“I have said goodbye to many people, most of them permanent. Not the people––the goodbyes.”
– Render
Incoming Thought message. Identity, Delano Dorr.
Accept. Hi, father.
Eleanor. How was your day today?
It’s not over yet. Eleanor paused for a second, inhaled quickly, and continued. Just exercising. As she rose, stomach clenched, the hyper-fit exercise robo on the other side of the room remained still, its platform without an occupant like a v-World waiting for someone to enter and imagine and decide who they wanted to be.
That’s good. Well, it’s about Tr’aedis.
She stopped, mid-air, stomach clenched. She held, and then released, falling back onto the alter mat. Yeah, I should see him, right. I know I’ve been ignoring him.
Your mother and I are at the von Hiischklens’. He left the Thought-feed, and Eleanor lay back on the mat for a few seconds, before heaving herself back up. It was that time in the year when the von Hiischklens and the Dorrs would meet and discuss Alteryear plans for them both, Eleanor and Tr'aedis's futures. Looked like Tr'aedis would finally be able to see her. She wondered if he'd gotten his receptor upgraded, which would be a surprise but would also explain why he hadn’t been responsive. Or he'd discarded it himself, and his parents had recently made him wear it again, hence their meeting.
Eleanor got up from the mat. She carefully removed the hyper-fit body wears, pressing lightly on each one’s center to release it from its hold on her arms, legs, abdomen, chest, and neck. She placed them on the house tube standing still between her mat and the exercise robo. The tube sucked the wears in, where they’d enter the house system to be cleaned, her body specs analyzed, the exercise robo prepared for her next session, even though she didn’t use it.
She folded the mat into three sections, before placing it under the bench that she’d use sometimes for jumping exercises. Mother would too, holding Eleanor when she was younger, lightly stepping onto the floor, returning to the bench, stepping onto the floor.
She gave the room a final look, relaxed the tension in her belly, and ran her hands through her hair. Some sweat clung to her fingers, which she shook off onto the floor.
“Dutifully prepared for our eyes, Elly,” he would say. “Imagine that! An exercise floor that can’t show the efforts of the exerciser.”
Eleanor shook her head, throwing more sweat to the floor, and walked out of the room. Her body-maintenance prescriptions would clean her hair. She turned right and continued walking. About two hundred and ten steps later she’d arrive at the atrium.
Today she’d take longer steps, to compensate for her interrupted exercise.
Thankfully, the walls were empty from the exercise room to the atrium; Mother didn’t exercise there anymore, after all. She counted one hundred and eighty-seven steps.
She arrived in the atrium, took another right to the archway framing the house’s entrance. If Mother was truly at the von Hiischklens’, then George would still be at home. She thought about it, and then, taking a deep breath, called “George! George! Giddyup!” in the direction of the ceiling, where somewhere it would be prancing around in imitation Fayar Gaebus fashion. “Giddyup, giddyup!” she called, but knew it would be home regardless. Alter mankers weren’t real pets.
“Whoa boy, whoa there!” came the reply, faint but audible. Her house was only eight floors, unlike Tr’aedis’s of twenty. She even thought she heard light padding, as if the alter manker was running down the stairs that led up to Mother’s room, but being unable of course to take the house portal, was running around and around before tiring and returning to its enclave.
Eleanor turned back around and left the house. Today she would walk; Tr’aedis’s house was just across the street, after all.
She stepped onto the street and looked across. A mansion, finely wrought after the style of ancient architecture, with staple contemporary Plent fittings serving as meager attempts to wrap it into the flynder of modern society. Eleanor remembered the first time she’d walked onto its grounds, passing by the Pegasus and wanting to touch it, Tr’aedis’s father warning against it––it was considered misfortune in the von Hiischklen tradition to touch relics of the past, and mythological creatures were as far back in the past (unreal past) as you could go; she remembered looking at its sturdy tresses, absence of a rider, and feeling shaken by an invisible flame of air, that when brought by a nonexistent dragon––that other day, in Mr. Tupil’s house, she’d thought about Mother reading stories to her and she remembered the dragons. Back then of course she didn’t know, truly, what it meant to be Scion Element’r, what that word even signified.
