Selene Lanimede

  “Can’t sleep?”

  Staring into the dancing orange flames of their small campfire with a meager portion of food in his belly—all he could stomach—Theo shook his head. “No, my head hurts. Told Faris to sleep instead.”

  The physician, knees tucked up against her chest and her head resting on Professor Moriya’s shoulder, opened her eyes. “You should get more rest if your head hurts.”

  “No…it’s okay. I need to think.”

  “About what? That shadow thing?”

  Theo lowered his eyes from the fire and glanced over at Selene, who had stopped playing on her lyre to ask the question. “A bit…but no, mostly Cyril…we ran into him at the capital.”

  “Ah, Cyril. The ever-hopeful, ever-righteous. How much he’s changed this Circle,” mused Chel dreamily.

  Theo returned to the fire, wondering what he could have done better, what his old friend’s words meant. Wondering if they’d ever see each other again, if that was their last conversation together.

  Are you afraid of being abandoned that much?

  Knowing the voice inside his head was borne out of the same guilty feelings as the ones in his nightmares, he let the vile thoughts freely fester.

  “I guess that was always supposed to happen, though,” she continued quietly.

  Theo raised his head and stared at Chel, who sat alertly while Nate was still as a stone beside her. “What do you mean?”

  The third-year student, who had been around for all prior resets, shifted her gaze to the only other person around the campfire who did not know the truth. “Before I address that…Selene, do you trust me?”

  Selene’s eyes grew wide, her grip on her instrument tightening. “No…no, I don’t,” she answered truthfully.

  Chel smiled wistfully, kindly. “Maybe that distrust will help. Maybe it won’t. Whether you do or do not, however, will not change the truth.” Her tone softened. “Do you remember how we mentioned something about a Circle?”

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t mean the Circle of Graces. We mean the repeats that this world has gone through, the same three years repeating for the past fifty-odd years. This reality that we’re living in right now? It’s the sixteenth loop, the Sixteenth Circle.” She fondly regarded Nate, who looked foggy-eyed for a change. “Nate and I…and a handful of other people…we’ve lived through all of it because we’re bound to the Headmistress. We have a mission to complete, and it’s breaking this world out of this endless loop. Since you and everyone else are neither Ancients nor bound to any of the individuals responsible for the resets, none of you remember.”

  Waiting for the denial to escape from the rebellious, straightforward Selene, Theo perked up when the royal turned to him instead.

  “Is this some sort of joke?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Honestly, life would be far easier if it were,” he sighed dejectedly, feeling his throbbing headache amplify.

  Chel, using her polite physician’s smile, did not try hard to convince her. “The world is in a dire state right now, and there are a lot of forces who are using this time-looping magic to stop the Fate of the Ancients—something that has been written in history since the time of the Graces, far before MATS came into existence. Something that MATS refuses to accept, because it means the end of magic and the end of them. The end of what we’ve dedicated our lives to.”

  Selene looked like she was seeing a ghost. “You’re serious. She’s really going to do it, like Darius said. She’s literally going around killing Ancients.”

  The polite smile turned weak and full of pity while Moriya broke the silence with his muted words. “Yes, she is killing and relinquishing them of their sins—a burden that cannot be shouldered by anyone but her.”

  “Why? Isn’t she just a halfling? I…I heard about her when I was small. The Circle of Graces kept talking about some miracle kid, and some even set off on pilgrimages to Hythe to find her—I remember going with my mother. They…they called her the Child of Hope. She’s not even fully Ancient—why does she matter that much?”

  The professor shifted his piercing eyes from the fire to Selene. “It is precisely because she is a halfling that she can do this.”

  “Haven’t there been other halflings? Like, ever? Surely one of them would have been able to do it if you say that this ‘Fate of the Ancients’ has existed since the beginning of time. Why now?”

  “No other halfling has ever survived long enough—and as for the timing…perhaps it’s all a part of the Mother’s designs. I neither understand nor desire to understand her motives.”

  The unconvinced royal let go of her lyre and crossed her arms. “So you’re telling me that Ty has been going around killing the Ancients because they want to be killed, and because of that, some special forces at MATS are using some kind of time-looping magic to send us back to repeat the same three years over again, and this is the sixteenth time because you’ve never been able to succeed before?”

