The Awakening of Ren Crown (59 page)

Bone, smoke, enlargement charm.

Bats during the bell ritual. The tricorn after I had set up shop. The demon that I barely remembered. The narwhal. Countless other incidents.

Some of them had been black magic backlashes and soul-binding ritual repercussions. All facilitated by my eaten-away control cuff. And the storage papers. Where had I pulled the space from? How was I creating the space in those papers? Why hadn't I thought that the space had to be coming from
somewhere
. In my single-mindedness, I had simply never thought about
where
. I had been too mono-focused on
everything
.

Ever since Christian had sparked electricity between his fingers, my world had been turned upside down and everything had been crazy. I just wanted him
back
.

And instead...I had created a bone giant. From my rib experiment, there was no doubt about that. With a shaky hand, I entered my room. I was responsible for this catastrophe. And I had the only solution.

Things couldn't possibly get worse.

Olivia surveyed me in that narrow-eyed, cool way that she had. “We need to talk,” she said as soon as I had shut the door.

Neph and Will burst through the door behind me, knocking me to the side. “Ren, we need to talk to you. Thank God we found you first.”

Neph slammed the door closed, leaning heavily against it as if she had just run a long distance. They seemed to realize Olivia was in the room at the same time. Will stood awkwardly in the middle of the space, breathing more heavily than normal. “Er...that is, we need to speak to you.”

I thought Olivia might spin around in her seat and ignore them, but her narrow-eyed gaze turned to them, to me, then back to them. “I think we might possibly have the same thing to say.”

Will and Neph looked nervous. “Oh. Just something homework related for us.”

Screams and roars shook the building.

Olivia wore a very jaded look as she surveyed them without response.

“It is a
dire
homework issue,” Will appended.

A long, strangled scream made me grab my hair in both fists.

“Well, I wouldn't want my roommate to get a bad grade,” Olivia said. “It would reflect badly on me.”

“Yes, exactly. If you could just come with us, Ren, we can get this straightened—”

“I was just thinking I had a proper roommate for once.” Olivia shrugged. “But if you think you can talk her out of raising the dead and into fixing this problem without getting expelled or imprisoned, feel free.”

She turned around in her chair. I could tell that the other two were staring stupidly at the back of her head along with me, but I couldn't get past the pit in my stomach. The abject fear.

“How...how did you know?”

She just turned and stared at me.

I swallowed and looked at the others. “And you two?”

Will and Neph exchanged a glance. “The eyes of the bone giant are like those black-and-white patterned designs you draw.”

My heart thumped loudly in my chest.

“And we started talking about your...wounds.” They both looked uncomfortable at the admission that they had been comparing notes. “And put things together.”

“Ok.” I took a deep breath. “Ok.”

“Who are you trying to raise?” Olivia asked without emotion.

“My brother. My twin.” I couldn't seem to raise my voice from a whisper. “He died three and a half months ago during his Awakening.”

“You've been experimenting the whole time you've been here,” Will said softly. “Trying to beat the four month mark.”

I couldn't look at him. I didn't want to feel that I had betrayed him by not taking his warnings to heart all those weeks ago, but I had
needed
to ignore those warnings.

“Yes. Since nearly the minute in the First Layer when I realized I could do magic, I started planning. Before I even asked you about necromancy. Before I even knew there was a time line.”

I could see glances exchanged. A giant tearing sound reverberated through the building.

Neph won the silent exchange and turned to me. “Studying the souls of the dead in a passive, non-invasive way is not a problem, Ren. Trying to raise the dead? There are reasons it is forbidden.”

“The dead don't listen well.” Olivia's expression was perfectly smooth. “It is better to have sentient beings that can follow explicit orders, yet still make moment-to-moment decisions. Very wearing to try and control all of them at the same time.”

We all stared at her. She haughtily stared back. “What? It's why war czars are always ordering their scientists to make golems, even though the scientists continually fail and die horrifically in the process.”

Neph took a deep breath. “Right. Back to raising the dead. Ren, it's invasive. Souls find rest in a very short period of time. You rip them away if you try to bring them back later.”

