"these same old paths, newly paved"

They sat there in relative silence. Mulled it over. Worked through it.

"Nezarec," Ikharos said.

Nightmare Lord. Luna's Haunted. Father of Kinslaying, Icon of Sin.

"Nezarec," Ikharos said again, then continued, "Is already dead."

Xiān settled in the crook of his shoulder. She was warm and kept the prickly ends of her fins from pinching against his skin; she was precious. "Would that stop him?"

"Would it indeed." Ikharos breathed slowly, through his nose. "But we have proof of his passing. Misraaks had his lingering remains well in hand before we set out."

"All of them?"

"The parts that mattered. The rest, I imagine, decomposed or were summarily devoured. The Eliksni in those days were so terribly hungry. I wouldn't have put it past them." Ikharos paused. "How old is the message?"

"Uh, not old. Not old at all. Code's fresh; frame-data's giving me a weird date, but it looks like a day, maybe a little more."

"Recent."

"Yeah. Think it's him?"

"I'm not sure." Ikharos's gaze was pinned to the dead Exo's sleek mouthless skull. "Her chassis is altered. She was sent to us to die, a two-way introduction: message and confrontation. If I survived, I earned the right to claim the letter inscribed in her spinal cord. Could be symbolic."

"Could be. We won't have any idea. Nezarec or not, we're treading new territory. These aren't the aliens we know."

"I'm aware." Ikharos pursed his lips. "Almost makes me wi-" he cut himself off. "Want for common Hive instead."

"Nice catch," Xiān murmured.

He didn't respond.

"The letter's- Okay, let's put the letter part aside for now. The rest of the attachments - that looks legit. Sec-logs and Warmind sub-data."

"It's intended."

"I know, but that doesn't mean it can't be false."

"The truth, portioned out, can be as damning as any barefaced lie," Ikharos murmured. "High Coven was rife with it."

"This isn't High Coven," Xiān pointed out.

"No. Just someone else's playground. It's a willspace, even if it doesn't look it. Anyone with power beyond the pull of their bare fingertips would be as a god."

"Like the Warmind's already tried."

Ikharos tilted his head. "Curious."

"Isn't it just? Another Warmind..." Xiān shivered. "Rasputin gave me chills enough. And this... golem procedure. It's... familiar. I'll have to cross it with what we already know. Might be a feature we've seen before."

"The Tyrant bade them to colonize other stars. I hadn't dared to hope any other survived."

"But here we are."

"Here. We. Are," he murmured.

"So... how bad is it?"

Ikharos considered it for a moment. "We're fucked."

"Thought so," Xiān sighed. "Scorn, Troubleshooters, Disciples, a rogue 'Mind - yeesh."

"And the witch," Ikharos murmured. He tapped the edge of the surgical table. "We cannot forget her."

"Wish you'd just kill h-"

"Ah," Ikharos tutted, lifting a finger. "Language."

Xiān looked away, suitably chastised. "Hate that."

"I won't lose you too."

"You won't. I don't have desires to grant." She pressed in close. "Still have you, don't I? That's all I need."

Ikharos leaned into her touch as best he could. It was precious to him - the electric feel of her Light against his own. "Would that I could slough off my humanity and be sated with the same."

"That would reduce you to something else."

"We'd be safer."

"In so far as dead things can be. All you are is human, in some capacity or another - ah ah ah, I said human, not baseline, don't get cross now. You lose that, there's nothing left."

"Inspiring," Ikharos drawled. "Thank you."

"Y'know I try." Xiān glided back into the air. "Nezarec was a Disciple, right?"

"In life, yes."

"But Elsie said-"

"She accounted for three," Ikharos murmured, frowning. "Zendolyn-Far - who we've encountered. Xhafi - who Zendolyn spoke of, attested for. And... Shelbth, who only Elisabeth has mentioned to us."

"That's a full three if we're to trust Elsie's word. This 'Zen' lass included."

"I know. I can count."

Xiān rolled her single eye. "Look, Nezarec's a Disciple as well. Either this Shelbth or Xhafi - or Zendolyn, maybe - aren't really Disciples. Eramis wasn't, and she still works for the Witness."

"Little more than a slave, unwitting."

"I dunno, she sounded pretty witting on comms."

"That's not a proper term."

"Don't care. Maybe Elsie was wrong-"

"Or maybe she's right," Ikharos retorted, though it was food enough for thought. "Maybe..."

"Might not be him."

"Would that we be so lucky."

Xiān groaned. "Look Mister Pessimist, I'm trying to give us a shred of hope to hold onto."

"No, you might be onto something." Ikharos began to pace. "Maybe a piece of Nezarec was lost. A hand, a claw, a stray tendon. The Wolves butchered him and their kills aren't clean. If a piece of him was ferried away..."

"Then that's another piece not in Sol. Not with House Light. Not in safe hands."

"No. Another's hands." Ikharos's frown deepened. "But the timing doesn't add up. The Exodus programme was launched before the Collapse. Nezarec was killed sometime during, and carved up only a few years after humanity's fall. And all the Exodus vessels bar the Lang Yiwei were destroyed because they didn't make it out in time. The Echo fleets were worse off; they were stillborn, before they could even fire themselves into the deep black."

"And here we are. A human world. A terraformed world."

"But was it terraformed by human will?" Ikharos asked. "It really doesn't add up. Even accounting for warp-time, the Golden Age vessels weren't quick. Not... not like alien craft. But a dragon..."

"Maybe it was the other Disciples."

Ikharos shook his head. "They were chasing something. What's worth the attention of three whole Disciples? A dragon? There were plenty in Sol during and after the Collapse. No. They wanted something more than seductive bones and whispering scales. A dragon's wings are ruin for all and they aren't fool enough to subject themselves to it. Arrogant, maybe, but not foolish. The Fleet doesn't employ imbeciles."

"You think they were chasing a piece of Nezarec?"

"Maybe. Which in turn begs the question: why this piece? Why not the others scattered throughout the outer system, among the laggard houses?"

"An important piece? Like a head? Or two heads? How many'd this guy have?"

"Does it matter?" Ikharos questioned. "You hardly need more than black ash to resuscitate me. The enemy could maybe employ similar measures, provided it doesn't break one of the Witness's rules."

"Only because I have it hardwired into my system. If it was a first rez, total genetic degradation would put an end to any second chances."

"Even so, an organ, a scrap of skin - that's all you need on the first go."

"Yeah... but this isn't the Light we're talking about," Xiān pointed out. "It's a Disciple. A dead one. Maybe they want his brain; maybe they want the secrets inside his head."

"A fair assumption," Ikharos concurred. "An even fairer point. But that still doesn't answer the mystery of: who took it?"

"A Fallen pirate lord, maybe. If they found old Exodus trajectory-logs, it's possible."

"The anomaly's a bit much for a Fallen killer to create."

Xiān did the approximation of a shrug with her pinions. "Sure, but the Disciples?"

"They're trapped here. They want freedom. The Witness demands their freedom. That's why it sent the Locus."

"Maybe they made a mistake?"

