Dax didn't bother waiting. He jumped between the summon's legs, rolling to the other side of the room as Anthony charged in. Other than the colour, his bat looked like it was made of the same stuff that formed the summon's limbs and head, almost like electricity in a way.
Anthony's bat cracked against the summon's side. The hit should've been enough to crack a few ribs, but the summon barely stumbled. It glared down at him, more in annoyance than anything, but a quick sidestep dodged the crushing blow that followed. A duck evaded another swing of its limbs, and a couple steps backward brought Anthony to the wall of the room, beside Dax.
The summon charged forward, using its limbs to push off in one lunge, impaling itself in the wall as Anthony just barely kicked his partner out of the way.
"Construct: Blade!" With its beak stuck, its neck perfectly vulnerable, Anthony's bat disappeared, being replaced by a blade that extended out of his arm. Just as he was about to attack, a dive-tackle from Dax sent both of them crashing to the floor, just barely avoiding a swipe from one of its arms, which Anthony noticed had grown one sharp claw.
It pulled its beak out of the wall, and a realization struck Anthony like a truck. It was too smart. Most low-level summons worked purely on instinct, but this one had just purposefully tried to trick them to get an easy kill.
"Mmmm… Good intuition, that one has…" Anthony felt a shiver run down his spine. When he'd heard it speak before, he'd assumed it was just repeating words it had heard - that was what most summons capable of speech did. Now that he knew how intelligent it was, he wondered…
He didn't have time to wonder. He pulled Dax out of the way just in time for both of them to avoid another attack. He swung his blade to cut its limb - but the blade wasn't there. He hadn't been focusing on it, so it'd disappeared.
A headbutt from the monster felt like getting hit by a truck. He felt his chest collapse as he was flung backwards, catching himself just in time to sidestep another attack.
Let the sun flow through you.
It was the perfect shot. The summon had just attacked Anthony, and was distracted. Its defenses were completely open. Any Warlock would've attacked.
He threw the punch…
The golden light didn't come.
Even for a normal punch, it was weak. The earlier kick had caught the summon already off balance, but this time, Dax didn't have that advantage. It didn't even look at him before swatting him in the chest.
"Construct: Smoke bomb!" Smoke filled the hallway, causing Dax to cough as he felt Anthony's hands wrap around his shirt collar. He felt himself thrown inside a room, the door slamming closed behind him. He started to sit up, to try to orient himself, and then Anthony's hands were around his collar again.
"What the hell are you doing out there?" His face was so close, Dax could feel small drips of spit hitting the bridge of his nose. "Are you gonna use your magic or what?"
"I don't… know how…"
Dax didn't expect the slap that followed. "I don't give a crap! Hurry up and figure out how, or stay out of my way! If I don't focus on my constructs, then I can't keep them together. There's no way I can focus on you and the constructs at the same time, especially while that thing is swinging its giraffe neck around!!!"
"Come out…. I can still smell you…" Its voice bellowed out, the sound of doors opening and closing just barely audible. It was probably checking rooms for them.
Anthony took a deep breath, letting go of Dax's collar. He straightened his shirt out, closing his eyes to think. "Do you have the button?"
Dax gulped. He couldn't remember the last time his mouth had felt so dry, so stuffed with cotton. "No, I- I lost it."
"Can you find it?"
"Maybe?"
"Find it, and press it. There's no way either of us are beating that, especially when you don't even know how to use your magic."
A few steps, and Anthony's hand was resting on the doorknob. He glanced back, and for a second, when his eyes rested on Dax's trembling face… he felt bad. Dax barely knew what was going on, and this summon was way, way too powerful for an initiation mission. But it wasn't Anthony's fault he was incompetent… So why should he feel bad? "Five seconds. Exactly five seconds after I step out this door, you will follow, and try to find the stupid device while I hold off the summon."
Dax nodded, and Anthony opened the door, disappearing around the corner. He could hear a few thuds, and the growl of the beast - sounds of them fighting.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
He threw open the door, and dashed down the hallway. He could hear Anthony and the summon fighting loudly behind him, but he was going the opposite direction.
The ground floor of the building had 3 hallways, arranged in a sort of T, with the entrance being the top of the T and the room Dax had been in before getting attacked at the bottom, at the end of the third hallway. He knew it wasn't the third hallway that he'd left the device in, but the first and second were both equally likely.
He vaguely remembered turning left first, but that had been, what, thirty minutes ago? The order didn't even matter that much, he couldn't even remember when he'd gotten the dice. Everything was blurring together.
