Fifty Years Ago

Alistair laid in the dungeon, ankle chained to the floor, playing with fire. He gathered it in his hands, a spherical pyre, and then divided it into smaller orbs, rotated them around him like planets. He made them dance, like he’d seen the Stars doing, until he heard the door to the dungeon unlocking. 

Alistair extinguished the fire, laid down, and pretended to be asleep. He pretended to snap awake at the same time his father unlocked the door at the top of the stairs. Amadeous Albrecht stood in the pale morning light, looking down on Alistair with a solemn brooding. 

“Have you learned your lesson?” Father asked. 

Alistair bit his tongue for a moment. “Yes, Father,” he lied.

“You won’t provoke your older sister again?”

“I won’t, father,” Alistair lied again. 

“Very good. You must overcome your temper- it is a weakness. You have many weaknesses, and as my son you must have none. You’ll do well to remember that. Now. Come upstairs, have some breakfast.”

“Thank you, father,” Alistair said, rising from the floor and ascending the stairs.

 

He entered the castle’s ground floor, awash with heated air from the central furnace. He accompanied his father through the main building into the dining room, where a stone table stood with a tray of fruit and bread draped across it. His younger sister, Addison, ran over to embrace him. He took the hug affectionately, brushed an errant strand of hair from his sister’s face and revealed the bruise still on her forehead. The bruise that Amelia had put there. 

Across the table, Amelia glared at him. Both her eyes were still black. 

Alistair smirked, and then gave Amelia the middle finger. He’d seen it in one of the comic books Aunt Elleanor had brought on her last trip up from their school in Colorado. His older sister’s eyes widened and her forehead vein throbbed. 

Alistair’s mother, Penelope, smiled at her son. “How was your night?”

“Educational,” he said, and felt terribly pleased with his own cleverness.

“Ah. Well that’s good to hear.” Mother’s lack of ability to pick up on sarcasm was something to behold.
They ate breakfast in silence. Same as they always did. Every day was the same: breakfast, lessons, fight with Amelia, get in trouble for it… Maybe it wasn’t worth it. Maybe he should just take it when she disciplined him. That was always what she said she was doing. Disciplining him. Disciplining Addison. 

She’d crossed a line with that one. It was one thing to do that to him, but to Addison…  

Alistair couldn’t wait to leave home, head to school in Colorado with their aunt. She’d take Addison with them, hopefully. Get her away from this lunacy wherein Amelia could hit them as much as she liked but if either of them raised a voice or Godforbid a hand in response they were the ones in all the trouble. 

“Are you ready, my son?” his father asked. 

“Ready for what?”

“For your trial.”

Alistair’s eyes went wide. This was exactly what he’d been waiting for- if he passed his trial he’d be allowed to leave, to go to school in actual civilization. Amelia hadn’t passed hers’, so he’d be able to rub it in. That would settle it once and for all: she was weak, and he was strong. “Yes, father,” Alistair said. “I’m ready to face the world.” 

***

Present Day

Gwen woke up at the bottom of a pit ash, her body screaming at her not to move ever again. She twitched her fingers, curled her toes, just to reassure herself everything still worked. A thick coat of ash covered her; she wiped her forearm across her forehead only to leave a pile of powder above her eyes. 

Her father loomed over her at the top of the pit, barely resembling a human. He crawled down on all fours, the powder dispersing into the air with each step. “Impressive, Guinevere. Truly impressive.”  His voice was a chainsaw cutting into dead, dry wood.

Gwen wished she had enough energy to at least spit at him. 

“I should kill you,” Alistair continued, “For what you’ve done to our family. For what you’re doing to the world, resisting your mother and I. But I won’t. Because I want you to keep going, to be able to see the full-extent of your mistakes. You will never learn if you’re not given the time in which to see everything you’ve wrought. We will see each other again, daughter, and when we do,” he said, his monstrous face contorting into the most hideous smile she’d ever seen in her life, “Perhaps then you shall finally see the light.”

