by Ruby Brown
It was a strange feeling to be wandering the streets alone at night. The barely twinkling stars and gentle glow of the crescent moon above provided barely enough light to adequately illuminate her path, so Mal used the torchlight on her phone. Her paranoia started to get to her, and she started to think that she was seeing figures lurking amongst the trees. Hastily, she sped up her pace, her footsteps echoing loudly in her ears and disturbing eerie silence that lingered in the cold night air.
Walking through the forest to get to Tenebar was the worst part. Although the noises were probably just being made by fluffy little woodland creatures, every rustle Mal heard made her heart leap to her throat. The light from her phone lit up the trees in the worst of ways, so that every branch was a gnarled hand reaching forward to seize her and every trunk bore a gnarled face twisted with malice.
The ruins of Tenebar looked about ten times creepier at night, the perfect setting for a horror movie. Rose was waiting for Mal outside the door, talking to a tall boy Mal hadn’t seen before. His shaggy hair was almost as dark as the night sky which was a startling contrast to his snow-white skin. He was dressed in a large, soft blue sweater and black jeans with his hands stuffed in his pockets, and even though she was at least two meters from them Mal could hear the rock music he had blasting through his headphones. He looked up when he heard Mal approaching, and his face lit up with a friendly smile that didn’t reach the fathomless depths of his piercing ice-blue eyes.
“Hey, I’m Dallas. You’re Mal, right?”
Mal nodded. Although Dallas didn’t say much, his voice reminded Mal of the way the waves crashed on the shore at the beach by her house. His posture was relaxed but his eyes were alert and constantly scanning their surroundings. Mal noticed how he flinched at even the smallest of noise.
“I asked Dallas to help me with training,” Rose said. Even though there was still a sharp edge to her, she seemed so much more relaxed around Dallas. Her eyes kept flickering over to his tall and skinny frame, as if to reassure herself he was still there.
“Do you have a Memoriam with you?” Dallas asked.
“Um...I wasn’t sure which one to work, so I brought quite a few,” Mal said uncertainly. She opened her bag and showed them the contents.
“Do you have your brother’s t-shirt? I think that’ll be the most effective Memoriam,” Rose said. Mal unzipped her black jacket to show her brother’s band t-shirt underneath, the one she had been wearing the day of the attack.
“What are your Memoriams?” Mal asked nervously. She wasn’t sure if it was acceptable to ask that, but ever since she found out what Memoriams were she’d been really curious.
Dallas pulled up his shirt slightly to reveal a tight grey singlet underneath. “My binder,” he said as way of explanation, and dropped his shirt again.
“What about you, Rose?” Mal asked.
Rose reached up and popped open the locket hanging around her neck. There was a photograph inside of a man and a woman with their arms around each other, smiling happily. “My grandmother left me the locket in her will, and the people in the photograph are my parents,” Rose said. Neither Mal nor Dallas missed the sadness in her eyes, which were looking anywhere but the photo, or the catch in her voice when she said the word ‘parents’. She closed the locket again. There was silence for a few seconds, broken only by the rustling of leaves.
Rose straightened her spine, letting her mask of confidence and security slip back into place. She shook her head slightly, blinked a few times and then said “I think we should start with a demonstration of how a duel actually works. Dallas, would you mind?”
“I’m gonna kick your ass,” Dallas said with a half-smile, cracking his knuckles. Mal winced at the noise.
“You say that every time,” Rose teased.
Dallas looked mildly embarrassed. “Yeah, well, this time I mean it.”
Mal warily crept backwards to the doorway and watched as Rose and Dallas placed the guns and knives they had been carrying on the grass and then walked back and faced each other, standing only a few centimetres away from the other person’s heaving chest.
“Mal, pay attention,” Rose called, but her eyes never left Dallas’ face. “I’m going to talk you through the proper way to conduct a formal duel.”
Dallas smiled at her, and then the two of them raised their wrists to show each other their Spatium. “That’s to prove that we both have the same amount of magic to use,” Rose said.
Then they lowered their hand and raised their other one. Simultaneously, a blazing inferno erupted onto Rose’s palm, and a cascading waterfall started flowing from Dallas’s hand. Mal gasped in shock, her hands jumping to her mouth as she watched the bright red dance amongst Rose’s fingers, twisting around her arm like vines. Then her gaze swapped to the silvery water coming from Dallas’s hand, slipping through the gaps in his fingers and hitting the ground. Then they closed their fists over the magic, and it was gone. “Now we’re both aware of what element our opponent can control,” Rose explained.
Finally, they both crossed their left and right arms over their chests (“to signify that we’re not going to kill each other,” said Rose), and then they turned and took three big steps away from each other. They both paused and stood as still as statues for a second, their eyes shut and their heads bowed, before leaping around to face competitor, their powers coming to life in a loud hiss like an angry snake. And so the fight began.
The ferocity with which they fought was unbridled. They had already stated that they weren’t trying to kill each other, but between the urgency in Dallas’s eyes and the snarl that lifted Rose’s lips, they seemed to be thirsting for each other’s blood. Every time Rose kindled a flame, Dallas would extinguish it, and every time he sent a jet of spiralling water near Rose she would meet it with a burst of flame that turned it to steam. When their bracelets started beeping they jumped at each other and fought using their fists, shrieking with an animalistic rage to try and intimidate each other.
