The first thing Iris noticed when she opened her sleep filled eyes was that it was hard to stand. As though the weight of the Steel Whale had found a new home on her shoulders, her legs shook at every attempt she took. The second peculiarity she noticed was the doors’ lack of a suffocating presence. It seemed that they were tamer when she dreamed the hallway in her head.
Iris had looked over her shoulder six times already. She could not help but think that there was something behind her. Something breathing.
But there never was.
And that was the issue. Living life as she did now had taught her that hallways were places where people would walk past each other, emerge from, and enter their rooms. Even if it was empty, she would ordinarily hear chatter from behind a door or the mumble of the street outside.
But here, there was nothing. No sense of life in a place where people were supposed to live. Her illusions were dead, and as far as she was aware, she was the sole exception.
The doorways were not looming over her as they did when she panicked. They were foreboding but unintrusive. They kept their distance. Iris struggled to lift a foot and step forward, fighting against her weight for agency. For the first time, she reached out and touched the drywall. Stale, like spoiled bread. It felt old, but not in a charming sense. Rotten, fit to be demolished.
Her hand, unsheathed from the sleeve of her jacket felt a chilling wind from behind. She turned cautiously, finding a single door barely ajar. It felt obvious, almost as if she had been the one to open it not moments prior.
Mountains. The death temperature of a summit. That was the extent to which she could remember. Rounding the door, that was exactly what she found. An expansive mountain range unfolded itself before her like the layers of a picture book. Snow, metres deep, piled on top of the grey rock as far as she could see before the cold air stung her eyes shut. The jagged shapes drifted into the distance, where a grey haze obscured them, and made them feel infinite.
Timidly, she stepped forward, aching to know what it all meant to her, and as soon as she immersed herself in it, the memory became clear. The haze receded another metre with each step she took, her clothes barely keeping out the bitter cold that stung her bare skin with pinpricks. Despite that, she pressed forward, her footsteps the only sign of life for kilometres, or even centuries.
She continued until her feet reached the edge of a small plateau, and the tips of her toes stood facing a sudden drop. As she looked down, the grey haze receded, running away from her further down the slope of the mountain. The jagged cliff faces gave way to crumbling rock that bordered wet, green plains. And on those plains stood something that rivalled the stars for their heavenly place in the grand order of the universe.
Shimmering pillars of white rose from the valley, dwarfing the great rivers that ran through it. They reflected the sun's rays as if they were snowcapped mountains themselves, and the tips of their figures seemed to carve the very sky itself. The city had long forgotten it was not anything more than a city; it seemed as if it had surpassed that definition hundreds of years ago.
The beacons pierced the landscape, splitting the horizon in two while light emanated from it in all directions, as well as Aether. The sheer quantity made Iris jitter as she stood. Whatever she was looking at was somewhere that held many answers, answers to questions posed by many for thousands of years. That was what Iris felt. If she went there, then it would all become clear to her. She may not have to open the doors of that hallway.
The city had occupied her imagination long enough for a sudden cold to set in. A wind kicked at her body, and she almost lost her footing. She scrambled backwards onto flat ground, her bare hands falling deep into the snow, and each finger felt like it disappeared as their nerves overloaded. Numbness set in as the vast white sucked her of her energy, and her heat rapidly escaped. The clothes Evalyn had gifted her did nothing to protect her as she sunk further. Her breathing became rapid as she thrashed and fell deeper. Her arms and legs grew tired, and her lungs froze over.
Her thrashing stopped, and she grew silent, the movement of her chest so rabid only a moment ago falling still. She watched the snow fall onto her face, burying her corpse in innocent, deadly white. She died. She died there for a second time.
Iris seemed to have a sudden disdain for white. All morning, she’d gaze up at the rafters for a moment before averting her eyes with a shudder, dismissing his inquest into her wellbeing with a simple ‘I don’t like it’. She even refused his eggs. His eggs.
