The Other Prism (The Broken Prism) (18 page)

“WHAT?!” Zane and Lorn shouted at the same time. “How is that fair!?” the latter added.

“C-come on…” Tess said through chattering teeth, turning her back to
the howling wind that dropped the temperature below zero. “L-let’s g-go b-b-before we f-freeze to d-death.”

There was too much truth in that to ignore, so the four of them set off along the path ahead of them, barely able to see three feet in front of their face
s in the rampaging blizzard.

“D-does anyone
know h-how we can stay warm?” Tess added in a small voice, after no more than two minutes of walking.

Hayden drew his cherry wand and cast Heat, knowing that he was using up his best offensive wand right now, but if he didn’t do something fast then they weren’t even going to make it to the yeti lair.

A blast of warmth surrounded them, melting the snow from their skin and clothing, and Hayden saw the color return to his teammates’ faces as they breathed in relief.

“Thank the
holy arcana that you know how to use wands,” Zane mumbled appreciatively, continuing on the path.

“We’d better hurry,” Hayden frowned. “This won’t hold out for long with me channeling so much power through it, and we’ll be right back to where we started unless you guys have anything for warmth.”

“If I could use my powders then we’d be fine,” Lorn grumbled furiously, picking up the pace as requested.

“Well, sure, if I could use my prisms I’d be a lot happier as well, but there’s no use harping over it.”

“I’ve got an oak wand,” Zane added. “It’s alright for heat, but I can’t use wands as well as Hayden so it won’t be as warm.”

The
ir path was sloping upwards now and getting steeper by the minute. Hayden tried not to look too closely at his cherry wand, which was almost three-quarters consumed after only ten minutes.

“There! Up ahead there’s a cave entrance!” Zane shouted in excitement, pointing through the fog of falling snow flurries.

Thinking that at last something had gone right, the rest of them hurried as fast as their legs could carry them through the snow, Hayden’s calves burning from exertion. He felt the wand vanish from his hand as the last of it was consumed, and they were hit with the freezing cold air all over again as they approached the mouth of the cave, only this time it was worse because they were soaking wet.

They stu
mbled blindly into the cave, desperate to escape the wind-chill, and paused.

The cave was massive. Icicles hung from the ceiling like stalactites
, and the floor was slick with well-trodden snow. There were four different pathways in front of them, one leading upwards, one downwards, and two remaining level and turning off to the left and right.

“We’re going to be searching forever,” Zane groaned in dismay. Hayden was alarmed to note how blue his friend’s lips and hands were becoming.

“Can’t anyone conjure us some jackets and mittens?” Lorn scowled at him, the only one besides Zane who had any conjury chalk with them.

“I don’t know how,” he admitted ruefully.

“I’ll walk you through it,” Zane assured him. “Come on, this rock looks big enough to draw on.” He motioned towards a large stone near the path that led upwards.

Hayden removed his level-two conjury chalk and drew the basic summoning
circle, wincing a little at how uneven it was since his hands were trembling violently. Zane looked tortured but didn’t comment on his atrocious drawing skills.

“Ok, now put a single-pairing through the bottom and a triple through the right side.” He watched Hayden work in silence. “Now do a single-braid around the bottom left arc…”

Hayden was still terrible at braiding, and it showed worse than ever on this attempt.

“This is making my soul hurt,” Zane joked feebly, opening his mouth to give Hayden the next instruction for completing the diagram.

The words never made it out of his mouth, because at that moment something massive jumped off of the path above them and crashed into Zane, knocking him to the floor with a strangled cry of pain.

“ZANE!”
Hayden was flung backwards, cutting his hand on a jagged bit of ice as he struggled to his feet but ignoring the pain. His friend was being held by a ten-foot yeti, one of Zane’s arms clearly broken and dangling uselessly at his side while the shaggy white monster gripped him in its claws.

Tess was halfway through drawing a scripture and Lorn was grabbing a birch wand when the yeti oh-so-casually ripped Zane in half.

Hayden didn’t remember if he screamed or not, only that white stars of light popped in front of his eyes as he watched his friend’s demise, and then he was slumped on the ground with his heart racing and a deathly chill settling over his extremities.

He blinked hard until everything came back into focus. Lorn waved his wand and tree branches burst out of the cave wall and wrapped around the yeti like chains, holding it in place. Tess was finishing her scripture with tears in her eyes, her skin ghostly-pale in the cold, and the yeti
was struggling against its bonds. Hayden could hear the branches straining and snapping under the pressure.

Lorn’s wand had been entirely consumed by the complex spell and he was fumbling around his belt frantically for another weapon. Hayden staggered to his feet and grabbed his clear prism without thinking, and it burst into dust in his hand and vanished.

Tess finished her scripture at last, slammed it printed-side down against the cave wall, and pulled a bow and four arrows out of the rock. The yeti had managed to free its right arm and was now tearing at the branches holding its left. With a surprising amount of skill, Tess nocked an arrow, aimed, and fired into the yeti’s neck.

The monster stopped struggling and collapsed against its bonds, clearly dead. The silence that it left in its wake was deafening.

“Where did you learn to shoot a bow?” For some reason this was the only thought Hayden’s mind could process at the moment.

“My dad’s been teaching me since I was six,” Tess replied softly.

“Fat lot of good
you
did us, Frost,” Lorn snapped at him hatefully. “Wait until everyone hears how our great prism-wielder fainted during battle and left me and his girlfriend to clean up the—”

Tess stepped forward and punched Lorn in the face with all the strength she could muster, bloodying his mouth and knocking him to the ground.

