The Halcyon Girl

 

The ground sloshed underfoot, muddy and red, scattered with the dead and dying. Few were completely dead, at least so far. That would take time, hours at least.. 

Isadore inhaled deeply. She could almost taste the blood in the air, or at least she imagined she did. It was tinged with an almost metallic smell— a familiar metallic smell, fortunately. After all, Isadore would be far different without those experiences. 

Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing. 

She tapped into her Core, allowing her to see the spores of deep, rich green light from her view. She’d been deliberating about whether or not to use some of their Glow to see the souls of the dying, but it turned out to be unnecessary. The life forces were visible without it, abandoning their previous owners, blossoming from their chests into the night sky above. The misty souls were a beautiful shade of violet against the dark, starry sky. Isadore reached her hand through one. It continued its slow climb, not in the least disturbed by her presence. She moved on.

Ah, there he was. He’d fallen at the very beginning, before the fighting even started. Only a thin tendril of mist was coming off of him now, like the smoke from a candle just barely blown out. Soon all of his life force would be gone, moving on to who-knew-where. 

She knelt next to him, her cape and dress suddenly cold, soaked through with mud. She didn’t care. She could just clean that off later— assuming she had any Glow left after that. She probably wouldn’t, but honestly, she didn’t care. 

Isadore took a deep breath and reached out with her senses. This would either work or it wouldn’t. In preparation for today, she’d refrained from using the Glow for two weeks at least. She could feel motes of energy spread out for miles, her senses and power amplified by the full moon

Would it be enough? 

She flared her Charge, drawing the glowing motes toward her. The nearest ones settled on her skin, in line with a plain through the center of her chest. The others arranged themselves into rings like those encircling a planet, their radiance increasing just by virtue of being near each other. She closed her eyes. They were still there, but the way they were was impossible to describe. They felt like the energy of a lightning bolt when the volts became a part of the person in the seconds before that person was reduced to charcoal. 

She wanted to draw them into herself, feel that feeling as more than just an impression. But such mistakes had destroyed mages greater than her. She had a job to do. 

Mustering her strength, she drew every tiny mote of Glow toward her. She felt them streaking from every direction as far as her senses could reach to form rings around her, projecting around her a shell of raw power exploding into brilliant light. Her hold on it was slippery at best. But she didn’t need to hold it, at least not all of it. Gritting her teeth, she sent half of the light into the boy’s body and directed it to heal and mend and return to its prior state. The other half she held next to her as long as the healing process would allow. Sweat beaded on her forehead, pain blossomed in her abdomen. Afraid to breathe, in case that interrupted the delicate balance, she opened her eyes. The smoke of the boy’s life was…

It was gone. A wave of panic crashed through her— but there it was, in the sky, not quite gone. She sent the rest of her Glow up, and it obliged, glad to be doing something. It wrapped around the tendril of soul and rolled it up like a spool of thread. The mist strained against it, reaching for the sky, and whatever freedom lay beyond. Isadore yanked on her Glow, struggling against the celestial pull of the stars. At the same time, her Core cracked. 

She screamed, slapping her hands to the mud, clawing compulsively. But the soul in the stars above her finally gave, and the spool of magical energy, suddenly without resistance, spun faster than a top, collecting the misty soul, dragging it out of the sky. 

Isadore, freed from the worst of it (though she had to keep constant pressure on both aspects of the Glow), closed her eyes and sucked in breath after breath. She felt lightheaded and about five seconds from blacking out, but she opened her eyes again anyway to transfer the soul back into the body. 

She broke apart the motes of the magic spool, and before the soul could escape, used them to form a cocoon around it. She drew the cocoon toward her and toward the body. She lengthened it, then created a rope to twine around the soul.Then, finally she pushed it back into the boy’s chest. 

Closing her eyes, she could feel both the magic and the soul, coiling in his chest like a snake until it was all inside. With a sigh of relief, she pulled at the remaining Glow (some had been used up in the process, but not all of it). But it wouldn’t come. 

She frowned and tugged again. She hadn’t expected this. She could only hope it wouldn’t have any ill effects once she revived him. With a final puff of Glow, she started his heart and lungs. 

He coughed, jerked up to sit, and coughed again. His eyes were panicked, Isadore noticed dimly. Panicked and green. 

And then, to her utter humiliation, she slumped into oblivion.

In an age long forgotten, there hung a castle in the sky, suspended by stars. The palace used to be a beacon of hope, little more than a concept to bring to the world ideals, to give the world order and to show men honor when they looked to the skies. This palace was secured to the clouds by thirty strings, delicate as spiderweb, but hundreds of times as strong. Those gifted with the powers of darkness were chosen to watch over half of these strings, and those with light the other half, to keep the castle in the sky and preserve this shred of hope that the world could eventually become perfect. 