I felt the tears trickle down. I never wanted to hurt Christian. But those books were full of lies. “He calls to me.”

Neph immediately moved toward me and gripped my hands. “My Father died three years ago. I felt the same way. It's normal, I promise. They teach the consequences to us early because it
is
such a normal reaction. I can help you create keepsakes. Capture memories. They aren't the same. I know that too. But it will help. Ok?”

She was telling me that I needed to let him go.

“He calls for me to help,” I whispered. “He's not at rest.” And I didn't know how to let him go. To rip apart that part of me that he held and always would.

“Magic and emotion do funny things to us sometimes.” I could feel her magic trying to soothe me. “Let me help you later. But we have to fix this now.”

I nodded without speaking, then wiped the back of my hand over my face. “Yes, of course. I need to fix it. I know I do. I do.” The bone giant roared in the background.

I verbalized the thoughts running through my head, trying to make sense of the situation. “It is a two-pronged problem. The immediate one.” The roaring repeated. “And the growing repercussion. Every time I did an experiment, something happened outside of it. Something smaller. This is none of those. I didn't use black-and-white drawing patterns in any part of the rib experiment—I used them in an earlier one. The magic is collecting.” I knew I was babbling almost incoherently to them, but I didn't have time for explanation.

I grabbed the storage paper containing my research. I turned it over and concentrated. My magic came out shrill and uneven to match my emotion, but the books and papers and tokens poured onto my bed. I pointed at the three of them, my friends. “I need you to stay here and figure out why. Because the collection problem has to be neutralized separately—or else each individual attempt would have done so—I don't have time for more explanation. This is all of my research. The journal is detailed. I have to go get rid of that thing.”

I grabbed the beautiful, perfect charcoal pencil Stevens had given me, and shoved the tip in the hole of the haunting lavender paint tube. “Whatever you do,
do not
touch the paint tube,” I yelled as I ran to the door, lavender sparkles swirling along the surface of the pencil. “Give it to Stevens, if I don't make it back.”

“Ren!” Will and Neph both shouted.

Olivia stepped behind me, blocking them, as I slipped through the door. I had known Olivia would understand. She saw the big picture—she was a general, a queen. I was merely an errant knight off to do my duty. A general didn't waste all of her pieces on the frontal assault.

~*~

I didn't have far to run. The rampaging smoked bone giant was approaching Dorm Twenty-Five, leaving a path of devastation behind him.

It was like a piece of war art come to life. The visual and sensory details displayed in fine detail. Combat mages running forth even as their comrades fell, crushed at their feet. Flung like ragdolls to the side. Students were running in every direction, ripped clothing on usually impeccably dressed mages acting as tattered flags flying in the wind.

Combat mages were sprawled to all sides of the beast's path, broken. Only five minutes had passed since Isaiah had broadcast his feed. Five minutes for this type of complete ruination to occur.

Five more minutes until some of these mages wouldn't be able to be revived.

“What is it?” someone yelled.

I rubbed my ribs and swallowed. The beast whipped around and I caught sight of its face as it swatted another mage to the side and roared.

“Christian?” I whispered.

“I've never seen such a thing. Argh!” Another mage went down, her dark hair snapping against the dirt.

This, then, is what my experiments and magic had produced. My feet were firmly stuck to the ground, and I was unable to do anything but watch as the beast’s patterned eyes swirled and its large bones turned to smoke, spells cast by defending mages passing clear through. It returned to a solid state and swung. Another mage down.

Christian? My lips formed the word without sound.

It roared and its intended target ducked. Another two mages went down, but two others slid on their knees beneath a strike. I blinked and looked more closely at the group. A contingent of five combat mages was working together as a unit within the melee, and they were clearly getting the most accomplished.

Alexander Dare and Camille Straught were two of the five. The other three were guys I had seen often around Dare.

Their cloaks whirled and sliced, black scales rippling down to points as the edges lengthened, then rippling up to reform.

