In a city like Trepedite, the rain spent more time between buildings than it ever did in the sky. Birthed from an angry cloud, shaped by the air into a droplet fit to grace the blade of a green leaf, the water would instead see the sky for a second before the heights of humanity’s greed and ambition met it.

  It would find his coat a shadow of its former hopes, running down the fabric until it found a place between the crevices to pool and die.

  “You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?”

  Rain lost its ability to give life when it fell into a human city. It instead sapped vigour from him, desperate to take back what it once might have had.

  The grinding gears of Higher Order Armour laid the background of their conversation, grating against his ears as hunks of metal shifted hunks of metal into place. The birth of a shoddy refuge for another hundred people not yet born, not yet exploited.

  “You’ve seen it all, and you’re smart enough to know it’s not just humans who suffer.”

  “I’m smart enough to know things will never change.”

  The man—hiding behind the name Reverence—smiled warmly, any sincerity in the gesture washed away by the rain.

  “Then you’ve still much to learn.”

  Colte examined the man, digging for whatever lay behind the deadened eyes, as sapped of life as the rain itself.

  Reverence turned his back on Colte; any other sign he should follow drowned out by the drone of rain and discordant percussion of construction. He followed, leaving the shade of a market stall’s awning to let the river of bodies swallow him like a length of driftwood, Reverence’s back his one and only north star.

  The slum market sang in dreary hymns, the ordinary hustle and bustle weighed down by the water and the foundations of the skyscrapers themselves until they droned in harmony with the rain. Their faces, skin so leathery and detached from their skulls, seemed to flow with the rain into the gutters.

  Reverence’s back dipped in and out of sight; the lack of contrast from one shape to another stealing Colte’s eyesight from out underneath him.

  Eventually, the crowd parted with the street’s termination, and Reverence waited for him on the other side. Behind him, the only building in the district with windows lit ablaze by working electricity.

  Electricity. Money. Power.

  Reverence entered the front door, and Colte crossed the street to catch up, making it to the door before it could close again.

  He pressed against the weary, rusted hinges. Yet the building’s run-down fa?ade was just that: a fa?ade, and Colte’s eyes found the secret it so masterfully kept hidden.

  He closed the door behind him, and the sound of the rain and the market’s muted bustle faded to nothing. There, standing only inches away from the building’s threshold, Colte was standing in a new world.

  Spacehopper magic. The difference was too stark; those decrepit walls would’ve never filtered the sound so completely.

  Reverence kept walking, the sound of his heels now reverberating crystal clear against the polished walls. Joining him was a chorus more of similar sounds. Quiet talking introduced itself as the rustle of clothes and the subtle whoops of fans rounded out the quartet.

  Colte followed his guide down the corridor, the masters of the small symphony hiding behind a set of polished spruce doors. His attention was drawn elsewhere, and so they continued walking under a chandelier’s light, the fixture slowly trailing Revenance.

  Considering the building’s profile, he still expected a stairway despite the moving fixture, its moving glow a gentle reminder that nothing was out of the ordinary anymore: moving paintings, shifting wallpaper, and those were the obvious things.

  After they passed several more spruce doors, all locked by brass, Revenance paused where the hallway expired, and another door waited to receive his key. His guide turned again, the same wiry smile strung underneath his nose.

  “You’re a man of experience, Mr Colte. Often, we begin helping those in need by giving them work, but I don’t feel the need to patronise you with due process.”

  Reverence opened the door, the chandelier following him no further as he stepped through, still refusing to beckon Colte to follow, all the while leaving an ample space behind him. And having no choice, Colte obliged.

  The corridor broadened, lapping up space until the straight walls fattened into a rotunda study of rich, encircling brown lines and countless tombs. The books and the words they bore the foundational pillars of a divine rhetoric, painted onto the domed roof itself, bearing down on all that entered.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  This world may carry no hope. But the next will.

  “It’s a morbid message,” Colte muttered, voice pipe choked by the angle of his head as he regarded the words. “Although the thought that death is the only escape has crossed my mind before.”

  “The afterlife is the layperson’s way to cope with life’s cruelties, to indulge the very instincts it seeks to warn against and punish. The dead have left us. All we have influence over is here, and now, all around us. That is our mission.”

  Reverence threw his attention to the room, acting in such accordance with his namesake it was almost comical. The shine in his eyes reflected off the polished wood shelves and illuminated the book's spines in a silent prayer to the words above.

  “We aim to create a better world, for both you and I know that the one we live in is mistaken.”

  “Mistaken?”

  “The world was never supposed to be like this. That is the statement we dare to put into words.”

  “Come in.”

  The door to Elvera’s office swung open, and a frazzled airman stormed through what was a serene evening office. The brash affront to her person would ordinarily be a cause for discipline, but Elliot was rarely frazzled, nor did he storm without good reason.

  “Something’s happened.”

  “That’s not a promising start.”

  Elliot closed the distance to her desk and leaned over it, the distance motivating his voice to soften to a whisper.

  “A girl showed up at Evalyn’s practice a few days ago. It seemed like she had amnesia until the doctors at the East Excala said it was…some sort of magical memory wipe. Anyway—”

  “Hold on, let’s calm down—”

  “Let me finish…please.”

