Chapter Six
Artiz acted as though nothing had happened the next day. He showed no sign of wanting to talk about it or engage her when she tried to bring up the subject herself. All she received was a chilly reception on that front, which made her deeply suspect she’d been used.
Well. She’d used him as well, so she couldn’t really complain. It dug at her, though. His friendliness, their getting closer… the afternoon they shared together, with the brief hug initiated by him... and then nothing.
Did it mean nothing to him?
Did she read him wrong? She honestly thought she saw something in him. Like the potential for a future relationship.
Funny, because she was the one who considered just using him for sexual gains. Nothing else.
I suppose I deserve this. Again, she plunged into harsh training. Her mind and body was forced to its limits. She trained until her muscles screamed in exhaustion, and her brain wanted to drop her body unconscious.
But before she’d even had ten minutes’ rest between training, Artiz yanked her up. “Self-defense, now.” Taking a sly glance around to make sure no-one was listening, he leaned forward to whisper, “I’m sorry. I can’t let anyone suspect what we did last night. I’ve already had some stern warnings from Graff about not getting too friendly with you. And they can see from the windows what we’re doing.” He indicated the school, and the windows three storeys above.
Oh. The wriggling despair evaporated in light of this reveal.
What a relief to know that her assumption he didn't care was false. Artiz was just acting like he didn’t want her.
He needed to show to everyone else that everything between them was strictly professional. Even if it meant basically wearing her out and breaking her down.
“Thank you,” she breathed back, before stepping aside, rubbing her knuckles. “I was actually worried I'd been used for a one-off, there. Anyway. Self-defense?”
“Yes. It may not help you against a full grown wyrm – but if you can get one before they shift, or a man or woman that doesn’t want to hang around and talk to you nicely – it’ll be useful. I’ll take you through some basics. Blocking.” He helped position her feet, taught her how to hold her arms, and how to react to certain blows. More importantly, he taught her how to see it coming.
“No matter how good you are at defending, it’s harder if you can’t figure out how your opponent intends to attack you. So now we’ll teach intention movements.”
Pain, pain, more pain. Artiz didn’t exactly let up with the training. Every failed block added to the bruises she accumulated all along her sides. And even when she blocked, her arms rang with dull pain as well.
Part of her honestly didn’t see how being beaten up on a regular basis would help strengthen her magic. She needed to discover about the soul she’d rescued, and how she did it. She needed to sit around and figure out how that happened. If it really was just imagining a pretty door, or whether she did something else as well, beyond what it seemed to her on the outside. Maybe she’d made a connection with the soul? Listened to it, talked to it, cared for it in her own way? The soul had been clinging to her. She felt fingers digging onto her skin. Impatience clawed at her.
Maybe the books in the library held the answers. Just a shame she could barely read. Struggling through the ledger names had been bad enough.
Artiz lunged towards her during a series of blocks. Taken off guard, Seon’s back slammed into the stone, with Artiz straddling her.
“You should have seen that coming,” he said. “Someone was distracted.”
The compromising position made Seon blush, though she fought past it and growled, “I’ve not done this before! You can’t expect me to get it right straight away.”
“Perhaps not,” Artiz said, eyes briefly trailing over her clothed body. Remembering the curves, the softness underneath. They darkened. It wasn't just her that did such a thing after all. Seon shivered from the heat that emanated from him. From the memories that stirred. For a moment, she thought he might break control and just lean in to kiss her anyway. Then, wresting command of his limbs, he stood up and helped pull her to her feet.
“Again.”
Seon groaned, preparing to get herself fully battered. She only hoped not too many bruises would show when she went to eat in the canteen.
She understood that he wanted her better prepared if something like the wyrm attack happened again. Though he didn't speak of it, the fear still clearly lingered inside him. He couldn't always be there to help her. And she didn't expect it, either. It made sense to defend herself.
But she wanted to focus on unlocking more of her magic. That seemed more important.
