SIMONE ALLARD || AFTER

Simone has never considered themself a religious person. Not in a “priest in the temple” sense. True, the Gods walk the earth still, and they’ve seen enough Gods-touched people in their life to know the hand of the divine in everyday places. Still, Simone has never had reason to pray.

Until now, that is. On the walk back to the dormitories, the names of Gods they half-remember tumble free, earning Simone a fair amount of glances. If a divine ear is among the listeners, all the better, they think.

Their harried recitation stops only when they reach the Diviner’s tower. Their resolve carries them forward, even as their breath rattles at the third floor landing. Impatience scuttles under their skin.

All their prayers have amounted to nothing. Nadia’s apartment is as empty and untouched as the last time Simone stepped inside it. The name of Tifar turns to ash on their tongue.

The moment the door shuts behind them, their bury their face in their hands and scream.

Their throat burns when they’ve finished. Tears, sudden and hot, spill down their cheeks in twin rivers. A second, quieter shriek fills the apartment, straining their vocal chords to their limit.

Warmth wraps around their ankles. Hiccuping, they meet eyes with the all-white cat nuzzling them. Dio’s eyes are a brilliant gold, like divine ichor. The closest Simone will get, they think, to a divine presence.

“Hey there.” Simone sniffles and drops to their knees. Dio rubs against them with more fervor now, leaving a cloud of fur in his wake. After a beat, they scratch him behind the ears.

“Have you seen Nadia?”

Dio’s eyes remain wide and unblinking. How foolish of them to expect a cat to talk, no matter how many stories they’ve read. Their fingers tangle in his snow-white fur as they give a sad sigh.

“Of course you haven’t.”

Between the confusion and the anguish twisting knots in their chest, their hand stills. What if Nadia never returns?

As if sensing their turmoil, Dio chirrups and twists between their legs. Tail fluffed, he marches into the bedroom. They don’t follow him—not at first. Instead, they dwindle in the living room, a wayward ghost in living skin.

They sag into Nadia’s couch. Their gaze drifts over her spotted carpet and cluttered table. A bundle of pamphlets sits on top of a wobbling tower of books. From the page staring back at them, Simone knows it’s about Nadia’s Malifica diagnosis.

The bundled pages hit the floor. Simone shifts focus to the books underneath. A tattered leather cover greets them. A quick flip through proves it to be a textbook from her Divination and Mysticism class. This too, they set aside.

Their heart lurches at the tome underneath. The spine is one wrong tug away from disintergrating. The pages inside are scattered, comprised of various different mediums; receipts and shredded envelopes and old book pages have been repurposed now. Each of them are covered in sigils.

Some of the pages Simone understands. Though their time studying Divination has been brief thus far, they can make out some of the spirals and lines they see, though many of them are intermingled with other sigils or twisted in a way Simone cannot define. Their thumb rubs over a sigil for clairvoyance. If only they hadn’t left their casting glove at home.

They turn the page once more. This deep in, the sigils are more advanced. Deep-seated pencil grooves retain their shape despite the shreds of eraser that tried to sweep them away. In places, Nadia has drawn the same line over and over again with minimal change. Some sigils are still half-formed, Nadia’s tiny scrawl crawling in the spaces around them to denote their use.

Simone shuts the tome with as much care as they can muster. Nadia’s spellbook is as tattered and incomplete as she is. She’ll have to come back for it, right?

They turn back through, making another pass at deciphering Nadia’s handiwork. The translations are just as clear as before. With a sigh, they press the book to their chest. The clock on the wall chimes to signify the hour.

Simone shrinks when they see the position of the clock hands. It’s three AM? They have classes in the morning and—

Etienne. They still have to take their watch over Etienne.

They rub the back of her spellbook the way one might a fussing child before setting it back down. They should leave before it gets any later. Still, the moment they turn away, the book nags at them. It creeps into their nest of thoughts and settles there, a constant weight.

Before they can think, the spellbook slides into their bag and settles against their hip. Nadia shouldn’t mind, especially when she isn’t here to use it. Besides, as far-fetched as they know it sounds, perhaps Simone can find some clues within her work.

#

Simone wants more than anything to focus on Professor Favreau’s lecture, but their mind continues to drift.

This is a first for them. All their life, they’ve prided themself on their steel-clad attention span. It had aided them in everything from reading to homework to the grueling entrance exam to Voterique to begin with.

But now, Professor Favreau’s voice is a garbled whine at the back of their skull.

Lost to their thoughts, they don’t register the class has ended until someone shoves past them in their attempts to leave. Simone snaps back to with a start. The page before them is woefully blank. Stomach sinking, they realize they’ll have to consult their study group for notes.

Professor Favreau is at the front of the room still, wiping away her lecture from the blackboard. Clouds of chalk dust hover around her and drift away. The rings on her fingers are covered in a fine film. She rubs them clear one by one.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Ah, Mx. Allard,” she says when their eyes lock. “Is there something you needed?”

They sling their bag over their shoulder and approach her desk. A tower of papers sits to one side. An emptied mug sits on the other. In the ocean of space between the two, her desk is bare of decoration save for the splotches of ink. It’s these splotches they focus on, trailing a path around them with a finger, as they ask, “Do you ever do sigil translation work?”

