See a world stripped of colour, a black string’s cradle scrawled across an infinite white.

See time flowing by, a thousand rainfalls and rain crumbling into feathers of light.

Beyond the chase of falling angel feathers, a melody waits for you in the night.

Crystalline shards clung onto Jaxl’s shoulders as he fell from the skies over Hadron, black wings that allowed him to glide through the open air. Swarms of silent ravens flew by us for a few moments, before splitting off to investigate the other newcomers.

Hadron Alley was a single street stretched into infinity, a slice taken out of a dense gothic city and transplanted into a realm of warm setting sun and misty clouds. Jaxl picked a designated landing platform and touched down between flickering black-iron lanterns; the faux wings disintegrated as they flapped us into a gentle landing.

A city painted in a single sweeping brushstroke. It was a place that could only exist within the depths of one’s mind — you’d have to hire a thousand architects and artists for a thousand years to create anything like it.

The streets. The buildings. Even the goddamn trash cans. Everything here could be a work of art, save for the glaring neon billboards and advertisements hanging over the walkways and buildings. But crane your head back and you’ll see pure black spires reaching towards a gentle sea of clouds, charred Towers of Babel scraping their knees against the sky.

“Stay quiet,” Jaxl muttered, making his way into the walking streets. “We’ll be there soon.”

Stay quiet? You didn’t even need to ask, old lizard.

Despite being wrapped up in a layer of Ether-suppressing fabric we scavenged, I could still perceive through the senses I learned. I was so occupied by the sights that I couldn’t be bothered to make conversation in the first place.

There were people here, lots of people. Their conversations melted into a pleasant cloud of chatter that I caught bare snippets of as we passed above the main crowds.

Two squads of obvious mercenaries bragged to each other about their recent hauls. Three youngsters chattered about migration permits. A man argued with his wife on where to eat through something that looked awfully similar to a smartphone. Rivals in the street brawled for show, throwing kicks and punches for a small crowd of cheering onlookers.

One of my greatest fears was that society had completely collapsed and I would’ve been left to fend off in a post-apocalyptic world populated with monsters like the Princess, or some completely dystopian madhouse where only the strong and wicked survived. If people could still smile in the streets, then I could rest easy. I didn’t need to be the guy rebuilding society from scratch or a martyring revolutionary; just an easy time for little old me.

We made our way to a quieter section of the city and turned into an alleyway several stories above the ground. The most attention we got was a few curious glances from what looked like civilians dressed in streetwear — they whispered a joke about a dragon’s hoard before walking away with giggles trailing behind them.

Jaxl stopped at a shuttered storefront that had a spray-painted fox mascot crudely painted in blue paint where its window would be. There was a trigram made up of six blocks on a little scarf the thing wore, yet nothing that actually told me what this place was.

He knocked twice on the shutter. No response.

“We’ll be waiting here forever if we don’t let ourselves in,” Jaxl muttered, placing his hand on a shutter that looked like a door. “I’m sure he’ll forgive me for this.”

Wait. Was he going to commit an act of breaking and entering this soon?

You couldn’t do that — that was a clear violation of private property rights and any sensible city would have laws against trespassing. Hey, old man, don’t tell me you’ve gone senile already.

What if somebody caught us? If I got a criminal record, that would crush my dreams of being a philosopher-idol-merchant. Nobody would want to be associated with the rock with a criminal record. Not only that, but crime is bad. Bad! Laws are there for a reason, y’know? You gotta do your part as a responsible citizen and try not to break it when you can!

I’ll acknowledge that there are times where the law can’t solve your issues and you have to take justice into your own hands, but this isn’t one of those times. Maybe the guy that runs this place is out for lunch? We could take a walk and talk to some other people and wait until he gets back. Please don’t do anything that would get us both kicked out of the city.

Yeah, no, I was a hostage, and definitely not complicit in this crime. If the gothic police came for me, I’d pretend to be completely inanimate. They wouldn’t arrest an inanimate object, would they?

Jaxl melted a finger into the shutter and broke the simple lock mechanism. The door itself was a false door with a shutter pattern on the outside; there were hidden hinges upon which the door opened.

Inside was a simple reception room. Upon a small glass table snuggled in a corner was a sad, pathetic plastic bonsai tree; beside it was a single uncomfortable-looking chair. The only other things inside was a heavy-duty unlabelled metal door, and a counter built into the wall which sat an all-too-familiar cloaked figure.

“I thought I told you not to follow me,” said a fabricated voice.

We stared down the barrel of a rifle. This time, it was impossible for them to miss.

Jaxl raised his hands in surrender, yet stood his ground.

“I didn’t. I know what this place is — I’m just another customer.”

