The next morning, with Ra teasing the horizon and Solaris right behind it, Rey and I stepped out of the transport in front of the Council building. The crowd of Believers outside the gate was twice as big today, with signs twice as large. When we approached, a low buzz hummed through them.
“Let the gods decide!” a man yelled, accompanied by shouts of agreement from his companions.
Rey grabbed my arm and pulled me through the crowd to the gate. Some of the Believers refused to make way. A woman shoved me out of Rey’s grasp. Numerous hands and shoulders pushed me back, until Rey yanked me in the right direction.
Rey placed his hand to a metal sensor plate to the side of the latch. The panel beeped, and the word AUTHORIZED scrolled horizontally across its top. The gate popped open a foot. Rey and I squeezed through, and it whirred shut behind us.
Despite my mother’s numerous childhood warnings that I shouldn’t look directly at the suns, I peeked upward for a partial second.
I’d always felt a connection with Ra, even though I knew it was just a sun—no different from the sun our ancestors had left on Earth-One. Still, it was a little romantic to think of Ra and Solaris as gods watching over us. On the other hand, if they were up there, they’d proven themselves pretty useless over the past nine months.
“You coming?” asked Rey from the door of the building.
“Right behind you.” With my chin held high, I strode through the front door behind Rey, feigning the same confidence he exuded. I wouldn’t want to keep the murderous Mages waiting.
Unlike the day before, the various groups of practitioners wouldn’t all be starting the day in the same room. “See you later.” Rey waved, leapt over the metal railing of the staircase, and took the steps to the second floor two at a time.
“Yeah, later.”
This morning’s message on my comm unit instructed me to meet the rest of my task force in the basement training room. I took the stairs downward at about half the pace Rey had taken them in the opposite direction.
The steps ended in a brightly lit room with a thick mat covering most of the floor. The smell of sweat and leather hit my nostrils. It almost drowned out the scent of cleaning supplies that clung to every surface inside this pristine building.
Bladed weapons of all shapes and sizes lined the far wall. The sight of them slowed my footfalls. Leather armor and padding hung on hooks along the wall to my right. On my left, foam weapons and other nonlethal devices lay piled against the wall.
A circle was drawn on the mat toward the center of the room. I sank to the floor at the edge of the circle and waited for the others. According to my comm, I was a few minutes early. I tapped my fingertips against my knee.
My breath caught at the sight of Loken at the bottom of the steps. I ignored the feeling.
“Are you just going to stand there?”
His eyes darted around the otherwise empty room, as if searching for an escape route. “No one else is here?”
I made a show of scanning the room, first examining the blades, then the padding, then the pile of foam weapons. “Hmm. Doesn’t look like it.”
He turned over his shoulder to look at the staircase. It was still empty.
“I don’t bite,” I said. “Mostly.”
Loken sat on the other side of the circle, as far away as possible. I chewed the inside of my cheek to stop myself from telling him what a coward he was. He’d take on the world but wouldn’t sit within six feet of me.
“So,” I said, “how are you doing with the whole end-of-the-world thing?” I tried to ease the tension a bit with a smile, but his gaze remained fixed on something over my head.
“We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, Ashara.”
“And what if I want to?”
He didn’t answer, so I gave up on the conversation. I didn’t want to let him off the hook too easily though, so I continued to stare at him, letting my gaze drift downward to examine his posture; stiff shoulders, hands clasped together in his lap. I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling.
I liked that I made him so uncomfortable. In these times, I’d take my little joys where I found them.
“So,” I tried again, “what have you been up to these past nine months?”
He stared at me for a moment before answering, perhaps trying to decide whether to answer at all. “Recruiting mostly. A lot of it overseas.”
It was some consolation that I’d been dumped for a cause as important as this one. But I didn’t see why recruiting required him to be single. I waited for him to explain, but he didn’t. And since I didn’t want to look like I cared, I opted not to ask.
