His students were no longer the age to ask questions like ‘Sir, why are you so gloomy?’ and expect an answer. Children would, out of pure curiosity and lack of real concern, teenagers would if they felt like needling their closest authority figure. Being in entirely different ranks didn’t help encourage discourse between teacher and student either.

Elliot was stuck between relief at never having to experience that awkward tiptoeing interaction again, and saddened that such an opportunity would never arise. Even if the answer would inevitably be a simple ‘yes, just tired’, it was an interaction he felt lonely in the absence of.

'The metal walls of the Steel Whale sometimes felt colder than usual' was that day's line of woeful poetry he'd shamefully expelled from his thoughts.

“I am growing soft,” Elliot whispered as his students caught up on their notetaking, jotting down points of interest and crudely imitating his perfect diagrams. He gave them a moment, instead staring out the glass panes into the Steel Whale’s inner chasm.

When his mind froze over, his ears often replaced his eyes. The muted sounds of conveyor belts grinding their gears as moving platforms traded vehicles and supplies between the lower and upper floors fell underneath pencils and pens scratching against paper notebooks. It felt like he was in a fighter’s cockpit, the rustle of his sleeves overpowering the roaring engine outside.

Elliot thought too much when he began to listen. For some years, he’d run out of pressing things to think about, and his mind would circulate between dinner over the weekend, his bed, his marriage to his wife, and his marriage to the stack of test papers on his desk.

He no longer had such a luxury. Life had well and truly caught up to him, reminding him he wasn’t out of the woods until his entire family one day threw in the towel.

The creak of an unoiled metal hinge snapped him back to his senses, and he turned around to face the door. He had counted an open desk that morning, one whose seat had remained consistently cold for the first fifteen minutes of every lesson.

He had chewed the kid out like a wad of gum and spat her onto the sidewalk last week; perhaps he needed to nail the memo into her head.

“I am going to make you sleep in the damn engine room—”

The entire class jumped out of their seat and stood at attention, scraping metal and clicking heels as they made their obedience known. Elliot scrunched his nose as his godmother-in-law stared back at him through the door, raising her eyebrows as though wondering why the hand scratching his chin hadn’t morphed into a salute yet.

Keep up the airs around subordinates. That was their promise.

“Ma’am,” Elliot acknowledged as he brought himself in line with his students.

“At ease,” she said, addressing the entire room, which responded by clasping their hands behind their backs. “Apologies for interrupting.”

She walked over to him, the sound of her bulky heels against the metal sheets was, to Elliot, as good as the thumping war drums of impending doom. Being shipped out to the desert to pretend he was a spy wasn’t going to happen again unless they dragged him, kicking and screaming.

“I need you to come with me,” she muttered under her breath.

“I am going to throw a tantrum,” Elliot warned. “Let’s see what you do then.”

“I don’t know, court-martial you?”

“Abuse of power. I’m going to report this to my union.”

Marie rolled her eyes. “Like they’d get me this time,” she sneered, turning around and walking back towards the door, leaving Elliot frozen and wondering where his worker’s rights had disappeared to. Brought out to the back of the house and shot dead, most likely.

“Look I get I’m too good at my job, but if you keep giving me these tasks, someone will accuse you of nepotism.”

“There is a very small contingent of Spec Ops pilots skilled enough to perform this kind of work while on part-time duty.”

Elliot followed Marie as she strode along section eighty-four’s sixteenth transit catwalk, bobbing and weaving between sweat-drenched personnel and the occasional discharge of steam from loose washers and bolts. The Academy was smack bang in the centre of the Whale’s starboard flank, sandwiched between the second and third main guns. Marie’s office was under the helm, networked closer to the port side, making the walk a nightmare for someone who could phone the PA operator.

“Sure, we can take people off the fighting force, but I’d like to avoid as much as possible.”

Elliot sighed through his teeth. His heyday was over, and Marie knew that better than anyone. What happened on land had long since taken priority from the sky. Chasing victory had long been replaced with a desire to protect, replaced again by the simple goal of making it to the weekend and seeing his family.