His house’s tops weren’t even pointed, they were rounded. She took her hand out of his, and put her hand in Daddy’s. “It’s a very nice place,” Daddy said to the boy’s parents, and they were smiling, and the boy named Tr’aedis was putting his hands on his hips. Or one hand, and he threw the other one out upwards, towards his house. “Not a tower!” he said, and swayed his chest forward and back, staying on his feet. “Not a tower, but a pretty house. We can play there!”
Eleanor shook her head. “How many floors?” she asked.
She found herself walking the other way, towards the portal that would take her to the von Hiischklen’s––and turned back around. It was within walking distance. Eleanor took the slight climb upwards, on the slope that led to the gates; she Thought, and after giving her name, allowed them to open for her.
Eleanor walked through. She used her hand to block out the sunlight that was just beginning to push through the towers’ rounded crenelations. As her hand warmed, she made sight of the pegasus fountain, glistening whitely through the shafts––it was wet, spewing water, the horse seeming to giddy up in the absence of its rider. It was active––it was never active; the von Hiischklens had turned it on. The horse eschewed the water with delight, as if noticing her, but without preening or prancing off the stone-made foam. It was dry.
No one stood on the front steps to greet her. Of course, they were inside. Parents: two on her end, consisting of one who would be sending a hologram figure to continue a tradition of eight years, and another who since that day of rain still hadn’t collected himself from the houses of Netbanking. On the other end were his parents, always there, but never inside when she visited. Even busier than her own parents, ostensibly.
She Thought once again to allow the front doors to open wide. A familiar person in a jaundiced suit stood there––the servant, John. He swept his three-pointed hat back. “Welcome, Eleanor,” he said without courtesy. “Your parents are in the main hall.”
“Thank you, John.” He nodded and retreated to the nearest wall, which created an aperture that took him inside. Eleanor walked further in; the alternating orange and yellow triangles on the floor shone. The portraits of Tr’aedis’s predecessors kept their stolid expressions; she heard voices, echoing down the long hallway from beyond. She made out her father’s, and then those of Tr’aedis’s parents; and lastly, Ulera’s. “I can’t help saying it again, these chairs are so comfortable,” her voice; as if she was actually sitting there. George was home; if Mother was here, truly here, she’d have taken George along to do the giddying for her.
Eleanor kept walking; and as she approached, the triangles shifted to green, and the stifling hallway expanded into a tall dining area that could function as ceremony for guests, engineering testing, and meals, sometimes all at once; sometimes. She knew it was used, even if Tr’aedis didn’t talk about it. She looked up and around; it was far more spacious than Tupil’s skylighted greenhouse, and the light was unnatural, sifted through mirroring, reflected and refracted into a faint resemblance of what the real sun felt like.
But then again––how much of the sun was real––or the sun’s light.
On the hall hung the best examples of the von Hiischklen engineering estate on the upper walls. A table, modest for Plent standards, filled the center; and four adults were sitting in it. George was not in sight; and next to Delano Dorr, with his Netbanking suit replaced with an attempt at the everyday, sat a slim woman with long favorable orange hair; an eerily familiar orange, not like that of the autumn cyber trees but instead closer to the orange of this house, not a real orange, a fake orange, and it was too familiar.
“What shade of orange is your hair now, Eleanor?” her mother asked. A little more than her mother’s hologram self, and no less than cordial.
She nodded. “For the color of a real dusk,” she replied. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. von Hiischklen, Father; is Tr’aedis being late again?” There was a sixth chair open, after she moved to sit in hers: three meters from Ulera. “I didn’t see him on my way in.”
Tr’aedis’s first parent nodded to her; Tuvi, she supposed. If the rosen curls were today to indicate that, unless they were for Tr’iago. “Tr’aedis is why we are speaking today, Eleanor,” and Tuvi or Tr’iago’s face was as still as the platform Form Governors had used for the Alteryear club showing. “You do know, he was going to Highpoint, before attempting the second Sector;” and Tr’iago, or Tuvi, on her or his left opened his or her mouth. He, or she, was adapting to the artificial lighting well with the hyace braids. They almost looked like real hair, with the steep backdrop of alter stucco canvassing.
