Artemis
My breath tore in and out of my chest, sharp against the cold night air. Steam drifted from the shattered ice and scorched dirt around me, curling in pale ribbons that caught the last fragments of firelight. My arms trembled from the Cast I’d forced through them, the taste of copper thick on my tongue.
The soldiers didn’t move. They held their positions in a perfect ring.
Footsteps approached through the dark.
The Magister stepped into the clearing, armored now, as though he’d been preparing for this moment all along.
“I knew I’d draw it out of you eventually.”
My pulse hammered in my ears. I couldn’t tell if it was the Cast or the anticipation. I still had strength left – enough to make this a fight – but my core hadn’t fully recovered from the Stone. Every strike would cost more than it should. I’d have to choose each one carefully.
Six soldiers. Earth. Ice. Fire.
And him.
I’d walked straight into their snare.
But I forced my stance steady. Whatever he wanted, whatever game he’d been playing, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me break first.
“Beasley. Tend to Ameren’s burns,” the Magister said, nodding towards the Fire Caster I’d faced earlier.
A soldier broke from his side at once, hurrying to Ameren’s aid.
“That restraint of yours is impressive,” the Magister said, redirecting his attention back to me. “You’ve been pretending to be smaller than you are. I doubt I could have managed the same. Power always betrays its owner eventually.”
I let the words settle rather than answer. I needed a moment to take in the shape of what I’d stepped into. The realization that I’d been watched all along pricked at the back of my mind. I’d slipped, more than once, and somewhere along the way, I’d left a trail I shouldn’t have.
“If you already knew,” I said evenly, “why wait until now?”
“Because certainty is a luxury, Samuel, and I prefer proof. Power like yours is rare. Worth waiting for. Worth studying. Tonight, you finally showed me what I hoped to see.”
“Proof and patience,” the Magister went on, stepping closer. “Thames was the first proof when you drained him dry. One of my strongest Casters reduced to nothing.”
He let that accusation hang before turning his head slightly.
“Isn’t that right, Thames?”
Armor creaked as one of the soldiers shifted in the circle. The Magister’s gaze flicked to him, smug.
“Thames has one of the largest cores in my company. When he went down and you remained standing, I knew you were something unusual. Maybe your core was simply larger than his.”
He stepped closer, eyes narrowing.
“Or perhaps your strength wasn’t confined to Fire.”
I hadn’t spared a thought for Thames back then. I’d only needed the spectacle to steer the Magister’s attention away from Celeste. I’d given him exactly the show he needed to start looking closer.
And now I was paying for it.
“Then came Rusk,” the Magister continued. “Worthless and a coward, certainly, but still a soldier I handpicked for his capability. I chose him for his obedience and fighting talent, not for his spine.”
“So yes,” he said, voice smooth, “you can imagine my surprise when you dropped him with all the effort of flicking mud from your boot.”
A shift rippled through the ring of soldiers, their bodies angling inward as the formation subtly tightened around me. Whatever the Magister intended, the others already knew their roles.
Movement stirred behind the ring of soldiers. The two men who’d been guarding empty tents approached first, and behind them came the conscripts, herded forward in a loose cluster.
Aeris’s face was tight with worry. Viola’s wide eyes found mine immediately. The others followed their lead, fear twisting their expressions as they edged to the perimeter of the circle.
They shouldn’t have been here.
I lifted my chin slightly. “Why bring them?”
“Because your secret is no longer yours.”
A quiet fell over the clearing.
“The only way to keep your secret would be to slaughter every witness here.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “And we both know you won’t. You’d sooner damn yourself than kill these conscripts – even if sparing them condemned you to being hunted for the rest of your life.”
He drifted a step to the side, giving me a clear view of the conscripts. Aeris stiffened. Viola didn’t look away.
The Magister followed my gaze with a quiet, knowing hum.
