Her name was Naracilla Geisler, and why wouldn’t it be? She’d just mentally checked-out of the faculty meeting, mere seconds after it started. The faculty office had rapidly filled with teachers, hierophants, assistants, apprentices, administrators—everyone, all the way up to Principal Vandagriff. That many bodies congregated pushed the temperature up. Nara fanned herself with unmarked test papers, using the sides of her top to wipe sweat from her palms.
The meeting embodied an almost living, volatile corollary of recent news: A possible new constellation of magic had revealed itself. Rumours had spread beforehand, but the Academy paid little mind to student gossip. So when the Detective Mages arrived to give their official verdict—that being, yeah, there’s a good chance of a sweet new type of magic floating around, up for the grabs, and whoever gets a head start could join the rank of the Erudite—the faculty became abuzz with their own conversations, what they’d like to call “discussion” rather than gossip, as if having gruff voices decades past puberty automatically elevated their intentions to a refined, academic plane.
A new constellation of magic hadn’t been discovered in close to a decade, aside from Phoenix-magic, but that stayed hush-hush, not open for public discourse. Nara only knew because of her time working as a DetMage.
The lights dimmed and a projector lit up to show the video. It hadn’t been made public; the Detective Mages were around to show the faculty and—officially speaking—ensure nobody leaked a copy. Knowing the Academy, the public would have a copy within a day. Knowing the DetMages, the public would have a copy within the hour.
Nara idly ran a finger across the tattoo on her wrist: Chains dotted with stars. A sort of central-easterly slang term for DetMages was the Models (à la, the Finest, the Law, the Fuzz). The moniker had been derived from being called model citizens by Mayor Carpenter, or looking like high fashion models because of the mandatory, and ridiculous, half-capes as part of the uniform. Folks from central tended to claim the latter, while suburbs figured the former.
As for the video, it showed footage from an Auroch that crashed between Alderrow and Melbourne during the recent excursion, which Nara had attended. Officially, the Hunter-Yao gang caused the crash and stole the entire supply of vegetables. They weren’t in the video, though. No, the video showed a hazy figure standing alone in the rain, without rain gear, taking a swing at a group of Entities. Normally, a video like that might get passed around in the blacker parts of the black market, Entity snuff film kinda stuff, but the figure didn’t die.
The figure swung at the Entities, and a visible arc of distorted air and light caused the Entities to vanish. They disintegrated. No weapons needed. It couldn’t be explained. The footage hadn’t been tampered with, though there were suggestions aplenty.
A party composed from multiple organisations had been sent to conduct research in situ, which is how they recovered the footage, but nothing about the crash location suggested it had relevance. The figure in the video was the only source of information.
A few of the nuttier faculty members, like Mr Devai or Miss Guillory, later made whispered but trenchant declarations: The figure was the Man-in-Darkness.
Between the resilience to rain and absolute destruction of Entities, it was deemed to have come from a new constellation of magic.
The video ended and DetMages secured the source.
The side of Nara’s head throbbed. Principal Vandagriff thanked the Detective Mages. The gentle churning of Nara’s stomach and vision kept her distracted. The ceiling fans blurred. Nara had a 0.5mm black gel pen in her pocket. She didn’t much like ballpoint pens, and she preferred a cap to retractable types. When her co-workers clicked their pens in the office continually like click-click she wanted to stamp their passport or her own. Yet, she never brought it up. Better to shelf the hassle than give her co-workers new reasons to petition Principal Vandagriff for her resignation.
Potent Vulpecula-class magic, illusions, bought with a friend-only discount from Connor Duncan, hid Nara’s pallor and the purplish crescents under her eyes. But the illusions came in cream form, and if she sweat much more it’d streak, showing unobscured evidence of her midnight activities, broken into lines like a painting fed through a paper shredder.
Thankfully, the meeting ended. Nara got out of the room, ignoring Robb Irvine’s attempt to strike up conversation. She couldn’t waste time; another meeting called her attention.
A breeze in the hallway cooled her, but she didn’t get far. A trio of junior-2 girls ambushed her around the corner.
‘Hey, Nara.’
Nara put on her best and widest smile. A feigned but wholly convincing cheer infused her countenance. ‘What’s up?’
