203 — Book 4, Chapter 47 — Confrontation, Pt 1

There was a strange resonance of magic echoing in the Temple of Vitality. Cale didn't quite know what to make of it, and no one seemed willing to explain it to him. Which was really quite rude of them, considering he'd been the one to bring them here. Vital and Damien were off having some sort of private conversation—they kept glancing at him like they were afraid he'd listen in on them, and Cale politely didn't eavesdrop, because he knew when he wasn't wanted—and Flia had wandered off to save the Abyssal Ones.

He considered going to help her, but there were some things his apprentices needed to figure out on their own, and this was one of them.

Syphus and Leo were exploring the Temple, albeit for very different reasons. Leo, predictably, was fascinated by the murals and records painted onto its walls and had one of his notebooks out; he had a tongue sticking out of his mouth as he sketched a copy of everything he could find. Syphus seemed to be having the time of its life, though Cale couldn't for the life of him figure out what it was trying to do. What was it trying to accomplish, rolling around tapping on all the bricks that made up the Temple's walls?

Ah well. It was good to see them having fun, at least. So much had happened of late that Cale had been a little worried that things would never stop; it went like that, sometimes, when the Thread of Fate wound around everything and brought them all together.

For now, though, it seemed to have gone dormant. That, too, happened sometimes, though Cale would be hard-pressed to explain how he knew when it was dormant. It was a loosening of the mana within him, a slight dimming of the silver Thread in his core. A whisper that said you can rest, now, until I brighten once more.

Not literally, of course. If the whisper was literal, he wouldn't have been caught off-guard while sunbathing on the beaches of the Henoan realm's underworld that one time. Granted, that one might have happened anyway. What sort of Empress sent entire armies to a nude beach?

Anyway.

It was odd, not having anything to accomplish on his immediate agenda. Oh, he had his questions and his suspicions, plenty of things left to investigate—he still hadn't found a way to the bottom of Utelia's oceans, the Endless Deep, where the Gift had claimed some secrets were hidden. Nor had he made any progress on finding out what had happened to humanity beyond what he'd already seen in the Bitter Path. Adam's note to him had given him an inkling, but it was just that. An inkling.

Still, an inkling was hope, and that hope was more than he'd had for a very long time. Besides, he was certain now that it had something to do with the Dark and with the Lesion. All that remained was to find the connection.

"You appear to be thinking more than usual," Thorn said quietly, and Cale glanced up at him, surprised. Of all the people he thought might approach him while he was visibly sulking, Thorn had been among the last. He'd assumed the vinewalker would much prefer to be anywhere else, in fact.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cale muttered, half-indignant. "I think all the time. Can't stop thinking, really. It's kind of a problem."

"Indeed," Thorn said, voice dry as a desert, and it took Cale a moment to realize that had been his point. "What could so trouble the great Cale Cadwell Cobbs?"

Cale snorted. "Don't call me that," he said without heat. When Thorn just raised an eyebrow, waiting for a real answer, he sighed. "I'm just not used to not having another immediate crisis to deal with. Takes a while for me to switch myself off, so to speak. I keep expecting something else to happen."

"Hm." Thorn turned to examine him for a moment, and his gaze lingered before he seemed to come to a decision. When he spoke again, there was a trace of amusement in his voice. "And yet you are capable of sleep. Curious."

"I'm perfectly capable of taking breaks." Cale laughed in spite of himself. He hadn't expected Thorn of all people to have such a dry sense of humor. "I don't expect a crisis around every corner. But I can always feel when there's one coming. It's hard to explain."

"The Thread of Fate."

"Maybe not that hard to explain," Cale amended, shaking his head. "This is the first time in a while that I've felt like there isn't something big right around the corner. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely one coming, but it feels like we're being given a chance to rest and recuperate..."

Cale trailed off. "Sort of, anyway," he tacked on, grinning wryly. "I'm not very good at that bit."

