The Broken Academy 4: Pacts & Promises

by Jade Alters

  “This… is it?” Helena marvels. She carries me about halfway to the book, before letting me down to stand on my own. My legs have a new heaviness to them as I learn to operate them again.

  I stumble a few steps towards the book. I cross some kind of invisible boundary, and the final trial begins. In the time of a blink, a myriad of bricks from each wall to the side of me builds towards itself. It forms a solid wall faster than I can hope to outrun it. Solid, except for the man-sized hole it leaves directly in front of me. I take one more, suspicious step further, and the hole shrinks. If I ducked and pulled in my shoulders, I could still fit. But just as I do, the bricks build in, as if from nothing. The hole shrinks more. I’d have to crawl… but as I crouch, it closes smaller still.

  “Alright… I can do small,” I work myself up.

  I break into a run as my form condenses and reduces so rapidly, it’s hard for the others to keep track. My tiny mouse feet propel me like a small rocket. The hole in the wall cobbles itself smaller, and smaller. I shift again, to the even smaller form of a winged roach. A wisp of air feels like airplane turbulence as I scuttle for the shrinking opening. I shift to the smallest form I can manage, a beetle, to try and squeeze through the pinprick of light left in the stone wall. My lightly armored headplate thumps against solid rock. It’s completely closed.

  I fall back a few leggy steps, and the hole reopens, just big enough for me. I scramble back more, and the hole widens. I brace myself for a jostling change as I flare out my wings and stand up, my muscles bursting bigger in size while a skeleton reforms inside me. I return to human form before the living hole in the wall, big enough to see the book on the other side.

  “To declare true mastery of form,” the voice of the Tower rattles stone around us, “you must shed all of its constraints.” I raise an eyebrow to the vague voice.

  It must take note of this somehow, as it clears things up for me with a surge of heat at my side. It takes until smoke billows up from my satchel to realize what it is. I flap it open and dump out the totems on the floor. Hawk, rhino, lion, and ape scorch the rocky floor as fire eats away at them. In a second, only ash remains of the totems, the frames I showed mastery of. Now it tells me this isn’t mastery? That these forms are only more constraints?

  “What does it mean?” Fey Deller hums. I cringe at the thought of the answer, the truth that’s already infected me.

  “Last year, River Murtagh did something that no Shifter has done, on record at least… she mimicked the form of a Dragon. I had my suspicions, when I saw it, but the Dalshak records all but confirmed it… I should have realized,” I mutter, more to myself than the rest of the group. They’re not the only ones who need convincing - this means everything I’ve been taught…

  “Don’t leave us hanging in suspense,” Emery reminds me I’ve gotten lost in my thoughts. I turn back over my shoulder to face her, and the rest of the group. The ones that carried me. The ones counting on me, even if it means defying age-old Ahwahneechee values.

  “The Dalshak records say the Origas were splintered into Shifters, Magicians, and Witches and Warlocks. No mention of Dragons. They must be derived from a creature from another Realm, like Vampires.” I try to move on quickly, so Darius won’t feel the sting from this too heavily. “Yet River was able to shift into one. Now the Tower tells me I have to shed all constraints of form, and burns the totems… it means that true mastery of form isn’t just mimicking forms from nature. We can be anything. The Shifters who are closest to this are labeled Misforms and treated like outcasts. But that’s exactly what this Tower is asking me to do, to be. The most sacred of Ahwahneechee Trials…”

  I rush for the opening. Hands reach out at my back to stop me. But I owe it not just to them - to everyone in the village, all the mistreated Misforms - to do this. To undo generations of fear-based hate. To restore the Ahwahneechee to its full potential. I imagine every animal I can. Every form I’ve ever taken. I let it all meld together in my mind, like a formless mass. I close my eyes, uncaring if the hole before me is even open anymore. I let go of myself.

  I hit the wall hard. I try to open my eyes, only to find blackness. I have no eyes. I inch forward my feel, but I’m not feeling with hands or feet. What am I? Fear causes hands to materialize, along with eyes. I look down to find myself half-human, half… something like a jellyfish. My flesh’s color, shape, and even texture, changes in waves. Feathers unfurl over scales, then give way to hard reptilian leather. I charge forward for the hole again. I push the fear down. I don’t need eyes. I don’t need hands, feet, or even skin. I just need to be.

