Iris had long since exited the car to try and better discern the muffled sounds of the battlefield. Their volume, despite Evalyn's barrier, was alarming. Each gunshot was like the blast of aerial bombardment. The crunching of breaking metal persisted at jarring and random intervals. Even though Iris could see, hear, and feel very little from where she stood atop the dune, her senses had noticed the stream of Aether since the beginning of the assault. Like the wind, it rushed en masse to fill the void left by the intense display of logic-defying magic.

She could feel it all pass through her on its way to its final destination. It beckoned her to follow it, make use of it. It beckoned her to join the fray and harness her power for what it was meant for.

The hallway was answering that call, and she could barely resist following along. The dizziness, the numbness in the limbs. The need to let it out and let it out violently.

Aether influx. That was what Elliot had called it.

The thumping in her ears grew as she took a cautious step forward.

But a rumble stole the balance from that cautious step, and she stumbled, knees first into the sand.

The vibrations grew in magnitude, and the sand grains began to dance around her. The dune she stood on drifted around her small footsteps until it snuffed them out of history.

The Aether shifted, its direction changing slightly. Only slightly, but she could tell. Her vision followed the flow as the Aether’s second master brought its form to bear.

Segmented, calloused, and ivory white. Six organically cylindrical bones emerged from the sand as if the seas were parting for it. The thing seemed to disintegrate and reform with each passing moment as if it was one with the sand. Of the same grain. The height of the apparatus dwarfed the golden dome, and the three-fingered hand descended on it like a gavel delivering a death sentence.

Another limb followed, the digits digging into the dome and squeezing it like a child testing a balloon.

Iris picked herself back up as she watched the hands continue to grip the shield. What was it? Why had she not known of them before? Why were they here? Why now?

Evalyn’s dome creaked under immense pressure, and its orange glow intensified to the point Iris could no longer look at it.

And then it happened. Succumbing to the immeasurable pressure, the dome shattered, disintegrating into a brief golden whirlwind.

And she watched as the hands came down upon the miniature buildings below.

Evalyn. Evalyn was in danger.

She answered the beckoning, yet this time it was not the hallway that invited her.

Help me save her. I want to save her.

 

The carpet prickled, and the lights were flat and dead, like the eyes of a dying fish. The unmistakable plaster walls and quietly monstrous doors boxed her in the narrow, suffocating space.

She had returned of her own volition. The suffering, cloth-covered Evalyn was nowhere, and her pained whimpers were absent.

She had returned to the space but had no more confidence left in her to take another step forward. Another step into submission would land her in god knows where, subservient to god knows what. She could not trust herself, for she would lose herself the moment she did.

But her sense of self-preservation was warped, distorted by the very woman hell-bent on preserving her. Why should she sit still? Be the rescued one for the rest of her life? A life that would surely end pitifully if she continued in such a way.

She had that power. Why not use it? Why not use it to protect what she loves? Why not use it to kill what she hates?

Kill what she hates.

Kill hatred.

Kill something.

Kill.

Kill moved her forward. Kill pumped her legs with blood, with Aether. It did not matter which. Kill brought her to the next door, across the hall from the frozen death.

Kill willed her arm forward. Kill wrapped her hand around the knob and turned it open. It swivelled as smoothly as if it had been oiled daily since the invention of oil.

The door creaked open, and that was where Kill left her. It had served its purpose and done so flawlessly.

Iris had crossed the threshold of no return and had not so much as looked back in the process.

Before her was darkness. Pure darkness obscured direction, any sense of up, down, left or right. A flat canvas, devoid of dimension no matter how far Iris tried to venture into it.

Albeit, that was not very far.

A lone bureau stood, or rather, floated in the space. It looked regal and enjoyed a marbling wood finish and a simple yet elegantly carved design. Decorated with an ink well, skull, dimly burning candle, and a globe, the bureau as well hosted an occupant.

A devilish, elongated face. Their chin reached down to their abdomen, and their nose curled like the blade of a sickle. One sunken eye hid behind a monocle, while the other was left uncovered.

The humanoid entity looked up from underneath its top hat. Their movements were delicate, as if to not crease the thick, black cape draped across its androgynous body.

They placed their quill down.

“I have not seen you in a long time, friend,” they whispered. A voice both male and female.

Iris was frozen. There was no icy chill to paralyse her or an overloading sense of intimidation.

Only neutrality. A coating numbness. She could feel nothing in this space, for nothing but herself and the bureau existed.

She had felt this before. This was death. Oblivion.

“You look…different. Your lines, they’re clearer now. I am glad.”

