Unlike most magicians, Winter hadn't been born to magic. That had been part of the reason why it had been so hard to find someone to teach them.
Winter's ascension had been largely an accident, and while the Council had allowed them to study and live among them, that didn't mean that everyone had been happy about it. Magic usually ran in bloodlines, and unlike most of the other people in Autumn Springs, the only magic in Winter's blood was their own. They'd gotten through their first few years of study, figuring out how to control their new magic and how this strange new world worked, catching up on everything everyone else their age had learned, and it had been amazing. The strange pocket-dimension of Autumn Springs, a bubble of space formed by the sheer magic of three converging ley lines, felt like somewhere they had always been meant to belong, and magic felt like something they'd been born to have, been born to study, born to love. But when Winter had started approaching their teachers to apprentice under them, all of them had been reluctant to take them.
All of them, that was, but Balthazar.
"Balthazar," Winter called, letting themselves into their mentor's study. The room was dimly-lit, full of slouching piles of spellbooks and paper turning the spacious room into a cramped maze, magical artifacts and ingredients and equipment balancing precariously on every available surface, books included. "I found the books you wanted!"
Their mentor was at his desk, bent over a scramble of papers, witchlight bobbing over his head to illuminate the yellowed pages. His suit was worn and patched in places, his hair greying and wild, and he didn't seem to notice his glasses sliding down his button of a nose.
"Oh?" he asked, then saw Winter. "Oh, thank you, Winter. Put them there, just there for me," he said, not actually giving Winter any indication as to where he wanted them.
They put them next to the desk, where there was a patch of floor that wasn't quite clear but flat, and where Balthazar wouldn't trip over them. Then again, Balthazar never seemed to have much trouble navigating his study, no matter how cluttered. "I'm busy right now, but I'll get started on those soon."
"They weren't easy to find. I spent most of the morning looking for that one on defunct rituals," they said. "I know why the Institute's library is the way it is, magic is unpredictable and magical texts being inherently magical and all, but really, isn't books rearranging themselves a little much?"
"You've been here three years now, Winter," Balthazar said, pulling another paper over to himself to examine, and scribbling something in his notes. Winter grinned.
"I know. But isn't books rearranging themselves really too much? You know, my own books are starting to do it too, and most of them are stuff from home. I don't know how Mistress Meriwether keeps her bookshelves organised."
"See if you can figure it out, ey?" Balthazar challenged, twinkle in his eye. "But make sure you don't fall behind in your own studies. How's that essay coming?"
Winter perked up. "Great! There's a book on prestidigitation mechanics in the Ludo hall somewhere I've got to find; I've got an idea about something I read last year, and using that in relation to what we were talking about yesterday. It's fascinating, actually--"
Balthazar chuckled. "I haven't had an apprentice as eager as you for a long, long time," he said. "I'm surprised none of the other sages wanted you as their student." He looked at Winter over the rims of his glasses, sympathetic. "Well, maybe not."
Winter had mostly finished formal classes at this point, and their study this year was largely self-directed, under Balthazar's guidance. Finding someone to mentor them had been important, and something Winter nearly hadn't been able to do.
"Oh, well," the man said conspiratorially, a little smug, which made Winter burn with pride, just a bit. "Their loss."
"What are you working on?" Winter asked. Balthazar smiled.
"Oh, I'm preparing for the Trials," he said, toothy smile transforming his face. "Setting up a few different traps and such. We can't make it easy for you now, can we?"
Winter made a noise that was half laugh, half groan. "I love the Trials, but I'm almost glad these are going to be my last Trials," they said. "Aside from graduation, I mean."
"Hmm, I hope you do well on these, Winter. Your Trials are meant to be a test of how you can apply what you've learned in a practical, real life setting. Graduation Trials are going to be a lot harder than an exam that's half a sporting event. You did just say you enjoyed them."
"I do. Except one of Mistress Meriwether's traps made me think I was being digested by a plant last year. And Nathaniel Morrow actually tried to turn me into a spider. I was coughing up spider silk for a week."
"The Trials do bring out people's competitive sides," Baltazar acknowledged. "But try to have fun, yes? I've got something spectacular planned."
Winter smiled at their mentor. "I'll keep an eye out for it," they told him.
Winter had lived for the last three years in a little house in the woods of Autumn Springs, not far from the town proper. It was intended as accommodation for Institute students, and looked it. The dining room was less of a dining room and more of a alchemy/magic/study/dining room, potion ingredients and books and various magical paraphernalia adorning the walls and taking up space, the actual dining table pushed against one wall. Winter had their books and papers spread out over the smudged remains of pentacle, cross legged on the floor and bent over their work, pen in hand and their wand in their mouth.
"Getting anywhere?" Tessa asked. Winter's best friend and favourite housemate was in the kitchen cooking dinner, visible through the connecting archway.
"Hmm. Somewhere," Winter agreed, flicking a finger in the direction of the bookshelf. A heavy tome picked itself up and floated across the room, and flipped open in midair. Winter flipped through the pages until they found the one they wanted.
"What does Balthazar even study? He's never taught us much as acolytes," Tessa asked. Winter hummed in agreement. Prior to becoming his apprentice, Winter had only had a single class with him.
"He's mainly into his research. His area of interest is history of magic. Reconstructing old practices and such," Winter said, calling another book over. It bobbed happily across the room. "He thinks we could learn a lot from things we've forgotten, better ways of doing things. I agree, actually. Modern practice is so regimented--"
"Of course you agree," Tristan said from behind them. The book Winter was rifling through stopped moving, spine falling flat in midair. "You're so grateful to him you'd agree if he said the earth was flat. He's the only master stupid enough to waste time and effort on an inherently talentless upstart."
