The skiff – small enough for two people and some storage – was red, the designated color of the Fourth Wing. Its Eidolon – Xanarken Tellan – had led it since the early days, some 350 years prior. With immortal and unageing mantles, made in their likeness with nanotechnology – machines so small they accumulated in the air without notice – the four were the foundational pillars of the Luminary Council.


    Originally six wings, the First – headed by Rylen Vor’antiss – was responsible for military research and development; it had also, in part, taken over the duties of the Second Wing – the Limitless and those who were afflicted with it - whose leader had been missing for centuries and was presumed dead. The Third Wing, led by a largely enigmatic man who rarely got directly involved with anything – Arbelos Germain – maintained the nanotechnology used by both the Council and its allies, colloquially referred to as the World Cloud. The Fourth Wing was primarily responsible for mediations within the world’s allied nations, political negotiations, education, and community outreach; they were the friendly face of the Luminary Council, and the Wing most-likely to be encountered by the average person. The Fifth Wing, headed by the free-spirited Etienne Cisneros, was a behind-the-scenes operation that mostly dealt with terraforming, atmospheric integrity, flora, fauna, agriculture, cultivation, medicine, and other bio-sciences. Finally, the Sixth Wing – also headed by Rylen – was tasked with the planet’s defense forces, and was the closest thing any named-entity on the world stage had to a standing army. Altogether, beneath their chosen label as the Luminary Council, the Eidolon were backed by a technological marvel referred to as the Seraphim System; hence, the six wings.


    The world itself – Hadira – was a rocky planet roughly 1.5 times the size of Earth, had been terraformed and colonized some 350 years prior, in an event mostly remembered with trepidation and suspicion. The calamity that brought the colony fleet down in the first place had, as many believed, been deliberately sabotaged by the would-have-been Eidolon of the Second Wing, had he not absconded and abandoned his duties right at the beginning. His name, no longer spoken and almost-nearly forgotten, was only ever mentioned as a footnote in ‘basic histories’ lessons, never to be repeated.


    The Eidolon themselves, however, were a source of stability in an ever-changing landscape; they claimed to be the original leaders of the colony fleet’s command structure, but whether that was true, or if they had simply become a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence that used their names, could not be ascertained with any certainty. What could be known for certain though, was that Xanarken and Rylen – who referred to one another as brothers, though they were not related – were the primary guiding hands of the Council, and everything of significance or import went through them.


    Which is to say that, when the Prince and heir of the Empire of Sargon had suddenly become afflicted by the Limitless curse, the Council was the first thing prevailing heads considered reaching out to for help, in spite of the fact that Sargon had a contentious relationship with said Council, and had for some two decades. Its sister nation to the west, Kitez, was even more hostile towards it, and together, they formed a pair of hermit-nations that wanted nothing to do with the larger world alliance; the Hadiran Accord.


    “…And that all basically changed the day Prince Iresha lit his dear old uncle on fire,” Gabriel explained, piloting his skiff – Maeve – through a torrential rainstorm, taking himself and his mediator mentee, Ren Nibasai, to the site of their next mission. The skiff had no true wind-shield, possessing instead a sophisticated array of display-panels on the inner shell of the hull. Gabriel could see everything around him in varying levels of detail – topographical maps for the altitude, weather assessments, windspeed projections, and a main screen that showed whatever was actually directly ahead of it, with an overlay that showed him the safest route to take to their destination; the SkyFortress called The Bulwark, “Since Sargon and Kitez were usually in lock-step with each other, the day the Sargonian Emperor reached out to us was kind of a kick in the guts to Kitez. They’ve been somewhat at odds with each other ever since.”


    “And that was two years ago.” Ren noted; she was a handful of years younger than Gabriel, with olive skin, bright green eyes, and long black hair that she preferred to keep up in a clip. As a cadet in the Fourth, her uniform-coat was shorter than his – cutting off at the mid-thigh instead of the ankle – but it still bore the same characteristic red coloring, blocked with dark grey, trimmed in silver, and held close to the body at the waist with a wide belt as her mentor’s.


    “Right.” Gabriel nodded, “And Xanarken, genius that he is, decided that he’d throw me at it. To his mind, it was a perfect fit – I was a high-ranking mediator within the Fourth, and I was also afflicted by the Limitless, so I could teach the Prince how to control himself and I could get Sargon into the Luminary fold.”


    “Seems to have worked, though,” Ren supposed, watching the screens as keenly as Maeve’s pilot, “Sargon may not have actually joined the Hadiran Accord, but they haven’t been so friendly with the Council in decades. Who knew, we just needed a crisis to impact the royal family to get them to buckle?”


    “You’d think so,” The blonde shrugged, “Kitez took particular issue with the fact that I was the one sent to do the job. The Exclusion Zone is completely contained wi-“


    “-within Kitez, and they claim the territory as their own.” Ren finished, getting a look, though she smiled, “I’m well-acquainted with the concept.”


