As Isaac walked through the forest with his hands behind his head, his blonde hair curly like Dad’s, he grinned like he knew a fun secret. They weren’t too far from home now… what kind of scheme was he about? Ariel had to bite.
“What’re you all worked up about?” she asked. “We didn’t get any fish down at the pond. Seems like a crap day to me.”
“You actually did good for once,” Isaac replied.
“Oh, just that? Wait, what do you mean for once?” Ariel laughed. “I’m practically junior sheriff at this point. They should give me a badge.”
“You’d lose it after a week,” Isaac said, hopping clumsily between some rocks along the path. “And what kind of sheriff puts folks in the hospital?”
“That was one time!” Ariel complained.
“And I’m pretty sure law enforcement has to be smart these days,” Isaac continued.
“That’s a low blow,” Ariel sulked, slumping. “I’ll pass chemistry this time… probably.”
“I can help,” Isaac suggested, frowning. He seemed to have regretted insulting her, which Ariel found amusing. That was his job as a little brother. “I don’t think the reactions are that hard, once you get used to them.”
“That just makes it worse! I can’t even keep up with my kid brother… can we go back to the part where you talk about how cool I am?”
“You really did a good job looking out for Damian,” Isaac said earnestly. Ariel smiled and ruffled his hair. Okay, maybe it was a fine day, fish be damned.
After a while of keeping her on a tight leash, Ariel’s parents finally let her go exploring in the woods - provided she keep an eye on her brother so he didn’t wander off. It was an easy deal for her. He’d stayed close by her side since her fight with Big Ben, and it was easy to look after him that way. It sometimes seemed like he was trying to protect her - which was silly. She was the older one.
That Monday, Ariel had beaten a couple of upperclassmen jocks that were making fun of Damian. I mean, they were right about one thing - he does suck at football - but they didn’t have to rub it in his face. More than anything, Damian couldn’t seriously tackle people. Maybe if they played two-hand touch?
Anyway, she’d beaten them solidly. She didn’t throw the first punch, just told them to back off, and when it came down to it they had a good, clean fight. No broken bones, no bad bruises. Just parrying them around until they were tired and a good couple of punches to knock the wind out of them. She’d gotten detention again, of course, but Uncle Lamont had praised her for her restraint.
“Some people,” he’d said, “just decide they don’t like you, and will do anything to prove you’re wrong. It can be because of your magic, the color of your skin, or simply because you do the right thing when they can’t. You should always try to be the bigger person, but don’t let people like that make you question your values.”
It wasn’t just Isaac that was in a good mood about it. She was still buzzing from the thrill of it all, the joy. She’d found her place in this town, and some peers and parents were even starting to accept her, now that she’d learned to control her strength. Ariel’s eyes were on an ever brighter future - fighting tournaments to find real opponents, and maybe even a hidden master…
“Hey Ari, think you can find me?” Isaac asked.
“Hide and seek again?” she complained. When Isaac looked disappointed, she sighed with exaggerated exasperation. “I guess, but you’ll have to make it extra hard for me or I’ll throw you in the lake again.”
Isaac got the hint and immediately scampered off, leaving Ariel chuckling as she closed her eyes and counted. Isaac was a good kid, but he wasn’t very strong. So, he couldn’t go about earning respect Ariel’s way. On the other hand, Isaac was smart, and that made him ridiculous at hide and seek, amongst… well, most things, if she was honest. Ariel was a lot faster, but her bro could sit stock still indefinitely while barely breathing in an obscure place she’d never think of. That was probably why he always liked the game. It worked for Ariel - she got a good workout looking for him.
As Ariel ran through the dense forest, climbed up for vantage points, then jumped between thick and sturdy branches, she wondered what kind of spot he would think up this time. Between the ground and the canopy, there were seemingly infinite places to hide in branches, shrubs, hollows, caves, or even strange places like puddles of mud. Ariel laughed to herself. Mom hadn’t been happy that day.
Still, they always played within a set area, and realistically she would have to find him eventually. But Ariel’s joy started to run thin as the many minutes ticked by. She checked and rechecked several places. Isaac wouldn’t go beyond the range they’d set, would he? He was so honest. She hated to admit defeat, but Ariel called out for him. The boy’s reply was immediate… and frantic. Ariel felt sick, but tensing her muscles, her vision narrowing, she launched herself from the branch she stood on toward the sound. She couldn’t lose any time and leapt across far branches once, twice. The next branch was several meters away. She jumped - it snapped - and she fell. She saw red as an awful sound came from her ankle. Shouting for her brother, she ran, heedless of the pain. She barely felt it as she came into the clearing.
