by Kira Stüssy
It took Kelsey and Danny nearly two days to wake up. By that time, the Legion had moved them via portal to Nostos, where they were being closely watched by Legion guards. Apparently Turning humans is an activity that is closely monitored by the Council and Legion and there are copious rules concerning different scenarios where it was legal to Turn someone. As it so happens, Xavier’s Shade broke almost all of said rules.
When they finally did awaken, I happened to be sleeping beside Kelsey’s bed. Caspian and I had barely left their sides since returning to Nostos. “Mira?” she croaked.
I startled awake, momentarily confused and wondering what the heck I was doing in the underground tunnel beneath Center Hill. The jeweled notebook fell from my lap as I struggled into an upright sitting position. Remembrance flooded me and I said, “Huh? Yeah? Oh, thank goodness you’re awake!”
I counted to three before looking at her face, and bit back the yelp that threatened to escape my lips as I took in her new features. She was still Kelsey: cropped blonde hair, ski slope nose, and curvy body frame. But now, her skin had lost its tan glow, replaced by a pale snowy complexion. And her eyes were no longer chocolate brown. The eyes that stared groggily into mine were a deep red. Blood red.
“I feel sorta funky.” She murmured. Her normally perky voice had adopted an unidentifiable mystery to it, a sort of whispered attribute.
Danny groaned unintelligibly in the bed beside her, “Whadappened..?”
“’Morning, bro. How’re you feeling?” Caspian asked nervously, immediately perking up at the sight of his friend’s revival. Danny, whose skin used to be a rich mocha color, had taken on a slightly duller tone and his normally stunning green eyes, just like Kelsey’s, were now a brilliant red. I let my eyes wash over my two best friends. A new beauty exuded from the two of them, an eerie sort of exotic elegance.
“Like I was hit by a truck.”
“What happened? Where are we?” Kelsey demanded.
Caspian and I shared a hesitant glance, we had already planned for this question and we both knew there was no perfect way to respond. I breathed in deeply and told them the entire story. They listened intently, Kelsey gasping and nodding where appropriate. At the end of the tale, and after I had explained to them their new situation, they glanced at each other.
I braced for the crazed panic that was sure to ensue.
Danny, who had remained silent the whole time, simply shrugged, “So, I’m like a vampire?”
“Sort of. Vampires are the myth that came from Shades, there are similarities but they’re not the same thing. Humans misconstrue reality and the idea of vampires is one result of that.”
“Sounds cool enough to me.”
Caspian’s jaw dropped, “Are you kidding me?”
“Dude,” Danny sat back in his bed and folded his arms over his chest, “I’m in a magical land with things that aren’t supposed to exist, you being one of them, and now you’re telling me that I have been Turned into a supernatural being with my own set of powers? Please, tell me what I should be upset about.”
Bewildered by his response, I turned to Kelsey.
She took a bit longer to respond, but eventually nodded, “It’s going to be hard to hide from my parents, but it is pretty cool. Plus, do you have any idea how hot vamps are right now?”
“You’re not a vampire!”
“Eh, close enough. Ooh, we’re still going to Prom right? It’s in only a few days!”
I could not believe they were taking this news so well. Caspian and I shared an exasperated glance at each other before bursting into relieved laughter.
*
Roman held his sister’s hand as she slept.
He remembered when they were younger and used to shoot amateur Casts at one another, thinking it all to be just fun and games. But as soon as their parents were alerted of their children’s activities by a maid, the two of them were forced to stop their shenanigans. Their parents stressed how dangerous magic could be when not used properly. It was not something to fool around with.
Roman hadn’t a clue what Zoë had done to make someone put her in this state, to cut off her hand and mutilate her body. But nothing she could have done justified this. Every time he looked at her blank face or the bloody bandages that covered her body, a strange feeling of sickness overwhelmed him. He had recently come to recognize this as revenge, a new emotion to him. Whoever did this to Zoë was going to hurt, just like they hurt her.