“Portals cannot directly access other Sectors,” they said. “So when applying for passage, which of course is always denied, you first access Highpoint.” One only travels to other Sectors if one is made to, yes, she knew, that was the only way it could happen. Why anyone would want to leave Sectors, though, she didn’t understand. “After the customary discussion, and if you’re fortunate you speak with a personal travel agent ordained by the government; you are sent back on your way, and you would be entering our great hall about this moment, reciting your newest line.” Tr’iago/Tuvi looked forward, past her, and Eleanor turned around quickly in her seat.
“A dinner scene already begun? Leave some time for me!” came the words, and Eleanor closed her mouth. The long hallway leading past the hall was as empty as ever.
Her father looked at her. “Eleanor,” he began to say.
“Engineering delights, all of them,” continued the words, and while Eleanor did not get up and wave her arms, she felt compelled to. She didn’t though, and Delano’s face was stoic. He would say to follow, “That is something Tr’aedis would say,” or the actual parents would defend Tr’aedis’s one friend, attributing her antics, histrionics even, to a hearty tribute. Mother might––
“That is something Tr’aedis would say,” her father said, brushing up his collar. “Eleanor, Tr’aedis did access a portal, the one by the house; and he did send a Thought for Highpoint.” He stopped there, and Eleanor saw him glance at Mother.
“Have you seen Portal 13, Eleanor?” she asked her daughter, who shook her head. She wouldn’t watch movies decided by the government. The pseudo-documentary remake instead of the portal dysfunction some hundred years back, people would disappear… and never come back. People would vanish, not sent away, but transported to the hyperspace in between the portals, an aspiring techist or engineer might know the answer, certainly not her nor, nor Klost who rather liked Form Governors––or he paid attention to Jule. Their hair was the thing, the silver mindo imitation because Klost loved mindo. Or the idea of mindo, she remembered that imitation mindo he’d gotten from Student Blucorps. It was pretty good. It wasn’t real, she tried to remember mindo, and she thought to a scene from The Brave Little Receptor, she’d scene the premiere with him, that seen where the receptor was teaching the blucorps stele to produce mindo and the stele didn’t know how, it was funny…
“Where’s Tr’aedis?” she asked.
Tr’aedis’s parents were still staid. She saw something in their faces, it was just so like a set of bodiezes, unrumbling––the left one spoke, adjusting their hyace carefully––“We were informed by a porter this morning, he came in person. Perry, quite a friendly person. Tr’aedis experienced a rare and irremediable portal malfunction.”
“To portal or not to portal, that is the question,” she voiced. “So the government knows where he is.”
Some nods from adults.
“These times, such an occurrence is vastly rare, isn’t it. It would make some news sources, Father.” She looked at Delano, who nodded, probably acknowledging that his daughter, soon to apply for universities, was at last paying attention to the world. More so than to her house, to the telltale fairy hostels within. “I see Governing Mechanics and Colosso’s Home Accompaniment each morning, before work. Eleanor, I can add you to the Dorr subscription,” and she nodded, it was a good thing to do, while she did not want to take the Governor path, the Governor––her local Governor––would know about it; she nodded and thought about it, sorted both ideas into Thoughtnote: Dorr subscription, contact Governor, and she knew what to do.
The lines were getting on her like hyper-fit body wears, very uninteresting, and she had no desire to repeat them. She stood up, pushed the chair back, and left the room. This way they’d still go to different places next year, and she would not go to v-ArtUniversity, that would be his idea. Tr’aedis’s plan for a life. The real world that controlled everything.
I am wearing my usual clothes. It’s not much more than remodeled flynder, but of course, he doesn’t know that. Certainly not now, and not before.
“Must be as good as Divani, if you’re wearing it.” He nods as he seems to examine it, glancing up and down. I am not sure if his gaze is worse now, because he has forgotten, or better, because he is not looking while knowing me as an acquaintance, and knowing what my trait is, what it really is.
“I heard Skylark’s coming, as well as two other Scions that Wisteria and Porte found. I’m pretty excited. I’d like to get to know you a bit more. I’m Luke, by the way,” he jokes, as if to pretend that, holding his cup of false firesimmer (Agate’s concoction) and talking to me, we are at a party, and I am someone new, someone he is aiming to talk to.
