The Broken Academy 5: Bonds

by Jade Alters

  “So…” my throat scratches when I try to speak up. “They couldn’t stand you in there either, huh?” It’s all I can do to try and sharpen my bravery. The corners of Heren’s lips curl up in an imitation of a smile. It’s the most horrifying mask I’ve seen. His eyes act as two windows, through which I can plainly see that anything within him that once resembled humanity is gone. He doesn’t need to say a thing to tell me that he’s even more a monster than the Silver Fiends that ripped it out of him. But then he does.

  “Hello, Emery.” The sound of it is nauseating. So calm. So sleek. So coldly barren. Heren sounds like a beautiful song rewritten in minor. He takes a single step towards me. His hand slides inside the folds of his robe. My marrow turns to ice. I have to move now, before I can’t.

  I turn tail and sprint back around the corner of Clearlake. The roaring soundwaves of Heren’s disabling orb ripple through the air just beyond the edge of my cover. Though they don’t hit me directly, the sound still wiggles razors between the wrinkles in my brain. I dig in my tight uniform pockets for Reynold and Lily’s earbuds. The quiet hope that they work as planned thrums in every thump of my heart. I jam one in each ear before I trot on, through the center of the pond courtyard.

  A sting sears through my left shoulder blade. I take another step to outrun it, but instead feel a painful tug backward. I wheel around to find a cable taut in the air between Heren and myself. Whatever is on the end of it is embedded in my back tissue. The slightest of movements courses agony through my skin, down into the muscle. I trace the cable back to the source, the disabling orb in Heren’s hand. He clicks a button I recognize all too well. My eyes bulge white in realization of what’s about to happen to me. I have just enough time to throw up a conjuring hand, but my trick never fully forms. Heren activates the Magician-scrambling vibration of his damnable orb. It resonates not just through the air, but through the cable attached to it. The wave jostles its way down the steel binding us, right into my back.

  My knee hits the ground. My teeth clench hard enough to brighten both sides of my jaw with strained heat. I force myself to stare up at him. To look him in the eye as he approaches, gradually, calmly. His cable retracts deeper in his orb with every step. My lifeline shortens by the second. I can’t scream. I can’t so much as twitch. It’s dead silent around Clearlake, aside from the stark tap of Heren’s footsteps toward me. The others could still be setting a perimeter, or they could all be dead from the rest of Heren’s ambush.

  He makes it within a few feet of me before my half-formed trick falls out of the sky. A glassy blade of light. It plunges straight down, like a guillotine, and cleaves me free of his orb. The cable swings down loose from both my back and Heren’s weapon, though it continues to boom the noise through the air. I squint to keep him focused in my eyes while I ready the fastest trick I can think of. Heren takes a single step closer to me, a hand on the cable of his orb. I don’t have the time to sort out everything that happens in a few chaotic seconds.

  A pike of pure light comes to life in my hands. Before I can use it, the cold comet of Heren’s orb crashes up into my jaw. His underhand swing, like the ball-end of a morningstar, kicks my head straight back and sends me tipping. My back slaps an Emery-shaped hole in the algae on the surface of the pond. My body sinks to the cold depths while Heren’s shadow obscures the late-afternoon sun over it.

  The water splash was a convincing touch, it seems. Heren’s too busy staring at my trick, my false defeat, to see me aiming with my real spike of light from fifteen feet away. I hurl it straight for him. A crisp snap breaks the whistle of my spear through the air. How? Heren holds my illusory weapon out, inches from his head, where he snatched it mid-flight. He clenches it tight enough to crack its glassy surface, dead eyes turning on me. A show of force.

  Then, just for a moment, I’m more angry than scared. He wants to show me how strong he is? Fine. Let him. A rub of two fingers weakens the illusory spike intentionally. Heren shatters it to razor sharp shards of light, which ravage the inside of his palm. Finally, he breaks form, just long enough to shake out his gloved hand. Crystal shreds and a bloody rain sprinkle over the ground by his feet. I take the opportunity to run back toward the front of the school. Toward the road to the Tether.

  I make it around the next corner before my heels scrape into the clay again. My line of Magicians stands braced in formation. They face a rank of Lotus robes, twice their size in numbers. I conjure a portal in each hand and let it fly, before Heren can catch up. My targets are surprised when their chests are warped to a different part of the forest than their legs, which collapse on the spot.