"Elisabeth said it's a turf war. And those Exos - they're something terrible. A Warmind's worse. But would that hold back three Disciples?" Ikharos paused. "The sec-log mentioned an alien craft intercepted the Exodus vessel. Someone... met with the Warmind. Rendezvoused with it. It tracked the colony ship here, to Kepler-186f. If it wasn't the Disciples... then who was it?"

"... Let's put a pin in it, yeah, and move on?" Xiān told him. "All I'm hearing is a whole lot of assumptions. Let's keep an open mind."

"I'd prefer a closed one, what with a living metaphor at large," Ikharos replied. "But you're right. I'll do the digging later."

"Great. And now?"

"Now we grab ourselves some air support."

Psions chittered in his ear as the waves overtook him. The ocean trembled, surface rippling, as hulking Cabal marched in after him; Vindica'aur led the way in full power-armour and she glided through the depths on brief roars of her jump-pack's flight-thrusters, belching bubbles of black smoke and heavy heat. Ikharos kept pace with her just to keep himself free of it and imagined he cut a far more elegant sight. He had to make a genuine effort to dive, after all. For Cabal in open water, sinking was their natural state of being.

"She sang in another language," Indilic was whispering to him over the radio, voice thin and without a shred of emotion. He affected an air of clinical professionalism well enough. Under different circumstances Ikharos might not have known any better. "A language full of meaning. Like Hive speech if softer."

"And it had paracausal pull?" Ikharos questioned.

"She urged your flesh to reweave while I cleaned your wounds."

"They've closed well."

"It was an arduous task through and through," Indilic complained. "You may heal fairer than any Legionary, but you were more grievously wounded than most soldiers would survive. It was a miracle we lasted the night."

"That's our business, Optus. That's our purpose here. To sniff out these dangers and blunt them once and for all."

"Sir."

"The language - does anything about it strike you as..." Ikharos hesitated. "Draconic?"

"... Affirmative." Indilic sounded surprised. "It did. I wasn't certain of it at the tie, but-"

"Do you recall a phrase?" Vindica'aur rumbled. She cut through the water ahead of him and Ikharos paused, if only to avoid the worst of her pack's emissions. Everything was muffled but for their voices, dampened by the weight and pressure of so much water. It built in his head and it was everything he could do to keep from giving into the oxygen-deprived delirium, to laugh and cry and wonder at everything cast beautiful in the blue-ish half-light.

"I don't dare speak a word of it," Ikharos admitted. "I wouldn't. Dragon-magic - it frightens me."

"Frightens?"

"Dragons are monsters, Val. They attack us where we're our weakest: at our very desires. They know us better than we know ourselves. If you can't fear that, there is something deeply wrong with you."

Vindica'aur harrumphed, unimpressed. "But this is just a set of noises spoken by a common human."

"Neohuman."

"Does it matter? It was mortal."

Ikharos didn't immediately reply, though he suspected Indilic's thoughts mirrored his own. "A dragon does not have to be present for its foul works to be felt," he murmured after a significant pause. "If the opposite were true, we wouldn't even need to be here."

Vindica'aur stopped and looked at him, and Ikharos thought he saw the moment realization dawned on her. "Perhaps you speak truly," she begrudgingly admitted. "Commander-interim, the Rancis Olytus is close at hand."

"We'll take to the hangars, cut out a transmat zone." Ikharos looked at his HUD's radar and was relieved to find it clear of red. Xiān was paying close attention to changes in the water; it wouldn't do to fall prey to a mosasaur a second time. The first encounter had been quite enough for him.

They dove deeper. Down, down, down until the morning light flickered out and the darkness of the ocean's deep enveloped them, clutched them, crushed them within an inch of their fragile lives. Ikharos felt it in his bones, in his arms and legs and his ribcage; he felt like an aluminium can being squeezed to a crinkling pulp by a giant invisible hand and he had to bear it, to keep swimming, to pretend everything was alright. At long last a monolithic structure peeked out of the gloom and their trip came to a close without incident. It was the Ketch they saw first, still embedded in the ocean floor and pinning their frigate through. It was the Ketch that gave Ikharos pause. It was the Ketch that dominated his thoughts as he and the Cabal swam closer, and it was the Ketch that inevitably turned him away from his original course.

"Val," Ikharos breathed laboriously. "You have the Rancis Olytus."

"Commander-interim?" Vindica'aur turned, the flashlight beam on her helm swerving to cut directly at him, and her jump-pack belched another collection of murky bubbles and steaming water.

Ikharos gazed upon the Ketch expressionlessly, keeping his thoughts and emotions in tidy order despite the lack of Psions present to pick up on them, and he kicked towards the downed Scornship. "The dead are moving. The Locus is lost to us. It must be found. Carry on."

"... Sir." Vindica'aur glided away, sinking down towards the dead slab of the Rancis Olytus, and instead of following Ikharos delicately swam right beneath the Ketch's slim belly and found its hangar bay already ajar - having deposited most of its lesser flight craft during the battle above the anomaly and the rest likely during orbital entry. Only a single lonely Skiff remained inside, hanging from magnetic hooks. The water had flooded the interior right to the airlock - but there, Ikharos found, was where it stopped. The hull's integrity was largely intact. He pressed his hand against the airlock's security terminal but it refused him with a brief show of red light; it didn't like his biometric signature. Xiān handled it from there - hijacking his sensorium's weak emitters and linking it with the ship's security system, logging him in as an identified crewmember through sheer force of will. The Scornship's outdated firewalls fell before her without incident.

"What do we say?" she whispered.

Ikharos pursed his lips. "About time?"

"I think it starts with 'Thank you best Ghost, I'd be nothing without you!'," Xiān said. "Ends with that too. I'm not greedy, see."

"Cute."

"Eh, I'll take it."

Ikharos stifled a snort and slipped into the airlock. It closed behind him, flared with bright orange light and then started to drain the water away, replacing it with the hiss of poorly-recycled air and cleansing sprays. Ikharos braced against one of the walls until the chamber was clear and a blue light flickered on ahead. The other hatch slid open on automatic. Beyond it lay a long, dark corridor - where the air was a haze of floating grey spores, circulating around growths of dank black matter.

"That's a lovely sight," Ikharos grimly mused. "Company, please note we have Egregore infestations aboard the scuttled Scornship."

There was a pause. It drew out. Ikharos frowned. "Company?" he repeated. "Val? Indilic? Do you read?"

"You know they can't hear you," something purred at his back. A shiver ran down his spine and Ikharos's hands curled into fists. "Not here. This is our domain. My domain. And I don't intend to share."

He forced himself to take a step forward. One pace became two, became three, until he was stiffly marching down the hallway. Egregore stalks slowly lifted up around him, smelling the presence of life and Light, and the spore emissions increased. It choked his filters until he was forced to turn to an internal oxygen supply of Xiān's making. He walked on, deeper into the Ketch-

-and she followed. Ikharos didn't dare look at her; he was afraid he would snap if he did, that his anger would prompt a manifestation of terrible Dark and cleansing Light - the kind that would tear the ship apart from the inside out.

