The Other Prism (The Broken Prism) (17 page)

He walked moodily along the edge of the arena, departing through the first exit he saw and ignoring everyone he passed as he stalked across the grass and left the
sounds of cheering and roaring behind. He was so thoroughly covered in pigment that he couldn’t tell what color his robes were anymore, and kept walking until he was all the way back at the lake.

There didn’t seem to be any point in trying to clean
himself up, so he simply sat down at the edge of the water and looked at his own brooding reflection. His face was covered in violet dust on one side and his hair was a mixture of pink and yellow. It seemed impossible that he would meet a boy he hated as much as Oliver Trout during the course of the I.S.C., but then again he had terrible luck, so maybe it wasn’t that surprising after all.

Hayden had no idea how long he sat there thinking morose thoughts, interrupted only wh
en Master Mandra approached him from behind. Hayden saw his face and bright yellow robes reflected in the water behind him and turned around.

“The trials at Valhalla are over,” the Master greeted him neutrally. “The losers from each team have had their Resonance bracelets snapped
off, and you’ll all be returning to school soon.”

Hayden nodded mutely and looked down at the thin band of red crystal on his left arm for the last time, since clearly
Mandra had come here to remove it from his wrist.

“Davis from
Isenfall won the prism round, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” Hayden answered dully, getting to his feet and holding out his wrist. “There, go ahead. Take it.”

Master Mandra gave him a strange look and said, “What are you talking about?”

“The Resonance thing on my wrist.
I lost, so you’re here to remove it.”

Mandra
raised an eyebrow in surprise and said, “Hayden, you didn’t lose.”

“What do you mean?” Hayden demanded loudly, surprised by how sharp his voice sounded.

“Ceres from Branx saw you and Davis deadlocked and got distracted watching you. She got taken out about five seconds before you did.”

“You—you mean I’m still
in
?” Hayden’s insides were rapidly inflating with elation; his hands and feet actually tingled with the sensation.

“Of course, though you’re at the bottom of the rankings at present. Don’t tell me you spent all this time thinking you were out
of the competition?”

Hayden laughed weakly and covered his face with his hands.

It’s not over…I’m not going back in disgrace….

Of course
, he was only in by the skin of his teeth, but there was time to recover. At least he would be able to say in years to come that he made it through the first round of trials.

“Davis seems to have taken a disliking to you,”
Mandra observed casually as he led the way back to the winding stone path that Team Mizzenwald had walked down only this morning. It felt like a lifetime ago.

“I noticed,” Hayden mumbled. “I don’t know why, other than he probably hates me for being related to the Dark Prism
, just like everyone else who hates me for no reason.”

Master
Mandra gave him a strange look and said, “I think it’s more likely that he’s trying to remove his biggest competition as soon as possible to avoid facing you in the finals.” He smirked at the look on Hayden’s face. “You’re the only two natural prisms in the competition; if he can beat you, who is left to challenge him?”

Hayden hadn’t quite thought of it like that before, and he frowned as he considered the possibilities.

“Well, he nearly had me. I’m sure by round two he’s going to have a solid plan for taking me out; he’s much stronger than me.”

Master
Mandra snorted. “I doubt that. You were able to hold him off for a surprisingly long time, given that he was compounding and amplifying his power and you were doing neither. No,” the Master of Wands continued, “I believe he’s going to be very careful before he challenges you directly again. If you were compounding, he would have lost.”

They arrived at the clearing where Hayden’s teammates were waiting for him. Collectively they looked a lot worse for wear than they did upon entering: Oliver still covered in paste and scriptures,
Reya with her robes torn, Griff with bandages around both hands, and Hayden covered head-to-toe in a riot of colored pigments. Only Darren, their conjurer, was unharmed.

“This is where I leave you,” Master
Mandra stopped walking and motioned for Hayden to join his teammates on the circle of black stone that would transport them back to Mizzenwald. “I’m glad we met. This has been a most…illuminating experience.”

Hayden wasn’t sure what the Master meant by that, but before he could ask any questions the circle was activated and Team Mizzenwald was transported home.

9

All is Lost

The first thing Master Asher said upon seeing them was, “What the devil did they
do
to you people at Valhalla?”

Hayden and his teammates
took turns sharing an account of the day, though Griff left the room as soon as he was done detailing his defeat for the Masters and didn’t return. Kilgore frowned thoughtfully but made no move to go after him.

When it was his turn, Hayden explained why he looked like the victim of a dye-mill explosion and Master Asher attempted (unsuccessfully) to dust him off
with a conjured shoe-brush.

“Elias probably needs to put some solvent on that or your skin will be dyed for weeks,” he put in cheerfully, and Master Kilgore nodded and told Hayden to see him after he showered and changed clothing.

Hayden left the room when dismissed and wasn’t entirely surprised when the Prism Master followed him, because they hadn’t had a chance to talk privately yet since his return.

