Altostratus (short story)

 Altostratus

 

CW // war trauma, mass death implied, fall from a height, chronic pain

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The world around her is covered by a deep blue shadow, created by the heavy clouds that block the sunlight above. Down below, the distant hills of Jazera’s desert land roll under her, once filled with stunning red and orange banded rock formations, steep canyons and valleys carved by ancient rivers, and sparse small forests. All the vibrancy here was lost due to war. The infighting within relickind, the guardians of this world, destroyed everything it touched. The Relic Wars has taken so much, from the young and old, from kingdoms great and small. But the greatest loss was the sunlight. A distant star once driven by a being of fire, the sun now roams free since the Skyfall Event that remade this world thousands of years ago. That same being, along with many others like it, later became the progenitors of the relics who live today. One of which flies beside Flammin.

Nike is a living trident with red linen cloth wings so long and slender, it still surprised Flammin that they could support the weight of their owner’s lengthy leather-wrapped iron-wooden pole. Nike’s wings stretch wide as she flies and is attached to her chest with a decorative cloth knot. Just above her strong iron-wooden chest and supported by a jointed bronze neck is her headblade, cast in rusted bronze with the polished edges of her three prongs shining gold. Flammin remembers her first meeting with Nike when she was a mere seventy-year-old living paintbrush a few years ago. Oh, how the relic queen towered over her back then. With her mentor’s age around a thousand years old, Queen Nike is one of the last surviving members of the First Relics.

“Keep your wings steady. Light strokes, remember, keep them small and don’t push it,” Nike says in her smooth voice, her bronze headblade facing Flammin, “That new tail blade of yours is helping with your balance.”

Following Nike’s direction, Flammin steadies her broad ichor wings with a light beat. With the arms of her webbed wings covered in armored bronze plating, enchanted for greater strength, Flammin’s wings are broader than Nike’s and are made for greater endurance and powerful flight. Like Nike, she is a flying polearm, but her anatomy is far more complex. Instead of a long rigid pole, Flammin’s entire armored bronze core takes the shape of a long-extinct wyvern, a beast that existed before the Skyfall Event. Every inch of Flammin’s core is covered by armor, save for her reddish-black joints, ichor wings, and tail blade. Her heavy bronze head sports a single sharp horn and a crest of bristles just behind it, reddish-black like her unarmored parts. From the upper portion of her head to her back, her crest flows down their plated neck and into the internal fuel chambers inside her chest. Within that cavernous space is a rumbling ichor engine that Nike’s loyal toolsmiths built for Flammin, which powers her every movement. Should she breathe fire, the engine would ignite and light the bristles of her crest, turning it into a great flame. The bronze armor that covered her body was heavily enchanted by relic magic to withstand the heat should she do this, along with the rigors of combat with relickind.
 

Flammin looks back at Nike, gently lifting the leading fingers of her wings for a little stabilization. Nike smiles and nods with approval. “Good, good! You’re really flying now!”

Excitedly flapping her slender wings, Nike quickly glides over Flammin to the other side of the wartorch’s wide frame. Flammin turns her head to follow the trident, mildly jealous of Nike’s greater agility in flight. When Flammin started her flying lessons a month ago, Nike flew circles around her. Those lessons were rough initially because Flammin still needed time to adapt to her new size, but Nike encouraged her to keep going.

“Ah, at this point,” Nike says as she settles in her new position, “You’ll be a skilled flier in no time.”
“And to think for the past three years, I was stuck in those damned scaffolds,” Flammin says through her closed heavy jaw, shuddering a little at the memory. She had to endure a decades-long refitting process to become the form she is now.

Flammin remembers the first year of her refitting. It had begun with her undergoing ichor training and consuming excessive amounts of material to strengthen her core in preparation for her role in the war. When her core size reached a certain point, the toolsmiths started their reconstruction. The pain of Flammin’s core drilled, welded, and cut, and her ichor structure stretched by the toolsmiths bothered her so much that she drank tankers full of quicksilver to soothe her deepest aches. And the scaffolds. Flammin’s core itched as the damned scaffolds kept her off the ground while the toolsmiths installed new gears in her legs. This became easier to live with as the reconstruction neared its completion, especially with a small refillable quicksilver pump installed inside her. Flammin breathes some steam, glad that it’s over, even with the occasional dull aches still lingering within her core’s new structure.

Nike looks at Flammin with concern. “The quicksilver help, though. I knew it was rough on you.”

“Ah rusting skies, you have no idea, Nike, how thankful I am to be free of—,” Flammin makes a low cuffing noise through the steel-reinforced chambers of her neck, “all of that.”