  Despite all he could have done at that very moment to make the tiny botanist’s life slightly easier, the professor shrugged instead. “I guess, in a very oversimplified way. There’s a lot of factors at play, and it’s not as easy as it sounds. Especially for a group of students.”

  Selene, with her look of utter disbelief, then addressed Chel. “Why are you telling me this if it even is real?”

  The physician nodded to Theo, her voice compassionate. “Because Theo is inextricably linked to Ty and your class, and we need him to help us sever the Anchors.”

  The disbelief did not leave Sel’s face, but her words were markedly less indignant. “What makes you think it’ll succeed this time? Has everything we’ve been doing these past few years been useless?”

  Chel shook her head. “There’s no more time. This is our last chance. They’re coming close to a solution.”

  “Solution for what?”

  “Any problem you can think of,” Moriya started with another shake of the head. “If they succeed in translating the entire archive of Ancient context notes—one of the oldest surviving Ancient texts that has become the Head Archivist’s reason for being—there’s nothing they won’t be able to do. They’ll even be able to resurrect the Ancients, for all they care. The only true bottleneck would be Ancient blood and paper to write with—which, if Ty fulfills her purpose and all the sanctuaries and Ancients are gone, then we should be safe. But what use is burning down all the books, all the sanctuaries, getting rid of the Ancients, when they can just turn back time?”

  Theo closed his eyes and put his face in his hands. The fire, he could still see it dancing. If only it could stop, pause for a moment so he could rest. If only he could rest. Return to that field.

  “Well, yeah,” stated Sel practically. “What in the world are we going to achieve when we’re just students?”

  The hint of a smile crossed Moriya’s face. “We kill the people who are required for the resets. According to the Headmistress, there are five known people anchoring us down in these loops, and four are required to be present for a reset to cast the requisite spells: the Headmistress, Zoi; the Head of the Magic Society, Emrys; the Head of the Tome Society, also known as the Head Archivist, Araminta; the Head of MATS, Narciluka; and finally, an Ancient exile whose name we do not currently know. That being said.” He paused, and the small shadow of a grin dropped completely. “I have a feeling there is a sixth that we don’t know about. In one Circle, Emrys initiated a reset with the authorization of two other known Anchors when there should have been at least three others. We don’t even know if the others know about this sixth person.”

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  “You’re planning on killing all of them?” breathed the royal.

  The professor nodded. “Sacrifices will have to be made. The only thing that will guarantee peace and breaking out of the loop is killing them. We can kill Zoi, but we still have Em, Minta, Narci, and the Ancient to deal with. Araminta will undoubtedly try to complete the archive this Circle, so that will afford us some time after Ty completes her task for Theo to face his teacher. If we get that done, we’ll be able to stop it until either the sixth person makes themselves known, or they find a way to circumvent the four-person requirement—which I’m sure they’ve been working on, too. Until that point, well…we’ll have to consider burning down every trace of magic left, so something like this never happens again.”

  None of this surprised Theo; Ty had told him as much before she had left. He had come to terms with it, but everything felt like such a distant future at the time that it hadn’t really hit him yet. A part of him still felt like it hadn’t.

  “Okay,” continued Sel skeptically, “so…what if they complete these context notes or whatever? The world’s not going to end. Why not just let the world run its course like the Earth Mother intended, Fate of the Ancients and all?”

  “Innocent people are going to die,” Chel countered back. “Are you okay with that?”

  A brooding silence hung in the air.

  “They’re already dying,” whispered Selene finally.

  “Does that make it okay?”

  “That’s life. The world is a horrible place, filled with horrible people. Innocent lives die every day. Ancients, sorcerers, commoners, royals. Wiping out MATS isn’t going to suddenly heal the world.”

  “We may not be able to heal the world, but we can prevent a terrible tragedy. We can prevent MATS from killing the common people, something they’re already trying to do in the name of revenge. Something that started long before Ty killed Eve and her party, something that started long before the Calamity of Cephelia. Is that not enough for you?”

