Ruthless Magic

by Megan Crewe

  I ran back toward her. Words from one of Javi’s favorite rock songs, a line about shoving someone away, leapt to my tongue. Prisha shouted out a quavering verse of what sounded like Greek. Despite her broken voice, the conjuring blasted the creature backward.

  The shadow-wolf spun on Finn, who’d been running to Prisha too. It swiped a razor-clawed paw at him, and he stumbled backward. I spat out the lyric I had ready, channeling all my intent into hurling the creature away.

  The energy in the air walloped the shadow-wolf several feet back into the mist, sprawled on its side. In an instant, it leapt back to its feet. It blended in and out of the haze as it stalked toward us once more.

  I opened my mouth to try a different casting when something small tapped against my shoe. I glanced down. The square of light above us caught on the glossy surface of a marble.

  On instinct, I lifted my foot and slammed it down, willing the magic to follow my heel. The marble burst into jagged shards, and the shadow-wolf wisped apart into the fog.

  Finn had rushed to Prisha’s side, but she backed away, pressing her hand to her wounded shoulder.

  “Pree,” Finn pleaded. “You’re bleeding. There’ll be more coming. We have to—”

  “I don’t have to do anything.” She glared at him.

  Lacey drifted deeper into the mist that filled the great gray room, her watery eyes wide. I looked at the crushed marble again and saw the sketchy image I’d marked on my skin with my nicked thumb. The rest of me turned cold.

  It wasn’t just Lacey’s ’chantment attacking us. We were dealing with Finn’s too.

  “Wait,” I said, hurrying over the spongy ground after Lacey. “We have to stay together.”

  I turned my hand toward her so she could see the symbol, but either she couldn’t see it or I wasn’t close enough yet. She spun away and dashed toward the thicker haze—just as three more wolf shapes emerged from it.

  She stiffened as they converged on her. This was her nightmare—the most horrible thing she’d been able to imagine. And it was coming for her. I knew how awful that felt.

  I dashed after her. The wolves seemed content to draw out the hunt. The muscular confidence of their prowl struck a chord of recognition in me. Their shapes were blurry and artless, but there was a stark honesty to Lacey’s conjuring.

  The packs of Dull kids who’d sometimes cornered me at school had given off the same air: nonchalance laced with aggression. They’d worked the same way too, always picking on the tutorial kids when they could catch us alone, focusing on the easiest targets. How many times had I gone still and silent, knowing that raising my voice with the slightest defensive casting was the fastest route to a mandated burnout? How many times had Lacey?

  “No!” Judith cried somewhere behind me. There was a thump like a body falling. Finn shouted something.

  Glass glinted near my foot. I aimed another fracturing jab of magic through my heel as I ran past, and one of the wolves blew apart into the sudden dark. The other two lunged at Lacey from either side.

  “We’ll have to go through them,” I sang, and leapt closer to her with magic-enhanced speed. My concentration was shaky. The energy shuddered over my skin. But my groping hand found Lacey’s elbow.

  I hauled her toward me and gasped out another lyric. A shadow-wolf rebounded off of an invisible wall of magic. Lacey shoved at me with a squeal, but I managed to heave my arm around her so the back of my hand was right before her eyes. At the sight of the symbol, her shoulders sagged against my chest.

  Magic reverberated through me as the creatures flung themselves at my shield. It held, and like bullies everywhere, they lost interest quickly in victims who could defend themselves. They stalked away toward the others, who were scattered around the fringes of Desmond’s light. Four more shadow-wolves prowled past us out of the fog.

  “They’re coming your way!” I called out, letting go of Lacey.

  She stumbled to the side. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It wasn’t your fault. Here.” I pressed open the nick on my thumb and sketched the square and heart symbol on her thin hand. Then I tugged her to follow me as I whirled back toward the rest of our group.

  Desmond was hustling past the cots in what had been our dorm room. Judith stood directly beneath the glowing square in the mist, clutching her broken arm tight against her slim frame. As the shadow-wolves loped toward her, she brandished a small knife at them.

