As they moved into the center of the city, the ether mists grew weaker, consumed by the higher volume of flora. The start of the pinkish shine returned somewhat through the fog. The trees along the street hissed loudly, their metal skins drawing in the mists through their widening pores. Diana had stopped to watch them and Jonah took off his headphones to hear the sounds fully. The prayers were distorted as they flooded into the trees, whose boughs shook about in the localized winds around them. He could feel the warmth returning to the air. Quickly after his hopes were raised, they were dashed again as mists descended upon them and the tree finished its meal.

He lost Diana in the new haze that covered the empty streets. A sudden cacophony of clanking metal filled his exposed and now frigid ears. He put the headphones back on. A pair of strong arms and a firm chestplate held him. Diana's eyes smiled through her goggles.

Are you okay? she signed.

Yes, he replied.

Atop the ether flakes were heavy three pronged leaves that had dropped from the trees. Dipping down, he picked up an acorn made out of diamond. He lit it up with his finger, watching the prism it created.

Diana moved his headphone, whispering in his ear, “It will return to an acorn the moment it leaves the city walls, remember?”

He nodded, I know. It was still pretty, even if it was worthless.

She picked up one of the oak leaves, twisting it about. The silvery skinned thing was drained of all its shine in the fog. She signed several letters as a question and he gave her the right word.

Throwing the leaf down, she flicked her fingers downwards across her face, holding her palm open.

Shame.

He agreed with her. On the database was a rough scanning of many newspapers. He narrowed it down to only ones on Alpha. There were several articles of Druids complaining about the waste of the Grand elves and their harmful cities and alchemy.

He hadn't seen much of the city, but he had endured the glare of it. From Diana alone he had plenty of complaints about how ugly it was to her. She had balked at the sight of New York city, a favorite movie location. The grit and grime of a place he had never been to was more appealing than a city full of pointless extravagance. On the docks they used rubies to grit the steps--more wealth that would just dispel at a certain range--all for the look of it.

As Aiko walked, it swatted aside any leaves it saw with a sneer of its whiskered lips. With the tiger’s help, they made it to the park of the Ash Maker’s last meeting. Diana debated where to place the pine cone, having Jonah stay by Aiko as she vanished within the fog. Occasionally parts of the park would clear up as the trees drank the mists. Knowing he was safe, but fearing the worst, Jonah focused on trying to improve his situation.

He had shifted his headphones to block out more noise. As the mists grew thicker, so did the prayers and pleas on the wind. He needed some way to regain his senses. Diana had a whole tiger for hers, a keen eared and sharp eyed beast. Meanwhile, he had bumped into her several times. His sense of smell was useless, he had started off with wool and now had only frozen snot.

When he was a little kid, he had wanted to be a spy. According to his grandma and mom, he had wanted to be everything, including a giant crow. The ones in his hometown were like black chickens that could fly. His grandma had taken the spy more seriously than the bird and gotten him a whole toy spy kit. One part was a plastic gun with a dish and headphones, the barrel a sensitive microphone. He had used it specifically until it fell apart and they had to buy a new one. He loved to listen to his grandma’s soap operas from another room like they were some kind of secret. Often he caught his grandma swearing at some imaginary hunk.

In Grayhill, Old Bill had used a spell to listen in on Angelina and Diana. Jonah was excited to use his technology to duplicate it. Technology, magic, or machinery. What with him being the new Machinist.

He didn’t need to print the whole device, he could morph his hand like Old Bill had put the spell around his. He had made the edges of fingertips without realizing it. Now how did he make the dish without making it permanent?

He tested the fingertip edges, and found he could sink them back in on command. Okay, so that wasn’t there for good, he thought. How far could he take that? His fingertips extended out several inches. He shuddered, he could still feel them…

“Focus, focus,” he mumbled. “Spy gear…”

His hand returned to normal. Through his mind swarmed with the dimensions of dishes for real listening devices, not toys. Too fast and he made his head hurt.

"Focus, specifics… Dish, only the dish…"

Aiko bumped his leg, Diana stood before him.

Wait, be back, she signed.

Where?

She spelled out, S-e-w-e-r-s.

