4.112: Catching Up

Okay. This was nothing to worry about.

I put the pearl back on the plinth, but the light didn’t come back on. Moving it must have permanently disconnected something. This was… this was nothing to panic about; I should have expected this. Removing the heart probably shut down the whole magic system, and the glowing stone around me was, presumably, magic. So… what would still be working?

Well, all of my potions. The very first potion I’d ever made had been one to cast light. I hadn’t packed one for this journey, though. When I’d packed for the journey, I’d assumed that I’d have my tablet.

The tablets were probably working. They worked just fine out of range of the school for quite a while; had some kind of internal magical battery life or something. But I didn’t have one on me, so that wasn’t helpful.

Lighter.

I pulled out my lighter and struck it. Okay. Now I had a tiny flame. Everything was… where I expected to be. Plinth. Pearl. Chips of stalagmite. Not sure what else I was expecting to see. The pearl was heavy; I couldn’t carry both it and the lighter. With uneven tunnels and less than perfect control over my muscles, I’d be sure to drop one of them, especially since I’d need to be juggling my map as well.

Just as I thought that, my hand spasmed and I dropped the lighter, plunging me back into darkness. With an impatient sigh, I felt around until I found it again. I only cut myself on one sharp fragment of rock scrabbling for it, which I counted as a victory.

I lit the lighter and, with my other hand, started going through my pack, discarding anything that was definitely not going to be useful. The food and most of the medkit could go; there was no way I’d survive the spells long enough to starve, and I didn’t have the coordination to do any medical care more advanced than applying a potion. My hands were twitchy the whole time I worked, even as I moved with the spells, danced to their tune. I didn’t think it was just the direct presence of the unfamiliar spells, either; I was beginning to fear that they’d done actual, possibly permanent damage to my nervous system. Well, expecting to get out of this fully intact was probably a foolish hope, anyway.

I tried not to worry about it. I tried to bring up my childhood training of not exacerbating magic by not worrying about things. My emotions were making the spells agitated, harder to control, and that just made it harder to move or see.

I hummed a little tune as I worked. That seemed to help. The spells seemed to follow the melody. The ringing in my ears followed it, too, making it marginally less annoying.

When I was satisfied, I let the flame go out so that I could use two hands to very, very carefully find the giant pearl in the dark, and very carefully wrap it in cloth bandages, and very carefully settle it in my pack. I secured everything carefully, shouldered my bag, and in the light of my lighter, consulted my map.

Okay. I needed to find the door out of the library, and then follow the pattern of paths worked out by Max. So, first step: find the way out of the library.

I really needed a better light source. The lighter barely lit the length of a bookshelf. I could try fashioning a torch out of the old papers and parchments in the library itself, but I wasn’t really sure how to make a slow-burning torch out of paper. Also, I was pretty sure that if I burned anything in there, Max would return from the grave and haunt me forever.

The spellthing was dead and gone, of course; its flip phone lay on the desk. Maybe it had a light? I picked it up, but not only was the phone significantly older than me with no light attached, it was obviously damaged beyond all repair. I opened it up and found that it didn’t even have a battery; the inside of the case was etched with… enchantment runes? This was an enchanted object? Or it had been once, anyway. Whatever spell had been in it was long gone now, the plastic cracked almost in half. Useless to me. I put it back down.

The magic was in my teeth, buzzing. I started humming again to mask the unpleasant sensation.

Searching the bookshelves by lighter-light would be a nightmare, but I didn’t need to search among the bookshelves. I was looking for a door. It would be in the wall. I put a hand on the wall and focused on not tripping over anything as I walked until an exit presented itself. Another big, stone door. I stepped through.

The tunnel ahead lead steeply downward. Maybe I should stay in the library and look for a light source? A lantern or something?

No. I had no idea if there was even one to find, and searching with the lighter would be ridiculously slow. I might lose control of the magic at any moment; I might not have time to hang around on an incredibly slow ‘maybe’ rather than simply stumble ahead with what I had. I moved on.

I was barely a few metres from the library when I felt the prod of the Eye of Duniyasar on my mind. I let it in, and was assaulted by several sights in quick succession. Di Fiore watched Clara help Kylie walk to the edge of the great dome room, while Kylie hummed a tune (the same one I was humming, I noticed). Hua watched Cheryl, Talbot, and a kindly-looking old man I didn’t recognise emerge from a solid stone wall. Talbot had a hand over each of his companion’s mouths, probably using his spell to provide them with oxygen, and as soon as they emerged, Cheryl fell to her knees. “I am never using that much magic again.”

“You must be Tristan Arum,” Hua said to the old man.

“The one and only,” he said, fishing a pair of small glasses out of his pocket and settling them on his nose. “Now, would one of you young people kindly explain just what the fuck is going on?”

"Revolution," Cheryl said, accepting the hand her master offered to help her up. "The core of the whole political system is cracking, and we need you to help hold things together well enough to keep people alive."

"Ah." He took a deep breath through his nose and let it out slowly. "Back to work, then."

Mae, Terry, and several other people were directing refugees through dark tunnels, using a combination of tablets and magic to provide light. Mae held a flame comfortably in her hands; I recognised Peter, my old pit comp leader, as a human-shaped beacon of light.

Gertrude was with a small team of sekuranti. All armed, all hunting. For me, presumably.

