Cave of Nightmares

by V. St. Clair

  His classmate looked distinctly worse than the last time Hayden saw him. The bruising around his right eye and jaw had darkened considerably, and the area was still swollen as well. Lorn caught him staring and glared daggers at him.

  “Alright you two, come over here and get in the circle,” Master Kilgore said in his usual gruff tone. It was just then that Hayden noticed the conjury circle that had been drawn behind him on the pavement in light blue chalk.

  It didn’t look as complex as the circle he’d seen Master Reede use in class to retrieve Anabel’s hand the other day, but it felt all the more powerful for its simplicity. It was a perfect circle, large enough for the three of them to stand comfortably inside, with an intricate weaving that looked like a five-stranded braid drawn around the circumference. Hayden raised his eyebrows, impressed.

  “You can draw a perfect circle even though you’re the Master of Elixirs?”

  Master Kilgore shooed them towards the drawing as he answered Hayden’s question.

  “One of the benefits of being a Master at Mizzenwald is you get a Mastery Charm.” He gestured to the long necklace he wore with the phial of elixir carved in gold at the end. “These aren’t just decorative, boy. An amplifier like this sharpens your skill sets and boosts your overall power.”

  Hayden considered that for a brief moment.

  “And only master-level mages can wear them?”

  “Students are never permitted to wear Mastery Charms, even at the mastery level. Only a select group of people are given that honor: chiefly, those on the Council of Mages, as well as the instructors at each of the Great Nine schools of magic.” He chuckled at Hayden’s obvious surprise. “There had to be some incentive for the most skillful mages in the Nine Lands to come back and teach.”

  Before Hayden could ask any follow-up questions, Master Kilgore snapped his fingers and the conjury circle disappeared around them. Hayden blinked, and when he opened his eyes he discovered that they weren’t anywhere near Mizzenwald anymore.

  He gasped as he took in their surroundings. They were standing at the edge of a massive bog that smelled like armpits. They were surrounded by a sparse forest, the leaves long since gone from the dead trees. Hayden shivered as the wintry air hit him all at once, and wished he had dressed more warmly for the occasion.

  Lorn wrinkled his nose at the smell and said, “You’re not going to make us go in there, are you, sir?” He pointed to the bog in front of them.

  “Of course I am,” Master Kilgore confirmed. “How else am I supposed to get siltgrass?”

  The half of Lorn’s face that wasn’t bruised and swollen looked horrified at the prospect. Hayden shivered and stared down at the murky green-brown water without entirely concealing a frown.

  “But you could just harvest it with magic!” Lorn countered hotly. “Frost and I will have to wade in there and collect it by hand!”

  “Perhaps I should send you to the library to look up the definition of the word punishment,” Kilgore said dryly, taking a seat on a sawed-off tree trunk and removing a book from the outer pocket of his robes. “You’ve got an hour to collect me as much siltgrass as possible, so get to it.”

  Hayden shivered again. It’s going to be freezing in that water…

  “Sir,” he said quietly, not wanting to get in any more trouble. “There aren’t really hydras in there, are there?”

  Master Kilgore didn’t look up from his book when he replied, “There might be. Don’t go too far from shore and shout if something grabs you.” He didn’t look terribly concerned about the prospect of Hayden and Lorn getting attacked by monsters in the bog while he read a book.

  “And what if they eat us before we can shout?” Lorn’s voice was shaking, but not from the cold.

  “Hydras almost never eat their pray right away. They’ll want to pull you under and drown you first.” Kilgore flipped the page and continued reading. “Now off with you, or I’ll add another half hour to your time.”

  Hayden pulled off his shoes and walked to the edge of the bog, Lorn close by him. They had to move around the shore a bit to find a break in the reeds and cat-tails. Taking one last moment to scowl at each other, they stepped out into the murky water.

  Hayden grimaced as his socks got wet, and then the hem of his pants. The water was ice-cold, and he immediately began to go numb as he walked further into the bog. He didn’t even know what siltgrass looked like until he saw Lorn reach into the water and extract a clump from the muddy ground.

