Lost Pieces

  Little did he know, the person he had been looking for was already waiting for him.

  “Ah, good. They’re here.” A disinterested, monotone voice.

  “Not too late, hmm?” A bright, chime-like one.

  Theo rubbed his eyes as he approached the bench outside the palace, hoping that it wasn’t too obvious that he had been crying. “Hello, Professor. Physician.” He spotted Callie, Elias, and Selene sitting on the bench, too; the recently wed royal was no longer in her gown, but he could still see the faint traces of her face dressing, and Kor was standing to the side with her arms crossed, looking into the distance like her mind was elsewhere. Seth and Pia were nowhere to be seen. “Are we going back to the Academy now?”

  A faraway conversation returned to him.

  He looks a bit like Moriya, doesn’t he?

  He’s got a neat scepter, too. I could imagine Nate with one.

  “You sound like you were expecting me,” noted the casting professor before making eye contact with the two other students who had been following Theo. “Anyhow. No. We’ve got a mission.”

  “At least everything sounds like it’s okay back at school,” added Callie, standing at attention beside the physician. “We can return soon.”

  Theo shifted his eyes from Callie to Moriya, glad to have one less thing to worry about. “What’s the mission?”

  “Simple escort, because we’re in Thaon’s domain—we’re going to head through the mountains, into the southeastern Frieril Forest, where we’ll meet up with MATS. We’ll pass through Blackire Village—where we’ll expect to encounter some trouble—and once MATS gets through, we’re good to go.”

  It didn’t matter to Theo what he needed to do, as long as it would bring him closer to a semblance of truth. “When?”

  The professor paused and checked his pocket watch. “Their arrival should be tomorrow, an hour to noon. We’re looking at about a four-hour trek to the mountains with Swiftness, and then three hours to get through the pass, where we’ll rest for the night. In the morning, about three hours to arrive at the meeting location.”

  “We’ll go through the mountains tonight?” Theo raised an eyebrow.

  “Up to you, tact.”

  The tactician winced, suppressing his innate desire to correct the professor. Seven hours wasn’t nothing, and it was dangerous, but the terrain was doable if they were heading southeast under the cloak of night. “Mountains it is. Setting up camp in the forest close to the boundary makes sense.”

  Professor Moriya nodded decisively and pulled the glove off his right hand. “Good to me. Let’s do the binding.”

  * * *

  “So…who wants to start?”

  “Not it,” responded Elias in a shockingly normal tone to the ever-talkative chemist at the center of the group.

  “When do you ever want to be it?” complained Korinna, not unkindly.

  “You want to start, Kor?” chuckled Theo lightly, feeling slightly better now that they were outside the Royal Capital’s walls and almost an hour into their journey. He had been able to clear his head a little—only a little, but enough to feel like himself again.

  “Mm, I kinda don’t wanna say mine yet.” She turned to Selene beside her, who had been walking along without a single complaint. “How ‘bout you, Sel?”

  “Maybe later, when we’re not walking,” replied the taciturn royal, expression calm and unaffected.

  “How about you, Faris?” chirped Callie from up front. “Did you find a book to bring home?”

  “Mhm,” mumbled the caster. “Royal history stuff.”

  “Ooh!” The support spun around and beamed at Faris, eyes glimmering in the dim light of the spell-candle she had affixed onto the spear on her back. It swayed as she turned around. “I want to read it when we get home.”

  Faris let out an incoherent grumble, but his words were nothing but nice. “I know, I know.”

  Seeing the genuine display of sincerity coming from someone who had always been so frigid made Theo smile. “Faris is so nice now,” he commented with a sentimental sigh.

  “Hey,” the caster barked back immediately, whipping his head around to glare at Theo.

  “Ty not here for him to be cool,” teased Darius with a hearty laugh.

  “You!” Faris continued to snap, shifting his gaze to the Ancient beside Theo.

  Theo focused on him, too. “You know, you’ve changed a lot too, Darius. You seem more easygoing now.”

  “Aha. No, no, not at all.”

