Serenity Jones

I've dealt with all sorts of weird situations before. Befriending a dragon afraid of flight? Sure. Getting roped into a challenge involving vodka, mustard, and a bloodthirsty cult? Been there, done that. And I'd been in dangerous situations too – all part of the daily routine of an alpha team six-member, a squad of five of the most powerful teenagers in all of Refuge, tasked with winning the war through special ops. No pressure.

But, this seeking mission presented a lot of firsts for me. And one thing was apparent as I talked trash with Amelia Blood – I didn't have my friends to back me up. Electress, I was going to kill our stupid-ass government for thinking disbanding our team was a good idea. I even miss Aiden. God, what's happening to me?

But this – staring into the face of the girl who looked almost exactly like one of my best friends – this was some weird shit. The Warden was an idiot if he thought I was going to follow the script in this whole mission - then again, he was always mistaken. I would never insult the head of the government to his face, as much as it pained me to admit it. I wasn't completely stupid, whatever the stories Mia could tell about proved to the contrary.

The file that the Warden gave me of this area felt like it was burning a hole in my backpack. In it were the names of suspected people with a dominant Akin gene. Amanda Abbot and James Smith were on that list. But Cassandra Winters was not.

I knew our seeking - the magic-based system we used to find others like us - wasn't always completely accurate from long distances. That was why I had been sent, to determine who belonged in Refuge, using the seeking orb that always told us what we needed to know.

But still, it was pretty weird that her name hadn't shown up on that list. As the biological sister of Lark Lang, the most renowned Akin of our generation, she had been thoroughly vetted. When the tests of all of Lark's siblings had come up negative, she had begged the government to try again. Cassandra had been reported completely human five times.

When I had handed the orb to her, I don't know what I had been expecting. Logic said she was powerless, but she looked so much like how Lark had done when she was younger that I couldn't help expecting something more from her – something great. I knew it was unfair to expect a young girl to live up to her sister's shining legacy, but they were the same blood, and that had to have counted for something, right?

I coughed loudly, shaking my head slightly as if to clear it from the thoughts swirling around. The battlefield wasn't the best place for some self-therapy. I hated the school mandated sessions for me and the rest of the alpha squad so much that I had dreamed of tearing the old guy who ran them to threads with my sonic scream. Of course, if I told him that, he'd say it was because of "my traumatic past". He thought that my family – or lack thereof – was the root of all my insecurities. As if I care about some good for nothing people who dumped me on the doorsteps of an orphanage in Refuge's most backwards province.

Lark's sister still had the orb clutched in her hand, which was tinted a light blue hue. I groaned inwardly. Who would have thought that the sister of our world's most famous hero would be a windweaver? Wind-based powers tended to consistently be the weakest of the elements in our world, and if she only had that single element, she would be considered as good as powerless. Seeking orbs could only detect one element, and more often than not a person could more than one. I hoped that was the case with this girl.

She jumped when she noticed my arm outstretched, waiting to take the orb. "Sorry," she muttered, passing the ball back to me as if it was made of acid.

I put it back into the blue pouch made of frost dragon leather on my belt and clapped my hands once to get the new recruits' attention. "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?"

I had always been a little bit resentful of Mia's reality powers – less than one percent of our population possessed the gift.

"Only because you asked nicely, Banshee." Mia rolled her eyes and knelt down, pressing her hand to her temple as she spoke to someone on our school board. Telepathy was just one of the perks of her vast reality and nature powers. She sent a request for a mindwipe team to be sent to the Algebra class we had just totally wrecked, to make them forget that they saw magic. Her immobilization would only last so long, and having humans find out about magic after so many years would destroy the fabric of society that we had worked so hard to protect. 

Personally, I just didn't want to be burned at the stake.

"Hate that nickname." I hissed at her. My sonic scream might have been my most powerful asset but that name brought up memories of bad times I would rather repress.

"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."

I winced inwardly. She had called her father? He was a wealthy businessman in the province of Aluria, and barely tolerated his daughter's mingling with human-born Akin like Aiden and Lark. Every mistake she made farther reinforced the belief in his eyes that she was one giant screw-up. Electress, the situation might have been a little worse than I thought.

