The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  “How unflattering that sounds.”

  “Agreed,” Camille said in a deadpan voice.

  I tugged harder, putting one foot against the wall, literally and metaphorically.

  “He can't be allowed to run loose. You know that, despite your worrisome fondness for him. You know he needs to be watched.” Bellacia's voice was far too light. “They are setting up campus so they will be able to do so. He requires a firm hand and a watchful eye. For his own good, of course.”

  “Secure him another way then. You aren't going to get him on your arm, and your face is far too lovely to be irreparably scarred trying and failing to use mind control on Sera McEllian's son.”

  Bellacia laughed, a tinkling sound. “You will always be my favorite. I do so love my skin. I only use the finest of Tinctly's creams on it. Fine. Lox is looking exceptionally well formed this year, and he'll likely win the swords and sorcery part of the competition. He'll make a lovely adornment at Father's ball.”

  “A far more promising prospect. Especially since he was talking about you the other day.”

  “There's always Ramirez too.” Bellacia's voice was too idle… Wow, she really wielded that thing like a weapon. No response issued from Camille. “Unattached and deadly. He would lend me an air of mystery.”

  “He doesn't date either,” Camille's voice was tight. Their background noise rose in volume from whatever magic they were doing. “Watch that second blast, Bella,” Camille called, sounding slightly smug.

  I got my panic under control and started unwinding the magic in the attached ribbon—as I should have done from the beginning. It was as if I hadn't learned anything from destroying the entire Shangwei Art Complex last term when I had yanked wards from the walls in my panic.

  At the same time, I wondered what Bellacia and Camille were doing in there that they hadn't noticed an intruder. It had to be Bellacia's magic holding the room. Camille would have noticed and squashed me by now, I was pretty sure.

  “Someone ought to change Ramirez's dating status,” Bellacia said in a singsong way. “Perhaps I should tell Inessa to—”

  The ribbon broke free. Whew. Okay, no more thoughts of Dare. The ribbon, looking for completion, wildly shot toward another wall, connecting to a second room with a snap.

  No!

  The panic had only one moment to form, then I was flat on the ground, cheek pressed to the tiles, arms and legs splayed. The connection had been harshly severed by the person on the other side. I had obviously found the real Dare this time.

  I groaned. Draeger chuckled above me in his gruff, holographic way.

  “Always amusing, Cadet, when you accidentally connect to a real mage.”

  Why had my brain picked a mentor simulation that had been a combat mage? “Art mages rule, old man.”

  “Yes, you are doing a nice impression of a flattened squirrel, art mage. Very dignified.”

  “I'll end you. Pull out your coding, erase your upgrades, choose the Zen Master guy instead. Just you wait.” I pushed slowly upward. “Ow. Bruising.” I huffed a short laugh at myself, feeling better. Pity party over. “And I'm the personification of dignity. I will not be convinced otherwise.”

  A shot of magic swirled around my head, then abruptly poked me in the side.

  I gave a high-pitched scream, landed on my rear, then shot a bolt of magic wildly toward an unknown shadow on the wall. Before the spell could hit, the walls turned into dense forest and the shadow slipped behind trees, easily evading the blast.

  Someone had connected to my room.

  Draeger's voice boomed in laughter as my mind made him invisible in order to free up visual space. I could walk or shoot through Draeger, but in a fighting simulation, unless he was actively an opponent or obstacle, he would unnecessarily draw some of my attention.

  My room's connection capabilities were obviously wide open in the wake of my mistake with Camille and Bellacia. Either that or I had left a ribbon open to one specific person.

  I looked at where the shadow had first shown itself. The magic of the entry point was fading, but the connection was still visible. Stunning ultramarine. I groaned. Alexander Dare had connected with my room, perhaps recognizing my magic after flattening me.