“That’s a nice name. d’Voris. Well, I’ll leave you alone. I gotta help Val with the decorations.” And he steps away, walking over to Valha’ya who is laboriously stringing up a large banner spelling ALTERYEAR FOR THE JOYS. Cade’s idea. How fast things are changing.
“I have to say, that light green hairstyle just keeps getting better. What’s the proper color again?” He asks Valha’ya, who has also changed.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Pistachio,” she replies, handing him a pair of scissors.
“Thanks, Val,” he says. “Pistachios are great.”
Cade now walks towards me, with Zefayus. “d’Voris––we want to talk to you.”
I want to talk to you also. What––or rather, where––Jaceus wants to take those who remain, those who have changed and those who have not––is rather up to Jaceus, and not up to me.
“Good! That’s… that’s good, d’Voris.” Cade has not suffered any noticeable changes, other than not being able to ‘hear the souls’ of objects. For the trait he said to have had, I was expecting something more to have occurred on the surface.
“How––how much do you think about––” Cade stops, shaking his head. He reaches into his shirt pocket for a poppy seed, which he extends to his shoulder, as if to feed his bird, which is not there. His fingers hover and twitch. “Zef, you want to ask?” he asks, and Zefayus nods. He is not smiling as he usually does, not ready to chuckle or make a quick joke. I too am not feeling very comfortable with the way we were treated by the Agents. After Jaceus returned from his bout with their R’aegoth…
“Oh, ha ha, that wasn’t it, d’Voris. We were thinking about returning to everyday normal lives.” Zefayus scratches his hair. “You know how Faer and I came late, and originally because we didn’t have a home, or a place to stay.”
I remember, Zefayus. You started in combat, and Faer’s always been with Technical Support.
“Yeah, and to think… it’s a lot, isn’t it? A lot’s different. Taylor, when he was professional, when he didn’t do anything, he was all the same person. I know you once mentioned the effects of the Gene––right?”
I really should not have. What do you remember.
“Now ‘Taylor’ or ‘Cole’ as the person goes by now, you know, I don’t even know how to describe it, I can’t even do it in a funny way. I can’t even make good jokes anymore, I think that’s how I’ve been changed, I wasn’t as ‘far along’ as Nodari was and look how he changed. I just had flashlight hands, ha ha.” He is not laughing.
“d’Voris, you’ve ‘trained’ (can I use that word?) your trait to get to where you are now,” Cade says.
“Guys! Our guests have arrived!” Agate’s voice comes from the stepladder and we turn our faces. She is accompanied by Skylark, who perhaps for Alteryear has changed her eye color to a very bright silver, almost clear. Skylark comes down the stairs, waving, looking somewhat nervous but also excited. As the others group around, more feet ring on the steps, and an unknown face walks down, using their hands to steady themselves on the sides––a man in his forties, older than Porte, with black hair cut in a side afro. A Lowers style, and the collared shirt he is wearing is a uniform that can be identified as the same high school Wisteria attends––Isenwood, in Lowers. A teacher, likely one of hers.
Walking down behind them is a girl around Agate’s age. She has silver-white hair kept very precisely cut between her chin and shoulders; a cherry pin is tucked on top, and she surveys us with a feeling in between curiosity and seriousness. She is wearing glasses––either for fashion, or because she refuses body-maintenance prescriptions––and is wearing clothes fit for an Agent, but without the flynder, eierch, or iststarkes. A shirt of a soft white; a light vest in grey, and black pants. Her eyes are lightly tinted red, or pink.
Wisteria walks down behind her.
Introductions must be made. It is rather fortunate that Cole is in the former Communications room. Jaceus is now approaching, and he is smiling. Whether it is genuine I cannot discern.
“Welcome, welcome Scions.” Jaceus claps his hands, and moves his golden hair back. It had been drooping over one eye. “Wisteria, Porte, please introduce them. I am Jaceus."
Wisteria gestures to the girl. “This is––"
“I'm Cerise," the girl says, addressing Jaceus. “I just do this as a hobby. But I heard you were taking part-time interns for theater performances in the Lowers?”
“That's right," Lucas says. “We are a theater troupe. Am I right?"
No one responds.
Wisteria now gestures to the teacher. “This is my science teacher, from Isenwood High School in the Lowers. He has used his trait in class.”
