[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

The sun was starting its slow descent toward the horizon when I stepped into the shadow cast by the temple of Athena. Behind it and on the left, a huge statue of the Goddess was keeping a solitary watch over the whole Sacred Domain. Beyond that, a narrow flight of stairs carved into the rock led to the mountain’s very top, where a small, unremarkable temple stood offering a roof for the altar of Athena. It contained another, life-sized representation of the Goddess, her left hand resting over a shield of gold, and her right held palm up, bearing the winged incarnation of victory: Nike, the little goddess who could help one triumph against impossible odds.

Some said that the smaller representation of Athena had been a beacon once, that it had glowed in the night and in the hearts of all those who swore their life in the service of the goddess of Earth, Wisdom and War. Some said that it had been the goddess’ way of always being close to her Saints, even in between incarnations. The life-sized statue was a God Cloth, the armor that Athena wore when she herself went to battle. As a little girl, I had tried to feel her song in my mind, the way I could feel all the other Cloths in the Sanctuary hum softly. I had tried, and tried, until master Nominoë’s gaze had set on the weird, stubborn brat that I had been. He had laughed while berating me for disturbing his afternoon nap. He had taken my hand, and he had led me up the forbidden Stairs, to the House of Aries, and he had told me I’d live there from then on. Afterwards, in the waning light of dusk, he had explained that the Goddess’ Cloth no longer sang to the hearts of Athena’s Saints.

Because the God Cloth was dead.

Because Athena herself had withdrawn from the Earth, as had Poseidon.

Because the gods were gone, never to return.

When I had asked him why, master Nominoë had shrugged off the question, and he had gone on to explain that gods didn’t matter, in and of themselves, but that the ideals and love they sometimes embodied could be worth dying for. Those were eternal, as eternal as the grand stream flowing at the heart of the sea of chaos. It had taken me years, long years to understand those words, and longer still to realize that he hadn’t answered my question because he didn’t know the answer.

Because nobody knew the answer.

The gods were gone, and that was that, their last gift to humanity a cryptic warning echoed by the winds over Cape Sounio. A dark, hazy augury no longer. I paused when two shadows detached themselves from the entrance of Athena’s temple to greet me, and groaned inwardly when I recognized Haizea on Tau’s left. She was wearing the Sagittarius Cloth, and Tau had donned his own Leo Cloth as well. I heaved out a sigh, and didn’t reach out to Aries. Thomas might have decreed this occasion was one for which formal attire was required, but I hadn’t received his order. Empty formality could just rot on the spot.

“Good, you’re here,” Tau hooked his left arm around mine, and drew me toward the temple. “For a moment there, I thought Thomas’ summons hadn’t reached you. Fi, they’re waiting for you.”

I opened my mouth to ask what that meant, but I was cut off by Haizea. “Late and Clothless,” she grimaced, but I discarded the bait and let the snide comment pass unchallenged.

“Haizea,” Tau shook his head, pleading.

“Shut up, Sagittarius. If you can’t, there’s a nice, big sandbox just right by the sea near Cape Sounio which would be a suitable place for you.” Ithiel stepped out of nowhere and strode between us, as Clothless as I was, and still very much pissed off by Cinaed’s ability to block him off.

“Ithiel,” Thomas was standing upon the temple’s threshold, “wait. They requested a word with Fiammetta first, and in private. I couldn’t deny them.” The Gemini Saint nodded at me. “Hurry.”

Woodenly I nodded back. Despite the cold snake squeezing my guts, I didn’t pause. I didn’t slow down. In long strides, I waded through the labored beatings of my heart and went to the door of the visiting room set next to the main chambers. Thomas hadn’t needed to tell me where I was expected: I could feel the somber, subdued light of their presences as keenly as the oxygen tearing at my lungs.

Scylla, Lymnades, Sea Dragon, Kraken, Sea Horse and Chrysaeor.

All six of them. I had known this moment would come, sooner rather than later, but that understanding didn’t make it any easier. My heart in my throat, I leaned on the door handle, and pushed.

