#head exploded

Being alive comes with an entire library, an archive of odd and mismatched experiences filed away into what makes you you, things that come into your life in passing and fade away, only yours for a moment as it leaves an impression unforgettable, as it changes you as though it hasn’t.

It’s never-ending, a story told until the end of time. The unique, unfathomable experience of being human.

Or…whatever Sophie was now.

A collection of experiences, perhaps, a story waiting to be told of all her triumphs, her defeats, the quiet moments she shared with no one.

Gentle warmth blossomed across her skin, comforting, familiar, and wrong.

Flinching, her eyes shot open, roving across the blurred colors before her, shimmering golden as her heart pounded. Gold gold gold, the colors fire, the brightness it burned, burning burning burning away behind her eyelids with searing heat tantalizingly close, a threat.

She blinked, and the motion reminded her that if she could blink, then her eyes were open; no crown of fire sat across her brow and held her captive beneath the earth, surrounded by monsters and a little girl stuck in the middle of an apocalypse, somehow wrapped up in the messiest pieces.

Phoenix.

The thought cleared her muddled panic, clear, cold dread dousing it all and turning her numb.

The gold wasn’t from any fire.

Well, the sun was, technically, on fire.

Golden sunlight washed through the room as her eyes focused, head still buzzing with the lulling lethargy of sleep, trying to pull her back into its clutches. She would’ve let it take her if she could’ve, years of insomnia teaching her to value sleep whenever it came.

But the jolt of adrenaline had pushed her too far into the waking world, making her overly conscious of the stiffness of her body, the lead in her bones, the stifling sweat sticking to her body, condensing in the feathers at the base of her wings.

Cursing her lack of curtains--because her window was broken, as the sun oh so loved to remind her--she groaned, rolling over, pushing herself onto her elbows, looking around.

Doing so brought the basket hidden in that corner by her bed into her line of sight, and everything in her went colder than that doused fire.

She hadn’t been back here since she’d learned what’d happened, hadn’t slept in this bed since she’d learned a gnome had written their last words here, gone to try and save a little girl whose name they didn’t even know.

Everything crashed into her consciousness in a flurry then, that her friends must’ve put her here because they didn’t know why she wanted to stay away and that they’d had to move her because she’d collapsed, and that she’d collapsed because she’d given Linh and Maruca every drop of energy her body could spare and then some, and that she’d had to give and give and give like she always had because the world was full of monsters and the seas weren’t an exception.

Atlantis.

Thudding against her ribs, the terror of the encounter swelled outward, encompassing her as she pressed her hands over her face; she hadn’t time to think about it in the moment, but now, all alone, living with the ghost of that gnome at her side, she couldn’t stop.

Her life was just one thing after the other, horror after horror, harrowing escape tumbling into each other like dominoes as she played with her life like a cat with a string, unraveling and pawing and tossing it around and watching it fray apart.

Just wait it out, she told herself as the panic rose and rose, trying to drown her; she’d been here before.

It’ll go away; just wait it out, she repeated, pressing her hands harder against her face, letting out deep, slow breaths, foot tapping against her leg beneath the covers.

So she waited, counting the seconds, breathing steadily, rocking back and forth, waiting for the terror to run its course. It was only an emotion after all, and those couldn’t last forever. She simply had to outlast them, however long it took.

As her heart began to calm, a knock sounded at the door; she scrunched her face up at the sound, wishing there was a quieter way to announce your presence.

The knocking sounded again, louder, as though worried she hadn’t heard.

She’d have to say something.

“Yeah?” she called out, wincing at the volume of her own voice in what had been absolute stillness. The crack, the roughness from terror held tight.

Creaking, the door swung open with hesitation, Dex poking his head in at the same snail pace, almost comically, her lips twitching towards a smile.

“Hello,” he said, glancing around. “Um. Can I come in?”

He was already halfway through the doorway, leaning to the side like in cartoons when the characters all piled on top of each other to peer around a corner, but she still nodded, deciding not to comment.

Pushing the door closed behind him, he kept looking away, instead finding other things to focus on.

“I’m…sorry to disturb you. I thought--you’d either be asleep or you’d be awake, not still in bed,” he finished feebly, flushing.

His awkwardness clicked in her head. “Oh. No, it’s fine. You’re not interrupting anything; I just haven’t moved yet.” He thought he’d butted himself into something private, but once she cleared it up the flush faded from his cheeks as he jumped up the step into her bedroom, leaning against the wall near the window. He’d taken off his wings and could do so more comfortably than anyone else could, without fear of tearing the structures.

“I wanted to check on you, make sure you’re alright. That Atlantis mission was no joke, I guess,” he frowned, kicking at the floor.

“If it helps, I also wish I could’ve brought all of you,” she offered, guessing at the meaning behind the words.

He started, then waved his hands around. “No I--I don’t mean to whine about it, you were all risking your lives and the rest of us wouldn’t have been able to do anything underwater, at least nothing that made it worth bringing us, I get it.”

Despite everything, she had to laugh.

“What are you laughing at,” he scowled, then shook himself off. “Sorry, you’re exhausted and I came to check on you, not be…like this,” he said, pressing his own hands to his face.

“You’re fine, Dex. It’s just funny to watch you sulk and pout--because that is what you were doing,” she added before he could protest. “And thank you--for checking on me. I’m…good.”

He made a face as she spoke, but it melted into concern as she finished. “Good? What’s good for the Lady Fos-boss?” he prodded.