“Yeah, fucking right,” they said. “Never seen your ass-ugly mug before today. Don’t move a goddamn muscle.”

“You’ll break the rules of Hadron if you pull that trigger,” Jaxl said. “I hope you’re ready to take responsibility.”

The shadow said nothing more.

Jaxl’s mirage trick wouldn’t work twice. I knew this intuitively; he got lucky when he got hit in the heart. But the shadow was aiming at his head, at his brain. I couldn’t heal that before he was gone for good.

I couldn’t do anything here. Wind disrupted shots made at long range, not at this point-blank distance. There was no time to pull any tricks.

There simply wasn’t any way out of this one. Jaxl knew, the shadow knew. We were trapped.

The standoff continued. The old lizard was tense — he was searching for an escape, but there was nothing he could do to a bullet fired directly into his cranium.

In the terrible standoff, footsteps rang like gunshots. They came from behind the metal door; nobody dared move as the locks opened one by one, cracking open like metallic ribs.

A fine gentleman emerged, old age worn like a shining metal on his square features. His limping gait was supplemented with a fine-walking mahogany stick, paired perfectly with a grey twine suit.

It’s always heartwarming to see the elderly in good health.

Problem was, there were two bestial ears poking out of his greying hair.

That couldn’t be normal. Could it?

The gentleman stared at us. Then, with a curt frown, he said, “Of course. The only person who would dare break in would be you.”

Animosity and recognition blended into a single frustrated word. Behind the mask, I felt Jaxl smile faintly at the reception.

“You know this prick?” asked the shadow.

“Unfortunately. Let’s make this quick — I’m working on an order.”

The gentleman turned his back and gestured for us to follow. Jaxl waited until the shadow lowered their rifle, which took too many seconds for them to do. Even then, their concealed gaze trailed us as we entered the steel door.

Give me an excuse to blow your brains out. C’mon, then. What are you waiting for?

That’s what the eyes underneath the hood said. No words needed.

...At this rate, I wouldn’t ever meet a normal person, would I?

Basic hospitality came in the form of amber whiskey poured with a sneer. Jaxl raised the glass and swirled the expensive-looking liquid inside, smirking in turn.

“Oldlaw Reserve?” he said. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I was debating between pouring you a glass or smashing the bottle over your head,” the gentleman said, wringing the hexagonal whiskey bottle by the neck. “Then again, you aren’t worth wasting an entire eighteen year on.”

“I appreciate the gesture,” said Jaxl. “Broken glass doesn’t taste very good.”

“Stuff it.”

The gentleman stored the bottle on a high shelf and sat down at a neat workshop, continuing work on what looked like a sledgehammer with burning red plates on each hammer face. He worked with a crystal-tipped soldering iron, carefully etching circuits into pieces of metal.

The gentleman’s workshop was drenched in warm evening light, casting soft shadows on brass furnishings and blue crystalline implements. A speaker in the shape of a silver canister leaked a sentimental jazz tune that was heavy on clarinets and flute; partially hidden underneath it was a crumpled business card that read:

TAPIO, Owner of Frontier-renowned Kon Atelier.

“Those who shine brightest in the night,” Jaxl said, reading the slogan. “Nifty. Heard there’s a two-year waitlist for this place through the conventional venues.”

Tapio looked over his shoulder, annoyed. “Knowing you, you’ve been keeping a dossier on me this whole time. I know you’re not here out of the goodness of your pretty little heart.” He continued working on a runic description, sighing through his nose. “It’s been two decades, Jack. Twenty years. Lay down your arms and give it a rest already.”

“And what, travel the world? Start a garden? I’d get bored in a few days, find the nearest terminal and take the first job offered. Maybe cause a little trouble on the way there.”

“Speaking from experience there?”

Without lips, Jaxl had to drink by pouring whiskey straight into his maw. His blue tongue caught any stray dribbles, leaving a shimmering slick on the lower side of his face.

“We can still cut down the Qliphoth,” he said, gingerly placing the glass on a coaster. “It hasn’t grown out of control yet. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly a young man anymore. We have to give it our all just to match the kids these days.”

These old men had some history between them. I didn’t understand a single thing they were saying, but Tapio regarded Jaxl with barely concealed pity; his eyes were not of a man gazing upon long-lost comrade, but someone looking at a swindler.

Tapio put down his tools and glanced at his old friend. “And that’s got something to do with all these bags you’ve brought in here.”

It seemed like he was about to say something else, but diverted his statement to call attention to all the junk Jaxl brought in.

“I found a one-of-a-kind Relic,” Jaxl said, quietly. He slung me off his back and pulled back a layer of the cloth covering me, exposing the mangled stone and metal surface of my body. “It provides the user with rapid healing and an aspect of the wind. But the kicker?” A pause for emphasis. “It’s sentient. It understands our language. It even managed to hack into my Nexus unit and figured out how to manipulate the data inside.”

