Ignis looked at Ravina as debris continued falling around them. The wind screamed past, carrying the scent of burning metal and smoke that filled his lungs with every breath. Below them, the ground was so far it looked like a painted landscape, the fields and roads reduced to abstract patterns.
"Come fast or I'll leave you!" Ravina shouted over the roar of wind, her body already regenerating the burns across her arms where Lee's chainsaw had grazed her. The skin knitted itself back together in seconds, perfect and unblemished, as if the damage had never existed. Her hair whipped around her face, wild and tangled.
"I'm coming!" Ignis called back, flames erupting from his hands and feet, using them like jets to propel himself through the air. The technique was crude, inefficient, but it worked. He could feel the heat against his own skin, uncomfortably hot but not quite burning. His muscles strained with the effort of maintaining control while falling at terminal velocity.
Then Ravina's body went limp.
It happened mid-sentence, mid-movement. One moment she was maneuvering through falling debris with that same chaotic energy she brought to everything, the next she was simply falling, her limbs loose, her eyes closed, her body as lifeless as the wreckage tumbling past them. No warning. No gradual weakening. Just instant collapse.
She dropped like a stone, her tall frame twisting as the wind caught her differently now that she wasn't controlling her descent.
Ignis watched her fall for maybe two seconds, his mind calculating trajectory, wind resistance, the distance to the ground far below. The physics were bad. If she hit the ground at this speed, even her regeneration might not be fast enough. *So she's exhausted. Regeneration isn't free.*
He adjusted his flames, angling himself into a dive, and went after her. The wind resistance increased immediately, his eyes watering, his ears popping from the pressure change as he accelerated. The ground rushed up faster now, details becoming clearer individual trees, roads, the outline of a small town.
He caught her maybe three hundred meters from impact, his arms wrapping around her unconscious form in an awkward embrace. She was heavier than she looked, all that height and enhanced muscle density creating weight his scrawny frame wasn't designed to carry. The sudden additional mass threw off his balance, his flames flickering dangerously.
The flames from his hands and feet intensified, pushing against gravity, slowing their descent but not stopping it. His arms screamed in protest, his shoulders feeling like they might dislocate from the strain. They hit the ground hard—a field outside some small town, the earth soft from recent rain but still solid enough to hurt.
Ignis felt something crack in his chest when they impacted. Sharp pain radiated through his torso, making it difficult to breathe. A rib, maybe two. But he was Blessed. The bones would heal.
Ravina didn't move. Didn't react to the impact at all. Her breathing was shallow but steady, her body's automatic functions continuing even while her consciousness had shut down completely. Blood trickled from her nose—not from external injury, but from the internal strain of pushing her regeneration too far, too fast.
Ignis lay there for several seconds, staring up at the sky where the debris field was still visible a spreading cloud of metal and fabric and other things he didn't want to think about. His chest hurt with every breath, a sharp stabbing sensation that confirmed the broken ribs. But he could breathe. That was what mattered.
*We need to move. Now. Before someone comes to investigate the crash site.*
But his body wasn't cooperating. The broken ribs made breathing difficult, and his legs felt like jelly after maintaining those flames for so long. He'd pushed his powers harder in the last ten minutes than he had in the previous year combined. Every muscle ached. His head pounded from dehydration and exertion.
*Just a minute. Just one minute to catch my breath, then we move.*
The minute stretched into five. No sign of anyone approaching. The town in the distance showed no unusual activity—no sirens, no emergency vehicles rushing toward the crash site. Maybe they hadn't seen. Maybe they didn't care. Or maybe in Nazi-occupied territory, people had learned not to investigate strange events too closely.
Finally, with tremendous effort, Ignis pushed himself to his feet. His ribs screamed in protest, sending white-hot pain through his chest. He ignored it, bent down, and grabbed Ravina under the arms. She was complete dead weight, her tall frame making it awkward to maneuver.
He managed to get her into a fireman's carry across his shoulders, her body draped over him like a sack of grain. Then he started walking, each step sending jolts of pain through his chest, heading toward the distant lights of the town.
