“Wake up! Wake Up! WAKE UP!”

  The world faded into focus in small increments. First, there was noise. Just the smallest noise intruding on such a wonderful feeling, like a pin sliding gently into the skin of a balloon. Then the rest of her senses rushed in all at once.

  Angel blinked in the harsh light of morning and looked around her room, which was shaking something awful. Birds were chirping in the… was it the east or upwards? She couldn’t quite tell, and they were moving really fast. Her brother was gyrating in her vision, moving closer and further away like some sort of cursed jack-in-the-box.

  Wait. Axel?

  “Hooray!” Axel shouted, dropping her back onto her bed. “You’re finally alive again!” Then he burst out laughing, as he always did. That laugh jangled her nerves until the friction caused them to combust.

  “Could you please be serious for once in your life?” Angel groaned, sitting up and scraping her hair back behind her ears. Everything about her felt frazzled and crusted, like an old cat with its hair brushed backwards. The hot summer air last night had done terrors to her sinuses and the humidity was killing her. Ugh. Why did they have to live by a lake of all things?

  She stretched, examining the world outside. It was the sort of green you would think to find on an emerald necklace, sparkling with quickly evaporating dew. She would know; she had just such a necklace. It was her favorite one in the drawer.

  Her room was the same as always. Alabaster white with a splash of teal and a daub of gold filigree. The curtains on the window had been drawn back and the shutters were swung wide, letting in a light breeze that was cool to the touch and made her thin nightgown flutter slightly.

  Speaking of which…

  “GET OUT!” She cried. And she slapped her brother hard across the face and shoved him towards the door.

  He whined the whole way there. “Owww. Why’d you hit me? I haven’t done anything.” But he went anyway, slinking out the door like the warm-hearted idiot he was. And the thing was, those comments were likely genuine. He probably didn’t even realize what was wrong. Numskull.

  Angel slammed the door behind him and set her back to it, breathing hard, listening to his stupid, ever-present chuckle as he walked back down the hallway on the way to breakfast. Would he never learn not to enter her room without her permission?

  Taking a quick dip into the bath, Angel took a look at herself in the mirror. Her auburn hair hung loosely around her bony shoulders, and her cheeks were lit with an angry red from heating the water until it scalded. Her hazel eyes sparkled dully in the fog condensing on the mirror’s surface. She had inherited her grandfather’s looks, but her mother’s build: lean and beautiful. At least, that’s what she told herself. The opinions of her family members didn’t really count. Hers had only a slight effect, but it was the best she had for the moment.

  Due to political reasons, her parents and their children had been hidden from the public eye for their entire lives. That meant she had very few friends. There were the children of the other two natural Paragons, Lord Petrov and Lady Regan, but that was about it. All other contact was forbidden. Even the servants and tutors were kept strictly silent about their existence.

  She began her makeup routine, then quickly gave up when her stomach rumbled angrily. She’d do it a little later. For now, it was time to eat. It irked her to follow her idiotic brother so soon, but it couldn’t be helped. She was too starving to care that much about it anyway. And it wasn’t like anyone was paying attention at any rate.

  Breakfast was a massive spread of steaming scrambled eggs, various spiced meats—including bacon, which her brother was already heaping onto his plate(please let him not take too much, she was really looking forward to the stuff)—and hash browns with a side of some kind of sauce that smelled like smoked cedar and sweet onion. There was also a selection of different breads and jams. Man, the cook really knew how to set a table.

  It was a lonely affair for today. Her father was off on a business trip for the next few days, and her mother had gone with him. To keep him company, of course, get those thoughts out of your head. She was not going to have another brother. One was already too much for her.

  The brother in question was busy being obnoxious as usual. He was talking and talking and talking and he would not shut up. First one topic then another, each one was systematically butchered by his ignorant blather. It was as if he hadn’t ever paid attention to the private tutor the two of them had. Of course, said tutor spent half the time they were together scolding them for how badly they spoke Latin or nitpicking every mistake in biology they had ever committed in the history of their existence.

  Said tutor was also in the middle of walking through the double doors to the breakfast hall with an unpleasant expression on his face. It was two minutes before their schooling was due to begin, and he was already in a bad mood. This wasn’t good. They were still in the middle of breakfast.

