Onyx
He grasped his wits quickly, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, then scanned his surroundings. He didn’t expect to see Dominic, but if he had, would he have attacked without thinking? Possibly. Probably.
Definitely.
It didn’t matter what kind of truce they had; if he saw a realistic opening to take Dominic out with, he’d do it.
Which was why it was important to both of them that he never got a chance. It could ruin everything if he failed, Dominic’s death wish or otherwise.
Onyx looked at the shackle around his ankle, half exasperated and half curious.
He’d never said that he wouldn’t try to take it off, and he wondered…
Dominic had made it sound like Onyx could rival him in strength in some ways.
Would he be able to override the locking spell Dominic had cast to keep him from breaking free?
It was something he’d have to talk to Cecile about. If he could come up with a way to break a spell like that, it would give him more options. It probably wasn’t what Dominic had intended from the magic lessons, but… Well.
Onyx still had some spirit left,[9] and he was in a situation no one like him would thrive in. The ease with which he’d touched Dominic that morning had been concerning, for all that he didn’t want to think about it. Could anyone blame him for wanting a way out?
He poked at the spell with his magic, but it seemed impenetrable.
It wasn’t the type of magic he knew how to perform, and without training, he didn’t think he could break it.
He might be able to make it explode, but that would be dangerous.
Maybe he could melt it? He looked dubiously down at the metal.
No, the chain wasn’t long enough to melt without also melting his skin in the process.
Besides, without knowing where Dominic was, it would be pointless. If he was going to make any sort of escape or assassination attempt, he needed Dominic dead before he could knock him out again.
He finally rose, stretching, and he smirked as he saw the shirt on one of the targets.
He was about to throw a torrent of flame at it when he remembered what Dominic had said, what Cecile had said.
He was using too much of his magic all at once, and if he slowed down and was more precise, he could cast for longer.
He wanted to play with some of the things he’d been learning, and if he didn’t drain himself, he’d be able to do it for longer.
He had three hours. He might as well use every minute he could instead of burning himself out in the first half hour.
So he summoned up the magic from within, and as he watched, the shirt caught on fire at the hem with barely a whisper of power. For all that it had taken little enough power-wise, it still spread quickly, engulfing the shirt within seconds in a small blaze.
That was satisfying.
If only Dominic had been wearing that shirt when it caught on fire.
Onyx tried to pay attention to how the magic materialized, but it was difficult for him to put into words even as he worked through the process.
He concentrated, and a small flame danced in his palm.
He hurled it at a target, watching as it exploded on contact and threatened to spread to another target.
Time was going to fly, and he mostly wanted to enjoy feeling awake, alive. Between the magic coursing through his body and the vampire blood in his system, he was on top of the world.
For a little while, he played with small spells, preserving his strength.
He thought about poking at the dome spell, to try to figure out how to dismantle that.
It was probably beyond him — for now. Once he understood the principle behind it, he might be able to figure out how to unravel it or overwhelm it, too.
If he could find Dominic, the source of the spell, he could kill him… then the rest would collapse.
But the spell was effective, and even as Onyx closed his eyes and sent out a pulse of questioning energy, he felt it stop at the edges of the dome.
He didn’t know how much more to do than that.
He could find things in the vicinity, he could set up simple alarm spells, he could cast illusory magic to a degree, and he could cast basic wards.
None of those things would help him in his quest to escape or kill Dominic.
At least, he didn’t think so.
He spent an hour testing the dome in various ways, poking and prodding at it with small spells. If he tried to overwhelm it, Dominic would know for sure what he was doing, and he would shut Onyx down. He couldn’t say anything about indulging curiosity, though.
Finally, he called out, “I don’t guess you’d teach me how to do the dome thing?”
Dominic’s chuckle filled the space. When he spoke, the words seemed to be coming from everywhere, with no specific directional source. “So that you can understand how to dismantle it, you mean?” he asked, amusement rich in his voice. “It seems to me that that might not be my best course of action.”
Onyx shrugged, unashamed. He wasn’t clever or manipulative, not like Dominic; he wasn’t subtle, either.
He didn’t think Dominic would’ve missed how he was testing the dome, especially since the witch would’ve expected him to spend his time hurling flames at the targets.
Which he would do, but he had more appreciation for his magic this time than the last. He might exhaust himself, but he was curious about so many things after talking to Cecile that he didn’t want to run through his reserves that quickly.
Still, he did grow bored of that after a time, and he started to play with the flames he’d thus far avoided summoning too many of. This took the least out of him; throwing a fireball was instinctive, something he’d always known how to do and had practiced so many times.
“You told me I could take out an army,” Onyx remarked, turning slowly in place as he scanned his surroundings. “I need to be more precise. How?”
“I did,” Dominic agreed. “And I could think of a few ways that fire could be used in such a way. You cast fire out from yourself, and you can start something burning from a distance. Can you cast the fire from below something and send it up? Or from above something and send it down?”
