"reaching on high to touch the ceiling"

"So... what happened?"

Indilic, in his usual fashion, stared. Xiān flitted about with all the nervous energy of a clucking mother hen, darting from him to the Psion to the great Cabal laid out between them. Vindica'aur, rendered utterly immobile, had been pitifully drawn across the steel slab of an Uluranth operating table, stripped straight down to the loincloth. Her muscles had begun to atrophy. Her hide, once dark grey, was sickly faded. Her eyes rested listless in their sockets. Someone had drawn over her translucent inner eyelids to spare them from drying out. From one of her tusks fluttered a yellow rag inscribed with Uluranth blood. A token to encourage quick recovery.

Your Ghost extracted as many of us as she could, Vindica'aur dully explained. Indilic was bridging her voice to the forefront of Ikharos' mind - a shallow, surface-level insertion, like painting letters across a canvas with the light of a projector for a brush. Any deeper into his thoughts and it would've put them all at risk of possession. Of the hundred and so we once boasted, little under two score survived.

"And only because they went for the wounded first," Xiān said grimly. "Y'know how Scorn are around pain. Like blood in shark-infested waters."

"Traveler above..." His hands curled into fists.

"Their deaths masked our escape," Indilic tonelessly reported. His Y-iris was as thin as a blade. "Their sacrifice spared our battle-able warriors."

"Sacrifice has to be willing," Ikharos exhaled. "What happened was butchery."

Scorn moved on after that, Vindica'aur continued. Her words came grating out, painted in rancid yellow loathing. It had taken him a minute to realise it wasn't aimed at him. They had as little choice in the matter as we did.

"What do you mean?"

"The, uh... Touch of Malice." Xiān inched closer. "It exploded, remember?"

Ikharos frowned. "Yeah. Took out the Locus. It is down, isn't it?"

"Ike, nothing's getting up after a discharge like that. I could feel it and- hell, I was already in the air by that point. It's just..."

"The Darkness housed within the containment chamber escaped," Indilic told him. "It took root."

Ikharos leaned forward. "Are you saying the charge didn't dissipate?"

Xiān hesitated. "It... definitely scattered. Settled after that. Just not thinly enough to matter."

"Xiān-"

"It's not... Him. You know it's not. What you did to Him nothing can get back from. But power like that doesn't disappear. The good news is that it's not water soluble - and the winds just carried it back to shore."

"What's the bad news?"

"Shit's there to stay." A projection flared from Xiān's fiery eye. Ikharos recognized the energy readings.

"Sterile neutrinos," he said softly. "Taken Blight."

"It's not conscious, not active, so no Taken are gonna come through. No Tablets of Ruin around either to take up those reins. Destructive, not possessive."

"But..."

"We erected long-range scanners to detect the Scornship's movements," Indilic cut in. "This was not long after we found refuge here. The Ariks-Fel did not turn back for Vroengard. Our sensors lost it to the south."

"But we, ah... picked up on other signatures," Xiān said. "Small ones."

"Warsats?"

"Little bigger. Just a blip here and there - cursory checks, y'know? We couldn't tell how widespread the infection is, still can't, but those blips? Still, they kept coming. 'Ventually we picked up on a pattern. Transmission too. Couldn't crack it but I sure as hell could identify it."

"ExSec."

"Exactly. Warmind tech." Xiān bobbed. "We broke out that Warsat we picked up in Doru Araeba to decipher 'em, but they must've updated their security 'cause we were locked out from the get go."

Ikharos nodded slowly. "And this listening station?"

"We mapped the Warsat's original position, then scanned for other 'sats if any were left. Found... a couple."

"What quantifies a couple?"

Xiān hesitated. "Less than Earth."

Ikharos narrowed his eyes. "Mars?"

"Less than that too. More like... Venus."

"That's still a lot."

"The Warsats are a secondary concern," Indilic cut in. "We probed with disguised transmissions until we found the command satellite. Before they could cut us off we began bouncing further transmissions off of its communications relay - a soft hijack to locate additional installations."

"How many?"

"Sixteen so far." Xiān's projection changed to depict the entirety of Kepler-186f with all its strange continents and seas. A series of dots flared to life around it in low orbit. "But given the state of what was left of the Exodus Prime outside the anomaly, we're thinking... mid twenties? That's if they're all the same size - y'know, big. Frigate-big."

"You think they salvaged parts from the colony ship?"

"Oh we know so. That Warsat we grabbed wasn't hammered out of any old Earth factory. It's got the reconfigured hull of a deep-space hauler. So knowing this, we tracked these new blips as well as we could. This station-" A satellite set over the ocean between Vroengard and Alagaësia was highlighted in red. "-is where they're coming from and returning to. We don't know why. Probably safe to say they're curious."

"What worries me now is how curious," Ikharos muttered. "They detected Agnisia's Light in Doru Araeba, just like the Scorn. Regardless of polarity, a paracausal signature drenched in Taken energy must have pinged those same sensors."

"You think they want to stamp it out?"

"... No. The opposite." Ikharos inhaled deeply. "I believe they intend to study it. We know something happened to the Warmind and the ExSec with it. According to their logs, it was the work of Nezarec."

Indilic stiffened. "This is unlikely."

"I know."

"The carcass of Nezarec was butchered and scattered across Sol."

"Maybe someone ferried parts of Him out. Nezarec had His followers. They might be responsible for all this."

"That... just doesn't sound right." Xiān deactivated the projection and looked between them. "We know Nezarec was a Disciple of the Witness, but the ExSec and Scipio are fighting against the Scorn. Zendolyn-Far's involvement shows the Scorn serve the Disciples. Shelbth is another and, if Bray can be believed, Xhafi's still out there. The Scorn carry Shelbth. They followed Zendolyn's orders. Maybe the Warmind's rebelling?"

Ikharos frowned. "Angela."

"What?"

"The woman I returned with. She's a mage - don't know the extent of her abilities, but she's paracausal."

Indilic bristled. "If she's a danger-"

"She's human," Ikharos retorted. "Cat's weird, I'll admit, but I don't think they're threats. Certainly no dragons themselves. Checked already. I thought they might've been with Zendolyn but they had their chance to set her free and didn't take it."

"You trust them?"

"Like hell I do. She admitted to me that she spent time with an Ahamkara in the distant past - some drake called Balaur. That he cared for her during her youth. He might've granted her a wish."

"In what manner?"

"She's over six thousand years old for starters."

Xiān and Indilic stared. Vindica'aur rumbled unhappily in his mind. How long have humans been here?

"The Exodus-programme wasn't active until just before the Collapse," Xiān said accusingly. "What the hell is going on?"

Ikharos grimaced. "The anomaly is temporal as well as spatial. According to Angela, humanity's been here for eight thousand years."

"Oh fuuuck."

"I encountered other neohuman phenotypes in the wilds as well. Non-elven, I might add. Formora called them urgals; they were... larger. Broad. Horned."

Xiān's eye blinked. "Horned?"

"Horns are not natural in humans," Indilic said suspiciously.

Ikharos inclined his head. "Nor any of our ancestors. I thought elven anatomy was suspect enough. The urgals all but confirmed things: this is not a mistake. This is not happenstance. Someone's taken it upon themselves to deprive humanity here of all its technology, all its knowledge and weapons and experiment on them as they see fit. Beyond Zendolyn-Far the Disciples don't have much in the way of forces - so far as we know anyways. Shelbth might've played a part, but if so I'd have expected each and every human I met to have been a carrier. If that was the case I should've been infected weeks ago."

"So... the ExSec. Scipio."

"Angela called them the Exsecrati and Scipio as the Archentrope. Individual Exos are Partisans."

Xiān's fins shifted. "Archentrope. Didn't the old hag-"

"Yeah."

Indilic hummed questioningly. "Which hag?"

"The Witch Queen," Xiān explained. "It's another term for Savathûn. We, uh, heard it from Her daughter. In a dream."

Ikharos closed his eyes. "Part of the curse."

Somewhere within, the witch cackled.

"What does it mean?" Indilic pressed.

"I'm not sure. Arch- means highest, but -entrope denotes time. Either She's framing herself as a kind of LUCA, a last universal common ancestor, or... as the final shape."

"'Cept that doesn't fit Her MO," Xiān murmured. "Not anymore. Not since She meddled in the Collapse."

"But this isn't Her. This is a Warmind twisted by the Dark."

"Do you think he wants to try and fight his way to the top? AI with an ambitious streak - he wants to be rid of the Disciples to take their place. Hell, maybe even the Witness' place! That's reason enough to pick a fight with 'em, right?"

"But why the experiments?" Ikharos opened his eyes. "Why the elves? The urgals? What part does that dragon play in all this? It gave this world magic; what other wishes did it grant?"

"... Well. Had a look at Exsecrati. To my utter shock it's Latin."

"An ancient human language," Ikharos quickly explained, catching Indilic's lost look. "As classical as it is dead."

Xiān huffed. "Can't stand it. Every damn human names their hoo-haa with it. Anyways, exsecrati means... accursed? Hated? Loathed? Kinda. Weird to call themselves that. 'Spose it jives with the old. Won't have to scrub out any old letters, just add some new ones."

"Accursed." Indilic hissed through his spiracles. "Apt."

Are they punishing themselves? For turning on their own wards? Vindica'aur questioned. Perhaps they mean to acknowledge their dishonour. Embrace it.

"Human military doctrine isn't quite the same as Cabal mantra," Ikharos said softly. "Honour seldom plays a part."

But you prize protecting your people above all else, just as we do. To offer up those they swore to serve for their own gain... there is no appropriate punishment. Not even agony stretched to the ends of eternity is penance enough.

"When I spoke with them, they seemed... sure of themselves. In their purpose. No regret as far as I could tell. No reservations. If they chose the name, it might come from a place of irony."

"Or perhaps they didn't," Indilic reasoned. "The dishonour may have come by way of another."

"Saddling them with a derogative name to keep them in their place. Maybe. But that's human thinking - and there was nothing human left in them." Ikharos shook his head. "We won't know unless we hit their nest. Still - this station. You called it a listening post in your Crow message."

Indilic shifted uneasily. "Just so. We believe it may be tapping our radio transmissions. The BattleNet is on high alert as a result."

"If they can hack the 'Net-"

"Hence our concern. It likely knows our location. I fear they may ambush us."

Ikharos straightened. "It might've contacted me in the field."

"When you fought Zendolyn," Xiān said. "Yeah, checked your sensorium. Wasn't a hack, just a priority message. Broadcast signature's the same as the Warsat transmissions."

He grimaced. "But... I don't know why they'd go to such lengths."

"Isn't it obvious?"

"...They want me alive."

"So they sent killers."

"Disposable infantry. Their jammers were aimed for Zendolyn-Far, not me. They allowed me to butcher their Exos." Ikharos' frown deepened. "The Scorn's arrival must've tipped the balance. We're alive, unmolested... because we're the bulwark between the ExSec and the Disciples."

"Where does that leave us?"

