Enoa found the case of floppies beside the sensor station, where Dr. Stan had left them after her night’s work. The plastic opened with a snap. All floppy discs were back in their rows, all labeled in Dr. Stan’s neat script on thin sticky notes.
Enoa turned on the sensor monitor, pressed the center switch she’d watched Dr. Stan use. The screen and console beneath lit up, pale green, enough light to work by.
One stack of floppies was labeled ‘Dreamthought Project’. Enoa pulled floppies free, far enough to read the name on each label. She saw ‘Perez’ and ‘O’Harrell’, ‘Grant’, ‘Ophion’, and ‘Gerwold’, until she found ‘Cloud’.
Enoa slid the floppy free.
“Enoa?” Jaleel whispered. She looked back to find him peeking out of his open bunk door. He lit his cold-white work light in one hand and stepped into the passage barefoot. “Are you okay?”
“I can’t wait anymore.” She whispered back. “I wanted to get my aunt’s letter before I checked out the floppies, but I just need to look now. I’m still afraid that… I’m afraid that if I just read my letter last year, like I should have, the Liberty Corps wouldn’t know as much as they do, that it’s my fault, somehow.”
“That’s crazy.” Jaleel started toward her. “It’s not your fault you got robbed.” He stopped to look through the outer door into the darkened barn. When she listened, Enoa could still hear the indecipherable murmur of Orson’s speech.
“Is he talking to someone?” Jaleel asked.
“He’s ‘getting news’.” Enoa rose into a crouch and searched the sensor area for any sign of a floppy disk port or drive. She saw nothing but the smooth black surface of the console. “He’s supposedly just saying good-bye to… I assume he’s talking to Fire Girlfriend, because he sounds just way too happy.”
Jaleel listened again. “That’s so wholesome! I thought he was like a stoic anime character who’s only happy when he’s messing with somebody in a fight. Oh, I think he’s coming back.” He stepped out of the doorway to let Orson aboard. The door shut behind him.
“Alright,” Orson said. “Are you two okay? Did I bother you leaving?”
“I don’t think so,” Jaleel said. “If you need to talk to your girlfriend, I’ll never stand in the way, Boss.”
“And this is why I’m glad the phone was outside the ship.” Orson nodded to Enoa. “What’s up? What’s bothering you that you need to look at those floppies without…” He shot a thumb over his shoulder toward Dr. Stan’s closed bunk.
“I need to know if people died because I didn’t read my letter a year ago.” Enoa tried to remember all the times she’d sat alone, in the last autumn she’d spend in her childhood home, all those nights she could have looked through what Sucora had left behind. “I need to be sure that Kol isn’t wrong, and the Liberty Corps didn’t get the island’s location from me, because I screwed up.”
“That’s nuts.” Orson stepped around Jaleel and crouched beside her. “Even if you’d read it, that wouldn’t have stopped the Liberty Corps from taking it, unless you left immediately. And how would you have known to leave?”
“Unless there’s more about contacting Archie in the letter.” Enoa could see the old man, facedown and motionless, everything caught in the rosy glow of the firelight from the burning train. He was the first death she might have prevented, but maybe not the last.
“Archie was the old train guy?” Jaleel joined them on the floor.
“Yeah.” Orson took the floppy from Enoa and leaned up to the sensor station. A port opened in the side of the console and he slipped the disk inside. “No matter what, this isn’t your fault. But we were gonna look at all this eventually so we might as well go for it now.”
Words filled the screen, green on black. They slowly began to scroll upward. Enoa leaned closer, Jaleel beside her. All three crushed into the space in front of the monitor.