“Ariel!” Isaac called out, somehow looking relieved immediately. But she was not.
In the sunlit clearing, a hand was solidly clamped around Isaac’s wrist, and a hooded figure looked in her direction while chanting as she arrived. The figure looked surprised, but Ariel didn’t care. The unreality of the situation was crashing down on her. Her first thought was that this was a sick prank to play on her. She shuddered thinking of how Ben had almost badly hurt her little brother. She could laugh about it these days - Mom didn’t want her to lose the happy kid Ariel had been over the incident - but her smile never reached her eyes when she did.
As she caught a glimpse of the assailant’s eyes scanning her and the area, they weren’t like Ben’s. No anger. Her golden, gleaming eyes held only cold disdain. This wasn’t a prank. This was real. How had the woman even found Isaac?! It didn’t matter.
Ariel lunged forward, crossing the distance in a blink. But as she did, the attacker seemed to bite down on something. Ariel struck the hand that grabbed Isaac - and reeled back in searing pain. Her hand was split open, and bleeding horribly - but she reached out again, trying to break the grip, Isaac looking on in horror.
“Don’t look so sad. He’ll be fine,” came a feminine voice from the cloak, still emotionless.
Then Ariel saw stars as she was hit by a blow she couldn’t see coming, her arm torn by rocks and roots as she skidded across the ground. She scrambled to her feet. Let him go. Let him go. They thought consumed and fueled her as her broken body ran back into the clearing. How had she been knocked so far away?
Then, there was a flash of blinding light, and when she stumbled back to the place, Isaac and the woman were gone, replaced by wooden mannequins. Nothing about what happened made any sense. All Ariel knew as she started to hyperventilate was, for the first time she could remember, she was alone.
***
As Ariel remembered the origin of her journey in the midst of her worries, only one word came to mind.
Idiot.
Ariel’s fist struck the knob, and metal flowed like water, out of its shape in an instant. If she’d failed to control the metal, she would’ve broken her knuckles against it instead. But it was like Terrence said - she couldn’t afford to hesitate when dealing with metal. And that all-or-nothing situation sharpened her focus - apparently, that was enough. It made sense. She’d done this before, when she’d fought to protect. When things were simpler. But that was an excuse of crusty adults. Things were still simple - the stakes were just higher. And Ariel didn’t want to lose anyone again.
Some metal dripped to the ground and reformed into misshapen chunks, other places flowing like lava, but the rest had flown into the house from Ariel’s cast. She pushed inside, still numb from the memories flooding her mind. She didn’t feel the heat. She wasn’t afraid anymore, and took stock. Stairs ahead. Dining room left. Living room right. Kitchen behind. She rushed through the rooms, heedless of the flames, her aura drawn about her in a protective shell as Dave had shown her. The flames licked at her still, but only for an instant as she rushed through the rooms, melting any locks on site. As she found no one, Ariel’s desperation grew, and she remembered the feeling of bone-deep loneliness of that day.
Ariel called up the stairs, and when she heard voices, she rushed across the creaky wood floor and up the steps, several in a bound. Halfway up, a curtain of inferno consumed the stairs as a woman tried to extinguish the fire with a stream of foam. The flames shot up as if they didn’t notice, and Ariel dove through the curtain of flame. Looking at the woman, her skin was badly burned as she desperately tried to make a path. An inferno blazed before her, and the doors besides an open one behind her were dented as if she had pounded on them in turn.
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“The locks are stuck!” The woman cried. “Even the warded wood should have failed by now. I don’t get it,” she said, the words falling unsteadily. “But I have to get her out!”
“Get your shit together!” Ariel said, expanding her shell aura to protect the woman as the same as Dave had done for her when they’d fought the Black Hand. She pulled her to the other side of the flames safely. “Tell me where the others are, and I’ll blow a way out the side.”
“First door on the left and second on the right! A strange voice came through here. Is that yours? Please, tell me my daughter’s safe!”
“He’s a friend. You go right, I’ll go left. Just, take a breath. Your aura’s all over the place,” Ariel said, not missing the irony. Her aura had been abysmal until Dave did something about it. If I found him before that woman came for Isaac, would things have been different? “I’ll get everyone out.”
