Brother and Sister

  "You've lost," she told him. "Everything you've ever built is now being shattered, piece by piece. Your forces are in chaos. Your worlds burn. Holy Mercury has been reduced to an ashen graveyard. And now, Doss, the entire Great Domain can see what you truly are. Not an Emperor. Certainly not any manner of God, and barely even a Highborn at all. You call yourself Architect; now, your design has been laid to ruin." She leaned in close. "I have laid it to ruin. It was I who brokered the alliance between Jaras and the Sovereign; I who facilitated countless defections to the side of the Black Fleet. It was I who charted the course of this invasion, and it was I who has dogged your heels at every turn. And it is you, Doss, who has been stupid enough to forget that all this time, you've been sitting on my throne. That was your mistake, in the end." She leaned back, folded her arms. "Forgetting, for even a moment, that you were always living on borrowed time."

  And Doss, the bastard, just looked up at Hiela and smiled.

  "I knew it was you," he said. Even in this broken form, his very being still hummed with a keen, invisible energy — an unmistakable sense of presence that precluded his every word and deed. The two siblings were facing one another now in what felt, really, like little more than a closet — a sparse enclosure, all grey-marbled granite and the occasional throbbing vein, sporting only a rudimentary bench upon which the disgraced Emperor now sat. They had dumped him here in rather unceremonious fashion; after that, the Grand Architect had been left for several hours to simply stew in his own isolation. Finally, though, Hiela had returned, albeit greatly changed: she had shed her gown in favor of a sleek, armor-plated grey bodysuit, the right shoulder of which sported a golden-orange cloak. While one arm remained bare, the other was concealed by a black glove that stretched from her fingers all the way to her upper elbow.

  This was a sort of reunion, really, because in a full decade the siblings had hardly spoken a word to one another. Now Hiela had a great deal to say to her brother indeed; by contrast, she harbored an irritating suspicion that Doss had little, if anything, to say in return.

  At any rate, he was looking up at her now with all the warmth in the world, as though nothing had changed between them — as though they were still thick as thieves, she and her little brother, and as though he were still the only one who truly understood her. As though the past decade had been nothing more than a strange, fleeting dream. Hiela, naturally, found this childish farce absolutely infuriating.

  "Jaras always lacked vision," Doss went on, in that strange modulated voice of his. "What use would a creature like that have for a throne? Of course it was you, whispering in his ear! And of course it was you — the mind I've been pitting myself against, all this time." His smile grew to a grin, his emerald eyes shone bright. "Who else could possibly challenge a deity made flesh, save for his own-"

  "Stop it!" Hiela snapped, suddenly, and at that Doss simply straightened and cocked his head. "I have no desire to talk to the Grand Architect, or the Jade Emperor, or whatever else you fucking call yourself. Neither of those shallow farces mean a thing to me. I'm here to talk to my brother, Doss — and if he isn't here, then we have nothing more to discuss." She paused, briefly, and then: "Surely you haven't deluded yourself into actually believing that nonsense? That you're some all-seeing, all-knowing deity fated to rule the Domain?"

  For a moment, he just looked at her, blinking and unmoving in distinctly reptilian fashion. Looking as though the words had simply passed through him, ethereal and meaningless. Like he hadn't even heard her at all. And then, well, nothing changed at all — and yet, paradoxically, everything changed at once, and suddenly all that overwhelming presence had fallen away and suddenly, like a fading mirage, the Jade Emperor was gone. And in his place was just...

  Doss.

  He wasn't smiling anymore.

  "Of course I don't actually believe that shit," her little brother scoffed, nose wrinkled with irritation. "Are you insane?"

  "When's the last time you broke character?" she shot back, her voice dry as any desert. How easily they reverted back to old roles, old patterns. Old annoyances, too.

  "Oh, I don't know," Doss rolled his eyes, waving her off. "When's the last time you stopped seething at me for five minutes?"