GOOD MORNING, I said with a pulled string, cutting in for equal effect.

INFORMATION COLLECTED FROM RESPONDENTS IS KEPT STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.

“You…” Tapio stared at me, wide-eyed. Then he cleared his throat.

A trace of concern lingered on his expression as he turned back to Jaxl and asked, “Where did you find it?”

“I already took out the Husk there. It was a pre-calamity facility, too.” Jaxl took out my belongings and laid them out on the table. The non-functional plasma pistol, the stone gates, Samson’s beacon, it was all still there.

I see. So I was a bargaining chip in this conversation between grouchy old men.

As long as Jaxl worked to fulfill his end of his bargain to me, I’d be satisfied. I wasn’t going to waste this chance to gain a voice and finally be able to speak freely.

Tapio looked at additional spoils with open alarm. “You should’ve taken this, all of this to the Bureau. That was the first thing you should’ve done.”

“But I didn’t. I came here to make a deal, because I know I can trust you with discretion.” Jaxl smiled and placed a palm on the worn grip of the plasma pistol. “I only want two things: give this Relic a working voice, and let me crash on your couch until I — until we — figure out what this Relic knows about the Qliphoth.”

Both parties were going to be sorely disappointed in my knowledge of their ‘Qliphoth’. Perhaps Samson left a note for me on his beacon, but I couldn’t guarantee anything.

Lowering his voice, Tapio said, “And what exactly do I get out of this agreement?”

“All of this scrap and the services of the lowest of the low, a Class 0 Hunter,” Jaxl replied. “And aren’t you curious as to what a Relic has to say? Maybe she’s got a secret that’ll propel your workshop to the legends of smithery. Or something that can fuel your Hero of Justice streak. One hell of a legacy for your kids, right?”

In response to the offer, Tapio pinched the bridge of his nose and glared. “I see that age hasn’t diminished your talent for sophism one bit. You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?”

“I learned from the best.”

After a small delay, the old smith rose to his feet, sledgehammer in hand. He laid it on the counter and said, “What do you think this needs?”

Jaxl picked up the hammer and gave it a few experimental swings, making sure to steer clear of any important equipment. The heads left hanging streaks of dull red flame as they flew, like that of a weightless hammer-shaped paintbrush.

“Needs a proper counterweight,” he observed, inspecting the open runic core in the weapon’s grip. “It’s too light in the user’s hands. This’ll cause some mean self-inflicted injuries if you swing it the wrong way.”

“Precisely,” Tapio said, taking the hammer back. “You were always too rash, Jack. The world’s changed since then, and it’s going to keep changing without us. I’m willing to work with you, but you’ve only got one chance. Don’t blow it.”

He put the work-in-progress into a black polymer case and stored it away in a rack of twenty similar cases. “Take the guest room and get some rest. You look like a tattered garbage bag caught in a wire mesh fence.”

Jaxl stood up, nodding appreciatively. “Thanks, pal. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go take a shower then pass out for three days.” He left his gas mask on the counter and stumbled away towards what looked like the residential section of this workshop.

Tapio let out a long sigh, then turned to me. “Now then,” he muttered to himself. “Let’s see what fresh disaster that rat bastard dragged in.”

My thoughts exactly.

All this pondering and mystery was getting irksome. Hurry up and tell me what the hell I was and where the hell we landed, would you?

Picture this: a sterile white doctor’s office. Endless cabinets with black metal handles. On the walls are many diagrams of the human body, of a bisected cranium, of the entire respiratory and digestive system splayed out in pastel goodness. On the eastern wall, baroque, metal-framed windows gave a calming view of distant islands floating far above clouds.

Who was the mysterious person that sat in a cushy red chair?

It was me. A rock.

Tapio came in with a crystal clipboard and briefcase and sat in a seat adjacent to me. If he was aware of the sheer absurdity of treating a rock like a patient, he was doing an excellent job of hiding it with a stern smile.

“Thank you for enduring the wait,” he said, flicking upwards on the tablet’s translucent surface. “For both the sake of time and brevity, I’ll summarize the consultations and the scan results.”

A day had passed since Tapio popped me into a closet with many lasers and scanners. I sat there and twiddled my fingers for an entire day, fully intending on being nice and placid until further notice.

When the scan presumably finished, he plopped me on a doctor’s seat and put on some suspiciously nondescript waiting room music. Then he went through an entire checklist of questions, which I had no way of responding to since I didn’t have my hijacked Nexus unit, then told me to go sign some documents that would register me as an actual person in said Nexus system.

All with a straight face.