A thud resounded to his right, and he turned to see Anthony flung across the hallway. Barely picking himself up, his glare struck fear into Dax's soul. "What the hell are you doing? MOVE!!!"
He ran left, and prayed he was right.
He kicked open one door. Nothing on the desk.
Same with the second, third, fourth…
Just as he was considering switching hallways, there it was - on top of a filing cabinet in the fifth room. He dashed forward, his fingers wrapping around the cold steel-
Before he could even think about pressing it, the wall exploded concrete and dust flying everywhere as the summon crashed through the wall, Anthony tangled in its limbs. The device flew out Dax's hand, shattering against the wall.
Time stopped. Anthony was on the floor, seemingly barely conscious, pinned there by the monster, which had its head reared back. He'd be dead if he got hit by that beak.
Dax couldn't do anything, though. He had no clue how to use magic, and a normal punch wouldn't do anything. He was useless, how could he-
Passive.
Passive.
PASSIVE.
Hadn't he just come to the conclusion that he couldn't be passive anymore, that he'd take charge of his life? Was he just going to sit by and watch this guy die? Was he not going to try to do something, just because he couldn't?
He clenched his fist. Maybe it wouldn't do anything. Maybe it would be completely useless, a waste of time, of energy. But he had to try.
He had to be active.
A small eruption of golden energy exploded from his fist as it made contact with the summon's face, causing a ringing in the ears and a flash too bright to see through… for anyone who wasn't Dax Harrington.
The impact wasn't nearly as strong as the one he'd hit the golem with, and the opponent was much stronger - but it was enough to hurt, enough to force the summon to pitch backwards. The second shockwave punch, which landed in the stomach of the summoned human skin, was enough to confirm to Dax he knew how to use it. It wasn't necessarily tightening the muscles - it was releasing them, at the last moment, right before the hit landed.
A duck would've put him in a great position, but his reflexes weren't fast enough. He was sent flying back into the hallway by a swing of the summon's legs, stumbling to his feet as it chased after him.
Three leaps backward dodged three beak attacks, switching to a sidestep to just barely get out of the way of the fourth one.
Then, Dax brought his leg up.
Muscles tightened.
Kick thrown.
Just before impact…
Relax.
BOOOM!!!
That one sent the summon careening backwards, its head cracking against a wall. It lurched forward, and for a second, Dax thought it wasn't done.
"Hmmm…." The growl sounded much weaker and less confident than its earlier speech. "Much growth… just recently… would be wise, to wait for more…." Before Dax could react, the summon's spiny limbs were sucked back into the human body's back, the head disappearing down the corpse's throat.
At least, Dax had assumed it was a corpse.
It was the most terrifying out of all the realizations he'd made today. The sounds of flesh squishing and bones cracking were grotesque, the obscenely widened, broken, forced-open jaw now being forced back together.
The girl fell to her elbows and knees as her jaw finished fixing itself, her fingers wrapped around her throat. Blood splattered on the dusty floor as she coughed it up, way too much to be safe. She collapsed, falling unconscious in a fetal position.
Anthony finally summoned enough energy to pull himself to his feet. Other than the holes they'd made, the building seemed to be back to normal. Almost like an illusion, everything had immediately fixed itself when the summon disappeared.
He scrambled into the hallway, and immediately noticed Dax next to the unconscious girl. A memory flashed in his head. He knew what this was.
He focused hard. He was too hurt to keep using magic for long, but keeping a blade up didn't take too much, and he didn't need it for long.
In a few steps, he was standing over the girl. He felt a tinge of guilt - she was the same age as him. But there wasn't another option. He thrust the blade down - and stopped.
Because, suddenly, Dax was standing between the blade and its target. "What the hell are you doing?" Anthony gritted his teeth.
'What… the hell…. are you… doing?" Dax paused every couple words to take a breath. He hadn't realized it in the moment, but using his magic had taken a lot out of him.
"That summon… is a parasite." Anthony was breathing just as heavily. His magic didn't usually take much out of him physically, but he'd sustained a lot of injuries during the fight. "And a powerful one, too. It needs to be destroyed. The girl is a host. The only way to kill the parasite is to kill the host."
"She's… she's a person!"
"Okay? So?" Anthony was getting frustrated. What did he not understand? "Do you think I want to kill her? No! That's the last thing I want to do! But I have to!"
"Do you hear yourself?"
"Why do you care so much? You don't know her!"
Dax paused. Let himself breathe. He realized getting frustrated wasn't a good idea. It wouldn't get him anywhere. Plus, if he couldn't explain his reasoning plainly and calmly… maybe he was wrong.