“And so now I need to shoot down a spy plane while working with people who hate me.”

Marie swivelled on her heels, her brow furrowing. “Sidos has been keeping S.H.I.A. under pressure for a while now. I doubt the Air Force would risk sympathising with them.”

“Yes, but it's not just S.H.I.A. who's bitter. It’d take one pilot about my age to tattle to the entire task force that I was a traitor, and then I’d be coming home with half my teeth missing, for God’s sake.”

“Evalyn taught you self-defence for a reason,” Marie frowned, elbowing him. “Besides, if someone knew who you were, they’d know they’d be at a loss without you. Elliot Maxwell, a former White Devil. I hear it still holds a lot of prestige for a decommissioned Wing.”

They reached section eighty-four’s elevator and waited out of courtesy for the small compartment to grow cramped with bodies until someone shut the doors and began to crank the lever.

“It’d be a small task force, twenty personnel maximum, backed up by an intelligence team,” Marie began to whisper as though Elliot had already taken the job. “Ten of ours, ten of theirs.”

“And why us?” Elliot asked. “Ask the damn Air Force for pilots, it’s their whole thing.”

“They have. The Air Force is supplying seven, we’re contributing three. It’s a broader range of opinions; two heads are better than one. Besides—”

The elevator jerked violently as Elliot and Marie came to their stop: starboard’s main transit catwalk. A town’s main street was the closest comparison, where morale was made and maintained. Personnel-run shops, street performances, restaurants and the like—all closed in the event of an operation, but they came alive during regular patrols. The neighbouring floor on the port side mirrored its sister, with a sweeping arched bridge connecting them. It wasn’t much of a heritage sight, the boorish grey just as soul-sucking as the rest of the Steel Whale’s machined interior. But as far as being a hangout spot and the occasional sight for love confessions, it served its purpose well.

They trotted onto the bridge, speaking as they went and watching the Steel Whale’s cells move from task to task underneath them.

“Excala’s in bad shape, Sidos is sending a lot of aid our way. We need to give them an ‘I love you too’ to show it isn’t a one-sided deal, and if Vesmos has found a way to use magic in their fighters, then who better to take it down than us?”

She leaned on the bridge’s railings as the small pocket kingdom’s Queen. “These are the moments this sort of alliance sets in stone or crumbles like a cookie.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Elliot also found himself a spot, watching the off-duty soldiers stumble by in loose formation, smiling and spouting nonsense. It was a respite that could only exist on either that particular floor, or in whichever small nook of the ship they called home.

“It feels like we’re always at war with someone,” Elliot muttered, trying his hardest to find in the people around him that same plight he knew followed war like an obedient mutt.

“We’re watching the stagehand stumble over the wiring,” Marie sighed. “We’re watching them trip over the cable that brings the entire stage down.”

“I started asking around about the name Tetrica,” Colte sighed, his telephone receiver picking up every pop and crack from his spine to the springs in his chair. “Remind me exactly what it is again?”

“It’s my name,” Iris said as the small bulb illuminating the telephone box flickered on and off. “One of them.”

“I thought your name was already too much of a mouthful. Anyhow, our quest was not for nought.”

“Really?” Iris muttered, trying to keep her nerves contained in her voice, let alone the bright blue phone box standing in the corner of their reading space.

“Yes, really,” he continued. “Multiple Spirits and scholars came back to me, many calling from different regions. They all mentioned folklore of some sort. Let me see….”

Iris heard him rustling through several pages of paper, grumbling subheadings under his breath as he searched.

“Uh…yes. Lots of stories, some roughly the same but under different titles. The main character of every single one has some variation of the name ‘Tetrica’. Interestingly, the names became less varied the further east I went. Seems like the origin is behind the Karaxians.”

“And that’s out of reach for us,” Iris muttered, recalling Al’s frankly disheartening explanation. A mountain range that walled off even knowledge from passing: she couldn’t blame herself for meeting her end in such a place.