  It was slow, tedious work, and soon Hayden’s teeth were chattering as he tread water, looking around for another patch of siltgrass through the murky depths. He was glad that his hand had healed enough that he could submerge it without being in agony, but was still too afraid to remove the bandages and see what it looked like.

  Lorn wandered off in the opposite direction, which suited Hayden just fine, and was carrying another armful of siltgrass back to shore. Hayden ignored him and fell into a natural sort of rhythm. Find the siltgrass, pick it up, swim back to shore, repeat…

  Judging from the position of the sun compared to when they started, he estimated that they were collecting siltgrass for the better part of an hour.

  Hayden thought he could see a few strands near his foot, but it was hard to be certain with the discolored, foul-smelling water all around him. Holding his breath and closing his eyes, he submerged himself completely and swam downwards, feeling blindly ahead of him with his hands until he touched the bottom. It took a surprisingly-long time to get to the silty ground; Hayden hadn’t expected the bog to be very deep, but it dropped off sharply just past the shoreline.

  His hand brushed something scaly, and for a moment he assumed it was a fish. Then he heard a shrill shriek that echoed strangely in the water, and he opened his mouth and nearly gasped, which would have been fatal. Instead, he kicked as hard as he could towards the surface, legs burning from the cold and exertion. He welcomed the feel of ice-cold air on his face as he shouted, “MASTER—”

  Something wrapped around his ankle and tugged him sharply back underwater. Hayden barely had time to suck in half a lungful of air before his head was submerged. He kicked wildly as he was pulled down, so rapidly that his ears hurt from the water pressure.

  I’m going to die. I didn’t even last a full week in school and now I’m going to die in a bog.

  Still struggling uselessly, he was surprised when whatever was holding him gave another eerie shriek and released him quite abruptly. Before he could react, something massive came up beneath him and began pushing him towards the surface. Clinging on for dear life, Hayden focused all of his effort on resisting the urge to exhale as his lungs screamed for air.

  His head broke the icy surface for a second time and Hayden sucked in a loud breath, coughing and gasping as he clung to the slippery thing that had saved him from certain death. When he finally blinked the water out of his eyes he saw that it was an otter that was nudging him gently towards shore, where Master Kilgore was sitting with his eyes closed and his hand clasping a charm of some sort, his book lying forgotten on the ground.

  Lorn was standing at the edge of the bank, shivering near the cat-tails and looking petrified. Hayden tried to thank the helpful otter as his feet found purchase and he stumbled clumsily towards dry land, but he wasn’t able to articulate words just yet and it swam away while he was still knee-deep in the bog.

  Master Kilgore released his charm and watched his progress.

  “Come here, boy, let me have a look at you,” he beckoned him over to the sawed-off tree stump, and Hayden collapsed onto it, his legs giving out from adrenaline-burn and the freezing cold.

  “Here, drink this.” He handed Hayden a phial of something red from his robes, and he drank it without question. “You too, Trout.” He passed another phial to the other boy.

  The elixir tasted sugary and warmed him instantly from head to toe. His teeth stopped chattering and feeling returned to his limbs, but his muscles still ached from being cold f
or so long.

  “That hydra didn’t take any pieces off of you, did it?” Master Kilgore asked calmly, examining Hayden’s hands and feet, including the burned one, which had mostly healed. “No? Good, then you should be fine.”

  Hayden looked out at the deceptively still waters of the bog.

  “How did that otter know to come and save me?”

  Master Kilgore raised an eyebrow.

  “I sent it after you.” He held up the charm, and Hayden saw a carving of an otter done in ivory, wrapped in a piece of red hair. “You thought I was just going to sit here and watch you drown?”

  Hayden shivered, his wet clothes making him cold all over again as the effects of the elixir wore off.

  “Kind of,” he admitted, and Master Kilgore huffed impatiently.

