Mission Briefing

  Chicken scratch, Ty thought to herself as she looked at her physician’s paper. My writing looks like chicken scratch compared to this.

  “Did I…do a bad job?”

  She palmed her cheek and kept staring at the pristine letters, the perfect alignment of his words on the blank page. It was almost enough to ignore the fact that he had been sent to the infirmary for the umpteenth time that past Friday, the same day he had spent the night on the bench with her.

  “I tried to follow how you usually do yours, but I can do it again if you’d like.”

  “No, it’s perfect,” was all she could say before remembering what she was doing and reaching for her own notebook in her bag. “May I take this? I’d like to put it up.”

  Theo blushed slightly. “I-I mean…you could, I guess.”

  “You’re going to take over when I’m gone, anyway. They should get used to you,” the current class lead for Class 2-A responded quietly, closing the cream reports folder.

  “I know,” he grumbled after another long sigh. “I know…”

  Determined not to get weighed down by another thing out of her control, Ty took one last sip of her coffee before getting up from the table. “Okay, Headmistress is next. You can put give the reports back.”

  Watching Theo stand up and pick up the folder without protest, she nodded encouragingly to the handler while she put her dirty mug away.

  “Everything is in order. Thank you, tactician,” she heard the staff behind the table say to Theo as she headed toward the stairs.

  It is a title you both share.

  Tactician Theo.

  “Thanks,” he responded quickly over his back as he rushed over to Ty, who was now ascending the stairs to the tenth floor.

  On the middle landing, she took the pin that he held out to her and smiled. “Thank you, tactician.”

  “Honestly, whenever I hear ‘tactician,’ I can only think of you,” he commented weakly. “Crazy to think that I used to resent you for taking the position from me…but now it sounds too daunting. To fill your shoes, I mean.”

  Ty kept wearing the same smile, facing forward as they neared the next floor. “Physician Theo,” she murmured, letting a pinch of melancholy through. “That’s my Theo.”

  Yes, you won’t see him as a tactician as long as you’re alive.

  He’ll join you when he returns to me.

  I hope it’s a long wait, then.

  The tenth floor was about as busy as the reports floor—only a handful of students sat by the open study area by the stairs, and it looked like the Head Physician was walking out of the Headmistress’s office toward the special staff accommodations.

  She turned her head to the window overlooking the main courtyard, espying the sharp architecture of the Academy buildings and the infinitesimal students strolling around the school grounds past it. In their own worlds, the main characters of their own stories. From so far up, they were tinier than ants, just like how she looked, surely, if someone else was standing up on the tenth floor in her place.

  “Ready?” Theo offered gently when Ty stopped to steel herself at the Headmistress’s door.

  “Yeah.”

  Knock, knock.

  “Come in.”

  With a nervous Theo in tow, Ty pushed open the door. “It’s me,” she announced in a cold, matter-of-fact tone.

  At first, the Headmistress looked like she always did—simultaneously sad yet happy to see her daughter—but then her expression turned to one of genuine surprise.

  Pen falling from her hand, stopping what she had been doing and sitting up, letting her jaw drop slightly, the Headmistress paused a whole two seconds before replying. “Theo,” she breathed.

  Ty pressed onward obliviously, walking to the back of the room before the door could even close behind Theo, who stood awkwardly in front of the most powerful person at the Academy.

  “Headmistress,” he replied stiffly. The last time he was here, she had served him a lambasting and an even more humiliating dorm arrest.

  “I did not expect you,” she confessed candidly before promptly returning to her work.

  “I did not expect this myself,” he similarly admitted in a formal tone, still standing awkwardly.

  “Theo,” Ty called from inside the room.

  “Er, a-am I allowed to go in?”

  The Headmistress didn’t even look up as she dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

  On the other side of the room, behind the giant backdrop that was the Headmistress’s bookshelves, Ty began surveying the changes in the map of Chloris. Color-coded thumbtacks, miniature flags, and two thick black books pinned the chart down onto a large mahogany table.

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  Orange thumbtacks were scattered everywhere—MATS deployments. They always moved around here and there, but there were some that always remained stationary. Especially near the headquarters.

  Green, purple, and red thumbtacks were common—third, fourth, and fifth-years’ colors, respectively. Their placements and numbers always seemed to change.

  Black and blue, the colors for first and second-years, respectively, were sparse, mostly sitting unpinned and off to the side.

  Yellow thumbtacks—state settlements—were generally surrounded by either orange or red. Those only grew and never diminished ever since the announcements.

  As she moved onto the white ones—the ones placed for her specifically—Theo finally made his way over at a comically swift pace.

  “Are you sure I should be here?” he whispered under his breath, looking over his shoulder one more time before surveying the enormous map in front of them.

  “Look,” Ty responded without addressing his question, placing a hand on his arm and pointing to a white thumbtack with her other. “That one’s next.”

  “Anasot, Grace of the Dark, forward facet,” he whispered without a moment’s delay, eyes scanning the rest of the plan.

  “Yeah.”

  “What do the other pins mean?”

  She let go of him and walked over to the other end of the table, where a single black book sat. “Everyone else with a stake in this war. Everyone who is fighting for something they believe in.”

  “You can fight for something and not believe in it.”

  Ty nodded solemnly, an undeniable smile on her face as she started flipping through large sections of the book at a time. “I want to believe in everyone. I want to believe that this world is good. That people won’t fight, shed blood and kill each other, all for something they don’t believe in.”

  “And yet you continue.”