  "I thought you'd lost yourself in the depths of your own illusion." Heila folded her arms, fixed him with a stern glare. "I'm still not convinced otherwise."

  "Believe what you like," Doss scoffed, leaning back and closing his eyes. "I really do not care." But Hiela's glare did not waver, and soon the heat of her gaze was such that his eyes snapped open once more.

  "Okay, fine," he sighed, leaning forward and enmeshing his metal fingers. "Let's talk. Tell me, Hiela, what exactly is the point of all this nonsense? You really want to be Empress that badly?"

  "That's what you think this is?" Hiela demanded, her voice and ire rising in concert. She took a single step forwards, her expression darkening. "You think I'm jealous of you?"

  "Sure, why not."

  "You really don't understand, do you?" she seethed, glaring down at him with brilliant golden eyes. "You stabbed me in the back, you fucking bastard."

  "I did no such thing."

  "I never wanted it," Hiela hissed, leaning in and jabbing a finger against his metal chest. "Never. But I knew it was going to be me and so I worked, day and night and day and night. I carved away every piece of myself until there was nothing left but the future Empress. I sacrificed everything I had — happiness, camaraderie, joy, calm, contentment! I whittled it all away to become a perfect implement, and the only reason I ever did so was because he told me I would have to. And then you just..." Hiela closed her mouth, swallowed. Stood tall. Composed herself. This would be no wild outpouring of emotion. This would be controlled and surgical, this excision of her long-hidden self. "You and father never said a word to me. And then he was dead, and you were Emperor, and I was fucking pointless."

  Doss's expression had been steadily fracturing; each word another twist of the knife in his gut. That was what Hiela had been hoping for, to see that he still loved his older sister after all these years — because that would hurt him all the more.

  "Father made his decision," Doss said, finally. Quietly. The Emperor of the known universe, who was now just a meek young man that couldn't look his sister in the eye. "What was I to do?"

  "You could have rejected it."

  "No, I couldn't," he shook his head, smiling sadly. Still staring at the far wall. "Please, Hiela. Don't make me say it. Surely you saw it too, in the games we played together. Surely you were aware in some capacity that I was outpacing you, day by day." And at that, Hiela went rigid, quite literally frozen with rage. Her eyes went wide, her jaw clenched tight. She was livid beyond all belief, and it brought on only the slightest mollification to see Doss visibly shrinking back. Was he scared of her? Was he ashamed? She hoped he felt all of it and more.

  "What are you saying?" she growled, through tight-gritted teeth. It barely qualified as a question.

  "There are trillions and trillions of people, within the Domain," Doss answered, slowly. Hesitant, yet nevertheless firm in his conviction. In no way was he backing down, now, and now his eyes were finally locking onto her own. "So many of them just as I was, penniless and starving. Suffering, Hiela, on a level you can only imagine. Whoever inherits the throne inherits them, too. They need..." He trailed off. "Only the greatest of minds should ever be set to such a monumental task. And, Hiela..." He gave her a sad, knowing little smile. "In all my life, never once have I met a true equal."

  Hiela was still as stone. "Even father?"

  "Even father," Doss nodded. "Even in his prime. His methods, his philosophies — all so blatantly flawed. Even then I could see it, even then I knew what I needed to do and how I was going to do it. The only path to true prosperity is stability, and that-" He raised one hand, closed it tight into a fist, "-requires control. Perfection. Totality. The removal of any and all choice, save for the right choice. You don't have it in you, Hiela. Nobody does. Nobody but me..." He trailed off, then muttered, half to his sister and half to himself: "I wish I understood why."

  Hiela was silent for a long, long time. And then, finally: "You're wrong."

  "Because of this?" Doss gestured to the cell, to himself. The meaning was clear; he referred to his complete and total defeat. "Hiela, please." And then, suddenly, there came about another change, this time one entirely invisible, and suddenly Hiela was once again sitting across a Sarnac board against an opponent whom she knew she could never, ever best. All-seeing, all-knowing. Totality, just like he had said. It was like staring up the face of a mountain.

