Chương 189: 184 — Book 4, Chapter 28 — The Grand Design, Pt 1

"Shouldn't Cale have given us the signal by now?" Leo asked, frowning and checking his scrolls with worry. His schedule scroll showed no change, even though Cale had been supposed to use it to communicate that it was now safe to enter the Black Vault.

"It doesn't take that long to cast a projection spell. We already finished our part, and we had to go to the dorm labyrinth to do it. Do you think something happened?"

"Yes," Damien said.

"It's not fine," Leo said, then processed what Damien had said and blinked.

"Wait, you agree with me?"

"It's Cale, first of all," Damien said, which Leo had to admit was a pretty damning point.

"Second, he was half lying to us when he said there was a risk. There was a risk, it just wasn't what he said."

"Wait, you knew he was lying?" Flia asked.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I figured he had his reasons," Damien said, shifting uncomfortably.

"Anyway, um, there's a third reason I'm pretty sure something went wrong."

"And what's that?" Leo asked, looking cross.

"Something else you're hiding from us?"

"No." Damien frowned a little at him, then pointed.

"The Black Vault is... I mean, just look at it. That's an evil glow if I've ever seen one." Leo paused, then turned to look—and sure enough, the egg-shaped artifact that held the Black Vault was glowing. It was an ominous, evil-looking glow, though if Cale had been here Leo was certain he would have some sort of lecture either about how all glows were evil or about how they couldn't just assume such things about glowing artifacts. It was hard to tell which way he'd lean on any given day.

But this was definitely an evil glow. A deep, blood-red light shone from cracks and fractures all over the artifact that hadn't been visible before. In fact, Leo was reasonably certain they hadn't been there before. He'd inspected the Black Vault pretty thoroughly when he'd first uncovered the room, and he remembered running his fingers all over the thing. None of those cracks had been there at the time. More alarmingly, the cracks were growing.

They inched across the surface of the artifact like something within was trying to break free, then shrank again, like the Black Vault was trying to hold itself together. Every so often, sputtering magic blasted free from the cracks, tinted with a familiar, prismatic shade. Leo's first thought was that Cale was trying to break free, but that wasn't quite right—the blasts of magic were too haphazard for that. It seemed more like a side effect of his spellcasting, if anything. Was he fighting in there?

Had his projection spell torn open the veil and allowed the Nothing through after all? Except that just wasn't how projection spells worked. Leo cursed himself for not questioning Cale further on that. He'd noticed the incongruency, but he was so used to going along with his mentor's bizarre claims that he hadn't called it out. But if that wasn't it, then what happened in there?

"I can't believe we're missing the fight," Syphus complained.

"Quick, Leo, open the Vault! We need to join in. I want to test my new spells." Leo shot Syphus an incredulous look.

"We're not supposed to open the Vault until he gives us the signal, remember? That was the whole point of the—" Oh, forget it. He couldn't very well convince the others not to open the Vault if he wanted to do it as well, though in his case it was more because he was just worried about Cale. Who knew what that ominous red glow was doing to him? Leo marched forward and grabbed the artifact, channeling his mana into the cracks.

The Black Vault had originally been activated by the simple act of being thrown against the ground, but the mages that studied it had, of course, refined that into something more elegant. It simply needed mana channeled into a certain shape, like a key, and... And nothing. apparently. His mana brushed against the part of the artifact that should have parted to accept it and then opened the Vault, but it encountered a smooth nothingness where the activation circle should have been.

It took his mind a few seconds to catch up with what that meant.

"It's locked," Leo said.

"It's what?" Damien looked alarmed, now.

"Is he trapped in there?"

"No, that—" Leo started, and then he stopped, running over everything he knew about the Black Vault in his mind.

"—it shouldn't be possible, but..." The Black Vault functioned in much the same way that Cale's own ability to create an isolated section of reality did. Anyone inside the Vault when the entrance was sealed was functionally within another realm. That entrance was easy enough to open from either side, but if their side had been sealed, then he could only assume the same thing had been done to the other.

