Spectrum

by Samantha Mina

  He led the way, carefully but quickly, chin up and eyes forward. His steps were graceful and fluid. I followed closely behind, keeping my eyes on him so I wouldn’t look down. When we reached the edge, Cease lassoed half a dozen massive stalactites with deadline from his utility belt, hidden beneath his swathe. I stood a foot in front of him, facing the fire. He shot two cables around me, binding my waist to his. We were bolted to the spot.

  “Secure,” Cease said. “Now, do it, Scarlet.”

  Do it, Scarlet. Just crush a magical rock ten times the size of a vitreous silica with your hair. No problem.

  I took a deep breath, channeled my aura into my scalp, and sent all my hair through the flames and around the Crystal.

  And, with that, I felt a galvanizing wave zip up my locks, striking my head like an electric mallet. My mind went numb with shock.

  “Come on, what are you waiting for? Do it!” a faraway voice called through the crackling. “Concentrate!”

  Where was that voice coming from? What did those weird words mean?

  “Scarlet, what’s going on? Why aren’t you doing it?”

  What was that obscure language? It definitely wasn’t Conflagrian.

  “Are you okay? Scarlet?”

  Nurian? Ichthyothian? ICHTHYOTHIAN! It was the language of the enemy! There was an enemy of Conflagria, here! Powerful hatred as I’d never felt before pulsed like venom through my veins. I struggled to turn, but couldn’t move—there were wires wrapped around my waist! The enemy had me trapped! I withdrew a single lock from the Crystal and used it to slice myself free. Without even turning around, I then whipped that lock behind me, where I’d heard the Ichthyothian voice.

  There was a scream, followed by the sound of something hitting stone.

  Only then did I turn and see the body of my enemy, writhing on the cliff, looking at me through a strange, silver strip across his face.

  “Scarlet!” he yelled. “Scarlet, it’s me! It’s your Commander, Lechatelierite! Snap out of it!”

  My frame shuddered violently, overwhelmed by the surges of spectrum coursing up my hair. My ears were filled with the deafening rumble of fire and tumbling boulders. His words meant nothing to me. I poised my free lock high above my head and prepared to deal my enemy a deathly blow.

  But, the Ichthyothian rolled forward, narrowly escaping my hair as it crashed into the stone, creating a crevice too deep to cross on foot. We were stranded on this little oval of rock, now. Stranded in the heart of the Fire Pit.

  “Scarlet!” the enemy called, again. “You’re on the side of Ichthyosis, now, remember? Snap out of it! This is a direct order!”

  I heard his words, but they didn’t register. I ignited my free lock and launched it at him again. But, in a flash, he somersaulted through the air, right above my ringlet. His feet landed on my chest, knocking me clean off the cliff.

  As I fell, I saw a wire lash toward me, from above. It coiled tightly around my waist, breaking my fall, but not without terrible whiplash. I screamed, dangling mere feet from the flames. I looked up and saw the white face of my enemy straining over the edge, holding the cable that saved my life with both hands. His whole body shook.

  “Let me go!” I shouted, in his hateful, consonant language. “Let me go, now!”

  He panted with an open mouth. “No!”

  “Then, I’ll cut myself free! I’d rather die than be indebted to the enemy!”

  “Scarlet, don’t! You’ll fall in! You’ll die!”

  “What do you care, Ichthyothian?”

  I slid a lock of hair between my body and the wire.

  “Scarlet, NO!” he screamed, voice cracking. His hands were purple. “Scarlet, listen to me! Don’t cut the wires! Let me pull you up!”

  “Quit toying with me, enemy!” I hollered, legs thrashing.

  “Scarlet, I’m not your enemy! I’m your commander! You’re on the side of Ichthyosis, now!” he yelled again, visual band sliding to the end of his nose. He paused. “No, you’re not fighting for Ichthyosis, but with Ichthyosis to liberate your people from the System.” He inhaled, sharply. “Scarlet, this is Cease! This is Cease, remember me? Not your enemy, your friend!”

  Friend. Not my enemy. Cease. That name was familiar. Cease… my friend…?

  “Cease?” I whispered.

  He shook off the visual band—it dropped to his neck—and he looked at me with his own two eyes.

