Architects of Ether

by Ryan Muree

  “We don’t need the ingredients,” Adalai huffed. “Just freakin’ make it.”

  “I have to know how it works so I can make it stronger.” He then dug out a piece of wire mesh from another pocket inside his pants.

  His gold ether rolled over his hands, replicating the parts that made up the sticky sauce until he’d produced an amount the approximate size of his palm.

  Vaughn held out his hands. “Me first.”

  Mykel smeared some on them. “The wire mesh has been woven through the molecules to add strength. The goop won’t fall apart.”

  “We just need to know if it sticks.” Vaughn ran and launched himself against the wall like a hopper, and his hands stuck. He dangled there.

  “Does put a strain on the arms, though.” His voice was muffled against the concrete.

  A loud bang below had him push off the wall and land with a small thud.

  A couple of voices echoed up the stairwell.

  “I swear if he asks me one more time for the reports, I’m going to spike his morning juice with ethyrol,” one voice said.

  The stench of smoke wafted up toward them.

  “If you do that, we won’t get our raises,” the other voice said.

  Both laughed.

  “We’ll end up in Dimmur or worse.”

  Both laughed again.

  Adalai motioned for Mykel to continue quietly. As long as they didn’t make a sound, they’d be okay. Two workers needing a smoke break weren’t going to be focusing on the floors in the stairwell above them.

  Mykel hurried, creating enough goop for each of them.

  Adalai made for the small window and pointed at it with her fingers.

  We can’t break it. They’ll hear it. Sonora’s voice floated into her mind, but her lips had barely moved.

  Vaughn stepped forward, placed one sticky finger to the surface of the glass, and let his yellow ether wind its way around it. It shrunk rapidly until it was a tiny chink of square glass falling out of the empty window.

  A rush of street sounds and air currents whipped into the space, echoing through the column.

  Adalai hurried them on before the workers below got curious.

  Vaughn stepped out first, climbing into the window and out to the wall. Mykel followed with extra goop on his fingers.

  But Sonora shook her head.

  Footsteps echoed behind them.

  Adalai pushed her forward. “Hurry!” she mouthed.

  Sonora reluctantly straddled the edge of the open window, reached up with sticky hands to the wall above it, and slowly climbed out.

  Adalai followed and made the mistake of looking down. It was definitely higher than the other building had been. Much higher.

  Street sounds echoed up as the wind tossed her hair. It was difficult to see, but if she focused on moving up it wouldn’t be too bad. Shouldn’t be too bad.

  She reached with one arm and then the other, successfully climbing out of the window. The soles of their shoes provided enough friction, but the climb was solely reliant on their arms and pulling themselves up. Had they not been trained in the RCA, this would have been too difficult.

  Checking on their progress above her, she found Vaughn was already near the top, figuring out how to climb over the ledge to the roof.

  Mykel wasn’t too far behind, and Sonora was making her way, albeit slowly.

  “Don’t look down,” she shouted to Sonora.

  Sonora shook her head and strained against the pull of her body up the side of the building.

  It was like doing multiple pull-ups in a row with the threat of death if they failed. The longer they took, the more tired they’d become.

  “Keep moving!” Sonora yelled to Mykel, but he wasn’t moving. Ether was encircling his hands.

  “What’s wrong?” Adalai called out, but Mykel was sliding, inch by inch, down toward them. “Vaughn, grab him!”

  Vaughn stretched over the edge to reach him but couldn’t.

  “Just keep moving, Sonora!” Adalai ordered, her own muscles twitching from the strain.

  She did, side-stepping Mykel a few inches and reaching up for Vaughn’s hand. Vaughn firmly gripped Sonora’s arm, and he shrunk her enough to pull her up easily. However, Mykel was still slowly sliding down toward Adalai.

  “Up, Mykel! Climb!” she shouted to him.

  “I am!” His voice trembled. “I can’t make more and climb at the same time.”

  “You don’t need more. Just climb!”