CLOUD, SUCORA (aka “Eta”) The following summary was heavily edited, in accordance with the terms of the Third Concealment Truce (04/15/2002). Sucora Cloud joined the IHSA in May 1977, along with the rest of Second Wave Dreamthought. She was a cultural recruit and the only E.S. Test recipient to both miss the standardized screening and to volunteer for a personal screening at a later date. Though Sucora resisted a deep study based in her alternative cultural heritage, she produced a manner of extrasensory influence enigma, colloquially known as “Shaping”, that fulfilled Administrator Lambda’s (Λ) hopes for cross-cultural experimentation. In 1982, Sucora accepted the letter Eta (Η) and with it the representative liaison position between the Dreamthought Project and Lambda Command. Lambda preferred the Fourth Mapmaker to hold this position, but the Mapmaker’s frequent absences made a collaborative candidate more logical. In accordance with the succession protocols of the time, Sucora’s assigned apprentice, [redacted], was lettered Theta (Θ) and trained in all procedural methods. Along with the remaining Dreamthought Project master-ranked enigma practitioners, Sucora defected on the night of July 23, 1985, during a changing of the locks – when IHSA operations lost access to the “Dreamside Road” storage facility. Sucora is believed to have spent the next decade and a half mostly at her family home in Nimauk, Pennsylvania. Of the Second Wave Dreamthought Class, she alone survived Theta’s effort to recover access through the Dreamside Door. [See file “Night of the Seven Keys”] LC UPDATE 08/10/2020: Sucora Cloud succumbed to cancer. With her, the last of Second Wave Dreamthought is now gone. Her heir, Enoa, has inherited many materials and knowledge of potential interest. [See file Cloud, Enoa]
The account ended with an image of Sucora, and she looked no older than Enoa. She had her hair pulled back, and she wore small earrings and a dark blue garment. The picture cut off just below her collar, like an ID photo.
“Wow, family resemblance,” Jaleel said. “Like nineteen-eighties Enoa.”
Then the screen went dark.
“My file next.” Enoa turned back to the case of floppies before the image had scrolled out of sight. “Is mine on a different floppy or is it on the same one? How much did you fit on these?”
“I think it’s on the same one.” Orson leaned down to the console. The view on the monitor changed to a bulleted list, the text too small to read.
“Enoa.” Jaleel whispered her name, and it wasn’t the courtesy hushed tones they’d used for Dr. Stan’s benefit. Now he spoke at a level barely audible. “That name again.”
“Yeah, we’ve never had a proper talk about Theta.” Orson didn’t turn away from the screen. A green arrow moved between lines of text. “We still have to compare our notes about Theta.”
But before Enoa could answer, the screen changed again and showed her own younger face, five years before. She recognized the school photo, tenth grade, Nimauk Area High School. She remembered the dress she’d worn, remembered choosing the pattern and the rich green fabric, remembered waiting as Sucora sewed it for her.
There’d been inconsistent schooling in later years, after Thunderworks turned tenth grade into chaos. But there were no more school photo days, and no more picture-day dresses sewn for her. That had been the last.
Another picture followed that one, a still-image taken from her battle with Kol. She saw the moment again, this time frozen, with Kol flying backward, hair wild.
And she saw herself, her own rage, the staff raised – its tip still glowing red from the blast she’d caused.
Two more pictures followed, one after the next. The first showed Brett Nalrik, seated on a cushioned, gray bench, as if in a doctor’s office. He was bearded now, and she knew him only from the shape of his eyes and from the short stub of bandaged arm that ended only inches past his shoulder.
A caption below read, “Extensive nerve damage. Ineligible for full-daktylos prosthesis.”
The next picture showed Brielle Rinlee. She wore a tank top. Both arms were bandaged up to the shoulder, but a man in a lab coat stood beside her. He was undoing the wrappings, revealing red, burned flesh, as if she’d been boiled.
Enoa could see the spaces where the Bullet Rain had pierced the armor and the jumpsuit. The burns were all small circles, darkest in the middle and fading at the edges.
That image’s caption read, “Four months expected recuperation time. No skin grafts necessary. Data sent to Shaper Influence Study, Lost Park Office, and ongoing Pinnacle Holdfast Preservation Project.”
“Man,” Jaleel said. “You really mess up our enemies. Damn!”
Enoa nodded, but she felt only more fearful. This was harm done in defense, but what damage had she caused through negligence? How many had died, how many had been hurt, who’d been innocent, whose only crime was being near her. Because she’d found no strength to face her truth until she’d had no choice.
Only when all four images were gone did the text begin.
