The Grandmaster stared out of the window of the Celestial to the webs of crystalline black clouds that were spread out like streaks of paint across the stormy gray sky. The dark whisper of the Star Legion’s Celestial ship slipped over miles of soft tones–gray and green and blue and brown. From the cabins, the land was a verdant sprawl of towns, cities, and forests. The American Southwest held an extraordinary majesty from the air. It offered new perspectives, a place where one could forget about the poisons of city life and industries that had long since begun to seep into rural life.

  Grandmaster sat near the front, leaning back in her seat. From all the way up here, she was almost able to forget everything, she thought. Then, quietly to herself: almost.

  Riven sat silently next to Grandmaster, her mind lost within the sky outside of the ship’s viewing shields. She was tugging silently on her yellow opera gloves, rearranging them to make sure the cuffs overlapped with her sleeves. The gloves had been a gift from Gauntlet. While the last few months had been rough for the entire team, they at least had each other, she reflected. And while they labelled each other “boyfriend” and “girlfriend,” it was as though they were more than that–they both seemed to know there was no one else in the world they would rather be with than each other.

  But Riven was starting to lose faith in that reality. How could she be with a man like Gauntlet, who deserved a woman who could give him the stars? She was so troubled and haunted by her past, her fears of never being good enough. She could never be good enough–and it was not about the touch, either. Everyone she loved left her. Her moms, her parents; even Grandmaster had left for a little. Why would they keep coming back?

  Grandmaster spoke, interrupting Riven’s thoughts.

  “You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?” Maggie guessed. Riven nodded, not surprised. Grandmaster could always read people like the books she loved.

  “He’s adjusting–he’s going to be alright. There’s more to that Cajun than any of us really know.”

  Riven drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Ah don’t know why it’s hittin’ me so hard all a’sudden,” she confessed. “But Ah was just a stupid kid and Ah was experimentin’ with love. The guy Ah thought I was in love with–Daniel–he was sixteen and Ah was twelve. Ah thought Ah was in love with him. Can you picture that? A twelve-year-old kid–an ordinary twelve-year-old kid–in love? It was supposed t’be beautiful.

  “Daniel would tell me anythin’ Ah wanted t’hear. That’s when Ah found out Ah was a deviant. That’s why Ah had to leave home…why Ah can’t ever get close to someone like that again…why Ah feel like Ah have t’be alone…why Gauntlet and Ah can’t…”

  Grandmaster was silent for a long moment, closing her eyes briefly as she remembered her own pain, so much like Riven’s and so different, the pain that clawed up from this pit of nothing in her stomach.

  Sometimes she dreamed that she was on a road and she was running for her life. Running for her life along rivers that burned in blood and fire that erupted out of the earth.

  She was running. She was running and she could not stop. She would never stop.

  Sometimes she dreamed that everything fell apart.

  There was blood…and fire…and cold hands…and the promise of death…and it never stopped. Never.

  But then she woke up, and it was not a dream.

  Grandmaster rested a hand on Riven’s shoulder and her friend leaned into her touch, the tension melting in her body. When Riven had first joined the Star Legion, the others had been distrustful of her, but it was Grandmaster who encouraged her friends that everyone deserves a second chance. The two had become close, as close as sisters, connected through their empathy for one another on a profound level.

  “I…I was alone for a long time, too,” Grandmaster said slowly. “But that’s all in the past. I know the feeling of never escaping it–that your past is your present and your future, and you can’t escape the thing you are–but that is in the past. You have to look for the future. And know that you are not alone, Riv–not if you don’t want to be.”

  Riven breathed out and tilted her head in thought. Her emerald-bright eyes reflected her inner fires and the silence of the moment. “But Ah’ll hurt him,” she whispered.

  She was right, but there was so much more to it than her frustration allowed her to consider. Riven looked over at Grandmaster and shrugged in thought. The muscles that rippled beneath her green-and-yellow bodysuit suggested professional tennis, gymnastics, or something even more athletic, though she was far too tall and robust for any Olympic team.

