RainCaster (edited)

Before

Cloud 7 was breaking apart.

It was infested with Rain, wet bodies, broken wheels, and blood.

Drops of water clung to the silver frosted towers and the bridges that connected them, burning and dripping like liquid acid. It melted locked doors and spread like a flood through chambers and rooms. These rooms were quiet now, save for the steady sound of dripping and the occasional bubble.

Several bodies littered the streets, each amidst its own crimson puddle. Most wore clothes with a sharp number seven imprinted on the backs. Squadrons—soldiers. Others wore jackets, dresses, jeans, slippers. People—civilians.

Innocents.

The sound of cloth scraping against concrete reverberated through the silent city. A little boy of about eight years old crawled out of a dark alley. His face was beyond pain, his ice blue eyes beyond tears. He crawled down the street, towards the tall white capital tower in the distance. The boy kept his sights on that tower and reached out with a feeble little hand.

Behind him trailed the water, inching forward little by little, closer and closer. Blood seeped from the boy's missing legs and the water engulfed it, mixed with it - and, when there was enough, transformed it. The water rose.

It became a figure.

In the capital tower, everything was still. The wind wheels ceased to turn, their runners dangling from their posts. Wind wheels kept the city alive; they propelled Cloud 7 through the sky, either to attack an enemy city or flee from a hopeless battle

But without runners to run on them, the wheels sat still and unmoving in deathly silence.

Deeper in the tower, globs of water roamed the halls, fusing with each other to create Rain, so the city grew heavier and the white pieces of the cloud it sat on began to split apart. One of the halls opened into a large glistening chamber at the apex of the tower. A clear glass window spanned the far wall of the chamber, overlooking the dying city. A single white chair, decorated with icy spires along the back, sat in front of the window. It was empty. And stained with dried crimson.

Fresh blood still dotted the walls of the throne room.

Blood that continued to pool from the dying Seventh Crown's heart.

The ruler of Cloud 7 screamed as a foot rammed into the gash across his stomach, but his shriek came out as a gurgling cough. Underneath all the dirt and metallic scent, he wore a long coat that tapered into icicles at the hem and clear, crystallized boots that spiraled up his legs.

One wing made of ice daggers twitched from his back and he tried to lift it. But the man standing over him planted a foot on the feathers and a sickening crunch followed by another broken scream filled the chamber.

"You," the Seventh Crown breathed, his narrow blue eyes fighting to stay conscious, "have everything. So, why? Why attack now?"

His tormentor crouched down next to the Seventh Crown's head and ran one golden-skinned hand through the Crown's pale hair. The ice ruler shrank away from his touch.

"Everything?" his attacker said, twirling silvery strands around his finger, and laughed, "No, my dear Tricksift. Not everything."

The man stood and turned his back on Tricksift, who coughed on the ground. What the Seventh Crown wore in icy white and blue, the man wore in fiery red and yellow, with a coat of flames that burned the cracked floor.

"How did you break our water shed?" Tricksift whispered. He bared his teeth. "I know that's what you did. The water shed is where the Rain comes from."

"And here I thought you were clever, Tricksift," the man said and, snapping his fingers, lighted a small fire in his hands. "Your barriers are made of ice, fool. I melted them."

"That's impossible," said Tricksift. "Even if you did melt one layer, another would've replaced it. Your fire can't - "

"Trick," the man interrupted. "You're not the only Crown, did you forget? There is nothing I can't do as the fire ruler..."

The man heard the sharp sigh before he saw the ice, and the fire in his hands spilled onto the floor. It roared and spread in a circle around Tricksift, and the ice daggers the Seventh Crown had conjured disintegrated into mist.

Tricksift stared at the man with wild blue eyes.

"You won't get away with this, Kairine," he yelled through the fire.

The heat was already pressing in on him.

"Allegro will kill you." Tricksift hissed at the flames, moving his hand away from their reach. "He'll lob your head off your shoulders, fry it in your own fire, and feed you to-"

"Shut up."

The man brought his fingers together and the circle swallowed the Seventh Crown in fire. There was no time to scream.

Kairine left the charred remains of the body in the throne room and vanished in a trail of smoke.

In the street just outside the capital, a young man stood and stared wordlessly at the open threshold where a set of double doors once was. His eyes were a little odd, one an ice blue color and the other amber. In his arms, he held a sleeping, dissolving, eight-year-old boy.

Blood still dripped from the stumps of the boy's legs. He was almost out of the crimson fluid, having painted a red road in his slow, agonizing journey to the capital. It was only within the last few blocks that the water—the Rain water—following him finally took shape and carried the boy to the steps of the tower.

The young man set the boy down at the threshold, and the movement shook the boy awake. He opened his eyes and gazed up at the glistening wall, at the tip of the tower, and at the sky beyond.

The boy smiled. And then he died.

The young man sat with him until the sun set in the horizon. He left as the city was cast in shadow. Cloud 7 drifted, split, and finally broke apart.