New Decameron Thirty-Two: A.E. Prevost (Patreon)

The Skies of Paris

By A.E. Prevost

“Breakfast!” 

Aurèle flipped the pancake with a practiced movement, dropping it neatly atop the two already steaming on his sister’s plate. With a sweeping gesture towards the French press, he intoned two ice-clear syllables and drew twin arcs of fragrant coffee through the air to fill their waiting cups. 

He frowned towards the bedroom door of their attic apartment. “Irénée, breakfast!”

“I heard you,” his sister said, hopping out as she pulled a heavy boot over her striped stocking. 

He pushed the plate toward her. “Well, let me know, so I don’t always have to tell you everything five times.”

Irénée blithely walked over to the dormer window and sat down next to where Zinna was curled up, pausing to give the fluffy calico a scratch behind the ears before lacing up her boots. The late autumn dawn was bleeding watercolour pinks and yellows into the sky, where a few zealous couriers were already out, their skycycles darting ruby-winged above the grey mansard roofs. Above it all, the rebuilt Eiffel Tower loomed black and skeletal. A pigeon landed on the wrought iron balcony; Zinna slinked away from Irénée’s hand and chittered, fangs bared, fixated on the ball of feathers and meat. 

Irénée smiled. “You wanna eat it, huh? Big fat tasty pigeon?”

“You’ve got big fat tasty pancakes that aren’t going to eat themselves,” Aurèle said irritably. He took a sip of coffee, made a face, blew on it, and sipped again. 

His sister slipped him a glance. “You know, you should invite Caius in for breakfast sometime.”

As if on cue, a heavy thud hit the roof above them. Aurèle counted the seconds until knuckles rapped at the window, followed by an all-too-familiar grinning brown face. Irénée leapt over the fleeing cat to let Caius in. 

The newcomer pushed his goggles up onto his forehead. “Good morning, Izumida siblings! Smells amazing in here, Aurèle, I hope you saved me some?”

Aurèle adjusted his glasses. “Actually, I suppose Irénée won’t have time to finish hers, so...”

“Hah!” Irénée bounded across the room and grabbed the plate of pancakes. “Says you.” She stuffed one into her mouth; popping open her hip satchel, she slid the remaining contents of the plate inside.

Aurèle grimaced. “Yeah, I’m not washing that.”

“You’re gonna share with me, right?” Caius whispered to his courier partner.

She patted the satchel. “Maybe.”

Caius smiled and glanced over to Aurèle. “Give you a ride? That teacher of yours lives way out.”

Aurèle sipped his coffee, one arm crossed over his chest. “I would rather walk, thanks.”

“You sure?” Caius stretched, elaborately. “I wouldn’t mind the company. Gets real chilly up there.” 

Aurèle put down his coffee on the saucer with a distinct tink. He picked up a loosely-knit orange scarf from the back of the sofa and shoved it at Caius. “Here you go. Don’t say I never do anything for you.”

Caius’s eyes lit up, and he gently wrapped the scarf around his neck, pressing his fingers into its thick weave. “Oh, Aurèle, I’ll cherish it forever.”

It should have looked absurd with the sharp blue canvas vest and brown breeches of the sky couriers’ uniform, but somehow Caius made it work, the colour bringing out sunset highlights in his dark skin. Aurèle scowled. “You’ll give it back to me tomorrow. Now shoo.”

Caius lingered just a moment longer before turning away, a bounce in his step. Irénée grabbed a handful of cherries from the counter and dumped them in her bag with the pancakes.

“You’re a disaster,” Aurèle said.

“Love you too.” She patted his face, leaving greasy fingerprints on his glasses. She clambered out the window, then popped her pigtailed head back in. “Don’t forget to take your meds!”

“Yes, yes.” He took off his smudged glasses and squinted.

“I mean it! You know where they are?”

Aurèle reached a hand toward the bookshelf. “Ensis, toh, daiyal.” The small tin of medication floated to the table. “I’ll take them with breakfast.”

“Good.” His sister grinned. “See you tonight!”

“Stay safe out there.”

“You know it.” And she was gone, vanishing up the ladder to the roof. 

Moments later, two skybikes launched, their sailcloth wings catching the wind and lifting them high over Paris. Aurèle sighed as he watched them shrink into specks of colour and disappear into the misty morning. 

He measured out a careful dose of the medication that kept him able to do things like watch his little sister throw herself into the sky—or enjoy breakfast, or get dressed and walk out the door—and shook the powder into his mouth, quickly covering the sour taste with coffee. There was always a pit of despair in his mental landscape; the medication mostly kept it out of reach, but anxiety flares tended to nudge him closer. And the anxiety was bad today. The smart thing would be to focus on being forgiving with himself, even if that meant being late; he’d gone over this a hundred times in therapy, he knew the ropes. The world wouldn’t end from him being a few minutes late to his lessons. Mestre Tanaïs would just have to deal with it.