  “Yes,” he breathed. “I’m here, Scarlet.”

  But, those icy eyes brought back too many unpleasant memories. Memories of violence and destruction and reprimands and harsh words. No, he wasn’t my friend. Just my commander. Commander Lechatelierite. He didn’t care for the Conflagrian people. All he cared about was the war. Winning the war for Ichthyosis. My life and my people were nothing, absolutely nothing to him. He just wanted to win.

  If I fell into the Pit, the Crystal would detonate. It’d be the end of the spectral web. The end of the System’s thought-control. The end of magic on Second Earth. The end of the war.

  Exactly what this commander wanted.

  “If I fell in, everything would be all over,” I told him. “Your mission would be a success. Ichthyosis would be victorious. Isn’t that what you want, Commander Lechatelierite?”

  I wound my hair around the wire.

  “NO! Scarlet, don’t do it! Scarlet, please don’t! I don’t care about the war anymore; do you hear me? I don’t care about winning! Just as long as you don’t fall in! Please, Scarlet, listen to me!”

  His words traveled slowly from my ears to my brain. Was this possible? Was the great Commander Cease Lechatelierite, Leader of the Ichthyothian Resistance, actually willing to give up the war? For me?

  As I looked into his desperate, silver-grey eyes, I realized just how much I cared for him. I loved him. I probably already did before now, but I didn’t recognize it until this wild, black moment. Until I saw him willing to sacrifice the purpose of his whole life… for me.

  My hair released the Crystal. I lay still in the wire and allowed Cease to pull me up. As soon as I made it onto the stone, he wrenched me to my feet and threw his arms tightly around me. My second hug, in six ages—both, from him. We stood frozen in time, for just a minute.

  “Don’t you ever scare me like that again, Scarlet,” he cried, face buried in my hair. “Let’s get out of here. We tried our best and failed. Let’s go home, to Icicle.”

  There was a long pause.

  “No.”

  Cease’s arms stiffened around me; he clearly thought I was turning against him again.

  “What I mean is; no, we didn’t fail, because we didn’t finish trying.” I took a deep breath. “I can do it this time, sir. I know what to expect. The shock took me by surprise, but it won’t, now. I’ll have more control.”

  Cease pulled away and gave me a long, hard stare. “Are you sure?” he demanded.

  “Yes, sir, I am.” I swallowed. “And, if I falter, you know what to say to make me come around.”

  He nodded, that maddening look of approval in his eyes. That look was enough to empower me with the strength of a hundred Core Crystals. It was the closest his face ever got to a smile.

  I faced the flames and Cease shot new bindings around my waist and six stalactites. Repeating Cease’s words in my mind, I reached back into the inferno with my hair and braced myself for the jolt. My locks raveled around the Crystal, and sure enough, electricity galvanized my every cell and photon. But, this time, I could take it. This time, I could focus through the pain and ignore the voice shouting lies inside my head. The Crystal slowly began to crumble as I increased my pressure. Lava squirted from the growing cracks, narrowly missing our faces. The cavern walls began to crumble and avalanche. My body shook as screams ripped through my throat. The last thing I remembered was a glorious rush of light and arms encircling my waist, before everything went black.

  Cease Lechatelierite

  Scarlet’s hair receded from the Crystal and her tiny body pitched forwar
d. My arms caught her before the deadline could. A rumble sounded in my ears as I severed all the cables but one—wound around a stalactite, hundreds of yards above. I leapt off the stone island, swinging. When my feet came in contact with the other side, I cut the last wire and sprinted up the narrow, dark stairwell. I was still in the tunnel when I heard the final, deafening boom of the Crystal’s detonation. Scarlet’s limp body jerked in my arms, emitting irregular bursts of red light. She was losing her aura. Total diffusion. I felt my own black haze flicker and die. Without magic to control my body temperature, I suddenly felt hot, overwhelmingly hot—so much so, I turned my head and vomited right over my shoulder.

  Dizzy, nauseous and sweaty, I emerged from the tunnel to the sight of mad chaos in the square. The sky changed rapidly from bright orange to dark brown—from early afternoon to late evening—as the island, no longer enshrouded in spectrum, visually adjusted to the Earth’s thirty-six-hour rotation. Mages everywhere were scrambling about, screaming, as their colorful auras flashed and dissipated. Left and right, brawls were already breaking out between townsfolk and System officials, as the minds of the masses were freed from the thought-control. No doubt there’d be a big revolution, in the ages to come. The first in Conflagrian history. It was long overdue.