Okay alone?

She mimicked alone, he taught her it.

Through a series of more lessons, she learned a few more words. God, she knew the alphabet so fast. Finally she signed, Safe alone, I promise.

Why? he wondered.

N-y-m-p-h-s.

He repeated his question.

She gestured to his arm, then eyes. I-n-d-e-x.

He looked up the subject, his mind swarming with images of naked women and men of unnatural skin tones, and articles complaining about them outside cities. Rubbing his head he agreed. The word, Debauchery, showed up so many times.

Diana signaled to Aiko, then him. Safe, wait. She left, tapping her staff along the ground.

The tiger chuffed, bumping its head into him, staring up in determination.

Pushing out useless concerns over Diana being accosted, he returned to his device construction. He stuck out his left forefinger, imagining that the first joint of it could spawn forth plastic. A rush of magic toll came with a blooming of a dish, the back of which rested on his other knuckles. He knew microphones well, he used to do the sound checks for his mother’s shows. The small ones in bars, turning all the knobs like a safecracker. Now his full fingertip became a microphone, the knobs for gain and pitch all in his head. The first sound was a blast of the screeching wind and the whispered prayers. He had an app on his phone for recording, but it was a cheap one, he never needed any better. He went into his app store and bought the most expensive one available to him. It auto completed the purchase and he apologized to whoever made it for using it illegally in another world. Then he wondered if maybe the Machinist was footing the bill…

Anyway, the expensive app had extremely complex settings for voice removal and noise reduction. At least it's worth the fifteen bucks I didn’t pay, he thought. Or was his bank going to get a really weird charge? Were his credit cards canceled? Oh God, his mom’s things were all gonna be in a thrift store somewhere, weren’t they?

“Focus,” Jonah said, smacking his head with the heel of his palm. He groaned in pain, forgetting once again that his hands were metal.

“Oi, don’t hurt yourself, dear,” came Diana’s voice, faint with all the rest.

He looked at Aiko, whose mouth was open. He started to tweak the settings, signing, Talk, please.

"Can you hear me now?" it said repeatedly until he nodded.

“And the horribly disturbing prayers?” she asked.

“Nope, thank God," he said, trying to control his voice to pick up. "Isolated them out, mostly… almost background, part of the ambient. Work in progress…"

“Consider yourself lucky, I have to hear them all the time through Aiko,” she said, the tiger sighing. “I have set up a few pinecones, but I will need some maps to figure out where to put the last few. I’m going to wait on Kalyah to return before setting them. I hope she has found something and has some clue where they enter and exit.”

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“She should be back any day now.”

“I hope so. Come, follow Aiko, I cannot stand walking through these sewers any more. The Nymphs have grown bored, they keep surfacing and trying to draw me into the water. They know what and who I am, and that makes it worse.” The tiger walked off and he followed.

The back alley of the three tall buildings had one of the few patches of dirt around the sewer entrance. The manhole cover was drawing in the ether fumes through its many holes. Jonah pointed his spy dish at the cover as the tiger sniffed at it. The prayers were strained through, but he also heard laughter and an irritated growl.

He found out quickly that it was about the same weight as a normal manhole cover, that is, impossible for his normal strength. Especially when one hand was a listening device.

“They’re trapping me, not for good, but as a bloody bother!” Aiko projected. “I can’t get my blasted staff up!”

There was a place to stick a lever bar. Examining his arm, he considered it flattened out. He knew it was only a tool replacing his limb, a conduit for his magic. Could the rest of his arm take the weight of it?

Moving into the ether mists, Aiko pawed the cover until its claws caught the gap. Leveraging its massive strength, it slid the metal disk aside, digging at it more to drag it over. On his knees, Jonah pushed with his palms, his feet skidding in the dirt. Suddenly the ether stopped flowing and the scene was clear, Diana clinging to the ladder, shivering. Catching himself, he offered his hand down to her, feeling like a hero. She handed him her staff, and he took it as she climbed up quickly. Well, it was a help, he thought.

Diana surfaced and tackled him in a hug, he could feel the extra cold from her through all his layers. There was ice crackling on her jacket, the bluish ether ice that snapped on the ground. She shook all over, holding him tightly, her heart beating hard from the stress.