"This must feel refreshing," Dûl Incaru sighed. "How many times have you walked these halls? My good uncle was a man all about His work, but He missed so many. It was kind of you to finish where He left off."

"Shut up."

"The Eliksni were as rats escaping a sinking ship - far from land, but they sighted your leaky raft and they dug their little claws in. It was the right thing to do, you know. To kill them as you did. By their hundreds."

"Shut. Up."

"They wielded their homes like warships, as is proper, and you responded accordingly. But it just seems so dreary. The same battlefield, over and over. You board their ships, you empty them of life, you move on." Her voice scratched at his eardrums like a thousand little barbed claws. "I think you must adore the Scorn as a result. They're something new at least. Something unique. They may be dead things but at least they wear it on their sleeves."

"Shut. The fuck. Up," Ikharos growled. Or begged. It all boiled down to the same. He trudged onwards, past colonies of grim mycelial growths, and he swatted their roving tendrils away as they swayed before him.

Dûl Incaru harrumphed. "You may act the grouch all you like, I know you appreciate it - if for nothing else than a minute change in scenery, because what else do you have to gain? No Worm to feed, no queenly mother to offer tribute, no rotting gods to bow before - you are free of shackles and all the poorer for it." Her chin rested on his shoulder, her cheek pressed against the side of his helmet, and he could feel her every breath as it hissed past her ivory fangs. "There is a love of death-craft in you and I think my uncle would be proud to see it, were He still alive."

"Ignore her," Xiān whispered, but her words had already needled into his brain.

Ikharos's right hand balled into a fist. It shook by his side. She noticed; she noticed everything. She ran her own hand down his arm, as if to massage the muscles there, and the sensuality in the motion raised a thin, fragile mask over her inherent insidious nature - and he didn't believe it for a second.

They stopped by the entrance to a teleporter and Xiān reluctantly keyed in the access codes. Ikharos stepped through - but before he could walk onto the warp disk, claws closed around his wrist, twirled him around and pulled him back, pulled him close. His sight filled with her macabre visage and she grinned, she leered at him, her three eyes twinkling with cruel amusement and a long barbed tongue snaking over ancient serrated teeth.

"Sometimes I wonder if you hate them as you hate me," Dûl Incaru sang, every word grating on his focus, his resolve to not lash out. "You throw yourself at them time and again, though they be Devils not. Again and again. What have they ever done to you?" She leaned into him, almost pressing against the visor of his helmet, and she laughed softly. "But then I realize: it's not they you hate, but the wish-granter behind them. All because of what she took from you - a friend, a fellow artist, a brood-sister. So I ask now: what, my dear, have I taken from you to make you despise me so?"

"My dreams," Ikharos whispered, raging raging raging, full of fire, gathering it at his back and allowing it to settle as two billowing wings of pure flame. The air seared with the intensity of it and the Egregore shrieked, shrinking away from the Light and the heat while their spores sizzled and burned.

Dûl Incaru felt none of him. It didn't touch her. There was nothing physical to touch, though her grip on him felt firm enough. "I am but a presenter on this show. The camera rolls, you see my face, but the whims at work, the script at play - the direction we travel is not mine to command."

"Quria is dead."

"And you bemoan her loss. The Mind. Who set you before me."

"She was a puppet, same as all the others you've broken down," Ikharos retorted. "She could have been more."

"She could have been everything. You would have hated it. The Vex have no imagination."

"Her captivity taught her otherwise."

"Then there is advantage in duress, is there not?" Incaru chuckled throatily. "Besides, it was not I who slew her, nor my clever mother. Your progeny performed the act - your prodigy. She is dead by your legacy. You have your vengeance. Realize it. Bask in it."

"Then why do I still dream of you?" Ikharos hoarsely questioned.

Her claws ran down the side of his helmet, cutting into it, breaching it, caressing across his bare skin. Sour air flushed inside and he gagged on the taste of it, the stink of burning Egregore. "Oh my Lord of Loss, my Prince of Hollow Promises and Empty Hopes, o Dark Angel mine; you already know why. We've had our doctored interview, but now we're off the script. There's nothing left to read. You just can't accept it."

She ran her hands down to his chest, braced against him, and before he realized what she was doing she pushed him into the teleporter. Ikharos gasped, breathing in the vile air, and as he reappeared in another chamber he beat his wings around himself, trying to banish the spores, trying to keep it from filling his lungs and-

Too late. He choked on it, felt it sink into the lining of his esophagus, and as he doubled over to wretch something looped around his neck, something cold and metallic and clinking. The chain pulled taut, dragged him down to the ground with a heavy thud, and it pulled him along the floor at incredible speed - the wet sound of squelching flesh slapping against the steel floor filled his ears, pounding along to the excited gurgling huffs of something sickening and dead.

All at once he felt the chain pull tighter around his neck, felt it rise upwards and himself with it, felt it cut off his windpipe, felt it drag him into the air despite the urging of his immolated wings and raise him on display for all the Scorn to see. He saw their eyes as his vision darkened, saw their pale hungry gazes pinned to him, and he grabbed at the chain, lifted himself up to draw in another breath, to snap up all the oxygen he could get before channelling the Light, the Dark, everything at his disposal - freezing the chain solid and shattering it with a yawning of the Void. Ikharos hit the ground on his knees and clumsily swept an arm around him, filling the space with Arc, but it bounced off scratched walls and nothing else.

The Scorn were gone.

Instead all he saw was red - as far as the eye could see. It shifted and crawled with silhouettes of things and creatures and people. He flushed more Light into his wings, banishing the shadows, and he filled the air with searing heat and the acrid smell of burning Egregore. The Nightmares retreated before him, all save one - her. HER. HER. The warden to his cell, hefting the keys to his mind, rolling it in her hands and shooting him a knowing smile that was all teeth. She held her arms out to gesture to the chamber around them and said, "What do you think?"

It was the bridge of the Ketch, filled with fungal infestation and the stink of Dark Ether. A single dead Scorn Chieftain laid twitching by the Baron's throne, tendrils of Egregore wrapped around it and pinning it down, and it mewled thoughtlessly as mycelial stalks buried into its eyeless head. Scraps of a cloak peeked through their bindings; red and bloody, the attire of a Devil though this time he did not recognize them. Just one of the countless faceless dead scattered across Sol. There were plenty of bodies leftover from half-forgotten wars for the Black Fleet to pick through. Each one was a hazard. He almost - almost - wished he'd had the power to sort through them all, to click his fingers and see them disintegrated beyond the reach of the Witness.

"Well I think it's wonderful," Dûl Incaru said dreamily. "They've renovated quickly. I have to admire them. Perhaps I should have pressed them into service before I set myself towards the task of parsing through Eleusinia. My Darkblades - they are valiant and bold and so, so loyal to stand firm for a time against you of all Sky-worshippers, but these Scorn? They are breathtaking, are they not? They are the resilience of all Fallen nature, perfected beyond the grave." She huffed a laugh. "Oh, my dear uncle would have died from shame! A tragedy - I would have liked to have seen His face. Oh the scandal! Necromancy? Not in His court! But His son, oh His second son, he would have-"

"That's enough," Ikharos barked.

