Eva hugged me when we saw each other again at school, and my hands rose to rest at the small of her back. My heart thudded in my chest, and heat flushed my cheeks. The same reaction her closeness got out of me every time.

Before my stupid developing crush could get the better of me, I stepped back and smiled. “Hey Eva. You have AP calculus first, right?”

“Yup!” she grinned, taking a half step back into my personal space. My cheeks flushed just a little more.

“How can you even stand that shit?” I asked, genuinely curious. Eva had always had a screw loose, but in my honest opinion, the sheer glee with which she launched into the subject sometimes… I swear.

“I just like it,” she shrugged sheepishly. “It’s weird, I know. Oh my god, Eva the math nerd. But like… I just like how it all fits together and stuff. It’s like I’m making something, but it’s just numbers.”

“You should just take shop then,” I laughed. “Then you’ll learn math and making stuff.”

“I’m too small and weak for shop,” she giggled, pointing out her soft, scrawny little arms.

I put my arm around her shoulders and steered her “That’s what power tools are for.”

She was quiet for several moments, leaning into me as we approached the school door. I could hear the gears in her head turning, then suddenly she was looking at me with a singular intensity. “Do you think I could? Take shop, I mean. I’m scared of all the boys and stuff, but I really want to make things. I already do it at home, but my tools are limited.”

“Oh, that’s right!” It was true. With her mom being the eccentric that she was, she was all about being handy around the house. Eva had picked up a lot from her mom, but it very rarely came up. Sometimes she’d fix a broken pencil case zipper or know just how to kick an old door to get it to open.

I smiled. “You should absolutely take shop. If anyone gives you shit, remember their name and tell me, okay?”

She was giving me a happy, grateful look when a distant explosion rocked the city. Another one quickly followed, somewhere further away, and with a growing sense of worry, I realised they weren’t mundane detonations.

The teachers who’d been standing watch at the gate reacted quickly, calling out over the rising panic of the school kids. “Everyone get inside the school, now! Walk, don’t run!”

“Shit,” I swore under my breath, as one of the teachers gently pushed Eva and me towards the entrance. “Shit, how the hell am I going to escape and help?”

“Magic?” Eva asked, clearly not understanding the problem.

I shook my head. “They’ll call a roll, Eva. If I'm missing, there will be questions.”

“Maybe I can cause a distraction, or like, answer for your name?” she suggested hopefully as a further two explosions went off in the direction of the city center. Each time it happened, a pulse of magical energy radiated out from the blast, but the magic was wrong somehow. It felt almost like…

Eva grabbed my hand as we moved through the hallway, desperate not to get separated in the crowd. No, I wasn’t going anywhere. I’d stay and protect her. Protect the school.

“I’m staying,” I whispered into her ear.

“If you’re sure,” she murmured back, anxiety swimming in her blue eyes.

****

Dremea’s message was short and clipped, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. She’d asked me to come to an old cemetery where a derelict chapel was hidden in the back at the corner. It was one of those really ancient places from the early days of colonisation, that had been rebuilt in rough stone and then promptly forgotten as the city rose around it.

As I approached, I saw Stoneskin standing outside, hand over his face. He saw me as I approached and gave a grim nod, but he didn’t say anything. I was anxious before, but it stepped up a notch when he motioned me inside but didn’t follow.

I smelled it before I saw it, and I desperately wished that had been the extent of it. Dremea stood to the side, leaning against a wall and hugging herself, while Tarmack knelt next to the small altar.

At the base of the altar was Spirit Boy, naked and with his throat, wrists, and thighs slashed to ribbons. His last frozen expression was one of horror and desperate fear, although Tarmack had closed his eyes already.

The world spun and tilted on its axis, leaving me collapsed on my knees. They fucking killed him. His blood was everywhere, all over the altar, painted in strange awful patterns on the walls. Even on the ceiling.

I gagged and turned away, trying to stop the mental image of my comrade from forming, but it was too late. I could see it in my mind’s eye.

“What the fuck?” I asked, my voice soft and low.

“I got a garbled voicemail from him about six hours ago, during the explosions downtown, but it just sounded like a pocket dial,” Dremea told me quietly. “Tarmack and I were together for the clean up, and the scene is pretty much the same at every site. Blood painted in runes and shit, plus a dead person. They all have that spike in their chest, too.”