  “Oh, hi Master Scopal!” Axel called and waved with his left hand—the hand with a fork in it. A piece of sausage quivered on the end of his fork, tenuously impaled with a careless aplomb. It was slowly wiggling its way off the utensil, and would soon meet its end to the jaws of the waiting dogs if Axel didn’t get a handle on it soon. Thankfully, he did. He stuffed it unceremoniously into his mouth, causing his cheeks to bulge like a chipmunk on a grocery run.

  Master Scopal frowned sharply as he set his poor, overstuffed notebooks on the end of the table along with a volume titled Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Great. Newton. It was that time of the week again: math day.

  “Have you learned nothing, boy?” he asked, as he placed his last book down with a thump. “I specifically recall teaching you how to eat like a proper little gentleman. Am I going to have to beat those lessons back into you?”

  Angel winced. Memories of the sharp smack of a ruler upside the head echoed through her thoughts. It hadn’t hurt, so much as it had been a shock value in the equation that was Master Scopal’s teaching methods. She had yet to figure out exactly what the answer to that equation was, but doing the wrong thing most certainly wasn’t it.

  Axel just laughed, pulling the fork out of his mouth and gulping down the sausage. He stuck the fork upright into a small slab of steak and left it there before taking an overly massive swig of orange juice.

  Master Scopal’s frown somehow deepened even further, his lightly-salted eyebrows doing their very best to pull themselves right off his knife of a face. Angel could practically see his chestnut hair graying in real time. Stress and frustration could do that to a man, she had seen it in her father. His hair was already going gray even though he was only ninety years old. And he was a Expert, at that. He wouldn’t die for a couple hundred years yet.

  The next hour and a half passed in a blur of numbers and symbols and getting smacked upside the head with that annoying ruler Master Scopal seemed to carry on him at all times. They weren’t doing well, and Angel knew it. There were only so many frustrated expressions she could overlook on their tutor’s face before she realized that fact. It was discouraging.

  Eventually, Axel and herself managed to screw up so many times in a row that even Master Scopal couldn’t take it anymore. He stood up and paced, muttering to himself about incompetence and smacking the palm of his hand with his ruler. Even so, Angel continued to do worse and worse as her mind got more and more tired. She could only do so much math in one day, and her limits were knocking at the door. Still, it wasn’t good enough.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Master Scopal said, rubbing his face with the heels of his hands, “Just what is Sir Dale going to think of me when I can’t get his children to manage simple mathematics without their eyes falling out of their heads. And you,” his eyes swung between Angel and her brother, “You two are a disgrace. A disgrace, do you hear? What would your grandfather, the great Lord Castor Dale think if he saw your miserable performance right now? He entered the dungeon when he was eight years old and came out just twelve years later. You’re his grandchildren, and you can’t even do basic math at twice his age back then. How would he feel to see you now? Disappointed? Ashamed?”

  He huffed and paced even faster, feet thumping the floorboards like bongo drums, face red from outrage and frustration. The lights flickered around him as he unknowingly brought his presence to bear upon the room, causing Angel to shrink from the raw wrath she felt in the air. Master Scopal was only an Apprentice tier, but that didn’t matter at the moment. If he continued in this manner, he would kill them with his sheer existence, accidental or not. She had to stop this. But what could she do? What could she say to bring him back to reality when he was already so far into his own head he forgot to hide his presence from them?

  She had to face it. There was nothing she could do. Nothing that could be done. They were going to die, crushed by an immaterial force the likes of which they had never felt before.

  “He would be proud.”

  The presence vanished immediately, leaving her stumbling and coughing from sudden pressure-sickness. Who…

  “What did you say, boy?” Master Scopal stared at her brother. Axel’s nose was bleeding heavily, but he was still standing. He glared defiantly back at their tutor.

  Her brother wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You heard me. I said he would be proud. Our grandfather didn’t want us to follow in his footsteps. That’s the whole reason he went to war—so that we wouldn’t have to. And if we aren’t as good as he was, so what? We get to do what we want with our lives, just as he wanted. He wouldn’t care whether we were the smartest people on this planet, saving lives and inventing the cure for cancer, or a pair of drooling idiots making lopsided castles in the sand. Just the fact that we are alive would be enough for him.”

  Axel started swaying on his feet and wiped his nose again. Then he fell to his knees and forwards onto his face.

  “Oh no. Axel!” Angel cried, scrambling forward on all fours to where her brother lay face down. He must be more hurt than she realized, remaining on his feet for so long instead of buckling under the pressure. What was he thinking?

