by Izzy Shows
“Cool. I won’t die, then.” I said it like I had any control over the situation, a little too peppy. “I’d rather survive than learn some stupid, boring runes anyway.” I don’t know why I said it like that. Studying runes, and doing something with them, that sounded like a lot of fun. I like to learn new things, I can soak up knowledge like a sponge. But, at the end of the day, I wanted Aidan to like me. I didn’t want him to send me away. And I felt like he wasn’t the type to be fond of book loving nerds.
Everyone says not to let peer pressure change who you are, but those people don’t know what it’s like to live on the outside and watch everyone else make friends.
“Good,” he grunted. “I wish we had time to get you a focus or two, but that’s the kind of thing you need to spend weeks working on. Not hours. A half-baked focus is worse than no focus.”
I tilted my head to the side. “What’s a focus?”
“Oh.” He rolled his eyes. “Duh. A focus is something you use to channel your energy. It makes it easier. Without a focus, you have to hold it entirely on your own, which is hard as fuck. The kind of thing only someone with eons of practice can easily do. You can store energy in a focus, so that you can call it forth with a thought. For example,” he held out his hand, showing me a ring he was wearing, “this is a focus. I store anger in it, because that’s what I’ve found is easiest to associate with fire. Also, it helps to keep my temper in check, but eh, that’s not so important. I pour my anger into this ring, and when I need to do some damage, I can pull that energy back out. Now, that’s the basic gist of a focus, but what makes it good, is that it was created specifically for fire. I can’t pull energy out of it to do just any willy-nilly thing, if it was a loose focus like that then it wouldn’t be able to hold very much. The more specific you can be, the stronger it will be.” He stared at the ring for a moment before looking back up at me. “And more importantly, it’s something that I made. You can borrow a focus, steal a focus, but it will only be half as good for you than it would be for the Wizard who made it. They’re personal like that.”
I nodded, as if any of that made sense. I stored the information in a cupboard of my mind, to be looked over later when I was alone. “So no focus for me then. I get to sweat bullets all night. Cool.” I stuck my tongue out at him.
“You shouldn’t need one tonight.” He shrugged. “We won’t be going into battle, just conducting a ritual for information.”
“Oh, so need to duck, dodge, or run tonight. That’s cool,” I said. “What kind of ritual?”
“The kind where you have to be really careful about how you phrase things, or you end up screwing everything in the world up. Come to think of it, that’s most rituals.” He frowned. “Ritual magic is powerful, it’s what Wizards do best. You can flash magic around all day and it will generally win you some points for style, but where the real magic is—forgive the pun—is in ritual. Foci and conjuring are like guns, rituals are like cannons.”
“Good to know.” I grinned. “I can’t wait to see it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s for tonight. First we need to get the basics of magic into you. And that will not be fun.” His face grew grim.
I frowned. “Why not? I don’t see why learning should be lame.”
“Because we covered the case and basic info. We’re going to move on to target practice, and I can guarantee you won’t enjoy that. Magic isn’t fun, it isn’t recreational. It’s hard work, and it’s dangerous.” He stood up and put the empty coffee cup on the table, walking towards what I assumed was his bedroom. “I’m going to change and then we’ll go outside and start.”
“OK,” I said, trying to keep the disquiet out of my voice.
“Don’t ever forget, Blair. There are no happy endings for Wizards.”
11
SWEAT BEADED ON MY BROW AS I bent over, hands on my knees, to catch my breath.
Magic lessons are not fun. Aidan was right. I was wrong. I don’t care what kid’s shows and movies tell you, they just aren’t and they get it all wrong.
Or maybe Aidan was just a shit teacher. When he’d said target practice, I had assumed he meant me throwing things at a target, like archery or something.
No. I was the target. He was throwing cricket balls.
I had discarded my jacket somewhere in the yard earlier, the running around and trying to conjure a shield having worked my body into such a heat that I couldn’t stand to keep it on. My arms were sporting dark bruises, and the hit to my gut had made me want to vomit. I couldn’t seem to get a shield up to save my life, and the one time it had worked I hadn’t been able to hold it.
We had left the safety of the living room for the field next to his house. The guy lived in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t know how he managed to keep a pulse on the city, but I guess that wasn’t my problem. It was a large field, bordered on one side by a country road, his house on another and a thick forest on the other two. The occasional bush dotted the landscape, but aside from that, a few gentle hills, and the likely ankle-twisting-holes that had to be present, it was empty.
“You’re not trying hard enough,” Aidan called from the far end of the field.
“Easy for you to say!” I snapped. “You’re not the one getting the shit beaten out of them.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be if you were trying hard enough,” he yelled back.
“Who died and made you king of trying hard enough? You don’t get to decide if I’m trying hard enough. I’m working my tits off and it’s not fucking happening,” I spat out between panting breaths. This sucked. I wanted to give up. “Maybe it’s time to admit I don’t have whatever magic you thought I had.”
“You got it earlier, you have magic, it’s just hard,” he said. “You can’t just give up because it’s tough.”
I ground my teeth together, wanting to scream at him and rip my hair out all at once. I hated that he was right, hated that I would hate myself if I quit. It wasn’t fair.
