They covered Sylvanni's head as she was brought to the audience, a stuffy hood to block her vision, but her hands and feet remained unbound. Clearly the Baroness wished to show off her docile Guardian prisoner, and Sylvanni did not resist. She shuffled her feet, trying not to trip as the two Vandal guards walked her forward. Let them think her broken, all the better for when an opportunity showed itself.

Within, she was taut, poised to strike. An arrow on a drawn string.

Somewhere off to her left, she could hear Uldren being similarly marched by his own guards. He didn't speak, but the sounds of a moving body clad in skin rather than chitin were familiar, and she picked them out in the shuffle. He hadn't been in his cell when they'd retrieved her, but she was relieved to know they'd be facing this together at least.

Despite her covered eyes, she recognized the route they were taking: their destination was the Baroness' throne room, where she'd been brought any number of times. Or, perhaps Sylvanni realized, it was not her throne room at all, but the absent Kell's. Her suspicions were confirmed when the hood was yanked free, and she found herself at the front of the familiar chamber, standing before a throne-seated Fallen even larger than the Baroness: the massive Kell himself.

She quickly took her usual attentive pose, arms behind her, eyes lowered; though through this indirect gaze, she tried to study the rest of the room. Just in front of her, the Baroness was chittering out a grandiose presentation, telling the story of how a valiant strike team had captured Machine-thief Silveks, and saying how perfectly obedient the Kings' most valuable slave was now, after she had been properly tamed.

The Baroness held Mandala's stasis canister in her lower hands, which she proffered towards the Kell, praising the Kings splicers' ingenuity in its design, how it entirely disabled a Machine-shard, explaining how Silveks now lived and died at the House's command, how her stolen Machine-ether was now siphoned away to be rightfully returned to the most worthy members of the House.

Sylvanni stopped listening closely enough to translate after that; she had a feeling she knew where this presentation was headed. Instead, she tried to surreptitiously study the reclusive Kell himself, who dwarfed even this large seat as he lounged across it. Though it was hard to tell with him seated, she guessed he would be at least a full head taller than the Baroness standing, and she was already twice a human's height. Sylvanni had faced Kells in the past, hunting Skolas after his treachery in the Reef, though she had never been so powerless before one as she was now. A creature like this felt far more intimidating when she had no weapons or armor and with her powers stripped away.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Uldren being held by two guards off to the side, presumably waiting his turn to be shown off to the court. He looked much worse than when she'd last seen him: grey skin mottled with black and purple bruises, his own dark blood smeared across the side of his mouth and staining his dirtied clothes in several new places. Whatever they had been doing to him this morning, it clearly hadn't been pleasant, and he sagged with a heavy slump between his two guards, their arms holding him upright almost as much as they held him in place.

Clearly the Baroness wished for both of her prized prisoners to appear powerless and debased when brought before the Kell: a Guardian stripped of her powers and coerced into obedience beside the Awoken Prince thoroughly interrogated and beaten to a bloody, impotent pulp. Despite his clearly terrible condition however, when Uldren caught Sylvanni's sideways glance, he winked once, with the tiniest fraction of a smile.

She turned her eyes forward again, to the floor before the throne, and tried to interpret that. Did this mean Uldren had a plan? Dared she wait for him to make the first move? Perhaps he hoped to cause some kind of distraction, and in the chaos she'd be able to grab Mandala's containment and free him.

Her ears pricked as she caught the Eliksni words she was listening for from the Baroness: loyalty-showing and offered life. She straightened, steeling herself for what was to come, looking to see who would hand her a weapon for the deed. To her surprise, the Kell interrupted, standing from his chair.

[ No, ] he growled in Eliksni, slowly crossing floor to stand right in front of Sylvanni. It took every shred of her remaining will not to step back or flinch away, but she stood her ground, craning her neck to stare up at him with her coldest expression. [ To kill these deathless thieves is great pleasure, why should Silveksslave have such privilege granted? It shall instead prove loyalty by offering life to its Kell. ]

The Baroness looked taken aback by the unexpected interruption in her carefully scripted pageantry, but she quickly recovered and motioned for Erxaris to translate a command to Sylvanni not to resist. They still thought her incapable of doing more than repeating the rote Eliksni phrases she'd been drilled in.