  He could swear that Darius was blushing as he stuttered through his reply.

  “Probably because not much more is at stake for him now,” suggested the professor drearily from the back of the party. “Especially when most of his job here is done.”

  “That’s a good thing though, isn’t it?” chided Chelsi softly.

  But Moriya continued, his tone dark and expression grim. “He can rest easy knowing that his end arrives. It is indeed a good thing.”

  Thankfully for Theo, he turned around just in time to watch the physician hit the caster over the head with the tome she had been carrying in her arms.

  “You dummy!”

  “Hey—ow!”

  * * *

  “What did you two end up doing, Callie?” Theo piped up a third of the way into their trek to the mountains, the fatigue already slowly chipping away at his morale.

  “We had a picnic!” she boasted sweetly.

  Elias turned to her briefly, gaze lingering for a few seconds. “Then we looked around and stuff. Went into a few stores with random knickknacks and a bookstore with Faris and Darius. Scoured the shelves far too long with nothing to show for it.”

  Callie huffed. “It’s hard to justify another book, especially when we’re traveling. I’m glad Faris got something, though.”

  “A small pocket tome or the other wouldn’t have hurt.”

  “But they were expensive.”

  “And I said I was gonna get it for you.”

  A gloomy sigh escaped the support.

  “If you want a book, just tell us and we can get it for you next time.”

  The class fell silent.

  “W-what? Kor and I go back all the time. It’s just a book,” protested Selene, defending herself to no avail.

  Elias turned to the uncharacteristically silent chemist. “Now I really want to know what happened at the palace.”

  “Good people sometimes take time,” rumbled the Ancient with an air of sentimentality, marking the first time he had spoken since Moriya’s comment earlier.

  “N-no, that’s not it,” the royal continued to deny, hitting her partner beside her with a tiny fist. “Kor, come on, tell them.”

  “Sel’s just in a good mood,” explained Kor in a casual, singsong manner, hands in her pockets. “Y’know, since the queen wed us and all.”

  “No—what!” squeaked the other newlywed.

  “Wait, what?” Elias burst out at almost the same time.

  “Oh!” followed Callie. “That’s what the bell was for. Congrats!”

  “They’re literally wearing rings,” muttered Faris while looking in the opposite direction, into the darkness.

  “Oh, are they?” Genuinely impressed that the caster had noticed when no one else did, Theo made a mental note to check when they set up camp later.

  “Can…can we light back up the spell-candle? I want to see it,” spoke Callie shyly from the front, turning to the back briefly to see if the professor had anything to say.

  He didn’t. It was almost as if he and Chel weren’t paying attention to anything at all from the back—but Theo could see it, even in the darkness. They were holding hands and busy talking to each other in whispers.

  “Let’s try to keep it off for now,” Theo answered in his stead. The walls within the Royal Boundary were considered tremendously safe—animals never a worry since they were inherently afraid of magic—but the queen’s words kept coming back to him. The last time he had been out this late…

  The Earth Mother…in all her tenebrous glory…

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “So, Kor,” he added, ignoring the unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach, “does that make you a royal, too? How does it work?”

  “Eh—titles are whatever. Told Her Majesty I didn’t care for it, and she took it weirdly well. Maybe even got a lil’ teary-eyed.” A short, boastful laugh pierced the silence. “Told me and Sel that we were an exception, that she was happy to see Uph—”

  “Wait.” Darius came to a sudden halt. “There is something. Stop.” He looked around frantically and quickly recited Ancient words that lit up Callie’s spell-candle as the class waited with bated breath.

  And as the Ancient stared off into the distance where the bottom of the hill was, he said, slowly and measuredly, “There…there is something in the distance. It shies from the light.” Then, more Ancient words left his mouth, and pale lines of light extended from under the class outward into the surrounding darkness.

  Theo, who had never seen Darius cast anything other than simple spells for daily life or spells for his craft, realized at that moment that he did not truly comprehend how much magic the kind classmate held in his words. In the soft, almost lyrical phrases that trickled out of his mouth, there was enough anima, enough power for him to light up the world.