"Tristan," Tessa frowned. Winter snarled.
"Fuck the hell off, Saint Valentine," they warned. Tristan Saint Valentine was Winter's other and least favourite housemate, and the feeling was mutual. The Saint Valentines were a wealthy, powerful, and influential old magical family, and they had been among the most vocal (but not the only) voices in opposition to allowing Winter to study at the Institute or stay in Autumn Springs at all. "At least I didn't have to apprentice with my uncle."
"No. Too bad, as well. You might not have had to apprentice with the only person at the Institute who's as big as a disgrace to magic as you are. The only meaningful contribution Balthazar will ever make to magic is when he finally gets himself kicked out."
"Fuck off," Winter snapped. With a wave of their arm, the books in front of them hurled themselves at Tristan's head. Tristan ducked out of the archway, and the books nailed the wood instead of his head and fell to the floor with a thump. He toed at one with his boot.
"What in the name of magic is this? Reconstructing ancient practice: cults of necromancy and chaos magic. Do you want to be expelled?"
"It's Balthazar's. He gave it to me by accident and there's a useful bit on reconstructing practice in there. Now get out before I hit you with the whole shelf."
Tristan snorted and spun away, and moments later Winter heard his boots on the stairs. Winter waited until they were gone.
"Why did we let him move in?" they asked Tessa.
"Because you felt bad for him when his parents kicked him out," Tessa reminded them. "And this is student accommodation, so he technically has the right to be here."
"Yeah. That lasted for about two minutes. You'd think he'd be less of an unrelenting asshole in that case."
Tessa shrugged. "I don't know what you thought was going to happen. Tristan Saint Valentine isn't going to stop being Tristan Saint Valentine just because you were nice to him once."
That was, unfortunately, true.
The Trials were a tradition. They were a chance to prove you could apply what you were learning at the Institute in a practical, real-world situation. It was one thing to learn spells and practice them yourself or overload yourself with theory, but another thing entirely to use those skills. Every year, students were divided into teams, and set loose in the Whispering Wood, tasked with solving riddles and puzzles to locate 'relics' hidden in the woods and return them to the starting point. The task was made more difficult by the traps, puzzles and obstacles set by the teachers and other accomplished magicians, and by the fact of there being fewer relics than teams meaning that other students were likely to become obstacles as well. It was exhilarating, educational, and absolutely bonkers.
It was a big event in Autumn Springs, as much like a fair as a school event. The whole town packed into the field behind the Institute, setting up live music and spectacle magic, stalls selling food and carnival games for children, taking advantage of the gathering. The teachers kept an eye on the students, using familiars to watch them and showing their points-of-view for the crowd like a magical reality TV show. It was great. Winter loved magic, loved the strange little world Autumn Springs occupied, but this was one of the moments where they really felt a part of the magical community they called home.
The first day of the Trials was for the first and second year acolytes, so Winter and Tessa got to enjoy the fairground and watch them go through their Trials.
"It's too bad they usually change up the traps for us," Tessa commented as a first-year pair narrowly avoided being paralysed.
"Do you really want an unfair advantage?" Winter asked, taking a bite of a honey cake. The flavour exploded in their mouth, sweet and buzzing and filling their body with a gentle, golden warmth.
"Don't you?" Tessa returned, and Winter grinned.
There was a sensation of something brushing against their hand. A purple flower had sprouted next to them, it's heavy blossom bending on its stalk to brush against Winter's hand.
"I think Mistress Meriwether wants me. I'll be right back," Winter said, passing her the rest of the cake and standing. Tessa mhmmed and nodded, but didn't look away from the magical broadcast as a second year was knocked off their feet by a sudden bolt of magic.
Mistress Meriwether was a plump redheaded woman old enough to be Winter's mother (not that they had one of those). Her dress was patched and dirt-stained, her hat just as stout as she was with a garland of flowers around the rim, though she'd donned a lovely shawl for the occasion. A little disconcerting was the fact that her eyes and fingertips were glowing a pale lavender colour, since she was channelling what her familiars in the woods were seeing of the Trials.
Meriwether had been one of the few teachers who'd given a believable reason for rejecting them as an apprentice, since Winter had never shown any deeper interest in the field of arcano-botany. She was probably one of their favourite teachers.
"Winter, great. Could you do me a favour and find Balthazar for me? I'm busy running the display right now, but we need him as soon as possible."
"Balthazar? What for?" Winter asked.
"Oh, just a minor problem with some of his obstacles. He's usually so careful, but you know him—he starts thinking about something else or gets so excited he skips ahead, and he misses something."
Winter nodded. Balthazar was like that. "I'll get him for you," they said, and Meriwether smiled, her eyes still glowing a solid, eerie green.
The first place Winter checked was the place they found him, holed up in his study in the Institute. There was a clear floor space at the back of the room, the books and papers piled even higher than usual elsewhere to accommodate it. Balthazar must have been working on something important, because the floor had been cleared for a pentacle array, drawn in chalk and smudged in places like Balthazar had been rubbing it out and making corrections. The wall was covered in papers, full of diagrams and schematics of pentacle arrays and Balthazar's cramped, slanting handwriting. Their mentor was in the middle of the array, finishing off a section, low to the ground and consulting a piece of paper as he drew it.
