Cave of Nightmares (7 page)

Hayden touched only the edge of the prism, careful not to smudge it with his fingerprints. He held it in front of his right eye and looked at the giant lens on the other side of the room. The walls were bright enough that he could see the flecks of color in the glass, but the pattern didn’t feel right yet so he slowly turned the prism until something looked familiar.

He took a deep breath
, aimed his hand and thought,
Fire
.

Again, the prism disintegrated into dust as soon as he used it, and Hayden dropped his empty hand in surprise. The lens didn’t burst into flames like he thought it would, but it changed to a dark red color an
d he heard a loud
BANG!
as though someone had struck it with a hammer. A tiny crack formed in the center of the thick glass, and Master Asher raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Oh my, that’s very interesting.” He gave Hayden another appraising look.

“Was that supposed to happen?” He winced and tried to read the expression on the others’ faces.

“No one’s ever damaged the lens before. It’s meant to absorb powerful magic.” The man looked at him in alarm and took a step backwards.

“Yes, something is not right here…” Asher trailed off thoughtfully, but just then the machine turned itself on and began cutting the crystal.

“So I need a corrector?” Hayden watched it working, a little disappointed.

“Apparently so,” the Prism Master replied without looking at him.

The other man walked around the side of the machine, read the display, and shouted, “
IMPOSSIBLE!” so loudly that Hayden jumped and fell off the table.

Asher turned to his colleague
while Hayden scrambled up off of the floor.

“What now?”

“It can’t be right….The lens must have been damaged and made an error,” he was muttering to himself while the saws trimmed away at the crystal tube. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

Master Asher grew impatient and walked around the whirring machine to join the man, scanning the readouts for
himself. His mouth opened in shock.

“What in the—
three-inch
correctors?
Two
of them?” He made a strange face at Hayden. “Your Foci must be so scattered it’s amazing you can channel magic at all. If this readout is correct, you’ll officially be the owner of the largest correctors in the documented history of the Nine Lands.”

Hayden felt his cheeks burn, mortified at how broken he was. The machine eventually stopped cutting and spit out two identical crystal bracelets that were indeed three inches wide.

“Well, time to find out if the lens knows what it’s talking about.” Master Asher walked back to Hayden and handed him the cuffs. They were open on one end, enough that he could slip them onto his wrists if he turned them sideways first. Once on, they fit snuggly without being too tight. He didn’t feel any different than before.

“Good thing I thought to bring two low-grade prisms instead of one.” Asher handed him a fresh one. “You know what to do.”

Hayden held the prism up in front of his eye and turned it until the familiar pattern came into view. Taking a deep breath for courage, he aimed at the lens and thought,
Fire!

This time nothing happened to the
lens, or nothing visible at least. The prism also didn’t disintegrate in his hand, though it seemed to shrink a little. Master Asher took it from him and examined it closely.

“Hmm, well you were still able to summon enough power to consume part of it, but it was much more controlled this time.” He looked back at the chart readouts. “Yes, this is much better.”

“It doesn’t seem possible.” The other man was still staring at Hayden like he was a freak.

Maybe I am.

“He shouldn’t be able to do
anything
with correctors that thick on. He might as well be wearing lead Binders.”

Master Asher shrugged. “Apparently that’s not the case with young Frost, though I must say, this reeks of magical damage. Come, Hayden, time is ticking and we’ve much to discuss.”

He thanked the man for helping them and led Hayden back outside, motioning for him to sit down at a grouping of park benches a little away from the rest of the material shops.

“What did you mean by magical damage?” Hayden asked quietly
as soon as he sat down.

“I
mean that for your Foci to be that scattered, especially both of them, it’s probable that it’s a result of magical damage.”

“I didn’t know that a Focus could be broken by magic.”

“Oh sure, in the same way that you can go blind by damaging an eye,” he shrugged. “Though truthfully, it’s quite difficult to permanently scar a magical Focus, as they are meant to withstand great power channeling through them.”

“Maybe it happened during that massive exp
losion I was in a few years ago,” Hayden grumbled. “I wish I could remember what happened, but it’s all a blank to me. It’s like that day never happened, except that I woke up and everyone told me it did.”

The Prism Master was giving him a strangely compassionate look.

“That must be very difficult for you, losing your family and not knowing why.” He paused. “Given that traces of Aleric’s magic were later discovered there, it is quite possible that your Foci were damaged at that time. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about right now.”

Hayden only just remembered that he had been expecting a lecture
before getting his magical Foci tested, and he became nervous all over again.

“I wanted to go over a few things with you before you started classes with me, things that anyone growing up in a magical household would already know. Also, given your lineage, I didn’t want to embarrass you by explaining in front of the entire class.”

Hayden let out his breath in relief. This didn’t sound like it was going to be a lecture so much as an overview, and he could use all the explanation he could get right now.

“
Do you understand the nature of how prisms work?”

“Not really…” Hayden admitted. “I assume it has something to do with the way the lights look though, because some patterns feel right and some don’t.”

Master Asher nodded.

“That’s exactly right. There is very powerful magic all around us, all the time. The skill of a ma
ge is determined by how well he or she can see it and use it. Looking through a prism allows you to see magic that can’t be perceived by the naked eye.”

“Are some prisms more powerful than others?”

