Falling Falling

  She was in the middle of a field again. Ancients surrounding her, their watchful gazes piercing straight through her, a black sword beside her.

  It was clear to her now as she watched the dream play out over and over again, that the black was the amalgamation of all the souls that she had taken. The sheer number of them had been so inordinate that the sword itself had become corrupted, transformed into pure darkness—the sins that she had been tasked to collect for the Earth Mother so that her children could be cleansed and born anew.

  In these dreams, the figure by the hill was no longer there. No matter how hard she screamed or wept, no one would appear.

  “Here, there’s still some on your hand.”

  The dream changed, and she was standing in a memory. Halle with her matronly smile, wiping her hands with a cold washcloth. Pia with her back to them, effortlessly casting water that flowed off the tips of her fingers and between the cracks in the ground. Seth with his head in a spellbook that Chel was using to instruct the tomecart beside her. Nate, far away from the group and on the lookout.

  “Okay, that’s it for now. Midterms are coming up, aren’t they? Where does the time go…”

  “Spent doing this,” chirped Seth, turning his head back with a radiant smile on his face. “What’s life without purpose, after all?”

  And then the dream fizzled into nothingness. Darkness. She was no longer standing alone in the center but lying down. Curled up in a ball, coat covering her body, hands covering her ears, focusing on breathing. Breathing. Despite everything, she was still breathing.

  * * *

  Ty opened her eyes slowly, blinking a few times before she pulled her hands off her head to drag the covers off. She glanced at her timepiece on her nightstand.

  Another week. Another day.

  Feeling the cold wood underneath her feet, she slowly shuffled to her chest at the other end of the room. As she usually did these days, instead of taking a sachet of her usual anima-suppressing powder, she took one of Nate’s and rested her back against the wall.

  She poured the medicine into a cup she had filled the night before and closed her eyes, feeling herself almost drifting back to sleep before she caught herself and brought the drink up to her lips.

  Tired. With everything that had happened the past month, the only thought that ran through her mind was how fatigued she was—being a tactician for the class, monitoring everyone’s performances in their classes, going to administration to adjust schedules, tuning rotations, allocating materials for equipment, attending her own classes, studying new spells, meeting with the Headmistress to receive new missions, making calculations and preparations to plan for the inevitable…

  No more.

  She set the empty cup down beside her and opened her eyes, looking out her small bedside window. It was gray outside, overcast with dark clouds. Had it not been shy of four hours since she had last been awake, she would have thought that it was still twilight.

  Groaning and feeling her joints pop, Ty got up from her spot and gathered her toiletries from her nightstand drawer and her outfit for the day: a cream blouse, dark tights, a knee-length black skirt, her tactician’s coat on top, and boots instead of flats in case it was going to rain.

  As she left her room with her belongings, she spoke a longer-than-necessary sealing spell to her door. Not that she was paranoid about people going through her belongings, but because she didn’t want surprise visitors letting themselves in to speak to her.

  Visitor, she corrected herself gloomily as she made her way to the girls’ bathroom, remembering all the nights she had ignored the same gentle knocks on her bedroom door. At first it was every night, then once every week, and then never again.

  The hallway was empty, which was only slightly surprising. General assemblies were being held early today for tacticians, casters, supports, and healers. The remaining classes would be dispersed throughout the week, but since a lot of her students were multi-disciplined, at least half her class was supposed to be attending their assemblies today.

  “Ty?”

  Completely absorbed in her own thoughts, Ty dropped her belongings onto the small table in front of her before turning her head to the individual at the end of the room. “Callie. You’re still here,” she breathed.

  Chuckling, her classmate returned to combing her wet hair. “I figured Alex might get ready beforehand, so I decided to be a bit late. Who knew you’d be late too, lead.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “I guess I overslept,” responded Ty quietly, looking at herself in the mirror. It was a wonder how much had changed in only the first month of school. Her skin was pale, her cheeks slightly sunken in. There were dark circles under her eyes, which were once bright brown but now dull like the earth. None of this was unexpected—she struggled to stay alert and awake on most days, and meals were usually skipped, unless she started feeling faint or Darius begged her during one of her workshop meeting days with him. She had even stopped sitting where she normally sat, stopped speaking unless spoken to.

  She turned to Callie.

  Her long, healthy hair. A smidgen lighter than medium brown. Pale skin that was pink with life. Like how Ty herself used to be. Callie was one of the taller girls in the class too, and her figure was slender, but not too thin. Not lean, like Alex or Kor. Not malnourished, like herself and Selene. Healthy and full. She was beautiful.

  And then there were the marks on her arms that she could see as clear as day, the ones she had seen during their field exam last year. The bumps of raised skin, scars that had been opened too many times to count.

