Axis II

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“Before the tag disappeared, he was here,” Steele insisted, jabbing her finger onto a strange symbol on her mistpad that looked vaguely like a circle.

“I’ve never seen that circle shape before, is it common?” Axis asked.

“… No, actually, but who cares right now!”

“It might matter, since Smoke and Cir vanished inside of it.”

Steele seemed to be fighting back a quick response, deciding instead to swipe a hand across her screen, opening up a new page of some kind. She muttered something quickly under her breath and glowing words in Steele’s tight, cramped handwriting flitted across the pad, imbedding themselves into the pixels.

“I made note of it. Now let’s go.”

It was a demand, not an invitation, but Axis didn’t have to be told twice.

“We’re only about a mile out. How about a run?”

Steele nodded, pocketing the mistpad and plucking Cir’s hat from her head, her silvery hair streaking out behind her as she began running, long legs eating the ground underneath her.

“Why I recommended this is beyond me,” Axis muttered, moving her own hat to her hand and sprinting after Steele, urging her short legs to keep up. She was worried about Cir and Smoke too though. If Smoke had vanished in some strange circle, it was guaranteed that Cir had probably been leading the way.

People were really staring at them now, but Axis was ignorant of the dirty stares. Devious inspiration suddenly striking her, she yelled, “Outenders!” The streets, full of people, emptied faster than Steele was running. Instead of having to dodge men, women, and small children, Axis and Steele were now the only ones on the road.

It was almost humorous how quickly people vanished. It wasn’t like running into Outenders was a common occurrence. Even Cir and Smoke, who had specifically trained to hunt the creatures, had never seen them before, only the warped wreckage they left behind. No one knew what they looked like, only that mistbullets seemed to discourage them from lingering. Axis had poured over every book she could find on the subject when meeting Cir and learning about his profession. He didn’t know it, but her deciphering degree hadn’t been quite as vigorous as she had dutifully maintained. And for something people knew almost nothing about, there was a surprisingly vast amount of information on the subject, almost all of which contradicted each other.

The scholar Actus insisted that Outenders looked like elongated shadows with eyes like black holes. But Gregorious was quick to contradict—they were demons, creatures of darkness with coal-red eyes and wicked horns. Califus claimed they were invisible, and Loof’s assertion that Outenders were actually haunted belongings was interesting, but impractical in Axis’s estimation. Doome’s description was the shortest and most terrifying—“they look like us. In fact, they are in no way indistinguishable from your friends, loved ones, family members. They perfectly mimic every voice, mannerism, cultural reference. They are horrible copies of us.” She’d had to dig to even find his book, and most of the pages had been ripped out, but his description had seemed to have the most truth to it, even though noteworthy and respectable scholars ridiculed Doome, claiming he was nothing more than a twisted storyteller who had forgotten the difference between fact and fiction.

Revisiting her studies helped distract her from her pounding heart. She was in good shape, but it turned out that lifting and sprinting were on opposite sides of the spectrum. Steele was a natural-born runner, and Axis was struggling just to keep her within view.

Being so tall is kind of cheating though.

Steele had insisted over and over again that being tall was actually a disadvantage when running, but in Axis’s mind, long legs plus bigger lungs meant better runner. Obviously.

The scenery was quickly changing. The tightly packed houses and clean, polished roads were fading away to the rich wilderness that surrounded Persis like a thick blanket. Persisiens had done everything conceivable to tame the copses of trees, straighten the many entwined streams and rivers, and wrench the boulders and stones from the very ground. But it was almost as if the landscape insisted on being wild, unbroken. Steele often complained about it—she was a compulsive neat freak—but Axis loved leaving the strict, identical streets and getting lost in the complicated, united mass of life.

Lazarenth was a close neighbor, and as they got closer Axis couldn’t help her mouth from opening slightly as she stared, dumbstruck, at the warped town. She’d never seen a warped town up till now—as far as she knew, they’d only been the stuff of legend until now, at least on Lore.

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What had seemed like a somewhat useless profession and a great excuse to run around the wilderness with his best friend now seemed to Axis like a useful, dangerous job.

Cirilius, when I find you, I’m knocking the stars out of you. After I kiss you. And maybe smack you for good measure. I haven’t decided yet.