He stalked away into the night. Gwen wanted to follow him, to call out to him, to send her zombies at him, but she was at her limit. She tried to reach for Starlight, and it only burned her. All the Dust for miles and miles had been spent that evening, burnt through in a futile attempt at resistance. The pain and exhaustion and humiliation consumed her once again, and unconsciousness claimed her. 

***

“Gwen!” Quentin called out from behind the darkness. 

She woke before she opened her eyes. She could feel her entire body, and almost wished she couldn’t. It would be easier, now and perhaps more generally, to be numb. But that wasn’t where she was, wasn’t who she was, wasn’t what she was.

God, I need a drink, she thought.

“Gwen!” Quentin said, his hands on her body, shaking her. 

She opened her eyes, and looked up once more at the world she’d covered in ashes. 

“Oh thank God,” Quentin exclaimed, putting his hands over his mouth when he realized what he’d said. She chuckled at that. Good old Quentin. He was a mess: a gash on his forehead, an eye swelling up, his torn vestments revealing myriad scrapes and bloody wounds. 

Joshua stood atop the crater, his Hawaiian shirt a collection of loosely-bound rags, his massive eyebrows singed, and cuts and burns running up his limbs. “Are you okay?” he asked. 

“Ffffrh,” Gwen grunted.

Before she knew it, she was lifted off the ground- Quentin carried her in his arms. Bridal-carried, no less. She’d dreamt of this. Wished the circumstances were better. She always forgot how wonderful he was. She didn’t deserve him. She’d never deserved him. 

He brought her to the top of the crater, and she asked in a low whisper to be put down. He obliged, and when she tried to stand she found that she couldn’t just yet. She sat on the ground above her garden of ashes. 

She looked around, and saw it didn’t end there: the streets had decayed into ash and dust; buildings had fallen and dispersed into the wind, leaving only skeletons behind; odd car parts stuck out of the powdery ground alongside the bones. 

She’d done this. 

“Where’s Lacy?” Gwen asked, draping her dirty hand over her dirty forehead. 

“We haven’t been able to find her,” Quentin said.

“And Percival?” Gwen asked. “Danny- I mean Danny.”

“We haven’t found him either.”

“Isabella?”

They both looked at the ground.

Gwen covered her face with her hands, spread her fingers so that her bulging eyes could look upon all that she’d wrought. The city reeked of blood and sulfur and rotting flesh, and the sounds of pyres and screams and sirens swirled around her. “FUCK!!”

Quentin and Joshua said nothing, did nothing. 

The night sky was a bruised skin over the world, the city lights and the fires blotting out the moon and stars. Downtown Peoria was… Gone. Nothing but ash remained. Gwen sat there a while longer, drinking it in, until Alice Carmichael came thrashing forward over the ash-ground, shotgun in hand. She plodded through like she was running on a beach in sandals.

Quentin and Joshua formed a barrier in front of Gwen. Gwen didn’t move, didn’t speak. 

Alice aimed her gun with both hands. “Explain. Now. It better be good.”

“Put down the gun, Alice,” Joshua said. 

She cocked the gun. 

“Ms. Carmichael,” Quentin cautioned. “I wouldn’t-”

“Not that I think you’ll believe me,” Gwen said, her throat dry, her voice scratchy, “But this wasn’t my doing. I had no idea this was going to happen.”

“Someone told the Sovereignty we were all going to be here. They had to know that in order to plan an attack on this scale,” Alice said. “And you’re the one with the most obvious connection to them. So logic would indicate-”

“It was my little brother,” Gwen said. My baby brother is still alive, she thought. 

Both Joshua and Quentin looked back at her in shock. 

“You told me you were the last of the Albrecht brats,” Alice said, lowering the gun. “You mean to tell me there’s another one of you out there, working for your family.”

“Yes.” He’s alive. He’s been right here the whole time. Just like Elaine was. 

“And how do you know this?” Alice asked. 

“Because my father told me when we fought.”

“And you believed him?”

