Vaetra didn’t like waiting.

  Usually, when she had to wait, she talked with Oris or at least spent the time in Oris’s lap. But with his leg stinted and all their wounds, she could only hold his hand.

  It was weird, really. Every other Incarnate she had talked to never felt this urge she did. She always wanted to stay close to him and talk with him about anything and everything. Of course, the other Incarnates felt a bond to their wielders, but those were practical- something she had as well.

  She knew where Oris was as long as he was close enough to her and if they were touching, she could even get a vague feeling for his feelings. It was not really accurate or reliable, but she had learned how to interpret it and how he acts enough to help him.

  It was different for her. His quiet determination settled under her skin like warmth after frostbite- steady, patient, stubborn in a way that never tried to overpower her. It pulled at her, softened the edges of her instincts. She didn’t just want to be near him because it was safer, or easier. She needed to be.

  She remembered the first time she noticed it- before she even had a name, when she was just a tangle of magic and memory given form. He’d reached out without fear, fingers brushing her skin like he was greeting an old friend instead of claiming a weapon. And in that moment, something clicked into place. A silence that made sense. A stillness she could anchor herself in.

  “You’re still bleeding,” she said softly, not because she wanted to remind him, but because silence made her thoughts louder.

  He hummed in response.

  She knew that hum way too well. It was his go to response when he didn’t want to answer- when none of the words fit. He probably didn’t want to acknowledge it.

  As if that would help calm her down.

  While she picked at her bandaged arm, thinking of topics that she could bring up that wouldn’t get shut down by Oris, Lio had been busy. Vaetra hadn’t seen Lio in a few minutes, but when she strained her spatial sense to the maximum, she could still feel her buzzing around the inside of the shuttle like a busy worker bee.

  The moment Lio had been good enough to work, she climbed into the shuttle and started.

  Vaetra’s fingers lingered on Oris’s hand, feeling the soft tremor of his spatial energy through the calloused bandages. Despite the pain in his stinted leg, he exuded a quiet determination that both soothed and unnerved her. In those moments of waiting, her mind was a restless tide. She wanted it to be over quicker and knew that Oris wanted the same.

  Everybody hated waiting.

  Except Lio. Lio never seemed to mind waiting, but that might have just been because of her Xendarii implants. She spent all her time in her own head, going through files.

  “Do you remember our first mission, the one without Lio?” Vaetra asked, leaning over and resting her head on his shoulder. She didn’t wait for him to answer, because she knew he wouldn’t. “We spent three hours waiting for that big bear monster.”

  She smiled against his shoulder, remembering the cramp in her legs and how neither of them had dared to breathe too loud. Oris had been still the entire time- statue-still- like he was carved for that moment.

  “You fell asleep sitting up. I don’t even know how you did that.” Her voice was soft, threading through the rain outside the nest. “You said you didn’t, but you did. I remember your head dipped once, and your fingers twitched like you were dreaming.”

  He didn’t respond, but she felt it- that flicker. That slight shift in his breathing. Maybe amusement. Maybe just remembering too.

  “We weren’t even sure if we would get an archivist,” she went on. “But I already didn’t want one. I didn’t say anything because I thought it would sound needy. Or wrong. Or dangerous.”

  A quiet sigh stirred her hair. It was more than most people ever got out of Oris when he got like this. She was no expert, seeing as she was only a few months old, but she knew that this behaviour wasn’t normal. There were times when he wouldn’t respond at all for hours, even.

  “But I am glad that we got Lio,” Vaetra admitted softly, whispering against Oris’s shoulder low enough that Lio couldn’t hear her. “She’s smart and... quirky. She talks enough for the two of you... but she could get a bit more serious.”

  Vaetra’s whispered words lingered in the dim light of the nest- a fragile echo threaded among the pattering rain. For a long moment, the only sound was the steady rhythm of Oris’s heartbeat against her ear and the soft, distant murmur of Lio’s ever-busy presence. The nest, with its battered walls and makeshift comforts, was less a refuge than a pause between battle and the next uncertain step.

