Scarlet Tempest, #1

by Juniper King

  “You can go with him if you’d prefer.”

  I jolted again at Aksel’s voice. I hadn’t realized I’d been staring at Ayre’s back as he walked towards the stream. I shook my head. “It doesn’t take two people to get water. My time is better spent practicing.”

  Aksel nodded, but something in his posture suggested he was upset. “Do you remember what I taught you?” Aksel asked after a moment before I had the chance to ask what was bothering him.

  This had become somewhat of a routine over the last few days. While Ayre was out hunting in the evenings, Aksel and I would stay back at camp and practice my magic.

  Nodding, I sat down on the ground with my legs crossed. I closed my eyes, took in a deep breath through my nose, holding for a moment at the peak of the inhale, then exhaled in a slow, controlled breath. I did this a few more times until I felt calm and relaxed. “Okay, I’m ready.” I opened my eyes.

  “Alright, let’s start with a warm-up.” Looking around the campsite, he picked up a small rock, then another, and a third, and finally a fourth, placing them on the ground in front of me.

  Each of the rocks he brought were small enough to fill my palm, but this test wasn’t about how much I could lift; it was about building my dexterity.

  I closed my eyes again. With a deep breath in, magic swelled through my body like air filling up my lungs, a warm, comforting sensation like stepping outside into the summer sun for the first time after a long, cold winter.

  Learning how to properly manipulate my magic was something I wish I had learned when I was a child. Before Aksel had started teaching me, I had never taken the time to test the limits and capabilities of my magic. I had always used it in quick bursts, feeling the magic quickly build within me, then releasing it all almost immediately. Letting it gradually fill me, letting it ebb and flow within me like the beating of my heart, felt so natural now.

  I opened my eyes to see what I was doing. The first rock floated up, nice and slow, then settled gently on top of one of the other rocks.

  The first time we had tried this a few days ago, my motions had been quick and jerky. One of the rocks had whipped up and hit Aksel in the shin pretty hard, causing him to bark out a curse.

  I placed the fourth and final rock on top, gently enough to keep the rickety tower steady.

  “You’ve gotten better.” His kind words and encouraging smile had my heart swelling in my chest. “Let’s try something new today,” he continued. “So far you’ve done well with solid objects, now let’s try something a little more difficult.” He pulled a length of rope from his pack. “Tie this in a knot.”

  “Piece of cake.”

  With a slight quirk to his lips, he nodded at the rope in his hand as if to say; ‘Well, get on with it then’.

  I snatched the rope from him and held it in my upturned hands, the ends spilling over the side of my hands between my thumb and forefinger. It was about as thick as my thumb and maybe two feet long, I could probably tie two or three knots if I really tried.

  Just like the rocks, the rope floated up, but started wiggling around in the air like an unhappy snake the more magic I put into it. I would finally get the hang of manipulating one side, then the other would drop and hang limp. I couldn’t consistently feed enough magic through the whole length while making it move in the desired way. The rope was just too long and pliable. My entire face drew together in a scowl as I focused.

  “Want a hint?” I could hear the slight chuckle hidden behind his words.

  “No,” I said stubbornly.

  I held the ends of the rope in my hands and pulled it taught, picturing my magic coming down each arm and out my fingers.

  I let go and both sides floated up, crossed over top of each other and held for a moment, then came falling before I could twist it into a knot. I breathed out in a huff, realizing I had been holding my breath.

  “Not bad,” Aksel complimented. “For a novice.”

  My brief smile crumpled into a scowl. His response was a quick wink that had my stomach doing somersaults.

  He sat down in front of me and held his hands up, palms facing me as if he were ready for me to start throwing punches. “You know the drill, don’t try to move me, just push until you feel that little bit of strain in your magic.”

  Aksel had taken time in the beginning to explain that practicing with magic was like working out muscles, you start small and slowly work your way up until you can do more. That wasn’t just for telekinesis either, it worked the same for anyone, whether the magic was elemental like Ilane and the flereous, restorative like Ayre’s, or mental like mine.

