He barreled out the door, slamming it against the wall with a heavy crash. The sound bounced off the wall, reverberating from the concave roof to the other corridors, announcing his presence. His heart beat faster than raindrops pattering against his window, pounding louder than the thunder. In that moment, he felt triumphant – as if he could shatter the earth with his fists.
But that feeling plummeted as soon as Victor, in all his sadistic glee, laid eyes on him. Oh shit. Oh, fuck. What the fuck am I doing? What was I think–
“Danor.” Victor said, languidly making his way over in great strides. “It’s not like you to come back for more.”
He tried to say something, anything, but every sound he made died in his throat. Rudy and the other girl, who he recognized as Cali, followed him. Rudy stayed behind Victor the entire time, towering over the other two, hands as large as his face. Cali, on the other hand, circled him enthusiastically, her pale figure, clad in black, like a vulture descending on soon-to-be carrion. “Why are you so afraid?” She said, a voice thicker than velvet. “I’m not going to do anything to you. It’s not in my interest to get caught in a crossfire.”
“No.” Rudy interjected. “He’s alone. He wouldn’t be hiding otherwise.”
“Is that so?” Victor’s frame pulsed with green. His staff appeared at his side, obsidian black, jagged lines and harsh edges running from one end to the other. He gently slammed one end onto the ground, causing Beck to topple to the floor as something snagged his ankle. “I’ve just felt my interest in alchemy evaporate for the day, Danor. You want to know why that is?”
Beck forced a weak grin. “‘Cause you can’t brew a potion to save your hide.”
The end of Victor’s staff suddenly flashed, a wicked green projection spiking out from a magic circle, sharper than any blade he’d seen before. He pressed it flatly against Beck’s chest, forcing him to lie, the edge digging into his skin with a frightening hiss. His breathing became shallow, every muscle in his body tightened, bracing for pain; but it was alright. He did get to do something after all. His vision flashed red as he tried to look past his assailants, searching for just a blink of that white hair. If she knew better, she’d be gone. A lesson learned. Don’t fuck with these guys. You’ll end up like me.
But she was still there.
He couldn’t believe it. Why – why – did she stay? Was she dense? Obstinate? She had to go, and now! If she didn’t, as soon as they finished with him, they’d be back onto her. He had to be seeing things. No sane person would stick around, even if they were new, after seeing what was going on. Except, Victor’s blade sunk deeper into his flesh, and with the clarity of pain, he saw her still there, watching. Even as he began to bleed.
G-O. He tried to mouth in between dry, empty screams. G-O.
“Slightly off. It’s because I’ve suddenly felt the urge to study anatomy.” Victor said. “Cali, make sure you heal him properly. I want to know, thoroughly, what a subhuman Egra like you looks like on the inside.”
Cali looked at him in surprise. “Is that not a bit too much, Vic? Surely not even you can get away with murder.”
“It won’t even be that bad. Just a couple of cuts here and there; maybe I could journal this for Arcane Physiology. And if it does get too bad – well, I don’t let you hang around me for nothing.”
Cali shrugged, pouting slightly. She stood back, allowing Victor to inch closer to Beck, the vibrant green blade still resting on the latter’s chest as the former loomed over him. “I doubt Uyar’s around to save you now.”
Just when it looked like Victor was about to make the first cut, and as Beck tried to make one final struggle, the world went pitch-black. It was, for a moment, like he’d been teleported to the bottom of the sea – no. At the bottom of the sea, there was life. Here, there was nothing; a vast, empty, yawning maw of dark, swallowing him whole along with constellations of dragons and chimeras. He could not breathe. He could not see. He could not hear or feel or taste, could not think or panic or cry. All he could do was be. But this feeling – it was familiar. He’d felt it before.
Something took his hand, yanking him out of the void. He was plunged back into the familiar halls, a sickening feeling in his chest, as if his mind and soul were disconnected from his body. It was wrong. It was so undeniably wrong; but he was powerless. A spectator in his own body.