She shrugged. “I’m not dead. No one else is dead. All my limbs are still attached--sorry,” she winced, remembering that not all of Dex’s limbs had decided to stay attached; that was a pretty significant reason they’d gone to Mysterium, so he could find the supplies he needed to make a prosthetic to supplant what would’ve been.

It was Dex’s turn to laugh at her, the sound melodic and rough as it lifted the veil clouding her thoughts.

“Not to distract from the conversation but…what day is it?” she asked, already itching and dreading getting everything done. She wanted this to be behind her, to be with her parents again, for the world to be safe.

“You slept through yesterday,” Dex offered.

“Through yesterday?”

Holding up his hands in a what do you want me to say? manner, he said, “What do you want me to say? You were tired! Maruca and Linh too--though neither of them collapsed like you did. Wylie told us what happened, and one of us has been checking in to make sure you’re still breathing every hour or so.”

Sophie stifled a groan, already dreading trying to reorient herself with that knowledge.

“Keefe wanted to draw on your face while you slept. We stopped him though,” Dex added.

“...thanks.”

They fell into silence for a moment before she asked. “What did I miss?”

Dex shifted, picking at the braided bracelet he still wore from the Forbidden Cities, pinching at the strands. “Honestly? Nothing. We’ve been waiting for you because you’re--I don’t know if you’ve noticed--kinda important. Biana told us her secret though, the one you apparently already knew. So now she’s been trying to figure out if she can like…read Linh’s dragons’ minds with colors, or something. I don’t really get it, but I thought you might since you’re the telepath, and Marella shared an update on her dragon too; I guess it’s healed now and is safe to move around again, but it’s eyes were permanently damaged, so she’s trying to figure out how to help it navigate without sight and is struggling with it. So Keefe tried walking around with his eyes closed to help through experience or something, and fell out of the village because he walked right off the bridges--it was hilarious. And I’m rambling, aren’t I,” he realized, pressing his lips firmly closed as he averted his eyes, hand cupping his neck.

Sophie would’ve been content to listen to him ramble all day, but the one thing that would beat that was seeing her family for herself, so she could be a part of all the fun they had when she’d forced them into inaction--her unfortunate tendency to overexert herself into unconsciousness had her missing out on the best bonding moments.

“I’m in bed after missions way too much,” she grumbled, throwing back the covers, shivering with the rush of cool air as she propelled herself out of bed, a completely avoidable headrush throwing her balance off as she stumbled a few steps, Dex exclaiming behind her as he grabbed her by the wrist, wrenching her back and away from the edge of the elevated area, where that step to the ground would’ve sent her tumbling.

Steadying her, he shook his head. “I’ll go get everyone,” he sighed, having saved her and correctly guessing what she wanted next; he always had that way of reading her, even when she tried to keep things to herself.

“Thanks.” There was no point being embarrassed over her near-faceplant. A lifetime of stumbling into tables, banging her arms on walls, and literally falling into chairs had given her more than enough experience dealing with it. It was just a part of her life at this point.

He hopped neatly down from the slight ledge, stumps of his wings flapping as though something was there.

Waving, he shut the door on his way out with a, “Thirty minutes. Campfire. Probably. Definitely. I’ll make sure they show up.”

She didn’t even have time to give him a thumbs up of acknowledgement before he was out, on his way to find the rest of their family and assemble them together for the meeting that should’ve happened already, had her body not decided differently.

Well. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes to do…what?

As she turned to look around the room, a clump of tangled hair fell into her face; reaching back, she felt around, finding the hair tie from her tied hair still there, trying to hold the mess of it all together fruitlessly.

A shower would be a good place to start.

[Paragraph break]

BRRR, Echo said.

“Jesus Fucking Christ what--hello,” Sophie said back. She had a way with words.

Her hand clutched at her chest, wings spread behind her ready to take flight, stars winking in the void of their shape. She hadn’t spotted the little creature as she hurried out of the bathhouse, trying to shake the water from her hair so it would dry faster; she despised how wet hair felt lying against her neck.

But all thoughts of wet hair fled as she nearly stepped on the not-cat as it purred up at her, winding between her feet like it hadn’t forcibly taken a few centuries from her life.

“Lovely to see you again, but I don’t have time to explore monster communities or save trapped creatures--actually, I probably could make time for the second if it was an emergency, because I do care, but I have somewhere to be,” she rattled off, starting forward.

BRRR, Echo called again, following behind her, keeping pace on nimble paws as it trotted alongside her.

As she went, she pulled at the edges of the loose, flowing yellow top she’d grabbed from her stash; her skin hadn’t dried and everything was trying to stick to her, and she wouldn’t be able to focus on what anyone said if all she could feel was misaligned fabric and creases.

It hadn’t taken her the full thirty minutes to start feeling like herself, so theoretically she could mess around for a little while longer before joining everyone at the campsite, but she couldn’t shake the urge to go sooner, to jump into everything, to get things done.

Everything was finally, finally coming together; they couldn’t stop now, not when they were so close.

A few voices rang out up ahead, and as she got closer the trees growing up all around the village thinned enough that she could see them, Fitz and Marella in a heated debate about something, Linh occasionally chiming in, Tam sitting silent on the side staring off somewhere in the distance. She had the strangest sense he was trying to escape his body.

They stopped when they spotted her, waving as Marella called out, “She’s alive! The rumors are true after all.”

Sophie took the seat across from Tam when she got there, the space strangely empty without Wylie’s campfire of colored light brightening the space. She had half a mind to request a rainbow fire; something about the idea seemed fitting for their group.