"Mm." Strangely enough, Thorn gave him a faint smirk. "You are not."

"Okay, you haven't known me for that long," Cale said, laughing again. "You don't get to pretend you know exactly what I'm like!"

Thorn gestured toward the rest of the Temple. "You are not difficult to understand."

"I've got about a thousand exes that would beg to differ."

Thorn's vines constricted for a moment before they loosened again. "Then they did not know you well enough," he said plainly. "Your Thread of Fate is only an excuse. If there was no Thread, you would simply involve yourself in the closest and most immediate crisis. Not everything that has happened is a result of that Thread."

"...Okay, that's a pretty accurate assessment, I'll give you that." Cale squinted at Thorn, and then a grin stole across his face. "Yeah, the Thread doesn't get tangled up in everything. Learned that the hard way several times over. I've gotten very good at breaking into the wrong place at the wrong time just to make sure I get involved."

Thorn grunted with amusement. "Seems I have befriended a criminal."

"I can tell the difference between your grunts, now!" Cale declared, ignoring the fact that he'd technically just been labeled a criminal. "That grunt was amused. I'm growing on you."

"Never denied it." One of Thorn's vines separated from his arm and edged toward Cale, hovering hesitantly in the air. Cale watched it carefully, but after a moment, it retreated, and Thorn changed the subject. "What crisis do you plan to seek out this time?"

"I don't know yet." Cale's gaze flickered toward his apprentices for a moment, or at least toward the ones still in the chamber with him. "They're doing well, I think. They won't need me for this next bit. I might head out, see what I can find about what the dark lord is up to. There has to be a reason everything feels so closely tied to the Darkness lately."

If Thorn understood that he was avoiding his apprentices—or, at the very least, that he was avoiding the idea that they might no longer need him—he made no mention of it. "Have noticed the trend," he grunted instead. "You believe Utelia is tied closely to the Dark, then."

"Or something along those lines," Cale said. "Don't get me wrong, the Thread means I usually end up involved with whoever gets appointed by the Dark, but it feels different, this time. I mean, I'll usually have met the dark lord and established some sort of rivalry by now. Instead we're drifting around the problem, learning everything about what the Dark is and what it wants, and we haven't even met the guy at the helm of all this. He's sending out his forces to, what, skirmish? Harass the academies? He hasn't really done anything big, has he?"

"Compared to the Grand Magus, he has not."

"Right, and that's weird," Cale said, more animated now. He stood up and began pacing back and forth, turning the problem over in his head. Thorn watched him as he moved, his gaze intent. "I've met one of his... soldiers? Lieutenants? Whatever. He knows I exist, because he's basically got a sapient clone of me running around in the Corrupted Lands. I assume, anyway. I know he hasn't killed the clone, because I'm not that easy to kill."

That made Thorn blink, but it seemed he was used to this now, because that was all the reaction he had. Cale was almost disappointed.

"Also because there would be a really big and obvious explosion," Cale added, and Thorn nodded, as if the clone thing now made perfect sense. "But then why is he waiting? Either he's willing to work with me and I'm not a threat to his plans at all, or he's not willing to work with me, and he'll want to get rid of me as soon as possible. I mean, I already messed with him once when I blamed him for the Red Hunters getting sabotaged."

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"Perhaps he simply does not want to draw your attention," Thorn said. "Third option. Many would be intimidated by the legends surrounding you."

"And what about you?" Cale asked. In response, Thorn met and held his gaze, the vines that comprised his body tightening as if in challenge. Cale laughed. "Right, you're not the type to be intimidated. I don't know, to answer your question. Dark lords are usually proactive by this stage. If he's in hiding, there's a good reason for it. I think I'd like to find out why."

"Hmm." Thorn hummed, noncommittal, and some of the tension in his vines bled away. "Could also work on some of your passions. Seems you've had little opportunity."

Cale made a face. "Not much, no," he muttered in agreement. "Tried a bit of magical baking a month or so ago. That's when I turned the whole school into an oven by accident, if you remember that."

