Chapter Text
Olruggio performed his due diligence by checking his wards before he nailed Qifrey in the spine with a snowball.
Qifrey squeaked at the impact, which was his equivalent of leaping off the ground with a holler. He whirled around with wide eyes, crying, “Olly!” with reproach.
The next snowball hit him square in the chest. It scattered harmlessly to the ground, but Qifrey flinched and that only made Olruggio madder.
“Give me a break,” he groused, packing more snow in his gloves. “You can’t even get wet! I made you a spell for that, remember?”
He slung forward with more force than he meant to. Qifrey ducked it, snow cracking against the tree trunk behind him to sprinkle into his hair. The hydrophobic ward activated almost immediately. As soon as the snow began to melt, the droplets were flung away. Qifrey could enjoy all the softness of snow with none of the damp.
Not that Qifrey seemed to appreciate anything Olruggio did. So if Qifrey was learning to dodge, Olruggio would need to change up the game. He sketched out the Ghodrey special: a page of small seals that gathered the snow to clump into perfect spheres. With a repetition sign attached, it would continue for as long as there was material in reach.
Qifrey drank that in for precisely two seconds before he turned tail and fled.
Olruggio snagged his ammunition in a grasping wind to give chase. While Qifrey’s shoes let him run over the snow without sinking too deep, there was no beating a Ghodrey kid. Snowball after snowball broke against his back, his arms, one even nearly taking his hat as he tried to escape.
“STOP!” Qifrey shouted. He tripped forward when one got him in the back of the head, going down in a cloud of powder. The snow atop him melted, then sprang away.
Olruggio walked to stand over him, silently holding a clump of snow over his face. Qifrey wrapped his arms around his head, wailing, “Why are you so mad!”
“Because you’re stupid,” Olruggio told him, and let go. The snow sloughed off the bend of his elbows. Qifrey twisted onto his side and curled up, trying to protect his exposed head. He made a fine impression of a brushbug in the meantime.
The sight made Olruggio’s chest twinge. “I’m done,” he spat, letting himself fall into a seated position. He crossed his arms in front of his chest. Qifrey stayed balled up.
“I mean it, I’m done,” Olruggio insisted. “Stop being dramatic.”
From beneath one sentry arm, Qifrey glared. He unwound after a beat, cautiously pushing up onto his knees. His cheeks were flushed red, their color made vibrant by a backdrop of frost.
“You’re being dramatic,” Qifrey sneered. “Just because you don’t get what you want one time—”
“That’s not what this is about!” Olruggio almost shouted. He balled his fists up in his cloak. He’d love to smother Qifrey in the snow or start shoving it down his robes, but Qifrey would actually start crying if he did. Olruggio couldn’t even be mad without it turning into guilt now.
Qifrey scoffed. “Then what is it about? Cause it looks like I said no and then you started being a dick about it.”
Unable to take it out on Qifrey, Olruggio gripped his own hair and pulled with a furious sound. A clump came free, painful but not enough to make him stop. Then a hand was on his wrist. Qifrey was leaning forward suddenly, one hand sunk in the snow and the other pulling at Olruggio’s.
“Don’t,” Qifrey said. His eye was wide, face pinched.
“What do you care?” Olruggio snapped, but he let go. His scalp just stung now, and he didn’t even feel any better. “You’re — UGH!”
Qifrey balked at the sudden shout. “What?”
“What do you care,” Olruggio repeated, muffled by his own hands on his face. “I forgot that you’re a stupid, stupid idiot asshole self-sacrificing jerk — you’re incorrigible!”
Qifrey’s head tipped. “I’m…?”
“Annoying!” Olruggio translated. “Impossible! You never change, you just keep pulling the same stupid card over and over again!”
“I don’t get it,” Qifrey lied. His face stayed way too innocent for the situation. Olruggio was never going to share his tells with him, because then Qifrey would start hiding them so he could keep lying.
He crawled forward several paces, putting his face level with Qifrey’s and glaring directly into his eye. “You think you’re holding me back,” Olruggio accused. “That’s why you said you won’t test with me.”
