by Sever Bronny
Bridget strolled along the edge of the long training pool, hands folded across her chest, Jengo and Olaf dutifully following behind. Olaf was there because he had snuck in, wanting to be near Bridget, while Jengo was there in case Augum incurred another injury. Bridget had scolded Olaf for not training on his own spells as he was told, but he had endeared himself to her to allow him to stay by, in Leera’s words, “expertly flashing puppy-dog eyes.”
Augum and his friends had eaten a quiet meal in a chamber in the library usually reserved for the upper echelon of staff. Klines had then hosted a memorial ceremony for Naoki in another room, this one old and abandoned. Augum saw Naoki in the sacred blue fires and thanked her for her sacrifice. He also saw the faces of the enemies he had slain, their gazes mournful and haunting.
Afterward, while they waited for Esha’s health to improve, most went to get some badly needed rest in their shared room, into which Klines had an attendant lug in two more beds. Leland reluctantly resumed his evening studies alongside his father, who was glad his son had helped the group but still worried for his safety. Augum had taken the remainder with him to work on their own spells.
Bridget stopped across from Augum and waited for him to clumsily swim over, for his robe caught the water like a sail. They were in an old library Trainer made from brick encrusted with white grime. The ceiling was high and arched, giving the place the appearance of an ancient sewer. And by the stench of the water, Augum strongly suspected that’s exactly what it used to be.
“He do it again?” Leera called from afar. She was idly training with Arthur, shooting First and Second Offensives at his shield.
Bridget ignored her and crouched beside the pool, resting a hand on her chin. She tapped her cheek and studied Augum, who felt rather pathetic treading water in his robe.
Olaf extended a hand to him.
“Leave him,” Bridget said, and Olaf’s hand snapped back.
Augum swallowed nervously under Bridget’s gaze.
“Annihilo,” Leera incanted in the background and there was a deep thunk as Arthur’s shield rang with the blow. Augum glanced over only for Bridget to snap her fingers in his face.
“Distracted much?” she said.
“Er …”
She rubbed her face in exasperation. Behind her, Olaf pursed his lips in a comedic Now you’ve done it way.
“This isn’t working, Aug,” Bridget said. “What did Jez say about teleportation distractions?” She gave him an imploring look.
“We need to focus past all distractions,” he replied dutifully, feeling like a scolded pupil.
“Emphasis on the all.”
“Good job, Three Toes,” Olaf teased with a wink, but Augum didn’t entirely mind the nickname the boys had given him.
Bridget slowly glanced over her shoulder and Olaf looked away, placing his hands behind his back. “I’ll be quiet,” he squeaked.
“Yes, you will.” She returned her gaze to Augum. “You’re allowing your past failures to bleed into your preparatory work, aren’t you?”
“I can’t help it—”
“You can. You can help it, Augum. Don’t you start with cheap excuses. I know you can do this, and I know that you haven’t hit your ceiling. Work the problem. I’m serious, Aug—don’t you dare flash Ollie that look! In fact—” She whirled on Olaf. “Go train with Leera and Arthur.”
“Yes, m’lady,” he mumbled, and waddled off, head hanging.
“You too, Jengo.”
“But what if Augum—”
“Then we’ll call for your help.”
“Oh. Okay.” Jengo loped after Olaf.
“Like a bunch of children,” Bridget muttered, extending her hand to Augum. He took it and she leaned back and hauled him over the edge with a groan.
He stood, sopping wet and dripping onto the floor.
She crossed her arms as she faced him. “Go back and do it again. This time, you will not teleport until you’ve thoroughly understood that you need to concentrate past all distractions—even your insecurities.” She stabbed a finger into his chest. “You can solve this. You’ve been indulging your fears. Face the problem and picture success. Take charge. Discipline your mind, Aug.” She leaned forward a little, stabbing again for emphasis. “Discipline your mind.”
“I’ll try—”
She instantly held up a finger in admonition.
