The Other Prism (The Broken Prism) (37 page)

“No, my magic has been fine,” Hayden explained, frowning. “If there’s something wrong with the crystal, why don’t you take off your bracelet?”

“Yeah, let me know how that works out for you,” Davis muttered.

Not knowing what he meant, Hayden grabbed the thin crystal bracelet and tried to break it, but it was surprisingly resilient. He tried casting Break at it with his amber prism, but it remained intact.

“Why can’t I take it off?”

“There’s a certain spell that does it, the one the Masters use to remove our bracelets when we finish, but none of us know what it is,” Farrah explained wearily, looking devastated.

“I can’t believe I left Darren and Oliver by the Resonance Crystal,” Hayden slapped himself in the forehead so hard it hurt. “I thought they’d be safe there—but it’s probably killing them!”

“Yeah, well we’ve got bigger problems right now,” Davis growled.

“What could be worse than being magically imploded by a giant red crystal?” Hayden asked doubtfully.

“Being eaten by fire-breathing chimaeras first.”

Davis pointed with his free hand, and it felt like the bottom dropped out of Hayden’s stomach as he watched the two chimaeras fly towards them. One had the body of a lion (including foot-long talons) and the head of a dragon; the other looked like it had the body of a dragon and the head of a lion. Both were about fifteen feet tall.

Hayden released his hold on Farrah and spun his clear prism around in his eyepiece, casting Slow against the chimaera nearest them. It slowed down for about half a second and then shook the spell, spitting fire at them and causing the three of them to dive in opposite directions.

“Sleep!” Davis cast at it, before screaming and clutching his head in agony. His spell sort of worked; the chimaera looked like it was nodding off, though it was also trying to fight the effects of the spell.

“Sleep!”
Hayden added his own strength to it, and the chimaera fell into a doze. Unfortunately the other one was still preparing to attack, and Davis looked like he was out of commission.

“Cut
!” Farrah waved her wand at it, and a gash appeared in its leg that made it roar and charge them. Farrah and Hayden dove in opposite directions and jumped back to their feet, rounding for another attack. Hayden tried to put it to sleep like its brother, but his spell had little effect. It seemed that the creatures native to the Forest of Illusions were much stronger than normal monsters, or else his spells were much weaker for some reason.

“Why the hell does your magic still work, Frost?” Davis was on his hands and knees, saliva running down the corner of his mouth as he panted in pain.

“I don’t know!” Hayden answered, casting Break and wincing as his Focus-correctors grew so cold it almost burned. His fingers were turning purple and black.

“I’m beginning to think it was
you
who tampered with the crystal!” Davis glared at him.

“Me?
Why would I mess with the Resonance Crystal when I’m wearing a bracelet?!”

“Because you know you can’t beat me in a fair fight!” Davis countered hotly, struggling to his knees. Farrah cast Banish to no effect and lunged out of the way of a jet of poison that was spit at her.

“Stop fighting, you two! Hayden didn’t do anything to the Resonance Crystal!” Her eyes were watering with pain and emotion.

“You can’t know that!” Davis argued, moaning and pressing a hand over his closed eyes once more. “Just because you’ve got a crush on the little idiot—”

“He didn’t do anything to the crystal!” Farrah interrupted, looking tortured. “I did.”

“WHAT?!”
They both shouted simultaneously, possibly the only moment that Davis and Hayden would ever think the same thing at the same time.

“It was me, I did it!” Farrah was practically sobb
ing now, though it might have been because she had a bit of poison on her sleeve that was burning her skin.

“You—you tampered with the crystal? Why would you do that?” Hayden took a step backwards in shock.

“My mentor has been pushing me all year to win, no matter what! He says I’ll shame Creston if I don’t, and I panicked!” Now she really was crying. “I found a way to make a small change in the vibration frequency of the main crystal, just enough to make everyone’s magic a little unsteady, not enough to hurt anyone.”

