To Your New Era

"The time has just now hit nine in the morning on the eleventh of September 1944, as the ceasefire between Treyatas and Neflem broke down earlier this morning. The two sides exchanged volleys of small-arms fire before artillery restarted bombardment. This follows recent failed attempts to—"

Iris's blank stared wafted out of the attic window along with the radio waves as she kicked her feet underneath an old, mahogany makeup dresser: her favourite seat that month. A shadowy hand waved in front of her eyes, baiting her stare back into the room, but Iris didn't fall for it.

The radio slowly crackled, and the voice from within fizzled out. The silence ringing in her ears, Iris reached out to it, only to find the power switch was as she had left it.

She flicked it back and forth to no avail, making her impatience known to the Beak with the remarkably annoying powers.

"You were spaced out again," Crestana said, feigning innocence. "Thinking about something?"

"No," Iris said, her return to consciousness accompanied by a prickling cold through her field jacket. "I was listening. Why'd you turn it off?"

"It's all the same," Crestana moaned, delving into her schoolbag and finding a notepad and a pencil. "Seven different wars, and your grandma's predicted every detail about them. Saw that one coming too."

That 'one', she referred to with the wave of her pencil as though it were a thing in the room with them, was hot off the presses. 'One' of seven that seemed to update daily, from breaking story to pivotal moment. In a way, Crestana was correct about Marie, only that her predictions were less divinations and more logical conclusions. The public weren't clued into the lead-up to war: war and the subsequent headlines were the successes and failures of those tucked behind the curtain, so to speak.

For Iris, who'd long since wandered deep into the void beyond the dance floor, saw the recent news as simply the result of an influx of work a year prior, and the events in a years' time the result of a current influx of work, a boiling over of their unmitigated successes and failures.

Sometimes it still felt like rubbing salt into the wound when the headline was the result of a failure, even more so when it came from a success.

"Do you believe what Ms. Elvera says?" Crestana asked, her mask occupied with the scenery beyond the window. "That Vesmos has its hands in most of the pies."

"Six out of seven," Iris recited. "She says to always follow the money."

"I wonder if it's really that simple…come here a second."

Iris slid off the desk and walked towards the light, grabbing a pair of ancient binoculars off their study bureau as she went.

"Who are we looking at?" Iris asked, knowing they did little else when by the windowsill but snoop on their classmates. Crestana shared the bulk of idle gossip and rumour, Iris only ever contributed the odd titbit where she could.

"Ten o'clock, third floor, two people. Recognise the guy?" Crestana whispered as though they were in earshot of somebody, her pencil noisily scratching against the paper. Iris brought the binoculars to her face and squinted through the layers of scratches and mould.

"Sure. He was in my Maths B class last term. Why?"

Crestana didn't answer with words, only more furious scratching. Iris peered over the page and found the scene crudely replicated in lines of grey on a white canvas.

"What are you doing?"

"Realism assignment for Art. What do you know about him?"

Iris turned away, not particularly in a hurry for answers she wasn't getting, but willing to indulge her, nonetheless. "Patrick Eaton. He's roughly a hundred and sixty-five centimetres tall, brown hair, broad shoulders, slim build, sixteen and…four months now?"

"I think he'd drop dead blushing if he found out you knew that much about him."

"Habit. He talked to me a few times, so I guess it stayed in my memory. Why do you ask?"

Crestana's drawing had progressed to the point of a rough sketch, its centre a more detailed rendition of Patrick Eaton and his conversation partner from their vantage point. Iris had watched Crestana at work before; the surrounding environment wouldn't change much; once she had the moment, the rest could come later.

"What about the girl?"

Iris returned to her binoculars. "I don't know her name…but I recognise her. Roughly my height and build, blond hair…our grade as well? I don't know what hall she belongs to, though."

"Jess Avery, and yes, good call. She looks like you."

"Oh," Iris muttered, eyes still on the pair. "They're kissing."

"Thought as much," Crestana sighed, leaning against the windowsill. "What a fun little story."

"You've done love stories before," Iris argued, finally putting down the binoculars once the scene became overtly intimate.

"I have," Crestana admitted. "But nothing quite like this."

"How come?"

"Rumour was that Patrick Eaton used to like you. Would come up to talk to you, then scurry away after you gave him the cold shoulder. He'd debrief with his friends like an idiot and the word got spread around."

