MAGE ACADEMY : LEO'S FRACTURED SYSTEM

Chapter 9: The Mirror of Skill

The Echoing Well was a memory that was following Leo everywhere. The sensations of drowning and burning that he had experienced as a phantom were engraved into his nerves, a low-level hum of trauma, continually present. Power, however, accompanied the trauma. His senses were sharper. The circulation of the diffusive spirit in the halls of the Academy was now the stream of visible essence to him, the river of light which he could have almost touched with his hands. His statistics, there forever stained with that ominous pinkish hue, was his ordeal, a monument to that ghastly deal he had struck.

He had already returned to an approved classroom, Applied Thaumaturgy, but was no longer that cowed initiate. He sat better, and his look was not so much terrified. The other pupils continued to avoid him openly, and they now cast a new and doubtful respect at him, as they whispered, Unmaker. Permanent scarring of Jax had become known, and the boy who had brought it about was not merely a null; he was a risky unknown.

The teacher was a gagging fellow, Professor Hemlock, who gave a handclap. "Right! Theory is well enough, but magic is in the doing! We exercise adaptive counters to-day. In groups of two you will be partnering and taking turns throwing a basic Lumina Dart. Your lover will strive to take it away. It is not to overwhelm, but to comprehend and to perplex.

There was a surge of nervousness in the classroom when students were put in pairs. Leo find himself standing alone, the necessary island in the social sea. He was by default supposed to be paired with Hemlock, which is a special project of the professor.

He was not anticipating the action of Aria.

She passed with her usual, uncomfortable grace, her sapphire and silver robes apparently discouraging the particles of dust that were dancing in the air. The conversation of the room fell dead at once. Everyone stared at them--the ideal genius and the threat to the world.

I will work with Leo, she declared, her voice cold and clear, with not a question of that. It wasn't an offer. It was a challenge.

Professor Hemlock seemed to be looking rather confused, and he said he agreed. "Very well, Initiate Aria. A… noble gesture."

But Aria was not to find anything rightful in her violet eyes. They were keen, critical and reeked with an incendiary, rivalrous intensity. The conflict between the two was at once and visibly felt. This was not an act of helping him. This was about testing him. Proving something.

They were positioned around the assigned circle of practice. The atmosphere between them was as hot as unasked questions and the recollection of her horrifying recognition in the Athenaeum.

First, she said, in such a tone that she made it quite plain that she thought this was a mere form.

Leo nodded, forcing a new wave of anxiety. He concentrated, and summoned the well-known, pleasant vitality of the Lumen spell. A soft, golden glittering light paled above his palm, and stretched out to the plain, dart-like projectile. It was shaky, rough, amateurish. He sent it sailing in her direction.

Aria did not even make any movements with her hands. She waved her wrist, a minute, just disdainful movement. A flash of thin silver power, and so fine that it resembled woven lace, flew out and struck his dart. No violent collision had taken place. His Lumina Dart just disintegrated and the force had gone out into harmless motes of light, as though it had never been. It was an exercise of authority so complete it was infantile.

"Your form is sloppy. Your essence is leaking. You are working power into the projection, and setting it and none into the containment, though you are like chipped ice in your voice. "Again."

He tried again, and again. His dart was easily, gracefully torn down every time. The other students had ceased their own practice to observe the show. Leo's face burned. The golden girl of the Academy was having him dissected in public.

Now, she said, and her eyes furrowed. "My turn."

She didn't use the Lumina Dart. Her hands raised, and fingers combined to form a complicated design. The air in the room grew cold. Hoarfrost swung in a rippling floor, and the dampness of the air formed itself in a dozen crystals of sharp, transparent, glittering blue ice-- Frost Shards, a spell which was well out of their own curriculum. They circled round her and hissed like death.

"Aria!" In a voice of alarm Professor Hemlock said. "That is an Adept-level—"

"He is able to cope with it," she interrupted, and stared at Leo. "Can't you?"

The shards were thrown out, not in volley, but in series, in an intelligent, programmed, pattern, which was to close him in, to put his reflexes to the utmost test in every direction of the compass. He was stabbed with panic, cold and sharp. This was no practice exercise, this was an attack.

"Incoming projectiles. Cryo-kinetic signature. Threat level: Elevated."

