‘A small fraction of Excalan Academy’ did a disservice to the number of people in the great hall by mid-morning. Several hundred sat idly in loose formation, stringing across the cold wooden floorboard like a drunken spider’s web. The line for the telephone stretched along its edges, snaking halfway around the building. Iris had been watching it for hours, and it only seemed to get longer.

She heard Crestana hum again beside her, and she turned her head. Her client had been clutching the paper, desperately invested in the scribbles across it as though it held the meaning of life itself.

A sheet of piano music; short and incomplete, but something of significance to Crestana. A significance that, until recently, she thought belonged to her. A piece of music written by her mother weeks before she took her own life left by her bedside table like a suicide note.

She heard Crestana hum the same tune again, this time piecing together the music from the beginning, adding what she had just deciphered. Iris was positive Crestana had reached the end of the page by then, but the humming hadn’t stopped.

“Crestana?” Iris asked. “Have you figured anything out?”

Crestana shook her head. “No…why did he have this? Why did she give him this?”

Iris curled her legs up to her face and leaned back on the wall behind her. “Well, you said they were friends, and he was a music teacher. Maybe they were writing something.”

“Then why leave it where you died?” Crestana muttered. “Did he know something I didn’t?”

Iris glanced over at her client, talking to someone who no longer existed. “How…well, did you know your mum?”

Crestana glanced at Iris, turned back, and did a double take. “Pardon? Wait…no. Uhm….” She pondered, the absence of an answer being one in and of itself.

“Not well. I remember her being nice to me when I was a child, but once we started going to sect meetings, she grew distant like everyone else.”

“When you were a child?”

Crestana nodded slowly, shutters downturned as she clutched onto the paper. “I’m an only child, and my mother used to spoil me a lot. We’d go on outings together while my father was at work and a lot of the time with my aunt. They were opposites, my aunt coming out of upper-class life, my mum going into it. I think they had some sort of...common ground there.”

Crestana threw her head back, her hair softly crunching against the polished hardwood as she stretched herself out as though it were the middle of summer. Iris curled into her jacket more as another chill descended the room.

“It was when I first got my diagnosis. Somehow word reached t.o.t.s.o.s.…Temple of the Spirit of Spirits. At first, they invited us to a small communion every month, then every second Saturday, then every week. Before I knew it, they were holding sermons in my house, ones that I couldn’t even step foot in.”

Crestana crossed her arms, her head bobbing in the air as though she were fast asleep.

“Getting rid of the problem…. That was their promise. My parents must’ve thought that meant getting rid of my deformity. But no. It was getting rid of me.”

“When did you realise?” Iris asked. Normally, children of such a young age never did until it was too late. Evalyn had often facilitated or sometimes even taken part in such interventions. Sects like Crestana’s could, and sometimes would boil over, their belief spilling over into the realm of ‘doomsday cult’.

“When? When my mother killed herself.” She chuckled. “It’s not exactly surprising why that’d be an eye-opener.

“What about your dad?”

“Silent as always,” she answered, tracing a finger over the black bars drawn into the paper. “Stoic as always. Seems like that’s the right way for a Beak to carry themselves. Did you know our weddings are silent? Even without the masks, no one says a word.”

“I see,” Iris said, reluctantly letting the conversation die.

“What about your parents?”

It was Iris’s turn to do a double-take. “Sorry?”

“Your parents,” Crestana asked again, a hint of surprise in her voice. “You’ve made me say some awfully personal things about mine. I only think it’s fair.”

Iris frowned, reluctant to say anything, but something about the word ‘fair’ always backed her into a corner, branding her with the obligation to reciprocate her part.

“Well…my dad is a pilot. He flies fighter jets for the Special Operations Air Force, and my mum is a private detective…and my boss.”

“How did they meet?”

“Uh…it’s a very long story.”

“We have time.”

“But the—”

“I need a break. Humming notes for hours is giving me a headache,” she said, chuckling.