---
**Six Hours Later - A Hotel Room**
The hotel was the kind of place that rented rooms by the hour and didn't ask questions. The neon sign outside flickered intermittently, buzzing with electrical problems that nobody bothered to fix. Inside, the carpet was worn thin, the wallpaper peeling in corners, and everything smelled faintly of cigarettes and cleaning chemicals that didn't quite mask older, more unpleasant odors.
Ignis had found it after carrying Ravina for nearly an hour, his body finally giving out when he'd spotted the flickering sign. The clerk behind the desk a tired-looking woman in her fifties with nicotine-stained fingers and bags under her eyes had taken one look at his bloodied clothes and Ravina's unconscious form and simply quoted a price. No questions. No concern. Just business.
He'd paid with bills from Ravina's jacket pocket, the money from those drug dealers they'd killed back in Berlin. The clerk had given him a key, pointed toward the stairs with one yellow-stained finger, and returned to her magazine without another word.
The room was small. One bed with sheets that were clean but worn thin from countless washings. A bathroom with a shower that dripped steadily, the sound echoing in the quiet. A window that looked out over an alley where trash bins overflowed and cats prowled. The kind of place where people came to hide or to fuck or to die, and nobody cared which.
Ignis had dropped Ravina on the bed, then spent the next two hours dealing with practical problems.
Her clothes were destroyed burned, torn, soaked in blood both hers and from other people on the train. They smelled like death and smoke and something chemical that made his eyes water. He'd pulled them off her with the same mechanical efficiency he'd learned working at the brothel, not looking at her body as anything other than a problem to solve. Just another task. Just another body that needed handling.
He'd tried to wake her first. Shaken her shoulders hard enough that her head lolled. Slapped her face, not gently. Even used small bursts of flame against her arm, careful to keep the heat low enough that it wouldn't cause serious damage. Her regeneration had activated automatically, healing the minor burns immediately, skin knitting back together in seconds. But she hadn't even twitched. Whatever internal battery powered her Blessed abilities had been completely drained.
So he'd thrown away her clothes, stuffing them into a garbage bag and leaving it in the hallway for whoever handled such things. Then he'd taken the longest shower of his life, standing under water that was barely warm, watching pink-tinged water circle the drain as blood and smoke and the residue of violence washed away. His ribs had already started healing, the sharp pain dulling to a constant ache.
He'd collapsed on the floor next to the bed afterward, too exhausted to care about comfort, and passed out almost immediately.
When he woke, dawn light was filtering through the thin curtains, painting everything in shades of gray and pale yellow. His ribs had healed overnight, just a lingering soreness remaining. The exhaustion had dulled but not disappeared that would take days to fully recover from.
Ravina was still unconscious. Her breathing remained steady, her body occasionally twitching as if she were dreaming. Whatever dreams Blessed psychopaths had, he didn't want to know.
He'd gone out then, finding a cheap clothing store just opening its metal shutters. An old man ran it, selling secondhand clothes that smelled of mothballs and other people's lives. Ignis had bought the plainest things he could find a dark gray hoodie, black elastic-waist pants, generic underwear. All approximately her size, which he'd had to estimate.
The old man had counted out change with shaking hands, never making eye contact, never asking why a teenage boy was buying women's clothes at dawn. That was the nice thing about places like this nobody asked questions they didn't want answers to.
Now Ignis was back, carrying that plastic bag, opening the door to find her awake and screaming.
---
Ravina's eyes snapped open to unfamiliar surroundings. Soft light. Clean sheets. The smell of soap and something else underneath
cigarettes, old sweat, the accumulated scent of transient lives.
She was wrapped in a blanket.
Completely naked underneath.
Her mind raced through fragmented memories. The train. Lee. Fighting. Falling. Then nothing. Just a black void where hours should have been. She looked around wildly
a hotel room, small and cheap, a window showing an alley, a bathroom door slightly ajar.
*Did Ignis and I... did we have sex?*
The thought came unbidden, followed immediately by confusion. Why would that happen? They'd been fighting for their lives. Unless she'd blacked out and something had occurred while she was unconscious, something she couldn't remember, something that—
*No. No no no. I was fighting with that guy. We were falling. Why am I naked?*
Horror crept up her spine, cold and viscous.
*Did he rape me?*
Her heart pounded. Her hands gripped the blanket tighter.
