Chapter 52: Wheels Within Wheels
"—just so cool! I don't really know how to describe it, but he just slid right in and lit up like he was made of magic and burned the thing right out of its body. The spaceport would have been destroyed if he hadn't stopped it, maybe even all of Eden probably, it was just…wow."
Adora's image flickered in the video stream, and Catra sat hunched over on a chair in Taline's room, biting her nails and pumping her leg. This was her third time watching Adora's message, while Taline stood off to the side with arms crossed, watching for the first time.
"Ly told me who he really is," Adora said. "I always had a feeling his real name wasn't Kal, but to think that's who he really was? The same Corynth from the stories? Catra, this is the person Salas told me would be able to help me get in touch with She Ra again. He can train me." She went quiet all of a sudden, curling into herself. "I know I shouldn't be saying any of this to you but…I miss you. I made a mistake the last time we saw each other and it's been eating away at me ever since.
"I don't know if you'll ever forgive me enough to speak to me again. I don't know if you'll even get this message, or maybe you've moved on enough by now you wouldn't care to open this once you see who it's from." An anguished look passed across her face. "But I just had to reach out and say that I'm sorry. And I miss you. And I hope we can see each other again soon, and I hope…Well, I hope for a lot of things. I think I should just leave it there."
She cleared her throat and looked behind her shoulder. There was a lab behind her—people, soldiers maybe, in uniforms Catra didn't recognize. When Adora turned back around, she said, "I have to go. Can you message me back something, even if it's just to say you got this? I'd love to hear from you." She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead reached for the camera, and the feed cut off.
Catra sat there, unable to process anything. The urge to replay the video a fourth time was near unstoppable. It wasn't until she noticed Pip floating off to the side, glancing between her and Taline in concern, that she remembered why she'd come here in the first place.
"When did you get this message?" Taline asked, the calm in her voice at odds with how Catra felt.
"The timestamp says it came through about a half hour before our training session ended," Catra said. "I just didn't notice until I got back to my room. I watched it twice and then came straight here."
Taline's frown deepened. "Well, that settles it then," she said, staring a hole into a point on the wall. "To think, everything I had been worrying about for years was actually true…that it wasn't just paranoia. Corynth is alive, and Adora has been traveling with him."
A memory came to mind for Catra, one of her looking up at Corynth's statue in the Atrium. She remembered seeing his Shaper mask in the box Taline hid it in, deep inside the hidden room adjacent her office, and thinking whoever carved the statue got it looking just like the real thing.
"I'm not entirely convinced Adora knows what she's talking about," Catra said. "She's been wrong before. Quite a lot actually, and she's very impressionable. Super impressionable. It's almost embarrassing. I'm sure she just thinks this person is Corynth...it can't actually be him."
"That emergency communication I took earlier informed me of Eden's destruction." Taline spoke with finality in her voice, and it sent a stone plummeting in Catra's stomach.
Destroyed? Adora had just sent her a message from Eden, how could it be destroyed? Catra had to force herself to focus on Taline's words when she started to speak again.
"It was a smuggler haven, hidden on the sun side of a rocky planet so close to its star it was considered uninhabitable. All scans of the planet had marked it as such and no one ever investigated further. The Vestamid were apparently using it as some sort of makeshift research settlement, and the Imperial naval forces stationed nearby responded when their scanners picked up a brand-new Beast infection spreading across its surface. To say the commander of the garrison there was surprised when the scans tripped would be an understatement."
She stopped with a faraway look in her eyes. The ship creaked as it continued to rocket through hyperspace, the only sound alongside the humming of the life support system and thee rhythmic thumping of Catra's leg still pumping away.
"They picked up a handful of survivors, those who had escaped before the response fleet obliterated everything. Some of those survivors had been called in to clean up the aftermath of the fight Adora recounted in her message—the one against the Abomination.