“Hey,” was all she could think to say, looking around to see if anyone else was approaching; there was still time before it’d be officially thirty minutes, but she couldn’t help checking.

“How are you feeling?” Fitz asked, looking like he wanted to scrutinize every piece of her to make sure she’d come back intact.

She shrugged. “Tired. But I’ll be fine. What were you talking about?”

She really had to get out of the habit of walking in on people in the middle of their conversations; it was starting to alienate her from everything going on, but they’d never minded catching her up when she asked before.

This time was no different, and Marella immediately huffed, “I was trying to explain to Mr. Wonderboy that we’re not elves anymore, but he’s insistent on convincing himself we are.”

Linh cut in before Fitz could retort. “Friendly debate, we’re being friendly and cordial about all of this,” she assured, though she glared at both of them when she said it, as though keeping them in check, daring them to disagree.

“Extremely cordial,” Fitz agreed. “I was just saying that I think we still count as elves because adding something else doesn’t take away from what we originally were.”

“But it wasn’t just something added, everything we originally were changed,” Marella argued back. “We think different, we see different, we behave different. Being an elf isn’t a forever thing. It can change--though we didn’t know that at the time.”

“I disagree. We are our thoughts, right? And how we think changes as we learn and grow, but our parents learning and growing doesn’t make them any less elven, so change doesn’t automatically make us not elves. Just because we’ve been through something doesn’t mean our primary influence in who we are isn’t elven--or human, in Sophie’s case.”

Sophie shook her head as he gestured to her. “Uh-uh, don’t involve me in this, I just got here. How did--how did this even get brought up?” Her head spun trying to follow their logic, too anxious to admit that she herself didn’t know where she fell on each side of the argument.

Was she still an elf? She felt like an elf, at least she thought she did. Most of the time…

“I dunno, just got brought up while we were waiting,” Marella shrugged.

“It got brought up because Fitz started staring like a bird, as he does, and Linh made a joke about how un-elf-like it was. He got confused and said everything he does is still elven, and then he and Marella started debating,” Tam deadpanned, making not even a single movement as he outlined the sequence of events.

Silence.

“Ah, that’s right,” Fitz said.

They were saved from another awkward silence as Dex ran into the campsite, footsteps pounding against the hanging bridges and making them all sway.

“Thirty minutes,” he panted, out of breath, finding her in the group and pointing at her. “Great, you’re here. Wet, but here. Where’s everyone else?” he asked, turning around in circles a few times as if turning around again would make them magically materialize.

They all glanced at each other. “Weren’t you getting everyone?” she asked.

He made a face, groaned, and ran away, leaving the four of them alone around no campfire.

Someone shouted in the distance. Several someone’s shouted back.

Then, “SOPHIE! CONTROL YOUR CAT!”

“I--what?”

“YOUR CAT is holding them HOSTAGE,” Dex explained, yelling as he ran a little ways back in their direction so they could see him better, pointing off somewhere to the right.

Sophie didn’t have a cat, but she did have an Echo.

Glancing around her feet, she was surprised to discover that Echo wasn’t anywhere in sight; in fact, she hadn’t seen it since it’d started following her when she’d almost tripped over it.

She sighed, standing and making her way to where Dex was, who stood rigidly at attention, still pointing in that exact same direction.

Coming up to him, she paused. She looked between him and where he pointed and back. He didn’t move.

She nodded to herself, and followed his directions.

What had Echo gotten itself into?

Gazing into the distance with sight too-clear to be entirely elven, she saw Echo standing up ahead, sitting back on its haunches in front of an open door, gazing inside without a care.

Jogging to get there quicker, she didn’t realize why she’d been called in to “control her cat” until she got right up close.

Inside, just beyond the door frame, four of her friends stood watching the not-cat, the not-cat blocking the only exit out of the building.

Echo looked back at them.

“Get it--,” Maruca told her, making a shooing motion with her hand. Biana just stared at the not-cat, Keefe staring at her, Wylie with his head in his hands at the absurdity of it all.

Sophie couldn’t suppress the laugh that burst out of her. “Are you--did--seriously? None of you could just walk around it? This is where you draw the line?”

“Easy for you to say!” Maruca exclaimed. “Every time we try--” she stepped forward, and Echo let out a loud BRRR “--it does that! We’re trapped, Soph.”

Sophie sighed, though she couldn’t hide her grin, bending down to scoop Echo into her arms, the not-cat spreading terror and sowing chaos. In a cat-like fashion, it immediately decided it no longer had bones and it needed to become liquid in her arms, making it difficult for her to keep her grip, but she had plenty of experience with Marty and adapted deftly.

“I can’t believe you--come on,” she smiled, leading the way back to the center area, everyone behind her trailing behind, sufficiently mollified by their encounter with the glitchy creature Sophie’d come to think of as her own.

Rejoining the circle, everyone found their places, Fitz and Marella’s debate forgotten as the air heavied, the weight of what came next quieting. They were all painfully aware of the state of the world, of what was at stake.

Sophie was particularly aware that each day they didn’t do something was another day Phoenix the girl, was stuck with Phoenix, the organization. No matter how hastily made her promise was, she’d meant it with everything she was, and intended to carry it through to the very end.

It’d been hard enough getting thrown into this war when she was twelve, and Phoenix was even younger than that.

Whatever Murad wanted her for, whatever reason he kept her around, she’d stop him.

Whatever connection Fintan had with her, whatever influence he had over her, she’d get in his way.

