Whispers

Pain filled Jere’s heart. His failure to protect Ylfa had cost her dearly. He grit his teeth as he climbed, capacitors humming while they recharged from his last jump. If only his designers had made the process faster. Three seconds. Three seconds where he couldn’t punch through the wall of wyverns - three seconds that had resulted in his wife’s injury.

Higher and higher he climbed, drawing the wyverns after him. They took the bait. A grin curled across his lips - feral, unhinged. They were the reason Ylfa had been hurt. And they were going to pay.

He had two reasons for pulling them into the upper airspace: at this altitude, his ion engines ran at peak efficiency… and he wanted his retaliation to be so unmistakably brutal that everyone below would understand. No one, not for the rest of their lives or the lifetimes that followed, would dare lay a hand on the Angel of Death’s family again.

He looped, blue light flaring around him as he locked onto his target. His mind raced, processors burning ahead of his thoughts. His emotions bled into his systems, narrowing the world into a tunnel containing only himself and the display he was about to unleash.

His capacitors dumped their charge. His body snapped forward, accelerating to just below light-speed in a fraction of a second. The wyvern and its rider never even registered their deaths; they simply ceased, shredded into red mist by the passing of the kinetic weapon that had once been a man.

Jere reappeared a heartbeat later, already tracking the next cluster as his capacitors surged back toward readiness, his reactor pouring out enough power to level a city. He didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t think of anything except the violence he was about to carve across the sky.

And the sky would remember it. It would be torn open, scarred and scorched by a wrath so absolute that, for generations, people would whisper the tale of the fools who dared harm the wife of the Angel of Death.

Jaka orbited the battlefield, his mind throbbing. He couldn’t find Miro. He couldn’t find anyone he could call a superior. His old superior was dead. His silver wings flashed in the sunlight as he spiraled, frantic. He wished Miro hadn’t dulled his processors. He could feel them trying to tell him what to do, algorithms pushing suggestions toward the surface - but his organic mind, now fully dominant, drowned them out. He could ignore the processors entirely if he wished.

And without them, he was lost. Without purpose. Destined to orbit endlessly until something, anything, gave him direction.

A sudden flicker caught his eye - a black shape spearing upward, wyverns in pursuit. His heart jolted.

J‑1.

A superior. Someone he could follow.

But then memory flared: the last time they’d met, he’d tried to kill him. Something twisted painfully inside him. He wrenched his gaze away. No. That route was gone.

Purpose. He needed purpose.

What could he do? He thought hard, pushing through the haze. His old superior - the King - might be dead, but the advisor still lived. Maybe if Jaka proved he hadn’t deserted, hadn’t turned traitor, he’d be accepted again. Taken back. Given direction.

Yes. That was it. That was the path.

But how?

He looked toward J‑1 again, just in time to see a wyvern vanish into red mist. If J‑1 was here, then the Formy couldn’t be far. And if the Formy was close… then the child would be, too.

Certainty rippled through him like a command signal. Yes. He would take the child again - just like the kingdom had wanted him to.

His head turned, scanning. He found her easily: a tiny shape clinging to her mother on the far side of the lake.

He banked sharply and set his course, excitement flaring bright in his mind. The presence of the Formy - Ylfa - didn’t deter him. She was an afterthought. Irrelevant.

All that mattered was what would happen once he had the child.

He accelerated, impulses burning through him like wildfire.

Ylfa looked up from her attempt at bandaging, woozy, as Jaka flared his wings and landed a short distance away. Her head swam as she struggled to stand, small droplets of blood still dripping from her arm. Eny held her hand, cowering behind her, but Ylfa barely noticed. Her focus was entirely on the approaching winged figure.

“J… Jere?”

Then she saw the silver wings. Her chest tightened, clarity snapping into her mind as danger screamed in her head. She stepped back, instinctively.

Jaka advanced, eyes fixed on Eny. A low growl rose in Ylfa’s throat. He paused, almost confused, then spoke with chilling calm.

“I just need to borrow the child.”

Ylfa snarled.

“You can’t have her, kidnapper!”

Step by step, he closed the distance.

“I need her. You’re in the way.”

Her eyes never left him, retreating slowly as he advanced.

“Are you crazy? Why would I let you?”

His wings glinted in the sunlight.

“Because I’m just borrowing her.”

“The hell do you mean, ‘just borrowing’? You’ll put her in that machine again!”

He was within striking range now, but she couldn’t fire - Eny was clutching her hand.

“This is my purpose. I thought you’d be more sympathetic, since you’re in a relationship with J‑1.”

She gritted her teeth, growling.

“I would never let filth like you lay hands on my daughter.”

He shrugged.

“I don’t need your permission.”

Feral desperation burned in her veins as she snarled again. He took another step, then twisted. Ylfa couldn’t react. His wing, razor-sharp and built to cut through composite armor, sliced through the air, grazing her throat.

She barely felt it as she collapsed, landing hard on her back. Blood rushed from her brain, and a haze overtook her senses. Colours bled together, sounds warped. She heard Eny screaming. She felt the blast of air as Jaka took flight. She sensed the distant battle raging, glimpsed flashes high above as Jere tore through the last wyverns. She smelled the acrid smoke of the burning house, felt the breeze on her skin, the rustle of her ears and tail. The faint lap of the lake reached her ears.

Then everything began to fade. The sounds dimmed, the colours dulled. Grey swallowed the world.

She saw one more flash of blue as Jere destroyed another target-

-and then her eyes closed.