It felt like her knees were rattling with every step she took, the technique of her dash falling apart as she focused on preserving her own life.

Stray bolts of magic just barely finding their mark pinged off the face of her shield, either enacting their effects on it, or whatever they finally landed on. Iris kept her shield up for the both of them as Alis continued harassing them with attacks of his own, performing the role that they both silently understood she could not.

Iris parried another blue beam of magic that bridged the gap between the two rooftops. She pushed back against the initial force, focusing everything on keeping her footsteps in line. She gritted her teeth, leaning her meagre bodyweight into the shield, reforming every molecule it ate away from the shield like scar tissue on a flesh wound. She stumbled for a moment, tripping over her own boots as panic rose in her throat.

The pressure ceased and she regained her footing which was when Alis took his chance. A purple orb the size of a gold ball formed in the open palm of his hand, the purple material swirling until it grew still and solid.

It hovered a barely noticeable hair or two above his skin, but she could sense it was not the kinetic energy in his arm that catapulted it across the distance. The orb sped through the air—not nearly as fast as a bullet, but the inferior speed let it turn to his will much easier.

It hit its mark square in the shoulder, tearing through it for good measure and leaving a gaping absence in its wake. The destruction of bone and snapping of ligaments echoed inside Iris’s ears as she watched the man collapse onto the roof tiling, twitching.

The remaining five, travelling in loose formation leapt from the edge and plummeted down into the streets below, splitting off their separate ways further into Excala’s backstreets and underbellies. Domains that they undoubtedly knew better than Alis and Iris combined.

Alis rushed out in front of Iris, leaping off the edge of the roof in pursuit of his remaining opponents. Yet, when she saw the contortion of his face for just a fleeting moment, she could not think of the battle as something so even footed.

Predator and prey, that was what it was slowly turning into. Perhaps the world was lucky that his status as a Wizard was merely a borrowed title.

Iris changed her elevation to follow, stepping off the roof and speeding down the side of the building. She caught herself at the last moment, her ability to judge distances accurately stifled by the darkness. She landed harshly, her knees buckling under the weight of her own body.

She stood slowly, knees still trembling from the impact. With both hands on each knee, she rose to her feet and scanned her surroundings. The domain only revealed to her vague silhouettes, like the remnants of chalk on a blackboard. She focused in on any magic around her, but anything that did exist was obscured by tightly knit buildings and funnelled through compromising tunnels. Vague living shapes sustained a modicum of magic inside the many walls surrounding her, but she could not be sure if they were watching or just sleeping.

A distant echo. The sound was too mangled to determine its original signature, but the direction was at least vaguely clear. She willed her knees to quit their whining and began to move.

The little girl’s footsteps lost their sound to the echoes of narrow, winding corridors. The lively streets of Excala city had withered into a catacomb under the guise of a moonless night. Suffocating, yet it hid its true boundaries. Eyes lurked in this place, watching where no light existed to betray their whereabouts. Pursued and pursuer, criminal and innocent. This realm did not dictate character with such niceties afforded to the overworld.

Iris did not know this place. She did not know what it wanted to do to her. She did not know what it could do to her.

Muffled shouting shockwaved from every which direction. Echoes that enticed her one way and dissuaded her from another. The bricks of the vague building walls rattled faintly with each scream, each command, each cry. She was lost, confused as to if she was even running towards or away from something. She had lost track long ago, her legs only concerned with preserving her life.

No. The boy. That’s who she was trying to find.

She finally felt the ring on her hand, the accessory that she had forgotten to take off the night before. She brought it to her face and followed the small white beam with her gaze.

A chilling crunch, the brutal annihilation of skin and bone jumped her ears. Over and over, it repeated, like a hammer driving home a nail. The sound beckoned from the same direction the ring pointed her in.

It was him. No one else she had ever encountered fought with such brutality.

She took off towards the hammering, which somehow grew more inhuman with every step she took. With every crunch, her surroundings faded. With every strike, the silence between them grew louder. She could hear only it, the rhythmic pounding, crushing, crumpling.

