by Mary Fan
Frightened screams pierced the air. Flynn changed direction abruptly, thinking he could cross the street and get away from the thing chasing him. But a gold-and-white patrol vehicle zoomed to a stop in the street ahead of him, forcing him to halt.
Someone grabbed his shoulder. Startled, he cried out and held up his fists. He dropped them when he realized who it was. “Mom?”
“What are you doing here?” Mom’s blue eyes betrayed fear.
“I was just—” He broke off and gasped in horror.
The undead giant seeped through the wall of the building behind Mom, passing through the concrete as though it were made of mist. The stench of putrid flesh filled the air. The giant turned its white eyes toward Flynn.
Mom glanced over her shoulder. “Flynn, run!”
Flynn turned and sprinted down the alley, doing his best not to choke on the thick stink. A burst of gold light flashed through the darkness, and the five Sentinels appeared above, flying toward the creature with their wands out. They passed over him with a whoosh, and a bit of relief trickled through him. They’ll stop the monster.
A high, piercing scream tore through the night.
He whirled. For a moment, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. His mom lay sprawled on the concrete, faceup, her limbs bent at unnatural angles and her neck twisted to the side.
“Mom!” He raced toward her, horror flooding his veins with ice. Why wasn’t she moving? Why was her face so still? What happened? He knelt by her side, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her. “C’mon, Mom! Get up!”
Through the chaos in his head, he became aware of the sounds of wand blasts and flashes of red light above him. The giant’s heavy footsteps made the ground tremble, but he barely noticed. He stared into his mother’s eyes, which were as lifeless as glass.
Somewhere distant, a woman’s voice rang out. “Patrolman! Get that kid out of here!” It had to be one of the Sentinels, since the sound came from above, but Flynn might as well have been deaf for all the impact those words had.
The rest of the world—where he was, what was happening—didn’t matter anymore, not with his mom lying here. Her face, whose smiles had brought him comfort when nothing else could and whose scowls had taught him the difference between right and wrong, lay completely slack. Blood seeped from beneath her broken body, darkening the concrete. Flynn hugged her close, seeking a breath, a pulse, a movement, anything. Surely, his mind was playing tricks on him. Surely she would snap out of her daze if he could only get her attention.
But she was limp in his arms, and no matter how he searched, he couldn’t find any sign of life. No, no, no…
“Mom!” Tears streamed down his face.
A hand clenched his arm, and he looked up with a startled gasp. The first things he saw were the Sentinels flying around the undead monster, firing bright-red spells at it with their wands. But if the blasts had any effect on the giant, he couldn’t tell. Each disappeared into the decaying flesh.
Flynn’s gaze moved down to see who had grabbed him. A black-clad patrolman.
“Let me go!” Flynn tried to twist his way free, but the man dragged him toward the patrol vehicle parked a few yards away. He had to get back to his mom—she needed him. She couldn’t be dead. People didn’t just die like that, not when they were supposed to be safe within the Capital’s borders.
“Quit it!” the man shouted. “I’m trying to help! You wanna get killed too?”
“I don’t care!” Flynn cried, but his flailing did no good. “Mom! Mom!”
A small voice in the back of Flynn’s head told him he should be worried about his own survival, with the monster still just a few feet away, but he didn’t listen. He couldn’t leave his mom alone out there. He had to get to her… Had to save her…
But he was no match for the grown man dragging him away. With a shove, the patrolman threw him into the back of the vehicle. Flynn fell facedown onto the black seat, the force of the impact knocking the wind out of him. He scrambled to get up. Before he could escape, the door slammed shut.
Flynn yanked desperately at the handle, but it was locked. Through the window, he stared at his mom’s unmoving body. Her head was twisted, her eyes empty. He couldn’t deny it anymore. The monster had killed her when he’d had his back turned, and he’d done nothing to save her. How could a split second be the difference between life and death? His world collapsed all around him. Everything he knew, everything he loved, shattered at the sight of his lifeless mom.