    “And they think I’m supposed to be one of theirs.” Gabriel puffed, then went back to the displays, “They consider my existence with the Council the be nothing less than kidnapping and brainwashing, even though Kitez itself doesn’t govern the territory for shit and mostly leaves it feral.”


    “Who can blame them? It’s basically considered a massive haunted forest.”


    “Mmh…”


    “Dangerous people who don’t want to be tracked or contacted go there, and use that huge swath of untouched wilderness as cover. And, for whatever reason, those who are afflicted tend to get more powerful for being there,” Ren explained, “That’s why they think you were born with the affliction, right?”


    “So goes the rumor, anyway.”


    “You don’t believe it?”


    Gabriel shrugged, “All I know is that I’ve had it for as long as I can remember, and it’s never done me a single favor. It’s just followed me around, causing problems, like an albatross around my neck. If not for that, I probably wouldn’t have the reputation that I do, and things would be a lot easier for everyone, especially Xanarken.”


    “People distance themselves from things they don’t understand. The expected thing is that, if someone’s going to get the Limitless curse, it’ll happen in young-adulthood. To be born with it is just…weird, to say the least.”


    Gabriel raised a brow at her, slouching over the middle armrest as he was, “Thanks for that.”


    Ren waved her hands back and forth frantically, “I didn’t mean that as a judgement of you as a person, sir! In fact, I…was always kind of inspired by your origins story. Your rise in the Council to being Lord Xanarken’s second in command, after basically being found in the woods as a young kid, reminded me that anything is possible, no matter who you are or where you come from.”


    Gabriel was quiet for a moment after that, with nothing to listen to but the sound of the storm tip-tapping on the ship’s hull. The Bulwark wasn’t much further. With a long, slow blink, the blonde sighed and sat up a bit straighter in his seat, “Prince Iresha developed an affinity to fire while at a family get-together in Trazad, the Sargonian capitol. His eyes suddenly lit up in that characteristic way, and so too did his uncle’s clothes, leaving Prince Aamin badly burned on the left side, and with a permanent squint. The call for someone in the Council to come calm him down and get his affliction under control led to me becoming the bridge between the Sargonian Emperor and the Council. As such, mine was the most common face Prince Iresha saw for a while. He’s probably not going to be too thrilled to see it again, since he didn’t like my methods and resisted everything I said or did to begin with.”


    “…Because you’re from the Council or the Exclusion Zone?”


    “Because he’s a spoiled brat who doesn’t like being told what to do.” He answered simply, “And, I can guarantee it wasn’t the Empress who made the call requesting this Inquisition.”


    Ren gave a serious look, “What are you suggesting?”


    “Empress Rani is cool-headed and loving. She was the one who pressed for the Council to help her son, and convinced the Emperor to join her in that request. She would never call for Rylen’s special goon-squad to pick up her kid. It was, in all likelihood…”


    .


    “…Prince Aamin, with all due respect, we cannot simply lock up your nephew because you feel aggrieved by him.” One of the Inquisitors said with an anonymizing synthesized voice; masked and mysterious, the Inquisitor division was specialized in the study of Limitless afflictions and their effects, and were the closest thing to a Second Wing as was possible without one truly existing. Their masks were eerie, leaving them featureless, with small, button-like circles in place of eyes, but in all the wrong places on their faces. They wore white cowls with pulled-over hoods, capes that resembled robes, and an otherwise-typical Luminary uniform underneath; they were akin to a monastic order, dedicated to their research, and wanted as few distinctions and distractions as possible. They were not, as the burned Prince had been told several times before, to be called upon to babysit an afflicted teenager, “You must withdraw your petition before this gets out of hand.”If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    “His power is uncontrolled! He’s constantly trying to burn things!” Aamin protested, gesturing at the holding-cell where his teenaged nephew was being contained, “His hair is starting to turn into flame when he gets going now! He’s too dangerous to be allowed to stay in Sargon! If you people are worth half of what you claim, you’ll take him to Agartha and guarantee his stability before sending him back!”


    The pair of Inquisitors, who had been sent in response to the petition, looked at one another, and one gave off an air of obvious annoyance; he spoke to the surrounding First Wing soldiers, “Will someone tell Captain Gallifey to cancel the lock-down? This is a waste of our time.”


    “What!? No!” Aamin protested; long black hair tumbled like thick porcupine-quills down his back, framing the burn-marred skin around the left side of his face. He wore the pale gold and black colors of the Sargonian imperial family, with a two-tiered set of extended shoulder-plates and a braided cape that dragged behind his ornately-decorated core, “You can’t ignore a request by the Empress herself! This is an outrage!”


