Jennifer San Filippo

PROLOGUE

I’m rather intrigued by heroes. 

Obviously you are as well, or you wouldn’t be reading this right now. What got your attention first? The snazzy cover? The clever title? Perhaps the promise that this might be a little different than your typical diversionary pursuits? Are you standing among the shelves of a book store right now? Perhaps reading this on your device as you contemplate a purchase? Or perhaps a sultry voice is reading you these words in your ear? My, what varied ways a story can travel. 

Pardon me while I tap on the glass a bit. It is an indulgence. 

The shard of reality I bring you is a curious one: not too dissimilar to yours, and yet so horrifically different that you can likely imagine it in a way that is enjoyable. You might call it a parallel world. Your understanding of the concept is faulty, but it will do for now. 

My interest in this world is less about its mechanisms and more about its people. There are several realities that are enduring a similar, tragic fate—an entropic inevitability for most of us, I’m afraid—and yet there are always a few, quiet souls who stand to face their destruction with a hope that they may prevent it. 

Hero. The word has been worn and stretched and discarded, only to be picked up again and slapped across campaign signs and middle school teachers and the occasional nurse. It is a balloon that floats far above our heads, something to watch as it’s carried on the wind to greater heights. Something to be admired, not to be chased. Something that exists so far from ourselves that we wouldn’t recognize it up close. 

Extraordinary individuals, aren’t they? Those who go above and beyond and are subsequently dehumanized. Too good to be true, so we seek a means to disentangle the person from the legend. Surely such a wonderful person could not be mortal as we are. That would imply that we too could be heroic. We sometimes deny their existence entirely, particularly when they’re busy saving the world from our own mistakes. Or perhaps that is only my experience. 

I confess this world I bring you is one such world in need of saving, a casualty in a war far too large to discuss here. Yet this story features a number of heroes, and some of them survive. That is perhaps not what you want to hear; we prefer our heroes’ quick demise, so that we may continue to venerate them before they have time to ruin the perfection with alcoholism or lingering trauma or terrible decor choices. Is someone more or less heroic if they die before the end? What is the end, anyway? 

A question for another time, I think. 

So with great care, I have plucked this story from a dying world, coaxed it carefully from its own reality so it might exist in yours. It is an homage to a friend, a vengeful antic on a rival, and a warning to you. There are some colorful characters to meet, some mortal peril to encounter, a princess (of sorts) to be rescued. There is even an evil dragon that must be slain. 

Some things truly are universal.  

I’ve struggled to choose a beginning, but if you’ll forgive my overt partiality, I’d like to direct your attention to one hero in particular: a twelve-year-old girl named Adeline Brown. 

CHAPTER 1

Once again, Adeline woke up alone. 

She scrambled out of bed, fully awake, before she remembered whether or not there was reason to panic. Her room looked like hers still: colored-pencil drawings taped to the walls (many of which had fallen to the floor and she had yet to replace them), her floor littered with discarded clothes (that would never be washed again), a stack of textbooks that belonged to the school (never to be returned).

Some mornings, Adeline wanted to indulge in the fantasy that everything was normal: surely her mother had just called for her to wake up or else miss breakfast. Duncan’s alarm was likely blaring heavy metal music in an irritating (but effective) strategy to awaken himself for school. Her father often left earlier than everyone, but perhaps he was running late this time, snagging a few strips of bacon and a kiss before rushing to the office. 

But the apartment was hollow with silence now. If she stayed still too long, or if she didn’t play music while she fell asleep, the silence would become a living thing that pressed on her ears and smothered her breathing. It would sweep through the entirety of the Stunning Heights apartment building—as much as was left—and report back to her that it had not found another living soul.

It was impossible to forget that she was alone. 

Sleep left in a hurry. She had only been dreaming—a nightmare, of course—but enough of the truth had woven itself through it that the terror was slow to leave. Screaming, the smell of fire, the rush of stone falling. 

