The Other Prism (The Broken Prism)

by St. Clair, V.

  If he didn’t look so frightened, Hayden would have gone on with his rant the way he planned, but the fear on the older man’s face caused the three of them to turn around and see what he was looking at over their shoulders.

  Bonk took flight and soared back towards the castle without prompting, as Hayden, Tess, and Zane stared open-mouthed at the strange phenomena behind them.

  At first it was hard to figure out what they were looking at. Hayden squinted and craned his neck, certain that his eyes were deceiving him. Then he panicked.

  In the middle of thin air, a pair of dark brown eyes hovered in a blurry face. The only thing he could be sure of was that the eyes were focused on him and his friends at that exact moment. It looked as though the air between them was a series of curtains that were being pulled back one by one to sharpen the image on the other side—like a window into another world that was gradually becoming clearer.

  “What is that?” the owner of Pounds of Prisms sounded terrified.

  Hayden had no answer. He had never heard of this before, of the air becoming so thin that it revealed hidden people. Reflexively, he glanced at Zane and Tess.

  “Who is that?” Zane’s voice shook strangely. “And how did he penetrate the shields around Mizzenwald to look into the grounds?”

  Tess took a nervous step backwards and shook her head slowly, eyes wide with fear. The mysterious figure continued to take shape, arms and legs distinguishable now. Hayden had never seen anyone like the stranger before, with his dark, oiled braids framing his face, the dark red robes that opened in the front over brown leather clothing, and the strange symbols drawn on the back of his hands in black.

  “Those siglas on his hands look like…isn’t that what the sorcerers up north wear to identify their clan allegiance?” The owner of Pounds of Prisms asked no one in particular. Hayden had forgotten he was there until just now.

  “A sorcerer?” Tess gasped. “Do you think he can break through the wards and transport himself here?”

  That was a new and horrifying thought. Hayden hadn’t seen many of the Masters return to school yet from their research over the summer holidays, which made it the worst possible time for an invasion of the school.

  “We can’t let that happen—” Zane choked out, aghast. “We have to do something to close whatever portal he’s opening.”

  The image of the sorcerer was clear enough that they could see the threads of his robes, his surroundings coming into focus. Hayden’s clenched fingers slipped over the green prism he was still holding, and something clicked inside his head.

  “The prism! That’s why Bonk—”

  There was no time to finish his thought; the sorcerer was sneering at him as he drew a laurel wand and aimed it at the group of them. Hayden equipped the green prism without a second thought and spun it as fast as he could until he found the alignment he was looking for. Green prisms were used for highly-specialized magic, and the only things Hayden had ever had occasion to practice in class were alignments like Lock, Unlock, Open, and Close.

  “Hayden, what are you—”

  “Close!” Hayden interrupted Zane, aiming at the strange portal in front of him. His spell clashed against the one the sorcerer cast at the same moment, and a ripple of green light pulsed outward around the edge of the portal where their spells collided. For all the people Hayden had dueled in the past, he had never had so much at stake; this was nothing like the challenge arenas at school, or even the slightly-more-dangerous duels of the Inter-School Championship. He had the distinct feeling that the sorcerer was going to kill him if he gave way.

  For a moment they stood at an impasse as the strength of their spells pressed against each other, and then the sorcerer frowned and used his free hand to raise a knife and make a shallow gash in his own forearm.

  Hayden nearly lost focus at the sight of his opponent willfully injuring himself, but then he understood that he must know some way to amplify his power with blood, because the force pushing against him doubled in strength.

  It hit him so hard that it pushed him backwards, and he stumbled and nearly fell over before catching his balance and maintaining his casting, forcing as much willpower through his prism as he could manage, knowing he had to win at all costs. The charm around his neck grew hot and sweat ran down his forehead. His Focus-correctors seemed to be vibrating around his wrists, like they were struggling to regulate the magic coursing through his channels.

