Awakened Spells Box Set

by Logan Byrne

  Within a second we were gone, warping through time and space, out of bounds of the magical charms and hexes surrounding the precinct.

  I gasped for air, the mark leaving me, as the blue glow faded and I fell to my knees, weak. I shook my head, before Xelia knelt beside me and Mirian rushed over. “Lexa!” he called.

  “I’m…okay. A bit drained, but I don’t feel like I did all those other times,” I said, before standing up, albeit slowly.

  “You’re finally mastering it,” Mirian said, smiling.

  “Guess I saved it until the end,” I said. “I learned something—”

  “You did it,” Pote said, running up, as she saw Xelia holding the box containing the amulet.

  “What did you learn?” Mirian asked.

  “Maybe it’s better we discuss this in private,” I said.

  14

  “I learned about the amulet,” I said, as we entered Pote’s tent.

  “We told you about it, Lexa,” Mirian said.

  “No, when I was outside the vault and went silent for a while,” I said.

  “That was…unexpected,” Mirian said.

  “I went there, to the place I go when I meditate. Kaia told me about the amulet and the true history behind it. I know why Kiren wants it so badly. I know, more importantly, why Alornia is so important to him. I know it all,” I said.

  “So?” Pote asked, on the edge of her seat.

  “The amulet is a way to summon Sha’rari, yes, but it’s also the very thing keeping him in the nether realm. It’s sort of a double-edged sword, so to speak. The Malum, when wielded by a very powerful dark mage like Kiren, can amplify his powers to a level like the Mark of Merlin. That should be the only person who could summon or contain Sha’rari, but with the Malum attached to Kiren he can fake it, in a way,” I said.

  “This isn’t good,” Mirian said.

  “Why does he want Alornia so badly?” Pote asked.

  “The gold. More specifically, Rafael’s tower, the one I went up with him. It’s coated in gold, including within the tower itself. It will act like a superconductor and charge his powers with the Malum like an antenna. He’ll then, and only then, be able to summon Sha’rari like he planned,” I said, running out of breath.

  “But doesn’t he need the amulet?” Pote asked.

  “Yes, he does,” I said.

  “We have that now, don’t we? It was in the box you brought back with you,” Pote asked.

  “Well, Xelia had it. Didn’t she give it to you?” I asked, looking around.

  “We need to find her,” Pote said, springing up and running out of the tent.

  “Where’s Xelia?” Mirian asked, looking around.

  “You rang, my lord?” Xelia asked, jokingly, as she came in the tent.

  “The box, where is it?” Pote asked.

  “You should know, you asked for it,” she replied, shaking her head.

  “Xelia, we’ve been in the tent. This is no time for jokes,” Pote said, coming back inside.

  “Your guard, he said you requested it and took it from me. Real handsy, those guys. You might want to teach them about personal space,” Xelia said.

  “I didn’t order any guard to retrieve the box. They wouldn’t even know what it was or what was inside it,” Pote said, as the color left her skin.

  “What did this guard look like?” Mirian asked.

  “He had a dark goatee and brown eyes. A white man, maybe six foot with a small scar cutting through his eyebrow,” Xelia said.

  “Mirian, we don’t have any guards matching that description,” Pote said, panicked.

  Mirian pulled out his wand, flicking it upwards, and a siren went off. “This is a high-alert notification. There is a duskhowler among us. I repeat, there is a duskhowler among us,” he said, as he talked into his wand and it amplified throughout the camp.

  The citizens outside ran around like headless chickens as the sirens wailed. There was mass panic, pure chaos at the thought of one of them infiltrating our camp.

  “We need to search every square inch of this camp and find this man. He mustn’t be allowed to leave the camp,” Mirian said.

  “Mages,” Pote said, as her most senior warriors ran to her. “Place a lockdown on the perimeter of the camp. Nobody teleports in or not.”

  “Got it,” they said, grabbing hands and starting to incant a protection spell.

  “What can I do?” I asked, as Charlie, Britta, and Blake ran up to us.

