PART II: STRIFE.
9
Jordyn Moriau - The Cardinal.
Jordyn faces down a Metal at the train station.
The Metal grins grit-sharp teeth at her. Her blades spin in a spiral carve of destruction.
The first few swipes Jordyn dodges. Left-right-left-left-feint. It's barely enough to keep up with this demon of a being laughing down at her. Right-right-left-right-feint-right again— her breaths shallow, her throat hurts, her hands scramble for a blade but she has nothing.
She wasn't expecting an attack on Eight. Not at Salvatore, the plot of territory that Sadie Rendevez had so painstakingly claimed. Not at the station that stands next to it, destroyed and useless enough that the Capitol would ignore it as a possible point of future mobilisation—
Left-right-left-left-feint.
The Metal isn't giving up. She presses on with laughs that amplify with every step, every swipe. Jordyn staggers. She's faltering, failing— soon another trophy body for the Metal to string around her belt.
"You know," the Metal says. "For a rebellion figurehead, I was expecting more. Where's your fight, Moriau? You're not really impressing me."
Jordyn shuts her eyes.
"Impress this," a voice snarls.
Crash.
The Metal drops down, skull dented in, and the crowbar that did the deed belongs to none other than—
"Maddie," Jordyn gasps out. Maddie drops the crowbar, rushes towards her, kneels down. Concern meets her gaze, as Maddie cups Jordyn's face in hers. "Are you okay?" she whispers.
Jordyn nods. Maddie's eyes linger on hers, half-smile breaking through, before looking away.
She licks her lips and looks away as well.
"Thank you," Jordyn says. "I didn't notice her coming. The armaments…" She casts a gaze back to the rebels in the station, trying to make the electrical circuits work, at those in the rails, working at the battered train tucked in a repairman's tunnel.
"I can tell," Maddie says, softly. "How's progress been?"
"Not… great. I don't think we'll be able to get the train up and running."
If Jordyn thought Eight was destroyed when she first came— did the Capitol have a surprise for her. Only rubble and dust is left. Only dead birds and corpses alike. Only a dirty hell.
Yet this isn't the vision of Eight broadcast to the rest of Panem. Only replays of Sadie's roars as she raised her torch as if she were Eight's very own Ilyda Nagini.
Charge! They can't fucking keep us down. Fight! We'll triumph. We won't ever rest, not even till the bitterest damn end!
Her fall was framed a little too beautifully. Sadie Rendevez's causticity and rage transmuted into a hero's valiant rally. Her body was cradled in Cynane's arms, head hanging back, arm lolling under, and that shot was bombarded with warsongs like it were a muse.
A template, even.
"You're doing all you can," Maddie says. "That's more than The Vultures can ask for, Jor."
"I know that," Jordyn exhales. Her eyes can't resist flicking back to the ruined landscape. "It's just…"
Before her demise, Cynane branded Sadie The New Vulture. That title shouldn't mean anything - it doesn't mean anything - and yet.
Is it shameful of her to feel cast aside? To feel unneeded in a role she never asked for? She'd always thought she'd be glad, when the mantle wore off, but now…
Jordyn swallows. Maddie notices.
"You should talk to Cynane," Maddie says. "Find out where you stand. If… if that's what's bothering you."
Jordyn shakes her head. "I think she has better things to do," she says. "What with all the attacks coming down from The Metals."
"Shit," Maddie mutters. "Fuck."
"What is it?"
"Kiernan. We have to get to him. Before—"
Maddie clenches her crowbar. Jordyn picks up a piece of rebar.
"Let's go."
Kiernan is nowhere to be found.
They pass through the stations, the broken train's compartments, and even through the gates outside with the rubble. Still no sight of the child.
It's bad enough that Kiernan is caught up in a war: but to be lost, too?
She can imagine how he feels.
Maddie had told her a little. When Jordyn was recruiting troops with Sadie, Maddie and Kiernan were making propaganda pieces for the Districts. He was the poster boy of revolution - the traumatised, the broken. The tragic result of ripped-apart families. The representation of the Capitol's devastation.
His head, bobbing on video against a backdrop of rusted height charts, too short for a soldier's headshot. Kiernan Alcraiz is another casualty in the Capitol's machinations. Out of all the dead twelve-year olds that enter the Games - he's lucky. Will you truly stand for this?