  Doss leaned forward, eyes glittering, and told her: "Our game is far from over."

  Hiela just stared at him, at the Jade Emperor, and silently — for just the briefest flicker of an instant — she wished to have her brother back. "Jaras will be here shortly," she told him, instead, her voice devoid of any inflection. "Prepare yourself."

  "Oh, Jaras," Doss sighed, and the self-assured smile returned to his countenance once more. "That vacant-headed moron. How it must irk you, Hiela, to know that this will forever be his victory. His fleets, his soldiers. And, in the end, his throne. All you've managed to do is sideline yourself once more."

  "We'll see," Hiela said, ice-cold, and then those emerald eyes flicked right to her gloved arm. Damn him to the void and back.

  "Oh, my beloved sister," the Emperor chuckled darkly, to himself. Knowing, somehow, just as he always did. "Of course you'd have another plan in motion. Listen — I'll leave you with this." He leaned forward, steepled his fingers, and grinned up at her like the devil himself.

  "It is true that mine is a mind without equal," he told her. "But you, Hiela...out of every living thing in all the Great Domain, you have come by far the closest."

  For a moment, Hiela was a statue, her expression entirely unreadable. Then she just stepped out, slammed the door shut, and set off without another word. Her heels clicked loudly against the tiled floor; her halo thrummed and shone brightly about her skull.

  She had been a fool to waste words on a beaten enemy.

  There was still work to be done.

  The Apocalypse

  When the Black Fleet came, it did so in characteristically violent fashion.

  All across the Sol System, thousands of gouges were torn violently into the fabric of realspace, and it was from these gaping wounds that millions warships spilled out, pouring over all like a plague of old-testament locusts. They were a literal black cloud upon the Sol System, and they wasted no time in setting to that which they indisputably did best.

  Countless moons were not just boiled but shattered, in that initial onslaught, with Callisto being one of few that was merely scoured of all life. The Black Fleet swept onwards to the Inner Worlds, whereupon the megastructures of Venus were demolished and the surface of the planet itself was made to little more than blackened char and superheated glass. Mars, next in line, was simply set ablaze.

  Trillions perished in those early hours.

  From out-system, there came the closest forces of the Star-Touched and Void-Grazing Imperial Naval Armada — three fleets, dubbed the Second, Third, and Ninth Hosts, respectively. Impressive flotillas of voidships, disgorgers, frigates, poniards, and even a trio of twin-pronged Hannibal-Class Reality-Shredders. Yet they were in so many ways at a disadvantage; for one, they were caught emerging from the far reaches of Sol, and the three fleets had all appeared some distance apart by error on the part of a nameless Wayfarer-hybrid. But more important were the defections of which Hiela had spoken, because in truth the military had always been loyal to the Crimson Emir. Anyone with any combat experience or aptitude at all had inevitably defected to the side of the bloody-handed conquerer, aided in doing so by Hiela's invisible agents.

  More to the point, the three Hosts now present had not fought in a single campaign. The Black Fleet, by contrast, had never stopped fighting.

  And so what followed was really just another sort of slaughter. The Sky-Melters did what they did best and went straight to war, whereupon they rent the Emperor's forces to bloody pieces. Forget firepower, forget muscle, forget experience: at the end of the day, these were novice admirals pitted against perhaps the greatest tactician the Great Domain had ever known. And so this was no contest at all.

  Far, far away, thousands of troops were arriving to reinforce those besieging the Panopticon — to finally break the Imperial forces cloistered within, for against all odds there were scattered reports that the defenders were actually pushing back. The Sovereign's Se-dai had seemingly vanished into thin air; thus, the Emir's soldiers were reinforced by three legions of Death Knell, and thus were a great many killers disembarking from a dozen different shuttles when, ahead, someone let out a warning shout.