After hearing the news, Elliot had expected at least some sort of behavioural change. Shot in the head and is fine were rarely found in the same sentence. Getting shot in the arm had been enough to leave him at the mercy of Evalyn’s cooking for a week and out of commission for a month. Yet, when Elvera knocked on his door that morning, Iris was still Iris. She ate with the same appetite as she always would, if not for refusing the eggs.
“Iris? Evalyn asked me to try and train you. You remember hearing about that?”
Iris nodded timidly. ‘Training so far for her had not all been pleasant memories’, would be putting it lightly. Something lurking in the crevices of her mind held the key to her power, and like a fail-safe mechanism, lashed out at any attempt to use it.
“I can’t train you on anything magic-related, but basic close-quarters combat is something all pilots learn in case they crash," he explained, untying his apron. "Plus, it’s how Evalyn keeps me in shape.”
The word ‘basic’ seemed to put Iris at ease, only impressing Elliot at how blazingly fast she was grasping the language, like she was remembering, rather than learning.
“What is Evalyn’s magic?”
“What do you mean? It’s the golden shapes that she…you know…does stuff with.”
“No. What Spirit was it? What did it do?”
She presumably knew the fundamental principle of movement, using magic to heat up, cool down, blow wind, and even fly.
“It is very vague, isn’t it?” Elliot said as he wiped his hands on a towel and hung it back on the oven handle. Sitting down at the table, he thought up a way to explain. He had a way with words, at least he liked to think he did. Making something simple enough for a child to understand was not exactly his forte, but he figured it was not so different from telling a story.
“Do you know what a dandelion is? The yellow flowers out there?”
Iris glanced outside, squinted, then nodded.
“Come spring, those dandelions turn white. This little sphere of seeds, each with its own parachute. Sometimes, people like to pick them and blow on them. The seeds then fly, and the person who blew on it makes a wish.”
A wish. Iris nodded along in understanding much to Elliot’s relief. Between her frequent questions regarding Evalyn, and Iris’s rather idiosyncratic philosophy-oriented Pattern Reading material, he could surmise it was a concept she was growing familiar with more than anything else.
“People make wishes on dandelions, stars, and candles that stick out of birthday cakes. But none of them truly work. At least, I don’t think they do. But do you want to know what does work?”
“What?”
“Wishing on Darminjun. The Wishing Whale. A powerful, old Spirit that only appears when someone’s wish is strong enough. Evalyn met him one day, one of the hardest days of her life, the first of many, and he let her have one wish.”
“What was it?”
“Power.”
“Why?”
Elliot moved around the table and crouched in front of Iris. He patted down her jacket, checking that everything was in its correct place. A stalling method while he thought.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
“I think that’s something she should tell you. Ask her when she comes back. For now, let’s go outside.”
Iris sighed and pulled a face of blatant dissatisfaction. Elliot could lie to himself and say he felt guilty, but playing with her in such a way was much more entertaining. Adults were annoying, he would have to agree.
“What would you wish for?”
“What would I wish for?” Elliot asked, stepping out onto the balcony. Elliot paused mid-stride, pleasantly surprised by the question. He had assumed he was an intermediary measure to learn more about Evalyn while the woman herself wasn’t present, but apparently his new ward showed interest in him, albeit likely not to the same degree. After all, what was there to say? Of the hardship, pain, loss, happiness, bliss he had experienced….
“You know, there was this thing called a no-stick pan advertised on the radio, and I was just thinking how good exactly a few extra thousand Ixa in my wallet would be right now. Anyway!”
He swung his body past the glass doorways and into the grassy plain, just as the wind began to pick up. Iris scampered after him, pulling on her boots. She followed his movements onto the short grass, her solid metal heels making dents in the softness of the green.
“Combat! Where do we start?” Elliot hollered against the wind. He held up two fists to Iris, confusing the girl with a sudden sign of aggression. He beckoned her forward, letting her make the first move.
“No magic, just your body.”
Iris hesitated at first, but eventually yielded to his brashness, a repeating trend. She unenthusiastically ran forward and punched Elliot square in the stomach. She looked up, expecting feedback, but he simply smiled back.
“What next?”
