“Behold!”

Domrik raised the white-and-silver bow above his head in reverence as he entered the studio double doors. Kelly watched him with folded arms, unimpressed. “Are you expecting something to happen when you do that with the real bow?”

He lowered it to his side and gave her a confused look. “But, this is the real bow. Look! It’s exactly what we saw.”

She took a step closer and held out a hand. He gave it to her. It was lighter than she expected, and the arms of the bow felt like metal but looked like stone. It didn’t have the same sense of presence that she experienced in the museum. “How much was this?”

“I allocated four thousand shards for the highest quality. I painted it myself.”

She frowned. “It looks perfect.”

“And that’s disappointing?”

She ran her fingertips along the metallic bowstring, feeling the smoothness. Would the real thing feel the same? Would it do anything different? She closed her eyes. “It looks like you’re ready.”

“My acting’s that good, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t feel ready either. I know the risk. If things go wrong, we could end up in jail or even dead. But not following through with this carries greater risk.”

She put a hand on her hip. “Thanks for making the decision easy.”

“I just stated the facts, Kelly. Remember, this is a voluntary mission. You can back out if you want.”

“No, I… I want to do it. It’s just…” She hesitated.

“Way outside your comfort zone?”

“Kilometers.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s the same for me. I’ve been trying to think of any other way I could ‘legally’ acquire the real thing. The only other way I can think of is to contact the museum directly and offer all the shards to my name. The chance they accept the transaction is low, and if they decline, then they will know who likely stole it.”

“Aren’t there millionaires you know who could offer a price?” she asked, her spirit rising at the prospect of avoiding the mission entirely.

“None who I think would understand the urgency, agree with the tactic, or accept the risk of accusation if we need to commit theft. Just the attempt to reach out to them would put myself at greater risk.”

“Not even Brandon?”

“He’s missing, remember?”

“But if we found him tomorrow, would you ask him?”

He looked away. “That’s a good question.”

A car door closed outside. They looked out the front windows. Jase had arrived.

Domrik turned back to her. “How are you with illusions?”

Kelly dug into her pocket and put on the fingerless Aetheric combat gloves. A small crystal was embedded within the socket on the back of each glove. She focused on the bow in her hands and felt the subtle electric sensation as she intended for the bow to disappear. It vanished from her hands.

Delicately, she glanced at him while maintaining focus. She had practiced with objects in her house for the past few days, as well as in the mirror.

Domrik nodded. “Good, cloaking specific objects can be trickier than cloaking a general area. You forgot the shadow.”

The bow reappeared as she realized her mistake. The shadow had still been patterned across the floor from the multiple ceiling lights. She refocused. The bow disappeared along with its shadows. She stopped after a few seconds. “I’ll let the night take care of the shadows. The focus is exhausting.”

“The museum has nighttime security lights around the perimeter. Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep us cloaked. It gets much easier with time. It took years for it to become automatic.”

Jase entered the studio. He wore casual shorts and a shirt like the other two. To on lookers, they had to make it look like nothing unusual was about to happen. He smiled, but Kelly noticed something strange. It looked forced. Suddenly she felt more at-home.

“Evening everyone,” he said. “Is it still happening?”

Kelly looked at Domrik. He nodded to both of them. “There’s no reason why it can’t, unless you’ve found one?”

Jase gave a small shake of his head. “I’d rather just get it over with.”

“Good,” Domrik said, looking at Kelly. “That makes three of us.”

She put the combat gloves back into her pocket and handed the decoy bow to Domrik. It disappeared as soon as it touched his fingers, and for a moment Kelly was grasping solid air again. An internal shiver passed through her. She would need to get used to these new abilities quick.

They got into Domrik’s car, an unassuming blue model at least a decade old. Kelly took the passenger seat and Jase sat in the back. The bottom of the sun grazed the horizon behind them. The drive to the museum would take an hour, just long enough to arrive after dark.

Kelly watched the golden brown plains pass by her window as Domrik drove on the highway. She tried to pretend they were going somewhere mundane. Maybe Domrik was just playing a cruel prank on them the entire time, just to test and see if they could detect his deceitful intentions. She would’ve been angry but relieved. So far that theory wasn’t supported by evidence.

The tingling in her sweating palms were a constant reminder of her own anticipation. In moments like these, it was easy to forget the advice of the sages of society. Stay in the present moment. Don’t suffer from that which has yet to come. How many different times had Domrik implied this, and how many times had she internally rolled her eyes in agreement? Only the present moment exists, right? But if that were true, that meant past and future were simply facets of the present moment. It didn’t feel that way to her now. The future was its own separate dimension superimposing itself over the present, dominating Kelly with its threatening glare as it advanced relentlessly toward her. Was there no way to escape its wrath without escaping the mission? It seemed as though the tormenting processes of her mind were out of reach, yet they influenced her with ease.