  I hit the wall again, and this time, it stings. It’s more than impact, though. It feels almost electric. Eyes form in me again and, sure enough, sparks jump from the stone wall into my mess of flesh. I back up just far enough for the hole to reform. I condense into a tiny, meaty meteor and fire at the hole again. But, just as I near it, an insect antenna shoots out of me. The wall disapproves with another jolt of ancient power. It’s no good. I can’t be formless. I can’t imagine what it should even look like. I can’t fall back, either. The shock locks me up.

  “Rock!” Emery screams.

  “Screw this!” Helena leaps forward. She flings out two hands, one wielding wind, the other flame. Her miniature tornado swallows her fireball and spits out a surge of air-propelled napalm. It crashes hard into the wall beside me. The shock lets up. I retreat as the wall struggles to rebuild itself around the hole she incinerated. Now’s my chance - I can get through!

  “You would interfere with this sacred ritual? You who shares a branch of the great tree of blood?” the voice of the Tower erupts. Bricks fire out from the wall, building a battering ram that juts straight at Helena’s head. Everything goes black.

  Emery,

  Yosemite, Totem Tower

  Just when I thought it couldn’t get stranger than Rock as a formless blob, the wall shoots out to stop the interloper. My best friend. I try to snap an illusory wall of my own before her, but the wall moves too fast. The only thing faster is whatever shoots up from the floor. A tan flash leaps up and goes rigid in the inches between Helena and the bricks. An enormous, gilded black tower shield. The bricks strike it with a deafening clang. The note tolls the end of the trial. At long last, they stop. The bricks retreat into the wall, which then unbuilds itself until only the altar and the book remain.

  “Where… where’s Rock?” Hoster trembles beside me. All eyes follow along with mine, to the black shield that protected Helena. On it is emblazoned a twisted golden rendition of a hawk, a rhino, a lion, and an ape. In a single second flat, it melts into a lighter colored, bubbling mass of steely magma. All of us look on in shock as it takes the shape of a body. The molten metal peels back and dissolves, leaving behind the shuddering frame of the future Ahwahneehee Chief.

  “What… no…” Helena whimpers as she falls to the ground beside him. She puts two fingers to his throat to check for the thrum of life. I know from her relieved sigh that she finds it. Then her eyes climb to the book on the altar. “That completed the trial?”

  “He became whatever he wanted. To protect you,” I realize. The romance of the notion consumes me for all of three seconds before I snap back to pragmatic reality. “Let’s get the book and get the hell out of here.” Helena and Fey Deller lug Rock up onto their shoulders while I creep towards the altar. No wall forms. The ancient forbidden knowledge of the Ahwahneechee warms my palms from the sun that’s been hitting it for years uncounted. I tuck it under my arm and race down the stairs with the others, before a disembodied voice can try to murder any more of my friends.

  Under the Full Moon

  Rock,

  Helena was in trouble. She stuck up for me, against forces none of us understood, and they tried to punish her. That’s about the extent of what I remember. The next thing I see, when my sight comes fluttering back, are the cliffs around the base of the Totem Tower. I feel arms under mine. I take a groggy glance to either side of me. Helena and F
ey Deller ferry me along, back towards the steep trail to Sasoen’s tent. But, before we get there, a shadow bars our path.

  I squint at it with my still wavering vision. At first, I’m convinced it’s just a hallucination. When a flurry of blinks and even a head shake doesn’t chase it away, I figure it’s a projection of the Tower. It’s not until later in the evening, when Emery explains it, that I even begin to understand. It’s she that takes to the front of our group now.

  “It’s you,” Emery says to the figure. The element of hostility in her voice doesn’t exactly match the words. My sight focuses on the figure, unveiling detail after odd detail.

