Fyre blinked her eyes a few times, finding herself no longer in the archive labyrinth's carved tunnels but in the school's more familiar setting. She stood outside the door to the office she had woken up in less than a week prior. The destruction her passing and resurrection had wrought was no longer present so she must be before then. She reached out, tracing her fingers over the lettering of the plaque on the door, knowing why she was there.

It was like the cat had said, there were things that people were too afraid to know and she was in the very place she could learn hers. As time pressed on she had found more and more reasons to believe that Eterna… her previous self, had enough presence of mind to see her death coming before it happened.

If she could see it before it happened… why did she do nothing to prevent it? Why did she decide to duck out and leave anything that might need doing in the hands of a person she didn’t even know? How did she fit into whatever her previous self had planned?

She turned from the office, there was only so much she could handle in one day, and meeting herself was not one of them. She could hear talking behind one of the doors as she walked away from the office. It was the Vice President’s office where two voices were deep in conversation.

“Just put this in her drink and it will knock her out long enough that you can get beneath the library and confirm our suspicions that the Fount is still located down there.”

Fyre put her hand out to the door and it swung open before her. She could see the gorgon Ruska talking in hushed tones to the patchwork girl their teacher had told them about. The girl, Laverne she remembered, was looking at a small vial in her hand or glowing, swirling purple liquid.

“And you are sure this won’t hurt her?”

“Of course not,” The vice president admonished, apparently taking no notice of Fyre’s entrance. “She is a smart woman, undoubtedly she has some sort of warning system around the Fount. This will just keep her napping long enough for you to get in, confirm the location, and get out… couldn't be easier.”

“Okay…” Laverne gripped the vial tighter in her hand, a look of determination on her face. “I can’t wait for all this subterfuge to be over and we can get the school back on track properly.”

“My thoughts exactly… even Eterna will see how much better things are once we take care of a few minor… missteps. Now go… she will be expecting her lunch any moment, as long as that potion is delivered with it there should be no complications.”

The patchwork girl nodded and walked out of the office, right past where Fyre was watching. She followed the girl out into the hallway, unsure of what she hoped to see.

“She’s wrong, you know…” A voice sounded in the hall as she walked. “That potion might be more than enough for a human… but for a phoenix like the President it will barely make her drowsy.”

The voice came from a blurry shadowy form that stood unmoving right beside them. Fyre tried focusing her eyes but no matter how hard she concentrated she couldn’t bring the figure into focus.

“But if we don’t put her to sleep she might find out what is happening before we are ready.” Laverne looked stressed and nervous… the poor girl nearly shaking as she kept herself from looking directly at the figure.

“If you ever want us to fix this world and get you a real family we will need something stronger… let me see the potion she gave you.”

With a shaking hand, the patchwork girl held out the purple vial. It began shaking even harder in her hand, vibrating with a seeming energy of its own. Slowly a yellow color spread through the liquid, absorbing and changing its color until it settled as a mustard yellow.

“That’s better…” The figure said. “That will give you plenty of time to scout and report back what we need to know. Then at the Equinox, we will put everything as I should be once more. Best not keep our dear President waiting any longer than we must.”

With that said, the figure dissipated like smoke in a breeze. The girl stared at the changed liquid in the vial for several long seconds before resuming her journey toward the campus Dining Hall to retrieve the President’s meal. Fyre watched her for some long moments as she left the hall. If no one could see her here, how would she be able to even do anything? If there was no way to change anything, what was the entire point?

With a sigh, she turned back toward the end of the hallway. The doors to the office still loomed there, taunting her. If she wasn’t here to change things, the only way home was through there… or hiding away for a few weeks until she caught back up to her time and pretended all of this never happened. Boy would she like to do just that… I mean, she liked Mr Wilde… he seemed like a nice enough guy but she barely knew him for a few days… she wasn’t as enamored with him as the other girls in the class.

It wasn’t about him though… it wasn’t about how scared she was to find out just how much Eterna had bet on her being able to do. She took a step towards the office, then another. It wasn’t about just the human… but the school, the island, the friends she was only just starting to get to know. The life she had only just begun and was not prepared to give up just because some crusty old magic man couldn’t come to terms with the world moving on without him.

She reached the double doors at the end of the hallway… pushing through them into the office, and for the first time, she saw herself. Eterna sat behind her desk, holding her head in her hands looking like the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders. Fyre knew her former self was barely older than forty but the stress lines on her face… the frown of concentration… she seemed almost ancient sitting there. She looked up, staring right through Fyre and at her at the same time.

“You’re here, aren’t you? I guess that means today is my last day…”

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

She stood up, walked around the desk to the front, and stood there. Even as tired as she was Fyre could still see a strength lying inside her. She was calm… as if she had already accepted what was going to happen.

“A few weeks ago a man approached me in the town… he confirmed many things I thought I knew. That my time here was coming to a close. He told me that before the end I would be given a chance to talk to whom I would become.”

“I’m not strong enough for what is coming… not just Ruska’s misguided attempt to bring back the old ways but there is worse coming… much worse, and my fire is almost spent.” A tear rolled down her cheek as her shoulders shook with emotion. “I don’t want to die. I still have so much left that I want to do but if we are going to have a chance we need all the help we can get. I’ve stacked the deck as best as I can but there is no way of really knowing if it’s going to be enough.”

