Kaia the Argent Wing

It took us around the same amount of time to get back from the quarry to Edgewood, but that was because we had to stop singing for a day due to the cold air of the eternal winter—it was like razor blades in our windpipes.

Getting back under the cloud cover might’ve saved our eyes from the sun, but it was far from fun. The cold was… hideously biting, and our metabolisms had to rush to regain the burn rate that just a few days ago they’d started to cycle down. Strangely, it almost felt worse than it had been before... and I couldn't tell if it really was worse, or if we'd just lost our acclimatisation.

The moment we stepped through the gates of home, we dumped our samples at the workshop, explained what we’d learned to April, then Chloe and I rushed up to her little study. She had her bed and belongings in there now, along with the currently five different alien books. Only the one of them mentioned harmonic chanting, but it was enough so far. Now, we were going to interrogate it.

“Okay,” Chloe said, sitting down heavily in a chair beside me. She thumped the book down on the desk and opened it. “Goddess, it’d be so much easier if they’d thought of indexes and tables of contents. So far, we have a chant that buffs precision for tradesmen, a chant that significantly decreases fatigue build up—that’s the one we used—a chant for synchronicity of movements so workers can more efficiently pass materials around or whatever, a chant for resting that speeds up recovery, and finally a chant to help with ideation. That last one is funny because they have a little diagram of people sitting around staring thoughtfully into the distance while they think and hum together.”

I whipped my head around to stare at her full on. “They have diagrams? With pictures?”

“Yeah, it shows a bunch of dudes in weird clothes—” she said, but I cut her off.

“Show me.”

She shrugged, then flipped the book open and leafed through until she found the page. Sure enough, there in the middle of the second page was an illustration of a group of normal-ass looking dudes doing what she’d described.

I sat back in the chair and shook my head in wonder. “Chloe… they’re human, or near enough to it that we can’t tell the difference from an illustration.”

“We looked at these before… When you were Silver, helping me translate?” she pointed out, like I’d just gone off the deep end.

I felt my face heat, and I shuffled uncomfortably. “Really? I… huh. I guess I was concentrating on the words and it didn’t occur to me at the time that it’d be weird for aliens to have little illustrations of humans.”

She laughed softly and patted my shoulder. “Fair. Anyway, I wanted to try and translate more of the book, because I think I’ve figured out… okay look.”

Flicking to a different page, she put her finger down on a strange geometric diagram that looked like a snowflake. “This is a magical thought construct that these people use to channel the energy of their chanting into a purpose. It actually syphons small wisps of storm energy from the participants, but also it doesn’t? The theory is very far beyond me, but the energy for it both comes from the level of the participant, and it doesn’t. No actual change happens to the amount of storm-ness in their level container.”

“Okay…” I mumbled, bemused but following along.

“Now, the conductor is the only one who has to manifest the chant-structure, which was my role when we were marching. This central bevelled triangle in the middle, that’s what is called the Affa, which you described to me as being translated literally as base-centre-entrance. It’s the part of the construct that can collect the mana given by the others in the chant. Next, there’s the Is-Ovan, the corridors or channels through which the mana is transported within the structure. There’s a few more here, here, and here.” she explained, pointing to various little stem-like parts in the snowflake.

“Okay… I’m guessing the little sections between the Is-Ovan are the actual functional parts?” I asked, tapping the much more complex substructures at various junctions inside the snowflake.

“Yeah, now this is the one that reduces fatigue build-up, so the first Elici—function-structure—strips all other intent-mana off to get just the mana intended for the job,” she said, then shook her head, “No wait. I forgot to mention, the mana gathered from the other chanters isn’t raw, it’s laced with intent. I don’t have a whole lot of context for how that works because this is a practical application book, not a theory book. Either way, the first Elici refines the mana and the more pure intent mana that matches what is needed, the more powerful the ritual will be. Hence, why the chant needs to make sense for what you’re doing, to shape the intent of the chanters into giving enough of the energy to make the ritual function.”

My head was beginning to swim dangerously, but I was managing to follow… somehow.

“It gets sent down the next Is-Ovan,” she continued, tapping the next corridor. “Then we’re at the second Elici—”

And that was where she lost me. I think it was the random language words she was using, but I just couldn’t concentrate properly. I was too tired, this was all too complicated, and she was far too pretty.

