But what am I even doing, exactly?

At what point did I decide this was a good idea? I’m clinging for dear life to my bird’s mineral plumage while a massive shadow passes overhead. And the worst part is, if I survive this, I’m definitely getting a serious beatdown from Soledad… When we crossed paths just now, I could tell she was giving me a weird look. Like, what the hell are you doing here? I don’t think she realizes how much I’m asking myself that exact same question.

A shadow falls over me, blotting out the sun. I look up, and anxiety gives way to awe. Halua passes overhead, so close I could almost touch him. My stomach still knots up—partly because I feel like a flea next to him, and partly because of what he’s just been through. I can see his hide, slashed and burned, wounds that are thankfully slowly knitting themselves back together. Okay, he’s a monster. But not the way people mean it. He’s a wonder of nature, a being to revere, not to hunt…

I realize my mouth is hanging open and snap it shut, because: one, I don’t feel like swallowing a bug—even if that’s unlikely at this altitude; two, the wind is drying my mouth out; and three, Mom says I look stupid when I do that.

And this really isn’t the time to stand there gawking. On the nearby islets, hunters—Bravos and others—are already taking positions along the ridges and cliff edges. I can see them from where I’m perched on my armored bird: little busy ants scurrying around… except they’re armed with lances, harpoons, and impact bolts. Ready to finish the job. All I know is I have to stop them. I don’t know how, but I don’t have a choice. I have to. I have to.

Puff, you need to—

I don’t even get to finish the sentence. A massive turbulence born from one of Halua’s wingbeats hurls me backward like a scrap of straw. I hang on as best I can to keep from flipping over, and a hundred disaster scenarios start playing in my head as my flying mount drops like a rock. Are we going to slam into an islet and pancake? Or worse—are we going to plunge into the Sea of Tumult? I squeeze my eyes shut and whisper prayers and encouragements to my armored birdie.

Shhhwouf! He spreads his wings just in time above the clouds, the pink vapors of the Tumult warping his chest. He starts gliding again, at the cost of a few mineral feathers and a handful of intrusive ideas in his plumage. As for me… cold sweats, nausea, heart racing. That was way too close.

Puff suddenly bleats inside my head, and I realize I don’t have time to collect myself. No choice—we need to hit the turbo. Stroking the back of his head, I beg my jade bird to ride the updrafts, to cut across the hunters’ line of fire… Faster. Come on, just a little more, big guy…

We suddenly cross the trajectory of the projectiles. Lances, arrows, rockets—all of it shatters against the great bird’s armor. I squeeze my eyes shut because everything is exploding around us, because every blast almost makes me lose my grip. When Mom and Dad find out I did this, I’m going to get one hell of a lecture… And honestly, I’ll deserve it. I can run every justification through my head—no, it was just a little fireworks show; he’s not actually that big, Halua; I didn’t mean to be here, I was just passing through—and I still can’t even convince myself.

Ha. I’m going to get wrecked…

When I open my eyes again as we skim over the hunters’ ranks, I see that many of them—and thank you for that—have held their fire. But a few shots still go off. The smoke makes my eyes sting and I start coughing. My hands hurt from gripping so hard. My stomach is twisted in knots. But I remember what Eru said. Let instinct speak. Don’t think.

Below us, another hunter is taking aim. Without hesitating, I ask my Eidolon to interpose himself. Even battered as he is, he banks to block the line of sight. With a bit of luck—

Boom!

I’d hoped the hunter would stop, but the harpoon slams into us, and the impact is so violent I bite my tongue. Tears spring to my eyes, and I lose control of my Alteration. I see stars bursting around my head before I start falling into the void…

Another bleat echoes in my mind—louder this time—and I twist around at the sound of my Alter Ego’s wolflike wailing. My mouth fills with the taste of metal as I try, with a simple wave of sensation, to tell him everything’s fine, that—no. He doesn’t hear me. He’s not just complaining…

Oh no. Puff? Puff, no!

I see him charge headlong into a Bravos unit, furious beyond reason. I wince as he slams straight into one of the hunters, then wreaks havoc in the melee. Oh no, no, no—he’s impossible to stop when he sees red. Horns here, hooves there… I have to—no, no and no, I can’t let myself get distracted. I look back up at Halua, his massive shadow drifting above us like a kite the size of the sky.