The dream/nightmare clung to her like cobwebs as she made her bed, checked her backpack full of supplies, and reached for her water bottle. None of these things were things she did before everything, but she still wanted to pretend it was a normal morning. Just for a little longer. 

She stood up and looked out the window. 

Once, the city of Montavista had been a sprawling metropolis. Glittering in some places, greasy in others. Glossy skyscrapers and abused housing units and odiferous dog parks and overpriced parking lots. It was the kind of place that might look like the rest of the world someday, if industrialism had its way—and perhaps, if cities didn’t need rural farms to sustain themselves. 

From her window, Adeline saw only vague shapes among the gray. Shapes that didn’t look like buildings. Some were leaning, some were missing parts, some were entirely gone. She thought she could still see the dark scarring of fire on some. 

She didn’t look for long. 

On her wall was a calendar that featured photos of adolescent felines in various states of play: an orange tabby staring at a water bowl, a gray longhair sitting on a beachball, a tuxedo with a rather cliche ball of yarn. Adeline had been pestering for a cat for her birthday several months ago, and this was closest thing their apartment lease would allow. 

She did not want to mark that another day had passed, but she forced herself. She had run out of sad-faced stickers a long time ago, so she drew the proper expression herself with a blue marker, in its place next to rows of similar expressions. She would need to flip back to the month before to add up exactly how many days she had been here. 

She did not do that. 

Instead, she changed her clothes. She searched fruitlessly for clean underwear (the washing machine had stopped working weeks ago). She retied her shoelaces so she was prepared to run at a moment’s notice. She set President Snuffles on the window sill to keep watch.

She stepped into the living room. 

The apartment was just as she had left it the night before, which was further evidence that things were not the same. Normally, her mother would have tidied up the place like a self-contained hurricane, spurred on by frustration and coffee at five in the morning. A cup would already be in the sink, left by her father on his way to work. 

But it was untouched. The remains of a jacket that Adeline had tried to mend herself were still splayed on the couch. A few plates were scattered around the room. A heaping pile of garbage took up most of the tiny kitchen floor, with another in the living room to match. Its smell was a growing presence, but Adeline hadn’t yet brought herself to take it out. Almost as if she could force her mother to appear if she left a large enough mess. 

Somewhat unwillingly, Adeline glanced at the front door of the apartment, just past the kitchen. The door was still technically there, but two of the three hinges had been snapped off the wall, and there was a big crack halfway up the door itself. Dark roots had grown around the door, likely filling the hallway outside. The roots themselves were an impossible color: sometimes blue, sometimes purple, sometimes black, when there wasn’t enough light for the room. Adeline suspected they would make more sense if she got a closer look. 

She had not yet taken a closer look. 

She wandered to the bathroom and flicked the switch. Nothing. She flicked it off again, so that it might surprise her tomorrow with a different answer. From the faint light of the window, she could see enough: her mother’s makeup bag on the counter, her father’s book set on the back of the toilet, her brother’s shampoo still in the shower. She studied herself in the mirror. The poor girl was exhausted, as you might imagine. Her curly hair felt flat and greasy because because she hadn’t taken a shower in some time. She wrangled it back in a low ponytail. 

She used the facilities and did not flush, too unfamiliar with the mechanics of indoor plumbing to risk it. She brushed her teeth and rinsed with a small bit of precious bottled water from her pack. 

Next, Adeline braved the kitchen. 

It was truly a mess. Not only because her mother wasn’t here, but because there was no water, and it had been quite some time since Adeline had attempted to cook anything. In fact, as she rummaged through drawers and cupboards and the now defunct refrigerator, she realized with growing dread that she was out of food entirely. 

It was not a shock, per se. She had scoured the entire apartment for wayward foods: some forgotten potato chips in an old schoolbag, some chocolates her father had given her mother for their anniversary, Duncan’s hidden stash of Girl Scout cookies that had grown stale long ago. 

