Chapter 13 #2
I review a litany of additional texts. The ancient scholars debated whether echo-beasts are conscious, sentient, magical surge, or forces of nature.
Most argued for the latter: magical entropy given form.
But something nags at me. My magic seems to hesitate, reluctant.
Is my Cognitive Resonance afraid of what we’ll find?
Or does this mean there’s something . . .
off . . . about the scholars’ work? I scrawl a notion not found in any of these books and underline it for good measure: something far more adaptive, perhaps even learning?
Taken together, it paints a disturbing picture. A primal force, drawn to me for reasons unknown, with unending appetite, that’s escalating and evolving into ever-more perilous and petrifying configurations.
The last few questions are the most crucial: How does one fight it? Are there any recorded instances of echo-beasts being defeated or contained permanently? And most importantly, how do we get rid of it?
I turn my attention to these, harmonizing with my magic as it brings me relevant texts. Staying focused, I reach for the latest artifact that the magic surfaces for me, a time-worn parchment the color of dried earth with edges that threaten to crumble like autumn leaves. I wrap my hand around it.
As soon as I touch it, a rush of power and light whooshes into me like air being pulled into a vacuum.
It’s too much, too fast, out of control.
Magic, dizzying, overwhelming magic, floods my senses.
The library shelves warp, colors bleed, and the solid armchair beneath me becomes quicksand.
Disjointed scenes flash through my mind: a lean man in fine, pleated linen, frantically scrambling backward in a crumbling stone chamber.
A sickening metallic tang in the air, and glowing red runes flaring with destructive force.
Gold bands sliding up his arms as he strains, channeling immense energy toward a coiling mass of shadows, vast, and beyond anything I’ve yet seen in my waking life.
The shadows pulse—awful, cold, hungry. Filling the chamber, they deepen, growing denser as the magic pours in.
A discordant cacophony rings in my ears.
Muffled shouts, a woman’s desperate cry, and then, darkness. Crushing cold.
“They’re trying to overpower it, but that just feeds it more,” I gasp, emerging from the vision like a drowning woman breaking the water’s surface.
Kade is already at my side, crouching beside the chair.
His eyes, usually so guarded, are suffused with alarm, fixed on my face.
He doesn’t touch me, but just knowing he’s there is grounding, like an anchor in the swirling aftermath of the vision.
My breath comes in ragged gasps, the metallic tang of the past still clinging in my nostrils.
I’m shaking with residual terror as the truth becomes obvious—the echo-beast isn’t just a monster to be fought; it’s a hungry void, invigorated by any power hurled against it.
All those people’s efforts, all that raw magic, only served to strengthen it, to help it solidify into something truly monstrous. We’d been thinking about it all wrong.
“What happened?” His voice is urgent, pulling me fully back.
My hands are still trembling, and I shake my head trying to get rid of the residual ringing in my ears.
“I saw . . . a vision. The past.” I lock onto Kade’s gold-rimmed eyes, checking to see whether he believes me.
In them, I find nothing but conviction and concern.
“They fought it with a huge amount of magic. So much power. But it just grew. It absorbed it. It was hungry.”
Kade’s entire body grows rigid. “And it’s feeding on you.”
With a chill, I remember the way it siphoned my light in the park. “We can’t fight it like they did, Kade. We have to find another way.”
“We will.” He looks so determined, he almost convinces me.
Gently, he tries to take the scroll out of my clenched hand.
“Wait,” I say, carefully unrolling it. I almost ruined it during the vision, my body seizing up and further damaging the fragile parchment.
Together we skim the contents. Whatever I expected to find after my, shall we say, extreme reaction, this isn’t it.
It’s a deceptively simple document, with neat, antiquated script in lines down the page.
Names, dates, cause of death. It’s a death register from some forgotten village.
The entries start off mundane—fever, old age, childbirth—but the last few are scrawled in a different, hurried hand.
“Lost in the dark,” “taken by the creeping shadows,” “accompanied the soothsayer.”
“Unreadable,” Kade murmurs beside me, and I resist the urge to lean into him for comfort. “Those might be dates?” He points to the column of dates down the page.