I pulled in a breath and focussed on the image of a shield in my mind, the description he’d given to me and told me to visualise. It hadn’t worked yet, except for that random blip, but it was all I had. I built the image in my head, of the large round shield in front of my hands, glaring down at the emptiness that mocked me.
“Arma,” I whispered, tasting the foreign word Aidan had taught me on my tongue. Sweat dripped down into my eyes, distracting me, and I saw the light blue around my hands shimmer and break before it even formed anything.
“Fuck it!” I shouted, throwing up my hands and standing up.
Aidan didn’t respond, and not wanting to see his disappointment I turned my back to him. He was going to give up on me soon, I could feel it in my gut.
I heard him grunt and felt my stomach drop out, knowing that a ball was whizzing its way towards me and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I couldn’t get a stupid medieval shield that I’d never seen before to manifest.
I turned my head to look over my shoulder and saw it coming for me, moving faster than it had a right to and over a distance that shouldn’t be possible—magically enhanced throw.
Cheat.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek, tasted blood, and threw my hand backwards and up at the same time, squeezing my eyes shut.
I saw red on the inside of eye lids, anger pulsing inside of me that I couldn’t get this right, that I was failing yet again. I gave myself over to the anger, so that it would get me to stand back up when the ball knocked me to my feet. I needed some motivation to keep me going.
And then I felt it. Heat exuding out of my hand, the image of angry red fire burning inside my mind’s eye. “Incendium.” I murmured the word I’d heard Aidan use in the warehouse to call fire into life. I opened my eyes and saw a blaze of fire in front of my hand, holding strong and steady in a brilliant circle.
I heard the ball smack into it and saw its charred remains fall to the ground. I let the image fall from my mind and the fiery shield dissipated.
&nb
sp; I stared at my hand in shock for a moment, turning my body around as I brought the hand closer to me so that I could marvel at it. I had done that. I had brought fire into existence from nothing and used it to protect me.
I was magic.
I lifted my eyes to meet Aidan’s across the field.
He didn’t look impressed, he didn’t look anything in fact. His face was completely blank as he stared back at me.
“That’s not what I taught you.” He wasn’t yelling so I could barely hear him, but his words reached me all the same.
“You teach for shit,” I said, my voice just as quiet.
“You learn for shit,” he retorted.
I saw him ready another ball and squared my shoulders.
He didn’t throw it just yet. “Fire might stop a cricket ball, but it’s not going to do a lot for bullets, for energy. You can’t rely on it. You need an energy shield. Don’t cut corners.”
I exhaled an angry breath through my nostrils, holding back from screaming at him. “Could’ve been reading books and studying and shit,” I grumbled. “Instead I’m trying not to turn into a giant bruise. Fantastic.”
“Oh, you want books, do you? What do you think you’ll do when a warlock is bearing down on you? Recite them to death?” Aidan rolled his eyes.
I ground my teeth together to keep my mouth shut, not make the same mistake twice. Aidan believe in practical experience.
“Get your shields up,” he barked.
He threw the ball and all I could do was react—trying to pull up a shield you don’t know how to conjure is hard on its own. Try doing it when you know you have another defence mechanism in place.
“Incendium!” I gasped, yanking my arms up in a cross pattern as the fire flared to life in front of me, destroying the ball before it could get to me.
I dropped the spell as quickly as I’d called it into life, unable to meet Aidan’s eyes this time. I knew he’d be angry, it seemed like that was his default emotion.
I shouldn’t have to feel ashamed for finally doing magic. It was a shitty feeling, all I wanted to do was enjoy the fact that something fantastic had happened and he wanted to take a giant dump all over it.
I heard his boots snapping twigs as he walked towards me and lifted my eyes at last.
Oh, shit he looked angry.
“Didn’t I just tell you not to do that?” he snapped.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said.
“Fantastic. You didn’t mean to. That’s going to go over well when it actually matters.”
“Well maybe if you’d just walked me through making a shield even once before throwing fucking balls at me, I wouldn’t have to resort to knee jerk reactions,” I retorted.
“I did. I told you what to visualise, I told you where to pull the magic from—and clearly you can find that no problem.”
“That?” I snapped, tossing a hand up. “That wasn’t me finding anything. I don’t even know what I did. I told you, it was a reaction. I couldn’t replicate it right now without you throwing something at me.”
He shook his head. “Which means you know where it is, in your subconscious. You trust it to protect you. You just have to try.”
“I’m going to punch you if you say that one more time,” I growled.
“Yeah, right.” He chuckled. “Here, let’s work on a different kind of shield. Give you a bit of a break from turning purple.”
My breath rushed out of me in a big whoosh. “Oh. Good. Yeah, let’s do that.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy. Don’t look so relieved.” He sat down right where he was, in the grass, and gestured for me to sit opposite him. “We’re going to beat up your mind instead.”
I opened and shut my mouth, glaring down at the grass he wanted me to sit in. This wasn’t fair. I mouthed a few curse words so he wouldn’t chide me for snapping at him, stomped over, and threw myself onto the ground.
