Isaac traced the chain around his neck with his fingers. A key dangled from it at the bottom. He grabbed it. “Holy shit. Every single person who comes here gets one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Including you?”

  She bit her lip. “Well, sort of, I have several, but I didn’t get mine by coming here.”

  “No? How come?”

  “I wasn’t taken by the storms like you.”

  “What do you mean you weren’t taken? Then how did you end up here?

  She hesitated for a long while. “I was born here.”

  If Isaac had held a drink, he would’ve spilled it. “You were born here? In this place? In… what did you call it?”

  Aster looked saddened from his reaction. “The Endpoint.”

  Her expression made him pause and he tried to hide his incredulity a bit. “Right, the Endpoint. I mean… that’s what you meant by here right? The Endpoint. You mean you were born in this world, like, in a city or something, far from here?” Isaac couldn’t imagine growing up in a place without electricity.

  Aster grew even more solemn at that. “I’ve never seen a city.”

  Isaac was at a loss for words. “You’ve never seen a city?”

  Aster said nothing.

  Then something occurred to Isaac. “Are there any cities, in the Endpoint?”

  She shook her head.

  Isaac leaned back. “Oh boy.” He scratched the stubble on his chin then sighed. They sat silent for a while. Isaac rolled his key between his fingers. It was silver and had an odd design. It looked old fashioned and sturdy.

  “How do I use it?”

  Aster stirred. She drew out a chain identical to his own from beneath her clothing. Four keys hung from it, three silver and one bronze. All but one had the chain going through it at the handle, the last key, a silver one, instead hung from the handle of another silver key.

  She held out the two silver keys that were bundled together. “First you find a key that’s synchronized with you, then you hold onto it until you have synchronized back with it.” She looked up at him, her mood brightening. “Since that one,” she indicated the key in his hand, “is your birthright the synchronization part is already there.”

  “My… birthright?”

  “Yes, that’s what we call it. The key you arrive with is your birthright key.”

  “Why’s it called that, and who’s ‘we’?”

  She ignored him. “All you have to do is focus… and,” the keys in her hand glowed, “tadaaa!” A large jetblack feather grew out of her hand, a silvery color melted up the root. She smiled at him. “Now you try.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Very.”

  “But, how do I know if I’m synchronized.”

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  “You understand the whispers.”

  A chill went up Isaac’s spine and a memory of voices calling to him behind a wall bubbled up, unwelcome. “The whispers?”

  “Yes, or well, not understand exactly, more like you recognize the words. There’s no real meaning behind it.”

  Isaac hesitated, then brought the key up to his ear. He didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, least of all whispering voices. Still, he could remember the voices from before Crassus had burst through the wall. He didn’t really want to hear something like that ever again.

  “Stop hesitating, just do it!” Aster threw a pebble at him. She seemed almost playful, it was startling to see.

  Isaac drew himself up. He focused on the key, trying his best not to look stupid. Nothing happened for five whole seconds. But then he noticed something. A sound, far off in the distance. He couldn’t quite place it. The sound grew in strength. It was something like an echo.

  The key grew warm to the touch and it even glowed faintly. Isaac's eyes grew wide and his muscles stiffened in anticipation, whatever happened next, it would surely be as fantastical as everything else had been in the Endpoint.

  A tiny tremor went through the key and then… nothing. His palm tickled but that was about it.

  Isaac slumped down and sighed. “Well, that was... anticlimactic.”

  Aster looked confused. “What happened?” She looked at him as if he should have seen what she hadn’t.

  “Nothing, that’s what happened.” He couldn’t help but feel a bit let down from the whole affair. Maybe in some small place in his mind he had grown a hope that these ‘keys’ could help him survive the days ahead. Or, who knew, even help him find Finn somehow.

  “Then you did it wrong, try again!”

  He looked up at her sharply. “I did exactly what you said I should do. What was supposed to happen?”

  Aster looked exasperated. “I don’t know, but certainly more than that.”

  “If you don’t know then how do you know I did it wrong?”

  “I just do alright? Trust me, I’ve been around these things since I was a baby. I’ve seen keys do things you couldn’t imagine.”

  “But you’ve never seen one like mine before?”

  “No! I haven’t, alright?” She shouted at him. She seemed to realize she’d raise her voice, because she wrapped her arms around herself and turned her head sharply away from him in quite a pouty fashion. “Fucking interrogator,” she grumbled.

  He gave her a few seconds of personal space to calm down. Then he picked the thread back up. “Is that uncommon? For you to not recognize a particular key?”

  She pouted a little while longer but it seemed she couldn’t resist sharing her knowledge with someone who was interested. “It’s not that it’s uncommon for keys to be different, it’s that I’ve never seen one that looks anything like yours.”

  “Most keys look similar?”

  “No, most keys look different to one another, but the basetypes are almost always one out of a handful.”

  “Basetypes?”

  “Yes, many keys share the same base, but the aspect is different.”

  “What’s an aspect?”

  She huffed. “Look,” she held up her set of silver keys, “my key is a projectile key, that’s the basetype.”

  “Projectile, right.” Isaac repeated, eager to keep her going.

  “That means I can create something and then shoot stuff with it.”

  Isaac hesitated, then nodded, “uh-huh.”

  “Now my aspect,” she said, pointing at a small emblem at the cross-section between the circular handle and the key proper, “is what determines what form whatever it is I create will take.” She beamed at him. “the aspect for my key is a feather.”

  “So you shoot feathers.”

  “Yup.”

  Isaac looked on amazed as Aster demonstrated by ushering forth more feather, sending a few of them into the tower roof. They did not fall down again.

  “What are the different aspects a key can have?”

  “Oh, they can be almost anything. Metals, rocks, liquids, organic stuff, anything.”

  Isaac took some time to let that sink in. What he wouldn’t give to get his hands on some of the metal projectile ones, or even a fire aspect. He could be a living flamethrower. He needed to know more.

  “I’ve noticed the tips of your feathers are metal, is that part of your keys power as well?”

  Aster raised her eyebrows at him. “You always pay attention, don’t you, Isaac?”

  Isaac felt his cheeks redden. Damn his emotions to hell. He was acting as hormonal as a teenager.

  “You are right my feathers do have irontips, but that’s not from my projectile key, it’s from my armament key.” She held up the other key that hung from the first key she’d been talking about.