“What do you mean ‘unreadable’?”
Kade fixes me with a level look.
Right. It means he can’t read it.
“I can read it,” I say in a breathless tone.
His eyes flicking to the mark on my arm, he gives a brief nod. I feel like he’s adding “translation” to his mental list of what I can do. “Must be the magic. What does it say?”
“It’s a death registry. I think an echo-beast killed people in this village.”
We stare at the ancient parchment in silence, the implications settling over us like a shroud. Was the whole village consumed by shadows? The final entries descend into terror, threatening to pull me with them.
“How many?” Kade asks quietly.
I count the shadow-related deaths, my finger tracing the hurried script.
“Fifteen. Maybe more? The last few entries are barely legible.” I look up at him, noticing how close he’s become, how his shoulders are angled like he’s ready to shield me from whatever might emerge from the page.
“This is what happens when it gets stronger . . .”
“We won’t let it get that far.”
Searching his face, I can see that he truly believes that.
But there’s something else, too, an underlying intensity that I suddenly know has nothing to do with duty.
He’s still crouched beside my chair, closer than he usually allows himself to be.
The vision isn’t just a data point to him—he was scared.
Not scared of my uncontrolled magic, though. Scared that he couldn’t protect me?
Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, I wish I could focus this truth-telling ability better.
Then I’d finally be able to figure out what’s going on with him.
What he’s keeping from me. The memory of the way he snarled at Seb, the territorial way he pulled me away and refused to let go, flashes through my mind.
He called Seb a “distraction.” But that feels like a lie, a thin veil over something far more primal.
The way he looks at me—it’s more than just a Warden containing an anomaly.
More than a teacher training a pupil. It’s deeper, and I’m starting to suspect that he’s at war with himself for some reason.
It’s in the way he watches me with those dark umber eyes, drinking in every detail like he’s memorizing the curve of my mouth for some private torment.
It’s how his jaw tightens when I laugh, how his hands clench into fists when I step too close, how his breathing changes when I say his name.
There’s hunger there, bottomless as the echo-beast’s and barely leashed, but every time the air between us crackles with possibility, he pulls away like I’ve burned him.
The contradiction is driving me slowly insane.
“You okay?” he asks, with aching gentleness, and I realize I’ve been zoning out.
I nod, pushing away all of the thoughts in my head—of echo-beasts and the ancient past and of him.
The books that were floating around me have all fallen to the floor, haphazardly strewn about my chair.
I must have dropped them when I lost control of the magic.
One book’s spine has bent backward, another has lost a page, and more are creased and bent.
An unexpected tear wells up in my eye. I damaged the books. For some reason, this detail, beyond everything else that’s going on, makes me want to cry.
I blink the traitorous moisture away before Kade can see, but of course it’s too late. He’s already caught it. I straighten and force my face to display my resolve, willing him to see me as capable even if I can’t be unaffected.
“We’ve learned enough. You’re drained.” He finally stands, but doesn’t budge from my side. “And I’m not sticking around to find out if the beast felt that surge through the wards. Or if the other Wardens in residence are coming to investigate. We’re heading home. Now.”
The thought of leaving this place fills me with remorse, but he’s right. My head aches and I haven’t gotten rid of the lingering tremors from the vision yet. And what if the echo-beast is coming here?
I turn my earnest, probably still-damp eyes toward him as he gently but firmly pulls me to my feet. “We can come back, though, right?”
A flicker of a smile. “Sure, Librarian.”
“I have a lot more to research,” I say with a brave sniffle.
“Of course you do.” His large, warm hand settles on the small of my back, propelling me toward the exit.
I drag my feet, twisting to look at the books scattered around my abandoned chair. Another tear threatens as I take in their state. “Can I take these home?”
Kade halts, glancing between the books and the door. He looks down at me, and the rigid, protective lines of his face soften instantly. “Y—”
“No. Nope. Absolutely not,” Seb cuts in, watching with us concern from across the library foyer. “I gotta draw the line somewhere.”
I forgot he was here. My eyes jerk up to him guiltily. “I’m so sorry about the books.”