The giant stood by her body, holding up its rotting arms to shield itself from the red blasts bursting from the Sentinels’ wands. But Flynn barely noticed the battle through his tears. His heart ached as if a pair of claws had slashed it to pieces.
I shouldn’t have run. If he hadn’t turned away, maybe he could have saved her. Was it his fault that she was dead? If he hadn’t followed her out, she wouldn’t have run into him right when the monster was attacking, and she might have found a way to escape. I’m so sorry…
Guilt burned in his heart, and a fresh wave of sorrow broke over him. He gasped for air as sobs shook his chest.
Meanwhile, glittering fireworks lit the sky. The rest of the Capital celebrated on, oblivious to the fact that Flynn’s world might as well have just ended.
Chapter 1
A Voice from the Past
Six Years Later…
Hours had passed since Flynn had woken up in a cold sweat, but the remnants of his nightmare, in which he’d relived the night his mom died, lingered in his mind. No amount of time could erase the pain of that memory, especially when its anniversary fell on the Triumvirate’s biggest holiday. So far, the 93rd Day of Glory seemed determined to be the most miserable one yet, other than the 87th, of course. He’d changed a lot since he was ten. His face had developed prominent cheekbones, making him look a bit older than his sixteen years, and his sandy hair had darkened somewhat. Also, he had, thankfully, grown to a decent height. But each time Flynn relived his mom’s death, he felt like that scared little kid again—alone, helpless, and guilt-ridden over having failed the only family he’d ever known.
Sorrow enveloped him, and a shiver ran down his spine. Though he stood inside the auditorium of the Academy of Supernatural Defense, safe behind the Capital’s enchantments, the memory always brought a strange, disturbing sense of foreboding… as if that undead giant—which he now knew was called a draugr—might seep through the stone walls and kill him too.
But that was ridiculous. Even if the dark-magic-wielding anarchists attacked the Capital again, he was too insignificant for them to target—just another Norm, practically invisible.
Flynn sighed and tried to bring his mind back to reality. He was supposed to be setting up for a Day of Glory ceremony that would be taking place at the school that evening, and mulling over the past wouldn’t get the work done. He glanced down at the table he’d been standing by for the past several minutes, regarding the tall stack of paper he was supposed to fold into programs.
“Hey! Did you hear me?” A silvery male voice with lazy vowels called to him.
Flynn glanced up at the auditorium’s wide black stage, where his friend Brax leaned against a large broom. Bright hazel eyes twinkled against his mahogany complexion, features he attributed to a mixed heritage. Depending on his mood and who was asking, he’d vary where he said his ancestors were from. But the truth was, he had no idea who his family was—something he’d confided in Flynn years back. Though Brax was by no means a small guy, he looked tiny compared to the giant backdrop featuring an image of the Palace of Concord. The dull ceiling lights made the setup look colorless, but that would change once in the theatrical lighting for the Day of Glory ceremony.
“What did you say?” Flynn asked.
Brax shook his head of tightly cropped black hair. “You’re having a spacey kind of day, aren’t you? I said: You’d better get moving before s
omeone catches you sleeping on the job. Those programs won’t magically fold themselves.”
Flynn found it funny that Brax was the one telling him off for slacking. Usually, it was the other way around. “Why not?” he asked, only half sarcastic. “Why do the Powers That Be need us to do this crap when they can wave their wands and make it happen?”
“It’s their way of reminding us we suck.” Brax swept the stage in floppy, half-hearted motions. “As if we’d forget.”
Flynn made a derisive noise. That’s true. He and the other Secondstringers—as the orphans under state guardianship at the Academy were called—may have been called students, but they weren’t the Academy’s real pupils. Those were the Scholars—the children of Enchanters who were studying to become Sentinels—and the Cadets—specially selected Norms training to become the Defenders who assisted the Sentinels in combating supernatural dangers. While the school offered several monster-fighting and magic-training classes, the Secondstringers were prohibited from taking any of them. So they could only take the same boring classes—like math and history—they would have at any other school. But they had it tougher at the Academy, since the Triumvirate had sent them here to be janitors and servants to the higher-class students. Still, with no living relatives on his mom’s side and no clue as to who his dad was, Flynn could have ended up a lot worse off than being claimed under government guardianship and attending the Academy on a work-study program.