“You could at least have knocked.” Sea Dragon Sachiko scoffed from the far side of the room. Her dark eyes were glowing with a light that wasn’t humor. I squared my shoulders as I turned toward her, but a small, somber man came to stand before me before I could complete the motion.

Felipe’s brown eyes were cold and unreadable. He was Lymnades, the most feared of the Marine Shoguns among the Marinas of Poseidon, because of the harshness of his temper, the sharpness of his mind and his utter lack of mercy or understanding for the smallest weakness or mistake. “Where is Sorento?” He asked in a flat, emotionless voice.

I didn’t shy away from the icy light in that gaze, it would have been the worst thing to do. “Lost,” I shaped the ugly word with my lips and it trickled out of me. “Consumed.”

“Ligea?” he spat out the name, as if he feared it would leave a sour taste in his mouth.

“Lost also,” I replied softly.

“How is this possible?!” He hissed, reaching out to grab my wounded arm.

“I don’t think so,” I told him in an even voice, and I willed myself to the center of the room, where Efraïm was waiting, his lower back leaned against the table and his arms crossed over his stomach. “I have no answer for you,” I looked Scylla Efraïm right in the eye. Scylla, Sorento’s closest friend and ally, who had little love lost for me. “If I had, fate would have shifted another way. I can only tell you what I know.”

Efraïm gave me a curt nod, then: “How?” The word was a growl.

I closed my eyes and bowed my head, then I made myself confront him. “To protect me,” I explained, unblinking. “Murali came between our enemy and me, and he took a blow which would have killed me, so that I could strike at what was holding us prisoners.”

During a long minute, Efraïm stared at me fixedly. The silence in the room was awful, but I didn’t flinch. At last, the Marine Shogun looked away. “I always told him you’d be the end of him one day, but he didn’t give a damn.” The right corner of his mouth was curled up in the beginnings of a smile.

My eyes dry, I stared out the window beyond him, at the falling night outside. The sun had set behind the high peaks, and the moon would be quick in rising. Already stars were winking into existence, a thousand lanterns to light up the heavens and chase ghosts and evil things away.

“There are many things I had meant to tell you.” Reluctantly I faced Sachiko, who smirked as she went on, “But I can see you’ve already smashed yourself with those and more, repeatedly, so I’ll pass.” Nodding at her companions, she stepped away from her spot against the wall, and made for the door. “We’re here for a reason. Let’s get to work.” As one they followed her, even Efraïm, and I watched them walk past me. Once they had all gone, I followed suit. It hadn’t been long, but then I could hardly blame Sachiko for moving quickly in times like these. Murali had led them, albeit unofficially, and they had needed someone to replace him. Sachiko was foul-tempered enough and resilient enough for the job. From the opened window, a swirling gust of wind pushed me toward the door, and I went along with the impetus.

Our assembly was one of glittering Scales and Cloths, but for Ithiel and I. Once everyone had had a chance to drink a sip from the wine served in earthen glasses set before us, Thomas stood up. “This meeting was decided before any of us got wind of Fiammetta’s escape. You already know all that she could tell us of what happened. Unseemly though this may be in the face of your loss, I respectfully request that we get to the heart of the matter.”

Sachiko gave him a slight bow of the head, and ignored the faint snort that came from both Haizea and Felipe. “So it must be,” she said. “We can’t afford to tarry here and, I fear, neither can you.”

“Explain,” Thomas waved at her, much too calm.

“Is the Graad Foundation blind to the storm brewing Halo Side?” Efraïm snapped.

“The Graad Foundation knows that the supply line cannot hold,” Tau replied in a quiet, quiet voice. “Our people are exhausting themselves manning the jumpgates without respite. Harvests on agricultural worlds cannot keep up, and stellar farms Core Side are all operating at their maximum capacity. Yet demands for more come through the Interface with each day that passes. That’s what the Graad Foundation knows.”

“You’re losing ground.” It was Ithiel, and chairs creaked as they were being shoved to the side to allow the Marine Shoguns to round up on now serene, composed Virgo.

“We are.” Sachiko had lifted up her right hand to silence her companions. “Three months ago, when your warning first came, we started the evacuation of the Fringe Worlds.”