They passed crop fields where the side-view patterns of the rapidly-passing rows followed the motion of the car. She could see only the row centered on her, flanked by narrower rows emerging from the angled view of the grid-like structure. It was a hypnotizing sight she had experienced many times before, but the effect was much weaker now. The field had lost its dimensionality, as though it were being projected on a screen. It was the future that had stolen the dimension of depth and refused to give it up.

Red flashed before her eyes, followed immediately by the muffled roar of hoverboard engines. The car oscillated from the resulting turbulence of the passing rider in the hoverlane. The disturbance shook her out of her stupor momentarily, but the moment she realized what happened it started to reassert itself.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Why would Sylga do such a thing?” she pondered out loud, hoping one of the others would comment.

“I would be skeptical of the media’s interpretation,” Domrik said, glancing at her. “You know how they like to spin things.”

“How can you spin something like this? Government officials proclaiming their secret team’s discoveries is a difficult thing to misinterpret.”

“Are politicians not part of the media?”

“Of course not.”

Jase leaned forward in the back seat. “Are you seriously implying that?”

“Yes. Who could spend months campaigning for election and not know how to spin a riveting story? Certainly they don’t have all the facts. Sylga’s attack makes no sense given the current level of public knowledge. Therefore, we are missing relevant information. There are news reports on the outraged reactions of Sylga’s own government. Protests are flaring in the cities. The people were certainly not privy to those plans. The ambassadors have publicly denounced their own nation. Yet, the only narrative getting airtime is that of coordinated betrayal and plans of retribution.”

“Could Sylga have worked out a deal with Trellendek?”

Kelly looked back at Jase. “What does Trellendek have to trade? They are Aetherite-starved. They wouldn’t be able to give Sylga anything of value.”

“People?” Jase suggested, shrugging. “That’s the only advantage they have over Eredore. Too many people willing to fight over too little resource. Eredore created this situation, honestly.”

“We don’t give Aetherite to them because they would use it to destroy us.”

“And they are hostile because we created their resource shortage,” he replied, looking at her expectantly. “Which do you think came first?”

Kelly frowned, turning forward in her seat. “I don’t know.”

“Trellendek hasn’t taken advantage of Sylga’s exposed position yet, even though they know Sylga is no longer supported by Eredore.”

She folded her arms. “They don’t have any effective strategies against Aetheric weapons. I’m not buying the conspiracy.”

“They don’t want to attack a potential ally.”

“I’m not going to argue about this. Either time will reveal it or it won’t.”

That seemed to shup him up, though she thought it was odd how insistent he was about something he could do nothing about. Jase had never argued with her before. His insistence was juvenile, which was surprising coming from him, even though she was older than him.

Part of her wanted to inquire further, because he did have a point. That was why she ended the debate. She didn’t want to compound her current crisis with another one. In the silence that followed, dread wafted back into her mind from the periphery of her awareness.

“Are you planning to use the bow against Sylga?” she asked Domrik, desperate for more distraction. Perhaps talking as if it were already done would help.

“There is a low probability,” Domrik said. “Certainly not zero.”

“Do you even know how it works? Will we have to find the arrows next?”

“No and no. Legends mention nothing about arrows. If there were any, they would likely be stored with the bow.”

Jase spoke up. “They wouldn’t separate them for more security?”

“No, they don’t think there is anything special about the Augmentor Bow. If they truly knew anything about it, it would be stored in a secure underground vault with eleven different layers of security.”

Kelly tilted her head. “Do you really think it’s that powerful?”

“You felt its power.”

“I felt its presence.”

“Which is a representation of its power.”

“If there are no arrows, how does it work, then?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“When we feel its presence, we are sensing its Aetheric body. My intuition tells me it will have something to do with that. We will see when we have it in our hands.”

Assuming nothing goes wrong, her mind added. The thought came barreling in from the void, obscuring the brief relief the conversation was giving her.

“Speaking of intuition,” Domrik said, looking at Jase in the rear-view mirror, “do you have anything to report?”

Kelly looked suspiciously at Domrik, then at Jase, who was sheepishly looking out the window in the other direction. “Report on what?”

Jase’s hand brought out a crystal from his pocket as if by its own accord. He offered it to her while still refusing eye contact. She took it curiously and examined its features. It didn’t look unique by any measure, nor did it feel different, though she was aware that her anxiety could be dampening her sensitivity.

