Young Writers Society

The east side of the palace was a small, enclosed courtyard of neatly trimmed rose shrubs and other topiaries, with electric lanterns lining the path. The wind didn’t get through the walls, but it was much colder outside than inside, and Mireya found herself shivering a little. Why couldn’t she have waited a few seasons and founded the Houses in summer? She wasn’t dressed for this.

“Do we just… wait?” Dawn asked.

Mireya scanned the courtyard, spotting a bench under what would be the shade of a gnarly willow in daylight. “I guess. We might as well sit.”

Dawn moved over to it, and Mireya sat beside her, tilting her head up to the sky. The night had gone dark now, but the atmosphere was tinted with the glow of a city that was still very much awake. It was strange, she reflected, to see the effects of modernity in a place that was so old. Theo Summer would’ve had no problem seeing the galaxy in all its color and light.

“Have you ever been here before?” Dawn asked.

Mireya frowned slightly, a little surprised that she didn’t have an immediate answer to the question. It was a simple one, after all.

“I don’t remember,” she admitted.

Dawn blinked. “Don’t remember?”

“Well, there was a window of about four centuries after the time it was built, and when I might’ve been a guest to this event, or just a tourist,” Mireya said. “So it’s possible. If I ever came here, it must’ve not made a lasting impression on me. I know I haven’t been here in modern times.”

Dawn tilted her head, looking at her with curiosity. “Do you have trouble remembering stuff from… really long ago?”

“Pretty sure I don’t have dementia or amnesia, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, more like…” Dawn waved a hand. “Does your memory really span the twenty-one centuries or so of your life? Or does it get blurrier the farther back you go?”

“Ah.” Mireya hummed. “Not exactly to either one. Some memories from the start of my life are just as clear as the ones twenty years ago. I remember a lot of moments in time that were pretty far apart, or are pretty old. But a lot of the times in between the important things get hazy.”

“So you haven’t forgotten the details, then?” Dawn asked. “Of how you got your immortality in the first place?”

The thought was so funny to Mireya that she nearly laughed out loud. No, she’d keep on remembering that event for another two thousand years. It was impossible to forget the way the lightning had raced through her veins like a second heartbeat the moment her spear had ripped through the thunderbird, suspended in flight as though she’d pinned it to the clouds. It wasn’t every day you killed something immortal.

“No,” she said.

She would’ve elaborated— this was probably only one of the many questions Dawn had, and she had at a guess at what the others were— if not for the scuffling sound in the dark, quiet courtyard.

Mireya immediately sat up, and Dawn did the same a moment later. She knew without a doubt where the sound had come from— it was at her nine o’ clock. But when she turned her head to her left, the garden was empty. At least, it appeared empty.

She and Dawn were partly obscured from view by the willow from that direction. If someone was here, they might not be able to see the two of them. Dawn looked at Mireya uncertainly, but Mireya didn’t respond, instead quietly bending down to scoop up a pebble from the garden path.

She knew she’d always had a good throwing arm. And when the pebble rebounded off something unseen instead of colliding with the courtyard wall, she knew she’d clocked the location accurately.

A small part of her wished she’d found a slightly larger rock.

“Clarity, show your damn self!” Mireya shouted, getting up to her feet.

There was a heavy pause in the courtyard. Then more shuffling, and a light thud. Mireya watched as the wisps of a Concealment spell parted when Clarity waved them away with Acid. Now standing on the ground, she wore a guilty expression.

“How did you—” Dawn started, standing with a sweep of her gown’s skirt.

“There’s a reason Clarity sticks behind the scenes whenever there’s a heist in the works,” Mireya said. Normally, she’d make her tone lighthearted so her friend knew it wasn’t serious, but she allowed some bitterness to slip into her words. “She’s not very sneaky.”

Clarity swallowed, holding up her hands.

“Look,” she started faintly. “I know you’re mad. I can explain—”

“You will explain,” Mireya said firmly.

Clarity’s wide, panicked eyes darted to Dawn.

“I’m really sorry about what happened to your friend,” she began, pleading with her instead of with Mireya. “I didn’t want to hurt him, but I didn’t have a choice. Sparrow—”

“No, Clarity, our friend!” Mireya interrupted. She couldn’t suppress the burst of anger in her voice, and she realized she didn’t want to. “That’s who you ended up hurting!”

Confusion flickered over Clarity’s face at first. It was quickly replaced with horrified dread as she put together the implication: there was only one person Mireya would refer to as that. Mireya’s heart ached to see it, for a moment, but she pushed the feeling aside. This was no time to be soft.

“What?” Clarity asked quietly anyway, even though she must have understood.

“Cyrin saved Shane,” Mireya said bluntly. “He took the magic poisoning in his stead.”

Clarity’s face was pale in the low light as she shook her head.

“No,” she said, desperation tinging her voice. “No, that can’t be. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Does it really not?” Mireya snapped. “If Cyrin had the ability to help— Cyrin, who we both know has a dumber, softer heart than they will ever admit to, and way too much faith in their survival skills— don’t you think they would, even if it meant losing their life? Are you that deluded, or do you just not want to admit you got them killed?”