“Roman?” she breathed and he reached for her cold hand.
“I’m right here Zoë,” he assured her, rubbing her hand with his thumb, “I’m right here.”
*
I left Caspian to deal with our new and overenthusiastic Shades and snuck through the tunnels, praying that I headed the right way. I crept down the dark halls, following the twists and turns faithfully. Finally, I started to recognize some landmarks (a large rock here and a missing light there) and my confidence grew. Soon enough, I stood in front of the large door with the Archives label clearly plastered on the front. With a shaky breath, I twisted the handle and entered the room.
Complete darkness enveloped me, no windows or torches to illuminate the space.
Over the past few days, I had managed to learn a new trick while waiting for Kelsey and Danny to wake up. I concentrated on the Knowledge that I now knew teemed inside me. I focused on the essence of light and the warm feeling I felt whenever I was in the presence of any brightness.
With a sharp pang of joy, the tip of my right pointer finger lit up like a flashlight, illuminating the Ink that decorated my hand. I stared at the Ink for a moment and thought back to when the Legion guards had come to the rescue mere days ago. When the Wielders of the group saw the tattoo they all exchanged uneasy glances at each other and I even heard one of the mutter, “That’s red around the edges, means it’s new. But she’s got a Knowledge, what the heck is she?”
Wouldn’t I like to know.
All I knew about Inks was that they were achieved only when a Wielder had fully mastered the art of summoning energy and controlling it into deliberate Casts. I most definitely could not control my Wielding powers, much less any of my powers. But the Ink said otherwise.
I tiptoed to the file cabinet where Ash and I had found my name before and started fingering through the papers. I pulled out the one labeled “Mirabelle Durrant” and opened the folder. Just as it had before, one piece of paper with the same cryptic information awaited there for me. I still could make no sense of the listed Kingdom: Boni Coniugator.
I went back to the files and pulled out a second folder that read “Caspian Durrant” and scanned the document inside. Everything we knew already had been stated there: that he was a water Knowledge and the list of all the members in his family. Under Kingdom, his merely said Wielder and Elemental, sinking my heart deeper into the depression it had recently succumbed to after my encounter with Xavier. With a short sigh, I placed both of the folders back into the cabinet. The drawer shut with a bang and when I looked up I almost went into cardiac arrest.
“Hello Mira.” The Elemental queen greeted me ruefully. She loomed in the doorway, creating a major de ja vu situation. “You seem to find yourself wandering here quite often.”
“I could say the same for you.”
She chuckled, “What is it that you are so desperate to learn here?”
“I need to figure out what’s wrong with me.”
“Wrong with you? Child, you assume the worst.”
I tried to control my breathing, “What else is there to assume?”
“Being different is not always a bad thing, it is uniqueness from which the greatest leaders arise.”
I glared into her silvery eyes that shone in the darkness ominously, “Xavier told me that I’m not his daughter. He told me the Council switched his daughter with me, that I was some sort of creation made by the Council. Is that true?”
She didn’t respond right away. She studied the ceiling for a few minutes, as if admiring
the great architecture of the dirt tunnels and said, “Did you know that Nostos is in a state of unrest? That the Kingdoms are on the very brink of war? We make it seem like our most awful foe is across the realm but really our greatest threat is ourselves. We need a common goal, a plan without division. We need…” she looked me straight into the eyes and said, with the utmost solemnity, “unity. The time will come for you to understand. Soon, but not quite yet. They say that you are a light Knowledge?”
I nodded, “That’s the best way I can describe it.”
“Well, good day little light, don’t ever let the darkness extinguish you.”
And with the most mystical of exits, she glided out of the room.
*
I walked away from Center Hill, desperate to clear my head.
The conversation with the queen had only upped my anxiety. She had said close to nothing outright, but she implied a lot. And when I had asked her whether Xavier told the truth or not, her avoidance of answering told me everything I needed to know.