With an intent, four-eyed gaze, the Kell seized Sylvanni with one immense hand wrapped around her waist. She gritted her teeth, keeping herself silent as the roughly shaped prisoner's stay pinched and cut into her skin. The metal began to creak and groan around her as the Kell slowly started to squeeze.

[ So pitiful and weak, these creatures. Soft like a molted hatchling. Great Machine would never choose such pitiful race. Proves its theft by sickening unworthiness. ]

His grip tightened and the stay crumped, making a shredded mess of her abdomen as she bit back the sounds that tried to rise in her throat. She would not give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream. She kept her gaze locked hard on his, and through bloodied lips rasped: To House Kings , in Eliksni, the final phrase of the recitation she'd been taught when 'proving loyalty.'

She spit it as a bloodied curse, wishing that every member of this vile House should be subject to such a slow and painful death as this. The Kell seemed to take her meaning regardless, and with a cruel smile he clenched his hand, thick claws spearing her through from all sides. In a way, it was a mercy, the cruelty she'd goaded from him had ensured she'd fade quickly.

With a dismissive flick, he tossed her ruined mess of a body off his fingers and down to the floor. She vaguely heard him start to order the Baroness to bring out the Ghost, and then Sylvanni closed her eyes and slipped into the soft darkness of death.

As ever, her respite was all too brief, for the next thing she knew, she was seized from quiet rest and dragged back into existence. She dropped back into a renewed body, her livery robes and the ill-fitting stay restored to their original condition as well. She let the momentum of resurrection drop her to one knee, trying to hide how unsteady she always was when getting revived with no warning like this.

For one moment, she let herself feel Mandala's presence, reconnected to her even briefly, Ghost and Guardian once more. It was an indulgence she rarely allowed herself in this routine, but something about being here before the Kell, the sense that something was going to change, she let herself consider what would happen if she simply kept him, refused to hand him back over for containment. She already knew there were Vandal guards watching her for any twitch of aggression or disobedience, ready to drop her in an instant if she showed any hint of becoming a threat. In as dark a place as this, bereft of shields or armor, she had to remind herself that her Light would be curtailed long before she could muster enough to pose a threat.

And yet, she hesitated, and ever so briefly looked for Uldren out of the corner of her eye again. He shook his head with a wince of sympathy, and she understood what he meant; that unwise hope dying in her chest. This isn't the time. Don't make your move yet.

She bowed her head and smothered her treasonous emotions, letting the mantle of Silveks settle upon her again. She was as the void within: cold, vacuous, hollow. A space in which light and life could not exist. Nihility itself. She held her hand forward, calling her Ghost to it—just a thing, just an object, allowing herself no emotion in the act giving him over. The Baroness greedily snapped his canister prison closed and Sylvanni felt the connection between them snap within her as it was severed, leaving a dull ache behind.

Mandala was once more an object without meaning taken from her. And, in like manner, she too became an object unto herself. The Kings' prize, the decorative trophy, a thing merely shaped like a Guardian. She could not bear it otherwise.

The Kell watched this routine with an air of satisfaction, settling back onto his throne as the Baroness began to lavish praise upon the ingenuity of the splicers whom she had led to discover this new invention, that which could ensnare the most loathed Machine thieves. She started into a self-aggrandizing account of how she had found a way to bind Silveks to a blessed Servitor, that the stolen Light ether might be reclaimed for the Eliksni.

Sure enough, Sylvanni heard the all too familiar whirr of mechanics floating up into place beside her. She closed her eyes, trying to slow her breathing as she waited for the Baroness to give the order. Trying to fight the Servitor's grasp only made it worse. With a hard whine, she felt its power fall upon her, and her muscles seized as she was lifted from the floor. The paralysis was only relief the experience offered: in that she did not have to hold herself back from screaming. Under its terrible auspices, she could not have opened her mouth to cry out even if she'd wanted to. As ever, the Servitor extracted her Light with an agony so comprehensive it wormed its way through her soul, seeking the parts of her nature beyond causality.

