Preliminaries out of the way, I can pick up with my own story from the prologue. If you skipped over those words which I painstakingly crafted-- for you-- that's honestly okay. No need to feel bad. I don't read the prologues either.

You merely need to accept in this one particular instance that it's going to be relevant.

But where was I? So, I slit the squire's throat and he returned the favor, crowning me with a death mask, to use an older phrase. Older. Let's resume.

-A Literary Critic, Apparently

###

In the 172nd year of the Reconstituted Church—a breadth of time so far gone from the age of Darkness and Syches that the human brain would struggle to grasp the real import of so many commas in a number—Kael Rasgard grabbed a shirt, his shoes, and an old burner cellphone, and then wrestled with the moral quandary of whether to blow a man up. Wasn't his go-to, but Kael couldn't discount the possibility.

The world may have forgotten about the Four Elements and the Syches but that didn't mean he had to be stingy when using his powers. Even the flashiest element, Combustion, would inevitably be written off as a faulty sewer line or the toxic buildup from some negligent corporation. Stay away from cellphone cameras and you're good.

For the Rasgard brothers, every day for the past six months had started with leaving from some motel or hostel, and this day wasn't breaking new ground. Kael brushed his teeth and splashed some water on his face. He even doubled checked Joshua's side of the room-- which could only be described as a haphazard maelstrom of human existence—to make sure his brother wasn't lost somewhere within. Kael plunged outside in nothing but jeans and a white t-shirt, an entire snowstorm forcing itself into the room in the three seconds that it took.

Swinging one leg over the balcony, he dropped down into the two feet of snow that had piled up the night before. Then came the two-block march across the center of Einhurst to get some breakfast, not one pedestrian whom he could flaunt his disregard of the cold to crossed his path. Kael warmed himself all the while with a slight burn that radiated through his gut: not even a strain on his mental powers.

Downright refreshing, like a cold shower.

In town, you had an unimpeded view of the night sky—weather cooperating. No steam, fog, or whatever word for ground-clouds that constantly hung about the surrounding fields and made their way into town. A wall of steam partitioned the town from beyond, it would turn milky white as the sun rose but was practically invisible now. Above, a thin blue scar of stars and asterisms cut through the night sky.

Kael trudged across the street to the warm, yellow glow of the Crispy Biscuit. The diner added as much to the nighttime ambience as the stars overhead except that people actually went to the diner. Humanity had yet to invent a battery powerful enough to break out of the planet's gravity.

***

"Would you like some paline with that?" bubbled the diner maid of the Crispy Biscuit, whose intimate knowledge of every soul within twenty miles made her the first stop on every one of Kael's mornings. She stood before Kael in a peach-white uniform stained yellow over the years.

"Come on, Saley, how many times are you going to make me turn you down?" Kael's attention was drawn to the frozen window.

"Stealing from me kid. I know you got the money." She loved throwing that in his face, not that she knew better. Kael had offered a bounty for information on the Doctor that was more than anyone around these parts made in a year; Kael had no qualms about lying, which he did again two days ago when he doubled the offer.

Kael held up his two fingers closest to the outside of his right hand signaling "order complete" in RUS.

The end of act one. Breakfast had become a ballet of information, money, and eggs. Kael would eat, offend, then order more food. Once satisfied with the dance, Saley would slip in gossip ranging from the mundane to even more mundane. Every dollop of information seemed useless to Kael, but a starved man doesn't turn his nose up at a grain of rice.

"Watch the floor, you're going to slip on the melted snow," Kael offered. The diner bell trilled in the background, as if to punctuate his statement.

"Problem with you foreigners, talking like you know a thing. I do this every day." Saley set down second helpings before Kael, electing to leave his old clutter there. She doubled back and said with an unnecessary whisper, "Not the newest stranger in town either. Man from the capital checked in last night. And that was it; that was Kael's new information for today, the exact opposite of what he needed. He needed suspects, eye witnesses to the Doctor's disappearance.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The diner maid took three more orders at two different tables and then retreated into the kitchen. Kael watched her spit into the sink through the server's window. Disgusting.

Kael tilted and pulled his phone out. No messages. It was unlikely Joshua had come in and then left while Kael slept, but he couldn’t hazard a guess.

"You look mad." Joshua slid into the booth across from Kael, his feet flying up into the air with the extra energy.

"Where have you been?" Kael barely got the words out. Joshua was covered in blood. Flaky crusts of dried brown fluid clung to his coat and his hair. Kael could practically smell the faint aroma of iron. Not a smell that mixed well with the grease and paline in the air.

"Hospital," Joshua said. Quick. Matter of fact.

"Now, I don't care how this happened," the human boomerang swung back around to their table. "You can't be coming up in here, looking a mess," Saley said. "You’re welcome to head right back to the hospital.”