  “Your scars,” she breathed.

  Callie stopped brushing her hair. She laughed softly again. “I never gave you a straight answer, did I?”

  Realizing how intrusive her comment was, Ty started to fill a container beside her with the water from the built-in reservoir in the wall in front of her while Callie answered.

  “To be honest, for most of my life I’ve wished to be dead instead.”

  She turned off the tap when the water reached the top and placed a towel in the basin. She began undressing.

  “Things are different now. I have friends…I have a reason to live, I have people who keep me company so I feel less alone. I pass my classes. I can do my job. People have a use for me. I have a reason to keep going other than to see the sun rise in the morning. To see the flowers bloom in the spring.”

  She swirled the cloth around in the water and wrung it out.

  “But some things remain the same. Some things always remain the same.”

  She dragged the cold towel onto her skin, washing away the impurities, the buildup of a night’s worth of nightmares.

  “I wake up in the same body. Every day, I look in the mirror and see the same person I have always hated, that I still hate. I see the same person who created these marks on my arms, these marks I can’t get rid of, no matter how much I wish I could have known back then. I have to accept her. I have to accept that the person I was before is still the person I am now, because if I don’t…then I’ll never learn to love myself.”

  She dipped the towel back into the water.

  “But what if I don’t want to accept her? What if I can’t learn to love myself? What if I hate her so much I can’t bear to look at her in the mirror? I can’t go back. I can’t change anything. I can only hide so much, these scars—if only concealing them meant they didn’t exist anymore. If only magic could heal them. If only I had been a better child, if only my parents wanted me. If only I hadn’t sought strangers to fill the void my family left in my heart. If only I hadn’t brought a blade to my skin the first time to see if I really had the courage to do it. If only I had stopped after the first time. If only I had stopped after the tenth, fiftieth, hundredth time.”

  She watched the towel float.

  “If only I had died. If only they loved me. If only I loved myself.”

  Plip, plip.

  “I love you, Callie.”

  “I know.”

  Plip, plip.

  Watching her own disfigured face in the basin, Ty slowly reached out to take her towel again. Quiet, she dragged it across her skin like she always had, except this time it felt different. It didn’t feel any cleaner, even when she had wiped down every inch of her body, even when she had put on new clothes. The feeling of disgust she felt toward herself at that moment did not go away.

  “Oh yes, before I go.” From the entranceway, Callie stopped but did not turn around. “I spoke to Darius for you. It’ll be ready at the workshop by the week-end.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Hope you have a good day today.”

  After she left, there were no more tears to fill the silence.

  * * *

  Rubbing her stinging, bloodshot eyes, Ty dropped off her belongings in her room and picked up her usual book bag, rummaging through it for her black journal when she realized she was already in the class’s common room.

  “Nope, not him.”

  The sudden sound of Alex’s voice startled Ty, and she jumped, nearly dropping the pen in her hand when the figure beside her spoke up too.

  “I mean, it was close,” said Faris with a shrug.

  “The Caster’s Assembly,” Ty tried to get out in the most neutral tone possible as she counted two out of her three casters by the door. Alex, in her normal Academy-issued white blouse and black pants, stood upright with a bright and mischievous look on her face, and Faris, who had on his caster’s uniform, leaned on the wall with a small book in his hand.

  “Just waiting on one more,” smiled Alex nicely, a hint of curiosity in her voice. “Is the Tactician’s Assembly today, too? I completely forgot.”

  “Why else would she be here?” Faris interjected with a scoff.

  The duelist looked flabbergasted, as if the answer was obvious. “Well, I mean, T—”

  “Yes. Same time as the Caster’s,” Ty answered quickly, her mind racing to catch up as she made her way to the kitchen. With her back to the dorm entrance, she covered her mouth with her free hand and breathed out.

  Returning to my room is risky. If I leave right now, I’ll be early and possibly subjected to the Headmistress. I was going to get something to drink. Can I just leave and wander around? Arrive early and awkwardly avoid eye contact? What if Luci also arrives early and sits next to me? Wait, the dining—

  “Sorry, sorry, I’m here.”

  Don’t turn around.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Faris stand up from his spot, palm his book, and then turn to Ty for a second before heading for the door. “Finally. Let’s go.”

  Unable to do anything but stare at the cabinets in vain, Ty could hear the door swing open. People shuffled outside, the door closed, and then there was nothing but her pounding heart in the silence again.

  One, two, three, four, five. One two, three.

  She dropped her hand from her face, took another deep breath, and turned toward the entrance to leave when her heart stopped.

  One caster had not left yet.

  “I know you’ve been avoiding me for the past month, but I hope you know that even though I can’t say I trust you completely right now, it doesn’t mean I love you any less.”

  The door closed.

  Plip, plip.