Miss Moony would like to say that she doesn't own the Circle of Magic and that she had no help with this story from Miss Wormtail, Miss Padfoot or Miss Prongs.
Thanks to Cesy for pointing out those errors - not sure how I managed to miss them when I went over it myself.
Warnings for AU-ness and character death – lots of it. Darkfic: stay away if you're squeamish.
------- I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good -------
Corvus Corax
The room is dark, except for the small, flickering light of the oil lamp as it dies out. The girl's face can hardly be seen, but she is terrified – scared of the dark, and scared that she will be found, and scared that she won't be found.
She screws her eyes shut, thinking, and when she opens them again, she squints through the darkness, in the direction of a basket of threads.
The lamp gutters as she pulls the basket on to her lap, and she gropes blindly for three threads to begin her plait.
Green, red and yellow silk – they light up, and the room fills with a dim, flickering glow.
-------
'Coal. It really is made of dead plants. And this whole place is filled with it.' Black dust trickles down from the tunnel wall where a hand rested against it.
'Who cares what it's made of. Put out that lamp, Trader! You'll set the whole cave alight!'
A sniff, and the light extinguishes. 'Bear! Come back, Little Bear!'
Footsteps echo down the tunnel, accompanied by the dull, rhythmic thunk of metal on the ground.
Whining. 'Stop that noise! Oh, where is Little Bear?'
The staff is lifted from the ground, silencing its sound, and the footsteps continue on down the tunnel.
'I think I see him. Up there.' A finger points, and two sighs of relief can be heard.
The Little Bear barks, and a hand reaches out for his collar. 'Come on, Bear. Let's go home.'
-------
The girls in the hall are nearly all nobles, and proud of their heritages. There is one girl who stands in the doorway, though, who is not a noble, however proud she might be of her ancestors.
She is a dark Trader, and she stands next to a Temple Dedicate, clad in red tunic and breeches, staff in hand. Those few noble girls that take any notice of her at all, look towards her with contempt.
The Dedicate makes a short speech, about differences of culture, and the importance that everyone be accepted for who they are, and not what they are, and then leaves.
The nobles turn back to their meaningless prattle, and the dark girl stands alone for a moment before making her way towards an empty space at one of the tables, looking hopefully at the girls around it. One notices her approaching, and tells her friends. They stare at the dark girl contemptuously, and she backs away with injured pride.
Eventually, she spots a table, where there are five empty places. She settles in the seat furthest from the other girls, and no one speaks to her.
-------
The merchant girl walks a few steps behind the man who is leading her, and she scowls furiously at the ground. She is young, and her wild, red hair strains from the kerchief she has used to tie it back.
They walk in silence, despite the older man's attempts to make conversation, and they soon arrive at the gate of a small, quaint cottage, where he leaves her.
A boy sits in the garden, tan skinned and green eyed. His clothes are torn and muddy. He sniffs. 'Not another girl,' he complains loudly to himself, and then turns away.
The door opens at the sound of the boy's protest, and a tall, willowy Dedicate looks out. 'Don't be rude, Briar,' she scolds gently, and then looks at the merchant girl. 'You must be Trisana.'
The merchant girl nods, and the Dedicate smiles, offering her a choice of two bedrooms. She chooses the one on the top floor, to be nearer the sky, and on the way up, she meets a Trader girl.
With dismay, the merchant girl realises that she will have to live with these two until the Dedicates send her away. Even so, she doesn't have to be friends with them, and she tells the Trader girl so, rudely.
The dark girl's eyes flash with anger and sadness at her rejection, and the merchant girl isn't sorry.
-------
A pulse in the earth. Someone shrieks sharply, and there is the sound of the Little Bear whining, and forms toppling to the ground.
The Little Bear whines again, and the forms pick themselves up, breathing heavily. 'What was that?'
'An aftershock. From the earthquake.' Matter-of-fact, to-the-point, no dancing around the facts.
'Bear?' The Little Bear is silent.
'He's here. I've still got hold of his collar.' A breath of relief.
'The tunnel's caved in. We're trapped.' Shock, then panic, and then the Little Bear sneezes, and the metal cap of the staff thumps against the ground in frustration.
-------
Light shines steadily from the coloured, silk braid. The girl-in-shadows doesn't think about anything but the light. When she focuses hard enough, it is all that is there – the controlled, pattern movements of her fingers, and the trail of light that runs through her threads.
