Frost Prisms (The Broken Prism Book 5) (2 page)

“Afraid not,” Asher sighed. “I saw him with my own eyes—spoke to him, briefly. As everyone is keen on reminding me, I was the man’s best friend for most of our lives, so if anyone would recognize him after a five year hiatus, it would be me.”

Another horrible pause, while the others digested this information in silence. Hayden was surprised that none of them were gaspers or shouters—there was usually one in any given group of people.

Finally Master Willow said, “Where is Aleric now? You said he’s left the grounds…”

Asher shook his head.

“He caught me off-guard and took one of my prisms. I have no idea where he went to, but if he’s been stuck in the other realm for five years then he’ll probably need time to set up base again and reestablish his magic.”

So that was to be the official story: Asher was surprised by the Dark Prism’s unexpected appearance and got overpowered. Hayden committed it to memory so he wouldn’t be the one to say otherwise.

“Does the Council know?” Willow prodded.

“No, not yet,” Asher replied.

“Someone needs to tell them immediately, or we’ll be brought up on charges for withholding information,” Master Dirqua pointed out pragmatically.

“As soon as Hayden tells us—succinctly—how in the world he happened to bring the Dark Prism back through the schism with him, we will inform the Council,” Laurren responded, weighing Hayden with those strange, blue-purple eyes.

Once more, everyone turned to him, waiting for an explanation. Trying to ignore his throbbing headache, he gave the best overview he could manage right now and hoped it was enough.

“I have no idea how long we’d been in the other realm before I met up with him. Harold was already dead, and Tanner and I were attacked by hyenas after we cleared the swamp. Tanner died saving me, but there was still one hyena left. That’s when Hun—when my father showed up. He finished off the hyena and said he saw the flash bomb I’d set off in the swamp, and came to investigate. He told me his name was Hunter and offered to help me find the schism aperture, once I told him what I was doing.”

“And you didn’t recognize him on sight?” Master Sark seemed unable to interject at this point.

“I’d never seen him before, other than the time he blew up my house, but I don’t have most of my memories from that time. It’s not like I look exactly like him or anything, and I was well on my way to losing my mind by the time I met him, so I wasn’t at my mental peak anyway.”

The others frowned at this and Master Kilgore made an impatient motion with one hand to wave him on.

“Anyway, we traveled together for the rest of the way. He kept me talking because it helped keep my mind focused, so I ended up telling him my entire life’s story, including all the stuff about him…”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Reede interrupted. “If Aleric spent five years inside the other realm he should be a slobbering pile of drool by now. Hayden has the worst Foci the world has probably ever seen and he barely lasted two days in there.”

Wow, I was only gone for two days?
It felt like a week had elapsed inside the schism.

“He’s obviously found a way to use magic inside of the other realm, probably with that accursed Black Prism of his,” Sark scowled. “He duped Hayden long enough to get free of the schism and then showed his true colors.”

“I don’t think that’s true…” Hayden interjected softly. “I mean, I don’t think he was pretending not to know who I was. He was much stronger than me and much better at surviving—he could have just taken my prism from me and followed the ley lines for himself. Heck, I
gave
him the void-prism to hang onto because I was afraid I’d lose my mind and accidentally use it too early,” he explained to general astonishment. “He didn’t seem to understand magic at all; I had to tell him how Foci and Sources work, and what prisms even were. I don’t claim to know him very well, but surely he can’t be that good of an actor, especially when there was just no reason for it.”

A few of the Masters frowned thoughtfully in the silence that followed this.

“And he didn’t show any signs of recognition when you were sharing your life story with him? You said you told him about his own role in how you came to be at Mizzenwald…” Master Kilgore prodded gently.

“He just looked like it was an interesting story—not like it was familiar at all. I don’t know why, but I think for some reason he really didn’t remember any of that until we left the schism. Even once we made it out, it took him a couple minutes to remember who he was.”

“Hayden’s right,” Asher interjected at this point. “When he caught sight of me he initially thought we were still friends. He asked me who I’d stolen Mastery robes off of.”

“That still doesn’t make sense,” Master Potts persisted. “The other realm should distort anyone who crosses through with open Foci, and since we’ve established that Aleric probably wasn’t using magic to protect himself inside the other realm, he should have been as affected as Hayden was by it.”

“Should he?” Master Laurren asked quietly, capturing everyone’s attention in that subtle way of his. “He was already suffering under massive distortion effects from his own work with broken prisms. We really have no idea what happens to someone who crosses realms under those circumstances. If it drives a sane person crazy, mightn’t it force a crazy person sane?”

Hayden’s mouth wasn’t the only one to drop open at that mind-blowing possibility. Master Asher had spent over a decade trying to find a cure for mental distortion; was there another way to go about it involving schisms? Admittedly, forcing someone to live in that horrible realm for the rest of their lives in order to remain sane was hardly ideal, but maybe it was a start…

“If he was suddenly cured of his mental issues, then why didn’t he remember who he was?” Master Sark persisted, though he looked floored by the very thought of a sane Aleric Frost.

Laurren shrugged and said, “I have no idea. Maybe after suffering from the distortion for ten years, when he was suddenly free of it inside the other realm he lost his memory?”

“I think it’s something like that,” Hayden spoke again, recalling his own recent experience. “Towards the end, when it got really bad, I couldn’t remember who people were anymore. I forgot about all of you, all of my friends, and even who I was and what the void-prism was for. At first it was terribly painful, but towards the end I started to get used to it, like my brain was rebuilding itself around the effects. Maybe he did the same thing, only he had a lot longer to build a new life for himself…”

Now most of the others were giving him concerned, pensive looks. Master Reede actually asked if he felt he was still suffering from the effect of being inside the other realm for so long, and Hayden shook his head.

