WHITE DARKNESS - BLACK MAGIC SAGA - BOOK 1

WARMING COLD

Vailant.

She could hear his voice behind her.

She was on the ground.

Rain pouring over her.

Her vision blurry by the heavy raindrops.

Still, she can see the two ribbons of light in shape of two thin Ukreshan wyverns embracing the Phantomind before an orbit of light comes from its within, breaking cracks appearing and making it explode in light before her, leaving a sparkling smoke mixed with black shadow as trail.

The Platrium shield reacted from the core of the element a person had been giving, shaping itself in what the person’s spirit of it. That his shield was a wyvern made sense. They were calculating and destructive, almost impossible to catch when flying, rapid and light as an arrow, bullet-like, not harmless in any way. Yet, they are not dragons, so they didn’t breath fire, which was a curious fact Leevanna didn’t have the time to chat about.

Leevanna’s jade eyes were full of salty tears sliding down her cheeks, mixing with the cold water of the rain. A hand took her by the arm, yanking her from the ground and making her stand. But everything was too slow for her to realise.

Time unfurls its wings in deliberate, unhurried motions, and the pace of existence takes on a dreamlike quality. Every heartbeat of the clock stretches, every breath lingers, and every moment becomes a canvas for contemplation. A slow and deliberate dance with gravity. The whispering breeze weaves intricate patterns through the air, its gentle touch a soothing serenade that accompanies your journey.

Tears fall in slow-motion arcs, glistening like precious jewels before they kiss the ground.

She was in a sort of trance.

For the first time in years, she had felt how the fear ran all her tiny body leaving her in a total shock and panic. She needed to run. She needed to escape. Why couldn’t she escape?

She needed to die.

She — She — She needs to go back.

Why — Why he had saved her?

She needs to go back.

She — She has this sudden necessity of wanting to run.

But she couldn’t — she cannot —

An image before her. A face she recognises yet it is so blurry for her to know. It is calling her. “Are you okay?” But it is so soft… so distant, far away from her as much. She blinks. Her breathing a slow panting. The voice keeps calling. Distorted. There is this sound. Her body becomes light, a feather dropping. A flash through her eyes. “Vaughan,” there it is again. The voice. There is a second after that, a pause. “Vaughan!” and she snaps back. “Are you okay?!”

Her eyes can focus now. Sound back to her.

It is Vailant who is speaking to her. His height towering her by so many inches. He is soaked.

“Ye-Yes…” she is able to reply, low and uncertain.

He had his hand wrapped around her elbow. She didn’t realise, but when she answered, a breath of relief was released from him. They were both drenched from the rain, their hair plastered to the skin of their faces and looking into each other’s eyes. A dark shade of steel-grey against a crystal-like jade, flickering, observing.

A second passes.

He removes his hand from her elbow, rapid, as if she was venom. He should not be touching her, he knows that. Strangely, she doesn’t seem to mind. Her eyes are expectantly eery, they search for something he doesn’t quite understand. “Let’s get back to the chateau, we’re going to get sick,” with a last look at her, up and down, he turned then to start walking. She nodded, to no one who could see her, puzzled, disorientated.

He took another step away from her.

A second.

Two.

Three.

The rain appeases itself. Just a few raindrops now.

“Vailant.”

But it wasn’t the mention of his surname what made him stop mid-step. Her hand, wrapped around his elbow, almost taking him closer to her. His head turned, then his body did as her hand released him. There is a pause. His eyes harden, steel taking over them, cold and lifeless. And then…

“Thank you,” she says.

…Soft, starry-like.

They flicker once, twice.

She looks up at him, trying to meet his height.

His body frozen in time, just like the cloud taking over his eyes.

He stares at her, blinks. Perplexed and dumbfounded by her words. He doesn’t know what to say, what to expect, because he didn’t expect those words at all. Not from her. Not with such raw emotion running through him as her jade eyes shine with the raindrops that cross them. He can’t — it isn’t right. His hands form into fists, tight. He catches her shivering.

