“It’s not a mirror?” Brom asked.
She shook her head. “No, it’s a mirror. I could see the room behind me, but my own reflection wasn’t there.”
“And mine is not here,” Royal said, standing before the red-bordered mirror.
“Try your own color,” Brom said.
Royal walked to the blue-bordered mirror. “Nothing,” he said.
“This is the separation,” Oriana said softly, and Brom knew she was right. “It won’t begin until we are all staring at ourselves in our own mirrors. Until we are divided according to our paths.”
“Did we really think we were going to go through this together?” Vale asked nervously. “It is called the Test of Separation.”
Brom’s foreboding twisted in his stomach, harder this time.
Only his trust in The Four kept him from running from this room. They were the only ones who could call for a Test of Separation for second-years. And if they thought Quad Brilliant was ready, he had to believe they were. He had to trust that. He had to.
Didn’t he?
“Does anyone else feel like they just want to stop now and flee the academy?” he asked.
Royal raised his chin, which was what he did when he was scared but refused to admit it. Oriana ignored Brom’s statement altogether. Which was what she did when she was scared but refused admit it.
“Take the path of the Forgotten?” Royal asked disdainfully.
“I’m not about to give up my chance at being a Quadron,” Vale said.
“There are fourth-years who cannot face the Test of Separation,” Brom said. “We’re second-years. Why is no one even questioning that? We were supposed to have two more years to prepare. What if The Collector is behind this? What if he never wanted us to succeed and this is his last attempt to make sure we don’t?”
Nobody answered. Oriana and Royal looked into their mirrors, didn’t even glance at Brom.
“Enough,” Vale said. “We’re already here. We’ve already started. Stand in front of your mirror, Brom.” She walked to hers.
Brom’s mirror was on the far side, obscured by Oriana’s, and his revulsion was so strong he didn’t want to move, didn’t even want to glimpse it.
“Did it occur to you that you’re already failing?” Vale asked. “That your indecision, your fear, is part of the Test? Stand in front of the gods-be-damned mirror, Brom!”
“Courage, man,” Royal said.
“When there is but one path, that is the path you take,” Oriana said. “This is what we came for.”
Despite his misgivings, Brom knew Oriana was right. There really was no other choice. Could he simply leave his Quad mates here, unable to continue the Test because he refused to? To steal away their hopes at becoming Quadrons because he was afraid? Their faces were against the wall, and they either had to break through or fail. There was no other path. No other path that Brom would ever live down, at least. They weren’t going to walk away from the Test, and he wasn’t going to abandon his Quad.
Finally, his right foot moved, and then his left, and he started walking. He passed Vale and stepped up to his mirror. As Vale had said, he could see the reflection of the room behind him, the eerie copy of the double doors they’d entered, but his own reflection was absent.
“I still don’t see anything,” Royal rumbled.
“Nor do I,” Oriana confirmed.
Vale flicked a glance at Brom, probably to ensure he was actually looking, then gazed back into her own mirror, frustrated. “What does that mean?” she asked. “Did we wait too long?”
Brom’s foreboding had begun to leak away, as though its warning was no longer relevant, as though whatever he was supposed to have learned, he’d missed it.
He harnessed the magic that crackled within him and sank deeper into the Soul of the World. He became one with the mirrors, the room. Each one of his Quad mates became living parts of his own body, his head, his heart, his arms.
“It’s blank. Is it still blank for youuuuu...” Royal said, but his last word stretched out, like a lowing cow falling down a well.
A flicker of green flame appeared inside Brom’s mirror. He gasped, and that, too, stretched out like Royal’s word, as though time had slowed and he was drawing in that short, sharp breath forever.
In the span of that minutes-long gasp, the curl of flame formed into an ethereal hand, smoke twirling out behind it. The flame turned into a forearm, then upper arm, shoulder, head, and body.
A sea-green figure formed inside the mirror, and in the span of that breathless gasp, those greenish fingers, limned in flame, took hold of Brom’s tunic just below his neck.