  Magic poked me in the side again, almost mischievously. I stumbled back a step and looked around. The simulation rooms were incredible and somehow the floor either ceased to exist or became an omnidirectional mover, allowing me to walk in any direction without actually getting closer to a wall. I could—and had, under Draeger's command—run for miles without hitting anything.

  Another poke made me swear. But this time I followed the magic. Traces, indeed. I focused and Dare popped into view, grinning down at me from up on a branch.

  “You called?” Dare said, his voice almost lazy—completely different from how he had been before baiting the stooges and blowing the Department's device.

  “No. I most certainly did not.”

  The dirt beneath my feet moved abruptly, and I fell back on my rear. I could see the shadow of a small dragon flying through the simulated jungle sky. I blinked at it, mind connecting the image to my thoughts. The change in Dare's attitude had occurred before the blown device. It had been when I'd given him the dragon.

  “What kind of sorry civilian accidentally attaches to a combat mage in a battle simulation room?” Dare said.

  Combat mages obviously had the same sense of humor, because I could feel Draeger's answering amusement surrounding me.

  “One prone to accidents,” I muttered. Magic poked me again.

  “I usually don't bother to check the identity of accidental intruders, but imagine my surprise when after feeling a vague echo of the trespasser, I checked and found you.”

  His magic poked me a fourth time as I tried to stand, then a fifth as I stumbled.

  “Okay, that's it,” I muttered, finally on my feet.

  I twisted my hands and the forest turned into a three dimensional black-and-white block sketch that completely surrounded us. I didn't allow him time to react to the change before I whipped my hand down, redrawing the black line that he was perched upon, and yanking it down like a trap door.

  He fell to the floor, but landed in a crouch, one hand on the black and white tiles. His grin turned into something far more delighted and bloodthirsty.

  “All of those doodles are good for something after all, Crown?” A twirling staff appeared in his hands and he drove it sharply into the floor, breaking the tiles beneath me and sending me into an abyss.

  In free fall, I quickly redrew lines beneath me into a tunnel, then dropped myself Escher-style from the ceiling. I landed back on the floor, which was once more intact, and crouched with my virtual pencil in hand.

  Magic blasted toward me and I drew a shield, making the magic bounce. He caught the ricochet and twisted it, sending it back in ten streams. I channeled everything I remembered from the sketch world I had accidentally trapped Will within, and then began drawing in broad strokes, changing the environment around both of us and making the streams hit and ricochet back toward him.

  He laughed and let me change the environment, sidestepping my attacks or catching my thrown magic in his palm. His eyes keenly tracked me, watching my movements as he defended against them, then with one swipe, he shattered the line of magic I was using to draw.

  The backlash threw me back a step. He had watched, then pinched my advantage at the root. “Oh, it's on,” I said.

  I launched myself into a box on the floor, collapsed the box into a flat plane around me, then rotated it through empty space to form on a different wall. He turned just in time to catch the dart I threw, transformed it into a glowing ball of sapphire, then tossed it at the ground, falling deliberately into the resulting hole in mimicked manipulation. Crap, he learned fast.

  I pulled the wall around me, trapping myself in the white space.

  I was so out of my depth. I had never deliberately connected to someone else in one of the other rooms. I had acci
dentally connected to other rooms—mostly Dare's—a handful of times, but had always been kicked out instantaneously. I had never explored the vast awesomeness that could be produced from one's own head in simulation. Whether any of this was possible in the real world or not didn't matter. Adrenaline and excitement collided in an overwhelming surge.

  Hiding within my own manipulation, I tried to silence my quick breathing. After a moment, a small chewing noise registered. Paper tore above me, and the black-and-white head of a papered dragon poked through. Using a projection of my own creation to track me... Oh, it was truly on.

  Black fire blew from its mouth and I barely twisted and wrung myself from the paper in time. I landed flat on the floor. A booted foot pressed down on my back.

  Okay, not so much on as over.

  A dangerous smile smirked down at me. “Again.”