Bingo. Qifrey’s eye darted away.
“You suck,” Olruggio told him. “You’re trying to do what’s best for me.” He said it mockingly, like every adult that ignored him begging them not to send him away. It was for his own good, they said. There are no monsters in the Great Hall. Then the village leader held Olruggio out and asked for a trade.
Qifrey was better than that, at least. Qifrey, who was shrinking now. He wrapped his cloak around himself, face half-hidden in its folds. The snow, his robes, his hair, all were stark and blinding white. If he closed his eye, that one glint of blue, it seemed he could fade away completely.
When he spoke, Olruggio had to strain to hear him. “I don’t want to prove them right,” Qifrey mumbled. “That I’m bad for you.”
Olruggio scooted closer. Then closer again, until their arms touched through their cloaks. Qifrey tensed, but didn’t move away. “You always said you don’t care about that,” Olruggio reminded him.
Olruggio had suspected that was maybe not a lie, but not quite the truth either. Nobody liked being gossiped about. Catching your name in a stranger’s mouth, knowing that they hated you without giving you a chance, it was just. Unfair.
Master Ilonia rolled her eyes when he used that word. Still, no matter how childish it felt to say, he couldn’t let it go. People seemed to hate Qifrey for just being in their line of sight. It percolated in his head, itched in his teeth with the desire to speak, but Qifrey never let him breathe a word in his defense. Maybe Olruggio needed to start ignoring the things he said he wanted.
“I don’t,” Qifrey insisted, again. “But it’s about you. They’re starting to look at you weird, now. I heard your master arguing with Master Beldaruit. She told him to keep me away from you, she said she’ll do it herself if he doesn’t!”
His voice rose to a shout. Olruggio hadn’t known that about Ilonia. His lips turned downwards. “I’ll just leave her atelier,” he said. “Apprentices can choose their masters.”
Qifrey twisted to face him, his expression anguished. “You can’t,” he said.
“I literally can,” Olruggio snorted. He fished under Qifrey’s cloak to take his hand. The sensation was muted through their gloves, but the heat seeped through. “I can choose my master, and I can choose my friends, and I can choose when I take a test. She can’t stop me, and you can’t stop me. Okay?”
He smiled, praying that Qifrey could see it was true. The hand in his squeezed tight. Then, in a motion so predictable that Olruggio almost didn’t mind it, Qifrey yanked back. His hand disappeared into his cloak as he turned away.
“Okay,” Qifrey said. He pushed himself to his feet. When he faced Olruggio again, he’d taken several steps away and held his cloak tightly shut. “Sorry for being stupid.”
Olruggio swallowed around a lump in his throat, pinning his smile in place. “That’s okay!” he chirped, standing as well. “Sorry for throwing snow at you. But hey, at least it won’t be hard to get back on the path?” He pointed at their trail of footprints, safely preserved in the snow.
Qifrey nodded once, then moved to lead the way. Olruggio drifted behind, a silent shadow.
For all that he’d gotten what he wanted, he wasn’t satisfied. As always, he couldn’t shake the sense that there was a gap he could never close. Qifrey would always be walking away, and Olruggio would always give chase.
Over Coco’s head, Olruggio watched as murder entered that pale blue eye. Qifrey’s lips peeled back, arm spasming in its sling. He was reaching, Olruggio was certain, for his pen.
His hand was still on Coco’s shoulder. To Qifrey’s eye, it would look like he was doing something malicious — threatening her, maybe, holding her hostage. Olruggio yanked it back, stepping away from her, then realized that was the exact wrong move.
Water crashed into him from the side. It was only as he sputtered on the ground that he saw the seal Qifrey had completed, etched into the rock and waiting for the moment Coco was clear.
A cacophony erupted, Tetia gasping while Coco and Richeh both called, “Master, wait!”
Olruggio spun to his feet, only to feel a stream recoil around his ankles and pull. He went down again, arm barely coming up to guard before he slammed his face into the stone. Olruggio wheezed a curse, scrabbling for his fucking pen, why had he put it away, and froze when a shadow fell over him.
He looked up. It wasn’t Qifrey.
