Their robotic limbs danced just as their engineers had ordered, pulleys and motors whirring softly from marker to marker as the pre-programmed animations wrapped metal fingers around large rifle bolts, pulling them back and forth with equal parts machined precision and heavy-handed force.
The freer yet less meditated movements born of human input took over as each metal chassis raised a rifle to its eye and fired. Thunder and applause, again and again. Trumpets, bugles, a firing salute to the achievements of those never meant to be more than Help and Labour.
Now, with their force sufficiently multiplied, their dreams were too. Not quite the soaring freedom that hope born from wings offered, but a lumbering, humble fruit of toil and turmoil. Their army would enact their goals all the same.
Compacting the sand beneath their feet, the weary man watched the march of Higher Order Armour disappear beyond his vision’s periphery, stifled by the rising air departing the sand. Eventually, their chassis were gone, like an oasis receding from sight.
And he was left alone. Alone, with their corpses.
Strewn metal, busted chassis, wires and pulleys lost heat with the setting sun while the bodies within them were spared a precious few hours of scorching sunlight before day broke again.
He’d been too enthralled by the dancing machines to join the survivors as they mounted cars, bikes, whatever could still run, hauling their injured and leaving their dead to the desert. He’d watched the small men and women cry and shout, bustle like ants as they compiled what they could, all the while the machines swept their steel feet right past them, the ants none the wiser.
Until he was all alone, watching the dunes swallow and regurgitate the bones of their collective dreams; drowning and resurfacing, smothering and setting free, over and over as though through some act of cruelty, the desert would never let them truly die.
And so out there somewhere, the wandering dreams, the machines that so moved like humans, the contraptions that they had put their all into for one, final, battle….
The vagabonds still braved the desert, looking for a final resting place.
At night, the hawks finally arrived. With mental faculties somewhat regained, he guessed they had spent the day scouring the surrounding desert for the little ants who’d left in a hurry, and hoped at least the dancing machines made it safely.
Torchlights zipped across the scattered debris and scrap metal terrain, the guns at the lights’ fulcrums moving from one potential target to another. The weary man stayed quiet, hiding under the shade of a dead derelict, chassis hugging close enough to the sand to conceal him.
The torches grew stronger, their jarring white light more intense as the troopers travelled in a single, spanning line. The weary man lay low, pressing his chest to the sand.
One crunch of sand under steel-capped boots after another. Anything light enough to kick, they overturned with a strike of their foot. Other things they ducked underneath if they could be bothered.
The weary man stuck his head into the sand, feigning death as the sounds approached.
Closer and closer came horrid figures: a mismatch of bodies and colours and transparencies all feigning uniformity through their matching khaki overalls. Their guns were redundant; there were easier ways for a Spirit to kill a human.
But pulling on a trigger certainly seemed less taxing.
Fighting was out of the question. Spirits were hard to kill on even terms, let alone when outnumbered. Torchlight shined through his eyelids, the gun's barrel searching his body for a sign of life.
Save your bullets. They’ll be dead by morning.
The light receded, although slower than the weary man would’ve liked. The crunchy footsteps likewise disappeared, and the night returned to silence. The words anchored themselves in his brain, and he replayed them over and over again.
Conveyed with no voice, no tone, no intonation. As though they’d appeared in his head.
The weary man fell asleep, hoping those words wouldn’t prove to be true.
Three new doors opened, and somehow the end was becoming clearer. As though fine-tuning the focus on a lens, the number of entryways until the end of the hallway had whittled down to a final three. Three unopened doors; two on either side and one down the centre.
Nothing particularly remarkable about them, besides the rabid thing sitting in the corner like a failed doorwoman, shaking and convulsing in time with the walls. With each open door, its territory had grown smaller, and like it or not, Iris was permitted a closer look.
She couldn’t describe it in detail, namely because she refused to ever look for that long.
One new door led to the quiet city ruins, the other to the chamber of information where time and time again, the mud-soaked figure with the auburn hair would scramble his brain, and finally, the cave nestled deep in the Northern Chain.
The final door was where Iris spent most of her time dreaming. Surrounded by the cold, watching as the small spark of lightning shone despite all odds, providing the child with one bit of comfort as it remained curled up, forehead to its knees, toes turning purple from frostbite. Each extremity that would die would be painfully disassembled and reassembled as new. Over and over again, until the nervous system regarded the sensation as a non-factor. After several days, a liquid blanket had cocooned the girl, spreading the spark's light equally around the body; outside that, little else had changed.
