“My name is Agraneia.”

Her own name hurt to speak, and not just because she hadn’t spoken for weeks. Everything was dry, and when she swallowed, it felt like she was grinding rocks in her throat.

“My name is Agraneia.”

The metal bars of her cell dug into her back, cold and hard. Agraneia’s thin prisoner’s rags stuck to the permanent layer of sweat that covered her body. She stared up at the window, that tiny, dark square where a fraction of light cut into her cell. It was raining, softly, and it made her ache for the squelch of Thrassian mud beneath her boots.

“It’s nice to meet you, Agraneia,” the voice from the other side of the wall said. Despite the voice’s hardness, its cracks and croaks, there was a melodic quality to it.

Not cyran.

And his name. Eolh? What kind of name was that?

“How long have you been here?” Eolh said.

Agraneia blinked. She couldn’t remember. How long had she been here?

*How long, in hell? * It hurt to think about it. Suddenly, she didn’t feel like talking anymore.

“A while,” she grunted. Hoping her disinterest would end this.

“You want to know what I did? I saved someone’s life. I don’t know why I did it.” Eolh crowed a laugh, “That’s not true. I know exactly why I did it. Never even seen one of them before, the locals here, but I know what your soldiers do. Seen it a hundred times. So, I saved her life.”

He was talking about a local. He saw them as people. The blackmouths. The lassertane. People. He said it so casually, it just rolled right off his tongue. As if it was obvious. It twisted something inside her stomach.

Made her hurt, so much worse.

“And you know what? I would do it again,” he said. Talking to himself, outloud. For her benefit. “That’s the foolish part. I would do it again, every single time. Even though I’m supposed to- well. I should’ve been more careful. But they deserved it.”

Here, the stranger’s voice grew hard again. “They deserved worse than what I gave them. Gods damned soldiers.”

Agraneia cringed. It was like he could cut her, with only his words.

And for some reason, it made her blood grow hot. What would a xeno know about being in Vorpei’s army? Furious.

“You don’t know what they deserve,” Agraneia said. “It’s not their fault. They’re not given a choice. The Empire-”

A harsh laugh cut her off, scratching against the pattering of the rain.

“Right!” Eolh said, “I forgot! The Emperor forces them to kill innocent people. It forces your soldiers to corner innocent civilians in dark alleys, and take them.”

“They’re conscripts. They’re not given a choice.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Some of them fought to get into the Veneratian’s war academies. Some of us chose this life. But he didn’t need to know that.

“You’re right,” Eolh said acidly, “It’s not their fault they torture and murder my people. When my home was burning, they had to laugh while starting the fires, didn’t they? And when they come into my cell, every single day I’ve been here, and kick me, and spit on me - it’s not their fault. They’re conscripts.”

We’re not all like that, she wanted to say.

But was that true? Maybe at the beginning it was. But service changed you. They changed you.

Walk into this living nightmare. Again, and again, and again. How do you know what’s right, when everything is wrong? And then, they reward you for the awful things you’ve done...

“All that is,” Agraneia said, saying the words of the temples, “Must be the will of the gods.”

Another one of those squawking laughs. “What do you know about the gods, cyran?”

He spoke, as if this xeno could know anything about them, either.

She heard him get up, his feet scratching against the stone floor as he moved away to the other side of his cell. Muttering to himself about cyrans, and the gods damned soldiers.

Agraneia leaned back against the bars, listening to the rain fall.

Sometimes, she still couldn’t figure out why she had signed up. The dullscales - the provincials - didn’t have a choice. For some of them, the military was the only answer to the poverty forced on the provinces by Cyre’s controlling elite. Others were simply drafted when the Veneratian’s census takers found too many young in a single place.

But Agraneia was a glitterskin. And she had chosen this path. All her life, she had been lured by - and feasted on - the stories and the bloody legends of cyran history.

You, too, can become the pride of Cyre, and embrace the Glory of your Empire.

And she had.

She had fallen for it all. She had believed in it all, so resolutely. Without question. She had worn her pride as if it were the shining armor of Lethinaean herself.

Agraneia had committed herself - mind and body and will - to this life. She had let them mold her into the machine. And when they were too slow, she learned to mold herself. A machine for death.

But no matter how much they slaughtered, there was always more. Victory was always over the next hill. The next burned-out village.

The next conquered world. And like a good machine, she never stopped working.

For what?

For the Glory of the Empire?

That’s what the papers and scribes and politicians said, wasn’t it? Thousands of little, bright lies.

It had taken Agraneia so long to see how she was being used. To see who was using her. Not even the captains and commanders of this world were in control. Not entirely.

They were all at the whims of the Veneratian. The Cyran Elite, who had no qualms about climbing over the dead bodies of xenos and cyrans alike, to reach the top.

And what could she do to stop it? Become stronger, and help end this war faster?

And what about the next war? And the one after that?

How many more corpses did the people at the top want? How much higher should their mountain go?

There was a deep breath from the other side of the wall.

“Look,” Eolh said. “I don’t know you. And you don’t know me. Let me start over. My name is Eolh. I’m a corvani from Lowtown, and I’m getting the hells out of here. You want in?”

She didn’t even have to think about her answer, “No.”

The voice was silent for a moment. And then, confused. “No? What do you mean, no?”