The door opened.
Ignis entered, carrying a plastic bag. His expression was neutral, showing nothing. He paused when he saw she was awake, his dark eyes meeting hers briefly before looking away. "So you're wake up."
Ravina's voice came out high and sharp, panic overriding her usual control. "Did you buy condoms to fuck me?!"
Ignis blinked, his face showing the first hint of expresswak mild confusion, maybe annoyance. "Of course not."
"Then why am I NAKED?!"
"Because you stink." He said it flatly, like he was explaining something obvious to someone slow. "I threw your clothes away. They were covered in blood and burned and smelled like a corpse."
"You could have woken me up so I could throw them away myself!" Her voice was still too loud, too shrill, embarrassment mixing with lingering fear.
"I tried." Ignis set the bag down on the small table near the window. Dust motes danced in the morning light. "I actually used flames on you. Small ones. Targeted. You didn't wake up. Your regeneration kept healing the burns but you stayed unconscious."
Ravina processed this, her panic starting to recede as logic reasserted itself. If he'd tried to wake her, if he'd just been dealing with practical problems... "Why didn't you just eat me then? Consume me completely, take my powers?"
Ignis paused, his hand hovering over the plastic bag. "Nice thought. I forgot about that."
"I thought you'd say 'No, I don't do cowardly things like that' or 'I love you' or—" Her voice had shifted, taking on that performative quality, trying to regain control through humor.
"Shut up." He turned to face her, his expression flat. "Do you think we're in a movie or something?"
"Yes!" The word came out too bright, too enthusiastic. "I see the world like there's a big camera watching me as the heroine, watching you as the potential hero—"
"I don't want to be anyone's hero." His voice was cold, final.
"People like heroes like you—"
"Shut up." He reached into the bag.
Ravina's eyes widened. "Are you bringing out condoms—"
"New clothes." He pulled out a hoodie first, then pants. Both cheap, both secondhand, both smelling faintly of mothballs.
Her mind finally caught up with the situation. "Wait. Money? Where are we anyway? I forgot to ask, stupid me."
"Your money. From the drug dealers. We used it to stay in this hotel and I bought these clothes." His voice remained flat, emotionless.
"We could have bought a camera with that! Or an advanced recording robot that works from a distance—"
"My bad. Now wear these."
Ravina grinned suddenly, some of her usual energy returning. "Wear me yourself if you dare."
Without hesitation, without any change in expression, Ignis stepped forward and pulled the blanket off her.
"HUH?!"
Ravina's arms moved instinctively to cover herself, her face flushing red. But Ignis was already moving, holding out the hoodie, pulling it over her head while she was still processing. He maneuvered her arms through the sleeves like she was a doll or a mannequin, his hands quick and efficient, touching her body with complete detachment. Then he handed her the pants.
She stared at him, genuinely shocked. "Why did you put these on without feeling anything? You just... you didn't even react..."
"I'm used to it." The words came out automatic, without thought.
The room went quiet. Outside, a car alarm was going off somewhere, the sound distant and tinny. The dripping from the bathroom continued its steady rhythm.
Ravina's grin returned, but sharper now. Testing. "So you must have slept with many women then. Damn, you got game!"
Ignis said nothing. He moved toward the window, looking out at the alley below where an orange cat was investigating a trash bin.
"Hey. Hey!" She pushed at his shoulder when he didn't respond. "Say something, Ignis!"
His voice came out barely above a whisper. "I was a sex worker. Before."
The pushing stopped.
Ravina froze, her hand still on his shoulder. She looked at him really looked, taking in his slight frame, his too-neutral expression, the way he held himself with practiced detachment.
Then she pulled her knees to her chest and said one word "what a loser! I thought you actually had game but you were just getting paid by it lol! "
Then she pulled the blanket over her head, covering herself completely, creating a cocoon of darkness.
Under the blanket, hidden from sight, a single tear ran down her cheek. Just one. Then nothing else.
Ignis stood there thought to himself
"This laugh isn't usual what I heard from her,
This laugh is forced she is hiding something but what?"
He watching the blanket-covered shape. His throat felt tight. He turned toward the door. "Whatever. I'm going then."