Professor Favreau quirks a brow. “Sometimes, yes. If it’s not Divination or Necromation, however, I am afraid my expertise is limited.” She sets her chalkboard eraser down and pins Simone down with the full weight of her stare. “Why do you ask?”

“Well…” After a beat, they lift Nadia’s spell tome from their bag, placing it on the desk with a sheepish grin. “I have some of these a friend showed me and I wanted some help decoding their meaning.”

She takes a step closer. The tattoo on the back of her hand, an inter-connected circle of squares, glows a brilliant orange as she presses it to a tattoo on her other wrist. Then, after a beat, the glow fades.

“This is someone else’s handiwork, then?”

“It is.” They flip open the cover, revealing the scrabbled title page inside. Professor Favreau studies it without a word, pulling the tome closer and riffling through.

“I see elements of Illusion and Enchantment in these,” she says, lips pursed. “They seem more minor elements, however. This one, for example.” She points to one, waiting until Simone is studying it to continue, “This is a sigil for some kind of recollection.” She flips a page. “Meanwhile this one, despite its crude shape, seems to be the beginnings of creating an avatar for communion. It’s incomplete, however.”

“I see.”

Professor Favreau closes the spellbook with care. “They’re impressive works, for sure…if whoever wrote them could get them to a functional state, they would be a force to contend with.”

Simone trails their fingers over Nadia’s spellbook, chest aching. “I see,” they say again.

“But that’s for them to solve. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

They hold the tome to their chest, sure if they let it go, it will crumble into dust. With great hesitance, they say, “Do you know anything about Nadia?”

“Who?”

Their stomach twists. “Nadia DuPont. She was a student of yours last semester.” They’ve found themself subjected to her rants about their Professor from time to time, too. Professor Favreau is a raging bitch—her words, not Simone’s—but that doesn’t stop them from admiring her strictness and collected air. She is the perfect Professor for certain sorts of minds.

“Oh, Ms. DuPont. I can’t say I’ve heard of or from her since the change over. She should be doing mostly independent study now, I would think. Why?”

They swallow the growing lake of saliva in their mouth as they think. “I just… haven’t seen her lately is all,” they say at last.

“I wouldn’t be too concerned on that front, dear.” Now, Professor Favreau leans close, the silver bells around her neck clinking. “Not the most… reliable sort.”

Simone bristles, thankful they have at least enough restraint to keep from snapping back. What does she know about Nadia, anyway? True, she is often capricious, built more on whims than discipline, but that doesn’t give a Professor the right to profane her.

After a beat, they straighten, running anxious fingers through their cluster of braids. “I’ll…keep that in mind, thank you.”

With this, they turn to leave, but a sudden inhale makes them pause.

“I heard there’s a student in the hospital.” Professor Favreau sets a wrinkled, ring-laden hand on their shoulder. “A friend of yours. For that, I do apologize.”

Throat thick, they blink back the tears swarming behind their eyes. “Thank you.”

“I pray he is granted mercy soon.”

They give wordless nod before scurrying away.

#

Etienne, already one with a penchant for avoiding the sun, is the palest Simone has ever seen him. The blue of his veins form a garish roadmap up his arms, disappearing into the blood-crusted cuffs of his sleeves.

And the blood. There’s so much blood. The nurse who let them in to his room warned them of such.

“It’s too dangerous to move him,” she had said, “so he’s going to be… messy.”

An understatement. A polite one, but an understatement nonetheless.

Now Simone sits at his side, his limp hand in theirs. Sigils crisscross his skin in varying shades of green and gold, moving in time to his breaths.

“I don’t know how this could have happened,” they say, though they know he can’t respond. “What were you two doing? And where is Nadia?”

They fall silent as the door slides open. It takes a beat to recognize the grey-eyed woman who enters. That is, until they notice the clipboard clutched to her chest.

“Everything okay in here?”

Her phrasing is poor—but they can’t fault her for it, they think. “As… good as it can be.”

“Ah, right.” Her cheeks brighten. Then, more solemn, “He’s going to be asleep for a long while.”

“I understand.” Their gaze rakes over his features. His Enchantment cloak has been shredded to ribbons, splotches of blood turning the green the color of rust. His stomach and chest have been tightly bandaged, but even now specks of red bleed through.

“It took a while to stabilize him,” the gods-touched nurse steps to the foot of Etienne’s bed.

“To be honest, I didn’t think he would make it,” Simone replies. “Once I heard it was a monster attack…”

“He may still not. Time will tell.” The nurse’s eyes reflect in the low light like a cat’s. “I didn’t tell the others this, but you seem to have a decent head on you. There’s still a sizable chance he will die in this room…but we are doing all we can.”

Simone tightens their grip on Etienne’s hand. “That’s all we can ask for.”

She hums, gaze unfocused. After several moments staring into an empty corner, she speaks again. “Perhaps the gods will show this one mercy yet.”

It is the closest thing to good news Simone can hope for. While most gods-touched remain within temple walls, spending their hours studying or praying, some still drift through the wider world. No matter where they find themselves, the voices of the gods reach them all the same.

“Whichever god has chosen you,” Simone begins, the words coming one jumbled syllable at a time, “I pray they guide your hands in his favor.”

She nods, the sole acknowledgment they receive before she leaves the room again. Beside them, Etienne’s sigils continue to glow.

“As soon as you wake up,” they say under their breath, “you’re going to tell me everything you know.”