She heard a sizzling sound. The runes themselves smoked, threatening to catch fire. The floor beneath the creature was melting, warping out of shape... Emily didn’t know what to do except pray. The Manavore couldn’t affect the runes directly—she thought—but if it melted the floor it would either fall to the lower levels or simply disable the runes. Either way, it would escape and... she doubted it would let them trick it again. She reached for her magic, but... what could she do? The Manavore’s howl seemed to grow stronger, again, before it twisted and started to die. It threw everything it could into keeping itself alive a few seconds longer, but it snapped out of existence. There was a climactic sense of something utterly alien...
... And then it was gone.
Emily felt tears running down her cheeks, as if she’d been crying. She rubbed her eyes gingerly, half-expecting to find her hands covered in blood. Hoban had been bleeding... the thought snapped her out of her funk, driving her to her feet. Frieda was running up the stairs, straight towards Hoban. He was covering one of his eyes with his left hand. Blood leaked between his fingers and dripped on the floor.
That didn’t happen last time, Emily thought, as she forced herself to inspect the runes. They were scorched and twisted, but they’d held. Barely. I didn’t see anyone’s eyes bleed... did I?
She reached out with her mind, touching the wards. A Manavore should be instantly detectable, if only because its mere presence would be tearing holes in the wards. The wards had taken a pounding—she shuddered as she realized it would take some time to rebuild the network—but they seemed to be largely intact. And yet, there were blind spots. Anything could be lurking in the blind spots, anything at all.
The mirror turned into a Manavore, she thought, as she forced herself to walk up the stairs. What... where did it even come from?
“I’m fine,” Hoban said. Blood was still leaking from his eye. “I don’t need help...”
“Yes, you do.” Emily was in no mood for macho bullshit. Frieda wouldn’t think any less of Hoban for seeking medical assistance, now the danger was over. Besides, there was a fine line between stubbornness and outright stupidity. “Frieda, go fetch the Gorgon. She’s the closest thing to a Healer we have.”
And that’s something we’re going to have to fix, she thought, as Frieda hurried off to do her bidding. We should have hired a trained Healer as well as everything else.
Cirroc materialized beside her. “I got everyone down to the rear levels,” he said. “They’re safe...”
“For the moment,” Emily said. The mirror had become a Manavore. It made no sense. Nothing about the whole affair made sense. “Are there any mirrors there?”
“They’re all covered,” Cirroc said. “And...”
He swallowed, hard. “Seth is dead. Isn’t he?”
“I think so,” Emily said. It was possible that Seth had been snatched away somewhere, but... she shook her head. She’d never heard of any of their victims returning. Seth had died in terrible agony. “He never stood a chance.”
Cirroc’s face fell. Emily understood. An hour ago, Cirroc had been one of the elite; strong in muscle and magic alike. Now, he’d felt utterly helpless as the Manavore shrugged off his strongest spells and come within bare millimeters of tearing him apart. The shock wouldn’t be good for him. He’d either recover, and come out of it stronger than before, or fall into a funk from which he’d never recover.
It was easier for me, Emily thought. She gently moved Hoban’s hand away from his left eye and examined the wound. It was hard to see where the blood was actually coming from. I spent sixteen years without any power or privilege at all.
Cirroc sat down as Emily did what she could for Hoban. “Emily? What was that thing?”
“A very good question.” Master Highland sounded tired, but angry. “Lady Emily. What was that thing?”
His voice hardened. “And don’t pretend ignorance. Not now.”
Emily felt a hot flash of anger. How dare he talk to her like that? It vanished, almost as quickly as it had come. Cirroc wasn’t the only person who’d come face to face with a... with an outside context problem. Master Highland looked as if he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Lord Whitehall had handled it better, but then... Lord Whitehall had been on the run for months, if not years, before he’d reached the castle. Master Highland...
“Yeah.” Her throat was dry. It was hard to talk. “Let me deal with Hoban and then...”
She swallowed, hard. She’d have to choose her words very carefully. She needed time to think. What could she say without telling him something he’d either believe unquestionably or dismiss as an obvious lie? She wasn’t sure which outcome she’d prefer. If he thought she was a liar, it would be bad; if he started thinking about time travel, it might be worse.
“We’ll get something to drink too,” she said. “And then we’ll talk.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
IT WAS A MEASURE OF HOW badly shaken they all were, Emily reflected, that Yvonne served the drinks in the staff room without complaint and Master Highland refrained from sarcastic remarks. Everyone looked shaken, even the people who hadn’t seen the Manavore with their own eyes. They’d all seen the damage the creature had left in its wake.
And Seth is dead, she thought, as she took her cup of hot Kava. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Seth had been an asshole, but... she shook her head. Asshole or not, he hadn’t deserved the death penalty. His death was a warning in a way that Sixth’s death could never be. They—magicians as well as mundanes—were playing with fire in an environment that might be as dangerous to them as everyone else. All his magic couldn’t protect him. It merely made him a target.
