by Anne Zoelle
He looked at me in a sort of deadened way. “But feel free to try it—attempting to modify the tablet means automatic expulsion. And I don't think I need to tell you what will happen, if you fail to complete your task or lose the tablet?”
“Expulsion?”
“Right-o.”
Wellingham desperately needed a Prozac and a girlfriend. And I needed to improve my time management skills, if I was optimistic enough to think I would survive past spring. And...I wanted to survive. I wondered if dying had caused the change in my thinking, or if some other complicated mess had taken place unknowingly inside my head.
“Good, good. I want—I need—you to survive, Ren,” Christian said soothingly.
If my math was correct, Justice Squad would require a little over one hour of service every night. One hour, every night, away from my research for Christian.
On the other hand, I was going to watch and help the vault wards be placed. Worth it. This whole debacle was worth the tagging, the punishment, and anything else that happened if just for that. Time was not on my side, though. I took a deep breath as Wellingham handed me a thick book, a stack of papers, and my tablet.
“There are operating instructions in that manual, along with information on various offenses and punishments you can administer.”
I couldn't believe I was seriously going to be punishing people as my punishment.
“You can activate and deactivate a clip.” One popped up on top of the tablet in his hands, making it into a clipboard. “Sticking a paper—any paper—under the clip will meld it into the tablet and the information will become part of the device.”
“A magic scanner, got it.”
“If you just place a piece of paper on top of the tablet, nothing will happen. It's the clip that activates the enchantment.”
I nodded along, thinking of rogue tablets gobbling my homework, and wondering if I could use this one in class.
He outlined the workings of my tablet and the magic therein, in one large info dump that had my eyes glazing over and my butt numb in the chair. I probably should have waited to speak with him until I was more clearheaded. I still couldn't wrap my head around the notion that I had actually died. I hoped that in my present dazed state that I didn't accidentally zap myself into a coma by deactivating the clip incorrectly.
“Once you write the offense in the tablet, magic will shoot out and entwine the parties, sealing the contract, terms, and intentions in magic.”
“This information is all in the manual?”
“Yes. Familiarize yourself with the unit, the rules, and procedures, then come by next Wednesday evening at eight to start.”
The look on his face indicated that he didn't think there was a chance in hell I would come prepared, but using a number instead of zodiac time gained him points with me.
“The first night you will respond to low level offenses only,” he said. “Unless...” He shook his head. “No, you wouldn't be that unlucky. Good luck.”
“Thanks.” I shuffled from the room with my new tablet and reams of paper overflowing my bag. The ward sheet remained clutched in my hand.
~*~
The next morning I cautiously entered a building cut into the third circle of the mountain that looked an awful lot like Lycian rock-cut tombs embedded with dark windows. Inside, dark patches of brown stained the stones, suggesting hundreds of years of continual bloodshed that hadn't been cleansed. But at some point, the interior of the building had been redesigned to open it up to the light. Floor to ceiling windows were inset into the massive columns of stone—where I imagined manacles had once been hammered—dividing one lab and office space from another. The old mixed with the new. Culture and magic—past and present—entwined and melded.
How wonderful to be able to construct new creations without having to sacrifice older elements due to wear. Not having to sacrifice anything.
“Sacrifice, sacrifice!”
“Don't sacrifice, Ren!”
I skirted around three students and two assistant professors arguing in the main hall. Another student—languid, tall, and very good-looking—leaned against the glass wall with his arms crossed, watching them through a long fringe of hair, as if they were his own personal entertainment.
I saw Professor Stevens in a glass lab farther down and hurried toward her. She looked up and waved me inside, lips pinching as her gaze traveled behind me. I entered her personal, sterile domain to find her stirring a humongous pot. “Stir this carefully, while I sort out those idiots. Do not add magic to this, or I will expel you myself.”
Crap. I immediately took the rod and started stirring. I had hoped with the number of hourly explosions on campus that she might not notice that the art vault and south complex had been blown to smithereens.
I had hoped I could gently break the news to her concerning my culpability. The whole south quadrant of Old Town was like a constant fireworks display, and Professor Stevens's personal lab here was three circles away from the art vault. It had seemed...a hopeful plan.
Stevens was muttering as she grabbed something from her desk. “Look at him standing there after working them over. Stupidly brilliant and horrible. Bane of my existence.” She stalked out of the lab.
I could clearly see the drama through the glass panes. The boy smirked at Stevens. Ballsy. And made a “who me?” gesture, but innocence clearly wasn't his forte. If sexuality could ooze off someone, this guy was constantly perspiring. He was one of those guys who was a little uncomfortable to look at.
My eyes narrowed. Actually, his posture, height, and hair were the same as the firesnake thief's. He said four words and the others sputtered and began arguing again—with each other. He gave a slow smile, his hair hiding it from the others, but not from me in my viewing position. Dangerous.
Stevens cut the others off with a quick hand motion.
