by Anne Zoelle
Bar one.
My second afternoon was very pleasantly spent huddled in a non-mage-eating tree, watching Alexander Dare battle demented yetis and giant, animated rock beasts—quite unlike my loyal little Guard Rock. Dare wore a black, buckled cloak similar to ones I had seen other combat mages wear, but his...was magnificent. It moved like an extension of his magic, and it was like watching liquid metal. He moved like liquid metal. Mercury moving in glass.
It was hard not to watch him. More even than his astoundingly good looks, the way he held himself and moved drew my eye to him—and my pencil to paper.
Mages were either arrogant or desperate to come to the Midlands alone. After a few notable observations, I was pretty sure Dare's arrogance was earned from being a badass in everything he did. Sometimes a fellow mage in a black cloak would accompany him, but it was rare. The combat mages seemed to be tasked with patrolling the Midlands. That made things dicey for me sometimes in trying to stay unnoticed.
Because the landscape of the Midlands shifted so frequently and quickly—and I always shifted with the tree I was in—many times I just caught quick glimpses of Dare. But each time I saw him, I felt the pull. I wanted desperately to ask him about the night Christian died and about his missions with his uncle in the First Layer, but I couldn't afford the connection he would easily make.
I saw no one as frequently as I did Alexander Dare. It was almost like he was hunting me, instead of the thousands of predators surrounding us. By the third day, I had researched and erected a shield that would make me invisible to one specific person. An anti-ex enchantment, hilariously enough. I set it to respond to Dare, but he always seemed to find me anyway. The shield was taxing to maintain and made me collapse in exhaustion at the end of each reconnaissance mission, but visually, at least, it seemed to work.
But there was always something about the tense set of his shoulders that suggested he knew there was someone else nearby.
I was far from unhappy that he was frequently my unwitting companion, though. He had unknowingly saved me countless times due to his proximity and prowess.
Like the flotilla of rabid croc-geese that were waddling around on their webbed feet, sniffing out my tree with their snapping jaws, and propelling their knife-sharp feathers into the base. He moved faster than anyone I had ever seen—twirling, then knocking his staff into the ground. A quake shook the earth and the croc-geese were expelled in four directions, swept away with a multi-directional shift in the landscape. I cataloged his movements to memory so that I could draw and animate them later.
I also collected some great intel about how he looked without a cloak or shirt when he was hot and sweaty. Great intel.
Ensconced safely in the branches of another tree for the third day, I settled in for another bout of shirtless drooling while buildings formed and disappeared, and I drew and took notes. I wasn't furthering my needed goals fast enough, which made me tense and anxious, but reconnaissance had advantages.
The pleasant feeling of using my magic heavily—working my bones off with Draeger, Stevens, and Mbozi every day, with Will and Nephthys (and sometimes Mike) mentally at night, and being surrounded by chaos magic for much of the rest of the time—made my body happily lethargic. The tiring workouts produced a gratifying physical ache.
But there was an itchiness between my shoulder blades that wouldn't ease, no matter how I tried to shake it out.
I had started to register it as my magic further escaping the cuff, increasing my need to touch the tube of paint. Safely under the nearly completed vault wards, when Mbozi wasn't looking, I had started sneaking in moments of uncapping the tube and sniffing the comfort of the lavender paint.
The itching increased and I scratched the skin near my cuff.
I looked down to see Dare engaged in some very complicated martial arts forms. He obviously wasn't going to be finished anytime soon, so I was stuck. I always tried to keep quiet when he was around. If I alerted him to my presence audibly, I had a feeling that he could easily break through the shield enchantment hiding me from view. But the wind was currently howling through the trees, covering most sounds.
Normally, I would be nervous in the current scenery of dilapidation and devastation—I had firsthand knowledge that zombie-like beings hid out in these types of places in the Midlands—but I always felt safe when Dare was near.
