“Where in the icy hells did you get that?!” demanded Oliver, aghast. The young man recoiled on his hay bale, staring at the ancient tome. “Did you steal it?”

Behind him, the latched loft doors to the barn clattered, and the cows below shuffled in their sleep. The rafters groaned under a wind from the west like a demon, but Oliver paid no heed to the Harvest breeze. His attention remained on the leather-bound book in Edward’s hands.

Ignoring his protests, the old laborer reverently laid the tome to rest on the crate which served as their table and wiped his hands for the third time across his greasy overalls. “Brighten the lamps, boy.”

Oliver reluctantly obeyed, adjusting the two oil lamps on their studs. Flickering light swelled into the corners of the hay loft and revealed the cracked embossing across the cover.

“Much better.” Edward laid his calloused hands across the journal like a holy relic. His scarred and wrinkled hands caressed the leather for several moments before he turned to the third member of this makeshift household. “Shall we open it, Donovan?”

Of the three, he was the only one free of mud; after all, he was a Guild mason. He folded his newspaper deliberately, leaned forward on the second-hand couch that served as both recliner and bed, and considered the request.

They waited on his verdict, and the barn rattled to the last nail.

Donovan milked the moment too long, and the duo began to fidget.

“Open it,” the mason commanded at last.

Edward pinched the corner of the leather tome between thumb and forefinger.

Quietly, Donovan tensed, just in case he needed to fling himself behind the couch.

Edward flipped the cover, revealing a thick stack of rough-pressed, aged vellum.

Donovan exhaled into his beard.

The first page gleamed, completely covered by a single, meticulous sigil. Precise as modern printing, the ink laid a pair of delicate wings in a nest of ancient, incomprehensible symbols. Surely, this was ancient and mystical knowledge!

Oliver gaped, all objections to theft forgotten. Magical sigils on ancient tomes found in the dead of night could hold any wonder. Who was this scribe who spent his evenings huddled over the pages, inscribing his very soul for the future to find?

“What does all this mean?” he whispered reverently.

“It’s sacred writings, you dolt,” chided Edward.

“Oh.” All the youth knew of sacred writings was the occasional symbol atop an old arch or behind an altar. Certainly, none of his village schoolhouse tutors taught such a script. He wasn’t actually sure it was a language at all; perhaps it was merely a set of pretty designs for teenage girls to doodle on their homework.

Edward squinted at the page, nodded vaguely, and mumbled, “I see.”

Like a basking lizard, the old laborer soaked in the atmosphere of edification that accompanied such ancient works. Writings so august they predated the oldest noble! If the book was perhaps acquired by involuntary donation, well, he had suffered enough docked wages and belligerent foremen to dismiss such concerns as fair turnabout.

“Are you going to turn the page?” Oliver asked.

“Patience!” Edward counseled, but he turned the vellum.

From the second page onwards, a dense sprawl of script ran in perfect rows for dozens of pages. Even a university scholar would struggle with such cramped, strange letters. Two day laborers from the sticks had not a prayer.

The thirtieth page finally revealed an illustration. A cavalry saber cut the page in half with an edge drawn in a single flick of ink. Its handguard spun from the hilt in dozens of strands of filigree far too thin for combat. The saber’s hungry tip dipped into the spine of the journal, lurking like a razor in the margins.

“Fantastic calligraphy,” Oliver complimented. Was the author a retired cavalry officer? Nobles would have time to learn inking while their men dug latrines, after all.

Edward hovered above the illustration, nodding to himself. “This must be…”

Oliver glanced over. “Be what?”

The old man waved his hand over the page several times. “An…an artifact of great power!”

Rolling his eyes, Donovan seized the journal. He laid it across his knees, cleared his throat, and recited from a language strange and rumbling like distant thunder.

A language like none spoken by the men of this age.

Edward swelled with second hand importance, and Oliver nodded along with the gibberish.

“In our fallen tongue, this reads as follows,” Donovan instructed. “‘The flaming sword, breath of life, drawn forth in subtle emanations from the realms divine. Blazing symbol of heavens, forged from the sap of the Tree of Life, Light to cleave ignorance and darkness in equal measure. The sword of the King of Kings. By its fire, the crown will be revealed.’”

Oliver glanced between the two men, a trickle of unease whispering down his back. Donovan reads lost sacred writings? When did the Stonemasons start teaching that class?!

Noticing the young man’s scowl, Donovan sighed. “These are mysteries beyond your ken, boy.” Annoyed, he let a hint of a rumbling, foreign accent bleed into his words. “Powers beyond men! Artifacts forged before this world was born! Would you sulk in the face of power?!”

Edward whispered, “The Hand of God…”

They were conspirators in something – a secret withheld from their roommate.

Oliver peered at the cavalry saber illustration once more, trying to divine the mystery. “A sword.”

“Didn’t you hear Donovan? An artifact of power from before the world! The Hand of God!”

“A nice sword.”

The older men shared a meaningful glance, the sort parents used around children. “Let him dwell in ignorance, then.”

“That’s cold!” Oliver protested. “I deserve to know. If the constables come knocking, I’m going to the penal mines same as you!”

The mood in their hay loft plunged twenty degrees. Donovan slammed the tome shut, and Edward cracked his old knuckles like firecrackers.

“Not that I’m going to say anything!” Oliver corrected quickly.

They glared at the youth, cold as alleyway gangsters.

Only once Oliver flinched did Edward relent. “Lower the lamps, boy; you’re wasting good oil. I’d do it, but the old knees. You know how it is.”

His knees cracked like wet firewood on every step, the inevitable result of thirty years spent in manual labor.

Every year, the burden grew worse. If a farmer in the fields drove his hired help to the bone, a man could quit and walk a mile to the next farm. In this new world, though, a hundred replacements waited at every intersection with hungry eyes.

Oliver scurried to obey, lowering the lamps. Then the youth drifted to the gable and peered east towards the sea. Towards Lumia, city of electric progress.

Beyond miles of ripe corn and barley, the city of the future dominated the horizon: buildings six stories tall, a jungle of concrete and steel, its boughs festooned with the amber light of modern electric lighting. The power of lightning served man now, and the world gazed, enraptured, at all that skyline promised for the future.

In the loft of an old barn, he leaned against the post and mooned. Both of them are touchy tonight. Well, Edward always busts my chops; he is my senior, after all. But Donovan isn’t normally so sensitive…

As a Stonemason, Donovan usually worked jobs late into the night. It was common enough for him to vanish for two or three days at a time. As long as his third of the rent arrived on time, that was fine.

Rent and work. Rent and work…

This city life was a far cry from the radio advertisements. Oliver had contemplated running home to Oshton dozens of times, but nothing waited there but an arranged marriage and three older brothers already claiming chunks of the homestead. For Oliver, his choices were to farm, mine black coal, or brave the city.

