In Section 54, the Wall of Fire - from Madigan

The sun’s first rays shone through the stone tower’s open window. Madigan’s amber eyes fluttered open, as a throbbing pain in his head followed. An empty wine bottle hung loosely from his hand, gulped down in less than an hour the night before. With a grumble, he sat up, stomped his talons on the creaky floorboards, and snapped his wings into place. If it were up to him, he would’ve slept all day – but the Nexus didn’t wait for past dawn, so neither could he.

He grabbed his shirt off the nightstand, the same he had worn for the past week, and wrapped it over himself. The wings slipped through the holes cut in the back.

“Where did I put that thing?” Madigan muttered to himself.

His eyes darted across the room, but no sight of it. He rummaged through the drawers, going through useless junk from the previous Flier, until his fingers touched a sealed envelope. He wanted to ignore it, go on with his day, but on the paper was something that drew him like a moth to a flame and left him utterly powerless – the name “Jaswyn.”

Madigan huffed, then opened the envelope with a nail. In the fancy cursive he was oh-so-familiar with, the letter read:

“To my Madi,

Imagine my surprise when I saw that your troop had returned to Arenard, only not to see you amongst them. I feared the worst, thinking an anomaly had killed you – because surely, you would’ve told me if you had planned to stay behind.

Yet it was your captain who alerted me of your decision, instead of yourself.

Madi, how long will this go on? Am I now so much of a burden that you can’t even tell me these things anymore? I mourn him just as much as you do, but I know that Luka wouldn’t want—”

The headache worsened. He crumbled up the letter and tossed it into a corner. His troop’s mission had concluded at the end of winter, but there he was, surrounded by the summer with the next line of Fliers.

There was nothing left for him at home, no matter how many times Jaswyn tried to convince him otherwise.

He moved onto the next drawer and kept looking. After another second or two, there it was – a thick blue journal with a yellow spine titled, “Observations of Sections 50-54.” Madigan flipped to where the bookmark stuck out, which displayed a drawn map of the edges of Section 53’s eastern lands. “Completed,” he wrote on the bottom. Nothing but forest for miles, uninhabited save the structures built for Fliers. And of course, it wouldn’t be a far-out territory without the appearance of anomalies. Nevertheless, navigation was a picnic compared to the thickets of the other 50s he had been.

Once he stuffed the journal into a bag and attached it to his hip, he was alerted by a horn blown outside. “Troop, head out!” a man shouted. Instantly, Madigan’s feet were on the windowsill. Lines deep within his wings emitted a faint light, only visible to himself, and soon they spread out like an eagle’s. One leap, then he was amongst the other fliers who soared the sky. His hangover seemed to disappear as the early morning atmosphere eased him in an embrace. The wind swiftly blew against his long red locks, and within mere moments, the trees below became smaller and dispersed from each other – until eventually, they were nonexistent.

Then lo and behold, there it was – the beginnings of Section 54. A thin layer of grass covered the ground, with stubs of more advanced flora sprouting from the dirt. As far as Madigan could tell, there were no signs of animal life – though such a sighting would be an extreme rarity, as the land was only five years old.

Except rather than animals, there was indeed a type of creature present in the newly created Section 54. They were beings whose bodies resembled a shadow. Their backs were hunched, with jagged spikes that protruded from their spines. They had claws made to destroy, and sharp teeth to mutilate flesh.

Anomalies.

“Oi, Madigan! Let’s not get a repeat of last time, shall we?” A fellow Flier said.

“Don’t try and boss me around, Nix. You’re the same rank as me, know your place,” Madigan spat.

He had already honed in on an anomaly right beneath him. Talons readied, the light in his wings returned, he swooped down at the gangly beast, and in a matter of seconds its head was slashed clean off. With a low hiss, its body dissipated and drifted off like smoke, without even blood or bones as a trace.

“Good job, you didn’t almost kill yourself!” Nix said.

“Shut up, you’re overreacting,” Madigan said as he went back up to the sky.

“Overreacting? You got stabbed in the chest by one of those things! It’s a darn miracle a High Mender spared your life.”

Madigan’s face turned into a scowl at the mention of a Mender. He kicked a tiny rock and said, “I’d rather him let me die.”

