Potent Distraction

  Somehow, Ty found herself standing at the bottom of a wooden stage that looked all too familiar. Groups of people she didn’t recognize congregated in the field in front of her. The stirring feeling was gone; she felt cold.

  Why am I here?

  Among the chatty crowds and socializing students, her eyes landed on their class bench, where they had sat a year ago. Where she had sat.

  Did I ever manage to fit in?

  There they were, without her. Selene and Kor sat in the middle of the bench this time, speaking to Elias and Darius, who were on opposite ends. Someone was leaning back against the bench, reading a book of some sort—it must have been Callie. Theo stood by the tree with Faris, too far for her to see if he was still upset from earlier. Alex and Cyril were nowhere to be found.

  Could she truly call herself one of them? They were so peaceful. So human.

  “Ty! Tyyyy!” a voice yelled.

  Alex was suddenly in front of her. “Every time!” she laughed. “I have you find you every time!”

  Oh, it’s alright, I want to be here, she didn’t say, even though a part of her wanted to. “I got caught up in some student council business,” she replied with a soft smile. “Don’t worry.”

  She should have predicted it—Alex pouted and opened her mouth in protest. “You don’t look so well. I can’t help but worry. Theo’s in a bit of a dour mood, too…”

  Stopping her before she could go on, Ty guiltily offered, “Yes, Alex, I know. It’s nothing, but if you want, we can discuss it later. Why don’t you join the class for now?”

  “I—”

  Ty shook her head, tried to smile again. “It’ll be okay. Please.”

  “No, it’s just, I have an uneasy feeling—”

  “Alex.”

  The duelist deflated, sighing slightly before giving in. “Okay. I’m trusting you, alright?”

  Despite knowing that her promise was empty, Ty nodded decisively.

  That seemed to comfort the duelist as she mirrored the nod and ran off, not a word more leaving her lips.

  “She’s very kind, isn’t she?”

  About to deflate as well, feeling far more fatigued than she had imagined herself being at the peak of noon, Ty glanced at Halle beside her, who looked heavenly in her flowy pale dress, the front of her hair held back by a gold ring that could have easily been a halo.

  “Yes, she is,” replied Ty faintly when Halle locked eyes with her.

  “She cares about you a lot.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you go with her?”

  Ty turned to the crowd of strangers in front of them. “It didn’t feel right.”

  “Does it feel right here?”

  She stiffened. “No,” she answered truthfully after a moment of contemplation, looking at her senior when there was no reply.

  The healer’s head was slightly cocked, her smile as radiant as ever. “I think that’s normal.”

  “Well…” Ty started, observing the other student council members around the staging area. Seth was inspecting various swords in a crate, Pia not too far away sipping on some water and surveying the crowd. “It’s just that…” Nate was here now, rifling through his bag for Chel, who was standing expectantly in front of him. She hadn’t even noticed—the tiny physician wasn’t wearing her glasses today. Her outfit also looked very much like the outfit she regularly wore when in the infirmary—Ty would know, she had seen her often when visiting Theo during his rounds. “Is there a reason why Chel doesn’t like me?”

  “Ha, ha.”

  Ty blinked, focusing back on Halle. Her hand was covering her mouth as she laughed. “What a silly question.”

  Unable to find any humor in the situation, Ty responded mildly, “I don’t think it is.”

  Halle let her hand drop from her face and placed it on Ty’s shoulder. “Of course she does. You’re why we’re here doing all of this, after all. Why the Headmistress has bound us, why we’ve gone through so many Circles, why we’re still trying after all this time, why we have to keep on going even though all our efforts may very well be worthless. To Chel, you are the reason for her suffering.”

  Ty stepped back, away from a smile that was no longer pure, away from her cold hand.

  But Halle only folded it over her other hand, flat against her chest as if preparing for prayer. “None of us like you, Ty. We’re not here to be your friend; we’re here to put an end to the suffering.”

  It’s not my fault, she could not say.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  It’s my fault…? The truth felt grayer each day.

  “Fifteen times, Ty,” smiled Halle with overwhelming pity in her weary, knowing eyes. “We gave you fifteen Circles. Decades. And now it’s our last chance. We might have had hope once, but now there’s only grim resignation. We’ve gone down so many paths, made so many decisions, trying to find the one route that might be our salvation, but it’s feeling more and more like there isn’t one at all.” She shook her head. “How is a child supposed to go up against a god? We should have just given up from the start; it would have saved us decades of pain and suffering.”

  There were no words that could come to her.

  Think, Ty, think. Why is this sensation so familiar?

  She shuddered, clenched her fists, and felt something creeping up on her, slithering its way through her skin, trying to find the truths within her, hiding in the vastness of her empty box—

  Halle beamed, noticing the tactician’s sudden discomfort. “Seth is right. You’re still green, huh? Took you a while to—”

  “Interrupting something?” Nate asked dully as he arrived with Pia, eyes shifting from Halle to Ty for half a second before he turned back to the fifth-year. He narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brow in disbelief. “You cursed her. Again. Could you not just ask?”

  “Pfft—”

  Nate turned sharply to Pia, shooting her a critical look.

  Pia’s half-impressed, half-surprised smile dropped so quickly it was gone by the time Nate could utter another word.

  “We need to get going. Now,” muttered the vexed professor, checking his timepiece before pulling out some sheets of paper and a small purple vial from his pocket, the latter of which he promptly gave to an unquestioning Ty.

