CHAPTER 13 : GUARDIANS ASSEMBLE

“Winter, Year 4.

The frozen flowers have finally bloomed. Young Lenn is making a snow witch below my window. She’s using the petals as a crown. The other students are ice skating on the pond. We have a dozen girls now, any more and I’ll need to add another level to the school. I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, but the noise helps. It’s better than...it’s better. I should gather more firewood soon...” ~Avaris Lyonsmar, Diary No. 4

Note: Diaries are cursed for privacy, read at your own risk.

AVARIS

I did not sense the boy’s havoc until it was too late.

“What set him off?” Tirma asks, running after me into the dark. “It had to have been building for a while.”

“Nilah,” I breathe, leaping over rows of potato shrubs. “His havoc must be connected to her. We couldn’t see it until she made her choice.”

One moment Egg was an ordinary, if surprisingly unlucky, boy. The next his havoc lit up the entire valley like a volcano.

I look over my shoulder to double check on Yendy. Her shrinking figure is gathering the girls back into the tower. Good. Bavetna is not far behind us, having only stopped to collect her bow from the farm house porch.

Tirma shakes her head. “She probably tried to use too much too fast, or maybe take the root from him. Exposure toxicity?”

“Foolish child!” I curse. “That amount of havoc would be difficult for a maelstrom to control, let alone an untested novice. She didn't stand a chance.”

“But I can still feel her, Avaris. She isn’t dead.”

“Of course she's dead. That recoil knocked me off my feet—” No. Tirma is right. A small spark of violet flickers in the dark, deep in the forest. But it surrounds— “Is that...?”

“Wow.”

Egg’s havoc is blinding, and I have to close my third eye just to avoid running into a tree in the dark. I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s a walking super nova. The entire sky is looking for him. He’s connected to too many branching paths, too many fates.

I thought I cleared him the first night Bavetna brought him to Little Abbey. There was no indication of his havoc root being such a prime source. He was unimpressive! I assumed...how was I supposed to know his fate was intertwined with a nobody from the Tar Pools?

Havoc collisions are so rare.

Both their chaos energies have changed. Where Egg's havoc is an endlessly burning flame, Nilah's is a crystal star surrounding it, constantly shifting, keeping it from leaking. He fuels her havoc and she contains his. Neither can exist without the other now. Their magic is tied forever.

“Egg must have channeled the recoil." I stop short to catch my breath, bracing my palm against a tree trunk. “That's why Nilah is still alive.”

"No. He's a civilian, and a boy. He can't manipulate havoc. He'd be dead if he tried."

“I think he was, and Nilah brought him back.”

That girl was paying closer attention to my teachings than I thought.

“That technique is way beyond her studies—”

“She’s smart,” I whisper, and I can’t help but feel impressed. "His channeling mixed their havocs together, and when she returned it she inadvertently connected herself to him. I've seen this once before, but never of this magnitude, and only between witches."

"Can they be separated?"

I shake my head. "It's fate, Tirma. It's a chaos root now. Removing one will kill the other."

Bavetna finally catches up with us. She doesn’t look tired from sprinting at all, but she pauses where we do, alert. A branch of pine needles shades her forehead and two of her four eyes. “Do you feel that?” she asks, her feet shifting beneath her.

“My poor hamstrings?” Tirma scoffs. “Yes.”

“Wait,” I say, holding my hand up, “I feel it too.”

A rumble, distant but constant, shakes the ground.

“Another recoil?” Tirma asks, fingers tensing, ready to spell a shield at a moment’s notice.

“Footsteps.” Bavetna says. “A lot of them.”

The corners of Tirma’s mouth wrinkle. “Then why haven’t they tripped the perimeter? We’d have sensed their havoc by now.”

“They brought a witch,” I whisper, “she’s raised a veil.”

Silence falls between the three of us.

Both Tirma and Bavetna look to me for instruction.

Deep breath.

Let’s see what we’re dealing with first.

I close my eyes and slow my heartbeat, concentrating on the valley. I spread my own havoc and feel out the chaos of every rock, every grass shoot, every animal pulse. A map spread behind my eyelids, blinking with a million tiny lights.

Havoc is being disturbed.

A breeze from a passing boot displaces a milkweed stem, a pike shaft breaks on the soil, creating a tiny rockfall down a hill, a pipe burns in someone’s mouth, it makes the mosquitos around his head sleepy...

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I open my eyes.

“There are five hundred men marching from the North. They’re through Widow's Pass and have us surrounded on three sides. No campfires. No tree cutting. No passing villager left alive to give us warning.”

“How many witches?” Tirma asks, eyes searching mine.

I hold her gaze. “One, but she's good if she can hide this many men at once.”

She swears.

“They’re here for Egg,” Bavetna says solemnly and strings her bow.

“Then we should give him to them!” Tirma shouts.

Bavetna notches an arrow, but leaves it casually pointing at the ground. “You can try.”

Tirma straightens to her full height, which is still two heads shorter than Bavetna. She jabs her finger into Bavetna’s chest. “Listen to me, blueberry, if a single one of my students dies to protect that spoiled brat—”

“Egg is family now,” I say.

“But—” Tirma falters.

“Bavetna, collect our two troublemakers and take them somewhere safe. Not the tower. South is still open, but I don’t know for how long. Tirma, we go back. Yendy can’t defend Little Abbey alone.”