That power felt as though it pried every tendril of her nerves from her flesh, and she could do nothing at all to fight it off, nothing to be done but suffer until finally it completed its awful work and dropped her limp to the floor again. She simply lay there, body spasming in the aftermath, ostensibly uninjured but feeling just as broken and devastated as when the Kell had shredded her chest and dumped her to die.

She distantly heard the clicks and chitters of Eliksni speech, but was nowhere near coherent enough to bother trying to translate. Likely the Baroness promising the Kell the first of this 'Machine ether' harvest, once it had been synthesized for Eliksni consumption. She numbly felt clawed hands take hold of her arms and drag her away from the spot before the throne. Thankfully, they did not attempt to force her to stand for the rest of the proceedings. Grateful that she was no longer the main event, she settled into a kneeling position off to the side and waited for her strength to slowly return.

In her place, Uldren was dragged forward and tossed roughly to the floor before the Kell, who leaned forward with great interest. Uldren Sov, it appeared, needed no introduction, for no sooner had the Baroness attempted to explain her next prize's pedigree but the Kell cut her off, already sneering through a cruel smile.

[ Such shame must it feel, ] the Kell snarled, using the lowest, most derogatory register as he spoke. [ Broken prince of broken people. Blood of Mara-Falsekel, who failed to lead House of Wolves. Usurped by own prisoner, Skolaskel. Falsekel who died leading House of Reefwalkers to useless death. And that which falls now before the Kingskel, it is lesser sibling even still, lesser to an abject failure. Pitiful survivor of a people unfit to exist. To see such weak royal blood stain my floor is great pleasure. ]

Uldren slowly pushed himself up off the floor, wiping a smear of that 'weak royal blood' from his face. His Vandal guards stayed flanking to either side, ready to grab him again if he tried anything, but he simply settled into a lazy sitting posture.

And then looked up at the Kell, met the four eyes there with an intent look and smiled.

The Kell roared at the disrespectful expression, throwing himself to his feet and bristling with threat. [ You are nothing! Less than nothing, less than worthless! Your House crumbled around you, you fall to the hands of your enemies, you suffer at our behest! ]

Sylvanni slowly lifted her head to watch, feeling the energy in the room shift. She noticed how his language slipped as he addressed Uldren, from the lowest form—how one would address a prisoner or slave—to one slightly higher: How one addressed an enemy.

Something's changing here, she realized. Is this somehow Uldren's doing?

The Kell continued his brutal tirade, all four arms waving in fury as he spat insult after insult upon Uldren, but the prince simply settled back, smile broadening. Smugly waiting for the tantrum to be finished. Sylvanni watched the exchange rapt, waiting to catch some sort of signal from Uldren, and fearing that the Kell in his fury might kill the prince right then and there.

When finally his anger seemed to have run dry, the Kell stepped up, daring Uldren to respond to the accusations against him. That infuriating grin remained as Uldren craned his neck up to meet the Kell's eyes, then said plainly: "I think your Baroness is going to regret never learning my people's language, as I tell you that this little pageant she's putting on is a prelude to your assassination. That ether she extracted from the Guardian, which she plans to offer you next, has been poisoned."

The Kell pulled back, snarling at the unexpected response from his beaten yet un-humiliated prisoner. Clearly, he understood what Uldren had said, though the Baroness simply looked confused to hear human speech in the room. More telling however, was Erxaris, who flinched quite clearly, and stepped forward to speak. She, the Baroness' faithful translator, had certainly understood what Uldren said.

The lone member of House Judgment waved her staff in a threatening motion at Uldren, who looked utterly unimpressed. [ Hold silence! You shall not speak such filth before the Kell of Kings. Great Kell, this feeble worm speaks lies to you in false tongue! It thinks to divide your majestic court on the joyous occasion of your return. ]

The Kell looked between Uldren on the floor and Erxaris, narrowing his outer eyes, perhaps noting how quickly Erxaris had jumped to the Baroness' defense. [ Is this so? ]

Erxaris started to step back, realizing the ploy was out in the air, and there was little chance of it being covered back up. She turned to the Baroness, starting to call out a warning that Uldren had revealed them, when a small blur flew from the waist of a watching dreg and buried itself in Erxaris' throat, cutting her off mid-word. The shock dagger, telekinetically thrown, hummed quietly with energy as Erxaris twitched and slumped to the ground.