  Finn ran toward her from the opposite direction with Prisha right behind him. Something gleamed on the ground ahead of him.

  “Finn!” I called out. “Marble.”

  He slowed and spat out a quick phrase, shattering the glass. The wolf on the verge of springing at Judith shredded into fragments of shadow. One of the remaining five snapped at her good arm. She sliced the knife at it. Its fang cut a ragged line across the back of her hand, and she gasped, flinching away.

  Finn and Prisha charged through the filmy wolf forms from behind. Finn thrust the symbol on his hand in front of Judith’s eyes, and Prisha called up a rippling wave of magic that repelled the wolves, sending them back a few feet.

  I paused just long enough to stomp on another marble. The remaining four wolves had already turned toward the back of our dorm room, where Desmond was standing braced with a cot in front of him—as if that would provide any protection from Lacey’s ghostly creations. His gaze darted back and forth beneath his furrowed brow.

  I nudged Lacey toward the other three. “Stay with them,” I said. She was so shaky I wasn’t sure she’d be much help with Desmond.

  “Those things like picking off the strays from the herd, don’t they?” Finn observed. “So there’s safety in numbers. Shall we go get Desmond?”

  I’d meant to go alone, but he had a point. “Right.” I turned to Prisha. “Find the marbles?”

  She saluted me. “On it.”

  Finn and I started sprinting for the dorm room. At an exclamation and a crunch behind us, one of the shadow-wolves disintegrated. The other three creatures had just reached the first line of cots, some twenty feet ahead of us.

  Desmond crouched behind his cot, his eyes fixed on the prowling forms. His hands felt along the edges of the mattress, but I couldn’t tell what he was checking for.

  “I’m thinking you zap those things apart, and I’ll dive in to get to him,” Finn said, managing to sound reassuringly confident while also short-winded. His face was paler than usual, the cut on his lip stark in contrast, but he kept his chin up. “Unless you had something more spectacular in mind, Dragon-Tamer?”

  At the teasing note in his voice, I couldn’t help saying, “Maybe you can talk them into leaving with that silver tongue of yours.”

  He laughed, a ragged, breathless sound. “Hey, wolves!” he yelled. “I’m sure if we just take a moment to hash things out, we’ll discover we’re actually on the same side.”

  In spite of everything, I might have smiled if I hadn’t seen Desmond’s reaction to Finn’s voice. Though the shadow-wolves stalked on without hesitating, his gaze jerked up, as if he hadn’t noticed us approaching until then. He stared in our direction so vaguely I felt as if he were looking right past me. Was some other magic acting on him that hadn’t touched the rest of us yet?

  One of the wolves tensed as if to spring. I threw myself down the left aisle between the cots as Finn raced down the right. Desmond steadied himself with a hand upraised, and a new clawed shadow hurtled through the wall at his back.

  “Behind you!” I cried out, losing the lyric I’d been about to cast with.

  The wolf smacked against the protective magic Desmond must have conjured around himself earlier, fell onto its feet, and whipped around. Desmond’s roving eyes snagged on us, and he snapped out a verse that hurled Finn into the cot beside him.

  Two of the wolves leapt at Desmond at once. The air shivered as his shield fractured.

  “No!” My lips were already moving with the fastest, surest way I had to protect him. I reached out to the
magical barrier I’d built around myself and whipped it toward Desmond, flinging myself after it.

  But Desmond, who seemed to see me as just as much of a threat as the wolves, tried to dodge to the side, carrying my barrier with him. I fell on my hands and knees, my joints jarring. One of the wolves slammed into me and pushed me flat into the tiles. Teeth and claws raked my back. Pain seared through my torso. A strangled sound ripped from my throat, but in the haze of panic, I managed to hold onto one thought: I had to get to Desmond. He had my shield.

  “Brinca, brinca,” I rasped desperately. The slight rhythm to the words gathered the magic beneath me and tossed me forward, dislodging the creature that was still savaging me.

  I collided with Desmond, and we both toppled over. With a breath that was more a sob, I yanked my hand up to show him the symbol, but he kept shoving me away as if he couldn’t see it.

  As if he couldn’t see it.