  The confident sneer dropped off of the sorcerer’s face when Hayden didn’t give way beneath the power of his blood magic, replaced by a determined scowl. He slashed his arm again and drew more blood, and Hayden struggled so hard that he wasn’t sure whether his brain or his prism would explode first. It was Tess’s quiet gasp of worry that made him dredge up another reserve of strength, because if he lost to this sorcerer then she and Zane and everyone else he cared about were in danger.

  Through a screaming headache Hayden opened his mouth and yelled, “CLOSE!”

  His prism shattered and his vision went dark as he wavered on the spot. He fell onto his butt and blinked until his eyesight returned, just in time to see the sorcerer’s eyes go wide as the strange portal drew inwards like a rubber band that had just been released. It snapped shut with an echo that reverberated around them in every direction and caused the ground to tremble. For the briefest moment Hayden thought he saw a crack in the air, peering into blackness, but then it was gone and the world looked normal once more except for one small detail: there were two monsters in front of them.

  If Hayden had to compare them to something, he would have likened them to wargs, but there were some distinct differences between these creatures and anything he had ever seen before. First was that they appeared to be inside out, their organs covered with splotches of black fur that seemed randomly placed. Their eyes were entirely black, and Hayden had no idea if they were blind or not. At the moment, his head hurt too badly for him to care.

  The strange wargs wasted no time in attacking, one of them charging Hayden while the other went for Zane, who dove out of the way and began drawing on the ground as fast as he could.

  Hayden felt heavy and lethargic sitting on the grass while a deadly monster charged him, but Tess came to his rescue by doing the bravest, dumbest thing he had ever seen and jumping on the warg’s back.

  Since she hadn’t brought her belt of powders and elixirs with her, attracting the attention of monsters was particularly suicidal, but she clamped her arms around its meaty neck nonetheless, attempting to strangle it while riding its back. It threw her almost immediately, and she cried out as she toppled forward and landed hard on the ground in front of the beast. Just as it reared back to devour her, Mittens the cat jumped between them and sank its tiny teeth into the warg’s leg.

  “Mittens!” Tess exclaimed in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  Her familiar ignored her and darted out of the way of the warg’s next attack, drawing its attention from Tess. Hayden was sure that the little orange-and-white cat would be no match for such a massive opponent, but Mittens surprised them all with his speed and agility as he jumped and weaved around the warg’s attacks, slipping between its legs and keeping a step ahead of it. The beast roared in frustration and tried to stomp on the cat, and Mittens used the opportunity to run up the beast’s leg and jump onto its back, scratching at it ferociously. The warg howled and bucked, and Mittens was thrown to the ground, barely able to turn and land on its feet before impact. The warg pounced before Tess’s familiar could prepare itself, and Tess cried out just as Bonk launched itself at the warg’s face, clawing at its eyes with his tiny feet.

  Hayden hadn’t even noticed his familiar return to the fight, but he was glad for the support. He glanced over to find Zane fighting against the other warg single-handedly, drawing circles as fast as he could in between running and diving out of the way, unable to complete an entire drawing without being attacked. Hayden had been so distracted by the first warg that he had entirely fo
rgotten about the second.

  Tess seemed to come out of her stupor and uncapped the phial in her hand, the one Bonk had brought her during his first trip outside. Without looking at the contents, she threw it at the warg and hit it right in the face. The giant beast began to shrink rapidly, until it was no larger than one of Mitten’s paws, scrambling around on the ground in front of them like a terrifying toy. Bonk did exactly what Hayden expected him to do and swooped down to eat the miniature warg in one bite.

  Zane managed to successfully conjure a spear, and he hurled it at the other monster, piercing it in the right shoulder but only making it angrier. He stumbled and fell over just as the warg was turning about for another attack. Hayden felt useless, sitting on the ground with no prisms and a screaming headache, doomed to watch his friend get eaten.

