He barely had a second to savour his victory before he resumed his fall toward the ground, the momentum unbroken.
"Baylin!" he called as the ground rushed up to meet him. "If you don't want your test subject to die, you better intervene right now! Baylin!"
Nothing. The mages below were moving again, still stunned and useless. Marvel cursed as he rushed toward his doom.
Just before his face hit the ground, he felt a familiar tug at his spine dragging him backward.
Never in his life had he felt grateful to be summoned until that moment.
He dropped face-first onto the cold stone floor of Baylin's library.
***
Marvel was beginning to think that the life of a mage wasn't exactly what had been advertised to him since birth. Power, glory, strength—all that beautiful bullshit. Nobody ever talked about the constant near-death experiences, the torture, or when your own athat attempted to murder you.
You would think, having been surrounded by mages for half of his life, someone would have mentioned it. Maybe he wouldn't have tried as hard. Maybe none of this would have happened.
Alas, without warning, he had been thrown into this life of toeing around death almost every minute of the day.
He had been wronged by his friends. By Baylin. By every book he'd read about mages. One day, he would write his own book and tell the world the unedited truth.
Being a mage was awful.
"Suck it up," Baylin said, digging through a magical cupboard she'd summoned. "The self-pity grates on my nerves."
From the armchair Baylin had summoned, Marvel turned to regard her with unconcealed irritation.
"I'm sorry," he snapped, "I'll just stop thinking about how I almost died five minutes ago so you can look for a teacup in silence. Apologies for the inconvenience."
"Oh, please," Baylin said. "You should be thankful that nothing else has happened to you today."
Before Marvel could retort, a small ball of fur landed on his face.
He blinked.
The creature slid down his face, landing in his lap. It was a terrible thing, the size of a large rat, with horns, a lizard's tail, and bird's feet. Clearly, Baylin had been experimenting with animals again. It trembled in his lap. The poor thing was possibly having an even more awful day than Marvel.
He frowned as the creature sniffed him, then began to gnaw on his tunic.
Nope. That title still belonged to Marvel.
He picked it up, holding it away from his chest and stroking its tiny head with a soothing finger. The crackle of the fire and the clank of whatever Baylin was moving about in the cupboard were the only sounds. He wanted to revel in the fact that he couldn't hear the voice of the shadows anymore.
Or he wanted to.
Baylin gave a delighted cry, emerging from the cupboard with two steaming teacups. She offered one to Marvel.
He wrinkled his nose. "Where'd you get the tea?"
"I summoned it from someone's fresh pot," she chirped. "What do you care? It's hot. It's tea. You're thirsty, right? Drink."
He was thirsty.
Warily, Marvel accepted the tea with a free hand, frowning as he recognized the fragrance. Western Isles pitflower leaf. Flynn had been crazy about it, always talking about how homesick it made him feel. Just like that, he wasn't thirsty anymore.
He placed the cup on the arm of his chair and went back to petting the thing. Staring at the green flames, he thought he could make out faces in the fire, though he recognized none of them.
"Like it?" Baylin asked, nodding at the creature. "It's not much of a success compared to the genius of the person who created you."
Marvel frowned. "Nobody created me."
"Do you still think you're the same man you were the day before you left?" Not waiting for an answer, Baylin chortled. "I assure you, you are an entirely different thing than you were before."
Could she be right? He very badly didn't want to think of it.
"Alright," said Baylin when she had settled comfortably in her armchair. "What happened?"
"Apprentice Echo nearly killed me," he said. "I already told you about that."
"Not important."
"Not important? I almost—"
"Died, yes." She waved the subject away. "But that has no value to my research outside of how your akathar managed to do a time-stopping spell—"
"I stopped time?"
"No." Baylin sighed as if he were a moron. "The energy inside you did. I'm not interested in anything beyond its interactions with you and other things."
Marvel rubbed his left temple, feeling a headache begin to bloom. "What do you want to know then?"
"How did all this—" she gestured vaguely at him— "come about? What happened when you left the Academy?"
Marvel's body tensed. "I can't tell you that."
"Can't or don't?" Baylin eyed him sharply.
"Can't." She couldn't tell he was lying anyway. "Grandmaster Fable cast a geas that will harm me if I repeat what I told the Conclave."
"I see." Baylin sat back and took a sip of her tea. "And I'm to assume you told them everything?"
"They'd kill me the moment they thought I was lying," he said. "What would you have done in my shoes?"
From her silence, he understood that she would probably have done exactly what he did, and knew he was lying.
"Fine," she said. "I can just get it out of you once I crack through the defence in your mind. Until then, why don't you tell me what you've experienced these past few days."
Marvel did. What harm could there be in that anyway? After all, without Baylin's help, he didn't think he would survive having the monstrous thing inside him.
When he was done, Baylin whistled. "It's a wonder you're still sane. Mages more powerful than you have had their minds shattered by more trivial circumstances. Colour me impressed."
Marvel only gently scratched the chin of the creature in his lap. He wouldn't exactly say he was coping well. He hadn't time to think about how he was doing.
"I wonder, though," Baylin went on, "don't you fear it?"