  This particular group — some two-hundred-or-so soldiers, joined by a dozen Death Knell — was really just a victim of bad fortune, in that moment. They were unlucky enough to be the first ones the Se-dai encountered.

  An armored figure was above them, for a moment, the light glinting fiercely off the edge of her hammer, and then Ammit came down and split the entire hangar in twain. And then? All was chaos, and all was death. Through the dust and debris came blurred figures that left devastation in their wake, reaching out like living shadows and killing anything they touched. They were like phantoms, intangible and inviolable, and even the bloodthirsty warriors of the Black Fleet were quickly driven to a state of panicked, maddened terror. And amidst it all, none killed with such terrible veracity as Loki did, the Loyalist turncoat having become but a bolt of pure lightning as she cleft and dismembered by the dozens with curved sword in hand.

  She was a whirlwind, too fast to see and far too fast to possibly stop — until, finally, one of the Death Knell got lucky and did just that, locking her blade against the hilt of his staff. For the briefest of moments, the contest was thus, and the two actually appeared to be equal in strength — until, of course, Loki just dropped the sword, blitzed between his legs, and obliterated his heart with a bullet-punch to the back. Another knight emerged, roaring from the smoke, glaive raised to strike the head from her shoulders, and Loki just snatched her sword from the air and flashed the warrior a bloody-toothed grin.

  And then Ammit materialized, hammer cocked back, and with one titanic blow she simply vaporized the unfortunate cyborg from the waist down. And as the force of the impact blew all that smoke and dust and debris into sheer non-existence, all were quite suddenly and abruptly aware that the battle had already concluded. Two hundred soldiers of the Crimson Emir lie dead in a heap; the nine remaining Se-dai stood unbowed and unharmed, though all were venting heat and breathing heavily.

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  "[The ships]," Anansi said simply, and Ares darted forward at once to slaughter the pilots of those unfortunate transports. Loki, meanwhile, was looking at Ammit with a decidedly puzzled expression.

  "[What was your rank, again?]" Loki asked.

  "[Two-hundred-and-four,]" came Ammit's gruff reply, as she hefted the gore-soaked hammer over her shoulder. Loki's eyes flicked to the side — to the literal canyon that had been carved across the battlefield with but a single blow. Ammit saw this, and merely shrugged her shoulders.

  "[The Sovereign is a poor judge of character,]" Loki remarked, dryly. And then Anansi gave a sharp whistle, and all Se-dai assembled at once to hear the words of their de-facto leader.

  "[Our priority,]" Anansi declared, wiping her blades free as she spoke, "[is to reclaim the Medulla.]" She spoke of the Panopticon's 'nerve center', the room from which every aspect of the vast Citadel could be controlled — most significant among these functions being comms, shields, and weapons. "[The Panopticon must be reclaimed before-]"

  "[And what of the Sovereign?]" Loki interrupted sharply. Too sharply; several of her estranged sisters were shooting her pointed glares. Forgiveness only went so far. Yet still did Loki stand defiant — and, perhaps, just a tad bit desperate. Forgiveness only went so far, after all.

  "[The death of our father draws near,]" Anansi reassured her, cooly. "[But we have not the strength to assault a living moon-]"

  "[You speak of invasion,]" Loki cut in, again, heedless of the stares. She reached up, flipped her braid over one shoulder, and explained: "[I speak of *assassination.*]"

  "[You're lost your mind,]" Ra cut in, to which Loki bared her teeth and snarled. A clear and succinct retort.

  "[You would confront our father alone?]" Anansi asked, still calm as could be — and there, in her even tone of voice, came realization that somehow she had already known what Loki would suggest. They were kindred spirits, after all, whether they would admit it or not — two souls cut from one tapestry, chasing each another round and round for ages upon end. Loki understood, then, that Anansi wanted exactly the same thing: to storm Ceres alone, to turn the Sovereign's terrible and unrequited gifts against him. To avenge her sisters. To absolve herself, and more importantly to put the burden on herself. But Anansi was bound by countless threads; bound by the Se-dai, to whom she was a lighthouse amidst a stormy sea, and bound to the Emperor, with whom she shared a bond that transcended everything else.

