Kane's Fate 3 Chapter 3

“It says it’s more dangerous than the plague back in the 1700s, too…” Dax moaned as he climbed back onto his bed.

“Great,” I huffed and started to clear the pestle and mortar away.

“More dangerous than a plague that killed off thousands of people?” Demi whispered through her fingers as she peered at the blue stains that had been burned into the fabric of the carpet.

“Looks that way, yeah.” Dax sighed heavily as he finally flopped down in a heap on his bed, and he wedged a pillow under his chin to hold his head up. “This marking was only meant to be a stain, it wasn’t meant to burn through the actual carpet. The stronger the burn, the stronger the potency of the affliction.”

“And we’re immune?” Charlotte asked as she chewed on her lip.

“Seems like it,” I replied with a shrug. “Somehow, only us four haven’t been affected.”

“Well, at least if we’re not ill we can figure out a way to cure it,” Indira said firmly.

“Dax, do you know anything else? Could this be an attack spell of some kind?” I pressed my tattooed friend, but he shook his head from where it was buried in his pillows again.

“I have no idea, I just figured it was worth being sure what we were up against,” Dax mumbled sleepily. “The charm on the potion can only show how deadly this thing is.”

“Deadly?” Demi squeaked.

“For real?” I asked as a pit of dread opened in my stomach. “This thing can kill?”

“The potential is there. Right now, for me at least, it feels like I’m being… I dunno, drained is the best word I can think of.” Dax sighed, and I could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “It’s taking everything outta me. Literally.”

Dax’s words made my blood run cold, and I thought back to what the woman in the shop had said about other magical people being affected. This meant it wasn’t just my classmates and professors at Meloria in danger. It was my brother in the Regimen, maybe even the Premier of our magical world, my mom and dad…

“We need to find a cure,” I declared. “If we’re immune, we need to take advantage of that and try to help everyone.”

“I agree,” Charlotte whispered, and then she nodded to where Dax had finally passed out asleep and started to softly snore. “Let’s get out of here and let him rest.”

The four of us snuck out of Dax’s room and out of the charmer dorms altogether. It was late afternoon by the time we got out onto the quad, and the sun had started to throw long golden arcs across the lawn as it slipped beneath the top of the buildings.

“I think we should talk to the history professor,” Charlotte suddenly said as we wandered almost aimlessly on the quad.

“Jude?” Indira asked, and then she blinked her beautiful gray eyes as the light bulb went off in her head. “That’s a great idea, Charlotte. He knows a whole bunch about the first plague from centuries ago.”

“I should hope so, being our history teacher,” I chuckled as I wound my arm around Charlotte’s shoulders and kissed her on the top of her head. “Perfect idea though.”

It was the first time I’d ever been in the professors’ dormitories since Indira always came to crash with me in the shifters’ rooms. My girlfriend had said the professor’s dorms were far too loud late at night, and she didn’t want her fellow professors to hear how much of a literal animal I am between the sheets.

She’d almost made me blush.

The professors’ dorms were laid out exactly the same as the student’s, except there was a small brass plaque with a name embossed into the metal on each door. The four of us hurried down the corridor until we found a plaque that said ‘Jude Macintosh,’ and I rapped on the door with my knuckles.

“Who is it?” a breathless voice called out at the sound of my knock.

“It’s Kane Turner,” I said. “The shifter?”

“I’m not sure now is the best time, Kane.” I heard the history professor stifle a groan. “I’m not feeling too good, but if it’s urgent then please come in.”

“How are you, Jude?” Indira asked softly as she pushed the door open, and the four of us filed into the history professor’s room.

Jude Macintosh was pretty young to be a professor, and he was a tall, scrawny looking guy with messy curls of soft brown hair and thin round glasses. He normally had an almost annoying eagerness about him, like a golden retriever puppy, and this was the first time I’d ever seen him with a real look of discomfort on his face.

He was sitting at his desk with his head almost in his arms, and his hair was even messier than usual from where he’d been running his hands through it.

“Hi, Professor.” I held up an awkward hand by way of a greeting. “We just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about the plague, back in the 1700s…?”

“I know, Kane.” Professor Macintosh sighed deeply.

“About the plague?” Charlotte asked as she eagerly stepped forward.