  “Well, you’re both fine now. Stay closer to the shore from now on. They shouldn’t come for you as long as your feet are touching the ground.”

  Lorn’s mouth dropped open.

  “You’re making us go back out there?!”

  Kilgore picked up his book again and flipped to whatever page he had left off on.

  “Of course I am. You’ve got fifteen more minutes of your punishment to serve.”

  By the time Hayden returned to Mizzenwald he was freezing, exhausted, and smelled worse than he had ever imagined possible. The rest of the school was halfway through dinner by the time he finished showering and made it to the dining hall. A lot of people turned to look at him as he searched for Zane and Conner, though for once he was too tired to care about the attention. He threw himself into a vacant seat and began pulling everything in reach towards him.

  “Where have you been?” Zane greeted him, already finished eating. Felix the fox was curled up on his head like a fur hat. “I’ve heard all sorts of rumors about you this afternoon: someone said you beat Lorn to a pulp and were expelled for it, but I also heard it was the other way around. Jenni even said something about a prism-wielder’s duel at sundown, but of course no one believed that because only an idiot would challenge a natural prism-user to a duel.”

  Hayden ate half a bowl of stew before slowing down enough to answer.

  “Lorn tried to murder Bonk during Elixirs and I punched him in the face,” he said to the table at large. “We both just finished our punishment for Kilgore, collecting siltgrass from a freezing bog full of hydras that tried to drown and eat us.”

  Zane looked momentarily stunned, but Tamon apparently wasn’t shocked to hear about murderous water monsters because all he asked was, “How good did you pummel Lorn before they stopped you?”

  “He’s black and blue. You can see for yourself if he ever turns up for dinner,” Hayden said with grim satisfaction.

  “Is Bonk alright?” Mira interjected worriedly, and Hayden felt suddenly guilty for forgetting about his familiar until now.

  “Yeah, he was with Master Asher when I last saw him…” he looked around for the Prism Master and saw him sitting with a group of first-years. Bonk was perched on his shoulder, eating what appeared to be a block of yellow cheese and looking perfectly content.

  “Traitor,” Hayden mumbled, turning back to his stew.

  “You must have roughed Lorn up pretty bad, because Oliver looks ready to gut you.” Conner pointed three tables over, where the older boy and his friends were glaring hatefully at Hayden.

  Before he could respond, Tucker approached from the left and squeezed himself in beside him.

  “Hey there, heard you were in trouble tonight.”

  Hayden was already tired of discussing it.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Tucker surprised him by changing tracks. “Well make sure you don’t do anything stupid tomorrow, because we’ve got challenge group practice and we don’t need our prism digging holes while we’re all working,” he chided, and Hayden grimaced.

  “I wasn’t trying to get into trouble, but I won’t miss practice tomorrow,” he sighed, remembering something from earlier today. “By the way, I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to help me get the hang of wands. I’m having a bit of a problem making them work for me, and Willow recommended you.”

  Tucker brightened considerably.

  “Did he? Good, because I’m trying to transfer into his fourth-level class and I wasn’t sure if he even noticed me,” he smirked. “Sure, I can try and help you out a bit…tonight?”

  “No, not tonight.” Hayden sighed, thinking of the mountain of homework he had to do and how tired he already was. “Some day when I’m not stuck in a bog.”

  “Just let me know.” Tucker got up and walked back to his group of friends, and Hayden ladled himself another bowl of stew.

  9

  Compounding

  Asking Tucker for help with wands proved to be a good idea, and by the middle of the week Hayden had successfully completed a few attempts at the Growing and Shrinking spells, though he wasn’t sure how either would help him during the team challenge this weekend.

  Unfortunately his Conjury remained only partially-reliable, and Powders was still an unmitigated disaster. Hayden assured Zane and Conner that he would not be signing up for Powders again next year under any circumstances.

  Since Master Kilgore had expressly forbidden him from sitting beside Lorn Trout during Elixirs lessons from now on, his work there had improved slightly, though he wasn’t able to achieve higher than an average grade on any of his creations so far.

