The officer quarters of the Wizard City Corps were significantly larger than the barracks Kyra had been stuffed into as a private many years before. But the fact that officers were generally out on assignment meant that the rooms were often empty anyway. Kyra walked the long corridors, her footsteps echoing off the stone walls. The slitted windows provided a paltry amount of light, so she called up a glow orb with a snap of her fingers to see by. Not that there was much to see, the Corp was famously utilitarian. Only the occasional pattern where the stone mason had cared to get creative decorated the bare walls. 'This isn't an art museum,' she'd once heard an Admiral say when someone tried hanging paintings. Personally, Kyra thought the place could use some color.
She paused and an intersection, her face twisting in confusion. Were the Commander quarters to the left… or to the right? It had been so long since she was stationed in Wizard City she'd had trouble even finding her own quarters.
Down to her left, she spotted a young private scrubbing floors. A form of punishment probably. He scrambled to his feet and saluted when she approached.
"Ma'am!"
"Private. Are these the Commander quarters? I'm looking to speak with Commander Hunter, if he's awake that is."
"Oh, you'll find him down to your right, Ma'am. Just follow the music."
Music?
"Thank you, Private." Kyra turned to her right, and the young soldier went back to scrubbing floors.
Sure enough, just down the right corridor, Kyra could hear the faint sound of a violin. It grew louder as she walked, until finally she found herself standing in front of the door to what must have been Commander Hunter's quarters. She lifted her hand to knock, but paused to listen. He was really quite good. Filling the hall with a sound that was vibrant, complex, and a little melancholy. A shiver prickled down her spine when the song hit a particularly high and beautiful series of notes. The depth of emotion surprised her, although she supposed the commander couldn't always be staunch and humorless.
Finally, when she heard what sounded like a final, ringing chord, she tapped politely on the door. After a beat, the commander opened it, instrument in hand.
"Knight Captain." He greeted her. He still looked exhausted.
"Commander. I thought you'd be asleep." Kyra shifted awkwardly outside the door. She wasn't used to speaking with the man informally. But she had too many questions about their current situation, and she wasn't a lowly private anymore.
"I find music to be very cathartic. Come in, you look like you've got something on your mind."
Kyra stepped in the door while Hunter turned to retrieve a rag from his desk, which he then began using to polish rosin from the front of his violin. In stark contrast to the empty corridor outside, his room was a great collection of various objects that looked like they had come from all over the spiral. Tomes and scrolls from Krokotopia, a partially singed shield bearing a Dragonspyre symbol, a preserved lotus flower from Mooshu. Was there anywhere the commander hadn't been stationed? His desk was completely covered in sheet music. Some of the pages looked freshly printed, others appeared to have been hand-inked a century ago, with yellowed edges and tearing corners.
"I didn't know you played." Kyra admitted. Most soldiers had some sort of hobby outside of their work. She'd certainly filled enough sketchbooks over the years.
"Runs in my family. I wanted to go professional before I learned that I'd inherited my grandfather's magic. How are the Dawn children adjusting to their new home?" Hunter plucked one of the violin strings, frowned, and adjusted one of the tuners.
"As best as two children can, I suppose. Little Cecil needs some hand holding. She's fascinated with it all, but always on the verge of tears. Her brother is different, I know he's hurting, but he's so quiet. He keeps it all inside."
"Hmm." Hunter murmured thoughtfully, "All that pain will have to go somewhere someday. I wonder what will happen when he finally lashes out."
"I thought we were more worried about his sister lashing out, which reminds me…" Kyra paused, and Hunter looked up, waiting for her to finish her statement.
"Why are we here, commander?"
Hunter turned to hang his violin on a hook on the wall.
"You got your orders, same as me."
"Yes, but why do they need a commander and a knight captain to baby-sit two young children? Demon or no demon. The academy should be able to deal with it themselves, no? The two of us certainly managed okay years ago." Hunter folded his arms while she spoke.
"Is it a problem for you? You seemed fond of the children."
"Oh, I adore them. But I was doing good work in Krokotopia. We'd had the southern slave rings just about disbanded." Kyra had spent years sweltering in the desert, carefully cultivating allies, discrediting enemies, only to hand her work off to another officer on such short notice. Manders, who made up the lower slave class of Krokotopia were flighty creatures; they wouldn't trust a new officer easily.
