Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism)

by V. St. Clair

  Tamon raised his eyebrows and said, “Have you been poisoned? What in the world has come over you?”

  “Asher told me last year that I needed to learn to work with people who don’t like me, because let’s face it, there are still a lot of people in the world who hate me because of my last name.” He shrugged. “Last year I worked with Lorn because the Masters stuck him in my group and forced me to. This year it’s my choice and I’m going to prove to them that we can work together on our own terms and still come out on top of the rankings.”

  A smile crept over his face as he looked at Zane and said, “Are you up for the challenge, or are you going to wimp out on me?”

  Zane immediately put on his most dignified expression and said, “You’re on. We’re going to hit number one again this year or go down in flames trying. But hey, at least we’ll take one of the Trouts down with us if we fail epically. ”

  Conner was still giving Hayden an appraising look and said, “Why the sudden bout of maturity? Don’t tell me you’re going to stop shouting at the Masters and challenging them to duels when you get angry this year—it was such good entertainment.”

  Hayden grimaced in embarrassment and said, “That was kind of my plan, actually. It occurred to me that screaming at authority figures probably wasn’t the way to go about earning their respect.”

  They shared a laugh over that, and Hayden sacrificed his remaining lunch to Bonk after his familiar submerged his face in the mashed potato mound and nearly suffocated trying to get it back out, flapping his wings vigorously and spattering them all with potatoes.

  “So you’re not going to scream, fight, or get your butt kicked this year?” Zane frowned, wiping gravy off of his shirt from Bonk’s splashing. “This year is going to suck.”

  Hayden punched him in the shoulder as the others resumed laughing.

  “Don’t worry, there’s always summer holiday,” Hayden assured him. “What are the odds of me not running into a horde of monsters who want to tear me to shreds?”

  “Fair point,” his friend conceded. “Hope I’m there for it. We haven’t become local heroes in at least a year and a half.”

  Lunch ended soon after that, and Hayden grabbed Bonk by the middle and carried him to the Prism classroom, as the dragon’s face was still covered in mashed potatoes and he couldn’t see well enough to fly.

  He suddenly remembered that he was the only person in the level-four Prism class, and set his things down at a desk near Asher’s, pulling a spare napkin from his pocket and attempting to clear Bonk’s face of food before class started. Cinder alit on the desk beside him so silently that Hayden startled, unaware that the dragon was even in the room until now.

  Bonk exhaled heavily through his nose to clear it of potatoes, and Cinder looked at his counterpart with haughty distaste.

  “I see you haven’t taught him to eat gracefully yet,” Master Asher closed the door behind him as he entered the room. “Small wonder—my old man’s been trying to train him for longer than you’ve been alive.”

  “He knows how to behave, he just doesn’t do it unless it’s really important, because he likes being obnoxious.” Hayden made a face at Bonk, who was preening and cleaning his wings with his tongue.

  “Bonk, Cinder, why don’t you two find Horace and go play outside? Hayden and I have important prism work to do,” Asher informed the dragons, who immediately took flight and soared out an open window without further prompting.

  Asher sat at the desk beside Hayden and turned his chair around to face him. “So, how’s your first day going?”

  “Pretty well, I guess. I got to use a violet prism during Abnormal Magic, to show how it uses different colors of light on an Absorber.”

  The Prism Master raised an eyebrow in interest and said, “Oh? Lucky you, he normally doesn’t show that until later in the year. What did you think of the violet prism?”

  Hayden frowned. “It was weird. There were a lot of arrays in it, but it also made my head hurt a little just looking at them all.”

  “That’s normal, and will get better with practice. It’s a lot for your brain to process if you’re not used to it yet,” he replied. “So, you’ve probably been eagerly waiting to see what I intend to teach you this year.”

  Hayden nodded eagerly.

  “I plan on spending roughly half of our time together reviewing the basics of trigonometric and geometric formulas, the building blocks of prism-based research—if you decide to do any in the future,” he explained. “The other half of our time together will deviate slightly from my original lesson plan.”

  “Oh?” Hayden asked with interest.

  “We’ll be focusing heavily on spells for combat, both against magical creatures and against other mages. It occurred to me that while you’re very sharp and quick-thinking, you’re still not adept at combat scenarios yet.”

  Hayden grimaced, remembering his time in the I.S.C. last year. He had made it through mostly on luck or the errors of others, but he had to admit that the sixth-and-seventh year students he was up against were vastly more skilled at actually fighting other mages than he was.

  “That’s true…” he admitted shamefully.

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it; it isn’t anything you’ve done wrong. Actually, you’ve improved steadily every year that you’ve been here, which is the entire point of the challenge arenas. Being in the Inter-School Championship improved your skills as well, just not as much as I’d like. You’re on par with other fourth-year students right now, but you need to be better than that.”

  “Why?” Hayden asked curiously.

  “Because,” Master Asher said seriously, “I’m still not convinced this war is going to go in our favor. There has already been talk of pulling you into the fray if the fighting escalates, though my colleagues and I have been doing our best to keep you out of it.”

  Hayden’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “The Council wants me to fight fully-trained sorcerers?”