  “Like we practiced!” I shout to my mortified trainees. I can’t afford for them to see how terrified I am. Not now. “Break them up!” A few of the Lotus wheel around to deal with me, until their leader rounds the corner too.

  “Focus on the group,” Heren instructs with a haunting lack of urgency. However little is apparent in his tone, it saturates his intent, as every last Lotus robe turns back to my ranks of Magicians. It leaves me nowhere to flee. Nothing to do but face my blond, robed nightmare.

  I have just enough time to catch a glimpse of the massive portal created by my Magicians’ joint trick. It’s a beautiful display, and a good chunk of the Lotus forces are sucked in. The swell of pride in my chest doesn’t have a chance to fully blossom, though, before I hear the whomp of displaced air. I slide inches to the right of Heren’s disabling flail. The orb embeds itself in the earth. Its toxic frequency rattles the topsoil beneath my shoes. Even so diluted, it sends a violent vibration through my legs.

  Still, I trot along Heren’s flank. I can’t afford to let myself hesitate. To stop even for a second will see me a corpse in those dull blue pearls. I snap the fingers of one hand while I run. Each percussive note embeds a prismatic spike in the ground, tip tilted down toward Heren. I draw a half-moon perimeter around him while he tears his orb from the ground. He yanks the cable over his head to swing the flail at my back. I drop and skid on my knees to let it whoosh over my head.

  I slam my palm to the dry grass to command my arsenal in retaliation. Every one of my illusory spikes slides loose of its earthen sheath to fly straight for Heren. I don’t waste time being astonished or horrified as he spins and slides away from each one. Of the seven spears I conjured, one tears a loose piece of fabric from my sleeve. But, by the time that happens, I’ve already summoned a new defense. Heren and I stand as opposite reflections on two sides of a glassy mirror, a shield. Through it, his disinterest is distorted into an even more convincing ghost. I put on my fiercest face and charge. I have to get close, or I’ll never touch him.

  Heren gives another overhead swing of his flail. I bounce the strike off my shield. The vibration of it sets me stumbling off sideways a few steps before I can correct course. But I do. And I run, right toward the unfeeling face of the Lotus. He yanks back his orb by its cable just before I crash into him. Instead, my shield grates against his forsaken weapon! It shakes me, visibly, rapidly. But I brace against my shield with both arms. I dig my heels in to push forward, even while my joints threaten to seize. My graying teeth are mere inches from Heren’s lips, which finally twitch with a semblance of effort. But I feel my strength sapping, threatening to give way. If I want him to fold now, I have to make a crack.

  “You’re just going to drop the Academy from the sky?” I let some real rage and confusion seep through my grinding enamel. “Right on California’s cities? On its people? From where I stand, it sounds like…you’re the biggest threat here! What will you even tell them?” I dig in as deep as I can. I try to hook into the one value I know Heren actually has.

  “That it was a fallen satellite. A foreign attack. Freak meteor showers,” Heren lists. “The public will believe anything before a war against the supernatural.”

  “And you…” I slide back on my heels, while my arms drive forward with everything I have left. My bones send a fibrous tremolo through my whole body. “You genuinely thin
k that’s easier? That it’s the right way to do this?”

  “Undoubtedly,” Heren says, without missing a beat. Then, deep in the endless dull blue of his faded orbs, I see the faintest flicker of humanity. “I hope that helps you make peace.”

  “And what…helps you make yours?” I growl. Some part of me is getting through. Whatever is left of him that still feels something feels it, when he looks at me. All I need to do is wiggle my way deeper into his head, and exploit it. But here, Heren’s eyes glaze over to their previous level of lifelessness.

  “That I warned you,” he says.

  In a heartbeat, I am transported back to the moment I first met Heren, in person. How little I knew. How harmless he seemed while he bid us stop our search for the Origas’ ancient knowledge. Back then, the Gray Fiends seemed like too insurmountable a threat to be swayed by the words of a robed stranger. How I wish I could reach back through time and choke my former self. To save Hoster. To save countless lives lost in the Lotus’ dire attempt to eradicate the threat. But another heartbeat bounces me back. Back to the moment we’re in, where Heren and I know one another all too well. We both know the splinters in my shield will spread. That the vibrations from his orb will rob me of all feeling any second.

