I blew past duelling chambers and study areas without being observed by a single soul. The places were either curiously empty even though it was a weekend, or else the occupants were too distracted by their own studies or practice sessions to notice hurtling past, suspended in the air by an invisible force. Even at the entrance to the compound, the receptionist's desk was unmanned. I caught a brief glimpse of a cup of coffee with steam still gently rising, which hinted that the man was simply away on a short break.
What a coincidence. But of course, it wasn't a re coincidence it was the probability-twisting influence of a major Prophecy, clinging to in sickening waves. I was well and truly in its grip now, inescapably twined into Ambrose's life whether I wanted it or not. That thought brought a panicked lump to my throat, wrenching out of the montary calm. And just as quickly, the panic was quelled. I could feel the friend-in-the-arcana deftly draining the anxiety out of and sending it frittering into the air in harmless eddies.
The doors parted at the last mont and silently slid shut behind as I rose rapidly into the air, high above the compound. I had no idea where I was going, or rather, where I was being taken to. It felt like I had absolutely no control over what was happening. And while that might have terrified just a few minutes ago, I found it difficult to muster up any sense of fear. All negative emotions were draining away.
In fact, everything was draining away. It was getting harder and harder to focus on anything. There was only the purity of arcana, driving into euphoric bliss as I rose higher and higher, feeling the sunlight warm my skin.
I hung above the collection of dos in broad daylight. Below, the people in the Academy went about their business, their heads little more than blobs of hair in varying colours. There wasn't a single upturned face that had noticed the floating figure in the sky.
And then there was.
A lone oval of pink was pointed right at , almost across the length of the entire campus, stepping out of one of the small residences occupied by the teaching faculty. At this distance, it was impossible to pick out any defining details of the face, but I felt certain that it had turned to track as I drifted in the air.
Sohow, I was suddenly struck with the terror of discovery, feeling very much as if I had been caught in the middle of an indecent act. The euphoria faded. I sensed a kind of reluctance as it retreated, as the friend-in-the-arcana loosened its hold over . Now that I was a little more cognizant of what was happening around , I knew with that feeling of rightness that the person down there was soone I needed to see.
And yet the rightness was no longer... right. I had no words for that realisation, but I could tell that the friend-in-the-arcana was trying to pull higher, away from it.
The mont stretched the arcana continued to buoy up, obeying my subconscious desire to escape everything. And at the sa ti, the feeling of rightness grew, morphing into an urgent impulse to et that person, pushing away the last traces of euphoria.
My uneasiness about this rightness crystalized. It was an outside influence. It was like the impulse to confide that had driven to share my private goal with Ambrose.
It was the Prophecy's influence.
I had a palpable sense of the weight of Prophecy bearing down of like I was just flotsam adrift in the ocean watching a ship's inevitable approach, helpless and unable to get out of the way before being dashed against its unyielding hull.
No, I thought, grinding my teeth. You will not have .
A bone-deep humming filled the air, which beca charged. The euphoria was gone, but in its place burned a fury I had never known before. I was afla with righteous indignation. I will not be a puppet to a Prophecy.
There was an unbearable tension that pulled at my whole being, a tightness that made it difficult to breathe, or see, or even think. The ambient arcana itself seed to be splintering as two forces warred in and around . Faint crackles of energy played across my skin and coursed through , sotis arcing off into the air before fizzling out.
Even through the haze of confusion and ntal anguish, I realised that this was a very significant mont. I had no idea how I was doing it, but I was sohow pushing back against the Prophecy's influence over .
All at once, I felt the ambient arcana slacken and I knew it in my bones. The friend-in-the-arcana had lost. It didn't dissipate but instead yielded itself to the urgings of Prophecy.
Without really thinking about it, I ended up leaning forward and rocketing through the intervening space with alarming speed. The wind snatched at , pulling painfully at my hair and stretching my skin, drawing my clothes out in thundering billows, but the agony lasted only for a second before a warm, soothing sensation enveloped , keeping the frigid air at bay. My hair and clothes barely stirred now even as I rapidly closed in on the figure.
The vague, nondescript shape resolved into a familiar man with five orbs drifting vaguely around him.
An instant before I would have turned into a bloody sar on the ground, I ca to a complete stop right in front of my father, Everett Dundale. The last vestiges of the friend-in-the-arcana faded away as I gently landed.
"Caden." His eyes were wide open. And yet, sohow, he didn't seem completely surprised.
I couldn't speak. The absence of the friend-in-the-arcana had left completely defenceless against my own emotions. There was no euphoria or righteous anger to shield anymore.
"Co inside," my father said, reading the abject panic in my face. He placed a reassuring arm over my shoulders and guided into the residence.
Most of the staff residences were cookie-cutter two-story houses. The first floor had a kitchen, a sitting room, a modest study area, and a common toilet. Upstairs was a single bedroom with en suite facilities, and a deck large enough for a reading table and two chairs. The only residences that deviated from this pattern were given to the Demiurge and the heads of the respective disciplines.
Despite their uniform nature, my father's residence was unmistakably his. The original shape of the house had long since vanished beneath a wild assortnt of artefacts that protruded from almost every inch of its facade, either welded to the fra or else suspended in place by so arcanic manipulation, each having so esoteric function, or else serving as the field-test in so latest experint.
The interior was just as marked with his handiwork. The shelves in the study were cramd full of books, but there wasn't enough room and they crept along the room's corners and into other nooks and crannies. The workspace was cluttered with artefacts in various states of construction (or de-construction). This chaos spilt out into the sitting room, claiming every bare surface. Here, without my mother to object or enforce boundaries and impose cleanliness, his work had free reign over the living space.