Time returned to normal. Brom’s gasp sounded loud. Royal roared. A surprised, breathy huff came from Oriana, and Vale hissed.
The hand yanked Brom into the mirror.
CHAPTER NINE
Brom
Brom tripped over the edge of the mirror as he went through, and a loud metallic clang sounded. He tumbled to the grass, looking about for some giant steel gong.
He drew in a swift breath. He wasn’t at the academy anymore. And it wasn’t daytime anymore.
He stood up in the cemetery at Kyn. Fendra, full and round, shone her silver-blue light down on everything. Behind her, just a slim crescent, Kelto hung in the sky, a slash of faded purple. For a moment, Brom couldn’t think. The twisted willow tree was there, right where it should be, its roots bulging against the white fence that ran around the entire cemetery, sketching a perfect square. Every detail was so perfect, from the hills in the distance to the dirt path beyond the gate, to the rise in the road that obscured the rest of the town.
This was his home. This was where he’d kissed Myan a lifetime ago, before he came to the academy.
The flaming green figure that had dragged him here stood calmly, arms crossed, where the mirror portal had once been. There was no portal now. The figure’s features were lost in the green flames that surrounded it.
“What is this?” Brom demanded.
The flames rising from the figure went out, becoming wisps of smoke trailing up from the figure’s shoulders and head. It gained definition. Its chest resolved, a dark green tunic forming. Green breeches formed on its legs. Its bare arms resolved into sea-green-colored skin. As Brom watched, the figure’s face formed, and it smiled with shiny green teeth. The nose and the mouth became apparent, and the all-green eyes glowed.
The man looked just like Brom.
“Do you feel me, Brom?” the green creature asked, and its voice was ancient like an old woman’s, too creaky and too high-pitched to be coming out of Brom’s face.
Brom’s throat went dry, and his palms were suddenly clammy. He’d heard that voice somewhere before.
“Did you feel me coming?” the creature repeated. “You should. I’m you. In the Test of Separation, you face yourself. The only enemy that really matters...is yourself.”
“You’re not me,” he said.
“I’m what you might be, Brom. Powerful. A Quadron. If you defeat me, I’m what you could become. But you won’t. Because you’re a liar and a rule-breaker. We’ve known this from the very beginning with you. And here, the only person you can cheat is yourself, the only rules you can break are your own. And when you do, you won’t just lose a spot with the Kyn guardsmen. You’ll die.”
The creature moved so fast it might have been an Impetu. Brom barely threw up an arm before it slammed its fist into his cheek. Stars exploded in his vision, and he went down, almost hitting a headstone.
“If that was your best...” His adversary chuckled. “This isn’t going to take long.”
Brom got to his hands and knees as the creature kicked him in the ribs so hard he couldn’t breathe. He hit the headstone he’d narrowly missed before and crumpled at its base, nearly losing consciousness.
The creature leapt on top of him, surreal in shades of green. It snarled down at him, wearing Brom’s own face, and struck him again and again.
He tried to roll out
of its grasp, but it latched onto him and dragged him back, slamming him against the headstone. Another fist to the left side of Brom’s face. Another fist to the right.
It was just too fast, too vicious. He couldn’t move quickly enough to block the blows, couldn’t get his bearings enough to get away. His Test was going to be over before it had even begun. Brom was going to die...
In the depths of his belly, that familiar foreboding twisted, warning him.
Yes, he thought desperately. I’m getting beaten to death. I don’t need an Anima’s intuition to tell me that.
It felt like there was a knot of roots in his belly, tugging on him, tugging him downward, insistent. Distantly, he felt his head slamming to the side again, and again, and he went limp, let the creature hit him. He ignored the pain and followed the compulsion, dove deep into his own soul.
That foreboding, whatever it was trying to tell him, might be his last chance.
As he looked into his own soul, like he had looked into countless others, he began to hear whispers—his adversary’s whispers, sly and hidden before now, twisting like smoke inside him. This thing was using magic, sending insidious words into the deepest parts of him.
