The sky above began to shift, and the Realm moved to the left. Sirinn sat near the railing and cried, his forehead in his knees. Suddenly, a wind went through his hair, and he heard steps. Someone running fast, very fast. His eyes opened wide, Vellantina was charging at Estella. Before the princess or the star had time to react, she grabbed the amulet, pulled, breaking the chain, sent the princess on the floor with a foot-kick to the stomach, and threw the charm behind her.

Ulius caught it and shouted:

“Stop Jump! Engage Quarantine Protocol!”

The black sky disappeared out of the blue, replaced by a milky color.

“Providence, we did it!” gasped Ulius.

“You calculated all until the last bullet, hah, pig? Wanted to shoot me, piece of vomit?”

She kicked Estella in the ribs twice.

“Stop, Stop!” shouted Sirinn. “You’re hurting her!”

“Yeah, but I’m hurting it too! It’s been a while we were watching your conversation.”

She produced some rope from a pocket and busied to tie Estella.

“You think you can keep me prisoner?” laughed the star. “Just wait… What? What have you done?”

“Oh, you’ve noticed?” replied Ulius. “You cannot get into our minds; we have protection.”

“No protection can stop me!” hissed Estella, frowning intensely.

“I would beg you to differ!” smirked her brother back. “Excuse me if I don’t elaborate, it’s complicated, and you’d not understand it. You don’t strike me as a genius! Now, Sirinn, we have to chat in private. Let’s go in the house, so it could not hear us. I suppose you tied her tight, Vella?”

“What do you think? She’ll not go anywhere.”

They got back into the building and settled for the sitting room.

“How did you get here?” asked Sirinn, looking at his friends, still astonished.

“Oh, long story short,” replied Ulius, “I had a compelling experience, and that made me reconsider things from another perspective...”

“I kissed him,” confessed Vellantina.

“Yes! At that moment, I realized I became a man... - don’t you dare laugh, Sirinn! – and I’ve told myself: I’m a Quevedo, the son of the Slayer of the Second Moon, descending from Santiago Quevedo by my father, and from the First King by my mother. I’m hero material, and heroes do not run - I told you not to laugh! - The amulet is the work of my ancestors; I will get it back. In short, I took Sem’s scroll, if you remember, it was in my backpack, connected it to the tunneling interface, wrote some code, used my magic, and voila. I accessed the secondary systems of the ship and opened the cameras. We watched all the drama live. While we were doing that, we were searching for a plan too. It was a true feat to put one together so fast, but we did. The first step was to stop it from stealing the ship. Vella took the amulet back, and I activated the quarantine protocol. Do you remember it said the ship’s armor is a pseudo universe skin? We are now totally isolated from space and time around, a small, independent universe on our own. We hoped that would cut the link too. You know, the star projecting its mind in Estella.”

“Didn’t work...” sighed Sirinn.

“Eh... I have a theory... It did but in another way. Do you remember that light is a wave and particle at the same time? His mind projections are the same.”

“Sorry?” Vella and Sirinn asked at the same time.

“Pfff... how to put it. The beam was cut, but something was left behind, a hard copy of the star’s mind. There are two of them now, one here and one outside. This one, here, is weaker. That’s why he cannot jump to us. No more star-level fusion energy to feed it.”

“Please, Ulius, hurry with the story! I hear her wriggling on the floor... let’s get to the part we free her!”

The kid’s face sobered.

“The second part of the plan is more complicated. We prepared a plan B in case the link isn’t cut. There is my way and Vella’s way. Mine’s like this: I wrote a code for the ship to protect it from mind interference. When we open the ship again, the star mind will be ejected forcefully from Estella. The thing is that there are downsides. One, the star will be free to plot again and hijack some poor soul out there. Two, well...”

“Estella could die,” said Vellantina abruptly. “Now, it’s not just a beam of whatever anymore; the star’s mind is in her. Estella’s mind will be destroyed in the process. It will happen too fast, the extraction.”

