Chapter 17: _ I Think I Need My Mother

Tobin let out a melodic laugh that ended in a dark chuckle. He dropped from the vine, landing silently on his feet like a cat.

"The group?" he asked, tilting his head. "Oh, Elira. Sweet, naive, dragonless Elira. There is no group. There was never a group."

Miriel took a terrified step behind me. "Then... why did you bring us down here? This place is filthy!"

"Because it’s quiet," Tobin spread his hands wide as if showing off a grand estate. "Because the Wardens don’t sweep the lower drainage vaults. Because when people die down here, their screams get swallowed by fifty feet of mountain stone, and their bodies rot away before anyone even realizes a first-year has gone missing."

Bren stepped between Tobin and me and lowered her body into a combat stance. "You lured us down here to kill us?"

"Lured?" He corrected, slowly approaching us. "No, no. I invited you. And you walked right in. Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to navigate Last Bastion as a Sylven? Do you know how the high-born houses look at us? Wood-sprites. Gardeners. Little tree-dwelling rodents with oversized egos."

He shot a dark glance at Miriel, whose face drained of all color. "I heard you in the thoroughfare, little dragon. I hear everything."

I wrung my hands. "You’re out of your mind. You’re a first-year. If you kill us, the Academy–"

"I’m not a first-year," Tobin interrupted with a widening smile until it looked unnatural, splitting his thin face. "I’ve been a first-year three times now. The Wardens don’t care about commoners who disappear during free days. They just mark you as dropouts who fled the mountain in terror."

He raised his right hand. The skin of his palm split open, and a thorny black vine slithered out from his flesh, twisting around his wrist like a live snake.

"The system here is broken. It favors the agile shifters and fae with their pure bloodlines. But the ancestors gave ME a very special gift, Elira. A unique, beautiful gift. I don’t need to be born with royal magic..."

He paused, his glowing green eyes fixed on mine with a hunger that made my skin crawl.

"...I just have to take it from people like you."

"An absorber," Bren breathed, horror lacing her tone. "He absorbs powers by killing."

"By harvesting!" Tobin corrected loudly, stepping forward with shocking speed. "I take their core, their strength, their affinity! Every year, I pick off the weak, the naive, the lower-born who think they’ve found a sanctuary. I’ve killed twenty initiates in this room, girls, boys, name it! Twenty! And with every single one, I grow stronger. Faster. Smarter."

I had walked us straight into a trap.

Realization hit me all at once. I had done this.

The warning signs had been there. The uneasy feeling when Tobin approached me. The way something about his smile never quite reached his eyes. The instinct screaming that a stranger offering kindness inside a place like Last Bastion was something to question.

But I ignored it.

Because I was afraid.

I had let Raice’s reputation, the whispers, the threats, and the certainty that some horrible execution waited for me after yesterday’s confrontation cloud my judgment.

I had been so desperate to find someone—anyone—who might stand beside me that I ignored the part of myself that had been telling me to run.

And now... Bren and Miriel...

... They were here because of me.

The two girls who had barely known me for a day had followed me into this place because I told them it was safe.

And now they were going to pay for my mistake.

Tobin flexed his hand, and the black vine whipped through the air with a deafening SNAP, shattering a wooden crate into splinters.

"And today," Tobin grinned with all of his teeth, "you three brought me a buffet."

"Move!" Bren roared.

Before Tobin could strike, Bren’s body vibrated violently. A strange distortion rippled through the air around her, and in a second, her frame split.

Despite the situation, my mouth fell open in glee. So this was it... Her powers.

Two identical copies of Bren burst out from her sides, each wielding a hunting knife.

Replication.

"Miriel, attack!" the original Bren screamed.

All three Brens charged Tobin at once, fanning out in a triangle. The copy on the left lunged first, swinging her blade toward Tobin’s neck. Tobin didn’t even flinch. His speed was faster than the blur of light.

He caught her wrist, twisted it until the bone snapped, and smiled when the body in front of him began to flicker.

"A copy?"

His fingers pierced through the fading illusion instead of flesh. The duplicate collapsed into grey ash.

The real Bren and her second copy reached him simultaneously. "Die, you psycho!" Bren yelled, opening her mouth wide.

A torrent of red-orange fire erupted from her throat, engulfing Tobin in a blinding pillar of flame.

The heat washed over my face, scorching the air in the chamber.

"Did you get him?" Miriel cried out, blue sparks gathered between her fingers. "Is he dead?"

"He better be." I breathed, hating how fast my chest was heaving.

Back in Stonewick, the villagers were annoying, yes. I hated them all. They’d call me names, throw stones at me, hurl spit on my feet, but their disgust, I’d learn to live with.

Hell, I’d even built a whole mantra around it. Smile first, laugh louder than they did. Pretend none of it reaches your chest where it actually hurts.

But fighting psychotic Sylvens with a penchant for luring unsuspecting first-years to their deaths? No toxicity in Stonewick could ever prepare me for this.

I’d never get used to the good-looking monsters and the ugly ones in Last Bastion.

My eyes squinted shut because I never thought I’d ever say this but... I want my mother. I want to go HOME.

The fire cleared and so did my senses.

Tobin stood in the center of the scorched stone, completely untouched. A swirling sphere of water hovered around his body, evaporating the flames before they could touch his skin.

A water affinity, I realized with a stomach-churning dread. He stole a shifter with the water affinity ability.

"Cute," Tobin chuckled.

"Ironic to hear you use a word that wouldn’t qualify you even with the most potent beauty alchemy." Miriel spat.

For once, she didn’t look offended, annoyed, or concerned about her appearance. She looked terrified.

Then she inhaled. The way every dragon noble was taught before their first awakening. The flame that erupted from her throat was nothing like Bren’s.

It was a thin ribbon of pale blue fire that flickered weakly through the smoke before striking Tobin’s chest.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the flame disappeared.

Silence filled the chamber.

Tobin looked down at his coat. A tiny section of the fabric was smoking. Then he laughed. It started as a low one but soon erupted into belly laughter.

"That was supposed to scare me?"

Miriel’s face turned bright red. I expected her to look away. Instead, a smile appeared on her face.

"No."

Tobin’s smile faded slightly. "What?"

Miriel tilted her head. "It wasn’t supposed to hurt you."

Before he could react, the smoke behind him shifted. I followed his gaze. The small blue flame hadn’t disappeared.

The fire had crawled along the ground and burned through the thick black vines wrapped around Bren’s legs.

The restraints fell away. Bren immediately rolled backward, pulling herself free. Miriel crossed her arms, looking far more confident than she had any right to be.

"It was supposed to make you look away."

He stared at the severed vines on the ground and the smile disappeared just enough for me to realize something terrifying.

He wasn’t angry because they hurt him. He was angry because they had entertained him.

"Hm. Nice attempt, girls, but I’m afraid this little dance is starting to bore me."