Finally released from being hammered by Artiz, she made her way to the canteen without assistance, and lined up to get her daily dosage of slop.
Her jaw dropped when she saw a couple of familiar faces at the table nearby where Isera sat.
Seated by the entrance were Anya and Kalgrin, with a girl that Seon didn’t recognize. Anya immediately began waving, beckoning Seon over.
What are they doing here? Seon had no idea they even knew about this place. She grinned.
Isera, who’d been expecting Seon to sit next to her, at first appeared upset, until Seon yanked her pouty friend by the arm along as well.
“Hey, Anya, Kalgrin! Isera – those are my friends from before, where I lived in Tarn!”
“We sure are!” Anya got out of her seat and dove into a hug. Seon laughed and hugged Anya back, while the others in the canteen stared.
“What the fuck are you doing here, huh?” Seon prodded at Anya's cheek, and she made a snapping motion to the finger.
Anya’s long, dark hair flowed past Seon’s shoulder. The pretty woman held the hug for longer, before breaking apart. Kalgrin gave a curt nod of acknowledgement, eyes twinkling.
“Two things. Dropping off a magic user we discovered who had escaped from the plantations Kal was working on. And visiting you! This is the girl. Meet Jacie. Jacie, this is Seon. And you are…?”
“Isera. Nice to meet you.” Isera shook hands with Anya, smiling, before peering curiously at Jacie, who appeared as if she wanted to sink into her soup and disappear.
“She’s a bit shy,” Anya supplied. “How have you been? When you just vanished one day, we were so worried! Then Kal told me where you went. Some friend of his contacted him to say that you were safe and well in some crazy magic school. I didn’t even know we had magic schools. Learn something new every day.”
“Neither did I,” Seon said, grinning. “I didn't even know you guys knew about this place.” If she had, maybe she wouldn't have kept her powers secret. “I missed you!”
“Don’t worry,” Anya said with a wink. “You’ll probably be seeing more of me. It seems I’m adding ‘trying to figure out if our rescues know magic or not’ to my ever-growing list of things to do.” Anya examined Seon’s body language. “Are you… okay? You seem a little stiff.”
“Oh, that’s because I get beaten up every day,” Seon said casually. “They need to train my body and mind or something.”
Jacie appeared alarmed by this news, and shrank further into her bowl, barely touching the food. Her lank, brown hair hung over her eyes, and it irritated Seon. She wanted to chop all that hair off, just so she could actually see the girl's face.
Except doing so for this shivering slip of a human being wouldn’t be fair. Maybe the hair for her was a shield. Obviously, she’d come from great trauma. The plantations were amongst the worst places for humans to be, enslaved under the relentless lash of the wyrms, who needed their harvests done and their humans as cheap as possible.
Weakness irritated Seon, even if she understood it. Weakness let people get killed, and let others run them over without mercy. Too many people gave into weakness.
“I’ll be glad to have more friends in this place,” Seon confessed. “I only really have Isera as a friend. And I’m pretty sure my trainer hates me.” A lie, but she needed to maintain the fiction. Even in front of Anya. And she didn’t want anyone to know what kind of relationship she held with Artiz – even though Seon herself didn’t know. Sex was something anyone could do. Didn’t need to have love to do it. Just lust.
But… being with Artiz honestly amounted to the best sexual experience she’d had in her entire life. Was that sad? Or just because she had a sort of attachment to Artiz? She wanted it to be more than sex. She wanted a connection.
“Tarn’s getting worse,” Anya said. “We have more patrols by the day. Unoccupied humans, if they’re foolish enough to go off at night, end up being taken. The wyrms, for some reason, have a choke order upon Tarn, which has always traditionally been a drake town.”
“It’s politics,” Kalgrin explained, his voice gruff. “The drake faction pissed off the wyrms in the big city, so now they’re retaliating by peeling control from the drakes nearby in a passive aggressive way – while denying that anything is going on.”
“Fuckers.” Seon bit at her thumb.
