Elvera rubbed her temple, releasing the tension that crossed her eyebrows enough to knit a scarf. Fault’s desk was rampant with phone calls; the moment the receiver hit the box, it’d be back up again in a matter of moments.

Threatening to disband seven battalions, nine brigades, and an entire division from service gave people reason to start asking questions, whether well-meaning or not. The more ill-spirited calls had been pawned off to staff, leaving Fault free to try and follow up her decision with ample justification.

Elvera looked back to the mountains of files in front of her, only half of which concerned her original reason for her visit. Being Evalyn’s liaison, any lead of Evalyn's had also fallen into her realm of responsibility, but scrounging up information they already knew wasn’t a great look for her portfolio.

She read over the statements from the political staffer again, biting her lip as her eyes traced every word in the transcript, giving them a voice and attitude, adding context and background knowledge.

A staffer unable to refuse an order from a superior; if only that incessant nag pulling on her lower intestine would go away, she would’ve believed it. Being forced to commit treason on the regular without being a collaborator seemed too far-fetched. Blackmail?

On the flip side, giving the enemy enough to keep them satisfied yet guessing was a sound tactic he very well may have been trained in.

Another ring. Elvera tried to flush the ceaseless noise out of her brain but each strike of the bell inside the cheap casing seemed to eat away at her brain louder the more it went on.

“Lieutena-General,” the Prime Minister hissed, pressing her receiver to her shoulder. Elvera turned, only to find Fault pointing back in the opposite direction, squarely at Elvera’s ringing phone.

Elvera reached for it, hoping it was someone other than the analyst team.

“Marie?”

“Evalyn? It’s almost nightfall, what’s happened?”

“Found Iris and her friends in the city. Seems like they did some tracking work for us.”

“Tracking work?”

“Caught your assassin. Get some feds down to seventy-five 13th Street Rodana.”

“Assassin? Are they okay?”

“Crestana’s taken an injury to the shoulder but nothing’s localised with Beaks. She’ll be okay, but the adrenaline’s worn off.”

“I’ll get a medical team down—”

“No need. Will overcomplicate things considering her condition."

"What condition? She's been shot she should—"

"Not that...the Spirit of Spirits passing through her, seems to have left its Aether choking magic with her."

"You're serious?"

"Iris is. Crestana isn't taking it too well, but I'm unsure myself. Any luck with my snag?”

Elvera emptied her lungs, leaning back into her chair as she let her eyes rest. “Nothing juicy, but I haven’t decided if it’s genuine or not.”

“See if you have any more luck with this new one. Gut feeling says you will.”

“Eva,” Elvera whispered, leaning over the desk, body moving like her god-daughter was across the table from her. “Just hang tight for the moment, all right? Rest at the manor for when we need you, and I can call Colte for you, tell him to call things off.”

“…all right,” Evalyn sighed. “Okay. Ugh...all right. Call me when that happens.”

“Will do,” Elvera said, hanging up.

Waking up to handcuffs, Trysha found herself in a familiar situation. The hot or cold—whichever flavour the current season—intensified in the steel handcuffs bounding her wrists together. A female officer grabbed her by her throbbing head and forced her into the backseat of a police cruiser. She followed along, refusing to struggle when she knew what it felt like to get caught. An adrenaline rush that admittedly made the eventual escape from the handcuffs all the more satisfying, but she wasn’t acting herself. Hadn’t been for a long time before the car door slammed shut on her. The driver a thick grille screen away accelerated onto the main road.

The Wishbearer must’ve pinned her as one for the nuthouse by now, or one cowardly enough to beg for sympathy like she was, not even brave enough to grovel honestly. What a first impression, let alone a last one.

She rested her head against the window glass, late afternoon sunlight greeting her with much less scorn than it had hours earlier, and a great sense of closure washed over her. She closed her eyes, cycling through the execution methods in her head. She’d forgotten to research which one Sidos was most fond of.

Delirium hastened the flow of time, abridging the events between her capture and interrogation into a series of images her mind couldn’t care to recollect.

Grey room, raw wrists free to explore the surface of an unbalanced, paper-thin tabletop. The silence grew the more she listened to the overhead light’s buzzing until eventually, the door swung open.

Antlers, the two sweeping silhouettes formed a crest on the woman’s right shoulder, epaulettes signifying a rank too high to be an interrogator.

Cold eyes, sharp and uncompromising hid behind neatly tied black hair. She was beautifully crafted, carrying herself almost royally from head to toe. Not a hair or shoelace out of order.

“Evening,” the woman said, soft voice tickling Trysha’s ears and piquing her interest. “The time is eighteen-fifteen,” she said, checking her watch, “and with your permission, I’d like to start an off-the-record interview.”

“Can I say no?” Trysha croaked.

