Seated comfortably at Emery’s teaching desk in the training room, Hannah began to understand exactly what the Guild Member’s meant by practicing.
Her first foray into this comprehension occurred when Emery moved slowly to stand at the center of the room with the crowd of them scattered around him in a half-hearted semi-circle. She noted that Dean stood squarely with his back to her, but George caught her eye from across the room where he faced her, and he sent her a wink.
“It is not often that we have visitors during training,” Emery began, folding his hands in front of him and inclining his head in the general direction of where Hannah sat. A few faint smiles were sent her direction--Will, George, and Jane were the most genuine of the lot--and Hannah felt some of the tension in her shoulders ease. “I imagine that it will make a few among you nervous,” Emery continued casually, receiving a chuckle from Henry, “but I would encourage you to not get overly excited. Simply carry on with the work as if it were any other day. You’ll remember that last week we were working with wards; this is an absolutely vital skill for Members to master should they ever find themselves in a bad way. Many of you have known how to ward for years, and yet it is a bit of wielding that tends to go moldy with time if we do not flex the muscle every so often.”
Emery pointed one crooked finger in the direction of Taryn. “Miss Emerson, would you be so kind as to help me demonstrate?”
The floorboards were the first thing to rattle, and then the desk beneath Hannah’s palms started to quake. If she had blinked, she might’ve missed it. The amount of speed that the chairs neatly lined against the far wall gained as they soared across the room in a cluster as thick as a murder of ravens was insurmountable, and Hannah choked on a gasp clapping a hand over her mouth when she realized that the mass of metal legs and wooden seats was on a straight trajectory to collide with the frail form of Emery where he stood oblivious to their encroachment.
“Watch out!” Hannah cried, unable to contain herself as she shot to her feet. Without so much as flinching, Emery held out a flaccid hand towards the cloud of chairs, and a burst of brilliant white engulfed him from head to toe where he held out his palm. The chairs slammed into the wall of white surrounding him with a sound so remarkable that it shook the frosted glass in the windows on the out-facing wall, and Hannah yelped, clamping her hands over her ears. The chairs scattered to the floor in a mess of splinters and bent metal, wounded soldiers collapsing to the ground after the failure of their surprise attack, and Hannah tried to unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth to form words, her heart racing.
“You see?” Emery’s voice beat her to the quick as he dropped his palm, and the wall of shimmering hazy whiteness disappeared instantly. “Taryn used an incredible bit of her strength to make such a move, yet even with as lethal a blow as that, a well-concentrated ward is certain to counteract any form of assault you might encounter.”
It was then that Hannah noticed Taryn’s hands. They were clenched at her sides, with sparks of pink dying out from her fisted fingertips, and a bead of sweat was cascading down her temple. She rocked on her feet, looking slightly dizzy. “Excellent attempt, Taryn,” Emery continued. “I can feel your power fleeting a bit after such a demonstration.”
“I’m fine,” Taryn said quickly, but her voice cracked. She cleared her throat, “I’ll regain composure.”
“Indeed,” Emery smiled at the direction of her voice, and he waved another hand. The hum of magic filled the air in the way that static electricity tends to set the ends of your hair sticking out in wild directions, and Hannah felt a tingling in her feet as the smell of ash floated across her senses. Another swipe of that lovely white light from Emery’s hands, and the battered chairs rose from the floor, all of them pulling themselves together in midair and drifting calmly back to their tidy row against the wall, looking good as new when they scooted to press their wooden backs against the bricks once more.
“A proper ward will protect you from a variety of wielding,” Emery dropped his hands and adjusted the collar of his button-down. Hannah noticed that he had traded in his sock-feet for sensible house slippers--bright blue. “Last training, I assigned you all to the task of meeting up with one another and practicing the numerous forms of wards: elemental, physical, etcetera. I’d like to see what progress you’ve all made--please, pair up amongst yourselves and show your competency at the various types.”
