Approaching Daybreak

  For someone whose conscience had been so affected by what he did of his own volition, Theo’s sleep was nigh-dreamless that night.

  He did not dream of the world where Ty had left because he never trusted her; he did not dream of the red fires at the bottom of the grassy hill; he did not dream of his childhood friends being abandoned by him; he did not dream of his favorite memory of Em.

  No, he dreamed about the night before everything changed.

  Countless noises in the darkness while he slumbered, unable to wrench free from sleep until someone shook him and called his name.

  Theo. Get up, Theo.

  Then, in the vast darkness, among hushed voices, was the haunting noise:

  Tap, tap.

  And again, somehow—“Theo. Get up, Theo.”

  He inhaled sharply, adjusting his eyes to the shallow darkness. A small figure was standing over him, shaking him awake.

  “What’s wrong?” he whispered, looking around to see a wide-eyed Korinna and Chelsi speechlessly staring straight at him from beside a spell-candle. “Did something happen?”

  Moriya spared little time. “I hear something. We’re going to go investigate. Kor and Chel will keep watch.”

  He could hear his heart pounding as he listened to the silence.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Oh, no,” Theo breathed. “Oh…oh no.”

  “Come on.”

  Stumbling up from his spot, patting his pockets like he had any idea what he was getting himself into, Theo followed the professor deeper into the forest. They had successfully reclaimed the Ancients and were supposed to escort them to the nearest MATS office early in the morning—which, according to his timepiece, was soon as it was nearing daybreak—so they were resting just down the path.

  “Could it be the Ancients?”

  “Quiet.”

  Tap, tap.

  He swiveled his head toward the noise, seeing the brief image of a shadow in the distance. Away from where they were heading, where they had left the Ancients to rest.

  “S-someone to the left,” he mumbled.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Moriya turned his head and nodded silently before waving a hand and veering down a narrow path.

  “There’s…no one,” whispered Theo when they arrived at an empty campsite where the Ancients once were. “Wasn’t someone from MATS supposed to keep watch?”

  “Yes…” muttered Moriya, conjuring a small light orb to illuminate the area. “The scout from—”

  A dead body lay in the center of the clearing. Blood was splattered all over the ground underneath them, a gaping hole where their chest once was.

  “That—”

  “Shut up. Come.”

  Scared stiff, but not enough to disobey the professor, Theo complied and followed him back out of the clearing.

  “Bind.”

  Theo immediately started casting as they took a right on the path, this time to head toward where he had seen the shadow.

  Tap, tap.

  He just barely finished his spell when the professor stopped again to point at something on the side, his voice void of fear or apprehension. “Careful.”

  It was another body with a similar gaping hole in its chest. Claw marks surrounded the edges of the wound instead of a clean cut—a wound like that typically would only be possible with a spell, but why did it look like something had torn…or dug through it?

  Gingerly stepping around the pool of blood that had collected under the body, Theo fell into step beside the professor and began casting his tactician’s barriers without prompt.

  However, the further they walked, the quieter it became. There was no longer a tapping noise, but an eerie silence as they dodged body after body of the MATS officials Elias’s group had helped save north of the village.

  When Theo refreshed their barrier for the second time within ten minutes, counting the corpses of almost all the people in the other MATS squad, there was finally a voice.

  “—elp!”

  The professor’s pace picked up into a run, sprinting far quicker through the thicket than Theo could.

  “Help! H—”

  Their cries concluded with a wet, guttural scream, the professor’s dark figure in the distance stopping just as the sounds tapered into low sobs.

  And then…nothing.

  “W-what could it have been if—” whispered Theo as he shakily headed over to the professor’s stationary figure in the distance.

  “Grade V Barrier.”

  Theo again complied without question, listening to the unsettling sounds of the dark forest until he finally reached his professor and released a shimmering, rainbow-colored barrier over them both.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The professor’s voice was cold. “Did you promise Ty something before she left?”

  The dread overpowered the indecisiveness and everything else. “That I’d see her again.”

  “Well, I promised her something, too.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Theo waited for him to continue.

  Tap. Tap.

  “I don’t intend to break it. So you better not die.”