  Just then, Axel rolled over onto his back and laughed. He laughed and laughed until tears streamed down his eyes. “What was I saying? Did I get all philosophical on you two? I’m so sorry, it won’t happen again. But whoo! I’m beat. I could really go for a nap at the moment, maybe a massage as well. Yeah, that sounds good. I think I’ll do that. Hey Master Scopal, do you think you could fetch the healer? Angel isn’t looking too good right now. She’s all pale. She’s also looking worried for some reason.”

  Angel nearly slapped him. He had had her worried over nothing. Emotions boiled in her breast: fear, anger, relief, and regret(strangely enough). Fear for her life and the life of her brother, anger at her brother for worrying her so, relief that the two of them were alright, and regret that she hadn’t been able to come up with a solution to the problem they had found themselves in. It was an odd combination, making her feel as though she was both submerged in boiling water and sitting comfortably at the edge of a still lake and frozen at the bottom of the sea the arctic circle all at the same time.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Master Scopal was kind enough to cancel all lessons for the rest of the day to make up for his error, and the healer charged Axel with taking a nice long rest before doing anything else.

  Angel kept watch over her brother while he was sleeping. He looked so peaceful, Axel did. He had a quiet little smile on his face, and his arms were spread out across the bedsheets without a care in the world. His breathing was deep and even, his chest rising and falling in subconscious rhythm with the world around it. It was as though even the world was loathe to wake him.

  The birds were singing songs to one another outside the window like they had been that morning. But they seemed to be more carefree, happier than they had been for her. Somehow, she knew it was for her brother. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew it deep in her bones.

  Three hours passed in such a manner—her sitting by the bed, looking out the window and watching the world as it watched back; Axel lying there peacefully, dreaming of flowers and the summer sun—before he woke. Axel sat up with a yawn and stretched his arms towards the ceiling. He looked around the room, and when he spotted Angel, he smiled wider.

  “Hey, sis! Enjoying the breeze?” He said, looking outside. “Man, I think we should take a journey down to the shore this afternoon. That’d be fun.”

  Angel returned his smile, though it was a little strained. “Axel, you almost died. I don’t think you should be up and doing those sorts of things yet.”

  Axel flung the blankets off and swung to the edge of the bed. He was wearing a pair of dark shorts with various different stylized planets scattered across them. Some looked like they could exist out there somewhere, some looked like things from fairy-tales. One of those was cherry red with green and white bands crisscrossing them. It was absurd and comical at the same time.

  “Bah!” He said, sliding out of the bed and pulling a white shirt off the rack to put on. He always slept shirtless for some reason. She never could, for fear he might carelessly barge in like he had this morning. “You worry too much. We’re alive—enjoy it! Worrying about something out of our control is pointless. Loosen up those shoulders and laugh a little. You could use it after all that frowning you did while I was being looked at by the healer.”

  He put on a pair of sandals that had seen far more use than what they were likely rated for. Their edges were more tattered than the homeless man’s clothing, and their leather straps were beginning to fray from constant wear. How he had managed to walk around in them enough to do that even while still growing was a mystery to her. Axel was one energetic boy.

  “C’mon! We’re headed to the beach!” he called as he walked out the door, sandals protesting each step across the wood flooring.

  When she was certain he had gone, Angel sighed. That boy was a handful, and he was only going to get worse as the years went by. Soon enough he’d be old enough to best her in an arm-wrestle, even with the three more years of training she had. And when that happened it would all be over. He’d be insufferable. Sure, he wouldn’t brag about it more than the first couple times, but she also wouldn’t be able to pull a fast one on him and challenge him to a game where she had decent odds of winning. She could try a cooking competition, but he probably wouldn’t bother. She was the only one who was learning to cook.

  That meant he’d be able to do whatever he wanted without her being able to stop him. And he was a boy, which meant whatever he wanted to do would probably be something incredibly foolish and quite possibly dangerous. In fact, he was probably on his way do do something like that right at that minute.

  With that thought in mind, Angel stood and walked back to her room to get changed into appropriate beachwear. None of that skimpy stuff she heard other girls thought looked pretty or cute or whatever word they decided to use. Whatever it was, it wasn’t beachwear. It was just glorified underwear and she wouldn’t be caught dead with that on outside her room.

  Instead, she put on a breathable white shirt and a pair of turquoise shorts. She considered changing out her shirt because her brother was wearing a white one as well, but what did it matter? Nobody would care, and she wasn’t going to go through the hassle of choosing a color that would go well with turquoise.

