Arcane Dropout

by Edmund Hughes

  Just to the east of them, atop a small knoll in the snow, sat the ghost of a man. He wore heavy winter clothing and appeared to be clutching his stomach. The second of those two facts told Lee that it was a new apparition he was dealing with, one still reeling from their loss of life, tending to injuries that had long since run their course.

  He made sure Harper was still busy investigating the destroyed campsite before splitting off to follow his own lead. He nodded to the ghost as he approached and took a seat next to him, doing his best to act as though he was simply taking a breather.

  “Hi,” he said, holding one of his icy gloves partially over his mouth. “Lee Amaranth, freelance mystic. What can you tell me about what happened here?”

  “You… What?” The ghost looked confused and slowly shook his head. It was a common reaction, one that Lee usually tried to skip over by offering gifts or learning a little about the deceased beforehand.

  “You were a part of the survey team, I take it?” he said. “What was your name?”

  “Uh…” The ghost brought a hand to his forehead. “Keven Angler. I… we came here to study the coastal ice, how fast it’s melting. Just to do busywork, basically. None of this should have happened. I don’t understand.”

  “Frost trolls, right?” asked Lee. “Did you see them coming?”

  “What?” The ghost shook his head. “No, it was… Jean. He had some kind of episode during the day. Started flailing his arms around and screaming. We asked him what was wrong, and he told us to keep our mouths shut. Didn’t say anything else all day.”

  Lee curled one of his gloved hands into a fist and rested it against his brow.

  “And then what happened?” he asked.

  “He stabbed me in the stomach,” said the ghost. “That’s what I woke up to, at least. I think he stabbed everyone, just killed the entire team. Finally fucking snapped. Jesus, I never would have guessed it would have been him. I… I never… ohhhh…”

  The ghost let out a groan and grabbed at his stomach again. Lee was in the middle of considering whether to use his kris dagger to put the entity out of his misery when he heard Harper shout his name.

  He glanced up and saw exactly what had left the impossibly large footprint. The frost troll was at least twice Harper’s height, with broad shoulders, massive arms, and legs that were as thick as tree trunks.

  The troll’s fur was a mixture of blue and grey, and two horns curled upward and back from the top of its skull, much like those of a goat. A plume of frozen condensation erupted from its mouth as it let out a booming, guttural roar and slid one of its feet back across the icy ground, preparing to charge.

  Lee started sprinting back toward the campsite, pulling his kris dagger free from the inside of his jacket and hoping it would be enough. Harper stood her ground, her face expressionless, posture neither threatening nor frightened.

  The frost troll lurched forward. Lee shouted a warning to Harper and tried to throw himself into the fray. The supply sled was nearby. Lee leapt onto it, sliding forward down the slope and putting himself on a collision course with the troll.

  “Eldon!” snapped Harper.

  The frost troll looked Lee’s way just before he slammed into it. He impacted with the monster’s leg, and it let out a small howl of pain and swatted down at him. Lee ducked and then rose to counter, stabbing his kris dagger into the frost troll’s upper thigh.

  It felt like he was wielding a sharpened pencil against a giant. The frost troll roared and simply knocked him back with one arm, kicking the supply sled after him. Lee hit the ice hard enough to have the wind knocked from his lungs. He only barely managed to stay calm and take action, letting go of his kris dagger on impact instead of holding onto it and potentially impaling himself.

  His head was throbbing from a knock he’d taken at some point, but he forced himself to sit up. Harper was fighting the frost troll on her own now, and his concern for her safety came and went as he watched her work.

  She applied each of her spells carefully, using them as the creative tools she’d spoken of them as before. The frost troll tried to rush forward and grab at her. Harper cast an air spell, sending a gust of snow into its face to temporarily blind it.

  She flung her palm forward, using a gout of flames to melt a thin layer of ice into water. The frost troll’s next step found no purchase on the slippery ground and it fell into a tumble, punctuated by a tremendous crack of shattering ice.

