Chapter Thirty
SHE HIT THE GROUND, HARD ENOUGH to hurt. She lifted her hands, hastily raising a protective ward. If she wasn’t alone... something struck her like a physical blow. No, not something. The absence of something. There was no magic in the air. The chamber was pitch-black, without even a glimmer of light. Panic yammered at her as she stumbled to her feet and looked around, half-convinced she was somehow back on Earth. But she could still feel her magic...
The nexus point is gone, she thought numbly, as she cast a night-vision spell. She’d grown so used to its presence in the background that she hadn’t realized it was there until it was gone. Or...
She looked slowly around the room. It was the room, the mirror chamber she’d tried to use, but... it wasn’t. There was no sign of her friends. The floor below her feet was caked with dust so thick she knew no one had been in the room for years. And the mirror... she eyed it warily, probing it with her magic. The link to the nexus point—her nexus point—was dim, but she could feel it when she touched the mirror. She could force it open and go back home, if she wished. She could...
Dust billowed up around her as she turned and surveyed the room. There was no sign of Caleb. There was no sense that anyone had come through the mirror anytime in the recent past, nothing that might have suggested that Caleb had found himself trapped here or Alt-Caleb had been examining the mirror when he’d been thrown into another universe. And there was still no sense of the nexus point. She reached out with her senses, extending them as far as she could, but felt nothing. The nexus point was gone.
It’s gone in this universe, she thought. She tried to sense Caleb, but felt nothing. It didn’t prove anything, but... she glanced back at the mirror, wondering if she should turn around and go straight back home. If he’s here, somewhere...
She swallowed hard and made her way to the door. It was closed; locked, bolted and thoroughly hexed shut. She braced herself, then undid the charms one by one. Caleb hadn’t locked the door, she thought. The magic was completely unfamiliar. She’d opened the door once before, in her home universe, but here... the door had been left unlocked. She finished removing the spells and stepped into a dusty corridor. The dust was thinner, suggesting that someone had been exploring the school. She frowned, feeling vague hints of magic at the edge of her awareness. Caleb? Or someone else?
I should have taken some of Alt-Caleb’s blood, she thought, crossly. It would have upset him—and Master Highland—if she had, but... it might have made it easier to locate her Caleb. Or the Caleb that belonged in this world. Is this where Alt-Caleb came from?
She made her way down the corridor, careful to leave a trail leading back to the mirror. The school seemed to follow the same basic outline as her school, but she knew better than to take that for granted. This school seemed to have been abandoned for years. And yet... there were places in Whitehall where one could almost believe the entire building to be deserted, if one stood there long enough. The catacombs under the school hadn’t been explored for hundreds of years. They’d been dustier than Heart’s Eye.
Her lips curved into a faint smile as she found a stairwell leading down to the Great Hall. It took her a moment to realize that, in her world, the stairwell was a pile of rubble. Whatever had destroyed it hadn’t happened here. She stood at the top and peered down, into the darkness. Her spell should have allowed her to see what was lurking at the bottom, but... there was just darkness. She closed her eyes and concentrated, as hard as she could. The darkness refused to part. It was almost a living thing.
She tasted dust on the air as she looked around, slowly. The mirrors looked... dull, as if they were mere reflective surfaces rather than mirrors. Her image was curiously distorted, almost blurred beyond recognition. She touched the nearest mirror lightly and felt nothing. The mirror was a mundane mirror. And yet... she risked casting a light spell, throwing the stairwell into stark relief. The mirrors looked dead and cold.
The nexus point was never reignited, she thought, slowly. This school fell... and was … abandoned.
She felt a flash of alarm as it dawned on her that Dua Kepala—an alternate Dua Kepala—might be around somewhere. If he was still alive, here... she reached out with her senses, but found nothing beyond faint traces of magic. There was no hint of a necromancer, no hint of anything dangerous... she wasn’t sure how seriously she should take it. Her senses felt blunted, as if there was something dangerously wrong. She wanted to turn and hurry back to the mirror, leaving the dead school alone. And yet...