She groaned good-naturedly when she saw my eyes glaze over. “Okay. Well, basically these structures are why the rituals are inherently simple and broad. The conductor has to hold that shape in their mind and push their mana into it until it becomes a real thing, then they have to hold that image in their head the whole time. It’s pretty hard. These people, whoever they are, had a whole profession dedicated to conductors.”

“So… wait, why were we excited about all—” I said, then my brain finally started working again. “Oh! A wind chant! If we can find a wind… function structure thingy, we can gather a bunch of people to chant and hopefully summon a wind that will overpower the storm bird!”

“Yeah!” she said, sharing my excitement and then some. “So, let’s get reading! There’s still ten more chants in the book, so hopefully one of them has what we need.”

We were in the room researching for only an hour before nightfall, which prompted us to light candles. If I had to guess, those candles gave us away, because just five minutes afterwards, the Captain knocked on the open door.

“There you are,” he said, expression weighted with tired responsibility.

“Hey!” Chloe said, then gasped, “Fuck! I said I'd give you a report when we got back.”

His chuckle was exasperated but kind. “You did indeed. What was so urgent that you forgot to see me?”

She glanced in my direction for a second, then smiled conspiratorially. “We tested the chants. They worked very well, but we also had an idea. We think we might have a way to make the fire plan work.”

“Burning the bird out?” he asked, suddenly all ears. “How?”

“A wind calling chant,” she said, but held up a hand to stall him. “We need to do some research, though, and if you could get more of the alien books that would be very helpful.”

“Of course!” he nodded, tired but excited. “I’ll send a few more parties into the library tomorrow. We’ve discovered that the library is big enough for several parties, even if they’ve got to make sure they don’t make too much noise. Three groups of five—one for each ward. Each group must be able to take the boss on their own, but it significantly increases our loot opportunities. The civilians are loving the books we’ve been bringing back, too.”

“I bet they are,” I laughed, catching a wry grin from Chloe.

“It's about the only thing they are loving,” he muttered darkly. “Did you know we lost two people to the cold while you were gone? Our winter crops aren't growing anymore either. The situation is… it feels fucking hopeless.”

Our Captain's expression shattered for a brief moment, and it was like suddenly staring into a circle of hell—Not the fire and brimstone kind, but the dark, cold, miserable pit that housed the truly lost and forgotten.

On instinct, I reached out and grasped his hand. “C-cap?”

A tear rolled down his cheek, and he swiped it away in frustration. “One of the dead was a baby. They had him too near to a window—a fucking window—and it wasn't covered like we've had people do. They wanted some sunlight, they said. The cold got in like the damn thing wasn't even there, and just like that, the kid froze in his sleep.”

Our earlier exuberance and laughter seemed hollow in the face of a tragedy like that. Gah, and to think we’d been wandering the countryside looking for stone. It felt like such a waste…

The Captain cleared his throat, and his thousand-yard-stare was reeled in until his mask of confidence slipped back into place. “I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have… Look, you two are doing great work. Keep it up. Anything else you need, and I'll get it for you. This is the only solution to the cause of our problems. We need it.”

“Sadly, it's just Chloe doing the hard work. I'm just a board for her to bounce ideas off of.” I said, my voice small.

“It's still helping, though,” Chloe said, brushing a hand down my back. To the Captain, she nodded. “I'll work as fast as I can. We'll have something for you soon.”

“Good… keep up the good work—” he said, turning to leave. Then he paused and scanned our faces, “The trip did go well, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Chloe said. “Storm infused stone in lots of different sizes, plus some metals. I’ll write a proper report for you later. I can do it while we wait for new books.”

“Excellent.”

He left us after we told him a little more of how the journey had gone. Obviously, a certain angel’s appearance was omitted, although we did mention seeing raccoons using tools. The Captain really didn't know what to make of that one. He also seemed to mentally shelve it away as a ‘future’ problem to investigate.

After he left, we started figuring out the wind chant for real—No more theories, no more research. It needed to be done, now.

On the technical side of things, the conductor’s structure had to wait, but there were other things we could decide. For example, we decided to go for a simple prayer style chant, rather than a song. It might be more difficult to maintain a simpler chant over long periods of time—because people get bored—but we were all about power here, and a very specific prayer could do that. Who knows, if we dedicated it to Cynath, maybe she could help somehow.