The Sankari Legends Book One: The Scars We Hide

Alia didn’t seem to be in much pain as she stormed into the room Megan and Sabin were in.

“Megan Elise O’Carroll, you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do,” she ordered.

“Alia?” Megan asked. She glanced at me as I walked through the door. “Alec?”

There was no beating around the bush for Alia. She jumped straight to the point.

“Megan, why didn’t you tell us you had powers?” Alia asked, her voice harsh. “Or that your dad was a konna?”

She glared at Megan with one of her strongest glares, while Megan and Sabin both stared at her in shock. I shifted my gaze between the three, utterly confused as to what was going on.

“How… how did you know?” Megan asked.

Alia faltered slightly, but not for long. She crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest, even though she was careful about her wounds.

“When you’re subjected to countless varieties of torture, you find stuff out,” Alia said. Then in a less harsh tone: “But you aren’t denying it?”

I looked over at Megan, who exchanged an almost desperate glance with Sabin. I studied the two of them more. Sabin was lying on the bed, with his head propped up on a few pillows. White bandages were wrapped around his stomach. Megan was sitting in a chair beside him, with her shoulder bandaged and arm in a sling. I thought back to what Tyler and Nicki had said about them getting shot. All things considered, they actually didn’t look that bad off. But despite focusing on their injuries, I couldn’t help but notice the look that passed between them.

“You knew already, didn’t you?” I asked Sabin. Alia swiveled her heated glare from Megan to Sabin when I spoke. I wasn’t sure what she planned to accomplish with that glare, but it definitely made the other two shift uncomfortably.

“I was going to tell you,” Megan said. “There just wasn’t time before.”

“But you told him,” Alia said, gesturing angrily at Sabin, even though he hadn’t answered my question. “Apparently there was time for that!”

“I asked her to,” Sabin said. “We were attacked by Brittany—Megan’s older sister, remember?”

I rubbed one of my wrists absentmindedly, thinking about the cuffs that had held me in that chair. I answered slowly: “We remember. She well… we…”

“We had a lovely reunion,” Alia snapped. “With tea, cakes, and our worst fears coming true right before our eyes!”

Sabin winced at the bite in her words. “Yes, well as you… figured out, she’s a takot. She attacked us, and showed herself to Megan and me. After the visions were over, Megan…”

“I had a hard time recovering,” Megan interrupted. “Sabin asked if there was anything he should know before we continued on the mission. So I told him.”

“About being part konna?” Alia asked. “Not necessarily about your powers?”

“He actually already knew about that,” Megan admitted. “Zig had told him last year. At least, told him about me having powers. I told him what they actually were.”

“So, what are your powers?” I asked, before Alia could spew more accusations at the two.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to think right then. All my thoughts were muddled, and didn’t seem to be getting any clearer. Megan was part konna, she had powers, and she hadn’t told Alia and I about it. But Sabin knew. She’d told him. I didn’t understand why that bothered me, or why I cared that Megan had told Sabin but not us. I mean, we’d just been reunited for the first time in seven years only a few days ago. There really hadn’t been time for it, from the point we had left Edil until now. Especially since Alia and I hadn’t actually been with Megan and Sabin for half of that.

I rubbed my temples slowly, feeling a headache forming as Megan started to explain her powers.

“I’m a minnen,” she said. “It means I can sense the memories of the people and places around me. I also don’t forget anything, no matter how hard I try.”

My head continued to throb worse and worse as Megan continued to explain. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the room anymore, but instead sitting out on the academy’s central quad with Alia, Megan, and Sabin. Alia and Sabin were sparring while Megan and I sat by and watched. We were holding hands and laughing at the other two.

I blinked and shook my head. As suddenly as the strange vision had appeared, it disappeared and I was left looking at the three concerned faces of my teammates.

“Alec?” Megan asked. “Are you… are you okay?”

I shook my head again. My thoughts were swimming now, and I couldn’t process any of what was going on.

“I need some air,” I managed to say before running out of the room.

“Alec! Wait!” Megan shouted after me. I heard her telling Alia to stay with Sabin, but then I was out of earshot and couldn’t hear anything else except the sound of my feet on the pavement and the blood rushing through my ears.

The room was on the second level of the infirmary, but it was a short run down the stairs to the doors leading outside. As I pushed the doors open to the outside, I found myself standing in the Solace Garden. I slowed to a steady walk as I took in my surroundings. I’d never been in the Solace Garden before, since that was normally reserved for mental-powered (especially telepaths) people who needed to clear their minds. Apparently, there was some special type of plant that was designed for that purpose, but honestly I could care less. Right now, I had too much on my mind, and no fancy plant was going to help me clear my head.

