The winds of Rykros had been whipped up into a frenzy, as if the planet's own neutral calm, its will as observer and historian, had been disturbed by whatever was happening to it. Silicon dust storms stung Rune's flesh and attacked his eyes and mouth, forcing him to pull his hood up over his head, which he hated doing, because he couldn't see where he was going (not that he could see where he was going other than in the direction of the intense red light that could be his own eyes bleeding for all he knew) and it made him look too much like the real Lutz. He heard the grating roars of Carmineheads, twin-headed living stone gargoyles, and the screeches of Culla-Bellrs, the low, constant whine of the light beams that spewed out of their mouths when they attacked their prey. The natural denizens of Rykros, fierce predators designed to guard the Towers and test the would-be Protectors who sought Le Roof's knowledge, were enraged by the shift in mood, attacking anything they saw on sight, including each other. Elsydeon still flared, its aura blue now as it fought off the infectious rage itself, its single-minded consciousness tugging at Rune's mind, willing him to take the sword in hand and fight off the evil threats to Algol it sensed all around it. Rune wished he could - if only to stop them killing him first - but he hadn't the first clue how to use a sword and doubted he was strong or agile enough to learn. A wizard was trained to keep calm and focussed in battle, maybe a few tricks with a quarterstaff in case he succumbed to psychic exhaustion just as someone decided to attack him, but Espers weren't physically strong people and they were supposed to fight in teams with Protectors to shield them while they provided covering fire. Where is Chaz when I need him, the useless little runt? What about those three androids who were so keen to fight for Algol a week ago? But he knew that things were going wrong everywhere in the solar system, not just on Rykros. They were probably all busy protecting their own people and homes, fighting their own battles.
Shielded by the same winds that were threatening to tear him apart, he managed to reach the front gates of the Anger Tower. They were wide open, the doors having been torn off their hinges by the guardian monsters that had poured out of the Tower and rampaged in random directions, slaughtering each other if there was no prey to hunt. Their fighting amongst themselves was the only reason they hadn't tried to invade the Silence Temple and trash Le Roof's chamber yet. Rune was relieved to note that the Tower wasn't actually on fire, although the actual cause of the flickering red, orange and black shadows drained away that relief again: Re-Faze, his tri-pronged flaming form sillhouetted against the sky. The energy-being (it was difficult to describe in words the form of a Rykrosian entity, godlike but simple, a function of the Universe given a body) was hundreds of times larger than when Rune had last saw him, so large that he had burst out of his abode in the upper chamber of his Tower, melting the spires of the crystalline structure with the unimaginable heat and magical power that he radiated, so that the tower looked like a volcano of molten glass frozen mid-eruption. Re-Faze's core pulsed with a blinding emerald light.
"Legeon!" yelled Rune, pointing his staff at the creatures in front of the gate and channelling his will through it. A wave of giant blue-white fireballs streamed from his staff, immolating the monsters in seconds. Stepping over the piles of ash as he climbed the steps into the tower, he was surprised at how little fatigue he had felt from casting one of the most powerful combat spells he knew. He wondered if the Elsydeon, whose light was now brightly shining the same colour as the divine flames of Legeon, had something to do with it; if it couldn't be used directly as a weapon, it would still play its part in the battle!
The Anger Tower wasn't time-consuming or complicated to navigate. It wasn't that sort of trial; its danger was meant to lie in only one test, not even a battle, only a purity of the heart that was either present or missing, to be judged by a single answer to a simple question. The rules of the game had changed now, but fortunately Re-Faze either didn't have mysterious maze-constructing powers or was too angry to bother using them. Rune felt the irate fury like the overpowering heat of the Motavian desert, at midday, in an area where the Motavians had dismantled the terraforming equipment on purpose to spite the Palmans and built modern art out of it. He had to keep casting Deban just to keep himself from dying of heatstroke.
Finally, kicking away the corpse of a Bloodsaber who had tried to stab him as he climbed the stairs, he was at the door of Re-Faze's chamber. It had been melted away, so what he actually saw was the sky, and Re-Faze looming above him. Directly below that, he saw machinery strewn around the floor, covered in dust and molten glass, wires trailing up the walls as though they had been fixed to something on the ceiling when the room had been intact.