"Outnumbered and likely outgunned." Ikharos paused. "But we have one Disciple in our custody. We have the means to strip the power from the others too - Xhafi at least. Scorn are dangerous but they're not a winning card. So far, since we've arrived, all the Warmind has lost has been a few dozen Exos."

"Not easy losses. Exos are valuable tech and the soldiers inside are... well, they're well-trained."

"SOLSECCENT-trained, aye. But in matters of Light and Dark, Traveler and Pyramids, gods and dragons? Meaningless." Ikharos leaned back against the wall. "There's something to be won here. More than humanity; we're a survivor species but our power and influence is the result of circumstance, not ability. Any sapient race would have worked. Why the Exodus Prime...?"

"So... that places us at a disadvantage."

"Does it?"

Xiān groaned. "Ike, we're down to the fucking dregs of this company. Like you said, the Warmind helped you take down a Disciple-"

"Captured. Not killed. Perhaps they were hoping for the latter."

"What?"

Ikharos surged to his feet. "Bray wants me to talk with Zendolyn. She hasn't been forthcoming, but if I give her a reason..."

"Revenge."

"Precisely. For as much as she loathes me, I can't imagine the ExSec rank any higher in her eyes. She'll be just as eager to set us against each other as the Warmind was." He paused by the table. "Then we'll draw out her venom and synthesize an antidote, willing or not."

Vindica'aur's chest deflated. Her breath whistled past clenched fangs. Thank you, commander.

Ikharos considered her, then patted her wrist. "We need every remaining body on active duty. Scorn are pushing hard on local holdings, but that feels... instinctual. No higher purpose than the act itself. As urgent as the infestation is, this station takes priority. We can't make any moves until their eyes are plucked."

"Getting up there's gonna be a nightmare," Xiān complained.

Indilic regarded him neutrally. "We do not have the forces to storm a space station."

"Don't need to storm, just... break it." Ikharos exhaled. He tried pressing his fingers into his palm but the sensation was... distractingly strong. A headache pounded at his temples - and he wasn't sure if it was Shelbth's doing or sheer overstimulation. "Is the Trespass orbit-ready?"

"Eh... yeah?" Xiān motioned a shrug. "She's sealed up and ready to fly, but she's not warping anywhere. Not in a state to fight either; she's one bad encounter with a Skiff away from snapping apart. Why?"

"Her cloak might get us up there."

"How many is us?"

Ikharos hesitated. "I don't want to endanger more lives."

"So just me and you."

"I was thinking-"

"Me and you, right?" Xiān hovered closely, one fin dipping low over her eye. Her stern expression was heart-wrenchingly precious.

Ikharos cupped her in one hand, taking her to his chest. She melted into his touch. "It could be dangerous."

"I'm not leaving you again."

"We won't make the same mistake. I'll leave you with something to rez me from-"

"That's not happening. Ike, I'm staying with you. Come hell or highwater or whatever the fuck they say, I'm staying."

"... Very well. On your head be the consequences." He shrugged, rolled his shoulders - aching as his skin rubbed raw against the biosuit's slick material - and nodded to Indilic. The Flayer politely inclined his head. "Right, let's go get that venom."


The rank-and-file had shoved Zendolyn in something like a cross between a pen and a pit. A single warbeast sat in front of her, hackles raised and a low growl humming from its throat. It fell quiet when it noticed him and hopped to its feet, thrusting its snout against his hand. Ikharos marvelled at the feel of its scales - the indents and grooves and imperfections he never would have noticed before. Idly he brushed down its ridged back and the beast arched into his touch.

A huff caught his attention. Zendolyn-Far raised herself up; she'd curled in on herself like a spool of wire, tail wrapping round and round. The glitter of legion steel and clatter of chain links betrayed the presence of manacles. They were ill-fitting, tearing at the skin of her wrists, and the scales on her arms and shoulders were busted up, bruised, almost torn away. The manacles connected to the spot just beneath the bladed tip of her tail too, stripping her of all physical threat. His soldiers clearly hadn't been gentle about it.

"What's it this time, Iiraca?" she hissed, eyes flashing with loathing. "The stick again? Or another carrot?"

Ikharos sat down crosslegged. The warbeast settled by his side. The air was cool but the beast was a furnace set against him. He rested his hand on its flank and took comfort in the slow, deep movements of its chest as it breathed.

"Sir?" The Legionary on watch loitered nervously. The Valkyrie-jammer looked like a child's toy in his hands.

Ikharos waved him off. "Leave us." Once the Legionary had trundled off he looped his arm around the warbeast and all but dragged it onto his lap. It lolled its head across his leg, one paw kicking the air when his scratching fingers found its belly.

Zendolyn-Far snorted. "Is there a point to this? Some abstract metaphor you want to impart on me?"

"Would you like that?" Ikharos had eyes only for the beast. "How's this: kindness is easy. Why are you so fucking evil?"

"Evil is a matter of perspective."

"Cruel then."

"Cruelty is the universe's natural state of being."

"No. That's cold. Cruelty's going that extra mile."

She clicked the teeth of her secondary jaws. "The universe has been cruel to us."

"That's people, not the universe."

"Does it matter?"

Ikharos at last looked up at her. "Our actions shape the future. Ours. Not theirs-" he nodded to the waiting, watching throngs of Cabal. "Not those humans outside, not the dragons who use them - us. Because we have power. We decide whether to be kind or cruel and that makes all the difference."

Zendolyn closed her mouth. "I offered you kindness," she whispered, "and you answered with violence."

"You sent the Scorn against us."

"As I was bade to."

Ikharos cocked his head. "You don't control them?"

Zendolyn-Far said nothing.

"Shelbth. Or-"

"Do you think there's anything in their soft-rot heads Shelbth cares to subsume?"

"... Xhafi," Ikharos said at last, satisfied.

Zendolyn flicked her beak in his direction. It probably meant something rude. "I tried to shape your future-"

"You said it would've resulted in my death."

"And is that so terrible? Is that so wrong?" she growled. "You told me the Scorn belong in the earth. So do you, Lightbearer. The Wayfarer Moon invaded your body and planted a false-soul."

"Was it the Scorn?"

"Was what the Scorn?"

"Was it the Scorn that told you what I am?"

Zendolyn stilled.

"Now we're getting somewhere," Ikharos murmured. He craned his neck around and pointed. "Who's that?"

"A human."

Angela, sat with a hulking Colossus by a meagre cooking fire, saw them and waved animatedly. Solembum briefly glanced at Ikharos and proceeded to ignore him.

Ikharos' arm fell back to the whining warbeast's belly. "You don't know her?"

"Should I?" Zendolyn sneered. There wasn't even a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. "One human's clay face is hardly distinguishable from the next."

He pursed his lips, dissatisfied that his lead had hit a dead end so soon. "What was it?"

"Your cryptic questions do not amuse, Iiraca-"

"What was it that drew you to the Dark?" Ikharos turned back to her. "When we discussed loyalty, you said it widowed you. Tore-"

"-my children from my arms," Zendolyn finished. Her lips pulled back over glass teeth. "You want my story? You want to study me?"

"I want to understand."

"You understand plenty already, Iiraca. You just don't like how the truth tastes." She shifted, favouring one leg, and smiled. From a purely human perspective it was horrifying - like a shark-toothed, hawk-beaked snake baring its fangs in mocking promise. "You're as much a prisoner as I."

"Am I? Do tell."

"The Wayfarer Moon has you wrapped in restraints - morals, ethics, hope. There's no hope, Iiraca. None. That is the kindness I offered you - freedom from this sick game." She shifted her prosthetic shoulder testingly. "You chose otherwise."

Ikharos hummed. The air turned acrid and the warbeast all but leapt off of him with a frightened squeal. A violet glow fell over his sight. "Would you say the same if it was the other way around?"

Her smile died but her gaze never faltered. "Yes. Do it. Kill me."

"No."

"So now I shall call you cruel."

Ikharos paused. "You're scared."

Zendolyn bristled. A heavy hiss seethed past clenched fangs. "I'm not the one running, Iiraca-"

"You're scared. Not of Shelbth; Xhafi?"

"You know nothing-"

"When you asked me to free you from this place, you framed it as a request. But Xhafi... you said he'd demand it."

"He will, Iiraca. You'll rue the day you crossed him."

"Will you?"

Zendolyn glared at him.

Ikharos stood. "I think so. There's a way out of this, y'know. Renounce the Black Fleet and help us."

"No."

"I can protect you."

"You can't."

"I can kill him."

"You can't, Iiraca. He's already dead."

He frowned. "That's not what Elisabeth said."

Zendolyn snorted. "The rogue Exomind? She doesn't know him."

"If he's dead, why are you scared of him?"

"I am not scared."

"Bull. You're terrified."

She snapped her jaws. "Come closer and say it."

"He's dead - but he can come back? Or he's not fully gone? Which is it?"

"His voice will be the last you hear. Nothing matters beyond that."

"I've killed Rhulk," Ikharos said quietly, and the Nightmares within laughed. "I can destroy Xhafi."

"The Subjugator was strong," Zendolyn said cheerily, "but the Annihilator is greater. I will not turn on him, nor will you escape him. Kill your warriors now and spare them his gaze."

Ikharos scowled. "You won't help."

"No, Iiraca. Zærvoss par anur. I will not."

"What about the Warmind?"

Zendolyn faltered. "Ssseklas- What?"

Ikharos knelt close, quite aware he was but a single lunge away from a mauling. "We've a mutual enemy. I can't imagine you're all too pleased with them."

"The steel-wrought?" she guessed.

He nodded.

"They are scavengers. Beggars. Children slaved to far-flung dreams."

"They handed you to me on a silver platter."

"Opportunists," Zendolyn said flippantly. "I erred. They punished me."

"So help me hit them back."

"Oh? You intend to free me?"

"No." Ikharos pointed up. "Tell me about that."

Zendolyn sneered. "What of it?"

"What is it?"

"A bid for something greater - something the machines don't deserve."

"You going to expand on that?"

"Why should I?" She turned her head up. "Will you strike them next, Iiraca? It would do you well to be on the offensive for once."

"Tactically speaking, providing me with information would serve your cause as well as mine."

"Perhaps... but watching you squirm is a delight all on its own." Zendolyn laughed. Her tongue briefly darted out to taste the air. "For all their audacity, all their meddling, they are not the same enemy as you. You are the Light that yearns to be snuffed, you are the one who will free-"

Ikharos surged forth and snatched her tongue. Zendolyn gave a start before raking her talons across his arm, tearing flesh and drawing blood. Ikharos gave it no thought and tugged hard, dragging it beyond her inner jaws. She yelped and tripped on her own bust leg. "Easy."

She glared at him and tried to pull him closer-

"You want to bite down? Go ahead."

Zendolyn fell still.

"I thought so." Ikharos pulled savagely. He gripped the tip of her upper beak with his other hand to keep her in place. "Hold still."

Xiān appeared. Zendolyn growled at the sight of her.

"I told you to hold still!" He pulled again, taking care to keep his grip behind the venomous barbs, and nodded to his Ghost. "Go ahead."