Incredibly, the Guild Members moved towards one another with a remarkable amount of disinterest in all that had just occurred, even while Hannah remained battling the thundering of her own pulse. They melded together at once; Jane and Taryn, Will and Henry, Talia and George…yet Dean stood where he first had taken up his spot in the semi-circle, his hands in his pockets, his back still facing Hannah. No one moved near to him to stake their claim on him as their partner, and it wasn’t until Emery moved deliberately in his direction with his slow, shuffling steps that Hannah understood.
“Let’s see elemental first,” Dean said aloud to the others, his voice sharp with authority. “Don’t hold back, either. Protection needs to be the strongest part of your power; you can’t use your Gifts if you’re dead.”
“Would you call that situation a lack of our presents?” George chimed in, and the others chuckled at his truly rancid joke. “I guess we shouldn’t keep our powers under wraps, then?”
Instead of replying, a bolt of gold shot out from where Dean stood as if he had thrown it. It barreled towards George and arced gracefully down in a frenzy directly at his feet, causing the man to jump into the air with a surprised cry. Talia snickered, and Hannah sank back into the desk chair as George staggered backwards, his eyes shooting daggers at his older brother.
“Elemental. Now.” Dean commanded, “Will and Henry--you’re up.”
The pairs of Members dutifully faced one another, each of the groups properly spaced throughout the room. Henry and Will stood side by side and squared their shoulders as they faced Dean, their hands dropped to their thighs and their fingers splayed out, each of their brows furrowed in concentration. Another unmistakable humming of the air sent Hannah’s skin to give way to gooseflesh. “Good,” Dean continued as he sized them two men up. “Draw it up from within, just as you both are. Let it act on its own accord when you need it most.”
He had barely finished his sentence when Hannah was given a front row seat in witnessing what was almost too surreal for her Common mind to bear. A wave of golden fire spurted out from the air hanging before Dean and sent long metallic tongues licking violently towards Henry and Will, heating the room to a fever pitch almost instantly. Just as the flames were about to engulf the two men, Hannah saw Will step fiercely forward, a vein in his forehead pulsing, and he held out both of his hands to the impending beast. Henry bent over slightly, throwing his own open palms at the fire with a soft grunt of exertion, his teeth gritting. The flames beat up against a wall of color that exploded out from the mens’ fingertips--Will with his vibrant indigo and Henry with a warm, tawny yellow--and Hannah’s jaw dropped. The shield they created with whatever power was bleeding out from their hands was a portrait of exquisite proportions. Even as they both snarled with concentration at the threat of Dean’s fire, the ward that rose up before them was enough to send Hannah’s jaw tumbling nearly to the earth.
After an instant, the fire snuffed out, leaving both Henry and Will to drop their arms and deflate completely, both of them pulling in labored breaths.
“Marvelous!” Emery said proudly, gazing off at the far wall but beaming all the same. “Nicely warded, gentlemen.” Hannah gaped at the newly-charred wood of the floorboards that reached from Dean to just centimeters away from where Will and Henry’s feet were planted, and she couldn’t contain the awestruck shudder that went zinging through her.
“Together, yes,” Dean remarked, crossing his arms over his chest. “But I’d wager that neither of you could have gotten out of that attack unscathed if you’d have been separated.”
“Practice makes perfect,” Emery encouraged them, even as Will shot an annoyed glare at Dean. Henry reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny glass vial of something neon green, his fingers tugging at the cork.
“No tinctures, Hen,” Dean ordered cooly, and Henry froze in his attempt to open it. “You’ve got to let your power center on its own after use.”
“But shouldn’t I be utilizing my gifts?” Henry challenged, wiggling the little vial in the air for the others to see. “What use is being a master alchemist if I can’t even benefit from what I craft?”
“In the real world, I would like you to use as many tinctures as it requires to keep yourself alive,” Dean answered, entirely unimpressed. “Here, however, we have the liberty of training our energy to exhaustion, and then allowing it to return to us in a safe environment.”