    Empress Rani was a rather demure woman, typically rather confident, but overshadowed in the presence of her adamant and boisterous brother-in-law. She stood at the front of a brig-like cell by herself, a worried look on her face as she beheld the confines her son was kept in. Within that First Wing detainment bloc, three special rooms were crafted to restrain dangerous Limitless users, and one such was being used for the Prince. He was suspended above the ground in a series of slings, with a sensory-deprivation mask-like headset attached to his face. Designed to deprive chaotic elements from being able to ground themselves and lash-out, the mask covered both eyes and ears, and deprived the wearer of a sense of up and down, and denied them all external stimulus. Prince Iresha’s head bobbled from the dizziness, but that never stopped him from being just as loud as his uncle about his situation. Rani, trapped between the two, had no idea what to do.


    .


    On the Bulwark’s command-deck, Captain Gallifey was forwarded the request to stand down. Sporting medium-length grey-brown hair that curled inward at his ears, and some thick mutton-chops on either side of his face, he was dressed in the regalia of a Luminary Captain of the First Wing; silver pauldrons with the Council’s six-winged crest engraved across the curve, and a long purple cape hanging from the back of them. The request had come at the same time as a particularly specific annoyance from outside, “Cancel the lock-down, and then put the pest on the main-screen. I don’t need him thinking that it happened because he showed up.”


    “Yessir,” A nearby soldier acknowledged, and began the procedure.


    On the massive, wall-length screen that rounded the entire front-half of the bridge, the image of Gabriel’s face appeared, and the Captain sneered slightly from his seat, “Well, if it isn’t the illustrious Sir Gabriel Lugios, here to be a pain in my ass, no doubt.”


    “I don’t want to be here either but Xanarken told me-“


    “Lord Xanarken; have some manners. He may have raised you but he’s still your Eidolon.”


    Gabriel narrowed his eyes, but continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “…to come pick up a kid you’ve swept-up. Perhaps you know him. About 17 years old, black hair, eyes light up when he’s pissy, kinda royal…has a thing about fire, I’m told? Hopefully that sounds familiar, Captain.”


    Tarrock Gallifey stared in silence for a moment, but then stood up, and slid his arms behind his back, nested beneath the cape, “You’re in luck, Lugios-“


    “Sir Lugios; have some manners. I out-rank you.”


    The Captain grit his teeth, “The Inquisition is concluded, and we were going to take the Prince and his entourage back to his father anyway. If you’re here, you can spare us the trouble of going all the way back to Trazad ourselves.” He dismissed the hail without another word, and turned to his crew again, “Let him board, but make sure he has an escort to and from the holding cells.”


    The rear-deck of the massive, 1,300ft-long research-class SkyFortress flashed its warning-lights, and the hangar-bay doors began to rise. Gabriel just shook his head as he looked on, waiting for enough clearance to get through, “The Inquisition is done, huh? That’s not at all suspicious.”


    Ren watched the man, baffled, “How do you get away with talking to - and about - high-ranking officers and leaders so casually, sir?”


    He shrugged, “Guess it comes with being raised by an Eidolon. Let’s just get it done. This has already interrupted our other next mission long enough.”


    “…We have another next mission?” Ren echoed in confusion.


    Maeve glided forward, and the sound of the storm rapping on the hull quickly ceased as they entered the sheltered hangar. When it landed, both Knight and trainee hopped out, and were greeted by the escort ordered by the Captain. They saluted the mediator, and gestured for the pair to follow. They made it halfway into the bowels of the ship before alarm-lights started to flash in those halls, and a shudder could be felt in the floor.


    Ren looked to her mentor, “…That doesn’t feel right.”


    “Yeeahhhh…” Gabriel agreed warily, “We need to go faster.”


    The group hustled after that, and it became obvious that the alarms had been tripped because of their query. The brig was half-on-fire, smoldering from a bomb-like detonation. Two soldiers rushed by, their uniforms scorched, and both of them warned about ‘the afflicted Prince’ losing control. Gabriel’s eyes widened with worry, but before he could get a word in edgewise, his trainee had already skipped past him.


    There were charred bodies on the ground; at least four, so burnt they could not be identified by looks alone. The cell that the fire had escaped from was blackened, and the figure inside…clearly enraged. Ren held a hand out, “Your highness, stand down! We’re not the enemy!”


    “You don’t get to decide who the enemy is, Luminary bitch!” The teenager barked back, eyes flaring brightly with his afflictive light. His hair and shoulders were licked by flames, and as the fires trailed down his arms, Ren felt a shift in the air…and darted forward, directly into the small space.


    “Ren, get out of there!” Gabriel yelled after her, only to be blown-back by another belch of flame from within that long, narrow prison. The lapels of his uniform were singed, and he pat his chest down to put out the flames before they could take-hold, “Ren!”


