Deception

Aelia climbs gingerly over a hunk of hull, still steaming from the crash. The scattered pieces of the Seagull litter the ruined field of Providence, twisted and melted by the diseased-looking green fire.

Her hand, wreathed in a layer of conjured water, hisses and sputters at contact with a still-hot section of deck plate. She channels a stream of water, oddly suspended, and cools the glowing, ragged edge, before entering the largest chunk of what used to be the inside of a passenger boat.

Evan and Kari are already inside. An orb of soft blue-white light hangs in midair, and Evan’s eyes glow with the exact same color. The room is illuminated entirely by his willpower, it seems. What exactly are the extent of his powers, she wonders, taking a moment to admire the boy she’s only beginning to admit the depth of her affection for.

Kari interrupts Aelia’s thoughts. “Most of the tech is wrecked, unfortunately. Replicators and engines are shot. No food, guess you’ve got water covered, and nobody seems to be answering the radio.”

“Providence is a tech-free zone,” Aelia sighs. “They probably don’t even know we’re here. And they certainly wouldn’t assume we’re alive. Did you get your bearings before we fell?” She represses a curse at herself. A feeling of shame wells up inside her, shame at losing consciousness at a crucial moment.

Again.

Kari closes her eyes, rubs her eyelids. “The village is more or less… that way,” she points, “But I’m not sure how far. I could bound out that way, get help. Evan seems to handle those… things, pretty capably.”

“Thanks,” Evan mutters, pulling the top off a crate. Women’s clothes spill out, a delivery from Azurian merchants to Providence, looking rough and woolen in the pale glow from his eyes. “Wish I could find something other than underwear to wear. It’d really help me bask in the praise.” He’s still only got shorts and a silk poncho, a ludicrous outfit for anyone. Doubly so for a so-called warrior.

“Well if the replicators weren’t busted you could order something. Then again, if you’d been getting dressed properly, you would have been plastered by that meteor that wrecked your bunk. So, Aelia, what do you say? Feel like camping for a bit?”

Aelia and Evan look at each other, then out at the eerily quiet night. Gusts of sparkling dust swirl through a foggy, low-visibility darkness, unluckily one of the few nights of the year when none of Fallen’s several moons give off any light. An uncomfortable green hue penetrates the mist, cast by the few craters still burning.

Evan speaks first. “Sure. I’ll keep watch, I can see through this fog pretty well. Just hurry. I figure I melted those machines pretty easily, so they might come back with something tougher. Who knows?”

Kari nods, glances at Aelia for a nod, then picks up and straps on her sword. “Good point. See you both soon.” Her eyes light up, gray-white, as she leaves the shattered wreck, and she leaps away into the darkness with a barely audible huff of effort.

Evan looks after her, channeling-enhanced sight penetrating through the mist, but even his sight loses her quickly. Nasty weather. He turns to Aelia, sighing. “Guess we might as well settle in,” he mutters, letting the power slip away, his glowing blue eyes fading back to their natural dark brown. “Anything resembling a bed left here?”

Aelia stares at him, looking scandalized.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m tired. Just wanna sleep.”

“You said you’d keep watch. And you were sleeping an hour ago! I only just woke you up before those things showed up!”

Evan collapses into the singed remnants of a plush chair. “Yeah, well. I’ve got a theory about those things, and I don’t think they’ll bother us again tonight. And you know as well as I do, channeling is exhausting. Maybe I’ll get better at it with time, but for now? I’m bushed.”

“What’s your theory?”

“What’s that huge red planet called again? Only shows up in the evenings, I’ve noticed.”

“The Dusk Sister,” Aelia murmurs, following his line of thought. “You think they come from there?”

“Makes sense. They show up right after the planet appears, and they fall here like comets. From that direction. But the planet is out of sight, now, and I figure if they came more than once a night this whole part of the world would be trashed.”

They sit in silence for a moment. Aelia seems to consider, then channels briefly, conjuring something like a watery, transparent bean bag chair. With a few peculiar and complex motions of her fingers, the surface of the ball of water seems to tighten, becoming cloudy and rubbery-looking. When her eyes dim back to soft gray, the blob retains it’s unnatural shape.