  Clutching Scarlet to my chest, I pushed my way through the frantic crowd, the ground shaking beneath my feet. And, I ran right into a tall, muscular mage with copper-colored hair, alarmingly-huge hands and wide, amber eyes. Though he was much bigger than me, he was the one thrown onto his back. Fighting vertigo, I leapt over him and kept running, calling to Leavesleft through the microphone clipped inside my robe’s collar.

  “Now, Leavesleft!”

  The vitreous silica dashed across the sky, pouring fire into the vacant Pit. Conflagrian society would always need fire—spectrum or no spectrum, it was an irreplaceable part of their culture. Then, Leavesleft swooped above me and dropped a ladder. Hoisting Scarlet’s body over my shoulder, I flew up the rungs.

  “Go!” I ordered as soon as I made it in.

  Head throbbing and shapes spinning before my eyes, I passed Scarlet to Link and sank to my knees. Our ship shot into the distance, back home to Ichthyosis.

  Scarlet July

  I opened my eyes and stared at the white, metal ceiling. My whole body seared with pain, especially my eyes and scalp. It felt like thousands of ice-cold needles were simultaneously piercing my flesh. A large bandage was wrapped around my waist—where Cease’s wire broke my fall into the Fire Pit.

  I heard a creak and saw a blonde-haired, Nurian nurse in blue scrubs, Mrs. Insouci Raef, come in and approach my bedside. The lights seemed strangely dimmed, and it was actually a bit difficult to see the far side of the room. Normally, I would’ve been able to read the letters on the computer keyboard down the hall. But, now, I could hardly make out the individual, white buttons themselves. I blinked repeatedly, to no avail.

  “Your eyesight isn’t damaged, ma’am,” Raef said, quietly. “We scanned your retinas. You have twenty-twenty vision.”

  I scrunched my eyes shut and only saw auburn—the inside of my lids. I willed a single strand of hair to move. Nothing happened.

  So, we succeeded. The Crystal ended. Ichthyosis won the war. The spectral web diffused. My people were free. We did it. It was the moment of victory. But, I didn’t feel like celebrating. I just wanted to fall asleep. Diffusion was such a major drain on my body, I felt like I barely had the strength to just keep breathing. I rolled over and saw a lock of my own hair—lifeless and limp—flop over my shoulder.

  I peered out the window, at the snowflakes beating against the glass. I shivered, pulling the thin sheet to my throat. I could no longer spontaneously raise my body temperature. I was completely on my own, reliant on technology, just like the Nordics, for my wellbeing. How badly I wanted a fire, right now.

  “The Commander will be happy to see you awake,” Raef said giving me a mischievous smile. “He’s been stopping by to check on you at least, oh, once an hour, every hour, since he himself has been discharged.”

  “Cease!” I gasped, somehow finding the energy to sit up. “Is he alright?”

  The nurse seemed quite taken aback. “Commander Lechatelierite came home with fever of about one-oh-six. Heatstroke and mild spectral poisoning.”

  “Oh, Tincture!” I cried.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am; he’s fine, now. We took good care of him. And, you know the Commander—doesn’t matter if there’s a lance sticking out of his back and blood oozing from his eyes, he’ll still try to get up and return to duty.” She folded her arms. “He actually did try, more than once, to walk over here to see you, when he himself was supposed to be bedridden and tubed up. He’ll be very glad to know you’re awake and well. Should I get him?”

  “Oh, um, no, that’s okay,” I stuttered, floored by Cease’s degree of concern, not to mention quite nervous to face him again now that I knew I wasn’t just attached or attracted to him, but rather, I loved him. “I’m really tired; I think I’ll just take a nap or something.”

  I lay back down. Pillow stiff and frigid under my head, I wondered what would become of me now that the Crystal ended. What do you do, after achieving everything you ever wanted? The Multi-Source Enchant fulfilled the prophecy and ‘took from the fallen children of Second Earth what was no longer rightfully theirs’—the spectrum. I’d accomplished the purpose of my life. And, by winning the war, so did Cease. Was I just going to spend the rest of my days on this cold, isolated base, beating down generations of young men like Colonel Austere, repeating all the mistakes of the System by aiding in manipulating their lives and destroying their humanity?

