Starbright: The Complete Series

by Hilary Thompson

  I wander back toward the concrete, keeping a good distance from the guards, looking for whatever invisible barrier might be there.

  “All I see are these bits of crystal,” I say as Trea joins me, leaning over my shoulder as I kneel to inspect the tiny, sparkling bits which seem to be cast right into the concrete at irregular intervals.

  She reaches her hand to touch one, and her fingers curl inward. “Ugh,” she mutters.

  I do the same, and since she doesn’t stop me this time, I get to feel the sharp pierce of pain, as though a needle were being shoved into my fingertip.

  I see no logical explanation, and that worries me. Even the magic and mystery of the prophecies seem to always be rooted in an explanation. My internal sense of Balance is strangely threatened by this odd imbalance of power, born of ignorance and ambiguity.

  Just then, footsteps reach us, and we look up to see the True Prophet walking toward us. He nods to the guards as he passes them, but they only stare blankly in his direction.

  “Welcome to Elysium,” he says, stopping a dozen feet from the edge of the concrete. Well out of our reach.

  “Your people have not been exactly welcoming,” Trea says, her voice testy with the irritation that hangs in the air.

  “There has been a change in the prophecy. Javan was only following orders,” he answers. “You may not enter Elysium without claiming the path as your own journey.”

  “What path?” I ask. “What change?”

  He looks down at the concrete, then sweeps his fingers in the air as though to include the whole area. “The path is here. It begins when you touch the city we have made.”

  “The concrete,” I clarify, and he nods. “There’s a path here?”

  He nods again, but says nothing. Even I’m starting to lose patience with the boy.

  “And what about the prophecy?” Trea prompts.

  “You have done well at Tartarus. You saved many people,” he says instead. “You were to have been welcomed into Elysium on a different path. But the stars have spoken. The evil in this world has not been diminished by your cleansing of Tartarus: it has only grown.”

  “Grown?” I repeat, and he nods. “There is more evil in the world now than before?”

  “Something is no longer in balance,” he says, gazing into the blue of the sky. I narrow my eyes at him, wondering if he means me.

  Trea sighs and shifts, restless. I think of the blackness hidden behind her eyes, and we both shiver as though I had spoken the possibility aloud.

  The Prophet nods again. “Know this: you are not ready to save Elysium. Your powers have not been fully developed. You must follow the path which all those who live here have followed. You must become one of us before you will be allowed to save us.”

  Trea abruptly bursts into laughter edged with hysteria, and I glance at her nervously. She shakes with giggles for several minutes, and I try to make eye contact with the Prophet, but he only stares into the trees now, calm and unaffected.

  “Allowed!” she gasps finally, trying to catch her breath. She grasps her stomach and wipes the moisture from her eyes. “We are not allowed to save them,” she repeats to me, mimicking his young, formal voice.

  “This attitude is precisely what the stars are concerned about,” he answers quietly. He slants his eyes at us. “Being the savior is not the honor. Saving someone is the honor. You have much to learn.”

  She sobers up at this, and we exchange glances. Although it wasn’t expected, this makes sense enough.

  “What do we do?” I ask.

  “Follow the path,” he shrugs, and I feel my aggravation starting all over again. “You must overcome your greatest fears, and demonstrate your greatest love. You must, essentially, become truly human before you can become truly immortal again.”

  “But I am human,” Trea says, her shock echoing mine, evident in her voice at his implication. “We are human.”

  He only shakes his head. “You have not been fully human in many cycles. But you cannot yet access your immortal powers either. This is why the path is so vital for you both. And for the others.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Forget about his ideas of human and immortal – I just realized that all this time, I’ve never considered myself in the same league as Trea. Sure, I have power over the wind, and I can send her my thoughts.

  But I’m just the Scale – the equipment. She’s the one who must actually fulfill the Prophecy.

  The Prophet looks sharply at me. “There are many who must work together to fulfill this new prophecy. If any one of you fails, the earth will perish. If any one of you refuses your path, the earth will burn with the tears of the moon and the anger of the sun.”