And another. His heavy breathing as he stared at the beaten-up dummy. His small body, suffocated under an earthquake. Breaking down as he called Hera Dalenka by his sister's name.
Would you want your child to endure this pain? Would you want to damn your child to this fate? All of this is the Capitol's doing. Where do your loyalties lie: with child-killers or with liberators?
"He hated it all," Maddie had said to her at Sparrow Fort. "It was embarrassing to him. And I… I don't blame him. It's a… lot to replay and broadcast, at once. I felt the same with what they did to my footage. You get it, more than anyone…"
She does get it. Being The Vulture brought Jordyn the same pains: her existence moralised into a rhetoric. She was nothing other than what they made of her. And she understood the use of it in revolution, in convincing, in statements, in fight—
But god if it isn't fucking dehumanising.
She gets it if Kiernan ran, escaped to a somewhere the Vultures can't find him. When she was still The Vulture, she indulged: in a world where she didn't wind up in District 13, a world where she won the Games, a world where she chased her old designer dream, a world where she found success without birds of a fucking feather.
Escapism was gospel. Running was a holy grail.
(It was how she survived, after all.)
But they can't just let him go. Not when The Metals are hellbent on hunting him down. And the panic on Maddie's face strengthens Jordyn's resolve.
"Where do you think he could be?" Jordyn asks.
"He'd be in Two. If he could get there."
"But he can't."
"Exactly. If you were him, where would you be?"
Hiding was what she excelled at.
She was never good at much: school was never a forte, sports weren't her favourite. Fashion was a passion, but the dresses were like alluring radiation. Too young to dare.
The privacy of her bedroom always felt fragile. The world outside felt toweringly monstrous. She was only safe in the space of her mind.
That was where she stayed.
"I think I know."
They find Kiernan huddled in the rubble.
Relief breaks over Maddie's face. "Kiernan," she exhales, dropping to a knee. "Are you okay? We were so worried—"
"Save it," Kiernan snaps. He pulls his legs closer to his body, averting their gazes. "You don't care. Stop pretending to care! I'm done. I'm done. I'm done with you," he sniffs. The sneer that muffles it is weak. "Just… go away. Please."
"First of all," Maddie says. "I'm not pretending. Never was. Kiernan, I care about you—"
"No! You only care because—" Kiernan's blue eyes distort with pain. Then they snap into a normality so fast she nearly arrives at whiplash.
"Whatever," he huffs. "Just… leave me alone."
Maddie opens her mouth to respond, but Jordyn shakes her head.
"You're in danger," Jordyn cuts in. "The Metals are hunting down Vulture figureheads. We'll bring you somewhere safe, Kier. Come with us?"
"Wow. I'm a fuckin' figurehead now. Great. All I've wanted in my life."
Still he doesn't budge.
"Right?" Jordyn exhales. The chuckle from her lungs is true. "My life aspiration too. Avian bitch incarnate. Funny how the world works."
Kiernan snickers.
But he stands. Nods. Doesn't meet Maddie's eyes.
Whatever Kiernan has with Maddie… will take time. They deserve closure. That won't be today. (That may not be ever, in a revolution that fears no god and burns time to a wick.)
For now, though, she's glad he's back.
(For now, she's glad to be.)
She is brought to the leader of District 13. In a room of dreary lights and an unused conference circle, a woman, stoic-cold, tilts her head up to Jordyn. But then a quirk breaks her lips.
"You're impressive, Jordyn," Cynane says. "Your will to survive. It is fascinating. Whatever you have done to live… it is audacious. A statement. Tell me all about it. How you've escaped from the Capitol's grasp."
So Jordyn does. She tells her about death. Relentless. Undying. Unrepentant. Of the Capitol's ghost hand, pushing tributes the way of their wills. She tells her about their bomb. A hope. Made from cracks off their souls. And tells her. About Scott. How they've nearly abandoned it all.
Cynane listens. She is enraptured by every word. And something warm rises in Jordyn's throat. Something like a choke. That tells Jordyn. That Cynane understands.
When she is done recounting their tale, with Jordyn picking the can back up, Jordyn kicking the bomb, Jordyn surviving— Cynane stands. Determination takes flight in her eyes; welds every limb, every ligament and tendon and bone.
"You will lead this rebellion," Cynane says, looking her in the eyes. "You'll be our figurehead. Not a tribute; but not a Victor, either. A survivor."