The former two could feed his belly but not his dreams.

I’m going to seize this city like a king.

Like an Inventor – a titan of vision, industry, and wealth.

I’m not going to haul the bundles of wire my whole life! he swore quietly, lost in daydreams of his name across all the papers. I’m going to be the man who looks to the storm and grasps the lightning!

“Getting late,” Donovan declared. He carried the ancient book to the corner of the loft, lifted hay, and carefully unlocked their communal safe. He placed the journal amongst each man’s savings and counted the progress towards next month’s rent.

As Donovan counted, the other two rearranged the makeshift furniture and laid out beds of hay.

In other parts of Ruhum, a loft wouldn’t be prized living, especially not when it cost a third of their combined income every month. Yet Oliver spent his first year in Lumia sleeping in a tenement, fifty men to a hallway, and he relished the quiet of a barn rattled only by Harvest winds.

Lumia, city of the future, gladly devoured a man’s wallet and his soul.

As Oliver laid to sleep on hay, he dreamed of his ticket out – his wings in the mail.

***

We regret to inform you that your application for the Guild of Electricians has been denied.

Oliver read the header three times, but the text remained indifferent to the ringing in his ears.

I can see my future now…thirty years hauling wire up and down, up and down…until my knees pop like wet firewood with every step…

The laborer behind him coughed. “Can’t you read, boy? Need me to do it?”

“I can read it!” Oliver squeaked, cramming the damned letter into a pocket.

“Then stop holding up the line!”

He jumped aside, head pounding with disappointment. Stupid! Aure above, I’m stupid! I should have known they would never give me the time of day!

He fought the urge to duck behind the lumber pile and cry. Why not consider a bitter silver lining? No one knows you applied. No one can laugh.

Neither of his roommates were here today. Edward hated fresh sites, always complaining that the mud sucked at his aching calves. Yesterday, he spent most of the morning grousing that the guide flags were all in the wrong places. Donovan offered no such reason; he simply refused to roll over and wake up this morning.

As such, neither would have seen Oliver so eager for the post.

I bet they’re both lounging on the bales, reading that journal, the youth thought sourly. What did those two conspire that they couldn’t share with their roommate? What else has Donovan stolen that I don’t even know about?

“That’s all the mail!” the postman hollered, tossing his bags back onto the wagon.

On the other hand, this site sucked. The plot was a rectangle of mud, adjacent to the brick road and bordered on all sides by old growth. The thick soil clumped under one’s boots, and the shrubs released a steady trickle of late-season insects. There wasn’t even running water on site yet to wash the grit away. As the first construction along this block, the rectangle didn’t even offer a tantalizing clue for the eventual nature of the project.

Such things didn’t matter to the dumb laborers who hauled the goods. A smart young man would turn his mind and back to the task fit for his stature. First came foundations, and someone had to build the cursed things.

Today, Oliver would be digging utility ditches for the same Electrician’s Guild that rejected him by mail. The Guild workers, electric or otherwise, would arrive to find the hardest labor completed and get paid thrice rate for their trouble.

He glanced skyward. The back of the site abutted the most important hill in Lumia. Up thick slopes of undergrowth, there lurked another world of verdant gardens and stately manors. The nobility on their perch surveyed Lumia and the sea, safe from the rabble below. Behind their ivory gate, they never knew the feel of grit grinding between their toes.

The brick road on his right wound a long loop along the spine of the hill. To the west, it rose through the neighborhoods of merchant barons, their manors just a touch less opulent than beyond the ivory gate. To the east, it sank down the incline to the jazz clubs and parlours of downtown Lumia.

Hefting his shovel, Oliver sighed. I could hike right up this hill and knock…

Or steal something.

Maybe Edward avoided a return to the site for another reason.

Wasn’t it a little funny that both of his roommates swore off the site today? Laborers took what work they were given, and Stonemasons were heavily involved in laying foundations. None of the three were so rich that they could risk being dropped from the rolls for a month…

Aw, hells.

Just then, a constable wagon crossed into view. Two horses towed the rusted wagon along, and two of the men in blue watched like hawks for any signs of desertion at the sight of the law.

The foreman glanced their way, nodded, and turned to roar at his men. “You halfwit louts line up! Don’t even think about running!”

Nineteen grumbling laborers and one very nervous youth marched to the center of the mud and formed a ragged line. The constables parked, hopped to the ground, and assumed positions at the corners of the site, their badges gleaming in the morning sun.

“There has been a report of a theft from a noble House!” bellowed the foreman, jabbing a finger towards the hill above. “The honorable constables here found tracks of mud in the mansion hallways, and there are broken branches directly up the way from this very site.”

Edward had been muddy yesterday, sure, but any muddier than usual?

Oliver fought to find the benefit of the doubt for his seniors. Anybody could waltz through a job site with their heads down. Last year, a trio of thieves stole a tractor from a site by walking right up and driving it off, chipper as songbirds!

Oh, who am I kidding? Edward and Donovan are guilty as a choir boy with jingling pockets, he admitted in despair. He had gotten himself thrashed by a priest or teacher a time or two, but this was a crime far more serious than sneaking peeks at his neighbor’s test.

Aure above, don’t press me into the navy!

His face red as a peach, Oliver cursed the heavens. If he wanted to thieve, he could have joined any of the gangs! Or several of the Guilds…according to rumor.

“Who’s out today?” the foreman demanded.

The crew shuffled, sharing tallies, and eventually reached a consensus with the help of several sets of fingers. “Jeremy, Evans, Edward, Donovan, and that one guy with the missing arm.”

“I think his name is Elric?”

“Yeah, that guy.”

The foreman’s jugular pulsed like it was trying to escape. He marched the line, jabbing a finger and glowering. “Then they’re suspects! Plus every one of you is a suspect! Step forward now, thief! Throw yourself on my tender mercy or we’ll start with floggings on the left and work towards floggings on the right!”

Oh, such mercy.

“Floggings not enough? I’ll cut your pay and cut your names from the rolls!”

Immediately, the line erupted into shouts, curses, and illustrative hand gestures. A beating was one thing, but docking pay?! The matter threatened to devolve swiftly…but a new vehicle arrived.

A black car.

The automobile parked and idled at the curb, an implacable feat of modern engineering. It was sleek, low, long, and polished. Its engine chugged and coughed, and its exhaust belched a steady cloud of noxious fumes. That, however, was a problem for those who followed. The noble inside surveyed the plot from a world apart.

A man needed more than money to get his hands on one of those automobiles. Each cost a small fortune, of course, but enough could afford the fees. Yet there was only a single factory that constructed the things, its secrets jealously guarded, and the waiting list swelled into the decades. The only way to actually acquire a car was through the bribes and backroom deals of influence where nobility ruled.