“Like you said. Gods damned soldiers. We are damned. Nobody cares about us. They turned me into this. But I’m done. I will not bring any more bodies to the mountain.”

“Mountain? What mountain? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Agraneia said. She was looking at her hands. She couldn’t look at the windows anymore. At the walls. There were faces in the stone. And it was all her fault.

“I’m not asking you to fight,” Eolh said. She could hear him, pressing against the bars of his cell. Trying to get her to talk. “I’m just asking for your help. We don’t have to be in here.”

“Yes, I do.” She said. She wasn’t sure if it was true or not, but it sounded right. “I deserve this.”

“Why? What did you do?”

“I killed one of my own. One of my squad members.”

“Why?”

“Same as you. To save a life.”

“Oh.”

The rain was pouring now, a constant rush of sound, and flashes of droplets on the inside of the window. Eolh was silent now, not even moving. And she was glad of that. Right now, all she wanted to do was sleep.

No. That wasn’t true. She didn’t even want to sleep.

Agraneia wanted to become nothing.

But every time she closed her eyes, she could see their faces.

The ones she failed. The ones she killed.

Taeso, as he was screaming at the Scribe and that lassertane child. Private Taeso, who was so proud of himself for finding the courage to finally do something that mattered. At least, that’s how Taeso saw it. Idiot greenfin. How old was he, anyway? Barely hatched, barely old enough to leave whatever provincial shit-heel share farm he’d been born on.

Conscripted to die. Sent out, with too many drill sergeants, too many commanders, and none of them bothering to show him the way. Thinking he was acting right, because nobody would tell him otherwise.

Oh, Agraneia had tried. Barely.

But Taeso didn’t have a chance. None of them did.

Somewhere, deep in her chest, it felt like a gate was opening up. And all that hammering pressure was suddenly bursting forth, slamming against her inside, and drowning her in her own endless, spiraling thoughts.

All the faces. All the ones who didn’t deserve to be out here. Who didn’t get a chance to know right from wrong. Who had no one to teach them, or worse, had the wrong kinds of teachers telling them how to act. Turning them into machines, just like her.

Machines, made for death.

“Was it the right thing to do?” Eolh rasped again, “Did he deserve to be shot?”

“Does anyone?”

He laughed at that. The kind of laugh that spoke volumes. As if he knew what she was thinking. But how could he?

“How did it happen?” he asked.

Agraneia pulled her legs in close. Wrapped her arms around herself, as if she could squeeze the world out. The rain was pouring now, scraping and rattling against the roof. A million metal daggers on her ears.

“Come on, Agraneia. You’re already in here. It can’t hurt to talk about it.”

“Stop.”

The voice went silent for a long moment, except for one last word. “Sorry.”

There was thunder. And more rain. At one point, she heard the changing of the guards. She was running circles in her mind, going down into the blackness of her thoughts. And everywhere she ran, there were faces. So many faces.

Again, and again. Taeso. And the other soldiers before. And the lassertane, though they had long since blended together. And the child, the blackmouth child. And Taeso.

Taeso.

When she first met him, she could see how much he hated her, just because her scales glittered and his didn’t.

And then, when they were climbing down that hill, in the assault on the fort. There was Taeso, who went back for his comrade - a cyran whose name Agraneia couldn’t remember - while cannons rained death upon them. Agraneia told him to leave her.

But he didn’t. He was only a person. A dullscale, trying to look out for his friend.

“I killed him,” she said. Not caring if the voice on the other side of the wall was listening. “We were crossing the templelands, and someone in our squad found a child. A lassertane hatchling. Taeso was going to kill it. So I shot him. He didn’t deserve it. He was doing the right thing. The Captain was doing the right thing. We’re supposed to kill them, those were our orders.”

More thunder. It didn’t crack, so much as roll from one side of the sky to the other, rumbling the stones of the prison as it went.

“What about the locals?” Eolh said. “What do they deserve?”

The answer had been drilled into her since the day she could first understand words. She was a glitterskin, a daughter of Cyre. They were the chosen children of the gods. And no one else mattered.

Until she met the Scribe, she never questioned that. But now…

Now, she had no answer.

She closed her eyes. And opened them. Her face was wet, and not from the rain spattering in from the window. She didn’t bother to wipe it away.

“If you stay in here, they’ll just keep killing them. You know that. Is that what you want?”

“I deserve this. I deserve worse. They should kill me.”

“Why don’t they?”

Because they still want to use me, she thought. That was the answer she had figured, after all this time. She was far too useful to throw away, just because a dullscale had died.

“You did a good thing, Agraneia. Saving someone who couldn’t help themself. A child, gods damn it. You did the right thing.”

“Maybe,” she said.

A heavy sigh from the other side of the wall, louder even than the rain. There was depth to that sigh. A history of emotion that she could not understand. But she could feel it.

Who was this xeno?

“It doesn’t have to end here, Agraneia.”

“I want it to. I don’t want to-” she swallowed it. But it just came back up. “I don’t want to be alive.”

“Well, gods damn it, you are alive. Be it by the will of the gods, or sheer luck, or whatever you want to believe. You’re here, and I don’t care what you did. The past is nothing, compared to the future.”

“How can you say that?”

Another heavy sigh. This time, followed by a question. “Can I tell you a story?”

She said nothing.

“It’s a long story. About an android, and a god. And how the two of them saved my life.”