Tatiana stood with her hands clasped in front of her as she looked up at the scrap metal ship sailing down through the usual sky traffic around Kharon to proceed directly to the roof. Emerald moss spirits spiraled together and created a thoroughfare for this special vessel to follow, even as other routes around them were bent away, earning several yelled curses from delivery drivers and speeding Academy students.
Anytime the antagonism became too pointed, a pulse of an absolutely monstrous image spread out from that thin vessel, originating from the intense-eyed woman at the back. When that wave spread outward, even the moss spirits briefly froze. Very quickly, all of the traffic became completely accepting of this new arrangement. The previously numerous complaints quieted. Even the birds in the area ceased their song, fleeing back to their nests to hide.
The people of Kharon were used to the need to be aware of where they stood, on the spectrum of power. Since the new arrivals didn’t do anything but posture, no one pushed the matter further. Tatiana tried not to dwell on the increasingly chaotic reports coming out of Zone 1, as Ghost apparently mobilized his entire drone armada to contain some sort of dangerous image outbreak.
She very purposefully kept her hands from squeezing tight enough to reveal her unease.
The metal boat, gleaming with lines of pure Mana, slowed to a stop right above the roof and then landed lightly. Immediately afterward, all the materials collapsed into their separate pieces. Delilah had a pale face, for which Tatiana had a lot of sympathy; it could not have been easy to bring this group here. Tatiana stepped forward and bowed to the new arrivals. “Hello, friends of Randidly. My name is Tatiana. I’ve been led to understand that you are visiting our world and are interested in sampling a bit of our culture. I’d be more than happy to arrange that. What are your names?”
The middle woman stepped forward and smiled sweetly. She folded her hands in front of her, almost an exact mirror of Tatiana’s own posture. “My name is Pullas. This guy is Xershi, and she’s Fiona. I hope it’s alright that we came here, Randidly… was recovering, so he isn’t really aware of our presence here.”
Tatiana snorted, somewhat reassured by the frank admission. “If I’m being honest, the list of things Randidly isn’t aware of is never so long that it surprises me. And I can feel intuitively that while he might be defensive about the way you used to enter, your presence isn’t a serious problem.”
“Nice place you got here,” Xershi stepped forward and put his hands on his hips. His gaze was directed down through the building, sweeping side to side as though physical objects were not an impediment to his vision. His manufactured eyes clicked several times a second as he adjusted some internal mechanism. “Fascinating. Can I take a look at the engine on this baby? And can you make the city move? I’d like to see how the legs work. Also, are these little buggers-” Xershi waved a hand at the swarm of moss spirits that followed him around. They parted gleefully to swim through his fingers but clung to him. “-a weird radiational byproduct?”
Tatiana chuckled and cupped her palms together. The moss spirits swirled down, borrowing briefly from her own Nether to condense into a glittering emerald semi-liquid that pulsed with a mysterious power between her fingers. “We can show you around Kharon’s interior. And these are moss spirits, small manifestations of the soul of the city. If you ask them nicely, they will be able to move it for you.”
The last woman, Fiona, who had such intense and tragic eyes, had been standing at the back and just looking up at the streams of transports and students on Scrawled pieces of wood following the paths laid by moss spirits. Her eyes flicked from the drifting sky-islands, now so dense that they hung around Kharon’s airspace like an asteroid belt. “...the Nether is so dense here. It ties this whole city together. This place couldn’t function without it.”
“Honestly, the Nether right now is at record lows,” Tatiana offered a small smile. “But I suspect you all might know more about why; even we can feel how exhausted Randidly is. Anyway, I’ve arranged for a meal at one of the most delicious spots in town-”
“I’ll just, uh,” Delilah finally spoke up. She shrugged and raised both her hands, as though to press away further association with this group. “Leave you to it then.”
“Nonsense!” Tatiana had opened her mouth to speak, but Xershi beat her to it. The man swaggered over to Delilah and patted her on her shoulder, he each with such force that the girl winced. “You have done us such a favor! Let us at least treat you to a meal before you go.”
“Are we even the ones paying for this?” Pullas muttered. Tatiana met the woman’s gaze and the two of them exchanged a small smile. At least between the two of them, there was a kindred pragmatism that most of the rest of the world lacked.
Is it really that hard to have a plan? Pullas’s eyes glittered.
How can it be so easy to be unaware of your own situation? Tatiana countered. Both of their smiles widened slightly.
“Well, I can pay by instruction. The Ghosthound’s world could use a lot of direction in regards to images,” Xershi wasn’t dissuaded by issues of currency. He grinned at Delilah. “You, miss, your image is related to wind, yes? A speedy wind, one which can escape and reach all corners of the world?”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Yes, but-” Delilah began, but suddenly all other noise was covered up by the wind.
In the first moment, it was beautiful. The note of its existence sang against Tatiana’s skin, sure of itself and rich with texture. Then the unfortunate mundanities of the display caught up with that pure note.
A huge vortex erupted from Xershi’s body. A nearby weather vane snapped and was thrown out into the air. The roof beneath his feet cracked, smashed by the presence of the wind. Delilah tumbled helplessly backward and Tatiana staggered a few steps to steady herself. And still the wind rose and soared, claiming for itself a wide section of the sky.
