by CM Raymond
Her anger flared. “I can’t!”
“You can!” he screamed. And with the scream came a crash of thunder. “Let it out!”
Lightning hit the water, the whiteness blinding her for a moment.
Hannah collapsed around Sal and covered him with her arms. All the fear and frustration that she had been setting aside for hours came pouring out of her. But as those emotions washed over her, she felt something else among them. She felt Sal’s presence, as if they were connected, one with the other.
There was no telling where her body ended and his began. “Please,” she wept, picturing the animal’s potential. “Do this. For me.”
Her mind began to swim and she lost track of where she was. In the back of her mind, she thought she felt the world shaking and an intense heat. But she couldn’t focus on that.
All she could feel was the animal twitching beneath her chest. Something jabbed at her stomach and chest, and Hannah jumped, afraid she was hurting him. Looking down, she saw the skin on Sal’s back begin to bulge like two balls were trying to push through. Sal looked at her. She could feel his pain, but also his desire to please her, to do her bidding.
Hannah sobbed as she saw the pain she had caused him. The animal wanted nothing more than to end the torment—she could feel it—but he refused to give up. Sal screeched as finally, his scales could hold it in no longer. The balls burst through his skin, but they weren’t balls at all. Instead, something long and bony emerged.
The bones pushed up and out of Sal’s back as his screech continued across the waters. Extending an arm’s length on either side of him, they expanded into two glorious wings.
The last thing Hannah saw before losing consciousness was her pet lizard pushing from the ground, wings stretching toward the sky.
But I’m wrong, she thought as she hit the ground. He’s not a lizard at all.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ezekiel cracked the door and peered in on Hannah, the brave young girl who had quickly become the best pupil he had ever had. He beamed with delight. The magician who had seen more of the paranormal than anyone else living on Irth just witnessed the impossible. Hannah had just reached into the etheric and pulled out power like Ezekiel had never before beheld.
As she unleashed her frustrations, the ground beneath her began to shake. The trees and grass around them leaned in as if she was calling out to all of them. Fire bubbled beneath her skin. And then, in the midst of that terrifying sight, something beautiful happened. Hannah’s pet, the creature that was once nothing more than a common lizard, become something far more majestic.
Hannah pulled an image from her mind and created something brand new. And now that thing was curled up on his master’s legs. Sal continued to stretch its new wings as if trying to convince itself that they were real.
Nodding his head silently, Ezekiel whispered, “You are new magic, little creature.”
The lizard whipped out its tongue and nestled closer to the girl. The movement stirred her, and she cracked open her eyes.
“Ezekiel,” she moaned, “was it a dream?”
“It was more real than anything,” he replied in a gentle hush. “And it was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it in my considerably long life.”
A tired smile washed over her face, and her eyes closed. As Ezekiel stared at his sleeping student, he realized that what he said may not have been true. While he had never seen a creature change like that, he’d seen magicians expend all of their energy like Hannah had.
Perhaps that was the connection.
But it was a question that Ezekiel was unprepared to answer.
He needed help, and there was only one place he knew where to get it.
Once he had reached the idea, it took him mere seconds to make up his mind.
“I need to take care of something important. Dire even. You stay here. Stay safe.”
She opened her eyes, and Ezekiel was gone.
****
Recovery from whatever the hell happened between Sal and her took a full day and a half. Hannah spent the entire time in bed, feeling as if she had the flu. Her body ached and her energy level was next to nothing. Casting before had exhausted her, but it was more like being sleepy after a long day of hustling the streets with Parker.
This was something altogether different, and it scared her more than a little. She wondered what would happen if her body reacted like this in the heat of battle. She’d be a sitting duck, and the Hunters would have their way with her—or worse, Adrien would.
Either way, she’d need to talk with Ezekiel about how one defends herself in an exhausted state.
Glancing over, she found a plate of food on the bedside table. Touching the meat, she could feel that it was still warm. It was the third meal she had awoken to. Before she had dropped into slumber, the magician had told her that he had to go and attend to something important.
The food appearing by her bed was strange, but she had to admit, it was nothing more unusual than any of the other shit she had experienced since making it to the tower.
She reached down and scratched Sal’s back. Her fingers struck his wings, and she sat up in surprise. Somehow, she had forgotten the magic that had taken her energy away for the past thirty-six hours.
The creature stood and slowly moved the wings, clearly showing off his new accessories to her. The spikes running down his back had grown, and his scales reflected a darker shade of green. But the wings... the wings were like nothing she had ever seen—except in her imagination. They were long and thin, and yet Hannah could sense a strength within them.
Hannah wondered how far they could take him.