Evan watches, impressed, as she flops down into the blob and it catches her, assuming the general shape of a reclined loveseat. “How did you do that?”

“I can manipulate water at the molecular level. Did you know there are several kinds of ice? Well, some of them, and many aren’t discovered on Earth yet, remain crystallized at room temperature or higher. This one is kind of a tough plastic. I can warp it into whatever, and release it, and it won’t just wash away. Neat, huh?”

“And here’s me, in a wrecked old thing. Smells like fire.”

“Yes, well, we’ve all got our gifts,” she playfully teases. “You can blow stuff up, and I can sit back in comfort and watch.”

“Yeah, I noticed you relaxing while we were fighting those stupid machines,” Evan laughs, and immediately realizes he’s said the wrong thing when Aelia’s face falls.

He stammers awkwardly. “Hey, no, I didn’t mean-“

“No, you’re right. Just like on that Seraph ship. Things got hectic and I fainted, it always happens. I’m weak that way.”

Evan has to strain to remember what she’s talking about, recalling the sight of Dackorec, the biggest, scariest Seraph Evan’s ever seen, holding Aelia’s unconscious body above the gaping hole in the deck of his ship. Seconds later, Evan had blasted Dackorec with an eruption of his power, freeing Aelia and ruining the Seraph’s thick armor in the process.

“What I remember about that boat is you kicking a*s,” Evan remarks. “We hit the deck and you were already tearing it up. I think you could have ripped that boat in half, if you’d wanted to.”

“Come on,” Aelia protests, looking at the ground. “I was fighting some soldiers, and then Dackorec showed up and I passed out.”

Evan is stunned. “You pulled your knives and charged him! I saw the whole thing!”

“What?”

“He showed up and I was all concerned, okay I was scared out of my mind, and then I saw you pull your knives out and you fought him, and it looked like you were winning. He must have caught you across the head just right, after I went belowdecks. Next time I saw you he had you knocked out.”

Aelia sits up straighter, looking confused. Not the normal confused, Evan senses, where a person can’t remember someone’s name. She’s the kind of confused where your memory and reality don’t sync up and you know it. The kind of confused that causes physical discomfort, so vast is the cognitive gap.

“You okay?”

“No!” Aelia chokes out, sounding on the verge of tears. “All I remember is seeing him, everything went black, then the next thing I remember is Kari sitting with me on an escape boat! I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

* * *

Tyrone, Sylvia, and Valentine jump slightly when the war room’s wallscreen blinks on, startled out of a quiet conversation by Sebastean’s frantic voice.

“Everyone down to the hangar, now! There’s been an attack! Seraph soldiers in the Retreat!”

Sebastean’s pale face fills the screen, very close to the camera on the hangar wallscreen, apparently. Sylvia nearly dry heaves at the changes to their friend’s face, those deep, darkness-filled cracks ripping away from his eyes, the wild tangle of his beautiful hair, the apparent loss of his platunium irises. What’s happened to the young man in the last hour?

Tyrone reaches the screen first, palming the icon to respond. “We’re on our way! Can you hold them off for a minute? Where’s Oden?”

Sebastean looks away, black eyes flickering, scowls, then looks back to the screen. “Just hurry.”

“We’ll be right there!” Valentine calls, already at the door and strapping a sword to her waist. “Hold on!”

* * *

Sebastean turns away from the wallscreen and tears it from it’s bracket with a wave of shadows. Hopefully, it looks to the people on the other end as though it’s been broken in a fight.

The fight, unfortunately, has been over for several minutes. Sebastean surveys the wrecked hangar, trying to decide if it’s convincing. He knows what a capable storyteller he is, and if all else fails he can simply make some minor adjustments to their minds, but if he can avoid the effort, all the better.

Like Aelia. He’d had to do some serious work on her, over the course of months. All the times she’d glimpsed his rapidly deteriorating features, before he could shift them back to normal… living with the girl had become a liability.

And nearly everyone in Halfmoon is, to some extent, touched by his hypnotic shadows. Sebastean smirks at the scattered bodies cast about the hangar, not least at the bright-haired, dull-eyed remains of his friend Oden. Morons, all of them.

