Chapter Text
The Hall of Sorcerers is a quiet, solemn place. Its ceilings are arched and marble surfaces lovingly cared for. Children do not run when they pass through. Scholars and sorcerers alike keep a respectful silence amongst the noble statues. It is filled with blank stares from marble eyes. Lifeless and cold. Desolate, in a strange way. A frozen beauty.
Light Spinner hates it.
Quiet is not something to be feared, surely, but she does not like to be left alone with her thoughts for too long. A quirk she’s possessed from childhood. One she should have outgrown by now.
But here she is, arms wrapped about herself. Trembling and unable to face what should be her greatest achievement. It is a true honor for one’s likeness to grace this sacred hall. The last sorcerer of the Guild to be placed here was Master Norwyn, kind and solemn and holy as the vaulted ceiling his statue rests beneath.
Except the eyes on Light Spinner’s statue are soulless and empty, glaring from overtop the artists’ rendition of her veil, and they make her stomach knot in on itself. Is this how others see her? Cold and unapproachable and lifeless? Cruel and blank? Silent and judging and sentinel? This feels wrong because she wants power glory love recognition affection anything anyone please respect from her peers and students. She wants them to listen to her words.
But Light Spinner has never wanted them to fear her. Not in the way she fears herself on occasion.
So here she stands.
The silence is deafening.
Until it isn’t.
Light Spinner blinks in surprise when she hears little footsteps running past her. It is a boy, no taller than her waist, who does not heed the solemn aura surrounding him. Instead, he runs as though it is his mission in life and comes skidding to a stop just before her statue. There he stands, face tilted up like a flower to the moon, dwarfed by the hall and still so much brighter. He’s utterly tiny. A first year more than likely.
But there’s something different about him. She can feel it.
Light Spinner allows her curiosity to override her fear and strides into the hall. She keeps quiet, footsteps muffled, and approaches with hands folded neatly. The boy doesn’t seem to notice her. All his focus is upon the statues above. He’s even smaller up close, and she can see the baby-fat still lining his cheeks, a smudge of dirt along his chin, the gap in his teeth as he grins. But there’s such wonder in his dark eyes, such raw admiration, it makes her chest ache.
“What are you doing here, child?” Light Spinner questions.
She takes care to be quiet, to be unobtrusive. Children tend to be frightened of her, tall and serious and veiled as she is. But this boy is different. He doesn’t flinch or startle. He does not shy away. Instead, his eyes remain locked on her statue. Wide and glittering with awe. It’s. . . a strange feeling.
“I’m gonna be just like her someday,” the boy whispers, vehement.
Light Spinner tilts her head. “Whatever do you mean?”
Most children do not like her. Most children prefer Master Norwyn, who is patient and fatherly. Who has smile lines about his mouth and a gentle tone. But never her. Never Light Spinner, who is quiet and stern and speaks in low, harsh tones even when she doesn’t mean to. Who covers her mouth and stands tall and whose smiles do not quite reach her eyes.
This child, though. . .
This little boy is different.
“Light Spinner’s the greatest sorceress ever!” he whispers, eyes still affixed on her statue. “She’s strong and she’s smart and she doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do, not even Master Norwyn!! I wanna be like that when I’m a grown-up!”
Her eyebrows lift in surprise. “Really? Why, thank you, I’m flattered.”
There is a small part of her that feels guilty for the startled, doe-eyed expression on the boy’s face. It was not her intention to shock him. But Light Spinner mostly feels a deep sense of amusement, unable to keep from chuckling as the poor boy flushes red from tip to toe. He stammers for a moment, cheeks bright red, and only manages to choke out an approximation of her name when she decides to take pity on him.
Light Spinner chuckles again and places a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Calm yourself, little one. I did not mean to startle you. But I am flattered, all the same. What is your name?”
Those big dark eyes turn up to her again in awe, and a beatific grin spreads over his cherubic face. “I’m Micah! And I’m going to be just like you!”
She is not good with children, typically, too impatient and harsh. But Light Spinner finds herself smiling at his enthusiasm, enchanted by his whole-hearted sincerity. “Is that so?”
There’s a spark on his face. Determination. Raw energy. Intelligence. “It is! I’m gonna be the best student you ever have, Master Light Spinner! I promise!”
Promises are empty things, she has found. They are like dust, floating in the wind, transient and gritty and gone within a breath. They can be so much worse than lies because a promise makes you hope for nothing but uncertainties. But this boy, Micah, makes a promise sound like it means something. As though a promise has weight and shape and substance.
Light Spinner kneels before him and assesses. Then her smile widens. “I will hold you to that, Micah. Such promises are not to be taken lightly. I expect great things from you.”
