The Kingdom of Pereboom, bastion of light and prestige, home to the winged people, protected jewel of the royal family— its capitol, Aube Avenir, exists as a collection of floating islands, high in the sky, hovering thousands of feet over a grand lake, friend of the winds and beloved by the skies, just as is the case for its people.

On the biggest, most central island, sits Pereboom Castle, its spires and landing balconies gleaming even in the dusk, its stained-glass windows adding ever more color to the world below.

On a tiny, inconsequential island, close enough to Castle Island that you could easily jump between them, sits a young man, his face out of sight, thanks to his dark hood. A young girl stands next to him, stretching.

They clearly don’t belong here, and the way their eyes are set on the capitol’s Stream Portal is just one clue.

The young man’s hood is not that of a Pereboom guard or even a thief in the night, but a strange, angular garment that features zippers and garish designs. He wears no armor, but instead sports pants ready for combat, equipped with utility buckles and pockets, tapering down to stop above his shoes, rubber-soled and snapped into place.

He tugs at one of the sleeves of his thick, black jacket. Just under the cloth, a neon glow attempts to escape.

“You’re glowing, FANG,” his partner-in-crime supplies, unhelpfully.

“I can see that, Gelo,” he replies, tugging harder at the sleeve, and clamping it down around his wrist.

Gelo glows too, but, frankly, has better control over it. Her jellyfish hybrid parts could easily be mistaken, in this near-night dimness, for a charming bonnet and draping extensions to her ruffled skirt. She fiddles with the chunky, industrial attachment at her collar, meant for helping her breathe in dangerous situations, and wonders whether her sister was right— maybe she should have left the more obviously-not-Pereboom gear at home.

A hint of neon finds its way down a lock of her hair, tinting it pink.

FANG snorts. “You’re glowing.”

Gelo just glares at him. “Are we starting or not, Boss?”

He rolls his eyes, then tosses her a complex device, somewhere between a curved blade and a massive key, inscribed with indecipherable runes from a long-lost language. It hums as it soars through the air.

“Knock yourself out, kid.”

Gelo snatches the Stream Key out of the air, then hops the gap between islands. She adjusts her skirt, then makes a slow circle around the Stream Portal.

It’s not on, of course, because that’s the whole problem. The Stream Closure Treaty made it so almost all of these things were turned off and kept off, and if the sudden end of transportation between worlds left anybody stranded or stuck or abandoned, well. That, apparently, was not a problem that the greater factions cared much about.

So, no, the Stream Portal isn’t on; it’s practically dead. Inert. Dark. Just a hunk of metal arranged as a circular frame, set on a chunky base of— you guessed it— more metal, all of it covered head-to-toe in engravings that somehow make use of an ancient civilization’s unknowable tech. It looks awful like this, in Gelo’s opinion. Something so bound to the outcomes of people’s lives, should never look so lifeless.

FANG, his gaze piercing as he keeps watch, clears his throat.

Gelo doesn’t even bother glaring back this time, as she jams the Key into a slot in the frame. It makes a low, clicking sound, which starts to repeat and speed up over time, until the machine is practically purring.

“How much longer?” FANG asks, voice barely above a whispering rasp. “The next guard watch shift is coming up.”

“Avril said the first part— what I’m doing now— should take around five minutes. This is just booting up the Portal,” Gelo explains, not sure how much her leader is actually aware of. “The next step involves a little fiddling with the Key, then re-inserting it, which should make it so that anything that comes through the Portal gets redirected to us. And we can use the Stream connected to this Portal, even if we’re doing it from another Portal.” She scrunches her nose. “If that makes sense.”

FANG nods wisely, processing it all, before suddenly putting his hand up. “Wait. Stop everything. You said Avril came up with this plan?”

Gelo tilts her head. “Yes?”