She threw another punch.
“What now?”
She eyed him up and down, looking for somewhere else to attack. She took her right foot and stomped on his left. This time he did not ask her what her plan was and simply moved. He kicked up her foot, undoing her balance and hooking the inside of her leg just for good measure. He watched as the girl flailed her arms, grasping at thin air for something to hold onto.
She squinted her eyes as Elliot manoeuvred around her. Messing with her was exhilarating, almost as much as it was with Evalyn. But hard lessons did not need to be taught with pain; that was for later in life.
Iris fell into his arms, rebounding with a light puff as though she weight nothing at all. Her body was still tense as though playing dead, then she opened her eyes.
“You golden?”
Iris nodded.
“All right then.”
He gave her body the momentum it needed to stand up straight, and he returned to his stance.
“When you’re fighting someone like this, if they have a knife or even magic, you can’t just attack however you feel. Each attack has to have both the intention of doing damage and a follow-up in case that damage isn’t dealt. That way, the only thing that can stop you is your opponent. Now, what do you do if they stop you?”
“You-”
“Exactly right. You counter and follow up intending to do damage. What if they try and hit you back?”
“You-”
“You do everything you can to set up your next attack. If it’ll neutralise you, avoid it. If it won’t, use that to your advantage-”
“And hit them!”
Elliot smiled, satisfied.
“Good,” he praised. “When you fight, you can’t afford any wasted movements. If you can, that’s what we call a martial art.”
No wasted movements, a phrase he had long since engrained into his core. Elliot had practiced such while flying, and it permeated his everyday life. When he did anything, not a single move had no purpose. Even when he swung his legs to walk, the momentum would carry the rest of his body forward.
Yet he still found himself tired.
“Now, I don’t care what you do or how you do it. Techniques and forms might be useful, but if you don’t know how to react when they’re broken, then there is no point. So, let’s do this again!”
The final sentence he shouted over the wind seemed to compel her, and the wind itself made her restless. A westerly that had guided civilisation for millennia now carried the sound of small hands, fighting back against bigger ones.
“Lunch?” was the cowbell signalling the end of Iris’s training session. She lay flat on the ground, all her muscles failing to defeat gravity’s pull. Her small chest heaved for fresh air, and her forearms were sweating like pigs, even after discarding her jacket.
The prospect of food lifted her head, but not her body. She had no intention of picking out the grass stuck in her hair anytime soon, and the mere idea of standing was a far-off dream.
Elliot looked down, sweat on his brow and a few bruises across his body. He had acted as her punching bag for the most part, occasionally sweeping her off her feet or flicking her forehead when she least expected it. Iris now had him pegged as an excellent instructor, even if sparring was not his forte. Instructing was his job, after all.
He stepped over her body and offered her a hand. She summoned the remainder of her strength to lift her arm, enough for him to grab onto and pull. She had started to understand the concept of following up a blow with another but not yet how to react to an opponent’s blow, let alone predict one.
She would have to leave it for next time as her two aching legs trudged back inside, losing their last spurt of strength by the couch, making her collapse onto the cushions. Elliot returned to the kitchen once more and began to reheat breakfast and toast some bread.
“Iris? Can I ask you something?” he said over the sizzling meat in his pan. “When Evalyn first met you, she said you could climb buildings and flail giant knives at her without hesitation. What happened?”
What happened? Iris thought. He was right. Just a week prior, her delusions had never surfaced as often or as intensely as they did now. It had only started when she stared into Evalyn’s eyes for the first time, as if those sparkling orbs of autumn had given her a conscience. To her, they used to be just another set of limbs, but now her magic was entirely foreign. Alien. She could perceive it for what it was.
“I’m scared. It was normal…but not now.”
“But it is, isn’t it?”
Elliot lifted the pan off the stove and dumped its contents straight onto two plates, prepared with two pieces of toast each. He walked over and sat beside her, right by her head.
