The Thorn Protects the Rose

Chapter 10

SWITCHBLADE

Elara gasped for breath, her lungs burning with the effort as Lyra pulled her onward. The familiar oak door of their dorm room loomed ahead, and with a burst of frantic energy, they shoved it open and tumbled inside. With a desperate shove, the door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the immediate pursuit.

A moment later, a heavy thud vibrated through the frame as the red crystal slammed into the hard oak. Elara didn't need to see to know the green one was right behind it, hovering with that same eerie, calculated patience it had shown in the hall. Glancing at the floor, her fear was confirmed with a sliver of green light bleeding into the room.

Elara tried to think, the world around her had shrunk into the abysmal view of the assault on her sanctuary. Mr. Wiggles started a low growl and hissed at the assailants on the other side. In a striking moment of clarity, looking at the red light seeping in through the cracks, she swung up her arms and with them, a wave of green magic came up and covered their side of the door “HELP ME!” She choked out, summoning all her strength as the air around her arms felt thick and heavy, the pressure clamping around her muscles as if she were a thousand miles below the ocean. Sweat was beading on her brow. Lyra immediately stepped into action, pulling out her sturdy red cherrywood wand out of the endless abyss of her purse—a gift from her parents for her birthday—it was somewhat short, but thick and had a tortoiseshell grip. Her “emergency switchblade” she called it. Made for protection, and slow heavy hits. She swung the wand up in a crossing motion and her purple magic shot out frantically from the tip, joining with Elara's. They formed a swirling purple and green shield around the door, and the effect was immediate. The cold, emerald glow beneath the door vanished as if the green presence had retreated slightly.

Once the shield was in place, Elara slumped against the wall, her arms dropping to her sides, leaden and useless. She slumped to the floor, where Lyra crouched down beside her, holding her by the shoulders.

“Bloody hell, Elara—that was massive!” Lyra breathed. “How long can it hold?” Her eyes darted to the door, where the crimson light pulsed—a relentless heartbeat of malice.

Elara tried to rally, but her muscles refused. Her head throbbed with the force of a mallet; the room was turning gray. She shook her head weakly.

“Elara?” Lyra’s features twisted with panic.

Even behind the barrier, the crystal’s power felt like a physical hum against their skin. The glow flared, and the cracks in the wood began to shriek, spiderwebbing deeper as the frame groaned. A splinter snapped, suspended in mid-air by the turbulence. The hum grew into a roar—a hammer striking repeatedly, inevitably.

Lyra pressed her hand against the shield and gasped, her face contorting at the parasitic drain on her own magic. The shield flickered—a dying spark—before struggling back to a dim, desperate brilliance.

“'Parently not long!” Lyra cried.

It was as if the crystal was empowered by the shield rather than weakened. Elara watched in horror as the hole in the door widened; with each hit, the breach grew closer, and their magic began to fail. The red crystal was almost through now, pushing against the barrier, but it wasn't trying to pierce it anymore. It was absorbing it.

They looked on in terror as the shield was eaten alive by the entity held within the crimson light. The vibrant purple and green shimmer stretched and rapidly started to diminish, being pulled into the crystal like water down a drain. The door groaned one last time, and with a final, sickening crack, the center panels imploded.

Wood splinters and dust showered them and Lyra immediately turned, shielding them both from the debris. The red crystal, now pulsing with a malevolent, blinding intensity, glided effortlessly through the gaping hole. It paused, hovering just inside the room, its angry light washing over their terrified faces.

Behind it, the dark green crystal—having remained patient—now drifted silently into the room. Its presence was restrained, but no less menacing. Mr. Wiggles, a fluffy white streak, shot out from under Elara's bed and scrambled frantically on top of the desk, launching itself at the two assailants of his territory, fangs out, hissing and claws extended in the air, trying to get a hit on them. One strong, deep pulse from the green crystal sent a resonance that caused the poor animal to be flown further into the room, landing on his side and sliding across the floor. A small shriek escaped Lyra’s lips, while Elara could barely whimper.

The two crystals then floated one in front of the other, their combined focus fixed entirely on Elara. They pulsed: the red with an angry, staccato light; the green with a dark, hungry vibration. The air grew heavy, crackling with a metallic, unspoken threat.

