Hayden didn’t like the sound of ‘whatever challenge appears’, and saw the others’ gazes sharpen along with his.
“Sir,” Hayden raised his hand tentatively. “There are only three safe zones and four of us…”
“Ah, yes,” Master Asher continued, “An excellent point. Only three of you will be able to enter a safe zone on the first round, which means one of you will be stuck outside. If you manage to make it to the next round, then there will be three safe zones once again. However, if you are incapacitated or opt out, then the next round will only have two safe zones.”
Hayden understood the game now. They were always going to be short by one safe zone, and it was his job to make sure he got to one no matter what. If that meant knocking out one of his competitors during the transition time then so be it.
“You said something about opting out?” the prism-user from Valhalla asked.
“Yes. This trial will be very dangerous at times, so you have the option of tapping out—so to speak—if you feel you are unable or unwilling to continue in the competition. You must knock on the glass three times in rapid succession and the wall will come down to allow you out. Of course, this will forfeit you from the entire competition if you are the first one to leave.”
Hayden’s heart began to race with terror. He had thought that the trial in Valhalla was pretty dangerous, but no one had offered them the chance to opt out of it. This one must be so awful he might die…
“Also, don’t waste your time attempting to break the glass; it has been magically-reinforced by yours truly, and you won’t be able to crack it no matter what you try, so don’t waste your prisms,” Asher continued pleasantly, as though daring each of them to attempt to overpower his spell. Davis looked tempted.
By now the crowd had migrated over to the large dome, sitting on the grass and surrounding it from all sides so they could watch the spectacle. Hayden felt his heart jump into his throat when he saw his friends sitting in the front row, though they gave him an encouraging wave. Tess looked terrified for him.
Oh great, all my friends will have a front-row view of my doom.
He exhaled heavily and tried to let his nerves go. He needed to have his wits about him for this.
“Everyone understand the rules?” Master Asher glanced at him briefly, his expression neutral, until everyone nodded their assent. “Good, then in you go.”
The Prism Master tapped the glass wall of the dome nearest them and a panel swung inwards to admit them. This must have been some magical cue, because the walls of the safe zones dropped down into the ground and out of sight.
Master Asher explained the rules to the crowd much more generically than he had a moment ago, while the four competitors filed inside and the access panel closed itself behind them. The door was indistinguishable as soon as it closed, the glass appearing as smooth and continuous as ever.
The four of them naturally spread out to opposite quadrants of the circle, as far away from each other as they could go. Hayden equipped his clear prism and waited for the signal to begin.
The five Masters were sitting in fold-out chairs that they must have conjured up from somewhere, with clear views of the arena. Asher’s voice was amplified inside of the dome when he said, “You may begin.”
Davis immediately went for Hayden, as the latter had expected. Hayden cast Slow on his opponent to put some distance between them, barreling past the prism-user from Valhalla and nearly knocking him to the ground. He felt his sleeve catch fire but extinguished it quickly with the Water spell.
The boy from Creston tried to attack Davis while the latter’s attention was focused on Hayden, which diverted him for a couple minutes as the two exchanged attacks. Hayden lifted his eyepiece and held the rose-tinted prism in front of his eye, casting Repel and knocking his opponent backwards so hard that the boy from Valhalla slammed into the glass and crumpled to the floor.
Unfortunately, Hayden had knocked him right into the narrow strips of bright red light that lit up the grass all of a sudden, flashing to indicate where the safe zones were about to appear. The boy from Valhalla rolled into the space between the two lines and the wall shot up immediately around him.
Hayden scrambled to run to the other safe zones, but he was the farthest from them and he slammed into the tinted-red glass as the wall shot up around Davis, who had claimed the last one and was now grinning evilly at him from safety.
Hayden heard a groan from the crowd, and his eyes briefly met Asher’s. The Prism Master didn’t show any emotion other than a brief compression of the lips, and Hayden turned his attention to the open space around him, sandwiching him between two of the safe zones.
One of the other danger zones was filling rapidly with water, and the other now had a real warg in it, pacing back and forth between the two safe zones that confined it. Hayden turned his focus back to his own problems when he saw a beam of violet light shoot from one edge of the space to the other. He expected the beam of light to disappear, but it remained, like a strand from a violet spider web.
He had no idea what the light was, but was pretty sure that he didn’t want to touch it. Another beam of light appeared just behind him, and Hayden gasped and took a few steps away from it. He had no warning as to where the strands of light would appear, so it was impossible to know where to move next.
Soon they were coming more rapidly. There were a dozen of them bisecting his wedge of free space, bottling him in. He ducked down and crawled beneath one, popping up where there was more room, but soon it was impossible to find a safe place to stand. Davis was grinning like a loon, but he couldn’t see his friends’ faces clearly because of the zone full of water made things blurry in that direction.
A beam of violet light shot straight at him and Hayden raised an arm reflexively to shield himself. The light caught him in the forearm, and it was pain beyond imagining. It felt like he was being burned by the sun itself, the pain radiating through every nerve in his body that was even remotely connected to that point on his arm. Hayden screamed in agony and threw himself to the ground, crawling desperately in search of somewhere safe while the burned spot on his arm turned white and bubbled and his eyes brimmed with tears.
