There was a smooth surface, cold and vicious, against his cheek. It pressed against his arm as well—his back—his hand—until he came to the inescapable conclusion that he was lying on it. Something was digging into the space between his shoulder blades. His eyes felt stuck closed.

It took a moment to pry them open. His eyelashes were stiff; chilled tears clung to them, dripping salt and water in fine particles down his cheeks. He reached up a hand to wipe his eyes, and every muscle in his body spasmed. A strangled cry erupted from his throat—and once it erupted, the lava flows couldn't be contained. His cry metamorphosed into a low, twisted keening sound that he made to himself, the vibrations running up and down his spine, as he peeled himself off the floor to stare aghast at his own reflection in it.

This place was so cold.

He grimaced at his reflection, testing the tense muscles in his face. They seemed harder to move, powered by only him, stiffer and more recalcitrant. The metal floor was dark and reflected the world darkly, but his hair looked frighteningly pale in it. He reached up a hand, and it came away dotted with dozens of melting ice crystals. They beaded against his skin, sucking yet more warmth out of his body.

Other than the keening from his throat, which turned more to a humming when he shut his mouth, it was silent. His own voice was background noise.

His wet hand travelled over more of his body, as if he were conducting a diagnostics check on the Ark Angel. He tapped his knee—working. His lips—working, though he tried to mouth words and took a few long seconds to recall if he knew any. Twisting his shoulder in ways that stretched it uncomfortably, he ran his hand along his back to the frigid thing digging into it. His wings.

He'd forgotten about those. A cold, foreign appendage that shoved itself into his back. His body shape had changed, since last he thought of his body as his.

His hand cupped around the straight line of them on his back. He remembered what it felt like to fly. He had always wanted to fly. His last name was no longer metaphorical.

The wings were folded. He could do that, he knew; he'd had them only a short while, but that had been the first motion he learnt to make with them, as instinctual as if the tracks were carved into the soft fibre of his brain. With a grimace, he tried that motion again, to expand them. Folded, they collapsed on themselves and pressed along his back, and the metal of them was pushing chills along his spine. But they didn't move on command at first. It was like the nerve endings had been disconnected by—

By his own disconnection.

When he put his hand on his throat, felt the vibrations of his hum and silenced himself, the quiet was oppressive. He couldn't open his wings.

Why had he closed them at all? He remembered flying, the power and force they gave him, especially in that fight; he remembered landing, and the fight continuing.

Right. He'd closed them while they fought on the ground. Nerve-endings of the sort that he had in the other parts of his body would be impractical in a prosthetic, especially if he were to take a role as warrior, as the pain might incapacitate him despite it being a non-life-threatening injury. But he still had pain sensors of a sort, the same way he had usual sensors. They prickled at the back of his mind, on the edge of pain, now.

He'd wanted to hide his wings during the fight to prevent damage. It hadn't mattered, though. Invader had defeated him, knocked him to the floor, taken his lightsaber, and—

And stunned him.

He buried his face in his hands, another choked cry coming out of him. His thoughts since he'd joined the hivemind were fuzzy; they processed memory in a different way, and his human brain could hardly handle it. Images and sounds and smells fragmented in his mind's eye: marching through the desert, the worm-children in hand, fixing droids, feasting on the queen's flesh—revulsion, human and unfamiliar with time, rammed into his heart like a drawer slamming closed. Training with the lightsaber from even more distant and fragmented memories from another Jedi…

Duelling Invader. With a flamethrower. Fighting Aphra—with a flamethrower. She'd brought the flamethrower. Yes, she had—that was why she'd made Luke carry all the supplies—

Oh, stars.

He'd attacked Aphra.

Something else wanted to erupt from inside him, and it wasn't a scream. His torso heaved, shoulders clenching; his insides shoved each other, fighting for dominance, as if the sudden guilt and horror descending on him had activated each of their individual fight or flight responses. He snapped his teeth and lips shut, but vomit leaked into his mouth and burned, and then he had to get rid of it, so he crawled away from where it was lying, closer to the edge of the horribly cold chamber he'd found himself in.

He'd attacked Aphra. He'd tried to kill her.

Where was she? Where was he? What had happened?

What had Invader done to all of them?

Another surge, and he scrunched his eyes shut as he crawled ever more frantically, trying—

His hand hit something squishy. He opened his eyes and lifted it.

A yellow-green smear marred the floor. Squished against his hand, limp and dead, hung his worm.

Luke vomited.