"Woah," Winter said, half in awe. "This is so cool. What are you doing?"
Balthazar jolted upright. "Ah! Winter, my child. What a surprise. A pleasant surprise."
Winter smiled. "I wondered what you were doing when I couldn't find you at the Trials. Should have known you'd gotten caught up with work."
"Oh, bother the Trials," Balthazar said. "An important tradition, yes, yes, but this! I think I've finally gotten this down, and just in time, as well." The old man pushed himself to his feet and grabbed Winter by the arm. "This is the keystone to my life's work! I couldn't have done it without you."
"Congratulations!" Winter told him. "But what did I have to do with it?"
Balthazar smiled, a wide and joyous thing. "Your last essay! Your theoretical work on innovating practice really is something, you know, amazing potential if you keep developing it, and your essay on using old practices to do it gave me the idea I needed to finish this. Once I read that, it all made sense!"
Winter's cheeks hurt from smiling. They could have hugged the old man. "I'm glad I helped, but Mistress Meriwether sent me to tell you they need you at the Trials. Something about one of your obstacles."
Baltazar gripped Winter tighter, shaking. He exhaled. "Drat. Duty calls, I suppose. I shall deal with it quickly. This is too important for me to leave for long. Thank you for fetching me, Winter."
Winter nodded. Balthazar left, muttering. Winter stayed, looking at the array on the floor, and the notes Baltazar had pinned to the wall. Magical arrays were instruments to direct magic, inherently unpredictable, in a predictable and organised way in order to achieve a goal. They were theoretically interesting to Winter, but practically they preferred other ways of using magic. Half of what Winter loved about magic, after all, was the wild strangeness of it. Summoning a handful of fire was more fun than spending hours drawing an array, even though both had their uses.
Winter looked, but couldn't work out what Balthazar's array was designed for. They could read a few bits of it, but none of them seemed to make sense.
"Winter!" Balthazar called out, and Winter shook their head. If this was Baltazar's life's work, no wonder it was too advanced and too obscure for them to understand.
"Coming!" Winter called back.
In Winter's first year, their partner for the Trials had been Tessa, but that had been purely luck. Partners were decided by lots, apparently to encourage co-operation and friendship building but also probably because the teachers thought it was more sadistic that way.
Tessa stepped up, in front of a crowd that held much of the town and the entire student body, and picked a slip of paper out of a hat.
"Genevieve Glimmer," she read, and Genevieve, a bubbly blond girl known for her skill in the duelling arena, skipped forward. She and Tessa shook hands, and Mistress Meriwether touched her wand to their clasped hands and spoke the words. Until they finished the Trial, they wouldn't be allowed to move more than ten meters away from each other. If it weren't for the spell, Winter suspected, the forced partnership system wouldn't last long.
"That's lucky," Winter whispered when Tessa joined them, Gen at her side. Gen smiled at him, taking the compliment.
When it was Winter's turn, they stepped up to the hat and drew out a slip of paper, exhaling as they did. In second year, the only reason they hadn't been able to complete the Trial by bringing back a relic was because their partner had been completely uncooperative, no matter what Winter tried.
They opened the paper. Read the name. Instead of repeating it out loud, what came out of their mouth was "What?"
Their partner was Tristan Saint Valentine.
"I can't believe this," Tristan said. Winter yanked their hand up, feeling the pull of the tethering spell. Their Trial had just started, and they were already deep in the Whispering Wood.
"I'm not thrilled about it either," Winter said. "I'm not going to fail my last Trial just because of this. Can we agree to work together."
Tristan sniffed, like Winter had just said something ridiculous. "Of course. I'm not going to lose this just to be petty."
Winter huffed, because feeling annoyed was easier than feeling stung. "Okay," they said. "What was the first clue?"
"'Rising flames lead the way,'" Tristan recited.
"Well, that's easy," Winter said, and Tristan nodded. "East"
"South," Tristan said at the same time. They stared at each other.
"The sun rises in the east," Winter said. "'Rising flames? The sun is fire."
"Yes, but it's flames, and the sun set last night and isn't going to rise for another three days." Above them, the navy sky was lit by two full moons and a rippling aurora. Autumn Springs was a pocket dimension, and didn't really follow the same rules as the human world. "Fire's cardinal direction is south, and this is a test of our magical knowledge. Rising means more powerful. South."
They scowled at each other, neither of them willing to back down. Winter yanked at the invisible tether again.
Agreeing to cooperate was one thing. Actually being able to do it was another.
They flipped a coin, and went south. Or, at least, what they thought was south.
"I don't know if we're going the right way," Winter said. "We've been going for ten minutes and we haven't come across another clue or any other team or even so much as a trap."
"We're going the right way," Tristan said. Winter fell behind, and slipped their phone out of their pocket. They opened the compass app, but instead of calibrating, the needle on the screen kept swinging wildly. Winter, who hadn't expected anything else, was about to put it back when Tristan looked over his shoulder.
"What do you have that for?" he asked scornfully. That was one of the things about magicians—because they didn't use technology, a lot of them thought of it with disdain. Especially families like the Saint Valentines, who didn't live or work in the human world. Tristan had probably only left Autumn Springs a few times in his life, if ever. "Doesn't it not work here?"
"It works. Kind of," Winter said, just as they saw Tristan's wand appear in his hand and whip up to point at them. For a stupid, panicked moment, Winter thought that Tristan was doing something to them. But Tristan's spell missed them, flying over their shoulder. Winter looked, just in time to see the exploding white sparks of magic falling and pooling on the grass, the remains of a destroyed spell. There was a rustle from a nearby tree as something disappeared into the branches, a watching familiar.
