Monday, January 11, 2021

3: the exam

 

6PM, Winnow, navigation room. Ysh’vanna taps on the email icon, scrolls down a kilometre-long list of junk, then empties her entire inbox into the trash. She taps back into her draft right after. Her fingers hover over the keyboard, poised to type—yet she can’t figure out for the life of her what she should be typing.

Her eyes flit over to Auren. The thought of asking the big, sensitive Gallian for help crosses her mind for only the briefest of seconds before she wipes it clean from her head with a quick shake. He’s an Eldrak Gallian. His only parental figure growing up had been the ethereal world in its raw, unfiltered glory—and you can’t exactly email a mountain.

She rubs her face. The email window closes and the navigation panel flickers to a dark blue. “Sure wonder how Avett’s faring with Lili,” she mumbles.

Auren answers, “I would imagine them to be just fine, Ysh’vanna.” 

That dark, sinister feeling’s starting to get really uncomfortable in her stomach. “If Avett doesn’t pull it off—” She stops herself. She’s spiralling again. 

“Then I will train her myself. Perhaps you should focus on your own ordeals. Such as that email to your mother.”

“You saw,” she says. Her hand slaps the table as she picks herself up from the seat. “Well, whatever. I’ll just get it done before our mandatory leave, it’s—whatever.”

Auren looks like he’s about to say something, but he looks away from Ysh’vanna at the last second. “Avett… is a smart boy. I trust in him, more than I would like to admit. You should do the same.”

She forces a smile. As she always does. “Right. Believe in Avett.”

—  

“How many motherfucking drinks can you fuckin’ hold down, princess?!” 

Fourth shot. Fifth shot. If Lili drinks them all in quick succession, she won’t feel the effects of the alcohol, allowing her to quickly slam back another three or so before she starts getting faint. The next shot’s scent shoots straight up her nostrils, leaving her with a crazy migraine; she has to pinch her nose just to get it down. The bartender clicks his tongue and returns to his idle conversation with a ram-horned woman; Palerians, she’d learned that they were called. She’s dressed to impress. Maybe Lili should find some new clothes to wear—her baggy sweater and ankle-length jeans are just not cutting it here.

But she digresses. Seventh shot—shit. By the eighth, Avett’s finally cracked and holding her wrist flush against the table. “Okay, okay—I get it. You drink. That’s enough.” 

Drink? She’s hardly even feeling that sweet spot between feeling buzzed and being absolutely trashed. “I don’t feel anything,” she admits.

“Seriously? Is your liver made out of iron?” He raises an eyebrow and places a hand against her forehead. Lili hadn’t been watching, but he’s definitely had more than one shot. “Are you meant to be flushing like that?”

“Don’t feel anything after Ava died.”

She senses the concern in his eyes. Shit. Gotta backpedal fast. “I meant alcohol doesn’t hit as hard anymore. I dunno why.”

“Who’s Ava?” he asks after a while.

She stares down the piss-yellow liquid in her shot glass. Ava. Ava. Her name sends cascades of fire licking up her back and into her head, makes her teeth clack together. She hates her. She’s well aware of what she’d done to her for eighteen years. So why can’t she fucking forget her? Why is it that whenever she’s upset, she can hear this bitch’s voice in her head, talking and talk— 

Lili's wings unfurl, glowing a beautiful cyan blue. Her ether rushes down her veins and into her hands, meeting her newfound anger like she’s trying to mix diluted watercolours together. They roll and collide into each other; they eddy and turn to brown.

The shot glass explodes into tiny shards. Pain arcs through her hands. Blood follows not a moment after.

Avett jumps back. He spares one look at the bartender—still chatting away with the Palerian woman—before sliding off his seat and guiding Lili out of the bar by the shoulders. Once they’re well and clear of the bar’s golden glow, he guides her body down against a wall, underneath a faintly flickering lamp post. 

“Hand. Out.” 

When Lili doesn’t respond, he wraps his fingers around her wrist again and pulls it out into the open himself. It’s then that she realises that he’s got a pair of dull tweezers.

“Fuck. I’m fine.” She makes no effort to pull her hand back.

Sharp, red-hot pain sparks through her hand again. Avett lifts something into the air—a small cut of glass, glittering in the shitty lighting.

She grits her teeth. “I can do it myself.”

“Seven shots in? Nice try.” He drops the shard and starts picking at another.

“Why do you care so much?” she asks.

“Because,” he answers. Another bright shock of pain spreads outward; Lili’s jaw stiffens. “You’re fucking injured.”

She blinks; her eyes stay closed for a millisecond too long. “I’m not asking about that. You changed your mind about me so quickly at the store.” A one-eighty heel turn like that feels off. People don’t just change convictions like clothes. 

Avett taps his soles against the pavement. “You’re a lot more aware of things than you let on, princess.”

“I’m drunk.” She shrugs. “I was worried I was wrong… but obviously I’m not worried anymore.”

He sighs, his tweezers stopping their prolonged assault against a particularly deep shard. “Had a bad run-in with some humans. My first day here. I was nineteen. I’d heard from my seniors that the majority of humans that I’d meet on Earth would be less than hospitable towards off-landers… but—fuck. We had to stop in the Hive for some quick repairs, but I got curious and snuck off into one of the stores.”

Lili’s reminded all too soon of her own encounter with the Draconian store owner. 

Avett continues—the shard pops free from her skin. “Don’t mean to brag, but that day? Found out just how far you could get with an empty blaster and some fast legwork.” 

Silence. Even as the alcohol starts to make its grand, numbing tour around her body, she can’t think of anything witty to say. Even in her current state, she knows what he’s planning; behind those honest words is a test to see if she’ll give a single shit about how he came to be the asshole he was today. If she’ll side with her own people—or with him. “So that’s why you’re wary of me.”

“I’m wary of you because you look like the type of person who’ll just run into something, guns blazing, without thinking.” Another shard comes free—this time, she winces. Avett presses a ball of cotton into her palm. “Now I know that you think. You’ve just got poor judgement. But I’m sorry for shoving a gun into your mouth, if that’s what you’re referring to.”

Ouch. Brutally honest, and he’s not even four shots of hard liquor in. She’s gotta change the conversation before it ends with him berating her to no end. After several beats of silence, she says, “I used to fantasise about stuff like this.” 

“What, slamming seven shots in front of a handsome, strapping, capable lad?” His ears twitch.

Ignored. She continues, “I went to an all-girls high school, so shitty young adult novels were all I had. I always… had this fantasy that a dark prince with tousled hair and light stubble would just sweep me up at the annual spring ball, and we’d dance around our emotions—pretending to hate each other, because loving the other person was just too hard to accept.” It’s not as if she means any of the stuff she’s laying down, but at that moment she lets her eyes float towards Avett’s in the most earnest way possible. 

It works. His grip tightens, just a little. Then, with a sudden jerk, he quite literally wrestles another shard out of her skin, this time with little to no care for her wellbeing at all. She winces. At least he’s distracted. “You’re a fucking deviant. Sheltered to shit. You’ve got no idea of how you’re meant to talk to guys, do you.”

“I dunno how to talk to anybody anymore, really.”

“Can tell.”

The lights are so unfairly bright when she looks out onto the street. They’d chosen a well known area, far from the narrow streets and shady, towering apartments. For good reason too—she hadn’t realised that at exactly 6PM, the overhead floodlights would turn off and the street lamps would flicker on, simulating a faux day-to-night cycle within the sanctuary. The people around them have changed from young, strapping mercenaries to people in tight pencil skirts, in clothing that just seems to glow rebelliously against the backdrop of the night. 

Finally, after what seems to be an eternity of sudden pains and bloody glass shards, Avett starts to wrap his bandages around her hand. His leather gloves feel warm against her pulsating skin. 

“Don’t you hate me?” Lili mumbles. 

“You asking because you want approval, or because you’re thinking about getting off to it later?”

It feels unbearably hot. Maybe doing seven shots of hard liquor back to back hadn’t been the best idea after all. “Asking for a friend.”

He knots the bandage. “Figure it out yourself when you’re sober.”

 —

Day two of being in Australia. Ysh’vanna’s driven them all the way out to an empty spread of grass—or at least, that’s what Lili had seen at first. When the ship draws closer to land, its engines whirring into action, she sees the land for what it actually is. Or was; a forest, each tree levelled to the ground. She hadn’t seen earlier because of the overgrown grass, encroached on the stumps like knock-off rows of ivy.

Not surprisingly, when Lili comes to pick Avett out of bed, his ears start twitching uncontrollably at her mere footsteps. A groan leaves his lips not a moment after. “Aren’t you hungover?” he asks.

Lili shrugs. He mumbles something incoherent under his breath and rolls over. Guess he won’t be training her today.

Good thing there’s Auren. Getting him to go outside had been easier than the former.

The Gallian man is dressed in a perfectly ironed-out red cape that buttons up on the side. He’s wearing something with long sleeves underneath, and for pants, he’s got a pair of baggy slacks that taper at the end near his shins. His slender arms are folded. “I am surprised that you are not hungover, Lili. I did, however, expect you to have better judgement than to drink after training.”

She looks to her left hand—still bandaged, though she knows that if she lets Auren look too closely, he’ll know that it’s not a sparring injury. She hides it behind her back. “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have let Avett talk me into it.”

“What matters now is that you are here.” He readies himself, though it’s not a fighting stance that he’s assuming—he folds his arms in front of him. “I want you to hit me with your blade.”

Auren isn’t exactly the sturdiest fighter around. One misaimed hit, and it looks like he might actually end up with a few broken bones. Lili shuffles on her feet awkwardly. “S-seriously?”

“What are you waiting for?” He squares his shoulders. “Perhaps if you need to warm up, to stretch your limbs before exerting strength—”

“I mean—I hit hard, I can hit hard.” She lets the world’s ether rush into her wings, her veins, to mingle with her own personal reservoir of it before concentrating all of that energy into a bright, faintly pulse blade. “I don’t know if you want that.”

“Are you underestimating me?” The Gallian raises his chin. He’s already at least two heads taller than her, so this is pretty unnecessary, Lili thinks. Doesn’t make him any less intimidating.