A silver-and-gold chain peeked out from the collar of his shirt. Although I couldn’t see the chain’s details from where I sat, I knew a thin gold wire snaked around the mostly-silver chain in an intricate pattern. When I’d bought it for him, I knew he’d love something so beautiful that was made of metal.
“You still wear it?” I asked, touching my collarbone to indicate the necklace.
His face stayed blank. “It never hurts to keep extra bits of metal around.”
The smile I’d been fighting a moment ago turned to a scowl. “Nice, Loken.” Sarcasm dripped from my voice. “Do you think you could maybe try to be polite?”
His eyes finally dropped down to meet mine. “The world is ending in nine days. It’s not my job to be polite. It’s my job to keep you alive.”
I mumbled something Jin wouldn’t appreciate.
Krin stormed down the stairs and skidded to a halt several steps inside the training room. “Oh good.” She doubled over, panting. “I thought I was late.”
“No. Loken and I were just having a lovely conversation about how much of a jerk he is.”
She looked back and forth between the two of us, shrugged, and plopped down on the floor next to me. “It’s none of my business if you two want to ignore the serious sexual tension in the room. But since we have work to do, I suggest you just take it to the bedroom and get it out of your systems.”
I tried to think of a witty response, but Krin was talking again before I came up with something brilliant. She scooted around the circle to sit next to Loken. “So, what are we doing today?”
“Offense,” Loken said.
Krin punched him in the shoulder. He looked down at the spot she’d hit like he didn’t quite believe it.
“So we’re going to learn how to kill Mages today?” She giggled and punched him in the shoulder again.
“Yes.” He glanced again down at his arm. Annoyance plastered his face.
“And what am I going to do while they fling ether at each other all morning?” I asked. “Since all I’ve done so far is run and duck.”
“Offense,” he said again, standing as the remainder of the group entered the room together. “But first a field trip.”
Loken moved toward the door and gestured for the team to follow. He led us back up the staircase and down the main hallway. I inhaled a deep breath of air after emerging from the sweat stench of the training room.
Like yesterday, that not-at-all-reassuring female voice droned its pleasantries through unseen speakers in the hallway: “Remain calm. Please stay calm. Remain calm.” Wonderful. Because with the world ending, and me about to hunt killer-Mages after only a day of training, it was just so realistic for me to stay calm. I wished there was a way to shut that woman up.
We hooked a right near the back door, entering a hallway I had yet to explore. A bright-silver metal door at the end of the hall drew my attention as I turned the corner behind the rest of the team. Every other interior door I’d seen on this floor was white. This one contrasted against the stark-white walls that covered the inside of the building. Its smooth, fingerprint-free surface reflected the lights shining overhead.
A metal plate occupied the wall to the right of the door. Loken pressed his hand to it. The door slid away and disappeared into the left side of the doorway. Loken stepped through and down the stairs on the other side. His footsteps clanged against the metal steps as he descended.
Unlike in the overly bright training room on the other side of the building, dim lights filled this room with shadows. The team clustered at the bottom of the steps, blocking my view. As they shuffled slowly out of the way, I caught sight of what had stopped everyone else in their tracks.
A glass wall separated us from what looked like a large cell. The only entry point into the cell was another thick metal door with a security pad next to it. Behind the glass, three people stood as far away from one another as they could possibly get within the enclosed space: a hugely tall man, a woman with blond hair that hung past her waist, and a smaller man. All three were nude.
They looked human but . . . wrong somehow. Despite their lack of clothing, they made no effort to cover themselves. The larger man’s muscles bulged in odd places. While the woman wasn’t as massive, her body was more toned than any woman I’d ever met, more so than even Elder Ethereal.
From across the room, their black eyes cut through the darkness. A chill raced up and down my back like icy fingertips.
I stared at the smaller man. His eyes bore through me. I wondered if he saw me at all, or if he just happened to be looking where I was standing. At first glance, I’d thought him to be relatively slight. Although the other man dwarfed him, his thin arms were as tight as a predator’s, coiled to strike. The sharp planes of his face only emphasized the eerie black of his eyes, sunken into their sockets.