It takes my breath away, he’s so majestic, so overwhelming. Watching him pierce the high clouds like a sheet of plankton, watching him glide over the archipelago the way Nuit wraps the world in her mantle of night…

I start scanning the sky for Soledad’s reaction board. If only she could see him the way I do. If only— My eyes widen as an idea, not nearly as crazy as it sounds, hits me. And it’s still better than a harpoon.

He’s going to get skewered if he keeps this up…

I grit my teeth. What the hell is he doing? That damn kid is ruining everything. I fire my thrusters to catch up to him, to knock some sense into him—and get him home in one piece. Does he even realize what kind of mess he’s gotten himself into?

I chase him at full throttle as he weaves between the islets, his cursed bird spreading its wings to shield Halua. He dives, slaloms through Aerolith reefs, climbs toward the next ambush. I ride my skyboard, shifting my stance to ride the currents. I can slip through gaps his bird can’t, and I start gaining ground. He glances back at me in a flash, and I lock eyes with him.

I come up alongside him, ready to scream at him to stop—if he can hear me—or grab the reins of his beast… And that’s when I realize he’s deliberately slowed down so I could catch up. A trap.

Before I can react, something brushes against the surface of my mind: a kind of lethargy, trying to numb my thoughts. I shake my head, blink several times to chase it away—and then I understand.

Kauri. His mind is trying to link with mine. Emotions pour into me, raw and vivid. Not words—impressions. And I feel them probing something inside me, coaxing it back up from the pit I’d buried it in. I try to resist. But it’s like holding a lid on a geyser, like bailing out a sinking boat…

Look, Sol.

For a moment, I see Halua through my childhood eyes. I remember the books I used to read, my brother’s explanations as he tried to answer all my endless questions. I see myself staring up at the sky, hoping to glimpse Kaibara. I remember the Leviathan models—wood and paper—hanging from the beams of Saul’s study; my clumsy crayon drawings of Nebula, Cadracal, Meander, Hylida, pinned to the wall; our parents’ sometimes-annoyed looks as they listened to us chatter at dinner… No matter how hard I try to drown these feelings, they keep surfacing, wave after wave, and my heart starts pounding.

My parents’ devastated faces before the empty grave…

I shake my head, trying to push away the surge of emotion. I clench my jaw and glare at Kauri, throwing every ounce of will I have against his. I feel the link tearing, little by little, as I push him out, reject him, force him away… I start to recover. I reach for his collar as his eyes widen with the first flicker of worry. Then, out of nowhere, it’s like a psychic battering ram slams into my temple.

It’s like a dam suddenly breaking…

“Look, Sol.”

I stop chewing on my pencil and look up at Saul. Happy to abandon my homework, at least for a few minutes, I hurry over to the ancient desk, dropping my notebook onto the rough rug where I’d been lying.

I push aside a few books and sit behind him on the dresser, like I always do when he has something to show me.

“Here. Read this.”

I squint at the thick volume he hands me: Ascanios Fenn’s Codex Linificus.

“If Mana is the cement that binds an idea to existence, the Muna claim it does not operate in isolation. Every idea can be broken down into other ideas, linked together. What they call the Skein would be a network of Mana tasked with this function. Through it, ideas would shape a composite concept to form a thing, an individual—what we consider a whole. But their vision opens an entirely new field of exploration: could things and individuals be linked on a macroscopic scale? The Muna assert that it was the union of Niavhe and Kaibara that awakened them to this worldview, to the perception of this network. Would it not be wise to shed full light on this historico-legendary account, if only to understand how a Leviathan could allegedly have allowed humans to perceive it?”

I hand the heavy book back, a little lost.

“Just imagine what could happen if, instead of hunting Leviathans, we tried to understand them, to bond with them,” he continues without pause. “Maybe we’d learn even more about the world!”

Tears stream down my cheeks, quickly swept away by the wind.

My heart tightens. Sol’s emotions surge up the Skein and wash over me. I bite my lip as I feel her pain, her grief, her anger… It’s a deluge. I know I can’t let it consume me completely, but it’s hard. It clings like self-heal after walking through tall grass…

But they’re not mine to feel. They’re not mine to understand.

My gaze turns to Halua, and I wonder if I can do this. But somewhere deep down, I know I don’t really have a choice. I extend my Skein toward the Leviathan, like passionflower tendrils twisting out to probe their surroundings. Slowly, my mind brushes against a consciousness so vast it feels like a stream flowing into the sea.

I feel anger and fury. I feel pain and anguish. They’re enormous, overwhelming, crashing into me in waves. Panic grips me in the face of this tidal surge. There’s sorrow, despair, pleading—and at the same time, confusion, resentment, bitterness. I feel utterly helpless, like when our farm was destroyed by an earthquake. I could do nothing but watch and pray to survive.