Her heel taps on the ground twice. “Ok, I’m coming,” she calls out. With her sneakers slapping against the grass, she readies a swing, her blade aimed right for his upper arm—

No. She can’t do that. Her first hit goes wide, directed towards the empty space between his neck and shoulder. Only it doesn’t go through. She’s hit something. Something hard, unforgiving, and unyielding. Her blade bounces back—her body follows it, and she stumbles back. 

She looks up. Floating around Auren is a sphere of pure, faintly shimmering, raw ether. Before she can even marvel at the beauty of a Gallian shield, Auren’s voice booms through the field. 

“We will not be ending this session until you manage to fracture my shield, or until you understand how I have manifested it.” A light smile graces his features—it’s hard not to imagine him as a beatific god, with those literal strands of solar energy radiating from his head like he’s a small star. “Now—are you willing to hit me?”

Training with Auren lasts for both an eternity and an instant. Each time her blade collides with his barrier, she feels a little bit of her ether leave her body, as little sense as that makes. An hour later, and she’s on the floor, her vision blurry, and Auren’s shield as sturdy as ever. 

“BluEther,” he says simply. A packet of the stuff lands next to her head. “Take it. Then we start again.”

With a rough exhale, she slams her hand over the packet and nearly makes its contents squirt out onto the grass. Upon closer inspection, she finds that BluEther’s design looks very similar to a Capri Sun, plastic-wrapped straw and all. The only difference is the texture of the drink, if she can even call it that. It has the consistency of watery instant mashed potatoes. 

“Still don’t know how this is meant to help me,” she mumbles between mouthfuls. “If I’m channelling ether from the environment, then why is it that I still hemorrhage personal ether?”

Auren doesn’t move from his position. “You are simply not an Eldrak Gallian. Hence why you must use wings to manipulate ether.”

“Yeah, and?” 

“As such, your body cannot handle foreign ether. It must be filtered through your wings beforehand. But in order for you to use that ether, it must be introduced into your body.” His hair radiates outwards again, and Lili is reminded of her lowly human status. “Your wings can do more than siphon ether from the environment. They take a sample of your personal ether, combine it with the ether you’ve gathered, and only then can you use foreign ether safely.”

Lili keeps sipping. “And because you’re Gallian, you don’t have to do all that.”

“An Eldrak Gallian, I am more commonly referred to.” He folds his arms. “New Order Gallians… they are not so ethereally nimble as I. A shame that they choose to betray their heritage, though I harbour no ill will towards their decision.”

Lili looks back at the sky. Even though it’s early August, the heat still rolls off her forearms like waves of hot water. That’s not to mention what it’s doing to her legs, which are trapped underneath her jeans and feeling like a miniature sauna. She clenches her jaw against the urge to rip off her hoodie.

“Alright.” She rises back to her feet. “I’m, uh, ready.”

He chuckles. “I do admire your resolve. Allow me to give you a much-needed hint.” Lili flinches at that. ’Much needed’ indeed. “Try focusing on my shield.”

She stares it down. The barrier is still swirling around Auren, a suspension of wispy blue inks against the dull landscape. It’s guarding him at all angles. 

“I did not mean for you to start a staring contest with it.” Auren folds his arms. “Focus on its ethereal makeup. How did I create it? Discerning its properties, understanding that the barrier in front of you is not a static obstacle, but a living, breathing construct, is the first step to destroying it.”

She freezes. This is cool and all, but it’s just an elaborate way for Auren to tell her that her shielding needs some work. “And how do I do that?” she asks.

“Your mind is a weapon. Direct your ether towards mine. You must think of it as your third arm. You are already able to manifest your ether, so this should be relatively simple.”

Lili shuts her eyes. Relatively simple for a Gallian, or anyone for that matter—but not for her. It took her a good five months to understand ether manifestation in the first place, whereas Ava had only taken one. She thinks about the way she’d formed her blade earlier, the sheer pin-prick concentration she needed to spread her power from hilt to tip. How her hands had pulsed with raw power.

Then she thinks about the barrier in front of her. Surprisingly, her method works. She sees something hard, solid—a creation of adamant diamond. The surface is smooth. But that’s all she can see. It’s an impenetrable sea of pure crystal if she tries to look any further. 

She reels her power back in. “The barrier works both ways. I can’t see anything after the surface.”

“But what is on the surface?” Auren presses.

Shutting her eyes again, she places her ethereal hands onto the barrier. What is she meant to be looking for? It’s all solid—isn’t that the same as her own shields? What should she be learning?

Taking a step back, she leaps and strikes out her blade into Auren again. Her attack connects, and her mind flies right back into the wall of glass. 

There—right where the tip of her blade’s touching the surface of that once impenetrable shield is a facet, so fine and delicately formed that she’d have missed it had she not slammed her sword into the surface out of desperation. His barrier isn’t entirely smooth after all.  

She draws back, tries to imagine her own shields as not a smooth pane of crystal but as a multifaceted, crafted gem. It takes more than one try, but as soon as she’s got it, she rams herself into his barrier.

It shatters. Like a crystal cut at the wrong angle. So does her own. 

Auren trips backward. His body is not used to the intense momentum that she’s forced onto him all of a sudden, but that doesn’t mean he’s not ready for her. He sidesteps her easily. She faceplants into the grass.

“I did it.” Her voice is muffled.

“I noticed your shielding needed a bit of work on the technical side.” Auren offers her a hand; she accepts it. “You should not be recoiling so much now.”

“Is that all? If I just want to bring down someone’s shields, I just ram them with my own?” It seems far too simple. There must be a catch behind it. She flexes her fingers for any signs of injuries.

“Not everyone will have a basic shield.” The air in front of Auren wavers again, and another shield appears. “Experienced casters might imbue their shields with a counterspell. Or their shields may simply be stronger. My affinity is warding, so I am the latter.”

So Auren had shown her a flimsy shield. Lili’s heart sinks. Her hour-long training session feels like she’s just wasted her time on fundamentals. 

“What’s this affinity thing?” Lili asks instead. 

“Every soul has an inclination towards one aspect of casting. Your body will see it as natural—akin to moving a limb or having a thought. Acting in accordance with your affinity expends little to no ether at all.” He raises his chin at her. “Yours appears to be body enhancement.”

“Natural.” Lili observes her hands. “But if I try to send ether to more than two parts of my body, I get this massive headache and I feel like I’m getting overwhelmed.”

“Have you ever tried to lift more than you physically could? Without using your ether, of course. Your control over your affinity is a muscle. It may come naturally to you at first, though utilising it to its full potential will not.” Auren flicks his wrist, and the miniature barrier in his hand is gone. “Now recreate your shield and destroy it immediately after. You will do this two hundred times over the next hour.”

— 

Lili had ended up collapsing after the first fifty, only forty-five minutes in. At first she tried conserving her ether, but that plan went straight out the window when Auren began to fire non-lethal projectiles at her between shields. He had rained down multiple apologies onto her, and even though she humbly accepted and deflected most of them, he still chose to end training prematurely, his rationale being that she would sprain her ethereal muscle or something. Lili was too tired to understand.

The next two days passed like this. They would fly out to the same field, run through some ethereal theory, and then she would be drilled into the ground by Auren’s hellish exercises until sunset. Then they would fly back to the Afflatus and dine on Gallian meals, shower, then prepare for bed. 

The third day passed similarly. Unsurprisingly, Auren had caught onto her weakness on the second day. Lili could not aim for shit. “You have to see the target in your mind before anything else, Lili,” he had said. She’d been staring down a faraway tree trunk amidst the grass. At least when the mercy of the sunset finally arrived, she could confidently say that she almost hit it.

When she leaves the bathroom, her body feeling well-cleaned and deliciously limber from the previous hour’s activities, Avett is leaning against the wall directly in front of her.

She hasn’t exactly been in contact with this guy for a while, despite them living on the same ship. “What is it?” she asks.

“I’m sick of Gallian food.”

Lili thinks back to last night’s dinner. Auren had sautéed a seasonal blend of root vegetables and stuffed potatoes full of lentils and spices. “What’s wrong? It was good.”

He glares at her like she’s stupid. “Don’t tell me you’re one of them too.”

“Them?”

His hand makes a beckoning motion. “Vegetarians.”

She shrugs. “I don’t get it. What’s your point?”

“The point is,” he says as he walks down the corridor, “is that I’m heading off ship to get my own food. I’m sick of vegetables and no substance. Auren refuses to stock meat on board and Ysh’vanna doesn’t care as long as it’s him putting food on the plate.” 

Lili does feel curious about Therius’ foreign cuisines. Some of the stalls she passed earlier that week had looked interesting, and some dishes had even looked vaguely similar to human cuisine. There’s one problem though. 

“I don’t have any money,” she says.

“You think I’m evil enough to invite you out and expect you to not eat?” He waves his card in the air. 

Feeling a bit brave, she looks Avett right in the eyes. “Yeah, I do.”

He turns right away and laughs as he steps off the ship. Lili follows him.

— 

Lili is going to die.

Her throat feels like it’s flaring up. There’s a furnace in her stomach, and someone’s fanning the flames like they’re about to mold glass. “Water,” she manages to choke out. The Kattish store owner smirks before walking over the sink with a glass and turning the tap on. She gulps down her drink immediately. It does little to soothe her mouth.

“You can hold your liquor, avoid getting hungover after seven shots.” Avett taps his chopsticks against his bowl of noodles. The red oil wobbles around the surface when he does. “But stars forbid you have the mildest option on the Casa-Ilgash menu.”

Lili can’t answer. She calls for another glass of water, gulps that one down too. “Don’t worry,” she says. She tries to sound cool, but it’s hard being tough when your voice is the vocal equivalent of sandpaper right now. “I’m used to pain.”

Avett snorts. “Need another napkin? You’re crying.”

Her bowl is a blurry mess. She blinks, and her tears fall into the soup. “I’m not crying,” she says as evenly as possible. 

The store owner just keeps grinning. “Humans. Seem to be hit or miss when it comes to ‘gashian spices.” She looks at Avett. “Looks like you missed.”

Lili digs her chopsticks back into the soup with gusto. “I have spices for breakfast.” Oh god, she’s getting delirious from the heat, isn’t she? “Mum used to make me have spicy noodles all the time. I’m used to it.”

She takes another bite—and instantly regrets it.

“Something tells me she didn’t have the best childhood,” the store owner whispers into Avett’s ear. 

