ENDOPLANET

Chen had snuck out of the infirmary shortly before dawn.  Lay had been muttering distractedly about government officials invading his territory and needing to clear things up, and once Chen had heard enough to discover that it was very likely the officials were coming to see him (“why Kris can’t delay so there’s actually proper notice for these kinds of things,” Lay had huffed as he uprooted Silva and tucked her into a bed before hiding the plant pot), he had waited until Lay turned in for the night – or day, since it was about six in the morning – and quietly gathered his things together and slipped out of the door.

It was absolutely freezing outside, but he barely noticed as he wandered aimlessly through the deserted academy, his mind preoccupied by other things.

At some point, he was going to have to face up to the fact that he was going to be put through his paces by officials, and probably by officials who weren’t keen on magic but viewed it as the only way to save them all from the Red Eye tribe.  They were at war, after all, and Chen had made national news when he’d been found as an orphan in a village full of dead people – and then he’d made national news again when people got wind of the fact that he could manipulate lightning.  It was at that point that he’d ditched his real name of Jongdae, smartened up his appearance, and turned himself into a bright, sunny person whom nobody would suspect of being the shell shocked little kid sparking with electricity.  It helped that lightning manipulation wasn’t uncommon among magic users.  Chen just happened to be a heck of a lot more powerful than most of them.

Then there was the war itself.  Chen didn’t want to get involved in it if he didn’t have to, but he knew that his firepower – when he wasn’t on ebb – was the highest in the school, and he could only accurately control small pulses of electricity.  What he had overheard from Kris and Lay’s conversations, though, things were bad.  The Red Eye tribe was shutting off all the electricity it didn’t need all over the country and the toll of the war was making resources to power electricity rare in any case.  He knew that keeping all the electrics on in the academy by himself at full power wouldn’t be a problem – that was low level power manipulation, and comparatively little electricity in terms of what he was able to produce, but there was no way that he’d be able to do that alongside fighting, because he’d just get distracted, and that would probably mean he would blow things up.

And then there was that dream.  He’d had it every time he’d closed his eyes, and it was beginning to suffocate him.  The feeling of anxiety at being lost continued to gnaw at him long after he’d managed to convince himself that the maze was only a dream, and that it was probably a subconscious expression of his fear and confusion at potentially having to fight, but those tall, forbidding grey walls that just went up and up and up into blackness, too smooth for handholds, and turnings that all looked identical, and the dim lighting and the feeling of constantly being chased— it had left him rattled.

The girl always featured, too.  Most of the time, she stopped him, freezing his movements.  On one occasion, she hadn’t, and she’d collapsed as soon as Chen got up to her.  On another, she was standing there clutching Silva upside down by the feet, looking horrified.

In the last dream, she had stopped Chen as usual, and he had once again pleaded desperately for her to let him go so that he could escape the animal pursuing him.  With great reluctance, she had eventually extended a hand towards him.  Chen had snatched at it and accidentally electrocuted her.  Even several hours later, her scream was still echoing in his ears.

And so was his, because when he had dropped her and turned around, the animal chasing him wasn’t an animal at all, but a demonic-looking Silva with drool dripping from her open mouth like an angry dog, and her eyes were livid red.

He was still rattled by how terrifying she had looked, and also by his blind panic at the thought that he might have killed the other girl.  To say it had been a relief to wake up was putting it incredibly mildly.

The security guard at the entrance to the school grounds looked very unawake, nursing a cup of coffee and his breath condensing on the air.  He raised an eyebrow at Chen, but yawned instead of bothering to stop him from walking off campus during curfew.  Chen probably wouldn’t have listened to him if he’d tried, in any case.  He wanted space and fresh air, and it had been a while since he last left the grounds anyway.