Uldren lowered his hand, not even trying to hide the wrist flick he'd used to accomplish the feat. Sylvanni could hardly believe he was capable of that kind of mental focus considering his state. His guards seemed frozen with shock, one staring at the swiftly dying Judgment Vandal, the other at their charge, though neither moved to grab him again.

"How quickly she tries to warn her traitorous mistress," Uldren said casually. "So much for Judgment's impartiality. That makes another House… fallen . But if you disbelieve me, Great Kell– " The title dripped with insincerity. "–test the ether for yourself."

With Erxaris' death, the Baroness began to back away from the Kell, still not fully comprehending the exchange happening, but realizing something here had gone terribly wrong. When the Kell turned upon her, she crouched down to all sixes, sensing a fight, ether hissing from her rebreather. She clutched the Ghost containment cylinder under her lower right arm protectively, perhaps thinking it might be her only bargaining chip.

The Kell stayed upright, cruel and imperious as he walked toward the last ranking member of his court. [ This tribute of Machine-ether, Baroness: First draught will be yours. ]

The Baroness, despite realizing she was caught, still tried to demure. [ Such great honor, Magnificent Kell, should… should belong to you. ]

The Kell suddenly lunged, moving far faster than his size seemingly should have allowed. The watching courtiers scattered away from the fight as he crashed into her, the two of them struggling in a fierce scuffle. The Baroness faltered during the bout, clearly used to being the largest Eliksni in the room, but now simply outmatched by the stronger, heavier Kell. She reached for a charged sword at her back, only for the Kell to seize the offending arm and—with a sickening, wet crunch—tear it free. The weapon slipped inoffensively from its sheath, halfway drawn, and clattered to the ground.

The Kell seized her other lower arm, and wrenched this one free as well to complete the docking. He started to growl something about treason and traitors, but Sylvanni barely heard it, watching the severed limb tumble to the ground… along with Mandala's containment cylinder.

Enervated though she still was from the harvest, she dared not waste this chance. In the chaos of the House turning upon itself, she wouldn't get another opportunity. With a sudden heave, she threw herself forward, but her guards were not nearly as stunned by the outbreak of violence as Uldren's had been. Perhaps it was a matter of their difference in threat: a beaten, mortal Awoken going rogue might harm a few Eliksni before he was subdued, but a Guardian managing to fight back could potentially take out the entire room.

Whatever the reason, when she lunged, a clawed foot planted immediately itself in her back, pinning her to the floor before she could get more than a few feet. [ Stop now! ] a panicked voice yelped in Eliksni above her. When she continued struggling to get away, the fearful guard stabbed his shock blade through her shoulder, hoping the arc energy would incapacitate her. She struggled to try to push through it, ignore the pain, desperate not to lose her chance, but after everything she'd been through, she simply lacked the strength. Succumbing to the electrocution, her limbs spasmed, helplessly out of her control, until the guard finally relented and pulled his weapon free.

She turned her head as she remained pinned, watching as the canister rolled with improbable convenience right to where Uldren still sat on the floor. She wondered how long he'd been keeping that telekinetic aptitude from their captors, saving it for these crucial moments. He rested his hand atop it, keeping it close, and she tried to take some meager comfort in the idea that at least it hadn't ended up with another Eliksni.

The Kell had eyes only for his recently docked Baroness, completely ignoring the rest of the court in attendance. He held her fast with three arms, leaving his fourth to pull the intake from her ether rebreather with a swift yank. She struggled to get away, but his grip was unyielding, his free hand bringing a hose connected to Sylvanni's Servitor over and connecting it to the mask instead. All four eyes wide, the Baroness shook her head vigorously, trying to dislodge it before her held breath gave out, but the Kell's hand wrapped around her head, keeping it in place.