“You are no fun Druid!” came a call from below.

“Come see us again, they always do!” said another.

The tiger pushed the cover back over the hole, stopping the calls.

With a furious grumble, the Druid swelled with heat, face blushing around her eyes. The ether filled in around them again. Sitting up, the magic faded, but the anger didn’t.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No, I thank you for saving me,” she said, picking up her staff. She stood and banged on the manhole cover. “You bloody cows!” She grabbed Jonah’s hand as he stood, dragging him away.

“Mic, mic!” he said, squirming.

She swapped hands, slowing down and stopping when they reached the street.

“Would they've hurt you?” he asked.

She sighed, shaking her head. “Not seriously, they're only a bother when they're lonely. The elvish Nymphs are used to more attention than on any other continent. They’re miserable company. They have no level of commitment, individuality, or any personality. They are embodiments of the sources in a corpi form, nothing more,” she said, irritation fading as she spoke. “They truly embody nature, always trying to reproduce, though they are sterile, so it’s merely fun to them. I don’t share that sentiment.” She stared very pointedly at him.

“No, I didn’t think you did,” he said.

She nodded. “Yes, I regretted not telling you that I would never partake in their company,” she said, voice uneasy, holding his hand firmly. “You’re all the company I need.”

“They don’t sound fun,” he said, trying to figure out her expression from eyes alone. There was some thought going on past all those coverings on her face.

He didn’t want to press her in this weather, so he asked, “How the hell are the Ash Makers getting past them?”

Diana scratched at Aiko’s head for a moment in consideration. “I have no idea,” she said, shaking her head. “In this weather, and with their numbers, it would be impossible. I should have asked them, but honestly, if they were having trouble, I would be the one to be told.”

“Maybe it’s like invisibility or something?” he suggested.

“No, they could smell or hear anybody. There’s also giant snakes and frogs down there, not big enough to feasibly eat a person, but large enough to attack an Ash Maker,” she said, gathering herself up in confidence. “It has to be some kind of technology."

“We don’t need to go in there now, right?” he asked, looking back.

“No,” she stated. “I would like to go to the northern district, to see if Aiko can pick up any trace of them.” The tiger was already pointing towards what he assumed was north.

Would a compass work here? He opened up the maps app, which was only a scan of Alpha from space, a blurry one at that. There was a compass and they were actually heading north. That all distracted him and he stopped, realizing that they were headed to where Ash Makers could be.

“Do you not wish to come?” Diana asked, stopping at a distance that she was obscured slightly by the fog.

He hesitated, it had been a weird day. He got her out of the room, seeing the fear of leaving in her eyes. Not the fear of danger, but of hesitation to leave a safe place. He was the brave one. When she surfaced from the sewers she was strangely nervous about his approval it seemed. They were closer than ever, he hoped. Though he still wasn’t sure after all this time why she shut down when they fooled around. That didn’t matter now. Worries for another day. All they were looking for was traces.

“No, I’m coming,” he said.

The rows of houses, a couple miles of walking away, were all stiff pink boxes. Their walls and flat roofs were sharp cut edges. The pink quartz construction, laced with veins of gold and silver, shone through with the fog. Here it was the lightest of all since the sidewalks, yards, and empty streets were overrun with trees, shrubs, and grass that pulled in the ether in great amounts. In huge patches around them the mists were heavy and others nearly clear. For some reason the weather was slow to settle. Jonah figured it had something to do with the wall, which loomed high only two rows past them.

Diana was reading a sign stretched across the street. When he got to it, his translator unscrambled the words for him.

To be demolished in the 180th Year, 17th Age, 6th Grandeur

“Only the Grand elves would include the Grandeur on something…” Diana mumbled. "As if any other mortal would be confused about which ten thousand years a sign was put up." She gestured to it. "Can you read it?"

Jonah nodded.

"Ha, it's older than me," she said, adjusting her coverings. "Anyone could have moved in all that time."