  They’d need to get the shuttle working, but neither Oris nor Vaetra could help Lio with the repairs unless she needed something large lifted.

  “Well done,” Vaetra whispered, “earlier, I mean. With the spider monster. You thought quick and didn’t hesitate to ram me blade first into its carapace. The spatial tear will probably heal.”

  “Thank you,” he replied, his voice soft.

  Lios voice rang out through the nest, echoing off of the webbed walls. “Yes! Yes!” Seconds later, her head popped out from the hatch atop the shuttle. “We can get all the way up to Caldrith’s shard. Probably.”

  “Really?” Vaetra asked. “Got enough fuel?”

  Lio nodded, climbing up and out of the shuttle. Sliding down the side of the shuttle, she called out, “It’s difficult. I don’t know how good that fuel is, but the fuel tank is about halfway full. The displays turned on and there were no error messages after I fixed a few minor wear and tears, but I’ll need to get the shuttle excavated to do a proper maintenance check. If there’s no other problem, I can probably fly us in the right direction.”

  “What about landing?” Oris asked, his voice barely rising above the muted hum of the shuttle’s systems.

  “I-” she started, then paused as her mind flickered to the complexity of their situation. Landing on Caldrith’s shard wasn’t merely about touching down; it was about finding a landing strip in the endless forest or along the edge of the island that they could use that’s not too far away from a city where they needed to hike another day, but not so close that they invite pillagers. “It’s not going to be easy... but we’ll survive. The shuttle won’t completely crash, but it might not be able to lift off again.”

  “I assume that’s the main reason you’re not already herding us into the shuttle?” Vaetra asked, squeezing Oris’s fingers with a smile.

  Lio chuckled awkwardly, scratching the back of her head. “Not only because of that... but I do have to admit that it was kind of a large point of it. I already said that I needed to have the shuttle excavated for a final round of tests.”

  “Then let’s get to work,” Oris said, standing up with a groan. “I want to go home.”

  Vaetra didn’t stop him from standing up this time, seeing it as a good sign during one of his quiet stretches. She stood up as well, supporting Oris as best as she could. “Yeah, you wouldn’t want your mom to worry.”

  “She worries anyway,” Oris deadpanned.

  Lio whipped back around to Oris. “Your parents are alive?” she asked in surprise. The moment those words left her mouth, she realised how mean they sounded and quickly added, “Sorry. You just don’t seem like the kind of person with... alive parents.”

  “That’s... wow,” Oris said, staggering forward alongside Vaetra. He just didn’t know what to reply to that.

  Vaetra smiled faintly, wrapping Oris’s arm back around her shoulder to help him along. “To be fair, you never talk about them.”

  “Exactly!” Lio quickly agreed. “Anyone with parents that are alive talks about them at least a little bit, but you haven’t even taken a vacation to visit them since we met.”

  “We’ve been travelling together for two months. Do you visit your parents once a month?” Oris asked, rolling his eyes.

  Lio stopped at the edge of the shuttle, looking back over her shoulder with a mirthless smile. “I would have. I’m an orphan.”

  “Ahh,” Oris said, suddenly the one feeling awkward. He should know better than that, yet walked right into that one. Now he didn’t know what to say.

  “You must have worked exceedingly hard to become an archivist,” Vaetra eventually said, wanting to keep the conversation going. Everything was better than the silent waiting.

  Lio chuckled as she answered, climbing up the shuttle, “Yeah, I did. The moment I learned to read, I pestered the girl in my foster home who worked at the Noctharrow library. Really, I didn’t talk with her about anything except her job and what books she could get me. It earned me a really annoying nickname as well, Bookdragon.”

  “Because you hoarded books?” Oris asked, climbing after her with Vaetras help before helping her up in return. “That’d explain a lot of things.”

