by V. St. Clair
He rolled again and cast Sever, slicing one of the heads clean off. Unfortunately he hadn’t been prepared for the copious amounts of blood and poison that spewed forth from the wound, drenching him as he tried to escape the other heads. His skin burned wherever it touched him, and one of the remaining heads smacked into him and knocked him off his feet, sending him hurtling through the air. Winded and in pain, Hayden twisted his prism around and cast Heat to try and cauterize the still-spraying stump, but it didn’t work properly.
Hayden leapt for a torch again and had just closed his hand around it when he was yanked off of the ground with a sharp jerk by the teeth that were clamped around his leg. As he was flung up into the air he sincerely hoped that whatever Master he’d just summoned wasn’t busy using the restroom right now, because he wasn’t sure he was doing all that well on his own. He experienced a weird moment of disorientation when he reached the apex of the arc and found himself momentarily right-side up in midair. Then the jaws released him long enough to throw him higher, the mouth opening wide enough to bite him in half when he landed. Panicking, Hayden tried to find a useful array in his prism while flying through the air, but couldn’t manage it in time. He braced himself for the feel of razor-sharp teeth tearing through him, but before he could land in the hydra’s mouth a giant boulder appeared from thin air between them, crushing the hydra’s head into the ground.
Still falling fast enough to break every bone in his body, Hayden now tensed in anticipation of slamming into the giant rock at however-many meters-per-second, but again he was spared—this time by a giant cushion that softened the impact enough to merely rattle his teeth and make his bones flex ominously.
He blinked a few times and rolled slowly to his feet, entire body aching from being thrown around and doused in poison. His hand slipped a little on the prism in his circlet, and he realized it was too coated with poison to cast through. Wiping his hands furiously on what was left of his pants, he drew another prism from his belt, touching only the edges as he swapped it out with the one in his circlet. In this amount of time he was amazed that nothing had eaten him yet, but when he looked back at the hydra he saw that it had turned its focus to the larger threat—Master Graus.
The Master was activating scriptures so rapidly that Hayden wondered how many pre-drawn ones he kept on his person for occasions such as this, which at least explained how he was able to create a boulder to crush the hydra and a cushion to catch Hayden within the span of a couple seconds. The hydra still had three heads left, and its feet were stomping around scarily close to where Kobi was beginning to stir.
Trusting the hydra to Master Graus for now, Hayden darted around between its legs until he reached his partner, straining to pull him to his feet and half-carrying him out of harm’s way before turning back to help with the fight. The Master of Scriptures must have finally run out of his namesake, because he reached into his robes to draw another piece of scripted vellum and came up empty-handed, cursing and jumping out of the way instead.
Hayden brought up a second prism in front of the first to try a compound, but nearly lost his focus when he saw the hydra spray Master Graus with poison—the Master barely threw his hands in front of his face in time to shield his eyes, the acidic bile immediately beginning to eat through his gloves and the sleeves of his metallic green robes.
Abandoning Kobi and running back to help, Hayden raised his prisms and compounded Heat so powerfully that it seared two of the heads entirely, blackening the scales all the way down its necks. Master Graus, though weaponless, recovered from the attack almost immediately and extended one hand into the air, snapping his fingers. Hayden had no idea what he was hoping to accomplish, but he was more sidetracked by the fact that now that the Master’s gloves had been completed destroyed, he could see the sorcerer siglas on the back of his hands for the first time.
The snap echoed weirdly through the air, much louder than should have been possible, and Hayden could swear that he saw a ripple of magic wash over the hydra, its remaining head breaking at the neck so badly that it was bent into a right angle by the invisible force. It fell to the ground and moved no more.
Now that the immediate danger was past, Hayden began to feel the full effects of being beaten and covered in acidic poison. His vision wavered slightly, and he blinked hard to force the world back into focus, approaching Master Graus warily.
The Master of Scriptures examined his own injuries briefly and then turned to Hayden.
“Come on, we need to get to the infirmary to clean up and get some antidote to the hydra venom, before enough soaks through our skin to be fatal,” he said in greeting.
“You’re a sorcerer?” Hayden replied, not sure why he was asking it as a question when the evidence was plainly visible on the back of the man’s ungloved hands.
Graus frowned briefly at his hands, only just realizing the loss of his gloves.
“Yes and no. We can discuss it after we receive treatment,” he continued in clipped tones, walking away from Hayden to make sure that Kobi was alright. Hayden noticed that he tucked his hands into the pockets of his robes as he approached the other boy, who was on his feet now and limping slightly.
Feeling an odd combination of worry, disbelief, and fuzziness—the latter an effect of the poison—Hayden trudged after him, continuing to blink as hard as possible to try and keep himself upright and moving, because he was beginning to feel very drowsy. He tried not to look at his skin too closely, though he caught a few glimpses of exposed tissue where the acid had burned through it. He swallowed hard to suppress a wave of nausea as he entered the school.
