Darkness

  “Ty?”

  Ty blinked and raised her head from her knees, turning around just in time to see Theo barely open his eyes.

  “I’m here,” she whispered back, standing up and adjusting the blanket around him that had slipped. Trying to shake away the memory. Trying to forget everyone’s words that afternoon, trying to forget Selene final words to her that day. “It’s okay, you can sleep.”

  Still half-awake, Theo shifted over in his seat and unwrapped the blanket she had just fixed to pat the space beside him. “I’m okay,” he murmured, “Come sleep.”

  Hoping that he’d go to sleep again if she listened, Ty obliged, slipping into the seat by virtue of her thin frame.

  Theo then brought the blanket behind her, and she took it, wrapping it around them both.

  “Comfy?” she asked gently, watching him slowly close his eyes again.

  “Mm.”

  He rested his head on her shoulder, and she put her own head against his as she listened to him breathe steadily again, deep in slumber.

  In, out. In, out.

  She watched the fire at first, trying to be strong and stay awake so she could watch over him, but sleep was merciless; it seized her, pulled her under, until she arrived at another memory.

  * * *

  A month after the outburst in the Elder’s tent, right before the month of written exams, Class 1-A went on their field exam close to the northernmost point of Chloris, just south of Caspos, to deliver provisions to a MATS camp. The two mid-sized carts carrying the supplies—mostly tomes and paper—were being transported there with the help of the class’s magic-casters, who reapplied spells every hour to reach their destination in time. Also in tow, along with the ten students, was Professor Moriya.

  During the debriefing by the Headmistress, there were no expected roadblocks, but that didn’t mean that altercations would not occur; tomes were generally of significant value and provided equally significant use in everyday life. With enough learning, most impoverished families could gain considerable utility from a single tome, and military-grade tomes, unable to be purchased through legal means, were valuable to researchers and vagrants alike. Another concern for MATS was their tomes falling into the hands of the very people who opposed them, so it was integral for shipments such as these to be protected from looters and bandits. That was where the class came in.

  It had taken them approximately two days to arrive at the drop-off point, having spent the first night at the outskirts of the neighboring Township of Caspos, and then the rest of the second day weaving through the difficult channels of the trap-laden forest that served as the border of MATS’s northern base. Ty had been given a map ahead of time and had safely navigated everyone and the supplies to the agreed-upon location, where they waited in the night for the MATS representative to arrive.

  * * *

  “What was that?”

  Ty jolted awake and instinctively patted her pockets for her tomes.

  Soft, frantic footsteps approached. “Did you guys hear that?”

  “Sounded like something blew up?”

  “Yeah, I could hear the rumbling from the back.”

  Ty silenced them, sitting upright and trying to listen closely for another clue.

  Tap. Tap, tap. Tap. Northwest.

  She swiveled her head toward the sound, seeing only darkness. It was past midnight, but not yet dawn. No one had been there when they arrived, and Nate had assured them they would come nonetheless, so the class had decided to spend the night among the trees.

  Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap. Like knocking on a tree with something hard.

  “Headcount,” asked Ty as loud as she dared, slowly getting up and homing in on the direction of the sound.

  “Five here,” responded Alex, followed immediately by Callie.

  “Four here.”

  Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  Waiting for one last voice, she turned to her left, looking past the shadows of Selene, Kor, and Darius before stopping at a gap.

  “Darius, where’s the professor?” she whispered once she walked up to him, hesitant about making more noise than was necessary and wary about conjuring a light when they were meant to be unseen.

  “Gone.”

  “What?” she hissed.

  The groggy Ancient shrugged.

  With more urgency, Ty headed left to the eastern side of the class for Theo, who was bleary-eyed and wondering what was happening. “Did you see Nate?”

  Theo shook his head silently.

  Damn it.

  The tactician gritted her teeth and continued walking around the circle until she got to Elias by the northern side. Surprisingly, he was awake. He hadn’t even been asked to stay up. “Come, bring your spear,” she told him softly after tapping him on the shoulder.

  He scrambled up and reached for his weapon while Ty went back to where Callie had sat beside her. “Do a lightless warding spell and barrier. Silence, if you can.”

  “Got it.”

  Tap. Tap. Tap, Tap.

  Peeved by the noise, she rubbed her eyes. “If I’m not back in thirty, come get me. Bring Faris.”

  Callie nodded solemnly.

  Making sure Elias was behind her, Ty finally stepped into the rest of the forest, where the incessant noise was coming from, and saw only the muted darkness and the pitch-black trees. Her hands itched to cast something, but she couldn’t tell for sure what it was yet, so she kept walking slowly toward the sound, brushing aside plants and leaves, trying to stifle as much sound as she could.

