Aspect Of Winter

by Tom Early

  “Excuse me if that’s not enough to let you go,” Sam growled.

  “I quite understand, “Aiden replied lazily. “This much I can say. I was sent by a group known as Janus University. It’s a haven, a college, for people like us, though it’s rare for the University to notice people like the two of you. In fact, it’s only due to our prior knowledge of Samantha, here,” he said, inclining his head towards her, “that your school was tested at all.”

  I frowned. Every kid has dreams of being special and going somewhere magical. I had them a whole lot more than most, but they somehow never quite ended like this.

  “So… what? We’re being recruited?”

  Aiden grinned at me, showing far too many teeth. “I knew you were sharp, even if you didn’t seem to do much more than blush during our classes together. You are correct. The University offers the chance for people like you to attend if you manage to prove yourself worthy of the effort required. You and Samantha.”

  I froze at that, my head spinning. The idea that I could get to be with people like me alone was enough to send me into shock; the idea that Sam was being tested as well was enough to make me feel faint.

  Sam stepped in then. “What? I’ve never done anything magical in my life. Why am I being recruited?”

  Aiden looked at her seriously. “According to your file, you’re half Arcane, on your mother’s side. This means that you have the spark required to be an Arcane. The University is sure of that much, or I wouldn’t have been sent here at all.”

  Sam stared, her eyes wide. “My… mom?”

  I winced. Sam’s weak spot was her mom.

  “Sam, later. We can beat the information out of him if we have to.”

  “Now,” Aiden said, ignoring us, “let me explain to you one final thing.”

  All at once, the ice I had so painstakingly wrapped around him exploded outward. I cried out and fell backward, waving my hand wildly to melt the shards of ice flying at me and Sam. An aura of pulsating darkness surrounded Aiden, and sharp tendrils of shadow were extending in all directions.

  Aiden smiled once more, his eyes again two pinpricks of darkness in his face. “It was convenient to allow you two to think that it would only take a thin case of ice to seal me in. It put your minds at ease enough for me to talk to you without interruption. All it took was a little pressure from my shadows to break out, especially with the both of you so emotionally off-balance.”

  Aiden looked at Sam, his eyes cold. “Do not think I will be so easily tricked again, Sam. Now, as I was saying, I’m afraid I do have to test the two of you to see if you’ll be able to handle the danger that being a student of the University entails. To pass this test, all the two of you need to do is survive long enough to impress me.”

  As he said this, Aiden lashed out with one arm, sending a wave of dark energy directly at us. I dove to the right, and Sam simply swayed just far enough to get out of the way, also remaining on the right.

  I looked at Aiden dubiously. “Flashy. Was that supposed to separate us or something? We’re kind of a package deal.”

  Aiden gave us a slow once-over. “Somehow, I very much doubt that.”

  I flushed. “Not that way, asshole.”

  “Ah, well,” Aiden murmured, focusing intently on the ground in front of him, “If you’ll give me a moment, I need to show you an example of the learned magic the University offers.”

  Before I had a chance to figure out what that could possibly mean Aiden muttered a series of words that just sounded… wrong. There was the crackling of fire in those words, and an endless hunger. I wasn’t aware humans could make that sort of noise at all. The ground in front of Aiden’s feet opened up, briefly revealing a yawning chasm lit by the flickering of a flame that I couldn’t see. A howl answered Aiden’s chant.

  An enormous black hound bounded out of the hole, which closed immediately after. The creature was easily as large as a horse, covered head to toe in short black fur, with lava-red eyes and claws the size of knives. Sam and I looked at each other in horror.

  “This,” Aiden said, gesturing grandly at the freaking demon wolf, “is an example of conjuration magic, my focus. I’ve recently managed to add this hellhound to my menagerie.”

  Sam and I were busy edging away from the creature in question. Little flames were flickering into being where its drool hit the ground, and that was just so many levels of nope.

  “Not fond of him? Pity,” Aiden said, baring his teeth, “now it’s time I got around to testing the two of you.”