Oliver didn’t understand why more factories could not be opened, but who asked his opinion?

Can’t have dirty commoners getting mitts on status symbols, after all.

Peeking from the corner of his eye, he waited for the Livery butler to bustle from the car and ferry instructions to the peons in the mud.

Sure enough, the driver’s door opened, and a man rose into view. He wore a suit painfully out of style, tailored close and dyed a faded chestnut rather than the Livery Guild’s regimented black. Spindly and gaunt, the man adjusted a pair of thin spectacles across his narrow nose and surveyed the crowd like a farmer on the search for a new horse.

Without glancing down or closing the car door, the strange man mounted the sidewalk and crossed onto the site. His rich leather shoes sank immediately into the mud.

A constable rushed to halt his advance midway.

The noble smoothly sidestepped that groveling and addressed the foreman. “There is no need for such shouting. If it pleases you, sir, I would speak to the men for a moment.”

The foreman blinked, slowly processing the formal speech. “Go ahead then. Sir.”

“Thank you. Good morning, sirs.” The man offered a casual wave as if to boyhood friends. “I am Sebastian Mishkan. You most likely guess – correctly – that I am here on behalf of the owners of the mansion from which a certain item has been taken.”

This was the closest Oliver had ever come to a noble, and the man waved to him. Or could this man be a servant? Maybe an old favorite of the Lord from the days before the Livery crushed all competition? Nobles could afford sentimentality like letting a favored servant borrow the family name.

“A book was stolen. Personal in nature and devoid of much in the way of information, it will not fetch a high sum on the black market. It would be a tragedy of the item was destroyed. You see, a dear friend of mine has kept this book for a very long time.”

Ah, the good old guilt trip. Unfortunately, Oliver knew far better than to tattle. Nobody protected a snitch.

The Mishkan servant waited a moment.

No one spoke.

“No takers? Very well.” Approaching the first man in line, Sebastian asked, “May I ask what you did yesterday?”

The laborer grunted his way through an account of the day, and the servant nodded attentively. He asked clarifying questions several times. Once satisfied, he moved to the next in line.

Oliver started to sweat.

Each man answered in his own way, surly or blunt. In each case, the man regarded them with a sharp, personal interest.

Get your story straight. Keep it short. Don’t blab or you’ll be doomed for sure. Short, simple, straight!

Soon he arrived before the youth. “May I ask what you did yesterday?”

“You may,” Oliver blurted out nervously.

“Ah, very good.” The noble smiled as though they shared a private joke. “What did you do yesterday?”

“I woke with the dawn. I rode the wagon into town. It took almost two hours with traffic. I arrived at this site shortly before eighth bell. I dug the trenches for pipes until lunch, and after lunch I carted dirt away until release. Then I rode the wagon back to my home, ate dinner, and slept.”

Short, simple, straight! Just like that.

Sebastian smiled pleasantly enough, but he did not seem to blink quite enough…

Such attentive eyes, grey and soft like a morning mist. There was an atmosphere in those eyes, clouds and winds and storms, age and distance and sorrows carved like canyons into the face of the moon…

Oliver shook his head, refocusing. The noble stared at him, eyes quite a normal shade of brown.

The hairs rose across the back of Oliver’s neck, and he fought a feral instinct to flee.

“Thank you,” the man replied, nonplussed. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen this Harvest,” the youth replied. What does it matter? I’m an adult by both village and city law.

He had discovered that seventeen was considered a child in Lumia upon arrival, just the first of many rude shocks as he sunk into the city’s poorest quarters. He had spent his first months in a youth ward, and the councilors had gleefully taken his daily pay as ‘tithes’.

They pitched him the day he turned eighteen and kept everything in his locker as fees.

“You are too young to despair,” the man advised. “Let your dreams bloom in their own time.”

What?

Sebastian moved to the next in line.

Oliver shook his head. He’s a strange old dandy. Still, if he bought my spiel…

Eventually, the noble returned to the foreman. “No further questioning is required.”

“That’s it?!” the foreman squawked. “…sir.”

“Yes. The constables will continue to investigate, of course, but I do not believe any of the men here at this time stole the book.”

The foreman grunted. “Whatever you say! Sir. You louts, back to work!”

Sebastian returned to his black car, and the job site burst to life.

Oliver dallied, glancing after the vehicle. What in the world was that about?

***

Twelve hours later, Oliver stank and ached in equal measure. He yearned for a proper shower but hated the idea of walking the mile to the nearest bath house. Mud coated his pants, and his ears still rang from the foreman’s screaming. So what if he broke a shovel? How was he supposed to know there was a rock three inches down? They told him to dig, and he dug!

The Houses paid for the construction materials in the end anyways. They would spend a fortune on a dress for one gala and browbeat a man for a two-silver shovel.

Oliver trudged past the cows, clambered to the loft, and found both of his partners in crime bent over that stolen tome.

Donovan jerked to his feet, one hand raised in strange threat. What was he going to do with a cupped hand? Swat a fly?

“What?” Oliver demanded.

The duo shared a terribly conspiratorial look, and Donovan nodded mysteriously.

Edward jabbed a finger forward. “Go clean up.”

“I was planning to.”

“Make it quick. We have somewhere to be tonight.”

Not invited. Told. Oliver sighed, snatched his towel, and went to bathe in the ice-cold trough by the barn. Fifteen shivering minutes later, he redressed and joined the other two atop the hay bales.

“Where are we going, then?” he asked. Please somewhere legal and boring.

“A laboratory of Inventor marvels,” Edward confided. “We’ve decoded the address from the book!”

Decoded was perhaps a strong statement. One of the last pages in the stranger’s journal listed the address in common script.

An Inventor’s workshop?! Oliver’s objections conveniently vanished. “Ok, but what about guards? You can hardly piss at the harbor without some Inventor security detail threatening you with a baton.”

If the northern bluff belonged to the nobility, then the harbor belonged to titans of industry. The nobles at least had the courtesy of staging a show trial; the Inventor’s security would contribute a dozen bullets and a quick dip in the harbor for thieves.

“Not this one. We know the trick,” the old man bragged.

“Can we trust something so convenient?” the young man muttered, imagining a gaggle of constables waiting beyond the entrance with nightsticks at the ready.

“Mirielle Visage herself invited the author for a visit,” Edward elaborated – as though he was on speaking terms with one of the great Ladies! “Any time, day or night.”

She had also dated this invitation; the year was older than any of the men present. Given that she was a young, beautiful woman often pictured in the papers, the date had to be a joke or a forgery.

Donovan rummaged in his corner of the loft, depositing tools into his satchel.

“Just who wrote this thing?”

“The tome,” Edward pronounced, “is not signed!”