  “Search the camp. Find a man with a dark goatee, dark eyes, and a scar on his eyebrow, likely in a guard’s uniform. Go!” Mirian shouted.

  “What’s going on?” Blake asked, wiping food from his face.

  “We got the amulet, but a man took it from Xelia. He posed as a guard, but he’s actually a duskhowler. We just handed the amulet right back to Kiren if we don’t find this man,” I said, panicked.

  Charlie shifted, along with Blake, as they covered ground faster and used their improved vision and smell to track down the man. We ran from tent to tent, even checking under beds and behind curtains, but we started to run into dead ends. This man couldn’t be here any longer, the entire camp was looking for him, and nobody was turning up even the slightest bit of evidence he was still here.

  That amulet was everything for stopping Kiren dead in his tracks. Even with the Malum, and even if he took Alornia, he couldn’t summon Sha’rari without the amulet. It was the final key to get into the door, to open it, and it was in our possession.

  Why didn’t I take it with me into the tent? It wasn’t Xelia’s fault, of course, she had no way of knowing the man didn’t work for the resistance, but I should’ve kept a better eye on it. I had a connection with it, it spoke to me, and yet I didn’t even hear when it was being taken away from me.

  We searched for an hour, canvassing the entire camp, before we realized it was futile. It was gone, the man was gone, and our chance at stopping Kiren in his tracks was gone. We’d failed not only the world, but ourselves.

  “So, what does this mean?” Faus asked later that night, as we all sat back on the hill around our campfire.

  We roasted marshmallows, making smores, even though I didn’t feel like I deserved anything that tasted good. I deserved to eat rice cakes, plain ones, and maybe some bark off a tree.

  “It means the only piece of the puzzle is Alornia. If it doesn’t fall before the blood moon is over, we win. As long as he doesn’t get inside and into that tower, he won’t succeed and his attempts were for nothing,” I said.

  “Then let’s do it. We can still win,” Blake said.

  “I appreciate your enthusiasm, I do, but we have to be realistic, too. Their army is massive,” I said.

  “You said before they were unskilled citizens roped into battle,” Blake said.

  “That was when I still had some hope left. That was when I still thought we could take the amulet. It’s over,” I said, rubbing my eyes with my palms.

  “No, it’s not over. You might not have hope anymore, but I do. I know we can stop him, or at least slow his army down before they break through the walls so that he won’t have enough time to get into that tower and signal the destroyer,” Blake said.

  “You know what, I agree,” Britta said, sitting up straight and puffing out her chest a little. “We’re outnumbered, and we’re going against a man who would kill any of us just because we’re who we are. It doesn’t matter how big his forces are, or what magical artifact he has in his hands. What does matter is hope. I have hope that we’ll come out ahead and evil won’t be able to rear its ugly head any longer.”

  “Britta is right. This will be our hardest battle, but it’s still one worth fighting. We’re going to die anyway, so we might as well take the chance, however small, of living,” Charlie said.

  “You guys really want to do this?” I asked, looking around the fire.

  Everybody nodded without saying a word. I looked at them, seeing the fire in their eyes, reflecting their ambition, before realizi
ng that Charlie was right. We might as well die on the battlefield at least trying to stop Kiren; it was better than dying in a ditch somewhere hiding from Sha’rari. At least one option was valiant and honorable.

  “We still have a couple of days. We can train really hard, learn some new moves, and get to Alornia before his army does. We’ll defeat Kiren or die trying,” I said, smiling.

  “That’s my girl!” Blake cheered.

  “Never surrender!” Charlie said.

  “Let’s kick some butt!” Faus yelled, completely out of character, before clearing his throat and pushing his glasses back up his nose. “Yes, I said what I said.”

  “Whatever happens, we do it together. ‘Til the end,” I said.

  15

  Darkness swirled in the sky above as booming thunder and flashing lightning clamored for dominance. I stood outside the gates of Alornia, my wand gripped tightly in my hand, as Kiren’s army approached.

