The small white line moved. Despite the apparatus remaining still, it crawled from left to right ever so slowly. She lifted it off Evalyn’s desk, aligned herself with the line, and ended up facing Excala City.

Nothing suspicious there. He was attending a hearing, and by Iris's guess, it was somewhere in the city at the very least.

But it was moving. He wasn’t stationary like he was supposed to be.

“Evalyn!” Iris called, running out of Evalyn’s office clutching the ring. Her bare feet pattered against the floorboards until she reached the master bedroom and screeched to a halt.

“Evalyn!”

“What!” Evalyn echoed, clapping her book shut.

“The ring’s moving,” Iris whispered at the pyjama-clad woman.

“How can you tell?”

“Because it’s moving. Barely, but it is.”

Evalyn hauled herself out of her bed, throwing the book onto her pillow as she walked over and crouched down. Her eyes level with the small beam, she squinted and analysed. She waited a few silent seconds as Iris began to doubt if she was seeing things.

“No, you’re right,” Evalyn muttered, looking toward the clock at the end of the hallway. “He shouldn’t be in transit, not until late this afternoon.”

Evalyn stood upright and strode to her office, with Iris hot in pursuit. She rounded the doorway and made a grab for the telephone receiver, but it rang before she could pick it up.

“Hello?”

Iris could only overhear snippets of distorted conversation, but it did not take much of her intellect to guess the words. Evalyn nodded, listening in silence.

“The ring’s still with us. We’re on it.”

She slammed the receiver back onto the switch hook and turned around.

“That was Elvera. Don’t bother getting dressed; we need to hurry.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t lose the ring.”

“Okay.”

Evalyn disappeared into the office, returning with her usual two armaments. She strapped the sidearm holster to her shoulder and tucked an extra magazine in her waistline. Evalyn took Iris by the hand and dragged her outside as Iris struggled to fit the ring onto one of her fingers. They stepped onto the pillowy grass with bare feet, and Evalyn’s markings began to shine.

“Act Three: Subtext.”

Her armour sprang into being, wrapping itself gleefully around her and tightening her silhouette. Even without focusing, the aura around Evalyn was far stronger than last time. The armour was sapping an exorbitant quantity of Aether from the surroundings, something Iris sensed as a surge of energy. It felt familiar, for better or for worse.

She could control herself, for now.

“Show me the ring.”

Iris held her hand up to Evalyn, her visor’s eyes beaming a brilliant gold. Evalyn held her hand out in the same fashion.

“A bigger version of that ring would be nicer,” she said. Not long after, a golden light streamed forward from Evalyn’s hand like a compass needle. “Once I use this much of my power, turns out I can copy some weak magical properties if I’m near them. Nothing complex, but if I can make something elastic or flammable, I can make my own tracker.”

She aligned herself with the needle and crouched, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. “Get on my back, Iris.”

Iris did as she was told and climbed on, her heart skipping a beat when Evalyn rose to her full height. She stuck the beam hand forward, and Iris felt her whole body rise another few centimetres. Evalyn bent her knees and put a single leg forward as golden matter shot out from the bottom of her soles. It flattened the ground underneath, propelling them forward faster and faster and faster.

With every slight movement of the needle, Evalyn adjusted herself as fields of green sped past them. Fences turned into nothing but brown streaks, and trees into nothing more than their simplest shapes. They were at least a metre off the ground, the current of gold underneath surging like rockets. Iris could only see herself moving as fast as a car on a country road. Yet when the ground flew under her feet, and the wind assaulted her face, she could not help but hang on for dear life.

They rapidly approached the first road in kilometres, unpaved except for two parallel absences of grass. The needle turned, following the road away from the city.

Evalyn turned to pursue, but the road was clear as far as either of them could see. No wheels were kicking up dust, and nothing disturbed the grass other than the wind. Iris focused forward, scanning the road for anything pulling any amount of Aether.

Not a peep. There weren’t even any grazing Spirits to speak of.

Iris let her hair dissipate and formed a rod with an outstretched hand. She extended it longer and longer, going further whenever she felt she had gone far enough. She stopped and with one movement, waved it from left to right.

It struck something, something hard the size of a car.

“There’s something there.”

Bullets whizzed from thin air, pinging off Evalyn’s armour. She erected a barrier with her off hand as more shots rained down on them. The silent gunfire persisted alarmingly fast, barraging them with several bullets a second.

“A fucking SMG?!” Evalyn shouted. “For fuck’s sake, if we could go one job without a Witch or Wizard.”

Evalyn surged forward as the gunfire continued.

