The Schism (The Broken Prism Book 4) (17 page)

“What happened?” Zane entered the room first, waiting for Tess to follow before shutting the door behind them. “I saw you running up the stairs like the school was on fire, but you ignored me when I called out to you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Hayden snapped, still struggling to master his emotions. The fact that the Councilman had accomplished exactly what he was trying to do by making Hayden angry only incensed him further.

“Alright, well I guess the three of us can sit around in awkward silence if you’d prefer,” Zane suggested cheerfully, taking a seat on the edge of his bed and continuing to stare at Hayden. After a hesitant moment, Tess joined him.

“Can’t I just stomp around the room kicking things in peace?” He sighed, though some of the heat was beginning to leave him already. Somehow it seemed a lot stupider to throw a tantrum when there were people watching him.

“Sure thing, carry on,” Zane grinned, sensing his shifting mood. “We won’t say a word.”

With a last sigh of agitation, Hayden threw himself onto the chair in front of his desk, clenching and unclenching his fists a few times just because he could.

“I happened to be on schism duty when a big hoard of mages showed up, including some of the Council members,” Hayden explained, though now that he thought about it, it did seem awfully coincidental that they just happened to all show up when he was on rotation. Maybe they planned it that way deliberately so they would have a chance to needle him…

“Oh yeah, I saw a few of them walking through the Pentagon, but I didn’t know what they were here for,” Tess interjected, still scrutinizing him carefully.

Hayden summarized his meeting with Delauria and the others, his cheeks flushing with renewed fury when he told them the things that the Councilman shouted at him. By the time he was finished, Zane looked like he was smelling something unpleasant, and Tess was fingering the hilt of a knife she kept on her belt like she was itching to stab someone.

“That horrible old toad,” she fumed, looking down at her hand. As soon as she realized what she was doing, she stopped toying with the knife.

“Has anyone ever told you how refined you are?” Zane asked her. “The thing I was thinking of calling him was much less appropriate than ‘horrible old toad’.”

Tess ignored him and said to Hayden, “You know he’s just doing it to get under your skin—so you can’t let him succeed. They have no right to try and pressure you into anything just because they don’t like you; you’re not the Council’s errand boy.”

Hayden frowned.

“Apparently I am. And it wouldn’t bother me so much if I thought I stood any less of a chance than the others, but let’s face it…my Foci
are
considerably more damaged than anyone else’s. I might have the best shot at succeeding just because I can stay sane longer than anyone else.”

Tess shook her head furiously.

“No. I mean, that may be true…but that still doesn’t mean it’s your job to solve all the magical problems in the world for the Council. You said Delauria was taking a group of normal people with her, so they’ll be able to keep focused and drag her along no matter what.”

“She still needs to be well enough to perform the Closing spell,” Hayden pointed out grimly.

“I’m sure they’ll manage it somehow. Look, if the Council still didn’t know you existed, they’d find another way to solve the problem using fully-qualified adults who do this for a living. They’re just leaning on you because they can, and because you’re a minor and you don’t have a family that can stomp on them for you.”

Not wanting to be argumentative, Hayden still felt compelled to point out that without him, there might not be a schism at Mizzenwald in the first place. It was he, after all, who had inadvertently blown up the Forest of Illusions, causing it to lose stability and jump locations, which opened up a bunch of schisms across the Nine Lands during the backlash.

“You’re right,” Zane observed dryly, “Things would be much better right now if we were being overrun with sorcerers. I’m sure the Magistra would thank you for not opening any inconvenient schisms for her while she ruled from the top of the Crystal Tower. Maybe the rest of us could get cozy jobs as slaves in her new world order.”

Hayden let that pass without comment, his anger beginning to wind down.

“I know you’re right,” he relented at last. “Sometimes I just wish it wasn’t illegal to punch Council members in the face, or that you could buy a pass for it or something. I have a lot of money now; I could afford whatever prices they were charging.”

It wasn’t until Tess relaxed that he noticed how tense she was. Apparently she had been worried about him haring off into the schism in a moment of foolish bravado.

Zane, also seeing this, said, “Hey, we might be worrying over nothing. That group that went inside will probably be back by tomorrow, and everything will be sealed up nice and tight. The worst thing we’ll have to worry about for the rest of the year is our unholy amount of homework.”

Hayden wasn’t sure if any of them really believed that, but they all nodded and then dropped the subject entirely. There was nothing else to do but wait.

He kept an ear out for news about Delauria’s group over the next two days, but no one reported them emerging from the schism, and the opening looked as large and imposing as ever. On the third day, Master Willow came outside and removed the last wand he had set out to perform the Closing spell, not making eye contact with Hayden or saying a word as he walked back inside.

Even though he knew they had officially given up hope of Delauria’s party ever returning, he couldn’t help but hold out hope for her every time he had schism-patrol in the next week. He was sitting on the grass near the aperture, working on his Charms essay while Kobi watched the opening, avoiding conversation because he could tell his partner wanted to ask him why he hadn’t volunteered to go into the schism yet on his own expedition and he didn’t feel like answering.

He had nearly finished drawing a sketch of the emblem he was referring to in his essay when he heard Kobi let out a strangled yell, followed by a thud that was forceful enough to shake the ground where Hayden was sitting.

Leaping to his feet and equipping a prism as he looked up, Hayden felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. After all this time of waiting and wondering whether anything would ever break free of the schism, he now found himself facing a fifteen-foot tall hydra with seven heads. It looked a lot like a hydra from this world, except that it was dark purple and appeared to be rotting from the inside out, patches of scales flaking off of it as it moved and revealing sinew and bone beneath it.

