by Jade Alters
Power of Magic
The Broken Academy
Jade Alters
Contents
1. Kindred Souls
2. Orientation
3. The Girl From B-22
4. Blue Pain
5. A Good Day
6. Meetings and Secrets
7. Captain Rock
8. Breaking the Seal
9. Evaluations
10. Between The City Lights
11. Boy Problems
12. Sealbreaker Showdown
13. Spellbound
14. Missing Witch
15. Road Trip Buddies
16. The Grotto
17. Backup
18. Pitstop
19. Rock in a Hard Place
20. Point Arena
Epilogue
21. Power of Blood (Broken Academy III)
22. Power of Fire (Broken Academy I)
Also by Jade Alters
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.
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Kindred Souls
Emery Dalshak,
Clearlake Academy,
Twelve Years Ago
I was eight years old when I met Harry Bartos. If someone had told me back then that the meeting would change the course of my entire life, I’d have called them crazy. But, even now, I can trace it all back to that day.
It was another lazy afternoon at glorified daycare for me. Clearlake Academy for Gifted Young Witches, Warlocks, and Magicians. Yeah right. Even at eight I knew what the place really was. Busy work for kids whose parents worked for the real Academy, the one a mile up above the forests all around our little facility. But there were a few benefits to Clearlake. The teachers were nice, for one, at least to me. It isn’t like they had much of a choice.
The appearance of the last name “Dalshak” on an instructor’s roster was cause for both elation and panic. It put the pressure of mentoring a child of the oldest known family of Magicians, the founders of every supernatural Academy, on the lucky teacher. It meant exposure to the powers-that-be themselves and endless opportunities for advancement, if they could impress the child’s parents. My parents.
I’d already noticed the difference in the way the teachers treated me. The way they tensed whenever Mother or Father stopped in to pick me up. I saw the way they showered my brother before me with infinite praise. Sure, he had a few tricks up his sleeve, but everyone at Clearlake knew he wasn’t the best Magician in attendance. Hell, I might have been better than him, even at a full year younger. I know I am now. Yet still, the teachers had nothing but pats on the back and over-stocked sticker charts for Serge Dalshak, the prodigy of his class. My own chart was full from edge to edge too, where it sat buried under tomes in my cubby. I never used it once. Why did I need a prize when everyone was already telling me how great I was? Besides, even back then I had a distaste for being patronized.
Another perk of spending my days at Clearlake were the cool toys. Well, any kid with half a brain knew, they were tests of our skill designed to look like toys. I was “playing” with one during a free-time break when the commotion started.
It was a mirror puzzle. The difficulty of this particular model was designed for a Magician five years older than me. But then, there is a reason the Dalshak name is still feared and revered by those who remember. I sat by myself on the puzzle rug, legs crossed with a heap of glass in my hands. The cluster of crystal shards was held together as if by a strong magnet at its core. I, having been given many “toys” like this one by Mother, knew better. It was a trick designed by my Instructor. A damn good one, too. Every time I slid a shard free from the center to rearrange it, it would fold over and re-sheath itself in the center of the cluster. The instructions that came with the puzzle were to make solid glass from shards.
I’d seen a hundred students try to pull the shards from the core, to arrange them in a sheet on the floor. I’d seen a hundred students fail. But none of them were Dalshaks. More specifically, none of them were me. Mother hammered the way of magical tricks into me from the time I could listen - even in the womb, I suspect. No rule is to be trusted, she’d say. Rules are walls, put up to block us from a truth. But you must never break them down. If you want to see what’s on the other side, walk around. This, she welded into the iron trap of my mind, is the basis of all tricks. Go around the walls.
The fact is, a solid sheet is only the easiest way to imagine glass being whole. While more difficult to form, glass could easily be molded into a cube or an orb. After eyeing the shattered puzzle in my hands for five straight minutes without a word, these are the shapes I set out to make. I slid one little cut of crystal out, but not all the way. That would trigger the core to pull it back in. Instead, I drew it to the fringe of the other shards, then wiggled it up and down. Sure enough, when I aligned it in just the right position, the seam between my shard and another shimmered bright white, binding them together into one, angled piece. A cube, then, I surmised.
I sat there on the rug by myself, bending and binding shards for what I intended to be my entire free-time break. Students gathered here and there to watch me from the fringe of the puzzle carpet. They dared not get too close. Not after some of the things they’d seen me do in class and on the playground. My raw capacity for tricks, coupled with the lack of socializing encouraged by Mother, made for a sour recipe none cared to taste. Even my Instructor, while intrigued, only watched me over her glasses from the safety of her desk across the room. She’d come over and congratulate me when I was done, sure, but not before. Not while I was so focused.
In fifteen minutes, I had three walls of the cube done. Its mystical crystal faces reflected a prismatic version of my smirking face. I’d have enough time. I’d solve the most difficult puzzle our Instructor had managed to put together. If I could focus through the sudden roar of applause, that was.
