Westerweald

  High above the continent of Westerweald, a single Sparrowhawk soared just below the light cloud cover that lay beneath the heavens.

  Curiously, it was alone on its flight path, and unusually observant for one of its kind. Its eyes barely blinked as it glided over the Ashfall mountains, scanning the land below, watching the new additions to the region that had sprung up like flowers in a once-scarred garden patch.

  Westerweald had not looked this prosperous in centuries. Under Hybrid control, the once-bleak land of overseers, bondage, and suspicion had transformed into something startlingly alive. The Lamphran Mandate—the Archon’s dreamwalk that touched every mind—had settled the matter of allegiance in one fell stroke: stay and contribute, or leave and take your chances in the East or among the Gobrin sands. Many had left, true, but many more had stayed. Those who remained found themselves taxed fairly, their produce and coin taken not in exploitation but in cooperation, and in return, they received protection, trade, and the careful stewardship of Hybrid Geomancers who bent soil, stone, and water to improve farms, irrigate parched land, and shore up the walls of towns. The result was a land steadily healing from centuries of division.

  The cities glittered with a new kind of beauty. Along the coastline, fresh harbors bustled with boats—some for fishing, others for shipbuilding, and still others for defense. Plains long left fallow now teemed with crops, and in the Ashfall mountain villages, reopened mines pulsed with industry once more, their veins of iron and silver pried loose by human hands and Hybrid strength alike. The hated plantations had been dismantled. Overseers were executed, their whips and chains cast into fire, and the surviving workforces were offered the same choice as all: service and citizenship, or exile. Many chose to stay. Many died in the uprisings that followed the Mandate, when word of the Lightborn’s death and Lucent’s fall spread like wildfire. The slave revolts had been bloody, costly to both sides, and the bones of the dead were left to bleach in the sun. Yet the living carried on, rebuilding in their wake.

  Everywhere, schools and services began to rise. Lycae, Minxit, Hopla, Dixit, and Tialax walked openly in human towns now, teaching alongside their former enemies, instructing human children how to live beyond the Paths Kaedmon had carved for them. Sanctum’s engineers had secretly run tunnel systems beneath every village—silent arteries of control should rebellion flare—but the people did not speak of it, not during tithe collections nor at the mustering fields. Instead, humans offered their labor and their knowledge, repairing walls, raising bridges, and lending tools to Hybrid masons who built strange yet wondrous dwellings. There were revolts, of course, flickers of resentment and desperation, but each was extinguished swiftly, before they could burn out of control.

  The new order was already reshaping familiar places. Triant, once a minor hamlet, now prospered as a lumber village, its timber shipped downriver to feed the construction of cities. Sentinel, renamed Victory Bay after the Archon’s triumph in the Battle on the ocean, had become the heart of Westerweald’s fishing industry and the shipyard of a new Hybrid-human navy. Griffon’s Watch, once cursed as a prison island, had been converted into a fortress bristling with artillery, ensuring that no enemy fleet could threaten Westerweald’s coasts. And at the heart of it all stood Arcona, the capital—formerly Lucent—reborn as a marvel of Hybrid-human craft. Mushroom towers sprouted skyward, strange and colorful against the skyline, while intrepid Hybrids fascinated by the ocean had fashioned hovels from the shells of colossal crabs along the shore. The walls and palisades, stout and iron-lined by human hands, now gleamed with mounted cannons that promised devastation to any invader.

  The mood across Westerweald was not of despair but of hope. For the first time in living memory, the land felt like it belonged to its people—not just humans, not just Hybrids, but both. The air was full of hammers striking, children laughing, markets bustling, and sails catching the wind. The scars of rebellion and conquest were still fresh, yes, but out of them was growing something enduring. Westerweald was becoming whole again.

  The Sparrowhawk’s long, meandering journey came to an end at the base of the Ashfalls, its light, feathered wings arching back to propel it towards a little Hopla girl sitting beneath one mountain, legs crossed in silent meditation.