  I stare at him, trying to process this twist, and what he’s saying echoes some of the words written in my journal: be strong together. Somehow I knew it had all sounded too easy: of course the gods wouldn’t be satisfied with us simply saving the people in Elysium the same way we did in Tartarus, then traipsing off to relieve Asphodel.

  Then something he’s said before clicks in my brain. “You said this is a cycle, right? The world was nearly lost before, when Lakessa and her sisters were building the cities…” I trail off, my brain working furiously to unravel some knot I’ve just seen.

  He nods, a tiny smile playing at the edge of his mouth.

  “We are like them…” Trea breathes, and I can hear the hatred for the idea in her voice.

  “True,” the Prophet nods again. “Lakessa, Clota, and Aisa were also maidens. In fact, we in Elysium believe their consciousness may even have been transferred to your own, and to Irana’s, and to the third maiden. This is a true cycle.”

  Trea holds her fingers to her temples. “Okay…first you tell me I’m not human, then you tell me I’m some sort of reincarnation of Lakessa. I just can’t…”

  “What about the Three Sisters?” I ask, a small portion of the knot revealing itself to me. “Were the Three Sisters there, too?”

  “Yes, indeed,” the Prophet says, his smile a bit wider. Trea just shakes her head at me, refusing to believe in this mysticism.

  “So how did Lakessa and her sisters please the Three Sisters? How did they succeed in saving the world?” I ask.

  The smile disappears and the True Prophet draws his brows together, looking suddenly very old. “You are assuming too much. They did not.”

  A feeling of dread begins to seep into my limbs, making my feet feel too heavy to move.

  “They didn’t defeat the Sisters?” Trea whispers, sounding as dumbfounded as I feel. The Prophet shakes his head, staring wide-eyed and serious at her.

  “Clota, Lakessa, and Aisa were once just like you. Just like the three maidens we have today – you, Irana, and the third you have yet to find. But they failed. They were not,” he turns his eyes on me, “in Balance with their task. Three cannot balance, but four…perhaps. They succumbed to the lure of power and long life. They were not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, and hundreds of thousands of people died because of their selfishness. Look around you,” he gestures at the quiet forest, the empty ocean on the horizon. “We do not have so many left to die, and the human race surely could not survive a second time.”

  “So if we can’t find the other maiden, and work together, and find this invisible path, and become saviors, and gather all the people into some Garden we know nothing about–” Trea’s voice is rising again to hysteria, but she stops in mid-word as the Prophet simply bows to us and turns away, walking back toward the buildings in measured steps.

  I want to call out, beg him to stay, but I know it would do no good. He’s given us all he plans to.

  Trea sighs a deep breath, pushing strands of hair from her face and rubbing at her temples. I rest my arm along her shoulders, and she leans into me. “That was about as helpful as always. Riddles, puzzles, impossible claims of how I’m not a human.”

  I can’t help but smile into her hair. Her skin is hot to the touch, but she’
s calm: she’s not fuming in anger, and although it surprises me, it also makes me proud. She’s controlling her anger, not the other way around.

  “What should we do now?” I ask, prompted to let her lead. I feel her shoulders raise and lower in a shrug.

  “Find this path, I guess. We can’t just sit here and wait for the world to burn.” Although her words reach for strength, her voice is quiet with defeat.

  “This changes everything, Lexan. You know that, right?” Her voice is so quiet. So serious.

  “Not everything,” I answer, dropping a light kiss on her forehead.

  She looks up at me and smiles just a little, then kneels, leaning over the concrete as far as possible without coming in range of the crystals, gazing at the sparkling pieces. She backs up, paces south, then north again. I watch her movements, noticing out of the corner of my eyes that the guards have begun to twist toward us just the slightest bit. They are watching too, although they don’t seem to want us to know.