“About your need for guidance and strong desire for answers, mostly.” Jude Macintosh smiled through the grimace on his face. “I’m a connector, I can sense all of your emotions. Right now, though, it feels like I’m connected to every single magical being in this school.”

“You’re unable to control it?” Indira asked as she gently placed a hand on the professor’s shoulder.

“It’s exhausting, experiencing everyone’s worry and fear at the same time,” he muttered with a shake of the head. “But I’m a history teacher, so the least I can do is try and give you whatever information you want so badly.”

“We seem to be immune to whatever is happening right now,” I told the young professor. “We just want to help.”

“I can sense that, too.” Professor Macintosh smiled up at me. “So, what do you need to know?”

“We already know this… affliction, or whatever it is, it’s not exactly an illness,” I said. “It’s not affecting the human population at all, it’s just the magical community. It feels almost targeted. It feels like something is purposefully draining magic right out of people, and we wondered if this was similar to what happened before.”

“No, it’s a great deal different from the plague that happened centuries ago in that case,” the professor replied. “It affected everyone, and the sickness presented itself in the same exact way regardless of whether patients were human or magically inclined. But it did eventually fade, after some time, and after a considerable loss of life.”

“Yeah, we’re trying to avoid that part.” I sighed.

“Can you think of any similarities?” Indira asked gently, and Jude shrugged.

“There was never any proof the plague from the sixteenth century was produced magically, though the Concurem did a considerable amount of memory wipes to err on the side of caution.” The professor ran his hands through his messy brown hair again. “I feel like whatever is happening to our community right now, it has to be magically inclined for it to only affect us and not the human population.”

“That makes sense.” I nodded. “But what’s the goal?”

With every bit of information I learned, I was more convinced the Atroba were trying to weaken their enemies, but I wanted to cover all my bases just in case.

“I’ve already begun researching possibilities,” the professor said as he reached for a journal on his desk. “I told the dean I would find out what I can, but this was before I spoke to the four of you. I was researching history on people having their powers manipulated, but I wasn’t aware there would be a connection to another plague from centuries ago. I’ll let you know if I find anything useful.”

“Thank you for your help, Professor,” Demi said as she nervously played with one of her braids.

“Get some rest if you need to,” Charlotte added, and the professor chuckled in a pained way.

“There’s no way I’ll be able to rest or even sleep properly with my connector powers constantly latching on to everyone.” Jude smiled. “I’ll focus on the research for now.”

“Let us know if you need anything, okay?” Indira told the history professor, and he nodded as we left him at his desk.

The four of us were silent as we left the history teacher’s room, and I knew we were all lost in thoughts tinged with worry.

“I think we should go and talk to the dean,” I suddenly said to my girls. “If Professor Macintosh doesn’t know what’s up yet, maybe Canmore has more current information for us.”

“I just hope she’s alright…” Indira sighed as she led us over to the elevators. “But let’s go find out. She’s on the top floor.”

The four of us rode the elevator to where the dean’s digs took up almost the entire third floor, and I went to knock on the polished wooden door and heard the dean call my name from behind it.

“Come in, Kane,” Canmore said from the other side of the door, and the four of us trooped into her living quarters.

It was a massive open plan apartment with floor to ceiling windows on the west side and comfortable looking brown leather couches and armchairs scattered around. Aside from the windows, every other wall in the place was covered in bookshelves, and Dean Canmore appeared from behind another door that I figured was her actual bedroom.

There was a large wooden desk with piles of paperwork and a fancy looking lamp at the far end of the apartment, but the dean opted for the leather couches and motioned for us to sit down with her.

The sandy-haired leader of Meloria had a consistent pained expression on her face that made her forehead and nose scrunch up, but otherwise she looked okay.

“How are you, Dean Canmore?” Charlotte asked as she curled up like a cat on the end of one of the couches.

“I’ve been better.” The dean smiled as she rubbed at her temples. “My visions are completely out of whack, though. I keep seeing multiple things at once, and then they immediately change, and my brain feels like a cocktail. How come the four of you look fit as fiddles?”

“We don’t seem to be affected by what’s happening,” I replied. “Though you need to rest.”

“No rest for the wicked, I’m afraid.” Canmore attempted a smile, but it slipped into a grimace as she rubbed her forehead again. “People are relying on me, and rightly so.”