Work-study? Yeah, right. Flynn shook his head. People choose to attend work-study programs. None of us had any say.
At twelve, Flynn had been sent by the state to the Academy. Here, he was told, he and the other orphans would learn to lead productive lives and train to serve their nation in whatever way the government saw fit. With nowhere else to go, accepting his place at the bottom of the school’s—and the world’s—hierarchy was the only choice Flynn and the others had. He wouldn’t have been able to find work without a government job license, which he could only get by graduating from their program, so it was obey or wind up homeless. Then get jailed for being homeless, since by law, you had to have a permanent address to reside within the Triumvirate’s cities. Or dead from trying to live outside a city, since no one lasted long against the monsters.
There were two types of people in the Triumvirate: the magical and the non-magical—Enchanters and Norms. Among the Enchanters, the Sentinels were a special, elite group who held positions of power. Among the Norms, the Defenders had higher statuses. Defenders were even allowed to use magic devices to combat the supernaturals, though they were still considered inferior to the lowest Enchanter. Sentinel, Enchanter, Defender, Norm—that was how the hierarchy went in the Triumvirate, and at the Academy, it was Scholar, Cadet, Secondstringer. As a Norm orphan, Flynn was the lowest of the low, and the Academy reminded him of that every day.
A sudden snap reverberated through the auditorium, startling Flynn. On the stage, Brax waved his broom in the air. “Helloooo! Flyyyynn! You zone out on me again?”
“Sorry,” Flynn said. “Was just thinking about how messed up everything is. Why does the Triumvirate make us attend this academy if we aren’t allowed to take the classes that make it a school for supernatural defense? Why not send us to a regular school in the Fourth Ring?”
Brax tilted his head with a dry smile. “To remind us that we suck.”
Flynn let out a cynical laugh. The Academy seemed to have come up with an unlimited number of ways to remind the Secondstringers that they didn’t belong to the same caste as the Scholars or even the Cadets. Flynn found it infuriating. It wasn’t his fault he’d been born without magic, so why should he be treated like garbage for it? And the lengths to which the Academy would go in order to segregate the student body were downright absurd—like forbidding the Secondstringers from reading the books in the Scholars’ library and like ordering Flynn to fold programs when an Enchanter’s spell could get the tedious task done in a fraction of the time. At least that beat cleaning up after messy monster-fighting demonstrations. And anything beat tidying the Scholars’ dorm rooms, since the Scholars seemed to think it was okay to order Secondstringers around like slaves. Which we kind of are.
Flynn glanced around at the auditorium, gauging exactly how much work there was left to do. Not much, by the looks of it. Over the past few weeks, the seats had been reupholstered with gleaming gold cloth, the granite walls scrubbed clean, and the electric lights replaced with brighter bulbs—all in hopes of creating the perfect theater for when the Gold Triumvir would honor the school with his presence that evening. The high ceiling looked empty since the old chandelier had been scrapped, but the magical lanterns taking its place would more than compensate for its absence.
All that was left were the finishing touches, like folding the programs and giving the place one last sweep.
From the stage, Brax glanced down at Flynn and knitted his thick brows. “Okay, something’s eating you. What is it?”
Flynn shrugged. “Just the Day of Glory.”
“Ah.” Brax’s expression turned sympathetic, but he looked away. No doubt, he was hoping Flynn would stop right there instead of speculating about Vivian Nightsider’s death again.
Don’t worry, buddy, Flynn thought dryly. I don’t want to hear myself go on about it either.
