Snippet #1826813

“My apparent desire to get you killed?” Aurelie looked at Miraze in mock-offence, or at least mostly mock-offence. “M... Alice, my job is to make sure you don’t get killed.” Aurelie decided not to point out that her reason for a codename was to avoid giving away information, and that she doubted that Miraze was her real name. “That’s part of why I got us out of there. That, and to give us an advantage, of course.”

“As for what I want...” She trailed off, thoughtfully. “If the Black Mages are going to win, then I want it to be you who wins the scrabble for power at the end. You’re not driven by your issues the way they are... you’re not crazy. Guys like that... want to wreck the world. Or maybe cackle over it, then realise they don’t know what to do next.” She smiled at Miraze warmly. “You don’t want to wreck it. You want to change it. Cast out the crap so that what's left is a better place to be.”

She considered thoughtfully, as lamp-posts flicked by outside. “Perhaps it’s more like Order and Chaos? Order seeks to preserve... whereas Chaos seeks to change? It just worries me that we all know we’re supposed to fight, but not why. Maybe the first mages years and years ago made it like that – ” She shook her head, getting back on track. “The question is, how long we can keep out of the war before being forced to pick a side. I don’t know if the White Mages would allow a Destruction mage to join them, even if you decided you wanted to.”

At last she lifted up her smartphone and got to work. Outside, the neat, box-like houses and clean streets indicated that they were passing through suburbia. Small gardens boxed by hedges or flowerbeds fixed with pretty fences, painted in nice colours. Every so often a leafy tree surrounded by railings or a patch of green grass would flash by. “If you want to change it,” Aurelie said softly, lowering her phone and looking out the window, “to make this a world where people have freedom, where they think... how do we do it?”