  “W-what is this?” breathed Chel first.

  The first question that ran through Theo’s mind, however, was not how Darius had turned night into day, but what was in the distance. “Darius,” he whispered, facing down the hill, feeling his hair stand on end. “What is that down the hill?”

  …in all her tenebrous glory…

  A dark figure. A shadow in the blinding light of the Royal Boundary. Its lustrous, green grass. Cerulean blue skies with clouds whiter than snow. Trees swaying in the gentle wind. The sun, kissing everything it could reach. The sound of water, swishing while it glided down.

  Red, beady eyes. Staring at him.

  Closing in rapidly.

  “You have anything for this, Moriya?” called Theo loudly, not daring to take his eyes off the apparition, knowing that if it was who he thought it was, there was a close-to-nil chance it could be beat.

  “Tr’einare Strai,” spoke Darius almost in unison to his question, covering the entire party in a shimmering, rainbow-colored barrier.

  Moriya’s quick words came next, calm and collected. “I can see straight through that thing, and it’s not physical. I spotted it the moment Darius put us in this brightened parallel sphere, and it didn’t react to any of my Object spells. None of you move while I think.”

  “I—I think I know what it is.” With shaky legs, Theo fought against his self-preservation instincts and stumbled forward, putting distance between his friends and the enemy. He could feel his neck constricting again, the feeling of weightlessness. He reached into his breast pocket.

  You still have my Starshower, right?

  Oh, I do. Did you want it back?

  No, no. I wanted to give you something else.

  What is it?

  Another spell. I wrote it down. It’s important…in case you need to use it.

  What do you mean? What is it?

  Do…you remember that thing I encountered in the woods that one night? Not the small ones, but the…the main one.

  I do.

  I…I used this on it, and it disappeared. If it comes back for you…just in case…you’ll have it.

  Shouldn’t you teach it to me?

  I…think you know the words…but I don’t want you to use it until you absolutely have to. Please. Promise me. It’s not a good spell. There are two pieces of paper—two casts. I hope that’s enough time.

  The shadow was enveloping him. He could no longer recall what he had been thinking of and what he was supposed to do, staring into the murky fog, a hypnotic swirling in its markings, swirling, swirling, bringing him back…

  “Theo, barrier!” called out a muddled voice from behind him.

  He looked down and saw Darius’s rainbow barrier still over him, somehow. In his hand was his paper. Open. Ty’s neatest blood-red scribbles. Two lines of text, the first of which was the incantation, the last of which was the trigger line.

  When he read the second line, he froze.

  The barrier broke.

  The words, seared into his mind, left his mouth in whispers as the darkness ripped through him and sent him hurtling to the ground.

  Nothing.

  “Thank you,” he spoke first to the cerulean blue sky, and then, when he felt hands pulling him up, again. “Thank you, Darius.”

  “Are you okay?” the worried Ancient asked in a low voice.

  “Yes…yes I’m okay.” Between his fingers, where the spell had been, was now a fine, grainy powder. The spell had been consumed.

  “Are you sure you feel okay?” Darius asked again.

  That was when Theo looked past his hands and to the ground underneath him. A crater. There was a crater the size of his room underneath him.

  Wide-eyed, he looked at his speechless classmates and patted himself down nervously. “Y-yes.”

  The Ancient let out a loud sigh of relief before hugging his small classmate tightly. “Thank the Graces. Spell was okay. It has been a long time since I have used.”

  Patting Darius on the side while taking in the shocked looks—even Moriya—Theo tried to gasp for air. “Er—ugk—Dar—Darius—I—”

  The Ancient immediately let go of Theo and sent the entire world back into complete darkness. “Oh!” he gasped. “S-sorry, I was surprised.”

  After regaining his balance and breath, Theo tested his legs and headed out of what would have been a very unfortunate and shallow grave until he stood back in formation. “That’s okay. We should get going. We need to make it on time.”

  “Er—” started Callie.

  “Yeah, what the heck was that?” Elias practically yelled.