It was all gone now, the cupboards emptied of all cans and bags and dried pasta. It reminded her of that time Mom had been so horrified at the sight of roaches in the sink that she had deep-cleaned the entire apartment.

How she missed her mother. 

“Stop that,” she told herself, out loud because any noise was preferred to the unending silence, and because there was no one to worry that she was mentally unwell. 

This was the reasoning: 

There was no food in the apartment. 

She would have to find food elsewhere. 

Ergo, she would have to leave the apartment building. 

This problem had been long coming, but she had been hoping the last few weeks that it wouldn’t matter. Surely someone would find her by the time it became an issue. She had attempted to reach other apartments, but with their own apartment door block and roughly half the whole building broken to rubble (the half that included the front door and stairwell), the only way to reach the next door was from the outside. The windows had been locked, and she had not broken them. Rather, she had tried, but a twelve-year-old with a golf club did not make for a feasible threat to intruder-proof glass. 

Her stomach rumbled insistently, but she shook her head. She could do other things first, at least. 

Unfortunately, all of them were unpleasant. Cleaning up felt less like a productive chore and more like a means of stalling. Looking through the apartment again for food or supplies would be fruitless, just as the last four times had been. All she could do was patter away from the growing dread of what she needed to do. 

“Stop being chicken,” she muttered. “Stupid.” 

It is a cruel thing when your only friend is yourself. 

She returned to her room and opened her window. Chilly morning hair rushed in around her. The world felt so much worse when the window was open, when it was a place she could actually go instead of just look at. 

She shivered and stepped out. 

Her shoes were loud against the fire escape, each step echoing against the side of the building next to her, rattling up and down the unbothered metal. She reasoned that she wasn’t really leaving the building, but she still felt as though she should be in trouble, and the fact that she wasn’t made her feel worse. Perhaps the world was broken because she was disobedient, and not the other way around. 

She made it to the roof. 

The world was truly gray up here. The entire city sprawled out in every direction, more visible than it had ever been, now that several offending skyscrapers no longer scraped the sky. 

It was a city, broken. 

It was impossible to ignore the view, too easy to envision that day, like an overlay on reality. She could clearly see the fiery red scar that the dragon had left, a blast so bright that it had seared her vision, so that she could only hear a distant boom and screaming and—

“No, stop it,” she said, shaking her head. She tried mightily not to think about it, which was perhaps why it invaded her dreams nearly every night. 

A shiver crawled up her spine, and she wrapped her father’s coat more tightly around her; it was ill-fitted, and cold air kept snaking through it. Her memories were of it being quite warm, though she realized this was because she had only ever worn it after her father had been wearing it, when they had gone to Duncan’s football games or walked around the more affluent neighborhoods to ooh and ahh at Christmas lights. 

Young Adeline was beginning to learn that the most comforting memories were often laced with the pain of context. She was beginning to realize what a privileged life she had once led, featuring a loving family and three square meals and laughter, laughter, laughter, when was the last time she had laughed. She was, if you can believe, beginning to miss school and her snarky brother and the feeling of being left out of friend group chats and crying to her mother.

She was far too young for such lessons, learned before she’d had a chance to enjoy those vainglorious teenage years. The world was brittle and cruel around her. 

“Stop it,” she told herself. “Think about something else.” 

No one was technically allowed on the roof, but that rule had always been rather superfluous, even before the end of the world. The roof featured large air-conditioning vents (Adeline thought of them as “big shoot-things” because they looked easy to enter and slide down) and matrices of cell phone antennas and transceivers (Adeline thought of them as “big rectangle things”) and large satellite dishes (Adeline rightly assumed they were for Mrs. Henderson upstairs, who “hated all technology made this century,” according to Adeline’s father). But nothing about this place, other than its elevation, seemed dangerous. Besides, Adeline reasoned, if a helicopter came to pick her up, where else would they land? 

