Chapter Twenty-Five
Shadows on the Wall
“Michael, calm down! It’s okay!” yelled Oliver, leaning down to him.
Michael opened his eyes to find the Soiltorn had vanished. He twisted and turned to find out where it had gone when Sarah knelt down and froze him in her fierce grip. Her eyes were clear and sharp and her confident smile was bent in gentle seriousness.
“You’re okay,” she said, holding him upright, “It was just an illusion.”
Jack’s voice echoed through the air once more, muttering, “An illusion which just folded you, Williams.”
As Sarah helped Michael to his feet, he tried to get his heart under control. “You can just conjure monsters out of thin air? Wait, why go to all the trouble of the Arena?”
Oliver glanced at Sarah and the two warriors grinned. “Well, you’ve been up against these illusions a handful of times, the fear begins to fade, and that fear is one of the biggest tools we have when it comes to fighting.”
Michael had trouble believing he’d ever grow used to that level of terror. “So, why have this place then?”
Jack’s seldom-heard laughter rolled over the hall-floor, chilling the blood of everyone whose ears it touched. “Because illusory-creatures, while important, aren’t the main focus of the Conjurement. We tend to rely more on its environmental capabilities.”
Jack spoke a single, mysterious word under his breath and light exploded all around them, soaking into every corner of the hall like the surface of the sun had been driven down the staircase with them.
The five Legacies all shielded their eyes and everyone but Michael winced in pain. While his friends reeled in their blindness, Michael grew a touch confused, not finding the light particularly harsh at all. It consumed everything around him, but the outlines of every wall and person seemed clear. He could see the shapes of his friends and even the small chips in the wide, stone floor.
Nichole peered through the gaps in her fingers and yelled, “Jack, as much as I’m sure you’re enjoying this, how about we go with a cavern-type-thing, seeing as that’s the exact situation we’re headed for?”
Jack shrugged on the other side of the glass. “Into positions. If you want darkness, you’ll get it.”
Those word seemed to sit in Michael’s throat. His heart thumped in his ears. For a short while early in their friendship, Carter and James had teased him for his fear, before realising the extent of it.
Jack began speaking his gnarled words and Michael yelped, “Can we hold on for second?”
The entire tomb plummeted into crushing, black darkness.
Oliver, Sarah, Nichole, and Aroha all muttered blindly, trying to locate one another. Michael was held in a strangled silence.
Oliver levelled his blade out into the shadow before him, squinting hard as he stepped forward through the dark.
Aroha saw his faint outline vanish and she sharply yelled, “Jacobs get back here!” and ran after him.
Nichole tried to grab her arm but she was too quick, disappearing quickly after as Sarah and Nichole yelled after them.
Michael realised after a moment that he’d had his eyes closed. He pried them open to find the darkness less all-encompassing than he’d believed he would. This did little to calm his nerves, however, as every fibre of his skin yearned for light. His chest was tight as he strangled his bow in his grip. Far too focused on his own panic, Michael only then realised he was unable to see anyone in his company.
“Sarah? Nichole?”
No voices replied, instead all he heard was a pitter-patter skittering somewhere in the dark.
Michael fumbled in the dark and re-nocked his arrow. He took a slow breath. “Guys?”
The footfalls grew faintly louder behind him.
Michael spun on the spot but didn’t fire. He wanted to yell out. He wanted to break the deafening silence and draw the creature into his sight. He wanted the darkness to go away.
A vein in Michael’s hand burned.
He ignored it and turned back in the direction he’d been facing before, continuing along his path. The illusion was more than darkness he realised immediately. The very floor had been altered to that of a cavern’s decoration, moulded with rises and falls and littered with moss-patches and silent streams. Even the air tasted damper and more closed in. He swore he could even feel a distant wind curling through the air around him.
Michael kept his breaths steady as the footsteps grew nearer, resisting the urge to spin and twist in the direction of every one of them. His heart felt like it was pushed to its limited when he finally saw the gentle glint of a familiar iron sword peeking out of the darkness ahead.
Michael melted into relief and let his guard down. “Oliver, thank the gods...”