"Interesting," Iris muttered, leaning out the window, the scene in the distance now a far-removed collection of shapes. She watched the happy pair leave the scene of the crime none-the-wiser to their surveillance.

"So it's fascinating that once he claims he's over you and breaks all contact, he finds a girl that looks just like you."

Iris floated away from the morning daylight, back into the hole in the roof they'd made a home of.

"People have types. That's what you told me," she said, passing an eye over their budding collection of books bought, borrowed and 'borrowed' from stores, libraries and the school in that order, if for something to do while she figured out where the conversation was going.

"Sure, if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think it's too soon, though. It's a pathetic story about a guy who can't get over a girl, and so drags someone else down with them. There's a title for the piece in there somewhere."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Hunting Randelin, Trials of Three Kings, Respite from Gratitude—

Iris subconsciously reached for the radio again, her fingers a muscle's twitch away from tuning the knob. She decided against it, turning back to Crestana, who hadn't yet moved from her spot by the windowsill.

"Do you find it interesting?" Iris asked. "Watching those people."

Crestana nodded, pushing herself off the sill and leaning out of the window proper as though she were a Queen addressing a crowd. "In just this courtyard, there's what? Sixty? Seventy people? Each one with slightly different worries to the next person, some so small they might forget about it in a month…other's might have bigger problems in their life, but nothing like a headline on a radio."

She turned around to face Iris. "Nothing like our problems."

Iris felt her own brow crinkle, the silhouette against the morning rays fitting for words that belonged to somebody with a superiority complex, not Crestana.

"You mean that bigger problems put small ones into perspective?"

"No, not at all. The exact opposite, actually. Working with you, your mother, talking with Alis, it all kept nudging me further and further away from my old life. A few months ago, I looked back and realised I didn't feel like I belonged in this school…hell this city at all. It's why I started taking art, because I knew about this unit specifically."

Crestana tore the latest page from her notepad and began folding it in her hands, creating crisp lines between her fingers.

"It reminded me that the biggest worry of someone our age should be…I don't know, tests? Boys, maybe? Suddenly everything on the radio doesn't feel real, it feels surreal."

A finely shaped paper plane sat in her palm, delicate wings catching the inbound draught from behind Crestana's back. She poised its chassis between her index and thumb and launched it towards Iris.

"And you're just left hoping the problems on the radio don't get any closer to you than that, because God knows your hands are already tied with your own life."

Iris caught the plane, unravelling the same sketch she had watched Crestana create only moments prior; the small moment trapped in a mist of void, a big moment in somebody's life wrought with conflicting emotions but none of the outside world Iris was most concerned with. That was as simple as life could be.

Crestana humphed, as though pitying herself. "I say that as though I'm removed from it. If even you're having trouble keeping things under control, I don't think there's much hope for any of us."

"How long have you been thinking about this?" Iris asked. "It seems like a long time."

Crestana's head bobbed from side to side. "A couple of months, I'd say? I'm not certain, but it keeps me up at night. That and our midterms. Do you still need help with those?"

"…maybe?"

"How have you been going, my very unmotivated friend?"

"You know the drill."

"And I wish you'd surprise me once in a while," Crestana sighed, making her way over to her side of an old library reading desk. She waved her hand over a green lampshade drilled into its surface, and the Aether bulb inside responded with light.

One innocent abuse of Crestana's power after another, and Iris soon forgot that half the Aether instruments around her even had switches.

"I don't need top marks like you do," Iris mumbled. "I've got nothing to work towards."

"It's compulsory. You don't exactly get to choose. The Academy will try to kick you out if your grades keep dropping, anyway. Then I won't talk to you."

She sat like an office lady and talked like one who could fire her on a whim; her decision to apply for Marie's small corner of the military wasn't a surprise, but Iris wondered if a place existed for her there.

"We've got half an hour before our charter leaves. Might as well make the most of it."

The radio restarted like drowning lungs, gasping for air as Crestana finally loosened her grip. Begrudgingly, Iris killed it just as it did so.

It was roughly three years since Iris's education transitioned from a world of generality to one of half-baked specialisations, where teachers and their tests lived between a twilight world too advanced to be classified as 'everyday knowledge' but too base to be useful in any one field.