You can’t fight me, the whispers curled around his heart. I’m too fast, too vicious. You can’t move quickly enough to block my blows. You’ll never get your bearings enough to get away. Your Test is over before it has even begun. You’re going to die...
The creature had used Anima magic to suck Brom’s hope away. This was the destructive aspect of the Anima! Fourth-year magic, something Brom knew about but hadn’t practiced yet.
Just as the constructive path of Anima could extend the supreme confidence and the knowing of the Soul of the World to another Quad mate, the destructive path enabled an Anima to sap a person’s clarity, to steal their confidence, to render them impotent.
Brom opened his second Soulblock, releasing a storm of crackling magic into himself, and he put it all into plunging himself into the Soul of the World.
His awareness suddenly extended to the headstone behind him, the grass beneath him, the air around him, and his adversary before him. He became the blue-silver light from Fendra, the barest sheen of purple light from Kelto. He became the still air over the graveyard. He became his adversary’s own fists, flecked with Brom’s blood, driving down at him like hammer blows.
Yes, he thought. I feel you now. I feel everything. Yes, you are me, but not like you think.
He could see the ephemeral, magical tendrils of green connecting the creature to himself as those fists came down again and again. A half dozen more blows, and the creature would kill him, but Brom had what he needed now. He could see the blows coming before they fell. He could see them... And if he could see them...
With all of his strength, Brom threw his head sideways. In the same instant, he caught the doppelganger’s incoming blow by the wrist. He didn’t try to stop it, but pulled it past his bloodied head, yanking the creature forward and slamming its face into the headstone with terrible force. Teeth cracked. Blood flecked the stone. The creature’s head wobbled. Brom grabbed it and slammed it down again. His adversary collapsed.
With a shout, Brom shoved himself upright. His nose felt like it was the size of a potato, and his ears rang. Blood ran into his slowly swelling right eye so much that he couldn’t see out of it.
But this time he didn’t forget his magic. He didn’t need to see with his eyes if the Soul of the World was whispering to him. He let his fears swirl away like leaves on a river, and he listened...
His adversary, though hurt and momentarily stunned, had already staggered to its feet, but it didn’t charge this time. Its two front teeth were cracked in half, and its nose broken. There was a deep gash on its forehead, and blood ran into its left eye, an eerie mirror-image to Brom’s own injury.
Brom felt the intuitive nudge in his belly the moment before the creature attacked. It feinted left, then came right, lashing out with a foot. It wanted to trip him, wanted him on the ground again, wanted to leap atop him.
Brom hopped over the strike, feeling looser, less frightened.
The dance began. The creature lashed out with an elbow, and Brom leaned back, timing it perfectly and putting himself half-an-inch out of reach. He struck back, tried to knee the thing in the belly. But it was already twisting, grabbing for Brom’s hair.
He wrapped his arm around the creature’s arm in a corkscrew motion, trapping its hand against his chest and locking its elbow joint. Brom dropped to his knees, twisting the arm viciously.
But the thing jumped up, unwinding the joint lock by flipping over Brom’s shoulder. On the way over, it kneed Brom in the head. Stars burst in his vision, and he staggered back.
His adversary was also using the Soul of the World, sensing what Brom was going to do before he did it.
Another fist lashed out, and Brom blocked it, but didn’t see the second fist. It hammered into the other side of Brom’s face, and he collapsed, his right leg twisted under him.
Fear crept back in, a sure sign that his magic was faltering. He had to stay connected, had to anticipate the next strike, but his thoughts were so scrambled he didn’t know which way was up.
“I thought you were stronger than this,” his adversary creaked in that old woman’s voice. “But I was wrong. That will make twice this year I was wrong. You’re just a rule-breaker who cuts corners, puts on a good show.” It smiled, its green teeth so close to his face he could smell the decay on its breath. “Well, you won’t cheat your way out of this. One loss breaks the Quad as easily as two.”