Aurèle’s mestre lived at the edge of the city, past the boulevards and faubourgs, past parks heaped with yellow linden leaves, past the bakery where Aurèle picked up lunch, past the painters and booksellers that clustered along the banks of the Seine. Zinna followed him through the streets, the fall-coloured calico dipping in and out of sight amid the stalls. Above it all, a storm was gathering; darting couriers were recklessly braving the winds high above his head. Aurèle hoped Irénée would be careful. 

And Caius too, he supposed. He did want to see that scarf again.  

The fields outside the city were long since harvested, a faded landscape under a darkening sky. A squat tower stood nestled in a nearby copse of oak and ash, one of the few prewar buildings remaining in the area; Zinna bounded up a tree, which erupted in starlings, while Aurèle stood at the door and tried to compose himself. It was wretchedly easy to feel bad about something as simple as taking his time in the morning, and being forgiving with himself felt almost like a betrayal—as if by treating himself with kindness, he was breaking an unspoken promise to society. 

Aurèle had come close to breaking much more than that a few years ago, though. Between medication, therapy, and the support of his family, he had managed to rebuild himself into a person who could wake up every day and exist, and that victory was worth sometimes showing up late to things. Every day, he put in the work. Some days were fine, and he even forgot he had ever been depressed. But other days…

Maybe he should have taken Caius up on his offer and braved the skies to get here on time. 

Aurèle stretched, took a deep breath, and rang the bell of the mestrery.

The door swung open silently, and Aurèle followed the stone corridor to the octagonal practice room. Mestre Tanaïs stood with their back to him, regal as ever in a sleeveless icy-grey robe of thick brocade, embroidered with overlapping patterns of purple and gold. Their straight black hair hung down to their waist, pulled back into a low half-ponytail strung with a long dove-grey satin ribbon. They turned to Aurèle and spoke through thin painted lips.

“You will begin with thirteen recitations of the Avengardis injunction.”

Aurèle flushed. Tanaïs was seething, that much was clear. 

“I’m sorry I’m late, I…”

“Tardiness is an insult and an embarrassment. The Avengardis, Monsieur Izumida.” 

Aurèle hung his satchel up on the rack, forcing down a calming breath. The mestre’s anger was not surprising; that just was who Tanaïs was. He reminded himself that that anger belonged to Tanaïs, not to him. He didn’t need to take it on. He stripped off his vest and ascot, shoes and socks, and rolled up his sleeves—it was cold in the practice room now, but it wouldn’t be for long—and headed back towards his teacher before dropping into the proper stance for Avengardis. He closed his eyes and began the recitations. 

“Eyes open,” Tanaïs snapped. “The world is out here, not in there.”

Aurèle complied, nostrils flaring slightly. The practice room was open to the sky, although an invisible field shielded them from distemperate weather. Birds wheeled high overhead; the starlings Zinna had spooked, perhaps. Aurèle tried to pay them no mind, but their pattern against the dark clouds was hypnotic, like foam cresting the waves of an invisible sea. 

“Magic without proper mindfulness will fail.” Tanaïs’s voice cut through his distraction. “Begin again. Root your feet into the ground. Or must we return to elementary principles?”

Aurèle clenched his jaw and worked through his irritation with a slow breath. Honestly, Tanaïs was the last thing he needed today. Maybe he should have stayed home. But they were one of the greatest sorcerexes in Paris, one of the few who had survived the war, and they had chosen Aurèle as their only student. He wasn’t about to let that inexplicable honour and incomparable opportunity go to waste, so he came here every day and weathered the mestre’s exacting nature. He tried to remind himself that Tanaïs was from a different generation: one that didn’t care what effect their words had on people, one that painted everyone with the same brush whether or not the bristles wounded. Tardiness is an insult and embarrassment. He snorted. 

Tanaïs raised an eyebrow.

Aurèle looked away. “Eiden. Eidexis. Ledea, tisoph.” His right hand shot firmly out in front of him, then folded at the elbow, slicing a horizontal plane. The trace of his hand left a faint blue afterimage in the air.

“Acceptable. Carry on.” Tanaïs folded their hands at the small of their back and walked away. 