He guided over to a chair that had several books piled in it. With a quick, business-like gesture, he sent the books hurtling into a bookshelf where they slotted themselves perfectly into empty spaces.
"Why's everything so ssy if you can do that?" I managed to ask with a weak chuckle.
"You know , I make things. I don't always use them. Then they end up gathering dust," he said with a wry smile. "I'll show you the glyphs on the bookshelf after we talk."
My face fell. I wasn't ready to talk. There was still a lot more thinking that had to be done.
"Sit." His voice was gentle but firm. It brooked no argunt. I sank into the chair and watched as he slowly shuffled off into the kitchen. Everett Dundale had never been a fidgety man, but it seed that he was moving more ponderously than usual. It was as if a huge invisible weight had settled on his shoulders.
The hoy sounds of a hot beverage being poured soothed a little. A mont later, he returned bearing a tray with two steaming cups. The rich aroma of hot chocolate filled the little room as he carefully set the tray down on the table after elbowing so artefacts aside to make space for it. He cleared the remaining chair of books, sending them flying into the shelves, then lowered himself into it with a grateful sigh. The orbs around him shifted unobtrusively and kept out of his way.
"Drink." He reached over and handed a cup.
I accepted the cup and sipped, staring at the orbs that were now slowly drifting around him like corks bobbing along in the water.
"Trade you a question for a question," he smiled.
The knot of tension in my stomach loosened a little. Whatever else had happened, however crazy things were at the mont, this was a safe space. This was familiar territory.
I took in a deep, shuddering breath. " first, then. What're those orbs?"
He nodded to acknowledge the question as he sipped his drink. "What do you think they are?"
"That's not fair," I protested.
"Maybe," he conceded. "But I want to know what you think."
"Artefacts," was my disingenuous response. I wasn't in the mood for one of his sessions of leading questions.
In lieu of a response, he gestured over his shoulder and one of the orbs drifted over to , close enough to touch. What I had mistaken for perfectly polished silver was, in fact, more complex than that. The silver seed to be little more than a skin. Barely visible, just beneath the surface, was a fine lattice of glyphs. I knew enough by now to understand that these orbs must have been fiendishly difficult to create.
I couldn't read the glyphs. Not only were they minuscule, but I couldn't even understand or recognise the ones that I could make out.
"They're beyond what I can understand," I said grudgingly, unable to resist making a comnt. I did want him to tell more. "But if I had to guess, I'd say they're protective in so way."
"Yes, protective." With a flourish of arcana, he projected a segnt of the glyph sequence into the space between us. "This phrase refers to prophetic links."
Prophetic links. Those words rang with rightness. They fit perfectly. There was a weight of aning behind that term.
"Fates," I breathed. Did this an...
"In short, the orbs are supposed to protect from the influence of prophecies."
With shaking hands, I placed my cup back on the tray.
"My turn," my father began. "Tell m"
"No, no, you can't just drop that on and move on like this," I said, my voice trembling. "What do you an they protect you from the influence of prophecies? Why did you... when did you..." There were too many questions, all of them fighting for attention.
"One thing at a ti, Caden. You need to slow down. A question for a question." The gentle baritone of his voice was reassuring, authoritative, calm. I clenched my fists and forced myself to breathe slowly through my nose.
"Tell how you flew," he asked, once I had reined myself in a little.
How would I even start to explain that? I looked up at him helplessly, my brow furrowed. He returned my gaze patiently and nodded encouragingly. It was an exchange we had made thousands of tis before I, the frenetic one, he, the silent anchor.
"Take your ti, Caden. All the ti in the world."
But that wasn't true. I had thrown a net of panic over Ambrose and Jerric, charged with the impulse to run as far as they could from . Were they alright? What if they needed to undo it? And even if Devon and the twins had managed to help them, they would be looking for now. And I had flown across the length of the Academy. What if soone had seen?
"All the ti in the world," my father repeated, leaning forward and gently gripping my shoulder.
I nodded and took a minute to steady myself by just focusing on taking deep, calming breaths. Once I had settled myself, I realised that there was a lot of ssy background context that didn't have to be ntioned. I could just focus on the chanics of how I had flown. Trying to talk about it helped to make sense of exactly what I had accomplished.
"I flew by... fra-shifting." My father looked quizzical but gestured for to continue.
"I thought... I imagined..." None of those words seed right. It hadn't been such a simple, casual thing. "I felt convinced that I could speak to the arcana, and it would be able to help . And then I guess it worked. I just wanted to get away from sowhere... and the arcana listened, and made fly."
My father leaned back, his brow furrowed. It was exactly the expression I had on my face when I was engaged in furious thought. After a mont, he seed to have reached a satisfactory resolution in his head. "Your turn," he said.
"Why did you make those orbs?"
"For your sister," he said heavily. "That's been the focus of my research ever since she was born. These prototypes are the result of ten years worth of hard work. But the Academy thinks they're dampeners of ambient arcana that prevent overdraw or fatal surges in case of accidents with artefacts."
It was getting worse. Every answer he gave was giving more questions. The situation was spira
"My turn," he said with a knowing look as he interrupted my train of thought. "What were you getting away from?"
I gaped at him. The whole chain of events was unspooling itself, going from our attempts to learn how to overco Reeves' infusion all the way back to my first eting with Ambrose. Where would I start?
"I was running from the Chosen One," I blurted out.
This ti, my father's reaction was not so asured. He choked on the hot chocolate.
"Okay, I know this isn't fair," he said, once he had stopped coughing. "But you need to tell everything."
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