Stepping out from the shade and into his view, a stone skinned Obthraie snarled. Their broken teeth pale in the dark as they raised the stolen sword, and before Michael had so much as the time to release his breath, the Soiltorn ripped the blade through the air toward him and the archer collapsed to the ground in screaming panic.
The lamplights came up once more to show the boy shivering in fear on the stone floor, reverted back to its original, blank state.
After a long moment, Michael eventually called out, “Is everyone okay?”
“Of course, they are, Williams,” Jack’s voice echoed out, but this time not from the command-room.
Michael opened his eyes, still trembling as the armoured Javen knelt down beside him, offering his arm.
Michael took it and let the strong soldier hoist him upward. As he got his feet beneath himself he accidentally looked sharply into the man’s unsettling face. The three dominant scars ran deep from his jawline to his opposite temple and amidst them sat his misshapen, black eye. Jack looked briefly across Michael’s face and the archer wondered if there was any sight left in it whatsoever.
Jack’s hands silently danced in Riniglacian Sign, Are you okay?
Michael blinked in confusion. Does everyone in Fort Guardian know Sign? he asked.
The man’s brow narrowed for the space of a second before he softened in his eyes. I’m Riniglacian. We’re not all as pale as parchment, despite what stereotypes say, but most of us know Sign.
Michael flushed with subtle embarrassment and his hands fumbled to apologise when Jack stopped him and spoke aloud, “You know now, so don’t stress.”
Michael smiled appreciatively and finally he signed, I’ll be fine.
Michael’s company returned to the Conjurement floor and gave him sympathetic looks as they fell in line with him. “What happened to you lot?” he asked.
Sarah sighed and rubbed a faint bruise on her arm from where she’d fallen. “Nothing too different.”
Jack inserted without preamble, “You’re not thinking. That’s your first problem. The second is that you’re not working together.”
Oliver threw his hands helplessly at the surrounding room and said, “The dark feels like our biggest problem.”
Jack sarcastically rolled his good eye, which had a rather horrifying effect on the group, and loudly said, “So think! If you can’t see, you can’t fight, if you can’t fight, you won’t live, and if you won’t live here, you’re not going anywhere near that cavern. So just think. You are more than your sword. More than your sight. And far more than the illusions this place conjures.”
Jack took a rolled-up scroll from his pocket, opened it and spoke the same gnarled word as before.
At the exact point of his eye-line in front of him, an Obthraie appeared like it had been sketched into the space by some hidden hand.
Jack spoke once more and darkness clouded around them all like fog.
Hidden by shade, the Obthraie was still for a single beat of Jack’s heart and then leapt into action, bolting toward him. They could see nothing but heard its stone feet clattering on the floor and its gnashing feral growls.
Suddenly sparks sprayed across the floor as Jack had smashed his mace onto the ground. The light that flashed gave the briefest impression of space.
The black flooded in again and the Legacies could see nothing but heard him slam body-first into the creature and then a long torturous moment of stones being smashed together and Jack’s bellowing roars.
A sickly and final crack sang through the room and Jack mumbled the spell words again. Light returned and the Legacies watch as he got back to his feet, scraped and bruised but undaunted.
Jack turned back to the group of young warriors, all lightly aghast, and said, “That was me with two seconds to think. So, what are you going to do?”
Sarah and Oliver glanced at one another, unsure of themselves as Nichole began digging into her pack.
Jack smiled at her doing so and strolled back toward the command centre.
Michael glanced at the dim lamps and looked anxiously to his new friends. “Guys can we just wait for a second?” he asked but the others were busy discussing the logistics of crafting some kind of make-shift torch.
“Starting in ten,” Jack’s voice echoed across the room.
Michael’s hands began to shake and deep in his forearms, his muscles began to tickle. “Guys please, can we-”
“Five, four, three-”
“Jack, wait!”
“Two!”
Michael’s heart was beating so hard against his ribs he thought they might began to crack. He closed his eyes to save himself from the plunge into shadow and thoughts of the crushing black merely invaded his mind instead. He heard Jack’s dark, cursed words and felt the energy of the room shift into a state of illusion. Michael pried his eyes open again to find the darkness thick in front of him and his friends blurred into meaningless shapes.