Stupid, really, as he would likely just as soon destroy me due to my Raphael Verisetti connection. But my first encounter with Dare had been too intense to overcome. Seeing him utterly destroy everything that launched an attack here had only strengthened the feeling of protection I associated with him.
My shoulders itched.
I touched my latest ward device and the tube of paint. I could chance one test...I needed to see if it worked, and with the wind, Dare wouldn't be able to hear a thing, engaged as he was.
“Do it, Ren,” Christian said.
“Let this go, Ren,”
I flipped out my notebook, balancing in the fork of the tree's branches, and started drawing a 3-D space, using what I had learned from all my previous attempts. I rotated the box in my mind, shading the areas underneath and behind the box's edges with my magic. I shaped it much like I would my cornerstone pyramid, only the focus was a flat holding space. I put forth the intention that it would be able to hold three small acorns.
Pressing the ward device box, a small field activated a foot around me in all directions. I breathed deeply, then carefully twisted the cap off the paint. Its seductive magic hit me instantly, settling the itch. Dare stopped his form dead and his staff came whipping out as he looked around. I froze and Guard Rock immediately pulled his pencil into attack-spear position. Dare crept carefully along the path, his eyes cataloging everything.
My focus was on Dare, but the peripheral feeling of a million eyes suddenly watching me took hold.
His gaze settled on my tree and his eyes started drifting upwards, his shoulders tightening more.
Panic hit me full force as his narrowing eyes focused on my invisible position. His hand started to lift upward and I could see violet magic gathering in his palm. My panic turned wild, and the path tile abruptly changed, throwing my tree into the middle of an urban wasteland, far away from Dare’s intense eyes.
Breathing harshly, I clung to my branch. Hopefully I was all the way on the other side of the tenth circle.
Guard Rock relaxed, sitting back down on the branch with his little rock legs hanging over the edge. Zombies liked the urban wastelands too, but Guard Rock had developed a good feel for them. If he was relaxed, I'd trust his senses.
I checked the encapsulation field, which was still up, then shakily tipped the tube. I would never try this again in Dare's vicinity.
The sudden feeling of a million eyes touched me again. There was an abrupt stillness to the already unnaturally still landscape.
I touched the edge of the tube's mouth, then touched the page and focused my mind, intent, and control on what I wanted as the paint absorbed. A box, with depth and dimension. A box that could hold the one pound weight that I visualized in my mind and felt in my palms.
The paint seeped and the edges of the box sharpened. Excitement lit, internally and seemingly from all around me as well. I stuck my now-clean finger on top of the box and willed it to rotate toward me as I pulled my finger down. The box followed my finger. Smiling, I nudged its top aside. The inside was just as I had imagined it. I plucked three acorns from my tree and placed the first on top of the paper. The acorn sank inside, as if a surface of dense liquid had suddenly given way.
A crow let loose a caw in the distance.
I smiled down to see the acorn resting inside the box. It lay flat in a seemingly two-dimensional space, that now contained a three dimensional object.
I dropped in the other two acorns as well. It required a few tries for everything to get sorted, but I could fold the paper and still retrieve the acorns intact and without negligible mass or weight loss. I'd have to te
st that scientifically later when I set up my lab.
I stepped carefully from the Midlands thirty minutes later and waited for a member of the Justice Squad to come.
No one came.
Smiling fiercely, I made my way to the library to meet Will and Nephthys. I hadn't fallen out of the tree, gotten eaten by a yeti, or received a citation, and I had used paint.
Suck it, Marsgrove.
~*~
I experimented with encapsulation field modifications and tested small drops of paint on projects, but by the time Monday arrived, I still hadn't figured out how to claim a building. My exhaustion was nearly overwhelming, and if I wasn't careful, a yeti was going to claim me as a meaty prize instead. I tightened up my mental pyramid construct to keep my magic alert, but it cost energy resources. Every time I used a drop of paint, I had to fight to retain magical control an hour later, making me work my pyramid cornerstones to their limits.
