Chapter 117: 117: The Academy Test XXVII
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Rusk’s knees forgot math. He sat down fast and decided to hate jars later.
Edda recovered in one clean pivot and went for the jar, ignoring John’s shoulder, which was a mistake. John’s free hand caught her wrist. He did not squeeze. He pulled the baton instead. The metal leapt from her hand into his field and stuck there like a spoon to honey.
Edda blinked. "Okay," she said. "That was new."
Fizz, still in glass, pointed a paw and roared in a tiny voice, "And now you apologize to the hedge." He held up a paw like a magistrate with a scroll. "I have a list."
Brann had seen enough. He dropped a net from the ceiling, a folded square of weighted silk with copper thread. Circle three speed. It fell like a quiet curtain toward the boy and the jar.
John kicked the table hard. It flipped, a wooden wall. The net hit it, draped, and slid. Copper kissed wood. Wood did not care.
Brann did not swear. He never swore when work got interesting. He cut air again, and the beams bent toward each other. The room wanted to become a mouth.
John threw the field up. The beams slowed and creaked. Fizz looked up from inside the jar. "We are in a house sandwich," he said. "I hate house sandwiches."
The fourth bell came, closer now, heavy and calm. The city woke its shops. The academy would be lighting its halls.
Edda feinted for John’s knees and cut for his wrist. John rolled his forearm under hers, turned the field thin like a knife, and shaved the strap off his left cuff without cutting skin. The last leather line fell with a sad little flop.
Rusk came back to himself and went for the jar again, because men who get hit by jars hold grudges against jars. Fizz bared tiny teeth. "Touch me and I will sue," he said. "For emotional damage."
John flicked two fingers. The jar slid, the box slid, Rusk grabbed air, and fell into the chair that used to own John. It did not like him as much. A ring bit his wrist. He yelped. "Brann."
"Sit," Brann said, not looking.
The door bar shook. Someone outside tried it, sleepy and slow. Pim maybe. The knock did not come. Footsteps wandered away. The city went on with its morning.
"Finish," Brann said. No more calm. Just work.
He brought both hands up and pulled the old nails again, but this time from the walls. Edda moved with the hail, throwing her body behind the metal rain. John swore once and set the field like a dome. Nails rang on it like dry hail on a bell. Fizz winced inside the jar. "Do not dent my master," he said. "He is already in a different shape. That handsome face and body attracts many girls."
John stepped through the hail, because he had decided already and he did not change decisions in the middle of rooms.
He snapped his palm toward the rack on the shelf. The spirit bell hopped up and sailed into his hand. He shook it once, hard, right in Rusk’s face.
The note went through glass, through bone, through all the bad ideas Rusk had ever loved. He slumped in the chair like a coat on a peg and began to snore with his mouth open. It was a rude snore. Fizz judged it with a frown.
Edda cursed. "That was our bell."
"Ours now," Fizz said.
Brann planted his heels and threw a short, ugly pulse that tried to jam John’s core the way a wedge jams a door. It hit. John felt his second ring hitch then catch again. He bared his teeth and let the field go small, back to the size of a fist, and fast, like a stone from a sling.
He punched Brann’s spell low, ankle height. Brann’s boots skidded. The wedge missed its bite. He stumbled one step. That was all John needed.
John spun, jar tucked, field in his palm, and pushed the door bar up from ten feet away. The bar leapt. The door rattled. The air moved.
Edda slashed her hand and a ribbon of air snapped at John’s face. He ducked. It shaved the hair. Many hairs got cut. He did not check which part of how many. He kicked the door with his heel on the way by. It flew open.
Morning air came in like a friend. Cold. Honest. Full of city noise.
The fifth bell rolled through it.
"Fizz," John said.
"I am awake and offended," Fizz said.
"Hold your breath," John said.
Fizz slapped his paws to his cheeks inside the jar. "Always. Release me quickly."
"On it." John rolled the field around the jar’s bronze ring, made it thin, and twisted. The bronze was like a jar lid that had learned manners. The runes spat. The glass mouth opened a thumb.
Fizz exploded out of the gap like a cork with a temper. He streaked up, fizzed—true to his name—and turned on Brann with a face like a tiny judge.
"You. Put. Me. In. A. Jar," he squeaked, his tiny voice cutting through the groans of the house. Each word cracked with a sharp snap of fire, like a judge slamming a gavel. "Step one: roasting. Step two: roasting again. Step three: roasting while I help my master beat the shit out of you, because unlike you three amateurs I can multitask."
The kidnappers froze. Edda’s eyes went wide, reflecting the wild shimmer of Fizz’s fire aura. Rusk, still half-collapsed in the broken chair, let out a strangled grunt. Brann’s careful, professional mask cracked for a fraction of a second, his jaw tightening as his clean air-cuts fizzled against John’s compressed field.
He spun, threw a paw, and snapped a button off Edda’s sleeve with a hot kiss of spark. "And you," he said. "How dare you throw light at me. Light is my best friend."