There is a glimmer in Jordyn's eye. She wipes it away. Gives a slight smile back. But her heart rises into the skies: a balloon, a rocket, untethered, untamed.
"That is all I want," Jordyn says.
Cynane's in the station in spite of Sadie's death.
While there was no such thing as rest in a rebellion, it's still… discombobulating. Did Cynane not need to mourn? Did she not feel for the pieces shown over and over on screen - her dead daughter cradled in her arms?
(Maddie finds it ironic. Jordyn feels… pity.)
(War leaders don't have the benefit of being humanised. Not she. Not Cynane. Not the soldiers.)
(They are embodiments, martyrs in the making. They bear ideology and it erases them. It is their way to thank.)
However, what was more shocking than Cynane's appearance was her physical appearance. The eye patch wasn't for aesthetic's sake. Nor the arm sling.
"I received your radio call," Cynane says to Maddie. "I appreciate the heads-up about the Metals, but unfortunately, I was already attacked by one of their feral rabbits." Her grimace flicks on her face. "Talon Ivory fought more of a battle than I thought he would have. But he is dead and it is done."
"Shit," Jordyn breathes. "... Talon Ivory? Isn't he supposed to be…"
Killed in the 53rd Games. 20th placer. Destroyed Four's win-streak.
"Turns out the Capitol has been operating upon a level unprecedented. The Metals are Four's brave, foolish corpses. But it doesn't matter. We're leaving Eight immediately."
Jordyn's head whips up. "What? But… why?"
"Take a look," Cynane murmurs. "There is nothing here left for us. But District One contains opportunity. The remaining rebels are inflamed due to Sadie's suicidal fervour - they need a leader, and that is a prime opportunity for a revolution that would lead to an assault on the Capitol. Victory is nigh. We must—"
"How can you be so caustic? Towards your dead daughter?"
Cynane's gaze hardens. "This is what she would have wanted."
Was it?
Sadie wanted nothing else except for revolution. Cynane is striving for that.
Her stomach lurches. Cynane's right. Isn't she? This is the best way to honour Sadie's memory. Isn't that how Jordyn had been thinking all along? The Vultures honour Brynn. Scott. Maeve. Her friends. The dead.
(Why is she faltering?)
Maddie's eyes level at Cynane's. In them's a hardness that's inexplicable. Jordyn doesn't have to guess to know what's she's thinking. Dead bodies on screen. Trauma wrung in HD. More inspo-porn for the ages.
But she says none of that.
"Okay," Maddie says. "Fine. One it is."
"How do we get there?" Jordyn asks. "We've been working on the trains. Nothing's turned up. We can't head for One without the means."
"We'll figure out a way. We're Vultures," Cynane says. In her eye's a hard glint that Jordyn's seen before. It's the gaze she uses when she wants to get her way. No matter the cost. "Such a small technical error will not faze us."
"It's not small."
"The Vultures have resources."
"All our bases have been bombed," Jordyn grits out. "Our hovercrafts? Destroyed. Thirteen might have almost everything, but you don't have Six's crafts."
Cynane looks away from her. "Put the mechanics to harder work on the trains. We must get them moving at any cost. Keep an eye out for any more attacking Metals. We don't want them to threaten our operations."
Maddie nods.
Jordyn grits down a sigh. But despite that, her mind doesn't stop lingering on a word.
"I have a question."
It's stupid. It's insensitive. She shouldn't bother. And yet - Maddie echoes in her ear. Find out where you stand. Find out where you…
"Am I The Vulture still?"
Cynane looks at her, long and hard. "No."
She shouldn't feel as empty as she feels.
Jordyn slumps against the fluttering tent. Dirt presses up her insulated pants. The need to hurl pushes against her stomach.
Didn't she know? Since the beginning that there was someone more deserving. Someone who believed, with all their hearts and souls, and did not have a doubt about the Vultures' veracity.
Even then, Sadie Rendevez was her first pick.
(Obviously. That was before she got to know her personally.)
(But still.)
What was Jordyn expecting? For Cynane to tell her that no, she was The Vulture for all that title meant, that her passing the mantle to her daughter was merely a fluke?
What did Jordyn do to deserve that title anyway?
All she is is the girl that escaped the Games.
All she is is the girl that turned into their poster token.
All she is is the girl that wanted to fight for her friends, fight for the dead, spent the past few months taking their legacy's torch in her hands.
But she wasn't feeling.
Not as much as she should've been.
