Chapter 6
Lyra’s breath came fast and ragged, tearing its way through her throat as she sprinted down the street. Lights were starting to flicker on in previously dark windows, and shouts of “FIRE!” were shattering the quiet of the night. She saw people running away from the burgeoning light on the horizon, one, two, five, nine, then a continuous stream of noise and fear running away from an orange glow. Screams filled the air, the mass panic and running crowds making it harder for Lyra and Selene to beat their way towards the source of the fire.
“Oh god,” Selene choked out, when they came into view of the fire, “The University.”
Bright, Lyra had expected. Terrifying, she had expected. Angry, heavy, a thousand other things she’d expected, but she hadn’t expected the fire to be so loud. She was pushed to her knees by the noise, the rushing of oxygen being consumed, the crashing of debris. A far off echo of laughter, manic and insane. All of it drowned out by a chorus of screams and a feeling of fear-pain-sorrow-loss-
What is happening?
“-yra, Lyra, LYRA”
“Wha-” it was too loud, Lyra couldn’t hear, someone was calling her- Who is that? A wave of noise, a scream of fear-panic-pain. She buckled over, hugged herself.
“Loud,” she forced out. Clammy hands covered her ears, cold and damp with fear and adrenaline, and Lyra’s face was tilted upwards. Selene looked- worried, scared, lost. The sounds quieted, sobs and screams falling away in the face of purple eyes.
“What do we do?” Selene whispered.
“I don’t-” Lyra noticed motion past Selene’s face. A figure stood, stark in front of the fire. The world seemed to slow, an arm came back, a bottle launched towards a hotel. Her old hotel she thought, delirious. There was a new fire. A faint peal of laughter, manic and full of perverse joy. That one. Get them.
Lyra shot off past Selene, sprinting at full tilt towards the figure. She wasn’t subtle, wasn’t trying to be, it saw her. It ran. It better. The figure knew the City better than Lyra, ducking into alleyways and leading her to places she’d never seen. Lyra was fast though, and she was able to barely keep it in sight.
The city flew by the two, screams and light fading behind them as Lyra was slowly led away from the din of the fire. The figure came to a sudden stop when it reached a plaza. Lyra skidded to a stop in front of the figure, wary of it suddenly stopping. She hesitantly raised her fists. Here we go.
The figure turned, and Lyra got her first good look at it. Tall and thin, almost unnaturally so, with arms that were just a bit too long and a torso just a bit too small, it seemed- wrong. A hood was pulled up over its head, but as its face was turned upwards the moon illuminated a white domino mask. Painted on the mask, a grey sigil of an eye, the outer edges of the eyelids filled with inward facing teeth. As if, when one closed an eye, the eyelids were a mouth and the pupil a morsel to be swallowed.
“Well hello, little one,” the creature crooned. Its voice was dry, it almost reached up and playfully coiled around Lyra. Playing with its food. She shivered. “To what do I owe the…pleasure?” Something about the figure made her cower. It brought images of whispers in the dark, of massive bodies slipping through the air just beyond her sight.
“You started a fire,” Lyra said. Her voice cracked. “I saw you, don’t try to deny it.”
A dry laugh echoed from the figure, then from behind her the voice snarled “Why would I do that?” Lyra whirled around, nothing there. “I started that fire. What of it?” The voice came from right by her ear, and Lyra froze.
“Y-you have to go to jail.” she stuttered
“Have to, you say?” the figure chuckled, its breath ghosting over Lyra’s neck, “And if I don’t want to?”
“I’ll” her voice wavered, “I will make you”
The creature snarled, “You will try.” A searing pain burst through Lyra’s hand. She cried out and fell to her knees, tears gathered at the edges of her eyes. She gasped as the pain grew, creeping its way up her arm, winding its way over her shoulder and up past her neck, reaching towards her head. She blacked out.
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She stood on a plane, broken plates of stone and tattered silver banners stretching out as far as she could see, all under a grey-green sky. Wind brought the scent of ancient crypts and long-forgotten tombs to her, and sand scoured its way across her skin. She began to walk.
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Voices slowly faded into her hearing, she could barely make out what they were saying.
“-okay?”
“-ot sure, best be careful-”
The voices were coming in and out of focus, she was tired, let her sleep.
