by Ruby Brown
“How can you expect me to fight against an enemy when I don’t even know how to hold a sword properly?” Mal snapped back. “I know that it’s important for me to be well-informed and everything, but it’s important for me to be strong as well.”
“Our ranks are already filled with powerful warriors. You may not realise this, being the insignificant slug that you are, but things for Tenebar and the magical community at large are darker than they have been in a long time. Right now, we don’t need another fighter. We need someone who can be a beacon of hope for everyone out there,” Blaise shouted back. “You are the best chance we’ve got at beating our enemy and it would be reckless to let you go out onto the battlefield where you could easily be killed. It’s much better for you to stay here and learn the skills and information you need to become a leader.”
Mal had finally lost it. “You know those ‘powerful warriors’ you were talking about? Yeah, well two of your best fighters were Dallas and Rose and you’ve given them desk jobs! And what for? To protect your pride? Because you’re scared? Besides, how am I supposed to lead a rebellion if I can’t fight?”
“Get out!” Blaise roared, pointing at the door.
“Coward!” Mal screamed back, knowing that Blaise was only asking her to leave because he couldn’t think of a way to combat her argument.
“See how violent she is already?” Blaise yelled, pointing at Mal while looking at Cass, whom Mal had completely forgotten. “That’s the Akraansir magic taking over! If you let her exercise that magic, she’ll turn into a monster!”
Mal felt a lump rise in her throat. Blaise had just confirmed her worst fears. And it wasn’t only her who thought that she was a freak. Blaise could see her disastrous potential. Maybe he was just trying to protect the people he cared about, just as Mal was. There was an awkward silence, filled only with Blaise’s heavy breathing as he struggled to get a hold on his temper. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Cass looked petrified. Mal was far too pumped up on adrenaline to feel much of anything, but eventually she decided she wasn’t going to get anywhere. All she had done was lost her temper and lowered her zero percent chance at getting what she wanted to a negative thousand percent chance.
Furious with herself and everyone else she could think of, Mal left the room without saying another word, but as she closed the door behind her she hard Cass murmur something, then Blaise shout at her, and suddenly came the unmistakeable sound of a slap, something crashing to the floor, and then pained sobbing. Mal froze outside the office door, petrified and unable to move. Blaise had just hit Cass. He’d actually slapped her. Part of her wanted to open the door, but instinctively she started to run away from the nightmare. But she couldn’t run from the nightmare inside her, as barely a second later, the Akraansir power started to take a hold of her, triggered by her anger and the violence she had just heard. She tried to fight it but it wrapped claws around her throat and brought her to her knees in the middle of the corridor as she rocked backwards and forwards and murmured the word ‘no’ to herself over and over again as the ferocity washed over her like a tsunami.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the room stopped spinning and the violent desires ebbed away, back into the depths of her consciousness. Mal stood up, straightened her rumpled clothes with shaking hands, and kept walking.
After a largely miserable two weeks at Tenebar, Mal was glad to be heading home. To no-one’s surprise, Blaise refused to let Dallas or Rose take Mal home, like they had originally planned. Despite the sweltering heat outside, he insisted that she walk home herself. She didn’t dare argue.
Exhausted and sweaty, Mal started climbing the steps to her house. She glanced up from the ground as she walked up the steps, pulling her headphones from her ears. Her breath caught in her throat, and her body jerked to a halt with one foot raised. Her eyes grew wide as she scanned the destruction in front of her, the scale of it too great for her to comprehend at first. The door had been ripped off its hinges, the gap that it left gaping like an open mouth. Shards of wood littered the balcony, spilling from the deep gouges someone had left in the door. Something snapped inside her, and Mal bolted through the door into her house, screaming for her parents, her breaths coming quick and fast and tearing apart her lungs. The couch had been turned on its side. The lamp had fallen to the floor and was surrounded by shards of glass. The television had a massive hole punched through the middle. Mangled books and pillows were scattered across the floor. But the worst were the blood stains that coloured the white walls, a deep crimson spray that covered everything. That’s when she noticed that there was black blood mingling with the red. Demons.