So he takes out his long coat.

And places it over her shoulders.

His attentive eyes don’t leave hers for even a second.

And it is stupid.

At least the rain it’s not as strong right now.

“Keep it,” he said. Eyes finally leaving hers. She looks away too. “You’re trembling.”

She nods once. With a chill running down her spine as the black fabric embraces her, her feet guide her to the chateau. The collar of the coat brushing the start of her nose. She can smell him. Jasmine tea with mint, oakmoss and something spicy she couldn’t quite get to put a name on. Spirals of essences form into her mind, dancing around her skull, intoxicating at last. She drowns in it. Whips her skin like thorns before freeing her into nothingness.

She keeps walking, pretends her mind is still sane and hasn’t collided to then explode into sweet nothings.

Why had she done it?

What was wrong with her?

Why hadn’t she done it? Why had he had to saved her? Why had he done it? Why had she said, ‘thank you’?

‘Thank you’ for what? For f*****g what?

He had attacked her in the cruellest and horrendous of ways.

Then why…?

Closing her eyes for a second, she takes a deep breath before completing the question. There was no such question to make and voi—f*****g—là.

And she would make sure that he would not touch her again.

Before finally entering the chateau, she looks up at the sky again. The rain has acquired more force again. Eskarya had always been a cold place since Khione, the goddess of snow and rain had dammed it when Osnos killed his sister.

When they were near the entrance of the common room, they heard how Lhu was pacing from one side to another as the rest of the friend group tried to calm her. “Perhaps she’s in the library,” shrugged Mason, but a hint of disbelief was in his tone of voice. “You know she likes to spend most of her time there.”

“I know,” huffed Lhu. “But I haven’t seen her since Brews today,” clear desperation in her voice.

It was in that moment that Leevanna and Eisdrache went through the doors and Rhazel noticed them, “Found her.”

Lhu, stopping mid-pace, turned around to find a shivering Leevanna with a soaked Eisdrache behind her. The brunette released the breath she had been holding and started going towards her best friend. “Where were you? I was so worried!”

“Found her near the forest,” Eisdrache answered for her. Leevanna stood quiet while Lhu checked there was nothing wrong with her. “A Phantomind tried to attack her.”

“What were you doing near the forest?” frowned Thea, who stood up from her seat next to Freya and went to Leevanna to apply drying charms on her while Lhu did the same. Eisdrache just shrugged and took a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his trousers.

Thea then started applying the charms on him.

“Are you okay Leev?” worrisome in Lhu’s face. Leevanna just nodded. Her eyes flickered to the boy standing behind her, wondering if saying something else. “Let’s get you a hot bath and clean clothes, okay?” Leevanna nodded again and started walking with Lhu towards their dormitory while the rest of the group asked Vailant what had happened.

She remained quiet. Remembering the look in his eyes when he had put his coat over her shoulders. The warming cold which had travelled her body.

Leevanna sneezed from her bed. “I am not—” sneeze, “—sick!” she complained before twisting in her bed as a whim before she sneezed again making Lhu laugh.

It was the morning after and Leevanna had woken up with a fever.

“You are bloody on fire,” the curly-haired said as she brushed her hair. “And not in a good way this time.”

“It’s not that bad,” Leevanna huffed as she stood up from the bed. “See? I can—” and she stumbled falling back on her bed. “f*****g jelly legs,” she muttered angrily and Lhu laughed even harder at her clumsiness.

“That’s what you get for being in the forest while it was raining,” the curly-haired asked as she zipped up her school skirt. Leevanna looked at her nails for a second thinking they needed a manicure and sneezed again before complaining. Lhu laughed.

“I had nightmares yesterday,” she muttered before wrapping and covering herself with the covers and becoming a tiny ball under the faux fur velvet, fluffy duvet colour black.

