Arcane Dropout 5

by Edmund Hughes

  “Does it bother you?” asked Lee. “Two people you once cared about, facing off in a duel?”

  “An exhibition. This is basically professional wrestling with arcane talent and an improvised script. Nobody is actually going to get hurt.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  She shrugged. “Should it? That’s not a rhetorical question. In a sense, this emotional drama has already played out in my heart once before.”

  “How so?”

  A hint of a smile played across Zoe’s lips. “You’re a good listener when you’re stoned.”

  “Thank you. Now tell me a story.”

  “…When Harper and I first discovered we had feelings for each other—romantic feelings—we were both already in relationships. I was dating Carter, while Harper was dating his brother Elias.”

  “She mentioned that to me once. I suppose you can’t always help who you fall in love with.”

  “Very true, though there’s always still the question of how honest you are with your feelings and how willing you are to commit to them.”

  Zoe’s smile paled and wilted at the edge. “It was hard for us. For Harper and me. We thought we were just teasing each other, playing stupid games, even when the touching and kissing progressed to… staying up all night in the sheets.”

  A mental image—one he wasn’t really comfortable with—flashed through Lee’s head. He coughed awkwardly and waited for Zoe to continue.

  “Even worse was the fact we didn’t break up with our boyfriends immediately. Elias was oblivious, but Carter knew that something was going on. He became jealous and competitive, though, given the situation, it wasn’t his fault.

  “He took Harper seriously as a rival for my love. When I finally told him that it was over, he yelled and screamed, he pleaded, he even did his fair share of crying.

  “I remember at the time wishing I could just undo my relationship with him. It felt like it had all been such a massive mistake to let it progress to that point, to lead him on when my feelings for him were so much less than what I shared with Harper.”

  Lee set his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry. That must have been tough.”

  She shrugged. “Ironic, isn’t it? In the end, what Carter and I shared was undone. He doesn’t remember me after the dream-weaving the Order performed on Primhaven in the wake of Head Wizard Antioch’s death.

  “I’ve thought a lot about that, about Harper and Carter. About which ending is preferable. Harper remembers what we shared and despises me. Carter wouldn’t even recognize me in public. Hatred versus complete apathy.”

  “Are you sure you really want to watch this duel?”

  She nodded vigorously. “I need to watch it.”

  Head Wizard Odarin made his way out into the center of the dueling chamber, dressed in his official black robes. He grinned as he held his hand up, gestured the crowd to silence, and then tapped on a small clip-on mic stuck to his chest.

  “Is this thing on?”

  A sharp screech of feedback gave him his answer while triggering a wave of winces from the crowd.

  “Ah, there we go.” Odarin cleared his throat. “Welcome, current and prospective Primhaven students, family, and faculty members! I hope you’re all enjoying your visit to our campus. We have a special treat in store for you today. An exhibition duel between two former Primhaven alumni who have risen to…”

  He squinted, staring up into the crowd. Lee followed his gaze and realized, somewhat unsurprisingly, that an initiate was holding up prompt cards for Odarin in the third row. One of the cards had either been lost or illegible to begin with, and the initiate was trying desperately to pantomime whatever it was Odarin was supposed to be saying next.

  “They’ve, uh, risen toward the sky! Yes, that’s how it goes. Risen skyward with a stratospheric trajectory. Rockets of the magical world! And we’re very proud of them, and, er, without further ado, let’s bring out our combatants! Harper Black and Carter Depree!”

  CHAPTER 32

  The crowd’s applause was thunderous as Harper and Carter made their way out into the center of the dueling chamber. They were both in costume, Harper’s being the same sultry black sorceress-themed dress he’d seen her in the day before, and Carter’s a fanciful and far more modest entertainer’s suit.

  Lee felt an odd twisting feeling in his chest as he watched her standing there, confident and poised, the center of attention for a crowd of thousands of people. Not a hair was out of place in her golden braid. Her makeup was perfect. The dress fluttered in the light wind where it wasn’t skin-tight against her perfect curves.