"You're the boss..." Xiān shone a wave of Light over the pale stingers, followed the venom grooves along and briefly fired out a transmat beam. "Found the glands. Got some."

"Good." Ikharos waited until she'd disappeared before releasing. Zendolyn stumbled back, tongue slithering back behind gnashing teeth.

"Creature!" she bellowed. "Cur! Zaeburr jeras!"

"Thought I was Iiraca," he drily replied.

Zendolyn scuttled deeper into the shallow pit. "You are, now and always. You are a weak prey-thing-"

"Slytha."

She dropped.

"What a bitch," Xiān groaned. "How long do we have to keep her?"

Ikharos didn't respond. He simply turned on his heel and marched back to the Shadow Trespass in silence.


His old notes on Zendolyn's venom yielded some success. The Solvent worked into it - to both rob it of its killing bite and render it a peerless paralyzing tool - was riding on a faint Dark charge laced in each cell of the neurotoxin. Solvent at its base parsed through most materials on an atomic level; the only things that it couldn't slither past were hadium alloys or objects enhanced with Light.

The trick, then, was to extract the base venom for study. That part turned out to be rather simple; Ikharos took up a hadium dish sampled from High Coven and shaved it down with Void and Xiān's aid to create a Solvent sieve. Of course, the quickest way to be sure it worked was to test the filtered substance. Ikharos laid open his hand with his knife and used a dropper to lather some of the venom onto the wound.

He died minutes later in twitching agony.

After a quick rez and dressing down from Xiān, he had the remaining venom samples set up beneath a microscope.

"It's a nerve-killer," he observed, feeding it his own cells. "The venom degrades the victim's neural and nervous systems into slop. Zendolyn's version simply suspends it."

"Suspends your immune system while at it," Xiān dourly reported. "The normal one kills you too fast to develop any antibodies anyways."

"Prep a sim. We'll test a couple of genetic samples."

"Which ones?"

"Sapient species first."

Humans were up before anything else. Like Ikharos thought, if he couldn't survive it there was no chance a baseline human could. Awoken held out a little longer by a difference of several milliseconds, so not quite what he envisioned. Exominds were obviously off the table. Following the line of thinking that paracausally-imbued species might stand a higher chance, they tried Hive - from various morphs too. They hardly fared any better. Zendolyn's venom dropped a Darkblade simulation in under five seconds. Cabal were worse off. Eliksni, strangely, lasted twelve seconds - an improvement but still stone cold dead.

Scorn were harder to simulate so Ikharos turned to the real thing. He carefully defrosted a petri dish armed with living Scorn cells and waited for it to wake up - and when the Stalker solidified out of a growing cloud of Dark Ether, he burned away its limbs, tore off its jaw and injected a few drops of venom into its neck. It lasted longest at almost a whole minute. Still died. Ironically enough it stayed dead.

"Huh."

"Yeah, uh, wow." Xiān decompiled next to him. "Why isn't it getting back up?"

"I... don't know." They ran the carcass through an x-ray, a CT-scan, autopsy and found its nervous system in tatters. It turned out something in the venom caused the Dark Ether that provided the Scorn with unlife to just... not. "Curious."

"Curious? Seriously?"

"Hm?" Ikharos glanced at her.

"Ike, this is... this is huge."

"Is it?"

"You've just found the cure for Scorn."

"... No I haven't." Ikharos waved to a nearby screen. "It still reads as Dark Ether."

"Dead Dark Ether."

"Exactly."

"Ike-"

"Xiān, this venom kills everything. This isn't a cure, it's a stronger disease. Let's move onto the next sample."

They tried Psions, nothing. With Vex radiolaria the uninfected cells cordoned the infected ones off and waited for them to die. Which was quick. Worm larvae, slow but still dead. After that they used animals. Nothing on Earth lasted past ten seconds. The Indian grey mongoose gave it a fighting try at least. The Venusian panther lasted a little longer, likely owing to its origin as a Traveler-spawned species, and the batadactyls were only shortly behind it. Flora generally survived longer owing to their less-developed metabolisms, until-

"You can't be serious."

Ikharos stared the screen, stone-faced.

"That's... that's rough," Xiān said weakly. "I mean - egregore? Really? Of all things?"

Egregore. The Dark-spawned mycelium. It alone survived the venom. In hindsight it made a strange sort of sense - that the fungus that fed on dying minds would have the means to counteract a venom designed to destroy them. It protected its food source quite jealously. "This will have to do."

"Yeah, sure, but... it just struck me that we haven't tried Zendolyn herself."

Ikharos paused. "I would just as soon test a Lubraean's response."

"Why would- oh, right."

Zendolyn was as much a changed creature as Rhulk - reshaped in some manner apparent in the odd steel-lined pores set along her spine, the bands of plastered colours along her limbs and tail, the Luster in her flesh. To consider either of them purely biological entities wasn't quite correct; they, like Risen and Ascendant Hive, were paracausal and therefore somewhat elemental. Energy-based. The reason why paracausal suppression was so effectively disorientating on them was that it felt like their souls were being shriven in two - which wasn't so far from the truth. It was that same reason why they were immune from Vex simulation. By the laws of causal physics their very existence was physically illegal. It presented a significant, nigh impossible hurdle when considering genetic manipulation - because a Disciple's body was as exempt from the usual rigours of life as a Risen's was. Grafting that advantage onto a mortal Cabal would only end in failure.

"But... egregore?" he breathed. "It does make things... difficult."

"I'll say. I know you're lax around 'em, but I don't think Vindy's the sort to take 'shrooms."

He shot her an unimpressed look. "She hasn't any choice."

"How're we gonna do this? Egregore's pretty dangerous."

"We can inhale spores without drawing adverse effects."

"Apart from Nightmares."

"Ye-es. Apart from those."

"Injecting egregore matter into the bloodstream though? That's a different monster altogether."

"Not if we isolate the antibodies the egregore employs and adapt them to Uluranth blood cells."

"They won't take. You know how Uluranth work, their own immune systems are tough. Her body'll read them as foreign and destroy them. How about nanites? Medical nanites, mind, not... whatever you're thinking."

Ikharos' frown eased. "That could work."

"Emphasis on work. How do you want to do this?"

"You prepare the nanites, I'll isolate the antibodies."

It took time. Longer than Ikharos cared for. When midnight swung around he was scowling - growing ever more frustrated with the egregore's... not resistance, but rather eagerness to offer up a solution. Adapting the antibodies from one species to another was difficult enough, doubly so if from from a fungus to a warm-blooded organism. That they were cultivated on different worlds, to different ecosystems, only made it worse. Cabal had a similar biology to a human, technically speaking, but egregore was decidedly unlike any other fungal strain he'd ever encountered. For one, it was active. It hunted, it calculated, it grew in the most inhospitable environments known.

And the antibodies were treating the Uluranth cells he exposed them to not as intruders but as prey. Egregore was remarkably quick to propagate.

"How's it looking?" Xiān warily ventured.

Ikharos sighed. "I can't convince it not to kill its host."

"Maybe it sees the cells as dead matter-"

"When it enters a living body, it'll take root in the host's brain and suspend them in the moment of death. It's worse than the neurotoxin."

"Egregore's... impurely Dark, right?"

"Right."

"What if we treat it with Light? Y'know, soften the bite?"

"Would that work?"

"I dunno, would it?"

Ikharos paused. Before he could reply, however, Xiān perked up.

"Your guests are here," she said. "Indilic's just warned me. He wants to know if he should escort them out."

Not a second later Ikharos heard a loud "Hello?" coming from the ship's front.

"Here," he gruffly called out, then lowered his voice. "We'll see. Tell him 'not yet.'"

Footsteps grew louder. Angela peeked in through the lab's door, just shy of the glowing containment field, and smiled. "Hey!"

"We're taking appointments only," Xiān said quickly. "You'll have to call later."

Angela blinked. "Oh. Hello."

"Xiān, Angela, vice versa." Ikharos waved to each of them. "And - I don't know. Light is life, the soul, the spark of being. That's what the Egregore feeds on in a roundabout way. It might just get excited."

"What are you working on?" Angela asked. She loudly rapped her knuckles against the door frame.

Ikharos raised his head and looked at Xiān with a frown.

"Should I..." she whispered.

He sighed. "No. He has more important things to be doing."

"Am I intruding?" Angela queried.

His response was an immediate "Yes."

"Oh, well. Can I come in anyways?"

Ikharos looked at Xiān. She muttered something, flitted over and scanned Angela - and then Solembum when the cat padded into view. "They're clear," she reported before decompiling. Neither of them were that trusting.

He walked over and, with his hand hovering over the containment field's controls, warned, "One wrong move and you'll never leave this ship alive. Am I clear?"

Angela's smile faded. She nodded solemnly.

"Good. Because I have more questions to ask."

"I expected you to search me out sooner."

"Was busy. Still am." Ikharos punched in the passcode and the field fizzled off. Angela gingerly stepped through - and balked at the sight of the dead Scorn stuffed in the corner. "Ignore that."

Solembum crept over and sniffed the Scorn's leg. What did you do to it?

"I wouldn't touch it, cat." Ikharos strolled back over to the egregore samples. "Not unless you want to liquefy your brain."

Solembum quickly darted back.

"I killed it," Ikharos explained, feeling Angela's inquisitive gaze on the back of his head. "With venom."

"I'd hate to meet the viper you drew it from," she muttered.

"You already have."

"... Oh." She shuffled closer. "Is that... safe?"

"No."

"But why-"

"This is my lab," Ikharos said, turning to them with a cross look. "I don't employ many safety measures because I don't need them. If you're here, it's because you accept those risks."

Angela looked around, then nodded solemnly. "I don't suppose you receive many guests."

"Not many, no."

"What are you doing?"

"Synthesizing a cure." Ikharos set back to work. "You still claim to be a herbalist?"

"Preferably."

"By hobby or vocation?"

"Well, people keep buying my ointments and salves so..." Angela caught his look and sobered. "Vocation."

"How's your microbiology?"

"Eh... less familiar."

"I see." Ikharos exhaled. "Are you familiar with Egregore?"

"With what?"

Ikharos pulled out a drawer and presented a dried stem.

Angela paled. "Ah. That. That's dangerous."

"I'm well aware. How do I curb its appetite?"

"Curb?"

"Egregore has medicinal properties," Ikharos said patiently. "I'm trying to extract them without sentencing my patient to a drawn-out end."

"Have you tried magic?"

"I... have not."

"Speak its true name."

Ikharos frowned. "Egregore has a name in the ancient language?"

"Dauthbraka. Keeper of death." Angela tilted her head. "It's a rare thing to see."

"Hm." Ikharos pursed his lips and looked down through the microscope. "Where've you found it?"

"Places best left forgotten."

"Witch-"

"Herbalist. I know it doesn't roll off the tongue near as well, but I'd appreciate-"

"I'm not a patient man. Not when lives are at stake."

"Are they?"

"My soldiers'. Where did you find egregore?"

Angela sighed. "Where Shades tread."