The roof was the messiest it had ever been, courtesy of Adeline’s most recent art project: She had used up her entire stash of acrylic paints to spell the word HELP in bold lettering. The hope was that a satellite would see it (there were few satellites still in orbit, and fewer still transmitting signals) or maybe a passing plane (there were none in flight). 

She took a seat, a compromise with her mother’s hypothetical disappointment, and reached in her bag. She produced two solar chargers her father had bought not too long ago, inspired by various survivalist Youtube channels. She had used one of them a bit last night before bed, playing the few MP3s she had downloaded on her phone, and would like to keep them topped up, though it was perhaps too gray a day to do much. 

She pulled out her phone and called 9-11. 

The dark irony of this was not lost on her; one usually called emergency responders when there was still an emergency. Arguably, the emergency had come and wreaked its havoc and left, so there was little for emergency responders to do. 

Another dark irony of the situation: the phone actually rang. 

Adeline had never been to the local police precinct, so she imagined one she’d seen on her father’s favorite Thursday night show: wooden desks and stacked files, white boards smeared with action items of yore, fragrant takeout containers balanced precariously in an overburdened trash can, the hum of printers and ringing phones and gurgling coffee makers and important people saying important things. 

Adeline pictured people, but she knew it wasn’t true. 

The station was empty. 

No one was there. 

Not one person. 

She felt a horrible, gapping fear open up in her stomach at that, the ever-present truth rearing its ugly head, as it often did throughout the day. She was alone alone alone alone—

“Ugh!” Adeline made a frustrated sound that sounded more like a whine. She then turned on the phone’s data and tried to open a search engine. 

The loading screen appeared, but when she tried to type in rescue services Montavista, the text box didn’t even offer to finish the thought for her. She waited, hoping it would just take a while, but nothing appeared. 

She opened emails and wrote yet another email to the helpline that the city had announced months ago. 

Hello this is Adeline Brown at 366 Tully Rd apartment 306 please come rescue me maybe send a helicopter because the roads look bad pls I’m alone. 

She sent the email. It was impossible to tell if it actually went anywhere, but her Sent folder was full of similar messages she had sent every day before. A shout into the void of the Internet. 

She sat there for maybe an hour, imagining the sound of the blades chopping the air (is that why they called it a chopper?), willing a helicopter to cut across her view, thinking it might if she just stared at the horizon long enough. She knew she was stalling, but there was nothing but her grumbling stomach to tell her that she could stall for a limited time. She needed to find food, and there was none here. 

She took a big breath and let it out. It’s what the heroes in her favorite shows did right before they did something brave (Indeed, I have seen many heroes do a similar motion and yield similar results). Ut didn’t help, but perhaps it would later. 

And she started back down the stairs. 

CHAPTER 2

Six months ago

On the day that everything changed, Adeline Brown was on the blacktop. 

Recess was a short, stunted thing at Lady Liberty Middle School, a desperate fourteen minutes of freedom that burned away like a dream. Adeline would usually race to the swings, but only because everyone else did. What she really wanted to do was stare up at the blue sky until it hurt her eyes, or watch a ladybug climb a dandelion and resolve to draw it later, or hang upside down on the monkey bars when the attendants weren’t watching. But there were school politics to attend to and friendships to earn, so she would most likely do whatever her friends were doing. 

Today, she was kicking a soccer ball around with her friend, Ava, and Ava’s friend, Brittany. Adeline didn’t like Brittany, who had once stolen her six-pens-in-one and used up the pink before “finding” it again and returning it. Brittany was not kind to many, not even Ava, and yet Ava’s bubbly voice jumped an octave whenever Brittany was around. 

So the three girls took turns kicking the ball back and forth. It would have been a circle if Brittany didn’t randomly decide to exclude Adeline every lap or so. Adeline found this activity quite unfulfilling, but of course it was only an excuse to stand around and talk about other people. 

“Did you hear about Eric?” Brittany said. “His parents are sending him to summer school.” 

Ava made an appreciated “Ooh” noise. 

