Right on cue, the bell fell through the roof and the revolution started. The bell made loud, obnoxious noises as it hit each step, leaving a trail of fallen people and broken wood in its wake. Sie looked up from her book just in time to leap out of the way and into an open doorway. Below the stairs, a group of soldiers had gathered to stop the revolt, but everyone knew they were much too late. Teens and morphs and hergs were pouring out of dorm doorways, cheering each time the bell hit a soldier, and booing each time a student moved too slowly to avoid its fast-paced fall.
“They would have cheered if it had hit me,” thought Sie. “They think I work for Her.” Sie was the campus’s only dujsh, or foreign wing. She had raven wings and the ability to swim under water, which made her weird without being foreign. The two combined made her an absolute outsider. Everyone thought she worked for the lady who they were rebelling against- which was not completely untrue.
Sie was a loner, which allowed her to get away with many things. However, it also hindered missions, which were given to her by Her right-hand man, Taskj. Taskj was foreign as well, although he was an almost-regular herg. He had power over metal, which was unusual for a cat-man. He was part cheetah, so he was also the campus’s security captain. He gave Sie missions to keep the campus functioning properly, and had given her special techs for surveillance. She liked to call herself Taskj’s right hand, but of course she told no one else this. The fact that she kept the campus under control was enough to get her killed by any number of morphs and hergs. Fortunately, teens were too normal to get too close to her, so she was safe from their hatred.
Sometimes, however, Sie wished she had someone to talk to- maybe another dujsh. If there was anyone out there remotely like her, they didn’t say anything. Sie was alone in a crowd of people- some of whom looked exactly like her from the back. Her wings and gills were different, though. Her wings were enormous- she had accidentally whacked people with them before. They were darker than the sky at midnight, and stronger than any man or beast alive. When she got in water, she could stay under as long as she wanted to, and her wings could propel her. They become like enormous flippers on her shoulders in the water; they were her favorite and most useful feature.
Sie stepped fully into the room and closed the door softly. She turned around, her nose still in her book, and walked towards what she thought was a couch. She turned to sit down, mumbling something about stupid revolution and… “She’ll be here soon, I warrant.” She sat down and instantly sprang back up again, stifling a scream. She put her book in her pocket and turned around slowly to face the couch. It was breathing. Sie reached out a cautious wingtip and poked it, ever so gently. It moved the slightest bit. Sie nearly screamed again, but forced herself to think. Without realizing it, she started to glide around the room, her wings carrying her silently back and forth, as if she was pacing.
“I’d come down if I were you, miss,” said a voice from everywhere and nowhere. It had a think native accent, and Sie, with her foreign accent, could barely understand it.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Come out, or I’ll- I’ll call Taskj.”
“Ooh, I’m so scared. Please, please, don’t call him, he’ll hurt me.” The voice was sarcastic, almost overly so
“If I call him, he’ll tell Her, and She’ll come. I’m warning you, I’m an agent!”
“A scared agent, I’d say. Why are you flying away, little birdie?”
Sie landed hard, getting angrier by the second. “I have a weapon! Get out on the open, or I will find you! I’m trained!”
“Sooo scared, I am!” Nevertheless, a boy unlike any herg or morph Sie had ever seen appeared where the couch had been.
Sie stared at the strange boy, completely miffed by his strange appearance. “Where- how…what?” she stuttered.
“I’m not a morph. Not really, I just like acting like one.” He smiled broadly, showing perfect teeth. After a moment of silence, he asked, “So…you’re this Sie person, right? Aren’t you working for Her?”
Sie shifted uncomfortably. “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, sort of…indirectly. I work for Taskj, and he works for Her. I’ve met Her, but that doesn’t mean I like Her.”
The boy grinned again, then stuck out a hand. “Name’s Jairg. Funny name, but I guess everybody here has a weird name…I’m from Alboreight. I hear you’re a foreigner, too, but where’re you from?”
Sie gulped. Her homeland, Fargeui, was a traditional enemy of Alboreight. She put her hand on the small knife she had tucked into her belt, just in in case, and said, “Fargeui. I am one of the few dujshii, and I alone in my family have the honor of the ancient fighting ways of that race.”
Jairg looked at her for a long minute before slowly sliding a knife out his pocket. “Well, then, shall we settle this the old-fashioned way, dujsh to fennec?”
Sie nodded and revealed her knife, which was slightly smaller than Jairg’s. They stood for a moment, facing each other unblinkingly, before lunging into silent combat.
Jairg was a fennec- a race almost as rare as the dujsh. He had the ability to morph, fly, and had the knowledge of fighting only a certain few possessed. His wings, when revealed, were tawny and a little black around the edges. They were large, but not as large as Sie’s, although his were slightly stronger, as he was a boy.
For a long minute, they were equally matched. Both used their wings, but as Sie’s were bigger and Jairg’s could be folded in, he had the advantage. It was an ancient, unwritten code that no one ever attacked wings, and Sie and Jairg were following it, but Jairg was making wild movements, and nearly caught Sie’s wing once. She dodged it skillfully, being trained in the ways of the dujshii, but nonetheless it phased her. She began to lose control of her fighting; her knife suddenly became inadequate, the ability to fly not enough, and even her training seemed entirely too little.
That was when Jairg began to lose control, too. He swung his knife wildly, getting more and more cocky every minute. He caught Sie on the face once, and a few minutes later on the leg. Sie began to lose hope, and Jairg fought with a ferocity even his ancestors had never used. Every thing in the room was a weapon, and he began throwing things at Sie carelessly, making the noise of the revolution outside seem quiet in comparison. He threw one of the dorm’s large chairs at Sie, and it caught her on the leg. She fell to the floor, gasping, blood running down her shin. Jairg leaned over her, bloodlust in his eyes, and threw his knife down without bothering to aim.
The scream that pierced the air silenced even the revolutionaries outside. Sie screamed until her lungs burned, then collapsed, unconscious, on the floor of the one person who would not think twice about killing her.
Jairg stood over her barely-moving form, also panting. He eyed the blood pouring from Sie’s wing and pulled his knife out of it carefully. Sie moaned and twitched, but did not wake. Jairg had a look of absolute terror written in his eyes. His face was white, and his hands were shaking. To cut a person’s wings was the ultimate dishonor, worse even than killing them. Wings never healed correctly, and the people who had suffered wing wounds were known to never fully recover. Most had gone crazy, some had killed themselves, some had continued cutting their wings until they were no longer good for anything. Any way he looked at it, Jairg could find no excuse for his carelessness. He could only hope that Sie did recover, and that when or if she did, she kept his part quiet.
A revolution was nothing compared to the act he had just committed.