"Was away from Brightscale at the time," Thorn said. "Alas. Would have liked to see that for myself."

"Would you really? I didn't think you were one for shenanigans."

"I could be." Thorn's gaze was more intent now.

"Well, I suppose I could see if I can repeat the oven incident." Cale winked. "I forgot you didn't come back until the tournament was coming up—speaking of which, how are my apprentices doing? You, Featherstrike, and Kryva have all seen their magic by now. Are we qualified to be your support team?"

It was Thorn's turn to snort. "Doubt any other team would qualify, if yours did not," he muttered, then reached out and caught Cale by the wrist, pulling him down to sit beside him. "And stop pacing. It is annoying."

"It's how I think," Cale complained, although he did, in fact, stay seated next to Thorn. He rubbed at his temples, then sighed. "I mean, you're right, I would love to try my hand at baking magic again. It's just that there's so much left to solve. Akkau's making progress on the Vekorax front, right? I think—I really think I need to talk to the dark lord or something, at least. Just so I know where we're at."

Thorn sighed. "Foolish, attached human," he muttered under his breath, though there was an undercurrent of something like affection beneath it. "Will you take the break your Thread offers you if you receive an audience with the dark lord?"

"Can you get me one?" Cale asked immediately, turning to look at Thorn with such bright eyes that the vinewalker had to look away, uncomfortable. "Wait, how can you get me one? You're not working with the dark lord, are you?"

At the question, Thorn turned back to stare at Cale with a look so flat it might have leveled a building, had there been any magic behind it. "No, Cale," he said. "I am not. But there are magics that may allow you to speak to him."

"Then why haven't we used them already?" Cale asked. "We could parley with him, maybe negotiate a temporary ceasefire—"

"Because most mages would die instantly if they were transported directly to the dark lord, and very few would be able to cast in the divine void around him," Thorn said, interrupting Cale by pressing a hand over his mouth. "And the spell requires a catalyst so that it may find him. It has only just occurred to me that your Thread may suffice."

Cale peeled Thorn's hand away. "What are we waiting for, then?"

"You wish to speak with him now?" Thorn sounded incredulous.

"Why not? My apprentices aren't going to need me for a little bit, and it's not like I'm going to be able to relax until I know what he's up to," Cale said. "Do the thing! Send me to him."

Thorn stared at him for a long moment, then let out a sigh. "The Headmaster may well kill me for this," he muttered.

And then he cast.

Cale felt his skin prickle at the force of the magic Thorn used. No one else seemed to notice—the world narrowed down around them, as if in merely using the spell Thorn had isolated the space they stood in. It was a stark and sudden reminder that Thorn was, in fact, a wyldfire mage. Not that Cale had ever underestimated him, but thus far Thorn had kept to a limited array of spells.

Now he unleashed something that Cale thought approached fifteenth-tier magic, and Cale couldn't help but step back just to admire it. High-tier magic was one thing, and by itself it did little to impress Cale, but the way this spell was constructed, the way Thorn's mana flowed into the spell construct and then magic bled into the world and burrowed into the ground...

There was a beauty to it, he thought, like watching a master at their craft. The tendrils of the spell spread out quickly, like roots seeking water, and Cale watched in simple appreciation as they did their work.

"Your mana," Thorn said, holding out a hand, and Cale gave him a drop of prismatic power.

The roots spread out, far and wide. Some died as they failed to find what they were searching for; others multiplied, sensing something close to what they wanted. Soon what had started as a hundred tendrils of magic had narrowed down to a dozen, each one carrying a fragment of Cale's mana. Six of those tendrils withered and died, then three, then two, leaving only a single one—

Thorn opened his eyes. "Grow," he whispered, and a flower bloomed out of the ground, large enough for Cale to step into.

Cale blinked at the sight of it. "Thorn, what's this spell called?"

