Young Writers Society

I sat cross legged on my bed, staring at the grey stone bricks of the wall. Thinking about Keil. Unlike the death of Karadan, Keil’s death was far from recent. That old wound was perhaps the deepest. I’d lost so many things, so many people over the years, but I had never gotten over her death. Not really. I never would.

I closed my eyes for a moment. I could still picture her face in perfect detail. I saw her laughing, silver eyes, her small, round nose, her white hair that was just past shoulder length, her playful smile. I could think of a thousand things I would have given up to see her again.

A part of me regretted not telling Thørn Feltrix about my past. With Karadan gone, I was the last being in the Myriad that knew about my past. No, that wasn’t true. There were two more, but I hoped never to see either of them again.

When I was younger, I was part of a nomadic tribe on Karadan. I was one of the Firstborn, a race similar to humans that shared a common ancestor, but had changed much less over time. On Karadan, humans were all but extinct leaving the Firstborn as one of the few remaining humanoid species on the world. My tribe lived on the plains, which large expanses of cracked ground and sparse vegetation. Our wandering was interrupted when we took a bi-annual pilgrimage to the mountains that ringed the Great Plain. With the sky stretching out like a dome and the ground rising into mountains to meet it, it was easy to imagine that we were in a bowl of global proportions.

The Great Plains was populated in large part by rabbits and other smaller game, but there were also larger animals that grazed in herds and the ones that hunted the larger animals. Other tribes roamed the plains as well as the outcasts and heretics, so we trained watchers to defend our tribe. I had been training to become a watcher when I had met Kiel.

The sun was beating down on us overhead like a blanket pulling us towards the ground. Not a single cloud blemished the perfect blue sky and the mountains put a fringe on the horizon, contrasting with the otherwise flat ground.

Garan, the man who trained the watchers, barked instructions at us. He had distributed wooden training swords among the six trainees. Soon we had split into pairs and were sparring with each other, sticks smacking together. I was training with a boy named Daret that day.

We both held our wooden swords out in front of us and then leaping into battle. Our swords met and then hit again. As I advanced Daret was forced to retreat before I tapped him on the chest with the tip of my mock weapon.

Daret sighed in disappointment. “Nice job,” he said. Most of our training bouts went like this. Daret wasn’t a bad swordsman, but I was both faster and stronger than him, so his victories were few and far between.

During a break a few minutes later I saw someone watching me. She was about my age and, like all of the Firstborn, she had white hair and pale skin. No distinguishing features jumped out at me, but when she saw that I had looked over, she grinned and waved as if we were old friends.

“Who’s that?” Daret asked me.

“I have no idea,” I replied. “Another match?”

“Sure,” he replied. “Maybe I’ll win some this time.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

Daret was right. He had started gaining more victories, almost as many as me. I was distracted by the girl, she stood and watched me with unwavering patience. She hadn’t moved in at least half of an hour. I should have been unsettled by it, but instead I was curious.

When the training regimen had finished and the other trainees had dispersed, the sun was getting low in the sky. The girl still stood there, her gaze unwavering. I walked over to her, not sure what was going to happen.

“Hello!” she said. “Alsari, isn’t it? Nice to meet you.” The girl smiled in a benign, innocent way that lead you to believe that she could do no harm. She was almost like a puppy.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Oh, right, we haven’t met,” she said. “Of course we haven’t. Right, I’m Keil.”

“How could you not notice that we haven’t met?” I said.

“Well, I’m sort of an oracle-in-training,” she said. “And sometimes things get a little muddled, trying to keep track of the past, present, and future, let alone all in the right order.” This took me by surprise. I realized that I did recognize her. I’d seen her trailing behind our tribe’s oracle, clothes draped in metal to enhance her prophetic abilities. Lithomancy was used to divine the future and commune with the gods, so oracles wore metals and precious stones. Keil looked much different in the usual white linen, but I supposed that metal robes couldn’t be very comfortable.

“So that’s how you knew my name,” I said. “You’re an oracle.”“Mm, no,” Keil said. “I asked around. You’re not hard to find.”

“Why were you trying to find me?” I still wasn’t sure what to make of this perky, enigmatic girl who was training to become the most important member of society.

“Well, I can’t read specific futures, but I can sometimes get vague impressions from people,” she said. “Like if they’re never going to marry or if they’re going to join another tribe or something. You’re… different. I can tell that your future will be important, very important, but it’s frustrating because it seems like the details are more obscured than usual.”

“Why would that happen?”

Keil bit her lip. “I have no idea,” she said. There was a brief pause. “But you were interesting, so I decided to meet you. Anyway, goodbye now.” With that, Keil turned and walked away. I was dumbfounded. She had waited two and a half hours to have a cryptic thirty second conversation.

In the Eternian Academy, a knock at the door pulled me from my thoughts.

“Come…. Come in,” I stuttered. I had been so immersed in memory that I had almost forgotten where I was.

“I’d prefer you came out,” came the reply. I sighed. What did Kyra want?

When I stepped into the hallway, I saw Thørn Feltrix, Quint, Kyra Solar, and the electromancer, Eira. Something in my gut twisted. These were high ranking members of the Academy. EIther they wanted me to do something or something was horribly wrong.

“You and Mr. Feltrix have an assignment,” Solar said.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Alaran,” she said. “There’s an elven forest on the west. You need to bring back two elves to the Academy, Taanyth and Laryn.”

“This is a kidnapping?” I said.

“No,” she said. “Those elves are Academy contacts on Alaran, but they aren’t Flickers, so we’ll need you to bring them in. It shouldn’t be very difficult. Nevertheless, you’ll need to learn the terrain and what kind of threats you’ll be facing.” She was right. It was difficult to Flicker to an exact point on a world, so we would need to learn how to navigate the world we were sent to.

“Even when we get there, we can’t bring back non-Flickers with us,” I said.

“Ah, but you can,” Solar corrected. “It’s easy for Flickers to bring objects like clothes or weapons between worlds, correct? And when you Flicker, it’s possible for another Flicker to follow you to your exact location even if they don’t know where you’re going. I have a device that binds you to a person so while the device is active, they will be brought wherever you bring them.”

More impossible technology from the Eternian Academy. I was no longer surprised when Eira presented things like it anymore.

“When do we leave?” I asked.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Kyra said. “Quint, take them to the libraries. Eira, prepare the immersive training program.”

The group dispersed. As Quint lead us away, I felt a consciousness brush mine. For a moment, I thought it was Regent Solar, but it was Thørn. I let him into my mind.

Should we escape from the Academy when we get there? he asked.

I considered it for a moment. This might be the best chance we would see for some time, but it wasn’t like Solar such a careless mistake. I don’t know yet, I thought. I’m suspicious, but if we see a chance, we should take it.