“But you’re suffering just as much as everyone else,” Indira said gently from where she sat on the couch opposite to the dean. “Let us do the heavy lifting for you, at least.”

“I have to say, as usual, your help is greatly appreciated,” Dean Canmore said with another forced smile. “What do you know so far?”

“We spoke to Professor Macintosh to see if the plague from the sixteenth century was the same as this one, since both times we’ve had asteroid landings,” I told the sandy-haired dean. “We figured there had to be some kinda correlation. But the professor told us everyone was affected last time, the regular humans as well as the magical community. And it was a proper plague, like an actual illness. Right now, only the magical populace is being affected, and it’s like their powers are being thrown out of whack and then drained.”

“What else do you know?”

“We’re trying to figure out a cure, but this is an unknown affliction we are seemingly unaffected by,” I explained.

“I mean, there’s got to be some kind of cure, right?” Charlotte asked the dean in a worried voice. “If we aren’t affected, that means there’s hope?”

“There’s something different about us,” Demi piped up with a nod. “Which has to be a good thing, right?”

“But for an unknown ailment to affect a majority of the magical population?” Dean Canmore sighed heavily. “This isn’t good at all.”

“Dax Mullen also did a potion to try and diagnose whatever this thing is,” Demi added as she nervously twirled a cornrow of hair around one of her fingers. “He said this thing has the potential to be deadly.”

“It’s bad, but there will be an answer,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. “If the source is magical, that means the cure will be, too. We’ll figure it out, I promise.”

“We need to, because the worst case scenario is the entire magical community ceases to exist because their powers no longer work,” Canmore sighed, and she rubbed at the sides of her head again and stifled a groan. “It’s exhausting me.”

“Yeah, Dax described it as draining,” I said. “Like he’s being drained of his magic.”

“Mr. Mullen and I have this concern in common,” Canmore moaned as she screwed her eyes shut against another onslaught of mismatched visions. “I just can’t seem to get a grip on it, it’s like trying to catch smoke with my bare hands. Just slips through my fingers every time.”

“We can’t let our magic just disappear,” Charlotte insisted. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I’m trying to think why the four of you would be supposedly immune.” Dean Canmore sighed as she squinted at us.

“I’m a charmer, so it’s not a shifter thing.” Charlotte shrugged.

“Even as shifters, our feras and our secondaries are all totally different,” Indira commented and pursed her lips.

“We must find the common denominator between you,” the dean said with a slight nod. “The answer will lie there, I just can’t think.”

“We’ll do some more research, we’ll head to the library now,” I said to Canmore. “We won’t stop until we figure out what’s going on. But you need to rest, okay?”

“Use my archives.” The dean laid her head against the arm of the leather couch with a soft groan. “And the prophecy journal, it’s on my desk.”

“We’ll find something, I swear,” I said to her firmly. “Do you need anything?”

“I need someone in charge of Meloria who isn’t completely down and out,” Canmore muttered against the soft brown leather of the couch. “Ms. Winters, that means you.”

“You want me in charge of the entire Academy?” Indira gasped with her gray eyes widening in surprise.

“You’re a member of staff now,” the dean reminded her with a slight smile. “I need someone available if anything happens, someone who isn’t sick. Can you handle it?”

“O-Of course, Dean Canmore.” Indira straightened her posture and nodded firmly. “Whatever you need.”

“My keys are also on my desk, Mr. Turner,” Canmore addressed me through a yawn. “You’ll need them to get into my office. Study the prophecy journal. Keep me updated.”

The dean had started to speak in shorter and shorter sentences, and I could tell how exhausted she was by her drooping eyelids.

“Get some rest,” I told her gently. “We’ll keep you posted if and when we find anything, okay?”

“Thank you, Kane…” Canmore muttered as her eyelids started to flutter and close.

We gathered the supplies from Canmore’s huge wooden desk and then quickly snuck out of her room as she passed out on the soft leather couch. It was odd to see the normally strong and omnipotent dean become so tired and exhausted from whatever was draining the magic from her, and I gripped the prophecy journal a little tighter as we rode the elevator back down and headed toward the library.

We had to find a cure for whatever was happening. We had to find something.

That meant we had to use every connection and knowledge base we had, and I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket as we walked toward the Medius.