If Caleb is here, I can’t leave him, she thought. It had been a day—two days, really—since Caleb had fallen through the looking glass. He couldn’t be dead. He’d been strong and healthy and... he’d had water, hadn’t he? There was no sign of anything to eat in this dead school, but he should have been able to keep himself alive for a couple of days. He could have left the school.
She hesitated, wondering if that was actually true. The school was dead, but the rest of the world might be alive. Caleb might have made his way out of the school and teleported to Farrakhan or... or somewhere. Perhaps he’d gone looking for an alternate version of his family, or himself, or Emily herself. Or... perhaps he wasn’t here at all. He might have stepped out of a different mirror, or stepped into a very different world. She wondered, suddenly, if she could reignite the nexus point, before deciding it was probably impossible. She’d need a power source—a vast power source—and she had none.
Except myself, she thought. But that would be pointless.
She looked up and down the stairwell, then started to climb to the Schoolmaster’s office. There were windows, up there. Caleb would have gone there first, if only to get the lie of the land before deciding what to do. And... if there had been any differences between the school, there might be records there. It wasn’t much, but... it was all she had. Her legs began to ache as she reached the top, forcing her to take a break as she checked for hostile spells. The entire corridor seemed clear, but... there were traces of footsteps in the dust. Big footsteps. They belonged to a man.
Emily’s eyes narrowed. Caleb’s feet were bigger than hers, but not that big. And... it was hard to be sure, but it looked as though whoever had disturbed the dust had done it years ago, well before Caleb had fallen out of the mirror... if, of course, he’d fallen out of a mirror into this universe. Emily wondered, as she walked down the corridor, if she should shout for him. But she didn’t know who else might hear.
The traces of magic grew stronger as she reached the office, but... she couldn’t localize them. They weren’t trying to stop her... or do anything, as far as she could tell. The door wasn’t locked, let alone hexed. It looked as if someone had managed to force the door open without doing significant damage. Caleb? Or someone else... she pushed the door open gingerly, careful not to touch anything before she’d checked it for spells. The office looked to have been ransacked, the desk, bookshelves and chairs torn to pieces and scattered across the floor. The strange devices she’d seen in the other office were gone. Instead, a large mirror stood against the wall. She eyed it, warily. Another Manavore? Or something else?
Caleb wouldn’t have torn the office to shreds, she thought, feeling her heart sink. Cat might have, if he’d been in a tearing hurry, but not Caleb. He certainly wouldn’t have dumped books on the floor... she picked one of them up and glanced at the title. An Introduction to Mirror Magic. Her lips quirked. They’d recovered a similar book from the necromancer’s lair...
She felt another twinge of magic, focused on the mirror. She advanced towards it carefully, very carefully. The mirror felt... different. She tried to put the feeling into words, but failed. It felt... full. Or... or what? She thought something was trapped in the mirror. Caleb? Had he come up here and tried to use the mirror to escape? Or... she hesitated, torn between trying to undo the spell and concern about what might emerge. She was starting to think they’d found the wrong universe. If Caleb had come here, there was no sign of him.
“In for a penny,” she muttered, as she touched the mirror. “In for a pound...”
The mirror twisted in front of her, becoming something else. She stumbled back, suddenly convinced she’d made a terrible mistake. A Manavore... no, the mirror wasn’t becoming a Manavore. It was wavering, as if it was an illusion that could no longer maintain itself. It was... reality itself seemed to hiccup, a wave of... something crashing into her. The world seemed to wink...
... And then Dua Kepala—both of him—stood in front of her.
He looked different—younger somehow, as if necromancy had yet to take its toll—but it was him. Both of him. His hair was white, but his eyes were red. His mere presence crashed into her, polluting the air. Her legs felt as if they’d turned to stone. The last time she’d been so close to him, he’d killed Casper and fought Void to a standstill. She’d cheated to beat him and... there was no nexus point here, no hope of drawing on the power she’d need to tear him to shreds. And this Dua Kepala looked stronger and saner than his counterpart.
They trapped him in the mirror, she thought, numbly. Or he trapped himself. And I let him out.
