by Isla Frost
And neither were Ameline and Bryn.
So I accepted the bowl of soup and a candle, blanket, and chamber pot with what little grace I could muster and settled in to see what would happen next.
The next time the door materialized and opened, it was Professor Cricklewood who entered my makeshift prison cell. He was carrying—of all things—a fluff ball of a creature known as a flum under one arm and a potted plant in the other.
I was huddled on the floor under the blanket, trying not to freeze. We’d just entered the last month of winter, and the weather had shown no signs of easing yet. If anything, it had grown colder. And sharing a dorm room with Bryn the firebug had accustomed me to sleeping in a room with a roaring fire. I’d also become accustomed to the luxury of my soft mattress.
“Right, kiddo,” Cricklewood said, “time to learn whether we’ve all been making a fuss over nothing.”
“Kiddo” was the nicest thing he’d ever called me. But with everything so uncertain right then, I almost wished he’d stuck to convention and called me maggot brain or something.
When I’d first seen the wizened old professor with his long white beard, watery blue eyes, and kindly human features, I’d thought he might be an ally in the unfamiliar place. He’d quickly disillusioned me of that hope, turning out instead to be a cranky drill sergeant of a teacher who hurled orders and insults in equal measure. He’d earned second place in my hypothetical worst-teacher awards, beaten only by the bored and contemptuous Grimwort.
Now he plonked the plant and the flum in front of me. The fluffy creature, which was about the size and shape of a watermelon, took three tottering steps on its tiny hooves, then sank onto the corner of my blanket.
The plant stayed motionless.
I remembered our Dangerous Magical Creatures teacher, Professor Wilverness, saying that flum weren’t good for anything but keeping your feet warm, and wondered for a crazy fleeting moment if that’s what Cricklewood had brought it for.
Then it occurred to me to wonder if Wilverness had meant as a living companion or skinned and made into slippers.
Damn it was cute. Dumber than a bunch of rocks, but adorable. The species wouldn’t have survived in a world full of lethal predators if they hadn’t evolved to taste so bad that most of those predators only tried flum meat once.
“Pay attention,” Cricklewood snapped.
I’d been distracted by the fluff ball sharing my blanket but fell easily into the familiar rhythm of following orders.
“You see life force energy through your second sight, don’t you? Pull it up and look at me.”
Second sight was one of the more advanced magic techniques we’d been taught, and after my failed attempt at lighting the candle, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to use it. But I closed my eyes and tried anyway.
“Now look toward me,” Cricklewood ordered. “Can you sense where I am?”
“Yes.” I could do more than that. His life force energy shone like a beacon in the darkness. A walker-shaped beacon.
Yesterday, or however long ago it was that I’d entered that transformation chamber, my sense of others’ life force had been vague, like a flicker of candlelight through closed eyelids. And unlike almost everyone else using their second sight, I’d had to shut my eyes to be able to make out anything at all.
Today I could see Cricklewood’s golden energy so clearly that I knew when he leaned toward me just slightly before asking the next question.
“Good. What about the plant?”
I shifted my focus. Waited. Maybe my sight needed time to adjust to the relative brightness. Sort of like my physical eyes did.
Yes, there. A dim light, so transparent it was easily missed between the brilliant glare of Cricklewood’s energy and the much weaker but still evident life force of the flum.
“Barely,” I reported. “But the flum is much clearer.”
Cricklewood shifted again in my second sight. And distantly, my ears picked up the corresponding rustle of fabric.
“Focus on the flum then. Can you tell me anything about it?”
“Um. It’s a lot smaller and less bright than yours. But the shape follows its basic physical form like yours does.”
“Uh-huh. Can you encourage it to come toward you?”
“How?”
“Whatever feels natural. Keep your focus on the life force though. I don’t want you communicating with the flum or using physical magic to move it.”
I tried. Nothing happened.
Cricklewood didn’t give me any further instructions, so I tried again.
After a few minutes of attempting everything I could think of without eliciting so much as a twitch of response from the flum’s life force, I sighed in disgust. It was like the stupid candle all over again.
The flum squealed and my eyes shot open. Cricklewood had a fine stiletto in his hand, the point of the blade touched with blood.
“What did you do?” I protested. Was he trying to motivate me?
The flum looked unperturbed now, and I couldn’t see how bad the injury was past all its fluff. It raised one hoof to scratch awkwardly at its head, overbalanced on its three remaining hooves, and fell onto its fluffy backside.
It squealed as it landed, the same noise as before, then resumed scratching from this new position.
“I barely nicked it,” Cricklewood growled, and after witnessing the flum’s self-inflicted “injury,” I was inclined to believe him. “Try again.”
I closed my eyes. The flum’s life force was brighter now, as if piercing its skin made its life energy more accessible. Instinctively, I tried to gather the creature toward me, away from the professor and his sharp knife, into my arms where I could keep it safe.
This time it came.
I opened my eyes, triumphant.
Only to see the flum still on the corner of my blanket. It was lying down now. Or…
No.