Standing still, Jonah's body ached at the day's effort. The houses, and their standard elf sized doors, were tempting to investigate. They could camp in one for a while, maybe at night. It was only a few hours since they left, but it felt like a day. Diana was stretching and groaning beside him. Good, walking in this frigid weather had affected her too. They had both brought a bag of provisions and supplies, just in case. She checked in hers now, then returned it to her back.

“The foolhardy thing would be to walk all of this neighborhood, try to subdue any Ash Makers still about,” she said to him, gesturing to the blocks of rows. “I am cold and hungry, a house of stone is better than out here.”

They made it to the first house they saw, its walkway lined with silver skinned birch trees, whose knot holes were replaced by golden disks. The doors were separated by a stone beam, too large to be double doors as an entrance. Diana found them locked, but a quick shift of the rock around them made it swing open. When the orbs floating below the ceiling lit, the Druid scoffed in disbelief. The place was empty, only dust and the odd bit of piping stuck out of the wall. A cross section of supporting walls divided the place in fours, each cube within the square equally barren, save one. In all of the house there was only a brass lined tub made of stone built into the floor with a sink beside it.

“You know, I was afraid it would be full of stuff like the hotel,” Jonah remarked.

“I suppose we are fortunate that it’s not,” she said, setting her bag on the ground. “We might as well rest up in here.”

There was a single windowed door on the back wall with a view to the lush and metallic backyard. Surprisingly the water was still on as well, coming out stale for a moment then hot. It was an elvish thing, Diana said, to always have water from the massive reserves underground. She also took pride in the fact that her Kingdom could demolish and rebuild within a few years, not decades.

They turned off all the lights, setting up an urban campsite in the faintly lit room against the tub. It was tempting to get in it now, but they let the steam heat up the place. The room was much smaller than theirs, so it could easily fill it up. Jonah wanted to try it back home, but the chill could test the heating enchantments and snap them. If that happened, they would need a Grand personally in their room.

Jonah played music when the faucet was stopped, unable to deal with the much closer nature outside. On a thick layer of blankets they watched a pot of soup boil. They were able to take their head coverings and outer jackets off as they ate. In close proximity, he could smell the effort and days on them. The hours and days were like weeks on them.

“I’m just going to let Aiko out, let her do our scouting,” Diana said, moving to the back door to let the cat out.

Having eaten, Diana had collapsed into his arms for several long minutes, breathing as if she were going to sleep. He was ready to join her, resting against the now padded side of the tub. As his eyes closed and he felt the sleep coming, Diana sprang up, rushing towards the front door. She threw it open, gripping the trim.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked when he got to her.

She didn’t answer, her eyes blank, cheeks blushing from the chill.

Jonah shook her. All her joints had locked up, she was stiff as the stone around her. As fast as she froze, Diana came to life again, pushing the heel of her hand into her eye.

“A screech, a machine, they dropped it,” she mumbled. “They’re coming past us, it made Aiko freeze in place, me with her. She got mad, she roared at them.”

“What the fuck are you saying?” he snapped.

She murmured, still not making sense as she pulled on her ears, as if trying to pop them.

The mists on the streets were pulled into the birches lining the house. The world was nearly free of the ether in the front yard. He pointed his microphone outside, listening for anything for several moments while Diana struggled to recover. She searched, looking lost herself.

Then there were heavy foot falls and even heavier breathing.

A sound hit his ear sharply.

A sound he knew well, but his mind couldn’t place the name. It was dangerous, clear and simple. He pushed his body into Diana’s, taking them both past the inner trim of the doorway into the house. The door snapped into the wall as another familiar sound came to his ear, a definite pew!

On the door was a horrific sight, a hole the size of his fist with a wreath of glowing red goo dripping down the wood.

Jonah put the sounds together. The rattle of a gun’s shoulder strap and the blast of a laser gun. Though his racing mind and galloping heart knew that cooling slime wasn’t a laser, it was sticky plasma. His sensitive microphone stood up, shaking with his hand. The prayers were gone, he heard the rattle again. As he tried to move back with her, Diana, the fall having woken her up, stuck her fingers in the wall, launching their feet out of the light of the doorway. Another blast of plasma melted through the bottom of the door.

“Who are you!? What the fuck are you doing out here!?” came a panicked voice.