CLOUD, ENOA Little information is available about the heir to Sucora Cloud’s knowledge and property (notably her key to the Dreamside Door). We have no medical records to confirm the stated aunt/niece relationship between the two Cloud women. Enoa is stated to be the child of the late Shawsuna Cloud and her fiancé Mika Holt. No E.S. data was submitted after her birth, but this was not uncommon in rural settings. Consequently, Enoa Cloud’s genomic data eludes us. No educational or governmental records suggest any other Enigma connection prior to her encounter with Kolben Maros and Newtown Division. However, based on the skill of her Shaping technique, it is the consensus belief of all four analytics departments that Enoa was trained from a very early age. It is accepted theory that only a life defined by Shaping can yield fluency of technique of the kind the young Cloud has displayed. These hypotheses were partially-verified by Lieutenant Colonel Gabrielle Rinlee, who had brief access to Captain Maros’s research into Ms. Cloud. However, Rinlee’s recent wounds, suffered in battle with Cloud herself, have delayed a full debriefing.
Sir Rowan of the Western Barony had a conflicting take. He believes the younger Cloud’s training was at most inconsistent. However, his own interest in Sucora Cloud’s Anemos technique call this report into question.
Enoa Cloud is at large, operating as part of the current iteration of the Aesir Crew. She holds Sucora Cloud’s Dreamside Road Key. She is a very gifted practitioner of Anemos and should be considered extremely dangerous.
Further Resources:
* Aesir Crew: second iteration
* Incident Report: Night of the Seven Keys
* Incident Report: Wintertide Festival Ruse
* Incident Report: Duel at the Age of the Dinosaurs
* Incident Report: Littlefield War Force Debacle
“Did you and Dr. Stan take any of those incident reports?” Enoa asked. “I need to read about this Night of the Seven Keys.”
Trained from an early age? Had she truly learned that much, that fast – fast enough to trick them all, fool everyone but Sir Rowan?
And Rinlee had seen Kol’s data. What data did he have? What did he know? What other secrets was he still keeping?
“Lemme look.” Orson nodded to the case of floppies. “I really can’t say. It sounds relevant to the Dreamside Road, and it’s referenced in those files, so Dr. Stan probably grabbed it.”
“Did Dr. Stan read all of these already?” Jaleel asked. “Like, has she already absorbed all these crazy plot twists and she’s just waiting to go over it all with us?”
“Uh.” Orson squeezed between them and the case of floppies. “I doubt it? It was a whole thing just to get them all labeled. Hey, while I’m doing this, see what they say about the rest of us.” He drew another floppy from the case, this one marked ‘Aesir 2’.
“What about the rest of the entries on my disk?” Enoa asked. The screen was dark, her own personal entry ended. “I saw a bunch of other lines there.”
Jaleel leaned forward and pressed a key on the console. The monitor switched back to the bulleted list. This time Enoa leaned close enough to read.
* CLOUD, SUCORA
* CLOUD, ENOA
* ANEMOS ABILITIES
* (tagged CLOUD, SUCORA)
* IHSA RRD: RESTORED MEETING MINUTES 1980-1985
* (tagged CLOUD, SUCORA)
* KEY-HOLDER SURVEILLANCE
* (tagged CLOUD, SUCORA)
* ENOA MESSAGE TILES: DESCIPHERING EFFORTS
“Enoa message tiles?” Jaleel read. “What is that?” The arrow arrived on the final bullet. Then the screen changed again, showing a mass of tree roots interwoven above a solid square block, set into mossy ground. There was writing there, faded and obscured by dirt and plant-life. But one word could be seen, the name ‘ENOA’.
“I really doubt that’s about me,” Enoa said. It was clear the text on the block was lines and sentences, but few words could be read, ‘life’, ‘find’, ‘help’. None of the others were clearly legible.
“Yeah, probably not.” Orson held out the ‘Aesir 2’ floppy again. “We were rushed so we just took whatever we saw that might be relevant. I’m still looking for incident reports. Check out this one out while we’re looking at these. There are a couple floppies about the Aesir crew, but I think this one was current.”
That time, Jaleel took the floppy and switched it with the Cloud disk. The screen now had only two true bullets.
* GREGORY, ORSON
* YAYE, JALEEL
*(See Cloud family files for crewmember Cloud, Enoa)
“Ooh, I’m clicking me first!” Jaleel said. The screen changed again, now to another school picture.