What had happened to me back there? What I’d seen—the four of us on the quad—that had never happened. I hadn’t seen Alia in seven years, Megan only briefly in passing, and last year was the first time I’d seen Sabin after leaving Satama. So why were the four of us together in my vision? And why were Megan and I holding hands?

“Alec, there you are.” Megan’s voice came from behind me. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped walking and was just staring blankly at the fountain in front of me.

“What happened?” she asked. “Why did you run?”

“Why would we be holding hands on the quad while watching Alia and Sabin spar?” I asked, turning part way around to look at her.

Megan looked taken aback by the question. “I… I don’t understand Alec. What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what happened in there, Megan,” I said. “While you were describing your powers… I saw the four of us out on the quad. Sabin and Alia were sparing. We were sitting there watching them and holding hands.”

“That never happened Alec,” Megan said. “I would know if it had.”

“Right, because of your minnen powers,” I scoffed, sounding a lot harsher than I meant to. She winced slightly at my rough tone, but didn’t remark about it.

“Alec, I don’t know why you saw that, but that never could’ve happened. It couldn’t have…”

She paused, looking at me with a curiously gaze. Her blue eyes sparked as she seemed to be thinking intensely.

“What do you think it was?” Megan finally asked.

I frowned, confused by her question.

“What do you mean?”

“Alec, obviously you think there’s something significant about what you saw. And since you don’t have a history of having tulevik or minnen powers, something else has to be going on.”

I had no doubt she would’ve crossed her arms at that point, had it not been for one of her arms being in a sling.

“Megan, I honestly don’t know what’s going on. All I know is that you started talking about your powers, and then my head started hurting.” I paused to think through my next words. “Actually, it started hurting a little after I asked you what your powers were. My thoughts had started to get cluttered. I was trying to sort out how I felt about you not telling us about your powers or that you were a konna, or the fact that you told Sabin and… well, I don’t know what happened. One minute, I was standing there listening to you explain your powers, and the next I’m watching myself sit on the quad holding hands with you.”

Megan stared at me blankly for a moment before she spoke again.

“Wait…” she said as she reached out with her good arm and grabbed one of my hands. She closed her eyes in a look of relaxed concentration. We stood silently for a few seconds before Megan pulled back.

“That… that isn’t possible,” she gasped.

“Huh?” I said.

“What you saw,” Megan explained. “It was a memory. A real one. I remember it now too. The four of us had just finished classes for the day, and Alia wanted to try out this new move she’d learned in one of her powerless training sessions, which is why she and Sabin were sparring.”

“I don’t remember that much.”

“That’s because your memory doesn’t repair itself as quickly as mine does,” she answered.

“What do you mean ‘repair’?” I asked skeptically.

Megan reached up to tug on her ponytail, but dropped her hand when she realized that her hair was hanging loose around her face. The faraway look in her eyes suggested she considering how to answer. Finally, she looked up at me, making eye contact. A firm look was placed deep within the blue color and I knew immediately I probably wasn’t going to like what was going to happen next.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

“What kind of question is that?” I asked as I averted my eyes from her.

I thought about how she hadn’t told us the truth about herself at the start of the mission. Despite the crunched schedule, that should’ve been something for her to be up front about. But she had told Sabin eventually, though he probably had to wheedle it out of her. I wondered if Alia hadn’t stormed into the room earlier if Megan would ever have told us the truth.

A stupid question, really, I realized. Megan had every reason in the world to not tell us the truth about her powers or her lineage. As a minnen, one of the three sight powers, she would be a high prize to be exploited—plenty enough reason to not let her powers be well known. And if people knew she was half-konna, then she’d be shunned from society and no one would ever trust her. Again, perfect excuse not to say anything.

I looked back at her, meeting her eyes once again and seeing the desperate need for me to trust her in them.

“Alec, please,” she pleaded. “I think I know what’s wrong, and I can fix it. But I can’t do that without your help.”

I took a breath and then nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “I trust you.”

Megan nodded silently as she reached up with her hand and placed it gently against the side of my head, close to my left temple. There was a slight height difference between us, and I found myself looking across the top of her head before I lowered my eyes to look down at her.

“So, now what?” I asked, not appreciating the heated feeling of having her this close to me. Not that it was a bad feeling… it was just extremely confusing.

“Now,” Megan said quietly. “We remember.”

The barrage of memories that followed was enough to make my head feel like it was about to explode. Suddenly I felt like I was floating between multiple different realities at once. Images flashed before my line of sight. Pictures of myself sparring in the training gym with Alia; of Sabin and I planning a prank on Tyler; and Megan standing beside me, her hand entwined in mine as we walked across the campus.