  Harper fell into the conjuration casting stance, one hand tightly clasped around the wrist of the other. Lee watched in awe, still too dazed from his fall to do anything else. He was expecting her to use telekinesis, but instead Harper cast a binding spell that was so clever in its application that he couldn’t help but smile.

  Harper bound the frost troll’s ankles together with a chain formed from glowing purple magical energy. The monster attempted to stand, but the combination of the binding and the slick ice sent it sprawling before it had risen halfway to its feet. It reminded Lee of Tess’s pranks, of tying shoelaces together and making childish mischief into an effective weapon.

  She pressed on her advantage, falling back into her elemental stance and flinging a volley of fruit-sized fireballs at the frost troll. It howled as they singed its fur, sliding backward across the snow and rolling to put distance between itself and this unexpectedly powerful opponent.

  Harper looked over at Lee, raising one eyebrow in that frustratingly challenging way that she so often did. She continued blasting the frost troll with fireballs, though with relaxed and lazy movements, lacking in the urgency of her attacks earlier in the fight. The bindings on the troll’s feet had vanished, and the monster was running on all fours, fleeing as fast as it could.

  She came over to him once it was no longer visible in the distance, frowning as she surveyed the damage the monster had done to both him and their supply sled. Lee found his footing and rose on shaky feet.

  “That was... incredible,” he said. “You didn’t kill it, but you could have, couldn’t you?”

  “If I had wanted to, yes,” said Harper. “They’re intelligent creatures, more so than many in the supernatural world realize. They live in tribes and communicate with each other using primitive languages. Killing that frost troll would have made trouble for Primhaven.”

  She stepped in close to Lee, first looking at his head and then pressing a hand to his chest. He hadn’t realized it, but the frost troll’s attack had caught him heavily across the ribs. He winced, hoping it was just bad bruising.

  “I’ll have to check on those once we’ve made camp,” said Harper. “Speaking of which…”

  She crouched down next to the sled and let out a frustrated sigh. The back left third of the sled had cracked and broken partially loose, forcing a wooden splinter up through a canvas bundle that Lee suspected was meant to be the skin of their tent.

  “Dammit,” he said. “It’s my fault. I thought the troll was going to overrun you.”

  “Had it been a fire troll instead of a frost troll, it very well might have. We’ll be alright. This just means…”

  “Just means what?”

  She looked over and met his gaze with her usual intensity.

  “It just means things will be a little more complicated,” she said.

  CHAPTER 40

  They traveled west from where they’d found the survey team before attempting to set up camp. Harper insisted that they not remain too close to where the battle with the frost troll had taken place, but Lee’s injuries made moving painful, so she settled for covering their tracks with an air spell that reset the snow in their wake.

  He debated with himself on how to tell Harper the details the ghost had revealed about what had really happened. He doubted she’d believe him if he told her the truth, and doing so would also likely create problems for him moving forward. With that said, it was extremely hard to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse to explain how he’d inferred that a member of the survey team had been the one
who’d committed the murders and not frost trolls.

  “I’ll set the tent up,” said Harper. “Try not to move much and don’t fall asleep. It’s likely that you have at least a minor concussion.”

  “I’m fine,” said Lee. “I can still help.”

  Harper scowled as she unrolled the tent’s canvas, holding up one side and revealing the size of the gaping hole the broken sled had torn in it.

  “I think you’ve helped enough for now,” she said.

  It still looked like a tent once she’d unrolled the base layer and set up the poles and canvas, though one that was more susceptible to the elements than most. The base layer was made of a thick mixture of rubber and foam that provided a surprising amount of insulation between them and the ground. The real issue would be the hole in the side, which allowed in not only wind but also falling snow, given how it was angled.

  “Take off your jacket and snow pants,” said Harper. “We can use them to form a patch that will at least keep us from getting snowed on.”

  “We’ll freeze to death in just our regular clothing, regardless of the tent,” said Lee.