  A glowing red summoning circle appeared in the grass around them, five feet in diameter and full of inscribed squares and braids that Hayden would never be skillful enough to draw. Before any of them could figure out what it meant, another appeared adjacent to it, then another. The circles rapidly formed a path through the grass, as though mapping out a trail, until one of the circles appeared directly beneath the monster that was charging towards Zane. The warg fell through the grass as though the ground wasn’t even there and vanished from sight.

  Zane glanced at Hayden as though wondering if he had been the one to draw the conjury circles. Then his senses caught up to him and they all turned to see Master Reede kneeling on the hard ground in the courtyard, pocketing his chalk.

  “Any of you dead or seriously injured?” he greeted them, rising to his feet and approaching them.

  When they all mumbled some variation of the word “no,” he turned to the owner of Pounds of Prisms and said, “What are you doing out here? Bringing Hayden equipment to fight the schism-wargs?”

  The man frowned, and for a moment seemed completely unsure of how to answer. Finally he said, “His familiar stole a mastery-level green prism from my store, and I knew that Frost wasn’t permitted to own or use one so I ran after him. Then that portal appeared in the middle of nowhere—”

  “A portal? It seems we have much to discuss, all of you.” Master Reede’s sweeping gaze included the rest of them. “I’ll send word for my colleagues to return immediately. The rest of you wait for us in classroom three.”

  Master Reede gripped his Mastery charm and closed his eyes, apparently using some magic that none of them could see to call the other Masters. The charm must have been extremely powerful, because Hayden could feel the tingle of magic in his defensive charm just from the proximity. Trying to be quiet so that Reede could concentrate, he got to his feet with help from Tess and followed his friends back towards the school.

  “I didn’t know Bonk got you a mastery-level prism back there,” Zane was the first to break the silence as they entered the castle.

  “I didn’t either,” Hayden admitted. “I probably would have noticed if I’d had any time to study it, but since I was in such a hurry trying to find the right alignment before I got killed, I didn’t notice anything different.”

  “If that was a mastery-level prism, I’d hate to think what would have happened if he’d brought you a level-three one.” Zane shuddered.

  “We probably wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, for one thing.” Hayden made a mental note to give Bonk extra apple pie at dinner tonight, because his familiar had obviously noticed the magical disturbance and taken action long before the rest of them were aware of it.

  They filed into classroom three to wait for the Masters, the owner of the prism shop looking like he wasn’t certain why he was there. An awkward silence fell over them as Hayden remembered how the man had treated him before the portal appeared, and the things he had said to Tess. Bonk broke the tension by coughing up a leg bone that looked much too large to fit inside of his stomach.

  “Oh yuck,” Hayden grimaced. “It looks like that warg he ate went back to being full-sized again…” Almost against his will he added, “How is it that he doesn’t explode from eating something that large? He’s much too small to devour that entire monster.”

  Zane made a skeptical face and said, “Sometimes it’s best not to question magic too much.”

  Unable to disagree with that logic, they waited in silence until all five Masters filed into the room. Asher was five minutes later than the others, and when Master Willow asked him about it, he explained that he was in combat when he got the summons and was delayed.

  Master Kilgore took one look at Hayden and Zane and said, “Why am I not surprised that this involves you two in some way?”

  “This one probably isn’t his fault,” Master Reede interjected solemnly. “They were battling a pair of schism-wargs when I arrived.”

  Sark and Kilgore gasped, and Willow actually shoved his chair backwards and stood up in alarm.

  “Explain,” he commanded sharply, and Hayden listened as the owner of Pounds of Prisms began the story from the beginning.

  When they finished explaining how Bonk had reappeared long enough to eat the first monster, Hayden said, “I’m not sure why he went away in the first place though.”

  Master Reede pursed his lips and said, “He came to get me.” He shot Bonk an annoyed glance and added, “I was in the middle of a nap when he woke me quite violently and wanted me to follow him.”

  “Finish the story,” Master Willow prompted gently, bringing them back to the point.

