Chapter 32 #2
It sways, then begins to fall. As it connects it echoes through the arena so loudly that several eyes turn my way.
Other hopefuls, scholars watching on, the smoky wraiths lurking on the ground.
One prowls closer, a writhing creature of darkness, shifting suddenly to re-form into a shadow far too close …
I scramble along the podium, keeping my balance on the slippery, rounded edge, heart in my throat as I leap for the portal.
Something slams into my side.
I drop to the ground, narrowly missing a spit of flames beneath me and roll, finding a shadow crouched over me. My side barks in pain as I raise my hands, fear and horror filling my body. This looming creature, this maw of night looks ready to devour me whole.
It bends towards my chest and I smell decay and death and longing. And as though it desires more than flesh, more than my body, it nuzzles my chest and inhales.
I scream in rage and terror, all mingled together, as my heart leaps in the cage of my ribs, as though this creature is prying my very soul from me.
I try to grasp it, try to stab it with my blade, but it’s made of nothing but smoke, ethereal and ravenous.
It’s feeding on everything I am, just like the cold one, just like that imperious, vicious being.
I have barely anything left to fight with. But right there I find myself balanced, on the edge of a knife, a blade, and I’m not ready to topple off, so I dig deeper. I grip that feral, steely part of myself, the core of my being that does not break, does not shatter—
And push.
Time slows around me, the roaring screams of the other hopefuls fading away, and something inside me, something buried so deep, so much deeper than I’ve ever dug before … sparks.
I’m a lit match. A single flame, a flare in the darkness.
I cradle it inside myself, that ember, that slow-building flame, coaxing it out, letting it fill me, consume me.
I close my eyes and breathe. Every lesson from the Collector.
Every time I’ve quaked and trembled before an assignment, but lifted my chin and done it anyway, every room I’ve sauntered into, stalking a mark, every time I’ve walked the city streets alone, so horribly aware of my own vulnerability, fear prickling at my fingertips, eyes and teeth lurking around every corner, waiting …
The vault. The loss of control, the endless, cloying dark, my nails as a child as they scrape so uselessly at the door, the charged silence, burdened with the horror that he might not let me out this time, that I’m a ghost, that I’m powerless, that I will never be anyone but that.
Then the gates of Killmarth, the fist pummelling me back, the breaking as I shoved and shoved, as I made it through and the bracelet shattered—
I mould all of it. I take all those strands of myself, every weakness, every fear, every time I’ve got back up. Every time I kept going, placing one foot in front of the other, kept fighting, kept breathing—
I open my eyes. And the shadow stares back.
Not today .
This time when I push, my magic explodes.
An endless stream of light, of stars and heat roars into it, this prowling shadow, poised to devour me whole.
I change it. I change it into light. I wield my magic and reshape it.
And the shadow unravels, ribbons of dark and absence unspooling around me, leaving nothing behind but a glitter of stars.
Leaving nothing but my magic.
I get to my feet, staring at my hands, feeling this wonderful, endless power coursing through me, like a dam has burst, like I’ve unlocked it, like I’ve finally found it.
It’s like molten silver, like warm sunlight, like I’m dipped in toquay, charged and electric.
‘Alchemist,’ I say in wonder. ‘I’m an alchemist .’
All the times I’ve struggled, fighting for even a glimmer of my magic, to raise even a single thread of illusion, the headaches, the nose bleeds, the dizziness, striving these past months to strengthen it to a point when I could possibly just scrape through, all because it was my lesser magic.
Always my weakest form of wielding. And the Collector, an alchemist, forever training me, always pushing me, forcing me to the very brink, the very edge of what I could survive.
Alchemy. My dominant magic. And now I’m here, now it’s my life, my future, when there is nothing between me and the end, it’s sparked.
On the edge of a blade, staring into the very eyes of death, I’ve cut through to my true self, to what’s buried inside me.
To what’s always been there, waiting for me to find.
I laugh, breathless, drunk on the raw magic suffusing my veins.
I crook a single finger and the flames at my side, the flames that nearly scorched me, crackle to ice.
I can reach that portal. I can cross it, complete the final Ordeal.
The place as a scholar is mine. Glancing around, I note how few portals are left, only a handful that have not yet been claimed.
I leap onto the podium, scrambling along it, eyeing that glimmering rent in the air, just at the top, so close, just a few feet away.
Then a guttural cry shifts my attention, away from that shimmering alchemist-made portal and I look over to find Alden, across the arena.
Surrounded by shadow and flame.