It stormed out of him, burning from the inside out. He just about got his hands out of the way before they were splattered in it, leaving a thick, lumpy mess over the floor.

What had he even eaten over the last few days? He couldn't remember. Just rations—and arms—and sand?—and—

Thumping.

He froze. After a moment, his brain clicked into gear and identified that thumping as heavy footsteps. Helpfully, it also identified the click and hiss that soon followed as hydraulics, and it was easy to figure out what they were controlling as the tooth-like sides of the pod he was in disconnected from each other to sink back into the floor and ceiling. He scrambled backwards: the jaws of the maw that imprisoned him opened to reveal a tall figure, with loud, raspy breathing, and a bug-like mask that wouldn't look out of place in a Geonosian art gallery.

"Invader," he said.

"Skywalker."

Luke, breath hitched, kept staring at him. Peering at the way he moved—stepped forwards, almost nervously; folded his arms; stiffened his shoulders—to confirm… what? He wasn't a droid. He didn't move like a droid, and he could feel him in the Force, and also the Geonosians had memories of dealing with him before, so Luke knew he wasn't a droid, even if those memories were fading rapidly from his mind.

Invader. The man who had led the campaign to sterilise Geonosis in the first place. Why was he here? Why had he fought—and captured, instead of killed—Luke? Who—

Wait.

Luke's eyes widened. "You're Aphra's boss?"

Invader tilted his head to the side. "I was. Did she not inform you of my identity?"

"She said you were big on secrecy." His heart was hammering like a piston.

"I am."

"Then why—" He swallowed. "Why are you here, Invader?"

That was useless. He knew why he was here: because he and Aphra had failed. That was what Aphra had said. She'd contacted him when everything went to hell, and he was coming to— to fix it. He wanted the Death Star plans (and Luke, now he knew what they were in a biased, individualistic sort of way, balked and wanted to vomit again), but Queen Karina didn't want to give them to him. Not after he'd had the Geonosians build the Death Star then wiped them out to keep the secret.

Not when she knew he was going to use their creation to do it to other worlds.

The real question was—

"Why do you want me?"

Luke was an orphan. A nobody.

He hardly counted as a Jedi.

"Vader," Invader said.

"What?"

"My name is not Invader." He snorted, which was a remarkably expressive thing for a man in a suit designed to alienate people to do. "I am Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith."

That name, too, meant something. Once it clicked, the blood drained out of Luke's face. He remembered Ben's journals—how could he not remember them? He'd reread them dozens of times. Ben had written about Darth Vader. The Jedi killer.

"You killed my father," Luke accused. Common sense would have had him silence himself. Common sense had no place in a situation this absurd.

Vader stiffened—almost imperceptibly, but Luke saw it. He was watching Vader like he was a rampaging womp rat. "And why do you say that?"

"Ben wrote it in all of his journals. Darth Vader killed Anakin Skywalker." Shock gave way to rage. The temperature had risen somewhat after Vader had opened the chamber he'd shoved Luke in, but it was still cold. Every inch of Luke was shaking, and it was because of all of this: the cold, the anger, the—

Vader held out something in his right hand. Distracted, Luke looked at it.

It was a blanket.

Grey wool—standard military issue, Luke would guess. It didn't even look that warm. But Vader held it out, like he expected Luke to stand up and take it on his own strength, like he expected trust after he'd kidnapped him and killed his father. He held it out like he'd rehearsed this moment in his head and it was a much softer, more comforting one than reality had handed him, because reality sucked like that sometimes.

"We have much to discuss," he said.

"You didn't kill my father," Luke repeated.

Vader had led him out of the strange pod he'd been shoved into—a hyperbaric chamber, he called it—and through much of the ship. The cockpit had been surprisingly nice: everything was round and smooth, in a way that felt offensive to the world it had landed on, like either the desert would ruin it, or it would ruin the desert. The silver nose of the ship was blinding under the sunlight.

Down a ladder, though, and the main hold had also been comfortable: a larger room, one side dedicated to tech stations and droid charging, another with a table and chairs bolted to the floor around it. Luke had gingerly settled into one of them—after noting that Vader would sit in the largest, reinforced chair at the head of the table, and selecting the one farthest away.

Then he shivered and wrapped the blanket around himself, blinking through a storm of sudden emotions. The brush of Vader's hand against his had brought his nausea rolling back: blood, death, and brutality splashed behind his eyes for half a moment, too quickly for Luke to process or understand what he was looking at. Vader seemed to have interpreted his gasp for fear—which wasn't too far off the mark—and left it be.