"Look where you're going," Tristan told him. Winter winced. They'd set off a trap and hadn't even noticed it. "We're headed the right way. Come on."
"So why do you have it?" Tristan asked, a little later. "Your phone, I mean. If it only kind of works."
Winter shrugged, a little embarrassed. "I get a signal sometimes, and there being two moons up seems to help. So I can make calls, you know? It's my little sister's birthday today. I wanted to call her."
Tristan was quiet for a moment. "Summer, right? Your sister."
Winter nodded, surprised that Tristan remembered that. "Yeah. I haven't seen her much since I ascended, but we were super close before that."
"It must be hard," Tristan said. "Having to keep so much a secret from them. Being away from them."
"It is—wait. What the hell is this?" they asked. "Why are you being nice to me? You're not nice."
Tristan bristled. "Well, sorry for trying," he said. "I'll remember to be a complete and utter ass to you at all times from now on."
"Tristan," Winter said.
"Fuck off, Darling," Tristan snapped.
"No, Tristan!" Winter lunged, tacking Tristan to the ground, the spell narrowly missing them. Tristan swore.
"Nathaniel, Matilda, what the fuck?"
Nathaniel and Matilda grinned at them.
"Sorry, Tris. Nothing personal, you know? We just want to win this, which means taking out the competition," Nathaniel said. "Can't have the ascendant showing us up again, yeah?"
Winter pulled Tristan to his feet, just as Matilda started an incantation that made Winter's skin crawl.
"Run. Run!" Winter said, pulling at Tristan. Tristan didn't have to be told twice.
This part of the Wood wasn't a great place to run. Roots protruded from the ground trying to trip them, and low branches seemed to appear from nowhere. They'd crossed through here only moments ago, but it was much harder to navigate than it had been.
"Why are we running? You're way better than either of those idiots. We could take them easy," Tristan said. A bolt of magic struck a tree just ahead of them, wrapping it in sticky spiderwebs.
"What the fuck is with you and spiders?" Winter demanded, and Nate laughed. "God, your friend's a weirdo."
"We're not friends, and I'm not going to deny that. Can we fight them?"
"Waste of time. This way," Winter grabbed hold of Tristan's hand and yanked them sideways, dodging around the edge of a small clearing. Not far from it, Winter pulled them to a stop and looked back.
Winter and Tristan had skirted the clearing, but Nate and Matilda had only seem them ahead and opted for the straight path.
And stopped, as the invisible pentacle array under them appeared, glowing, trapping them inside. Winter grinned.
"I noticed it when we passed by earlier," Winter said, and gave Tristan a triumphant smile. "See the mushroom ring? You told me to watch where I was going."
The pentacle was ringed with tiny mushrooms. Meriwether's magic tended to encourage plant growth, and if she'd set the trap after the first round of Trials, mushrooms would be one of the only things that had had time to grow. Tristan, panting, returned a tiny smile of his own, which made something warm and proud bloom in Winter's chest.
"Darling!" Nathaniel snapped, banging his fist against the empty air, sending ripples of light across the invisible barrier of the pentacle's edge.
"Let's see if your spiders can get you out of that!" Winter said, and with a thought for whatever familiar was probably watching, bowed. Tristan laughed.
"Sorry, Nate," he said. "Come on, Win."
"They'll figure out how to get out of it eventually, but I don't think they'll be bothering us for a while," Winter said as they and Tristan returned to the place Nate and Matilda had ambushed them. "Which leaves us—" Winter came to a stop in front of a gnarled oak tree, which had an array painted onto the trunk. "with the clue they were after."
Tristan got out his wand. The moonlight was so bright it could have been an overcast day, and when it touched his wand, the wand seemed to shimmer in pearlescent rainbow colours.
"I still can't believe your wand is actually made of unicorn horn," Winter commented. Harvesting unicorn horns had been illegal for longer than unicorns had been a protected species, which meant the wand had to be at least a hundred and fifty years old. Tristan shrugged.
"It's a family heirloom. It seems a waste not to use it when the unicorn probably died for it," he said, and tapped the array. Another one appeared, floating in mid-air. "That's incomplete."
Winter studied it. "Oh," they said. "This is easy." They got out their own wand, drawing the missing lines and symbols onto the array. It disappeared. A trail of bobbing witchlights appeared, leading a path through the wood.
"You know," Winter said. "I think we're going pretty well, actually."
They followed the path, deeper into the Wood. Which was fine. But Winter didn't think they'd ever seen this part of the Whispering Wood before. The farther away from town you got, the wilder and stranger and more obviously magical it was. Wild roses grew in thorny snarls of briars, glowing mushrooms sprouted from trees, and animals with more eyes than they should have had stared at them from the undergrowth.
The witchlights still bobbed ahead of them.
"Tristan," they said, "do you think maybe this is another trick? Like, a dead end?"
"What?" Tristan frowned.
"It's just that this is a pretty deep part of the Wood, and it's been a while, and we haven't seen anyone else. Usually, don't you think we would have at least come across an obstacle or another clue by now?"
Winter was talking to Tristan when they should have been watching, so they didn't notice the array opening under them until it was too late.
The array opened, and the ground under them crumbled.
"Fuck!"
"Ouch."
"Tristan, get off me, you asshole."