“Looks good, you little creep,” she said. “Learn to use them yet?”
In response, Sal waddled to the side of the bed and started to vigorously flap the wings. Hannah’s hair blew back as his little body levitated over the surface of her bed. He hung a few feet in the air before tumbling off the bed and onto the floor. Sal looked up at her and whipped his tongue in and back out.
Hannah could swear he was trying to smile.
“Not bad. Looks like we are both going to take some time getting used to our new powers.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, grabbed the plate of food, and made her way out of the room and into the great hall.
The meal helped immensely, but she was still feeling woozy from her use of magic. She also knew it was time to get back to work. Arcadia wasn’t going to save itself, and if she were going to have a hand in its redemption, she would need to be ready for the fight.
Pushing her head back, she realized it was time to practice nature magic. Ezekiel was still nowhere to be found, but she didn’t need him to practice her forms. She quickly made her way outside.
The air felt refreshing on her face, and it was invigorating to get outside of the tower. She made her way to the stream, where the forest met the short band of grass between it and their home.
She looked down at her usual spot, the place had changed somehow. The large tree that loomed overhead seemed to lean a little more today. And where Hannah usually sat was a ring of dead grass that looked like it had been burned. Hannah thought for a moment about the power that it had taken to transform Sal, and she wondered what else she was capable of.
Dropping into a cross-legged sitting position, she closed her eyes and focused. An hour passed in a heartbeat, and she opened her eyes and felt for her pulse.
Slower than ever, she thought.
Taking a few minutes, she ran through some of the simpler spells that she’d mastered during her first week under the tutelage of Ezekiel. Pleased to find that they all still came easily and that she expended little energy on them, she stood, deciding to try something a bit more intense.
Her mind wandered, trying to imagine what the next step would have been if the magician had been with her. The sun bleated down on Hannah, and her body started to sweat under the folds of her cloak.
“Wish we had some shade,” she s
aid to Sal, who was flapping around in the grass practicing his own skills. He looked like an awkward toddler just after learning to walk.
She couldn’t help but laugh at his difficulty. The animal looked up at her and then curled into a tight ball in the grass. “Some shade,” she repeated as she looked up at the cobalt blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and she knew exactly what she was going to try.
She held her hands out to her sides, palms up. She pictured a storm cloud roll in overhead and nothing happened. The other arts were making some sense of how they worked.
Even the work of connecting outward with the physical things of nature—the trees, the river, and even Sal—made some sense to her, but she had no idea how to connect with the weather. Imagining herself raising up into the sky and spreading clouds overhead didn’t work. She tried saying some simple words, thinking that mixing with mind magic might help. Nothing.
“Looks like you might need a staff,” a voice said behind her.
“Zeke!” Hannah shouted with joy as she turned around. She didn’t expect to have missed him as much as she had. “You’re back.”
“Indeed. And you’re practicing. I’m glad to see it, but weather control is a significant jump from what you’ve done so far.”
She smiled. “I look terrible with a sunburn. Just trying to protect my doll-like complexion.” Hannah winked at her teacher. “Wasn’t sure how long you’d be gone, and I didn’t want to fall behind.”
“Very wise. Discipline is the key to mastery. Keep it up. And… it looks like little Sal has been working on his own discipline.”
She laughed. “Yeah, poor guy. Not sure he knows what happened to him.”
“Well,” Ezekiel said. “He knows about as much as you do, which is a good start. Your dragon will figure it out soon enough.”
“Dragon?” She looked down at Sal who looked back at her.
Then his tongue whipped out and back in. “What the hell?”
The old man chuckled. “Look at him. You want to keep calling him a lizard. I guess that’s fine, but we both know what we have here. And if Sal is to grow into what he now is, it is going to take you nurturing him. The first step is to admit and name his new nature.”
“Holy shit. I have a dragon!” She crowed.
“Yes, you do.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Kind of little for what I expected dragons to look like. Wait, does this mean they actually exist? I mean other than Sal?”
The magician shrugged. “I don’t think so. At least none that I’ve ever seen. But that’s the power of your new magic. You have truly created something, brought something to life that once only existed in dreams as far as I know. The mystics devote their lives to accomplish only a shadow of what you have with Sal here. You connected with him during his changing. He’ll do your bidding forever, I suspect.”
She looked fondly at him. “And I his.”
Ezekiel leaned on his staff. “Yes, it does go both ways. But remember, you are the magician, not him. Now, about that staff.” Ezekiel’s eyes cut to the trees, and Hannah could tell he was looking for the perfect limb.
“Hey, Zeke, any chance I can have a wand instead?”
“A wand?”
