Silas Harrow stood amidst the whirring, softly glowing Arc-Lanterns, guiding their nightly descent into the central docking station. A whisper of thought, a subtle warp in the air, nudged them. These spherical drones, designed to illuminate the high reaches of Aethelburg’s Spire District, moved with an unusual grace under his influence, settling into their charging berths without a single collision.
His Stargazer abilities often felt like this – a quiet, almost instinctive command over the very weave of reality. He understood its primal characteristics, though he rarely articulated them, even to himself. First, a strong desire could manifest through a careful expenditure of cosmic energy. Second, voicing that desire, even silently, seemed to focus the intention, reducing the drain. And third, the difficulty of the desired outcome determined the energy cost, or whether it was possible at all.
What constituted ‘difficulty’ remained maddeningly elusive. Sometimes, a complex manipulation of gravity felt as effortless as breathing. Other times, a simple deflection proved impossible. Only days ago, confronting that rabid Aether-Hound, his silent command to ‘still’ its frenzied charge had barely rippled its momentum. Yet, the focused burst of cosmic force that had punched a hole through its skull felt ridiculously easy, repeatable a hundred times over without significant strain.
He watched the last Arc-Lantern hum into place, its soft glow dimming. A metallic tang, sharp and acrid, pricked the damp air. Not the usual ozone-laced exhaust from the lower districts, nor the faint, oily scent of the Arc-Lanterns themselves. It was raw, organic, with an undercurrent of something feral. Aether-Vermin.
Through the perpetual mist that clung to the upper arcades, a figure emerged, silhouetted against the smudged canvas of the twilight sky. Elder Thorne. A retired Guild surveyor, known more for his meticulous ledger-keeping than for prowess, yet he moved with a surprising ease. Over his shoulder, a hulking mass of matted fur and gnashing teeth — a dead Aether-Vermin, its form unnaturally large, mutated by the city’s unseen energies.
“Good evening, Silas,” Thorne’s voice was a low rumble, carrying over the distant thrum of the city. He didn’t seem winded, despite the kill. “Any chance of a corner to rest tonight? This creature should more than cover the cost of a warm corner.”
An Aether-Vermin, particularly one of this size, was a valuable find. Its hide could be traded, its denser tissues salvaged for various industrial components. It was ample payment for a night’s respite.
Silas gave a curt nod, the rain-slicked metal of the walkway gleaming under the distant streetlights.
“Not many of these venture this high,” Silas observed, his gaze lingering on the carcass. He had patrolled these upper levels for years, culling most of the mutated creatures. “How far did you range to find this one?”
These Spire District heights were relatively desolate, inhospitable to most organic life, even the city’s hardy anomalies. An Aether-Vermin this size hinted at deeper, more dangerous hunting grounds.
“Scouted near the Empyrean Spires,” Thorne replied, a faint satisfaction in his tone. “Beyond the smog-line.”
The Empyrean Spires. That distant, mythical jagged crown of Aethelburg, a place few ever saw clearly, let alone traversed. It would take days of grueling ascent just to reach the lowest of those broken, forgotten pinnacles.
“With my stride, half a cycle was sufficient,” Thorne added, as if reading Silas’s thoughts. A faint tremor of unease ran through Silas. He, too, could cover such distances with his own unusual means, but Thorne was no Stargazer. This old Mechanist held more secrets than he let on.
---
Later, a small, contained heat generator sputtered in Silas’s cramped dwelling, casting flickering shadows on the corrugated metal walls. The air, usually chilled by the constant Aethelburg rain, held a rare warmth. They shared a meal of nutrient paste, spiced with scavenged synth-greens, while the butchered Aether-Vermin hung cooling in a secure alcove.
Thorne looked up, past the grime-streaked observation pane, towards the obscured sky. “The celestial bodies,” he mused, a rare softness in his voice, “they shine with surprising clarity from these heights, even through the perpetual haze.”
Silas had heard his mother speak of it. “This sector of the Upper Arcades, she said, is one of the highest points in Aethelburg, save for the Empyrean Spires themselves.”
“Compared to those pinnacles, what could be higher?” Thorne scoffed lightly. “Having ventured closer today, I’m even more impressed. Even the Arch-Engineers, for all their power, would find it a challenge to breach their full extent.”
