It was early in the morning still. The moon and stars were still just visible against the pale blue sky, the sun having not quite risen to shoo the night away. And Carmen was already in the classroom, sitting at her desk, as always. She was writing in her notebook, stopping every few minutes to look up at her surroundings and sigh, as if deep in thought. Her symbiote flew around her in lazy circles, flapping and gliding on broad, black-and-yellow wings.

“Good morning, Carmen.”

“Good morning,” she said, not looking up from her desk. I sat down beside her and took out my pencil case. I nervously tapped my fingers against my palm. I’d come here for a reason, after all. I’d wanted to ask her about... about what Miriam had said yesterday. She’d hurried off after class, and so I hadn’t had the opportunity to ask, but something definitely didn’t sit right with Miriam’s insinuation. And I just had to get to the bottom of this.

“Yesterday, um, Miriam said something about our destinies as Angels, right?”

“That’s right,” she mumbled.

“Did you notice her acting odd to you about it? Like you had a special destiny, different from all the others?“

Carmen smiled. “Don’t be silly, Quinn.”

Puzzling. Maybe I’d just been seeing things. Or I’d read way too deep into what Miriam had said. Regardless, Carmen didn’t seem to be too troubled by it. I supposed I’d have to just keep an eye out for anything suspicious. As if I wasn’t doing that all the time already... because everything was suspicious. Why couldn’t I just be a normal magical girl?

***

“Echoes,” said Miriam, at the front of the class. “What are they? What do they do? How can we stop them? All those questions and more will be answered by the end of today’s class.”

“Congratulations,” muttered Vespa. “Yet another class for which you already know all the material. What a worthwhile use of your time.”

“First things first, an Echo is a memory of something that once was. A regret, crystallized in molten rock, fanned by the flames of the Demon. In short, they were extinct, and now they are alive.”

“Hold on, what?” I whispered. “You never told me that that’s what Echoes were.”

“I did. Kinda,” said Vespa.

“Don’t you give me that. This... this changes everything!”

“Does it really?”

“Yeah. This is like... I thought I noticed a pattern, but this... so they’re all extinct animals? They’re Echoes of... of what used to be. I get it now.”

“If you say so. I thought I spelled it out pretty clearly.”

“Extinction is more than just the end of a species,” said Miriam. “It is the severance of a branch in the ever-growing tapestry of life. And with that severance, the hopes and aspirations of the branch are blocked; they turn inward, they fester and consume one another. It is in such fertile soil that the Demons grow their Echoes. In harnessing the lost potential, they can resurrect an avatar of hate.” She lifted up a small cardboard box and placed it on the desk.

“An Echo is inside,” Carmen whispered to me, leaning over in her seat. “Isn’t it?”

I nodded. I could feel it, and the others could too. It must have been a small one, because the distortion in spacetime was tiny, but it was an Echo nonetheless. “You’ve got a good sense for it,” I whispered back.

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“Thanks.”

Miriam opened the box, and a little butterfly flew out. Even though the box had been scarcely larger than a tissue box, I’d expected something... larger. It had to have been no more than a few centimetres across. “Class, this is E-1 Persis. An Echo.” Miriam let it flutter up and down the classroom, and as it passed I was awestruck by its beauty. Despite its size, it was of higher... quality? Than any other Echo I’d ever seen. Instead of the crude, rock-like materials of the others, this was made of smooth, polished molten metal. The wings were paper-thin and made of dark stone, but as the creature passed, for a moment I could’ve sworn they were powder-blue.

“In the absence of a Demon,” she continued, “An Echo acts on its base impulses. And what do you think those impulses might be?” Someone near the front raised her hand. “Yes, Melody?”

“To injure or destroy living things,” she said.

Miriam nodded. “For many Echoes, that is the case. Especially those for whom much has been lost, where rage and anger at the living has managed to grow unhindered. However, this one is relatively peaceful. Does anyone here have an idea of why that might be?” Everyone remained silent. “Then perhaps another question. Does anyone know what this Echo was, before it became an Echo?”