(She is guilty for the fact. What monster saw their dead friends, swallowed a breath, and decided she was miserable fighting for their souls?)
(Is she Brynn, caustic laughs and fuck you's, some sociopath for the soul?)
(...)
(... No. Jordyn does not have the joy of feeling nothing.)
It just feels wrong.
Scott's body had been tossed in an unmarked headstone. She begged Cynane to tell her the location, never received an answer. There are more important things to focus on, Jordyn.
Brynn… her best friend… is cradled in the Capitol's hands. They used her skin for target practice the other day. Propaganda for those who didn't follow the proper steps set and betrayed. The Vultures had a day of mourning and threw Brynn's face out as inspiration and got Jordyn to talk in interviews about how close they were, how torn up they were when they came to be one of the last ones left, how their bond was the heart and soul of the Games.
(Brynn did mean a lot to her. They had a connection, yes, a desperate union of souls, but the cameras acted as if they'd known each other forever. She could only wish that they were childhood friends.)
Maeve's gone as gone can be, but her life screams itself across the Districts. Nobody knows where her body's gone. It always happens with the manic pixie dream girls. Too excessive to be confined. Jordyn wonders, sometimes, if Cynane knows where she lays. If she's saving its secret to keep the narrative going. Because there's nothing more inspiring than Maddie's anguish in HD.
Stop, stop, stop. Stop thinking.
She can't think. Not as their poster-fucking-beauty.
(She doesn't even have that anymore.)
Her desire had always stayed the same. Design all she wished to design, moulded upon human beings and sculped in flow. Made into being - her creations, spinning, spreading, enlivened. (In another life, she might've become a Capitol stylist, trussing up children down the depths to die.)
But instead of a stylist she became a model. Here Jordyn Moriau stays, raising flags for her life. Here Jordyn Moriau lives:, singing the song of rebellion. Here Jordyn Moriau is, the rebel hero, the Vulture's poster girl, the fighter for good.
Today, and tomorrow, and to martyrdom and forever beyond: she will inhabit that role.
The Vulture. A title so revoltingly infinite.
Or so she thought.
She breathes a shuddery exhale. To say she's exhausted would be the least of it. She became the model Cynane Rendevez wanted her to be— The Vulture, the leader, the hero— and for that she received what?
Not fulfilment.
Not valiance.
Not even revenge.
What has Jordyn felt over the months in preparation for the rebellion? Pain? Wistfulness? Guilt? Inadequacy? Discomfort? Because it certainly wasn't victorious.
Jordyn Moriau. The Vulture.
Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
(Not really.)
The Vulture. If not infinite in role, then infinite for what?
Life? Good joke.
Death, then. Death, then The Vulture always meant to be a martyr.
Was that why…?
Did Cynane want her to die?
Did Cynane hand her the torch waiting for her to flame out?
Jordyn wouldn't put it past her.
Steps crunch the dirt outside of the tent. The cover sweeps aside.
Jordyn looks up.
Maddie.
Concerned to the nth degree, and yes, Maddie's expressionless expression says it all. (The quiver of her lip. That's the read. Maddie modulates, tempers her feelings, but Jordyn has learnt to see.)
Maddie sits down next to Jordyn. She draws her knees to her chest.
"Are you doing okay?"
"I think you know the answer." Jordyn says. Maddie wets her lip, staring ahead at the spot Jordyn's looking at. The flap of the tent flicks in the wind, and they catch glimpses of Vultures dragging metal and rubble, attempting to fix the train that will bring them to oblivion.
"I know that you never liked the title," Maddie says. "But I'm sorry that you had to lose it."
"Thank you. Just… it's so fucking weird," Jordyn chuckles. "I thought I'd be happy. But I feel…"
Exposed. Naked.
"I understand," Maddie says, softly. "I… you know what happened to me. When he stopped calling me Variable One and started with Madison I felt… lost."
Jordyn's eyes flick to hers. Maddie still stares ahead, faraway, as if tuning into a memory.
"It was odd. I… I used to feel glad, sometimes, when he'd say Variable One instead of my name. I felt fraudulent. Like I didn't deserve... how fucked was that?" Maddie exhales. Meets her eyes. "The role's a part of you. It matters - or mattered, at one point in your life. For good or for worse."
Jordyn can't say she doesn't understand that. Being relieved something's gone yet still mourning it. Clinging to it despite how much she'd prefer to be something else.
The vestiges she can't let go of.