"There's not a Battlemage alive that could have left behind what that cleanup crew said they had found. A burned-out husk missing a head? Calcified growths on the corpse that caused a severe mental reaction when touched? A whole team of Battlemages might kill an Abominations, as can an entire fleet bombarding the surface of a corrupted planet from orbit, but only the Shapers were powerful enough to do something that surgically precise to a fledgling Abomination."
"Are you sure? People misremember things under stress. Eyewitness testimony is not reliable, its like the first thing I learned as an officer."
Catra didn't want to wrestle with the implications behind Corynth being alive and Adora having traveled with him, almost as much as she didn't want to wrestle with the idea she might have died when the station supposedly broke apart.
Taline shook her head. "I'm certain. Those friends of hers Adora met along the way? Lysithea and Vasher? I recognize those names. Those are famous names, two of Evie's original scientist faction, marked on official Imperial records as dead since no one could find any trace of them after the war ended. The fact Adora called them by name and said it was them who directly confirmed Corynth's identity to her leave doubt in my mind. There's too for this to be mere coincidence and faulty eyewitness testimony."
"Are you saying Adora finally reached out to me wanting to, I don't know, rekindle something after all these years and now she's died before I've even got a chance to respond?" Catra's breathing started to come in spurts. The corners of her vision were pulling in, signaling an oncoming panic attack.
Taline paused and looked at her—finally seemed to see her. She looked surprised, as if her mind were on a different topic and hadn't expected to wander so far afield after assuming her and Catra had been on the same page.
"I'm not sure," she said, sounding and looking far more sympathetic and comforting than moments earlier. It helped settle Catra's nerves and she managed to get herself back under control.
"You said the station blew up."
"I don't know if she's alive or not, Catra. I hope she is, but I'm operating on almost no information myself, either." Taline ran a hand through her hair. "Corynth is still alive. If he survived what happened at Archanas the first time, then a station exploding wouldn't be enough to take him down. And if he's still alive, then Adora likely is too. Whatever his reasons, he wouldn't have gone to all the trouble to take her from Etheria just to leave her to die. Not unless he was already done with her."
Catra almost felt relieved until Taline got to the last part. "What do you mean 'not unless he was already done with her?' What's he trying to do?"
"Nothing good, that's for sure."
Catra scowled. Taline was in her head again already, ruminating on overdrive because her strange fixation and paranoia over Corynth had reignited. Catra understood, since now she was doing the same thing about either reuniting with Adora or learning of her sudden death. Still, these non-answers and cryptic comments about things that had happened in the past were starting to grate on her.
"What's your deal with him, anyways?" she asked.
Taline whirled on her, glaring this time, and Catra put both palms up to placate her.
"I just don't understand, is all. We talked about this before you made me your Sentinel, but you'd never explained what happened. You two used to be close. Now he's someone you've thought about killing for years. Believe me when I say I get it, but context would be nice."
Taline didn't speak, and Catra crossed her arms and scowled at her. Being cagey about Archanas was one thing, but Catra had her limits, especially after having to talk to Diallo again.
"He stood up for Evie when she refused to bow to the emperor's command," she said, unfurling fingers as she listed things off. "He rallied all the rest of the Daiamid and whisked her and her scientists away so she could study the Barrier away from his wrath. When the time came, he brought them all back to Archanas and then you helped them spear through your blockading fleet and onto the planet's surface so they could partially seal the Beast away."
Taline averted her eyes midway through Catra's words, and it was enough to convince her she was actually making some astute points. She'd not wanted to throw cold logic in the face of Taline's emotions, however, so she gentled her voice.
"I'm missing something, obviously. You're convinced he manipulated not just your sister, but you too—that he'd tapped into the depths of some horrific power to persuade Evie to abandon reason and defy the emperor despite the threat of death. And even though it ended with them helping save the galaxy, you haven't forgiven him.
"What is it that I'm missing, then? I might have let it go before, but I'm your Sentinel now and I won't fumble around making guesses on my own, not after what happened with Diallo and Moriarty. Fill in the blanks for me, please. I just don't understand how someone who'd done all that so your sister had a shot at sealing the Beast away could earn such deep hatred from you."
