Eysin: The Giggling Curtain | Ch. 15 - Continental Breakfast with Riot

Alexander gets a little extra over Arkion's old red bomber jacket. A tour around the gluten time-bombs in the Sampo. A breath of nightfall, fake lightning and colliding stormfronts.

Mid-afternoon light filters through the dome in soft, artificial gold—simulated 2:17 p.m. sun that never quite warms.

The private service street behind the hotel stretches wide enough for laundry carts the size of small trucks, food deliveries, emergency rigs. Low buildings line one side: glass and steel facades, five and six stories at most, topped with living green walls that drip recirculated dew. A tall fence of matte black metal runs opposite, etched with abstract reliefs—swirling cuneiform tangled with faint, stylized waves, as if the architect couldn’t choose between ancient Sumer and Baltic sea.

No one moves. The air hangs warm, humid, mountain-fresh—oxygen-rich, laced with moss, cedar, and the faint sweet rot of overripe kitchen scraps drifting from open delivery bays.

Cassius and Sylrissa had stuck with Eysin for the quick Continental errand, but when Clarity lit up about Lily sneaking up from Vegas-B, they bolted, leaving her alone.

Imogen’s voice cuts across the channel, calm as winter steel:

“Daegan is awake. Three hours, people. Wrap your hearts in black rags and move.”

Eysin leans against the wall beside a service entrance, arms crossed, Arkion’s old red bomber draped over her shoulders like borrowed armor.

The metal door beside her bangs open.

Alexander.

He strides out in full theatrical exit: hair freshly tied back with the pine-bead crown perched high and mocking, surma still wet around the eyes, silhouette backlit by the corridor fluorescents as though he’s stepping onto a stage instead of a loading dock. The door swings shut behind him with a heavy, satisfied thunk.

He stops, plants both hands on his hips, scans the empty street—then locks onto her.

A slow, delighted grin splits his face.

He points at the jacket, one long finger tracing the air in front of it like he’s appraising fine art.

“Hold everything. That red. That exact murderous crimson—Arkion’s old bomber? I need that jacket. I mean, I need it on me. Right now. The color alone demands a parade.”

Clarity crackles before she can answer:

Sylrissa, calm: “We’ve got eyes on Lily. Following now.”

Cassius: “Cloaking her signal. We’re good.”

Imogen, brisk: “Thanks. Eysin, stay with Riot. You’ll know when we move.”

Channel goes dead.

Alexander closes the distance in three strides, hips rolling like he owns every square inch of concrete between them. Orange-blossom clings to his collar—Valen’s perfume from the meeting, thick enough to taste. It’s doing things to him he refuses to acknowledge.

He reaches her, spins her once—sharp, dramatic—then dips her back, one arm locked around her waist, the other cradling the nape of her neck.

For one suspended second he hovers, eyes half-lidded.

Then he dives—full, shameless plunge.

Eysin bites down on his lower lip. Hard.

He jerks back with a cartoon howl that bounces off the brick walls—high, theatrical, complete with watering eyes and a hand flying to his mouth.

“Aaaeeesyinnnnn Rrrraavanaaaaaaah! Teeth! Actual teeth!”

She straightens, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, caught between laugh and scowl. “Let’s pretend that never happened.”

Alexander touches the fresh split, winces theatrically, inspects his fingertips for blood like he’s checking a new manicure. The jacket is forgotten; whatever interest he had in stealing that perfect red died somewhere between the dip and the bite.

He offers his arm instead, grand as a man who just lost a duel to a much smaller opponent and loved every second of it.

“Shall we? The world ends in three hours. Plenty of time for a riot, a sunset, and maybe a small revolution before breakfast.”

Eysin eyes the arm, the bead crown, the fresh bite mark already swelling like a badge of bad ideas. She takes it anyway.

“Where to, Riot?”

“Up,” he booms, already walking. “Always up. The cannons are lonely and the ants are gossiping.”

*

They climb through service veins that pulse like living intestines.

Mushroom stairs sigh under their boots—blue and yellow luminescence, soft as exhaled breath.

A fat, rainbow-coloured Lif Ant waddles past, salutes with one glittery antenna, keeps rolling like a disco bowling ball on a mission from God.

Alexander doesn’t even glance down. He starts bouncing a small red rubber ball off the surfaces—ground, corners, metallic walls, handrail, even one unlikely tree (a forty-year-old swirly oak grown in controlled magnetic impulses—electric art).

The ceiling soars, frescoed windows with abstract patterns shifting like cubes of glass lit from within, changing colours on some distant program. Golden metallic panels line the walls, low-level lightning dark yellow with pleasant infrared warmth. Cobblestone floor in salted cement—heavy, costly, absurd in a floating tree.

Eysin watches the ball’s impossible returns. “We aren’t going too far, are we?”

Alexander laughs so hard the ball misses the next bounce and nearly commits suicide off the railing.

“Predictable conflict: definition of ‘too far’.”