The titles.
Names.
"Yeah," she says, quietly. "That's how I feel about The Vulture."
About myself.
Maddie nods. "After all of this is over, maybe you can forget," she says, quietly. But even as Maddie says the words, Jordyn knows that they don't ring true.
Both of them know that isn't possible. The Vultures— their titles— their roles— have played such a part of their lives. Any forgetting would be a hopeless endeavour.
(And not necessarily a wanted one, either.)
"I can't forget," Jordyn says. Her eyes flick away from Maddie's, and back to the tent's slit. "Aren't you worn to the bone?"
"Have been," Maddie says, half-humorously. "Since the start."
Jordyn chuckles. "That bad?"
"Worse than the time Levine strapped me to a bomb."
"You're joking."
"Nope." Maddie's smiling. "Bomb armour. Lessons in mortality. Not that I really needed it, but…" her eyes follow Jordyn's, "... that's how this all feels now."
"One big fat Levine teaching? The horror."
"Almost, not quite. Death's craven, peeking," Maddie meets Jordyn's eyes once more. "I haven't ever fought it. I welcomed it. You all saw."
"You had no choice."
"I was tired."
"You shouldn't have to be— forced—"
"I wasn't."
"Maddie…"
Maddie shakes her head. Looks away. "It doesn't matter what it was. Just… just that I wanted it to end, and I didn't get it. I'll be relieved…" she bites her lip, "... I'll be relieved when it ends. But…" she falters.
"But you're still mourning," Jordyn supplies.
"Yeah," Maddie says, faintly. "Mourning."
Quiet again.
"I'm sorry."
Maddie doesn't respond. But a light flicks in her eyes. Jordyn doesn't know what to make of it.
But it's there.
They've never really gotten close to each other in the arena - of course, they were friends - but Maddie was always with Maeve. And now she's here, and Maddie is broken, but so is she. Maybe broken pieces fit together, but they're shattered grains, not puzzle pieces.
Perhaps love could've been a possibility. In some other fathomable universe. Perhaps it would be a way to combat their shared emptiness, their failed dreams. In Maddie's lips would be solace, that there are things as broken and destroyed as she, and it would not be healthy, would not be good, for the either of them, but - perhaps what they need, if they were to breathe without those shards harboured in their lungs.
But they both hurt too much from their losses.
There is no love in despair.
(Only despairing solidarity.)
(And what is that, if not a familiar end?)
Kiernan talks to a girl.
She's about the same age as him - thirteen, but she smiles through the rubble. Streaks of dust run down her eyes like warpaint. Her gaze sparkles with old joy as she talks, legs lounged out, pushing herself up with her arms, as if she were at a beach instead of a warzone.
But Kiernan's quieter. Hunched in on himself, hands shoved in his pockets, daring not to meet her eyes. It's a sight, Jordyn muses, almost of old familiarity.
(Brynn and her dark gaze, quiet, turns in her mind.)
The girl must be from home - Jordyn thinks Kiernan wouldn't say anything more than a few snappy words at anyone else - and must be somebody he knows. It must be odd to reconnect in war - but, then again, hadn't that been what all tributes from all Districts had been doing, for the past fifty-five years?
Fighting for each other despite.
Past strangerhood; past friendships; past grudges; past hatred.
Past love.
The Vultures are that. Rising for common humanity. Fighting to right The Capitol's wrongs. For your neighbour that hates you; for the stranger that doesn't know you; for the friends that died for you.
That is a noble pursuit. Not one many can do.
And yet here they are. Here is a station populated by perfect strangers, vainly trying to get a train to start. To help their comrades over at One, rousing with riotous froth. Hometown Eight's destroyed to hell, but damned if they can't help their stranger friends.
The Vultures had their wrongs. Cynane Rendevez has her pitfalls. She knows this clearly. The rebellion may not be beautiful, nor valiant, not sane nor gallant.
But it can't discount the humanity of their fight.
Another Metal arrives.
(The Metal arrives.)
The Vultures are armed to their teeth: swords and guns pointed to blow. (It is bravado, for the Vivisector would shrug off any attempts; they cannot come to harm through metal.)
"I just want to talk to Variable One," The Vivisector says. They sway on their feet to-and-fro, hands held up to the same rhythm. Their grin wears on their face, but they don't look… happy. "Variable to Variable."
Maddie stiffens.
"Don't call her that," Jordyn grits out.