Fyre walked up to the older woman, touching her cheek with her hand even though Eterna couldn’t feel any of it. This was exactly as she had feared… Eterna had wagered everything… even her life… on things being able to change. Maybe she could at least try to live up to her hopes.

“Tell Meira I am really sorry to do this to her again…”

* * *

Akuji caught a scent in the air and knew where she was headed before she could even see it. It’s a common misconception that devils, as a species, come from some religious version of hell. Their home had actually influenced early depictions of the place. Early man was not very good at what was and wasn’t harmful to eat. A few creative people were at the wrong berries and their firey homeland and decided being sent there would be the perfect place to scare people into being good.

The sulfur smell filling her nostrils made her know she was home before turning a corner and seeing the flaming plains not far from the home she was raised in. She hadn’t been back in years ever since she had asked her parents questions they didn’t much like. Early man had conflated the real-life devils with those they had read about, and why not…there were real-life angels, though they looked nothing like how they were described in the texts.

The problem was that in the olden days, many of the devils visiting Earth had played into that superstition. Hyping themselves up into almost mythical proportions making deals they couldn’t deliver on with the humans. Thus also earning them a reputation for not dealing with them fairly. The devils thought it was a funny joke, playing as evil to the foolish humans who believed in them.

Akuji had had the gall to ask… How long can people pretend to be evil before they truly are? This had exploded into a moral argument that lasted days… She didn’t want to participate in this giant game they had played with humanity for centuries and after meeting Mr. Wilde, even more so. She walked forward, towards where her home had been when she had left. The familiar sights and sounds brought her back to her childhood, moving up the walk to her old house.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she understood this couldn’t be real… she was still in the labyrinth of the archives but there was something it wanted her to see… or understand first. She was too familiar with mind tricks and reversals that her people had been doing for centuries not to recognize what was happening. She pushed through the door into her childhood home, wondering what she would encounter.

Inside was how she remembered it from the day she had left. It was all there… the furniture, the half-eaten meal on the table, even her father…. Seemingly frozen in time in the middle of screaming at her as she crashed out the door. She looked around the room carefully, examining everything for any detail missed as she tried to ignore the statue that was her father. She moved back in front of him and examined his face, it was twisted in anger of those last moments years ago.

“Dad?” She asked and he came to life once more.

“-walk out that door… huh… Aku, I thought you were leaving.”

“I did… though it seems part of me never did… still stuck here trying to convince you to see sense.”

“I am not the one that needs to see anything… this is how we devils have operated for centuries and just because you are a little squeamish won’t change anything about the real world.” Her dad seemed to deflate… was he always this small? The picture in Akuji’s mind had her father as a towering figure that blotted out the sun, not this… person.

“That is how it’s always been is no reason for things to continue that way, Dad.” Her voice was quiet but strong… she had learned so much since that moment. She had been angry, contrary… rebelling somewhat just for the act of rebelling. “I’ve met a human now, he doesn’t deserve the trickery we put them through.”

“Good people don’t summon us to make deals, dear…”

“You know that’s not true, either… yes, bad people call on us all the time, but so do the desperate… people who need help more than they need us making things worse for them.” She looked her father in the eye, pleading with him silently to at least consider her side.

“So we should offer free counseling? The deals we make with humans have shaped the entire economy of our world… if we were to change the chaos would be devastating.” He reached out to her, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I was young once too… had a few deep thoughts even. It’s too ingrained in our culture to change things now.”

“Humans. You know those pathetic beings you look down on so much? They have remade themselves almost from scratch over and over again. Due to disease or nature wiping them out. Or political changes and moral change… even things they thought were too ingrained to ever give up.” Akuji smirked a little, her voice sounding more confident. “Are you saying we aren’t even as good as humans?”

The anger came back into her father’s face, being better than humans was a point of pride to him, Comparing their species was a low blow but she could tell it hit home.

“And intent only counts for so much… we can say we are playing into their prejudices but if we harm people the reason means less than you might think.” Akuji stood straighter… her mind flashing through the lessons she had learned through her years at the university. “You might not intend to kill someone but that doesn’t make them any less dead… the harm is still done.”

“They bring it on themselves…”

“Maybe… but we don’t have to help them destroy themselves and lose ourselves in the process… what are we besides our deals? Where is our culture? Our songs? The only thing anyone ever talks about is the humans and what they tricked them out of.

We have tied ourselves so deeply to them we no longer have an identity of our own.”

She knew that had not always been the way… up to even fifty years previous there had been devil singers and even fiddlers… they were a dying breed. Singing doesn’t earn souls some would say… though at least one devil tried to make things work even with his love of music but it had ended badly.

“Much as I am loathe to admit you have a point there. When you aren’t yelling at me… look, stay… finish your dinner and we can keep talking.” Her father pointed to their dinner still waiting for them. “If we can keep things civil then maybe we can come up with a plan.”

Akuji looked from her dad to the food. It all seemed so real but she knew that no part of it could be… you can’t go back and change things in your past. It just wasn’t possible to change things that had already happened.

“Sure Dad… I’d like that.” Maybe she could spare a few minutes before she got back.