"I didn't fall on you on purpose."
"I don't care-ow, ow, ow, those are my ribs!"
Tristan pulled himself off Winter and sat, rubbing his knee. "How are you that heavy?" Winter demanded. Tristan was busy.
"Where are we?" he asked, which pulled Winter out of thinking about all the parts of their body that hurt. "What happened?"
"Uh, the array opened under us, and the ground... fell away? And then everything went black, and you landed on top of me."
"The ground fell away. The ground, in the wood. And we're in a cave now. A cave with a massive array on the floor."
Winter finally looked around. Tristan was right—they were in a cave, a massive cavern that didn't seem to have any obvious way in or out. The light came from the glowing purple pentacle array on the ground, and the twin array spread across the domed cave ceiling. They looked up, expecting to see some kind of hole for them to have fallen through—only solid rock, crossed with lines and sigils of the array.
"Fuck," they said.
"This is some kind of obstacle," Tristan said. "Is it an illusion?"
Winter stood. The cave was tall enough to stand in close to the middle, but the ceiling was low and uneven. Last year, during the Trials, Winter had gotten caught in an illusion set by Mistress Meriwether that made them think they were being digested inside a giant plant. It had been a good one, woven with mind magic to convince them of a situation they had no reason to believe was probable. It had taken a while for Winter to figure out how to get out of it.
They tried that now, casting the modified dispelling spell that had freed them last year. The light from their wand spluttered and did nothing. They tried again, a more complex version of the same spell, to the same result.
"It's not an illusion," they announced. Tristan tried his own spell, one designed less to dispel the illusion and more to blow it to pieces. Nothing. He frowned.
"Okay, it's not an illusion. So what is it?"
"I think," Winter said slowly, "that it's a cave covered with magical arrays. I think the one we stepped into was—"
"A teleportation array," Tristan said, and cursed.
"And teachers don't usually set traps we can't get out of. So there must be a way out. And the entrance can't be covered by an illusion, because we would have dispelled it."
"Okay. Maybe it's like the one that bought us here. We just need to solve the array," Tristan said, completing Winter's train of thought. They nodded.
"Exactly."
The problem was, the array was completely unfamiliar. It wasn't like any they'd ever learned about or studied or made themselves. There was a science to drawing arrays, but this one didn't seem to follow the same rules Winter was used to. Lines curved where they should have been straight, crossed over each other where they made no sense to cross. The sigils and symbols were utterly alien. It looked strange.
"I don't think I've ever seen anything like this," Tristan said eventually.
"Me neither," Winter said, just as they remembered. They had. "No. I've seen something like this before. It reminds of what Balthazar was drawing yesterday, when I went to his study."
"Balthazar?"
Winter thought about what they'd seen on the floor of Balthazar's study, the notes on the wall. "No. This isn't like it, it's exactly what I saw yesterday. And—" Pentacle arrays were a science, and just because this one didn't seem to be following the normal rules didn't mean there weren't any. Winter was good with arrays. They knew more about Balthazar's work than anyone who wasn't Balthazar.
The notes on the wall. Balthazar's studies. The work they'd been doing themselves, based off the same principle as Balthazar's. The book on ancient necromantic practices Balthazar had leant them on accident.
I couldn't have done it without you. Your last essay. Once I read that, it all made sense.
Winter's ideas about innovating modern practice with old techniques. That was how Balthazar had figured out how to make this array work. If Winter could use their own theories as a frame of reference, read the array, they'd know exactly what it was and what it did.
"And I can solve this. I can figure this out."
Winter figured it out, alright. It took time, and frustration, and a lot of guesses and missing holes where knowledge they simply didn't have was meant to go. But half an hour later, they had the basic shape of it.
And it wasn't good.
"This—this is impossible," Winter said. "No. No."
"What is it?" Tristan, who'd been remarkably patient and limited himself to only the occasional annoying comment, asked.
"I know what it does. It's not an obstacle. It's—but it makes no sense!"
Tristan grabbed Winter by the arms. "Winter. What. Is it?"
"It's chaos magic," Winter whispered. "Dark magic. It's designed to pull magic from the ley lines. We take magic from the lines, but that's ambient stuff, like heat from a bonfire, store it and run it through our own bodies and souls before using it. It's a gift. This is—this is stealing the whole bonfire and keeping it inside you."
Tristan's grip on Winter's arms was suddenly tight enough to hurt. "He's stealing the lines?"
"Diverting them. Into himself. Magic is unpredictable, but it has basic rules, like physics. Chaos magic is a corruption of them, forcing magic to act in ways it shouldn't. There's a reason it's been outlawed for most of recorded history."
"Okay. So Balthazar is stealing magic from the lines? Going to? We have to tell the Institute."
Winter grabbed Tristan by the elbows, holding him there.
"We don't know it's him for sure! But we're not going to be able to tell anyone, Tris, that's what I'm saying. To tap into the lines, to break the rules, you need power. A certain type of it, channelled in a certain way. Look!"
They spun him to look at the centre of the array, where a large circle contained a few sigils. Winter could only read two of them and Tristan would only be able to recognise one, but that was enough.
"Sacrifice. It needs a sacrifice."
"The array is mirrored above us; it needs two. And they have to be magicians, because there needs to be a pre-existing connection to the ley lines," Winter said.
"Are you sure," Tristan asked, shaking them. Winter shook their head.