  “Letting people in–even when they are not perfect–has made me better,” Grandmaster told her. “Riven, think about it. Do you really want to be alone, or do you think you deserve to be alone because you’re so used to the feeling? Because you have to know that you are not, Riven. You are not alone.”

  Riven really, truly smiled at that. “Thank you, Grandmaster,” she said.

  She looked curiously at Grandmaster. Riven found her fascinating, and strangely, had trusted her the moment she asked to join the Star Legion. Maggie Bawa–though she rarely used the nickname or her birth name, which remained unknown to them–was shrouded with mystery and intrigue, with most of the significant details of her past remaining a secret, and yet, there was no deception to it.

  She had been alive since the dawn of Creation, alive forever, and yet too late. She was a goddess of deviants, the messiah to their entire species, She was the heart of the Star Legion, fiercely dedicated and passionately loyal. In the times of calm, she was quiet, almost introverted, yet she was also flamboyant, always ready with a witty jab and a sharp observation.

  Riven also felt a pang of guilt at burdening her friend with her own problems, which seemed inconsequential compared to Grandmaster’s. The Teacher had cut a deal with Blackstar to have her captured so the rest of them could free the human slaves and the deviant children, and Grandmaster had suffered worse than the rest of them. All the trauma that Riven was running from, Grandmaster had faced.

  So for Grandmaster, to say these words of radiance, after everything she had been through…

  “It does count for somethin’, after all,” Riven said softly. “It’s enough.”

  Grandmaster nodded. “It is.”

  Riven took Grandmaster’s hand. “And how are you doing?” she queried quietly. “And don’t put on a brave face for me. Be honest.”

  Grandmaster inhaled, her eyes glistening with wetness. “When I dream, I feel his hands on me,” she whispered. “When I wake up, I check for bruises shaped like his fingers. Whenever I see him on the news or in the paper, I walk away. Because he marked me as his, and I can never undo that. And it was my fault.”

  Riven felt anger rising within her. “Don’t say that!” she snapped so fiercely that Grandmaster flinched. “Don’t ever say that!”

  “But…”

  “Hush good and listen. Bein’ hurt don’t make you guilty of nothin’. Innocent newborn babies ain’t done nothin’. Those people died–Blackstar hurt you–because of a warped and wicked evil. That is what evil looks like. Not innocence. Not your fault.”

  “Riv–”

  “You know Blackstar ain’t the first girl to hurt, right? You know what he did to me?”

  Grandmaster nodded, pained by the reminder that Blackstar had seduced and manipulated a younger Riven.

  “Would you say that’s my fault?”

  “No–of course not–”

  “Then you don’t get to say that ‘bout yourself. Never say that ‘bout yourself, Grandmaster,” Riven said, her tone one of titanium. “He views us as his items, his property. He don’t see us as people with a heart and soul. He is a monster, and Ah will carry the scar he gave me forever.” Riven pointed to her neck, where a deep bite mark was visible. “But the question we have to ask ourselves: do we double down and let that pain define us? Or do we carry on and wear our scars, our trauma, as a mark of all we have survived?

  “It’s your choice. Even when we have our choices taken away from us, we still have our spirit to help us, Grandmaster. And I know you. If I am strong enough to survive this fall, then so are you.”

  Grandmaster sighed and a smile ghosted her lips. “Thank you, Riven,” she replied. “You’re right. We are deviant women. We are strong enough to survive this fall.”

  …

  A red light flickered to life on the control panel in the cockpit, alerting the Star Legion to an incoming call on the Celestial’s vid-comm unit. Sparks flicked a green toggle switch as the team all gathered around the picture of Will Morgrant that snapped to life.

  All present and accounted for, sir, Sparks transmitted. Grandmaster bit down on her tongue. She hated the way Sparks still worshiped the Teacher, as though he didn’t betray them, as though she wasn’t tortured Beneath the Mountain, if Blackstar didn’t–

  She slammed the mental door shut on that train of thought. She wouldn’t succumb to that, not now.