Three years, Aurèle had been studying under the mestre’s tutelage. Three years of swallowing his pride and practicing the forms, learning despite everything. Aurèle had come to them a perfect mess but had, apparently, developed into something vaguely semi-competent. With more study, he might earn the title of sorcerex himself some day, and eventually do something useful in the world rather than mooch off his little sister’s meager wages. Magic had won the war, after all, turned back the tide of demons that had spilled out of the sky, long before Aurèle was born, when even Tanaïs was only a small child. But there were always threats, rumbles, possibilities of a new darkness. It would be up to Aurèle’s generation to defend Paris if disaster struck again. He always tried to keep that in mind when Tanaïs’ attitude got particularly irritating. There was a reason for all this.

“Stop,” Tanaïs said suddenly. “You are daydreaming. You clearly do not wish to put effort into your studies today.” They looked down their nose at him. “Go home, you are wasting my time.”

Aurèle grunted. “Oh, come on.”

Tanaïs drew themself up straighter. “Your forms are full of mistakes. You focus for a few moments, then drift off again.”

“I’m having a bad day,” Aurèle riposted, sharply. “I’m doing my best.”

“I have seen your best, and this is far from it. A sorcerex is not allowed bad days. We must be flawless.”

Aurèle scowled. “Look, I… that’s… that’s not human. Everybody makes mistakes. There’s nothing wrong with that. You get it wrong, you learn, you grow.”

“You would lecture me on what it is to be human? Your generation is only alive because we mastered ourselves and banished back the darkness in the war.”

Aurele clenched his jaw. “You were like, three.”

“And you are a fool!” Tanaïs shouted, hands balling into fists. “The world is always balanced on a tightrope. A sorcerex cannot afford a misstep, can’t you see what I’ve been trying to teach you all this time?” Aurèle said nothing. The mestre’s lips pressed into a dark line. “After three years, Monsieur Izumida, I expect more of you. Put in more effort. Arrive on time, or don’t arrive at all. Unless you wish to be relegated to the servile class, like your sister.”

Aurèle punched them.

It was a reflex, a spike of rage, and it shouldn’t even have hit—Tanaïs was a good meter out of reach—but a wave of magical force lashed out from Aurèle’s fist and collided with the mestre’s face. Regret crashed into Aurèle like an avalanche, flushing all the anger from him immediately. “Oh, shit, I—I’m so sorry, I…”

Thunder rolled in the sky. 

“Now you’ve done it,” Tanaïs slurred, wiping their face with the back of a thin hand, leaving a streak of lipcolour across their cheek.

Aurèle’s eyes grew wide. “I’m so, so sorry. I can’t believe I did that—I overreacted, I…”

“It’s a fight you want?” The wind whipped in the trees outside, dead leaves dancing against the invisible ceiling.

“No, not at all,” Aurèle said, hands outreached. “I apologize, you’re right, I’m… I’m in the wrong mindset to study today. I mean, clearly. This is… I’ll go home and work on straightening myself out. I’m sorry. I really fucked up.” 

Tanaïs took a step closer, and Aurèle found himself staggering back under the terrifying intensity of his teacher’s gaze.

“Yes, I was a child during the war. But I saw what it did. Do you know how the demons were banished?” Tanaïs asked. “Do you know how the war was won?”

Aurèle shook his head, keeping a distance between himself and the sorcerex. Tanaïs slowly stretched their right arm out to the side, then lowered it in an arc, materializing a glistening, silver-black blade out of thin air. 

“Sacrifice.”

Lightning erupted like wounds against the clouds. The thunder crackled and passed, but the lightning remained, coruscating and shifting directly overhead.

“Mestre,” Aurèle said, face blanching. “The sky.”

Tanaïs kept slowly advancing. “Arm yourself, child. Pull that little bludgeon back out of your bag of tricks. Or was the attack a fluke?”

“Yeah, I… Look, I honestly have no idea what I did, and I really don’t want to fight you. Anyway, we... I think we have larger problems.” 

He pointed to the sky, where the branching forks of light were deepening in hue, a pink cast to their flashes. Tanaïs glanced behind them and stopped dead in their tracks. 

Aurèle bit his lip. “That’s not normal, right?”

The sorcerex did not answer, so Aurèle continued backing slowly towards the door, keeping an eye on the fracturing sky. Another rumble of thunder echoed all around them, shaking the mestrery to its foundations, and Tanaïs fell to their knees. 

Blood drained from the sorcerex’s face as they stared at the sky. “I… run, boy,” they muttered. “Run and don’t look back.” The blade vanished from their hand, its magical substance dissipating like ink in water. 

With another crash of thunder, jagged seams of magenta fire split the darkening sky, and from them, heavy, dripping globs of shadow seeped into the world.

Aurèle pressed up against the door. “What… what the fuck is that.”

