I circled to his left, searching for purchase on the ice.
Falar straightened his back to scowl down at me. “You’re killing yourself, you rank amateur. This is exactly what I warned you about, but did you listen?”
I charged him, but he punched his palm forward, drawing a single rune. A blast of power hit me, pushing me back.
“Nooo, you just had to do the opposite. I have to say I’m surprised you managed to break through the ward. What mystifies—“
I grabbed hold of a zombie that was standing close by and ripped off its arm, throwing it with the same motion at him.
He swatted the arm aside. It spun, flying off somewhere. “What outright mystifies me is why you would do something so preposterously stupid. Now, stop that!”
I charged at him, but the last words were so loud they shook the platform, slamming into me like I had hit water chest first. I stumbled and fell on one knee.
Falar’s eyes were dark holes, and black smoke rose from his mouth as he walked toward me. “I have tolerated your tantrums thus far, but this is pushing it, student. Do you even understand what you have done?”
The cold surged through my veins, and I leaned on its power, drawing in more. That’s right, keep talking, come closer. “How could I?”
“By learning what we’re trying to teach you! By stopping to act like a wounded animal and start acting like a person!”
He stood next to me, close enough to grab. I reached for him, but he flicked his hand at me and the force threw me on my back. The pressure was similar to what had surrounded the floating skull, overpowering, crushing me.
He crouched lower, pushing his face almost down to mine. His skin was blue and grey, cracking in places. Black fumes rose from his eyes and mouth, puffing at my face as he spoke. “Empowering yourself with the Null is difficult and precise, unless you’re unconcerned about killing yourself. I will attempt to save you, once again, despite what I said earlier. I’m beyond disappointed, but I also want to know how you managed this.”
I crunched myself up, willed my drive my fingers into his eyes.
He slapped my hand away, causing it to slam to the platform floor. I felt the impact, but nothing else. He grabbed my throat, slamming me down against the floor. “You will stay there. I will finish my work with the wards so the winds won’t blow this whole Academy away. Then we’ll see if you can still be saved.”
I lay on my back, unable to move. I didn’t know what was going on. Some part of me wondered why I didn’t feel helpless, while the rest was numb. I couldn’t even keep holding on to the hate. It had been bright and sharp, driving me forward, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Powers swirled above me, pressure and the tingling of magic mixing together.
“Just a bit more,” Falar said.
The snow swirling and rushing above me stopped. It started to float gently down, landing on my face. I expected it to melt and the water to dribble down my neck and shirt, but it didn’t.
Three skeletons walked to stand next to me. One lay down on all fours and the two others sat on top of its pelvis, spines straight and against each other. They placed their hands on the first skeleton’s back, forming a bowl of bones.
Falar sat on it. He put his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers before his face, looking down at me. “Now, your turn. Finally, I might be able to speak without you interrupting me constantly. Listen. Truly listen, this time.”
I could hardly move my eyes, but I tried to glare at him anyway.
“Your body is held together mostly by the remnants of the power you pulled. You did it once already, with the Conspice. This time you went much further.”
I remembered the time I had punched Jordan. The lack of emotion except annoyance and spite, and the force of the punch. The icy cold that had pushed up my veins afterward. Now I didn’t feel cold, or warm. Nothing.
“You controlled it somewhat better now, I grant you that. Enough to keep you moving. Not enough to keep from wreaking havoc on yourself.” He leaned back against the two ribcages and crossed one leg over the other. “The connection created by the Conspice has been broken. You were correct about that. But there is still a connection. Something tethering you to the nothing, or close to it. I was buying you time to figure out what it was.” He leaned down and tapped my throat with a finger. “Maybe this will teach you to respect the limitations I have placed on you. Do not test my wards again.”
I tried to tell him it hadn’t been me. That Jextor had done it, but that was stupid. It didn’t matter whose fault it had been.
I was probably dying. Falar’s skin was flaking off, lips cracked and split. What did I look like?
“I will reinforce the ward. I won’t repeat the mistake of leaving it too weak, but our deal still holds. Once you know what you’re doing, you can remove it. Not before.”
He started drawing runes into the air as he spoke. We had made no deal, he had only—
My throat clamped down on itself as the noose snapped around it. Warmth and feeling rushed back, and with them, pain. Frozen slush ran in my veins. The ice-coated floor was scalding hot like I was lying on a stovetop, sizzling and charring. I screamed and jerked, hitting my nose on the floor as I thrashed. The impact wasn’t enough to distract me from the icicles inside my lungs.
“Remember this,” Falar droned, standing up. He raised his voice to make it carry over my screaming. “I would have told you of the price if you had asked.”
I convulsed, back arching and curling. My legs kicked and my nails dug into the softening ice on the floor. Something black oozed out from my skin, bulging and stretching as slivers of ice pushed their way out of me.
“See that she doesn’t fall or bite off her tongue. Take her to her dorm,” he said, gesturing at the skeleton chair. The skeletons unfolded themselves, bones shuffling back into place where his weight had pressed them out of alignment. “I’ll see you in three days, according to your schedule. Think hard about your options before that.”
He walked away.
I drove my face into the floor to distract myself from the pain. Fingers grabbed on to me, pinching and holding me as I bled ice and dark and death.