  But Loki — Loki was untethered. Loki was free. And it was for that reason that Anansi did not immediately respond. Instead, she just strode forward, extended a hand — and the two Se-dai clasped arms, each hand grasping the other's elbow. It was an old, old symbol of solidarity. Of the passing, truly, of an infinitesimal spark that could not be touched and could not be felt. It was the closest expression of sorority that two Se-dai could ever express.

  "[You will not survive,]" Anansi told her plainly. Loki just smiled, exposing rows of teal-stained teeth.

  "[Nor should I,]" Loki agreed. "[I told you, Anansi, that I've been a coward all my life. Here, now,]" her voice was thick with pride and certainty, "[this is the first time I've ever felt truly unafraid. This is where I'm supposed to be. This is what I'm supposed to do. I know it like I know the stars and the moon.]"

  "[I know it, too,]" Anansi said quietly. And then: "[But first, my sister, there are two things I must teach you.]"

  When she was done, Loki stepped back — no longer smiling, her face set hard with determination and purpose. And at once Anansi crossed her arms in salute, and at once did all Se-dai present do the same. At once did all hail their wayward sister, now finally returned home, as she turned her back and made way for the ship that would take her to their vile father.

  "[When you strike him down,]" Anansi called, from behind, [it will be the hand of every Se-dai that holds the sword. Know this, Loki: never again will you fight alone.]"

  Loki didn't turn back. "[I know,]" she said, after a moment. And then: "[I won't let you down.]" And then the door hissed shut, and a minute later the shuttle was lifting up and gliding away, the afterburners trailing twin streaks of iridescent blue and leaving in their wake a shimmering, quavering miasma.

  For a moment, not one of the Se-dai spoke a word.

  "[Do you think she can do it?]" Ammit asked, finally, speaking for all of them. Anansi's eyes had remained closed; she opened them, now, and fixed Ammit with an even stare.

  "[Loki beat me,]" she told them, simply.

  A long, stunned silence followed. And then, again, it was Ammit who said what they all were thinking: "[Our father is doomed.]"

  The Family, Reunited

  A shadow fell over the holy ruin of Mercury.

  The Ardenti Manu was a slow and silent monolith, sliding without sound across the darkness of space and carrying with it a buzzing black cloud of a thousand frigates, picket ships, and point-defense fighters, all locked in perpetual orbit to the man at the center of it all. It moved, with gradual and terrible purpose, to sit suspended in nothingness betwixt Mercury and Ceres, its great engines slowly cooling from blinding-white to a dull, warm umber.

  From this vast and hideous vessel, a single shuttle was disgorged.

  The three of them were waiting in the Inner Sanctum — imperious Hiela, kneeling Doss, and the looming Sovereign — when those great double-doors swung ponderously open, and the shadow of a giant was cast upon them all.

  He was much as Hiela remembered him. A true colossus of a man, a slab of meat and bone hewn from the side of a solid cliff. Keen black eyes peered out from beneath a heavy cro-magnon brow, and the body of the titan was draped in a vast panapoly of trophies, trinkets, and weaponry. And, of course, he was grinning all the while — exposing rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  There they were, then. The four beings in all the Great Domain who could be plausibly classified as demigods, now assembled together in one room. Raan Volsif's legacy in the flesh.

  A pitiful state of affairs, indeed.