  “I do need more, or I’ll fall.” His voice cracked.

  “Make a hand-hold out of the concrete or something!”

  “I can’t concentrate…” His foot slipped, and he dangled by one sticky hand.

  Shit. Shit.

  There was no other way to do this. She’d expel a lot of ether, but if he couldn’t concentrate there was no other way.

  “Fall and catch my hand!” she ordered.

  “Are you nuts?” he screamed.

  “Just catch my hand as you slide past!”

  “No! I’m going to fall. All you care about is the stupid Ingini and getting revenge. I didn’t want to do this. I don’t hate the Ingini like you do—”

  “Really, Mykel? This is the wrong time to piss me off with that shit.” She grunted and lifted herself up. Her own arms were starting to burn and ache as she hung mid-climb.

  She Blinked up, grabbed him by the arm, and Blinked up again, and again, and again, using all of her concentration to get them all the way to the top.

  Mykel fell to his face, coughing and hacking until he retched onto the concrete.

  “Breathe, Mykel,” Sonora was rubbing his back. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  “I… can’t…” He swallowed, but then vomited again. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Yes, you can. In, out. Breathe,” Sonora urged.

  “I hate that. I hate Blinking.”

  Adalai had her arms raised to the top of her head. Her heart thundered in her chest as she tried to calm her own breathing. “Better than dying,” she panted. “Blinking up is not easy, thank you very much. You’re welcome.”

  “Welcome?” Mykel shrieked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Welcome? Screw you, Adalai. After this, I’m done.”

  Him, too? Or was he just saying that because Jahree had told them about his little fit?

  “Done with this group, with this team, whatever it is… I’m done. I’m not your pawn. I’m not the RCA’s pawn. You’re going to get us killed here. If I survive this, I’m done, and I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one.”

  Adalai looked at Vaughn and Sonora, both avoiding eye contact. “That’s how you all feel?”

  Nothing.

  They had truly lost that much faith in her?

  Fine.

  Fine.

  She hadn’t needed others to get all the way up the ranks to her current position, and she didn’t need them after this, either.

  She hadn’t joined the RCA for friends or anything else. She’d joined to do a job, right?

  Right.

  She’d be fine. This was a matter of cooperation and nothing else. She didn’t need them to see it her way. She just needed them to follow orders.

  “Fine,” she said. “Fine.”

  She didn’t care, and she would have had to leave them behind in Revel, anyway. Nothing was forever.

  She marched over to the metal boxes below the giant tower and blinking lights. “Get this thing talking to Orr. I’ll get us back to Revel once Clove and Emeryss come back and stop the airship, and then we’re done. You all can go back to your own worlds and pretend that none of this matters to you ever again.”

  They didn’t say a word.

  Mykel rose and headed to the boxes, Sonora and Vaughn followed him, and they didn’t say one damn word.

  That’s how they wanted it? Then, fine. That’s how it would be. They’d be Zephyrs until the end of this mission and that was it. No. They weren’t even Zephyrs anymore. They were no
thing. They couldn’t call themselves the Zephyrs when they acted like whiny babies.

  No one signs up to the RCA to be a paper-pusher. They should have expected missions. Just a few weeks ago they were begging for a dangerous assignment to protect Advisor O’Brecht, and now this? Now, they didn’t want to do anything? Be a part of anything?

  Screw them.

  Screw all of them.

  She’d make sure what had to get done would get done, and Orr would see to it that they were officially removed from the RCA.

  Mykel, Vaughn, and Sonora talked technicalities about the tower.

  She pulled back her sleeve. The ether on her wrist showed she still had plenty, but all the sneaking around and saving everyone else from their own incompetencies were costing her.

  The sooner they moved on the better.

  She needed real soldiers. She’d been wrong to put together this group if they weren’t really made for the hard stuff, the stuff that mattered.

  She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Static crackled on the piece Sonora was holding. “There.”

