Cave of Nightmares (37 page)

“So you are taki
ng the traditional path of the Prism and going with Charms then?” Master Willow looked almost disappointed in him. “A safe bet, I suppose.”

“I wanted to try Abnormal Magic and Scriptures too, but I couldn’t make room for them on my schedule,” Hayden admitted. “Everyone said Charms was a good complement to Prisms though, and Wands.”

“And so it is,” Master Asher spoke now. “A good choice for your third-year— well, your second year of actual schooling,” he amended with an airy wave of the hand. “I didn’t have time for Abnormal Magic until my fifth year here.”

The Master wearing green robes at the far end of the table leaned forward and muttered, “You
are
abnormal magic, Asher.” He didn’t sound entirely complimentary.

The Prism Master beamed as though it was the most flattering thing he’d ever been called.

“Very well then, Charms it is.” Master Willow stamped a sheet of paper in front of him. “All of your current instructors have given you permission to continue on in their courses. Pending the results of your final exams and the average score from your arena challenges, you’ll be notified which level you will be permitted to enroll in for each class.”

Hayden nodded and tried not to dwell on the possibility that he might have to retake a level-one class if he did too poorly in his exams.

“You are dismissed,” Master Willow waved him off, and Hayden walked out of the room with Bonk still perched on top of his head, claws fisted in his hair. The little dragon hopped down onto his shoulder as soon as they were out of sight and began behaving properly now that there was no audience.

“Torin was right about you,” Hayden grumbled to him. “You are a little menace.”

***

The last week of sc
hool was reserved for finals, which were supposed to be a culmination of everything they had learned over the course of the entire year. Fortunately there wasn’t a practical portion to contend with, because his nerves were so frayed he would probably find a way to burn down the school on accident and get arrested for it. It was understood that their last challenge arena would be their most difficult and would serve as a practical final exam, weighted more heavily than their average scores throughout the entire year.

Classes were cancelled in the days leading up to the exams, and the Masters instead held optional review sessions, which almost everyone attended. The exams themselves would last two hours
each, and they would have to do three in a row for two consecutive days. The schedule of final arena challenges was posted on the wall in the main foyer, divided up by year. Hayden’s group fell on the night after their other tests were finished.

Three more days and it’ll all be over…

His first exam was in Wands, immediately following a frenzied breakfast where all of his friends were attempting to do a bit of last-minute reading before they took their first test. Even Bonk was subdued on his behalf, remaining quiet and still while Hayden tried to skim sixty-seven pages of notes about wand-based magic.

Their normal rows of seats had been broken up and spread out considerably in an effort to prevent them from cheating. Hayden took the seat closest to the door, just in front of Master Willow’s desk, and instructed Bonk to go off into the next room with the other familiars until the exam was over. He had no idea what forty animals would do for entertainment for the next two hours, but suspected that Bonk would fall back on his favorite pastime and take a nap.

Laziest dragon I’ve ever seen.

Master Willow walked between
the tables, depositing a stapled stack of papers in front of Hayden that was worryingly-thick. Hayden flipped it over and saw that it ended on page twenty-two. He began immediately, speed-reading the first question in the desperate hope that he would be able to make it through twenty-two pages of questions in two hours.

1.
       
What spell and which wand would you use to transform a frog into a tadpole?

Ha! Hayden knew this one. It was the Reversion spell (not the Shrinking spell, as that would just make the frog smaller), and would work best with a maple wand. He filled in the answer and moved on to the next question, relaxing slightly when he saw that the first several pages were all short answers like this.

He was slightly less enthusiastic when he got to the three short-essay questions, but only had difficulty with one of them:
Describe how you would light a candle given nothing but an elder wand, an acorn, and a pint of water.

Elder wands weren’t able to create heat, which he explained, so the water was obviously supposed to be a conduit between the elder wand and the candle to light it, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of how he was supposed to start a fire with an acorn, so he made something up and went to the next page.

He put down his pencil with ten minutes to go, flexing his cramped fingers and trying not to imagine how much they would hurt after four more hours of this. When Master Willow called time he heard a few horrified gasps from his neighbors (who clearly hadn’t finished), and relieved sighs from the others at it finally being over.

He went to find Bonk while his classmates muttered to each other about different exam questions they found difficult and consulting to see if they got the answers right. As expected, Bonk was fast asleep on the floor, his little legs sticking up in the air like a dead animal. Hayden woke him up and let him fly behind him on the way to Conjury.

The Conjury exam was set to take place in an unused classroom rather than outdoors, since there wasn’t a practical portion accompanying it. Hayden was relieved that he would be able to avoid the possibility of losing his conjuring hand in a moment of panic.

The desks were spread out in much the same fashion as in Wands, and Master Reede was holding a similarly-thick stack of paper. Since they were n
ear the rear exit to the castle, Hayden told Bonk to go play outside, wondering if the dragon would visit Torin while he sat his exam.

Offering up a silent apology to his aching hand, Hayden sharpened his pencils and started on the first question:
Name the basic components of the drawing below.

It was a sketch of a circle with a double-pairing of crosshatches drawn through the top and bottom (Hayden noted with delight that Master Reede had taken the care to specify which end was considered the bottom with a directional arrow). Hayden listed all of the components in the blanks provided and moved on to the next question:
Give an example of what the above configuration could be used for.

