Arusian Crusade: Starfall
Chapter 5: Aftermath

Rolling right along! Two down.
Many thanks for reading, double thanks for the reviews, and keep an eye out, part 3 is forthcoming...
Enjoy!

It was nearly half an hour before Yurak approached Haggar's quarters, realizing she wasn't going to come to him herself. "Haggar!"

"Please, enter." She turned to him and bowed slightly when he opened the door. "My apologies, Admiral Yurak. I intended to send Galcia to you with my report, but became caught up in other matters."

Other matters? What could possibly have distracted her from reporting on the mission she'd come here for in the first place? He shrugged it off. Sometimes he wondered if the witch might be just a slight bit crazy. "Not a problem. It's done?"

"It is done. One of the pilots of the hated Voltron now lies lifeless in the dust, as you wished."

Only one? But so quickly. The admiral had expected to be hovering just beyond Arusian orbit for weeks, and nodded his appreciation for the witch's efficiency. One would suffice. The lions, despite their power, did not possess Voltron's aura of terror. "The fleet stands ready, then. We'll open fire and draw the rest of the lions out to be slaughtered."

"No. We will return to Korrinoth immediately," Haggar said calmly.

He frowned. "You have so little faith in my fleet?"

"Respectfully, Admiral, there is little I can say about your fleet which would not be harsher than what you've said yourself." He winced; she had a point there. "Nonetheless, this is not a matter of faith in your abilities. A champion has fallen. A champion of our enemies, perhaps, but he died bravely and honorably. We will permit them time to mourn, as common decency requires."

Another frown. He died honorably? Haggar had been acting slightly peculiar for the whole mission—not least by taking on the mission in the first place—most certainly not least by returning to the dreadnought with what looked like a crippled housecat in her arms—but this was a whole new level of odd. Of course it was common practice to allow a mourning period, if a champion fell in honorable combat, but... there was that word again.

Honor. Honor was key. And suggesting that a mere human could display such honor, even in death, was absurd. "An Earthling, witch, nothing more. That kind of vermin wouldn't know the first thing about honor."

A flicker of gold beneath the witch's hood. "I held this assumption as well, but perhaps we have underestimated our enemies. Do you question my judgment, Admiral?"

He took a step back. Maybe he technically outranked her, but this was still a Daughter of the Wyvern. Ranks meant nothing. "Of course not!"

"Then we shall return."

Something about this made Yurak uneasy. The idea of just leaving on the cusp of victory, that was certainly one thing, but... he dared not question her judgment. No. Incorrect.

A human died honorably.

He dared question her judgment only in his mind. She was crazy.

Cursing his own cowardice this time, he turned to his helmsman and nodded. "You heard the lady, Snuff. Get us out of here."

It was Keith's first time meeting the castle's chief physician. He would have preferred to remain unacquainted.

"His spine is broken in two places—completely severed in one of them. Several other bones are broken including a significant skull fracture, many third-degree burns, and he's lost dangerous quantities of blood. Honestly I don't see how he survived in the first place." Dr. Gorma looked intensely frustrated. "We've induced a coma and placed him under energy stasis. Unfortunately... with our current level of resources there's very little more we can do." He grimaced. "And I cannot help but admit that even in Arus' prime, we could not have repaired the worst of the spinal damage."

Keith gritted his teeth against anything that might come out. Anything. He didn't want to hear it, but he couldn't lose his composure. Not now. The team needed him to be strong. And Sven, more than anyone, needed him to keep his head. He counted down from twenty before daring to speak. "What do you suggest, then?"

The doctor hesitated a moment. "There is a distant planet called Ebb. It is known throughout this galaxy as a world of healing; the planet has certain native herbs which can do miraculous things, but once harvested lose their potency too quickly to be exported. To make the best use of this resource, Ebb has focused on medical technology and mysticism to the exclusion of all else. They would be able to heal him."

Hopeful as the words were, there was something in the doctor's tone Keith didn't like. "What's the catch?"

"Transit. Skip drive jumps will disrupt the stasis he's under, and can be quite rough on the body, as I'm sure you know. If he survives the trip, he would be certain to make a full recovery..."

"Odds?"

"Optimistically speaking, perhaps ten percent."

Clenching his fists, he forced himself to ask a question he knew the answer to. "And if he stays here?"