What spike? I looked up and stared at him, actually looking this time. He did indeed have a spike in his chest, made of a red metal that practically radiated magic. Crawling forward, I crossed the four or so meters to his body and reached out with a tentative finger.

“W-what?” I gasped, drawing away before I made contact. “It’s… oh god, it’s a piece of a spirit’s soul.”

Dremea stepped forward. “It is?”

“Yeah, see how the magic sort of pulses gently, like a heartbeat?” I said, pulling the spike out of his chest with my gauntleted fingers. It still held the brutalised and butchered hunk of soul, from what, I couldn’t tell.

She nodded, and I held the spike up for a better look. Then I frowned down at the body, and with a flash of insight, realised what had happened. “Holy shit.”

“What is it?” she asked, as Tarmack stepped up to stare at the spike along with us. I could hear Stoneskin come in behind, too.

“Were the spikes in the other victims red?” I asked, glancing between my teammates.

Dremea and Tarmack both shook their heads.

“The soul is still in this one, while the others were used up,” I explained. “I had a conversation with Artemis about making mages out of people already alive. She said that you need to give the human a piece of a spirit’s soul. Normally, I’d assume that happens when the spirit and human fuck, but here…”

“They were making mages and then killing them?” Tarmack rumbled, raising an eyebrow. “Why?”

I gestured around us, then down into the earth. “To sacrifice them over the leyline, closing it in the process. Except here, Spirit Boy was already a mage, so the spike didn’t work.”

“They’re trying to lock all the magic away again,” Dremea gasped, dawning realisation on her face. “Can we undo this?”

“Who is Artemis?” Stoneskin asked, shifting around until he was in front of me, on the other side of the body. The look he gave me was very pointed.

“The… uh, the Greek goddess of the hunt,” I mumbled, trying to find somewhere to rest my eyes other than the three people who were now staring at me incredulously. “I’m one of her priestesses.”

“Holy crap,” Dremea whispered, her feathers shivering in her hair slightly. “For real?”

“Yes… and, I think now might be a good time to ask for her help,” I said, clasping my hands together. As I bent my head to pray, I could sense the poisoned leyline below us. The poison was weak, just barely there, holding the magic in place and stopping its natural flow. “Artemis, hey… it’s me again. I’m at a leyline that was just poisoned by hunters. They used one of my friends to do it. How do we purify it?”

Finishing my prayer, I stood up and turned to the door. Right on time, my new goddess stepped out of the shadows, wearing nothing but a short tunic. It was cinched at the waist by a wide belt that she’d used to hang a quiver of golden arrows. Her hand held her bow, which shone in the light of the moon.

“They’ve acted over a good portion of the world,” she said, without preamble. “Not many successes, mind you, but here in Concorde it seems to have been particularly bad.”

“How do we fix it?” I asked, staring up at her as she stepped in beside me.

“I’ll cleanse this one, pay attention so that you can learn to call on my power to cleanse the others,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder almost affectionately. Her finger brushed my neck, and it felt like I’d just been hit by a static shock.

We all watched, fascinated, as she stepped around the body and placed her hand on the altar. I followed her with all of my senses, trying to pick up on how she was going to do this.

From within her vast pool of magic, she pulled a tiny droplet, barely more than a particle of mist. It fell from her palm, through the altar and down into the leyline. It erupted in an explosion of energy, pushing out in all directions and staggering everyone except the goddess.

“Do you feel my power in you?” she asked, turning to me. “I just bestowed a small portion on you, but it will grow as you continue to worship.”

When I looked inside myself, I saw that yet, there was a little seed of her silvery, moonlit magic. It was nestled up against my own, happy and content. “Yeah, I see it.”

“Good. Only those who have consented to be my priestess can hold that power,” she smiled. “It is part of why the gods must favour their followers. Otherwise, nobody would say yes.”

She winked as she finished speaking, and I grinned. I liked that. Consent was always a good thing, even if she hadn’t asked to put the magic there just now. I’d already said yes to her days ago.

“Now, I trust you can sneak up to the other leylines and cleanse them?” she asked, hefting her bow. “There are other places that require my attention tonight.”

I nodded, and opened my mouth to say so, but she interrupted me. “Oh, and Lette, my dear?”

“Yes?” I asked.

“My aspects may be the moon, the wilds, and the hunt,” she said, her expression going deathly cold. “But I am partial to revenge. See that these hunters beg for death before the end. It will please me.”

QuietValerie

Getting a little dark in here. Can't wait to write some trauma! Wooo!