It must have jumped through the opening with amazing speed, because Kobi was lying in a heap on the ground near one of its scaly legs. The hydra had to have slammed right into him upon exiting the schism and knocked him unconscious. One of those seven heads was lowering towards his prone figure, teeth bared hungrily. It occurred to Hayden just then that while he had extensive experience fighting hydras, he had only ever tackled the two- and three-headed ones before—never a seven-headed one, the most powerful.

He spun the crystal prism around in his eyepiece as fast as he could, casting Pierce at the head that was approaching Kobi and diving out of the way of the other six, which were rearing back to strike at him. The hydra let out a high-pitched shriek that let him know his spell must have been at least somewhat effective, and when he rolled back to his feet he saw that the head that had been struck was now blind, lashing back and forth in agitation.

He dove for the nearest summoning torch, not caring who it brought to help him, but fell short of his goal and had to roll out of the way as two more heads struck out at him, slamming into the ground on either side of his body. Looking up from his back, the hydra seemed even bigger and scarier, all six heads swaying above him and positioning for the next attack.

He rolled again and cast Sever, slicing one of the heads clean off. Unfortunately he hadn’t been prepared for the copious amounts of blood and poison that spewed forth from the wound, drenching him as he tried to escape the other heads. His skin burned wherever it touched him, and one of the remaining heads smacked into him and knocked him off his feet, sending him hurtling through the air. Winded and in pain, Hayden twisted his prism around and cast Heat to try and cauterize the still-spraying stump, but it didn’t work properly.

Hayden leapt for a torch again and had just closed his hand around it when he was yanked off of the ground with a sharp jerk by the teeth that were clamped around his leg. As he was flung up into the air he sincerely hoped that whatever Master he’d just summoned wasn’t busy using the restroom right now, because he wasn’t sure he was doing all that well on his own. He experienced a weird moment of disorientation when he reached the apex of the arc and found himself momentarily right-side up in midair. Then the jaws released him long enough to throw him higher, the mouth opening wide enough to bite him in half when he landed. Panicking, Hayden tried to find a useful array in his prism while flying through the air, but couldn’t manage it in time. He braced himself for the feel of razor-sharp teeth tearing through him, but before he could land in the hydra’s mouth a giant boulder appeared from thin air between them, crushing the hydra’s head into the ground.

Still falling fast enough to break every bone in his body, Hayden now tensed in anticipation of slamming into the giant rock at however-many meters-per-second, but again he was spared—this time by a giant cushion that softened the impact enough to merely rattle his teeth and make his bones flex ominously.

He blinked a few times and rolled slowly to his feet, entire body aching from being thrown around and doused in poison. His hand slipped a little on the prism in his circlet, and he realized it was too coated with poison to cast through. Wiping his hands furiously on what was left of his pants, he drew another prism from his belt, touching only the edges as he swapped it out with the one in his circlet. In this amount of time he was amazed that nothing had eaten him yet, but when he looked back at the hydra he saw that it had turned its focus to the larger threat—Master Graus.

The Master was activating scriptures so rapidly that Hayden wondered how many pre-drawn ones he kept on his person for occasions such as this, which at least explained how he was able to create a boulder to crush the hydra and a cushion to catch Hayden within the span of a couple seconds. The hydra still had three heads left, and its feet were stomping around scarily close to where Kobi was beginning to stir.

Trusting the hydra to Master Graus for now, Hayden darted around between its legs until he reached his partner, straining to pull him to his feet and half-carrying him out of harm’s way before turning back to help with the fight. The Master of Scriptures must have finally run out of his namesake, because he reached into his robes to draw another piece of scripted vellum and came up empty-handed, cursing and jumping out of the way instead.

Hayden brought up a second prism in front of the first to try a compound, but nearly lost his focus when he saw the hydra spray Master Graus with poison—the Master barely threw his hands in front of his face in time to shield his eyes, the acidic bile immediately beginning to eat through his gloves and the sleeves of his metallic green robes.

Abandoning Kobi and running back to help, Hayden raised his prisms and compounded Heat so powerfully that it seared two of the heads entirely, blackening the scales all the way down its necks. Master Graus, though weaponless, recovered from the attack almost immediately and extended one hand into the air, snapping his fingers. Hayden had no idea what he was hoping to accomplish, but he was more sidetracked by the fact that now that the Master’s gloves had been completed destroyed, he could see the sorcerer siglas on the back of his hands for the first time.

The snap echoed weirdly through the air, much louder than should have been possible, and Hayden could swear that he saw a ripple of magic wash over the hydra, its remaining head breaking at the neck so badly that it was bent into a right angle by the invisible force. It fell to the ground and moved no more.

Now that the immediate danger was past, Hayden began to feel the full effects of being beaten and covered in acidic poison. His vision wavered slightly, and he blinked hard to force the world back into focus, approaching Master Graus warily.

The Master of Scriptures examined his own injuries briefly and then turned to Hayden.

“Come on, we need to get to the infirmary to clean up and get some antidote to the hydra venom, before enough soaks through our skin to be fatal,” he said in greeting.

“You’re a sorcerer?” Hayden replied, not sure why he was asking it as a question when the evidence was plainly visible on the back of the man’s ungloved hands.

Graus frowned briefly at his hands, only just realizing the loss of his gloves.

“Yes and no. We can discuss it after we receive treatment,” he continued in clipped tones, walking away from Hayden to make sure that Kobi was alright. Hayden noticed that he tucked his hands into the pockets of his robes as he approached the other boy, who was on his feet now and limping slightly.

Feeling an odd combination of worry, disbelief, and fuzziness—the latter an effect of the poison—Hayden trudged after him, continuing to blink as hard as possible to try and keep himself upright and moving, because he was beginning to feel very drowsy. He tried not to look at his skin too closely, though he caught a few glimpses of exposed tissue where the acid had burned through it. He swallowed hard to suppress a wave of nausea as he entered the school.