The Jaleel on the monitor looked no older than twelve. He had a broad grin and wore a button-down shirt with a thin, navy tie that almost matched the swirly-lined backdrop behind him. “Jaleel Yaye, seventh grade: last confirmed image.”
“Look at you!” Enoa said. Past Jaleel had the same smile, but the expression seemed even happier, truly carefree. It was a child’s smile for a world that allowed unwary happiness.
Two more images followed it. One showed the Wuyar Archers, gathered on the roof of the Solar Saver Crawler, smoke billowing out around them. A red arrow was superimposed over the image. It pointed toward one of the masked figures. “Yaye?” was written above it.
The next image showed Jaleel, slumped to the side in an office chair, Enoa behind him. The image displayed nothing of the pursuit from Nalrik’s men. Very little of the crawler hallway could be seen around them, just Enoa’s own face, months before, and the obstructed view of Jaleel. But she remembered that chase, only minutes after they’d met.
A final picture rose into view, a blurred shape of two figures walking through a flat landscape, lit orange and violet by a vivid sunset. Neither figure was distinct, but one seemed to be wearing a strange helmet or headdress, a glossy and white rectangle.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“No!” Jaleel shouted.
“Hey, keep it down.” Orson looked over his shoulder. “We’re trying to be considerate to the person who got us all… Wait, what am I looking at?”
“Toilet paper.” Jaleel spoke with horror and sorrow. “That’s me, definitely, when I went with Dr. Stan to grab supplies while we were driving to see Teddy.”
Then Enoa could see it too, the vague shapes of the toilet paper rolls, just barely visible through the plastic.
“This is a good thing,” Orson said. “You don’t want them to know who you are. That first picture of you is so old. I bet they have tons of pictures of me. All the facial recognition crap in the world will know me wherever I go.”
“I bet they have tons of cool pictures of you,” Jaleel said. “Just like they had the cool action pose of Enoa. But me, no. I’m Two-ply Man.” His complaints ended when the text began to scroll.
YAYE, JALEEL
Jaleel Yaye is a current member of the Aesir Crew, Second Iteration. Recruited out of an independent outlaw troupe, Yaye is reportedly a prodigy inventor. However, outside of his pre-Aesir outlaw activities, little has been definitively seen of Yaye. He proved effective in combat against Sir Rowan and his pupils in the Crystal Dune Forest. Like all Aesir crewmembers, he should be considered armed and dangerous.
“See,” Orson said. “It’s fine.”
“That’s…” Jaleel said. “That’s all?! Reportedly an inventor? They know about the fight with Nalrik but they don’t know about my arrows, or the gliders, or the fire extinguisher? I’m just Two-ply Man!”
“You’re a man of mystery.” Enoa tried to sound positive, and she tried not to laugh. “I’d rather they not know all of these things about me.”
“Yeah, I can only imagine what they’ve got on me.” Orson drew a whole stack of floppies from a far side of the case. He flicked through them and spread them across the floor. “See what they’ve got.”
Jaleel returned to the menu and selected Orson’s name. A second menu appeared.
* Overview
* Opal Theft and the Blitzkrieg Crisis
* Evergreen Years
* Isla de Manos and Treason
* Role in Combatting Thunderworks
* Aesir Captaincy
* Dreamside Road Key-holder
* Notable Accomplices
“See!” Jaleel said. “Look at this. It’s like you’re a superhero. They even broke it down by the story arc.”
Orson raised a floppy from the pile. “Pops said that Theta was administrator in the nineties,” he said. “This is incident reports ending in two-thousand and two. Check out my overview and then we’ll see what the IHSA has to say about that.”
The overview began with three images. The first was a newspaper clipping. “Student assaults Cyprus during school project.” None of the article’s text was visible, just that title and an image of a much-younger Orson. He was short-haired, teenaged, and there was a boyish look to him, almost baby-faced.
His hands were behind his back, presumably cuffed. Two police officers escorted him away from a brick building.
Teen Orson’s eyes were downcast, but the image scrolled out of sight before Enoa could take a longer look at his expression.
The next image showed the front of the Aesir and a view through the windshield. The interior looked nothing like the place Enoa knew, where they all sat.