“Avery is right,” Emery added, “take advantage of the safety of the Atrium to practice quick revival of your power after considerable use.”
“Can we actually harness finite power?” Jane piped up, “if it’s always going to run out eventually, I mean--how can we work on retrieving it faster if it isn’t up to us?”
Emery nodded thoughtfully, “you’re correct, Jane; magic does not heed our requests to come to our aid should we expend our powers beyond our reserves. But should we work towards the goal of constantly readying our senses--that is, making ourselves more available for our power to not burn up like some short-struck matchstick--magic often will teach us how to wield in a way that does not require the complete enervation of our physical strength.”
“Let’s have you two be next,” Dean motioned to Jane and Taryn, and a flicker of gold fire danced between the arches of his fingers. “Dig deep; ready your power accordingly.”
Another flare of that ethereal golden fire had Hannah sweating with nervous enthrallment. It glided so effortlessly through the air as it careened towards the girls that it almost looked alive--some ferocious winged animal with talons that swiped through the space chaotically in its hunger--and both Jane and Taryn were thrown back slightly as it met the immaculate stronghold of deep green and sparkling pink that they threw out to protect themselves against it. The fire struck their ward and fanned out dramatically like the feathers of a peacock, roiling angrily at being denied another set of victims. Jane and Taryn both grunted with focus, their heels firmly dug into the creases of the floorboards, and Hannah saw little sprigs of grass shooting up from the wood around Jane’s ankles, winding their way up her skin and helping to hold her fast to where she stood bent against the force of Dean’s fire.
George and Talia met the same task after the girls succeeded, both of them demonstrating in pairs how to properly ward off the flames that shot out in ceaseless might to attempt to break them. Hannah couldn’t help but notice, however, that George had a considerably difficult time keeping his footing as he worked to keep the scarlet glow of his power upright against the attack. He swung from heel to heel, his knees shaking, and his eyes narrowed with fervent concentration, almost as if he were just barely holding onto his ward. Talia, on the other hand, looked wholly unflappable as she stood casually beside him, one single palm outstretched that burned brilliant with violet, pulsatile light, her own ward as thick as glass as it held firm against the fire. Her curled hair blew back gently in the wind off of the flames, and Hannah bit her tongue as she saw Talia actually fight back a yawn.
Once the flames receded for a final time, Dean turned back to Will and Henry and had them ward off a stone the size of a football that appeared before him in a burst of gold light. With a nod of his head, the stone rocketed at the boys, and they once again pulled up their shields of vibrating energy, which the stone collided against and erupted into shards of crumbling pebbles that scattered in droves all along the scorched floorboards. Jane and Taryn were next, with Taryn demonstrating a particularly excellent rose-colored ward that the stone did not even come close to denting, and Jane held her own as well, even with some difficulty. George and Talia did the same, with George perspiring at the tremendous effort of his shield and with Talia examining a bit of crud underneath one of her fingernails as the rock exploded lamely at her feet.
“You’re not holding onto it, George,” Dean told his brother as the rock debris vanished with a last wave of his hand. “You need to be able to ward as if it were second nature--always having your power strung on guard for a physical assault. If that rock had been any larger, you’d have failed.”
“You know, this is actually hard for some of us in the room,” George replied, and the hint of mirth in his words made Hannah’s neck prickle. “But thank you for the correction, Master Seeker.”
“Avery is right to remind you, George,” Emery interrupted before George’s sarcasm could ignite animosity. “Even as an apprentice, this must be your first area of mastery. Wards are what uphold the line between our work and fatality.”
“This is only my first year working with wards!” George argued, but Emery’s unfaltering calm deflated him considerably. “Physical warding is no fun, anyways. Can’t we move on to mental?”
“Let’s,” Dean chided, pushing a hand through his hair. “You’re up first.”
