Iris sat with Elliot, the only neutral enough party in the room. Evalyn’s face had knotted for much longer than Iris was used to, and she was beginning to worry if the lines across her face would be permanent. As the discourse simmered on low heat, she clutched the edge of Elliot’s sleeve.
As far as Iris could care to remember, he had always been somewhere. Nothing more, nothing less. Comforting neutrality when weight was shifting left or right. Perhaps his sloth-like tendencies prevented him from choosing one in time.
“Mind Palace work is dangerous, Liam.”
“You don't need to tell me that. You know how bad mine can be.”
“What if hers is worse?”
The back and forth between the two had been punctual, sentences flying like jabs in a sparring match. Iris had begun to pull the punches together, but the entire pattern was still incomplete. Without it, Iris could barely follow.
"Worse? Evalyn you know how many Mind Palaces there are. What are the chances that hers is that dangerous?"
“I'd bet on it, Liam,” Evalyn said with absolute clarity. Liam's shifting glare questioned her, but she did not budge. Her defensive frame was strong.
“I have dreams,” Iris said, breaking the tension. “Dreams about this hallway, with doors going down either side and a person in the corner. I don’t know if that person is dead or alive, but it moves.”
“What’s behind the doors?” Liam asked, softly.
“I’ve opened one. It opened to the top of the Northern Chain Ridge. I tried walking through it, but I died.”
“You…you what?”
“It was too cold, and I died. My body is still there.”
Liam retreated into his own mind, brow furrowing as he pieced together the puzzle, but none of the pieces matched.
“How do you die in your own mind?”
“That’s why I think there’s something else to it. Iris is being shown something.”
“Then that’s all the more reason to train her, is it not? If she has such a dangerous Mind Palace, leaving it to her subconscious is the worst thing we could do.”
“I don’t want to pressure her,” Evalyn muttered.
“And you should not neglect her either,” Liam countered.
Iris felt Elliot’s hand wrap around hers, cradling it as he leaned over.
“What do you want to do, Iris?” he asked. “There’s danger involved, but there are also people here to help you if it gets too scary. You’ll be able to find out more about yourself and how to accept it.”
“I’ve tried controlling it myself, but I-”
“Not controlling, accepting. If you ride a bicycle and head over a bump, trying to force it steady will only worsen things. You have to let things play out for that split second and react accordingly. You don’t stop a river from flooding a town, you redirect it away.”
The words were gentler on Iris’s ears than she was used to. The feeling of riding a bicycle escaped her, but the retention of movement in the river's path did not.
“I want to try that,” Iris muttered. She glanced at Evalyn, who pursed her lips, then at Liam, who showed his approval. Elliot, however, patted her head, and said nothing more of the situation, as if he had no part in the decision of it. He had given the river two options of where to flow for a crucial split second and reacted accordingly.
A night had been surrendered to sleep, and Elliot had left to fulfil his assignment in the morning, right as promised. Evalyn had watched him wave a hand to Liam, felt him hug her close, and heard him whisper to Iris some more words of strength.
She clung onto his sleeve for an awkward extra second, but let go once his hand found her head for another time. Small, new interactions between the two were becoming more and more commonplace. As each passed, and she was but a passive observer, it became clear that she was missing something Elliot was seeing.
“Doing this anywhere in the city is going to ring alarm bells. Higher Order Spirits are Aether Sommeliers, they’ll pick up on such a high concentration immediately,” Liam explained from the hotel room’s balcony.
“How much does Mind Palace work use?” Iris asked Evalyn.
“Not exactly a healthy amount...”
“Like alcohol then.”
“Well...there isn’t a healthy amount of alcohol to begin with.”
“Nonsense,” Liam interjected, “speaking of alcohol, I’m meeting with my client tonight. I’ll try and see if I can pick up anything noteworthy.”
“And if not?” Evalyn asked.
“If not, then you do what you want. Tail him, beat the crap out of him. If you’re bringing Iris along, you’ll have to wait outside.”
“That sounds doable,” she concluded, looking at Iris to confirm their common understanding.
“Just make sure you tail him well. He’s a pretty capable evader.”
“Shadow magic?”
“Seems like he can at least duck in and out of them. If this was truly at night, it wouldn’t be an issue, but with the light of the city...”
“There are shadows casted everywhere. The only way to track him would be to follow his Aether.”
“Which would mean using a bit of your own...”
An even riskier game than an ordinary cat and mouse. She’d be trailing blood every time she hunted, and there were plenty of sharks in the water. A single report could stamp her death warrant then and there, and those weren't exactly good publicity.
She looked at Iris once more, reconsidering the validity of Liam’s perspective. Their world was merciless.
“I can’t let this slip by,” she concluded. “Whoever knows my identity got it from S.H.I.A. Otherwise, they would have acted on it sooner. The timing is too coincidental. It’s not unreasonable to make the connection from our mystery client to whoever set the deal up between the two rebel groups.”