  "Hiela!" the Crimson Emir boomed, stomping across the floor and spreading his arms wide. Ninety-nine Crimson Knights followed in close proximity as he wrapped his sister in a tight embrace, one that threatened to snap her ribs like twigs and leave her as nothing more than a bag of empty skin. Hiela was a tall woman; with her heels on, she stood at nearly seven feet. But her brother, Jaras, was a literal giant, having undergone so much gene-editing that he towered at nearly ten feet in height. His hands were the size of Hiela's skull; his neck almost two feet thick in length. Just like Hiela and Doss, he too was a vast and terrible presence — but in his case, that presence was most entirely physical.

  "Jaras," Hiela laughed, after finally she was released. She straightened, pulled the glove tight — for to lose it now would be nothing short of disastrous. Her mind whirled, for a moment, with ten thousand plans and dreams and hateful epithets before she went on: "You look well."

  "And you look like a damned war-goddess!" Jaras laughed, gesturing to her calculated new ensemble. "By the void, Hiela, it's been too long!"

  Far, far too long. Too long for them to ever be anything resembling family. But Hiela just put on a smile and nodded, hands folded behind her, then took a step back — the perfect picture of polite contrition. A part of the background and nothing more. And Jaras accepted this at once, of course, because she was only confirming that which he already believed. And so now did that predatory gaze turn, slow and ponderous, onto the kneeling form of his half-brother, and so did his wide grin twist into a narrow, angular smirk.

  "Doss," the Emir rumbled, stepping forward and bathing the former Emperor in his shadow.

  "Jaras," Doss replied, calm as could be — though his lip curled, reflexively, with plain disgust. "You haven't changed a bit." A vicious insult, to be sure.

  "And you, my half-brother, have changed to the point I hardly even recognize you," the Emir sneered back. "What happened to that scared, meek little orphan boy?"

  "He ascended," Doss snarled in reply. "He became a higher being, a creature of vast and infinite multitudes. He became the undisputed lord and master of the entire human race." He hawked, then spat — which was a decidedly un-deific thing to do. "You may take my head, Jaras, but you'll never take my throne."

  "Is that so?" the Emir chuckled. He took a step closer, and the ground trembled as he lowered himself to one knee. Doss glared in defiance all the while, emerald eyes blazing with hatred beyond compare. No - not hatred, Hiela realized. Disgust. Disdain! Even now, Doss was looking at his older brother as though he were entirely beneath him. As though he were an unwelcome annoyance, and nothing more. And Jaras saw it too.

  "All is entropy," Jaras told him, his sneer twisting into something truly vile. "All is chaos. All is death. And I, Doss, am lord and master of death. You speak of humanity — of order, of control, of perfection. But look, Doss. Look how easily the illusion shatters. Look how it crumbles in the palm of my hand." And his giant hand curled tight into a fist, just a quarter-inch from Doss's head.

  For a moment, Hiela thought her brother was going to die.

  Doss didn't flinch. He didn't even blink.

  And then, abruptly, and Crimson Emir was on his feet.

  "Back to the Ardenti Manu," he ordered, and ninety-nine vermillion knights moved to obey. "I intend to make you watch." And so Doss was hoisted to his feet, Hiela was surrounded by a twenty-person escort, and all made for the great doorway — just as, finally, the Sovereign spoke up behind them.

  "You're welcome!" the gestalt snapped.

  The Emir froze on the spot.

  All knights did the same, in unison. Hiela mirrored them in turn — and turned her head to watch, now, as the Crimson Emir strode forwards. And she watched, silent, as the Sovereign physically receded whilst the Warmaster drew closer and closer. Eight half-blood Se-dai formed a defensive ring, wrist-blades at the ready, for none had yet mastered a Ker-sot. The Emir didn't even spare them a glance.

  Doss and Hiela were brave, certainly, and confident to a fault. But Jaras? Fear was something he had simply been born without.

  "I think," her older brother said, coming to a halt, "that you have forgotten our earlier conversation." And to put a period on that sentence, he stamped one foot straight down, shattering the mosaic beneath him and sending a spiderweb of cracks spanning out in all directions. One made it nearly to the tip of Hiela's shoe; she just watched all the while, calm as could be, with one eyebrow raised.