Eventually, she gives in. Her soup is barely half-drained, her flat noodles are floating around the bottom like a school of white eels in murky pond water—but she’d rather strip down in public than take another sip. She places her chopsticks on top of her bowl and rests her forehead against the counter.

“Why’s it the same kind of spice here too…?” she whimpers. She’d expected a totally foreign taste unlike anything she’s had on Earth, but this just tastes like Sichuan-style noodles with a sugary aftertaste. The spices burn the same too. Like she’s eating a mouthful of TV static.

The store owner shrugs. “If you threw two groups of people into roughly the same environment, they’d probably end up developing roughly the same technology and culture. That’s what they teach us in school, anyway.” She turns her attention back to Lili. “Can I get you anything else?”

Lili slides her bowl over to Avett. “I’m sorry for wasting your money.”

“No big deal. I expected more from you, but I guess it’s on me for choosing this place.” He shrugs. “We’ll clean up and get you something else.”

Panic spikes through her. “No—I mean, thanks, but don’t. It’s fine.” She doesn’t want to spend more of his money, but the empty sensation in her stomach’s gnawing at her like a puppy that hasn’t been properly broken in yet.  

And, also like a puppy that hasn’t been properly broken in yet, her stomach growls its disapproval. Loudly.

“You have your test tomorrow, Lilith.” He starts shovelling the rest of her noodles into his mouth. It’s only when he’s finished with his bowl that he starts talking again. “You’re not sleeping on an empty stomach. I’m not letting you.”

Avett’s sudden use of her actual name leaves her reeling. It’s a good enough distraction for him to start walking off to some other, less spicy food stall before Lili can make any further objections.

— 

Day of the test. She’s been drunk, thoroughly drilled through the basics of ethereal theory, then beaten into the ground over and over by Auren spanning a period of five days. When she arrives at the Afflatus’ local Inter-Realm Concern station, she finds that it’s one of the only buildings in this sanctuary that’s been well kept. It’s not a part of the walls; it’s been built from the ground up because natural sanctuary formations are just too vulgar for Inter-Realm Concern employees, it seems. Only Auren is here with her—Avett and Ysh’vanna had preparations to make before taking the trip back to the Hive. 

Lili tries her hardest not to be daunted by the sheer opulence of the floor-to-ceiling windows that greet her like the queen’s soldiers as she walks through the entrance. That’s the last thing she needs. She finds it ironic that even years after the fall of civilisation, she’s still stressing out over graded tests. 

“Good luck.” Auren rubs her shoulder. “You should not require my blessings if our training served its purpose.”

Blunt. Lili just smiles at the Draconian man that’s currently working through her documents. After a good five minutes of rifling through papers and nodding to himself, he says, “Alright, Lilith Wang-Rosales. You may enter the testing room.”

She gives Auren one last glance before following the man into the room.

The room is completely dark. The Draconian man has to turn on the lights, and when he does, it’s like she’s been thrust directly into the sun. That’s because everything in this room is white. The walls, the floors, even the dust bunnies in the corner probably—all white. There’s a mirror in front of her, and in front of that is a single desk and chair. On top of the table are several sheets of paper. One dastardly pen rests next to it.

Lili can feel her soul melting into her body. 

“You have an hour,” the man says. “The timer will start once you write down your name, and it will end once you leave the examination room. Good luck.”

She takes her seat at the table. Good luck this, good luck that. Good luck does nothing if she’s taking a dumb, written exam due to the arbitary decisions of some intergalactic Ministry of Education that she could not give less shits about. She scribbles down her name, and a timer in red LED projects itself above the mirror in front of her.

There’s no way that’s an actual mirror. 

Fine. This is savable. She looks at the first question.

An S rank dragon approaches your crew and appears to only show interest in your ship. You are fifty metres away from the entrance. Do you: 

  • A: order your backline crew to take off without you, 
  • B: ask your ship to wait for you before leaving, 
  • C: sprint after your ship as it leaves in hopes of intercepting it mid-air, 
  • or D: stand you—

This question just goes on and on. Lili can’t see an objectively correct answer. She quickly scans down the paper. They’re all the damn same—they lack just enough context for her to make any educated assumptions, but not enough for her to feel good about leaving a random answer. 

She grits her teeth and does the latter anyway. A bad rank can’t be so bad if both Auren and Ysh’vanna are just going to lift her and Avett by the scruff of their necks into a more acceptable rank, right?

Lili thinks about the lowest possible score as she marks her way down the paper. That’s an E. If she gets an E1, theoretically the lowest she can get that isn’t a complete fail mark, she’ll be dragging her team down into… a D? She gulps. Nausea rolls through her like a vicious heatwave. That’s terrible. 

By the time she’s neared the second to last page, the clock’s only at twenty-five minutes and thirty seconds. No good. She wonders how she’s going to break the news to her crew members. That they won’t be getting a new member. That they’ll be heading off to the Hive without her. 

As she pens in the last answer, she’s already got a pretty good idea of what she has to say to Auren. A wave of calm washes over her. It’s over. It was dumb of her to think that she’d even remotely have a chance of getting anywhere without Ava’s guidance. Without her, she’s just a nuisance.

She’s so busy wallowing in her own self-depreciative filth that she almost misses the projectile that’s aimed straight for her head. Her arm raises instinctively to her ear, and her shield forms in the air, not a millisecond later. The projectile explodes against her shield, but its faceted, reinforced surface keeps her body from toppling over the chair and falling to the ground. 

She holds her shield there for a few seconds, thankful for Auren’s gruelling training sessions. Then it occurs to her that these guys shot her. That’s their idea of a fair test. 

Lili just picks herself up from the seat and walks out of the exam room. She hands over her papers to the Draconian man, who responds with a droll, “We will have your results shortly, ma’am,” before shuffling her papers into what appears to be a glorified scanner. Automatic marking. Shit. Nausea boils through her veins again. She’s not ready to accept her fate so damn soon.

“How was the test, princess?”

She wheels on her heel and finds that Avett has replaced Auren. They must’ve swapped while she was in the exam room. He’s sitting slouched and cross-legged on a black, leather sofa that looks way too expensive for someone who looks like Avett. She takes her seat next to him. “They made me do a written exam and then shot me in the head,” she whispers.

He mouths a curse. 

She fidgets with her fingers. “I, um, didn’t do that well on the written.”

Avett doesn’t say anything to that. Maybe because he’s actually keen on leaving her on the Afflatus. She doesn’t know for sure.

After what seems like an eternity, the man calls her full name. He hands her papers back face down. She almost doesn’t want to turn it over.

Like ripping off a bandaid, she does it anyway.

It takes a trip back to the couch for her to totally register her grade. Avett leans over to look at her exam.

“C5?” He raises an eyebrow. “I thought you said you flunked the exam.”

She hands the exam over to him. She’s shell shocked enough as it is. Just looking at the thing makes her want to tear out her stomach and other butterfly-riddled organs.

“Huh, look at this.” He flips the page over. “Practical response: A2. Responded to the threat calmly and with pin-prick precision. Written response… D1. Judgement leaves much to be desired.” 

She clutches her head. It’s like she’s just narrowly avoided a bullet. Which wouldn’t be too far off from the truth.

Avett plucks the attached card from the back of the exam and drops it into Lili’s hands. He’s saying something to her, but Lili can’t figure out for the life of her what it is. She’s too dazed, far too deep inside her own mind. She got a C5. That means she’s following the Winnow back to the Hive, and she’ll be working with their crew for the foreseeable future. 

All this without Ava.

With the weight of her written exam’s grade still resting on her shoulders, Lili can’t even find it in herself to properly celebrate. She probably needs some rest.

2: the Afflatus

“Please let me join your crew.”

Lili is on her knees, her face flat against the dusty dirt path leading to her own home. The thought of leaving this place is so violently at the forefront of her mind that it hurts to even consider what she’d end up doing with her life if these people refused her request. 

Avett immediately pivots on his heel, his face flushed with anger. “You deliberately decided not to follow orders, you put yourself at risk for no good reason, and you would have outright died if I hadn’t been there. We’re not taking you on. Get real.”

This all feels mildly unfair to Lili, but she’s not sure if she wants to bring up the fact that he would’ve similarly died had she not distracted and gotten its attention. 

"Come on, we can give her more credit than that." Ysh'vanna grabs Lili's arm and hoists her right up to her feet. "She totally went toe to toe with a grade B dragon for, like, ten minutes without breaking a sweat! I saw her distracting that thing for you and stuff—plus if we have her on our crew, we can get an obligatory Human discount—"

“Ysh’vanna.” Auren glares at the smaller lizard girl, which shuts her up immediately. 

“Discount or no, I’m not taking on dead weight as my frontline partner.” Avett doesn’t even spare a look backwards at his crew before stomping up the stairs and entering the ship. 

Lili looks to Auren and Ysh’vanna warily. They’re her last hope out of this desolate hellhole. 

“I mean…” Ysh’vanna shrugs. “We could take her back to the Hive. She could get a job there, maybe even do some mercenary work if any ship wants her…”

Wants her. Lili can’t help but flinch. “What’s the Hive?” she asks instead. Anything to stave off the crippling sensation of disapproval in her stomach.

Surprisingly, Auren is the one to answer her. “The Hive is a sanctuary for Humans. Though the same cannot be said for us, they will most likely offer you succour.” He’s sitting on a mound of slightly uplifted dirt and putting his hair back up. Even long after he’d used them to cast wards around her house, they still glow with an insatiable, solar light. It makes Lilith want to shiver.

It’s better than being stuck here, she guesses. Even though she’s spent the majority of her six years here, there’s something about the place that makes her want to leave. Maybe it had been the time Ava had used her wings against her, had threatened to crack them clean in two during a heated argument about things that hadn’t even mattered in the end. Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s dead, and that this dwelling was something she was meant to leave behind a long time ago. 

“Thank you,” she stammers. She’s not sure how she’s going to readjust to talking with real, walking humans, but that’s a problem for another day.

“Of course, there does happen to be another option for you.” Auren nods towards Ysh’vanna, who straightens her back immediately. “But first, I would like you to explain how you, a Human… managed to sprint as swiftly across the field as Avett.”