And campus events seemed to be growing crazier—as if part of the Midlands insanity was following me past the boundaries. A silly thought. They had specific enchantments in place to prevent such things. It had to be that I was just better able to identify the weird stuff popping up on campus everywhere.
Christian's evil voice was growing more demented and his sane voice more wistful and cautious. I was becoming terrified that if I didn't retrieve him quickly, I might lose him completely. I had a thousand soul purification rituals to try. I just needed a moderately safe place to try them.
Opportunity intersected with determination finally on Tuesday morning, the fifth day of my Midlands search.
A building with the letters OKAI emblazoned over the doorway had repeatedly drawn my eye. It looked eerily similar to a building I had drawn for Christian back in the second or third grade. I had gotten angry with him over something stupid while finishing the sketch, and had overlaid a Gothic roof with jagged tiles that threatened to impale anyone who came too near the stoop.
There was an intoxicating thread of magic that came from the building every time it appeared near me—magic that was sympathetic with mine. Magic that stroked and snapped, both embracing and dangerous.
The problem was that the Okai building tended to disappear the instant I walked toward it.
The other pressing concern was that I needed to locate the building in the future, no matter where it popped up. Standard maps didn't work in the Midlands.
I activated my new and improved encapsulation field, then spent an hour making a map dragon and imbuing my own experiences in the Midlands into his consciousness—creating a little beast that wasn't afraid to fly and catalog the Midlands on paper. A concentrated drop of paint later, I carefully removed him from his paper sketch. He flapped his parchment wings and roared out streams of papercut-sharp confetti, then dove downward through the leafy canopy.
I watched the paper I had removed him from and sure enough, as he soared across the Midlands, the lines of the buildings and landscapes started to sketch themselves on the page. I doubted the paper magic would be able to handle the landscape shifts in the Midlands—yet. But cataloging what was actually here at different points in time would definitely help. Tiles tended to attract to their same neighbors over time.
I drew and released three more dragons from the paper and sent them out in different directions. Lines, landmarks, and buildings began forming on the sketch like a possessed Etch-a-Sketch. I made it so I could zoom in or out at will.
A burst of sweat wet my brow as I stared at Okai, which had stayed in my view while I had been sketching and using the paint. I still needed to secure it. Need rocked me.
Gold the hue of Mr. Verisetti's spell glowed from under Okai's entrance door, and opportunity presented itself with one thought.
Maybe I could use myself to hook the location.
I squeezed a bit of lavender paint onto my forefinger, then channeled my need between the still-expanding map and the real door of Okai. I pressed my painted finger against the door in the map as I concentrated. Both began to glow.
I secured Guard Rock, threw everything back in my bag, shimmied down the tree, and jogged toward the building. It abruptly disappeared, and the landscape changed. My shoulders fell. Christian was screaming again.
My map suddenly glowed, and I felt a tug. I stared for a moment, then followed the tug, keeping my eyes alert for predators and the strange magic swirls that sometimes twisted down the urban streets. I rounded two corners, then three, then the tug abruptly settled, and the Okai building was in front of me again. As if I had gone around the block, but it had never moved.
This happened three more times—but each time I was able to approach a little bit closer before it disappeared, as if the building was skittish, but slowly growing accustomed to me.
I took a deep breath as I successfully made it onto the eerie stoop, then touched a painted finger to the real door. The ground shook, and I closed my eyes. At least if I blew up in the Midlands, the chaotic magic would contain the blast.
The shaking abruptly settled and I cracked an eye to find both myself and the building intact. I cautiously opened the door.
Square load-bearing pillars dotted the open single-room space. Dust bunnies littered the area, hopping around.
I carefully stepped onto the parquet floor, thankful it was sturdy, and locked the door behind me. I quickly weaved the spell I had used in the art studio, but this time to check if anything nasty was waiting for me. No trip lines or magic holes presented themselves.