  My small observations of him across the last half a day clicked together like an interlocking puzzle. Choking down the pain, I muttered a few words to set the dried blood of the mark glowing.

  The second the symbol lit up, Desmond’s body stilled. He looked at me where I had collapsed beside him on the floor. As horrified as his expression was, his gaze still held that odd distance—the distance I’d noticed earlier but hadn’t realized the significance of.

  All this time, he’d been hiding his weakness. He clearly had ways of compensating with magic, but needing to focus on those castings distracted from everything else we’d needed to do. And he’d never even hinted he might need a little extra support, let alone asked for it. Because he’d been worried we’d think less of him for it? Or because he’d wanted to show the examiners he could pass without anyone knowing?

  It didn’t matter. We all had vulnerable spots we didn’t want on display. I got it.

  The wolves battered the shield that now sheltered both of us, but it held. Gritting my teeth against the agony radiating through my back, I grasped Desmond’s hand and turned it over. I hissed the lyrics to shape a line of magic into a matching symbol, glowing bright blue against his dark brown skin. Then a fresh wave of pain rushed through me, and my head dropped to the floor. The floor that was now smeared with my blood.

  “I’m sorry,” Desmond said roughly. “I didn’t— It was like DEFCON 1 blaring in my head.”

  “Finn’s ’chantment,” I said. “We’re all okay now.” I paused, woozy. “It isn’t your magic ability they held you back for; it’s your sight.”

  His lips twisted, and his voice dropped. “They didn’t give a detailed explanation, but I doubt being legally blind helped my case. I can still see a few things: shapes, movement. Contrast, so light helps a lot. Unless the thing’s too far away.”

  “Hmmm.” My head was really spinning now. “My back isn’t too far away, is it? Because I could use some of that healing skill, I think.”

  Desmond shifted closer and swore. So the wound looked bad too. Before I’d had time to register more than that, he was crooning under his breath. A burning sensation spread over my skin so suddenly I bit my tongue in surprise. A numbing chill followed in the wake of the heat.

  Rushing feet scraped the floor just behind Desmond. “Don’t get up,” Finn said quickly. He was panting. Were the others okay? And my shield—the wolves had left us for the moment, but I wasn’t sure how stable it still was, or—

  The ’chanted chill settled my pulse, and with it my thoughts slowed too. I pushed myself into a sitting position and winced as new aches prickled down my ribs.

  “Take it slow,” Desmond said. “The cuts were deep. I stopped the bleeding and dulled some of the nerves, but that’s as much as I can manage. You’re still really hurt.”

  Finn leaned against the frame of the cot next to us, close enough to Desmond to share my shield. He held his side as he watched the wolves lurking around its edges, but I didn’t see any blood on him.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He smiled crookedly. “I can’t say this is the best day of my life, but so far I’m still planning on surviving.” His gaze fell on Desmond. “The others are on their way over,” he said quietly.

  “Thanks,” Desmond said.

  Finn nodded as if it were nothing. He’d realized Desmond wouldn’t necessarily see that, and he was going to keep the secret, no questions asked.

  I had the sudden urge to reach out to him. As if he’d sensed it, he offered his hand to me to help me up from the floor. I took it, my fingers curling around his warm, dry palm. My gaze focused on the defined muscles in his arm. Some of that warmth traveled to my face. I levered myself onto my feet with my other hand braced against the cot.

  The tatters of my shirt slipped against my newly sealed side and back. I was probably showing a lot more skin than I’d prefer. I’d need to take care of that when I had a chance.

  The hum in the air shifted as the others gathered around us. Their protective shell overlaid ours, and the wolves drew back farther. Only two remained—or remained nearby, at least.

  Prisha peered into Finn’s face. Before she could say anything, he gave her a firm look. “I’m fine. Managed to completely escape getting clawed. Didn’t you observe my daring dash?”

  She frowned. What did she see that I couldn’t?

  Judith sank down on the cot beside us, still clutching her blade, which looked like a Swiss Army knife with a pearly handle. She folded it shut against her thigh. Her slim shoulders trembled. “The examiners have only just gotten started. I don’t know... I didn’t know it was going to be like this.”