“All right, I’ll … I’ll do it.”
She nodded. “Now I’m going to marshal the troops and make it difficult.”
He raised a questioning eyebrow at her but she turned her back on him and strode over to the others. He trailed behind, heading for the side of the pool near them. His soaked robes and undergarments made him feel twice as heavy, but he tried to ignore it.
As he stepped to the edge of the pool, Bridget huddled with the others, whispering to them. After a few snickers, they turned to face him.
Augum began the mental preparatory work of the spell, which had to be done quickly and flawlessly in the grip of combat.
“Hey, Three Toes,” Olaf called, “remember when you ’ported into that pig’s trough and your undergarments were exposed for all to see?”
Augum’s thought process careened into a ditch. He turned to see his friends—including Bridget!—chortling.
“Who chops their own toes off?” Leera said, glancing between Arthur and Jengo. “I mean, really, this is the man I’m going to marry one day?”
This made them laugh, though Augum noticed Arthur forced his. Knowing her protector might have feelings for his beloved angered him.
“Look, Three Toes is scared he hit his arcane ceiling,” Jengo called.
“Ouch,” Augum muttered, trying to focus on the spell again.
Bridget cupped her mouth with her hands. “If you’re going to focus on your failures, you might as well focus on all of them at once. What else have you failed at?”
Leera flipped her palms open at the friends. “Whoa, did Bridget just use sarcasm?” Everyone laughed once more.
The ribbing strengthened. Throughout, Bridget looked on expectantly, face glowing with belief in him. Augum began to understand what she was doing. She was right—he had been indulging his fears.
And then something The Grizzly had said came back to him—Your past is your future if you don’t let go of it. That thought was followed by Laudine’s idea to imagine being a successful Augum, a concept he thought he was finally starting to understand.
As the cat-calling continued—“Come on, Three Toes, let’s whittle it down to Two Toes—no, One Toe!”—Augum decided to start even simpler and closed his eyes, replacing the memories of his teleportation failures with successes. Each time, his mind, conditioned to think about failure, tried to derail his efforts. But he was relentless, replacing each instance of failure with a successful casting. He even used successful castings of other spells before changing tack and recalling the few instances he had cast Teleport successfully. He followed this by imagining future successful castings. Lastly, he took on the fears that swirled around hitting his ceiling like a charging knight. In this way, one memory and thought at a time, he steeled his mind with Teleport.
The others kept up their taunting, but Augum stood there with his eyes closed, dripping and soggy and cold, making progress. He refused to allow this cursed spell to get the better of him. He refused the ceiling that loomed over him like a hanging blade. He refused defeat.
And then, after summoning the courage and feeling certain and emboldened, he opened his eyes.
“Whoa, Three Toes is going to barf all over himself—”
Augum envisioned himself standing triumphantly at the other end of the pool, facing his friends, arms crossed. “Impetus peragro.” But this time, instead of his body being yanked, he arcanely yanked on his body. Although it happened briefly, he hurtled through the arcane ether, aware of his limbs—and for the first time ever was able to control them. Whereas before they flopped about, he now held them firm, so that although he st
ill felt that somersaulting sensation, he was gaining control over his body. And that meant in due time he would be able to precisely control the hurtling as well—which in turn meant that he could, with practice, succeed at the Battle Teleport extension! It was the next crucial step—controlling the arc of the ’port using touch-and-go teleporting, enabling him to teleport to spots in line of sight, or even nearby spots he had only glimpsed briefly.
An eyeblink later, he appeared on the other side of the pool, hands already folded across his chest, a triumphant smirk on his face.
His friends erupted in cheers.
Ruse
After the pool session, Augum and his group took a much-needed nap while the others took their turn training. Later they all met up again to eat a quiet supper in a secret room. When the library closed at the strike of the ninth evening bell, they gathered all their belongings in their room and waited for Secretary Klines, who had ensured all commoners and attendants vacated the Ordinary wing of the library. When she returned, she snuck the group into a long flagstone-floored room marked History, dimly lit with iron lanterns and gargoyle statues perched at the top of columns or in corners.
