The entrance to the building beeped as Amara swiped Chloé’s ID card. Neither her nor Vee said anything as they slowly marched up three flights of stairs, slowly approaching the dorms on the top level. Amara recounted all the tis she’d walked up these stairs with Chloé, listening to her excitedly rant about what ga she was playing at the ti, eager to show Amara so hot new thing she’d just unlocked.
Today there was nothing but silence. Amara’s demonic hearing amplified the echo of their footsteps, each one bringing them closer to the top.
When they finally arrived, it was only a short trip down the hall to reach Chloé’s room. Amara slipped the key into the door, turned the handle, and walked inside. The first room didn’t matter; a small common area with a kitchenette. Chloé’s roommate, always the more boisterous of the two, had completely decorated this room without Chloé’s input. Amara turned to the left, grabbed the handle to Chloé’s room, then paused.
“We don’t have to do this now,” Vee whispered, lightly grabbing Amara’s arm.
Amara shook her head. “No. I need to face this.” She swallowed nervously, and once Vee released her arm, she summoned a small flurry of hellfire to change into sothing more appropriate. Her winter coat disappeared, as did the simple black tank underneath it. A black, zip-up hoodie now hung loosely on Amara’s fra, a red and white stripe running down one arm and a patch on the chest reading “N7.” Underneath, she wore a red T-shirt with the image of a woman on it. This woman scowled at an imaginary audience, asserting her dominance as her thick, blackened, skeletal wings reached for the skies. A heavy, chitinous carapace covered most of her body, accentuating her seductive curves, and Amara couldn’t help but smile as she looked down at her new clothes.
“Who’s that?” Vee asked.
“This is the Queen of Blades,” Amara muttered. “Back when Chloé first found out about us, after you told her everything, she hid up on the rooftop for a while. I went to talk with her, and one of the first things she said was that I looked just like this character and that she was super jealous.”
Vee smiled. “That sounds like her.”
“I was ready to apologize when I found her. I felt terrible for lying about us, and I had a whole speech prepared, but then she told she didn’t care about the lying. She actually thought we did the right thing by not telling her. The thing that really bothered her was that our existence made her feel small. She’d always dread of magic being real, and we were proof that it is, but… she wasn’t important enough to be included. In her eyes, at least. She really thought that she didn’t matter, but in the end, she—”
“I know,” Vee said, cutting Amara off. It was for the best; Amara wanted to celebrate who Chloé was, not dwell on the tragedy that cut her off in her pri.
Amara turned, smiled at Vee, then opened the door.
Chloé’s room was exactly how Amara rembered it. A little cluttered, but not dirty, with plushies covering nearly every surface. Tiny monsters and creatures from all sorts of gas and shows sat near her computer, on top of the mini-fridge, and everywhere else a surface could be created. Her bed held a veritable mountain of critters as well, with Chloé’s favorites sitting front and center.
Walking inside, Amara gently traced a hand over Chloé’s ga collection. “I thought these were DVDs the first ti I was here. I never really got into video gas, but it was exciting seeing Chloé have so much fun with them.”
“I was always impressed by how well you kept up with her stories, despite knowing nothing about what she was talking about.”
“I like seeing people in their elent. When Nick wrestles, or plays any sport for that matter, he gets this look on his face like he’s exactly where he needs to be. When Tessa is at a party, or flirting with her partners, she’s completely lost in the mont. With Chloé, it was gaming. She loved puzzles, and every mont of every ga was a challenge to figure out. How to sneak around the guards, how to ti her parries, how to leap across a bottomless pit. If you could catch her in her elent, she was assertive, confident, and brilliant. The real world had been so harsh to her, however, that showing her true face terrified her.”
Vee paused at Chloé’s desk, picking up a small figure as she spoke. “One of my biggest regrets is not sharing that passion with her when I had the chance. I honestly forgot how many plushies she had. Didn’t she na them all?”
“She did! They all had nas, personalities, and backstories. Since she had trouble talking with people, she would use them to bounce ideas around or practice difficult conversations.” Amara sat down on the edge of Chloé’s bed, briefly displacing the two plushies in front of the pile. “These two were her favorites. Finnster and Paige.”
Picking up the shark, Vee chuckled. “Finnster I understand, but why Paige?”
“Because it’s a ram!” Amara said, picking up Paige and playfully making her headbutt Vee. “She’s normally very timid and sweet, but if you get her angry, she’ll go on a Ram-Paige!”