“Seems like this Davis kid has it out for you,” Asher said without breaking stride, holding up one hand over his head just as Horace the hawk alit upon it, transferring his familiar to his shoulder
with practiced ease.

“
Yes, he does,” Hayden agreed darkly. “He’s like Oliver, but crazier.”

Master Asher snorted in amusement as something small and winged slammed into Hayden and nearly knocked him to the
ground. It was Bonk, who was furious at being left alone all day and repeatedly head-butted Hayden angrily to convey the sentiment, which resulted in the little dragon’s head being stained the same violet has Hayden’s face.

“Next time you skip town be sure and warn Bonk in adva
nce; he almost burned down Torin’s cabin when we wouldn’t take him to you,” Asher pointed out conversationally. “But back to the competition. You did a bit worse than I expected—to be perfectly frank—placing second-to-last.” He didn’t attempt to sugar-coat his thoughts at all for Hayden’s benefit. “It sounds like you’re only still in the running at all by virtue of luck.”

Hayden hadn’t gone into
an extensive detailing of the Prism challenge, merely saying that he was the second one out and that Davis from Isenfall had been stalking him relentlessly the entire time.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, ashamed of his poor performance. Asher didn’t respond, but was giving Hayden a contemplative stare as though unable to figure him out. They passed a tide of students leaving the dining hall on their w
ay to the Pentagon, most of them gawking at Hayden’s multi-colored visage.

“There was a spell Davis used that I
don’t know,” Hayden changed the subject abruptly, because Master Asher stopped at the base of the stairwell; clearly he had no intention of climbing the stairs.

“Oh? Which prism was he using?”

“His blue-tinted, I think. He did something that made a whole bunch of those orbs come to him and circle around him, then he switched to his rose-tinted and used Push to send them at me.”

Master Asher frowned thoughtfully and motioned for Hayden to lend him a blue prism, twisting it slowly in front of his left eye as he squinted through it.

“Ah, yes, he must have been using Draw, with an inversion to attract likes. I rarely use that spell, so it never occurred to me to teach it to you.”

Hayden was attempting to wipe the purple dust off of Bonk’s forehead while he listened, but only succeeded in smearing it even worse. Zane passed him on his way up the
stairs and goggled openly, but Hayden simply waved to say that he’d be right up and continued talking to Master Asher.

“What does it do?”

“Draw is used when you want to make yourself a human magnet for non-magnetic objects,” the Prism Master explained. “You cast it once at the thing you want to summon to you, then you cast it again with the violet-yellow inversion right beside it and it will also summon nearby like items within the vicinity.” He passed the prism back to Hayden so he could look for himself. “It’s the blue-green-blue-yellow with the prime trifecta next to it.”

Hayden quickly located it and made a mental note to remember it in the future.

“How come you don’t carry a blue prism of your own?” He just realized that he only really saw Master Asher with clear or violet ones in his belt.

“I do, sometimes, but generally if I need colored prisms I opt for the violet as a sort of catch-all.”

“What do you mean?” Hayden had never been permitted to use a violet prism before, nor did he know anyone other than Asher who carried one.

“Violet is the only mastery-level tint
I normally need, because I can compound it with a clear prism and reproduce most of the arrays that are visible in any of the other colored prisms. I only bring along other tints if I’m going to use highly specialized, obscure spells that can’t be found in the violet, because it saves room on my belt.”

Hayden frowned.

“But if you can just use violet instead of carrying around all these different colors, then why don’t they let us use them in the I.S.C.?”

Master Asher gave him a contemplative look and said, “Violet is only permitted at the mastery-level because it has such a wide breadth of powerful arrays in it. Novices
could accidentally kill themselves with a violet prism, and not even violet can do everything, so it’s still important to learn the other colors.”

Hayden
nodded wearily and said goodnight to the Prism Master, walking upstairs with Bonk to get cleaned up. He was sure that his roommates would be waiting for him in the dormitory, eager to hear all about his exploits that day, and Hayden was too worn out to even be properly hungry right now.

Sure enough, as soon as he had showered and tracked down Master Kilgore to get some pigment-removing solvent for his face and hands, half the students in his year were waiting for him in the
third-year common area. He sat down with Bonk and someone brought him some crackers and cookies from the snack cart while he was barraged with questions, until he finally fell asleep mid-sentence, at which point he announced he was going to bed.

As glad as he was to be back at school, there wasn’t much time to relax the following day
, because they had their first challenge arena that night. He deliberately held back in Charms to conserve his Source power and energy for that night, and even forced himself to be polite to Lorn during Elixirs since they would need him later.

Master Asher began teaching them about green-tinted prisms, which were used for highly-specialized, very specific
types of magic, and were therefore quite limited in functionality. Hayden took notes until his hand hurt (there was still a light layer of pink pigment on it that Master Kilgore said should wash off by tonight) and then made his way to lunch.

He sat
with his usual group of friends, and Tess’s cat, Mittens, hopped onto the table and began examining Bonk at close range. Mittens and Bonk must have decided they were friends at some point, because they bumped heads and then turned their attention to the food in front of them.

