Aosa is the primary moon, both the largest and closest. It is possible to reach it with enough preparation, but as it contains no breathable atmosphere and its soil has a disruptive effect on constructs similar to flashstone, it has been deemed uninhabitable.

Despite this, attempts have been made to establish a watchpost upon its surface to provide early warning of incursions. Such efforts have never come to fruition.

-Aosa and Erae

Something cold and hard impacted against me from the side. I barely noticed.

I was burning. I was broken. Nothing but purple light and unstoppable power burning through my blood, pain and pain and pain.

I breathed in light and exhaled pain and felt it all burning and slicing and tearing me apart from the inside.

It was like when Pelys tore my power out, but worse. So much worse. A thousand times worse. Physical as well as mental, as well as intangible.

I was dying but couldn’t even manage to do it properly. I wanted it to stop, to end, but I knew it never could.

Fire in my blood, purple light searing my body apart, and yet I lived.

Why?

Why?

WHY????

Somehow my body knew what to do. I pulled the power in, drawing it through my body and out into the world, even through the chaos. I felt the shield segment forming, distant and tremulous, the shield I’d spent so long practicing.

Through the burning, through the dying, I still did what I’d been trained to do.

I might have laughed if I had any breath left.

The shield formed slowly and did absolutely nothing to distract my attention from the agony. But it was progress of a sort. A thing that could progress. A marker of time passing so I could know I had not been trapped in an endless moment forever.

It didn’t make it any better.

I pulled harder, straining to fit myself back together. It had been minutes, ten, maybe more, and I was still breathing. I was still dying, but still not dead.

Oh, and I was screaming. I hadn’t noticed at first. It kind of disappeared into the overall torment, but as I slowly regained some semblance of mental control I began to think that perhaps I wasn’t actually going to die after all.

Why?

Build the shield. Ignore the pain. Retti could come back any moment and she’ll be out for blood. Build the shield. Ignore the pain.

Can’t be ignored. Endure. Endure the pain. Build the shield.

Fire.

Build the shield.

Pain.

Not dying. Not quite.

Shield.

Purple light.

The shield hit something and shattered, its structure disintegrating before I even realized what was happening. It took me a long moment to understand. Lan’s flashmail. I must have landed near her.

Start over. Build the shield. Pull the power in. Endure the pain. Hold it in closer this time, not stretching out so far.

Distant flashes of blue and silver and teal and red and red and red. Blurry, vague.

Sound coming slowly into focus.

Screaming. Retti? Yes, but also someone else. A man? And me. Of course me as well. Faint, by now. Rasping.

Why?

I tried to catch my breath, tried to hold steady for more than a split second. Too much. Too deep.

Fire. Purple light.

Shield.

The blades through my chest were beginning to melt. I wasn’t bleeding. Wasn’t dying. It only felt like it. An illusion of death. Though the reality would be welcome, any escape, any refuge.

Vess?

I shouldn’t be here. I should be in a chilly office beneath a drafty bedroom, scribbling inconsequential nonsense for the richer commoners. Why did life lately involve so much pain? I wasn’t a warrior, wasn’t a hero. I shouldn’t be here.

Yet here I remained. The reality could not be escaped or denied.

I lay screaming on the cold stone floor of a buried vault, one more broken body among so many, my power shattered, my future empty.

Alive, why?

At least you’ll be useful now.

One more experiment. One more point of data. One more in a row waiting for her decision to end us.

NO.

I blinked away the tears and focused. My shield was half formed. So, maybe another ten minutes had passed.

Endure.

I had to see what was happening. It had been long enough, if the others were still fighting—

Lights flared nearby. For a moment I imagined it was Vess coming to save me.

No. Just one of the helpless prisoners, power fluctuating out of control.

My vision blurred. The room was too still, too quiet. Rhythmic clatter. Metal on stone. No crack of power on power. Only the heavy sound of too many people breathing with too little strength.

Purple light and pink fire.

Endure.

My shield flared and pulsed around me as it reached full form, the colours shifting and blending.

I turned my head toward Lan, hoping she could help. But she lay dead beside me in a too-large pool of blood. Her hands and arms were mangled beyond recognition, shredded lumps of bloody flesh. I shuddered and looked away.

Why

I wanted to sit up and look around properly, but even tilting my head had been unbearable. I didn’t want to move, couldn’t force myself to do anything to further enflame the tearing inside me.

Endure.

But the shield was finished. My thoughts wandered, circling from pain to pain. Would the broken powerstone kill me? Would I go unconscious like Desten 4? Would the fire in my blood burn me to nothing? Would Retti come back and take back what she’d given, my body nothing but incubation for her mad experiments?

Fylen. Hylet. How many more unnamed souls. Dozens, just counting for the people lying here.

Retti was a monster. I should … do something.

Pain.

Would it never end? Was I doomed to struggle from torment to torment, watching friends slaughtered, my heart breaking more day by day, my purpose never fulfilled?

Endure.

But is that enough?

“Astesh, enough. Stop your whining.”