“Arch-Engineers,” Silas echoed, a hint of his mother’s old disdain in his voice. “I’ve heard they wield near-divine authority. Couldn’t they simply command a path through any obstacle?”
“Not all of them, my young friend. The heads of the great Guild Houses, the true Arch-Engineers? They might indeed be akin to old-world gods,” Thorne said, his expression distant. He then regaled Silas with a tale of witnessing a senior Arch-Engineer, a titan of the Guild, reduce a crumbling hydro-accumulator to slag with a mere gesture during a system purge.
A prickle of shame, sharp and unwelcome, spread through Silas. Sometimes, in the quiet solitude of his life, he deluded himself. His power, so much greater than he initially believed, occasionally felt comparable to the legends. But Thorne’s casual anecdotes reminded him of the vast, terrifying gulf between his nascent abilities and the true might wielded by the Guild’s highest echelons.
“By the way,” Thorne shifted, his gaze returning to Silas, a small smile playing on his lips, “doesn’t living alone in a place like this get lonely?”
A bitter taste filled Silas’s mouth. “Of course it does. But I’ve grown accustomed to it.”
“Why not bring a technician from the Lower Arcades to share your space?”
“Who would willingly commit to a life of solitude, maintaining these rusting structures?” Silas’s voice was flat, devoid of humor.
“I’m sure there are plenty of bright young minds who wouldn’t mind the company of a capable young man like yourself.”
Silas managed a thin, awkward smile. He remembered, vaguely, children from the Lower Arcades, during his infrequent trips down, who used to follow him, captivated by his quiet intensity. But after his mother’s death, after the bitter quarrel with the district overseers, all contact had fractured. They had likely understood the stark reality: a life tied to Silas Harrow meant exile to these high, neglected spaces, far from the city’s bustling heart. It meant a life of quiet desperation.
“Well, don’t dwell on it so much,” Thorne offered, a surprising gentleness in his tone. “Who knows? A passing surveyor, a lost cargo runner, might just spark something.”
A passing traveler. The thought was laughable. Thorne was the only other soul Silas had encountered in these upper levels in almost two decades.
---
Silence settled between them, broken only by the hum of the heat generator and the distant mournful sigh of the wind through the corroded girders. Silas eventually broke it.
“Why do you go to such lengths?” he asked, his voice low.
Thorne turned, a quizzical look on his face. “Hm?”
“I don’t know what the sector overseers promised you, but with your capabilities, it seems you could secure far greater comfort, with far less effort.”
Any district, if a man of Thorne’s evident skill settled there, declared his protection from anomalies, and demanded resources in return, would surely comply. It would be immeasurably easier than venturing into the Empyrean Spires, risking life and limb for a mutated carcass, then seeking lodging in a deserted upper arcade.
Someone who could retrieve an Aether-Vermin from the Empyrean Spires in half a cycle clearly possessed formidable abilities. And the sector overseers of the Lower Arcades were hardly deserving of such selflessness. In fact, Thorne was staying with Silas because the lower district had demanded an exorbitant fee for even a shared bunk in a cramped communal space.
Silas, in Thorne’s position, would have dismantled their control room, confiscated their supplies, and left them to fend for themselves.
“They are pitiable folk,” Thorne stated simply.
“In what way?”
“Living each cycle in trembling fear, in this remote frontier of the city, without the stability a Guild-trained hand provides.”
The old Mechanist spoke gently, patiently, as if instructing a young apprentice. While the Upper Arcades, due to their harsh environment, were relatively stable, the lower levels teemed with anomalies, mutated creatures, and unstable energy fluctuations, preying on the unprotected population.
It was, Thorne explained, the pride of a true Guildsman, one who inherited the principles of order and protection, to shield the powerless from the chaotic incursions of the void. Even though he no longer served a specific Guild House, he couldn’t simply stand by.
This account diverged sharply from his mother’s teachings. She had always painted the Guild as oppressors, the Arch-Engineers as exploiters, and their agents as mere enforcers of tyranny. Wasn’t that the truth?
