Icarus Awakens

Figure 1: Image of an Avianoid, candid

Shuni took in a breath as she returned to the Octyrrum. With all the problems she attributed to her class, losing the magic itself had been hard the first time. Like her ill-advised dip into one of the pools the humans liked. Some kinds of avianoids were naturally suited for the water, there were different kinds that didn't quite rise to the level of the subspieces attributed to draconoids, but she wasn't one of them. Clouds were as close to wet feathers as she liked getting. I hope Daniel doesn't plan on too much swimming in Vellus, she thought distantly as she made her way throughout the Arcadian.

It was rapidly becoming close to habitable. The day after the humans in black successfully cleared the first rift, all of them had been marched through as she watched from the distance. The general plan, as far as she understood, was to clear the 'tower' first and then work along the rest of the ship's body. Everyone in Eido knew about the portals now, but both Zolyra and Murdon had been enough to keep them in line. What is it about draconoids that lands them in leadership roles? It was a mystery she didn't have time for. She'd come back today with a surprise. It wouldn't change the world or anything like that, but it would be… another step in the right direction.

Shuni made her way to the home away from home they'd made in one of the housing blocks clear of any nearby rifts, and close enough to a recently cleansed one to not provoke any nearby monsters. Daniel had been taking over some on his own to get advancement potential so none of the mercenaries knew about it. They had a few reasons to stay in the Arcadian, one of which was how adorably nervous Daniel got whenever she was on Earth. Being here also gave Alex some space, which she still needed. Shuni felt for both of them but knew better than to get in the middle of that drama.

Teleporting over, Shuni activated Invisibility. Thanks to Suppress Presence, which she'd made sure to heighten, she should have lost any tracking powers of at least her level. With her being toward the peak of level 2 there were a few more passive features in the mix that made her nearly impossible for anyone on par with her to notice.

The sharpened feathers tracked her Shadow Dodge and actually managed to hit her, forcing Shuni to activate Mana Shield in order to avoid damage. It was an extremely expensive ability, but it blocked everything as long as she could pay for it. The feathers from the level 1 attack didn't hit too hard, and the armor she wore was taken into account, but the end result still left her revealed and at the mercy of her attacker who pinned her against the wall.

"Part of me wonders if this isn't going to give me some kind of complex," Daniel whispered to her after the kiss. "I'm not sure enemy Rogues will appreciate the follow-up either."

Shuni beamed at him. "That's the beauty of it. They'll be so distracted they'll never see me coming."

"So I'm defenseless without you, then?"

"Look who's finally catching on." She patted him on the head and then Blink Teleported away. It was far, far less effective than the kind Zolyra tossed around outside the Arcadian, but useful all the same. After she'd succeeded in keeping Daniel on edge, she moved to what she actually wanted to talk about. "I saw Ami today. She's… about as down as they said. Not terrible, but I'd be throwing Clerics at her if I didn't know better."

Daniel's smile faltered and he took a seat on the bed. The frame itself was Arcadian original, directly connected to the wall as anything less would've been stolen. "Did they say anything about getting her off the island? We don't need her bond to make this work."

So much for not getting in the middle of drama, she sighed internally. Still, she kinda had to be the messenger here. "The problem is getting back. Your mom won't let her go without being there for the ride, but she also doesn't want to leave unless she can return without bringing anyone else along. For a world without magic, you have some pretty scary forces at work. Finding someone no matter where they are in the world, mass surveillance? It's the kind of stuff I'd expect a Tyrant to do."

"Technology can be a bitch. Especially when it doesn't give me free formulae," Daniel grumbled. He was still sour about not getting to play with the guns of his world. "You're sure Ami's fine?"

"Yeah. We even talked for a little bit," Shuni said with an excited but conspiratorial tone. Her hand was itching to dive for her bag of holding but like any good hunter she used patience and waited for the right moment.