“Why?” Lili stiffens. While he had displayed a tremendous amount of athletic ability, he hadn’t seemed… particularly special.

Auren continues, “Avett is a particularly well-trained Kattish, capable of running up to sixty kilometres per hour. You are not supposed to match his pace. So how did you do it?”

She feels like she’s being drilled into all of a sudden. “Ether manipulation. I just kinda… shove the ether into my legs. I can do it to any body part. It makes me stronger.”

A flash strikes across Ysh’vanna’s lime-green eyes. “No former formal training?”

“I mean, I’ve been here for six years.”

“No way.” She shakes her head. “Direct body manipulation was a third-year course at—” 

“It is entirely possible that it just so happens to be her affinity and not the alternative.” 

Regardless of how Lili feels, Auren looks to her again. It’s not fear nor hatred glistening in his otherworldly eyes—but wonder. Curious, childlike wonder. “I would like to extend a formal offer to invite you on to our crew, Lili. We could use a second frontliner.”

As the taller man fixes his eyes upon her own, Lili can’t help but feel a burst of warmth in her chest. She’s getting out of here, and she’s wanted, damn it. She jumps to her feet and shakes Auren’s hand until it’s a blur of motion against his still body. “Thank you. Thank you,” she repeats. 

“Avett is… not going to like this one, Auren.” Ysh’vanna exhales roughly and claws a hand through her wiry, white hair. 

Lili freezes. What are they going to do about Avett? It’s not as if he’ll change his mind about her overnight, and he’s certainly going to have to if he wants to continue working on the frontline. 

“That is a conversation I will be having with Avett.” Auren tugs at the cords of his hairnet, securing his locks in place. “I would not concern yourself for now. We leave at six. You will have your belongings packed before then.”

And with that, he’s stepped through the ship’s sliding doors and disappeared into the bridge. Which leaves Lili and Ysh’vanna outside.

Despite herself, Lili finds that she’s fixing her focus towards a distant blue silhouette that’s most likely a mountain. “I can help you with packing, if you want,” the girl says. “I might be Draconian, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do heavy lifting.”

“That’s alright.” It doesn’t feel right to make her busy her with any kind of heavy lifting—if there’s one person who should be down here, it’s Avett, but he’s not about to help her out anytime soon. “I’ll be packing lightly.”

She walks into her house, shuts the floor, and sinks to the ground. She’s lived in this place for a good six years now. The dragons had long since destroyed the context around the area, but Lili is pretty sure that this was once someone’s glorified garden shed, judging from the tin roof and its unoiled, wooden interior. She and Ava had quickly placed stolen rugs over the flooring to get rid of the scent. The day before that had been brutal. She shuts out the memory and gets to packing everything she needs in those reusable cloth bags Ava had pillaged from a nearby supermarket years ago.

Surprisingly, Lili has an easy time saying goodbye to her house of six years.

When she’s all done and dusted, she locks the door—pointless as it is—and stands at the entrance of the ship, her knuckles poised to rap against its metallic surface. The doors had slid open automatically for Auren and Avett, so shouldn’t they be opening for her? Or maybe they had opened because they had some sort of ID card, and in retrospect that made a lot more sense than— 

Thunk. Lili jumps at the sound, her heart skipping a precious beat in response. The doors slide open, and then she sees Avett with his fist on a green LED light. 

“Hopeless,” he says as he whirls and heads back inside. “Hit the light again—it’ll close it, in case you didn’t know.” 

She makes sure to treat the button with only the utmost respect, just to spite him in silence. It flashes red, and the doors slide shut behind her.

The ship’s interior is—put simply—something she’s only ever had the pleasure of seeing in a comic book. It’s a structure that’s been primarily reinforced by some sort of blue metal, and she’s not quite keen on settling and calling it iron just yet. Right now, she’s in a hallway that’s just wide enough to fit two people side by side, and that’s if they’re willing to brush shoulders. It’s a good thing she’s closely trailing Avett instead of the former. 

“Right. Behind us are the sleeping quarters, left of that is the bathroom, and to the right of that is the armoury. Up ahead’s navigation, which is also where we coincidentally have the kitchen.” Avett doesn’t stop walking until he’s up against what seems to be a block of metal, but once he knocks on it to reclaim Lili’s attention, the hollow sound that it makes gives it away. “And this is the engine room. Which is my turf. You’ll never have to find yourself here if you’ve done everything correctly, so just follow whatever Auren and I tell you to do—like the good little frontliner you are—and we’ll be good, okay?”

Lili just stares at him. Auren’s been ruthless with him, no doubt.

“Not going to say anything?” He folds his arms and raises an eyebrow. “Or are you more of the silent, seething type?”

She does want to say something. Her hands clench behind her. But there’s just something wiggling around at the back of her mind, telling her that this complete stranger who she’s only known for half of a day is right, that she does deserve all of these beratements. She can’t argue with that. She was a nuisance on the battlefield.

Her eyes squeeze shut. “Sorry. Thank you.”

She balls her hands further into her bags and barges right past him before he can say another word.

Lili’s legs are unbearably stiff. 

Though she loathes to admit it, yesterday’s encounter had left quite the impression on her—both physically and mentally. As she rises from her slumber, she has to suppress yet another groan. She’d moved to the armoury with nothing but her quilt in hand because she absolutely admonished the idea of being watched by—she shivers—Avett while she slept. She hadn’t bothered to move the mattress along with her, and now her back feels like it’s been bruised to hell and back. Or maybe that was also from yesterday. She’s not sure.

There aren’t any windows in the armoury, so the entire room’s dark. She can only hope that her body clock is on time and that it’s nine in the morning and not… nine in the evening. 

“Oh, what’re you doing awake? It’s five in the morning.”

Lili deadpans as she stands in the entrance of the bathroom. Ysh’vanna is up and brushing away at her teeth. Her canines are pointed. Lili briefly makes eye contact with her before looking into the corner where a pile of dust bunnies are sitting. “I thought it was morning. But—like, a more acceptable ‘morning.’”

Ysh’vanna gargles her water and spits. She runs the tap—her face returns wet, the fringes of her white mane sticking her skin. “You moved to the armoury. Don’t like sleeping in communal rooms?” Her toothy grin is bone-white.

That’s… not quite true. Lili has slept under the same roof with Ava for all those years, so she’s used to the absolute surrendering of all defences that sleeping with another person offers. In retrospect, she hadn’t liked it one bit—but it was bearable at least. 

She shrugs as she crosses the bathroom towards the sink. “I’m just not fond of sleeping near someone who hates my guts.” For good reason, she adds silently.

Ysh’vanna doesn’t leave the room. Instead, she leans against the shower’s sliding glass door. Does everything on this ship have to slide open? “He’s incredibly prejudiced against Humans. He had a bad run-in with a couple on his first day out on the field.”

“And now he just hates all of them,” Lili completes. 

“Well, hate’s kind of a strong word—I wouldn’t say hate, maybe more like misguided prejudice?” 

She looks at herself in the mirror. Her mother used to call her lucky—her eyes are more Caucasian than East Asian, having layered eyelids and all, so kids never really got to stretch out their eyelids at her. They did, however, call unwanted attention to her last name (“Why’s your last name doubled up? Isn’t that, like, a Mexican last name? Aren’t you meant to be Asian?”) and made fun of her heritage. Ava had to step in whenever she had even dared to open her lunchbox in the classroom. 

Lili laces her fingers through her matted, jet-black hair. She rakes her hand through it until it hangs behind her back. She’s not sure what kind of environment it is in terms of race for these people. Still, it can’t be much better than what the human race had to offer before the dragons came and rained hellfire onto their world. “So he hates me,” Lili finishes. Then, sensing that the topic had gotten a little too sensitive for her liking, she asks, “You pilot the ship, right? Are there assigned roles for everyone?”

“Eh…” She taps her chin with the tip of her finger. “Where to start… Oh, Auren’s our backline caster. If we encounter anything while in transit, or if we need something warded, or if we just need something ethereal done, he’s our guy. He also happens to be really good at cooking, so he’s also the main chef. Don’t let Avett or me anywhere near the kitchen counter. 

“Avett is our main frontline attacker. He’s an arms specialist—means that he prefers machinery and guns over swords and spells, though if I had to tell the truth, I’ve never actually seen him solely fight a dragon from midrange. He likes his proximity, I guess.” Ysh’vanna strides across the room, her mess of a mane swaying behind her, glittering and catching the dawn like spider silk. “He’s also our mechanic. Fixes up the ship when we’ve busted it. I don’t know how Kattish culture works, but it seems like repairing ships and slinging guns go hand in hand.”

Dread settles at the pit of Lili’s stomach as she squirts a spot of toothpaste onto her brush. Of course Avett is overly competent and completely deserving of his place as a mercenary aboard the Winnow. It feels less valid to want to abhor his innards now. Her fist closes around the hilt of the toothbrush.

Ysh’vanna doesn’t notice. “And then there’s me. Believe it or not, I’m the captain of this ship. Not Auren. When it comes right down to it, I’m the one accepting new jobs and handing in the goods—they taught us all the way back in pilot school that a good pilot is someone even a sociopath feels like they can trust.”

Lili spits out her water. “Where does this leave me?” 

“Frontliner, of course.” Ysh’vanna doesn’t even hesitate when she titles her—her confidence makes Lili feel a bit better about it all. “Frontline… I saw you using ether to attack, so caster? But you were also using that sword, so… some sort of frontline melee caster flex? But I wouldn’t worry about it too much; the graders’ll decide your specialisation for you.”

Wait. Lili freezes. “The… graders?”

“Your license. Here’s mine—” She holds out a thin, rectangular piece of what appears to be metal, though like the ship, Lili’s not entirely sure exactly which metal it is. “A4, baby. That’s one of the highest grades any pilot looking to get hired could strive for.”

Her hands are shaky as she regards the card in front of her with apprehension. If she doesn’t wow these graders when it’s her turn to shine, she’ll likely spend the rest of her days in the Hive, and that’s not something she wants to be accepting at such a young age. 

“Oh, don’t worry!” Ysh’vanna hastily takes back her ID. “Pilots, backliners and maintenance roles have it really easy when it comes to grading, so our rankings are way higher. It’s like at least a B1 to secure a position on a ship, but frontliners are graded more harshly so it’s about a D5 for you guys. You’ll be fine—you’re already with us, so the grade won’t really mean much since you’re technically already working under a ship.”