“You’ve tried very hard to hide what you are, Samuel,” the Magister said as he paced, hands clasped behind his back. “but sentiment is a difficult thing to mask.”
He flicked a glance toward the conscripts; several of them shifted uneasily.
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“And nowhere was it clearer than during the Trial of Balance.”
My jaw tightened.
He stepped closer to the firelit edge of the circle, voice carrying easily over the quiet. “A simple exercise,” he continued. “Stand your ground. Endure the elements. Nothing more.”
His tone hardened. “But you turned it into something else entirely.”
He gestured lazily toward Viola.
“You caught her when she fell. Pulled her back onto the platform. Stepped in front of strikes meant for her. Half the company saw it. Your little acts of heroism.”
The Magister’s eyes sharpened.
“But what they didn’t see,” he went on, “is that the Trial wasn’t chance at all. It was crafted for you, Samuel. Rusk only executed what he’s too unimaginative to devise.”
A flicker of heat tightened in my chest.
“And while they watched the chaos…” A slow smile raised the corner of his mouth. “…I watched you.”
He paused for a breath, assessing me with a calm precision. “I was there. In the shadows. Close enough to see the Wind you Cast when you thought no one was looking.”
A murmur rippled through the circle. Viola blinked, confusion furrowing her brow.
The Magister’s gaze swept over the conscripts, then returned to me.
“Some of you may not grasp what you just heard,” he said, tone flat. “So allow me to be plain.”
He gestured toward me with idle precision.
“The man standing before you is an Aberration. For the ignorant among you, that means he can Cast more than one element.”
He nodded toward the soldiers.
“You all believed him a Fire Caster. You were wrong. He is also a Wind Caster.”
The Magister didn’t slow.
“He used Wind in the Trial. Garrin was pushed into that fireball by Samuel’s hand.”
His gaze cut to Viola.
“Because he chose to shield her.”
A few of the conscripts flinched; Viola’s eyes widened.
A quiet settled over the clearing. The Magister looked back to me, all pretense of amusement fading.
“There’s no need to fight.” His voice was steady, almost gentle. “Your secret is gone. Every man here knows what you are. And soon, the rest of AurenVale will know as well.”
He stepped closer.
“You can’t hide anymore. You can’t outrun this. Aberrations are hunted for a reason. And once the word spreads, they will come for you until the day you die.”
He lowered his voice as though confiding.
“But you are far too valuable to waste on the run. Serve the Triarchy, and you won’t be hunted at all. You’ll be rewarded. Protected. Elevated.”
He wasn’t wrong. They would hunt me, every domain, every soldier, every bounty knife with a pulse.
But his offer wasn’t salvation. It was a cage with finer bars. Reward, rank, protection… different words for the same leash.
Serve. Obey. Belong. I’d worn those chains before.
Celeste dragged me back into the world when I didn’t want it. And I’d made her a promise.
I needed to get back to her first.
I let my gaze pass over the conscripts. Aeris was tense, Viola standing rigid, their eyes fixed on me.
They were caught in the Magister’s trap as surely as I was.
They didn’t deserve any of this.
“No.” My voice stayed even. “I’m done belonging to anyone.”
The Magister studied me for a long, quiet breath. When he finally spoke his tone carried a faint, almost genuine disappointment.
“A shame. You could have risen far.” His gaze hardened into command.
“Bring him.”
A soldier stepped forward through the ring, the same man who’d blinded Aeris during the Trial.
Before he even lifted his hand, another soldier barked out: “Signal One!”
The effect was immediate. A ripple moved through the ranks as every soldier turned their faces away at once, bracing for the blast they knew was coming.
I didn’t wait.
My eyes closed the instant his hand rose. My world snapped into darkness.
Light exploded.
Heat shimmered across my skin, the air thrumming with the same pressure I remembered from the platform. But I’d lived this before, and I wasn’t the one who hesitated.
While they turned away from the flash, I moved.