"A little clearer please."

"Shades. Egregore is... not so much drawn to them, but they produce it, work with it. I've been fortunate to encounter precious few of them in my life."

"And what exactly is a Shade?" He recalled Elisabeth mentioning something like that, but she hadn't elaborated. Typical.

"A mortal body inhabited by vile spirits."

"Ah, the superstitious route. I see."

"It's not superstition," Angela retorted. "They were crafted in your image."

"Were they?" Ikharos straightened. He frowned. He'd have to ask about that later. "Strange that you say that, because there's something I want to ask you. How do you know what I am?"

"Balaur told me-"

"Don't give me that shit. How does the dragon know what I am?"

Angela paused. "I don't know. But he told me to look for the signs if I ever met... well, one of you, and you fit the criteria too well."

"I'd like to meet him."

"You mean kill him."

"One and the same where a dragon is concerned." Ikharos glanced down at the egregore samples. "Please tell me if I use the wrong phrase. Dauthbraka. Ono weohnata néiat malthinae haina. Ono weohnata néiat malthinae dauth." (Death-keeper. You will not inflict harm. You will not inflict death.)

Angela made a face. "Your prose is awkward."

"Will that be a problem?"

"No."

"Good." Ikharos repeated the incantation, felt the magic work through him, and waited. There was no obvious change in the egregore cells, but when he manifested Light and drew it near, it didn't so much as react. "Xiān, we're good to go. Extracting antibodies now."

"This 'magic' is weird."

"Tell me about it."

"Right, uh. Nanites prepped. Waiting for payload."

Ikharos carefully recreated the treatment with another egregore sample and, with the utmost delicacy, transferred the petri dish over to Xiān's workstation. It disappeared in a flash of transmat; Ikharos returned and sorted the leftover materials into either long-term storage or Devoured them on the spot. The Scorn corpse was of the former - for though the potency of Eimin-Tin venom concerned him, its properties in regards to Dark Ether certainly merited further research.

"Shouldn't take long," Xiān said. "Cells're behaving. Fancy stuff."

"Good." Ikharos glanced Angela's way. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

Angela offered a fleeting smile. "What kind?"

"I'm partial to earl grey personally, though I've packed plenty of other blends."

"Do you have anything exciting?"

Ikharos considered her. "I have some herbal teas. Would that do?"

"I don't think you understand what exciting means."

"It's fruity."

"Fruity tea?"

"I hesitate to call it tea at all, but... yes." Ikharos performed a last once-over of the lab, scrubbing each surface with Void, then glided out and slipped into the small kitchenette. The kettle - perhaps his prized possession - he filled near to the brim and set to boil. Angela and Solembum followed him in, stopping just within the door.

"It's quite the home," Angela commented.

Ikharos hummed.

"How did you come by it?"

"Found it drifting over Mars. Repaired and reworked it into something of my own."

"It must have taken a while."

Ikharos shrugged. "I had time."

The kettle shrieked. Steam billowed out, only to be sucked up by the automatic vents. Ikharos prepared two cups, slotted in two different tea bags and paused before pouring. "Do you take milk? Sugar?"

Please, Solembum muttered.

Angela grinned. "With herbal tea?"

"I've encountered all sorts."

"I'll live without."

"Say when." He poured, listened, and just as the boiling water reached the brim did he hear Angela whisper "when".

Ikharos wrapped the mug in a cloth and wordlessly gestured for her to leave. Angela cackled and went, but Solembum lingered. Human.

"I don't keep pets," Ikharos brusquely told him. "I don't have anything to feed you."

Solembum's hackles rose. I wasn't asking.

"Then what do you want?"

Only to warn you.

"Of?"

Solembum hissed. We're here by our own volition, not as prisoners.

Ikharos crouched down before him. "Have I indicated otherwise?"

I think you will, if you don't find any of our answers to your liking. The werecat turned and padded out, claws tap-tap-tapping against the floor.

"Even the cats are weird," Xiān muttered. "This planet's wrong on a fundamental level, sweet Traveler above."

Ikharos snorted, stood and cradled his mug to his chest. The scalding heat of it diffused through his skin. It almost felt too hot, what with his heightened sensitivity. He returned to the main hold, found Angela there waiting for her own tea to steep, but Solembum had left them behind.

"Hey." Angela held up an object in the general shape of a horseshoe. "What's this?"

"Eliksni respirator," Ikharos said, snatching it out of her hands. "It was a gift. Where'd you find it?"

Angela raised her brow. "In that press-"

"Stop. Just... stop." Ikharos set both mask and mug down and fell into his armchair with a sigh. "I'm going to ask my questions now. Regardless of whether you're amenable or not, you're going to answer-"

"Or there will be consequences, I understand." Angela made a show of sinking back in her seat. "Ask away."

"I want to know about Balaur."

"Naturally."

Ikharos' mouth thinned. "Is the state of the world his doing?"

"No. The Archentrope and the, ah... the Others. They did this." Angela paused. "Though... he was probably involved in there somewhere."

"Do you understand what's been done?"

"We fell prey to something stronger."

"We?"

"People." Angela gestured flippantly. "Everyone's ancestors. They came from your world-"

"Earth."

"Is that what you call it?"

Ikharos nodded slowly.

"Could've picked something fancier."

"We aren't a fancy species."

"No we aren't." Angela chuckled. "But... are we?"

"Are we what?"

"Are we the same species?"

Ikharos regarded her blankly. "You're human."

"Oh, I know. But what about you?"

"I'm Risen. We fall under the greater umbrella of humanity."

"So..."

"We're transhuman, posthuman, but still human. Enough to consider you lot our responsibility."

"But you don't... you don't believe yourself fully human, do you?" Angela leaned forward.

Ikharos tilted his head. "Is this because of how I look?"

"Hm? Oh, that - you changed quicker than most but it's nothing unusual."

"It isn't?"

"Mm, perhaps now, but not always."

Ikharos frowned. "...No. No, I've never considered myself a full member of homo sapiens sapiens. Is that what you want to hear?"

"I just find it fascinating. For all intents and purposes you are - or were, before all... this." She gestured wildly to his face. "You looked like us."

"Appearances can be deceiving."

"Oh, don't I know it."

Ikharos breathed in deeply. "The specifics are a highly debated topic. Other Risen may be of the opinion we're nothing more than mortals hopped up on a god's favour. My position is more reserved."

"You want there to be a difference."

"On the contrary, I'd love to be fully human - but everything I've observed has led me to the conclusion that we are not. I'm not proposing I'm a different species; what I believe is that we are... a subspecies at most. You've got me rambling."

Angela laughed. "It wasn't hard."

"It's also not the reason I want to speak with you."

"Fine, fine. What else has you curious?"

"Your circumstances."

Her expression fell. "Go on."

Ikharos sipped his tea. "Thank you. Now, I've considered what you've told me - which, mind you, I would've disregarded as fantasy if not for your oaths, and I'm still left in disbelief."

"We live in a world of magic. Nothing's impossible."

"But unlikelihoods still exist. For instance, I fail to see why a dragon would shelter a human child. They've never been so inclined before. It's just not in their nature. They're inherently a selfish species, entirely disposed towards the purpose of gathering energy and feasting on mortals, and entirely without mercy. So... what exactly was it that drove Balaur to you?"

Angela opened her mouth, froze, and looked away. After a time she whispered, "He wanted to know about my dreams."

"Ambitions?"

"No, dream-dreams." She looked at him. "And not just when I sleep."

Ikharos, his interest piqued, lowered his mug to the table. "Elaborate."

"That's... that's difficult."

"Because you don't trust me?"

Angela stared. "Some of it."

"And the rest?"

"Because it's hard to describe."

Ikharos hummed thoughtfully. "Humour me."

Angela closed her eyes. "Balaur said it'd interest you."

"Me?"

"Anything like you. That you're... I don't know, part of the problem. Or the solution. Or something else."

"I see," Ikharos said quietly, crossing his legs that his knife would remain in close reach. Away, within, Xiān rustled with slow-blink curiosity and world-weary suspicion.

Angela noticed none of this. "Have you ever dreamed you were someone else?"

"Someone?"

"Or something?"

"... I can exist as other things," Ikharos said at length. "As smoke, as fire, as lightning and crystal. But each was, and is, intrinsically me. I've never become something other than what I already am. This is how I live. Dreams are… random. If I've ever been anyone else, then it was as a superficial fantasy and nothing more."

"Okay. Okay." Angela breathed in deeply. The humour, the joy, the frivolous front was gone. "That's..."

"Not what you wanted to hear. You're not here because I'm interesting, are you?"

Angela made a face. "Sure I am."

"But why? You think... ah, you think I might help you in some capacity. Hence the need to know what I am, what I'm capable of."

"You think so lowly of me already?"

"There's nothing lowly about hope. It's what we all strive for," Ikharos said.

Of course, he didn't believe it one bit.

She glanced down at her hands. "I dream I'm elsewhere," Angela said quickly, a scowl crossing her face. She disliked honesty, and desperation, and most of all she liked neither when faced with him.

Because he scared her.

Ikharos wasn't comfortable with the notion, but neither was he uncomfortable. There was a middle ground in there somewhere.

"I get headaches," Angela continued. "I had them young. I saw lights dancing before my eyes. My... mother, if that's what she was, thought I was sick. Then - she was gone and I was alone with the dreams until..."

"Until Balaur."

"They didn't stop. But he showed me magic."

"Did he feed on you?"

Angela huffed. "Of course he did. We both know what he is - but it wasn't... anything big. Nothing harmful. A trick here or there; I wasn't going anywhere and neither was he. Except..."

"Except?"

"When he died. Not often, but he always made me flee when he sensed them coming."

"The Disciples," Ikharos murmured.

"I think so. Never the Partisans. The Archentrope has an understanding with him. I can see your questions, but no, I have no idea what they agreed to. Only that they left us in peace, along with most everyone else."

"So... the Disciples killed him."

Angela nodded solemnly.

"But it never stuck."

"I told you, he's slippery. Balaur has his ways. He'd always find me again and... then we'd move on."

Ikharos interlaced his fingers. "So him teaching you magic was... what? His bargain?"

Angela flinched, nodded, sighed. "Do you know how debilitating it is? To have your vision disappear and some force seize your mind? He gave me the spells to protect myself."

"While you had your episodes?"

"Yeah-"

"In what manner?"

Angela looked at him sharply. "Why?"

"Because I'm a Warlock," Ikharos said bluntly. "I'm curious. Your dragonspeak interests me."

"Teleportation. And... time."

"You can tamper time?"

"Within reason." Angela grimaced. "I can't stop all of time - that would take a great deal more power than even the mightiest mage can muster. But I can speed my time up."

"By accelerating your entropy," Ikharos murmured thoughtfully. "Still costly, no?

"Very."

"That must be how you caught up with me..."

Angela shrugged. "Solembum helped."

"He's magic?"

"He's a werecat. If you earn their ire you'll never escape them."

"So you use these spells to disguise your episodes. In exchange, Balaur gets... what? Front-row seats?"

