A Rational Magic || ONC2022

Seven || The Gateway Breach

"Kat!" Mother yells, her voice edging towards being frantic, and I start -- sending the watch I've been trying to fix flying. "Come here, please!"

I'd much rather ignore her and start working on the watch all over again, but it's kinda difficult to ignore her sometimes. Or... most of the time, honestly.

So I listen.

I expect to find her in the kitchen, since that's the only place you can hear anyone from in the basement, but apparently she'd opened every door and shouted from the street instead.

Which was just... strange.

My older sister — Adalia, sixteen summers old and entirely too full of herself — was already there, twirling a feather in her hand. Plucked from her own wing, no doubt, as she was wont to do when particularly worried. But her wings repair at an unnatural rate, nothing like mine.

Not that mine were ever right in the first place.

"What's the matter?"

"There you are!" Mother sighs, as though I had taken an age to get upstairs and outside. "Children, there's been reports of a Gateway Breach."

Adalia dropped the feather.

"What?"

"Is it the breach you've been worrying over?" I've never understood the panicked whispers — breaches happen much more often than one might expect, and they're never impossible to deal with.

"I don't know, I don't think so... but it's best to check it out. Can you do us all a favour and take a look?"

"Kat's too young!" Adalia snaps, eyes a little too blank for comfort. "He's not even thirteen—!"

"He's a smart boy, you'll both be fine."

And, really, that's that. Adalia never argues when Mother speaks in that sort of tone.

She takes my hand, mumbling something under her breath. A Strength spell of some sort, no doubt, something I've never been able to use.

Within moments, every feather is aglow, and she forces a small smile.

"Ready?"

"... ready."

I've never liked flying. Adalia is reckless, sending us both swerving around various (and almost equally dangerous) machines as we rise, but we don't actually crash.

Our closest Gateway leads into a forest, according to Father, who's one of the most well-known Fixers in the whole of Azaevelum. Most seem to think that Adalia and I will be the same, but I'll never be a Gateway Fixer.

Being incapable of flight does make that difficult.

No, I Fix machines, and even then it's small things. All sorts of timekeeping devices for the most part, but also some more complex things.

Never a flying machine like the ones you see all over at this time. Despite being predominantly fae, the population of Lios City isn't entirely made of flight-capable creatures.

I really don't trust them.

Honestly... everything's horribly fallible when it comes to flight. Wings can be broken. Machines can fail. It's terrifying, but sometimes I think I'm the only one who sees it.

We make it through the real Gateway with no issue, and Adalia drops her spell immediately, looking around for the tear.

Gateways are two-layered, with a shield-like layer hiding the real entrance to Azaevelum, and the breaches tend to happen in the shield. In my lifetime (which is only twelve winters...), there's never been a real-entrance breach. So as Adalia moves off to try and find the tear, I look around.

It's a well, I think, ivy-covered and half-crumbled, but Gateways can really be anything. Azaevelum is generally found below Earth, although Father has seen Gateways in the sky.

I could never.

The trees cast dark shadows all across the ground, so thick that for a long moment neither of us notice the girls. It's helped by the fact that neither are awake, I expect, but when I do notice... well, it's obvious.

One girl opens her eyes, but takes an age to react in any other way. And even when she does, she just sits up and turns to look at the other one.

"Anya?" she asks, barely a hint of worry in her voice for just a moment. "Anya, wake up, get up!"

There's blood on Anya's face, a little of it staining her pale hair. Her sister — they've got to be sisters, their hair is exactly the same — seems to be forcing her panic down as best she can, but it's bubbling to the surface now.

"Don't worry," I say, pretty uselessly. "I... Adalia!"

She's by my side in an instant, hand drifting to her wing as if to pluck a feather.

"Don't, Lia. Help her, will you?"

"Of course." She rolls her eyes at me, mutters something about how useless I am for something like this, and kneels beside Anya.

The other girl shuffles away, watching the healing with a strange fascination. It almost reminds me of how I used to watch spellcraft — hopelessly enthused by something I could never do.

"So," she says, struggling to her feet about halfway through the spell, "magic is real."

"I... yeah?"

"You literally have wings."

"A wing, if you want to be pedantic."

"Eh, whatever. Wing, schming." She laughs, at least for a moment. "Uh, what's your name? I'm Lani."

"Katriel."

"I assume she's your sister?" she asks, waving a hand vaguely in Adalia's direction. "Or are you just, like, friends?"

"Siblings, we're siblings." Who'd be friends with someone three-and-a-half years older than them? "Anya's your sister, right?"

"We're twins, yeah. What's it like having an older sister?"

I've never spoken to a human — I've never been on 'regular Earth' to do so — but I'm almost certain that these are extremely normal questions for two people to ask each other. Siblings, names... I don't really talk to people that much, but they're not magic-based at all.

How can anyone be so calm about this?

"Done," Adalia grimaces, standing up again. "Where was I...?"

She sets off again, looking for the breach, and I leave her to it.

"Anya, you alright?"

"For God's sake, Lani—!"

I know two elf kids who aren't really twins at all, but they act like it. They were raised like it, even if one's fire and one's water... neither species of which are commonplace in Lios City. But Lani and Anya act a lot like them.

Despite their being identical — barring Anya's glasses — there's definitely a difference between them. I'm not sure what it is, but something's telling me that I'll have the chance to work it out.