The shadows were coagulating into wispy limbs and faces, and suddenly, Aurèle’s breath stopped. He had seen this before: old pictures from the war, films in history class. Void demons, who could stretch as tall as buildings, whose eyes and mouths shot beams of light that sliced through flesh and brick and steel. The great and ruinous enemy that had crushed the city of Paris in wave after relentless wave, who had decimated the population and nearly wiped out every sorcerex in the land. If they were back… 

“We need to get out of here, Mestre,” he croaked.

Tanaïs remained kneeling, their upturned face lit magenta by the storm. “It’s too late,” they said, voice hollow. “I have failed.” One by one, apertures of red-gold light peeked open in the shadowy figures high above. “This is my fault.”

“Okay, but what we’re not going to do is stand here and let them kill us or whatever. We need to warn the city, we…”

“Oh, I have no doubt they know. Alarms will have gone off.” Tanaïs closed their eyes. “I have doomed us all.”

Aurèle huffed and walked over to his teacher. “I kind of doubt it. Come on. One way or another, we’re safer away from here.” 

Then a demon turned its face towards them and screamed. 

A red-gold beam of light shot out of its mouth and sliced through the wall of the mestrery, snapping the seal of the magical ceiling like a soap bubble. The transected bookshelf exploded into a blizzard of pages; the wall behind it cracked and crumbled apart. Aurèle dove to the ground, covering Tanaïs with his body. 

Tanaïs laughed, a broken sound. “I did this! Through my foolishness and inattention, I allowed this to happen! I was so… angry.” They turned to Aurèle with feverish eyes. “I lost control, and now look. Look at what I’ve done.”

The void demons continued unhurried, heads lolling, limbs smudging into shapeless tapers as they approached. One belched out a sharp streak of red-gold light; half a massive oak crashed through the ceiling.

“Okay, let’s go,” Aurèle said, eyeing the newly formed gap in the wall. “Up we get.”

Tanaïs wouldn’t budge. “I caused this; I must take responsibility. Go, Aurèle. Find peace.”

Aurèle hesitated. Only a few demons had oozed from the breach above them, and they weren’t nearly as large as the history books said. Maybe this wasn’t a full-scale invasion. Maybe they could handle it. But as he gazed at the sky, something else was approaching from the direction of the city—two shapes of red sailcloth, wheeling through the storm. Aurèle stared as the twin skycycles dodged the void demons and landed just outside the mestrery. 

He sprinted toward them, leaving Tanaïs for the moment. “Irénée! Caius, over here! How—”

Caius hopped off his skybike. “Forget that! Come on!”

“The whole city’s on alert!” Irénée shouted. “We could tell the storm was centered here, so…”

“You shouldn’t have come,” Aurèle said. “Things are bad.”

Caius reached out an arm. “Just get on the damn bike, Aurèle!”

Aurèle looked over his shoulder to his teacher, who was staring transfixed at the gap in the sky, tears streaming down their cheeks. He rubbed at his face. “I can’t go. I have to stop this.”

“Aurèle, I know you’re good,” Irénée said, “but you’ve just been studying for three years, and Tanaïs is a pro. They’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

Aurèle didn’t budge. “No, you don’t get it, Tanaïs thinks they did this. They’re blaming themself.”

“They’ll snap out of it,” Caius said, walking up to Aurèle and taking his arm. “We don’t have time.”

“No,” Aurèle said, firmly. “They were saying shit about responsibility and—and sacrifice. I’ve got to do something.”

“Aurèle…” Irénée hesitated.

He pushed Caius’ arm away. “You two get somewhere safe! You can’t fly in this anyway, those—those—they’ll cut straight through you.” The wind whipped at Aurèle’s skin. “Put your goggles on, cover your faces, lock down your skybikes if you can. Try not to attract their attention. Give me a chance.”

Caius’ eyes glistened. He nodded. 

“You’re a dick,” Irénée shouted, face red. “Don’t you dare get hurt.”

Aurèle grinned. “I love you too.” He pushed his glasses back up his face and ran towards his teacher.

The sorcerex was still staring blankly at the incoming devastation. But Aurèle knew dissociation, he knew how panic could run deep under a deceptively still surface.

“Mestre Tanaïs,” he said gently. “Please. Listen to me.”

Tanaïs blinked slowly, then looked at Aurèle. 

“Okay, good. Hey. I’m right here.” Aurèle took a step closer. “Listen, I’m freaking out too. But here’s the important part. Right now, it doesn’t matter whether or not you did this.”

“Of course it does,” Tanaïs mumbled hoarsely.

“Nope. What matters is that you can fix it. We can fix it. Right? You’re a powerful sorcerex, I’m… apparently tolerable, and…” He looked up. “Look, they’re much smaller than they were in the war, right? And there’s just like a… half dozen of them? We’ve got this.”