  My throat tightened. Part of me wanted to insist that she should have listened for the stories, she should have paid attention to how ruthless the Confed could be—but I hadn’t really known either, had I? I’d known the Exam would be hard, but I hadn’t expected this chaos. Another part of me wanted to run for the nearest exit too.

  If she broke down and called out to the examiners, maybe they’d come get her and accept her resignation. Or maybe they weren’t even watching that closely, and Lacey’s wolves would tear her apart.

  “We know now,” I said. “We’re all still here. We can do this together.”

  I could do this. I could make sure the five people around me made it through.

  Judith rubbed her mouth. Then her jaw clenched. “Yes,” she said, even though her voice wobbled. “I’m keeping my magic. I am.”

  “So what next?” Lacey said. Her eyes were following the wolves.

  “While we’re shielded, they can’t hurt us,” Prisha said.

  “As long as they’re our only problem,” I said. “Who knows what’s going to come after this? We’ve got no idea what Mark’s ’chantment even is.” My back prickled. Was I ready? If I’d been a few seconds slower, if I hadn’t made it to Desmond, Lacey’s wolves might have torn me apart.

  But they hadn’t, and I was still here. I raised my chin. “Let’s find all the marbles and destroy them while we can.”

  “It’s getting lighter,” Desmond said.

  I lifted my gaze from the ground and blinked. Sometime in the last few minutes, the fog drifting around us had drawn back. It still lingered in the distance—I couldn’t make out the walls of the dorm room we’d left behind—but now we could see about half a mile ahead of us across the flat landscape, and the receding fog had revealed a few scattered buildings and more of those mutilated artificial trees all around.

  The narrow buildings all appeared slanted, this one to the left, that one to the right, like cardboard boxes starting to sag under their own weight. When we’d picked up our conversation about our various defensive ’chantments as we’d started our hunt for the rest of the marbles, Prisha had told us hers involved a massive storm that should only affect people outside. I wouldn’t count on those buildings for shelter in that.

  The buildings, ground, and trees were still gray, but the brighter light above us cast everything with a yellowish tone, as if the landscape were singed. Or going rotten. I bre
athed in and found the peppery smell had turned sour.

  Had we even kept walking away from the dorm room? With that haze all around and the vague sameness of the terrain the examiners had created, we could have been walking in circles for all we knew.

  A lone shadow-wolf was still tracking us. It slunk closer to our protective shell, whipping its tail.

  Then Lacey called out, “There it is! I’ve got it,” and pointed at the marble she’d spotted.

  She shot the wolf a triumphant look before striding away from our cluster. I tensed to run after her, but she was already muttering a phrase, and the marble shattered. The wolf wisped away mid-prowl.

  Lacey set her hands on her hips. “Take that, wolves!” she said. “No one’s ever been able to beat me down so much I can’t get back up.”

  “I’ll toast to that,” Desmond said. He raised a fist and intoned, “We’ll face our fears, and only we will remain.”

  “Is that from a movie?” Finn asked.

  Desmond’s face fell a little. Maybe he’d hoped one of us would recognize it. “Sort of,” he said. “Mostly a book. And I was paraphrasing.”

  “Not that we have any shortage of other things to worry about,” Finn said, “but I hope Mark managed to steer clear of the wolves, wherever he is now.”

  “He seemed to think he could handle anything. I just hope we missed his ’chantment, and it’s not waiting to spring on—” Judith froze. “Hold on. Is that food?”

  We all jerked around to look. My stomach pinched before I even saw what she was talking about. We hadn’t eaten since last night. We hadn’t even had water since we’d left the dorm room with its bathroom behind.

  A table had appeared in the open space between us and the distant buildings. It was heaped with shapes that did look as if they could be food. Lacey darted forward first, and the rest of us followed. As soon as we got close enough to identify the shapes as sandwiches, fruit, and bottles of water, Judith and Prisha hurried ahead. An itch crept over my skin as they left the shelter of our shield, but we hadn’t seen any other wolves in a long time. Maybe we were safe.