[Voltron] Lighting Fire (english version)
Feb. 26th, 2019 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fairy_circlesTitolo: Lighting Fire
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Rating: verde
Personaggi: Lance McClain, Keith Kogane, Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane, Pidge Gunderson/Katie Holt
Pairings: Keith/Lance, Shiro/Pidge
Disclaimer: Voltron e tutti i suoi personaggi appartengono a Dreamworks & Netflix.
Note: Scritta come contributo alla splendida fanzine Tales of Altea, di cui sono orgogliosa e felice di aver fatto parte.
Traduttrice: Myst
Word count: 3243
Viewed through the bars of the cell’s small window, Altea didn’t look different from any other village in the kingdom. However, that place was hidden from the eye of the world by an invisible barrier. Created by outlaw wizards as their only hideaway, it was a particularly dangerous place for the two royal hunters.
“They won’t harm us. They can’t.” Shiro broke a long silence. “We belong to a Royal Guard chosen unit.”
It seemed like he was trying to persuade himself more than his companion.
Keith gave him a furtive look. “I doubt they care,” he commented. “They’re persecuted. I don’t see why they should show any mercy toward who hunts them.”
He might have sounded cynical, but Keith had learned way too soon that not everything was black or white.
Shiro, however, had always been very firm on his ideas. “They use magic. It’s against the law,” he insisted. “We all know that magic is evil. This is why King Lotor prohibited it. It consumed Queen Honerva until it led her to insanity.”
An amused snort interrupted their exchange, followed by a sarcastic laugh. A shape covered in a blue cloak flopped on the bench in front of their cell.
“You are so ignorant, you gofers of the king.”
“Hey!” Keith was aware that he didn’t know the whole story, but hearing someone rubbing it in his face like this was annoying.
The shape pulled back the cloak’s hood, uncovering dark hair and amber skin. It was the same boy they had followed, the reason why they had ended up in trouble.
“You don’t agree? I doubt that people who aren’t involved in magical arts know the whole story. If everybody knew about it, wizards wouldn’t be hunted and you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have stalked me, you wouldn’t have been attacked by that creature and Pidge and I wouldn’t have had to save your ass.”
He stretched his legs and laid them on the bench.
He sure talked a lot despite being a jailer.
“Pidge is the girl who was with me, the one that knocked down the monster. I’m Lance. Now that we’ve introduced, I expect you to be civil and that you won’t try to kill me anymore.”
Shiro was studying him with the attention he usually displayed for an enemy.
“Nobody tried to kill you,” he objected.
“Spending my whole life in jail doesn’t sound more promising.” Lance dismissed him with a gesture of his hand.
Keith couldn’t care less about quarreling. He didn’t care if Lance was a wizard, nor about why they had followed him in the first place. What mattered to him now was to understand what had happened in the woods and what was the nature of the thing that had attacked them.
What he knew for sure was that it was something their human weapons couldn’t stop. Shiro had attacked it with his sword, and Keith had thrown his knives at it. A creature made of flesh and blood would have died. Instead, their weapons had gone through it as if it had been made of fog. It had taken the intervention of a girl creating lightings with her hands to kill it—or rather, to make it dissolve like a puff of smoke.
"They weren't just bolts of lightning, they were magical darts. If Pidge heard you, she'd tear you into pieces."
At those words, Keith's eyes widened and he abruptly turned back. He opened his mouth to reply, but Lance was faster.
"No, I don't read minds. Let's say that I'm an empath in training, and your thoughts are way too noisy."
"Stop it immediately!"
Lance placed his hands on his hips and shot him an offended glance.
"Listen up, I'm not the one who's carrying a catalyst in their pocket, alright? If you want me to stop listening, then stop using it!"
Keith didn’t know what a catalyst was, but he was sure that he wasn’t carrying any magical object. He glared at Lance and crossed his arms over his chest. After all, he had more important issues to think about.
He nodded toward Shiro and they sat down in the cell’s farthest corner. They had to find a way to get out of there, discover what was the creature that attacked them and how to stop it. They should probably report to King Lotor, too, so he could take appropriate measures, organize patrols to protect the population, and...
“And maybe stop making up plans that will definitely lead to disastrous outcomes.”
Once again, Lance’s voice distracted them from their whispered conversation. That guy was really reading his mind.