Magistus and a few of his friends lurked in the dark in a corridor. A couple of sekuranti approached and, after a rushed, hushed discussion with his comrades, Magistus threw something bright at them (a glow stick?) and charged off down the tunnel, laughing. One of them gave chase.

I didn’t have the mental reserves to focus on any one scene for long, so it was a relief when they all disappeared except for the walls of the tunnel reflected in my lighter, and the Pit reflected in Saina’s tablet.

“Kayden! Are you alright? I lost you in the lake, I was… I was worried…”

“He’s back?” Hammond asked. “Told you he was fine.”

“I’m… currently alive and on task,” I told her. “How’s… everything?”

“The revolution’s going well,” she said.

“I’m sorry, the revolution?”

“Necessary evil, don’t worry about it. I was worried you’d died.”

“It’d take more than a truly inconceivable amount of magic to kill me,” I said, weakly.

“The magic went out,” Hammond pointed out. “That wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t succeeded, right? Where is he now? Anywhere we can assist?”

“I’m just outside the library under the school. I have a map, but even if you guys could help, I… have no idea how you’d find this place.”

Saina relayed the message while I started walking. The route was simple, but treacherous; unlike the carefully carved paths of the Labyrinth of Dreams, or the corridors of the school worn smooth and flat by generations of feet, the tunnels I was traversing didn’t seem designed for human habitation at all. They reminded me a bit of the path that Kylie and I had taken to follow Max down into the Labyrinth, full of steep slopes and blind ends and little cracks that could just barely fit a person through them.

Saina and Hammond were quiet, making me feel uncomfortably alone (except for, y’know, all the spells that were probably tearing my body apart from the inside). As I edged very, very carefully down a stony slope, trying not to drop lighter, match, or backpack, I said, “Hey, you know what sucks about destroying the heart of our magical society and throwing everything into chaos?”

“Many things,” Saina said, “but by all means, tell me your thing.”

“You and Hammond can’t graduate.”

“So?”

“So, isn’t that a prerequisite to you guys getting married?”

Saina giggled in a slightly hysterical way.

“What’s he saying?” Hammond asked.

“He’s pointing out that our marriage arrangement is dependent on our graduations, which will presumably never happen.”

“Oh, no! This means that we’re going to have to marry rebelliously. Against the wishes of our families, Parvi! It’ll be so dramatic!”

“Absolutely. After all of this, getting married without graduating high school is definitely what my parents are going to be the most pissed off about.”

“Dibs on best man,” I said through gritted teeth as I scraped my arm on a rock and the spells inside it reeled in protest. “Unless Hammond’s boyfriend is doing it.”

“Hammond’s boyfriend?” Saina asked. “Hammond, are you seeing anyone right now?”

“Uh. No?”

“I thought you were seeing Josh,” I said.

“What happened to Josh?” Saina relayed.

“Oh, him. He was exhausting. Nice enough guy, I suppose, but quite arrogant, and a total smartarse.”

“You like an arrogant smartarse.”

“I like a jokingly arrogant, lighthearted smartarse. You know the type of guy. Witty, but honourable. Someone you can depend on to keep a mood up, but in an emotionally honest way. Also, athletic, and Josh is the opposite of athletic. I think he got bored with me first, anyway; guy has no attention span.”

“Oh, so you like a guy like my boyfriend?” Saina teased.

I expected Hammond to chuckle and tease back. I did not expect him to suddenly go bright red, freeze like a deer in headlights, and start stammering.

Saina said nothing. I said nothing. Hammond said nothing except for incoherent stammering. Which was unexpectedly adorable.

I successfully navigated the slope. On more solid ground, I said, “Um, as fascinating as this conversation has become, maybe this is a discussion that should be put off until the life and death stuff is over with? I’d hate for any of our last moments to be super awkward.”

“Good point, Kayden. Maybe we should drop this topic until we’re done saving the world.”

Apparently the alternative to relationship discussion was lapsing back into silence, which, whatever, I had a job to concentrate on anyway. Saina periodically brought new people into our link for a few seconds at a time to check their progress, but dropped them quickly, probably not wanting to distract me. The idea that she could drop me from the link didn’t seem to occur to her – that period of thinking me probably dead must have hit her hard.

I tried to concentrate mostly on what was in front of me, anyway. I had a mission to do, and it involved navigating these tunnels. I checked in occasionally with Saina’s view in the Pit, but there wasn’t much to see. Just a stone floor, a still awkward-looking fiance, the glow of a tablet being used as a torch, and the twinkle of Saina’s externalised spell.

Wait. She didn’t have that spell any more. She’d given up a hand to remove it.

Something else was moving in the light.

“Saina, what’s that in the room with you?”

“What’s what?”

“Something’s…”

Whatever was moving flew directly over the light, and for just a moment, the invisible shape was filled out, its contours clear.

It looked like a little dragon.

“Look out!” I shouted, as the room lit up with fire and ice. Yelling, Saina and Hammond ran for each other, and turned to face the doorway.

Alania Miratova radiated fury. The hem and sleeves of her voluminous purple robes were singed; ice crystallised in her hair. The air around her glowed a dim red, so that when the invisible dragon flew over to rest on her shoulder it was, for once, clearly visible.

“Saina, Hammond,” she said. “For once, I am angry and disappointed.”