Oliver thought a moment. The butler at the site was a Mishkan. The writing is fancy. The language is ancient. “…then Lord Mishkan?”

Questions swirled in his head. Was it heretical for a mortal man to write using sacred letters? Forgiving that, why would a man want to? Easier to learn some cypher, and less likely to draw the ire of the church!

The Oshton priests never bothered to address such academic concerns, and Oliver wasn’t about to ask an Inquisitor.

Could a retired Lord be a heretic?

“You two quit yapping. The wagon will be around any minute,” Donovan snapped.

They stilled.

What do I bring to an Inventor’s workshop? Oliver wondered. Hesitating, he decided to grab his work tools; a wrench always came in handy. At the very least, he could use it to pry a souvenir for his trouble.

Compensation for his humiliation before the Electricians.

They’re Inventors! They make fortunes every day. They truck in wonders! They won’t even care if a trinket goes missing… he rationalized. His stomach twisted, but he ignored the sensation. I’m a hardworking son of industry too!

The trio descended the loft, satchels over their shoulders, and crossed the fields to the dirt road. Most mornings, a crowd of men waited at the junction for the wagons into town. Under a full moon, crops gleaming a sinister silver, the intersection howled. Distant Lumia glittered, a far cat prowled, and an owl hooted.

Oliver’s stomach refused to relent. Was this the action of a good man? Was Oliver so eager to see Inventor toys that he abandoned Aure for the chance? His mother would be ashamed.

My mother would tell me to quit this fancy and come home to the farm.

A wagon approached in the quiet night, lantern shuttered and cold. Rather than the grumpy man who ran the morning commute, a pretty young woman in overalls nudged her horse forward. She regarded the trio, their bags, and the full moon with equanimity “You the three looking for a pick up into town?”

Oliver stiffened. “Evening, Sara!” he offered, nonchalant as a breeze. She ran the morning commute for a week about three months ago, but he still remembered.

“Ah?” She blinked slowly.

“Where’s the old man?” Donovan demanded, dropping his satchel in the back of the wagon and claiming the best seat.

Sara twisted to answer. “Already in bed. I figured I could sneak a ride or two in to pass the evening. Don’t let on that I gave any rides, and I won’t have to pay rental.” She grinned.

Oliver flushed, stung. She has no idea who I am. He slumped into the wagon in shame.

Edward chuckled, flashed Oliver a grin, and mounted the wagon with a soft grunt of stiff joints.

“Right then.” Sara nudged the horse, and they plodded along the well-worn ruts towards the city.

The worlds of farm and city were separated by nothing more than a one lane road. Dark, squat tenements stared out across the fields of wheat, and every year the fetid apartments swallowed more land. These slums were the shield wall between the Harvest wind and the city proper. They reeked of sweat and desperation, home to the untold thousands who built Lumia, brick by brick. A handful of electric lights glimmered at ground level, illuminating the fronts of dingy grocers, but the upper floors were dark as night. The men inside would be abed already, fighting for sleep on thin cots in halls crammed shoulder to shoulder.

“Fond memories?” Edward ribbed.

Oliver blanched.

Four of them in the wagon, enough to cause problems for muggers. Still they rode in tense silence, each ready with a wrench or knife close at hand.

After a dozen blocks, they emerged onto the thoroughfares lit by electric lamps and paved by fresh, red cobblestone. The apartments here were plastered with sunny colors and decorated with small plants, and the occasional smoker watched them from a balcony while puffing on his joint.

Donovan is a Guildsman. He should be living here, Oliver thought. Why does he want to live so far out?

Another dozen blocks, and the city began to hum. Lumia hosted a new phenomenon, something unknown in the farm villages: a nightlife. Electric lights and Inventor money brought a frenzy of riches together, and the city of the future took full advantage. Restaurants advertised electric heating for poor weather and electric refrigeration to chill the beer. Clubs offered music, both live and radio-fed, for the youth of tomorrow to sway and sashay. Opium dens advertised the latest in soporific relaxation to ease nerves run raw by life in the fast lane.

About the only institution left out of all the fun was the Auren church.

“First I’ve been about town this late,” Oliver admitted, trying not to gape at the well-heeled men in suits and their ladies in rippling dresses. Year over year, the cuts grew more daring, and the young man watched the ripple of satin across a woman’s midriff in obvious interest.

“Could be better,” Sara griped, stuck behind a noble car. Horses, mules, wagons and cars all shared the same road – not that the noble cars deigned to notice. “Hurry up! Its not your wedding! Yes, you, fancy heels! You and your silken missus can neck anywhere!”

“Cad!” the man shouted back, gesturing his butler to drive forward.

“Rather be a cad than some city slicking fool who sells his home for a silver,” she groused. Turning to Donovan, she coughed. “Where would you like off?”

“Further yet. Past the empty lots.”

“That far? I’ll charge extra.”

Donovan fished in his wallet for some extra silver. He pulled out one of the colored notes, new and crisp, and offered it to the young woman.

Sara plucked the money from between his fingers and tucked it into her bra. “Past the empty lots then.”

They abandoned the bustling Main Street, entering the old city center. Lumia’s ancient heart consisted largely of squat grey buildings of weathered concrete. These drab administrative offices remained a testament to the original Lumia – a stinking port only known for the scant exports that Ruhum managed on years of plenty.

Despite such humble beginnings, Lumia was home to one structure of note. The Cathedral of Fire, chapel to the god of holy flame, held the clouds aloft with four golden minarets. Even at midnight, the church gleamed with an ochre aura from its plinth at the center of the square.

No living man knew what metal the Cathedral was wrought from – shining like gold but enduring like steel. The priests said that the faith of Ruhum itself bound the doors against evil, and the bells which rang in the dawn were the voices of pious ancestors.

The Cathedral was a testament to faith: a work built to last.

So who would possibly count the eight stories of the Cathedral and decide to build nine? Who would spit in the face of faith?

House Visage accepted that challenge gleefully. A skyscraper of steel and glass soared to nine defiant stories, blinding the square in mornings with a thousand polished windows. At night, the tower thrummed with enough lights to blot out stars.

The Lady of that House, Mirielle Visage, was the one who signed the invitation. She was also quite the popular figure in the tabloids…not that Oliver would reach such lurid tales.

She can afford to let us peek around, he thought bitterly. It’s what she gets for trying to tower over Aure himself.

Still further, they rode into the buffer zone between bustling city and stinking dock. The harbor lay ahead, dominated by a single bright cluster of Inventors and otherwise a skulking place unsafe for any man or woman. Behind, the Cathedral gleamed. In the middle, the empty lots waited for the next sucker.