Sitting in the chair, though, with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he felt entirely different. Determination suffused him, along with an enormous amount of affection, and a painful measure of hope. An image flashed before his eyes of Vader bending down to retrieve it from a nondescript supplies box, then knotting it in his hands and pressing it to his mask as if he could smell it through his respirator.

Luke didn't know what any of this meant. His memories from the other Jedi-Geonosian were fuzzy and useless. He remembered only what his muscles didn't want to forget.

Vader didn't confirm what Luke had said—he had already told it to Luke straight—but the lack of contradiction or cruel words meant Luke took it as an affirmative.

"But you kill Jedi," Luke said, pushing.

"I did not personally kill all the Jedi."

Luke gritted his teeth. Someone about that statement felt wrong, even as it wasn't necessarily false. "Are you going to kill me, then?" He clutched his pack to his front—Vader had given that back to him too, which Luke supposed must be a good sign, if nothing else?—and knotted his hands in the familiar fabric. It too felt slightly like Vader from being in his hands, but it also felt too much like Luke for that to be overwhelming.

"Luke." Vader switched to his first name, and Luke resisted the urge to grimace. Was he supposed to call Vader Darth? "If I intended to kill you—or allow harm to befall you at all—you would already be dead."

"That's a cheerful thought."

"I will not hurt you," Vader repeated. "Stretch out with your feelings. You can feel my intentions in the Force."

"All I can feel in the Force right now is this blanket," Luke muttered.

Vader tilted his head. "Elaborate on that."

Luke shrugged, burrowing into it deeper. "It feels warm. Affectionate. The same way—" He cut himself off there.

"Continue."

Vader's gaze bore into his. Luke lowered his voice further. "Like when I was working for the queen, and I could feel how the different bodies in the desert died."

That seemed to catch Vader off guard. "Why would you desire to sense that?"

"Poison is poison," Luke said. "The ones that died by poison would have—" He shut his mouth again. His emotions seesawed in his chest, from the darkness he'd felt from the hand's touch to the warmth he felt from the blanket. Vader hadn't killed his father, but he had killed almost all of the Geonosians.

"Do not protect them, Luke. They no longer control you."

"Control?"

"That is what the worm in your head did to you. I presume you saw its corpse on the floor. I freed you from it."

The cold came back to Luke in earnest. "How? Why?"

"Aphra informed me that you were aware they are sensitive to extreme temperatures. You killed them when they were trying to eat you alive by burning yourself with your father's lightsaber. Brave, but foolish to risk your own skin like that."

Luke scowled. "I didn't have many options. Aphra wasn't being useful."

"She rarely is," Vader agreed, and Luke opened his mouth again to defend his friend—his friend whom he had tried to kill. Again, the realisation punched the air out of his lungs. He closed his mouth wordlessly. "Nonetheless, I utilised the same approach. My hyperbaric chamber is temperature controlled. I lowered the temperature beyond the level which worms can survive. Unfortunately, it is also difficult for humans to endure." He nodded at Luke and the blanket.

Luke laced his fingers into the blanket to grip it harder. The rush of affection from it shot through him, making him dizzy. "You didn't want to use the lightsaber, then?"

Vader snorted again. "I had no desire to run a lightsaber through your head, no. That would negate the purpose of rescuing you."

Despite himself, Luke laughed. He was starting to warm up now. His skin had stopped pimpling into goosebumps, at least.

"Why did you?"

"Why did I rescue you?" Vader probed.

"Yes. No. Why did you come? Why did you want us to come to Geonosis? The Death Star plans? Why did you wipe out the Geonosians in the first place?"

Vader paused. "You ask a great many questions."

He didn't want to tell him.

Luke's anger, which had been simmering down, boiled over. "I've been eaten alive, stunned, run ragged, shot at, betrayed, almost blown up, mind-controlled, and more because of all this! I want to know why!"

"The Geonosians are dangerous," Vader said.

Luke stared at him, aghast. "Why?"

"The Death Star," Vader continued, tilted his mask so he didn't meet his gaze, "is a technological horror. It is a space station the size of a moon, built with a laser beam powerful enough to destroy entire worlds. It has been the Emperor's pet project for many years, and he already has a list of planets he intends to use it against, as a means of keeping the rest of the galaxy in line. Alderaan, Chandrila, Mimban—all planets considered potential Rebel threats, who would serve as suitable warnings."