  He walked through the crowd, laughing as he came to the very front, only fifteen feet from me. “You thought you had this, didn’t you?” he asked, pulling out the amulet.

  “That isn’t yours. It doesn’t belong to you,” I said.

  “Then why do I have it?” he asked.

  “You stole it, like you stole everything else. None of this, nothing, belongs to you,” I said.

  “You had so much potential, dear Lexa. With the mark you possess and the crystal wand in your hand, you could’ve achieved so much with me and Sha’rari. He would’ve loved you like a daughter. He would’ve been more of a father than your own,” Kiren said.

  “My father was a great man,” I said.

  “Your father died at my hand,” he replied, smiling.

  “You weren’t there that night, you didn’t touch him,” I said, as tears began to well up in my eyes.

  “You better than anybody should know the power of magic, and how it can transform a mage. Did you not just recently figure that one out?” he asked.

  “Why did you do it? What did they do to you?” I asked.

  “They sought to destroy me and what I was building. I needed to weed them out, to kill them, and cut the head off the snake that was trying to bite me. I couldn’t find you before those pathetic auditors came knocking, but now I have you. I’ve been waiting a long time for this, Lexa. It’s time to finish what I started that night all those years ago,” he said, lifting up his wand.

  “Rigor Viberum!”

  My eyes jolted open as I gasped for air and sat up in my cot. I looked around the room, panicked, before realizing I was in the camp and not outside Alornia. I wiped the sweat off my face before crossing my legs underneath my blankets. Why did this have to keep happening to me? It seemed my dreams were becoming not only far more frequent, but darker and more intense too.

  It couldn’t be true, though, could it? I was stressed, my mind fabricating events and turning me against myself in the cruelest way. Kiren wasn’t there that night, I was sure of it, I remembered seeing the man as he hurt my mother. It wasn’t him, no matter what my stupid brain tried to tell me. It was just looking for another reason for me to hate Kiren and everything he did and stood for.

  “Good, Lexa, command your wand. Make it an extension of you,” Shira said. Britta and I were back in the virtual reality simulation practicing our spells against each other without any real consequences.

  “Pacificate!” Britta exclaimed.

  I swiped my wand, forgetting to incant Arma Maximus, but the shield came out nonetheless. “Lexa, that’s advanced spellcasting. Non-spoken magic is quite difficult,” Shira said.

  “Good job, Lexa,” Britta said.

  “Glacio!” I shouted.

  “Ignitus Maximus!” Britta retorted.

  Her flames and my ice met each other as they danced and battled for dominance. Two opposing forces intertwined, before the heat of her flames began to overpower my frosty chill.

  “Terra Elevare,” I said, quickly pointing my wand at the ground before flicking upwards. A thick sheet of rock flung up and Britta’s inferno blew around it, heating up the rock but keeping me safe.

  “You’ve been brushing up on your spell books,” Britta said, stopping her spell.

  “Eruptico,” I said, blasting into the rock. It shattered all around, creating a smoke screen of rock dust, before I pointed my wand straight ahead, trying to feel where Britta was at.

  “Rigormorio,” I shouted, shooting the spell through the cloud.

  I heard Britta gasp as she went to swipe her wand. “Arma—” she said, before my spell hit, seizing her virtual body before she could incant the rest of the spell.

  “That’s match. You can take off the headsets,” Shira said, and the simulation ceased and we put away our equipment.

  “I don’t know what happened. I should’ve gone on the defensive when that smoke screen came up. I should’ve shielded myself before you had the chance to attack,” Britta said, shaking her head.

  “Hey, it’s okay. You did amazing, and that Ignitus was scorching. We all make mistakes,” I said, putting my hand on her back and rubbing it a little.

  “But we can’t afford to make mistakes with what’s about to happen. Getting hit with an immobilization spell on the battlefield will mean certain death. You need to always take the defensive if you believe even for a second that there’s a chance you’ll be attacked,” Shira said.