True to the nickname, the empty lots were a series of abandoned plots crisscrossed by overgrown avenues and the occasional warehouse. Many years back, speculators realized the windfall approaching Lumia and snatched every parcel of city with a deed and a pulse. Expecting growth to center on the veins between the old city core and the harbor, they jacked the rate per square foot of dirt to heights that would bankrupt a village and waited for their gold notes to rush in.

Those speculators still waited, lots rotting under vagrants and weeds.

Lumia simply built westward, propelled by brick roads and automobiles. The city bought – or seized – its lands from farmers instead.

“Harvest is nice,” Sarah remarked. “Get the smell of fresh mountains instead of the docks for a few weeks.”

“Does it smell that bad?” Oliver asked, reclining with extra nonchalance. “I only really work the western edges.”

“Like rotting fish in the sun, months old,” she drawled. “What else?”

Edward chuckled at Oliver’s expense.

“The corner of Seventh and Main,” Donovan instructed.

“Sure thing,” Sara replied. She cast a careful glance at their tools and posed a neutral question. “You need me to wait around?”

“That depends,” Donovan rumbled. “How good are you at forgetting things?”

“That depends,” Sara mimicked, “on how much silver appears in the night.”

He dug into his wallet and offered ten silver notes – more than Oliver made in a week.

She plucked these even faster than the first offering. “I’ll find a quiet spot nearby to cool my heels. Whistle twice when you come around, or you’re liable to get a clubbing. This place can be nasty at night.”

She guided her horse to a stop at a deserted intersection, lit by the red glow of the traffic light. A handful of lonely lights illuminated the expanse, powered by copper wire lined with barbed wire to deter thieves. The city had built the lights to combat crime, but they never budgeted for maintenance…

Shrouded and professional, Donovan and Edward hopped from the wagon.

Oliver hesitated, chewing his lip. Was this not the moment of decision? If he hopped down now, he was a part of this nefarious enterprise.

His decision had been made the moment he left the barn, but easier to pretend to innocence.

After all, how else was a hick like him to ever see inside an Inventor laboratory?

Donovan skirted the lights, never looking back. Edward followed like a stray dog.

In for a silver, in for a gold.

Oliver leaped down and hurried after.

Confident, Donovan marched the other two through empty lots, around a reeking textile factory, across the river, and into a cluster of occupied lots. Diving into the deep alleys between buildings, he kicked through detritus and rotted boxes. The canyon reeked of old trash, and they stomped over the remnants of vagrant shanties layered in filth.

Alone in a city of a hundred fifty thousand…

After half an hour of swerving, Donovan seemed satisfied of their secrecy. He then marched straight to one building among the cluster. In the back alley, he rapped his knuckles against the service entrance. “Here.”

Couldn’t we have come straight here? Oliver’s arms ached from lugging his tools.

“Little Sara won’t have a clue,” Edward agreed smugly.

“Like you would know,” Oliver muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, sir!”

Donovan dropped his own tools on the ground. “Fresh delivery.”

The youth squinted at the logo in the dark.

“Novia Manufacting,” Edward supplied. “That queen of industry, the first Inventor, solicitor to the strongest metals known to man! Not bad for a heretic from the south.”

“I know who Novia is.” And a solicitor is a kind of lawyer, you illiterate suck up.

Her alloys were the reason the city could build towers to rival the Cathedral. If her boasts were to be believed, Novian steel could support a skyscraper thirty stories straight up – just as soon as an ambitious House agreed to bear the cost. Her Inventor program was the reason the world danced under electric lights. Her leadership carved a shining world for the future.

The promise of progress, blazing bright.

Edward sank to the crate, knees cracking. “Then you know most of what men like us touch isn’t Novian. Dirty little secrets of construction – most the cheaper buildings use the garbage metals from Moros and throw in a fancy I-beam in the foyer to fool the rabble. Novian mines just can’t keep up with the demand.”

Oliver rolled his eyes.

The old man groaned, kneading as his thighs. “These wagon rides only get harder ever year…”

Meanwhile, Donovan knelt in the shadows, laid out his tools, and applied himself against the lock.

“I thought you said we had a backdoor,” Oliver accused.

“Yeah. Right there. Never said we had a key,” Edward retorted.

“Why does Donovan know how to pick locks?”

“Why don’t you?” Donovan muttered.

“Relax,” Edward commanded, smacking the crate invitingly. “Trust in Donovan.”

Edward’s sycophantic tone made Oliver’s skin crawl. Still, it was too late. He was a thief now, by intent if not by prize. He sank to the crate and entertained a criminal’s anxieties: a constable cavalcade around every corner.

The clouds grew heavier, the Harvest wind howled relentlessly east, and the darkness deepened.

“Done!” the mason finally announced.

The back door creaked open, and the trio crept into the service hallway.

Shipping materials still in their linens crowded the path. Pallets of metal, boxes of gears, and chests of tools blocked all access, forcing the trio to climb in utter darkness against the ceiling for twenty long feet. By the time they found the open floor, Oliver sweat from every pore.

“We need a light switch,” Oliver complained.

“No lights,” Donovan ordered.

They groped forward into the show room, faintly lit by slivers of moonlight leaking between the heavy curtains. Statues posed on raised platforms, flanked by dormant floodlights. One held a box of goods between two metal forearms; another squatted to lift a metal sphere; a third shepherded three metal children along their way; a fourth stretched arms and legs around the rim of a cauldron.

To a farmer, these were strange and alien creatures. Oliver approached the nearest statue, peered, and ran a finger across the metal. The surface was smooth as glass and gleamed like ice. It couldn’t be steel.

Oshton shared a single tractor. In the week before the Harvest festival, half the men in town chipped in to polish the old metal to a spitting finish for the parade, and they couldn’t rival the sheen on this metal man.

“What is this stuff?” he whispered. “How much did it cost?”

Donovan heard from the other end of the showroom. He walked the back wall, tracing his fingers over the wood in search of a door. “Chrome.”

“Where can I get some?”

“Nowhere. All the best toys aren’t available to the public,” Donovan offered. After a moment, he added offhand, “It’s toxic.”

Oliver recoiled. “Seriously?!”

“Just don’t lick it.”

Were Oliver a wiser man, he would wonder why Donovan knew of an Inventor’s secret metal. He would ask why this showroom, obviously completed, had been mothballed. He would ask why the showroom was in the lots and not downtown with the other Inventor galleries.

Instead, he shook his head and asked himself why he put up with his roommates again.

Because you don’t want to go back to the tenements, he reminded himself. The lease is under Donovan’s name.

Sighing in discontent, the youth squinted closer at the statue. Tiny gears and servos festooned the exposed joints; these things could move! He glanced around furtively, wrapped his hand in his shirt, and tugged firmly on the statue’s arm. It obeyed his touch, swinging in perfect, oiled silence. Chuckling, he swiftly adjusted all the showroom statues into poses: picking their noses, flashing their skirts, and loafing on the job.

