Chapter Text
“Hold that line!” Clara’s voice carried through the howling gale as she struggled to tie the last of the ropes. Buffeted by the ever-increasing gusts, she strained against the rope, struggling to draw in as slack as possible. “Goddamn it Iris! Give it some welly.” The small craft flew through midnight-black clouds, its fragile frame shuddering violently with the tempest that had boiled up from a cloudless and clear sky. Large, black thunderheads roiled above and below them and lightning flickered in the distance.
Iris wrestled with the thick, coarse rope as she fed the slack to her sister. “I’m doing the best I can,” Her voice slid between gritted teeth as she braced herself against the oncoming storm.
"Then do better.” Clara called back, trying to lash the rope down. “Just give me a little more!”
“I have a great idea…” Iris gave another agonising heave on the rope, grunting as the first icy drops of rain began to pelt against her face. “I’ll stand there and shout and you can come over here to pull on the bloody rope.” She threw her whole body weight into the motion, the rough hemp burning through the gloves that protected her hands.
The Gemini bucked like a wild horse. The deck dropped beneath them Iris’s knees slammed into the deck, the rope tearing from her grasp. Caught off guard by the sudden snap of tension, Clara screamed as the heavy line whipped across her face sending her crashing to the slick timber.
“Sis!” Iris screamed. Scrambling upright, she took several paces forward, only to freeze as Clara began to drag herself up.
“Well what are you waiting for?” Clara roared, wiping the blood and rain from her face as she crawled over the slick, unsteady surface. “Get that rope tied down.”
Pushing past her stunned sibling, Clara seized the loose line herself. Iris could only watch in bewildered fascination as her sister began to heave on the rope with furious strength. Clara’s face was already swelling, a deep bruise blooming where the rope had struck. Blood welled from split skin above her eyebrow and lip, washing down her jaw in the downpour.
“IRIS!” The shout snapped Iris out of her daze. Clara shoved the rope into her hands. “Stop day dreaming and snap to it. Do you want us to fall out of the sky?”
“Sorry!” Iris gripped the line, throwing herself into the task. Another massive fist of wind battered the vessel as the lightning drew terrifyingly close. The air crackled, thick with static, making the hairs on the back of Iris's neck stand on end. She threw the rope around the cleat one final time, locking it down in a tight, practiced figure-eight.
“Secure!” she screamed into the gale.
Glancing out at the roiling sky, she watched a spiderweb of lightning arc across the clouds, drawing a dangerous perimeter around their craft. With every flash, she could swear the electricity held an unnatural, sickly green tint. Shuddering at the sheer malice of the storm, she retreated from the rail to join her sister at the helm.
“Get ready for landing,” Clara barked.
Miles below, it had been a long and frustrating day for Ciel and Sebastian. First, Bard had incinerated the kitchen and scullery for the second time that week, Finny had followed suit by decimating the formal sculpture garden and Mey-Rin had capped the morning by breaking the last stack of plates in the house. As if to crown that set of disasters, a letter from the Queen had arrived just afterward dispatching them to the remote Norfolk coast. At this time of year, Norfolk was a ghost landscape; the aristocracy had long since decamped to London for the social season. After two agonizing hours suffocating on a steam train, Ciel now found himself being jostled to pieces in a rattling dog cart en route to the coastal village of Brancaster.
The storm struck the coast like a vengeful god, turning the twilight into an unnatural night. Rain lashed the narrow road in sheets, and the wind screamed through the hedgerows as if trying to tear the very earth apart. The dog cart lurched violently, its wheels slipping in the sudden mud.
“Sebastian!” Ciel’s voice cut through the roar, sharp with irritation rather than fear. He gripped the side of the cart, his single visible eye narrowed against the driving rain. “If this contraption overturns, I shall hold you personally responsible.”
The demon butler stood at the front, one gloved hand steady on the reins while the other kept the young earl from being pitched out entirely. His black coat whipped around him like living shadows, and though the rain soaked him through, his expression remained one of perfect, unruffled calm. “As you wish, my lord. Though I suspect the horses might object first.”
