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‘You look like you got run over, Agent Umbra.’
One of the first sentences his Commander had spoken to him the day after he had been officially made Veil Operative.
Maybe it was how he looked. He hadn’t given himself a good look in the mirror earlier that morning. Maybe the sense of duty of his promotion. It had plagued his mind and kept him up the night before, and now seeped into his posture and left him too tired to care for how he presented himself at the moment.
He had never bothered to think about his mental chastising to any extent afterwards.
Perhaps he had enjoyed his time as an Acolyte of the Veil; Nikolai had gotten to know the sound of the ambient noise of the training room quite well. He certainly hadn’t enjoyed the amount of paperwork and attention he had been given by the medical and psychological division of the agency over the past few weeks.
Had he missed his time before the OSV? There had never been a time in his life when his personal life and the OSV stood in separate lanes—always fraying at the edges, blurring at the seams.
There was a certain memory from when he was a child that had grown increasingly uneasy in his mind.
When his father returned home after a particularly strenuous mission. Wings bandaged but he could tell how battered and bruised they were under there.
The chagrin and strain in his movements as his father took sore steps that not even magic would help with other than making him more sore. He had been placed on medical leave for the entire month to recover, only returning to the headquarters for medical checkups.
Nikolai had always been a smart boy—as his mother would say—so prim and behaved, the taciturn propriety of a true-blooded Ashcroft.
He saw himself standing before his father’s casket at his funeral, having passed away a year after he had been promoted to Veil Warden.
His mother’s hands on her face as she wept the loss of her mate—he wanted to let out a sniffle, a tear, to have the feeling of his stomach churn and drop at the sight of his deceased father—cold and closed off, he would tell himself. That was what he always told himself.
Few have known of his father’s true work with the OSV, the agency never faltering in its covert way. His stomach could only churn at the sight of those putting up an act around his mother to earn her favor in her distressed state.
He hated it. All of them.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ they said. His father wasn’t lost, he was dead. He died in that ocean. Perhaps his soul drifted into the freedom of the ocean’s expanse, after having soared through the sky his entire life. Not lost. Never lost. Not when his mother had loved him, oh so dear.
He was a good man. A very good man. Ambitious, goal-oriented, and had dreamed of reaching for the stars. Perhaps it was something he and his father shared in common.
He could never escape the grasp of the bond he had with his father.
When he was young, his father had always told him to never stop wanting more and to stop at nothing to attain it. Perhaps that was what led to his inevitable death. He cursed himself for allowing himself to read the file that contained the cause of death of his father when he had gotten access. A horrible way of dying.
An act of humiliation for a man who shone as brightly as the stars.
His mother had taken more of the mental toll of his death. She couldn’t accept it. She had spent the first four months locked up in the master bedroom. Clinging onto whatever he had left—clothes, blankets, and the like until they had begun to lose the scent of his father.
He knew his mother could never bring herself to let go of his father, and he made no attempt to tell her to do so. Harpy Eagles tended to stay faithful even after the death of their partner.
It was only after much probing and tending to her basic needs that he convinced her to finally go out and have a much-needed talk with him.
Nikolai wanted to rip the world apart for tearing away the source of his mother’s happiness.
When he felt his mother’s arms wrap around him, he had choked out a sound that he hadn’t even realized had come from him. And cried, and cried, and cried, until his throat was sore and he had fallen asleep in his mother’s warm embrace.
Life after seemed devoid of any real meaning. A few years later, he found a steady routine after being accepted into the OSV’s training program under the direction of his father’s old colleagues.
Wake up earlier, train, eat, train some more, sleep, visit mother once a month, repeat. For the entirety of the training period, that was his life. Until he was officially made Veil Operative. He knew what type of work he was getting himself into, the espionage, operations, protection, and the whole lot.
Fresh out of adolescence, he told himself he was prepared for it.
When he was assigned his first mission, he thought of it like no other practice mission he had been given. Of course, there was a gravity in making sure the mission wouldn’t have to be aborted.
It was a simple reconnaissance mission. To infiltrate one of the ships of a high-ranking illegal magic ingredient smuggler and gather the needed observations to guide their next move regarding their leader.