“If things keep going the way they are, we’ll have civil war. A few wyrms understand antagonizing us pushes us into a natural alliance with the humans, but most dislike us anyway because of our fraternizing with humans. You could say things are getting tense in the big cities.”
“This just reminds me why I hate wyrms.” Isera shook her head. Again, Seon sensed Isera’s soul under the fabric of her skin, with that ice encased over it. Pretty much every human hated wyrms to some extent. Seon wondered what exactly happened in that estate for Isera to have such a guarded expression
Then, for a brief, unexpected moment, Seon sensed something else. She caught a glimpse of a dark place. Rhythmic sounds banging against something hard, like stone or metal. Lights in the darkness. A canary singing, before falling silent, slumped dead in its cage. Screams, an explosion, debris shattering like rain upon skin. The memories came disjointed, but Seon knew without a shadow of doubt that she saw something of Isera’s past.
The girl had mentioned not working in the mines. But she'd clearly seen enough of them to loathe what happened.
Seon didn’t say anything of her revelation. But she understood why Isera harbored such hatred. More than anyone else here.
Artiz strolled into the hall, calling for silence. The chatter in the canteen stopped. All eyes fixed upon him.
“Has anyone seen Edith in the past few hours?” His gray eyes examined the crowd, resting briefly on Seon where she sat with her friends.
A chorus of no greeted his query.
“She's been reported missing. As you know, there is a wyrm presence nearby the school. If no one has spotted her, then we have reason to believe that she’s in danger right now.”
Seon didn’t like Edith. Edith certainly didn’t like Seon. But that didn’t justify any kind of suffering at the hands of the wyrms.
“Is this Edith someone you like?” Anya hissed.
Both Isera and Seon stubbornly shook their heads.
“No. She’s a bitch. But still, she doesn’t deserve to be caught by the wyrms.” Seon stood up, Isera in tow, and strode over to Artiz.
“We’ll help look through the school and grounds. Okay?”
“Thank you,” Artiz said. He gave her a ghost of a smile. “Can we have any other volunteers who will help us locate Edith?”
About half the room agreed. Obviously, Anya and Kalgrin with their charge didn’t volunteer, because none of them knew what Edith looked like.
With the search underway, they explored every nook and cranny, including Edith’s rooms, but encountered no sign of her.
Another student was missing as well – Edith’s drake friend, Sigmund. A fearful atmosphere pervaded the school, making everyone step cautiously, worried that an army of wyrms loitered outside their gates. Offensive magic users were especially vigilant, ready to use their abilities at a moment's notice.
Artiz explored the hallways, stairs and various rooms with Seon and Isera, and he appeared pale and anxious.
“I don’t like this. First you run into wyrms and might have potentially been killed, then we have two missing students.”
Understandably, two events so close together would make everyone nervous.
When an hour of searching the school and grounds turned up no Edith or Sigmund, Master Graff himself came to announce the emergency to every student, who had spent ten or so minutes regathering in the canteen dining hall.
He addressed the congregation with a grave air. “No one may leave without permission. As long as you do not leave the protective barriers of the school, you will not be in danger. We will be sending some of our drakes and magicians out to inspect the situation beyond the school and in the nearby mountain villages.”
The hall erupted into mutterings and gasps. Seon let out bursting breaths when she thought about Edith being in the same situation as her – exposed to wyrms who would strip her down without mercy.
Seon’s heart thudded in fear, because although they didn’t know for sure if it was the wyrms, in her soul she believed it was.
Somehow they knew the school to be here. Even if they couldn’t find it. No other reason existed for why they would be sniffing around in an area they usually hated, and had no qualms about killing her.
When Master Graff left the room, Artiz informed Seon that he would be going with the other drakes in the school, starting a search outside for Edith and Sigmund. Kalgrin offered to come along as well, and was given a description of Edith. He gave Anya a kiss and hug goodbye, and joined Artiz on the way out.
