She’d seen a painting like it before. Ignoring the protrusions she had clumsily labelled a city, the scene was remarkably similar to the fields painters had replicated countless times through history, filtered through fantastical lenses. Some were rose-tinted, some in the pursuit of aesthetic perfection.

But the way the grass swayed in unison as though a blurred mass in an endless sea made her feel it was already perfect in its simplicity and vastness—no need for a painter's creative intervention. An incomprehensible beauty, coupled with the unfathomable height of the clouds and depth of the blue sky. There was nothing vaster, nothing bluer, nothing taller than the scene before her.

She knew she was dreaming; she just had no idea why it all looked so perfect.

Which lens was she looking through? That self that still remembered, the self not named Iris.

She continued to speed above the vast green paint stroke, playing with the idle thoughts like gum in her molars as the city got closer and closer. Her memories wouldn't let her pick up from where she left off, instead forcing her to start from square one each time.

Whatever the city held, it wasn’t something she was eager to remember, but it was there, in the back of her mind, ready to oblige if she ever felt like going a step too far, learning something she’d never be able to forget.

Flying overhead was a flock of white birds, their wingspans much wider than what she saw in Excala. They soared, gracefully riding the wind’s coattails, oblivious to how they’d never reach the world’s ceiling no matter how high they flew.

Iris slowed as she reached the city, noticing sudden imperfections in the grass. Rabbits, their bodies carving small, soft chasms in the otherwise untouched landscape, never bothered to stray too far from their burrows despite how much there was to explore.

But looking out from above the grass, she knew that was an inconsequential endeavour. What difference was there between the grass around the burrow and the grass a thousand kilometres away?

The scenery disappeared as the first of the city’s spires choked her view, and something choked her nostrils.

Or rather, the human side of her brain translated the sensation into something it could understand. An overpowering smell, or a swell in the throat, acute Aether influx was what it was. Nothing as suffocating as she’d experienced on her last visit, just the stuffiness of walking through a crowd of Beaks. Like odour, it was the presence of life.

The city’s outskirts were peppered with signs of habitation, and Iris felt it stronger here.

Spirits. The vast array that had rushed through the city in her last dream was now settled, milling about the city leisurely. Iris slowed her mount and disembarked it, the sweat on the underside of her bare feet sticking to the crystal floor.

Spirits of all makes and any manner of concept meandered left and right, some crawling from one spire to the next, others weaving their way through in graceful flight. The variation in shape to the spread of hues made Iris reexamine the value of imagination.

Evalyn had drilled it into her, how imagination was limitless, but needed time and source material. Combat limited the former while life experience the latter, making the principle of ‘sticking to what you know’ so important.

Iris understood that. Trying to guess what the Spirit around the corner would look, sound and move like was akin to guessing how a grain of sand would fall in an hourglass.

It was less a city, more a congregation of ideas and phenomena—a microcosm of the world itself, many facets of it if only a tiny fraction.

She stepped through it, admittedly struck by awe, until something stole her attention and forced her ear to the ground, or whichever organ of hers dealt with Aether.

“Gr—”

A fraction of a word cut off by what sounded like struggling. She knew it was only her interpretation of an Aether signal, but so far, nothing had registered as anything more sophisticated than a vague emotion.

“Greet—”

Iris picked up the pace, jogging around the corner of a spire and coming across a scene she would’ve expected from a fairytale book sitting in her bedroom’s bookshelf. She imagined the princess there, gracefully poised on a mossy rock as tepid deer lapped at her gloved hands, while butterflies and robins perched on her shoulders and hair.

“Greetings,” a tall Spirit spluttered, this time through the air rather than the Aether. With brown fur coating its webbed wings and body long and bony, the regal Spirit was one of many crowded around a single figure—a human.

Black hair streaking with silver despite his young body, and a golden gleam in the one eye said hair didn’t obscure. He wore simple, white robes that ended above his ankles, exposing his worn feet and strained straw sandals. The only thing of value on his person was a straw basket with two loops Iris presumed were backpack straps.

“Good,” he said as his smile broadened, Iris somewhat able to understand him. “I could hear you.”

The Spirit continued to recite the word over and over as if not to forget the sensation.

The man’s attention slowly wafted to her, like the smell of freshly baked bread.

“Greetings,” he repeated, and the small oasis of infatuated Spirits turned to her. Those with eyes seemed to widen, as though to say ‘there’s another one’.

“Gr—hello,” Iris managed.

The man stood to his full height, retrieved his basket with one swaying hand and walked over, crouching in front of her. “What brings you so far East?” he asked, as though talking to a child.

Perhaps it was the Aether’s acute chokehold on her throat, but her words seemed to get bottlenecked in her throat.

