Calla's Story

Chapter 17-1

Seventeen

After a glance at the motionless elf lying on the floor, I back up slowly, raising my hands. Shield magic hangs in the air in front of me, but it won’t last long if attacked repeatedly with a crossbow. “Chase?” I say as I place one foot behind the other. “Looks like I’m not going home just yet.”

Saber crosses the threshold into the room, and I cast a quick glance over my shoulder at Chase. He’s standing over the urn with the bangle held in a cloth. “Ah, look who decided to join us for the festivities,” he says. “You’re just in time, Mr. Saber.”

“That’s mine,” Saber growls. “I want it back.”

“You did just fine without it all those months it was at the Guild.”

“Things change.”

I edge further back until I’m next to Chase. I sense his shield magic joining mine. “By ‘things change,’” Chase says, “do you mean someone at Velazar Prison told you to get it back?”

Sparks fly from Saber’s tongue as he speaks. “What I do at Velazar Prison is no business of yours. Now give me the bangle before I shoot your girlfriend through the head.”

“Anything to do with that particular prisoner is my business, Saber. What information does he want you to find?”

“You won’t know until it’s too late.”

“Then I suppose we have no reason to delay this any longer.” Chase drops the bangle into the urn and places the lid on top.

“No!” Saber takes a few steps forward, then stops as the sound of an explosion rips through the still air. The urn rocks, but remains intact. “NO!” Saber raises his crossbow and fires. Again and again, bolts strike our combined shield.

“Now would be a good time to do your thing,” Chase says between gritted teeth.

“But I’m pouring all my energy into the shield. I can’t—”

“I’ll hold the shield. You distract him.”

I breathe out slowly, releasing both my shield and the control around my mind. I close my eyes and focus on what I need Saber to see. I imagine a second explosion within the stone urn. This time, it cracks. It shatters. It sends stone and flame and heat flying across the room. When I open my eyes, I see the scene I’m imagining. I feel the searing heat. Saber is on the other side of the room, his arm raised to protect his face against the imaginary burning debris that just flew past him.

Chase kicks the reclining chair across the room, knocking Saber to the ground. The crossbow clatters onto the floor, and Chase forces a gust of wind from his hand strong enough to sweep the weapon out the door. Saber rolls away from the broken chair, jumps to his feet, and runs at Chase. Chase bends and uses the man’s momentum to flip him over his shoulder. Saber lands on his side and kicks at Chase, but the tattoo artist leaps out of the way. As Saber scrambles up and flings sparks at his opponent, Chase ducks. Then he jumps and kicks, striking Saber in the chest with his solid combat boot. Saber goes down with a crash, and Chase raises a spinning, crackling ball of magic above his hand and slams it down onto Saber. The green man collapses, his head dropping back to the floor and his limbs going floppy.

The flames, smoke and heat of my projection fade away. “You can fight,” is the first thing I say, followed quickly by, “Was that stunner magic?”

Chase nods as he looks down at the knocked-out man.

“How did you draw so much power so quickly? It takes me minutes of concentration to gather enough to stun someone.”

Without meeting my eyes, Chase says, “I suppose you need to practice. The more important question, though, is this: What did Saber do with my lovely assistant?”

“Oh no.” I jump over Saber and run to the doorway. “I saw her lying here when I opened the door, but …” I look around the room. “She’s gone.”

Chase walks to my side. “She must have gone for help.”

“Hopefully that means she’s—”

I fall backward with a cry as something grabs my arm and pulls. I tumble into darkness. Chase flails at my side, shouting angry words, and the grip on my wrist never loosens.

Until we hit the ground.

I gasp in a breath or two before being able to move. Then I pull my knees up, roll my weight back onto my shoulders, and kick directly up into the air. The force of my kick pulls the rest of my body up. I snap my legs down and land in a squat. I straighten and spin around, attempting to get my bearings. “You can stay down here until he decides what to do with you,” Saber snarls. I see him a few feet away, a bright white ball of magic hovering above each hand. I reach for a throwing star, aim for his shoulder, and let it loose. “Personally,” he adds as the glittering weapon whizzes over his shoulder and disappears into the faerie paths, “I hope you die a horrible death first.”

I hold my hands up as a bow and arrow form in my grasp. I let the arrow go—just as Saber jumps backward into the void. The arrow flies into the narrowing gap as the edges of the doorway grow toward each other. A second later, the doorway and the faerie paths are gone. And so is the light.

“Chase?” I ask tentatively. A groan is my only response. I gather magic into a ball of yellow light and send it into the air above me. Looking around, I find we’re in a tunnel. Narrower and lower than I’m comfortable with—don’t panic, don’t panic—and completely bare. On the ground nearby lies Chase. “Crap.” I drop to my knees beside him. “What happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

He lifts his hand to the back of his head. “Feels like I cracked my skull open. Doesn’t seem like anything’s bleeding, though. Must have just dazed me for a bit.”

“Let me check.” I raise my hands as he sits up, but he brushes them away.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. What happened?”

“Saber brought us here through the faerie paths.”

“An impressive stunt for an unconscious man.”

“Yes. Apparently there was something wrong with your stunner spell.”

“There wasn’t.” Chase carefully rubs the back of his head. “He must have thrown a shield up at the last moment. That would have absorbed most of the stunner spell.”

“Maybe.” I stand, reach for his arm, and pull him to his feet.

“So he threw a little tantrum and brought us to another Underground tunnel,” Chase says as he looks around. “Seems like a waste of everyone’s time.”

“Perhaps he’s busy trashing your tattoo studio.” I slip my stylus out of my boot. “We should probably check on that.” I write a doorway spell against the dusty tunnel wall. The words glow and fade—and nothing happens. “That’s weird.”

