by B. T. Narro
Basen did the same thing he’d done for the last two hours. He formed a cluster of bastial energy and tried to move sartious into it even though there was none in his wand.
He gasped as he felt something different. It was reluctant to move to his will, reminding him of prodding the tip of a buried rock. So Basen heaved.
Soon he came to realize he wasn’t pulling anything out from his wand but prying it out of the cluster of bastial energy. He let the BE go to focus all of his efforts on whatever this was, but the moment he did, it slipped from his grasp so suddenly it was as if it never existed.
Desperately, he tried to feel for it again. But there were no traces of it.
“No…no!” He wanted to throw his wand. I had it.
He quickly calmed as he realized that now he was at least certain he’d felt something. Chills ran up and down his arms. Maybe it was a third form of energy. Whatever it was, he could touch it with his mind.
It had disappeared the moment he’d let his cluster of bastial energy disperse. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
He gathered BE and then took hold of the stubborn energy. It didn’t feel as if there was much he could do with it because it was too heavy. All he could think of was expanding it, and even then it was like trying to get his fingers into stale bread.
Basen grunted as he tunneled in with his mind and then pulled in every direction. It was immensely difficult to keep the BE steady as he worked on this much heavier energy, and soon his hand began to shake as a groan came out of his throat.
Finally he broke it open and actually heard a ripping sound as if he’d run a dagger across flesh. He saw the same burning circle as he had at the training center, but this time he held onto it with all of his strength.
Sitting just in front of his wand, it rippled at the edges. It looked to be some sort of sphere, no bigger than his fist, and deep within it was the appearance of fire.
It roared as it sucked in all the BE around it, quickly becoming more difficult to hold. After just a few breaths, he felt as if he was between two grown men trying to get at each other to fight.
He let go. The sphere of distant fire collapsed and instantly disappeared.
“What in god’s world was that?” he asked no one.
He wanted to see it again, but he was too tired from the toll it had taken on his mind and body. While regaining his breath, he put the sartious pellets back in his wand and returned to his room.
He gathered more BE and tried the spell again, but he couldn’t feel it any longer. Panic came over him as he quickly removed the sartious pellets and tried again.
It was no use. He’d lost it.
Basen paced and cursed for a while, his mind racing to remember everything that had just happened so he could figure out the problem. When he was done, he kept coming back to the same question: Why was it so easy to feel the energy moments ago and not now?
Then he realized the only time the spell had worked was when he was in Nick’s room. He hurried back there, took the sartious pellets from his wand, and stood exactly where he had before.
He couldn’t feel it. But then he gathered BE first…and there it was! Waiting for him to expand it again!
He didn’t waste his fortitude on it. He was barely standing after the long day. Instead, he returned the sartious pellets and tried again to prove their proximity didn’t matter. As he suspected, it worked; he could feel this heavy energy separately from bastial and sartious, though it was very similar to bastial. In fact, he wondered if it could be some form of heavier bastial energy.
Basen needed to tell someone. No, show someone. He ran back to his room to confirm his discovery. He couldn’t feel the new energy here within a cluster of bastial energy. He ran back to Nick’s room. But here he could.
Why did this only work in Nick’s room?
He heard footsteps and voices headed toward him. He looked out the window and saw nothing but absolute darkness as the rain pattered. A light broke through—someone’s wand. Then he recognized Nick’s voice.
Basen opened the front door and waited for him to appear. Nick came into sight with Effie and Alex walking beside him, cowls protecting their heads from the rain.
“See, easy to find,” Alex said, stepping under the awning of the house and removing his hood. “And your roommate is here to greet us.”
“The three of you need to see something,” Basen said. “Come inside.”
“We’re tired and drunk,” Effie complained. “We just came here because it was on the way and Nick didn’t bring his wand and he’s a fool because it’s dark…and he didn’t bring his wand.” She did sound drunk, but this couldn’t wait.
“Trust me, Effie. You’ll want to see this.”
She folded her arms. “Unless it’s bacon, I doubt it.”
“Better than bacon,” Basen promised.
The three of them looked at each other as if Basen had just proclaimed he would turn bronze into gold.
“What could be in there that’s better than bacon?” Alex drunkenly swung a finger at Basen. “Mage, you have set my expectations for something amazing! Come on, Eff.”
Basen led them to Nick’s room and lit a lamp. Nick kicked off his shoes and removed his cloak. Then he started toward the doorway but stopped when Basen stayed put. “This better than bacon thing is in my room?” His speech was slurred like the rest of them, probably just as much from exhaustion as it was from alcohol at this point.
“For some reason,” Basen explained, “it can only be done in your room.” He readied his wand, but the three of them jumped up and put their hands out. “Relax and stand behind me,” he said.
Reluctantly, they obeyed.
Basen showed them the spell, creating the rippling sphere within the cluster of hot bastial energy. The same fire burned within it.
“Bastial hell!” Effie yelled, then reached her hand toward it like the intoxicated fool she was.