Clarity made a choking sound. To Mireya’s surprise, her eyes were glistening.

“Cyrin’s dying?” she whispered.

Out of nowhere, Mireya found her throat closing up. She didn’t have the strength to say Yes, or even They might be dead already.

Dawn stepped forward, putting a hand on Mireya’s shoulder.

“I don’t really know who she is, or why she’s doing any of this,” Dawn said quietly. “But for this, you can go easier on her. She clearly didn’t want to endanger Shane, and she definitely didn’t want to hurt Cyrin. You know this, Mireya.”

She did know it. But knowing it didn’t pacify her rage.

Mireya gritted her teeth.

“What are you here to do, Clarity?” she demanded.

“I—” Clarity shuddered, visibly trying to compose herself, and also visibly failing. Grief strained her voice. “If you’re here to stop me, you need to get busy elsewhere and find Sparrow. I’m only here to unlock a door.”

“Well, where is he?” Mireya asked impatiently.

“What door?” Dawn asked, at the same time.

“I don’t know where he is!” Clarity pleaded. “He knows he can’t trust me with the details of his plans. All I know is that he’s here, probably already inside the building, and he’s got the First Spell with him.”

“He obviously still trusts you enough to help him out. What’s with this door?” Mireya asked firmly, echoing Dawn’s question.

But instead of answering, Clarity suddenly bristled, turning to her left. Mireya got no warning. Clarity threw her arms up, casting a Force shield spell around herself in the time it took for Mireya to blink, just as a fiery projectile flew her way and exploded against the barrier.

Mireya hurriedly stepped in front of Dawn protectively. Another fireball— it looked more like a small missile— sent a bush beside Clarity up in flames, but she ignored it. Clarity flung a pre-made spell that looked like Acid out of her MagicBox before her arm swung in a vicious arc, sending the Force shield away from herself. The Acid collided with something ahead of her, and Mireya watched another Concealment spell dissipate, revealing a familiar figure just before they got pinned against the courtyard wall by the Force spell.

It was the astronaut.

The astronaut writhed, attempting to get loose, but Clarity’s spell held them tightly in place. A gun slipped from their grasp and fell to the cobblestones. Mireya recognized the weapon: it was designed to shoot Flare spells, acting as something between a magic flamethrower and a rifle. Police carried them when they had their eyes on dispersing a riot— or even just a peaceful protest they didn’t like.

Mireya rubbed her hands on her dress, trying to generate a static spark. When she did, she focused on growing it until she was holding a ball of electricity defensively in her hands. Clarity cast another Force spell, tugging the gun towards herself. Seeing Dawn was the only one without any means of defending herself, Clarity casually tossed it her way before snuffing out the burning shrub with more Acid. Baffled, Dawn barely managed to catch it, looking frantically between the gun and the astronaut. Maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

“Saints, why’s it always got to be you?” Mireya groaned.

The astronaut had stopped thrashing, but she could hear the frantic rush of their breathing. Yet again, she couldn’t see through their helmet despite her proximity: the glow of the courtyard lamps reflected too harshly on their visor.

“You know this weirdo?” Clarity asked, leveling the astronaut with a fierce stare. The waver in her voice was gone, but Mireya knew how hard she must have been trying to keep it that way.

“No, but they keep following us around,” Dawn said hurriedly. “In the Arcade, in Storm City. They haven’t hurt us, but we don’t know what to make of them, or how to tell what side they’re on.”

Considering the astronaut had just attacked Clarity, whose own allegiance was hard to decipher, determining that was a harder task than ever.

“Well, they can talk, no?” Clarity demanded, stepping closer to the astronaut without any fear. “What’s your purpose?”

The astronaut only responded in silence, aside from their still-racing breathing.

“Answer me,” Clarity said coldly, with a tilt of her head towards the gun in Dawn’s hands, “or we’ll find out just how fire-resistant they make those spacesuits.”

Dawn gave Mireya a terrified look. Immediately, Mireya knew she couldn’t let Dawn have that on her conscience. Not after her brother.

“Let’s save the interrogation,” she said quickly. “We should see who we’re talking to. I’m going to take the helmet off.”

“No.”

Delayed, Mireya realized the word came from the astronaut. It was a man’s voice— a familiar one, somehow, but one she could not recognize. Maybe if the tone were different, she’d know who it belonged to. Maybe she’d never heard them speak with this kind of raw fear before.

Mireya set her jaw, stepping forward anyway. She let the electricity in her hands fizzle out.

“I think you’ve kept the mystery going for long enough,” she said.

The astronaut tried to shrink away as she approached, but there was nowhere for him to go. He flinched when Mireya put her hands on the sides of his helmet, twisting it fiercely and lifting it overhead, and then he suddenly went still. Mireya froze too, the helmet already forgotten in her hands. The astronaut was in his mid-twenties, with black hair in tight curls, rich brown skin, and dark eyes that she knew were gentle when they weren’t filled with terror like this. He was meeting her gaze, lips parted to say words that she knew were never going to make it out. And she was looking back at a face she used to love.

“Dante?” she whispered.

And then, in a way that had nothing to do with Mireya at all for once, the power suddenly went out and plunged them all into darkness.