“Good luck,” Seon called after them, though the anxiety remained. As drakes, they should be fine, but that didn't guarantee their safety. Artiz got lucky against the four on the path, simply because they were unprepared and the path too narrow to comfortably allow them to shift.
Still nervous, Seon conversed with Anya and Isera, trying to take her mind off the bad thoughts.
“I can't believe that happened to you,” Anya said when hearing about Seon's close encounter. “They're getting too bold. They shouldn't even be here.”
“Exactly,” Isera said, her expression dark. She idly flexed her fingers, and a small flame danced between them. “They're most likely hunting us. Which means we likely have a traitor, since the people in the mountain villages have no clue of the magic. They just think this is some kind of monastery.”
“Right.” Anya nodded. “So the wyrms can't find this place alone, right?”
“The place is completely anti-wyrm. I mean, I guess there might be ways around it, but it'd be obvious to everyone else that someone's trying to lower the defenses. They have like a twenty-strong defensive spell around the premises. The second even one of those spells breaks, everyone will know.”
Unless, Seon thought, they found a way to stop the alarm from going off. Not that she knew much about magic. Isera seemed confident the school would never be detected. Though the wyrms could still get too close for comfort.
Two hours passed. They ate food, while Isera kept casting sly glances to the entrance doors. Seon tried not to be so obvious, but she thought that Artiz and the rest wouldn't take two hours to look on the outside. Especially if using their drake forms.
Three hours. Then four. No sign of the drake teachers, no sign of Artiz.
“I'm sure everything is fine,” Isera said, though she didn't sound very convinced. Anya looked pale as well. Her partner had also flown out there with the search.
Eventually, Seon made excuses and went to her room, trying to catch some sleep. She didn't want to stay up and worry, though it took her about an hour to fall asleep.
Isera knocked on her door some hours later, deep into the night, not so far from dawn.
“I think they’re in trouble. It doesn’t take nearly half a day to check the area as a drake.”
With Artiz missing, Seon had no choice. Useless magic or not, she didn’t want to stand by uselessly. And, Isera, having no clue of Seon’s magic, agreed.
“It’s probably suicide, but if the teachers are missing, we’re only going to starve out anyway. Especially if the wyrms have something to do with their disappearance.”
Seon nodded. She didn’t inform Anya of their idea. No point putting more people in danger. Her breath hitched in her throat. The thought of Artiz being in danger… the thought of him lying in the snow like that frozen girl who had been undetected for so many years… it made poison pump in her veins, her bowels almost turn to liquid.
Honestly, Seon knew she was foolish to do this. However, she hated the idea of sitting around, not knowing anything whilst other people died for her. Isera shared the same sentiment.
“I can just about conjure fireballs bigger than my palms now,” Isera muttered. “Maybe I can coax more out of my hands with some practise.” She flexed her fingers, and a flame began hovering in her palm, helping them see in the darkness. Wrapped up in fur clothes which also covered their faces, the friends stepped outside and trudged through the snow until they reached the limits of the school’s boundaries.
Giving one last glance, they nodded grimly and pushed through the protection. Leaving safety behind. And possibly common sense.
“The only issue with the light is that others will see us, too,” Seon said, and Isera shrugged.
“If we don’t have the light, we risk breaking our necks. It’s a sacrifice we have to make.”
Seon nodded, though she didn’t like it. She didn't want to draw any more attention than necessary. Out here in the bitter cold pre-dawn, a light could be seen from far away. But surely the wyrms would be asleep. Maybe.
Her heart pulsed with fear, wondering where Artiz was. For all she knew, he might have arrived back in school and only just missed her. Maybe someone would mention they saw her and Isera sneaking out with a light, knowingly putting themselves in danger like fools.
I am a fool. Completely and utterly.
Fool or not, they’d gone too far now. Seon couldn’t leave Isera, but she wanted to admit defeat and turn back. Didn’t want to admit how stupid she was for doing this in the first place, with the kind of magic she possessed. What exactly did she think she could manage with her power? Isera was far more useful.