Wind guided my steps as I listened for movement around me. The world narrowed to breath and footfall, the scrape of armor, the way sound bent around bodies in motion. A shift to my left, and I slipped past the nearest soldier before he could recover.
They thought the Light would stop me.
Instead, it bought me the first strike.
My fist found the soldier’s jaw before he even registered I’d moved. Bone met knuckle with a sharp crack, his head snapping sideways.
I didn’t stop there.
My other hand opened against his chest, the heel of my palm striking just beneath the ribs.
Wind roared through the point of contact. A focused surge hit him like a battering ram, lifting him clean off his feet.
He vanished into the dark beyond the ring, slamming into a tree with a thud that shook bark loose.
I opened my eyes.
The world returned in fractured pieces. Soldiers’ heads were snapping back toward the clearing as the last remnants of the flash thinned in the dark. Faces tightened as they focused – surprise and anger flashing as they saw the empty space where their comrade had been. His shape crumpled against the tree.
Others shifted into stance, hands rising as they readied Casts they hadn’t yet released.
I was already stepping forward again, an ice shard forming mid-stride—
A voice cut through the clearing.
“Enough!” the Magister barked. “You’ll only embarrass yourselves further.”
He strode between them, not bothering to look at the man I’d thrown.
“Perimeter holds,” he snapped. “No one engages unless I command it.”
His gaze flicked toward his soldier with open disdain.
“Clearly, none of you can manage more than that.”
He walked until he stood a few paces in front of me, then bent down. For a moment, I thought he was studying the ground.
But no.
He slipped off one boot. Then the other.
He set them aside with deliberate precision, planting his bare feet in the dirt.
A quiet murmur rippled through the soldiers.
My stomach tightened. It was a form of fighting I’d seen only a handful of times before. He wasn’t just preparing to fight – he was linking himself to the earth.
The ground beneath us gave a subtle, unsettling tremor, as if the soil itself recognized him.
I knew what came next.
He straightened, meeting my eyes.
“Now, let’s peel back what you pretend to be.”
His right food immediately slid half a pace across the dirt. And earth answered.
A jagged spike tore upward at my right side, soil exploding around it. I was already moving, twisting away as its edge sliced through the space where my ribs had been a hearbeat earlier.
But he was already moving again.
Two mounds of earth swelled beside him, smooth and rising just below his knees. With a small pivot of his heel, the soil compacted. The hardened surface then split and crumbled, each mound breaking apart into dense, stone-like masses the size of fists.
A flick of his hand and the first hurled forward.
I dropped beneath it, the air humming as it tore past my head and shattered against a tree behind me.
Another tremor – and the second projectile launched.
I slipped sideways, boots skidding over loose dirt as the lump smashed into the ground where I’d been standing, sending shards spraying outward.
I surged forward, closing the distance in a burst of speed. Heat rose along my arm, flame gathering in my palm as I swung a Cast toward him.
His bare feet shifted. His hands swept upward in a mirrored arc.
A wall of earth rose between us in perfect sync with the motion, thick and seamless, swallowing the fire before it reached him. My Cast splashed against it and guttered out in a wash of sparks.
I didn’t slow. I drove straight for the barrier, boots hammering the dirt, then cut sideways along its face in a sharp lateral burst. The wall ended just ahead.
I cleared it and came up hard on the Magister’s flank.
He shifted his stance to meet me, Earth already tightening beneath his feet. I drove forward anyway.
My palm lifted. Cold flared outward – Ice knitting itself into a tight cluster of shards that hovered for a heartbeat before I sent them screaming forward.
His eyes widened.
At this range, he didn’t have time for an Earth wall. The shards would hit before the ground could rise to meet them.
His arms snapped up instead.
Ice surged along both forearms in a single, seamless motion, forming a thick, curved shield from wrist to elbow. My shards shattered against it in a blast of frost and splintered light.
He was an Aberration.
Same as me.
How clear was the action during this scene?