"About what?" Daniel asked flatly, now wary of a trap. While she had gained plenty of teasing material to last for months if rationed correctly, what she had to share now was too much of a good thing to taint. She pulled out the first of the set with two talons, holding it like a playing card and waving it in his face. His eyes grew round. "How did you-"

"Your sister is apparently 'trendy'?" she said uncertainly, sounding out the word. Zolyra's translation scrolls didn't work on Earth and no one in Daniel's family left there was too fluent in her language. To be fair, she didn't understand any in kind as it was literally impossible for Daniel to teach her with his hidden translation power. "As best I understood she got this thing a few years ago when it was popular and still had some ammunition left when she went on her big vacation."

"Film," Daniel corrected, finally snagging the square and looking on it. "This is… you?"

"They were showing me how it worked." Shuni smiled as Daniel blinked at the image that had been burned into the strange parchment. They'd caught her unawares and she didn't need experience with 'photography' to know the pose was unflattering. Mirrors still existed on the Octyrrum. "Want to see the rest?"

"The rest?"

Figure 2: Earth's Ocean

"So you and the, the other me. You're really…" Earth-Daniel trailed off as Shuni gave him a look meant to imply he'd be better letting her wonder what he was going to say next. Not that she had her bag of holding, that wouldn't work here, but she had at least one of her daggers was worn visibly. "How? I mean, I just can't see myself, you know."

"You're different than him, clearly," Shuni replied, a bit annoyed. The two were taking a walk after visiting his sister and his inexact command of the Octyrrum language caused headaches when he said the wrong word or just couldn't find one. She mostly tried to gloss over it and hear what he'd meant to say, like if he were Khare. "But better than last time I saw you. Exercising?"

Earth-Daniel touched his arm self-conciously. The guy didn't have as much barely-constrained rage as he'd shown when with Chris, but there was more intensity to him. Not as much as she'd seen from her's at times, but he was building something with his life rather than wasting away, if only speaking in terms of muscle. "I blamed myself, for everything. I was just stupid, doing what I was told. When Hunter died I thought it was because of what I'd done. Then Alex… I'm done having my life screwed with. I don't have magic, I can't stop Hourglass, but the least I can do is make sure Chris gets what he deserves."

Shuni nodded, getting about half of that. She looked up at the sky, jostling the strap of the treasure she'd been loaned. "I really wish I could use my wings here."

"Lot of the Blessed avianoids here feel the same," Earth-Daniel commiserated. "I kind of get it, but at the same time, what does it feel like? Your arms double in length and the bone structure has to shift, you don't have fingers anymore at least. I imagine that happening to me and, ugh." He shuddered.

"Transmutation isn't painful," Shuni answered simply. "Tingly, maybe, but it's worth it. So what if I don't have hands when I can have wings?" She looked back down and sighed. "Not here though."

"We have planes. And helicopters, parachutes, wingsuits, even some jetpacks in the works," Earth-Daniel replied, launching a barrage of nonsense at her that was somehow supposed to make her feel better. "Actually, there's something here you might like. We can't use it too often because of the fuel, no way to get more out here, but since you're on your way to being my… sister-in-law? It's worth it. Come on."

Twenty minutes later, they stood in front of a strange ship resting alongside a wooden dock. Long poles had been tied to the side that led down to the water, and more had been driven into the sand on either side leading out to the ocean. And… the ocean. She'd seen it surrounding them, but only now could she step up and have it fill her vision.

"Wow." It was all Shuni had eyes for. She'd heard of them, like you heard of evernight regions or those as fantastical as Threst and Rikendia had once been. Her favorite saying was inspired by such tales, but it wasn't until now that she fully appreciated the metaphor. It was all blue, unending. Fumbling a little, she raised the small box she'd been given and remembered where the trigger was.

"The yacht's not going to be in the photo," Earth-Daniel warned.

"I know."

Figure 3: Avianoid on a Jet Ski, blurry

"I'm starting to understand how you've been getting toned," Shuni called across the strange boat apparently called a 'yacht' in Earthspeak. She was panting from the exertion of helping Earth-Daniel push the contraption out to sea with one of the long poles. Ropes trailed the vessel, piercing the shroud of invisibility around Eido and leading back to its harbor.