‘Well, we…’ The trio looked at each other and giggled. The freckled girl in the middle found her voice first. ‘Carol Darcy’s having a party this Saturday, and I, all of us, thought it’d be a good idea to invite you.’
‘How bold of you,’ she replied, with mock gravity. ‘You, a student, are inviting me, the hierophant of history, to a party?’
‘Yeah, but like, history isn’t…’
‘Isn’t what?’
‘We’re in junior-2, anyway,’ a girl with round spectacles chimed in. ‘So, you’re not really our hierophant, you know?’
Nara sucked air through her teeth.
In addition to the magic cream, Nara used a perfume scented with distinct citrus notes. Auriga-class magic—speed magic—smelled of citrus. This way, Nara often smelled like she used her magic, and all the while she told students and faculty that she, on principle, avoided using magic on campus. She had a whole philosophical monologue about how people needed to not rely on magic all the time so she didn’t use magic on campus and—blah-blah-blah.
Truthfully? Nara hadn’t used magic in three years. No enhanced sprint to avoid tardiness. No little sleight of hand tricks. No dashing to save a cat falling from a tree.
The perfume also helped when she forgot to wash her clothes. Not a common occurrence, but…not uncommon.
‘Won’t it be annoying, having a member of staff around?’ Nara asked.
The freckled girl had renewed confidence. ‘It won’t get super rowdy. A-And you pretty much pass for a student, so it’s fine.’
The third girl spoke for the first time. ‘Yeah, you look really good for thirty.’
Nara pursed her lips. ‘That’s probably because I’m not thirty.’
‘Oh. I mean—it’s obvious you’re not, so you look really good for…whatever you are.’
Nara kept her neck stiff, so as to not irritate the illusionary cream, turning her whole torso to address each of the trio. ‘I. Will. Think about it.’
‘Are you alright?’ the freckled girl asked. ‘You seem kinda…’
‘Got a crick in my neck,’ Nara replied. ‘I bought a new pillow and it’s way thicker than my usual one, so, you know.’
‘I could try massaging it. Like, not in a weird way. My dad’s friend does a whole physical therapy thing with Circinus magic where, like, he can sense the blood in your arteries and veins, so then he massages it and—’
‘I’ll be alright,’ Nara replied. ‘If it gets worse, I’ll let you know.’ She turned to leave.
‘So, are you coming to the party?’
‘Who’s buried in Howard’s grave?’ Nara called over her shoulder, replicating teenage laughter heard around campus.
Nara left the faculty building, went up the main path toward the quad, and passed the cafeteria and dining hall where hungry teens flooded at scheduled hours. They needed to eat well. Nutrients for brain function. Proteins and carbs, too. Strong body, strong mind. Strong mind, strong magic.
Then she walked the oval path around the quad, past the statues of the city’s heroes, and went south down the main boulevard. To her left, the recreation hall, private learning centre, and main hall for indoor practicals. To her right, the Chaplain’s house and a small building for welcoming visitors, sort of like a museum.
A short distance before the main gate, she veered left, taking a stony, flora-shaded path to the memorial pagoda and fountain. As she approached, she spotted students of the senior classes running laps on the track of synthetic rubber, the orange-red shade of ground equal parts warmly nostalgic and hotly unpleasant.
One of the runners stood out. A girl. She was fast. Not fast like Nara in her youth, but fast compared to her peers. Nara guessed it was Carol Darcy, the same girl organising the party. She was in senior-1, class-c, and had gained Auriga-class magic during the graduation period from junior-2 to senior-1. Around three-quarters of students completed their Deals in that period, with some taking a bit longer, rare few doing it sooner, and the rest never accomplishing it at all.
Seeing Carol Darcy run, Nara could practically smell the citrus. Nara yearned for the girl’s youth: Her mind, not body. Nara knew she physically could handle Auriga magic, but something in her mind prevented usage. Whether the blockage floated in a shallow strata of thoughts or lurked in deepest depths, she didn’t know. The unseen enemy remained an undefeated one.
Until she regained that, she’d never feel whole.
On a whim, Nara paused. Few people walked in the current part of campus. Why not…try running? Her clothes, for starters. Her hangover, too. So what? Long-sleeved top, slacks, loafers, and a recently evacuated stomach. Yeah, so what?
