Serit Kai Ul-Daeris watched the other children play energy tag, frustrated that they wouldn’t let her join in. Those designated as “it” would take turns tossing mostly harmless orbs of light or dark or chaos at their fellow participants, who tried to avoid such attacks by running, or ducking behind one of the many trees ringing the hillside, or unfurling their prepubescent wings for a short burst of flight.
Of these things, Serit Kai could do none. So she watched, and waited.
But she did not pray.
She’d long ago given up hope that she’d be allowed to join her classmates during recess. Or what she called unscripted time. The teachers ensured everyone played nice while under their supervision, but only kept a close enough eye while the students were outside to avoid broken bones and bloody noses.
Instead of sulking on the sidelines for her turn at “fun,” Serit Kai stomped away through the small patch of forest bordering the school grounds. Within two marks, she’d found and pushed through the loose board on the boundary fence. Another three saw her to the forest’s end. It came abruptly, and with a harsh blast of wind, opening up to a vista that more than made up for her peers’ inability to include a freak like her.
Heart racing, she took tiny steps until her toes were hanging over the cliff’s edge.
And stared straight down at a drop of several thousand paces.
They said a great city had once rested on this mountain. Mecrithan, or something like that. Not that she knew what a city was, exactly. Sure, the teachers showed them in projections during history lessons, but no one actually lived in one anymore. They were a relic of the ancient age, when limited means of transportation forced everyone to dwell in cramped proximity to each other. Sitting in a classroom with eleven other students was bad enough. She couldn’t imagine sharing a few square leagues with millions.
Though the valley below her didn’t contain a city, it did, however, hold one of the largest gatherings of activity this world had seen in a few millenia. Serit Kai Ul-Daeris came here almost every day to gaze upon it. Forgetting, for the moment, all the morons who surrounded her and dwelling instead upon the place where everyone actually knew what the abyss was going on.
A place where she might not have to be so alone.
“Do you come here often?”
Serit Kai tensed, yet was proud of herself for not squealing or jumping in fright, like one of her pathetic classmates surely would. She scanned the cliffside in search of the voice. It didn’t take her long to find a figure dressed in strange, dark robes standing as close to the edge as she, not twenty paces away. Judging by stature and vocal inflection, Serit Kai presumed the speaker to be a girl about her own age.
“Perhaps I do,” she said, crossing her arms. “Perhaps I don’t. I see no reason to tell you one way or the other.”
“Smart girl,” the other said, speaking as slowly as her grandmother. “Never give up information freely. Always make sure your audience earns it.”
“I don’t recall asking for your advice. Or your approval.”
The other girl turned towards her. Though her face was hidden within a shadowed hood, it still gave off the distinct impression of a smile. “Feisty, this one is.”
Serit Kai felt the spark of rage light within her. But she’d had so much practice subduing it—and other emotions—that she made sure not to let even a hint of it show on her face. Anger was only useful, after all, if she could direct it, instead of letting it direct her.
“You’re strange,” she said, testing a low-level insult to see if it had any effect. “I bet your own mother gave up on you years ago.”
“How perceptive! Though you are correct in your hasty surmisal, you’d have to go back farther than mere years to find the point in time when my mother realized I was not the tame creature she wished me to be. Quite a bit farther indeed.”
“Why haven’t I seen you around school before? Why do you talk so funny? Just who the abyss are you?”
“You’ll figure it out,” the other girl said. “Or you won’t. In which case I’ll be most disappointed.”
“That’ll make two of us, then.”
“Wishing to watch the launch alone, were you? I don’t blame you. So many whoops and hollers. So much unbridled emotion. So many people wishing to capture your every word and gesture in hopes of garnering vicarious attention. Much better to view the event from afar. A distant yet unobscured cliff, for example.”
Serit Kai suppressed the growl that nearly burst forth from her throat. She was used to the petty and pedantic social stigma from her supposed peers. This was something different. This other girl knew too much about her. About the real her. The one she hid from the others. And she was far too casual in her surety for it to be merely good guessing.
Who are you?
The question remained in her mind, this time, for she remembered the response to when she’d asked it out loud.
She had to figure it out.
But I don’t know enough about her, yet. Time to stop acting like such a child and decipher who it is I’m dealing with.
Serit Kai knew the other girl was no student. She was connected with the activity below, somehow—maybe even central to it—yet she did not want the attention it naturally drew. She also, apparently, had a keen insight into the mind, able to glean indisputable truths about people she barely knew.
Taking this evidence, and what she could tell about the girl’s physical characteristics, only a single possible candidate sprang forth in her mind.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s impossible. You can’t be her. You can’t!”
“Why ever not?”
Serit Kai shivered inside her coat. She had no use for the gods; not the new, not the old, and certainly not the ancient. There was only one person, in her mind, who was worthy of such devotion as the deities inspired.
“Because,” she answered at last, her voice like a mouse, “Vashodia Everchild has no reason to visit me.”
The other girl let down her hood, putting all doubt to rest.
Serit Kai felt her throat go dry. It wasn’t every day she got to meet her idol.
“I’m afraid,” Vashodia began, “that you are quite mistaken. I have a very good reason to visit you, Serit Kai Ul-Daeris. And not just because you are a blood descendent of some dear old friends of mine.”
“I am?”
“Never mind that. Tell me why you’re an outcast.”
The question stunned her with its abruptness and total lack of etiquette. “It’s because I’m a freak,” she answered instinctively. “My parents decided it would be a good idea for their offspring to sport all three types of energy within their blood. Abyss cares if that means none of them will ever fully manifest.”
“Won’t they?”
Serit Kai couldn’t hold back the emotion any longer. “Of course not! Everyone knows that! I have all the power in the universe at my fingertips, only I’ve had my hands cut off at the wrist. It doesn’t matter that I can feel them all when I’m about as close to harnessing them as an abyss-taken void.”
Vashodia smiled warmly. “You certainly are a rarity, child. Even in this supposedly enlightened age. It is a problem I have too long neglected in lieu of more pressing matters.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . . utopia.”
“Utopia? What’s that?”
“It is a word whose origins lie in a past far older than you could possibly imagine. It is the dream towards which people will never cease to strive. It is a world transcended into perfection.” The other girl giggled. “It is impossible.”
“If it’s so impossible, then what’s the point of even trying?”
“Better to keep society walking the path that leads towards it, rather than let them race down the one leading away. Such an endeavor is a worthy use of one’s time, I think.”
“What does any of this have to do with me?”
Vashodia gestured to the valley below. Serit Kai looked that way and watched as the latest greatship kicked off its thrusters in a burst of fire and smoke, and began its long ascent towards the void.
“Our efforts to reach the stars have been ongoing for half a thousand years now. I can rest assured in the fact that, no matter what happens to this world, all of sentient life will live on. Somewhere. So I’ve decided to turn my attention back to the kind of studies that used to interest me.”
“What kind of studies?”
“The kind dealing with things that everyone considers impossible. Mysteries that few even recognize as such, much less expend any effort towards resolving.”
Vashodia raised an eyebrow. Serit Kai felt energy cascading through her, dark in nature, matching the Everchild’s famed source of power. It latched on to something inside her. Something she’d always felt, yet had never been able to grasp. A strange, familiar beast that sported three heads, all of them now fighting to be the first free from her fingertips. Though modern education gave it a different title, it was the old name that sprang into her mind.
Magic.
“You may not ever sprout wings,” Vashodia said. “But in no time at all, I can teach you how to fly.”
The End