“You carry a magical knife in your belt. It’s not my fault that it amplifies your power,” the young man commented as if there was nothing weird in it. “Why do you think you were attacked? Those beasts feed on magic. If you didn’t have any in you, they wouldn’t even have come close. Besides, I don’t recommend going to your king. If the head of the village were to discover it, you all would get in huge troubles—your dear king included.”
The amount of implications hidden in those few words—spoken almost carelessly—made Keith speechless. Before he could ask more questions, Shiro spoke instead.
“The head of the village?”
“Yep. Allura, the most powerful witch I’ve ever seen, the only one who could—possibly—surpass even Pidge. She isn’t on good terms with the king, and you don’t want to get on her bad side.”
Each word Lance spoke presented them with yet another mystery. Lotor—the king who hated magic because it had taken his mother away—had some sort of tie with a witch?
Keith stepped forward, gripping the bars.
“What—”
Before he could finish, a mighty quake shook the building from its foundations. Lance hit the wall and Keith was thrown to the ground. The only thing that saved him from a violent impact with the floor was Shiro’s quick reflexes when the man caught him in mid-air.
Suddenly, the door was slammed open and a voice yelled in urgency.
“Lance! We’re under attack!”
The girl who had come to their help in the woods burst into the room and grabbed Lance’s arm.
“There’s a lot of them, this time. We’re gonna need everyone’s help. Allura and Coran are already on the field. Hunk is taking the children to safety.”
She stopped only for one moment to look into his eyes.
“We will do everything we can to protect this village, but we need a barrier.”
Lance kept up with her gaze for a moment, then looked away with a sigh.
“It’s almost impossible without a complementary. However…” He turned toward Keith and stared at him, as if he was searching for something in his eyes. He then nodded at Pidge.
The girl frowned. “They’re hunters. We can’t trust them and we don’t have time for trial and error.”
“I’m well aware of this, but it’s a make or break situation. You take the other one, he’s a swordsman. He can lend a hand.”
Pidge huffed in frustration and took the cell’s key from Lance.
“I’m doing this only because I trust you, but Allura is going to be so mad. Listening to you gets me in trouble every time!” she grumbled as she opened the lock. “C’mon, you two, get out of here. You—the big one, come with me, but remember that I’m doing this only to keep an eye on you, not because I think your sword can help.”
Keith understood nothing of what was happening. However, when his eyes met Shiro’s, it was clear to him that this was their only chance to get out of there. All he knew was that the people from that village were in terrible danger and, as it seemed, their intervention could be crucial.
“We’ll help you only if—” he began, but Pidge silenced him with a sharp gesture of her hand.
“We aren’t negotiating on people’s lives!”
There was nothing left to add, so all of them ran outside.
Shiro was confused but he didn’t have any time to think twice.
His beliefs were clashing with reality, which was not what he expected. He had always believed that wizards were evil creatures, obsessed with power. All the ones he had dealt with or heard about were like that. Besides, the King’s dispatch was clear, magic had been banned because it was dangerous and because it corrupted people’s minds.
However, what he was seeing did not look evil or corrupted at all.
The girl and the boy had saved their lives earlier and now they were protecting the village’s inhabitants from a terrible threat. None of the wizards he had met had ever acted like this.
Too many questions crowded his mind. His first instinct was to ask for explanations, but the umpteenth quake cut off any hesitation.
A catastrophic scenario opened in front of their eyes. There were buildings on fire and people laying on the ground—wounded, or worse. Others were still fiercely fighting, in the desperate effort to contain the wave of dark creatures invading the village.
They appeared like inconsistent shadows, but they surrounded people like a flock of predators hunting their prey. A fitting comparison, since Lance had said they fed on magic.
“We have to do something!” Keith broke out beside him. “We can’t allow these people to be exterminated!”
These words made something click inside Shiro, fueling his sense of justice. His questions had to be saved for later, now they had to act!
“You go with Lance. He needs your help,” he said with the attitude of someone who was accustomed to give orders. “I’ll do my best to make my part here.”
Without any further discussion, Keith ran away.
Once on his own, Shiro drew his sword and launched himself against the closest group of creatures, which were surrounding a girl with dark skin and long, white hair.
She turned around with a stunned expression, completely surrounded by magical light.
“What do you want?” she asked sharply, bringing her attention back on her enemies. “If you mean to arrest me, I’m pretty busy at the moment.”
“I’m only here to help!” Shiro protested, but before he could engage the creatures in a fight, his attention was caught by the girl who had been at his side so far.
