First Halo of Ciazel,
Atera,
East Lily Drive
-Two weeks later-
Biting into a crisp apple, Caro peered at the odd, rectangular object hung adjacent to their closet. Like, really stared at it. It was a wonder how this one thin sheet of metal held such a grip on her steadfast roommate.
Val had charged inside the apartment like her life depended on it, a long device under one arm and an even larger frame beneath the other. She placed the device inside the redwood fixture, in a hurry to just… look at it.
For hours, upon hours.
It broke Caro’s heart to think she couldn’t make a gamer out of Val. That type of concentration was highly valuable in RPGs, farming for items on end. Oh well, you can’t win them all.
As each week passed, the air in the home grew heavier, dense with a prickling sort of vexation. Ask the wrong question and you gained Val’s death glare—rare treatment, Caro had to say. To no one’s surprise, Kenneth frequently encroached on said boundaries under the guise of caring reminders, as if trying to kill a campfire by spilling oil on it.
After a few rounds of knocks on their bedroom door, he would peek his head and gesture to the Recognition Rectangle. “How’s training going?”
“Take a look at it.” Curled up under her blankets, Val’s attention was on the book in her grasp. “Does it seem any different?”
“Uh…” His gaze meandered to the featureless device, a trio of geometric lines narrowly breaking the surface. The only form of progress in three hundred hours. A grimace pulled his cheeks to the side, and he’d click his tongue. “You’ll get it soon.”
“Hope so.”
There went the door, shut before the answer could travel across the cramped room. Caro couldn’t begin to guess his motive. Did he want to piss her off? Or was there some sibling dynamic she missed?
Letting the thought be, she wandered to their shared closest and sighted the enrapturing guitar. Working up a sweat in a duelist center, she couldn’t believe her eyes when the old enchanter walked past the occupied rings. He was as out of place as she’d ever seen a person, a snowflake compared to the ragged combatants during high-intensity exercise, prepping for battles against each other.
His request made her day—and it wasn’t because she got to add a little spice to Val’s training. Let’s be honest, maybe it was a tiny bit. To her, though, the ability to ask what his student would prefer rather than themself, despite years of experience, was the mark of a reasonable master.
She had hoped her idea would help her musically-inclined friend fall into a rhythm, one that expedited improvement rather than adding layers of strain. In the hours past, it appeared she’d accomplished the opposite, stripping away the one thing Val loved to enjoy anytime, anywhere.
Each night, she’d hear Val play a splendid total of three notes before plucking a soundless string. A pause interrupted her session, and the croaks of the pigeons on the window ledge filled the sudden silence. Caro imagined her face growing a shade or two darker.
Then, she’d huff a great sigh, slip on the reading glasses she’d finally gotten herself, and scrutinize the hiccup in her strumming. Seconds later, a flash of blue coloured the dark room and Caro grinned under her covers. Still stubborn to the T.
Even years back, unaccompanied by the need to prove herself, she’d never settle for a loss on her part. Without fail, she’d take the time to consult with teachers on mistakes, ask her peers for advice and strive for the best version of herself.
Born in a family where the sum of its household’s ASC amounted to less than the random student, Caro struck a chord with the strange, hard-working girl. She’d passed along her opinion to Val the next day during their spars, and they’d been glued at the hip ever since.
The fact sparked what must’ve been millions of conversations in elementary school. People strolled up to Val in the middle of the halls—instructors, TAs, and peers. To clear up whatever misunderstanding that must have existed in the poor girl’s head to link arms with Caro.
She’s not going to be much.
Don’t waste your time!
There’s an open seat at my table if you want.
Those final two years at Vexal Elementary School couldn’t go by any slower. She yearned for the dawn of Deduction Day, for her magical aptitude to simply shut up the persistent noise.
Deduction Day came alright, and it hit the girls like a tsunami on Portside’s shores. At the young age of twelve, Caro witnessed the fickleness of humanity. It wasn’t the questions muttered in the halls that changed, it was the girl they pulled aside to whisper in her ear. Friends swapped to gossipers the following week, and gossipers into bystanders. Strangers. Passerbys.
From that moment onwards, Val second-guessed the very Central Essences that encapsulated the world. The lock on that door, the answer to this question, herself. Whatever the case, Caro made damn sure she’d have her to fall back on.
Her eyes shifted to the stack of scattered textbooks, cataloged and organized in a manner no one could grasp except for its culprit. The mountain of tomes nearly swallowed the nightstand whole, seemingly empty without its typical bookworm neck-deep into a hardback volume. A resonant quiet spread to the corners of the apartment, none of its usual rowdy occupants at home.