  He stared at his professor, remembering a conversation he wished he could forget.

  She asked me to promise her that I’d take care of you.

  Is that what this is?

  “What did she say to you?” he whispered.

  The professor’s reply was uncharacteristically soft. “To be a person, not a weapon. Now tell me you won’t die.”

  “I-I won’t die.”

  Tap.

  “Good. Now go.”

  The next thing he knew, a hand seized him by the front of his coat and propelled him forward so forcefully that he found himself stumbling down the path, not stopping until he could see a clearing in front of him illuminated by the deep blue of the sky, the light before dawn. In the center, a mass of dark shadows clawing at a body on the ground.

  Taptaptaptaptaptap.

  “O-oh, Graces.”

  They stopped feeding, turning to their new visitor for a second. A single second. And then they moved.

  Toward him, they were moving toward him.

  Divinity.

  Getting thrown onto the ground the same moment his first tactician’s barrier broke, and then watching a giant pillar of light burst from the sky to slam the ground on top of him to break the second Grade V shield and shock the chattering shadows from him, Theo could feel his bones rattle in his skin, the promise he haphazardly gave Moriya almost leave his shattered soul.

  Barrier. Another Barrier. Live, you have to live, he thought furiously to himself once he remembered to think, shuffling away instead of waiting for the shadows to return, casting another Barrier before starting a complex, one-line Quickspell.

  A shadow slammed him into a tree, winding him and breaking his new barrier before he could even finish the Quickspell.

  Tap, tap, it began before sliding its shadowy tendrils—are those tendrils or hands?—over him.

  Having had the unfortunate pleasure of being suffocated recently had given him some time to think about just how many words of a spell he could get out while breathless, and while the list was not terribly long, a few panicked gasps was all it took for him to get out a Revitalize to stifle his searing skin.

  However, before he could even think about the second step—to abate the damage the shadow was causing by its grating, crunching taps—he saw a dark spear pierce through the shadow’s head, impaling it on the tree beside him.

  Okay. Divinity will stun but not outright kill them. Impaling seems to work—I’ll have to disable them?

  Theo straightened from the tree and moved back, taking in a deep and shaky breath before sending a Dedgreas over the already-injured shadow, enveloping the shadowy beast in a wooden prison.

  Wet blood trickled down the back of his head as he searched for Moriya, trying to focus on anything moving when his gaze landed on a cloaked figure not ten steps away struggling up to their feet and steadying themselves against a tree. An unmoving shadow lay on the ground in front of them, still far too dark to discern who—or what—they were, which Moriya nudged before being suddenly seized by a loud, guttural cough.

  Oh, he lost his barrier.

  In the middle of deciding whether to heal or set up a new shield, Theo suddenly detected movement in the corner of his eye.

  This time, he didn’t have to think twice.

  Obsidian Spear.

  Back toward a tree, with the shadow barreling toward him, Theo managed to dodge at the right time but completed the spell a second too late—an outstretched claw grabbed him and tore through his coat and tunic underneath, drawing warm blood that only made him feel fainter by the second. He was losing far too much blood and exerting far too much energy to survive against the six, perhaps seven shadows he had seen earlier.

  Even so, he pulled away and fell back onto the ground, deciding in a moment of sheer panic it would be quicker to cast an inaccurate transfiguring spell with the tree already there than to cast another Dedgreas or an Entangle.

  Don’t die, he repeated to himself once he stopped casting and had a moment to breathe again, dodging the horrifyingly tangled nest of branches he had created around the shadow to get back to the clearing where he could see his professor.

  “Y-you…you okay?” he panted, voice small and muffled against the pounding in his ears.

  When there was no immediate answer, Theo re-scanned the forest again with his back against another tree that hadn’t been used to imprison any of his enemies. He put a hand to his side and felt something warm and sticky.

  Nothing new there.

  “Yes…keep going.”

  Was he imagining it, or did he sound like he was having difficulty?

  Not taking any risks, Theo cast a tactician’s healing spell over himself and Moriya, about to gain a sliver of hope when yet another one appeared—whether it was a previous one or a new one, he could not tell. All he knew was that he had no choice but to fight.