"We can't do this too often. Even though we found what they used to track us, there could be more," Earth-Daniel explained. "It was Chris that said the yacht checked out. We still come out here every week or so to stay updated."

Shuni looked around her at all the nothing. The initial awe of seeing the ocean was beginning to wear into intimidation as she considered how helpless she'd be if dropped here. The 'oceans' of her home she could fly through, this was different. "How? You take this out to the nearest port?"

"Oh, you don't know about the internet?" Another nonsense word, but Earth-Daniel helpfully pointed to a concave appendage attached to the roof. "We have a satellite connection. It should be safe as long as we don't access it too often, but again that was Chris' advice so I'm not going to risk it today." Shuni stared blankly at him until he found another way to explain. "That thing can receive news from the rest of the world. Access all of our knowledge, too." Shuni kept staring at him. "Come on, I know I said that right."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

There was nothing for it but for him to turn on a 'generator' which powered both the 'antenna' and 'laptop'. The words all made literal sense, but Shuni still had a hard time grasping the nonmagical workarounds Earth's people had been forced to develop. It wasn't like they functioned on the Octyrrum, so what was the point? She couldn't read the language on the screen, but the images were something else. Earth-Daniel had to stop her from taking another photo.

"Don't! We have more paper than film for that thing. I can just print out anything you want to keep."

"This-" Shuni looked up from the screen with wide eyes. It was currently showing a selection of 'screenshots' from 'Google Earth'. "You know what the entire surface of your world looks like?"

"Roughly? We have, uh, cameras high up in the sky that scan the surface. That's also what we're connecting to." Earth-Daniel was clearly trying to maintain emotional distance from her, caught off guard by how simple things like this were impressing her. In the retelling of the events Shuni assured Daniel unprompted that if anything untoward had happened she'd have burned the evidence rather than show him proof she had been alone with his twin for so long. "There's a lot more detail in the places we live, obviously. Think it's better than being able to cast fireballs?"

"Sure, but I'd still take my wings over this." She selected a few landscape shots, quickly getting a handle on how to control the device even if she didn't know how the electronics inside worked. Earth-Daniel promised to preserve them while she was doing what he'd actually brought her out to do. He brought her to the smaller ship nesting in the back of the 'yacht' and lowered it into the water.

"I think you'll be fine on your own with this," he said nervously, for no apparent reason. "You've still got your attributes and dexterity will help you out. Otherwise you'd have to ride with me for a lap and it's for the best we don't."

"Why?"

"Just trust me. You straddle there and hang on to the bars." Shuni began lowering herself down, but Earth-Daniel called out. "Wait! Drop anything out there and you'll lose it. Better give that to me until you're back."

"Alright." Shuni handed him a few things as she bobbed up and down on the strange mechanical water mount. Earth-Daniel gave her more instructions as he carefully put a dagger down, warning her not to take things too fast and not to go too far from the boat and so on. Then he started the device and Shuni felt an unexpected thrum of power below her. Soon she was off, and she had to admit. For a moment, she did feel like she was flying.

On the yacht, Earth-Daniel watched her go and decided this was worth one of the camera's remaining films.

Figure 4: Selfie of an Avianoid from Below, candid

"Yeah, that one was an accident," Shuni chuckled, taking the photo back from Daniel as he looked through the rest. "Hit the button when I was putting it back on."

Figure 5: The City of Eido, taken from a nearby hill

Shuni returned to Eido in the late afternoon, camera still around her neck and the photos she'd taken so far in a spare folder. Earth-Daniel had urged her to head off while he checked to make sure everything on the yacht was put away correctly. She considered capturing some of the fields the Eido natives had tried to sow outside the city, or the two other vessels docked on the island, but declined for different regions.

The first were just fields, you could see them in any region with enough landmass. Shuni hadn't personally seen a lot of farms, but she knew enough to tell these weren't anything special. The black and ruined ships were, but in that case the history surrounding them gave her second thoughts. There were only a handful of pictures left and she had something particular already in mind for the last one.

It occurred to her as Eido grew in the distance that for all her Daniel was tied to this place, he would never truly see it. They could manipulate the gate to appear wherever they wanted, but that wasn't the same. This wouldn't make up for it, but it was something, at least.

