by V. St. Clair
Asher snorted and said, “Did the words ‘colossal idiocy’ come to mind at any point?”
“Yes, more than once.” Hayden scowled.
“Good, then you about summed up my lecture.”
“Then Eldridge came in to expel me and mock me, and I got pretty mouthy with him,” Hayden continued, not bothering to look at their faces because he knew what expressions they’d be gracing him with. “He threatened to send my friends off to the Forest to die—”
“At which point you punched him in the face, because you have never been able to abide having your friends threatened,” Asher supplied helpfully, and Hayden nodded.
“If he truly threatened to send children off to die out of spite, we can use that in our case against him,” Master Willow said pragmatically. “At least Kirius had the good sense to prevent Hayden from fighting in the dining hall.”
“Then he left me alone again, until Tess and Zane broke into the room to see me. They knew I was planning to go to the Forest to see if I could at least save Cinder and Bonk, and they wanted to come with me. Then Oliver showed up and demanded to come along too, since he had been named as head of the Trout estate, except he refused to open the letter so he didn’t have to admit his mom was dead. He wanted to find out what happened to her, so the four of us broke out and left school. I stopped by Laurren’s weapons cache to load up before we went, and I grabbed the Absorber with my power in it on the way out because I didn’t want them to have anything of mine.
“One of the Fias tried to grab me and I swung the Absorber at him without thinking, but luckily he ducked and it hit the wall instead. It blew up and I got away in all the confusion, and the four of us started walking towards the Forest.”
Kilgore sighed and said, “I believe it’s time to call in some favors. Excuse me.” Then he walked off.
Master Willow followed him out the door with only a, “Perhaps they need to be reminded that Hayden is a war hero who saved us from falling under northern rule.”
A war hero, Hayden thought glumly to himself, at first pleased but then grim, thinking of what it had cost in lives to attain that title.
17
Zane Wins a Bet
For several minutes after the other Masters left, Hayden and Asher sat in total silence, each lost in their own thoughts. If not for the door creaking open and Cinder walking in, they might have stayed that way for the rest of the day.
“Cinder—there you are,” Hayden brightened marginally, eyeing the dark purple dragonling as it approached him. “I’ve been worried about you ever since Bonk got sick.”
Given that he’d been tormented for months, Cinder actually looked pretty good, almost fully healed. He was obviously still tired or he would have flown instead of walking, but otherwise he seemed alright. The dragonling acknowledged Hayden’s words with a gentle head-bump to his leg—a rare sign of affection from the typically-haughty familiar.
Bonk cuffed his friend lightly with one wing, and Cinder stood on the edge of Hayden’s mattress, as it was the only bit of furniture in the room that he could attempt to perch regally on.
“How are you feeling?” Master Asher addressed Hayden gently, still sitting on the floor with his legs splayed out in front of him.
“I’m still pretty sore, and my arms hurt a bit where they’re bandaged, but otherwise not bad.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” the Prism Master corrected him mildly.
Hayden shrugged noncommittally and said, “I don’t know.” Another long minute of silence passed before he added, “Willow called me a war hero.”
“And so you are,” Asher agreed sympathetically, clearly knowing why that title weighed on his conscience.
“I don’t feel like one,” Hayden admitted. “I feel like an idiot who almost led his friends into total disaster after screwing things up royally at Mizzenwald. I feel like a killer—like my father, even though I’m trying so hard not to be like him.”
Asher didn’t look surprised by this revelation in the slightest.
“You’re no different than any of the old heroes you’ve heard about in school. Althea the Bold, Garin the Mighty, they also stumbled through to success with a combination of dumb luck and favorable circumstances.”
“It sounded a lot cooler when it was happening to them though,” Hayden mumbled dispiritedly. “Reading about all the people who died helping them…it somehow meant less than when it happened to me, like they’re less real or something.”
“If it’s any consolation, your intentions for entering the fight were undoubtedly much better than your father’s ever were, which counts for quite a bit.”
Hayden picked moodily at the edge of one of his bandages. “I know, but it doesn’t feel that way right now. I didn’t really want to kill anyone, and I wiped out hundreds of people with a single spell. Dead is dead, whether or not I killed them out of malice or self-defense.”
“That’s why we Masters were trying so hard to keep all of you students away from the fighting,” Asher sighed. “No child or young adult should have to bear that burden—the burden of deciding whether to kill or be killed.” He paused for a moment. “I suppose there’s always the miniscule chance that some of them survived.”
“No,” Hayden said without hesitation, shaking his head. “I know they’re all gone, except for maybe the Magistra. Some part of me knew it was going to happen since before we even got to the campsite.”
“Oh?” Asher raised his eyebrows with interest.
“I saw it happen before it did—only I didn’t understand it at the time,” Hayden explained. “There was an illusion that came to me while Oliver and I were walking through the woods; I was sitting on a huge heap of corpses like it was a throne, but I was also crying.” He frowned. “It was showing me the future. At the time I didn’t understand how it was possible to be victorious and miserable at the same time. Now I do.”
Bonk cuffed Hayden lightly with one wing, over and over again, almost like he was trying to pat him consolingly.
