Chapter 2
THE APPRENTICES
Iwatched the Apprentices training in the hall. “You’re adding them to your army? Why go through all the effort to kidnap Apprentices from Gaia? Don’t you already have enough warriors? What difference can just a handful of Apprentices make to you?”
“All the difference in the Many Realms,” Fenris replied.
Well, wasn’t he cryptic?
Queen Seriana’s gaze panned across the hall, her expression darkening. “He’s not just made them his warriors. He’s made them his Polymages.”
I gaped at her in shock. Words failed me.
“Look there.” She indicated the six smaller cages hanging on each of the three big cages with Apprentices inside. “Six cages, six spirits. One for each branch of magic.”
I hadn’t even noticed that, but there was indeed a spirit trapped inside each of those small cages, a tiny flicker of colored light pulsing like a firefly.
The spirits were so bright and beautiful.
How had I missed them? Whatever Fenris had given me to knock me out had hit me hard, my mind as much as my body.
I needed to clear my head fast. If I was going to get out of this mess, I would definitely need to have my wits about me.
“This is your master plan, Fenris,” Seriana realized. “You captured spirits. I don’t know how you did it, but you found a way to drain the spirits’ magic and transfer it to these young Gaian Apprentices.”
“Jealous?”
“It’s unnatural, Fenris.” Seriana cast a scornful look upon her son. “You saturated the Apprentices with all six kinds of magic to create Polymages. That shouldn’t be possible, and it’s definitely not natural. You are dabbling in dark magic.”
“This is how Polymages are made,” Fenris said.
“No one knows how Polymages are made.”
“I do.” Fenris’s chin turned upward. Defiance burned in his eyes. “It took centuries, but I finally know.”
When Fenris said centuries, I realized two things.
One, that the concept of a Polymage was far older than I’d thought. It went back further than Conner and Kato and me.
And two, that Fenris himself was far older than I’d ever imagined.
What did that mean for me and Kato and Conner? How had we become Polymages? I certainly couldn’t remember ever being locked in a cage and bombarded with magic. I’d had magic my whole life, long before the Blending ceremony. What did it mean? Was there more than one way to become a Polymage?
“You are playing with forces you do not understand, Fenris,” Seriana said. “It’s wrong. Magic works in very particular, very defined ways.”
“Then explain her.” Fenris pointed at me.
Seriana shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know how Polymages came to be, but I do know this abominable experiment of yours is not the way. There is an order to the Many Realms, an order which makes everything work. You have disrupted that order.”
“Your mind is so small. So unimaginative.” He grabbed his mother’s jaw roughly in his hand, giving her a stony glare.
Then, he shoved her away, disgusted. “I used to think you were so mighty, so terrifying. But you’re nothing.
You’ve done nothing. Nothing but play the same old game, over and over again. I am changing that game.”
“Foolish boy. You don’t even realize what you’ve done. You can’t just burn the laws of magic and expect there to be no consequences.”
“Only you need to fear the consequences of what I’m doing,” he replied.
“I will change everything. And then you and all of the other small-minded leaders of today will fall by the wayside. You will be obsolete.” He turned his gaze on his new Polymages.
“Look at them, Mother. See how strong they are. They are the future.”
I watched the Polymages train. One of them looked like a younger version of the Rebel Vivi.
She must have been Vivi’s little sister.
Her eyes looked so familiar. It took me a moment to realize why.
I’d stared into those eyes that day in the Park, when her armor had fallen away.
She’d worn a head-to-toe bodysuit under that armor, so I hadn’t seen her face, but she couldn’t hide those eyes: dark and powerful and haunted.
Vivi’s little sister was the mysterious female Techno Knight.
She was the one who’d grabbed Kylie’s body and disappeared through the Spirit Tree.
Fenris caught me looking, and he smiled.
“Evie is my greatest accomplishment, my finest Polymage thus far.” He waved his hand at Evie, and she trotted over.
“She is a fine warrior. The Polymage magic took to her fastest of all the candidates. The process works better when they are young and pliable. Directly after the Blending is best. The Blending to prime their magic, then heavy doses of all six kinds of magic over the course of several months. The older ones can’t take the magic so well.
They aren’t very flexible. But the young can take a lot of pain before they break. ”
Fenris patted Evie on the head, like she was a pet dog, then waved her off. She rejoined the others in the training formation.
I felt my fists clench up, anger boiling inside of me. “They’re people, not pets or slaves or dolls. You can’t snatch them away from their lives and everyone they know, bombard them with dangerous magic, train them until they break, and force them to serve you until they die.”
Fenris’s brows lifted. “Why not? Isn’t that precisely what your Government does to you?
They remove teenagers with potential from their homes and chain them to the Spirit Trees, where they’re bombarded with magic.
Then they subject you to hard training until you break.
They make you swear to serve them until you die. ”
“That’s not the same—”
“Isn’t it?” he cut me off. “Do Gaian sixteen-year-olds get to choose whether they get magic?”
“No, but everyone wants—”
“And would you describe the Blending as a painless experience?”
It was supposed to be, but it had been anything but painless for me. According to Conner, that was because I’d already had magic before the Blending. I wasn’t going to tell Fenris that, though. I settled for giving him my icy glower.