One loss breaks the Quad as easily as two...
A chime sounded inside his mind at those words. He’d heard them before. They rippled through his soul, and Brom’s foreboding—so bound up and knotted until now—unwound, sending tendrils of wisdom into him. There were no memories, no thoughts, just...a knowing.
The Test of Separation was a lie.
That shocking realization crackled through him. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he was certain.
This wasn’t a test of magical skills. It was a coming-of-age threshold he had to break through. It was designed to break a Quad, to inhibit the power of any Quadron who emerged from the academy, to enslave them. It didn’t matter if one of a given Quad died, or if all of them died, just so long as there weren’t four at the end to lend power to each other.
A full Quad of magic users could be powerful, as powerful as The Four themselves, and The Four wanted to make sure their power was never threatened.
The sudden knowing sickened Brom. The academy was a lure, and young people with magical talent buzzed to it like flies. Once they were caught, they were destroyed, through death or enslavement.
Brom floated in his connection to the Soul of the World like he was submerged beneath a lake. Never before had he been this deep, in a place where vague intuition transformed into profound assurance.
Then suddenly, it was as though someone grabbed his ankle and yanked him downward. He plunged deeper into the depths of the Soul. His consciousness went so far down he hadn’t even realized such a place had existed.
He didn’t just feel everything around him now, didn’t just make the lands a part of him, couldn’t just anticipate what would happen a second from now, but instead he saw the grand view. He saw...the future. Instead of merely being a part of everything, he now saw its purpose, its origin, and its destiny.
The mirror was a portal made by The Four. This cemetery wasn’t an illusion created by the test makers; Brom actually stood in Kyn at some future or past time, perhaps the coming night, perhaps a night from a dozen years ago.
And he suddenly realized there were greater threats to the two kingdoms than the war of the Hallowed Woods, greater threats to him than the struggles of this slaughterhouse academy.
The lands were under attack. There was a secret invasion by creatures from another land, some land below them. Some place...that Brom didn’t understand. Another world.
These invaders had already breached the barrier between their land and Brom’s many times, and they longed to invade the two kingdoms through portals just like this one.
And Brom saw that his green adversary wasn’t a replica of himself at all. It was one of The Four in disguise.
Brom’s new eyes stripped away her disguise. He saw her wrinkled lips and bony chin beneath her black cowl. He saw her midnight robes. The green-skinned image of his adversary hovered like a mirage over her real form.
She raised her fist.
“Linza,” he gasped. The word came Brom’s mouth unbidden, as though it had been waiting behind his teeth, unfettered by the blank spots in his memory. It was as though that knowing, that recognition, had been placed there by the Soul of the World herself, waiting for this moment to emerge. Brom grappled with the name in his mind, trying to follow some string that would unlock his missing memories. There was something personal here, something vast between Linza and himself, but though he had perfect certainty of who and what she was, he had no details at all.
The old woman’s fist froze, hovering in mid-air.
“What did you say?” she creaked.
“You’re Linza. You’re the Anima of The Four.”
His newfound wisdom changed the nature of the Test. He wasn’t fighting to become a Quadron. There was no prize here. He was fighting to escape the jaws of a trap closing down on him and his friends. He had to get away from this place, back to the academy. He had to warn his Quad.
“Remarkable...” Linza creaked. “How did you see that?”
Using her magic, she tried to fill him with despair again. He felt the attack coming, knew exactly what she was trying to do, but he was submerged in the Soul of the World, and the attack had no effect. Her despair came down like rain on top of that lake, unable to reach him because he was so far beneath the surface. Instead, it thrummed on the top, but he only felt the ripples of her vile intent, not the soul-crushing despair.
“Clever, Rule-breaker,” she creaked. “Perhaps I’ll keep you after all. The hooks burn at first, but the pain goes away quickly enough. You’ll soon come to like them. In fact, you’ll come to love them...” Green flames appeared, dancing over her bony fingers.
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