  I kneel down and close my eyes for a few moments against the white sun and its blinding reflection in the ocean before us. My head is starting to pulse from the exhaustion of the last few days. I just need to calm my racing mind – I can’t even remember anything from my reading that might help solve this puzzle. I haven’t felt this helpless in a long while.

  Trea begins muttering under her breath, too muffled for me to make out. I open one eye.

  And before I can open the other, she has taken a running leap across the concrete, soaring through the air like some crazy fire bird.

  She hits the concrete in a crouch, her body shaking violently as she tumbles and slumps to her side.

  “Trea!” I bolt to my feet, my eyes swimming with dizziness at the sudden movement. My arm swings out over the concrete, and I snatch it back, knocked nearly breathless by the jolt of pain.

  “Trea!” I call again, and she twitches, groans, and lolls her head back to see me. I wince as her eyes find me.

  Solid black. No white.

  She grins lazily at me, and nausea rolls up my throat at the unfamiliar expression. Her lips form words I can barely make out: “Smart girl.” I nearly lose the meager contents of my stomach.

  Then she coughs and moans, screwing her eyes shut and gulping air.

  Her eyes slide open again, and I cry out in relief when I see how the ashy gray has returned. She curses quietly and pushes to a sitting position, rubbing at her temples. “That really hurt. But it doesn’t now!”

  I have no idea if she even realizes the darkness had surfaced again. And what was that speaking from her mouth? But there isn’t a chance to ask as she scoots over excitedly, pointing beneath her – more crystals, but as she traces her fingers over five separate stones, the pattern seems to pulse at me.

  “The Aries constellation?” I ask, amazed. She nods and grins.

  “Just like the True Prophet said when I saw him in Tartarus – keep your sights in the stars. He was giving me clues even then. See those at the edge,” she gestures to the five feet or so between us, “they’re the other stars. If you step back, you might see the pattern better. Libra is over there,” she points. I walk to where she points, and find she is right.

  But can I make it? I’m fighting the flutter of dread for the pain and judging the distance I’ll need to jump when another sound registers behind me. Footsteps.

  A figure is approaching, and as it nears, I can see it is a woman in a yellow dress. Trea sucks in a breath, and then I recognize her too – the youngest of the Three Sisters. The only one who had truly smiled at me in Tartarus. She’s smiling now, just a little, appearing friendly rather than some ancient figure who would be content to watch the world burn.

  I relax in relief. Perhaps now we will get some answers, and hopefully an easier way in. I’m just not sure if I can make such a jump right now; my body may not be up for the evident pain Trea felt when flying through the open space between the grass and the constellation of crystals.

  “Sister,” the two guards say in unison, bowing slightly at the waist as the youngest Sister passes them and stops before us, standing effortlessly on the open expanse of concrete. I eye them curiously, mindful of the strangeness of their greeting.

  “You have kept us waiting quite some time,” the girl says to Trea, her beautiful face a smooth mask of calm. She slides her startlingly blue eyes over to me, then turns and nods at the two guards, who begin to approach.

  As they glide in our direction, the air surrounding them grows hazy. My eyes widen as the simple clothing, then the short brown hair, seems to float away from them, dissolving into nothingness. Their pale bodies shrink and slim, then color reappears from nowhere, cloaking one form in a glittering gown of silver and long lavender hair, and the other with coils of pale orange hair and a royal blue robe, slit nearly to the hip.

  The two elder of the Three Sisters now stroll languidly toward us, as if they had all the time in the world, and I realize it must be time to close my mouth.

  FOUR

  ASTREA

  “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage

  of those who dare to make dreams into reality.”

  From Jonas Salk

  Inscribed in Elysium before the Cleansing

  I scramble to my feet, smoothing back my escaping curls and dusting off my shirt. I’m careful to stay within the confines of the Aries constellation. Not knowing when the pain might strike is a good motivation to stay still for once.