  Tap. Tap, tap. Tap. Tap.

  Well away from camp now, Ty stopped.

  Tap.

  It was getting louder.

  Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

  “Ty,” whispered Elias anxiously.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Keeping her eyes focused ahead, Ty reached back to grab the shirking Elias by the edge of his shirt. “Get ready.”

  Tap. Tap.

  Above.

  Tap.

  Close enough.

  Praxis Indicum.

  Continuing to recite while a bright blue light solidified around a black shape in front of them, she tried to identify what they were dealing with when the shadow promptly disappeared behind a tree.

  This is bad.

  She roughly pulled Elias forward, snapping him out of whatever stupor he had been transfixed with as he smoothly launched his spear through the tree the apparition had hid behind.

  Watching the light from her spell extinguish, not even bothering to wait, Ty stopped reciting and rushed toward the tree.

  “Take out your spear.”

  While Elias worked on that, Ty began reciting a stationary shield spell around them as she knelt down to inspect the ground.

  A meager slip of paper was all that was left.

  She picked it up and held it in her hands, curiosity finally getting the best of her as she cast a small orb of light.

  The handwriting belonged to exactly who she thought it did.

  “Graces, Ty,” whispered Elias from behind her.

  “There’s a lot more, aren’t there?” she replied, pocketing the piece of paper before looking, holding out the light in her left hand up to the darkness.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap, all the shadows chattered together, watching them from the tops of the branches.

  “They’ll die easily,” Ty tried to reassure both herself and her classmate while trying to count the hundred-odd shadows completely surrounding them. “I’m worried about the cargo. I think these things are attracted to spellpaper.”

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  Tap, tap, tap.

  If only I could burn down this entire forest.

  “Alex holds her ground pretty well, and so do Faris and Theo.”

  No fire. It’s immune to wind, water, ice, and dark. Earth? Too much liability when visibility is so poor. Light attracts too much.

  “You’re right. Let’s focus on these.”

  What else? Morphs are easy. What, though? There are plenty of trees around. Go right through, like a spear.

  “Do you think you could do that light-marking thing again?”

  “You remember how they look?” she asked after amplifying her light orb and commanding it to follow Elias.

  “I mean, yeah.”

  Tap, tap.

  Ty focused on the surrounding trees to prepare for the morphing spells. “Then you don’t need markers.”

  Tap.

  Both the tactician and the duelist bolted into the darkness.

  * * *

  The next time she had a moment to stop and think, Ty was panting in a veritable nest of dagger-sharp loops of wood and logs, scratches and numb wounds everywhere. She had just lost Elias because she hadn’t thought to refresh the illumination spell on him.

  If only I had done a binding spell earlier.

  There had to be at least thirty left—they had gotten the giant pack in the center of it all, but many were still hounding her. It wasn’t surprising given that Elias never carried spellpaper on him.

  Tap, tap.

  Crouched down, Ty looked up and saw two more shadows, exhaling loudly before sending a long, razor-sharp branch through them. Being in the nest made it easy due to the plethora of branches everywhere, but it also made her worried for Elias.

  Not too concerned about the light at this point, Ty conjured a sword and felt her ringed hand twitch painfully.

  Ouch. Ran out.

  She started to cut through the makeshift branches, melting them like butter when the tapping returned.

  Taptaptaptaptaptap.

  “Elias?” she asked over her pounding heart.

  Taptaptaptaptaptap.

  She started slashing more frantically, rushing to the source of the sound. But the closer she got, the denser the shadows congregated.

  She let out a loud curse, driving her sword into another dusky shadow before almost walking directly into a tree.

  Her sword illuminated it perfectly.

  “O-oh. Hi.”

  Impaled on the shoulder to the tree with one of Ty’s long branches was Elias, whose head barely peeked out of the mass of black accumulating on where he had been hit.

  Without another thought, Ty relinquished her sword and started tearing the shadows off him, afraid that using her magic would hurt him even more than she already had.

  I’m so sorry, she didn’t have the time to say, her mind messier than her nest of long branches as she kept ripping them off him, feeling the shadows attach themselves to her and her wounded hand.

  Pulling off the last shadow, exposing Elias’s black, rotting flesh underneath, Ty could not help but stifle a gasp.

  “Is it bad?” he whispered, gulping, still looking forward at her. “I-I can’t look.”

  Oh Graces.

  Instead of answering him, she did her best to cover her tall classmate and his wound with her small frame as she started up the morphing spell again, this time to retract and compress her nest of branches, crushing the rest of the shadows within before disappearing.

  The lengthy spell had practically been yelled into Elias’s shirt, but eventually the crackling of branches stopped, and she could hear no more tapping. Not even the ones that had been latched onto her hand.