A strange smile suffused Tanaïs’s features. “You’ve come to die with me, then.” 

“What, no,” Aurèle scowled. “How about, instead, you explain to me how our elders won the war. Teach me. We have to stop this before it overruns the city.”

Tanaïs gave a humourless snort. “Stop it? We can’t stop it. Our elders didn’t stop it either, they only lingered until the demons got bored and left.”

Aurèle drew in a tense breath. “Okay. What made them leave?”

“Death,” Tanaïs said. “Death and death and death. They came for us, took our lives, and left once there were only a handful remaining.”

Aurèle ran a hand across his face. “There has to be another way. Look, you’re a great sorcerex.”

“I’m a failure. I should never have survived the war. I never deserved to have this power.”

“Mm, no, we’re not doing this. You’re not a failure, you’re an amazingly accomplished person, and you’ve earned every bit of the power you have. Also, you were three? You can’t blame yourself for anything that happened when you were three.”

“And yet,” the mestre said with a sigh. “Today I let a crack form in my self-control, and look. Look what I have wrought.”

Aurèle wasn’t getting anywhere. Up above, the void demons were spiraling, limbs long and thin as branches, sharp as blades; they looked like a maleficent bird’s nest, a wreath of sharpened bone. Aurèle forced his eyes away, pushing through the fear that churned at his gut, focusing his attention on his teacher. He thought back to therapy, to the way he had retrained his inner voice to lift him up rather than drag him down. Had Tanaïs ever been to therapy? Probably not. They’d probably had to live their whole life with the stress of being a sorcerex, of being a survivor, and never been taught how to accept that. 

He exhaled heavily. “Okay. What you’re not going to do is kick yourself while you’re down. You’re suffering enough, Mestre. You don’t need to add to it. I think you’re really used to blaming yourself, aren’t you?”

Tanaïs glowered. “You speak to me as to a child.”

Aurèle sighed. “Sorry. Look, I…” He had a thought. “Why did you take me as your student?”

Tanaïs tilted their head at the unexpected question. “You… had potential. An ocean, a cosmos of potential.”

“But… I… I mean, honestly, I kind of suck.”

“It would indeed appear that I have not yet succeeded in unlocking it.” The faintest smile appeared on their lips.

Aurèle smiled in return, encouraging any reaction from his teacher that wasn’t a further spiral into despair. “Right now I’m asking you to trust whatever it is you saw in me. I know things look really bad, but you’re not alone.” He reached out a hand. “We can do this.”

Above them, four mouths were opening into a searing scream.

“But I failed,” Tanaïs said, sounding uncertain now. “I must take responsibility.”

“Eh, and I punched you and I feel extremely bad about that, but I’m not letting it define where we go from here. Sometimes you just have to forgive yourself, and the rest you play by ear.”

“Hmm.”

Four beams of red-gold light sliced through the room. Aurèle flattened himself against the floor just in time; he looked up to see Tanaïs standing up with ineffable calm, brushing the dust off their knees. 

“Very well, we try it your way.”

Aurèle rolled onto his back. “Really?”

“It is perhaps… selfish of me, but if I’m being honest, I would rather not sacrifice myself to the darkness if there may be another way.” They pushed a loose strand of hair out of their face. “I have shamed the elders with my weakness.”

“Can’t speak for the elders,” Aurèle said, standing up. “But the youngers are pretty proud.”

Tanaïs smiled and turned towards the sky with renewed determination. “We have to keep the demons from reaching the city. Draw them in closer, then…” 

“Then what?”

Tanaïs looked stern. “I… am not certain. We will, uh…”

“Play it by ear?”

The sorcerex cocked a brow. “Indeed.”

Aurèle grinned. “Fantastic. How?”

The sorcerex eyed the skybikes, safely grounded in the shelter of the now-ruined mestrery. “We take the fight to them.”

Aurèle had a sinking feeling. “What?”

“The skycycles were built to withstand the pressures of battle,” Tanaïs said, already walking towards them. “They are powered by magic as much as by aeronautics; the sky was filled with flocks of them during the war. It is the only reason the city wasn’t completely destroyed.”

Aurèle followed, stammering. “Or—I mean—maybe there’s a better way.”

“Oh?”

“N…no I don’t… it’s not like I actually have a better way, but you know, maybe there is one. One that doesn’t involve going up into the sky. On things we don’t know how to control.”

A faint smile pinched a corner of the mestre’s lips. “Oh, but we have excellent pilots on hand, and the cycles can easily carry two. Can’t they, young lady?”

