Chapter 3
Three
Imake it home to Dhakira without further incident, breathing a sigh of relief once I cross the sky bridge and step foot back in the quarter housing the non-magic mortals of Velmora.
I have crossed the sky bridges possibly thousands of times, and yet I still hold my breath every time I venture across one.
The two hundred foot drop into the icy black depths of Lake Voyd below is an unavoidable sight thanks to the battered, slatted wood that makes up the bridges joining each quarter to the others.
I walk down our street and smirk as I spy a soft, blue glow on our roof.
Stryx must have noticed the parting in the Veil and made a beeline for the roof to charge her magic by the moon.
Gaps in the Veil are so few and infrequent, she often goes far too long without her magic, and since the only other way of charging it is currently out of the question, this is a rare opportunity.
I bypass the door to our apartment and continue up the iron stairs, exiting onto the rooftop.
The Veil is sealed again, no moon to be seen, but the ethereal blue aura surrounding her from her tattoos confirms she’s already got what she needs.
She sits cross legged with her back to me, her silver, half-braided hair cascading down her back and pooling on the floor, the occasional gold tipped feather peeking out between the braids.
I take a step and she snaps her head round with her hands raised in defence, the blue aura stuttering.
Her ice blue eyes meet with my green ones, and she slowly lowers her hands, the intricate web of silver tattoos glistening along her arms with the movement as the aura returns with full force.
The sight of an Irithys is a marvel to behold, albeit a rare one shared by so few, but even in her humanoid form, she is still the most stunning, ethereal creature I’ve ever seen.
She smiles as I walk towards her, her long pointed ears twitching with relief.
If it had been anyone else but me finding her up here she would have been in serious trouble.
“Octavia, you’re back!” she sings, jumping up to embrace me. I pat her on the back awkwardly in return––I’ve never been a hugger, even before my magic started erasing my emotions, but for her I willingly endure it, knowing it makes her so happy. I look down and notice she has bare feet. Again.
I swear, this woman and her aversion to damn shoes…
She pulls away from me and taps the tiny, glowing crescent moon on her forehead. “I feel full at last,” she beams. “Scath has blessed me with a moonlit night.”
“Lower your voice,” I admonish her, my eyes darting round to ensure we truly are alone. “If anyone hears you praising that Goddess–”
“They’ll know I’m an Echofae?” She laughs. “I think the blue aura would be a little more of an obvious giveaway, don’t you?”
I glance around and see the glowing blue light has extended around us, almost reaching the edge of the rooftop.
“You need to rein it in, Stryx. If any of our neighbours suspect I’m harbouring you, I’ll have no choice but to collar you again.”
She wrinkles her nose in disgust. “I’m no one’s slave,” she growls, her ears flattening like a spooked horse.
“I know,” I sigh. “But if it’s the only way to keep you safe, I may have no choice.”
She stares at the ground, trying and failing to hide the tears welling in her big almond shaped eyes. I take her hand and she lifts her head, her lower lip trembling.
“One day, there will come a time when you are free, and you can charge your magic or shift as you please. I long for that day, I pray to Fios for it, but right now this is not the way. You need to disguise yourself, even when you think no one can see you.”
She nods sadly, and the sight makes my stone heart crack a little. “I would do anything for you, you know that?” I remind her, and she nods again, a small smile finally appearing.
“So, are you going to tell me what got Xavier’s panties in a twist then?” she asks with a giggle, her sadness banished as quickly as it came.
“You’re going to love this one,” I smirk, and she bounces on her bare feet in anticipation. “Let’s go inside and close the curtains. You can shift and I’ll tell you all about it.”
She gives me a toothy grin before bounding past me to the staircase and I shake my head with a smile. It’s easy to forget she’s still regarded as a teenager by her kind, even though she’s at least fifty in mortal years.
She’s already disappeared into the apartment as I descend the stairs, and as I open the door, I duck quickly as a huge tail of glowing blue and gold feathers whips towards me.
“Stryx!” I yell, trying to push my way past her huge form. “Make yourself an appropriate size this instant!”
Her huge white reptilian head turns to me, her feathers twisting into horn-like obtrusions above her eyes which narrow playfully at me as her long body writhes through the air on an invisible wind.
“Bad dragon.” I tap her nose and she huffs.
“I am no stupid dragon, you take that back. I am the guardian of the forest, the angel of the night, and giver of prophecy…” Her voice fills my head with her power, and I flinch at the volume.
“Fine, I take it back!” I shout, interrupting her tirade and she finally behaves, her enormous half-scaled, half-feathered body shrinking down to the size of a horse instead.
Thank the Gods for small miracles. The Irithys are one of the only creatures to be blessed with phenotypic plasticity, an ability allowing her to shrink or grow depending on her environment.
I don’t think I could cope with her being that monstrous size all the time.
She huffs again, and I can’t help but laugh at her irritation.
Calling her a ‘mere dragon’ really is offensive to her kind, but given that the Irithys look like some sort of white dragon slash phoenix hybrid, it’s hard not to make the comparison.
Honestly, her long, wingless body reminds me more of an enormous snake rather than a dragon, but I think if I called her that, she’d probably eat me.
I manage to step fully into the apartment, the place looking like a laboratory collided with a library and then politely gave up halfway through the argument.
Books are slouched in uneven stacks against the walls, loose parchment scrawled with half-finished equations and magical notes pinned haphazardly to every surface.
Glass phials clutter the tables, some filled with liquids that shimmer faintly in the lamplight, others forgotten with crusted residue at the bottom.