“Stop!” Basen screamed. “I don’t know what happens if you touch it.”
“What is that?” Nick asked.
Basen could hold it no longer, so he let it collapse. “I was hoping one of you would know.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Nick said. He looked to Effie and Alex. They shook their heads.
“As I mentioned, I can only do it in your room,” Basen told Nick. “And I’ve done it once before—at Worender Training Center.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Effie said. “Spells should work no matter where you cast them.”
“I know,” Basen agreed. “Nor does it make sense that I need to first gather bastial energy in order to do it.”
“Shit,” Effie murmured. “It looked like a portal to somewhere burning.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Do it again,” Nick requested, edging closer.
Basen repeated the spell. However, this time there was no fire to be seen within the rippling circle. Effie drew a quick breath and a burst of light shone out from her wand. The sphere was a black hole sitting in the center of her pillar of light. It flickered wildly with hundreds of streams of light shooting across its edges.
“Bastial hell,” Effie whispered. “How are you making that thing?”
He tried to explain to them how it had happened originally and what it had felt like, demonstrating the spell several more times to accompany his descriptions. Effie and Nick both tried afterward, but they couldn’t feel anything abnormal like he did.
“It’s late, and I’m still drunk,” Nick said. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow.”
They agreed, and Effie and Alex started out the door.
“One moment,” Basen said, stopping them. “Promise me none of you will tell anyone about this just yet.”
“Why?” Effie asked.
“It’s in our best interest to figure out what it is before everyone in the Academy knows about it—which is bound to happen if we start telling people. Not even your roommates, all right?”
&nbs
p; Alex shrugged.
“Fine,” Effie said. “I don’t know how you can resist the potential fame, but it’s your discovery to do what you want with. Tell us the moment you know more.”
“Agreed.”
Alone with Nick, Basen finally felt pride as his friend smiled at him. “Amazing,” Nick said. He stepped forward and clasped Basen in a suffocating hug, stumbling into him and taking Basen back a step. “You can’t meditate, yet you discover a new spell! You’re going to get so many of the womans.”
Basen laughed as he returned the hug. “Sleep well.”
“Oh I will.” Nick hiccupped as he winked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A scream awoke Basen. It was coming from Nick’s room. Basen bolted up, but the solid darkness disoriented him. He couldn’t even see his hands in front of his face. He kicked his bedpost in his attempt to make it to the other side of the room for his wand.
Nick sounded as if his flesh were being stripped from his bones. He needed help. Basen stumbled into his dresser and searched for his wand he knew to be there.
“Nick?” he shouted, but his voice wasn’t loud enough to cut through his roommate’s shrieks. “Nick! I’m coming!”
Just as he found his wand, Nick’s agonized cries suddenly ceased.
Basen gathered energy for light…no, it wouldn’t come. He must be too fatigued. He focused harder.
It still wouldn’t work. What in god’s world was this? He could feel no bastial energy to grasp! It was as if the BE in the air and his body was completely gone. He noticed a strange smell as well. It was bitter and acrid, making him think of a chemist’s lab.
He tripped to his door, then fumbled around with his hand until it reached the doorknob.
He twisted and pulled. “Nick, are you all right?” he yelled down the hall.
No answer.
Basen felt his way along the hallway and into the common area. It was as black as pitch. Again he tried to make light, but the only energy he could feel was the sartious in his wand.
Shivers of fear stopped him. Could it be that someone had removed all the bastial energy in the vicinity, even what Basen’s body produced? It would explain his inability to feel the energy, but not even master mages could do this. Had this same person done something to Nick?
Basen’s wand was useless, but he had a dagger buried beneath his clothes in his top dresser drawer.
No, it would take too long to find in this darkness.
“Nick?” he asked softly now as he slowly made his way down the hall.
Nothing.
Finally, he got to Nick’s door and felt around until he found the handle. He threw it open. All he heard was the rain beating against the roof. Basen tripped over a chair as he tried Nick’s name again. A howl of wind came into the room and brought freezing rain onto Basen’s face. He winced as he lost his breath.
The damned window is open. Someone came here and left. Did they take Nick?
Finally, Basen kicked against something that could be a body. Bending down and moving his hands around, he came to Nick’s chest and shoulders. He felt something damp and thick with a metallic odor. Was it blood?
“Shit!” Basen scooped up Nick, thrashing from side to side to free Nick’s legs from what Basen soon figured out to be the sheets of his bed. It was as if Nick had tried to make it to the door and gotten tangled.
“Help!” Basen screamed as he hoisted his roommate over his shoulder and made his way out of the dark room as quickly as possible.
He got Nick out of the house and bellowed for help again. Nick sounded like he was trying to speak, but only a gargle came out.
“Help, I think he’s been stabbed!” Basen shouted.
“Basen?” someone called not too far off.
“Yes, help us!”
Sloshing footsteps came to him. He made out the silhouette of a woman through the rain. Sanya, he realized. She’d heard his screams.
“Help me carry him to the medical building,” he told her.