Nara crouched into the starting posture of a race. One knee contacted the ground. Other foot forward. Hands on the ground, fingers splayed. She heard the figment of a whistle from countless races run in her past. Go! She launched. She ran. Warmth pulsed in her legs. She ran, and ran. A stitch formed in her side almost immediately. Sweat followed. Her breathing grew laboured, but still she charged at the pagoda and fountain. And nothing happened. No great speed. But, she thought she sensed it, a bit of magic. She citrus smell, at least. Oh, that’s why, she thought, remembering her perfume.
Nara reached the pagoda and didn’t so much collapse against one of the support posts as sort of like embrace it in the way a sailor might in a crow’s nest during a maelstrom. The impact of her body in the pseudo-embrace alarmed a man seated inside, who hopped to his feet and reached for his sidearm. ‘You didn’t need to rush,’ the man grumbled, when he recognised Nara.
Since when did Nara need to catch her breath after a quick sprint? ‘I…wasn’t,’ she panted.
The man handed Nara a handkerchief monogrammed with the initials CAG, which stood for Coen Ashley Gerst. When he’d commissioned it, he wanted the initial DMCAG, to mean Detective Mage Coen Ashley Gerst, but Nara talked him out of it.
Nara wiped off sweat and illusionary cream, leaving what looked like splotches or flecks of human skin on the handkerchief.
‘You’re still wearing that cream,’ Gerst said, statement not question.
‘Yep.’
‘From Connor?’
‘That’s right.’ Nara slumped onto the pagoda’s bench. Gerst sat beside her.
‘How much?’
‘A couple bottles.’
‘How much did it cost?’ he clarified.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
‘I got a discount.’
‘It’s still a waste. You’re spending money on booze and cream when stopping one would stop the other.’
‘You know who I’m married to, don’t you? Drinks and cosmetics barely make a dent.’
Gerst sniffed the air. ‘And that perfume.’
Nara ground her teeth, ready to walk away. ‘You can criticise me in a letter instead of dragging me out here.’
Gerst sighed. A black corduroy jacket sat loosely on his frame. He seemed to deflate, prior words being less of an effort to have Nara capitulate than to convince himself of something. That, the something: If he ended up like Nara, he’d have solutions, as if their downfalls would be identical not parallel. But he didn’t believe this, and hence “that” need.
‘Still can’t trigger it?’ Gerst whispered, oddly tender.
‘Nope.’
‘A guy at the station, his wife knows a worker who got some new fancy treatment at the Qronyurch Institute—’
‘Yeah, no.’
Gerst sighed again, longer this time. Then he opened a satchel and handed a wrapped sandwich to Nara. Sourdough bread, tomatoes, mozzarella, avocado, onion, and balsamic vinegar. The balsamic vinegar dripped from the bread and darkened the paper like a Rorschach. See, see, and let the inkblots reveal Nara’s innermost thoughts: A man with a three-inch cock fucking a woman while she dreamed about a sandwich. Nara figured it might be more premonition than reflection, but oh well.
Gerst had a chicken sandwich of some bland description, drier than him. They both had coffee. Cold brew for Nara. Latte for Gerst.
‘You been alright?’ Gerst asked around a mouthful of chicken, to which Nara shrugged. ‘Ever think about coming back?’
‘Never.’
‘My current partner—that young guy I told you about—you’re worth four of him.’
‘He’ll learn.’ Nara appreciated the vinegar’s acidity.
‘Sure, or he’ll get his passport stamped by a Snake.’
‘So it goes.’
‘But, no, really. You been alright here?’
Nara chewed and really thought about it, willing to give a bit of sincerity to Gerst’s rare show of condescension-free concern. Bit of CFC, the other DetMages used to say. Nara felt alright in a general sense. Stagnant apathy may have been better than a decline in mental and physical health; or it meant she’d already hit the bottom of the well. Though, for the past few weeks, she’d had bizarre nightmares about a labyrinth. She opened her mouth, ready to recount the nightmares, when a twitch in her hand caused her to spill coffee onto her lap.
Nara swore and wiped her slacks with Gerst’s handkerchief. ‘I’ve been fine. Still hoping to run across water someday.’ They laughed, and Nara just about convinced herself it was a joke.
