Chapter Text
All told, humanity was yet to make a good impression.
If there had been anyone to see the cloaked and hooded strangers, whose footprints in the ash somehow only started in the middle of the fire site, and who seemed unfazed by the suffocating smoke, there would have been… questions.
But no one else was around to ask. Pockets of pale fire still burned in the blackened buildings, along the ash-filled sidewalks, and upon the skeletal husks of trees. The firefighters were occupied with a collapsing apartment block some way away. And none of the evacuees beyond the barricades would be watching for suspicious wanderers.
The taller of the two cast a glance toward that apartment block and the distant sounds of shouting.
“How depressing,” he said heavily. “I will never understand why they do this to themselves.”
The shorter stranger gazed around them, and stepped closer to his companion. The only impression any onlooker could have gotten of his appearance was a flash of strange, glittering eyes.
“There’s nothing to fear,” said the taller. “But if you wish to go back—”
“No!” the shorter one said. “I just… I didn’t expect it to smell sweet.”
A short, weary laugh. “All the more reason to keep this visit brief.”
The duo stopped their stroll, and pulled back their hoods. They were clearly father and son, from their dark hair and the identical colour of their inhuman eyes.
“Do you sense anything?” the tall stranger asked.
His son took several seconds to respond. “No. Whoever we’re looking for isn’t here now.”
“I suppose that’s a blessing. Very well. Let me see whether she was here, once.”
From somewhere beneath his cloak, the tall stranger pulled out a crystalline key. He closed his eyes and frowned. Beneath his eyelids, his eyes darted around as if he were dreaming. The light around the duo blurred into an indistinct haze.
Finally, he started awake.
“The fire has obscured too much,” he said grimly. “I cannot make out the light’s imprints.”
“We can move on to the next block.”
“Unfortunately, there is no time for that. I am needed in Eternalia, and it will not be long before the humans return.”
The tall stranger produced a slender silver wand with a small, perfectly clear crystal at its tip. He held out a hand to his son, who obliged reluctantly.
A ray of sunlight somehow pierced the thick smoke, and then faded. All that remained of the two strangers were a few faint glimmers, dancing amongst the ashes.