The Vivisector exhales. "Fiiine. Madison. Saros. I want to talk to Madison Saros. Happy, your majesty?"
Jordyn doesn't speak. She lets Maddie do it.
The slap strikes the night. Maddie's jaw sets. "What do you want?"
The Vivisector cups their cheek and laughs. "Oh, that's a good one, Maddie. Okay." They exhale. "I said, Variable to Variable."
Jordyn's heart beats in her throat. She doesn't like where this is going. She certainly doesn't like the Vivisector, and the way they're talking to Maddie, well…
… is gut churning.
"Whatever you have to say to me," Maddie says, "You can say to everyone."
"Fine, ugh. Listen up then, 'cause this is a juicy one." The Vivisector's gaze darts between the Vultures: manic, seeking. When it's clear they're all listening, they finally speak.
"I've let Phaedra too loose on her leash. They're all, loose about. Point is. I don't have control over the Metals. Not anymore. Madison— whoopsies, Maddie— saw how Alithyia Essetella totally murdered my bestie."
Maddie raises an eyebrow. "And that is our problem how?"
"For one, I don't think you want the Metals - you know, bitches who want your deaths - rampaging without me. Like it or not, I kept them in check. For two…" The Vivisector glances up at Jordyn, gleams a grin. "I want to join your cause, babe."
What the fuck?
"There is no way that is happening," Jordyn hisses. "You… you're The Vivisector, asshole. You ruined lives. You killed…"
She glances to Cynane for help. But Cynane is still.
So is Maddie.
(Why is Maddie still?)
The Vivisector shrugs. They gesture to a rock. "I'll sit over there, while y'all decide among yourselves. Pinkie promise you'll get back to me? Thanks, Madison! Maddie. Dang, I should be better at not deadnaming. You'd think."
They don't wait. Metal-upon-metal clacks and then they're on the rock, staring at the Vultures with a gleaming smile. Waving when Jordyn looks.
Jordyn quickly looks away.
"Maddie," she emphasises. "I can't believe you're considering this."
"I'd like to… hear The Vivisector out, at least." At Jordyn's dismay, Maddie gnaws her lip. "They're a Variable. Dangerous, but…"
Useful.
(And Maddie doesn't have to say the extra strings. Jordyn feels it. Feels the: They were never given a chance. Feels the: Neither was I.)
Frankly, Maddie's too emotional to think straight.
"Maddie…"
But Maddie looks at her. Her eyes shine: asking.
And Jordyn swallows her words.
(For her friend, if anything.)
(For her friend?)
"... I will consider giving The Vivisector a chance," Cynane says. "But only if they prove their worth."
Jordyn shuts her eyes.
"... Fine. But don't say I didn't warn you guys."
The Vivisector proves their worth. The Vivisector keeps their word.
They fix the old train. The engine is up and running in bare time. (Who knew all it took was Capitol futurism to kickstart it to life?)
Huh.
Maybe Jordyn can be wrong about people sometimes.
(She does not trust the thought with half a breath.)
"He's gone."
They've searched every cart, looked through the toilets and under the seats where a child could hide. Nothing. Not a wisp of Kiernan.
It is only until the train billows a screech, signifying its leave from District Two and Jordyn meets Maddie's panic-stricken eyes that she realises.
Kiernan Alcraiz is in his nowhere place.
"We'll find him together," Jordyn says, and squeezes Maddie's hand. Maddie doesn't squeeze back; but her lashes flutter closed.
"... If you don't mind," Maddie says. "... my sight's… it's not…"
"Maddie," Jordyn says, softer, "I'll bring you there."
Maddie doesn't squeeze back; but her mouth curls a thank you.
"We'll find him," Jordyn repeats, as if wishing the mantra will make it true.
She hopes.
(Maddie squeezes back, eventually, when they descend upon District Two's forests.)
(Maybe it is better, that she cannot see the gold.)
This is how the Vulture Revolution begins for Jordyn Moriau. She lives through a Metal and a Metal again; saves a child and reignites a belief.
The mantle of The Vulture falls heavy on her head; crashes into the dust for the daughter it has bitten. She is saved from its wrath. She will not be saved forever.
She follows her friend not-quite into the depths of the forests. This is her first time; she is no angel-headed sky, no explosion flushed in flesh. But she holds her friend's hand, as they seek the child of the sky's belonging, left to the ground.
This is how it begins.