“Yes, there is rarely glory in such a victory,” Asher agreed heavily.
Hayden changed the subject. “Has there been any sign of the Magistra in the Forest since then? What about other sorcerers—are they all gone from our continent now?”
“It’s been kind of hard to verify, as the Forest has moved us all away from the coastline—though I believe we’ve rounded up most of the sorcerers who were still in the Forest of Illusions with us. If the Magistra is still taking refuge somewhere in there, I believe the magical creatures within will remedy the problem for us; they didn’t appreciate being enslaved and having the magic drained out of them any more than the rest of us.”
Hayden was all too familiar with the power and intelligence of the magical creatures that dwelt in the Forest of Illusions, and almost pitied the Magistra if she was still alive.
“Do you think they’ll send more boats over to fight us?”
“I doubt it—or if they do, certainly not for a long time. They have to bring up a new Magistra and rebuild their numbers before they’d attempt another attack on us, and now that we know to expect their trick with the Suppressors, they’ll need to develop a new plan if they hope to defeat us on our home turf. Add that to the fact that the Forest is no longer easily accessible from the coast—they’d have to make it hundreds of miles inland to even reach it—and I think we’re safe for a while.”
Hayden nodded gratefully. That’s something, at least.
“Assuming the Schisms work themselves out, things should go back to normal fairly soon,” Master Asher continued.
“Schisms?” Hayden looked up to meet his gaze with a frown. He had only one brief experience with Schisms thus far: last year when an oculus opened in the lawns of Mizzenwald and he had seen his first sorcerer. The force of their magic fighting against each other had caused a momentary crack in the space between their world and the strange realm of anti-magic, and two Schism-wargs had popped out and nearly eaten them all.
; Asher nodded and continued quickly, as though delivering the bad news faster would lessen the impact of it.
“The sheer force of the magical explosion is still having repercussions throughout the Forest of Illusions—and to some extent, the rest of the Nine Lands—while the world attempts to absorb the magical aftershock. Schisms have been opening and closing throughout the continent as we struggle to regain balance. So far there haven’t been very many—mostly confined to the Forest—and they’ve closed themselves, so we must hope that things settle down before they get worse.”
Hayden winced and asked, “I don’t suppose Schisms are easy to force closed if they don’t do it on their own?”
Asher smirked and said, “Of course not; that would be much too simple. It’s quite a challenge to close a Schism without going insane or being eaten by whatever is inside.” He shuddered at some private thought. “But anyway, that’s a problem for another day. For now we can only hope that the world rebalances itself soon, rather than remaining in flux.”
Hayden rested his head in his hands and moaned, “Why can’t I catch a lucky break? I save us from sorcerers only to endanger us with Schism-creatures.”
“Oh you have an extraordinary amount of luck,” Asher corrected cheerfully. “It’s a shame most of it is bad.”
Hayden snorted in wry amusement and threw his empty cup at the Master, who caught it deftly in one hand and set it to the side.
“Do you think you all will be able to get me out from under all the arrest charges out there against me?” he changed the subject again.
“It’ll certainly take some effort, but I imagine we’ll be able to sort it out. We’ll take the long way back from Minir to make sure our messages have time to make it to their intended destinations before we return to Mizzenwald. Hopefully Sark will lay the groundwork for us there before the Fias know what hit them. It will be best if we can catch them completely off guard and snowball them before they can get their bearings and drum up legal arguments.”
“Uh, not to be a naysayer, but Sark still hates you and me both. Why would he do me any favors to get me back into school?” He distinctly remembered the Master of Powders recommending him for expulsion at least three times in as many years.
Asher chuckled and said, “Yes, but he likely hates being surrounded by snotty, money-pinching Fias even more than he hates you. Besides, if the rest of us are on board he won’t go against the will of the pack.”
Hayden would have to take his word for it, because he still wasn’t entirely convinced that Sark wouldn’t cheerfully endure a horde of Fias for the joy of seeing Hayden hauled off to a dark jail cell in Binders for the rest of his life.
“Well, I’d best be off. Your friends have probably been lurking outside the door for the past hour, same as every day thus far, and they’ll want to see you.” Master Asher stood up and picked a few stray pieces of straw off of his pants. He had made it all the way to the door before he turned around and said, “Thanks for ignoring all common sense and coming to get us out of the Forest.”
Hayden nodded and said, “You all would have come to get me.”
One corner of Asher’s mouth twisted upwards into a smile. “And so we would have.”
Then he opened the door and was gone. Before Hayden could do much more than adjust his position against the wall, Tess and Zane hurried into the room with identical worried looks on their faces. Zane stopped as soon as he saw Hayden sitting upright in bed and said, “Oh cool, you’re alive.”
“So they tell me,” Hayden chuckled darkly. “How are you two holding up?”
Tess took a seat beside his bed and opened her arms reflexively as Bonk hopped into them.
“We’re fine. I wasn’t really hurt, and Zane got the splint off of his leg yesterday.” She waved a dismissive hand at him and gestured to Hayden’s bandages. “How do your arms feel?”