  "What did I tell you, when last we spoke?" the Emir rumbled. "We are not equals. Myself, my beloved sister — we are higher beings, descended from a lineage that spans millennia. We are the true inheritors of the known universe. Even Doss, that pathetic little wretch, was anointed by my father, Raan Kal Volsif. He, too, is a distant member of this vaunted fraternity. But you, Sovereign-" He pointed a meaty finger. "You are a low creature. A self-important parasite who has thrived for so long by only the graces of the service you provide. And what service do you provide to me, now?" He scoffed. "Word from the Panopticon is clear: your Se-dai are extinct. You have served your purpose, Sovereign, and for that I will not thank you — because the only reason you even exist at all is to fulfill that purpose. Beyond that?" With one hand, he made a sharp gesture of negation. "We are finished. It is only in return for services rendered that I do not annihilate you here and now, in service to my own passing whim."

  Hiela couldn't know for sure, of course. Nobody could. But she was certain, in the moment immediately following that verbal lashing, that the Sovereign was looking directly at her - and somehow, damn him, Doss knew it too, because now he was glancing up at her with a ghost of a smile upon his face. How did he know? How the fuck could he possibly know?!

  It didn't matter one iota. Things would proceed all the same.

  "Well done," Doss whispered, out the corner of his mouth. Hiela did not dare respond. All-seeing, all-knowing. She was half-tempted to rip his damned tongue out.

  "You've made your point," the Sovereign conceded, finally. He spread his thousand spindly arms in a gesture that vaguely resembled contrition. Distantly, Hiela was disappointed that her brother had not simply executed the damn gestalt on the spot. "Forgive me, Noble Emir, for I have lost so many of my beautiful daughters on this wretched day. I forget myself, in my grief."

  "Sentimental old fool," Jaras snarled. "You are lucky to even draw breath." And with that, he turned sharply on his heel, and with that the entire complement was on the move once more.

  And Hiela could feel them both, all the while — both Doss and the Sovereign's stares boring straight into the back of her skull.

  To the void with all of them.

  Kore

  They were looking at a wound.

  There was no other word to describe it, really. A gaping, wound in the middle of empty space — a gash in the tapestry of the universe that oozed and bled and most certainly should never, ever have existed.

  The three of them were staring at a wormhole; a truly gigantic thing that defied any physical description and dwarfed their shuttle by a factor of ten thousand. Here they had emerged, in accordance with their mysterious instructions. And here they just stared, for a moment, before finally Jaheed broke the silence.

  "We have to go in-" he was starting, just as Sekhmet was already shaking her head.

  *"Non, non, non, non, non!" Sekhmet insisted, whirling around in her chair to face the both of them. She shook her head violently. "Absolutely fucking not!"

  "This is..." Kore just trailed off, transfixed by the anomaly hovering before her.

  "Sekhmet, the instructions were clear-"

  "The fuck they were! And even if they said, verbatim, 'go throw yourselves into a fucking wormhole', I most certainly would not be doing so!"

  "Calm the hell down!" Jaheed snapped, his irritation flaring at this unexpected defiance. "You're Se-dai — you're not even supposed to feel fear!"

  "Oh, fuck off," Sekhmet rolled her eyes, then shot to her feet and stormed across the bridge, swearing all the while. "Putain d'enfant arrogant, tu te prends pour qui? à qui crois-tu parler?"

  "Hey, hey!" Kore snapped, stepping firmly between them — her attention having finally been wrestled from that strange and terrible sight. "Both of you, knock it off! Sekhmet-" she turned to face her irate girlfriend, who was glaring now with glowing eyes, "-I'm sorry, but I don't understand. What is the problem here, exactly?"