They finished their lunch and Gerst honed in on the core subject. It wasn’t circulating, but the DetMages believed the new form of magic was discovered by a student at the Vandagriff Academy. The faculty meeting earlier had been about the possibility of new magic but not specifically originating at the Academy. If the DetMages pushed for a deeper investigation, the Academy would clamp up, so Gerst sought Nara out.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ Nara asked.
Gerst got his phone out and replayed the salvaged footage. ‘This happened during an excursion for the senior classes to Alderrow—’
‘Yeah, I was on it.’
‘—so I’d start with them. Sure, it could’ve been a mage from Hunter-Yao, but that’s doubtful. Now, this might not be relevant, but I pressed the teacher, Willigan, for info. He said two students were on the crashed Auroch. Victoria F. Fornax and Cecilia Harkenfield. They’re in junior-1, so I’m betting it isn’t them; and there’s no way a Fornax would stray from their family’s magic, so then—the Harkenfield girl.’
‘She’s an exchange student from Adelaide,’ Nara explained. ‘Class-B. Decent, but nothing special.’
‘Okay, so back to the senior classes. Any sleepers?’
Nara returned more of a tilt than a nod, as if a literal looking-into-the-self motion. ‘A few more than usual.’ She knew where Gerst’s theory went from there. He’d want her to investigate any students in the senior classes who hadn’t—who claimed to not have completed a Deal yet.
An easy method existed.
The Tanstock Mage Academy’s singular claim to fame came from their invention of the Intuitive Constellation Self-Mapping test (ICSM). It involved a person placing their hand on the surface of a moderately-sized body of water, typically a basin or large bowl. Any granular, non-soluble material would be added to the water, akin to tea leaves used in pre-Dusk divination practices. Pretty soon, the material would automatically float to the surface and align into the mage’s constellation.
Supposedly, a hierophant at Tanstock had a reputation for taking elaborate baths, and one day they used glitter while bathing, which resulted in the aforementioned shape of their constellation, as if an involuntary shape-memory response of the mage’s soul.
However, Nara couldn’t go around forcing the senior students to put their hands in buckets of water. A legal precedent emerged a few months after discovering the ICSM test. Based on the precedent, anyone could refuse the test, and it had become common practice for most mages to refuse, seeing as the majority deemed it uncouth, not far off asking someone to undress in front of you. Asking a mage you’ve just met to reveal their category of magic could be deemed a faux pas, as well, among certain circles. Common practice was to let the mage speak of their magic first.
No matter how popular Nara had become among the students, she couldn’t coerce them into undergoing the ICSM test.
‘Thanks for lunch,’ Nara said, balling the sandwich wrapper and tossing it across Gerst and into his satchel.
‘You’ll look into the seniors?’
‘We’ll see how it goes.’
‘You fill me with confidence,’ Gerst called to her back, as she strode from the pagoda.
#
Lunch with Gerst had unwittingly dislodged parts of Nara’s memories. She didn’t like how Gerst pitied her, not that he’d admit it. They graduated from Vandagriff and became DetMages together. Worked as partners.
No major incident caused her departure. They did good work, as partners. And Nara did good work as a vigilante. And she did still better work after using magic-enhancing drugs. She ran and ran. Nara changed and work stayed the same. Her thoughts thinned into a corridor and the city ate its own tail. She left the DetMages with equal ceremony as joining them. Soon after, a man named Carson Geisler had helped Nara get the hierophant of history position at Vandagriff Academy.
Classes ended and Nara rode her bike home. She had a sleek, hybrid, stone-toned bike. A few students rode with her, before splitting off to their own addresses. With each student’s departure, her shoulders settled into normal repose, lips into normal alignment. She didn’t resent the students. She wanted them around. They were under enough pressure, she felt, so it helped to have a faculty member to relax around.
Nara passed a café. It had a blocky steel exterior, while the interior imitated Alice in Wonderland aesthetics, with vibrant shades, cakes, and floral touches. An alumnus from Vandagriff, a boy, used to work there. As she rode past, she reflected on her only memory of him…
The boy came from the western suburbs, had auburn hair and hazel eyes, and preserved—to put it lightly—a confrontational demeanour. Bad combination, since the Battle of Flemington back in the Chaotic Era. He had no friends, and a few dedicated classmates actively harassed him, hoping his departure could open a spot for one of their friends. Nara figured: Why not help the guy out? Didn’t have to be a major thing. She devised a plan. When next the class seemed disinterested, she’d offer them a proposition. She’d pick someone to answer a question, and if they got it correct, the whole class could leave early for lunch. Except, she made sure beforehand that the boy knew the question and answer.