Coco and Richeh both stood in front of him, shoulder-to-shoulder. Through their legs, he could see Qifrey’s water knife hanging in one hand. The idiot had pulled his arm out of its sling.
“Girls,” Qifrey gasped, quick and urgent, “get away from him—”
“It’s okay!” Coco called, as Richeh shouted, “He’s good!”
The good news: Qifrey would not try to kill him while the girls were blocking his way. Bad news: Olruggio had never felt as truly pathetic as he did now, with two young girls acting as his shield. This was a backwards life he led.
“I know that man,” Qifrey said. The water had not let up on Olruggio’s legs, warping and coiling to bind him every time he kicked free, but he managed to close his fingers around his wand. “He is a brimhat— whatever he has said to you, it was a lie. I need you to trust me, and come over here.”
Richeh swung her head around. A correction to his earlier assertion: this was the worst he had ever felt. Stark betrayal shone in her face.
“But—” Coco said.
“Now!” Qifrey snapped.
Olruggio set woodcruor to the stone. Richeh saw him do it. Her eyes widened, but she wouldn’t have time to call. Fire was carved into his skin, it was second nature to draw.
He let it consume him. The girls shrieked, Qifrey cried out. Summoned water turned to steam and Olruggio rolled out of his own inferno, onto his feet, and sprinted for the first exit he could see.
The girls were well out of range, he reminded himself. Olruggio was a master of fire. He knew its precise distance, its heat and its light, he could summon it deaf and blind. They’d screamed but it was shock, not pain. He had seconds before Qifrey doused the flames and washed his seal away, meaning seconds to get out of sight.
But the girls had screamed. Olruggio snapped his head over his shoulder before he could turn a corner, knowing his fire was exactly where it was meant to be, knowing that its heat could have only licked the backs of their cloaks. His heart uncoiled the moment he saw them clear of its reach.
That moment was the same moment that Qifrey completed his seal. The water smeared his woodcruor, the flames winked out, and there were the girls unscathed behind Qifrey and there was Qifrey in pursuit.
Olruggio was a fool. He bolted.
Instinct nearly had him clasping his shoes, a move that would likely kill him faster than Qifrey could. The magic of Serpentback Cave would see his skull cracked open on its ceilings if he left the ground. Running it was, Olruggio calling a wall of fire to blaze in his wake.
This time he didn’t look back. Qifrey would chase him until he lost a trail to follow. The sound of water was already echoing through the caves, a flood or a construct or a rope summoned to Qifrey’s aid, Olruggio didn’t know. Then a stalagmite burst into shards that cut his exposed hands and Olruggio learned at least that much.
He wiped the blood before tearing a bundle of seals from his quire. Crumpling them around stones from a pouch, he scattered them across the floor as rapid-strobing lights. Somewhere behind him, Qifrey bit a sharp noise as he flinched from the pain in his eye.
It bought him a moment while Qifrey was blinded. His next spell was a reversal: it stole the light he intimately knew, carving out a place of shadow. Olruggio tucked himself inside. He didn’t dare move, not even to look behind himself.
It was a complicated nest of seals. To just remove light would mean blinding himself while he hid away, and would create a pitch black void that would be obvious to any gaze in its absence. A pair of seals within each other allowed all light in and trickled only some back out. Those within kept full vision, those outside would see an ordinary shadow.
And yet, it was imperfect. Too much movement could catch a keen eye as the shadow flexed, and while Qifrey’s vision was failing, Olruggio didn’t dare make that bet.
It meant that when his strobing lights began to die, he was slow to check what killed them. Instead he let his cloak conceal the motion of his arm as he inked more seals, filling his quire. A spell for a decoy, a spell to dampen sound, a ring of fire, a spray of embers, every contingency he could think of was drawn a penstroke away. He fervently thanked his past self for carving water-repelling seals into his tools.
Another light died. A seal for invisibility required larger paper than he had in reach. Every spell in his quire was limited by their size, so how would he escape Qifrey? He couldn’t make a light strong enough to truly blind. He couldn’t fly, and didn’t dare test teleportation within the Caves. The decoy, maybe, could trick Qifrey’s eye, but would it trick his too-clever mind? Doubtful.
