The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  In exchange for the save, they had made me promise to send Olivia their way later that night. The gleam in their eyes was twenty percent worrying and eighty percent awesome.

  The two of them drove her mad, but I noticed that she always went to see what they wanted, no matter how much she complained about it.

  Which was stupidly similar to how I always showed up whenever Dare sent me a note to meet somewhere. Stupidly, stupid, since the man was solely responsible for my new “popularity” on campus.

  Keeping a low profile? I was obviously going about it the wrong way.

  I didn't need to meet with him so often—surely the Justice Magic wouldn't hold me to so many hours?—but I showed up every time he called.

  Like now—shaking off tree sap and resignedly thinking about how I needed to look up shower charms. I could seriously use a magical loofah.

  Dare put his hand in the dirt of the Midlands. The magic that was still dissipating from the man-eating tree that had stood there a moment ago rapidly reformed under his palm, and a sapling slowly sprouted from the soil. Dare backed away and the tile shifted, taking the new tree with it.

  The tree had tried to eat both of us ten minutes past and I was still numb from the bark explosions. But I had to admit that once again, I was a little speechless. Dare hadn't just destroyed it. He had given its energy back, turning the remnants of the bloodthirsty oak into a sapling brimming with vicious possibilities.

  Protection could be wrought in many ways, and Dare made use of them all. No wonder the branches and stalks always stretched toward him.

  Shadowing Dare was eye opening. It wasn't just battling demons or soul-sucking, flying piranhas or some mage's accidentally realized robot monster—though there were a lot of those. There was also the aftermath and a crazy amount of cleanup.

  He had, oddly, about half an hour prior, called forth his form-fitting battle cloak—looking good as new with its many buckles and slightly flared hem. It made for a pretty arresting view. And watching someone who was so deadly revive a plant was a little like looking at a calendar of hot Marines holding kittens.

  He pushed dark strands away from his forehead and arched a brow at my, undoubtedly, dumbstruck expression. “What?”

  I cleared my throat and tried to think of man-eating trees and not all the hotness so clearly on display. “I've gotta say, since they are now options, trapping and transformation are probably going to be my go-to choices here,” I said, brushing the remnants of bark from my jeans in an attempt not to stare at him. “You might have noticed that beating up things is not really my forte.”

  His lips quirked. “No? But the squirrels in the simulation rooms run in terror when they see you.”

  That...that had been Draeger's fault. Draeger, and his weird animal curses infecting my brain.

  The only thing I was remotely decent at, when fighting Dare in the simulation rooms, was running and setting traps. But his kinesthetic and strategic intelligence was coupled so highly that even when I was winning for a moment, I usually ended up flat on my back a second later, with Dare's foot heavy on my chest and him smirking down at me.

  “Whatever. Tree hugger,” I countered.

  And there was the much beloved, full-on smirk. “That is why it is essential to carve out the position at the top of the pack right away, Crown. You can express any thoughts you like and do anything you wish, and people will nod along like they are preferences, ideas, and actions of extraordinary value.”

  “Mmmhmm. Badass apex predator and all, I notice you spend a lot of time doing the dishes.” I pointed at his hand, where the healthy, nutmeg-colored residue of the oak's transformation still clung to his palm. “You rarely let the magic go to the recycling plant.”

  He looked at me for a long moment, as if debating whether to answer. “Excelsine has one of the best magic processors in the entire Second Layer. But relying on backlashes to be taken care of by something or someone else makes mages lazy. And it is useless to fight for something unless you intend to preserve the essence of what you fight for.”

  “You are only making your new nickname stick harder, tree hugger.”

  “It's better than some of the others I get.” He cocked his head, listening to something in the distance.

  “Alexander the Great?”

  “Worse.” His head stayed cocked, but he refocused on me. “Speaking of worse, the Troop is coming tomorrow. We'll have at least one tagalong for the next two weeks. They wouldn't let me refuse.”