  ~*~

  After an hour of getting flattened by Dare in increasingly crazy manipulations, I had come to the distinct realization that even while he laughed, Dare was deadlier than I'd seen before or been led to believe. If I thought on it too long, the question of how he had not killed the Bone Beast immediately last term became quite a frightening memory. My subconscious magic and black magic experiments had created something that formidable? Kind of terrifying.

  Dare watched everything I did, then used it against me in the next second. So quickly did he convert strategy and moves into counter attack, that I was left wondering how. Ugh. He would have been thick as thieves with Christian in the non-magic world—or in this one, if we'd grown up here.

  He requisitioned my hour directly afterward—which had been my free time—and dragged me, limping, around campus with him on his patrol before healing me with a smirk and taking off to God knew where.

  I shook off the weirdness of the possible revelation that we might be forming a friendship and dragged myself back to the dorm. A stupid grin painted my face and I couldn't get it off.

  Before I could throw myself on my bed, close my eyes, and think up something witty with which to amuse Olivia, I noticed movement on her desk.

  A paper caterpillar was inching its way along. A caterpillar, not an egg.

  I stared at it for a long moment, stricken, then touched the wards. There was a slight tingle of sickly brown attached to Olivia's health thread, but far lighter than what it had been after the previous attack.

  “It ate the magic,” Olivia said, without looking up, but obviously aware of the direction of my thoughts. “I opened my mother's note and the egg flew right out of my bag, swallowed the note's magic, then burst into that.” She pointed at the inching insect.

  “Did it? How strange,” I said innocently, trying to hide my concern.

  “Ren.”

  “Yes?”

  Olivia was still looking at her desk, her gaze blank and unseeing. “Thank you.”

  “Absolutely my pleasure.” I walked to my bed and changed out items from my bag, giving her some privacy. “You ready to do some serious justice-mongering tonight?”

  She cleared her throat. “Yes.” Her voice was strong. Good.

  “Awesome. Dinner first?” I needed the calories and the renewal energy of the cafeteria.

  She nodded.

  “And I, uh, was thinking we might make a stop after service?” I shifted on my feet, hoping she wouldn't change moods and kill me.

  “To see Leandred?” She looked darkly resigned.

  “Uh, no. I wouldn't do that to you.”

  “Well, where to, then?” she said, motioning for me to hurry up. “My sense of disapproval is awaiting activation.”

  I grinned at her dry tone and hurried to the door. Maybe I'd survive after all.

  She slipped the caterpillar carefully into her bag and I adjusted my wavering tally.

  Protection of friends: Restarting from 0

  ~*~

  We were both exhausted at the end of our two hours of service, but it had been an invigorating and productive service session. New clients for Olivia and several new contacts for me—a communications mage who could hack any frequency, an alchemist who could exchange one metal for another, and a music conductor who could change the fabric of the air using sound!

  There had been a few dull calls, of course. A girl casting a restricted love spell, a few people imbibing things they weren't supposed to be imbibing, two benign room explosions, and the relocation of an entire school of wild grouper to one of the science labs.

  Cleaning up enormous, flopping fish had turned tedious after the first few fun zaps with Justice Toad. Lab accidents were normally under the dominion of the class professor, and not in our jurisdiction. But sneaking in after hours to use equipment in order to enchant the entire female population of Excelsine? That fell to us. That they had produced a school of groupers instead of a school of groupies...well, such subpar spellcasting deserved special punishment...a firesnake-skin-collecting sort of punishment.

  Testing Olivia's patience near the end, we made a Level Three call to Constantine, who had invoked savage retribution on the girl who had cast the restricted love spell earlier. Why was it always Constantine they were trying to enchant? He might be the king of all that was sensually dark and brooding, but he was the emperor of revenge. I knew for a fact he had a device that downgraded his offense level, which meant he had enacted some serious Level Four vengeance.

  The Neutralizer Squad had been called for the girl, so we hadn't seen the results of Constantine's revenge, but I had a mind to go find her again, then shake her with a few “Seriously? What were you thinking?” types of statements thrown in.

