The ferry ride had been fourteen days of salt spray and the unsettling sensation of impending doom.
So much so that Relik's heart had taken the initiative of skipping every other beat.
He had spent most of the trip leaning against the railing, staring into the dark water, trying to ignore his negative thoughts. Yet nothing allowed him to rest.
He had fallen asleep due to exhaustion once so far. The only pity being that it only lasted a few hours before he was awake again.
Lost in wondering how he would be received, would his perspective even matter. He had even wondered what the city looked like.
Relik was allowed such a long time to think that he even found himself hoping that everyone was wrong about the city that he would be met with grace.
He couldn't fully believe that.
As the third morning came; the tallest tower of Potaan's temple loomed.
While Rému's seemed to incorporate the surrounding city, the Temple here seemed to be the city itself. Its spires climbed toward the sky with elegant obsidian pillars, whilst it spread across the coast like a jagged, black crown.
It was a continuous mass that seemed to be carved out of black stone and adorned with tempered steel. The overhanging cliffs held up by even more constructed pillars. Massive iron chains of links the size of the ferry, draped from the higher tiers down to the harbour, anchoring the port to the earth as if they feared it could ever float away.
The ferry had docked itself alongside a crowded dry dock for unloading.
The other two had joined Relik offering a pat on the back as though they expected it to be the last time they saw him alive.
"That is the Iron Spire," Logun muttered, standing behind Relik. He looked unusually sober; his eyes fixed on the massive central tower that pierced the clouds. "A death sentence for anyone under questioning."
The three of them gathered their belongings and left the ferry, heading towards Logun's residence.
The Hands of this city seemed to stand in as sentinels dressed in all black compared to the whites of Rému. In addition, they wore metal helmets and stood at every gangplank, armed with spears.
The sound of metal clanging and hammers pounding provided an eerie backdrop that Relik knew he would never grow acquainted with.
"Stay close," Wyva whispered, his usual playful smirk replaced by a tight, professional line. "And for Astra's sake, keep your head down. The Hands here don't have a sense of humor."
The transition from "visitor" to "prisoner" happened before Relik's boots even touched the city's first sidewalk.
A squad of six men in black, almost blue breast plates dropped from the buildings. Their movements were more like those of living statues than people. Their masks were faceless plates of polished steel, save for a single horizontal slit for their eyes.
The lead officer stepped forward, his voice a metallic rasp that seemed to vibrate in Relik's teeth. "Relik of the Von Vino Estate?"
Relik took a hesitant step forward, his throat dry and raised hand shaking, "I am."
He didn't get to say another word.
Two hands stepped in with incredible burst of speed Relik had seen only from Shink-Ra. Before he could even reach for his Iké, his arms were forced behind his back and a set of heavy, cold-iron shackles snapped around his wrists.
"Hey! He's with us!" Wyva reacted, taking a stance ready to hit them with a strike of lightning. Instinctively, Logun caught his arm, shaking his head.
"We have to let them," Logun said, his voice strangely flat. "They probably had him moved to fugitive status after I left."
The Hands didn't acknowledge them. They reached out and grabbed Relik by the collar of his oversized cloak, dragging him along.
"By order of Shiear Hukaam," the Guard announced to the other two, "Relik of the Von Vino Estate has been upgraded from person of interest to fugitive. They are to be brought to the Spire for questioning at the nearest opportunity. An audience including the Shiear's lead advisor, a neutral guest, a defendant for the accused and a Hand of the Shiears choice, must convene at said location by half hour of the fugitive's arrest."
Relik stumbled along, trying to match the pace of the Hands so that he was not dragged like a common sack of produce. He looked back, desperate for a sign from Logun or Wyva, but they were already being blocked by a wall of other Hands that convened at the location.
He was being taken to the spire.
The very place where people like him stepped in but never stepped out.
As they entered the lift, a massive, iron-caged platform began to rise rapidly toward the clouds, Relik could tell this was going to be an experience worse than any before.
____________________________________________________________________________
At first Souki had fought for air. She had clawed at the invisible that held her in place. But as the days bled into a singular, shimmering blur, she realized the vacuum wasn't meant to kill her.
The magic circle at the base of the cylinder hummed with a sickly silver light, pulsing nutrients directly into her pores. She didn't need to swallow. She didn't need to breathe. She was being kept at the edge of life, a perpetual fire of sorts.
But the most terrifying thing wasn't her own state, it was Vanqis'.
From her suspended vantage point, she had become an expert on his routine. It was a clockwork nightmare. Every morning, or what she assumed was morning by the shift in the city's artificial glow, Vanqis would disappear for exactly fifteen minutes into a small alcove to shower.
Then, he would return.
He never left the lab, never attended the Shiear's court, never received messengers, and most hauntingly, he never ate. There were no plates in the lab, no smell of cooking, no "nature calls" that forced him to abandon his post. He would sit at his desk for twenty hours at a time, staring at the telemetry of her soul, his eyes never losing their sharp, predatory focus.
She began to wonder if the man was even a man at all. Was he, too, plugged in somewhere? Was this just an apparition? Was the Architect of the Empire just another piece of high-yield hardware, keeping himself alive on the very energy he stole from others?
"You're staring again, Souki," Vanqis remarked, not lifting his gaze from a brass ledger. "It's a common side effect of confinement. The mind seeks a pattern to keep from fracturing. I suppose I am the only pattern you have left."
He finally looked up, and for a split second, Souki thought she saw a flicker of the same silver light from her cylinder dancing behind his pupils.
"At this point you must wonder why you've never seen me dine," he mused, as if reading the frantic rhythm of her Iké, "Food is a crude way to sustain a complex system. Why would you eat bread when you can drink the light that made the grain grow?"
He stood up, walking toward her with that casual, terrifying grace.
"I have a gift for you. Or perhaps, a distraction." He tapped a sequence into the base of the tank. He drew an equation for her to read perfectly in reverse so that she could see it the right way from inside.
It was math.
She loved math.