“No, I started to get better as soon as I came back through the schism, but it took me a couple minutes to orient myself. It took him even longer, which I didn’t really understand until I learned who he was, but maybe it’s because he was in the other realm for such a long time—so there was more to sort through to get back to normal; well, normal for him anyway.”

“That seems as likely as anything,” Master Graus agreed slowly. “If he had to rebuild himself inside the other realm and didn’t have any of the people or places he knew to help him along, it makes sense that he would have started from scratch and given himself an entirely new identity.”

“I asked him how long he’d been in that realm and he said for as long as he could remember. At the time I just thought that meant he was born there, but in hindsight I feel pretty stupid for missing it.”

He rested his forehead in his hands and sighed.

“I can’t believe I unleashed the Dark Prism on the world again, especially when he was doing just fine for himself in the other realm. Every time I try to do something good, something even worse happens in the aftermath.”

That was, sadly, true. Last year he’d fought in a war to save his friends, which led to the schisms opening in the first place. Now he’d gone into the schism to close it and protect his friends at Mizzenwald, only to reincarnate the greatest magical threat the Nine Lands had seen in a century.

I should stop trying to do good things before I get us all killed.

No one really said anything in response to that, which only confirmed that they too were blaming him for bringing the Dark Prism back to life. He kept his face turned down and his eyes closed as Master Willow said, “I’ll inform the Council. We need to beef up our defenses around the school significantly in order to prevent him from reappearing here at will.”

“We don’t know what sort of magic he has at his disposal since he acquired the Black Prism,” Sark pointed out. “Nothing we do may be able to keep him out if he’s determined to get into Mizzenwald.”

“No, but we can still try,” Kilgore grumbled. “We haven’t been idle for the last five years and he has; we may yet have some new tricks up our sleeves that he isn’t prepared for.”

Hayden listened to all of this with his eyes shut. Eventually he heard the flutter of papers around Asher’s office being blown off of their piles, and knew that the other Masters were disappearing to go do whatever task they had been assigned in fortifying the school. When he opened his eyes, only Master Asher remained.

For a moment they stared at each other in silence. Hayden wished his mentor didn’t have such a sad, sympathetic look on his face, because it just made his chest hurt.

“Cinder left with him,” he pointed out, mostly to break the silence.

“He was always Aleric’s familiar. He will stick with him until the end.” Asher nodded.

“I’ll miss him,” Hayden said glumly. “I’m sure Bonk will too.” Frowning, he added, “Does this mean he and Bonk will be enemies if they see each other again?”

Asher looked unhappy when he said, “If you find yourself fighting your father, then yes, I expect so.”

For some reason that made Hayden even sadder than the thought of loosing the Dark Prism on the world. Bonk and Cinder had been friends for as long as Hayden had been at Mizzenwald, and they would be forced to fight each other just because of a battle between their masters.

Another moment of silence passed between them before Asher said, “So, what did you think of the Aleric Frost—Hunter, that you met in the other realm?”

Hayden frowned and said, “I liked him—and I was jealous of him, though I’m not sure if it was because my mind was turning on me or if I would have felt that way no matter what. He was everything I’m not: tall, stupidly handsome, self-confident, naturally charming…”

He sighed and continued. “I was glad for his help and I would have died without him, but I still felt like the loser little kid who was tagging along—even though it was my mission in the first place and he was nothing but nice to me.”

“Aleric did have that effect on the people around him,” Asher said with a sympathetic smile. “It was a side-effect of being his friend, though I was probably just as cocksure as him so it didn’t bother me at the time. It took the magical community by surprise when the boy who seemed to have it all morphed into the Dark Prism.”

“I’m still trying to reconcile the two different versions of him in my head,” Hayden admitted. “I can’t believe he was ready to slit my throat not two minutes after carrying me on his back through the schism to save my life. You’d think that the fact that I’m his son would have counted for something, especially after I shared my life story with him…”

Master Asher shook his head.

“Becoming the Dark Prism removed the last of the humanity from him; you don’t matter to him any more than I or anyone else at this point.”

Very quietly, so softly that he wasn’t sure if his mentor even heard it, Hayden whispered, “He said any father would be proud to have me as a son.”

Saying it out loud made his heart hurt. The man he had known as Hunter had listened to all of the struggles he’d overcome in the last five years with great interest, and had told him that he was brave and worthy of admiration.

Asher rested a gentle hand on his shoulder and said, “So he would have been, if he had been the father you deserved.” He sighed and retracted his hand.

“The fact that he was willing to kill me without hesitation as soon as we came through the opening sort of suggests that he didn’t show up at my mother’s house five years ago to recruit me as an ally,” Hayden transitioned to a less painful subject.

“I’m not sure we can say that just yet,” Asher countered mildly. “He may have wanted to assess your strengths and see if you would be an asset to him, or he might have just been curious about you. Either way, Aleric now prizes himself more than anything, and since he thought I was going to kill him when he came through the schism, he would have willingly sacrificed anyone to prevent that from happening, even if he was otherwise interested in keeping you around.”

Hayden frowned thoughtfully.

“How long do you think it’ll take before he’s ready to start terrorizing the world again?”

His mentor shrugged and said, “I have no idea. A few weeks, at the earliest, while he recovers his strength and gets the lay of the land. He’ll also need time to refortify his defenses at the Frost estate—assuming he decides to return there. After that, who knows?”

Hayden was old enough to remember the way the world was the last time the Dark Prism was strong. Mages were impossible to find, as they all attempted to lie low and avoid the attention of Aleric Frost. This was largely responsible for the boom in the monster population that the Nine Lands was still attempting to recover from. Even non-magic people lived in fear of their towns being the next to burn, their friends being murdered, their houses being ravaged by monsters they weren’t equipped to fight off.