Pidge had taken a defensive position. Like it had happened earlier in the woods, a green light came out of her hands. Power materialized around her in elegant, hypnotic coils, and then clashed against her assaulters with a strength that charmed Shiro. The dark creatures surrounding her were torn down one by one by her light darts and disappeared in puffs of black smoke.
Shiro had always been fascinated by strength, and such a display of power left him speechless. In his eyes now that girl, whom he should have hunted down, looked implacable and beautiful.
It was precisely then that Shiro caught sight of a simple movement with the corner of his eye. It was too short of a warning. The girl didn’t even have that.
“Pidge!”
Shiro could barely recognize his own voice as his body moved, driven by instinct. He launched himself between the girl and the creature that was attacking her from behind.
The sword flashed to pierce the creature while the hunter pushed the young witch away, saving her from a potentially deadly attack. The blade cut through the beast as if it had been completely inconsistent. The moment after, however, a swirl of green light swept away the beast together with all the other remaining ones.
The girl turned to him, astonished, with her hands still stretched out.
“You saved me?” she asked as if even she could hardly believe it.
Shiro lowered his sword, his expression turning into uncertainty.
“Well, yes. I could not allow them to hurt you. I’m a hunter, not a monster.”
She stared at him as if she was seeing him for the first time. Behind the round lenses of her glasses, she had big, honey-colored eyes, which were too deep and heavy with knowledge to belong to the young girl she appeared to be.
The moment passed and Pidge reached out with her hands. She took the hilt of his sword to lift it, then ran her fingers along the blade. A line of iridescent runes appeared at her touch and was absorbed by the steel.
“It’s a spell that strengthens weapons,” she explained when she saw his confused gaze. “Now you can hit those creatures, too. I would have never thought to cast one for an enemy, but now we have to join our forces.”
She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, but Shiro could have sworn he had seen a small smile appear on her face, right before she brought her attention back on the fight.
The one who really was not enthusiastic at all was Keith, who had been dragged into something that was completely crazy and out of Keith’s understanding.
They were in some kind of laboratory. It was cluttered with all the objects Keith had always associated with magic: vials, crystals, bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling, books, scrolls, and quills. Weird symbols drawn with chalk covered the walls.
Lance didn’t explain anything—they didn’t have enough time for that. He pushed the furniture aside to free the floor, then he took a piece of chalk to draw weird lines around Keith.
“Don’t step out of the circle,” Lance quickly explained. “It would be dangerous without precautions. Sit down and don’t touch anything.”
Keith gave him a perplexed glance, but he did what he was told as he stared at Lance taking two bowls. He poured water in one of them and set a candle in the second one. He lit up a few incense sticks and placed them on a shelf.
“It would have been ideal to have earth and air, too, but Pidge and Hunk are busy,” he commented as he put the bowls on the circle. “Water in the west, fire in the south. Let’s hope these are enough.”
Lance deleted a trait of chalk with his foot. He whispered a few words, stepped inside the circle and then knelt down to complete it again. Once he was done, he sat down in front of Keith with his legs crossed.
“I don’t understand the meaning of all this,” the hunter protested. “I told you I was going to help you, but all this stuff…”
“Listen. There is no simple way to put it, so don’t get mad at me,” Lance began. “You have magical blood. I understood it as soon as I saw you, and what you carry in your belt only confirms it. It’s the athame of a fire witch.”
Keith’s eyes widened.
He had never known anything about his family. That knife was the only clue he had, but he could have never imagined that it would lead him to such a discovery. He had been taught that wizards were evil personified, and he had always justified the interest he felt toward them as a simple interest in the enemy, instead of something deeper.
Lance shook his head and sighed.
“I know,” he said, answering to all his silent conflicts. “I’ll help you later, I promise, but we don’t have time right now. I have to try anything to save the village, and I need your help. In order to erect a protective barrier, you need at least two complementary elements. There haven’t been fire wizards since the last generation, and you really are a priceless rarity. I am a water wizard, but I’m also an empath, and the only one who can draw from an untrained power like yours.”
Keith tried to force himself to stay calm and nodded. He was going to have all the time to investigate on his origins later on. If he had the chance to save lives right now, he had to try.
Lance explained to him in a few, concise words how he was supposed to sit and what he had to focus on in order to enter a state of trance. He instructed him about how to channel the power he didn’t even know he possessed. Since Keith had no idea how to use it, he would simply let Lance draw from it.