  When he finished putting the small sheets of paper back into his pocket, Halle was already gone, and so were the other members of the student council—Ty had been so focused on what Nate had said and the vial that she had missed all of them taking their leave.

  What is happening?

  In her hand was the vial, and to her left was the reticent professor standing at attention.

  “Wh…” she began before her voice faltered again.

  He turned to her and nodded at the undrunk medicine in her hand. “Drink it,” he maintained before checking his timepiece again. “I’m serious.”

  As she obediently uncorked the potion and emptied its contents into her mouth, swallowing easily because it had no flavor, Ty noticed that her heart was beating about a mile an hour. Her vision was blurring, and her hearing could barely pick up the noise that the students were making. The world felt like it was teetering, going from one place to another. Reality to nightmare, blue skies to red. Sirens. Rumbling thunder. Rain. Running. Crashing. Lying on the ground with Theo.

  Oh Graces, I’m dying.

  A hand held onto her arm, and she could feel herself leaning against something warm. Like a nice, sturdy wall. Maybe it was the floor. Or the ground, the ever-unrelenting Earth Mother who had promised to support her.

  “Breathe,” the wall said.

  She closed her eyes and breathed in the icy air. Clockwork. One, two. In, out. One, two. In, out.

  “Five minutes. I just need five more minutes,” she could hear her warm wall saying.

  A voice answered her wall because she could not.

  “Take…room…fifth…shelf…”

  One, two. One, two.

  Don’t fall apart.

  Don’t…fall…apart?

  Her breathing steadied, and she began to recall where she was. What was real, like the warm hand that gripped her arm. The warm body that was holding her up. The sandy ground beneath her feet. Soundless. It was so quiet. Quiet enough that the pitter-patter of rain would have sounded like a festival.

  “Let me know when you can walk.”

  When her vision came back not a minute later, she was still in the courtyard. In front of the stage again, where she had spoken to Alex and Halle. The professor was still beside her.

  Her ears had not been lying to her, though—there was no sound other than Nate’s voice, and all the students were gone, the windows of all the surrounding buildings were black.

  Lockdown.

  Before even opening her mouth to speak, she used a hand to steady herself on Nate’s even smaller frame, the feeling coming back to her feet.

  “Good?” Nate stepped back as she found her footing.

  “Yes,” she spoke clearly, shivering from the mental disconnect her mind was trying to bridge. “How long did I…?”

  “Half an hour.” The casting professor no longer checked his timepiece, but there was still a deep frown on his face. His dark eyes were more animated than usual, darting around the front of the courtyard as if trying to calculate something inside his head.

  Politeness the farthest thing from her mind, she swallowed and winced. “What was that…I drank?” The potion had left no aftertaste, but her throat was oddly parched.

  “I made it. Magic-Amp.” Even his voice sounded more distant and eerie than usual, almost unsure.

  She stopped rifling through her small book bag and froze. “Magic-Amp? Why would I need one?” It wasn’t exactly known for being a forbidden form of magic enhancement—being far less potent than the illicit Araise—but it was still fairly dangerous and harmful to its imbiber.

  “Well, you’re going to need it,” Nate replied testily, his voice slightly shakier than usual.

  “Well, you sound scared,” she suddenly found herself with the courage to tease. In fact, she felt good. It wasn’t the same as having more anima than usual, which usually made her anxious and nauseous—this…her brain felt sharp. Her hands were shaking; her feet wanted to move. She felt like she could turn the entire world into flowers.

  “I am.”

  Ty blinked. The flowers in her imagination wilted as soon as they had bloomed as she turned her head to the straight-faced professor. “What?”

  Nate froze. Like a predator honed in on its prey, he focused on one thing and one thing alone—the faint outline of someone in the distance, on the edge of the courtyard. “This is only the second time this has happened.”

  Before Ty could even process his words, his expression at that very moment as he began pre-casting what sounded like the beginning of an Ex-Antigraf, turn to see the fear behind the stoicism, a gust enveloped them.

  The Headmistress appeared. In all her tenebrous, sunless glory, the messy wisps of her ashen hair flew in the wind to contrast the murderous darkness of her eyes, the lightlessness of her MATS-regulated outfit. “Again?” she screeched, reaching out to grab Nate, who backpedaled before she could even reach out and grasped Ty’s arm tightly, pulling her back. “You dare disobey me again?”

  Ty, wide-eyed and speechless, could feel the Headmistress’s words stifling her newfound passion and courage. The figure in front of them—in its rage, they were only a shadow of the person who had cried before her, the one who had recalled the people she loved, the one who lamented the past, the present, the future. Her thin, gray hair, no longer shining with its typical silvery gleam, hung lifelessly, her face, marked by countless lines and scars, seemed to have lost all its former charm, and her bloodshot, almost pitch-black irises, looked flat and devoid of any life. Old. Done with time, done with the order of the world like everyone else who had to live it over endlessly. The Headmistress was only a figure—no more, no less. The thing in front of them was no longer recognizable. No longer human.

  Preparing a dark orb in her other hand that grew to the size of her own head within the blink of an eye, eyes focused squarely on the casting professor, the Headmistress shrieked, “I told you to take her to the fifth floor!”

  Continuing to step back, as if that could save him from what would be an Academy-sized ball within the minute, Nate’s voice trembled like the hand that clung onto her coat. “And I said no.”

  Screaming, the Headmistress lunged forward.

  Day turned into night.

  Ex-Antigraf.

  Gone.