“You shut up, Lorn Trout! Zane was just ripped apart and we’re all freezing to death and can’t use our primary weapons! So you just shut your stupid mouth!” she shrieked at such a high pitch that only dogs would be able to hear her soon.

Lorn and Hayden stared at her for a long moment in stunned silence, and then the latter offered his nemesis a hand to help him to his feet.

“Come on, we’ve got to keep going…Zane’s not really—” he couldn’t bring himself to say the word. “He’s outside with the mastery students right now, probably lolling about with a glass of lemonade, laughing at our misfortune for being stuck here.”

Tess lowered her bow and walked back to the half-finished summoning circle of Hayden’s.

“Do you think it’s still usable, or do the blood smears ruin it?”

“I have no idea how to finish it without Zane here,” Hayden felt as though his best friend really had just died, despite the fact that he kept telling himself it was only an arena and
that everyone was fine.

“Figures,” Lorn mumbled, and the three of them set off down th
e central path without debate because it had the most yeti footprints in it, following the curve to the right.

“What are we going to do if we find more of them?” Tess aske
d softly. “I’ve just got my bow and a charm or two.”

Hayden frowned and took inventory as he continued walking. “Other than my prisms, I’m down to a maple wand, half a stick of chalk, and an elixir.” At the moment he couldn’t even remember what the bright purple elixir in his belt contained.

“I’m down to nothing but powders,” Lorn frowned. “Wish we’d gotten Laraby’s oak wand off of him before his body disappeared.”

Hayden was tempted to take a leaf out of Tess’s book and sock Lorn again, but that would accomplish nothing right now, and besides, his muscles were much too stiff and cold to exert that kind of energy needlessly.

It felt like the path they were on was winding them around one large circle, but so far they hadn’t passed any crossways to turn onto. Tess was shaking so badly that Hayden was surprised her legs could even hold her upright.

As soon as he thought that,
she collapsed, shivering on the ground.

“Come on, get up, we don’t have time for this,” Lorn grous
ed, but Tess’s skin was cold to the touch and turning blue.

“She’s freezing, you idiot!” Hayden snapped, frantically trying to think of a way to warm her.

“So am I, but you don’t see me flailing around on the ground like an idiot.”

“You’re fatter than her.”

Lorn rolled his eyes and watched Hayden lazily.

“Don’t you have anything that can help her?” Hayden heard the desperate note in his own voice.

“Sure, a powder, but I wouldn’t trust you with it unless I wanted to blow the entire cave up.”

There was too much truth in that to ignore, so Hayden changed tracks and said, “I’ll have to carry her then. Help me get her onto my back.”

Lorn looked at him like he was the stupidest person to ever draw breath.

“What the hell do you want to carry her for? Just leave her here; she’
ll reappear at Mizzenwald when she finally freezes to death.”

“Just do it!” Hayden shouted, hearing a muffled roar somewhere further down the path in response. He had a shrewd idea of what creature
that roar belonged to…

“Fine,” Lorn stooped down and helped hoist Tess’s shaking form over Hayden’s shoulders. She was either heavier than she looked, or Hayden was a lot weaker right now than he ju
dged, because it was agony lifting her. He suddenly remembered what the bright purple elixir in his belt contained: Energy, the present Tess had given him for his birthday. Now he was going to use it to save her…

He opened the cap and downed the entire thing in one gulp. It tasted like lemons, and Hayden immediately felt the burn in his veins as he got his strength and energy back, and suddenly carrying Tess not only seemed possible but easy.

“It’s okay…” she said weakly in his ear, so quietly that only he could hear. “You can leave me…it’s alright…”

“You shut up and work on staying alive,” Hayden grumbled defiantly, taking a few staggering steps forwa
rd before getting his pace and continuing along the path.

The way finally branched out into two different paths ahead of them, and Hayden said “right” at the same time Lorn said “left.”

“Why left?” the former asked.

“That footprint over there looks human,” Lorn pointed, and Hayden squinted and saw that he was correct.

They turned down the path to the left and neither of them commented on the fact that the noises coming from up ahead were clearly not being made by humans. They had only been walking for a minute or two when Hayden felt Tess’s body give one last horrible shudder and then fall still. Before he could process what it meant, she vanished entirely and the weight was lifted off of his shoulders.

I couldn’t save her either…

His throat was constricting unpleasantly, and all Lorn said was “Oh goody, just the two of us.”

The path open
ed up fairly quickly after that into a large, dead-end room that reminded Hayden horribly of the warg den he was trapped in the year before. There were four people in a cage made of red crystal, and with a start Hayden realized that the cage was the trigger crystal. If they could just lay hands on the cage they would be finished with the arena.

While he was busy marveling over the fact that they made it, Lorn had noticed another feature of the
room of more immediate concern: it was full of yetis.

There were five of the ten-foot monsters in here, two of them sitting around a small bonfire and the others pacing the room. All of them took notice of the two fresh humans who had just walked into their lair to die.

For a moment the scene was frozen, and then the yetis moved towards them as one and the fake hostages cried out.

“Frost, take it!” Lorn tossed one of his powder packets to him and Hayden caught it in one hand. “Cast Stop!”

Hayden had never done this before with powders but he thought he knew how it must work. He held his breath (so he wouldn’t sneeze or vomit), emptied the packet into his hand, threw it at the horde of yetis and yelled, “STOP!”

It only partially worked. Three of the yetis were frozen in place around the fire, which was also suspended in motion, but the other two were still coming at them. Hayden launched himself forward and rolled between one of the yeti’s legs as it ran towards him, leaping back to his feet just as he felt the last of his energy elixir burn out.

All of his aches and pains returned in an instant, along with the horrible shoots of cold that were creeping up his legs. One of his hands was turning black and was past feeling.