Arcane Dropout

by Edmund Hughes

  Lee hesitated, considering what the specter had just said. Obviously just being able to see the entity was evidence of his nature as a mystic, but he’d never revealed that he’d been lacking the Potential to anyone but Tess. Had he let it slip in some other way?

  “What’s your point?” asked Lee. “You sound like you’re trying to convince me to join you. It’s not going to happen.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” said the specter. “The last host I tried to possess was... rather disagreeable. The fact that you can hear me, that you can consider my proposition and make an educated decision, makes you a far better candidate.”

  “Forget it,” said Lee. “I’d rather die than let you possess me.”

  “Eldon, you assume too much if you think that you’ll be given a choice in the matter.”

  Lee couldn’t stop himself from laughing, and he grinned upon seeing the specter’s perplexed expression.

  “Go ahead and try,” said Lee. “You won’t be the first specter that has. I think you’ll find it to be more of a challenge than you’re expecting.”

  He wasn’t bluffing, either. Lee had never been possessed by a specter before, despite several attempts. The specter had a cold, disconcerting smile, and he felt his confidence waver as the entity reached a hand out again.

  “You have no idea what you’re currently up against, do you?” asked the specter. “I am not a simple house ghost to be underestimated.”

  Lee gritted his teeth as he felt another ghostly touch, this one far more direct and intense than the previous. The specter thrust his entire arm into Lee’s chest, sliding it downward until he felt as though his guts were being flash frozen. He gasped as the specter pulled outward, almost falling forward in time with the motion.

  “I plan on taking my time,” said the specter. “Feel free to ask for mercy when you’re ready to listen to reason.”

  “Fuck... you…” Lee forced words out through gritted teeth. “I won’t give…”

  His last word was cut off by his own scream as he felt the fingers of the specter prodding and scraping against the inside of his hip bone. It was the most painful sensation he’d ever experienced, the kind of agony that taught him a lesson about the limits of his own psyche.

  Lee’s body thrashed and seized, doing nothing to force the specter away and only adding to his own pain as his body flailed ineffectually against his restraints. The ghost let out a dark laugh, stopping his onslaught for a moment, and then starting again. Proving to Lee that he could make him scream.

  “Let’s test your will, shall we?” asked the specter. “Perhaps I’ve already done enough?”

  The specter shifted his assault away from Lee’s physical body, focusing on his mind instead. The sensation was similar to being on the verge of falling asleep, knowing that all it would take was for him to close his eyes and relinquish control.

  “No!” shouted Lee. “I won’t!”

  The specter shifted strategies, reaching an ethereal hand up to gouge into Lee’s eyes. The pain was enough to outdo even what the ghost had inflicted on him earlier. He couldn’t even scream.

  “If you want me to stop, simply let me in. It’s an easy decision, Eldon. Do it.”

  Part of him wanted to. Part of him would have done anything to stop the pain. Why did he have to struggle, when it would be so easy to give in?

  Normally, when questions like that flickered into his awareness, he’d remember Zoe and think about how without him, her disappearance would never be resolved. It was more than that this time. He saw not only Zoe’s face, but Tess’s too, and even Harper’s.

  He lashed out, pulling his head back far enough to be out of the specter’s touch and then triggered his mystic stream. He threw his body forward, slamming a headbutt into the specter’s freshly corporeal body that was as effective as it was painful.

  “You insolent little wretch!” screeched the specter.

  The ghost pulled an arm back and threw a punch. Lee tried to release his mystic stream, but he was an instant too late. The fist slammed into the side of his head, knocking him out cold.

  CHAPTER 43

  The fire was out when Lee woke up, and he was shivering from the cold. He couldn’t feel his hands or his feet, he was both thirsty and hungry, but all of those facts combined paled in comparison to his general sense of despair.

  He felt a chill run up the back of his neck and immediately tensed in expectation of more torture at the hands of his captor. A small, feminine gasp sounded instead.

  “You’re awake!” hissed Tess. “Finally! Hurry, Lee. Use your mystic river thingie so I’ll be strong enough to help get these bindings undone.”

  “It’s a stream, not a…” Lee blinked, realizing the implications of her presence. “Wait, how can you be here? Tess, we’re miles outside of Primhaven!”

  She came around to the front, stepping into his field of view. Her ethereal body looked less substantial than usual, with an odd, flickering undercurrent similar to a lightbulb on the verge of burning out. She looked worried, but it seemed directed toward him, rather than to herself.

  “I could feel your pain,” she said. “I came as fast as I could.”

  “You’re risking yourself by being this far from the college,” he said. “Here. Stay close to me.”

  Lee exhaled and extended his mystic stream, giving Tess form and color. She looked cold, and there were red smudges around her eyes, as though she’d recently been crying. He couldn’t help but smile at her as he thought about how far she’d gone for him, and how doomed he would have been if she hadn’t.

  “Lee…” whispered Tess. “Your nose…”

  She gasped and clamped a hand over her mouth. Lee felt twin lines of warm blood trickling down across his lip from his nostrils. It was a minor concern compared to what the specter had in store for him.

  “My kris dagger,” said Lee. “It’s inside my snow pants on the left side. You should be able to use it to cut my bindings.”

