The Other Prism (The Broken Prism) (22 page)

Hayden wasn’t sure why he was so tired, other than the fact that he hadn’t ever cast this spell before or held a
compound for this long, and the fact that he’d just been severely burned. The last time he was this tired it was because he’d been casting Suspend for fifteen minutes on a four-hundred pound block and had tapped into his Source directly to sustain the spell.

The safe zones lifted all around him and the violet lights vanished. The partition full of water drained into the ground with unnatural speed, leaving the area squishy but maneuverable, and the
warg disappeared as the others were brought into play again.

Davis cast something at him
, but it was deflected just as the light had been. Hayden had no idea how to turn off whatever spell he’d cast, since he had no idea what arrays he used or even the name of it, so he had no choice but to let it continue to burn through his prisms. Davis looked stunned that he would have been repelled so easily, and for once turned his attention to someone else.

Hayden walked sedately around the space, watching his peers battle
each other. He was still too shocky and fatigued to fight, though he suspected it was more because of trauma than because he lacked the capacity to use more magic. He still felt like he could cast spells if he wanted to, he just couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment.

Occasionally the others would cast against him, and he felt both his defens
ive charm and his elite repelling spell (that’s what he mentally dubbed it) rebuffing the attempts. Nothing hit him, and soon he saw the bright red lights on the ground that signaled where the safe zones would appear.

This time he was near one and had no trouble getting to it. As soon as the red walls shot up around him he sat down on the ground and closed his eyes, mentally
shaking himself and casting Heal a few more times to lessen the pain and regain his wits. It fatigued him significantly every time he cast a spell with his mystery spell still active, but there was nothing to be done about it. His clear prism shrank slightly faster than his rose-tinted from all the Heals.

Finally Hayden felt almost human again, blinking
open his eyes and discovering that one of the safe zones was unoccupied. The prism-user from Valhalla was battling the warg, and the Prism from Creston was stuck in the chamber of water. Hayden dimly remembered Davis knocking the other boy out before the safe zones popped up.

He must have been unconscious for too long and the walls went up without him.

The boy was certainly conscious now, struggling to stay afloat as his space rapidly filled with water. With a last desperate breathe the chamber filled completely, and he began fumbling desperately with his prisms for some way to breathe underwater. Hayden wished him luck, because he had no idea how to survive without air for five minutes.

He turned his attention to the competitor from Valhalla, who was still fighting the
warg. Hayden had confronted one larger than this at the end of last year, and could sympathize with how terrified the other boy must be right now. The warg’s head darted forward and snapped its teeth, grazing the Valhallan’s arm and tearing his robes. A streak of blood spattered the grass, and the boy held up his amber prism and cast at the warg.

Nothing happened.

With a look of confusion and terror, the competitor from Valhalla went down as the warg pounced on him, pounding the ground three times in rapid succession since he couldn’t reach the edge of the dome. The warg vanished and the wall of the dome opened on his side, and Masters Kilgore and Reede hurried in and pulled him out.

I made it through this round,
Hayden thought dizzily.
No matter what, I’m in the next trial.

The prism-
user from Creston looked thrilled, immediately tapping out as well before he ran out of air and drowned. The wall opened and he slid out with a rush of water that made the crowd cry out and move to avoid getting soaked.

Hayden and Davis looked at each other.

Just the two of us…

The safe zones fell away, and they were the only ones left
in the arena.

Hayden’s mystery spell
was still holding up, but his prisms were almost spent and it wouldn’t last too much longer, not to mention the fact that his Source was fatiguing rapidly. He wasn’t even aware of consciously bypassing his Foci when he cast that spell, but he must have managed it somehow, because he was never this tired unless he was tapped into his Source, and besides, he was still able to cast normally through his channels even with this spell active.

Hayden switched the remnant of his clear prism for his amber and cast Break, hoping to break Davis’s prism, but his opponent cast Repel in the nick of time and saved it. Hayden felt another bit of energy leave him and dropped to his knees, no longer able to hold himself upright.

There was no prism-user he hated as much as Davis, and this close to victory, Hayden didn’t want to lose to his nemesis a second time. Davis tried to cast Dispel against him, probably hoping to get rid of his protective spell, but it didn’t work.

“What spell did you
use
?!” he yelled in frustration.

Hayden gave him a sleepy smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Wouldn’t
I
like to know…

“Well, Frost, don’t think it’s going to last forever. You’re looking awfully tired…”

Unfortunately that was true. Hayden was resting on his bent knees, doing everything he could just to remain conscious while the energy continued to drain out of him. Davis was nearly out of prisms, but otherwise he looked quite well-rested.

The older boy approached him slowly, holding up the remnant of his rose-tinted prism, the last one left to him. Hayden had most of his
prisms intact, and drew the blue-tinted one from his belt. It was unused thus far, and Hayden twisted it inside his eyepiece while looking for inspiration. Davis seemed to be waiting for his clear and rose prisms to expire before using his last spells, and Hayden felt a surge of weakness and vulnerability as both prisms passed their minimum size thresholds and exploded into dust.

Davis cast Suspend at the same time that Hayden cast Sleep.

When Hayden opened his eyes, he was lying in the infirmary with no recollection as to how he got there. He blinked several times to clear his vision and sat up with a groan as his body ached in protest. There were strips of gauze tied around various spots on his arms, legs, and chest, and the oily smell of burn paste permeated the air.