They dumped their stuff in a pile—including the trio’s golden breastplates—and began meticulously picking out books from rows of towering shelves. Then, one by one, with piles of books teetering in their arms, they took up places at library tables and began poring over the texts. Guided by the ancient motto of the library, Omnio incipus equa liberatus corsisi mei—all begin equal but only the curious thrive—they searched for an answer to an age-old question: how to get into the plane of Ley. It was an improbable task, considering they were looking in books available to commoners. But at the very least they wanted to arm themselves with as much knowledge as possible while they waited for Esha to wake up. Thus, it promised to be a late night.
After a couple hours of tedious study, Leera, who sat beside Augum, was hidden behind a giant book propped up to hide the fact that she was napping. Her chin rested on her folded hands, a pair of drawn paper eyes slipped in behind her spectacles for good measure, something she had delighted in concocting. Bridget was on her other side, ignoring her while she pored over no less than seven open books.
Olaf sat beside Bridget, gawking at her collection of books as if intimidated by her smarts. He too had his own books, but like so many others, his eyes had long glazed over and he was fighting to stay awake. It had, after all, already been a long day, even with the nap.
Augum fought the same battle. He twirled his raven feather quill, trying to think through the fog of mental exhaustion. Something was bothering him, something he had either forgotten or not considered. He was searching for what it was and glancing from person to person, hoping for inspiration.
Mary sat at a table with Jengo, their noses buried in huge books. Arthur sat at another table with Brandon and Cry, the latter pair having ended their feud after Cry had gone out into the blizzard and single-handedly brought Brandon back. Although they weren’t exactly friends yet, Brandon seemed to be going out of his way not to make Cry’s life miserable anymore, even offering Cry his roasted chicken wing at supper, which Cry grudgingly accepted.
Cry pretended to study but was really scribbling in his journal, occasionally glancing up at Haylee, admiring her from afar. Augum wondered if he was mustering up the courage to ask her out on a date when this was all over with.
Arthur, meanwhile, frowned in concentration at a decrepit tome that required constant arcane repairing as the pages kept fragmenting in his hands. Once in a while, he glanced over at Leera but quickly looked away if Augum happened to be watching. He obviously had a crush on her, but Augum did not feel as threatened by it, perhaps because it had helped save her life once already. Though anything more than occasional glances still riled his anger despite his attempts to ignore them.
Haylee sat with Leland and Mr. Goss, patiently whispering what she read about Ley to Leland, treating him like an equal who could see, something his father, judging by the proud smile, appreciated greatly. Leland used his ghoul, which sat beside him, to occasionally voice a question.
As for Maxine, she sat away from everyone else, glaring at the page before her as if it had insulted her.
She’d probably prefer to be doing something practical, like training, Augum thought, somewhat amused by the realization that he had never actually seen her smile. Probably incapable of the feat. He almost snorted. Heck, her smiling would be a feat of legend …
Secretary Klines had even more books than Bridget and was murmuring to herself as she glanced between two particularly fat tomes, eyes magnified behind her beetle-like spectacles. Augum strained to hear her mutterings.
“… but if all known Ley portal recipes have been destroyed, then we have no choice but to either craft a new recipe from scratch—which would take more time than we have, not to mention would likely be impossible—or find another way in. There has to be another way in …” She rubbed her forehead in frustration.
While the gentle susurrus of study continued, Augum’s thoughts drifted like snow caught in the wind, and yet he kept returning to the same nagging thought that there was something he needed to piece together. He thought of Katrina and pondered their encounter. And that’s when it hit him.
“Hey, when’s the last time the Orb of Hearing was checked?” he blurted.
Bridget didn’t even look up from her studies. “I checked it after supper. Still nothing.”
“That was hours ago though,” Olaf said, perking up. “Mind if Aug and I check on it again?”