Adeline did not. She couldn’t fathom how Brittany would have such information, as she wasn’t friends with Eric and it was only April, too early for any student to know if they would fail the year. Adeline did not yet believe that there were people who could lie so frivolously. 

“How stupid,” Brittany added. 

“Yeah,” Ava said.

The girls looked at Adeline. It was unfortunate, because Adeline quite liked Eric—he also enjoyed doodling anime characters and sometimes lent her his pristine white erasers—but she pretended to agree, only because if she didn’t, Brittany would march away in a huff, and Ava would follow. She hummed something that almost sounded like, “Uh huh.” Brittany kicked the ball to her. 

Brittany said, “We’re going to Guam this summer.” 

“Ooh!” said Ava with much more enthusiasm. “I’ve always wanted to go to Guam.” 

Adeline suspected that Ava had no idea where Guam was (she was correct). 

“What about you, Adeline?” Brittany said. “What are you doing for summer?” 

Adeline was about to say swimming, which was the most likely answer, when the air began to hum. 

Hum was not the right word, and it wasn’t technically the air doing it, but everything suddenly seemed to vibrate at a microscopic level (that was, in fact, what was happening). Adeline’s vision began to blur, although what was really happening was that light was no longer moving in a straight line. For a brief, immeasurable moment, space and time and thought were slightly less distinguishable. 

“What is that?” Ava cried, although Adeline wasn’t sure she had heard the words come from Ava. It was more like the thoughts had been delivered directly into Adeline’s mind, without the need for sound to carry them to her. She thought horribly that this would be an awful way to exist, the physical and the mental so blended that they were indistinguishable. (She was quite right in that regard.) 

And then it stopped. 

Adeline gasped. She felt as if she had just landed on her feet, though she didn’t think she had jumped. The ball that Ava had just kicked to her bounced by her feet, utterly normal. 

Ava started to cry, but only a little, when it was apparent that no one else was going to. Adeline looked around at the rest of the field. The swings were not swinging, because the people on them had stopped, and one had fallen off entirely. Someone was throwing up behind a tree. Everyone, collectively, was dazed. 

That was how she knew it had really happened, that it hadn’t just been her. Indeed, the students in the yard and the teachers in the break room and the administration in the offices could not know that every living being on the planet had felt/heard/experienced the exact same sensation. Even non-living matter reacted in some way, though there would be no time for local scientists to understand exactly how. Even my understanding is rather limited, but this is what happened: 

Spacetime broke. 

Now, don’t devolve into hysterics. It was only a small fracture, precisely placed in this realm’s timeline by a small group of well-meaning hammers in search of a nail they had been chasing for quite some time. The Illaiti helming the effort had the uncommon combination of skill and patience, so that it was a well-contained crack. Nothing to worry about just yet. 

Adeline’s first thought was that it had been some new alarm, or perhaps a malfunctioning one, but that hypothesis was quickly dashed when the perfectly functional and ordinary bell rang three minutes early, beckoning students back to class. 

Unfortunately, it is difficult to convince the young that something terrible might be happening, and so students were slow to comply, feeling robbed of their blessed recess and too eager to daydream about what that could have been. Some of the girls were panicking early, partly out of fear and partly out of an insatiable desire for attention. Some of the boys theorized they had just been irradiated by a nuclear bomb and were pretending that their flesh was melting off their bones. 

Adeline was of the opinion that an explanation would be presented shortly. Adults were eager to keep children from feeling fear (an understandable but ultimately fruitless enterprise), and so surely the teachers would give it a two-minute explanation before asking for the formula for the area of a cylinder. 

But that is not what happened. Mrs. Cheng was glued to her computer when the students entered, and she did not step from it when the ordinary bell rang again to signal the beginning of class. Her split attention was the first piece of evidence to suggest that something was truly happening. A growing, eager excitement hummed throughout Adeline’s geometry class as they waited for Mrs. Cheng to start class. 