But he wasn't wrong. He felt in his heart that he wasn't. "Please, just… I've… All my life, I've been passive. Ever since… since I was a kid. The teachers didn't call on me, so I never raised my hand. Nobody approached me, so I didn't approach them. When I saw kids getting bullied on the playground, I just… I just watched. I- I don't want to live like that anymore. I don't want to just let things happen to me. I.. I want to live my life like a person."
"What does any of this have to do with the host?"
"Because she's a person, too!" He didn't fully understand where the words were coming from. He had no clue what he was going to say until it came out of his mouth - but he believed every second of it. "If I regret the way I've lived my life, then maybe she does, too! Maybe everyone does! She didn't choose to become a- a host, or whatever, just like I didn't choose these stupid powers! Just like I didn't choose to lose my mother, just like-" Just like my mother didn't choose to have me. He didn't say that one out loud. "She's already had to suffer because of something she didn't choose! Do you really think she deserves to lose her entire life because of that?"
Anthony wanted to groan. He desired being the perfect warlock. He prided himself on being emotionless, on being stonehearted, on always putting the mission first. It was his best quality, it was the one thing he believed he had above other first years.
So why was this stupid speech making him hesitate?
He knew what he was supposed to do. Either get Dax out of the way and kill the host, or kill them both. Tanner and the headmaster would probably do the latter. Anthony figured the rest of the faculty would opt for the former.
Was there a difference between what was right and what he was supposed to do?
He closed his eyes.
***
They flickered open. He was standing in the center of the headmasters office. The headmaster himself sat in front of him, behind his desk, his arms folded on the table. Mac stood behind him in the corner, two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.
It had been three hours since Anthony had returned from the mission. His torn up hoodie was lying in the trash somewhere, leaving him in a graphic Nirvana t-shirt, which really wasn't in much better condition. "The… initiation mission was a failure."
Silas grunted. "The initiate wasn't strong enough, huh?"
"No." Anthony shook his head. "He held his own well enough. The summon… it was a parasite. A powerful one. Something a pair of third years would've struggled against."
Silas looked back, making eye contact with Mac, who cleared his throat. "Sir, we believe… We believe the summon was hiding its Majik levels, making itself look much weaker than it really was. Geoff seems to believe it was trying to attract weak Warlocks for easy meals."
"A summon with that much intelligence…" Silas grunted, his gaze shifting back to focus on Anthony. "I assume the other boy died, and you slaughtered it, yes?"
Anthony gulped. "A few weeks ago… I read a book in the library. Old school rules that are still around, ones people don't usually enact. There's one… one that says that, if a student, for whatever reason, isn't accepted by the school… a student can take responsibility for them, giving them a shot at an initiation mission."
"What's your point, Shinsaku?"
Anthony flinched at the sound of his last name. "Both… both the initiate and the host are alive, in the nursery. I- I take responsibility. For both of them." He shoved his hands in his pockets to hide the trembling.
The headmaster's face went dark. He leaned forward, and when his voice came forth, it was much deeper than it had been previously. "Take it back, boy."
Anthony was tempted to bite his tongue. To cower and take it all back, to apologize and beg for forgiveness. But he didn't. "No. I- I take responsibility for Dax Harrington and Cecilia Rios."
Silas stood up, glaring into Anthony's eyes. His gaze made Anthony want to hide away, but it was impossible to stop making eye contact. "Fine. I can't stop this. They will both get one chance at initiation. You will accompany them. But if they fail…" Anthony gulped. "Not only will the host be executed, but I promise you and the initiate will never graduate from a single warlock school in this damn country. You are putting people in danger and going against the rules of this society. I hope you understand that. Get out of my office."
Anthony nearly collapsed as he stepped into the hallway. He'd always listened to orders, always tried to be like Mac - doing what had to be done for Warlock society, no matter what. The way Mac had looked in that room, how disappointed he'd seemed… He felt like he'd just gone against everything he'd believed in since completing his own initiation mission.
"Hey." He felt a hand grip his shoulder. It was Mac. "I wouldn't have done that, what you did in there. Geoff probably would've. Angie, too. It wasn't what you were supposed to do." He nodded politely, and Anthony felt stopped in his tracks when he heard Mac's next words. "It was the right thing to do. Good job, Anthony."
He didn't move. Just watched Mac walk away. He didn't know what to think. He didn't know anything anymore.
He was no longer certain that the most efficient action was always the right one.
All he knew was that, no matter the outcome, his entire life had just changed, for better or for worse.