He heard a voice in his mind that he recognised from his dreams.
"Brother! Come, you must look! I am purifying Algol of its every imperfection!"
The core flared again in time to the voice. He looked up at the core and squinted hard; inside its emerald facets, he could just make out the silhouette of a young female figure, absolutely covered in wires from head to foot.
"The taint has returned to Algol - it has travelled around the galaxy, corrupting so many solar systems, destroying entire planets or worse, twisting their destinies into empty shells - but now I am finally ready for it! I can stop it in its tracks and completely erase it! Algol will be its grave - no, its crematorium!"
"Are you saying you want Algol to be on fire?" yelled Rune, both out loud and in his mind, praying that she could actually hear one of them and wasn't too far gone to understand the words, "Doran... look, I'm sorry, I'm not your brother, not any more... this thing that's gone wrong... it's Re-Faze! Anyone can clearly see! The memory banks of Rykros must have decayed with age..."
Rune's world exploded with red light as a Megid technique almost flung him off the tower; he would have been incinerated on the spot if it hadn't been for his paranoid casting of Deban and the pale blue aura that now protectively surrounded him as well as the sword; Elsydeon didn't want him for its collection quite yet.
"How dare you accuse me of being senile!" a voice boomed in his head, also female but clearly not the girl he had been talking to - or at least, not just her, "Do you presume to know the will of the solar system, just because you hold a pretty toy, because your ancestors at some point dabbled in playing at being me? You don't even hold those skills any more - they died out long ago! Then you finally discovered what you were playing with and you tried to use my power - to control me, as you tried to control the deserts and the snowstorms and the tides!"
It's Re-Faze who is in control, thought Rune, Re-Faze who is doing this, although Doran might have started it off - who knows what she got up to in all that time, alone on an inhospitable alien planet, already going mad, her memory backed up so many times she could never die? Damaged minds, both humans and planets... an endless feedback loop of insanity...
"I'm getting you out of there, Doran!" promised Rune. Another Megid; this time he was expecting it. Instead of trying futilely to brace himself against a half-demolished wall, he drew the sword and held it out in front of him. It wasn't as heavy as he imagined it to be; it sort of held itself up. He idly wondered if he would have been able to wield it himself, if he learned the technique, then he wouldn't need to rely on idiots like Chaz...
Spell-fire struck sword like fire hitting ice, and they washed over each other, flames in crimson and cerulean dancing and leaping all around Rune, notes like a rain of shattering glass ringing out. The Tower was gone, the sky was eclipsed by darkness, nothing remained but the twin fires of Re-Faze and the Elsydeon, pure serenity and righteous fury, duellists, dance partners, mates. He swung as he leapt forward into the abyss, striking the emerald core again and again. Beside him, he saw the blue flames coalesce into ghostly figures - Alis, Myau, Odin and Lutz (Noah, Alis had called him... did he have two names, as Rune had been both Rune and Lutz?). The red flames also took forms, those of Zio, the Profound Darkness in Her final angelic form, Doran and what looked unnervingly like Wren. Rune suddenly feared for the android's safety, that the insane spirit had thought to choose Wren as His avatar, the one person that Rune would have voted least likely to be possessed by an eldritch horror from the stars, had there been a questionnaire. Still, the image did not break his concentration, as it was almost certainly meant to do; he left the apparitions to fight each other in the arena of the combined mind-worlds of the two godlike spirits as he concentrated on striking the crystal. Cracks were already beginning to form inside it, their jagged circuit-board patterns lighting up. Alis' flashing blade struck the Profound Darkness, Lutz met Zio's spells, Odin threw himself at Wren, his armour stopping a Photon Eraser blast.
That left only Myau and Doran.
"What in Algol's name do you think you are doing?"
Wren grabbed the other android by the throat, picked him up in one hand and threw him against the far wall. He convulsed, sparks flying from his connectors, as the damage from being incorrectly removed from a larger device surged through his system. He was still too dazed to react when the first bolt from the Photon Eraser hit him, taking off one of his arms. The second shot, aimed at his chest where his CPU was and fully capable of punching a hole straight through his chest and the wall behind it, was averted only by Demi using Phononmezer on Wren.
