"Serenity?" Amanda was the first to speak up in a class of silence. Everyone was staring at the two magical intruders into our Algebra class, trying to ignore Amelia's unconscious and maybe dead followers slumped on one side of the classroom in... awkward positions, to say the least.

The rest of the class turned to stare at her. She was the only one with any courage to speak. Being apparently part of the same powered race as all the crazy people we'd seen in the past half hour probably gave her a boost of confidence. Amanda has powers. Like, real superpowers. Is that even true? Was Amelia lying?

"Yeah, that's me," Serena-no, Serenity waved in Amanda's direction. "But we really don't have time for small talk right now, because those Bloodbound goons of Amelia's are going to wake up in a few minutes, and we have to be well out of here by then."

"W-we?" Amanda stuttered, blinking rapidly. "You're not including me in that, are you?"

Serenity rolled her eyes. "Yes, I am. You want to live, don't you?" Without waiting for Amanda's answer, she turned back to Mia. "How about using your little bag of party tricks to tie up our guests over there," she said, gesturing towards the pile of unconscious people.

"Gladly." Mia reached for a pouch on her belt and rummaged inside, pulling out a fistful of seeds. She dropped one onto her palm and closed her eyes, and it grew, sprouting then growing branches and leaves in a matter of seconds. She moved towards the followers, and then, as if they were bending to her will, the branches curved and thinned, creating material that looked almost like rope. She then set about tying them up.

In the meantime, Serenity had fished an orb out of her blue leather pouch that looked almost identical to the one Amelia had used. I felt myself flinch involuntarily, and looking around, I noticed the reactions of my classmates weren't too different.

Serenity sighed. "I'm not the same person that DC wannabe lady is. I have no pent-up anger toward humans. I won't hurt you. But, I do need to figure out who else is like us." She passed the orb to the next person in the order Amelia had created.

As he took the ball, it stayed the same. The trend followed for the next two people she passed the orb to. Serenity seemed increasing and increasingly more relieved as the ball remained blank, a sharp contrast to Amelia. Finally, it was just James and me left. He took the glass-like orb with steady hands, wincing as his fingers closed around it.

His eyes widened a fraction as the ball was filled with a sea-blue liquid, but his face soon broke into an all-out grin. "I have freaking superpowers – this is awesome!" He pointed his fist at the wall in extreme concentration, looking like he was trying to his hands into laser beams or sprout claws.

Oh no, now that he has powers, he'll never shut up about it. When James got a higher mark than me on a test, he was unbearable. What was going to happen now that he had something infinitely cooler to hold over my head?

By all rights, I should've been freaking out about the fact everything I had learned about reality was apparently false, magic existed, and I had been close to death several times in the past half hour. It was all straight out of the fantasy books I had tucked in the boxes in my room. And I was scared sick, but it was an ever-present dread building up in the back of my throat that I found easy to ignore and move on to other matters. Because, you know, priorities.

But no matter how cool it'd be, or how much James's bragging was going to get on my nerves, I didn't think I wanted magic abilities. Being locked in some weird magical blood feud might hinder my ability to get into University and law school – to guarantee my parents the retirement they deserved.

Lost in my thoughts, I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin when I noticed Serenity approaching me. Glancing around the classroom, I realized I was the only one who hadn't held the orb. I could hear my heartbeat quicken and felt the blood rush in my ears. I knew it was irrational-if the two girls had wanted to kill us they probably would have already tried, but being so near to someone who I had seen send a grown woman flying out the window and could probably kill me in seconds wasn't exactly calming.

"Last one," Mia said to Serenity. She had finished tying up the followers and was standing a few feet behind Serenity, who held the orb. The petite girl approached me, and I felt the attention of my classmates turn to me. Even Mr. Davidson, who was now awake but still looked groggy, had his eyes turned towards me.

"Take it," Serenity's hand had been outstretched and I hadn't even realized, I had felt so immobilized. Her voice wasn't harsh, exactly, but her tone left no room for argument. She had probably dealt with many people much more threatening than a freshman girl who had slept with a nightlight until she was twelve.

"Sorry," I muttered, taking the orb from her hand. It looked as smooth as glass, but as it moved in my hand, it felt like the rocks I used to collect our summer trips to the beach – smooth but almost grainy. I closed my fist around it as I had seen all of my classmates do, my hand so unsteady that I had to use my other to support it.

Instantly, I felt the orb heat up, but not so much so that it hurt. It was pleasant, like how sitting in front of a fire after a day of shovelling the snow felt. It was strangely... right. I felt a tingling feeling spread across my arms and looked down at my hand nearly dropping the ball in shock. Inside the orb, a blue liquid much lighter than the shade of James's had appeared. I stared down at it in astonishment. Wait, I have magical powers? Am I dreaming? Am I hallucinating? Am I dead?

