The Clan of Outcasts [Season 3]

Part 2: "The Strange Stone"

In The Harbor (West)

Aurelle sat with her hands folded in front of her. She kept her eyes focused on Denahlia's shoulders--it had been too ingrained in her psyche never to look the Hunter straight in the eye. It had taken a while to learn why exactly that disturbed people so much, but the Gift she carried was so bizarre, so unlike anything Aurelle had ever seen--and she'd definitely seen her fair share of Gifts.

Denahlia leaned back, arms folded. "Taking up arms in peacetime now, are we?" She nodded to the weapon which the Harbormaster and his team had so tactfully relieved her of.

Aurelle snorted. "Well, somebody had to--"

"Come on, Aurelle!" Denahlia grunted. "Are you really so bored up in the White Castle that you had to come all the way down here just to stir things up?"

"I wasn't stirring anything," Aurelle finally looked Denahlia in the eye--but her gaze had lost its strangeness. Aurelle tightened her lips. "In case it's escaped your notice, Madam Watch, things are already stirred up--"

"You're not helping the situation with your vigilante tactics!"

The illusionist rolled her eyes. "Vigilante... I'm just doing what you should be doing."

Denahlia drummed her fingers on the desk. "I'm sorry if my work ethic isn't up to your standards, but I can't patrol the Harbor if half the time I'm getting called in it's to straighten you out!"

Aurelle's lip curled. "Apologies, Madam Watch; I guess old habits are hard to break."

Denahlia tilted an eyebrow. "Old habits? What old habits? For as long as I've known you, you've never been one to slip into combat so frequently."

Aurelle kept her face buried in the folds of her collar. "Shows how little you know me. What was I supposed to do? Just sit by and let the Harbor run amuck? Somebody had to step in, and you were gone--"

"Oh boy! Here we go again," Denahlia's face darkened, but her eyes didn't quite glint the way they used to. Instead, the angry red scar over her right eye swelled and darkened. "I step out for what amounts to--"

"A year, Denahlia. You were gone for an entire year, without so much as a message at any point, telling us this important reason why you would leave your jurisdiction in the hands of a skittish cadet--"

"Hayden is a perfectly capable Harbormaster, I wouldn't have left if I didn't believe he could handle it."

"YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE LEFT AT ALL!"

Denahlia's hand came up, and Aurelle felt a tingling sensation creep in from her hands and feet, up her limbs toward her core—like a weighted blanket had just dropped over her. She tried to lift her hands, to resist the pressure, but her body went numb.

"Don't. Yell. At me." Denahlia growled, her blue eyes piercing Aurelle's own. She closed her fist, and Aurelle felt the pressure on her body lift abruptly.

The illusionist raised her eyebrow, staring at the young woman's empty hands. How had she altered her own Gift? Didn't it used to be her eyes that could accomplish these superhuman feats?
She stared at the dark-haired woman. "What happened to you while you were gone, Denahlia? Where did you go?"

Denahlia glared across the desk. Her memory wanted to bring it all back, dredge up the events that transpired over her absence. She didn't want it. Those experiences, that life had no place in The Realm. "Nothing happened. I left, I came back."

"With a new scar on your face, and that strange thing you do with your hands." Aurelle's gaze cut into her.

Denahlia's lip curled. She pulled out the requisite form and signed it. "This is the last time I'm covering for you, Aurelle. Next time you decide to flaunt Harbor policies, you will answer for it."