Taline bit her lip, eyes still averted. She closed them, took a deep breath, then tilted her head up to the ceiling and uttered something under her breath. To Catra it sounded like it might be a prayer, or perhaps a curse. Taline then padded across the room and leaned on one hip against the table pushed against the wall of her private quarters. The image of her there, arms crossed and contemplative, struck a strange chord with Catra when she saw it.
"There was a prominent family in the empire, once," Taline said at last. "The La Valettes. They were old money…very old. 'Roots dating back to the first decades after the founding of the empire'-kind of old money." She gestured to herself and said, "They ran a scholarship that sponsored part of my education at the Enclave Academy when I was an initiate. That and endless shifts at the local tavern off campus helped pay for things."
"You were a bar maid?"
"The scholarship didn't cover living expenses, unfortunately," Taline said, maybe a little indignant. "I took to the service aspect of the job well enough, believe it or not."
"Is that why you're the only member of Phoenix's administration who could stomach personal office hours?"
"My secret is out." Taline gave her a tired smile that disappeared the next moment. "The La Valettes were also extremely powerful, and it was for that reason Horde Prime wanted them gone. There was a fire at their estate one day, during a major gathering. Every important member of the main family branch was there. The fire consumed everything and razed it to the ground before emergency services got it contained. No survivors."
Catra kept silent, nodding along with a somber expression.
"An 'internal investigation' found an arsonist." Taline's contempt for that investigation was clear in her tone of voice. "One of the family's servants was implicated, arrested, then executed. It was a big affair. Everybody talked about it, and for days every news agency large and small ran near constant updates and opinions and roundtable sessions about it. And then, about a week after the execution, there was nothing. Nobody talked about it any longer, the news moved on to other prospects. It was as if the whole family were wiped from the face of galactic consciousness overnight."
"Let me guess," Catra said. "Anyone remotely questioning the arson narrative were called crazy and dismissed?"
"Yes. I thought it strange at the time, too, but what could you do aside from speculate endlessly with no proof of anything? It wasn't until the Daiamid actually reached out directly to recruit me that I learned they had done it. It was an assassination, sanctioned by the emperor himself and then aggressively covered up. Those 'conspiracy theorists' calling foul on the arson narrative weren't just dismissed, they were disappeared. All of it was the Daiamid working in the shadows."
"Corynth told you?" Catra knew he'd practically begged Taline to come with them when they were escaping after Evelyn's trial. Whatever atrocities the Daiamid committed against imperial citizens, they did a complete face-heel turn as soon as the verdict came down.
Catra watched Taline's features harden—she was clenching her jaw. "Corynth didn't tell me anything, he lied to my face. Someone else was sent to recruit me—not him. They told me what happened before the Daiamid ever went public."
That…wasn't what Catra had expected to hear. She was under the impression Corynth himself had tried to recruit her after they'd defected. This was the first she'd heard of Taline being a formal candidate to the Daiamid before they'd revealed their existence to anyone else.
"Their representative bragged about their accomplishment to me," Taline said, before Catra could get a word in. "He thought because of the things I'd done already in the war that I'd be impressed they'd successfully culled one of the oldest, most revered families in the empire's history without anyone discovering the truth. I was disgusted and I killed him, but not before he let slip that they'd almost failed the hit in the beginning. The La Valettes discovered the identity of the first agent the Daiamid had sent after them."
"Pretty big accomplishment, considering no one knew about them at the time," Catra said. "How'd they find out?"
"Corynth was the first agent."
Catra's jaw fell open. So many questions came to her at once, the only coherent thing she could get out was, "Him? How? Why?"
"He wasn't always their leader," Taline said. "Long before he became the 'Last Shaper of the Daiamid', he was sent to eliminate the family line, and he told them who he was. I don't know why he was sent and I don't know why he broke their most sacred rule to never reveal the nature of their existence, but he did. He told them who he was, but he didn't tell me. Not when he had every opportunity to, and not until it was too late."
Taline leaned further into the table and ran her fingers through her hair again, smoothing it back. Her fingers shook with her voice, although from anger or some other emotion, Catra couldn't tell.