“But we don’t know for sure!” said Ulius.

“You’ll do that over my dead body!” hissed Sirinn. “What’s the other option?”

“Well... I’ll let Vellantina explain.”

“We kill her. Fill the tub with water, and drown her...”

“You’ll do that over my dead body!” Sirinn shouted.

“... and then we resuscitate her by mouth to mouth and cardiac massage. I’ll let you do the honors; looks like you have the experience.”

“When she’ll die, the star’s mind will die too. Their consciousnesses are linked together,” spoke Ulius again. “Then, when we open the ship to the universe again, the star minds will fusion anew, and chances are the main one will die as well, from the shock. At least that’s my theory. We’re in uncharted terrain here!”

“This is insane! One plan risks killing her afterward - maybe, said Ulius - and the other requires killing her beforehand? What if the resuscitation fails? Bullocks! We stay here, and we think, for a hundred years if we must, of a better so... lu... tion...”

His words slowed as his eyes lightened.

“What?” the other two asked.

“I have an idea!” he exclaimed, jumping up from the sofa. “It’s… perfect. Just perfect!”

“Is it safe?” asked Vellantina.

“For her? Worse than death, but safe, yes. Come!”

“How can it be worse than death but safe?” mumbled Ulius on their way back.

On the terrace, Estella was free. She had cut her ropes on the kitchen knife Sirinn had thrown away. As soon she saw them, she took a fighting posture.

“Get back!” she shouted. “I know hundreds of martial arts!”

Vella was ready to put the senses back in the star’s mind, breaking her an arm or two, but Sirinn stepped in front.

“My love, I’m very sorry for what’s about to happen! It will hurt me more than it will hurt you!”

He knelt and touched the stone tiles with his hands. The next second, one, then two, then a legion of little red ants crawled down his arms, arranged in lines, marching toward Estella. At first, she looked at them amused, but her expression changed into surprise, then horror. As soon as the first ants reached her ankles, she screamed:

“Iiiii! Take them off me! Please! Please! Take them off, take them oooooff!”

“It must be dead,” said Ulius. “Firewall up, return to normal status!” he said, with the amulet in his hand, and the stars shone above, with the Realm in his original position.

“How?” asked Vellantina, stupefied, while Estella was still running amock, but the ants were returning to the boy.

“Shush! Calm down, my love. Here, they are gone!” Sirinn was telling the princess, catching her in his arms. “I provoked an immune reaction, Vella. Like a vaccine. She’s terrified of bugs. I thought: she’s still in there, somewhere, when she’ll see the ants, she’ll panic so much her mind will kill that invader on its own.”

“Brilliant!” said Ulius. “Not that I see how your relationship will work, with you a walking anthill.”

“Can you get rid of them, dear?” asked Estella immediately.

“There are no ants; that’s my blood!” he sulked. “I can do blood magic. But for you, my heart, I’ll do anything. A complete transfusion, if that’s what it takes!” he energized again, ready to show his dedication.

“It’s fine,” she sighed back. “I’ll try not to think about it... maybe you can make them take another shape? Tiny cats or something?” she showed hope again.

“I’ll work on it,” he promised.

They had to tell the story to Estella again. About Ulius bravery and Vellantina’s kiss. She was a little indisposed by that but hid it well. In the end, they all congratulated Sirinn.

“Impressive, mate!” said Ulius, patting him on the back.

“Indeed, mate! You too, with the ship controls and all,” indulged Sirinn the kid manliness show-off, patting him back in turn.

“Two things are yet unclear to me,” Estella said. “If the star was in Alienor, and Sem was innocent, who kidnapped us?”

“I have a theory!” said Ulius, to her distress. “As always, it is the least conspicuous person. I think it was you, my dear sister.”

“What?”

“Yes. The star had no idea who we were when we first met in the village. It was not it who spied on you, but you who spied on it. I suppose the scroll, being linked to the Stars Society or whatever, had on it, already, enough things for you to read probabilities. A path to Alienor’s mind, you two connected, and your subconsciousness felt the bad guy, yet it was impossible to identify it. You might have inherited the tunneling ability from dad, but it was dormant.”