  “T-Ty,” stuttered Elias, beginning to go into shock. “A-am I g-going crazy? T-there’s some—someone.”

  Unfazed, Ty let Elias go, letting him fall as she threw an illuminating orb behind her.

  Of course, it only flashed for a second before being nullified.

  “Get out of here,” she growled, advancing into the small clearing.

  The short, robed figure did not respond.

  Preparing for a fight, the tactician erected a shield around her and tried to work in a light spell with it before realizing that the latter didn’t work. There was something in the air that was stifling it. Something strangely familiar.

  “Nate, I know it’s you, stop it,” she snapped, continuing to walk toward the short figure.

  When he did not answer again, she should have realized something was wrong.

  One last try—she did a consecrating spell, which normally would have done absolutely nothing at all except provide light. If the air wasn’t on her side, perhaps earth would be.

  By sheer luck, she was right. White, shining lines burst from the ground, creating a circle around her and the hooded figure, who raised their head at that very moment to show her two red, beady eyes.

  It was not Professor Moriya.

  Shivers ran down her spine as she tried raising her hand toward the figure, her mind screaming any spell, anything at all. Incapacitate it. Bind it. Mark it.

  But she was petrified, watching its shining red eyes observe her intently, the rest of its face a black shroud that filled the shape of its cloak.

  Revenge. Revenge.

  Then, as if it couldn’t get any worse, the consecration spell started to fade just as she saw a long shadowy, tentacle-like arm reach out to her from under the robe.

  In the darkness, still staring at its luminescent eyes, Ty could feel the shroud wrap its arms around her. There was no pain, no discomfort. Her shield was still up, so she was technically still safe.

  The shadow walked forward a step, unblinking.

  That was when her shield broke—a loud, shattering sound, like several windows breaking all at once, letting in the fire. Searing pain that infected every inch of her, that dug deep beneath her skin and seeped into every fiber of her being.

  Consecrate, her mind processed again, holding in the pain. Please, consecrate.

  The shadow advanced, stifling any light from her spell, so close she could see her eyes reflected in the red orbs that were the monster’s eyes. So close it felt like she was breathing it in. So close she felt…one with it.

  Revenge.

  Revenge.

  Forcing her eyes shut, she could no longer discern her own thoughts from the monster’s.

  Revenge. Revenge.

  “Ty? Is that you, Ty?”

  That was Callie’s voice.

  Opening her eyes, she tried to speak, but no words came out. There was only shadow. The shadow of the monster.

  I can’t let her get hurt. Courage. Tradition. Revenge. Revenge. Kill, kill.

  Realizing that she had to make a decision, nothing outweighing the safety of her friend, Ty choked out shaky words, words she could not remember the origin of no matter how hard she tried to go back. Words with such a steep price that she would have never imagined herself using before today.

  “Ex…ex…” she tried to choke out while shaking, four syllables from freedom.

  Is this who I am?

  They’re my family.

  “Oh, there!”

  Annihilate, a distant voice in her mind filled in as she gasped and winced at the anima unwillingly leaving her, watching the shadow immediately get so violently torn into shreds in front of her that there was absolutely no trace of it left. No eyes. No robes. No spellpaper.

  Nothing.

  She collapsed onto the grass on all fours, feeling like throwing up but unable to get rid of the phantom presence that had violated her.

  “Ty? Ty, is that you?” called out Callie from close by.

  Remembering where she was, who she was meant to be, and the people she cared for, the tactician got up shakily and lit a weak illuminating spell.

  Nothing. There was nothing in front of her.

  She turned around, toward her classmate’s voice, and saw two figures approaching.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” whispered one.

  “Wow, you look terrible,” whispered the other.

  For a fleeting moment, all felt normal again. It was all part of the exam. Callie and Faris were here, everything would be okay now. She’d have Theo look at Elias’s wound back at camp, they’d turn over the materials and head home in the morning. When it was bright. No more darkness, no more nightmares.

  “Yeah,” she admitted weakly, stumbling past her friends, to where she had left Elias. “We’ve…we’ve got to get Elias looked after.”

  “Elias?” asked Callie curiously. “Where is he?”

  Feeling a bit of her energy return, thankful that the tapping and the voices were now gone—though remnants of it remained, she could still hear echoing in her mind—she walked up to Elias resting by a tree. His shoulder, as she expected, had been ripped through by one of her attacks, and subsequently exacerbated by the small, demon-like minions.

  Callie gasped when she saw him, fumbling in her pocket to no doubt see if she had something that could help identify and heal him, when Ty interrupted her.

  “No, let’s get him back to camp. You cast Weightless; Faris carry.”