“You are an odd girl, Savannah Winters. So argumentative one moment, so quiet the next. What are you hiding?”
“What are you hiding?” I countered.
His lip twitched, betraying a hint of amusement.
So he thought I was funny—or maybe being evil just put him in a good mood.
“I will learn all of your secrets, of course.” He glanced at Seriana.
“Yours too, Mother. It’s only a matter of time now that you’re here.
” He focused on me again. “You are an enigma, Savannah Winters: a Polymage that I did not create. You will help me make better Polymages. Stronger Polymages.”
“I won’t help you.”
“You have no choice. Polymages are the ultimate mystery—and the ultimate solution. An army of them would change everything. No one will be able to stand against me.”
I squared my shoulders and stood up taller. “I will stand against you.”
He laughed. “You? You can’t even save yourself! How do you expect to save others?”
“I can—”
“Do nothing against me,” he cut me off. “You are naive, Savannah Winters. You have all this power, but you have no idea how to use it. You’re here because I need a Polymage to perfect my formula, and you were an easy target.
Kato and Conner would be difficult to catch, but you…
” He moved in closer, triumph lighting up his eyes.
“You are a clueless, helpless novice. And sure enough, you walked right into my trap.”
My fists clenched. I unclenched them. He was trying to get me angry. I wasn’t going to let him. There was too much at stake. I needed to keep my wits about me.
“But why abduct Apprentices from Gaia?” I asked him calmly. “Surely, there are more than enough people in the Many Realms who want to join your Polymage army.”
“Many would like to be a Polymage, but so few can be. Apprentices are prime candidates. They have just the right amount of magic,” Fenris replied. “I can’t make Polymages from humans. And the spirits won’t blend with supernaturals.”
That last one wasn’t entirely true. I’d had magic before the Blending, but no way was I going to tell Fenris that. I wouldn’t do anything that might help him. Like Seriana had told him, what he was doing was unnatural.
One of the three Apprentice cages rattled. Dirt-crusted hands clutched the bars. A pair of haunted eyes met mine. Kylie. I’d found her.
I had to hold myself back to keep from running to her. I couldn’t let Fenris know she was my friend. He’d find a way to use that against me, to force me to help him. So I glanced into the other two cages too. I didn’t recognize the boy inside either one. They must have been last year’s Apprentices.
I didn’t see Asher anywhere. I hadn’t expected to see him—he’d been catapulted into another realm, after all—but finding him here certainly would have been convenient.
I could have rescued him, along with Kylie and the other Apprentices.
I didn’t know how, but I was going to get us all out of here. Somehow.
At the moment, my magic was only a dull, muted trickle. The teleportation spell that had brought me here had drained me dry. It was so…frustrating. The Apprentices were right there in front of me, and I couldn’t do anything to help them.
I had to wait for my magic to return before I made my move. And, even then, even with magic, it wouldn’t be easy. I watched the seven Apprentices running through their drills, their movements in sync, their faces devoid of emotion.
“You brainwashed them,” Seriana said.
I’d noticed that too. Fenris had them completely under his control. The other three Apprentices, the ones trapped in the cages, were still hanging on, but who knew how long that would last. Time was running out.
“This can’t work,” Seriana said.
Evie collapsed to the ground, convulsing. One moment she was fine, and the next she wasn’t.
“You see, Fenris?” the Vampire Queen said. “Their magic is unstable.”
“She’s right,” I said. “The Apprentices were force-fed all that magic. It is against nature. It’s not how magic is meant to work. Each Apprentice is meant to have one specific power, be in one specific Tribe.”
Evie was still coughing. She couldn’t stop.
“You made her sick,” Seriana told her son.
Fenris watched Evie, unconcerned. And that’s when a sickening thought hit me. This wasn’t the first time Evie had gone into convulsions. Fenris knew his experiments were hurting the Apprentices—and he simply didn’t care.
“You pumped her full of more magic than she could handle, and now her body is rejecting it,” Seriana said. “It’s too much. You’re killing her.”
Fenris scoffed at her. “I have given them a priceless gift.” His gaze snapped to the Apprentices. “Isn’t that right, soldiers?”
“Yes, Prince Fenris.”
They spoke in perfect unison, all seven brainwashed Apprentices, even Evie, who could barely stop coughing long enough to speak.
They were like puppets, and Fenris was the puppet master.
There was some kind of fog over their minds.
I could feel it there, suffocating their free will. I had to set them free.
“I just need to perfect the procedure.” Fenris frowned at Evie, who’d finally stopped coughing. “And then I will control an army that rivals the Court’s army.”
Seriana’s mouth tightened. “Don’t be a child, Fenris. You don’t need to fight everyone. You don’t need to beat everyone.”
His smile turned sharp. A predatory glow rolled over his eyes. “Of course I do.”
“Once again, you demonstrate that you’re completely unfit to rule anyone. This is why I appointed Lyssa as my successor.”
“You always favored her over me,” he replied savagely.
So that’s what this was about. Queen Seriana had named Fenris’s little sister her successor, and Fenris went off on a temper tantrum. But instead of throwing things and shouting, he was building an army to overthrow the Many Realms Court.
“You have seen enough.” Fenris waved his hand, and his guards herded me and Seriana back into the hallway, back to our cell.