She sipped her drink, composing herself as best as she could. Master Highland was watching her, clearly waiting... she knew it was just a matter of time before he started asking pointed questions. And yet, it was hard to figure out what to say. The truth would be dangerous—the thought kept rattling around in her head—but a lie might be equally bad, particularly if he caught her in it. He might, too. He was smarter than she wanted to admit.
Master Highland took a long swig of his drink, then placed the mug on the table. “Let us not waste time,” he said. “An apprentice is dead. The rest of us came very close to following him. You clearly knew what that... that thing was”—his eyes bored into Emily—“so enlighten us. What was it?”
“They’re called Manavores,” Emily said, picking her words carefully. “I came across references to them in old books. Very old tomes.”
Master Highland scowled. “And where did you find these books?”
“My father’s home,” Emily said. She hated to lie, but... she had no choice. “They were passed down through the years, from generation to generation. They... contained stories about the early days of magic. Some of them talked about creatures that ate magic and killed magicians. Manavores. The description matched.”
“Really.” Master Highland sounded displeased. She couldn’t tell if he thought she was lying or if he was perturbed at the thought of Void keeping long-lost books for himself. There was no way he could ask Void... unless he was prepared to go to him, cap in hand, and pay whatever price Void demanded. “And the books just happened to tell you how do defeat them?”
Jayson snorted. “With all due respect, Master, instructions for casting spells, waging wars and... eliminating supernatural vermin have been written down, time and time again. And then they have been passed through the generations. It would be odd indeed to encounter a description of a dragon or a griffin without instructions on how to kill one if necessary.”
“Dragons are fairly common,” Master Highland pointed out. “Manavores... I’ve never heard of anything like them.”
“They’re fairly simple to beat, as long as you know how to do it.” Emily took another sip of her drink. “I imagine they were driven to the brink of extinction.”
“And rightly so.” Cirroc looked pensive. “That lone creature could have killed us all
.”
“If Emily hadn’t known how to stop it,” Master Highland said.
“Perhaps you should be grateful,” Yvonne pointed out, sardonically. “You might have been its next victim if Lady Emily hadn’t saved your ungrateful ass.”
Master Highland purpled. “You...”
Emily held up a hand. “We don’t have time to fight,” she said, firmly. “We don’t even know where the creature came from.”
“The mirror,” Hoban said. He glanced towards the covered mirror. “No. It didn’t come out of the mirror. It was the mirror.”
“They caught the Manavore and turned it into a mirror?” Master Highland looked suspicious. “What were they thinking?”
“There was a sorcerer who turned a dragon into stone,” Cirroc said. “And...”
“The dragon returned to flesh while the sorcerer was showing off his work to his friends and flamed them all,” Master Highland cut him off. “I am familiar with the story. It was a stupid thing to do and... this is worse. This is a school!”
Emily nodded, slowly. The Manavore could have casually wiped out the entire school... her blood ran cold as she realized that might well have been the tipping point, that the Manavore might have gotten loose and rampaged throughout the building. Someone had clearly tried to build a runic network to trap and kill the beast, which suggested... what? Had they had time to put their plan into action before the school fell? But... a necromancer couldn’t have stopped a Manavore. He would have just been a very tasty snack.
It would have made more sense if the Manavore had come out of the mirror instead of being the mirror, she mused, thoughtfully. What had they been thinking? Stupid didn’t seem a strong word, somehow. They might have been poking into alternate dimensions...
She frowned. Manavores were multidimensional creatures. She was sure of that, if nothing else. Heart’s Eye might have tried to use them to stabilize the mirror network—or something—just as one might use a dragon to fly. But... it would be utterly insane to capture such a creature and put it to work in a school. They wouldn’t have stood a chance if—when—the Manavore broke free. Emily wasn’t even sure how they could have held it prisoner. The Manavore would’ve absorbed any spells.
“And it was... weird,” Cirroc said. “Did you notice how it had no trouble moving down a corridor that should have been too small for it?”
“It’s a multidimensional creature,” Emily said. “Most of it exists in another dimension.”
“And that allows it to fit into confined spaces?” Cirroc didn’t sound convinced. “That doesn’t make sense!”
Emily reached for her notebook, placed it on the desk and drew a spider-like creature. “This is a two-dimensional creature,” she explained. “It’s flat. It can move anywhere within its two dimensions, but it doesn’t have any conception of height. A three-dimensional creature would be completely beyond its grasp. You could put your foot down next to it and all it would see is the bottom of your foot.”
“It could just look up,” Hoban said.
“It can’t look up,” Emily said. “It doesn’t have any conception of height.”
She took a breath, then drew a circle around the creature. “There’s now a wall around the spider,” she explained. “The creature cannot go through the wall. It’s an impassable barrier, as far as it is concerned. To us, the wall is laughable. We can just step over it.”
“And the Manavores may see our walls in the same light.” Cirroc stroked his chin. “They can simply go around it.”
“Yeah.” Emily made a face. “It’s also difficult to hit the creature. We can’t punch something we can’t reach.”
