The Other Apprentice

21-2 | Unleashing Monsters

Quinn watched, unable to move, as Bria walked slowly toward her, sword in hand. In the distance, she could hear the memory of her and Valryk battling darkhounds in the streets. So much had changed since then, it seemed ages ago. "Do something!" she heard the memories of her less-enlightened past self yelling at Valryk, but she might as well have been yelling it to present-day Quinn.

She knew she had one chance to make this work, but the timing had to be perfect.

Bria raised the sword in both hands, with the point downward, ready to stab it down on Quinn's chest. Looking down, she spat on Quinn. "You shouldn't bring a stick to a magic battle. Fight by the sword, die by it."

In the distance, she heard her memory yelling, "Madrigal's not a wizard! He can't use magic!" and she knew it was time.

When returning from her confrontation with Rookplume and his pirates, she'd charged the black opal in the pommel of her knife with magical energy—one abundant enough to cause no strain on the veil during her return trip. She couldn't move her fingers or move anything else, but her mind still functioned. She opened her senses and drew their power she'd stored in the knife and employed it.

A short-lived but powerful gust of wind roared past the rooftop, blowing Bria violently back and off the ledge. At that instant, a torrent of lightning came down from the skies, aimed directly at the memory of the darkhound pack in the streets just below Bria, coursing through her into the memory of the battle.

As the wind subsided, Quinn felt the paralysis slowly losing effect on her. After a few minutes, she lifted herself up, despite the pain in her stiff joints. She stumbled her way to the edge of the roof and looked down.

Bria's unconscious form laid in the middle of burnt and blackened darkhounds from the memory of the battle. She was unburnt, owing to the peculiarities of the Embrance. Pain and danger were unreal in the Embrance, but felt real. A situation that your mind believed genuine often resulted in phantom pains. Bria likely went into shock with the sensation of being electrocuted, as well as suffering a violent fall. Quinn started lowering herself from the roof, prepared to end the other woman permanently.

Climbing down took longer than she would have liked, but her body was already feeling more responsive by the time she set her foot down on the street. She went over and picked up her sword where it had dropped.

As she prepared to take the other woman's head off, a voice came from behind her. "I would advise against that."

Quinn turned to see Madrigal, clutching his bloodied side, stumbling toward her with Widdershanks at his heels. Quinn lowered her sword and rushed to his side. "She wants to kill you. She wants to kill both of us."

Madrigal let out a pained laugh. "Better than her have tried. But more to the point, she is the only witness to whatever transpired in that library, and I suspect she knows far more of what's going on than Tenet did, and certainly more than we know."

Quinn shook her head. "I don't trust her."

Madrigal shrugged his shoulders. "I do not expect you to, but I wish to know what she knows, and I find my taste for unnecessarily killing practitioners of magic lessened from what it once was."

Quinn looked down at her. "So, what do we do with her, then? We can't leave her here and I'd rather not carry her. I suppose I could drag her by her hair."

Madrigal smiled. "That will not be necessary. This memory of this situation offers another solution."

Not long after, Quinn and Madrigal rode the memory of their horses, which their memories had left outside of Uldrin, through the maze. Bria, still unconscious, was tied to the back of the third horse. Quinn had seen to Madrigal's wounds as best she could with the limited medical supplies she kept in the pouch of her cloak. Unsatisfied, Quinn worried infection could set in. Madrigal had only laughed and said it would be unlikely he'd live long enough for an infection to set in.