Cricklewood looked from me to the crumpled body of the flum and back again. “Well I’ll be damned. It’s true then. You’re a reaper. You can drain life force from other beings as easily as drinking from a glass. So long as they’re bleeding.”
I felt sick.
I’d been trying to protect the flum. Yet somehow instead I’d called its life force over to me and left its body behind. Killing the poor creature in an eye blink.
Which was supposed to be impossible. Not even healers could transfer life force. Their ability to heal was constrained by what the patient’s life force could provide energy for.
And I had absorbed the flum’s life force into my own. I felt it. My body grew warm for the first time in hours, and I was energized as if I’d actually managed to sleep. It felt good, and that made it all the more sickening.
Cricklewood nodded, a self-satisfied smile breaking across his crinkled old face.
“You’re either the one we’ve been waiting for or a horrifying aberration that ought to be put down.”
He ran a hand down his long, long beard.
“Now I just have to convince the cowards to give us the chance to learn which.”
Chapter Four
I did not sleep again that night.
Cricklewood departed, thankfully taking the poor flum’s body with him, and I huddled in my prison cell, wondering what they’d turned me into.
I had now taken two lives without trying to. Kyrrha’s, the walker woman. I hadn’t even been conscious when I’d apparently drained her life force. And the flum’s. I’d just been following Cricklewood’s orders, unaware of the consequences.
But I was aware now, and I felt dirty. Nauseated.
I’d killed before, but only ever as a matter of survival. There was little nature had to offer more harmless than the flum, and this was the first time I’d taken another life without good cause.
I’d certainly never killed a human being. The walkers were a long way from human, but far closer than a night crawler spider was, and like me, Kyrrha had only been following orders.
May
be my self-reflection was pointless anyway. From what Cricklewood had said, the professors had not yet decided whether to let me live.
Which was the other reason I couldn’t sleep.
I didn’t understand. This was what they’d wanted. They had done this to me. Transformed me. Given me this terrifying new power. Terrifying, yes, but perfect for the warrior they were supposedly crafting me to be.
What the hell was their problem?
Maybe they were afraid I’d turn against them.
I wrapped my blanket tighter around me and scowled into the darkness. Maybe they were right to be afraid.
Maybe I would.
Chapter Five
Grimwort had ordered Millicent not to let me out. He’d failed to mention anything about letting others in.
So an hour before dawn, just as the section of sky I could see through the window was shifting to a gloomy gray, four figures snuck into the room.
Figures I actually wanted to see. Two of them at least. Ameline, my best friend since forever. And Bryn, who was fast becoming just as dear to me.
The other visitors I was less sure about. Two walker students, Theus and Lirielle.
Ameline immediately rushed to my side and joined me on the floor. Her stride was shorter, stiffer than usual, her movements cautious as if they pained her, and by the messy state of her golden halo of hair, she hadn’t taken the time to brush it before coming to visit me.
My heart swelled as it always did when I saw her familiar face after an absence. Jeez, I loved her. She was gentle and generous and kind, and I wished with everything I had that I could offer her a world where she could be safe and happy, where she didn’t have to harden her wonderful nature just to survive.
But I couldn’t. And she’d proven herself able to cope with that reality. She’d charged into a battle she had no hope of winning and bloodied her hands to save our lives.
Bryn sauntered over as well, hugging herself against the chill. She was small and slight beside Ameline’s curves, and her short black hair hung straight and sleek above her shoulders. But even in the meager light of the candle, I could see that her lips were cracked and her complexion was off. Not just because of the old bruise that colored her left cheek a sickly green either.
Bryn couldn’t have been more different from Ameline. Bold, reckless, and often self-serving. She’d grown up rough and had adopted a take-no-prisoners attitude to her dealings with the world. But that hadn’t stopped her from being willing to sacrifice herself—to be paralyzed and torn apart by beasts—to save my and Ameline’s lives in the final trial.
My friends’ actions in that harrowing test were forever imprinted on my heart. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve their love or loyalty. But having them here with me, seeing them safe for the moment and their beloved characters unaltered by the ritual, was a balm to my soul.
A lump formed in my throat and my eyes stung. I was so, so glad to see them.
Then Bryn set the antique writing desk on fire with a casual wave of her wandless hand. “There. That should take the chill out of the air.”
“Bryn!” I protested. “You know how Millicent feels about damaging—”
“Relax. It looks like fire, it feels like fire, but it won’t actually burn anything. Handy new trick I picked up recently.”
“You wouldn’t believe how much she’s been showing it off either,” Ameline added. “Or maybe you would.”
We sniggered and Bryn plonked herself down beside us, utterly unaffected by our amusement. “Go ahead and laugh. I’ll bask in your envy like a cat before a hearth.”
That caused us to snigger some more, and Bryn grinned. She had a way of grinning that was entirely hers, the expression flashing quick and sharp across her heart-shaped face.
Ameline sobered first. “Are you okay?” she asked me. “I can’t believe they stuck you in here straight after your transformation ritual without even a bed to recover in.”