“Now, boys; I’d like for us to pause here.” Emery interceded, holding out his hands. Hannah swore she saw a glitter of white light biting at his nails. “Metal wards can be moved to the end of practice for those who feel up to the challenge.”
“I’m game,” George pressed on. “I can do it right now.”
“Enough,” Emery’s tone turned to ice, and both Dean and George slumped slightly. “Later, if you so wish--the rest of us would like to continue on with training, if both of you are agreeable to it. I’d like us all to move on to our texts.”
The Members retrieved their workbooks from where they had discarded them by the window seats. All except Dean grabbed onto a stack, and Talia returned with only a single book bound with heavy gray leather, her fingers thumbing to the center of it where she began to scan the pages. “Last practice, I instructed some of you to specifically work within your gifts to strengthen certain aspects. I’d like you to take some time now to do so, and Avery and I will come around and help where we are able to correct any mistakes.” George hauled over his stack of books that Dean had brought from their dorm--the largest pile out of all of them--and he slammed it down on the floor where he knelt and began to rifle through a few pages of one and more so of another, spreading them around him in a rainbow of parchment and bindings.
“Hannah, why don’t you come by me and have a closer look?” Emery spoke in the direction of his desk, and Hannah stood a little too quickly, eager to accept his request.
“It’s too dangerous,” Dean immediately protested as Hannah marched over to stand just behind Emery’s shoulder. “If she gets hit with anything, we can’t exactly heal her as we would a wielder.”
“I will stand vigil, Avery,” Emery placated Dean easily. “If she stands beside me, I will ensure she remains unscathed. Thank you for being so attentive to our guest’s safety.”
George, Will, and Henry all snickered as Dean burned red with displeasure, and Jane and Taryn exchanged furtive glances. Talia just rolled her eyes, placing her book down on the floor and cracking her knuckles loudly.
“May we get on with it?” She asked mockingly, and Emery nodded peacefully. A flicker of purple from her hands sent a gust of wind through the air, whipping Hannah’s hair around her face so violently that she had to swat it back. To Hannah’s utter amazement, Talia twirled her arms in a single graceful sweep and spun the wind around her in a delicate spiral, the dust of the air making the miniature tornado she was forming visible to the naked eye. It shrunk to the size of a flower vase, and Talia held it in the air before her, perfectly undulating in the space between her glowing palms.
“You’ll see that Miss Grove is an excellent weather wielder,” Emery murmured to Hannah as Talia tossed the pillar of wind from side to side, playing with it in the way that is akin to a kitten with a fresh ball of yarn. “She outdoes herself in the manner of wind, but truly she has a knack for all things elemental. Hail is one of her specialties.”
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“Avoid her like the plague when it’s cloudy out and she’s pissed,” George called over, causing Talia’s personal twister to falter slightly. “She’s clocked me on the head plenty of times with ice the size of baseballs.”
“Deservedly so,” Talia snapped, but Hannah saw her blister with pride. Will and Henry began to flip through their texts, and Emery motioned vaguely in the direction of Jane.
“Let’s have you work on growing and controlling,” he spoke kindly over to her. Jane fumbled through a workbook of her own, muttering a few words under her breath, and Hannah recognized the clunky nature of it as it left her lips.
“What language is that?” She asked Emery, touching his elbow to get his attention. “Dean spoke it in London--when he was trying to Eclipse me--it’s not like anything I’ve ever heard before.”
“It’s an old tongue that very few here in the Vale ever learn to properly speak. When Members first start out in their training, they often need to reference texts such as the ones we are using here today in order to flesh out their power--there are certain words and phrases that can aid in wielding should the wielder be learning to control the skill.”
“Is it like…spell work?” Hannah asked, watching as Will plucked a beautiful, silver dagger out from dead air, his hands glimmering indigo. “You know, like in fairy tales? Witches and the lot?”