All sensations of pain, even the smallest convulsion of discomfort had stopped after a few days, and soon, it became clear that Iris’s Aetherologst was mistaken; she could survive much longer than a week on purely Aether.
Perhaps not comfortably, but the small child still breathed, however weak each breath was. Self-sustaining herself as a Spirit, regenerating any human aspect that failed along the way.
Iris was confident she’d get through winter. Her dreaming of the image in and of itself was proof she had.
But that made it no less painful to watch.
As the child suffered in silence, she turned her attention behind her, where her Beast guarded the open door, and another entrance lay just beyond the hallway's bristling red carpet.
“Shoot,” she ordered, and the Beast did.
Heat filled the cave and the air grew frenzied, compelled to rush through her hair by the temperature difference. She felt the tips of her fingers begin to melt, so she reformed them. But much to her disappointment, her fingers simply weren’t as hardy as everything else around her.
Not a scratch, not a scorch mark. Yet again, she gave up, finally dawning on her that the earlier success in brute-force tactics had been by the hallway’s grace. It wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
The chattering mess of bones and flesh kept at a steady pace, and the girl before her showed no signs of an improving condition. The mountains had long since been silent, and in the depths of the mountain’s cold, it was disheartening to know the snow had smothered her mother’s magic.
Even if it were just a recreation, witnessing what had ended the war of Aether and Diesel was an experience she cursed herself for missing out on. But time progressed linearly; one day the small child would leave the cave. She was sure of it.
“Tuck your elbows in. Yeah, like that. You’ve got to move your body more than in fencing. Can’t rely on levers.”
Alis tapped Crestana’s right shoulder, correcting her posture one joint at a time. Her extended arm, hand bawled into a fist, grew stronger with every minor alteration. The more Iris watched Crestana’s movements, the more her bias towards swords became apparent. Iris had little to alter when it came to movement; knife thrusts and slashes transitioned well into strikes.
It was a matter of power, of which Crestana had little. Alis had brass knuckles and a certain level of brawn, while Iris could reinforce her fist, even leave the mechanical movements of a strike entirely to an exoskeleton of sorts.
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“This isn’t going to hurt anyone, Alis,” she admitted, dropping the stance and straightening the sleeves of her school blazer. “Lend me your knuckle dusters; it’d be a different story.”
“It’s still a skill you should know, and no. These are mine.”
Crestana sighed, watching the boy clutch his brass knuckles like a priest did his prayer beads. She turned to Iris, shrugging. “As long as I’ve got a sword—”
“You only practice longsword. Too big to carry around.”
“Yeah, but…fine. Knives?”
Iris bobbed her head from side to side, propping her other foot onto the chair, and resting her chin atop her knees. “Depends on what you’re killing.”
“I can’t carry an arsenal with me,” Crestana sighed, defeated. She fell back into her chair, and Alis dropped all guard, his attention beginning to wander the room. Four solid walls made entirely of books, their covers so thick they blotted out the hearty shelves they rested on. Blocks of jade, mauve, crimson and navy melded the further away she was, and eventually disappeared like a horizon, replaced with the towering, nonsensical ceilings of the East Excalan Library.
Under the light of a single streetlamp springing from the wooden floorboards, Iris, at least, was filling in the time before she went home for the day. Evalyn had quit giving her lip for not coming home earlier, and in return, she’d agreed to call her when she could.
But as of late, she was beginning to question if it was even worth all the effort.
Crestana had turned herself away from books, her magic as a Beak now the least of her problems. To replace it had sprung a sudden obsession with becoming a fighter, and Iris struggled to indulge her repetitive demands. They’d outgrown her already, and Crestana had, just that day, turned to Alis.
“When’s your Aetherologist’s appointment?” Iris asked, mumbling through the gap in her teeth.
“Tomorrow. Why?”
“Mmm,” Iris grumbled as Alis sat at the ornate, wood-carved table that rocked gently on the uneven surface. His eyes were still on the room, as though exiting training mode had switched some sort of flip in his brain.
“It’s a library,” she said. “You’re allowed to take one.”
“No, it’s the space itself,” Alis replied. “Do you really get used to this?”