Everyone knows the rules, he muses. Everyone knows only the hopeless castaways gain these special powers, naturally. There aren’t silly exceptions, no fantasy ideas of morality and love made real. Why should he be somehow different, just because his parents had been different races?

Maybe people just want to believe the best. A typical trait, in the majority of people- they see something mysterious and assume it’s just the way things work. Never for a moment wondering if perhaps some effort or manipulation could be at work.

Sebastean reaches into his shirt to finger the small, dull medallion hanging there on a sturdy cord. Anyone who asks is told it’s some kind of heirloom from his mother, the last relic of his peaceful life in the Greatwood, something he can’t bear to part with, for sentimental reasons.

It’s almost true. He’s not sure what would happen if he were to part with it, but it certainly has nothing to do with his mother. He’s not sure where it comes from, but he’d found it in a peculiar, twisted building, in a secluded part of the Greatwood, not far from his mother’s hovel.

And from the plain, unpolished disc, the shadows came.

* * *

Tyrone shows up first, swooping in on a wave of air, landing among the bodies with an expression of horror on his face. Sylvia and Valentine aren’t far behind, both already channeling, eyes lit up with green and lavender light. The glows fade as they take in the wrecked area of the hangar.

Three boats are ruined, one by some kind of internal explosion, the others by tremendous hull damage. Among the scrap lie a dozen Seraph soldiers in bloodstained uniforms and armor, broken spears, discarded knives… and Oden’s motionless body.

Sebastean huddles against the wall, arms around his drawn-in knees, appearing to sob. Sylvia runs to comfort him as the others examine the catastrophic aftermath.

“What happened, Sebastean? Are you all right?”

He looks up at them with his usual face, eyes like pools of ink with shining silver irises. His perfect, pale skin shows no sign of cracks or gouges, and his full lips are no longer flaky and chapped. Sylia frowns, knowing his skill at manipulating his own appearance.

“I’m okay,” he mutters, “The b******s got Oden. He took down half of them in one blast, then one got behind him with a knife. I was fighting three others, or I would have done something. I’m… I failed.” He buries his face again, openly weeping.

Valentine kneels beside him, a hand on his shoulder. He’s cold to the touch, as always. “You couldn’t have helped him. The two of you fought off twelve soldiers by yourselves, nobody blames you. How did they get in?”

“I have no idea,” Sebastean moans into his sleeves. “They were just… here. Oden came down to talk to me, he was upset about Kari, and all of a sudden we were surrounded. We’re going to have to leave Whitewall, immediately. They must know we’re here, now.”

Sylvia nods, looking around, counting undamaged boats. “We can probably take everyone out to sea, stay up high. Most of the boats are able to link together, we can make a sort of floating retreat. Maybe from there we can take back our village.”

“All right,” Tyrone snarls. “All right. It’s time to really take this fight to them, now. This has gone on long enough.”

Valentine nods solemnly. “We need to end this fight. For Oden.”

“For all of us,” Sebastean suggests, standing and wiping his face. “Everyone in Halfmoon. Everyone the Priesthood has hurt.”

“What do we do first?” Sylvia asks, enthusiastic, full of vengeance, and she smiles at his answer.

“We strike back.”

* * *

Sebastean stalks to his rooms, making sure to hold his head down, limp slightly. Plans are in motion and it won’t do to let anyone know how he’s really feeling.

Top of the world, in fact. The most powerful channelers on the planet and they’re mad as hell, and they’re all ready to follow his orders. The plot with Oden couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.

He turns his attention to a mirror, letting his concentration slip away. His irises vanish, consumed by blackness, and deep cracks like fissures split the skin near his eyes, and now at the corners of his lips.

“How long can I keep this up?” he wonders aloud, gingerly touching his deteriorating features. Perhaps he’ll have to find a way to explain his ruined face to his comrades, in some way that’ll make them feel sorry for him, rather than repulsed by his constant use of corrupting, sickening magics.

The medallion feels warm against his dry, peeling skin.

Not much longer, now.

Sebastean smiles at his ghoulish reflection. Everything is in place.