Chapter Sixteen
~
Halo
The White Herons gathered at their airship’s lounge, discussing their imprisoned comrade.
“Can’t you find her on the radar?” Xeila asked Jeremiah.
Orphenn answered for him. “Her crest was most likely stolen when they shoved her in the cell. We can’t trust the tracker. There’s no way to exactly locate her unless I go and find her myself. I know she’s in the dungeon, at least.”
“Alright then, Orphenn.” Sven patted his shoulder. “Show us how it’s done. Let’s bring our Little Drifter back home.”
Orphenn nodded. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He opened them again slowly. Then they rolled back, and his head lolled when his knees gave, and he collapsed onto the lounge’s cushioned sofa.
Orphenn watched from afar as the others swarmed around his body. In this form, which he had decided to name Halo, he discovered that he could choose whether he would really touch something, or go straight through it like a hologram. He needed only to wish it.
To hint to the others that Orphenn had left his body safely, Eynochia, who miraculously had the eyes to see him in the Halo form, smiled and said, “Hurry back, Angel Face.” She stared at his sparkling apparition, his eyes like molten gold, and her smile widened.
Orphenn smiled back at her, his face an odd panorama of happiness that no one else could see.
“I will.” Came his distant echo. Then he turned slowly, his wings twirling behind him as glistening veils, toward the wide, bolted picture window.
“You look like a pixie.” Eynochia threw the comment at him in the last moment.
Orphenn laughed, a sound that pervaded like honey in water.
“Jerk.” His voice faded into the air almost as soon as he spoke, but still Eynochia heard him.
Orphenn jumped, and flew his pixie self out of the Day Star’s hull and across the wastelands, into the castle of Ardara.
This time when Cinder woke in the cell, after passing out from the pain, Wynne was chained beside her. If their backs were visible, one could’ve seen that Cinder’s brand had already healed, leaving an E shaped pink scar, while Wynne’s was still crusted and blistering. Wynne was speaking with Music Man.
“…What will happen now? What are we going to do?” He distressed. Cinder stared at him, at the metal ring clamped to his neck. His neck looked like hers now, bloodied, yellowing with bruises, veins protruding.
“I don’t know.” Music Man said, still with his back to them, always hindered by the stockade that trapped his head and arms. It also constantly scraped against the device where it came around his neck, causing even more discomfort, if imaginable. “But at least neither of us is alone anymore. We’ll figure it out together.”
“Ehey…Music Man…” Cinder beckoned drowsily.
“Music Man?” Laughed Wynne. “You’re notorious, Old Man!”
“Yeah, well….”
“Ugh….What happened?” Cinder asked, feeling her lip split.
Wynne drooped in his binds. “We were branded.” He said sadly. “I’m to blame. I should have thought ahead. I’m so sor-”
“Don’t apologize. I don’t want to hear it.” Cinder ordered.
His mouth clicked closed.
After an interval, Cinder spoke. “Wynne…What was she talking about? Before?”
“Ardara?”
“Yes. You…Helped to assault a cell guard?”
“Oh…That…” he looked down bashfully.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing really, I-it was just an experiment.”
“Curiosity branded the cat and locked it in a cell,” sang Music Man in a mocking melody.
“No,” Wynne corrected lengthily, “Ardara branded the cat-I mean me-and branded-I mean-oh, damn. You always jumble me up!”
Music Man let out a triumphant “Ha!” and Cinder giggled. Then she frowned in the realization that not only was she laughing in the midst of one of her most dangerous predicaments, but she saw that Wynne and Music Man seemed to share a filial bond-similar to that of Sven and Orphenn.
“But what happened?” she said finally.
Wynne relented. “I used my gift, and tried something, merely out of curiosity. It worked, and I would have been able to help you escape if it hadn’t been for…”
“My sister.”
He nodded.
“What is your gift?” Questioned Cinder.
“My gifts…” he contemplated, “…For lack of a better word, are moody.”
“Moody?” She chuckled. Again…Laughing? What was it about these two that she found so amusing? Well, she was glad at least that they lifted her spirits a bit.
“Unpredictable.” Wynne clarified. “Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they backfire, sometimes they cooperate. At times I might as well be rendered human.”
“That’s very odd. Well…What can you do?”
“I can…” he paused, searching his mind for words. “Manipulate time. And impose slumber on another.”
“You can go back in time? And into the future?”