  “Not if we’re sharing a sleeping bag.” Harper shrugged when she saw his surprised expression. “It wasn’t what I had in mind, but it’s a standard tactic for this type of terrain. We can’t let our body heat go to waste, Eldon.”

  Harper was already pulling off her own parka. She’d worn a long-sleeve shirt underneath, but it was a little on the tight side, and the near-hypnotic movements of her breasts underneath revealed that she hadn’t deemed a bra necessary.

  She wiggled out of her snow pants, revealing a skin-tight pair of leggings that stirred a mixture of arousal and excitement within Lee. He waited, watching to see if she was planning on taking anything else off. She noticed.

  “Our regular clothes will stay on,” said Harper. “You didn’t sweat too much during the fight, did you?”

  Lee shook his head. He took his own winter gear off and passed it to Harper, who carefully layered it over the hole with the help of part of the cord from the sled’s harness. It didn’t do much in terms of insulation, but snow had already begun to fall again, and it seemed to work as a serviceable patch against the precipitation.

  Harper had packed two sleeping bags, but they were of the sort that could be completely unzipped and re-zipped into a double. She closed the tent’s entrance flap and sat down cross-legged, shooting Lee an expectant, somewhat impatient glance.

  “Come over here,” she said. “From the way you were holding your side earlier, I’m not entirely convinced that you haven’t broken a rib. Let me see your back.”

  Lee made his way over to her, stretching out across the tent.

  “Take off your shirt,” said Harper.

  He did, feeling oddly bashful as he set the garment aside. Harper gestured for him to flip over onto his back. Lee did, and then let out a small gasp as she set her extremely cold hands down on his abdomen.

  “Did that hurt?” asked Harper.

  “It felt like you just ran an icicle across my stomach. But no, it didn’t hurt.”

  Harper exhaled through her nose and leaned closer in. Her braid shifted, briefly dangling close enough to Lee’s face for him to catch a smell of citrus-scented shampoo. She pulled back, shifting her hands up higher, feeling across his ribs.

  It tickled slightly, but there was an odd, flowing tension within the tent that would have made it impossible for him to laugh if he’d wanted to. She ran her fingers across his chest with a surprising amount of gentle attention and care, and it felt strange to recognize that Harper was the same instructor who’d given him such a hard time when he’d first come to Primhaven.

  “Harper,” said Lee. “How did you and my sister meet?”

  The question came to his lips before he had time to consider whether it was wise to ask. Harper continued feeling his ribs for damage, and for a couple of seconds, it seemed as though she’d chosen to ignore the question.

  “I was 15 when I came to Primhaven,” said Harper. “Primhaven took in more students in their mid-teens back then, but I was still younger than most. I met a boy named Adam, whom I started dating. Adam had a twin brother named Aaron, who happened to be dating Zoe.”

  “Interesting,” said Lee. “She never mentioned that to me back when we were still in contact.”

  “It wasn’t a long-term relationship for her, or for me,” said Harper. “Zoe and I quickly became close, in part because of how much time our boyfriends spent together, but also because of how easily we got along. In the span of a month, we went from being strangers to being friends to being... more than that.”

  She went silent. It took an embarrassingly long time for her implication to reach Lee, and he felt his jaw drop open in dumb surprise.

  “Hold on,” he said. “You’re saying that you and Zoe broke up with these guys because you wanted to be... together. Meaning that you were like…”

  He felt a flush come to his cheeks as he saw a tiny, amused smile play across Harper’s mouth.

  “I’ve done many things throughout my life that I’ve felt the need to explain, but dating both men and women is not one of them,” she said.

  “It’s not like that,” said Lee. “Zoe was my sister. I never knew that she was bi.”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “Of course not,” said Lee. “It’s just… she never told me. She never said anything about her love life while we were still in contact. It stings a bit.”