Iris dared, with everything in her power, to risk a painfully slow glance backwards

There was nothing, not even a door. Only she existed, and those words existed solely for her.

“Wh—…who….”

The sunken eyes searched over Iris’s body, eyeing something deeper than even the things she was yet to know about.

Whoever, whatever they were, they knew who she was better than anyone else.

“I see. It seems that I was able to manage my end of the bargain.”

“What…you—?”

“I am your old friend. Your greatest benefactor when you were at your zenith,” they said. A toothy smile spread from end to end, splitting their face in two. “I am death, at least in Spirit.”

The Spirit of Death watched her. Every shift of her feet, every twitch of her finger. They watched with the manner a person might observe a bug, or a god might observe his people.

“Who…am I?”

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you that, else there’d be no point to our agreement. You must find that out yourself, old friend. For now, you are one step closer.”

Death’s wraithlike cape responded to a non-existent wind, broadening itself in an indescribable defiance of physical matter. She could not comprehend it, and so the only option left for her was to fear it. Death reduced her to an animal, a startled beast, as all living things really were. A great equaliser. The only equaliser.

And this great equaliser was a benefactor of Iris’s past self.

A self, an equaliser more powerful than the incarnation of death.

Death came closer, silently commanding the distance between them to shrink into infinity. She traded places with them, their cloak passing through her for what seemed like an eternity. It drained her of her senses, her function to feel herself. She felt her soul rip from her body.

Like hell, her mind was dying. Yet this was not a mind death so easily contextualised in smoke and fire. This was vaguer, darker.

Void.

Oblivion.

The mind that died did not turn to ash, it simply did not exist anymore.

The lines that contained her blurred and betrayed her, mingling with the suffocating darkness beyond the now unclear edges of her existence.

She was disappearing, disappearing in a truer sense than anything.

She needed help.

She had not given in when she had asked for help.

She had not conceded when she walked down that bristling carpet.

She had yet to submit when she opened the door.

The hallway was testing her once again.

Not with pain, but with pure annihilation.

This was where it wanted her.

“Save me…,” she muttered. The only two words that had yet to be taken from her.

The borders of herself began to glow purple, and her mind felt as though it had caught fire once more. She blinked. She breathed. Her organs existed. She had willed them to exist once more. She had willed her malleable existence back into reality.

Death watched her with the same toothy grin. A corpselike satisfaction of something that could see beyond the future—beyond death itself.

“You truly are the one to save us all.”

 

The toothy grin was contagious, and Iris caught it as she returned to the desert. She immediately did away with her lengthy hair. The white locks disintegrated into purple matter as she willed it into the sky.

She knew what she wanted. Like an artist, she saw the painting in her mind's eye. She did away with subtlety. She painted with broad strokes, her purple shapes would be larger than comprehension.

The matter expanded, but it was not enough. The hair was too light, too restricting. She needed more.

A hand. No, an arm. Yes! An arm!

An arm would suffice!

The worthless imitation sprung itself from its humane bounds, returning to a beautiful hue of ever-changing purple.

It hurt, the pain of a lopped-off arm, the nerves of the severed stump firing. Yet she knew no such pain, so she ignored it and instead relished in her newfound paint.

Paint. Purple paint. She would paint great swords with them and a new arm with the leftovers. Three swords! And they would rain down like holy spires, driven by divine conviction to carry out her will. The will of god.

No sooner did the swords form in her mind than they formed in the air. Colossal monuments that dwarfed even the malevolent towers of the city. Brilliantly, against the shine of the blue sky did the purple swords shimmer.

Yes. Killing could be beautiful. She relished in such a thought.

The small god tightened her fingers and clenched her teeth. Like a humble conductor, she brought the three swords down like she was conducting a crescendo to end the world.

And the world shook.

The swords plunged downwards, implanting their blades into the immense Spirit. She skewered either hand while the third found the rest of the body still hidden under the sand. Each impalement brought with it its own great boom, its own dust storm.

Ah. To create and destroy.

Yet she was not done. She had promised herself more to kill.

Specks travelled across the sand towards her. A party of ants. Nothing of note.

Yet yonder, there were great grey men. Metal men, she knew to be bad. She would kill those.

Without a thought, she outstretched her better hand. The purple grew wire-thin, just like Evalyn’s limbs.

She was just like Evalyn. That thought made her ecstatic.

By the time her eyes had opened once more, she was already in the fray.

Bullets. A hailstorm of metal rounds sought her out, sniffing their air for her flesh.

She could see them. She could see them move.

Slides. The ones she had seen children play on. Yes! She would send those cannon rounds on slides, directed right back to their owners!