"That's putting it mildly."

"But that doesn't clear anything up. What do dreams matter-"

"I dream of worlds," Angela said quickly. "I dream of stars. I... I dream of a city clumped beneath my shadow."

Ikharos froze.

"I see light and it's blinding. I-I... I think it's me but it's not, it shouldn't be, and I can't understand that. Never could. The city was new - that happened some thousands of years ago, I don't know when exactly. Balaur and I separated shortly after-"

"What else did you see?" Ikharos pressed, trying to mask the urgency now racing through his heart.

Angela regarded him knowingly. Knowingly. "I saw pieces of me leading people into the city, to help me build it up. It's like I'm a hen and they're my little chicks but... but I feel afraid. For them. For me. There's foxes out there in the dark. I see them slink in close. Some of my little ones are braver than the rest, they go out to meet them, to fight. Not many return. Others, always younger, they take inspiration, follow them out, and I'm left to hold in a scream. And sometimes, sometimes, those who crawl back do so changed. They're not just my chicks anymore. By this point the foxes have as much a hand in raising them as I do."

"Angela-"

"Those dangerous little chicks with blood on their beaks keep leaving. They like it outside - away from me. One by one the foxes pick them off - and they peck back against my wishes. I see this big lynx, all black with white pits for eyes, and he growls at me, tears up the ground with his monster claws. And my little ones? They rip him apart. In my dreams I don't even recognize them as mine anymore. I want to, I need to - but they terrify me."

"Angela," Ikharos warned, but she was on a roll.

"I'm trying to call out to them. They won't listen. They can't. My voices have all died away and I'm, I'm, I'm reaching as far as I can, asking, demanding, crying for someone to hear and, and, and..." Angela choked off. "I dream of me. I'm deaf, blind, I don't know where I am, what I am, but I know I'm in the wrong place and I'm trying to change that. And I- I... I don't... I don't know how."

The gulf of silence, as abrupt as it was tense, stretched open between them.

"Oh," Xiān said. "Fuuuck."

Angela shuddered. Her eyes shone. "Help me understand."

Ikharos, frozen solid, was at a loss for words.

"You. I dreamed of you. I saw... I saw you kill Him. The lynx, the-"

"Oryx," he gasped, expelling the last air in his lungs. He couldn't- couldn't fucking breathe.

"I saw you," Angela said - kept talking, kept going, kept shattering his world. "Outside the city, fighting for your life."

(The sortie he'd led during Twilight gap. They killed so many...)

"Spreading your wings over a sea of green."

(Bhutan. The place he'd earned his title. Dark Angel, they called him, like he'd ever stoop so low as to demand an Iron Lord's petty honours. Dark Angel of the Burning Lake.)

"Hunting Balaur's nestmates down-"

"Enough," Ikharos whispered. "Please."

She looked at him - all pretence at glib carelessness a memory on the wind, leaving nothing more than a woman battered down by time, by fear, by a god that had no right to treat her as it had. "I saw you leave."

"It wasn't happenstance, was it?" Ikharos closed his eyes. "Our encounter?"

"...I had to check."

"Check what?"

"If the dreams were real."

"So." Ikharos cleared his throat. "So you and Balaur... you were watching this entire time?"

"I didn't know what I was seeing."

"But Balaur-"

"He knew," Angela said, sighing. "He always knew."

"...We need to find him." His hands were shaking, Ikharos levered himself up and schooled his features. "Angela."

"I've already told you I can't help you. Not with that." She avoided looking at him. "I'm here because you're my dream. That's... that shouldn't be possible. I didn't even know it was you at first; I was just traipsing about, running from the dead. But you arrived, you're alive, you're real and dangerous and... I'm tired. I'm tired of pretending I'm alright with this. I just... I want to know." Angela, trembling, looked up at him again. "I can't wait another moment. I need to know. What is this? What am I?"

Ikharos blinked quickly.

"You know. I can see it in your eyes."

He turned away.

"Ikharos-" Angela's voice fell away. For a long time neither of them said a thing.

His mind was a-whirl, rocked from the bedrock up. Ikharos considered leaving. Considered fleeing, or transmatting her out of his ship and flying away. He considered feigning ignorance. He considered lying. He even considered shooting her right then and there, telling himself it would be a kindness to them both.

But no. He couldn't manage any of it. Empathy, that monstrous relic of human evolution, made a slave of him once more. Heaving air into lungs bleeding for more, more, MORE, Ikharos braced against an armrests... and stared.

Because there was nothing else he could do.

"You're a Speaker," he said.

Angela watched him. Wordlessly.

"It's not hereditary. No one did this to you. It's just what you are." He paused, still gasping. "They aren't dreams. They're the words of a god. My god. Humanity's. The only one who ever gave a shit."

"You hate Her."

"... Yeah. Yeah, I hate Her." Ikharos grimaced. "She saw the world the Dark left for us and still She made my kind."

"She loves you."

"Sure about that?"

Angela nodded almost angrily. "You scare Her, but She loves you. I felt it."

"I'm sure She needs us to keep Her alive-"

"You, Ikharos. You in particular."

His mouth set in a thin line. "You're imagining it."

"I'm not. She's seen you. She's watching you."

"What about you?"

"I..." Angela faltered.

Ikharos leaned in close. "Can She hear you?"

"I... I guess? It's hard; She's not like us-"

"I don't care. If She's aware then that's enough." Ikharos snarled. "I want Her to know I hate Her. That if ever we defeat the monsters in the Dark, she's next."

Angela baulked. "She created you."

"I never asked to be made." He tore away and paced. His limbs trembled with violence. Void bubbled between his fingers, aching to eat. "Fucking. Fuck. FUCK!" He lost - control, cohesion, collapsed into caustic smoke. The Void he gave himself over to slithered out of the Trespass' belly, into the air, frightening the Cabal something fierce. It- He, still him, he flared with cobra-fury and dispersed, taking to the winds until he was far, until he could coalesce, until he could run through burrows and root channels and cracks in stone, until he could find some silence and solace and some damn fucking sense-

Ikharos turned to flesh once more and staggered, falling to his knees. "Fuck," he wheezed, curling up into himself.

There were few birds, but those winter hadn't banished noisomely tittered and tweedled to one another. It was all the life he could bear. Everything and everyone else - they just had to make things so damn complicated.

"You don't mean it."

Ikharos hardly reacted as Xiān settled on his shoulder.

"You don't," she reasoned. "We've been dealt a bad hand, let's not pretend we haven't, but we're not like that."

He peeked at her over the edge of his crossed arms. "Aren't we?"

"Look, we gave up on the idea of a good god a long time ago, but we aren't killing all of them. Just those who act like pricks." Xiān pressed in close. "It's easier to lose hope than it is to find it."

"... She's a Speaker."

"Ike... Yeah. She is."

"Xiān, I... I can't. I just fucking can't." Ikharos raged. He grieved. He panicked. "What are we supposed to do?"

"I don't know."

"We're supposed to kill Scorn. That's it. But - Disciples, Nezarec, Warminds, rogue Exos, now our lost Speaker and a fucking Ahamkara! It's all connected but we don't have a fucking clue how, now Agnisia's loose because I couldn't let go and, and, a damn mind-virus held at bay only because-"

A lipless mouth traced over the side of his head. Fangs dimpled the skin of his cheek. "Because of me," the Nightmare purred. She paused over his jugular.

He caught her by the throat and unleashed the building inferno inside. She shrieked with wicked laughter and the birds fled with screams as the forest plunged into flame. He only stopped when the burning need for oxygen became too much to bear - and he swallowed the heat back into himself, leaving the nearest trees charred but standing. By then the witch was gone. For the moment. He needed-

"I need a tincture," Ikharos gasped. "I, I fucking need it!"

"Ike." Xiān hovered in front of him. "We can't..."

"Xiān-"

"I'm not losing you again."

It was then he saw it: the tremor in her fins. Reaching up, Ikharos gathered her in his hands and pressed her to his chest, pulling her as close to his heart as was possible. Even closed off as their neurosymbiotic bond was, he could feel her terror as if it were his own.

Untenable. Everything was untenable. It was too much - too much responsibility, too many tasks for him alone. His one purpose was to protect and he couldn't even do that for his own soldiers.

He needed-

He needed his fireteam, but that was three years too late. Lennox-2 was dead. Jaxson was over a hundred lightyears away. With them he might've managed, maybe, but just him? Not even Quantis, Arthur, Saint-14 or even a damn New Light? Too much. It was all too much.

"You're having a panic attack," Xiān murmured into his chest. "Thought you never lost your cool."

Ikharos said nothing. His throat was chock full of acid and his mind - oh his mind was pounding, it was being actively raked by the witch's long, long claws, his thoughts were frozen in ice and...

What the fuck was he supposed to do?

"I can't do it all," Ikharos whispered, utterly aghast at the realisation.

Xiān shifted against him, but didn't try to pull away. "We need to cut our losses."

"It's not ours alone."

"Ike..."

"I never wanted the choice. I never wanted to play god. Gods are evil. They're monsters, and I... I don't want to be a monster." He hated how meek he sounded, but the words that spilled out were so full of raw feeling even the honesty of the ancient language couldn't compare. "I never wanted to play with people's lives."

"... So what's our priority?"

"I don't know." Ikharos sunk into himself, curled around her, and for a time he basked in the closeness. It was the last tether - the only thing keeping him in place. They pressed closely together, surrounded on all sides by responsibility and threat and an overbearing tension-

It blinded him. Deafened him. Left him squirming with anxiousness. Ikharos suffered silently, clinging to the last thing that had the measure of him. Waiting.

It wasn't long before the soft tap-tap-tap of sabatons reached them. Ikharos didn't move; he recognized them, with bitterness and relief and a pathetic kind of yearning. When Indilic stopped beside them, he said nothing. When his thoughts brushed Ikharos' own, as cursory as possible, he still said nothing. When he sat down beside them, setting his rifle aside, he continued to say nothing.

For a time there was only the three of them, watching the rising sun flicker between the ashen trees.

"She's a Speaker," Ikharos said hollowly. He struggled to keep his voice even. "Anointed by the Traveler. Somehow."

Indilic made a high-pitched humming sound - a native Psionic expression of which the meaning escaped him.

"I have to make sure, but her testimony was uncanny. She knows too much for any other mortal. We need to get her to Earth."

"Why?"

"Because the Traveler needs to be heard." Ikharos' lip trembled. "Because the City needs its god and... we need direction."

Indilic exhaled wetly. He wasn't wearing his helmet. "This is true."

"I know it doesn't mean anything to you-"

"No, but it does for you. That is enough."

"It doesn't. It shouldn't. It..." He paused for Indilic to cut in.

The Psion waited.

"We never cared for the Traveler," Ikharos admitted. "Others flock to Her message, to Herworship and assurances, but that never sat right with us. She made us. She put us in this world - but the world's shit. She left us with the illusion of choice: be a bastard and run away or fight their wars forever. I'm not a warrior. I'm not a killer. Not at heart. All I ever wanted was to be left alone."

