4.64: Burden

“What did I do?” the spellthing asked.

“What did you do? Your stupid little Sinister Remark right before all that? Thought you’d take one last chance to terrify me?”

“Hey, if you’re paranoid about your own mind, I can’t – ”

“Oh, don’t pull that with me. You are the part of my own mind that I’m calling an arsehole. I have too much of a headache to argue with me right now. Are we done here?”

“Did you find what you needed?”

“You already know the answer to that, I’m sure. Can I wake up now?”

“I’m not stopping you.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly set an alarm, so…”

“So? It’s your dream logic. Follow it.”

“I really hope I’m not this insufferable in the waking world. I can’t be, or all of my friends would have hit me by now.” I got up and yanked on the cabin door. I expected it to stick, but it didn’t, swinging open easily under what turned out to be an unnecessary amount of force and almost unbalancing me. “Let me just say, I hope never to see you – real you or dream you – ever again.” I stepped through the door.

The light was harsh through my closed eyelids, and my mouth tasted like vinegar. I sat up in the hospital bed and forced my eyes open just long enough to locate the water lef on my bedside table, drank until the taste in my mouth was tolerable again, then lay back down. There was a pulse monitor pinching my finger, which seemed like overkill since I wasn’t sick, but it was probably standard procedure. At least Malas hadn’t stuck any IV lines in me. Given how overprotective he got with the whole familiarity link thing, I’d half expected to find myself in an oxygen mask and covered in electrodes.

Something about the pulse monitor must have alerted him that I’d woken up, because I’d barely settled back down when the soundproofing curtains were whipped aside and the mild but annoying sounds of the main hospital area filtered in. “How are you feeling?” Malas asked.

“Like my skull is splitting in half,” I groaned, sitting back up. “How much do you need to drink to get a hangover?”

“A lot more than you did. Believe me, no matter how much of a lightweight you are, it’s impossible to get a hangover on that. Hold still.” Without warning, he stuck a thermometer in my ear, ignoring my protests. “Hmm.”

“What is it? Am I dying?”

“I can never say ‘no’ to that question with full confidence. But your temperature is normal.” He sounded puzzled.

“That’s good, right?”

“Well, theoretically. But it doesn’t explain your headache. If a magical imbalance is severe enough to cause a headache then – ”

“Or maybe I’m just dehydrated. Or slept badly. Or have a minor infection. Or have displaced pain from some random muscle cramp or something. Or have eye strain.” Or just unlocked a chaotic chain of associated memories from a bad mind wipe and my brain was freaking out about it. Probably that one.

“You just woke up. How would you have eye strain?”

“You get my point.”

“Yes. That is fair enough. But we do need to consider all possibilities.”

“Yeah, all possibilities, not just assume it must be the worst thing.”

“Hmm. I apologise, but I’m going to have to magically scan you.”

“Ugh.” I braced myself. Malas laid a hand on my shoulder, and I gritted my teeth through the wave of nausea and pins and needles that rushed through my body.

“You’re physically normal,” he said, still sounding puzzled. “How did that feel?”

“Awful, like always.”

“Worse than the last time? How much worse?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t take detailed notes on exactly how bad last time felt.”

“Kayden, if the amount of Fionnrath’s Destiny that you’re shouldering is still increasing, we need to know. Last night, a mild chemical impairment possibly affected your ability to modulate your magic, so – ”

“Possibly?”

“Well, in theory, any number of things could cause a mild fever, although the pins and needles you described seem pretty specific to problems with your familiarity bond. It is a little puzzling that alcohol would affect you when you can sleep or undergo severe emotional distress without difficulty, but if drinking alcohol is a new thing for you, then it may be the lack of experience with that specific kind of impairment.”

“Well, extreme emotional distress is a new thing for me, too, so...”

“Is it, though?”

There was no point in trying to argue that. “So if it wasn’t Kylie’s magic, what else could it be?”

Malas shrugged. “As I said, any number of things. Anxiety, a mild infection, exhaustion, your body just reacting strangely to a sudden temperature change. If it’s not Kylie’s magic, my second guess would be an intolerance or allergy to alcohol.”

“People can be allergic to alcohol?”

“People can be allergic to anything. Water, dust, their own bodies. Alcohol allergies and intolerances are more common than you might think. In either case, I’d recommend avoiding alcohol in the future, if you want to avoid further scares.”

