23:12 TST, 1st Lunar Month, 10th Day, Year 329

X'halvram, Archives

"Through her blood she gave life to those she had molded, and set them free. Through her were we given the blessings of Uranand'r, the sun's light which strengthened the first of our people and gave them flight. Through her were we given the Diplomat's Kiss, so that none would have cause to harm another through misunderstanding. Through her were we giv-"

"Reading old legends again?"

I very deliberately don't look up from the screen displaying the ancient pieces of parchment. "Hello, Komand'r. Come to hear more legends of Earth?"

"More curious as to why you're looking into our own legends, Legate," she says, taking a seat across from me. "What is so fascinating about some ancient superstitions?"

"On Earth, those superstitions are quite real and tend to break a lot of things when they get annoyed."

"Hmph. Should I be worried about X'Hal descending from the stars, all fire and fury, to smite the unbelievers?" she asks with a smile, leaning back and folding her hands behind her head. "Or does that only happen on Earth?"
"Given the sheer amount of other highly improbable things that happen on that planet, you knows? Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if the sheer quantity of magic there warps probability somehow. How else do you explain how aliens keep crashing into it and deciding to fight crime? I mean, hell, two Thanagarians, a Martian from a Zeta Tube accident, a bunch of Durlans, and that's just the ones I know about. Oh, and the famous 'Last Son of Krypton'," I add, making air quotes.

Komand'r seems frozen.

"...Komand'r? Are you-"

"You're saying there's a Kryptonian on your home planet," she says flatly, leaning forwards intently.

"Three, technically. The first one got cloned a couple of times."

"A X'hal-damned Kryptonian?!"

"Yeeesss…" I say carefully. "Is there….some kind of problem with that?"

"Is there - give me that," she growls, practically snatching the tablet I've been reading off of out of my hands. Okay, now I'm honestly confused. What's so important about Krypton?

She shoves the tablet back into my hands, and I scan it quickly. Some ancient spire, blue crystal, Kryptonian origin- twelve million years old? "Ah."

"Yeah, ah," she says, mimicking me. "Do you know what the Kryptonians were like? Their technology is still better than anything except maybe what those shriveled little blue gnomes on Oa hand out to their police force, and their ruins are everywhere. Planets and entire civilizations have risen and fallen because of their proximity to Kryptonian artifacts, and you're telling me your planet has one. When their race has been extinct for twelve million years?" She leans very close to me, eyes challenging. "Is that seriously what you're claiming?" she asks.

"Not claiming," I reply calmly. "Stating. I've met the guy. And seen his home base. Same architecture as this thing," I add, gesturing to the display of the crystalline spires. "For the record, he's not millennia old. Crashed on our planet...call it thirty years ago, as a baby. I'm guessing it must've been a STL spacecraft if the timescale here is supposed to make any sense...either way, I've seen the thing-" -not really, but fuck it, metaknowledge still counts- "-and it looked more like an escape pod with delusions of grandeur than anything else. Anyway, baby-Kryptonian ends up secretly adopted by a childless local couple, helped by the fact they have an astonishing resemblance to humans...grows up, finds out the sun gives him a wide variety of powers due to the radiation it puts out, and naturally decides to adopt an alternate persona so he can fight crime."

"Fight...crime." Her tone is dubious.

"My planet is weird as hell."

"Clearly." She pauses for a moment, and then walks around the desk, taking the chair next to me. "I should have already guessed from what you've told me already. A sane planet wouldn't have three Green Lanterns on it."

"Like I said. Magic and rationality probably don't mix all that well. It's why I'm investigating your legends and mythos."

"Oh?"

How to put this delicately…

"Chancellor Sco'la has asked me to start trying to teach any of her students who show a spark of magical potential. And in relation to that, I may have slightly damaged the sanity of my research assistant."

"What did you do, Legate?" she asks, with an air of resignation.

"He got a look at what passes for my soul. Almost immediately after that, asked to be taught my magic. I told him I'd make sure I have a safe framework first. Hence, legends and mythos."

"I don't follow. At all. Some old scrolls and parchment are supposed to keep a magic user sane how?"

"Magic works off of conceptual links. Champions of gods, domains, life's blood, the power of words and bargains...all of it works because those concepts are deeply rooted in the human psyche. All of it works because our legends draw on the same sources, the same basic mindset, ingrained in our very nature. But Tamaraneans are different."

"It took you this long to realize this?" Komand'r asks, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

"Hush. It's accurate. I'm trying to figure out exactly how. So I have to look back over what your people have done in the past, what mythologies you have, and make an entirely different set of invocations, spells, and principles, if I want anyone to be able to use magic effectively, because the right mindset is paramount to your manipulation of magic. And the lack of ambient magic makes it even harder!"