Emery shook his head, “not exactly. Magic isn’t a dormant, sleeping thing that can be drawn up and cast at the drop of a hat, and it’s actually a rather short fuse for those that are Gifted with it.”
“Gifted?”
“Those lucky few here in the Unseen that are chosen to wield,” Emery swept a hand around at the Members scattered around him, all of them entranced in their concentration of their wielding. Jane was producing long, lovely stalks of river reeds around her feet, and she was holding out her emerald palms to them, her tongue poked between her teeth in her focused attempt to make them move. Henry had formed a sort of orange cloud of mist in front of him which he was breeding thicker and thicker as he bent over his workbook, wrapped up in a string of phrases that were somehow adding little streaks of yellow to join his cloudy creation. “Each of us here are Gifted by magic--most of us from birth--but we were not bonafide wielders right from the get-go. No; it takes years of dedicated training to refine any form of Gift that magic chooses to bestow, and those who are Gifted that do not seek out proper training to harness their power often can get themselves into a world of trouble.”
Hannah gaped at Will, who was quite literally pulling an entire royal armory out of thin air, piling up axes and spiked-hammers in stacks at his feet as he continued to reference his texts, stopping halfway through the creation of a copper longsword to sneeze, sending the blade swinging haphazardly. “But you mentioned earlier that magic is finite. How can it get people in hot water if they ignore it?”
“One cannot reject it,” Emery said softly, and the subtle shift in his tone gave Hannah cause to look at him. He was gazing off at a distant wall, his hazy eyes pinched at the edges as if he were pained. “If a wielder does not assume the responsibility of their Gift, the power they innately possess will eventually come to possess them. It’s a rare occurrence, and it’s a Guild matter when one such person rises out of the mire. They need to be dealt with, lest the energy within them lead them to do anything rash.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Hannah admitted, and Talia sent a gust of wind in an arc up to the rafters, rattling the lights from where they hung. “Can’t someone simply choose not to wield?”
“The divine mystery of it lies in your question, my dear,” Emery’s face shifted back to his peaceful smile, and Hannah couldn’t help but wonder if he was trying to evade her. “Can a Commoner simply choose not to breathe? It is much the same with magic.”
George yelped so loudly that it had Hannah leaping into the air with a gasp. He was cowering back from his immense stack of workbooks with his red hands outstretched before him, and great beams of ruby light were shunting out from his palms. “Ouch!” He cried out, wagging his hands around erratically as if shaking off a brood of angry ants. “It’s burning me!”
Dean crossed to his brother and slapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’re letting it burn you. Center yourself!”
“I can’t!” George’s voice rose to a shriek, and Hannah stepped towards him, mortified. “It hurts!”
“It’s not going to stop unless you make it,” Dean’s voice was sharp as steel as he gave George’s shoulder a small tug, to which George snarled in pain. “Will it away from you!”
“Try, George,” Emery encouraged, that faint smile once more playing across his lips. “See if you can ask the power to flow outward, not inward.”
George writhed with pain, his hands smoldering with the wicked, bleeding light. “It’s crawling up my arms!”
“Are you going to allow it to do that?” Dean pressed him. “If you’re not quick about this, it’ll choke you. Fight it back.”
“Come on, George!” Jane called from the corner, but her face had gone considerably pale. The rest of the Guild had paused their own wielding to witness George’s plight, each of them looking nervously at one another. Talia’s face was blank as she crossed her arms over her chest, one perfect dark brow raised to her hairline.
“This is torture,” Hannah breathed, something in her chest twisting as George grunted in pain. “Don’t you think that’s enough?”
Emery seemed unperturbed, “unfortunately, it’s not up to me. George must handle this on his own.”
“You’re slipping!” Dean spat at his brother as George was forced to his knees under the pressure of the agony of the murderous light that was vibrating out from his hands. “Get up!”
“Get up!” Talia echoed, and Will and Henry nodded fervently in agreement.