A brilliant flash of lightning split the sky overhead, green-tinged, unnatural, crackling with an energy that made the hair on Ciel’s arms rise. The horses screamed and reared. The cart tilted dangerously.
In the distance, something else caught Sebastian’s attention. A dark shape, smaller than a dirigible but far too agile for any balloon, tumbled through the roiling clouds above the cliffs. Lightning danced around it in jagged, hungry arcs.
“Master,” Sebastian murmured, his voice dropping to that velvet tone reserved for interesting developments. “It appears we are not the only ones caught unprepared by this… meteorological anomaly.”
They dropped through the clouds into chaos. Lightning found the mast and ran down it in a hiss of greenish-white fire. Iris tore her eyes from the sight and bent back over the altimeter. Clara fought the helm as another gust yawed the Gemini sideways, her jaw locked, her knuckles white on the wheel. Rain came in sheets, soaking through waxed canvas until the cold sat in their bones. The timbers groaned. Then the mast snapped.
It tore free and slammed into the deck, crushing an engine housing beneath it. Iris screamed and dropped flat as splinters filled the air like grapeshot. She covered her head, felt the wood-dust and debris rake across her arms, and when she dared look up, Clara was already back on her feet at the helm, goggles down, blood threading from a dozen small cuts on her cheeks and mixing with the blood already at her lip.
"Clara!"
"Don't panic. Punch the switches." Clara's voice came out level, almost bored. "Get us down."
Iris hauled her own goggles into place and stumbled to the engine controls, blinking dust and rain out of her lashes.
"Engine four's gone," she called out, reading the panel. "Three's at fifty percent."
"Fuel?"
She checked, and her stomach dropped with the number. "Fifteen percent. We're bleeding it."
Clara swore and began snapping switches down the row. "We need ground, now." Iris moved to the altitude panel, throwing levers into landing configuration under Clara's shouted sequence. The last lever clicked home and the engines answered with a shriek of tortured metal, warning lights flooding the console red.
"What now?" Iris didn't wait for permission. She wrenched open the nearest maintenance hatch and dropped into the engine housing, out of the wind long enough to shove her goggles up and search the machinery. Nothing. She hauled herself back up, fought across the pitching deck to the next hatch, and the wind ripped it out of her hands the second the latch gave, slamming it flat with a crack like a gunshot.
She looked down into the housing and went still.
Ten feet below, past a hole torn clean through the hull, she could see clouds. The engine that belonged there was simply gone, torn free by the storm, or the mast, or both. It didn't matter which.
"The descent modulator's gone!" She fought her way back to the helm, wind shoving at her with both hands. "We land without it."
"Fine." Clara's eyes didn't leave the panels as lightning cracked white across the clouds. "We descend on the engines. Cut them to half power, one at a time. We lost altitude fast when four died , we get close enough to the ground and then we use the chutes."
"In this?"
"The alternative is we crash." Clara's voice sharpened. "That's what we're left with. And we're not even through the worst of it."
"Clara..." Iris looked at her sister and something in her face gave.
"We'll get through it. Do what I tell you and we'll be fine."
"Okay." Iris drew a breath that didn't quite steady her and put her hand back on the controls. "Cutting three!"
The ship dropped like something had cut its strings. Clara threw her weight into the wheel, wrestling the spin the broken mast wanted to put on them, holding the Gemini almost level through sheer stubbornness.
"Two?" Iris's hand hovered at the next switch. Her hair hung in wet ropes across her face; only the adrenaline kept the shivering at bay. She kept glancing at the broken mast, at the way it shifted with each gust — it wouldn't take much to bring the rest of it down.
"Wait." Clara's eyes tracked the altimeter, the horizon line, cornflower blue gone narrow with concentration. "If we drop too fast now I lose the descent entirely. Ten percent at a time. Slow."
Iris nodded and eased the dial down by degrees. The ship rocked and she grabbed the console rail to keep her feet as the wind slammed broadside into them. Rain hammered her hands numb.
"Cutting two!" She hauled the lever and the deck dropped away beneath her again. She waited, watching Clara correct for it, before she let herself breathe.
