“Tally on bandit heading bullseye two-seven-three at three hundred knots, altitude angels thirty-five. Heavy cloud cover, unsteady visual.”

Three hundred, angels thirty-five. Their pens hurried to etch in the information as more flooded in by the second.

“Unclear Aether signal. Ghost is fluctuating at irregular intervals. Visual dropping.”

Fluctuating Aether signal—those words amounted to a death sentence in a Geverdian fighter. Maintaining the statistics Deity Division were reporting under such conditions ruled out Aether as the main fuel source.

“Lost visual. Tracking ghost.”

Elliot racked his brain, keeping an ear to the air while he pieced together the situation brick by brick. The weaker-willed pilots had taken to taking drags of cigarettes, suffusing the already tenebrous room with white smoke as their faces curled in a colourful range of ugly emotions.

He checked his watch, noting down the time underneath a growing list of similar notes. ‘Oh-nine-three-four: visual lost – magic stable’. In tandem came a running tally from the analysts, aligning coordinates to timestamps on long receipts and drawing the flight path on the enlarged map.

“Visual! Tally on bandit.”

Elliot noted down the time again, labelling it appropriately.

“Cannot confirm any turbines!” the Deity’s Eye reported as static cut into the tail-end of his sentence. “Ghost is fluctuating!”

‘Unsteady Aether’. The pattern was practically spelt out on his page.

His foot was tapping, jostling the clipboard on his thigh up and down as the stretch of silence between calls distended, testing his patience. The connection was faulty, fleeting at best. Repeats of the same report weren’t uncommon, each one wasting precious time.

More intel, but the extent of what the Deity could glean left Elliot wanting. The information was sparse, too scattered to reliably deploy on.

The clock was ticking, and any theories would take more observation to endorse or rebut. Too much birdwatching and the chance that Vesmos found what they were looking for grew by the day, too little and the plane cruising at three hundred knots might very well outpace any half-arsed attempt at an interception.

An excess of variables even for Elliot.

The spy plane reached the border, and the Deity ceased tracking, terminating its connection with their radio.

The pilots erupted into hushed discussion like the end of a theatre play, trading cautious expletives for scribbles on paper. A shared disquiet hung with the cigarette smoke above the congregation, and Elliot couldn’t help but wrap his fingers against the clipboard, watching the analysts plot out the final movements of the spy plane with red string wrapped around thumbtacks.

There were gaps where Deity had lost tally on the bandit's ghost. Seemingly random, the easiest explanation was a faulty or incomplete Aether circuit, but such an explanation still left the question of supply.

An irregular ghost—the fluctuating Aether signal—suggested an inconsistent source rather than a fuel tank filled with liquid Aether. He scratched the abridged thought process into his notes, circulating the words ‘fuel source’ for emphasis.

“So it’s magic, is it?”

A soft voice, tame enough to filter under even the library mutters of the rest of the room. Elliot turned his head, looking up to find the same man he’d had the displeasure of interacting with the night before. Curled hair springing up like weeds, a curt smile barely hanging onto his face with a single thread of stubble.

“If we were listening to the same report, then sure,” Elliot answered, shrugging his shoulders. His eyes lingered on the face, wanting to say something with more edge to it despite his professionalism’s objections.

“Aircraft with magic. Doesn’t that sound familiar?”

The sides of Elliot’s face twitched, his foot finding more fuel to continue its indefatigable tapping. He glanced down at the man’s clipboard, attempting to glimpse at the notes he guessed were more biased than the average politician.

“Your point being?” Elliot asked, forgoing the option to disengage and half regretting it instantly.

The pilot leaned in closer as though to whisper a secret.

“Magic kills people. S’all it’s good for. All it ever will be, at least in this country.”

Somehow the gesture brought Elliot’s attention upward. Behind the pilot was a scattering of Sidosian ones sitting in twos and threes, all of which had, at some point, fallen silent. They watched him, eyeing him cautiously like a felon behind bars.

“But I don’t have to tell you that. Seen it for yourself, just as much as we have.”

The man stood and paced over, swinging from one foot to the next.

“And you saw our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers and cousins and friends die to magic, from your back row seat and thought ‘oh…they’re the dumb ones. All they got to do is stop shooting and pray they don’t shoot back.’”

