The first thing that he heard was the relentless pounding of hundreds of footfalls above him. A sharp ringing filled his ears, and blinking, he realized he was on his back, arms and legs splayed out. Disoriented, he looked up at the tunnel’s ceiling, dust floating down through the semidarkness, lightly coating his face and clothes. Stretching, he slowly stood, brushing himself off. Screams echoed around the Academy, and the tunnel’s walls seemed to move as shocks shuddered down them. To his right, frost had slicked the walls, creating a distorted mirror. He tilted his head, looking at himself captured in the ice. A pink flush had crept into his cheeks, and for the first time in years, he felt alive. Leaning closer, the ice misted from his breath as he took in his sweeping black hair, but he paused, a slow smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he took in his eyes. His pupils widened, bleeding in the now black iris around them, all flecks of the dark brown gone. All traces of him gone.
A deep chuckle passed through his lips, and he tentatively traced the outline of his features, growing more distorted with every second. Flicking the melted droplets off his fingertips he murmured, “Finally, it’s time.” Clenching his fist, he slammed it into the ice, the impact should have shredded his skin and his knuckles, leaving a bloody print. Instead the cracks split through the ice, racing up and through the sheets as they fell around him. The ice fractured around him, and he flexed his unharmed hand, grinning viciously.
The ground shuddered beneath him and looking up, his hair stood on end with anticipation. The temperature continued to drop, his breath outlined in front of him as he looked onward to the war that raged above him. He could practically taste the ancient magic spurring through the Academy because it was the same that coursed through him. A gravitational force that wouldn’t let him go, couldn’t let him go. And he would answer it.
Bowing his head, his body became magic and smoke, and soon he was flying, cutting through the physical barriers of the school. He was no longer a man, no longer just Adair Stratton. The voices purred inside him, coaxing him onward, as he became destruction, chaos, and rage. He became the monster he was pegged for, the fear that was whispered behind his back. The one that was always there in the depths of his heart. As he raced to escape the tunnels, inside he battered against his confinements, screaming, unable to do anything but watch as the magic sealed him within, overpowering and enhancing him, and the magic relished as he burned with one desire. To end the Academy.
18
Brokk
For the first hour, he had screamed. Gut-wrenching wails as he heard the Academy torn apart, stormed by Bresslin’s forces. For the second hour, he had fought. Against the chains, against the forces of the world he didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. There was no rhyme or reason to their destruction, and the smell of smoke, the harsh tang of winter cut into his face. As the third hour rolled around, his head hung limply, the sounds of war crashing around him.
The metal bit into his wrists, blood slowly seeping onto the ground, a steady drip. He sagged, no longer wanting to hear the dabarnes shatter through the icy courtyard, the screams rising and falling, as the Academy was caught completely unaware by Bresslin’s rage.
First, I will make you beg.
He cringed against the memory slithering through his mind of the Gortach’s sick whispers.
Then, I will make you bleed.
A whimper escaped him, and he clenched his eyes shut.
My name is Brokk Foster. I will not break. I will not break. I will not break. He repeated this over and over to himself, trying to shut out the increased sound of smashing concrete, the roars of the monsters, the roars of the residents of the Academy. The singing of metal against metal, of ice crackling over everything, alive or not. The ground shuddered, and he was sure the world would split apart from the forces clashing together.
“Brokk.” He squeezed his eyes tighter, and for the first time, he let his mind wonder what it would be like just to drift away from their government, from their politics. Like the raiders had done. And the Shattered Isles. Leaving Kiero to battle over an acclaimed crown.
“Brokk!” Defeatedly wrenching his gaze, he squinted through his non-swollen eye at his best friend, cringing at how true Bresslin was to her word. Memphis’s wrists and ankles where melded into blocks of ice, his body stretched taut, blood running down his arms, the chain collar tight around his throat. They were on the outskirts of the forest, left broken and beaten, their torture listening to their home falling into ruin, seeing enough but not all. “We have to do something.” Memphis’s voice cracked.
“If you have any plans, I would love to hear them,” he rasped.
“So, we just give up strapped to a block of ice? Brokk, Em is in there.”
“Don’t you think I know that? But what can we do against a bloody army of demons!”
Memphis’s face grew ashen as he spat, “We can try.”
Try. He wanted to laugh bitterly at the word. How many years had he spent trying? Trying to figure out his past. Who his parents were, why they didn’t want to keep him. Trying to live up to the expectations of the Academy, to grow up to become one of Kiero’s guardians. Guardians, which was just another word for soldier. But he had tried to stay true to his heart and what he knew was right, and that was all he could ever want. He looked at the world around him, the hush of the forest, snow encrusted and timeless. His gaze drifted toward the