  No. I knew what I had to do. I knew what my next calling would be. There was no time to sit back and bask in the victory. There was still work to be done. My people needed me.

  Scarlet July

  August seventh.

  I adjusted my robe over my narrow shoulders, surveying myself in the mirror of my military quarters for the last time. Yesterday, I briefly awoke from my coma, exchanged a few words with Raef, then fell right back asleep. Today, Fair and I would return to Conflagria. In a couple hours, we’d begin our trek across the Septentrion Sea, Briny Ocean and Fervor Sea, aboard a deck-ship, piloted by Nurtic. No longer bound by the Core Crystal, my people were now aware of the sixteen-age war and the thought-control that oppressed them for eras. I, the former Multi-Source Enchant, was now known as their liberator, the only Conflagrian strong enough to break free of the System’s dominion while the Crystal was intact. My people called me home, to be their revolutionary leader.

  I marched into the mess hall and faced my men. It was time for final farewells. They all looked at me now, dressed in my red Conflagrian robe, without a trace of hatred or distrust in their eyes.

  “I’m sorry for calling you a spy and ordering the other officers to fire at you,” Illia Frappe said, shaking my hand.

  I grinned. “It’s okay, Illia.” I nearly killed Cease in the Fire Pit; I understood Illia’s struggle better than he knew.

  Arrhyth Link came bounding over next, Orion curls bouncing with every step. I never did get to hear the rest of his story—the story of how the Second Earth Order Chairman secretly denounced isolationism and allowed his own son to participate in an international conspiracy could get Nuria blacklisted, if the Order ever found out. He bowed deeply to me.

  “You paid attention in mage culture class, I see,” I chortled, returning the bow instead of shaking his hand.

  “Yes, ma’am, I did. And, I think I knew, all along.” He gave me a sly look. “You know, that you’re a mage.” Uh huh, sure he did. “I just didn’t say anything about it ’cuz I didn’t want to jump to conclusions or anything.”

  Arrhyth Link didn’t want to jump to conclusions? “Imagine that,” I chuckled.

  Nurtic Leavesleft was next. My hand felt so tiny in his.

  “I never imagined, when I met you at the train station, we’d both wind up here,
” he said, smiling his dimpled smile. “It’s been a crazy ride.”

  No kidding. With Nurtic, that could be taken literally. The man could practically fly fifteen directions, at once. No one liked surface-riding on his crystallines.

  “Riding on anything you pilot is as crazy as crazy gets.”

  “And, we’ve got one more trip together, so buckle up!”

  I laughed. Then, I bit my lip. “It’s been an honor, serving alongside you,” I breathed, realizing that, after spending nine months feeling annoyed by his friendliness and constantly pushing him away, I was actually going to miss him. A lot. From day one, he was kind to me, when no one else was. Nurtic was my friend. “You’re the most skilled pilot in the fleet,” I said, honestly.

  Nurtic’s tan cheeks turned deep pink. “Yeah, well, I got some practice back at the arcade.” He winked one of his large, hazel eyes. Then, after touching my shoulder for just a moment, he left the mess hall and disappeared down the corridors, off to get Fair.

  I was surprised when Inexor Buird took my hand next, all prior hostility apparently behind him.

  “I never really got to see you fight,” he said. “But, from what the Commander tells me, I’m glad he chose you to fill my boots when I was MIA.”

  I noticed, with surprise, two cobalt blue bands were already on each of his arms. I guessed he and Cease patched things up during the seven days I was unconscious.

  “Glad to return it to you.”

  After about thirty more minutes, the crowd abated. There was only one soldier left to whom I hadn’t yet bid farewell.

  Cease Lechatelierite stood in the empty hall with his hands clasped behind his back. His pale, sharp face and silver-grey eyes were set. I noticed a tiny, silver pin on his collar. He was an admiral, now. His country rewarded him well for his victory.

  “Good-bye, sir,” I whispered, in Ichthyothian.

  “Call me Cease,” he answered quietly, in Nurian.