He was only vaguely aware of the others, cowering, reduced to the floor in silent cries before where he once was. A veil of black swirled around their faces, muffling their yelling, their groans. They were faceless. Helpless. His blood ran cold – he was the exact same only moments before. He couldn’t help but feel a tinge of pity for them.
He was running. No, they were running. But who were they? Who was he? And the person next to him – who was she?
A brief clarity fired him back awake as he felt himself regain control over his body. He broke away from whomever held his hand – that frigid grip – and gasped for a breath, doubling over.
And then, once he halted his reprieve, his savior came into view.
She would’ve been beautiful, hair like brush strokes, something straight out of a portrait. But that gash – straight out of a nightmare. On closer look, it wasn’t just exposed flesh or a deep scar; it was alive. Writhing. Grasping. Muscle fibers and tissue like centipedes, drifting in an invisible wind, moving like the tentacles of an anemone along the edges. Patches of bruised marks around it bleeding purple into her pale white skin – and if he looked closely, he could see fragments of bone tucked behind flesh. He felt as if he were going to faint. Was he looking at some sort of homunculus? Some sort of failed undead amalgamation? Then he snapped out of it. Those things only existed in children’s stories – the latter party, anyway.
Clearly, his horror showed upon his face, since the girl hurriedly covered it back with her mask. Her eyes were large and round, but blazed with a quelled intensity. One of them was veiled by her straight white hair – except, now, there were streaks of black where there weren’t before. She turned to him as if to say, “What? Anything the matter?”
“My head…” He found himself grumbling. His vision swam, still, as he sauntered to a wall, sliding down into an awkward sit. Surprisingly, the girl followed, taking a seat next to him. Before long, he felt that nausea fade away. They were in an empty lecture hall; of what wing, Beck had no idea; at the very front, where a Scholar would’ve been teaching. Words began to float in his vision, though they were less words and more symbols and characters. Looks like the nausea still had a grip on him, in its own way.
The girl looked at him expectantly. A single yellow Cirae revolved around her wrist, weaving unrecognizable characters into the air from a sheet of gold. Then she jolted suddenly; the symbols faded away, instead replaced with words. S-u-n-r-y? No – S-o-r-r-y. It looked like she wanted to say more, but the threads started to become undone the longer she concentrated. Frustrated, she banished the words and the magical circle, pulling something out from the depths of her patchwork robes: A journal and an instrument of metal with a pointed, glass tip. She tapped it with a finger, and it began to glow yellow.
Sorry, she wrote, making sure Beck could see. Her handwriting was rigid, scrawled, lacking elegance – though Beck couldn’t critique. His was largely the same. I had to let out my curse.
Anakhli – The Cursed. Those tainted by beings from the Horizon. To say they were rare was an understatement; the last curse the world had seen, much less Nalin, was during the Banishing Wars. Granted, those were fairly recent – only half a century had passed since their conclusion – but since then, the legacy of curses, and those afflicted, were spoken only in fairy tales and horror stories. To think he was staring one in the eyes now: Unbelievable.
He must’ve looked incredulous, given that growing expression of concern on her face. She sighed, as if expecting this to happen. Should’ve known as much. I’ll be on my way.
“Wait.” Beck groaned, weakly latching onto her robe. She looked at him with a mixture of confusion and surprise, trying to yank it back. “Those three’re still out there. They’ll be houndin’ you like a pack of wolves if you go out now.”
She tilted her head thoughtfully for a second, then nodded. Beck rose to his feet, and as the fog in his head began to clear, blurted out: “My name’s Beck. I’m a student here. Who’re you? And what’s with the scar?” He wanted to slap himself almost immediately after.
He got his retribution with a look that almost reminded him of Yuna’s stink eyes. She wrote something down in her journal – a series of characters, almost like pictograms, more like sigils – and wrote something underneath. It’s hard to pronounce if you’re not from the Glass Isles, She continued. But you folk would probably sound it like M-I-R. Mir.
