Bad internet. For once, this isn't late just because it's late.

"So this is it?" Misha certainly hoped so: there weren't any other hymn crystals in here. Hadn't Mir made a lot of hymns here? So why had this one, and this one alone, been left here? Shouldn't all of them have been taken somewhere to study them? People had been talking about profiling and assessments and other military things that boiled down to, 'know your enemy,' when she and Aurica had been in the hurried version of boot camp.

Aurica had been grateful for the additional training, even though they'd pushed her really hard. Misha had thought it was a walk in the park, to be honest. Although getting advice on how to sing hymns other than Chronicle Key had been useful.

Aurica frowned. "The only way to tell for sure would be to download it, but…"

"Remember what happened to Lyner," Misha finished for her. Mir not actually fighting them like that could mean she wanted them to have it. And not in a nice, 'I want to be saved and find out that the world wasn't as horrible as I thought it was,' way.

"Lady Shurelia should have some way of finding out what it is, right?" Aurica wondered. She wanted to download it now, she wanted to go right to the Crescent Chronicle and get this over with, but it might not be safe.

They should have backup when they tried it, too. Just in case Mir was willing to fight them the next time. She hadn't fought a world and held on for all these centuries without being stubborn. If she captured them, took Aurica out of the equation the way she had Lyner? "Misha?" Aurica asked, turning the crystal over in her hands. "Remember that you said you thought that you should sing to save Mir, instead of just to hurt her?"

"Yes." Of course Misha did. She'd said it more than once because she meant it, it wasn't an idle statement. She hadn't nagged, and it made sense that they didn't want to remind Mir of Chronicle Key when they tried to tell her that things could be different, but Misha had still felt like she had to have some part in this. She wanted to slam the door of the Crescent Chronicle, the door to the past when people had suffered and sacrificed, shut with her own two hands. That had been why she'd wanted to sing Harmonious, as much or maybe more than because she was a member of the Lune line, and she should help Mir to make up for how she'd hurt her, with her song. To make things right herself, so they couldn't go back to being so deeply wrong.

"Now that I've sung with you, now that I know that I can sing with you, I think you're right." Now Aurica knew what it was like, now that she knew she could do it. If she hadn't been able to sing with Misha, then if Misha sang Harmonious to Mir, Aurica couldn't. And she wanted to. "If we show her both of our feelings, so she knows I'm not the only one." That it wasn't just her daughter, wasn't just Aurica and Ayatane, that wanted to make peace with her? "I think that's much better than just me."

"You're not putting yourself down again, are you?" Misha asked, and Aurica smiled because she'd just been wondering the same thing. Was this because she thought she couldn't save Mir on her own, so she wanted someone else to share the burden and the blame?

Yet, was it wrong to want to share the burden, to let other people help? If something was important, and this would determine the fate of the tower and so much more, then wasn't it okay to be glad that she had friends that wanted to help her? That if she fell, Misha could carry on for her?

So, "No," Aurica said. "I think it would be underestimating Mir, and you, to not ask you. I wouldn't be taking this seriously enough if I didn't try to plan for what would happen. I know I can count on you, Misha, so…"

"Of course you can," Misha interrupted. "So why are we still talking about it?" She didn't want Aurica to be morbid.

"…Because I want to download the crystal now," Aurica confessed. "I don't want to just leave without making sure we got what we came for." If this wasn't it, or if this was some spell for doing maintenance on the Silver Horn, they had to keep looking.

"Alright."

"Alright?"

"I know the spell for downloading hymns," even though someone else had always cast it for her, because Chronicle Key was a very secret and important hymn and Misha's authorization level wasn't high enough.

Aurica had actually been surprised that Misha was fine with just doing it when it could be dangerous, but after a moment, Aurica smiled. "Right." Even if she did fall unconscious, what Mir did to Lyner hadn't taken out his cosmosphere avatars. So between hers and Misha, they'd certainly be able to get Aurica out of here safely, without too much trouble.

And if she didn't fall unconscious, then she'd know for sure. So Misha was right to be so confident: it was worth the risk.

Honestly, Aurica had admired Misha from the beginning. Even though she'd been kidnapped, experimented on, had her hymn stolen and been turned into a child, she hadn't let it get her down. She'd kept working to get it back and hadn't let Bourd intimidate her. If Aurica was going to be the holy maiden, if she was going to speak in front of countless people the way Misha wanted to sing to them, she needed to learn how to do that. She knew she could, if the real her, the heart of her could. It was definitely in her to do that, to inspire others.

"If it's the right one, I'll teach you the spell and then you'll give me the hymn too. Deal?" Misha offered her hand to seal the bargain, like with Spica.

Aurica took her hand, squeezed it. "Deal."

Misha spoke the words and Aurica closed her eyes, to focus on the feelings of the hymn.

Joy. Hope Determination.

'I found out it was possible to change the world, so I won't give up trying to change you. Even if trying hurts me, even if you hurt me, I won't give up on getting through to you. Because you are my mother and my father, and I love you.'

