Tower of the Four, Episode 5: The Resurrection, page 1
Tower of the Four
Episode 5: The Resurrection
Todd Fahnestock
Copyright © 2020 Todd Fahnestock
All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 13: 978-1-952699-15-3
Cover illustration and design by:
Rashed AlAkroka
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Tower of the Four
Episode 5: The Resurrection
1
BROM
After six days of running, Brom finally stood on the rise overlooking the Champions Academy, breathing hard and holding his side. His feet were blistered and bleeding inside his boots. His dirt-crusted clothes hung loosely on his bony frame, and the claw wounds on his back and arms burned. He’d barely eaten since he’d fought his way out of his grave and killed the monster who’d tried to destroy him.
The white walls of the Champions Academy loomed in the distance. Seagulls gave their thin cries as they floated above a setting sun, and the scent of the lilac fields before him combined with the taste of blood at the back of his throat.
His skin crawled at the idea of going back inside the academy, but he had to. His friends were unaware, vulnerable, their necks exposed. And Brom might be able to save them. That single unlikely hope had driven him all the way here on ragged feet, praying with every painful step that he’d be in time.
His vision blurred, and he shook his head to clear his fatigue.
The Champions Academy’s gate was an impregnable latticework of iron, and the entire place was bound with magic. But Brom had one advantage. He’d been a student there. Once, those protective spells had allowed him to enter, to walk the academy’s halls without molestation.
If the protective magic still recognized him as a student, he needed only to sneak past the human guards. If not, Brom surmised the spells would repel him, alert The Four, and he’d be caught. And he knew the next time The Four tried to kill him, they’d make sure it was permanent.
He edged down the slope. Using the tall grasses and long shadows for cover, he slunk forward until he reached the packed and rutted road that led up to the academy’s walls.
Scooting gingerly into the roadside ditch, he watched as a trade wagon rolled across the drawbridge through the open portcullis a hundred yards to his left. To his right, in the distance, two more wagons crested the hill and started down toward the academy. There. That was his way in.
Brom hunched down, fighting fatigue, until the two wagons trundled up alongside him. Their tired mules pulled and their bored drivers stared straight ahead. Just as the second wagon, full of bushels of wheat, reached Brom, he lurched from his hiding spot, grabbed the tailgate, and pulled himself underneath the wagon. His feet dragged—making so much noise he was sure the wagon drivers would stop—as he grappled with the spare wagon wheel chained to the undercarriage.
But the wheels kept creaking and rolling. Brom lifted his right foot and jammed it into a crack in slats of the wagon bed. His muscles bunched tight with effort, and he lifted his left leg so it stopped bumping on the ground.
Aching seconds rolled by. The driver still didn’t stop.
Please, Brom thought as his legs and arms began to quiver. Please let me hold on long enough to get through the gate.
He gritted his teeth, trying to keep his breath even and quiet as he wedged his other foot atop his shin to keep it from trailing in the dirt. The slices in his arms and back felt like they were splitting open again. He bit his lip to keep from gasping and focused on his trembling muscles.
Hold on, he demanded of them. Just hold on.
The wagon rolled interminably forward, and just when Brom thought he could no longer hold on, the iron-shod wheels thundered over the thick planks of the drawbridge. He permitted himself a gasp in the midst of the noise, shifted his grip and redoubled his efforts.
Just a little longer. A little longer…
The wagon stopped at the guard post, and by then Brom was shaking so badly he feared they’d hear the rattle of the spare wheel’s chain. But the wagon driver talked briefly with the guards, and then the wagon rolled into the academy. Brom felt the telltale tingle of the academy’s protection spell wash over him.
It didn’t hurt him. By the gods, it had worked! It had accepted him as a student of the academy.
Beyond the gate lay a road of crushed white gravel. He craned his neck and saw the legs of the guards as they returned to their posts inside the wall—
Brom’s foot slipped.
His legs thumped to the ground and his arms gave out at the same instant, dropping him right in the middle of the white gravel road. He rolled painfully to his knees, expecting a shout go up from the wagon driver or from the guards at the wall. Kneeling in the middle of that white road, he’d be as obvious as a fly in a bowl of milk. He raised his head, preparing to run…
…but no one shouted.
Bewildered, he looked at the guards. Both were faced away from him, their focus on the purple lilac fields beyond the drawbridge. Neither had seen him fall.
He craned his neck in the other direction. The driver faced the heart of the academy. They hadn’t heard him either.
Astounded, Brom scrambled behind the nearby stables. He sidestepped to the south side until he was hidden from the tall wall and the road. The deepening shadows laid a dark cloak over him, and he huffed until he’d regained his breath.
