Hide Your Fires

Chapter Nine: Everything You Touch

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✧Eyes✧

Sunlight crowns the children of the sky. It settles on their shoulders like a pauldron, fans out behind them like a cape. It makes kings of princes, forges conquistadors of coronal flame. They are legion now, united against the nation-town.

Oa: little jewel, diamond in the desert sands.

They have the tools to prize it out. They have the power.

And yet... something is lacking. They are not at full strength. They just haven't noticed yet.

Their minds wander as they do through the empty streets, snagging on certain curiosities: a smoke-filled jar, an empty ink phial, an altar dressed in ash. Hydrogardens. Earthen innovations. Earthen toys.

Ilyas stoops for a toy-bird on a string, which he presses tightly against his chest, and sighs. Sabriya skims her palm over a fountain pool. Vere's gaze trails over the colourful streets. This world is strange to them. They don't belong to it anymore. It does not belong to them.

The children turn to Izem, their eyes gleaming like the now-blue stones in their Fetters. Questions lurk there.

Izem speaks his answer aloud. Dust of the superior kind rises from his warhammer until the weapon evaporates, returning to his wrists. "Let them see us for what we are."

"We are conquerors."

"We are lions!"

"You're a caracal, actually," drawls Ankit. The wildcat that was once his sister responds by hissing. Jessamine shakes dust from her golden coat. "None of us are lions."

Vere's smile is familiar. "We are all lions." He trades his axes for the form of a wolverine, and pants in the desert heat as he urges his siblings forward toward the apparent heart of this town.

"If you say so."

Izem adopts Calt's Atlas Bear, stooping to let Helio ride in a manner befitting a prince. It masks his weakness. It gives him honour, dignity, majesty he has yet to earn. It affords him a guard of honour.

Sabriya, Ankit, and Yol's nations have not won them animal forms. They summon weapons: a trident, a chakram, a haladie blade, and fall into step behind the Fetterling-beasts. Taylan wreaths themself with hovering knives. Avė and Ilyas flank the bear and its rider, their abilities being of a separate nature, the kind wielded on the tip of the tongue, or in a shake of the hand.

They stop before the finest of these paltry homes.

Izem roars.

The world cowers.

✵

Lene of Elpis submits to being touched, if only for a moment, by Pyrrhus of Pyrrhi. His gaze penetrates her veil. His fingertips trespass against her Fetters, assaulting the circles of translucent skin bald of Kyadel's perfect gold.

He has empathy enough to apologize, but not to loosen his grip. Ambition. Pyrrhi's hostages wield no power, prowl without an animal form. But they have passed this gift to their prodigal son.

"I'm ready," he says, scarcely able to move without trembling. Ready. One gaze into those pontic eyes reveals that he has awaited this moment for years, scheming all the while.

The pale girl knows this. She has watched him all these years.

With Fetters only just awoken, Lene is used to fading into the background.

It's become something of a specialty.

"Lene, we should go before we're missed-"

"They won't miss us."