“I can barely see.” She came to grab Nick’s arms and shoulders while Basen shifted to take his feet. “Can you give us light?” she asked.
“I can’t.”
“Why not? We can’t make it without it.”
But he could feel the bastial energy again, not that he understood why or had time to think about it. He switched to hold Nick with one arm, grabbing his wand with his free hand. Creating light, Basen aimed it at Nick and nearly dropped his wand at the horrific sight.
Nick’s throat had been cut, the wound opening and closing as he struggled to breathe.
“God’s mercy!”
“We have to hurry!” Sanya yelled.
They ran, but the medical building was a half-mile away. The rain beat down. Panic and adrenaline were the only things that kept Basen’s painfully sore legs moving as he lit their path.
He and Sanya didn’t speak. The only sounds were their haggard breaths and the clap of their footsteps against the sodden ground.
It seemed to take a miserably long time to get there, but they never slowed. “Almost there, Nick,” Basen assured him, though he couldn’t take the time to check if his friend was still alive.
Lamp light poured out from the medical building’s windows. He and Sanya took Nick around to the front. “Someone’s cut his throat!” Basen shouted as they barreled through the doorway.
Two healers, a man and a woman, rushed over and helped Sanya and Basen get Nick onto a medical bed. They ran to wheel him into a nearby room. The man told the woman to get a caregelow potion. She ran out as he fetched a few jars and placed them on a table beside the bed.
“Open these jars and get out the tools,” he told Basen as he leaned over Nick to inspect the wound.
Basen followed the instructions, noticing all the while that Nick was no longer moving, his eyes shut.
“Nick!” Basen yelled, holding back tears.
“What can I do?” Sanya cried out.
“Just stand back,” the healer said.
The woman returned with a vial just like the one Alabell had given Basen to sell. It appeared inedible, a silver glow beneath the lamp light. The female healer pushed Basen away to bring the caregelow potion to Nick’s lips. The second healer ran gut through the needle Basen had readied for him.
“Is he drinking?” the man asked.
“No.” She pressed her fingers against his neck to feel for his pulse.
A tense moment passed as Basen watched and waited.
She shook her head.
Both healers lost their hurry as they straightened their backs and let their shoulders slump. Sanya put her face against Basen’s shoulder and cried.
“I’m sorry,” the man told them. “He’s already dead.”
The words made the hairs on Basen’s neck stand as a sharp sadness pierced his heart. His strength left him, buckling his knees. If it wasn’t for Sanya’s warmth, her arms around him, he would’ve collapsed. He put his head on top of hers and squeezed her into him, for he felt that if he let go, the world would shatter.
*****
It felt like time didn’t move. Basen stood staring at Nick’s bloody corpse waiting for thoughts or feelings to come, but his shock was too much for either.
He didn’t know how long he stared before the male healer touched his arm and asked, “What did you see?”
Basen swayed on his feet as he struggled to speak. “Absolutely nothing. Nick’s screams awoke me, but whoever had come in had already left through the window by the time I got to his room.”
“You should clean yourselves up and try to get some rest,” the healer suggested in a soft voice. “I have to go speak with Terren. The gates need to be closed, the walls need to be watched, and we must search for the murderer.”
Sanya wiped her teary eyes. “You think it’s someone from outside the Academy?”
“It must be. Everyone here had their loyalty questioned. Intentions to murder another student would’ve been detected.” The healer frow
ned. “I’m sorry, I must go to Terren now.”
Basen kept his arm around Sanya as they trudged in a stupor out of the medical building. Why Nick? Who could possibly want to kill him?
“Basen,” Sanya murmured, “your clothes.”
He looked down to see that not only his shirt and pants were red with Nick’s blood, but his arms and hands were as well. “Sanya…” He gestured at her coat.
She looked down to find the same sight.
They walked in silence all the way back to the bathhouse near their campus homes. He aimed light over the spigot as Sanya scrubbed the blood from her arms and hands. When she was done, he stuck his right hand beneath the stream while continuing to use his wand with his left.
Sanya enclosed his hand with both of hers and rubbed to free Nick’s blood from its grasp on his skin. Once his hand and arm were clean, he switched his wand to his other hand so she could cleanse the other side.
Not a single word was spoken, and Basen didn’t feel the need to disrupt the stillness. What would be the point? Nothing they spoke of could alleviate his shock and horror nor answer his questions.
He could read his very emotions on Sanya’s blood-streaked face. The two of them were stuck in the same nightmare.
“I think I want to use the showers,” she said. “But I need spare clothes from my house first.”
“That’s a good idea.”
She looked at him for a while, her almond eyes blinking expectantly. But Basen couldn’t think clearly enough to figure out what she wanted.
“Will you come with me?” she asked gently, almost shamefully. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”
“I don’t, either,” he realized.
They both retrieved a clean set of clothes and returned to the bathhouse. There were separate entrances for men and women, but they entered neither and simply stared at each other instead.
“I never thanked you for your help,” Basen finally said. “I wouldn’t have made it to the medical building without you.”