Eventually, her lungs gave out and involuntarily, the damning breath was drawn. Uldren's accusation against her was revealed almost immediately as she convulsed, a breath of aerosolized poison dosed strong to kill a Kell flooding her body along with the sweet, precious Light-ether. Sickly black veins spread in sinister tendrils across her skin, visible between the plates of carapace. The Kell dropped her to the floor, and the mask finally popped free, just in time to reveal a brackish foam beginning to well up in the Baroness' maw, spilling over her chin as she choked.

It wasn't a quick death, but the Kell stood over her the entire time, watching as her own plot consumed her. Only after she finally stilled did he look away, his gaze sweeping over the silent, fearful members of his court, who cringed away when he turned towards them. Then, finally, he saw Uldren, still sitting on the floor there. Beaten, bloody, and battered, but the only person in the room who met the Kell's eyes.

And once again smiled.

Sylvanni thought she could see the moment the situation dawned in the Kell's eyes. His last real member of the House Court, dead after a failed coup. Their House Judgment representative, her impartiality compromised as she assisted in a political scheme. Ether reserves critically low, no one left but a handful of Captains at size now. The Kings too, it turned out, were a House breathing its last dying gasps. The House which had hid its weakness from the rest of the world, in hopes that out of sight they would be believed strong. Now, at the moment of his return, its weak Kell revealed he had done the same in hiding from his people.

Now, both Kell and House were revealed for enervated things they truly were. Everyone who had witnessed this scene knew it. The truth rang out in the silence, impossibly obvious, irreparably damning.

With heavy steps, the Kell crossed the room, coming to stand in front of his throne over the person before him who was not subject to the Kings' shame. Before that throne, and before his lowly prisoner, the Kell dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

Uldren's smile widened, satisfaction writ plain, and in that moment as his posture straightened. He somehow seemed to stand tall while on his knees.

[ You broken, beaten thing, ] the Kell rasped miserably, four eyes fixed to the ground. [ With nothing at all, with no pride, you will do what I cannot. You will lose nothing when you give the word that must be given. It is twilight for the Fallen, and we must lay our banners down. ]

Sylvanni looked up slowly, hardly able to believe the words she was hearing. In particular, she caught the term he used to describe his people: not "Eliksni" in their tongue, but their equivalent of the human name. A word in Eliksni to refer to one brought low, an enemy defeated, a thing bereft of value or honor. "Fallen."

[ 'Broken prince of broken people.' ] Uldren said simply, turning the Kell's own words back upon him. [ 'Broken ruler of a broken House.' ]

The Kell snarled in derision, a sound somehow both anguished and pitiful, realizing how thoroughly the trick had been played upon him. [ 'Usurped by own prisoner.' So clever, you must think yourself. Knelt down on floor in chains, you have unraveled a House. ]

[ House Kings unraveled itself, ] Uldren said, voice raising as he addressed the entire room in effortlessly fluent Eliksni. [ As all Houses have. None yet stand worthy to be called such, nor any Kell worthy of its title. All present are witness to this moment, an end to Houses. A new era thus dawns for Eliksni. ]

The Vandal guards beside Uldren, the same pair who had tossed him roughly to the floor before their Kell but minutes earlier, now leaned down, carefully helping him to his feet. Despite his injuries, Uldren stood unassisted once he was up, with that same confident, imperious posture he'd had when Sylvanni had first met him in his sister's throne room: the regal bearing of the Awoken Prince. As the Vandals took up positions behind Uldren now instead, falling into parade rest at his back like an honor guard, Sylvanni watched ripples of movement as other Eliksni in the crowd shifted positions as well, responding to the change in power.

Those Eliksni, including the very guards who'd brought Uldren forward, had been ready for this, she realized. A contingent of sympathizers seeded amongst those in attendance, prepared to secure the scene during this quiet coup. How had Uldren swayed so many to his own cause as a tortured prisoner in a cell? Perhaps they had only agreed to act after the Kell had been brought low, but the fact remained that Uldren had carved out and primed his own faction here for a regime change, right beneath the noses of the current leaders.

What Sylvanni truly struggled to understand, however, was how and why he had done all of this without informing her of any of it. She had thought he had some sort of plan of escape he might be working, but this? A full-scale insurrection, with allies recruited from among the guards? How could he have left something if this scale unsaid?