She found a small light, big enough to mimic a firefly—a pinprick in her blackened vision. She reached for it, running at it with renewed purpose as her vision tunnelled on the lone speck of light. Her shoes fell in crevices and slipped on damp brick, but she kept going.

She could hear it now, every speck of bone, every splatter of blood. She could hear it all now. It all was so clear, so audible, so naked and visceral. It longed to demonstrate to her just what it looked like when the sound met the sight.

The light enveloped her as she finally rounded the last corner. The sound stopped. A streetlamp, shining with a tinny orange from several metres above. The meek lighting illuminated the shutters of a corner store, an apartment staircase, and the sight of a massacre.

Bloodied men, all fighting age, cut down like logs ready for a fire pit. Trench coats, black gloves. Well suited, almost like it was a uniform. Broken jaws, caved-in noses, dented skulls. No mercy had been shown in their pacification, only ferocious efficiency.

The boy stood amidst the carnage, his poise as if he was standing atop a pile of deadened corpses, satisfied. Bruised and cut as he was, his lungs heaved wheezing breath after wheezing breath, sustaining the adrenaline overload for a few seconds longer.

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Blood seeped into the pores of his hand, clotted under his nails, and stained his clothes. Every muscle still twitched with anticipation, with a deadly instinct to use itself to its full lethal capacity.

His raven black hair was dyed with a hint of crimson. It was anyone’s guess if he was bloodstained or born that way. However, the same could not be said about his eyes. Razor sharp, needle-thin, predatorial. A gift from whatever hell had birthed such a monster.

The brass knuckles on either hand lustred in the streetlight, glinting as though they were lapping at the fresh blood.

“I can’t say I’m that altruistic myself,” Alis said. “With every movement towards greater good, there’s vested interests. I understand that now.”

He walked forward in a swaying limp, shoulders tense like a hunting mountain cat. Brass fists bared and fresh from its most recent feast. His voice was soft, yet a certain creeping confidence animated its very tone into something threatening.

“Ah, but what a beautiful thought! For the world to die for the sake of something as selfish as love,” he chuckled, feet finally coming to a halt. “Yes, I would like to see how Mrs Hardridge would orchestrate the end of the world.”

Iris’s foot tapped away against the wooden floorboards like a rabid dog itching its fur. Anxiety was the liquor and exhaustion the tonic in the awful, heart dropping fuel that kept the insufferable tick going.

The clocked ticked second after second, counting away the mid-morning in slow motion. The adrenaline from the night before would not subside, and in fact had gotten since seeing Evalyn’s well rested, oblivious face the next morning.

‘Didn’t sleep well?’ she had asked, to which Iris nodded, hastily accepting the convenient excuse. Since returning just before the crack of dawn to a quiet household, she had not been able to force herself asleep.

Sunday. Elliot was home, and Elvera was in the office already working her—as of late—usual routine. Work started at ten on weekends, in two hours’ time.

A quick nap would do, but the stress of trying to fall asleep would only keep her eyelids peeled even wider.

“What’s wrong with you?” Elliot asked, “the house is made of wood you’ll bring down the whole bloody place at this rate.”

“Tired,” she snapped, only registering her tone after the word had left her mouth. Elliot frowned.

“You want me to make you breakfast?”

“Yes,” she snapped again. This time, Elliot smiled, getting up from his chair with a slice of toast hanging from his mouth. She watched him walk over to the kitchen and fire up the stove, the familiar sight giving her pause.

She knew it was a futile thought, but such small, everyday scenes almost tricked her weary mind into considering the possibility that nothing had changed. Perhaps what had happened last night had not happened at all, that the world could continue spinning even after pulling such a stunt. Her actions not having any sort of impact gave her security, the security that came in the absence of responsibility. Nothing changed, so it could not have been important, she could not be guilty.

But that was not the case, undoubtedly so. What she had done had happened, what Alis had committed with his bloodstained hands could not be undone, nor could it be forgotten anytime soon. No matter how much her begging appealed to whatever god presided over her, nothing could change the fact that she had acted, and acted with intention.

What excuse could she possibly have then?