The liquid in the pot began to boil fiercely, catching my attention again, as strange bubbles started to rise. My stir rate increased. The mess was a reddish-brown mixture that was beginning to solidify beneath my rod—a Karo Syrup shade nicely associated with old horror flicks. I hoped I wasn't stirring previous assistant professors, while Stevens was looking to add the lot in the hall to the pot.
A bubble formed at the top and pressed up to form into what looked like a fist. I batted it down with my rod and stirred more vigorously. Stevens had managed to keep the concoction flat without...things...poking out. I tried to channel my mother and stirred in a quick, controlled pattern.
That didn't stop a gawping face-like image from pressing at the side of my pattern. I sat hard on my magic to stop it from reacting. I whacked the face with the rod and quickly rotated figure-eight designs around the bowl. Great. I was going to have nightmares tonight.
Stevens strode back in, obviously irritated. I wondered if she was angry about my destructive tendencies, or life in general. I eyed her apprehensively as she took the rod and started stirring in spiraled circles and hard lines.
“You look like a frightened chicken,” she said. “I should just let you cluck like one.”
“I'm sorry. I ran into a spot of trouble outside the art vault last night trying to do some extra work. It was an accident, I swear.”
“Hmmm...” She eyed me without giving anything away. “Did you complete the homework I assigned?”
“Yes.” I dug my three perfect charcoal sticks from my bag and handed them to her. I had worked right through the dawn hours to get them like this, even though I had been exhausted and feeling half-again dead. I needed to be on Stevens's good side, especially with the whole vault debacle, and she valued perfection and hard work.
She looked them over, then nodded. “Fine. The vault should be rebuilt by the end of next week. We will work here every day this week and next. Don't do it again.”
Professor Stevens wasn't much for asking questions thankfully. She did her thing, I worked my tail off to help her, and that was that.
“I won't. I will stay out of
trouble.” I couldn't afford the attention I had now, but I also couldn't afford lamentations. Onward, forward, watch your back and do better next time, Ren.
I looked through the windows. The students and assistants were in the other lab space throwing spells. The troublemaker was no longer in the room. I wondered where he had gone. Magic whipped from my cuff and my sight inverted momentarily, befuddling me, but I could clearly see the troublemaker smirking from a position at the side of the room, where moments ago he had been invisible to me. He made a motion with his finger and Karo Syrup floated into a ceramic container, then floated toward his bag.
My vision cleared, and the image of the container disappeared along with the boy. Maybe the shock from dying was affecting me still.
Professor Stevens's back was to the window as she stepped slowly around her pot, stirring constantly. “If you ruin anything in my domain, you won't be worrying about expulsion. I will hunt you down and erase you.”
I saluted her before I could stop myself. She wasn't amused. And the motion brought her attention to the other room and her expression became furious.
“Idiots!”
She tossed the stirring rod to me again, then ran over to help them contain whatever was forming into reddish swamp monsters. Blasting the matter seemed to produce a monster from each splatter. My attention swung toward the windows looking outside, and my eyes narrowed on the tall boy walking casually away, a bag slung over one shoulder.
The angle confirmed he was in fact my firesnake thief.
The pot in front of me started to form up, and I had to concentrate once again on what I was doing.
Stevens returned, even less amused.
During our session, I blew up eight pounds of clay, trying to get the right amount of magic to settle with the exact formula I had been tasked with creating. I grew five man-eating clay plants instead.
She really wasn't amused.
~*~
Vibrating, I headed off to my first session of vault construction. Professor Mbozi, whose research I'd been stalking, was in charge. I took it as a karmic sign.
By the end of the week, the amount of knowledge I had on encapsulation chaos wards could only be termed dangerous, but I was fanatical in watching, taking notes, and asking questions during the construction. Professor Mbozi was as fantastic at material construction and laying wards as he was at teaching classes and being sarcastic, and I had volunteered to do everything he would let me do.
I would learn everything. As long as I was making progress and going forward, sorrow didn't exist.
Mbozi had actually done a spell on me at one point to determine if I was either cursed or being compelled to be enthusiastic.
But thanks to his work, his awesome class syllabuses, and his somewhat patient teachings on site, I was totally going to enroll in the engineering program now that the provost had activated my class transcript.
After asking my three dozenth question, Mbozi had told me that chaos wards needed to be set up in areas already touched by chaos. Otherwise, chaos needed to be infused—a far more dangerous task. Since we were putting the vault right back into its original spot, we just needed to do the material construction and the warding. I felt pretty good about my reconstruction abilities—I now knew what I had been missing before—Debrout's beam, duh.
I started constructing small containment fields based on the vault wards and embedding them in devices, ala Will. I just had to find a private spot on campus touched by chaos magic so I could test.
And there was really only one spot for an obsessed optimist determined to succeed—the three mountain circles of pure, untamed chaos magic where sane mages rarely ventured. A place that accounted for eighty-five percent of the cases on campus where mages had not been successfully revived.
Sane mages didn't go there.
I packed up my bag and trotted toward the fog barrier shrouding the tenth circle.