The descent turned ragged as the last of the engine power bled away, less a landing now than a controlled fall. They burst from the cloud base over the North Sea, the coastline a dark seam ahead of them, the wind shoving the little ship along like driftwood. Clara held the wheel with everything she had left. Then the final engine died, and with it, every scrap of control.
"Launch the chutes!"
Iris threw herself at the rear lever, wrenched the lock free, and dragged it down. On the port side, silk billowed to life. From starboard and stern came only the crunch of splintering wood. She abandoned the lever, leaned over the rail to look at the housing and swore. The two chute housings were crushed and warped beneath the fins, the wood buckled in on itself.
Behind her the port chute caught the wind full-on, and the ship snapped into a flat spin so violent it threw Iris sideways into the rail. Somewhere behind her, Clara's body hit the steering column and then the deck, and blood was already spreading beneath her head by the time Iris dragged herself upright.
"CLARA!"
Dizzy, retching with the spin, Iris hauled herself to the rail on the tie-line and went over the side. She kept her eyes fixed on the hull, moving hand over hand, until reached the ruined starboard housing and began kicking at the warped wood with everything she had. The ship lurched and nearly threw her clear. She kicked again.
"Come on!" She looped the safety line through a groove above her, prayed it would hold, and let go of the hull to swing backward on the tether. It caught, snapped her back hard against the side, she thrust out with both legs and kicked with her eyes shut.
The wood gave. Silk spilled free, and she lunged for the handholds overhead, missed, the spin too violent, too fast and the ground kept closing. She reached again. This time her fingers caught, tore against the metal, held. She hauled herself in against the hull with what was left of her strength as the chute finally bit and the spin broke, hard, all at once.
Her head cracked against the side of the craft. Dazed, sick, she clung on as the ground rushed up to meet them.
Through the churning vortex of the clouds, a small, fragile airship burst into view. It was handling the rough skies poorly, yawing violently as the gale-force winds caught its frame. From their vantage point on the desolate road to Brancaster, Ciel and Sebastian watched the vessel’s desperate struggle for survival.
A jagged bolt of that peculiar green lightning struck the ship’s central mast. Even from the ground, the blinding flash illuminated the deck, revealing two frantic figures clad in drenched, waxed jackets. A second later, the sheer force of the wind snapped the heavy wooden pole. The mast ripped free, crashing directly into the vessel's hull with a sickening crunch that echoed across the marshes.
"It's losing power," Ciel observed, shielding his eyes against the driving rain as the lights on the craft flickered and died. A cloud of lethal wooden shrapnel and debris erupted from the deck, billowed by the wind like a swarm of hornets. "They're going to crash."
"Indeed. One of their engines appears to have been entirely severed," Sebastian noted coolly, his inhuman vision tracking the mechanical wreckage as it plummeted into the gray waves of the sea. " They are attempting to bleed power from the remaining thrusters, but their trajectory is... unrefined."
The small craft lurchingly dropped several hundred feet, rocking violently as the pilot down below struggled to maintain a level course. The remnants of the shattered mast dragged behind it, inducing a dangerous, unpredictable spin.
As the dying vessel cleared the lowest layer of storm clouds, heading directly for the rugged coastline, its final engine gave a high-pitched, mechanical shriek and fell silent. All control vanished.
"They are deploying a parachute, my lord," Sebastian reported calmly.
A massive canopy of white silk erupted from the port side of the craft, billowing to life as it caught the gale. But the starboard housing remained tragically dark, the wooden casing warped and jammed by the impact of the mast. The uneven drag was instantaneous and catastrophic.
Frail human figures were violently hurled across the deck as the airship caught the wind and entered a dizzying, flat death spin. Through the downpour, Ciel saw the pilot thrown backward, slamming hard against the rear railing before slumping into an motionless heap.
"The pilot is unconscious," Ciel muttered, his brow furrowing as he watched the second figure drag herself over the shaking rail. The girl was clinging desperately to the exterior of the hull, kicking frantically at the jammed starboard housing as the ground spun rapidly toward them. "What is she doing? She'll be crushed."
