The ash cloud that hung over the city had dispersed soon enough, and the battle only a few blocks from the city’s outskirts had raged on as though the gods themselves were battling. Storm clouds had formed and entities of unimaginable power had both harnessed their energy and unleashed their own underneath them.
But the city had other concerns. More pressing, more immediate. The changes of a thousand years in a matter of moments.
Elliot ran as fast as his legs could take him, the feet only used to walking, jogging, and working yaw pedals were now tasked with carrying their master through the apocalypse at a pace he could only pray was fast enough.
Desperation. Desperation as the trees around him grew into giants, their branches spreading like tumours as their bark cracked. Their leaves were mutations, the painful result of a surge of Aether no modern Spirit was ready for. If Elliot himself could feel the thickness in the air, the loss of control a Spirit would face would be paramount to death itself.
And death there was. All around him.
Magic instruments of everyday make were running haywire, executing their basic orders with dangerous zeal if their magical patterns weren’t being overloaded entirely. Cars, accessories, kitchen appliances.
And the Beaks.
Despite the city’s respite from the ash cloud’s looming shadow, the streets and the faces of buildings were painted with ghastly interpretations of Excala’s other half. Their bodies turned impalpable, shadow like the darkest of ink and stretching as though it were sunset. Inconsistent, they played with Elliot’s eyes, marred his footing as he tried to run.
Under the burning electrical towers as the roots of the Spirit trees destroyed the pavement he ran across, as the lights in the sky flickered on and off in incomprehensibly agonising code.
Elliot ran as Excala fell, looking for the daughter in the centre of it all.
The Excalan Academy. It had been the centre of everything so far. A matter of intuition, but one he had no choice but to follow.
So he ran until his legs crumbled under him and then kept on running, paying no heed to the collapsing world around him unless it crossed his path. He always lamented what obstacles came his way on the ground; the inconvenient detour, the roadblock he had to scale. Flying afforded him a position to complain, something he could not even consider at the moment, a moment that demanded he be a father first and foremost.
Elliot turned the final corner and found the school to be under another spell. A red dome was still cast across the entire Academy and its immediate vicinity, one that he knew Iris had survived before. It was that rationality that kept him from despairing entirely and gave his legs the motivation to move, but in the moments his feet weren’t moving, his mind was taking over.
He slammed a fist on the thin film that formed the barrier between his world and the other, finding another opportunity to lament the fact that his ability as a human only went so far.
He slammed again, knowing that the barrier was no door that would swing open after a few slams, but he kept trying nonetheless, knowing that there was nothing else he could do.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
“Iris!” he shouted, hoping his voice could at least be a beacon for her return. “Iris!”
He kept going as the world seemed to die around him. He had no clue what drowned out the cracking buildings, the malfunctioning machines or the screams of the people there to experience it, but near silence followed each hollow strike of his fist. His cries were lost in the swirling red mist beyond the barrier, but he kept on trying. Even the faintest words would count for something amidst silence.
A blinding golden light interrupted him, streaking across the sky and enveloping him in a warmth he knew better than anyone. The fight was over, he could be sure of that.
Before he could react, the barrier fell with all the grandiosity of a sheet of paper falling. Elliot was caught off guard, and he instinctually covered his face waiting for the gas to reach his skin.
But that too disappeared almost instantaneously.
He dared open his eyes, finding an empty school before him, one of the few places in the city saved from the damage. He took a tentative step forward, daring his shoes over the line where the barrier used to be. His eyes weren’t deceiving him, he was safe to move forward.
And so he took off once again, sprinting through the front gates as students began to trickle from the courts and into the sunlight. Their numbers only increased as Elliot ran, their cries of celebration too early for his liking. He had no idea where to head next, or which sandstone building was the correct one.
So he looked for the biggest. He could only imagine a grand ritual of such a scale; by his severely limited logic of such things, taking place in a grand temple or a dingy dungeon. Catacombs were too difficult to reach, he’d have to make do with the former.
So he ran, eyes set on the large hall that towered through the gaps between each court. He ran, praying under his breath that he hadn’t run out of luck just yet.
He burst through the doors, his daughter’s name the first thing leaping from his mouth as he did so, but no one replied.
Tens of people sat, keeled over as though a strong gust of wind had toppled them all at once, their heads bowed towards the two small beings on the stage.
