who have actual power, and here, those are the mages.
—Tali Finch, “Who Killed The World”
Violet wasn’t in control, and it hurt. Each of her muscles rebelled against every agonizing step. Her eyes betrayed her and refused all commands to focus. Her blood fled through a dozen gashes and wounds with a stubborn persistence to rival even Violet herself. She wasn’t angry because of the pain. It wasn’t the aching of her flesh or the throbbing in her skull that left her furious. It wasn’t even the rib, cracked and complaining at the slightest movement she made. Pain was just a sensation. Pain could be conquered. Pain could be ruled.
It was the convulsions. The way her arm would twitch without a command. The weakness which drove her body to the ground long before her mind gave in. She wasn’t in control. And it hurt.
She had to lean against the tired wall just to walk. It was old, and rotten, and it groaned under the slightest pressure. Each inch she traveled left evidence of her passage. Smears of red dripped down the plasterboard and mocked their previous owner. Violet was livid and determined. Her body could betray her, but she would rule it in the end. It could try to collapse, but it was hers and she wouldn’t allow it. She would walk. She would move. Because her ears, at least, obeyed her. And they could hear the rasping voice. The two words it was struggling to say. The command.
“H–help… me…” Derek said. The words scraped against her spine like the bow of a cello, and she was moved by the music they made. It was a feeling she recognized, but didn’t truly know. Like an early meeting with a cousin or an artificial flavor. But she had lost control, and that feeling promised to give it back. It was cool water on a fresh burn, calming the anger that was pooling around her like the blood she was losing. “Help…” the voice groaned. “P–please…” Every word steeled her resolve. The weakness in the voice didn’t panic her, but it did drive her to move faster. Her knees buckled, and black spots swam across her vision as she nearly fell again. Long nails cut into drywall and held Violet in place. She took a deep breath and another step forward.
With each step she took, her heart raced further ahead of her. The pleading voice struggled to draw her in, and adrenaline rushed through her as it did. Her breathing grew heavy and deep, but quickened at the same time. There was something else in the shelter. The beast that had broken her. The monster who took her control away. She could hear its steps in the creaking of strained floorboards. She didn’t care. The voice called her, and she was going to answer. It was growing closer, and the pain faded as it did. Her vision finally swam into focus as the throbbing in her head started to subside. And she could see it, even if it looked like the world through baroque glass. Steel beams had collapsed in front of her, and they obstructed her route to the desperate voice. She pressed both hands to the wall and tried to lower herself. She hadn’t the strength to maintain a steady pace, and as soon as her knees bent just a little too far, she collapsed the rest of the way. She crumpled to the ground in a broken pile of blood and hurt.
She still wasn’t in control.
She set her jaw and let a deep breath out, planted her palms on the wood, ignored the splinters that dug into already raw skin, and pushed herself to her hands and knees. She’d have to crawl to make it to Derek. The idea tasted like spoiled fruit, but the voice was calling. And so she crawled. The steel was decorated with rust, and it tore at her clothes and back as she tried to force herself through. More wounds. More blood.
She still wasn’t in control.
But she was moving, and the words changed.
“V–Violet. You–You’re alive,” Derek coughed. Violet kept crawling. There wasn’t much space under the rubble—she had to crawl over his arm to reach him. “Violet, that–that hurts. You need… you need to lift the beams, please,” he begged. And she stopped, just as her face made it within a few breaths of his. Her eyes dilated as she focused on the pain and hope in his eyes. Her heart was beating like a wounded deer’s, and her jaw shook with each breath.
He could die. The man who was supposed to keep her safe. He would die, without her help. He was so much stronger than she was. Gifted in ways she had never been. In ways everyone but her had been. If one of them was going to survive, reason demanded that it should have been him.
But now, he could die. Or, he could live.
Either way, Violet was in control.
A dim white glow haunted Violet. She wore it on her right ring finger like a scarlet letter. The empathy ring she’d been given on her fifth birthday had felt like a shackle ever since. It should have been lighter than air. The soft light of the crystal set into the silver band. Instead, it chained her to the filthy ground and painted smirks and pity on the faces around her. Both looks made her sick.
As she did every day, she pressed her hand against the glass mirror and waited for the ring to react. She was vaguely aware of her reflection as she did this, but she had little interest in the lies it wanted to tell her. She had written them, after all. Pretty, cheerful, and unbothered. The girl in the mirror was just the skin Violet wore. Nothing more.