  We heard a roar, before walking out of the tent and seeing Charlie and Blake, both shifted, as they tried swiping at one another and sparring. They weren’t using their claws, both of them going for slaps like schoolchildren who didn’t want to leave a mark. Smart.

  “I’m going to take you down,” Charlie said, hopping around with his tail wagging like a counterweight.

  “Charlie, I have an advantage. I’m not stuck on four paws,” Blake said, before swiping at him.

  “Yeah, and you also can’t jump or do anything awesome,” Charlie said, lunging at Blake.

  They matched power, neither of them budging. They looked like two stubborn brothers who both wanted to get the upper hand solely for bragging rights.

  “Are you two done yet?” Britta asked.

  “Only when he concedes,” Blake said.

  I took out my wand, flicking it and shaking my head, before a small burst of air pushed them six feet away from one another. “Come on, neither of you is going to win over the other. Let’s get Faus and Rosie and have lunch. We need to rest.”

  “Fine,” Charlie said, shifting back into his human form.

  “You’re no fun,” Blake said, as his fur quickly disappeared and the dog-like structure of his face went back to the handsome human man I knew and loved.

  “Oh, there they are,” Rosie said, as the four of us walked into the mess tent.

  “I was looking for you guys. It looks like we’re leaving tomorrow. The gryphons came back, and the new intelligence says they should arrive at Alornia around noon tomorrow,” Faus said.

  “So they made good time,” I said.

  “I thought we’d have at least two more days, maybe even three,” Blake said.

  “It looks like he has to make good time as well,” Faus said, pulling out an old piece of parchment. There were celestial signs and planets on the map scaled with years. It was a magical map, the images and constellations moving, as it showed in real time and in the distant future what the cosmos was going to look like.

  “The blood moon will be happening tomorrow. With the time difference, and accounting for seasonal changes, it looks like it will start around six in the evening,” Faus said.

  “What about the comet? He needs that,” I said.

  “It will be around for maybe an hour, at least close enough to Earth for it to have any magical impact on him. The timing is hard to know for sure. It could come right away, or an hour or two after the sky turns red,” Faus said. I looked back down at the map and saw the comet coming, on a direct collision course with our planet. I wasn’t ready, none of us were.

 
“Are the walls of Alornia enough to stop his onslaught?” Blake asked.

  “For a while, yes. The engineering and magical protections on the walls, so long as the gates stay shut, are second to none. Nothing will take it down easily. The problem, however, is the fact that even the best protections crumble after so many vicious attacks. Matching that with the Malum and the power it will give him, it’s only a matter of time,” Faus said.

  “Maybe we can set traps or something,” Charlie said.

  “With so many of them using ranged attacks, even a bottomless ditch wouldn’t stop them. They’d build over it, or just teleport around. This battle will be won with offense, rather than defense,” Faus said.

  “Just remember, he can’t get into the palace and up into the tower. He needs that room more than anything, so if we can stop him from getting into it, we stand the best chance,” I said.

  “Lexa,” Mirian said as he approached us.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Could you please come with me? I need to see you,” he said.

  “I was just about to—”

  “Now,” he said, before walking away.

  “Good luck,” Britta said, her eyebrows raised.

  “What’s so important?” I asked, following him into his tent.

  “I take it you’ve heard we leave in the morning,” Mirian said.

  “Yeah, I heard,” I said, exasperated.

  “I’ve kept something safe for many decades. My mentor passed it down to me in hopes that one day I would find a worthy student who would be able to use it,” Mirian said, walking over to his chest.

  He flicked his wand around, not saying a word, before the myriad of locks on the chest began to click, the top of the trunk popping open. Mirian reached inside, picking up a battered wooden box, before setting it on his desk. The wood was weathered, speckled with small holes likely from worms eating through the box, and a tarnished brass clasp kept it closed.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “This sapphire was said to have been owned and used by Merlin himself. It is an embodiment of the mark, and it’s supposed to, at least in legend, highly amplify the powers of a mark bearer,” he said, opening the box.