“They still hurt, but they’re a lot better than before. Hopefully I didn’t manage to warp my Foci any worse from breaking those Suppressors, or they won’t be able to make big enough Focus-correctors to let me still use magic.” He tried to imagine how awful it would be if he needed correctors longer than his arms.
“Those crystal things?” Zane sat down beside Tess and watched his fox make a circuit around the room. “Those were horrible. I don’t know how the Masters and everyone else survived all that time in those cages, having their magic drained to feed those awful things.” He shuddered sympathetically.
“Yeah, I guess if we hadn’t gone to help out they’d still be there, unless the Magistra didn’t need them anymore once her main invasion party showed up.” Hayden frowned at the possibility.
If we had showed up just one day later, everything might be different…
“Speaking of which…” Zane pursed his lips. “I can’t believe you left us behind in Amvale for the joy of storming a magical forest with no one but Oliver Trout for company.”
Hayden was wondering when the subject of their separation would come up. He looked between his two friends and tried to think of what to say that would make it sound alright.
“I wanted to bust you guys out, but Oliver convinced me that we’d make too much of a scene and then we’d be in even more trouble. Besides, I knew we were walking into a deathtrap and I didn’t want you two to be stuck there with me.”
Tess frowned and said, “We managed to escape on our own before our transport to Kargath showed up. After that it wasn’t hard to have Felix and Mittens track you all, but we had to make up for lost time because we were at least a day behind you, so we didn’t get to stop and rest much.”
“Is there any particular reason why you two charged into that clearing with weapons blazing when you couldn’t use magic properly and were outnumbered by about a gazillion-to-one?”
“We got close enough to see what they were doing to people—and to the animals,” Tess explained. “Then we saw you and Oliver walking with them, and we were trying to decide whether to do something or not when Bonk caught my eye and gave me a nod. I figured he was telling us to go for it, so we did.”
Hayden gave Bonk the evil eye and said, “You trusted Bonk? That’s not always the smartest thing to do, since I think most of the time he’s just making it up as he goes along. Most whimsical dragon I’ve ever seen.”
Bonk yawned widely and flopped onto his back so that Tess could scratch his belly.
“Anyway, enough of the stupid war,” Hayden changed the subject abruptly. “Where are we exactly—other than somewhere in Minir? What is this place we’re staying in?”
Zane made a face and said, “It’s an abandoned farmhouse we found once everyone got out of the Forest, and since we had so many wounded or dead the Council decided to stop here and set up camp for a while. People have been coming and going as they become strong enough—mostly to get word to all the capitals that the war is over and to bring in other healers. I think the Masters have just been waiting for you to wake up before we head back to school again, now that they’ve taken care of Master Ferule’s body.”
Tess looked grim and momentarily stopped stroking Bonk. “I can’t believe he’s just gone. I suppose they’ll find someone else to teach Scriptures from now on, but it’ll be strange not seeing him in class anymore.”
Hayden was the only one of them who didn’t take Scriptures, so he wasn’t terribly familiar with Master Ferule, but it was still hard to come to terms with the sudden loss of someone he knew.
“I wonder if we’re still going to have to take final exams this year, since we’ve been gone for so long and the Masters weren’t there for most of the year to teach us,” Zane wondered out loud, moving onto a more neutral subject.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hayden frowned. “Assuming they can keep me out of prison, I expect we’ll spend the last month or so of school buried in our textbooks to try and catch up before the end of term.”
Zane rolled his eyes. “I expect my mother will show up at some point to shriek at me for running away fr
om Mizzenwald, becoming a fugitive, and walking into a war zone without permission. If I’m lucky she’ll shift some of that yelling onto you, since she feels somewhat responsible for your care, and it’ll dilute the overall effect.”
Hayden winced at the prospect.
“My dad’s always telling me to stay out of trouble and focus on my schooling,” Tess mumbled. “I can only imagine what he’s going to have to say about all this, if he even knows I was gone.”
Hayden didn’t imagine it would be anything good, and that he would likely feature prominently into the lecture as a bad influence on Tess. He was beginning to wonder if it was true.
“Oh, hey, did I tell you all that Oliver promised to help me get back my family’s money and the Frost estate if we got his mom out alive?” he said with a forced smile. “The Masters said she made it, so I guess that means I’ll have a house to call my own soon.”
“Really? You think they can get everything released to you before you come of age?” Zane brightened immediately.
“I don’t know about everything…but Oliver swears that I’ve got rights, even as a minor, and he would know.” He shrugged.
“I’ve never been to a Great House before,” Zane grinned. “If we can get into the place by the end of the year then I can come visit you for a change. Maybe you’ll be able to hire a support staff for when you live there and we can get our meals made and everything.”
Hayden snorted and said, “If anyone wants to work at the Dark Prism’s old base of operations, sure. I don’t know if I want to stay in that mausoleum by myself all winter or not, but I would like to be able to come and go as I please and look around without a chaperone.”
“I don’t see why it matters. It isn’t like the house was evil, just the person living inside of it.” Tess shrugged. “I’d still visit you there, and I’m sure there are people in the area who need jobs and would be willing to work in the house.”