  “Got it!” Tess ran over and gave him a quick hug and kiss before reaching for the dagger. She held it with a curious look in her eyes before starting to pull it from its sheath. Footsteps sounded at the cave’s entrance before she got the chance.

  Tess spun around, flailing as she passed the dagger back to Lee’s still-bound hands. The specter stood at the opening of the tunnel leading outside, and as he strode forward, he too entered Lee’s mystic stream.

  His skin was pale, almost the same color as the snow. He had no hair to speak of, not even eyebrows, and between that and the hulking muscles of his physique, he seemed somehow less than human. His eyes were beady and colorless, lacking anything that could be construed as emotion.

  “Get back!” cried Tess. She stood and moved before Lee could warn her not to. The specter laughed as he sidestepped her ineffectual first strike, seizing her arm and pulling her to him.

  Tess’s petite figure made it easy for her to be handled. The specter held her in front of him, one arm wrapped tightly enough around her neck to make her gasp. He furrowed his brow and looked at Lee expectantly, waving the hand of his other arm as though to demonstrate that he was capable of more violence, if needed.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve absorbed another ghost,” said the specter. “I can already tell from her voice that she would be oh so delectable. What will it be, Eldon? You have such resolve when it comes to threats to yourself. What about when I threaten her?”

  The specter squeezed his arm momentarily. Tess’s face went white, and her eyes bulged. Lee had his kris dagger out and he quickly cut through his wrist bindings. He did the same for his ankles and stood to his feet, halfway delirious from the hot anger he felt over watching a monster hurt Tess.

  “I will absorb her if you attack me,” said the specter. “If you cooperate, however, and allow me access to your body, I will let her live. She can even stay with you. With us.”

  The specter loosened his arm. Tess gasped for breath, locking eyes with Lee
as soon as she could speak again.

  “Lee,” she said, in a quiet voice. “You... should do it.”

  She nodded very slowly and then… what was that? Lee frowned and shook his head.

  “Tess, you can’t be—”

  “Please, Lee,” said Tess. She did it again, and this time Lee caught it. She was winking at him.

  Slowly, fighting against almost every survival instinct he’d developed in his time as a mystic, Lee sheathed his kris dagger and slid it back into his snow pants. He took a slow breath, ignoring the specter’s cackling laughter, and bowed his head.

  “Alright,” he said, through gritted teeth. “If you release her, you can have me.”

  “Wonderful!” shouted the specter. “Oh, this is beyond wonderful. This is optimal! I thought this would be a much longer process. My master will be so pleased.”

  The specter pushed Tess aside. Lee released his mystic stream, knowing that it would make it impossible for him to be possessed. It meant that Tess was existing on a time limit again, and he hoped that whatever it was she was planning happened quickly.

  He did his best to relax both his body and mind, but it was pointless. The specter came around to stand behind him, and Lee felt the cold, crawling, invasive touch that he recognized as the telltale sign of a ghost attempting possession.

  Tess was still in the cave, and she was doing her best to act afraid. She was not a very good actor, and Lee hoped that the fact that he could see through her attempt was because of how well he’d grown to know her, rather than it being that transparent.

  He let out a small gasp as the specter seized complete control of him. It was a disconcerting sensation, even before he’d been forced to do anything. It felt like being in a dream, realizing it for what it was, and still finding himself unable to pull awake.

  “Perfect,” said Lee. It wasn’t him talking, though. His voice didn’t even sound like his own, though he knew his mouth had been the one forming the sounds.

  A deep, rumbling cry came from outside the cave, followed by the heavy, earth-shaking footsteps of the frost trolls. Unnatural light flashed across the sliver of the surface visible through the cave’s exit. A battle was being waged, and Lee could only think of a single nearby group that would be interested in instigating one.

  “Even this works in our favor,” said Lee’s mouth. “Your instructors have arrived to rescue us. They’ll destroy the frost trolls, leaving us free to accompany them back to the college without accruing any suspicion. Let’s go greet them, shall we?”

  Lee felt his body standing up and moving, somewhat awkwardly given his injuries, toward the outside world. The entrance to the cave was narrow, forcing the specter to turn his body sideways. The area around them was a vast plane of ice, almost completely flat in all directions.

  The specter made Lee’s body take a step forward and he slipped hard. Not on ice. On a carefully placed scattering of smooth, glass marbles.

  Lee hit his head as he fell, and the sensation was enough to jar the specter loose. It was also extremely painful, but he pushed that fact aside as he scrambled to his feet and drew his kris dagger.

  “You have no idea how annoying it was to carry those all the way here,” muttered Tess.

  “A prank…” said Lee. “Your idea for freeing me... was to set up a prank?”

  “Yup.” Tess gave him a quick peck on the lips. “It worked, too.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Even though Lee had broken free from the specter’s possession, the battle had only just begun. The specter had pulled himself to his feet and begun circling around Lee with a wild look in his eyes. In the distance beyond it, another war was being waged, this one between the frost trolls and his teachers from Primhaven.