Alderaan.

Leia. The Organas.

The blood drained from his face, until his skin was the same colour as the blanket around his shoulders. "Why would he want to do that?" But then he sucked in a breath. "He's the Emperor. It's what the Empire does."

"I work for the Empire," Vader informed him.

Luke scowled. "Why?"

Vader studied him with scorn—good, Luke had just as much scorn for him—then moved on as if Luke hadn't spoken at all. "The Geonosians are master architects. During the Clone Wars, the Separatists intended to develop such a weapon and gave it to their pet builders to do so. When the Emperor wanted it built, he also used them. But once their role was finished in its construction—the rest could be completed by Imperial hands—they had to be destroyed."

His nausea was back again, in full force. "No, they didn't."

"I told you: you are no longer bound to them. You need not defend them like a mindless drone."

Geonosian drones were anything but mindless. Luke made to interject, then closed his mouth.

"I carried it out," Vader continued. "They have caused no end of suffering to the galaxy through their contributions to the Clone Wars. They would only inflame the war with the Rebels if they were allowed to spread their knowledge of the Death Star to any interested party. No. Their planet, their knowledge, and their existence had to be erased."

Luke let the blanket fall from around his shoulders. The warmth that had enveloped him vanished. "That's…"

"Necessary." Vader looked at him closely; Luke flinched. "Naturally, the creation of the Death Star is one of their many crimes. It is insignificant next to the power of the Force, and an abomination in the face of it. I intend for it to be destroyed. For that, I require a copy of the plans so that I can identify potential weaknesses. I had believed that a physical copy may still exist within the catacombs of the Geonosian hive, which would preclude me from having to risk my master noticing if I took undue interest in the copy locked in the Scarif vaults. Aphra has informed me there is not. But this excursion has not been in vain."

Luke's head was still spinning. He looked at the wall, then back at Vader.

Vader's tone softened again. "I have been looking for you for a long time, young one."

"You don't want the Death Star to destroy entire planets," Luke said, "but you were willing to destroy the entirety of Geonosian civilisation?"

"Have you noticed anything worthy of saving during your entire time here? You said yourself: you have endured much on this planet. I think you agree with me when I say that this planet is rotten to the core."

The words struck a chord in Luke. It was familiar. Aphra had said something like that—referred to the planet's rotten core, at least—but so had someone else. Someone he had never met.

He blinked slowly, then faster. His mouth dropped open.

The Geonosians had known another Skywalker. An Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight. Beloved by the Jedi, hated by those they called bugs. Torturer. Murderer. A man who trespassed, destroyed their creations, and then would rather start a war than pay the price for his crimes. That was why they'd called him Wormie and not Skywalker. They hated Skywalker.

When he had been one of them, Luke had hated him too.

He would have to unpack that, later. The man he'd done all of this for, the man who'd made him want to be a Jedi and help people like the Geonosians in the first place… He had been a monster, as well as a hero.

The wings folded against Luke's back twitched.

Poggle. When Luke had fought Vader and the flamethrower had failed, Vader had mentioned what had been done to Archduke Poggle the Lesser, a leader remembered fondly by the hivemind for his tenacity, if not the consequences of his choices. He had been tortured. He had been murdered. Vader said he had done it.

This planet is rotten to the core. Another Jedi, a long time ago, spitting the words as he wandered the catacombs, echoing through them all for the planet and the hive to hear.

I did not kill your father.

Monster. Hero. Father. And now…

Now, it seemed that particular piece of baggage was stuffed even fuller than he'd thought.

Luke reached for the blanket, fallen along the back of the chair. It truly did stink of affection.

"You never told me what this is," Luke said, lifting it. "Why I can feel emotions from it so strongly."

Vader didn't seem fazed by the change of topic. "Based on this and what Aphra has told me, I believe you may have a rare Force talent named psychometry. It is where you can touch physical objects and feel echoes of events—particularly strong events—in the Force. If you do not develop your shields, it is easy to become overwhelmed, but I have known many who used this skill to great effect. In fact." He reached to his belt and drew something out. A lightsaber—Luke's father's lightsaber. "What can you detect from this?"

Luke took it in his hands. "Peace," he said. He always got peace from this lightsaber. It steadied him in every sandstorm.

"Who does it feel like?"

"Ben."

Luke couldn't see behind the mask, but Vader definitely frowned. "Ben?"

"Psychometry," Luke repeated the word with a tiny, if terrified, thrill. "That's why the Geonosians wanted me. They wanted me to figure out which bodies were poisoned, and which bodies had died by other means."

