Bright Obscurity

by Ruby Brown

Mallika. Like Abigail, Felix only called her that when he was stressed or angry. He clearly felt very strongly about this.

  I have to go back there. I’m late for my lessons, actually. Mal had lost track of time, and she was already twenty minutes late. Rose was going to be so pissed. She dropped her phone on her bed and grabbed her stuff. Her phone started having a seizure, buzzing with messages all from Felix, begging her to reconsider. Mal glanced at her phone and considered taking it, but in the end she decided not to. She needed some time away, to think. She went around to the back door and left the house that way, running as fast as she could.

  When Mal got to Tenebar, Rose, Thomas and Dallas were standing in a circle outside the building, talking anxiously. Rose looked up when she heard Mal approaching, and she scowled. “Where the hell were you? We were worried!” she said angrily.

  “I’m sorry,” Mal said brokenly. Her voice was shaking like a leaf in the wind.

  “Are you okay?” Thomas asked softly. Mal shook her head.

  “What happened?” Dallas said. The scowl dropped from Rose’s face, and even she looked concerned.

  Mal wiped away her tears and forced herself to tell them what had happened. Once she had finished her story, there was silence. All three of them were staring at her in shock. Thomas looked even paler than usual, Rose’s brow was furrowed in confusion as her fingers anxiously tapped against the grip of her guns, and Dallas was shuffling about nervously on the grass.

  “But don’t spirits usually use like...I don’t know, Ouija boards to communicate, or something like that?” Thomas asked.

  “Can I see the messages?” Rose said.

  “I don’t have my phone. I left it in my room.”

  “What are you, stupid?” Rose said, and Mal felt her cheeks flame.

  “I just needed some space from it, that’s all,” Mal said quietly.

  “Should we talk to Cass?” Dallas asked.

  Rose and Thomas looked conflicted.

  “No,” said Rose. “It’s too early on. The messages might just go away after a while. Besides, she’s got enough to worry about without us adding to it.” Thomas nodded in agreement.

  “Come on Mal, let’s just do some training, okay? It’ll take your mind off of it,” Dallas said comfortingly.

  Mal nodded. She got hurt even worse than usual during that training session. No matter how hard she tried to focus, her mind was in a different place, on a different planet. Where was Felix now? Could he see her? If he could, he’d be pretty embarrassed by how easy it was to beat her in a fight. She still couldn’t use her magic, but instead of feeling disappointed like the last couple of times, Mal felt a strange sense of relief. Felix was telling her that Tenebar was a bad place, and Felix was usually right about these kinds of things. If she couldn’t use her magic, she’d be kicked out, but maybe it’d be safer that way.

  Chapter 7

  For the last two weeks before the test, Mal spent more time at Tenebar then she did anywhere else. During the last week, she was skipping school in order to spend more time there. She’d tried to talk to Felix, tried to reason with him, but he kept insisting that Tenebar was dangerous and she had to leave, but he couldn’t tell her why. What freaked her out the most was the way Felix seemed to know where she was at any given time. Eventually, she blocked the number. Her parents and friends were starting to get suspicious, but Mal didn’t really care. After the test was over, she’d make up for lost time, but right now all she was focusing on was learning her magic and keeping her place at Tenebar. It wasn’t just her; as the days passed everyone around her was becoming more and more desperate. Rose has abandoned her self-defence lessons in order to focus on her magic more and Trixie and Thomas were scouring the library for any books that might help her.

  Despite their efforts, Mal woke up on the day of the test still unable to use any kind of magic. She curled up in her blankets at home, with her stomach in knots and her hands shaking. She needed to get to Tenebar by lunchtime to complete her test, so she told her parents that she was sick and wanted to sleep. It wasn’t difficult to pretend that she was sick, the nerves made her feel like she was about to throw up.

  Once her parents were convinced that she was just going to sleep for a few hours, Mal put on as many Memoriams as she could. She figured she’d need all the help she could get. Of course, she wore Felix’s band t-shirt, although she felt differently about it after all the messages she’d been receiving from her dead brother. Then she let through the window, keeping low to the ground so that her parents wouldn’t see her through the windows, and headed towards Tenebar.