The woman looked hard at Ariel, then nodded shakily. It was all she could hope for. Turning, she melted open the door on the left and found a baffling sight - a child, stuck under a fallen grandfather clock, surrounded by a room in shambles. A man, pulling at the clock but unable to lift it past all the fallen ceiling debris that had piled on top of it. Ariel went right to work, splitting the beams with Magnetic Resonance or throwing wooden members aside, then lifting the clock with the man. But Ariel didn’t stop there.
“We need a way out,” Ariel said, glancing at the window and finding the lock jammed. Magnetic Resonance removed the locks and yet, the window still remained stuck in place. More and more, she knew what happened here was no accident. Scrambling for an option, the man grabbed a metal beam. It wouldn’t do anything like that - runic reinforcement on structures excelled at neutralizing blunt force. But maybe….
You can’t be a scared little girl anymore. In the moment you found him with that woman, Isaac smiled. He trusted you. Be that person instead.
Ariel gestured for the length of metal and took it in her hands. In her mind’s eye, she saw it shaved down to a point, and she forced her will into the metal. There was a reason bullets got through reinforced windows. You could only reinforce so much at a single point. The javelin she turned the beam into was horribly crude - but the point was still sharp. She thrust forward with a shout, forcing through waves of azure magical energy and crashing through the window’s glass. As she broke up some of the runes, she got the man’s help - he was glad to do it - to get the grandfather clock onto her shoulder. With a physical and magical grip on the metal trim, Ariel strained and threw the clock. It hit the damaged window and surrounding wall like a bomb, crashing through and falling to the ground below.
Good. The fire in the hall was intense - absurdly so. She couldn’t protect the kid through that - but his dad could probably cradle him through a fall.
“Get him out. I’ll get the rest.”
“I’m ashamed to be found this powerless… but I owe you more than I can repay.”
Without another word, he cradled the softly sobbing child’s battered body - she couldn’t bring herself to look at his legs - and leaped.
Ariel turned back to the hall, not looking back. She hurried down the hall to the sound of a crying child, finding the mother beating on the locked door. She gestured the woman aside, taking her stance.
The moment she touched the metal, sparks of uncontrolled electricity flew, but beyond that, she felt connected to the metal - as though part of her could see every little piece that made it up at once. The metal blew away like dust in the wind, and Ariel pulled the door aside.
Inside, she saw something horrible. A figure in a dark cloak, a metal mask gleaming in the firelight of a child’s room, incongruous amongst the toys and the tall mirror. Thick violet mana streamed out of the figure, unsteadily surrounding an empty space. No… as she focused - was that Terrance? And behind the figure, a small girl, eyes blank. The mana ensnared her well - was he keeping her quiet?
Ariel had seen enough. She rushed forward, thrusting with her makeshift javelin. However, she lost sight of the man - as the room was consumed by darkness.
***
Terrance hurried away the moment he was free of the man’s grip - if Ariel had arrived any later, he wasn’t sure what would’ve happened to him. Whatever abilities this man had, it let him interact with Terrence directly.
“Ariel, what’s wrong? You’re moving the wrong way!”
“I can’t see him,” Ariel yelled. “It’s pitch black!”
Terrence could see violet light like the man’s own soul permeating the space, but it didn’t block his vision. It was disorienting comparing his sight to hers - something to think about later.
“He’s on your left! Guard!”
Ariel moved quickly, stabbing at the dark and getting the man to back off. Then, he saw a second identical aura rise up and panicked.
“Behind!”
Ariel dodged, but not quickly enough as Terrence could see by the flash of queasy purple in her soul. She was hurt, and staggered unevenly as she dodged. This wasn’t going to work. Ariel realized that there were two enemies, whether or not she knew they were identical. But she couldn’t defend against both in the dark. As the original attacked an off-balance Ariel, Terrence… no, Xenron lunged to intercept. He could hide like a coward no longer. Ariel needed everything he could offer to make it through this alive.
I need to distract him, the prince thought, and intercepted his soul directly. The man cried out as they collided and Xenron felt everything - his bloodlust, his love of money, his selfishness, and his service to a darker mission. At the same time, Xenron’s own emotions no doubt flooded the man, and Ariel clearly scored a clean blow, causing the man to stagger back. As Ariel contended with the double, Xenron pursued the original - but a violet hand caught his face before he could make contact, making Xenron’s mind go hazy.