The red crystal drifted forward—persistent, yet strangely less violent than before. "They're after you!" Lyra gasped. She shot herself up and in front of Elara, raising her sturdy switchblade like a shield. Lyra didn't wait. She swiped her wand in a fierce circular motion and shoved it forward, launching a thick, purple projectile. The mass caught the red crystal mid-air, slamming it against the opposite wall with a heavy thud and pinning it there.

Lyra let out a ragged sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. Just as she started to relax, the crystal drank the purple magic, too. It was free in seconds, glowing brighter than before. "Damnit! It's just eating it!" she yelled.

The red crystal didn't just approach; it homed in on Elara with the singular, predatory focus of a parasite finding a host. Lyra lunged, her wand arm a blur of desperate, frantic magic.

The crystal didn't stop. It didn’t even hesitate. It tore through the flesh and bone of Lyra’s arm with a sickening, wet crack, leaving a spray of hot, arterial red to stain the wall and splatter across Elara’s slack face.

Lyra screamed—a raw, serrated sound—clutching her mangled arm as if she could force the wound shut by sheer, panicked willpower.

Elara didn’t have time to process the sight. The crystal slammed into her chest—not with the impact of stone, but with a sickening, cold pressure that defied the physics of solid matter. It didn't pierce; it settled.

It sat embedded against her sternum, not in the flesh, but warping it. The skin around the edges of the red glass puckered and stretched, as if the tissue was trying to reject a foreign organ that refused to be ousted. She could feel it throbbing against her ribs—a rhythmic, heavy beat that matched her own, but with a different, colder cadence. It was a brand, a leech, a piece of something ancient anchoring itself to the architecture of her life.

Then, a brilliant, blinding pulse.

Elara’s eyes snapped open, the pupils dilating until the irises vanished. Electricity surged through her—not a clean flow, but a jagged, high-voltage thrashing that threatened to tear her nervous system apart. The warmth that followed was terrifying; it felt like a fever breaking from the inside out, a rush of stolen, intoxicating potential. She lurched to her feet, her body vibrating with a strength that felt like it belonged to a predator twice her size.

The crystal’s once-malevolent light now bled into a rhythmic, synchronized crimson, pulsing in lock-step with her own hammered heartbeat. It wasn't just a trinket; it was a companion, an anchor, a witness.

Lyra, one hand clamped over her ruin of an arm, her screams still echoing against the walls, her fingers slick with the dark, iron-scented reality of her own blood. She looked small, shattered—a stark, jagged contrast to the hum of power vibrating through Elara’s own veins.

"Hold still," Elara breathed. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears—colder, sharper, resonant with the pulse of the crimson shard at her sternum. Lyra stared in pale, horrified awe.

Elars didn't reach for her wand; she didn't have the patience for the ritualistic, delicate casting she had been taught. She simply reached out, her palm hovering over the ruin of Lyra’s arm. She didn't know what she was doing, but the Red Crystal did.

It surged. A vein of searing, liquid heat shot from the shard, down Elara’s arm, and erupted into Lyra’s wound. It wasn't the gentle glow of a restorative spell. It was cauterization, raw and brutal. The flesh knit together with a sickening, wet hiss, the skin sealing over with a strange, dark sheen. Lyra gasped, her body arching in a spasm of pain that quickly faded into a hollow, breathless relief.

Elara pulled her hand back, her own skin smoking faintly. The power had been too much—like trying to drink from a wildfire. She looked at her palm, then at Lyra’s arm, which was now jaggedly healed, scarred with a faint, pulsing pattern that mirrored the crystal’s own glow. It was a fix, but it wasn't a clean one. It felt like she had tied a broken limb together with burning wire.

But the air didn’t stay still for long.

From the shattered doorframe, the green crystal began to hum—a low, resonant thrum that vibrated deep in the marrow of Elara’s bones. It was a hunger so vast it made the red crystal’s earlier violence seem like a playful nudge. The room grew deathly cold, the air turning metallic and heavy, tasting of ozone and ancient earth. The green shard surged toward them, accelerating with a predatory, howling speed.

Elara watched it come. She looked down at her own hands, which were sparking with raw, untethered energy. The hum of the red crystal against her chest was a constant, narcotic vibration beneath her skin, a siren song of limitless potential. She shouldn't have been able to handle it—she should have been shattering under the strain—but as the green crystal bore down on them, she felt no fear. Only a dangerous, emboldened spark of defiance.