"The stasis can hold for a few months. If, by the end of that time, we were to completely return to our prior levels of knowledge and resources—which I'm sure you know is exceptionally improbable—we would be able to repair all of the peripheral injuries and some of the spinal damage. The best case scenario is that he would regain brain function and speaking ability. Far more likely, he simply never wakes."

This was nearly—nearly—as hard on Gorma as it was on Keith, the commander realized. By all counts the man was an excellent doctor, used to working miracles himself, but this situation went far beyond his power. And this patient was no ordinary patient... he was one of the Voltron Force. The Arusians revered these warriors above all but their dead king and beloved princess: the five warriors from another galaxy who had left behind everything they knew to deliver this world from the encroaching darkness. They were already becoming legendary.

And now a legend was dying.

"Send him to Ebb," Keith ordered, softly. He'd have stopped there, but for just an instant, he felt something... not optimism. Not exactly that. More like certainty. A whisper of lightning in the back of his mind. "He'll make it."

"As you wish." Dr. Gorma turned away, going back to the infirmary to begin the preparations.

Keith stared after the doctor for a very long time, then closed his eyes. Sven... his fists clenched so tightly as to be painful. Damn you, Sven! I need you! Without you I'm...

There weren't any words.

It felt like they'd known each other forever, though it really hadn't been that long. Oh, they'd seen each other often. Brief encounters. Military functions where Keith's aunt had pointed out the two decorated pilots with a son about his age. They'd spoken to each other then, spoken with the cautious unease of two children who were told to go and be playmates for lack of other options.

Running into him at the academy had been a shock. Not that he'd been trying to kill Lance—that happened to Lance every other week, Keith was used to breaking those incidents up before his friend actually had to hurt somebody. No, the shock had been the recognition.

It was hard to explain what had happened after that. Nobody had ever said, let's be friends. It just happened. Their duo became a trio. He still would never understand how they'd done it—Lance and Sven were complete opposites, fire and ice, bickering just like that and yet occasionally they would both turn it on him. Breaking him out of his barriers of intensity and forcing him to be human rather than "the chief," as Lance had called him even then.

Keith could not recall ever arguing with Sven. Not seriously. And when he and Lance clashed—oh, he and Lance had clashed plenty—the third of their group would always be there, with an almost supernatural sense of how far he could let things go. Watching with faint amusement until he had to jump in and stop them from strangling each other.

Conventional wisdom said three was such a terrible number for friendship. But they'd made it work so flawlessly.

Words whispered in his mind, from very long ago, a line from some ancient movie he'd been watching on a bet. Words that suddenly rang frighteningly true. Disturb not the harmony of fire, ice, and lightning...

Now it had been disturbed, all right.

You can't leave us, Sven. You can't leave me. Especially not like this.

Keith tried to imagine what his friend would say if he could hear these thoughts, and nothing he imagined was very comforting. No. Sven would tell him what he already knew. What he had told him not so long ago. That he had to go on, because there was no other choice.

I... Keith drew in a long, slow breath. I can't waste time feeling sorry for myself. If I don't have you to rely on anymore... he started to walk back to his quarters. I can only rely on me. And make sure that nobody else will fall on my watch!

But it wasn't quite so simple as that. He knew it wasn't. There was one detail left to attend to.

No matter how resolved he was not to rely on anyone else, he still needed a second in command. And he knew... Sven's quiet reassurance had served him so well in these early months on Arus, a voice of calm in the chaos. But now everything had changed. What Keith needed now wasn't a right hand, an extension of his will. It was someone who would test him, who would force him to be stronger.

The choice was obvious.

Lance wouldn't have called what he was feeling fear. Not at all. But Keith was going to have his head, and while he knew he deserved it, it was too early. Much too early. He was perfectly capable of snarling at himself for what had happened to his friend. His closest friend in the world. His friend who'd insisted on saving him from his own stupidity and paid a crippling, perhaps deadly price.

Usually he'd have prepared to hide behind the barbs and wisecracks he employed so well, but somehow he couldn't bring himself into that frame of mind. Too early, again. Maybe that was why Keith had called for him now... Keith was close too, so close, and knew him much too well.

When all else failed he slipped into his own soldier mode, a cloak of quietly boiling rage. Hollow. Seething. A sign of danger, but he couldn't say who it was most dangerous to.

Keith looked up as he walked into the otherwise empty control room. "Lance."

"Reporting, Commander."