  He pulled a thin, flexible folder from his cloak. “But before they get here, I want to try something.” He handed the folder to me.

  It was made of brown, pulp fibers that were bound together with a light dusting of magic. I had made similar folders with Stevens. They were made to hold magical documents.

  Unwrapping the string that kept the folder secured, I looked inside to see heavy, blank sheets of parchment. My fingers automatically tugged out the sheet on top, thumb and forefinger rubbing over the bumpy surface. The parchment was laced with magic—heady, old magic.

  I looked at him questioningly.

  “Draw something,” he said, his tone deep and smooth, but there was tension buried deep beneath the words, and something resembling triumph in his gaze.

  “What, like anything?”

  “Yes, Ren.”

  The use of my first name, even said in an exasperated way, took me by surprise. I looked down at the blank page—the very expensive, magic-filled blank page. “Er, why don't you give me a more defined instruction?”

  “No.”

  Tiles shifted around us as the Midlands sorted through disparate landscapes, piecing a new puzzle together. One tile clicked in on our right. Ruined cityscape. Ugh. That meant zombies. Another tile clicked on the other side. Stones. That meant trolls. Of course, anything could pop up anywhere in the Midlands, but some creatures were naturally drawn to certain tile types.

  I tensely waited for a zombie to spring out from behind one of the crumbling stone pillars. Guard Rock was my zombie fighting wingman. He was great at using his pencil to stab and unhinge jaws on anything that got too close. Zombies got preoccupied when you unhinged their biting mechanism.

  Dare cleared his throat in an obvious effort to get me to begin.

  Well, it wasn't like Dare couldn't take down a fleet of zombies, especially with his cloak on. This was my umpteenth session with him. I was well aware of what he could do.

  He raised his brows and pointed to the paper. I realized, somewhat abruptly, that I was stalling.

  We had fought and adventured in the simulation rooms and I had changed the surroundings with a simulated pencil more times than I could count, but it wasn't quite the same thing. He'd seen my dragons, wasps, and maps and hadn't freaked out...and that whole weird thing in the cafeteria had happened. But there was something strangely intimate about this atmosphere and his lack of instruction. Magic was heavy in my hand.

  I took a deep breath. I could do this. I could even make something impressive.

  He had been going on and on about thinking of defense as offense—containing threats as soon as they presented themselves as such. I suddenly had a pencil in hand and was drawing on the page. The sketch animated as I drew the lines, swirls forming and taking shape as they left my pencil's tip.

  The swirls formed into tight, magical rope, knotting together every few inches to form a spider web wrapping around the page and funneling down into a very real holding cell in the middle.

  I paused for a moment, surprised, and the line flowing from my pencil tip rippled in suspense, waiting. I was getting more fantastic results with my pencils each week, but this...? It was like the paper and graphite were alive—parts of a sentient picture that had started to form. When I had thought I might draw something impressive, I hadn't quite pictured this outcome.

  There was something very special about this paper. I continued drawing, watching in delight as finished lines jumped into motion and began to swirl toward the center,
drawing down into the cell I had created.

  This was significantly better than my trap for Marsgrove. Better than any I had previously made by pencil—special charcoal or not.

  “What kind of paper is this?” I didn't look up from the page, too enamored watching the trap world take effect. I could feel that the trap would work—without paint. It was an unheard of result for me and had to be because of one of the other magical elements in play, namely the paper. The paper I made was good, but this was imbued with something more.

  “Something I was wondering if you could use,” he said in a distant voice.

  His tone made me look up sharply. “Oh?”

  Ultramarine eyes watched me in a detached fashion. He didn't respond.

  “And?” I nervously pushed a section of hair behind my ear. What kind of paper?

  His head cocked an inch farther to the side. “A few months ago, a Department mage told tales of being trapped in a world smelling of charcoal.”