Lance started singing a lullaby. It had to be somewhat hypnotical because, together with the candle’s light dancing in front of him and with the sweet fragrance of the burning incense, it made Keith’s head start to feel lighter. He didn’t realize he had closed his eyes, but then—as if in a dream—he felt something brush against him.
Were these Lance’s hands? Was he touching him?
In Keith’s current lack of lucidity, he wouldn’t have known how it happened, but his body reacted to the touch and tensed.
“No, no, no! Trust me!”
The muffled voice came from afar.
“Your barriers aren’t bad at all. Let me in, you have nothing to fear.”
Keith wanted to reply that he wasn’t afraid at all, but the sensation he felt then overcame everything else.
It was as if someone was taking apart his mind, body, and energy piece by piece, brick by brick, and then used them to build something new.
He saw the flame spark and burn behind his closed eyelids. He saw the water ooze, drop by drop. He saw the barrier take shape and turn into an enormous, bright blue dome.
His sight became confused. For a moment, Keith thought he was hovering outside his body. He could see the fight taking place in the village’s streets, although nothing could touch or harm him. The crystal-clear barrier was growing, layer after layer, covering the whole surface of the village and cutting out the evil creatures.
It lasted only one instant, then the sensation of falling down prevailed and Keith opened his eyes with a strangled scream.
He was lying on the floor, exhausted, his breath heavy. Lance was sitting next to him and was staring at Keith, panting.
“Calm down and take a deep breath,” he instructed him. “It went well. We cut the monsters out and we protected the village.”
He looked exhausted, too, but he was smiling. It was at that moment that Keith realized that the bright blue of the barrier was the same color as Lance’s eyes.
“I really think that we are going to have a lot to work on from now on, Mr. Hunter.” Lance reached out with one hand and brushed away a strand of Keith’s hair in an unintentionally kind gesture. “Not only we’ll have to discover where those monsters came from, we’ll also have to train a fire wizard.”
He offered Keith his hand and helped him sit up.
“Maybe we’ll get along. What do you think?”
Keith stared at him and his lips relaxed in a smile.
“We can try. By the way, I’m Keith.”
He didn’t know what had just happened, nor what was going to happen to him in the future, but he already felt that there was no way he could ever deny anything in front of such a smile.
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Rating: verde
Personaggi: Lance McClain, Keith Kogane, Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane, Pidge Gunderson/Katie Holt
Pairings: Keith/Lance, Shiro/Pidge
Disclaimer: Voltron e tutti i suoi personaggi appartengono a Dreamworks & Netflix.
Note: Scritta come contributo alla splendida fanzine Tales of Altea, di cui sono orgogliosa e felice di aver fatto parte.
Traduttrice: Myst
Word count: 3243
Viewed through the bars of the cell’s small window, Altea didn’t look different from any other village in the kingdom. However, that place was hidden from the eye of the world by an invisible barrier. Created by outlaw wizards as their only hideaway, it was a particularly dangerous place for the two royal hunters.
“They won’t harm us. They can’t.” Shiro broke a long silence. “We belong to a Royal Guard chosen unit.”
It seemed like he was trying to persuade himself more than his companion.
Keith gave him a furtive look. “I doubt they care,” he commented. “They’re persecuted. I don’t see why they should show any mercy toward who hunts them.”
He might have sounded cynical, but Keith had learned way too soon that not everything was black or white.
Shiro, however, had always been very firm on his ideas. “They use magic. It’s against the law,” he insisted. “We all know that magic is evil. This is why King Lotor prohibited it. It consumed Queen Honerva until it led her to insanity.”
An amused snort interrupted their exchange, followed by a sarcastic laugh. A shape covered in a blue cloak flopped on the bench in front of their cell.
“You are so ignorant, you gofers of the king.”
“Hey!” Keith was aware that he didn’t know the whole story, but hearing someone rubbing it in his face like this was annoying.
The shape pulled back the cloak’s hood, uncovering dark hair and amber skin. It was the same boy they had followed, the reason why they had ended up in trouble.
“You don’t agree? I doubt that people who aren’t involved in magical arts know the whole story. If everybody knew about it, wizards wouldn’t be hunted and you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have stalked me, you wouldn’t have been attacked by that creature and Pidge and I wouldn’t have had to save your ass.”
He stretched his legs and laid them on the bench.
He sure talked a lot despite being a jailer.