She looked at him, head tilted, and she raised a hand to cover her grin. "Is something the matter?"

Ikharos pointed at her with a trembling finger. "I will make you hurt. One day I'll find a way - and I will make you hurt."

Dûl Incaru closed in on him, pressing him against the bannister of the observatory deck. She reached out as if to cup his face, though her claws did not reach him. Instead she flexed her talons, running them through the air on either side of his head to work invisible magic. "Your torment is my bread, your anguish my wine. I salt my meals with your regrets - and the only one to blame is yourself. This is my nature. You have disowned yours. What follows is of your own doing. But I'll be there for you. I will. There is room in the Deep and when you fall you will find it freeing. I'll even be there to catch you." She paused and cocked her head the other way, horns catching the dim red-orange light. "You now coil yourself in law and morality like living shackles, all because you see what you are now. You are more beautiful without them. Shrug them off. Dust your shoulders free. You are ruthless; you are brutal. Cease this farce, this pretence of otherwise. Live, for once, for yourself."

Though the air was stuffy and searing, though his throat was full of what felt like burning glass and his heart was caught in a squeezing vice, Ikharos summoned the resolve to stand up straight, to stand up to her and growl, "Never."

Dûl Incaru sighed and closed her eyes - a dramatic show, so human a gesture on so alien a creature. "The Gods in their slithering masses surely weep for you. You shatter their Logic over your knee - and for what? Only to fall prey to scheme after scheme, ploy after ploy, war after war time and again."

"I'll never stop. Never. I'll kill every last one of your kind. I'll kill you."

She laughed. "Will you now?!" Dûl Incaru leaned in close, staring into his eyes. "Then why haven't you done so already?"

Ikharos said nothing.

"Because you are afraid. You cite excuse after excuse. You want to kill her, but you know - you know who she used to be."

"It was mercy."

"No. True death is mercy. You offered her only purgatory."

Ikharos scowled. "She is my way."

"To banishing me?" Dûl Incaru asked innocently. "It seems a travesty. Alas, your brigade of fallen conquerors will doubtless keep you from it. They hate her. They, at least, understand the proper procedure. Visit death unto others to spare yourself."

"That's the worst kind of bribe, pretending the universe cares. It never lasts."

"And you would know, wouldn't you?" She scoffed with derision. "O Dark Angel of the Burning Lake - I am your foil, self-constructed, and I am your demon-light. I will always understand you better than yourself, than even your sweet-voiced Sky-anchor. I have seen into your hidden third eye and I see the hollow in your words - just venom without the fangs to deliver it. You believe the same as I. But you should be free to practise beyond the nip of a Worm." Dûl Incaru clacked her teeth. The sound of it echoed through the Ketch's bridge. "Kill her and be done with it."

Ikharos stared - his gaze full of loathing and vicious hate, but also disgust. "You know, then, who she is. What she is. She's your second chance."

"She is an embarrassment."

"Because I cut her down?"

"Of course not!" She traced his cheek with a bony finger. "That is nothing to be ashamed of, o Kingkiller, o Dragonbane. Nothing at all. But she basks in the Sky without memory of the Deep. You, at least, have allowed your curiosity to take you into the black waters, but she is not so swayed - and she languishes, she degrades us both for it. Kill her and be done with it. A final end is a mercy for all involved."

"Not I."

"You consider me a curse. A small-minded assumption. It is so much more. I am so much more." Dûl Incaru leaned in closer yet, just to whisper into his ear, "This is an invitation. Take it."

Ikharos loosed the Void in himself, allowed it to rip out from his palm as steaming absence, and it took her in a swathe of black-violet flame. She melted away with a bout of shrieking laughter, hauntingly. The air popped as it rushed to fill in the sudden vacuum and he crumpled to the floor, breathing hard.

"Ike-" Xiān started to say, that promise of warmth and sympathy and support; his better half come a-calling, to help him back to his feet just when he hit his lowest. The only thing left intact, his PRIDE, instinctively bucked against it as a wave of fire, filling his head and his throat until it felt like his mouth was full of Stasis shards - until he felt close to bursting with so much rage and wrath, so much hate, so much violence it would reduce the Ketch, the world, the universe to him and him alone.

But he was more afraid of where that would lead, and so he said nothing though she could read him loud and clear. Their symbiotic neural bond stretched and pulled taut. She tried to drag it in, he tugged himself out of reach. No man's an island, he heard in a voice long since lost, another friend lost to blades and ages, but he rebuked it with a grunt - with a welling tear that streaked down his cheek and grew dark with the spores lining his bare skin.

No man's an island until you make him so, Ikharos snapped back. You died, Len. You died and left me here. You and all the rest. What have I left but a witch to wound me?

He looked up at the ceiling and saw more of the same - steel stained and spoiled with Dark rot, etched with caustic scars from fouled Ether. The Scorn were gone, left, having migrated to kinder grounds - to rally behind a new calling. It wasn't clear to him if it was to be a crueler one than before. He couldn't imagine otherwise.

"I am..." Ikharos croaked. "I am a ruin."

She stood over him, all too abruptly there, with a hand on her hip and wearing that frustrated look he ached to see again - manifested in crimson glory. "You're supposed to be a temple," Lennox-2 argued with a snort. "That's what they always say."

Ikharos closed his eyes, but he knew better than to expect that to banish the new Nightmare. "I'm tired."

"Took you a while."

"I am."

"Must ache, putting all that ego aside to admit it."

It did. It really did. But really - his life was his own. Restricted as it was, he only ever really grew upset when someone threatened to change that. "I've lived. I've lost. Even if I do what everyone expects me to, I've lost. I..." Ikharos felt another tear escape him and he furiously wiped it away, heaving heavy lungfuls of contaminated air. "I'm going to die. We're going to lose, the universe is going to end."

"We've always known that, Ike," Lennox said softly. He wished - yes wished and sorely at that - that the shape behind her voice could have been the real thing.

"But what have I to show for it?" He opened his eyes and stared at her. She really hadn't changed a bit and it hurt him to see her so - short and stocky and still equipped to charge into the Dreaming City. To kill a dragon. "It's getting hard to see the light on that other side, Len."

"There's no other side."

"I know. I know there isn't, I'd just..." Ikharos trailed off. "I wanted the illusion. I wanted to pretend."

"You've never been the sort."

"I suppose not."

Lennox-2 sighed and crouched down in front of him. "It's not gonna get easier, Ike."

"I know that too."

"But we both know you're going to get back up and how much of a bastard you're going to be while doing it."

"Why do you always think so poorly of me?" Ikharos whispered. "Why do you put me on that kind of pedestal?"

"Because you're a killer who's never had enough."

"I never wanted to be."

"Neither did the Hive in the beginning, but just look at where that got them. You've got the makings of something terrible. It's the only reason you're still alive." She graced him with a bloody smile. He had to look away, if only to preserve his memory of her. To keep it pure. "It's not a bad thing to be terrible."

