The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Two

Mrs. Barbier wasn’t someone I’d thought about in a long time. 

A tall, older woman, with steely gray hair, gray-blue eyes, and weathered skin, she looked every part the charming, caring, old lady, who would be perfect for working with children. 

She even acted the part. Every time that parents came in, looking to adopt, Mrs. Barbier was the doting, kind, matronly headmistress. 

The reality, of course, wasn’t that simple. 

It’s not that she was some horrifying, cruel monster in human flesh. The truth is rarely so black and white, and people are even less binary than the truth. 

Mrs. Barbier did try, often quite hard, to do what was best for the kids. She taught us basic math, reading skills, and what she knew of history. She taught us manners and etiquette as best she could, even though her views were outdated. She told us that we could have bright futures, and to pursue education and follow our dreams. 

Mrs. Barbier was also a monster. When the stress got to be too much, she would snap, lashing out at the kids. Sometimes it was verbal, shouting at us that we were a bunch of miserable, ungrateful ingrates who couldn’t understand the amount that she sacrificed for us, and that if we all went and died, it would make her life so much easier. Sometimes it was physical. A kid would neg her all day, and eventually it would build up and she’d backhand the kid. Or even randomly, one of us would be doing something that would normally get us a sharp ‘stop that’, only for it to instead result in a caneing. 

After Aldvarri had adopted me, I’d stopped thinking about the woman. More than that, really. I’d blocked her out, letting her slip to the darkest parts of my mind and never emerge…

I sat in the small bundle of blankets that made up my ‘bed’, staring at the ceiling. The other kids were making noise downstairs, probably playing pretend, or fighting over something. 

“Get up you lousy lout!” Mrs. Barbier shouted, slamming something against the wall. I leapt out of bed to see her standing there, a wooden spoon in hand, and stammered out a quick apology. 

“Why are you lazing around all day?” she snapped. 

“I-I wasn’t, I ju–” 

Crack!

The smack of the spoon against my arm resonated through the room, as loud and clear as the tolling of a clocktower. 

The lance of pain that shot through my shoulder caused me to let out a whimper, and Mrs. Barbier let out a sigh. 

“You really need to learn to stop lying. You won’t ever get adopted if you gain a reputation for that, and I won’t hear any lip from you about that.” 

She shook her head. 

“You’re too smart of a kid to go to waste here. Go play with the others.” 

I rushed down the hall and to the stairs with her

I felt a well of emotions that my child brain couldn’t really sort through, all rushing through me at once. 

But I could sort them. There was pride in being smart, shame in being smacked. There was anger at her falsely accusing me of lying, and confusion about how I had given her lip. 

I could sort them? That wasn’t right, I was too young.

But I wasn’t. 

The world around me fractured, and for just a second, I saw the nightmare hag. She was old and withered, with stringy black hair that drooped to the ground. Parts of her hair had been ripped out, and one of her eyes was completely black, while the other was bright purple. She smiled at me, and when she did, I could see she only had a single, long, curved tooth. 

“One of three,” the hag said. 

I sat up in bed with a gasp, panting heavily, sweating. Osheen’s eyes snapped awake, and he sat up a moment later. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

“Just… the dream.” 

“I wish you didn’t have to go through with this,” Osheen said. He pulled me back down, and held me tightly. 

I didn’t get much more sleep that night, nor much productive work done the following day. Luckily, much of what I needed to do was physical construction of the spell array, rather than the more complex spellwork – I wouldn’t have trusted myself to do spellwork in that frame of mind. 

That night, however, when I went to bed, I fell asleep easier than I ever had before…

Frank hovered in the air on his massive phoenix wings, his Aura a bright, flowing power around him. 

I knew this scene. I’d lived it once before, when I’d been paralyzed by Frank’s witch, just after leaving the mausoleum where the aura pillar ritual was hosted.

“You know,” Frank said, landing on the lake like it was solid and beginning to walk towards Osheen and myself. “I suspected that there was something wrong with your concubine, boy. His tournament request and yours made me hope I was wrong, that you two were going to disappear into the night as average mages.”

He clucked his tongue.

“Now I’m disappointed.”

I shifted my eyes, the only part of the body I still had control over, to Osheen, only to see him frozen in fear, just like he had been the first time. 

This was a dream. 

I knew it was a dream. 

It didn’t matter. My knowledge meant nothing, it did nothing. The world didn’t fracture to reveal the hag. It had last night, why wasn’t it now? 

The dull ‘wumph’ of Frank’s fist driving itself into Osheen’s stomach caused me to cringe and shut my eyes. 

I couldn’t watch this, not again. I’d watched Frank die, watched Draven rip his throat out. Frank couldn’t hurt Osheen anymore. He couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. 

But he could. From beyond the grave, his mere visage and memory was enough to hurt me. 

Through the darkness, I was only able to keep focused on one thought: I was glad I hadn’t allowed Osheen to take this on himself. 

I suspected that the nightmares would have been different, but I had no doubt he would have been forced to relive the memories of his abuse again. I couldn’t inflict that on him. 

My eyes were pried open by the power of Roark’s Witch, and I was forced to watch. 

The beatings didn’t end with me breaking out of the witch’s hold, not this time. My mind bubble was gone, my cloak nonexistent. 