  “Zoe was a very guarded person, even with those she loved,” said Harper. “She didn’t tell me much about you, either, Eldon, other than your name and that she loved you. She was confident and free spirited, and so incredibly smart, but she also liked to keep her life compartmentalized.”

  “Yeah, she did,” sighed Lee. “She was always trying to hide stuff from me when we were kids. Things she had to do for us, the sacrifices she didn’t want to have to admit to. I didn’t always see the reasoning of it at the time, but I get it now.”

  He took a slow breath, wincing as it sent a small sliver of pain through one of his ribs. Harper seemed to sense exactly where the injury was, her fingers instantly running along the length of the bruise, testing for more.

  “I have a question for you now, Eldon,” said Harper. “You enrolled in Primhaven under the pseudonym ‘Lee Amaranth’. I can understand how Eldon might shorten to L or Lee as a nickname, but why Amaranth?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why Amaranth, and not Smith, or Johnson, or any other generic-sounding last name?”

  Lee shrugged, a gesture made clumsy by his position. “Amaranth is a type of flower. I like flowers.”

  Harper met his gaze, her pale blue eyes boring into him with that infuriating, unyielding intensity.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Please. I’d like to know.”

  “There was a girl who used to live next door to Zoe and me back when we first lived in foster care,” said Lee. “She was obsessed with flowers, amaranths in particular. She never stopped bothering me about how pretty they were, always talking, all the time.”

  She’d been a ghost, though Lee couldn’t admit that to Harper. She’d been one of Lee’s first real friends, given how often he and Zoe had moved around as orphans during their early years. Flowers had been her obsession, and she’d often left trails of petals in her wake, humming songs under her breath, promising Lee that she’d marry him one day.

  “What happened to her?” asked Harper.

  “She... passed away,” said Lee, in a quiet voice.

  “I’m sorry,” said Harper.

  She hadn’t just been dead. She’d been a specter with a bad habit of hurting other children, pushing them into the street in front of speeding cars or off bridges. Lee had tried to talk to her, to teach her about how her actions were affecting other people in the same way any grade-school student would need to learn, but it hadn’t worked.

  The memory of how he’d finally been forced to
banish her still brought tears to his eyes, so he didn’t let himself think about it much. He’d been shouting at her after she’d pushed a boy in front of a bus, leaving him paralyzed for life. She’d been crying, and then she’d started throwing things, and then…

  “What was her name?” asked Harper.

  “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago. Water under the bridge.”

  If Harper’s silence was any indication, she didn’t believe him. Lee felt a sudden pressing need to change the subject.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Do you have any family back home?”

  “I do,” said Harper. “My mother and my little brother. It’s been a while since I’ve spoken to them. Perhaps I’ll bring you along the next time I visit. That would be appropriate for you, as my apprentice.”

  Lee winced slightly at her words and tried to play it off as a reaction to the continuing movements of her hands across his abdomen. He wasn’t sure for how long he could keep up the guise of a mage, especially now that Harper would be placing her own expectations on him. Having Tess help him cast minor spells wouldn’t be enough to fool her indefinitely.

  “Harper…” He closed his eyes and took a breath. “I need to tell you something. I—”

  One of Harper’s fingers prodded into a rib that was more sensitive than the rest, sending a jolt of pain through Lee that made him tense and gasp.

  “Your muscle is cramping underneath this bruise.” She shifted position, straddling him in a fashion that had her resting her butt on the edge of his crotch. “This might hurt.”

  “Hold on a second, I—”

  Harper dug her fingers in. Lee would have shouted from the pain, but he gasped first, forcing the air out of his lungs. His hands shot up reflexively, one grabbing Harper’s hip, the other shooting out in the direction of her chest and seizing something soft and heavenly.

  “Eldon,” said Harper in a terse voice. “Let go of my breast.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Lee was surprised by how much Harper’s massage had done for his pain and also by the fact that she didn’t seem overly put off by his accidental wandering hand. She had him roll over and did the same for the muscles of his back before finally relenting and sliding into the sleeping bag.