"Uh," Leo said after a moment.

"He might be trapped, actually. Yeah."

"Actually trapped, or is it just a matter of time before he breaks out?" Flia asked, which was a reasonable question. Leo hesitated.

"I think he might be actually trapped," he said eventually.

"We're seeing some wisps of his mana escape because the Black Vault needs to retain a connection to the space it creates, but it's still basically an isolated realm. If he blasts the whole thing apart with mana, he'll just end up in the Abyss. I'm sure he knows that."

"Then what's he doing, if he's not trying to escape?" Flia frowned at the Black Vault, watching the puffs of mana escape from those cracks again. Leo shuddered a bit at the feeling that prickled across his mana sense—it was always strange to be reminded that as far as mana went, Cale was an absolute monster. He was isolated in another dimension. It should have been impossible for his mana to affect the activation artifact for the Black Vault.

The fact that they could feel and see the effects of his spellcasting even here meant his power was resonating down the connection, affecting the physical anchor of the Vault. The very idea of that was absurd. Then again, it was hardly more absurd than some of the other feats they'd seen Cale pull off. Better to accept it at face value and move on, or he would be rocking and drooling in the corner of his room for the rest of eternity.

"He's fighting, obviously," Syphus said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. The rest of the apprentices turned to stare at it, and it shrugged.

"What? He must've found something to fight. I'm pretty sure some of those are battle spells."

"Not all of them," Damien said, watching the eruptions intently.

"Some of them are barriers, and some... um... hm." He blushed and didn't elaborate. Leo stared at him, then decided it was probably best not to ask.

"Alright, then we're going to need to find a way to get him out," Flia said authoritatively, her words cutting through the tension in the room.

"If he could break the Vault to get out, I assume he would have done it already, so Leo's probably right that he can't. That means it's up to us to find him. Any ideas?"

"If he does break the realm and fall into the Abyss, you could probably retrieve him," Leo said. The thought had been lurking in the back of his mind ever since he'd considered the possibility of Cale breaking the Vault apart, absurd as it was.

"I might be able to," Flia acknowledged, "but I don't want to rely on that. We don't know if he'll actually go for it, and the Abyss is a big place. I can't really control which part of the Abyss my magic leads to."

"Time in the Vault is different when the entrance is sealed," Damien said. He was still watching the eruptions intently.

"Um, based on the spells it looks like he's casting, I mean. I think at least a few minutes are passing for him for every second that passes for us. We should hurry. Humans age pretty fast, right?"

"Not that fast," Leo muttered.

"They age at basically the same speed as us minotaurs." The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Damien stared at him.

"So... pretty fast," he said awkwardly. Leo groaned. He really didn't need the reminder that none of his friends was likely to visibly age by the time he was old and his fur was falling out. Unless he managed to invent some sort of anti-aging magic, anyway. He wondered if he could interpret time itself as a labyrinth... The four apprentices were interrupted when Draak burst into the room. Leo remembered him, if only vaguely—he was Threek's older brother, and Cale had been quite friendly with him.

Something about finally having someone doubt him.

"Have any of y'all seen Irides?" Draak asked.

"He's late for class. Ain't ever seen him late for class, and if he's late again the prof is gonna—" Draak paused mid-sentence, taking in the state of the Black Vault and the four apprentices gathered around it. Leo exchanged glances with his friends, the same thought occurring to them at once.

"Irides is the fellrune that was following Cale around all the time, right?" Leo asked, just to confirm, and when Draak nodded, his expression hardened. Flia, Damien, and Syphus all recognized the urgency of the situation at the same time. None of them were especially worried about Cale's ability to handle himself no matter the situation he ended up in, but if Irides had snuck into the Black Vault to spy on him...

"The physical anchor is still connected to the planar location of the Black Vault," Leo said, straightening.