  Our final service call was to Delia, who had successfully created a weaving pattern capable of hypnotizing the wearer into doing her bidding for a period of five minutes after donning the woven fabric.

  Not really a problem—until she had tested it on an unknown subject and made the girl do her laundry.

  For someone so determined to rule the world one day, Olivia was capable of a pretty deep well of disapproval, and Delia seemed to enjoy stepping on all of her buttons. I thought of Delia's words about Olivia and Olivia's mom. I wondered if they'd had some magicist war against each other in their previous school. I'd ask later.

  Olivia left the punishment to me and I gave Delia laundry duty at the Fashion Design Center. I was pretty sure Delia had sought the punishment, after all—she got the best ideas when she went through the laundry at the Design Center and mentally mixed enchantments together as she sorted items.

  Because if Delia had been trying to do something nefarious, it would have been far worse than making someone do her laundry—tracking bracelet or not.

  Delia winked at me as we left, looking completely revitalized, as if the fiasco of Politics hadn't happened.

  Olivia and I logged out of service and headed toward Dorm Five.

  “So tell me finally, what is the purpose of this visit we are undertaking?” Olivia asked, tiredly and reluctantly following me.

  “I need you to make sure I don't sign a faulty contract.”

  She frowned. “A contract? Why didn’t you give me a copy to review?”

  “Because it is going to be verbal.”

  Olivia gave me a look deep from her disapproval well. “I'm not going to like this.”

  “Not in the least.” I fished out the sketches I had made and hastily stuck them into a folder.

  Olivia looked at the drawings as I moved them. “Art Expressionists Club?” She looked puzzled.

  “Gamers. Fun guys.”

  Patrick opened the door, his eyes bright. “Welcome!” He swept his hands through the air, inviting us inside. “Please, enter our humble abode.”

  I whistled at the interior of their room. It currently looked like something straight out of a sci-fi dream—projections and holographic images danced on every surface, tests ran, and code scrawled. “Nice.” I handed Trick the folder then poked at one of the images in the air.

  In the midst of the chaos and equipment, Olivia held herself st
iffly and regally, coolly waiting for an explanation.

  “We got in a few tests tonight,” Patrick said. “No alerts issued, but thanks for telling us about your service time, Ren. Fantastically useful.”

  Olivia gave me a deeply unimpressed look.

  “We'll be just a minute,” Asafa said. He smiled out at us from where he was situated under a large worktable hooking up wires with magic pliers. “Have a seat. Trick forgets his courtesies when excited.”

  “I do no such thing.” Trick hastily cleared off space on the small couch in the midst of the chaos.

  Dorm Five was laid out in a slightly different fashion from Twenty-five. Larger rooms accommodated a communal work area for the two students sharing the space, but the bathroom was shared with a room of students on the other side. I was a fan of our personal bathroom, but extra workspace was always a good thing. Saf and Trick had chosen to convert their extra living space into a gaming area—with a couch, two reclining chairs, a coffee table, and numerous screens and projector devices—to the surprise of pretty much no one, I'd bet.

  The space was currently drowning in magic and tech.

  Olivia looked dubiously at the couch, but sat down regally with her legs crossed at the ankles and to the side. I energetically dropped next to her, right foot tucked under my left thigh. We both looked over the back of the couch while Patrick opened the folder. Asafa finished his machinations under the large table, his hair sticking out from his head without a single drooping spike.

  “These are...” Patrick trailed off, flipping through my pages. “Saf, wait until you see these.”

  He put his hand on the manticore-like beast that was snarling and pacing on the page, and pulled a visual duplicate of the animated drawing into the air. His other hand circled the creature, pulling a string of code from one of the displays and making it encircle the image.

  The string of aerial code bloomed into a suspended three-dimensional scene with a jungle landscape. Several associated animals populated the landscape.