  Lead Instructor Mattis was the easiest to spot, as she wasn’t standing alone. She was surrounded by a posse of bonded animals far more ferocious than any of the ones she let wander free around the college’s campus. There were half a dozen polar bears, ten arctic wolves, and several exotic-looking snow cats, all snarling as they charged toward one of the frost trolls.

  Instructor Daniels, the alteration teacher, stood with a posture that made him look like he’d stepped directly out of one of his classes and into battle. He was in the process of using green walls of magical force to separate off one of the frost trolls from its companions, crossing his arms over his chest in the casting stance to make a barrier before scratching his head and spending a few seconds carefully deciding where to place the next one.

  Instructor Constantine, the school’s resident illusionist, seemed impossible for the trolls to effectively deal with. He’d created a dozen copies of himself, each of them impossible to distinguish from the original aside from being composed of magic. He was circling one of the frost trolls, trying to get in close enough to cast a sleep spell, Lee assumed.

  Harper was there too, and she was scary. She was flying through the air, aloft through the power of her air elemental spells, flinging fireballs down on the frost trolls in an endless onslaught. She seemed like a goddess of magic, raining her wrath down on those who’d earned her ire.

  Lee only had a few seconds to take in the scene before focusing back on his own situation. The specter was rushing forward, attempting to bludgeon him with heavy punches. A small smile played across Lee’s lips. He still remembered the specter’s torture, and really wanted to return the favor.

  Lee struck out with his kris dagger, slicing a small, grazing cut into the specter’s shoulder. A wretched howl came from the entity as he stumbled back. Lee tapped the flat of his blade on his palm and slowly stepped forward to strike him again.

  “Silver,” he said. “There’s a reason why I only need a dagger, and not say, a sword, or silver bullets. Hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it?”

  “You…” The specter snarled in a manner that the frost trolls would have appreciated. “You will pay for this insolence!”

  Lee slashed him again, this time with a full cut across the chest. The specter fell backward, scraping at the invisible wound across his ethereal chest.

  “Remember how you were scraping at my eyeballs, before?” asked Lee. “Ghastly stuff, even from a spook.”

  He briefly thought about pressing the tip of his kris dagger into a similar spot on the specter before deciding that he was above that sort of thing. The specter kicked out at him, and one of his feet caught the edge of Lee’s jaw. Pain flared across the side of his face and through his teeth, enough to make him gasp and give his opponent a little more respect.

  The two circled each other, both waiting for a mistake to provide an opening. Lee’s dagger would have given him a small advantage in range had the specter not been half a foot taller than he was. He slashed forward with his blade, swinging with movements that curled up in figure eights and doubled back after feinting. Knife fighting was all about unpredictability.

  The specter kept his distance, waiting until one of Lee’s feet caught the wrong way on a crack in the ice before slamming a fist into his abdomen. The ethereal blow reignited the pain of every injury Lee had suffered over the past day, and he groaned as black curtains threatened to momentarily render him unconscious.

  He spun, slashing as he did and landing a cut across the specter’s face. The specter let out an ear-rending screech and fell to his knees. Lee took his dagger in both hands and prepared to drive it down, through the specter’s shoulder blades.

  The ground shook hard underneath his feet, and an arm the size of a tree trunk swatted Lee off his feet. He couldn’t risk letting go of his knife this time, so he tried to keep his arm held at an angle that would keep the edge away from his body while not exposing the limb to potential breakage.

  Kukachuk, the frost troll chieftain, had intervened in the fight. Oblivious to the specter, Kukachuk advanced toward Lee, snarling and spraying spittle from his mouth. Lee rose quickly to his feet, muttering a few choice curse words under his breath as he saw the specter retreating across the distant ice.

 
“You play trick on Kukachuk!” shouted the troll. “You die!”

  “Hold on!” said Lee. “This is all just a big misunder—”

  Kukachuk’s fist came down within a foot of him, scattering chunks of snow and ice and shaking the ground enough to send Lee stumbling back. He tapped a finger on the hilt of his kris dagger, knowing that it wouldn’t be enough for him to take the monster down, or likely even to defend himself.

  “Lee!” Tess’s voice was suddenly in his ear, and he felt her ghostly touch on his arm. “I’m here! Two spells, that’s all I can give you for now.”

  “I think I can work with that,” he said.

  More trolls had entered the fray over by where Lee’s instructors were fighting. Harper was on the ground now, fighting alongside Instructor Constantine on one side of the battle, while Mattis and Daniels corralled the trolls the best they could with their magic across the way.

  Lee dodged a lurching swat by the troll that would have sent him flying through the air, and he considered his options. He didn’t have a fraction of the repertoire of spells his instructors had, or even the other initiates, partially due to the fact that he’d skipped a couple of classes.

  He had an illumination spell, the force blast spell that Harper had made him train, and a spell shield. On top of that, he could only pick two, or just one if he wanted to cast the same spell twice. He tried to come up with a plan based off those restrictions. Kukachuk seemed determined to break his concentration.

  This time, the frost troll chieftain slammed its foot down, nearly squashing Lee underneath and cracking the ice so severely that one of Lee’s legs slid into a fissure. He rolled forward to escape, narrowly avoiding one of the troll’s slapping paws.