The Quantum Games(The Alchemists Academy)

Chapter 18





Roland lunged for the third ball, snatching it up. Wirt and Spencer barely looked at one another.

“Run!” Spencer yelled.

They ran, and Roland threw the ball. Desperation lent Wirt speed, and he sprinted for the tree line, throwing himself into a roll to avoid the initial pass of the ball. He came to his feet and sidestepped as the thing swooped back at him. His lessons with Ms. Burns came back to him, and he managed to use a shield of air to send the ball flying upwards. It shot back to Roland, who caught it and threw it after them again.

Wirt found thoughts of the ball racing through his head. Once thrown, the magic of the thrower kept it on target. It kept the ball hunting their opponent, no matter how far they ran. Losing it was nearly impossible. Unless…

“Split up,” he yelled to Spencer. “It can’t follow both of us!”

Spencer looked like he wanted to argue, but Wirt shoved him aside just as the ball passed through the spot where he had been standing, and Spencer kept going with that push, sprinting off on a strange, zigzagging course obviously designed to fool the ball if it came for him.

It didn’t. Instead, it sped after Wirt as he sprinted for the trees. He darted into them, dodging back and forth between them, hoping to lose the ball, or slow it, or something. It just came on after him, sometimes weaving around the trees and sometimes passing straight through them to leave neat holes in their trunks as it kept coming.

Did Roland hate him that much? Did he have that much power? Somehow, Wirt suspected that it wasn’t just him anymore. He’d seen the greenish mist that had poured into Roland. He’d heard the change in Roland’s voice. Something else was controlling him, and whatever it was seemed to be determined to destroy him. Him, not Spencer, because otherwise the ball would have gone the other way when he and Spencer split up.


So why him? Why did someone want him dead that badly? Or was it just that whatever was in Roland wanted everyone dead, and Wirt was just the first on the list? Wirt glanced back. The ball was gaining on him, slowly but surely, its glow as bright as ever as it pulsed its way after him. Wirt knew he couldn’t keep running. Instead, he scrambled up the nearest tree, using magic to push against the air itself to make the climb easier. So far, the ball had been on a flat path just a few feet from the ground, and the one time Wirt had deflected it higher it had gone back to Roland, so maybe it wouldn’t be able to follow him.

Wirt saw the answer to that hope as the ball curved gently upwards after him. Worse, he was stuck there, because throwing himself out of a tree this size wouldn’t be much better than letting the thing hit him. But then, what had he expected? Hadn’t Ms. Burns told him that the only sure way to get away from the quantum ball was transportation?

Wirt winced as he realized how stupid he’d been. He could have done this at the start and saved himself a lot of running. Except of course, then the ball might simply have gone after Spencer. Now though, it blazed towards him, its surface a lurid mess of light almost too bright to look at. Wirt watched it coming, almost close enough to reach out and touch, and he vanished.

He reappeared on the field, where everything was in chaos. People were running about, seemingly at random. Other people were screaming. At the heart of it all, moving fast, was Roland. He’d recovered the two balls that he and Wirt had thrown simultaneously, and now he used them to devastating effect. He threw one at a woman in the stands, and she didn’t even have time to scream before she vanished in a burst of energy. He threw one after a clutch of younger students, and they scattered, one of their number falling. Wirt stretched out his power, snatching the boy away with his transportation magic even as he winced at the effort of doing it.

When the quantum ball missed, or when its intended victim managed to deflect it with magic, it sped back to Roland’s hand. When it hit, its victim vanished as his or her constituent atoms were scattered across a thousand dimensions, torn apart so completely that it would be impossible to put them back together. And still, Roland kept throwing the ball.

“I will destroy you!” he boomed, in the voice from the box. “I will have vengeance!”

The box. Somehow, whatever was in it was behind all this, which meant that Wirt needed to find it. He needed to find it now. Doing that, however, was easier said than done. There were so many pushing, jostling, fleeing bodies in the way, and Wirt still had to remember where the box had been.

It had been where they’d been standing to hear the results, which was just over… there, in the middle of the main group of people fighting to get away. Wirt forced his way through them, feeling like a fish swimming against some kind of raging river, getting swept backwards by them a step for every two he took forward. He pushed against people with magic as well as physical strength, creating a kind of bubble of air around himself that bounced people off as Wirt forced his way between them, keeping his eyes on the ground; looking for the dull gleam of lead.