"The fight against their envoy nearly killed me," she said. "My new powers weren't enough at the time, so I had to over-rely on my runes. I kept up. I'm still not entirely sure how I won that fight, actually. And when Evie and Corynth found me later, half dead in the corner of my apartment, I told them what happened. I knew the Daiamid would come for me after I killed one of them. I was half afraid Corynth himself would be the one to do it, right there in front of Evie. I knew what he was. He still thought I had no idea."
"But that didn't happen," Catra said, so invested in the story she forgot to breathe.
Taline shook her head. She was looking to some distant point off to the side, her sharp features standing in contrast against the light of the room. "No. He had no idea I knew what he was. He still thought I was in the dark. He could have told me. Do you want to know what he said to me instead of the truth?"
She looked at Catra with such a naked look of open pain and anger she froze. Then, realizing Taline was actually waiting on an answer, she swallowed and nodded. "Yeah."
"I'd told him I knew what happened with the La Valettes, but without explicitly saying I knew it was him who was sent to kill them to begin with. I wanted to see if he'd come clean. Instead, he said, to my face, that he wouldn't allow the Daiamid to retaliate. 'Nothing will happen to you, I promise,' he said." Taline effected a different tone of voice as she recited the words, each syllable dripping with contempt and hurt. "'If I have to stand up and declare war upon the emperor himself and all his secret assassins in the shadows then I will, but no harm will come to you. I promise.'" She scoffed then, crossing her arms.
"He didn't tell you something untrue," Catra said. "He just…wasn't fully honest with you." Catra understood how damaging even that much could be.
"He promised no harm would come to me without realizing that he'd caused me more pain and suffering than any blatant assassin ever could." Taline spoke with such force it felt to Catra like someone was driving a spike into her chest. "He was one of them, Catra. For years. For as long as him and I had known each other. For longer! The entire time, he was only pretending to be a Battlemage.
"These people served as the emperor's secret enforcers in the shadows. The La Valettes were just one instance, and if even a fraction of just the most believable stories I'd heard whispered about them up to that point were true, the atrocities they'd committed in the name of the empire would be enough to make even the most forgiving person sick with hatred."
She took a deep breath and smoothed her hair down, again. It was a nervous tick, one Catra hadn't ever seen her do before because she'd never thought Taline of all people could even have a nervous tick.
"I knew where his allegiance lay that day. If he'd come forward and told me who he was that day, I might have been inclined to believe him when he said he cared about me and cared about saving the galaxy. But he didn't." She shrugged, throwing her hands up and letting them fall back down to her sides like she were giving up on something and saying 'oh well.' "How was I supposed to believe anything he'd said or done after that if he couldn't even be forthright with me about who he was?"
Catra remembered wrestling with the same question when Adora first defected from the Horde—everything she'd come to believe about her growing up had been thrown into question. A betrayal like this wasn't something straightforward to come back from. And with Corynth having been believed to be dead up until only minutes earlier, it was clear Taline had no way of reconciling the hurt. It had been festering for so long, she was certain it had turned into a knot of impossible to untangle emotions.
At least with Adora, both of you are still alive, and there's the opportunity for your paths to cross again in the future.
Taline had said that to comfort her back on Etheria, when Catra and Adora had their final falling out. Those words came back to her, this time laden with a newer, deeper, more painful meaning. Catra could finally, finally admit she was decidedly notover Adora and had not moved past their shared history at all. Merely entertaining the possibility she might really have died on that station when it exploded threatened to send her into new spirals of anxiety-stricken grief.
"So, he's alive," Catra said, pushing all other thoughts out of her head to focus on getting back to the original conversation. "Corynth. What now?"
Taline tapped a restless rhythm the table she was still leaning against. "Our mission to Archanas is too important to divert from," she said. "He had a hand in helping them crack the algorithm encrypting Moriarty's files, I'm just sure of it. We can't abandon that lead."
"Why do I get the feeling there's a 'but' coming in the next sentence?" Catra asked.