  I glanced towards Sam, who was busy sizing up the hellhound. Her eyes were wide, but her stance was steady.

  “Fay, do you have enough left to arm me?” Sam whispered, her voice betraying the nerves her body hid. “I can take out the hellhound if you can manage to distract Aiden for long enough. Then we work together to take him out, okay?”

  I nodded uncertainly and reached deep into my core for the energy this would require. Sam had much more of a knack for anything involving fighting than I did, so I was just going to follow her lead and hope for the best. I fell back into my mind, picturing what I wanted as clearly as I could.

  Several shards of ice that had flown everywhere when Aiden escaped began to lift off the ground and move towards each other. The ice crackled as the shards merged together, forming two gleaming daggers of ice that floated forward to land quietly in Sam’s hands. I could feel blood pouring out of my nose again; I was seriously pushing myself with this. Sam showed her teeth in more of a snarl than a smile, and charged at the hellhound.

  At that point, I turned back to Aiden. He was looking at me in shock.

  “Well now, you certainly are an enigma. Innate users aren’t exactly commonplace, you know, and you’ve appeared out of nowhere.”

  I smiled. It was a cold thing, and Aiden shivered upon seeing it. “I hope you weren’t under the impression that you were the only special guy here, Aiden. I’d hate to have to correct you on that.”

  Aiden’s face hardened. “So be it. If you wish to comport yourself as a worthy adversary, then I shall face you as one. May the battle be glorious, and your fortunes golden all the same.” His last sentence had a bit of a singsong quality to it, as if he were reciting it from memory.

  Aiden made a grasping gesture with his right hand, and a whip of shadows formed itself there. More shadow draped itself around his body in a cloak, and he strode toward me.

  I took a deep breath, and did my best to ignore the pain that was already wracking my body. If I wanted to beat Aiden, I needed to do so with as little energy as possible. Also, it was pretty clear from his display that a head-on battle held no chance for me. I raised my hands outward, to shoulder level. The remaining shards of ice lying around raised themselves as well and shifted their alignments so that they were facing directly at Aiden. Thankfully, it was a lot less draining to move ice around than it was to reform it, or summon it in the first place. Now, it was time for the mental part.

  I raised an eyebrow at Aiden. “You ready?”

  His only response was a smirk, which was incredibly creepy when coupled with his all-black eyes. I gathered my energy and let loose, screaming from the pain as I did so. The shards of ice quivered once, becoming even more streamlined and sharp as they shot towards him.

  Aiden immediately swirled his cloak around him, becoming an indistinct black figure in front of me. The shards of ice flew toward the shadows, and continued straight on through, sailing harmlessly into the distance. A second later, Aiden seemed to reform from the shadows, checked to make sure his cloak was still tight around his shoulders, and charged towards me. His face was a mask of savage glee.

  The ice that I had melted to avoid being hit by when Aiden first escaped played its part well. The entire time Aiden had been talking, I had been freezing the water slowly, creating a sheet of nearly invisible black ice between him and me.

  Aiden ran at me, lost his balance, and fell. I immediately melted the ice in my way, and ran at him. Sam was
the one who was insanely talented in martial arts, but she did manage to teach me a couple of valuable lessons, one of which was to always press the advantage when you had it. I reached Aiden, who was struggling to find purchase, and kicked him as hard as I could in the side. A startled “Whoof!” came out of him as the air left his lungs. He rolled back, away from the kick, and rose to standing before I could get to him.

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I could see it in the way he held himself rigidly, his pitch-black eyes burning with fury. He snapped his shadowy whip at me, and I dove desperately out of the way. To my horror, the tendril writhed in midair and continued unerringly toward my chest before I could react, and I felt a tearing sensation as a line of pain drew itself across my chest. I spun around from the momentum and struggled to remain conscious from the strain. I had been using magic way too much already. By the time I faced forward again, blinking my eyes to clear the blood, Aiden was barely a foot away from me.