“Iris!”
Elliot disregarded the crowd, weaving between them as quickly as he could, never breaking eye line with Iris and Crestana lest they disappeared again.
He climbed the stage, ignoring the steps and hauling himself up over the ledge.
“Iris,” he couldn’t help but say as he took the girl into his arms and pressed her against his chest, only then realising the state she was in.
Distraught and shaking, like a kitten pulled from a river rapid.
He looked over to the unconscious Crestana.
“Is she okay?” he whispered, and Iris nodded faintly, nary a shift of her head a single degree back and forth.
“Then what happened? Why are you crying?”
He cradled her head, caressing the hair out of her eyes, the blank look in them unbecoming of a girl so young.
“Tell me, darling. You can tell me.”
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Why not?”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. Why not?”
“Because you won’t love me anymore....”
Elliot gripped her shoulders and hugged her even tighter, unsure of a way he could ever convey the words she needed to hear in their entirety. They’d always be partial, inadequate, unfit to battle whatever had imprinted itself on her identity.
“I’m sorry, Iris,” Elliot whispered into her ear, “but my love isn’t something that you can shake off so easily.”
He could feel her curl into him, trying to deny one of the few things he could profess in his life was wholly true.
“And that goes for you being my daughter. Whatever happens, whatever you were or whoever you turn out to be, that’s part of you now.”
Elliot chuckled. “I’m sorry if your mother and I ended up doing anything unnecessary.”
Iris shook her head, again only going back and forth one degree at a time. Her shoulders began to shake in his arms, and when she tried to open her mouth, he could hear her choking on tears.
“Dad?” she asked, so softly it pained him to even listen.
“What is it?”
“…why can’t I just be your daughter?”
Elliot closed his eyes, knowing the question was ultimately impossible to answer. A half-baked rumination; a few words barely considered wise. That was all he could give her.
“Because we can choose who we become, not who we’re born as.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know darling—”
“Why not?!”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Why….”
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The tears took over, and Elliot sat with her in silence as she cried her lungs out, hugging the shoulders that were too big for their burden.
Evalyn had rushed back to the city the moment the enemy had fallen. Her fading light had taken the Spirit of Spirits with it, and while much of the city breathed a sigh of relief, Evalyn couldn’t.
Her client’s safety. Her daughter’s safety.
She ran past crumbling buildings and leapt over overgrown roots. Beaks lay unconscious, some managing to barely make it onto their feet, their masks lost under the rubble.
A crack high above caught her attention; the sound of wood splintering echoed through the street.
Evalyn turned her eyes skyward and watched as the base of an electrical tower burned away, everything above splintering, burning, and going into freefall.
She summoned her armour, dug her boots into the ground and steeled herself as she raised her palms above her head.
Gold supports the width of tree trunks sprang from the ground and latched themselves onto the burning tower, spreading out like glue on contact and easing the fall’s speed. She strained, concentrating on distributing the supports evenly and keeping the tower from splintering further.
In a few seconds, she brought the fall to a snail’s pace, the wood creaking under the hundreds of opposing forces as Evalyn brought it down, having no choice but to lay it where it would’ve fallen, albeit avoiding most of the damage.
Evalyn relaxed for only a moment, starting again on her journey in the next.
She sent two ropes from her gauntlets to the fallen tower’s pinnacle, embedding their ends into the wood before reeling them in and launching her over the top.
Her boots landed on solid ground, but before she could look up from her landing, she heard a voice call her name.
“Evalyn!” Elliot called from somewhere ahead of her.
She looked up to face him, the sight she was treated to lowering her defences in a heartbeat.
Evalyn collapsed to her knees, her armour shedding her body as she saw the small hand holding her husband’s. She breathed for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, the air itself drawing tears from her eyes as it left her.
Evalyn picked herself up if not barely, the relief stringing her muscles and softening her bones. She collapsed into her daughter first, taking the small body and pulling it tightly into her grasp, subconsciously checking every inch for injury.
For those few moments, she did not know what words to even say.
“Mum,” Iris said, barely croaking the sound from her throat.
Evalyn pulled away, keeping her hands on Iris’s shoulders. “What is it?”
“…I don’t know what to do….”