Dua Kepala turned to face her, his bodies moving in unison. Emily couldn’t understand how he had one mind in two bodies—there were all sorts of horror stories about magicians who’d split themselves in two permanently—but it didn’t matter. His power was beating on the air, pressing against her defenses... demanding she submit. She bit her lip, then threw a blasting spell at the floor under his—their—feet. It wouldn’t do him any real harm, she thought, but it might distract them for a second. She turned as they stumbled, forcing herself to run. She couldn’t beat him in a straight fight.
“Come back.” Dua Kepala’s voice was rusty, as if he hadn’t spoken in years. “Come back and...”
Emily ignored him as she fled the office, scattering a handful of hexes and minor prank spells behind her. They wouldn’t slow him down for more than a few seconds, but... they might just buy her some time. Her magic was growing stronger, more focused... she hurled herself down the stairs, nearly tripping in her haste to get away. The necromancer followed, his magic reaching for her. It was practically part of him. She scowled, feeling a twinge of unwilling admiration. Dua Kepala had found a way to make necromancy work.
An invisible force grabbed her shirt and started to pull her back up. She looked up. Dua Kepala—one of his bodies—was standing at the top of the stairs, beckoning. She gritted her teeth, then muttered a spell that caused her shirt to dissolve into dust. The force let go, sending her plunging forward; she cast a spell to throw herself down the stairs and into a darkened doorway. Dust billowed around her as she landed. She coughed and spat, then rolled over. Behind her, Dua Kepala came closer. She picked herself up and threw the strongest blasting spell she could muster at the stairwell. The force of the explosion pushed her back against the walls. The stairwell itself shattered, sending the necromancer plunging into the darkness. Emily wanted to think the fall would kill him, but she knew better. A necromancer was very hard to kill.
Red light glimmered in the darkness. The necromancer was levitating himself... she turned and ran, throwing a second spell at the roof behind her. The entire building shook, pieces of debris falling to the ground. Hopefully, it would slow the necromancer down... she cursed under her breath, knowing he could simply melt his way through if he wished. And...
A hand snapped onto her wrist, yanking her up. She found herself staring into a pair of red eyes. The other body... she cursed her own mistake as she brought up her knee as hard as she could, striking him in the groin. It didn’t even slow him down. She forced herself to think as his eyes blazed into hers. He’d kill her. No, he’d drain her mind dry and then kill her...
She plucked the knife from her belt and stabbed into his eye. Dua Kepala stumbled back, letting go of her as magic—tainted magic—crackled around the blade. Emily dropped to the floor, then turned and fled. Behind her, she sensed his magic building to a crescendo. A normal person would be dead. But a necromancer... he might just survive.
Her mind raced as she kept moving, heading back to the mirror. Did she have time to prepare a nuke-spell? Did she dare use it? The nexus point was dead... wasn’t it? She was sure the school was empty, that Heart’s Ease had been abandoned as it had been in her timeline, but how would the nuclear blast and the dead nexus point interact? Would there be a far greater explosion? Would she devastate the entire continent? The entire world couldn’t be dead... would she sentence everyone to death? She couldn’t take the chance.
And Caleb can’t be here, she told herself, firmly. She reached out with her senses one last time, but there was nothing... apart from the necromancer. We found the wrong universe.
The necromancer was closing in. It was easy to sense him, but hard—very hard—to pin him down. The bilocation spell made it almost impossible. She forced herself to keep moving, despite the growing pain in her legs. There was no time to stop and check how badly she was hurt, or if she was bleeding. She had to get back to the mirror before it was too late.
She felt the entire building shake as the necromancer chased her up the corridor. She risked a glance and saw a sickly red light follow her, felt Dua Kepala’s presence as he closed in. She plunged into the mirror chamber, slamming the door behind her as she ran to the mirror. Her fingers brushed something solid. She had to push her magic into the mirror, hoping and praying she could open the link to her home dimension as the door shattered. Dua Kepala had hit it with enough magic to blow a hole in a stone wall.
He’ll bring the entire building crashing down, Emily thought, numbly. The mirror was twisting in front of her, opening a pathway and... she sensed, more than saw, the Manavore taking shape. Behind it, she could feel Dua Kepala trying to push his way into the mirror. If I...
