Powerful: A Powerless Story

Adena is shackled in the castle’s dark dungeon. She thinks sadly about the possibility of never seeing Makoto again. She painfully moves toward some bread that has been thrown into the corner of her cell, her skin rubbed raw by her restraints. She wishes that this was just one of her nightmares and that Paedyn would wake her, as she always used to do, and comfort her. The Imperials have broken all of her fingers; she begins to cry as she thinks about how she will never be able to sew again. Adena has no idea why she has been imprisoned. She gives up on reaching the bread. A man’s voice calls to her to be quiet; her rumbling stomach is keeping him awake. She realizes that there is another prisoner in an adjoining cell, and that he is quite near the hunk of bread. She asks him to retrieve it for her, and he tosses her the bread. Adena presses it between her palms and lifts it to her mouth, managing to eat some despite the pain. She explains her situation to the man, and in return he tells her his name is Al. He will not tell her much more about himself, however; he assures her that he is a dangerous person to know. Guards enter. They gag Adena and roughly haul her out; she loses consciousness.

Makoto feels the weight of sensing everyone else’s powers as he joins the throngs slowly entering the arena. Finally, he is on the circular pavement that surrounds the “Pit,” where, below him, a tall maze of hedges obscures whatever waits at the arena’s center. As he begins searching for Adena, he hears the king’s voice nearby explaining that contestants need to reach the center of the Pit and then kill the person waiting there. Makoto is nervous at his proximity to the king. He is unsurprised that this cruel ruler would sacrifice the life of “a criminal from his dungeons” this way (202). The contestants enter the foliage maze, but Makoto hardly notices; he has located the feeling of Adena’s power, and he is confused that, no matter how far he walks along the circular pavement, he never seems to get any closer to her. Horrified, he realizes Adena stands at the center of the maze.

Inside the maze, Adena’s hands are bound behind her back, and her feet are bound at the ankles. She struggles to her feet, desperately wishing she could wake from this nightmare and sit silently with Paedyn, contemplating the stars. Her head is still pounding from the drugs that the Imperials used to knock her out, and her vision is fuzzy, but after a moment she realizes that she is in the Pit and has somehow become part of the final Trial. She can hear pounding feet and the cheering of the crowd. “Pae will find me,” she thinks, “She’ll know what to do. She always knows what to do” (207). She tells herself that maybe she has been included in the Trial because Paedyn’s prize for winning is meant to be finding her. Adena has been counting the seconds since she woke; at around second 552, she begins to black out. Paedyn finally arrives, but Adena’s relief is cut short by the look on Paedyn’s face. Adena feels a new pain in her chest and looks down. Someone has impaled her with a branch. Paedyn screams and catches Adena as she falls. Adena knows that she is dying. She asks Paedyn to promise to keep wearing the green vest she made for Paedyn, and she silently hopes that Makoto will wear the black one she made for him. As death takes her, she counts the stars, wondering whether she will be able to watch over Paedyn from wherever she is going next. The stars are “winking at [her], welcoming [her] home” (212).

The narrative moves back a few minutes, to Makoto’s perspective as he desperately tries to understand why Adena is being treated as a criminal. He stops an Imperial and tries to get himself thrown into the arena with Adena but is unsuccessful. He studies Adena, trying to figure out what is wrong with her hands; when he realizes that her fingers have been broken, he fights back tears. He sees Paedyn at the edge of the inner circle of the Pit and feels a surge of hope. His hope is shattered when, from behind, someone plunges a branch into Adena’s chest. Makoto forces himself to watch Adena’s last moments, wishing he were the one holding and comforting her. When he realizes from her face that she is counting the stars, he breaks down. He wishes that death would come for him, too, so that he could join her in the sky. He begins counting the seconds until he can be with her again. Makoto staggers out of the arena into the sunshine. Suddenly, he feels Adena’s presence again; he realizes that she is now a part of the sun, and he tells her, “Thanks for picking the closest star, Dena” (220). He is comforted, knowing that she will always be nearby.

Adena offers a few brief, final words from her new perspective as part of the sun. She died filled with the memories of Paedyn and Makoto, and now she will watch over them from the sky, just as Makoto once told her she would.