“You want to defend it?! We should take the children and run.”

“Should we?” My eyes spark blue.

For the first time in a long time, I let my havoc unravel around me. So many tiny choices over the last fifty years, so many threads braided tightly together, waiting to be uncoiled.

Releasing it is like lifting a mountain off my shoulders.

Bavetna is already gone, her blueness melting into the forest, leaving Tirma and I alone. She looks at me in awe, then in fear. “This cannot be another Blackthorn Peak,” she says, her voice small and shaking.

“It won’t be, because I have you.” I hold my hand out to her. “Stop me if I cross a line.”

Her gaze shifts back and forth for a moment, then hardens. She inhales, unlocking her own havoc. It flows like a ribbon from her sewing set, and is a pale pink hue.

I’ve always loved that colour for her.

Tirma grasps my hand. “Very well. Little Abbey will not fall tonight.”

BAVETNA

The valley is about to become a killing ground.

I have read many scrolls from the Thirteenth Library, and have heard plenty of stories from around campfires in my travels.

When witches go to war, the world trembles.

I do not envy the men who made the mistake of descending on the valley this night. They will come to regret that choice most dearly.

My four eyes, which are unlike human eyes, shade the forest in an amber tint. I can see better in the dark than others, and hear more than most. Even if I could not, it would be difficult to miss the loud arguing between Nilah and Egg.

They are not far, but I must hurry.

Someone moves through this darkness with me.

EGG

“I am not going back to become some witch’s magic experiment!”

I push Nilah away from me and drape my left arm over a tree branch instead to hold my weight. My body feels as weak as a potato stem in a drought, and I don’t trust my legs to keep me from falling.

Dying will do that to you.

“All I meant is that you’d be a respected natural anomaly! You’d be famous!”

I throw my free hand in the air. “I’m already famous!”

A ray of bright yellow light from the thing glowing in my hand passes over my eyes. Just looking at it makes me want to throw up.

I shove my hand into my pocket.

“This is pointless. We are running out of time,” she pinches the bridge of her nose, “you felt that quake. Something bad is happening. We should make for Little Abbey while we still can.”

“Don’t bother. I’m going back to my palace and you can’t stop me.”

“What if they’ve already replaced you?” Nilah asks.

It’s not exactly a sneer, but it’s close.

“Then I’ll kick the little usurper out myself!” Anger bubbles inside my chest and I can feel the magic in my pocket pulse even brighter. “I should have never let Lyara send me away. I should have called a council and defended my throne. So what if the oracles got it wrong? They can get it wrong again! Or right, or, you know what I mean!”

I’m not sure which direction to storm off to, so I pick one at random and start walking. Well, limping. I grab a dead stick off the ground and use it to keep me upright, hobbling for freedom.

Nilah, after a snort of disbelief, and a long pause, hurries after me. “You were literally dead a minute ago! If you’re not careful you’ll collapse.”

“I’ve been through worse,” I mutter.

She blinks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Why won’t this woman leave me alone? Can’t she take a hint? “Never mind.”

Nilah touches my shoulder. “No, Egg, I—”

“Egg.”

We stop short and look up.

Silk Sister Dart stands between two birch trees, her smiling porcelain mask appears to hover in the air above her crimson cloak. Her robes are heavy enough to be undisturbed by the breeze, and the moon glows behind her head, outlining her in silver.

She eclipses both of us in her shadow.

Nilah doesn’t scream, she just freezes, but I can feel her havoc spike like a porcupine.

Dart opens her arms, which are wrapped in ribbons of the same, red silk. Even her fingertips, pointed like claws, are covered. Her voice is a familiar, hollow sound. “We have been looking everywhere for you.”

Relief floods through me.

I knew it was a mistake.

My smile stretches from ear to ear. I take an eager step forward. “Dart! This is amazing! How did you find me—?”

An arrow tears through the air over my shoulder and finds its mark within the eye slit of Dart’s mask.

“No!” I shout, horrified. I whip around.

Bavetna perches on a mossy stone, balancing on four of her limbs. Another arrow is already notched and ready to fire. “Get behind me,” she orders.

Nilah doesn’t wait. She nearly falls head over heels as she scrambles backwards. “Egg, run!”

“Interesting.” Dart pulls the arrow out. She examines it for a moment, then curls her fingers into a fist and snaps it in two.

“This is all just a big misunderstanding,” I say, trying to calm them all down. “Dart is a Silk Sister from Starfloat. She's my friend—”

“I know what she is,” Bavetna cuts me off. “Shield, Nilah, now.”

“I can’t, my havoc is twisted up in his—”

“Try.” Bavetna nods her chin at Dart and says something in a deep, gravelly language I can’t understand. All four of her yellow eyes are narrowed, watching Dart’s cloak.

Dart laughs. “That tongue is lost with the rest of the fallen.”

I feel Nilah tugging at my...I’m not sure what...but it’s both inside and outside my body at the same time. It’s like she’s trying to pull my hair out. I yank it back from her.

“Cut it out, Egg!”

“No, you cut it out!”

“Don’t worry, my King,” Dart says as she removes a long, saw-toothed sword from beneath her cloak and points it at Nilah. “I’ll dispose of this witch for you.”

I reach out to her. “Wait—!”

She leaps.

Bavetna fires.