Everyone was silent yet again, or so it seemed until a brave young woman in gray raised her hand. “It’s the Xerces Blue, isn’t it?”

“We have a butterfly fan here, don’t we?” Miriam chuckled. “Would you like to tell the class about the Xerces Blue?”

“Um... it was a butterfly that used to live on the coastal sand dunes near San Francisco, in the United States. And it went extinct in the early 1900s because the dunes it lived on were destroyed, and there were no more native plants for its caterpillars.“

“Excellent summary, Grace,” said Miriam. “It took only fifty years for some Demon to tap in to this lineage’s regret and craft this little Echo. But she... well, she’s completely docile.” Miriam grabbed the insect out of the air and held it up in the light. “With such a short time to extinction, the anger and resentment has not had time to gather in E-1 Persis. Without the presence of a Demon nearby, she is of no threat.” Still, holding it up so close to her face, it was clear that the butterfly was warping the space around it. Its wings flickered, bits and pieces winking in and out of existence as Miriam waved it about. “But don’t be fooled. Most Echoes have had far longer to mature beneath the Earth before being called forth by our adversary. For those with grudges spanning hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years, their wrath against the living can be fearsome and intense.”

Joy raised her hand. “Is there anything that can be done to free them, then? I know that we’ve always had to destroy them, and that they’re used by Demons as tools for their own schemes, but it just seems so sad. They were cut off long ago, and are brought back now only to fight us. Is there no way to make them... normal again?”

Miriam shook her head. “Remember, their stories were woven into the great tapestry of life. They had their time, a time to rise and reign and meet their end. The anger that they feel now is unjust and unnatural, stoked by the whims of the Demons. Their existence is an abomination, a time paradox. It may be sad, but they do not belong here anymore. The best we can do is put them back where they belong. Well, except for those that are useful teaching tools.” She placed the butterfly back in the box.

And it fluttered out before she could close the lid.

“Odd,” Carmen whispered.

It flew up above the desk, and Miriam immediately transformed partly into her Imago. Her skin turned to glass and flaked away, revealing the sandy, spiked carapace beneath. Why was she transforming? She tracked the Echo with her hand, clawed fingers moving in to snatch it.

She tried and missed.

The butterfly darted out of reach and above us and flashed blue. It was like a flashlight shining right into our eyes. After the blinding flash, blue powder slowly dissipated in the air while the Echo fluttered out through the window, shattering the glass with an audible crash as it disappeared past the garden and out into the wilderness.

And as soon as the incident had begun, Miriam returned to the lesson. “Anyways,” she said, her carapace melting away and reforming into her ordinary skin. “I suppose that means there is a Demon nearby. Not exactly much a surprise to those of you who’ve been paying attention to the goings-on around here of late. Though we keep moving the entrance point, they keep finding it... I wonder why...” She shook her head. “Ah well, back on topic. Defeating Echoes.” She smiled, double-tapping her shoulder before pulling out a long, straight rapier with a wire guard. “You each have a weapon, inherited from your symbiote. Though some Flights may be more specialized in dealing with Echoes than others, any Angel’s weapon is more than capable of breaking through an Echo’s shell and flesh. Most Echoes are only slightly more stable than the creatures they were in life, and can be dispatched with a proper blow to the head or body.”

Miriam stood up and spread her arms, making a show of her transformation. Wings unfurled behind her, folding neatly behind her back. Spined plates emerged over her arms and shoulders, a skirt of scales falling from her hips. “Of course, an Angel has one final tool at her disposal. A body gifted from Gaia, to fulfill the tasks set out before her.” Her helmet materialized, with two prominent curved horns rising up from her brows and curling back behind her head. Her full Imago stood tall, brandishing her rapier forward. It flashed once, bold red and bright green, before turning back to its normal tan. “So Angels, ready your bodies. We’re going to hunt for Echoes.”