“Wouldn’t be in your best interest,” she shrugged, pulling the opposite chair out from underneath the table and taking a seat. “I can’t find anything on you, so I’m guessing you’re pretty experienced?”

Trysha nodded. “Since I was a kid. Geverde?”

“Mhm,” she answered absent-mindedly, busy sorting through a stack of folders she’d brought in with her. “I work with your lot, so you don’t have to tip-toe.”

“Is that why they sent you in first?”

The woman shook her head. “One of mine caught you, so I got first go. Technically you’re still my prisoner. That’s the deal.”

One of hers. “Wishbearer or the three kids.”

“Both. Well, the big Witch and the small Witch.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“So they are a pair. Am I allowed to know this much?”

“No,” the woman stated frankly as she finished organising her folders. The cold eyes turned to Trysha, and with no semblance of overconfidence, offered her a straight deal, purely business.

“But you’re a Witch I’ve got interest in, so I have no choice but to bargain. You clue me in on what I want to know, and I’ll put in a good word for you, see if I can score you an early retirement someone around Excala. Sound good?”

Trysha smiled, rubbing her wrists as she came to grips with the end of her line.

“I’m expecting a shot to the head any day now. Bargain like that won’t do much to convince me.”

“Well, that makes things all the more easy then,” the woman suggested. “Might as well tell me if you’re going to die soon.”

At that, Trysha couldn’t help but chuckle, which seemed to put a small smile on her interrogator’s face. “What do you want to know? If it’s the incident this morning then yes, a Witch has to do what a Witch has to do.”

“I understand that,” the woman said, clearing her throat. “Actually, I lied. I do have something on you, but please, forgive me since this is my own conjecture. Wesper, that’s a name you’ve worked with before, am I right?”

Trysha shook her head out of instinct. “Can’t say I have unless it was anonymous.”

“Almost three years ago now, your first run-in with my Wishbearer. You slipped past security and abducted an Alistair Harbourman from Geverdian custody on request of a Recres Wesper. Same magic, it’s hard to come by.”

“And what if that was me?”

“If that was you, then I’d like to know the meaning behind a unique phrase he seemed quite fond of. ‘Until utopia begins’, if you’ve ever heard of that?”

Before Trysha could confirm or deny, the woman took to the pile of files before her, selecting one from the vast array. “If you’ve been in this game for a long time, you must be familiar with Liam Colte. He’s a bit of a figure after all.”

Trysha shrugged. “Heard of him, but never been in that circle.”

The woman nodded. “He’s told me that he recently found out this phrase is used by a collection of Aether-infused individuals offering help to other such people in distress. Is that true?”

Trysha interlaced her fingers and chewed on her cheeks, thinking about the ways she’d end up croaking, each way as dissatisfying as the last. And then her head nodded, closing off several fates and opening up several others.

The woman returned the gesture. “Were you someone that could be described as such?”

Trysha held her tongue. Another habit, one she’d only broken with Providence when his honeyed words finally won her over through her grief.

She held her tongue, biting down on it until she tasted blood in her mouth.

“It’s in my best interest to offer you a better deal, because…I have to admit, I have nothing at the moment.”

She threw her hands up in defeat, exhaling through her nose as she slouched back into her chair, the cold eyes drooping at the sides, ending in wrinkles Trysha hadn’t noticed beforehand. “This…syndicate, organisation, whatever it is, has been running circles around us without us even knowing. For all we know, we’ve got a strong suspicion they’ve an interest in one of ours. The silver-haired girl you met today. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

Trysha shook her head and frowned, genuine this time.

The woman sighed proper, leaning back over the table. “That Wesper fellow seemed to recognise her as someone important, another named her Tetrica. Can you tell me anything about that?”

“Tetrica?” Trysha blurted, letting her tongue slip from between her teeth.

“Ring a bell?”

“Yeah,” Trysha admitted, composing herself. “Something about an old wives tale. I just thought they were making things up, didn’t expect it to be real.”

“Tell me the truth. That girl’s safety is on the line.”

“You’re risking it in the first place.”

The woman didn’t seem too amused at the rebuttal, but Trysha kept on pressing. “You could’ve kept her locked up at home, taught her to keep herself under control sent her to school.”

A dream she was too old for.

“But you’re pointing her at people and telling her to go wild, huh? What right do you have to say anything about her safety? You’ll just make another one of me and for what? Magic like her you can say bye-bye to your whole capital if she loses it! If she ends up like me!”

“But you didn’t lose it,” the woman countered, her voice still level while Trysha’s had skyrocketed out of her control. “You could’ve killed the Prime Minister, planted a bomb under Parliament house whenever you wanted to.”

The woman watched her, something in her eyes telling Trysha that she’d seen it all before. The same conversations with the same people, convincing them they weren’t monsters.

“You were just…following orders. Like we all have to do. I just want to know who and why.”

Trysha held her tongue and tried her best to lie.