A few students defied the school’s no-phones-during-class policy to scour the Internet themselves, for they were notably superior researchers in this regard. Earthquakes were common enough that one could find information fairly quickly, and this felt similar. Adeline, still too well-behaved to flaunt school rules even now, leaned over Teresa’s head to see her phone screen. Teresa, kindly quiet with a penchant for reading in lieu of social activities, held her phone to the side to share what she was looking at. 

“This is in Washington DC,” she murmured. “It’s right above the White House.” 

Adeline narrowed her eyes, but all she saw was a spidery design against a bright blue screen. For a moment, she thought Teresa’s phone was cracked, but then the crack moved as the camera zoomed out to show its proximity to a familiar state building. 

The crack was in the air, glowing faintly, like that of a broken window pane. 

“It’s like…a crack,” Teresa murmured. “A crack in nothing.” 

Adeline didn’t understand what this was, or how a crack could appear when there wasn’t anything there in the first place. She didn’t understand what this had to do with the strange noise/vibration sensation that she’d felt on the blacktop. She didn’t understand why the teachers weren’t giving a reasonable explanation so that she wouldn’t have to feel scared about it. 

An administrator from the front office hurried over and murmured something to Mrs. Cheng, who nodded tersely and stood. “Phones away,” she said. 

“But Mrs. Cheng—”

“Did you hear that noise?”

She held up a hand for silence. “Phones away, now.” 

Students reluctantly complied, relieved they weren’t being punished but desperate to know more. Mrs. Cheng dutifully reviewed the lesson to a stiff, unnerved class. Adeline resolved to pay attention—surely whatever was happening would be resolved and old news within the hour—but she disliked math too much to remain focused. 

Blessedly, the bell rang. 

The whole school was humming. 

Humming in the metaphorical sense, I mean. Humming with questions and theories and the general excitement that the young feel when the natural order is seemingly challenged. The teachers’ tenuous hold on order frayed throughout the day as the more rebellious students snuck peeks at their phones and were quick to share their findings in the hall between classes. The military is checking it out now! I saw helicopters! My cousin lives near Washington DC, and they shut down his whole block! 

Adeline’s parents had been young when 9-11 happened, and she wondered if this was how it felt. 

But there were no bodies yet. No terrible fires. No mutinous planes. Everyone was poised to panic, though there was nothing specifically to panic about just yet. 

Adeline was kept in the loop regardless. Social lines had blurred in the wake of this momentous event, enough that kids too cool for her were sharing their screens for her to see. 

The news was all a-flutter. Scientists were pulled in front of cameras to admit their utter bafflement. Commercial flights had been directed away from the area to make room for a collective military response, and cameras ate up the drama of helicopters and men in gear standing uncertainly in the vicinity. The president had been escorted somewhere safe. Technicians held various types of equipment in the direction of the crack, seeking some numbers to make sense of what was happening. 

The appearance over the White House felt too intentional to be accidental, as many news anchors were quick to note. Various world leaders came out and insisted their innocence. A few more ambitious leaders attempted to claim credit and threaten further harm, once the ambiguous initial harm had been enacted. Rumors abounded on the Internet, as you might expect. People watched people reacting to the livestream, commenting with more expletives than strictly necessary. No one could settle on a theory other than aliens.

And technically, they were correct. 

By the time Adeline reached her final class of the day (history with Mr. Keller, a truly awful time of day for such a dense and admittedly dry subject), the teachers’ tenuous authority had been frayed to the breaking point. Mr. Keller knew his planned lesson regarding Mesopotamia could not possibly be productive, so he set up the projector with a news station’s livestream of the strange anomaly. And he ordered delivery. 

“If it’s the end of the world,” he joked, “we might as well have donuts.” 

The class erupted with agreement, and it was suddenly a party. 

Adeline had the unshakeable thought that this was a bad idea, that they would be in trouble for this, but no one else seemed to think so. The tense nerves of the other teachers bled from her memory enough that she could enjoy the festivities. 