"We can't open it using the artifact, but I bet we can use it in the projection spell if we perform the Streaming ritual. That should let us force our way into the Vault from the outside."

"We can't take anything back with us if we use the ritual," Damien pointed out.

"The ritual anchors us to the artificial leyline it creates, but it won't do that for anything we interact with. We'll have to modify the ritual—""No," Syphus said.

"I have a spellform I can use to bring them back with us when you end the ritual. It's the one I used recently on Sisyphus." Flia glanced at Leo, and when he nodded, she came to a decision.

"That'll work," she decided.

"Draak, let Akkau know what's happening. The rest of us will head for the dorm. Leo, we're going to need your labyrinth magic to even have a chance of pulling this off—I looked at the ritual breakdown and it's not going to easy to get it to target the Vault, even with the artifact. The ritual is designed to target a random realm, so the currents of the Abyss don't matter, but if you want to hit something specific—""We'll need to actually navigate the Abyss," Leo said, and Flia nodded.

"Can you reduce the effects of the currents? I know it's not your specialty, but your magic does interact with the Abyss."

"I can try." Flia paused, frowning.

"There's a critter in the menagerie that might be able to help. Sabri, can you get her?" As she spoke, she held out her hand, and the little shadeling climbed out of her satchel and onto her hand. The two pressed their foreheads together, and Leo saw a little spark of mana pass between then; after that, Sabri chirped brightly and raced out of the room, running right between Draak's legs. Speaking of which—the kobold was staring blankly at them.

"Ye'll have t'scuse me, but I ain't got a clue what I'm s'pposed ta tell the Headmaster," he said.

"Are ye sure y'all are still at palewater?"

"Pretty sure," Flia said.

"Irides is probably trapped in the Black Vault with Cale. We don't know what's happening in there, but if Cale is fighting something then he's probably in a lot of danger, assuming he isn't dead already." Draak froze.

"Irides is a darkwood mage," he protested weakly.

"He's still pretty strong, ya know?"

"You've seen what Cale can do. If he doesn't end a fight instantly, it's a dangerous one." Flia paused, frowning slightly, then amended her statement.

"Okay, some of the time. Sometimes he just likes to draw out the fight, but since we don't know which one it is, it's better to assume Irides is at risk. We'll have to act fast. Get the Headmaster. Got it?"

"R-right," Draak said.

"Uh, I gotcha. I'll... get on that. Right away. Ma'am." He stared at her for a moment, as if expecting her to bark more orders at him, and when Flia just frowned at him, he turned and booked it. The four apprentices didn't waste any time after that—Leo grabbed the artifact and they hurried down the halls toward Damien's dorm.

"Didn't know you could take charge like that," Leo ventured a little nervously, more to fill in the silence than anything. To his surprise, Flia laughed.

"I didn't know I could, either," she said.

"Guess all the practice with all those different critters is helping. You sure you can pull this modified ritual off?" Leo thought about it for a moment. The idea would have been absurd a month ago, but now he was surprised to find he was confident.

"Yeah," he said.

"We just need to get there. Let's..." Leo trailed off, then stopped dead in his tracks, his gaze hardening. He should have known that something would go wrong with their plan—they'd put it together so quickly, and more importantly, Cale and his Thread of Fate weren't around. For once, they didn't have to worry about the Thread engineering the events around them. Leo had hoped that would mean they could rescue Cale and bring him back before anyone other than Akkau caught wind of what was happening.

Evidently, though, not all of their problems were caused by the Thread of Fate. This one was technically their own fault. Leo had almost forgotten that they'd planted bait in the hopes that they would draw the Red Hunters in whatever new form they had back to Brightscale. It was awful timing. And what made things worse was... well, if it were just the fact that the Hunters were here that was the problem, Leo was pretty sure they could have handled them.

