The Protection of Ren Crown (37 page)

Saf and Trick had been pretty particular in what they wanted and had given me skeletal sketches for much of it. But the art had been missing that vital component of life. Breathing it into the designs was pure pleasure. I couldn't wait to show them the results.

As I packed up the papers, Draeger barked at me to give him another recounting of what had happened today.

By the time I was finished, my left sleeve was rolled up to my elbow, and I was staring at my cuff as I leaned against the wall. I was thinking of Delia and the choice she made to be tagged and tracked, I was thinking of the weight of freedom and fear.

“There's a
thing
somewhere within me. Pulling on me,” I said, shaking my head. “I'm scared.” It wasn't something I had acknowledged to anyone else. The word sounded foreign in my mouth.

“
Raccoon paws,
Cadet! You are not trying hard enough.” His crisp projection paced angrily around the simulation room. Draeger didn't respond well to fear. He beat fear into submission with anger and action.

The image of his shaved head and barrel chest was comforting, even while his overly large muscles flexed as if he were going to pummel me. When I'd purchased a mentor simulation, my subconscious had picked characteristics that it had thought I needed at the time.

The real Draeger, on whom he was based, had been a soldier in life. Now that I had Dare too, it became very clear I seemed to be collecting drill sergeants.

The thought and sense of Dare connected suddenly to the wall.
No! Thinking only, no connection!
I snatched back my hand. A ribbon of rich brown to match the room's default color pulled from the wall and attached to my palm.

Panicked, I tried to peel the ribbon away. I should have made Draeger practice auditory defense with me instead of mooning around and complaining. At the auditory thought, another wall ribbon immediately launched toward me, combining with the first.

“Stop poking at Axer, Bella,” a familiar female voice said.

I looked wildly around, but no one was in the room with me other than Draeger, whose anger had morphed into half amusement, half exasperation. “You connected to another room, Cadet.” Draeger shook his head and muttered one of his many weird animal curses. “You aren't keeping your thoughts straight, but at least this is more entertaining.”

I had accidentally connected to Dare in the simulation rooms a few times last term, and Dare had always demolished me and cut the connection in two seconds flat. But that hadn't been Dare's voice.

“But Cami, he's going to win the Combat Games again,” another familiar female voice said into the ether of my room. “And he will look lovely on my arm.”

Instead of connecting to Dare, I had somehow connected to Bellacia and Camille talking about him.
Wow.
Seriously, time to exit. I tugged at the strip of magic stuck to the wall. It stubbornly refused to part.

“That tack won't work. He isn't interested in you.” Camille Straught's voice was no-nonsense. “He doesn't date. You
know
that. And he'll flatten you socially, even with your influence, if you continue nagging him this way.”

“How unflattering that sounds.”

“Agreed,” Camille said in a deadpan voice.

I tugged harder, putting one foot against the wall, literally and metaphorically.

“He can't be allowed to run loose. You know that, despite your worrisome fondness for him. You know he needs to be watched.” Bellacia's voice was far too light. “They are setting up campus so they will be able to do so. He requires a firm hand and a watchful eye. For his own good, of course.”

“Secure him another way then. You aren't going to get him on your arm, and your face is far too lovely to be irreparably scarred trying and failing to use mind control on Sera McEllian's son.”

Bellacia laughed, a tinkling sound. “You will always be my favorite. I do so love my skin. I only use the finest of Tinctly's creams on it. Fine. Lox is looking exceptionally well formed this year, and he'll likely win the swords and sorcery part of the competition. He'll make a lovely adornment at Father's ball.”

“A far more promising prospect. Especially since he was talking about you the other day.”

“There's always Ramirez too.” Bellacia's voice was too idle… Wow, she really wielded that thing like a weapon. No response issued from Camille. “Unattached and deadly. He would lend me an air of mystery.”

“He doesn't date either,” Camille's voice was tight. Their background noise rose in volume from whatever magic they were doing. “Watch that second blast, Bella,” Camille called, sounding slightly smug.