He suddenly remembered the violet rays of light that felt like they were melting his organs during the prism trial. He strained his mind, but couldn’t remember anything after casting Sleep at Davis; he didn’t even know who had won the round.

Hayden quickly discovered that he wasn’t the only one in the infirmary right now, which was a little surprising. There were two other patients in the room with him: a boy from Creston who was either sleeping or unconscious (Hayden only knew he was from Creston because of the robes he still wore), and a girl from
Branx who was sitting up in bed, looking bored.

When the latter noticed that Hayden was awake, the look of boredom vanished from her face.

“Hey, what time is it?” Hayden asked before she could open her mouth. “Are the trials all finished?”

“Yes, they finished hours ago,” she answered with a slight frown. “Everyone else has gone back to their schools except for me and Greg, because we’re still healing and your Mistress Razelle hasn’t declared us recovered yet.”

“Oh, so I missed lunch then.” Hayden’s stomach growled traitorously. The girl from Branx looked disgusted that his first waking thought would be about food, but Hayden had never drained his magical powers so completely before and was quite ravenous.

“You missed dinner too, I think,” she corrected him dryly.

Wow, I must have been out for a long time…

Belatedly, it occurred to him to ask, “Who won the Prism trial?”

The girl twirled a long strand of dirty-blond hair around one finger as she answered him. “They called it a tie, since you and that boy from Isenfall both went down at the same time. By the time the safe zones came back up, neither of you were moving yet, so your Masters ended the trial and pulled you both out of there before you could drown or get eaten.”

Ha!
Hayden may not have had the clear victory over Davis that he’d been hoping for, but he was willing to bet that he’d wiped the arrogant smirk off of the other boy’s face for a while.

On the down side, that also meant that Hayden would have to endure the panic of surviving yet another prism challenge at another school, but at least he had a couple
of months to recover in between now and then.

“Huh, I never thought I’d tie
for first in one of these things,” Hayden said slowly, trying not to sound like a braggart.

She shrugged, still twirling her hair around her finger. Hayden wished she would cut it out because it was annoying.

“I heard that kid from Valhalla complaining afterwards that his prism didn’t work right while he was fighting the warg, and that that’s the only reason he had to tap out and take the loss.”

Hayden frowned thoughtfully.

“There’s no reason why his prism would suddenly just stop working; he must have panicked is all. I mean, I don’t blame him—wargs are terrifying. He did tell Master Asher that he felt sick this morning, so maybe that was it.”

The girl shrugged as though she couldn’t care less.
“Yeah, probably. People are always making up excuses for why they lost.”

One of Mistress
Razelle’s apprentices opened the door at that moment, looking pleasantly surprised to find Hayden sitting up in bed. Hayden had never been happier to see a person in his life, mostly because of the meal trays she was carrying. If he’d had the energy for it, he would have leapt out of bed and tackled her for one of those trays.

“Oh, good, I was hoping you wouldn’t sleep the night away. Master Asher and all your friends have been asking after you every time I see them.” She looked annoyed by that fact, but Hayden was just glad to know that people cared.

She placed one of the meal trays in front of him and Hayden dug in without even taking note of what he was eating. He hardly chewed any of it, shoveling it down with indecent fervor and causing both girls to look at him with mild distaste.

The mastery student was checking the other girl’s vital signs and scribbling down numbers on a clipboard.

“I think we’ll be able to send you on your way once you’ve finished eating,” the former explained. “Your vitals have been steady for several hours now.”

“Oh good.”
The girl from Branx looked relieved and more than ready to depart from Mizzenwald. The healer walked over to the still-unconscious boy from Creston and began checking his pulse and temperature as well.

“Oh, right,” Hayden said between bites, “do you know where our next trial takes place?”

“Isenfall,” she answered simply, and Hayden grimaced inwardly.

Great, Davis’s home turf.

“Ah, okay.” Hayden waited until the healer was finished with the boy from Creston before he caught her attention. “Can I go now? I want to talk to Master Asher about the trial before lights out.” Specifically, he wanted to ask about the spell he had cast that made him impossible to touch, though if he was being honest with himself he was also hoping for a bit of praise for his performance.

“Sorry, I want to keep you for a little while longer. I’m sure you’ll see him in the morning.”

Hayden frowned, wondering if it was worth arguing. Before he could decide, the girl from Branx gave him a funny look and said, “It must be weird having him as a mentor.”

He had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. Asher was one of the most powerful people he had ever met, and he enjoyed learning about prisms from him.

“Uh, why do you say that?”

The girl looked mildly embarrassed by the question. “You know…because of his past,” she answered cryptically. “My mom says that everyone was surprised when the Council of Mages approved his appointment as a teacher here, because the last thing they wanted to do was give someone that dangerous more power…”

“What are you talking about?” Hayden’s voice came across much louder and more commanding than he had ever heard it, but it wasn’t the first time that he had heard people saying bad things about the Prism Master’s character, and he was beginning to wonder what he didn’t know about that everyone else did.

Mistress
Razelle’s apprentice frowned and came over to check Hayden’s pulse.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said to the other girl, “but Hayden needs rest and this is clearly making his blood pressure—”

“
What are you talking about?
” Hayden ignored the apprentice entirely, speaking to the girl from Branx through clenched teeth.

“What, don’t yo
u know?” she looked like she regretted ever entering into this conversation. “Or maybe it just doesn’t bother you because of your father. I guess I can see why people are afraid of you two teaming up just like they did.”