Page 77 of Foresyth Conservatory
“Thanks,” I replied, and I meant it. If it hadn’t been for Nina, I don’t know if I would be leaving unscathed. My gratitude lingered like an unspoken debt between us.
The lab’s sharp, chemical scent—a pungent cloud of formaldehyde that somehow felt comforting—enveloped us as we re-entered. The relief was so visceral that my chest loosened; I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been until I was here, back in the world of the familiar.
I drifted to my workstation, letting my fingers brush over the cold brass of my instruments, their silence a welcome response. I could almost fool myself into thinking that nothing had changed—that I could simply return to the rhythm of work, the whirr of machines, the bite of chemicals in the air. But as I turned to leave, reality came crashing back with the weight of a half-dozen questions.
Whatwasthat thing out there? Radiation poisoning? A genetic anomaly? I kept trying to offer myself some rational explanation, but the truth felt slippery, the familiar logic I’d clung to unraveling into bare threads.
It was magick.Unmistakable, powerful, mind-shattering, magick. It almost felt good to give into the admission. My mind could rest now that it had found an explanation for the inexplicable, and my body could just take action. I started up the steps.
“Where are you going?” Nina’s voice caught me, the note of hurt unmistakable. Maybe she’d expected me to stay, to linger in this pocket of safety with her. Maybe she needed the company more than I realized. But I couldn’t afford to stay here, not now. I had too many questions clawing for answers, too many mysteries snapping at my heels.
“To find the Mapmaker,” I called over my shoulder, already halfway up the stairs.
The Acolyte & The Alchemist: Part VII
The scholars began with small sacrifices.
An unsuspecting spider, swathed in its own web. A lizard, its glassy eyes reflecting moonlight. A goldfinch, its song cut short beneath their whispered invocations. Little things, barely a ripple in the vast pulse of the world’s thrumming life.
They practiced only when the halls of the Conservatory lay silent, when the oil lamps had guttered to embers, and when the other students’ dreams lay undisturbed. The first time, Quill had flinched. The second, his hands had merely trembled. By the third, he had learned how to steady his grip.
And yet, the magick did not answer them.
His hands, once dry and ashen from the endless turning of pages, had softened—warmed by the slick stain of blood. The ink of his studies had been replaced by something more sickly sweet.
But it wasn’t enough.
“It’s not working. We should stop,” Quill murmured, his voice barely rising above the weight of his own revulsion. The latest offering lay twitching before him, its broken body still clinging to the last embers of life. A stray cat. A thing with a name, perhaps. A thing that might have purred beneath someone’s touch.
His stomach twisted.
“This feels . . . morbid.”
Hamra, crouched beside him, did not look away from the carcass. Her eyes—swirls of onyx and fire—were dark, too dark, reflecting none of his hesitation. Cards encircled them in a bright gold ring, gleaming under the moonlight.
“No,” she said, fingers trailing the pages ofThe Book of Skorn, her lips moving as if deciphering a prophecy mid-chant.
“We’re just misreading the Book. We need five elements represented.” She looked over to their makeshift altar. “But what if they aren’t just symbolic? What if they’re . . .people?”
Quill’s breath hitched. The air between them thickened, taking on the weight of something irreversible.
“You want to bring more students into this?” His voice was sharp, laced with something unexpected, even to him.
It should have been horror.
It should have been disgust.
But he named it for what it was: jealousy coursing through him, hot and thick, curling around his ribs like a vice. This ritual, this madness, was theirs. No one else’s.
Breaching their pact would require him to justify himself, explain this madness to someone other than Hamra. He didn’t know if he could do that.
Hamra lifted her gaze, watching him in that way she always did—like she already knew what he would say, what he would do, what he would become.
“It says here,” she continued, unfazed, “that the elements breathe life into the cards, imbuing them with the power of transcendental magick. We need someone touched by water and earth magick. We already represent the others.”
Quill swallowed. Somewhere, the rational part of him was screaming, clawing at the edges of his mind like a caged thing. Hamra must have seen it in his eyes, the quiet scream of doubt, because her voice dipped into that crushed velvet sound, soothing the scared boy.
“I will never feel the same about anyone except you.”