  I pulled my hands up in front of me and mirrored Aksel’s position. Since my magic was fully mental, I had no reason to touch him while doing this drill, but today I rested my hands against his. We had done this exercise every day for the last week, and every time I had wanted to touch him. Since our night in the cabin, there had been no romantic gestures or words spoken between us, proving that night had just been me pushing myself on him and him reacting more out of instinct than actual affection for me.

  Ayre had called the night ‘a distraction’, ‘a physical release’ on my part, and at the time I had thought maybe he was right. But now I wasn’t so sure.

  If I did believe any of that, would tingles be spreading from where our skin touched? Would my stomach be fluttering?

  Aksel may not be interested in me, but I allowed myself a little selfishness.

  “Whenever you’re ready.” His voice was quiet, almost like he didn’t want to disturb the moment.

  I pushed with my mind, gradually building the force until I started to feel the strain, like stretching muscles just the right amount. I could feel Aksel pushing his hands against the force of my magic. I held for a moment then tried going a little further. The more force I used, the more pain built in my head. A drop of blood dripped from my nose onto my upper lip.

  Aksel’s fingers closed around mine. “Stop, stop, stop, you’re trying to do too much too fast.”

  I let go, the pressure in my head releasing. “How am I going to get better if I don’t push myself?” I took my hands back and wiped my thumb across my lip, looking at the crimson smear against my pale skin.

  “It’s not going to happen overnight. Keep in mind, you’ve gotten a late start, most children learn these things as their magic grows with them. You’ll get there.” He pulled me up to my feet.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “We’re going to see how much you can actually lift after all this training. Let’s go find a nice big rock.”

  An unbelievable weariness eked from my bones after two hours of practice. I slumped over to the nearest tree and flopped against the side of it, sliding down and scraping my shirt against the bark the entire way.

  Ayre had returned shortly after Aksel and I had found ‘a nice big rock’ and watched from a distance, eventually nodding off against a tree trunk. The sun was already low in the sky, we would have to make camp soon.

  “You did good today.” Aksel said as he glided over.

  “Thanks,” I panted, a thin layer of sweat coated my brow. Aksel handed me a freshly filled canteen, and I downed nearly half of it.

  He joined me against the tree, and we sat in comfortable silence as I regained some energy.

  “I wish I’d had the chance to use my magic more as a child,” I mused, “I think I used to be better, I could move things without even really trying.” My magic must have been developing normally then I’d stifled it by never using it.

  Aksel held out his hand and I passed him the canteen. “You said you were scolded? Taught not to use your magic?” He took a sip of water.

  “I wouldn’t say I was taught not to.” I fiddled with the hem of my sleeve for something to do with my hands. “The old mistress at my orphanage caught me using it one day, I was just playing by myself, but she charged into the room and hit me.” I remember her hitting me so hard I was thrown to the floor. My face was bruised for a week
and no one batted an eye. Children laughed at me for getting scolded, teased me because I had gotten in trouble. “The anger and fear in her eyes… the revulsion. She’d never liked having me in the orphanage, even as a child I realized that, but magic was the last straw. She said terrible things, that I was a waste of food and bed space and I was lucky to be living under her roof. She called me a half-breed and a mistake.

  “I thought she would have thrown me out right then and there, but she never did. Maybe she was worried I would turn on her if she threw me out, use my magic against her, or something. Maybe that’s why she beat me down with words and fear.”

  Aksel was quiet beside me but I could feel the tension rolling off him. I’d let myself talk for too long.

  “You still visit the orphanage even after she was so wretched to you?”

  My brow furrowed. “How did you know I visit the orphanage?”

  “You mentioned the kids. You don’t have any yourself and you grew up in an orphanage, so I just assumed.”