“And therefore, those missing hostages,” Liam said. “What if you’re wrong?”
“There are other investigators in the city already, not even counting the hired Wizard and Witch help. No one’s going to bat an eye if I divert my attention a little.”
“It’s settled then,” Liam said, “then let’s begin.”
“Spirits, especially the powerful ones are prideful. It’s like a trademark. When you reach a similar power, you pull into a small bubble where you can exercise that power. The one thing they won’t let you do is use your full potential in the real world.”
The pipe was again in Liam’s mouth while he paced back and forth. So far, the seldom travelled dirt road on the city's outskirts faithfully kept their identities a secret. Evalyn kept her body temperature as regulated as she could manage. Deserts weren’t a first for her, but certainly not something she was used to. She kept her attention on Iris. Between the water, the recently purchased sun hat and the field jacket, she had little reason to worry about sunstroke, but overthinking things was less dangerous than under-preparing.
“Many Wizards and Witches had no idea their power could reach such heights until Evalyn came along.”
Evalyn felt Iris’s look, the one she always gave whenever there was a missing book inside her head's library.
“I was the first Witch to open her Mind Palace. It was the first thing I did, and for a while, it was all I could do. That in itself was a horrible experience."
“And I think Iris might be the same,” Liam suggested, the smoke from his pipe pluming, more intensely now. “If we can't push ourselves further to improve, then we must see where we must pull back from.”
In other words, Iris would understand what she could truly do, and learn to control it from there. It was a road Evalyn had walked once before, but accepting something was a lot harder than empowering it. And Evalyn was lucky, she could consider her power a friend.
“And to do that, we have to force it open,” Liam said. “You know what that entails, Iris. We have to reach that state you described when your power saved you of its own volition.”
Iris nodded. A steady but nervous conviction about her, one that Evalyn could barely stand to accept.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
The smoke from his pipe began to spark. At first, only a small melody to accompany the wind, but eventually, it decided that was not enough. It wished to overpower it. Overpower everything.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Ring of fire. Circle of hell.
He tore the pipe from his mouth and inhaled like a giant through his nostrils. His chest grew, bones creaked, and ribs strained as his lungs expanded.
And he let it go.
A gust of fire.
A hail of destructive force.
The alive things travelled in a winding circle around the three, as the smoke blocked their perception of the outside world. Smoke and fire. Eternal fire.
Iris was in hell. And it was closing in on its target.
Through the ash filling her synapses, Iris could only think of the words Evalyn had spoken before this, before the heat stung her eyes.
He isn’t a normal Wizard. He found his powers through ritual.
A ritual of smoke and fire, she could see it now. She could see the inferno they would walk into, the blood that would spill from their wrists.
They kill themselves in ritual and send themselves to hell.
Walking through nothing were countless souls, and Iris felt her feet joining them. She had felt this feeling before. She had died once...
No. She had died twice already.
The warriors of Aerilia present themselves to their god and ask for eternal fire that burns on water.
She felt herself slipping, her conscience fading as her body died. Nerves surrendered to the dull static that was the smoke. To the coals that burnt the soles of her feet. She felt trapped in her own body as its own synapses began to kill themselves, accepting their fate.
They will walk through flames barefoot, and dance with the embers until they can no more. And if they are worthy of life, the Spirit of Hell does not take theirs just yet.
She wanted to scream, but her lips would not move. She had no mouth, no eyes, no ears. Her hands and feet were charred, and her legs would not respond to her. They would simply keep moving, and moving, and moving, and moving, and moving, and moving-
Would you like to be saved?
Iris found the voice still alive in her few remaining cells. She cried out, with everything left in her being.
Yes.
Hell was overpowered. The world of death was overpowered. The reality of the end was overpowered by the farce that was Iris’s mind. Four plywood stage dressings stood like quiet bastion walls. The crackling of fire was snuffed out in an instant as the space outside receded into pure and utter inexistence.
They were in Iris’s mind. In her Mind Palace. The bristling carpet and brassy lighting were disgusting, but almost comforting after what Evalyn imagined Iris must have gone through. Albeit in the way the hands of a thief would be comforting in the face of a murderer.
The feelings of taking the same abuse herself flooded back into her nerves, as they remembered a pain they had wished to never experience again.
“Iris!” she cried, barely able to control herself. She ran up to the girl and grabbed her shoulders, swivelling her around. She scanned her face again. The purple eyes, silver hair and fragile cheekbones. They were all there under the wide-brim sun hat.
“I’m okay now, but I’d rather not do that again,” she admitted, blinking rapidly and doing a once-over of her own body. A remarkably mute reaction.
“Good,” Evalyn said, breathing out her worry in a single sigh. “Good.”
“Where the fuck are we…” Liam uttered. He was still standing, the godforsaken pipe still sticking out of his mouth.