  It’s facing away from us. The person bears a hooded robe of the most peculiar colors - burgundy and violet. In the center of its back is emblazoned a bright hearthfire pink-and-red flower. A lotus, if my eyes can be trusted. When it speaks, I can’t be sure if the voice is male or female. It slides from the tongue of its wielder so smoothly, so quietly, it’s a strain just to listen. It’s what I imagine a snake might sound like, if it could sing.

  “And it’s you. I shouldn’t be surprised,” says the robed figure. The light of the setting sun only serves to heighten the colors of its holographic robe. It turns around slowly, two absolutely stunning emerald eyes flashing straight at Emery.

  “Is this the person who broke your trick, in San Francisco?” Fey Deller asks. That’s right. Emery did mention an enigma of this very nature. The pale skin around those frighteningly green eyes only serves to deepen the serpentine ambiance around the figure.

  “Yes,” Emery tells Fey Deller, and all of us by extension.

  “I was sorry I did that to you. An order. A test,” says the figure to Emery. “But now it seems my superiors were correct in their opinion of you. Your family-”

  “Do I know you?” Emery bites with such force that the green-eyed mystery stops dead in its tracks. “Who are you to me? That you think you can just lump me in with them?”

  “Forgive me, but I believe my conclusion is accurate,” the figure insists. Whether it’s man or woman, it has a set of balls. Emery’s practically frothing at the mouth. Her fingers twitch with the urge to trick the bastard. If only it hadn’t broken through them before. “You have, after all, been collaborating with them. All of you, together. A formidable alliance to be sure, but now… with that,” the robed figure extends a grim finger at the ancient Ahwahneechee text tucked under Emery’s arm. “Along with the records you took from the Forbidden Shelves… well, now you’re a threat.”

  “How did you know…” Hoster murmurs out the thought all of us share. Darius jerks forward, ready to lunge for the throat, only to be stopped by Emery’s hand on his chest.

  “Who are you?” Emery demands, though there’s a considerable void where confidence usually sits in her voice.

  “Heren,” the figure tells us without a second’s hesitation. “But it’s hardly my name that matters. You should have asked what I am. Abandon your search for the Origas’ knowledge. They split it with intention. To reassemble it would endanger the entire Realm… and you’ve all done enough damage.”

  “You know about the Origas?” Helena blurts out. But Heren hardly seems interested in answering any more questions. If there was a chance hidden somewhere amidst all the cryptic whispers, we blew it. It turns around.

  “You’ve all allied yourself with some dangerous entities. Time will tell if it’s just the Kyrie, the Academy, or all of you, that will disappear.”

  “Just hold - agh!” Emery tries to reach out, to snap. But she’s hit with a trick of Heren’s own custom variety. Something like I’ve never seen before. The click of a button on a small metal orb from within its robe is all it takes.

  Helena, Emery, and I hit the ground under the sting of a horrendous sound. Darius zips off for the robed figure, but is instantly frozen by a flash of light from a lens on the side of the orb. Hoster and Fey Deller can’t get to Heren fast enough, before the back of its robe kicks up behind it, right over the side of a cliff face.

  Damn that noise! It grates on the very tissues of my brain! Everything starts to fade again.

  Darius,

  Yosemite, Ahwahneechee Village

  This is ridiculous. Every last God-forsaken ounce of this experience. I shouldn’t have been in the Forbidden Shelves. I shouldn’t have gone to the Truce Camp. I had no business climbing the most ancient and sacred of Ahwahneechee ruins, and I was punished for it. Paralyzed by some kind of anti-Vampire flashbang? No thank you. I have no business being tangled up in things this big, this important. If only I could be trusted with myself. I can’t even tie my damn shoes without my fingers itching, with all the pulses constantly around me. Being down in that prison for so long, where the only whiff of blood I’d get was through Reynold’s test tubes… it did something to me. My nose, my nerves, they’re more sensitive than when I first turned.

  But it’s not like I can leave. Whatever captain pajamas shot me with still has me stiff as a board. With Emery, Rock, and Helena out of commission too, it was up to spearmint and Q-tip to drag us all down the mountain. I know when to admit I’m impressed and, well, we all made it down to the village. The others have recovered enough to join in the festivities that awaited us below, but Heren’s dose of Vamp-repellent seems more potent. Now I’m stuck here, at this absurd festival. Some part of me that remembers what it’s like to have a community understands. The future Chief, Blood of the Origas, returns with the ancient knowledge even the most crotchety elders forgot! Hooray! Party! Fine. Just leave me the hell out of it. All I hear is the ba-bump of hundreds of free meals dancing like idiots on the fringe of every firelit tent.