“Pidge is the girl who was with me, the one that knocked down the monster. I’m Lance. Now that we’ve introduced, I expect you to be civil and that you won’t try to kill me anymore.”
Shiro was studying him with the attention he usually displayed for an enemy.
“Nobody tried to kill you,” he objected.
“Spending my whole life in jail doesn’t sound more promising.” Lance dismissed him with a gesture of his hand.
Keith couldn’t care less about quarreling. He didn’t care if Lance was a wizard, nor about why they had followed him in the first place. What mattered to him now was to understand what had happened in the woods and what was the nature of the thing that had attacked them.
What he knew for sure was that it was something their human weapons couldn’t stop. Shiro had attacked it with his sword, and Keith had thrown his knives at it. A creature made of flesh and blood would have died. Instead, their weapons had gone through it as if it had been made of fog. It had taken the intervention of a girl creating lightings with her hands to kill it—or rather, to make it dissolve like a puff of smoke.
"They weren't just bolts of lightning, they were magical darts. If Pidge heard you, she'd tear you into pieces."
At those words, Keith's eyes widened and he abruptly turned back. He opened his mouth to reply, but Lance was faster.
"No, I don't read minds. Let's say that I'm an empath in training, and your thoughts are way too noisy."
"Stop it immediately!"
Lance placed his hands on his hips and shot him an offended glance.
"Listen up, I'm not the one who's carrying a catalyst in their pocket, alright? If you want me to stop listening, then stop using it!"
Keith didn’t know what a catalyst was, but he was sure that he wasn’t carrying any magical object. He glared at Lance and crossed his arms over his chest. After all, he had more important issues to think about.
He nodded toward Shiro and they sat down in the cell’s farthest corner. They had to find a way to get out of there, discover what was the creature that attacked them and how to stop it. They should probably report to King Lotor, too, so he could take appropriate measures, organize patrols to protect the population, and...
“And maybe stop making up plans that will definitely lead to disastrous outcomes.”
Once again, Lance’s voice distracted them from their whispered conversation. That guy was really reading his mind.
“You carry a magical knife in your belt. It’s not my fault that it amplifies your power,” the young man commented as if there was nothing weird in it. “Why do you think you were attacked? Those beasts feed on magic. If you didn’t have any in you, they wouldn’t even have come close. Besides, I don’t recommend going to your king. If the head of the village were to discover it, you all would get in huge troubles—your dear king included.”
The amount of implications hidden in those few words—spoken almost carelessly—made Keith speechless. Before he could ask more questions, Shiro spoke instead.
“The head of the village?”
“Yep. Allura, the most powerful witch I’ve ever seen, the only one who could—possibly—surpass even Pidge. She isn’t on good terms with the king, and you don’t want to get on her bad side.”
Each word Lance spoke presented them with yet another mystery. Lotor—the king who hated magic because it had taken his mother away—had some sort of tie with a witch?
Keith stepped forward, gripping the bars.
“What—”
Before he could finish, a mighty quake shook the building from its foundations. Lance hit the wall and Keith was thrown to the ground. The only thing that saved him from a violent impact with the floor was Shiro’s quick reflexes when the man caught him in mid-air.
Suddenly, the door was slammed open and a voice yelled in urgency.
“Lance! We’re under attack!”
The girl who had come to their help in the woods burst into the room and grabbed Lance’s arm.
“There’s a lot of them, this time. We’re gonna need everyone’s help. Allura and Coran are already on the field. Hunk is taking the children to safety.”
She stopped only for one moment to look into his eyes.
“We will do everything we can to protect this village, but we need a barrier.”
Lance kept up with her gaze for a moment, then looked away with a sigh.
“It’s almost impossible without a complementary. However…” He turned toward Keith and stared at him, as if he was searching for something in his eyes. He then nodded at Pidge.
The girl frowned. “They’re hunters. We can’t trust them and we don’t have time for trial and error.”
“I’m well aware of this, but it’s a make or break situation. You take the other one, he’s a swordsman. He can lend a hand.”
Pidge huffed in frustration and took the cell’s key from Lance.
“I’m doing this only because I trust you, but Allura is going to be so mad. Listening to you gets me in trouble every time!” she grumbled as she opened the lock. “C’mon, you two, get out of here. You—the big one, come with me, but remember that I’m doing this only to keep an eye on you, not because I think your sword can help.”
