"An Abomination?! You have to be kidding me, Scarlet." Mira scoffed, refusing to accept Scarlet's theory.
Yes, Abominations that come from the chasms come in unpredictable forms and nature, but calling a veil of darkness an Abomination?
"You're nuts! You've gone haywire. Yes, you've totally lost it, Scarlet."
Scarlet didn't reply and stared at Mira with an unreadable expression for seconds, making her feel uncomfortable.
"Okay, okay. I get it. It's an Abomination! So how do we get out of here?"
Scarlet stood up and started thinking of a plan to get out of this forsaken island.
After a few seconds, he snapped his fingers together, making a clicking sound. A bright smile appeared on his face.
"We will need one of those metallic birds the soldiers carry around. A Starool."
Mira blinked a few times, then placed her palm on her forehead and shook it sideways.
"You mean a Sparrow, Scarlet. Do you know anything besides the geographical description of the floating islands?"
He shook his head sideways with confidence. "Nope! I know nothing at all. I lived in a store where they sell books related to the floating islands and nothing else."
"Figures." She then paused, a strange expression appearing on her face.
"Uh, smarty-pants?"
"What?"
"... Where the hell do we get a Sparrow from?"
Scarlet grinned. Mira sighed, knowing he was about to say something stupid. Alas,
"We will build one!"
Mira fell and lay on the ground dejectedly.
"Huh? What's wrong, Mira?"
Mira waved her hand.
"Nothing... Nothing at all. I just figured out that you're a hopeless fool. I'd rather stay here and wait for an Abomination to find me."
He kicked her leg softly. "Get up! I need your help to build the Sparrow."
Mira didn't reply and continued to stare into the darkness above with a hopeless expression.
"Hey, I said get up." He kicked her again, but she didn't budge.
"I won't help you do something that will all be for naught. Build it yourself."
A comical frown appeared on Scarlet's face.
"Hehhh... You think I can't build a Sparrow? Fuck that! I don't need your help! I will build it and prove to you why my name is Scarlet."
Mira turned her gaze to him with a deadpan expression.
"Isn't your name Scarlet because of your eyes? And please don't disturb me. I'm exhausted. So run along, little vampire."
Her statement startled Scarlet. A thousand ways to kill her and keep his identity hidden flooded his head.
"Mira..." he said quietly, "... don't joke about things you don't understand."
She lifted her head a little, still sprawled on the ground, her eyes half-lidded, tired and... unbothered.
"It was a joke, Scarlet. Relax. If you were a vampire, you'd have eaten me by now. Or drained me dramatically while telling a tragic backstory." She made a vague gesture. "You know... classic vampire things."
Scarlet stared at her with a deadpan expression. Totally unamused. He was internally panicking.
"...Classic vampire things?" he repeated.
"Yes, pale skin, creepy eyes, dramatic coat..." She paused and pointed at him without looking. "You literally check all the boxes. Aside from dramatic coats..."
Scarlet's eye twitched.
She yawned loudly. "Anyway. Wake me up when the Abomination comes back and we get eaten."
Scarlet clapped his hands sharply. "Nope! You're not sleeping. We're building that Skaroo."
"Sparrow..." Mira corrected, still lying down like an exhausted corpse.
"And no. I said what I said. I'm not helping. I'm done. My soul has left my body. Goodbye, Scarlet."
He crouched in front of her face and poked her cheek. "Get... up."
"No."
"Mira."
"No."
"MIRA!"
She lifted one finger, placed it gently on his forehead, and pushed him away like an annoying fly. "Be gone, little vampire."
Scarlet's entire brain short-circuited.
"I... stop calling me that!"
"Why?" she smirked. "Sounds fitting."
"Mira, I swear—"
Before he could finish, the darkness above them shifted like a living curtain stirring. A low, distant groan echoed through the island, followed by a metallic clang somewhere deeper in the ruins.
Both of them froze.
Mira slowly sat up. "... Okay. Maybe not staying here."
"Great. Now get up so we can build the damn Sparrow."
She squinted at him. "...You really don't know how to build one, do you?"
Scarlet puffed out his chest. "I absolutely do not. But that never stopped me before."
"That's not encouraging!"
"That's confidence!"
"That's stupid!"
"Same thing! And besides, what might go wrong? Things could only go uphill from here. No downsides. Trust me."
Mira stood, dusting off her pants with reluctance. She sighed. "Fine. I'll help. But if we die because of your 'confidence,' I'm haunting you."
He grinned. "You already do, Mira."
She punched his shoulder lightly. "Shut up."
Scarlet smiled and thought inwardly:
'Truly speaking, the shock of the collapsing island and the sight of that massive claw had somehow reset my system; the consuming agony of hunger had receded to a tolerable ache. I don't know why. But I'll be hungry eventually. I think...'
Some time later, the duo was walking down a ruined street. Mira had swapped her roller boots for a pair of black rubber utility boots she'd scavenged from the cinema's storage room, clutching the speed-centric rollers as a last resort.
The adrenaline rush from their near-miss encounter with the colossal hand had faded, replaced by the grim reality of their situation. The floating island was a silent graveyard of stone and collapsed metal.
"This is ridiculous," Mira grumbled, picking her way through a street littered with the shattered crystalline remains of what might have once been streetlights.
"We're looking for a small metallic drone in a city turned to scrap. What exactly are we supposed to be looking for?"
"We're looking for where the metal birds sleep, Mira," Scarlet replied, eyes darting from one ruin to the next. He walked with a light, almost unnatural grace, his scarlet eyes cutting through the pervasive shadows.
"They wouldn't just leave their flying things lying about on the main street. They'd need a big, covered space. A... a metal bird nest!"
"It's called a hangar," Mira corrected, her voice tired. "And you're right; it needs to be big. Look for large structural collapses, something that suggests a roof span big enough for vehicles."
As they moved deeper into the ruins, the architecture grew more imposing and angular. The buildings here seemed older, built with a heavy, industrial purpose rather than residential comfort. Dust motes danced in the thin, oily shafts of light that occasionally penetrated the gloom above.
Suddenly, Scarlet stopped, his head tilting. "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what? The sound of my sanity draining away?" Mira whispered, pulling a rusted piece of pipe from the ground just in case.
"No, that," he pointed down a dark, debris-choked alley. "A sort of... wet, clicking sound."
They moved toward the alley with newfound caution. The ground here was slick, covered in a thin, iridescent film that shimmered faintly.
"This is not dust," Mira murmured, wrinkling her nose.
Scarlet knelt and touched the film. "Tastes like... metal."
"Don't lick it, you fool!"
Just then, a sound echoed from around a tight corner. It was the scraping of hard bone against stone.
"Hide!" Scarlet hissed, pulling Mira behind the fractured remains of a colossal stone column.
A moment later, a creature shuffled into view. It was small for an Abomination, no bigger than a large dog, but its form was utterly grotesque. It looked like a cluster of jagged, blackened bone shards woven together with sinew and shadow, forming a roughly spherical body. It balanced precariously on four unequal, spindly limbs of hardened flesh. From its body, three long, slender tentacles of pure shadow-stuff lashed out, clicking as they sampled the air. It moved with a jittery, hungry motion, its misshapen body clicking and scraping.
Mira sighed.
"Oh, look... the downside."