Something is Brewing

A thunderous thud thud thud thrashes me awake until I identify the noise, and freeze. I halt my breath to listen for what comes next — what’s happening – what do they want? I peer out my bedroom window to see swarms of Enforcers raiding the homes in my story-book-esque neighborhood, destroying everything in their wake. They stare unamused at my people begging for their lives, as if the fear they impose is all in a day's work. It’s barely morning.

I collapse out of bed and realize I’m in my nightwear, barely clothed, and I have about three seconds before they burst through my door. My heart races, the thumps deafening, while sharp demands rise from outside. “It’s The Order, open the door!” They shout. I fight the buttons of my pants with shaky hands. Panic has me by the throat but I refuse to face this confrontation half-nude.

Three…two…

“Now!” They roar.

Blast.

Six men burst through the seams of my tiny cottage, fully armed. They don The Order’s uniform – dark wool coats that drape to their knees, paired with green trousers and black leather boots. Their dark blades rest subtly exposed at their hips.

The inertia knocks me off balance, but I catch it against the doorframe. “Search decree! they yell, holding shields laced in dark Magic, “search decree!” They repeat in case anyone forgot, as I’m forced to back away.

“What’s going on?” I ask firmly, reclaiming my stance, but none of them look up. “Hello?” I say to one that zips by, but I may have already asked that one, they’re impossible to tell apart. In my doorway, an Official sporting a blue sash walks in slowly behind his ilk, holding a clipboard with a list of names. His other hand holds out a notice.

“Read it,” He orders. My eyes are glued to the pictures being tossed off my mantle, family heirlooms shattering, my heart shattering with them. Two others sift through the glasses in my cupboards, displacing things like they’re meaningless. The clan of them is all consuming. The sight and sounds make me sick.

“You don’t have to break things! just tell me what you’re looking for!” I yell, ready to fight, but the official tugs my shoulder. “Read. It.”

The commotion rages, but I hold the piece of paper to my face, and read.

“Human,

By decree of the King, your holdings, including your person, are subject to search.

The World Law is written as such: the use, possession, or commodification of the Flaire’s magical properties is strictly forbidden.

Your compliance is expected.

The Order”

My bones quiver. The Official pats me down before I can think, but it ends quickly. An acknowledgement that hiding something beneath my silk tank top is unlikely. “Clear!” he barks to his clan who circle my bedroom like wolves.

“What the fuck is this?” I shout, holding the decree. “Prohibiting Magic? How do you expect us to survive?”

“You humans are bottom feeders, I’m sure you’ll find a way,” The official quips without looking up, pacing into my kitchen.

“It’s not yours to forbid,” I argue, my voice cracking.

He whips his head toward me with flat, pursed lips, “it is not yours either. It has never been,” he stares with evil. “It’s time you act as such.”

I audibly smirk, a cavalier response to a dire situation, no doubt. He halts and huffs. That got his attention. He points towards the peaks of The Ranges. “Have you looked outside?”

The Flaire, a native mineral and also the humans key to survival, traverses down the mountain slab dim and gray.

“The Flaire’s Magic is dwindling because of your use — your dependence,” he sneers. Dependence hits a nerve. I hate it, because somewhere deep down… he’s not entirely wrong.

I stare out as the frenzy swirls around me, struck by how dull everything looks. I don’t let myself look often— I try not to —because the sight always takes me back to when I was ten, standing at this same window, mesmerized by the way the Flaire shimmered blue across the Ranges. Back then, the land transformed into an oasis of salt-kissed light, like a sea made of earth. The sun would catch on the surface, reflecting and refracting until beams shot into the sky. I remember craning my neck, desperate to see where it ended, but I never could. It was the most breathtaking sight I’ve ever witnessed. And I haven’t seen it that bright ever since.

The piercing sound of shattered glance brings me back— I face the Official, staring at his clipboard.

“Blame your leader,” I snarl with clenched fists.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

He faces me, a dark plume circulates his sword, readying.

“Excuse me?” He stalks closer.

“Your kind doesn’t even need it,” I reply, my tone low.

“Do not blame others for your inability to adapt.”

“Clear!” Two Enforcers shout from my bedroom, the sound jolts me back. They approach my mothers bedroom door now, my heart sinks. “You don’t need to search there, she’s dead, probably not going to find much,” I say. He ignores me and creaks the door open.

No.

“In here!” Another calls from near the supply cabinet in the hall. They shift to their toes, racing away from her room.