Loken’s voice startled me from the man’s hypnotic gaze. “In case you haven’t guessed it, these three are—”
“Mages,” I whispered.
“Yes. Two Breathers and an Ethereal.”
Mauryn, Jin, Elis, and Krin had the good sense to cluster against the wall opposite the glass cell, as far away from the Mages as they could get without bolting back up the stairs. For some reason I couldn’t explain, I was standing in the middle of the room. I must have wandered here when I’d locked gazes with the smaller male.
Gently, Loken peeled my fingers from his arm, where I’d clutched him without meaning to. A red outline on his skin remained where my fingers had pressed. He patted my hand and placed it back by my side.
Loken strode toward the glass wall and pointed at the Mages one by one. First the smaller male, then the female, then the largest one. “This is what happens as Mages age. Immediately after the transition from human practitioner to Mage, immediately after their energy consumes them to initiate that transition, they’re very much like us. Except that they no longer feel obliged to wear clothing.”
Krin giggled. Her hand flew to her mouth to cover it.
“Most of the energy a Mage takes in, he transforms into another form of energy and outputs. The energy he doesn’t expel gets incorporated into his mass. They grow taller.” He pointed at the largest Mage, who was taller than any one of us by at least a foot. “And bigger, less human.”
As Loken paced in front of the glass wall, the largest Mage turned to follow Loken’s path. When presented with his profile, I saw the fist-sized bulge toward the left side of his forehead. The Mage’s eyes momentarily fell on me, and I flinched. Krin shuffled closer to me. I glanced her way to find her trembling and staring at me wide-eyed.
I felt exactly the way Krin looked—terrified, ready to bolt up the stairs and all the way back home. But I also itched to learn everything I could about these creatures. If I could help exterminate them, I would do just that. My hands curled into fists.
Krin took another step closer to me.
“I thought you guys have been training already,” I hissed at her. “Why is everyone acting like they’ve never seen a Mage before?”
“We’ve been training,” she whispered, “but not to fight Mages. Mostly drills to help us with our control and focus. Basic Ethereal stuff, like shields and energy balls. Then defensive skills. Anything to get us ready for some kind of natural disasters or manmade weapon.” The pitch of her voice increased steadily. “And Mauryn was able to project himself across a room once. But never—”
“How’d he do that?”
“Who?” Her fingers dug into my arm until I had to pry them loose.
“Mauryn? Which one is he again?”
“The guy with the short dark hair. Pale skin. Likes to ramble on about all the stuff he knows, even though I rarely know what he’s talking about.”
“Right. How’d he project himself across a room?”
“Something about separating your body into energy and moving it through the ether in the air. But that’s not the point. We were never trained to fight Mages! We’re supposed to be preventing wars and dismantling science experiments.”
“At the end of the day,” Loken continued, “a Mage will always be attracted to the most powerful thing in the area. So why do you care how old a Mage is when you fight him?” Loken asked the group. His gaze swept the room and landed on Jin.
“Young Mages are less predictable,” said Jin. “Out of control. Many of them die before they can mature because they draw energy without moderation. Often they implode from the overload. Older Mages have survived as long as they have because they’ve adapted. They draw energy only in selective situations—when they need it. And only from specific, powerful targets.”
“What does that mean for us?” Loken asked him.
“A young Mage is more likely to kill you just for being in his vicinity. Expect an attack. With an older Mage, you may be able to avoid confrontation by staying out of his way. One way to do that is by spreading out, dispersing the energy of the people around you. But that can backfire if the Mage ends up attacking you when you’re on your own.”
Loken turned to me. “What do you do when you see an old Mage?” He pointed again to the monstrously large one behind the glass.
Before I could answer, clanging sounded from the stairway. We all turned as Elder Ethereal entered the room. Today, she wore a Bender-style weapons belt around her waist. Her blond braid trailed behind her.
“If we’re done with the chitchat, perhaps we can move on to some offense,” she said.