by B. T. Narro
The door to Eden’s room was closed when I arrived. I knocked on it. “It’s Jon,” I said.
She opened the door. It might’ve been the first time in a while that Eden stared right at me. She looked different, mostly because of her hair. She usually wore it in a stylish fashion, her dark brown locks combed over to fall loosely down one side of her head, some often resting on the front of her shoulder. But now it was messy and shorter than I remembered. I didn’t know when she had cut it, but it had to be recently.
She had large, beautiful eyes of hazel, and thick eyelashes, dark. However, the whites of her eyes were bloodshot near the corners. She had always appeared delicate, but now she seemed tough, angry. These moods didn’t seem to sit right on her face.
“I changed my mind. Go away,” she said, using a tone as if I was nothing but a bother.
She started to close the door, but I put my foot in front of it. It banged loudly against my boot.
“What are you doing?” she complained loudly.
I figured many of my peers, who had gone to their rooms to pack for the forest, had heard both the door striking my boot and Eden’s following question. I knew this might not look good for me in their eyes, but seeing Eden this way made me realize why she had come to me in the first place. She needed my help. I wasn’t going to leave.
I pushed past Eden, shoving her out of the way in the process, and shut the door behind us, mostly to give her privacy. I had a feeling she was going to need it.
“Get out of my room, Jon,” she said as she balled her fists.
“Where is the Induct stone?” I asked. In the note, she had told me to take it from her. It must be infused with dteria and altering her mind.
“Get out!” she yelled.
“I’m not leaving until I have it.”
There was a gentle knock on the door. “Is everything all right?” Aliana asked from the other side.
I quickly locked the door just as I heard her turning the doorknob. “We’re fine,” I said. “Eden just needs help with something.”
“I do not,” she countered as she started for the door.
With my outstretched arm, I barred her from accessing it. She tried to get around me, but she was much smaller. I didn’t even need the use of my other hand as she started to struggle to get past me.
“Eden,” I whispered. “I know why you came to me. You’re losing this fight against dteria. You need someone to take the Induct stone you mentioned. I’m now certain that it holds dteria just like a moonstone, only it’s probably stronger. Make this easier on both of us and get it for me.”
“I changed my mind, all right, Jon? It happens sometimes,” she said snidely. “Maybe you’re too stupid to know that.”
“I’m not leaving,” I told her forcefully. “Not without the Induct stone.”
My instincts took over as she swung at me, and I blocked her thin arm by holding mine up. She tried to strike me with her other hand, but I grabbed her wrist. She was very easy to detain.
“I can do this all day,” I said.
“Let go of me!” she yelled.
“Jon, what are you doing to her?” Aliana asked. She tried the doorknob again.
Then I heard other voices muttering in the hall.
“This is looking bad for both of us,” I told Eden quietly. “Just tell me where the Induct stone is and we can end this.”
“You’re a bastard,” she seethed. “You’re not getting my stone. You just want it for yourself.”
“Are you even hearing yourself? Hell, Eden, I thought you were better at resisting dteria than this. You’re worse than a drunk being thrown out of a tavern.”
“I’m fine unless someone is trying to take my stone like you are!”
“Jon?” Michael asked with too hard knocks on the door. “Let us in.”
“I can let them in,” I told Eden. “But then everyone is going to see you like this. I know you were trying to avoid that by coming to me. You knew I would do the right thing, no matter how difficult you made it. But I can let them in,” I repeated. “I can let everyone see you like this. No one’s going to trust you for a long time if they do, and you know that. You don’t want that.”
“Just get out of here,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You have another choice. You can keep your voice down and tell me where the Induct stone is, and we can talk our way out of this after.”
She thrashed against my hold of her wrists. “Tell them whatever you want. I’m not giving it to you. Let me go!”
“I’m not leaving until I have it!” I said, frustration getting the better of me.
“Then I’ll make you leave!” She squirmed violently and got a hand free, then she aimed it and hit me with a strong spell of dteria.
It surprised me too much for me to be ready; I couldn’t believe she would cast at me—indoors, nonetheless! I was thrown back and hit the door. Eden ran toward me, her gaze on the lock. I found the four familiar notes of dvinia, readied a fifth note of G, and targeted Eden. My mana wrapped around her waist. Then I forced it up into the air with the power of my mind.
She came up off the floor, her feet flailing. She aimed her hand at me again and struck me with dteria once more, knocking me into the door. I heard a small commotion outside, but I couldn’t pay much attention as I focused. Using my mana, I tossed Eden onto her bed and morphed the dvinia to pin her against the mattress.
“Eden, calm down!”
“Fuck you!”
*****
The sorcery wrestling match went on for a few long minutes, but I had her overpowered the entire time. It was a terrible feeling to fight against one of my peers, but Eden made no attempts to curb her aggression until she was too exhausted to continue. I had held her against her own bed for the better part of it, though my mana had slipped off during one of her forceful blasts of dteria that had struck me in the stomach.
