Austin Taveck had studied for days to remember the note and could now fully recall it. He didn’t need the tuning fork anymore to create the sound. It was etched into his brain along with the other four elemental notes. A part of him just as much as his personality or words could ever be.
He’d returned the black case with the tuning forks to Professor Dereey, on the morning after he’d borrowed them. But Austin had only returned eleven of them. He’d kept the double imbue note for himself and hoped Professor Dereey would never notice. Or at least if he did, he wouldn’t care. For the professor, it was just another decoy anyway, and Austin needed it more.
In his room, the sun shone in through his window and marked midday. His hands were itching to grab the crude blade and do anything else with it than make it glow. He wanted to try it out. Cast a spell and see what it could do. But Austin knew better. He knew it only had one use, and he didn’t want to waste it.
He was also afraid of the way Melissa used the lava spell. It was impressive that she could make up her own spells, and they worked. But how she went about it made Austin feel queasy. One couldn’t just command the magic to melt your face. What if it actually did?
She was reckless in a way that made Austin feel like he was losing control. He couldn’t imagine being like Melissa or doing anything the way she did. It wasn’t that he thought his rules and measured risks were any better. It was more that he’d die if he made an action without knowing the outcome of it.
Most of the spells Austin knew by now he had learned from his brother Derek. He was a shitty person who’d imprisoned Melissa, and Austin wanted to punch him almost every day. But he knew Derek was a good teacher, and he knew he was an expert on casting magic. He had taught Austin before how to feel the magic, how to command it to do what you wanted.
The door to his father’s study clicked closed and Austin stiffened from the sound. He had lived in this eerie mansion all his life and by now, the sounds of doors closing or opening made a visceral impact on him. It was the sounds that meant he wasn’t alone anymore. That either his father or his brother had come home.
Anxiety filled his body, and his fingers twitched against his sides. He knew he needed help if he was going to use the crude blade tonight and he needed to finish the experiment soon, or Melissa wouldn’t get the help she needed. Austin wished he was a better elemental warrior, that he could have solved this lava spell on his own. That he was as brilliant as Melissa and as fearless. But he wasn’t, and he had to work with what he’d got. He needed to try something he knew had worked before. Ask his brother for help.
He snuck down the stairs to the bottom floor and listened for sounds coming from his father’s office. It was frequently used by either Derek or his dad. He listened to make out who was in there, but there wasn’t any sound coming from inside.
He snuck closer, putting his ear against the hard wooden door. He heard a chair scraping softly against the floor, pulling someone closer to the desk. But then there was silence again. Austin’s heart drummed in his chest. He needed to choose now. If it was his father, he could ask something trivial about the mansion or the bunker, perhaps.
Austin snuck back a couple of steps, making sure he would make the appropriate noises. He stomped out three loud steps against the floorboards to the door and then knocked two times with his closed fist.
“Come in,” Derek’s voice sounded from inside the office.
Austin let out a sigh of relief, and his shoulders sank toward the floor. He opened the door and stepped inside, making sure to close it after himself.
“Austin, what are you doing here?”
“I need your help. I have some questions about…school and I thought maybe you could give me some advice.”
Derek put down a pen and pushed some papers to the side. “Sure, sit down.”
Austin took one of the chairs in front of the large desk and then finally met his brother's gaze. His eyes were soft and his face open. It instantly made Austin angry. His blood pumped harder in his veins and he gripped the sides of the chair until his knuckles grew white.
Why was he so nice to Austin now? How could he be the same person who’d thrown Melissa into the dungeons?
Austin swallowed hard, noticing his brother studying his every expression. He needed to calm down. He needed to not show what he was feeling. Austin flattened his expression on command, like he usually did. It was one of his gifts, to make his expression look neutral, almost bored any time he wanted it to.
“It’s about magic. I’m wondering about the spells and specifically if you’ve ever made up your own spell?”
Derek dragged a hand over the dark stubble on his chin, watching his brother with interest. “Sure. I think most elemental warriors, who've been around as long as I have, have made their own spells. But it’s not like I’ve invented anything new, it’s just that I’ve learned and tried many of the different approaches and now I’ve come up with my own.”
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“What do you mean?”
“Well, how you make ice, for example. It’s a spell I first learned from my teacher. But then I read the same spell, but a different way to cast it from a couple of different books on water magic. I thought they were interesting, so I practiced trying out all the different ones and now when I cast a spell that makes ice, it’s not really any one of the spells I learned. It’s a mix of them all. It’s my own version of it.”
Austin furrowed his brow. He knew how to make ice with a water imbue, but he did it just as Derek had taught him every single time. It was like a mental checklist he went through, ticking off every item to make sure the spell he cast was controlled. He couldn’t just go off like that, especially not with ice magic, it could be dangerous. Dousing something in water, yes, it was more of a feeling, but ice or lava. No, it needed to be precise. It needed to follow a formula.