FANG springs to his feet and rolls up his sleeves, exposing monstrous mouths embedded in his forearms and palms, filled with rows of teeth and neon-glowing tongues. He hops over to join Gelo on the main island, and immediately slams his hand against a street lamp, letting the mouth on it clamp its jaws around the metal.

He says, frustratedly (though not without fondness), “Avril is awful with schedules.” He grips the pole tight, clenches his teeth, and closes his eyes. “Getting lots of movement, not very far away. I’d guess at least ten different pairs of…” He cracks his neck, eyes still closed, hands still searching. “Soldiers’ boots. Pereboom metal.” He looks at Gelo, determined. “You’re going to need to capture the Portal faster.”

The footsteps are getting closer now, audible even to Gelo.

“Yes,” she says serenely, “I’ll just wait for the Key to work even faster than I’ve already been waiting.”

FANG blinks. “You’ve got to spend less time with Avril. You’re getting sassy.”

“It’s the piracy,” she reasons, “spending time with a pirate captain, doing pirate stuff, makes you sassy.”

Praetor Kagally de Vaal holds her spear loosely, with practiced ease, as though it’s just an extension of her body. Though she looks perfectly relaxed, her soldiers know that this— Praetor seemingly at rest— is when she’s at her most dangerous. She’s a predator in waiting.

She raises her free hand and makes a silent set of gestures, trusting that her soldiers are familiar with the code, that they’ve all spent long hours in training, for moments just like this one.

They spread out with inhuman speed, wings spread out to help them glide above the ground ever so slightly, removing the footstep problem. Feathers, organic and metal alike, cut through the wind.

The Order of the Clockwork Knights surrounds the enemy, while Kagally, perched on a rooftop, watches them carefully. Her long, blonde hair whips in the night breeze, her form silhouetted by the slow-rising moon behind her.

Finally, she speaks: “Free Guilders.” Though her voice is loud and booming, her tone is steady. Calculated. “Step away from the Portal. Come with us willingly, and I may be able to have your sentence lessened.”

FANG turns around to face her, slow and relaxed, his movements in direct contrast to the way his neon-glowing mutations flicker with nervousness. “Praetor. I’m afraid we can’t do that. You see, you’ve reminded us time and time again just how awful a sentence we’re supposed to have, seeing as Pereboom’s decided we’re— what was it Her Majesty called us, Gelo?”

“Nothing more than a pack of ruffians and scoundrels, set on destroying everything the great Clockmaker made for us,” Gelo recites smoothly, eyes still trained on the Key as it clicks away, working at invisible puzzles in the Portal frame.

FANG grins. “Dearest Praetor, we remember how we’re treated, you see.” His other mouths, lining his arms, begin to grin, too, and in the darkness, it looks like a pack of monsters baring their teeth in preparation for the kill. “And we remember how many times Pereboom has denied the pleas of our refugees. Why would we ever—” he adjusts his stance so he’s covering Gelo and the Key— “decide to trust you now?”

Praetor Kagally’s wings, white and glorious and perfect and massive, unfurl with a menacing elegance, her wingtips extending to reveal her truly unthinkable wingspan. Each feather, blade-sharp and ivory-pale, is arranged just so. “Because you have no alternative.”

A young girl, her hair plaited in long braids that drift behind her as she lands next to her Praetor, attempts not to quiver as she speaks up. “Mister FANG,” she says, “my name is Zelly Vinke. I’m the Praetor’s newest trainee, and, well—”

“What’s with the newbie?” FANG grimaces. “You take in child soldiers now, Kagally?”

Kagally doesn’t dignify him with an answer.

Zelly clears her throat, though it sounds more like a squeak. “I’m grown, sir. I’m just… catching up on growing, since, well. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” She takes a deep breath. “I was a refugee myself. The Praetor— the Kingdom, I mean— took me in, and, well.” She hardens her resolve and forces herself to stare him down. “I know what it’s like to suffer, and finally getting to have power over something can make you feel like you’re not so helpless anymore. But opening the Stream Portals isn’t just illegal here in the Kingdom; it’s illegal all over Alapagos. It endangers us all.”