When he could finally make his exhausted muscles move, he shuffled across the campus to Westfall Dormitory, sticking to the shadows. With his dirt-stained clothes, his unwashed face, and the brutish beginnings of a beard, he didn’t look like a Champions Academy student. He clung to the shadows, hoping not to be noticed.
Students came and went through the front entrance of the dormitory, but the east side of the building was dark. As Brom had done a hundred times before, he painstakingly scaled the drainpipe until he reached the ledge outside the row of third floor windows.
What had been a regular adventure for him mere days ago was a trial he almost couldn’t manage now. He almost fell twice, but he finally made it up, scooted carefully along the ledge, and pushed open Vale’s window. He fell through onto her floor, breathing hard.
He had hoped she’d be there, that she would rush to him with a cry and embrace him. He longed for that, but she wasn’t in the room. It was empty and…
A feeling of foreboding prickled up his spine.
The room was completely different.
She had changed…everything. In the place of her academy-provided pine wardrobe was now an ornate mahogany one. And she had hung a tapestry of a unicorn on the wall. Even the bed was different, draped with soft blue blankets and fine, light blue sheets rather than the dun-colored sheets and gray wool blanket given to each student as a matter of course. This kind of finery had been brought from outside the academy.
Like a ghost, he moved to the expensive wardrobe and opened the doors with an increasing sense of doom. Inside, there were more than a dozen dresses and skirts.
In the years Brom had known Vale, she’d never owned nor worn a dress. Everything she wore had been provided by the academy. And she had worn her academy-provided skirt only once. She’d had no money, no family outside to send her clothes or fancy sheets, let alone a mahogany wardrobe.
Maybe these were the spoils of becoming a Quadron. Maybe a stipend was given to newly made Quadrons. But why would Vale redecorate her room?
It simply felt wrong. Even if she would redecorate her student’s room days after her Test of Separation, the more he looked around, the more this all felt like someone else’s touch. He knew Vale. And even if they’d given her a chest of gold, she’d never spend it like this. She wouldn’t buy frilly dresses, and she’d never have put a unicorn on the wall.
He pushed aside the dresses, looking for the academy-assigned clothing every student possessed, the clothing that indicated their path of magic: Mentis, Motus, Anima or Impetu.
He stumbled back from the wardrobe. The uniforms were blue! Impetu blue, not Motus red…
He cast about, certain that somehow he’d climbed into the wrong room. But no. There was the familiar thin crack in the mortar above the bed, snaking up to the ceiling. He had stared at that crack night after night in this room, Vale’s naked body next to his.
This was Vale’s room, but Vale didn’t live here anymore. She’d left the academy, and they’d put someone else here.
But even that seemed wrong. Why would they move a new student into this room a week from the end of the year?
He calmed his racing mind and forced himself to look at the room differently, to look at it as some other student’s room rather than Vale’s.
His prickling sense of foreboding increased.
The desk in the corner was scattered with papers, some shelved in little slats. There were crates in the corner, stylish women’s boots with dried mud on their heels at the foot of the bed.
He heard voices approaching the door. Quickly, he backed toward the window and climbed onto the ledge, ducking from view just as the door opened.
“…so frustrating,” a haughty young woman’s voice said as she strode into the room. “As if I should already know the width and breadth of pain control in my first year.”
“They’re just trying to expel you because of who you are,” a wheedling voice responded.
“You’re right, of course,” said the first voice. “It’s because of who my father is. They’re pressing me harder, throwing obstacles in my path and making outrageous demands. They didn’t do this to Queen Oriana. They built a road straight to the Test for her. They let her pass in her second year. Second! But me, no. They won’t even give me a chance to learn.”
Brom pressed his back against the marble wall. Who were these women? As an Anima, he could have looked into their souls, could have seen their desires and likely life paths. He’d have been able to glimpse something of their background and possibly why they were in Vale’s room.
But his magic was gone.
Where Brom’s magic had once been, there was only a hard little pebble, as though his Soulblocks had all been melted down to a useless lump. He’d spent every spare moment of his journey trying to coax his magic out, trying to recreate those Soulblocks. But Brom had failed to conjure even a whisper of magical confidence, let alone soul-sight. Night after night, day after day, every time he tried to use magic, the most that damned pebble ever did was vibrate.
He suddenly realized the voices in the room had gone silent.
“By Kelto, what is happening here?” the haughty girl suddenly demanded, her footsteps stomping toward Brom’s hiding place. “If I’m damned to live in this drafty little cell, the servants can at least close the window! These academy drabs ought to be punished! How many slights am I to endure?” With an indignant huff, she slammed the window shut and locked it, never seeing Brom clinging to the ledge just outside.
Her muffled voice continued inside, but Brom couldn’t make out her words anymore. It didn’t matter. He’d heard enough. Clearly, this was the wrong room or…or something else was happening here that he didn’t understand.