“You can do it!” Jane cried. Hannah felt something drop low in her stomach--George was not going to get back up, no matter how much they told him to--he was quaking from head to toe, his body wracked with pain so sharp that it was bending him over, stealing breath from his lungs. He choked on spit, his lungs heaving, and Hannah felt a bright stab of fear go through her--he’s losing; whatever he’s up against is going to blow him out like a candle.
A scream left George’s lips, and Dean darkened. “This is embarrassing, George!”
Without thinking, Hannah leapt forward towards George and ran to his side, stopping just short of the beams of scarlet light that emitted from his hands in chaotic waves.
“Stop this!” She looked at Dean pleadingly, and he sneered at her, shaking his head and taking a few steps back. “It’s hurting him--do something to help him!”
“Like what, Commoner?” Dean snapped, his hands clenching at his sides. “You think you understand even a fraction of this? He has to do it himself if he ever wants to gain mastery over his power. This is how we all learn--there’s no help for weakness.”
George cried out once more, and Hannah swore that she saw tears forming behind his spectacles. Not quite knowing what she was doing--or if it would even have a chance at helping, for that matter--she reached for him and grasped onto his arm, yanking it out of its locked position out in front of him and shunting one of the beams of light away from where he had been holding it out towards his workbooks.
“Hey!” Dean shouted, “stop!”
As soon as Hannah ripped George’s limb back, the red light vanished in a popping hiss of steam, leaving George’s body to go limp where he knelt. He swayed on his knees, and Hannah slung his flaccid arm over her shoulder, sticking her other arm around his waist to keep him upright.
“Whoa!” She exclaimed as she caught some of his weight, “I’ve got you.”
His breathing was labored as he glanced around blearily at all of them, trying to fill his lungs.
“Jove, Hannah,” he gasped, noticing her tucked into the crook of his armpit where she struggled to keep him from collapsing. “That was bloody foolish of you.”
“How curious,” Emery mused, his eyes still staring off at some distant point. “That was quite unexpected.”
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Dean turned upon Hannah with frightful anger, “what were you thinking? You got directly in the line of wielding--if you’d have been touched by that light, it would have torn the flesh clean off your bones!”
A ripple of wounded courage took hold of her, “I wasn’t going to sit back like the rest of you were so content to do as he was struggling to breathe!” She retorted, helping George shakily to his feet. “He clearly wasn’t going to be able to get whatever that light was under control. It was going to do something nasty--I don’t know what--but he was practically ready to faint!”
“You know nothing!” Dean stepped towards her with his teeth gritted, his fists glowing golden at his sides. “That was idiotic in every sense!”
“Give her a break, Dean,” George muttered, releasing Hannah’s shoulder and straightening his glasses, wiping away the remnants of tears as he did so. “She didn’t know. I was on the road to face-planting into the floorboards--she merely wanted to catch me before I knocked out a tooth.”
“I don’t care,” Dean fumed, and Hannah felt her pulse in the base of her throat as she faced him head-on, her jaw clenched. “Her stupidity almost had her blood splattering across the walls.”
“Avery,” Emery cleaved through Dean’s anger with a voice so stern that Hannah felt her own stomach flip in a somersault, and the air in the training room grew instantly taught. “While Hannah did do something quite dangerous just now, she also lacks the knowledge to have known better. Her Common empathy is something that we might do good to learn from.”
“She didn’t get hurt,” Jane piped up from where she stood by her books, the reeds around her feet swaying gently in a draft through the room. “George got it under control just in time for her to be able to get that close to him. Really, all she did was help him stay upright.”
Hannah felt a tide of gratitude for the young girl wash over her, even if Dean’s expression turned murderous. She looked him straight in the eye and lifted her chin slightly, trying not to seem defiant, yet also wanting to show him that she was not afraid of whatever dark place his quickly-ignited rage crept out from. His eyes flickered from her, to Emery, to George, and back.