  Vaetra happily accepted his arm and let him help her up. While Lio climbed inside the shuttle, Vaetra stayed outside, looking around the nest while offering Oris her arm. “You do know a lot of things. It’s impressive.”

  They filtered in one after another, Vaetra sitting on the edge of the hatch and looking down at the two. She swung her legs back and forth, not participating in their conversation. They weren’t talking about anything important, just small talk, and she had something else to figure out: How to get this shuttle out of the nest.

  It was large, but just barely big enough to hold six people- a lot larger than they needed it to be, but not too large. If it were any bigger, they probably couldn’t even transport it outside. They’d need to tear down everything around and even then, it’d be a long shot.

  Actually, that was something she could try to figure out. She quietly murmured, “How big is this shuttle, really?”

  Oris glanced at her, but didn’t answer. He knew how she liked to solve questions like these once they got into her mind. She was kind of obsessive, but he didn’t mind.

  She focused on her spatial sense, seeing the entire thing as an exercise for her power. She had always struggled with getting enough power into her spells and abilities but exceeded in getting the minute changes just right. Just the opposite of Oris.

  Her sense was weird. She just felt an entire bubble of space around her, just like one felt their arm or leg. It was there and she could interpret its curvature to know where stuff was. It wasn’t accurate, nor reliable, but it was something she needed to do for any of the spells she cast. Everything with mass curved space, or that’s how it felt to her, and she could do the same.

  She could twist, bend, even snap space apart with enough force. They had mostly been warping the space to affect gravity or making boundaries and swapping spaces to teleport. There was barely any scientific basis for their magic, but it worked for them and that was what counted.

  Vaetra’s eyes narrowed as she shifted her focus inward, her mind already untangling the spatial puzzle before her. The steady buzz of their small talk faded into the background as she leaned over the hatch, peering down at the shuttle with a quiet intensity. She had a rough idea of what the shuttle looked like and its mass distribution due to the curvature. It was made of a material slightly heavier than the dirt surrounding it, but lighter than whatever made up the large platform below it.

  Ugh, she hated dirt! Every square inch had a different density and thus a different curvature she could feel. It was like going through a room with hundreds of lights all set to different strengths and flickering with every step you took. Sure, if you spent every day since you were born with literal tons of that below you, everyone would be annoyed.

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  She knew that Oris loved the feeling of motionlessness and freedom that accompanied the apex of a jump, but she loved it for something completely different. Air was so blessedly uniform!

  Yes, everything else was amazing. She loved that feeling as well, but it was not enough to trigger this utter contentment Oris got whenever they did a big jump.

  She was getting off-track again.

  The ship itself was easy to approximate, but she couldn’t get anything specific from it like its exact size or composition. She just knew it was there and how it affected the space it occupied. There was something very heavy at the back of the shuttle, probably its propulsion system or whatever cargo they had when everything here went to shit. Additionally, the front was similarly heavy, probably to make up for the back of it. That was probably something Lio would want to know, maybe even needed to know.

  “Lio, the ship is very heavy at the back and at the front. Anything noteworthy there?” She called out, leaning forward and looking down at Lio and Oris who had already gone through some of the storage space and sorted what little remained of it.

  Looking back up, Lio tossed whatever she had grabbed away onto a pile of moldy rags. “Huh. I guess they needed to for something... Very little of Xendarii design is unintentional. Weight distribution is something people way smarter than me have been struggling to figure out since the Shattering- or Calamity, I guess. If they have something heavy in the front, maybe the weight can’t be too far in the back? The propulsion needs to be at the back of the shuttle, but I see no reason for the front to be so heavy.”

  “Probably,” Vaetra replied, sitting back up and stretching again.

  She wanted to figure out how to get the dimensions of the shuttle just from her spatial sense. Vaetra’s eyes narrowed as she shifted her focus inward, her mind already untangling the spatial puzzle before her. The incessant murmur of their small talk faded into a distant background buzz.

  It took her a while longer, just to try to approximate the length and width of it just by comparing it to how she herself distorted space. It was inaccurate and probably the worst day for her to do it, but it was the only one she could think of.