The final light winked out. In that moment, as the cave was plunged back into darkness, Olruggio risked a glance back. Qifrey clearly hadn’t spotted him yet, and made no effort to hide himself.
He rode atop a water construct in the shape of a horse. It was a masterwork of water magic; Olruggio yearned for the seal that made it. Qifrey had figured out how to balance size, complexity, and dynamic movement all while retaining its surface tension to support a fully grown man upon its back.
Qifrey was brilliant, and that fact had never been more inconvenient. It meant making a run for it was off the table.
The mount halted, then turned in a circle to let Qifrey survey the scene. Without the light to confound his gaze, Olruggio’s position became all the more precarious. Maybe he could just bury himself in the stone until Qifrey gave up — he wasn’t claustrophobic.
Olruggio turned back to his seals. One for an illusion that would mirror him exactly, multiple to raise the stone into pillars, a chain that would delay a detonation of fire, a wall of fire wrapped in water-repellant seals. He didn’t dare put them away, lest the crinkle of paper catch Qifrey’s ears.
A cry split the silence, making his heart leap in his chest:
“Olruggio!”
Qifrey’s voice echoed off the stone. Time was running out.
Options whittling down, Olruggio swallowed nausea as he returned his pen to page. Bolts of fire, shackles of stone, ice that would climb its victims ankles, then knees.
“Olruggio!” Qifrey called again, nearly a snarl. “Come out!”
His pen was frozen on the page. Ink bloomed from its nib, marring the curve of his water rune. Around it: expansion, convergence, repetition.
He couldn’t. He might have to.
Maybe he could send a firebird messenger back to Richeh and apologize.
“Come out,” Qifrey growled, “before I drag you.”
With Qifrey’s blind side exposed, Olruggio took the risk of kneeling. He set his muffling spell down before tearing a long strip of paper from a roll. His pen wicked along its length. Collection and pull drawn heavy with his demand, linked to keystones to crush and nested within fire and dispersion. He connected the rings, each left with the barest gap. With just a dab of his pen to each seal—
His gaze was drawn to the sight of water droplets floating before him. For a moment, Olruggio wondered if he’d accidentally closed his water-fetch seal. It was wrong, though, too lightweight for what he’d made. His spell was built to be oppressive beyond resistance. This was almost gentle, the damp pulling from his robes and into an array of drifting tears.
Almost gentle, were it not the spell that damned him.
Qifrey held out his own quire, his gaze fixed where the water he had coaxed emerged from the shadow. He let the paper drop to brandish the next: his water knife, never dissolved, arced back in his grip.
“Found you,” Qifrey sneered.
Olruggio moved a second before he launched the blade. Spell clutched in hand, Olruggio smudged one ink-slicked finger to the page. The effect was instantaneous: a sucking sound as his magic battled Qifrey’s, yanking its substance from the construct he rode. The air around Olruggio went suffocatingly hot, enough to devour the water when it was crushed into smaller drops.
Qifrey tried to dismount, then cried out when he twisted. He’d forgotten his wounds, and fell instead of leaping to his feet.
Olruggio’s heart clenched, but Qifrey’s blood was vicious. Even as he rasped with agony, he pushed himself up from the stone, hellbent.
Olruggio didn’t risk hesitation. He weighted another seal with a bead and pitched. The moment it touched the earth, an inch from Qifrey’s flank, the rock around it churned into rubble. Qifrey lost his grip, falling into the broken stone.
It was uneven and sharp-edged. The stone would shred his clothes and then his skin the more he struggled. Qifrey thrashed to get free, one arm swinging to fling his water knife. It anchored into a wall and Qifrey used it to drag himself from the shallow trap, spilling out on one side with blood smeared across the ground.
“Qifrey, stop!” The words burst out of him. Olruggio silenced himself, flattening his tone as he grimaced down at his old friend. “You can’t fight like this.”