  Mal walked into a side room off of the main hall, and was met with four anxious lines of fifteen year olds, separated by golden ropes. The room itself was small with a dark brown polished floor. The four lines were heading towards four different doors, each emblazoned with a picture of the four different elements. As Mal hesitated, a stern-looking woman carrying a clipboard and wearing a dark green dress and black heels came towards her.

  “Name?” she asked briskly, looking down at her clipboard.

  “Um...Mallika Jay,” Mal said nervously.

  “Element?”

  “Fire, I guess,” Mal said, her panic escalating as she remembered her previous failures to conjure her element.

  The woman peered at her over the top of gold-rimmed spectacles. “What do you mean, you guess?”

  “It’s complicated,” Mal said hesitantly.

  The woman sniffed, now openly judging her, and then pointed to the line at the rightmost side of the room. “Your lot is in that line. Good luck,” she said, not sounding genuine at all, and then scurried off to talk to a small, sandy-haired boy who looked so scared he was about to pass out.

  Swallowing hard, Mal went and joined the end of the line. The other people in it were packed close together in various friendship groups, chattering quietly and anxiously. Mal felt completely alone. Her palms were starting to sweat as she played with the charm on Claire’s friendship bracelet in an attempt to calm herself down. Even though she kept her head down and her eyes fixed on the floor, she knew she was attracting curious glances from the people around her. She tried to ignore them and instead focused on what she’d been told about conjuring magic over the past three weeks.

  Caught up in her thoughts, Mal didn’t realise how quickly the line was moving, and before she knew it she was at the front. She looked up and stared in terror at the curling flames on the wooden door, her heart beating a million times a minute. She struggled to calm herself down, and just when she thought she might have it together, the last person who took the test came out of the room in floods of tears. Her mascara was running down her face and staining the white blouse she wore as she sobbed hysterically and hurried away, pushing away the comforting and sympathetic hands outstretched by the rest of the people in the line.

  Well...shit Mal thought to herself. The crying girl had left the door slightly ajar, so Mal hesitantly walked up and poked her head through. There were two men and two women sitting at a desk in a small circular room. They were talking quietly, looking faintly annoyed as they shuffled papers back and forth. Hanging on the wall Mal was facing was a target with scorch marks on and around it.

  The assessors all looked up at once, like a pack of predators that had caught scent of their prey. The man on the far left gave Mal a smile that she supposed was meant to be friendly. She smiled weakly back, turned to shut the door behind her, and then stood in the centre of the room with her hands behind her back, twisting her fingers together anxiously.

  The blonde-haired woman in the centre of the row looked down at a piece of paper. “Mallika?” she asked, not looking up.

  “Yeah,” Mal said.

  “Okay Mallika, all you have to do to pass the test is prove that you can control your magic well enough to hit the centre on the target. Then we can get you fitted with a Dimension and register you with the Council.”

  She’s making it sound so easy, Mal thought.

&
nbsp; “Whenever you’re ready,” said the blonde-haired woman, finally looking up from her paper and nodding in bored encouragement.

  Mal took a deep breath and turned slightly so she was facing the target. She started focusing on the Memoriams she was wearing, calling to mind all the painful and happy memories associated with them. She felt something inside her swell, and the power started to course through her veins, igniting her with a feeling of indestructibility. She raised her hand, channelling her power, but then she felt it hit that barrier, the one that had been frustrated her for so long.

  Mal almost screamed in anger. She felt her lips curl in annoyance and tried harder, feeling her magic cascade onto that barrier inside her, feeling it start to crack under the pressure. Sweat started to break out on her brow. She had never pressed herself this far before, but she was determined to get it right this time. The edges of her vision started to blur, but she didn’t stop. Her legs started shaking, but she didn’t stop. The pressure built up to an almost unbearable point, and despite herself a cry of pain stumbled through her lips. Just a little further, she told herself, fighting to stay conscious. Just a little more....just a little...

  A flash of light.

  A searing pain.

  Someone was screaming.

  The crash of something breaking.