“Do it again! Do it again!” one of my brother’s pathetically adoring fans clapped and cheered. I cocked a lazy eye over my shoulder to see what he’d done this time. Serge. If my parents could only see him, showboating like this, he’d get the back end of a wooden spoon for sure. He already had, once or twice, when his Instructors accidentally let on just how much of his trickery he put on display.
“If the crowd insists,” Serge smirked at the growing half-moon of braindead Clearlake students. Anyone who knew a damn thing about tricks would know what he was about to show them was one of the simplest techniques. “Don’t lose track of me, now,” Serge announced with all the gusto of a carnival illusionist. I hid a snort while I went on working on my puzzle. But I had to admit - begrudgingly - that his energy was quite infectious. I kept the corner of one eye trained on him.
Serge snapped a lazy finger and suddenly he was on the other side of the classroom. Gasps burst up from the crowd which made me want to both laugh and vomit at once. My eyes shot to where he appeared instantly, having shared in the family teachings that gave him this “gift”. What a joke. I mean, there was a window right next to him letting in a sunbeam. Reflections… Light… Of course he was going to show up at the other end of the beam. It was all he could do at this point, which was hardly impressive to a Magician from our family. It was al
l in the way he dressed it up. Serge gave two sharp claps to call the eyes of the other clueless students, who immediately began oohing and aahing.
“I said don’t lose track of me!” Serge laughed, which called up amazed laughter and more applause.
I shook my head and huffed a curl of dark hair away from my eyes. That hair, our honey-brown eyes and our dark tan skin were about all we shared. Aside from the fact that the attention of others gave me no satisfaction, I’d never do what he did for the risk alone. If Mother and Father saw…they’d be embarrassed enough to beat the cheers right out of his ears. They had before, and I was sure they would again, until Serge was squeezed into the mold all Dalshaks must fit. Prestige. Composure. Power.
I turned my attention back to my glass cube, which my hands never stopped working on. The core of shards had shrunk by more than half in size now, and four walls of glass welded themselves into a shape resembling a box. I should have been done in another fifteen minutes. I would have been, if I didn’t hear that tiny hint of a scream from outside. It was so faint that even my Instructor hardly looked up from her tome of puzzle-making. But something about that sound rolled around the inside of my ear like a quarter in a bowl. It stood the hairs up on my neck. It called me. If even a small part of me believes in destiny now, it’s because I stood up and walked to the back door of the classroom to see what that sound was. Absent-minded as my curiosity was, I didn’t think much about bringing my mirror puzzle with me.
I stopped to peer around the open doorway to the pond and garden outside our classroom. Every room in the Clearlake Academy had backdoor access to the tiny wooded park the place was named for. It was a place I rarely went, as most of the puzzles that interested me could be done indoors. But this day, twelve years ago, I peeked outside to see something I just couldn’t understand. And it pissed me off.
“Your mom is going to flip when she finds out you raided her makeup closet!” one of the kids from another class was laughing when I arrived on the fringe of a small gathering. At the heart of it was a boy I knew only in the basest of ways. We’d been classmates the year before, though we’d hardly shared more than five words. The Warlock Harry Bartos. He was just on the heavier side of a medium build and had his hair parted down over both shoulders. An innocent sprinkle of freckles danced across his cheeks and nose. His blue-shadowed eyes searched the crowd for any break, any mode of escape, but he was completely closed in. His red-painted lips hung open with the temptation to scream for help.
“Hey, maybe his mom is in on it. Maybe she always wanted a daughter!” one of the other kids laughed, with a hardy shove of Harry’s shoulder. He stumbled forward into the arms of the crowd, which nudged him back on his feet, an island in a sea of cruel bodies. In that moment I noticed two things. Harry’s makeup was done better than my own attempts. Also, my fists were clenched tight enough to read my own pulse through my fingertips. I didn’t know Harry well, but I knew that he was the last person to deserve this.
I’d seen Harry cup spiders and carry them outside to save them from the hasty boots of others. I’d seen him use his magic to revive plants that had dried out in the summer sun. I’d seen him paint pictures for his parents with hand-crafted paints from berries in the gardens. Never once, though, did I ever see him raise a hand or speak a cruel word to anyone. Sure, he was wearing makeup, but so was I. Did I deserve to be berated and pushed around too? It didn’t make sense to me at the time. Twelve years later, it still doesn’t.
“You’re a Bartos Warlock! One of the Core Lines!” one of the other kids went for a more direct jab. The worst part about it was that there was no cruelty in her voice. What she spewed was the truth she believed, handed down to her from her family just like mine. “Nature gave you a man’s body! Act like one!”
“Don’t even think about screaming. Unless you want your parents to know what a freak you are!” another kid hissed. Harry’s face bunched up in agony, which bunched up mine. Act like a man? Harry didn’t look like he wanted to act like anyone. He just wanted out of that circle. He wanted to save bugs and plants and to paint. Just like I wanted to solve my puzzle on the carpet in quiet.
