Kartega

For the first time in decades, magic had entered Tower City. On any other day, Sid would have been glad to witness such an occasion, to see the city wake up for the first time and embrace the wonder of Kartega. On this particular morning, she felt nothing but dread and disgust as she watched thousands of Domers rush the streets. Their faces, rabid and irate, turned from side to side — in search of victims. Their magic had just begun to wake up, still weak in its infancy, but their sheer numbers were enough to trample the Citizens to oblivion.

She had freed them and this was the result.

Her eyes squinted to focus from the top floor of the Queen’s Tower. Somewhere below, she saw a flash of electricity followed by two more, all directed at the same spot. In mere seconds, whatever the bursts of magic had hit erupted into flames, spreading quickly through the street. She watched as projections flickered and died, the poles that held them toppling over with loud clangs. New magic or not, the Domers were getting the hang of it fast. It took Sid months to figure out how to channel her energy to create electrical bursts. Granted, she was practicing out of necessity in dark corners of her ship without an unbridled rage fueling her motives.

“Well, this can’t be good,” Serryl said, tipping over the edge to get a better view of the streets. “They’re going to burn the star down at this pace.”

“I know,” she agreed. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Serryl let out a half laugh, “Ha! Kid, this is exactly what was going to happen. They’re mad and they have every right to be.”

“They don’t have every right to destroy this place. Or hurt the Citizens.”

“They think they do,” the club owner said, “that’s probably worse. And they have their power back which I have to admit,” she smiled and let a few electrical sparks dance from palm to palm, “is so much better than the garbage I was swindling at Magic.”

Sid’s head whirled in the direction of a scream coming from a transit pod docked on one of the streets near the gardens. For a moment, she thought she saw a light turn on but soon realized that it was just more fire. Someone had blasted at one of the trees and the flames were eating through the beautiful foliage like hungry beasts.

“No!” She yelled, reaching over as if she could do anything from where she stood. She nearly tripped over the edge but caught hold of the metal bar next to her just in time to regain her balance. “They’re destroying everything!”

“Have any big plans?” Serryl asked.

Sid shook her head, dumbfounded. Who could plan for something like this?

“They need a priestess,” Tazmin said over her shoulder, her long hair barely fussed. “They need guidance.”

“Oh, no!” Sid yelled. “You are not going to start your mind control right now! They are not the Al’iil! They’re just mad. And scared. And really, really strong,” She added as she watched a Domer magnetize the side of the transit pod and topple it to the side.

“Not me, Stardaughter.”

“Oh,” Sid said. “Who? Me? No, no, no! I’m not really the leading type. I’m more of the lets figure stuff out and I’ll help out type.”

The high priestess stepped aside, revealing the large group that watched Sid with eager eyes. “Tell that to them.”

This was a disaster. According to Serryl, she should have anticipated this outcome once they shut the ring down. She didn’t. Yet another failure to add to her growing list and why would the priestess think that anyone could possibly need her? All she did was make decisions based on zero factual evidence and follow them through with all the swagger of a rusted satellite. She had no right to tell these people what they should or shouldn’t do. She wasn’t the one that was held prisoner and sucked dry of her magic her entire life. She wasn’t the one forced to live in tiresome conditions and sent to work to keep the Citizens perfectly content in their glass city. They were Domers; the people who were here first.

Except she knew how they felt. She knew it because she felt the same betrayal when she found out that Colton had known about her parents and who she truly was. Felt it so deep in her bones she could set the entire star ablaze. What’s a few gardens compared to that rage?

Sid knew exactly how they felt because she was them. Maybe without the chips or the domes but the hatred in her was just as strong at one point. So what changed? What changed her that could help change them now?

She glanced around the room, smiling when she noticed a guard and a Freedom Runner chatting like they were on the same side of this war. Smiled harder when she caught view of two guards help Dalrak sit up and applied nanite cloths to his wound.

This was it. This was what changed her.

It was them.

All of them.

Not the Citizens, or the Freedom Runners, or the Al’iil. It was every single person that lived on Kartega and breathed its air. It was everyone who went to bed gazing up at its moons and woke up with the light of Jericho shining down on them. They changed her. And if they could change her, then she was sure going to try to change them.

“Uhm, magic girl?” Tann asked, jarring her back to the room. “We kind of need a plan.”

“I have a plan,” she said. “And don’t call me that. Every girl is magic girl now.”

Abbot patted Tann’s shoulder in solidarity and walked past her to the doorway. As he passed, people looked up from where they were, wondering why he would be leaving at an urgent time such as this. Sid was actually wondering that herself.

“Where are you going, general?” She shouted after him.

“To the telebox. I’m assuming you’ll be broadcasting soon?”

She looked from Tann to the general in surprise. “How did you know that?”

“Because,” Abbot said dryly and cocked an eyebrow, “it’s what Colton would have done.”

* * *

The telebox was much smaller than Sid had expected. From the telescreens that Sid had seen of the queen projected over the domes and city, it always looked like she was casually relaxing in a rooftop garden. This place was more of a closet than a garden, it was barely large enough to be called a room.

Abbot ran his palm over an interface box implanted in the wall and the room came to life. Lights flickered on from every angle and a projection of a garden with a magnificent sky filled the space.

That’s more like it! Sid thought and walked through a hanging vine.

The projection froze as her figure moved through it, coming alive again as soon as she had crossed into a clear area. Sid turned to the others, spotting a small red dot on the far end of the wall in front of her. “I talk to this thing?” She asked.

“Yes,” Abbot said. “You talk to that thing.”