Evalyn watched her daughter’s sunken eyes in confusion. In her overwhelming relief, she had failed to feel the shaking of her shoulders or the lack of warmth from her arms. She looked at Elliot, who carried Crestana in his other arm, but he seemed to have no answer either. He simply pursed his lips and caressed Iris’s fingers.
“What happened?” Evalyn asked. “Tell me what happened.”
Iris opened her mouth, but only silence followed. The weight of it crushed Evalyn’s rekindled hope as though it were worth nothing, and she couldn’t bear it.
She pulled her daughter into her arms once again, unable to watch her face lose any more hope than it already had.
“Don’t let me go. Please.”
Provenance placed his teacup back on its saucer, the small tinker of the porcelain barely noticeable above the low racket of an afternoon rush. He sighed in mild frustration, the sound of the radio playing from behind the counter fading in and out of earshot. The workers and immediate customers were crowded around it despite their café almost reaching full capacity.
It was a national news report, one that, like many of its counterparts, had been utterly transfixed by the goings-on in Geverde’s capital.
Two hundred were dead and counting, electricity was cut to half the city, and another third was damaged. The crackled voice went on to say relief was already beginning to pour in from Aerilia and military regiments across the country, even so far as to stretch across the border into Sidos.
The idea of Excala being a utopian city untouched by war had been shattered over a decade prior, but the concept was still novel in the minds of many around the world.
Yet the call for relief and the counting of the dead was a clear signal the battle was already won. As for its defeated belligerents, Provenance could only guess as to how their legacy would be remembered.
He stood, leaving the coins on the table and flashing a brief smile at the nearest waitress before exiting.
The walk back from the stay was brief, only taking a few minutes down a quiet main street of old brick buildings, vines overtaking their walls and colouring the grey with vibrant greens, blues and yellows. It was the final leg of his round trip that had started early in the morning, and he had heard the situation in Geverde develop bit by bit whenever he found a radio in tune with the latest story.
His backside found the armchair under the windowsill by the time the sun began to stream orange light through it, falling onto the small stool in convenient reach of his right hand.
He’d placed his own telephone there, keeping Caynes in arms reach for whenever the need arose. Their last interaction had been the day before, a puzzling conversation that had left Provenance nonetheless hopeful. Caynes was a friend, but not an ally. He was…or had been hoping things would change for the better.
It was too soon, much too soon for him to try contact someone who would be—in the best case scenario—going into hiding, but Provenance could not see much harm in trying anyway. The first item of evidence to be destroyed would be the corresponding telephone, Provenance could trust Caynes to do that much.
But a small thump from his door caught his attention before his hand could reach the receiver. He looked over, finding an envelope lying flat underneath the letterbox.
He stood up and walked over to investigate. No doubt it was addressed to him, but the stamp on the white paper suggested it had nothing to do with a generic government announcement, something Provenance wasn’t quite sure existed in the area.
He picked up the letter and turned it over, finding no sender name or address listed. Handwritten, and in quite a hurry.
Provenance opened it with his thumb, working along the envelope’s inside until he could pry the folded letter from it. Walking back, he discarded the rubbish in a waste basket and unfurled the letter itself.
Dear Mr Krejinal,
It has come to my attention that my work is of a more sensitive nature than I first realised. Recently, other investors both from the public and private sectors have expressed their interest in my technology, and their attempts have quite brashly outlined their hopes for its military use cases.
I do not wish for my research to fall into the wrong hands, as I feel that the idea of it may upset many powers even if it does not fulfil the use cases they hope for.
I am leaving the country and am taking my research with me. Although I have destroyed the prototype, I cannot bear to erase years of my work. Someone will replicate it eventually, and I do not want a bad actor to be the first to do so.
Thank you for your expression of interest, but I must terminate our agreement.
Goodbye,
Edict Grotur
Provenance sighed and held the letter up to the window by its corners, letting the light filter through it and onto his face. He began to fold it, taking its edges and moulding them diagonally into a paper aeroplane.
He held it by its underbelly, and, with the flick of his fingers, let it loose from the window.
An issue he’d have to chase up as soon as possible. Most likely the second call he’d make that day.
Provenance picked up the telephone and dialled the number, pressing his face to the receiver and waiting for the tone to stop humming. He watched as the paper aeroplane glided from his window and slowly to the street below, finding its final resting place in a damp gutter.