Something pressed into my shield, and I reflexively tore it apart.

An exhalation of breath, irritable. “Fine, be that way.”

Lan’s body twisted and flung itself atop me, sizzling my shield to nothing, then flopped off with a squelchy clang.

I shuddered, both from disgust at the display and from the fresh waves of agony at the shards of power stabbing through my heart and lungs, driven in further by the weight of her body.

Then power draped over me, flickering and flowing like a blanket, silver and calming and soothing. Finally, Vess had—

Wait. No. That hadn’t been Vess’s voice—

Vess’s power didn’t flicker with red—

Retti

No

Vess…

no no no

why

My throat stung with acid. I swallowed, trying not to imagine—

Not to think—

“Is that better? Ready to come with me?”

I didn’t look at her, didn’t respond, though I wanted to scream, Where are they? What have you done? Are any of them still alive?

“I had to deal with several of them, I’m afraid. A bit wasteful, I admit, but in the heat of the moment it’s hard to save everyone.”

Wait, had she just responded to my thoughts?

“If you don’t want me to answer, you should stop thinking so loudly.”

What…

“The silver power I wield is not that of your friend. I had to take him out of commission for the moment, but he’s still quite alive. See?”

I was lifted into the air, and I could see Vess lying on the floor near where he’d been standing. He twitched and panted heavily, but seemed uninjured. The silver power now pulsed with erratic streaks of blue.

Pelys lay beside him. Or… what used to be Pelys. I only recognized him by the robes.

“No.”

“It looks like you’re the only one who’ll be stabilizing. I wasn’t expecting that much. Pink and purple usually don’t play nicely together. You were very lucky.”

Cay lay torn open; Daum’s power fluctuated between his native teal and her blue.

I’d barely met them.

It wasn’t fair.

“There is no such thing as fairness, Astesh. You should know that by now. It is something we must build for ourselves, not something innate in the world.”

Why?

How could she—

Just why?

“Why am I doing all this? You know why. To save my husband. To protect my children. To safeguard the future of our world.”

How could she sound so calm, so untroubled? She stood amid death and madness. How could she talk like this was normal?

“We all must make sacrifices, sometimes.” Then she winced. “Please, do stop thinking so loudly, it’s beginning to cause a headache.”

Wait. If she was still acting calm and normal, she must not have gone upstairs yet. Once she realized I’d lied to her about Desten—

Retti’s power vanished from beneath me, dropping me abruptly to the ground. She was gone in a blur of red light before I could so much as catch my breath.

Not good. Not good. Not good, how had I— how was she—

No, that didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop myself thinking. I would have to do something else. I had— minutes at best.

Resources?

Uhhhh… dead people. Dying people. Soon to be murdered people. Unconscious people, twitching people. Could I break some of them free? No. Even if I had any way of breaking flashstone, what use would they be?

Wait. Flashstone.

I took a deep breath, flinched at the scent of blood and death, and started unfastening Lan’s flashmail as fast as my trembling hands could move. My power was no help, beginning to flicker then fading the moment I touched the armor.

Faster. Faster. No time.

I slipped the jacket on, trying to ignore the sticky blood coating the arms. No time to buckle it on properly. I unfastened the skirting next, then heard Retti’s roar of fury. She’d found Desten. No time. I tugged, trying to get the armor piece free, but Lan’s weight held it down.

No time. I’d have to take only what I had.

I started building my shield as I ran for the other exit, then paused. I couldn’t leave Vess here. And Daum. If they were left behind, she’d probably butcher them on the spot.

My power knew what I wanted. I raced toward them, forming loops of power as I ran, the rest cycling through me. I felt sluggish and clumsy, the power not reacting the same way as usual. My speed was significantly decreased by Retti’s shattering my stone, though fortunately the replacement seemed capable of doing everything else.

I secured each of them in a loop of power, flared it into levitation, and ran for the exit. They floated behind me like balloons on a string.

Something crashed loudly above, like breaking stone.

I ran.

This sub-basement was not set up anything like the two upper floors. Long, straight tunnels connected high, vast rooms. Thankfully, none of the others were full of living bodies - nor dead ones either.

One was set up like a living quarter, with a bed against one wall and a desk and various other furniture filling its bulk. Another door led outward. I crossed to it, trying to disguise my route, but it opened onto another stairway down.

No time to recalculate.

I flew down the stairs, checking to be sure Vess and Daum were still secured behind me. I had never been so terrified in my life. I knew that any second Retti would come after us, and we would all die. I had to come up with a plan. Something.

The bottom of the stairs was a single room full of boxes and piled furniture, looking oddly reminiscent of Desten 3’s untidy house. Pale green light glowed across the wall from behind a storage crate, likely a fading light construct.

But the image gave me an idea.

I crossed to the largest crate, forced it open, and guided Vess and Daum inside. I reclosed it, stuffing some dust into the cracks to conceal their fluctuating glows. I slashed a few gashes in the back of the crate, so they could get air without revealing their presence.

Then the light moved, shifting position, and I froze. It was barely visible in the brighter pink-purple illumination I was giving off, but I was sure of it. The green light wasn’t stationary.

