The air on Thrass et Yunum had a taste.

Old vegetation and wet bark. And, the scent of fresh life pushing up from the rain-soaked soil.

The metal disc of gate was icy under the soles of Poire’s boots, and there was a frosty fringe around his feet where the air had condensed.

His wrist implant buzzed gently. A voiceless message chimed in his thoughts, Humidity: high. Recommend increased fluid intake. Sweat stung at his armpits, his neck- and hairline, and where the air touched his skin, it only seemed to make him sweat more.

But what struck him most of all was the color of the world. The sky was more magenta than blue, and all the world beneath it was a shade of red. Even the paler skin of his palms had turned to a redwood brown. Even the leaves that grew on the trees were red.

“Welcome to Thrass,” Kirine said behind Poire.

A few soldiers were standing around the disc of the gate, scrambling to fix their gear before they met the new arrivals. But these soldiers looked different than the ones on Cyre. And not just their uniforms - which were more rugged and worn, the colors muted against the strange, violet sky. These soldiers were cyran, yes, but their bodies came in so many shapes.

One soldier had dark, green skin - almost as smooth as Poire’s - and whiskers drooped down from his lips. And that one had a neck like an eel. Another cyran, this one wearing a medic’s armband, had jaws that looked like they could unhinge and swallow a basket of fruit in a single gulp. Their bodies were mostly humanoid, though their skin was all scaled, and fins stuck out of strange places - the backs of arms, of their heads. Some of them even had webbed fingers.

A cyran with a crisp, well-decorated uniform approached them first. Unlike the other soldiers, the scales of his throat glittered as he stepped onto the gate, and his uniform was unstained.

“You’re off schedule!” he called, as he started across the flat expanse of the gate. All the medals on his dark crimson uniform jangled against each other. “What is this? State your purpose.”

“Special mission,” Kirine called back, affecting an almost bored tone. He was wearing the ceremonial robes of a tribune, though they were hiked up to his calves, revealing the azure blue of his scales on his feet and shins. He gestured at the robes, “Veneratian business.”

The officer stopped short of them. Narrowed his eyes at Kirine. But when Kirine lifted his chin, showing the shining scales of his neck, that seemed to change the soldier’s mind.

“Like I said, you’re off schedule. We’re not expecting anyone. What is the nature of your business?”

There were more soldiers, creeping out of the stone and blackwood buildings that lined the muddy road around the gate. They were watching from afar, but Poire couldn’t help but notice how they looked. So many of them were wearing white bandages, blotted with blood. One hobbled soldier had a crutch under his arm, and held his rifle in the other. His leg ended in a stump. And yet, he’s still in a uniform? Was that normal here?

Kirine leveled his gaze at the officer, as if he was just now deigning to notice him, “I have a message for Vorpei of critical importance.”

“The General does not have time for guests. You can leave your message with me.”

“What part of critical do you not understand, soldier?”

The officer shrugged, “Sir, this isn’t Cyre. On Thrass, we follow her rules. The message. I’ll make sure it gets to her, if its worth her time.”

Poire, whose hood was pulled up to shroud his face, could still see Kirine’s jaw clench and unclench, as the tribune tried to figure out how to respond.

He looked back at Poire, as if about to ask for help.

Then, seemed to change his mind.

The frost on the gate had thawed enough to release Kirine’s shoes, freeing him to walk slow, careful towards the soldier, his chin held high. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, showing that he was not threatened. The closer he came to the officer, the more he looked like a monarch about to reprimand one of his subjects. Kirine’s jaw clenched and his eyes were hard. Poire walked behind him, unsure of himself, but not liking where this was headed. Laykis’s feet clanked heavily behind him.

“Be careful, Divine One,” she said.

“Tell him that,” he whispered back. “They have guns.”

Kirine stopped right in front of the officer. Looking down on the soldier. Weaponless, armorless, wearing nothing but his simple ceremonial robes, Kirine did not so much as blink. All his attention was focused upon that single cyran.

The officer smirked. As if he was enjoying Kirine’s attempt to intimidate him.

Kirine inhaled slowly, before he spoke.

“Soldier,” his voice was low, and calm, but Poire could hear the storm of emotions, just below the surface, “It’s clear you don’t know who I am. You think I am here to waste her time. You think you’re doing the right thing, by stopping me. Go ahead and smile. And see where it gets you,” Kirine leaned in dangerously close.

The officer’s smirk became a grimace. He fidgeted, uncomfortable, beneath Kirine’s unrelenting gaze.

Kirine closed his eyes, and inhaled. “I can smell the green on you.”

He opened his eyes again, “You’re fresh from the academy. Excited about your career with the military. All the glory you’ll bring to your family. To your name. Well, let me explain something to you, soldier. A venerator doesn’t come to Thrass et Yunum to waste time. If you continue to block my way, you will not be punished. Not by your direct superiors, at least. But you will feel a shift.”

It wasn’t the words, so much as the intensity with which they were said. Poire could almost feel the heat coming off of Kirine, as he spoke, each word dripping from his lips like the slow-moving magma, hot enough to melt the pure stone.

“Promotions will pass over you, no matter how much you dedicate yourself to the service. Your peers, regardless of ability, will rise above you. You will spend the rest of your days, wallowing on one backwater planet or another, and your precious career, like a tree with rotten roots, will wither and stagnate and die. Understand this, soldier. You are not the first officer who has stood in my way.”

Kirine turned to the side, so that he was no longer piercing the cyran officer, whose face had paled considerably.

“Now, the other path is considerably easier. You have seen me and my two guests come through this gate. Have you ever seen such a thing before? No, you most certainly have not. Why would the Empire expend so much energy for so few? Reason with me, soldier. And see that I am here for a purpose. Take the other path. Take me to Consul Vorpei.”