He came to a stop, craning over Elliot’s seat. “And thanks to your little impulse, we had to wait six months after the war, watching them kick us while we were down.”

Then he smiled, affording Elliot a toothy grin. “But of course, you were right, weren’t you? Elliot Maxwell, 67th Wing. Tell my sister how right you were while you pour one out over her grave.”

An individual of lesser character may have observed her two friends: one tall, slightly older, ruggedly handsome, and the other petite, fragile, adorable, and come to an aptly ignoble conclusion—a judgement so base it put a bad taste in Crestana’s voice box even thinking about it.

You two suit each other!

Iris was tamed at the best of times, feral at the worst. Petite in the way a rabbit was, she even had the hair to match the white fur. A rabbit prone to biting, defecating with no consideration because consideration wasn’t a concept comprehendible to her.

She loved her friend dearly, but there were moments she felt like Iris’s second mother, or rather owner.

Wouldn’t you two be such a wonderful couple?

Alis was similarly abnormal—a tough nut to crack on the surface, but one soon realised that the nut was made of nothing but shell to the very core. The polite speech was the only speech, the military mind the only thought pattern. Besides his proficient tastebuds, the boy knew as much about himself as one could glean in a single sitting.

Shallow, no, but the vessel was nowhere near full.

You two should—

The thought would’ve never even crossed their minds. Crestana had to admit, it had for a split second. Their ‘two oddballs in a pod’ relationship had, for a moment, come across as affection.

But Iris acted like that with everyone she was comfortable with, and on second thought, Alis demurred more often than not. Not to the extent of outright rejecting her, but certainly not reciprocating either.

“Crestana?” Iris asked, pulling on a pair of white socks by the door. “What are you looking at?”

“You’ve been staring,” came Alis’s voice from the kitchen, closing a largely hollow Frost Box after taking a swig of milk like it was whiskey. “Your shutters are in a knot.”

Crestana, the middle woman, the ‘third wheel’—although she never felt left out—sat at the table, head resting on a bed of intertwined fingers like a kingpin.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just thinking about how today’s going to go.”

“Nervous?” Iris asked, standing up and trotting closer. “About the mission, or about using your power?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“I never said I was nervous,” Crestana argued, grabbing her drawing tube off the table and slinging it across her shoulders. “I’m just not convinced we’ll find anything useful.”

“Why not?” Alis asked, for some reason taking another swig of milk.

“A Spirit was murdered!” Crestana cried, throwing her hands in the air. “If that doesn’t cause at least a little hubbub, then what has the world come to? We’re going to stumble onto a crime scene, and get questioned why three children are asking questions about a Spirit who got axed the day before.”

“I doubt it,” Alis argued, closing the Frost Box for the final time and waltzing over to the door to find his shoes. “He didn’t have any ID on him when I checked. Just the hotel keys.”

“Which you shouldn’t have taken,” Crestana rebutted. “That was evidence; the police should have that.”

“And they will have it after today,” Iris said, her tone asking what about the plan Crestana had misunderstood. “After we’ve had a look first.”

She mulled over it further if only to delay their departure. The plan was sound, provided nothing went awry—and even if things did trend south, Crestana was there to sneak in undetected.

“All right,” she sighed, succumbing. “All right. Fine. Get me out the door before I change my mind.”

The identity of the room key Crestana held in her hand had been the culmination of all three’s efforts. Through trawling the contents of every travel guide and phone book they could find in both Aunty Mallorine’s mansion and the Hardridge-Maxwell household, the three had pinpointed its origins to a small establishment far to the city’s west.

An older part of town—if municipal boundaries constituted what was and wasn’t ‘town’—and not necessarily as well-maintained, the infrastructure only standing to serve the farms they were nestled amongst. Crestana never had much reason to visit, and besides the few hazy memories she held onto for dear life, where a family of three had leisured on grassy hills in the summer sun, the west never crossed her mind either.

That was how she imagined many in Excala thought of the city’s western quadrant. The recently arrived scientist had either been aware or made a lucky guess—it was one way to stay hidden.

She turned the nameless key over in her palm: in the end, it hadn’t helped his fate for the better.

Is there always that much blood when a human dies?