FANG is silent, considering her words carefully, as the click-click-click of the Key working its magic continues behind him. He looks at Zelly, taking note of her prosthetic wings made of bronze and gold and copper, the way they fit on her just barely awkwardly, like she still needs to grow into them.

Finally, he says, “I’m sorry that the birdbrains got to you before we could come help, little refugee. Our doors are still open, and always are, if you ever decide you’re ready to stop living under the rule of monsters.”

“Take a good look in the mirror,” Praetor says.

FANG hisses back, “I don’t pretend to be holy.”

“Boss, I think we’re ready to move to Stage Two—”

Zelly leaps forward, evading Praetor’s hand as she tries to stop her. Zelly’s wings, clumsy though she may be with them, help slow her descent, and with the extra time, she whips forward one of her feathers.

Midflight, the metal piece reveals itself for what it really is and shoots straight for Gelo’s eyes. Just in time, FANG shoves her out of the way, pushing himself away too, which keeps them both safe but leaves the Portal right in the middle of the blade’s course.

The feather-blade embeds itself in the frame, carving out a comfortable notch. There is, for the first time tonight, perfect silence, just for a moment.

Then, the Portal frame explodes in a shower of blazing sparks, some sort of fluid stored in its foundations bleeding out onto the pavement. When a drop of it touches Gelo, who’s still recovering from the ground, her skin sizzles.

FANG dashes to her, grabs her wrist, and runs.

“But it’s not fini—” she starts to argue, but FANG is determined.

“It’s not safe anymore. We have to go meet up with Avril and get the hell out of dodge.”

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Zelly, shaky-kneed and illuminated by the fuchsia glow of the malfunctioning, but awake, Portal, looks back to her mentor. “Praetor, I can catch them.”

“Zelly,” Praetor Kagally says lowly and carefully, “I need you to step away from the Portal. We don’t know what it’ll do. We should handle that before we go chasing after the Free Guilders.” She sighs, as she descends to the ground, though still a safe distance from the Portal. She raises a wing, as if inviting Zelly to come settle herself under its protection. “You acted without orders. We need to work on that, otherwise, one of these days, you’ll really get hurt.”

Zelly’s lip trembles. “And on my first-ever mission, too…”

“Soldiers,” Praetor Kagally addresses the rest, “get ready to—”

The Portal makes another booming sound, blowing back everything around it, the grass and trees and metal structures shifting slightly, as if attacked by a great wind.

Then, the first of the creatures comes through.

“Streameater,” Kagally whispers, recalling the stories of the beasts that live somewhere deep in the space between worlds, traveling between them like a virus, consuming life in their paths. The very reason that the Stream Portals were closed in the first place.

Zelly narrowly dodges its oilslick grasp and cragged jaws.

It takes the Praetor only a half-second of processing, before she’s back in command mode. “Squad Epsilon, Position 34-C! Squad Lambda, prepare the Artemis Maneuver! And I want Sky Scouts reporting this development to His Majesty immediately!”

It’s understood, even if unspoken, that she intends to get Zelly out of peril herself.

Zelly demonstrates the talent Praetor saw in her as, even though her wings are new and her experience is little, she escapes again and again from the clutches of more and more Streameaters pouring through the Portal. She takes extended soldiers’ hands, clambers over monsters’ backs, flutters her wings for a boost and flattens them for maneuverability as necessary, kicks and claws and disables her way through to the best of her ability.

Praetor Kagally is as proud as a teacher can possibly be, when confronted with the fact that you could never train your student well enough or fast enough to overcome the sheer number of unholy entities spilling out of the mouth of the world-between-worlds.

It takes the Praetor’s full and personal attention to clear a path. She sets herself in the center of the carnage, swirling and twirling her spear— the Pereboom flag attached to it soaring proudly as she goes— to decimate her enemies. Zelly deftly ducks under the weapon, making rounds of her own as she her feather-blades sweep and sing.