  "I'm not going in," Sekhmet declared simply, and a little hoarsely. She folded her arms. "I'm Se-dai. I'm supposed to die fighting, supposed to die on my feet. When I die, it should be my own damn fault. But that-" she jabbed a finger. "That's an enemy you can't fight. That's-we'd just be submitting ourselves to the laws of physics! Or not even that, really, because everything about a wormhole spits in the eye of fucking physics! We could just-" she snapped her fingers, "-vanish, just like that. Never to be seen or heard from again."

  "There are plenty of commonly-used wormholes," Jaheed countered, from behind Kore's back. He and Sekhmet were still being thoroughly sequestered from one another. "Void, my family took a vacation through one, once! I'm sorry, Sekhmet, but I truly do not understand where this is coming from."

  "Those were stable," Sekhmet replied, exasperated and tiring quickly. She was physically unable to get spun up in such arguments, as she so often used to. "This one is a complete fucking anomaly, hanging out here in the middle of putain nulle part. And yeah, Jaheed, it ain't so bad going through as a human. But in case you've forgotten-" she tapped rapidly, aggressively, against her chest, "-I got a whole hell of a lot more goin' on down here than the rest of you. And when the laws of physics go funny, you know what else goes funny? Circuitry. Machinery. Electricity. Your ship-computers go haywire — c'mon, Jaheed, I'm sure you remember the lights flickering on the way to your fucking vacation. Now, try being me — I've got a computer in my fucking brain!"

  To that, well...nobody had much to say. And worry was clawing at Kore once more, now, because Sekhmet was already broken and Kore was terrified at the thought of breaking her even further. Was terrified, on a deeper level, that passing through would change Sekhmet, somehow — that a bit would flip, or a diode would burn out, and suddenly her girlfriend would just be...someone else.

  Kore yearned for the days when she believed Sekhmet to be invincible.

  GIVE HER BACK. That was what the jawless, skinless, partly-dismembered teal skeleton howled in her dreams. Every single night. That half-second glimpse was engraved upon the surface of Kore's brain for the rest of eternity.

  "Okay," Kore gulped and nodded, finally. Maybe we..."

  "We have to," Jaheed said, simply. His expression soft. Apologetic, now, for whatever that was worth. "You know we have no choice."

  Kore thought, again, of the escape Diesch had offered. Of another life...

  "There's always a choice," Sekhmet said quietly. A meek protest, after all that fire and brimstone. "We could just..." Just what? Sekhmet couldn't say leave. She was bound by too many threads; ensnared in a web of debt and obligations, just as Kore was. Even as she had argued against it, the truth of their situation had been staring her plain in the face.

  Nobody had to say it, at the end. They all understood. Sekhmet just returned to the console and bade the ship glide forward, into the gaping mistake in the skin of Real Life. And for a moment, everything was fine — life and reality and existence were still as they should be. The universe was still mannered and neat. And then that nameless shuttle crossed that impossible threshold, and everything changed.

  Though simpler to understand, certainly, it would be patently misleading to say that the shuttle moved. Instead, it would be more accurate — yet still insufficient — to say that the entire universe moved, shifting and transforming and contorting around the shuttle as though entirely subservient to the onyx vessel's whims. Nobody felt it, of course, because the illusion of the universe is perfect and unbreaking. No creature as small and meager as a human being could ever hope to even sniff at the backdrop of this particular stage play; save for Doss Ken Volsif, though the nature of his understanding was vague and...childish, shall we say.

  And then, to engage with this event in the parlance of human understanding, they 'emerged' from the wormhole — and after a long period of vomiting, bleeding, sobbing, and rebooting, all looked up to gaze upon and through the bridge's viewscreen.

  Nobody said anything; this was not just because their throats were too choked with vomit (and Ceresian 'blood') to speak. Finally, though, it was Kore — of course it was Kore, for she was by far strongest amongst them — who voiced that which all were currently thinking.

  "What the fuck is that?"

  A Trillion Light-years Away

  The Jade Emperor smiled.