Chapter 378: Varnhol
"Alicia, you’d be our guard. You’d be responsible for the secrecy. What do I mean by that? Use your Wind to disperse our voices so that other people can’t hear them." Theo starts giving instructions.
"Remember, you don’t really need incantations. You just need to visualize what you want and feel the feedback: is your magic doing what you want, or as you imagine it? If not, you need to keep adjusting the way you communicate until your visual and the element match."
Alicia nods and closes her eyes to concentrate. Her back is to the crowd.
"Next is Liam. Use your Water subtly to create illusions, to deceive the crowd’s eyes. You tell them what they need to see, and use your Water to do that. Water can create illusions. Work with Alicia in tandem, since you both need to synchronize the visual and the sounds."
Theo watches both of them attempt what he’s instructed, while keeping half an eye on Hawk.
Hawk is still in his own little world, no signs of waking up. Theo sighs. Both relieved and sad.
The air in the café slowly shifts. It grows breezier. Soft, subtle wind flows through, lulling the crowd. Then the air turns mistier, a sign of Liam’s Water coming into play.
The misty wind blankets the whole café for a few minutes, before the crowd starts to disperse. People murmur to each other about needing to be somewhere else, or having something else to do.
Theo smiles and shifts his attention to Liam and Alicia, checking if they’re struggling to maintain the magic.
Alicia seems to struggle more than Liam.
That’s to be expected. She learned magic much later than he did. But if she keeps going at this rate, she’ll reach the next level faster than most.
He raises his voice. "Good, both of you. Keep going. Maeve and I will get Hawk out."
He turns to Maeve. "Maeve, use your Light to calm Hawk down so we can get him out of here."
Maeve, who has been observing silently, nods. She turns to Hawk, approaches slowly, and extends her Light.
In her first few attempts, it seems she might fail. Hawk shakes his head harder, as if rejecting her Light outright.
But Maeve doesn’t give up. She keeps sending waves of calming light toward him, and finally, after several unsuccessful tries, Hawk starts to settle.
Maeve moves closer and whispers to him, calming him further, and leads him toward the exit.
It’s like coaxing a child who doesn’t want to leave a toy store.
Slowly, step by step, Maeve guides Hawk toward the door.
Theo follows behind them, glancing back at Alicia and Liam every so often. When Maeve’s hand reaches the door, Theo signals for both of them to follow.
Once everyone is outside, Alicia and Liam release their hold on the café.
The whole atmosphere lets out one giant exhale of relief.
People inside the café come back to themselves, disoriented for a moment, before returning to whatever they were doing. Some are more confused than others, but no one seems to notice that Rhaenas isn’t there anymore.
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They drive back to Monforts Residence, the safest place they know. They’re driving back in two cars: Liam, Maeve, and Hawk in Liam’s car, Alicia and Theo in Alicia’s. They decided it that way because they wanted to keep Theo away from Hawk.
Theo didn’t protest, because he knew the reason. He only nodded and gave a few additional instructions in case Hawk got out of control.
But nothing happened during the drive.
Rhaenas quickly drags Hawk into the guest house, and now they’re in the living room. Hawk’s condition hasn’t changed.
Theo says to Maeve, "Okay, Maeve. Now it’s all you. Use your Light to enter his mind. You have to do it slowly and carefully. Mind is the most private place for a magus after Soul Palace. He may reject you instinctively. Make sure you stay away from his Soul Palace, as he could easily kill you."
Maeve is stunned when she hears the last part. So are Alicia and Liam.
"K–kill?" Maeve asks, wide-eyed.
Theo nods. "Yes, Maeve. Kill. So be careful."
When he sees Maeve is still afraid, Theo grins. "Well, I doubt that he wants to kill you. But just stay away from his Soul Palace."
"How do I...?" Maeve’s voice trails off. She’s completely confused.
"Stay away from any kind of door that appears. Just stay away. Other than that, it’s relatively safe." Theo grins.
Maeve looks unsure, but Theo nods to her, assuring her, so Maeve can only take a deep breath and start.
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Hawk looks around in confusion. How did I get here? I’m supposed to be in a café with Thea. Why am I here? This is... where is this?
The area around him is thick with dust, but it isn’t the desert kind of dusty. It’s a red mist mixed with the sand of the desert itself. People are running, trying to take cover.
Fighter jets scream overhead, dropping bombs that explode all around him, tearing apart buildings and the people crouched beneath them.
Screams are drowned out by the roar of the jets.
"ATTACK!" Someone yells from a distance. Moments later, a group of figures wearing goggles and masks to shield their eyes, noses, and mouths from the sand appear, semi-automatic weapons raised.
Strathmore soldiers? Where the fuck am I?
Hawk, a soldier himself once, scrambles instinctively for cover. But he can barely see. The red mist swallows most of his visibility. He ducks just in time as two soldiers pass right in front of him, chasing what looks like a family of three. A young father. An even younger mother. Their infant.
The mother trips and falls. She screams. Her body curls around the baby, shielding it from the impact. The father spins back in a panic. The soldiers are closing in.
He watches in horror as both of them raise their weapons and aim.
"No!" He shouts. A second later, a spray of bullets tears through him and he collapses to the ground.
The mother screams, sobbing over her husband’s body. The soldiers laugh, then turn their guns toward her and the baby.
Hawk lunges at them, yelling, "No!"
But he passes straight through, falling elbows first into the dirt, forced to watch as the mother is gunned down in front of him.
He gets up and swings at the soldiers, fists passing through empty air. He cannot touch them. They are not tangible to him.
"What the fuck?!"
Hawk stares, more confused than ever, as the soldiers simply walk away, leaving the mother bleeding on the ground.
"Hey, wait!" He screams. Nothing. They don’t hear him. He is invisible to them.
Frustrated, he looks down at the mother, bleeding out on top of her dead husband.
Why do they look familiar?
Before he can think further, a cry cuts through everything. The infant.
It’s screaming at the top of its lungs.
Hawk rushes toward it, but once again finds he cannot touch it. He cannot touch anything. He does not exist here.
"Shh, shh, shh." He tries to calm it anyway, uselessly, since it cannot hear him either. "Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. They’ll hear you." He scans the area, but there’s no one else in sight.
It takes him a few seconds to fully understand. The red mist is desert sand mixed with blood. This is a war zone. Bodies are scattered everywhere. Bullets fly at random. Every so often, more shouting, more screaming.
Hawk freezes. He cannot fight. He cannot touch anything. He cannot reach anyone.
He can only watch.
And his frustration builds.
Another group of soldiers approaches the crying infant. One of them sees it’s just a baby and does not hesitate. He draws his pistol and fires.
The cry stops instantly.
Hawk feels the blood rush straight to his skull. "You bastard!" He lunges again, straight through the soldier’s body.
He tries. Again. Again. Again. His fists mean nothing. The soldier feels nothing. He spits on the dead infant and moves on with the others.
"ARGH!" Hawk screams into the void.
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Hawk walks aimlessly. His face is streaked with red mist. His eyes are raw from fury and grief. He can no longer even scream. He can only stare.
After wandering for a while, he realizes where he is. His hometown. Varnhol. He recognizes a few signs, half destroyed, barely legible.
This was his old neighborhood.
The orphanage where he grew up sits just around the corner. When he reaches it, half of the building is still standing. The other half has collapsed entirely.
He approaches and recognizes some of the bodies scattered across what used to be the yard.
When he sees one particular face, he knows instantly.
This was the day he was forced into becoming a child soldier of Varnhol, just to survive. With the orphanage gone, there was nowhere else to go.
So he joined the military.