The Aether was certainly comparable, although the second time around, Crestana hadn't even managed to crack a frown.

Her friend was passed out on her shoulder, the tram’s rocking had long since lulled her to sleep.

“She really can sleep anywhere,” Alis muttered from past Iris’s other shoulder. “Even though we’re about to go on a mission.”

Crestana could feel her shutters turning upwards. Iris had expended all her nerves the night before, pacing around their room and deliberating on her next course of action. Crestana had told her she’d follow no matter what path Iris chose, which, in hindsight, must have made things harder.

Little rabbit exploded at Evalyn over the phone, insisting the weapon be destroyed along with its plans. Breaking her vow of complacency hadn’t been easy for her. With none of the documents her mother hid behind either.

“Transit is just about the only downtime she’s been afforded,” Crestana said, watching the silver hair frizz against their seat’s coarse cushioning. “She’s had hard choices thrown at her since the day we met.”

“I see,” Alis muttered. “But for you to be sitting here with us, surely you’ve experienced similar?”

Hard? Yes. But hard choices? She felt her voice box loosen, just a tad, curious as to what the reciprocation would be.

“No,” Crestana admitted. “My life has always been in the hands of others. Hard, perhaps, but they’ve simply happened to me if that makes sense.” She shifted her shoulders, letting Iris’s head drop neatly onto it. “She was the one that decided to risk her life to save me.”

Agonised over it, even. Daresay Crestana could blame her; with her own life on the line, she was rather dubious that she could’ve made the same sacrifices for someone else, let alone a mere client.

“Then she must’ve seen you as worthy of it,” Alis said, allowing a thin smile to form around the edge of his lips.

“Worthy.” The word tasted sour the way it sat on the wires in her voice box, like an allergic reaction.

Watching a friend jump to his death, hot on the heels of her own mother: she could only hope they were both in a better place. Together, if God or the gods allowed such a thing. She knew what sympathies such a plaintive story would illicit—told to an almost divine paragon of altruism, it wasn’t such a stretch to assume they would go out of their way for her.

So, if Iris had admitted it was simply pity that had driven her to do what she did, Crestana would welcome it. She would welcome it, and feel lonely. Such a possibility she’d long since prepared for.

“I don’t know,” Crestana half-truthed as she shrugged her free shoulder. “What about you then? What’s your sob story?”

“Sob story….”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well…injustice, I guess.”

“Injustice…against what?”

“The colours I mentioned.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“How is that quest fairing?”

“I’d imagine you’ve gathered by now.”

“I see….”

“Yes….”

“…you seem awfully unsure of yourself,” Crestana blurted, biting the bullet and forcing the reciprocation out of him.

He had to be more than that—she had faith in her friend’s choice of character.

“Unsure…you could phrase it like that,” he said. “But I think since I came back to this city, unsure is the last thing I’d describe myself as.”

“Meaning?”

His face stiffened, eyebrows tripping over themselves as his brain thought of an answer. One thing at a time.

“I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”

Well. At least he was straightforward.

The path got narrower once they transferred, demoting from a paved—albeit in disrepair—road, to a beaten track, maintained only by the tyres that ran along it. Their transport had been similarly humbled, a charming coach arrived to pick up where the city bus had left off.

Very few passengers. Those who were on it were committed, carrying with them suitcases and souvenirs of wine and chocolate. Going home to visit family, Crestana guessed.

Again: why else would anyone travel so far west?

The final stopover before Excala, back when people travelled on foot and horseback. She’d heard about such places once from a guest her father was entertaining; a politician, who insisted on the importance of rural seats on the council.

The sun was teasing its zenith, bearing down on them through an arrant blue sky. The clouds had long since shied away, birds too tired to cry, the edges of their beaks dry and cracking like Iris’s lips.

Crestana held no envy for that aspect of being human. She felt no envy for how the human body reacted to heat, for she simply felt it, and it would needle her.

Beaming, cooking every millimetre of her skin as though it were personal. She swore never to take the shade tall buildings and Spirit trees offered for granted ever again.

Their coach stopped, and the passengers began to disembark while the driver leaned back in his chair, unscrewing a bottle of soft drink and tipping his hat over his head.

This was their stop, whether they liked it or not.