She finally seemed to have given up, both of us sweaty and drawing quick breaths. I didn’t hear much from my friends outside anymore. I hoped that Michael, who had seen the note, might’ve pieced together what was actually happening here and explained it to the rest of them.
Eden lay on her bed as I stumbled around her room, trying to feel for dteria. Eventually, I realized there was probably a reason I hadn’t felt it yet. It was sealed away where the mana would be kept out of the air. I went to her wooden chest near her desk and tried to open it, but it was locked.
Still exhausted, I went over to where Eden lay in a ball on her bed. “Where’s the key?” I asked.
“Fuck off,” she grumbled between gasps for breath.
I started patting down the pockets of her pants and soon found something inside. She tried to grab my hand as I reached into her pocket, but I pinned her arms back with my other hand and retrieved the key.
She must’ve regained some strength, because the next thing I knew, she was jumping on my back as I was walking away from her bed.
“You can’t have it!” she shouted as she wrapped her arm around my neck.
It squeezed a choking sound out of my throat before she sealed off my air completely. Would she actually choke me to death if she could?
I was sick of this…and I knew I could heal her later.
I flipped her over me, slamming her back onto the floor with nearly all my strength.
I think the only reason she didn’t scream in pain was because she was just too exhausted. She did groan and squirm, though, tears falling from her eyes. I felt pity for Eden, for so many reasons.
I unlocked her wooden chest and was taken aback by an offensive magical odor. The dteria was a pungent stench to my mana, eliciting a similar reaction in my body as if I was hit by a pungent odor of rotting meat. I had grown to be more disgusted by dteria as my sensitivity to mana had increased. Eden should not have kept an Induct stone in her possession for so long.
I didn’t even want to touch it, but she had told me to bring it to Barrett. I had come this far, and I wasn’t goin
g to give up now.
“My fucking tailbone,” she grumbled as she cried. “I think you broke it.”
“I would heal you now,” I told Eden as I stepped around her writhing body. “But then you’d make it nearly impossible for me to get this to Barrett. I’ll heal you when I come back.”
I did not look forward to seeing my friends as I unlocked the door and opened it. Michael and Aliana were the closest to the door, though everyone else stood nearby. I knew what they saw didn’t look good for me. Eden and I were both drenched in sweat. Her room was in disarray, especially the covers of her bed. She lay near it on the floor, twisting in obvious pain.
I held up the black stone. “I have to get this to Barrett. I’ll be back to heal Eden after.”
Fortunately, my peers seemed to understand. They parted for me as a few of them nodded.
I hurried to the keep. Once I was inside, I was tempted to lift myself up the floors rather than run up the stairs, but I didn’t trust my spell to hold me while I carried this Induct stone of dteria. It pulled my mana down to lower frequencies.
I was glad to find that Barrett wasn’t meeting with the king but was in his own study on the second floor of the keep. He was guarded just like the king and the king’s family, with two armored men outside his door. They let me pass without delay.
Still catching my breath, I set the Induct stone on his desk and stepped back.
“Why are you delivering this and not Eden?” Barrett asked.
“Can you do something about it so I can focus?” I requested.
He moved his palm over the black stone and closed his eyes. I hadn’t really looked at his face until now. There was a bruise on his cheek as if he’d been punched.
Barrett made a grabbing motion. The stone lost its black color as I felt dense dteria in the air. I made a wide wall of dvinia and moved it across the room from the desk toward the door, careful not to bump into anything. It wasn’t long after that the feeling of dteria went away.
“Eden needed my help,” I said, answering his earlier question.
“That is disappointing.”
“Why? Better yet, why didn’t someone help her sooner?”
“Jennava tried to get her to disenchant this Induct stone yesterday, but she couldn’t convince Eden to do it. Then Jennava and Leon tried together, and still Eden refused. Eventually, they brought me with them to disenchant the gem against Eden’s will, and that’s how I got this.” He pointed at the bruise on his cheek.
“Would you like me to heal it for you?”
“Yes.”
I moved around his desk. “Why didn’t you call for me?”
“It wasn’t a priority until recently.”
Wasn’t a priority? What did that say about what they thought of Eden?
I reached up and put my hand over his cheek. It just took a moment to heal his bruise, Barrett wincing until I was done.
“By the looks of you,” he said, “I’m sure it took considerable force for you to get this from Eden.”
I didn’t answer, as I was starting to get the feeling that he and our instructors were quickly losing hope in Eden. “She came to me for help this morning, and she’s going to be a lot better now that this cursed stone is no longer in her possession.”
“It wasn’t cursed but enchanted, and I’m going to leave it up to Eden to enchant it again, this time for you.”
“Enchant it with what?” I had been told that there was no way to create an essence of dvinia, which was the only school of magic I would be using for a while.