    She moved faster than any person had the right to, using the nearby walls to leap past gluts of fire and torrents of heat. She tried twice to simply restrain the prince – whose previous slings had been burnt to a crisp in the initial blast – but both times, he simply created an inferno under her gloved hands and forced her to let go. There was no way she was going to truly hit him though, and instead, decided to leap up and over him - with a foot on the wall for leverage, then the other between his shoulder-blades - landed in front of him, slapped his forehead twice – rather hard – and sent him brow-first towards his own feet. Disoriented, he toppled forward, and Ren quickly grappled him, twisted, flipped him over himself, and put him chest-down on the floor, then sat on his back with his arms pressed to his upper back, “Give it up, now!”


    “I’m a sovereign! You can’t touch or talk to me like this!”


    “Iresha, have you gone mental!? You killed four people out here!” Gabriel scolded, warily sticking his head around the corner of the cell’s door.


    “Lugios!?” The teen barked, and his eyes quickly lost their flare, and went back to their normal brown, “What the Hell are you doing here!?”


    “I was trying to take you home, but now I have to identify bodies, too!” The mediator answered irritably, “What happened!?”


    Ren looked on at the Prince cautiously for a moment, but once she was satisfied his flames wouldn’t immediately return if she let him go, she stood up, and pulled the teen to his feet. As he explained his sorry state, she dusted him off.


    “I was trying to do the training sessions you gave me, so I can get a better handle on this damn curse,” Iresha started, “But out of nowhere, I got slapped with that stupid sensory-deprivation helmet,” He gestured at the melted mass of plastic and circuitry that had landed on the floor near the wall, “…and have no idea what happened or where I went after that. It’s been hours! Where even am I right now?”


    “You’re on SkyFortress Bulwark. Your mom apparently called for an Inquisition on you.”


    “What?” Iresha’s eyes widened, “There’s no way. She would never…”


    “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.” Gabriel agreed, and stepped into the cell fully. He watched as Ren inspected the young Prince for damage, and crossed his arms lightly, “Your uncle was involved though, and apparently he and your mom were both here for the proceedings.”


    “…They were…?” The Prince gaped, “…Where are they right now?”


    The mediator had his mouth open, but then closed it again and slouched, “You know what? I have no idea. That’s a great question.” He turned to the open hall, and the charred quartet of corpses, “…Hopefully not nearby.”


    Iresha rushed out, and beheld the horror of his outburst. Some parts of the walls were still smoldering, and the smell of burnt flesh permeated the air. He held his arm up to his nose with worry and disgust, “…How could this…have happened…?”


    “You need to take your lessons to heart, your highness.” A synthesized voice answered; Iresha looked up and saw one – then both – of the Inquisitors who had come for him, “Never use your affliction in anger, and be sure you know what you’re using it on before you do.” The pair stepped fully into that open space, and saluted to the mediator before continuing, “This was avoidable.”


    Gabriel felt a pit in his stomach, “Do you two know who the victims are?”


    The second Inquisitor stepped around the first, and moved towards the middle of the room, then started pointing in a clockwise manner, “Dame Violet Shire, Sir Kendrick Admund, Sir Kashi Sheridan, and…”


    “Don’t…” Iresha interrupted, as the Inquisitor pointed at the last blackened body. All eyes went up to the Prince, but there was a part of him who already knew who the last victim was; the distinctive melted outline of the Empress’ imperial armor gave that away. There was a heavy weight in his stomach that pulled him down, until he collapsed to his knees, “…I…didn’t mean to…”


    Gabriel’s brow furrowed, “…Where’s Prince Aamin?”


    .


    Imperial armor was little-more than kindling against explosive flame, and much of it had been cast aside, scattered in the floating fortress’ corridors. Aamin banged against the walls in pain and frustration as he clawed for a way to one of the ship’s many docking capsules; small escape-pod-like attachments that could be used to easily leave from - or ascend into - the ship. He collided roughly with the last wall, charred skin weeping, and he desperately felt-around for the button that would open the double-layer doors to let him through. When it finally did, he tumbled through, and slammed his fist onto the ‘down’ button.


    The two curved, rotating plastic doors closed again, and the pod started to move. Through the panel, Aamin could see the hazy outline of trees, and heard the torrent of rain. The mist from it made the curved door wet and splotchy, but it opened all the same, a few feet above the uneven rocky terrain. With frantic anguish, he tried to jump out, but immediately fell on the slippery ground as he landed. He gasped for breath as he stared up at the darkened shadow of the SkyFortress…and the growing glow from its rear engines as it prepared to set a new course.


    “You…little shit… You little…fucking shit… You burned me again…!” He screamed out in anger; thunder cracked in answer, and lightning flashed across the sky soon after. Aamin’s narrowed eyes clenched shut, but he finally rolled over and pushed himself up, “I can’t…stay in Sargon anymore… This place…has gone mad…”