I trudged along the stream that flowed beside the cobblestone path leading me into town. Every so often, I would glance sorrowfully down into the glassy water, the surface disturbed by the gurgling of rushing water over rocks. The reflection that stared back at me was the same one I had known for sixteen years: crazy red hair, big gray eyes, and ghost pale skin. But something had changed over the past month, other than the glistening butterfly-like wings. I stood a little taller and my stride stretched a little further. The changes were probably hardly noticeable to a stranger, but in my eyes, I was a new person. I had felt and seen myself use powers I had no idea how to control, but I could still harness them. A whole new universe now exposed for my blinded eyes to see, and I knew this was only the beginning.
Curious, I focused on the electricity inside of me, always there but usually subdued. At that moment though, I brought it to the surface of my consciousness. My skin tingled with the Wielding power and when I checked my reflection in the stream, my eyes rippled back brilliant cobalt blue.
With great effort, I managed to push the electricity back into submission and concentrate on the power I knew only slightly better. I felt the pleasant warmth that the setting sun and the dim lights of the Elemental village transferred to me. I absorbed the light and showered in the wonderful power it brought me. Now that I knew where to focus my energy, light seemed to bring me much more strength than it had back when I was ignorant to my Knowledge. When I glanced back down at the stream, my eyes burned like two beacons of light.
I sighed, and shoved the light energy down. It wasn’t easy, but I had been practicing. This new discovery of the crazy eye color changes had come as quite a shock the first time I managed to switch them by sheer force of will. I was slowly becoming more accustomed to the strangeness of it as I continued to exercise my magic over the past few days.
Before Ash and Erion rescued me from the farmhouse and introduced me to the world of magic and excitement, back when I thought I was nothing more than a disastrous human girl, accidents followed me everywhere. I always just assumed Caspian and I had inherited an awful dose of bad luck, but now I knew better. None of the freak accidents in my life, spontaneous fires and the like, had been accidents at all. Now that we were learning to control our unusual abilities, such occurrences have seemed like nothing more than flukes in our practices. I felt slight relief in the idea that I no longer had to assume I was a walking curse.
But even though I felt much more in control of my powers, I knew something huge was still missing, abilities I had not discovered. Before the run in with Xavier, such an assumption would have been even nuttier than the very fact that I possessed any supernatural powers in the first place. But after everything he accused me of, of being a monster experiment developed by the Council, assuming that any rules applied to me anymore seemed ludicrous.
I scurried down the vacating streets of the Elemental town as vendors closed shop and people headed home from the marketplace. I rushed by Laurel’s stand and she smiled and waved at me. She had been much more cordial as of late, and I could only assume it had something to do with Caspian. But this was only a theory since I had not seen them together since the night they barged into Kelsey’s room claiming they were on a rescue mission. I had a hard time believing it had only been two days ago. In my head, it could have been a lifetime.
With all of the nervous thoughts swimming around my brain, the colors and voices I had been dealing with recently crowded the forefront of my attention. Even just over the last couple of days, since “that night”, auras seemed to be glowing brighter and voices seemed to be growing louder. I could now practically see the colors that enveloped people ceaselessly and the voices were a constant hum in the background of my brain that occasionally rose to shouts. They spoke of the most random things, ranging from typical everyday comments to philosophical arguments. I started to wonder whether I had gained the ability to read minds but the idea only increased my already sky high stress level. I chose to save that concern for a later date.
My head ached. I lifted my fingertips to my temples and hurried past the last row of shops. I headed for the outskirts of town, to the dividing line between the Wielding Kingdom and the Elemental Kingdom: The University.
Once the main part of town was out of sight and I made it to the stretch of flowering meadows, I picked up my pace and ran as fast as I could. Athletics have never been my thing, but something about the way my lungs gasped for air and my legs begged to stop made me want to push even harder, to run away from all my fears and worries right back to the past where life had been so much simpler and far less confusing.
But, of course, I couldn’t go back.