  The way his brow crossed, knitted like the seams on a shoe, pleaded with her more than his words ever could. She breathed, aware that the conversation would go nowhere if neither party were of sound mind.

  “At least sit down first.”

  He hesitated, her words visibly skipping the queue of other urgent thoughts in his mind until he finally addressed them, sitting down across from her.

  “I told Alis and Crestana that it seemed harmless enough to investigate, so Alis went with the girl to the first place she remembers after losing her memory. They rooted around, due process until they found a name that’s very possibly her…last master.”

  “I see.”

  “As they were off investigating, Crestana got a knock on the door at Evalyn’s office from the same name.”

  “So maybe he’s looking for the girl? There’s no guarantee he wiped her memory. Something might’ve happened.”

  Elliot pursed her lips, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders. “Sure. Sure, I don’t know, maybe that is the reason. But on the way back home, Alis noticed he was being tailed. Noticed it from the beginning. He led the pursuers into the Great Library, Al and Tony apprehended them and…yeah.”

  A resounding and defeated shrug killed the sentence prematurely.

  “They were Vesmosian spies.”

  The ticking in Evalyn’s head slowed to a crawl, one movement of the millisecond hand for every letter in the word.

  “A-are you sure?” she started, throwing out banal phrases while her brain was yet to catch up with time.

  “Alis knows a Vesmosian wand when he sees one. Wouldn’t say Al and Tony are exactly amateurs in that field either.”

  “So this girl is important?”

  “Possibly, yes. What I know is that this…Peter Nair that’s looking for her might be so big-time he has Vesmosian elite guarding his footprints, and this big-time Vesmosian just showed up at Evalyn’s door.”

  With enough words said came enough time passed. Elvera’s head was once again ticking over at full speed again.

  “How many of these bodyguards are there?”

  “Two. Posing as a couple.”

  “Are they still in custody?”

  “Yes. I just got the call. They’re still being held in the Great Library.”

  “Right. Okay. Okay, we can still work with this, but it’s worrying. Are Crestana and Alis safe?”

  “The sun is coming down, so Crestana can leave Evalyn’s office through the shadows. Alis is at the Great Library.”

  “Good. All right. Cordon off that office, nobody related to you can go anywhere near it. I’m going to liaison with Foreign Affairs and the R.I.B. Fingers crossed I get my team on it, too.”

  “All right,” Elliot muttered. “What should I do?”

  Elvera tried to smile for him, knowing her words would cut deep.

  “Stay put for now,” she said. “There isn’t much you can do.”

  Nobody was in any immediate danger, and a series of unknowns kept the danger further at bay. Like a stray bullet, the close encounter might graze them but wouldn’t bite off enough to consider fatal.

  But it wasn’t the pilot and his pride she directed her order toward; it was the father and husband, and in those eyes, that same order became nothing more than a plea. A plea for him to let others handle his family for him.

  “All right,” he said. “Keep me in the loop, okay?”

  “Of course. But for now, I need you to bring those two here. I don’t want to speculate, but our homes might not be safe.”

  “Spacehopper magic means my house is safe. I don’t think they’d be able to get to it even if they tried.”

  “Vesmosians are just as capable of magic as any Spirit. We don’t know what tricks they have up their sleeve, and when it comes to your home, Evalyn and Iris’s home…I don’t want to take any chances.”

  Elliot nodded, sucking air through his teeth and exhaling as he did so. “Yeah. You’re right…yeah, I’ll go do that now.”

  “Take a car from the loading bay. Maintenance should be finished refuelling them by now, and if you leave now…yeah. You’ll miss rush hour traffic.”

  “Okay,” he said, standing out of his chair. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Be careful, Elliot,” Elvera warned, squeezing his hand from across the table. “If ever there was a time to be.”

  The pilot stood and made for the door. Serenity returned, but not in a form she could enjoy in the slightest.

  Making a conscious effort to work her windpipe open and closed forced her breathing, and therefore her mind, back into a rhythm. With each breath came another check in a long list of tasks, each screaming for her attention as the seconds ran by.

  One call after another. One call after another. One call—

  A shrill ring; the sound of someone beating her to it. She reached for the receiver, praying whatever business the green plastic gadget had with her wouldn’t derail her train of thought.

  “Hello?”

  “Marie?”

  “Evalyn. Oh goodness, great timing.”

  “Great timing for what?”

  “Uh…sorry. You go first. I’d take a while.”

  “Okay…is everything all right?”

  “…no,” Elvera admitted. “It’s under control for the moment, but…go first. I’ll explain.”

  “Okay,” Evalyn muttered. “Well, looks like we’ve been going down the wrong rabbit hole. The F.S.A. has nothing to do with the assassinations.”

  Elvera hung her head, a sigh slipping out of her mouth. “Great.”

  “The F.S.A. as they exist now. Turns out we were on the money about the killer’s motive, but the Army doesn’t claim his actions, someone else does.”

  “Someone?”

  “Someone…for now.”

  “Did they give you a name?”