The ling rang for a few seconds until eventually, my older brother Kolton picked up.

“Hey, baby brother,” he said. “What’s up, are you sick?”

“Are you?” I asked in response.

“Yeah, I feel like a first year, but the Regimen is already looking into it.” Kolton sighed. “Mom and Dad are the same.”

“So, it really is affecting the entire magical community…” I muttered with a frown.

“Yeah, bet it’s no fun half-shifting into a tiger without any warning,” Kolton laughed down the phone, and I rolled my eyes.

“I’m not affected,” I told my older brother and tried to keep the smugness out of my voice. “Neither are my girlfriends.”

“Immunity is a shifter thing, then?” Kolton quickly asked.

“No, Charlotte is a charmer like you, so that can’t be it,” I said, and I smiled down at Charlotte when she looked round at me at the mention of her name.

“Well, shit…” Kolton whistled, and then I heard him fumbling awkwardly with something. “Sorry, Kane… the whistling made the light bulbs blow.”

“Please be careful.” I rolled my eyes again, and Kolton huffed out a laugh.

“What have you found so far then?” my brother asked me. “And don’t try and deny it, I’d be willing to bet my entire salary that you and your band of chicks have been playing PIs on this shit.”

“There’s some kind of connection between what’s happening now and the plague in the 1700s,” I sighed in reply as I walked to the Medius with my girlfriends. “Whatever this new affliction is has also got a very strong potential to be deadly, too.”

“So, we’re talking about a literal magical plague,” Kolton deadpanned. “Awesome. I was hoping you’d be calling with better news.”

“And I was hoping you’d have a better idea of what’s going on than we do.” I couldn’t help but fall back into sibling rivalry, and then I sighed heavily. “Are you okay, though?”

“Yeah, little brother, I’m okay,” Kolton murmured. “Our scientists have been trying to figure out a cure, or even a cause, but we’ve got jack shit so far. We’re all just trying not to accidentally set charms on each other, or set each other on fire.”

“Well, we’re off to dive into some heavy research,” I said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Yeah, just the lives of thousands of magical people relying on you and that research,” Kolton snorted.

“I captured a whole bunch of Atroba extremists and saved the dean of Meloria,” I immediately fired back. “It’s barely been a year since I activated, you should have a little more faith in me.”

“I do have faith in you,” Kolton said, and his deep voice suddenly became sincere. “But it seems like a whole lot to rest on one person’s shoulders.”

“I’ve got my girls.” I allowed myself a smile as Demi, Charlotte, and Indira turned to throw grins over their shoulders at me. “There’s got to be a reason we haven’t been affected, and we’re gonna find out why.”

“Okay, little brother. Good luck.” Kolton sighed. “Feel like you’re gonna need it.”

I said my goodbyes to my older brother, and the four of us headed into the library.

I suddenly really missed Auden. Pouring through ancient texts and huge books was far more his gig than mine, and he just had a better eye for it. Plus, the guy could read Latin.

I pinged him a quick text telling him to message me when he was awake so I could check in on him before I turned to Demi, Charlotte and Indira.

“Okay, we should start with the medical texts, right?” I ran a hand through my hair, and my three girls nodded eagerly at the direction.

Then we gathered as many books together on the topic as we could possibly find and spread them out on the wide wooden library tables before we started to pore over them in detail.

I found a gruesomely detailed account of a homemade potion a mountain bear shifter had concocted that gave his entire village fur and claws, as well as something called ‘magical lethargy’ which was a self-inflicted exhaustion from casting, or shifting, or using magic way too often.

“Nothing like what’s happening, though…” Indira sighed as she flipped a book closed and pushed it away from her.

“Yeah, I’ve found almost nothing about the plague that happened centuries ago,” I groaned. “It’s like whatever accounts there are, they tell you as little information as possible.”

“And there’s nothing in here at all about people’s magic going haywire, either,” Demi commented. “I feel like we’re getting nowhere fast here, guys.”

“There’s something here about a charmer-- well, they called her a witch back in the day-- but she hexed someone she was battling with to put like, a mental block on their powers,” Indira said quickly as she continued to read. “Hey, could that be something?”

“It might be, actually.” I grinned at the gray-eyed shifter. “Sounds like a pretty good MO for stopping someone’s magic.”