Speaking at all had been a mistake. Qifrey twisted towards him, eye wild and teeth bared. He looked more like a cornered dog than a human. “You more than anyone,” he seethed, “should know that pain only makes this easier.”
He pushed himself to one knee. He was trembling. Olruggio skimmed a page in his quire, the one he didn’t want to use. It was too small in this form, but it would distract until he could copy it larger, harsher. It was his solution. Between the masters of fire and water, only one of them could fall to the very magic they wielded.
Then Qifrey swayed to one side and collapsed.
It was sudden, without warning. Olruggio stared. Qifrey was sprawled across the stone, his breath rapid and shallow.
It had to be a trick. He creased the paper between his fingers. This had to be a trick.
In the dark of the cave, a glint found Olruggio’s eye.
He dove forward, seizing a page he’d drawn and throwing it against the stone. Fire roared to life in a solid arc in front of Qifrey. The whistle of projectiles died within that wall.
Over the crackle of flame, Sasaran’s voice hissed out, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Olruggio, cloaked by the fire, knelt towards Qifrey. His eye was open but glazed with pain. He’d bled through the makeshift bandages that Coco had helped place and now his hands could do no more than twitch against the ground. Even Qifrey could not be powered by rage alone, it seemed.
Hazy as he was, Qifrey still spasmed when Olruggio got closer. His lips moved, his voice croaked. He couldn’t form words, mouth turned clumsy by blood loss.
He desperately needed a hospital but, for this precise moment, he was alive. Olruggio forced himself upright and leapt through the flames, into the face of Sasaran’s puppet.
The real body would be skulking somewhere in the dark. Olruggio glowered into it. “He’s helpless!” he called out. “There’s no threat from him now!”
“And?” The puppet whisked as if to peer around Olruggio. It wouldn’t go near his flame. If only the kids had known that would keep him at bay. If only he’d left them with a fireshield of their own. “Why not eliminate the threat permanently. He’s meddled enough, so Iguin says.”
Olruggio sneered. “And you are, of course, Iguin’s lackey.”
A hiss rang from beneath the brim. “I work for a shared cause,” he seethed, the eye in his hat constricted with fury. “Agreeing with Iguin’s method does not make me his patsy.”
Nearly everyone who consorted with Iguin were pieces in his game. “Well if you agree with his method first and foremost,” Olruggio drawled, “then you should think for yourself. Would murdering Coco’s teacher make her sympathetic to our cause?”
“She doesn’t have to know!” Sasaran spat, utterly feline. “Iguin is with her now.”
It clenched his gut. “I see,” Olruggio said.
Under his cloak, his pen moved along the page. The seals that worked a compass were complicated, requiring great range and a chain of spells. To make a light that pointed towards the closest domestic whiskercat, however, was child’s play.
His wayfinder bloomed and darted forth. The cloak twisted, mirroring the shock of its master as the real Sasaran shrank from the light. “How dare,” he yowled, but was cut off by Olruggio’s arm crushing into his throat.
“Let’s chat,” Olruggio growled. He slapped a wallbreaker seal onto the stone at his back and shoved Sasaran through.
He then placed three seals in quick succession: a bolt of fire caught Sasaran’s puppet, a water construct raced towards the girls in the shape of a deer, and Olruggio took a final gaze at the flames that shielded Qifrey before he sealed the cave.
The new chamber looked like it had been home to a fountain, once. Aged marble rose in tiers, serpents winding around its central column. It was surrounded by ornate benches formed of gold and precious gems. They looked impossible to sit upon, rendering this idyllic place of beauty unreachable to anyone who would care to sit and enjoy the peace.
That meant he wasn’t desecrating any pleasant memories. In the dim glow from the fountain’s base, Sasaran’s teeth cast jagged shadows. “You are treading dangerous ground,” he spat. “Do not think your brim earns you any loyalty. I’ll cut you down as soon as that half-blind freak.”
Olruggio closed a seal in his robe that set his body ablaze. Smoke gathered as a brim around his cap and dripped into tassels veiling his face. Sasaran’s ears went flat.
“Tell me again,” Olruggio rumbled, “how you will cut me down with your feeble blade of cloth.”