Like an ant beneath a giant’s boot…

Then, just as the emotions crest and I think it’s all over, something steps in and shields me. It’s Puff. He’s taking the torrent too, and it’s as if his vaporous fleece is being devoured mouthful by mouthful, like cotton candy at a fair… But he holds on. His wool reforms, using his Mana like spoonfuls of powdered sugar tossed into the blower.

He won’t last long. I have to tame this.

Carried by the filtered emotions of the behemoth, visions and memories bloom in my mind like bubbles. I see Halua, no bigger than a kite, emerging from the bark of a tree like a chick hatching from an egg. I see him flying alongside humans, curling against them, playing with them. There is love—almost unconditional. He loves them, and they love him. Just as they love and venerate the tree that grows and unites them. The humans watch over the tree. They cherish it. It is their hope, and they care for it.

Until the day they bled it to harvest its sap.

And Halua didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand why, after so many years of nurturing it, they began draining it like leeches, gorging themselves on its fruits like ravenous hyenas. Benevolent smiles had turned into predatory grins. Or maybe they always had been.

Halua tried to make them come to their senses. Again and again, he tried to drive them away, to stand in their path. He was born of the tree—born to protect it. That was his charge, his purpose. And he believed the humans wanted the same thing. But they grew less and less tolerant of his interference. One day, they captured him. Held him prisoner. Forced him to feel the tree’s suffering. He battered himself against the walls of his prison over and over, unable to escape. Finally fed up, they carried him beyond the cloudline, exiling him so he would trouble them no longer.

But even now, he feels the tree’s pain. He feels its sorrow. The tree calls out to him. And humans must pay for what they are doing to it… Because it was never love. They were only waiting for it to grow big enough to exploit.

I watch. I feel. Even though it hurts, I force myself not to look away. Because beside me, Sol is watching too.

Decades of emotion crash down on me—those of this monster. And I am standing squarely in his gaze. My reflection stares back at me from eyes so large they could cradle an airship. But the image is that of a little girl crying, vowing she will never be weak again. A child shattered by her brother’s death, unable to grieve. Instead, she buries her innocence and tears apart every fairy tale she once believed in.

Through the anise-tinted lens of his gaze, he watches a little girl who doesn’t understand what’s happening around her—the procession of blurred, mourning faces passing before her eyes. He witnesses the endless vigil, feels the knot in her stomach that won’t go away, the bitter bile in her throat when she runs to the bathroom. He observes grief, distress, supplication—and at the same time, incomprehension, resentment, bitterness.

They say his ship was attacked by Garuda, that it broke apart on impact. But even those words make no sense to her. She can’t imagine it. No—he’ll come back. Her on his knees, him a teenager, a big picture book open between them. She listens as he reads. Not Mom or Dad—him. And of course, most of the time, they’re stories about Leviathans. Niavhe and Kaibara, Nuur and Annoba, Abelen, Maya and Kacchena… He loves them. And she loves them too.

It’s his passion. His parents call it an obsession. He doesn’t care. He knows what he wants. He wants to prove they can be seen differently. So he works on his airship, earns his pilot’s license. At night, he studies them, researches late into the night. Sometimes, when she has to go to the bathroom, she sees the light on in his study and slips inside to stay with him, falling asleep on the couch or the rug. Mom and Dad scold him for spending more time dreaming about Leviathans than studying, but he can’t help it. He laughs, a little embarrassed, which only annoys them more. But not her.

She never saw the problem. She defended him fiercely. It was part of who he was. So she couldn’t understand why something he loved so much would hurt him. Why, when all he felt was respect and reverence. He wanted a world where humans and Leviathans could live together, coexist.

So she rejected the idea again and again. Calling Leviathans pure evil was trampling everything Saul believed in. But as time passed and the pain of his absence deepened; with her father’s tears when he thought he was alone; with her mother’s vacant stare whenever the anniversary approached—that unconditional love turned into hatred.

The injustice haunts her. They answered love with cruelty. So now, she will do the same. The Leviathans will pay for the suffering they caused.

I watch my own memories as a spectator, and see Halua’s unfolding alongside them. It’s strange how they echo each other, harmonize, resonate. Two opposing lives whose paths mirror one another—a kaleidoscope of echoes brought into tune.

I stare at the monster, and it’s like looking into a mirror as it shatters.

I stare at the monster— and realize I have become one too.