Chasing the Suns

The Road To Hell

They had told us. They had. Many times. I couldn't count how many times I'd heard it, even if I lived to be two hundred. I could hear Ana's voice even as I did it; "All things end, and we must not intervene.". But that didn't stop me. Perhaps it should have.

You hear many things, as you endure the training to become a Venefica. And, looking back, much of it was useless. But from day one, the highest command, to be revered above all, was that death is final, inevitable, and unquestionable. Please don't think poorly of me in the events that follow.

For six suns, from the age of fifteen to twenty-one, I questioned many of the Praeceptor's teachings, but I never wondered after that particular secret. Why would I? What would a child know about such things? But we are never children forever.

Mama would have said I was always too curious. Always out after dark, always late, always too loud, too nosy, bold. I think she hoped the Veneficas and their Abbey would set me on a more stable path. And the soaring spires and walls of the convent did indeed set me on a road less travelled. I wonder if she would regret the choice to send me, if she were able.

But I wasn't thinking any of this, not as I watched the body of my friend, my teacher, crumple like a parchment sheet left out in a thunderstorm.

"Ana!"

Even as I screamed her name, even as I threw my palms forward and sent lemon-yellow waves of power all around us, I knew I was too late. Mama would have said, I told you so.

I reached Ana's body, barely registering the chaos around us, and pulled her into my lap. In life, she'd towered over me, head held high, but as I cradled her head and tried to will her back to me, she seemed so small.

Everyone thinks that Veneficas are immortal, magical beings of immense power. But we are women and men, we live and we die. And Ana was dying.

"Ana, look at me. Come on, focus!"

Her watery eyes swam somewhere in the middle-distance, as I tried to think of a single spell that might help her. But, even at twenty-one suns old, with my training almost at it's close, I had yet to learn a single healing chant.

The Praeceptors here are the teachers, the ones who deem you ready, decide when and what and how we learn. And Ana had never decided I was ready for healing. Every time I pushed her on it, asking why not, why not, why not, she would pause, lock her fingers together and look at me with concern etched over her aging features, still graceful, then reach out and brush some of my red curls away from my face, and say

"You're too volatile still, Leta, too much power and too weak reins."

She used to say. But in that moment I didn't feel powerful. I wasn't a woman on the edge of becoming capable of greatness. I was a girl, watching her friend fade to stars.

"Ana, tell me what to do! Tell me how to help!"

But Ana's tattoos were already blue, not the midnight black that they should have been. This was a bad sign. Even I, with no healing skills, knew that it meant something final.

Later, the others would tell me what happened. Later, once Ana's body was gently tugged from my grasp.

But with every answer, more questions arrived hot on their heels. How had they got in? Who were they? Would they be back? And, most distressing of all – How had they killed one of the Veneficas most advanced and powerful Praeceptors?

Sat in the Hall of The Ten, in amongst my fellow trainees, listening as raised voices tried to put their pieces together of a puzzle we'd never seen before. In all it's two thousand suns, no Venefica abbey had ever endured such an attack.