4.62: Leap of Faith

“He’s drunk and his familiar magic is playing up,” di Fiore told Malas.

“Nothing is ‘playing up’, it’s completely fine, and I had one cider,” I clarified. “Di Fiore’s just being a fusspot.”

“Well, let’s have a look.” Malas held out a small electronic device with a plastic straw attached. “Breathe into this until it beeps, please.”

“Is that a breathalyser? Why do you have a breathalyser?”

“I run a hospital for teenagers with access to magic, poor impulse control, and a lot of unsupervised time. Breathe, please.”

I breathed into the stupid plastic straw until it beeped. Malas checked the reading, nodded to himself, and put it away.

“What did it say?” I asked.

“That you probably weren’t lying about having one cider.” He stuck a thermometer in my ear.

“Can’t you do this with magic?” di Fiore asked.

“I can, yes. But magic isn’t always the best answer to every medical problem, especially if the problem is caused by magic.”

“Yeah, if you scan me right now, I’ll definitely throw up,” I said.

The thermometer beeped. Malas frowned at it, biting his lip. For the first time, I started to feel a little worried. Maybe coming here had been the right call.

“What does it say?” I asked.

“Nothing alarming, necessarily. You do have a fever. It’s not elevated enough to be dangerous, but…”

“But if it’s a symptom of homeostatic cascade – ” di Fiore butted in.

“Are you still here?” I asked.

“Are you getting pissy at the guy who brought you to get much needed medical attention?” di Fiore asked.

“No, I’m getting pissy at the guy who barged into my room and wouldn’t stop pestering me until I drank his stupid cider. If anything does happen here, it’s your fau – ”

“Hey, you’re the one with the familiarity link. I don’t know how that shit works. You should keep an eye out for – ”

“Kayden is probably fine!” Malas cut us off. “There’s probably nothing to worry about. But there’s also no reason to take chances.” He pointed at di Fiore. “You, thank you for bringing him in. I can take it from here.” He pointed at me. “You, you’re under medical observation until this fever is gone. Pick a hospital bed.”

“I have homework!” I protested.

“No teenager has ever used that as anything other than an excuse, but if you’re that worried about your homework, have Kylie bring it to you.”

“It’s all behind my force field,” I mumbled under my breath, but there was no point in pushing the matter. I tottered over to one of the stupid beds in a way that wasn’t sulky or petulant at all, closed the stupid hospital bed curtains, put on a stupid hospital gown (because I wasn’t going to sleep in my clothes), got under the stupid covers, and immediately passed out.

“Are we ready to continue?” the spellthing asked me from across the table in the cabin.

“You again?” I asked. “Now?”

“The world is still – ”

“And what do you expect me to do about it, huh?” I threw up my hands. “In case you didn’t notice, oh-so-pretentious subconscious o’ mine, Max is dead! He went down and he picked up a prophecy, something that could’ve helped us, something that was probably important, and then he just died. Fionnrath’s Destiny said all this stuff about what he was supposed to do, he was supposed to give up his spell and learn secrets no mage could learn and bring us the information we needed to know to save the world, and none of that happened, because he just died! Destiny was wrong, okay? Or unlucky, anyway. So how are we supposed to save anything when we don’t know what do to?”

“You generally don’t know what to do. It hasn’t stopped you before.”

“It was different when we had Max.”

“Why?”

“Because it was! Because he could figure stuff out, or at least tell me when I was being an idiot if I figured stuff out wrong! He had a role in this whole world saving plan, right? And now he can’t fulfil it. So.”

The spellthing sipped its tea, maintaining eye contact the whole time. After all this time, it was still so damn unnerving how the thing never blinked. “Do you remember what I told you, the first time you met me? The real me, I mean. Not this me.”

“Uh, yeah. You told me a lot of cryptic bullshit and tried to trap me in the Pit until I died.”

“Do you remember what I said when I read your palm?”

“Well, you remember, and you’re me, so obviously I – ”

“Kayden.”

I sighed. “You told me that I was the ‘chosen one’.”

“And then?”

“Then I pressed you for what that meant, and you had to backtrack, and told me I might be the ‘chosen one’. But I had to choose destiny first.”

“And what does that tell you?”

“That no matter how sophisticated an amalgamation of prophecies might be, it still totally sucks at giving useful information to humans?”

The spellthing put its tea down. “What do you think would have happened, if you hadn’t chosen Fionnrath’s Destiny down in that labyrinth?”