  His left hand snapped forward, and wrapped around my throat. At this distance, I could hear the sound of soft whispering coming from the shadows, like a thousand voices trying desperately to be heard, voices of minds too broken to make sense. I tried to pry his hand off me, but I only managed to keep it loose enough to allow me to breathe.

  “I will have you feel unimaginable torment, Fay, for how you’ve tricked me. Have you any idea what it feels like, to be cut off from all light? To be surrounded by darkness, constantly feeding off your life itself? I promise you, you shall find out.” Looking down, Aiden’s shadow, which had previously been cast behind him by the sun, was slowly moving towards me. When the tip of his shadow reached my feet, I screamed. It felt like someone had set me on fire, while at the same time buried me alive, choking me with dirt pouring down my throat. I was stifled and burning. Somewhere in the distance, for everything was fading to me now, I heard a startled yelp, and Sam screaming my name.

  Something inside me snapped, and I felt cold, colder than I ever had before.

  In desperation, anything to stop the pain, I gathered every last bit of energy I had, and gathered it around me. I didn’t know what I was doing, just that I had to make Aiden stop. I screamed, and my world went white. A wave of icy energy burst out of me, freezing everything in its path. I felt each blade of grass become brittle and shatter, felt the old oak tree in the yard get covered in frost and lose its leaves, felt the wave pass harmlessly around Sam as though it knew she was not to be touched, and felt Aiden fight the wave with everything he had. I crumpled to the ground as Aiden let go of me rather than lose his arm. Aiden had been pushed at least ten feet back, panting, and looked at me in awe.

  “Excellent!” Aiden roared, gathering his shadows back around him as he strode back toward me. “That is exactly what I’m looking for! Now, can you do it again?”

  I blinked up at him, broken, unable to do anything more as pain pulsed through my body in waves so intense that I could barely think. I saw Sam scream furiously at Aiden as she pushed the hellhound’s bloody corpse out of the way.

  “You almost killed him!” Sam’s voice was the picture of righteous fury as she moved in his way.

  Aiden rolled his eyes at Sam before looking at me again, his shadows dispersing as he took in my crumpled form. “Really? What a pity. I was hoping to have a bit more fun with him. Still, they did say to be reasonable. I suppose leaving him alive will have to count. Congratulations, you two. You’ve passed the test.”

  “Well,” Sam said, her voice cold with rage, “Allow me to thank you.” She stepped forward, swinging her fist at Aiden’s face. Aiden instinctively moved his right arm to block, and in a single fluid movement, Sam stopped her punch, grabbed his wrist, and stepped behind him, yanking his arm with her. There was a sickening snap as Aiden’s arm was moved in a way it was never intended to. Aiden screamed in agony, and sank to his knees. Sam knocked him out with the same brutal efficiency she had before.

  I couldn’t hold on any longer. My vision faded to black as Sam ran towards me with concern written all over her face.

  Chapter Five

  I woke up in the nearby Morse Hospital, surrounded by the soft beeping of various monitors hooked up to me in various places. Looking around groggily, I saw my parents just outside the room. Weary didn’t even come close to describing how they looked. My mom’s usually impeccable appearance was ruined by strands of curly hair lying limply around her face. Her eyes were red from crying. My dad wasn’t doing much better, the lines on his face standing out way more than usual. They were clutching each other’s hands, heads bent down, leaning into each other. Both of them were wearing rumpled business suits, which meant that they had probably caught the soonest flight back to Boston to see me.

  I tried my best to call out to them, but I was only able to make some kind of squeak come out. Definitely a masculine squeak, but a squeak nonetheless. There was no reaction, so I tried again and produced a slightly louder groan. My parents’ heads whipped up at the noise, and their eyes softened with relief at seeing me conscious. I saw my dad motion to someone down the hall before they both came in.

  My mom got to me first, and her hazel eyes locked on mine as she reached to hug me. However, the pained noise I let out made her draw back.

  “Fay, we were so worried about you! What on Earth happened?”