  Just as my shield begins to crumble, Heren unleashes one last surprise. He turns completely around, giving me his blindside. My jaw hangs open, almost too shocked to take advantage. Almost. I let my shield disintegrate to illusory dust, which reconverges in my hand as a stardust blade. I swing it just as the distraction that caused Heren to turn materializes. Serge emerges from the perfect camouflage of a trick, his own illusory spear in both hands. He impales it in the earth when Heren just manages to sidestep it. I lash my blade horizontally at his waist. Heren dodges it by leaping forward. Just then, the robed enigma lets out his first yelp of agony. Serge’s glassy spearhead slices out from Heren’s side in a shower of blood.

  Even pierced through by my brother, even with my own blade swinging for his throat, Heren moves like lightning. He slings his orb backward, straight into Serge’s forehead. Serge reels back a few steps while Heren turns towards him. He lifts his flail high over his head, showing me his back yet again. This time, it’s a test. I can tell from the deliberate half-turn backward at me. Serge is close enough that Heren doesn’t need his focus to aim. No, this is a blow intended for me. A choice. I have enough time to strike at Heren, though his strike may still connect, or to ensure Serge’s safety. Not both. Damn him, the blue-eyed devil.

  I swipe a hand along the ground to open a portal beneath my brother. Heren’s flail sinks in the ground where Serge had been a second later when it closes. Heren turns into a wide swing to crack my side with his flail next. It whooshes through empty air. I’ve already fallen through the portal I opened beneath myself.

  Serge and I reappear in the clay field by the Tether Teleporter. We share a look of understanding when we see the Lotus line pushing back our Magicians, hard. They’re almost here. I clench my fists, and force myself to scream:

  “Fall back!”

  Our Magicians pedal backward toward us, spraying illusory weapons and portals in an outward cone. Lotus flails and maces take out a handful more before we all gather round the lightstream. Through the crowd of converging dark red robes, a set of blue eyes slices out at me. Then we step into the Tether, the last to ever do so.

  We spill through the Adjustment Lounge doors onto a shaking floor. I never thought I’d ask myself if the Academy could support itself on just two Tethers. I never thought my life would depend on it. A few Magicians stumble into the walls with the new slope of our floating refuge.

  I cringe until the shaking stops, a hand on a table to keep myself from falling over. The Academy floats on, hanging by two fine threads.

  The Unknown

  Lee,

  Sierra Nevadas, Academy Training Zone

  As if we weren’t nervous enough already. I’m in the middle of my tenth pace across the length of our defensive position, a high bald mountain ridge, when I notice a few of my fellow Dragons staring. At first I wonder if they’re pining for the days when we ruled these skies without fear of robed attackers. I know I did, when we first set up on the ridge. Then I notice a large part of the crowd all staring at one collective spot. I trace their line of sight. The regret of looking is instant.

  It’s the most horrifying five seconds of my life. In that time, a nightmare flickers across the sky. The hundreds-of-years-old trick hiding the Academy weakens, just enough for it to appear temporarily. It’s taken on such a sharp tilt, it looks like its ready to turn on its head. Only two beams of shimmering light hold it up at one end. Then the massive complex flickers back out of existence, as quickly as it appeared. Could it have been real? Could I really be that terrified, to conjure the sight in my mind? Dragonlord Thise confirms it when a piece of parchment materializes in her hand.

  “Word from the Academy,” she announces. I turn over to her, along with the majority of our forces. A shimmering blue wisp has appeared beside her to deliver the message. With just his chest formed properly and no face to speak of, Hoster resembles the form Stephanie did the year Cece came to the Broken Academy. “There…are only two Tethers left, including the one we guard.”

  “It’s on us, then,” I grumble. I don’t realize just how loud, or how closely everyone is listening, until Thise says:

  “Us and Cece. We’re it,” I gulp and wipe a glaze of sweat from my palms on my pant legs. “But we may have an advantage, it seems,” Thise says, taking quick glances up at Hoster beside her. “It looks like…well, why don’t you tell them what you found?” Blue mist froths out around Hoster as he struggles to take the most human form he can. He ends up short both feet and a hand, and his face remains absent of most detail. Still, he speaks up loud enough for all of us to hear.