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Nichole tore off the bottom of her shirt and wrapped it high around a wooden stake she’d had in her bag. She held out the unlit torch as Aroha showered it in sparks from her firestones, trying to get it to light.
Each time the sparks flew, Michael watched the room flush with light only to be swallowed up again and his stomach and heart tightened further. He shut his eyes again.
Oliver squinted through the low light at him and noticed his panic for the first time, but his focus was still on the outward darkness, watching for the Obthraie. “Michael?”
But Michael didn’t hear him. His thoughts were too bent on light. He fought for memories of full moons and reflective water. He thought of stars and the sun and brightness of polished silver.
An unfamiliar pain tickled in his forearm.
“Michael? What’s wrong?” Oliver’s faraway voice asked.
The tickle of pain flourished and Michael’s yearning for light seized up his forearms.
Suddenly the pain wasn’t in his head.
Michael’s eyes shot open. The veins from his biceps to his fingers had swollen and risen. He wanted to scream Oliver’s name in panic but the unyielding shock suffocated the word.
Oliver ran to him but when he realised what Michael was looking at, his face became light with astonishment. “I’ll be damned.”
Aroha stopped trying to light the torch and attention turned to Michael. “What’s going on?”
Oliver put a comforting hand on Michael’s shoulder, turning to her. “His Arcancy...”
Michael looked at him in terror. “What?”
Oliver looked at the young man in his petrified state and a tortured look passed across his face. Oliver took his hand off of Michael’s shoulder and stepped back.
The pain continued seizing up his arms, forcing his hands into knots. His bow clattered to the floor and the his twisted until he doubled over. It was like someone had begun heating his bones and muscles from within. Michael could no longer keep the agony inside and began to cry out.
Nichole rushed toward him but Sarah and Aroha stopped her.
Sarah too had the same guilty look as Oliver as she said, “You know we can’t. Not while he’s starting.”
Michael collapsed to his knees as his muscles twisted, and then, rather like something within him had snapped, his swollen veins burst out with scorching white light. The light of stars. The light of the moon. The white light of polished silver.
And like a tide breaking free from the dam, the same magic roared up into his palms as he screamed out his lungs and the group of Legacies watched in awe as the starlight poured into the shadow-filled cavern and chased every spot of darkness faraway.
The worst of the pain suddenly ceded and Michael took his first breath in a long minute. He felt the cold air rush into his lungs and opened his eyes again, only to have that breath taken away in wonderment.
Pearls of roiling moonlight sat politely in either hand. They glowed bright enough to make the deep, underground arena seem as though it were bathed in the midday sun.
Michael’s friends all shielded their eyes from the blinding magic, but it didn’t so much as leave spots in his eyes.
He sat in silence staring at the magic in his hands. There was still pain, certainly, but it was nothing like before. Rather, it was spread throughout his body from his toes up to his fingertips. It was balanced, like the ache of tired muscles, as though he was finally awake after fifteen cycles of being asleep.
Sarah watched him gently before she turned to Nichole and kindly said, “I don’t think we’ll need the torch.” She chuckled with delight as archer’s magical light danced on the shining metal of her sword. “Oh shit.”
Michael tried to frown in confusion but his wide smile barely noticed. “What?”
“I probably could’ve used my Arcancy for light,” Sarah realised, huffing.
Oliver knelt down beside him and said, “Try easing up. Get a feel for it.”
Michael’s face was sore with the delight he felt. He slowed his breathing and closed his eyes once more, this time thinking quieter and gentler. In his head he imagined the sun shrinking to the size of a candlelight.
The moment the thought touched his mind, the silver lights upon his palms softened and the far-cast light shortened to their area only, leaving the five of them in a dome of summer’s glow. It was as though he held the dawn.
Michael could hardly breathe for the astonishment he felt. “I’m doing this?”
Jack’s voiced echoed back to life and it spoke, “Yes. But now is not the time to explore it. This is a training session. So, train.”
His dark, spell-bound words chanted from the control room.
On the edge of Michael’s Arcancy light, five plumes of dust were kicked up in a sudden unseen whirlwind, and from the midst of the churning dirt, five Obthraie were thrown together.
Michael dropped the orbs of light and they hung weightless in the air as he snatched his bow from the ground.
