Though anatomy and biology weren’t his concentrated studies, Rowan knew he had seconds to act before he’d become another forgotten part of the graveyard of knickknacks. He ripped his glove from his right hand, the open air stinging his carbon-colored skin, and dragged his hand along his aggressor’s arm. He just needed flesh, a hint of flesh to touch and incapacitate his ungrateful rescuee. His charcoal-dipped fingers danced along the odd material of the person’s arm: no bare skin. Rowan always felt bad about breaching personal space, but his current circumstances excluded such concerns. As such, he shot his hand out to where the person’s face ought to be and met metal instead. Rowan wheezed in confusion as the hood fell back from the stranger’s head: any semblance of a face was completely housed in an intricate helm.

  The helm was metallic and smooth save for three grooves, the first of which began a few notches above where the throttler’s right ear would be. The groove made its way diagonally to the middle of the helm, where a nose would be, then cut 180 degrees to the left. The other two grooves mirrored this at about two fingers’ width apart from each other. Perpendicular to the first groove was a notch through which Rowan could see his attacker’s right eye. The flaxen hue was unusual enough, but the apathy on display made Rowan take pause—that and the lack of air, of course.

  None of this mattered, though. Seconds were ticking down, vision was blurring, and thoughts were growing increasingly incoherent.

  .

  Rowan’s hand lifelessly slid down the helm, trying to find where metal ended and skin would hopefully begin. The chin was covered as well, along with the jaw, and the neck—the neck was bare. Rowan wrapped a hand around his opponent’s neck as best he could, the two gripping each other’s throats. If the attacker was more like Rowan than the worm clew was, it likely didn’t consider Rowan’s attempt to choke it as much of a threat. This made it easy for him to siphon the vi straight from their body. It took longer than Rowan anticipated, his eyelids fluttering before the attacker finally reacted to the effect of the parasite latched onto it. The person’s grip loosened as it doubled over and Rowan, unobstructed, gasped for air as his bottom connected to the crag once again.

  Rowan hyperventilated and rasped as he grabbed his bag from his back once again, rifling through it for a solution. He doubted his new friend would surrender so easily. He kicked at the ground, his butt skidding along the frigid crag as he backed himself up, searching for something of use in the knapsack. He saw the monster stand upright once more, slowly marching toward him.

  “Stop. Stop,” Rowan said, his voice not unlike a punctured woodwind, squeaking and writhing in dissonant notes.

  He continued searching as the beast approached: none of his vials would stop something like this, none of his notes had an answer—the monster was close, now. Rowan felt a memory of a symbol surface, something like an unfinished sphere. It may have been an equation of some kind. Was he supposed to know what it was? He couldn’t say—the offscape puts holes in your head. Rowan let out a quick yelp as the creature grabbed at the collar of his tunic, lifting him off the ground. He gripped at whatever he could hold onto in the bag as the assaulter separated Rowan from his lifeline. He felt what was in his hand and instinctively thumbed it slightly to verify, his eyes closed in fear. The gentle chime of Rowan’s finger harp echoed in the silence as everything came to a halt. He opened his eyes slowly, seeing just how close the creature was to him, though it’d released him once again. Its eye, visible through the helm’s notch, was no longer a yellowish hue, but a brilliant shade of scarlet. Was this a good sign? Rowan had no way to know. He feared uttering a single word.

  “Tulu arik?sh?”

  Rowan’s eyes fluttered rapidly as he grappled with the creature’s whispers. Did they actually say anything? Was his mind decaying from lack of air? He needed to know more.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Rowan paused, curious if the whispers would come again or if he truly was losing his mind. The answer the prisoner provided was a sound not unlike a scoff. Rowan shrugged and walked around the person, getting a full scope of them. He spied a closer look at the chain hanging off their back, but it was only for a second before the masked prisoner spun around to meet him. They snarled at him, like a cornered animal about to strike. Rowan, growing familiar with this position, raised his hands in surrender.

  “Okay, easy, easy. I’m sorry,” he apologized, hands still up. “I’ll stay in sight.”

  The air of hostility died down and the creature whispered again, though it was barely audible. Among the foreign sounds, Rowan finally heard a word he recognized: malike.

  “Malike. Ma-ma-malike. You’re speaking the nameless tongue,” he said, his excitement reaching a peak from the asphyxiation and the discovery at hand. The creature didn’t respond again, much to Rowan’s disappointment. “I don’t suppose you know what the treasure of this tower is, do you?”

  “...runi?”

  The nameless person cocked their head quizzically. Was it because they didn’t understand Rowan or was it because they didn’t know what he was talking about? He couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that their voice sounded like they hadn’t spoken before in their life.

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  “Runi? Does that mean treasure?” Rowan asked, to which the nameless didn’t respond. He walked over to a small cylinder from the pile of things, gripped it and showed it to his less hostile friend. “Like this? Runi?”

  The nameless simply shrugged, to Rowan’s vexation—the discovery was riding the line between excitement and frustration. Rowan considered how best to communicate with the nameless when he heard an odd hum. Rowan looked around the valley for the source, spying an odd shape in the distance.

  “Be kalēb?s,” the nameless whispered, balling their hands in fists.