“What is it with you and the Menders? I don’t get why you hate them so much, they don’t start trouble with anybody.”

“None of your business,” Madigan muttered. “Keep looking ahead.”

Nix shook his head, yet obliged. “Alright, but honestly, whatever grudge you have – you need to let it go. The tribes need each other, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t got a problem with the others, just Menders,” then in his thoughts he said, “And maybe those arrogant Elders, too.”

“Yeah, well, us and the Nexus would be dead if everyone thought like you, so get a grip!” Nix snapped.

Madigan, not in the mood to go back-and-forth, held up his palms in feigned submission.

But he knew that Nix was right.

As he quickened his flight, the lines flickered – without cooperation between the Five Tribes, those “lines,” the threads of the Nexus, would cease to exist. They were the very thing that held them all together. The Menders repaired the Nexus, and Madigan’s tribe, the Fliers, explored the lands it generated after an expansion every one hundred years. The Reapers’ tribe handled death, the Weavers were overseers, and the Guardians protected.

All were connected through the threads, and in unison, the tribes kept the Nexus – their world – alive.

“Eesh – there sure are a lot of them out here,” Nix said. He pointed to the large gathering of anomalies in the clearing. Their crimson eyes, corrupted with bloodlust, stared at the Fliers hungrily like predators about to pounce.

“Annoying bastards… But it’s no matter, we can still take them.”

“Uh, I don’t know about that. We may need to tell the Guardians about this.”

Madigan scoffed. “Since when are you a wuss, Nix?”

“You mean to tell me you’ve seen this many before?”

He was prepared to protest, but when his glare switched from Nix and back to the earth, he couldn’t deny the sight was unfathomable. Hordes of the things were swarming, reaching tens of hundreds, and they only increased the more the Fliers progressed into Section 54. Significantly outnumbered, not a single Flier dared to strike. Not even Madigan.

“Exactly,” Nix said as he witnessed Madigan’s bewilderment. “And look at this terrain upcoming too… Strange, right?”

Instead of wide plains with budding life, the environment looked distorted, as if a powerful quake had ravaged the area. Mounds of dirt and stone jutted upward, cracks emerged from deep depressions that opened into treacherous ravines. Even the sky seemed off, for Madigan could feel the air itself stiffen as his wings suddenly struggled against the current.

“You’d think a Weaver would’a warned us about this,” Madigan said.

“Don’t blame them. Even most High Weavers would have trouble sensing something this far out.”

The horn blew again in the distance, telling the troop to fly back to the base. “A right call,” Madigan thought. Finding a spot to land would be a needle in a haystack.

He and Nix changed direction, away from the worrying scene and towards Section 53, a sanctuary in comparison. Someone would have to fly all the way to the main regions that made up Section 1 to notify the Elders. A five-day journey if one weren't to stop, even for the fastest Flier. Madigan almost felt bad.

The wind brushed by, a cold touch on Madigan’s skin. But something was different about the air. Alarming, even. The sun had reached the horizon, yet a gray haze covered its view. A burning scent whisked past their noses, and embers it carried alongside.

“Hey, watch it!” Madigan shouted. A Flier had barged straight by – but she wasn’t alone. Not long after another Flier bolted, then a third, fourth, sixth, tenth. Soon enough, all of the frontline was seen in a frenzy.

“Fall back, fall back!” Their leader cried.

All it took was a simple glance, then Madigan and Nix jolted forward.

From the north, a great, moving wall of fire engulfed the landscape in its wake. It would be lit aflame, and in less than a second, it vanished into nothing. A hurricane of sparks rushed through the sky and sent many a Flier off course, plummeting them to their quick yet brutal deaths.

For only a brief moment, an image of Jaswyn entered Madigan’s mind. In contrast to the sweltering heat, her smile was pleasantly warm, as she stood in the threshold to their quaint cottage in Arenard. Arms open, she waited to welcome him home.

“Fly, Madigan! Come on!” Nix’s panicked voice cut through the vision. Gone as soon as she came, Jaswyn faded back into the depths of his mind. The chaos met him again, and once Madigan readjusted to his bearings, he was right beside Nix in a dash.

Every one hundred years, the Nexus expanded.

But on that fateful day, it began to recede.