"Yet you fought. Yet you killed."

"Couldn't leave them behind. She wronged us, putting us in that position. But... but Xiān and I, we never found the excuse to hurt Her back. It would've been cruel - to more than just the Traveler, more than those who only ever repeated Her words warped into self-serving agendas. The previous Speaker was wrong. He was a prideful old man who ran the city on the grounds of paranoia. We never would've aligned with you if he was still alive."

"Ghaul killed him."

"He did. Only favour that bastard ever did us." Ikharos looked at him. "Everything we did was for someone else. We never stood a fucking chance. Traveler left us a job knowing we couldn't refuse, knowing there would come those who'd use Her as an excuse to rule the rest of us. This life isn't a blessing like Ghaul thought it was; it's a damn curse. And I... I've been picking up so many curses along the way that without this duty, I don't know what's left of me anymore. She frames Herself as a sort of mother, but She lets the Dark whittle us down to the bone. What kind of parent does that?"

Indilic watched him. His expression was unreadable, but his eye flickered between yellow and orange hues. His Y-iris sharpened. "Duty is a merciless master," he said slowly. "She'll never be appeased."

Ikharos snorted.

"You're amused?"

"Yeah. You take to your duty like it's a lover."

Indilic hummed again. "It was the only option left to me."

"The Hive-"

"It did not begin with the Hive." Indilic shot him a warning look. "It did not begin with the Empire's fracture. I'm not blind. My people weren't left with much in the old empire."

Ikharos grimaced. "You still had it luckier than most."

"I sense your frustration, so I'll forgive your words, knowing they are made in anger. We more than most cannot afford to be enemies."

"...I'm sorry."

"Luck is subjective, Warlock. Even those born free were not quite citizens, let alone full-blooded Cabal." Indilic's spiracles whistled as he inhaled. "We took our opportunities as they came. Few tasted sweet."

"The legion became your life," Ikharos murmured.

"Eventually."

"It wasn't your first calling?"

"My second. The first came as a spy."

"On whose behalf?"

"The Praetorate's."

"As a servant?"

"No. As a pleasure-slave."

Ikharos fell silent and still. Xiān worriedly peeked up at him.

"What I am is not what I was," Indilic calmly said. "Duty is my calling, when before it was survival. In the time of Calus the laws of the Empire were... foggy. Anarchy was but a breath away. Hate, ambition, prejudice - these things swayed the fate of hundreds of billions. To the fourth-born son of Freeborn peasants, service as a mind-tender was more than I could've asked for. Gladiators, officers, warlords in finery - they all came to me and those like me, whispered their secrets in dual concert, took their stresses and frustrations and laid it all on my shoulders. Like your mythical hero who bears the weight of the world."

"Atlas."

"At'las. Mind-tenders burn quick yet I persevered. I served. I pleased. I sold my mind and form for their delights and I compiled their secrets like ammunition. When the call came, and the old order upturned, I made myself... useful. The Princess-Imperial was always partial to our kind, I think, because the Emperor left her upbringing to one of us. When I came forth with the names of Calian diehards, she took me into her confidence and afforded me a respect few Cabal would ever spare for one of my station. For that I will serve 'til the day my ancestors take me into their embrace." Indilic stopped and looked at him again. "But I do not enjoy it. Perhaps in the beginning, when I held power, when the limits on my psychic restraints were unsocketed I thought it more than fair. It faded, as all pleasures do. Now I carry my own frustrations and there are no mind-tenders left to share it with me. Outlawing the practice was the first and last request I ever made of her."

"What if someone offered?" Ikharos pursed his lips. "They say a problem shared-"

"-is a problem halved, yes, I have heard." Indilic's eye glinted. "No. I would never accept."

"Never?"

"Would you saddle another soul with your every regret, your every fear?"

His mouth felt dry. "No."

"Your people understand my reasoning. Humans defend their individuality to their last breath. I... admire that. But you above all else recognise the danger."

"Is this why we're friends?"

Indilic dipped his head. "It may well be."

The sun at last broke above the treeline. The feel of it on his bare skin was too warm and soft for something so fake.

"I need you to make me a promise," Ikharos said quietly. "If everything goes to shit, worse than it already has, will you take Angela to Earth?"

Indilic didn't immediately answer. "You think we'll die here. You think we'll fail."

"So do you."

"But I admired your optimism. I'll miss its absence."

"Indilic."

"I cannot promise the impossible."

"Then I'll need a second one from you."

"What would that be?"

"That no matter what happens, you stay good." Ikharos grimaced. "I've seen too many people turn, but we don't have a choice anymore. I'll teach you the Dark."

Indilic tilted his head. "The Disciples have the Dark. Escape is their objective. I stand no more chance of it than they, even armed with Stasis."

"They seem to think I have something that can get them out."

"Your Light."

"Maybe. If that's the case, then the Traveler will give you all the help you need. Angela can hear Her voice. The Dark..." Ikharos' voice cracked. "The Dark I'll give to you to protect her. Dragonspeak too. Whatever you can use."

"You mean to pass her on?"

"It won't do either of us any good to be responsible for the other. Historically I've never got along with Speakers, I don't see that changing now. Indilic, promise me-"

"I vow it," Indilic swore.

"Thank you."

The silence that stretched between them wasn't uncomfortable. It held a value of its own - something both of them respected.

"Indilic... is of the legion," the Psion said after a time. Ikharos threw him a questioning look; Indilic stared back. "My name to you now is Qiniq. It is the one I was born with."

Ikharos watched him. And nodded. "Qiniq," he slowly repeated, tasting the word.

Qiniq quirked his head, stood and offered a hand. "We should return."

Ikharos took it. Qiniq's grip was alien and wrong - boneless yet powerful despite it - and he staggered as he was effortlessly dragged up. "Feels like all I am to you is dead weight."

Qiniq huffed. "You're too quick to undersell yourself."

"I've made mistake after mistake, and each one we've paid for in lives." When Qiniq began to pull away Ikharos held tight. "I'm sorry I dragged you along."

Qiniq regarded him guardedly. "I hope there's something better on the other side for both of us."

"I don't have ancestors. Oblivion's my reward, not an afterlife."

"That's why I hope." Qiniq's hand dropped away. "We've tarried too long. Come."


There were no words for them upon their return. Though their Cabal watched, not one said a thing. The tension was so thick Ikharos could have cut it with a knife. They boarded the Trespass - finding relief from the stares in the privacy of darkness - and found Angela slouched against the couch, her boots propped up on the coffee table.

She had a weapon in her hands.

"I couldn't find arrows," she said, hefting the bow up to the light.

Ikharos snatched it out of her hands and tossed it behind him. Qiniq made a thoughtful sound as he caught it. "It doesn't take any. You make them from your mind."

Angela raised an eyebrow. "Brain-arrows?"

"In a way." Ikharos turned just in time to see Qiniq reached up, press his thumb and forefinger into his eye and pull out a glowing implement. "Like that."

Qiniq slotted it over the Divination's enactine frame, pulled testingly on the drawstring and slowly, carefully eased to avoid firing on them. The arrow dissipated. He offered it back but Ikharos waved for him to keep it.

"My armoury's off-limits," he sternly told Angela. "Did you take anything else out?"

"I... actually found that in your lab, but..." Angela gave him a thumbs up. Her smile wavered at his lack of a reaction. "So..."

"So you're a Speaker." Ikharos was grateful his voice didn't crack - because on the inside he was fucking mess. "This complicates things."

"How?"

"For starters, we now have a pressing need to actually survive this death world."

Angela blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"It's fine. I've been looking for an excuse to keep these fuckers from heroically sacrificing themselves in glorious battle." Ikharos sat leaning forward, hands clasped together. "Plan of action hasn't changed. If we know how to leave this place that would help, but we don't. Priority now, for you, is to reach Earth. Humanity needs you."

"That's not stressful at all." Angela made a face. "Maybe I shouldn't have followed you-"

"No. That..." Ikharos sighed. "That was the smart thing to do. Might've been easier if you were honest from the start, but... I understand your reservations. Look. Whatever happens, you need to stay safe. To that end I'm assigning my friend here to watch over you."

Angela spared Qiniq a look. "Hi."

Qiniq dipped his head.

"He's talkative."

"He's reliable. That's all that matters." Ikharos paused. "When I say priority for you, that's not me misspeaking. My mission is to keep humanity safe. That means killing everything here capable of threatening them - or die trying."

Angela winced. "That's… ambitious."

"I'm aware. I'm also aware there's a power balance we've upset. So in the interest of keeping things fair..." Ikharos looked Qiniq's way. "We're hitting that listening post shortly. Whatever they're taking from Vroengard, it can't bode well."

Qiniq nodded readily. "I can organise two boarding crews-"

"No. Just Xiān and I. We have something to protect now."

"Is that wise?"

"I'm not presiding over more deaths."

"We agreed to die for you," Qiniq said harshly. "All of us."

"You also agreed to follow my orders. I'm ordering you to live."

"The Val will not be agreeable."

"I'm still her commander, temporary or not. To that end..."

Xiān appeared. "Nanites are just about cooked. We should be good to go."

Ikharos rose. "Fantastic."

"What about the Disciple?" Qiniq inquired.

Ikharos glanced back at him. "We keep her alive. For now."

"Has she provided information?"

"Not so far."

"I..." Qiniq hesitated, looked briefly Angela's way, then back to him. "I do not like this."

"We'll keep that Valkyrie charged and on repeat. That should leave her relatively harmless. If we can grab other spears from aboard that station then we'll be in a much stronger position."

"Her venom-"

"Muzzle her if you have to. We've never had a Disciple prisoner before; she's an untapped source of leverage and I'm not keen on throwing it away." He made for the lab. "Look, the Trespass is the only ship we have with stealth capabilities. It'll be easier if it's just me." Ikharos stepped inside, waited for the nanite-printer to finish filling the vial and returned to the hold. "If they're able to tap our sensoriums, we need to take them out sooner rather than later. We lost the advantage of numbers and firepower a long time ago. It's time we made up for it. Quick, grab your things." He gestured for Qiniq and Angela to follow him outside.

They trudged through the muck to the remaining Harvester and slipped inside to find Vindica'aur in the same limp position. Her eyes tracked their progress, her chest rose and fell with each shallow breath, and that was the extent of what she could do.

"Here." Ikharos waited for Xiān to ready oil-transfuser - a Cabal machine that acted as both an IV and a blood bag, pumping black oil into the Val's body to keep her vitals strong. A slot opened up and he fit the vial into it, pressing down to introduce the nanite solution into the oil bank. "It shouldn't take long."

He turned to her. "We created the antivenom with egregore cells, so if you start to feel disorientated or confused, know it will pass."

Vindica'aur's eyes quickly flicked from him to the machine.

"We nullified the egregore's adverse effect," Ikharos assured her. "We haven't made a corpse of you yet."

Qiniq leaned forward. "She is... expressing gratitude."

