Zandith stared at the city strike replay captured by Specter Four’s armor. He had already chastised the half-human half-drone at length, but he knew he was really yelling at himself. If only he hadn’t been so paranoid as to remove the self-destruct module from the craft. If only he had waited until the Sylgan scientists had worked out the shield-glitch.

He finished off the last of the hemberries and tossed the carton onto the pile of other cartons. He paused the recording on Brandon’s blurred face, the muzzle of the gun flaring red just below it. He had had Specter Three calculate the odds of a successful shot that would hit the shield at the exact moment a glitch occurred, at the exact place the glitch occurred, on a ship traveling at hundreds of kilometers an hour. With everything taken into account, it was a one in one hundred billion shot.

That blurred face inspired a fear in Zandith that he was used to inspiring in others. It was the dread of being completely out of control, the new awareness of an unpredictable variable. Domrik had nothing to do with this, he was sure of that. At least Domrik was still partially predictable, with his students needing to train to expand their abilities. This was worse. This was the result of a spontaneous learning brought on by his own actions. The trancing ritual had had no setup. It was executed in haste and greed, two aspects of himself that had only worsened over time. He could only wonder which of his actions would backfire on him next.

A message from Three arrived. “The Vein claims to have abducted Brandon.”

Zandith slammed his fist on the table, both in triumph and in rage. It would be so easy to have them kill him, to remove the unpredictable variable, but he refused to be a victim of his haste again.

“Tell them not to kill him,” he sent to Three, “and to figure out why he can pierce our densest illusions. We must know how to prevent others from gaining this ability. They must scour his mind. They must break him.”

***

Domrik always felt there was a time and place for mourning, and this day’s morning was truly a mourning for him. The winds swirling around Mount Vernai whispered in his ears, tugging softly on his training uniform, reminding him of the present moment. He stood under the sprawling canopy of an ancient tree, watching the first sliver of sun rise above the oceanic horizon. He saw the sun as himself, slowly gazing back at a scarred world after taking a night to retreat and regroup from the horror of the previous day’s events.

He dug his toes into the moist dirt, imagining himself connecting with the roots of the tree behind him. He felt their stability and made it his own. The emotional turmoil in the city was palpable, even from dozens of kilometers away. Normally, there was just a vague uneasiness in that direction, the restlessness of everyday life. Now the currents of rage and despair threatened to take him away and drag him through the dirt, like it was doing to most of the others in the city. He tried to keep his hands out of it as much as possible, but found himself adding his own sticks to the fire.

“Was it really necessary to come all the way out here?” Kelly’s voice said behind him.

He lowered his head, gazing over the cliff’s edge a dozen meters in front of him. “I come here when I need to take a break from normal life.”

“When you need to think?” she asked as she stood next to him. Her eyes were framed dark from a sleepless night, red at the edges. Her hair was still a black mess from the smoke.

“When I need to stop thinking,” Domrik replied, smiling weakly at her. “I don’t think it will work this time around.”

Kelly followed his gaze back to the city. “I thought we wouldn’t be able to feel it from here.”

He shook his head. “We’d have to travel to Trellendekian territory with our sensitivity. But it’s a small price to pay for the work we do with ourselves.”

She gazed at him for a moment, contemplating. “You feel guilty about this, don’t you?”

He closed his eyes, another surge of emotion stinging his eyes with tears. “I go back and forth. You know the pattern. It has its momentum still.”

“What could you have done?”

Domrik’s jaw clenched involuntarily. “That’s what keeps running through my mind. I knew something was going to happen, but that was it. I knew it was going to be bad.” He nodded to the silhouette of the Ridgemire skyline in the distance. “I didn’t know it was going to be this bad. Would I have known more details had I looked deeper into the feeling? Was I ignoring something in some way? Why was Brandon used, and not me?”

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Hey,” Kelly said, putting a hand on his shoulder blade. “Aren’t you supposed to be reminding me that you’re only shown what’s relevant to you? Could you have done anything more than Brandon did at that moment?”

Domrik blinked, mentally projecting himself into the same situation. “No, not against a ship like that. His shot shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Even if I had been just as lucky, it would have still crashed somewhere. I couldn’t have had any influence over the following sky battle.”

“So, nothing more?”

“Nothing more,” Domrik said, looking at her. “But Brandon has disappeared.”

“Would you rather you have disappeared?”

He found that no quick answer came.