She'd thought them allies. She'd trusted that he was working with her to look for a way out, that they were on the same side. Yet all this time, he'd been scheming at great length in secret to his own ends. How quickly I forget, she thought bitterly, remembering the feeling of his knife sliding into her neck on Mars. Uldren Sov is only ever on his own side.

If there had been any doubt of that in her mind, his next words sealed it, as he turned to regard the Baroness' corpse with contempt. [ She thought to raise herself to the top of something grand, unaware that it was naught but a crumbing ruin. A chance to sit upon the pinnacle of a heap of debris. And she hoped to claw her way there upon stolen achievements, false victories. ]

Uldren's nail tapped the glass of Mandala's containment, which he held in one hand. Sylvanni's heart clenched. [ No splicers of hers discovered such power, the means to tame your most hated and feared enemies. That knowledge was mine. She believed she had wrested it from me by force, never realizing she was but leading me to this moment, exactly as intended. ]

Somehow, unfathomably, the betrayal still felt fresh, sharper than the arc blade she'd just endured even though she'd suspected it from the start. After so long down here with him, she hadn't wanted it to believe it anymore. She hadn't wanted it to be true.

"Uldren…" she breathed, low and full of venom. Her own guards still held her down, two clawed hands on each side encircling her arms. They too, must have been Uldren's creatures, she realized. No wonder they'd been so quick to snatch her while his own pair had been 'stunned.'

The prince did not deign to look upon her.

[ What becomes of us now? ] The humbled Kell demanded softly. Even knelt and bowed forward as he was, he was still slightly taller than Uldren standing at full height.

[ Now, the scraps of this once-House shall be reforged, fit to a new purpose. A grander destiny. ] With a smirk, he continued more softly, dropping out of Eliksni to address the Kell alone. "The details of such purpose need no longer concern you, but rest assured, I've no intention of squandering them as you have."

The Kell hissed at the insult, but did not raise his head. Instead, his lowered gaze moved to the side, fixing upon the other Awoken in the room. [ And what becomes of it? ]

Sylvanni snarled softly and stared the massive Eliksni down, the sound from her making the guards' grips on her arms tighten. She fixed Uldren with a savage glare, letting the sight of her caged Ghost within his hands fuel her rage. All along, he'd lied. She'd never been anything more than a token for him to barter to arrange his own plans. Well, she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing how much that betrayal had hurt her. When he looked in her eyes, she hoped viciously that the only thing he saw within was his own death.

For only a moment, something flickered in his expression: Pity? Regret? The last tiny wisps of his rotten conscience finally crumbling away? Whatever it might have been, a moment later it was gone. Only that unaffected smirk and practiced confidence remained. [ This one… Succulent though the Light-wielder's ether may be, I have a different purpose in mind for her and her little Machine. Tis a shame your Baroness saw fit to befoul the final extracted reserve. ] He made a motion to her guards, who obediently began pulling her to her feet. [ Handle Silveks as was discussed, please. ]

She shoved herself forward as soon as her feet were beneath her, trying in vain to break free. "You cowardly traitor ," she howled, tears slipping free as she tried to get to him. "Give him back to me, you da–" She was forced to cut herself off, snapping her mouth closed as she tasted something sharp on the air: the heady scent of the Eliksni soporific they always used against her.

Her guards pressed the dampened cloth over her mouth and nose, but she stubbornly refused to breathe, glaring at Uldren in silence all the while. Let these Fallen see how their torture had trained her, how clearly she'd been forcibly taught that she didn't need air to stay alive. She didn't relent, breathing out the rest of her air with slow control and then leaving herself empty even as her lungs burned. She had a horrible thought that she knew exactly what the Baroness must have been feeling in her final moments, with the poisoned ether mask forced upon her face.

Uldren's smile widened just a touch as he realized what she was doing. Clever, he mouthed, just for her. Then he gave another little nod to her guards, and she felt something sharp stick her arm.

That's… cheating, you bastard. The room swum despite her diligence, and as she lost control, her body gasped for the air she'd denied it. That breath damned her, and between one heartbeat and the next, everything fell to darkness.