1.42: Ultimatum

The portal took us to the dormitory corridors, pretty close to our own room. We were well into what most of the student body thought of as ‘night’ based on class schedules, so managed to make it back to our dorm without having to explain to anyone why we were exhausted, mildly abraded and covered in sand.

Max was already asleep, which didn’t surprise me. Last he knew, we’d gone off to talk to another witch about witch stuff – a couple of hours in he’d probably figured we were out having a great time and would come back when we’d run out of stuff to talk about. Kylie reached over her bed to grab a glass and marched straight into the bathroom. I heard several glasses of water being poured and gulped down in quick succession. Not a bad idea. I hydrated myself, filled a water bottle for my nightstand and got out of her way so she could have the first shower.  

While I waited, I replayed my recording of her prophecy. I turned the volume way down low, so nobody outside of my little nook of the bedroom would hear it. I played it over and over again, until I knew every word. Then, when the shower was free, I went to wash off the sand of our little excursion.

And then I went to bed. As if everything was fine.

I made sure to wake up before Max or Kylie, mostly because I didn’t want to miss them in the morning. The immediate danger had passed, and now I needed to explain to them what had happened, what it all meant.

And I really, really needed one of them to tell me what I was missing, find the hole in my theory, explain to me that I was wrong.

Max woke early, and I explained that I wanted a dorm meeting. He shrugged and got to work on his staff project while we waited for Kylie, the deepest sleeper I’d ever met, to remember a world existed outside her bedcurtains and become conscious to participate in it.  

After awhile, I got bored and wandered over to see how Max was doing. He was carefully pulling fragments of exploded cauldron out of the staff (secured in a vice) and placing them on a white cloth on his desk which, I noticed, had been cleared of all books. Even part of his precious map of the halls had been taken down off the wall to make way for a sheet covered in arcane symbols with labels like ‘part of the housing for crystal/tablet; how did she solve the dimensional display problem?’, ‘power deflector?? end destroyed in expl.’, and ‘why use a familiarity coupling here?? Dangerous!!’

The metal fragments had dried ichor on them. Gross.

“So how’s it going?” I asked as he used his tablet to take a photo of the partially-deconstructed staff.

“Oh, it’s going great.” He picked up a plane and fell silent as he checked that the staff was secure in its vice and very carefully sliced off one thin layer of wood. “Some of her choices for power relay are really confusing me, which is always the best thing to find in a research project.”

“It is?”

“Of course! Things are boring if they make sense right away, don’t you think?”

“Well, you’re going to be disappointed when Kylie gets up, then.”

“What?”

“Nothing. So uh, do you know what part of the staff… overloaded, or whatever?”

“Actually, no!” He grinned brightly. “It’s kind of hard to be sure because the staff is so damaged, but I’m not even certain it overloaded at all. I haven’t diagrammed the full thing yet, but look at this sketch of a circuit that – ”

“Max! Pretend I grew up with commonfolk and have no clue what you’re talking about.”

He sighed. “Okay. Imagine this thing is like a battery that’s really, really bad at holding charge. People have known how to make awful batteries for awhile, but one day a genius scientist thinks, ‘hang on, don’t we have way too much electricity around and it’s really dangerous?’, and attached a lightning rod to the awful battery. Now she has a power sink. It’s terrible as a battery, but now it’s a great safety feature, right?”

“Right.”

“Now, any battery has its limits. She knows that one day she’s going to overcharge it and melt the insides, or whatever happens to overcharged batteries, and it won’t work any more. And she does, and it doesn’t, so now I’m taking it apart to see specifically what part – ”

“Okay, yeah, good metaphor. I get it.”

“Okay, But overcharging isn’t the only thing that can destroy a battery. You can also destroy a battery by shooting several sharp chunks of scrap metal through it. And whether the battery burns out from power and then gets torn to bits by scrap metal, or gets torn to bits by scrap metal and then loses its ability to hold power, isn’t exactly easy to determine when you’re faced with a pile of graphite and spinel leaking lithium hydroxide.”  

“So if it hasn’t burned out, does that mean it’s still dangerous?”

“Dangerous? It was never dangerous. Well, except maybe to Miratova because she included a familiarity spell linkage for some insane reason, but now it’s just scrap, even for her. A lot of the runes were destroyed already and I’ve cut most of the intact ones up for analysis, so it certainly can’t do anything now.” He thought about this. “I guess some of the internal ichor might still have some vitality, so if you forced a truly massive amount of power through it you could get a reaction, but there are no spells of any power in my little office back here, so...” he frowned at me, puzzled. This was probably because I’d stepped back as far as I could, until I was pressed against the force field opposite. “Seriously, it’s fine. It can’t hurt you.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I said.

“Then what – ”

We were interrupted by Kylie’s curtains opening. She glared blearily at me, and at the wall blocking her view of Max. “Can you two nerd out quietly?” she asked. “It’s way too early for this.”