“You look like a human, but…,” he said, trailing off as he examined her, frowning.

“Excuse me, he said as he reached around Iris’s ear and used his index finger to put pressure on a particular point. She felt a slight jolt of shivers, and her hair began disintegrating into purple dust.

A smile stretched across his face. “Spirits have pressure points like humans. It seems as though you are, somehow, a mix of both. I must document this.”

Iris had never heard of such a phenomenon in Aetherology, and from what the science had taught her, she found the thought hard to believe.

But it was a fool’s errand to deny a practical demonstration.

Even as the man produced a poorly bound set of pages from his basket and furiously jotted down words she could not read, Iris found it hard to imagine he was an Aetherologist. At least, not by the modern definition.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The man stood and readjusted the straw basket on his shoulders, watching the purple swirl around Iris before it coalesced into strands of silver hair. One final note, and he shut the book.

“That colour reminds me of this city’s patron,” he said. “I wish I could have met them. The admiration each purple spark in the sky draws from the Spirits here; it's almost like the Gods the people of the frontier still worship.”

'Frontier'. Of all the frontiers in history, the human advancement across the continent was the most famous, and a matter fiercely studied and documented in scrolls thousands of years old.

Perhaps the repeated delving into her schooling triggered the memory, but the man’s appearance was too distinct to forget. Although embellished slightly, the resemblance to the stained-glass artwork in her school’s courts was uncanny. Each was a retelling of Excala’s founding, the man appearing as the human’s representative and counterpart to Queen Amestris.

A man who could freely control Spirits like a physician. A Witch Doctor.

“Humans will arrive at the mountains yonder before my lifetime is over. I can only hope the patron Spirit is equipped to handle what might come with them.”

His face changed, as though the wind itself was adjusting his eyebrows ever so slightly upwards. Sympathy: how a parent looks at an orphaned child, concerned for a future that they could have no hand in controlling.

“The way it protects this place,” he whispered, “makes me feel as though they have failed many a time before.”

“Why do you dress so poor?”

Iris’s tongue was still seeping with venom, and she flicked it without much intention or care. But at the same time, the quizzical face she gave him as she pulled on her shoes wasn’t one he could blame wholeheartedly.

He sighed, fluffing his jacket and readjusting his flat cap to the exact same position. “I am poor, Iris,” Alis explained. “Why do you think Mrs Hardridge let me stay here.”

“Oh,” she sighed, brushing off the backside of her school skirt and making way in the hallway for Crestana to pull her shoes on. “Pity, then. Makes sense. She doesn’t like you very much.”

“Does she not?” Alis asked, mood souring. He had clocked some unfamiliarity during their conversation, but never any outright hostility.

“No,” Iris said, holding back no punches. But a small smirk crawled across her lips. “But she respects you. You didn’t hesitate to do something she couldn’t bring herself to do for years. Or at least that’s what she tells me.”

Iris’s manner of speaking was an acquired taste; her inability to tell white lies was a boon in and of itself, and he suspected Crestana shared a similar sentiment.

“Shall we go?” Crestana said, mimicking how Iris had patted down the seat of her trousers and rode the straps of her school bag further up her shoulders.

In return for allowing Iris to stay in Excala, Evalyn had saddled her with maintaining their headquarters, the small office fashioned over the years from a regular old apartment. It was a task meant only for her, but according to Crestana, the stopover on the way to the Academy was brief, and Alis had little else to do either.

“What exactly are we doing?” Crestana asked, walking with Iris side by side.

“Cleaning, mostly. Changing the air and checking the mail. I can pay bills too, but as far as I remember, there aren’t any due soon.”

“What is your position in the business, anyway?” Alis asked from three steps ahead, hands in his pockets and passing his eyes over the street’s every nook and corner. Old habits died hard, and considering how he’d parted with ULEF, he wasn’t too keen on forgetting them just yet.

“Apprentice,” Iris replied. “It’s less suspicious, like how blacksmiths and butchers start early.”

“And is the apprentice ever going to take over the business?”

Alis kept his eyes forward, but the lack of any answer from behind him was enough plaster to fill in the gaps.

“What career was your cover?” he heard Crestana ask, filling in the void.

“Me? I moved from job to job quite frequently. The factories employ most green residents, and consequentially, service jobs were understaffed and easy to come by. Eventually, I landed on a local fish and chip shop run by a Mr Rockshall.”

Crestana seemed satisfied with the explanation, even though it lacked the significant detail that rested right above the said restaurant.

“Green…as in naïve?” Crestana asked.

“Green as in non-Vesmosian commoners.”

“Non-Vesmosian? As in not a citizen?”