“Absolutely,” Irénée said, standing up straight, the barest hint of tremble in her voice. “I mean, I’ve offered to take Aurèle out like a million times.”

“Well, today is your chance.”

Caius walked up to them. “All right, let’s fucking do this then!”

“Your vim is estimable. However, I must warn you.” Tanaïs steepled their fingers. “Airborne magic is apparently far more difficult than that on the ground.”

Aurèle cast them a worried look. “Apparently?”

“It isn’t like I’ve tried it before.”

He closed his eyes. “Great.”

Tanaïs chuckled. “What was it you were saying about mistakes?”

“I’m not sure right now is the time for it!”

Tanaïs looked at him. A smile spread across their features. “Let’s find out.”

“So long as you don’t object to entrusting your life to the servile class,” Aurèle mumbled. Tanaïs had the good sense to look abashed.

Irénée adjusted her goggles. “Just tell us where to go,” she said. “It gets loud up there with the wind, so set the trajectory now.”

“Can you fly in symmetry? Straight lines?”

“Can we,” Caius smirked. 

Tanaïs nodded. “Then we ride straight towards the breach, diverge, and circumscribe the demons. Aurèle is correct in assessing that the threat is as yet localized; at the moment, we aim for containment.”

“Containment… The invocation of Laodeus?” Aurèle suggested.

“An excellent choice. You are confident of the rhythm?”

Aurèle nodded firmly, and they got into position, Aurèle climbing into the small passenger seat of Irénée’s skycycle.

“Well, circumstances suck, but this is a treat,” his sister said. “Took you long enough.”

“Okay, gloat later. You know I hate heights. Focus on saving the world or whatever, which is literally the only reason I’m doing this.”

“Pft, you don’t hate heights. You hate the massive crush you have on Caius and you use heights as an excuse to ignore his hopeless nerd advances.” She dislodged the kickstand. “Ready?”

Aurèle sputtered, any cogent reply eluding him. Just then, a small white-orange-brown shape darted past them through a gap in the wall, disappearing under a toppled bookshelf.

“That looked like our cat,” Irénée mused.

“Argh, shit,” Aurèle said. “Yes. They followed me here. I assumed they’d run away when all this nonsense started.”

“Well, Zinna’s resourceful.” She sighed. “We’ll just have to trust ‘em to stay safe. Caius! Ready?”

Without further ceremony, the two skycycles launched themselves into the air. Aurèle screamed. 

His sister laughed warmly. “You’ll get the hang of it!”

Aurèle screamed again in response, clinging to Irénée with one arm and holding his glasses with the other. The skybikes leveled out in midair, catching a gust of wind. Tanaïs had two splotches of red on their fawn cheeks, but looked otherwise impeccably collected. 

“Well done!” they said. “Now it’s up to us.”

Aurèle swallowed. “Lead on, Mestre!” 

Tanaïs nodded and commenced the invocation of Laodeus, with Aurèle echoing their motions. The wind spat his words back at him, and every gust and dive tested his focus as well as his stomach. Irénée was thoughtful enough to warn him before veering sharply to the right, peeling away from Caius and Tanaïs; Aurèle’s concentration held, blue afterimages forming at his fingertips and staying stuck against the sky.

“Hold on, I’m gonna have to dodge!” Irénée shouted. 

Aurèle nodded without breaking the litany. The skybike lurched down, making Aurèle revisit breakfast; a beam of light shot out far over their heads harmlessly, and Irénée laughed. Sweat was sticking Aurèle’s curls against his nape and running down his back. Between them and the demons, a tenuous membrane was forming, like a film of oil on water. The next blast hit the barrier and was deflected back. Irénée whooped. The two skybikes completed the circuit and came up beside each other.

“Keep up the Laodeus!” Tanaïs shouted. “I have an idea. Riders, please, circle back the way we came!”

Aurèle nodded and doubled his focus, noticing that the mestre was beginning to intone a different form—the retribution of Salvesta, it seemed like—and layering it on top of his own.

“It’s working!” Irénée shrieked. “Look!”

One by one, the shadowed figures were being drawn into the center of the diaphanous enclosure. By the time they skycycles had completed a second circuit, the demons had coalesced into a tarry ball of roiling limbs.

“Land!” Tanaïs instructed, drawing up close alongside Aurèle and Irénée. “We finish this with our feet on the ground.”

The ball of writhing darkness was descending as well, sucking up stray bits of shadow as it fell. Aurèle watched with horror as a calico blur was drawn into the orb and disappeared in the blackness.

“Zinna!” he screamed

“Zinna?” Irénée said, landing the skybike.

“They got sucked in!” Aurèle dismounted and clung to the skybike, legs unaccustomed to solid ground. 