“Iris,” a whisper called from the far side of the living room. Iris looked over to see Elvera leaning out of a partly ajar door. The glare she beckoned Iris with ensnared her like steel wire, digging into her skin and crushing her windpipe.

She looked back at Elliot, back still turned and enjoying himself. She’d have to enjoy whatever was left of her morning with him after her business was finished.

Iris reluctantly relinquished her spot at the table and journeyed over, savouring every last step as if it were her last. Elvera held the door for her as she entered, closing it shut and leaving the room in an incomplete darkness.

Morning light streamed through the window only to be stifled by the snowy floral curtains. A sliver of light fell on Elvera’s face, bright enough to examine the deadened and heartless expression she wore. She sat in her office chair, leaving Iris to stand at the door. Even with the height advantage, Iris felt no more superior than a cornered mouse.

“The mole is dead,” Elvera began, speaking in a low whisper, “along with a few people we’re assuming are Vesmos agents. Some wounds seem like the work of bullets, but others are far from it. Do you know anything about that?”

Iris stayed stock still; she knew fidgeting would give her away. She scrunched her brow and shook her head, feigning ignorance as if the mere idea of it was absurd. “No. When was this?”

“Last night. The reports I’ve gotten are saying sometime between one and three o’clock in the morning.”

Iris shook her head again. “No, I was asleep.”

Alis had already begged her not to tell Evalyn, someone with close ties to the government. By that logic, telling a public servant was the last thing she could afford to do.

Elvera observed her, recording every tremble and twitch for the vaguest sign of guilt or remorse. But eventually, she blinked, several times in fact. She sighed, her shoulders drooped, and she began to rub her eyes. “I had to check off the record since I told you about the mole off the record.”

She leaned into her chair and threw her head backwards, stretching her legs. “Just because you say no yourself doesn’t mean I suddenly believe you wholeheartedly,” she warned, much to Iris’s dismay.

Elvera looked back at her, the striking features just that much softer. “But if there’s something you have to do, you can tell me. And if you can’t tell me, then I understand that too.”

“I don’t get it,” Iris said, driving the point home that she was indeed not guilty. Elvera smiled and chuckled.

“I’m just saying that you’re going to grow up to do some incredible things. For whom you do them, and at who’s expense, only time will tell. You have to come to that conclusion yourself and you have to do it sooner rather than later.”

Elvera stood up from her chair and crouched in front of her. “People in the Council want me to tell you what to do the same way they want me to tell Evalyn what to do, but I don’t want to do that.”

Elvera wrapped a hand around Iris’s shoulder. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and one day you and I might be on opposite sides.”

“I don’t want that,” Iris blurted, which earned her a head rub.

“Me neither. But you’re family, and for me, family comes first. I’m not losing years with you like I did with Evalyn, all right?”

“…all right.”

Elvera kept caressing her head. “I don’t think you did anything last night, nothing malicious anyway. But in the end, it’s not people like me who get to decide what happens in the world, it’s people like you and Evalyn.”

“I don’t even think Evalyn thinks that.”

“Well, it’s hard to be optimistic about changing anything these days. But that’s what I think. As a lieutenant general, I would’ve admittedly locked you out of this office a long time ago, but I guess the grandmother in me didn’t want to do that.”

“Why?” Iris asked.

“There’s no logic in it. You just need to know, in the same way future leaders do. It’s the only thing I can teach you as the person I am,” she admitted. She stood up once more and walked over to the far window, spreading the curtains apart and letting the morning glow stream into the room.

“Are you really loyal to Geverde?” Iris asked. The question up until that morning had seemed so obvious. Elvera’s hands rested on the windowsill as she let the sun’s rays bless her closed eyes.

“Sure I am, as far as countries go. For the longest time, protecting the people of this country was my only mission. Then I met Florence, then Evalyn, Elliot, and now you. Now I’ve got something else equally as important to worry about.”

She turned around, sitting against the windowsill in a way reminiscent of her goddaughter. “Evalyn’s taught me a lot of wonderful things, but she doesn’t understand the value of selflessness. I’d like to see where you draw the line.”