Quietly, Brom slunk back to the drainpipe and slid down to the ground. His rubbery legs collapsed, and he slumped against the base of the wall, breathing hard. He wanted to fall over and sleep for a week. His exhaustion pulled him down like he had stones tied to his body.
He looked back up the wall toward where Oriana’s room would be, and he cursed himself. He should have thought to check Oriana’s room before he slid down, but the idea of climbing up the drainpipe again made him quail.
For the first time since he’d begun his journey, despair crept over him. Too many little things didn’t feel right. That haughty Impetu girl had referred to Oriana as “Queen Oriana.” But Oriana was a princess, not a queen.
His stomach growled, and the cuts on his back burned horribly. Even the warm summer breeze seemed icy to him. He shivered.
I’m feverish, he realized. My wounds… I should have taken care of them. I should have eaten something. I should have…
A female student rounded the corner of the dormitory, close enough that Brom could have flicked a pebble and hit her. Her tawny hair bounced about her shoulders. When she glanced up at the darkening sky, her face was clearly visible, and he recognized her.
Caila! She was the first student he’d ever connected with at the academy, back when he and his Quad were struggling to bond.
She was dressed in black breeches, black boots, and a black tunic—the school uniform for an Anima—and she moved like a breeze, fluid and graceful. It was unmistakably her, and yet…she was different. Caila had been long-limbed and lean the last time he’d seen her, but now she had curves to her hips. Her breasts were larger, and her face rounder, as though she’d put on weight. As though she had…grown up.
In two weeks? What was going on here?
A chill crept through him.
New students in Vale’s room. Caila looking older.
He had assumed he’d been buried and had awoken the next day. Or perhaps the day after. But what if he’d lain there for longer than that?
The hard pebble in his belly twisted, and Caila stopped, as though sensing him. She turned, spotted him and cocked her head. Brom must have looked a fright with his matted black hair, black scruff, and dirt-stained clothing, but she came forward unafraid. And why should she be afraid? She was a third-year student, practically a Quadron. She was a match for any ragged beggar.
“Caila,” he said hoarsely.
She squinted. “Do I know you?”
“It’s me,” he said. “It’s Brom.” He pushed his matted hair away from his face.
She watched him for another breathless second, eyes narrow, then those same eyes went as round as coins. Her mouth formed an ‘O’.
“Caila…” he began, but realized he didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t stopped to think about the effect he’d have on her. Brom was supposed to be dead.
Her calm courage had vanished, and she did look scared now. Her body tensed like she was about to flee.
“Please, Caila…” he said, and she hesitated, tight as a bowstring.
“Are you…a ghost?” she whispered.
“I don’t know what I am,” he said hoarsely. The strain of the last week crashed down on him. The hunger. The pain. This horrible confusion. He felt like a ship in a storm, sails in tatters, rudder broken. He’d been hanging on to one single certainty: if he could just rejoin his Quad, all would be mended. But his Quad wasn’t here.
“You’re… How can you… We saw your body. Your…coffin. They took it back to Kyn.”
“They buried me,” he said.
Her chin rose, her eyes widening. “In the Hallowed Woods?”
“I’m not a Lyancorpse,” he said quickly.
She swallowed again, and she wrapped her arms around herself like she was cold. “Then what are you?” she asked.
“Just Brom. I’m just…” He clenched his fists, trying to marshal some meager strength, but tears burned his eyes. “Please. I need to…find out what’s happened. How long…has it been?” he asked.
She swallowed, hesitating. Then her mouth set into a line, as though she’d come to a decision. She stepped toward him, into the shadow of Westfall Dormitory. “Since you died?” she asked. “You want to know how long it’s been since you died?”
“It’s been more than ten days, hasn’t it?” he asked.
The surprise on her face told him more than words could, a surprise that quickly softened into compassion. “Oh Brom…” she whispered, and she descended to her knees next to him. “It’s been a year. A whole year.”
The last of his strength left him, and he leaned his head back against the marble wall.
“No…” Everything clicked together, and now it made sense. He had failed before he’d even begun his journey. He wasn’t just late. He was far too late.
Whatever had become of Quad Brilliant, it had happened long ago.
2
BROM
Brom let his eyes slide shut. His strength trickled away, and he slumped against the wall. He had failed.
“Are they…okay?” he murmured to Caila. “Royal and Oriana. Vale…”
“What do you mean?” Caila asked.
“I mean… Are they in danger?”
“Royal, probably. Because of the war. He has been on the front line since he left the academy, as you’d expect. But the queen doesn’t participate in battles.”
“The queen?”
“Queen Oriana. Sorry. Yes. She took the throne earlier this year.”