"Good." Ikharos clasped his hands behind his back. "We'll discuss our next of plan of action upon my return. Indilic, update her on everything. We'll need to relocate soon. When I hit the ExSec they're not going to be happy with us."

"Understood." Qiniq cut him off when he made to leave. "You will return."

"I will," Ikharos promised. They clasped arms. "Just remember your vow."

Qiniq nodded. They parted - and transmat took Ikharos, depositing him back in the Trespass' cockpit. He fell into the pilot's seat with a breath of relief. "Are we clear?"

"Just... checking." Xiān hovered beside him. "I think... yeah, Belac's got eyes on the cat-thing."

"Belac?"

"Legionary."

"I see."

"Hey, they listen to me."

"Good." Ikharos allowed muscle memory to take over - hands darted here and there across the control board. The Trespass rumbled to life around them. "You'd make for a better commander."

"Hell no. You keep the damn job." Xiān grumbled. "Just 'bout had my own panic attacks every time one of them so much as reported a stubbed toe. I've no idea how these idiots stay alive, let alone managed an empire."

The Trespass rose from the ground, rose above the camp's ramshackle walls, rose above the over ships and hung there. "Prepare stealth-field."

"On it."

The mirage of an electrostatic field sheathed the Trespass from prow to stern, blanketing even the plasma-glow of its thrusters. It shimmered on the canopy's edge like a hazy dream.

"Good to go," Xiān reported. "We're crystal."

"Noted." Ikharos raised the Trespass up. "What's our heading?"

"Looking at little under three hundred miles altitude-wise. Logging the co-ordinates now." The Trespass' navigational display flared with a new heading. "Are we heading straight there?"

"Not... entirely." Ikharos turned the Trespass up and pressed hard on the throttle. The thrusters rumbled the chair beneath him. "Need to check for mines, defences-"

"They'll be watching. They probably know we're trying to escape their attention."

"Still need to be certain. The Shadow Trespass is the only advantage we've got. If we lose it, we lose our edge." Ikharos paused. "Might do to scan for that Ketch."

"Ariks-Fel hit a city, right?"

Ikharos' mind darkened. His grip tightened. "It did."

"D'ya reckon they'll try a repeat?"

"They sensed Light. That was the biggest draw."

"But now that they have a taste for blood..."

"It depends on the Disciples. What they intend for the planet and its denizens."

The Trespass broke the atmosphere quickly. It was a blockade-runner first and foremost - a thing designed for BrayTech's habitual espionage. That purpose hadn't changed. They levelled out when gravity decided they weren't worth the effort and glided on the turn of the globe, settling on orbital currents. Beyond, beneath, Ikharos beheld the browns, greens and blues of a living world - and this time he had the chance to appreciate it for what it was.

A second Earth.

Humanity ached for the stars. Mercury, Venus, Mars - they weren't enough. They tried on places like Titan, like Europa and Hyperion and Triton and even Callisto, places bereft of the Traveler's lively touch. None of them looked like this. They were always too artificial, too cold, too dangerous. By comparison Kepler-186f was... a paradise. A treasure.

That it was a prison for everyone on it made it all the more tragic.

"It's pretty," Xiān commented. She was probably thinking the same as him. "How many do you reckon are down there?"

"They've had eight thousand years to propagate. Tens of millions."

"We're talking about humans. Hundreds of millions at least. No one multiplies like you guys, 'cept the Hive."

Ikharos grunted. "Unless their hidden overlords had something to say about it." He watched the fat tan-and-verdant blob of Alagaësia crawl away beneath them. "How many landmasses?"

"In terms of continents we're looking at four. Alagaësia's part of a supercontinent - there's another to the east and south linked by a narrow landbridge. To the west... two." Xiān floated from the long-range scanners. "No apparent superstructures. Everything's technologically stagnant. They're not even industrial."

He gently turned the Trespass away. "Where's our quarry?"

"Eh... there."

A blip appeared on the radar. They were several hundred miles out. A five-minute flight. Ikharos took them in at a wary speed - quick enough to capitalize on the apparent obliviousness of their enemy, but more than aware they were likely prepared for an incursion. "Any traffic?"

"Not much- wait, look! There!"

He saw it. Another blip, tiny, disengaging from the huge structure hanging in darkness. It shot down towards the planet - towards the tiny mass of Vroengard.

"I see." Ikharos waited until the scanners washed over the station's form. "What are we seeing?"

"It's... it's definitely a Warmind's station," Xiān said. She brought up a projection. The station was large - large enough to make up for half the size of Europa's own Morning Star. It was shaped like a squat tree, a single long spindle limbed with ringed compartments and sprawling solar-panelled fields. Warsats small and large hung beneath these branches like overripe fruit. Towards the bottom hung massive docking racks, some lined with slim silvery shuttles but mostly with... pods.

Frowning, Ikharos learned forward. "What are those?"

"Uh..." Xiān flitted away. "They look like SIVA capsules. Terraformers in bomb form."

"Aimed at the planet."

"Looks it."

"...Dammit." Ikharos fell back. "This is how they keep the Disciples behaving."

"I don't think so."

"You don't?"

"...No..."

"Xiān?" Ikharos turned. Xiān hovered transfixed by something on the scanners. "What is it?"

She looked at him then back at the screen. "Something popped up on spectral analysis. I... I don't know. Bringing it up now."

The projection changed. The station remained but now it looked to be caught in a giant net, shawled in shimmering blue threads. It fell over the entire installation like a veil. Ikharos blinked, trying to make sense of it. "Is that Light?"

Xiān bobbed. "Yeah, the ambient kind. It's concentrated cosmic radiation. Like really densely concentrated. It's not acting like it should."

"There's structures," Ikharos noted. "A pattern. A spiderweb."

"Yeah, it's sorted into intersecting threads. Little highways running against each other."

"Something's holding it together?"

"That's what ticked the analyzer. Huge energy compositions, no apparent source. That spiderweb analogy is on point because this isn't alive, but it was left by something that is. Hold on a second..." The projection shrunk. A single glowing thread led from the station's summit out into the deep black. "This is going somewhere."

"Xiān?"

Soon the Warmind's station shrunk to a pin and the ripe mass of Kepler-186f entered their view, itself rapidly becoming smaller. Its moon, one of the few truly physical astronomical bodies in the anomaly, joined it, until the scanners could go no farther - and the entire cockpit was painted in a vast criss-cross of blue lines.

"This is a net," Xiān whispered. "Its catching cosmic radiation and corralling it around a few key points. Look, it links up to other stations - Indilic and I mapped some of those out!"

Ikharos' gaze sharpened. "So we can use this to find each and every station?"

"I think so." Xiān's shell twisted. "But... why?"

"Minimise the image."

Everything fell away but the very space station that lay ahead of them.

"There." Ikharos pointed most of the way down its length. "The threads phase through the hull there. An anchor point?"

"No, Ike... the radiation's moving. Inside, but... something's filing past it? Another energy signature, can't snag it but it reads as Dark. Look at... wait." Xiān moved closer. "What the hell... Ike. The parts going in? I think it's a feeding tube."

Ikharos shifted uneasily. "This isn't the Warmind's doing."

"No damn way."

"If it's a feeding tube, then what is it excreting? Waste?"

"Dunno what kind of waste comes from cosmic radiation, but... maybe? Maybe it's building an even bigger net."

"Xiān."

"Yeah?"

"Does this 'net' fill the diameter of the anomaly?"

Xiān blinked. "That's a good question."

"Does it?"

"Hell if I know. We don't have the equipment to check. You have a hypothesis?"

"I think..." Ikharos exhaled. "I think we're looking at a footprint left by the anomaly's architect."

"What do you mean?"

"This isn't like Sol. We know the Witness Took Mars to chew up its memory, but this is far different. It isn't so much the planet that's important as it is the space it occupied. The anomaly is a burrow - and there's something here ready to catch whatever falls in. An ambush predator waiting for ample prey while keeping out of the spotlight." Ikharos left the Trespass on autopilot and stood. "If this is Nezarec then He's playing a very dangerous game."

"Do you think He's trying to run? Find somewhere to hide?"

"Someone is."

"Then... the cosmic radiation-"

"As you said: a feeding tube."

"Yeah, well, what the hell eats the Light in radiation?"

"Where is it coming from is the more important question."

"Uh..." Xiān paused. "The sun, reads like."

"The one in here-"

"No. No, Ike - it's drawing in the radiation from outside the anomaly. The actual sun, Kepler-186 itself."

"It's changing."

"What?"

Ikharos pointed at the projection. Slowly, thread by thread, the blue glow was overtaken by a familiar red hue.

"Flow's halting," Xiān reported. "It's... it's getting real Dark."

"Is that...?"

"That's Nightmare energy."

"What's it doing?"

"I don't-"

The web pulsed. A single throb. A heartbeat. Ikharos felt it. Barely, but it was there, touching his Light. The curse on his mind, the Leviathan's lingering touch, whispered with anticipation. Then - the red faded and the blue overtook it.

"It's eating Light," Xiān said in a small voice, "and it's sending out Darkness, but it's not Dark itself. Ike, this is new."

Ikharos, still fighting with overstimulation, braced against the display. "Alert Indilic."

"If the ExSec are tapped into the BattleNet-"

"Stagger the transmission if you have to. He has to know."

"Sent. What now?"

"We investigate." Ikharos resettled in his seat and gently, almost lovingly, ushered the Trespass onwards. "Do you have a read on their sensors?"

"Vaguely. Ike, this is a Warmind. It'll catch us for sure."

"So we'll be quick."

"Ike-"

"Disable life support, divert power to stealth." The terrariums had their own air supply, Ikharos knew - and he still had that respirator Angela was playing with. "Hold all emissions. Are we still cold?"

"Thrusters are behaving."

"Good."

"We won't make that final stretch."

"What's the sweet spot?"

"Couple of miles. If we displace even a microbe of dust the station's sensors will feel it."

Ikharos nodded. "I can deal with that. Can you keep the Trespass stationary?"

"I'm going with you."

"We need an out if things go south."

"So we'll leave the engine running." Xiān stubbornly glared at him. "I'm going with you."

Ikharos met her gaze, considered arguing, then thought better of it. "Fine. Bring us in. I'm going to gear up."

"Be quick."

He left the cockpit behind, clasped the respirator to his face and marched to the armoury. His old armour was in ruin but he had a sizable selection of robe and plate to choose from. Choosing practicality over socially acceptable, he donned a suit of grey hadronic weave and Hive shell enamelled in molten hadium silver - all the better to focus his magicks. The metal-wrought chitin was situated about his forearms and shoulders, a girdle about his hips, studs along the tops of his ankles and the toe of his boots. The bond was a Solipsism-type - a focusing lens recently engineered amongst the City's more reckless covens. The helm was the final key, an act of defense, and it was enshrouded in the Nightmarish likeness of a human skull with naught but a thorny crown to cage it.

