Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

"Two down" Alteea said, clapping once as the traversal gallery sighed its obstacles back into the floor. "Egos bruised the correct amount. Who's next?"

"Lynea," Raizen answered, like the idea had been waiting behind his teeth. He tipped his chin toward her boots. "You've got your f ragments... What can we do with them... Maybe wheels?"

"Wheels?" Lynea echoed, as if he'd asked her to wear rain.

"Something like skates" Raizen said. "Make your own. Little rings, ankle-high. Let them learn your balance."

The engineers along the wall leaned forward as one organism. Saffi's stylus paused over her slate, then hovered like a dragonfly.

Lynea glanced down at her hands, then let her breath go slow. A soft chime in the air answered, fragments lifted from the inside of her sleeves - rhey didn't pretend to be anything but obedient. They circled her heels, clicked into crescents under each sole, then overlapped until two smooth rings hung there, spinning faintly against the world.

She put her weight forward.

For a heartbeat she was a foal: unsure knees, toes negotiating, hands up like apology. The rings hummed. She pushed again, gentler. The gallery's floor became an almost-lake. Lynea skimmed. The adjustment happened in her ankles first, then climbed to her hips. The next pass was a line drawn slow, the one after a careful curve.

Keahi whistled, appreciative. "Oh, that's mean."

Esen, towel over his head, raised a hand without looking. "I lodge a complaint. She brought her own wheels."

"Complain to the wall," Alteea said, lips tilted. "I encourage plagiarism if it gets my people home alive."

Lynea leaned into her left heel - the left ring slowed a whisper, the right spun a fraction faster, and she carved a figure-eight that made the engineers make a collective sound usually reserved for new stuff and old engines. She braked by tipping into a toe and letting both rings purr against the floor, then tried again harder, and slid to a crisp stop that left a faint polished arc.

"Obstacles?" Saffi asked, almost to the rings.

"Obstacles." Alteea agreed.

Panels lifted again. A low rail unfolded along one side - half-metre high, polished - the kind of thing that begged for regret. Lynea looked at the rail the way you look at a pool the second before your stomach decides if it's cold.

"Don't" Arashi said, which in Arashi meant absolutely do.

Lynea went for the rail.

The first try she ended up beside it, laughing at herself under her breath. The second try, she committed too early, the rings clicked against the metal, and she hopped off with an undignified noise and a blush. The third try, she didn't think about it. She let the rings carry and her knees listen. She slid along the rail three meters like she had always done it and dropped off at the end with a little hop that made Hikari clap once, involuntary and pleased.

"Curbs," Alteea said.

Steps telescoped out of the wall - shallow stairs, two sets with a landing between.

Lynea took them as if they might bite. Up was oddly easy: the rings climbed with a soft purr. Down took nerve. She rolled to the edge, knees soft, and let the rings fall together, catching the second step like hands take a friend, then the third, then a clean glide off the landing.

"You're cheating," Esen told the universe. "And I respect it."

Lynea, cheeks bright, risked a look at Raizen. He didn't grin; he nodded. The nod felt like permission to keep being herself at speed.

"Last bit," Alteea said, enjoying herself. "Columns."

Four support columns weren't obstacles so much as temptations. Lynea approached the first, leaned into a gentle spiral, and the rings obliged - she climbed the column not with height but with curve, a half-turn that gave her a wider look across the gallery. On the second, she did it tighter. On the third, she tucked one knee and made a fast circle that made her hair lift and the engineers make a new sound entirely.

She then stopped, breath high, laughter quiet, and rolled to a sweet stop in front of Alteea.

"Name it," Arashi said, because someone had to.

Lynea blinked. "I don't-"

"good job!" Alteea interrupted. "Controlling the fragments while moving? Not bad at all!"

Lynea made the mistake of looking proud, then tried to hide it, then gave up hiding it. "Thank you" she said to no one in particular and everyone at once.

"Alright," Alteea said, clapping her hands. "From clever to chaotic. Feris?"

Feris hugged her whale, realized she didn't need to carry it right now, and shoved it into Lynea's arms. "Something that spins," she announced. "Really fast."

"Unpredictable" Esen murmured. "And potentially fatal."

"Good" Feris said cheerfully.

Alteea's grin sharpened. "Then I have a museum piece for you."

They left the traversal gallery for a side corridor that smelled like sanitizer. The room they entered could have been an archive or a crime scene: racks of retired projects, prototype shells, labeled drawers full of parts that hadn't been asked to be useful in years. In the center, on a stand, sat a device that looked like a backpack taught a pair of thrusters to pretend to be wings.

It was beautiful in the way blunt instruments are when smart people make them. Two nacelles folded against a central spine - each could swing out into a wing-like brace. Vector nozzles dotted the rims like dimples. The harness was old, the straps patched, the buckles replaced and replaced again. It looked like it had lived three lives in two decades and had the opinions to prove it.

Saffi read the placard under her breath. "Vector Gyropack, twin spin. Design: Prof. Elvis."

"Professor… Elvis?" Arashi repeated, unsure if someone was teasing him.