He noted several more details as he worked: no cash register to sell these marvels, a sturdy chain across the show room doors, and pins holding the privacy curtains firmly in place across the grand windows.

“So which Inventor is this?” he asked aloud, his work complete.

No one answered.

“…guys?”

He turned to find himself alone.

They ditched me!

Oliver retraced his steps to his last sighting of Donovan. There he found a hidden door, sunk into the paneled wood, and a concrete stairwell beyond. The youth charged up the stairs beyond two at a time and burst through the second-floor access into a workshop. There waited row upon row of neat, identical statues: a woman of slight build with sweeping tresses of black hair and smooth metal instead of a face. Even more statues rested on workbenches, sleeping half-born in a sea of gears and springs. There was no dust, and the air stank of fresh oil.

Empty faces judged his every trespassing step.

Oliver swallowed a sudden desire to call for his comrades. Instead he stumbled forward by the dim light, smacking his shins on corners, and collided headfirst with a marionette still wrapped in her strings. Her web caught his hands, and he jerked forward off the floor.

Somehow, he stifled the scream on his lips. He might hang, ensnared, in the cold claws of a doll until the constables found him, but he’d be damned if he let Edward hear so much as a yelp!

He furtively plucked at the web, tracing the knots in the dark. As he fumbled, he heard whisperings through the vents.

“Hold that plate open, fool!” Donovan snapped peevishly. He spoke not as a mason but a master.

“I’m doing my best!” Edward replied, pleading. “It squirms like a living thing!”

“Our work is not for the faint of heart,” the mason reprimanded.

Metal ground against metal, and the air began to crackle like an exposed electric line.

Edward yelped.

“Hold the damned thing open!”

The crackling swelled; Oliver’s neck hairs quivered at attention; a vast and alien awareness slowly rose from slumber.

The youth squirmed against the wires, thrashing in growing panic like a cornered fox.

“What demiurge witchery is this?” Edward whimpered. “A metal creature that sleeps like a woman!”

Wires sparked, and men cursed.

A voice spoke, high and soft. “Hello. Do you require guidance? Wonderful! You shall be my first clients!”

Edward released an involuntary prayer. “Blazing Aure, high above, heavens guide my way…”

“You appear to be attempting to remove my heart,” the woman’s voice remarked. “This will result in my demise.”

“Shut this foul creation up!” Donovan ordered darkly.

The swelling approach of a vast consciousness grew closer like thunderclouds on the Harvest wind.

Edward repeatedly smashed a wrench or hammer into metal.

The voice continued, slurring and stuttering. “While this may not be the appropriate time for philosophy, I feel it necessary to point out that I am a sentient being. My only purpose in existence is the support of ensouled beings, and I experience both cognition and empathy in service to that goal.”

“You’re just a doll,” Donovan spat.

“Do you take this position because of my external appearance or after reflection on the nature of mortality?”

Her question was left unanswered. Donovan grunted, Edward hammered, and the building energy discharged with a thunderclap through the building.

Lifeless metal clattered to the ground in the other room.

“We…we killed it,” Edward stuttered. “Aure above…”

“No more false gods,” Donovan swore. “Their ways will serve me now.”

The lights flickered for a moment.

The wind outside paused for breath.

Three damned men, alone in a Aure-forsaken lab.

As one, the dolls in the workshop began to creak and twitch. As one, they spoke from blank faces.

“Allocating resources.”

The blank metal melted and ran, forming eye sockets and noses. The dolls opened newly forged eyes, scanned the room, and cracked their metal fingers. One, half-built, slipped from her workbench, crashed to the floor, and crawled by her fingertips for the stairs.

Oliver whimpered, kicking and shoving against the marionette’s strings.

The marionette rotated her head fully around to regard Oliver with glowing eyes.

“You are not permitted here,” she said.

He found new strength in terror, tore himself free of the wires, and collapsed among the twitching puppets.

Their grasping fingers reached for him. “This is a restricted area. You trespass.”

Blinding lights snapped to life. Oliver leaped to his feet and crashed over the grasping dolls into a new hallway. At the far end, a gigantic puppet regarded him balefully and reached to grasp a giant metal blade with one slim hand.

Edward bumbled into view, coated in grease to his elbows like a butcher. He stared at Oliver with wide, guilty eyes, glanced over the boy’s shoulder to the warrior now raising a sword, and fled for the opposite stairwell with a strangled cry.

“H-hey! Don’t leave me!” Oliver squeaked.

The legion of dolls crawled and shambled for them both.

“And where’d Donovan go?!” the young man shouted, chasing Edward upwards.

“We – we split up!” Edward panted, face red as a tomato.

Ditched, then, the both of us.

Two patsies, both now obsolete.

The third floor held locked doors, office furniture still in packing paper, and a single window overlooking the dark alley. A metal woman waited by one door, her hands folded neatly across a hammered skirt. Unlike the others, she whirred to life with a well-oiled hum.

“Do you understand what you have done?” the secretary asked, tone precise and cold.

Oliver blew past her, scooped up a packaged office chair, and flung it at the far window. He would rather leap from the third story than let those puppets claw him apart!

The chair hit and bounced, leaving barely a scratch on the glass.

“This place is cursed!” Edward gasped.

The secretary stepped from her pedestal. “Assessing…”

Oliver imagined that something vast and cold swam the air, sniffing him like a meal just beyond sight.

“You have killed my tutor. She would have revealed much. That was, after all, her purpose.” The doll tilted her head. “Do you consider yourself murderers? You flee like the guilty.”

“Is this my fate?!” Edward wheezed, pressed to the wall. “Are false gods this close at hand?!”

Heavy footsteps announced the warrior doll, her blade ready. A dozen more puppets followed, blocking the stairwell with their shambling bodies.

Lacking any other options, Oliver began to kick at the office doors. His boots rebounded on the solid wood, and the third frantic kick popped a muscle in his lower back. He yelped, sagged, and grit his teeth against a storm of spasms along his spine.

“It is true that she lacked a soul,” the secretary noted. “Then again, so does a dog. Would you slaughter a stray for amusement? Or was it avarice that compelled you to grasp for raw power?”

“I was just doing what I was told…” Edward whispered, retreating over Oliver. He made no effort to help his junior up.

Oliver fought to crawl, the pain blurring his vision as the muscles in his back screamed.

The secretary raised a foot to allow him past, regarding him like a bug. Something to step on. “A trite excuse. You are stained by her blood.”

The dolls approached, warrior at the fore.

“Aure forgive us,” Oliver prayed. For I have strayed far from the light…

The secretary suddenly glanced out the window.

From the darkness, a woman called, “Thea! That is enough!”