"But"—Taline smirked at Catra as she said it—"once we're done on Archanas, I'll need to set out again and hunt him down. He can't be allowed to live."
"But why, though?"
Taline shot her a genuinely puzzled look, and Catra sighed and shook her head in response.
"Why does he need to die? If he's alive now that means he's been alive for the past decade, too. It's not like he's been marauding around wreaking open havoc, and you two haven't actually talked to each other in all this time either, just like Adora and I haven't. Why can't you just talk?"
"Talk?"
"Or start by talking, I don't know!" Catra flailed her arms in a vague gesture to try and get her point across. "You two haven't talked in all this time, just like Adora and I haven't, and unless I'm mistaken, he was trying to reason with you and ask you to come with them when they escaped with your sister, right? Why does step one have to be throwing lightning bolts?"
Taline scowled and that was all the proof Catra needed to know, yet again, she'd made a good point. Taline had never gotten the opportunity for her feelings of betrayal to be validated. Just like Catra's last conversation with Adora, they went their separate ways before reaching any sort of definite conclusion, each having to carry forward without any sense of closure good or bad. Adora had just reached outtrying to mend things. Catra didn't want to see Taline kill any chance of possibly getting the same for herself.
"We didn't speak to one another after that day with the envoy," Taline said. "Not until the trial. I'd planned on confronting him after, thinking Evie would agree to research ignominite and comply with the emperor's wishes to avoid death. But she didn't. It never crossed my mind that she might refuse him, and before I knew it, they were trying to escape and succeeding at it. By then, the only thing I could think of was getting Evie away from Corynth. I still half believe he had her under some kind of spell and she hadn't made the decision to refuse Horde Prime of her own volition."
"Can he even do that?" The look on Taline's face when she asked was answer enough and Catra shook her head. "Never mind, I actually don't want to know if he can mind control people. What if he was telling you the truth then, though?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if he really did care about you? Lies and half truths aside, what if the relationship you had before everything fell apart was real? What if he believed Evelyn and that was why he backed her up to the extent he revealed the existence of the Daiamid to everyone? He already did that much with the La Valettes and he said he'd do as much again in order to protect you, didn't he? What if he was sincere?"
"Catra—"
"He was part of a secretive group that committed countless atrocities, sure. He also kept that from you and broke any sense of trust you had for him, yes, but what if the only reason you or I or anyone else in this god's forsaken galaxy is still alive is because he decided to step up and do the right thing when it really, really counted?"
Catra realized halfway through that she was repeating the same things she'd told herself when coming to terms with Adora's betrayal, but this time to Taline on behalf of Corynth—someone she'd never actually met. Her breathing had turned labored, and she was gripping the leather of the chair she'd been sitting in so hard her claws were digging into the cushioning. Why was she pushing this so hard?
"What if one of you kills the other without either of you finding out the truth?" she asked.
Catra felt like Taline could see right through her the way she was looking at her. Much of her own feelings on redemption were getting tangled into this and she wasn't doing a good job hiding it, she knew. She'd done horrible things as part of the Horde before Etheria came back into the wider universe and Taline had been the one to whisk her away from it all. Everything she'd built for herself was thanks in part to her.
A new, chilling thought came to her: was it fair to say she wasn't deserving of those opportunities if Taline decided to dedicate her life once again to hunting down and executing someone else who'd also supposedly committed atrocities as part of a belligerent group? Was all of her progress thus far just some casual fluke that the universe would invalidate soon enough? It didn't make any sense logically, of course, but it didn't have to. The feelings were real enough.
Taline must have read all of that too, because she shook her head, went to her, and put a firm hand on her shoulder to ground her.
"It's not like that," Taline said. "I have to kill him because he's too dangerous to be left alive, my personal feelings aside."
Catra looked up at her. "What do you mean?"
"He survived the final confrontation on Archanas. The Beast infestation there was so strong and concentrated, it turned the other few hundred Shapers there with him to ash before the Barrier sealed the thing away, remember? Corynth was powerful, immensely so, but even he has limits. Archanas still drives people mad years after its death. Do you really think anyone could survive having touched the thing when it was living? Do you think they have any chance of still being sane, still being themselves, if they had?"