Climbing onto the anchor. Slipping onto the bowsprit. Maneuvering onto the deck and moving through the large boat. It was easy to slip into the shadows and crevices of the massive ship.
He stayed on full alert, the deck creaking quietly under each step. The stormy night sky hid him away.
A faint hum thrummed behind his ears. ‘A mule at 7 o’clock heading in your direction. Agent Umbra, wait for my signal before I tell you to move.’ Wings folded tightly as he pressed against the large crates of smuggled cargo, crouching before dashing away once he had gotten the signal and entered the boat’s cabin.
‘Agent Umbra, three more mules heading towards your direction at 1 o’clock—another at 8 o’clock.’
Once the needed information had been gathered, everything had been going smoothly, that was until he heard a shout heading towards his direction.
‘Agent Umbra—move—qui—‘
His ears began to ring as the flashing of bombs momentarily blinded him, bright colors flashing in his vision.
“What the hell happened?!” he whispered into his whisperglyph. His ears screamed at the explosions and the flurry of debris stung his eyes.
Weapons drawn. Commands flew back and forth through his whisperglyph. He fought through the multiple lackeys. Mentally chiding himself as blood splattered across his dark uniform. He stifled out a pained sound when he felt a sharp blade pierce through the muscle of one of his wings, then the other as more mules started to appear.
‘Agent Umbra, there are too many. Agent Umbra, do you hear me? Agent Umbra!’
After that, everything turned into a blur. Stabbing into the neck of one of the mules, hitting an artery, and having blood spray all over him as the body fell limp against his.
The vague memory of the sickening sound of his ribs cracking and the long unsettling blank in his mind after his weapon had slipped out of his hands until he felt the air around him speed up as he was pushed off the ship—body coming in contact with the cold water and being engulfed by the ocean.
He heard the voice in the whisperglyph become nothing but the sound of a high-pitched frequency as the sigil’s magic had broken.
He gasped and water filled his lungs. His eyes shut, water soaked his wings and weighed him down, being thrown around in the currents and the crackling of thunder in the sky above him as he thrashed in the water.
It felt like he had been in there for hours, maybe days. A desperate struggle to cling onto the last bits of oxygen in the crashing tides of the ocean.
For a moment… everything had seemed silent while he was pulled down into the water. He was going to die the very same way his father had died. Drowning in the ocean after having been thrown off a ship. Battered and bruised like how he saw him return from headquarters after every mission when he was a child.
He never did get to see the stars or fly to the sun.
Goodness. He wishes he had done that when he still had the chance.
What would his mother say when she heard the news?
His poor mother.
His…
Nikolai awoke with a gasp, sweating as he sat up on the mattress, shaking as he looked at his surroundings.
Eyes wide, his feather crests raised, and chest heaving. He ran his hands over his face, tugging at his hair as he let out a groan of frustration. Not every day that the ghosts of the past pay him a visit. It had been years since he had thought about it. Let alone dream of it.
He wasn’t dead. He knew that when he woke up after being swallowed whole by the tides.
He vaguely remembered being awoken by bright lights. It must have been the afterlife, or wherever he ended up. His finger twitched, hurried and hasty chatter around him. He forced himself to open his eyes, pupils dilating as he took in his surroundings.
He had awoken in the medical bay of the OSV and not some dingy run-down island in the middle of nowhere that he was expecting to wash up on if the water in his lungs hadn’t done its job and killed him off.
He ran his fingers over his hair, reminding himself that it was over a decade ago. He stifled out a sound, pressing his palms against his throbbing eyelids, tossing and turning on the mattress he was lying on.
He wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t dead.
He was inside one of the cabin rooms inside The Compass.
He wasn’t dead.
He was lying in bed in the comfort of warm blankets and pillows.
Not engulfed in the freezing waters that had nearly claimed him fifteen years ago.
He’s alive.
He shuddered slightly with a murmur, listening to the soft sounds of the waves moving around the boat. He could never get over the sound of thunderstorms whenever the ship set sail.
The soft chatter of the hearties who stayed up the night through the walls had eventually lulled him back to sleep.
For the most part, he was alive.