  I see. I didn’t remember mentioning the kids, I know I hadn’t spoken about them to the guys after we’d left the cabin, for fear of falling back into my depression, but I couldn’t really remember much of what I’d said in the first days. It was all just a black void.

  “Yes, I still visit,” I continued. “Actually, that woman left when I was still young. The new mistress raised me through much of my childhood and adolescence. She is… was… a much kinder woman, but she also told me not use my magic. She knew it would be hard for me if humans knew I had it, and she’d tried to protect me from that.” I heard the waver in my voice. Before he could ask any more questions that made me reminisce, I put an end to the conversation. “But anyway, that’s all in the past now. Tell me about your magic,” I asked as I took the canteen back and took another sip of water.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What can you do? What kind of magic do you have?” There were so many different fields and varieties of magic, it was so interesting to be able to talk to someone about it.

  He smiled, something resembling appreciation shining in his eyes. “Deydre have illusory magic.”

  “Illusions?” I thought about his shimmer. “Like shapeshifting?”

  “Not exactly,” he mused. “True shapeshifting is more of an alteration magic that some species have, it can alter the rules of nature, fully changing the caster’s biology. My magic isn’t a true shift, I don’t actually change my skin.”

  “So how does it work?”

  Aksel’s eyebrows scrunched in thought. “Illusory magic allows me to manipulate how people perceive reality—what they see.”

  “What does that mean? How can you affect something someone else is seeing?

  Something traced a line up the side of my arm. I jumped and slapped my opposite hand to my bicep where I had felt the touch, thinking it might have been a bug.

  Aksel was grinning like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. Was he laughing at me because we were camping and I was less than tolerant of insects?

  Wait…

  “What the hell? Was that you?” I asked. I groped around the empty space between us with two hands, probably seeming like a fool, until my fingers wrapped around something warm and whip-thin.

  “Ow,” he chuckled, “At least buy me a drink before you manhandle me.”

  I let go, a slight heat building on my cheeks.

  “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there, I’m using your own perception against you. Human minds are easy to manipulate, they want to see things that coincide with their known reality. They want to see a normal looking human without all the horns and tails. My tail is still there, but your mind doesn’t quite understand the idea of a humanoid with a tail and wants to erase it. My magic just helps you see what you want to see.”

  I still didn’t quite understand. My fingers closed around his tail, lightly this time, and for a moment I thought I saw it in my hand before it slid out of my grasp.

  “So then humans shouldn’t see your aura at all. Why can I see it?”

  “It could be a passive ability of your magic. Kimyrians—Supers, as humans call us—will still see what I put in their heads, but it takes more effort and active magic on my part. You’re somewhere in between, which is probably why you can see the shimmer but not the actual features I’m hiding. If I pumped more magic into the illusion, you probably wouldn’t be able to see anything except my human form. I just don’t try that hard in human towns,” he shrugged.

  A passive ability? I squinted, staring at him like I was trying to see through an optical illusion. His shimmer staggered, through the aura I saw the ghost of horns, the wisp of a tail, the shadow of talons. They all looked like smudges made by water colour paints.

  A twinge of pain shot through my head. “Ouch.”

  Aksel chuckled. “You’re good, but you’re not that good. It’s still magic, and ultimately I’m the one who controls what you see. But my glamour more of a passive ability now, anyway, it doesn’t take much effort to maintain. If I wanted to create an illusion, not just hide or alter something, it takes an active effort. Touching the person I’m trying to manipulate helps to amplify the magic.”

  “So you could theoretically make people see whatever you want them to see?”

  “Theoretically. Though if I tried to make you believe something that was utterly ridiculous, let’s say making you see the sky as purple, your mind would see through the illusion easily, you would know something was amiss because logically you know the sky is blue. The more believable the illusion, the more pliable it is in the person’s mind.”

  I contemplated his words, considering the full gravity behind them. “Have you used any illusions on me?

  “Why would you ask that?”