Though the general was not great with humor or any light-heartedness, she was sure she saw him crack a smile. Perhaps it was at her expense but a smile is a smile and she was willing to take a win where she could. Smiling back at him, she straightened herself up and shook off her nerves.

“So what do I say?” She asked.

“Whatever you came here to say,” Serryl scoffed. “This was your plan, remember?”

“Right, of course. Right.” She bit her bottom lip until it started to swell. “This is much harder than she made it look, you know.”

“Just pretend you’re talking to me,” Ashlan yelled out from the back.

“Actually,” she said, “all of you standing there and staring makes this a lot worse. Could you maybe…?”

Tann, Ashlan and Serryl exchanged glances and shrugged, not bothering to step away. She was about to blast them with a good dose of energy when Abbot shooed them off. Urging them to leave as soon as possible for the sake of the star itself. Whoa, she smirked. This guy is good!

When the group was finally out of the room, he turned his attention back to her. “Ready?” He asked and smiled when she nodded yes. He tapped something into the small screen under the red dot and it changed to a bright blue.

“Oh, Sid?” He asked and she gazed up from her fingers, “Not the goggles.”

She touched her face, realizing that at some point, she’d taken to wearing them again. With another nod, she slid the goggles off her eyes and snapped them in place on her head. Her eyes shone, even in the brightness of the garden projection. It was as though, turned on or off, the chips were magnifying her magic simply by existing inside her. It would be some time until she was able to get used to power this strong but she already felt like she was complete now that she had hold of it.

Abbot held up a finger, tapped something else and abruptly dropped his hand. The garden around her flourished, suddenly coming to life. Leaves rustled next to her in simulated wind and she jerked her gaze from the projection to the blue dot, quickly forgetting everything she was supposed to say.

“Forget it,” she said.

“You’re live,” Abbot whispered and she stared wide-eyed at the dot, mortified.

“Uhm, hello there,” she started. “I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this. You’re probably used to seeing the queen up here and she is definitely much better at this talking thing. Actually, let’s not call her that anymore. I guess she might be just Leona now. Is that how this works?”

She looked to Abbot but he shrugged and moved his finger in the air, urging her to move on.

“Right. Well, Leona,” she emphasized the name and looked at Abbot with a grin, “she was always very good at talking, wasn’t she? I don’t know if many of you know this, but I grew up on a ship. A really great ship actually. Not really, it was a piece of junk. But the point is, I only knew things about your star,” she paused, “our star from what I saw on telescreens. And what I saw was Leona. And she was beautiful. I mean, I used to watch her for hours, just picturing the day I would meet her. And then I did and she was not at all the person I thought she would be. She was cruel and vicious and the more I got to know her, the worse she became. Because that’s what happens. You idolize people and then you meet them and they’re not that person at all. I felt the same way when I met the Domers. Again, we should think of a better name,” she sighed. “And when I got captured by the Al’iil. Everyone turns out to be so different.

You’re probably wondering why I’m babbling about this when all you want to do is fight each other. I’m kind of wondering that myself. I should just let you, right? Because you deserve it. Because you can finally do whatever it is you want to do without someone telling you what to wear, or what to eat, or what time to return home. But you have your freedom now!” She shouted, “You are free! Is this what you want to do with it? Because I can tell you — no, I can promise you — that the people you want to hurt so badly might not be who you think they are. They might surprise you in the end like all of you surprised me. Like I’m hoping I surprised you just now.”

In her peripheral, she could see Abbot beam and hoped the people on the streets had some of the same sentiment.

“So it might be hard to stop fighting. It might be hard not to be angry but trust me, you have to. It’s the only way to-”

The lights flickered again and the blue dot turned dark. The garden around her flashed momentarily before disappearing.

“Abbot! What happened?” She yelled as the rest of the group ran back into the room.

“It’s the queen,” he cleared his throat, “Leona. She shut you down.”

“How? How can she do that?”

He fumbled with the screen on the wall, tapping a few sequences of code. His fingers froze as did his expression.

“What’s happening, Abbot?”

He flicked his fingers and expanded the screen for all of them to see. “She’s screening herself.”

On the screen in front of them, Leona sat in the middle of a lushly cushioned, levitating bed. The color seemed to have returned to her face but Sid could still see the charred marks of her fingers on her throat. She looked serene; serene and absolutely evil.

“That was truly lovely. The girl learns quite well from her superiors it seems,” she sang on the projection. “My darling Citizens, fear not. Your queen is very much alive and well. I will not abandon you in this time of need. It looks as though our savages have escaped and while you may be fearful, I urge you to find courage. Today, we fight for what we have built. We fight for what my mother has built. We fight for Neostar!”

“What the muck is she doing?” Sid asked.

On the screen, Leona smiled. “The savages on our streets must be put down! Stand with me and fight for what is yours! Arm yourselves and kill anyone that threatens our survival. We are Citizens! We are the chosen! We are human!” She shouted. “Take arms and show them why they should fear us! We have weapons for anyone who is going to stand by my side to rid our star of this scourge. But know this, if you are not with me, you are against me. And anyone against me pays the price.”

The screen flew across the room to four guards, tied together with lightlines and bound at their hands and feet. A Magistra stood next to them, a sword in each hand. She was young and beautiful though blood covered her silky brown hair. Sid immediately recognized her as one of the girls that huddled over Leona’s body in the aftermath of the Arcane attacks. Before the guards had a chance to take another breath, she lifted her swords and sliced. One time, two, three, four. Each slice rushed through the air and cut though the guards throats so quickly that Sid did not have a chance to cry out. The last guard’s head fell back, revealing a thick gash across his neck, blood pouring from it like a fountain.

“Time to decide, my darlings,” Leona said off screen as the projection faded to black.