Joshua yawned and blinked excessively. His eyes bore spidery red veins and his face drooped. "Uh. Sorry, running slow. It's horse blood. Not human. You gonna tell me a bunch of farmers are squeamish about that?" Joshua splayed open his arms, gesturing to the crowded diner.

Kael kicked his brother under the table while signing a curse in RUS with his left hand, just outside the diner maid's sight.

"Alright, alright. Just get me some food to go and I'll be out of your hair." Joshua started running a hand through his own hair reflexively but stopped as he felt what was there. The waitress remained silent though, so he continued. "Can I get something. . . ." He drummed his fingers on the yellowed table nervously.

"You took a horse to the hospital? Kael asked.

"No caffeine. No sugar either. Just meat, I guess. Quick bite before I go to bed." He beamed a wide, twitchy smile. “And no. The Man or Rider or whatever. I found him and chased him into traffic. It was some local boy playing a prank.” The conversation didn’t prevent Joshua from finishing his order however. As he spoke with Kael, his hands signed out his order: sausage, eggs with cheese. Light on sativa, extra pepper.” His fingers dancing without looking her way.

Ordering food, like most circumstances, was a completely acceptable time to have two conversations at once. Between spoken and physical language, Regimented Use Sign was implemented the world over; there were some indigenous groups who didn’t use vocal speech at all. Even if two people didn’t speak the same language, they both knew RUS. And that was the trick: a single set of vocabulary. The eastern Yearn languages, for example, might be grammatically alien to the old Imperadas, but you could at least get the fuzzy idea based on the words.

"And you went to the hospital with this kid, why?" Kael plunged ahead as the waitress scratched at her notepad and walked away.

"After ten minutes of first aid, it just felt like my civic duty." Joshua smiled. "Plus, anyone who owns a horse has money. Never hurts to be nice to people with money."

"You hate people with money."

Joshua shrugged. "No, you hate people with money. I prefer people without it. In either case, I didn't say genuinely nice."

Kael leaned back and rolled his eyes. His brother had an automaton-like mentality for doing "good". It's why Kael held on to the bulk of their money at all times. One man on the street with a sob story and they'd be broke.

"J, I have one place I want to visit today," Kael started. "After that, we can attend the festival tonight and then go home. Assuming I find nothing." Kael placed his clenched fists, a protruding vein running atop each, on the table and leaned forward. "I just, I don't know what else I can do to find Bartholomew."

"Hom?" Joshua asked with a mouth full of food, little crumbs of sausage falling onto the table.

Kael looked around hesitantly; Joshua had most certainly not been served yet.

Joshua swallowed. "Been what, two months since we've been home? Too long." He paused, rapping his fingers on the table. "Not to downplay the whole Doctor business. I want to save Mom's life as much as you."

"I know. You're free to come with me to that trailer a couple miles north."

"Where that guy pulled a shotgun on you?" Joshua chuckled nervously. "Pass. I leave that to the—" Joshua made the hand sign for Syche which wasn't a real hand sign but one of the hundred or so the brothers had invented. Others included: The usual place, police watching, and don't die. Don't die was two quick signs anyway but it came up enough that Kael and Joshua had abbreviated it.

"Say what you want Josh, but someone with firepower like that is suspicious. And then he threatened to shoot me if I came back."

"That isn't suspicious." Joshua paused.

Kael waited but was pleasantly surprised when Joshua didn’t make the easy joke. His eyes narrowed. "Why didn't you say it?"

"Say what?" Joshua gleamed as his plate of sausage, bacon, and ham with red and black pudding were set before him.

"I don't know. Something like, 'If I didn't know you, I'd want to shoot you too."

"You. . . want me to say that?"

Kael leaned across the table, hands within strangling range. "I don't want you to say that. I'm saying that you always say things like that; you never miss the chance."

Joshua signed for a to-go box. "What I'm saying is, little brother, that despite being on no sleep I can still tell how on edge you are. I couldn't come up with anything, so now you've put it on yourself to find the Doctor. Go try and save Mom. I'll be around if you need me."

"What happened last night?" Kael mouthed as Joshua paid for them both and disappeared into the tea-kettle-grey night sky. What a day to find out his brother could be reasonable.

Saley the diner maid glid by, picking up the plates. "You know, I never did ask. Why is this one doctor the only one in the entire world that can cure your mum?"

Kael stood and brushed himself off, moving for the door. With a strong gust and the trill of the diner bell Kael looked back. "Our mother is dead."

And he left.

As he began trekking north, he passed by a man shoveling his storefront. He gave Kael a look of incredulity, his eyes glancing over Kael's clothes, and Kael smiled.