It was—for lack of better phrasing—a totally weird experience. I was seeing and suddenly remembering events that had happened that only a few seconds ago had seemed impossible. At some point I realized that everything I was seeing had taken place in the three years I had been at Edil. Slowly the new images began to line up and eventually replace everything I had believed to be real. Though I didn’t forget it all. Both realities were still present in my memory, but there was something about the one Megan was showing me—the one that had us, Sabin, Alia, and our other friends altogether—that just made it feel… right.

I’m not sure how long we stood there like that. At some point, Megan’s hand began to shake. Whatever it was that she was doing, it was putting a lot of strain on her powers. Without really thinking, I reached up and placed my hand over hers, holding it steady until the images slowly receded and left the two of us standing there.

Megan slowly lowered her hand, though I wasn’t quick to let go of it, especially when she began to sway on her feet. I barely manage to catch her as she fell forward into me. A hiss of pain escaped her lips as her bad shoulder took the impact.

“Hey, you alright?”

She shook her head and straightened back up, then sucked in a deep breath.

“I don’t know. Are you?”

I didn’t know what to do, what to say. Everything that had just happened, all of those memories, I didn’t even know they existed until two minutes ago.

“I, ah…” I let out a breath, not really knowing what else to do, reluctant to talk about what we’d just seen. “Well…” Megan looked up at me, and I saw the misery in her eyes, and my heart reached out to hers, wanting to erase the guilt written in her eyes.

I let a goofy grin make its way onto my face, “Well, I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

Megan grinned back at me, letting out a shaky laugh.

“Yeah about that… look Alec, I know what we just saw was us and everything but I just-”

I held up a hand, silencing her.

“I understand, and I think we both need time to process whatever just happened, and we can talk about that later on.” I saw the relief as it made it’s way across her face. “But first things first, I think we need to go and talk with Alia and Sabin, and maybe do your,” I waved my hands around her head, “brain-powery thing, to them too.”

Megan shook her head.

“I think… I think what I just did should already be working on them. Besides, even if it didn’t, I don’t have the strength right now to be able to do it again.”

“Right, okay,” I said, nodding slowly. “So uh, care to explain what just happened?”

“Well, as near as I can tell, everything we thought had happened these past three years wasn’t real. Everything we just saw was our real memories. Something… happened that rewrote our memories, but I don’t know what…”

“Oh dear, what an unfortunate problem.”

Megan and I spun around to find ourselves facing Brittany. Megan cursed loudly at the sight of her sister, but I was confused. Brittany hadn’t been the one who had spoken. Which meant…

I reached out and felt the air currents around me, feeling the slightest change as one skirted around an invisible object a few feet to my right. Without even a second’s hesitation, I spun and launched a rock right at that spot.

“I know you’re there,” I said. I turned in her direction and watched as Odyssa became visible.

“Hey there Alec,” she said. “Did you miss me?”

“What are you doing here?” Megan asked, directing the question at her sister. “How did you get in?”

“Quite easily, actually,” Brittany said. “Getting in my special team was a piece of cake. The goal is for us to be able to take control from the inside before the troops get here. That way there’s a lot less of a mess to clean up.”

Megan narrowed her eyes at her, staying silent for a few seconds before saying “You’re lying. That isn’t your real plan.” She reached for her gun that was normally holstered to her right hip before realizing it wasn’t there. “Dammit. I don’t have a gun.”

“You won’t need one, Little Sister,” Brittany said with a smirk. “Because you and I have some business to take care of.”

“No! Stay out of my head!” Megan shouted, taking a step back. I couldn’t turn around to see her, because I was too busy watching Odyssa. Of course, she was flicking her gaze between me and the two sisters, as if trying to decide what was more worth her time.

I only dared turned around when I noticed Megan had stopped shouting. I saw her standing a few feet away, her eyes focused on Brittany, wearing a determined expression. Brittany was focused on Megan, with her signature smirk poised on her face. They must have been locked in some kind of weird mental battle I didn’t want to try and understand. Not that I really had time. Since the O’Carrolls had become uninteresting, Odyssa now turned her attention on me, which I realized only after a knife was thrown inches from my face.

“Pay attention, Alec,” she chided. “I’d hate to mess up that pretty face of yours.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“Mm, not going to happen.” Odyssa grinned. “I feel like we need to talk about some stuff first Alec. I mean… Tyrone got to be all conversational with your sister, so surely I have the right to talk to you.”

“Honestly, I’d rather just throw rocks at your head,” I replied, giving as nonchalant of a shrug as I could manage.

To prove my point, I sent another rock flying at her head. But even though my aim was spot on (something I always prided myself with), the rocks never hit her. As the projectiles got close to Odyssa, her eyes flickered mischievously and her skin turned almost translucent. The rocks sailed through her as if she wasn’t even there.