The laughter was desperate. ‘Distract me, please,’ it seemed to say. Finding the implicit meaning was not and never would be Iris's strong suit, but the patterns she’d noticed over tens of distressed commissions weren’t lost on her.

“Well—”

“What’s that, music?”

Another mechanical voice interrupted their conversation, and the two looked up to see Mr Caynes peering over Crestana’s shoulder.

“Ah, uh, yes…,” Crestana coughed, turning the paper over. “Just some music.”

“I see,” Mr Caynes muttered, his gaze every so slightly nudging away. “I’m sorry, Ms Mallorine, about this morning, I mean. I understand you were somewhat acquainted with Greidus.”

“Yes. I was. And thank you, Caynes. I appreciate your concern.”

Iris only then noticed the disparity in how they addressed each other. ‘Ms Mallorine,’ instead of her first name, ‘Caynes’ without his title.

“If there’s anything you need of me, you can come ask. I’m not in charge of this week’s sermon, so any time before and after.”

“Thank you.”

Sermon. The sect.

“Oh, and I saw a piano when I walked past one of the annexes over that way. Might help to pass the time,” Caynes said, pointing at the paper. He gave a meek nod before finally leaving.

Crestana pushed herself off the floor. “Let’s go then.”

“You know Caynes?” Iris asked, following Crestana’s lead.

“Of course…he’s our Aetherology teacher,” she added.

“Sermon?!” Iris hissed.

“Oh. That’s right. He moved recently, but he’s a reverent from a foreign branch. My father took a liking to him, well everyone did. That’s how he got the position at the Academy.”

“It doesn’t look like he hates you,” Iris asked, following Crestana as she weaved through the knee-high labyrinth of tense bodies, their collective noise barely levelling to a whisper.

“I guess not. But it’s a relief, isn’t it?”

Iris bit down on her bottom lip, dissatisfied with the sudden turn of information and vexed that she could not pinpoint exactly why.

They continued, one behind the other. Some turned heads as they watched Crestana walk past, their glances fleeing the moment they felt her omniscient glare fall onto them. ‘How is she fine now?’, they seemed to ask as their eyes tried to look through the mask out of morbid curiosity.

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The entryway into the annexe was one of the more discreet doors of the grand hall, making up for its limited access with a glass peephole, a sliver as long as a face. Crestana pushed her mask up to it and scanned the room.

“I see a piano,” she said. “It’s a small one, I think the school uses it for their musicals.”

She grabbed the door handle and twisted it, slipping into the dark room before anyone could notice, let alone Iris who found herself missing her client in the blink of an eye.

Iris slipped in before easing the door shut behind her. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. A beam of light pierced through the peephole, and a rectangular halo followed it through the seams of the doorframe. Besides the few wisps of the outside world, Iris couldn’t notice when she was blinking and when she wasn't.

A piano note cut through the filtered muffle from beyond the doorway, a note that soon after blossomed into a scale. Each hit of the keys bounced spritely through the room as the hammer scratched against the string and the pedal squeaked.

“It works. Barely,” Crestana’s voice said. She was all but a mask and a set of clothes in the darkness; the contours of her wrists and head were all but lost in the lack of light. Iris saw Crestana's sleeve fish around in the air for a moment before her invisible fingers caught on to the pull cord of a dangling lamp hanging on by its exposed wires.

“You can see when it’s that dark?”

“I’m not that defective of a Beak,” Crestana scoffed, her body now visible under the lamplight. She turned back to the keys and almost immediately began to play.

A rhythmic melody, each note refusing to stray too far from its predecessor. Stiff and rigid, a groundwork rather than something meant to steal one’s breath. Crestana played it with a single, delicate left hand.

The second melody began the moment Crestana’s right hand graced the ivory keys. The notes were higher in heaven, floating above the melody on Crestana’s left. In freefall they were, forever falling back and forth yet never reaching the consistent rhythm below them.

The first melody continued unabated, repeating as though its existence hinged on one thing and one thing only. Like a diligent worker, a determined miner striking for gold, striking for something.