The teacher glances around at us, probably noting that he is the oldest in the room (but not necessarily the oldest in identity). “Hello! That’s correct, I teach at Isenwood. But please, call me Sterne, or Mr. T.”
“Welcome, Sterne and Cerise.”
Jaceus has his arms folded and he is looking intently at the two new Scions. Two new traits to ask about and examine, to compensate for the loss of most of the Furies’. After his negotiations with the Agents. I am not thinking about this right now.
“We are not a theater troupe. I am Jaceus, and the people you see here before you are predominantly purified Scions. We used to be the group that called themselves the Furies.”
Lucas is trying to laugh. Cade, Zefayus, and Faer are forcing smiles. Agate, whose trait Jaceus deemed useful, is shaking her head. Kelit is fidgeting with their hair that was made shorter by the Agent who called himself N’ziet. Valha’ya is sitting on a crate, examining a pair of pliers. Porte is upstairs, and somewhere in the room is what was Glid’s bot, or rather, the Agent Joe’s, bot, broken by my hands after wringing the truth out of him.
“But now, I am to be the new prince––leader,” Jaceus says. That one time he mentioned his past, about being royalty in the other world. “The new leader of this organization, which has been rather disorganized, and fairly unsuccessful in its objectives regarding the government.” Seven years… I have been here for seven years. Maybe Vael was right. “But you are Scions! You have traits. I will stop speaking––please, Cerise. Show us your trait.”
Cerise nods. “Well, this isn’t what I came for, but I do enjoy using it.” She points to Valha’ya, who looks back as if she is interested. Well, now she is. “Choose a color.”
“Pistachio green,” Valha’ya replies.
“Not your own hair color, please,” the girl requests, and Valha’ya, who prior to last week would not be so verbose, smiles and says, “Orange.”
Cerise then touches her cherry pin, before pointing to Valha’ya, whose hazy pistachio hair is now a dusky orange.
“You said orange, but I rather like the color of dusk, so I gave it dusky orange. How do you like it?”
Valha’ya touches her bangs. “It’s a nice color,” she says.
Scion Magy’cal? What a trait to have, in this world.
“And back to pistachio.” As Cerise touches her pin again, Valha’ya’s hair returns to its light green. “I'm Scion Element'r." She says it with assurance. “As you just saw, I can change the colors of things I see.”
“Anything you see?" Cade asks.
“Really anything I can touch. I haven’t been able to affect the sky, for example.”
“And is it permanent?" Agate asks, to which Cerise shakes her head and scans her outfit with her hands. “I chose the colors of everything here. Once changed, it keeps the new color until I change it back."
Jaceus appears neither particularly interested or disappointed, which is to be expected. If he wasn't satisfied with the McFellen siblings’ traits, then changing colors is practically useless, especially with technology. Even if she changed my hair to lavender, she’d have to make more changes to make me really look like Mik’vael.
Cerise seems happy at some of the others’ reactions, at least. Skylark in particular, who is looking like she escaped purification.
“How long have you been actively using your trait, Cerise?” I ask.
She looks back at me and seems to consider for a moment. “Three years, since I was a first year at university,” she says. “I noticed late, I suppose.”
Latency, and only three years. Likely needing to make contact with her hair pin for her trait’s power. Mmm. I will wait and see where Sterne and Skylark are.
“A useful ability," Jaceus announces. “Where I was born, we allow things imbued with Magcolor to take color and appearance as nature deems fitting; but that is not the way of things here. Sterne, would you go next?"
Magcolor. A foreign word, and he said it as he did those in Neo English. But he slipped into the language he first spoke as an Emulus, not as a pretend human like the rest of us.
Perhaps he will slip more. Sterne, Wisteria’s teacher, is now standing before the audience and Cerise is returning to stand beside Skylark, standing some seven centimeters above her.
The teacher claps his hands, once, twice. “Alter, just good stuff, for Cerise. My own trait’s not as extraordinary; but still, a trait that examines the lines of technology in a different way.”
