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"Wait, turn this up," Beatrice Prescott said, reaching for the radio of the car they were in. She turned it up by dial, and the announcer's voice — no longer in commercial — flowed through the air.
It was 1968, she and her partner, Grace Morgan, were 18, and they were about to hear the most drastic news of their lives up to that point.
"Following devastating attacks on the Inglish colony at Victon and Oiltown," the announcer began in a rushed tone, "the Kingdom of Inglenook has declared war on Carillon!"
Grace and Beatrice glanced at each other, faced lit in soft emerald glow by the various lights emitted by the dash.
"Its two oil-drilling facilities in the jungle realm were the subject of brutal attacks by the crazed Qu'kon residents of Carillon," the announcer continued, "driven mad by our nation's presence there. The initial Royal Guard force has retreated, and the Security Ministry says they are fast at work assembling a specialized team of Royal Protectors — the Operators, they're being called — to head into Carillon in their place, rescue any Inglish and Silvani survivors left behind during the event and subsequent retreat, and fend off the Qu'kon savages if at all possible."
"That's ridiculous," Grace said, as if the announcer himself could hear her. "Inglenook doesn't start wars."
"We just have wars started against us, right?" Beatrice asked, reaching for a cartridge of aetheric mist.
"Hm? We haven't," Grace insisted. "The Leadminers' Rebellion was the last major conflict like this, everything else has just been...small differences of opinion."
"True," Beatrice said, with a shrug. "What about the war with the Orlathar Pride? Or the Enlightenment?"
"Corrupt leaders acting in the name of their corruption," Grace said, glancing out the window at the empty night, the bricks of their hotel, a tree in the parking lot.
"Maybe that's all this is," Beatrice replied. "King Charles has only been monarch for 6 years. He's still learning how to do things. If you ask me, he's—"
"Probably like you," Grace cut in. "I know."
"All I'm saying is, there's something different about him. A girl knows it when she sees it."
"So you're saying he's corrupt?" Grace asked.
"Maybe," Beatrice said. "Starting a war because the corvics went loony? That doesn't make any sense. We were peaceful with them, so there had to be some trigger event."
Grace stared out the window, the flickers of Beatrice's mist dancing around her face. "I guess we don't know."
Beatrice glanced over at her, and the sound of the radio practically faded; he was just rattling off facts about Inglenook's recent move to set up their drilling facilities in the first place within the course of the previous several years, anyway. "Grace? Hey, what is it?"
Grace let the announcer ramble for a second or two. "Is this the world you want Clementine to grow up in?"
"What do you mean?"
She ran one hand across her stomach, still mostly flat, although she could feel the distant spark of what they had done inside herself. "Corrupt monarchs, and war," Grace said. "Warlocks, gremlins, monsters in the shadows. What are we doing, Beatrice?"
"We can't change it now," Beatrice said. "We're just gonna have to do our best."
"Just us?"
"Guess so," she said. "All the Protectors are gonna be busy for a while."
Grace kept staring, her hands behind the wheel, though their car was left still, unmoving.
Beatrice's mist flickered around the two, and eventually, the radio switched back to commercials.