Spurred on by the lack of darkness, Michael ripped an arrow from his quiver and shot it sharply through the nearest rearing creature and it exploded back into dust.
The rest of the Obthraie screeched and lunged into the dark, disappearing entirely. Their footsteps spread out and the other Legacies raised their weapons.
Oliver sprinted forward and shouted, “We’re gonna lose them! Michael, more light!”
Michael didn’t know much, but somewhere beneath the myths and tales that layered the recesses of his mind, he knew this strange, tide within him answered to him. Michael splayed the fingertips on his free hand and let visions of shock and awe spiral through him. He gave a pitched shout from his lungs and the two hanging orbs erupted, showering the room in particles of light, like he’d thrown a handful of constellations against the ceiling. The cavern filled with white starlight, illuminating every inch of it. His face was stretched ear-to-ear with a grin of utter disbelief.
Oliver’s foe, now caught in the light, turned on him and came fast with a barrage of its swinging stone fists.
Oliver ducked and dodged back, narrowly avoiding the viscous attacks as Nichole and Aroha sent arrows whistling and Sarah came in careening with her blade.
Michael’s newfound joy turned to panic as he couldn’t decide who to help. An Obthraie came screaming in from the side and he’d hardly had time to react before the creature slammed into him and they both went tumbling.
He had to hand it to Jack. The magecraft was excellent. And he made a mental note to tell him that once he spoke to someone about the ribs he knew he was going to break.
As they hit the ground, the Arcancy light snapped off and darkness spilled in like ink.
Michael thrashed against the stone body of the Obthraie on the ground, squirming out from the creatures many-armed bear-hug. He spun onto his back, squinting in the dark, and kicked the Obthraie square in the chest, knocking it back several paces and sending a flare of hot pain up his leg. Michael cursed his lungs out, having effectively kicked a brick wall, and reached for an arrow but his fingers grasped at nothing.
He looked over his shoulder at an empty quiver. Further back was a scattered pile of arrows where they first hit the ground. Michael sighed.
The creature snarled and began stalking back toward him, leaving Michael only enough time to say, “Fuck it, then” and click-in the small panel on his bow’s grip.
The slender blades jutted out both limbs of the bow and he scrambled to his feet, feeling entirely unsure how to even wield it. “I don’t suppose you’d want to talk this out, huh?”
The jagged-tooth fiend screeched and lunged when it was quite rudely interrupted by one of Nichole’s arrows, which exploded through its eye-socket and sent it to the ground in a wave of dust.
Michael looked around in panic as his heart still raced but the room had become still again.
The Legacies all stood about, each glistening with sweat, nursing bruises or panting their lungs out.
Oliver was leaning hard against the wall as he pumped his fist high and yelled, “That’s what I’m talking about!” before proceeding to continue wheezing.
Sarah lit up with laughter, pulling her sweat-matted hair out of her face. She grinned at Oliver and shouted, “Hope you were watching, Jack!” toward the tinted command-room.
Nichole stepped toward Michael pulled him into a sudden hug. “Good work,” she said, puffed, with her chin on his shoulder.
Michael smiled softly, wrapping his free hand around her. “You still had to save me...”
Aroha handed him the bundle of arrows he’d dropped. “Suppose that’s what friends are for.”
Michael humbly agreed as Nichole let him go and nudged Aroha lovingly.
And so they went again. And again, and again, and again, until the group of five Legacies finally fell in sync with one-another. Aroha and Nichole already mirrored each other, and while Sarah and Oliver fought with dramatically different styles, they quickly met the same rhythm.
Each time it was necessary, Michael conjured the light from his hands and fought down the great sense of joy, overwhelmed by disbelief every single time.
Slowly the group of Legacies took on more and more enemies, able to defeat ten at a time when they worked together. Soon even fifteen when they worked together well.
Before long, Michael barely registered the shock of seeing an Obthraie emerge from the dark. Despite his best efforts, he found himself less and less concerned about gettingwounded. He had a few bruises already and the hard landing on the ground had rattled his ribs, but he began to move for the first time in his life like the world would catch him if he fell.
It was only when he chose to yawn during a fight that Jack apparently had had enough.