  After checking her approximations twice, she called out “Twenty meters long, like five meters high?”

  Lio nodded. “Sounds about right. Probably not exactly, but if we round to the nearest nice to calculate number... That’d be just under a thousand cubic meters. Can you two teleport or move that outside?”

  “Probably, if we construct a boundary excluding the inside of it, we could teleport it for small stretches,” Oris thought aloud, stepping over to one of the remaining chairs and sitting down. “It’ll take some time, but this shuttle should be safe, yeah?”

  “Yeah, let’s get to work!” Vaetra agreed, dropping down into the shuttle and walking over to Oris before dropping into his lap. “Proximity makes it easier, right?”

  Lio rolled her eyes, but claimed another chair for herself. She pulled out her tablet and started to tap away on another document. It was always easier to use the tablet directly.

  “It’d be easiest if you swapped forms,” Oris noted, but wrapped his arms around her waist anyway. Her weight was comforting on his lap and he needed all the comfort he could.

  Vaetra pouted and wrapped her arms around Oris’s neck. “Would it? Your presence of mind is very important to how well your spells work and I hope you’re most comfortable with me in your lap.”

  “Can you two stop fli-“ Lio tried to make a joke, only for the entire shuttle to lurch as Oris teleported it onto the launch pad, just a few feet further. “You can’t shut me up that easily. You’re acting like an old married couple even though you haven’t even known each other for a year.”

  “We’re not old,” Vaetra retorted, tightening her hug around Oris’s neck and turning so neither of them could see the blush on her face.

  Lios grin only broadened as she caught onto Vaetras reaction but she didn’t press it. She tapped away on he tablet for a few moments before waving it to the other two, “You mind if I put on some music while you two flirt?”

  “Go ahead,” Oris said, shaking his head with a smile, “but we aren’t flirting.”

  Lio didn’t deign to answer, instead selecting her favourite playlist to play. The music played from the speaker of her tablet, an uptempo beat with distorted vocals suddenly filling the cramped space as she tapped away. She chose this song to start, not because it was her favourite, but because she thought it would be perfect to introduce the other two to her music tastes.

  The shimmering boundary Oris had constructed glinted in front of Vaetras eyes, the plane of magic visible to only her. It was strange that Oris couldn’t see them like she could, but she supposed it made sense when she was quite literally the incarnation of his magic. It made sense that she could see what was supposed to be herself, but it was still something different from what she had heard off of other Incarnates.

  The music throbbed against her skull, each distorted lyric a reminder of their situation. It forced her to ignore it if she wanted to get any further. They needed to get better at their magic if they wanted to continue.

  If Oris was the power behind their spells, she needed to be the finesse. She needed to be better, to use her unique view of this magic to help him advance. They had all been hurt, and it was her fault.

  Oris went back to being silent and listened to the music, just wanting to rest and focus on the magic. He kept adjusting the boundary, trying to get it as tight as possible around the shuttle to minimise the power needed.

  Vaetra tried to focus on the mesh of the boundary Oris had woven- its shimmering plane was tactile to her spatial sense, like a physical line she could trace with her mind. But instead of clarity, she found only dizzying layers of possibility: What if she snapped the boundary apart instead of letting it unravel? What if space buckled and she had to stabilise it on a whim? What if the spatial boundary went through someone, or Oris, and then snapped?

  A sudden creak from the shuttle’s frame jolted her focus back to her other senses, causing her to glance around. Light was shining through the hatch at the top now, they were outside after a few more teleports from Oris.

  “You okay?” Oris asked, concern threaded through his words as he squeezed Vaetras waist.

  Vaetra blinked, the question catching her off guard. It was so mundane. “I...” She wanted to tell him about her fears of not being strong enough to protect them, how she had already failed, but didn’t. She could grow stronger, help him survive and actually live. She disliked lying to him, and wouldn’t, but there was not much she could say that would reassure him and be the truth.