Outside the walls demarking the end of the academy’s property, it was much more exposed, much windier, and the snow was much deeper.  Chen shivered and cursed internally as he almost got stuck in a drift that was knee deep, regretting not stopping to steal an infirmary blanket or detour via his room to get a coat.  He really couldn’t be bothered to go back at that point, though: he knew that about a ten minute walk away, there was a small outcrop of rocks on a low hill and a copse of tightly knit pine trees next to it where he could shelter from the wind and just tune out the rest of the world.  He needed a little space to allow himself to wallow in misery every so often so that he could keep up the cheerful facade, and if the officials really were going to come at dawn, as Lay had been muttering, then he wasn’t going to be nearly composed enough to meet them.

Using tiny bursts of electricity to fool his nerves into telling his body that he was warm and to keep himself awake, Chen trudged on through the snow and the wind towards the outcrop.  His face was numb by the time he reached it, as were his hands, but he revived his fingers by tucking them under his armpits and sending a little electricity into them.  It pinched at his armpits too and he jumped in shock before realising what it was and scoffing at himself.

A light sound to his right had him whirling to see what it was, but there was nothing there.  Chen squinted, then scrutinised the snow.  The surface was still untouched.  For a moment, Chen frowned, but then concluded it must have been a figment of his imagination – likely from his stressed and hyperactive mind.  Once his heartbeat had returned to normal, he extended a hand towards a spot in the lee of the rock and summoned as much of his power as he felt capable of comfortably wielding at the time.

Lightning shot out from the palm of his hand.  Chen grimaced and sustained it, though his nerves were beginning to tingle from the amount of electricity travelling through them.  The snow, though, began to sizzle under the lightning attack and melt.

“He’s a mage,” said a voice from above him.

Chen whipped his gaze up to the top of the outcrop, throwing his hand up instinctively.  A black wing dropped over the face of the person who had been peering down at him and the much thinner bolt of lightning Chen had sent streaking up as a reflex tore through feathers on its tip and scattered them into the air.

Chen brought his other hand up, lacing his fingers from his left hand through those on his right in preparation to deliver a much stronger strike, but then a hand brushed the wing out of the way and the face reappeared again.  The man was young – a year or two older than Chen at most – and had a haggard and exhausted appearance.

“Please hold your fire,” he croaked out.  “I need help.”

Chen eyed him warily for a few seconds before uncurling the fingers from his left hand and separating them from his right.  The man seemed to take it as an indication to continue.

“I need to get to the academy,” he said.  Chen pointed back the way he’d come and opened his mouth to say it was that way, but the man cut him off.  “I know where it is.  We’re both injured and I’m not capable of getting there by myself.”

Chen’s heart sank.  He’d been hoping for more time away.  “We?” he echoed.

“My friend needs to see Lay the healer as soon as possible,” the man said.  “He might die.”

For a moment or two, Chen struggled with himself, but it wasn’t really an argument worth having.  Somebody’s life was in danger and he couldn’t turn his back on that.  Wordlessly, he held his arms up and waited for the man to pass his friend down.  It took the man a couple of seconds to get the message, and then an unconscious boy was carefully placed in his arms before the man slid down the outcrop himself.  A pair of black wings lay folded against his back, and Chen instantly noticed that the one not missing feathers from its tip was badly broken.  So, by the looks of it, was the man’s arm, and he was limping as he came to stand by Chen.  The boy sized him up, concluded he probably wasn’t dangerous a second time, and then glanced down at the person in his arms.  He couldn’t see any visible damage in the same way, beyond the person being unconscious and deathly pale, but he figured that was bad enough, and besides, if Lay was needed, it could potentially be something like a life-threatening disease.  There was a small impact as something dropped out of the unconscious boy’s pocket, and Chen stooped to pick it up.  It was a small glass vial, containing what looked to be water, but he shoved it into his own pocket anyway, just in case it was a memento that the boy would want, assuming he was going to wake up at some point.

Chen sighed internally.  So much for trying to keep away from the officials.  The dim dawn light of winter was beginning to creep over t