The Outenders’ trail looked like a starstorm had torn through, although the destruction was more contained and chaotic than that. The town’s signpost had been neatly torn in two like a leaf of paper by a talented toddler, separating the name so that it almost looked like two new towns sat side by side in the bloodless carnage. It seemed to be absolutely deserted, except for two horses in the distance that were calmly eating a few rare clumps of grass.

Steele had finally slowed down, allowing Axis a chance to catch her breath as the taller woman pulled out her mistpad and began verbally jotting down notes and describing the scene before them. As she spoke, the pad filled with handwritten sprawl and impressively detailed images of the scene Steele was describing—it was uncanny, really. Maybe Axis just didn’t understand tech, but it didn’t make sense that something as simple as words could create a complex, detailed picture. She didn’t really know any other Technics though, so maybe this was normal.

Although she knew they were supposed to be rushing into the unknown circle shape… thing… Axis couldn’t help but stop and examine the town quickly. A tree with burning leaves. Mobiles warped in strange ways, making the vehicles impossible to drive. Buildings ripped in half, as though sawed through by someone with an unsteady hand. A single balcony, suspended in midair, nothing underneath to support it, a yellow scarf tied around one of the metal bars flapping in the faint breeze.

Stealing a glance at Steele, Axis noticed the mistpad had been stowed away: time to go. If only she was an artist like Cir! She’d have drawn it all out for further inspection, on her own time. Steele’s work would be detailed, but she wouldn’t have emphasized the details that stood out to Axis’s eyes.

Cir.

She was about to start fidgeting when Steele took off, following her indecipherable pad. It felt good to run this time, to do something familiar.

They were climbing upward, the Outender dialectic spread out before her like a map—finally, something she could understand! She might not have Cir’s uncanny ability to mentally save visual pictures, but she could remember every word she read. And this language was completely clear, although that didn’t make it easy to understand. Outenders didn’t write like people—everything was a riddle, a puzzle, a code.

One she’d have to work through later. Steele had picked up the pace again, and Axis was aching to keep up. As she looked up at Steele’s retreating form, she noticed the hulking stone structure they seemed to be racing toward. A monastery of sorts? It didn’t look like any of the many common monasteries dedicated to Lina or Ekta though. Was it some kind of Outender shrine?

The rest of the run was a blur, and Axis didn’t even attempt to comprehend the strange statues and carvings leading up to the monastery’s gaping entrance. It looked foreboding. It was also perfectly circular, a huge clone of the circle symbol on Steele’s mistpad.

“What if we run into Outenders?” Steele asked, uncharacteristically concerned.

“We run them through.”

“No mistbullets…”

“Speak for yourself.” Axis reached into the deep pockets of Cir’s longcoat and pulled out her small stash of mistbullets—the number of hours she’d had to put in to earn the coin for the bullets grated on her, and Cir had been oblivious to the purchase, but on the off chance that the many scholars she’d read about were onto something when it came to Outenders, Axis was going to be prepared.

“And you have a gun for those? Or were you planning on chucking them at the Outenders and getting lucky?” Steele asked, hands on hips.

“For your information, I was one dangerous shieldball player. I threw curveballs at seventy miles an hour!”

As Steele opened her mouth with a retort, Axis continued,

“But no, I’m not planning on nailing them with my bare hands. I may or may not have also stolen one of Cir’s revolvers.”

“He has more than one mistbullet revolver?”

“I got him a nicer one during the last Holy Tournament, and he liked it so much he ‘lost track’ of the old one.”

“And it wandered into your pocket.”

“Or his pocket,” Axis grinned, reaching into the opposite pocket of the coat and revealing Cir’s old revolver. It was still in mint condition—Cir was exceptionally particular with the things he valued.

“Great. But that still doesn’t explain how you’re going to shoot that thing. Or have you decided to take up vigilante firing lessons behind my back as well?”

“If it keeps us alive, who cares what the Concord thinks? And it’s not as though you registered Smoke’s tag.”

Steele’s look was one of begrudging respect. “Fair enough.”

“Ready to hunt the hunters?” Axis asked, loading the revolver.

Steele’s response was yet another sprint, this time into the gloom of the hulking edifice. Groaning, Axis followed, gun in hand, three of her four mistbullets locked and loaded.