And what did two small women hope to accomplish that the teachers couldn’t?
Though they could hardly wait around if something did happen. What if Artiz desperately needed help, but Seon was too much of a coward to look?
I just have to hope that the choice we made is the right one.
They trekked through the darkness, sticking to the main path, glancing skyward for any drakes flying around. The cold had a way of churning and whipping them mercilessly, and their boots sank ankle deep into snow. Recent snowfall had left a feathery blanket over the harder, compact white underneath. Her breath condensed in the air, lingering for a few seconds after each exhale, like signals to anyone who might see them in the dark.
The darkness of the mountains, even with the stars above, unnerved her.
Neither of them knew if the path they took would even help. Drakes flew. They might be anywhere. This really was a stupid idea. What did they possible hope to accomplish?
However, Seon also felt a strange burning sensation in her, which had nothing to do with the cold. Even though she didn't know where to go, it felt right somehow, to walk in this direction. To take the left path, then the right.
In the distance, something made a hooting sound. Seon flinched when she heard voices. Isera's face paled and she instantly turned off the flame in her hands. They huddled together, barely able to see through the trees in the darkness. The voices grew louder. Complaining, judging by the sharp, high tone of them. Drakes, or wyrms?
Please be drakes. Please be drakes.
Soon, they saw a light flickering through the trunk gaps past snow-laden bushes. Beyond these lay a small clearing with several figures, some standing up, some sitting down.
Close enough at last, Seon and Isera saw for themselves the captives in the middle of the clearing near the campfire. Five figures tied up. Edith. Artiz. Master Raka, the one who taught the fire students. Two faces Seon didn’t recognize. There was no Kalgrin.
Seon suppressed a gasp. The wyrms had somehow captured all the drakes, aside from Anya's partner. Maybe he had escaped, or lay somewhere, mortally wounded. Seon pushed the thought out of mind, and held a palm against her stomach. Isera crouched by her, eyes narrow, one hand on Seon's back.
Both women saw a student of the school sitting with the wyrm guards.
Sigmund. Edith’s friend.
He laughed and joked with the guards, freely talking about the school and its soft teachers. Seon listened in blank shock as his derogatory words tumbled across the clearing, not caring whether the captives heard or not.
A traitor. A drake traitor.
Isera’s breath hitched in her chest.
“I still don’t know the ability of the new woman,” Sigmund said, drinking something out of a mug. “They’re tight-lipped about it, so I presume she’s important.”
“You’ve done good work for us, Sigmund. Soon we’ll be able to wipe this filth off the planet, preserving our freedom. Our rightful place. We can’t allow such danger roaming the mountains.”
“What about me? I know magic, too.”
“You’re not a human,” a wyrm guard replied smoothly. He gave a rather insincere smile. “You do not defile magic with your presence.”
Of course the wyrms would feel less bothered about drakes holding the power. Drakes weren't their natural slaves. Seon boiled indignantly, wanting to wrap her hands around Sigmund's treacherous little throat and squeeze until the life popped out of his eyes.
Isera's fingers tightened around Seon, as if detecting her desire to rush in. Not yet, Isera mouthed. She shook her head. The flickering firelight from the camp helped them to see their outlines clearer.
How could they do this? The wyrms were awake. Maybe if Isera flung some fire at those ropes or something, she'd free the others. But even if the ropes got burned through, it didn't guarantee that they reacted in time and transformed. They might be physically tortured in some way, making it hard to shift, or maybe the flame wouldn't burn through in time, giving the wyrms plenty of opportunity to subdue the drakes again. Her breath started hissing faster.
No. She just needed to be patient.
Something rustled in the darkness. A new voice, frighteningly close to Seon and Isera, said, “Well, well, well. Look what we have here.”
Horror flooded Seon as a wyrm leered right behind them.
With a low, gurgling laugh, the wyrm seized Seon and Isera, hauling them into the clearing.