The furniture is old and threadbare; a patched-up armchair that sags dangerously next to the fireplace, and a rug whose original colour has long surrendered to ink stains and scorch marks.
And yet, within the chaos, there is order.
I know exactly which heap hides which notebook, which pile conceals which experiment.
The only touch of wild beauty comes from Stryx––scales, claws, and feathers from her shedding tucked into corners, glimmering faintly in the gloom. A single massive coat, clearly not hers, is slung over the back of a chair, smelling faintly of smoke and cedar.
To the rare outsiders who we allow to cross the threshold, it’s a mess. To me and my unlikely roommate, it is home. Half refuge, half crime lab, and always a little on the verge of catching fire.
I roll my eyes as Stryx continues to float through the air grumbling at me, flying in circles above my head, akin to what a mortal would do if they were pacing.
Over on the table, Quill, our little enchanted companion, starts writing furiously on his parchment and I duck under Stryx to see.
The feathered ink pen stops his writing and hovers, waiting for me to read.
You’re being a bit of a dick…
“Hey!” I admonish him, swatting him with my hand, but the sarcastic thing dodges me at the last second, shaking back and forth like he’s admonishing me.
I’ve never quite got used to having arguments with an inanimate object, but unlike most Quills, which are solely designed to send and receive messages from one person to another, our one seems to have harnessed some sort of sentience somehow.
And he’s always favoured Stryx over me, the little git.
He tilts slightly like he’s waiting for me to apologise, and I sigh at both of their melodramatics before fishing out a small package from my cloak and raising it up to Stryx. “I got you a present.”
She halts her movements instantly and snaps her head to me, her ears flicking as she observes the package with delight.
“Is it a mushroom?” Her voice appears again in my mind, though thankfully at a much more reasonable volume this time.
I laugh. “Yes, shall I open it for you?”
She does a backflip in the air and nods her head eagerly.
I unwrap the small parcel and retrieve the little mushroom I bought from the market earlier.
She snatches it from me eagerly with her little claws and pulls it close to her chest, an overwhelming sense of contentment leaking from her aura.
I learnt quickly when we first met that mushrooms and other fungi are sacred to the Echofae.
It is the primary way they charge their magic in Lunoreth and is the underlying life-force of all things there.
The mycelium networks beneath the soil weave intricate, underground systems formed by the branching threads of the mushrooms, connecting to plants and trees and allowing communication between all natural things.
Stryx said the Echofae can link themselves into these webs, and not only charge their magic through the earth, but also speak to the forest itself.
The concept is a beautiful one, a true feat of nature, but one that poor Stryx has to sacrifice in order to venture into the other quarters since it’s been ripped out at the roots here.
So for now, I gift her with such things so she can add them to her little shrine to Scath, making her feel more connected to her home.
I’ve never felt such things. Even as a child, I’ve never truly felt like I belong anywhere.
Shunned by mortals due to their mistrust of my hair colour, but never allowed to pass into the gates of Lunoreth either––it has been forbidden for over a hundred years.
My certainty of my parentage makes no odds to my peers, and so I’ve succumbed to a life of loneliness.
At least, I did until my beautiful friend came into my life so suddenly.
I smile up at her, the only joy in my miserable, difficult life, and take a seat on the armchair, watching her delicately place her new mushroom on the shrine before she floats over to me and rests her head gently in my lap.
Her whisker-like tendrils that protrude from her jaw tickle my hands as I stroke her head affectionately and finally start to relax.
“So what happened?” she prompts, the soothing tones of her sweet voice echoing through my mind. “You seemed a bit shaken on the roof?”
I debate whether to tell her of my encounter with the man that claimed to know of me, but decide not to, knowing it’ll only worry her.
Instead, I recount the events of the night after we received the message from Xavier’s call for help, the letter brought to us by an Eidolon Moth.
A useful and subtle way of communication which I much prefer over Whisper Stones or Quills, the only problem being that I constantly have to stop Stryx from trying to eat the damn things.
Stryx shifts back into her humanoid form again as I open my cloak to retrieve the bottle filled with the memory thread I preserved at the crime scene.
A look of inappropriate delight crosses her features as she takes it from me, and I can’t help but laugh.
She loves a good puzzle even more than I do, even if it is a murderous one.
Before we can open the bottle to watch the memory back, though, another Eidolon Moth comes flying gently into the room through the crack in the curtains, its wings glowing with a faint blue light and carrying a little roll of parchment with its tiny feet.
I roll my eyes.
What does Xavier want now?
“So there really was no evidence at all, no leads?” she asks aloud now, curiosity sparking a fire in her eyes.
I walk over to the hovering Moth and take the tiny rolled up piece of faded parchment, and it flutters off out the window immediately, not waiting for me to write out a reply. Odd.
I turn back to Stryx to answer her question, unfurling the note as I go. “No, there was nothing to go on at all,” I say, as I look down at the message.
Are you sure?
My blood turns to ice in my veins. I drop the note instantly as I run to the window, frantically scanning the dark streets for any evidence of someone watching us, but it appears empty. Stryx slowly backs away from the window, slinking into the shadows to stay hidden.
“It’s him again, isn’t it?” she breathes, her eyes darting about the apartment like he could be hiding behind the furniture.
I turn back to pick up the note again, when movement flutters in the corner of my eye.
Stryx and I spin round at the same time to find Quill scribbling again on his enchanted parchment, only this time his movements are more delicate, like he’s being wielded by an invisible hand.
We both creep over to him slowly, and he falls back to the table with a light thud as the message finishes.
Did you like the little puzzle tonight, Detective? –C
Well… Fuck.