“I hate you,” I said.
“Good. Hold on to that.” He grinned. “You should be good at this, though. You threw me out of your head last night, now you just need to keep me from getting there in the first place. Close your eyes.”
I did.
“Now, visualise—do not make that face—visualise whatever the fuck you want. Most people go with a fortress, or a wall, or something to that effect. Visualise something to keep me out of your mind. I’ll give you a minute before I try and breach it.” He pitched his voice low as he spoke, much gentler than the barked orders from earlier.
I took in a breath and tried to think of something good. See, the problem was evident from the foundation he had given me. Walls could be scaled. Fortresses could be breached. They had obvious weak points, and history had made them all too clear. I didn’t want him to get in, not after all the failure of the morning.
I needed something he wouldn’t expect.
I grinned when I finally had it. I envisioned a perfect sphere encapsulating my entire form, not just my mind, and instead of making it out of steel to keep him out, I made it flexible. Let it bend, but not break.
I felt him as soon as he reached out, testing the waters to see if I was ready. A tendril of magic setting off proximity sensors, and then growing and spreading as it explored the borders of the shield I had created. I felt him look for the edges, felt him turn one way or another, trying to make head or tails of what I had created.
I giggled, envisioning him in my mind’s eye as if he was walking around the sphere and scratching his head.
“Why can’t you ever just do as you’re told?” he growled.
And then he attacked. It was a brute force attack, like a battering ram being shoved right into my gut. I felt the barrier bend, bend too far in as it clearly hadn’t been created to stop attacks at the door. I gasped in pain, but the shield held and eventually expanded back out, pushing him away as it did so. It hurt, but it served its purpose.
It came again, and again, battering at my mind what felt like a thousand times, at different angles and not ceasing to allow me to catch my breath.
I realised my error—the shield could only hold so long as I did, and I was close to breaking from the pain being inflicted on me.
This was worse than target practice.
The next attack broke me. I gasped and my eyes jerked open.
I was laying on my back, the sky above me, and I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. “Unngh,” I gurgled the word out, uncertain as to what I had even been trying to say.
Aidan was quiet, but thankfully all magic presence was absent from my mind. I don’t think I could have stood any gloating.
Amateur. I thought to myself. It’s what I deserved for getting smug.
“Don’t feel bad. You’re not the first person to try that.”
“Great. I’m not even original in my failure,” I grumbled.
“Sit up.” He had the decency to speak with a gentle voice. “We’ll go again. You know what to prepare for now.”
“I hate you,” I whispered.
“I know.”
12
THE DAY WAS HALF OVER WHEN Aidan called for a break, and I was more than just grateful for it. I was exhausted, drenched in sweat, and had been wanting to surrender for the last hour or so. I hadn’t let myself, though, because I already knew that Aidan didn’t tolerate weakness like that. I needed to be strong, or he wouldn’t help me. I needed him to help me, but more than that…I needed to belong.
I was weak and I needed someone that wanted me around.
We walked back towards his house, and I felt a little better when I picked up on the sound of his breathing. Heavy, though he was doing his best to hide that.
Good. He might not be as bad off as me, but at least he hadn’t walked away completely unscathed.
“Well. I think I have to admit that you aren’t entirely bonkers.” Light-hearted, trying to make fun of the situation. Trying not to lose my mind that my entire world had been turned on its head in one night.
“Yeah. I’ve got a fe
w screws loose, but you’re definitely a mage.”
I frowned. “Not a Wizard?”
“No. Like I said. Wizards are proven mages. It’s a title, one you should earn. Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance. They’re going to want to test you, once this is all over and we get you properly reported.”
“Right, test me. So, do I get a cheat sheet? What exactly do I need to know?”
He laughed at me, the arse.
“It’s not a written test. I told you, you’ll be assessed. Assigned a mentor. Trained, and eventually tested again. It’s a load of fun.” He rolled his eyes. “Not everyone who’s assessed passes, though, like I said last night.”
“Yeah, but I’m not like that. I conjured fire!” The excitement bubbled back up inside of me, easing the pain of the training I’d been given.
“I knew you’d be strong enough after you threw off the compulsion last night.” He grinned.
“Oh, yeah, I owe you a broken nose for that. It felt wrong.” I scowled at the memory. Someone else creeping around in my brain was just wrong, and I was grateful for the lessons of the early morning. I double checked the shields that he’d taught me, making sure they were still there.
Something whispered at the back of my mind that shields someone else had taught me wouldn’t be very efficient at keeping them out, but I brushed it aside as paranoia. I belonged now. That was all that mattered. Right?
“Of course it did. Mind magic…it’s not well looked upon, OK? So maybe don’t mention it when we get around to the Order.” His tone was definitely sketchy, and when I glanced up at him I found that he was pointedly looking away from me. Oh, it was that bad? I thought everyone must do it, since it was like, his first fucking move.
“Yeah, no problem,” I agreed, a little too quickly for my own liking. I didn’t trust people, generally, but I found myself wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t want to be let down. “So, why don’t we switch gears for a minute. Get some grub, we can get into the ritual you’ll be doing tonight.”