Micah bows his head and furrows his tiny brow. “I won’t disappoint you.”
The child’s face morphs, grows older, and it is covered in blood and dust and tears. But his expression does not change though the fear in his eyes is stark. “I promise.”
“Light Spinner, I promise.”
Her heart spasms and everything about this little boy becomes familiar. Micah – her brightest, kindest, most powerful student. Micah, who can blast apart granite in a heartbeat but captures spiders and sets them free even though he has a terrible fear of them. Micah, who deciphers runes without effort but struggles with basic spelling and grammar. Micah, who looks at her with wonder instead of fear and believes in her, even when she no longer believes in herself.
Fear. It’s written all over his face. Light Spinner tightens her grip on his shoulders. Tries to keep him close. Keep him safe. But it’s. . .
It’s not working.
She’s losing him. The slim shoulders under her fingers begin to crumble, Micah’s face dissolving in a cloud of dust. Her fingers are stained red. It’s all she can see. Red, red, red, the color of a monster’s eyes and it’s dripping from the statues and they smile down at her, mock her, accuse her, and then it’s swamping her, crawling up her neck and into her mouth her nose down her throat drowning her and she struggles against the tidal wave but just before it clogs her ears. . .
“I promise.”
Light Spinner wakes and finds herself in a cell. It is cold, and it is dark, and it smells of rusting metal and sewage. For a moment, through her pain and sleep-addled brain, she panics. This is not her room in Mystacor. There are no dark canopies or the smell of incense. No crystals tinkling in a light breeze. Here there is only stale air and damp steel, old blood filling her mouth like filthy coins. Her nose is swollen and her lip is cracked. Her skull throbs in time with her heartbeat.
Memories rush back.
The Whispering Wood. The Horde. Micah.
Light Spinner steels her spine and catalogues what she knows. The Fright Zone is a labyrinth. Its soldiers are brutes. They fear magick. Lord Hordak is a monster, intelligent and cunning, and he has developed a technology to cut her from her power. She is in a cell with no windows. There are shackles on her wrists. She is injured and weak and dehydrated, judging by how dry her mouth is.
A precarious position, to be sure, but not altogether a hopeless one.
Sitting upright brings a fresh wave of agony, new hurts summoned with the motion, but Light Spinner makes no sound. Pain is not weakness, she has found. Rather, it is strength in its own way. She grinds her teeth together. She focuses on the hurt, on the anger, and perseveres. Her ribs are definitely bruised, if not cracked, and she likely has a concussion. There is a split on her brow she didn’t notice before and it itches. Her nose is swollen, and her knees are bruised as well. But, all in all, she is whole.
Footsteps seem to echo in this place, and the sound of boots on metal grating make her tense. Light Spinner nearly gasps for the pain it causes her ribs. Instead, she grinds her teeth until they groan, fresh blood staining her lips, and remains silent.
The shackles binding her wrists chafe.
A soldier, different from the ones her brought her here, rounds the corner. This one is smaller, leaner than the rest. Almost. . . childlike? Their hands, gripping a tray of food, shake almost imperceptibly. But when they speak, Light Spinner feels her anger spike once more.
“Breakfast, prisoner.”
It’s a girl. Obviously young, if the way her voice warbles like birdsong is anything to go by. This is a child. And she is a soldier in full armor, unable to fill out the chest plates that protect her fragile heart. Light Spinner notes how her fingers tremble when opening the energy barrier, how she hesitates at the door before stepping forward. She’s scared. Terrified, really, if the line of her shoulders is anything to go by.
The tray is placed a few feet before her. Barely within grasp if she were to struggle for it. Light Spinner does not move.
“I won’t harm you, child,” she rasps, low and raw. “There’s no need to fear.”
The soldier-girl stiffens, then huffs. “I’m not afraid! You’re the one who should be afraid, witch!”
It’s terribly rude to call a sorcerer such but Light Spinner supposes she can forgive a frightened child such a thing.
Behind her veil, she smiles, and blood stains her teeth. “Of course. Forgive me – you’re terribly intimidating.”
Electricity crackles to life before her. Light Spinner reels away, eye-level with a sparking stun-baton, and blinks in shock. The girl-soldier makes a growling sound behind her helm, fingers white-knuckled about the weapon’s hilt.
“Don’t make fun of me, prisoner!” she near-snarls. “I’ll make you sorry!”
“Don’t take that attitude with me, girl! You’ll regret it! Watch your tongue when speaking to your mother!”