Serenity coughed lightly, and I quickly placed the ball back into her hands. She put it back into the blue pouch on her belt and clapped her hands once. "Alright, three, a pretty good turnout. Mia, would you mind informing the Academy board and then doing some of your mind-bending to buy us some time?"

"Only because you asked nicely, Banshee." Mia rolled her eyes and knelt down, pressing her hand to her temple and muttering something under her breath, the same way Serenity had done before. She seemed to be talking to someone, and I caught the words mindwipe and humans.

"Hate that nickname." Serenity said.

"Well, it fits." Mia stood up again. "By the way, the general's pissed. I'm going to be in so much trouble when I get home. You owe me one."

"Thanks for your help." Serenity said. It didn't strike me like something she said often. "Now, get on with your thing and I'll deal with the newbies here."

Is she talking about us?

Serenity turned towards the three of us – me, Amanda, and James. "Okay, we need to go now." She motioned towards the door. "I'll explain everything to you on the way."

"Wait, what?" Amanda jerked back. "Where are we going, how long are we going for, and more importantly: why on earth should we go with you?"

Serenity paused for a second, before speaking again. "We are going to one of the border provinces in Refuge, we'll be staying indefinitely, and you should come with me and Mia if you don't want to die."

Her explanation just spawned a million more questions in my mind.

"What's Refuge?" James asked, voicing one of them.

"It's where people like us live. We're safe from humans and can practice our magic freely."

I half-expected the rest of the class to be listening in on this very strange conversation, but their eyes were focused on Mia, who was summoning some sort of purple fog. As she approached each of my classmates and moved the mist around them, their expressions fell and they seemed to be caught in a trance – sitting forward, not moving, just blinking occasionally.

"What did you just do to them?" Amanda questioned, sounding close to tears.

"It's okay." Mia hastened to reassure her. "It's just a trance, they'll wake up in a few hours. It's just to buy time, so their memories of what happened today can be erased by the Academy's reality-bending team." Mia approached us, and I noticed her forehead was sticky with sweat, and she walked unsteadily. Whatever she had done, it had really taken a toll on her.

"And we need to go – now." Serenity added, glancing at the door as if she expected an attack at any minute. "Before anyone else finds us." She motioned towards the door, and moved past the herd of motionless students, hiking her bag over her shoulder.

Not one of us three moved a muscle. Mia nudged Amanda gently and smiled. "Take your bag with you, if you want. It's up to you, but it might slow you down."

Amanda nodded silently and started gathering up her things, shoving them into her bag at random. Pulling on a pink hoodie and quickly braiding her blonde hair, she slung her bag over her shoulder and moved to the back of the classroom.

Mia turned to me and James. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your names." Her expression was open, inviting – very different than a minute ago when she had been fighting off the Bloodbound followers.

"I'm James." He too started packing his bag. He closed his binder and put it in the bag, along with his spare pair of glasses and cell phone. Then he too joined Serenity and Amanda at the back.

"Cassie." I managed to get out. I saw Mia's eyes widen by the smallest of margins. I still wasn't sure where we were going or why exactly we were leaving, but I knew I couldn't stay here. All of my classmates were in a trance, and I was terrified there'd be another attack. I could only hope all of this would be done by tonight.

"It's okay to be nervous or overwhelmed, Cassie. I know the whole magic existing thing is a lot to take in. I was lucky enough to be born into the magical world, to grow up knowing what I was. But some of my friends had a bit of trouble with it too."

"Yeah, it's like everything I've ever known has just been turned onto its head. I'm not sure what to think or what to do," I confessed.

Mia laughed. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. I'd actually be more worried if you were totally cool with everything."

This was honestly the most personal conversation I had in months, maybe years - ever since Ashlyn went missing. My parents never bothered to get me a therapist, since, after the initial breakdown, I didn't really show my grief externally. It manifested in other ways, namely pushing people away.

I felt a little bit of the dread in my stomach disappear. "That's a relief."

"So, are you ready to get going?" Mia motioned towards the binders on my desk.

I took a deep breath. "Sure," I said. I quickly flipped my math binder closed and put it into my bag, my pencil case and water bottle following. Zipping the bag shut, I pulled it over my shoulder and followed Mia to the back of the classroom.

Serenity was staring just below the door, with her hands extended towards the door and trembling slightly.

Confused, I glanced at James. "The door is still jammed," he explained. "I think she's trying to open it."

I felt the ground vibrate and grabbed onto a nearby desk, nearly knocking a motionless classmate out of their seat. There was a pop, and the door swung open.