  A few of the men in the audience were clearly ogling her, but the general mood was more one of respect, almost awe. Odarin said a few words off-mic to both Harper and Carter. They fell into their casting stances, staring each other down. Odarin held his hands up, and the crowd went silent under the tension of imminent, violence-based entertainment.

  “Begin!” bellowed Odarin as he stepped back.

  Lee felt his sister’s hand grip his knee, so clammy it left an imprint of sweat on his jeans. He had his own share of tension to shoulder as he watched Harper and Carter slowly begin to circle one another. What if she got hurt? What if she accidentally killed her opponent? What if she lost?

  Harper Black. One of the very first memories Lee had of her, long before she’d ever taken him as an apprentice, was watching her take on two mages at once in the dueling chamber. She’d made it look easy, flinging around arcane power as though it was second nature.

  There was a subtle back and forth to the early engagement that he’d never noticed before in the duels he’d watched or partaken in. Harper and Carter kept shifting their arms, moving from casting stance to casting stance. Elemental, alteration, conjuration—it was like a dance, a pregame of positioning that would determine the fight’s initial direction.

  Carter struck first, flinging a lance of purple conjuration energy forward with blurring speed. Harper reacted at the last instant, crossing her arms into the alteration stance and dismissing the attack with a spell shield. She immediately countered, flinging a barrage of magic missiles that Carter dodged rather than blocked.

  Lee felt Zoe’s fingers digging into his knee, then suddenly relax. She let out a relieved sigh and snorted.

  “She’s going easy on him.”

  Lee raised an eyebrow. “What? Seriously?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure of it. It’s just like her. She was the same back then, too.”

  The two combatants exchanged more spells and Lee could see what his sister was talking about. He knew Harper’s fighting style well enough. Normally, she was all about overwhelming, immediate force. Here, in this duel, there was more variety in her spell choice. Flexibility in the place of fireballs. It made for an undeniably more entertaining match, but also worried him.

  “She’s taking too many chances,” he muttered. “I don’t like seeing her leave herself so open.”

  As though to emphasize his point, Harper tried to dodge out of the way of a sudden burst of conjured arrows with a wind-infused jump but launched off balance. She landed with too much momentum and her legs at the wrong angle, taking an immediate spill across the dueling chamber’s hard stone floor.

  Carter wasn’t holding back. He immediately followed up with a massive ice sphere aimed at Harper’s center of mass. She was still pulling herself to her feet as the attack crossed the distance, a jagged crystal of blurred white-blue.

  Flames danced around her body in a sudden outward burst, a circular blast of fire with herself as the center-point. The air hissed as the ice spell dissipated into a plume of superheated steam, and the nearest row of onlookers let out surprised shouts as the flames came within a few feet of roasting them.

  The back and forth continued, neither caster getting the upper hand. It became clear to Lee at a certain point, that Harper was doing her best to look like she wasn’t toying with Carter. She was, but the same physical and arcane talents that ser
ved her so well in real fights also made her a natural performer when it came to the realm of stage combat.

  He amused himself for a while by counting each spell she fired off and comparing it to his own meager casting limit. He stopped when he reached four dozen, finding it too deflating to continue. His finger traced the shape of his spellchain, nearly half his casting potential, underneath his shirt, a gift from Harper that he almost never took off.

  She ended the duel with a fantastic combination of a force spell to knock Carter off his feet and conjuration bindings to secure him to the ground. The crowd roared their approval. Harper gave them a hard smile as she lifted her arms into the air, scanning over the faces of the audience.

  Her eyes caught Lee’s for an instant, her smile widening. It fled almost as quickly as she panned to the person sitting next to him.

  “Time to go!” he snapped, standing up and seizing Zoe by the hand.

  “I suppose it is,” muttered Zoe.

