» 03 – The Guide «

EARTH. UNIVERSITY OF NEW ALBION.

A world away, June Winters watches the Chosen One enter her office. She wants nothing more than to throw the girl out, pretend she can go back to a normal life. Instead, she forces herself to merely look up from her laptop and peer at the Hero over her glasses.

June can tell on most days the girl is a force of nature, her hair a swirling thunder cloud framing a face with tan skin but dark brown freckles. She’s confident, rocking what would have been called Grunge back in the day, but the straightness in her back betrays a tightness too. There’s a flash of youth to her hazel eyes still, even if it’s hidden behind dark lashes.

Only nineteen, June thinks. Bloody hell.

The girl clears her throat.

“Hi,” she begins, uncertainty written plain across her face.

June opens her mind’s eye, sees the blazing crown atop the girl’s head she knew would be there.

“Can I help you, Miss…?”

“Kyra,” answers the girl. “Kyra Iravani.”

She’s frowning slightly, unwilling to broach the question she’s come here to ask—presumably afraid June will tell her she’s just going crazy. Understandably, given the only other explanation for what she’s going through is magic.

Maybe I could play dumb, June considers, though she immediately scoffs at the cruelty of such a decision.

“I can tell you came here for a reason.” June leans back in her chair, knits her hands together in her lap. She softens her tone before she continues: “Just tell me. Get it over and done with.”

“I…” Kyra swallows, forcing steel into her eyes. “I’ve been having dreams.”

“Strange dreams?” June asks, though she already knows the answer. That’s how it always starts.

“Ones where I was visited by spirits who told me there were other worlds.” A pause, a chance for June to look concerned, or laugh in her face. When she does neither, Kyra continues, “They told me destiny had chosen me to protect this city, our world, from monsters and magic. That I have a power inside me which means I have to be the one to do it.”

“And in your dreams,” June says, “Those spirits called the space between worlds the Marchlands.”

Kyra’s eyes widen. “So, it’s true? I’m not going crazy—this is all real?”

June catches sight of herself reflected in the glass of her framed Masters on the wall. She’s still only in her late twenties, but dark shadows cut her face under her eyes, her flowing red hair unloved for so long it’s become a mop of tangled curls. Even her skin seems paler, more sallow, though the cold light of her office does her no favours.

In the moment before she answers, June indulges every selfish thought that flows through her.

I could tell her she’s been misled. Send her away, dissuade her that any of this is her responsibility, lie about how godforsaken blood pacts and ancient contracts expect her to fight until she dies.

But she knows she can’t.

For a time it might protect both of them. But fate is all thorns and coils. In the end, all that would do is cast the poor girl out to the wolves, set her on the path to an even early grave than she’s already marked for. She’s the Hero, and every Hero needs a Guide. It was an inevitability that had kept her up at night for weeks, ever since she had been informed herself. At least the foxes had respected her enough to tell her in person, rather than pour dreams into her mind as she slept.

“It’s true; all of it,” June manages, smiling sadly. “You’re the Hero.”

“And… you’re the Guide?” she asks in return.

June can feel the Marchland magic wrapping around her, biting into her skin with invisible thorns.

Bloody foxes probably had this planned from the start, she thinks. Since the very beginning.

“Yes.” The thorns dig deeper.

“I dreamt about you. The spirits told me to find you.”

“Did they say why?”

Emboldened with the realisation she can finally talk about this with another human being, Kyra crosses the small office to lean against the chair opposite June’s desk.

“They said you’d mentor me. Teach me to fight, about magic and the Marchlands.”

There’s no turning back, but June still hesitates. Only for a moment, but she can tell Kyra senses it by the slight shake of her hands, the way she bites her lip.

“That’s the Guide’s role.”

“So, you will? You’ll help me?”

The relief on her face breaks June’s heart.

“I will,” she replies. “But first things first.”

June stands, sweeping her thick cardigan around her shoulders like it’s a wise woman’s cloak. “We need to find you a Squire.”

~***~