Ah, now Catra understood. Whoever Adora was traveling with, even if it looked and talked and proclaimed itself to be Corynth, it likely wasn't the same person. Not really.
"You're to kill me if the Beast corrupts me," Taline said. "It's your duty as my Sentinel. It's my duty to kill Corynth, now that he's surely corrupted beyond saving. Abominations, especially powerful ones like he no doubt is, could easily blend in for a decade, even longer. I'm likely the only person alive strong enough to have a chance at destroying him. I'm probably not strong enough, truth be told, but the opportunity for us to have talked things out is…long in the past, I'm afraid."
Catra nodded. She couldn't point out why, but Taline's explanation just made her feel sad for her.
Taline gave Catra's should a squeeze. "There's something else."
Already that sounded bad. What else could there possibly be, after that? Catra tried to stamp down the knot of anxiety that was growing unchecked under her sternum.
"That message I took earlier also mentioned that we lost another planet to the Beast. Scavria."
"Scavria isn't that far from Archanas," Catra said, frowning. "They're both on the Kaloshi Border. How concerned is Imperial Command about the local Barrier node? It's within jumping distance, if I remember correctly"
"You are remembering correctly, and they're fairly concerned," Taline said with a sigh. "It also happens to be where Glimmer was deployed. An Abomination appeared in the capital city when they were on the verge of retaking it. The whole planet is lost."
That knot of anxiety turned into a dense stone that dropped into her stomach. "Don't tell me that Glimmer…"
"She's alive," Taline said quickly, shaking her head. "She's alive, but somehow escaped only after several hours of orbital bombardment. She's quarantined and receiving the best care aboard the Omen-Kador, the flagship. I happen to know the Admiral leading the detachment. He assured me she's in good health, but were being coy with the details."
Catra breathed a half sigh of relief. Glimmer was alright, thank god. But another planet lost? And this time to another confirmed Abomination? "Poor Glimmer," Catra said, biting her lip. "First Rinne and now this?"
"From what I've heard, it took them by surprise. They didn't want to say too much, but it seemed like the Beast was…different this time."
"Different how?"
"If I knew, I'd tell you," Taline said. "We won't be able to contact Glimmer yet until the mission is over. They blacked out all nonessential communications until the campaign officially concludes. But once they've bombarded the planet into submission, her assignment should be over and she'll finally get her shore leave. Whatever happened there was likely traumatic—likely similar to Rinne, if not worse. She'll need some time to adjust and it might be…rough at first when you see her again."
"Whatever she needs," Catra said, nodding. "And I'll be there for her regardless."
"I know you will." Taline squeezed her shoulder a third time, and Catra used the gesture to drag herself out of spiraling thoughts and worries.
"Whatever it is that happened, both on Eden and on Scavria, we'll find out," Taline said. "If Adora is still alive, I promise you I won't let anything else happen to her. Regardless of his motives, Corynth won't have the chance to manipulating her anymore. Glimmer will come home, and if she needs something to help get her through her latest experiences, we'll both be there to help her. It's not all on you, I'm here as well. Ever since I took you from Etheria, I've been here and I will continue to be here. For you, for Glimmer, and soon for Adora."
Pip floated into view and landed with dainty feet on top of Catra's knee, looking up at her with a determined expression. Catra had forgotten she was there, but when Pip looked up at her with a determined expression and gave a single, firm nod as if to agree directly with Taline, she felt as if a weight had lifted from her shoulders.
"I know," Catra reached up to lay her hand on top of Taline's over her shoulder. "Thank you."
Taline pulled away and, mentioning the need to check on the bridge as they make their arrival, left. Catra remained seated, watching her go. When the doors hissed shut and she was alone in Taline's quarters, she slid over to the control console and played Adora's message again from the beginning.
She and Pip watched the recording a fourth time and then a fifth. Neither said a word to one another.