  The only instrument that Hayden hadn’t actually been trained to use yet was, ironically, the prism. His classmates assured him that this was normal, and that since prisms were so difficult to understand and could go so badly wrong, Master Asher focused heavily on theory and diagrams for the first few months before they would begin practicing with real prisms.

  This would have been fine, except that it was Hayden’s major of focus, and despite Zane’s insistence that he would be able to use a prism during the challenge arenas whether he’d practiced with it or not, it still made him nervous.

  They were due to have their first arena challenge immediately after dinner on Serin, the first day of the weekend. Hayden was too nervous to eat more than a few bites of food at dinner that night, following Zane upstairs to return their familiars to the dormitory because they weren’t allowed to bring them along.

  “Bonk, I’m going off to the arena now…wish me luck.” He was getting used to talking to Bonk as though he were human and could understand.

  Bonk climbed up onto Hayden’s desk, glanced at him, and then promptly ate his essay for Conjury from off of his desk.

  Hayden shouted himself hoarse and threatened to feed his familiar to Slasher until Zane, laughing, pulled him from the dormitory and shut the door behind them.

  “Don’t worry, your essay was terrible anyway; Bonk was doing you a favor. It’s probably for the best that you rewrite it.”

  Hayden scowled, still feeling sour about having to redo his work.

  “I’ll bet no one else has to worry about their familiar eating their essays before class.”

  “Oh, you’re not the only one…though you could be the only person in Mizzenwald who can confidently say that a dragon ate your homework. They’re usually pretty picky about what they’ll put in their mouths.”

  Zane led him out the rear exit of the castle and past the black stone floor they had Conjury lessons on. Darkness was falling rapidly, and they followed a winding trail that seemed to come from nowhere, distinguishable only because the grass was well-trodden along the path.

  It took them almost ten minutes to find the right place, and as they walked towards a circle of lights near the cliffs that overlooked that Gawain Sea, Hayden patted the slots of his belt to make sure that all his instruments were accounted for, whether he knew how to use them or not.

  As they drew closer he saw that the pinpricks of bright light were done by magic, evenly-spaced around the circle and radiating up from the grass. He also noted that they weren’t alone; six mastery-level students (identifiable by t
he silver ‘M’ that was pinned to their clothing) were waiting for them, one standing just behind each of the lights. Tess was already standing in the center of the circle, looking anxious.

  Her expression cleared when she caught sight of them, and Hayden and Zane went to join her in the middle of the circle.

  “I hope Tucker comes soon…we’re supposed to start in five minutes.” Tess squinted at the chrono on her wrist, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Where are the Masters? I thought they were supposed to be watching us and scoring us,” Hayden lowered his voice so that only Zane and Tess would hear, in case it was a dumb question.

  “They don’t have to be here to watch us,” the former explained quietly. “They tell their students where to send us so they can use their Mastery Charms to see us from wherever they’re at.”

  Hayden imagined the Prism Master lying around in his pajamas, watching them battle monsters from the comfort of his room while he sipped hot cocoa. Kilgore would probably spend the entire time reading a book and would only look up if they were being murdered.

  Sark is probably hoping I’m murdered in there...

  His last Powder’s lesson had nearly brought the man to tears.

  Tucker strode towards them in the darkness, slowing down from a jog as he approached the circle.

  “Good, you’re all here,” he greeted them, and Hayden could hear the nervous pitch to his voice. “Just remember everything we talked about and planned for, and we should be fine.”

  The others nodded, trying to look confident, but Hayden noticed that Zane was gripping his chalk almost tightly enough to snap it, and Tess was checking the phials of elixirs and powders on her belt one last time. Hayden touched the metal circlet on top of his head to reassure himself that he still had it.

  The mastery-level students looked bored as they took their positions next to each point of light around the circle and pressed their hands against the top of the short pedestal of rock that jutted out of the ground beside each of them.

  “Ready to go?” one of them, a dark-haired boy, asked them collectively.