"There's nothing worse," Ikharos spat. He grabbed the railing and dragged himself up, looking over her. At least some things hadn't changed - and he hurt for it. "This isn't you."

"It's the me I wanted to be. No filter." Lennox-2 crossed her arms.

"Our decency is what makes us worth saving," Ikharos retorted. "This - this isn't anything but a sham. A-" he doubled over, groaning, and clutched his chest, feeling the wet cold of blood bubbling to the surface. His injuries had been reopened. Somehow. The pain was monumental, all-consuming and-

No.

No, it was a Nightmare sensation. Ikharos straightened up despite the agony - and it dissipated away.

"You're already in too deep," Lennox-2 warned. "You're going to suffer."

"No different to the usual, then," Ikharos grunted. He limped over to the primary navigation console as phantom wounds manifested across his body, slicing through him, cracking his bones and rending his muscles. He fought them with willpower, with resolve, and some faded with Memory-blue - but the rest... the rest lingered. It sat within him, boiling and writhing, and he weathered it as best he could. Wincing. Gasping. Listening to his ribs break and reset over and over again as something, his umbral centre maybe, shifted and shook with every pang of red pain. His fingers played across the terminal's controls, keying in commands in Eliksni glyphs, and he delved into the poorly-secured mainframe - activating his sensorium's vis-capture and pressing every image, every report, every reading to digital memory. The files built and built, full of intel, curious and useless, until at last he lucked out on the comms dish.

He bounced a signal. It bounced back on automatic. And the other side - it heard. It shut off, went quiet. They knew. But now so did he.

"This is the Yemeks-Syn," Ikharos noted. "The Locus has the Ariks-Fel."

"They'll know we're digging," Xiān nervously warned. "They'll come for us."

"I don't think so. But now we know where they were. Stationary. Looking for something." Ikharos switched the terminal off and pushed away - swaying in place without something to balance himself against. "These coordinates, they must have meaning. Why stop at all?"

"Ike, they'll try to kill us."

"He doesn't care," Lennox-2 called out. "You know he doesn't, I know he doesn't, he certainly knows he doesn't. It's all just scenery at this point, the same old sights flashing by as he rides ahead. You made him this way."

"I never-!" Xiān lowered her voice. "I never meant for this. Any of this. I just wanted you at your best."

"And now you've seen me at my worst," Ikharos murmured.

"I'm still with you, aren't I?"

"You should have stayed away. You should have run." Ikharos looked around. "This place will be the death of me. I can't... I won't be able to continue like this."

"The Nightmares aren't eternal."

"Mine are."

"And now you're killing Dark cultists," Lennox-2 added. "Really moving up in the world, eh? Or maybe down?"

Ikharos grimaced. "Don't test me."

"Nezarec too. Yeesh."

"He's dead."

"Pfft. Dead, dying, undying; it's all the same, really," Lennox scoffed. "Those rules went out of fashion centuries ago. We're the new trendsetters and the rest of the universe is racing to follow. I've got ten K glimmer that this bastard's still alive. You game?"

Ikharos looked at her. "You're not her. Stop trying."

Lennox-2 chuckled. "Suit yourself." Her optics flashed crimson. "It was me or something more physical, but then you've always preferred action to talk. Used to like that about you." She smiled crookedly. "But that's how I ended up like this, so I suppose it wasn't all it was cracked up to be."

"Len-"

"Could've talked me out of it, Ike. The chance was there. You didn't. Can't change the past." She glanced away, down the central corridor leading to the bridge. "But hey - I won't say no to being avenged a second time 'round. 'Specially when the first felt like an afterthought. Here she is now. Got some catching up to do, the two of you, don't ya?"

Something rumbled. A rattle swept through the ship, deep and sonorous like an earthquake, and movement rocked the bridge. It felt like something was slithering beneath the floors, the walls, up in the ceiling; an entity was sluicing through the bones of the ship like a sleek parasite, hunting for fresher prey buried within a rotting carcass. Time seemed to stop and nonspace closed around him, prickling his nerves with icy fear. He had to bury it, that terror, and he strangled it in a downpour of imagined Void - a great field of nothing, a Nullscape. Impervious. Merciless. Inhuman.

Inhuman...

Jaws flexed behind rattling grates. Eyes blinked from the shadows. The air turned; it ebbed and flowed as if the Ketch itself was breathing. Ikharos caught the scent of lavender and vanilla, heady smells that reminded him of thick incense, and in his mind he recalled great sweeping halls of marble and amethyst, crystalline arches, elegant statues of Awoken long passed. But when he opened his eyes - he found himself once more buried beneath warped steel and makeshift grave, spoiled with synaptic infestation.

He took up his knife and Ikharos stepped forward, feet placed apart. His wings returned to him, radiant, and resonance grew beneath his fingers. His eyes shone violet, parsing through space and matter to catch out the flickers of more - to see the vile thing in true, in all its wretched glory.

And he saw.

And he fled.

And he fought.

Riven of a Thousand Voices set herself upon him and she took no singular fixed shape; she was formed and formless, she was monstrously terrible and iridescently beautiful, she was alien and more. She was a dragon. She defied his comprehension and tantalised his senses with animal terror - feeding his system with another bout of adrenaline, to spice his blood and salt his flesh. Ikharos lurched through the spore-filled interior of Ketch, hearing nothing but the creaking of metal stretching and compressing, the howl of Ogres and the keening of Minotaurs - the shrieks of false-Taken filling up the hallways, directed by tendrils of dragon-flesh like an orator before a choir. They fell on him, clawing and lashing and shooting and stabbing, and Ikharos burned them each to a crisp. The air he drew in was contaminated, each breath, and the longer he allowed it to settle in him the stronger the Nightmares would become. Soon they no longer died the moment he touched them. Soon he had to actually try, to bring Dawnblade and Lubrae's Ruin to bear, to shatter their flesh and banish their foul magics by hand.

He stumbled through the teleporter, carved down to the airlock, and he cut through it with Solar if only to escape them - only to find her consolidated ahead, filling the hangar with her pinions, her neck, her great skull resplendent with shark fangs and whale baleen. She leered at him, she snarled, she said nothing but there was nothing that needed to be said. Ikharos doused his Light and his hate, his fury fed into the Dark; he drew his rifle, heart-caged, over his shoulder and he fired on her, taking her flames in stride, resisting the graceful allure of her tendrils as they lashed at him, allowing her to strike if only so that he could do the same. Her eyes went out one by one, and the Taken egg she took into her jaws he smashed with a wave of Blight, with husk-dry king-essence. She fell before he did and she roared as she died, jaws held ajar. Ikharos pulled his Light back, cocooned the worst of his wounds in restorative benevolence, and he passed over her teeth to run down her throat, to entire the cavity at her centre and find her hear-

Not there.

Just open ocean.

Ocean - and filling his mouth, flooding his lungs, crushing his skull. It might've been the pressure that finished him off, or the bloodloss, but in the end he died-

-and opened his eyes with a ragged gasp, alive once more. His helm was whole again and stars danced across his HUD. Ikharos floated, limbs limp, and he scarcely dared to breathe.

