A Different Beginning - KOTLC AU

Alleventurre

Sophie awoke from her dream, cuddling with Ella. She'd dreamed about that day again. The day everything changed.

Two years ago, she was forced to accept her fate as Project Moonlark of the Black Swan, so she left her home (and most of civilization) to live in Alleventurre, one of Black Swan's numerous bases. And then the training started.

She sighed and set Ella down to pick at her eyelashes. Two years, five abilities to master. Abilities she didn't want or ask for.

Sometimes she wondered whether the Black Swan was telling the truth, or just keeping her prisoner.

"Morning, Sleepyhead," a petite blonde girl with ice-blue eyes said from the other bed in the room. "You were mumbling in your sleep again. Thought I'd let you know."

"Thanks," Sophie mumbled.

Marella was the only other person her age who stayed at Alleventurre---and she only stayed sometimes for training. She was an elf, but lived normally in the Lost Cities. No one knew about her secret training with Mr. Forkle.

She had an ability called Pyrokinesis that was apparently really bad, so the Council banned it. Now she had to train in secret, rather than their "prestegious" school called . . . Something to do with fungus. Marella was sassy, and often the source of Sophie's embarrassment, but it was nice to have someone else around. If Marella wasn't there, all of Sophie's eyelashes would be gone by now.

Marella got up from bed, fully dressed, and sat down next to the waterfall in their room. "I have to get home soon so my parents don't worry. I wouldn't want to make my mom's condition worse."

A certain loneliness panged at Sophie's heart at the mention of parents, but she shoved it down. There was no point in wishing for something she wouldn't get.

"I'll take you there sometime---to my house," Marella assured her, as if she could feel Sophie's emotions. That was impossible, since she wasn't an Empath (another ability Sophie learned about) but perhaps it was just empathy. Or the fact that Sophie shared everything about her past life to Marella, since there was no one else.

Marella slung her bag over her shoulder and excited the room, not saying another word. Sophie just lied in bed.

A few minutes later her door creaked open, and a Gnome with intricately-braided hair came through with a tray of Gnomish food.

Sophie sat up quickly, making the blood rush to her head. "Calla!"

Calla smiled. "Hello, Moonlark. Are you ready for another day of training?"

Sophie groaned. "The opposite, actually. What are we doing today? Mind reading across this one property? Inflicting across this one property? Throwing daggers and playing hide and seek across this one property?"

"No, actually---although I see your emphasis on 'this one property.'" Calla sat down next to Sophie. "It's been two years since you started your training, so we've decided to take it one step futher."

Sophie's eyes lit up. Were they going outside of Alleventurre?

As if reading her thoughts, Calla nodded. "We'll be going to the neutral territories. Keep in mind that you will be monitered by several of us on the Collective, but we'll be granting you more freedom in your training if this goes well."

Sophie nodded. "Then I'll do so well. I just need to get out of this place. It's like a prison."

Calla laughed. "Not quite. We're expecting you at the entrance of Alleventurre in an hour. Be ready."

***

An hour later, Sophie was where Calla told her to be, dressed in her black training clothes. Their numerous pockets held daggers for throwing, and other that, she didn't know what else she'd need.

She paced around the entrance to Alleventurre, which was right in front of the forest. She'd tried to go exploring it in her two years there, but the forest was something called a "neutral territory," and Mr. Forkle thought it was too dangerous.

Sometimes Sophie wondered who would win in a worrying contest: Mr. Forkle or her human parents.

She realized with a pang that she thought of her parents again---or, not her parents. The people who acted as them for the first 12 years of her life.

One of the first things Sophie was taught was that her human parents weren't her biological parents. Her biological parents had given their DNA up for Project Moonlark---aka Sophie. And of course, when Sophie asked, Mr. Forkle didn't tell her who these people were.

"Ugh," she groaned after a few more minutes of pacing. "Are they ever going to show up?"

On que, the leaves in the trees above her began to quake, and five people jumped off of the branches and onto the ground.

The Collective. They were all here.

"Mr. Forkle!" Sophie's eyes lit up. "Are we really going to the neutral territories today? You're actually going to allow it?"

He smiled, showing his wrinkles. "I figured it's high time you got out of this one place, yes? You weren't intended to come here, after all. You were supposed to go to the Lost Cities."

Sophie's smile faded. She heard a lot about these "Lost Cities" from scrolls the Black Swan gave to her for her education, and Marella often told her about all the different places. But she never got to see them for herself.

A tall woman covered in ice walked up to Sophie and motioned towards the forest. Her name was Squall. Like the other Collective members, she covered up her identity from Sophie. Not that Sophie could actually tell anyone, except Marella, who already swore fealty to the Black Swan.

"Let me explain your training for today," Squall said. Her voice was soft and light; Sophie could totally see her as a mother.

As Squall and the other Collective members explained the mission, Sophie nodded along, hooked on every word. If she wanted to get out of Alleventurre more after this, she needed to do this perfectly.

"Do you understand?" Mr. Forkle asked after they finished explaining.

Sophie nodded. She was to go out into the forest and find Calla, who was hiding somewhere at the edge of the forest. Sophie had tried tracking with her telepathy before, but not at this long of a distance. It would be good practice. The Collective members would be hiding in the trees to keep track of her and make sure no one . . . unexpected came.

"Are you ready?" Granite's gravelly voice was somehow soothing, and Sophie nodded.

Mr. Forkle pulled out a human stopwatch. "I kept this after leaving the Forbidden Cities. It's surprisingly quite useful. And we'll be using it to track the amount of time it takes you to reach Calla."

Sophie tugged on her eyelashes. This test seemed . . . too easy. If she was having this much supervision, there had to be something else going on, right?

"One more thing," Blur said. He was a Vanisher that made himself only half invisible. Sophie couldn't see his real face, but she could make it out as round. "Your target will be moving."

"Calla will be running around?" That would make it harder. There wasn't too much room at Alleventurre to move around, so she hadn't tried it like that before. She was sure she'd pull it off, though.

Which brought up the question from before: Why so much security?

Were the neutral territories that dangerous? Were the Black Swan not exhaggerating about the dangers of this Neverseen group trying to get her?

The Collective members levitated back up into the trees and disappeared from sight. The only sign they were ever there was when Mr. Forkle said, "Go!" through the bunch of leaves he was hiding in.

Then Sophie set off straight into the forest.