The Watch Thief of Wuthering Hallow

If, while reading this you start to suspect that you’re different, then you’re not like them, you’re more like us. If you ever feel an inkling in your veins, a nagging instinct that signifies that something about yourself isn’t entirely as it seems, it may be entirely too late.

They will find you.

They’ve found them all. Except us.

In this broken society of Wuthering Hallow, they call us “Outliers.” We may not betray it at first obvious glance, but we bend minds. Even for those who are not like us, existence in the city of Wuthering Hallow is intensely regulated down to every spare second of every day of each lifetime of every inhabiting individual. Except for those academically tested to be proven to be the opposite of an Outlier. An Elite. Testing into the Elite class from subjugated levels of Wuthering Hallow’s society was almost impossible. In Wuthering Hallow, excess is not an option, unless you’re part of the fortunate few who belong to this category.

We are Glitch, Twig, and Ursa. The most dangerous Outliers of them all. We’re coming for you. You will never find us.

At Imperial Academy, failure was never an option. Glitch and Ursa were classmates at the famed school that trained its students to slay the vicious creatures called Carpers, part crab, part raptor. Currently, the odds were against them. Glitch fired at them with her scythe-turned-gun, but missed. Usually accustomed to drawing attention to herself, she wore a black leather jacket that was frayed at the collar and sleeves, a flowery-patterned top, and her hair was a light rose pink.

Her classmate Ursa, a blood-drinking wraith, was platinum-haired and pensive, preferring to slash at her targets with a pair of always-sharpened scimitars.

“Ursa, we could use your powers right about now!” called Glitch, lost in the fray of the swarming Carpers amidst the ravine in every direction.

Ursa was afraid of the dark as a child. She wouldn’t sleep without dozens of candles to light her way. Raised in an ornate manor, she was an Elite by birth turned Outlier when it was discovered that she had a gruesome set of supernatural abilities that had made her a pariah in higher echelon circles. Her hair turned white, and she devoured human brains and drank their blood until her targets slept eternally.

She had come to the Academy alone, and emotionally in pieces. She learned to keep her emotions hidden in order to survive. “Tears mean weakness,” her raging bitch of a mother used to tell her growing up. When they died, they had left her everything until she drank her groom’s blood on the night before her wedding. Storming from the altar in tears, she was away for good from her ancestral home, wrapped away in a flurry of faded roses and frayed, bloodstained lace. The first thing she did in the Academy’s stairway her first day stepping foot on the grounds was to pull apart the string of pearls around her neck.

Professor Zane taught her to harness her powers so that no one would get hurt, for she could transform into a billow of dark smoke as well that poisoned those who breathed it. The battle was concluded with the Carpers fleeing back ot whatever shadows from whence they came, licking their wounds in the vast caves that permeated throughout Coronia. Ursa and Glitch knew that deep down they would live long enough to regret not besting the beasts.

***

At breakfast the next day, Ursa could barely eat out of nervousness after seeing the exam scores posted. She hadn’t done as well as she had hoped but she tried not to think about it as she ate a piece of toast.

"We're late for class!" Said Ursa.

Glitch sat down next to her. “Do you want to go to the club tonight? Walsh made snickerdoodles.” Walsh was the bartender and owner of a local night club. Glitch and Ursa had been close friends with Walsh since they first moved to the city to attend the Carp-slaying academy. Glitch loved going to nightclubs, while her friend Ursa preferred libraries. And, occasionally, ballrooms.

Ursa shrugged. “I flunked the ‘understanding wayward creatures’ class. Apparently, Professor Marshall didn’t get why I copied and posted pictures of stegosauruses from the internet.”

Glitch frowned slightly. “Why did you do that? Isn’t that cheating?”

Ursa nodded.

“That’s why she gave me lower marks than last exam.”

“But why did you do it?”

Ursa smiled.

“I wanted to show him how much I liked learning about dinosaurs. They’re not the same as Carpers, are they?”

“I don’t know, Ursa. The one we were facing yesterday all but kicked our butts. And it got away!”

“It’s not my fault, Glitch,” Ursa said, grimacing.

“We weren’t outnumbered, but that Carper was massive! I couldn’t exactly spear it to death that easily.”

“There will always be another day to try again,” said Glitch, more optimistic.

Glitch and Ursa threaded their way through the crowded street to get to the club. The club was deserted except for a couple people. Once they arrived at the bar, Glitch set down her purse and pulled out some currency. “Two martinis please,” Glitch told Walsh.

“Sure,” said Walsh. “Hey, do you ladies want to try these cookies that I made?”

Ursa hesitated. Baked goods weren’t her favorite. Glitch, however, nodded.

“Not bad,” she said, after she sampled one.

“Why isn’t there anyone here?” asked Ursa.

Walsh set down the glass he had been drying.

“With all of those Carpers loose, business hasn’t been very good. If either of you are looking for a task, an important piece of clockwork has been stolen from the cathedral last night. Would the both of you want to go looking for the thief? You’d be amply compensated for it by the Coronian council. Glitch and Ursa exchanged wary glances. “Thanks but no thanks. I can barely kill a Carper, let alone find a missing watch or whatever.”

Glitch sipped her martini. Ursa had long since drained hers earlier in the conversation. “I would be interested, but we’re in the middle of a term. We can’t just ditch school to go off and chase after someone. But Walsh, in case I change my mind, how much compensation are we talking about here?”

“Enough,” said Walsh. “More than enough to get by.”