  “Hello, Star Legion,” the Teacher said, addressing his former students. “You’ve all been busy.”

  “Formalities, uh-oh,” Phantasma joked. “We must be in more trouble than I thought.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The Teacher smiled, but it overlapped with the combination of worry and seriousness in his expression.

  “I just spoke with the Executive. The government received a report on the cataclysm of the Phoenix and the Eternity Corporation from his first attacks in Manhattan. I think she’s frightened, and has also consulted Sebastian Herrick on this, who seems to have unreasonable suspicions that the Star Legion may have sleeper agents with the Corporation and may be responsible for the attacks.”

  “That is ridiculous!” Cryo protested with anger in his voice. “Teacher, Grandmaster, they can’t honestly think–”

  Astra held up a hand to quiet Cryo’s protests. “They actually can, Jamie,” she said. “When it comes to matters of superhuman races like deviants, people like Sebastian Herrick can make ordinary citizens believe what they want to believe–that what is beneficial for those individuals is also what is most beneficial for the world–even though that is rarely true.”

  Tempest nodded in assent with Astra and began directing the Teacher. “Teacher, you must continue to deal with the political aspects of this in Washington D.C. while we continue our reconnaissance on the Eternity Corporation that Grandmaster learned about. The people will turn us into vague, unspecified threats and make us scapegoats, but we will do whatever it takes to stop it, for the good of deviantdom, humanity, and for reality.”

  “For the good of the dream. Amen to that,” Riven said in approval.

  “Well said,” Astra agreed.

  “Oui,” Gauntlet said, flashing his teammates a cocky smirk before his face turned serious. “We all have one t’ing in common: we didn’t ask for any a’this. But we goin’ t’ continue t’ fight, because dat is what we do. Dat is what de Star Legion does. And den, hopefully, de scars won’t hurt as bad anymore.”

  “Listen to me,” the Teacher urged. “Huddle up. It is crucial that you focus on the Phoenix and the Eternity Corporation while I continue to play politics with Herrick and the entirety of the Intelligence Sector here in D.C. We will reconvene as soon as I can, but Herrick is keeping a close eye and a short leash on me, so I will have to be careful. Be careful also, Legionnaires. The Phoenix has the potential to be incredibly dangerous.”

  Understood, Sparks said, nodding.

  “Thank you, Teacher,” Grandmaster said cautiously.

  “I do what I can, Star Legion. Always,” he said earnestly. “Keep me posted.”

  In a blip, the Teacher disappeared from the screen.

  Grandmaster heard the loud whine of the landing gear of the ship beginning to descend and she snapped back to reality, standing up and holding on to the Celestial’s metal frame. As the ship landed, she descended down the exit ramp and studied their surroundings. It was still early in the morning in Arizona, and the day was cool and breezy by the Grand Canyon. She reached out with a tendril of her power and felt the rocky ground, the fir and spruce trees crowding together, with their roots intertwining together. She felt the wet soil on the ground, water moving through the ground like blood flowing through their veins.

  “Give me a report, please, Astra?” Grandmaster asked calmly.

  “Our mission objective is right over there,” Astra said. She inclined her head at a cluster of spruce trees about one hundred yards away. “It is surrounded by an aura of energy. I do sense the telepathic signals of other deviants, though, but I can’t pinpoint through energy signatures specifically enough to know who it might be.”

  Well, we won’t know who it will be until we get there, Sparks transmitted. Let’s move out now.

  The Star Legion began to move forward, walking through the forest until they stopped at the mouth of a box canyon lined with a grove of trees on either side.

  The canyon dead-ended along a tall precipice, with the middle part a sloppy mixture of rock and gravel. But somehow, the Star Legion was unsurprised to see three men standing unflinchingly at the base of the cliff. Their bodies were covered entirely in thick, metallic green armor that covered their faces and each carried a high-tech weapon that looked like a cross between a dueling staff and a plasma gun.

