Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism) (4 page)

“Now, some of you might be wondering why I teach this class underground when there are plenty of spare rooms in the main castle. The answers is two-fold: first, being immersed in the ground makes some types of magic easier, closer to the core of the world and all that; secondly, there is a tiny chance of something going horribly wrong in here and the room exploding. If that happens, being underground will prevent the rest of the school from absorbing most of the shock from the blast. And no, I’m not joking when I tell you this,” he added calmly before anyone could ask.

“Any other questions before we begin?”

The room was eerily silent as they all absorbed this information. Hayden was trying not to imagine what sort of condition he would be in if the room exploded with him in it. Master Laurren obviously took their silence for assent and began the lesson.

“Hayden, since you answered your classmate’s question earlier, the first thing I’ll show you will be of interest to you as a prism-user.” He moved behind his desk and extracted what looked like a clear sheet of glass no larger than a window pane, carrying it by the edges to the middle of the room.
Standing it upright, he set it to one side of the fire-pit and let go. Hayden expected the panel to fall to the ground and shatter, but somehow it remained standing balanced on its end, as if there was an imaginary frame holding it up. Master Laurren stepped away from it and gestured to the pane of glass.

“This is an extremely
expensive piece of equipment called an Absorber, so named because it absorbs magic that is cast at it,” he explained to the class. “Hayden, draw one of your prisms and cast any spell at the Absorber.”

Surprised but curious, Hayden drew his clear prism and cast Stop at the transparent panel, tensing in preparation for the unknown.

Nothing happened.

Master
Laurren didn’t look surprised. “Try one of your tinted prisms.”

Hayden switched to his blue-tinted prism and cast Sleep. A few people gasped as a splotch of blue color hit the Absorber. It looked like he’d flung blue
goo at it, and he expected the stuff to slide down the glass to the floor, but once again he was surprised when it remained intact.

“Clear prism, clear magical imprint. Blue prism, blue magical imprint,”
Laurren said gently. “What do you suppose would happen if you tried your rose-tinted or amber prisms?”

“Rose-tinted or amber goo on the Absorber,” Hayden answered automatically, and the Master nodded affirmation.

“Now try your violet prism.”

Hayden raised an eyebrow and said, “I haven’t been cleared to carry and use violet prisms yet, sir.”

Frowning thoughtfully, Master Laurren went to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a half-depleted violet prism, dusting it off on his robes.

“Use this one, for demonstration purposes. You should be able to see most of your normal spells within it, so stick with something familiar.”

Interested by the new prism, Hayden took it in his hand and fit it into the eyepiece of his circlet, turning toward the light and twisting it slowly. There were many more arrays in this prism than in any he’d used before, and the effect was a little dizzying and gave him a mild headache. Within a minute he’d located the Slow alignment, and cast it at the Absorber like he had with the others. The goo on the Absorber turned green.

A few people made noises of interest, and Hayden raised the eyepiece so he could see normally.

“It’s green,” he stated bluntly, “not violet.”

“Try again. Same spell,” Master
Laurren coached him, and Hayden did as he was told, casting Slow once more. This time the glass turned orange.

“Why is it doing that?” A fourth-year girl raised her hand. “It should be purple, especially if he cast the same spell twice through the same prism.”

Master Laurren said, “I have no idea why it doesn’t work with violet prisms, but it doesn’t. The ‘goo’—as Hayden calls it—is a visible representation of the magic being cast, which as you know is normally impossible for us to see. You typically only see the effects of the spells you cast, not the magic behind it, which is what makes the Absorber useful. Every colored prism produces magic in that same color, with the exception of violet, which utilizes every color of the rainbow.”

“That doesn’t make
any sense,” Hayden mused out loud. “Violet is a defined color, so it should only be casting violet light. The clear prism should be the one throwing off all different colors since it’s the only one that allows all light to pass through it without tinting effects.”

“And yet…” Master
Laurren gestured at the Absorber again. “This is believed to be the reason why violet prisms are capable of casting most spells that are visible in other prisms, but as Hayden says, one would expect the clear prism to have that honor. Prism-users who are interested in research almost always try to solve that mystery at some point in their career, though not a lot of advancements have been made in the last hundred years.”

He shrugged as though it was a matter of no importance and said, “Now, take out your writing supplies and we’ll discuss the many properties of the Absorber, and how it is used to help us
better understand magic…”

By the time he got through his morning classes, Hayden’s head was swimming with new information. Elixirs would probably prove to be every bit as difficult as it was last year, Abnormal Magic was strangely fascinating
but frustrating, and they had even begun crafting their own emblems in Charms now (though Hayden discovered he was a terrible woodcarver).

He
dropped heavily onto the wooden bench beside his friends in the dining hall and let his bag hit the floor with a thud, grabbing every plate within reach and filling his own.

“Rough morning?”
Conner ventured after watching him spoon four scoops of mashed potatoes onto his plate and drown them in gravy.

“Just information overload.
It happens every year during the first week, like my brain forgets how to learn while I’m on holiday.” Hayden shrugged, piling strips of beef onto his mountain of potatoes and gravy.

Zane snorted in amusement and said, “
He’s lying, Conner. He looks confused most of the time, whether we’ve been on holiday or not.”

Hayden tossed a roll at his head
but his friend caught it in one hand and took a satisfied bite.

“At least there’s no I.S.C. this year,” Tess put in helpfully. Hayden couldn’t help but notice that her loose blond curls were pulled back into a high ponytail today, and that it made the angles of her face stand out more. “Not that they’d do it this year with a war going on, but at least you don’t have to worry about the possibility.”