As if to remedy the peculiarity, knuckles rapped on the thin door. Ugh. She stormed out into the living room, whisking the chain lock off and ripping the door open. “No means no, Earl. I swear, another knock on my door and I’ll be shoving a ball of magma up your… Oh.”
“Yeah,” Aeron let out a soft laugh. “We’re not Earl.”
Silann lifted a manicured eyebrow. “You’ll be shoving what up where?”
The door escaped Caro’s frozen hand and groaned as it veered wide, permitting a clear sight of the crew. Clad in civvies—sweater, jeans, and a summer dress—she nearly missed the bottle of delicious amber stone in Silann’s hand. Almost. “I didn’t get a text you were coming over.”
“Wanted it to be a surprise.” The Captain’s stature lumbered over the two in front. “Mind if we come in?”
Caro stepped aside, beckoning them inside with one hand. “As long as I get a cup of whatever Sil’s carrying, you’re welcome in our home.”
Aeron’s head swerved about, laying hold of the empty living room. “Where’s Val? We need both stars of the show today to celebrate having a full team again.”
“It’s been two weeks,” Bo added, leaving Caro at a loss as to when he arrived.
“Sorry guys.” She sighed through her nose. “Wrong day.”
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“How much longer?” Kenneth groaned, his shuffling steps an ever-present noise in the background.
Val huffed a chuckle. “We’re almost there. Promise.”
In response, a string of muttered complaints battered her ears, evoking a shake of the head. An astral cover of countless stars bestowed pale lighting to the Efron siblings, the lamp in Kenneth’s hands working double-time to compensate for the rest. Sinusoidal hills rolled into one another, like an inanimate wave of grass put on hold. Piggybacking on Val’s back, Andy’s giggle warmed her chest during the downhills, arms high in the air.
“Sis, be honest with me,” Kenneth repositioned himself up front, his spiky bedhead a source of distraction. “Do you like astronomy? Stars, to be specific.”
“Not at first,” Val admitted. “Didn’t have much interest in sparkling dots too far to be of importance.”
Hands buried in his jacket’s pockets, Kenneth scoffed. “I hear you.”
“But Mom came in and… things started to make sense,” she said, adjusting her grasp on Andy. “She added details behind the stars—songs, stories, rhymes. I don’t know, I guess it all lured me in. I’m a sucker for a good tale and discovering the rich history of these celestial beings did it for me.”
“Huh,” Kenneth cast a glance her way. “Figured it was the puzzles involved in stargazing that drew you in.”
“Oh, that definitely helped,” she nodded. “Though it’s less solving the problem of the hidden stars and detecting them through the ones quite visible.”
“All the same mumbo jumbo to me.”
Val smirked. “Someone’s beginning to sound like Caro.”
He shuddered. “That’s a highly disturbing thought.”
“Kenneth.”
“Alright, a mildly disturbing thought.”
Lucky for him, they cleared the last hill and unveiled a breathtaking scene, stealing the reprimand right out of her mouth. A flat plateau the breadth of four EC-rooms stretched amid unleveled ground, formed as if it lay waiting for the Efron siblings.
Several strides deep inside the field, Val let her littlest brother off her shoulders and patted the grassy floor. “Follow my lead, okay?”
Andy bobbed his head, bear-themed mittens struggling to nudge his winter hat above his eyes. So cute. Helping him, she tickled at his reddened nose and he shot her a toothy grin.
“We’re seriously going to lie on the grass?”
“Kenneth.”
“Fine, fine.”
Her windbreaker soaked in the cool temperature of the grass blades and she shivered, a cloud of frozen vapour obstructing her view of the airspace above. Her littlest oohed and ahhed, gazing at the starry skies.
Kenneth let out a winding breath. “Woah.”
Val had to agree with her siblings' reaction as the fog cleared out. Behind a screen of absolute black, a sea of twinkling lights absorbed her in its magnificence, wrapping her in a hug as its boundlessness stretched for the darkened horizons. Her hand extended skywards, eager to understand the feeling of familiarity discernible in the panorama of the starry night.
“Tell us stories, Vallie!” Andy giggled. “Stories!”
“Okay, little guy. Don’t fall asleep on me, though.”
Conjuring her mother’s voice, she began to weave the myths and legends surrounding the celestial beings hovering at Spiravale’s door. Words were passed under the prevalence of the glowing orbs, flowing where the conversation led.
“You seem to know a lot about them,” Kenneth muttered.