Three months.

I gulped in a breath. Three months. How could it have been so long?

“Somehow,” Sachiko was saying, oblivious to the chaos her words had sparked inside me, “we found places to settle all those we had displaced. At first they were reluctant, but when more red dwarves started collapsing into black holes, refugees began flocking toward Pillar.” So it hadn’t been tourist cruisers which had clogged my traffic monitor at the time, then. “The tale has now spread through all eight galactic octants, that the darkness beyond the Rim is rising and devouring everything in its path.”

“How can people know?” Haizea hissed.

“These are Merchanters, Traders and Transporters,” Sachiko retorted calmly. “Their clans have sailed the deep space in the Fringe Worlds regions for generations. They have known of the white sails haunting the abyss beyond the Rim for years--well, leaves.” The Marine Shogun glanced at me before continuing, “It’s as if a great hand was plucking stars and worlds from the heavens. A great, dark hand that moves faster with time. We can hardly keep up and evacuate colony worlds in time, now. It has reached beyond the Fringe Worlds, and the situation has become unmanageable. We cannot house them, and we cannot feed them. You cannot produce more. We cannot hold. Saints of Athena,” Sachiko stood up, and looked all of us in the eye in turn. In a deadly quiet voice, she said, “I tell you this before my peers, so you know it’s the truth. This thing, it’s not stopping, and it’s moving Coreward.”

“It will engulf the whole galaxy, Efraïm added softly, “Earth and the Core Side worlds before the Earth sees another Summer.”

Stunned silence met those words on our side of the table. The Marine Shoguns looked like grim ghosts from some dark fantasy tale. “You’re saying we’re lost,” Scorpio Orion stated at last, shaking his head as if to get rid of a buzzing noise in his ears.

“I’m saying we can’t continue as we are, “Sachiko countered. “Already, the pieces on the chessboard are shifting. Decentralized though they are, the military are remembering their old federal roots. They’re not blind. They have the figures, the numbers, they have their own intel resources. They’re meeting, planning strategy, building insane plans to defeat an enemy they can neither see, nor seize, nor comprehend. Still,” she smirked, “they are moving. Some among them have reopened all comm links, and are talking to your Core Side military--to Confluence, to Threshold, where archives telling of an old weapon are stored. You know what I’m talking about,” she spat air out of her lungs, and the corners of her mouth curled up into a smile that had nothing pleasant about it. “The star-splitter.” The light in Sachiko’s eyes was an icy one.

“Yes,” Shui confirmed with a very slow nod. “A weapon that pierces through the heart of a sun and splits it--severs it and causes a chain reaction that sends it going nova. That thing,” Shui’s voice was shaking, “is evil and it was banned by a unanimous vote of United Federation of Planets decades ago. It won’t do any good. It’s not other people they’re confronted to, there’s no home planet for them to destroy.”

“For them, no, but for us?” Felipe flicked his eyes my way.

“You’d have us be the enemy,” I told him softly. Softly. Then I drew on a smile. “Too bad. Even if we could all agree on such a course of action, it would fail. We wouldn’t be allowed to reach the tree.”

“You’re lying,” he smiled back at me.

“No,” Ithiel shook his head once. “It’s the truth.”

“What’s left to us, then?” Haizea asked, sounding as lost as she looked.

“We must give them what they want,” Thomas heaved out a sigh. “You say that colony worlds are being engulfed faster and faster,” he glanced at Sachiko, who nodded in confirmation. “They’re pushing us, those who live beyond the Rim. That’s what they’ve been doing until now, and we’ve done nothing other than give way. If we go on like this,” Thomas bowed his head, and his voice dropped to a faint whisper, “then we’ll have to stand by and watch while famines decimate refugee camps and civil wars send humanity killing itself.” Drawing in a deep breath, the head of the Sanctuary looked up at us. “We have but one option: to take up the challenge and bring the war as close to them as we can. To draw a line.” Cold bit the pit of my stomach. It was Gemini Thomas talking, the blind, traditionalist representative of the Goddess Athena, and he was speaking of open, all-out war.

