The Schism (The Broken Prism Book 4) (31 page)

The portal’s been closed.

Hayden was just glad that he could recognize his surroundings, that his feelings seemed to be leveling out and returning to normal.

That was when he realized that Hunter had come through the opening with him. Hayden blinked hard and tried to sift through his mind for his most recent memories. After the distortion fully penetrated his brain his recollection was foggy at best, though he had a vague suspicion that at one point Hunter was fighting off monsters while he stood around uselessly, trying to figure out what to do with the onyx prism.

Guiltily, he remembered his resentful, bitter feelings towards the man who had been nothing but helpful, despite having no reason to risk himself for a total stranger. Hunter had somehow managed to convince Hayden to seal the portal, but then his memories became even fuzzier…

I fell to the ground. I was watching the prism shrink without even realizing I was going to get stuck inside.

With a surge of nausea, he remembered staring down at the ground while it shook beneath him in time with someone else’s footsteps.

Hunter was carrying me on his back. He must have dove through the opening before it was fully shut so that we’d both make it.

Now the man was on his hands and knees on the grass behind him, eyes clamped shut despite facing the ground and being shielded from the direct sunlight. He looked like he was undergoing the same sort of painful mental reorganizing that Hayden had been, only it was taking a lot longer. He wasn’t sure why Hunter would be experiencing the reshuffling effect, as he wasn’t a mage, but had never really considered the possibility that a regular person would have a problem adjusting to the regular world.

“Hayden!”

The sound of his name caused him to jump, which hurt horribly, but then his eyes focused on Master Asher, who had just risen from a chair he had propped outside the opening.

He was waiting for me to come back.

He had no idea how long he’d been gone, but was touched that the Master had believed he would returned, enough to wait for him outside the schism for whoever-knows-how-long.

“Asher!” He grinned, suddenly able to appreciate that he had done the impossible and made it out of the schism alive. “I never thought I’d see this place again,” he began excitedly. “The distortion in there was a lot more intense than I thought it would be, especially towards the end. Howard and Tanner both didn’t make it,” he frowned here. “If not for Hunter showing up when he did, I would have been eaten by hyenas before we even made it to the mountain pass. I never would have managed to seal the exit and make it back through without his help—he had to carry me on his back. Asher?”

The Prism Master had taken one step towards him as soon as he saw him arrive, but had been frozen in place ever since. He had a strange look on his face, mouth hanging slightly open as though stuck mid-speech. It took Hayden a moment to place the expression on his mentor’s face—terror.

The Prism Master’s eyes were wide with fear, his face blanched of color. The naked horror on his face made him look unusually young, and Hayden wasn’t sure he had ever seen his mentor looking so vulnerable.

“What’s wrong?” he asked worriedly, wondering why Asher was still staring at him like he was an absolutely terrifying apparition.

Asher remained silent, still wide-eyed and unmoving.

“Come on, I can’t look
that
bad…” Hayden insisted.

Then he realized what he should have noticed before. Asher wasn’t staring at
him
in horror, he was staring at Hunter—who was right behind him and now struggling to his feet.

“Oh, right—this is Hunter, the guy who saved my life…” he explained, gesturing to the man behind him, who still looked like he was attempting to shake off the strange fugue that was a result of crossing realms.

When Hunter was finally upright and his face was properly visible, Asher spoke a single word, a word that set off so many different thoughts and emotions inside of Hayden that for a moment he worried that he was back inside the schism and suffering the effects of distortion.

His voice unusually soft and scared, Asher said, “Aleric?”