“It felt like a car! If you attack it wrong, you might hurt Alis!”

“I know!” All we can do is wait until they run out of ammo!”

The bullets kept coming, but Iris noticed she could see no muzzle flash nor hear any gunfire. No dust, no disturbance. It was as though it did not exist until something touched it and confirmed its existence.

Almost like she could not notice it.

“The fuck is that?!”

Iris looked to the horizon, and a castle greeted her instead. Standing tens of metres tall, its great walls were hewn from sandstone and tiered into increasingly smaller levels. Like an ancient temple, it stood with the promise of something divine at its apex. Grand carvings and hanging gardens beckoned them inside.

They quickly approached the castle as the car’s exhaust began to sound, and the body’s dull grey painted the two pursuers a visible target.

“Can you tell if Alis is in there?” Evalyn asked.

“I don’t know! Just follow it!”

The great, steel grid at the castle’s base cranked open, and the car sped inside. Evalyn surged forward, and Iris rallied her power into two colossal hands. They extended from the ground and met the closing gate, forcing it to stay open. The gate pushed back against the palms, rebelling against Iris’s own strength and bearing down on her body.

She was not supposed to feel her magic; the castle was not supposed to exist.

The hands barely held, and the castle gates made swift progress at crushing them back into the ground. It wouldn’t hold, not for much longer.

Evalyn tore Iris from her back and held her close to her chest as she slid through the narrow gap Iris’s pillars had given them. The gate slammed shut behind them, sending reverberations up their spine and chattering their jaws.

Iris dared to open an eye and look around. The castle ceiling had kept its material make on the inside; an arching auditorium, like an aircraft hangar. Red carpeted sandstone tiers flanked their left and right, each lined with blazing torches. A lone pier sat at the end of the room, reaching off into a mysterious water.

They got on their feet, examining the room. Evalyn’s eyes fell on the water at the far side of the room.

“There’s no body of water that big around here, let alone a castle.”

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Iris muttered.

“Looks like it; I don’t know what he’d want with Alis, though.”

Iris took the lead as they strode through the room, Evalyn scanning elsewhere for signs of danger. Iris stepped onto the pier, but it did not creak like she expected. She stomped on it but felt none of the reflexivity wood ordinarily had.

Even her footsteps felt less hollow than they were meant to be.

“A boat’s recently left here,” Evalyn said. “They didn’t take the rope with them.

“Do you think they went that way?”

“Who knows? If it is one of Wesper’s hangouts, then I don’t know when the floor might drop out from under us.”

Iris glanced around at the silent chasm, its walls wordlessly threatening unimaginable deaths. “He knows we’re here, doesn’t he?”

“And he probably knows who we are by now,” she uttered, turning to the indiscernible blackness surrounding the stagnant river. It was as though the only glow came from the water itself.

“I can’t overwhelm it with my Mind Palace; it must be tethered like last time. You remember what I taught you, right?”

“Yeah,” Iris said. She hovered a foot above the water and crafted a small platform, enough for both her feet to stand on. She stepped forward, uneasy about the water’s murkiness.

“I don’t know how fast I can move like this,” she said, conscious of every step she took.

“If you fall, I’ll catch you. Once this is done, I need to teach you how to swim,” Evalyn said as her armour began to shimmer, the water’s surface gleefully playing with its light.

“Act Two: Character.”

It was a trick Iris had seen before. Buoyancy; another physical attribute Evalyn could cheat at will.

“How many more acts are there?”

“I’ve shown you one, two, three, and five. I guess four and six?”

“Why did you divide them?”

“I didn’t. I could do different things by exerting more magic, so I just gave them names. Makes them easier to do if I give them names. Come on, let’s make pace,” she said, striding across the water.

Their trek began, Evalyn looking forward as Iris took one tentative step after another. Eventually, watching her feet as she walked became more of a detriment than a precaution, so she looked forward. A faint, fairylike glow coloured their path, emanating from deep within the black water.

The blackness was bent, somehow. No contours revealed themselves, but the glow's path was not straight. It followed a curve.

One foot forward, another foot, and then the other. Iris made the mistake of looking down, throwing herself off rhythm and tripping over herself. She fell forward, but her platform extended to account for her whole body by instinct.

“Are you all right?” Evalyn asked, running over. Iris pushed herself up and sat upright, her heart refusing to calm itself down. She peered into the water, unsure if the shapes moving in them were more than just her mind playing tricks.

She looked forward, finally starting to see a faint glow at the end of the turn.

“Let’s hurry,” she said.

“Hold my hand.”