Finding the tallest spot she could and then climbing a tree, Shuni raised the camera.

Figure 6: Eido's Main Square

The main square of Eido had been far enough away from the Divine Quarter to survive the explosion that had gutted part of the city, though most who had lived there hadn't. In addition to the new residents, there was a notice board for times and places the gate to the Arcadian would be open. No one was rushing to get through now that the point of how dangerous the other side was had gotten across, though the was another reason.

Most days, it opened near where the prisoners were kept. The death of Commander Marshall still resounded with those who'd survived months of exile under his leadership, and his slayers had earned some amount of fear for their deeds. Barely anyone other than Blessed visited that part of the island, especially because they'd been allowed more freedoms as of late.

Shuni knew she was spending the night on Earth for this trip but still decided to stop by. The last photo she'd taken reminded her of her last idea, and before she left she took another, catching a square full of people going about their day.

Figure 7: World Gate

"Come on, Evalyn, pick up already," Emily whined as she sat in a meditative pose a safe enough distance from the prison. She was on rotation as the target for the ritual with Evalyn on the other side and planning to come through today. "Any day now. She has to know how hard it is to keep this up when I start to get annoyed." Shuni watched with a hidden smile as Emily was left to stew for another minute before a tear in space opened. "Took you long enough."

"This one wasn't my fault," Evalyn shouted back, glaring at Lograve.

"Oh, excuse me young miss," the Arcanist sniped back. "In case everyone has forgotten, I don't get a break day, or practically any mana left after you all squander it blaming me for finishing my tea before running over to you at the drop of a hat."

"We set the time in advance."

"I hardly see why that matters."

Tak stepped around them and through the gate. "Hello, Emily! I have come to see Pouncer. For fun! Also because I have brought samples of other gestalt to see if he likes those as well as Khare. This has been suggested as a good first step to help me understand magical research."

"I expect those notes to be written by tomorrow night, Tak," Lograve said with a heavy sigh. "It is true what they say. The successful truly do suffer from the needs of the inept."

"Not to interrupt your humor, Sir Lograve, but we do need to keep this moving," Gadriel said, from further in the back. "Clear a path to the prison. Detainees, eyes forward." People moved away from the opening, Lograve remaining out of necessity but staying wary. It couldn't have escaped the mercenaries that he was the only one able to open the rifts, making the Arcanist a high value target if they decided to take him down, or even just push him through to Earth. Nothing happened as the line of over fifty black clad warriors led by Eagle marched through. People were departing, Lograve ready to close his second portal of the day, when Shuni had another flash of inspiration.

"Wait! Three seconds."

"Want to come through, Shuni?" Lograve asked her. "I wasn't aware you'd bonded with Daniel. Sensing his perpetual anxiety when you're away is the only reason I could see that you'd cut your visit short."

"It's not that. You, Gadriel, Tak, and Evalyn were the ones Daniel sent over here from Aughal." The four she mentioned looked at her uncomprehendingly, so she raised the camera. They still didn't get it, so she showed them one of the earlier photos. Not the one she'd taken by accident. "It just feels right to get one of these with all of you around the gate."

"Well, I don't see why not," Evalyn said brightly. "Just us?"

"Yeah," Shuni nodded. "I'd offer to do more but I only have three of these left. Just stand in front of it and…"

Figure 8: Earth's Sky

"That was the last one," Shuni said as Daniel put down the eighth photograph. "I went out in the fields at night, watched the sky, and took that when I felt the time was right."

"This is amazing, Shuni," her partner said, and the Rogue felt a warm buzz within her as she heard how genuine his words were. "We'll have to find a way to preserve these. The bag of holding should work, but we could do copies. Maybe I could even enchant a piece of bone with this image on it? It'd mean manipulating the colors more than I have before, but that could be a way to push my enchanting skills." He nodded to himself in a satisfied way. "Look at that, another awesome idea from my girlfriend."