  “Uh,” started Theo, the adrenaline still coursing through his veins. “I—I think it should be gone? I think?”

  “Keep walking,” ordered Moriya. “Theo has plenty of time to explain to us how he came to be in possession of an Ex-Annihilate.”

  “It’s really not what you think it is, professor,” Theo began as he walked, desperate to exonerate himself because possessing the spell in itself was grounds for expulsion. “It…it was Ty. She gave it to me.”

  “For that thing?”

  “Y…yes, for that thing. I think.”

  “How many casts do you have left?”

  “I…”

  “Theodore.”

  “…One.”

  “Okay, take good care of it. I don’t know where to get you more. The only times I’ve been able to use it were because the Headmistress gave it to me. Those kinds of Ex spells aren’t like regular ones you can write on typical paper, irritatingly enough.”

  “O-okay.”

  The class descended into silence again as they pressed on.

  * * *

  “Hey, Darius.”

  “Yes, Faris?”

  “What in the world was that spell earlier? That made it daytime?”

  “It is as Moriya says. Parallel sphere. It is snapshot, trickery of the mind that extends, like Para-spells. But for good, not for bad.”

  “Oh hey, my pocket tome has spells like those.”

  “Not you, Theo.”

  “Ha, ha. Is special Ancient trick.”

  “So how did the prof know it?”

  “Because I am an old man.”

  “Yes. He know because I have used before. I help, but do not fight. In this world…in this peaceful time, not so much. So no need.”

  “What about the shield?”

  “That one, Theo, is Tr’einare Strai. It is Ancient-based trigger spell. Harder, not common-tongue type. It is support-based. If extensive damage is done to person, it will heal the inflicted upon damage. Is good for powerful enemy, not as effective for small instances of damage. Is useful when enemy does not understand and cannot circumvent. Risky.”

  “Ah.”

  “Does that one come in book-form?”

  “Can you even read support script that advanced, Kor?”

  “No, but Callie can. Maybe it’ll be useful for her later.”

  “Mmm. It is secret. A surprise.”

  “Ahhh, I get it, I get it. Very cute.”

  “W-what did he say? Sorry, I didn’t catch that from up here.”

  “Don’t worry Callie, it was nothing.”

  * * *

  “Oh yeah, you never told us about meeting the queen, Theo.”

  Theo passed his hands over his face. “Augh, I’m tired. Can we wait until we’ve set up camp?”

  “No, you’re just gonna fall asleep,” whined Kor as the tactician let out another groan.

  “She gave me a box. Didn’t say what was in it.”

  “Oh? Can I see?” asked Darius inquisitively.

  “I don’t know; I can’t open it. Here, let me…” Theo reached into his pocket and pulled out the wooden box.

  “Stop.”

  Without a single protest, the entire party stopped to face the professor and his outstretched hand.

  “Hand it to me.”

  Theo did not immediately obey. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I’m going to try to open it for you.”

  For a moment, he considered what the worst thing he could do was, what would happen should the box be forced open when it wasn’t meant to, but curiosity eventually triumphed as he placed it into the professor’s outstretched palm.

  “Hmm.” Moriya regarded it quizzically, casting a quick illumination spell that produced a small, floating white orb. “This is interesting. I can’t tell what it is.”

  “You’ve never seen it before, old man?” laughed Chel lightly.

  “No,” stated the child professor plainly, continuing to turn it over in his gloved hands while the class formed a circle around him. “No, you should know better than anyone else that the kids have never seen the queen before.” He paused. “Does everyone know about the Circles yet?”

  Awkwardly, Theo turned to Kor, pretty sure that it was only her and Sel left when, right on cue, Kor raised her eyebrows expectantly. “Uh, no? Some of y’all talked about it earlier, but I thought it was the Circle of Graces?”

  For a split second, the professor appeared to contemplate telling her the truth, but he shook his head instead. “Now isn’t the time.”

  “Wh—” exclaimed the chemist, mouth agape. “You just—you were the one who asked!”