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She doesn’t know how long she walked for. It could have been hours, it could have been weeks. It didn’t seem to matter.
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“-kay-” a voice familiar coming in and out of focus “Please be okay Ly-”
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She came upon the ruins of a castle, devastated in the wake of a great battle. Ragged silver banners flapped forlornly in the wind, overlooking the rusted armour of an ancient army strewn about in and around craters in the ancient stone land.
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“-one all we can, it’s up to her n-”
“-ope?”
“There is always hope.”
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Into the ruined castle she walked, making her way across shattered stone slabs and around craters. She trudged through the midst of legions of ancient helms and long lost swords, long devoid of their owners. She wandered under crumbling archways, between cracked pillars and up mangled stairs. She found herself, eventually, in a throne room, weathered by an ancient and terrifying battle. Huge holes blown in the walls, massive cracks running across the floor, only half the roof remaining. Obscured in shadow, a massive stone throne sat. It was not spared the damage of the room, a huge crack running across its stone back, starburst cracks in the stone of its armrests.
Yet none of this devastation hid the majesty of the throne's occupant. It, too, was broken, bleeding grey from cracks creeping their way up its stonelike skin. But this did not diminish from its glory, for it was dignified in its repose. It sat, reclining on its chair, and grace and power pouring from its form. She bowed, and it smiled.
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Lyra groaned, and opened her eyes. Then closed them immediately Motherfucker, it's bright. She decided she wanted whoever was nearby to know.
“Bright.”
“Not a surprise. Oversensitivity is quite normal after exposure to Demon magic,” The voice was stern and matronly. “You’ve given us all quite the fright Lyra.”
“Wonderful” Lyra said, raising her fist in mock celebration. She couldn’t keep it up for long, and it fell back down with a grunt. She still hadn’t opened her eyes, but she was working her way up to another attempt.
It took her a few minutes, filled with a non-zero amount of cursing and lancing pain through her head, but Lyra did eventually get her eyes to adjust to the light. When they did, she saw beds lining two long walls in the rectangular room. They all had a curtain bolted to the ceiling above them, and Lyra could see silhouettes behind the ones that were drawn. Arched windows set into the wood of the walls shed plenty of light into the hall, and she could see gas lamps next to them that would light the area up in the night.
“Where am I?” she asked
A woman sitting at her bedside responded, “The Clinic, young one.”
“Clinic…” Lyra mutters, “That makes sense.” She felt warm, everything seemed bathed in a sleepy light. Then- seniors, fire, Selene, figure, pain, pain, PAIN.
She sat bolt upright, her muscles groaning in protest to the sudden movement. She ignored them. “Fire! What happened to the fire, is everyone okay?”
The woman put an old wrinkly hand on Lyra’s shoulder. “Everything is fine, young lady. The fire was stopped soon after your friend reported to us.”
“My friend…” Lyra’s thoughts were sluggish, it was hard to get them moving, but- “Selene! Is Selene okay?”
“She is fine,” the woman responded, “She was quick to report to the professors after you ran off.” She levelled a stern look at Lyra. “You ought to speak to her about that, it seems like you gave her quite the fright. She hardly left your side, you know. We had to drag her away for classes, and she ended up sleeping here after sneaking out to find you.”
She lifted her cane- she has a cane??? to point towards the bed next to Lyra’s. The sheets were messy, as if someone had slept there the day before.
“So she’s okay?”
The woman huffed, and levelled a glare at Lyra “Yes. Perfectly safe. Far safer than you are, young Lady. Do you have any idea the danger you put yourself in!?”
“N-”
The woman didn’t seem to care about her answer and barreled right past her attempt at an explanation. “Exposure to Demonic magics, a stress fever, and a brand burned into your hand-”
“A WHAT?”
“-all at once? It took every one of my nearly 200 years of experience to keep you alive.” Lyra didn’t hear much past the brand that was burned into her hand, and she frantically looked at her hands. Sure enough, the same sigil she’d seen on the mask of the figure was burned onto the palm of her left hand. Now that she’d noticed it, it started to itch.
She used her other hand to try and scratch, and her hand was caught by the woman. “Ah-ah-ah, none of that now young lady. I won’t have you undoing all my hard work like that.”