The officer needed no more chiding.

“Sir. The stone house at the end of the row,” he pointed down the way, at a huge stone house that towered over the rest of the blackwood buildings. “Will you need an escort?”

“No. I think I’ve caused you enough grief for today,” he bowed at the cyran officer. “Thank you, soldier.”

“Sir,” he saluted Kirine again, and then before Kirine could say anything else, the officer waved his men away and almost trotted away from the gate.

A dark, brown canal ran along the road. Plaster and blackwood plantation houses with wraparound balconies leaned over the canal and over the streets. Modified drudges, weighed down by satchels of gear, were led by soldiers along the side roads. On the canal there was a boat with a hunched figure that Poire mistook for another kind of cyran. Except, instead of a uniform, it wore old rags and a bamboo hat. It’s claws held a paddle, and it stood on the back of the narrow boat as it rowed. A forked, black tongue scented at the air.

Black-limbed trees hung over the road, gently clattering against each other as a slight breeze rolled through the avenue. Poire could see down the alleys between the brick and wood houses, see the roads on the otherside. There were more of those aliens over there, pulling rickshaws and carrying ridiculous amounts of grains and foodstuffs on their shoulders, their heads.

They kept their heads low, especially when passing by cyran soldiers. Once, Poire thought he saw a cyran spit on one of them, but he couldn’t be sure.

Here, all the other roads and the canal split off, wrapping around a huge manor made of stone. The manor would’ve looked natural in the middle of a garden villa on Cyre, but here, all the ornate column-work and the clay tile roofs just looked out of place. Its walls shone a pale pink in the strange sunlight.

The house had two wings that hugged around a fountain, and a high iron gate, rusting in the humidity, wrapped around the whole building and its gardens. The only path in was a brick road that circled around the fountain. Moss grew in the gaps between the bricks, splashes of yellow and red against the pale pink bricks.

There were more guards standing at the entrance of the stone manor. Their polished, brass helmets and their rifles gleamed in the late sunlight.

Kirine stopped before the gate. There was a slight hitch in his throat as he said, “So, this is it. From here, I shall not return.”

He looked down at Poire.

“You know, Divine One, I thought it would be more difficult to get here.”

“How can I help?”

Kirine’s serious face crinkled into a smile. “This is not your fight, your grace. I will have my say, and that is all that really matters. I will make the official demand of her arrest, and then… I am prepared to die, Divine One. You need not waste your time on my short, mortal life. Perhaps you should leave on your mission now, to avoid association with me and my fate.”

“What about the avians?” Poire said. “What about all the other Xenos under your protection? What happens to them?”

“I’ll do what I can, and may the gods do the rest,” he said. And then realized who he was talking to. “Well, that’s just a phrase, isn’t it?”

“If I can help you, I will. I won’t let Vorpei hurt you.”

Kirine shrugged, “If the gods will it. That’s what they say. And if you will it, who am I to say no?”

Kirine went first. Perhaps it was the way he held himself, or perhaps the other cyrans could sense the surety of his purpose. This time, the guards took little convincing to allow their group to pass through the gates, and into the stone manor.

Inside, desk sergeants and aides and other back-line personnel darted in and out of the side rooms, carrying papers and maps and even a tray of mugs. Twin chandeliers lit the main hallway, and the dark mahogany wood thunked under their boots. At the end of the hallway, two huge oaken doors were sealed shut.

A cyran clerk, as thin as a rail, blocked their way. The only thing more dazzling than his crisp uniform were the scales on his neck that twinkled in the gaslights. His posture was so rigid and so imperious that, even though he was a full head shorter than Kirine, he still managed to stare down his nose at the three of them.

He wore a sneer as if it was part of his uniform.

“What do you want?” he said, and before Kirine could even open his mouth, he said, “You need to go back and sign in with the guests office.”

“No,” Kirine said.

“No? What do you mean—”

Kirine reached out. If the clerk hadn’t been standing with his chest so puffed out, perhaps he could have kept his balance. Instead, Kirine shoved him aside as if he was nothing but a potted plant.

The cyran made a high-pitched yelp, and tried to pull him back by grabbing at Kirine’s robes. But Kirine simply planted a boot on the clerk’s stomach, and heaved, throwing him hard into the wall.

Then, he shoved open the oak doors.

They found her, sitting on a low stage, ruling like a queen. Another clerk was up there with her, whispering into her ear.

The top brass of Vorpei’s army were sitting or standing at the tables below her. Maps were spread out over the tables, and silverware and plates and glasses littered through the piles of paper. Colonels and majors and other higher-ups with their heads together, talking over the movements of troops as if they were pieces on a game board.

Kirine stood in the doorway, his tribune robes falling back into place around him, barely wrinkled by the altercation. Behind him, Poire and Laykis. And behind them, the cyran aide was whisper-shouting at them to get out of there! Right now!

The colonels and the majors turned to stare at the newcomers.

Then, slowly, they looked back at their general.

Her face gave away nothing. She was large, for a cyran. As tall as Kirine. And her mouth was shaped the same, confident and hard, though she was nowhere near as slender as him. Her neck and her cheeks sparkled with glittering scales, though many of them were lost in the wrinkles around her eyes and her neck. Three crested fins, as red as coral, ran back along her scalp, and all of them were standing sharply on end. That was the only sign of emotion, as she held her gaze on Kirine.

“This is how it starts?” She said. “They sent you?”

Kirine’s mouth twisted into a kind of snarling smile, “I wish I could say it’s good to see you again, but I wouldn’t want to start this off with a lie.”

“That’s never stopped you before, son of mine.”