“Honestly, do I have to do everything myself?” Chase produces his stylus and writes on the tunnel floor. The result is the same: no doorway.

“You were saying?”

“Damn. This isn’t good. I think I know where we are.” He pushes his hand through his hair as he stares down the tunnel. “This must be the labyrinth.”

My heart rate bumps up a level at the thought of being trapped in a tunnel known as The Labyrinth. “You’re right. That doesn’t sound good.” Don’t panic. DON’T. PANIC.

“You haven’t heard of it?”

I shake my head.

“It’s become something of a legend. They say there are dangerous creatures who roam these passages and enchantments that confuse and muddle the brain, making it even harder to find a way out. It’s connected to the Underground tunnels, and, as far as I know, that’s the only way out.”

“Dangerous creatures, huh?” I squint into the darkness beyond my light and remind myself that I’m trained to fight creatures of all kinds. The thought of facing one down here shouldn’t bother me.

“Yes, but I’ve heard these tunnels were abandoned after The Destruction, so hopefully we won’t come across any.”

“Okay, so no creatures, but we’re still lost in a labyrinth of tunnels.” I swallow. “We need to start walking.”

“Don’t bother.” Chase removes his amber from his coat pocket. “We’ll never find our way out.”

Despite my best efforts to remain calm, my breathing is definitely becoming faster. “Well then, Mr. Optimistic. What do you plan to do?”

“I’m not above asking for help.” He writes quickly across the surface of his amber. After putting both amber and stylus away, he looks at me. “I’ve asked Gaius to send tracking owls to the labyrinth entrance. It shouldn’t be too hard for him to call in a favor or two and find out where it is. Once the owls are in the tunnels, they’ll easily track us down.”

“And they’ll be able to find their way back to the entrance?”

“Of course. They’re tracking owls.”

“Right.” I send heat to my hands before running them over my arms a few times. “And until then?”

Chase lowers himself to the ground and leans back against the tunnel wall. “We wait.”

Wait. In a confined space. That might run out of air. “If it’s all right with you,” I say, “I’d prefer to keep moving.”

Chase peers up at me. “Uh, okay.”

I pick a direction and Chase follows me. My conjured ball of light comes with us. I increase its glow, hoping that by lighting more of the tunnel, the space will feel bigger. It doesn’t. What does grow, though, is the silence. I say nothing, Chase says nothing, and soon enough it feels as if it’s too late, too obvious, to attempt to begin a conversation. Besides, the thought of the tunnel walls narrowing until they crush us to death is occupying too much of my brain. There isn’t space left to come up with anything to say.

Focus on something else.

It’s the logical thing to do. After all, you can’t stop thinking a thought by telling yourself not to think it. You have to think a different thought instead. Such a simple piece of advice, yet so difficult to execute. The first time I tried it, I was at my third junior school and wanted to go down the blue twisty tunnel slide all the other kids loved so much. I focused on the thought of flying. It worked until I got to one of the bends and stopped moving. I thought I was stuck. I panicked. That was also the day Incident Number Two happened. It wasn’t—

“Calla.” Chase puts a hand out and stops me. I look up and, in the moment before it disappears, I see a playground scene with a shattered blue slide and children running away in terror. Then it’s gone, leaving nothing but the empty tunnel ahead of us.

“Ugh, I’m sorry. That was me.” I rub my temples while mentally reinforcing my mind’s brick wall. “I’m not sure how that image slipped out. Maybe I’m not being as careful as I usually am because you already know what I can do.” I drop my hands to my sides. “But how did you see that? I thought you could shield your mind from me.”

“I can,” he says as we begin walking again, “but I haven’t since you returned the bangle to me. I wasn’t expecting any more mental attacks from you. What I have been wondering, though, is how you’ve managed to keep your ability a secret from the Guild all this time.”

“Probably because I’ve only been there one week.”

“What?” He leans away as he examines me. “It’s possible I could be wrong, but you don’t look like a thirteen-year-old first-year trainee.”

“I’m not. Thanks for noticing.” I explain my lifelong desperation to be a guardian, Mom’s determination to keep me away from the Guild, how it all blew up when she discovered I’d been training behind her back, and then her sudden, strange change of heart. Which reminds me that I need to ask Ryn if he’s discovered anything else about the person named Tamaria. I file the thought away for later. “Yeah, so after proving to the Guild that my skills were up to scratch, they let me begin in fifth year instead of starting at the bottom.”

“And why, Miss Goldilocks, do you want to be a guardian so badly?”

Ignoring the nickname, I say, “I want to help people. I want to fight the bad guys and rid the world of evil. All that honorable stuff.”

“You know you can do all that without being a guardian, right? You don’t need guardian weapons. You don’t even need magic.”

“I know, but that’s the way I want to do it.”

“Fair enough. So if you’ve only just joined the Guild, what school were you at before?”

With a humorless laugh, I say, “Where should I start?”

Chase eyes me. “That many, huh?”

I pull a loose thread off my jacket and slowly twist it around my finger. “That’s what happens when you have an overactive imagination and keep accidentally sharing it with everyone else.” I unwind the thread, then wind it again, tighter this time. “I left my first junior school because I projected an image of a troll in a tutu after the two girls I was with decided a dancing troll would be the funniest thing ever. I left my second junior school because I imagined a boy’s hair was on fire after he pushed me into a door, and three people saw the imaginary fire. At my third junior school, all the kids on the playground saw an exploding slide. It was the twisting tunnel type, and I got stuck inside it and freaked out. In my head I kept wishing I was strong enough to break my way out. I guess I ended up projecting an illusion of me smashing the slide apart and climbing out. That was the, uh, projection you saw back there.” I wave awkwardly over my shoulder.