A few minutes later, footsteps crunched behind them. Only Kelly turned to look. “Hey.”

Jase groaned as he collapsed to a sitting position in the dirt. “I hope this is important. I gotta study for class soon.”

“It’s not cancelled?” Domrik asked, squinting at the orange semicircle of the sun behind the horizon.

“Not yet.”

“What class do you have today?”

“Aetheric Mechanics.”

“Oh?” Domrik turned around to face Jase, surprised. “You haven’t heard of Brandon’s disappearance? It’s been reported on the news.”

“Professor Norallis?” Jase stood with a start. “He’s missing? How?”

Domrik shrugged. “They’re not telling, but I know someone who’s on the case. He’s seen the classified security footage. Brandon was walking back to his car when he simply vanished.”

Jase gaped. “Zandith?”

“We think so, but we can’t be certain.”

Jase paced around in shock for a few minutes, after which he settled back down onto the dirt, playing absentmindedly with the shrubs.

Over the next half-hour, the rest of Domrik’s level seven class arrived. Each of them was weary and worn out. They all wore casual hiking clothes, mostly to remain inconspicuous to the trail entrance guards. Each carried their own weight from the events in the past day, and each was processing the emotions at their own pace. The energy was such that Domrik could hardly sense the background stillness of the Aetheric field.

“Thank you all for coming,” Domrik started. He cleared his throat before continuing in a steadier tone. “It should be no secret why I’ve called an unplanned meeting at this location. An unspeakable tragedy has stricken the heart of Eredore, and now it seeks to find the perpetrator. Thousands of innocent people, mostly children, have died.” He waited a moment for each of them to process his words.

“I can sense what you all feel at this moment. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not fair. A reckoning should be had. Each of these sentiments, I agree with totally, but let us not forget, as Konjukan-in-training, that we must take care of ourselves first. Stabilize yourself first, so you can lend a stable hand to other people. And I am proud of the effort each of you made yesterday in response to this disaster. I trust that you hid your healing abilities as best you could from suspicious eyes. We don’t want to draw undue attention to ourselves just yet, lest we become the targets of those who seek to maintain control.

“And yet, I think now is the time for more participation on our part. Eredore has withdrawn all support from Sylga, leaving them exposed to the whims of Trellendek. I don’t need to spell out what follows next, but there will certainly be more strife and death.”

“What can we possibly do?” Yuka asked.

Domrik scanned the group, watching their reactions as he spoke. “I’ve had an idea for some time now, but it hadn’t felt right to tell anyone before now. What I am about to tell you should remain strictly confidential, for reasons that will be apparent when I tell you. Knowing that, you may leave this meeting at any time if you do not want to participate, and do not want to compromise your polarity if you’re questioned by others.”

Glances were exchanged, but nobody moved. Domrik straightened his posture and interlocked his fingers behind his lower back. “I will put it plainly, then. I am planning to commit a crime.”

The expressions of surprise were expected, and he found himself equally surprised that one or two of them didn’t immediately walk off. Oscar spoke up. “You don’t think your polarity will be compromised?”

“I don’t feel that it is, since I have justified intentions. There will be no killing or injury involved. Shouldn’t be. Ideally, nobody else will know anything has occurred, but many things must fall into place for that to happen.”

Everyone watched him intently. He continued, “How many of you have heard of the Augmentors?”

Kelly and Norwin raised their hands. Kelly answered, “The mythical beings that gifted humanity with technology of immense power?”

“Almost,” Domrik said, “except that I believe they are not mythical. I believe they were incredibly powerful and wise beings that saw the potential of humanity, and the challenges that lay ahead. Thousands of years ago, they seeded the ancient cultures with technology so advanced it was unusable at the time. Nobody knew how any of the items worked, so they were used as tokens of good luck instead, with the hope that one day someone would learn how to use them to their desired effect.”

“But why not tell us how to use them?” Kelly asked, frustrated.

“Because humans were not yet ready, but they needed something to aspire to. They left us ignorant precisely so we could do the work to figure it out, and in the process of that work, learn new lessons, accelerate our evolution.”

“Did anyone figure them out?” Oscar asked.

“I don’t know,” Domrik replied. “History makes no mention of it, but that’s irrelevant. The only thing that matters now is that we acquire one of these artifacts. Are any of you willing to participate in theft?”

A few looked uneasy, but they were all too curious to leave. Domrik sighed.

“I’ll spit it out, then. We are going to steal the Augmentor Bow.”