  “Darius told me that he has faith,” she whispered under her breath. “In the life that She has given us. This path. I may not believe in…Her methods, but I want to believe that it will help bring everyone closer to peace. I want to believe that this is the right thing to do. For my friends. For the Ancients. For the world.”

  Theo did not yield. “And if you’re wrong?”

  Her hands stopped, and the room fell silent. Not even the Headmistress’s scribbling could be heard.

  “Then I’ll have deserved to die.”

  An even longer silence followed, until the sound of scribbling returned, and Theo finally shifted his gaze over to the map again, where the next sanctuary was. “Anasot…this is near your home, isn’t it?”

  Her voice returned to its normal volume, and she continued to turn the pages of the book. “Yeah. We’ll be close.”

  “We?”

  A faraway voice answered, startling only the physician. “It’s been approved, by the way. Three weeks to dispatch Anasot, complete the class exam in Eslah, and then return to the Academy. Added bonus would be dispatching Eslah after the exam. The expedition will not be accompanied by a professor, but Professor Moriya and Professor Lundkis will audit your class exam once you reach Eslah’s domain. Those are your only orders. How you want to allocate the rest of your time is up to you.”

  Three weeks? mouthed Theo with a sidelong glance and furrowed brows.

  Ty’s voice was half-playful, half-wistful. “Practical exams are being pushed up…so we’re going to do the mission and exam together. I was thinking of maybe…spending a few days making some final, happy memories with everyone.”

  “O…oh…”

  “We’ll talk about it later, when the details are posted, okay?” she tried to say comfortingly without being patronizing.

  Theo could only nod, steadying his wavering gaze by scanning the rest of the map. “The sanctuaries…they’re so scattered. How do you get to them all?”

  “Tomecarts. If that’s not an option, I catch a carriage or use spells, though that tires me out over long distances. Animals aren’t an option.”

  “Ah. Horses must be freaked out by you.”

  Ty grinned, recalling the memory of trying to ride a horse for the first time and failing spectacularly. “Yeah. I tried once…with Seth and Pia around. It did not go well, though everyone got a good laugh out of it. Even Nate.”

  “With how averse animals are to magic, probably wasn’t a smart idea to begin with, huh?” chuckled Theo in a low voice.

  “I wanted to try, at least. It would have given me more time.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ty’s hand closed into a fist as she looked away. “The last two were easy to do because they were close to the school…the rest are so far away. And there’s always…so many people to go through. I want to…but I can’t stay.”

  Far be it from her not to trust him, she still couldn’t help but feel relieved when she saw him quietly nod out of the corner of her eye.

  But when he said nothing, she could feel the worries return, and with it the festering, intrusive thoughts.

  “Hey,” the tactician blurted, trying to fill the silence before the voices came back. “There’s…another reason why I came up here. I wanted to show you this.”

  As he gradually made his way over, she pushed her black book until it was in front of him. She pointed her finger at the last sentence on the page.

  “After the execution of the tactician, a request for a reset was initiated. Four of five convened. Reset of the Fifteenth Circle was successful,” the next tactician read aloud.

  “This is the Headmistress’s log of the last Circle,” the current tactician whispered as she flipped backwards, section by section of text until she arrived at a dog-eared page. She pointed to another passage.

  “Tyche practiced with Theodore in the courtyard today, before sunrise. Tyche won as expected, but Theodore came close. They seemed to be having fun, going over to the workshop next, where Darius and Selene were for morning blessing. They stayed inside for a few hours before leaving for the village, when the sun began to rise. Calliope was going to meet up with them for breakfast at the restaurant where she worked part-time.”

  Again, she flipped a few pages before pointing at a passage.

  “Nathaniel knocked on my door in the morning. He told me that Tyche was planning to go home for the winter break, and that it was my last chance to show her the paper if I wanted her to stay. I told him no. He looked at me stonily, shook his head, and then turned away. That he should turn away from me…it made me reconsider.”

  Flip, flip.

  “Today, Tyche and Theodore went into the forest together. Nathaniel predicted it with almost absolute certainty after speaking with her in the courtyard. This meant that another repeat of the Thirteenth was avoided. There was no movement from the children until nighttime. I had the student council patrol the area to make sure it was undisturbed. Slightly past midnight, a Starshower dome was scattered across the field near the middle of the forest, where they would often go, close to where she would always save Faris.”

  Flip, flip.

  “Today, Tyche cast her first Starshower. I forgot how beautiful it looked. Spending days and nights making that spell in the deeper recesses of MATS with Ark…it was worth it.”

  She arrived at the beginning.

  “Today is the first day of the Fifteenth Circle. Tyche is in her class common room once again. She left her dorm room earlier than scheduled and headed to the eastern practice yard. She met everyone for the first time again. Nathaniel was on standby and cast the Ex-Annihilate I gave him at the instructed time. As expected, Theo suppressed it, as he usually did, and stayed behind after class ended to confront Tyche. They talked and did not fight. Although Theodore provoked her, she revealed her circumstances without conflict. After the sun set, they returned to the dorms together. Ty looked worried, but happy. Nathaniel returned to his regular duties earlier than scheduled.”

  Ty closed the book.

  “This is us,” spoke Theo steadily as he met her eyes.

  “We were happy back then, weren’t we?” she whispered back with a smile, this time refusing to let her tears taint the lost memories they had all forfeited to time.

  The smile that Theo returned was full of sadness, yet his words were full of hope. “Yeah. We were happy.”