  By the time the four of them explained everything, an ominous silence settled over the room. Even Master Asher looked grim. Finally Zane blurted out, “Why would a sorcerer break into Mizzenwald? I thought that wasn’t supposed to be possible.”

  Master Reede smirked humorlessly and said, “Likely a scout, sent to enter the grounds and assess our capabilities and defenses. I’d be surprised if the other eight schools weren’t penetrated similarly.”

  Without a word, Master Sark got up and left the room, probably to send warnings to the other schools.

  “And to answer your other question,” Asher added, “they were able to open an oculus because our security was downgraded to a level sufficient to repel monsters, inclement weather, and direct attacks. Raising our defenses to defend against pinpoint magical attacks such as oculi takes much more energy, though it’s apparently necessary at present.”

  “Yes, we’ll need to heighten our security until the northern threat is subdued,” Master Willow sighed. “It seems that war is imminent, little though we need it right now.”

  “That portal thing…” Hayden raised his hand as though in class.

  “The oculus,” Asher corrected him calmly.

  “Right. How does it work, and why did it bring those weird wargs to us?”

  It was Master Kilgore who answered. “An oculus allows you to create a window from one place to another, and is typically used for spying, though it sounds as though the sorcerer you encountered was attempting to enter the grounds through it. It’s very difficult to accomplish that, but not impossible.”

  “We’re very lucky that Frost happened to be outside and equipped with a mastery-level prism when it appeared. If it had been anyone with less willpower facing the sorcerer they would have lost,” Master Reede said.

  “But how did the schism-wargs come to us?” Tess asked quietly. “There shouldn’t be any schisms open around here.”

  She clearly knew more about it than Hayden, who had no idea what a schism even was. His ignorance must have shown on his face, because Zane leaned over and whispered, “Schisms are like cracks in our world, cracks that let you pass through to the other side.”

  Alarmed, Hayden asked, “What’s on the other side of the world?”

  “Magic has a price, you know this by now,” Master Asher said evenly. “The Law of Equivalence, our guiding principle. It also applies to the world itself. Every time you exert your will on the world, the inverse plane pays a price. Schisms occur when phenomenal amounts of magic collide at one point
in space and the atmosphere can’t absorb it all. The one you opened was thankfully closed as soon as the schism-wargs jumped through. A stable schism can only be closed from the interior, which makes it much more difficult, so we got lucky.”

  “So that’s why they looked so…wrong?” Hayden frowned thoughtfully.

  “Yes, because they come from a world of anti-magic, a place that is constantly being plagued by the effects of our casting.”

  Hayden shuddered at the thought of a place that could breed things like the schism-warg. Every time he thought he understood magic and the way things worked, something came along to rattle him all over again.

  Maybe I should stop assuming that I know anything.

  “Well, we’d best get on with shielding the school. The Council will need to be informed as well.” Master Willow rose to his feet. “Thank you all for fighting for the school and making sure we weren’t caught defenseless. You’ll each be awarded a badge of valor to add to your collection of spoils.”

  That seemed to be their dismissal, so Hayden followed his friends upstairs to the third-year floor, his head still thumping painfully in time with his heartbeat. Tess bade them goodnight and turned into her room, while Zane and Hayden continued down the hall. Hayden settled his familiar onto his pillow and said, “Thanks, Bonk. I owe you again.”

  Bonk flopped over onto his back and promptly fell asleep.

  Zane glanced at Hayden and said, “Next time I suggest practicing conjury on the lawns, go ahead and remind me why it’s a bad idea. On the bright side, we got loot to add to our collection of spoils.”

  Hayden snorted and instantly regretted it, because it made his head hurt worse.

  “I’m going to take a nap until my brain stops trying to explode. Wake me up if any more deadly killers or monsters show up.”

  “You and Bonk will be first on my list of people to notify,” Zane agreed readily, and that was the last thing Hayden remembered before falling asleep.

  16

  Master Kiresa