“Get Anise. And Aubergine,” Colby commanded Nori.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

“Go!”

Nori ran. Her tired legs had covered more than twenty miles that day, but still they ran as fast as ever. Colby examined Archie’s leg. His expression didn’t make Archie feel better about the situation. Blackness had spread from the wound, radiating out up to his knee. The smell of rot filled the air, and the pain was even worse.

“Can’t you do something about it?” Archie pleaded. The pain in his leg had evolved from the splitting of flesh to a fire that burned away the inside of his leg, leaving a smoldering, hollowed-out tree trunk. Agony and emptiness married and crept up his leg with each passing minute.

“It’s…not normal,” Colby said with exasperation. “Just hold on. Aubergine or Anise will be able to handle it.” Nothing in his voice inspired confidence.

“Why can’t YOU handle it?” Archie screamed.

“I was never much of a healer.” His voice gave away his panic. His helplessness.

Archie tried to remember how he had gotten here. Everything started to get fuzzy just before they exited the forest. Nori tried to carry him…She got him onto the elevator…She was crying…Colby picked him up…They were in the infirmary…

Aubergine rushed into the room, still in his striped pajamas. Nori trailed behind, her face wracked with worry and her black hair plastered to her face by sweat and tears.

Worry flashed across Aubergine’s face. He caught the change and did his best to return to his normal, composed self. He hovered his hand over Archie’s wound.

“Where’s Anise?” Colby demanded.

“It’s okay,” Aubergine said, his voice mostly calm but with the tension of a wound of string backing it. “She is getting something for the wound.”

The headmaster lowered his face down to Archie’s wound. “Fascinating,” he murmured.

“What?” Archie asked. His hands balled up into tight fists and his arms shook as unrelenting pain surged through his body.

Aubergine put his hands together. When he slid them apart, he held a large square noodle the size of his palm. A brief moment of awe struck Archie, washed away by agony a heartbeat later.

Aubergine placed the noodle across Archie’s wound, causing Archie to kick in pain. The noodle felt scratchy—almost like gauze. Coolness seeped from the bandaging noodle into Archie’s leg. But the heat of the wound lashed back, devouring the soothing effect.

When Aubergine peeled the noodle away, it was just that—a plain, normal noodle, not a drop of essence in it. The headmaster held the noodle up to examine it. “Fascinating,” he repeated. “Does it feel better?”

Archie’s mind had shut off as much as possible. He tried to assess his wound, a feeble mind trying to comprehend multidimensional pain. His vision blurred.

“Maybe,” he groaned.

“Okay. Anise will be here in a moment. What did this?”

“Licertes…” When Archie imagined the creatures, they charged at him. Clawed at him. Ate him. “But a bunch of them. A pack.” The words hurt to get out.

“Where?”

Closer than you think.

“Um…the highlands. Ten miles. Maybe more. There was a…tunnel. A cave, maybe.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“A voice.”

“The licertes? They spoke to you?”

“No.” Archie felt the world slipping away. His leg still hurt, but a deeper pain trickled into his chest. He lifted his head just enough to see the blackness halfway up his thigh. He heard footsteps.

Then, haze.

A jar popping open.

A man and a woman arguing.

A girl crying.

Something placed on his leg.

Soothing.

Burning.

A war with his leg as the battlefield.

Darkness and dreams of a voice.

Closer than you think.

Archie awoke and looked down at his leg. A large lasagna noodle patched over the wound. Where it touched, pain bristled and bubbled like a fizzing drink.

He felt intense essence radiating from the noodle. He turned his mind to it, trying to understand its magic, but if strengthening a noodle was a single word of another language, this magic was the world’s toughest tongue twister.

“What…” his voice squeaked out a thin rasp.

“Good afternoon, Archie.”

Anise bent down over him, her gray curls falling into Archie’s face. In a certain light, her drooping cheeks, wrinkled forehead, and wild gray hair made her seem old and frail. In another light, her wickedly arched eyebrows, piercing blue eyes, and tightly pursed lips gave her a wild energy.

“What—”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Anise held a finger to her lips. She pointed at another bed that contained a sleeping Nori.

“She was here all night. Just fell asleep a few hours ago,” Anise whispered. “How are you feeling?”

“Is she okay?” Archie lifted his neck to get a better look at her, but Anise pushed his shoulder down.

“Superficial cuts. Just tired. And you?”

“I feel weird.”

Anise nodded. “Weird how?”

“Well, my leg hurts, for one.” Archie closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he reopened them, he tried to orient himself.

I’m in the Academy…this is…the infirmary. I got cut. I…walked back. And…

“What else?” Anise inquired.

“I’m…” Archie struggled to find the word. Everything still felt blurry. “Sore. But not…it’s not just my muscles. My insides. They…ache. I feel…”

“Spent?” she suggested. Archie nodded.

“Am I going to be okay?”

“I think so.”

“Was it poison?”

“Of a sort.” She scratched the back of her neck, considering whether or not she should continue. Archie’s concerned face convinced her.

“It’s like…tainted essence,” she explained. “It attacked—it’s attacking—the normal essence in your body. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Archie looked at the noodle covering his leg. “So…this is stopping it?”

“Partially. The two kinds of essences are fighting. And…yours was losing.”

Archie thought of the emptiness that had started in his legs and worked its way up his torso. A kind of fatigue that he had never felt before. “Reinforcements?” he suggested.

“Exactly. A special experiment of mine—fortunate that we had it. I’ve been attempting to put as much essence as possible into different containers. Not to alter any of the container’s qualities, but rather to create a sort of reserve that can be called upon. For you, I modified it to have some healing properties. In a past life, I was a Veratore.”