“Yeah, you know, nothing screams ‘old man’ more than leaning on a staff. A wand is, well, kind of sexy. And if it is about focusing…”
Looking at his own staff, Ezekiel said, “I’ve had this since I was not much older than you.”
“Let’s not get all self-conscious about this, Z. No offense, really. I mean, I never expected you to have been very fashionable, but…”
Ezekiel held up his hand to stop Hannah before she had a chance to say anything else more offensive. “We can discuss that at another time. In fact, the druids will have better luck than you and me at creating a tool for you to connect to the natural world. Let’s wait until we speak with them.”
“I guess that’s on the to-do list, right after blow shit up.” She gave Ezekiel a winning grin. “Now, where the hell have you been?”
The old man’s face darkened a little bit. Hannah could tell that something was bothering him. “Well do you want the truth, or do you want the TRUTH.”
She laughed at him. “What the hell kind of wizard nonsense is that?”
“Trust me, young girl. You’ll be speaking my brand of nonsense soon enough. But to answer your question, I’ve been traveling throughout Irth… and I’ve been sitting alone at the top of the tower. I’ve been everywhere without budging an inch.”
Hannah paused for a second and squinted her eyes. It was a riddle and she was determined to solve it. Finally, the answer clicked and she yelled with glee. “You’ve been astro-whatevering. Traveling with your mind!”
Ezekiel nodded, proud once again of his young protégé. “Top notch.”
“But where did you go?” she asked. His face turned cold again.
“Might want to sit for this one.”
The two sat in the grass, taking in the sunshine, as Ezekiel told his story.
“While you’ve been training these last weeks, I have been quite active, mentally. At first, I spent my energy walking the streets of Arcadia, but this time from the safety of the tower. I’ve been gone from my city for nearly half a century after all. And when I went there physically, well you stumbled across my path within the first hour, flashing rude gestures at large angry men.”
Hannah nodded. She remembered it well.
“Naturally,” Ezekiel continued, “I needed to get you away from the city. But once I had, I decided to return. That is the battleground after all, and I mean to be prepared. So, I observed and assessed and planned. But preparing for battle means more than just knowing the arena. You need to know your enemy as well.”
“Adrien,” Hannah said between gritted teeth.
The man’s name rang in her ears. While many in Arcadia elevated him to nearly god status, the third person with the Matriarch and Patriarch, many, including Hannah, despised the man.
The people of Queen’s Boulevard were pretty easily split. Half were enamored by the rhetoric of the Academy and the Capitol, dreaming of one day working hard enough to make it out of the Boulevard and up onto the hill. The other half realized that those in charge were working for their own ends, not for the common good.
Hannah and William were lucky. Wisdom was the foremost of her mother’s abilities, and she passed it along to her children from their earliest days. Highlights of the story, as told by her, remained etched in Hannah’s mind, and no matter how much her drunk father went on about the virtues of the authorities, he couldn’t sway what she had already learned.
“Tell me about Adrien. I want to know what happened. How he became like he is.”
The old man nodded. “Interesting question. I also want to know the answer to your query. I cannot say exactly what went on with my student since I left Arcadia, though I have gotten some information. But I will tell you what I know. As the Age of Madness was coming to a close, a small band of us had been working together to not only survive but also to pursue the cure.
“The days were exciting and we were filled with hope. Hard not to have hope in the darkest of days. It was almost all we had. There was a group of about five of us who started to think seriously about the founding of a new city. Of Arcadia.
“One night, I remember it was winter as we were huddled by a stove in a makeshift shelter. A boy about your brother’s age came stumbling through the door. His hands and face were riddled with frostbite, and he looked like he hadn’t eaten for a month. We did the best we could to nurse him back to health.
“The boy told us about the loss of his parents to some of the mad ones, the zombies as you call them. He’d been making it on his own for a long time and had no plan to do otherwise. Trust was not one of his vices, and we couldn’t blame him. He had seen the worst come out in people, and it was only by the necessity of winter that the boy named Adrien agreed to join us.
“Over the course of a few weeks,
not only did he come to trust us, but I started to see that the boy had abilities beyond what even he knew. It wasn’t unlike what I saw in you. So, I offered to train him if he would agree to stay and help to build our dream. We were quite a pair. He was naturally gifted; I was naturally stubborn. Many I have taught believe I was born special. I wasn’t. I just work without ceasing and have always doggedly pursued that which I put my mind to. Magic was no different.”
“As people started to gather to our burgeoning town, Adrien’s gifts advanced quickly. He took lead on magical construction, helping others understand how the gift of physical magic could be used for the sake of actually constructing the city itself. It was an amazing sight to see.