Kin of Kings (The Kin of Kings Book 1) (16 page)

Back in his room, Basen attempted to make a fireball with his empty wand just as he had at Worender Training Center. Holding bastial energy in a cluster near the tip of his wand, he then strained his mind to move sartious energy into it like before.

Nothing happened.

He let the hot BE disperse.

He didn’t feel close to grabbing anything.
What had it looked like?
He remembered a small circle forming at the center of his bastial energy cluster. Something seemed to be burning within it, but it looked far away, as if he’d been glancing through a window at a distant campfire.

Basen tried for at least an hour and succeeded in nothing but making himself more weary and frustrated. He took a rest, pacing back and forth from his room to Nick’s.

Rain had begun to fall. Basen looked out his window but could see nothing. The night was too dark.

He tried recreating the spell for another hour but made no progress of any kind. It felt like he was trying to familiarize himself with a dark room, yet he’d felt and heard nothing after all of his walking around.

Worry set in that he’d imagined what he’d seen and felt at the training center. He could feel his dreams of discovering a new energy fading. It was the same with his will to keep practicing.

He went back to Nick’s room, but seeing his sartious pellets gave him the kick of determination he needed to try once again. He moved them to one corner of Nick’s room and stood in the other, finding no point in walking all the way back to his room. One tug of his mind was all it took to confirm that the sartious energy was too far away for him to move from there.

Basen did the same thing he’d done for the last two hours. He formed a cluster of bastial energy and tried to move sartious into it even though there was none in his wand.

He gasped as he felt something different. It was reluctant to move to his will, reminding him of prodding the tip of a buried rock. So Basen heaved.

Soon he came to realize he wasn’t pulling anything out from his wand but prying it out of the cluster of bastial energy. He let the BE go to focus all of his efforts on whatever this was, but the moment he did, it slipped from his grasp so suddenly it was as if it never existed.

Desperately, he tried to feel for it again. But there were no traces of it.

“No…no!” He wanted to throw his wand.
I had it.

He quickly calmed as he realized that now he was at least certain he’d felt something. Chills ran up and down his arms. Maybe it was a third form of energy. Whatever it was, he could touch it with his mind.

It had disappeared the moment he’d let his cluster of bastial energy disperse. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

He gathered BE and then took hold of the stubborn energy. It didn’t feel as if there was much he could do with it because it was too heavy. All he could think of was expanding it, and even then it was like trying to get his fingers into stale bread.

Basen grunted as he tunneled in with his mind and then pulled in every direction. It was immensely difficult to keep the BE steady as he worked on this much heavier energy, and soon his hand began to shake as a groan came out of his throat.

Finally he broke it open and actually heard a ripping sound as if he’d run a dagger across flesh. He saw the same burning circle as he had at the training center, but this time he held onto it with all of his strength.

Sitting just in front of his wand, it rippled at the edges. It looked to be some sort of sphere, no bigger than his fist, and deep within it was the appearance of fire.

It roared as it sucked in all the BE around it, quickly becoming more difficult to hold. After just a few breaths, he felt as if he was between two grown men trying to get at each other to fight.

He let go. The sphere of distant fire collapsed and instantly disappeared.

“What in god’s world was that?” he asked no one.

He wanted to see it again, but he was too tired from the toll it had taken on his mind and body. While regaining his breath, he put the sartious pellets back in his wand and returned to his room.

He gathered more BE and tried the spell again, but he couldn’t feel it any longer. Panic came over him as he quickly removed the sartious pellets and tried again.

It was no use. He’d lost it.

Basen paced and cursed for a while, his mind racing to remember everything that had just happened so he could figure out the problem. When he was done, he kept coming back to the same question:
Why was it so easy to feel the energy moments ago and not now?

Then he realized the only time the spell had worked was when he was in Nick’s room. He hurried back there, took the sartious pellets from his wand, and stood exactly where he had before.

He couldn’t feel it. But then he gathered BE first…and there it was! Waiting for him to expand it again!

He didn’t waste his fortitude on it. He was barely standing after the long day. Instead, he returned the sartious pellets and tried again to prove their proximity didn’t matter. As he suspected, it worked; he could feel this heavy energy separately from bastial and sartious, though it was very similar to bastial. In fact, he wondered if it could be some form of heavier bastial energy.

Basen needed to tell someone. No,
show
someone. He ran back to his room to confirm his discovery. He couldn’t feel the new energy here within a cluster of bastial energy. He ran back to Nick’s room. But here he could.

Why did this only work in Nick’s room?

He heard footsteps and voices headed toward him. He looked out the window and saw nothing but absolute darkness as the rain pattered. A light broke through—someone’s wand. Then he recognized Nick’s voice.

Basen opened the front door and waited for him to appear. Nick came into sight with Effie and Alex walking beside him, cowls protecting their heads from the rain.

“See, easy to find,” Alex said, stepping under the awning of the house and removing his hood. “And your roommate is here to greet us.”

“The three of you need to see something,” Basen said. “Come inside.”

“We’re tired and drunk,” Effie complained. “We just came here because it was on the way and Nick didn’t bring his wand and he’s a fool because it’s dark…and he didn’t bring his wand.” She did sound drunk, but this couldn’t wait.

“Trust me, Effie. You’ll want to see this.”

She folded her arms. “Unless it’s bacon, I doubt it.”

“Better than bacon,” Basen promised.

The three of them looked at each other as if Basen had just proclaimed he would turn bronze into gold.