Snatches it mid-air. “We’re going all the way to the top balcony. Historical night. No better time to abuse the view before the fools inherit the bill.”

Clarity buzzes again:

Sylrissa → Group: “Lily’s with us now. Kid’s got guts—slipped past every checkpoint like a ghost. Cassius is scrambling her signal; we’re good for now.”

Alexander pauses mid-step, face clouding like he just remembered a melody left unfinished. Begins to sing an ode to Quiet—voice low, lilting, laced with ache:

“Quiet calls through shadowed veils of night,

Her silence heavy with the songs we lost;

Nostalgic notes that danced in candlelight,

Yet hope endures, a duet worth the cost.”

Eysin tilts her head, catching the worry under his bluster. “Wanna go back in there and bust her out? Leave some ugly graffiti on their hall walls before we go? ‘So long, suckers!’ in big, drippy letters?”

Alexander snorts, a real laugh bubbling up like fizzy relief. “Tempting, puella. But I’ve already left them a farewell gift.”

Leans in conspiratorially, voice dropping to velvet doom. “Rigged the whole Tree with gluten bombs—slow-release, sneaky. The Lif Ants will go nuts, like crack addicts jonesing for a fix. Nords think they can control it? Ha! Every corridor will be a slip-and-slide of chaos. Gluten versus high-tech Eesian gear… an interesting experiment to behold. The ants will throw a rave, the Nords will slip, and the tree will remember who fed it last.”

Eysin grins, the image too perfect not to. “Classy sabotage. Gastronomic guerrilla warfare.”

“You know I once laced Arkion’s cookies with enough wheat to give a bison the runs for a week—just to watch him try to meditate through the apocalypse in his guts. He knew it was me. Still ate three. That’s the thing, Ravana—I’m the only one who loves him enough to poison him correctly. If I ever do it for real, he’ll thank me on the way down.”

Eysin looks at him.

Smiles, “you talk like no one’s listening.”

There’s no joke in his eyes now. Only the kind of love that would burn the world down just to keep one person warm—and the quiet terror that they might still walk away.

*

Up again.

Pipes, ladders, one terrifying vertical shaft where Alexander finally zerks just enough to stick to the wall like a golden gecko on a sugar high.

Eysin follows, quieter, her silver barely humming, third ring purring like a cat that knows every secret.

Clarity chimes:

Imogen: “Lily update—kid’s idea was gold, stupid as it is. She’s got codes that might crack the Guild door. Cassius is scrambling her signal; we’re good for now.”

On the top balcony the wind is suddenly gentle, almost shy.

Two storm fronts—one ice, one fire—crouch on opposite horizons, waiting for permission to collide.

Alexander spreads his arms like he’s about to hug the entire Baltic, the sky, and the concept of bad decisions.

“Look at it! Ten minutes of perfect calm before the storm starts and nudges us toward—The Constellation is waiting right outside the perimeter. We’ll get front-row seats to the Cataclysm.” Alexander feels the goosebumps.

Eysin leans on the railing.

Far below, the sea is black glass.

Far above, the lightning curtain flickers off for a moment, just long enough for the sunset to bleed gold straight into their eyes.

Alexander’s voice drops to something rawer, almost shy.

“I had to check,” he says. “That you bite.”

Eysin turns, slow.

“You mean when you tried to stick your tongue down my throat for a hello?”

“Crude, but accurate.”

He touches the split in his lip, winces, “I needed to know the girl in Arkion’s jacket can still be mean when the world asks nicely to be robbed.”

“Yeah, sure.” She rolls her eyes.

“No eye-rolling allowed!”

He spins her once—dramatic, playful—leans her back like people do in old movies, and for one heartbeat looks like he might try again.

Eysin laughs and bites the air an inch from his nose.

“Riot!? Try it and lose the other lip!”

Alexander lets go to touch the split, winces theatrically, then clutches his forehead like a diva in full operatic death scene. “Ooooh, the rejection! It h-huuuuuurts!”

Throws his head back, one hand to the heavens, the other to his chest. “The agony! The tragedy! The drrraaamaaaa!”

Somewhere below, Imogen’s voice returns, calm and final:

“Shafty in twenty. Move.”

“Haha, you said shaft—”

Imogen has kicked Alexander off the channel.

Alexander offers his arm to Eysin again, grand and ridiculous.

“Time to leave the Tree to the fools and the ants to their gluten apocalypse.”

Eysin takes it.

They walk.

From the cooling rack, a naked scrap of lace still dusted in cinnamon sugar wakes up, hears the footsteps fade, and plays one low, satisfied funk note on a saxophone made of pure relief.

If we die tonight, we’ll do so in grand company!

Into the merry darknes we go!

Coming in hot: elevators to hell, squid corpses full of secrets, and the moment every fool learns you can’t outrun family.

The windows are gone, the lace is free, and the giggler just tuned the moon to 0AM/0FM.

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