“I can handle this area; go help the other units,” Praetor Kagally says, fighting to keep her voice steady as she devotes all her energy to the good fight.

A monster leaps right over her spear’s coverage, leaving inky black globs trailing in the air behind it. Praetor Kagally calmly steps back, kneels down, and points her spear to the heavens, letting the monster impale itself.

“But, Praetor—” Zelly tries— “I can help you like you helped me, I just—”

“This is too much for a new recruit. Even many of your senior officers have never faced a Streameater in the flesh, and— Great Clockmaker, I don’t have time to argue with you about this, Zelly, just go!”

Praetor Kagally will remember this exact moment forever. And forever she will wonder, if she had just spent that fraction of a second looking to her side instead of turning to face Zelly, would things have been different?

A monster’s stinger-tendril-spike shoots out, piercing into Kagally’s side, straight through the armor, and it extends its barbs. The spines within carve and scrape at her insides as she struggles against it.

“Kagally!” Zelly screams, reaching out to her, but she’s held back by a fellow soldier.

Then, the thing pulls. Kagally shrieks in pain, yanking desperately at the barbed tendril in hopes of ripping it out of herself once and for all, even as its spikes tear away at her palms, but it holds fast.

Zelly is screaming incoherently now, her voice indistinct against the deafening screech-groans of the monsters and the war cries of her siblings-in-arms.

Kagally’s voice, on the other hand, is perfectly audible and distinguishable, as she says, in that perfect, calm, steady way she does, “Be safe, Zelly.”

The tendril yanks Kagally unceremoniously into the Portal, magenta light enveloping her in less time than it takes Zelly to blink another stream of tears onto her cheeks.

This is the part Kagally doesn’t remember very well, because it looks exactly the same as all the parts that come next for the next three years.

Darkness. Nothingness. Opening or closing her eyes changes nothing, and sometimes she wonders whether it matters if she breathes. Or if she’s been breathing at all, actually.

She won’t be sure later, looking back on it, but right now, as it’s happening, it’s obvious that Praetor Kagally de Vaal shows no fear at all about being stranded in the Stream. There is no panic, no oh-gods-how-could-this-happen-to-me, no anger or regret.

If the great Clockmaker felt that this had to happen in order to secure Zelly’s safety, then so be it.

Kagally is not afraid, because she chooses not to be afraid. Because she’s never had time to be afraid, leader and soldier and mentor and warrior that she is, and she’s sure not starting now.

She holds her spear tight, as the flag fragments and falls away in the harsh, uncaring void.

And she counts the seconds.

They say that those who’ve spent too much time in the Stream, who encounter something strange in there, who are vulnerable to its whims, can become Stream-touched. Just a moment of exposure to the Stream’s darkest depths, if you dare to stray from its bright-lit paths outlined by the Portals, can result in unhealable deformities and growths and illnesses.

Kagally has been here a very long time, and the malfunctioned Portal never gave her an opportunity to travel a safe path.

Her wings came after the flag, unravelling in this place where the rules make less sense, feel less familiar. Stained black like the void around her, her wings broke and tattered and reformed and broke and tattered and reformed and never, ever, not even once, did she feels as though she understood what was happening to her.

The horns, though, the horns she sort of understands. They began as small bumps, then as little points, and on and on they grew and curled and sharpened, until it became clear to her that these would be a permanent reminder of how she’s been twisted by this place. By this not-place.

She gets tired of praying for help and singing Kingdom songs eventually, and takes to daydreaming about

anything

anywhere

except this and except here.

97,761,600 seconds— that’s when she sees something here (here in the nowhere-ness?) for the first time.

It’s a staircase, but it’s far away and flat and strange, like it exists on a different layer than she does, so she can’t touch it, but she looks at it. Because anything to look at is welcome, at this point.