  I cherish every twitch I coax out of my fingers. Another step closer to escape. I can’t stand to listen to these idiots for another minute. No one knew a damn thing about the Origas before we pulled the slightest trace of them out of the asshole of the Academy. Suddenly, everyone’s got stories. Elders pass around the book we brought back from the Totem Tower like it’s a ceremonial pipe. They recount long-lost tales they heard when they were children, all things about the Age of Legends that everyone assumed were just that. And now, all of them might be true. What does that make me?

  Sasoen turns the tome away at every offer, despite being the only one who can read it. Something about the agreement between the Academy and the Kyrie, only to share such knowledge in the neutral space of the Truce Camp. Hardly my concern. I care more about the fact that I can move my eyebrows now, and wiggle the toes of my left foot.

  I sit on a log between Fey Deller and Helena. One of them is actually about as entertaining as a tree, and the other can’t stop staring at Chief Dreamboat, across the fire. He did save her life and all, but I smell something else afoot. I hear it, too, with how fast Helena’s heart thunders in her chest. But Rock’s too busy listening to Emery’s debrief of the situation since the top of the Totem Tower. She includes the encounter with Heren, which Sasoen has already sent word of to the Academy and the Truce Camp. Rock apparently doesn’t remember a thing since he turned into a shield. My money’s on the fact that it’s because shields don’t have brains. But that would mean he’s limited to the mental constraints of whatever he becomes. How would hawk-Rock even remember what he meant to do before he shifted?

  I toy with the absurdity of it to distract myself from the blood. Then my leg bounces. A reflex from me trying so hard. But it’s enough. I force myself to stand, legs wobbling like it’s my first time on stilts. I try not to, but I connect eyes with Emery. Just for a second. She doesn’t say anything, but she sees everything.

  That’s okay. I don’t need this. The fawning over each other. The ancient rituals and star-crossed bloodlines. The second I decide I’m out of here, I am. The only trace of me are the tent flaps that kick up in a straight line behind me.

  Emery,

  Yosemite, Ahwahneechee Forest

  “Wait,” I say, just a second too late. He’s already gone. I haven’t seen Darius move in hours, since he g
ot hit with that light from Heren’s orb. Now he wobbles to his feet and vanishes. With that look in his eye. Help, I could almost hear him say. I leap up from my log before the tent flaps finish rippling.

  “Emery. He’s not well,” Rock warns me, a weak hand reaching out to grab my shirt. I shake him off. Of course I know that. We all do. It would be impossible for any one of us traveling with Darius not to notice it.

  “Which is why I have to go after him,” I tell Rock, and hurry off before the wind behind him can settle. I pass from one tent to the next, following the ripples in Darius’ wake. I break into a run to keep up.

  Darius’ path takes me straight to the edge of the village. Seeing the amount of older couples tending their last minute chores or going on an evening walk, worry overtakes me. But there’s no blood spray. No chaos. I trace Darius’ steps around the fringe of the village to the narrow canyon that cuts it off from the rest of the Yosemite forest. I conjure a tiny orb of light to act as my lantern. I vault over stones and slide through tiny passes sideways. I stumble out the other side, only to be seized by both shoulders.

  My world becomes a dark blur of blues and greens. When everything stops spinning, my back is flat against a cold stone wall. My orb-lantern shines on a set of extended fangs and a pair of wild eyes. We’ve been here before, Darius and I. Only this time, somehow, I’m not scared. I’m not even sure why at first.

  “Why would you come out here?” Darius snarls.

  “Because you’re out here,” I murmur.

  “That’s the opposite of a reason! You… you can see that there’s something wrong with me, can’t you?” Darius shrieks. There’s a hint of something I’ve never heard in his voice. Fear. He pulls his face back from mine, but he can’t seem to retract his fangs.