Thorn frowned at him. "[Worldvein Travel]," he said. "It is an advanced vinewalker spell. Why do you ask?"

"...Nothing. Nevermind." Cale shook his head. "I just step into this thing, right?"

"You will have one hour before the bloom withers," Thorn said. "It will remain active until then. Do not let the dark lord destroy the bloom on the other end."

"Of course not," Cale said, offended. "See you soon, Thorn."

"Be careful, Cale." Thorn's eyes tracked him as he vanished into the oversized flower.

Only an instant later, Cale stepped out the other side.

Kelegas was on vacation.

That was how he decided to think of this, anyway. He needed a break from the academy and from the mages he was working with—it was getting too easy to like them, to think of them as friends. That was... that was more than what he was there for. He couldn't let himself care about them; if he did, then he would second-guess his plans, and if he second-guessed his plans...

He had sacrificed too much for those plans already. Any more and he thought he might very well break, and too much rode on his shoulders for him to allow himself that mercy. So he would keep moving, carrying all that anger and hatred that wasn't even his own inside him. The longer he held on to it, the more of a reprieve the world would have.

It was difficult, sometimes, to remember why he was doing this. Remembering his life from before he had become the dark lord felt like looking at memories through a lens of fog. Detail and light had been scraped out of those memories until all that remained was a series of facts and vague impressions.

He knew he had done this because he cared for someone. Not only his aberrations, though he did care for them too, but for one of the realmborn. The thought of that seemed absurd now, with the hatred that flowed through him for every single one of those bastards, but then it wasn't his own hatred, was it?

It was so hard to tell the two apart, sometimes. It was why he was glad to be giving himself space away from everything. This wasn't nearly as calming as being in the divine void of Corrupted Lands would have been—the nearby forest was still full of divine intent—but it was at least not mired with the thoughts and feelings of all the realmborn at the academy. Here, in the quiet of the forest, it was almost peaceful.

Which was why Kelegas had no qualms absolutely obliterating the bloom that appeared suddenly in front of him. He recognized the signs of a divination spell when he saw one. This was a high-tier one, too, a spellbridge that combined divination with some sort of spatial transferrence.

That meant at least a wyldfire mage was after him. His mind raced. One of the ones back at the academy, maybe? Had they discovered what he was? That would be almost a relief—

Kelegas frowned. Something was wrong. The spell he cast should have disintegrated the bloom. It was a bubble of scouring intent he had invented specifically to disrupt and destroy even wyldfire spells; it took the properties of a divine void and applied it to everything, including the intent of an enemy mage.

But though the bloom was obscured by the dark cloud of his mana that hung over it, he could still feel it there, intact. There was some sort of... opposing intent? Eating away at his own? What sort of mage could do that?

His eyes narrowed when he recognized the flash of prismatic mana, and he drew himself to his full height as a human stepped out of the bloom.

"Cale Cadwell Cobbs," he greeted, modulating his voice so that it was impassive. "I see you've finally found me."

"Was I supposed to be looking?" Cale seemed rather cross, for some reason. Perhaps because his clone had been very insistent on him establishing some sort of dialogue with the original. Kelegas had refused, of course; such a thing was far too risky. "I can't believe I was right. I mean, I can, but of all the stupid reasons not to just show up—what, is there just no milk in all the Corrupted Lands? Are you waiting for an invitation?"

...Kelegas found himself at a loss. Cale Cadwell Cobbs was nothing like he expected. "What are you talking about?" he asked, keeping his tone neutral.

Cale stormed over, and Kelegas braced himself to counter a spell, his senses extended to their fullest.

He was, therefore, entirely unprepared when the human reached out and slapped him upside the head. "I'm talking about your son!" Cale snapped. "Don't pretend you don't know. No amount of glamor is going to hide the fact that you're a dreadshade from me, you absolute ass. Take that off before I strangle you. I know you don't need to breathe, but trust me, I'm going to find a way."