Sure enough, a class on the Dust Bowl saw the students yawning and fading away. Nara showed mock annoyance and made her proposition. ‘I’m serious,’ she said, after explaining the conditions. ‘And I will ask…’
Nara pointed at the boy. Most of the class fidgeted nervously. The boy wasn’t known for excelling at history. Nara asked her question, the boy pondered, and then he answered. And…his answer was incorrect.
The class groaned and swore under their breaths. Nara chuckled uneasily and gave him another chance. Classmates whispered hints and made hand gestures. The boy stared right at Nara—some serious soul-interfacing eye contact—and gave a different, equally incorrect answer.
‘W-Well, that’s too bad,’ Nara said, turning back to the whiteboard. ‘So, anyway, the Dust Bowl is the setting of The Grapes of Wrath, a novel and film, but you’ll have to ask Mr Irvine more about that…’
Nara rode past the café behind and onward to home. Home was a tall terrace house and had been built in the pre-Dusk days. It needed repairs after the Chaotic Era, but much of it survived the decades. She brought her bike inside. The smell of citrus perfume had worn off.
Tossing her keys into a glass bowl, Nara spotted a soft, maroon scarf. Possibly cashmere. Real? If so, how had the owner gotten it? All the same, forgotten articles like undergarments or accessories weren’t uncommon. With the scarf being ungendered, Nara couldn’t recall which guest of the past few weeks had worn it, and she had no intention of finding out. After all, it was a cashmere scarf. She could plausibly claim it was an anniversary gift from her husband. He’d like that.
Oh, right, Nara’s husband: Carson Geisler, Sentinel overseeing a project to foster better cooperation between the clans. In secret, to Nara, Carson admitted he used the project with intentions to not only better relations but ultimately unite the clans. Big ambitions, bigger fame. Except that goal had changed hands dozens of times, passed around, left soiled and bloodied and all previous attempters felt uneasy and unclean when they washed their proverbial hands. Nara supported him all the way.
Carson’d come home late at night after being absent for weeks or months. He’d shower and eat pasta and wanna fuck. Nara tended to zone out, mind drifting to ocean waves, a vague sense of weightlessness and detached hunger, mostly for sandwiches.
Present day, time, space:
Nara undressed, showered, snacked on popcorn, and fetched an unmarked DVD from a hollow book under her bed, playing it on the living room’s TV. The footage came from a phone held in the bleachers of a running track. Nara never sat when she watched—best not get too comfortable.
In the video, a long-limbed girl ran in the city-wide, under-18s, open track tournament, specifically the 100m event. “Open track” meaning any gender, attire, or magic category. Eight kids ran. Six boys, two girls. Four of the boys and one girl were nineteen-years-old, and the other two boys were eighteen-years old. The last girl had turned seventeen-years-old a week before the race and could just about still taste the orange-flavoured birthday cake.
The boy in the innermost lane had dark skin and a contrasting, richly red shorts-singlet combo with white diamonds on the left pectoral and hip. The boys in the next two lanes had synthetic uniforms tight against their frames, which made you think of body paint or cheap action figures. Next lane, the nineteen-year-old girl, who had braided her inky hair and had thigh muscles that made the other girl-runner feel not only inadequate but uniquely terrified. Fifth, a boy known to run barefoot. Sixth and seventh, brothers from the Tanstock Mage Academy, who specialised in Auriga-class magic; their magic had pure potency in the short-term, all like anaerobic, with tightly ridged quadriceps to match. And eighth, the seventeen-year-old girl, closest to the bleachers, to the crowd’s shouts of encouragement, advice, and raw noise, volume intermingling into auditory soup.
The video zoomed in on the young girl, frame and framing shaky, before the phone-holder handed it off to someone else behind the screen and the footage stabilised. The girl spotted the camera and offered a rictus grin, and her neck bobbed as she swallowed, hand waving with animatronic rigidity.