“You’re not wrong,” Colte said, sounding as though he was pursing his lips. “But there’s still leads we can follow. I haven’t quite gotten to the end of this one either.”

So don’t despair. That’s what Iris heard Colte saying, but despite being the investigation’s benefactor, she wasn’t sure what she’d do with herself when it reached an answer.

Sometimes, knowing things hurt just as much as being in the dark about them. Crestana had muttered that under her breath once as she stared out the attic windowsill like always. That passing sentiment had held onto her psyche like a scar, sometimes panging with pain to remind her exactly what she was afraid of.

“Thank you,” Iris said, trying to weakly smile through the phone, hoping Colte would somehow sense the gesture. She placed the receiver back onto the hook and sat in silence as the flickering light above her head finally died once and for all, the small congregation of bugs dispersing as she opened the glass door.

“All done?” Crestana asked, never being one to ask too many questions straight away. Despite the barrier of formality between them all but eroded, she was still careful with her words, knowing what to say and when to say it. The finer points of interpersonal interaction were second nature to Crestana, and Iris sometimes wished she could offer the same.

But the girl in question had expressly told her not to do so.

“Yep,” Iris said. “I’m the stuff of legend, apparently.”

“Oh,” Crestana said, her shutters raising. “I guess you are old.”

“I guess I am,” Iris exhaled, sinking into her armchair, a stack of books stacked high at her feet. “Makes me wonder what the point of choosing my age was.”

“You still need an age,” Crestana said. “You don’t look thousands of years old to me.”

Iris’s eyes wandered across the infinite ceiling’s rich wooden planks. She frowned, and turned her head sideways, looking at Crestana through a furrowed brow. “You take this well, speaking about being thousands of years old like it’s…tomorrow’s shopping.”

Crestana’s shutters raised, this time in surprise. “Is that bad?”

“No,” Iris blurted. “No. I’m just wondering why.”

“It looks to me like the last thing you need now is your friend to lose her composure at every new discovery,” Crestana explained, sinking into her own chair. “Besides, Spirits have reached wilder heights than immortality.”

They watched each other from their armchairs, both mentally drained from having trawled through piles of books and still coming short. Tranquil moments, where it felt like processing a street sign would be the death of them, were what often signalled them to end the day.

It was hard to tell with Beaks what it was exactly that they were looking at. Like someone wearing tinted glasses, Crestana would look at her sometimes, and Iris would freeze, unsure of what she was being scrutinised for.

“Your ring,” Crestana asked. “I’ve never seen the beam move.”

Refusing Crestana the courtesy of an explanation was another example of her shortcomings in peer-to-peer communication, but Iris didn’t have the time to reflect on her conduct for the same reasons she didn’t have time to answer Crestana’s questions.

“Iris! Stop!”

“Can’t!” Iris protested with a grin so wide it hurt the sides of her face, using muscles that had stayed dormant for what felt like months.

They were flying over rooftops, Iris’s reflexes so tuned to the environment that the balancing act of traversing the thin shadow between streetlamps and sky lanterns was second nature. Like summoning the armour that held Crestana in a princess carry, the movements had become instinct.

“Where’s the ring pointing!” Iris shouted over the wind before it carried her words away from the pedestrians below. Crestana sheepishly opened her shutters and glanced at the small beam, more defined now that there was no sun to overpower. She raised her index finger, pointing it fifty degrees off course.

The Royal Gardens. How nostalgic.

Iris adjusted accordingly, leaping across an entire main street, the nightlife in its infancy and still mingling with returning workers. It was loud, it was crowded, it was risky, but Iris couldn’t be bothered to care.

Before he slipped through her fingers, she’d latch onto him no matter what.

She’d make him stay, at least for a while.

Those same blinding thoughts carried her to the Royal Garden’s new perimeter, one the trees, or rather, tree, had carved out itself from the surrounding city. The fence, the surrounding road, and the nearest buildings had been at least partially swallowed. Looking up, she was reminded how lucky the city had been that trees grew upwards more than they did sideways.