“What about it?” she asked.

“It has a memory,” Jase admitted.

Her eyes widened. “A memory? That’s not possible.”

Domrik looked at her. “This is new to the three of us, Kelly. There is more to the Aether than any of us know.”

“That any human knows,” Jase added, staring at the Aetherite in her palm. “That thing there contains a memory, but not a human memory. A Waterling’s.”

Kelly rolled the crystal between her fingers. “A Waterling…”

“A shingagi?” Domrik offered.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a Sylgan word meaning ‘smart-swimmer’.”

Jase nodded. “You could say that again. There’s an entire society under the ocean, and they know how to use the Aether in ways we can’t even dream.”

Kelly glared at him. “How do you know this?”

“Because blasphia showed me.”

“I thought you were done with that.”

“This is an extenuating circumstance, though not one I’m yearning to repeat. I’ve spent the past few days integrating the experience. It was intense.”

She leaned a bit more out of her seat, eager for more distraction. “Well, what did you see?”

Jase told them the story of what he experienced. Nobody interrupted him. When he finished, a single tear left a glistening path on his cheek. She was moved as well, though not to the point of crying. It wasn’t visceral for her, and after hearing the story, she was glad she wasn’t the one who’d taken the journey. He’d described the Waterling as young. Suddenly his slightly altered behavior made perfect sense. The creature’s personality must have rubbed off on him.

She spent the last half hour of the drive in an odd trance alternating between the mission, her argument with Jase about Sylga and Trellendek, and his story about the Waterling. There was no catharsis from those tangents, but the novelty kept her mind occupied as Domrik drove into the main city of Ridgemire.

The mundane behaviors of the cars and pedestrians served to ground her more in reality. She wasn’t traveling to some foreign land with treacherous terrain. It was a place where she had been calm before. She sought to anchor herself in that memory, to bring that feeling more deeply into the present. As the minutes passed by, her attention seeped deeper into her senses. She simply noticed the sensation of the worn seat fabric behind her back. The rumble of the car on the road was more detailed than she realized. The engine was a quiet hum. She wondered if Domrik had gotten it serviced, then was surprised by her own wondering. That taste of calmness was new in the face of this fear.

As they drew closer to their planned parking spot, about a kilometer from the Ancient Traspian Museum, she grew more perplexed at her internal situation. She was closer to the gnashing mouth of the beast, yet its teeth had dulled. The fear dug not as deep. It was more transparent. Her body started to ease into a more relaxed state of alertness.

The thoughts remained relentless, trying to seduce her into fictional scenarios of pain and failure, but she remained relentless within herself, refusing to sacrifice any more of her precious mental energy. She would be needing it all to deal with reality.

Domrik parked the car on the side of the street. Pedestrians were few and far between, and the sky was blurred with a deep purple from the ending sunset. Stars began to peek out from behind the veil.

Kelly sighed, allowing herself a nervous giggle. “Hard part’s over.”

Domrik added with his own laugh. “Hey, I was supposed to say that!”

She saw that the steering wheel glistened more than normal. His presence felt different, but she couldn’t decide if that comforted her or worried her.

Domrik looked at the two of them when the mirth passed. “Final chance. We haven’t done anything illegal yet. Jase, do you really want to do this so soon after your shingagi experience?”

“They’re called Waterlings,” he snapped, then looked down at his hands, uncertain. “I need to do this. There has to be a connection to Lumen. This is where I found the crystal. No coincidences.”

“Correct. Now, we suit up,” Domrik said, opening the center console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. He grabbed stacks of metallic rectangles. They were connected in pairs by wires and straps. “Just in case.”

Kelly took a pair and examined the slightly curved surfaces of the reactive combat shielding. She had only used them a handful of times in training with Domrik. They weren’t the most comfortable, as each pair was designed to attach to either an arm or a leg.

When she saw the Aetherite socket on the bottom was empty, Domrik fished out a bag full of small Aetherite. The three spent the next minute securing the armor to limbs and torsos, testing the functionality by ramming forearms together. Red screens shimmered on impact, preventing direct contact.

Finally, Domrik produced a large triple-pronged fishing hook with several meters of rope attached. They left their wristpads in the center console.

They gazed at each other with silent queries of readiness. They took several deep breaths in sync with each other. Then, if any outside observers had been watching closely, they would have disappeared from within the car.

***

Raymi burst through Kyreeda’s door, glaring into the dim light of the dorm, panting hard to catch her breath.

“Operator, we’ve got something.”