“You have the cache, right?” Marella asked, looking at Dex, who had settled next to Sophie in the circle; while she’d been thinking, Wylie had conjured a campfire made of silently bursting spheres of light all melding together in oranges and pinks and whites, reminiscent of something she’d seen in the Forbidden Cities, though she didn’t want to distract herself trying to figure it out.

He nodded, pulling it from his pocket. “Right here. I haven’t tried to open it yet, but it feels really similar to the others I’ve tried to hack…which probably means that it will not be easy to get into.”

“Oralie showed me how to open one,” Sophie offered, realizing she may not have ever shared that with anyone else. All the talk of Elysium and Kenric’s confounding message had gotten swept to the side by Keefe’s new ability and the excursion he took they didn’t really mention.

“She did?” Sophie nodded, letting Echo escape her grasp with a BRRR. “But it’s not good news. That needed blood, sweat, and tears, and she said there was no way around that. We don’t even know whose cache that is, even if we could get them to agree to help us open it.”

They went silent.

“But this wasn’t a councillor’s cache,” Fitz said. “They keep those only accessible to themselves because they contain all those forbidden secrets. This one was in a library where people--well, certain people--could just access it how they wanted. I know it was apparently really hidden and the councillors themselves don’t even know what’s in it, but it wouldn’t make sense if only one person could open it; if it was something like that, then it would be in a safe or a museum or something, not a library. Libraries are for accessing information.”

Turning to stare at the cache-that-might-not-actually-be-a-cache, the question then became, “Well then how do we get to the information?”

Fitz shrugged, helpless, as Sophie looked at him. He’d just been reasoning--and very intelligently at that--but it didn’t solve the rest of the problem.

Wylie and Dex started talking, debating potential solutions, but Sophie tuned them and all the subsequent additions from the group out, furrowing her brow as she stared at the thing in Dex’s hands, as though with enough force she could pierce right through to the secrets within. Maybe she could intimidate it with her ferocious, uneven eyelashes; they’d certainly had an effect on Vertina.

Dots of twinkling crystal shone within the golden marble shape, each one winking at her as it reflected the morning sunlight, casting strange patterns of light onto Dex’s fingers and palm, fingerprints pressing to the smooth surface.

Oralie and Bronte had been the ones to send them on this wild chase, months worth of wonderings and sudden realizations in rooms filled with rotted history and impossibility in the wake of such unbelievable tragedy had led them to this.

To Foxfire, a place of infectious light.

To the Mentors’ Cafeteria, where history would have something sweet to say about her.

To Atlantis, where that history was kept.

To a cache, where secrets were held.

They’d completed the riddle--or at least, they almost had. All that was left was to learn those secrets.

Play a melody for me, and tell me what it says.

That was the only thing that didn’t fit, that they hadn’t figured out.

Mindlessly, Sophie let her fingers card through Echo’s fur, swirling along the glitched black and white colors, trailing along the patterns in its fur. She started tapping a rhythm into its skin, lightly, as though unconscious of the action.

Melodies? Why would Oralie be talking about melodies? It wasn’t like the Lost Cities were big on music; all the music she’d heard so far was gnomish, sung to her by Calla or Flori.

Melody.

She looked down at her fingers, the word on repeat in her head, and as she did so, Echo arched itself into the touch, rubbing against her in such a way that a shock of electricity zapped into her fingers. Static.

The feeling tugged at a memory, a memory she’d tried to bury; she’d tried to erase the feeling from her consciousness, escape the hurt, the betrayal, and the all-consuming humiliation of having the answer to all her questions right in front of her eyes for years without her knowing.

Even when Councillor Oralie had grabbed her by the wrists instead of the palms that day in her castle, set in the heart of Eternalia, it had still felt like electricity jolting through the two of them, shocking buzzes of energy draining from Sophie into her…into Oralie without restraint. She hadn’t learned control yet.

But that day she had, going through her abilities piece by piece, allowing herself to be honest about how they felt, until they’d gotten to her enhancing and she’d decided it felt restricting.

Then everything had clicked, a few glorious moments before her world had come crashing down in ways she hadn’t even had the time to think about.

But that wasn’t the part of the memory that had drawn her attention to it, it was the feeling, the way she’d turned her enhancing off, felt it flicker away.

She’d thought it felt like sliding her will across the string of a violin, a clear note ringing in her mind as she took control.

Hadn’t she often described the sensation as a note ringing through her, on and off.

She’d never told Oralie that, though, and yet…

“Can I see that?” she asked, mumbling, bumping her arm against Dex’s to get his attention.

He started, cutting off from whatever he’d been saying to Fitz, turning to her. “See wha--oh, this? Um. Sure, why?” He handed her the cache, dropping it into the center of her palm where it rolled around before settling in the center.

She furrowed her brows. “I…had an idea. But it’s probably a stretch so…”

“That means she’s definitely right,” Keefe said, nodding sagely, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he focused his attention on her. “I’ll bet everything I know about the Great Gulon Incident on it--though I obviously didn’t have anything to do with it. Any takers?”

“Obviously not,” Marella rolled her eyes. “We’re not gonna pick a losing battle.”

Sophie flushed, trying to tune them out as she picked the marble up between two fingers, glancing at Echo and sincerely wishing it actually worked. Nothing like a little pressure.

Exhaling, she slid her will across that violin string holding back all the energy buzzing through her, still recovering after the drain from Atlantis, letting the note ring out clear through her body, echoing through each bone, each artery, each vein, her fingers fluttering with the influx.