Iris skidded to a halt and placed Crestana backside-first onto a nearby tiled roof, the roots coming dangerously close to its orange-brick walls. She brought her ring to her face and confirmed Alis was somewhere inside the branches.

“Your friend is somewhere inside, right?” Crestana asked, getting up and struggling to find her footing on the unstable tiles. “How did he get up there in the first place?”

The tree tapered to the east on a steep angle, the consequential structural integrity the council's biggest headache. Climbing up was possible; surveyors were doing it consistently. But doing so required magic or mountaineer training. The latter, Iris hadn’t heard of in Alis’s letters, and the former, plausible, but what magic he had used….

“If I could better use Beak magic, I might’ve been able to ride the shadows to the top,” Crestana muttered as she gazed up at the sky lanterns, now trapped between the tree’s leaves.

“I’m guessing that’s what he did,” Iris muttered.

“Your friend’s a Beak too?”

“Nope. But, he can use our magic better than we can ourselves. It’s frustrating.”

Iris grabbed Crestana by her waist as her friend anxiously gripped the straps of her school bag tighter. A thin layer of armour spread across her right arm, securing her grip as she raised the other to the sky.

“Don’t look down,” Iris grinned, recalling her first job with Evalyn. “And try not to scream either.”

Iris was unfortunately unable to give Crestana points for the second criterion.

They landed, feet firmly planted on a branch as wide as the narrower alleys she regularly leapt across with the strength of her bare legs.

“Does ‘don’t look down’ still apply?” Crestana asked, her knees quivering as she collapsed onto the concrete solid bark. Iris peered over the ledge, the streets below barely a haze of orange light through the first layers of foliage.

“If you’re brave,” Iris said, a shiver crawling up her spine as she kept her cool. Looking at her ring again, she repositioned herself.

“That way,” she pointed. Elevation was the same, but there was still a way to walk. Once the trunk broke down, Excala’s landmark Spirit tree showed off exactly why it deserved the title of ‘unmapped’. A side-effect of the Aether, the natural evolution of the species, whatever it was, the regular growth pattern had deteriorated into abstract art, each new branch a pathway in the maze, the leaves the hedges that made sure the foolhardy adventurer went missing for all eternity.

She looked back at Crestana, guilt catching up to her as she watched her friend's legs turn into stilts.

“You okay?” Iris asked. “Sorry, should I bring you back down?”

“No, I’m fine,” Crestana said, shaking her head either as a gesture or a way to readjust her brain. “It’s preferable to climbing, and…fun.” She scoffed at herself, shoes sinking into the foliage’s shadow slightly.

“Your feet.”

“A safety net, so I don’t fall off,” she said, looking up to spot the specks of lanternlight that managed to reach them through the multiple canopies. “But I’m not so sure what happens when everywhere is shadow.”

They began the journey’s final leg, hacking and boring a path through multiple dead ends. Despite Crestana’s grumbling protests, Iris continued her destructive roadworks, only pausing when Crestana noticed a small camp of explorers pitching their tent on a wide branch. A government party, or at least an academic one, although neither of the girls was too interested in giving their greetings.

“I think it’s another camp,” Crestana whispered as the beam became so directional it was replicating each subtle shift in Alis’s body

“No, it’s him,” Iris said, trying to press on before Crestana grabbed her shoulder and forced her to her knees.

“Then who is he talking to?”

“Are there two voices?”

Crestana didn’t answer, instead keeping quiet and inviting the sound from the far side of the leaves. Two voices: a conversation back and forth.

Crestana took the lead, craning her head towards the edge of the leaves. Iris could hear the soft creak of her shutters as she squinted through the amber lighting.

“Black-haired boy; looks a good head taller than us.”

“Was Alis always that tall?” Iris muttered.

“And….” Crestana snorted softly.

“And what?”

“Oh no,” she chuckled.

“What?”

“A private detective with red hair and markings.”

“Tch.”