A large staircase at the back of the room lead up to four smaller rooms and a bathroom.
One room contained rows of empty bookshelves. Another contained pedestals and ritual bowls. The third was empty. All three rooms returned neutral results to the spell checking the space.
The fourth room...returned sharp black and white beams. Cracked mirrors surrounded a glossy and undamaged full length Cheval looking glass in the center of the room. I avoided looking in it for no rational reason. Icy chills and visions of fairytales filled me: Snow White and Beauty and the Beast. No good came of magic mirrors in the sharded worlds of Grimm and beyond.
I closed the door firmly behind me, put shield and alarm wards over it, and decided to set up shop on the ground floor.
There was a weird silence to the building, enhanced by the sweep of wind that flowed over the jagged roof tiles every three or four minutes. The brush of branches, the creak of boards, then silence again.
Creepsville. My new home away from home.
I carefully removed and activated the device I had made just for this moment. Ward lines transformed the space around me into a five-by-seven-by-five enclosure. I would figure out a way to increase the size and permanently attach it to the building later tonight.
I set up my supplies: a large piece of canvas carefully smoothed and affixed to a frame made from wood I had gathered in the Midlands, some paint I had mixed with Stevens, tubes I had purchased from the Art Expressionists meetings, three brushes, six charcoal pencils, some scrap paper. Materials easily stored in my bag for exactly this purpose.
Guard Rock tumbled out of the harness I had made for him, walked over to the front door, and thumped his pencil stick before standing at attention.
Charcoal, brush, and paints in hand, I took a deep breath. “Ok, let's do this thing.”
A butterfly—a real one—flew free an hour later, soaring to the ceiling then back down to perch on top of Guard Rock. Its wings whispered gently. Guard Rock shook himself and the butterfly took to the air, fluttering up the stairs and away from view.
The exhilaration from my success rocked through me, making me dizzy with adrenaline. I could do anything.
Like free Christian.
“Yes, yes, yes!”
“No, no, no!”
I did a quick sketch, then painted without thought, bursting color onto canvas in some mad Pollock liberation. And the magic burst with and from me.
I could see paint splatters seeping into the floor and around the canvas
, but it barely registered, as my creation took form.
The tension in me unwound and stretched, emptying from me for the first time since I'd arrived in the Second Layer. Finally, a place where my magic could fly free without consequence. Magic slipped happily past my cuff.
The features of my brother took shape and he became more and more real on the canvas. I concentrated everything I had on my memories of him and projecting them onto the page.
“Yes, yes, yes!”
“No, no, no!”
I added the last bit of lavender shading, then tentatively reached inside, fingers dipping into the canvas. A thrilled shudder shook me. I touched his wrist, which was cool, but firm and real, not paper, and pulled.
Just like the butterfly. Just like the dragons. But real. Come on...
Paint chips fell to the floor.
“Ok.” I nodded. “Ok.” I grabbed my notebook and tried the soul binding ritual I had been saving up. The backlash knocked me into a pillar. When I finally regained my feet and reached in to the canvas again, dried brown leaves emerged as crumbled paint. And again the second time, and the third. A repeat of my fruitless efforts in my bedroom.
I tried another ritual. Guard Rock started running toward me on his thin rock legs a second before the backlash knocked me clear across the building floor. When I awoke, Guard Rock was pacing on my chest, spear pointed outward. I lifted him, gave him a pat, and dragged myself forward, my head pounding more fiercely than the worst migraine I had ever experienced.
A quick look at the time indicated five hours had passed while I was unconsciousness.
One ritual per day. Right.
But I was running out of time. I narrowed my eyes at the painting and thrust my hand inside.
“Come on, Crown!”
My hand gripped and tugged something free. The lack of resistance sent me falling to the ground.
I stared at the laurel wreath coronet in my hand for a long time. And as I exited the Midlands it burst into flames.