“And you’re sure you’re all right to go to school today?” Elliot asked for the fifth time that morning as he completed the presentation on a hand-made lunch, sealing it before Iris could take a peek.
“Yeah. I need to go anyway,” she said. “I promised her.”
Elliot flashed her a proud grin through the concern. He’d arrived home late last night after hours at a library before going straight to bed, only briefly mentioning what he’d found. Namely, what Sigils were and how to find them. Little was known about the latter, with most documents concerning themselves with their destruction over everything else. But in Iris’s case, weeding out the suspect was the top priority.
According to her client, every day consisted of a round trip exclusively by car, all manned by trusted servants with years of history with the company. Unless someone was breaking and entering under darkness, the artist had only six hours a day of opportunity. It was someone in the school.
And despite Crestana's objections, Iris’s music teacher was at the top of the suspect list. If not the outright artist, then someone who knew something.
A day of tasteful rule-breaking was bound to give her something, anything to work off of.
Elliot rounded the table and placed the metal container beside Iris’s breakfast before giving her a squeeze. “If ever you feel like you’re losing it, and you can’t bring yourself to keep going, remember why you’re doing this. It’ll help you get back on your feet.”
The embrace itself was admittedly more reassuring than the advice. The words only reminded her of the alien thoughts festering in the back of her head.
Why do you care?
This will change nothing.
“Dad?”
“What.”
“Just hug me next time.”
The brass and Verdigris statues of wrinkly men and women flanking the school gates were enjoying a fresh new coat of snow. Like guard dogs, they overwatched the entrance while tirelessly holding imposing stances, the impact of which lessened by the piles of detail-obscuring white.
Between them was most often a constant stream of students ignoring their welcome as they talked, and Iris would mindlessly follow with her head in the clouds. But the stream was clogged, and Iris stopped barely a few metres past the gates. Before her was a wall of student bodies numbering almost in the hundreds. Spreading from Gewen Court to her left to Kribikk Court to her right, a solid barrier of students blocked off the school’s central courtyard, its equivalent to a town square.
Iris approached a boy, a head taller than the surrounding crowd. “Can you see?” she said.
“Uh…yeah,” he answered. Either his voice box was far from calibrated, or, for whatever reason, he was mortified. “There’s someone about to jump off Gewen Court’s roof.”
“What?! Who?”
“I…don’t know. He looks like a teacher. Hey, Jackal,” he called, elbowing a boy beside him. “Who’s up there?”
“Apparently, it’s a guy called Forecer. Never had him in a class.”
Iris’s heart leapt into her mouth as she began to sprint, ramming into the crowd and using her size to get between student after student. Forcing through it was like molasses, with people at random becoming selfish roadblocks she’d have to manoeuvre around.
Forward. As long as she went forward.
She slipped, and caught herself on a girl’s shoulder, who yelped as they stumbled to the floor. Iris mumbled her apologies, her fingers freezing and her shoes losing traction on the snow as she began to run before even standing.
She forced her way to the edge, spotting in advance the loose perimeter of staff trying to prevent the crowd from moving any further ahead. Breaking past the last bodies, she bent her knees and burst forward, clearing their arms in one movement before transferring the momentum into a sprint.
The square was clear of foot traffic, with anyone already inside long since ushered into either of the courts. Iris glanced upward, seeing the suited figure inching closer and closer to the roof’s edge. No self-preservation in his movements besides whatever instinct was keeping him from jumping then and there.
The snow was soft but thin; face-first from that height would turn his ribs into shrapnel.
A million eyes were trained on Mr Forecer and the teachers one floor below as their begging fell on dogged ears. Those million eyes connecting her to her armour was too big of a risk for her to stomach.
Reluctantly, she sped past the teachers blocking Gewen Court’s entrance, slipping past their arms and turning right, forcing her way to another wall of bodies. Rounding the corner and finding the stairs, she began to ascend several floors, skipping steps until she confirmed the stairwell was empty. The tail on her left arm began to glow, and she could feel her hair disassembling, something that by now barely irked her.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Armour radiated from her helmet, forming plate by plate as it stretched to her extremities. The beast-like scowl etched itself into her helmet, ill-fitting for its mission and ridiculously distinct. But she had no choice and no time to think of another outfit.
She reached the top floor and continued her sprint, speeding up as she reached the landing’s edge and vaulting over the barrier. She shifted her torso a half-circle as her foot kicked off the brick.
Liquids were ill-suited to combat, but the randomness inherent to their properties gave her control where and when Iris could not maintain it.
She released a jet stream of viscous purple liquid, forcing it through the cold winter air and at the tiled rooftop. Solid points required accuracy, but the splash of the liquid against the hardened clay gave Iris a workable surface area for another trick.
She concentrated on the liquid, willing onto its adhesive properties. She felt her trajectory change from a fall to a swing, and she knew it had worked.
She tugged herself forward, a physical movement that acted like muscle memory, commanding the liquid rope to shorten rapidly until she landed on the roof, but its angle was too sharp to run over fast enough. Spider limbs raced from her gauntlets forward, anchoring themselves into the roof’s apex. Like a catapult, Iris propelled herself up the roof and cleared the ledge.
All to watch it happen.