Most of the Conjury exam followed this pattern, with lots of drawings he had to identify and label, and
asking what sorts of magic they were used for. There were also several pages where Master Reede listed what magic he wanted to perform and asked them to draw the configuration they would use to accomplish it. Hayden struggled a bit with these, but thought that with any luck he might have gotten at least half of them correct.

There were a couple essay questions he fumbled through, but once he was back on the fill-in-the-blanks and multiple-choice he did much better. He finished his exam with less than a minute to spare, immensely relieved that it was lunch time because his hand was going to fall off if he had to do any more writing in the next hour.

Lunch was fairly subdued, as all of his friends were taking the chance to read through more notes for their last exam that afternoon. Hayden felt like his brain was oversaturated as is, and didn’t think he would retain an ounce of information even if he tried. Besides, since he had dropped Powders he only had five classes right now, and his next period was free. Bonk flew into the dining hall towards the end of the meal, alighting on his shoulder and smelling of bacon.

“So you visited Torin after all,” Hayden smirked. “Even convinced him to feed you, I see.”

Bonk belched in response, a small jet of fire nearly singing Hayden’s hair in passing.

He wished his friends luck
with their third exam and decided to get some fresh air. With Bonk on his shoulder, he made his way out to the obstacle courses and coached the little dragon through a series of progressively-smaller metal rings (Bonk nearly got stuck in the last one, bloated from bacon as he was). He collected a few of the shed scales that fell to the grass, eager to show them to Tess so she would be able to make something good with them before their last arena.

He was a little surprised when Cinder the dragon flew past him and dive-bombed Bonk, which was apparently their favorite way to greet each other. The pair of them locked claws and spit fire at each other as they tumbled to the ground and rolled around in the grass. Reflexively, Hayden looked around for Master Asher.

And there he was, strolling over casually with Horace the hawk on the shoulder of his bright red Masters robes. He seemed surprised to see Hayden there, one of the only people out on the front lawns right now, but approached anyway.

“Don’t tell me you were booted out of class in the middle of your final exam?” Asher greeted him pleasantly.

“No, I don’t have a third-period class since I dropped Powders and moved Healing to the slot after lunch.”

“Ah, yes.” The Prism Master smiled and watched the dragons rolling around in the grass, trying to incinerate each other.

“Don’t you have an exam to give this hour?” Hayden ventured.

“I don’t teach nearly as many classes as my colleagues, since no one has qualified for better than third-level prisms
since I began teaching,” he shrugged cheerfully. “Though I also teach the greatest number of first-level classes for that same reason, because people just don’t know when to give up and try something else. I expect that grading your class’s exams will be quite as painful as the rest.” He sighed. “It’s times like these I wish I had a mastery student to delegate these unpleasant tasks to.”

Hayden was very careful not to bring up the subject of his last attempt to feel Asher out for a sponsorship.

“Anyway, how did your first two finals go?” he changed the subject abruptly.

“Fine, I think. Wands
was better than Conjury, but I’m hoping to make it to the second-level in both next year.”

Master Asher nodded. “Willow’s been debating bumping you into
his level-three class next term. I think he’s waiting to see how you do on your final exam first.” He shrugged as though this shouldn’t be news to Hayden.

“
R-really
? He thinks I’m good enough to skip level-two completely?”

Asher shrugged.
“Apparently. That will put you into another class with your peers, who will be able to help you catch up on what you’ll miss from the second-year class,” he explained. “Unless you fall asleep and forget to complete your Prisms exam, I expect you’ll move into the level-three class for it as well, though that will put you with mostly sixth and seventh-year students.”

Hayden grinned. He had been worried that Master Asher was going to refuse to move him into a higher-level class because of all the trouble he got into throughout the year, claiming he wasn’t mentally ready for such responsibility.

Thank heavens he’s not holding that nighttime debacle with Oliver and Jasper against me.

Master Asher made a clicking noise with his tongue and snapped his fingers at the dragons,
who were still locked in battle.

“Cinder, stop chewing on Bonk’s head
before you hurt him, or I’ll put a leash on you the next time we come outside.”

Cinder seemed to understand his master perfectly, and released Bonk’s head from his jaws. He spit fire in Bonk’s face as a courtesy (in case he needed healing), and took flight in the direction of
Torin’s cabin.

Bonk seemed completely uninjured, which was a miracle given how hard they were chewing on each other, and shuffled over to Hayden on foot.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow I suppose.” Master Asher waved at him and walked off in the direction of his father’s cabin.

Hayden was tired of be
ing outside with no one but the older students who were studying for their exams later in the week, and made his way back to his dormitory so he’d be there to celebrate with Zane and Conner as soon as they finished their last test of the day.

His Healing exam went well the next morning, but Elixirs was a bit of a challenge. Hayden had no illusions about qualifying for the level-three class next year based on his performance on the final, and simply hoped to avoid repeating the level-one.

Prisms was
the only exam he wasn’t nervous about at all, and with good reason. He finished half an hour earlier than anyone else, and was absolutely certain that he’d gotten all of the questions right, even the essays. Meanwhile, his classmates looked like they were being subjected to a cruel and unusual form of torture, sweating profusely and grimacing, resting their heads in their hands and muttering wearily to themselves. Master Asher seemed to enjoy watching their agony, because he sat with his feet propped up on his desk, eating popped corn with a pleased look on his face.

Hayden was hoping to have the night off to relax, but Tucker insisted on them getting together for one last team meeting befor
e their final arena challenge the next night.