Lhu turned herself to her best friend, “I’ve told you a thousand times that you need to wake me up when you’re having nightmares,” Lhu sighed as she sat on her best friend’s bed with caution and placed her hand on Leevanna over the duvet.

“Sorry,” she muttered under the sheets as she became smaller. “Are you going to go for breakfast?” she asked uncovering her face to look at her, Lhu nodded placing some kind of transparent but sparkly lipstick on her lips that made them look bigger. “Well… You already know who to say that I’m sick.”

“Good morning, my beautiful señoritas!” the voice of Rhazel Cox made the two girls look at the door, which had been open abruptly.

“Could you not break our door?” laughed Lhu standing up.

“You ask too much, darling,” he sighed before jumping to Leevanna’s bed making her laugh. “And why are you not ready?”

“I’m sick,” she sighed before she sneezed again.

“Aw…” Rhaz said with a cheesy tone pinching one of her cheeks before she slapped his hand. “You heard that, Drache? She sneezes like a kitten!”

“I heard her from the hallway,” Eisdrache chuckled leaning his back on the door’s frame and placing his hands inside his pockets. “Oi, Gryrku, what happened to you?” the things were better between the two, at least civilised conversations could be made.

She took off her middle finger. “Nothing that should concern you, Oxygenated, I’m sick, that’s all,” she sighed and then coughed due to her sore throat. “Oi, Rhaz! I’m cold! Stop stealing my bloody duvet!”

“But — it’s so bloody fluffy and soft,” the boy said as he wrapped himself inside it, leaving the girl just covered with her sheets. “You need to try it, mate.”

“Make room,” the boy said before throwing himself on the bed. “For holy Heaven’s sake... Vaughan, you sleep in the f*****g clouds,” he said as he also wrapped himself in the duvet.

“Could you stop stealing — get out of my bed!”

“Why the hell are you taking so bloody long?” said Mason Stein arriving at the scene, his hair wet from the shower. “Move your flat, plain arses, I’m f*****g starving.”

“I’ll move my hot and juicy arse after you try this,” Rhazel said from the bed before extending a hand for the dark-skinned to also lay down on the bed.

“Why are you all in Leevanna’s bed?” Mason frowned as he approached and laid down. “Holy hell… This is heaven.”

“Told you,” said Eisdrache and Rhazel at the same time with their eyes closed and letting themselves get lost in the warmth the duvet had.

“Get the f**k out of my bed!” exclaimed Leevanna trying to recover her duvet as she hit the three boys with her pillow and tried to push them away without any success because of her muscle pain and weak body It was a stroke of luck for her that her bed was big enough so as not to have the boys too close.

“Sh, we’re trying to sleep here, witch,” Eisdrache shushed her as he also grabbed the pillow to then put it under his head. “I swear, mate, I’m in the f*****g clouds.”

“From f*****g where did you get this?” asked Rhaz grabbing another pillow to put it under his head just like his friend had done. “From f*****g Paradise?”

“It’s—” said Leevanna between teeth as she tried to recover her pillow and coughed repeatedly. “— from — Kharaid,” she huffed starting to feel more discomfort in her body. “Get out!” she complained doing a childish whim.

The little tears filled up with anger crystallising her vision and Lhu took action, “She vomited on that last year,” said Lhu as a lie, tying a lace around her collar and looking herself in the mirror before turning her head to her friends. Mason was the first to get out. “And I vomited on it last month.”

“I’m out! I’m out!” said Rhazel getting up quickly not knowing that the curly-haired was lying from the mere beginning. “Mate… Gross,” he said towards Eisdrache, who was still wrapped on the bed. “Mate… Mate, are you dead?” asked the boy frowning because his friend wasn’t moving. “I think he’s dead.”

Leevanna just moved her leg under the sheet to then kick him.

“Sweet Khione’s sake, witch,” he huffed after he fell sitting on the floor. He looked up at her. “I swear you hit my brain.”