“Yes, but that’s a lesson you’ll pick up in class,” Master Asher continued, plucking at a long strand of grass and twirling it between his fingers. “As you’ve already observed, just looking at random colored-light arrays doesn’t mean anything; most of it is gibberish, magically speaking. The key is to rotate the prism until you come across an array of power that the mind can translate and exert its will upon.”

“So the pattern for fire looks the same every time, no matter what prism you’re using?” Hayden asked curiously.

“The array you were using was for heat, not fire specifically, and yes—though as you’ll soon learn, not all prisms can do all things.”

Hayden was beginning to appreciate that this class was going to be a lot more difficult than just snapping a prism in front of his eye and casting whatever
spell he wanted.

“Anyway, the point is that prisms allow you to see
a reality that is hidden to most, and to manipulate that reality to a small extent,” Master Asher continued. “There is a very important reason that a prism-maker must be certified before they can legally sell their wares. Can you guess why that is?”

Hayden frowned.

“Because if they make it wrong it won’t work right?”

Master Asher smirked.

“The understatement of the year, but yes.” He was still focused on the twirling strand of grass in his hand. “The smallest flaw in a prism, the tiniest error…even an inclusion could be catastrophic. An imperfect prism—commonly known as a broken prism—is extremely dangerous to use.”

“Does it make things blow up or something?”

Master Asher let out his breath and rubbed his eyes.

“Not likely. Let me try
this another way: when you look through a regular prism, you open a path between your mind and the magic of the world. When you channel your power through it, you’re exerting your will on the world, in a manner of speaking. Do you understand?”

“I think so…”

“When you look through a broken prism you’re seeing a distorted reality. Sometimes it may be such a small change that you barely notice it, but it is still a distortion. If you channel your magic through it when your mind is open and vulnerable, you’re not just exerting your will on the world…it begins to exert its distorted will back on you.”

Hayden frowned.

“So you’re saying that a broken prism can…mess with my mind?”

“
That is exactly what I’m saying. You may not notice it the first time you use one, or the second, or the twentieth. Everyone is different, but at some point it will begin to change you. You might forget your name, or the difference between a friend and an enemy, or you might lose your sense of self entirely. You could be driven absolutely insane.”

Hayden shuddered at the thought.

“Isn’t there a way to tell if you’ve got a bad prism? Or do you just have to trust the maker?”

“Well, for those of us who are naturally
adept at using them, it’s simple. You or I could look into any imperfect prism and know instantly that something was amiss. Most of your classmates, who are trying to train their minds to see what we can feel so easily, will have to examine them very closely for flaws or rely on their prisms being certified when they purchase them.”

Hayden narrowed his eyebrows.

“But if people can tell when they’re using a broken prism, why would they keep using it anyway?”

Master Asher pointed at him.

“Excellent question. The answer is, unfortunately, that imperfect prisms can be very powerful tools, especially ones with only mild distortion. There are some advanced healing spells that can only be cast with a broken prism, and some darker magic as well. People always believe that they can control the broken prism and protect their mind, and when they use it the first few times they see no changes in themselves and a great magical reward, so they keep on with it. The problem is that the change happens so gradually that by the time the people around them notice, it’s already too late.”

Hayden’s voice was very quiet when he asked, “Is that what happened to my father?”

Master Asher stopped twirling the blade of grass in his fingers and faced him, the intensity in his blue eyes a little alarming.

“Yes, that
is what happened to your father,” he sighed. “He began investigating the power of broken prisms in an attempt to pioneer new magic during his time at Mizzenwald. Of course, you’ve heard of the path that led him down by the time it was said and done. I’m told that at the height of his power he even fashioned a new prism for himself, the most powerful prism ever made—and the most unnatural.”

“But don’t prisms start to disappear when you use them? Both of mine disintegrated with just one spell, until I got the correctors.” Hayden looked down at them
, glistening in the sunlight on each wrist.

“Yes, all magic comes with a price. Every spell you cast will reduce the size of your prism equal to the power you channel through it. Your first two were consumed entirely because your Foci are garbage and you’ve got an unusual amount of natural power. Unfortunately, rumor has it that Aleric got far enough in his studies to produce his infamous
black prism.”

“How could he see any light with it if it was black?”

“The prism itself looked like any other, but apparently when held up to the light it showed every normal color of the rainbow, plus one other.”

“Black,
” Hayden said softly, understanding.

“Yes, black:
the absence of light, the anti-magic.” Master Asher frowned. “He manipulated the laws of magic so much that he created this monstrosity of a prism, which was never consumed no matter what he channeled through it; I’ve no idea how he managed that spectacular feat, by the way. It was then, at his worst, that he disappeared from the world on the day your house blew up, and his black prism was never found.”

They sat in silence for a long moment before Asher spoke again.

“I generally explain this in my first year class, because it is imperative that everyone understand the danger of imperfect prisms. Given the circumstances, and your personal connection to the tragic results, I thought it best to have this talk with you in private.”

He turned towards Hayden and startled him by clasping his shoulders, staring hi
m straight in the eye.

“I don’t judge you based on your father’s actions, but on your own merit
s. I see great potential in you; possibly even more power than I had at your age, and that was after two years of training. That’s why I hope with everything inside of me that if you don’t listen to anything else I ever say to you, that you will listen to this: never use a broken prism. You can’t control it, and it isn’t worth the sacrifice. Do not follow in your father’s footsteps.”