  “I’ll be fine,” she eventually said, and meant it. She would be fine because she had Lio and Oris.

  Oris squeezed her waist, a soft smile on his lips to reassure her. He didn’t know what to say, but his presence was reassuring in its own right.

  Vaetra focused on Oris a few more seconds, revelling in the feeling of closeness and familiarity. It was almost like how they had met for the very first time, but now Oris was actually clothed. He had always been very even-tempered, with some small outbursts from time to time, but there were times where he was just not completely there. He was steady. Patient.

  Most of the time.

  Vaetra reached out her hand, sliding it along the boundary she could feel along the edge of the chair. It was just a few centimeters off of the surface, but it felt so real to her.

  Oris had been training just as much as her. While she tried to increase her finesse and control over their magic, Oris decided to go the opposite route and increase how much power he could put into the boundary to strengthen it. The stronger and more stable the boundary, the more they could twist and bend space inside that boundary without destroying anything around.

  Maybe that was something she could explore?

  If they managed to make a sufficiently strong boundary, that would allow her to make much smaller, intricate adjustments. If she wanted to make more complex effects, she’d end up having to do that anyway. If she could make a sufficiently strong boundary encircled by another, she could maybe generate two opposite effects and spin stuff like that, disorient people.

  For now, they needed to focus on getting the shuttle out of here and ready. She could experiment with their power when they were safe. But there was this want to try it out now.

  There was a way for her to improve and explore their innate magic, yet she could not because something might just attack them. It was frustrating, but she needed to be reliable.

  The entire ship teleported again, just a few more feet. Vaetra pressed her cheek against Oris’s shoulder, inhaling the sharp tang of his sweat and a faint smell of ozone. She didn’t know where it came from, but it was probably something from the ship.

  Lio’s voice crackled through the shuttles speakers, interrupting the music for a moment. “We’re outside and in a great place to start. I think. I’ll get started on repairs!”

  Then the music started playing again.

  Vaetra looked around the inside of the shuttle, finding that Lio was already outside or working somewhere else. “Wait, when did Lio leave?”

  “Are you alright? Zoning out and forgetting about my surroundings is usually my thing, not yours,” Oris said, patting Vaetras thigh.

  She blinked, looking around as she replied “Yeah. I was just thinking of our magic. How to improve.”

  Oris nodded just as Lio dropped down into the hatch again. She was sporting a huge grin, turning around and immediately going to where she had found the propulsion system earlier. “So we’re outside and now I just have to fix this Xendarii ship with no reference to how it looked when it was fully functional,” she joked, unlatching a panel. Below it, dozens of tubings coiled around like serpents, “This seems... good enough. They’re kind of corroded, but I could probably make it work up to Caldrith’s shard. It just needs to hold out for a few minutes, max... If I could figure out what this was.”

  “Very reassuring, Lio,” Vaetra said, standing up and stretching. “How long?”

  “Just... a few days, maybe weeks...” Lio admitted sheepishly, reaching into the machine to unlatch another panel. “I can rush it.”

  Oris stood up as well, grabbing the last fruit from his bag and biting down. “We’ve been stuck here for a few days. We can make with a few more. We’ll scavenge and hunt. Lio, you should know a lot about survival training, right?”

  “Oh- Yeah! I’ve spent a lot of time going over different survival trainings and what to do with barely any resources to survive. But you two don’t have to indulge me with figuring out this ship,” Lio argued, before reconsidering, “but it would help everyone if I was more certain and if I knew just what everything did, I could even fix it while we’re travelling. This thing is a treasure trove of Xendarii-“

  Oris raised a hand to stop her, walking over and looking into the newly opened panel. “I already said you can take your time. We’ve spent a few days here already and I do not mind if it’s three or two weeks. It makes no difference to me here in this jungle. There’s plenty of foods around here, we’ll survive.”

  “Okay, I’ll get started right away!” Lio says excitedly, pulling her hair into a ponytail. She reached past some of the tubes and groped around for a cogwheel or something else. “Do you want me to explain anything?”