They’re going to find my stash. Fuck. This.

I face the Official, clench my teeth.

“You’re soulless cowards, your wicked king—“.

“Enough!” He interrupts, debris falling from the ceiling. My heart stops dead.

He charges me with his hand resting on a dagger. My stomach drops, he halts an inch from me. He grips my neck and yanks me closer, I wrench my head back but it doesn’t budge.

“If you don’t shut your greedy mouth,” he growls, leaning into me, “I will shut it for you.”

I stare with force, as if my eyes are weapons, until an iron lock clunks onto the floor.

“Reported!” One of them, not sure which, screeches. They all swarm to my supply cabinet to meet him. The clanking of glass vials fill my ears. The first noise that overpowers my thumping heart. Remedies, Ointments, teas. Some I’ve acquired on my own through trade and commerce, others that my mother left me when she died.

Looted and stolen.

There it is — the last of sources of the Flaire’s Magic we require for healing, for survival.

Gone.

~

I stand warily at my front door, watching each Enforcer march out. The Official pauses in my doorway while the rest continue.

I clench my fists.

“The World Law is now in effect!” He announces, like others are listening, “Any human caught using or possessing Magic from the Flaire will be sent to Mar.”

Mar. The prison camps North. No one returns.

He leans in, baring his teeth. “But if I catch you, Jo,” he whispers, glancing at my hips,“I will handle you myself.”

His black pupils hint at something evil, and despite every urge to surrender, to cower at this creature threatening my life, my body.

I don’t flinch.

“Leave,” I demand with the little dignity I have left. He smiles and disappears.

And so do the rest.

~

I release the fear I swallowed whole, the satisfaction I refused to give, and scream. Loud.

My mothers bedroom lies vacant. A rush of grief comes, but I breathe through it and thank the stars that they didn’t loot her bedroom.

I would have to go in there if they did, and I’m not ready for that. I’m not sure I’ll ever be.

~

As I sit on the bench in my nook to calm myself down, a blue spark ignites from my coal-burning stove, creating an uproar of flames. The embers pop pop as I race over to tend to it, noticing the shattered vial and cork melting below. The Enforcers threw one of my vials into the fire, Dust, by the looks of it. A powdered mix of Flaire, Raivine root and pine — a way to open our airways, our human airways during the cold winter months, when the air is brutally thin.

As I watch the flames rage, I imagine a world where the Flaire’s Magic flows freely, abundantly. I’ve heard the old wives’ tales of a different time, when the Magic wove itself into everything: the soil, the water, the very air we breathed. We didn’t have to summon it, or ingest it in various ways. It simply was.

The story we’re taught in school is different, of course. We’re taught that Raia was in ruins when the Dark King Kai arrived, teetering on the brink of collapse. Our leaders were desperate but he came like a savior, preaching reform and prosperity, and within months, he’d lead us to salvation. He promised that with structure and discipline, Raia would thrive, and the Flaire would become a powerful tool for trade.

And so, The Order was born, and none of his promises were kept.

I doubt they were ever real to begin with.

The roaring blue flames dim to gray, and then to black, ravaging the firewood to ash.

~

Pieces of my childhood, my life, splay the floor. I scour through the broken bits, trying to find anything salvageable. My eyes well up as I soak in the destruction. It feels like my heart was destroyed, too.

I glance around, searching for a figurine I can’t seem to find, scanning the remnants of my childhood, of who I used to be — when a blue Valerian warrior catches my eye.

“Thank goodness,” I mutter, stepping toward it.

I wrap my fingers around the small figure, holding it tightly as memories rush in. My mother used to tell me stories of the Valerians: a fabled people whose women could wield Magic directly, a gift we lesser humans could only dream of.

The Valerians were fierce. That’s what she always said, with fire in her voice. And I had to be fierce like them. This was her favorite heirloom. I never understood why, not with all the treasures she had. But after this morning, I think I get it.

The Valerians embodied strength and defiance, qualities that feel nearly impossible to claim under a regime like his. But more than that, they were wild, untamed.

They were free.

Dreaming of what once was and what will never be, I clutch the Valerian tightly to my chest as tears stream down. A sudden breeze brushes my cheek, cool and deliberate. I look up, startled. All the windows are closed.

Outside, the world carries on.

The Enforcers vanish. My tears dry. And the roaring train in my chest slows to its final stop: numbness.

Another day here on Raia.

Oh, and happy twenty-sixth birthday to me