The lights bloomed and the Soiltorn all vanished prematurely, resetting the Conjurement arena.
Jack came marching out of the room, rather blank-faced. He looked over the group to find that despite their laughter, they were almost shaking with exhaustion.
Oliver pushed himself back up to full height and walked gingerly back toward him with the rest of the group.
Jack looked over the knackered group and sighed. “Go get something to eat. Then cycle through the Arena a couple times if you’re feeling up for it.” He turned sharply to leave but stopped himself and regarded each of them. “Good work, guys.”
They watched as Jack then marched off, all glowing with a quiet pride.
*****
As they moved through the Forges and pushed outside into the sun, Michael gently said to Oliver, “To Enthall with the Arena.”
Oliver smiled tiredly but shook his head, the midday light on his face. “Don’t get used to the Conjurement. Trust me, it’ll make the real thing much more dangerous if you convince yourself losing means resetting rather than a funeral.”
Michael wanted to argue he wasn’t that foolish but Oliver touched his shoulder fondly and he knew the swordsman was finished. Michael closed his mouth and nodded and the company began to make their way gingerly found a spot on the grass.
Michael laid down, tenderly lifting his shirt to see his ribs were coloured with patches of purple and yellow bruising. He winced as he asked, “Why not just build the Conjurement into the Arena? Use the same space, I mean.”
Sarah began moving through her limbering-down stretches as she answered. “The original mages worried that tired and idiotic Legacies might forget if a fight was real or conjured, especially if mixed trainings were possible. For instance, if you wanted a real Scalprum on the ground but also wanted some illusory Angelhawks in the sky. The mages knew it would only be a matter of time before Legacies forgot which Shanii could actually kill them.”
Michael got second-hand embarrassment from the idea. “What an awful commentary on our intelligence.”
Everyone nodded in chuckling agreement.
Moving across the forum, Jack headed toward the low-lying tavern with a tired certainty. He disappeared inside.
Michael frowned, asking off the cuff, “How old is Jack?”
Oliver shrugged as they too stepped outside, grimacing in the sunlight. “Old enough to have fought in the First Conscription War, but I don’t know exactly.”
“Damn, really?” Michael soured immediately. “I was starting to like him-”
Nichole grinned and shook her head. “Not for the Emperor. He was a rebel.”
Michael’s face flooded with relief. “Oh, thank the Seraphs. Wait I thought he was Riniglacian? What’s he doing fighting Talisatian wars?”
Aroha’s deep brown eyes saddened. “Not sure about why… but I heard he was about sixteen when the war ended. I don’t know how young he must’ve been when he left Riniglacia to join the fight. Younger than any of us, that’s for sure.”
Michael let that sink in as he looked up at the pale sky. “Rebellion started because Ardic forced kids to fight. Bet he didn’t expect the rest of the kids to take up against him.”
Oliver rolled out his stiff neck with a series of cracks and crunches. “Voe armoni ka aey,” he said mournfully, kissing his right hand before pushing it against his heart.
The others spent a moment in silence.
Across the fort, a different kind of solemness had taken hold. Swords were being swung half-heartedly in the sword arena. Friends sat quietly, speaking only in subdued sentences. The only real activity seemed to be on top of the walls where an absurd number of guards were roaming, keeping a watchful eye on the newly cursed hillside.
Michael looked over the tense scene and his gaze moved at last back to the tavern, where Jack’s silhouette stepped across the window.
“Hard thing that. To come all this way to lose.”
Nichole shrugged, looking at him softly. “Maybe. But I’ll wager you, of all the things that keep Jack up at night… spending his life doing the right thing ain't one of them.”
The day rolled on steadily after that.
The Legacies ate together soon after and found they weren’t quite as bogged down as the rest of the fort. They had a plan. And nowhere in it was there time to mourn their fortunes.
Night rose in the distance and the sun slipped quietly down under the horizon.
Michael lay in his bed, far too awake to sleep despite his tired bones. He played the day back through his mind as he gently spurred his Arcancy to life, just bright enough to make him grin before illuminating too much of the rest of the cabin. He watched the silver light glow and fade and slowly he felt his eyes begin to droop.