Something tells Light Spinner she should at least be startled by the sudden change in demeanor, should be submissive and get the girl-soldier to leave her cell. But all she feels is rage. Deep and consuming and intense, chewing deep into the walls of her heart until the world is stained in various shades of red and black and lightning pushes through her veins. Because she was not to be threatened by a child. Because she should not be in a freezing metal box, chained to a wall and beaten and powerless.
Because how dare they?!!
None of this is right and Light Spinner growls, fingers flexing and wrists bleeding, and the girl finally cracks. There are no eyes to contact beneath the helm’s visor, but a sorcerer always knows where a person’s soul may be found. She reaches out. She feels for it, connects through tinted glass, and the child dressed as a soldier folds like wet paper. There is little magick behind her actions, nothing but a shadow, but it is enough to taste this child’s fear. Fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of a stranger, fear of a monster with bright green eyes and a blood-stained veil. The fear of a child dressed in armor, who knows nothing of a world outside steel walls and the smell of dripping water.
The rage builds.
Light Spinner does not know the girl’s name but watches through burning eyes as she flees. Tripping over boots too large for her feet as she goes. She can still taste the fear, like bile running over her teeth. It’s cloying, nauseating, and she wants to scream.
Instead, she breathes. In, then out, then in again.
Her skull is throbbing. Her fingers won’t stop shaking. Deep in her heart, she grieves. But Light Spinner sets her jaw and reaches for the tray of bland food that was provided. It’s some sort of ration bar, gray and bland, with a glass of water.
She sips the water – it tastes metallic, stale in a way. The bar is bland and flavorless. Nothing horrid. But nothing she wishes to consume further, not with how her stomach rolls and her skull throbs. Light Spinner forces herself to swallow the bite she’s already taken then shoves the rest away.
It’s cold in this metal box.
She catalogues the hurts, the wrongs. Each and every one. She keeps them close to her heart and lets the rage burn. Quiet and hot and fierce. Her skin is cold but her guts are aflame and nothing here is right. Brutish soldiers. Children wearing armor. Warlords with fangs and claws. Bruises on her knees and blood on her teeth.
There are shouts emerging from the belly of the beast.
“Fear is a friend, my child. As is patience. Heed them or be killed.”
Light Spinner listens. It’s garbled. Muffled, in the same way one might hear a cavern’s echo. She cannot decipher what they are screaming about. Not until someone spits the word “witch”. Boots collide with the grating outside her cell. Rapid, staccato, angry. There isn’t enough energy in her body to be afraid of consequences. Not when the cuffs about her wrists cut into her skin and suck away her magick.
She leans against the frozen steel wall and bides her time. Patience is not something she excels at. But it is something she has practiced for a long while. It is a virtue, after all. And so she waits. Listens to the sound of thundering footsteps echoing within a steel carcass, rats scurrying across through its veins.
Another soldier, larger, without a helmet rounds the corner. It’s another Reptiloid. His scales are violet, glowing like an oil-slick in the low light. He snarls at her, removing the energy barrier. In three steps, he’s on her. She’s powerless. Chained to the wall like a dog. Magick just out of her grasp.
It’s quick and vicious and brutal. Light Spinner barely has time to think before she is backhanded across the face. Her vision blurs. She spirals to the ground. Something clatters, liquid on her sleeve. Blood fills her mouth, lips ground against her teeth. But she has no time to reflect on that before she is kicked in the stomach. All the air leaves her lungs. Each blow is in a different spot. One to the ribs. Another to the face. One against her legs. Something snaps. The pain is excruciating. She curls in on herself and takes it.
Light Spinner coughs a mouthful of blood and it stains her veil. The smell is overwhelming. She stares at the walls. Steel, cold and unforgiving, and she catalogues the hurt. This soldier, with his violet scales and viper-eyes, will die screaming.
Because she is not kind. Or good. Or gentle.
And magick always remembers its enemies.
It ends just as quickly as it begins, and more rats scurry into the cage. They grab at her shoulders and heave her upright, squeaking amongst each other with noise shaped into words she can’t grasp. Sliding into her ears and out again, oily and viscous.
The rats wearing armor drag her out of her cell. Her vision is blurry, blood dripping from her nose once more. Light Spinner feels her head lolling about, a bladder on a stick, and she catches sight of another prisoner. A young man with dark eyes, dark hair, and he looks at her in abject horror. There are bruises on his face but he is well-fed it seems, and her heart hurts.
She locks the hurt away. Closes her eyes. Makes a promise.
“You’ll never be trusted, girl. Just like me. Just like him. The best you can do is keep your word.”
They can break her. Snap every bone in her body. Pain is an old friend and she is stronger for it. She does not matter. Not in the grand scheme, it seems, in the face of this great rotting monster. With its gnashing teeth and children dressed in armor.