"I apologise, but I have observed you tanking a direct Phononmezer hit before with little difficulty, and you needed to be apprehended. Your optical lenses are glowing red," Demi pointed out, "Are you malfunctioning?"
"Demi... if you do not stop siding with the saboteur, I will consider you to have defected to the enemy."
"Saboteur? Explain yourself. I saw only that the android immobilised the forces attacking us, then began negotiations with another force that was firing upon Algol."
"Negotiation? That Motherbrain plant was in control of those forces all along! He only stopped attacking because he had achieved everything he wanted to - he used the forces as a beacon for the ships, then used them as a targeting device for the installation he has set up on Rykros! And now he has Nurvus under control... probably Zelan too... and you! He has hacked you, too!"
"I think you are the one who has been hacked..." said Demi, hearing the crackling static that distorted Wren's voice module, the unhealthy red glow in his eyes, the way his hands shook as he pointed his Photon Eraser at Demi and his weapons systems - including a primed Positron Bolt - at the other android, who was still slumped in the corner, a look of disbelief in his wide eyes as he stared at his would-be executioner. Wren didn't fire at unarmed prisoners, even if he really wanted to. His hands never shook. He didn't have any red LEDs in his eyes and his voicebox turned off when it detuned, it didn't turn to static. The only thing in the building that could do red lights and static was the thing on the display screen.
"Is that all you can say in your defense? So be it. I have changed your security setting to 'class 1 threat to Algol'," said Wren, then he fired the Positron Bolt.
"NOT NEAR THE CONSOLE!" yelled Demi, throwing herself protectively in front of her equipment. The blast hit her firmly in every part of her body at once, throwing her at the display screen. Her optical sensors went blank. Her audio sensors were down, too, but she could feel the vibrations of Wren's heavy footsteps. She scanned her control terminal; still functioning. Good. Blindly rummaging underneath the terminal, she found a hidden hatch, which she bashed open with her fist. Small cylindrical objects spilled out into her hands; repair beam canisters. Trimate for androids. Good; she knew her facility well enough to remember where she kept the repair kit. That would buy her a little time. She stabbed herself in the chest with it and felt the lattice of repair beams flood her system, connecting loose circuits, defragmenting damaged code, welding her left leg back on. There was a satisfied 'beep' and she could see again. Her Barrier was down – she had kept it up as soon as Wren began behaving oddly, and it had been the only thing that saved her from the Posibolt – then she grabbed a handful more of the repair canisters and walked towards Wren.
"You are malfunctioning, Wren," she declared, "You have been critically malfunctioning for a long time. As a medical android, I apologise for not noticing it earlier. I would have recalled you from duty straight away. Now, if you would kindly allow me to treat you..."
Wren's eyes flared, then he answered her with a Photon Eraser bolt to the face. It refracted off her Barrier but it still knocked her backward. The cannisters spilled out of her hands. She quite calmly replaced the Barrier and bent down to pick them up, then continued walking towards Wren.
"Wren, you are malfunctioning..." she repeated.
"What is that?" asked the android, suddenly, "Oh, yes. One of those animals. Those are sold in Skure."
Demi glanced around briefly, confused. The image on the display had changed. The red static was still there but it briefly flickered off, replaced with another image; a small Musk Cat, outlined in blue, like an old photograph.
"That is Myau," she told him, glancing back at Wren and hoping that the Burst Rockets he was charging wouldn't be primed in the next five seconds, "You can tell because he is wearing battle claws."
"Oh. Myau of the First Era legends," said the android conversationally, as though he wasn't missing an arm and still in a room with an out-of-control combat android, "He was your favourite, wasn't he, Doran? You do like those animals. You bought ten of them from Skure. Musk Cats are still alive on Dezolis, you know. They fled Skure and migrated to a cave that was still warm due to proximity to the original fires of the Eclipse Torch. Would you like to see pictures of their habitat?"