I was forced to watch as Roark did everything a second time, then worse. He looked at me, then turned to the witch. 

“You know,” Archmage Roark said. “I was going to force you all into binding oaths. But I think I have a better idea.” 

I was jerked forwards in an inelegant, rough imitation of a walk, the blood witch controlling me and my movement. My hand wrenched to my side, and I drew my knife. 

I fought against the bindings with everything I could. I’d fought against the commands of King Thomas’ scepter, I had the will to do this. I could break free. 

I couldn’t. 

I was forced to watch as I was moved like a puppet in front of Osheen, every step putting me deeper under the control of the witch. A smile curled up my lips, freakish and warped, like someone had grabbed my lips and pulled them as wide as I could. 

My arm raised into the air, and I had a moment to take in the silver gleam of the steel. 

Then it plunged down, sinking into the soft flesh of Osheen’s throat.

Again and again, like a master seamster’s rhythmic sowing, I left long trails of blood running down Osheen’s body. 

It was only after the blood that soaked my hands had cooled completely that the witch had me hold the knife to my own neck. 

Even then, he couldn’t do me the service of driving it in. Instead, he let the tip drag in slow gestures in a circle. He moved the knife to my eye and ran it along its surface. Around my ear.

It was only after the witch and Archmage Roark had finally had their fill that I was allowed to plunge the knife into my own throat. 

As I died, I saw the hag again, cackling in delight. 

I woke up softer this time. There was no sudden jolting, only the soft noise of crying as sobs wracked my body. 

That day I spent doing everything I could to recover. I begged Wisteria for a potion that was supposed to help me sleep, and slept through most of the day. Osheen brought me food, and we ate together. 

Cruelly enough, the potion did little to help, but the moment my head hit the pillow that night, I was out like a light. 

I stood in front of an array, curling with complex magic, and lit my dual auras. I sent them racing through the circle, while Osheen put his hand on one shoulder, and Tara put her hand on the other. 

Together, Tara and I raised our voices in a chant, while Osheen fed his aura through a clarification array in order to help fuel the spell. 

The power crackled, glowing brightly as the runes, so cleverly crafted, blending magic from as many worlds as I could manage, lit themselves.

By the very end, I wasn’t just directing a spell, I was spreading my power through a thousand relays, growing and empowering. I was holding more power in my hands than any mortal had the right to direct. 

I raised one hand and a spinning circle of silver appeared in the air. I cut Tara out of the spell, then stepped inside. 

“Hello, good people of Paerús!” I said, and the array sent my words through the sympathetic connection to every clock tower, from there radiating out to another, and another, and another, until I was speaking in the mind of everyone in the country who didn’t have a mental shield up. 

“I know this is a new experience for each of you,” I said, and as I spoke, I felt the power of my change magic surging, growing. “This kind of spell has never been done in our nation’s history, though I understand that some other countries have something similar, they call it radio.” 

The power flowing into my silver aura felt gooooooddd. 

“I wanted to reach out today to tell you about the nobility, and how they’re controlling the country! How they sustain themselves with murder! How they all deserve to go down! How together we can all work to bring something to this country: change!” 

So I started to talk, outlining everything I had learned. With every word that resonated through the country, my Silver aura grew, reaching higher, denser, broader. I started floating off the ground, a wide smile stretching my face as I spoke. 

My first arch-star faded first. They were like a pyramid, after all – you can’t remove the bottom layer.

The moment it was gone, my auras fused back together. 

This time, the human power wasn’t able to match the inhuman. Faerie magic surged through my veins, and my eyes, teeth, and hair all turned a bright silver. 

“You should all know that information isn’t free,” I said, laughing. “Just remember – the Argent Monarch was the one to tell you this information.” 

With a laugh, I let the spell end, and turned to face my two soon to be vassals. 

“Well done, all!” I said, applauding. “For your help, I think each of you deserve a prize!” 

I spread my hands out, power lighting in either hand as I tore open a portal to the Fae Sovereignties. 

“Your repayment might hurt a bit,” I warned them. It would be hard to turn them both into fairies – I didn’t have any fae lifesparks to pour into them, after all. 

But it could be done with boons. It was just much, much harder. A boon was a feather compared to the elephant that even a portion of a lifespark was. 

But if I drained them of all their power, then implanted enough change magic into them, it would work.

“No, Evan, listen to me,” Osheen said, shielding himself. His ghost plate activated, defending himself from being pulled into the portal. 

I sighed. That really was stupid for me to not think of. 

But I’d created it. I could change it.

The ghost plate flickered out, and Osheen slipped into the portal. I smiled as I saw Tara had already fallen in, then turned to step through the portal as well. 

When I awoke from this dream, it was the worst of them all. I wasn’t panting. I wasn’t crying. 

I felt… good. 

It felt right. Natural, even. 

I could taste the power I’d held in that moment, and it had fit like a glove. 

I could have it again, too. I just needed to take it.

No. 

This was why I was contacting Oberon. No matter how good the power felt, it was a lie. The power came with chains. It was a poisoned cake – delicious in the moment, but something that would kill you down the line. 

Still, I couldn’t get the feeling out of my head, and it took me a long, long time to get back to sleep.