“My other self, the one from another reality, was doing tunnels...” pondered Estella. “It might be...”

“Then, your inner self transported us to confront the menace and took Sem with us. As soon as you opened the scroll again, on the hill, to check Sem’s story, you saw Alienor approaching. And it leads to the rest. At least that’s my theory for now. Things change, that’s what you say. I was pretty close, with Sem being the villain, yet not quite spot on. No one expected a star, no?”

“Oh, you were brilliant, Ulius!” said Vellantina, to Estella’s desperation.

She sighed was and decided to go for another thing. “And how can you do blood magic, my dear? Never heard of it. Is this a secret beauhemian trick?”

“Nah,” he waved his hand. “It’s beyond them. Only we can do it. We have this magic ink we mix with blood, and we tatoo ourselves with it. It becomes a part of us.”

“We? We who?” she asked, surprised.

Sirinn froze. There are moments when the truth can make or break a relationship, and it was one of those moments. He inhaled, then decided that honesty is the best option in love.

“To tell you the truth... I’m not quite beauhemian, my love. I look beauhemian, but I’m not!”

“You’re joking, yes? You cannot be a human with those pointy ears. A dwarf is not even an option. An elf? Have you been sick as a child, maybe?”

“No, Estella. No elf. No.”

He was quite upset now.

“I’m yellé, Estella. The Free people. The ones who refused to change when the humans came. The ones who hunt barefoot in the forest. The ones who sleep in the rain and revel in it. The...”

“He’s a head-hunter, sis, it’s obvious,” said Ulius. “Those neolithic savages from the Islands.”

“Savages? You take a stone and make a tool out of it. I dare you, Ulius! Let’s see your science at work!”

“Calm down, my love!” said Estella, putting her hand on his arm. “I love you anyway, be you whatever. Every moment from now to the end of my life, I’ll fall in love with you.”

“Bleah!” whispered Vellantina.

“My dearest dove!” Sirinn sighed. “I’ll do the same, love you every moment, with every blink of my eyes and every beat of my heart!”

“Beurch!” whispered Ulius back to the Protectoress, hugging her by the shoulders and kissing her temple. She tucked herself into him, and they kissed rapidly and furtively, nibbling each other lips while the others were occupied with themselves.

“But why pretend to be a…well… beauhemian?” had asked Estella meanwhile.

“I never said I’m a beauhemian; I just let the others think I am. The story is simple: my tribe lived on the Archipelago’s Capital's outskirts, and life was hard. The humans were cutting the forest down, and food was scarce. Our tribe decided to go hunting on another island, and before they left, my parents took me apart and told me: Look, Sirinn. You are our weakest child, and we’re afraid you won’t make it through the trip. Your brothers and sisters are much stronger. They’ve already hunted explorer, while you still go for dhodos.”

“You have brothers, Sirinn?” asked Estella, interested.

“Five, and two sisters, that was back then. We kinda like big families. So, papa said: there is this nice guy, kind of a sucker for our people, charity society and all, he was talking about Ernest. I think you can make him take you with him, offer you food, shelter, clothes, and an education for free. Make him believe it’s his idea and that you’re doing him a service. And by all means, don’t let him know who you are, or he’ll drop you in the middle of the jungle just to put you in your natural habitat. So I hunted a few cats, skinned them, tanned the skins, made some hats to look like raccoon ones and begun peddling on the main street, where Ernest had business every day. And the rest is history!”

He was quite proud of himself, and Estella smiled back at him, the blindness of her loving heart passing over some minor details of his loved one race: the notorious consumption of human blood or the shrinking of heads.

“You know this kind of scam is so typically beauhemian, don’t you?” sussured Ulius in Vella’s ear.

“Yes, I do!” she replied through her pretend to smile clenched teeth.