"Thanks for your help." I got out. Mia glanced at me with wide eyes, remembering the last and only other time I'd said those words. "Now, get on with your thing and I'll deal with the newbies here."

Now, where had I heard that before?

~~

Two years ago

Akin City Academy Assimilation Outpost

Border of Zirka and Opaque

"I'll deal with the newbies here," Marcus said. He had been my Mixed Combat I teacher for my first four years at Akin City Academy. The orphanage had sent me when I was just nine years old – way younger than the norm of thirteen or fourteen. I was the only one of us permitted to go – they reserved limited spots for the less fortunate. I had studied until I passed out every single day and snuck out to the mountainside to practise my physical endurance, and it had all paid off.

Not that any of the idiots I had grown up with had a great chance of getting in. They barely cared about developing their powers, or about anything really. I didn't exactly have many friends growing up.

In Refuge, a girl almost always shows the first sign of her developing powers the day of her first bleeding. It is seen as a sign of independence since children are sent to the Academy around that time. So, my having been there for six years was strange, to say the least. Now, everything was changing. In the past two years, my classes of one or two other people had grown into those of fifteen to twenty, and my grade now held nearly a thousand students.

I was one of the top students in my year, making up for what I lacked in power with my stamina, fighting skills, and intellect. And standing around me, were four other students with similar standing.

Mia Madaki had quickly become one of my best friends at the Academy since she came at eleven to escape her overbearing father. For two people who had virtually nothing in common – I grew up an orphan in the desolate eastern woodlands, and she grew up in one of the most wealthy families in Aluria, our country's economic capital – we became inseparable.

She had weak reality powers, something that was highly sought after. Although her telepathy might not be something you could use to attack, it was extraordinarily useful in its own right. And with her vast control over her nature powers, the combo made her incredible at potions.

She was sitting beside me in the small wooden cabin on the bottom of a bunk bed, making grass grow through the cracks in the wood for fun. The lighting made her dark skin look absolutely perfect, which, to be fair, it pretty much was already. She grinned at me: "if we're about to be creepily murdered in the middle of nowhere, at least we're together, yeah?"

Despite myself, I giggled, and I heard a similar sound behind me.

When I turned around, I found myself face-to-face with Lark Lang. She was somewhat of a legend at school, being from the human world. Although the government had passed a law a few years ago allowing the human akin – or awoken, as they were being called – into Refuge out the necessity for the war, many viewed them as intruders. Insults were flung at them as they walked from class to class every day, especially by those from less progressive towns in the outer provinces, and those from Aluria province, who tended to be bigots.

Her long brown hair was dyed with pink and blue streaks, and she was wearing an oversized jean jacket with what looked like an elaborate hand-stitched drawing of a Royal Frost dragon, and black leggings. At her feet was a violin case, and tucked under her arm was a sketchbook.

Lark extended a hand in a wave. "Hi, I'm Lark."

I knew who she was.

The insults that had plagued all the other human born kids never had seemed to have touched her, for a simple reason: her powers had been so vast even the professors looked up to her. After her first week at the Academy, she had undergone testing to determine the range of her abilities, along with several other new recruits. It was done to determine what remedial classes you were supposed to take, to catch up with the other kids.

We had had this teacher: Professor Lean, the head of the Element Training for the younger grades. By then the war against the renegades was in full bloom, and he was constantly ranting about the unbelievable scale of power their leader, Rachel Holloway had. She was a reality bender, and she could control minds.

If you asked me, that basically rendered all our other powers useless, but then again, no one ever asked me. They'd ask Lark, naturally. 

He had entered his testing with her with the same face he always had: like he had eaten something really sour. It was just constant disappointment in us, his family, the coffee shop for getting his order wrong. He was pissed so often, we'd never know what he was so upset about. When he stepped out of that test, he looked like a kid on Christmas morning. It was like all his prayers had been answered.

And from there, the rumours only grew.