The interior was a metallic gray, without the homey touches or enclosed bunks. The image showed clear through to the exposed beds and metal frames, more like a deep-sea submarine than the moving home where they all lived.
Orson stood in the center of the submarine Aesir. He was in plain view, kissing a girl with short red hair, seen from behind.
“You really like redheads,” Jaleel said.
“That’s Sirona,” Orson said. “First time we kissed.”
“Why does anyone have that?” Jaleel asked.
“How would anyone know to take it?” Enoa attempted humor. “Did you hire a photographer in case it was the only time?”
“Very funny.” Orson passed Jaleel the other floppy. “No. I kissed her as a diversion. We got cornered by one of the Hierarchia administrators and I was messing with him. They must’ve been taking pictures. Look, it’s a long story.”
“Romantic,” Enoa said. “It must have done something for her if she’s still talking to you on the phone in the middle of the night.”
“There was a little more to it than that.” But Orson offered no explanation. A third image rose into view.
Orson stood on a long, metallic surface. Snowcapped mountain peaks lined the distant background. He wore his standard regalia, with bandana but no goggles. He led with his now-lost repulsor boot forward. His sword was drawn.
He faced three figures. Two were clearly machines, naked metal. Their arms, legs, and torsos were scaled like chainmail. Their right arms stretched out far ahead of them and ended in blades that glowed blue like their eyes – the same as the lenses of Orson’s goggles. They held tall shields with their left hands. The shields bore the stylized image of what looked like a dinosaur skull, wreathed in lightning bolts. The cool gray of their bodies was splotched with red, blood or paint patterned to look like it.
The figure behind them was also covered in scaled metal, but Enoa couldn’t tell whether it was armor or an automaton’s flesh. He stood a full head and shoulders taller than Orson, and he held swords in both hands. They were black blades, almost as long as Orson was tall, curved like scimitars. They gave off no light and reflected none.
The massive figure wore a breastplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, and grieves of the same black as his swords. His mask too was the same, with angled oval slits for his eyes. His hair was snow white and fell from the top of his head in a long tail blended together with a cloak of furs that fell around his arms and down his back.
This image was labeled, “Gregory in battle with Thunderworks Supreme Commander and guards.”
“See!” Jaleel said. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen! You, right there, are everything I want to be in my life.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Orson said. “If I lost, I would’ve been just one of the countless no-names who tried to fight him one-on-one and died.”
“But you didn’t lose!” Jaleel said.
And then the text began.
GREGORY, ORSON Orson Gregory is an American mercenary who took part in most of the key conflicts of the last dozen years. He is one of the most notorious independent operators still at-large. Gregory was the target of an attempted Hiss Variation. The traitor Administrator, Delta, in partnership with the subversive agent known as Ruhland (aka “the Virus” within Delta’s operation), attempted to scandalize and incriminate young Gregory as leverage in a property acquisition maneuver. They had located Manufactured Enigma 2-99, “the Opal”, buried beneath a defunct industrial plant, on land then owned by Gregory’s family. This was a colossal failure. Gregory stole the Opal and escaped. His flight led to the destruction of Delta and his Blitzkrieg [See file “Blitzkrieg Crisis”], as well as the formation of the Aesir Crew, First Iteration. Without outside intervention, Gregory would surely have remained an uninvolved party. Gregory received some manner of training from Ophion and lived with his Concealment Truce community for the better part of a half-decade. During these years, Gregory was the romantic partner of the current Keeper of the Truce, Sirona Birgham. LC Update: Gregory and Birgham parted ways around the Battle of Norlenheim and Birgam’s ascension to the post of Truce Keeper. Analysis suggests she ended the dalliance with outlaw Gregory just as she assumed her current position.
“That’s not what happened!” Orson shouted. “I killed their Hierarchia, and they’re still lying about me!”
Jaleel made a show of leaning sideways and shushing Orson. “We’re trying to be quiet for Dr. Stan.” He spoke in a whisper.
“Yeah, yeah,” Orson grumbled.
The narrative continued to scroll.
Gregory and his accomplices led an unchecked rampage over those next five years. None were tried. Most are still at large. Gregory spent most of the destabilization period as a solo operator.