He held up the stone. It was no longer black but translucent. “I can feel that this Induct stone is a lot like a moonstone in that it can hold a spell. However, the limitations of this Induct stone feel different than a moonstone. I’m almost certain that it can hold a spell of dvinia.” He handed it to me. “Take it to Eden to be primed. If she refuses, then bring it up with Jennava or Leon.”
An essence of dvinia seemed too good to be true, but Barrett seemed certain.
“Go on, now,” the councilman said. “The others must be waiting for you before they leave for the forest.”
I had other questions, though. “Wait a minute. I’ve never even heard of an Induct stone before. Do you know how Eden got it?”
“I had never seen one before now. Eden informed us that there are many of them near the center of Curdith Forest. We believe it was created when something came from the stars and struck the forest, which caused the Day of Death.”
“So she picked this up from the ground when Valinox brought her there to open the portal to Fyrren?”
“Yes. He turned one into an essence of dteria for her to hold onto so the creatures wouldn’t attack her. There’s something about the powerful scent of dteria that turns them into friends, most likely Airinold’s doing and a discussion for another time. Valinox took the stone away from Eden later, but she found another and turned it into a second essence of dteria.”
Now I remembered her talking about using an essence of dteria to get through the forest to reach us in time for the battle, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about an Induct stone. I wondered if even then she didn’t want to part with it.
I needed to know something else. “Are you suggesting that Eden is becoming corrupted?”
“She is, Jon. It’s not a question but a fact. The only unknown that remains is if she can control herself and keep from continuing down this path. Eden might be your friend, but she has proven to be traitorous in the past. She might do so again. Jennava and Leon are keeping a close watch on her, as should you. If she becomes more dangerous, she will need to be removed.”
“You mean put in the dungeons?”
“That is one option,” he said in a dark tone.
I shuddered at the thought of them executing Eden.
“Does Eden know she is being watched this way?” I asked.
“That is something we have been struggling with, whether to tell her. For the safety of the rest of us, we, for now, will keep her uninformed.” He tossed his hand. “It should be clear enough to her anyway that we know she is struggling with corruption. This is the punishment Leon issued her upon her re-acceptance. She is to learn how to use dteria without it controlling her. If she cannot do that, then we must protect everyone else. She will have to pull herself together or face the consequences.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
Barrett continued. “Leon and Jennava have both struggled with the corruption of dteria in the past and have told me they are confident they can get Eden through this difficult period, but it seems that Eden has reached out to you, at least in this one matter. She might do so again. Be careful, Jon. She might eventually give in completely and decide to take you out as a means of winning over Valinox as she had once before.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
He showed me a look as if I were a child who couldn’t comprehend the complexity of the situation. “You don’t know people who have gone down this path of dteria, but I do. In fact, Cason was one of them. He used to be a completely different young man before he started dabbling with dteria. It changed him just as it has changed thousands of others. Right now, Eden would not kill you, but that might change as well.”
“Then why not make her give up dteria completely?” I questioned. “There’s no reason she has to keep at it.”
“Because our demands would do nothing. She has gone too far to give it up so suddenly. She needs to learn how to control it before she can stop casting, or it will permanently control her. There is a limit to the amount of dteria that every dark mage can be exposed to before they cross this threshold. Eden seemed to be well before the threshold before she came into contact with the powerful Induct stone, but now she’s far past it. If she doesn’t learn to control dteria like Jennava has, then she will become a danger to anyone who wants to stop her from using it.”
“I’m not telling you to demand that she stop. I’m saying you can force her to stop by punishing her every t
ime she casts. She wasn’t this crazy until very recently. It can’t take too long to correct.”
Barrett studied me for a moment before replying. “We believe she can control it.” He paused as if choosing his words carefully. “At the same time, her skill with dteria could prove extremely useful.”
I was stunned. “So you’re basically saying that if Eden stops using dteria you’ll throw her out of the castle, but if she uses it too much and loses control, you’ll kill her?”
“Killing her would be extreme, but if it’s necessary then it must be done. None of us wants that, Jon, and we will do everything in our power to prevent it.” Barrett sighed as he studied my reaction. I was certain I appeared angry. “She agreed to this punishment upon returning,” he continued. “She almost killed Remi Ryler. You shouldn’t soon forget that. You were punished for doing a lot less, don’t you remember? You are all here in service to the king. You are to train and become as powerful as you can so that we can stand against Rohaer. I could go on, but that should be more than enough for you to see that you are in no position to change the king’s mind.”
So this was the king’s decision, not Barrett’s or anyone else’s. “What if Eden refuses to use dteria any longer?” I asked.
“Then she will likely be replaced with another sorcerer who is more suited to provide us with what we need in the upcoming months.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Are you forgetting about her enchanting skill? Reuben just admitted this morning that he’ll never be as good as she is.”
“There is not enough time for her to learn any level three or higher enchanting skills, and we do not have the resources for her level one and two skills to make much of a difference.”