  I glance back over at Lexan, glad the Sisters arrived when they did. Or made themselves known, anyways. I’m afraid he won’t be able to make the jump. That he’ll land in the galaxy of pain instead. I inwardly curse that storm again – if he hadn’t needed to save the ship, he would be strong enough now.

  As it is, we’re in trouble. The Three Sisters stand before me, examining me with varying expressions of amusement, curiosity, and downright animosity.

  “I am sorry to keep you waiting, Your Graces. We have cleansed Tartarus. Hadeon the Destroyer has been destroyed,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

  The eldest Sister cuts her eyes sharply over my face. Her dress is as blue as Lexan’s eyes, but it slinks over her body like a snake coiled around a pile of bones. She slits open her lips and laughter spills out.

  “We have heard of your deeds in Tartarus, little star. You are very brave to claim such a thing, though.”

  “Alecta, let us leave that for another time,” the youngest Sister says in her soft voice. It is the first mention I have heard of any of their names – even Hadeon never told me as much.

  Alecta bares her teeth and all but hisses at the youngest girl, who flinches briefly. “My name is my own to give or keep, Sisss-ter.” She then turns back to us and smiles tightly, but neither action is gracious.

  The middle Sister tugs at the thick braid of her lavender hair, studying Lexan. “Why have you not begun the path? Cross.”

  He flushes a bit, and I grit my teeth to keep from mouthing off to her. “Your Grace, he is injured–”

  “I’m fine,” Lexan interrupts, his voice light. “We were merely hoping to be invited or escorted inside your fine city. Entrance is necessary, but forced entrance need not be.”

  I close my eyes briefly to keep them from rolling. I don’t think Lexan’s usual charming diplomacy is going to work on these three vultures. I watch as they exchange glances. The exchange takes so long that I begin to wonder if they can send each other thoughts as well.

  The clouds shift slightly, and as the full, round sun illuminates their golden and lavender and pale orange hair, I catch fleeting glimpses of something else. Something dark and twisting beneath their beauty. Something like what I see when I close my eyes and Hade’s laughter echoes in my brain.

  I close my eyes again, this time to judge them. But there is no color, no black, no white. No soul?

  I jerk my eyes open. The oldest, Alecta, is watching me, her lips parted in a cruel sort of smile. She simply shakes her head at me and t
urns away before I can speak.

  The only people I’ve seen without souls have been dead.

  I glance back to Lexan, but he is gathering our bags.

  “Astrea, you may cross the border now without pain. By willingly and bravely crossing the threshold, you have passed the first test of our path,” the youngest Sister says.

  I look down at the glittering bits of crystal which make up the border she speaks of – five or six feet of stars in a mock galaxy. I’m suddenly, achingly reminded of the Ministration Room in Asphodel, with its mosaics of the night sky. The religion I never accepted until I ran from it. The religion I have somehow become a symbol of now.

  I step into the stars.

  And there is no pain, just as she said. I walk the few steps to Lexan, gather both of our packs, and walk back, depositing them near the Aries constellation.

  Lexan watches me with a masked expression. I keep my eyes open, trained on his. I nod, sending him a flare of courage.

  I don’t know if I can jump that far, Trea. His thought, followed by his fear, drifts to me across the divide.

  The middle Sister steps forward. “The pain is temporary, but necessary. There is no entrance to Elysium without pain.” Her voice is grudging, as though she doesn’t really want to give us this information, but knows it is required of her.

  I scrape down into my soul and find the purest bravery waiting there: the power which started this mess, but which I’ve nearly forgotten in my search for more and more fire. I walk toward the Libra constellation, bracing for possible pain. But again there is nothing, as though passing the border might be the only test. Lexan follows, keeping parallel to me in the grass. Standing across from him, I send him as much bravery as I can, to withstand the pain.

  Lexan nods, takes a deep breath, and focuses his deep-water blue eyes on my own gray ones.

  He jumps.

  The force of his body colliding with mine nearly bowls me over, but I stagger and hold him, feeling the spasms of his muscles as the pain courses through each limb.