“What! Why?”

“I don’t know!” He made his way towards the orb, Irénée close behind. The wind was dying down, and the fissure in the sky was healing; by the time Caius and Tanaïs had joined them, the world outside the containment sphere was eerily calm. 

“Now what?” Caius asked.

Tanaïs took a step forward. “Now… we banish it.”

“My cat’s in there!” Aurèle shouted. He brought his hands up to his mouth to call for them. “Zinna! Come on! Who’s a good kitty!”

The demon sphere touched down against the earth and shifted, spasming briefly before resolving into a towering figure, wide-eyed, sharp-mouthed, its head ringed with saurian ridges. Two long clawed hands pressed into the ground.

“Not Zinna,” came a voice made up of fire and darkness. “We are Alazacis.”

Tanaïs stared up at it for a long stunned moment. “Well, fuck.”

Aurèle trembled, looking up into the creature’s enormous maw. “Have… have these ever talked before…?”

“Not to my rather extensive knowledge. But they’ve never fused into a… shall we say a megalodemon, either. Our unconventional approach may have something to do with it.” 

The thing that had called itself Alazacis blinked slowly, its eyes shimmering like moonstones. 

“Irénée, take Caius and hide.” Aurèle turned to his teacher. “Should we… talk to it?”

Tanaïs tucked their hair behind their ears. “Very well.” They took a halting step forward. “Hello!”

The megalodemon lowered its head curiously. “Hello.”

“My name is Tanaïs.”

“We know.”

“Ah. Well.” They swallowed, fidgeting with their hair. “What—not to be impolite, but what are you? Why are you here?”

The figure seemed to consider this, leaning its massive head backwards. “We are always on the edge of things, seeking to exist. You take from our world, but never give back. Sometimes, there is a fissure, and our hunger draws us to you.”

“I don’t understand,” Tanaïs said.

“Magic does not make something from nothing.”

Aurèle thought about the blue afterimages of his own power, the sword Tanaïs had summoned earlier. He frowned. “When we do magic, we’re using resources from your world?”

The megalodemon nodded. “Take and take. We awaken hungry. We awaken scared.”

“And so you lash out,” Aurèle hazarded. “Is… is that why you started the war?”

“Humans started the war. We were only hungry.”

“You killed so many,” Tanaïs said, their voice uncharacteristically raw. “So many died.”

The megalodemon shrugged, slow and heavy. 

“You’re not making a good case for yourself.” Tanaïs snarled. A blade materialized in their hand.

“Tanaïs,” Aurèle warned.

“When a sorcerex dies, you give a little back.” Alazacis blinked. “A little bit of all you took from us.”

Aurèle stepped forward, carefully coming between his mestre and the megalodemon. “Okay, well, we don’t want any of that, so. How do we help you? How do we make it not happen again?”

Alazacis turned its head, scratching behind its neck ridge with a clawed hand. “We do not need your death, it is just the easiest way. If something else from your world was sacrificed, that could also do.”

“Something else?” Aurèle said. “Like what?”

Alazacis shrugged. 

“Why tell us this now?” Tanaïs asked, knuckles white on their sword hilt. “Why not forty years ago, and avoid all that bloodshed?”

“We… lacked the understanding that… you were creatures to communicate with.”

Aurèle frowned. “What changed?”

The megalodemon blinked its opalescent eyes. “Not so different, what you call demons and what you call cats. We have never been combined before. We are… augmented.” It lowered its face startlingly close to Aurèle. “You summon fish.”

“I… I do,” he said, panic spearing his gut as the megalodemon’s furnace-hot breath washed over him. “Yep. I… could give you some, if you promise not to kill anybody?”

Alazacis sniffed at Aurèle’s face. “It will not satisfy our entire world, but it will do for now.”

“Really?” he squeaked.

“I cannot believe this,” Tanaïs muttered.

“You will find a better solution soon,” Alazacis said. “For all your world.”

“We will,” Aurèle promised hastily. “Tell them, Tanaïs. Promise with me.”

Tanaïs hesitated, but ultimately let the sword evanesce. “Very well. We will seek another way to replenish the resources our magic takes from your world.” They looked straight into Alazacis’ enormous eyes. “But give us time. It will not be easy to convince people to change.”

“Hey, uh,” Aurèle said, having an idea. “Cats—pretty cool, right?”

Alazacis turned its focus to him. 

He quailed but pushed on. “Being a cat is fun, too. And—and you said it’s… not so different from being a demon?”

Alazacis shrugged, casually. 