Jaxl may have been a survivor, but this guy was on an entirely different level.

“Nobody has any concrete idea what you are, so let’s completely ignore that and focus on what we can do about it. If you want to hear my personal theory, it seems like you’re either some piece of sentient technology that our current civilization has yet to understand, or a soul somehow trapped in a mineral basis through some vile ancient sorcery that I have no way of comprehending. So to deal with that, I’ll have you explain yourself.”

Tapio took out a small cube the size of a baby’s fist from the briefcase and tossed the thing. It bounced off the seat’s cushioning and landed on me.

“It’s a vocoder in a protective shell. As it is, it’s a compact text-to-speech device. But that should be good enough for me.”

I stretched my Ether tendrils inside and found something like a miniature keyboard inside. The device was powered by Ether instead of electricity, so I pumped in prerequisite fuel and typed something up:

“Hello, world!”

The vocoder’s voice was a scratchy mechanical sound, a whisper muffled by steel wood and muddied water, but it would do.

An immense wave of relief came over me when I heard the sound of my new voice.

Communication and language was the tool that allowed pitiful, hairless apes to form communities and elevate themselves beyond their ant-eating, excrement-flinging origins. Entire civilizations live and die off tiny pieces of intelligence in the right place and the right time, and that power was in my hands.

This called for a celebration. I put my fingers to the keyboard and typed up the most elegant, most touching, the most emotional sonnet to ever grace this side of the world:

“Yay.”

...My literary abilities needed some work.

It was easy to feel the swirling emotions as they brushed past me, be they the gentle brush of warm joy, or the endless black well of sorrow, or perhaps the crushing maw of raw terror, a primordial fear which permeated all living things capable of thought — but putting any of those into words? That was too hard.

Tapio looked at me expectantly, a pen poised over his clipboard.

“—Don’t know.”

Hate to disappoint, but I only knew what I knew.

His hand hesitated. “You don’t know anything about the Qliphoth?”

“Don’t know anything.”

The old man shrugged, then placed his clipboard on the nearby counter. “That’s that, then. Moving on—”

“Wait,” I said. “That’s it?”

Tapio leaned against the counter, faintly amused by my remark. “I’m not a therapist, I'm a glorified arms dealer. That old Jack, he’s still stuck in the past. But this is the Frontier. My eyes are focused on the future that I can see, and I see something much more interesting than some dusty old information.”

Brushing past Samson’s distress beacon, he picked up the plasma pistol and the gates I had created when I was desperate to survive. He held the stone gates between his fingers and gestured to me. “In the days of antiquity, legendary artifacts came from the remains and belongings of saints and heroes and villains and magical beasts, lingering reminders that myth was once history. Nowadays, these are called Relics: unique, unreplicatable treasures that are desired the world over.

“The Oracle Bureau was established to control and catalogue current and future Relics, and over the centuries, have grown to an international organization capable of fighting the three remaining federations on its own. This plasma pistol here was created from, as far as I can tell, the hilt of one such legendary sword: the Sun Piercing Sky Blade. A mouthful, but bear with me for a moment.”

Tapio tossed the stone gates up and down. “And within these stones are the same circuits. With a bit of refinement, you would have a perfect duplicate of the same blade, albeit the material could use some improvement. Though many have tried, nobody has ever been able to perfectly replicate a Relic before.”

I began to realize what he was talking about.

“What do you think will happen when the Bureau, the people in charge of cataloging and controlling all Relics, finds out that you’re capable of perfectly replicating Relics?”

I didn’t need this crusty cat-eared old man to spell out the rest.

If I found myself and learned about the ability to copy artifacts, I’d use it and abuse it until it broke. If I could replicate any weapon without having to care about the pain or consequences, I’d find the most powerful one and replicate it enough times to create an army of supersoldiers.

Then again, Tapio was making a reaching observation. The plasma-pistol-sword-whatever could have been a one-off fluke, and I didn’t feel like it was worth subjecting myself through that much pain just to have something less efficient than my wind.

Still, it was an astute judgement. Yet there was one glaring conflict of interests here, which I quickly raised.

“Why are you telling me this? It is not in your best interests to inform me about this, should you be only an arms dealer.”

Tapio placed the tools back in the briefcase and grinned. “A man of many talents would naturally have many interests. Jack’s heart is in the right place, but the only thing he’s good at is smashing what he doesn’t like. That won’t be enough to change anything.”

The old man stepped towards me. “These days, Relic Hunters and civilians alike pray to the distant constellations above. As much as some don’t want to admit it, they’re the new divinities, and this world’s dancing to their tune.”

Then, with glimmering grey eyes, he extended a hand to me.

“How would you like to tear down the heavens and take back our world?”