  I thought of the night I had met Ilane, when he had tried to manipulate me with magic. “Well, according to you, if you were good, I wouldn’t even know it. The thought of someone messing with my mind, creating illusions is… icky.”

  “Icky?” I could hear the chuckle in his throat, but he sobered up at the sight of my face. “Well, if you want to be accurate about it, technically I’m using magic on you right now.”

  True. As we sat here talking, Aksel’s magic was molding my mind to see what he wanted me to see. The implication, and the fact that his magic was technically always inside my head, was unpleasant, but I could understand to a degree. It wasn’t because he wanted to be manipulative or malicious, he was just altering the way I saw him; he was protecting himself.

  I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to constantly deceive everyone around you. “Isn’t it exhausting having to hold an illusion all the time? To manipulate so many people at once?” He was even able to hold the illusion in his sleep.

  “It was difficult to get used to when I first came to the human realm, but now it’s easy. If it makes you feel any better though, I’m not actually in your mind, not when I’m doing this. Think of it more like an aura that I shroud myself in—the ‘shimmer’ that you see around me. It’s not an active illusion I have to maintain, I created the illusion years ago and now I just kind of wrap it around me and the magic passively projects the image into your head. So the magic just barely touches your mind.”

  I felt even more confused than when we began. “But why don’t you drop it? Even if it’s not active, it must be exhausting to hold the shimmer in place night and day.”

  The ghost of a smile haunted his lips as he shrugged. “It’s not too tiring. I don’t mind.” Something in his voice betrayed the illusion of indifference he was trying to project.

  “Still, you should be able to relax when you’re around your friends.”

  He turned to look at me, his eyes holding a sudden intense contact, and his hand trailing up to my cheek. The unexpected shift in conversation and intimate touch threw me for a complete loop. “Do you dislike my human face that much, Selynna?”

  I think my throat closed, my heart hammering in my chest.
The look in his eyes, how could a deydre make puppy-dog eyes? “I-I…”

  His jaw twitched just before he burst out laughing. “Sorry, Sel, I couldn’t resist.”

  Yeah, yeah very funny. I tried to ignore the blazing heat in my face and ears and the intense wave of desire that had just rolled through me.

  How was I supposed to ignore my ever-increasing feelings for him when his teasing stirred such longing in me?

  “Ready?” Aksel asked.

  After eight full days of walking, Aksel and Ayre had convened during our downtime and decided on a tactic that would cut our trek in half. Aksel’s arm was wrapped around my waist, and Ayre stood ready with a hand on Aksel’s shoulder.

  I’d known some Supers could teleport, but Aksel never mentioned he was one of them.

  “Ready,” I said, hoping they didn’t catch the hesitation in my voice.”

  I felt magic sizzle against my skin and immediately latched myself to Aksel, fully wrapping my arms around his waist. He chuckled and hugged me in close before the world disappeared in a haze. Air whipped all around us, pulling like a vicious ocean current. A strong, reeling sensation made my body feel heavy and tingly, my head swimming. I gripped Aksel even tighter for fear that I would be thrown from his embrace.

  The world began to calm around us, the wind-like current relenting and the forest reforming before my eyes. Aksel’s hand slipped off my waist and he slumped into Ayre’s arms.

  “Aksel!” I shook off the dizziness I was feeling. “Are you alright? What’s wrong?” The only thing that kept me from fussing over him was the fact that Ayre looked completely nonplussed by Aksel’s collapse.

  “Nothing, I’m fine. Just tired from misting. It’s hard in the human realm. Even harder when I have to carry someone.” He laboured each sentence, as Ayre helped ease him to the ground.

  “What was that?” I asked, when we were all stably seated on the forest floor.

  “Different beings call it different things.” Ayre supplied an answer while Aksel caught his breath. “Creatures like Aksel call it ‘misting’ because when they move it looks a little like they vanish into a mist. Other beings call it ‘jumping’ or ‘blinking’ because it’s much more instantaneous with their magic.”