The shadow girl is still afraid of the shadows that surround her, and she is still afraid of staying here forever, but her fear of being found is gone.
She thinks that this is a good thing, and then stops thinking completely, until her hand reaches out to her basket for the next thread, and she finds that she has used them all.
Fear grips her, and she looses hold of the light. It flickers and dies, and, terrified, she begins to cry.
-------
The dog that the dark girl rescued out of pity follows her back to the wagon. The thief boy wrinkles his nose at the sight, and the merchant girl sniffs in disdain.
One of the two Dedicates picks the puppy up, and laughs. 'He looks rather like a little bear,' she says, and no one contests it, though the merchant girl rolls her eyes.
The sound of horses approaching makes them all look towards the riders, and the Gold-Eyed man and the Duke examine their find from horseback.
'Trisana,' the Gold-Eyed man says. 'I need to go abroad again, to search for the Duke's niece. I have here a list of books for you to study while I am away.'
He hands the merchant girl a piece of folded-up parchment, and the two riders move away.
By the time the townspeople arrive to complain about their sons' thrashings, they are long gone, and the dark girl, the merchant girl, and the thief boy are riding away from Summersea in the wagon.
-------
'Hold it!'
'I can't!' A deep voice, straining against the pressure of holding the tunnel up with magic shields.
'There aren't enough plants this far down,' another voice chimes in.
'Then use the coal!' Snapping.
The Little Bear barks, and his collar is released. Deep-calloused hands are placed against the rough coal walls, and the old plants begin to come to life.
'Hold out the heat. It's killing them!'
'I'm trying, thief boy!'
'Well try harder, then.'
There is silence for a moment, then the ground rumbles again. The shield fluctuates madly, and then fades.
The tunnel collapses around the figures, and the last thing they hear is the Little Bear's mad, desperate barking.
-------
'Here!' the Gold-Eyed man shouts, and his men rush by.
'Are you sure it's here, Niko?' they ask. 'We can't see a door.'
The Gold-Eyed man snaps, 'If you were meant to be able to see it, then you would.' He focuses for a moment and there is a loud snap.
The men see the door, and begin levering it open. 'Eurgh,' one of them says, wrinkling his nose. 'It smells like somebody died in here.'
A second stands in the doorway, looking into the now light-flooded room. 'That's because somebody did.'
The Gold-Eyed man leans against the wall in a movement of hopelessness, and then slides down towards the floor and buries his head in his arms, sighing in defeat. 'We're too late, then?' he says, rhetorically.
The men nod, and two of them enter the room and remove the shadow girl's body. A third taps the Gold-Eyed man on the shoulder and shows him a long, thin braid of multicoloured silk.
To the men's eyes, it is no more than a plait, but to the Gold-Eyed man, it glitters with the pale yellow light of the shadow girl's magic. 'Burn it with her,' he says, 'in the ruins of the old wooden theatre.'
The man nods, and goes after his fellows. The Gold-Eyed man is left alone with his failure.
-------
The Dedicates all pitch in, and the Duke's sniffer dogs sit at the side, their tails drooping in a strange subdued manner. A raven caws nearby, and the two Dedicates from Discipline eye it nervously.
Finally, they manage to dig through to an opening, and what they find is not entirely unexpected. The willowy Dedicate shrieks in alarm, and the other, shorter Dedicate's pale face is tinged with green.
One of the sniffer dogs whines, and buries its muzzle under its paws, an action that is altogether so human that it is unnerving.
The single raven is joined by others, and they flock towards the bodies as the Dedicates try to shoo them away, but eventually the bodies are covered by shrouds, and the ravens sit feigning innocence on the fence.
The willowy dedicate trembles and sobs into the shorter Dedicate's shoulder as they carry the three children and the Little Bear away.
-------
Three of the figures on the pyre are smaller than the others, and one is canine. Two Dedicates stand together, and a third, black man joins them, wearing the red habit of a Fire Dedicate.
The fire is lit, and the Dedicate Superior says prayers for the spirits of the dead. The three figures lean on each other for support, and, as each raven from the flock finds its own perch on the wall of the Temple City, they say their own goodbyes to their students.
-------
RIP
Sandreline fa Toren
Daja Kisubo
Trisana Chandler
Briar Moss
The Circle that Wasn't