Summoner 4

by Eric Vall

  She closed the door behind us and looked over us. “Are you all alright?”

  We were silent. Of course, we weren’t, and I had the impression Arwyn knew as much. She frowned and crossed her arms loosely.

  “Can we see Nia?” Layla asked.

  Arwyn shook her head with a frown. “I’m sorry. Ms. Kenefick is in with Headmaster Sleet and several others.”

  “What do they want her for?” I mumbled.

  “They merely want to find out what happened,” Arwyn explained gently, “though I doubt she’ll know much. From the looks of it, everything happened in the blink of an eye.”

  The three of us remained quiet as we stood in the hallway. I wanted to go back to my room. I wanted to sleep and forget this night ever happened, but I did not want to go back out in the rain.

  Arwyn seemed to sense this, and she put her finger to the flame inside the jar. She murmured something, a spell, I think. I still had to go through my spellcasters class, but that was usually reserved for second-year students. I didn’t think I would get much use of it, as it was mainly a class to help elementalists and healers hone and craft their magic, but I wouldn’t have minded learning a thing or two to help in battle if I could.

  The fire flickered, then burned a soft shade of lavender. When Arwyn removed her finger, there wasn’t even a mark or burn on her skin. She repeated the same to Braden and Layla’s flames, then smiled softly.

  “If you hold it over your heads, it’ll protect you on your way back to your rooms,” she explained. “Get some sleep. It’s been a long night.”

  We nodded in unison and turned to walk out of the main building again.

  “Gryff?” Arwyn called out, and I turned towards her again. “See me tomorrow afternoon after you’ve rested.”

  There weren’t any more exams, aside from my round in the Magicae Nito, so I could only imagine what Arwyn might want with me. I had an idea, and it brought a small smile to my face amidst the gloom that hung in the air like a thick fog.

  “Sure,” I agreed with a short nod.

  Without another word, the three of us held our small lanterns over our heads and made the trek across the courtyard to the dormitories. I watched as the rain stopped short of my face and trickled down as though I was walking on the inside of a protective bubble. Magic really was a fascinating art.

  We reached the doors to the dormitories, and Braden held the oaken door open for us before he slipped into the hall. I brought my lantern down and held it close to my person. I found the warmth, despite how small the flame was, to be a comfort.

  Usually, this was where Layla would have split off from us for the night, but she lingered. There was a look about her that was dark and distant, and I recognized it as the look of someone that had experienced death and was brought back to a moment where they had experienced the worst pain in their entire lives.

  I looked to Braden, and he, too, had a similar look on his face. I sighed heavily and held out my hand for her.

  “Come on,” I whispered. I didn’t want to draw any attention to us, and it was already pretty late. The less noise we made, the better.

  Layla took my hand and fell into step beside me as we walked down the hall to mine and Braden’s room in silence. I unlocked the door when we got there and let her and Braden in before I closed and locked it behind them.

  We were still quiet as we stripped off our wet clothes and changed into something warm. I loaned Layla a long sleeved shirt that hung on her like a dress with a short skirt, and she crawled into my bed. I normally didn’t wear sleep pants myself, but the rain had set a chill in my bones that not even magic could get out, and truth be told, I didn’t anticipate anything sexy to happen between Layla and me tonight since my big friend was also in the room, and that wouldn’t have been thoughtful.

  Braden climbed into his bed, and I climbed in next to Layla. Our little lanterns still burned brightly, and it was just enough light in the room for me to make out the outline of their faces.

  There weren’t any words to say, at least none that didn’t sound hollow or insensitive somehow. I rolled to face Layla, who already had her eyes closed. She squeezed them tightly, as though she had tried to will the bad thoughts from her mind, and I pulled her close against my chest. I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and she settled for draping her arm across my chest and drawing absentminded circles along my back, which I didn’t mind. It was an odd little comfort that kept me calm and relaxed.

  Tomorrow, we would meet up with Nia, and the four of us could handle this together. I’d visit Arwyn and see what she needed from me. Tonight, though, I wanted to sleep, and forget the pool of worry that had settled in the pit of my stomach.

  Chapter 11

  Morning had come and gone by the time we had woken up, and the afternoon sun beat against our curtains. I found when I rolled to check the time that I had woken up in the same position that I’d fallen asleep in, with my arms wound tightly around Layla, and our legs only barely entwined.

  The clock beside the bed read a quarter to twelve, and I groaned at the thought of having missed most of the morning. I shifted to sit up, and Layla stirred. She stretched her arms up over her head and yawned. She smiled at me, though it was weighted, and it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She might have just been tired though.

  “Morning,” Braden uttered.

  “Hey,” I grumbled back, and Layla hummed something unintelligible in response as she nestled back into the pillows. There was still an odd air that hung around from what happened the night before. None of us really knew what to say, or how to move past it, but I knew we had to keep going. Any loss was tragic, but Liam Aegard died saving the General’s prodigy daughter. That was one hell of a way to go down, and a heroic one, at that.

  I sat up, much to Layla’s protest, and she laid her head in my lap. I snorted a little and ran my fingers through her hair. She hummed, content.