Ikharos paused before donning it. Not out of hesitation, no; he stopped only to add another capsule to his respirator's air supply. Soon the sweet thin notes of frozen ether trickled into his lungs, reaching through his body to rouse his muscles to a dangerous level of liveliness. To a human it would have been a huge risk. Ether was a powerful stimulant and it granted a strength far beyond a mortal's limits, often leaving bruised muscle and deep bone trauma in its wake - and that was only if inhaled. Awoken fared better courtesy of their own increased capabilities, but Risen like he could capitalise on it a step farther. There was no fear of torn ligaments or fractured joints for him.

It had been a gift from the Kell of Light. A forget-me-not before he set to the deep black, offered amidst a moment of shared sorrows. Nasarya, a Warlock of his own coven, had only just been interred when Misraaks pressed it into his hands. Ikharos remembered the bitter taste in his mouth then - the same as now. Another protégé gone before her time. He didn't have the strength to bury another, hence his leaping at the opportunity to run. Misraaks had known. Misraaks had given him the tools to fight until he couldn't anymore, with the understanding that he would return on his own terms.

Ikharos pulled the skull-helm over his head and sealed the clasps. He felt... powerful. His body surged with energy, his senses were sharpened to a deadly point, and his Void-thrumming Light flowed freely through his garb, clinging to his skin like a second suit of armour.

"We're close enough," Xiān reported, teleporting in front of him. "How are we going to do this?"

Ikharos held out his hand and she decompiled, the weight of her mind settling behind his own. He doused himself in the energies of nothingness, blanketing him from all visual spectrums. With a flick of a finger he Blinked out of the Trespass into open vacuum. The cold struck him first before the Void could fully banish it - and bereft of Ether he doubted his body would've recovered so quickly. He turned on will alone and became... less-than-cohesive. The invisible Void mass he constituted gripped onto the Trespass's hull and clambered around, finally revealing the physical scope of the space station. It was well and truly colossal, easily as long as a five Ketches lined up from prow to aft.

He solidified along the Trespass's wing, watched for a time in case the ExSec had noticed, then kicked off while everything seemed clear. The Void devoured each and every particulate in his path, nullifying any chance he'd make a disturbance and alert the Warmind's systems.

"Bring up the thread," Ikharos commanded. Xiān dutifully overlayed his HUD with a view of the radiation channels.

"You're going to give 'em a look?" she asked.

"We need to."

"What if they're sensitive?"

"We'll be quick."

He dared not make any sudden movements, even to redirect their course. Every moment that passed his heart pounded and the Nightmare squirmed. Even the dulled presence of Shelbth was roused - irritable and raw, but not yet so achingly strong that they could redivert his focus. When at last the station's hull reared up to meet him, Ikharos splayed his hands out and, purely with his mind, brought his trajectory to a slow, graceful stop. One of the glowing blue ducts burned ahead of him, as large and wide as a river. It felt... strange on his Light. Not sharp or biting like the Dark, but equally other.

"Ugh," Xiān complained. "Feels wrong."

Ikharos glided closer, closer, closer until he hovered just beyond the skein. It was all but a physical thing, as solid as Stasis and smooth as Solvent. When he reached out to touch it, it barely shifted beneath his fingers.

"Is that smart?"

How would he know? "It's deceptively biological," Ikharos remarked. "Silk-like. Can only hazard a guess at the composition. It's not visible to the naked eye?"

In answer Xiān disabled his HUD. It disappeared completely. "I doubt anyone causal could even touch it," she said. "Whatever it is, it's part of our crazy world."

Ikharos looked up, followed it with his eye until the strands faded away to the star-speckled black. "Something made this by hand."

"Hand is... definitely an assumption."

Ignoring her, Ikharos brought the Dark to the fore and waved the empty space before his face, tearing away the veil of the present. The sensation of Deepsight washed over him, giving life to-

Colour. Deep, deep blue. A shadow, colossal, shifting in the light, the Light, the Deep Light. Building. Tidying. Biding. Song. Whale-song, sonorous and ear-splitting and beautifully toneless. A thousand, thousand fingers weaving together beneath a million watchful eyes.

He gasped. The honey-sweet ether frosted on his tongue.

"What is it?" Xiān pressed.

"Not... not clear enough," Ikharos croaked. The Deepsight dissipated. "Too faint. Need to find the source."

"We won't get inside. Not without tripping one alarm or another."

Probably not. "If we can find an exhaust port-"

"You think the Disciples haven't tried that?"

"I could tunnel through. Or Blink."

"Ike. They've been fighting a Disciple who can move through solid matter for millennia. Anything we touch is probably bugged."

They waited. Eventually the silvery shape of a dropship flitted up from the world below. Ikharos watched it dock beneath them, watched as the station wrapped it up in skeletal framework and hungry siphons, watched it deliver whatever, then disengage and dive back down.

"We're not getting in that way either," Xiān said bluntly. "They'll be watching- Hold on."

"What?"

"Trespass just... thought I saw something." Ikharos felt her needling fear. "Oh, okay. Great. Something's up here with us?"

Ikharos resisted every urge to turn around. "The Ariks-Fel?"

"No, it's smaller. And it's got... wings?"

His mind, ironically enough, immediately darted to Formora. He disregarded the notion as quickly as it arrived. "Where?"

"Uh... coming around. Coming around fast. It- Ike, there!" His HUD lit up. On the corner of his vision Ikharos spied something flitting over the ribbed docking grids beneath them. It moved quickly, sinuously, like a bird on the wind despite the vacuum. The light of the sun behind the station caught on its wing briefly, illuminating the most splendid silver, before it joined them in the station's shadow. The first thing that struck him was its size. It was big. Hive Prince-big. The second thing was that it was vaguely shaped like a man. The third: that it was rapidly closing in on their location.

"Ike..."

It stopped. Far enough that he was almost sure they weren't quite yet detected, but close enough that Ikharos was driven to hold his breath. The thing was close enough now that his ocular implants could home in on it. It wasn't a man at all, though that hardly surprised him. The term humanoid was itself a misnomer; it hadn't started with humans at all. Most sapient life in the known universe was bipedal simply because that was evolution's make-it or break-it. Vast intelligences couldn't dominate with anything else, let alone live long enough to reach the stars.

The creature hovering before him was humanoid, yes, but was so very obviously extraterrestrial in origin. It boasted two arms, two legs, a set of hips and shoulders with a torso between them, yet that was where the similarities ended. A pair of draconic wings rose from between its shoulders. A faceless head turned this way and that, swinging two mighty backswept horns. Its legs were digitigrade and its arms were shaped like those of a bird's wings, utterly bereft of feathers. What actually surprised him was when it brushed against another of the giant blue cables its perfectly smooth silver skin flickered out - and revealed the cold, brutalistic frame of an alien Exomind beneath.

"Holy fuck," he heard Xiān whisper.

The creature tensed. Ikharos flushed his mind with the Nullscape, all too aware that if it turned out to be a telepath that hiding his thoughts would be his only recourse. It clutched a weapon - a crude glaive carved from silver and inscribed with twisting patterns all along its haft. The blade itself glittered with a menacing sort of power he had no desire to see used against him.

It moved closer. How it propelled itself was unclear, but it wasn't constricted by causal limitations. If it was like him then maybe it could sense the Void hiding him. Maybe it could sense the Light in his soul.

The blue threads shifted colour. Nightmare roared past, flushing bloodily up and away towards an unknown purpose. Ikharos felt the wraiths within his mind howl with it, scratching at his skin from the inside. The creature itself stopped. It turned to regard the closest stream of red and it... stared into it. A hand, six-fingered with two thumbs, shakily rose up to the alien's featureless skull. Fingertips longingly traced over silvered hide - until the red ran dry and the thing flinched back, broken out of its reverie. With a shake of its wings and a flick of its horns, it bucked away from the station and kept on flying the other way. Quicker than Ikharos liked, it disappeared around the station's bend.

"What the hell was that?"

Ikharos exhaled shakily. "Someone's dirty little secret."

"Ike, that... that was an Exo!"

"I saw."

"Sweet Traveler above... Why do we keep ending up in such terrifying places? Why can't we ever meet the small gentle aliens who offer pretty flowers and sing us nursery rhymes?"

"Nothing gentle survives a universe like this."

"Dammit. That thing was patrolling." Xiān grumbled. Her nervousness upset him. He preferred her being the more collected of them both. "We need to get a move on before it comes back."

"Inside."

"What?"

"Light goes in, Dark comes out." Ikharos turned to the blue vessel. "We go in."

"Ike, that's..."

"Reckless."

"I was going to use choicer words, but yeah. Reckless."

He nodded. "I know."

"But you're still going ahead?"

"Yes."

"Guess it's lucky we didn't bring anyone else. Right, how're we-"

Ikharos wrapped a finger in Stasis and brought the tip of the crystalline claw against the ephemeral material. The incision was small, tiny, microscopic - but that was more than enough. He melted into Voidsmoke, filled it against the spurt of radiation and ambient Light, and was swept away with the tide. Sight, smell, touch - all these things ceased to be, ceased to matter. The Void was stripped down to the barest elements, flayed to the Light, and the tube ingested him as it would any other scrap of sun-borne energy. Onwards and away he floated, until the cold touch of vacuum gave way to the press of steel and the Arc-tingle of electrics. Darkness overtook him, turning sharp and defiant, and he blindly sliced, diced, butchered his way out-

Solid, breathing, a man once more, Ikharos settled against the floor of some dark forgotten chamber and blinked up at the bleeding thread. Bit by bit it pulled each flapping length of bioluminescent blue and stitched itself back together. Radiation filled the air - air! - and caked the walls. With some measure of strain Ikharos righted himself up against the pull of artificial gravity and looked around. It looked to him like the inside of some colossal cable. He turned to the Void again and layered it over his eyes, granting himself Truesight. He saw flickers of movement but no shine of a soul. They were alone for the moment. "Where-"

"In the core," Xiān told him. "Or close enough. Warmind's local network is all around."

"Do they suspect anything?"

"Not as far as I can tell"

"Yet."

"Yet," she chuckled. "Naw, no alarms've been tripped. I think we're good."

Ikharos took another draw of ether-rich air. "What's our first priority?"

"That's not what you wanna ask."

"Xiān-"

"Ike, you just want to know if there's anything we can't put off in favour of investigating whatever the hell this is."

He inclined his head. "That's... not far from it."

"I know. Look, this is our best lead so far. If they're collecting Taken energy then they're bound to store it in the same place as... wherever this is taking the Light. Tech like that isn't easy to create, but it works just as well on both polarities."

"If it isn't, we keep looking." Ikharos looked down the cable. "Do we have the munitions to bring this place down?"

"That's dangerous."

"To scuttle it in the very least."

"Mmmmaybe." Xiān didn't sound sure. "We'll need to tap the mainframe first, see if we can snag a couple of schematics. Never seen a sat like this before."

Ikharos nodded. "So deeper we go."

"Deeper we go."


AN: Big thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!

Sick as a dog, exhausted after grinding through contest Vesper's for my own clear and then clanmates, but damn if Icebreaker doesn't feel nice. I don't know why Destiny doesn't dip into horror more often, because it really excels at it. Dungeon is a delight.