But they will never hurt Micah. Or any of her other students. Mystacor is hers to protect, hers to defend, and she will do so with rage in her heart.
One of the rats runs its claws through her hair and chuckles, pulls on thick curls as they drag her.
Light Spinner closes her eyes. She sees a little boy, very nearly twelve, with big shining eyes and a bloody lip, who looks up in wonder and unconditional trust. He smiles at her. He isn’t afraid of her.
“I’m gonna be just like you one day. I promise.”
Light Spinner opens her eyes.
And lets the beast swallow her whole.
~*O*~
He lets the wounds fester.
They’re hidden beneath thick bandages, covered by his sleeves, burrowing into the flesh of his arm. At night, he unravels each wrapping and stares at them. They’re angry and red, and they drip pus at the slightest provocation. But, somehow, physical hurt is better. Physical hurt he can handle.
It’s his heart that’s causing him real grief.
None of the healers had noticed them upon his return to Mystacor. They were too busy dealing with the wounds on his face. Too busy dealing with the fact that he couldn’t stop screaming. Clawing at the hands holding him, magick bleeding from every pore and lashing out at whatever – whoever – it could reach. Eyes burning and lungs too tight and no one would listen.
Micah doesn’t remember much about the frantic few hours after returning from the Whispering Wood. But he does remember that no one would listen. He remembers how they pinned him down and forced him to sleep and no one listened. He remembers how they told him to calm down, how they whispered platitudes after platitude until words were nothing but white-noise. How they gave him drugs, herbal teas that froze his muscles and forced his brain into submission, into a black abyss that it hasn’t quite crawled out of yet.
But Micah fought. He fought and he fought and he fought until he just couldn’t anymore.
“Do not stop fighting, my child.”
Micah looks at the wounds rotting in his forearm. Three gashes in perfect parallel. He remembers how he screamed, how the blood dripped. How Light Spinner came flying out of nowhere, eyes blazing, magick sizzling through the clearing like a lightning blast. How soldiers flew and her eyes burned and blood painted the grass and her nails were dripping, long and sharp like claws. And he remembers how angry she’d looked, like an animal, like a demon. It had scared him.
And then he remembers how she’d looked at him, and how the anger turned to fear, and how she ran her hands over his head like he would disappear and how he just wanted to go home. How he’d clung to his mentor like a scared little boy, sobbing like a baby, and she’d held him just as tight and the way she kissed him on the forehead and –
Pus leaks from one angry gash. Fever crawls up his arm. Tears crawl down his face.
He’s stopped fighting.
Light Spinner will be would be she’s dead you killed her all your fault weak little baby so disappointed in him. Because she saved him, told him she was proud of him, that she thought he was strong. He’s not, and Micah knows this. Because he’s weak. He’s small and pathetic and scared. He wakes up screaming and his mother had to put a spell on his door so he doesn’t wake Castaspella and there are times when he hears boots on floors and just freezes, his muscles locked like rusted gates. Can’t move can’t think, can’t breathe because they’re coming, they’re coming, oh moons, they’re coming please help me. And sometimes he think she hears Light Spinner around the corner, too, and sees the hem of her robes so he sprints after her except she’s not there, she’s gone, and he’s weak and stupid and pathetic and crazy. . . .
Sometimes, he sits under the workbench in her study and stares at the patterns carved there. He hasn’t practiced his magicks in days, not a spell to be woven about his ruined fingertips, the ones where he’s chewed the nails to the quick. He can’t cry anymore. There aren’t any tears left.
“Do not stop fighting, my child,” she’d whispered, and sometimes he still feels the imprint of her lips on his forehead.
Micah watches the pus drip to the floor, wipes it away, then re-bandages his arm. Mother will be angry if he makes a mess. She worries enough as it is. Father is angry, but he’s angry at Light Spinner, which makes Micah angry in turn. Because they don’t understand, neither of them. Not his parents, not his peers, not his tutors. No one understands. Not a bit.
His parents try. Mother cries a lot. Sometimes, when she thinks he’s sleeping, she comes into his room and holds him like a baby, strokes his hair and rocks him and her body shakes like she’s crying. And Father buries himself in scroll after scroll in an attempt to find any other way to make Mystacor stronger. He won’t look at Light Spinner’s notes on the Spell of Obtainment. Refuses to even speak her name. But sometimes Micah catches him late at night, red-eyed and teary and shaking with exhaustion, muttering about keeping them all safe.
That was what Light Spinner had been trying to do. Keep them all safe. It was what she did, that day.