“Mir…” He repeated, though his mind lingered on something else: The Glass Isles. A collection of islands near the Wro’tsun Peninsula, if he remembered correctly. A remnant of an ancient battlefield from where the Horizon first sprang up, before it relocated. An illustration he’d found in a journal showed monumental, towering structures of glass that sprawled, like roots, across the land, dwarfing trees and even some mountains. But the land was inhospitable, desolate – at least, that’s what he read. “People live there? I didn’t know that.”
Not many. She twirled the pen in her hand, eyes straying from the paper. Most just come for the riches, and leave just as quickly. I was one of those.
“You were?”
I think I was.
“What do you mean, ‘you think?’” The words dribbled out of his mouth before he realized it. Heavens above, he sounded so unnecessarily accusatory! “Sorry. Curiosity got the better of me.” He muttered.
Mir nodded slowly. You’re not one for thinking before speaking, aren’t you?
“At least I speak.” His eyes widened in horror at what he said. “Holy shit. I am–”
The girl held her hand, stopping him. She gave him a peculiar look. Writing is speaking on paper, refined with eloquence. And from what I’ve seen, eloquence has evaded your repertoire. She laughed, though it was less mocking and more jesting. It was a nice, airy laugh, muffled as it may be. He almost didn’t mind that it was to his own chagrin. Excuse me. It’s just, I don’t remember the last time someone’s talked to me like that.
“Like what?”
Like they actually say what they mean. She paused, the tip of that instrument fading yellow. Of all the things to describe himself, Beck wouldn’t say he was ‘upfront.’ Student? Yes. Deluded? Possibly. Egra? …Undoubtedly. A sense of guilt nibbled at him. She had the wrong idea.
“You speak like you know me.” He said, his voice low. “We’ve just met.”
I do know you, though. Beck raised an eyebrow. At the very least, you’re not a bad person. You saved me back there. And I returned the favor.
Not a bad person. What a statement – except he didn’t deserve it. “It wasn’t entirely for your sake. It…” He stopped himself before he said anything too brash. “Look. We’re still practically strangers. I barely know anything about you, and you don’t know anything about me. You don’t know me.”
Well I’d like to.
And yet. Part of him remained apprehensive, as if treading piranha-infested waters. It was strange that he remained anxious, seeing that she’d just divulged her status as Anakhli. He felt an urge to reciprocate her sincerity, yet an equal desire to refrain. Then he remembered, though begrudgingly: She saved him. If not for her – well, he didn’t want to think about it.
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“I’m an Egra.” He said. Mir leaned in slightly, listening intently, a glint of curiosity in her violet eyes. That innocence offset the unease he felt, to a degree. Beck continued: “I can barely do magic.”
He expected at least a look of surprise. Instead, Mir continued looking at him, as if she expected to hear more. Before long, she hastily scribbled something down on her journal: A question mark.
“What’re you confused about?”
What’s ‘Egra?’
Shoot. He forgot that other continents had their own ways of characterizing mages. “It’s how we rank magicians based on their capabilities. Bear with me here: There’s Egra, Norra, Tulria, Alphrodia, Heruta, Veritas, and Nous Optima. Guess which one’s the lowest.” The last words came out bitter, like they snagged on his tongue as they left.
Mir jotted something down: Which is it?
“Wh– It’s Egra. Egra is the lowest. I can’t cast spells, can’t summon a familiar, enchant talismans, anything like that. Not like what others can do.” Not like what Killen could do. He thought to himself.
Mir’s eyebrows furrowed in concern, the dipping corners of her cheeks implying a frown. That sucks. She wrote.
“It does.” He heaved a heavy sigh. That was the understatement of the era. “You’re barely recognized. You’ve got a target on your back that says ‘piss on me’ for your entire life. And…” Yuna’s words briefly came back into mind. Beck shook his head slowly. “I actually thought you were one too. An Egra. You’re a transfer too, but crossing Victor on the first day? Talk about a stroke of bad luck.”