“Not exactly,” Alis explained. “Vesmos is an Empire, and the title of Emperor means ‘king of kings’.”

“Ah,” Crestana exclaimed, catching on. “So, where you were was originally a different country?”

“Yes, although its nobles and derelict castles are the only real sign it still exists.”

“They still have their nobles?” Crestana asked, fascinated by the concept and making Alis realise how foreign it sounded to a Geverdian. Palace life and politics may as well have been a thing of fairytales.

“Yes, they do. Foreign-born nobles, reds, and Vesmosian nobles, greys. Then black signifies the Royal family.”

“It sounds like a fantasy novel,” was Crestana’s almost dreamy response.

“But in the end, it’s a hierarchy, isn’t it?” Iris interjected. “A concentration of power.”

“Sure is,” Alis sighed, giving his eyes a rest. “But they make you forget, what with how many greens gain wealth and how many reds become imperial consorts.”

He scratched his chin, trying to recall a news broadcast. “If I remember correctly, I think the current Empress was originally a red.”

“What’s an imperial consort?” Iris asked.

“Imagine your father had other wives besides your mother he hugged and kissed,” Crestana explained so delicately.

“Ew.”

"So," Crestana said, turning back to him. "What are you?"

Alis craned his neck upwards, feeling the morning sun begin to singe his brow.

His parents had fled the country, abandoning their titles rather than becoming reds themselves. Alis hoped they were doing well, but the urge to find them and reconnect was never something he'd suffered from. The only confirmation he ever had parents were second-hand accounts and the fact that he had to have come from someone's womb.

"Green," he said. "At least that's what it said on my identification."

Alis propped the wooden broom against the hallway’s far wall before doing the same with himself. Mornings moved fast no matter where he was, and by the time he had worked up a sweat, the air was too humid to take the burden off his skin.

“Objective completed,” Alis said, wiping his brow as Iris undid a brass latch and forced open a second window. It was like draining a dam, how the air rushed through the gap and swirled up the loose debris in the room.

Crestana leaned out the window and hit the feather duster against the outside wall. The heat was beginning to rise, and Excala was on its way to work. “Is there anything else we should tend to before we go?”

“No,” Iris answered. “That’s all I normally do. Thank you; six hands really make a difference.”

“Weren’t you using four hands this entire time?” Crestana reminded her, leaning against the window. “Must be nice. I wish I had four hands.”

“We can swap for a day if you’d like,” Iris said, stretching her back and rolling her shoulders. “Actually, Alis, can you check the mail? It slipped my mind.”

“Rodger,” Alis replied, picking up his broom and trotting down the hall. At some point, the pair had crudely drilled a mailbox into the apartment door in hopes of not having to return to a week's worth of piled-up mail.

He lifted the lid and found four envelopes stacked neatly on each other. Two were white and stamped with Royal crests, one was blue and addressed with handwritten letters, and one was brown, its paper full of blemishes and imperfections.

“There’s four,” he said, wandering into the office and leaning on his broomstick. He handed them to Iris, who passed her eyes over each one.

“Business survey…electorate change…Harvey…her cat must have gone missing again.”

Iris unceremoniously tossed the request above the other two letters, but held onto the brown one, her eyes furrowing. She flipped it in her hand, then back to its front.

“No stamp. Not even an address.”

“Must have been hand-delivered. Does that happen a lot?” Crestana asked.

“No, not at all. If they come all the way here, it’s easier to knock on the door and come in.”

“Anonymous request, maybe?” Alis suggested.

“No point in being anonymous if we catch you slipping a letter under our door,” Iris explained, opening the letter with her thumb. “It’s easier to be anonymous through the mail.”

Inside was a standard piece of writing paper folded into thirds. Handwritten, and in rushed scrawl as well.

“It’s almost as bad as your handwriting,” Crestana chimed.

“Shut up,” Iris replied, deciphering the glyphs into language.

“Is it the type of thing you can read aloud?” Alis asked.

“Hm?”

“Is it private?”

“Oh. No, I guess not.”

“Then what does it say?”

“Uh…dear Excala International Private Investigations. What I am going to say is hard to believe, but I urge you to take this seriously. I am a scientist who has created the technology to destroy Aether.”

Iris choked on her words, and Crestana leaned on her shoulder, trying to read it for herself.

“I originally intended for it to be an emergency cure to dangerous Aether influx, but my country sought after it for military purposes. I sought refuge in Sidos, but after sharing my information, I caught wind of a plan to kill me.”

Iris crushed the letter in her fist and pegged it into the nearest waste basket.

“In exchange for your protection, I will cooperate in destroying my creation. Find me during the protest scheduled for July fifteenth.”