He spotted it, several yards away, and shoved towards it. Before Wirt could get to it though, a foot clipped it like a soccer ball, and it spun away. He chased after it, looking up just in time to avoid another randomly thrown quantum ball. It hit a slender man with delicately pointed ears, obviously a parent, and he was gone, just like that. The last thing Wirt saw in his eyes was shock. Shock that it should be him. Shock that it could happen at all.

That spurred Wirt on. He pushed harder with his magic as he forced his way forward to the box, finally diving on it and grabbing it with both hands. A voice, the voice that had sounded so clearly from Roland’s throat, came from within.

“Boy! It is time to strike! All those descended from Merlin must die! All those who bear his magic must fall!”

Wirt wrenched open the box, prepared to confront whatever was within. At least, he thought he was prepared. At the sight of what lay within, however, it was all he could do to keep from throwing up. It was a heart. A human heart, blackened with age, or perhaps with something else, beating in the confines of the box as though it still pumped blood around some vile body. Instead of blood, though, what pumped through it was that greenish mist; the same mist that had forced its way into Roland.

“You…” the voice came from the box again, and Wirt could see the eddies in the mist as it came. “I can sense you. I know what you are. You will fall, pride of the academy. All your kind will fall. They must.”

“What are you?” Wirt demanded. “Who are you?”

The heart didn’t answer, and Wirt could feel the anger building in him.

“Answer me,” he said. “Answer me, and stop this, or I’ll destroy you, whatever you are.”

That got a reply, a long, drawn out reply that started low and ended on a cackling high. It was a laugh. Whatever spirit, or power, or evil sentience resided in the heart was laughing at him.

“Destroy me? You are not ready for that yet, boy, and you never will be.”

Wirt felt the touch of the green mist as it slid up over his fingers. He felt it, and it hurt. It was like being burnt, frozen, and electrocuted all at once, so that for a moment, all he could do was cry out in pain as the mist slid up his arm.

“Maybe I should claim you instead of the foolish boy,” the voice from the box said, almost a whisper now. “Maybe I shouldn’t destroy you. Maybe I should make you my champion.”

“No,” Wirt said, through gritted teeth. “No!”

As he did that, power leapt up, wreathing his hands in flame. The mist coating them seemed to recoil from it like some kind of snake, pulling back into the box. “Then you’ll die, as you should.”

“I won’t be the one who dies,” Wirt said, raising his hand and calling up more fire. He’d used it to melt stones before, so how much different would it be to destroy one ancient heart? He would burn it until there was nothing left of it, the box or the mist.

“You’re too late,” the voice said. “You were always too late.”

Wirt looked down at the heart, and somehow it seemed like it was less real. Less solid. It was fading away, Wirt realized with a start, and he poured fire down into the box as swiftly as he could, hoping to catch it before it was gone. The heat of the flames his elemental magic called up was enough that the sides of the box buckled and started to melt, but Wirt knew even as he stopped the spell that it hadn’t destroyed the heart. It was gone.

Gone where? Wirt could guess the answer to that as more people ran past him. He stood, and with everyone else trying to get away, he found himself alone in a clear space in front of the stand. A little way away, Roland was still there, breathing heavily and looking around as though looking at the world for the first time. The first time in centuries, at least.

“I should have done this at the start,” he said, in a louder, clearer version of the voice from the box. “I wanted the foolish boy to have his chance, but this is so much more.”

Wirt looked at him then. Really looked at him, with the kind of magical awareness that he’d been training over the past few weeks. He saw Roland, and so much about him wasn’t himself anymore. He looked deeper, and for a moment, it was like Roland’s skin fell away, because Wirt was sure that he could see the black heart inside him, pressed against his and beating with it, tendrils of green smoke wrapped around it like chains.


“I will destroy you,” Roland said, softly, confidently, and Wirt knew just by looking at him that he was out classed. This wasn’t Roland anymore. This wasn’t just a student. Whoever had taken his body was a master of magic just to do that.

Then a pair of figures stepped past Wirt, into the space between him and Roland. Ender Paine looked terrifying. His eyes seemed to glow with black light, and he had removed those strange white gloves he always wore to reveal hands covered in scars and tattoos that seemed to shift and blur as they formed mystical symbols with every movement of his fingers. Ms. Lake looked almost as dangerous. Her hair seemed to float in some kind of unseen wind, while small pools of water seemed to form with every step she took.

“This has gone on long enough,” Ender Paine said.