He spreads his hands and waves his fingers. “I speak with the stars, and they tell me their names.” He acts; he seems practiced for this part, although Jaceus is no critic. Cade, though, is staring at him. “That is my trait! The stars––their stories are good, and interesting. As Wisteria noted, I’ve even told them to my students. Where the forgotten constellations come from, and how they feel about being invisible––”
“And what is your heritage, Sterne?” Jaceus asks. “Do you identify under the Gene of one of the seven?”
Sterne nods, and scratches his head. It has sparse hairs remaining to scratch. “Scion Ab’maluk, Jaceus.”
“Now that is interesting,” Jaceus responds. “We have, or should I say, had, two such Scions here––Cade,” and he gestures towards him––“and Lucas. Cade could, ostensibly, read the souls of objects. Lucas could read the emotions of human minds. But you! You can read the lives of stars. One would think you were Scion Ligaeryen.”
I feel myself nodding. Ligaeryae Scions have affinity with light. “I just had flashlight hands, ha ha." Sterne is nodding with interest towards the two. He is the only real Scion Ab’maluk in the room.
And now, it is Skylark’s turn. Of course, our new leader would leave the best for last. The best, or maybe strongest, potential. Something about Skylark’s trait––it almost demands growth. Vertical levitation––she can only go higher.
“Skylark li Agle. You are free to show us who you are.”
Skylark smiles.
Skylark smiles, and steps forward. She steps into the center of our circle, with space between her and the two other newcomers. Facing Jaceus, whose eyes are very clear. They are almost showing their own light, as Faer’s did. Looking like that, he does not seem so human. But the eyes are still too human.
Skylark raises her arms, her hands’ palms facing outward. She seems to concentrate, looking into Jaceus’s eyes––or she is staring beyond them, beyond those spheres, and into a light further away. She takes a deep breath, holds it for a second, and releases.
Jaceus’s arms twitch; they, too, begin to rise––is he responding, or is he being affected? Is that possible?––and he allows them to, until they meet Skylark’s level. Both are now facing each other with their palms. Skylark is staring fixedly; she seems to be holding her breath, and keeping that light ahead of her. Jaceus’s eyes are now even more clear. He is smiling––genuinely now. What an extraordinary ability.
“That’s amazing,” Cerise says. Cade has his arms crossed, but is shaking his head, looking down. Faer is looking almost shocked; Wisteria unaffected; Lucas, or Luke, is pumping the air with his fists. “What a Scion you are, Skylark!” he is saying. What a Scion indeed. “Yeah,” Zefayus says, standing nearest me. “So unlike Cerise there, Skylark can affect living things. That’s––that’s mmh, I don’t know how else to put it. Alter.”
“So you can enact your will on gravity,” Jaceus says, as if to somehow encapsulate the show with different language.
“Something like that,” Skylark replies. “I do think about, or, when I first started practicing, I had to think about or imagine the object pushing against gravity, like what we learned in school.”
First started practicing. How long has she been practicing?
“Aveï, Skylark. Thank you for showing us.” Jaceus now lowers his arms, or Skylark lets them go. Skylark smiles again and nearly blushes. Her stomach––her stomach is nearly heaving. Is she already approaching the first threshold?
“Skylark––Skylark, how long have you been practicing?”
Skylark looks at me. “Hi, d’Voris! Yeah, I’ve been working on my trait since… since mediary, or sometime before that. So, at least five years.” She is still smiling, as if she knows exactly how she has been spending her life. I should tell her. I should tell all of them, as I should have when I joined, does Jaceus even know? He might not! Where he comes from, they are fully realized…
Lucas walks over to Skylark. Was he attracted to me for my trait alone? He reaches into the pocket of his Lowers jeans, pulls out what appears to be a movie ticket. “Miss Gravity. I bought an extra, after me and Cade. You want to join us? It’s playing at the closest theater.”
Skylark seems ready to take the ticket immediately, but retracts her hand. “Does the person fly?” she asks.
Skylark, do not ask this, flight of one’s self must be entirely different from telekinesis––
“Not just flying. Miss Gravity, by the posters, uses her traits against the world.”
“Wow. I mean, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fly, but––”
And Jaceus steps in between them. “Yes! You can fly, Skylark, if you trust in your use of––use of it. Even I cannot fly––” visible exclamations of disbelief crowd the room––and he nods to them. “Even I cannot fly, flight is a special thing, only given to those born with wings, or those who choose to manifest them. A rare trait you have, Skylark, reminds me so much.”