  I wanted to respond with something vaguely witty and hopefully distracting about the magical world of barbecues, but nothing emerged from my clenched throat.

  “He was found wandering around the First Layer, unharmed,” Dare said, not waiting for a response. “But with the strangest tale. The non-magical authorities in the First Layer committed him, of course, but when the Department finally retrieved him, mages began investigating the truth to his story.”

  It wasn't surprising that the brutish man who had been sucked into my gopher sketch on the day I'd truly learned about magic had turned out to be a problem. He hadn't been kind and I hadn't felt too guilty about his disappearance. The episode had provided the initial springboard for my papered traps and storage—a boon from a nightmare. Marsgrove's enchanted paper had done the rest.

  Dare snapped his wrist and his staff shot out in both directions from his grip. “Of course, that led to people whispering about magic not seen in decades.”

  Magic burned suddenly under my skin. The spiraled web on the page swirled faster as I looked at Dare in horror. Whenever Dare drew his staff, he was usually going to take no prisoners. Unbeatable. And he was wearing his battle cloak...had been wearing it for the last half hour, as if in anticipation...

  “What do you want?” I asked, my voice reedy. While a normal person might have felt betrayal, I just felt energized resignation.

  “I want you to use that paper,” he said. A gusty breeze swept the space and the appearance of five serpentine heads formed long shadows on the ground.

  Dare swung his staff directly under the chin of the head in the middle. I stared, dumbstruck.

  This wasn't some nefarious attempt on his part to end me for the good of all mankind, then. Nor was it zombies or trolls coming out to play. A straight-up ten-foot monster of legend was striking killing blows.

  Dare ducked beneath the next head, twisting in and out of the hydra's five lunging strikes. He twirled the pole as he went, hitting and moving in a fast, coordinated dance.

  “She's been tracking us for half an hour,” he said in between strikes. “So you can either stay here all day while I play counting games with her heads. Or you can use that paper.” He wasn't even out of breath.

  “Seriously? You didn't think to mention that a giant monster was tracking us?”

  The hydra roared as he broke one of its—her?—necks.

  “You're supposed to be paying attention.” He smiled, then sliced a head clear off with a blade that suddenly curved out from the end of the staff. Two heads sprouted to take the cleaved one's place.

  My resignation retreated like it had never existed at all. “You're a freak.” I carefully put the paper on the dirt, keeping my eyes on the six—no, now five again—no, now seven—heads.

  “Likewise,” he said, spinning, his cloak flaring around him. He made it all look manly somehow.

  Then between one moment and the next, he pushed the hydra back toward the paper and the serpentine monster...fell right in.

  Schwoop.

  A black-and-white, seven-headed monster fell through parchment space then splatted against the cords of the web, heads and necks stilling at odd angles as they affixed to the sticky threads. Dare walked over and we stared down at the stilled picture. Other than the subject matter, the animated blinking of the hydra's seven sets of eyes was the only thing that made the drawing look dangerous.

  “How long will she stay in there?” Dare asked, crouching down to get a better view.

  “Permanently, I think; if I say so?” I rubbed the back of my neck when he looked up at me. “Don't credit me. There is something extremely special about that paper.”

  Dare's stare was intense. He rose slowly. “Can you release her?”

  I nodded apprehensively.

  “Good. We'll let her out near one of the swamps that contain wet caves. She'll hunker down, if given habitable territory.”

  Release and run? I could do that.

  “Okay.” I carefully lifted the sheet and held it toward Dare. “Here.”

  One brow rose. “There is not a chance that I'm touching that.”

  “You'll fight a hydra, but not touch a piece of parchment?”

  “Not that parchment.”

  I removed the highly magical blank pages from the folder and carefully put the trap paper inside instead. “I can erase the web, later, after we de-hydra it.” I had no idea how to erase it, but I'd figure something out. I thrust the unused papers into the air between us. “These are still blank.”

  He made no move to take them, he just watched me with a dissecting and analytical gaze. “They are yours.”