“Do you have one?” she whispered, more to her then to him, but she knew he had heard. He didn’t say anything afterwards.

“Come on,” laughed Lhu passing her arms around Rhaz and Mason’s shoulders making them bow to reach her height. “Let’s go for breakfast and leave Miss Sick alone,” she chuckled waving goodbye to her friend. “See you in the break!”

“Sweet dreams, Ice Queen!” Said Rhazel as they walked.

“Are you going to get out or what?” asked Leevanna towards Vailant, who was staring a music-ballerina box on the dressing table which had the inscription ‘Leev – 10th bd.’

“Oh — yeah, yeah,” he reacted turning his body to see her. “See you around, Vaughan,” and he closed the door.

Leevanna sighed relieved and stood up from her bed to re-accommodate the bed herself, she would have used her magic, but she felt too weak for even snapping her fingers. A few seconds later she wrapped herself again in the duvet as she twisted in pleasure against the pillows. “f*****g hell, this is certainly the clouds,” she muttered closing her eyes to sleep some more hours.

Her mind’s eye starts wondering through her memories of the times she has swam in the Attlely Lake, filling her brain with the few happy memories she has.

She loves how the fine and fragile sheet of ice surrounds her body leaving a sensation of warmth inside her as she just lets herself be immersed and sank until her body is just floating in the middle of the water, her ears plugged and the darkness surrounding her, or maybe the moonlight illuminating her way as a ray making the bubbles shine like crystals. Everything was slower underwater.

The cold travelling every single part of her body pore by pore, reaching her veins and pressing her skin as if she were contracting to become stone, caused her an immense feeling of comfort. Comfort she knew she didn’t deserve. The silence the Attlely Lake had was another thing she found the most comfortable experience in the entire world. Just listening to the tiny waves collide with each other and the wind creating a symphony with the leaves of the tress. Seeing the glorious landscape, the light of the twilight painted over the horizon, sliding down the hills and finally making the water glow. The cold in her body was comforting. And that’s a guilty pleasure she doesn’t want to share with anyone else.

A week later, Eisdrache huffed before wetting the quill in the black ink to continue writing. He was running out of time for the deadline of his Mathamancy essay and he also needed to complete the other one for Self Defence and Magical Survival. “I swear I’m going to pitch myself from the f*****g Heaven’s Lookout Tower one of these days,” he mumbled between teeth when his calligraphy didn’t convince him at all, and he needed to use another piece of parchment to start again from the beginning.

He was a bit angry with himself and he had a lot of motives to be, because — what — what the hell was f*****g wrong with him? First of all, since when did he run out of time for a deadline in his entire life?

He always handed his homework on time, a week before the bloody deadline if we need a date. He was extremely responsible and careful with school stuff because he didn’t want to disappoint his parents, and now the bloody professors had had to remind him the bloody deadline. Since when did that happen? Since when he was so distracted and careless with something so simple as school?

Another thing was that his housemates were always going to Lhu and Vaughan’s dormitory to smoke or just bother the second one. And that shouldn’t be a problem or something similar because he loved to piss her off at any time but — yesterday, the last time they had gone, she was peacefully sleeping wrapped in her duvet next to a book about princesses and — and she looked…

He didn’t know how to describe it but — for the first time, he — he felt this weird thing… Some kind of — he didn’t know how to express it. It had been something that made him say: ‘she looks in peace, don’t bother her.’

He had actually whispered it as if he had been saying it for himself but — his friends had been able to listen to him and frowned playfully before he realised what he’d said. Uttara’s holy sake, he was going mental.

She wasn’t speaking to him fully still.

Baby steps had said Orya, just little by little.

H didn’t understand though, why she just couldn’t talk to him, or yell or do f*****g something. He was just going mental with her silent treatment. He knew about the scar, his mum had told him about it, and she had been so mad with him that Eisdrache almost cried right there. He remembered that day perfectly, almost so vividly that he was having dreams about it. He recalled the way her eyes looked at him, so full of fear and tears.