  “They see it as a win-win for them. They haven’t seen you in action, only hearing about it after the fact. Imagine the picture your story paints to someone who wasn’t there.”

  Hayden frowned and said, “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

  “Hayden Frost, the boy who topped the arena rankings in his first year of school, despite starting in the third-year rosters; the boy who took down a fully-grown dragon during the summer, who survived a den of wargs at the end of the year; the boy who entered the I.S.C. at thirteen and defeated other natural prism-users who were four years ahead of him in schooling.”

  “But that was just because—”

  “The son of the Dark Prism, one of the most powerful mages in living history,” Asher cut him off. “A boy with an enormous amount of Source power and ambition to prove himself; someone that few people outside of this school will truly mourn, should he die in combat defending our homeland. Hayden, you’re their ideal candidate for this war.”

  “But…” he began, suddenly worried. “It all sounds impressive when you say it like that, but I had help with most of those things, or I just stumbled through them with a combination of allies and dumb luck. Like you said, I’m no good at fighting.”

  Master Asher still looked grim when he said, “But that is how the Council chooses to hear it. If things take a turn for the worse, they’ll be screaming for you to join the battle, and we aren’t legally allowed to refuse them access to you. If you had a legal guardian they could deny permission, but your parents are both dead and there are no other Frosts to claim custody of you, which officially means that you are alone in the world. It’s an awkward sort of no-man’s land to be left in, legally, and it leaves you vulnerable until you come of age.”

  Hayden let that sink in for a moment.

  “So you’re going to teach me how to fight this year…”

  “In case you find yourself in a position that requires it, yes,” Master Asher finished for him. “As I said, it’d be best if we can avoid
it entirely, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  Hayden nodded slowly in agreement, and the Prism Master looked satisfied.

  “Alright then, let’s begin.”

  4

  Lessons Learned

  By the end of the day, Hayden was spent. He’d noticed a definite increase in the difficulty of his lessons this year and wondered if he’d be able to keep pace with it. Master Willow had sprung a quiz on them as soon as they entered the room, he got two reading assignments in Healing, and even Prisms was hard to make sense of by the time he finished taking notes on all the formulas Asher showed him.

  His roommates complained similarly when they were working on their homework that night.

  “Are you sure the Masters aren’t confusing us with sixth-year students?” Conner grimaced, flexing his hand to shake out the writing cramps.

  “I don’t know, but you’d think they’d have better things to do than assign us piles of homework with a war going on,” Tamon frowned and reread the essay he’d just completed.

  “Guess they want to make sure we didn’t forget how to use magic over the holiday,” Zane suggested. “Maybe they’ll be so busy that they won’t actually have time to grade all of this stuff, and they’ll just pass us anyway.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Tamon countered. “I’ve always thought that the Masters greatest joy in life came from making big red X’s all over parts of my essays that are wrong, and scribbling in the footnotes about how they’re not certain I’m actually literate.”

  Hayden laughed and stretched out in bed, setting up a pillow for Bonk since the bed was large enough this year to accommodate both of them.

  It’ll be nice not having Bonk steal my pillows or roll over on me all night.

  His familiar watched him work patiently, but as soon as Hayden was finished setting up Bonk’s new sleeping space, the little dragon dragged it over closer to his own pillow and curled up to go to sleep. Apparently he liked rolling onto Hayden and waking him up at all hours of the night, and had no plans on stopping now.

  With a resigned sigh, Hayden got ready for bed and went to sleep.

  When Hayden realized that he didn’t have any classes with Lorn Trout this year, his first thought was, Finally! Then it occurred to him that since he wanted to ask Lorn to be in his arena group again this year, he was going to have to go out of his way to look for him.

  He spent the better part of the week searching for him in the hallways between lessons, but the only time he actually laid eyes on his target was during mealtimes in the dining hall. On the last day before the team requests were due, he swallowed his displeasure and went to sit beside Lorn at dinner.

  Judging by the way half the hall stared at him, you’d think he’d walked up to Lorn and punched him in the jaw. Even Masters Sark and Asher raised their eyebrows from their respective tables before they resumed eating.

  “What are you doing here?” Lorn greeted him with the customary bite of derision in his voice.

  “I go to school here too, remember?” he answered automatically, unable to temper his sarcasm when he was this hungry and uncomfortable.

  One of Lorn’s rat-faced cronies scowled and said, “What’s the matter, Frost? Did your loser friends get tired of you already?”

  Hayden ignored him completely, continuing to focus on Lorn. “I wanted to know if you’ll be in my arena group again this year. I know I’ve left it a bit late to ask, but I never saw you in the hallways between classes.”

  Lorn stared at him as though he’d just grown another head, and Hayden noticed that Oliver was watching the pair of them from a nearby table with an unsettling look on his face, like he was preparing to come over and pound Hayden into the floor if necessary. Reflecting on Oliver’s performance in the Inter-School Championship last year, that was a very real possibility.

  “Are you joking, Frost?” Lorn recaptured his attention.

  “I wish people would stop asking me that,” Hayden sighed.