Sophie gasped, eyes widening as the marble grew warm in her hands, all the tiny specks of crystals in the cache glittering and pulsing, flickering in response to the downpour from her.

Without warning, they all flashed, everyone flinching back as multiple projections erupted from the cache, pointed out in all directions from the little marble in her hands, more than she’d ever thought them capable of holding.

Dropping the cache into her lap, she shoved her fingers in her ears, trying desperately to escape from the horrible cacophony of hundreds of projections just like the one she’d seen in Oralie’s cache playing over each other, all at the same time, and she wasn’t the only one.

Tam stared with a fury better suited for eternal torment at the projections, Biana vanishing out of sight as she pressed both hands over her ears, Maruca’s wings coming up around her like they could block the noise.

She’d unlocked the cache.

[Paragraph break]

It was, as always, Dex who saved the day.

Grimacing, he snatched the torturous little marble from her lap as Echo yowled and jumped away, squinting at it as he fiddled for a few moments, tapping and scraping his nails along the marble and swiping at the projections in the air until they’d faded, leaving only a ringing in their ears as everyone lowered their hands, Biana reappearing, Echo BRRRing with great annoyance from a nearby tree.

“I am….so sorry,” Sophie said to break the now-deafening silence, keeping her hands close to her chest; just turning off her enhancing didn’t feel like enough. She needed physical space between her energy and that accursed little thing.

“Did anyone understand any of that?” Linh asked, playing with the silver edges of her hair as she peered at the marble. “Because I think my brain stopped working.”

Everyone shook their heads no, but Wylie remained strangely immobile, still staring at where the projections had been, as though he could still see them.

Maruca nudged him, noticing. “What are you thinking?”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing. I just…what did you do?” he asked Sophie, who explained that it’d been just a neat enhancing trick. “So…energy. Your energy set it off, but it accessed every single thing stored in the cache--there has to be a way to narrow that down.”

“The councillor’s cache needed passwords,” Dex offered. “Maybe this needs something like that too, like you need to be thinking of something specific or say something out loud to access specifically what you want. And instead Sophie overrode the system and accessed everything at once. I bet now it would work normally since it’s unlocked.”

“What passwords or key words, though?” Fitz asked.

“How am I supposed to know? I wasn’t even the one to unlock it.”

Maruca leaned forward. “It’s unlocked right now, right?”

Dex nodded, holding the cache forward so everyone could see the gleam over the scattered crystals suspended in the glass marble; they burned as though lit from the inside, a tiny glow in each creating a night sky held in the palm of a hand, just waiting waiting waiting to spill its secrets to whoever could listen.

“Phoenix,” she said, as though giving a direction.

A single projection popped up, a disembodied voice beginning to speak about some incident with a Phoenix in a Forbidden City, an image of the creature in question displayed side by side of a video of a raging fire somewhere near a volcano, a volcano with a village at its base.

Dex paused the projection, shaking his head. “The cache isn’t gonna know who Phoenix is; we didn’t even know they had a name until a few weeks ago. We’ll have to use different keywords. But at least we know how it works now,” he added as an afterthought. The year read 79 C.E.

“Experimentation,” Fitz tried, getting results on something to do with a new plant species gnomes had synthesized that’d gone awry, but the elves had helped control when more hands and specific abilities were needed.

Tam tried “Monsters,” but only found two results talking about the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, respectively. It seemed to have something to do with undercover efforts to capture the two of them so they stopped showing up in the human world and rumors.

On and on they went, trying Fintan Pyren and Organization and Inhuman and Phoenix, but like the little girl, are you sure Monsters isn’t right, and Murad, and just give us the thing, dammit!

It was well into the afternoon by the time Sophie had given up--temporarily, she reminded herself. This was a temporary defeat; they’d figure this out. Hopefully sooner rather than later, but she couldn’t keep justifying looking into the stupid riddle she’d finally solved after what felt like a year and five weeks of dragging it along.

There were people who needed her, people who needed someone, and a world that needed someone to step up and claim the challenge of setting it right. No one else was going to do it.

Biana, Maruca, Marella, and Linh crowded around a paper where they brainstormed more potential keywords, but she couldn’t bring herself to join them just yet.

“You’re chewing over some problem in your head, aren’t you,” Keefe whispered to her, having incredibly unsubtly scooted over on his butt inch by inch to get closer. They’d all pretended not to notice.

Sophie shrugged. “I have a lot of problems.”

“If only I knew what that was like,” he raised a brow. “So spill. What’s on the Mysterious Miss F’s mind that troubles her so?”

Hesitating a moment, she let her fingers brush through Echo’s fur to stall for time; pets were great for that, even though Echo wasn’t a pet. “I…was trying to figure out how we could get to the Main Facility,” she confessed, cheeks heating as his eyebrows skyrocketed, though he said nothing. “Here’s the thing, we didn’t actually find it, and it was Flori who brought us there--and she brought us underground, so I can’t teleport us in. And it could be anywhere in the world, just like wherever we’re living right now. Who knows what forest we’re in the middle of! So if we don’t have the location I can’t bring us there, but we need to get there so we can finish what we started, and hopefully they’ll have their other locations listed there so that I can figure out where they took me that other time, because I think that’s where Phoenix stays, and that way I can get her out.”

Keefe made a face somewhere between a frown and deep thought, running his tongue over his teeth as he looked off somewhere. “Yeah, that is a problem. Do you think my…my monster would know where it was?”