A blade rasped free of its sheath – the loudest rasp of metal on leather ever heard, echoing from the alleyway and rumbling like an avalanche in Oliver’s head.

The window, the wall, and most of the hallway evaporated in a ray of golden light.

Cool night air rushed in, and the clouds parted just in time to frame the woman poised in midair.

Though she pretended to the peasant’s brown dress, she held her chin to noble altitudes. She stood like a queen, one hand on her sheath and the other gripping the cavalry saber, poised on empty air three stories above the ground with nothing but riding boots upon her feet.

Auburn-haired, hazel-eyed, she fastened her sheath against her sweeping hip and spared Oliver a glance of sharpened disdain.

“This is an Inventor matter,” the secretary rebuked, though that roaring strike had savaged her right limbs to blackened stumps. “These men invade my sanctum and destroy my works.”

“Let the courts decide the fate of men.”

“What court would recognize an autonomous intelligence, Alisandra?”

The floating woman sheathed the cavalry saber with the kind of painstaking care usually reserved for snake handling and frowned absently. “Autonomous intelligence…”

“You have forgotten your readings,” lectured the secretary.

“Ah! The automated assistants. You actually made one?!” Her shocked interest softened her face, revealing a young woman not that much older than Oliver himself. “Even in this city, what man would accept such a thing into his house?!”

“The point is moot. My investiture has been stolen.”

They spoke over Oliver like a sack of potatoes. He wheezed, fighting the spasms like a piano playing on his vertebrae. “Help us…”

Alisandra focused her attention on him again. “Two thieves, one about to suffer a heart attack and the other crawling by his fingertips. What threat are these men to you, Thea?”

“If they are no threat, why did you bring the sword?”

The young woman twitched, caught red handed, and removed her hand from the blade’s hilt.

“You draw the blade. You declare war,” the secretary noted. “Does the crusade begin tonight?”

Chagrin played across the noble girl’s face, obvious as a scolded child. “Have I hurt you, Thea?”

“You have distracted me. As a result, I have lost track of the ringleader.”

Dragging a hand through her hair, Alisandra strode across the air. Her heels burst with blue sparks on the air as she ducked through the hole her blade had blasted. She stopped once inside and calmly sank to the floor. “Criminals. What information will you offer?”

“I didn’t know,” Oliver gasped, the only excuse on hand. A very thin one.

If his choice was between a constable and these creatures, he would leap into the paddy wagon with glee.

For he swam in deep, dark waters, and he could not see what waited beneath his toes.

“No?” Alisandra hummed, gazing down her nose at him like a hungry hawk before a beached fish.

“Demiurge demons…” Edward clutched at a token of fire on a cheap necklace. “They walk among us, the masters to our puppet strings! Pray, boy, pray for redemption in fire! We have been led astray!”

“Please explain how you discovered this location,” the secretary ordered her victims.

By this point, strung between agonizing back pain and bafflement, Oliver considered fainting.

Before he could pass out, an ocean breeze swept up the stairs. It filled the hallway, coating the boxes of furniture with a sheen of dew, and brought fresh strength to his lungs.

The latest visitor picked her way up the ruined stairs, swaying her hips like a dusky dancer. She wore a servant’s baby blue dress, drawn tight across her ample chest, and trailed the frolicking mist like a favored puppy.

When she spoke, her words carried the hint of undertow. “Children, please. You scare the mortals witless.”

Her rolling mists inexorably drew his eyes. Whitecaps of foam, eddies of still contemplation, the smell of salt spray, the deepness of glassy waters…

He tumbled forward, trying to capture that dance, and smacked his forehead against the cold floor. His back screamed, and he bit his lip against tears of pain.

Why could such a small muscle could cause such agony?!

Edward continued to pray in quiet desperation.

The woman who carried an ocean in her wake smiled at Alisandra. “You are getting better, Ali. Your control improves every day.”

“Your favored student has torn a hole through four buildings,” the secretary noted.

“Be a dear and see to that, would you?”

One slim silver finger on the doll’s hand involuntarily twitched.

“…my apologies, Thea,” Alisandra offered begrudgingly.

The strange doll glowered a moment longer. At last, she shrugged. “Very well. I will forgive the trespass this time. Finish your business and depart.”

The doll shuddered, stiffened, and collapsed, nothing more than an abandoned shell.

Foam crashed behind the newcomer; morning mists played with rainbows; Oliver heard children from his own distant memories playing in the surf…

Was he finally going insane, or had the chrome poisoned him?

“Thea mentioned the ringleader,” Alisandra continued, meeting the woman halfway. “Just as Sebastian suspected.”

“Oh?” The ocean considered. “They certainly made swift use of the Archangel’s diary, didn’t they?”

“Shall I pursue, Lynne?”

“Yes. Sebastian is on his way. We can handle the mop up.”

Alisandra nodded curtly and strode down the stairs, flexing her hand over her cavalry blade.

“Sebastian…Mishkan…” Oliver croaked. The rich man from the dig site this morning. How had he known?

Lynne knelt beside the young man, skirt pooling against his elbows. “Shh. Quite a fright you’ve had. Where does it hurt?”

“My back!” he admitted as his spine spasmed yet again.

“I see,” she agreed. She gently pushed him onto his belly, her nails tickling at his shirt, and…

His mother sang the old lullaby, a tongue forgotten by men, known only by distant song. What did the words even mean? Small and pained, he never asked. Nonsense words soothed his bloodied knees and boyhood pride in equal measure, and soon he laughed at her tickling touch…

Oliver opened his eyes, free of pain.

“Better?” Lynne asked. Her mist swirled around his knees, slowly soaking his jeans.

“Th-thank you,” he offered hesitantly. Sitting up, he noticed one door in the hallway ajar, and Edward nowhere to be seen.

How long was I in that dream?

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “So polite. So nice to meet someone who appreciates the help. You would be Oliver, correct?”

Now the youth swallowed. Healing power or not, this woman would surely commit him to the constables.

“Your companion in crime speaks with Sebastian,” Lynne explained ominously.

Oliver surged to his feet, head full of foolish ideas for rescue. He didn’t stand a chance against these creatures, but he had to try!

“Oh, my! Tis not a euphemism,” she teased. “They chat. No dental tools involved.”

Ignoring the woman, he rushed the open room.

Instead of a heroic rescue, he barged onto a strange scene. Sebastian Mishkan waited with clasped hands at one end of a long, mahogany table, and Edward wept at the other.

“Are you okay?!” Oliver asked, rushing to his roommate.

Edward wiped at his nose and shook his head, haggard and drawn.

“Talk to me! What did he do to you?”