  And that was the last thing Mal heard.

  Chapter 8

  She had never felt so tired. In that moment, all Mal wanted to do was fall into a very, very deep sleep and maybe never wake up. When she felt a single hand on her knee, Mal forced her eyes open. Even though her vision was blurry, she could make out the faces of Thomas, Trixie, Rose and Dallas, all of them looking incredibly concerned. Their mouths were moving, they were trying to say something, but all Mal could hear was a high-pitched ringing. She looked to one side and saw Cass and Blaise talking to the assessors, who all looked very shaken. Cass looked over and then came walking towards Mal, laying a cool hand on her hot forehead and saying something to Thomas, who nodded and then left.

  Cass grabbed both sides of Mal’s face and spoke urgently, a certain kind of panic in her eyes. Groggily, Mal pushed her away and fell back onto the cold floor. Every piece of her body hurt. She was confused, scared and tired and she just wanted everyone to leave her alone. She felt strong arms slide underneath her body and pick her up. Weakly, she tried to fight back. She liked the floor. The floor was cold. But whoever was carrying her didn’t stop walking.

  Mal was carried out of the room, past the lines of people still waiting to be tested. Her appearance sparked flurries of interest amongst the crowd, who were craning their necks to try and get a better look. Mal blearily tried to open her eyes, and then groaned and let her head fall onto the shoulder of the person carrying her. She didn’t like the attention.

  After a bit of walking, they opened another door and Mal instantly recognised the disinfectant smell. They were in the hospital ward. She squirmed in the person’s arms; she didn’t want to be here. She just wanted to go home. Her parents would be worried. She was tipped onto one of the hospital beds and someone pulled the blankets up to her chin.

  Mal heard a distorted voice from far away say “just let her sleep.”

  Yes. Sleep. That sounds nice. Mal stopped struggling and shut her eyes, giving in to the exhaustion. She didn’t know how long she slept for, but when she eventually woke up it was because someone was forcing a foul-tasting liquid down her throat. Coughing and spluttering, Mal sat up, and was instantly consumed by a wave of dizziness. She tried to focus and saw that in front of her was a confused looking nurse who was holding a bowl full of some kind of steaming liquid.

  “You have to drink this,” the nurse said, and reached forward.

  Mal felt an irrational anger take over her. “I don’t want it,” she grizzled like a toddler, and knocked the bowl out of the nurse’s hands. It hit the tiled floor and broke, the liquid spilling everywhere and polluting the ward with a foul smell. Mal fell backwards onto her pillows, closing her eyes again, but she wasn’t tired anymore. She just gave herself time to process her thoughts and get everything to make some kind of sense. But trying to apply logic to the situation made her head hurt, so she stopped. She opened her eyes again, and cautiously sat up. The nurse was crouching by her bed, cleaning up the smashed bowl with a face like thunder.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Mal said. Then nurse just scowled at her, and Mal fought back the urge to laugh. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” the nurse said stiffly. “You were brought in yesterday. I was told to tell Cass and Blaise when you woke up.”

  “Well...can you please?”

  “I’m getting to it,” the nurse snapped.

  Mal stared at her for a second, and then lay down again. The nurse took an infuriatingly long time to clear the mess up. Mal felt like she was drawing it out just to annoy her. Finally, she got up and walked out of the door. When she came back with Cass and Blaise, Mal forced herself into an upright position, determined to get some answers, but her questions died before they even reached her lips when she saw the look on Blaise’s face.

  For no reason Mal could find, Blaise was furious. His emotions were raging in his eyes, but the rest of his face was an expressionless mask carved from stone. His fists were clenching and unclenching at his sides, like he was resisting the urge to punch something. Cass was walking close behind him, not angry but definitely concerned. She kept moving her arms, crossing and uncrossing, holding them behind her back, letting them hang at her sides, as if she didn’t know what she was meant to do with them. The source of her concern was made clear by the way her red-rimmed eyes kept glancing up at her brother and then flickering away again, as if she was scared to be caught looking.