"Ike," Xiān said, subdued, worried - so cherished, so fragile, so loved. There was nothing he treasured more in the world, in all the universe, but even then he felt so unhappy, so pathologically bothered to have someone, anyone talk to him. He'd had his reverie and it was broken. He couldn't do it. He couldn't sort things out with people after him, people eating up his time, so he hung there in the darkness of the deep and heaved a wretched sigh.

"Ike," she said again, this time with more force. She wasn't going to give him a choice.

"What?" Ikharos croaked. "What do you want?"

"... They're on the line. They're concerned."

"Have you-"

"Haven't told them anything."

Ikharos exhaled and the weight of the sea settled on his chest. "Tell them what we found. The concrete findings. The things we can use."

"Will do."

"What about on their end?"

"You know you can ask them yourself," Xiān said, voice clipped, and she left him alone. Frustrated. Unhappy herself. Ikharos reluctantly breathed in, sucking in clean oxygen, and he reset his commlink.

All at once he was assailed with a hundred pings, a thousand queries, endless messages. Cabal. Cabal. Cabal. Concerned, right. They'd lost him. He'd lost them. His warrior-hippos and his secretive psychics. All worried because surely they knew they didn't stand a chance, pride be damned.

As if his presence evened the odds somehow.

Almost like she was reading his thoughts (and that was a distinct possibility), Xiān rose back to the surface of his mind and said, "The Vanguard sent you. Ikora. Zavala. They believed you were the right choice for the job."

"This isn't a fairytale," Ikharos muttered. "Their beliefs doesn't help me a bit."

"You could try, Ike. You could try to dig yourself out of this hole."

"Unless you're willing to wipe my memory again, that won't happen."

"You know I won't-"

"Then leave me alone."

A tense moment passed with breath bated on either side. "You need help," Xiān bitterly said - but to his surprise she did just as he asked, retreating back into subspace. And he regretted it the very moment she did so. Yet he said nothing more. He refused to apologize. Pride kept him from it - and at his core he was nothing more than a slave to pride. They both were.

His commlink pinged once more. Ikharos reluctantly answered the active call, wiring back into BattleNet systems. A couple of Cabal runes and numbers briefly flickered to life on his sensorium's hallucinatory HUD, spelling Optus, Indilic, Staff of Empress Caiatl, Utmost Priority.

"Yeah?" Ikharos said.

A pause. "You live," Indilic noted. "Your biosignature disappeared."

"I entered the Ketch."

"Our Val informed me. Here she is now." The call expanded. Another auditory feed spliced into their channel. "Val."

"Optus," Vindica'aur rumbled. "Commander-interim. What news?"

"Ketch is empty of Scorn," Ikharos reported, voice blank. "Full of Nightmares. Infrastructural integrity is intact, thought the Egregore roots dig deep. I cut through it. I found the other Scornship - the Ariks-Fel."

"Sir?"

"East of our location by some margin, upper atmosphere. It must be dancing with those ob-sats like Elisabeth said." Ikharos took a breath. "What I could read suggested it was stationary. That might change - they could see what I was doing as well - but it's a spot of interest. My Ghost will beam you the coordinates relative to our location. Terrain directly beneath is unknown. What about on your end?"

"Three Threshers freed, with two rising to the surface," Vindica'aur proudly reported. "Another four are being cut from the Egregore. Five Harvesters marked to follow. We have two drill-rigs set to float and a portable surveillance post to use at our discretion."

"That's good. That's very good." Ikharos re-orientated himself and kicked up. "What's your time?"

"Estimated three and a half terran hours," Indilic told him. "Scorn have not intervened. Should those on standby for Scorn incursion be turned towards salvage posts? It would expedite progress."

"Leave it." Ikharos glanced down and allowed himself to descend. "Vicinity is clear?"

"No life signs detected."

"Scorn scampered," Vindica'aur huffed. "Where have they gone?"

The idea struck Ikharos that beyond the errant crews stalking the nearby island there was probably a grand herd of ghouls hopping along the ocean floor, migrating en masse according to the will of the Locus - and whatever had taken the reins behind it. "We'll worry about that later. Indilic, what's the camp's status?"

"No external activity. No Exominds detected. No Scorn detected. We are clear," Indilic reported. "We feel nothing but absent life."

"Right." Ikharos breathed in and out slowly, trying to calm himself - put himself in a clearer headspace. "Val - are there any incapacitated spaceborne vessels beyond saving?"

"Three Threshers inoperable," Vindica'aur replied. "I was considering salvaging them for parts. We've already dismantled a scuttled Harvester."

"Good. But - Xiān, what do we need exactly?"

"Oh, now you want my help," Xiān bit out.

"Xiān," Ikharos warned.

"Trespass's propulsion systems are bust. I can field the glimmer for a patchjob, but there's some components I can't synthesize."

"Anything we can salvage?"

"Harvester drive-lock, alluvial dampeners and ion flux manifolds, lateral stabilizers - and that's just the warp drive, unless you're happy free-flying for the rest of our lives."

"Not a chance."

"Didn't think so. We need a Void-charge phase coil for anti-grav propulsors, a refurbished radiation shield, and a repulsor actuator. Oh, and we need to repair the coolant pump."

"Can we manage that?"

"I'll... see what my technicians say," Vindica'aur grumbled.

"Cabal can't supply us everything," Xiān explained. "Most of the list, maybe, but we'll need Skiff parts to round it off."

"Skiff?" Ikharos hesitantly questioned.

"Yeah."

"I'm... not going back in."

"Figured as much."

Ikharos took in another deep breath - wincing as the pressure once more squeezed him like an orange, threatening to pop him like a balloon. It was agony and the delirium of sweet oxygen almost entirely numbed him to it. "Val, load up a fighter with whatever components you have at hand. We'll work from there."

"Duly noted," Vindica'aur said. "We're about to eject another Thresher."

"Understood." He kicked upwards. "Ascending now."

"Commander," Indilic said forebodingly.

"Speak."

"We are..." Indilic hesitated. "Your informant is here."

"Elisabeth?"

"Yes sir."

"Is there-"

"She's wounded." Indilic paused. "Severely. I am holding her in a state of limbo, per her request; I do not have the experience with Exomind functions to conduct repairs. The injury is... it is grave."

"... Shit." Ikharos stopped in place, grimacing. "I'm on my way. Val. Thresher?"

"Sir?" She sounded bewildered.

"The sooner the better. I'll take it up."

"But that will..." Vindica'aur trailed off. He imagined the realization dawned on her. "Commander-interim," she said not a moment later, "ejecting Thresher now."

Ikharos watched as a shadow, darker than the rest, rose up through the depths at some speed and flashed towards him. Its thrusters were faintly alight, boiling the water left in its wake. He swam into its path - and allowed it to hit him. The impact was abrupt enough to kill him on the spot. Better that than to suffer rapid decompression sickness.