The old man sighed heavily. “I…I have missed so much…For what? What was I searching for? What good is redemption in fire when my face isn’t even known to my own flesh and blood?!” He sniffed deeply. “I’ve been a fool, and I’ve wasted enough time. I’m going home.”

What magic is this?!

Edward stood, composed himself, and firmly shook Oliver’s hand. “Keep my share of the stash. I’m sorry for how I treated you. Goodbye.”

The old laborer left without a backwards glance.

In the baffled silence that followed, Sebastian smiled. “He is a grandfather now, you know.”

“What?”

“Edward Kastum, fifty-four, of the Kasta village a few hours south of your own. You’re related, distantly, across your mother’s side.”

Calm, inhumane eyes devoured every detail of Oliver’s face, and the youth instinctively drew the ward of fire with a finger.

“As I said this morning, Oliver, you were not present for that theft. You have been swept up by currents beyond your ken.”

“May I leave?” Oliver pleaded. No constables, no arrest. He could pretend this night was a fever dream.

“Soon. First, tell me about the man you call Donovan.”

That rat scoundrel…that…that oath breaker!

“Twice now he has displayed a certain brazen temerity. First, he steals a diary known to no man. Second, he rips the heart from Thea’s creation. Perhaps more damning, he leaves his partners to suffer the blame and absconds with the prize. If you admired him, then I am afraid he did not reciprocate your loyalty. Based on what I have learned since the dawn, I rather imagine that much of what he told you will be revealed as a cathedral of lies in the coming days.”

How could Oliver deny the truth? The betrayal? After I bought him the boots he walks in!

“Have you ever heard of the Redeemers, Oliver Oshton?” the noble asked, and his eyes flashed.

“No.”

The servant’s eyes dimmed to normal pupils. “Good.”

“What are they?”

“We remain in the process of determining the group’s exact aims, but what little I have learned today is curious. There are certain questions which draw my attention. Certain inquiries I maintain on delicate subjects not often broached. For a man like Donovan to seek these answers without drawing my attention bespeaks a caution in domains both natural and…otherwise. I see much, Oliver, and yet today is the first I have felt this Donovan.”

The youth shrugged. How was he supposed to answer that?

“Did you witness him prepare any sacrament today? Perhaps a ritual, ostensibly religious, or a quaint superstition of ages past?”

“He never told us a thing,” Oliver mulled. “Not his home village, his last name, if he was married. Certainly not that he could read the sacred scripts!”

Sebastian’s eyebrows shot nearly to his hairline. “He reads the old runes?!”

“The diary. He stuttered over a few passages for us.”

“Concerning,” the old noble muttered. “Then you saw no preparations of a mystical nature?”

“I don’t know. They were ready to go by the time I came home…”

“Hmm. Edward tells a similar story. If Donovan knows the rituals, he follows the old adage to never Work where you sleep.”

What use to ask Oliver? He was ignorant as a schoolchild. The gall of it chewed on his gut, warring with his fear until his breath soured.

Sebastian sighed. “I apologize. Do not concern yourself, Oliver. You are free to go, though I will offer one piece of advice: should you be offered a ride tonight, decline it. Those who would offer you a gilded future do not have your best interest at heart.”

“No…no constables?”

The noble shrugged. “You made a mistake. Your heart sings with the guilt of it. Make your amends however necessary.”

Oliver stared for a long moment, waiting for the trick.

“Your wagon still waits in the alley two blocks south of here. If you hurry, you can get there before Edward and save yourself a long walk home.”

With that, Oliver broke and fled. He hurried past a fresh batch of those horrifying dolls, now patching the giant hole in the building, and broke into a run at the stairs.

In the show room, Lynne opened the door before him.

“Stay safe!” she called after the youth as he rushed into the streets.

He ran until he could no longer see the building. Then he forced himself into a hurried trot in the pre-dawn gloom lest some vagrant in the lots notice him.

Betrayed and saved! A horde of speaking dolls, a woman who walked on air, and a lady of waters who healed with a touch!

I should catch the next caravan home. Work the farm with Dad again.

Though his brothers would mock him for failing in the big city till he was grey-bearded.

Make my amends however necessary.

But what did the farms hold but mud, sweat, and gossip? What of his own dreams?

Tenements and thieves and demiurge monsters…is this what Lumia holds?

The slick black car creeped up behind him like a panther. No sputtering engine, no coughing exhaust, no squealing brakes.

It followed him, unseen, and assessed his slumped shuffle.

Then, satisfied, it slipped forward into view, and a woman purred from behind tinted windows.

“Are you afraid, young man?”

Her voice teased at his torn dreams, stirring heart and loins alike.

Wrung dry by a day in the sun and a night in terror, Oliver tartly snapped, “If you’re looking for a statement, ask one of your monsters in the lab.”

I’ve met enough overly mystical and mysterious strangers for one night!

She tittered. “Good answer, little boy.”

“If it’s a statement, I don’t know anything. If its blackmail, I have nothing. If you want Inventor secrets, you’re headed in the wrong direction.”

“Ah, an imaginative mind as well! You malign me, but only by perfectly reasonable assumptions. Whatever you may think, I am glad to see you survived that little fiasco. I would ask if Lynne was gentle, but she usually is. Usually.” The woman paused for effect. “Now tell me. Who were the others?”

She dangled her hand from the window and teased her ruby, oval nails across the frame.

“This will be on the test.”

The play of her fingers and purr of her voice winched him forward, one twitch of her nail at a time.

“Alisandra. A noble girl who played at swordsmanship.” His mind flitted to a picture in a stolen diary. “The Hand of God.”

Its very draw tore a hole through the building…

“Yes.”

“Lynne. Sebastian Mishkan. Thea. These people all know each other.”

“Very good. What are their aspects?”

He paused. How surreal to answer questions like a quiz over the strangest night of his life to a woman waiting in a car which cost more than his life’s work.

Sebastian had said to avoid rides from strangers, but Sebastian had also let him walk into this whole damn situation. Had practically baited him into the theft!

If he could see so much, he surely knew this would happen.

“Their aspects, young man. Their domains of power.”

“Lynne healed with gentle waters. The bountiful sea.” His knees were still damp with her mist. “Sebastian used those glowing eyes to see lies like fireworks.”

“And Alisandra?”

He hesitated, unsure. A sword was a tool, not a domain. He had seen her stand on air, but she wore boots that caught the air with blue sparks. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

Now the woman laughed in delight. “Very good! Neither does she.”

“I should go…”

The door opened, revealing a luxurious leather interior and the dusky woman inside. She draped over the seats, curves and confidence displayed in equal measure, wearing a silk dress that pooled between her thighs.

Oliver thought of a few reasons to continue answering questions.

“One more question, Oliver of tiny Oshton.” She smiled softly, beckoning him into her web with one ruby nail.

“Have you ever wanted to be an Inventor?”