“The people I love most are like you. I see my goddaughter in you, I see her daughter’s future in you. That’s why I need to know, Trysha, and I can only know from you.”

Her lips quivered, the pain in her wrists thawing over as her own name wrenched her heart out of her chest.

“How do you know my name?”

“Colte told me,” the woman said. “He remembered you, back when you were still tied to your mentor.”

Trysha held in a smirk, fingers curling into a fist. “He must’ve remembered my magic.”

But the woman pursed her lips and shook her head. “Wasn’t until I described your profile that he finally remembered you.” Then the woman smiled, weakly leaping the small, rickety table, grasping Trysha’s hand in hers. “Remembered you when I mentioned your eyes. Said they’d made you look like a ghost when you were younger.”

The warmth seemed to pull at her frozen hands, searing tungsten light too weak to decry the gaze of the woman before her; a look not of deceptive sympathy, those Trysha knew. It was plain understanding, as well as the emotions that came along with it, recalling a story of someone who had seen her once as human, and had remembered her as human for decades after.

“Colte remembered me?”

The woman nodded. “The first to offer you help the moment I mentioned you. Might be making a plea to Her Majesty as we speak.” She gripped Trysha’s hand. “So let’s give her a sob story to get your case over the line, hm?”

Trysha held her tongue, keeping the tears as far down their ducts as she could manage. She drooped her head, keeping her albino eyes to the floor. She thought, choosing her words carefully, ordering her story, deciding on which details were too painful to remember.

“I know I uh…said all those things about…not bringing children into this but…. The beginning of last year, I had a baby.”

With her free hand, she supported her head by her brow, hiding her eyes. “It was a fling I’d kept while work was slow, but the guy had—”

“What was his name?”

“…Damian. Damian, he’d…taken a liking to me. I just thought I’d play along until I got busy again. But I let it slip that I did this sort of thing, and he stuck by me, kept obsessing over my uh…eyes. Yeah, he kept talking about them. And I thought I’d play along for a little longer.”

“Till he gave you a child?”

Trysha nodded, trying to smile. “The country that claims me on that board of Middling Nations noticed I hadn’t taken a job in a while. Tracked me down and, you know….”

“Can you be sure?”

Trysha nodded, forcing her body to accept it as she had every morning since. “There’s no way they wouldn’t. Maybe did some tests on her first, but they wouldn’t have had the Aetherologists Geverde or Vesmos has.”

She covered her mouth, unable to blink through the glassy sheen over her eyes. “I just hope it was quick.”

Another squeeze of the hand. “What about your partner?”

“He was out when it happened. Business trip. I left him a note and told him I was sorry. I managed to escape, but I couldn't stay there in case they came back for him.”

“Have you seen him since?”

Trysha shook her head, deciding she had said her peace. “I’d heard about them through the grapevine, people dropping words and hints, said I should go to them if I was ever in need…. So, I went to the address, and I was greeted by a guy called Providence. That’s all he’d address himself as. He gave me a place to stay and work for a while. All Witch work. Said he was a Wizard himself, but never told me what he was.”

“Did he tell you about that organisation, then?”

Trysha shook her head. “It’s not an organisation. I…don’t know how to put it. Like a…web of people. Just a loose network of people looking to mess things up. Always for something ideological.”

“What was his agenda?”

Trysha shook her head, frowning. “Just…to watch the world burn, I guess, him and his small cut of the pie. Said that the world wasn’t made right and needed to start over from scratch. Said they can try all their might, but only Tetrica can truly reset everything back and let us build it up again.”

“And did you believe him?”

“…I wanted to. Because I can’t say I like things how they are either,” she said, lifting her face up and pulling a wry grin. “Made me feel like I could…do something with myself, other than just waiting to starve myself to death.”

“Do you remember what this man looked like? Providence?”

Trysha wiped the tears from her eyes. “Uh…yeah. Yeah, he has….”

“…Trysha?”

“He has….”

“What’s wrong? Trysha?”

“…I can’t remember,” Trysha muttered.

“Have you seen him?”

She nodded. “I only saw him last week at a Café—”

“Where?”

“I…don’t remember. I remember everything around it, everything he said, everything I did for him. But there’s a…black hole there. I don’t know who he is.”

A final squeeze and the woman let go, packing up her folders as she stood from her chairs. “I’ll keep in touch as long as I’m in Sidos. If Colte starts visiting you instead, you’re in luck. He’ll have more questions for you,” she explained as she walked for the door. “The boys coming in next will be asking about the job you did this morning and the whereabouts of the Minister of Defence.”

“The Minister of Defence?” Trysha asked. “Why?”

“He’s…on the run at the moment.”

“Yes…I’d imagine he is. But it’s the staffer you want.”

The woman drew back from the door, turning her body to full attention once again. “Why?”

“He’s one of us…I mean, one of them.”