“It’s nothing compared to Dad.” A trace of a smile touched Val’s lips. “I barely remember half of the stuff he taught because there was so much. Last I did this was when he was…” Val drew in a quivering breath. “He loved stargazing—said it reminded him of home, of his small town in the Glass Dunes.”
Kenneth shot up, his clenched jaw unlocking as he wiped at his eyes. “Let’s give him the send-off he deserves.”
“Let’s.” Val hefted herself off the grass, gingerly removing a box from her bag. Unwrapping the cardboard, she plucked a lampflower out of its case. As if she were holding a newborn, she planted the stem inside the fresh soil and flicked on her lighter. The closed buds caught the fire’s glow, exploding into a crown of radiant petals.
A hole sank into her stomach. Today marked the anniversary of Raven Efron’s passing, and the revelation unblurred the days that disappeared in his absence. He never saw his daughter graduate high school. He wasn’t there to glimpse Andy on his own feet. He didn’t have a chance to mentor his oldest son.
The gape of grief widened for a split moment, and then a weight filled its site. A weight of acknowledgement that he was… gone. There was a sense of finality to truth, a scary one. But she knew, with every fiber of her being, that though he might not be present phyiscally, he would be forever nearby in soul.
With all that in mind, she squeezed her palms together and bowed her head. “In honour of Dad.”
“In honour of Dad,” Kenneth echoed.
The gold of Andy’s irises caught a warm gleam and he stared at the lampflower. “Was Dad… a good dad?”
Val’s lips upturned despite her glistening eyes. “The very best.”
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In the dead of night, the hum of Val’s desk lamp filtered out the creaks from the flat overhead. The faint sounds of blankets ruffling would tamper with her attentiveness on the task at hand, accented by Andy's snores in the room next door.
The blank state of the rectangle teased her from the farthest wall, its throbbing light piercing through her attempts to sleep. Just five minutes. She jumped out of bed, hand on her chin. Before she could stop it, she submitted hours of focus to solving the bottleneck keeping her headway at bay.
Her glare burned a hole through the metal plate. “It’s me and you.”
Noticeable flares of energy burst out of its surface, the behaviour no different than the day she received the tool. Honing in on the unnatural movement of aether, she activated Vague View.
Bombarded with a blast of blue tones, she grunted at the discomfort. Her senses settled into the new norm and she edged closer, concentrating on the three apparent cracks of emission. The simmering light reminded her of the night walk, and Kenneth’s remark slinked into her thoughts.
Figured it was the puzzles involved in stargazing that drew you in.
“Hold on…” she murmured, thumbnail clamped between her teeth. “What did I say…”
She frowned, rewinding the events of the day, sifting past the whirlwind of emotions to attain the answer.
You detected the parts hidden through the pieces in view.
That was it! In the instances prior, she’d skipped over the entry points already found, thinking the place was done and dusted. This time, the beginning was the means to the end.
Her vision returned to the fissures breaking the clean surface of the device. Junctions riddled the lines of aether, acting as crossways where other bands intersected. Some sections of the joints bore copious amounts of aether in contrast to the lines that streaked out of it, whereas others seemed starved.
A calloused finger traced one of the several headache-inducing fractures marking the rectangle. Forcing herself to emit energy, the shakiest of unstable glows sat on her finger pad. The fissure was far from straight, swerving to the left and looping to the right.
If not for detecting its start, she’d never be able to trace the pale hints of aether that digressed onwards. Her hard work shaped into a fourth stroke across the glossy rectangle. Unbelievable.
“About damn time,” Caro said, a knowing smirk spread across her drowsy face. “Don’t you have a certain enchanter to tell?”
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Master Winsford’s office during later hours possessed a distinct ambience to it. The walls appeared a tinge darker—a coffee colour, instead of regular beige—and his quartz table lacked the luminosity gifted by the sun’s rays. The details were the last thing on her mind, a spring in her steps as she crossed the length of the room. “I cracked it.”
The wrinkles straying from Winsford’s eyes lightened and he combed a hand through his short beard. “Oh?”
“Detection at least. Emission needs a little work.”
His lips curled past the angle of a polite smile, forming a grin. “The Initiation is to start in three days. If any doubts remain and are a cause for the exit of scribal hood, now is the time to act on it.”
Val translated the sophisticated speech in a heartbeat. If you want to pull out, do it today.
The answer couldn’t be more obvious.
As much as difficulties arose in studying the written language of the arcane, there was a joy to be had in unraveling the precepts of enchantments. These inscriptions morphed into an integral sliver of her identity. This was her key to university, her link to the scribal community, her route to greater heights. To Mom’s cure.
“No doubts on my part,” Val replied. “I’m here for the long haul.”