"I mean, this is a mix of really, really old magic and really, really advanced stuff. But I'm sure I've got the basic gist of it down, and whoever this is they're really working off some of my own theories—someone tampered with the clue. They lead us here, they lead us right into the teleportation array."
"We have to get out of here," Tristan said.
"Can you see any way out?" Winter asked, because every surface of the cave was covered in the array and none of it showed any way out.
"We have to try. Come on. Help me."
There wasn't one. No physical way out, no spell, nothing. Winter tried to change the array, ruin it, but it wasn't meant to be changed, and nothing they did left a mark.
"If they wanted us here, they're not going to let us leave," Winter said quietly when Tristan eventually gave up, coming over to sit by Winter. He slid down the wall, letting out a defeated breath and hanging his head.
"Stop saying 'they,' Win. We know who it is."
"We have no proof it's Balthazar."
"You said yourself, it's his work! You saw him drawing the circle, you only know what it is because you have access to his research. It's Balthazar."
Winter didn't want to believe it. But everything pointed to it being him. "You're right. It's probably him," they sighed. Tristan, who had been looking for a fight, looked a little bit surprised when Winter didn't rise to meet him. "Fuck. Of course the only teacher who believes in me is an evil chaos mage." Winter closed their eyes. "Sorry," they said. "I guess we're going to die."
"We could overpower him," Tristan suggested. "He's got to be here to trigger the array, right?"
"If this is based on ancient practice, that means there's a whole ritual involved, so yes. We could try."
"He's an old man."
"And a more powerful magician than either of us, with decades more experience," Winter countered.
"Why are you being like this?" Tristan demanded. "Why are you being so pessimistic about this?"
"Because I don't want to die!" Winter snapped. "Because the person who is about to kill me is probably my mentor, the only person in this godforsaken, literal world who ever thought I was worth shit as a magician! Because I'm never going to see Tessa or my sister or my dads ever again, and they're probably never going to know how or even if I died! Because I am scared and angry and I'm sorry if I can't be optimistic right now!"
Annoyed with themselves, Winter scrubbed the wetness from their eyes. Tristan blinked.
"Right. Sorry," he said, sitting back against the cave wall. A moment. "Do you really think we're about to die?"
"I don't know. I'm just scared. I don't think I could beat Balthazar if I tried to fight him."
They both lapsed into silence. There was nothing to say. But, eventually, Winter figured that if they were going to die, they wanted to know a few things first.
"Why are you such an asshole to me?" they asked.
"Are we really doing this now?" he asked.
"What else do we have to do?"
"That's fair."
"So? Why do you hate me? Is it really just because I wasn't born a magician?"
Tristan sighed. "I don't hate you. My family disapproves of you because they think magic is a birthright, and humans don't deserve it."
"If magic didn't want me, I wouldn't be here. I had no idea magic was even a thing before I got it."
"I agree with you. The longer I've known you, the more I know that. They're obviously wrong. Nobody who isn't meant to have magic would be half as good at it as you are."
"You've called me an inherently talentless waste of magic multiple times!" Winter protested, because Tristan Saint Valentine couldn't be saying actually good things about them as a magician after years of putting them down for it.
"Yes," Tristan said. "And most of those times I was lying, because I was being an ass to you. I'm kind of an asshole, if you haven't noticed. You're not that special."
Winter shook their head. Tristan scrubbed a hand over his face and tugged at his dreads. "Fuck it. If I'm going to fucking die," he said, and Winter was about to ask what he meant when Tristan leant over and kissed them.
Oh, Winter thought.
Tristan pulled away and sat, blinking, visibly half-terrified.
"Okay," Winter said. "So... am I meant to take that as you liking me? Romantically. And... it's easier for you to pretend to hate me than it is for you to like me?" Tristan nodded, and rested his forehead on his knees. "Tristan, we live together." They lived together, and apparently making it a terrible experience for the both of them was a conscious choice Tristan was making.
"That makes it worse, because I'm just around you all the time," Tristan said. Winter had nothing to say to that.
"You know, I was kind of hoping when I offered you the spare room that you'd like, I don't know, change. Stop being so terrible to me all the time," they said.
"Yeah. Sorry if I didn't take well to you saw me like that on what was probably the worst day of my life, and having to be constantly reminded that you pitied me even though I'd spent a long time making very sure you hated me," Tristan told him darkly. Winter didn't have anything to say to that, either, because the fact was that they had offered to let Tristan move in because they'd pitied him.
They'd found Tristan upstairs, above the ball going on in his parent's foyer, sulking and tearful, and after a few angry barbs, he had admitted that he'd had a fight with his parents, and he'd told them he was moving out before they could kick him out themselves. Winter had hated him, but right then, they hadn't been able to.
So, yeah. It had been pity.
"I like men. That's why my parents kicked me out. They caught me making out with Charlie Morrow in my bedroom," Tristan said, as if divulging his darkest secret. I'm sorry, Winter almost said, but that was only more pity Tristan was too proud of bear.
"I didn't think magicians were that homophobic," Winter said instead. "Your parents never had any problem with me. Not with the magic thing, with me being—" they gestured down their body, from their spelled-white hair to their stubbornly androgynous appearance.
"You," Tristan agreed. "I don't really know how those are related, but nobody knew what to think about you at first, about you having magic or about—" he waved a hand to indicate all of them "—but then you told them what to think, and that was it. It would have been different if you'd been born here, I think, if they'd been able to put you in a box before you decided for yourself you didn't want anything to do with boxes."
"Probably," Winter said. Tristan continued.