Ysh’vanna’s reassurances send a wave of apathetic calm over Lili’s heart. “What’s Avett’s rank?” she finds herself asking.

“About B3ish, I wanna say?” 

Nevermind. The dread is back and pumping into her veins like a reversed stomach pump at the hospital. Maybe coming aboard had been a mistake after all. Avett is scarily proficient at his job, and he’s the one telling her to shape up and follow orders. Maybe she really doesn’t deserve to be on this ship, maybe she’s going to be their dead weight, or maybe she’ll end up killing someone as a result of just not being good enough on the field— 

“If you’re finished with your morning routine…” Ysh’vanna touches Lili’s forearm. It’s only the lightest of touches, but it sends her careening back to earth all the same. “Wanna have breakfast now, or are you the type of person who skips that meal?”

“I thought you said that you didn’t cook.” She lets that tender touch guide her out of the bathroom and into the corridor.

“Um, couldn’t cook. Girl’s gotta eat.”

A shiver runs through her spine. She opens her mouth to suggest that maybe she should be making breakfast instead, but the words stay clogged in her throat like cotton balls. It just doesn’t feel right for Lili to criticise someone’s cooking on their turf.

Two burnt pieces of toast later, and Lili’s ready to question just exactly how it’s possible to burn toast on an automatic toaster. Ysh’vanna, despite her earlier amicabilities, was ultimately a deeply impatient person and had decided to set the toaster’s dial to max to fully maximise the speed at which the bread cooked. 

But food’s food. Lili has her toast with two slices of tomatoes from her garden and nothing else. The juices are seeping through, and her tomatoes are mildly warm, but it’s good considering she hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch. 

The clink of cutlery against ceramics is an inherently awkward sound. Lili gives her captain a shy glance. “If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you guys?”

“I’m twenty-six,” the small Draconian gir—woman, says proudly. Lili doesn’t bring up the fact that she looks at least ten years younger than her actual age. It’s probably because she’s wearing knee-length overalls over a baggy jumper. 

She hides her reaction behind a fist and a light cough. “The others?”

“Auren’s… eh… probably somewhere in his forties.” Expected, but that’s not what’s bothering Lili right now.

Her attention falls right on Ysh’vanna. Those eyes of hers are glinting, the flecks around her slitted pupils alternating between a bright yellow and a deep forest green. What about Avett? Is what she wants to ask, but she’s going to most definitely walk into her trap if she does that.

Damn it. It feels like her curiosity is gonna boil over. She spits out her undying question—begrudgingly—like it’ll burn her to cinders if she tries to keep it shut tight inside of her head.

Her captain’s grin turns feral. “Oh, he’s the youngest out of us. Recently turned twenty. You two seem to be about the same age.”

Lili leans forward, her eyebrows furrowing. “I’m twenty-three.”

“Hey, that’s no big deal. Avett’s on this ship—he hardly cares that he’s the youngest. He’ll get anal about the way you hang your face towels all the same…” Ysh’vanna shudders. “Anything else you wanna know about our Kattish frontliner? I hear he’s quite the romantic charmer back in Therius…”

Lili flinches—not at her last line, that’s just gone completely over her head—but at her casual inclusion of his race. Maybe it’s mostly a human thing. Whenever she’s been referred to by her race, it’s never been for a good reason, and yet she can’t seem to detect a single droplet of malice from Ysh’vanna. 

Well, no malice—not for Avett, anyway. 

“Ha. Read like a book.” She tosses her silvery mane over her shoulders. “It’s just unfortunate that he absolutely hates you, but you’ll warm up to each other—soon enough anyway.” 

“Ok, that’s not—” Lili’s starting to stammer. She looks to her shoes for guidance. “I’m not in love. I just want to know about my crewmates.”

“You wanted to know so much about your crewmates that you completely skipped over asking for Auren’s ranking and went straight for Avett’s?”

Shit. Shit! It’s true, he’s been at the forefront of her mind for the past twelve hours, but that’s only because it’s too hard for her to think about anything else. No, that wasn’t the right way to describe it—what she feels is an insatiable desire to compare; to pit her skills against Avett’s massive ego, but admitting that to Ysh’vanna to clear the muddied air… she’d rather eat another slice of burned toast. 

Memories of Ava and her mum arise like hot bile in her throat. They’re asking her to look down upon the kids with bad grades. Maybe Avett is doing the same. 

She can’t stand it.

“I’m not in love with Avett,” Lili replies, her voice aimed at the table. She can’t feel her knees. She’s been gripping them so tightly that she’s cut right through the material of her jeans with her nails and pierced the skin.

“That’s a damn good thing. I’d rather throw myself overboard than have a Human coming onto me.”

This time, it’s her race that’s been brought up—and its usage invites a severe chill to zip down her spine. Thankfully, all Avett offers her is a narrowed glare before he strides right up to the navigation panel. 

“We’re seriously headed off land to get her a license?” His fingers drum against the table. “They assigned us to the Hive—”

Ysh’vanna shrugs. “I got clearance for us to move to the Afflatus – New Therius landmass for like, four days. Penalty was… eh, don’t worry about it.”

The look that Avett gives Lili is enough to sear iron into red-hot embers. She opens her mouth to apologise, but he’s already turned his attention back towards the panel. “Goddamn. You know she’s gonna get nothing higher than a C, right?”

Lili bristles. Ysh’vanna’s chair rattles against the tiled flooring as she leaps to her feet, her features narrowing for a brief second before relaxing into something looser. “Avett, that doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” He whirls—his arms are folded. “If she gets anything lower than a C3, we’re gonna be stuck doing C ranked jobs, getting C ranked rewards until she fucking—”

A cold hand grabs at Lili’s throat and yanks it. “Why’s that?” she breathes.

Now it’s her turn to be pinned to the spot by this haughty asshole. “The board won’t let us take jobs outside of our rank range. So they take the average of the crew’s ranks and that’s your highest allowed job.”

Clearly Ysh’vanna’s—and presumably Auren’s—A4 hadn’t been enough to balance out Avett’s unimpressive B3. She doesn’t bring that up though. Instead, she slumps back in her chair, defeated.

“It’s not all bad!” Ysh’vanna points out. “If the thought of ranking down’s bringing you to tears then maybe you should do something about it.”

Silence. A thick, low, heavy fog of silence. Avett places his hands on his hips as he surveys the landscape. 

Then, finally, Avett decides to speak up. “Just dock the ship, Ysh’.” 

His response hadn’t been a no. Lili’s not sure if she should be happy about her new teacher, or if she should start crying and thinking about leaving the ship again. The look that Avett offers her on his way out of the room is anything but a nice gesture.

In seconds, Ysh’vanna is in front of the navigation panel, her hands a blur of motion as they flurry against the buttons. Even though she’s fully concentrating on her job, she still somehow manages to find a shred of consciousness to talk to Lili. “The view’s nice—wanna take a look? Though you don’t have to; a lot of people don’t like watching me dock. Avett included.”

Lili walks right up to Ysh’vanna’s side. Immediately—almost jarringly so—she wishes that she hadn’t.

The Afflatus is a tall, gnarled spiral of steel; its wider on the bottom, and haphazardly thin near the top. But that’s not what she’s looking at right now. What she sees through the room-wide windows are the concrete and gravel remains of what used to be a city. Roads have been cracked clean in half, revealing sewage pipes and drainage systems underneath. Blackened foundations of once towering skyscrapers are all that’s left of the architectural achievements of humankind, and if she looks to the side near the ocean she can see—

The Sydney Opera House, with its interior fully exposed to the elements. Like someone’s forcefully deshelled a hermit crab. 

She pushes off the table. “I’ll—I’ll be getting my things ready,” she says. 

“Hah, my pleasure.” The ship swerves a little too suddenly, leaving the air in Lili’s stomach in freefall. She’s gotta go before she sees anything else.

“First things first, we’re restocking on BluEther and ether pens. Auren gets pissy if we go below ten, so we’ll be getting him his sweet fix in bulk.”

Lili lets her eyes wander as she loosely trails Avett’s path. The Afflatus looks much more appealing on the inside. However, that’s only because she’s shoved away the gut-churning realisation that every wall, every building here—has been built from the broken skin and bones of Sydney city itself. Neon signage—not so bright that she can’t look straight ahead without squinting her eyes, but not dim enough to look suspicious—hang from the shops, their seductive lights beckoning to pedestrians like they’re moths. Avett leads her through one narrow street to a wider, bigger road. And by road, she truly means it; golf carts drive down marked paths, each manned by one person with a tin box seated above their wheel.

“Alright, pop quiz.” Avett whirls so quickly on his heel that Lili almost ends up walking nose-first into his chest. “Exactly where are we going first?”

“Uh—um.” Lili’s cheeks flush with shame before she can even consider her options. In truth, she hadn’t been listening at all. She’s walked right into another verbal trap, and this one isn’t even well-hidden—Avett’s ears are twitching just slightly, and his tail’s… just starting to wag itself in a black blur. She doesn’t have to be familiar with Kattish culture to know exactly what he’s thinking.

Avett turns again. “Ysh’vanna was onto something back there. You are fun to mess with. Maybe I’ll get something out of this after all.”

The truth feels even worse coming out of Avett’s mouth.

The two slip and weave between sweaty bodies and oily golf carts until they reach a plaza. Somehow, there’s a palm tree in the centre of all of these shops; the pot surrounding it is made out of pool tiling and concrete. Lili’s sure that Avett’s just trying his hardest to lose her in the crowd, but she’s got enough experience from tailing her mum in busy shopping departments that she could easily do this again with her head dipped between the pages of a book. 

“Right, we’re here.” Avett chucks something at her—she catches it by the tip in both hands. It’s a credit card, and it’s got Auren Draksparrow’s name engraved into it. “Get us some BluEther and pens.”

“Wha—you’re trusting me with this?” She spares a glance back towards the store. The customers, the storekeeper… none of them are human. 

“Do you really think,” Avett says, his smile twisting into a lazy smirk as he closes the distance between them in one, easy stride, “that you’ve got the balls to run off with that thing? Chop chop. You’re cutting into our training.”