“What could be in there that’s better than bacon?” Alex drunkenly swung a finger at Basen. “Mage, you have set my expectations for something amazing! Come on, Eff.”

Basen led them to Nick’s room and lit a lamp. Nick kicked off his shoes and removed his cloak. Then he started toward the doorway but stopped when Basen stayed put. “This better than bacon thing is in my room?” His speech was slurred like the rest of them, probably just as much from exhaustion as it was from alcohol at this point.

“For some reason,” Basen explained, “it can only be done in your room.” He readied his wand, but the three of them jumped up and put their hands out. “Relax and stand behind me,” he said.

Reluctantly, they obeyed.

Basen showed them the spell, creating the rippling sphere within the cluster of hot bastial energy. The same fire burned within it.

“Bastial hell!” Effie yelled, then reached her hand toward it like the intoxicated fool she was.

“Stop!” Basen screamed. “I don’t know what happens if you touch it.”

“What is that?” Nick asked.

Basen could hold it no longer, so he let it collapse. “I was hoping one of you would know.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Nick said. He looked to Effie and Alex. They shook their heads.

“As I mentioned, I can only do it in your room,” Basen told Nick. “And I’ve done it once before—at Worender Training Center.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Effie said. “Spells should work no matter where you cast them.”

“I know,” Basen agreed. “Nor does it make sense that I need to first gather bastial energy in order to do it.”

“Shit,” Effie murmured. “It looked like a portal to somewhere burning.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Do it again,” Nick requested, edging closer.

Basen repeated the spell. However, this time there was no fire to be seen within the rippling circle. Effie drew a quick breath and a burst of light shone out from her wand. The sphere was a black hole sitting in the center of her pillar of light. It flickered wildly with hundreds of streams of light shooting across its edges.

“Bastial hell,” Effie whispered. “How are you making that thing?”

He tried to explain to them how it had happened originally and what it had felt like, demonstrating the spell several more times to accompany his descriptions. Effie and Nick both tried afterward, but they couldn’t feel anything abnormal like he did.

“It’s late, and I’m still drunk,” Nick said. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow.”

They agreed, and Effie and Alex started out the door.

“One moment,” Basen said, stopping them. “Promise me none of you will tell anyone about this just yet.”

“Why?” Effie asked.

“It’s in our best interest to figure out what it is before everyone in the Academy knows about it—which is bound to happen if we start telling people. Not even your roommates, all right?”

Alex shrugged.

“Fine,” Effie said. “I don’t know how you can resist the potential fame, but it’s your discovery to do what you want with. Tell us the moment you know more.”

“Agreed.”

Alone with Nick, Basen finally felt pride as his friend smiled at him. “Amazing,” Nick said. He stepped forward and clasped Basen in a suffocating hug, stumbling into him and taking Basen back a step. “You can’t meditate, yet you discover a new spell! You’re going to get so many of the womans.”

Basen laughed as he returned the hug. “Sleep well.”

“Oh I will.” Nick hiccupped as he winked.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A scream awoke Basen. It was coming from Nick’s room. Basen bolted up, but the solid darkness disoriented him. He couldn’t even see his hands in front of his face. He kicked his bedpost in his attempt to make it to the other side of the room for his wand.

Nick sounded as if his flesh were being stripped from his bones. He needed help. Basen stumbled into his dresser and searched for his wand he knew to be there.

“Nick?” he shouted, but his voice wasn’t loud enough to cut through his roommate’s shrieks. “Nick! I’m coming!”

Just as he found his wand, Nick’s agonized cries suddenly ceased.

Basen gathered energy for light…no, it wouldn’t come. He must be too fatigued. He focused harder.

It still wouldn’t work. What in god’s world was this? He could feel no bastial energy to grasp! It was as if the BE in the air and his body was completely gone. He noticed a strange smell as well. It was bitter and acrid, making him think of a chemist’s lab.

He tripped to his door, then fumbled around with his hand until it reached the doorknob.

He twisted and pulled. “Nick, are you all right?” he yelled down the hall.

No answer.

Basen felt his way along the hallway and into the common area. It was as black as pitch. Again he tried to make light, but the only energy he could feel was the sartious in his wand.

Shivers of fear stopped him. Could it be that someone had removed all the bastial energy in the vicinity, even what Basen’s body produced? It would explain his inability to feel the energy, but not even master mages could do this. Had this same person done something to Nick?

Basen’s wand was useless, but he had a dagger buried beneath his clothes in his top dresser drawer.

No, it would take too long to find in this darkness.

“Nick?” he asked softly now as he slowly made his way down the hall.

Nothing.

Finally, he got to Nick’s door and felt around until he found the handle. He threw it open. All he heard was the rain beating against the roof. Basen tripped over a chair as he tried Nick’s name again. A howl of wind came into the room and brought freezing rain onto Basen’s face. He winced as he lost his breath.

The damned window is open. Someone came here and left. Did they take Nick?

Finally, Basen kicked against something that could be a body. Bending down and moving his hands around, he came to Nick’s chest and shoulders. He felt something damp and thick with a metallic odor. Was it blood?

“Shit!” Basen scooped up Nick, thrashing from side to side to free Nick’s legs from what Basen soon figured out to be the sheets of his bed. It was as if Nick had tried to make it to the door and gotten tangled.

“Help!” Basen screamed as he hoisted his roommate over his shoulder and made his way out of the dark room as quickly as possible.

He got Nick out of the house and bellowed for help again. Nick sounded like he was trying to speak, but only a gargle came out.