“It… Made sense. Due to the circumstances. And, uh, who he said it was.”

“Whom?”

“Ffffff do you remember how there was a young man traveling with us, alongside Isabella and my student Lacy? Early twenties, brown hair, blue eyes, around my height?”

“The pretty boy who smelled like my dad at the end of a long weekend?”Alice’s thin eyebrows twitched. She raised the gun and aimed. “Do you mean to tell me that you not only had a long-lost brother working for your parents, but that he’s been traveling with you for over a month, and you completely failed to recognize him?!”

He’s alive, and his allegiance is to the family. To the Sovereignty. They’ve got their claws in him. “I hadn’t seen him since he was six. And even then, he doesn’t look much like the rest of us- we all got our dad’s hair and eyes and cheekbones. Percy, even as a baby, looked more like Mom. Guess he still looks more like her. I… God, I’d forgotten what she looks like. I hadn’t seen a picture of her in over fifteen years-”

“This is still your fault,” Alice said.

Mom is still alive… And I have to kill her again.

“That’s not fair,” Quentin said. “She didn’t know-”

Alice continued, “Yeah. I’m sure she didn’t. I’m sure that in spite of all this evidence-”

“Circumstantial,” Joshua said. 

“-She had nothing to do with this catastrophic fucking failure we’ve suffered here today. Do you know how many of us I’ve watched die in the past two hours!? Probably close to a hundred. And that’s without even getting into the astronomical civilian casualties! People have died, lives have been FUCKING DESTROYED, because of your fucking family, and you don’t think you deserve to be held even a little accountable for that?!”

“I never said that,” Gwen said. He’s alive, and he betrayed you, and he betrayed Lacy. He’s working with Mom and Dad, and that means he’s betrayed the whole world.

Police sirens rang through the air.

“Even if I believe you, which I haven’t decided yet,” Alice said, “How do I know you’re not gonna waver? How do I know you’ll be able to go up against him? Against your family?”

“Because I know I can’t save him,” Gwen said. She realized it as she said it, as the words dropped out her mouth and shattered on the ground. “I don’t want to save him. He’s too far gone. I’m going to save Lacy, though. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to save her.” 

‘Your Destiny is to mentor the Dark Lord’- that was what her mother had told her when she’d asked what the Star meant, what the dreams meant. She’d been afraid of it, she’d run from it, but it was time for her to own up and do her job. 

Silence hung over the four of them, in spite of all the noise elsewhere. The police were nearly upon them.

“We should probably get moving,” Joshua said. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Gwen said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m giving myself up to them.”

“What?!” Alice said. 

“We can’t do this on our own,” Gwen said. “This past evening has proven that. There aren’t enough of us. We don’t have as many mages as the Sovereignty, and we definitely don’t have an army of ghouls- we can’t win in a fair fight. We need help.”

“You’re breaking the highest of the Guild Codes if you do this,” Alice said. “We handle things on our own. The government- no government- is ever going to be trustworthy. Not with knowledge of magic and monsters. They can’t handle it.”

“We can’t fucking handle it!” Gwen found her legs, found the strength to stand up straight and rigid. “For fuck’s sake- if we stay the course, not only are we dead, the world is dead. My father wins. You can’t seriously be telling me that that’s less important than Guild regulations!”

Alice did not lower her gun.

Gwen drew a deep, cleansing breath. “You also can’t possibly be telling me that you think shooting three people dead right before the fuzz arrives is in any way a good idea.”

Alice lowered her gun, finally. “Alright. Fine. We try it your way. But when this goes tits-up, it’s on your head, Gwen. I guess it’s fitting, though, that the end of the Damocles Guild be brought about by House Albrecht.”

The squad cars came into view behind Alice, driving slowly and carefully over the rotted streets. Alice dropped her gun and put her hands up, turned around to face them. Gwen did the same. She was surprised to find not squad cars labeled with ‘Peoria Police’, but simple black SUV’s. From out of the car emerged lawmen adorned in jackets labeled ‘FBI.’