About ten minutes in, when it seemed that there wouldn’t be any more incredible things happening in the immediate future, someone (perhaps Mr. Keller himself) pulled out a deck of cards, and a lively game of Egyptian War was waged. It felt as if the end of the year had come months early, where social boundaries were eroded enough that Adeline could pretend these were her friends. She lost spectacularly (her assumption was that she wasn’t very good; the truth was that the boys had several tricky rules that she wasn’t privy to), but she watched them play with all the camaraderie of minimally contained anarchy. 

About halfway through class, someone shouted: “Look!” 

Everyone’s heads swiveled to the screen. Adeline was one of the few students who had taken a seat facing away from the screen (she was too acquiescent to insist on anything inconvenient for others), and so she was more poised than most to notice that the crack had grown since it had first appeared. 

And now it was opening. 

The nature of the ether cannot be captured on camera, and so the students in Mr. Keller’s history class only saw a great, gaping blackness grow where the cracks had spread. And from that blackness, came something solid. 

You might call it a spaceship, but that is denotatively incorrect, as it was designed to navigate everything but space. Some cultures called it an Ethersail, or a Shard Needle, or a Ship That Carries through Silence. One passenger on this particular ship called it something distasteful that I shan’t repeat here. Another passenger called it “that horrible headache of a carriage.” A third called it “my ship.” 

It did not resemble a ship in the classical sense, or even in the futuristic sense that your various TV shows might suggest. It looked somewhat like a giant piece of shattered opal, shining various colors in the afternoon sun, and it was shaped more like a oblong piece of broken glass, jagged but symmetrical, too vertical to be traditionally aerodynamic, and several times the height of the White House it floated just above. Even over a relatively low-definition stream, it was beautiful. 

Adeline held her breath as a small opening appeared on the front of the ship, and a figure stepped out. 

The camera struggled desperately to zoom in on the figure, and there were calls of frustration as blurry sky streaked across the screen. There was some shaking and fumbling until the camera focused again on a man. 

Yes, a human man. Except for his clothes, he looked quite ordinary: dark hair, light skin, bright blue eyes. He might have passed for French or Italian, but he was not any of these, because he was from an entirely different universe. 

His name was Theofel. 

His clothing, as previously mentioned, was considerably different than the standard garb of most cultures in this realm: an armored tunic that shone like metal but looked more like glass, dark boots that were shined for this occasion, a fairly well-decorated sleeve boasting military achievements that a different realm would find quite impressive. 

A few of the girls in class made appreciative noises. Adeline’s assumption was that he was roughly thirty (which was relatively accurate) and was quite capable (also relatively accurate). He raised a lackadaisical hand in the air, a practiced motion that was meant to be a harmless greeting but was actually a signal to his colleagues in the ship. 

Words appeared around him.

On the hull of the ship (truly, ship and hull are not accurate terms, but for the sake of brevity), the fractured light rearranged itself into something resembling your modern English. 

The message glowed brightly: We come in peace. Please don’t shoot. 

This was a rather bold thing to say to the gathered military force of the United States, but the request was honored. The minutes trickled by, with the human man waving in a friendly manner, hands both visible to show that he carried no weapon (a false implication). 

Helicopters circled the area, aiming weapons and cameras. Commands were shouted over megaphones regarding how to exit his vehicle, but he gave a wry shrug and gestured to the several hundred feet of air between him and the ground. There would be no traditional means of dismounting. 

Adeline thought their caution was a bit absurd at this point. If this new arrival had any intention of harm, he would not have stepped from his vehicle without defense (she was correct in this assumption). She began to worry that the military would shoot him without warning, just to play it safe. 

But the helicopters kept circling, and Theofel kept waving, keeping a handsome grin for the more ambitious cameras to hone in on. 

After perhaps five minutes of this, Theofel glanced behind him, where the entrance to the Ethersail was still open, and gestured for someone to join him. 

Another creature ran from the opening.