“Oh! Maybe. I mean, that was one of their facilities before they…completely lost control, to put it nicely. They might know where each other are, that way we can either leap there or if there are pictures, I can teleport us in--but like, in a sneaky way.”

“Really? You think all this has no impact on who we are?” Marella asked, laughing alongside it loud enough that she drew both Sophie and Keefe’s attention.

Fitz waved his arms about. “That’s not what I’m saying! You’re putting words in my mouth,” he accused. “I’m saying that the wings don’t have an impact on how elven we are! Of course they’ve had an impact on who we are, just not that part.”

Tam noticed the attention they’d drawn and shared a look with her.

They’re at it again, his voice whispered into the mindbubble, but he kept it away from the two of them. I vote we push them off the balconies.

I’ll tackle Fitz, Keefe offered, making a few over-the-top stretching moves as though he really were preparing to tackle his best friend out of a tree-house village.

Biana hid a smile in her hands. Get his ass.

“Okay, just, hang on--hang on,” Fitz said, completely oblivious to the plan forming around him. “We’re still elves, it’s our minds that have been opened and changed, there’s a difference.”

Marella rolled her eyes fondly, finding the argument more entertaining for the both of them than anything. “If we’re still elves, but also have been changed, then what does that make us? Half-elves?”

“No, that’s not--” he cut off, interrupted.

They all were, Dex’s near-silent gasp ringing out alongside Sophie’s as the cache sparkled, pulsing with the energy that’d brought it to chaotic life, one shard of crystal brighter than the others.

A single projection was suspended above the cache, though no noise came through.

They’d triggered the cache by accident.

And it had responded.

To the phrase half-elves.

[Paragraph break]

“Did that just--” Keefe asked, starting at the cache settled nicely in Dex’s palm, all thought of tackling Fitz off the village abandoned. “Anyone else confused?”

All eyes followed Dex as he tapped at the single projection displayed above it, eyes widening as it exploded into dozens upon dozens of them, multiplying and surrounding him like he was the center of the universe, or l a character in some stupid sci-fi movie she’d watched with her human family.

“Half-elves?” he whispered to himself, looking between all the different projections. A slight sliver to his left allowed him to make eye-contact with Sophie, who immediately scooted closer next to him, pushing through the wall of frozen projections and into the circle, the cache sensing her presence and accommodating.

She glanced around, trying to make sense of it. “I thought elves and humans were cut off from each other?” she said, unsure whether it was a statement or a question.

“They were,” Fitz murmured, staring staring staring at the projections, perplexed. “At least, that’s what they told us in every history class.”

“But they also told us humans started the conflict that led to Atlantis sinking.”

Which now they knew had actually been the elves' fault, been Vespera’s fault.

Silent, Dex made some incomprehensible gestures, spreading the projections out so everyone could see the mess, thoughts on what to do next with Phoenix and the Neverseen completely abandoned; everyone wanted to know what, exactly, they’d just discovered--and accidentally at that.

Biana tapped at one full of text before her as it rotated slowly past, skimming through the words Sophie’s mind would never be able to naturally understand. One day she’d have the time to learn, but not now.

Her eyes widened as she read, ignoring the eyes on her. “This is all scribbled and scratched out, but you can understand some parts of it,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

“Well what parts?” Fitz asked, scooting closer to peer over her shoulder, getting annoyingly close in that way siblings could get away with.“Wait--does that say what I think it does?”

Tam pressed both hands to his face. “Oh for fucks sake just tell us already instead of all this cryptic crap.” He rolled his eyes, leaning forward with a huff to tap at one of the images, a low static sounding as the audio of a memory began to play, capturing their attention.

“--make us leave? But we--entire lives here! They can’t--to us!” a voice whispered, growing in volume and horror, cutting in and out before smoothing, as though it’d been corrupted either intentionally or with time.

“It’s for the best. You’re--dangerous. Think--future generations.”

“They--erase us! Because they’re ashamed, with all the talk of genetics and purity. It’s bullshit! So what I’m part human? I’m--elf, too.”

“--not my choice! Please don’t fight it. I don’t want--to happen to you.”

The clip cut out there, but Sophie swore the crackling memory was still playing with the way the voices rang in her ears.

Part human, part elf.

Maruca swallowed. “Um. That said what I thought it said, right?”

“If you thought it was someone saying they were part elf and part human, then yeah, it did.” Wylie bit at his thumb absentmindedly, eyes wide and dazed, unfocused in the direction the voice had come from.

Sophie ran her fingers through her hair in an attempt to center herself. “But why would they hide this? What did…what happened to them?”

Was this person the only half-elf? Who were they talking to in that audio clip? When was it from? She hadn't the faintest clue how to even begin figuring out how to find that out, let alone knowing what any of that information would do.

A floating projection drifted close to Dex’s right, so he grabbed it out of the air.

Covered in text, he read it aloud, squinting and stumbling through the archaic words as he skimmed. “From here toward, all mentions made of persons of impure elven blood will be discontinued. In the interests of all elves, mention will no longer be permitted in any medias or classes offered in the elven curriculums. Those found in violation of this decree--” he cut off there, having gotten to the part that outlined the punishments, face pale.

“They erased them,” Tam murmured, looking similarly pallid as he squinted around at the various pieces of history stored away and forgotten in this little cache--how had it come to be there? What was it doing in the Atlantis library of all places. Where had it even been? It was the sea serpent that’d found it, not them.

Fitz shook his head. “I don’t get it--why would the council send us after this? What does it matter? Well, I mean, obviously this is huge, because half-elves aren’t supposed to exist, but apparently they did--or do, I don’t know anymore. But what does this have to do with what we’re doing?”