An official gave orders. The eight runners got into position, crouched and primed. The smell of citrus, pine, and lavender emanated from the starting line, from Auriga-, Aquila-, and Taurus-class respectively. Speed. Flight. Major Kinetic.
Three. Two. The starting gun fired, adding scents of gunpowder.
The runners shot away. The boy using kinetic magic pulled ahead first, but his legs couldn’t sustain the force. It threw him off-balance, and another haphazard burst of kinetic energy caused him to veer and soar bodily toward the bleachers, where he bloodied his nose against the lower seats with a sound like hitting a gong. The girl using flight magic fared better but had a weaker top speed; consistency helped her at longer races, but not the 100m. Four other runners used speed magic: The two boys from Tanstock, the barefoot guy, and the young girl. The Tanstock boys kept ahead, though the barefoot guy kept close to their elbows. The video footage kept them in centre frame, leaving enough surplus frame to keep the youngest girl visible, her head bobbing in the corner like a loading icon. The crowd chanted Tanstock! Tanstock! Tanstock! Which sounded to the young girl like an abstract indictment about tan socks.
And yet in the last quarter of the race, a sharp smell of citrus reached the crowds and a blur of a body launched past the three leading boys and crossed the finish line to seize a record time of 8.22 seconds.
Nara closed her eyes and felt the crowd’s awed cries on the living room speakers.
The footage blurred as the phone holder jumped and waved their hands. The phone briefly fell on the ground, before being recovered. A few frames showed a red-cheeked young woman in a beanie wiping the lens. Thus restored, the camera returned to filming the young girl, who had collapsed a short distance past the finish line and looked more comatose than fatigued, with paramedics rushing to check her condition.
The video ended.
Nara paced in front of the TV, index finger hovering over the rewind button. It couldn’t hurt, right, watching it again? A sickly-sweet feeling overcame Nara, and she lurched, ejected the DVD, and turned off the TV with a sigh of relief. Viewing the DVD once and no more had a litmus feature to her psyche’s condition.
Nara imagined a faint residual outline on the TV of the young woman holding the camera, her sister, Tea Novak, in their days before Nara became a DetMage and the Hunter-Yao gang stole Tea away. Nara had come close to reconciling the loss of her sister, until Tea showed up with Stefan Hunter and requested help getting one of their members enrolled at Vandagriff.
On principle, Nara hated the Hunter-Yao girl who got enrolled, Amborella Cole, masquerading as Eleanor Wilson, but principled hatred only worked with a certain detachment. For better or worse, Nara saw and interacted with Amborella enough to not hate her. Nara was intrigued, even, in a clinical, social-scientific way, since Amborella embodied every opposite trait of Nara’s youth. Where Nara showed earnest passion, Amborella showed disinterest. Nara joined the Academy to better the city, whereas Amborella—being with Hunter-Yao—focused on a heist or mission or whatever objective.
These same diametric traits caused Nara to lose her hatred. Nara had been, on paper, a good person, and the city hadn’t changed. Amborella, on paper, was a criminal, but she might shake things up. “Might” being the operative word, and a big one.
Amborella Cole had been on the Alderrow excursion, but she hadn’t been allowed on the Auroch, according to Mr Willigan. Yet, given footage of that new magic, she may have—nah.
Nara retreated to the house’s main hallway, opened the front door, crouched at the other end, and faced the open entrance. Echoes of bleacher crowds reverberated deep in her, coursing from head to heels. It had to work this time. Go!
She sprinted. One second, two. Hallway neared an end. She sprinted out the front door and into the street. No matter. Just a warm-up. She spun, crouched, and ran back inside. This time, this time.
There.
The smell of citrus. No perfume. Lemony, hints of orange. Her feet drummed the floor faster than should’ve been possible. Her magic was back – until it wasn’t. The power and smell vanished. Nara stumbled, and slammed into the end of the hall, denting the drywall below the light switch.
Curled up, she panted on the ground. Muscles creaked as she pushed to her knees. Where’d she leave her flask? She wanted it with desperate need, not only for the evening but for the night, to send her into a sleep deep enough to avoid nightmares of labyrinths. Yet, she sensed it. The only way to avoid the nightmare would be to drink herself to death. She’d have the nightmare again, she knew.