"Wait, where are you going?" Her voice was muffled by the blanket.
"To bring some food. Are you coming?"
"Sure!" The blanket moved as she pushed it off and stood up.
Her legs buckled immediately. She crashed to the floor with a heavy thud, her knees hitting the worn carpet.
"Fuck," she said quietly, looking down at her useless legs. They twitched but wouldn't support her weight.
*Everything has consequences,* she thought. *Regeneration prioritized vital organs. The muscle damage was low priority. They'll heal, but not yet.*
"You go and bring food, my cameraman," she said, forcing brightness back into her voice.
"Alright." Ignis stepped through the door without looking back.
The door clicked shut.
Ravina sat on the floor for several seconds, staring at her legs. Then she crawled back to the bed actually crawled, pulling herself across the cheap carpet and hauled herself onto the mattress.
She lay on her side, staring at the ceiling fan. It was old, wobbling slightly as it rotated. Dust had collected on the blades.
"Sex worker," she whispered to the empty room.
The words hung in the air. The fan kept rotating. Outside, the car alarm finally stopped.
---
**Outside - Morning Streets**
The city was small, maybe twenty thousand people. The kind of place that existed between larger destinations without having much identity of its own. Dutch flags hung from some buildings. Nazi imagery was present but less overwhelming than in Berlin
red banners with black swastikas, propaganda posters showing idealized soldiers and workers, but interspersed with older architecture that predated the occupation.
People moved through the streets with morning purpose. Workers in practical clothes heading to factories or offices. Shop owners opening their businesses, rolling up metal shutters, sweeping sidewalks. Children walking to school, their voices high and excited, talking about something that had nothing to do with war or occupation or the train that had exploded yesterday.
Ignis walked among them, his hands in his jacket pockets, his face carefully neutral. Nobody gave him a second glance. He was just another teenager, slightly scruffy but not threatening, not remarkable. In places like this, being unremarkable was a survival skill.
*I want to die.*
The thought came automatically, familiar, like an old song. It wasn't even particularly emotional anymore, just a fact that lived in his brain alongside other facts.
*What does this life even mean? So awkward. So boring. Nothing changes. Same shit, different scenery.*
He found a small market one of those hybrid places that sold both groceries and prepared food, catering to people who didn't have time or space to cook properly. The prices were marked in both Eisentaler and Euros, the currency transition still awkward years after occupation. A radio played quietly behind the counter, news in Dutch that Ignis couldn't understand.
He bought bread that was already a day old and discounted, cheap cheese that came in individual plastic wrappers, some kind of prepared meat that might have been ham, a few bruised apples from the discount bin, and two bottles of water. The total came to maybe fifteen Eisentaler.
The clerk a teenage girl, maybe his age, with tired eyes and dyed purple hair showing dark roots rang him up without interest. She barely looked at him, just scanned items and accepted his money and counted out change with mechanical precision. Then she returned to watching something on her phone, earbuds blocking out the world.
Ignis tucked the food into the plastic bag and headed back toward the hotel. His mind churned through the morning's events as he walked, replaying that moment in the room.
*Why did she go cold like that? Why did she just say "loser" and hide?*
Ravina's reaction played on repeat in his memory. No performance. No chaos. Just one word and retreat.
*Maybe she has some past with sex workers. Maybe she knew someone who was, someone who got hurt. Or maybe I reminded her of her own trauma.*
The thought felt strange. The idea that Ravina
who laughed at murder, who treated violence like entertainment might have her own buried pain.
*But everyone has something. Everyone's damaged somehow.*
He thought of the brothel. Of the years there. Of what he'd learned about people when they thought nobody was watching. Everyone had trauma. The difference was just how they expressed it.
*Whatever. Now isn't the time for psychology. I need to focus on my revenge on that demon*
He reached the hotel, climbed the stairs that creaked under his weight, heard sounds from other rooms someone coughing wetly, a TV playing too loud, what might have been an argument in a language he didn't recognize.
He opened the door.
Ravina was back in bed, the blanket pulled to her chin, staring at the ceiling with an expression he'd never seen on her face before. Something lost.
She didn't look at him when he entered.
Ignis set the food on the table and said nothing.