  I examined him for a moment, then shook my head. “I know the parchment is special. I can't get this type of result usually without using p... I can't get this type of result usually.” Stupid, stupid.

  “Mmmm.”

  He still didn't move, even as I stepped forward into his space and held the papers toward him. He looked at my fingers as I shook the parchment at him.

  “Like I said, they are yours,” he said.

  “I can't take them.” They were far too valuable and there was something about the magic in them that sung to me. That was usually a dangerous thing. I grabbed his hand in order to uncurl his fingers and put the pages in his palm.

  The second I touched him, something twanged, his cloak rolled up and disappeared from existence, a shield popped, and magic exploded outward, blinding the clearing with white light.

  When a troll clubbed Dare in the head the very next moment, I was completely unprepared. Stranger still, so was Dare.

  He dropped like a stone, and for a moment, all I could do was stare in shock at his body lying completely motionless on the ground.

  Nothing ever got the best of Alexander Dare. He always knew what was coming, assimilating tile shifts and their threats quickly and with seemingly little effort.

  I ducked the troll's backswing instinctively, but there were twenty trolls surrounding us now. All motion slowed, and almost unconsciously, I crumpled the papers around the pencil in my fist, crushing them together with magic and forcing images, worlds, onto the pages, before I threw them outward. Paper flew end over end, spreading around me like large leaves blown in high wind. Six trolls absorbed into the papers as they were touched, pulled into the parchments with a horrible squelching sound. A few of the pages continued to turn end over end. Two trolls stepped into papers as they fell to the ground in front of them.

  One troll, though, ducked the traps, raised its club, and ran toward me, my death in its gaze. The papers were all too far away for me to dive inside. I called up my magic, but I wasn't going to be quick enough.

  Dare, face dripping with blood, slid low across the dirt in front of me, then under the troll, the end of his staff connecting upward and flipping the beast into the air and down into one of the papers. Squelch. But there were still a dozen remaining. I had never seen twenty trolls—a pack? A trollage?—together before. Together, the remaining trolls heaped onto Dare before his ma
neuver was complete.

  I dove for the parchment nearest to me, ready to slap it on the pile in order to suck up whatever I could reach.

  Before I could do so, a blast in the middle of the pile blew troll bits everywhere and Dare was pushing himself up off the ground. Relief fired along my veins. Then one flailing, mostly-intact troll who had been blown straight upward, brought a meaty paw down on Dare's back as it plummeted back to earth. Sickly purple burst from the contact.

  Dare's shields. Something had happened to one of his shields when I'd touched him while holding the parchment.

  Magic leaped to my fingers and I inelegantly blasted the offending troll toward one of the papers on the ground, not watching as the troll was sucked from view. I stumbled toward Dare, who lay unmoving. I dropped to my knees and flipped him over with adrenaline-fueled strength.

  His chest didn't rise. Painful silence stretched under the whistle of the wind. Troll parts surrounded us—splayed everywhere in a horrifying tableaux.

  Nothing moved. Nothing produced sound. No breaths released from Dare. Dead.

  Dead.

  My vision tunneled, and my heart rate rapidly approached hysterical as I put my hands on his chest. The litany of resurrection books I had read last term scrolled through my head like a list of movie credits too fast to comprehend. But there was enough knowledge and confidence in my subconscious to form a shaky pyramid anyway, and charcoal made with my own magic covered my fingers. I shoved the magic into his chest.

  His body jerked and white light shot out from him like a starburst. The magic washed over me cleanly, but two ground impacts indicated unknown beasts lingering in the bushes had been felled in an automatic defense mechanism from Dare's last shields.

  Dare's blue eyes opened above a furious expression. “Where the hell is my twelfth rib?” he wheezed.

  Hysterical sounds emerged from my mouth. Alive. Not dead. “I took it. Used it. To revive you.” Alive. Not dead.