Onyx frowned at that, unsure of why that mattered.
“I could?” he ventured, and he focused on one of the targets, letting the fire descend from above and drip down like melting candle wax until it caught on fire.
“It feels funny. It takes more effort than just throwing fire.” But was it actually taking more power?
He couldn’t tell. He needed to have Cecile there with him because he had a feeling she’d teach him more than Dominic would.
The price for that, though…
He closed the door on that thought.
“Good!” Dominic said. “Now, when you make a fireball, how small can you make it? Can you make a very small, very dense fireball over the target and shoot it straight down into the target?”
There had never been any point in making small fireballs before.
Onyx had always been ready for full-fledged destruction, and anyone who saw him use magic had had to die, clearly.
No one could find out that the rebellion had a pyromancer on their side — or a witch at all, really.
It felt silly to make something small when he might need something larger.
But he did it anyway, forming a ball the size of a tennis ball in his hands and letting it orbit slowly above his palm.
He regarded it thoughtfully. It felt like it would still pack a punch despite being smaller, and he sent it flying at another target.
It went up in flames just as easily as it would have with the larger ball of fire, and he hummed with interest.
“It’s so hot that the size doesn’t really matter,” Onyx commented. “It wouldn’t kill a person on contact, though.”
Dominic hummed. “Not yet,” he agreed. “Now make it smaller, and hotter, and see if you can send it through the target.”
Onyx nodded, then summoned another ball — a golf ball sized one this time — willing it to burn hotter.
He wasn’t sure if it was working, not at first, but then he let it get closer to his hand and hissed in a breath.
He didn’t ordinarily have to worry about being burned by his own flames when they were still in the stages of creation, but this seemed different.
Of course, the second it was out of his hands and hitting something around him, everything changed. His surroundings could be the death of him once the fire manifested in full and caught anything else aflame. He knew that. And letting go of this little ball of death…
He hurled it at another target, and this time it went straight through before erupting into flames when it hit the warehouse floor on the other side.
Onyx let out a triumphant sound. “Okay, that could burn right through someone,” he announced cheerfully. “It’s not taking much to do that, either.”
He went back to playing with fireballs of varying sizes, amusing himself with seeing just how small he could make them. Bullets, too, wrought of liquid fire that burned and sizzled their way through the targets.
And he’d thought he’d been deadly before.
Still, this was all well and good, but it wouldn’t get him out of his situation.
Yet.
He just had to keep learning. Dominic had made it clear that he’d be able to come out here fairly regularly, and that meant he’d have other opportunities in the future to learn things that could help him find, target, and destroy Dominic before the witch could do anything about it.
He was pretty sure he’d already been playing for two hours, though, and he didn’t think he’d be able to manage to take the Bancroft witch down with a single strike.
He wasn’t tired, even remotely, but he’d been going through enough power to where he’d need to work to bring Dominic down.
In an ideal world, he’d have his magic and his body and maybe even one of those staves.
He daydreamed about taking Dominic out, about getting rid of all the confusing thoughts and living on his own…
but that wasn’t a fun idea either, because what did he know of living on his own?
Besides, he’d be on the run if he killed Dominic.
There would be no point in even trying to stay in one place.
They’d hunt him down and do worse than put him into Tartarus when they caught him.
It would be worth it, though.
“About thirty minutes left,” Dominic said.
Onyx wondered if he could send those projectiles in a circle around himself, fling them in all directions, and catch Dominic in the crossfire. If he was fast enough, if he spun them around, he could theoretically hit him with one of them, and if he did…
Only half an hour left. It was practically nothing.
But it would give him time to launch into a full scale attack if he so chose.
He was pretty sure he could get through the dome; it wasn’t a shield, per se.
He didn’t think it was tangible, and something to stop his fire would need to be dedicated to doing just that.
He considered it for a long moment, then abandoned the idea with a sigh. Not here, not now, not yet. Next time, maybe. Once he understood more about the dome, and maybe once he could detect where the spell Dominic used to speak to him was originating from.
He spent the next thirty minutes playing with the small projectiles, watching them burn through the targets to set what lay beyond them on fire while leaving pools of fire behind. They were hot, and he almost burned himself a few times on them.
It was exhilarating.
“It’s time, Onyx,” Dominic said. “Please lie down, so I can cast the spell.”
Onyx glared at the target that had once held Dominic’s shirt.
He considered casting a shield around himself and trying to fight it off, but he was still shackled and was now operating at maybe fifty percent of his regular power level.
Powerful elemental witch or otherwise, he lacked the training to avoid being put to sleep.
He sighed, then sat down on the ground.
Next time. Next time, he’d have a better plan and make sure he was still at full power at the end of the time in the warehouse. He’d make sure to get vampire blood right before they came out here, too, instead of only having had it a few days earlier. It might not help but… It couldn’t hurt.