Camille whacked off a piece of a thigh bone with a red-edged sword. Dare had traded in his staff for a sword as well—this one deep black. He severed an elbow with his thrust and the knobby chunk of bone rolled off. The beast turned to smoke, rippled, then reappeared, completely intact.

“Third form!”

Camille and one of the other guys thrust their sword blades through the swirling black-and-white eyes. When they pulled them out, the blades were gone.

“Son of a—” Camille Straught looked gorgeous and
pissed
. She did a magic-enhanced backflip to avoid the bone arm headed her way, and landed on one knee, hand upon the ground. Her fingers gripped a blade of grass, and she pulled a green sword from the ground.

One of the other guys knocked off a piece of the giant too, but the bone smoked, then repaired. “It's no use, it doesn't—”

“It doesn't matter,” Dare shouted back sharply. “Just keep it occupied.”

I looked around me at the rescuers dragging the wounded to two of the campus portal arches, and understood his plan.

“We've been keeping it occupied. It is almost to the dorms!” one of the guys yelled.

“Pay attention!” Dare shouted.

Bone whacked flesh and the guy who had yelled went flying, then lay still.

The faces of the remaining four grew darker, but none of them ran to their compatriot. They stayed on task, fighting. Dare's cloak swirled out, amputating an entire giant leg as his sword severed an arm. The bone giant touched the fragments, rippled, and stood completely reformed.

I saw someone in a white coat dart in, grab the fallen combat mage, and make for the arch.

The bone beast saw the motions too, and was enraged by the loss of its prize. It surged forward, howling, but Dare leaped between the retreating mages and the beast and drove it back in a flurry of swirling lights and flashing sword. The bone beast stumbled back, but hefted a large rock—a piece of some building that had once stood here—and threw it at the retreating medical mage carrying the fallen soldier through the portico. The arch shattered, emitting a concussing blast of magic in all directions.

But the two mages had made it through.

The beast raised its face to the sky and bellowed—a great wail that sent icy chills through me. It was moaning the loss of its dead.

I grabbed my throat in response, as if the howl was emerging from my own gut.

The beast started heavily walking forward, forcing Dare away from his position, and stomping toward Dormitory Circle where students were fleeing. It would find its dead there. Surround itself with them. I could feel its thought.

Oh. God.

Christian
.

The magic around the beast slowed and solidified to my eyes. Ugly green mixed with tarnished gold. But the eyes were covered in neither green nor gold. They were black-and-white swirls with a haunting lavender film over the top. Like the paint that was splotched all over my cuff; the paint now in my pencil.

It roared again and tried to charge. Dare did something to stop it, but it struggled against the bonds and broke an arm free. I could see how this was going to end. The monster's path was going to take it crashing right through Dorm Twenty-Five. Through...our dorm room which had a window facing down the hillside. Olivia, Will, and Neph, if they were still inside, would never see it until it was destroying the building around them.

I reached down numbly and picked up the fallen elbow bone Dare had severed, letting it burn the skin of my palm, watching intensely as the green and gold mixed.
Christian
... No, not Christian. That wasn't my brother. Even the golem which I had finally made into a reasonable facsimile wasn't my brother. The sculptures and dolls weren't, and neither was this.

But what if...

No.

I pushed the emotion down and drew a precise series of splintered black-and-white spikes across the surface with the enhanced pencil. I tucked the bone against my body, uncaring of the seeping burn, and picked up the smaller sliver of thigh bone Camille had chopped. I repeated the design, channeling my thoughts, my pencil focused.

I could see Alexander Dare, alone now, standing between my monster and the dorms. The last three combat mages were splayed on the ground around him, their bodies still but the edges of their cloaks jerking up and down like the last gasps of flopping, dying fish. Camille's blonde hair was spread out around her, the perfect, fallen heroine.

Dare threw a concussive wave of magic at the monster that blasted it into a thousand pieces and took out two buildings that had survived the initial carnage. But like it was made of boned blob matter, the monster's pieces rolled back together, quickly reforming the whole. A one-headed Hydra that continued to reform.