ONE
We stood in the center of the Stone Circle garden.
I looked around Dex’s quiet zen garden in silence.
As tranquil as the space was, I only felt a storm of chaos inside me. We had removed the dark flame—when I say we, I really meant Marius Ater, who had purged Monty of the dark flame.
It didn’t mean Monty was out of danger.
The dark flame, like a disease, had left traces of itself within Monty. Dex had informed me that even though there was no trace of the cast, the dark flame had managed to corrupt the power of the White Heart.
That was the power inside Monty right now.
It was getting worse.
The White Heart, which I had thought was stronger than the dark flame had been transformed, changed by the dark flame. It wasn’t a matter of which power was stronger. Now, according to Dex, it was a matter of Monty making a choice.
A choice only he could make.
So much so, that Monty was being confined to the school for some kind of advanced treatment. I was short on the details, but long on the reasons.
Monty was being corrupted and he was running out of time.
I looked around the garden again and felt little to no peace.
Dex stood several feet away, looking off into the distance. I could sense he was concerned, but he didn’t appear to be in a sharing mood at the moment.
The space around us was very much like Dex himself.
If I scanned quickly, my eyes would be drawn to the gravel, sand, and the asymmetrical grouping of the immense boulders carefully placed around the space. If I took a moment to investigate deeper, I would notice the moss, the low bamboo and wooden fences leading to low stone walls, creating borders and boundaries.
Beyond the moss, if I took more time to be still and observe the Stone Circle, I would notice the carefully manicured evergreen shrubs, and sculpted trees, some of them miniature versions and others normal-sized, all carefully pruned and cared for.
There were several stone bridges leading to different areas of the garden, but I didn’t see water of any kind. Beneath all of that, if I chose to use my innersight—which could be dangerous these days with my new eyes—I would see an explosion of runic symbols covering almost every surface of the garden.
I slowly allowed my innersight to take in the scene around me.
It was an explosion of green, violet and deep blue inscriptions everywhere. The symbols would slowly alternate in color, glowing softly as we stood in the center of Dex’s garden of peace.
Like Dex, the overt hardness distracted from a deeper softness. This space represented the balance he contained. It spoke to who he was as a person, as family, and as a friend.
Even more, it was an accurate example of who he was as a mage. The power that flowed from him moved seamlessly into the space around us. There was no differentiation between Dex and his Stone Circle when it came to the energy signature I sensed around us.
This energy signature brought me back to the topic at hand.
“It’s not right,” I said with an edge to my voice. “He should be able to join us.”
“Join you?” Dex asked. “Join you where?”
“To find a solution for his condition.”
“He doesn’t have a cold,” Dex said with a low growl. “He’s unstable and fighting the power of a corrupted White Heart. The last thing he needs to be doing is joining you anywhere.”
“Can I see him?”
He narrowed his eyes at me with a scowl.
“Unsupervised? No,” Dex said. “I know you. You would try something foolish.”
“Define…foolish.”
“You would attempt and fail, to disrupt the stasis keeping him in place,” Dex said. “A stasis cast that is in place for his own safety.”
I mulled his words over.
“I’m not strong enough to remove a stasis cast, at least I don’t think I am,” I said. “Especially if it’s for his safety. How bad is it?”
He gestured and formed a tall, clear glass of water.
“This glass is my nephew,” he said. “The water symbolizes the power of the White Heart. Following so far?”
“So far, yes.”
With another gesture, a large drop of black ink fell into the water, turning it a murky gray, almost black color. With another motion of his hand, Dex stirred the water until the ink was fully mixed into the water.
“Do I need to explain this part?”
“The ink is the dark flame mixing and influencing the White Heart?”
“Aye,” he said with a nod, his expression serious. “Now, the dark flame has been purged, according to your conversation with Marius.”
“Yes, that’s what he told me.”
“Aye, except there are still traces of the dark flame in Tristan,” he said. “We can’t leave those traces in there.”
He handed me the murky glass.
“I’m not drinking this,” I said, taking the glass and raising an eyebrow at him. “This looks dangerous.”
“I don’t want you to drink it,” he said, shaking his head and giving me a look. “I want you to remove the ink and leave the water untouched. Can you do that?”
I held the glass and examined it, thinking of ways to remove the ink without affecting the water. Try as I might, every solution I thought of didn’t return the water back to its pre-ink state.
Not unless I boiled the water and captured it somehow.
“There’s one way,” I said, “but I don’t think it applies here.”
“Let’s hear it,” Dex said. “It can’t be any more far-fetched than anything else presented to me.”
“If the ink is the dark flame and the water is the White Heart, the only way to separate the two, at least in the physical world, is to boil the water, and catch it as it turns to steam,” I said. “I don’t know how practical that would be in the magical world.”
“Are you suggesting I boil my nephew magically to remove any traces of the dark flame?” Dex asked. “You think boiling and distilling his essence is the solution?”
“Well, when you put it that way, no.”
“You’re actually not too far off,” he said with a small smile. “The process…the complicated process he needs to undergo is a kind of runic distillation. He needs to completely purge the dark flame from his energy signature.”
“How does he do that?”
“We need a forbidden cast,” he said. “A kind of temporary erasure.”
“Does such a thing exist?”
“Aye,” he said. “It does and we’re going to find it.”
“Can I see him now?”
He gave me another look, accompanied by another low growl of suspicion.
“I only want to see him,” I said, raising my hand in surrender. “I’ll even accept supervision. I promise not to try anything even remotely foolish.”
“Lad, you’re lying to me,” he said, with a small sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Badly. Try again.”
“Can it hurt me seeing him?” I asked, doing my best to look innocent. “You said he was in stasis.”
“Aye, I did, and he is,” Dex said with a low growl. “And he needs to stay there.”
“I understand,” I said, trying to reassure him. “I only want to see him.”
“You will,” Dex said. “First, we need to discuss next steps.”
“Next steps?”
“You need to be briefed on this mission,” he said. “It won’t be easy.”
“It’s never easy.”
“Aye,” he said. “This will make your recent interactions with the Nubilus Magus feel like a stroll through the Stone Circle.”
“That bad?”
“Worse,” he said with a solemn expression. “Walk with me, the others are waiting.”
He started walking down one of the paths with me in tow.
My hellhound kept pace as we exited the Stone Circle, crossing the campus grounds, and entering one of the many conference rooms on the lower level of the main building.
The room was occupied as I stepped inside.
An overwhelming sense of dread gripped me by the chest as the Morrigan made her presence felt. I took a few deep breaths and calmed my heart rate as the fear slowly dissipated.
No matter how many times I encountered her cloud of fear, I could never get used to it.
Dex took a seat in one of the large empty chairs at one end of the rune-inscribed conference table. The energy flowing around the room calmed somewhat, buy I could sense an undercurrent of tension filling the space.
Everyone in the room was holding onto tension and worry.
Dex began to explain what he meant by ‘next steps’.
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