Victor. The tall, pale one?
Beck nodded. “You shouldn’t have interfered. I would’ve survived. But now he knows you’re cursed – and you’re bound to get caught out too. You should’ve left.”
Mir looked at him as if he’d suddenly transformed into a worm. How could you say something like that?! She scribbled fiercely. Are you saying I should’ve just left you there?!
“Exactly.” He answered immediately, almost matter-of-factly. “It would’ve saved you so much trouble in the long run.”
She shook her head furiously. That’s wrong! The paper tore slightly as she dragged the tip, unapologetically callous. Mir jabbed a finger towards it, tapping on it incessantly.
“Wrong?” An ember set off a spark within him. “I tried to stop you from becoming a target. Just like me! And you’ll probably have it worse since you fought back!”
So I shouldn’t have done anything? Should’ve just watched? N-O! Beck looked at her, slack-jawed. The intensity in her eyes matched that of her writing. I acted because it beats doing nothing. It beats watching someone get hurt when I could’ve done something.
Beck scoffed, watching the gold drip down from the loop of the last ‘g.’ His distaste wasn’t because he disagreed, but rather the opposite. However, the right to act was a privilege to be born with; that honor was not imparted to him. Yet even if that was the case, why did her words sting so? His gaze went from her to his lap as his head hung low.
He felt a light tap on his shoulder. The intensity in Mir had smoldered down. She jabbed a finger towards another line on the page, but Beck refused to look, even as she nearly shoved it in his face. “Will you stop that!” Rising suddenly, he distanced himself from the girl, accidentally knocking the journal out of her hand. He instinctively reached out to pick it up, but recessed his reach, ignoring that hurt plastered across Mir’s face. “We’re even. We’re even, and you don’t need to concern yourself with me, or I with you.”
And as he departed, back into the corridor, becoming lost again, Beck could not shake a peculiar feeling inside him – that he’d found something long-forgotten, only to leave it behind.
…
She knew nothing about him. She knew nothing, yet she knew everything. And that bothered him.
He was rotting in his room, the evening sunset a cloudy haze through his window. He couldn’t focus, not for the rest of the day. Not even during a seminar for Practical Theory Applications, or for History of Dawnchasers. Those round eyes, brimming with naivete, bold and assuming – he’d close his own for a second, and they’d be in his mind’s eye, looking back at him. She probably despised him – a silly thing to think after a single interaction, probably – but he didn’t particularly mind.
His eyes began to drift along each board of the roof, spiraling down to the meager lamp at the corner of his desk, until he too, began to drift into a dream.
And in that dream was fire.
It happened in the blink of an eye. He was but a child – a small, helpless child in a world that wasn’t his own. Fires whipped around him, lashing against the ground and the trees, filling the air with heavy plumes of smoke and embers. The camp was gone, swallowed up in the inferno. Barrels of meat and fish spilled over a voracious lake of flames, kegs of mead and water and wine torn apart, charred, as if smitten by lightning. Screams erupted from all around: Of panic, of command, of rallying, of despair; those too were devoured by the blaze. Even his tears weren’t spared.
Someone grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, sweeping him onto horseback. He couldn’t see his face between the smoke, but knew, instinctively, who it was. He held onto the man’s back, feeble arms wrapped in a feeble grip, jostling up and down as the heat licked his body. It wanted a taste.
“Hold the line!” The man cried. His voice was deep and gruff, slightly fracturing with controlled panic. “Don’t let them reach the Veil!” Something roared from the left, taking someone down in a single bound. Her final cries sputtered out as a spray of red splayed across the ashen remains of a tree stump. The child covered his eyes, burying his face in the back of the man, shutting them with all the force he could. The bones of a whimper escaped him. The man barked another order, then pulled the child in close. “I’m not letting them hurt you.” He cooed. “Daddy’s here. You’re safe.”