“An insect can still bite a man and bring him down,” Master Highland said. “How did you kill it? What did your runes actually do?”
“They cut it off from its power source,” Emily said. “I’m not sure if the creature actually absorbs power from magic, from spells we shoot at it, but... it couldn’t survive without its connection to the higher dimensions.”
Frieda coughed. “Did you kill it? Or did it simply withdraw back into... into the higher dimensions?”
Emily hesitated. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know any way to test it.”
“Particularly as testing it could prove difficult,” Master Highland said. “Or dangerous.”
He met Emily’s eyes. “Why did you tell us not to use magic?”
“The books said they sense magic,” Emily said. “As long as we weren’t using magic, it couldn’t actually see us.”
Yvonne barked a harsh laugh. “So all your vaunted magic is useless if one of those... things turns up?”
“Of course not,” Master Highland said. “Emily stopped one.”
“Yes,” Emily said. “But I didn’t kill it with magic. I killed it by cutting it off from magic.”
“And if it absorbed the spells we hurled at it,” Cirroc said, “we might have been fueling it all along.”
“So your magic was worse than useless.” Yvonne sounded as though she wanted to gloat, as if she would have gloated if the situation hadn’t been so dangerous. “You were literally giving it the power to kill you.”
“Perhaps,” Emily said. “I don’t know if it was absorbing the magic or merely breaking up the spellware.”
“It was absorbing the magic,” Master Highland said. “I don’t know if it could have made use of it...”
“Then it seems to me that finding a way to taint the magic might kill it,” Yvonne said. “Or am I barking up the wrong tree?”
“I don’t see how we can taint the magic,” Master Highland said. “And even if we did, would it work?”
“Even necromancy wouldn’t provide enough power,” Emily said. “And that would be hideously dangerous...”
“But the Manavore didn’t kill the necromancer,” Cirroc pointed out. “Surely...”
“Not one more word,” Master Highland snapped. “Necromancy is unthinkable.”
Emily nodded. For once, she agreed with him completely.
“There may be another possibility,” Yvonne said. “You can’t use magic on it because it absorbs your spells, right?”
“Yes,” Emily and Master Highland said together.
“So what if you could punch a spell through the... absorption effect and get it straight into the creature?” Yvonne leaned forward. “It would work, wouldn’t it?”
Master Highland snorted. “The trouble with getting a spell through the absorption effect is that we can’t get a spell through the absorption effect. We might as well say you could cast spells if you could cast spells...”
“But there should be a way to get something through the haze,” Yvonne said. “We should give it some thought.”
Emily nodded, slowly. Most protective wards weren’t shields, in the conventional sense. They didn’t so much block an incoming spell as they broke it up, tearing the spellware apart and dissipating the magic harmlessly. A physical blow—or a charmed object—would go through the wards like a knife through butter. The wards might not even register the threat before it was too late. It wasn’t that uncommon for magicians to be knocked out by someone sneaking up behind them and hitting them over the head with a club. Most magicians disdained physical force...
She wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe that it was possible to find a way to sneak something through the absorption effect. But...
“We can work on it,” she said. It would be brilliant, despite everything, if Yvonne and Praxis found a way to combine magic and mundane technology. “I’ll sketch out the runic diagram for your consideration...”
“I think we’re forgetting something,” Cirroc said. “What happened to Caleb? Our Caleb?”
“And what does it have to do with those... creatures?” Master Highland frowned, as if a thought had struck him. “Demons are supposed to be time-sensitive. Could these creatures be dimensionally-sensitive?”
“It’s possible,” Emily said. She looked at her drawing. “It’s possible
they see multiple alternate timelines at once. They may be responsible for people being swapped for their alternate counterparts...”
Master Highland shook his head. “This makes no sense.”
“Things rarely do, until you find the piece that serves as the key and everything else falls into place.” Hoban grinned at Emily. “This is a fascinating puzzle, is it not?”
“Seth is dead.” Master Highland glared at him. “And this is turning into a nightmare.”
“Feel free to leave,” Frieda said.
Master Highland turned to look at her. “And you can watch your mouth.”
Emily rubbed her forehead. “Enough. We know how to stop these creatures. We’ll start setting traps, then continue researching the mirrors...”
“We should evacuate,” Master Highland said. He looked from face to face. “We came here, intending to clear the school and start setting up a... university. Instead, we are being attacked by creatures out of legend. We can’t abandon the building, but... at the very least, we should move everyone out before we continue...”
“We have to know what happened here,” Jayson said, quietly. “I would say that has become more urgent than ever.”
“Yes.” Master Highland tapped the table. “We should probably ask for help.”
“If help will come,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure what the White Council would do if they knew the truth. Or, more accurately, what little fragments of the truth they’d found. So far. Hoban was right—sooner or later, they’d stumble across the key to the mystery—but it might prove difficult if they were ordered to abandon the school. And who knew what problems would be left to fester if she followed orders? “We may be left alone.”
Mirror Image (Schooled in Magic Book 18) Page 24