And he remembers thinking initially that she never needed to wear a veil, that she was beautiful, that her smile could light a room, and he remembers how her fangs had caught the light and shone with venom and how his heart froze a little bit but then she’d kept smiling and leaned in and kissed him on the forehead and he just wants it to be okay again, just wants the world to go back to normal except it never will because he killed her he killed her he killed her. . . .
In some ways, his grief feels like betrayal. Because Micah loves his parents and he knows they love him too but they don’t get it. Father is a sorcerer, yes, but he is a scholar first and foremost. He learns the past, not the future. And Mother can weave spells but she does nothing but take care of Castaspella and host parties with women who drip jewels and titter like empty-headed songbirds. She is prim and proper and does not know how to speak to a son who wishes to create explosions and sometimes comes in covered in soot from his latest endeavors.
Light Spinner did.
Because even though she pushed him hard and tolerated no disrespect, she was patient and corrected gently when needed. Because even though she was serious and scholarly, she had a dry sense of humor that never failed to make him laugh until he cried. Because even when his peers turned their noses at him you’re small you’re weak you’re such a show-off witch Micah Light Spinner listened to him and Light Spinner told him he was destined for great things and Light Spinner just. . .
Like during his Second Year practicals when they forced the students to give an oral demonstration of an illusion rune and Master Norwyn’s grandfather-stare made him so nervous his hands shook and his palms were sweaty and he nearly fainted on stage and barely passed even though he knew how to do the spell, had done it ten thousand times, and had to run away from Father’s disappointment and Mother’s fretting and she’d found him in the toilets, retching and crying because “I’m sorry, I ruined it, I failed you, I’m sorry” and Light Spinner had picked him up and sat him before the sinks and looked him dead in the eyes and said, “You failed no one, Micah, and I’m so proud of you” and let him cry until his throat was raw.
Micah stares at his arm in the dark and ignores how his stomach growls. There are more tears to cry, it seems. Because they drip down his nose and make his eyes burn. He watches through a film as his arm rots away. He doesn’t want to die. Light Spinner told him to fight, and he can’t fight that way anymore. But sometimes, he thinks, fighting means just staying alive so that’s what he’ll do. Still, he watches his arm, night after night, and does nothing.
The wounds fester.
But the ones you can’t see are the ones killing him.
There is a knock on his door. Small and light. Micah wraps his arm tight in bandages before rasping out, “Come in.”
And there, standing in her little lavender nightgown, is Castaspella. She’s just turned four this last fortnight, and she is still small. Cheeks rounded with baby fat and ears a bit too large for her head. She’s clumsy with a gap between her front teeth.
Micah loves her dearly.
“Casta? What’s wrong?”
Castaspella rocks on her feet and chews her lip. Mother has put braids in her hair to keep it from knotting. “I had a bad dream. Can I sleep in here?”
Father has said that Casta’s too old to be sleeping in his bed now. That she needs to learn how to start overcoming her fears. But Micah thinks that’s dumb he’s scared all the time and it makes his heart pound like a war drum so he’ll do whatever he likes when she comes to his room in the night. Instead of answering, Micah smiles and lifts the covers on the edge of the bed. Casta smiles back, and it’s watery, and she runs on fat little legs to crawl atop the mattress.
She burrows into his side and radiates heat like a hearth. Micah doesn’t mind. He just re-situates the covers and wraps an arm over her shoulders. She’s just little. Most brothers find their sisters annoying. But Casta is nothing if not entertaining. She’s bright and curious and her smile makes things just a little bit brighter.
“I'm sorry I had bad dreams. Mama says I’m not a’pposed to bother you,” Casta whispers.
Micah hums in his throat, rubs at her tiny back. “Well I say you’re never a bother. Go to sleep, little bird. I’ll keep the nightmares away.”
Casta tucks even deeper against him, and she smells like candy-apple soap. “Will you make the lights dance for me, p’ease?”
His throat closes. His fingers twist, clench. But Micah holds his sister tighter and realizes that he cannot say no and so he slowly starts to carve the rune. Feels the magick gather on his fingertips like a flame and then releases, allows it to burst apart in an explosion of colorful birds that circle them lazily. Casta giggles against his side. It’s sleepy. She’s getting tired.
She doesn’t notice how his breath hitches. Or how his fingers twitch. Or how he does not look at the birds, at the light, because it hurts.
Instead, she presses a sloppy kiss to his cheek and whispers, “I love you, Micah.”
Micah smiles and it pulls at the corners of his mouth like fishhooks, digging deeper and deeper until blood soaks into his teeth. “I love you, too, Casta. Go to sleep now.”
She sags against him and the room is quiet once more.
“Do not stop fighting, my child.”
The wounds are festering.
Micah has stopped fighting.
Instead, he cries, and lets the rot in.