  Next was my dad’s turn. He was trying to frown at me, but he wasn’t able to stop the relieved smile from breaking out.

  “Thank god you’re alive, son. How are you feeling?”

  “’m srry, mom. ‘m srry, dad. Wh…?” I let out another squeak in frustration. My voice wasn’t cooperating with me at all.

  “Don’t speak if it hurts, son. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Several nurses rushed into the room, checking my pulse and asking how I was feeling. I responded to them dazedly, my head throbbing as I looked up at my dad.

  He finally let the worry show on his face, the creases under his eyes far deeper than before.

  “Sam brought you here. She didn’t know what else she could do.”

  He gripped my hand tightly once one of the nurses finished checking my reflexes. “You’ve been out for two days, Fay, and the doctors had no idea about how this happened to you. They thought you might have suffered from some sort of brain trauma after seeing all the bruising around your neck.”

  Wow. That was a hell of a lot worse than I had expected. Apparently being forced to use my magic that many times in a row, at dangerously high levels, didn’t agree with me. Or being magically strangled, for that matter. I wondered where Sam was, and if she was hurt at all. I didn’t remember seeing any injuries, but I also wasn’t exactly paying the best attention at that time.

  As if she could tell what I was thinking, my mom spoke.

  “Sam stayed to watch over you for the first twenty-four hours, but the doctor told her to leave when he realized she hadn’t slept at all. She left you this sketch to see when you woke up.”

  She fished inside her purse, and pulled out a carefully unwrinkled sheet of paper. On it was one of the most detailed drawings I’d ever seen Sam make. It showed Sam, laughing and smiling while climbing on the back of a polar bear who was calmly indulging her fancies. There was just such a feeling of contentment in the picture, I couldn’t help but smile. Or try to smile, at least. Moving hurt. Beneath the sketch, a brief scribble left a message from Sam. “Get better soon, moron.” Coming from her, that was just about enough to make my heart melt.

  A man with a slightly crooked nose and a receding hairline wearing a long white coat walked into the room.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “Feayr, I’m Doctor Holding. It’s good to see you conscious. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I’m not really sure how to describe it,” I said truthfully. “I wasn’t in the best state of mind, but I’m guessing I got hit by something? I’m sorry, but I don’t actually know.” I shot my parents a desperate look, and my mom pursed her mouth in her “we’re going to ta
lk about this later” expression.

  Doctor Holding looked skeptical, but eventually he just raised an eyebrow and carried on.

  “Well, I’m sorry to inform you that while you may have woken up, we’re going to need to keep you here for a little while longer. Your body is going to take a while to recover from being shut down for two days, and we want to make sure you don’t experience any sort of relapse. I’d expect another three days.”

  He pressed a small button into my hands from where it had been laying on the table next to my bed.

  “This is a call button, Feayr,” the doctor said. “If the pain comes back or you feel anything wrong, just press it and a nurse will be with you right away.”

  I nodded at him as I groaned mentally. That was going to be less than fun. I guess if my parents could bring some books, it would be tolerable, but I had no idea as to what was going on with Aiden and Janus University. If he was still planning on attacking me like the psycho he most definitely was, I was going to be presenting a ridiculously easy target for a while. Hopefully Sam was helping keep him away or something.

  Sensing my distress, my mom smiled and promised to sort everything out. Even better, she pulled out a few books from a bag she brought with her, and handed them over.

  “Fay, would it be alright if your father and I went home to just sleep for a little bit, now that you’ve woken up? We couldn’t possibly when we were worried that you might never wake up, but now… We can talk about what happened later, if that’s all right.”

  That was family code for when we had to talk about my magic, out of hearing and alone. It was also a reminder that I was responsible for my parents rushing home to spend two probably sleepless nights at my side. I immediately felt guilty again. My parents had lives too, and they had put them on hold for long enough without any real explanation. I reached out and patted my mom’s arm, trying to communicate that it was okay. She smiled, and teared up a little with relief. I might have done the same. It was a touching moment that I intended never to bring up again. Ever.