Suddenly, a shriek, shrill and thunderous, exploded from the sky. The young Beck could barely see its figure as it dove; only a flash of purple, its jagged wings, its impossibly massive jaws. The man, bracing himself, took Beck in his arms and leaped off the horse as the beast violently split it through the middle, shoveling the carcass into its mouth with halfway-human hands as it hovered. Its throat bulged as it went down, down; then it shrieked again, disappearing into the sky.
The man drew a sword, gleaming with white energy, mirroring the ferocity of the fire. He backed against a tree, Beck right between them. His eyes darted back and forth, to the sky, to the branches. Sounds of combat soon faded away with each snuffed scream until the only thing audible was the cackling of a creeping blaze. Beck felt his heart swell in fear as the world held a bated breath. Everything went silent.
Then the sky shrieked.
That monster – that thing – barreled down from the corner of his eye, claws outstretched, its maw a chasm. He heard a roar; a defiant shout; and the sound of metal cleaving through flesh; and the light of a thousand suns lit up the sky, and when he came to, the beast was dead, bisected.
Just then, the sound of hooves on burnt mud clamored throughout the quiet battlefield. On top of a chestnut-colored horse was a mage, visage shrouded by a hood; but even Beck could see the brown of her hair spill in locks from it. Exactly like his.
“The Uyar Division’s fallen. We can’t stay here any longer!” She pulled something from a satchel around her waist, clambering down from the saddle. She tossed something to the man. “Help me with the circle! If we’re lucky, we’ll only lose the horse.”
The man nodded. They etched a circle into the mud, then drew out intertwining lines, then other shapes weaving between a myriad of letters and words. The man’s half of the circle was far more crude than the woman’s, his lines staggered and uneven.
“As unrefined as ever.” She said. Her voice was like a flowing stream, smooth and cool, almost dousing the heat with every word.
He managed a weak grin. “Well, you were always better than me at this.”
“And everything else.” She etched something into the dirt.
“If we don’t make it, do you really want those to be your last words? How about an ‘I love you?’”
“We’ll make it.” A staff appeared at her side, gleaming an ethereal white. She stabbed it into the ground, causing a blue light to seep into the ritual circle, spreading across the symbols and lines they drew – save for a single spot where continuity broke, and the mana flickered out in a crackling purple. The mage’s eyes were visibly shocked as she sprang to fix the mistake. “Watch my back, Rain! Something’s wrong!”
“What?!” Rain yelled. He made a move towards her, but that shrill shriek sounded off in the distance, causing him to whirl around in alarm. Readying his sword, his eyes looked past the silent, dead trees to the sky – but the dying fires could only illuminate so much. The thought of dying chilled his aching bones. Whenever his father spoke of death, fear never leaked into his voice. It had no place next to his bravado. But now? Even the slightest sway of a burnt bough drew his gaze.
A roar, like butcher knives on porcelain, as bloodcurdling as a banshee’s wail, echoed again. And it was much closer. Beck scrambled to his mother, his heart in his throat, too paralyzed with fear to quake. Even as she pored over loose pages from her notebook, sifting through grimoire after grimoire, she couldn’t help but run a hand over her child’s hair. His hair, which was so much like hers, and eyes, so much like Rain’s. In the dark, Beck could barely see past her hood. Every time this dream came back, that stayed the same. But with each gentle caress, and each wiped tear, he found himself thinking, despite his dread: Maybe it’ll be alright. Maybe I can stay like this forever.
But something barreled down from the sky, quicker than lightning, and just as ferocious. It knocked Rain’s sword out of his hand, causing it to plunge into a tree, as it jetted straight for Beck. Claws outstretched, jaw opened, dagger-teeth gleaming a sickening white – Beck gasped, turning away, cradled in his mother’s arm. Bracing for death.
It never came.
Rain, summoning the strength of a mountain, grabbed the beast by its wings, his steel gauntlets causing its blistered flesh to wet with blue blood from the sheer force of the grip. With a fearsome roar of his own, he tore off a wing from the monster, sending a spray of fluids splaying across the ground. It cried out in a mixture of pain and fury, scuttling away with a single flapping wing, transfixed on a different target. The mage broke concentration from the ritual, beholding the showdown between Rain and the creature. She rose, taking back her staff.