“So,” Tau said in a breath, “we’ve come to it, to the end of all things.”

“Who’s to say?” Ithiel was smiling. The Goddess alone knew how he had the will and the strength to. “Our enemies are immense elemental forces of the universe, way beyond any one of us, but they’re not invincible. Fiammetta did hurt that tree enough to win free.”

“A fluke,” I waved Virgo’s words aside, “and one which nearly cost me my life.”

“Shall we roll over and wait for death, then?” Sachiko asked in her sweetest voice.

“No.” Thomas rose from his chair and strode over to the window, his glass of wine in the left hand. Outside, a full moon was rising, casting a pale, dead light on the mountains surrounding the Sanctuary. “We rise. If you will all follow me, we rise, and we draw the line out there.”

“Pillar will welcome you,” Sachiko grinned. “We’re next in the pattern they’re following anyway. But I have to warn you that some in the military are thinking of doing the same thing. Fleets are leaving Edge and Vega. I hear some will even come from Threshold.”

“Let them,” Thomas shrugged. “Theirs are ships, and ours are jumpships. They won’t be a hindrance. As to secrets,” a sad chuckle escaped him, “there’s no use for them if there’s nothing left to protect. All right,” the Gemini Saint faced us all and lifted his glass, “drink, all of you. Drink your glasses dry, for tomorrow we go to war.”

We obeyed, the whole lot of us, Gold Saints and Marine Shoguns together. I dipped my head into my own glass and drank, of only not to see the bleak, terrible light in Thomas’ eyes anymore.

A loud rattle rippled through the air and rebounded on the steel sky of Pillar station, sending echoes back and forth like a tennis ball. Pivoting to the left, I caught sight of a long convoy of tank wagons sliding toward the innermost coils, where the station’s pulsing heart was humming and core reserves were stored. It was a full water shipment, a delivery from the last freighter ship the Marinas of Poseidon had allowed to dock at Pillar. Even known, the big, sluggish vessel was releasing all mooring clamps with as much speed as its crew could manage. The undocking process was vibrating through the station’s section doors and walls, muffled clangs that registered in my mind like a bee’s distant buzz--too quick, even for Pillar’s loose interpretation of regulations.

Pillar’s ops had decided to allow it. They had even decided to help all departing ships to proceed faster. They had started allowing it in the moment when shadows had appeared on the surface of Achernar, less than half a month ago. The dark stains were growing, weakening the white star’s bright light a little more with each day. We had come to Pillar a bit more than a week ago, as soon as the news had reached Earth. We had surfaced from hyperspace’s currents to stumble upon a swarm of ships rushing for the local jumpgate, all of them outbound.

Fleeing.

People had spotted the jumpships cleaving the night, plunging down Achernar’s gravity well. The news that thirteen jumpships had docked at Pillar and stayed there had traveled through all eight galactic octants. Humanity’s fearful gaze gad turned our way, and it hadn’t been easy to keep the media at bay. Fortunately the military had soon followed us, and martial law had done wonders to ensure our right to privacy. Huge destroyers were now moored at Pillar, uncomfortably close to our jumpships. Supply ships had come and gone, replenishing the station’s food, energy and water reserves one more time--one last time. Last. That word was the trend of the day.

Pillar’s great market was empty around me. The shops and stores were deserted. There was no concert of voices competing to win a customer’s attention, no stall full of brightly colored and strangely shaped fruits. No peddler was trying to sell scarves or trinkets that would bring good fortune. The echo of my steps as I strolled through the naked alleys sent shivers through the metallic structures of the shops, spooking the silence that had claimed the place. Above my head, a light flashed blue on the great departure panel hanging over the market’s center, a useless warning that the last freighter ship to ever come to Pillar station was leaving dock.

I closed my eyes when the deep vibration caused by the ship’s engines coursed through the steel floor. It was done. Humankind had abandoned Pillar. The only ones who remained were despaired military personnel, Marine Shoguns and Gold Saints preparing for a hopeless battle, as well as a single shift of Marinas to man the local jumpgate until the last of the fleet of warships expected from Threshold had arrived.