Vee laughed again, louder this ti, before sitting next to Amara on the bed. She hugged Finnster close, then leaned against Amara’s shoulder. “I’m kinda jealous. I think I hit a point where I decided plushies weren’t mature enough. Is there more to Finnster here?”
“Um, if I rember correctly, Chloé said that every trans person in the world has one of these sharks. She swore it was part of the gay agenda.” Amara smiled as she t Vee’s gaze, the angel staring back with a healthy dose of skepticism. “It’s safe to say she was probably making that part up.”
Both girls laughed again before they put both plushies back where they belonged. Vee quickly returned to leaning against Amara’s shoulder, and she welcod the comfort as they started sharing stories about Chloé. They stayed there for the better part of an hour, occasionally laughing, occasionally crying as they rembered all the wonderful tis they’d shared with their friend.
In the end, Amara got up to stretch her legs and found herself staring out the window. She nervously bit her lip as she watched the campus, the dull gray clouds slowly moving overhead.
“What’re you thinking?” Vee asked, stepping next to Amara.
“I think… I want to say sothing. Like, sothing more official. I don’t want to have a funeral, or anything like that, but… I think I’m ready to take the next step.”
“Do you want to do that here?”
Amara shook her head. “Honestly, I wish we could do it in the quad, but Palesa is still cleaning everything up.”
Vee thought for a mont before speaking up again. “Well, if the goal is to pay respect to her last monts, what about the circle under Lysander Hall? It’s not exactly the sa, but it still represents the barrier between our world and Purgatory.”
“That’s a really good idea, actually.” Amara nodded resolutely as she steeled herself. “Let’s do it.”
After locking up Chloé’s room again, and returning her outfit to sothing more appropriate for the weather, the two girls started for Lysander Hall. As they passed the quad, they saw Coven Head Palesa still hard at work. All the damaged trees had been regrown, and all the gouges in the field had been completely smoothed over. The scars from their battle against Brandon had all but completely healed, and Amara paused for a mont to watch Palesa as she continued regrowing patches of grass around the quad.
They only lingered for a mont, as Vee began shivering and grabbed Amara’s hand to indicate that she wanted to get out of the cold. Once they’d walked far enough away from the quad, and the Coven Head, Amara quickly ward a pocket of air around Vee to keep her comfortable before they made it inside.
Before long, they were standing in front of the illusory wall that hid the Lysander Circle. Amara had completely forgotten about it, but was too committed to her current course of action to bother Tessa. Instead, with the newfound knowledge that she had innate control over illusion magic, Amara placed a hand on the wall and tried to remove it herself. It took far longer than she wanted, and it was nowhere near as graceful as Tessa’s removal, but in the end, she was able to disperse the wall with a flurry of hellfire.
They now stood at the edge of the Lysander Circle, the sa one that Tessa had engineered to bring them back from Purgatory. Amara noticed that Vee had started shivering again, rembered that cold from the other side had a habit of leaking through, and brought back Vee’s warm pocket of air.
The two of them stood side by side, staring at the circle. Amara was trying to find the words, and just as the weight of the situation threatened to overwhelm her, Vee quietly grabbed her hand. For so reason, it felt right to have Vee close like this, and Amara began to speak.
“I think, in the end, Chloé was the strongest of all of us. She wasn’t a demon, a witch, or an angel, and she even defied our wishes by putting herself in harm’s way. The last thing I wanted was to see Chloé get hurt, but had she listened to , none of us would be standing here today. She faced down a madman with nothing but her own confidence, purely out of the desire to help. She refused to back down; she refused to accept that the world around her was beyond fixing. I’ve never known soone with a bigger heart, and I owe her my life. I only wish there was more I could do to celebrate her.”
Vee squeezed Amara’s hand, then looked over and offered a soft, reassuring smile. “Recently, I’ve been thinking about the kind of person I want to be moving forward. The Church always told to lie low, to only intervene when absolutely necessary, but I see now how wrong that is. Chloé fought relentlessly to make the world a better place, and I want to do the sa. No more hiding, no more half-asures.”
Neither of them spoke again. Amara couldn’t think of anything else to say, and instead let herself shed tears of sorrow as she rembered her friend. Once the tears had dried up, she took a deep breath, bowed her head, and whispered, “Goodbye, Chloé.”
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