Ignored. She pockets the card and walks towards the shop, her mind racing as it rehearses over and over exactly what she wants to say to get what she needs. As soon as she passes the open storefront, two customers turn their heads, narrow their eyes, before promptly turning back to their own shopping.

Okay, this is something she’s painfully familiar with. Except they’ve got horns now instead of ironed uniforms. 

Alright then, here’s the moment of truth. “One crate of BluEther and one crate of pens, please,” she says as she meets the shopkeeper’s eyes. Her pupils are slitted. Judging by the ear webbings, this person is a Draconian. 

The shopkeeper doesn’t even narrow her eyes, doesn’t even show a bare hint of malice as she tosses her shock of bright-pink hair over her shoulder. “Get lost, Human. I only sell to mercenaries.”

There’s no sign outside that says anything like that. Or maybe there had been, and Lili missed it. Either way, the panic’s setting in fast. “You—you can’t just not sell to me,” she stammers. Her eyes are starting to float away from the action, and her back feels hot like she’s just been dunked into a vat full of steam. 

“No license, no service.” The shopkeeper leans back against the wall. “Scram.”

When she meets with Avett again, he throws his hands into the air. “Oh, for fucks sake! How did you manage to come back with—”  

At that moment, all of her pent up rages boil over. Her cheeks are a bright shade of red as she storms forward and jabs a finger into his chest. “You—set me up. They only sell to people with licenses.” She slaps Auren’s card into his body for good measure. “I’m going back to the ship.”

Something flashes across his eyes, but Lili just doesn’t give a crap anymore. Let them string her along, let them play stupid games with her. 

“Wh—wait.” He turns the card over in his hands, his eyes narrowing into a scowl, his body as still as ice as he surveys the store. 

Lili actually finds it in herself to stop in her tracks. “What?”

“That store shouldn’t be asking for proof of license.”

With Avett on the frontline and Lili stuck firmly behind him, they’re on the offensive again. Avett slams down Auren’s credit card onto the counter; the shopkeeper jumps, spares one glance at Lili, then mumbles, “I’ll be right back with your goods, sir,” before scurrying away into the back.

“Gotta be confident.” He hands over the card to Lili. “Straight back and eye contact. Maybe even a little bit of violence if you need the extra sweetener.”

The shopkeeper comes out with a full crate of shiny packets, each one labelled with the words ‘BluEther.’ Lili’s hands clench and unclench. “Violence—that’s…”

“There’s no law enforcement in the Afflatus.” Avett starts counting the packets in complete silence. “Go wild.”

Great. Avett’s fun fact hangs over her—ten tons of deadly steel, just dangling on a needle-thin string. The shopkeeper slams down yet another crate onto the counter—this one’s full of plastic syringes, each one filled with a bluish, transparent liquid. “How do these work?” Lili asks.

“BluEther helps with ether recovery.” The shopkeeper folds her arms, her line of sight never leaving Lili’s for a second. “Ether pens… don’t use ether pens. Leave them for your Gallian caster.”

She assumes that means Auren. 

Once Avett nods and swipes the card through the transmitter, they’re headed off towards the hangar again. Lili’s holding the box of ether pens, and she can’t help but wonder exactly why she’s not allowed to use them. Then she remembers—how his hair had expanded like that from their nylon prisons, how he had smelled like the sun in all its glorious power, how he’d radiated that crushing power simply by standing there. Maybe she should leave the pens for Auren.

After returning to the ship and greeting Auren—he’d been seated on the dining table, eating breakfast while they were having lunch at 2PM—it comes to Lili’s attention that Avett is most definitely taking his sweet time stalling before their training session. A full hour passes before Auren puts down his knife and fork, his napkin dabbing at the edges of his mouth. 

“You two have somewhere to be, no?” Auren finally asks between bites. “Unless Ysh’vanna was mistaken.”

Avett had been bickering with Ysh’vanna about canned tomatoes and their recent appearance in the ship’s bathroom cabinet only a second ago, but now she’s pushing him away from the navigation panel and out the exit. “Nope! Go on—you two enjoy yourselves now!”

Upon being promptly pushed down the stairs, the doors click shut behind them.  

Avett’s tail brushes against the side of his thigh. “Mmkay. That’s annoying.”

“If you really don’t want to teach me…” Lili starts as she moves from one foot to the other, “then just tell me what’s on the test, and I’ll practice myself.”

“That’s the big fucking elephant in the room. What’s on the test this year?” He throws up his arms as he walks ahead of Lili. “The frontliner tests are so fucking arbitrary—one year they’ll be pitting every candidate against each other, the next they’ll actually have modules for you to complete. There’s nothing for you to prepare for.”

Lili’s teeth clench into a grimace. Just what she needs—a shitty, completely arbitrary and unfair test that’ll determine whether she’ll be sniffing around for spare jobs in the absolute dregs of the Hive or if she’ll be actually living. “So… just be prepared for anything?”

“I have no damn idea. I stopped keeping track when they started including written sections.”

Lili’s teeth clench into a grimace. “So… just be prepared for anything?”

“Pretty much. Ugh. Just know that the entire time you’re taking the test, they’ll be watching you. Like a hawk. Everything you do—graded and noted down. ”

The imagery doesn’t sit well with Lili. “So what now?”

“Now?” Avett stops at the hangar’s gate, his tail swishing against the wall like he’s a dog seeing a stick for the first time. “Do you drink, princess?”

1: the stranger

It seems that even without being a confrontational person, Lili still manages to find a way to have a gun shoved down her throat. One second, she's peering around the doorway with her caster's wings outspread and ready. The next—dazed and pinned to the ground... with the aforementioned icy brush of a barrel against her tonsils.

Maybe she'd been a little hasty putting on the wings. When she first heard the rustle of footsteps against the unkempt grass on her front lawn, she'd expected wolves, or rabbits, or worse: a dragon. It'd have to be an infantile, tiny thing to make it past her front gates, let alone to fit in her garden at all. But in the wilds, everything is worthy of her attention. Especially the stranger now leaning over her, who she'd seen only the briefest glimpse of before she raised one of her hands in greeting and suffered the consequences for it.

She should've raised both hands instead.

It hasn't been more than five seconds since that particular someone's knocked her onto her ass. This strange man has stared her down for far too long, his breath hot and heavy despite the lack of fight she'd put up earlier. It's getting awkward. All fights are, really. Remove the passion, strip away the thrill, and it's like watching a movie without the soundtrack. Or maybe it's just been too damn long since Lili's seen another person. She tries to count the years, but the numbers escape her.  

"A single spell out of you," the stranger hisses—she finds the voice harshly soft, like he's trying to scold someone but there's a wad of gum in the way of his tongue, "and you're tasting battery."

She feels her ether revolt inside of her, but she pushes it down. The wings at her back give a half-hearted shutter before dimming to a lame teal entirely, returning to their sheathed state and folding themselves down the small of her back.

Several beats of silence pass. The stranger dislodges his gun from her mouth and stands up when he's satisfied with her compliance. His pants are coated in dust. Lili should really try to clean her house more often.

They regard each other cautiously, as one does when they've just left a potentially life-threatening encounter. As he pats himself down, Lili notices the unique… adornments on his head and back. The cat ears and tail certainly don't make him a part of this world, and she hasn't even started on the stripes at his eyes, nor the way his pupils slit like a cat's. He seems to be about the same height as her, which is not surprising—most men of her age and ethnicity tend to end up meeting her eyes standing upright. His hair is black, like hers, and he carries it in a ponytail that dips just below the shoulders. On his back is a metallic slew of pipes and hand grips—no doubt a weapon of some sort. She's lucky he's not pointing that at her instead.

This man is not Human, but he's not animal either. Her only references are the corpses in the abandoned airship she and Ava had found early into the initial years of the apocalypse. Some bodies had dark, burgundy skin; others had beast-like appendages. She hadn't exactly scrutinised their features during the moment. The blood had been wet and bright red—new. They'd left quickly with their spoils, and the next week, the ship had vanished entirely. All that remained was a blackened smear in the grass.

The stranger looks like he wants to say something, but he scrubs at the barrel of his gun with a swatch of silk instead. To call it a gun doesn't do it justice because it looks more like a revolver—but rather than having the eponymous revolving chamber, there's a faint, blue battery in its place.  

He gives her a narrow glance; the stripes at the corners of his eyes wrinkle too. "I've just spared your life, but keep looking at me like that, and I'll reconsider real soon."

Lili opens her mouth, but she finds her tongue unwilling. Not even years of talking to plants have prepared her for the joys of socialisation.

Luckily, she doesn't have to. Two more figures—one male, the other female—are hovering near the gate to her garden, and the difference in their heights is almost comedic. One looks like he might have trouble walking through her front door, and the other just reaches the first man's shoulders. The shorter one has a long shock of unnaturally white hair and bright, slitted eyes; the other has green skin. Both of these people are not Human, and judging from her assaulter's reaction, they're already well acquainted.

"Avett, really?" The shorter girl rushes ahead. "I heard a crash, I thought you'd somehow gotten into trouble, but…" She motions to Lili. Point taken—with her perpetual ten-degree slouch and a blank expression, she hardly looks threatening at all.

She thinks about raising a hand in greeting again, but then she reconsiders and wills her tongue into action. "H-hey."

The girl whips around to face the catboy—who Lili now knows as Avett. "You pointed a gun at her?" She throws an apologetic glance at Lili not a second later. "Sorry."

It's funny watching her chew out Avett because she can't be older than sixteen. When she turns to the side again, Lili catches the faintest glimmer of vividly green webbings behind each ear.

"Ok, rag on me all you like, go on." Avett throws his hands into the air. "Doesn't change the fact she was running at me, wings out, probably wanted me dead too if I hadn't—"

The taller man steps forward, but the girl thrusts out an arm in front of him and says, "Avett. Look at her. You can't be serious."

Lili feels like she's caught between an unstoppable force and an unmovable object. Then she remembers—the tea she'd left to boil on the stove in her pilfered tin teapot is now bubbling over. She knows she should probably care more about the matter at hand, but she sidles behind Avett and takes the pot off the rack, wincing at the way the boiling metal bites into her skin and subsequently dropping it onto the counter. Some of the liquid splashes out, but there's still a good half-full pot of over-brewed tea in there.