“Okay. Thanks. Can I go?”

“Well… your fever is gone, so I suppose I ave no justifiable reason to stop you. But if you have further problems, I want you to come right back, okay?”

“Yes, yes of course.”

“Excellent. Take these.” He handed me two white pills and poured another cup of water.

“What are they?”

“Painkillers. For your head.”

“Right.” I took them and got out of bed. Already, the headache was settling down, although the painkillers couldn’t possibly have had time to work yet. I didn’t know how long unlocked memories from a botched mind wipe were supposed to hurt. Or if they were supposed to hurt at all. It might be, what was the word? Placebo pain? Psychosomatic. A psychosomatic headache. That sounded like it was probably a thing.

Whatever it was, my head was pretty clear by the time I was dressed, which was good, because I’d need all my focus when I found Kylie. I had to talk to her as soon as possible.

I knew what we needed to do.

Kylie was in our room, reading something on her tablet. She jumped up as I came in.

“Kayden! Are you okay? Di Fiore said you were in hospital!”

“I’m fine. Just an overreaction by jumpy people.” I shot her a meaningful look. “I could do with some fresh air though, I’m just here to grab my tablet beore I head outside for a bit.”

She gave a tiny nod. “I’ll come with you. I don’t trust your idea of an ‘overreaction’.”

Once we were in the valley that Instruktanto Cooper always stopped in to bring us to school, out of range of the intranet, Kylie asked, “So, what’s up?”

“I had a dream,” I said. This did not inspire a look of interest or confidence on Kylie’s face, so I clarified. “I mean, I remembered some stuff. You know how that memory wipe from the Labyrinth didn’t completely take with me because I got one of the Destiny’s prophecies? Well, I think I have the whole prophecy now. And, more importantly, some random scraps of associated memories. Mostly junk, but some useful stuff. Follow me.” I headed under the waterfall and into the tunnels that lead to the Lake of Inquisition.

“Where are we going?” Kylie asked, holding up her tablet for light.

“Somewhere that we’re not supposed to find. We were right; they wiped our memories because we saw something important. Something significant. There’s a huge library under the school somewhere, and we got to it from the centre of the Labyrinth of Dreams, from the room where I became your familiar. That’s got to be the heart we’re looking for.”

“Right, but unless you want to get lost in the labyrinth again – ”

“That’s the best part! We don’t have to! We don’t have to go through the Labyrinth at all! You remember where the centre of the Labyrinth is, right?” I stopped at the end of a tunnel which opened out into a cliff, and pointed dramatically. “It’s right under there.”

Kylie squinted down into the water, then looked back up at me. “I refuse to believe that the lake isn’t guarded somehow.”

“You mean aside from the giant spellbinding magimechanical lake monster?”

“Yeah. Aside from that. If this is the heart of the whole – ”

“That’s the thing! It is guarded. It’s warded so that only the highest ranking leaders of Refujeyo can find it. You can stumble into it by accident, but you can’t decide to come here, or follow directions here; the school will just lead you in circles.”

“But you just brought us here.”

“Exactly!”

“How?”

“Not sure! My working theory is that it’s because the lake monster marked me, but for all I know it could just be that the whole ward is broken for everyone and nobody’s noticed. Things have been breaking down here. What matters is, we can get here whenever we want, and the place we need to be is right under that water, and I’m, I dunno, maybe eighty per cent sure that the High Council and Malas don’t know that, or at least don’t know that I know that.”

“And the other twenty per cent?”

“Well, if I can find it because the beast in there marked me, then Alania probably knows that’s a thing since her immunity would come from the same source, and there’s a decent chance that she guessed that the monster cut up my legs when she rescued us, and she might have warned the Council that a random student was running around who can access the place. I dunno. And Malas, of course, treated those injuries after the fact, and he’s old as balls and probably knows all kinds of things about how the school and the wards work, I figure. But, crucially, he found the bindings that the lake monster left over my heart and didn’t recognise them; he assumed they were old self harm scars, so he definitely doesn’t know everything about that lake. Anyway, the point is, there’s good odds that they don’t know we can get here, and better odds that they don’t now I know I can get here, or that I’d want to, so we have a way in. Remember how Fionnrath’s Destiny told me that I needed to rely on what had gotten me out of the Pit twice before? My sense of direction? This must be what it meant! It meant that I can guide us here, and we can get back down without having to go through any wells in Duniyasar or pace out ancient runes in the Labyinth of Dreams or any of that; we can get directly down, all fresh and well-rested and uninjured, and get directly to the room we need to be in, which shouldn’t be too hard to find since we found it before, and… y’know, do what needs to be done. Find the Child’s heart and all that.”