  Though her eyes were closed, she could see well enough. The Sparrowhawk’s sight was her own. As she had begun to do every day for the past few months, she had borrowed its eyes to look upon the new world that the adults were making, and found that she’d never felt more free than when she inhabited the form of a bird.

  But that body was not her own, and as the Sparrowhawk came to rest on her shoulder, Mara the Hopla opened her eyes and let it go.

  “Hi Kimi,” she said as the little creature nuzzled into her neck. “Here, I brought you some Mooncarrot crackers.”

  She smiled as the bird began pecking at the scraps in her hands, and petted its plume affectionately. She preferred to sit here in the shade, away from the heat of the great fireball that burned in the sky above. The sun was still strange to her, and though her own eyes had adjusted, she still felt like it was a foreign, malicious object – something put there by Kaedmon to burn the heat up her fur and remind her that this wasn’t her world.

  Above, that red sun had reached its apex. Down in the valley below, she could see her friends playing with some of the human children from the local school. Elise, one of her closest companions, was busy teaching some human boys the rules of Invisi-tag. A Mage was only allowed to use an invisibility spell for five seconds during the game, and in this time it was up to the ‘chaser’ to catch them using guile alone. The human children loved the game. It seemed almost natural to them to sprint around the newly grown pines and oaks on the playground, seeking out Hybrids who were hiding as evening drew in.

  Mara, however, preferred to stay out of such games. The first time Elise had asked her to join one, she’d happily agreed, even if it took time away from her studies of the human ‘alphabet’ (she was still getting her ‘b’s and ‘d’s mixed up).

  But down there in the open school courtyard, where old friends like Marvin were happily playing in the sandboxes and wooden climbing frames, Mara had felt something twinge inside her.

  It was the same twinge she was getting now, as she looked at the human children running after her friends, pinning them down when they caught them, laughing with them, and eating from the big lunch table alongside them.

  She’d felt sweat bead on her brow the first time a human girl had walked up to her and asked her if she wanted to play. The girl had held out her pudgy hand stained with chocolate, and Mara had felt her body move away on its own.

  Elise had asked her what was wrong. But she didn’t know. All she knew was that when that little human girl had reached out her hand to her, she’d felt fear.

  Miss Fauna had taken great pains to explain to them all that humans weren’t going to be the Bad People now. With the Archon soon to beat up Kaedmon and take the world for them, the humans would live alongside them. Not everybody was happy about that (Mr Cormyr was always shouting in the Council meetings according to Mr Borlor) but Mara had accepted this as true. Everything Miss Fauna said had the ring of truth.

  So she was confused when, in response to the human girl trying to be her friend, she had turned tail and run away, finding her spot up here in the mountains overlooking the valley.

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  She felt comfortable here, surrounded by the animals of the surface. The birds, like Kimi, had become her greatest friends. They who sang in the treetops and soared in the clouds – they didn’t have anything to fear from those who walked the land. They were her favorite thing about the surface world.

  “I wish I could be like one of you forever,” she told Kimi as the bird hopped away to clean its wings.

  “Mara!”

  A shriek in the bushes behind startled her. Kimi felt it, and instinctively flew in front of her, ready to strike at the enemy approaching.

  “MARA!” the shrill voice came again. “Maramara!”

  Slowly, fear turned to recognition. Mara quieted her beating heart as she called back to the familiar voice.

  “Elise!” she shouted. “I’m very busy! Go away!”

  “Maramara!” her friend called again, appearing out of thin air as her invisibility spell fizzled. Her sudden appearance sent Mara reeling back, and her friend quickly summoned a little gust of air to stop her from falling.

  “Sorry Maramara!” Elise giggled, smoothing her fluffy ears and patting down her tawny fur.

  Mara sighed, telepathically commanding Kimi to stand down.

  “We’re supposed to talk like adults now, Elise. Remember what Miss Fauna told us? We’re eight now!”