  Weaving between the trees of those he had already imprisoned, he started conjuring an Obsidian Spear, but by the time it finished, a dark mist was already enveloping him as he helplessly watched his spell get countered and a thin spear pierce through his left foot instead, fastening him against the ground while a writhing mass of shadows slithered toward him.

  Transfigure. Transfigure again.

  Hitting the ground, palms breaking his fall with a shock that jolted up to his shoulders, Theo scrambled to find anything resembling the roots of a tree with the few seconds he had bought for himself, coming up with only sand and dirt when a small, bright light appeared in the distance.

  M…Moriya?

  Amid the loud chatter in his ear, he heard a dull thud accompanied by a few more wet, choked coughs to the right.

  And in that same direction, a sliver of wood poking out from under the dirt. If he stretched as far as he could, ignoring the growing numbness in his foot, the unbearable pain in the other, the blood trickling out of his side and onto the ground, his pounding head, his spotty eyesight, he could just barely reach it. If he tried his best, if he wanted to live. He could do it.

  I’m going to live—his words.

  He pulled his impaled foot as far up from the spear as he could, giving him a bit more distance.

  I’ll see you later—her words.

  He stretched out his arms and dug his fingers into the earth.

  Your story will not end here—his friend’s.

  He pulled himself over, blinking away the tears and ignoring the metallic taste in his mouth.

  You’ll be okay—Moriya’s.

  The darkness closed in as he opened his hands, grasping for the root.

  And…and those four words. Why now, of all times?

  His hand closed over the wood, remembering the decision he had made long before today. Long before Ty, long before Em. He was going to live. Live to see the approaching daybreak, live to see winter again, knowing it would undoubtedly come. Even if it hurt. Even if it meant suffering. Even if it took an eternity. It would come.

  * * *

  With more wounds than he could patch up, blood splattered over his clothes and left hand because he had spent about five spells too many, the casting student no longer wanted anything to do with magic. He just wanted to sleep. Collapse.

  Which he did at that very moment, over Moriya’s legs.

  “You’re heavy.”

  Theo could not care less.

  “Come on, get up.”

  I healed you instead of myself, you old man, he imagined himself retorting if only he had enough energy left in him to speak.

  “Look. The sun’s finally rising.”

  Rolling over onto his back, with the top half of his body propped up by his professor’s stationary legs, Theo looked up.

  Yes, daybreak.

  And with that, a grave realization.

  “Did…you know?” he forced out of his spent lungs, staring at the bodies of the shadows surrounding them, impaled onto the trees and forced into the ground, no longer obscured by the blanket of night.

  “Yeah…”

  “That…regret…I hear?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Crazy if…doing that…restored your…humanity.”

  There was slight warmth in his reply. “Haha.”

  “Maybe…you…you took…their auras.” He let out a weak chuckle and coughed up some more blood onto the grass beside him. There was so much blood all around them that it didn’t look too terribly out of place, but his eyesight was also beginning to fail him along with his hearing.

  “That’s a new one. I’ll have…tell Chel.”

  “Ha…”

  Blurry birds passed overhead, accompanied by muffled, gentle chirping.

  “Thank you…helping me. It was…easier…time.”

  “No…no problem.”

  “You’re a good kid…you know…good kid.”

  Theo turned his head slightly, watching Moriya gaze softly into the distance, to where the birds were flying.

  “…moments like these…wonder…I had never…”

  “Hey…”

  Despite the curtain of sleep beginning to descend upon Theo, he would forever remember at that very moment the eyes that turned to meet his. Warm. They were full of everything but coldness. It reminded him of an important memory, words more important than his own life—but even warmer, somehow. Bright. Burning. Enough to engulf a room in flames, reduce once-saccharine memories into smoldering ashes.

  “I’m…”

  I’m glad you’re here.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m…bit tired…N…”

  Before he could finish his sentence, Theo felt his eyelids droop and his consciousness finally fade as his head rolled to the side and his eyes closed with the image of the dead bodies of those they had slain to survive still fresh in his mind.

  Six. The six Ancients they had saved.

  Dead. All dead.