  “Not the time,” mumbled Moriya absentmindedly before switching to the Ancient tongue.

  When the words finally stopped flowing, the professor tilted his head, eyed Darius—who subtly shook his head—and then turned to his partner. “Chel, Skypiercer this.”

  No one dared speak as Chel’s eyes grew big, her fascinated smile turning into a disapproving frown.

  “What? No!” she snapped. “I’m saving that!”

  “Chel, it’s the queen. And didn’t Ty get you that book? Think of it as repayment.”

  “So? I don’t care! I’m saving it for you-know-what!”

  “I feel like it’s only right that you do it, being a girl and all. This…glorified block might as well be a holy item. You know how the royal line favors the women.” He paused. “That, and Skypiercer,” he muttered with animosity behind his voice.

  “No! That’s—that’s completely—why can’t you use another spell, genius?” Tightly hugging her tome to her chest, the physician took a step back, lowered her chin, and gave the professor a dirty scowl.

  Moriya blinked obliviously before stiffly turning to the class, then back to Chel. “Do you really want me to explain why?”

  “Yes!”

  “Can we…can we hold on a moment?” Faris interjected, his eyes also wide. “Skypiercer…is there another spell with that name? There’s no way it’s like, the same one from that old Ancient myth—you know, back in the…” He surveyed his classmates’s faces and received nothing. “Did no one read it? In the Great War of the Graceless Period, it was the spell Ulgorhdir created to fell Pannasa’t—he was notoriously a pacifist, so it ended up being a painless, uncounterable and unblockable…spell…why are you looking at me like that?”

  Chel, whose gaze the student historian-caster landed on, was positively beaming. “You’re right. It was an Ancient myth, but there was also a real spell made for it long, long ago. There had been rumors of its existence in the even more mythical Ancient Archives, but it wasn’t until I mentioned it to Ty that she tracked it down. I don’t even think the Ancients knew where to find it.”

  The excitement was lost on the skeptical caster, who narrowed his eyes at the only Ancient among them. “But that’d mean that they’re all real, right? Is she lying?”

  Darius shook his head, speaking low and deliberately, “You say yourself, is myth. Stories to tell at night, like Graces. Like Earth Mother. I have heard of Ancient Archives, I have heard many times of the heroic tales of Ulgorhdir, who sacrificed his life for the commoners, and the mistakes of Pannasa’t, who believed herself the ‘New’ Earth Mother, but the truth of it…I do not know. Whether it is real or convenient story to suit tradition, I do not know. What matters is if it works.”

  The critical caster turned to the mythical spell-wielding physician. “And?”

  “Yes, it does,” interrupted Moriya impatiently and without gusto, returning to the topic at hand. “Listen, Chel, if this world burns to the ground, that book will be worth nothing. I can’t just destroy it because if there’s something dangerous in there, it’ll be let out—we have no idea if the ever-powerful queen’s intentions are pure, or if she was being truthful—so the Skypiercer will imprison it, and then we can decide whether it’s necessary to kill it. If yes, you complete the spell. There’s literally nothing that can circumvent Skypiercer—we tried it, remember—or, well—” He gave Theo a dry side-eye. “Maybe an Ex-Annihilate would work, but we don’t want to obliterate it in case there’s something useful inside.” He held out the box. “Come on. Let’s not waste any more time.”

  Chel took another step back, her expression dark and voice unwavering. “I only get to use it once a Circle. I’m not going to use it on the box. I say we leave it alone.”

  The professor stared at her coldly, the murderous intent plain for the class to see in his eyes while the headstrong physician held her ground.

  “You wouldn’t dare hurt me,” she threatened in a whisper, eyes glistening.

  Several tense seconds passed, followed by Moriya letting out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to stretch for eternity. “Fine.” He thrust the box back into Theo’s hands and dismissed his flame. “Keep it. If anything happens, blame Chelsi.”

  Silently, Theo placed it back into his pocket, wondering for a moment—and only for a moment—what the writing on the spell looked like before forging ahead into the darkness.