She forced herself into the mirror. It felt different, as if she was caught in a vice, intent on squashing the life out of her, as if her entire body was being ripped apart cell by cell... she screamed as the Manavore appeared behind her, its mere presence disrupting the path through the mirror dimension. She pushed out with her magic, forcing it into the dead universe. Dua Kepala wouldn’t stand a chance. The Manavore would see him as nothing more than a tasty snack. And...
The mirror dimension seemed to shatter. Light flared, so bright she had to squeeze her eyes tightly closed. Daggers seemed to plunge into her mind, pain stabbing into her thoughts. She fell, again. The link to the nexus point was suddenly stronger, much stronger. The pain faded as she felt a solid surface underneath her. She was home.
“Emily?” Jayson’s voice echoed in her ears. He sounded worried. “Is it really you?”
“Yes,” Emily said. She opened her eyes. “It’s me.”
“Let go of me,” a voice shouted. It was Frieda, but... it was wrong. “Let go!”
Emily stared in horror. Frieda was struggling with Cirroc and Hoban, wriggling desperately even through her hands were tied behind her back. Magic crackled around her, threatening to tear into them the moment they weakened. Emily reached for her magic, unsure what was happening. Had Master Highland mounted a coup? Had he taken over the school? Had he subverted Hoban and Jayson and... she froze as the truth dawned on her.
It wasn’t Frieda. It wasn’t her Frieda...
“No,” she said, quietly. “I...”
“She fell through the mirror with you,” Master Highland said, quietly. “And this is what came out.”
Chapter Thirty-One
IMPOSSIBLE, EMILY THOUGHT.
She stared at Frieda... no, Alt-Frieda. She looked like Frieda, but she clearly wasn’t. She was stronger, more muscular, her hair flying in all directions as she tried to get to Emily... her dress, a torn and tattered robe, exposed more bare skin than the real Frieda would ever have tolerated. Magic crackled around her, tainted by... something. It wasn’t necromancy, Emily thought. It was something worse.
“She wasn’t tied to the wall,” Jayson said. He was speaking so quickly that the
words practically fell over themselves. “When you stepped through the mirror, she was dragged in and replaced...”
Emily felt a hot flash of anger. She glared at Hoban, who looked badly shaken. “Didn’t you think to check?”
“Let go of me,” Alt-Frieda shouted. Her magic grew stronger, battering against Cirroc and Hoban as they tried to hold her in place. “Let go!”
Master Highland glanced at Emily. “Where does this one come from?”
“I don’t know,” Emily said. Alt-Frieda was still struggling, but... Alt-Frieda directed a hateful look at her. At Emily. Frieda had never looked at her like that, even when Fulvia was damaging her mind. Loathing and anger and hate... and fear. Frieda was terrified of Emily, as terrified as Caleb’s counterpart. “I don’t want to know.”
There was a surge of magic. Cirroc and Hoban were blasted across the room. Alt-Frieda lunged forward, trying to slam her magic into Emily. Emily lifted her hand and cast a protective ward, something that would have stopped a normal magician in his tracks. Alt-Frieda crashed into it, as if she were determined to kill herself as long as she could take Emily with her. Emily gritted her teeth as she felt the ward begin to weaken, then cast a stunning spell. Alt-Frieda staggered, then crashed to the ground. She hadn’t even tried to undo her hands.
“She was scared of you,” Master Highland observed. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Emily said, again. He was right, damn him. Alt-Frieda really was scared of her... her personally. A nasty thought crossed her mind. If she did have a counterpart... what was her counterpart like? “Cirroc, Hoban. Take her to a bedroom, ward it thoroughly and keep her stunned until I get there.”
“Yes, My Lady,” Hoban said. He looked down at Alt-Frieda. “What happened to her?”
“What happened to you?” Master Highland caught Emily’s arm. “Did you find Caleb?”
Emily shrugged him off. “No,” she said. She picked up a cloak and wrapped it around her tattered undershirt. She’d forgotten she was practically topless. “Give me a minute to catch my breath.”
Mirror Image (Schooled in Magic Book 18) Page 29