“Remind me never to get on her bad side,” Mal muttered as she watched Rose deliver a devastating roundhouse kick that knocked Dallas to the ground. She stood over him, seemingly preparing for the final death blow, but Dallas shot some water directly into her face and she stumbled back sputtering.
This continued for quite some time until finally Dallas held up both of his hands with his knuckles facing Rose, which seemed to be the gesture for surrender, for suddenly Rose was strutting around the field and singing a very loud, very off tune version of We Are the Champions. Dallas scowled at her.
“Got the idea?” Rose panted, coming back to Mal with Dallas by her side. Their sweat was mingling with their blood and bruises coloured their skin, but despite that Mal couldn’t remember the last time she had seen two people so happy. The adrenaline running through their veins was making their eyes spark and dance brighter than any of Rose’s flames.
“Yeah, I think so,” Mal said, but she was severely disappointed. Rose used her flames to light the scene as Mal struggled for the next couple of hours, but despite her best efforts she just couldn’t make her magic work. Around midnight, Dallas finally said that they should just call it off and try again some other time. He patted Mal on the shoulder and tried to make her feel better by saying that every mage struggled for the first couple of attempts, but nothing he said could shake the terrible hollowness and uselessness Mal felt in the pit of her stomach. She traipsed back home, too absorbed in her own thoughts to take much notice of the surroundings, collapsed onto her bed and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow so she didn’t have to think anymore.
Chapter 6
The next three weeks passed in a blur. Mal spent her time going backwards and forwards between Tenebar and her house, sneaking out at night and arriving back home in the early hours of the morning, except for on the weekends when she spent practically all her time at Tenebar. She was in a permanently exhausted but happy state, her every waking thought consumed with the magnificent new wor
ld she’d become a part of.
Rose had started to include self-defence lessons in Mal’s training. There was a large room on the bottom floor of Tenebar that was absolutely covered in safety mats. Weapons of all shapes, sizes and makes were either stacked on racks around the room or hanging from the walls. Worn targets and dummies that leaked stuffing were stationed around the room, and the entire structure smelt of sweat and leather.
As soon as Mal entered the training room for the first time, Rose jumped at her. Before Mal had even time to think, she was on the floor, completely out of breath and with a bruised rib. Rose just stood above her and smiled as Mal gasped. Slowly, Mal raised herself up, only to be knocked down again when Rose kicked her in the side.
“You’re weak,” Rose scoffed. “Come on, fight back.”
Mal tightened her jaw and tried her best, but every single lesson seemed to end with a triumphant Rose standing over Mal’s aching body. That’s not to say that Mal didn’t get any good hits in, at one point she broke Rose’s nose and felt so bad about it she avoided looking directly at Rose for the next couple of days. Rose, Dallas and Thomas also took it in turns to teach her how to use different weapons. Rose’s speciality was guns, Dallas used battle axes more than anything else, and Thomas had an obsession with chemical weapons, but he was also very good at hand-to-hand combat.
To her surprise, Mal quickly became very good at throwing knives, so Rose spoke to Cass and had a set of throwing knives custom made for Mal. She also learnt how to use the sword that Thomas stole from the Aril that came into her room on the night he took her to Tenebar. Mal attempted archery several times because it looked cool, but the first time she tried she aimed too high and almost hit the light fixture, and the second time she almost skewered Dallas on the end of an arrow. After that, everyone made an effort to keep her as far away from the bows and arrows as possible.
No matter how far Mal progressed with her weapons, her magic still wasn’t working. Anxiously, Cass had her try to conjure all of the elements using her different Memoriams, but nothing helped. Mal spent hours locked in a room or standing outside, trying everything, but nothing worked. It was too much trouble to always wear Felix’s t-shirt, so in the end she cut strips of the fabric and plaited them together to form a bracelet. She felt like a complete failure, and so she channelled all of her energy into using her knives, hoping to give the others a reason not to cast her out after she failed the test. She could see the hope slowly fading from everyone’s eyes as the time passed, and she knew that they were all starting to resign themselves to the possibility that she would be leaving them.
When Mal wasn’t working on her fighting skills or her magic, she was in Tenebar’s massive library. She loved it there. Lit by the gentle glow of oil lamps and candles, the massive room was so full of books that they were overflowing from the giant oak shelves and piling on every available surface. In the centre of the room was a study area with curved tables and padded seats. Mal got used to spending many long nights in the library pouring over books by candlelight. She often read so late that she fell asleep, and then woke up hours later with her face resting on one of her textbooks, the candle just managing to stay alive in the pool of melting wax.
Her progress was overseen by Allie, the strict librarian with green eyes and brown hair that always seemed to be piled in a bun at the top of her head. Allie had a thirteen year old daughter named Trixie who was studying at Tenebar. With her pale skin, almond-shaped green eyes and bright red hair, Trixie reminded Mal of the elves in her fantasy books. Trixie often brought her books down to the library so she could do her homework with Mal, and the two soon became good friends. Trixie was also good friends with Thomas, so he soon joined their study group. Mal was grateful for their company, but sometimes worried that she annoyed them with all the questions she asked.
