Page 4 of The Alchemists

He’d been broken.

Thinking of the summer recalled Chant’s speech: If each of you doesn’t have new Words of Power by year’s end, I’ll be crossed and cursed. Seb shivered despite the temperance of the day. Suddenly he was back in Lapland, naked in the cedar sauna, desperately trying to make something, anything happen; finding himself empty of even a single mote of Magic, the inescapable knowledge of his new reality stretched out endlessly before him. He might have never come back if the witches⁠* hadn’t warded him against doing anything self-destructive.

“You okay?” Asher jogged him with his shoulder, brown eyes keen and worried.

“Yeah.”

“Cantrèa?” he asked.

Seb shrugged in response, because a shrug was not technically a lie. He was an awful liar, hated lying by obfuscation to them. If anyone could understand, it would be them. He stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“I can’t believe they put the first matches the day after the bonfire. What were they thinking? Everyone’s going to be hungover.”

“They weren’t thinking, obviously,” Tori cut in. “Speaking of this bonfire, what time would you gentlemen like to put in an appearance?”

“Can’t we just…go when we’re ready?” Asher shot Seb, the perpetual tiebreaker, a pained glance.

“You know how long it takes me to get ready. I need specifics.” Tori glared.

Both of them turned to Seb. He turned his hands out inside his blazer pockets. “Why are you looking at me? I can’t stay out late or celebrate the year accordingly.”

“Rochambeau?”

Asher sighed. “Fine. If I win, we go when I feel moved; if you win, set a time. Best of five.”

Tori grinned, her teeth dazzlingly white. “Nine sounds fine.”

“I can’t believe you’re making both of us waste a cantrip on this,” he grumbled even as he began casting.

“It’s only a waste if you don’t have power to spare,” Tori said sweetly, their argument blurring to background noise in his head.

“Earth to Sebastian!”

Seb turned, tearing his concentration from the entrance of Paracelsus where a flash of dark magic had caught his eye. Magic made the world so beautiful, but this was…a brown-haired girl with a black aura rushing down the steps, her motions a deflection, as if to avoid notice.

“Who is that?” he said, frowning. “Was she in alchemy with us?”

Tori glanced in her direction. “Leper Lily? I feel like I would have noticed. Come on.”

Tori and Asher began—palms spinning together, fists coming to hover over flat hands. They locked eyes, trying to read the intention behind blank expressions, but Seb watched power shimmer out from their closed fists. People had taken note of the obstruction, and a few stopped to watch. Seb squared himself between them, placing a hand over each of their fists. Their familiar magic set a pleasant tingle in his skin.

He pulled his hands away and they began.

It went like this: three strikes of the fist, and then the hand laid palm up. In Tori’s hand a smattering of twinkling stars sparked to life, and in Asher’s a tiny, brilliant sun. The stars swiftly spiraled into a comet formation and struck the sun. Flecks of spectral ash filtered down over Asher’s closing fist before disappearing.

The second round went to Asher, who threw sun again, to eclipse Tori’s tiny moon. Tori took the next round, and Asher the following. On the fifth, two shining moons orbited lazily over two tensed hands.

“Tie breaker,” Seb said, though his roommates were too focused on each other to acknowledge him.

They tied and tied again. A decent crowd had gathered by now, rumors already flying on the basis of the bet. He grinned tightly, imagining how dismayed their peers would be at the inanity of what was being settled.

“Come on,” Asher grimaced. “I’m hungry.”

“Allsaires! What’s the bet?”

“Shut up!” Tori silenced the crowd. Then, to Asher, “You can always concede.”

Two more ties, moons again, then suns. They were in the flow of it now. The way things were shaping up, they’d go on all afternoon. Both Asher and Tori were spectacularly bad at concession and susceptible to extreme tunnel vision. Finally, Tori’s miniature moon flared full and bright, blotting out Asher’s stars.