And so she did, shaping them with a wave of her hand. She watched several metal men burst into brilliant colour as their own gunfire came back towards them. Such a painting she would never be able to see again. She relished the moment.

Grey man after grey man fell to great purple cleavers, puncturing spears or even their own gunfire. One by one, they fell to her. One by one, she killed them all.

One by one by one by one by one by one by one by—

“Iris!”

A voice.

A voice she could recognise.

A voice she liked.

“Evalyn!” she shouted gleefully. Her favourite person would watch her art. She would be proud.

Two golden hands wrapped around her waist and forced her to the ground, a violent show of affection.

“Iris! Snap out of it!”

Iris could not stop smiling.

“Are you proud of me?!”

“Iris! Listen to me!”

The golden hue faded, leaving the soft hands of a human being.

More to kill. She had to find more. She had to continue until she saw nothing but Evalyn. Until Evalyn was safe. That’s what she had promised herself.

Until the painting was finished.

 

Elliot watched from the sky like a vulture. He had feigned ignorance regarding the dome, advising the flight not to shoot without any concrete information. However, what had transpired in just the past few minutes had left him dumbfounded.

A great, terrible Spirit slaughtered as easily as livestock by a triad of purple swords.

“Iris,” he muttered as he searched for his ward amongst the unexplainable chaos and otherworldly destruction. The crumbs left behind by macabre devouring were not dissimilar to Evalyn’s brand of destruction. Yet this was unbearably darker.

Malice exuded from it. A hatred for the world.

Elliot’s eyes fell on two figures, still amongst the destruction. From this distance, he was unable to make out anything concrete, but he could do nothing but trust his intuition.

“Grain man one to all fighters, mission objective complete. Return to base while I do a final sweep.”

Upon hearing the confirmations of his order, he veered his fighter away from the formation and down towards the base. His wings flapped gently as the scene grew in gruesome detail. The units had been contorted as easily as a body of bone and flesh, leaving its occupants trapped in tombs of their own making.

The few still left standing were beyond saving. The only difference between them and their fallen brothers was their resilience in the face of death. But, they would not last long.

Elliot found the two figures; a cackling girl with silver hair and a woman holding her back. Iris had gone berserk once again, but for what reason, he was not so sure.

He could tell at a glance that Evalyn was struggling. A foreign strength drove Iris forward despite Evalyn’s best efforts to push her back. Evalyn was pleading, begging to reach the little girl she hoped was still underneath the hideous cackle.

He could not do anything.

This was not something in his domain.

He fought pilots, not superhumans. He killed; he did not plead.

He had not a clue as to how to save such a girl, let alone raise her.

As his gloves tightened around his yoke and the wings of his fighter carried him along the wind, he did not know what to do. He did not know how to use himself for her.

He had never flown for anything other than himself.

As a child, he had seen his dad glide like a bird. He was the village crop duster. He had watched that man fly slow in a bright yellow biplane. Looking back, his grip on the yoke had been unsteady, the plane had handled like a wild horse, and the winds had never been in his favour.

He had long surpassed his dad as a pilot, yet the thumbs up he had given a young and bright-eyed Elliot had stuck with him. Even now, higher than his father had ever flown, he still looked up to that bright-yellow biplane silhouetted against the afternoon sun.

He had never flown for anything besides himself. That could not have been true, no matter how hard he tried to deny it. Even if it was, it was no excuse to start trying.

Make sure they never want to leave you.

Francis’s words had proved invaluable. If he could use his skills for something, anything, it ought to be that.

Think. Think. Think.

The ways in which Iris had snapped out of it before. Her trances. Trances! Like a slumber, if not for an inexplicable reason, it was always some violent movement. A fall, forceful shaking.

A loud noise. That could work.

He cranked the lever away, locking his wings and making a blade out of his aircraft. He traded altitude for speed.

Lower. Lower. Even lower.

Fifty. Thirty. Twenty. Ten.

The blast from his engines kicked up a great trail behind him as he pushed his engines further.

Loud. As loud as he could without outright deafening them. A shock to Iris’s system was all he needed.

The engines roared as he came closer and closer.

He saw Evalyn duck as he finally blew past them, sending a storm of sound and sand in their direction.

Elliot unlocked his wings once more and ascended, narrowly dodging a stray dune catching the nose of his aircraft. He found the serenity after the pass. The engines slowed, and the sound subsided.

He looked down at the two.

No more struggling. No more cackling. The swords had faded, and Iris’s brilliant purple eyes had found him against the sky’s clement blue.