"You were never briefed on my personal experience with psychomancy were you? Prior to the Dawn incident, I mean." Hunter asked. Kyra shook her head. All she'd ever really heard about the commander were the rumors that other soldiers whispered behind his back. Stupid rumors; that he once incinerated a man by staring at him too hard, or that he once killed his own squad member. She'd never taken them seriously, although such tales often had a grain of truth in them.
"Well then let me say that your experience with professor Dawn was rather kind, compared to the Corp's other dealings with mind magic."
Kyra's pride was slightly wounded at Hunter's words. Seeing the Demon bypass her defenses as if they were nothing. To have it hold her prisoner, torturing her. She'd never felt so helpless. It was still one of the most terrifying experiences she'd had in the Corps.
"You're saying it gets worse?" She asked, shoving her pride away.
"Much worse, you heard about the dead O'learys. And the Corps have been known to be too relaxed about Psychomancy in the past. We're trying to limit our liability here. And you and I have been on this case since it began."
"So I'm stuck here until the girl proves not to be a threat." Kyra sighed. If the child ever proved not to be dangerous. She wasn't sure what it would take to convince her superiors.
"We both are. Don't look so disappointed, Steelwater. They'll keep us busy while we're here. There's a new group of cadets coming in for training and someone needs to put the fear of the void into them." Hunter smiled devilishly. Shouting at greenhorns was one of the pleasures of being an officer. Despite her grievances, Kyra couldn't help but smile back.
"Well then, I look forward to serving with you again, Sir."
"Xander?" Cecil couldn't sleep. Everything was too strange. She kept dozing half-off and waking up again, forgetting where she was. Then she'd be greeted by the dark ceiling of the Drake's guest room, and everything would come flooding back. She shifted in her bed. It was too soft. And the sheets smelled too much like flowers.
"Yeah?" Her brother answered. He sounded just as awake as she did.
"Do you think Julian went to heaven?" Nobody around them had ever been particularly religious, but the local chapel donated to the orphanage a lot. And Mr. Sweeny brought the children to services on special occasions to be polite. They said if you were good, you went to heaven, and Cecil thought Julian was the best.
"…What? How should I know?" Xander sounded annoyed. The frame of his bed creaked as he turned away from her. Cecil decided to drop the issue.
She tried closing her eyes, but the buzzing in the back of her head distracted her. Silvia said that she had a lot of power inside of her, more than a normal wizard. That's why she was able to do scary things. Cecil wanted to be special, but not that special. She didn't want to hear the voice in her head. If she fell asleep, would she have to talk to it again?
"Xander?" She asked again.
"What?"
"You hear voices and stuff too, right? What do they say to you?"
"I don't know, I can never understand them." There was a long silence. Then Cecil heard him turn back towards her.
"Why, do you?" Xander asked. In the faint light of the moonlit window, Cecil could just see the curious gleam in his eyes.
"Sort of… Just the one, I mean. It said its name was Ashes, I think."
"Lair." Xander said.
"Nuh uh! It's true, it talks about power a lot, and says it wants to help me." Cecil bit her lip, remembering what the creature's 'help' had entailed.
"But it only does bad stuff." She finished.
Xander thought about that for a while.
"Julian said only really powerful wizards could understand the voices." He said, finally.
"I guess." Cecil muttered. She didn't feel powerful. In the stories, wizards were always fearless, and always in control. Cecil didn't feel like she had control over anything.
They lay in silence for a while longer.
"Xander?"
"What?" Now Xander sounded annoyed again.
"I'm scared." Cecil said.
"… Me Too." Xander admitted.
The Silence was still deafening. In the orphanage, something was always making sound. Traffic on the street outside, the hum of airship engines, the soft breathing of an entire bunkroom full of children. Cecil could hear the blood pumping in her ears.
"Xander?"
"Shut up, Cecil."
"…"
Author's Semi-coherent Ramblings:
Whew, been a little while since I updated. Haven't had as much time as I usually do to work on this stuff. Probably something to do with the fact that I've gone on a study abroad program to study collaborative literature in Portugal. Highly recommend it, especially if you live in a glass ball like me, and need a way to break out. Travel while you're young.
Starting to flesh out the commander a little. I try to make all of my major characters as dynamic as I can, even if that only shows up in subtext at first. I love violinists, probably because I used to be one myself and know how dedicated they are to their art. If anyone reading plays, be like Rohan. Clean your violin. Rosin stains are the worst.
Cheers.