“So, you know,” he let out a shaky exhale. “Instead of, you know, giant laser death monsters, when you guys get hungry, maybe you could try being cats for a while. You’ll… get lots of fish, and probably no one will die. Think you can do that?”

Alazacis scratched its neck again, thoughtfully. “Your pigeons do have potential.”

“Great!” Aurèle said, with frantic cheerfulness. “Awesome, it’s a deal. Yes to cats, no to murder.”

The megalodemon closed its eyes, and with that, its form began to dissolve and pool thickly into the bottom of the sphere.

Tanaïs broke the containment field with a word. A pile of cats dropped harmlessly to the ground. Three immediately chased a nearby bird, while another rolled onto its back in a pile of leaves.

“So,” Tanaïs said, blinking at this, “now there are a lot of cats.”

“Not how I was expecting this to go,” Aurèle admitted, thoroughly shaken. “What happens next?”

“Next?” The mestre straightened their robes. “Next we have a world of study ahead of us.” 

Aurèle glanced at them. “You still want to teach me?”

“You did excellent work today,” Tanaïs said. “You likely averted disaster.”

“I also punched you in the face.”

Tanaïs waved dismissively. “I accept your apology. Next time you are… having a bad day, you have my permission to stay home.” They exhaled. “And perhaps I should apply the same rule to myself.”

Aurèle smiled, broad and honest. “That sounds pretty great.”

Tanaïs nodded. “Then it is decided. After all,” they said, “that punch was rather remarkable. Perhaps you didn’t notice, but you did summon a significant percussive force without a single syllable. That was no spell I ever taught you.”

“Oh, huh,” Aurèle said. “You’re right, I didn’t realize.”

“I knew I had not misjudged your potential.” Tanaïs smiled. “And… I am sorry about what I said. About your sister.”

Aurèle exhaled. “Thank you. It was a shit thing to say.”

“Agreed.”

“Apology accepted, then.” Aurèle glanced over to the skybikes, where Caius was looking at them. “Mestre, if you’ll excuse me, there’s something I’ve got to do.”

Tanaïs nodded, and Aurèle walked over.

“The hero of the day,” Caius said, beaming. “And, you finally flew. Had fun up there?”

He managed a smile. “Not really, but I guess it could have been worse.”

Eyes set with determination, Aurèle reached out and hooked his fingers around Caius’s lapel, then pulled him close. Caius laughed and squeezed him, and Aurèle buried his face into the thick familiar scarf. He closed his eyes, not even caring that he was trembling, or that his glasses would probably get smudged. He couldn’t imagine a better place right now in the entire world. 

“Your teacher’s looking at us very pointedly,” Caius said, after a moment.

Aurèle’s voice was muffled. “They’re not a fan of uh, worldly distractions.”

“Am I that distracting?” 

Aurèle could hear the smirk in his voice. He gave him a little shove. “Hey, I need to see where Irénée went. Uh. See you later?” He blushed. 

“You know it.” Caius’s eyes sparkled. 

His sister, it turned out, was crouching down behind the skybikes. Playing with a cat, all white and orange and brown fluff.

Tears welled up in Aurèle’s eyes and he ran the rest of the way. “Zinna!” 

Irénée grinned at him, crying too. 

“Zinna came back,” Aurèle marveled. The cat rubbed against his shin, purring loudly.

“They did,” Irénée said. She sniffed. “So… I only caught part of that, but… Is our kitty a demon now?”

“Man, I don’t even know,” Aurèle said with a sigh. He sat down on the ground to better scratch behind Zinna’s ear, heedless of the cold damp earth. “But I think we’re gonna need to buy a lot of fish.”

*******************************************************

"Pancakes, cherries, and blessed blessed coffee," he says. He takes a sip. "Parisian coffee. Amazing."

"That was a really good story," Maya says. She takes a pancake from the top of the stack, rolls it up and eats it. "I loved how the therapy had actually helped. And the demons turning into cats!"

The library cat is napping on one of the other chairs, but his ears twitch at that. The colours of his fur seem to have reset to his more normal brindle overnight.

"Yes, it was excellent," he says. "Nice to read about people succeeding for a change. Also, I really appreciate the food. And most especially the coffee." He deposits a cherry stone in his empty coconut bowl from yesterday.

"I'm going to wash my hands," Maya says, licking sugar and butter off her fingers as she finishes the last pancake in the stack.

"I'd better do that too. And then we should see what else the library has for us."

When they get back to the chairs, Maya picks up the next book. "View from the Fifth Floor, by Ken Gerber and Brian Hirt."

"Ah. I think that's about a plague," he says. "Are you up for that?"

"The cholera in The Cunning Man was bad enough," she mutters. "But all right." 

The cat settles himself on Maya's lap, and they read.