Silence

Wendy stumbled over herself, nearly tripping to the ground as they ran out of the vault. The vault was connected to a command center, which, fortunately for them, was empty on this occasion. Noir noted that oddity: Matthias, who was hellbent on eliminating them just moments ago, seemed to be letting them go. He couldn't shake the feeling that it was for a very specific reason. Under other circumstances, he perhaps would have just turned around and asked him directly—but he couldn't be sure they would leave with their lives in that case. Wendy shouted to Noir in a very panicked and hurried voice:

"What do we do?! Where do we go?!"

"Let me think, damn it! That sign over there!" He pointed and squinted to read it. "They have a courtyard that way, maybe we can get outside from there!"

They both made haste in that direction. Noir said it reactively—they were both under the supposition that if they could get outside this sky-city, it would be neatly conjoined with another one. Or, if they were forced to, they could find a way down from this one and back to the ground. Wendy vocalized this idea as they were running:

"Y'know, Noir, consider yourself lucky you're with a lady who knows how to use a parachute."

"You don't have one and this isn't a falling building! We're not going down that route!"

"We might not have a choice! Those sirens are loud as hell—I wouldn't be surprised if we're surrounded when we get outside. We may have to jump!"

"No, something's weird. Why'd Matthias let us go so easily?"

"Because he was scared for his life after we killed Alphaeus? Obviously?"

"What color was his pathos?"

"It was really hard to get a read, it was like a teal-ish specimen from what I saw. Typically that means bratty and not that impressive."

"Why did Alphaeus say something about it—like it was one-in-a-million?"

"Well, it may have been. Pathoses, again, are meshes of quantity and quality of one's suffering. It could all just be a front."

"Or…he's powerful enough to kill us but letting us go for a reason."

"Like what? You're shootin' from the hip with that one."

"I…don't know. I just trust my instinct."

They made it to the courtyard and, for the first time, could see the world that was built beyond the clouds in full array. It was enough to move Wendy to tears immediately. It made Noir wonder why ivory was the popular material amongst sky-city architects (and how they could have that much!) The colors contrasting the striking white of several ivory pillars, be they from gardens or from lights refracting—evoked in Noir a sublime vertigo that shook around the contents of his heart. They thought every speck was gorgeous—even multifold more gorgeous than they had found each other. Noir, in spite of the sight of front of him, felt it necessary to comfort Wendy:

"Hey…it's okay. We've already made it this far—that's so much further than I or you thought we'd get, right?"

"I…" she said through tears, "I…know. This place…it just reminded me of my performances with the violin. Or, one performance in particular…I'm just—I'm dumbfounded that I was right. That's what's most shocking…I was right. The answer is here. It's here somewhere."

Noir, unsure of how to respond or comfort her further, just made an attempt to clarify. "You're talking about The Ultimate Weapon?"

Wendy silently nodded and rose to her feet.

"How do you know your violin wasn't the ultimate weapon?" Noir asked, almost jokingly.

"Pft…I couldn't even make my fiance care about me with that thing. Much less make other people happy."

"Aw—don't say it like that. Look, you'll have to play for me sometime. If we can find a lyre or violin or ukulele here, 'mkay?"

Wendy nodded again.

"Speaking of which…you mentioned you don't know what The Ultimate Weapon is…do you know anything at all about it? What it does, what it could be, or where it could be?"

"No…nothing. I assumed its power would be self-evident and we would find it by default. But I believed the same thing about finding someone like you to do the ritual with me…"

Noir wanted to say something bitter—chastizing her for poor planning or information gathering—but he could not. He was now, unequivocally, as invested in this as she was. He was not able to shame her for taking a chance she may have never had again.

"Okay…but what if it's being held behind closed doors? Like a secure facility or somewhere only select people can work with it?"

"Whuh, like it's a nuke? We have those in the home-world. I don't think you can make something more troublesome and keep it wholly contained with no traces."

Noir was about to laugh, but realized she was onto something. He played around with the idea that "weapon" didn't have to be understood so literally. He was adept, through his father's teachings, at tracing the flow of history. He understood that words were weapons, ideas were weapons, concepts were weapons—but always weapons for something.

"Well…let's think. Were you able to do magic in our world?"

"Yes, Noir, that's how I found your pathos. I couldn't crack more spells than that, probably because I lived alone most of the time."

"Okay, so magic isn't the weapon. Obviously you can see pathoses back there too. We could've asked the enigma if it knew anything."

"Doubt it. The enigmas apparently are just monsters manifested of our self-destroying thoughts. Why would it know anything?"

"Do you think people around here will know anything about it?"

"Probably not. The alchemists I read talked about it like it served a purpose in our world. Unless some people are on the same quest we are."

"Okay…wait, that tells us a lot, though!"

"Hmm? Why's that?"

"Well, think about it. If it could only be found here but serves a purpose in the other world, that means our world lacks it."

"Yeah, good one Sherlock. Good work keeping up."

"Well…yeah. But it reframes how we should think. What's something fundamental about this world that we don't see in ours?"

At this point, Wendy was sitting on the steps to the courtyard and was scarcely engaged in this conversation. "Beats me," she muttered.

"Hear me out. Couldn't the fact that we can't lie itself—be the ultimate weapon? It ensures that the people who are in the right win out no matter what in the end."

"Pfft. We have the power to make people not lie already in our world. Torture works wonders nowadays, you should try it."

Noir quietly swallowed.

"I'm joking, relax. In any case, does that 'weapon' really accomplish anything? We didn't do anything wrong and we almost got killed just for walking into a building. We had to mislead and obfuscate several times there just to stay alive."

"Well, yeah…but…"

"I like the way you're thinking though. Maybe if we can figure out how to lie, that'll give us access to the ultimate weapon."

Despite how convincingly Wendy shut him down, Noir couldn't shake himself from this line of thinking. But now he was confusing himself more from thinking about it, so he had to let it out of his mind.

"By the way," Wendy said, "I've still gotta get you that pathos spell. It just takes a second and we can get out of here."

Wendy was carrying the book that brought them there in her pants all along. She took it out, traced some symbol in the air and muttered another undecipherable phrase.

"Did it work? You should be able to see my pathos next to my ear."

"Yeah…I see it." Noir finally gained some clarity of what she meant when she said it was difficult to read pathos. The cloud hovering above her left ear was a cluttered matter of several different types of grays and blacks, with individual anatomies that could seemingly be arranged millions of different ways.

"Oh—and if you want to see your own, you can look into your left palm."

He looked into his left palm and, of course, it was there. He wondered how she could have spotted that at the bar as astutely as she did. "Wendy," he thought, "has to be a meticulous freak."

"So, what do you think?" she asked cheerfully.

"You have to be a freak to read these things so precisely."

"Thanks, love. I take pride in what I do."

"Great…"

Wendy giggled happily.

"We should be able," Noir continued, "to jump that fence. If these guys cared so much about invasion, they could stand to make their wall a bit taller."

"They also could stand to sharpen their locks a bit…"

"Yeah, right. A wooden bolt on a vault door that we could chisel with a card. I guess their lock technology is a few hundred years behind."

"That just means people up here trust each other, right?"

"If that's the case," Noir reasoned, "We shouldn't be mercilessly killed if we explore the streets conjoining the cities."

"All I'm hearing is…the worst of it's behind us!"

They carefully climbed over the fence with smiles on their faces. Yet, something deep in them both told a different story:

"The best of it is behind them."