"Head of engineering," Alteea said. "Brilliant. Uncomfy with sleep. This… was his personal nightmare and daydream. Most pilots couldn't handle the torque. It threw people around like coins. We retired it before we started writing apology letters to their backs."

She patted the frame like a tiger's shoulder. "But if you want spin…"

Feris' eyes were already fireworks. "Yes."

"Listen" Alteea said, the flirt gone for one sentence. "You will put hands where I tell you and not where your joy tells you. We want to keep your teeth set complete."

Feris nodded so fast her ponytail said "ma'am."

Engineers descended with reverent busyness. Straps. Buckles. A chest clip that was designed by someone who had been yelled at by physics for a living. A secondary harness around her thighs. Checks, double checks. A tech who clearly worshiped Prof. Elvis' bad ideas plugged a diagnostic into the spine, mouthed something that might have been a prayer, and stepped back.

"Half throttle to lift," Alteea said. "Quarter on the right turbine will yaw you left. Don't-" she tipped a look over her glasses - "do not go full until you're kissing the ceiling. Ready?"

"Bring it on" Feris said.

"Lies. Up."

Feris thumbed the controls. The nacelles unfolded with a hiss and a promise. Twin cones of air pushed down and she rose a handspan, then a foot, then two.

She grinned.

"Quarter right" Alteea said.

Feris nudged. The pack respected her and slid left.

"Quarter left, now a touch aft. Good. Spin?"

"Spin" Feris confirmed, and did not wait for permission.

She rolled her wrists and bumped both nacelles a hair off center. The gyropack obliged with enthusiasm that bordered on offense. Feris rotated once, laugh breaking into the air, then twice. On the third rotation she overfed the right nacelle a kiss too much and the world tried to throw her like a discus.

Foam panels erupted from the wall with the sigh of long practice. Feris bounced off one, pinged a second, caromed gently across the air like a happy comet, and finally came down onto a sprung mat on her knees, laughing so hard she had to clamp her mouth shut to breathe.

Arashi made a choked noise. "I can't decide if that was majestic or a medical emergency."

"Both" Esen declared, hands clasped like he'd just watched theatre. "Encore."

Alteea lifted two fingers. "Again. This time, when it wants to throw you, ask it to throw you slower."

"Yes," Feris said, wiping at her eyes.

She went up. This time, she remembered to listen in the wrist before telling the gyros what to do. She found the edge of a spin and held it, then widened, then tightened, finding a line where the pack's torque didn't bully so much as carry. She angled the nacelles out, and the twin rings of exhaust made a bright wind that ruffled hair and notes on clipboards.

"Add a corkscrew" Arashi suggested, because if someone could break their neck beautifully, he wanted it on film.

Feris did just that. The pack laughed with her. She rose in a clean spiral that made the ceiling remember it hadn't been touched in a while. The vector nozzles chattered tiny corrections faster than eyes could catalogue. On the way down, she cut the spin, widened both nacelles, and hovered like a coin deciding against falling into a grate.

"Professor Elvis will both weep and gloat," Alteea said, impressed against her will. "If anyone asks, I did not authorize this in writing."

Saffi, deadpan: "No writing. Alright"

"See?" Alteea joked. "Flawless bureaucracy."

Feris tried a lateral leap and almost ate a rack of retired quads. Foam exploded again - she laughed again - the engineers made more prayers, and Alteea made a note on her slate with a flourish: PILOT: FERIS. STATUS: EXTREMELY FERIS. WARN ALL CEILINGS.

"Alright," Alteea said when Feris landed for the third time, cheeks bright, hair wild, chest heaving with joy. "We'll refit that harness for your spine and add a kill switch at your hip. And no full spins indoors without three foam crews and a lawyer."

"Unfair" Feris said, glowing.

"Legal. Or bare minimum, whichever you prefer" Alteea corrected, amused.

Lynea handed back the plush whale. Feris hugged it with the same ferocity she reserved for weapons and terrible ideas.

They walked back toward the main corridor, the air around them still holding the echo of turbine whine and ring hum. Esen bumped Arashi's shoulder on purpose and immediately denied doing so. Arashi floated two centimeters off the floor with a micro-impeller from the Astra cradle and pretended he had not just stolen it.

Saffi, stylus tapping, glanced at Alteea. "Schedule for next?"

Alteea's smile turned sly. "We did clever and we did chaos." She looked over her shoulder at the eight; her gaze found two faces like a cat finds the warm place on a sofa. "Time for pride and fire."

Hikari, who didn't realize she'd stepped half a pace forward at the word pride, stopped and tried to be casual about it. Keahi rolled her shoulders in a way that meant she'd been waiting to be let off a leash.

"The vehicle level" Alteea went on. "A whole floor that purrs when you turn on the lights. Bikes, cars, drones, a few things that might be crimes in other cities." Her eyes flicked to Hikari. "Let's see if you still love a machine when it's not pretending to be have common sense!"

Then, adding like she needed to:

"Keahi, Hikari, you're up!"