“I’ve had about enough of you, runt. Whatever kind of spirit you are, I’ll trap you in a trinket and use you as a battery. How do you like that, runt?”
“You will do no such thing,” Xenron said, recalling all the plays and movies to put on his best ‘Xexherre’ voice. Time to put this charade to bed, even if Ariel hates me. “You will unhand the first prince of the esteemed Xexen empire. His Highness Xenron Xexen!”
The man’s courage shook at the proclamation, shouted directly into his soul, and even Ariel seemed stunned. Xenron groaned in frustration at her hesitation.
“Go!” he yelled.
***
More than ever, today didn’t make any sense. Terrence had proclaimed himself a prince, and the Black Hand had attacked another homestead for a child. Ariel was lost without the ability to see anything. Still, the core of it was simple. She had to kick some ass.
“That all you’ve got? I know drunks with better aim,” she jeered.
Ariel slapped the enemy’s knife hand away, then rolled away from another attack. Ariel’s shell aura didn’t slow the knife as much as she’d like - it was made to resist energy attacks, not mundane stabs, using her knack for the lightning element. Here, it was a battle of straight physicality - and her movements were getting slower from the poisoned knife that had grazed her. She had to find him soon. Her eyes strained against the darkness - but no, that was useless. She couldn’t see the man - even the bits of light from her lightning magic were useless against his thick darkness. She heard his boot scuff the ground at the last moment and dodged a slice at her neck, striking back at nothing, roaring her anger… and then chastising herself.
There’s no point in railing against the unfairness of life, Dave had said, even if you’re right. If you have the strength to get mad, spend that energy finding another way to your goal.
This man was weak compared to that woman. Even in the dark, she could follow his movements. She could win. She growled internally, but closed her eyes, listening with her ears and her mind.
“What’s it going to be, Spook?”
“I’ll keep you apprised - now, left!”
Ariel listened deeply to his messy narration. She had to keep the little child in mind - hurting her was unacceptable. She knew that was part of the point of the darkness - to make her hesitate. But she couldn’t do anything about that - instead, she moved deliberately, trusting the ghost for direction and her ears for how close the enemy was. At this point, three of them were on her like rabid dogs, delayed only slightly by the ghost’s interference and jeering. In that melee, parrying and dodging, taking glancing blows and bleeding from that poisoned knife, Ariel waited in that delirious stupor for a specific sound. She heard it as Spook flew at the man attacking ahead. At the same moment, she stabbed her javelin through his head. 1 down.
Another enemy came from the side before she could pull out her weapon. Ariel roared her defiance, swinging the skewered body into her enemy’s path. In that moment, she electrified her lance, giving herself a moment of light. Where the enemy’s knife stuck through his duplicate, Ariel grabbed the blade, transmuting it before it could cut her, forming a crude gauntlet on her hand. They both fled back as a burning wooden beam fell from above, disrupting the darkness. Harsh poison tingled on her fingers, but she’d felt worse. One masked figure lunged at Ariel’s side as another threw his knife at her. She moved like a phantom in the darkness, empowered by a rush of electricity. The enemies followed - but here, flames consumed the wall and pushed back the darkness. Two enemies lunged out of it. Too fast. A thunderous sound pierced the near silence. The double in front of Ariel slumped to the ground, dead, from a shot to the head. The girl’s mother panted heavily as she reloaded the weapon.
Ariel poured all the mana she could into rushing at the single enemy left, crossing the distance in one step and punching the man with electrically amplified speed. The metal on her hand grew spikes at her command and impaled him - and the man slumped to the ground, motionless.
***
“Ariel, I don’t see any more - but I’m not sure that was the real one.”
Ariel grunted, ignoring the voice otherwise as she checked on the small aura - the infant - alongside the other woman.
“You should get out of here,” Xenron continued. “It’s not safe.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she yelled back.
“I just wanted to remind you - I can’t move anything in this form,” Xenron said haltingly, feeling hazy and weak after the battle. “If you… if you don’t get out soon…”
“And why am I supposed to trust you for what’s safe? Your Highness?” she spit the words out like acid. Xenron flinched back, but steeled himself. There was something important - he had to…
His mind grew increasingly muddled as he saw Ariel and the other auras retreat, until he felt himself pulled back as if by an inexorable tide. The light of her soul faded to nothing more than a point, a crimson star on the unreachable horizon, as Xenron was pulled back to reality.