“True,” Hayden answered, forcing himself to blink and look away from Tess’s face before he creeped her out with his staring. “My goal is to get through the entire year without having to visit the infirmary once.”

“You should also try to avoid being bodily carried to your bed because you’re so banged up that you can’t walk on your own,”
Zane put in. “You’re getting kind of heavy and I’m not sure I can lift you anymore without throwing my back out.”

The others laughed at that.

“Speaking of goals for the year…” Zane continued, “It’s the first week of school; you know what that means?” He didn’t pause to wait for a response. “New challenge team groups. We can finally get rid of that snot, Lorn.”

“Good,” Tamon said with an eye-roll, “because I’m tired of listening to you all complain about what an obnoxious toad he is all the time.”

Hayden couldn’t speak, owing to a hefty spoonful of food he had just shoved in his mouth and was in danger of choking on, but he stared down at his plate thoughtfully until his airways were clear.

“I don’t know…” he answered at last. “I don’t like him any
more than the rest of you, but he did prove useful a few times last year,” he admitted grudgingly.

Zane looked at him as though he’d just lost his mind in a dangerous way.

“Are you kidding me? You can’t possibly want that brat on our team again this year. He still calls you the Broken Prism behind your back to make fun of you.”

Hayden shrugged and said, “He says it to my face, too. If that’s the worst I have to endure this year then my life has improved significantly.” He smirked humorlessly. “I’m just saying
, we did pretty well in the rosters last year, partly because of him.”

“We could find another Powder major without too much trouble though,” Zane argued around a mouthful of peas. “Heck, Tess is a dual major for crying out loud, one of them in Powders.”

Tess was watching the two of them in silence, her eyes narrowed slightly in deep thought. When Hayden met her gaze she obviously felt compelled to speak, and said, “If Hayden wants another Powder major then that’s what we’ll get. He’s our group leader, and we’ve always come through the rankings well under his leadership. Besides, having a Powder on the team lets me focus more heavily on Elixirs in our arenas, which has been a big help in the past.”

Zane frowned and said, “Fine, another Powder major then. Just not anyone whose last name is Trout.”

Hayden shook his head and said, “I think I want it to be Lorn.” For some reason his friends’ doubts made him all the more certain.

Tamon raised his eyebrows and said, “Have you been poisoned? What in the world has come over you?”

“Asher told me last year that I needed to learn to work with people who don’t like me, because let’s face it, there are still a lot of people in the world who hate me because of my last name.” He shrugged. “Last year I worked with Lorn because the Masters stuck him in my group and forced me to. This year it’s my choice and I’m going to prove to them that we can work together on our own terms and still come out on top of the rankings.”

A smile crept over his face as he looked at Zane and said, “Are you up for the challenge
, or are you going to wimp out on me?”

Zane immediately put on his most dignified expression and said, “You’re on. We’re going to hit number one again this year or go down in flames trying.
But hey, at least we’ll take one of the Trouts down with us if we fail epically. ”

Conner was still giving Hayden an appraising look and said, “Why the sudden bout of maturity? Don’t tell me you’re going to stop shouting at the Masters and challenging them to duels when you get angry this year—it was such good entertainment.”

Hayden grimaced in embarrassment and said, “That was kind of my plan, actually. It occurred to me that screaming at authority figures probably wasn’t the way to go about earning their respect.”

They shared a laugh over that, and Hayden sacrificed his remaining lunch to Bonk after his familiar submerged his face in the mashed potato mound and nearly suffocated
trying to get it back out, flapping his wings vigorously and spattering them all with potatoes.

“So you’re not going to scream, fight,
or
get your butt kicked this year?” Zane frowned, wiping gravy off of his shirt from Bonk’s splashing. “This year is going to suck.”

Hayden punched him in the shoulder as the others resumed laughing.

“Don’t worry, there’s always summer holiday,” Hayden assured him. “What are the odds of me
not
running into a horde of monsters who want to tear me to shreds?”

“Fair point,” his friend conceded. “Hope I’m there for it.
We haven’t become local heroes in at least a year and a half.”

Lunch ended soon after that
, and Hayden grabbed Bonk by the middle and carried him to the Prism classroom, as the dragon’s face was still covered in mashed potatoes and he couldn’t see well enough to fly.

He suddenly remembered that he was the only person in the level-four Prism class, and set his things
down at a desk near Asher’s, pulling a spare napkin from his pocket and attempting to clear Bonk’s face of food before class started. Cinder alit on the desk beside him so silently that Hayden startled, unaware that the dragon was even in the room until now.

Bonk exhaled heavily through his nose to clear it of potatoes, and Cinder looked at his counterpart with
haughty distaste.

“I see you haven’t taught him to eat gracefully yet,” Master Asher closed the door behind him as he entered the room. “Small wonder—my old man’s been trying to train him for longer than you’ve been alive.”

“He knows how to behave, he just doesn’t do it unless it’s really important, because he likes being obnoxious.” Hayden made a face at Bonk, who was preening and cleaning his wings with his tongue.

“Bonk, Cinder, why don’t you two find Horace and go play outside? Hayden and I have import
ant prism work to do,” Asher informed the dragons, who immediately took flight and soared out an open window without further prompting.

Asher sat at the desk beside Hayden and turned his chair around to face him. “So, how’s your first day going?”

“Pretty well, I guess. I got to use a violet prism during Abnormal Magic, to show how it uses different colors of light on an Absorber.”

The Prism Master raised an eyebrow in interest and said, “Oh? Lucky you, he normally doesn’t show that until later in the year. What did you think of the violet prism?”