Keith understood nothing of what was happening. However, when his eyes met Shiro’s, it was clear to him that this was their only chance to get out of there. All he knew was that the people from that village were in terrible danger and, as it seemed, their intervention could be crucial.
“We’ll help you only if—” he began, but Pidge silenced him with a sharp gesture of her hand.
“We aren’t negotiating on people’s lives!”
There was nothing left to add, so all of them ran outside.
Shiro was confused but he didn’t have any time to think twice.
His beliefs were clashing with reality, which was not what he expected. He had always believed that wizards were evil creatures, obsessed with power. All the ones he had dealt with or heard about were like that. Besides, the King’s dispatch was clear, magic had been banned because it was dangerous and because it corrupted people’s minds.
However, what he was seeing did not look evil or corrupted at all.
The girl and the boy had saved their lives earlier and now they were protecting the village’s inhabitants from a terrible threat. None of the wizards he had met had ever acted like this.
Too many questions crowded his mind. His first instinct was to ask for explanations, but the umpteenth quake cut off any hesitation.
A catastrophic scenario opened in front of their eyes. There were buildings on fire and people laying on the ground—wounded, or worse. Others were still fiercely fighting, in the desperate effort to contain the wave of dark creatures invading the village.
They appeared like inconsistent shadows, but they surrounded people like a flock of predators hunting their prey. A fitting comparison, since Lance had said they fed on magic.
“We have to do something!” Keith broke out beside him. “We can’t allow these people to be exterminated!”
These words made something click inside Shiro, fueling his sense of justice. His questions had to be saved for later, now they had to act!
“You go with Lance. He needs your help,” he said with the attitude of someone who was accustomed to give orders. “I’ll do my best to make my part here.”
Without any further discussion, Keith ran away.
Once on his own, Shiro drew his sword and launched himself against the closest group of creatures, which were surrounding a girl with dark skin and long, white hair.
She turned around with a stunned expression, completely surrounded by magical light.
“What do you want?” she asked sharply, bringing her attention back on her enemies. “If you mean to arrest me, I’m pretty busy at the moment.”
“I’m only here to help!” Shiro protested, but before he could engage the creatures in a fight, his attention was caught by the girl who had been at his side so far.
Pidge had taken a defensive position. Like it had happened earlier in the woods, a green light came out of her hands. Power materialized around her in elegant, hypnotic coils, and then clashed against her assaulters with a strength that charmed Shiro. The dark creatures surrounding her were torn down one by one by her light darts and disappeared in puffs of black smoke.
Shiro had always been fascinated by strength, and such a display of power left him speechless. In his eyes now that girl, whom he should have hunted down, looked implacable and beautiful.
It was precisely then that Shiro caught sight of a simple movement with the corner of his eye. It was too short of a warning. The girl didn’t even have that.
“Pidge!”
Shiro could barely recognize his own voice as his body moved, driven by instinct. He launched himself between the girl and the creature that was attacking her from behind.
The sword flashed to pierce the creature while the hunter pushed the young witch away, saving her from a potentially deadly attack. The blade cut through the beast as if it had been completely inconsistent. The moment after, however, a swirl of green light swept away the beast together with all the other remaining ones.
The girl turned to him, astonished, with her hands still stretched out.
“You saved me?” she asked as if even she could hardly believe it.
Shiro lowered his sword, his expression turning into uncertainty.
“Well, yes. I could not allow them to hurt you. I’m a hunter, not a monster.”
She stared at him as if she was seeing him for the first time. Behind the round lenses of her glasses, she had big, honey-colored eyes, which were too deep and heavy with knowledge to belong to the young girl she appeared to be.
The moment passed and Pidge reached out with her hands. She took the hilt of his sword to lift it, then ran her fingers along the blade. A line of iridescent runes appeared at her touch and was absorbed by the steel.
“It’s a spell that strengthens weapons,” she explained when she saw his confused gaze. “Now you can hit those creatures, too. I would have never thought to cast one for an enemy, but now we have to join our forces.”
She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, but Shiro could have sworn he had seen a small smile appear on her face, right before she brought her attention back on the fight.
The one who really was not enthusiastic at all was Keith, who had been dragged into something that was completely crazy and out of Keith’s understanding.
They were in some kind of laboratory. It was cluttered with all the objects Keith had always associated with magic: vials, crystals, bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling, books, scrolls, and quills. Weird symbols drawn with chalk covered the walls.