Noticing Silas’s bewildered expression, Thorne offered a small, knowing smile. He gestured to a small flask of distilled water. “Well, not everyone sees it my way. For every myriad souls in Aethelburg, there are a myriad perspectives.”
---
The next cycle, Silas moved among the Arc-Lanterns’ docking station, performing routine maintenance. A wave of his hand, a ripple in the fabric of gravity, cleared away accumulated dust and stray mechanical detritus. His mind, however, remained snagged on the previous night’s conversation.
‘Pride.’
Thorne’s words had etched themselves into his thoughts. To think that a Guildsman wasn’t merely a subservient agent to the Arch-Engineers, but could be someone who found genuine meaning in protecting the common citizens? This newfound understanding didn’t suddenly make him eager to seek out a Guild House and beg for service, but it did temper his ingrained cynicism. Perhaps, if there were more like Thorne, life under Guild rule might not be an absolute damnation after all.
‘That aside, how should I inform him that the Aether-Hound is already neutralized?’
He had planned for Thorne to patrol for a while, perhaps find nothing, and eventually move on. But Thorne’s earnestness, his clear sense of duty, made Silas reluctant to let him waste time on a non-existent threat. The problem was, Silas had disposed of the Aether-Hound’s carcass days ago, tossing it into a deep, seldom-accessed service ravine. Retrieving the now-decaying anomaly would be an unpleasant task in itself. More importantly, the tell-tale ripples of Stargazer energy he’d used to destroy it would be undeniably present. If anyone were to trace the power, Silas would instantly become the prime suspect. The Guild had a long history of ‘containment’ for those like him.
Sighing, Silas completed the cleaning. He had a brief window of quiet before his next task. Thorne had mentioned patrolling closer to the Upper Arcades today, a high probability of finding him.
Silas focused his intent, a faint starlight blooming in his perception. He reached out, not with his eyes or ears, but with the subtle temporal echoes inherent in his bloodline. He chanted no spell, merely focused his will, a silent petition to the cosmic weave.
“Life-Pulse Scan.”
His perception broadened, flowing outwards like spilled mercury. His limited physical vision, usually confined to a hundred meters of mist and metal, stretched. He could discern individual rust flakes on girders kilometers distant. His hearing amplified, picking up the almost imperceptible scuttling of bio-mechanized vermin within the walls, the whisper of air currents through forgotten ducts.
Yet, this heightened sensory input filtered itself, focusing acutely on detecting life signatures, specifically human.
‘Let’s see… Hmm?’
A sharp spike in his awareness. A distant, guttural roar. His augmented vision snapped to the source, piercing through the persistent drizzle.
Thorne. He was breathing heavily, a dark stain blossoming on his forehead, another on his shoulder. Opposite him, the half-decayed form of the Aether-Hound Silas had destroyed days ago, its torn maw wide, was letting loose a horrifying, unearthly bellow.
---
‘Who in the blazes would do such a thing…?’
Thorne gritted his teeth, his grip tightening on his reinforced maintenance tool, as he stared at the unbound anomaly before him. The spectral echo of the dead Aether-Hound.
When creatures of the void died, their remaining energy often clung to their bodies, an instinctive defiance of oblivion. This residual cosmic charge, an echo of their life force, sometimes attempted to fulfill the dying creature’s final, desperate will, forcibly reanimating their shattered forms. Such was the nature of an unbound anomaly, a spectral echo.
This was precisely why standard Guild protocol dictated that after neutralizing a significant anomaly, its remnant energy must either be absorbed or dispersed immediately. It prevented these nightmarish resurrections.
But whoever had destroyed this Aether-Hound before him had either been woefully ignorant of this fundamental law, or had deliberately, maliciously, ignored it. Considering that many anomalies instinctively devoured their defeated foes to absorb their lingering energy, it was likely the work of someone with power, perhaps an unsanctioned Stargazer.
That singular, precise hole in its head spoke volumes. A focused, projectile-like strike.
[—KREEEE—!!!]
A deafening, rasping roar tore from the creature’s rotting throat, echoing like the wail of the lost across the desolate upper levels. Given its current state, the comparison was unsettlingly accurate.
“Take this, you void-spawned horror!” Thorne yelled, launching himself forward, his tool whistling through the rain-heavy air.