Page 6 of The City Of Fractured Memory

I manage to step fully into the apartment, the place looking like a laboratory collided with a library and then politely gave up halfway through the argument. Books are slouched in uneven stacks against the walls, loose parchment scrawled with half-finished equations and magical notes pinned haphazardly to every surface. Glass phials clutter the tables, some filled with liquids that shimmer faintly in the lamplight, others forgotten with crusted residue at the bottom. The furniture is old and threadbare; a patched-up armchair that sags dangerously next to the fireplace, and a rug whose original colour has long surrendered to ink stains and scorch marks. And yet, within the chaos, there is order. I know exactly which heap hides which notebook, which pile conceals which experiment.

The only touch of wild beauty comes from Stryx––scales, claws, and feathers from her shedding tucked into corners, glimmering faintly in the gloom. A single massive coat, clearly not hers, is slung over the back of a chair, smelling faintly of smoke and cedar.

To the rare outsiders who we allow to cross the threshold, it’s a mess. To me and my unlikely roommate, it is home. Half refuge, half crime lab, and always a little on the verge of catching fire.

I roll my eyes as Stryx continues to float through the air grumbling at me, flying in circles above my head, akin to what a mortal would do if they were pacing. Over on the table, Quill, our little enchanted companion, starts writing furiously on his parchment and I duck under Stryx to see. The feathered ink pen stops his writing and hovers, waiting for me to read.

You’re being a bit of a dick…

“Hey!” I admonish him, swatting him with my hand, but the sarcastic thing dodges me at the last second, shaking back and forth like he’s admonishing me. I’ve never quite got used to having arguments with an inanimate object, but unlike most Quills, which are solely designed to send and receive messages from one person to another, our one seems to have harnessed some sort of sentience somehow. And he’s always favoured Stryx over me, the little git.

He tilts slightly like he’s waiting for me to apologise, and I sigh at both of their melodramatics before fishing out a small package from my cloak and raising it up to Stryx. “I got you a present.”

She halts her movements instantly and snaps her head to me, her ears flicking as she observes the package with delight.

“Is it a mushroom?” Her voice appears again in my mind, though thankfully at a much more reasonable volume this time.

I laugh. “Yes, shall I open it for you?”

She does a backflip in the air and nods her head eagerly. I unwrap the small parcel and retrieve the little mushroom I bought from the market earlier. She snatches it from me eagerly with her little claws and pulls it close to her chest, an overwhelming sense of contentment leaking from her aura. I learnt quickly when we first met that mushrooms and other fungi are sacred to the Echofae. It is the primary way they charge their magic in Lunoreth and is the underlying life-force of all things there. The mycelium networks beneath the soil weave intricate, underground systems formed by the branching threads of the mushrooms, connecting to plants and trees and allowing communication between all natural things. Stryx said the Echofae can link themselves into these webs, and not only charge their magic through the earth, but also speak to the forest itself. The concept is a beautiful one, a true feat of nature, but one that poor Stryx has to sacrifice in order to venture into the other quarters since it’s been ripped out at the roots here. So for now, I gift her with such things so she can add them to her little shrine to Scath, making her feel more connected to her home.

I’ve never felt such things. Even as a child, I’ve never truly felt like I belong anywhere. Shunned by mortals due to their mistrust of my hair colour, but never allowed to pass into the gates of Lunoreth either––it has been forbidden for over a hundred years. My certainty of my parentage makes no odds to my peers, and so I’ve succumbed to a life of loneliness.

At least, I did until my beautiful friend came into my life so suddenly.

I smile up at her, the only joy in my miserable, difficult life, and take a seat on the armchair, watching her delicately place her new mushroom on the shrine before she floats over to me and rests her head gently in my lap. Her whisker-like tendrils that protrude from her jaw tickle my hands as I stroke her head affectionately and finally start to relax.

“So what happened?” she prompts, the soothing tones of her sweet voice echoing through my mind. “You seemed a bit shaken on the roof?”

I debate whether to tell her of my encounter with the man that claimed to know of me, but decide not to, knowing it’ll only worry her. Instead, I recount the events of the night after we received the message from Xavier’s call for help, the letter brought to us by an Eidolon Moth. A useful and subtle way of communication which I much prefer over Whisper Stones or Quills, the only problem being that I constantly have to stop Stryx from trying to eat the damn things.

Stryx shifts back into her humanoid form again as I open my cloak to retrieve the bottle filled with the memory thread I preserved at the crime scene. A look of inappropriate delight crosses her features as she takes it from me, and I can’t help but laugh. She loves a good puzzle even more than I do, even if it is a murderous one. Before we can open the bottle to watch the memory back, though, another Eidolon Moth comes flying gently into the room through the crack in the curtains, its wings glowing with a faint blue light and carrying a little roll of parchment with its tiny feet.

I roll my eyes.

What does Xavier want now?

“So there really was no evidence at all, no leads?” she asks aloud now, curiosity sparking a fire in her eyes.

I walk over to the hovering Moth and take the tiny rolled up piece of faded parchment, and it flutters off out the window immediately, not waiting for me to write out a reply. Odd.

I turn back to Stryx to answer her question, unfurling the note as I go. “No, there was nothing to go on at all,” I say, as I look down at the message.

Are you sure?

My blood turns to ice in my veins. I drop the note instantly as I run to the window, frantically scanning the dark streets for any evidence of someone watching us, but it appears empty. Stryx slowly backs away from the window, slinking into the shadows to stay hidden.

“It’s him again, isn’t it?” she breathes, her eyes darting about the apartment like he could be hiding behind the furniture. I turn back to pick up the note again, when movement flutters in the corner of my eye. Stryx and I spin round at the same time to find Quill scribbling again on his enchanted parchment, only this time his movements are more delicate, like he’s being wielded by an invisible hand. We both creep over to him slowly, and he falls back to the table with a light thud as the message finishes.

Did you like the little puzzle tonight, Detective? –C

Well… Fuck.

Four

Corvus. He’s back.

Stryx and I stare blankly at the parchment for a minute, my thoughts racing before I gather myself together and turn to Quill.