Hayden yawned sleepily and Zane said, “
Cut that out. You better have some energy left over for the arena tonight or we’re going to bomb big time.”

Tess frowned and said, “He has a right to be tired after what he went through yesterday,” and Zane looked stunned at her speaking up for a change.

“I’ll be fine,” Hayden assured his teammates, startling in surprise when Master Asher took the seat right beside him and began feeding Horace and Cinder bits of meat from his plate.

“You lied to me,” he greeted Hayden casually, and the others gasped. “Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that you deceived me. I
guess you didn’t lie outright.”

“What do you mean, sir?” Hayden asked in genuine surprise, trying to think of what he’d done or said during class that was false.

“You greatly undersold your performance against Davis from Isenfall in the retelling last night.” He was giving Hayden a shrewd look. “You neglected to mention that he was compounding against your single prism, and that he had a level-four offensive amplifier on top of that.”

Hayden tried not to look guilty when he answered.

“I didn’t leave that stuff out on purpose, I just didn’t want to sound like I was making excuses for why he beat me.” That was more-or-less the truth, because Hayden had been cautious about bragging ever since his peers started calling him a show-off last year.

“Well it paints a considerably different picture of your performance. I was beginning to think that you’d simply
choked under the pressure.”

Tess said, “
You were able to fight against another natural prism who had that much power on his side?” and Hayden felt his ears burn at the admiration in her voice.

“Your Source is ridiculously large,” Zane added before he could respond to Tess.

“How did you find out what really happened?” Hayden asked Master Asher, who raised an eyebrow at the question.

“Willow told me this morning.
Arturius Mandra talked to him last night— apparently you made quite an impression on the Wands Master of Valhalla.”

Hayden looked puzzled.

“I don’t know how, we didn’t talk about anything important,” he explained. “Truthfully, I thought he was going to punish me for trying to punch Oliver in the face when we were on the floating platform, because he caught it with his hand, but he just told us to beat each other up somewhere else.”

Master Asher snorted in amusement. “Sounds like
Mandra,” he concurred cheerfully. “I must say, Hayden, when I told you to use the opportunity to network with foreign mages, I rather expected you to be buddying up to other students. Leave it to you to go straight for the Masters when looking for allies.”

Hayden’
s face was red with embarrassment, and Cinder hopped from Asher’s shoulder onto his and cuffed him affectionately with his wing, which immediately made Bonk jealous.

“I wasn
’t trying to buddy-up to anyone; he just sat next to me during the Powder trial and introduced himself. None of the other students wanted to talk to me because I was the youngest competitor and my father was the stupid Dark Prism.”

Asher’s expression flickered to something horribly
close to pity for a fraction of a second, but his smile returned so suddenly that Hayden wondered if he hadn’t imagined the change after all.

“Well, it never hurts to have friends in high places,”
Asher said neutrally, rising to his feet and summoning Cinder back to him. “Good luck in the arena tonight.”

The Prism Master’s abandoned plate was only half-finished, and he moved over to another table of fifth-years to join them for the remainder of lunch. Zane took one look after him and sai
d, “I can never tell if he’s crazy or brilliant.”

“A little of both, maybe,” Hayden shrugged and turned back to his food, wishing he still felt hungry.

He
bolted down his dinner that night and took a quick shower, determined to get the rest of the dye off of his skin. It mostly worked: his face and hands were clean, but part of his hair was still yellow.

He checked his belt to make sure he had all his weapons and then jogged back downstairs to meet up with the rest of his group. He ran into Zane in the Pentagon and the two of them cut through the main hallway that led to the rear entrance of the school, closest to the Prisms classrooms. It was already dark out, a
nd Hayden checked his chrono as the two of them jogged up the hill that led to the translocation circle, arriving in the nick of time.

Tess and Lorn were already there, standing awkwardly beside each other in the translocation circle and not speaking. Lorn looked like he had a bad case of lockjaw and Tess appeared to be trying to
will herself invisible.

“About time,” Lorn greeted them, his irritation obvious.

Hayden ignored him and took his place inside the translocation circle, nodding to the mastery students as soon as Zane was inside. He’d almost forgotten the strange sensation of being sent to a place that didn’t really exist, the way everything blurred together like melted candle wax as his brain struggled to comprehend it.

Then he blinked and they were standing on a snow-covered mountain, in the middle of a blizzard.

The four of them began shivering the moment their bodies registered the temperature change, and Hayden snatched the letter with instructions on it from the dead branches of a small bush and tore it open with fumbling, shaking fingers.

“It says we have to rescue the hostages from the yetis’ lair,” he read out loud. “Also that we—” he paused in shock.

“That we what?” Lorn snapped, shuddering and fumbling with the drawstring on his belt to draw out a powder.

“We’re not allowed to use weapons from our major,” Hayden finished with a frown, glancing down at the four prisms on his belt.