Over the sounds of distant arguing, she catches the voice of the taller man. He's right next to her. "Is it customary on Earth to boil the leaves along with the water?" he asks.

"No, not—not really." Lili's face flushes. She'd done it to speed things up, but she's sure that she's done something completely stupid. "I like it this way," she lies. Save face, not values.

He nods slowly. "I've never enjoyed tea in such a manner. Perhaps we could settle down in your front yard over a cup or two, Miss…"

"Lilith, but most people call me Lili," she says, then she remembers that honorifics are meant to preface surnames, so she hastily adds, "Wang-Rosales."  

"Auren Draksparrow, a Gallian, ex-forger and current backline caster of the Winnow." Once outside and seated in her moss-covered iron chairs, he lifts the teapot in both hands and says, "We have similar contraptions on our home realm as well."

"Ah." She watches Auren pour her cup first before his own. She thought they'd be vastly different, both in customs, language, and mannerisms, but it seems that they're very similar. Almost too similar. Lili doesn't know what to make of it.

"How long have you been living in the wilds, Lili?" he asks.

"Six."

"Years?"

She nods, mostly to herself.

Auren swirls his tea around in his cup. If he feels even an ounce of pity, he doesn't show it. "Not alone, I hope?"

She shakes her head. "Not for the first three."

"My condolences."

"It's ok."

Auren takes his first sip. The way he holds his chin—not jutted out, but upwards, as if he's about to toast to the heavens—reminds Lili of the modern depiction of fae folk, their bodies draped in finery as they maneuver through the webs of political intrigue. He looks like one, too; his hair is long and golden, secured in place at his nape by a satin ribbon. Specks of light occasionally flicker behind his eyes.

Behind the walls of her beaten-down lodgings, Avett and the girl continue to argue.

"Lili, I apologise on behalf of my team for assaulting you in your own home. Mindless violence is far from what we represent—as such, I hope we can move past our rocky first impressions." He sips again, this time taking his time with the near-scalding beverage. "I should introduce you to our team proper; the young woman is Ysh'vanna O'Raal, our captain, and a Draconian. The brash Kattish man over there is Avett Ironsturm, an arms specialist most days, I suppose." Auren taps his fingers against his teacup, his lips as narrow as a pencil as he appraises the disturbance indoors.

"Avett sounds like a handful," she says, to garner approval from this man, if anything. Then, realising she doesn't really get what he's saying at all, she says, "What are you guys?"

Auren's reply is curt. "Off-landers." His teacup clacks down against the tempered-glass table. "Not of your realm—you could consider us as Humans from an alternate reality. Similar to those of Earth, yet different in subtle ways. We hail from a multitude of realms from which we call the Known Collective, though most of us reside in the realm of Therius."  

She thinks of the creatures that had descended upon their homeland all of those years ago. How they'd been warned of overhead planes and bullets raining hellfire upon cities in the event of a war, but nothing had prepared them for the fantastical terror of dragonkind.

"Those monsters," she says. The words are like rocks in her mouth. "Are they… they can't be like us, right?"

Auren waves a hand. "If they had an ounce of our intelligence, we would be negotiating with them instead. They are like endemic species, surviving purely out of biological need. And every hundred or so years, they migrate to a new world—we follow them."

"So you fight them." Lili's voice is of awe. She stares at the remains of the world yawning before her; chunks of asphalt peak through the grass like dead fish in an aquarium, their pale stomachs facing towards the skies. The odd shell of suburban housing dots the landscape, but nature has long since claimed their forms. They'd lost so much in a single night, yet were given the bounty of the dragons in the form of magic. Or ether, as they'd learned in an off-hand log while desecrating the final resting place of those off-landers mentioned above.

Auren catches her expression. "Do you not?"

She shrugs. "A little. I've learned how to control my ether somewhat, I guess. I just run and hope for the best if it's bigger than me."

He bobs his head in apprehension. Lili rocks on her seat for a bit.

Finally, after some thought, he begins to talk again. "Do you enjoy living here?"

"Here?" she echoes.

"In the wilderness, I suppose, there is no one to bother you." He swirls his tea; the sweet fumes have long since left the surface of his drink. "But do you enjoy this? Are you content with your current lifestyle?"

She gulps. Even after Ava's death, her friend's timeless 'wisdom' has stuck with her throughout the years. Lili's never strayed too far from the house; she wouldn't dare. If she had even an ounce of what these off-landers had—whether it was bravery, confidence, or sheer force of will—she would leave this wretched shack behind. It's her sanctuary, but she's come to loathe and see it as a testament to her lack of resolve.

So no, not really. She's not content at all.

The sounds of the Earth skate past; her ears fill briefly with the white noise of the prairie winds. Lili takes her first taste of unsweetened, over-boiled tea and finds that it has gone cold.

"I mean," she starts, her tongue loose and floppy in her mouth, "I don't not like it here. I don't mind it at all."

Auren stands to his feet, his cup in his hand. "I may have crossed a line asking you such questions. Once again, I apologise."

Lili is about to stand up and vehemently refuse his apologies when the Draconian girl—Ysh'vanna—stumbles back into the yard, Avett trailing her with a scowl plastered onto his features. That might be the only emotion he's capable of, Lili thinks.

"It wasn't a fluke," Ysh'vanna says.

"Of course it wasn't a fluke, Ysh', since when has our equipment ever crapped out on us?" Avett is tapping his foot against the ground; his arms folded loosely against his body. "Never happens. Not like stone-age Human technology. Half of the things inside her house, I swear, belong in a museum. It's like you guys were just asking for a dragon invasion—"

One word from Auren is all it takes to shut him up. "Avett."    

It feels like Lili's just swallowed a boulder. "What's happening?"

"We are mercenaries first, Lili. I do not mean to alarm you, but we traced an abnormally large ethereal reading to this location. When we saw no sign of the beast, we assumed the best." Auren's back straightens as he tugs at his pale ribbon, unravelling his hair and allowing it to fan down to his waist like a cape. It gives him a ghostly presence, one that makes Lili almost want to cower away into the folds of her hoodie. She soon realises that it's his ether that she's sensing. He's a caster, just like her, but his Gallian heritage means that he doesn't need wings to cast at all.

Ysh'vanna turns to Avett. "Your call. You still prepped?"

With a lazy roll of his shoulders, Avett swings his weapon around to his side. There's a belt of bolts hanging extravagantly from one of the lower pipes, and tipping the end of the device are several barrels that are arranged into a circle. The only way Lili can describe it is as an automatic crossbow.

"You will be fine on your lonesome, yes?" Auren's focus is on the wards, but he manages to toss a glance towards Avett.

Avett's silence speaks more than just volumes. Coupled with the way he's pulling the carry straps taut against his body, he might as well have recited an entire bible in the lines of his scowl alone.

"I'll be off." He easily steps past Auren and Lili, not even bothering with giving a passing glance to the latter.

Lili blinks. He's already several metres out from her front gate when she throws a look of incredulousness at Ysh'vanna. "Wait—you two aren't going to help him?"

The Draconian girl shrugs as she recoils. "Hey, don't look at me. I'm just the gal who pilots the ship."

Fine then, Auren, at least. But when Lili looks back at Auren, he's already radiating with the telltale scent of ether. He smells like the sun—powerful and like burning hydrogen. Lili's ether feels like Mercury in comparison, a speck smaller than the sunspots themselves. Translucent disks appear at the sides of her vision, and when she dares to turn and observe the exterior of her house again, she realises that he's warded it—all of it, actually. Lili can hardly manifest more than two at once.

Once he's finished with his work, his hair returns to its limp form. "A backline caster does not belong on the field, Lili."  

She presses her lips together.

"...But I suppose Avett has been in dire need of a frontline partner, and perhaps he could be overwhelmed by the beast on his lonesome."

"Ok, ok, slow down." Ysh'vanna steps in between the two, her hands splayed out in front of her. "I know what you're getting at here, and I'm not liking it one bit."

Auren doesn't budge. "If Lili deems herself unfit for the occasion, I trust in her judgement to refrain from engaging the enemy with Avett." His attention falls back to Lili. "What will you do? Or rather—what are you capable of?"

Lili feels her ether spike in her stomach. It's a challenge, one that might just change her life's course for the better. Her wings—she'd forgotten to take them off earlier, she guesses—give a slight lift before relaxing again, their crystalline feathers tinkling against one another as they sway from the leather straps at her shoulders. She feels them stiffen against her back afterwards. She could do it if she wanted to. She's seen worse, encountered the unsurvivable—she ran away from most, of course, but she's had her fair share of kills with the smaller fry. She could do it.

Ysh'vanna looks like she's about to vocally and loudly disagree with her taller colleague when Lili clenches her hands into tight coils and says, "I'll do it."

It doesn't come as a surprise to her when Auren gives Ysh'vanna a perfectly symmetrical, lowered smile. It's clear who's won the battle of wits here.

Pushing past the rickety garden gate and stepping onto the shattered road feels unbelievably liberating. Lili's gone outside of the old house plenty of times, sure, but she's never to seek trouble purposefully—and trouble, she realises, is but a dot on the horizon. Far enough for its features to be unrecognisable, but close enough to strike bolts of fear into Lili's nervous system. The beast is already this close to the shack. What would she have done had the off-landers not arrived?

With her jacket halfway on and her wings standing half-up, she's next to Avett in a heartbeat. There's just the barest hint of relief on his face when he sees her by his side, but it's quickly obscured by immense disgust and—not surprisingly—anger.

"Go back to the others. I work alone," is all that he offers.

No way. Lili's future dangerously teeters between two branching paths, and she's going to do everything in her power to make sure she's getting out of here.

"It's my house too," she settles on saying, not like she'll give a crap if Ava's hard-earned sanctuary burns to the ground along with her belongings.

He grits his teeth. "It's not a matter of values; if you mess up, I'm gonna be the one to have to drag your ass out of danger, and I just can't afford to do that right now—uh…"

Lili coughs. "I'm Lilith, but most people call me—"

"Lilith." He nearly spits out the word. "No. You're going back. Come on."

With her eyes still trained onto Avett's, she raises a hand to the side, ether pumping through her body as her wings harden and spread to their full length. A translucent circle shimmers into existence at her fingertips, and when the roiling ball of fire collides with her makeshift shield, she can actually feel its heat through her gauzy walls.