"It's the real crystal," Aurica said as soon as it was over. It couldn't be anything else.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm… fine. Why?"

"You're crying."

Aurica wiped her eyes. "It's just… How could they? How could they have refused this hymn, refused her feelings? She loved them so much, even though they hurt her so much, and… I can't understand it." It didn't make any sense.

"I don't want to understand it," Misha said sensibly. "Lyner's the one who wants to understand why people do things like that. I just want them to stop. Who would want to be able to think like Bourd?" What if seeing people as things to play with or any of that was catching? Misha wanted to stop people like that, not study them.

"If you don't know why they do things, then how can you get them to stop?" Aurica wondered.

"Lots of ways. We've got song magic, Krusche's got a chainsaw…"

"That didn't stop Mir," Aurica reminded Misha. "And I don't think it helped her, either." But if this song hadn't worked, then what was she supposed to do? Give up? No, the person who composed this hymn would never give up. Not on making things right.

Songs were the power that would move the human heart, Aurica had read in so many books, but songs were the power that would move the universe because they drew their power from the human heart. Just as it was possible for someone to stand in the face of the universe and not be moved, to sing and force it to change with that power and that determination, it was possible for someone to listen to every song ever crafted and not be moved. Not let those songs force them to change. Their body, maybe, but not their heart.

A song, like any other power, could force someone to die. It couldn't force them to change.

What had made Mir's parents so determined to oppose her song? How could they refuse love like this? How could they possibly want to?

But then, how could they possibly have tortured their own daughter-"Ah!" Aurica gasped, horrified. Her eyes were wide with shock, and she almost wished she hadn't realized this. It was so wrong, so sad.

"What is it?" Misha asked, looking around the room in case Aurica had seen something here.

"Her parents, they… Remember that in the early days, before the Church, most people didn't think that reyvateils were people?"

"Yeah," Misha said, nodding.

"And Mir was supposed to be emotionless. So she shouldn't have had a heart to hurt." And now Aurica's ached. "This song… These are a person's feelings. Real feelings. Their daughter's feelings. What if they didn't understand that they were hurting Mir? They were trying to make her sing better. Like, like fine-tuning a grathmelding recipe. What if they weren't torturing her because they enjoyed it or thought it was okay to torture people, like Bourd, but they told themselves they weren't really torturing her, because she didn't really feel, and this would make sure of that. So she wouldn't hurt. She wasn't a person that could be hurt. And then they heard this song."

"And they didn't want to be wrong? Didn't want to have their theory disproven?" Misha scowled: she'd met researchers like that, in Tenba Labs.

Aurica shook her head. No, no, that wasn't it. Or it was part of it, but it wasn't the real reason. No, that wasn't it at all. "They could believe in this song, listen to the feelings in here and know that Mir was their daughter and they'd been torturing their daughter, all those years, or they could… Don't you see? Before this song, they thought everything was fine and they were good people. Then they heard this song, and if they'd listened to it, then they would have hurt their daughter. They could believe that they'd done so many horrible things to such a poor little girl, that they were awful, terrible people and hadn't even known it, or they could tell themselves that the song was a lie, just… something wrong with their creation. Or they could tell themselves that the only reason she felt this way was that something had gone wrong, and that if they hurt her more, if they tortured her right this time, she'd stop feeling those emotions, she'd stop hurting." And everything would also be right again. "Song magic is about changing the world. So… they could live in a world, or believe they lived in a world, where everything was fine and Mir was okay, or in a world where they'd tortured their daughter. And… the more she sang, the more this song maybe made them love her, the more they would have wanted the first world to be the real one. For the real world to be the one where she wasn't hurting."

"So if it was okay to torture her, then they would have tortured her to make her stop singing. Stop trying to tell them that they were hurting her." Misha looked green. Then shuddered that was creepy. "At least Leard didn't think that the fact he was doing it for my own good made it right." It was for her own good. It would make her last longer, be sure to survive long enough for her daughter to come of age and take her place. It would keep Mir from breaking loose. It didn't mean he hadn't been traumatizing a young girl, a reyvateil.

Necessary and right weren't the same thing, not at all, and hurting kids, well, it just wasn't right.

She could admit that to herself, but she'd never hurt any of her own children. She'd put of having them, meaning she'd have to sing for longer, meaning she'd die sooner, in order to avoid hurting them for as long as possible.

She'd thought of Mir's parents as monsters, as shallow and selfish, but would Mir have loved them that much if they were?

And people who weren't monsters, like Leard, like Lyner, didn't want to have to torture children.

Or have tortured children.

So, if they'd refused to listen to her, maybe it hadn't been because they were evil people. Evil people liked hurting others, liked forcing them to react, liked seeing them cry. It made them feel powerful.

They hadn't wanted her to cry.

That might just have been because they'd thought her a doll with no tears to shed, or wanted her to be one.

So they wouldn't have made her cry.