I got my panic under control and started unwinding the magic in the attached ribbon—as I should have done from the beginning. It was as if I hadn't learned anything from destroying the entire Shangwei Art Complex last term when I had yanked wards from the walls in my panic.

At the same time, I wondered what Bellacia and Camille were
doing
in there that they hadn't noticed an intruder. It had to be Bellacia's magic holding the room. Camille would have noticed and squashed me by now, I was pretty sure.

“
Someone
ought to change Ramirez's dating status,” Bellacia said in a singsong way. “Perhaps I should tell Inessa to—”

The ribbon broke free.
Whew.
Okay, no more thoughts of Dare. The ribbon, looking for completion, wildly shot toward another wall, connecting to a second room with a snap.

No!

The panic had only one moment to form, then I was flat on the ground, cheek pressed to the tiles, arms and legs splayed. The connection had been harshly severed by the person on the other side. I had obviously found the real Dare this time.

I groaned. Draeger chuckled above me in his gruff, holographic way.

“Always amusing, Cadet, when you accidentally connect to a
real
mage.”

Why
had my brain picked a mentor simulation that had been a combat mage? “Art mages rule, old man.”

“Yes, you are doing a nice impression of a flattened squirrel,
art mage
. Very dignified.”

“I'll end you. Pull out your coding, erase your upgrades, choose the Zen Master guy instead. Just you wait.” I pushed slowly upward. “
Ow
. Bruising.” I huffed a short laugh at myself, feeling better. Pity party over. “And I'm the personification of dignity. I will not be convinced otherwise.”

A shot of magic swirled around my head, then abruptly poked me in the side.

I gave a high-pitched scream, landed on my rear, then shot a bolt of magic wildly toward an unknown shadow on the wall. Before the spell could hit, the walls turned into dense forest and the shadow slipped behind trees, easily evading the blast.

Someone had connected to
my
room.

Draeger's voice boomed in laughter as my mind made him invisible in order to free up visual space. I could walk or shoot through Draeger, but in a fighting simulation, unless he was actively an opponent or obstacle, he would unnecessarily draw some of my attention.

My room's connection capabilities were obviously wide open in the wake of my mistake with Camille and Bellacia. Either that or I had left a ribbon open to one specific person.

I looked at where the shadow had first shown itself. The magic of the entry point was fading, but the connection was still visible. Stunning ultramarine. I groaned. Alexander Dare had connected with my room, perhaps recognizing
my
magic after flattening me.

Magic poked me in the side again, almost mischievously. I stumbled back a step and looked around. The simulation rooms were incredible and somehow the floor either ceased to exist or became an omnidirectional mover, allowing me to walk in any direction without actually getting closer to a wall. I could—and had, under Draeger's command—run for miles without hitting anything.

Another poke made me swear. But this time I followed the magic. Traces, indeed. I focused and Dare popped into view, grinning down at me from up on a branch.

“You called?” Dare said, his voice almost lazy—
completely
different from how he had been before baiting the stooges and blowing the Department's device.

“No. I most certainly did
not
.”

The dirt beneath my feet moved abruptly, and I fell back on my rear. I could see the shadow of a small dragon flying through the simulated jungle sky. I blinked at it, mind connecting the image to my thoughts. The change in Dare's attitude had occurred
before
the blown device. It had been when I'd given him the
dragon.

“What kind of sorry civilian accidentally attaches to a combat mage in a battle simulation room?” Dare said.

Combat mages obviously had the same sense of humor, because I could feel Draeger's answering amusement surrounding me.

“One prone to accidents,” I muttered. Magic poked me again.

“I usually don't bother to check the identity of accidental intruders, but imagine my surprise when after feeling a vague echo of the trespasser, I checked and found you.”

His magic poked me a fourth time as I tried to stand, then a fifth as I stumbled.

“Okay, that's it,” I muttered, finally on my feet.