I must have fainted at some point. I came to when I was being carried down a flight of stairs. Bony hands held me, digging into my back. Something was between my teeth. My skin was raw. It prickled all over, and shivers ran up and down my body, making my teeth rattle against the thing in my mouth.
One of the skeletons was missing the other arm bone. I spat it out from between my teeth. The skeleton caught it and seemed to frown at the place where I had cracked the bone, biting through it. It snapped the bone back into place and grabbed hold of my head again, holding it so my neck wouldn’t get sore.
The choker hung around my throat, heavy and absolute. My lungs ached, but something else cut through the rest: the pressure in the air was missing, the vibration in the skeletons’ bones, it was gone.
An extra skeleton walked in front of me. It opened the door to my dorm, and the rest of the skeletons tilted me upright and onto my feet. One patted me on the shoulder and gave my back a small push.
I took a step. My legs seemed to hold. I stumbled forward and fell down on my face the moment I crossed the threshold.
“Lina!” someone shouted.
“We don’t know. She will tell us, if she so decides,” Minnelil’s voice said. I was coming to again, warm and bundled up tight inside a duvet.
“Nah, I’ll just ask her,” Fek said.
“No, absolutely no. She’ll kill you,” Grit said.
“Naaaah! We’re buddies.”
It was better to stop them talking right about now. “I’m awake,” I said.
Fek sat on his bed and Minnelil and Grit were standing next to him, all huddled close together.
“We’re happy about that,” Minnelil said. “You looked a bit… well...”
“Dead,” Fek said. “Why did you run into the storm like that?”
Both Grit and Minnelil groaned. Grit rubbed her face with both hands, making a rough scratching noise.
I let out a silly little chuckle. I didn’t know where that came from. This time, I think I really had been pretty close to snuffing it. For once, I wasn’t disappointed I hadn’t. It was… nice to see all of them again. I surprised myself by really feeling that way.
Fek grinned at me.
“You’ve obviously been through a lot,” Minnelil said. “You don’t have to tell us everything, or even anything. But I think all of us would be happy to listen, if you want to.”
I took a deep breath. My lungs ached, my whole body ached. I almost started talking, but stopped to rub my face, collect my thoughts. Skin flaked off, leaving the front of my robe gray and my face feeling raw. I looked at my hands, tested pressing my fingers together. The skin bounced back slowly, like after getting a frostbite.
I took another breath. “I’m not great at talking to people.”
“We gathered!” Fek shouted, before Grit slapped the back of his head.
“But I’ll try. This all started less than a week ago…”
“Whoa,” Grit said. “You got to spend a whole day with Falar? I would have paid him back with my body so hard.”
“Grit!” Minnelil shouted, cheeks turning pink. “That was the part that got your attention?”
“And he didn’t even mean it like that. He’s just a creep,” I said. “Anyway, that’s the story.” I had told them everything starting from the moment I stole the Conspice from Falar. That was enough. Going further back would have been asking too much from me and them both.
“How are you feeling now?” Minnelil asked. She swiped the front of my robe, brushing off the dandruff-like specks of skin. “What happened must have been horrible.”
“It was pretty bad, yeah. I’m fine.”
“You sure?” Fek said. He had turned a chair around and was sitting leaning against the backrest, arms dangling over it.
“I’m fine,” I said, smiling. I meant it. What had happened had been horrible, but I was feeling decent. “I’ve… done some stupid stuff earlier too, but this time I went too far. I paid for it and that’s all there is to it. But I don’t want to do that again, trust me.”
Minnelil put her index finger to the small notch under her thin, wide mouth, brow furrowed. “We do. I would like to blame them for not warning you, but it was your third day here. Most people don’t learn to channel the Null before being here for years. None of us can do it.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ll get it next time I’ll try,” Fek said, tilting back with the chair.
“Physical enhancement is a rare specialization among necromancers. It’s lucky you attacked Falar, out of all people. You probably would have killed anyone else,” Minnelil said.
I winced, looking away from all of them. I wasn’t proud of what had happened. For getting trashed so completely, but mostly for flying off the handle like that. I had been so angry.
Not even angry, filled with hate. Measureless hate.
Jordan, his face crumpling as I ran my fist practically through it on the roofs of Tenorsbridge.
That had been similar. I had almost gotten past him, but then I hadn’t wanted to. He had grabbed me and I still could have talked my way out, promised him something, gotten out of it later. Instead, I had…
“Lina?” Grit asked.
“I bet she’s realizing some stuff,” Fek said. “I make that face too.”
My vision blurred. I blinked back tears. Damn it, what had Falar done to me? I didn’t like this. I was supposed to be tougher.
A weight settled next to me on the bed. An arm wrapped over my shoulder. I was barely keeping everything together, and now someone was pulling me into a hug. I wanted to scream and bite and kick, but I sat still.
Minnelil’s hair flowed over me. It smelled of flowers in spring, fresh and heady. “Shh,” she said, pulling my head against her chest. “Shh, shh.”
I bit my lip to keep from howling out loud. I pushed my face into the coarse cloth of her robe and wailed.
“It’s fine,” she said, hand resting on the back of my head. “It’s fine.”