“Technically, it’s mid-afternoon,” Max said.

“Well, it’s too early on my personal schedule. And on yours.”

“It really isn’t.”

“Good, you’re up,” I said. “We need to have a dorm meeting.”

Kylie flopped back down onto her bed. “I am not up.”

“That’s okay, I’ll just fill Max in on everything from last night by myself.”

“Aargh! Fine! I’m up!”

“We should’ve got a bigger room with a coffee machine,” Max said. “This would go a lot smoother if she was caffeinated.”

“You know, you don’t have to rub in how right you were about the coffee machine all the time,” I said.

Eventually, the three of us assembled in the middle of the room with various approximations of alertness, and Kylie and I gave Max a brief overview of what happened after Talbot had left the previous night. Very quickly, his expression went from mild interest and puzzlement, to disbelief, to awe, to fear.

“It’s okay, you can calm down,” I told him. “We both got back safely.”

“I guess we should go fill Instruktanto Cooper in about this at some point,” Kylie said.  

“No!” Max’s eyes were wide. “No, you absolutely can’t tell him! Well… you should probably tell him about the portals, but you can’t tell him where you went.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll probably expel you.”

We stared.

“Why?” I asked. “It wasn’t our fault we ended up there.”

“You know that, and I know that. But here’s the thing. You guys keep ending up in weird places. Normally it’s like… it’s like you accidentally stumbled into a shop after closing and knocked over some shelves, right? But this is more like breaking into an eccentric millionaire’s house. You’re two witches from the same continent ending up here at the same time, which is weird. Not impossible, but weird. You quickly get a reputation for moving around out of bounds, you’re present when a very powerful member of the faculty is badly hurt – yes, not your fault, but look at the pattern here – and now you go off for a suspicious meeting with an older witch away from prying eyes and immediately go to Duniyasar, which should be completely impossible – I’m just saying. If you tell Cooper, he’s going to have to tell the higher-ups, and they’re not going to react well.”

“So they’ll be grumpy, and investigate, and find out what’s wrong with the portal, and everything will get sorted out,” Kylie shrugged. “You mage family kids are always so paranoid. Not everything has ten layers.”

“Hmm, I guess we are pretty paranoid. You know who taught us to think that way? The previous generation of mage family kids. That is, the people Cooper would have to report to.”

“So we should just not tell anyone, even though there might be something seriously wrong with the portals? What if one dumps somebody in the ocean or something?”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said. “That place we went; we found some stuff that made us think it might be an old school. Is that right?”

Max nodded. “It’s a lot of things. Including the original site for Refujeyo, back when it was a lot smaller.”

“And it’s surrounded by arches, with portals that can go different places. So it’s reasonable to assume that that portal on the island used to go to the old school, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“So the portal just got… confused… and went to an old location somehow.”

“Oh, well I feel so much better,” Kylie said, rolling her eyes. “That’s very safe. Nothing to worry about.”

“It won’t happen to anyone else. I know what went wrong with the portal.”

“Really? What?”

“I did. I think my curse messed it up. Simon’s right; there’s something about my curse that’s messing up other spells.”

Max shook his head. “Kayden, we’ve been over this. Counterspells don’t work like – ”

“The tame little mage spells you’ve learned about don’t work like that. Spells that are supposed to affect other spells don’t work like that. But you said yourself, Max; you don’t know everything. You’ve studied stuff that says it’s impossible; Simon’s studied stuff that says it isn’t.  You’re both so certain. How do we know who’s studying the right thing?”

“Simon’s just trying to discredit you. We know how spells interact.”

“No, you don’t. Nobody does. Any time anyone says anything about spells they remind us that ‘every spell is different’. Change spells care about complexity, except when they don’t; externalised spells are just gusts of wind or glimmers of light or whatever, except when they’re full-on invisible dragons; spells don’t work well together, except when you get a couple of spells that somehow do work really well together and become a great healer. Nobody seems to have any hard and fast rules for how this stuff works; even when they were telling us not to do dumb stuff like make human familiars they were really cagey with ‘except in limited circumstances’ and soforth.”

“Some uncertainty is – ”

“And even the most well-researched stuff, it’s going to be wrong for this, isn’t it? Because I bet most of the mages who get studied picked their spells up here, at Refujeyo. And Refujeyo only gives out the most practical, most controllable spells. Any research anyone does isn’t going to be on how spells work, it’s going to be on how the kinds of spells that Refujeyo likes work. But my curse didn’t come from here. What does the research know about spells like mine? Very little, I bet! Witches are too rare! You can’t go for a stroll in your grandma’s garden and declare you know how flowers work.”

“You agreed with Max about this yesterday,” Kylie said. “One portal mishap and you change your mind?”

“No, this isn’t about the portal. It’s about the prophecy your Eye gave in the desert.”

“The one about us?”

“It wasn’t about us. Nothing it said related to us in any way.”