Then the android was at Demi's terminal again, searching for images and sending them to the entity on the other end of the communication: Pictures of Musk Cats sleeping curled up on their ledges in Myst Vale. Statues of Alis in the Esper Mansion. The statue of Alis and Myau in its shrine on a hill in Termi. Monks chanting their devotions before the Eclipse Torch in the Gumbious Temple. The Aeroprism in the Soldier's Temple. The stores of Alshline in the chaotic Motavian market town of Tonoe. Owl roosting on the peaks of the indomitable mountains of Dezolis. A herd of Rappies running across the wild desert that reclaimed Motavia year by year. The Baya Malay Baker, walking through the ruined streets of Aiedo and loudly peddling his wares to the hungry survivors. People everywhere, singing the ancient songs as they lived and worked, even though they might not know the exact tune or all the same words. All the little things about Algol that had never changed and would never change in any number of millennia. But mostly Musk Cats. Doran liked Musk Cats.
I'm sorry, Re-Faze. I can't attack a Musk Cat. I can't attack Myau, and I definitely can't attack Alis. And I don't want to attack my brother.
You show weakness in the face of battle? You really are just a madwoman?
I'm so sorry... everything you said made so much sense up to now, but if these are really things you can attack and say it's for the good of Algol... Re-Faze, I... I think my brother is right... I think there may be something wrong with you... That makes you the weak one. That makes you the mad one.
But we are defeating your enemies, are we not?
I don't think you're protecting Algol any more. I think you're just attacking things that happen to be Algol's enemies at the moment. I think your enemies are everything. Everything in the whole Universe. And that's not what you're for. And that means you're broken!
With the next blow, the crystal shattered into billions of pieces and cascaded across the void like the violent formation of a new Universe. Like a fire being sucked through a window, Re-Faze's raw essence no longer had a stable physical shell to contain it, and so was sucked into it's only receptacle, the Elsydeon.
The only thing left was the image of Doran, cross-legged in empty space, Myau in her lap, purring.
"The others have gone and left us behind, meow, it's time to go," commented the cat.
"Just give me a moment. I'll be right behind you. I've got something important I need to tell my brother," said Doran, releasing her hold on the cat. Myau loped off into the Elsydeon. The girl stood up and walked towards Rune.
"Laconia is known for its magically conductive properties, you know," she told him, as if addressing a research partner or even a student, "So it isn't unusual for high volumes of magical energy to gather within a large mass of Laconia. Rykros has known for thousands of years that it is malfunctioning. It has been collecting the telepathic residue of lives that are most prominent in the fate of Algol, so that they may be stored for posterity, inside Alis' sword of Laconia – so that Rykros has a backup drive for all its most important information. But it isn't just a backup drive. It's a recovery install program. Re-Faze is the part of Rykros that broke down first. It needs a highly powerful telepath to restart it."
"Is that what you were doing, when you were possessed?"
"Possessed? No, I surrendered to it of my own will. I was too weak-willed and too angry. The things that want to hurt Algol, to change what Algol is, have always hurt me too, so I wanted to lash out at them, to destroy them all so they wouldn't haunt me any more."
"I'm sorry that you were hurt like that."
She shrugged, "We're Algol's tools. Tools wear out. I don't think what I've done was all bad, and Algol will be saved either way. Re-Faze's way would just be the worst possible way to save it. If you think you can mend Rykros, please, go ahead. It's fitting that you should be the person to do so."
"The Elsydeon chose you too."
"It's an afterlife. Dezolisians believe the afterlife is a place to expiate your sins, to completely blank your soul for your next reincarnation. The process isn't pretty, but it's necessary, and it's what happens to you if you haven't earned your way out of it by performing miracles," she said, "By the way, you should be prepared for what happens when you fix Rykros. There's data in there that has been damaged since Algol was created. Who knows what it looks like when it's fixed? And... there's something that initially damaged Rykros. The thing I was looking for. It did exist, and I felt its presence – I just got too many false readings because my instrument was damaged to tell exactly what it was. I think you'll be the first to find out."
"Thanks for the heads-up," said Rune.
"Just being a good sister," she said, then turned to the sword and added, irritably, "Yes, Myau, okay, I'm coming, I'm coming!"
The Elsydeon flared, then there was just darkness. Rune lay unconscious for hours, his brain caught up in simply understanding what had happened to him. Then he woke up. The Elsydeon was tightly gripped in his arms, and he lay curled up in a crystal courtyard where the Anger Tower once stood.