“Glad to hear!” Nike chuckles as the golden aura around her headblade glows, “Oh, I remember the day when you first lit your bristles. Oh, how you looked so—”

“Frightening?” Flammin said. She attempts to make a smirk at Nike by shifting her lower jaw to the side and up. With no ichoridic facial features like what she had before the refitting, Flammin had to make do with the limited motions of her jaw. Despite this, Nike looks at her, and the ichor expression on her face looks astonished by her words.

“I said that? Oh—,” Nike says, her eyes wide as her wings made two quick uneven flaps, “I—well I didn’t mean—”

Flammin gently shakes her mighty head and her crest of reddish-black bristles sways with it. “Well, what did you mean?”

“I-I meant you looked—,” Nike pauses, then flaps her wings once to regain air, “You were amazing.”
Flammin shifts her jaw again to smile at Nike, “Oh, you looked more shocked than amazed back then.”
“Your flames were more intense than I expected. But, yes. You looked amazing.”

“Hmfth,” Flammin’s expression turns prideful as she makes another strong flap of her ichor and metal wings, “I like frightening. Fitting as the scourge of Apollyon and his relics.”

Nike laughs heartily. “Okay, I’ll admit you did scare me!”

“Ah!”

“But—,” Nike continues with a sigh, “But it was…more of the thought from where you started. You were a small object —a paintbrush— before all this, yes?”

Flammin turns her gaze back to the gray cloudy view before her. After a moment of silence, she sighs and adjusts her wings again, the airflow around her becoming a little more turbulent than usual.

“I’m eighty, by now I should be in an abbey in my home kingdom, spending my later years teaching curios. I would have taught them how to paint—,” Flammin’s deep voice hitches into a low growl for a moment as an old painful memory drags itself out from the depths of her past. For a moment she breathes, allowing her metal jaw to open as hot steaming smoke flowed out from her cavernous metallic maw. Then with her jaw’s hinges groaning, she closes it, recollects herself, and speaks in a low dry monotone, “My future has gone to ashes. I just wanted to express that.”

“And we gave that anger form,” Nike said proudly, “Look at you! By this year’s end, you will be ready to fight!”

“Yes. I’ll be ready.” Flammin sighs, taking in the scope of her transformation into what she is now. So much change to become a monolithic flying torch to challenge the greatest of the relickind. A burning champion of all objectkind.

Falling silent, Flammin focuses on her flight. Like the long crest of bristles flowing in the wind upon her head, Flammin’s thoughts wander into a smoldering memory. She remembers her old home in northern Jazera —considering who she was back then— they once lived in many years ago. It was the first of its kind, a small kingdom with relics and objects living together. Even during the early days of the Relic War, the kingdom kept its peace before any conflict reached its lands. But one day, the skies rained fire. Flammin was a master muralist when it happened and was working on a commission for the royals, the names of whom the former artist had long forgotten. Flammin remembers looking out through the palace’s stained-glass windows, seeing the flicker of distant explosions hitting the buildings around its courtyard. The choking fear swelled up inside them as the palace, a century-old building carved from marble and stone, shook violently before it collapsed. Flammin and a few other living objects were lucky that the exit was nearby and together the panicked group ran out into the burning chaos. Flammin was lucky for a wooden paintbrush back then. While they barely escaped with permanent holes in their limbs, Flammin avoided the worst of the attack. The firestorm that ruined their kingdom burned through most of the fragilekind like themself, leaving behind an uncountable number of lost kernels to the mercy of the Great Spear Apollyon and his army.

Soon after, the fallen kingdom’s survivors hid as the skies grew dark with smog from the war’s destruction worldwide. But after all was lost, they were found by Queen Nike and her army. With the queen’s protection, Flammin and their people found a safe haven in the caverns under the vast deserts of Jazera, joining many others who also lost their homes. Even now, Flammin’s core aches deeply, her mind hunted by the knowledge that the lost kernels of the deceased will be revived as prisoners in a burning world under Apollyon’s rule.

Sudden turbulence disrupts Flammin’s thoughts, completely killing her focus. She gasps and attempts to correct herself, but she twists a wing awkwardly and spins out of control. As gravity pulls at her, Flammin panics and flaps her wings, twisting down at a sharp angle. Feeling the pain from her insides as the spinning grinding gears within her core struggle to keep up, Flammin screams as the sky and the ground become one ever-spinning black-and-gray gradient.

“Nike!” Flammin yelled.

"Flammin! I got you!" Nike calls to her, diving after Flammin like a bolt.

A rush of gold, red, and silver flies by Flammin, and then light surrounds her as her descent slows to a halt. She sees Nike again, flying beside her as she uses the aura from her headblade to stop Flammin’s descent. The queen looks deeply concerned; the whites of her ichoridic eyes are visible and her pupils shrank to dots with a hair-thin ring of black around them. After a brief moment looking over Flammin, she blinks, and her pupils return to a solid black ovoid disk.