Mr Forecer’s shoes parted with the tiles, bringing pieces of clay along with them as gravity’s impartiality took hold, snatching him from Iris’s grasp. She tried, willing her limbs to travel faster than they ever had, than they ever could. Solid or liquid, it didn’t matter. Her last attempt brushed past his coattails as he disappeared over the edge.
The collective gasp that fell over the school seemed to wind time itself. For a sublime moment, clocks forgot to tick, and the world forgot to turn.
Then the first scream came. Then the second and the third, cascading like a sudden rainstorm that jumpstarted time again. Iris stood halfway down the edge of the roof. She couldn’t see the body or the blood. She didn’t want to. She didn’t need to.
The snow was red, and her one lead was gone.
Sirens pierced through the newborn commotion, and Iris spotted the emergency vehicles arriving too late. She realised her position and the stares it was slowly garnering as the few whose attention wavered found her instead. She retreated, using the same method as before to clear the roof’s apex. Sliding off and over the edge, her gauntlet’s fingers liquified and stuck to it, catching her before she could drop as well. She swung onto the landing, the attention of those below solely on trying to get a glimpse outside.
Iris ducked into an open classroom and closed the door, sending out eight liquid tendrils to force the shutters closed before letting herself breathe. In and out, like she’d been told, but it didn’t help.
Her armour dissolved in time with her brain. The pressure built inside her throat until it had nowhere to escape but through her muscles. Her body shook, her teeth ground into each other as she suppressed a scream.
His coattails. She had felt the strands of cotton fraying from his coattails.
Her knuckles lashed out at a wooden desk, her self-preservation instincts armouring the hand before it made contact. Instead of her fingers, the desk bent and splintered into disrepair. She pried her fist from the indent, immediately regretting her decision as she released a shaky breath, tears taking their chance to spill in the moment’s weakness. Iris wiped them away before they could roll any further down her cheek.
Another failure, not even a day after the last.
Why do you concern yourself with this?
It taunted her from a distance, relegating itself to the closet in the corner of the classroom. Bloodied breath mocking her own, matching her from inhale to exhale.
Earthly.
Apathy in the face of tragedy. A man had taken his own life, and Iris’s soul was telling her not to care, that it hurt to care.
Not worth our time. Our power.
Why was she doing this? She had to remember why, and think of an answer, or at least an excuse. Anything to prove the monstrous thing how wrong it was.
There is nothing. I know there is nothing.
Iris had no recollection if she ran, flew or even teleported. But she was there, across the room, her hands wrapped around the thing's spongy neck. She squeezed, the pressure in her body gleefully coursing into her fingertips as she curled her fingers tighter around the pitiful imitation of her mother.
The entity fancied herself a maternal figure to her, yet its attempts at comfort only went so far as bloodied spluttering of incoherent, unhelpful gargle. It wasn’t what Iris wanted to hear, it wouldn’t make her path forward any easier. For its hubris, Iris squeezed and squeezed, wringing the red from the thing’s throat as she forced it to the ground.
The entity didn’t resist, only mocking the pathetic gargles of a choking human. No resistance or struggle as Iris crushed the life out of something she was sure never had any in it.
I am you, don't be me.
She heard something snap. Bone splintering like a branch on a dead tree. The thing’s head went limp, freely rolling backwards and swinging from loose muscle and skin.
Gas. Gas again began to seep from the shutters, cascading to the wooden floorboard before inching closer. Her skin burned as the clouds clawed upwards, matching her height, then continuing to the ceiling. She couldn’t breathe: a noose tightening around her neck.
Iris let go of the body and bolted for the door, stumbling across chairs and desks while her lungs heaved for untainted air. She reached the door, undoing the lock with shaking fingers before ramming it open with her shoulders.
Iris coughed as her face stung with cold, fresh air. It was sharp against her throat and her lungs, but it was clean. She gasped like a fish out of water, her heart beating in her ears and fingertips while she tried to loosen her quaking grip on the balcony railings. She calmed down, breathing in and out. It was working now.
The commotion filtered through her pounding body, and through it all, she heard the cries of someone familiar.
She ran across the landing, down the flight of stairs and forced her way to the front of the crowd blocking Gewen Court’s entrance. The familiar cries were clearer now, and she ran into the courtyard, still empty by the order of staff. But someone besides her had broken through.
Crestana was crouched next to the body, the source of the cries that had somehow reached Iris’s ears. Someone was trying to pry her away, but she wouldn’t allow them.
Iris ran over, forcing the corpse from her vision as best she could. Besides the shaking shoulders, Crestana's body looked as though in rigor mortis. Knelt in the snow, unfazed or perhaps uncaring by the corpse's crawling blood staining the hem of her skirt.
The surroundings seemed to hold their breath, waiting on what they pair would do, what they'd say.
Iris reached a hand out to her client, but Crestana met it with aggression, throwing Iris’s shoulder aside.
“Crestana! It’s me.”
Crestana's eye did not stray from the body. A morbid obsession to witness the death was about her as the blood seeped into the snow below their shoes. She continued to cry, and Iris was dumbfounded.
“Iris,” Crestana finally muttered, a deathly whisper overshadowing the tears in her voice. Her fists clenched, the shutters in her eyes still and peeled open in sheer anger. “Help me find out who’s doing this. I’m going to kill them.”