“Is this some sort of study you’re conducting?” Dean asked Emery coldly. “I bring you a Commoner out of desperation, and you turn it into a twisted experiment to see how much she can learn about us before we take it all away?”
“I understand that you are upset,” Emery continued placidly, “but I would urge you to get your temper under control before accusing your Leader of things you conjure up from it.”
Dean bit back a sneer, “you’re being careless.”
“Quite the contrary, Avery. I am truly being rather cautious with how I am continuing to handle your problem of bringing an outsider into our midst without adding an innocent Common murder to the Guild’s toll. Our guest seems to have a solid understanding of the facts--she is in our world now, and while she is here, I have no intention of locking her away as a prisoner under our roof as long as she is agreeable until we can work out how to get her home.”
Hannah swallowed hard, “I think it’s incredible--all of this.” She gazed beseechingly at Dean, “I just didn’t want George to get hurt. That’s all.”
Dean shook his head, “you won’t remember any of what you’ve seen here when we send you back. It’d be a waste of your life if you end up getting killed by a misfire such as the one you just put yourself directly in the way of.”
“And why would that matter to you if I was doing the right thing?” She asked, her skin warming with indignation.
“A wielder takes responsibility for their own downfalls. It’s not up to others to come to their rescue if they can’t keep a rein on the power they expel.”
Hannah blinked, her mouth dry. “But he’s your brother.”
The words caught Dean by surprise as she saw the minuscule recoil of his anger, his eyes searching hers. He studied her for a moment, lost for what to say, positively torn in two.
“I’ve got a while to go before I’m enlightened, I suppose,” George gave a feeble laugh, the poor timing of his joke helping to diffuse the brutality of the tension that was hanging from every particle of dust that wafted by. “Next time, I’ll show it who’s boss. Perhaps I’ll even do it in a darkened room.”
“I say we do a bit more work here from our texts, and then we will adjourn for afternoon chores,” Emery said lightly, all notes of poison in his voice eradicated. “We shall save mental wards for next practice. Miss Emerson, will you please keep working on that incredibly smart bit of strength you showed us last week when you took out one of the walls?”
As the Guild Members returned to their work to complete the day's training, and as George hobbled to the far wall of the room to collapse into a chair--towing along a textbook to thumb through idly--Hannah bit down on her tongue so hard that she drew blood. The way they returned to their work was too casual for her--unsettlingly so.
She felt Dean’s glare resting heavily upon her the whole journey back to Emery’s desk in the far corner, and once she sat down and faced the Members in their last moments of wielding, she refused to meet his eye. He scowled as he turned sharply away, focusing his attention on Taryn’s showmanship of actually pushing pink light so forcefully from her hands and into the wall she faced that it dented outward, but Hannah still sensed him watching her, red-hot vitriol boiling underneath his every breath.
Her mind was disturbingly trapped, however; replaying the single instant in which she had first gripped onto George as he fought against the torrent of light. The flesh of her fingertips still shuddered in the same way that they had when she had made contact with him, and not in the way of mere nerves. It was rapid, and it was over the second he had dropped the light and gone weak, but it bothered her that she had noticed it--the tiny tremor of power that hummed under her skin when she had touched him. It was like sitting on your hands, or perhaps sleeping with them held above your head. The television static beneath her flesh percolated bizarrely, even to the point where she had to hold her hands out in front of her to ensure herself that they were not vibrating in the spaces underneath her fingernails.
“Curious,” Emery had said. Curious was precisely how it felt as the prickling sensation slowly faded from every centimeter of her arms. Curious, and markedly unlike anything she had ever known prior.
She was still considering what it meant when training ended. The clock hung high on the wall behind Emery’s desk announced that it was nearly two, and as the Members gathered up their discarded workbooks and slung them into their arms gracelessly, Dean took up the task of cleaning up the debris of Taryn’s wall display and the dust bunnies that Talia’s twister had created all by waving his hands in sharp circles, causing any left over traces of destruction or dirt to disappear. With the room clean and with all of the Guild ready to depart--undoubtedly for the Mess in order to procure some lunch--Emery wandered slowly to the door and stood beside it, opening it with a glowing wave of his hand.