The messages started at the end of Mal’s first week at Tenebar. She was at home, and was towel drying her hair after a ridiculously long, hot shower. Her parents were out having dinner with their friends, so Mal was enjoying having the house to herself for a bit before she left for Tenebar.
Mal reached for her phone and clicked the power button so that it would display the time, and her brow furrowed in confusion. Her phone’s lock screen was jam packed with message notifications, which would be unusual in itself as Mal didn’t have much of a social life, but what made her breath catch in her throat and her blood run cold was who was sending the messages.
”Felix...,” she whispered, staring at the notifications. Her dead foster brother Felix. The foster brother that had been killed years ago, the one she had held in her arms as he died. Mal’s hands were shaking so much that it took her three goes to get her password right. Once her phone was unlocked, she scrolled through the masses of messages Felix had left for her. The last one had been sent only a few minutes ago, and Felix had started sending the messages soon after she got home from school about two hours ago, but as Mal’s phone had run out of battery at school, it had been charging in her room while she watched television and then had a shower she hadn’t seen the messages until now.
All of the messages were begging Mal to respond, to let whoever was on the other end of the line know that she was safe. They were all written in a panicked, urgent tone that gradually got worse and worse. Mal clicked off her phone and dropped it onto the bed next to her, trying to make sense of it all, taking deep breaths to calm herself. Her hands were shaking, so she balled them into fists and shut her eyes just as tightly. Her phone buzzed again with another message, but Mal didn’t look. The same thing happened again, and Mal didn’t open her eyes. When it happened a third time, she gave into the temptation and snatched up her phone. As suspected, all three of the messages were from Felix.
Why aren’t you responding?
Please talk to me
I’m worried about you
Mal switched her phone onto silent, shaking badly, and then hid it under the pillow of her bed, feeling like she could never get far enough away from it. She rubbed her hands together, unable to shake the feeling that they had been contaminated in some way, drenched in a vile poison she would never be able to scrub off. She hid her face in her hands and tried to think, tried to process some kind of rational thought to make sense of all this. She didn’t know whether or not Felix had his phone on him when he died. Her parents had never mentioned anything about his phone. Even though they had moved house after Felix died, Mal knew that her mum still kept a box of Felix’s belongings in her parents’ bedroom.
So she hurried into her parents’ room, reached under the bed and pulled out a shoebox with clumsy hands. She opened the lid shuffled through Felix’s belongings, occasionally pausing to hold a certain item, holding back tears the entire time. His phone wasn’t there. Carefully, she put all of the objects back and slid the box under the bed. She got up and went back to her room. In the time she had been away from her phone, Felix had sent her three more messages.
Mal stared at her phone for a moment longer, and then made her decision. With shaking hands and her heart thumping wildly in her chest, she replied with who are you?
Felix’s response came mere seconds later. I’m your brother. Listen, you need to stop going to Tenebar. I know this is weird but it’s important.
She texted back my brother is dead. And I don’t know anything about Tenebar.
Don’t lie to me. I know you’ve been going there.
Mal’s blood turned to ice in her veins. How did this...thing...know about Tenebar? And more importantly, how did it know she’d been going there? How the hell do you know that? Mal texted back, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the response.
I’ve been tracking you
Mal had never felt so scared in her entire life. Keep away from me. I’m calling the police. You’re not my brother. The last part of her text was more to remind herself that whatever this thing was, it wasn’t Felix.
No, I am! Look, what’s one thing only Felix would know?
Ma
l thought for a second, and then against her better judgement texted back what are the names and birthdays of my parents?
I don’t know about your real parents, but my parents fostered you when you were seven and I was eight. My mum’s name is Abigail and my dad’s name is Peter. Mum was born on the 23rd of April and Dad was born on the 7th of August.
How do you know that?
Because I’m your brother. I’m Felix.
Felix is dead.
Don’t you believe in ghosts?
Mal didn’t know what to think. This was way beyond creepy, this was terrifying. Her mind was spinning, and all her thoughts were mixing with a terrible yearning for it to be true, for Felix to be back. She missed him so much. Briefly, she thought about how her parents would feel if she could provide them with some kind of contact with their dead son. She felt sure that they would be overjoyed. Mal started texting Felix questions, asking for specific details about their life together. Felix got every single one of them right, down to the last details. He could even correctly answer questions about their parents and friends.
Eventually, Mal stopped asking questions. She was still feeling incredibly uneasy, but she couldn’t deny that this was Felix. She was talking to her dead brother. Why did you choose to talk to me now? Mal asked him.
To warn you. You need to stay away from Tenebar. It’s not safe for you there.
Why not?
I can’t tell you. Just trust me on this one.
Mal hesitated, and then typed back Felix, it’s amazing there. I have to go back.
You don’t really trust them, do you?
Well...yeah.
Don’t be stupid, Malika.