The blood wasn’t fresh. Whatever had happened here, it took place at least two days ago. And she had no idea. She should have known something like this was going to happen. This was her fault. She spun around slowly, taking it all in, and saw that a message had been scrawled on the opposite wall in blood that had trickled down the wall and dried in gruesome strands. “Come and get them...” Mal muttered, her eyes scanning the letters and the strange symbol beneath them that she’d never seen before.
Inside the kitchen, glasses and plates had been smashed, the remaining shards cutting into Mal’s feet and making them bleed as she sprinted down the hallway. The other rooms seemed to have been left alone, but her parents were nowhere to be seen. She fumbled in her pocket for her phone and called her mum. No response. Then she tried her dad’s number.
“Hello?”
“Dad!” Mal cried tearfully. “Where are you? What happened? I’ve just got back home and...” suddenly, Mal realised that the person on the other side of the phone wasn’t her father. The voice was too low, too raspy, and much too poisonous. “Who are you?” Mal said slowly, her fists clenching at her sides.
There was a low chuckle, and the line went dead. Mal called the number over and over again, feeling potent pangs of fear and sickness whenever she heard her dad’s voice on his voicemail recording. She tried her mum’s number too, until finally she screamed at her phone in frustration and threw it against the wall so hard it left a dent in the plaster. She leant against the wall and sunk down to the floor, burying her face in her knees and breaking down until she had no tears left and her throat was ripped raw.
Chapter 17
Blaise slammed his hands down on the desk in front of him, making the table shake and silencing the loud chatter that previously filled the room. The noise made Mal jump, a flash of surprise and fear illuminating her features like lightning, momentarily replacing the emotionless mask she’d been wearing ever since Dallas came and picked her up from her house after she’d called him and explained what had happened. Now she was sitting in front of Cass’s desk, Dallas and Rose standing either side of her like bodyguards. They kept looking at her like she was a bomb about to explode, but Mal felt strangely calm. After her collapse in the hallway, any emotions she had the energy to muster were bubbling far below the surface.
Everyone except Mal, who kept her eyes cast downwards, looked at Blaise, taken aback by his sudden outburst. “Everyone shut up,” he said tensely. “We need to think about this.” He shot a piercing look at Dallas. “Are you sure that the symbol belonged to Akraansir?”
As soon as Dallas had arrived at Mal’s house, he’d sprinted up the stairs and examined exactly what had happened for himself as Mal sat trembling against the wall and didn’t move until Dallas kicked her. Dallas nodded once, keeping his eyes fixed on Blaise. Out of the three of them, he was the one who trusted Blaise the least. “And there was definitely black blood?” Blaise asked. Dallas nodded again.
Blaise looked skywards and ran his fingers through his hair. Mal noticed that Cass had been unusually quiet and still. She wondered if it was because Blaise had hit her last time she’d argued with him. She wished Cass would snap out of it. She needed her.
“If you’d let me...sir,” Rose said, doing her best to be polite to get what she wanted but spitting out the word ‘sir’ like
she was allergic, “I could assemble the troops that were under my command before you demoted me. They all trust me, and with my level of experience I’m sure we could create...”
“Are you kidding me?” Blaise said. “They’re clearly using Mal’s parents as bait. If we try to get them back, Akraansir will destroy us and brainwash Mal so she becomes her own personal puppet.”
“We have to get them back,” Mal insisted, although her voice was flat and emotionless.
“I refuse to risk anyone’s life on a suicide mission to rescue two painfully insignificant humans,” Blaise said angrily.
“They’re not insignificant. They’re my parents,” Mal said, her voice tinged with anger. “Cass?” Mal asked, her voice tinged with hope, despite what her common sense was telling her.