“My dreams. This is where they happen,” Iris said, as Liam took several cautious steps down the hallway, reaching the first door and pausing.
“Iris, this is your Mind Palace. It’s a sensory manifestation of the height of your power, but everything is closed off.”
Except one. One door that he pushed open with the tips of his soot-covered fingers, inviting an unruly chill that contrasted the heat of moments ago. Evalyn felt her fingers snapping like a glass mug. Even if she was not tortured directly, the flames had lapped at her skin nonetheless.
“Evalyn, I’m not going to let you see this. Just saying,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s where I died,” Iris whispered. “There’s a body in there.”
Evalyn felt the information more than she heard it. She had heard it, many times before. The cold that had taken Iris, or at least a projection of her. The sickly snow refused to bury her completely, lest the message slip by those who would be most affected by it. She wanted to go find her, jump into the snow and look for her ward, but she understood that her ward lived in between her fingers. She could be sure, or at least she had to be.
Liam pressed the door open further.
“This is the Northern Chain Ridge. This is the peak of Mount Pretikhan, but beyond that…it’s not desert.”
“What is it?” Evalyn asked cautiously.
“It’s green. Fields of green. And a city…at least I think it’s a city. If it is, it’s not of human design.”
“Spirit architecture?” Evalyn asked.
“Has to be, and the fact that we don’t know what it looks like means its old Spirit Country. If the Queen is willing, she may be able to tell you more.”
By Iris's accounts, Amestris had been able to tame Iris's Mind Palace, but if she had absolute control would depend most likely on the day of the week, knowing her.
“Are these memories?” Evalyn asked Iris this time.
“No. I don’t remember a city like that. If they are memories, then they aren’t mine.”
Something else’s memories lived inside her Mind Palace. This was not exclusively Iris’s space.
Liam stepped across the hallway to the adjacent door, tugging on the dull brass knob.
“Stop!” Iris shrieked.
Fear. Sincere fear. The most genuine fear that Evalyn had ever seen in her life. A look of fear that would give murderers nightmares.
“Please,” she begged of Liam. “Don’t.”
Liam stopped dead in his tracks, hands still wrapped around the handle.
“Iris, if there are more clues behind these doors, they might be the only way to know about your power.”
“But-”
“I will not let you do anything unless you can control yourself. As long as you can’t keep yourself on a leash, you are a danger to everyone you have met and will ever meet, including Evalyn.”
“Iris,” Evalyn began to say, trying to reassure her, but Liam would not let her.
“Evalyn. I understand, but not right now.”
She withdrew, unable to speak up against her mentor, even if that relationship had ended years ago. She could only think of Iris, and the wash of realisation that was going over her head. The realisation that she was a danger. More dangerous than anything the world had ever seen.
“Okay…” she said. Her message was barely audible, but her lips forced them into existence, and that was good enough for Liam.
“Thank you, Iris,” he said.
They watched as he moved to turn the doorknob, but the click was late. In fact, it never came. Liam realised such and tried again, but the knob would not budge.
“Iris, come here,” he said, relinquishing his position. Iris walked up to him and, hesitating, tried the door herself, yet it would not open. It denied her. Her own mind denied her.
Open a door Iris, open your favourite one.
Eyes wide open, but they still could not see. Two figures with white fabric stitched to their faces emerged from the corners even the light could not touch. Two haunting bodies. It would have been wrong to call them anything more.
“What the fuck…” Liam uttered, as his pipe began to flare up once again.
The smoke was snuffed before it sparked, never feeling the warmth of birth.
“I can’t do anything, Iris’s Mind Palace is already stronger than mine,” Liam whispered.
The two figures, they were familiar.
The trench coat on the first.
The button-up shirt on the second.
Their hair, if not mangled, was familiar.
It was her. Her and Elliot. A destroyed visage of herself and Elliot.
“Why are you moving?” Iris whispered. “Why are you moving why are you moving why are you moving why are you moving why are you moving-”
The figures floated closer as the doors of the hallways creaked open, mocking the sound of Liam’s creaking ribcage. The ungodly doors mocked hell itself as uncomfortably human hands reached out from them.
Missing nails.
Blank fingerprints.
Nothing but flesh and bone and blood.
Iris was turning purple. Disappearing. Her hair was betraying her.
Quicker. Quicker. Racing up her back, hunting for her scalp.
Liam had been bested by something for the first time since Evalyn could remember. Bested was not a fair word. It did not capture the cruelty of how he was being hunted.
Evalyn was witnessing an execution.
Yet she would not have it.
She would not let harm come to anyone. Even if Iris was the perpetrator. Especially if Iris was a victim.
"Act V: Resolution."
Whatever Iris felt when heard the words autumn, was not influenced by the season itself. She knew not of the temperature change, the woollen clothing brushing against one’s skin or the colour of the trees.