Master Graus must have summoned help at some point, because he was greeted by a group of Masters as soon as he entered the castle: Asher, Willow, and Reede blew past him after only a cursory glance, headed out to the Schism to begin adding new magic; Sark and Mistress Razelle were leading the way to the infirmary to begin mixing antidotes for them; Kilgore caught Hayden just as his knees buckled and helped him back to his feet, half-carrying him to the infirmary and saying, “Why does it always have to be you?”
Hayden didn’t have a good answer.
10
The Sorcerer
Hayden was beginning to wonder if there was a prize for most visits to the infirmary, because if so, he was probably a contender for winning it. The moment Master Kilgore helped him sit down on the side of a cot, Mistress Razelle came over with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge and told him to strip off his remaining clothing.
“Even my underwear?” he asked, aghast at the prospect of a group of Masters seeing him naked.
“Unless you want to risk the acid eating away anything beneath them,” Razelle said with a steely glint in her eye.
Hayden scowled and tugged off the remaining scraps of his shirt and pants, relieved when the Mistress of Healing placed a modesty screen in front of him so he could have some privacy. He was less relieved when she stepped behind it to assist him with washing.
“There’s no need to blush, young man, I’ve seen it all before,” she assured him airily, dunking a second sponge into the soapy water and scrubbing his back and neck a little harder than he would have liked while Hayden tackled the front. He muttered a swear word when she reached the parts of his skin that had been burned through.
“I know it hurts, but it’s only going to get worse until we wash the vile stuff off,” she added sympathetically, continuing to scrub.
Hayden mumbled something about how it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t a woman helping him and Razelle said, “Would you rather have Kirius Sark assist you?”
“No thanks, he’d probably take the chance to kill me and claim it was an accident. I’m pretty sure he still hates me, even after last year,” Hayden sighed, rinsing the last of the soap off of his body and covering himself with a towel while she began mixing up burn paste.
“I’m not deaf, Frost,” Master Sark snapped from somewhere on the other side of the modesty curtain, and Hayden winced as he
remembered that the Master was helping Graus.
“Glad to hear it, sir,” he answered back automatically, earning an amused snort from the Master of Scriptures.
Mistress Razelle reappeared around the curtain, pursing her lips at their conversation. Hayden was prepared to forgive her for any past, present, or future embarrassment he might suffer at her hands when she started applying liberal amounts of the bright orange burn paste to his injuries. The areas with paste on them immediately went numb, and Hayden sighed in relief and opened his mouth to drink the cup of murky brown antidote without complaint—he didn’t even care that it tasted like black licorice.
His head began to clear almost immediately and his vision righted itself. It wasn’t until he began to feel better that he was able to appreciate just how terrible he had been feeling before. Before he could do more than thank the Mistress of Healing for saving his life for the umpteenth time, the door to the infirmary opened and Tess and Zane hurried in, the former carrying an armful of clothes.
“I’m naked,” he said in greeting, immediately feeling like a dolt.
Zane laughed out loud but Tess merely tossed him the bundle of clothing, which he realized were his, and said, “We heard. I figured you’d want something to wear.”
She turned her back to him so he could get dressed.
“How did you all already hear about what happened?” he asked the back of her head. “I know news travels fast around here, but that’s still surprisingly quick, even for Mizzenwald…”
“Most people don’t really know what happened yet,” Zane explained, turning back around when Hayden signaled he was finished dressing. “Kilgore saw me practicing conjury out front and told me you were injured and might appreciate some company. I went and got Tess, because she likes you more than I do and is willing to nurse you back to health.”
“I wasn’t sure what you’d need,” Tess ignored Zane’s sarcasm and began handing him the rest of what she brought, “so I grabbed your pillow, a comb, your toothbrush, and I sent for Bonk.”
Hayden raised his eyebrows, impressed at her foresight. Zane apparently agreed because he said, “See, that’s what’s nice about bringing a woman along—they think of these things. I would have just come down here to laugh at you.”
“Nice to know you’ve got my back,” Hayden made a face at him, accepting the rest of the things Tess brought and stretching out on his back on the cot. “I’m pretty sure that Razelle is going to keep me overnight to make sure I don’t take a turn for the worse. I’d argue with her, but I’ve seen her cow Asher and Laurren both, and I want no part of that scariness.”
“That’s fine, we’ll stay until she kicks us out,” Zane dragged a couple chairs over from the other side of the room so that they could sit beside him. “I intend to spend most of the time reminding you of the fact that Mistress Razelle has seen you naked.”
Hayden groaned at the memory.
“Better her than Sark, I guess. He’d probably stand around making snide comments about my manhood for a while before giving me the antidote to the hydra venom.”
“I’m still not deaf, Frost,” Master Sark called from the other side of the curtain.
“Damn this thing!” Hayden leapt out of bed and yanked the curtain back so that he could see the remainder of the room. He climbed back into bed and said, “Sorry again, sir—I usually try not to talk bad about you when you can hear me.”
Master Graus was sitting up in bed, already donning a new pair of robes and looking much better than Hayden, though he hadn’t been burned nearly as badly or beaten up as much. Hayden noticed that he had two convenient bandages covering the back of either hand so that his siglas weren’t visible. Graus saw him looking and narrowed his eyebrows, saying nothing.