Even the ground wasn’t free of the rays of light, and he had to crawl very carefully around the violet beams while more appeared every second. He had no idea how long he’d been in here, but prayed that five minutes had elapsed so that the arena would clear. The prospect of fighting Davis was nothing next to the terror he was in right now.
Another beam of light hit him in the calf, and he doubled up and screamed again, head swimming with pain. He could try to crawl to a wall and tap out…save himself from any more blistering burns before he died from it…
I’ll be out of the competition forever though. I’ll be remembered as the boy who quit.
Asher probably wouldn’t hold it against him, or he wouldn’t say so to Hayden’s face even if he did, but everyone else would be a nightmare. Oliver would pummel him, his friends would try to hide their disappointment, Master Sark would throw a party…
If Asher could win this stupid tournament when he was eleven, then I should be able to do it at thirteen.
Another dot of light hit his chest, burning a hole in his robes and shirt and nearly making him vomit from pain as he struggled to find a safe spot. Hayden had no idea how to fight burning rays of light with his prisms, but he had to try.
He looked through his clear prism, blinking tears from his eyes because they blurred his vision, but nothing came to him. Davis was laughing hysterically at his agony, and before Hayden could move another beam of light hit him. Then another.
There was nowhere left for him to go without crossing through a dozen more violet rays. He screamed and writhed in agony as the lights burned him, searing holes in his clothing and making his skin boil. Hayden grabbed a prism from his belt at random and held it in front of his clear one, desperate for anything that might save him before he passed out or died. Master As
her was getting to his feet; he was about to come pull him out of the arena….
Hayden had no idea what spell he cast with his compounded rose and clear prisms. He didn’t remember seeing a specific array of power, or of any coherent thought or will on his part, but the next thing he knew, the violet beams of light weren’t touching him anymore. Hayden blinked through the pain and struggled to sit up.
The lights were still coming towards him, but for some reason they weren’t making contact. Not only that, but where the violet beams got too close to him, they broke away and scattered into hundreds of tiny strands of light in every shade of purple imaginable. It was as though light suddenly bent around him, and he was untouchable.
Master Asher was standing just outside the dome with an arrested look on his face, and even Davis no longer appeared smug. Hayden forced himself to his feet, leaning against the wall while he suppressed the urge to puke and trying to ignore his burns. When he moved, the rays of light moved with him, bending around him but never touching him. His rose-tinted prism was being consumed very slowly in his hand, almost too slow to notice, and he tucked it back into its slot around his belt. His clear prism was also being consumed microscopically in his eyepiece, and he cast Heal on several of his worst burns to relieve the pain. It took a monumental amount of energy from him and left him exhausted.
Hayden wasn’t sure why he was so tired, other than the fact that he hadn’t ever cast this spell before or held a compound for this long, and the fact that he’d just been severely burned. The last time he was this tired it was because he’d been casting Suspend for fifteen minutes on a four-hundred pound block and had tapped into his Source directly to sustain the spell.
The safe zones lifted all around him and the violet lights vanished. The partition full of water drained into the ground with unnatural speed, leaving the area squishy but maneuverable, and the warg disappeared as the others were brought into play again.
Davis cast something at him, but it was deflected just as the light had been. Hayden had no idea how to turn off whatever spell he’d cast, since he had no idea what arrays he used or even the name of it, so he had no choice but to let it continue to burn through his prisms. Davis looked stunned that he would have been repelled so easily, and for once turned his attention to someone else.
Hayden walked sedately around the space, watching his peers battle each other. He was still too shocky and fatigued to fight, though he suspected it was more because of trauma than because he lacked the capacity to use more magic. He still felt like he could cast spells if he wanted to, he just couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment.
Occasionally the others would cast against him, and he felt both his defensive charm and his elite repelling spell (that’s what he mentally dubbed it) rebuffing the attempts. Nothing hit him, and soon he saw the bright red lights on the ground that signaled where the safe zones would appear.
This time he was near one and had no trouble getting to it. As soon as the red walls shot up around him he sat down on the ground and closed his eyes, mentally shaking himself and casting Heal a few more times to lessen the pain and regain his wits. It fatigued him significantly every time he cast a spell with his mystery spell still active, but there was nothing to be done about it. His clear prism shrank slightly faster than his rose-tinted from all the Heals.
Finally Hayden felt almost human again, blinking open his eyes and discovering that one of the safe zones was unoccupied. The prism-user from Valhalla was battling the warg, and the Prism from Creston was stuck in the chamber of water. Hayden dimly remembered Davis knocking the other boy out before the safe zones popped up.
He must have been unconscious for too long and the walls went up without him.
The boy was certainly conscious now, struggling to stay afloat as his space rapidly filled with water. With a last desperate breathe the chamber filled completely, and he began fumbling desperately with his prisms for some way to breathe underwater. Hayden wished him luck, because he had no idea how to survive without air for five minutes.