  Elise straightened up, hiding her tiny oak wand behind her back while trying to keep from laughing again.

  “Miss Mara, it’s dindi-er-dinner time down at school. Miss Leela asked me to come get you.”

  Mara frowned. “Oh. Sorry. Um – can you tell Miss Leela that I’m not hungry?”

  Elise double blinked, her feet beating against the ground in shock.

  “But Maramara! You didn’t have lunch with us either!”

  “I – yes. I kno-“

  “What’s wrong? Are we not friends any more?”

  Mara forced her gaze away from Elise’s hurt expression but couldn’t close her ears to her sad voice as she continued, “You never want to play these days…”

  She instantly realized her stupidity. Here she was sitting up here high and aloof, feeling sorry for herself, while she was making her friends worry down there. She knew that it was no way to behave. A Hopla her age needed to be sociable. Needed to be able to get along with others. What good was coming up to the surface if all she was going to do was hide away either in the mountains or within the minds of her animal companions?

  She felt something warm and fluffy on her paw. She looked up to see Elise smiling down at her, her tawny paw stretched over her own.

  “I’ll stay here with you, then,” she said, a mischievous tone of defiance in her voice. “Miss Leela might worry, but tough! We are two Hopla girls who want to play in the mountains!”

  Mara chuckled as Elise rubbed her cheek against her, sharing her warmth. If she was being honest, she’d almost forgotten what the warmth of one of her own kind felt like. In the wake of Sanctum’s expansion, they’d all had to get used to the fact that their little group would expand, too, even if they could all still remember the days in the farmhouse, and the little cottage, which they’d shared beneath the ground.

  “Thanks, Elise,” Mara said, wiping her eye. “I – I’m being silly.”

  Kimi hopped up on her shoulder again and nuzzled himself against her. With both Elise and the Sparrowhawk by her side, she began to feel like she really had been a fool all this time.

  Then, she heard it.

  “Eliiiise!” a pair of voices called from the bushes. “Are you up here?”

  Elise’s eyes went wide.

  “Oh – oh shoot! We were playing Invisi-tag. I totally forgot!”

  Mara stared blankly up at her friend as the girl started to straighten up again and dust off her dress.

  “Elise!” came the voices again – louder, nearer…and distinctive.

  “Alright!” Elise shouted back. “You found me. Now, come out and meet my friend!”

  Mara saw the look of self-importance oozing from Elise’s face. She stood proud, hands-on-hips, as her two friends emerged from the bushes and stood before the pair of Hybrids with sweaty, greasy faces.

  Two boys around their age.

  Both human.

  They stopped to gather their breath before Mara and Elise, knees skinned and faces flush with exertion. In the heat of the moment, all Mara could register was their sun-kissed faces and shaggy hair. One of them was freckled and the other had a big nose that took up about half of his face. Both of them wearing the little patches on their clothes that marked them as members of the Hybrid-Human school program: a little stitching of a Hopla and a human holding hands.

  Mara began edging away.

  “Found you, Elise,” the freckled one said, stepping forward once he’d regained his breath. “See? We don’t need magic to win this game.”

  “Hmpf,” the Hopla girl huffed. “You only found me because I let my guard down. Next time, you’ll have no chance. Right, Mara?”

  She turned to look at her friend and found that Mara was staring unblinkingly at the two boys, who began to shift uncomfortably.

  “Um – hello,” the large-nosed boy said sheepishly. “My name is Bruce. What’s yours?”

  Mara didn’t respond. She was looking at the boy, seeing his thin lips move, watching his hands to make sure they didn’t do anything strange…

  So when Elise grabbed her arm suddenly and pulled her forward, she almost screamed.

  “This is Mara the Magnificent! She and I are best friends, y’know.”

  The boys shared incredulous looks before turning back and staring in wonder.