Xiān revived him on the surface, right atop the Thresher as it hung just over the water. Ikharos shook off the cold shock of resurrection, slid along to the side of the vessel and grabbed a hold of the edge of the hull as he dropped against its side. The starboard airlock hissed open and he climbed inside. The interior of the fighter was... a little cramped; a lot of equipment had been roughly shoved inside, still smelling of Egregore stain. Ikharos nimbly climbed through the mess to the cockpit and he settled in beside the Psion pilot, clapping the alien on the shoulder. "My man," he said in Ulurant - or at least the closest analogue in the grunting speech he could manage. "Good to go."

"Commander," the Psion said in a whistling, shrieking voice. The Thresher lifted up and shot forward. The momentum pressed him back against a barrel of precarious black gel; Ikharos pulled himself forward, bracing against the Psion's chair, and within moments they were flitting over verdant land only to settle above the blasted landscape of their campside. Another pair of Threshers hovered above, cannons at the ready and tracers parsing through the surrounding landscape. Ikharos Blinked outside, beneath the Thresher, and dropped another ten feet - softening his landing with a glide, coming to a stop amidst a half-dozen Legionaries rushing to their feet to salute him. Some of them struggled to quickly don their beast-faced helmets, but Ikharos waved to them.

"At ease," he ordered in their own harsh tongue, and they reluctantly settled back down. The Thresher above moved on and landed somewhere to his right, where a number of soldiers were gathered. Ikharos scanned the area, found it little changed, and proceeded to hike towards the Shadow Trespass. He found the remains of the mosasaur on his way and already it was worried down to the bones; a number of war beasts lazed around the colossal skeleton and it appeared as if some Cabal had sawed off their own portions to bolster their rations.

Ikharos ducked beneath the wing of the Trespass, pulled himself up into the main body and found what he was looking for there: the Stranger laid out on the couch like she had been at the start of their ill-fated venture, but with Indilic sat cross-legged at one end and holding his hands on either side of her bare head, strings of psychic energy threading from his fingers into her mind. Almost immediately Ikharos saw the injury - a great gash across her side, like someone had taken a saw to her flank in some sick attempt to split her in two. Her biosuit was ripped at the point of entry and the synthetic plate-skin beneath was jaggedly torn, revealing elements of broken machinery within. Ellecta, one of the other Flayers, knelt beside them and had been in the course of speaking with Indilic until Ikharos's arrival. There was a half-empty wine bottle on the coffee table beside them, carved of glazed crystal, though he doubted it had been the conscious pair's.

"Right..." Ikharos said slowly. "Xiān, get the toolbox."

"I will depart-" Ellecta started to stay, but Ikharos motioned to her sharply.

"No," he ordered. "Stay. Indilic, is she out?"

"Deep stasis," Indilic reported. "Her metabolism has slowed. We have stemmed the bleeding as best we could."

Ikharos approached; he could smell the Alkahest spilled. The couch was going to need a wash. "I see." Xiān dropped his repair kit on the table beside them through transmat and he took it up. Ikharos dropped to his knees beside the Stranger and inspected the wound. "Torn cabling, broken fluid lines, but the bio-systems are intact."

"Sir?"

"It's a nasty cut, just non-lethal. So long as we treat it." Ikharos pulled a magnatool out. "Optus Ellecta, can you detect traces of foreign matter?"

Ellecta settled down next to him, her eye shining. "... Some. Faint, microscopic - unintentional. Traces of the weapon that dealt the blow."

"Unintentional or no, we need to clean this out before anything else. Flush it for me."

Ellecta hesitantly raised a hand, formed a minute bubble of constraining Void and pressed it in.

"You can separate external contaminants from the living system?" Ikharos softly inquired. "Yes?"

"From living forms, yes," Ellecta replied. "This... is more difficult."

"Her thoughts are fainter," Indilic explained to him. "We cannot trace the outline of her living body as we can yours, ours, any of the soldiers beneath our command."

Ikharos nodded slowly. "Alright. Then..." He formed an orb of warm Solar Light and motioned for Ellecta to pause. "I'm going to mark what's alive for you. Drag out the rest."

"Sir."

He pressed it against the Stranger's side, allowing the Solar to infuse with her mechanical flesh, and though his human gaze could scarcely make it out Ellecta had formed the bubble around the contours of broken steel and ruptured components to gather up flecks of dirt and even air, leaving in its wake nothing but cold, cold vacuum. Ikharos motioned for her to stop before the bubble popped and reached inside with his magnatool; he couldn't hope to stitch the cabling and Alkahest line together as it was, but the Solar restoration allowed the wires to regrow just enough for him to guide each back into place. That finished, he pulled the tool free, added to the Light already at work, and sat back only once the Stranger's flesh was once more intact. Ellecta pulled the small Void bubble free from her side and, at Ikharos's direction, dropped the contaminants on a tray supplied by Xiān.

Ikharos stood up, offered her a hand, and pulled Ellecta back to her feet. "Thank you."

"Sir." She bowed her head and stepped back.

"Indilic. You can wake her up."

Indilic dipped his head and closed his hands, bringing them back onto his lap. The Stranger's pale optics flickered before fully activating, glancing around. She saw Ellecta, she saw Indilic, she saw Ikharos and she groggily sat up, pressing a hand to her side only to find it whole.

"You're welcome." Ikharos retreated to his armchair and all but fell into it. He motioned to the Psions. "Leave us." Indilic got up and Ellecta led the way out. Ikharos waited until they were gone before sighing explosively. "Look, I won't even ask - I want to, I really do, but I won't. Well, except why... this?" He motioned to the half-empty wine bottle still perched on the table.

The Stranger blinked. "What?"

"That's... that's my Pallasian Blue. My Pallasian Blue. You come here, you bleed on my couch and all over my carpet, you've got a hole in your side and for what may be your last moments, you can never know, you take out my Pallasian Blue. Elisabeth, that vintage was brewed before the Reef Wars - before Ceres shattered."

Elisabeth grimaced and dropped her head into her hands. "I'll replace it."

"Replace it? Elisabeth, it's over a hundred years old - and if you think you're going to find a blue wine from Awoken gardens this side of the Kuiper Belt, you're insane."

"We have bigger problems than your wine."

"I spent thirty-two thousand glimmer on that single bottle - half-price too because I killed the right god. Elisabeth, that's, like... enough to make a Sparrow- no, a human person. I could have made a human being with that money. And you just swigged half of it."

"Ikharos," the Stranger said crossly. She raised her head and shot him a warning look. "Formora's..." She trailed off and glanced away.

Ikharos frowned and leaned forward. "She's what?"

"I don't..." The Stranger took a deep breath. "I want to say captured."

"'Want'?"

"Because the alternative is she's dead."

His frown deepened. "Scorn?"

"No. Our friend from earlier."

"Zendolyn-Far?"

"No. The other one?"

"... The dragon-thing?" Ikharos questioned dubiously.

"Yes. Cuaroc."

"I thought I-"

"He's not fully repaired," the Stranger explained. "Or he wasn't when I saw him. He wants her. They want her."

"Who?"

"Formo-"

"No, I mean who wants her?"

She looked as if she were about to tell him, then seemingly thought better of it. "It's... it's complicated."

"More than three Disciples?" Ikharos retorted. "More than Nezarec?"