"But me. My parents had expectations of me. Marry a girl from a good family, have a bunch of kids to carry on the Saint Valentine name, keep being a stuck-up asshole stuck in the Golden Age. That's when it started, actually. Us magicians were all very blasé about who you went to bed with until then, and my parents like to pretend the Golden Age never ended and homophobia is still fashionable. If my name were Morrow or Quartz, things would be different."
Tristan was too proud to want to be pitied, and sympathy was probably a bit too much like pity for him. But Winter couldn't help it.
There was also something else there. An identification of the strange warm feeling they'd gotten when Tristan complimented them earlier.
"So you like men," Winter said. "But you also like me."
"And you're not, I know that. I still do. Can we just pretend this never happened, please? I'd like to die with some dignity intact."
"Actually," Winter said, and turned Tristan's head towards theirs and kissed him. "Can we not?"
Tristan, after a brief moment, seemed amenable to that.
They were both scared, and taking shelter in something more pleasant was easy. And when Balthazar came, he found them like that.
The first thing Winter knew of it was a force like rope wrapping around them, pinning their arms to their sides and pulling them away from Tristan, their wands flying from their pockets.
"Teenagers," said Balthazar, and the last shred of hope they'd had that their mentor hadn't been responsible for this disappeared. Balthazar, looking every bit like the absent-minded academic Winter had always known him as, came towards them, lowering his wand. And paused.
"Winter?" he said. Cursed. "No. No, it wasn't supposed to be you."
"Balthazar, please," Winter said. "Please, just let us go."
Their mentor sighed. "I suppose you've figured out the purpose of the array. I really do have to thank you. I wouldn't have been able to do this without you. I've been so close for so long, but you gave me the last piece."
"Why?" Winter asked. "This is wrong. This goes against all of magic. Why do this?"
"Why? Why do we study magic, child? Why understand it, instead of just using it? To use it better, to grow more powerful. Power is the ultimate goal of magical study. The ancients had power we cannot dream of. Figuring out how they did it has been my passion, my life's work. Figure it out, and take it for myself. Isn't that the only option we have, as scholars?"
Winter was outraged. "No! This—this is rape. Taking control of the lines, breaking the laws of nature. It's sick!"
Balthazar shook his head sadly. "Oh, child. I wish you would have seen things differently. I didn't mean it to be you, you know. As long as I got two young magicians here, it didn't matter who, but I would have preferred it to be anyone else. But consider," he said, eyes lighting up, "the ley lines chose you themselves. You, potentially, have a stronger and more direct connection to the lines than anyone else. It may be for the best. The connection made to the lines through you may be stronger, easier to make and easier to take control through."
Winter was crying, tears spilling over their cheeks. "Please. Please don't do this," they begged. Balthazar smiled a smile that would have been easy to mistake for kind.
"Oh, there, there. Don't be sad. Take comfort—your sacrifice won't be in vain. For power, there is no sacrifice too great."
"What are you going to do with it?" Tristan asked, speaking up for the first time. "Once you have it. The power? How do you plan to handle so much magic without it burning you to ashes?"
Balthazar inclined his head to him. "Mister Saint Valentine. Don't worry about the power. I'll be perfectly able to handle it. And as for what I plan to do with it—whatever I want. Isn't that the point of having power at all? Isn't power a worthy goal in itself?"
He dropped the bag he was carrying, started rummaging through it. Winter had said he'd need to perform a ritual. Rituals had be set up.
Winter looked to Tristan, then to Balthazar and back. Could we try your overpowering plan? They asked. Tristan flexed, trying his bonds, then shook his head. Winter tried their own bonds, and found they could hardly move at all. Tristan's fingers fluttered. Magic? Winter looked to Balthazar. Maybe, they mouthed.
But what magic could Winter come up with that would overpower Balthazar?
Balthazar set up the ritual, setting candles around the edge of the array, laying out bowls with mystery contents, marking parts of the array with his own blood. Winter and Tristan moved back against the wall, shuffling, and linked their hands together.
Small comforts.
Balthazar's back was turned, fiddling with something. Tristan squeezed Winter's hand in his, and with a whispered incantation sent a spell at Balthazar's back. It didn't get anywhere near him before it burnt out in mid-air.
"Tut tut, Mister Saint Valentine. I understand your distress, but we really can't have that," said the old magician. "But regardless. We're all done now, and the time approaches."
"Time?" Winter asked.
"Oh, yes. The moons will be aligning themselves at this very moment. It's best for the ritual, you see. The line's power is like the tides, at the mercy of the moon. Or moons, here. They're in optimal position right now, which happens so rarely when there's two of them," Balthazar explained. "We really must get a move on."
Balthazar grabbed Winter by their bonds, and with strength Winter hadn't known the older man possessed, dragged him across the cave floor into the centre of the array. Winter kicked and struggled, but it was useless. Tristan was struggling himself, screaming, cursing Balthazar out, until Balthazar silenced him with a wave of his hand.
Winter did not want to die. And desperation gave them an idea.
They stopped struggling, made eye contact with Tristan. Flicked their eyes towards Balthazar and nodded, and after a moment got an almost imperceptible nod of understanding in return. Now, they mouthed.
Winter resumed their struggles. Tristan used the limited motion of his hands to attack Balthazar with whatever magic he could, started to struggle to his feet, and lunged towards his wand, still lying on the cave floor. Balthazar dropped Winter to attend to his other captive.