Iris stood, willing her knees to stop quivering, and took Evalyn’s hand. They started forward, the walls of the darkness becoming narrower as they went. The end of their path glowed brighter until the water abruptly ended, but not at a pier.

“It’s the hallway.”

The same hallway that brought shape to her mind, and whatever remnants of her life past still festered.

It was there, in form only. The light was not sickly, unnervingly even. The colour of the carpet did not eagerly replicate the same shade of blood red. The walls were stained, stained in such a way that suggested someone or something had traversed it once before.

If the hallway in Iris’s mind was such a farce, then the hallway before Iris’s eyes was trying too hard to be real.

They stepped into the hallway together, and Iris noticed the carpet was marginally softer. None of the same bristling, like a worn-out toothbrush.

It was a fake—a fake of a fake.

“I am deeply sorry for dragging you two all the way out here,” a disembodied voice echoed. “It really was not my intention.”

Wesper’s voice.

“Where’s the boy?” Evalyn hissed.

“He’s all right. I’ve been asked to hold onto him as part of a job.”

“Did you kidnap him?”

“God no, I wouldn’t know the first thing about it. The culprit is long gone now, although you wouldn’t have noticed. That’s her magic, see.”

Wesper materialised in front of them, unchanged from their last meeting. Out of Iris’s periphery, she saw Evalyn’s handgun slip through her gauntlet.

“Evalyn, wait!”

Evalyn squeezed the trigger, unloading the magazine into Wesper. She shot over and over until squeezing the trigger granted her nothing more than a metallic click.

Wesper stayed standing.

“Finished?”

Evalyn’s armour began to glow, the heat tingling at Iris’s skin and the pull of Aether robbing Iris of clear vision. She could feel it again, even if it was a fraction of what it was before. That rush of energy, the same surge of crazed freedom, like her heart was flying.

This time, she felt offence in place of glee. She had been mocked.

The hallway. It was pathetic. Weak.

“Hey!” Wesper shouted, throwing his hands in the air. “I don’t want a fight, Wishbearer.”

“Give him back, Wesper, and we won’t have to fight.”

“If you hear me out first.”

“How do you know this place.”

Iris’s cold mutter cut dismembered the discourse in an instant. She did not know what she was saying, the abruptness made her words feel foreign. The two adults turned to her.

“How do you know this place.”

Wesper smiled, “Because you’re sheltering something here, fledgeling. Shelter happens to be my…speciality.”

“The Spirit of Shelter,” Iris heard from nearby, although who it was remained only vaguely familiar. She could only see him, it. The body standing before her, mocking her creation, her sacred sanctum.

“You cannot kill me here; my body and my life are elsewhere. You are under my control here, and I want to make that clear to you.”

Arrogant words. Arrogant words coming from such a small rabbit, hopping gleefully between conversations. It took her creation and desecrated it.

No, she would decide when things were to be destroyed.

Wesper looked around, finally aware of his lacking product.

“Although…I sense I’m no longer in control of this area.”

The carpet’s fabric grew stiff, the lighting nauseating, the walls flimsy, and the stains vague in their origin. She could feel it, the stagnant air that seemed to sap the life from her pores. The first two doors in the sequence opened, one leading to cold death, the other to pure death.

The eyes behind Wesper’s eyes shone with dull light, his magic attempting to take hold of the situation.

“Die.”

The copy’s limbs twisted, fake flesh contorting around fake bone, until everything blew apart in a shower of fake red. The disparity between real and copy blood was only exemplified by the deep crimson of the carpet.

“Iris!” she heard from beside her. “Iris!”

She needed to find something. What it was she could not remember, she could not care. It was somewhere in the building, another elaborate fake.

She could see it all, layers upon layers of magic, built-in and squeezed into nothing more than an abandoned garden shed. What she was looking for was right in front of them, but space folded inward infinitely. Running forward would net her no results.

She would kill it. She would destroy the magic.

She raised her hands, conjoining her wrists in a diagonal cross above her head. The purple line drew itself on the ground, and the dome seeped from it and completed itself above her head. The purple was brilliant, shining, oozing magic that dripped from it, itching to destroy everything around her. The physical, the magical, it was all at her mercy.

She twisted her wrists, and the dome ruptured outward, clearing anything and everything in its path. She could not see the utter decimation, but she could feel it. She could sense it like some innate instinct, the only thing she could really feel she was born with, the only semblance of self she knew to be truth and nothing less.

Then she saw his face. Unconscious, helpless, lying on his side like he had just fallen asleep.

She was there for a reason; to find him. Not some indiscriminate ruination, she was there for a purpose…wasn’t she?