  Eliza stood up from her seat, frowning as she saw Lee and his sister making their way toward the exit. “What’s up?”

  “Zoe isn’t feeling well and needs to head home.”

  “Really? My dad said his stomach was hurting, too. I think my family is also going to head out early.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Lee said, with no real conviction. “Let’s catch up after, okay?”

  He all but dragged Zoe out of the stands and jogged with her across campus, to his dorm. The rest of the initiates were all still partaking in the open house, so the common area was empty. Tess was in Lee’s room, sitting on the bed and watching over Harold with a worried expression.

  “He still isn’t feeling well, Lee,” she said. “Did you see if Willow could... oh. Hello, Zoe.”

  Lee felt himself tense up as he watched Tess and Zoe look at each other. They’d never been friends or anything close to it. He hurried to grab the book on enchanting and pressed it into his sister’s hands.

  “Eldon,” said Zoe. “You have a sick kitten in your dorm?”

  “It’s Tess’s and mine,” he said. “We’ve been taking care of it together, and it’s none of your—”

  “You can’t just leave an animal to suffer! Especially one so young.”

  Zoe took a seat next to Tess and, to Lee’s slack-jawed surprise, pulled Tess into her mystic stream. It was bizarre watching someone else do it. It also stirred up a few odd, possessive feelings that he wasn’t sure he liked or needed.

  “Has he been eating much?” asked Zoe.

  “Just drinking water,” said Tess. “I gave him some wet food yesterday, but he didn’t seem to like it after the first few bites.”

  “Poor guy,” said Zoe. “He’s rare, you know. A male calico. The odds are small, only one out of thousands because of the genetics at play.”

  “In the interest of getting the kitten some help, and in getting you out of Primhaven, I think we should get moving,” said Lee. “Tess, I’ll grab Willow on the way back and have her play doctor for Harold, okay?”

  Tess nodded. “It was nice seeing you, Zoe.”

  “You too, Tess.”

  He ushered his sister out of the dormitories and to the edge of the Ewix Center, where the steam baths would let Ryoko teleport her from Primhaven by way of her water nymph abilities.

  “Thanks again, Eldon. This may seem a small favor to you, but…”

  “It didn’t seem like a small favor. It seemed like a stupid one. Zoe…” He set his hands on her shoulders and looked at her seriously. “You need to stop letting whatever feelings you still have for Harper cloud your judgment. I could have sent you this book in a dozen different ways. You didn’t come here for it; you came here for you.”

  “I’m in no mood for a lecture, little brother.”

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t need one. Seriously, I care about you. Don’t get yourself killed. You’re not invincible, and certainly not invisible. You can’t just stroll into Primhaven and expect to—”

  “Lee!”

  The voice came from behind and caught him so off-balance that he almost reached for his dagger. Most of the students and family members who’d watched the exhibition were flowing across campus toward the dining hall, which meant the area he and Zoe were in was relatively bare of people.

  He turned, expecting the worst, only to find Willow watching him with a furrowed brow. Lee gave Zoe a small push toward her escape as she frowned and took in the sight of Harper’s cousin.

  “Goodbye, Zoe,” he whispered. “Take care.”

  “You too, Eldon.”

  She hurried off and Lee did his best to act nonchalant as he made his way over to Willow.

  “Who was that?” she asked.

  “An old friend of mine,” he said. “She used to be a student here.”

  “Oh? Did you and she ever—”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to stop right there.”

  CHAPTER 33

  It took a bit of begging, but Willow went along with him to take a look at Harold. Lee wasn’t a huge fan of the secretive smile she kept flashing, as though the kitten was just a pretense and he had an entirely different reason for bringing her back to his dorm. He wasn’t interested in introducing any more complications into his life, especially mildly alcoholic ones related to people he was already involved with.

  “Here he is,” said Lee. “He’s been acting like this for a day or two now. Lethargic, sensitive to being touched, no appetite.”