  “Will I understand any of it?” Oris asked, reaching over and grabbing one of the remaining panels and detaching it, freeing Lio to explore more.

  Lio stopped, biting her bottom lip as she tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t insult him. “Maybe. I don’t always understand everything immediately, but if you heard it already, you might understand it later.”

  “Go ahead then,” Oris said, sitting down next to her. He might not be able to understand any of it, but he remembered what his mother always used to say: You only truly understand something once you can explain it to someone else.

  Vaetra laid across two seats, groaning softly as she stretched. “I’m gonna take a nap. Please turn down the music a little.”

  “Of course, sleep tight,” Lio replied, turning down the volume of her music.

  Oris motioned for her to go ahead with a smile before turning back to Lio and settling down to listen in.

  What followed were two hours of Lio explaining everything she could. Every single pipe, wire, or tube she knew what the purpose was- even some that she didn’t knew. She theorised with him, telling him about her conclusions and how she thought everything worked together while asking for his opinions.

  Sure, most of his opinions were about as insightful as that of any random citizen, but that was a boon in its own right. Sometimes, he pointed out something obvious she had completely forgotten and not even considered. He wasn’t distracted by the sheer giddy excitement she was feeling.

  After they just barely got through the propulsion system and any file Lio could pull up on her tablet that related to it, Oris finally stopped her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “That’s amazing, Lio,” he said, “but I am getting a headache. I’m gonna take a nap as well. Wake me up the moment you see anything dangerous approaching. Don’t get lost in your head.”

  “I would nev- Okay...” Lio agreed, a small smile on her face still from her prolonged tirade. “Lay with Vaetra. That seems like the most comfortable spot.”

  Now it was Oris’s turn to not deign her with an answer, laying down adjacent to Vaetra with her quickly moving her head onto his lap.

  Lio, meanwhile, got to fixing the ventilation. She left the propulsion system for now and got to search. If this was supposed to go for long flights, it definitely needed some way to take in air for its crew to survive.

  There was a small system in the front of the roof of the cabin, hidden behind a circular grate made to distribute the air evenly was a small duct that lead to a fan with filters and a system to circulate the air from inside. There was an intake, Lio knew it, but she couldn’t find one. The vents just led to a rectangular box.

  She didn’t find any screws or bolts in that box, so she decided to take a different approach.

  Climbing back outside, she propped the hatch open with a scrap of one of the crates so the others wouldn’t starve. The back of the ship didn’t have anything that could qualify as an air intake, except something for the propulsion maybe. But that certainly wasn’t what she was looking for unless they made two separate systems just to control the cabin air, which wasn’t very likely.

  So she turned to the front of the shuttle. It was a sleek design, starting narrow and broadening up to the tubular main body. It reminded Lio of a duck’s bill.

  Just above the front window, still caked with muddied blood and dirt, there was a narrow slit across the length of it. She stuck her hand inside, running it along the inside of it to try to figure out if it led somewhere. It fit purely from the positioning, but she didn’t think the Xendarii would make an air intake this easily clogged without a good reason.

  It took her a lot more climbing in and out of the ship, as well as crawling into the cramped space below the ceiling before she managed to find a way to open the box. For some reason, the Xendarii made the box which held the intake compressor as well as the filter for recirculated air accessible from only one particular side which you needed to climb into the ceiling for. It appeared like someone made this design and had it assembled but never planned on ever touching it again, so they didn’t care. They just wanted it as small as possible.

  She grabbed the filter and brought it outside to clean. She had no broom or something, but stepped inside to the pool that had gathered over the duration of the rain and washed it inside there.

  Turning back from the lake, she looked over to the shuttle with a smile.

  She really had her work cut out for her. She needed to repair a Xendarii shuttle with no schematics and just scattered knowledge, while also scavenging and exploring a new island full of unfamiliar fauna and flora. It was kind of exciting.