Her ring resonated with the glass for a moment before the mirror rippled like the water of a wishing well. Lines crawled from the ring like tree branches, carving themselves into the smooth surface with the precision of a court calligrapher. In only a few seconds, the sum total of Violet’s soul was dissected into seven numbers, each sitting uselessly on a different branch of the tree and next to a different label. She clicked her tongue in familiar irritation at the large and ugly ‘Zero’ displayed prominently next to the word ‘Degree.’
Category - [White]
Calling -
Degree - {0}
Of all the information presented, these were the only items that mattered to her. In Violet’s case, they were all that mattered to anyone. Every attribute listed beneath them was directly proportionate to her degree, and that had barely wavered in the eleven years since she first put the ring on. People like her weren’t unheard of, but they were rare. Over the years, the size of the ring had adjusted more than the soul it measured. Her spirit steadfastly refused to grow. She had no defined calling, and therefore no clue how to pursue it. Which made her weak, and powerless. At least by any metric her idiot neighbors would acknowledge. Every day, she saw the same thing when she checked her progress. A dead end. Smirks and disgust. A promise of a future she had no power over. It made her no less furious each time, however old the wound. She hated her lack of control, and she would do anything to escape it. Every day, she tried something new to feed her calling, whatever it was. And every day that she failed, she was one step closer to entering the mist.
She removed her hand, fighting the brief temptation to shatter the glass mirror as she did. Still powerless. Still weak. Still feeble enough that she had to be careful what she said to even a child, five years her junior. She would never grow used to it. She would never accept her position as something lesser. Someone broken. She would grow, and she would make every smarmy resident in her pathetic little town regret every single sneer. There would come a time when taking her anger out on a public mirror would be an offense she couldn’t be punished for. There would come a time when not a single detestable witness would dare complain. But that time remained far off. As the offensive attributes and missing titles melted back into clear and untarnished glass, Violet left the public restroom and went looking for Alex.
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She coughed as she made it outside, the ambient mist burning her lungs as she tried to breathe. There wasn’t enough to be dangerous, even this close to the town border. There wasn’t even enough to see it in the air around her. But there was enough to make her day unpleasant. Most people wouldn’t be bothered at all, but Violet, of course, lacked the spiritual energy to fight off its effects. Combined with the recent death of a local Lancer, the city couldn’t spare her the crystals to provide supplemental energy. Not that anyone particularly cared to keep her protected, anyway. She was just going to be miserable until a new Lancer was assigned to the local team.
She stitched a smile to her face anyway. She couldn’t afford to be perceived as anything but pleasant. She could be weak, or she could be angry, but never both. Only the useful or powerful had the luxury of bad moods. Violet? Violet was nothing in the eyes of the town she grew up in. They would never want her ability, so she needed them to want her company. She would either be in everyone’s good graces, or she’d find herself in the mist. And so she smiled until her cheeks hurt.
“Violet, there you are!” Alex called a moment later. An aimless irritation ran down her back as she heard his voice. Not with Alex himself. But with her lack of control. With the need for a fake smile. It was exhausting. But she would spend the day smiling for him anyway. He was a part of her life, and spending time with him was as good a use of her time as any. At least until the train arrived with new stock for the library, which it hadn’t done for almost a year. That meant most of her time was spent playing “manic pixie dream girl” for the clueless boy.
“Hi Alex! I’ve been looking for you!” she beamed.
“Inside the bathroom at the park?” Alex joked.
“No, silly,” Violet giggled. “Don’t be crass! You said you would meet me here an hour ago! I’ve just been waiting a long time, and it’s hard to breathe out here!” Alex paused, confusion flooding his eyes as he tried to remember making such a promise. He was going to ask, but Violet pushed the conversation forward. “What was keeping you all this time, anyway?”
He rubbed the back of his neck nervously, and confusion was crowded out by guilt. “Sorry, I forgot when we were meeting. I was helping my mom move our old wagon. I guess we got caught up in conversation.” Violet visibly pouted and crossed her arms.
“Again? Alex, she relies on you way too much! She’s a red fourth degree. She doesn’t need your help moving one wagon,” she complained. Alex shrugged.
“I know, but it wasn’t any trouble, really. I was just helping,” he protested.
“But I was waiting for you! Besides, I know what she wanted to talk about. I can see it in your eyes,” Violet accused. A guilty look flashed through his eyes, confirming Violet’s suspicions. “I knew it. She was trying to send you away again, wasn’t she?”
Alex sighed. “She’s just worried, you know? We’re short on Lancers, which means we’re short on supplies. She’s afraid I’m going to be chosen to help them in the mist until we can get a new one assigned. She just wants me somewhere safe. She wants to protect me,” he explained.