A man begins descending the staircase.

She gasps when he turns, and she recognizes his face. “Your Majesty,” she tries to say, but with her voicebox so out of practice, a weak rasp is all that comes out.

Not like he can hear her, anyway.

Kagally watches King Espen descend into this unfamiliar place, its halls cold and lonely. She drifts, gently swims through the darkness, to follow him on his path.

King Espen arrives in some sort of workshop, where he bows— the King is bowing?— to an older gentleman, whose bones seem frail but who eyes are still sharp.

Their conversation is muffled, but Kagally catches bits and pieces: girl, next, prototype, steel, inside, function, speech, self, trust. Trust. Trust comes up a lot.

And then King Espen places a portrait of a young girl on the old man’s worktable. Not just any girl, but the latest of the missing girls, the would-be rescues, the ones who take on the burden of a fate that Zelly barely escaped.

Kagally gasps. And that gasp erupts into a scream, as the old man draws back a curtain, revealing the missing girl sitting on another worktable, peaceful and quiet, but so very, clearly, terribly wrong. In her horror, Kagally almost misses, further into the room behind the curtain, a glimpse of a familiar wing, a scrap of blue cloth. Almost.

Kagally’s scream is guttural, violent, and true. King Espen is supposed to take care of his people. He’s not just failing, but doing something much worse. What she’s seen here is only a part of the greater terror, and it’s now all coming together in her mind.

The old man freezes, putting up a hand. “Espen, silence.”

And the King is quiet, bowing his head, taking orders from this stranger.

“We are being watched,” the old man says, almost amused.

Kagally begins to cry, though her body is frozen stiff, when the old man makes direct eye contact with her, somehow transcending the barrier between Alapagos and the world-between-worlds. She’d been wishing for years, now, that someone would see her. But not like this.

The old man’s gaze instills a dread in her that is stronger than every battle she’s ever faced, every brush with death she’s ever overcome, every enemy’s life she’s taken with her own hands. The memory of blood-slicked palms pales in comparison to this single look.

The old man smiles, sinister and sickeningly kind. “Don’t look so confused, dear. It’s as though you don’t recognize me, when you’ve been calling out to me for so long.” His eyes fall on her horns, her tattered wings. “Your time there has not been kind to you, has it?”

He steps forward, and she watches as his foot somehow settles on the harsh line between his world’s floor and her not-world’s nothingness. He takes another step, comfortable in the void, in the space beyond his space, as if he’s just walked right out of a picture frame and is completely unfazed. King Espen watches on with curiosity.

The old man cups Kagally’s face, and she burns with the desire to move, though not a single part of her listens to this prayer.

“You know who I am,” he says. He watches her, observing. “You may nod.”

She nods.

“Good girl.” He lays his hand over her mouth. “You will tell no one of what you saw.”

Just then, Kagally feels something in her mind click shut, like a lock’s just been thrown over it and pulled tight. She has never mourned a loss like this before; the loss of control over oneself.

“Now, say, ‘Thank you, sir,’” the old man instructs politely. He removes his hand from her mouth.

She croaks out, past sobs and chokes, “Thank you, sir.”

The old man smiles gently, then turns and re-enters his workshop with ease. He waves off King Espen’s questions, simply saying, “Where were we, Espen?”

He turns around to look back at Kagally. “Ah, are you still there? That’s enough of that.” He snaps, and the workshop vanishes from her sight.

And Kagally is alone again.

When the Portal re-opens, pink and swirling and bright, Kagally’s mind is more demon than woman, so when she comes out, she comes out swinging.

Keeping in mind that the Portal was being overseen and guarded by only Pereboom’s best and brightest, Kagally de Vaal’s first five minutes back in the world have a body count of 17— injured, not dead, though the Pereboom news reports might say otherwise.