The puzzle. I looked down at my hand when I realized that the feel of the glass had shifted in my distraction. I’m still not sure exactly how, but it was solved. Six faces of perfect crystal glimmered in my fist. I stared down at my own surprised reflection for a few seconds. My heart knew what to do long before my mind did. I believe that’s how I solved the puzzle without looking, too. I held the crystal cube up into the sun, to cast a glare over the rambunctious crowd. Eyes closed, I imagined a tiny prison inside of it - endless corridors of mirrors. I twisted the cube around until the positioning was perfect. Each of the kids was connected to the crystal now by light, without one of them knowing it. The only one who noticed was Harry, who followed the cube with his eyes up into the air when I tossed it.
The cube reached the height of its arc. I slammed my hands together to unleash a supersonic clap and the will of my greatest trick as an eight-year-old. In an instant, every one of the students tormenting Harry dissolved into a haze of color and was sucked inside the cube puzzle. I opened both palms to catch it. Harry and I were left alone in an empty garden and a vacuum of sudden silence.
“Wha-wha-what…did you just do?” Harry sputtered. He shifted back away from me, until his heel struck a rock and he tumbled over on his backside. Black mascara streaks had drawn themselves down his cheeks with the overflow of tears. I did my best to put on a friendly smile as I made my way over, but that only seemed to terrify him more. I only made it to Harry because I could walk faster than he could shuffle away on his ass.
“You’re too nice,” I told him, because I didn’t know how to express why I’d really done what I just did. I crouched low to offer him my hand instead. Harry’s eyes flitted from my outstretched fingers to the crystal cube and back. “I just mean…I’ve seen your magic. I’ve seen you bring plants back to life. Why didn’t you use some of it on them?”
“I-I-I…I just,” Harry tried, but he seemed to have as much trouble getting the contents of his heart out as I did.
“Listen. Kindness is good… I- eh- I guess. It’ll make you allies,” I tried to patch together what I learned from Mother with something from myself - though I’m not sure when exactly I learned about kindness. It certainly wasn’t at home. “But…I think that means you have to be nice to yourself, too. Don’t let other people treat you like that. What good is making everyone else happy, if you suffer for it?” Harry’s eyes flitted up and down my face, searching it for my intent. He couldn’t have succeeded, as I didn’t even know what my intent was. I just knew I needed to help him.
“Tha-tha-thanks… I think,” Harry breathed, and took my hand at last. I helped him up on his feet before he said, “I can’t use my magic to hurt people. I’ve tried… It just doesn’t work. I can’t get angry enough. Not at them.”
“Well, you don’t have to hurt anyone. Just defend yourself,” I told him. I held out the little cube puzzle so he could see it. Where once it was crystal clear, now it was full of teeming color. Harry’s eyes widened around it in the realization of what he saw. “I didn’t hurt them. Not really. Just scared them a little.” Harry leaned over the cube to watch his miniaturized tormentors in a crystalized maze of their own torment. They turned sharp corners to run into their own reflections and one another to escape the inescapable. “They’re going to do that themselves, running around like idiots. Not one of them is keeping a hand on a wall to track where they’re going.” I shook my head in disappointment with my hateful Clearlake peers. Harry chuckled at how scientifically I analyzed them. It was him who would teach me just how odd that was, and help me not to do it so much.
“So there’s…a way out of this thing for them?” Harry asked. His shoulders eased up a little at last, watching the cruel little devils run around like toys.
“Not yet. It’s an illusory prison, so there’s no door until we make one,” I expl
ained to him.
“You know how to do that?” Harry asked, eyes wide with amazement.
“Er…no. So we’re going to get in trouble when we give this to my Instructor. Or…we hide it in the woods-”
“We can’t do that!” Harry gasped at the very thought.
“Right, right. I was kidding,” I gave him the tiniest smirk. As it was my first attempt at a joke, I probably came off as a closet child-murderer. Still, Harry found it in himself to snicker, uncomfortably. “But…there are still a few minutes left of free time. Considering how they spent most of it, I figure they deserve to spend the rest of it in the cube.” Before Harry could answer, I knelt down to tuck the glassy prison under a bench, where no pesky Instructors would spot it.
“Are you sure?” Harry asked me. I stood up, nodded, and took a step too close to him. I noticed the surprise on his face, but licked my thumb anyway to fix his makeup. Back then, I was still more Dalshak than Emery, and if there was one thing Mother taught me, it was that appearances were key. With a few rough rubs, I erased the black streaks from Harry’s face. I stepped back from my masterpiece. Perfect, I thought. “Thanks,” Harry said, eyes on his shoes. I could stand to see him so ashamed for about two seconds.
“Stand up straight,” I told him, and he did. “Now…there are some plants toward the back of the garden that look like they could use your help.”
“Oh…okay,” Harry smirked. I led him to them. Harry spent the rest of free time that day summoning water from deep in the earth into the roots of sun-crisped plants. I spent the rest of free time watching him.
