"The fog that blankets Ewald Vale is like nothing else I've ever experienced before. It swirls with purpose. It knows you are trespassing. It will sink into your bones and cloud your eyes for days after you've left. If you manage to leave. Many do not. Many expire not even a mile beyond the threshold, for more reasons than I have fingers and toes to count on. Never venture into Ewald Vale unless you truly have no other choice, that's my advice."

- Dame Millicent Ingram, Wandering Champion of the Order of Nova

Nemira expected the elevator ride from the basement to the roof to be quiet. Lena did not seem one for idle chatter even in a good mood. And she was right in that idle chatter was not Lena's interest. As it turned out, the detective preferred to fill the air with much more difficult questions.

"Isn't Anima Rex fake?"

Nemira twitched as though a fly had suddenly buzzed too close to her ear. She snapped her head up, but Lena wasn't looking at her. She was leaning against the wall, gazing pensively into her mug as she swirled its contents around with her hand.

"I've read that water was historically one of the first scrying methods into the future, but recent studies show it's an incredibly difficult medium to use even for a seasoned forecaster," Nemira replied, more haltingly than she cared to admit.

"Wha—? Oh." Lena looked at her, then back at her drink before making a rueful expression and downing the rest of the water. "But it is fake, right? Fairytale bullshit. You think Black got swindled into taking an unregistered infernal instrument off someone else's hands before they could get busted with it?"

It took a long moment for Nemira to answer. "I don't know."

Lena grunted, dissatisfied. "I guess some idiot Vittoran nobleman would be prone to believing in a ridiculous myth like that. Fat load of good it will do him. Even if he surrenders, he's done for. Aimeric was the beloved House Black scion. His own family now wants his head on a pike."

"That is their right, I suppose." 

The strange look Lena gave her in response made her change tack a touch. "Ah, forgive me. That's more of a Mountain Lord mentality. Some clans are quite strict when it comes to punishing members who act out of turn."

"Harsh as hell in most cases, sure, but this situation isn't most cases."

The elevator dinged and ground to a stop on the fourth floor. The cage rattled open, revealing a room that was mostly cement and a variety of pipes attached to large metal cylinders twisting every which way throughout the space. Nemira assumed the door on the opposite end of the room must have been the exit. She strode towards it, Lena keeping pace next to her.

"They're going to bust out the hangman's noose for Black," Lena continued with grim surety. "I...didn't know how becoming a summoner worked until today, but I and every other officer in this building know damn well that forced summoner creation is one of the few crimes left in the Alliance that'll earn someone a spot on the executioner's schedule. And if what you told me downstairs is true, that's undeniably what Black did to those men. Even if he failed. Even if it was an accident."

"Do I detect a hint of remorse for your ignorance?" asked Nemira. Not expecting the detective to go so far as to open the door for her, she reached out and turned the knob herself. Cold, damp air greeted the two women immediately. Nemira breathed it in, letting it clear the last of the distraction away from her mind.

"Fuck off." There was no real irritation in Lena's rebuke as they stepped out onto the roof. The rain had stopped, but it was much darker now thanks to the persistent cloud cover. Nemira clicked her tongue. She would be lucky if she found Lord Black before nightfall at this rate. "Summoning never interested me. Can't just go to school or apprentice yourself out to a master and study it like any normal art, and aetherians aren't visible even when you learn how to see pneuma, so why would I waste my time looking into it when I was already buried up to my neck in practical exams at St. Melantha's?"

"Ah, a fellow graduate! I’ve been wondering if you had just made a good guess that I had attended college here in the city-state."

Lena wrinkled her nose. "You speak Tet exactly like all the other top students I knew back when I was there. Snobs, each and everyone of them."

"Ha!" Nemira approached the edge of the room. From below, glowing streetlamps chased away some of the gloom, but there was no one around to enjoy the hazy lights. "Weird little bookseller broad, summoner, and snob. I wear quite a few hats in your eyes, don't I?"

Her favorite summoning card was back between her fingers, its incantation rolling quietly off her freshly pneuma-lit tongue. In front of an audience, she opted for a more subdued approach, dropping the card on the wet surface of the roof and tapping it with the end of her torch. A moment and a burst of nighttime flame later and her wings were back, flapping in anticipation.

"No mercy."

Nemira paused just as she was about to mount her torch and looked behind her. Lena's oddly delicate face glinted with surprising ferocity.

"Whether or not you do it tonight, an aberrant in the Vale does it tomorrow, Black's uncle orders a lackey of his to do it on the sly a couple of weeks from now, or the city-state does it next month, Black will be slain. Unless he tosses the ring away and grovels for forgiveness at your feet, don't lower your guard for a second. Don't show him any mercy. He doesn't deserve it. Those men he killed did not go quietly."

Nemira hummed and swung a leg over her torch. "Thank you for the advice."