Facts and theories, historical dates and due by dates; eventually even the word 'education' succumbed to words like 'schooling' and 'task', although she didn't feel as though her life were any less because of it. The change felt like a business handover rife with paperwork rather than an unjust robbery.

By far the thing she missed the most was who taught her. Evalyn, and often by his own insistence Elliot, never cared about what was written in the textbooks, but only that Iris remembered them and committed the most vital things to memory.

The Excalan Academy, for all its grandeur, sported a lineup of teachers who seemed to care little about either, or at worst, give too much weight to the first and very little to the second.

Her history teacher belonged to the latter camp, and while his youthful eyes looked upon the ancient brick walls of the catacombs, their walls echoing back a hollow rendition of his enthusiasm, his students followed, either bored or scared.

"Did you bring the radio with you?" Crestana whispered. They were walking in step, taking up the rear as their guide led the pack. His flashlight scoured what wasn't already lit by ageing Aether lamps, their magic patterns imbibing what little energy they could.

"Was I supposed to?" Iris whispered back, her eyes preoccupied with a tin sign hanging from the wall above, a white arrow flaking off its rusted surface.

"Prison!" Iris hissed.

Nothing.

"It would've been nice," Crestana admitted. "The guide's a tad boring."

"Is he? I think he's fine," Iris shrugged. He couldn't fault the man for overstepping his job description. Reciting the same speech multiple times a day was a special kind of monotony, after all. "Although I can't hear him too well."

"It's not him, it's your shell shock. Let's get up closer."

"I don't have shell shock," Iris argued as Crestana grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her forward, skipping past the bulk of the crowd until they arrived near the front of the pack.

"You keep forgetting I can't phase through people like you do," Iris moaned, nursing two freshly bruised shoulders out of pettiness rather than pain.

"Sorry, sorry," Crestana said, waving away her complaints as another sign quickly approached.

"Your turn," Iris said.

Crestana focused on the sign.

"Execution room!"

Again, nothing. The arrow pointing left stayed that way.

"What's a catacomb without an execution room?"

Their history teacher, his immersion broken by Crestana's exceedingly reasonable assessment, flashed them a stink eye and forced their mouths closed.

Their guide took a left turn, and the tunnels narrowed, the old brick inter-cut with even older stone, the structure's safety only as robust as their guide's confidence. Still, the elderly lights flickered, maintaining some sense of security.

"Here we go back further still," the guide continued, "to a time where Excala city was much smaller, and where we're standing now, roughly underneath the Fulan Avenue, was the edge of the city almost eight hundred years ago."

The guide swept the walls with his torch, illuminating spreads of withered, grey moss fused with the mortar between the cobblestones.

"These passages would have been miniature trade routes between small businesses looking to avoid taxation. Rather than enter via the city gates, they would have taken these routes. Once word got out about these tunnels, it was thieves who took advantage of them first, and the shopkeepers couldn't report these crimes without revealing their own, so they were boarded up."

Another sign, this time turning right down a dingy corridor.

Iris prepared herself.

"Torture room!"

Still, nothing.

"Things stayed that way for roughly a hundred and fifty years, when authorities traced the Great Gerehn Infestation of 1206 back into these tunnels. Spirits so small rely heavily on factors other than Aether availability to survive. Somewhere so cold and dark was perfect for them to thrive. Since then, the Crown claimed the catacombs, and eventually absorbed them into the state network."

The guide paused and turned around, pocketing his flashlight before a bolt-locked iron door, forged in a modern factory rather than a smithy.

"Right now, we're standing below the National Convention Centre, and the kind people at the GNCC have agreed to take us on a tour of their Excala exhibit ahead of its unveiling at this year's International Convention of Middling Nations. What I'm particularly excited to see is a scale replica of the catacombs we just passed through. Hands-on is my favourite way to learn, but a bird's-eye view is always valuable."

He opened the door, and one-by-one, the class filed into the stairway.

Iris spotted one final sign just behind the guide's back, the arrow pointing straight ahead.

"Crestana," Iris hissed, nudging her shoulder.

"Fine, one more."

Crestana thought for a moment, her shutters extending over her eye holes as she meditated on her answer.

"Brothel."

Ping!

The tin sign cheerily spun on its spoke, the new direction pointing left.

"You got it."

"I wish I didn't…want to call Alis after this?"