Cass looked up and Blaise hesitantly and saw him glaring down at her, the warning evident in his eyes. Mal didn’t miss the way his fist clenched on top of the desk, and Cass didn’t either. She looked back at the three teenagers gathered around her desk and mumbled “I know your parents matter a lot to you, but the other members of Tenebar matter too. This is clearly a trap. We’ll all be slaughtered if we try. It’s better to lose two then two hundred. Making sacrifices is part of who we are.”
Blaise looked up smugly, and Mal’s hands itched to slap him. She hated him. Hated him for manipulating Cass, who was so strong and self-assured when they first met, into doing what he wanted. Hated him for putting her and the people she cared about in danger and refusing her the chance to rescue them and do what was right.
“I can use my Praethen magic,” Mal insisted.
Blaise laughed. “You really think you’re strong enough? Akraansir has had centuries to let her dark magic corrupt her, twist her soul and disfigure both heart and mind. You’d need to be a million times more powerful than you are to have even a hope of defeating her.”
“Well, maybe if I trained really hard every day, I could...” Mal began, but Blaise cut her off again.
“Your ignorance continues to astound me. You can’t force your magic to come to you. It slowly builds up over time, and since your magic is so weak from underuse there’s no way you’d be able to build it up to that magnitude quickly enough. Akraansir would have killed your parents before then.”
Rose immediately started protesting, but stopped when Blaise shouted at her. “Don’t even try to argue with me, Rose! We all know what would have happened to Mal’s parents by this point. There’s nothing to save anymore.”
That got Mal’s attention. Her head snapped up. “What do you mean?” she asked. Her voice shook as she spoke. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
Blaise looked at her for a second, almost as if he was evaluating her. Then he shook his head and started going through some papers on Cass’s desk. “Get out of here,” he said.
No one moved. Mal leaned forward in her chair. “Tell me,” she demanded.
Blaise glared at her. “Out.”
Despite the anxiety coiled in her stomach at his expression and tone, Mal held her ground. “Not until you explain.”
Groaning in frustration, Blaise slammed the papers down on the desk and said “come with me.”
Mal started to rise from her chair, but Dallas placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t,” he said warningly. Rose opened her mouth to elaborate, but Mal shrugged them away and followed Blaise out the door. She knew it was probably a bad idea, but she was desperate for any information she could get about her parents.
Blaise and Mal walked stiffly through the building, down all of the stairs and through a splintery wooden door that was tucked in the corner. Mal had never noticed it before. Through the entrance there lay an old, rickety staircase constructed of wood and metal. The gap the wall had created was just big enough for one person to squeeze through.
Blaise stepped back, and gestured with his hand. “Ladies first,” he said mockingly.
Mal rolled her eyes at him and walked down the steps, her footsteps echoing in the cold, damp and narrow space. She tried not to breathe too deeply, the coppery smell made her feel sick. As she got further down the staircase, she started to hear moaning and mumbling mixed with strange scuffling sounds that made her incredibly nervous. Her footsteps faltered as she got down to the bottom. All of a sudden, she wasn’t so sure that she wanted to know what lay in the darkness that engulfed the room.
“Scared?” Blaise taunted.
Mal gritted her teeth and walked to the end of the staircase. She couldn’t see anything until Blaise pressed a light switch and the room was set alight. Mal recoiled as the space was filled with animalistic shrieks and screams. She squinted as the bright light assaulted her eyes, illuminating row upon row of prison cells with the silver bars glinting. The screeches eventually died down and Mal slowly walked in between the cells.
The prisoners hissed and muttered in a language Mal couldn’t understand, acting more like wild animals then people. Their clothes had been turned into filthy, torn rags. Their deranged eyes looked around anxiously as they crawled about on all fours or sat in corners, rocking backwards and forwards. One woman with long brown hair was sobbing hysterically into her knees as she sat in the middle of her cell. Another man threw himself at the bars as they passed, grasping desperately for them as he screamed frantically. His mouth started foaming as his face turned purple and his eyes bulged. A woman with a shaved head threw herself around her cell while muttering incoherently. Her hands were scraped raw and bloody, leaving crimson streaks as she scratched frantically at the walls and floor.