  “You’re Mara?” Bruce gasped. “We – um – we didn’t – uh –“

  “You’re so cool!” the freckled boy shouted, nearly causing Kimi to flutter away. “Teacher told us you fought the Lightborn!”

  Mara’s lips moved, but no words came out. Her chest heaved, and every fiber of her being told her to sprint from here without really knowing why.

  “I thought you’d be…um…taller?” Bruce mumbled, much to the chagrin of Elise.

  “Hmpf!” she snorted. “Mara knows the Enlarge spell. And she can summon big animals to fight for her. Isn’t that right, Mara?”

  Elise didn’t check to see her friend’s terrified face. It seemed she was much more interested in proving the sheepish Bruce wrong than anything else.

  “Aw I wish I was a mage!” the freckled boy groaned. “Me dad says they’re all scary and gonna shoot lightning at me. But he’s a wuss.”

  “Your dad was a fighter in the army, Rory!”

  “And a lousy one! If he had been better, we wouldn’t have lost to them!”

  Mara felt her bones quake. The way he’d said that word – them – made her skin crawl.

  But he didn’t stop there. Rory – the freckled boy – came forwards and wiped his sweaty face with one hand before offering it to Mara.

  “Pleased ta meet ya!” he beamed. “I’m Rory, and I’m gonna be a mage one day. Dad says I’m supposed to be a Fighter ‘by my Path’. But screw that! Now, we’re supposed to say what we wanna be, right? And I wanna be a wizard. Teacher says I’m not allowed to do any spells yet. But – maybe you could teach me some?”

  “Don’t be silly!” Elise said, gripping Mara harder. “Mara has many important people to see. She’s going to be one of the best mages of all time and doesn’t have time to teach little boys.”

  “You’re no older than me, Eli! Besides, she can speak for herself!”

  While this exchange was going on, Mara remained frozen, feeling blood rush through her veins and pool in her chest. The second Rory had come forward and thrust his hand toward her, she’d registered the twinge again.

  She looked at his hand and didn’t see fingers there. She didn’t see soft, pale flesh inviting her to make a new friend. Instead, she saw a blade grafted onto his forearm, veins protruding from pallid skin while he moved forward, edging his blade closer and closer towards her heart.

  She looked up and saw four blinding blue eyes staring back at her, killing light surging through them ready to melt the flesh from her bones.

  And she screamed.

  “Wh-ah!”

  She registered movement to her right as she fell away from Rory’s open palm. In the moment of her shriek, Kimi had soared right for Rory’s hand, pecking his fingers and drawing blood.

  “Stop, stop!” the boy shouted, while his friend stood there shaking.

  The bird continued its assault.

  “Mara!” Elise screamed.

  The fallen Hopla couldn’t even be sure that what she was watching was real. Kimi had the boy on the ground now, and Rory was covering his head to protect it from the bird’s frenzied strikes.

  Her strikes…

  She let out another yelp and released the bird from her control, watching Kimi peacefully fly away to perch on a nearby tree branch, beak slick and wet with Rory’s blood. As she came to, she watched Bruce help his injured friend up, looking upon her and Elise with horror. Rory’s face came up beside his. The boy’s cheeks were stained with tears.

  “Why!?” he shrieked.

  When Elise then turned to Mara, she found that her friend had already taken off down the mountain path.

  “Mara!” she called. “Mara! Don’t go! It was an accident, right? An accident!”

  Mara wasn’t listening. She closed her ears off to the rest of the world as tears flashed in her eyes. She might have met some of the other Hybrid children during her flight, but if she did so she wouldn’t remember afterwards. The only image that rumbled in her mind was that of Rory’s hand covered in little streams of blood in the wake of Kimi’s attack. She couldn’t shake off the sight.

  So she ran. She didn’t look back even once – even as she could tell that Elise had tried to follow her, had done her best to match the magically enhanced speed that had propelled her far from the Hybrid school and into the Triant forest before she even knew where she was. She didn’t listen to anyone or anything anymore.

  She just ran.