  “Think of Grier or Emeryss,” Mykel said. “Just like you would communicate to them normally, but loudly.

  Sonora nodded to Mykel, and he pushed something in the metal box. “Grier… Emeryss… can you hear me?”

  Static.

  A gruff voice made a blip in return.

  “Grier, can you hear me?”

  “Sonora? Sonora is that you?” His words were laced through static. “How are you contacting me?”

  “I’m reaching you through one of their devices. I’m using it like another sound Caster. But Grier, we think they’re going to launch the airship in four days. You don’t have a lot of time. You have to hurry!”

  “What?”

  More static.

  “Hurry!” she shouted. “Four days until launch!”

  “Four days?”

  The connection died.

  If that’s the best they could do to another city in Ingini, they were in trouble.

  “You can’t make the waves stronger or bigger?” Adalai asked.

  Mykel handed a smaller piece to Vaughn, Vaughn enlarged it, and they connected it to the box.

  Adalai understood none of it. It was ether-tech she wanted no part of. Illusions and ether and grimoires she understood. This… This was a dying hobby held onto by struggling Ingini.

  It wouldn’t last forever.

  “We’re amplifying it, but we needed to see if we could tune it however we want,” Sonora said, curt and short on patience.

  That’s all right. Adalai was out of patience, too.

  Mykel turned more knobs and rerouted wires inside the machine. He nodded. “Think of the sound Caster you want to reach, and let’s try it.”

  “Caster Justine. Caster Vik.”

  Both names Adalai recognized as Casters from the palace in Aurelis.

  A voice crackled back. “What in the world is this ringing?”

  Sonora’s eyes lit up. “It’s a sound Caster!” She held the metal contraption to her mouth. “Hello? Hello? Do you hear me? I need a connection through to Aurelis.”

  The voice chirped and cracked through static, but the tone switched.

  “This is 11078. Your line has come through Delour. Who is this?”

  11078 — the communication control out of Aurelis.

  “This is Caster Sonora of the Zephyrs. I’m trying to reach General Orr with an urgent message!” Sonora was practically shouting into the device.

  “Direct lines to General Orr are not permissible. Relay message.”

  Sonora looked to Adalai.

  At least it was Aurelis.

  “We have intel from inside Ingini. I repeat, we have intel from inside Ingini.”

  “Relay message.”

  Sonora licked her lips and started again. “Ingini are planning an attack on Aurelis in four days. You have four days to prepare defenses before—”

  “Is this a prank? This is a military line. You need to be off this line immediately or be subject to—”

  “Tell them who we are,” Mykel urged quietly.

  “This is Castor Sonora of the Zephyrs. Inform General Orr that the Ingini might try an attack on Aurelis in four days!”

  The device crackled.

  “Message received.”

  Sonora’s eyes were wide. “Is that it? Can you confirm the message? I’m risking my neck sending this to you.”

  “Message received.”

  “Will you give it to General Orr?”

  “The message will be processed through the proper chain of command. We must first validate the authenticity of this message—”

  “We don’t have time for that!” Adalai shouted.

  The connection went dead. No static. No voices. Nothing.

  Sonora perked up and jerked her head in several directions.

  “What is it?” Adalai asked.

  “I’m hearing something strange… a tone… a hum. It’s like another communication tower heard us, I think. They’ve cut us off completely. Mykel try to—”

  “I can’t. There’s nothing.” He was furiously spinning the dial.

  Sonora took a deep breath and turned her head again. “Something…”

  Small airships whirred from a distance.

  “Those aren’t airships for us, are they?” Vaughn asked pointing off several buildings away.

  Sonora dropped the device. “We need to get out of here, now.”

  Adalai stormed to the edge and looked down the seventy or eighty floors to the street.

  “It’s the best I could do,” Sonora said. “We need to get out of here—”

  Sirens echoed from the street, an alarm chirped from the building they were standing on.

  Shit. Adalai swallowed the urge to scream. “Everyone, grab an arm and maybe my waist or something.”