“Weren’t you scared of hurting someone? Aren’t you scared you won’t be able to control it if you just let yourself go off from a feeling?”
Derek shook his head, then took in a breath and exhaled slowly. He dragged the moment out, making Austin feel like a kid who’d just asked if the mother would grant him birthday wishes.
“I get what you’re saying. I do,” Derek said. “Actually, we had several people in my class that felt like you do. I’m sorry to say that the people who couldn't get past that fear are dead today. Or went back into the valley. You need to work through this. Let go of the fear. There is no time to second guess yourself on the battlefield, brother.”
Austin swallowed hard, meeting Derek’s black eyes. “How do I get past the fear, then?”
“You have to learn to trust the magic. The elements all have their own notes, their own voice in a way. It might sound ridiculous, talking about inanimate objects in that way. But I’ve found it to be true. The magic inside your weapon is speaking to you and when you use it, you choose to speak back. If you trust it and feel the magic like an extension of yourself, not a recipe to be followed, it will reward you by trusting you back. It won’t let you get hurt, not from the magic, at least. You’ll find that the magic will know what you want as intimately as your fingers know how to scratch your nose without drawing blood.”
Austin nodded at this. It was surprisingly wise and compassionate for someone so cold-blooded as Derek. He still had difficulty reconciling the many sides and faces of his brother.
He didn’t trust him anymore, not in his judgment or his politics, but he did trust in the knowledge he possessed, especially with magic. There was no disputing the fact that Derek was an accomplished elemental warrior and that what he’d said resonated with Austin on a deeper level.
“You know,” Derek said, dragging Austin away from his thoughts. “You should have chosen your affinity by now. Elemental warriors are supposed to have chosen one element before they get employed by the governor. But since we had to speed up your recruitment process, you didn’t get the chance to choose before. Maybe you should think about what you want to specialize in now. It would help you to practice the spells of one element closely. It might even save your life out there.”
“I know. But I think I’ll just go with water. It’s what I know best and what you’ve trained me in.”
Derek held up a hand to Austin, like he wanted him to stop, even though he wasn’t saying anything more. “I know I’ve trained you in water. But it’s not so you could become a water singer like me. It’s because it’s what I know best. You have to choose for yourself which element speaks to you. Which do you trust the most and connect to in a way you don’t with the others?”
Austin shook his head. “None of them. I don’t trust the magic, not yet, at least. But I’ll try working on it. But to be honest, I don’t feel more connected to any one of the different elements. They’re just notes in my head that I’ve memorized. I can’t hear them yet.”
Derek nodded. “I know. But you will, though. I knew water was my element because I guess in some way the note resonated with me. It vibrated in a way that felt good to my ears. It was a note I wouldn’t mind hearing for the rest of my life. Nowadays I can hear it all the time from the water imbues. I think it’s because I want to hear it. I crave the sound.”
Austin frowned. His hands released their grip on the armchair and laid flat against the leather. He was completely immersed in the conversation and a part of him had forgotten Derek was the enemy. In this moment, he was just his brother, like old times.
“I guess I’ll have to think about it. I don’t know if any of the notes sound better to my ears. They all sound different, but I don’t particularly enjoy or despise any of them. I think I just see it as a means to an end. Like I need the right tone to command the object.”
“I understand. Perhaps I was too hasty in recruiting you to the governor's service. But we need more elemental warriors. I don’t have a choice in this. We need to protect Aldrion. I hope you understand my decision.”
Austin stared at his brother for a moment. He did understand the decision to recruit him. It was one of the few decisions his brother had made that made sense to him. But his request for Austin to understand him sent the feelings of hatred back up. He hated Derek for what he’d done to Melissa and all the lies he still kept. Austin’s teeth ground against each other.
He stood up abruptly from the chair, making Derek startle and stare at him. “I don’t understand you. But I’ll remember your advice about magic. I don’t think the governor has the people’s best interests at heart, and I think you should stop doing his bidding.”
Derek’s eyes hardened into small black stones, ready to sink Austin into the abyss. “You’re still young, but even for you, that’s stupid. Of course, the governor doesn’t consider everyone in Aldrion, he knows that people don’t know what they want or need. He’s making the hard decisions for them so they don’t have to. You have no idea what it’s like to sit with the burden of decisions.”
Austin’s hands trembled at his sides and he had to close them into fists to regain his control. He wanted to launch himself over the table and strangle Derek. But Austin knew his brother was stronger than him and a better elemental warrior. He could kill him in an instant if he wanted to. For now, it was better to keep his emotions inside and not act on them. He’d probably said too much already.