“Why the fuck do I have a Tower-damned sigil burned into my hand?” Lyra demanded, very much freaked out.
“That is a question we were hoping you would answer, Miss,” Lyra’s head snapped to the new voice, and she was surprised to see someone sitting right next to her. How didn’t I notice you?
No one ever went to war with the Dominion, but Stalport was a port city. On the eastern border and by the sea, so seeing the odd soldier seeking refuge, or refugees, during a war wasn’t uncommon. It wasn’t exactly common, either, but it’d happened enough that she had seen them. Had seen the way they walked, efficient and steady, stability in their every step. She’d seen the way they looked around them, constantly waiting for something to happen, for a threat they might have to subdue. She’d seen the way they sat, too. Relaxed, yes, but also poised and positioned in such a way that they could be on their feet at a moment's notice. This man looked like a soldier.
He had sandy blond hair, trimmed to be just short enough to stay out of his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, and stubble was encroaching on his face. There was a slump in how he sat that said he hadn’t sat down in a while, and the bags under his eyes had grown big enough Lyra thought she could fit everything she owned in them. But his eyes were alert and focused on Lyra.
“Sorry, what?” Lyra said
The man grumbled, and sank lower in his seat. “We don’t know what that sigil is, or how it got there. But, it reeks with Demon magic, and so does the attack on the school. So, how did you get that brand?”
“I- uh. I’m not sure?” Lyra cringed, “I have a guess though”
“Enlighten me”
Lyra took a moment to gather her thoughts. “Okay, so, after we got to the fire-”
The man held up a hand to signal her to stop, “We?”
“Me and my friend Selene. We didn’t want to go to the senior party-” Lyra closed her mouth.
“We are…aware…of the senior’s party. You don’t need to worry about getting anyone in trouble.” The woman said. The man grunted in agreement.
“Right…” Lyra squinted suspiciously, then shrugged. “The party was too loud, and we wanted to get out, so we did. We wandered the streets for a while, then we noticed- what we thought was the sunrise, but it turned out to be the fire. When we figured that out, we ran towards it-”
“Why?” interrupted the man
“Sorry?” said Lyra
“Why did you run towards the fire. And not away from it or something.”
“‘To be a mage is to be in service to the people,’ right? Isn’t that what the Holy Sage always taught?” Lyra asked
The man frowned, “And you’re a mage?”
Lyra gaped, then glared at the man. “I want to be. And if I want to be a mage, I’d better act like one should, right?” The man looked like he was about to respond, “And who the fuck are you to ask me that anyway?” Not her smartest question, in hindsight.
The man’s nostrils flared, and he sat up in his chair, matching her glare, “I am Heracles Bant, Professor of Combat at Waypoint University and High Enforcer of the Tower.”
Lyra paled. No wonder he looked like a soldier. Enforcers were the extensions of the towers' will. Highly trained to a man, they were known to fight battalions. High enforcers, on the other hand, were known to fight entire armies. And win. She’d heard stories of rivers going dry at the wave of a hand, of nascent militaries obliterated in an instant, of cities being levelled in a day. The stories were probably exaggerated, but only probably.
Lyra’s voice wavered “Sorry.” The man deflated, looking a little guilty, and motioned for her to go on.
Lyra took a moment to gather her thoughts. “So… after running towards the light, and finding the University on fire I…” She decided to leave her breakdown out of the story, as she still wasn’t entirely sure what happened, “saw a figure throw something at a hotel. The hotel lit on fire, and I ran at the figure. It led me through the city, till we met in a plaza where it…attacked me, I think? There was a pain that started in…my…hand.” She looked down at her hand. The man coughed, and she startled.
“Uh. Yeah, something happened that made my hand hurt, then it kind of spread up to my head? Then I blacked out.”
“Seems like whatever it was that made that happen caused the brand,” Bant mused, “Any idea what it could be?” He addressed that question to the other woman, who gave an exasperated look in response.
“As I have told you a thousand times already over the past few days, no I don’t have any idea.” She said rather pointedly.
“Few days!?!?!?” The two turned to look at Lyra, blinking in surprise. The woman coughed, and her cheeks colored a little.
“Yes, three days.” The woman sighed, “You have been asleep for three days.”