Could we have found a potential reason for the magical plague? Someone trying to get a leg up on the magical community? That definitely sounded like Atroba, but if they were behind this, why not claim responsibility? All the Atroba assholes I’d met had been prideful dicks, so I would have expected some kind of ransom communication from them if they were behind this.

We were no closer to figuring out who or what was causing it, but discovering a motive was something at least.

From this sort of motive, it made sense to assume whoever was behind this wanted the magical community on their knees. The reason still eluded us, but right now it seemed geared toward a coup.

Philo Geralds had made it very clear how he felt about the Premier and the government, and what better way to take everything down than with a magical plague that decimated the population? The government would be crippled and pretty much non-existent, and there would be no one to fight back against an overthrow.

This line of thinking linked immediately back to the Atroba, and their connection made perfect sense. Maybe their silence on the matter was just Philo gearing up for the final blow.

We still had no idea about a cure, though, which was definitely the more pressing matter.

“I feel like we’ve tapped medical records,” Demi groaned. “I think we should try a different angle.”

“We haven’t looked in the prophecy journal yet,” I pointed out. “Something has to be in there, right?”

The prophecy journal had been written by Dean Canmore’s seer ancestor and was full to bursting with every single vision of the future she’d ever had. The old pages were covered in smudged ink scribbles and even detailed sketches of things she’d seen, and as we started to flick through the pages, I was in awe at some of the historical events I recognized.

She’d predicted the Great Depression, which had apparently only affected the humans and therefore made it even harder for the magical community to keep itself in the shadows. She’d seen visions of the moon landing, and I noticed she mentioned landings and even settlements on many other planets in our distant future, too. Some of the depictions were so detailed it was like reading them from a history book, and as I turned a page, I suddenly saw something that made my eyes light up.

“A skeleton-cure?” My finger punched at the page to stop Indira turning it again. “As in like a skeleton-key? A cure-all?”

“Oh my god, Kane, yeah I think you might be right!” Charlotte gasped.

“This is it,” Indira agreed and leaned forward excitedly.

“What do we need to do?” Demi asked as she peered over my shoulder.

The journal listed an exact ingredient list to create the cure, and it was precisely what we needed.

Though one of the ingredients listed was just ‘blood’, and it didn’t say from what type of animal, so I made a mental note to mention it to Dax.

“It even says here, it will cure a magical ailment before it has the chance to wipe out ninety percent of the magical population,” Indira said in a horrified tone. “Ninety percent?”

“We’ll need a charmer to do it,” Charlotte said with a pale face, and she gulped. “Would Dax be up for it?”

“He’ll do it.” I nodded with confidence.

“Well, we need a seer, too,” Demi told us with a grimace. “And Dean Canmore can’t help right now.”

The journal also stated there was one ingredient in particular we needed to search for, because Canmore’s ancestor couldn’t tell exactly where in the world it would be when the correct time came.

“We just need to go and find another seer who isn’t suffering as much as Canmore,” I decided as Demi snapped a shot of the prophecy journal page on her cell phone, and Charlotte and Indira started to put the mountain of books back onto their correct shelves.

Then we hustled over to the seers’ dormitory, and where the charmers’ common room had looked like a magical bomb had gone off, the seers’ living quarters were as silent as the grave.

“We’ll just have to knock on doors and see who we can find that isn’t too sick to help,” I sighed and tentatively raised my fist against the door of the first room.

“Whoever it is, go away.” I heard a stifled man’s groan from within. “Unless it’s either Megan Fox or Scarlett Johansson.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I called back and moved onto the next one with a chuckle.

We went from room to room, but most of the seers suffered with the same awful migraines as Dean Canmore, and they either refused to help or simply didn’t answer us.

I was just about to give up when someone spoke from the second to last room.

“I’d be happy to try and help you.”

I whirled around and found Penny standing in the doorway to her bedroom with a wrinkled forehead and a slightly forced smile on her petite face.

Her short black hair, which was normally sleek and shiny, was jutting up in random spikes from where she’d obviously been tossing and turning in her sleep, and her blue eyes were tired and watery with deep dark circles beneath them.

“You’re sure you’re feeling well enough to do that?” I asked as I looked her over apprehensively.