The Stranger met his gaze evenly. "You saw the message?"

"I'm disinclined to believe it. Nezarec is dead."

"Tell it to them."

"Who?"

The Stranger hesitated. "They're... not quite Disciples. Not for the Witness. But they served him."

"Nezarec?" Ikharos's frown deepened. "He had his Nightmares. Surely that was enough."

"In a practical sense? Maybe. But he was vain. And they worshipped the ground he walked on."

"Who?"

"A lover. A friend. A confidante." The Stranger leaned back. "They're not a risk right now."

"But I'm led to believe they've rendered the ExSec Exominds as proxies," Ikharos noted. "And that they curtailed a lesser Warmind branch to their cause."

"It's rough."

"I'll say. Which colony ship was it?"

"The one above?" the Stranger questioned. He nodded. "It was the Exodus Prime. The first interstellar colonization attempt."

"Why is it here?"

"Kepler-186f's in a Goldilocks Zone. It's temperate. Hospitable."

Ikharos raised an eyebrow. "When I walk outside, it looks a little more than hospitable. It's the spitting image of home."

"Someone went to lengths to make it that way," the Stranger tiredly told him. "It's not important."

"I beg to differ."

"Ike-"

"Don't," Ikharos sharply retorted. "Do not call me that. Whatever you think we are, we're not. I don't care how much you know, how much you think you understand; I don't know you near so well and I certainly don't trust you enough in that regard."

Momentarily crestfallen, the Stranger looked at him and for a moment he almost felt sorry - and maybe he genuinely did. There was frustration in it, on her end, but also hurt and dare he think l-

Yes. Yes, it was there - broader than he'd been expecting. She took control quickly enough, but the act had fallen for a split-second too long and he'd seen it all. Probably best to nip it in the bud.

"You know more than you should," Ikharos continued. "About everything. If that's not enough, about me. The former I can handle - I just wish you'd be more forthcoming. The latter, however, I cannot. You're expecting something of me and I can't supply it. I won't. Not at such a disadvantage."

"Is my trust not enough?" the Stranger whispered.

"It's enough, but only for my consideration. We're playing for lives, Elisabeth. We're playing for keeps. I'm well aware of the stakes. I understand you're playing the long game, but I can't. I pathologically can't. I have to do things short term because that's where I am." He paused. "I'm running on fumes. My patience is threadbare and I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing anymore. I understand you trust me, you say it and you even seem to believe it, but I can't yet trust you. Not until you let me in. The way things have gone is unfair. It's unkind."

"I trust you," the Stranger said, gathering herself. "I trust your intentions and your capability - but you're not reliable."

Ikharos flinched. "I'm not-"

"You do things short term, exactly. You can't help it. If you were back in Salsburg and I arrived, telling you that you could do so much more good elsewhere, that the hundred or so lives lost in your absence would be miniscule compared to the thousands, the tens of the thousand you could save lightyears away, would you come with me?"

"... No," Ikharos admitted unhappily. "I would not."

"Why?"

"Because I knew those people. I'd seen them around day-in, day-out. I cared for them."

"What about here?" the Stranger pressed. "Would you do things here in the interest of Earth or those you see around you?"

"Earth. In a heartbeat."

"Maybe. At least until you settled in."

"And how does this relate to Formora?"

The Stranger paused. "You want to know so much. You're always so curious, but always so cautious. She can help us. Help you understand. We need her alive - and those with her."

"You mean the-"

"Cuaroc wants to kill her. If she's not dead yet, she will be soon. We need to retrieve her."

Ikharos pressed his lips in a thin line. "We're stretched real fucking thin. We've got a Hive witch somewhere nearby. A Disciple on the prowl with two others at large. The Scorn outnumber us and they know where we are. We'll have to move soon. I was attacked by ExSec Exos with paracausal-dampeners and what looked like new nanite tech not even two days ago, and now I know they're leashed to some dead monster's sycophants. This is the very definition of overwhelmed. And now... what? Some semi-Exo thing kidnapped a neohuman?"

"You used to care about the little things," the Stranger accused.

"I used to care," Ikharos coldly shot back. "But those I bothered to care about are dead or gone. Earth is in danger. Sol is in danger. That's millions of lives - human, Awoken, Eliksni, Cabal. Millions of people who just want to live."

"There's millions more here."

"What point are you trying to make? Am I to care about Earth or Kepler? What's my priority here? Why don't you tell me what to do, Elisabeth? Tell me-"

"I've already told you!" she snapped. "I told you to listen to Formora. You left. I told you again. And again. I told you to humour her."

"Why don't you tell me-"

"Because she has something that you need."

"And what's that?"

The Stranger gave him a sullen, exhausted look and he felt, somewhere deep down, that maybe he was going a little overboard. "A dragon," she said, so faintly he almost didn't hear. "She has a dragon, Ikharos. A dragon for you."

A moment passed. And another. The silence stretched on, and though it must have lasted a minute at most it felt like an eternity. Ikharos's thoughts froze and then shattered, thrown into chaotic disarray - as if someone had taken a Coldsnap grenade right to his brain. "A dragon," he echoed with disbelief. "Are you fucking serious?"

"Yes."

"Elisabeth-"

"It's Elsie. Just call me Elsie." She looked at him long and hard. "Only my grandfather called me Elisabeth."

That - that was not okay. No no no; if there was anyone Ikharos didn't want to be compared to, then it was certainly Clovis himself. Calus was a sick despot, Ghaul a barbarian, Oryx a sadist and Savathûn a sociopath - but Clovis, in his mind, was worse. He'd decided as much long ago, even before they'd flayed the secrets from Europa's ice. Near two hundred years he'd seen the Bray handiwork in action, near two hundred years he'd grown familiar with its cruel shortcomings, near two hundred years he'd become familiar with being woken up in the night to the sounds of struggling, of whimpering, of screams. Near two hundred years he'd seen the dark side of what becoming an Exo meant.

No. No, that was a comparison he couldn't abide. Not with her Nightmare so fresh on his mind.

"Fine," he growled. "Elsie. I'll tell you this once: no dragon, living or dead, is ever going to set foot in this camp, this company, this ship."

"But Formora-"

"Leave her to the dragons," Ikharos said with a scowl. "She seems familiar enough with them as is."

The Stranger got to her feet. "They'll kill her," she murmured. Her hands balled to fists by her side. They trembled.

"Then I suggest you hurry," Ikharos replied. "If you're so intent on rectifying that, that is."

She stared at him as if she couldn't believe he'd said that. But he had. He had and he wasn't going to apologize for it. "Oh Ikharos," Elsie whispered. "When did you turn so Dark?"

And she disappeared, flashing away with swirling transmat. Ikharos looked at the place she'd been standing before getting up with a scowl and pulling a glass cup free of a cupboard. He sat back down, pulled the Pallasian Blue over and poured it right to the brim. Ikharos raised his cup up in silent cheers and brought it to his lips. It was the dreamiest thing he'd ever tasted. Nothing could compare. As sweet as silence and as heavy as null.

AN: Hugest thanks to Nomad Blue the legend for editing!