"Hell," said Lena, who seemed bent on pressing the issue, "he might even prefer dying under the table rather than bear the shame of becoming the first criminal to be executed for attempted summoner creation in—God, I don't even know how long—"

"Thirteen years," Nemira told her quietly. Lena's mouth snapped shut.

"Thirteen years, seven months, and twelve days since the last government-mandated execution of a man who attempted to create a summoner." She turned her face away from the detective. Her torch wings flapped once, taking her up until she levitated well above Lena's head. "However tonight ends for Lord Black, rest assured that it will end. Give my regards to Detective Maybard. With any luck, neither of you will ever need to call upon me professionally ever again."

Nemira allowed herself to look back just once as she flew away. Much to her surprise, Lena still stood there despite the growing distance between them. The expression on the detective's face was difficult to discern, but she had taken off her cap, and it was a long while before she finally turned away and strode back into the building.

---

Unlike her knowledge of various locations in the city-state, which she had taken great pains to visit and commit to memory upon first moving to Coine with her mothers, the pull toward her destination was so instinctual she could have found her way to it blindfolded. Not that she needed to with the vantage point afforded to her by her flying torch. Past the Roseman River winding through the city like a great, glittering blue wyrm; past the famous North Gate that withstood three separate attacks from the Adalian Imperial Forces; past a small sliver of untainted plainslands and a simple, abandoned dirt road, she could see it: a thick wall of dark and impenetrable fog, twisting and billowing for untold miles in every direction and curving up into the sky and then back, forming a great dome of heavy mist. The shadow of Coine and the shroud of the Tyrant's Necropolis: Ewald Vale.

Flying there turned out to be a much livelier affair than her journey to the Supernatural Public Guard's headquarters. The sky had transformed. While there were still no other mortal fliers around, it glittered with a sea of pale lights only she could see. The aetherians were out en mass, more than ever in a single evening. Word of their brethren's rescue from the human bodies must have spread quite quickly. As she passed them by, many of the lights solidified into different shapes. Wonderous and hideous in equal measures, some almost-but-not-quite copies of animals that existed in the corporeal plane while others wore forms she could not have conceived of in her wildest fantasies. They chattered amongst themselves as they flew hither and yon all around her, not in the overwhelming screams of the captives in the three dead men, but the low and pleasant murmur of a busy park square heard from a distance.

"Well met, dark-eyed child of the earth."

Unlike the wyrm that had accosted her earlier that evening, the aetherian that fluttered around her now spoke gently. Nemira did not slow her pace, but lifted a hand so that it could alight on her wrist. It was an aerial of the sprites, dressed like a butterfly nearly as large as a bat, its wings bluer than a springtide sky. At that size, its enormous, perfectly round compound eyes proved dizzying to stare into for very long. Nemira saw herself reflected in them a million times over.

"Good evening, steward of the skies," she replied politely. "I’m looking for the human man responsible for trapping several hundred aetherians to the corporeal plane with the techniques of the old tyrants. I’ve heard he fled into the Vale no more than four turns of the sun and moon ago. Is he still there?”

The aerial gave a weighty flap of its velvety wings. "I can feel it on the currents of the autumn air. That cursed mortal who so tormented my kin will be easy to find, for my swarm torments it in turn as vengeance for its wanton act of violent seizure. It wanders up and down the Road at the edge of the mourning lands, lost and stinking of fear. My swarm will hold it there until they grow bored and let the flesh-hungry beasts catch its scent.

Nemira held back a sigh with some difficulty. Aerials were friendly enough at any class, but they were quick to resort to nasty pranks. Lord Black was well and truly doomed no matter what he did. "Thank you, friend from the Firmament. I will remove him from the Vale soon so that he can no longer be a danger to anyone."

"Dark-eyed child, your kindness is wasted upon such beings. My swarm will have fun leading it astray. Wander not into the mists. Go home and rest with the blessing of the aerials."

"If I could do that so easily, I would." She raised her hand up with care. The aerial took off and flew away. Reconnaissance complete, Nemira leaned forward on her torch, picking up speed until the wind pulled a few tears from her eyes. She could not beat the onset of nighttime, the streetlamps and building lights below her brightening until they rivaled the sea of aetherians she flew through, but eventually she outstripped the city limits and passed above the North Gate. It was still Coine's tallest structure by far after several centuries of city-state development, so tall that despite the height she flew at, she could have easily scraped the tip of her toe against the rough stone of the old rampart had she stuck a leg out. 

A frown tugged at the corners of her lips as the dome of fog grew closer by the second. She was not scared, or uncertain. Her duty wasn’t one she had chosen to bear, but it was hers. One she had been training and studying to carry out ever since she realized she had no other option. She knew what she was doing. So why the hell did everyone in her vicinity insist on talking to her as though they knew better?

A deep, crackling rancor seized her then. She grit her teeth, her pneuma bursting from her body, and shot straight into the ceaselessly churning fog wall of Ewald Vale.