Anciently, these two factions did not trust each other. Half stars reborn, half monsters given a second chance (so the legends said), one faction wished to control the others, though even they themselves never gave this desire a name, instead calling it suspicion or mistrust due to the nature of the darklings. Those who held the night in their hands were rarely powerful enough to fight back, instead retreating into mountains or fighting wars of ideas. These wars were ongoing, even at the time that these thirty guardians were chosen and given their wings, the better to protect and thicken their strings. 

Each string was bonded to the heart of the guardian. As they sought to become better, and in turn to better their worlds through the ideals of the stars, the strings would strengthen. This, the spirits decided, was a perfect way. Surely those respected with such a sacred duty would never forget what they stood for. After all, half of them came from the stars, and the other half had in a previous life been pure enough to wish to change their very nature. Their task was the perfect way to do it. How could they not appreciate that? 

This worked perfectly for exactly ten years. On the anniversary of the day the system had been implemented, a lightling called Elisa sought out the spirits and presented an argument. Creatures of darkness, she claimed, should not be trusted with such a task. Their very abilities marked them as evil by nature, something difficult to overcome even for the best of their kind. The spirits listened patiently but painfully as she listed the reasons she saw her people as deserving of the birthright, and the darklings as little more than peasants. Redeemed prisoners. As she spoke, her string began to melt, little by little, drop by drop. Gradually, the sustaining energy of the stars withdrew from the darkness she’d found in her heart. 

She paused for breath, and the string snapped. 

The spirits shuffled and muttered. There was more than one cry of despair. What went wrong, they asked each other? Where did she go wrong? What happened? 

They forgot about Elisa, who, feeling the loss, flew to see her string. It had snapped, having become far thinner than it should have been. Aghast, she tried to fix it. “I was only doing what was right,” she cried to the stars. “You have chosen my people! You have given us your gifts, not the darklings. Have you forgotten that you favor us?” 

She should not have spoken. Her wings, bestowed also of the stars, began to melt away. The stars did not wish her death, but they could not stop it. Her ideas were flawed. They were wrong, and they could not give their power unto one who had allowed her mind to become clouded with the ideas of men. If only she had understood. But, for Elisa, it was too late. 

The spirits called the other 29 together, determined to find out what went wrong. They told the others what had happened to Elisa, and asked how they could prevent this in the future. Haedin, a darkling, stepped forward. “We need to realize, he said, that my people is just as good as their people, chosen of the stars or not.” 

“But you are not chosen,” Tembri insisted, a lightling. “You are not chosen because you are not good enough. You are monsters. You must beg on your knees for a chance at redemption. We are fallen gods, here only to gather more power. Naturally, we are the more capable.” 

“And Elisa? She was among the capable?” 

“Elisa was a fool,” Tembri snapped. “She grew weak. The ideals state that our groups are equal and deserve our opportunities. Those are, however, ideals. Only rusty ideals. Her crime is speaking a truth that contradicts what the stars would have us believe.”

Haedin stiffened while Tembri went on. 

“The stars are weak,” he said. “They are too merciful to those who don’t deserve it.”

Tembri’s string snapped. “He stumbled back, shocked. What did you do, Haedin?”

Haedin’s eyes flashed with anger. “I did nothing, you fool. You did it yourself. You called the stars weak. You contradicted the ideals. The truth.”

From there, the conference only escalated, and the influence of the spirits was not enough to calm thirty fiery angels. Some were angry because they were set equal with darklings. Darklings, they claimed, had no moral code. Darklings were monsters reborn. Darklings were abominations. They should all be killed. These arguments only escalated, and several darklings threw in retorts of their own. Lightlings were useless little pieces of divinity who had never done anything wrong in their lives, as if the darkling blood on their hands was nothing but mud from mere interactions with them. Lightlings destroyed everything they touched. Lightlings, full of privilege, full of superiority, made them sick. Lightlings were the ones that should be expunged. 

Snap. Snap. Snap. 

But nobody seemed to care anymore. Now it was about winning. Winning, whether the castle crashed or not. Strings melted and snapped. Wings dripped onto the floor, coating it in a thin layer of wax. Most of the darklings stayed out of the confrontation, watching the proceedings with wide eyes, trying to calm everybody. But their strings alone were not enough. The castle creaked, tilted, stretched the remaining strings thin…

…thin enough to snap. 

The palace, symbol of ideals, fell. The spirits escaped. The twenty nine were not so lucky. The impact with the mountaintop killed most of them instantly, even the few who hadn’t noticed over their own shouting, not until the palace had flipped and crashed into the ground. 

The towers were not crushed. The palace was built in the shape of a smooth trident, and the spires stabbed into the ground, fixing the palace and the island beneath it deep into the earth. 

For years, people within eyeshot and earshot of the mountain where it fell spoke stories in hushed, nervous voices of the huge landmass that had fallen there. They knew nothing of the palace. It was no longer visible. 

A relic. 

A relic of ideals and broken promises. 

A relic of the past, of an angry people turned fiery and the passive not strong enough to hold up the world.