Disdain seeped from his lips. He stepped forward. Sasaran moved back, only to stagger against the edge of the fountain. Masked by his brim, Olruggio was free to stare at Sasaran's hands. One wrong move and Olruggio would close the distance. The intended entrance to this place was blocked, buried by rubble long ago. Without casting, Sasaran was trapped.
“I wanted to ask you about your part in all of this,” Olruggio continued. “Why did you carve on the boy?”
Wariness turned to confusion. “The boy?” Sasaran repeated, almost laughing. “Is that why you’re so incensed?” His eyes slitted. “The plan was always to provide motivation to Iguin’s girl. He was exposed, it was merely opportunity. That, and I suppose I did enjoy teaching that little brat a lesson. Patting himself on the back for frivolous —”
The nature of witches was to fight with words and magic, so perhaps that was why Sasaran did not expect Olruggio to seize him by the robes. Smoke billowed between his fingers. “He is a child!” Olruggio roared. “He did nothing wrong!”
Sasaran’s pupils were blown wide, heedless of the light. His hands fluttered, the instinct to push Olruggio away at war with the fire licking down his arms. It crawled onto his robes, chewing fabric black.
“Calm yourself,” Sasaran gulped. A claw scratched at the fountain’s edge, forming the sign for water. It was lost as Olruggio’s hand burned through the fabric he clutched and Sasaran fell back. He landed sprawled half against the fountain and half across the ground. At once he scrabbled through a new spell, dousing himself to put the fire out.
Olruggio should kill him. It would be simple, easy. He wouldn’t even have to use fire. Stone or ice would do the trick just as well. One spike through the brain and he would be dead, never to harm another soul, and Olruggio wouldn’t even have to endure the sound of him —
Nausea roiled in his throat. He jerked away, undoing his cloak to expose the seal stitched within. At once, the fire caught the embroidery, and the blaze that enfolded him was gone.
A chill rushed in to fill the empty space. Olruggio breathed in, then out, then yanked his cloak back into place to conceal the heave of his chest. He twisted on a heel.
Behind him, Sasaran’s nails scratched over stone. “Wait,” he snapped, “You think you can just —”
A new voice crooned, “Leave him, Sasaran.”
His heart stopped. Goosebumps erupted across Olruggio’s neck. He turned, first his head and then his gaze, to the one-eyed mask staring back.
Iguin’s mask was a breath from Olruggio’s nose. He stood on the ceiling in defiance of gravity, just the wisp of his smile visible behind his tasseled maw.
“Iguin!” Sasaran scrabbled to his feet. “The Emberwitch needs to be reminded of his place, he—”
“—Will see our child of hope safely from the caves,” Iguin finished. His voice was smooth, without a trace of threat. It made Olruggio’s skin crawl. Sasaran shut his mouth.
Iguin released himself from his perch, turning smoothly to land on his toes. Olruggio took a step back, then wished he hadn’t.
“Are you willing to do this?” Iguin asked him. His head cocked. He stepped closer.
Olruggio swallowed. When he tried to speak, his throat clamped and he coughed. “Yeah,” he croaked, rubbing his neck. “I’ll make sure of it. Did you succeed?”
He forced the words out before he could hesitate. The mask was still, leering through the dim.
“And what answer are you hoping for,” Iguin murmured. “Olruggio?”
As if he hadn’t spoken at all, Iguin turned to Sasaran and beckoned. “We leave now. It is not yet time to reap this sprout.”
What spell he cast, Olruggio did not see. The air bent around them, and then they were gone.
It had lasted only seconds. He didn’t let himself breathe. The back of his neck still shivered like that eye was boring down. If anyone was watching, they would see him find his spare paper, draw a layered seal, and touch it to his chest. Then they would see him no more.
Olruggio wandered the caves in a daze. His steps were mindless, automatic. He found the girls with Qifrey, with Alaira now awake and two dark-haired children. One of them, the boy, had a seal collared around his neck.
So he was okay. Alive, at least, and sane. Olruggio should probably be relieved, but he just felt sick.