“Who are these people?” Mal asked softly, looking around her. She was almost too scared to speak in this place. Every way she looked there was always a pair of demented, bloodshot eyes staring back at her.
“It’s where they put people who’ve spent too long in Akraansir’s domain,” Blaise said tensely. “They go insane. The doctors can’t do anything, so they lock them up here until they die. It doesn’t usually take long. They’re so self-destructive they usually kill themselves within a few months.”
“What makes you think it’s a good idea to keep rooms full of these people underneath Tenebar? They could get loose and hurt people.”
“We did have them at a separate location, but then families started protesting. They wanted to be able to see their loved ones in their final moments. Trust me, compared to the others, they’re not so bad.”
Mal suddenly stopped, staring at one cell. Inside there was a small girl, seven or eight, who lay on her side, arms wrapped around her knees as she mumbled to herself, her eyes wide, drooling onto the floor. “What is it?” Blaise asked when he realised she’d stopped.
Mal stared at the girl. “She’s so young...” she said softly.
“Ah yes, Dallas’ sister,” Blaise said. He didn’t sound sad or sorry, just coldly observant.
“Dallas had a sister?” Mal said. The sudden jump in volume of her voice as a result of her shock caused the prisoners all around them to screech and scuttle.
Blaise didn’t say anything, just stood next to Mal and stared at the girl with her. Mal took a deep breath and turned to him. “So this is what you think has happened to my parents?”
Blaise tilted his head. “From the colour of the blood they found in your house, your parents have been in there a while. There’s no way of knowing what’s happened to them, whether they’re dead or like the people in this room. Forget it, Mal. Your parents are gone,” Blaise said, and then turned and walked out, leaving Mal stranded in the dungeons.
Mal didn’t stay there long. She stared at the cells around her without really seeing anything until she could no longer hear Blaise’s footsteps. Everything around her turned into a blur of noise and colour on the walk back to her room. Part of it was because she was too deep in her own thoughts to pay attention to anything else, but mostly she just didn’t care anymore. She felt like the life had been sucked out of her. Her parents were gone, possibly reduced to those animalistic creatures down in the cell
s, and she was powerless to get them back. Pure, unfiltered hatred rose up inside her. She didn’t even know what she was angry at. She just wanted to split the world in two.
Everything was too loud, too bright, too aggressive. All Mal wanted to do was curl into a ball in a dark room and never come out. Desperate to find some refuge from the sound and brightness that surrounded her, all of which seemed disrespectful at this point, she quickened her pace.
“Mal!” called Thomas, running down the corridor towards her.
Mal felt her heart constrict inside her chest and her lungs seemed to fold in on themselves. She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She balled her hands into fists and slowly turned around to see Thomas hurrying towards her with Rose following behind, doing a very bad job of trying not to appear too anxious.
“I heard about what happened to your parents. Are you okay?” Thomas panted, coming to a stop at Mal’s feet.
“No,” Mal snapped. Usually she would have said yes, just to protect the innocence shining from the face of the boy staring up at her. But she was just done with everything and secretly she hoped that if she acted angry Thomas would leave her alone.
Thomas did look taken aback, but he was determined to try and help Mal feel better. “Blaise took you down to the dungeons, right? I’ve heard it’s really scary down there, so I’ve never gone. You must be very brave.”
“Hmm,” Mal said, tapping her fingers against her leg.
“I know you’re upset about what happened, but I think Blaise is right to...” Thomas began, but the words were barely out of his mouth before he was on the floor, a metallic taste filling his mouth. He placed a hand on his face and gasped when he pulled it away and saw it was covered in blood. Terrified, he looked up to see Mal standing over him, clutching the hand she had just used to punch him. Thomas didn’t understand what had just happened. Mal would never hit him, not without a good reason. He must have done something wrong. But what could he have done? He was just trying to comfort her. Frantically, he started replaying what he had said to her in his head, picking apart the conversation and trying to find something he should be apologising for before she hit him again.