“Eventually,” Crestana said, leaning on her chair, tapping her thumbs together and letting out another sigh. “Why, what’s so special about it? Vesmos has got to have magical buildings.”
“Yes, but…they’re not…alive. Like this is.”
Iris turned her eyes upwards, recalling the way that the space did indeed seem to breathe and change while she wasn’t looking. Tony had once admitted their incessant rearranging had given guests panic attacks in the past and, considering refugees still littered the bookshelf halls, meant the EGL had lost a touch of its fervour.
“Life comes from the people in the room where I’m from, not the room itself.”
Lost in the world around him again. It annoyed her sometimes, but admittedly she was jealous. Being so concerned in an outward direction surely felt better than the opposite.
Crestana turned to her again. “Did you talk to Mrs Hardridge?”
Iris curled further into her ball, taking a leaf from Alis’s book and turning towards the bookshelves.
“Yeah,” she said into her sleeve. “But it’s still no.”
Crestana sighed, shutters creasing upwards as she turned away, finally ready to tend to her homework instead. Iris had her load for the day sitting like a stench in her bag, and ignoring it didn’t make it go away as she’d hoped.
“I’m taking a walk,” she quietly declared, timidly unfurling as Crestana gave her a nod, already halfway through a sentence.
“Mind if I join you?” Alis asked as she passed, and Iris shrugged without pausing.
A shoulder-width cut of the bookshelf before them shifted backwards, and they stepped through the opening, turning right.
Unable to hold it in much longer, Iris stretched her back and rolled her shoulders, waiting for the bookshelf to move back into place before she took the same liberties with her speech.
“I don’t like this.”
“Crestana?”
Iris nodded. “And now she’s asking you.”
“I don’t mind. As long as she doesn’t treat training like a one-and-done deal—”
“I mind. I’m not worried about you.”
They rounded the corner, and the library’s cramped corridors and alleyways opened up, coalescing into a ring river of water that flowed forever clockwise. An open, green hill, grass growing to ankle height swayed happily, basking in streaming light that seemed to come from some nebulous point overhead.
Iris couldn’t seem to look directly upward. It was a lazy technique to hide the seams in the illusion. But it was just that: lazy, and the Interior Manager of the East Excalan Library was more aware of it than anyone else.
Their aether-infusion workshop sat at the apex of said hill, rotting wood planks and pillars frozen in time, pinned together with rusted nails in a similarly arrested state. The sign hanging by chain swung gently in a breeze that didn’t exist.
The library glade’s new status as something of a public park took away from its celestial aura, but it was quaint, nonetheless.
Iris stopped by the river and took off her socks and shoes. Checking up and downstream for anyone putting their mouth in the water, she stepped in...
And sighed. The cold water trickling over her feet sent shivers running up and down her spine like race cars, massaging every muscle and joint along its way.
She sighed again for good measure, conscious of Alis, who wasn’t as privy to removing any clothing willy-nilly.
“I don’t want her to start doing this stuff,” she said, frankly, although Alis had probably already gathered. “There's no reason for her to.”
“It’s hard to argue with her skillset,” Alis suggested, crouching by the riverbank and watching it all run past. “Given some training, anyone would kill to have her on a fire team.”
“That makes things worse, Alis,” Iris complained, splashing him with water. "Both ways make a bit of sense.”
“So, you don’t want me to help her?” Alis asked. “I won’t if you don’t like it.”
She pursed her lips, grinding the smooth pebbles under her toes.
“Do what you want,” she said, stepping out of the water. “I’m not giving you orders.”
Carrying her socks in her shoes, she hiked the small hill, turning to check if Alis was following. He still waited by the riverbank, hands in his pockets.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I can only imagine things taking a turn for the worst, Iris. What am I supposed to do then?”
“Help us make it better. What else?”
His face had ‘easier said than done’ written all over it. If there was a better alternative, she was open to suggestions. But between the pair, they had little outside the way of brute force. That applied to more things than just combat.
Alis stepped over the river, joining Iris halfway up the hill.
“Take your shoes off.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“It feels nice.”
“I will take your word for it,” he said, hands still in his pockets as he walked past. She turned with him, reminding herself what was a standoffish reaction from some, was Alis’s honest feelings. If he couldn’t explain it, then it was a matter of intuition rather than dodging the subject.