She storms her way to Pereboom Castle without a moment’s hesitation, though adjusting to the presence of light and sound and people again takes every ounce of her strength. She strides on shaky legs, dragging useless wings behind her, her hair draped over cursed horns.

They must see a monster when she kicks down the doors, and she can’t find the energy in herself to try and look like anything else when she raises a single finger to point at Espen, sitting comfortable on his throne of lies.

“My name is Kagally de Vaal,” she rasps, and though her voice is broken and torn and ravaged by time and circumstance, it is, as always, steady. “I will make you answer for your sins.”

“Kagally,” King Espen says, polite, diplomatic, cold. “Praetor. We’ve been worried sick about you.”

His wife, Queen Gwendolyn, nods frantically, eyes big with worried tears. “You’ve been gone for hours!”

“Hours,” Kagally repeats hollowly. “Hours?” She shakes her head, raises her spear, and points at the King’s throat. “Enough lies. Enough secrets. This ends, now.”

King Espen doesn’t flinch. He just narrows his eyes. “I suggest you cease this behavior at once, Praetor. Your time in the Stream has made you ill.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me, I saw with my own two eyes how you—” and she finds she can’t get the words out.

You will tell no one of what you saw.

“Kagally?” the Queen whispers, disbelieving.

The King beats his fist down on the arm of his throne. “Guards! Arrest the traitor!”

“I won’t be taken,” Kagally growls, spreading her tattered wings to keep them all away. She moves to attack, purely self-defense and instinct, but when she looks at their faces, she sees the soldiers she’s trained for years. And new ones, too, young ones.

She takes a halting step back, then another, and another, as the guards close in around her. She turns and dashes out the door, flexing the muscles in her back in hopeless attempt to move wings that just don’t work right anymore.

Kagally keeps running, keeps fleeing, ducking around corners and behind buildings— luckily, she knows the capitol like the back of her hand, has hunted down criminals in the deepest hiding places and darkest corners. And, now, Kagally knows darkness. Knows it like no one else could.

She comes to a tumbling stop in front of the Great Clocktower, hands pressed to the doors with a fierce, tragic hope.

“Meridian,” she pleads, “I need answers.”

But there’s no response.

Kagally makes it to the edge of the main island, before she realizes she’s out of options. She can’t fly to another, can’t survive the fall all the way down. Just from the sound coming closer and closer, she can determine the formation the soldiers plan to use to surround her, but knowledge means nothing if there’s nothing she can do about it.

“See, Avril, I told you she’d come back out of the Portal eventually.” A familiar voice. “Jeez, what happened to you, Praetor? You look almost as freakish as I do!”

She looks down. There, just below the lip of the island, hiding in plain sight, FANG and his Free Guild troublemakers are loading up their skyship. He waves.

The woman next to him must be the pirate captain, if the ridiculous hat is anything to go by. Avril. “Are those horns?”

Kagally instinctively reaches up to touch them, sensitive.

“They’re cool, but I don’t know if they’re cool enough to justify FANG making me turn this thing around to wait for you,” Avril laughs. “And he says I’m impulsive.”

“To wait and see if she’d come back out,” FANG corrects. “To help us learn more about the Stream.”

“Right.” Avril rolls her eyes.

Kagally stares down at them, glances back at where the soldiers will come for her any minute, and swallows her pride. “I have nowhere to go.”

FANG rubs his chin, considering what the wisest option would be, and even Gelo stops packing things away to think.

But Avril shoves past them both, walking past staring crew members, so she can stand at the helm of the ship. She looks up at Kagally with confidence, though it might be closer to smugness.

“That’s what the pirate ship is for, obviously,” Avril says with a grin. She squints, trying to guesstimate the distance between Kagally’s spot atop the island and the deck of the ship. “How confident are you about your jump?”

A royal guard’s voice rings out, just a street away, “Kagally de Vaal, by order of the King, you are under arrest for high treason—”

“Confident enough,” Kagally decides.

She jumps.