  Theo looked up from his hands—not because of Chel’s pleading voice, not because he wondered what Selene would say, but because of that word. It was that word again, the word that had changed everything. He hadn’t heard it in the longest time. He had forgotten about it.

  “I-it’s their fault. The commoners’ fault for treating us and the Ancients like monsters.”

  “What they’re doing isn’t right, but what MATS is doing isn’t right, either,” Chel tried to reason gently. “Is the entire population of a town responsible for the actions of the few?”

  Silence hung in the air again as Chel tucked her knees up to her chest and shuffled closer to Moriya before resting her head on his shoulder.

  Selene sat there, her lyre on the ground in front of her as she stared at her delicate hands. A gold ring on her left hand that she spun around with her other one, over and over again. Round and round, never-ending.

  “Did Kor and I…” she began, ever so faintly. “Did we…”

  Chel’s smile was gloomy. “When you two were lucky enough to go back, but never with us.”

  The small royal’s eyes glistened.

  “In one Circle, Korinna ended up dying anyway. Her body was even burned, leaving nothing to return to the Earth Mother, not even a vial of blood. There’s no telling what can or will happen. But that’s life, right? Innocent people die all the time.”

  The royal averted her gaze before the tears could fall. Her shoulders shook, and she wrapped her arms over her head as if shielding herself from the truth.

  Leaving the small royal alone, Chel at long last returned to Theo’s question. “You wanted to know about Cyril?”

  “That was always supposed to happen?” Theo echoed despondently, his mind still hazy.

  “In almost all the Circles, he left the party before the war truly began.”

  “Ah.”

  Why didn’t that make him feel better about any of it?

  Chel shook her head with a sigh. “Lucien, however…I hope he has a better ending this time. His fate has never been a happy one because of his obsession with Ty, and it hasn’t ever changed for as long as there have been Circles. He knows it himself too, being closely tied to the Headmistress. Usually she’d force previous Circles’ memories onto him after a point to get him to follow her, if he didn’t already regain them through other means. The how, I’m not sure, but he’s always…felt special. And this time…this time Ty’s altered his path, created a new branch. Maybe it’ll still lead him to the same place, or maybe she somehow got him a happy ending. Hard to say.”

  Watching Luci’s expectant expression from the corner of his eye as he ascended the stairs with Ty—large, bright eyes that lost their luster once he realized Theo was there. Cross-legged on the ground, lowering his head dejectedly, pretending to read his book, loose wisps of hair caressing pages that would give him more than the idol he desired more than anything else would ever give him.

  “It’s not going to be the same this time,” whispered Theo, remembering the bygone conversation.

  “It’s not going to be the same this time,” echoed Chel, lifting her head up from Moriya’s shoulder to rest it on her knees and watching her partner with a soft gaze.

  Moriya pulled his knees up to his chest, mirroring her. “As much as you dislike Ty, she’s living up to the task this time, isn’t she?”

  “…Maybe.”

  “The Tactician.”

  “Theo should get some credit too, you know.”

  “Mmm. All my tactician’s doing.”

  “Your tactician, dear?”

  Theo’s foggy mind somehow honed in on their words. “Wait, what are you two talking about?”

  Moriya’s expression was half amused, half serious as he straightened up to look at him. “The path that the world branches off into if you never trust Ty. She leaves to perform her duty, and you have no one to turn to except for Em. You stay in school, become the next tactician, but instead of fighting for Ty, you fight for MATS. Since you eventually turn into an even bigger hindrance toward eliminating Emrys, Ty comes back to kill you. Of course, she kills herself afterward, too. Without fail. Which, as you may surmise, triggers the reset.”

  That memory…one of the earliest he remembered of her.

  I’ve been here before. You were right here with me. I killed you. But I was crying. It was you. You…were wearing a cloak. And I had a sword.

  He looked at his trembling fingers. Blank. Nothing.

  “She loved me, didn’t she?”

  “Even when you didn’t love her.”

  “…How could I love anyone other than her?”

  There was no reply this time, the heavy silence merciless.

  * * *

  “Going to sleep now?” whispered a red-eyed Selene, her hands still fidgeting with her ring as Theo approached.

