Dawnbreaker: The Vaults of Malta, Chapter 16

"Really? This one? Of all the ones I submitted???"
-Arcturian Aru
Chapter 16: PLa Takhafuu Min Alhasid is the sixteenth chapter of Dawnbreaker, The Vaults of Malta. It was originally published as a solo entry within the University of Colorado's Riverrun literary journal. 
The chapter is follows Khaliah Al-Palmyra, as she finds an unlikely helper in her quest to unlock her magic. 
== The Text ==
=-=-=-= Khaliah Al-Palmyra =-=-=-=
Khaliah stepped out of the Reflecting Pools, dejected. 
The mood outside seemed to reflect her feelings like a mirror. A thick, choking mist had formed around Mount Kumagamine, as if a storm cloud had descended from above to strip the world of its sight and senses. The air was cold and quiet, like an empty coffin. 
Khaliah walked straight to the stone wall overlooking the valley, so her companions couldn’t see her face. She gripped the damp alabaster and peered out into the sea of mist. The lights of Nagasaki blinked like swarms of bioluminescent fish, swimming far below the fog. 
“Hey um…” Aaron murmured. He tried to find the right words, but they didn’t come. In the end, he just sighed. “Az and I are gonna go back to the dorms. Raihan’s cooking tonight, so we’re meeting there instead of the cafeteria…” 
“See you later Khal. Sorry…” Azanna muttered. 
The two of them backed away, turned a corner, and vanished up a staircase. 
Finally alone, Khaliah turned around and sank into a bench. Her head felt woozy. A mixture of rage, sadness, and doubt strangled her mind. She felt awful. Her stomach churned and her mouth grew sour, as if she had licked a lemon. 
She couldn’t handle it. Khaliah’s eyes welled up, and tears began to form at their corners. Why couldn’t she do this? She WANTED to do this. Her mind was open, ready, and willing. Never once had she performed magic, yet it was everything to her. This was her chance to finally gain her parents’ love and recognition, and yet she was squandering it! 
For a moment, Khaliah wondered whether this was some sort of cruel punishment from Allah. Had she done something to infuriate him? 
Or perhaps he didn’t want her using magic at all. 
Khaliah groaned in frustration. She held her head in her hands and screamed as loudly as she could. It was a shriek of pure frustration and disappointment, a wail of terror. Had there been people nearby, they would have called the police. 
“Hm, that’s quite some lungs you have. Do you sing by any chance? If not, you should really give it a try,” someone said incredibly close to Khaliah’s ear. 
Khaliah jumped high into the sky with fright. “Ai! Do not approach someone like…” her voice trailed off as she saw who had scared her. 
On her right sat a woman. Khaliah knew for a fact that she hadn’t been there a few moments before. A long, sleeveless black dress with patterns of emerald and silver adorned her body, while a gray stone mask lay tied to the side of her head. Oddly, her skin was clear and reflective, like glass. Khaliah could even see the woman’s skeleton beneath it. Her crystalline eyes were set with irises cut from the purest emeralds, and shone beneath a bun of deathly white hair. In her right hand she held a lantern that glowed with a strange green flame. 
The woman set it down and pulled out a paper bag with an owl printed on it, from which she took out a delicious smelling burger, as well as fries with mayo. “Want some?” she asked as she leaned them toward Khaliah. 
“U-um, no thank you,” Khal said with some confusion. “Um… who are you?” 
The woman of glass took a bite of her burger, causing Khaliah to recoil as she watched the burger turn to mush in her mouth. The woman swallowed and said, “Ah, I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself, Khaliah dearest. You may call me Sana.” 
“How do you know my name?”
“Oh! I know everyone here. It’s part of my job.” 
“Ah! So you are a knight? A… guardian for this campus?” 
“I suppose. So. Got a question for you. Just a moment ago you screamed your lungs out. I’ve lived long enough to know when someone is frustrated, so what’s the matter, dearest?” 
Khaliah looked down at her hands. She didn’t want to burden the woman with her problems, but somehow, she just felt… compelled to say something. Perhaps it was because of the woman’s approachability, or maybe Khaliah really just needed to get something off her chest. Regardless, she suddenly found herself spilling her problems to a woman she didn’t even know. 
“…And I KNOW my parents will be disappointed when they hear this! This is my chance to become someone they can love, and I- I am squandering it! I wish to become a mage, and yet, I just cannot seem to accomplish it!” she shouted. 
Sana sighed. “Well, it seems you have a problem on your hands…” 
“Quite.” 
Sana took another bite, deep in thought. “You know… it took a while for me to get the hang of magic too,” she said. 
“Really?” 
“Mhm. Well, my situation was a bit different from yours, but my words still stand. You see, from my point of view, it seems you’re trying to rush your awakening. My advice is this: don’t. Magic is a fickle thing. It’s a delicate, beautiful, living thing that doesn’t care about deadlines and frustrations. Things don’t always happen when you expect them to, and especially not when it comes to magic. Don’t worry. Give it some time!” Sana said. 