“Tali?” I asked. No one else came to mind.

She poked her head up from behind a cabinet, ducking her head fearfully. “Ashtesh?”

“Astesh,” I said, emphasizing the ‘z’. “Only one ‘sh’.”

“Why— why are you here?”

“Ahhh,” I mumbled, trying to think of anything I could say. Because your mother wants to kill me? Nope. That sounded terrible. To kill your family? Nope, even worse. “I’m looking… for your father,” I finally said, a bit haltingly as I frantically constructed the scenario in my mind. “His friend misses him and I was hoping he could visit. But I had to sneak in because your mom is waaay overprotective, and then these two had an adverse reaction to something and I had to put them out of the way…”

I trailed off helplessly. Nope. That was a terrible story. No way she’d believe that.

“What’s wrong with my mom?” she asked instead, faintly. “She started getting scary sometimes. I think she’s just very afraid, but I don’t know why. She already killed the bad guys who were chasing us.”

Oh. Yikes. I was not qualified to undertake this conversation. Even if I weren’t under extreme time pressure.

“She wants to save your dad and he just keeps getting worse,” I said, simplifying to the easiest common denomonator. “And she doesn’t want… anything to happen to you,” I finished more slowly as an idea occurred to me. A terrible, desperate, stupid plan.

Retti’s husband was out of commission, probably for good. Desten was dead. Tali was quite possibly the last person left for whom Retti cared at all.

If I took her hostage, maybe I could force Retti to let me go. To let me escape and get Daum and Vess to … somewhere safe until they stabilized and recovered.

I looked at Tali for a moment, but the sight of her face was enough to utterly destroy any such plan. No matter the circumstances, I just couldn’t bring myself to threaten a child. Besides, Retti’s control was insane. She could probably snipe me without lifting a finger regardless of how I tried to use her daughter as a shield.

I shuddered and looked away, disgusted with myself for even contemplating it.

Pelys would have more than contemplated it.

But Pelys was dead now.

I nearly choked on the sudden grief, but I had no time for it and forced it away. Retti’s fury had fallen silent. She could be here any moment. I had to get away.

“Is there any back door out of this place?” I asked. “Maybe a tunnel down the hill?”

Tali shook her head. “Just upstairs.”

I cursed and stared at the crate in which I’d stuffed the survivors of our little raid. My plan had been to leave them for now, find a way out without risking them if I was caught, and at least if Retti found me before I could come back to smuggle them out they’d be hidden away from her immediate wrath.

She may be insane, but it was a largely reasonable insanity. She’d already proven she cared more about them as resources than as corpses. Though I wasn’t sure if that might be worse, I still couldn’t bring myself to put them in any unnecessary danger.

But if Tali was here, that meant there was a much higher chance of Retti coming here. In fact, she might well come here immediately upon realizing we were gone, just to ensure the rest of her family was safe.

Lost god! I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. Why was it all up to me? I didn’t know what to do! How was I supposed to outwit an insane, overpowered, grieving mother bent on my destruction?

I picked up the whole crate with a loop of my power and dragged it behind me up the stairs. I didn’t have time to unpack them, and it would be easier managing one object than two bodies anyway. I mentally apologized for any bumps that may result, but getting out of here alive was a higher priority at the moment.

I paused halfway. “Please don’t tell her I was here,” I said. “She’s probably very angry right now.”

Tali didn’t respond, and I didn’t have time to waste in coaxing a promise out of her. I pushed back into the air and flew out, picking a new random direction when I hit the open passages.

I had to get around Retti somehow. I could try to tunnel out the side of the hill, but that could take hours and it would not be quiet or subtle. The only reasonable way to escape was through the upstairs.

If she did come to check on Tali, maybe I could get past while she was distracted?

I paused, two turns away, and strained to listen. Nothing. No indication of Retti’s location. Not a footstep, not a rush of wind, not a clatter of stone.

It made me very uneasy.

I slid to the ground, trembling and overwhelmed. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. It was too much. And Pelys wasn’t here to smack me out of it.

I couldn’t stop the tears this time, but I muffled my sobbing as best I could against the flashmail sleeve. Pel was gone. Lan was gone. Vess was— broken, just like Desten 4, his power out of control and unstable. I knew instinctively that it wouldn’t stabilize. It wasn’t clashing like Retti’s had been, dancing around each other trying to make peace. Not like mine had been, searching for a balance between fire and light. And I didn’t know how to fix him.

Curse my stupid curiosity. If I’d run away like any sensible person, I’d never have witnessed Fylen’s last duel. If I hadn’t been so driven by the need to understand why that event had happened, I’d never have gotten mixed up in this stupid quest for vengeance. And if I’d been willing to stand up for myself and tell Pelys ‘no, I don’t want to fight, leave me out of it,’ then I wouldn’t be here hiding in a neglected corridor in an underground secret compound of doom, waiting for a murderess to hunt me down and use me as just one more subject in her mad experiments.

Which, naturally, is when she found me.