  Putting on a pair of brand new flip-flops, she squeaked her way out the back entrance of the manor and out into the yard. It was a fairly large property, with extensive gardens and a fountain in the center of the grounds. The grass sloped down towards a tree line in the near distance where it gave way to a beach of soft sand bordering a pristine lake. They had the lake all to themselves, as no civilians were allowed anywhere within two miles of the place. Still, it wasn’t a military base so she didn’t really know why.

  Her brother was already in the water, splashing about and making a general ruckus. He had taken his shirt off and left it lying with his towel across the back of a chair on the small pavilion off to the side. Why had he even bothered bringing a shirt in the first place? He was just going to take it off, and he always complained about having to lug it back to his room and getting it all wet. Jokingly, of course, because he seemed to be incapable being anything other than cheerful.

  Angel set her towel down on the glass table and reclined in one of the chairs under the umbrella. The chair wasn’t the most comfortable of things, but it was better than nothing out here where the sand was everywhere.

  She pulled out her new favorite book, Unchartable Depths, and began to read. It was a book on space and how far humanity had managed to travel before the war. Space exploration hadn’t started back up quite yet, partially because people were still terrified of what would happen if they encountered something like the Ezgendi again, and partially because there wasn’t enough money to do so. All of it had been expended in the war effort.

  Still, it was fascinating to learn about the giant clouds of gas that birthed stars and the even larger holes in existence that sucked everything in and never let it out again. Black holes, they were called. Not a very imaginative name.

  This when on for a while—her reading, Axel splashing around—until he had the brilliant idea to get her to join him in the water.

  “Come on, sis, the water’s perfect!” he whined, continuing to pester her for perhaps the twentieth time in a row.

  Angel slid her bookmark back into position and set her book aside. “Fine, but only for half an hour. After that, I’m going back to my book.”

  Axel rapidly agreed to that, and took off running towards the water. When he had gotten about two thirds of the way there, he turned around to make sure she was coming. Kinda like a dog, now that she thought about it. Yeah, a dog on a walk, wanting his master to hurry up and walk faster so he could experience all the new sights and smells along the way.

  She decided to indulge her brother, for once, so she kicked off her flip-flops and raced towards the lake. Now it was her turn to laugh as Axel turned a bit too quickly and slipped, falling straight onto his face.

  Victory was hers.

  She splashed into the water, sending up sheets of spray as the water protested her movements. It was wonderfully cool, lapping at the shins and contrasting the hot summer afternoon, which was somehow already getting late. Now, if she could slowly submerge herself so as not to get cold all at once…

  Axel tackled her from behind, and they crashed together into the cool water, which instantly turned colder than it had originally felt as her belly and chest touched it. She screeched loudly, getting water in her mouth and coughing it back up. Oh she was going to get him!

  But he was already up and pounding the surface, causing waves to crash over her. How had he gotten up so quickly? Not fair! Angel tackled him in turn and gave him the treatment he had given her. Unfortunately, he knew better than to breath in the moment he reached the surface so she was unable to get that part of her revenge.

  They performed the “splishy-splashy” game, as Axel called it, for a while before they got bored and decided to do a couple races. She won, of course. He wasn’t quite able to beat her yet, and she was going to take heavy advantage of that.

  Soon enough, they were just swimming back and forth. The water wasn’t too exciting once all the energetic stuff had been done. All that was left was just doing laps along the shore until they were bored enough to get out. Now, if this had been the ocean, or if they had had friends to play with, that would be a different story. There were entire days of fun to be had if they had more friends. Even in the ocean they could go looking for shells or play “withstand the biggest wave you can.” But alas, they only had a lake.

  Even so, when they eventually got out of the water, Angel noticed that far more than half an hour had passed. She had been having too much fun to even notice the passage of time.

  Axel was nearly dragging himself out of the water. He had had a very eventful day, and it was probably time for him to go back, eat dinner, and take a long night’s rest before tomorrow slapped him across the face. She turned around to watch him, amused.

  Doing so saved her life.

  Something whizzed past, leaving an audible buzz right where she had been a moment before. It dragged a long line of fire across her upper back, tearing her shirt and thumping ominously into the ground with a spray of sand.

  At nearly the same time, Axel let out a shout of pain and staggered. He was holding his belly, which was gushing red, a crossbow bolt sunk deep into where his stomach was.