Not easily, perhaps, but he and his fellow apprentices had plenty of tricks up their sleeve by now; Cale had taught them half a dozen things that even archmages tended to overlook. At the very least, they should have been able to slip past the Hunters and lose them in the labyrinth. But Leo supposed he should have known that if Hunters were to be sent to Brightscale, then the two that were most likely to volunteer for the job would be them. He wouldn't be able to just slip past them.

The blood of a relative was one of the few things that could slip past Syphus's ability to hijack attempts to divine their location, after all.

"Hello, mother. Hello, father," Leo said. His friends had all stopped in their tracks as well. They weren't surprised by the declaration—it wasn't hard to guess who these Hunters were, considering they were both minotaurs—but to his surprise, they were angry. Even Syphus had its eye narrowed, and it was watching both Hunters with a calculating precision that told him it was about a single word away from launching its fists into both of their faces. It bolstered him, oddly enough.

He'd been afraid of this confrontation for longer than he wanted to admit, but now that he was faced with it, the only thing he could feel was cold. Maybe that was because neither of them seemed happy to see him. But then the feeling was mutual, wasn't it?

"Still a wild mage, I see," Eli, his father, snorted. He dug a hoof into the ground.

"I don't know where you think you're going, but we're here to make sure you lot can actually control your magic."

"We figured we'd see how our son was doing first," Mia said. There was a faux-sweetness to his mother's voice.

"Make sure he passes the test. Maybe get some information from him on a certain dangerous mage we're looking for. You wouldn't happen to know an Abyssal mage, would you? That's a very dangerous sort of wild magic, you know. Almost as bad as yours." It was strange. He'd been afraid of this for such a long time—afraid to see them again, afraid to know that they hated him beyond the vague memories he had refused to think about.

Now that they were in front of him, spouting that same thinly-veiled hatred he had been so afraid would break him, and he felt... nothing. They might as well have been strangers.

"Leo?" Damien glanced at him, obviously worried, and Leo just shot him a half-smile.

"I'm fine," he said.

"Hey, what do you think Cale would say to them?"

"Cale?" his mother interjected.

"Who is that, honey? Another wild mage?"

"I'm pretty sure he'd just blast them," Damien said, making a face.

"Oh, unless they were talking to him, I guess. Then he would be really condescending."

"Yeah, I think so too." Leo turned back to his parents and smiled at them.

"Sorry, we don't have the time to take any tests. We're the apprentices of a very important mage, you see."

"What mage could possibly be more important than us?" Mia asked, clicking her tongue.

"Just the man that killed your Red Commander," Leo answered. The air around them seemed to freeze to ice, but his expression remained placid.

"Anyway, we're going to get going now, unless you'd like to do something stupid first?" His mother's eyes flashed with magic. Leo felt her begin channeling a spell right in the corridors of Brightscale Academy.

"I see you've grown a little too fond of yourself," she bit out.

"But I'm sure we can fix that."

"Do something stupid it is," Leo noted. He'd known, of course, that she would do exactly that. Eli wouldn't be fair behind—fire magic was already boiling inside him, ready to be unleashed. Leo just smiled a pleasant smile, folding his hands behind his back. Flia understood what he'd done a second later and snorted with amusement; Damien's own eyes lit up when he understood.

"What?" Syphus said, looking between them in confusion.

"Shouldn't we get ready to fight— ohhh." Cale's first piece of advice to them, when it came to archmages, had been this: they tended to focus on what their targets could do. They believed they could beat their opponents down with their magic, and those that frequently fought other mages would be thinking ten steps ahead, predicting what spells they would cast to defend themselves. Neither of his parents had attended Brightscale Academy before.

If they had—or even if they had been a little less focused on punishing him for his apparent defiance—they might have noticed.

"Oh, just for the record," Leo said, like it was an afterthought.

"Brightscale Academy doesn't allow fighting in its halls." Behind the two Red Hunters, the Academy's wards blazed with magic. They still hadn't noticed. Leo wondered if it was wrong to find this fun. He supposed he understood Cale a little better, now.