Gregory is armed with the covenant sword nicknamed Thousand Destiny and currently resides in the prototype vessel, Aesir. Recently, he has begun assembling a new crew. See incident-specific files for more details about Orson Gregory.
Further Resources (most notable):
* Aesir Crew: first iteration
* Data Aggregation: Thousand Destiny
* Data Aggregation: Concealment Truce
* Data Aggregation: Project Aesir
* Data Aggregation: Dreamside Road
* Person of Interest: Ophion
* Person of Interest: Birgham, Sirona
* Person of Interest: Corwin, Eloise
* Person of Interest: Darlow, Earl
* Person of Interest: Haydn, Arthur, PhD
“Wow,” Enoa said. “You really are a big deal.”
“No wonder Teddy wanted you to have books about you!” Jaleel said. “You could have a whole series with all that.”
“It sounds like a lot when you look at a whole decade of your life in a couple minutes,” Orson said. “Alright, Jaleel. Let’s see what this Seven Keys thing is all about.”
Jaleel switched the floppies again.
This time the screen was filled with a complex mass of text, like lines of computer code, scattered words and numbers and even individual letters. This scrolled away, still too fast for Enoa to draw more than isolated words from the jumbled writing.
But her eyes found scattered names again, some of the same names she’d seen mingled throughout the labeled floppies, ‘Perez’, ‘O’Harrell’, ‘Montgomery’, ‘Cloud’.
Finally, the screen cleared of the coded text. A new narrative began to scroll in its place.
INCIDENT REPORT: “NIGHT OF THE SEVEN KEYS” On 7 April 2002, Administrator Theta launched an offensive to reclaim the keys to the Dreamside Door. Through this action, the Fourth Mapmaker and seven of the eight Key-holders perished, along with dozens of connected parties and bystanders.
This account is limited, in accordance with the terms of the Third Concealment Truce.
As RRD Administrator, it was Theta’s purview to pursue the stolen Dreamside Road. Most of Second Wave Dreamthought was not formally protected from direct recovery action. One Key-holder, Joanna Wild, was a citizen of a Coexistent Community, and she was certainly a borderline case. Only the direct pursuit of Bryce Montgomery violated the Second Concealment Truce. All other actions taken were sanctioned. All other recovery efforts taken by Theta were settled law, reprisals approved and collateral damage acceptable. The Third Concealment Truce was signed as a response to the potential for further hostilities and further bloodshed. In addition, the loss of the Dreamside Road was, in the view of the IHSA Directorate Board, less of a blow than full exposure.
An image followed this introduction, a blonde woman in a cloak and dark military-style uniform. The letter Θ was embroidered over the left breast pocket. It was only partially visible under her heavy cloak.
A familiar metal cylinder hung at her belt. It was plain with a barbed end.
It was a collapsed Anemos staff, like the one Enoa wore at her own hip.
“Their fantasy info dumps are so formal.” Jaleel said. “If that’s Theta, she has—”
“I know,” Enoa interrupted.
There were other figures gathered behind Theta, a full squad or more. They wore dark textured armors. They had sidearms holstered at their belts. Some wore rifles, strapped to their chests. Others had sheathed swords. All wore helmets with dark faceplates, like tinted glass.
IHSA was printed in white across their chests.
“Hierarchia,” Orson said the word like a curse.
Then the text resumed.
Theta did not file operation clearances. However, it was long understood that she had spent considerable resources surveilling the Dreamside Road Key-holders. Their locations had been monitored and recorded during her entire tenure as Administrator. The Fourth Mapmaker died first. We know this from intercepted communications between other Dreamthought Project members. He alone could follow the direct route to the trove. Theta attempted to arrest him and force him to deliver her to the trove. The Mapmaker did not survive their encounter. Following this, Theta’s hypersonic transport logged over fifteen thousand travel miles, visiting several locations across the contiguous United States, as well as Japan, the Philippines, and, finally, the United Kingdom. By 0900 on April 8, Sucora Cloud held the last key not returned to IHSA control. None of the Key-holders died without civilian casualties. Thirty-three other individuals perished or suffered grievous harm: family, friends, neighbors, and passersby [Key-holders and other casualties will be listed in full at the end of this report.] Theta’s reclamation effort was conducted with reasonable precision until the final effort to apprehend Sucora Cloud. The same pattern of success may have proven true for Ms. Cloud, but she was not present at her home and place of business for Theta’s attack. Her exact whereabouts at that time are unknown, but Theta did not halt the operation. Sucora’s widower father, Christophe, and two regulars at their family antique shop, Joseph Watkins and Hector Brantley, died in the strike. Theta then attempted to apprehend Sucora Cloud’s younger sister, Shawsuna, as well as her fiancé, Mika Holt. Both resisted and sustained fatal wounds. All five casualties occurred independent of Sucora Cloud’s immediate presence.