My legs practically cheered in exaltation when I reached the University grounds. I screeched to a halt outside the doorway. I read the motto that hung above the entrance that read Nostosian University: Coniungit scientia infestantibus inimicis.
I still had zero idea as to what the heck it meant, but somehow I found comfort in the phrase. I mouthed the words to myself, loving the way the old language rolled off my inexperienced tongue. I thought of the few classes I had taken here so far and yearned to take more and to learn more about Nostos.
With a sigh, I meandered away from the building and moseyed through the lawn and gardens that decorated the grounds. I wove through the trees that scattered the area and the variety of Nostosian plants, like Scarlet Delight and Sweet Violets, which were strategically placed for the perfect appearance until I arrived at my true destination. I pushed the concealing branches aside and stepped into Ash’s Grove, seeking solace from the only place I knew to go.
But I came to a sudden stop as I entered the clearing. I wasn’t alone.
“Seems you had the same idea that I did?” Ash was lying on his back amidst the dead leaves and soft soil, staring peacefully up at the clear starry sky. He looked so serene, his arms behind his head and magnificent black wings stretched out behind him. His feathers were so glossy and perfect, so beautiful.
“Sorry. I can go.” It was the first time I had seen him since the night with Xavier. Once all had been said and done, his feelings for me were clear. He only stared at me with ice in his eyes and a frown on his face, like I was the most disgusting thing he could imagine. He, Erion, and Laurel traveled in a portal back to Nostos while Caspian and I visited my mom and Bram.
“You don’t have to. I was about to leave anyways.”
He sat up and tried to brush off his back but failed miserably. He twisted his mouth in frustration. His dark hair sat ruffled slightly from laying down. I built up my courage and before he got up I blurted out, “Can we talk?”
He sighed, knowing where this was going, “Mirabelle…”
“Why didn’t you use your power back at the house?”
He blanched, clearly surprised, “What?”
“Your Knowledge, the fight would have been over in an instant if you had just used your Knowledge. So why didn’t you?”
He looked at me unseeingly. I suddenly realized why he had been ignoring me the past few days, not checking on Kelsey and Danny and not caring to see me: He was ashamed, thought the fault landed on his shoulders, “Because I can’t control it, I could’ve killed everyone in there. Including you and Erion. I couldn’t risk that. I would rather face the guilt of not acting than face your gravestone.”
“I think you’re scared.”
“Scared? No, no Mirabelle, I’m not scared. I am angry, I am ashamed, and I am dangerous. But I am not scared.”
I knelt down beside him and placed a hand on his warm cheek, “It’s okay to be scared, Ash.”
“Fear is weakness. That’s the first thing you learn in the Legion. Once you are afraid, you’re dead. We must always be brave in order to overcome our enemies.”
“There is no bravery without fear because courage means that you are overcoming your fear, that you do the right thing even if it terrifies you. Without fear, you’re just plain reckless.”
He shook his head and eased to stand, “I need to go…”
But I pulled him back down, “Don’t try to build walls against me, Ash Brentwood.”
“I don’t want to, but I have to. I’m a disaster, Mirabelle, can’t you see that? And being around you is the most awful thing I could possibly do because…” he trailed off but stared deeply into my eyes.
“Because, what?” My heart pounded painfully in my chest.
“Because I think I am falling in love with you, Mirabelle, and no matter how hard I try to get back up I just keep falling. And I cannot put you deliberately in harm’s way. I can’t do that to you.”
There it was, right out in the open. I put my hands on his shoulders and turned him towards me so he had no choice but to look me in the face while I spoke. His face displayed all of the destruction he had faced, new lines had formed on his features from worry that I had never seen before. It tore at my heart to see him like this, playful and carefree Ash seeming to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. He played the part of jester so well that I often forgot that deep down there was actually a sensitive person there who just wanted to keep others safe. He truly believed he was a monster. Xavier’s word floated across my thoughts: Abomination. I could relate to Ash more than he knew.