“So
that’s
why people have been getting sick all year? Why their magic is abandoning them during trials?” Hayden asked, mentally kicking himself for not figuring it out before now.

“It only affects people who are wearing the bracelets, and you have to be in range of the main crystal too. That’s why everyone was fine during the school year, but they sometimes got sick during the trials, because the crystal was moved to the schools during the competition,” she explained helplessly.

The chimaera roared and flew towards Hayden, who shook his mental stupor long enough to cast Sever at one of its wings. The wing tore, and the chimaera plummeted to the ground, shrieking in rage and pain.

“But why would you do that? You’re wearing the bracelet too!” Hayden turned back to Farrah, keeping one eye on the chimaera. The other one seemed to be struggling to regain consciousness again as well, and Hayden was beginning to run low on prisms.

“I thought I could control it, that I had a way to beat it; but I was wrong,” Farrah sobbed horribly, not jumping in time to avoid the swinging tail from the chimaera, which hit her in the stomach and threw her against a tree so hard they could hear her joints pop.

Hayden cast Break until h
is amber prism vanished, and succeeded only in disabling one of the chimaera’s legs. The monster was still hobbling towards him on the other, and it didn’t matter that he could still use magic, because he was entirely out of prisms.

“Hayden, I’m so sorry I did this to us,” Farrah moaned from the ground, coughing up blood as she struggled to her feet. “I didn’t know—the Forest of Illusions has too much magic, it must have reacted badly to the altered crystal when it was brought here. It’s my fault we were pulled out of the arena and the Masters can’t find us. It’s my fault it amplified the effects of the crystal against us. I don’t know why it hasn’t affected you…but please get out of here. You have to run and leave us behind.”

“What? Screw that!” Davis shouted at her. “I’m not the one who deserves to die here, and I don’t plan on getting eaten today!” He reached into his belt and tossed Hayden his last remaining prism, the amber one. Hayden caught it without knowing what to do with it; whatever he did wouldn’t be enough to stop the chimaera.

Th
e monster was closing in on him, and as Hayden struggled to make his mind focus on something meaningful, Farrah jumped on the chimaera’s back from behind and drew her remaining wand. The chimaera grabbed her with its tail and tossed her into the air before Hayden could even open his mouth, and a second later she was clamped in its jaws. Farrah’s eyes met Hayden’s in a moment that seemed to stop time, and then she pointed her wand into the monster’s throat and said, “Explode”.

Hayden fell to his knees from the force of the blast and he shielded his eyes. Bits of chimaera flew everywhere, covering him in guts and
bright blue blood, spattering the multi-colored trees all around him. He knew, even before he opened his eyes, that Farrah was gone.

Even Davis looked cowed, opening and closing his mouth several times without speaking. Hayden’s mind had ground to a complete halt; he could hear nothing but a loud buzzing in his ears.

He barely noticed that the force of the blast broke the spell on the other chimaera, who was now eyeing him and Davis as though trying to decide which of them to eat first.

“Do something, Frost, before we die!” Davis shouted at him, but Hayden’s thoughts were still buzzing and the amber prism was dangling uselessly in his palm. The chimaera took a step towards Davis, who must have looked more appetizing since he wasn’t covered in blue blood,
and Hayden felt his hand rise up and twist the amber prism into his eyepiece almost mechanically.

We’re going to die here. Asher was right, this was dangerous, and there’s no one left to help me…

The thought of Asher triggered something in his mind, something he was foolish to have forgotten until now. Hayden grabbed his defensive charm with his free hand and felt a surge of power tear through him, more power than he had ever felt before. It startled him so much that he almost forgot that he was trying to summon the Prism Master to him, because a defensive charm shouldn’t amplify his power like this, only his ability to repel magic cast against him.