  “What’re they up to here?” Riven wondered out loud. “What's Phoenix up to?”

  As if in response to her question, one of the armored men stepped forward and raised his weapon.

  “Eliminate targets,” he said heavily, speaking in a robotic, metallic voice. The two other men aimed their rifles at the Star Legion.

  And then they fired.

  BUDHA-BUDHA-BUDDHA!

  Grandmaster leaped in front of her friends, her skin aflame with bright gold energy as she created a thick force field to protect the Legionnaires from the projectiles.

  Stars of extraterrestrial photon energy flared gold and red in Gauntlet’s open fists, glowing brighter and brighter with each passing second. Gauntlet had just brought his deviant ability into play: the power to absorb and process various types of energy and regenerate that energy into powerful blasts with concussive force. Being a thief and gambler, he opted to use these blasts as a means to deliver an explosive payload.

  “De men want de high ground?” Gauntlet asked, a sinister smile whisking across lips, “den dat’s exactly what de goin’ get.” He closed his fists and doing the blasts at one of the soldiers, who screamed and fell to the rain-soaked earth as his metal helmet sizzled from the explosion and melted, the molt dripping into his eyes and burning in his face.

  Cryo rose up in the air on a track of pure-white ice, his skin shimmering as his flesh and blood transmuted into organic ice. He ripped moisture from the air particles and froze them with a single thought, burying the second soldier up to his neck in a block of solid ice, flaring his powers with an element of bravado. Jamie Edgerton was always considered to be one of the less powerful Legionnaires. At first, it was only thought he could create snowballs and chunks of ice, but recently, it was revealed that he could create ice instead of just manipulating him, which gave him the status of an Alpha-level deviant: a deviant with virtually no upper limits to their powers. Grandmaster knew that Cryo was a formidable threat with the only limits being his own imagination and the ambient air temperature around him.

  Sienna Flynn–the deviant Astra–concentrated for a moment, her skin flushed with silver light like she was imbued with the moon. She used her telekinetic powers to lift up a boulder the size of a small car and hurled it at the soldiers. The rock flew through the air and the third man, standing to the left, lunged to one side, barely avoiding the projectile. Phantasma reached out, her eyes wide, and pressed her fingers through the second man’s helmet. The soldier stiffened and his armor sparked with electricity before he collapsed–Betta Wei’s intangibility passed her own particles through the spaces of the atoms of his helmet, rendering her virtually untouchable in her natural state of phasing.

  “I’ve got this!” Tempest called to the other Legionnaires, and used the winds to take flight. She summoned a wind that was as strong as a hurricane-storm game, and the last soldier was thrown violently backwards. Shadowstalker materialized next to her and waved a hand. Inky blackness wrapped around the man’s body, dragging him down to the ground while Sparks unbuttoned his sweater and a stream of red energy blasted the man into a tree. He cried out and slumped to the ground, unconscious.

  Grandmaster leaned her head back and searched the skies. “Good job, Legionnaires. We’d better go before any more company show up.” She led the Star Legion past the motionless bodies of the men, rolling them back into a comfortable position on their backs and checking their pulses.

  These men had moved to protect the secrets of the Eternity Corporation energetically, almost eagerly. And now these men had been defeated. And now they were defeated. Maggie hoped that it was not a sign of things yet to come.

  The Star Legion paused as they reached the back end of the canyon. “What are we looking for?” Phantasma asked.

  “Anything that don’t seem right, Ah suppose,” Riven replied.

  Grandmaster tipped her head back and sniffed the cool morning air.

  “Be careful,” she said, raising a warning hand. “Something is not right.”

  She signalled with her fingers, and Grandmaster and her team moved forward cautiously. Her phoenix dragon flared up in the air around her, and she leaped ahead of her friends, the cosmic enemies roiling with infinite powers, humming at her fingertips, buzzing in her ears as all the colors on the electromagnetic spectrum flickered.