Lance didn’t explain anything—they didn’t have enough time for that. He pushed the furniture aside to free the floor, then he took a piece of chalk to draw weird lines around Keith.
“Don’t step out of the circle,” Lance quickly explained. “It would be dangerous without precautions. Sit down and don’t touch anything.”
Keith gave him a perplexed glance, but he did what he was told as he stared at Lance taking two bowls. He poured water in one of them and set a candle in the second one. He lit up a few incense sticks and placed them on a shelf.
“It would have been ideal to have earth and air, too, but Pidge and Hunk are busy,” he commented as he put the bowls on the circle. “Water in the west, fire in the south. Let’s hope these are enough.”
Lance deleted a trait of chalk with his foot. He whispered a few words, stepped inside the circle and then knelt down to complete it again. Once he was done, he sat down in front of Keith with his legs crossed.
“I don’t understand the meaning of all this,” the hunter protested. “I told you I was going to help you, but all this stuff…”
“Listen. There is no simple way to put it, so don’t get mad at me,” Lance began. “You have magical blood. I understood it as soon as I saw you, and what you carry in your belt only confirms it. It’s the athame of a fire witch.”
Keith’s eyes widened.
He had never known anything about his family. That knife was the only clue he had, but he could have never imagined that it would lead him to such a discovery. He had been taught that wizards were evil personified, and he had always justified the interest he felt toward them as a simple interest in the enemy, instead of something deeper.
Lance shook his head and sighed.
“I know,” he said, answering to all his silent conflicts. “I’ll help you later, I promise, but we don’t have time right now. I have to try anything to save the village, and I need your help. In order to erect a protective barrier, you need at least two complementary elements. There haven’t been fire wizards since the last generation, and you really are a priceless rarity. I am a water wizard, but I’m also an empath, and the only one who can draw from an untrained power like yours.”
Keith tried to force himself to stay calm and nodded. He was going to have all the time to investigate on his origins later on. If he had the chance to save lives right now, he had to try.
Lance explained to him in a few, concise words how he was supposed to sit and what he had to focus on in order to enter a state of trance. He instructed him about how to channel the power he didn’t even know he possessed. Since Keith had no idea how to use it, he would simply let Lance draw from it.
Lance started singing a lullaby. It had to be somewhat hypnotical because, together with the candle’s light dancing in front of him and with the sweet fragrance of the burning incense, it made Keith’s head start to feel lighter. He didn’t realize he had closed his eyes, but then—as if in a dream—he felt something brush against him.
Were these Lance’s hands? Was he touching him?
In Keith’s current lack of lucidity, he wouldn’t have known how it happened, but his body reacted to the touch and tensed.
“No, no, no! Trust me!”
The muffled voice came from afar.
“Your barriers aren’t bad at all. Let me in, you have nothing to fear.”
Keith wanted to reply that he wasn’t afraid at all, but the sensation he felt then overcame everything else.
It was as if someone was taking apart his mind, body, and energy piece by piece, brick by brick, and then used them to build something new.
He saw the flame spark and burn behind his closed eyelids. He saw the water ooze, drop by drop. He saw the barrier take shape and turn into an enormous, bright blue dome.
His sight became confused. For a moment, Keith thought he was hovering outside his body. He could see the fight taking place in the village’s streets, although nothing could touch or harm him. The crystal-clear barrier was growing, layer after layer, covering the whole surface of the village and cutting out the evil creatures.
It lasted only one instant, then the sensation of falling down prevailed and Keith opened his eyes with a strangled scream.
He was lying on the floor, exhausted, his breath heavy. Lance was sitting next to him and was staring at Keith, panting.
“Calm down and take a deep breath,” he instructed him. “It went well. We cut the monsters out and we protected the village.”
He looked exhausted, too, but he was smiling. It was at that moment that Keith realized that the bright blue of the barrier was the same color as Lance’s eyes.
“I really think that we are going to have a lot to work on from now on, Mr. Hunter.” Lance reached out with one hand and brushed away a strand of Keith’s hair in an unintentionally kind gesture. “Not only we’ll have to discover where those monsters came from, we’ll also have to train a fire wizard.”
He offered Keith his hand and helped him sit up.
“Maybe we’ll get along. What do you think?”
Keith stared at him and his lips relaxed in a smile.
“We can try. By the way, I’m Keith.”
He didn’t know what had just happened, nor what was going to happen to him in the future, but he already felt that there was no way he could ever deny anything in front of such a smile.