  “According to records I found in the Lotus’ own Library, they know the least about Dragons and Astrals. They have weapons against us, but they’re not nearly as well-equipped as they are against the Big Three or Vampires,” Hoster explains. “Their lack of experience fighting us might be our only chance. I…I don’t remember it, but I’ve been told that the only reason Heren was able to…to…kill me,” he chokes, “was because he got close. The same goes for you Dragons. If we keep enough distance between us and them, their weapons will be ineffective.”

  “So aerial fire is the name of the game,” I conclude. “How the hell did you get in and out of the Lotus Library as one intact…Astral?” I can’t help but ask Hoster.

  “I’m still figuring it all out myself, but I guess it’s because I’m what’s called a…Schism,” Hoster tries to explain. A pant of sympathy sounds through my ribcage when I see how confused he is. Like he’s talking about someone else. “I can open portals to other Realms, among other things. I guess Lotus alarm systems don’t know how to detect that.” He guesses? I almost chuckle. Hoster has no idea that he may have single-handedly done more against the Lotus than any of us. And he doesn’t even have a body.

  “Well…nice work,” I tell him. “We’ll set up some barricades to group them together and torch them from above?” I wait for a nod from Thise before I transfer the gesture to our ranks of scaly warriors. Flame bursts up from across the dry clay of the Sierra Nevadas’ rocky ridge. The setting sun glints off of each Dragon as they burst up in smoke and fire. They shoot across the sky like glistening arrows. They spread out to box the procession of burgundy robes in the field below. They’re here. But they go no further today. Not while there’s fire in my throat.

  A line of Dragons rips into the earth on either side of the Lotus. Heads cock on long scaly necks. Throat scales glow with blood orange light. Thise, Hoster and I watch from our high cliff as a firestorm explodes from the throats of both Dragon lines. The light of it is almost too bright to see through. I shade my eyes with a hand and squint to see a hundred shadows converge into one inside the fire.

  A gasp jumps from my lips when the first Dragon fal
ls. He jostles out of line, a bow gun bolt impaling his scaly chest. His human body hits the ground, twitching. Then a second Dragon is skewered on the other side. I look to Thise in equal parts both drive and terror. The only hope of victory is for us to put our own lives on the line. I turn back to the inferno in the clay valley below. Somehow, in the heart of it, the Lotus huddle together for life. I grit my teeth until they cut out from my gums. My jaw lengthens to a snout of dagger-like fangs.

  “Fall back a little, but keep the heat on!” I send down to the Dragons below through the Soul of Fire. Scared as they might be that the next bolt will come for them, they hold strong. They take gulps of air in shifts to keep the flame-tornado swirling. I turn to signal the others behind me. They step into a spread-out arrowhead formation. Just before I open my mouth, I notice for the first time with any sort of clarity, the landscape of our rocky ridge. The huge mounds of boulders scattered like guideposts for giants. Or weapons for Dragons. “Change of plans,” my voice ripples through our companions. I feel Thise’s head snap towards me from the side. “Grab the biggest boulder you can lug. They’re blocking our fire somehow. Let’s see how they do against these.”

  A fireburst unveils my true form. A serpentine suit of golden-red armor replaces my skin. My wings burst wide to cast a wicked shadow over the mountainous slope beneath us. A surge of pride swells in my chest when the Dragonlord is the first to follow suit. Her transformation heats our whole ridge. Her magnificent armor refracts light of overt color as she rises to the air alongside me. We lead by example, swooping low to clutch hunks of mountain in our talons. Turbulence from our wings dispels the fire from the mountaintop as we fight with the weight of the boulders. Then, finally, they lift.

  Thise and I turn over the clay valley hundreds of feet below. We flap tired wings to tow our boulders across the Sierra Nevadas. A sluggish flock of scales spreads out behind us. We keep our draconic gemstone eyes trained downward. When we’re close enough, the dark blob in the fire takes on a sharper shape. We see the mortifying truth. The Lotus are protected only within a turtle-shell formation, with the shell being made from the corpses of their fallen. The bodies on the outside of the Lotus battalion had been all but incinerated from our initial two-sides strike. Their flame-protected Robes, however, still serve their purposes, for the survivors deeper inside the formation.