“Explain yourself, damn you!” I blinked, taken aback by the sudden loud snatch of conversation which reached my ears. Focusing on it, I heard steps coming my way, and soon I saw Ithiel striding into the marketplace, a very flustered and angry military person on his heels. I laughed up my sleeve at the sight. Ithiel of all people, hounded by some self-important military official. Proud, tall Virgo whose long golden hair served as a perfect beacon for spotting him wherever he tried to go.

It was because Ithiel didn’t know Pillar, I realized while they were walking toward me. It was because Ithiel wasn’t used to traveling to Halo Side stations that he wasn’t aware that every single space station under the watch of Poseidon’s Marinas had one refuge no outsider would be allowed to step into: an inn such as the Meltemi, where kindred spirits could gather, free from the constraints of the mundane world. And of course, the Marine Shoguns hadn’t seen fit to inform the Gold Saints of the Meltemi’s existence, thus condemning Ithiel to bear with the nagging presence of a military official trailing him.

“This is intolerable!” The man was yelling, trying to keep up with the object of his bristling frustration. “The cargo which came through the jumpgate was incomplete!” He started waving at Ithiel’s back. “It was checked directly prior to entering the gate, and nothing was missing!” Abruptly the man jumped before the Virgo Gold Saint. “You lot stole it! It’s your people who operate the jumpgates, so you’re responsible, your organized this--”

Something like a twitch troubled Ithiel’s perfect features, and he started opening his eyes. My heart skipped at beat. “Whoa!” I exclaimed, and I willed myself at Ithiel’s side. With the right hand, I grabbed the military official’s collar and flung him out of harm’s way. “Wait a minute, Ithiel, don’t do anything you might regret. Painful though they are, those people are useful: they replace the station personnel which was evacuated. Except for the jumpgate and the docks, they make everything work here, we need them.” That triggered the faintest of snorts from prideful Virgo.

Even as Ithiel’s dangerous anger dispersed, I rounded up on the man, who was still busy gathering himself from the floor. “As to you,” I told him in my sweetest voice, “you’ll learn to respect a jumpship pilot’s privacy or I’ll space you myself.” The man opened his mouth to protest, and I silenced him with a thought. “Your cargo was illegal. You tried to smuggle parts of a banned weapon through the jumpgate. The charter all authorities, civilian or military, sign to be allowed to use the jumpgates is pretty clear, I think. Your cargo wasn’t stolen, it was dumped into the sea of chaos. Just be grateful you weren’t dumped along with it. Am I making myself clear?” I beamed at him.

The strangled noises and the repeated nods meant yes. Eyes wild, he pivoted and scampered away. Ignoring him, I glanced at Ithiel. “It takes some getting used to, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it, they’re actually easy to deal with,” I told him. Another snort met my words, and Ithiel moved to step past me.

“Wait,” I requested, lifting my right hand horizontally to bar his way. “There’s one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you. It won’t be long,” I added when I saw him purse his lips. “There hasn’t been a correct opportunity, ever since the Marine Shoguns came back to the Sanctuary, but I need to know.” I drew in a breath, and stared at Ithiel’s closed eyes steadily. “You said you had gotten something from Cinaed when you tried to win past his mental block. You never mentioned it during our gathering. Why? What is it you perceived?”

Silence enfolded my question, then Ithiel smiled. “Why do you care? Is it because you need more things to help you cradle your grief, as well as the thing you call hatred?”

Eyes wide, I made myself face the harsh judge standing before me. I made myself listen to his words and taste them. At last, I looked away. “I don’t know,” I whispered.

“Well,” there was a sigh in Ithiel’s voice, almost inaudible. “What I can tell you is that there are multiple facets to him. He seems to be the very essence of Fire, an elemental aspect of the universe, gifted with its horrible strength. He’s not human, but he’s a sentient being. Sentience means awareness of other forms of life’s existences, the ability to care--for the living as well as for the dead.”