Vader dragged himself back to the conversation. "Why would they want that?"

"Because flesh filled with poison could have poisoned the hive," Luke said. "But they still wanted to bury their dead. They needed to bury their dead, in order to survive."

Luke could understand that. He understood it so fiercely it hurt.

Before Vader could comment on that, Luke ran the blanket through his hands again. "I can feel affection in this," he said. "Is that yours?"

"Yes."

Luke could hear his pulse in his ears. "Why?"

Vader looked at him for a long moment. "Trust your feelings, Luke."

The blanket bundled up in his fist. Luke pressed it to his cheek, like he'd seen Vader do in the vision. "You didn't kill my father," he repeated.

"No."

"You are my father."

Luke could sense Vader's smile like a knife through the force. "I am."

Silence wrapped around them like the blanket in Luke's hands. That too was full of that twisted affection Luke didn't know what to do with.

Vader, apparently unnerved by Luke's lack of reaction, spoke again. "This person who told you I was dead. Ben."

"Ben Kenobi," Luke said thoughtlessly.

Vader stiffened. "Kenobi?" His voice lowered to a hiss as he said, "I had thought it was him. He was the one who took you to Tatooine?"

"How did you find me?" Luke asked. His heart ached and strained in his chest, until it physically hurt to breathe. A blockage was building in his throat. The conflict inside him was playing tug of war with his inner organs.

His father was alive.

His father was a monster.

His father had come for him, anyway.

"You submitted an application to the Imperial Academy. Your name and your test scores drew attention from those who run Project Harvester. It was fortunate I noticed before my master did. I sent troopers for you immediately and started making plans to ensure my political enemies did not accumulate too much power that they would be a threat to you. That was why I became interested in the Death Star again—Tarkin's pet project."

Luke closed his eyes. "Your master?"

"The Emperor."

He took in a ragged breath. His head spun. He almost wished he had his worm back, to centre his thoughts, to guide them in ways useful to him and to others.

But no.

He was never letting that happen to him again.

For better or for worse, he was alone in this.

"My stormtroopers are the best," Vader continued. "They came to the squalid farm to find you, but you weren't there. Your kidnappers refused to reveal your location when interrogated, so they were executed. It was only later that I realised this must have spooked you, so you ran." He paused. "Straight onto Aphra's ship. She was not even supposed to be in the system."

Luke stared at Vader. It seemed like he'd started that low, anguished keening noise he'd made earlier, in the hyperbaric chamber, but when he wrapped his hand around his throat his voice box was still. The noise was only in his ears, louder and louder, until his head was full of it.

He reached onto the table and grasped his father's lightsaber again.

"You killed my aunt and uncle?" he asked.

Vader continued, clueless and blind. "Would that I had. My troops did, after they refused to reveal your location. They report that a hermit also tried to defend them, but he was shot, and later they could only recover a robe he must have dropped. I presume that was Kenobi?"

Uncle Owen.

Aunt Beru.

Ben.

"You killed my family," Luke said.

Vader huffed in irritation. "I am your family. I came here to rescue you, after Aphra almost killed you—"

"Where is Aphra?" Luke asked suddenly.

He kicked himself, a snarl of self-disgust twisting his lips. This whole time, he'd hardly spared her a thought, too wrapped up in his own trauma and struggles. She was his best friend, and after trying to kill her, he didn't stop to so much as ask after her?

"Aphra is dead. She was unable to escape the catacombs before I detonated the charges and collapsed them."

Luke's chest heart was so tight and dense he thought it would implode into a black hole. "You collapsed the tunnels on the Geonosian hive?"

"They are all dead. And if not, those tunnels are impassable now; they soon will be. They will not bother you again, my son," Vader soothed, reaching a hand across the table to him. "And nor will Aphra."

Luke didn't really think through what he did next.

He surged to his feet. Vader looked irritated but not angry—something that changed immediately. Luke grabbed his—his father's—lightsaber, lit it, and brought it down on the proffered hand. It sawed through the table, leaving a great, glowing gash in it. Vader snatched his hand back just in time.

Luke stared at that hand. He stared at Vader.

"You killed my family," he repeated. "All of them."

"Luke—"

Luke seized his pack and ran.

"Luke!"

He didn't really have a plan beyond getting out. He didn't recognise this class of starship—this was way outside of the range of starship he'd grown up playing with—and didn't know where the landing ramp was. He could guess, though. Rather than run back the way they'd come, he went forwards, and— there. In the next room over, a corridor, with a large, raised landing ramp beside it. He hit open.