“That’s because it was trying to confuse us so it could kill you! But I know this thing’s limitations, Kayden. It only ever predicts things I can prevent, even if that’s just by telling someone else about the prophecy. And it can’t predict more than about twelve hours in the future.”

That… hmm. “Twelve hours? Are you sure?”

“Ever since I got it, it’s never predicted longer than that.”

“It had never lied before, either, until it did.”

“Wait,” Max said, “your prophecy can lie? Prophecies can’t lie! There’s an error rate, but – ”

“That was no error. It was a lie, and it killed three people.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

I was losing control of this conversation. “Max,” I said, “you haven’t heard the desert prophecy yet, have you?”

“I haven’t.” We both looked at Kylie for permission. She shrugged.

I played the file.

“In a time that’s mostly been, a Hero dreamed a thousand dreams.

A goal, a wish upon a star, a kiss blown to travel far.

In a time that’s partly been, a Child screams a thousand screams.

Imprisoned in the buried heart it pushes, presses, tries to start.

In a time that’s not yet been, the Hero dies, the Child freed.

Breaks mirrors, chains, and crushes pearls, to rise from the top of the world.”

“Huh. Are they always that abstract?”

“Yeah,” Kylie said. “It’s really annoying.”

“Abstract? It seemed pretty direct to me.” I tossed my tablet behind me, onto my bed. “If I wanted to describe a prophecy that predicts deaths and those deaths are then prevented, a ‘hero dreamed a thousand dreams’ is a description I wouldn’t dismiss out of hand. And as for a child – that is, something that just recently started experiencing the world – that’s trapped in a heart that’s literally underground right now?” I tapped my own chest. “I mean, come on!”

“You just said it wasn’t about us,” Kylie said.

“Not us. Our curses.”

“The Eye doesn’t predict anything about curses! Only people!”

“How would you know? Has it ever been around other curses to predict anything about? Well, now it has. The Evil Eye just predicted its own death due to the thing in my heart. Your curse was going crazy last night; you were zoning out everywhere. And then the portal played up. And then your curse said that.”

“Hmm,” Max said. “It’s flimsy.”

“Flimsy? Did you guys not hear the same prophecy I just did? My curse is waking up and spells around me are going haywire. Now we have an actual prophecy confirming what’s going on and you think it’s flimsy?”

“Just because it happened to use the word ‘heart’ doesn’t mean it’s about your curse,” Kylie said. “What about all that stuff about breaking chains and mirrors and crushing pearls?”

I smacked my hand against the force field on the bed next to me. “These things are tools of restraint. They keep things in and out by reflecting energy back. One of these used to be on Miratova’s cauldron, until it disappeared mid-experiment… when me and my curse were in the room. I don’t know about crushing pearls yet, but I bet I find out at the worst possible time, probably nearly killing someone in the process.”

“And yet all of this is invalid,” Max said, “if the Evil Eye can lie. How do you know it’s not lying to hurt you?”

“You said yourself that prophecies can’t lie.”

“I also said that the kind of spell interference you’re talking about is impossible. Do you trust my knowledge or not? Kayden… maybe I’m being a paranoid family mage kid here, but what you’re saying makes far too much sense.”

“Uh, yeah. That’s my point.”

“I phrased that poorly. I mean, what you’re saying makes too much sense to be believable. Humans are pattern-seeking creatures and fit things to neat causes, but life is more confusing than that. A bunch of accidents just happen around you, Simon just happens to tell you it’s your fault, you just happen to end up somewhere you’re definitely not supposed to be and a prophecy just happens to confirm everything at the right moment? That’s suspicious as hell.”

“Unless you’re suggesting some kind of grand conspiracy involving tampered portals and fake prophecies – ”

“No, no! I’m suggesting that you’re freaking out and attributing a lot of random stuff to a single cause with no reason to suspect it’s related.”

“Again, did you not hear the same prophecy I did?”

“You feared this before the prophecy, didn’t you? Do you know what a confirmation bias is?”

“I know what denial is! Just because you don’t want this to be about my curse doesn’t mean it isn’t.”

“Kayden, I guarantee you’re innocent.”

“Yes. I am. Because I didn’t choose to have this curse. But if I know what it’s doing and I just sit around and do nothing about it, then guess what, Max? The next time something goes wrong, I won’t be innocent. Because I could’ve removed the danger, and I didn’t. I’m going to go talk to Surveyanto Cooper about what happened last night, and if he wants me out of the school, fine. I hope there’s some kind of fix for this, but if there isn’t, me not being around a bunch of spells is the best solution.”  

“Don’t,” Max said. “Please. Please, just… just give me two weeks, okay? Two weeks to look into some things and consult with some people I know… Just give me a chance to figure out what’s going on.”

“And if someone’s hurt in that time?”

“Then it’ll be my fault. Just give me some time.”

“You have either one week, or until the next disaster, whichever is first,” I said. “Then I’m getting the teachers involved.”