  Not trusting herself to speak, Mal stayed quiet as they both got to Mal’s bedside and stood by her, staring down at her face. For some reason, Mal felt threatened, so she straightened her spine and raised her head, looking directly into Blaise’s eyes. Suddenly, she felt a stinging pain on the side of her face and she collapsed to her side, the pure force of the slap making her fall back onto her pillow. She looked up at Blaise in alarm. He had hit her.

  “Blaise!” Cass said in disbelief, staring at her brother in disbelief. Blaise didn’t look at her. He stared down at Mal for a few seconds more. “Stupid girl,” he spat like an angry snake, and then he stormed out of the room. Mal realised she could taste blood.

  “I’m so sorry,” Cass said, sitting next to Mal and reaching for her face. “I don’t know why he did that. Are you okay?”

  Instinctively, Mal flinched away from Cass’s hand. “I’m fine,” she lied. “What happened to me? Why am I here? Did I pass the test?”

  Cass’s face dropped, and so did Mal’s heart as she studied the expression on her face. “I didn’t pass, did I?”

  “Well...technically, yes. But it’s kind of complicated.”

  “Tell me,” Mal demanded.

  Cass took a deep breath. “Do you remember when you first got here, and I told you about magic, I spoke about how the magic in our world can be sorted into two categories, Akraansir and Praethen magic, which are categories named after the only two mages who could ever control pure light and dark magic? And I told you that they were just myths?”

  “Yeah,” Mal said.

  “Well...there’s a legend surrounding Praethen and Akraansir. It says that when the universe was new, Praethen and Akraansir were the first two beings to ever walk it. Praethen was a child of the stars, and she was swarming with life and light. Undiscovered mysteries teemed behind her eyes, which shone as brightly as the galaxies that made her. She was the embodiment of all the wonder people had of the universe, the excitement of discovering new corners of the vibrant space around them as they answered the unanswerable and unwound the mysteries of space, time and existence itself. She was driven by a fierce curiosity, the same kind of insane lust for knowledge that drove people to send each other hurtling into the unknown reaches of the night sky
, protected by a small metal contraption powered with what remains of the great dinosaurs that once roamed our planet.

  “Akraansir was different. If Praethen was made of the bright, burning stars, then Akraansir was made of the dark spaces between them. She was tall and shadowed by her somber thoughts that pulled her into her despair like a black hole. While Praethen would create planets, Akraansir would destroy them, revelling in the insane destructive power she wielded. She was a symbol of the fear and uncertainty people feel when they gaze at the never ending abyss of the night sky, questioning their reality and the meaning of their presence on the small chunk of rock hurtling through space that they called their home.

  “Together, Akraansir and Praethen created the earth, a combination of the light and dark magic they controlled. For billions of years they controlled the earth, treating the humans that populated its surface as little more than playthings to amuse them, seeing how they would react to certain kinds of stimulus. Of course, because of the cataclysmic nature of Akraansir, her desire to see how far your brittle world could bend before it would snap, and Praethen’s compelling kindness, they often clashed. The worst of their fights were so intense that they affected the world below them, resulting in storms that sent streaks of light brighter than Praethen’s smile streaking across the sky, followed by a thunder that was as loud and intimidating as Akraansir’s voice.

  “One day Praethen and Akraansir had a child, the most powerful mage the world had ever seen, because she could control both light and dark magic. She could exert immense control over the world, and even overrule the power of her parents if she disagreed with them. Both Praethen and Akraansir soon realised that if they wanted complete control over the earth, they would have to make the child side with them. Their lives soon became a subtle but frightening battle for the support of their child.

  “Over the years, Praethen became more and more certain that his child would choose Akraansir over him. She was gifted with a sly cunning and a gentle persuasion that could convince even the strongest of people to hurl themselves to their own deaths. Praethen did his best, but when his daughter was five years old he couldn’t ignore it any longer. His daughter was starting to kill people down in the mortal world just by thinking it. With their daughter by his side, Akraansir would be unstoppable. Their combined lust for death and destruction would wear away his own influence until he was too small and weak to do anything except stand and watch as the pair destroyed the world he had worked so hard to protect.