TUW 9: Fate in the Flame

Epilogue

2412, Diori 04, Velpa

Sera strode into the room to find Blazes rushing around, bearing a tray of steaming cups on her hands. She passed the drinks around, and the bittersweet smell of rip-off cousa wafted across the room.

"Where's Darmer?" he asked, using his friend's real name even with the Embers per Darmer's insistence. "I need him for something."

Kindle shrugged, returning to penning her article for tomorrow's prints. Flamma and Bonfire hunkered together at the table's edge, debating whether to put punctuation on that sentence or not. Blazes strode by Sera, her tray now tucked underneath her arm. "Do you want one?" she asked. "I didn't know you were coming, so I didn't make you one."

Sera shook his head. "I'm just looking for Darmer."

"And you're looking right at him!" came a sunny voice from the doorway. They all turned to find the mechanic strutting inside the room, plucking Bonfire's drink from his hands, taking a sip, and plopping on a table bench nearest to him. Ever since he and the Embers got summoned to the palace through Sera's sneaky methods, the mechanic had become more and more shameless.

Then again, he had every right to be. Most of the servants in the palace now revere him as a god for fixing most of their tools and systems, making work easier for them. The water pump idea in the kitchens was a real lifesaver, having decreased any need for traveling towards the wells and getting exhausted over it.

"What's up, Your Highness?" Darmer tilted his head to one side and returned Bonfire's drink already halfway done. "I have to be down by the servants quarters in the next hour."

Sera gripped the mechanic's shoulder and dragged him out. One of these days, he'd have to shatter his friend's fantasy about palace life being all for him and his talents. If he made a small misstep in this place, even Sera wouldn't be able to save him.

Together, they stalked past the empty corridors of the palace, gearing for the stairs to take them to the courtyard. "Another outburst occurred six fortweres off the last spot," Sera said. "What would that do to our equation?"

Darmer's dark eyes flitted here and there, seeing but not really. He's calculating, and with his brain the size of a mesa, it's not impossible for him to have come up with an answer in a flash. "It'd reset our parameters of prediction at least a bit tighter," he said. "I'd need a map to accurately prove it, but I'm sensing a pattern. I just need to find a new model for it now."

Sera understood it as much as he understood how a water pump worked. He'd leave the finer details to Darmer. As long as they would have something to present to the Potentate at the end of the week, they would be fine.

"Do you have any luck in researching what caused those fires?" Darmer asked as they reached the lip of the stairs.

Sera pursed his lips. "Not at all," he said. "None of the works in the archive say anything remotely close to what's happening. If only there was someone who can tell me everything, even the things I know but never really understood. I can feel it. Things are deeper than what they seem, and I just have no way of knowing unless someone told me."

Darmer hummed, seemingly bored of Sera's rambling. "Careful about who you talk to, though," he said. They started tackling the stairs, their feet thumping in synchronized succession against the dusty steps. "I kept hearing rumors in the city that a set of criminal fugitives made it past Calca's borders."

"Yeah?" Sera rolled his eyes, backhanding his friend on the arm light as a heartridge's feather. "Hand me the reports later. I'll look into it."

The mechanic suddenly stalled on the steps, gaze frozen somewhere distant. Sera knitted his eyebrows and whirled back to him. "What?" he demanded. "It can't be one of your stupid pranks. Not again."

"Would you believe me if I told you one of the described criminals matches the features of that girl?" Darmer asked, a finger jabbing towards the direction of the palace's walls. "Oh, she really did just flip past that wall. Wow."

Sera blew a breath and followed Darmer's gaze. "What is it now? I swear—"

His words died in his throat, watching a girl with light brown hair stride across the palace's courtyard, coming under the shadows of the rhenne fronds swaying with the gentle breeze. How dare she raltz inside as if she owned the place? Where was the security? Why weren't they apprehending this trespasser? Oh, right. Most of the army was somewhere far away, unable to help those who truly needed them.

Darmer shook Sera's arm like a child begging for sweets. "Sera, I tell you. She's one of them. She's—"

"Go back inside," Sera snapped. "I'll deal with it."

Darmer's throat bobbed as he swallowed against it. His friend rarely showed any emotion aside from joy and serenity, but the conflicting shadows dancing on the mechanic's face now was something else. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "I'll just...go. Be careful."

Good thing for the both of them, Darmer was a proper listener when Sera needed him to. Sera kept his eyes on his friend's back, at least until the mechanic disappeared into the confines of the palace. Then, he flexed his fingers and summoned his magic. By the time the girl reached the foot of the stairs, Sera was ready for her with his hands alight.