All she knew was her. Evalyn Hardridge. All she knew of autumn was her softly maple hair and her marble-like eyes dyed with the very essence of whatever the six-letter word meant. All she knew of was the playful chill that another’s embrace could easily remedy, and the constant motion of leaves, each one finding its final place.
Evalyn’s Mind Palace encapsulated that perfectly.
She stood, still shaking in her boots as the comforting air tried to ease her quaking knees. Her hands came down from her face, finding no need to protect it anymore, and she was greeted with a sea of calm.
A single loose pathway stretched endlessly forward, and endlessly backward. On either side was a deep and eternal forest. Trees of all shapes and sizes adorned their beautifully aged leaves with pride, and willed Iris to comfort.
A hand slid beside hers with the same intentions as the smiling trees. She looked up and saw Evalyn breathing in deeply.
“Maybe it's just a difference in experience for now, but it still looks like I’m ahead of you, Iris,” she smiled.
“Ah, crap…” Liam said, doubling over his knees and exhaling a tense breath. “Thanks, Evalyn.”
“Anytime.”
Iris could not stop herself from savouring every moment, and she breathed in deeply the atmosphere of the new environment, hoping to replace any smoke or stale air. Crisply neutral, as if it invited its own interpretation.
“I was the first Witch to hail from a nation with very little magic. I was not used to how it felt or behaved, while people like Liam were desensitised to it. Because of that, I could sense it acutely, yet not control it whatsoever. I think that has something to do with why I had to train like I did. Maybe you’re the same.”
Maybe Iris was, and she was happy with that. She was happy that she no longer felt alone.
Evalyn turned around to a bench sitting beside the pathway.
“Hi old man,” she said, gently.
Iris tilted her head and found an elderly gentleman sitting on the edge of the bench.
“I always like his suits,” Liam mused, taking off his own trench coat to reveal a navy suit of his own, although the styles differed greatly. Liam wore Iris’s image of a suit, yet the old man’s seemed more dated. The coat ended abruptly at the front yet continued like tails on his backside. The sleeves were tight, the collar was wide, and he was accompanied by a cane and a black top hat, resting on his lap.
“May I sit down?” Liam asked the old man, who inhaled deeply before finally opening his eyes.
“Sit downwind, you smell of smoke. All that Aerilian Fire mustn't be doing your fabrics any favours,” he said in a raspy voice. With the wave of his top hat, the bench extended to his right, and Liam took a grateful seat down.
"It is a gift from Hell. He would not be so happy if I refused to use it."
“You, ladies, may sit here,” the old man said, inviting Iris and Evalyn to sit on his left. Evalyn egged her on, and Iris sat down.
As she did, he inhaled again.
“Forgive me for my discourtesy, young lady, but I don’t sense the air of…youth around you.”
Iris watched the aged man, and he watched back through the sagging of his eyelids. Rainbow-white eyes adorned his vision with brilliant wisdom.
“How old do I seem?”
“Frankly,” the old man said, smacking his lips, “older than me…”
“Are you sure?” Evalyn whispered.
“Yes. I believe that would narrow down your search significantly.”
If this was Evalyn’s Mind Palace, then there was only a single thing that could reside here, other than Evalyn herself.
“You’re the Wishing Whale?” Iris asked.
“I represent unattainable desire, yes,” he smiled.
“Darminjung, do you know anything about her?” Evalyn asked slowly, caring not to raise her voice too loud. The old Spirit thought on it but shook his head.
“I do not have a memory outside the wishes I grant. I do not have any form unless someone wishes it, after all. All I can say for certain is that young Iris here is older than the concept of human or Spirit desire.”
Evalyn was at a loss for words, and Liam’s expression looked as though the sand of the desert three layers outside was grinding his gears to a halt.
Older than desire. What was older than that?
“Evalyn,” Liam started, “I can’t recommend Iris following you in your jobs if that’s the state of her Mind Palace. There’s clearly something else in there,” he said, and rightly so. Iris knew this more than anyone, but she could not bring herself to agree. Iris knew she could be a danger, but that hint of chance was enough for her to recognise the hand she had extended. They had tried to protect Evalyn and stop her from leaving. That was real, and that was redeemable.
“Leave her be, smokestack,” the Wishing Whale said, “if we were basing things off danger, none of you would be so friendly with the state. I imagine that’s why such a powerful Spirit of Protection decided not to kill her.”
“But-”
“If a Spirit as aggressive in her methods as her chose not to kill her, then I imagine there was some faith to be had. Perhaps she might cause great distress but will be needed nonetheless.”
He turned his gaze upon Evalyn, and Evalyn specifically.
“So, raise her well. This family will not leave you quite so soon.”
The hand holding Iris’s tightened defiantly as if closing itself off to words it did not want to hear.
“It was lovely meeting you all. Best of luck.”