Skylark continues to nod, and it seems that our exhibition is over. Zefayus sighs to himself, and walks over to his sister; Wisteria smirks and returns to her post, by our former leader’s holding cell; Agate and Cade walk over to shake hands with Cerise and Sterne. Skylark is still talking to Luke rather animatedly; Jaceus looks upon us all, and I cannot tell if he is happy to see those he chose to not be purified by the Agents in return for his not “destroying them all, as he almost did the porter”; or if he is unsettled, and wishes to have gone even further. I must talk to him, to Jaceus, but I must see Cole first.
Wisteria, do not block me. I can talk to it.
“Not that he can do anything anymore,” she replies, staring past my shoulder. She is holding a pack of future cards, and attempting to shuffle them. You knew what its trait was, didn’t you? You have seen Taylor use it.
“‘Heart of the cards’,” she says. “That was his name for it. I never got to see his ace of spades.”
I see. Well, can I see Cole? It cannot do anything… it cannot harm me, Wisteria.
“I know, you can see him.” She opens the door from behind her, kicking it forward with her foot; the heavy concrete causes her to bite back a wince. I step in, and take a deep breath.
Cole, which used to be called Taylor during its third part in the rotation. Wisteria was around before he became three, because she now refers to him as male, even though as Taylor Cole it was a dazon. The two others were both males but for some reason Taylor disposed of one self, the named self. Cole is sitting before me, staring into the wall. Its hunched back faces me.
“Cole, it’s me, d’Voris.” The leader of an organization must be the strongest; how else could one lead a group of powers? Even if predominantly absent of threats to the esteemed enemy.
Cole does not say a word or react; it remains staring at the wall. Most of its hair has fallen out, and the few strands that remain are black. The black strands that have fallen out are on the floor. Wisteria has not removed them. She has always been fond of her own hair color.
“Cole, whether you can hear me or not. I know that right now, you are but one third of a former combined self; and that it means much to lose.” I see Taylor, who stands with cards fanned out in their hands behind an array of extinct creatures, which all run shrieking towards my sister who disembowels them all. She does the same to the unnamed thing which slithers, half-formed, out of Taylor’s hand, before striking them hard in the stomach with her aegis. Taylor’s blue-black hair fans out as they fall to the concrete floor. Mik’vael then looks to me; I nod at her. She has always been confident in her role. I kneel before the side of its face that faces me; the times, many times, when Lucas would make a quip he thought would show him in an impressive light, or the many times he would glance at my body and be thinking, “That is her trait. In Might and above they’re all like that, but she’ll always be my number one.” Lucas, attracted to powers. Luke joined because of Taylor Cole.
I never berated you, Lucas, for being who you were. Cole refuses to speak or is unable to; regardless, it desists as it always has to us, beyond Wisteria. But I should have. Why did I not? Is it because the others would sometimes look at me the same way? Cole remains pinched forward, like the unfed raisin that is seen only in Lowers; without its cards, it is merely a thin man in his late twenties who enjoys card games. Zefayus sometimes joked about it. Cade treats me normally. Faer sometimes stares at my legs. Nodari––well he only looked at me without condescension or indifference, because I wasn’t that much behind him, at most. Cole tries to reach into its shirt pocket, the one at the front, and flails. But I didn’t like it, Lucas and after purification you’re just the same. Valha’ya is considered attractive for her own merits, albeit with body maintenance but she seems fine with it but she’s been purified also and if purification had to change you, why was it your memories of me and not that part of you, that trait? Why does purification only have to work on the Magy’cal Gene when there are so many other parts of us that can be removed? Cole’s head without its hair is cleaner but no less grotesque. Perhaps they did not use BMP’s; I move my hands lower, down its face, and reach his eyes.
“Malae, get off him!” and Wisteria is there, yanking my hands off the thing’s eyes––they were beginning to look my way––and wraps herself around Cole’s body, like a raw coating. Wisteria glares at me, and I get to my feet and stand, looking down at her.
“I will speak to Jaceus,” are the words that leave my mouth, and I find myself wiping my hands off on my legs as I turn, kick the door to swing open, and leave the dirty cell.