"Because your spells won't work as easily?"

"Worse. Because your souls can't take the strain as easily as humans. You've been...starved is probably the best way to put it. Which means there's going to be intense limits on what any Tamaranean mage can do, and I'm going to have to work out even greater protections than usual for any major working just to keep my students from having their sanity permanently damaged." I bury my face in my hands. "Why the hell did I agree to do this?" I moan.

"Because you are so used to doing magic you forgot what the rest of us mortals would have to do?" Komand'r says lightly. "Do you really think us so weak?"

"Considering that I now have Argen'tal monitored to make sure he doesn't go full cultist, it's less of matter of thinking and more being properly paranoid. He seems fine, but I'm not risking that happening to children. So. I'm going to have to do things carefully. Build it piece by piece. Was considering meditation as a way to develop their senses," - Komand'r snorts - "but discarded that after five minutes of research. You spend so much time feeling I think it'd actually screw with your minds if you assumed the right mindset for human-style meditation. Now I'm thinking that I'm going to have to stick them in spell circles when I open their senses to magic so they can learn to deal with the input properly."

Komand'r narrows her eyes. "To filter out anything too dangerous? Including yourself?"

"Precisely."

"What makes you of all things sanity-breaking?"

"Did you not see the abominations of nature I keep making in the labs? Or the fact that I eat the souls of my enemies?"

"Pssh." She flaps a hand at me. "You create strange things and inflict horrible torments on your enemies. There are hundreds of scientists and tyrants who can say the same."

"Those scientists and tyrants aren't me, and aren't magical. It's different."

"Prove it," she says shortly. "Show me what you think is so terrifying about you."

"Komand'r-"

"Show. Me. Consider it a command, Magus."

Huh. Well, that clarifies the title.

"I'm stopping the instant I think I have to," I say. "Understand that."

"Fine."

Have to do this carefully...hmm.

Her soul is interesting. Argen'tal's was much weaker, barely more than a ghost, but hers...much stronger. Stronger than most humans. Than most mages. What's the source of this…

I pause, and laugh to myself in the privacy of my own mind and soul as I recognize the traces of power.

I poured so much power into her, small wonder some of it stuck around.

Careful, now. She might take it better than Argen'tal, with a stronger soul, but she's no mage. None of the training. None of the knowledge.

Coaxing her senses to reach out takes an eternity and yet takes no time at all. But since I'm focused on letting it happen, and keeping my own open...I can directly observe the effects as she takes a look at me.

It's...difficult to describe. The best way would be to picture a hand reaching out to touch something, except for the something to be uncomfortably hot. There's two options, from there: either the 'hand' flinches away and contact is broken, or the 'muscles' lock up and can't get away, even as the heat burns into the hand.

For people with power, though, whether because they're an elemental or a mage, it's as though the hand is covered by an asbestos glove. Fireproof. Safe. And the same is true for Komand'r, to my surprise.

It's with a slight amount of disappointment - seeing what happened next would be so interesting - that I push her senses back down, and close her Eye.

Komand'r blinks rapidly before sitting back in her chair. "By X'hal…"

"Let me guess: throne on a lake of blood?"

"What? No. I saw...I don't even know how to describe it. I need...paper. Give me something to write on."

I yank a notebook out of a back pocket and hand it and a pen to her. She snatches both and starts scribbling intently. After a few minutes, she sets the pen down, and turns the notebook so I can see.

An intricate, spiraling design made of tiny, angular figures covers both pages, and in the center of it all...the same sigil of fangs that is burned into my hands, with a few lines of the same angular letters in the very center of it. Some of the spiral's arms end on the pages - others vanish off the edges - and at the end of them...more characters. Ones I can read, this time, because they're in Interlac script.

Names. Numbers. The former...stolen knowledge tells me they're Psion given-names, the latter Citadelian clone-decanting dates and tube labels.

"I…" She shakes her head, and the brief flicker of hesitancy in her expression vanishes as though it had never been. "I can read the figures. In the spirals. Most of them are nonsense...but I know the ones in the middle. It's Old Tamaranean."

"What does it say?"

"It says...The King in Red Lives."

The notebook bursts into flames.

I slam a hand down on the fire, shifting my body so the hand covers the tiny booklet and smothers the flame entirely. The burns this causes vanish by the time I lift my hand back up.

Nothing's left of the book. Not even ash.

Komand'r meets my eye. There's no fear in her expression - I doubt she fears anything - but there's something else...fuck, I still can't put my finger on it. "This could be...problematic."