"A desperate bid to manually deploy the secondary chute, I imagine," Sebastian said, watching the girl loop a safety line around a groove and fling herself backward to kick the warped timber. "Human adrenaline is a fascinating catalyst. Ah—there it goes."
The wooden housing shattered, and a second canopy of white silk unfurled into the storm. The airship violently yanked out of its deadly spin, braking so sharply that the girl’s head slammed hard against the hull.
"Sebastian," Ciel ordered, his voice cutting through the roar of the oncoming crash as the ship hurtled toward a nearby ridge. "Secure the area. Let us see what the Queen's storm has dragged in."
"Yes, my lord,"
Ciel Phantomhive stared at the wreckage from the edge of the heath, his single visible eye narrowed against the downpour. The dog cart stood abandoned behind them, horses still skittish.
He had seen airships before, majestic military dirigibles and lumbering civilian blimps drifting over London during exhibitions. But this… this was nothing like them. The vessel was compact, almost delicate in its lines, with an unconventional frame of reinforced timber and metal components that looked simultaneously advanced and jury-rigged. Strange engine housings protruded at odd angles, and what remained of the rigging and control surfaces bore no resemblance to any design in the Phantomhive archives or the Queen’s reports. Alien. Experimental. Possibly not even British.
“Sebastian,” Ciel said sharply, voice cutting through the gale. “What is that thing? It’s no standard dirigible or balloon. The propulsion system alone looks… wrong.”
The demon butler stepped forward gracefully, black coat snapping in the wind. His crimson eyes swept over the wreck with clinical interest. “Indeed, my lord. The construction suggests a level of ingenuity not commonly seen in conventional aeronautics. And the way it attracted that unnatural lightning…” He tilted his head. “Two human females aboard. Both alive, but unconscious.”
Ciel’s expression hardened. “Then we extract them before the wreckage shifts or the storm worsens. Search for any identification or cargo. This may be connected to the Queen’s summons.”
Sebastian moved without hesitation. With effortless strength he lifted the heavy spar pinning Clara, setting it aside as though it were kindling. He checked her pulse with a gloved hand, then carefully eased her free. Iris was next, lifted with equal care and laid beside her sister on a relatively dry patch of ground.
Both women were breathing, though raggedly. Clara’s face was badly bruised and bloodied from the earlier rope strike and final impact; Iris’s arm was clearly injured, and a nasty lump was already forming on her temple.
Sebastian straightened, brushing dirt from his sleeves. “They will require medical attention soon, young master. Shall I carry them to the cart? Or would you prefer a more… thorough examination of this curious vessel first?”
Ciel crouched beside the wreckage, peering into a torn engine housing with undisguised curiosity and suspicion. Rainwater dripped from the brim of his hat as he studied the unfamiliar mechanisms, gears, tubing, and components that hummed faintly with residual power. “This isn’t right,” he muttered. “No markings I recognise. No standard boiler or gas envelope. Who builds something like this… and why crash it here?”
A low groan escaped one of the women, Clara, stirring faintly but her eyes remained closed. The storm continued to rage around them, green-tinged lightning flickering ominously in the distance once more.
The young earl rose, brushing mud from his coat. “Bring them. And secure whatever documents or devices you can salvage from the wreck. I want answers before the tide or authorities complicate matters.”
Ciel crouched beside the two unconscious women, studying them with clinical detachment. They were clearly twins, same sharp features, same blonde hair plastered with blood and rain. “They’re twins,” he noted unnecessarily, almost to himself.
From the direction of the coastal road came a growing mechanical whine, sharp and high-pitched, with an underlying electric hum that bore no resemblance to any steam engine or motorcar Ciel had ever encountered. Completely alien.
“Sebastian,” Ciel said sharply. “What’s that noise?”
The butler’s head tilted as he finished securing a makeshift sling around Iris’s injured arm. “Another engine, my lord. Approaching fast. The signature matches elements of the wreckage.”
Headlights, brighter and steadier than any gas or oil lamp, cut through the sheeting rain. A sleek, low-slung vehicle emerged onto the heath, its angular lines and faint glowing accents looking thoroughly out of place against the Norfolk countryside. It skidded to a halt near the wreckage.