A brief pause. Just long enough for Keith to take in his words, his tone. "We can do this with formality if that'll make you feel better." For his part he sounded quite calm. Confident. Not as threatening as his own words sounded alone, really, but Lance was in no mood to relax.

"Being here at all is not making me feel better, sir."

He thought he saw a wince. A flicker of the old Keith, the Keith who would've backed off and waited for his second to intervene—no, the Keith who would've backed off and waited for the third in their trio to mediate between his friends. It had never been about ranks or command.

Assuming he'd really seen it at all, the flicker was gone in an instant. "Alright. We can do it that way. Specialist Lance Charles McClain, you are hereby promoted to Corporal. Until such time as Sergeant Holgersson is able to resume his duties, you will act as second in command of the Voltron Force."

Lance felt his impassive mask shatter into thousands of tiny pieces. "What?"

"You heard me."

"Keith, are you crazy?"

"No. Not in the least." The commander's ice-blue eyes narrowed. "I'm not going to bother lecturing you. There's no point. What's done is done. Now you're going to learn from it. You're going to take his place, you're going to take responsibility for this team—and for yourself. Understand?"

Not going to lecture me. Yeah, sure. That was a lecture. It was far milder than he had expected, and hit a thousand times harder. He wasn't sure he could imagine a worse punishment. And he realized with a sinking feeling that he couldn't think of a more effective one, either.

Keith was right.

"...I understand." He hesitated. "Um, the others aren't going to like—"

"—I'm pretty sure the others will understand exactly what happened here."

Probably true, now that he thought about it. "Yeah."

Another flicker. For one more moment his friend was the old Keith... and he looked very, very tired. "Lance." His tone had softened drastically. "I've never asked you to change before. Never. Didn't matter how insubordinate you got or how many fights you got me into. Didn't matter that you were looking for new ways to get expelled every week. Maybe I should've tried harder in the first place. But... we don't have that luxury of not changing anymore. I know you can do this." He turned back to the monitors. "I need you to do this."

Lance stared at his friend's back long after it was clear the conversation was over. Trying to grasp, fully, what had just happened. Trying to reconcile Keith and Keith. His friend and his commander. He'd never had a problem with that before, but...

Now you're going to take his place. He shook his head. Nobody could take Sven's place. And he wasn't as certain as Keith was.

"I'm going to Red," he muttered, earning a silent nod.

The zipline and shuttle seemed to take forever. He changed into his flight suit while the shuttle screamed down its track, not really planning to go anywhere, but it was nice to have the option. Plus it gave him something to focus on. It was probably the slowest he'd ever changed clothing.

Could he do this? Not that Lance was ever short on confidence, but his last attempt at taking initiative had gotten him into this situation to begin with. Not a very good start. But he would do what he had to do, for the team. To make sure there was still a team for Sven to come back to.

If he survived.

If.

Red Lion's den was always warm, a warmth that stopped just short of actually being hot. The convection ought to have been killer—when he left the shuttle Lance could have reached out and touched the exposed magma, if for some absurd reason he'd wanted to. The floor and walls appeared to simply be gleaming obsidian, but there had to be mystical forces at work here, rendering the place safe for a pilot to walk in.

He held up his key and Red lowered its head to greet him. Was that just the whirring of its servos, or had it growled in welcome as it moved? Either way... he sighed and sprawled out in the craft's mouth, not wanting to be at the controls where the urge for flight might overtake him. "I messed up big time, Red. Messed up about as bad as it's possible to mess up."

A gentle flicker of warmth touched the back of his mind. No words. He didn't expect words, didn't need words. The lion was listening, and he could trust it completely, knew it would never speak of his doubts.

"Sven's gone. He's my best friend and I got him hurt and now he's gone. They're sending him away. Shipping him off to the other side of the galaxy. There's a tiny little chance he'll live through the trip, and if he does he'll be there God only knows how long before he can come back, and until then Keith thinks he's going to make a respectable second in command out of me." He laughed, an odd mix of true humor and bitterness. "He's nuts."

With a jolt Red Lion returned to its sitting position, apparently deciding it had waited long enough for its pilot to get situated. Lance yelped as the craft's jaws snapped shut and plunged him into darkness, started fumbling around on the warm steel to find the key he'd placed beside him. Finding the key would be easier than trying to get to the entry hatch, anyway.

"Dude, Red. Did you have to do that? Open up, I can't see a thing!"