“That… that’s a good idea, actually,” Kylie said thoughtfully.

“I know! I feel like such an idiot for not noticing it before! The lake was right there and Fionnrath’s destiny basically told me what to do with the ‘what got you out twice before’ stuff and we’ve just been dicking around! Come on; the shop should be open.” I turned to head back out.

“The shop? Why?”

“We’re going to need supplies. You know, scuba stuff. Oxygen tanks and masks and things. I have no intention of nearly getting drowned by that thing again.”

“You want to do this right now?”

“Sure. Why not? Oh, do you need to sleep first? We can go tomorrow if – ”

“We don’t have a plan!”

“Sure we do! We go down there, we find whatever it is they wanted us to forget, and we get out.”

“How? How are we supposed to get out?”

“I don’t remember how, but I remember we were figuring it out last time. There was a map, I think? And – ”

“And we clearly didn’t figure it out, because they caught us and wiped our memories! We need more information before we can do anything.”

“From where? Where are we going to get more information? Kylie, we’re running out of time, we don’t have all the pieces to enact the Destiny’s mysterious plan any more, whatever the hell it was, and we dont have any other source of information. We’ve been looking and researching and there just isn’t anything else, but we do know that what we need is right down there!”

“So you’re just gonna jump in with a scuba tank, and… what? Cut your way through the bottom of the lake to the centre of the labyrinth with a big knife?”

“Yes!”

“And flood the heart of the school with all that water? Probably including the library you’re trying to find? The whole point of all of this is to find some way to kill the ‘child’ without potentially bringing down the school and killing everyone in it, right?”

“I’m sure it won’t flood. There’s got to be some kind of, of safety mechanism – ”

“In this school full of constantly failing safety mechanisms? I’d imagine the safety mechanism is a good strong dome! That you want to cut through! How do we even know you can cut through it?”

“I probably won’t have to! There’s a whole bunch of stuff in that room under the lake, remember? Stuff that fell in the lake. Including human bones. So we’ll probably just end up down there with – ”

“Alive? Uninjured enough to complete the mission? To find the library again, find what we need and magically find our way out?”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

“Well, analysing the prophecy you remembered might be a start! We can try to figure out specifically what each part – ”

“Because these prophecies have been so useful before the last possible second before. Kylie the answer to everything is right under – ”

“How do you know that? We know our memories were erased, but that doesn’t mean we had all the answers!”

“They have to be there! It’s a big secret library in the mysterious heart of a magic school, it has to explain everything!”

“You’re starting to sound like him!”

I glared at her in the harsh light of our tablets. “That’s not fair. I’m not running off on you, I’m just trying to get things done.”

“Yeah, by totally ignoring me and plunging ahead blindly. This is dangerous, Kayden!”

“I know! That’s the point! It’s dangerous, and it’s getting more dangerous all the time! A glitch in the Pit nearly killed Saina, we lost our friend to a fucking flood in a random crumbling tunnel, and your spell is straining our familiarity bond with more and more power all the time, which could kill you at any time. Everything is crumbling, everything is getting more dangerous, we don’t have a strategy for convincing the Council to let you stay here next semester, and we don’t know how long we have before a new magical god is born and destroys everything. We keep hesitating in the hopes of finding more information, of figuring out what to do, but that’s never really helped, has it? Only acting has ever told us anything, and hesitating isn’t making anything safer!”

I expected Kylie to snap back with some nonsense about me being impulsive or unreasonable or something, but she just watched me, head cocked.

“What?” I asked.

“Kill me?”

“Huh?”

“You said the familiaity bond might kill me. You realise that you’re the one in danger, right?”

“We both are! People forget that! Malas freaks out every time your magic upsets my body somehow, but everyone forgets that when someone tries to make a mage a familiar, both parties usually die.”

“Yeah, because the familiar’s spell reacts badly. But your spell doesn’t do anything, so – ”

“That’s not the only way that having a familiar is dangerous, Kylie! It’s not… the prophecy I remembered made me consider something that I really should have considered before. It never occurred to me, but. I think I might be killing you.”