“No, she wants to control you,” Violet countered. “I don’t like how she won’t let you choose anything for yourself. She didn’t want you going to school when you did, she didn’t want you dating me, and now she won’t even let you pick your own career. She always wants to decide what you’ll do for you. Sure, an admin position will keep you out of the mist, but what are the odds you’ll be picked for that anyway? She’s on the council, and you have too much potential to waste on something so dangerous. They’ll find someone disposable, but strong enough to have a chance. That’s not you. She probably just wants another excuse to separate us.”
“Oh, I think she’s given up on that,” Alex replied. “She knows I love you. I’m sure she is just scared.”
“I’m sure she is. She’s scared because you love me. She’s afraid you’ll choose to stay with me. And she should be, shouldn’t she? You’re not going to go off to some leadership academy and leave me behind, right?”
“Of course not! She can ask all she wants, but you and I are in it for the long haul,” Alex promised.
“Oh, I’m so glad to hear that!” Violet trilled, running to his side and wrapping her hands around his arm. She stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. “Come on, let’s get inside someplace. The mist is hurting my throat.”
“Really? I always forget how sensitive you are to it. Do you think you can tough it out for a couple of hours? I thought we could meet Chase and Shelly for lunch. It’s a nice day for a picnic,” Alex suggested. Violet once again had to bite her tongue and smile.
It really wasn’t safe for her to spend hours outdoors. But it was impossible to get anyone to take her seriously, and it was dangerous to call attention to her degree. She didn’t need to remind anyone of her shortcomings. She wanted to turn him down. She wanted to yell at him for asking. She could do neither. It wasn’t safe. She would have to steer him away from it with more subtlety. She planned to, but never got the chance.
“Alex, there you are!” a new voice called. Violet recognized it immediately and suppressed a scowl. She hated Chase. Just seeing him happily jog up the road to meet them irritated her. “Saying your final goodbyes while you still can?”
Violet’s irritation was immediately replaced with apprehension. “Whatever could you mean by that, Chase?” she asked, a look of almost stupid confusion painted over the grimace she wanted to wear.
“Did my mom get to you already? I told her, I’m not going anywhere,” he insisted.
“Nah,” Chase chuckled, “But I did see my dad after the last council meeting. They’re gonna call a town hall to pick a porter for the Lancers.”
“Already? But we’re only one lancer down, and it hasn’t even been that long. Doesn’t that seem a bit hasty?” Alex questioned.
Chase shook his head. “Nope, we lost another one today. The hedron have been dangerously active lately, apparently. And we’re running too low on supplies to suspend expeditions. Means we need a porter now. Dad says they already got one picked out,” Chase explained. Violet felt Alex tense at the news.
She laughed. “Oh, don’t let him get under your skin. You’re too useful to send out into the mist. They probably picked a higher category or degree with a calling we don’t need as much, right, Chase?” She asked this with an innocent smile, as if she didn’t realize she was perfectly describing Chase and his “Statistician” calling. Chase didn’t miss the implication, even if he didn’t realize it was intentional.
“Easy for you to say,” Chase scoffed, “It must be nice to feel secure in your uselessness. Funny, being perfectly expendable but too weak to contribute anything. Is it satisfying coasting on everyone else’s risk, huh?” Alex chuckled awkwardly at the blatant insult. Violet showed no sign of offense even as her blood boiled. Her useless boyfriend never defended her from such insults, and she couldn’t risk defending herself. Not openly, at least. That feeling of powerlessness made her want to vomit.
“Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything about you! I don’t want to fight. You know how sensitive Alex is about that,” Violet responded, a look of genuine concern masking the sick feeling she was fighting. “I figured since your dad is on the council, you’d be safe! He’ll prop you up like he does with your school work, right?” Again, the innocence in her voice disguised the insult she was implying about both boys.
Chase flinched anyway, and was about to respond when four loud chimes of the mountain bell rang through the air. He forced a smile with far less grace and practice than Violet. “Sounds like it’s time to find out,” he smirked. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll finally decide you’re good for something.”
He turned toward the community center where everyone would be gathering for the mandatory town hall. Alex looked down at her, offering an apologetic smile for his best friend’s “harmless” jabs at her. He, too, pulled away and caught up to his friend.
As the three of them answered the town’s summons together, Chase felt a chill run down his spine. He didn’t see the frozen look of hatred in the blue eyes behind him, and he wouldn’t have recognized its owner if he had. He’d never seen Violet without a smile, after all.