A man leaped out. He was reasonably muscular, with hair the colour of chocolate and rich hazel eyes that widened at the sight before him. He wore an old shirt with sleeves rolled up, paired with a heavy leather apron. Soot smudges streaked his forearms, and his hands were visibly calloused from hard work.
“What in God’s name..” His voice rang out, rough with alarm as he strode forward. “I saw the lightning strike and the ship go down from the hall. Are they...?” He stopped short a few paces away, gaze flicking from the crumpled Gemini to the two motionless women, then to the young earl and his butler. “Clara? Iris! Move aside! I need to check them.”
Ciel straightened, eyeing the newcomer coolly. “And you are?”
“James Wilmington, Lord of Woolsbury Hall,” the man replied curtly, already kneeling beside Clara to check her pulse. His movements were practical, efficient, despite the fine title. “These women have been… assisting with some private engineering projects at the hall. What the devil happened?”
Sebastian remained politely positioned between the group and the wreck, his expression one of perfect, unruffled courtesy. “A most violent storm, my lord. One that seemed rather… selective in its malice.”
James glanced up, hazel eyes narrowing at the strange little earl and his far-too-composed servant. The rain continued to lash down, and in the distance, another flicker of sickly green lightning lit the clouds.
Ciel’s single visible eye gleamed with sharp interest. “Woolsbury Hall. Then perhaps you can explain this vessel… and why its technology looks like nothing on these shores.”
The ride to the Hall was tense and silent inside James Wilmington’s strange vehicle. Its alien engine thrummed with an unnatural smoothness as he moved with speed through the storm.
Woolsbury Hall rose out of the storm like a brooding sentinel on the cliffs. The ancient Jacobean manor, its red-brick façade weathered by centuries of salt-laden winds, stood partially veiled by sheets of rain. Tall, mullioned windows glowed with warm lamplight in defiance of the tempest, while newer glass-and-steel extensions jutted from one wing like unnatural growths—angular, modern, and humming faintly with hidden machinery. Ivy clung stubbornly to the older stonework, but fresh scaffolding and strange copper piping snaked along the eastern walls, disappearing into what looked like reinforced workshops or hangars built into the hillside. Lightning flashes revealed the silhouette of a low tower capped with a curious metal framework that crackled with residual green energy, and the grounds, once formal gardens, now showed signs of recent excavation and heavy industrial traffic. The whole estate carried an air of secrecy and uneasy fusion: old aristocratic grandeur colliding with something far more experimental and dangerous.
Upon arrival, James’s capable staff quickly took charge. The twins were carried upstairs to guest rooms, where a doctor and housekeeper began treating their injuries, cleaning wounds, splinting Iris’s arm, and watching over Clara.
James led Ciel and Sebastian into a large, firelit study. He peeled off his wet shirt and pulled on a fresh dry one. His chocolate-brown hair was still damp as he turned, rich hazel eyes hard with suspicion.
“Now…” James said, voice low and commanding. “Who the devil are you?”
Ciel stepped forward, composure intact. “I am the Earl Phantomhive—”
James snatched a strange-looking pistol from the desk, sleek, compact, with faintly glowing mechanisms and pointed it straight at Ciel.
“I know the Earl Phantomhive,” he growled. “Vincent and I were university friends. I’m godfather to his children. Vincent doesn't have a son. So who the hell are you, boy?”
Ciel went very still. For a moment, something raw and ugly flickered across his face, shock, fury, and a deep, disorienting unease. His single visible eye narrowed sharply, lips pressing into a thin line.
“Never had a son…?” The words came out cold and dangerous, laced with barely contained anger. “That’s impossible. Vincent Phantomhive was my father. I am his heir. If you were truly his friend and godfather, how could you not know that?”
Sebastian stood silently at Ciel’s side, his expression one of polite calm, but his crimson eyes tracked James’s every movement with lethal focus.
James kept the pistol trained on the young earl, hazel eyes unwavering. “Because I knew the man well enough to know his family. He had daughters. No sons. Ever. So either you’re a very bold imposter… or something far more complicated is going on here. Start talking. Now.”