Their voices were low and urgent. Qifrey needed a doctor. The boy — Euini — could not be discovered. The children could not stay together, and Alaira could not abandon any of them.
If he could show himself, it would be easy. Two adults to escort the kids in opposite directions to safety. The kids knew he wore a brimmed hat, now. Maybe, by a miracle, if he walked out of the shadows they wouldn’t shy from him. Maybe they would let him guide them and their teacher to sunlight. But even then, Alaira would ask questions, and she would be too smart to take his answers.
Qifrey was bleeding, but to save his life would be exchanging it with Euini’s. There was no saving a witch that was carved like him. A wiped mind was still a human mind — they couldn’t send him to the isle, they couldn’t release him into the woods as a scalewolf. They could amputate his curse by separating his head from his neck, and no other way.
Olruggio inhaled. Exhaled. He wore a brimmed hat. He should act like it.
On the wall, Richeh drew out her specialty. A chain of minute seals would form a windowway once they were completed. Alaira knelt by Euini for a rushed farewell, hands on his shoulders in human form.
“Stay as a scalewolf,” she was telling him. Her voice was quick and fervent. “Go to the trees so no one else sees you. Wait for me. I will be there. I promise. I will be there, I am not going to leave you alone. Tell me: what are you going to do?”
“Wait for you,” Euini repeated back, but his voice shook with unease.
“It won’t be more than a day,” Alaira swore. “As soon as Qifrey is at a hospital, I’ll find you. Can you trust me on that?”
A trembling mouth, a stuttered nod. Alaira took his hands, squeezed them tight, then stood. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get you through.”
The windowway opened to blinding sunlight and a floral breeze. Richeh rushed past for a final, tight hug, just missing Olruggio’s cloak. She and Euini clung to each other. Their fingers twisted in robes, not enough time to linger.
“See you soon,” Euini whispered, maybe for Richeh, maybe for Alaira. He removed his collar and the shadows turned him to a beast. The scalewolf padded forward, taking a final, lingering glance back. Then he leapt through.
Brave kid. Too brave for his age, and for what he’s been dragged through.
“Okay,” Alaira rasped, as Olruggio slipped unseen between her and the girls. “I’m going to close the window. Remember, just wait—”
Olruggio didn’t bother with a spell. He pushed her forward, through the windowway, and broke the ring with his hand.
The window closed. Darkness snapped down like teeth. The girls tightened into a cluster around their teacher, pens in terrified hands.
“Who’s there?” Called the dark-haired girl, the one Olruggio hadn’t met. Agott Arklaum, the disgraced child. She put herself in front of her fellow students, brandishing a seal of fire.
Olruggio knelt down before he revealed himself. He pulled the seal free, light rippling back into place to a chorus of gasps and startled screams. He’d intentionally settled where Agott wasn’t looking, and had his hands up in surrender before she could turn her spell on him.
He looked up from under his brim, letting them see his face between threads of smoke and amber. “I am not here to harm any of you,” he said, level and slow. “The plot here has finished. I am going to escort you out of the caves and get your teacher to a hospital.”
Coco, Agott, Tetia, Richeh. Across their faces was an array of horror, of suspicion, of tearful disbelief. What sparse relief they had found believing the worst was over, Olruggio had shattered.
He waited, kneeling with hands still raised, displaying he had no pen, no tools, no seals. Slowly, he lowered them to rest atop his thighs. Tetia’s hand curled in Coco’s sleeve as she, with a wavering step, nudged herself in front of her sister-apprentice.
“Is this a trick?” Richeh asked. Her voice was harsh. “You already lied.”
Olruggio wet his lips. Words failed him.
“It’s not,” Agott said. It was sudden, and final. “If he was going to do anything, he had ample opportunity while he was invisible.”
To Richeh she asked, without taking her eyes from Olruggio, “This is the one who was with you before?”
“He helped Master Qifrey,” Coco told her, but her voice was uncertain.
Iguin had that effect on people. There was a gravity well around him, and it warped more than the physical world. Simple, reliable concepts like the idea that somebody might just care enough to help were made questionable in his wake.