The voice of the Warden was a soothing cosette. His Codex burst to life, the world had become retarded like in the Proving Grounds. However, this time it did not reveal to him a vacuum to undo. It showed him data.

Analyzing trajectory. Pattern identified: version of the 'Frozen Lattice.'

Analyzing spell structure. Breaking down harmonious frequency.

Counter-hypothesis: Resonant dissonance through phased sonic pulse.

The magic frequency of her ice, the defects of its crystal structure, the exact counter-vibration which would break it, flooded in on him. The System was not simply acting in his defense, but it was actually carrying out an analysis of her magic, in real-time, on a deeper level.

It was not the Warden who moved his body but the System. He lacked sonic pulse charm. He only had the Lumen spell. But the Codex taught him how to adjust it, how to make the golden light vibrate at the destructive frequency that it had worked out.

He instead stretched his hands outward, not to form a barrier, but to give out a burst of warped, buzzing light. That was an ugly grating sound literally seen, a sort of bastardization of pure Lumen energy. It hit the approaching Frost Shards.

It was an immediate outcome. The fragments did not melt or deflect. They broke, and sprinkled into a mist of small, shinning dust. The complex design, the deadly smart which had planned the deed--all of it, in one, inept, spurt, was ruined.

It was a shock in the room. Professor Hemlock gazed, with agape mouth. The ideal composure of Aria broke. Her eyes opened in absolute, bare belief, and closed in lines of enraged cognition.

He had not alone vindicated himself. The background information of her spell had been copied in his System. When it came to neutralising it, the Codex had assimilated the magic blueprint of the Frozen Lattice and held it. Another, dimmed-out glyph had now appeared on his Skills tab: Frost Shard.

A shiver of fear came to his stomach. His System did not merely study by anguish and survival. It learned from observation. It absorbed data. It consumed knowledge. This was an outlawed quality, which no ordinary Codex would have accomplished. It was robbery in essentials of intellect.

"How…?" The word pierced through the shocked silence, Aria whispered. She made one step forward, and the fury of cold was still crackling around her. "That wasn't a counter. That was a… a corruption. You didn't block my spell. You infected it." Her voice was high and demanding, her aggravation and bewilderment were all around like electricity. "Who trained you? That wasn't Academy magic. Who's been teaching you?"

Leo defended himself, and his heart throbbed. The reality dinted his lips, but he staved it off. He couldn't afford exposure. The secret training was the only benefit that Riven had, and his only way to stay alive. Should the Academy discover the fact, they would destroy them both.

He watched the fragments falling into place at the back of the furious eyes of Aria--his sudden inexplainable strength, the weird non-conformity of his counters, the mark of the Warden on his wrist. Her eyes were no longer those of an opponent; they were those of an investigator who has discovered an important hint.

The struggle between them was reversed. This was no longer the classroom rivalry. It concerned secrets and survival.

He made no reply, and looked up to meet her gaze with something that he hoped was insubordination not guilt.

Aria bent over and whispered something reproving to him, low and in a voice of venom. That hunger... that need to eat and reproduce. You're not just weird, Aris. You're like him."

Him. The word was a bombshell. It could only be one person. It was the name Riven that had talked in his sanctum with such fear. Eryndor.

Professor Hemlock had never spoken before, he could not demand to know what she meant, before he could interpret it. "That's enough! Both of you! Aria, it was quite an outlaw spell. Leo… I do not know what it was, but we will be talking of that with the curriculum board. Class dismissed!"

The spell was broken. Students started to walk away, and looked at them fearfully and curiously. Aria looked at Leo a moment longer, a world of undisclosed accusation, of a weird, almost personal pain in her eyes, and turned and swung out of the room.

Leo remained standing in the midst of the group of people, the sparkling remains of her magic mists settling down round his feet like poison snow. The decision he had to make was like a chasm in its open mouth. Aria knew something. She had witnessed an echo of his strength in another person, with whom she clearly was either frightened or loathed.

Would he have put his neck into her mercies to say a mite of the truth? Was she a friend, or was she a knife to turn him in? Or was he even more secretive, and conceal it all, and run the danger of her digging to the point where she discovered Riven and shattered his whole sensitive network of underground training?

He consulted the new, prohibited glyph of his Codex. Frost Shard. He had acquired a new magic, but he had perhaps found a great enemy. And in her accusation she had provided him with a dreadful view of what monster he could be on his way to being.