A suspicion started to nag at Sophie, one she really didn’t know what to do with except ease however she could before it drove her out of her mind.

Without responding to Fitz’s question, she scooted towards the center of the revolving sphere of projections, feeling an awful lot like she was back in that facility in the room at the end of the hall, stepping onto that stone and watching the rush of screens surround her like in some sort of sci-fi movie, too. Except the movie had become her real life and she had to deal with all the wild and impossible things that wanted to kill and hurt her and the people she loved instead of just getting cool tech.

She started grabbing at various projections, anything with an image, no matter how grainy or ill-defined; it wasn’t like the elves to have such low quality images where she couldn’t even make out the edges of a shape, but if this had been erased, who knew what condition everything was in.

How had this little cache even survived being erased?

How had it even been compiled?

How had Bronte and Oralie known about it, even if they didn’t know what it contained?

“There she goes.” Keefe pushed himself up from where he was sitting to join her in the middle, scanning around with her. He grabbed at photos she missed, memories hidden behind walls of texts, compiling them into his own assortment to merge with hers.

Marella cocked her head to the side, curiosity burning in her eyes. “Are you looking for something?”

“Not really, but I can’t read the words, so this is the best I can do.” Shrugging, she started to flip through the various images.

The first was a map of the Lost Cities. She couldn’t read any of the elven names, but she didn’t need to. On top of the official printing of elven geography, someone had scribbled in messy ink names in archaic human languages, denoting different locations around the world alongside elven. That, mixed with her admittedly scant knowledge of current elven city layouts, combined with her knowledge of human geography, told her what she needed to know: these weren’t the same Lost Cities she knew.

This map was of a time before them.

The next shifted and moved like those 3-D bookmarks her school always had at the book fair each year, but with a clarity those $2.50 scratchy things could never achieve. It showed a city not unlike Atlantis, but without its signature balefire sconces and pure crystal constructions. This city stood neat and organized, crystal and wood working together to give a breathtaking effect only multiplied by the glistening reflection off the water from canals running through the city; some were dug into the ground, large enough to fit a boat, others small and climbing through the air and gutters, cascading off of rooftops to merge together and flow away.

Crystal in buildings, even if it wasn’t the whole thing, was a distinctly elven choice. Yet she’d never seen anything like this style of architecture anywhere in their world.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Biana added as she leaned over Sophie’s shoulder, squinting down at the image as though that would make something click. But there wasn’t anything to click with, not if it had all been erased.

“I think it’s…a half-elf village.” She couldn’t think of any other reason the architecture would be so elven yet so not, would be hidden in this file about half-elves. Sophie offered her the photo, moving onto the next one as everyone gathered around Biana to take a look, at least those of them that weren’t trying to read through everything Sophie couldn’t.

One by one, she made her way through the photos and memories and everything else visual in her pile, unaware of the passing time, the chill that descended over the air as the sun sought its rest below the horizon. She hardly managed more than a nod of thanks when Fitz brought out blankets for everyone, wrapping them all up nice and cozy beside Wylie’s faux-fire--it’d shifted to greens and whites and greys.

She saw pictures of places, architectures previously unknown but so right alongside everything else, evidence of human sciences and beliefs scored into the walls. The symbol of an ancient god alongside a DNA strip, bookshelves lined with human languages written by part-human authors.

She listened to audio clips of meetings both secret and official. Conspirators, half-elves, finding each other and trying to figure out what to do next, if they had any power, if they could do anything; they spoke hushed of their worries, what would be done to them. Would the Golden Cities relocate them and be done with them, would they be pushed from their homes and abandoned to the elements, to the wild?

Many of them had never lived anywhere else but the Golden Cities, which she realized was the name for the Lost Cities before they’d been lost. Not to be confused with the golden capital, Gildingham. They worried where they’d go if they obeyed, how they’d survive.

In the official audio clips, councillors she didn’t know wielded authority she didn’t recognize, proclaiming amongst themselves the erasure of half-elves from history, from memory. They agreed on their forgetting, a cleansing that would remain unknown to any but them. Other species would not be alerted, their knowledge dealt with separately, and measures would need to be discussed to keep this decision from the ear of the humans; they hadn’t yet been separated, after all.

Scrap of information after another, it was all about the history of half-elves in the Golden Cities, how they’d been practically nothing, then their numbers had grown. Not enough to be noticed at large, not enough for their cities to be included officially on maps--if the elves were even aware of them, but enough that there were villages just for half-elves, who came together and found themselves among familiar faces and experiences.

And this had to be erased.

But they never explicitly mentioned why.

Faces blurred together in family photos, an elf with diamond eyes holding a child secure to their back beside a human with smile lines and textured skin, radiant smile of a laugh frozen in time, the child grinning over the shoulder with eyes brown brown brown like hers.

There was so much she had yet to see and not nearly enough to answer all the questions burning a hole through her chest, to soothe the sting in her eyes at the thought of what had happened to all these people, where they’d gone, forgotten.

She’d never forget them, even if all she had was a fragment of a name on a scrap of a letter, or a picture without a label of someone alive and free and unburdened by their world that’d decided to turn them out.

The tears in her eyes muddled the photos so much she nearly missed a crucial detail in the photo she’d just scanned over, committing these people to memory.