Agott’s gaze sharpened. Her fingers crinkled on her seal. “Why are you doing this?”
Olruggio sighed. “You kids ask the hard questions,” he muttered. “No chance you’ll accept that I just don’t want you to die?”
“Try again.”
“Okay, okay.” He nearly raised his hands again, but even a lift of his fingers made all four of the girls flinch. Olruggio flattened his hands back against his legs, cursing himself. “Well first thing’s first: if you’re going to point a spell at me, make it something other than fire. I don’t burn.” He clicked his tongue, then added, “Your best bet would be stone or crystal, if you want to go offensive. They won’t melt. Ordinarily fire’s typically a good go-to — quick to draw, effective, but, uh—”
Agott’s eyes had started to blaze. “Sorry,” Olruggio mumbled. “I meant it, but — yeah, not the time for a lesson. How about… you all know that there’s something going on with Coco here, don’t you?” His gaze flicked to her, finding her stricken. “So does it make sense that there’s a vested interest in getting her out of here, with the teacher that’s protecting her?”
The answer was no. It didn’t make any sense that a grown adult man had singled out a child and called her their savior. It didn’t make sense that a boy had been mutilated beyond repair, and it didn’t make sense that Olruggio had to make himself out to be just one more monster to get these kids to let him help.
It was that, of course, that made Agott’s mouth thin with acceptance. “That, I will buy,” she sniffed. “But if you turn out to be lying — I am an Arklaum. I know spells that will hurt far worse than this.”
She crumpled up her uncast spell and let it fall to the ground. The motion was contemptuous, and perhaps would have hidden the tremor in her hands from a less trained eye.
Olruggio needed a smoke and a strong drink. Maybe two.
“Alright. I’m getting up.” He gave them a moment to hear him before standing. “I’m gonna levitate a hammock for — your teacher. I’ll lead the way.”
They walked a silent procession. Qifrey had lost consciousness after Olruggio left. His face was ashen, his pulse rapid. He’d been bleeding too long. Would it be worth it to cauterize the wound? Leave him with a mass of scars and his apprentices with the scent-memory of his burning flesh — no, not an option. Olruggio was too much of a coward.
He kept his back to them, listening for the full pattern of footsteps to be assured that they followed. The only time that Olruggio faced them was to lift them back onto the bridge’s road, and he found in every face a different degree of terror. They were all waiting for the moment when the nightmare came screaming back to reality.
At last, blessedly, the sun found them. Olruggio paused before the mouth of the cave, squinting into the light. “Of course,” he murmured. “And this is where I leave.”
He turned, telegraphing the movement, and knelt again. Olruggio held a spell seal out towards Agott, the spell that guided Qifrey’s stretcher. “There is a Knight outside,” he told them. “Tell them whatever you will, but make sure that Qifrey gets to a doctor as soon as possible.” He paused, looked at Tetia. “My advice is that a young witch distraught over her teacher would probably light a fire under them — make them get a move on.”
Knowing a Knight was so close, the girls could choose to scream. They could call for help. If a skilled enough fighter was beyond that cave, then Olruggio may well lose.
None of the girls said a word. Agott clutched the spell he had given her, glaring up at him. Richeh’s fists curled in her dress. Coco hovered at Qifrey’s side, more concerned with her teacher than any other.
Tetia said, “Thank you.”
It was hushed. Olruggio startled, believing he had heard wrong. She looked back at him, though, eyes red-rimmed and exhausted.
“Yeah,” Olruggio rasped back. “Just — be careful.”
He returned the invisibility seal to its place. A second spell, one he had etched in his robes while leading their trail, created a distortion in the air that implied he’d teleported away.
Tetia burst into tears.
It shocked the others into movement. Richeh brushed up against her side, taking her hand as Coco floundered. Agott’s shoulders hunched before she forced them down again.
“That’s actually good, Tetia,” she said, her voice soft. “He was right about the crying. They’ll ask less questions.”
She took a breath, said, “Come on,” and started forward, leading her teacher and fellow apprentices into the light.
In their wake, leaning in shadow as a dying flame, Olruggio watched them go.