“Sure, it’s dangerous, but hell, anything is. Take the pilots who test-fly brand-new planes. It’s a dangerous job, but if they don’t at least trust the people who designed it and put it together, they’d never set foot in it in the first place. Same with cars, bikes, and even walking. Sure, accidents do happen, sometimes even frequently. But no one would get anywhere if they didn’t put their faith in the fact it could work out. They do it with confidence, and eventually, it works.”
But Iris had no clue where to place her faith. Whatever was behind the far door at the end of the hallway was probably the last thing she wanted to trust.
“Blind faith is never a good thing, and it has made people all the worse for it, in many cases. Thinking that it will never happen to you is a mistake. But I’d like to think the trust I put in the hundreds of crew on the Steel Whale isn’t blind. And if you believe that the trust you can put in yourself isn’t a blind trust, then you’re that much closer to controlling your power.”
His hands finished putting a rudimentary sandwich together, and he bit into it. Talking through the mouthful as he chewed.
“Even if you don’t trust your power, you have to trust that you can control it. I’m in the lucky position that I can put my trust in my machine, and I’m overconfident in my abilities. Don’t be like me, though,” he chuckled.
Putting trust in herself did not make much sense when she had no clue who she was. But perhaps that did not matter as much as trusting her abilities. Perhaps, the former would come naturally if she focused on the latter.
“Don’t think too hard about it. When you start doing that, then you begin to doubt yourself.”
She strained and sat upright, taking the food on her plate and biting into it. Finally realising exactly how famished she was, she began to demolish the meal, much to Elliot’s amusement. He resolved to clear his own before it was time to go out again.
Apart from trying to train Iris the best he could, Evalyn had given him one more task to fulfil before his week off was over. He had dressed as properly as his wardrobe would allow him. But he had given up on Iris. She was adamant in her field jacket, and he had yielded quickly, figuring it did not matter too much what she wore.
He had stepped out of the house and onto Excala’s streets, taking the same path he had taken a few days prior. However, this time, instead of continuing towards the station, he took an extra turn much to Iris’s confusion, but even she caught on quickly.
Elliot placed himself in front of the apartment door, his eyes level with the small brass plate. ‘Farehn’ was engraved on it in a blocky, stock standard lettering. He knocked twice, as politely as he could, but a few moments passed in silence, so he tried again. The latch on the other side clicked loose, and the door opened. A bone-white mask peered out from the other side.
“Mrs Farehn, I’m here on behalf of Evalyn Hardridge. The P.I. you hired?”
The door opened the rest of the way, and Mrs Farehn let them through. She silently beckoned them into a seat on the sofa while she took a chair for herself. She had no energy to offer them anything to eat or drink, but Elliot did not blame her in the slightest.
“Have you been taking care of yourself, ma’am?” Elliot asked her, but he only got a dismissive nod in reply. Seeing that there was not much of a conversation to be had on the topic, he got down to business.
“The Royal Intelligence Bureau or the Sidos Embassy will come to see you shortly, but my wife figured it’s best to hear it from her first. Or, well, someone close to her. Where do I start….” Elliot shifted himself on the sofa and readjusted his sleeves. “Your son was found, roughly three days ago from now. My wife saw him leaving from the address you gave us. After that, we have not seen him since, but we have a strong, almost certain reason to believe he’s been caught up in a terrorist ploy.”
She turned to him, perhaps the first movement of hers in months that had not travelled at a snail’s pace.
“Excuse me?” she whispered.
“We are almost certain that he, along with many other people of his calibre, were forced into building and training men to use highly specialised weaponry. Through some course of events, he was taken elsewhere. But we believe him to be still alive.”
Elliot leaned forward and placed a hand on her armrest, a painful centimetre from her hand. Rehearsed; it wasn’t the first time he had to deliver such grim news. The only difference was the glimmer of hope that would ordinarily be absent entirely. Yet no matter how rehearsed, there seemed to always be a shaking of his fingers, reminding him that the gesture was genuine.
“Due to the situation, the case has passed from my wife to the relevant authorities, while the government has hired her to investigate the suspected terrorist ploy. However, I can assure you, your son will be in good hands, ma’am. You will see him again.”