“Well you’ll soon get your chance,” Sark added sardonically, gathering the last of his things. As soon as his colleague was back on his feet, the two of them left the infirmary.
“You know, I really think he’s starting to warm up to you,” Zane observed as soon as Master Sark closed the door to the infirmary behind him. “If you had gotten smart with him in your first year here he would have started screaming, choking you, and ranting about how you deserve to be expelled and ripped into pieces by hungry vultures.”
“Yeah, compared to that, he was downright pleasant,” Hayden agreed, yawning widely.
“Oh no you don’t,” Zane frowned. “You can’t fall asleep until you’ve told us all about what happened at the schism. The whole school is going to have a garbled version of it by tomorrow morning, and I want to get the inside scoop before then so I can laugh at them for being sadly misinformed.”
Hayden yawned again and explained how he and Kobi were doing their usual rotation, and how he heard his partner make a weird noise and knew something was wrong. Zane and Tess both showed identical looks of surprise when he told them it was a seven-headed hydra that emerged through the opening.
“Nice to know you still have absolutely terrible luck,” the former commented cheerfully. Tess merely scowled and examined his bandaged skin with renewed interest.
He told them about fighting the hydra more-or-less successfully, and about summoning Graus to assist him.
“Was he any good?” Tess asked with obvious interest. “I’ve never seen him fight before, but Master Willow told me he’s one of the best he’s ever seen.”
Hayden hesitated, not sure whether he should mention the siglas on the back of Graus’s hands to his friends yet. He decided against it for now, at least until he got a chance to talk to the Master of Scriptures and ask him to explain.
“Yeah, he was pretty awesome. He must have had a kajillion scriptures pre-drawn, because he was activating them way faster than I thought was possible. Good thing too—if he hadn’t summoned that cushion for me I’d probably be dead instead of just really sore.”
Tess and Zane made appreciative noises as he told them some of the things the Master had summoned, and as soon as he was finished with his story, they were interrupted by a gentle knock on the door. Zane got up to answer it and looked surprised when Bonk flew into the room to perch on Hayden’s bed.
“About time you showed up,” Hayden greeted his familiar with a gentle pat on the head. “I could’ve used your help when I was getting maimed by that hydra.”
Bonk let out a belch that smelled suspiciously like bacon and flopped over on Hayden’s pillow to settle in for the night. Tess volunteered to bring him his book bag so he could get some work done, and soon afterwards they left him alone for the night. All in all, he didn’t mind the solitude, and managed to knock out two essays for Wands and Elixirs before going to sleep.
The next day was mercifully a weekend, and Hayden was cleared to leave the infirmary before breakfast by Mistress Razelle. He even got some of his bandages removed, as his less serious burns had already been healed by that excellent orange paste—though the new skin still looked pink and raw.
When he entered the dining hall he was unpleasantly surprised by the immediate upswing in noise as people began staring and talking about him to their friends. Ignoring it as best he could, he eventually found his friends and made his way over to join them.
The first thing Conner said when he sat down was, “I don’t know how you managed it, but somehow you became even more popular overnight. They’re probably going to start selling lunchboxes with your face on them at The Magnificent Mage soon.”
“For what—fighting a hydra and not dying?” Hayden asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You know how these things get warped in the retelling,” Zane sighed. “Somehow everyone has the impression that you singlehandedly took the thing down, while simultaneously saving Kobi from being stomped on or eaten, so now you’re a hero all over again.” He rolled his eyes in mock annoyance.
“But that’s ridiculous!” Hayden argued hotly. “It’s true that I helped drag Kobi out of immediate danger, but if Graus hadn’t shown up when he did we’d both probably be dead right now.”
“Yeah, well, for some reason everyone thinks that he just showed up at the end to help you to the infirmary or something.” Zane shrugged. “I’m surprised that the girls in this place haven’t started throwing themselves at your feet by now, begging for a date.”
Hayden smirked and said, “If they do, I’ll set Tess on them.”
Tess gave him an impish smile that suggested she’d like nothing better than to set a few people straight.
“It doesn’t help that you’re still wearing all those bandages,” Tamon pointed out. “It just reminds everyone of how brave and strong you are and all that.”
“I’d gladly take them off, if only I had skin beneath them,” Hayden said with pursed lips. “I removed all the ones I was able to before I came in here.” He pointed to the patches of new skin on his arms and neck.
“Well hurry up and eat your toast and fruit so we can get out of here—all the attention is creeping me out,” Zane said while glancing around the dining hall. “We should take a break from homework and spend some time outside with our familiars today.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Hayden agreed readily, shoveling a mouthful of buttered toast into his mouth. “I need to talk to Master Graus at some point today though, and I’ve also got a meeting with Fia Valay in the afternoon to review something boring involving investments and dividends that I don’t really understand,” he added with a scowl.
“Why do you need to see Graus?” Tamon asked. “I didn’t think you were even taking Scriptures.”
“I’m not—I just wanted to ask him something about yesterday,” he answered vaguely, trying to look nonchalant. He didn’t think the news that one of their teachers was secretly a sorcerer would be well-received, given that they had just emerged from a war with them where most of the people they knew very nearly died.