Ideals had fallen. Ideals had broken. And yet the stars had hope. 

Perfection, after all, is not for man. These people had listened too much to the skeptics. In magnanimously descending to work with the others, they showed the world how good they could really be. But only out of pride. 

This was not the way to return to the stars. This was the way to return to what they were before, back to waiting and learning until they were ready to try again. 

The stars and the spirits spoke of the events. They found the inferrations made by these two nations quite interesting. Why would they send remorseful monsters to the earth with darkness when that was the very thing they were attempting to forsake? Why would they send stars, who already knew how to use light, to earth as lightlings? There was no progression there. No, the monsters were the lightlings, given light to learn to use it so they could come to the skies. The stars were sent with darkness, to learn to harness it so they could become something more. Light and dark together. That was progression. 

No, the conquerors had been wrong. 

No, the victims had been wrong. 

Perhaps, with the truth, they would be able to find their ideals. 

Then again, maybe truth, like ideals, would famously thud to the earth, the minders of it disillusioned and annoyed. 

—KLH

The door opened and General Baure stepped just inside my office. “Sir?”

At that particular moment, I was pacing back and forth behind the walnut wood desk, but at the general’s arrival, knowing what this must mean, I stopped in my tracks. “Yes?” I asked, hoping my voice didn’t sound as tight to him as it felt to me. 

“We’ve cornered the criminals,” he began. “You know they won’t come easily. My team awaits your orders.”

It’s not that easy, General, I thought desperately. You don’t get it. It’s not that easy. Those criminals are—were my closest friends. They believe in what they’re doing, General. 

“What are our options?” I asked, stalling. I knew what they were. But I couldn’t just let them die… but if I didn’t, bad things would happen to me. To my family. 

“We can retreat,” Baure began, “we can kill them, or we can attempt to capture them.”

I nodded, sweat beading on my forehead. I’d given the order to capture three times before, but they slipped through Baure’s fingers every time—with ease, like water. I couldn’t do that again. They’d never let me. But kill them? I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t kill Raiku, who stayed with me and idly talked with me about anything all day long, Chara, quiet and thoughtful, who used to patiently help me talk through problems, Jyr, who always brought a ready smile and citrus fruit from the market for each of us—and then, of course, the others, the ones who hadn’t been quite as much a part of our group, the neighbors and cousins and siblings. There were at least fifteen of them total, at Baure’s mercy—my mercy. 

“Sir?”

“Hmm?” I raised my eyes from the red carpeting, patterned with gold. I had carpets and tapestries and wooden roofs; they had grass and dirt, trees and bushes, and boundless skies. But at the core, we both wished for the same things. We both wished to be free of these people who made us enemies. Maybe they were the smart ones—I conformed while they struggled and lived free. But at least my family ate! At least for now, air filled their lungs and blood colored their cheeks. But if I gave the order to retreat, my superiors’ vengeance would be swift. I’d be the last to go. That’s how they worked. 

“Your orders, sir.”

“Ah. I… I need some time to think, General.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You sympathize with these criminals?”

“No,” I said quickly. Too quickly. “But they have information we need. Why be so hasty to kill them?”

General Baure sighed. “This was your reasoning last time, and the time before that. Carslile, it’s time to give up.”

Say it, just say it. Tell him you can’t, tell him you won't, tell him to leave them alone. You can still save them.

But my mind flashed to a memory of my two-year-old daughter. I can’t let that happen to her.

“Kill them.” The words sounded foreign, and it took several seconds to realize it was my own tongue that had formed them. “Advance and slaughter. You know the drill, General.”

He nodded and left, the door closing softly behind him.

I slumped against the wall, heart and head pounding. What have I done? 

    It had to be done, I told myself. Your family. Think of your family. 

    Impossible. All I could think of were those late nights out under the stars when all of us would chat and fall silent by turns, the way the laughter would overtake Jyr’s face, the steady calmness of Chara’s eyes and the deep comments Raiku made that would launch us into new channels of thought. 

    Stars and glory, I’d made a big mistake.

    I never thought I could feel this bad. Until I did. Oh, I did. 

    Somehow I knew the regret would never fade.

—Collected by AW

 

Adder Carslile was later brought in to identify the bodies of his fallen friends. The experience haunted him, but eventually he rose above it to become the most ruthless, uncaring leader the Devoted Ones could ever hope to see. Without his compassion and mercy, eventually he got rid of his own family—the very ones whose danger put him on the path to who he eventually became. At the age of 36, second in command of all the Devoted Ones (assumed to be first), Adder was finally killed by G. Macquoid as revenge for murdering her brother, Joel. All world and character material has been pulled from someday-to-be-bestseller Echo of Memory by K. L. Halcyon.

 

‘Who wants to live in this place? / I don’t, so I’ll be sleeping in

 

Hat’s off to you / You solved the Rubix Cube

 

Suddenly you find / Everything’s in kilter

 

 

Actually really nervous, but hopefully being positive will help it go better than last time