“Hello Provenance,” Caynes’s voice said from the other end of the line.
“Caynes, I—”
“This is a prerecorded message. I recognise that this may be my last stint. I apologise for ever doubting you, but if…when I die, I will die as stubbornly as I lived.”
A long pause followed, the soft breaking of the signal becoming eerie predominant in Provenance’s ears.
“Your God Tetrica has returned. Your quest to find them is almost over, but not yet. Until utopia begins.”
Crestana hadn’t moved from her upright position since awakening, needing all the strength in her body to get there in the first place. Everywhere seemed to ache, and the doctors were doubtful it would heal anytime soon. Much like the city she could see from her room’s window, recovery would take time.
Time that she’d use thinking. That more than anything made her fearful.
The faces of the people she’d grown up around, been tortured by, they were nothing but fading blurs in her memory now. Maybe that was the ritual’s silver lining, at least she wouldn’t have to suffer putting identities to the madness.
Even her own father was an abstract collection of phantom Aether pangs. She thought of all the people she’d be able to remember, he would be the one seared into her mind the most, but that title went to someone else instead.
“Ms Mallorine?” a nurse she barely recognised called from beyond the white veil. “A visitor is here to see you.”
“Who?” Crestana asked.
“A shy girl with silver hair. She’s here with her parents.”
Crestana’s shoulders allowed themselves to ease. “Yes. Let her in, please.”
She waited for one shadow to trade themselves for another smaller one, and then watched that shadow hesitate to pull back the curtains.
“Iris?” Crestana asked. “It hurts too much to open them myself.”
Perhaps a pang of guilt convinced her to reveal herself, but the face she was making made Crestana feel half guilty…and half amused.
“Hello,” she said. “How’s school?”
“School? Oh, uhm….”
“…have you been going?”
“Well, no. I was only going because you were my client.”
Crestana sunk her head and clutched her covers. “So does that mean you’re not coming back?”
“…I mean—”
“But you’re a child. You have to go to school.”
Iris gripped the hem of her bomber jacket, the same Crestana had never seen her without.
“You know what I am,” she whispered, malice for herself seeping into her voice. “I don’t belong there.”
“I know what you are,” Crestana replied, finding all the commanding presence of a distinguished lady left in her. “And that’s why I need you at school.”
She knew the last thing Iris wanted to be was selfish, and seeing she was the hospital patient, Crestana figured it was permissible. Just this once.
“Sit down,” Crestana said, pointing at the stool beside the bed, and Iris obliged.
“How are you,” Iris asked. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. My body hurts, but I’ll be able to move soon enough,” she said despite having no idea if it was true or not.
“But your feelings,” Iris pressed. “How are they?”
“How are my…I don’t know, I can’t seem to remember the faces of many of those people,” she admitted, forcing a chuckle.
“Can’t remember anyone?”
“…not…everyone.”
Iris nodded, opening her mouth like a toad before closing it again. She ruminated a second longer.
“A lot of those people didn’t make it,” she said. “Your father survived along with the rest. They were arrested last night.”
“I see. What about Caynes?”
Iris fidgeted with her fingers, refusing to keep her eyes level. Crestana felt for her, but she had no clue on how to continue talking. The atmosphere was debilitating, and there wasn’t much she could do that would lift it. She just hadn’t lived long enough for that.
“Crestana,” Iris asked. “I know…I know I’m not someone who you would’ve liked to meet by choice…but I’m really glad I did…get to meet you.”
Iris raised her courage, Crestana now privy to the tiny, tiny wisps of Aether coming from the girl’s heart, and placed a hand on hers.
“I know that nothing can replace your family, and that even if they weren’t the best…losing them is really, really hard. But…please, you don’t have to be strong with me, okay?”
Crestana hadn’t lived long enough to answer such a request either. She sat in silence, hoping Iris would continue to talk in her place, but she wouldn’t.
Not being strong. That meant nothing to Crestana.
But she still found herself choking on her words like a human, her body only letting a few words slip into her voice box.
“I only remember my mother’s face.”
Iris smiled, gripping Crestana’s hand that was now strong enough to grip back.
“Then maybe that bond was there…even if it went unspoken.”