“I wonder if she played this for him,” Crestana whispered as her fingers continued to work the keys, the notes now burnt into her mind. “I wonder if it’s wrong, for me to pry like this.”

Iris, her body still pressed against the doorframe, began to tap the melody with her finger while she closed her eyes and shut her ears, interpreting the melody not as music but as beating. Cypher.

Quarter notes. Half notes. The spaces in between. Without the context of pitch or the encircling, enthralling second melody, it was nothing cypher.

“Crestana…,” Iris whispered. “Don’t say that.”

“But what if—”

“Crestana! The music was meant for you!”

“…what?”

Iris turned around and burst out of the doorway, flooding her eyes with cold, dry air and blinding light. She squinted but rushed forward anyway, recklessly stepping over tens of hunching students as she made a beeline for the telephone across the hall. The line was still hours long. Iris had no such time.

If only the Spirit inside her could see her now. See what progress she was making.

Iris barged into the front of the line as the previous boy hung the receiver onto the hook.

“Sorry, emergency!” Iris said, repeating it ad nauseam until the girl next in line fought to retain her place. Iris struggled to dial the numbers as Crestana caught up with her, pleading with the girl to let them use the phone for a minute.

“Hello, operator speaking.”

“East Excala residential, Maxwell please.”

“Won’t be a moment.”

Iris waited as she heard the line connect and the static buzz from the nebulous void between the cables.

“Hello, Maxwell speaking,” Elliot’s voice asked from the—

“Dad! Do you know Morse code!”

“What? Iris is that you? What’s going on—”

“Dad!”

“Uh…yeah I do.”

Iris ushered Crestana closer, and she brought the music to Iris’s face. She squinted at the first melody, translating the taps of her fingers into something audible.

“Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep. Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep. Beep. Beep beep beep.”

Iris waited for an answer. She could hear her father working it out under his breath. She needed his brain to go faster.

“Dad!”

“Caynes! It spells Caynes.”

The doctor’s laboratory was exactly how Provenance had imagined it through the phone. A vast array of creaking brass instruments, magic that examined magic, breaking its components down and building them back up again in a new way. The room itself was painfully typical of a young academic living off their research grant, and Provenance could picture the contract screaming for anyone to sign it. The wood of the floorboards was hollowed out by a mixture of rot and termites, and the windowless ceiling was probably classified as a World Heritage site for the mere fact it was still standing somewhat upright.

The attic of an old human building, built before its residents were killed and their land forcefully annexed. The nation-state of Kirelda was a state of Spirits through and through, but like squatters freeloading in an abandoned building, they’d taken over the skeleton of the dead human nation for themselves. The players had changed, and without the human need for social order, the system had fallen into corruption.

With no need for food and water, the social and economic apparatus remained solely to uphold the state’s existence as a state worthy of trade and military respect. Such were most Spirit nations, particularly the small ones.

‘Spirits were never meant to live like humans,’ his colleague had said while masquerading as a man himself. For a Spirit, the lack of pride his colleague held in his own appearance was astounding. ‘Ends were greater than the means,’ was typically a turn of phrase reserved for humans.

“The university lent me this space for the express purpose of carrying out my study,” the young Spirit said through pulses of excited Aether so loud Provenance barely had to concentrate to decipher them.

“Wouldn’t the university laboratories have been a better option?” Provenance asked through the Aether as he watched his footing for any of the countless trip hazards.

“Yes, but what I get is what I get. I can hardly complain, I like working alone,” the academic said. Edict Grotur; born and raised in the city, as far as Provenance’s research suggested. Under the white lab coat was a vaguely humanoid body: a centre mass of wood and limbs made of interwoven vines, transitioning from brown to green as they grew more flexible at their ends. No face, but instead a small garden atop his head.

“Working alone on such a project? Sounds daunting.”

“Oh, you know Uralders. Can’t help ourselves.”