He had not expected a response, but he got one. The lion's jaws opened immediately.

"...Oh. You... uh... thanks for that."

A shimmer of flame came across through the link.

Lance suddenly found himself wondering about Blue Lion. Without Sven they were one lion short, of course. Wouldn't be able to form Voltron. He'd kicked himself repeatedly over that fact, but now another element was occurring to him. One prompted by Red's unusual responsiveness.

"How's Blue doing?" he asked softly. "Is it lonely? Does it miss him already? Would you have missed me, if Sven hadn't come to save me?"

This time he felt a surge of emotion, rather than just heat. A mixture of confusion and comfort and something that he could only identify as possessiveness—not in a bad way. Just a clear sense of the lion's protective embrace.

Lance smiled, reached up and brushed a hand across one of the lion's shining fangs. "You're gonna stick with me, right? I think as long as I've got you, I can handle whatever Keith and the Drules throw at me."

He was pretty sure it was really just the crackling and hissing of the lava outside, but for a moment he thought Red was purring.

"Can you save him?"

"He's a her."

"Oh. Right. Sorry. Forgot. My idea and I still forgot."

"No problem, I've been doing the same thing with Colby. But yeah. I can save her and you can make her pretty again and then we'll paint a little bow on her head or something so we can remember."

"Um, about that. I can't fix the metal."

"Wait, what? Seriously?"

"Yeah. The patching just won't take. I had some temp plates on and it was messing her servos all up, so she's just gonna have to deal with looking creepy."

"Creepy? If it were your lion you'd say it was awesome."

"Hey now. Yellow's scar is strategically placed. This is just a mess."

"Still. Combat wounds, that's not creepy. She's gonna be the most badass mouse on the block."

Their voices were low and far, far too rushed. They knew they were shaken, they were terrified, they were seizing on the slightest distraction and it wasn't working out so well... especially not considering the circumstances that had brought this distraction to them in the first place.

Blue was sprawled out on the workbench, eyes dim, as Pidge poked at her exposed wiring and Hunk looked on. The extensive damage she'd taken had caused a homing signal to activate; the other four mice had locked onto it, dragged their shattered comrade back to the castle.

Eerily reminiscent of what their human counterparts had done.

Pidge pulled back for a moment, letting a shudder pass through him before returning to the delicate work. He'd left the mouse hanging for two days, much to the indignation of the others, but what else could he do? It was still taking all he had to focus.

To joke about being wounded in combat...

Like Sven...

Another shudder and he stopped, shaking his head. "I'm gonna have to come back to this later."

Truthfully Blue's wiring wasn't in such bad shape. She would look rather frightening from now on if Hunk couldn't patch her up, but most of her internal workings were just fine. It could wait. It would have to wait. Pidge knew he'd just make things worse if he tried to keep going now.

Hunk studied him carefully. "C'mere, little buddy."

He put down his tools and circled around the workbench, but warily. "If you hug me, I will punch you."

Massive arms wrapped around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. "Not until I let go of you, you won't, and it'll totally be worth it."

"Dammit, Hunk, cut it out!" he squawked indignantly, attempting to wrestle away.

"You're adorable when you're being all ornery, you know that?" The big engineer had not relinquished his grip in the slightest, but his tone suddenly became deadly serious. "Come off it, Pidge."

Why does he always have to do that? He sighed and stopped struggling. "Sorry."

"All good. I'm kinda used to this by now."

"Yeah." It felt good. He could admit that. Safety was still almost a foreign concept to the young warrior who had grown up surviving on his wits and reflexes alone. But nestled in Hunk's arms he always felt safe, no matter what was raging around him—or inside him.

That was what was terrifying him right now.

"Hunk... promise me you'll be careful. Promise me that'll never happen to you."

A brief hesitation. Pidge knew it was a silly thing to ask. Childish. He was young, but he wasn't a child, had never really been a child... he knew Hunk couldn't make that promise. They were warriors, and the battle had just become far more dangerous. Death was lurking around every corner, behind every gathering cloud.

"I promise." He said it with such certainty. A certainty that ought to have come across as placating but it wasn't, it was Hunk, and Hunk damned well believed it when he said... "But you've gotta promise me too."

Oh.

Well...

"As long as you keep your promise, I'll promise too. But if you ever try to break yours, you know I'll be jumping in front of you."

Hunk snorted and finally released him. "Like that'll ever work. You're too small a target."