  “We should find Nia,” Braden suggested, and I nodded slowly.

  “She shouldn’t be alone,” Layla whispered into my thigh, and again, I nodded.

  “All right,” I uttered finally. “Let’s be there for her.”

  Layla sat up, though she whined as she did, and I stood to get dressed. I didn’t care that my hair was sticking out in odd places and probably needed to be washed after our stroll in the rain the night before, so I simply ran my hands through it and got out what tangles I could.

  I handed Layla her clothes. They were still damp from the storm, and she took them with a small, defeated sigh. She slid out of bed and pulled her skirt on, but nothing else.

  “I’m going to go back to my room and change,” she announced.

  “Okay.” I pulled on a shirt and walked her to the door. “We’ll wait for you before we head over to the main building.”

  She gave me a hug, and I held her tightly. I didn’t really want her to leave, but I didn’t blame her for wanting to wear clothes that weren’t wet, either. She waved to Braden and then peered down the hall to make sure no one was coming before she slipped out the door and back to her room.

  When she was gone, Braden and I went back to silently dressing. A few minutes later, he and I headed out the door to wait for Layla.

  She was already perched in a chair by the oaken doors when we turned the corner. There was a small smile on her face as she chatted with someone I couldn’t see behind the wall. As we got closer though, I saw that Nia stood in front of her. She looked tired like she hadn’t slept at all last night, and my heart sank. Her smile, though faint, didn’t quite reach her eyes, and the bags that hung beneath them were heavy and swollen from the tears she’d cried the night before.

  As we approached, and she turned to face us, our eyes locked, and I felt a little better when the smile brightened, even if it was marginal. I smiled back, and it felt weak, but as I took her into my arms and held her against me, the tension started to ebb away. I knew that we would all be okay.

  “You look like shit,” she commented, an
d it immediately broke the weighted silence that lingered in the air as I snorted.

  I held her tighter, and I laughed, then laughed even harder when Braden and Layla started to giggle, too.

  “You look absolutely radiant,” I retorted, and Nia laughed as well. The sound was drier than usual, but I could tell that she was doing her best to put the events of the previous night behind her. It would take a while, no doubt, but I knew she would soon be able to look back on this and realize that it made her and her resolve even stronger.

  “So, how did it go last night?” Layla asked, and Nia stepped out of my hug as she sighed.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” I interjected, but she shook her head.

  “It’s fine,” she started. “They had me talk about what happened, asked if I thought I needed counseling, what I wanted to do from here.”

  She paused.

  “And?” I prompted her, and she took a deep breath.

  “After you complete your round in the Magicae Nito, I’ll return to Hartmire for the summer,” she said firmly. “I’ll be able to regroup and continue training in the care of my family.”

  Nia hung her head a little, and I couldn’t tell if this was a decision she had come to on her own, or if this was something the General had demanded of her. Either way, I didn’t think it was necessarily a bad idea. I’m sure even someone as steel-willed as Arwyn had taken the first death of one of her teammates hard.

  “But you’re coming back to Varle, right?” Braden asked as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Of course.” Nia smiled and looked to each of us. “Aside from not having a choice, I actually have people to look forward to seeing when I return.”

  We all smiled, and I put my arm around her shoulder.

  “So,” Layla began slowly, “what happened in the rift?”

  “You don’t have to answer that, either,” I interjected again and gave Layla a hard stare.

  Nia sighed again, but again, she shook her head. “It’s okay, really.”

  She looked around the entrance of the hall to see if anyone was in earshot but shooed us out the door despite not being able to detect anyone. We followed her to the far end of the courtyard and gathered by the edge of a little pond. It was a cute pond, one that I had never really paid any mind to because I’d never had a reason for coming this far south in the yard, but it was decorated in pink and purple lilies, and a little fountain rotated in fancy patterns.

  We took a seat at the water’s edge and took a deep breath. I held Nia’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “We had just gotten word on the communicators that they’d found the catalyst when he saw the axe starting to glow.” She took a deep breath. “and then he…”

  She trailed off. I could tell that it was going to be a struggle to tell us everything.

  “He told me that we should wait it out until they broke the catalyst, but it was too late by then,” Nia continued after a moment. “Liam realized that the axe was going to explode before the rift closed, so he grabbed me and shoved me to the ground as it exploded. When I turned around, the rift was closed, and he had fallen back through the gate with pieces of the axe lodged into his back.”

  I gulped. Every single one of us was silent as we digested what she told us. Liam must have realized that if anything had happened to Nia that it would have been put on him for making the call not to act. He did what he had to so that there wasn’t the life of the General’s daughter forever hanging on his conscious.

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could muster in response.

  “It’s okay, I think,” Nia finished. “It’s hard to swallow, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get the imagery out of my head, but we can’t stop because one life came to an untimely end. We have to push through to the next mission and remember why we’re fighting in the first place.”

  As she said the words, I was again hit with the impression that those words weren’t hers, but rather, her father’s. I frowned, but before I could say anything else, another voice joined the conversation.