It actually wasn’t a photo at all, but instead a clip of a memory. She didn’t know who the person was, but they were rushing around their home, going from room to room and scrambling to shove things into a bag that seemed much too small, reminding her painfully of that day down in the Underground when she’d shoved the few things she thought she might need to hold onto into that tiny backpack she’d used to run away.

Footsteps pounded outside the house, people calling to one another; the walls were a wood packed with dried clay, bricks of crystal interspersed throughout, decorating the wall like glitter spilled from a jar.

Shirts, pants, things of water, a sentimental item snatched from a mantelpiece and tucked into a cloth wrap, gently placed among the foodstuff squished together in the haste. Fruits she didn’t recognize, breads she did, all shoved together as they grabbed a starstone hidden in a jewel encrusted box at the bottom of a bookshelf. The ancients had been said to use starstones before leaping crystals were created, a distant voice reminded her.

She nearly looked away as the person rushed towards the door, calling out for someone to do something behind them, a person who shared the home rushing around just the same, trying to fit their entire lives onto their backs as they were erased, watching themselves disappear from the history books.

They looked back, someone with flowing dark hair and stubble chasing after, pulling the bag over their shoulders as they pushed into the fading light outside.

Whoever this memory belonged to took the time to look around for a few moments, drinking the place in one last time. They scanned the street, the cobbled ground, the flowers growing in pots on doorsteps, looking at the people they’d grown around rushing around. People with grey hair leaning out windows, young adults tying hair back, children clinging to their parents.

Looking away with shaky focus, they took their companion’s hand, raising the starstone to the sky.

And just as the light swept them further, they made eye contact with one of those children, right at the memory ended.

But Sophie had the advantage of time, of being able to pause and take a moment to scan the streets without the pressure to run, to look at all the other people--elves, humans, half-elves alike, rushing from their sentence--expulsion from the Golden Cities. Erasure of anything associated with them, anything their people would remember. That included the very villages and communities they themselves had built. Included elves.

Because elves lived there.

Elves who had built families with humans in those villages couldn’t be allowed to continue, had to be separated, though the records refused to tell her why. Only speaking of the good it would cause, how it would correct their errors, benefit the future.

Refocusing, she turned her attention back to the memory.

Paused, off to the side she could see a little boy, the one the memory made eye contact with at the very end. He popped into their peripheral even before they looked at each other, giving Sophie more to remember him by, a way to watch this snippet of his life.

He stood with a bunny stuffed animal clutched tight to his chest, curly black hair sticking out in all directions as he reached towards someone turning the other way, holding out a hand. The little boy was stepping towards them, who Sophie could only assume was a parent.

Rewinding the memory a few moments, she kept her eyes on the boy for a reason she couldn’t explain. Perhaps it was the utter heartbreak of the moment, the reminder that children were caught up in the middle of all this. Maybe seeing that little boy reaching for someone when the world was turned upside down reminded her a little too much of the way Phoenix had held tight to her, asking in barely more than a whisper how she’d gotten away from Fintan and Murad, how she’d escaped.

Rewinding further, he stood blurry in the eyes of the memory, only there in the peripherals for a few moments at a time as the memory’s sight shifted focus, but she watched as he was carried, held close to the chest as someone with hair as dark and curled as his hurried along, anxiously glancing at a device in their hand.

Their face paled at whatever they saw, eyes closing like they were bracing themselves before they shoved their device away, setting down the boy and whispering something into his ear, standing up and looking back the way they’d come.

They took a few steps away and the boy cried out, reaching towards them, other hand holding tight to the bunny rabbit sewn of patchwork fabrics, well-loved enough it must’ve been passed down.

His parent looked back at him, a pained expression flickering across their face--at least that’s what Sophie thought it was as the memory shifted, looking back at the house the person had come from before back to the street, that little boy an insignificant factor in the scheme of it all.

They crumbled, darting back to hug the boy once more before they held up their hands placatingly, stepping further and further away, begging him to just wait, to stay right there with every fiber of their body language. Not that the little boy would understand. Not that Sophie did.

Why leave that kid? Were they coming back? They had to be coming back, right?

The memory was ending soon, she knew, having already seen it to the end.

But what she hadn’t paid enough attention to her first watch, before she’d focused on that little boy to commit him to memory, to remember who he was when no one else had, was the final turn.

As his parent sprinted the other direction, he watched them go for only a moment, spinning around, looking around the street with his bunny clutched close, shoulders heaving as he looked and looked and looked, mouth agape.

In the final moment, he looked directly at whoever this memory belonged to, making eye contact for only a moment as they were pulled away by the light of the starstone and the memory started to replay.

This time she paused right before the end so she could truly see him, the snippet of his face that'd made her want to rewatch it all over again.

Frozen on that frame, the little kid trembling, she zoomed in, all her focus on the face she wanted to commit to memory. It was the least she could do for these people, to let them live on in her when she could do nothing else.

As she zoomed in the picture started to blur, but the elves' attentive minds and unparalleled technology left the image clear enough for her to notice one detail.

The little boy's eyes.

Wide, whites visible on either side, they were the most startling eyes she’d ever seen, eyes that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be blue or green, so rich in their elven hue she would’ve said she’d never seen eyes that shade before.

Except, she had.

She’d seen that exact shade of greenish-blue once before, had hoped to never see them again.

That blue and the curling black hair, she could practically hear the snap of his latex gloves, feel the prick of the needle as it pushed beneath her skin, feel the chill down her spine as he snapped at something around the corner, see the swish of the embroidered red cloak that’d hid him for so long.

That little boy, she’d seen that exact same shade of blue before.