"Maybe, but I can do precision."

"That may be true, but if you're gonna jump in front of me you'll have to get around me, and we all know that ain't the easiest thing in the world."

Pidge giggled. "We'll have to agree to disagree on who wins the more-martyr-than-thou argument, but I say we leave it theoretical and not do any testing. How's that?"

"Sounds like a plan."

They were quiet for awhile, then Hunk looked at the metal rodent on the workbench and shook his head. It was clear from his expression he wasn't really thinking about Blue, but her associated human, the one whose absence had already cast such a shroud over the Castle of Lions.

"I miss him already."

"Yeah. So do I..." Pidge's eyes narrowed. No. He wasn't going to dwell on this any longer, wasn't going to sit around moping anymore. His monthly quota of sappiness had been taken care of, and now he had work to do. And he was allowing himself to remember something now that he'd been suppressing for the last two days. "Look, we'll finish up with Blue later, but I need you to come help me with something on Green Lion right now."

Hunk looked startled by the abrupt change in subject. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I've got a half-installed sonar beacon in the nose. Sven was helping me with it... right before he got called out to look for Lance."

"...Ahh, gotcha." The big pilot nodded confidently. "Sure, let's go finish bolting that baby in."

"No, no. You don't understand." Pidge crossed his arms with a wicked smirk. "When he left he was acting way too happy of getting out of it, so I told him I'd save it for when he got back. You're going to help me yank it out. And when Sven comes back from Ebb, it's going to be sitting right there waiting for him."

Uproarious laughter as Hunk slapped a hand on his shoulder. "Oh, man. You're gonna have to let me be there to see the look on his face, you know that, right?"

"That can be arranged." Pidge looked at the hand gripping him, arched an eyebrow, then reached around and punched his friend as hard as he could in the ribs.

"Hey! What was that for?"

"I did tell you if you hugged me I'd punch you. Did you think I forgot?"

Snort. "I wouldn't ever expect you to forget anything, little buddy." He rubbed at the spot on his ribcage where he'd been hit, then quickly—quicker than someone that big had any right to move—reached out and grabbed Pidge again, flipping him over one shoulder. "And just for that I'm carrying you to the control room."

That got him an indignant snarl as the little engineer started thrashing about, trying to force the steel-hard grip on him to break despite knowing it was a lost cause. "You want to get punched again?"

"Yes! At least when you're punching me you're acting normal."

"You're incorrigible."

"Yep!"

Finally letting his intellect catch up to his embarrassment, Pidge remembered what he was wearing and wrenched around sideways, letting his tech coverall fall away in Hunk's hands as he hit the floor with a wince. "Nice try," he muttered, ready to duck away if his friend tried that again. His regular uniform wasn't nearly so loose and that trick probably wouldn't work a second time regardless.

Hunk just chuckled. "If you're that desperate I guess I'll let you walk."

Pidge punched him again, braced for retribution, but was not prepared for the other pilot to just reach down and tousle his hair. "Adorable."

"I hate you."

"I know."

He gave up. There was no way he was going to win this fight... no way at all, because he'd already lost it a long time ago. Hunk had gotten him to laugh.

Haggar locked herself in her laboratory and studied the small, furry form on one of the work tables. The cat wasn't dead. Not quite. She'd managed to bind the worst of its wounds, which were quite serious indeed, after returning to the Death Defiant. She wondered what sort of trouble it had gotten into. Something small but powerful seemed to have scratched down its face and bit into its throat, while a knife had still been embedded just below its heart.

The beast had served her well, with all its power. "Now tell me, little one," she murmured as she stroked the blood-matted fur. "How would you have me reward your service?"

A feeble "mew" answered her.

It was sufficient.

There would be no robeast transformation for this one. No doubt it could make a loyal and formidable monster, but it deserved... rather more. It would serve her in ways robeasts could not, as a scout and a spy, but that would not be all. Oh no.

Nearly every coven had a tradition of taking familiars. Among the Daughters of the Wyvern, such beasts were not sought out; it was said worthy candidates would present themselves in time. In all her centuries of service to Sarga, Haggar had never come across such a creature. But this cat... yes. The time had finally come.

Drawing out the ritual circles, she spoke the invocations in the old tongue, a language so ancient no coven could remember its creation. "Sarga, bless this creature, take it in your talons, accept it into your service. Let chaos wash over this chosen one, let the strength of the void flow through its veins. Grant it your wisdom and bind it to me, in blood and mind and soul."