  Tess watched from the side of his dorm, her back pressed against the wall to give them space. Willow brushed her blonde-and-blue hair out of her face as she took a seat on the bed next to the sickly animal.

  “Hmmm…” She ran a hand across its back. “You should have come to get me earlier.”

  Tess nodded her agreement. Lee shrugged.

  “It’s been a busy few days.”

  “He doesn’t have any visible injuries,” said Willow. “His eyes look fine. Breathing is okay. I’m going to use one of my nature spells to get a better sense of what his current experience is. This won’t hurt him, I promise.”

  Willow held her arms out to either side and adjusted her breathing. Nature magic was a rarity at Primhaven, so Lee watched in fascination as soft yellow light flashed between Willow’s hands, extending outward like a third arm to gently touch the kitten.

  The visible part of the spell only lasted an instant, but the connection between her and Harold seemed to linger, from the way she and the kitten looked at each other. Tess was wringing her hands together from where she stood, and Lee shot her a reassuring smile.

  “Interesting,” said Willow. “This could get challenging.”

  “What?” said Tess. “What is it? Lee, ask her what’s wrong!”

  “Is he going to be okay?” he asked.

  Willow stood up with a deep frown on her face. “I’m going to have to perform surgery on him.”

  Tess’s gasp was a fair reflection of Lee’s own feelings. He swore under his breath and shook his head.

  “He’s just a kitten. Is your nature magic going to make this easier on his body or something?”

  “If it works, it will bring him back to full health.” Willow reached over to Lee’s bed stand and pulled a tissue out of the tissue box. “Can you hold him flat for a moment?”

  “What’s the problem, anyway?”

  “Your kitten,” said Willow as Lee set his hands on Harold, “has eaten dental floss.”

  His next question died on his lips as he watched Willow flash a teasing grin, pull the cat’s tail up, and reveal a nub of white string protruding from his posterior. She gripped it with the tissue she held in hand and slowly but surely began to pull.

  Harold let out a low, growling moan and tried to squirm away. Lee held him where he was, tuning out Tess’s worried gasps, watching as Willow performed the dirty work.

  When it was done, the kitten immediately curled up and began licking his affected region. Willow made a face and held the floss out to the side
.

  “Can you show me to the bathroom so I can properly dispose of this?” she asked.

  “Of course.” Lee let out a chuckle. “I can’t believe it was just something he’d eaten.”

  “The fact they add flavor to dental floss doesn’t help. It can be serious, though, if it doesn’t pass through their digestive system on its own.”

  Lee glanced over his shoulder at Tess, savoring the relief on her face as she sat next to her beloved kitten. He was smiling as he brought Willow into the shared dormitory bathroom, still empty with all his fellow initiates engaged in open house activities.

  “It’s interesting experiencing the world from a kitten’s point of view.” Willow dropped the floss into the toilet bowl and flushed. “Especially that one.”

  She smiled and gave Lee a look he wasn’t sure he liked as she washed her hands off.

  “He’s a male calico,” he said. “They’re incredibly rare. Only one out of every few thousand are boys.”

  “Ah, yes, I’ve heard that before.” Willow folded her arms. “There’s also the fact that he, for whatever reason, could sense his master in that dorm room with us.”

  Lee’s blood ran cold. “Of course he could. I was right there with him.”

  “Not you,” said Willow. “Tess. He’s a smart animal, smart enough to even know her by name, even though she was—well, I’m not sure he understood what she was. What is she, Lee? Does Harper know about her?”

  “What… are you talking about?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  There was a sudden edge to Willow’s voice that fed deeper into his dread. It brought back memories of his first experiences with Harper as an instructor, back before she’d known he was Zoe’s sister and had only been concerned with exposing him. The resemblance between Willow and Harper only made the comparison that much more disconcerting.

  “Who are you, Lee Amaranth?” asked Willow. “Why are you really at Primhaven?”

  “You’re paranoid, Willow. Listen to yourself.”

  “Does Harper know?”