A Fortress of Pebbles

Aissaba’s life had only flashed before her eyes on one or two occasions. Always a weird experience.

She’d begun somewhere on Earth, in a life she’d hated, with a biological dad she preferred to forget. Then, there was the Fortress, the Room of Sand, her first classes in map magic. There was a Fortress "mom" that was pretty cool sometimes, and there was Tassadu, who was the best. Always had been. Once, a boy two inches shorter than she was; now, half-dragon who towered over her.

He’d been there the first time she’d messed with mind pebbles – the first time her life had flashed before her. And he was there now, eyes widening in slow motion as Orion Johnson, homeschooler from Montana, flung a handful of pebbles across the Room of Sand.

What kind of idiot does this? Aissaba somehow had time to think, as each of the map pebbles activated – becoming fireballs or globs of lava, becoming boulders or tornadoes of wind, becoming spikes of ice, sprays of water, or storm clouds spewing arcs of lightning. All of this, all of a sudden, at close range, each pebble changing the trajectory of the others. A burst of chaos. A micro apocalypse.

She’d had late-night discussions with Tassadu about his desire to change his body into something that slept in a tub instead of a bed, something whose reproductive system could lay eggs – but in that moment, there was no denying the benefits either: his reflexes were a hundred times faster than hers. While she was stupidly watching the oncoming onslaught in slow motion, his body was crashing into her, his tail wrapping around Cassandra and Orion at the same time, one wing expanding to shelter them from flecks of lava and ice, the other one absorbing the electric shock from an angry storm cloud.

Impact. A ringing in her ears. Aissaba spat sand out of her mouth and fought her way out from under Tassadu, who was moaning in pain. The twins were worming their way out of a dune that had formed inside of Tassadu’s left wing.

Aissaba had never hit a child. Ever. But she might have done it right then if not for the fact that Cassandra was already doing it – shoving Orion to the ground and yelling things like “Dad’s going to kill us” and “Do you ever listen?” and “You had one job!”

Aissaba had no time to process this because she could smell the burnt meat of Tassadu’s smoking wing. Her hand dove into her pouch of life pebbles. It didn’t take long to patch him up – grains of sand excreted from his wounds as the membranes and dragon scales healed under the influence of the life magic. All the while, her hands trembled with adrenaline and rage.

Meanwhile, Cassandra continued to shout in the background – other strange things like, “Remember what they told us!” and “Get your shit together” and “I am so telling Mom that you screwed things up!”

Aissaba’s panicked brain couldn’t make sense of it, and by the time Tassadu was patched up and telling her he was “quite alright,” Cassandra had fallen into red-faced silence. Orion was weeping into sandy hands.

Tassadu climbed to his feet and stood next to Aissaba as they faced off against the kids. There wasn’t exactly a protocol for moments like these. Usually the new recruits just played in the Room of Sand for hours. Most of the recruits were, like Aissaba and Tassadu, selected from broken homes. Most had lives that made the Fortress seem like heaven by comparison. The recruiting job was chill precisely because most of the recruitment work had been done by others before any of the kids physically arrived – years of careful research and data-driven selections.

But someone somewhere in the Fortress had screwed up, and Aissaba was tempted to march the children up to one of the four Masters right then. Let them deal with it.

The problem was that she and Tassadu were on probation. He gave her a look that seemed to say, See? This is why we should be on time for work consistently.

“Orion has behavioral issues,” explained Cassandra, apologetically. “We both do. We say and do things that don’t make sense.”

Aissaba, though, could still hear some of those things echoing in her ringing ears: “You had one job!” and “Remember what they told us!” Yes, maybe these were just the shocked exclamations of a twelve year old pumped full of adrenaline. Verbal chaos. Random linguistic abuse. Behavioral issues.

But Aissaba couldn’t shake the feeling that these kids, behavioral issues aside, knew something about the Fortress already. Which they definitely shouldn't. She dusted off her clipboard and re-read their biographies one more time, looking for clues – anything that would make this make sense. The twins stood the way kids do when awaiting sentencing and punishment.

“I think it’s time we got to know each other better,” said Aissaba, noticing something weird. Her hangover was long gone now, and her Earth sunglasses were lost to the dunes. She put on a fake smile – but only with her mouth, not with her eyes. “You’re homeschoolers. How did you die on a school bus?”

She said it in a friendly way. Like she was just curious. Just mentioning a funny little coincidence.