If the Ghosthound’s wind was the methodical churning and raising of a storm, this wind was air racing through a thin canyon, finally emerging back under the open sky. Wider and wider the swirling winds spread, until several alarmed students in the sky above them were knocked off their Scrawled boards by its expansion. Tatiana watched them with widening eyes, but the students of Kharon Academy were rather prepared for unexpected events; most of them pulled a new piece of driftwood out of interspatial storage and applied Scrawls while tumbling sideways.
Only a second after they had been knocked off their transportation, they had regained their footing in the sky. Then the foolhardy bastards whooped and shot directly into the rising wind, trying their best to ride the strange phenomenon to rapid heights and speeds.
The commercial traffic veered away from the sudden wind, triggering another round of low volume curses, but the moss spirits just adjusted their lines even wider around the center of Kharon and most weren’t impacted by the sudden release of the image.
After ten seconds, Xershi ceased producing that clear image. He put his hands on his hips and laughed, long and loud. “See? I have quite a bit to teach you. Your wind has no soul. What you need is-”
Pullas moved closer to Tatiana. “Can I… offer you valuable materials? It’s probably just good to put down a deposit now, before we break anything expensive.”
Tatiana shrugged, slightly bemused. “I would appreciate it, but to be honest, people like him are exactly what the city needs. Wild forces of chaos, keeping people from getting too comfortable. Even if its slightly dangerous-” Tatiana pointed upward, at the hundred-odd thrill-seekers that had converged on the wind and now just drifted around, disappointed having missed the spectacle. “-Randidly made this city to reward that desire to run toward adventure. Not everyone possesses the same wild zest for life, but most people would forgive those who have it because it reminds them of how they always wanted to be, even if it isn’t who they became.”
Then Tatiana clapped her hands together and addressed the group. “Well, since that’s settled, why don’t we go?”
After seeing the display of casual power from Xershi, Tatiana decided to take them directly to Selene’s restaurant. It was only four-thirty, but letting such volatile figures wander around didn’t seem like a good idea. When they got onto street level, the towering auras of the three figures with her, as well as pedestrians noticing Tatiana herself, meant that most gave them a wide berth.
Pullas asked polite questions about the history of the city which Tatiana was only too happy to answer. Xershi cooed and shouted and slapped his knee, reacting to the storefronts, the automatons, the constant presence of moss spirits. Delilah drifted after the group, sometimes looking worried and other times determined.
It was Fiona who worried Tatiana the most. The intense-eyed woman who released periodic pulses of mauve light seemed distracted, but in the worst, glazed-eyes sort of way. And of the three of them, it was her that Tatiana’s instincts identified as the most dangerous.
Selene had begun cooking when they arrived. Warm smells drifted out of the kitchen, filling the room with the promise of the meal. Xershi cooed and aw’d, very quickly dragging Delilah back to the corner of the cramped restaurant. Her eyes were wide as saucers as he launched into a very detailed explanation of how to construct a solid image.
Pullas sat down near Tatiana and made more polite conversation about how well run Kharon seemed to be. Fiona sat between the two groups, just looking into the middle distance while staring at the wall. Just as Tatiana was preparing to do some slight bragging, her Skill activated. She raised her head and blinked, feeling a cool flush of relief spreading through her body. “Oh, Randidly just woke back up. And-”
And then he was there, stepping through a crackling spatial threshold. His bright emerald eyes swept left and right, taking in the room. Even without a Skill, Tatiana could tell he wasn’t in a good mood. Nor did he seem to have recovered fully from whatever effort had emptied him of Nether in the first place.
He showed his teeth when his eyes landed on Fiona. “In the grand scheme of things… shit, it’s not such a big deal you came into the Alpha Cosmos, I guess. I heard that you were essentially tempted in here by a member of the Pantheon. But… Fiona, releasing your image?”
The entire street around them seemed to go silent. The anger of the Ghosthound was a physical presence in the room, squeezing the air from Tatiana’s lungs. Next to her, Pullas sighed silently and shook her head.
Fiona, the target of all this fury, just shrugged. She calmly crossed her legs “I just left fragments of my image lingering around. Isn’t it their fault if they stuck their noses into somewhere they had no business messing?”
“This is my homeworld,” Randidly hissed. His eyes seemed to brighten. In stark contrast to how thin the Nether had been for the past twenty-four hours, he leased dense waves of the energy that quickly pressurized the interior of the restaurant. “You are going to let yourself in, make a mess, and pretend like its nothing.”
Fiona flashed an ugly smirk. “Maybe next time, be a bit more careful with whom you give keys to, yea? This is-”
“You self-destructing,” Randidly’s shoulders shook as he retrained himself. “Lashing out because you can’t handle your own emotions. You sought to move forward, yet now you are just letting everything fall to pieces. Get over yourself. Didn’t you always know your husband was a piece of shit? What changed.”
“Don’t speak about things you don’t understand,” Pushing herself to her feet, all the false smugness fell away from Fiona’s face. She glared at Randidly. “Not unless you think you’ve recovered enough to pick a fight.”
“After you fucked around on my homeworld,” Randidly’s mouth curled into a Cheshire grin. Powerful reverberations hummed out through the pressurized Nether. “Did you think there was any other way this would end?”