Page 1 of Phoenix Academy: Madness

Chapter 1

It all startedwhen he ate his own dick.

Well, notliterally.I mean—gross. But hethoughtit was his own dick. He was screaming and crying, tears dripping off his cheeks as he choked on pieces of what was actually a slice of sheet cake. He was fully convinced it was his own mutilated genitals he was scarfing down.

It's not like he chose to do it, though. He was forced to eat it against his will by feral magic with a taste for violence.My magic.

It took control of him completely.

That's what the madness does to them.

That's what my touch does tomen.

At first I thought it was a curse. But I'm starting to realize now that it's a blessing. Some things in life require violent revenge. And sometimes the best way to get that is to make a man mad.

Literally.

* * *

My world wasn’t always severed genitals and sobbing men.

Two days ago I was in a very different place. I had a rifle in one hand, walking through the woods as the sun crested over the distant horizon, my little sister Lizzy mere steps behind me, our mother ahead of us forging a path. There was dew in the air, and with our witch senses we followed its scent towards fresh water, looking for signs of young rabbits and other prey in the foliage.

We'd been on the run for three months, after the Heretic found us in our modest cottage in rural Washington. Leaving that little house behind was incredibly difficult; it was where Lizzy attended her first full year of school. The garden was flush with the fruits and vegetables Mom and I planted in the early spring, and I was on the verge of falling in love with the boy in the house down the road, who let me keep my secrets without asking questions I couldn't answer.

But all things come to an end. Despite his lack of magic, the Heretic was a superb tracker, and he found us, his prey, just as Lizzy was about to enroll in high school. Mom sensed him a mile away—onlya mile away, when usually she felt him coming on the wind, or heard his voice in the dead of night. Either her witchy powers were failing her, so far from a coven, or the Heretic was growing more powerful in ways we couldn't comprehend.

So we returned to the wild. I showed Lizzy how to set a snare to trap a hare, and whispered the spell in her ear that called them close, unaware of the danger. We stood at the edge of riverbanks fat with fish and shoved our hands into the cool water, coaxing fish to leap into our grip, thanking them for lives given willingly.

I tried to teach my sister how to survive. Like my mother, who taught me everything, I passed down knowledge: how to skin a wild rabbit, cook a fresh fish so it's safe to eat, forage for wild onion, and even how to string a bow, though we'd both been carrying rifles since our hand-eye coordination was strong enough to aim and shoot.

Mouth tingling with magic, I gave her all the secret spells I knew: spells to start fires, reverse a stream's direction, tame the wildest of animals, and scent danger on the wind. I prepared her for everything I knew how to face.

Or so I thought. Now I wonder if I should have just taught her how to run without looking back. It would've served her better.

I always wanted her to have a different life. One with friends in it, maybe even a first kiss and a boyfriend. I never cared about those things—life showed me that attachments are risky to indulge in—but I thought Lizzy should have something different. Something worth standing her ground for.

"Lizzy, do you feel that?" I asked her, as the sun's warm rays stretched across the sky, the woods dappled with their light. "We're getting close."

"I know how to sense fresh water, Ari. I'm not a dumbass," she groused. "You don't have to bother teaching me again."

Lizzy was on the edge of puberty and increasingly ill-tempered because of it. Sometimes I wanted to smack her in the mouth because of it, but I settled for grinding my teeth and shooting a glare in her direction.

"Not the water. Thedoe. Do you sense her spirit?"

This got Lizzy's attention. Though she was an excellent herbalist, and could brew a potion to make the coldest heart fall in love, what my sister wanted more than anything was to be a naturalist like me.

"Show me," she said, skipping ahead and reaching out to grab my hand. "Where is she?"

Our mother eyed us from further up on the trail, where she was clearing debris. "We don't have storage space for venison," she reminded me. "So don't even think of coaxing her over here to take a shot, you show-off."

I grinned at her. "I would never!"

Closing my eyes, I let my senses dive out into the world and find the young doe. She was maybe half a year old at most, coming up on her first breeding season. Far from the herd, which I could sense traces of downstream, she wandered boldly from their protection in search of her own story.

My heart ached to be like her, to set out on my own and discover myself far from my mother and my sister. As much as I loved them, I'd just turned nineteen years old and found myself restless and hungry for adventure—or love. But I couldn't break away from them, not with the Heretic on our tail. So instead I let myself live vicariously through the young doe. She knew there were predators in these woods, but she set her own path anyway, despite the dangers.

"I can feel her," Lizzy said, awe in her voice. "I think I can even sense her heartbeat."

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