  “There you are.” Varleth jogged up behind us and stopped short as the four of us turned to look at him at the same time. He must have realized that we had been in the middle of a heavy conversation because he sheepishly scratched the back of his neck and looked around awkwardly.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he apologized, “and I’m sorry about what happened last night, Kenefick.”

  “Thank you.” Nia smiled a little at his words.

  Varleth bowed his head, then looked specifically to me. “Ms. Hamner wanted me to fetch you. Says she has something she’d like to show us.”

  Ah, that’s right. I did agree to meet with Arwyn. I had hoped I could do it later in the day and spend a little more time comforting Nia, but I stood up anyway.

  “I’ll be back,” I promised, and I put my hand on Nia’s shoulder before I stepped beside Varleth. He waved, then followed me back up the small slope and into the main building.

  “Any idea what it is that she wants to show us?” I questioned.

  Varleth shrugged, obviously not in a talkative mood. I wondered if he had known Liam, if they were friends, or if he was like us and generally saddened that a fellow classmate was killed.

  I decided to leave him be. I wasn’t going to force a conversation if he didn’t want to have one, especially given the circumstances. I didn’t want to risk the possibility of saying anything that might make the already broody and relatively angsty banisher even more broody and angsty.

  We walked in silence through the main building until we reached the far western wing where I knew there to be the magic testing labs. I’d never had a reason to come down here at all, and I only knew they existed because the vials and beakers in Arwyn’s classroom a few nights ago had to come from somewhere.

  Varleth opened the door and allowed me to step ahead of him. I thanked him with a wink, at which he rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  As I took in what surrounded me, I caught myself utterly fascinated. I knew science and magic to be somewhat of a contradictory practice, but that seemed kind of silly. There had to be some kind of relationship between the two whether they were close or not.

  To my left was a chalkboard with a number of different symbols and equations that I didn’t recognize or understand. In front of it was a long table of thin, spirally tubes that pushed a green liquid through them and dripped into a large beaker that was set on a cart at the foot of said table. In front of that were a few smaller tables that held a variety of experiments and substances.

  Directly ahead of us, Arwyn stood hunched over a desk, flanked by the teacher that had tried to stop me from getting to Nia outside of the gate last night. Poppy, I think Arwyn had called her.

  “Ms. Hamner,” Varleth called as he cleared his throat.

  Arwyn looked up from whatever scrolls were strewn about the desk’s surface with a bright smile. Considering Liam’s death was still fresh about the rest of the campus, it was good to see her, or anyone, in such high spirits.

  “Good, good. You both made it.” Her boots made a soft click as she walked across the white tile of the lab. “Over here.”

  She crooked her finger as she breezed by us, and we followed obediently to a table to the far right that sat beneath a stained glass window. There were no beakers or vials there, no chemicals to speak of, either. Instead, there was a weapon, a simple dagger with a curved edge and runes inscribed into the blade near the hilt. The hilt itself was jewel-crusted, comprised mainly of what looked to be diamonds and lapis lazuli.

  “What’s this?” I asked as I ran my finger along the blade, and I was shocked that it glowed a soft indigo color when I stroked it. I retracted my hand quickly.

  Arwyn smiled brightly. “This is why I called you here. It’s a blade that we were able to create using rhin.”

  I scrunched my nose. “Rhin?”

  “It’s a new metal that we’ve created right here in this very lab,” A
rwyn explained proudly.

  Varleth and I had the decency to gape. That was pretty damn impressive.

  “You created a metal?” Varleth clarified, and Arwyn nodded.

  “It’s comprised of an extremely high concentration of essence and has been pressurized and heated to the point of becoming a malleable solid,” Poppy interjected as she zoomed by. She stopped to tinker with the knob on a gas lamp, then moved on again.

  I shook my head and crossed my arms as I tried to process the information. “So this blade is made of the essence that you’ve collected?”

  Arwyn hummed and moved around to our other side. “Right you are, Gryff.”

  “How long have you been collecting essence samples that you’re now able to create weapons from it?” I had so many questions.

  “Not too long,” she replied as she pulled out another weapon. This one was much longer, and it had a slight bend to the blade. The hilt was all black with the exception of a single spiral line of amethyst. She held the sword out to Varleth. “This one is for you, but you can’t keep it yet. I want to test it out first.”

  Varleth took it in his hands and gripped it tightly as he examined it. “How do you plan on testing it?”

  “You’re going to spar with Gryff, of course,” Arwyn replied easily.

  “Ah, I’m not great with a sword,” I admitted, though I was certainly better than a novice. “I also don’t have a sword aside from the dagger that I have from my father.” I hardly ever used it, despite that I kept it at my side always because it was more of an heirloom than anything.

  “That’s why I made this too,” Arwyn answered as she walked past us again and picked up a dagger. She handed it to me by the hilt, and I took it from her carefully.

  “This?” I questioned.

  “That won’t be an issue, will it?” She nodded with a smirk.

  “No, ma’am,” I lied as I straightened up. How was I going to spar with Varleth when he had a long sword, and I had a single dagger?