  Angel dashed over, another bolt whizzing past and leaving a gash in her leg. She threw herself down beside her brother as the automatic protections on the property took effect and a pair of thunderbolts slammed into the line of trees about a hundred yards further up the beach, then another pair followed the first. Whoever the intruders were, if they were any lower than Journeyman tier they were dead now.

  But that wouldn’t help her brother. He was lying on the sand, breathing weakly. There was so much blood. Too much blood. She was going to be sick.

  Only the fletching of the bolt was still visible above his skin. It had been a broad-head, tearing the flesh as it entered and rendering organs as little more than flayed pieces of meat and gristle. Blood bubbled up from the wound and spilled like little streams down into the stained sand, turning it a mournful red of roses’ tears.

  He coughed weakly, blood trailing like bitter wine from the corners of his mouth and across his cheeks.

  “Angel,” he rasped, looking up at her with glazed eyes.

  “Save your strength,” she said, “We’ll get you to a healer soon and you’ll need all the help you can get. Somebody, help us!” she shouted this last up to the manor where there were always servants in hearing range of the lake.

  “Angel. Angel!” her brother coughed, bringing her attention back to him, “There’s no point. They won’t be able to help in time, maybe not even to save you. There’s a sound barrier and an illusion set over this place. I should have noticed it sooner.”

  “How do you know?”

  Axel shrugged painfully, coughing up more blood, “We should have heard the dinner bell by now—it’s after five. Either way, no help is coming, so listen to me. I need you to stay strong for what’s coming. It was kept from you for a long time, but… with this… father may not have a choice. You’ll have to enter the dungeon in my stead. Stay alive, whatever you do.”He spasmed sharply, voice becoming weaker. “I love you, Angel. Always remember that. And remember the five—”

  A knife plunged into his throat, sending a weak spray of blood onto Angel’s white shirt. She screamed, fear and pain and horror and disgust painting the sky haywire and rocking the foundations of the world.

  A tall figure dressed all in black faded into view, holding a wicked knife with a jagged edge. He licked it. “Delicious,” he sighed, “I do so love the blood of human young. It tastes more alive than elder samples.”

  “Who are you?” Angel’s voice cracked with loss as she challenged him.

  The man laughed long and hard and full of malice. “Oh, but my dear, don’t you recognize me?”

  He flicked back a generous hood to reveal a face practically mirroring the one on the ground next to her. Those same brown eyes staring out, the same nose, the same shade of hair. But the expression was completely different. It was warped and twisted by hatred.

  “Father?” her voice was weak, barely a whisper of a whisper.

  That familiar face contorted into a sick smile. “Indeed. I have grown tired of this charade. Of wearing the same smile day in and day out. So has your mother, but her face is away at the moment taking care of some other business.”

  In the distance, a voice called out, “Angel, Axel, where are you? It’s been dinnertime for nearly an hour. Hello?”

  Her father grimaced, “Seems as though my time is up. You got lucky, girl. I can’t afford to waste this face on something so trivial as this. And besides, they’ll never believe you anyway.”

  With those words he vanished once again, and the knife dropped with a thump to bounce off Axel’s chest and onto the sand. Blood and saliva dripped off the edge.

  Angel sagged, defeated. Her brother was dead, her father his murderer; and her mother was off who knew where committing tragedies as well. Her life had been turned upside down in an instant, and no one knew what would come next. Those eyes, pale and lifeless, stared up at her in sorrow. Those bloody palms were mirror images of her own, trying and failing to hold the lifeblood of her brother inside.

  She didn’t notice the pair of strong arms heave her from the ground by his body, nor could she feel the evening breeze caressing her cheeks as she was carried inside, all the while seeing nothing but that pale and bloody face.

  The laughter in the world had been cut off, sharp and sudden, like a bug crushed beneath the heel of a boot. The joy had decayed and turned ashen, blown into dust by the winds of violence and death. It would never be the same. It would never return to those vaunted hallways and arched ceilings of the whitewashed manor.

  Her brother’s corpse was carried in after her and laid on a medical bed. He was covered in a shroud that was almost immediately stained a dirty red. She watched this stain slowly expand as her back and leg were stitched up. The pain was far away, as if also tucked away under that tainted shroud. That foul and tainted shroud hiding such cruel fate behind bars of cloth.

  Yet the world was none the wiser, for their family had been hidden from its eyes. None knew that one of the few remaining pillars of hope had just crumbled and left the world all the more destitute for its unacknowledged loss.

  Oh such cruel fate.