He turned his attention to the competitor from Valhalla, who was still fighting the warg. Hayden had confronted one larger than this at the end of last year, and could sympathize with how terrified the other boy must be right now. The warg’s head darted forward and snapped its teeth, grazing the Valhallan’s arm and tearing his robes. A streak of blood spattered the grass, and the boy held up his amber prism and cast at the warg.
Nothing happened.
With a look of confusion and terror, the competitor from Valhalla went down as the warg pounced on him, pounding the ground three times in rapid succession since he couldn’t reach the edge of the dome. The warg vanished and the wall of the dome opened on his side, and Masters Kilgore and Reede hurried in and pulled him out.
I made it through this round, Hayden thought dizzily. No matter what, I’m in the next trial.
The prism-user from Creston looked thrilled, immediately tapping out as well before he ran out of air and drowned. The wall opened and he slid out with a rush of water that made the crowd cry out and move to avoid getting soaked.
Hayden and Davis looked at each other.
Just the two of us…
The safe zones fell away, and they were the only ones left in the arena.
Hayden’s mystery spell was still holding up, but his prisms were almost spent and it wouldn’t last too much longer, not to mention the fact that his Source was fatiguing rapidly. He wasn’t even aware of consciously bypassing his Foci when he cast that spell, but he must have managed it somehow, because he was never this tired unless he was tapped into his Source, and besides, he was still able to cast normally through his channels even with this spell active.
Hayden switched the remnant of his clear prism for his amber and cast Break, hoping to break Davis’s prism, but his opponent cast Repel in the nick of time and saved it. Hayden felt another bit of energy leave him and dropped to his knees, no longer able to hold himself upright.
There was no prism-user he hated as much as Davis, and this close to victory, Hayden didn’t want to lose to his nemesis a second time. Davis tried to cast Dispel against him, probably hoping to get rid of his protective spell, but it didn’t work.
“What spell did you use?!” he yelled in frustration.
Hayden gave him a sleepy smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Wouldn’t I like to know…
“Well, Frost, don’t think it’s going to last forever. You’re looking awfully tired…”
Unfortunately that was true. Hayden was resting on his bent knees, doing everything he could just to remain conscious while the energy continued to drain out of him. Davis was nearly out of prisms, but otherwise he looked quite well-rested.
The older boy approached him slowly, holding up the remnant of his rose-tinted prism, the last one left to him. Hayden had most of his prisms intact, and drew the blue-tinted one from his belt. It was unused thus far, and Hayden twisted it inside his eyepiece while looking for inspiration. Davis seemed to be waiting for his clear and rose prisms to expire before using his last spells, and Hayden felt a surge of weakness and vulnerability as both prisms passed their minimum size thresholds and exploded into dust.
Davis cast Suspend at the same time that Hayden cast Sleep.
When Hayden opened his eyes, he was lying in the infirmary with no recollection as to how he got there. He blinked several times to clear his vision and sat up with a groan as his body ached in protest. There were strips of gauze tied around various spots on his arms, legs, and chest, and the oily smell of burn paste permeated the air.
He suddenly remembered the violet rays of light that felt like they were melting his organs during the prism trial. He strained his mind, but couldn’t remember anything after casting Sleep at Davis; he didn’t even know who had won the round.
Hayden quickly discovered that he wasn’t the only one in the infirmary right now, which was a little surprising. There were two other patients in th
e room with him: a boy from Creston who was either sleeping or unconscious (Hayden only knew he was from Creston because of the robes he still wore), and a girl from Branx who was sitting up in bed, looking bored.
When the latter noticed that Hayden was awake, the look of boredom vanished from her face.
“Hey, what time is it?” Hayden asked before she could open her mouth. “Are the trials all finished?”
“Yes, they finished hours ago,” she answered with a slight frown. “Everyone else has gone back to their schools except for me and Greg, because we’re still healing and your Mistress Razelle hasn’t declared us recovered yet.”
“Oh, so I missed lunch then.” Hayden’s stomach growled traitorously. The girl from Branx looked disgusted that his first waking thought would be about food, but Hayden had never drained his magical powers so completely before and was quite ravenous.
“You missed dinner too, I think,” she corrected him dryly.
Wow, I must have been out for a long time…
Belatedly, it occurred to him to ask, “Who won the Prism trial?”
The girl twirled a long strand of dirty-blond hair around one finger as she answered him. “They called it a tie, since you and that boy from Isenfall both went down at the same time. By the time the safe zones came back up, neither of you were moving yet, so your Masters ended the trial and pulled you both out of there before you could drown or get eaten.”
Ha! Hayden may not have had the clear victory over Davis that he’d been hoping for, but he was willing to bet that he’d wiped the arrogant smirk off of the other boy’s face for a while.
On the down side, that also meant that Hayden would have to endure the panic of surviving yet another prism challenge at another school, but at least he had a couple of months to recover in between now and then.
The Other Prism (The Broken Prism) Page 17