It was a trait they shared, along with their inability to properly explain it aloud.
She followed behind him, arriving at what they most often used as the front counter. Four wooden posts sketched the workshop's borders, and a waist-high workbench filled in the gaps on all four sides.
It was an inviting design, easy to argue where the glade ended and the workshop began.
“Tony?” Iris called. “Al?”
With her free hand, she rang the service bell a couple of times for good measure, knowing the chances they’d be sleeping on the clock were frustratingly high.
“Phone’s that way, Iris. We gave you a key, didn’t we?”
A small, scaly neck stuck its head out from underneath the far workbench, bumping its dust-coated nose against the wood. With tired eyes, Tony looked from her, then to Alis.
“Oh, this whatcha racket’s about?” they asked. “Well, it’s not ready yet. Give us a minute, will ya? Maybe a week. Yeah, a week sounds good.”
“I wanted a break,” Iris said, slumping over the counter. “Where’s Al?”
“With her Majesty,” Tony said, head slowly rising as the toolbox he sat coiled in began to float. “Said it was urgent. Why, you need him?”
“No. Just looks lonely.”
“Where’s your friend? Karen?”
“Studying,” Iris mumbled, cheek pressed against the table.
The toolbox came down on the desk with a mighty clank, and Iris watched Alis take a rather blatant root around its contents. He reared back as tools began to prance around in the air.
“You sound as limp as your socks at the moment.”
Iris grunted, acknowledging the sentiment but taking it no further. The librarians were considerate enough to ask, but they weren’t babysitters.
“And what about you, big man? Still banking on these things to be ready?”
Alis nodded. “Otherwise, I’m afraid it’s back to square one with me.”
Tony chuckled, waving around a chisel like a free hand. “‘s a lotta pressure,” he started. “Do or die. Must be an important fight to you, huh?”
“Yes, sir,” Alis said, hands stiff in his pocket. Iris furrowed her brow, wondering if he was even trying to kill his military habits; at least it was better than watching him salute at random.
She turned her face into the wood and watched her world go black, hoping it would make the ensuing stretch of silence less painful to endure. It didn’t, and eventually, she heard a pair of boots softly trample the grass, one step at a time.
“Al ‘n’ I been talking ‘bout you,” the Spirit muttered under the scraping of a chisel against wood. “Aren’t yourself since you came back from Sidos.”
She tensed her hands and released them, feeling the pins and needles accumulate like sand in an hourglass. The chisel dropped onto the workbench, and the sound of sandpaper came next.
“I’ll be transparent; we talked to your mother about it.”
Iris recoiled but couldn’t argue. “When?”
“About a week ago, a few days after you came back from your holiday. Said you’d regressed pretty quickly.”
“What am I supposed to do? It was fun, but it doesn’t change anything.”
“Even though you have a shiny new sparring sabre?”
Iris nodded. “Don’t tell them that.”
Tony chuckled, blowing away the sawdust caught in his sandpaper. “They’re not the type to mind. As long as you’re using it, they’ll be happy.”
She poked her head out from her shell, seeing the Spirit smooth out the kinks in what looked like an oversized medicine pill, half the size of an egg. Turning her head, she saw Alis walking in a loose circle, craning his neck upwards but to no avail.
“Getting along with him?”
Iris nodded. “He took me out to dinner for my birthday. I let him talk the whole time about the food, but I liked it.”
“Helped you forget for a while?”
Iris nodded her head. “It feels wrong, sometimes.”
Tony released the carving, and it fell into the toolbox with a hollow clatter. “You got plenty of people to talk to it about, hey? Even that clueless mutt over there. Bet my Ixa you two have even more in common than you realise. Feels better suffering together, y’know? As long as you don't become each other's ball and chain.”
Iris felt her hands move, wrist drifting upwards as though carried by a warm current of air. Her fingertips, barely touching the driftwood, began to dance at Tony’s behest.
“And your mother used to swing by when she was younger. Sometimes a load ‘a people is the last thing you need and you just wanna…let it all out. ‘Cus ya know no one’d blame ya for whatcha doin’, but no sane person can do what you lot do day in day out without goin’ a little crazy.”
Iris watched her fingers tap and twirl, her nails softly clacking against the driftwood.
“I don’t want to start crying.”
“Why?” Tony asked.
“Because I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.”