Anora gasped when the use of her magic brought yet another sensation lurking at her edges flooded through her. The sensation of a strength, of a [i]power[/i] energized from slumbering for longer than she had been alive, forced into complete awareness. 
	She stumbled back in surprise when her abilities flared to an intensity unlike anything she had ever seen them before. Her backpack met the windowpane behind her as the whirling purple energy formed an angry, tornadic gale that wove its way through the apartment. Flashes of golden electricity enough to make the average man’s hairs stand on end flowed through the currents as they blew a couple pictures from the walls and sent her letter into a frenzied, air-born spiral.
	She gritted her teeth and fought against the new strength rising and fighting in her, trying to force it back into submission, but it refused to listen in its excitement of no longer being dormant.
	Then Pahn extinguished it with little more than a look. The sense of lost control changed to one of being virtually powerless as Pahn easily nullified her wild surge of magic. The pictures caught in the gale fell to the floor mid-flight, cracks webbing across the glass as they landed, while one soared into the wall and shattered on impact. Her letter floated to the floor near her feet, fluttering downward like a sickly bird shot from the sky as the dulled tinkle of glass falling on carpet filled the now still room. But that restless power still bubbled inside her, begging to be released. 
	Anora inhaled and held her breath, her attention turning to Pahn as he spoke.
	Once he finished, she stared at him for a long moment, the crepuscular light shifting to a darkness that cast the apartment in shadow. The only light of the room came from Pahn himself and what little filtered through the window from the mysterious aurora borealis snaking through the skies, giving her just enough light to make out the familiar shapes of the room.
	[i]This[/i] was simply him [i]existing.[/i] And someone—or some[i]thing[/i]—out there had poisoned him. They wanted to weaken him. If Pahn could do this kind of damage just by being in his “natural state,” there was no telling what kind of evil would be daring enough to confront someone with a power of such magnitude. 
	She took a deep breath, her shoulders squaring when Pahn spoke again.
	She did not answer immediately. Instead, she bent and picked up the envelope at her feet. She stepped back toward the coffee table as she smoothed the letter out, the coffee mug toppled over and teetering dangerously on the edge. Ignoring the mug, Anora placed the letter just beneath her phone, then strode toward the door.
	[color=violet]“Then what are we waiting for, Mr. High-and-Mighty?”[/color] she asked as she pulled the door open, her brows raising. [color=violet]“Pigs to fly?”[/color]
	With that, she stepped into the stairwell that linked the building’s floors. The lights that were always on lit the stairs. More litter than usual cluttered them, and she could hear a few people shouting further down, their voices echoing upward in frightened tones. She guessed she and Pahn had missed the initial panicked rush of other denizens of the apartment complex fleeing the building.
	Frantic footsteps from above made her step out of the way as a woman pulling a child no older than seven behind her rushed down the stairs, followed by a man carrying a couple suitcases. They all looked confused and terrified as they raced down the stairs, sparing Anora little more than a fearful glance.
	Her fists clenched again, but this time she was careful to keep her powers in check as well as she could. She hurried down the staircase, stopping only once to see if Pahn was behind her not.
	Upstairs, her phone vibrated on the coffee table. The screen lit up with the word, “Mom” and a picture of a smiling woman with honey-brown hair somewhere in her early forties a second before the refrain of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” filled the apartment. One of her mother’s favorite 80s songs.
	But Anora was not there to hear it.