Luke slammed the shut button on the door to the main hold behind him. After a moment's thought, he locked it. None too soon: Vader caught up to him in a few slides and slammed his fist into the door, leaving a dent.

"Luke! You will open this door!"

"Kark off," Luke snarled. "Get away from me."

The ramp was still lowering… lowering… He backed away from the door, closer to the ramp. Why was it so slow? He needed to—

"Luke, back away from the door."

The zing of a lightsaber through metal made him jump and whirl around. A crimson lightsaber beamed through the door and carved downwards, slowly but inexorably. Luke's heart leapt into his mouth; he glanced back at the landing ramp.

"Come on, come on—"

It was too slow. It was hardly at a forty-five-degree angle yet, and Vader had already finished half of the circle he needed to get through. The Geonosian sun peeked through the opening it had already made and struck the silver floor at his feet, blinding him, mocking him. He stumbled back—then forwards again, as he grew dangerously close to the lightsaber.

This was it.

No. This couldn't be it. The angle widened to fifty degrees. The orange sky was beyond, and it touched something deep inside him—something both alien to him and intrinsic, something that had both been planted there and been there all along.

The sky yawned brighter. Fifty-five degrees. Luke leapt forwards.

He was a metre in the air when his wings snapped to life. They slotted out from their resting position as if they'd never malfunctioned and beat, beat, beat, higher and harder under he'd left the beautiful silver ship behind. The sun was hot on his face, his skin, after his stint in the hyperbaric chamber. Despite everything, a laugh crashed out of him at the unexpected delight of flight.

"Luke!"

A thud. The groaning of metal bending.

Luke shot upwards. For a moment, he touched down on the very top of the ship, kneeling with one hang to steady himself, steadying where he was and where to go. Geonosis sprawled before him, the spires piercing the sky. He could see the dozens of tunnels that burrowed into them, visualise the map of it in his mind, more on instinct than memory, by now.

When his skin touched the cool metal of the ship, he could also sense safety. A warm laugh. The image of a woman with brown hair and dark, sad eyes flashed to mind, lying immobile, too weak to move.

Is Anakin alright?

It felt like home.

Luke beat his wings. He took off, heading for the alien spires, and left his home behind.

We remember our last destruction. It is branded into us like the first tale every child learns. The sky went dark with Star Destroyers, as though those pitifully designed Republic ships finally lived up to their names. The world went dark with the ruin they rained upon us. All that survived was an egg—a queen's egg—and the drone that carried her to safety.

We call him Sacrifice.

Sacrifice was brave. Even when Imperial stormtroopers landed to scan the debris, he carried the egg deeper into the catacombs, away from their prying eyes. When they finally left, he returned her to the birthing chamber, where he carried every corpse he could find to feed her. Queen Karina hatched, and she ate through them with abandon, as we always do. But this was a parody of normality, not the natural cycle of life. And it was not enough.

They poisoned our world. They poisoned our bodies.

Queen Karina sickened. The food was not pure; that which had caused death to our people could now cause death to us. And though Sacrifice examined every corpse for damage to see what it was that killed them, we could not tell. Those that were poisoned were also hit by falling debris, fire, blaster bolts. Few were clear in their death.

That is how and why Wormie saved us, before he was taken. But Sacrifice saved us first. When Queen Karina needed clean flesh to feast upon, without which she would die, he lay down in the birthing chamber. His worm, in its first life, which should upon his death have claimed the body he offered it and entered its second, shared this sacrifice. They lay in front of the larval queen.

She ate him while he still lived.

To prevent causing us more pain, Sacrifice bore that burden alone. His worm abandoned him willingly, crawling out of the warmth of understanding and life and into the darkness beyond. It died there, and we know no more from Sacrifice. We do not know what agony he lay there in, as the queen consumed him, denied of personhood and connection, alone for the first time in his life. He was a corpse before his body ever died.

We remember Sacrifice. Sacrifice lives with us still.

Now, ruin rains down upon us once more. We watch our world tremble; against this, we cannot hide in our catacombs. Our catacombs have been turned against us, executed by a being we created.

But all is not lost.

We are a hivemind. We are strong because we are many, and because the many have different strengths. And sometimes, the many that make us up will change our mind.

Even with Wormie gone, he gave us one last gift: we know when we were wrong.

We know who remains to save us.