“It’s in my rucksack.”
Olaf gently cleared his throat. “Are … are you mad at me?”
Bridget’s head snapped up. “What? No. No, of course not. Why would you think that?”
Olaf shrank, wincing. “Er … I don’t know?”
Her eyebrows rose in confusion. “I’m just studying, that’s all.”
“Yeah, of course, sorry. I just …”
“Never had a girlfriend before,” Augum blurted on his friend’s behalf.
Olaf’s cheeks reddened as he chuckled. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
Augum understood being the boyfriend of one of the kingdom’s “darling” heroines couldn’t be easy. Olaf constantly asked Augum what in Sithesia Bridget saw in him, thinking himself fat and useless and undeserving of her. He even made a thing about him being almost two years older than her, something no one ever considered because it didn’t matter, and yet she was “at least ten times as mature” as him. Augum would allay Olaf’s fears with reassurances, but like a snake in the grass, they always came slithering back.
Bridget smiled warmly at her boyfriend. “I’m going to get back to studying. Go and get the orb and do whatever it is you boys want to do.” She returned to her work with a shake of her head.
Olaf swallowed, nodded, and went to retrieve it.
Augum glanced over to see Brandon staring at her only for him to quickly return to studying. Augum sighed. Despite all their training, despite the dangers involved, it seemed they could not for the life of them leave their stupid teenage dramas behind in the academy. But maybe that was the point, that was what they were trying to save—their humanity.
Augum glanced at his snoozing girlfriend and those silly paper eyes. “And our youth,” he muttered.
“Hmm?” Bridget toned, not looking up.
“Nothing.”
Olaf returned holding the precious Orb of Hearing as if it would bite him. He carefully handed it to Augum and rubbed his hands excitedly. Augum felt the weight of the repaired orb, tightly wrapped in silentium.
“We should probably take this to a quiet corner,” Augum said, realizing the orb could potentially pick up the sounds of his friends. But just as he and Olaf got up, an urgent knock pattern came at the oaken door, startling everyone.
Leera bolted up with a yelp and began shuffling books in front of her, muttering, “Yes, yes, I’m on it.” She looked around as if lost only to rea
lize the paper eyes she had inserted were obstructing her view, and scrambled to remove them.
As Augum crammed the orb into a pocket, Secretary Klines stood and said, “That knock is for me,” and she strode over to the door, her high-heeled shoes clacking on the flagstones. She opened it a crack and Augum glimpsed the same auburn-haired attendant who had been helping Klines all day. The young and rather pale man whispered a few tense words before hurrying off. Klines carefully closed the door and turned around.
“Put everything back on the shelves,” she said, removing her shoes. “Urgently but quietly. We must get you to the safety of your room.”
They began scrambling even before she had finished speaking, permeating the place with the sounds of books quietly closing and parchments being stuffed into rucksacks. When everything was cleared away, they grabbed their belongings and lined up at the door, where Klines beckoned for Leland. When he drew near with his ghoul and father, she tapped her temple and pointed at the door. Leland and his ghoul nodded, then went still. Leland slowly craned his head left and right, as if listening to the arcane ether and the chatter of minds.
“There are too many of them,” the ghoul said.
Mr. Goss placed a finger to his lips. “Quieter, Son.”
“Sorry, Father,” the ghoul whispered hoarsely.
“The Canterrans,” Augum mouthed to Leera when they caught eyes.
Leland and his ghoul winced. “She’s flying about outside. She’s very suspicious.”
“Katrina?” Augum whispered. “How do you know it’s her?”
“Her thoughts are very loud. Louder than everyone’s.”
Amplified by the siege engine in the same manner as her spells, Augum realized.
Leland and his ghoul began backing away from the door. “Not safe,” the ghoul gurgle-whispered. “Not safe …”
“Are they coming this way?” Klines pressed.
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Concentrate, Son.”
“Don’t know. A lot.”
Augum’s battle instincts took over. “Get behind the bookshelves.”