All shall be as you ask, little daughter. As the whisper of the goddess echoed in her mind, Haggar watched the cat's form change, its fur taking on a bluish tinge, the wounds becoming sealed with molten gold. When its eyes opened they glowed to match its mistress.

Her familiar would require one more thing... Haggar sought through her knowledge of the old tongue, nodding her satisfaction as she found a name. A name that meant awaited one, a name that most certainly applied. "Coba," she murmured. "Your name shall be Coba, and we shall be bound together from this moment on. In the name of the Unfathomable One we shall serve, together, until we return to the oneness of the void."

The cat let out a screech of acceptance, and its eyes shone brilliant gold.

Allura wasn't sure how long she'd been in the catacombs. Nobody dared to approach her there, quite wisely really. She would not have taken any disturbances well.

Finally, though, she staggered from the crypts. It had been days, she had no doubt of that. The mice had been bringing her food and drink, which she touched only when she could no longer fight her body's demands, and she knew she'd drifted off more than once against her will. The castle was silent; she found a window and saw only darkness.

No stars.

She knew it was just the overcast, but the lack of stars seemed terribly fitting.

The princess did not return to her room. Not yet. For one thing she wouldn't have put it past Nanny to install some sort of alarm system in there, and she wasn't quite certain she wanted to deal with the woman right now. Not quite yet. There was something else she needed to do first...

She wanted to say she had to do this before she could rest easily. In truth she knew it wouldn't help her rest at all. But it had to be done, regardless.

The room she went to was not hers.

It seemed like an unforgivable intrusion. Almost a blasphemy. Allura was a spirit talker, accustomed to entering tombs and calling upon ghosts, but stepping into Sven's abandoned bedroom sent a shudder down her spine that no crypt had ever caused. This was somewhere she had no business being, a place that ought to be sacred.

She looked around only for a few moments, not wanting to be nosy, but unable to avoid being curious. Somehow she'd expected he would be a neat freak. Not so much. The room was not cluttered, not even exactly messy, just... haphazard, that was the word. A spare uniform tossed over the closet door, drawers that weren't quite shut, a few books stacked on the unevenly made bed. Some of the lights had been left on, as if he might return at any moment.

But he wouldn't.

Had there been any word from Ebb? She didn't know. Didn't even know if he was supposed to be there yet, if she'd been lurking in the tombs that long. Surely someone would have come to tell her if there had been news. Surely no news was good news.

Surely...

Gathering herself, Allura set her focus on what she'd come here for. Setting the candles up in a small circle before the bed. This was where he'd lived in the castle, where something of his spirit would yet linger.

Murmuring the ritual words she waited. And waited. But no aura gathered around the candles, no ghost appeared in the circle. Allura frowned. Doused the candles, set up new ones, repeated the ritual, and still there was nothing. She had not erred. And that could only mean one thing.

He wasn't dead.

She had not been able to entertain that idea before. One of Voltron's warriors had fallen, the fragile hope had shattered... to have that hope snatched away had nearly broken her in ways even the first attack had not managed. Of course Sven had to be dead. Couldn't have survived the transit. Couldn't possibly be cured, could never return.

But his ghost was not appearing. Which meant he could not be dead.

Hope. It was returning again, surging in her, mixed with shame that she'd ever let herself fall to this despair in the first place.

One had fallen, but the others remained. They still had the lions, still had Voltron. And Sven was still out there, surviving against all odds. He would heal. He would return. Now it was just a matter of making sure Arus lasted that long.

Allura walked to Sven's window, overlooking the lake, and gazed down at the water. The Drules weren't going to wait around for him to recover, that was for sure. It was amazing that they'd held back even this long. Someone was going to have to pilot Blue Lion until he came back...

Someone...

No. Not just someone. This was what she'd come here for to begin with, she realized, eyes narrowing as she turned away from the window. Not just to confirm to herself that he was dead. To get him to talk some sense into her. To gain his blessing for what she knew she had to do, no matter how shattered she may have been.

Sven wasn't dead. There was no blessing from the spirit realm to be had. But Allura was no longer shattered.

"Watch over me," she whispered to whatever phantoms might remain in this room. "I'm going to defend my planet. And if I can be half as strong as you were, Arus will never fall."

Perhaps it was her imagination, but she was nearly certain the candles flickered.