“No, my friend. No one has that power.”
“Oh…So you can stop time?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you can make someone sleep?”
“On occasion.”
“Well what’s the catch then?”
“I can’t say why, but there comes a time when my powers just stop. With no explanation, sometimes for months on end. That’s the reason Ardara favored Dacian over me. His gifts were more reliable I suppose.”
“So…”
“My eyes stay the same, but I’m left inept and defenseless.”
“I see. It’s not all that bad, is it?”
“Not to me. But in Dacian’s eyes, it’s weakness.”
“What about that purple girl? The one that was there at the warehouse? And pinned me to the wall in the boiler room?”
“Oh…Nyx. I really have no idea why she’s here to tell you the truth. But Ardara seems to have a soft spot for her.”
When Orphenn reached the dungeon, there was no sound but for the echoed dripping of a leaky pipe. But then he heard the clinking of chains and happy laughter from deep within. He followed the euphoria, such a strange sound to hit the ears in a place like this, and he found the source rather quickly.
As he neared the correct cell, he recognized the voice he had longed to hear.
“She’s not even Enma.” Cinder assumed.
“Actually, I’ve discovered she was recently mutated. Her gift is quite unique. She helped in the ambush at Plenthin.”
Orphenn started. Wynne? He couldn’t imagine what the pink-eyed man had done to deserve an Ardaran dungeon sentence. He listened.
“Ambush. Were there any fatalities?” Cinder queried anxiously.
“Only Ardaran casualties, rest assured. There was an airship bombed, but no one was hurt. The White Herons were spared from harm. And I bet they fought violently. There were no soldiers left when Dacian and Nyx returned.”
Orphenn recalled Dacian and the Ardaran soldiers at the Plenthin fueling dock. He was now even more thankful that Jeremiah had been able to thwart that second bomb.
He gracefully moved to the iron bars, invisible. This cell was entirely of metal, instead of inlaid sandstone like the others, and thoroughly reinforced. It was apparently meant for more threatening prisoners. Inside this metal cell, there was a man in a stockade, who looked surprisingly at ease, despite how ill and weak he must have been.
Orphenn sighed. Already, he could feel the Halo’s energy waning.
Unseen, Orphenn flowed through the bars, a glistening phantom. He knelt as close to Cinder as he could without touching her. Though he wanted to let her know he was there, somehow.
Cinder turned to speak to Wynne, but stiffened with a gasp as goose bumps rose on her skin. Orphenn saw his wing had brushed against hers, and jumped back. Then he spotted a glint of gold at Cinder’s belt. Feeling suddenly stingy, as if it were a squabble between siblings over who’s playing with whose special toy, Orphenn tugged his pistol from her belt. Wynne was wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Incidentally, this gave Cinder the clue she needed.
“Orphenn.” She smirked, gazing at the levitating firearm.
Perfect, thought Orphenn. Now it’s time to put my new trick to use.
He stuffed the pistol back into Cinder’s belt, stinginess vanished. Then he grasped her chains. His fingers tightened vigorously on the iron. They began to glow-not with red heat, but with warm light. The links seemed to vibrate, until they vanished in bright, firefly-like particles, that circled and faded as they floated to the ceiling; freeing Cinder from her binds.
She stretched, and laughed. “Orphenn, you clever dog!”
Wynne remained awestruck, even as his own restraints were erased in gold light. And even still, when Music Man’s stockade began to glow, and finally disappear.
Orphenn thought of erasing Ardara’s devices from their necks as well, but knew, regrettably, that he wouldn’t have enough energy, and feared that it would kill them besides. So he made a hole in the iron bars for them to escape through, as there was no key.
A fear rose in his stomach. He felt, like a rope at his spine, a force pulling him back to his body.
Back at the ship, his body’s eyes and mouth had opened wide. The shell breathed deeply, its back arching, and with every one of its breaths, Orphenn felt another tug. The body was greedily, urgently calling back to the soul-for it couldn’t go too long without a spirit or it would die; leaving the soul to wander.
So he turned and left the castle, faster than he expected he could.
Eynochia watched in amazement as Orphenn’s glittering spirit fell back into his body’s shell, like two pieces to a puzzle. He gasped, and full consciousness came to his eyes. He sat up shakily, leaning into Eynochia to catch his breath.
“Did you do it?” She asked eagerly.
He smiled.