Khaliah frowned. It will come when it wants to? Please, that was so stupid! “My parents say that if something does work the way it is supposed to, it is broken,” she quoted.
Sana just smiled. “Well, your parents are wrong then.”
Her parents? Wrong? Please. “My parents are never wrong. They are top experts in science and technology. They have always known what is best for me, what I should do, and how to do it. They are always right. Without fail,” she stated. 
Sana sighed. “Well, if you value expert opinions…” she began. She put down her burger and stood up. “Are you ready to see something cool?” 
“Y- yes?” 
Sana held out her hand, and Khaliah took it. It felt cold like ice, but at the same time it was… soft… and warm. The mage helped Khaliah to her feet, and lifted up her lanturn. The dim green light flickered softly within its silver cage. Then, it grew. And grew. It enveloped the whole chamber, and burst out of its confines. A blast of fire shot out of the lanturn, ebbing and flowing through the mist. The light grew brighter and brighter. For a moment, Khaliah thought it might blind her. But then, darkness. 
“Woah…” she murmured. The two of them stood in complete darkness, an endless void illuminated only by the light of the lanturn. What sort of strange magic was this? 
Sana smiled. “Khaliah Al-Palmyra, what you seek is knowledge. Knowledge to fulfill your desires. Your parents wished to grant you this knowledge with the teachings they embedded in you throughout your life, but in their endeavors, they failed to realize that it is not them who must seek it. They thought you were incapable of doing it on your own, because you did not seek it the way they did. But they were wrong. They said everything must work according to law and order. According to the gears of the cosmos they love. That if it doesn’t, something is broken…” 
Suddenly, lines of silver light appeared in the darkness. They shot towards the two, and past them. “Energy…” Sana said. More lines appeared, this time from the left. “Space…” Then more, from above. “Time…” Some came from below. “Entropy…” Finally, some from the right. “Gravity.” An endless series of interconnected, pentagonal dodecahedrons appeared around them, filling the void with thin wisps of light. 
“The Pentagram of Relativity,” Khaliah surmised. 
“Yes. This is reality. The fundamental core of all science. But… magic is different.” 
More strings appeared in the darkness. They spun around the straight lines like bees through a field of blossoms, dancing through and twisting around the rigid shape of reality. As they did, they bent it with each corner they turned. One by one, the strings wove the hard shapes into a new configuration. They bound tighter and tighter, until something new shone in the dark. It was but a small orb, but when Khaliah held out her hands to it, she felt it. It was light, but heavy. It was harsh, but soft. It was angry, yet serene. It was a contradiction. 
“This is… beautiful.” 
Sana smiled. “Science and magic are fundamentally different things. Science is law. It is truth. It is the essence of the Cosmos itself. But magic? Magic is the opposite. It’s wild and free and doesn’t care about what it can and can’t do. Magic is about feeling and love. It’s about you.” 
Khaliah didn’t know what to say. “I- I… suppose it is…” she murmured. 
Sana lowered her lanturn, and the darkness vanished like smoke from a wood fire, leaving them standing in the foggy plaza once more. “So, do you understand?” the mage asked. 
Khaliah nodded unsurely. “I… believe so. I thank you for the advice. I just wish my parents saw my situation in the same way as you.” 
Sana gave a little giggle. “Well, they are over seven-and-a-half thousand kilometers away, are they not? What does what they say matter?”  
Khaliah nodded. “I agree- I mean yeah. I get it. So… what do you recommend?” 
“Like I said, give it time. Practice it like you have it. Care for it like it’s a friend. Love it like it’s yours. And if you do, one day, it will love you in turn,” Sana finished. 
‘Practice it. Care for it. Love it. And it will love you back.’ 
Khaliah burned those words into her mind, letting them echo around every corner of her being. “Thank you,” she said. 
Sana looked up. Thin beams of light were beginning to cut through the fog, clearing the plaza. The mage sighed, and got up. “It seems it’s time for me to get back to work. I’ll leave these fries with you. I have the feeling you did want them after all. Maa’anh rhoul gehsh~” she farewelled in an unknown language. The woman waved, and vanished around a corner. 
Wait. That woman, there was something strange about her. Like she could really help! 
“Please wait a moment!” Khaliah shouted. She jumped up and turned the corner, but Sana was gone. Warmth crawled up Khal’s back. She turned around, in confusion. Where was all the fog? It was just thick as soup moments ago, but now it had just up and vanished! And the plaza had people milling about all of a sudden! Hadn’t this place been empty only moments before?
Khaliah took a deep breath. Perhaps it was better not to think about such things. She took a deep breath, and walked over to the pools. Khal looked at her own reflection in the water. She took out a fry from the box, dipped it in mayo, and began munching on it absentmindedly. 
Well, it was worth another try. 
Khaliah stepped forwards, and let the water rush over her. 
***