  And then she walked back toward the camp, looking back every once in a while to ensure that her students were still there, and that it all hadn’t been a dream—Elias’s wounds were real, but her meeting with the red-eyed phantom…that had left no discernible trace. No remnants of its existence.

  “You’re all back!” exclaimed Alex once she saw them approaching, her excitement quickly fizzling once she spotted Elias’s limp body. “What happened?”

  Ty shook her head. She was done for the night. “Later. Get Theo and Cyril.”

  Meanwhile, Faris laid Elias down on the ground, and Ty annulled her spell. “Thanks,” she whispered, admiring Elias’s peaceful demeanor despite all that had happened.

  And then there was a rustling noise in the distance.

  “Who is it?” Ty asked unreservedly, thinking that whatever was out there couldn’t have been worse than what she had just gone through. Failing grade, passing grade—it was all insignificant to her right now. She just wanted to lay down.

  “Just me,” spoke a familiar voice in an impeccably neutral tone before stepping out of the shrubbery. “Oh, did something happen?” the professor asked dully.

  Feeling a mixture of anger on top of the exhaustion, Ty exhaled. “Yes. Where were you?”

  Nate pointed a thumb behind him obliviously. “I went to camp to find the person responsible for meeting us here. Apparently, there was a commotion at the Ancient village nearby, hence the delay. A group is on the way to do the collection. Should be here within the hour.”

  A part of her wanted to believe him. But the other part had seen the writing on the note, and it had unmistakably been his. The robe, too, had looked like an Academy one, but she couldn’t be sure. It could have been a nightmare, for all she knew. It could have been a hallucination. But nothing was left. Not even the slip of paper in her pocket.

  “Alright,” she ended up saying, lowering her eyes and walking away to lie down at her spot beside Kor. “Sounds…good.”

  “What’s good now?” Kor asked, eyeing Ty with a raised eyebrow before doing a double take. “Yeah, definitely not you. Let me inspect those wounds.”

  Ty didn’t have the energy to explain or wave away the chemist, steadying her breathing as she looked up at the star-speckled sky.

  “Here, I’ve got some extra disinfectant and some balm. Might sting a bit, but I’ll bandage you right up.”

  It was silent at first. Closing her eyes, ignoring the cold, coarse hands that traced her wounds, listening to her classmates work and do what they were good at—it was so comforting. She didn’t need to think when they were here, when they were filling her head with noise. The room in her heart felt full when everyone was around. She could lie down like that forever if it meant that they would be there.

  “What’s this?”

  “Just inspected the wounds, gonna fix her up. What, you done with Elias?”

  “Cyril’s good with toxin tracing, he doesn’t need me.”

  The cold hands stopped. “Toxin? Toxin? What kind?”

  A sigh. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  “Cool, cool, cool. Here, you patch her up.”

  A few seconds passed, and then there was a new set of hands on her. They were similarly coarse, but warm.

  “Graces, Selene, what in the world is this? It smells strong enough to melt leather.”

  “…sinfectant.”

  “This does not seem safe to use on people.”

  “…if she’s…ing, then…n’t matter.”

  Another exhausted sigh. “You can not like her, but you don’t have to be so mean about it.”

  Hands started to slowly work on her again, this time accompanied by warmth and soft, almost inaudible musing.

  “I remember when I first tried to heal this, I felt really silly. You just rinsed it with some water. I never found out how long it took to heal, always forgot to ask—you usually put your ring away when we fight, anyway. I do know that your leg healed pretty quickly, though. Took a little peek at it when I was sewing you up after that duel. I couldn’t help myself ‘cause it was right there. I’m sorry. Though I’m still slightly remorseful that I couldn’t take out your stitches for you. That…that night, I would have stayed and waited for you, but I…something happened. Maybe I’ll tell you that story one day…”

  Pausing, his hands came to a halt just like his words. And then, after a few seconds, he began working again.

  “Sometimes I wonder how useful it is to patch you up even though I know you’ll heal it off quickly, but then I remember the handful of times I’ve fixed you up after class practice, and you leave the bandages on even after it’s healed. I’d inspect it, tell you that you could take it off, and then you’d refuse and keep it on for the entire duration that any normal person would.”

  He laughed under his breath. A twinkling, warm laugh. Full of kindness and love, enough to stifle any pain, dispel any doubts.

  “You probably don’t notice it, but you always have this silly smile on your face when I give you a bandage for a minor cut. And you just keep it on, oh Graces, it’s adorable…ah…look how soft you’ve made me.”

  And after applying the last bandage, the warm hands finally left her skin, and she felt him lean close to plant a kiss on her forehead. “Alright, no more pretending to sleep now, dear. Long day ahead. Tomorrow’s the day.”