“No, Asfi!” Rain shouted. He’d taken his sword from the bark, panting with adrenaline, entering a low stance. “Finish the ritual! You and Beck need to go!”
She responded by waving her staff, causing an innumerable amount of Cirae to appear below the monster. With a single utterance of command, pillars of light erupted from the circles, scorching the air with a hiss – the monster scrambled away just in time, the attack barely brushing its scaly hide. It shrieked again, rushing the mage – only to be blocked off by Rain and the fierce slashes of his blade. “You fool – I said we’ll make it! All of us!”
Rain curled his lip, almost as if in protest, before nodding. He turned back to the creature. Its many eyes, which had been singularly focused on Rain, were now split between him and Asfi. They flashed a sickening violet to a terrorizing red. But before it made any move, Asfi had stamped her staff into the ground, summoning a goliath of cracked rock and crumbling soil: A golem. Rain clambered onto its great shoulders, nestled between pauldrons of stone, and it charged towards the monster.
Beck couldn’t remember when he’d seen his mother and father fight side-by-side. They traveled with their Band, of course, but they’d made it adamantly clear that he had no place near a battlefield. The most he’d gotten were stories from other members of the camp: On how the commander of the Eclipsed Mages took down hordes of monsters with mere flourishes of her staff; on how the leader of the Vanguard could grapple a Titan and win.
But seeing it now, a sense of awe swelled under his breastbone. His mother’s attacks left no room for the beast to advance, and his father took full advantage of that, his ferocity driving the beast back. They fought in perfect tandem. Perfect synchronization.
As Asfi’s spells peppered the monster’s skin, its eyes suddenly widened. Immediately, the world fell black. And everything felt still. As if he’d been plunged into a dark sea. As if he’d been swallowed by a galaxy of dead stars.
He never saw them die. But he heard: A final bladed lash from his father as the beast plunged a talon through his chest. A cry from his mother. And a flash of blue light, as the battlefield disappeared – and he awoke at the doorstep of an unfamiliar abode, in an unfamiliar land, with unfamiliar people.
The complete eradication of the Maten Angels irrevocably reshaped how the world saw the Horizon. For delvers into the Horizon, casualties were to be expected – invited, even, as some wore their scars as badges of honor – but none could have predicted a tragedy of such magnitude. In the end, the world knew that they dove on the fiftieth day of the seventh moon, and how they never made it back. They knew of their feats and the legends they left behind. They didn’t know how their cries sounded before death, nor how their bloodstains glistened on battle-worn armor, or how Rain and Asfi fell protecting him. They didn’t know how, even in the orphanage when a young Beck claimed they were his parents, that he was telling the truth.
But he never saw them die. And though A Chronicle of Horizon Regulation and his own common sense said otherwise, he clasped onto that flimsy belief. That somewhere, somehow, they lived. And it was only after he’d taken a dive himself, and after he’d searched and scoured every corner of that other world, he’d be able to truly confirm or deny it. After all, it was because of him that they lost – it was his sole responsibility.
Perhaps if he didn’t exist, Asfi would’ve had enough mana in her reserves to bring down the creature. Perhaps, if Rain weren’t so concerned about harming his child in collateral damage, he would’ve been able to kill it. Perhaps, if he could cast the most flimsy fireball, Killen would’ve been able to mete out a crushing blow to Victor without being plagued by the prospect of Beck’s safety.
Beck rolled in his sheets. He’d tried breaking off ties with Killen, but the boy never relented his olive branch. Killen had the luxury of being powerful enough to pay no mind to the trouble associating with Beck brought. Somewhere along the line, Beck tacitly accepted his company – at times, welcomed it – but he refused to let Mir share that burden. It was hard enough being cursed. She didn’t need to be cursed and fraternize with an Egra, even if she wanted to.