“Stop it.” Enoa stood. She recoiled, pulled herself away from the sensor station, away from the words and the new truth. She forced herself around Orson. She retreated farther away. Jaleel was watching her, Orson too, and she couldn’t look at them. She wouldn’t.
She lived a life defined by Shaping? The knowledge her aunt found had killed the rest of their family. The techniques she practiced had orphaned her. Trained from a young age?
“Hey.” Jaleel hit a key below the screen. The scrolling halted, now stuck on an image, too distant for her to decipher, a mass of green and black.
“I’m sorry.” Jaleel stood from his seat. Orson did too, but he stepped aside. “I—” Jaleel stammered, but he said nothing. What could he say? What could anyone say?
Enoa felt the sudden urge to run, like the truth was a pain she could escape, like motion could force her brain to take it in, to accept truths and rewrite the life and childhood she’d lived, built on lies and omission and untold horror. Her parents died in an accident? But that was a lie.
Jaleel stepped closer. He tentatively wrapped his arms around her shoulders, but even that was like being trapped, like she could calm the pressure in her racing mind and ignore all thoughts only if she kept moving.
“She lied!” Enoa pushed away from him. Admitting it, vocalizing it, made it real, made it inescapable, undeniable. “She didn’t tell me anything! She told me it was an accident, that they fell when they were rock climbing!”
“Maybe they did.” Jaleel’s voice fell back to a whisper. “Maybe… Maybe that’s how they died. Maybe your aunt didn’t really lie to you. You loved your Aunt Sucora. It might be true.”
“But how can I know what’s real?” Enoa felt hot tears roll down her cheeks. “Aunt Sucora’s gone. They’re all… All of them…”
When Jaleel held his arms out again, she returned the hug. He didn’t speak, but slowly rubbed her back. He held her steady and held her upright.
Enoa gripped his back as if she were falling, and all the Shaper training in the world could not keep her mind clear. It was like her own thoughts could suffocate her, drown her, clutch at her and weigh her down in deep water. But holding onto him – he could not pull her from the waves, but he could help her keep her face above the surface.
She heard a distant crooning and felt a light touch on her legs. She twisted to the side with one arm still wrapped around Jaleel’s back.
Wesley sat beside them, forepaws rested on their legs. He chattered when he saw them looking.
“He must be afraid we’re getting attacked again,” Jaleel said. “It’s okay, bud.” He laughed, and the normalcy was enough.
“Thank you, Sweetie,” Enoa said. “We’re all safe.”
She took a deep breath. She found her peace, her controlled breathing and mind and thoughts. She found her training again.
“Thank you.” Enoa eased herself away from Wesley and Jaleel, her footsteps even, her mind still forced and distant. She felt the motion of the air through the cabin, the perfect, contained environment of the Aesir. She felt the motion of the air outside, the air in the barn that leaked out and mingled with the full world beyond. And the motion she watched kept her mind safe, far away from the rewritten past.
“I’m really sorry, Enoa,” Orson said. “But when you’re ready, there’s something else you need to see.” He pointed back to the sensor screen.
Enoa followed Orson’s gesture to the monitor and the image where the scrolling account had finally come to a stop.
The green she’d seen was a distorted sky. The clouds were a mass of swirls. And they clung close to the ground, so low that they swallowed the heads of the hills that ringed the scene in the image.
Two figures stood in a road beneath the discolored sky, both women, both with staves raised.