"Mister Saint Valentine, I am just about done with your misbehaviour—" he was saying. Winter scrambled towards the wand they'd dislodged from Balthazar's jacket pocket, and felt the pulse of power through their fingers. Balthazar was a powerful magician who'd been using his wand for a long, long time.
But Winter had their own power.
Praying desperately that Tristan was keeping Balthazar distracted, Winter scrawled against the ground. They hadn't been able to change the array when they'd tried earlier, but now, with the very wand that had drawn it, full of Balthazar's own power—
Tristan let out a muffled gasp. Winter threw Balthazar's wand away from themselves. Tristan's form was limp as Balthazar dragged him over to the middle of the array and dumped him next to Winter.
"Tristan? Tristan?" Winter asked, but Tristan didn't respond.
Balthazar sighed. "Now," he said. "We can start this."
The glow of the array changed, growing deeper in colour, pulsing. Winter, in the middle of the array, right where every line channelled power to and from, felt it. A static in their teeth, a buzzing in their bones, a sick wrongness pulling magic from them, burrowing inside and making it its own.
Balthazar started the incantation, and it got worse. Winter screwed their eyes shut.
The array drew on the lines whose intersection fed and made Autumn Springs, tapping into them, using Winter and Tristan's connection to the magic as a way in. This, Winter knew, was the part of the ritual where it started draining their life force, using the power of their deaths and wasted potential to latch onto the line and pull it closer, perverting it, twisting it.
Balthazar stopped the incantation. "What?" he snarled, just a two things happened at once.
One, half a dozen people appeared in the cave, all of them Institute staff, headed by Mistress Meriwether.
Two, Winter grabbed hold of the lines' magic, used it to burn away their restraints, and sent it out along the array, overloading it like a surging electrical circuit, and plunging the cave into darkness.
The array had been meant to kill them, use their deaths to seize hold of and pervert the lines' magic. That had been the way Balthazar had drawn it.
All Winter had done was change the array so it wouldn't kill them.
Winter had a direct link to the magic of the three converging ley lines that had created the bubble of warped space Autumn Springs occupied. They [were] the lines, a surging, endless current of magical energy. The border between Winter and magic didn't seem to exist. They were, simply, magic.
"Winter," a voice was saying, distant and unclear. "Winter. It's over. You're safe. Let go. You can let go now. Come back to us."
There was a sensation, just as distant. A hand. Someone's hand.
"Let go," said the voice again, and Winter remembered they existed and pushed back against the magic, and let it go, and came back to the blurry figure of Mistress Meriwether crouched in front of them, hand on their cheek. They blinked, and looked around, and found Tristan at their back, and Balthazar nowhere at all.
It turned out, channelling the power of three ley lines wasn't good for you.
Winter didn't remember leaving the cave, because they'd passed out almost as soon as they came back to themselves. They'd slept for fifteen hours, woken up for long enough to be checked over by a doctor and be interrogated about exactly what had happened, then fallen asleep again.
Three days after, Winter finally had a clear picture of exactly what had happened.
The Trials had ended, and Winter and Tristan had been the only team who hadn't made it back, relic or no. When the teachers traced their path, they had found the place where they disappeared, but nothing else. Someone had gone to fetch Balthazar to tell him that Winter was missing, and had discovered the array on the floor and the notes on the wall, the years of research into chaos magic, and the location of the underground cavern marked on a map. Balthazar must have been the one to alter the clue, leading them in the entirely wrong direction until they were close enough to teleport into the cave.
Teleportation magic was difficult and costly, but it had been the only way into the cave, and Meriwether had rounded up five of the most powerful teachers she could find and gotten them in there. And, well, Winter knew the rest.
"Hey," said a voice at the door, and Winter looked up from their book, and couldn't help their smile.
"Tristan!" they said, and Tristan smirked. Winter moved to get out of bed, but Tristan stopped them, and Winter let themselves back down thankfully. They had spent most of the last thee days sleeping, but Winter was still too tired and sore to leave their bed for long, even though at least they were in their own room now. Tristan came and sat at the end of Winter's bed.
"I didn't know you were home. Tessa said you were at your parents," Winter said. Apart from briefly after the first time they'd woken, they hadn't seen him since the cave. Tristan rolled his eyes.
"They insisted I stay with them. Apparently their only son nearly being sacrificed by a power-hungry madman scared them, or something," he said. "Actually, I think it made them realise that if I had died, I'd have died with me thinking they hate me."
"Did you really think that?" Winter asked.
"No. Maybe. I'd certainly have died thinking they were conservative bigots who care more about tradition than me, at least. At least I know they do care, now."
"That's good. I've been kind of wishing I could have my dads here now, actually. I'll go visit them when I'm not as weak as a newborn kitten." There was something Winter wanted to ask, but now that Tristan was here it was hard to find the words they needed. "So. Are you going to go back to hating me now?"
Tristan pressed his lips together. "About what happened," he said. "In the cave. We thought we were going to die. So if you want to forget about it, and about what I said, I wouldn't blame you. That might be easier."
Winter took a moment to sort out their words. "If that's what you want, then we can pretend it didn't happen," they said eventually. "As long as you don't start pretending to hate me again, because I know that's a lie. But I don't want to do that."
Tristan's brow furrowed. "What?"
"I liked kissing you, Tristan Saint Valentine, and I want to do it more. What do you say to that?"
It turned out that Tristan didn't have much to say to that, because in that situation he could communicated everything he needed to by letting Winter kiss him again.
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"In The Whispering Wood" written by BlueBlackInk