“So I’m going to be okay?” Archie asked again.

Anise smiled and nodded. “It took half of the staff, but yes. You’ll be okay. I had prepared six noodles. That is your third. You’ll likely need one more. I’ll be back by tonight. Here, drink this.”

She gave Archie a cup filled with a sweet-smelling purple liquid. He drank. Once the sweetness passed, an undercurrent of bitterness made him wince.

“I was out of essence when it cut me,” Archie remembered.

“From what?”

“I threw blueberries…” He suddenly felt groggy. “I…used essence to make them harder and faster. Does that matter?”

“Hm. Probably. Nothing left inside to fight back with. We’ll have to…”

Archie didn’t remember falling back asleep. He woke up as Anise put a new noodle on the wound. She fed him another bitter drink and he fell asleep again. He ended up not remembering any of that, either.

The next thing Archie did remember was waking up alone the next morning. Soft morning light illuminated the curtains, and the Academy had a sort of stillness to it—stale air, undisturbed for many hours. Settled dust on the linens.

Archie looked down at the noodle covering his wound. He still felt essence radiating from it, but the pain came in little pangs with seconds of nothing in between. The war had ended. Only stragglers remained.

He turned his focus inward, assessing himself for any other injuries or pains. He felt for broken bones and pulled muscles. He found only an empty stomach.

He swung his legs over the bed, placing them down gingerly. Pinpricks of pain inched up his injured leg. He planted his foot and put weight on it. The pain went off like an alarm, but died off quickly. After a couple seconds of standing, Archie could tolerate the pain.

Walking wasn’t too bad. But halfway to the great hall, Archie was spotted by Blanche, who helped him the rest of the way.

“Nori told me all about it…it sounded so scary,” she said. “How bad is it?”

“It’s…” Archie’s pain jumped from his leg up to his throat. He swallowed it down. “It’s okay. Much better than yesterday. I think it was yesterday…”

“Good. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

“Thanks.”

She got him to the great hall and sat him at one of its long tables. A few older students were eating early breakfasts—waking up this early was a learned behavior that none of the first-years but Blanche had figured out yet.

“Okay, just stay here, I’m going to go get Nori,” Blanche said.

“Oh, you don’t have to—”

“Please. If she knew that you were up and I didn’t wake her up…” Blanche raised her eyebrows and shook her head before hustling off.

Archie propped his elbows up on the table and rested his head in his hands. Whatever Anise had made him drink had left him with a lingering hangover of drowsiness. Minutes passed in seconds, tenuous consciousness made clear by a familiar voice.

“Archie!”

Nori sprinted down the great hall. She got to him before he could even turn to stand, draping over his back and squeezing him tightly.

“I was so worried,” she said softly. “I hate that I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t heal you. I was useless. Never again.”

“Nori. Nori. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Archie ducked his shoulders to push her off. “Now I’m a little fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure the only reason I got off with just a scratch was because you kicked the thing.”

Nori smiled and laughed, nearly letting a sob out with it. She tried—and failed—to recapture her usual teasing tone. “Yeah, I guess I did save you, then. If a scratch did all of this, I can’t imagine what a bite would have done.”

A moment of silence passed as they considered the horrible possibilities.

“Hey Nori, can you do something for me…”

“Anything.”

“I’m hungry.”

Nori spent the entire morning back and forth from the kitchen. She started with the rest of their blueberries, making blueberry pancakes, strudel with blueberry compote, and blueberry muffins. Archie devoured them all. He had never been so hungry in his life. Then she brought out an early lunch—chicken and pasta.

As Nori set the plate down, Archie grabbed a noodle and tried to strengthen it. His essence was pulled in two directions—one down to his leg and one to the noodle. He tugged on the noodle. It didn’t break. Archie breathed a sigh of relief.

I’m still magic.

The other students filed in throughout the morning, piling around Archie as he told the story over and over again. By the third time he told it, it felt more like a fable than a nightmare. By the fourth time, Nori had enough and told the others to stop bothering Archie.

Just as the students cleared out, Rowan appeared.

“Archie! Nori!” he called out as he jogged through the great hall. “I heard what happened. Are you okay?” He ducked down to get a good look at Archie’s leg.

“I think so,” Archie said. His leg didn’t hurt, but it still had a strange tingle as the pasta’s essence seeped into the wound.

“I feel at fault,” Rowan said. “I knew they had some trouble in the northern roads this summer, but, I—”

“It’s okay. Whatever we ran into…no one could have known.”

Rowan shook his head in disappointment at himself. He looked at Nori. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Listen, I don’t want you two going out there again.”

“Does that mean we’re allowed back at The Gift?” Archie asked. Even in his battered state, Archie’s ambition still had its step. The thought of going back to learning under a Black Jacket took some of the sting out of his leg.

“Yes. I…” Rowan looked down—looked inward. His voice danced on the line of tears. “I should pay more attention to you two.”

Archie and Nori exchanged a look of concern and confusion. For as traumatic as their experience had been, they found it odd that Rowan felt such responsibility.

“It’s okay,” Archie started. “We…”

“We’ve gotten really good at cooking with blueberries,” Nori finished.

“Yeah?” Rowan lifted his head and offered a vulnerable smile.

“Yeah,” Archie answered. “Maybe we can make some blueberry stuff at The Gift.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Rowan nodded, convincing himself that everything was going to be okay. He looked at Archie’s leg. “So what was it like?”

Archie was tired of telling the story.

“I don’t know.” Archie pushed his food around his plate with a fork. “But what I do know…if we run into them again, we need to know how to do more than kick and throw blueberries.”