  “Do you sense that?” she whispered, her ears flicking back.

  The Star Legion stepped forward, and the cosmic threads that made up Divergent-382 snapped with a stroke of power, and the Legionnaires gasped–they all felt it.

  Then the world began to spin.

  It started slowly at first, then faster and faster, gaining momentum. Steamy mist rose up around them, forming a wall around them, churning higher and further. The roar of the churning mists filled her ears, shaking through her bones, the wind and water thrashing at her, within her, with such force that she could barely lift her head to see the sky, which had become nothing more than a pinprick of light above the Star Legion.

  All at once, the world went silent. The great roar did not quiet, but simply vanished. Grandmaster rocked back in her heels and opened her eyes as the column collapsed into a great tumble of steam, sending the Legionnaires rocking back. Mist clung to Grandmaster’s shoulders and her wet hair as the world tilted, then stopped. It became eerily still, as they were shrouded in darkness.

  No, not darkness, Grandmaster realized. It was nighttime. How was that possible when it was daytime only moments ago? Did they lose or gain time?

  The Star Legion stumbled forward blindly, their eyes adjusting to the darkness, as wide as newly minted, polished coins. Grandmaster suspected she looked just as stunned.

  “Ah don’t know ‘bout you all,” Riven said with a nervous laugh, “but that ain’t the kind a’thing Ah’d like to do every day.”

  “What happened?” Phantasma asked, eyes wide. “Where are we?”

  Grandmaster looked around. The Star Legion were standing under a breathtaking black velvet sky with thousands–perhaps even millions–of stars. A lamppost with a burning bulb flickered unsteadily nearby, allowing her to see the wooden sign beneath it, painted in a bright red and trimmed in gold leaf.

  WELCOME TO THE TOWN OF BLUE SPRINGS, ARIZONA, it read. POPULATION: 525. DRIVE SAFELY!

  “Something is wrong,” Grandmaster breathed, inhaling the air again. The Star Legion stopped immediately and assumed combat-ready positions, their deviations at the ready, eyes sweeping across their moonlit surroundings, alert for the slightest indication that they might be about to face an attack at any moment.

  “I smell it, too.” Cryo raised his nose and sniffed. “It smells like something rotten–like sulphur and spoiled milk. Trouble, you think?”

  Grandmaster shook her head, a dark feeling sinking within her like the last ember of an ashen field. “It is worse than simple trouble, Jamie.”

  “What is it then, Grandmaster?” Tempest asked. “We all smell it, but what do you sense?”

  The whispered voices in the Grandmaster’s head had risen to a clamor, and she could hear nothing but anguish

  She knew what they were–what these voices were.

  Men and women and children and deviants in the hundreds. Beneath their feet, sinking into the bowels of the earth in blood and bones. All of them had died. Here. In this spot, the Grandmaster and the Star Legion were surrounded by graves.

  Grandmaster opened her mouth–to speak or cry or even wail, she was not sure–but then she gasped as the current of Death seized her, as if to drag her along the river, as if to pull her into the depths of its dark waters.

  The wailing within else to a terrible chorus. Death had claimed this spot. She could feel it, feel it in the air she breathed in. And it wanted to have its way with her.

  No. Maggie. Grandmaster. Come back. Do not give into the tide.

  A hand rested on her shoulder and her eyes flashed open. The voices had recorded to the back of her mind, but she could still hear them crying. Trapped in the cold spaces between life and death, trapped in torment and evil, because of the Phoenix and his Eternity Corporation.

  What is it? Sparks asked. What do you sense?

  When Grandmaster exhaled, she breathed out the weight of all the deviant spirits that lingered within her. For some strange reason, she recalled the day when she met the Teacher and the first members of the Star Legion.

  She was lonely. The Star Legion were many. She protected them and they thanked her in all the ways they knew how.

  And…she would never be lonely again.

  She eyed Sparks somberly.

  “It’s death, Thomas,” she said. “Death.”