  “No.” Mykel peered over the edge. “I-I’ll make a parachute or something—”

  “And they’ll shoot you down as you slowly fall. Grab on!” Adalai ordered. Sonora had already taken one arm and Vaughn had taken the other.

  Two thuds thudded into the roof, splintering pieces off next to their feet. Ether-guns.

  “Now!” she shouted.

  Mykel wrapped his arm around her waist, nearly squeezing her to death, and she dropped off the edge of the building.

  Sonora and Mykel screamed the whole way down.

  Landing would hurt. Even if she Blinked perfectly, landing with this much extra weight would hurt like a—

  The ground was there. She Blinked just before hitting it, and they landed with a crunch in the middle of the street.

  Carriages honked, and people shouted and pointed.

  On her back with Mykel still wrapped tightly around her, she could barely breathe.

  Her back and legs were too sore to shove him off.

  “Get off!” she commanded. “We need to run!”

  They hurried up, dodging carriages and people, and headed for the alleyways for Urla.

  Chapter 28

  Barren Ranch — Ingini

  Emeryss rested her hands on the wooden fence surrounding a group of aptericks grazing in the pasture.

  Sonora had somehow reached Grier, he’d said it was definitely her, and she’d warned they had four days to solve this before the airship launched.

  She took a deep breath.

  Scuffle and Lana were herding the rest of the birds into the fenced area. Their hands were moving as they spoke. She’d learned a little sign-language in Neeria, but she hadn’t been able to catch every word.

  At best, they were talking about the birds. At worst, they were talking about turning them in to the UA. Either way, the tension was thick, or at least the stench of apterick dung was.

  Clove had said he’d be helpful, and Lana seemed nice enough with a calm expression, but after that greeting and first impression, Emeryss didn’t bet on him still helping them.

  “They don’t fly away?” Grier aske
d.

  Emeryss and Jahree turned to look at him.

  “Man, have you never seen an apterick?” Jahree squinted at him.

  Grier shook his head. “Never.”

  “They can’t fly,” Emeryss said. “Sometimes travelers would ride them into Neeria with the jagged rocks. The poor birds hated it.”

  “And we can ride these?” Grier asked, eyes trained on the group of birds.

  Emeryss laughed a little.

  “If Scuffle doesn’t hate you, he’ll let you ride them,” Clove said.

  “Oh, I’ll let you ride them,” Scuffle said, walking up to join them. “Sooner let them drop you on your ass.”

  Grier nodded as if that was perfectly okay by him.

  “What do you want from me?” Scuffle said, squinting one eye in Clove’s direction.

  Clove clicked her tongue. “Why are you so angry?”

  “You bring something that isn’t Pigyll into my ranch with the enemy in tow, and you have to ask why I’m angry?” He tossed a pair of gloves to the ground near the fence post. “You were never stupid, kid. Don’t start today.”

  Lana came up beside him, wrapping some rope around her arm to keep the bundle neat and tidy.

  “Scuffle, the enemy is Kimpert and the other rulers. The rulers of Revel and Ingini.”

  He spat to the side and wiped his mouth. “Sounds like you’re wanting to kick up a revolution.”

  Clove shook her head. “We just want to stop Ingini from causing more deaths.”

  “And the Revelians? What about them causing more deaths? Starving us of ether? Invading and reducing us down to—”

  “Profits. That’s all it’s ever about,” Clove said. “We kidnapped Kimpert because she’s working with the enemy. All the CEOs are in on it, too. The rich and powerful are working behind Ingini and Revel’s backs to get rich off our deaths.”

  “Of course, they are.”

  “Well, then, help us stop it, Scuffle.”

  “How do you plan to do that? You got something to make them stop? Can you trance your way out of this shit-hole land and bring all the good of us along with ya?” He looked at Jahree, Grier, and Emeryss, and gestured with his hand. “Can you wave your little fingers to make things all better?”