“My head feels like a cleaver is wedged between my eyeballs, but yeah, I can do it.” Penny nodded and ran a hand through her disheveled hair.

“You have no idea how helpful that would be Penny, thank you.” Charlotte smiled at the dark-haired seer girl.

“I heard you guys talking about the fact you’re immune to whatever the hell is happening right now,” Penny mumbled as she motioned for us to follow her into her room. “I can’t make out anything at all, but if you guys end up finding a cure for it, this is the least I can do.”

The seer had covered her window with a thick black blanket, and several raw white candles were flickering on different surfaces in her room. Wax had melted into weird ghostly lumps on her desk, and a pink salt lamp just like Demi’s glowed red in one corner of Penny’s bedroom.

“Sorry for the funeral home aesthetic,” she automatically said and shot me a shy smile as if she’d somehow read my mind. “It just helps, you know?”

“Sure,” I chuckled and held my hands up. “You don’t have to explain yourself. It’s pretty cool.”

“The mood lighting is hot, actually,” Demi said casually as she perched on Penny’s desk chair, and the young seer laughed and then groaned as she clutched at her head.

“Quit making me laugh,” she said through a grimace. “That hurts more.”

“Sorry,” Demi whispered, and the two of them shared another quick grin.

“So,” Penny started as she sat cross-legged on her bed and held a pillow in her lap. “What can I do?”

“We’re looking for a Lilith Solacae flower,” Indira explained matter of factly.

“I have no idea what that is,” Penny said as she looked between the four of us.

“Well, we have a journal here that might give you more of a heading,” I told her and pulled the prophecy journal out of my backpack. “Here.”

“This is an original manuscript?” Penny gasped as I handed it over. “This is… hundreds of years old. It’s an original vision?”

I nodded in confirmation, and Penny chuckled to herself despite the grimace that followed.

“Wow…” she murmured as she splayed her hands out on the page. “I can feel it. This is incredible.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to find the flower the prophecy mentions?” Charlotte asked as she fidgeted from side to side.

“If this is the original, then I should just be able to tap into the first vision’s energy and feed it back into myself to pinpoint where it is for me. If that makes sense.” Penny blushed a little.

“Kinda.” I shrugged with a laugh. “But you’re the expert. You want us to leave?”

“No, it’s okay…” Penny said softly, and her voice started to become breathy as she felt the pages with her fingers and let her eyes slide closed. “I’m already searching for it.”

Then I watched as Penny gently moved her hands across the page and drew the energy from the ink back into herself.

I knew the future was liable to change thanks to Canmore’s many explanations, and nothing was set in stone, but it suddenly felt completely correct that Penny was helping us do this. Like Canmore’s ancestor knew exactly what was going to happen, and how to guide the young seer through the visions.

“Can someone get me a pen and paper?” Penny suddenly whispered with her eyes still closed. “On my desk, there’s a sketchpad.”

Indira grabbed the pad of paper and a sharp pencil from the stack on Penny’s desk and gently handed them to the seer, and I watched in awe as Penny ripped a page from the sketchpad and laid the paper out on top of the ancient prophecy journal, as if she were about to start tracing the ink markings.

Instead, we all watched in silence as the black-haired seer started to sketch something entirely new onto the paper she had laid against the prophecy book, and after a few minutes, an image started to appear.

Then the pencil suddenly snapped between Penny’s fingers, and her blue eyes shot open with a gasp. Her breathing was suddenly labored and quick, and I rushed over to her and knelt down beside the bed to take her hand.

“Penny, hey, are you okay?” I asked as her fingertips stiffened in mine.

“Oh… Kane. Hi. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you all, that’s kinda… Well, I’m still learning, that probably looked far more dramatic than it needed to be,” Penny rambled and immediately pulled her hand away from mine as another blush crept up her pale neck and into her cheeks. “Sorry, everyone.”

“Hey, no apologies necessary,” Demi said with a grin. “You’re a very talented artist, Penny.”

“It’s my secondary ability.” The black-haired seer grinned. “I can draw my visions in exact detail.”

I glanced down at the page and saw she’d sketched something that represented a rainforest, with trees and plants and birds.

“Where is this?” I asked and glanced up at her curiously.

Penny grimaced again before she answered me.

“New Zealand.”