Nike looks over Flammin’s core, occasionally hovering over her magical aura bubble surrounding the massive wartorch. “Are you okay, Flammin?” Her voice unsteady.

Moving carefully within the warm magic of Nike’s aura, Flammin looks back up to the trident and she stifles another gasp. Oh, how radiant the relic queen is. Lit by the light of her aura, Nike’s headblade shines, highlighting the upper part of her slim core against the gloomy environment surrounding them. It gives her a halo, revealing the delicate etching surrounding her ichor face on her headblade. From where Flammin lay in Nike’s aura, she can see the embroidery woven within Nike’s wings, the golden threading capturing the light from her aura and highlighting the intricate details within its design.

Flammin’s engine shudders as the awe she felt ten years ago flooded back to her. They were small then, though tall among their fellow objectkind when Nike first welcomed Flammin’s people to the safe haven hidden deep in the Jazeran’s canyons. Flammin remembers looking up and up at her, trying to see the face of their vastly tall savior. And when the trident spoke, her voice sounded so smooth, velvety, and strangely warm. There’s an alluring majesty to Queen Nike, something Flammin never felt before. Not even with other relics Flammin had met in the past as a muralist. Not even the royal relics from their lost kingdom. Something felt so rare about her, something so very distant.

Ah, here at this moment with Nike, now equal in size and power after years of refitting to become a powerful weapon, Flammin truly sees her.

“I-I’m fine. Bad turbulence, I think,” Flammin finally says, ignoring the dulling ache of her joints as her quicksilver pump began its work. Feeling that she looked at Nike long enough, she grows shy and turns her head to look over a partially extended wing. “I don’t think I have mastered soaring yet.”

Nike hovers in silence studying Flammin’s face, then nods in response. Quickly flapping her wings out of a hover, she lifts herself and Flammin back into their place in the sky. She rights Flammin in the correct flight position with a gentle twist of her aura.

“Well, that’s okay! You can’t learn without a few hiccups here and there. You’ll be fine,” Nike assured her with a smile, despite the subtle strain Flammin caught in her voice. “I’m about to release you. Be ready.”

Flammin opens her great wings and tilts them back slightly, expecting a sudden influx of air to overtake her. But as Nike’s aura ebbs away and the gray sky becomes open to her once again, Flammin holds herself steady. She hears Nike giggling.

“What?” Flammin asks, looking at Nike as she adjusts her wings.

“It’s the way you looked at me!” Nike laughed joyfully. Flammin swore she saw a glowing blush on Nike’s face.

“Oh-!” Embarrassed, Flammin shies away, lagging behind Nike.

“Flammin, don’t be shy!” Nike slows her laughter, then stops and gently smiles back at her. “Want to see what’s above the clouds?”

Flapping her wings once to push herself forward, Flammin looks towards Nike, “Will the sun be there? What about Apollyon’s relics?”

“Marathon is on our side. They still guard the sun.” Nike says as she looks upward, mentioning an allied relic that Flammin does not know. “And Apollyon’s relics are foolish to attack me by themselves. You are safe by my side.”

With a headstart, Nike takes off swiftly before Flammin can catch up. With a couple of strong beats of her great wings, Flammin flies after Nike. With their powerful wings carrying them through the sky, Flammin and Nike slipped through the dark clouds, using the faint light of the sun beyond to guide them through. They weave together in and out of the cloudscape, trading twists and turns, spins, and loops, all shooting upward in a dance in the ocean of clouds around them. Small droplets of water pelt Flammin’s armor as she flies higher, some of which seep into the exposed ichor of her wings and joints, further soothing the ache from her flying error. Flammin then hears Nike laughing joyfully, and Flammin opens her great jaw and joins her mentor with her deep laughter. After a short time, together both living weapons broke through the cloud top and beheld a wonderful sight before their eyes.
 

There before them is the sun. It shines brightly in an endless blue sky, bathing the cloudscape in pearlescent light below in its golden rays. Occasional breaks in the cloud formation show the shadowed lands below. The two living weapons glide side by side as the winds in this space gently push them forward, their wings outstretched, allowing the air to carry them. Flammin looks at Nike and sees the queen’s headblade shine more brightly under the sun's rays. She felt a fluttering within her heavily plated chest at the sight of the queen. She is unsure if it is the ichor engine inside her adjusting to her orientation in flight or something else. Whatever it is, that elevating feeling is a deep yet distant yearning. If only there were a word for it.
Flammin sighs. “Nikey?”

The long-lived trident looked at her, “Hm?”

“You are beautiful.”

The trident smiled at her. “You, too.”