Crestana got off first, her shoes crunching against the dry earth at the base of a set of stairs, thirsty wood creaking with every small swing of the wind.

Besides the people, the breeze was the only thing that seemed to move; that seemed to change. Everything else was simply a response. The crops, the reeds on their banks, the wind chimes, the glass panes. All in one, sleepy motion, as though the town were hibernating, waiting for the sun to set.

The trio could follow some semblance of a grid layout to the town, although there were barely enough buildings to fill out the nine squares of a naughts and cross’s game. A town where the most notable piece of history would be the murder and disappearance of a young girl clawing its way to the honourable mentions of a true crime magazine, fifty years after the case went cold.

And yet, it made her all the more nervous. This wasn’t one of the five-star hotels where one could waltz into the lobby, chest bared, eyes brimming with daft confidence, walk into the elevator and up to a stranger’s room.

It was an inn. Everyone knew each other here, intimately. Iris knew that, her father had explained as much to them in idle conversation. The drama, the gossip, who was new in town.

The adjacent lot was being demolished, the half of the house still standing in disrepair, with no promise of anything else to take its place. Crestana didn’t understand why she was fixating on such details, but it stood out.

She followed her two accomplices into the squat, two-storey building. The inn was unique: where every other store, service, and vendor operated out of their front doors, the Greyskir House enjoyed a reversal of rolls. Inn first, family home second.

“Ready?” Iris asked, clutching a bulging purse Crestana had never seen before.

They nodded, and Iris put on the widest smile she could manage.

The door’s hinges moaned as they opened it, and the wood gave Alis a splinter in retaliation. Crestana shooed him along, bringing up the rear as she took the handle and closed it.

The hard soles of her boots sank a half-centimetre into the wooden planks as she rested her weight on them, a mere glance in the wrong direction enough to snap one of the ramshackle pillars in half.

Carpets draped over the wooden rafters above, adding colour where there’d otherwise be none. They were in the restaurant, a hall with its own roof where the second flood guests could look down from their catwalk, sipping on whatever people who stayed in such a place entertained themselves with. Perhaps it made them feel wealthy, perhaps Crestana was letting her prejudices take over.

“Hello!” Iris’s grinned, bursting out of the gates like a greyhound, it not occurring to her that the rabbit she was chasing was never there. “We’re here to book a room!”

“The counter’s empty,” Crestana whispered, scanning her vision across the second-floor catwalk. Untenanted at first glance, although high noon was about as empty as an inn could be on any given day.

“What do I do then?” Iris asked, puzzled.

“The bell,” Crestana hissed. “Ding the bell.”

And so the little rabbit did as she was told, stepping back as though waiting for a spell to conjure.

Which, perhaps prophetically, was the most appropriate move she could’ve made.

It was the abrupt surge of Aether first, but the fruits of that influx only revealed themselves when she blinked her shutters.

“Three rooms?”

A Spirit of Hospitality. She couldn’t imagine what one was doing so far from the city.

“One please,” Iris clarified.

“Two.” The objection floated from its forever oval mouth, carrying with it not a single note of aggression.

“One please,” Iris reiterated.

“And your servants in the stables?”

“Yes please.”

“I can’t allow that.” It ruffled the feathers jutting from its putty-ish head.

“Then what do you recommend?”

“One room. Professional opinion.”

“Okay.”

“Breakfasts?”

“None please.”

“Will that be with the unlimited beverage bar or not?” Its beak hands wrapped against the table, as though agitated.

“None please,” Iris smiled, handling the situation like a seasoned veteran.

“Salt and Pepper is included in your rooms. That’ll be three thousand Ixa for the night.”

Remarkably inexpensive, considering the staff alone would ordinarily fetch ten times the price anywhere closer to the country’s heart. The shanty-town aesthetic, far from intentional, began to make sense. The heart of the problem lay in the entity standing before her. Washed up, or never experienced to begin with—the malaise had spread its tendrils across what might’ve once been a fine establishment.

The innkeeper’s sunken, beady eyes caught hers, a mutually foul Aether radiating between them like spilt, soured milk.

“Here are your keys,” the innkeeper finally said, the words unlocking a flood of relief. “Enjoy your stay.”