Serenity grinned. "I could have just frozen it and then kicked it in, but the humans would have probably picked up on that."
"What did you just do?" Amanda asked.

"I created an earthquake." Serenity said. Glancing at our confused expressions, she elaborated. "I'm an earth-shaper. That means I have certain gifts that fall under that element. Hence the earthquake creation, and the sonic scream."

"I literally have a million more questions now," James said.

"Let's hold them for now." Serenity headed out the door. "Right now, we have to go." As she moved down the halls, her feet barely touched the floor. The rest of us struggled to keep up, with Mia lagging behind and taking the rear. After only a few minutes, I could hear myself panting. We exited the school and went to the right. Strangely, not a single other student was leaving the school – even though, according to my watch, it had ended less than ten minutes ago. Weird.

"Where are we going?" Amanda asked, after a few minutes of winding through side streets.

"Downtown," Serenity said, still facing forward.

"Downtown? Why the hell would we go downtown?" James asked.

Serenity came to a screeching halt, and the rest of us stopped quickly. "Because," she said, "that's where the nearest portal is."

"Portal?" I found myself asking.

"Yeah, portal?" James repeated.

Serenity started taking some of the weirder items off her belt and placing them into her backpack. Mia was doing the same. All of the weapons went into the bag, along with the orb, with only seeds and rope remaining.

"Why are you putting everything away?" Amanda asked.

Serenity snickered. "I think we'd get some weird looks running through the streets of downtown Toronto like we're bounty hunters."

"What... who are you, exactly?"

"Mia and I come from a place called Refuge. I must have mentioned it earlier. It's basically like another country, one that humans have no idea exists. The only people that live there are our kind, so the only way to access it is through portals. Think Si-Fi or Fantasy and you've probably got it. The nearest portal is in the CN Tower, don't ask me why."

"Why is it in the CN Tower?" James asked, with a smirk on his face.

Serenity looked at him as if he were a particularly slimy slug. "Any questions that aren't purposely intended to antagonize the person who saved your ass?"

I took a deep breath and responded. "Yes... What's the deal with the two names – should we call you Serenity or Serena?"

"My actual name is Serenity, but I couldn't very well use it when I was undercover. I picked something similar enough." She said, not seeming fazed.

Undercover? What is she, a spy or something?

"What are you, a spy or something?" James asked, voicing my thoughts.

Serenity sat down on the pavement, rubbing her legs. We had come to a complete stop. "Well, since you all have so many damn questions, we might as well take a break. I'm not a spy, I'm a seeker."
"Seeker?" I wondered. Every time I ask a question, the response gives me a million more.

"Alright, time for a history lesson," Mia chimed in. "Our people have been living in Refuge for centuries. But the amount of space there is... fixed, and in the mid-nineteenth century, we were facing an overpopulation crisis. So, the government ruled to send about a quarter of the people into the human world. They hid their gifts and intermarried with humans. So, the gene that gives us our abilities isn't always dominant in you awoken."

I stood on the sidewalk, stunned. It felt like too much information to process at once.

"One of our relatives must have been from this Refuge place, then," Amanda said, fiddling with strands of her hair.

"Yup," Serenity had started to get up, and the rest of us followed her lead. I had to use my hands to push myself off the ground – my legs felt so sore from the running we'd been doing that I wasn't sure they'd cooperate. "Most of your ancestors are human. You all probably have human families. Someone with powers tends to pop up really rarely unless you have kids with someone from a similar Akin background. And always in the same families."

Something in her large information dump had stuck out to me. It's always in the same families... I thought of how I was leaving school, how I had disappeared without a trace. How my family was probably worried sick and would be until I returned home soon. How someone else had disappeared without a trace three and a half years ago. Ashlyn.

I could hear my heartbeat in my ears as I asked: "Could it happen twice in a generation – in, uh, a family, I mean." My voice sounded too high-pitched, too frantic as I heard myself speak.

A crazy theory was developing in my brain. What if Ashlyn was like me? What is she had been chased by that Bloodbound cult too?

Serenity looked at me, her face unreadable. "It could... but it wouldn't. It's never happened."

And just like that, all my hopes were crushed. I have to face the facts. My sister isn't off in some magical fantasy land. She doesn't have magical powers. I don't even know if she's alive. And, let's face it if I haven't heard from her in three years...

She's dead.

~~

This chapter was a little bit of an exposition dump, but it'll pick up next chapter.

Some questions:

So, Cassie has powers? Was that expected, unexpected? Who's your favourite character so far? What do you think the deal is with Cassie's sister?

Next chapter, we'll see some things from Serenity's point of view, visit the CN Tower, and meet our first dragon. But some trouble might be in store for Cassie and crew...

Please comment, and vote if you get the chance!