The ability to care. I hissed out a breath. I didn’t want to consider that, I didn’t want to remember him staring in childlike wonder at the rain falling over the hills in Scotland. I didn’t want to remember the scent of basil and oregano and honeysuckle, the scent and solidity of him. “Fuck!” I gave a wild shake of the head.

Bright shaft of golden light. Urgent.

“Thomas is calling for us,” Ithiel said quietly.

“Yeah,” I spat out the word. “I felt it. All right,” I sighed, and pivoted away. My trip to the Meltemi would wait, and likely never take place at all. Thomas’ call was for us to rejoin our jumpships. It meant that the last of the Marinas were evacuating Pillar. They would go through a jumpgate anchored on only one side, a dangerous thing they had become accustomed to during the evacuation of all the Fringe Worlds. The last of the military fleet must have arrived, or the dark stains on Achernar must be almost done engulfing the bright white star.

As Ithiel and I strode through previously empty corridors, we found scores of soldiers streaming through them at a brisk jog. Small fighters’ pilots, I eyed them as we went, their faces grim and wearing their full combat gear. So, the military had added two and two, and they had given their own order to scramble. Ithiel veered to the right, toward the eleventh berth on the outermost coil where Spica, his jumpship, was docked. It took me another two minutes to rejoin the eight berth where Hamal was waiting, drowsing in its mooring.

A bright blue communication request was flashing on the main control board when I stepped on Hamal’s bridge. With a sigh, I acknowledged it. “We’re going,” Thomas’ face popped on my comm screen, his jaw set. “Now.”

“Are all the Marinas safely through the jumpgate?” I asked softly.

Thomas bowed his head. “We can only hope. There’s no more time: Achernar is collapsing.”

Denying the ice freezing the blood in my veins, I bit my lower lip. “Thomas, we could have eavesdroppers.”

“Nonsense!” Felipe’s dark scowl appeared next to Thomas. “Not even the Graad Foundation can crack Pillar’s private frequency. Once we’re out of dock, the jumpships’ cluster net will ensure nobody can listen in on us.”

A sigh resounded loudly on Hamal’s bridge. “Enough, Felipe,” Sachiko said, then she heaved out another, deep sigh. “The military are scrambling. Most of their fleet is undocking as we speak, all on automatic procedures. They’ll follow us and hinder us, if only with questions. We could slow them down,” she smiled. It’s only then that I realized she was standing in Pillar’s great room of operations.

Thomas nodded. “Nothing bad or fatal,” he told her.

“Of course!” Sachiko scoffed. “I won’t trap them on station. They’ll be able to win free in time to evacuate through the jumpgate.” With that, she severed her own comm link.

“This is it,” Thomas whispered, even as he shifted away to start Alhena’s own undocking process.

It went quickly. The jumpships had been designed for swift and easy manipulation at dock, and Halo Side stations always had special berths reserved for them, with the most efficient mooring gear. Hundreds of communication requests came from the various flagships of the military fleet, a dizzying show of blinking dots that went unheeded. As Hamal smoothly glided out of Pillar’s docks, I grinned at them. The station would soon be bursting with seething military generals. Better that they be frustrated wasps than dead ducks swallowed by the black hole forming under their warships’ vulnerable bellies. Taking my mind away from them, I pushed at Hamal’s engines, and the jumpship purred in response, gathering speed as it caught whiffs of Achernar’s waning stellar winds, and as it went down the collapsing star’s gravity well.

Steep.

I clenched my teeth, and adjusted to the strength of the forces snatching at Hamal. It wasn’t a quiet, constant pull any longer. The silence that smothered the cluster net was deafening as the thirteen jumpships flung themselves toward the blossoming tear in the fabric of the space-time continuum. We were one blind bullet hurled at its target. We didn’t look in another direction, there was nothing left to see but absolute blackness except if one peered Coreward, toward distant Earth.

“We’ll reach the event horizon in five minutes,” Lymnades Felipe announced over the cluster net, his tone flat. There would be no returning from there, we all knew that. The last battle between light and darkness, it was how Tau had called it, a low fire kindling his eyes.

White specks in pitch black night.

“Fi?”