I twisted my hands and the forest turned into a three dimensional black-and-white block sketch that completely surrounded us. I didn't allow him time to react to the change before I whipped my hand down, redrawing the black line that he was perched upon, and yanking it down like a trap door.

He fell to the floor, but landed in a crouch, one hand on the black and white tiles. His grin turned into something far more delighted and bloodthirsty.

“All of those doodles are good for something after all, Crown?” A twirling staff appeared in his hands and he drove it sharply into the floor, breaking the tiles beneath me and sending me into an abyss.

In free fall, I quickly redrew lines beneath me into a tunnel, then dropped myself Escher-style from the ceiling. I landed back on the floor, which was once more intact, and crouched with my virtual pencil in hand.

Magic blasted toward me and I drew a shield, making the magic bounce. He caught the ricochet and twisted it, sending it back in ten streams. I channeled everything I remembered from the sketch world I had accidentally trapped Will within, and then began drawing in broad strokes, changing the environment around both of us and making the streams hit and ricochet back toward him.

He laughed and let me change the environment, sidestepping my attacks or catching my thrown magic in his palm. His eyes keenly tracked me, watching my movements as he defended against them, then with one swipe, he shattered the line of magic I was using to draw.

The backlash threw me back a step. He had watched, then pinched my advantage at the root. “Oh, it's
on,
” I said.

I launched myself into a box on the floor, collapsed the box into a flat plane around me, then rotated it through empty space to form on a different wall. He turned just in time to catch the dart I threw, transformed it into a glowing ball of sapphire, then tossed it at the ground, falling deliberately into the resulting hole in mimicked manipulation. Crap, he learned fast.

I pulled the wall around me, trapping myself in the white space.

I was so out of my depth. I had never deliberately connected to someone else in one of the other rooms. I had accidentally connected to other rooms—mostly Dare's—a handful of times, but had always been kicked out instantaneously. I had never explored the vast awesomeness that could be produced from one's own head in simulation. Whether any of this was possible in the real world or not didn't matter. Adrenaline and excitement collided in an overwhelming surge.

Hiding within my own manipulation, I tried to silence my quick breathing. After a moment, a small chewing noise registered. Paper tore above me, and the black-and-white head of a papered dragon poked through. Using a projection of my own creation to track me... Oh, it was truly
on
.

Black fire blew from its mouth and I barely twisted and wrung myself from the paper in time. I landed flat on the floor. A booted foot pressed down on my back.

Okay, not so much
on
as over.

A dangerous smile smirked down at me. “Again.”

~*~

After an hour of getting flattened by Dare in increasingly crazy manipulations, I had come to the distinct realization that even while he laughed, Dare was deadlier than I'd seen before or been led to believe. If I thought on it too long, the question of how he had not killed the Bone Beast immediately last term became quite a frightening memory. My subconscious magic and black magic experiments had created something that formidable? Kind of terrifying.

Dare watched everything I did, then used it against me in the next second. So quickly did he convert strategy and moves into counter attack, that I was left wondering
how
. Ugh. He would have been thick as thieves with Christian in the non-magic world—or in this one, if we'd grown up here.

He requisitioned my hour directly afterward—which had been my
free time
—and dragged me, limping, around campus with him on
his
patrol before healing me with a smirk and taking off to God knew where.

I shook off the weirdness of the possible revelation that we might be forming a
friendship
and dragged myself back to the dorm. A stupid grin painted my face and I couldn't get it
off.

Before I could throw myself on my bed, close my eyes, and think up something witty with which to amuse Olivia, I noticed movement on her desk.

A paper caterpillar was inching its way along. A caterpillar, not an egg.

I stared at it for a long moment, stricken, then touched the wards. There was a slight tingle of sickly brown attached to Olivia's health thread, but
far
lighter than what it had been after the previous attack.

“It ate the magic,” Olivia said, without looking up, but obviously aware of the direction of my thoughts. “I opened my mother's note and the egg flew right out of my bag, swallowed the note's magic, then burst into that.” She pointed at the inching insect.