Enoa saw Theta, still in her uniform, cloak now billowing out behind her. There was visible light glowing at the tip of her raised staff. By the light, Enoa saw the eyes of the woman who’d killed so many, murdered thirty-three. The eyes of the woman who’d orphaned her were wide, lids forced open. Her teeth were bared and gritted shut.
Sucora Cloud stood opposite her. Enoa couldn’t judge the distance between them. The odd colors and dark landscape distorted the scale.
Sucora wore a light jacket and jeans and suede boots of the kind she’d favored all Enoa’s life. Sucora held her own staff one-handed. It gave off a slight light of its own, but less than Theta’s.
Enoa could just see the small shape that Sucora clutched to her shoulder with her free hand. It was too dark to make out the toddler’s face, but she didn’t have to.
“Maybe there are more pictures,” Orson said. “So we can get a look at the kid’s face and we can be sure.”
“I am sure,” Enoa said. “It’s me.” She felt another tear roll down her cheek.
“Keep going,” she said. “Please. Keep going.”
Orson pressed a key on the console and it scrolled again. The next image showed the same scene. The two women still faced each other under the green sky.
But there was something above them. It was a great, dark mass that dwarfed the combatants. Enoa stared at Sucora and at herself. She ignored the blot in the sky until she saw the subtle swirls to it. It was textured. It was not some distortion or a photo error.
Enoa took a closer look. The shape in the sky seemed to glow. Or it was transparent, a clear window of glass or ice that reflected the light from the green sky.
“Theta performs her Meteor Hail Technique.” The caption scrolled beneath the picture as it slid away.
The next still showed the green-skied scene. But then the Meteor Hail was gone. The road was littered with shards of ice. Some of the upright shards stood almost as tall Sucora.
Sucora stood alone in the road, still clutching Enoa.
Then the next image scrolled into view. It showed a body buried in shards. Everything was still in the green glow, but the ground was red beneath Theta.
Enoa couldn’t find a face. All she saw was an impossible mass of blood and twisted flesh, shining red and green.
“Sucora performed a long-distance combustion. The hail shattered above its maker.” The last caption scrolled away. Standard text began beneath it.
LC Update: Theta’s thirst for revenge proved her undoing. If she had recruited adequate numbers, Sucora Cloud would have met the same fate as her colleagues. Instead, Theta gave into her madness and petty cruelties. She killed Sucora’s family. The directorate believed her excuses, how she hunted Cloud’s sister for leverage, kidnapped Cloud’s niece for leverage. But the truth is clear. Theta wanted to train the child as her own, and for that she gave Sucora time to prepare. We lost a full strike force that day. We lost yet another RRD Administrator. We lost the Dreamside Road keys for a second time, and for a second time they were scattered across this world. And this was the true price of Theta’s whims. Imagine, for a moment, what our fate would have been had we wielded the knowledge of the Dreamside Road against Thunderworks. We would not be a broken remnant of what we once were. That was robbed from us by Theta. What’s more, she could have done us the favor of dying. The shattering hail failed in killing her. Now we live in a world built on her failure, but with her still alive in it. Submitted by Baron R.K. Helmont, 08/17/20
Enoa watched the screen until it returned to darkness. Orson and Jaleel did not speak, not until she did.
“I needed to know this.” She still looked at neither of them. “I should… I should have known this so long ago. What really happened… I always should have known.”
‘We live in a world with her still alive in it.’ Theta lived, who studied Anemos, who tried to kidnap her, who killed her family, who’d killed so many people. She lived.
“This isn’t an easy thing to tell someone,” Orson said. “You haven’t watched all of her films. You don’t know what she says in the letter.”
“I’m glad I saw this first,” Enoa said. “I need the real truth now. I don’t…” What waited for her in the letter? Would it tell her this, the truth of murder and the real danger? Enoa did not believe it.
She was still staring at the screen when a new image appeared. It showed a woman in Theta’s same dark uniform. But now the face was a mask, a mask with the same pale cheeks and delicate chin and blue eyes as Theta’s real face. Now it was a shiny, plastic recreation, worn by the same woman. Sucora Cloud and all of the Dreamthought Project were gone. But Theta lived.
“If she is out there,” Enoa said. “I need more than movies. I need the truth. So I can be ready.”