Chapter Twenty-One: The Midlands
There was a tremendous magical backlash occurring all the time at school—magic intrinsically messed with all sorts of physics—and the twisted energy needed to be released, sorted, and defragged, just like it had in Ganymede Circus. A knot shaking itself free—a lumpy section of the layer vibrating until it was flat.
Therefore, the twisted energy was funneled to a place where it could explode, twist, and morph at will, without endlessly endangering students and staff. That somewhere was the Midlands. It was the magical exhaust system, the “flush of the magical toilet.” Every magical fume was directed to the Midlands, from the bottom of the mountain up, and from the top down, collecting in the middle in a chaotic, misfiring, compost heap of the magical.
I imagined a wonderful place full of magical whimsy and strange industry.
My first impression was exactly that. Upon passing through the smoke that veiled the Midlands, the territory became a mish-mosh of ecosystems and illusions: swamps, rain forests, deserts, oceans, mountains, and post-Apocalyptic cities. Exotic creatures scampered and soared.
My second impression involved rage-induced slobber and certain death. And whereas the path had been smooth upon entering, as I was sprinting flat out with a humongous roaring troll-beast thundering behind me, the path magically turned rocky and fierce.
I threw myself across the misty border and onto the grass of the ninth circle, landing poorly as I rolled and whacked a warning sign.
I scrambled behind the sign and waited for the troll to burst through the smoke.
Nothing emerged.
Clutching my chest, hoping that my racing heart wouldn't kill me first, I shakily edged around the sign. Obviously, I couldn't just enter the Midlands, throw up a field, and start painting. I laughed a little hysterically and walked warily along the barrier.
I stepped carefully through the barrier four hundred yards to the west of my previous position. An entirely new landscape of dense woodland immediately surrounded me.
Whether the troll was real outside these levels or an illusion that purely existed within didn't matter. Unlike the practice rooms which simulated reality, the Midlands made things real.
Four mages in battle cloaks appeared suddenly a few hundred yards away, their backs to me. They started creeping forward—away from me—spears in their hands. A monster with horns and a forked tail appeared suddenly behind the group, stalking steadily after them. I opened my mouth to yell out a warning, but the mages and monster blinked from existence like a channel that had been suddenly switched.
Monsters, trolls, and unidentifiable beasts appeared and disappeared at will. As I ran, ducked, and dodged different hairy pursuers, I passed a leopard-sized dragon, three large mechanical praying mantises, and a school of piranhas flying through the air before they too vanished.
The one simple line in the research book—that mages were hunted here—was unforgettable in the midst of the melee.
Finding a solid structure to inhabit that had four walls, locked windows, and impenetrable doors went on my checklist as a must.
As if on cue, a crumbling manor collapsed, then the bricks stacked themselves and smoothed into an obelisk.
Ok, finding a building that stayed solid was a must.
I looked up. Like the fish, other strange things flew through the skies. But it seemed far safer to be up in the canopy than down on the ground. I took a quick breath and climbed an oak with solid branches. A moment after gaining my position, there was a huge crack and the tree started to fall.
I hung on for dear life as the wind and leaves whipped across my cheeks, and the ground rushed up to meet my face. Christian, I'm sorry. I closed my eyes at the last second.
But the tree continued its plunge right into the ground without damage. I kept my grip tight as we whirled in the ensuing darkness. Moments later, the top of the tree lifted, pivoting us into place in an entirely different landscape.
Breathing hard, I clung to my large branch and let the tree take me on a roller coaster ride through the Midlands as it ported and pivoted
through a hundred different spots.
The landscape shifts were unnerving at first, but they were so frequent that they quickly became normal. And they were...tiled. The tiles weren't the same size—one could be a few inches, another a hundred yards, but each tiled section of earth moved, collapsed, and reformed as a unit as if it was a piece on a game board.
The shifts themselves were not a problem once I became used to them. What I could never count on was what I would shift next to—like a yeti or chupacabra.
Two students died during my first two days of reconnaissance, their companions whisking them to medical. I stayed as far from anyone or anything as I could get, which usually meant perched up a tree. There was a vast ecosystem that lived in the canopies, though. Like firesnakes. And lizards and monkeys who moved like lightning and threw magic.
And some of the trees...had a sweet tooth for mages. Ensuing nightmares of barked tongues and grasping branches caused me to examine trees carefully. Christian's voice was always most upset and insane after a mage-eating tree episode. That feeling of being trapped was bad for both of us.
Guard Rock had emerged from under the bed and tucked himself into my bag after my first eventful day. As if he had read my need, he had been my constant companion in the Midlands ever since. He was quick with his pencil jab and proved to be a good listener, occasionally gesturing to me with a small rock hand.
I had never dodged and dived so much in my life—not even in Draeger's training or running drills with Christian. I had been accosted by no less than fifteen unknown-to-me species of animals and plants.
Since the territory was a hotbed of churning energy and magic activity, the levels sometimes attracted attention from those pursuing adventure. Students traveled in groups, though, since death here was off the Academy’s radar. Even some of the gutsier combat mages, who came here to train, did so in pairs, just in case.