  Lorn stared at him for a moment and then said, as though compelled, “You do remember that we’re not friends, right?”

  Hayden snorted in amusement. “Thanks, I’d nearly forgotten.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Then why do you want me to be in your group again?” For the first time since Hayden had sat down, Lorn sounded genuinely curious instead of annoyed.

  “As obnoxious as I find you, there’s no denying that you’re good at what you do. You pulled your weight last year, and I have a better feel for where your strengths and weaknesses are now. I think if we have another go at it, we could top the rankings.” He shrugged.

  “Get lost, Frost,” another of Lorn’s friends snapped at him. “No one is interested in being in your arena group.”

  Again, Hayden ignored him. Lorn looked unusually pensive but said nothing for a long moment.

  “There’s another reason,” Hayden continued mildly. “The Masters threw us together last year as a challenge for both of us—I’m sure you figured that out as soon as I did. They wanted to see if we would be able to man up and get past our differences, and we mostly did that last year.” He took a breath to let that sink in. “This year, if we work together by choice, it’ll send a message to the Masters that not only can we take whatever they throw at us, but we can go one better. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got something to prove.”

  Lorn narrowed his eyes and looked around the dining hall with interest, focusing briefly on each of the Masters as he found them. He spared Sark a slightly longer consideration than the others.

  Finally he said, “Alright, Frost, I’ll give it a go. I suppose we didn’t disgrace ourselves in the rankings last year, so why not?”

  His friends looked at him like he said something dangerous and alarming, but Hayden smirked and held out his hand. Hesitantly, Lorn shook it.

  “Now go away before people start to think we’re friends,” he said with his typical amount of disdain, wiping his hand on his trousers as though Hayden had soiled it.

  Hayden left without complaint, eager to be back with his real friends at their table across the hall. No sooner had he sat down and begun to tell the others about his conversation with Lorn, when Master Willow motioned for Tess to make room for him to join them.

  She slid over obligingly and moved Mittens off of the table, and the Master of Wands sat down across from Hayden and greeted the group of them as one.

  “I hope you don’t mind me dining with you today?”

  Like any of us would dare say ‘yes’, even if we did…

  “Not at all, Master Willow,” Zane answered automatically.

  For a few minutes they made idle conversation while the Master buttered some bread and worked his way steadily through his plate of food with flawless etiquette. Tamon was in the middle of telling them how his boa constrictor almost fell out the window of the fourth-story dormitory, and how ridiculous he must have looked trying to drag the snake back inside without getting pulled out himself, when Master Willow turned to Hayden and said, “I noticed that you haven’t submitted any requests for your challenge arena partners this year. Registration ends tonight.”

  “I know, sir,” Hayden answered around a mouthful of stewed lamb and peas. “I was just checking to make sure Lorn was willing to give it another go before I turned in my request form.”

  The Master of Wands arched one eyebrow momentarily, though he didn’t look wholly surprised. “Last year you seemed quite opposed to having him on your team.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m trying to get better at dealing with people I don’t like.” He shrugged. “I still think he’s a jerk, but he’s decent with powders, and he thinks pretty quickly when we’re in a bind.”

  “That’s a very reasonable and mature decision to make,” he sounded mildly impressed, and Hayden felt mollified.

  “Thanks, I’ve got a goal this year to do less shouting at people, and also not to get my butt kicked so much,” he admitted, and Master Willow actually chuckled.

 
; “Both worthy objectives,” he conceded lightly, before turning to Zane. “Were you able to understand the reading on yew wands last night after I tried to clarify it?”

  Zane nodded and said, “I think so…but there are one or two parts I’m still a little sketchy on…like what happens if you put a permanent bend in it? Does it still work or does it shoot magic sideways?”

  Hayden finished his dinner while listening to Zane and Master Willow discuss the properties of yew, and Tess and Conner had a quiet discussion about their Scriptures class that they both found mutually engrossing.

  When everyone was dismissed, Hayden stood up to leave with the others, but Master Willow surprised him by saying, “A moment, Hayden.”

  Glancing back at him curiously, the others left the dining hall. When their table was clear Master Willow said, “Asher tells me he’s planning to train you in combat this year.”

  Surprised by the change in subject, Hayden nodded.

  “Good, you need to be prepared for whatever comes your way,” he finished cryptically, frowning. “Might I recommend that you pay particular attention during these lessons and practice outside of class? I also intend to focus more heavily on defensive and offensive magic this year with my classes, in case the worst should happen.”

  “You mean in case the sorcerers make it to Mizzenwald?”

  “That thought had crossed my mind,” he admitted. “I’m sure my worries are baseless, but it is better to be safe than sorry in these instances,” The Master of Wands looked down at his steepled fingers.

  If you really think your worries are baseless, why are you all training us to fight?

  “Well, either way, I’ll try my best to learn everything you all teach me,” Hayden assured him, and the Master looked up.

  “Good, that’s really all I wanted to say to you.” He got to his feet and smoothed his red Mastery robes. Hayden had already turned away when he said, “Oh, one more thing.”

  Hayden looked back at the Master once more.