His tragedy didn’t make him special. Not here. Almost all his peers had lost their families to creatures of the Underworld, either because the monsters had breached the Triumvirate’s safeguards or because they’d been foolish enough to venture outside the perimeters. Though Brax had been nice enough to listen when Flynn had talked about it in the past, even he didn’t really understand why Flynn needed to know what his mom had been doing that night.
The official story was that a group of anarchists, using the powers of the Underworld, had unleashed the draugr within the Capital’s protective perimeter. The monster was supposed to attack the Palace of Concord, and if the tale had ended differently, Flynn might have found himself rooting for the one group with the guts to stand up to a government that strangled freedom. But they’d lost control of their undead creation, and Vivian Nightsider had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d hardly been their first victim. From what Flynn had heard, they used violence and dark magic to attack at random, leaving a trail of dead citizens—innocent bystanders like his mom—in their wake. Seemed like the only things worse than the Triumvirate were those who fought it.
Flynn ran his finger along the crease of the program he was folding, wondering what would happen if he didn’t finish in time for the ceremony—something really bad, maybe even expulsion bad, since Gold Triumvir Salvator himself would be making an appearance. Every year, Salvator, the most powerful of the nation’s three rulers, picked a “place of the people” to use as the backdrop for his Day of Glory speech, and this year, it was the Academy’s turn to host. The previous day, a special courier had dropped off the Eye Stone, the magical device with which Salvator would broadcast his speech. Eye Stones were among the most closely guarded objects in the nation, since each one was connected to thousands of Procul Mirrors that displayed what it saw. That meant anyone who got his hands on one could send a message to the entire nation, and the Triumvirate, which so closely controlled communications, couldn’t allow that. This one’s presence put the entire faculty on edge, since they would be blamed if anything happened to it. So they’d have no patience—or mercy—for a Secondstringer who didn’t do his duty.
As much as Flynn disliked the Academy, he had no desire to end up on the street, especially not for something as stupid as failing to fold paper fast enough. So he picked up his pace and added a program to the slowly growing pile.
A brassy voice shot through the door. “Flynn!” Mrs. Miller, the Secondstringers’ short, full-figured supervisor, bustled through the auditorium’s arched doorway. Her grayish-brown hair looked ready to fall out of its loose bun. “The Gold Triumvir’s staff wil
l arrive in less than an hour. I thought you’d be finished with the programs by now!”
If you wanted them folded so badly, maybe you shouldn’t have made me spend all morning polishing lanterns. Flynn resisted the urge to speak the words out loud, not wanting to earn himself any extra shifts.
Mrs. Miller turned her attention to Brax. “And this stage is a disgrace!”
Brax slowed his sweeping to a barely moving scrape. “So get some Enchanter to cast a spell, and make it all pretty.”
Mrs. Miller put her hands on her wide hips. “Magic is not meant for menial, everyday labors! It is a craft meant to be practiced for the defense—”
“—and peacekeeping of humanity against the dark forces of the Underworld.” Flynn finished Mrs. Miller’s often-repeated line. That’s a bunch of bull. Scholars used magic for frivolous crap all the time. Flynn knew for a fact that the Gold Triumvir’s son used it to color his hair. He gave Mrs. Miller a fake smile. “We get it.”
“I don’t think you do! Do you understand what an honor—” She broke off as the electric lights on the auditorium’s high ceiling flickered.
Flynn glanced up. Weird… The bulbs shouldn’t have been faltering. They were brand new.
The lights went out completely, leaving him in total blackness. He looked around, but his eyes might as well have been closed for all he saw. Great. Another one of the Academy’s pet supernaturals got loose. It would hardly be the first time one of the school’s captured monsters or summoned spirits escaped and disrupted the electricity. A few years ago, such an incident might have scared him. Keeping the creatures on Academy grounds didn’t make them less lethal than the ones in the wild. But after four years at the Academy and a lifetime hearing about supernatural attacks, he’d grown somewhat numb to the danger. Part of him knew that someday, he’d join the thousands who died from such incidents each year. Just like his mom. Just like the parents of nearly all the Secondstringers.