I shrugged. “The ritual didn’t leave me exhausted the way it was supposed to.”
It had energized me in fact. I still didn’t completely understand why, but I’d come to the queasy conclusion it had something to do with sucking the life force out of the walker woman. Kyrrha.
On the topic of walkers, Theus and Lirielle were hanging back by the door, unnaturally motionless as their kind tended to be.
I waved them over. “You might as well get comfortable too.”
I wouldn’t classify them as friends, but they’d been… collaborative rather than condescending. And though I didn’t trust them, if I had to have a walker standing at my back, I would choose one of them.
“Please tell me you’re here to explain what the heck’s going on,” I said.
It wouldn’t be the first time Theus had taken the time to answer questions no one else would. But even then he only told us some of what we wanted to know. As if abiding by an incredibly frustrating set of rules only the walkers understood.
He’d told us the truth about the transformation ritual, for example, but he’d refused to tell us why on earth the walkers would need humans for their elite warrior unit and what those warriors would be fighting.
Theus sank gracefully to the floor six feet away and sat with his legs folded and back straight, looking like some sort of god in the flickering light of Bryn’s flames. His handsome face was open and appealing, with clear-cut features, dark expressive eyebrows, and deep forest-green eyes you could lose yourself in. But it was his unusual kindness—especially rare in a walker—that drew me to him. That had formed an uneasy bond between us.
He was the walker I trusted most. Which was still less than any human left alive on our ravaged planet. But he’d helped us, saved us, and even allowed me to see my family through a visual gateway. Some part of me I didn’t want to acknowledge sensed that if he’d been a human rather than a walker… Well, it didn’t matter, because what he was would never change. And right now we had more pressing concerns.
“We will do our best to make things clear,” he said.
Lirielle remained standing, staring at me as if she saw something far more interesting than anyone else did.
She was slender and delicate, her features almost ethereal, with hair the color of frost and skin nearly as pale. Her smoky-blue stare was unnerving, but she was a strange sort, and I knew my discomfort wasn’t her intent.
“Did you get my note?” she asked abruptly.
Her note about my wildcard magic shaking the worlds, she meant.
“Yes.” I’d been encouraged by those words before the transformation ritual. Now I wasn’t sure what to feel.
She nodded once, more to herself than me. “Good.”
Ameline was snuggled into my side, her head leaning on my shoulder. Bryn wasn’t as open in her affection, but she was still sitting close enough that her arm brushed mine when she waved her hand in a dramatic flourish toward Theus. “Please, enlighten us.”
“What would you like to know?”
Good question. There was so much I didn’t understand, that didn’t make sense. And I’d had hours of solitude to drive myself mad with those unknowns.
“What’s going on? Why am I in this room? Why are the professors treating me like I’m diseased when they’re the ones who compelled me to do the transformation ritual and who supposedly want us to be warriors? And now that we’ve undergone the transformation, I believe you promised you’d tell us what mysterious enemy we’re going to be fighting.”
Theus took a moment to absorb all this, then said six words that flipped my world upside down.
“You’re here to fight the Malus.”
What?
I shook my head, certain I must have misheard, that he must be joking.
But there was no trace of humor on his face, nor Lirielle’s. And on my right, Ameline’s expression was one of horror.
On my other side, Bryn—Bryn who was always fidgeting, even in sleep—had gone still.
The last, more than anything, convinced
me I hadn’t misheard after all. That this was no joke.
But that was absurd. Terrifyingly, sickeningly absurd.
When the invaders came, human civilization had been at the pinnacle of technological sophistication, more advanced than at any other time in history. Our ancestors from the Before had weapons, technology, and resources that those of us who’d come afterward couldn’t even comprehend. They’d ruled the earth, they’d outnumbered us at least a million to one, and they’d thrown everything at defending themselves from the Malus and the rest of the invaders.
And they’d been massacred.
My grandmother had recounted the video footage she’d seen before technology had failed. Nukes did nothing to the monstrous darkness that was the Malus. And any soldiers that got close—no matter what protective gear they wore or armored transports they entered in—died. Collapsing to the ground like puppets with their strings cut, and not a mark on them.
Those who lasted a little longer screamed and screamed, releasing a volley of bullets at nothing before falling alongside their comrades. Civilians didn’t stand a chance. Nor did animals, plants, or even cockroaches.
The entire continent of Europe had been wiped out by that unstoppable darkness while the rest of the world watched on, helpless. Then international communications failed, and no one knew what happened after that.
The Malus was an enemy beyond my conception. And they wanted us to fight it?
Waves of shock and horror crashed over me until I was drowning in them. What on this forsaken planet were a bunch of barely trained teens supposed to do?
I forced myself to inhale. To breathe. Then I exhaled and did it again, trying to think. React. Reason.
The walkers who’d founded this academy must be certifiably insane.
Insane or… desperate.
That was a terrifying thought. What would it take to bring the all-powerful walkers to the point of desperation?