“You’ll have to do better than that, sweetheart,” she chided. “Honestly, it’s hard to believe that you’re the infamous son of Demi and Malyn Parker. It’s sad, really.”

I froze in place from where I’d been about to send a blast of flame at her.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “How do you know my parents’ names?”

The grin that spread across Odyssa’s face sent shivers down my spine. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. At that moment, everything clicked.

“It was you,” I breathed. “You killed my parents.”

“And he finally figures it out. Good for you, Alec!”

“Shut up!” I shouted, this time following through with blasting her with flames. My head was spinning with emotion. After seven years of wondering what had happened to Dagger Girl, and now she was standing in front of me.

I had never given much thought to what I would do if I were ever given the chance to face her again. I’d honestly not believed it would ever happen. But here we were.

My vision tinted red. The next thing I knew, I was charging towards Odyssa, my hands burning with white-hot flame. I was fully intent on burning her, and would have if not for the shield that suddenly appeared between us. I bounced off of it and landed a few feet away.

“What the hell Zig?!”

I knew it was him. It couldn’t not be him. Zig was the only shield to have come through Edil in the last few years, and even if he wasn’t, I doubted any other shield would’ve been able to create a barrier powerful enough to keep in a phaser like Odyssa.

I turned around to glare at Megan’s older brother. With the new (old?) memories that Megan had unlocked, I could remember a lot more about him from my time spent at Edil. He’d been one of the drill leader-trainees of our first year training course. I’d been in that course with Megan and Alia, and then later Sabin was added as our team strategist (strategists couldn’t be first year students, which is how Sabin ended up with us).

“You know, there’s a reason we always made sure you and Alia were on the same team in your first year,” Zig said, holding his hands out and keeping the shield around Odyssa. “You balance out each other’s stupidity.”

“I’m not stupid, Zig,” I protested sternly. “Odyssa killed my parents.”

“I know, but you aren’t thinking, Alec. If I hadn’t been here, you would’ve been reunited with them right now instead of arguing with me.”

As I took a breath and looked over at Odyssa, I realized what he was talking about. She was holding a silver dagger in her left hand—a dagger that no doubt would’ve been stabbed right through me if Zig hadn’t created his shield in time.

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said.

“Ha! You two are pathetic,” Odyssa called out to us from inside the barrier. “Honestly, how did you even manage to get this far?” She rolled her eyes. “Jeez, you sankrin types are so boring. But whatever. I doubt you’ll be able to stay here long, Zig. Not with your sisters’ energies so nearby.”

Zig and I both spared a glance to where Brittany and Megan were still locked in mental combat. I hadn’t noticed before, since I’d been too preoccupied with Odyssa, but they were giving off an unusual amount of energy—both light and dark.

I looked over at Zig and noticed his face had gone considerably paler (which should’ve been near impossible since both he and Megan already had very pale skin). Sweat shone on his brow. I could tell that the energy was starting to affect him, and the fact that he still had to hold up the shield to keep Odyssa in couldn’t have been helping.

Odyssa laughed.

“Don’t think I can’t see your struggle, Zig,” she said. “Your track history with keeping your konna side under wraps is worse than Megan’s.”

As if on cue, Megan gave a strangled cry and stumbled back a few steps. I whirled around to help her, but just then Zig grunted in effort and collapsed to his knees. The energy from Megan and Brittany’s battle was draining him quickly. The shield he was holding up flickered, but stayed in place. He glanced up at me and I saw his eyes shift from light blue to dark—a change I remember seeing hundreds of times with Megan’s eyes, but one I’d never quite understood until now.

“Help her,” Zig grounded out. “I’ll be fine.”

His breathing was strained. He wouldn’t be fine.

Suddenly, KC appeared next to him. She gripped his arm and made him look at her. The darkness in his eyes started to recede.

“Help Megan, Alec,” she ordered without bothering to look up at me. “I’ll take care of Zig.”

KC might have been a foot shorter than me (and that was being generous), but I’d been trained under her since I’d first been placed with the Situational Specialists, and I would be the first to admit that KC Kinsley terrified me. There was no way in hell I was going to go against her orders.

I turned my back on the two of them and Odyssa, who continued to shout insults at me. But I didn’t listen. Megan was in trouble. I had no idea what I would be able to do to help her, but I had to do something.

“Megan!” I shouted, foolishly thinking maybe that would be enough to pull her back. Of course it didn’t work.

Neither she nor Brittany were aware of my approach, which probably worked in my favor. Without having any other plan, I took a breath, reached out, and took Megan’s hand in mine.

As soon as our hands made contact, I was whisked into a world so much like my own, with the exception of everything being on fire.