“Yeah, but exactly how much?” asked Glitch.

Ursa chuckled at her classmate’s apparent mercenary nature, almost spitting out cookie crumbs on Walsh’s freshly polished countertop.

Walsh chuckled. “More than a few dozen goldpieces, I should imagine,” he said. Glitch’s eyes widened. “Wow, that’s a lot. What do you say, Ursa?”

Just when Ursa was about to answer, a person walked over to the bar and ordered a beer. They had close-cropped light brown hair and matching eyes, and wore a brown environmental laborer’s coat.

Walsh placed the beer on the counter.

“Tirza Mae, I haven’t seen you here in a long while,” he exclaimed.

The person shuffled their feet and took a sip. “It’s Twig,” they muttered.

“These are my friends, Ursa and Glitch,” said Walsh.

Twig stared. “Is Glitch your real name?” they asked.

Glitch was taken aback.

“Is Twig yours?”

Twig shrugged and took another sip. “People call me ‘twig’ because that’s what I break people’s bones like. I couldn’t help but hear something about a job, Walsh? Whatever it is, count me in.”

The dusty air of the club circled overhead almost visible to the bare eye. Where there was lack of lamplight, shadows cut across the three patrons’ faces. Cookie crumbs were scattered on the scuff-marked floor. A competitive streak rose within Glitch.

“Count us in,” she remarked.

We Outliers have always known that magic was outlawed. As a group of young rebels, we began to discover that our myriad gifts were considered a curse rather than a blessing. Welcome to the resistance, reader. You are in for a very long ride…

The next morning dawned bright and cold.

Glitch and Ursa snuck out of their shared dorm through the window, shimming down the pipes. The streets were empty except for the occasional vendor selling trinkets and assorted oddities of various kinds.

Once the crown jewel of the kingdom of Coronia, Wuthering Hallow was as decrepit as ever nowadays with its roads paved with mold-strewn cobblestone and the brownstone buildings awash with dwindling ivy branches. Since the Carper population had arisen out of the Slayers’ control, the mayoral board of the city had declared a curfew that was as strictly enforced as the steel gate that surrounded the border of Wuthering Hallow City. Midnight. No one in or out. Not even soldiers.

The wind howled in a lustrous echo that rang in Ursa’s ear as she began to slightly regret her choice of companion when Glitch popped her bubblegum bubble obnoxiously. She had chosen for her daily outfit selection to wear a glittery gold top with sheer tights that were fashionably ripped underneath a light cotton blue skirt, with fuchsia lipstick and matching fingernails. Ursa preferred a short white dress and thigh-high boots made from pale brown sealskin, her nails and lips lacquered a lurid scarlet. Her bone white hair was piled in a knot above her head, the effects of her recent wraithing episode apparent in spidery black veins across her face despite the fruitless attempts to conceal them with cosmetic powder.

“Can you not do that with your gum?” she asked Glitch impatiently. She’d trust Glitch with her life on a Carper slaying mission, but outside the battlefield and the classroom was a different story. The two young women scarcely got along, despite their reasonably mature ages of twenty-one and twenty-five respectively.

They met Twig at the scene of the crime, the Wuthering Hallow cathedral. They were the only ones there. Twig was dressed as a janitor. Their shaved head prominently complimented their thin nose and flat lips.

“Well?” they asked Glitch.

“Where do we start?” asked Ursa.

“this glass cage is where the clock was?” Asked Ursa. “It’s empty now.”

Glitch nodded and popped her gum.

“No shit,” she said. “Where is it now? Who would take an artifact like this?”

Twig shrugged.

The ground began to shake.

Before any of them could react, the stained glass shattered in an million pieces and fell to the floor.

A Carper claw reached through the shattered window and pinched the air, before entering through the roof.

“Weapons at the ready!” Cried Glitch, wielding a battleax. Ursa reached for her power and tendrils of crystallized ice leeched from her fingertips to strangle the approaching colony of Carpers who demolished the cathedral with every step.

“There’s too many!” Cried Twig, firing at them with a vintage rifle.

Before they could react, a hooded man stepped in and threw a handful of finely ground sand over the vicious beasts. They evaporated into a gooey pulp, screeching to their deaths in inhuman horror.

“Looked like you had it sorted,” muttered the man. He removed his hood.

“I’m Beren,” he muttered grimly.

“Glitch!” said Glitch gleefully, putting her weapons away.

“That’s Ursa and Twig.”

Ursa’s eyes narrowed.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

Beren looked at Ursa up and down.

“No, but I would like to,” he said.

Ursa slapped him.

“”Ouch! Nails!” cried Beren. Twig bolted forward and shook Beren violenty until the watch that was missing fell from his pockets. “Treacherous snake!” they rasped. Ursa held her sword to him. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t end you right here and now,” Twig seized Beren and continued to shake him, their hands grasped around the thief’s throat.

“Elite! Elite!” he said in a muffled tone, holding up his golden medallion that revelaed his so-called superior status in life. Reluctantly, Twig released him and Ursa sheathed her weapon, rolling her eyes. It was a lethal crime to slay a member of the Elite class, let alone for Outliers repaying their debt to society by attending Carp-slaying academy merely for not belonging to the higher echelon.

“I’m one of you, fellows. If you killed me , you would have lived to regret it.”

“One of us, what do you mean by that?” asked Glitch, the least blood-thirsty of the group.

Beren smiled.

“There’s a resistance.”