Spirits of gardening. Curious and experimental, but not so abstract in their existence that it made them impractical. Being scientists was in their nature. If not gardeners.

He tripped over a table but quickly recovered, continuing as though nothing had happened.

“Just over here; this is what I wanted to show you.”

Past the endless forest of scientific equipment and remnants of nights not slept was a clearing, a single contraption standing in its centre. A circular brass arch overlooking a small metal bed, the arch connected by wire after wire to a control panel on the other side of the room.

Edict jogged over to the panel, his vines fiddling with the dials before his backside even touched the seat. “Have you read the documents I mailed to you?”

“Yes,” Provenance replied. “I know how it works, I’m just here for the demonstration.”

“Perfect. I’m not sure how many more times I can explain it before I go mad.”

A slow whirring vibrated the air as a red light on the control panel began to blink. The wires running along the floor glowed blue, and irregular pulses ran down their lengths like overexcited children.

“The machine here is undoubtedly overengineered,” Edict admitted. “Being the first of its kind, I needed to take precautions.”

Blue lights along the machine’s arch lit up one by one, beginning from the base and creeping towards the apex.

“Forgive me for asking,” Provenance asked. “But, practically, what’s the difference between these and the Pattern Destroyers used in Excala?”

“Those are only effective against infused objects,” Edict explained, standing from his seat and rushing to the arch, tweaking knobs and pausing to listen to the hum of the mechanical beast. “They don’t destroy patterns in Spirits who can heal, let alone Aether itself.”

Edict turned, his Aether indicating confusion. “But how would pattern destruction help with Aether infusion?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just curious.”

Edict did not reply, simply turning back to his work. A scientist so involved in his study he did not fathom the true implications of his work.

His proposal had pitched a more efficient method to reverse severe Aether influx. Aether pumps existed but were either too slow or too aggressive for use against extreme cases. Controlled destruction of Aether in the body was, apparently, safer and more regulatable.

Edict ran to a cupboard in the corner of the room and retrieved a small Spirit, cradling it in his hands. A vaguely mousy thing with a hard shell and six paddle-shaped legs.

“I’ve fed this Serek food with abnormal Aether content in it. Right now, it should be experiencing acute Aether influx.”

After placing the Spirit onto the metal plate, the scientist ran back to the cupboard and retrieved a standard medical mass-Aether meter. Inserting the pointed end into one of the Spirit’s legs as he held it down, he called out his measurement.

“One point one three.”

Taking mental note of the number, he scampered back to the control panel and began to adjust the dials, inputting the variables and fine-tuning the machine.

“If not to add to body mass, facilitate life or fuel magic, physical Aether is usually dispelled into ambient, non-tangible Aether in a process we don’t fully understand yet. There’s no effective way to speed these processes up, and simply forcing the Aether out of their bodies is fraught with risks depending on the Spirit.”

With one final switch, the machine began to whir profoundly, the vibrations reaching somewhere in Provenance even the oscillations of sound could not hope to penetrate. The lights grew in intensity, and the children of light running down the cables started to sprint.

"Decompressing Aether into an ambient state is easy; that's how compressor engines work. But if the Aether is already absolved in a body, that process is a mystery, so that technology isn't useful to us."

The air seemed to respond, bating its breath to see what happened next.

The whirring ceased, and the lights along the archway died. Edict did not bother to wait for the machine to fully sleep before rushing for the metal plate and the Spirit atop it.

Taking the meter again, Edict performed another measurement.

“Zero point nine eight. To happen organically, that would have taken half an hour.”

Provenance nodded his approval. “Impressive,” he said. “If you’d show me some more demonstrations, I’d be happy to continue to the next steps of our agreement.”

With zeal, the academic returned to performing his next test, convinced he’d change lives in the way he had always dreamed.

But all it took was for one person to crank the machine to eleven, and the test subject would be dead. Destroying the lifeblood of Spirits, harming those who do not have bodies. That was where the future of Edict’s technology lay. The only one who couldn’t see that was the scientist in question.