“HELP!” he screamed as loud as he could, and the charm seemed to break and change inside his closed palm, as though the force of the power going through it was
overwhelming. A shockwave of power radiated outwards from him in all directions, blowing back the leaves on the trees so that they bent away from him and making the chimaera buffet its wings frantically to remain standing. Davis was lifted from the ground and tumbled into the base of a tree, hitting his head and losing consciousness.

Just as Hayden began to lose hope, Cinder flew over his head and charged the chimera
head-on, soaring high into the air and spinning into a controlled dive towards its face. His heart pounding with renewed hope, Hayden would have cried if he’d had the energy for it when Master Asher appeared beside him wearing his combat circlet. He took in the scene at a glance and his eyes widened.

“What happened?”

“The crystal’s been tampered with,” Hayden choked out hoarsely. “No one can use magic but me…I don’t know why it isn’t affecting me, but Farrah’s dead and I don’t know about the others…”

Asher’s jaw tensed and he said, “Don’t take off that charm, no matter what.” And with that he charged the chimaera,
who was presently being clawed by Cinder (whose talons had grown enormously at some point so that he looked unbalanced).

Dazed and confused, Hayden looked down at the charm around his neck, expecting to see the wooden shield emblem broken and worthless. His mouth dropp
ed open when he saw a golden pendant that looked exactly like Asher’s Mastery Charm.

That doesn’t make sense. There’s only one charm that looks like that, and Master Asher has it…

Indeed, the Prism Master was wearing his Mastery Charm as he compounded two of his clear prisms together and cast at Cinder. The little dragon glowed electric purple as though there was a brilliant fire right behind him, and he let out a shriek so terrifying that Hayden’s spine tingled in terror. The noise seemed to be fatal to the chimaera, because it started wailing and staggering about blindly until it collapsed onto the ground and went still.

Note to self: dragons are scary screamers.

He had no idea why such a stupid thought occurred to him in that moment, but he was too overwhelmed and fatigued to process anything that was happening. Soon Master Asher was kneeling beside him, and Hayden wondered when he had come to be lying on his back.

“Hayden, are you alright? Are you injured?”

“She died saving us,” his teeth were chattering again for some reason. “I know it would have eaten her anyway, but she still died to save us…she wasn’t a bad person…” he had no idea what he was saying or whether it made any sense.

“I’ll be right back, Hayden. Stay here.” Master Asher ran out of his line of sight, and sure enough, he returned a moment later with Davis suspended behind him. “I removed the crystal band from his wrist, but he’s still out cold,” he explained. “I need you to stay focused for a little while longer, Hayden. I need you to help me find the main crystal so we can destroy it.”

He helped Hayden to his feet and Hayden tried to shake his mental lethargy.

“My charm is wrong,” he pointed out dully, holding out his arm for Asher to break the bracelet on it. Immediately his Focus-correctors warmed to his body temperature, and he understood that they had been fighting to filter the effects of the Resonance Crystal all this time.

“That’s because it’s my Mastery Charm,” Asher answered easily, grabbing his arm so they wouldn’t get separated and leading him back through the forest.

“What?” This momentarily shook Hayden from his stupor. “What do you mean this is your Mastery Charm?”

Asher grimaced and said, “Do you remember when I took your charm from you at the beginning of the year to make some alterations to it? Well, I wasn’t linking it to me, I was swapping it out for my Mastery Charm—which is always linked to me, and adding spells to bind it you as well. That way I could find you anywhere, no matter what.”

“But—but you mean I’ve had your Mastery Charm all year and never noticed?” Hayden ha
d a hard time believing that.

“Yes, that’s right. I put a simple masking spell over it to make it look like your shield charm, and I’ve been wearing your charm all year with a spell over it to make it
look like mine. It’s been very inconvenient whenever I needed the magical boost, or when the others wanted to summon me, because we do that through our charms as well and I couldn’t tell them I loaned mine out; it’s quite illegal. I had to convince Cinder to alert me whenever I was needed so that no one would get suspicious. I think he agreed because he knew I was doing it to protect you.”