Arc One: Awakening

Chapter 37: Choices

Factory horns pealed within the fog, sonorous and pouring into the cracks and crevices of the city. Lumen thrummed, and murmured, and once the misty pillows above parted to grant the stars a view of the shrouded world below, fell into stillness again.

To Esther, the sky bore promise, and presented a picture of history outside of the exhaust fumes and the stranglehold of industry. If only the citizens were permitted to look up and dream. No doubt the ruling families would stake a claim on those too, charge by the hour to merely visualise a better life. She hedged her bets on Ironstrike being the first to enact such a ludicrous enterprise.

Edgar's territory crammed every inch of accessible residential street until the houses sloped up on themselves to provide further lodgings. Derelict structures perched on earlier resident quarters, teetering over the precipice to prevent any housing overspill onto monied soil.

Gabriel steered Esther into a confined passageway between two slanted properties. Sodden clothes hung from gaunt, bony figures huddled near the stonework, bundles of belongings cradled close and bruises framing wearied, blood-shot stares.

"It's worse on the outskirts," he said, noting Esther's sorrowful expression as she met with every shivering, damp soul. "Higher-ups have started dismantling it to build a luxury nightspot, and more arrive here almost weekly."

"Is there nowhere for them?" Esther questioned.

"Look around. Where can they go? Nobody gets a transfer here. If you're born here, you'll die here too. No escaping that."

A smoke-suffused sting needled the inner curve of her eyes, a discrete cough clearing the clump deep in her throat. Hopelessness made a home in those filth-ridden, despondent streets, reconciling and acclimating while life suffered, and struggled, and strove. Hard work meant nothing, compassion long since dead, deserting the impoverished souls to mourn in the merciless cold.

Down the distant end of the patched alley, Gabriel extended a hand to assist her over a collapsed post. She accepted his offer with a gracious clasp, treading one careful foot at a time across the debris. The walkway thinned, most of the entrances shuttered with wooden boards, all apart from the furthest, splintered and green paint peeling, but unbarred.

Esther waited as Gabriel freed the latches and waved for her to enter first, inching by into a sparse, dim kitchen. A few loose cupboard doors hung slightly open where the hinges could no longer support them and the scant lamplight ghosted the jars on the tiled windowsill. A small square table draped with a threadbare cloth and two fold-out chairs nuzzled the wall at an orderly angle. Gabriel stocked and stored everything aptly, not a single item out of place.

He set out a pair of chipped cups and filled the kettle, observing the mage as she neared the scattered accumulation of photos on the pinboard above the table. Careful fingertips unrolled the curled corners of the older pictures, her teeth softly snagging her bottom lip and a wrinkle crinkling between her eyebrows.

"Is this your father?" she asked, tapping the grinning man in a discoloured photograph.

"That's him," Gabriel replied. "This is the house he raised me in."

"Alone?"

"Yes. Alone."

Popping bubbles permeated the water in the kettle and steam billowed from the cups in climbing wisps as he poured and mixed the coffee granules. He invited his guest to sit and placed the mugs down. "So, what is this important message you came to give me?"

From the inside pocket of her jacket, Esther withdrew the neatly folded letter and delivered it into his hands as instructed. He clocked the petal-speckled seal and flung it onto the surface. The envelope rotated as it flopped down.