“A few bumps here and there, but otherwise a successful practice,” he commented as they filed out. “When we reconvene in two days, we will revisit warding. Those of you who have homework assigned will receive an Orb sometime this evening. Off to lunch with you all.”
When George followed the pack with his stack of books, Emery gave him an appraising smile. “I would like for you to especially work on your misfire today, George. That could have very well been an Infirmary visit for you should Hannah not have intervened at exactly the right moment.”
“I got it under control,” George shrugged. “She just was there for morale, right Hannah?”
Hannah stepped out from behind Emery’s desk and made her way over to the door to stand beside Emery, “I’m a pretty rotten cheerleader.”
“Nonsense!” George replied, nudging her with an elbow. “Come on, let’s get a sandwich. I can show you some more of the Atrium if you’d like--maybe Jane will join us for the rest of our tour, too.”
“The business I have for you and your brother in the city will perhaps take up most of your afternoon following lunch,” Emery gently reminded George, and the man looked aghast.
“But we haven’t even gone down to the top-secret cinema on the negative tenth floor that serves brandy by the bottle via our staff of butlers!” He exclaimed, and Hannah tossed him a skeptical glance.
“Something tells me that even magic couldn’t create such a space as that,” she chided, and George positively beamed at her.
“No, it can’t, but doesn’t that sound lovely?”
“I’ll say!”
“Off to lunch,” Emery chuckled, and George gave Hannah a two-fingered salute as he ducked through the doorway after the others. Dean and Emery were the last in the room, and Hannah shifted awkwardly from foot to foot as Dean finished up the cleaning hurried to the door, wiggling his way past in his obvious haste to extricate himself from her immediate vicinity. Before he could barrel around the doorway corner and down the hall, Emery cleared his throat, and Dean froze midstep, looking back over his shoulder with his eyebrows pinched. Hannah wondered if Emery could feel the annoyance radiating off of the man, since she was certainly glad that he didn’t have the eyes to see his expression at that moment.
“Avery, would you be so kind as to escort our guest back down to the Mess?” Emery asked Dean in his usual carefree lilt, the crows feet at the corners of his milky gaze crinkling upwards. “I have to return to my office for a bit of business, and I will be sure to catch you and George promptly after the meal is done to brief you.”
Dean didn’t speak for an agonizingly painful moment in which Hannah was sure he was going to spit fire. She could tell that it was taking great restraint for him to swallow the tide of rising complaint that was brewing at the base of his throat, causing his Adam's apple to bob sharply. He blinked once, then twice, his blue eyes much like the glint of broken glass on a polished linoleum floor.
“Of course,” he finally managed to get out, and Hannah marveled at how much one person could continue to form words between the tiny openings of his tightly-gritted teeth. “Happy to.”
“Excellent,” Emery said, satisfied. He nodded in the direction of where Hannah stood at his elbow, “I’ll be sure to see how you are doing after lunch, and I’ll have the girls show you where your room will be. After that, I imagine you will have some downtime until we figure out exactly what we are going to do with you.”
He had meant it to be humorous, but something in Hannah’s gut twisted at his prose. She smiled all the same, choking back the bitter taste of fear. She turned to Dean, and stepped forward.
“Alright. After you.”
He flinched, his lip curling. Then, he took off down the hallway at a remarkable pace, his long legs easily working three of her strides into every one of his. She leapt after him, determined to keep at his heel. “We’ve simply got to stop partaking in this,” she mused morosely, and his glare backwards held a note of question. She shrugged in what she hoped was a casual way as they reached the end of the hall, “you leading the charge, and me tripping after you at breakneck speed.”
She practically heard his eyes roll up into the pearly white of his skull as they hopped down the stairs, two at a time. "Do you ever stop talking?