They sat in silence as morning became afternoon.
---
**The Netherlands Coast - Dawn**
The ship's engines shut down with a final, dying whine that echoed across the water. Carmilla stood at the railing, a fresh cigarette already between her lips despite having finished one barely two minutes ago. The smoke curled away into the morning air, dissipating quickly in the breeze coming off the North Sea.
"We finally reached land," she said, though nobody had asked. "After far too long."
"It's been a while since I touched actual ground," Angela replied from somewhere behind her. Her voice was distant, disconnected, the same way it had been since waking from that memory of childhood trauma.
Eve stood at the opposite railing, her crimson eyes fixed on the coastline ahead. The Netherlands stretched before them flat, geometrically organized, efficient in that particularly Dutch way that reminded her of circuit boards and logical systems. Windmills dotted the landscape, both the old picturesque kind and modern industrial versions. Water was everywhere, channeled through canals, controlled and directed, the entire landscape a testament to human determination to impose order on nature.
*We can't act like we're lost pirates or travelers who haven't eaten properly,* Eve thought, watching her companions with that analytical attention that came naturally to her synthetic mind. *Especially these two.*
Her gaze shifted to Carmilla, who was now on her third cigarette of the morning despite the sun barely being up. The scientist smoked with mechanical precision, each drag exactly the same length, each exhale aimed the same direction, like she'd turned even this vice into a formula.
*Miss Carmilla smokes constantly. Chain-smokes when she's thinking. Drinks coffee like it's water. Actually, it should be me saying she can't eat properly, but here she is, functioning, maintaining her intellect.*
Then to Angela, who had pulled an apple from their meager supplies and was eating it mechanically, chewing without tasting, just consuming because consuming food was what humans did.
*And Lady Angela. She eats regular meals. She maintains the performance of humanity even though her synthetic body processes food differently now. She goes through all the motions of being alive.*
*And here I am. Unable to eat, unable to drink, unable to recharge or oil my joints or do any of the maintenance tasks I should require. I don't understand why. My systems say I'm functional, but I feel...*
She paused in her thoughts, searching for the right word.
*Empty. I feel empty. Like there's a space inside me that should be filled with something, and that something is missing. Is this hunger? Is this what biological beings experience when they need food?*
*Funny, isn't it? A robot feeling hunger. It must be something new. Something the synthetic soul created.*
The ship bumped gently against the dock, wood creaking, ropes groaning as they took the vessel's weight.
"Let's move," Carmilla said, stubbing out her cigarette on the railing, leaving a small black mark. "We've wasted enough time already. Valenora is somewhere inland, and we need to find it before—"
"Before what?" Angela interrupted, her voice sharp. "Before someone else gets there? Before whatever's waiting kills us? We don't even know what we're looking for."
"Which is why we need to move. Now."
Eve stepped off the ship first, her synthetic feet touching the wooden dock. The sensation was different from the ship's deck
more stable, more permanent. The wood creaked slightly under her weight, old planks worn smooth by countless footsteps.
She looked back at Angela, who was gathering her small bundle of possessions, moving with that mechanical precision that mirrored Eve's own movements more than she probably realized.
Their eyes met briefly.
*She still doesn't forgive me,* Eve thought. *Why she still looking at me tho it's because I used to emotionaless Or when I never give her the comfort she needed*
*But she still keeps me close. Still shows moments of concern. What are we to each other?*
Carmilla stepped onto the dock last, already lighting another cigarette. Her remaining hand shook slightly as she brought it to her lips
barely noticeable, but Eve's enhanced vision caught it.
"The Netherlands isn't occupied by nazi however they are nearby," Carmilla said quietly, more to herself than them. "Security will be tight. Questions will be asked."
She looked at Eve, then Angela. "We're three women traveling without clear documentation or purpose. That's suspicious."
"So we lie," Angela said flatly. "We've done it before."
"Yes. We lie."
They stood together on the dock, three broken people in a foreign country, searching for something they didn't fully understand.
The morning sun climbed higher, painting the sky in shades of orange and gold.
Somewhere ahead lay Valenora.
And whatever waited there answers or death or something worse they would find it.
Because they had nowhere else to go.