  Rowan didn’t bother trying to understand the nameless, instead opting to retrieve his binoculars from his bag. He focused in on the shape as it whizzed toward them; in no time at all, the binoculars were unnecessary. Rowan felt himself take a step forward, his back to the nameless one. He felt the hand of the nameless one on his shoulder, a delicate touch he found incongruent to the first impression they’d made on him, as they whispered something in his ear. The words were incomprehensible, but the cautionary tone of a warning was universal.

  The vessel sputtered and backfired as it settled into a low hum, landing on the crag and kicking up a layer of dust that stung whatever it touched with a bitter cold. Rowan vaguely recalled ships carving through the clouds and figured this was a slapdash rendition of what must have been a luxury of the privileged. The bow rocked like a child pretending to listen to a lecture even after the airship had landed. The keel was imprinted with vi—likely some variations of the Air-Chain and Messelfi equations—to keep it afloat, though the energy was clearly waning. The stern was modified to be a storage den of some sort, the contents of which was spilling haphazardly onto the deck. Those on the deck likely had to watch their footing as they operated, or as they descended from the ship like they were currently doing. It was a gaudy gallimaufry of the airships that came before it, but Rowan found it a bit charming just the same.

  He didn’t feel the same about the new faces before him: they wore gray shawls and only had enough armor between the five of them to complete a single set. Without a memory springing from the sieve and nothing identifiable, Rowan took a defensive stance until he heard a voice from the airship.

  “Oi, that the intrepid explorer what was sent to find the treasure?”

  Rowan grinned when he saw Mogrim’s flabby frame spilling over the edge of the bow. The man was rather short—even Rowan had to look down to speak with him—but he had a grandiose stature, peering down at Rowan from the airship. The old man huffed on a pipe when he wasn’t gasping for the very air he was denying his body. His flapjack stack of a neck created an accordion-like effect with a hardboiled egg on top for a head. Mogrim pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his greasy face: it was surprising how much he was sweating, considering how cold Rowan felt. His less-than-alluring appearance notwithstanding, Rowan couldn’t deny Mogrim was the best-dressed person he had seen in the offscape thus far—perhaps that just came with being a trader.

  “Mogrim,” Rowan waved excitedly. The nameless one grabbed one of Rowan’s hands and pulled it down, their tone chiding. “No, it’s okay. He’s a friend.”

  Mogrim puffed on his pipe and clapped his hands a few times for Rowan.

  “I’ll admit, pup, I didn’t think you’d actually get the job done,” Mogrim said, pausing to hack up what he’d probably just sucked down from the pipe. He spat off the ship and continued, “You’re a plucky one, sure, but plucky don’t last too long out here. That said, kudos to you, pup. You found me treasure.”

  Rowan smiled, looked to the nameless one to try and gauge their temperament, and turned back to Mogrim.

  “So I find it,” Rowan shouted. “That’s such a relief. I wasn’t sure, what with the sheer amount of stuff the tower–”

  Rowan heard a snarl behind him as Mogrim’s group drew closer, surrounding the nameless one in a semi-circle.

  “Oh, they’re with me. Could you not crowd them so much? They don’t like that sort of–”

  One of the guys placed a hand on the nameless one’s shoulder: bad idea. The mask snapped in the direction of who pierced their personal bubble, cracking them in the side of the head with their fist.

  “Wait, stop,” Rowan said to the group, turning back to Mogrim. “Mogrim, what are you doing?”

  “Claiming me treasure, pup,” Mogrim said.

  Rowan turned back to the nameless one as they jabbed another stranger in the throat. He reached out to the nameless one’s shoulder to try and quell the situation as they turned toward the next target. Feeling another hand on their shoulder, the combative captive turned to Rowan, about to strike him as well. Rowan squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself for the consequences of approaching the Tower of Zchēve from behind, but felt no such reverberation. He felt momentary relief as the nameless one halted their attack mid-swing at the sight of Rowan. The relief was immediately dashed as one of Mogrim’s people took the pause as an opportunity to collar the nameless one.

  The collar snapped around the captive’s neck, another form of subjugation for the poor prisoner that still rattled the chain hanging from their back as they thrashed about. The nameless one crackled and buzzed as electricity arced from their body. Rowan recoiled from the sparks, looking back at Mogrim, who had a remote in his meaty mitts.

  “Stop, you’re hurting them,” Rowan said, whipping back to the nameless one, who sizzled as they fell to their knees. The chain in their back certainly gave the electricity enough to work with, their flesh bubbling around its point of penetration on the masked one's back. Rowan felt tears in his eyes and heard an unrecognizable voice inside his head reprimanding him for showing weakness in such a moment.

  “What’s a matter with you, pup? All this barking—this is what you came for: this is a premium body, the treasure of the Tower of Zchēve.”

  Rowan’s eyes widened at Mogrim’s words. Mogrim had introduced himself to Rowan as a trader, he’d naively assumed he knew what the old man traded. Rowan, eyes showcasing the disgust on his face, shook his head.

  “No. Deal’s off. Let them go, please.”

  Mogrim cackled slowly and steadily, the phlegm in his throat hopping out of his mouth excitedly.

  “Deal’s off? ?”

  No sooner did Mogrim snap his fingers that Rowan’s legs were kicked out from under him. Rowan yelped as he fell to his knees beside his still-sizzling friend. Rowan attempted to get to his feet and felt a hand on each shoulder holding him down.

  “You’re an ornery pup. We’ve got just the thing for that.”

  Mogrim’s guttural laughter haunted Rowan’s ears as he felt the collar snap around his neck.