"I still have one more trick up my sleeve," Shuni said knowingly, taking the camera out of her bag of holding and grabbing the seventh photo out of the pile. "Look, Lograve and the rest of the room he's in is visible here. I didn't think about it before, but if this item from your world didn't work here like Alex's phone, it shouldn't have been able to take this. I was thinking we get one last picture of us looking at the rest of these. You can hover it and then use telekinesis to hit the button, right?"

"Yeah!" His enthusiastic smile turned contemplative. "Wait, there's only one film left in here. Did Ami say if she had more?"

"She didn't have any, no," Shuni said sadly. "It was a last minute thing she took, and I think they said I was lucky it worked at all. What's wrong?"

"I don't know exactly how these things work, but it might have just captured the light being transmitted through the gate. Basically the paper inside gets exposed to what it sees and forms the image off of that. Magical saturation wouldn't affect it if it was on Earth. Then again," he spun another one of the photos with a finger. "If that was a problem for these, they would've changed when you came through. Worst case the camera doesn't take the photo, but we wouldn't be wasting film."

"So what are we waiting for?" she asked, unnecessarily lasciviously. Though, if they remained on course, Shuni imagined she could justify it later in the night.

Daniel grinned and levitated the camera in the air, fixing it in place with his rarely used Hover Object ability so that it would capture the two of them together with all the other photos she'd taken today, even the fourth one. "Ready?"

"Always."

Figure 9: Avianoid and Human, overexposed

"No!" Shuni cried out when the instant camera ejected its last charge. She'd waved it in the air exactly how Ami had shown her, but the result looked wrong. There was hardly any definition to the colors, and while she could see her and Daniel, there was not enough detail to make out what was on the table. "Can we fix this, put it back in?"

"These are one use only, I'm sorry Shuni." Daniel put a comforting hand on her back, but that didn't change the fact that the day was ruined. The last one was supposed to be the perfect finishing touch, the first thing she'd thought of when the camera had been fully explained to her. But her world's magic had ruined it somehow. It meant the dream had always been impossible, because the only other place they could have taken it and had it make any difference was at the rift. They'd tried Alex's devices in the magical suppression cells in Pinion's Point and not even that had been enough to get them to turn on.

With his other hand, Daniel caught the treacherous camera as it floated back to him. "Let's see if we can figure out what we did, at least. The photo looks overexposed, so… huh. See this?" A finger tapped the eye of the device and Shuni wiped at a single tear before peering inside. She'd inspected the camera closely when she'd first received it and noticed the difference immediately. The eye was fixed open now, showing her the insides of the camera.

"It's stuck open?"

"This must have circuitry inside it," Daniel sighed. "I didn't think about that. Damn. Too much light got through and ruined the image. Shuni, I'm so sorry."

"It's ok," she lied. "I still have the others."

"It's not ok. You put a lot of thought into this and I'm honestly touched. Come here." He embraced her, and that did make her feel a bit better. "It looked like you had fun on the jet ski."

"It was fun," she murmured into his chest. She could feel his heart beat from this close and thought of the bond Evalyn had with her sister. Even that would be enough, more than enough, but when she waited with desperate hope for something to change, it remained as it was before. The photo was still ruined, and she was still without a bond. She'd done the best she could to keep those thoughts out of her mind, planning all of this as an expression of her love, but it still eluded her. She wouldn't let herself get twisted by the world continuing to deny her that, though it hurt all the same. "I just wish… I wish it could all work out perfectly, just once."

"There's a saying we have on Earth," Daniel said down to her, keeping his voice gentle as he'd noticed how upset she was. "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. You found a way to share your time on Earth and even involve me in it. You did a lot of good today, Shuni, and you know what? You're perfect. Don't let the things that go wrong distract you from that."

…

Karma continued to observe as the two held each other throughout the night. It was always watching.

Still, still, no bond. There was no prejudice in this judgment, there could be no prejudice. There simply wasn't enough there. Not yet, if the current trend was anything to judge by. Karma had no mouth to speak nor the words to, or even the ability to desire them. But if it had all three and could find sympathy for Shuni Martell, it would simply say this: "Keep going. You're almost there."