  “No, not yet,” Theo responded softly, sitting beside the small botanist. He gently picked up her lyre and brushed the dirt off it lightly. “Can I ask you for a favor?”

  The botanist stopped playing with her ring, her eye on the instrument that he held out to her. “What is it?”

  “There’s this song I know. It’s…I don’t have any music for it, but I know how to hum it. I’m not very good, but maybe…if you played it, I would recognize it. Could you…could you help me write the music for it? I want to learn. I want to remember it.”

  “S…sure.” She picked up the lyre and readied it in her hands, watching Theo expectantly with her eyes full of sadness and compassion. “Y-you can…can start whenever.”

  Gradually, he hummed Ty’s lullaby to the soft sound of Selene’s music, for as many times as he needed to, until the plucking stopped, and Selene pulled out a piece of paper and pencil.

  Watching her draw lines and circles, he couldn’t help but feel in awe of her prowess. She was an excellent botanist and gatherer for the class, but that was expected of her at the Academy. Beneath that cold facade was something undeniably warm. Undeniably human.

  “Selene…” he began pathetically.

  She didn’t look up from her work. “Hmm?”

  “You’re so different when you’re around us.”

  The scribbling stopped.

  “Did…did you dislike Ty that much?”

  “…Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s…she’s not coming back, Selene. You know that, right? She’s never going to come back. You can be honest.”

  “I don’t know.”

  The light scribbling resumed before pausing not long after.

  “She reminds me of…of me. Back…when I was small. When I was weak. When I was angry at the world for being born the way I was. Half-royal, half-commoner. My mother was a princess, and she eloped with a commoner from the Circle of Graces. Since the palace didn’t want such a disgrace to be made public, my mother was dragged back to the palace and gave birth to me there. And it was only within the palace walls that my mother and I existed for so many years. Rarely ever able to venture outside our rooms, rarely ever able to talk to each other, let alone others. My father—I don’t know who he was, how he looked like, but everyone told me he had been sentenced to death.

  “Everyone hated me and my mother. The children and the adults—they bullied me, shunned me for being different. Pulled my hair, teased me for my appearance, for not really being royal. For being a dirty impostor who was only pretending to be special. But you know what?”

  The hand holding her pencil was trembling, and the next words out of her mouth were a sob.

  “I never chose to be born this way. I never chose to be born a disgrace. I never chose this, but for some reason I have to accept it. Pretend that I’m okay with all the abuse because I carry this royal blood in me, and that makes me special. So I don’t dishonor my people any more than I already have, when my only sin is my birth.”

  She hunched her back as if trying to make herself smaller, as if it’d hurt less.

  “Why does Ty have all these people around her supporting her, all these people who hold her up on a pedestal, call her special, call her the Child of Hope, when I had none of that? Why doesn’t she have to suffer, too? Why did I have to suffer? Why did the Earth Mother punish me? Even though I would pray to Her every day, even though I would beg for Her to lend me Her strength every night before I went to sleep, even though I would cry myself to sleep asking for Her forgiveness for being a failure even though I’ve done nothing wrong? Why does she get to grow up loved, while I grew up being hated? How is that fair?”

  In the darkness behind her emerged a shadow, who rushed over to the crying Sel and wrapped her arms around her, so tightly that it drew even more tears out and the princess dropped her music, turning around to clutch onto the only person who could understand her.

  Their golden rings shimmered in the dying light of their campfire. Turning and turning, round and round. A never-ending promise that triumphed over time itself, unbreakable even by the Earth Mother’s designs.

  * * *

  “H…here.” Selene shuffled over so she was sitting cross-legged in front of him, holding out her lyre.

  “Oh?”

  “Take it,” she insisted, forcing her invaluable instrument into his hands. “Hold it…hold it like this.” She adjusted her own hands in front of herself to make it look like she was holding an invisible one.

  Looking down, and then back up so he could mirror her, he manipulated his fingers until they seemed to be in the right place.

  And then Selene handed the music she had painstakingly made to a bright-eyed Kor, who silently held it up for him to see. She held out an index finger and pointed at the beginning. “Okay, this line is that one…and this is that one…you use your left hand for this side, and making a plucking motion…like this…your right hand will do this…and then you practice humming the note…yes, just like that…”