The way they shone against her pale skin which was burning up in flames from the inside. He could remember the way she screamed, and it haunted him, it just f*****g did all the time. And it is so ludicrous because all he could think after throwing her around the common room was the softness of her hair.

In his mind’s eye there was still the memory of her, as if she was always in front of him, burning and screaming her lungs out in pain. How she had begged for it to stop When she had gone unconscious. The way Reeves had looked at him, as if he was some kind of monster.

And the words he had said…

I hope you rot in my flames.

So close to her lips he swore he had just kissed her. He swore her lips had been his for a precious little moment that it was making him go mad by the second.

After four days of not seeing her for what he had done, all he could do was think about her, her and her lips, her tears and her soft hair, and he wonders if he had gone by her side that day she had been crying after class everything would be different. Perhaps she wouldn’t be so scared of him right now, so tiny when she looked at him.

Perhaps she would know that there was other side of him with her, one that was soft and longing. He should have stopped himself, he knew, but that though didn’t make things any better either way.

He missed the old her, the one who fought him, who challenged him in every way possible. He missed her.

And the days she hadn’t spoken to him had just been a martyrdom by all means of the word. When he had saw her after the incident, her rosy face still healing from the fire, the way she had covered it. It just broke him. Truly shattered him. He wanted for her to fight with him again, to be that girl who is capable of destroying him with words. He wanted her to just fight. But she wouldn’t. She would keep the contact to the minimum, and he didn’t want pieces, he wanted the whole picture, the entire masterpiece.

He wants her.

Not sure how or where neither when. But he does.

He wouldn’t say anything about it either.

Freya had literally threatened him not to set foot around her, any place she may go, he would have to ask, even if it was in group. He would have to beg, she had said. She had slapped him, punched him and yelled until she scared him. Freya had been so mad for days that every time he mentioned about something his element being took away for that week of detention, she would burn her with hers until his eyes shed tears.

For you to burn in my flames, she would say each time after maiming him.

And Lhu? Lhu hated him. He knew. She wouldn’t speak to him even if it was an indirect question. She would avoid him everywhere and anytime. And he understood, he really did. He had hurt her through her best friend, but he just didn’t understand why he had to be so f*****g punished all the f*****g time even if he had learned the lesson.

He wouldn’t do it again; he was sure of it. He had gotten scared even when he saw the shape and height of the flames within him. He had been enraged, yes, but he didn’t mean for her to literally burn until she collapsed into his flames. He had hopped she would fight him back at some point, but she didn’t, and that was when he realised she was truly suffering because of his unhinged behaviour.

It had been already almost three weeks since the incident and she hadn’t revoked the form that prohibited him from being near her when she didn’t consent to.

He had been scared that he would go running to a professor when he found her that day in the forest about to be swallowed by a Phantomind, but she hadn’t. She had said thank you.

And he wonders, thank you for what?

She shouldn’t be thanking him. Not now. Not ever.

He knew he deserved to be punished, he just didn’t know how much longer he would hold it together.

And it is at that moment that she goes through the door, alone and humming a melody it seems. She goes to the librarian and ask for a thing he can’t really hear, perhaps a section for the way Madame Lemnaert Grevink signals a specific place inside the library and then leaves giving her a smile. Vaughan continues walking, getting distracted by the different titles of the books before her, until she crashed with a bloke who had been reading. The book falls and both get down to pick it up. He is from House Vasilka, Eisdrache can tell by the insignia on his shirt. She apologises and he smiles to her to then say something, she points the book and starts speaking. The bloke looks down at the book and starts speaking too. It seems she has already read it.

They continue talking until the bloke’s friends come through the door and take him away, he waves his hand as a goodbye, and she does the same with a smile.

Something inside of him burns and withers.

Why they can’t be like that?

“f*****g hell,” he murmurs between teeth before he sat down to continue with his essay.