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4.115: Five Years Later

The sun shone high overhead our jeep, cruising through the Thar desert. In the passenger seat, I sipped from my water bottle and rhythmically squeezed a stress ball in my left hand. Clench, release. Clench, release. I’d been nearly paralysed after turning my body into a charter bus for a bunch of magic spells, but …

4.114: Climb and Sing

The spinal column of our prison was our prison was our home/ and the shadow of our home/ lay in the vessel’s bones/ and we knew these halls these halls but smaller/ in this temporary hauler/ and we ascended We ascended We ascended And rung by rung the vessel sung and we sung as we …

4.113: Be the Music

Hammond stepped in front of Saina. “Parvi,” he muttered, “I’ll distract her attention; you hide in the seats until she’s clear of the door and then get out – ” The pair were surrounded by a tornado of fire. Saina squealed and grabbed Hammond as the flames crept closer. A hole in the flaming wall …

4.112: Catching Up

Okay. This was nothing to worry about. I put the pearl back on the plinth, but the light didn’t come back on. Moving it must have permanently disconnected something. This was… this was nothing to panic about; I should have expected this. Removing the heart probably shut down the whole magic system, and the glowing …

4.111: Harmony

It took me a little while to be sure what I was looking at. Not because the room was poorly lit or anything. The stone within the 2m space glowed as brightly as the stone outside it, although instead of a plain white, it shone in all kinds of colours, seeming to almost display recognisable …

4.110: The Cursed Heart

They say that if you hit water from a high enough height, it’s like hitting concrete. Well, I wasn’t worried about that. I knew I wasn’t high enough for that to be a concern. I’d fallen off this exact cliff before, struggling with di Fiore over a counterfeit Guardian Ring. And that time, I hadn’t …

4.109: Bait And Run

Saina pulled a couple more people into the link, one at a time, to ask for updates. I didn’t know them or have any context for what they were discussing, but she didn’t drop her link with me the entire time. I think she was worried I might freak out again. In my defence, a …

4.108: What You Relied Upon Before

I screamed. There was a startled sound. Not me, not the monitor beeping next to me; something from outside the soundproofed curtains. But not from the rest of the hospital. Something from… somewhere else. Like the hand. I shut up and listened. “Points, Kayden!” Saina exclaimed. “Calm down!” “S-Saina?” I asked. I couldn’t see her, …

4.107: Mind Games

I woke up feeling a lot better. Not great, but a lot better. There was still something… itching… in the back of my head. Not quite a headache, although it did carry the unpleasantly disorienting tingle that signified magic in my body that wasn’t Kylie’s. But it was more than that. It felt… invasive? It …

4.106: Detention

The funny thing was, the cell they lead me to wasn’t all that different from my room in the school. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, really, but it made sense. I already lived in a cave underground, with a magically sealed door and no possibility of windows. Where could they put me that …