She stumbles back a bit; her dominant arm is sent flying from the recoil. Her barrier shatters, and they're safe, but Lili's hands quiver in the air anyway. They won't stop shaking. There's another projectile headed straight for them, but Lili's still teetering on her feet, and there's no way she's getting out of the way in time, no way at all—  

Avett grabs her shoulder and throws both of them to the ground. Lili lands uncomfortably on her knees. Behind them, the earth has burst into flames.

He scrambles to his feet and lifts her by the literal scuff of her neck. "We gotta move," he says.

She searches for the dragon, but she finds that it's still a moderately sized blob in the distance. It appears to have pearly, reflective skin. "We could stand our ground—"

"We're not going to win when we're this far from it." He straps his crossbow to his back. "You don't want to be fighting against it with those projectiles in the way—that's his game. And you always, always play by your own rules."

"So what do we do now?" Lili asks, her shoes pounding against soft grass as she tries her best to keep up with Avett's inhuman physique. Her ether is already pounding into her legs so hard that it almost hurts.

"Run." He's hardly panting at all. "We need to get closer, so we'll split up and take turns distracting it. I'm heading left. Work your magic or something, I don't know."

Which means she's headed right. And as she's running, she needs to think of something, fast.

Forming and gathering the ether at her hands is the least of her concerns. It's an act she's well acquainted with already, considering that she pumps her muscles with the stuff on the regular. The issue is propulsion—aim is also a big damn problem, but all she needs to do for now is to focus on her projectile's path. If it doesn't land far enough from her position, she'll probably blow herself up in the resultant explosion, which comes with its own complications.

Using her momentum, she takes a leap, whirls, and physically hurls her ethereally-charged incendiary. Lili's projectile doesn't hit its mark, but it doesn't need to—large chunks of dirt fly up from where it lands, and the distant dot swivels on the spot to face the proof of her destruction. The skin of her heart freezes over, and for a moment, it feels like she's pumping ice through her veins instead of blood.

It must be looking at her.

She knows because the ground behind her burst into flames just a millisecond ago, and the only reason she realised is that she's been knocked slightly forward. Not enough to completely send her flying but enough to make her stumble again.

The field below her feet is a blur of greens and browns as she sprints across the plains, vaulting over the stray juts of concrete and trying her best to redirect the fire from the houses that still stand. There are things in those houses—dusty collectibles, cracked paintings, homely televisions and untouched dinner plates—that belong to the dead, and using them as cover feels wrong.

They're closer now. Lili catches the dragon's quadrupedal build, how it arches its long neck over the ground like a snake. It almost looks like someone's ripped it right out of a classic fantasy novel… almost. There's something wrong with the shape of its head. It's too wide, too circular—but Lili isn't close enough to see exactly what it is.

There's another searing ball of fire hurtling towards her. Lili has been running for so long to the point where she can't feel her legs, though that's probably a mercy in hindsight. Her lungs burn, her eyes strain against the wobbling landscape as she pumps in more ether into her legs like a drug. The wings at her back shake in the air, the plumes of blue crystal hotter than lava, but she continues running and running, running and…

Just as she's about to collapse, Avett sends out a few warning shots with the very same weapon he'd used against Lili in the house. The odd one clips the beast's girthy body, but the rest miss—it's evident to her now why Avett had chosen to stick the barrel right down her throat.

Another shot. The bullets he fires are neon blue and soundless. He hits his mark this time; the beast lets out a growl of pure annoyance as it turns towards Avett, head finally pointed away from Lili. She releases an exhale and slows to a gentle jog, basking in the afterglow that comes with using ether. She's done her part.

Resting her back against a weatherboarded house that's missing a roof, she fans herself. Adrenaline leaks from every pore in her body, and she finds herself expending more of her ether just to stay upright. She wonders if the stranger can handle himself—and for a moment, she thinks her questions are answered with a feral screech that oscillates rapidly through the air. Lili inches towards the corner and peeks over, her breaths shallow against the silence that follows.

No—it's not all silent. Lili catches the tail end of another explosion. It hits the ground with such force that it leaves a smouldering crater behind, and when the dust settles, she sees the stranger again, his balance disturbed but not lost. The dragon has him on his toes; every opening it offers to him is a feint for a deadly counterattack. This is what it looks like to Lili, at least. She doubts that it has any intelligence beyond its instinctual habits.

A lump of air slides down her throat. Avett stays on the defensive, taking potshots wherever he can, none of which manage to connect. It's all a pointless back-and-forth scuffle—but Avett has a plan, she realises, and all of it hinges on a single shot from the automatic crossbow at his back. Why else would he have brought it out if not to use it now?

Lili slinks back and grabs the edge of the house so tightly that it turns her knuckles white. Lactic acid sours her legs at the thought of having to run again, but the stranger needs an opening. When she dares to peek around the corner, Avett is leaping back again, his footwork sagging from dark desperation.

The wings against her back are warm as she taps into the world's pockets of ether, her body burning in waves of heat as she forms a crude incendiary in her right hand again. If she manages to make the throw to its right, she'll provide Avett with a much-needed opportunity. If she misses, she'll just have to try again.

Stepping out, she hurls her ether out into the open. Between the dragon and Lili's position, it lands somewhere in the middle, dislodging dirt from the field and into the air in response. Not far enough. Not far enough at all.

She's sprinting along the field again, her body screaming in protest as it contests against the sudden onset of exertion. The way Avett is fighting now means he's prone to mistakes—he can't keep this up forever. Whatever she's doing, she has to do it now.  

Another bomb. The dragon hardly turns. Each misaimed strike sends bolts of shivers down Lili's spine, signifying that she's nearing the bottom of her well of ether. It's like she's ripping chunks of her innards out at this point, but she keeps her eyes narrowed against the prize. Another. Another. A blade of light stretches out from her hand, a weapon she’s honed to perfection while lounging around in the house—it’s high time she put it to use.  

Grass floats around her like gentle rain; curbs from a bygone era shatter and smoke as she does anything, anything to regain its attention. Her vision wavers, her head's swirling with air, but she goes through the blows, bomb by bomb, ether by ether. By the time she's gotten the beast to turn its mutated head, she's already out of juice—and she's in an incredibly undesirable position.

The dragon is far, far more enormous than she'd ever imagined. It's towering above her like a god staring down from the heavens. Close doesn't even begin to describe her proximity to this thing right now.

Lili's lungs beat at her ribcage for air, but she feels like she's hardly breathing at all. With her head raised to the skies, all she can see is the whirling neck of the beast as it coils around to meet the source of its annoyances.

"If you run out of range from the house, you know I can't save you." Ava flicks at an invisible speck of dirt on her shoulder in her memories. "So don't go any further than the gates. Else it's all on you. Lord knows you'd find a way to kill yourself out there."

As the beast drags its hulking mass across the grass, Lili can't find it in her to move. Its neck is so long that it almost carries its head like a weighted flail. The head—its head is nothing like the elongated maws and reptilian jaws she'd read described in novels. Its head has widened into six sharp flaps of skin, revealing misaligned rows of tiny teeth on each 'petal.' The flesh inside is a dark, bloody pink, ridged with bumpy throat ringlets, disfigured by stained dead skin. Saliva hangs from the topmost tooth to the lowest flap in sticky strands.

She is going to be eaten. She has made a mistake.

"You're—fucking—useless!"

Or maybe not. A black blur of motion whizzes through the air, and before she knows it, Avett is on the head of the dragon, his legs landing forcibly enough to send it wobbling off balance. His crossbow is loaded, and he's ready to fire all of his ammunition point-blank into its ear.

A metallic click. A bang of iron sliding against iron and colliding with bone and flesh.

It's over before the dragon's gigantic body even slumps to the ground.

It's over.

Lili scrambles backward on her hands and legs as its brutalised head comes crashing down to the grass. As if there's a chance that it'll pick itself right up again and start blasting. She doesn't forget the rows upon rows of glinting, yellowed teeth, nor the way its jaw had just… flowered like that, akin to a rafflesia—

"And that's why," Avett says, his features perfectly smug yet unsmiling, "I work alone."

Blank shock turns to flaming anger in the blink of an eye. "I—I distracted it for you—" Lili starts.

"By completely going out of your depth?" He doesn't even bother looking at her. She can tell that he's fuming anyway—his ears are visibly bristling on the spot. "You were completely overwhelmed. You nearly died today. Should've stayed back with Auren."

Lili opens her mouth to retort but finds herself gaping like a fish out of water. As he saunters off with his crossbow resting on his shoulder, there's only one angry, smouldering thought in her head right now. It's the first time she's been this mad about someone else—someone that wasn't herself—in her life.

With her hands clenched to the point of white-hot pain, she storms after him. This guy is a complete and utter asshole.

0.5: prelude

The days following the initial attack had been relentless. Spires of metal and earth had risen from the ground, had taken down square-kilometres of sprawling cities in a single night. The surviving smidgens of civilisation fared no better: my particular village was reduced to cobble and broken roof tiles, upturned fields and displaced wooden beams. They left behind a trail of perfect violence with their hulking bodies and terrible thirst, and yet all we could do was watch. Wyverns were capable of such easy destruction. On the second day, human history had vanished overnight.

What were they here for? Nobody knew. We crowded into the metallic spires, called them sanctuaries and set leaders—but fear of the outside had only created malice within our community. I was a fool to believe that we'd act otherwise. The other day, someone had called me slurs over a piece of bread.

Then came the off-landers. They came in with their sharply tailored uniforms and their corporately droll airships. Their leader had green skin, and she wore her hair in a net. They spoke our language. They offered succour, nourishments, and a means to fight back against the draconic forces. They offered us a place to rest. They called it Therius.

It was the third day. I had lost my mother in the resultant chaos, I had to fight with my teeth and nails for food, and these freaks of nature, aliens of a “parallel universe” that was “not unlike ours,” had offered us succour. In pure, seething anger—we rebelled. We chased them out of our sanctuary. I had watched the blue flames at the back of their vessel burn as they flew away until they were nothing more than a blink in the night sky.

We would live on our own terms. Only we knew such maddening loss as that day. We would live and see humanity to that glorious tomorrow.

—an excerpt from a diary, retrieved from the body
of a Human within the proximity of the Hive.