“Kylie would have died.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. If she had lived, you would have been deprived of a critical resource for saving the world. If she had died, you would have been deprived of two critical resources. What do you think would have happened? Do you think, if you hadn’t thought to try the link, or if Max had made a mistake in the runes, or if Kylie had rejected you, that the world would simply be doomed? On that first day you came here, if Kylie had not figured out how to save you from the Lake of Inquisition in time, then that’s it, that’s the end of the world? If Max had failed to convince Octavia to name him her successor, if you had refused the scholarship offer, if – ”

“What’s your point?” I asked.

“The things that have lead you to this point are a long and flimsy thread of causality. Thousands of other instances could be occurring instead of this one. The choices that you made and the position in which you find yourself are not unique or special, except in that they are the ones that came to pass. How fragile do you think the world is? This problem has been building for a long time. The Child of the next phase, that beyond the material world that will be born and consume all that lower beings consider ‘life’, has been gestating since the construction of this place, and may have been predicted before that. Do you think that you are the first to foresee this disaster? Do you think that this is the only time anyone has ever tried to prevent it? You might be the last chance for the world as you know it, for all I know, but you’re certainly not the first. Destiny’s plan is a potential future, the best option that that spell could foresee. It is not the only option.”

“Great, more cryptic bullshit to – ”

“Nothing I have said is cryptic. I’m never cryptic; I’m you.You just aren’t listening. If you don’t have the resources to stick to the original plan, make a new one. You still have most of the pieces for whatever Destiny wanted you to do; you still have knowledge of the problem; you still know what’s at stake and for the next few months you’re still in the right place to get things done. You’ve taken a loss, but it’s not game over. So figure it out and get it done.”

“How? Max was the one who could figure out what we needed to know; Fionnrath’s Destiny said – ”

“Max was the most direct and least destructive option. Not the only option. You have access to Fionnrath’s Destiny itself. You have your own mind and your own memories.”

“My memories were erased!”

“Incompletely. We have had this discussion before. You’re running out of time and options, and you still have fragments that might be useful.”

“Ha. Might be. It’s not like I can just call them up – ”

“You’ve never tried!”

“I… I try to remember stuff.”

The spellthing sighed. “You don’t trust me. You never have.”

“Of course not! You tried to trap me in the – ”

“Not that thing! Me! Yourself! How can you expect to recall memories that you refuse to look at? How can you follow intuition that you won’t trust? Stop relying on other people to do your job! You’re running out of people to do it!”

“Oh, yeah, and trusting you makes so much more sense. You could still be some kind of magical trick that – ?”

“From who? To what purpose? Have you ever wondered why you visualise me as something hostile and dangerous that scarred you so deeply? You didn’t have to build this place. You didn’t have to keep coming back to this cabin in your dreams. You could be anywhere, but it’s always here, and I always look like me. Maybe that says more about your unwillingness to trust your own mind than anything else.”

“I trust myself.”

“Drink the tea, then.”

“… Why?”

“Why not? It’s imaginary tea in an imaginary dream. Your mind can’t hurt you. You know that, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then drink the tea.”

“If it’s nothing, why do you always get so insistent I drink it?”

“If it’s nothing, why do you always refuse to drink it?”

I looked down at the cup of tea before me. Back up at the spellthing. Down again at the tea.

It was right about something. We were running out of time. And we were running out of avenues of information.

I took the cup and knocked the whole thing back in one gulp.

The spellthing’s smile became a leer. “There we go, my deer,” it purred. But I didn’t have time to feel afraid before blinding pain lanced through my skull.

Staffbreaker brings to hidden lair

Both scout and vessel, unprepared

Unaware of tribute thrice

He will be called to sacrifice.

They travel, lost, around the Heart,

Walk deep in shadows of old scars,

But when the soulless shades they find,

They’ll pay a part of their own minds.

Staffbreaker’s soul will be laid claim

By ghosts of spells that wax and wane;

Surrender brings with shocking ease

Truths no real person ever sees.

The shades will watch and act as one

And he will see what must be done –

The body of the New God’s home

When broken, also breaks his own.

The Heartbound has now made his choice,

And Destiny lives in his voice,

Restless and still settling –

He lacks the strength with which to sing.

He arrives early, circles brief

Within the ring of metal teeth

Marked, followed, by the speaker’s Kiss,

To call him back to what he’ll miss.

To imitate the ancient home

With hallways etched down to the bone

He bears the power locked in pearl

And carries it above the world.

The Airess carries in her blood

A power without room enough

And once the vessel is refined,

It’s grown too much for just one mind.

To stay alive so far from home

She must borrow another’s throne

A place she can open her mind

To truths hidden deep in time.

But foresight alone does not bring

Knowledge they need to climb and sing.

Assistance must the Airess find

To break a tooth and open an eye.