This one was much smaller in stature; the camera zoomed in to see properly, because the shape of it was far more baffling. 

“What is that?” blurted one student, who was quickly hushed when the newscaster attempted to give an explanation that was pure conjecture. 

I will spare you the inaccuracies and simply tell you: this was a ki’amaoph. In the language of the people who first discovered it, its species name roughly translates to “animal of imagination or flight.” The ambiguity is artfully intentional, as these creatures can change shape depending on the person they choose to bond with. 

Several students made cooing noises, and indeed, the ki’amaoph had adopted a rather adorable form. Currently, it was an animal that didn’t naturally exist in this realm: a small creature roughly the size of a squirrel, but with larger ears and an extra set of arms. The one consistency in its shapeshifting that it was white, and glowed with a faint blue light was barely visible in sunlight. 

Theofel called him Olli. 

Theofel stretched out a hand, and Olli jumped and grabbed it, swinging to his shoulder with practiced ease. The military still did not shoot. 

Adeline’s heart was racing. She had pulled a pencil from her bag to draw, but she didn’t want to yet look away from the screen to find a sheet of paper. 

The shimmering words behind Theofel faded and were replaced with a new message: “I will fly down alone. Please don’t shoot.” 

The white, slightly glowing creature jumped from his shoulder.

And it grew. 

The transformation was too quick to fully understand, especially over a relatively grainy livestream: one moment, there was a small, alien squirrel-looking thing; the next, there was a large, horse-sized lion, with large paws and a mane and a pair of expansive wings. Still blue-white, but large enough to ferry one human down to the ground. 

The world collectively held its breath as Theofel mounted the creature and glided down. 

It must have been quite a startling sight for the people down below: A large beast flying straight towards them. There was likely some yelling and screaming, though the livestream that Adeline watched didn’t catch it. 

The creature landed on a street, just outside the White House fence, equidistant from the military blockade and the gaggle of reporters jonesing for a better shot. Several weapons were pointed in his direction, many of them visible, but he only raised his arms in surrender. 

A brave, young reporter was the first to step up, the camera shakily following her. She spoke into her microphone with a breathy voice, “Who—who are you?” 

Theofel smiled at her and approached her slowly. To her credit, she did not back up, though the camera operator behind her was shaking a bit too much. 

Theofel looked directly into the camera.

Adeline stared back. 

“People of this realm,” he said. “My name is Theofel Relan. I come in peace to warn you. A threat is coming to your realm. A great and powerful enemy.” 

He paused to let that statement settle, and indeed it did, the world unified for a single beat with the most common emotion in any living being: fear. 

There was true silence in the classroom, and Adeline felt the same falling pit in her stomach, the horror that something was going to happen and there was nothing she could do about it. 

Theofel raised a hand up, perhaps to silence people who were trying to interrupt him with more questions, perhaps to tell everyone at home that they should not panic just yet. 

He said, “I swear to you on my life, my friends and I will do everything we possibly can to stop this threat. We seek to save your world from destruction, as we have saved others. We are the Shatter Guard. Please, work with us and not against us. We have some time to prepare, but not much. I would speak with your leaders as soon as possible.” 

The stream continued, watching Theofel walk towards the White House until some brave military folks stopped him at the White House gate, but there was an instinctive knowledge among Adeline’s class that they wouldn’t likely get more out of this person until the authorities had been given their turn. 

Adeline looked at the rest of the class. The responses were surprisingly varied: some of the boys were yelling at each other about different theories based on various shows and comics. The teacher was blatantly scrolling on his computer, ignoring the rise in turmoil. Brittany was crying while Ava consoled her. 

Adeline felt something she hadn’t in a long time. She would struggle to come up with a name for it, but it was the same, fluttering excitement one feels on a rollercoaster, or that old, old feeling when her father would toss her above his head at the pool. The promise of possibility, the excitement of change. The beginning of an adventure.

She grabbed her sketchbook from her bag and began to draw.