I nodded in answer to Tau’s question. Not white but silver, silvery-green. “Yes,” I told them all, “these are the tree’s leaves.” Our enemy wouldn’t be far behind. All of a sudden, the silvery, sail-like leaves filled my main viewscreen.

Hamal shuddered.

“Ithiel!” I shouted, “Help me!” Without waiting for an answer, I pushed at the wall of leaves with all my strength. I willed it back, and soon I sensed someone else join forces with me, a light bright and pure which took enough of the burden for me to manage to gulp in a breath.

“Fiammetta?” It was Thomas and Shui, their voices merging into a rather weird result.

“They’re trying to draw us in,” I said between clenched teeth.

Tau’s face popped to life on my comm screen. “Shouldn’t we let them?” Doubts and something darker were clouding the Leo gold Saint’s eyes.

“Hear!” That was Felipe, damn the persistent little bastard.

Crystalline laughter filled Hamal’s bridge, coming from Spica and Ithiel. “No!” I snapped. “They know we can harm the tree, they won’t repeat the mistake of letting us get to it alive a second time!” We had been over this before. It was a trap, and hell if I would allow us to be ensnared by it. Ithiel, I sent the thought his way, lend my your strength, just this once. There was no answer, but I hadn’t expected any. Pulling at the flames inside my heart, I drew them out and pushed--and blew an ethereal, burning wind at the curtain of leaves enclosing us.

A great whoosh went through Hamal’s hull and the whole ship trembled, as if rocked by one of hyperspace’s lethal storms, even as a blinding spear of light rushed past me, a focused beam of Virgo’s true power.

The veil of leaves recoiled.

That yielding silvery-green wall dissolved as the myriad leaves scattered in every direction at once--and veered.

And rushed back at us, as if the leaves had a will of their own.

Eyes wide, I stared at them, at tiny, imperceptible sparks on their edges, and harshly got a hold of myself. “Evade!” I yelled, “Evade!” It was impossible, of course. There were just too many of them. Every time they brushed against one of the jumpships, Fire bit at hulls already strained by the black hole’s awful pressure upon them.

“Thomas, permission to don our Cloths!” It was Haizea, and exhaustion was riding her shrill voice.

“Granted,” Thomas replied at once, his voice somber. It wasn’t what we had planned. There wasn’t yet anything solid, anything real to strike at, but we were fast running out of time, out of strength. Silently I called, and Aries cloaked my body in beautiful starlight.

Beneath my feet, Hamal reared up, the creaks resounding through the bridge like so many moans of pain.

Before us, the black hole shimmered.

Fiammetta! Shaking, I touched minds with Ithiel and pushed when he did. Just in time, we--light.

Silvery-green light.

“Hell!” The snarl had come from Nemea. We were no longer hovering right on the edge of the event horizon of a black hole. We were drifting in gentle silvery-green light.

Empty, but not for long.

Small leaves started floating our way, as if borne by a lazy breeze. A quick glance at Hamal’s scanners confirmed what I already knew: the atmosphere outside was breathable, the pressure similar to that of Earth. With a thought, I willed myself to be standing on the outside of my jumpship’s hull, right above the piloting bridge. There was no shock, no jarring pull even though Hamal was sailing fast: the force field surrounding the hull was seeing to that.

Shadows.

I blinked. Shadows had appeared in the distance. They seemed to be walking on thin air, their paths meeting and then diverging. Forking. They were stepping on the branches. I closed my hands into fists, and denied the cold wave of nausea heaving my stomach. They had us trapped, the tree was all over us, even if we could neither see it, nor feel it. They had found a way to keep us from touching it while still drawing us in. Looking at the fast approaching shadows, I snarled. They’re coming! I willed the thought to reach the other twelve jumpships.

Golden lights blossomed right and left, even as I parried an insubstantial ghost’s blow and stumbled under the sheer pressure of it. On instinct, I struck out, I hurled Fire at shadows barely glimpsed. Ithiel! I teleported myself to the edge of Hamal’s tail, and summoned more flames to my hand. We must break it! I barely felt his mental acknowledgement of me. Laughter had filled my mind, musical and cold. Hissing.

Black coils obscured the silvery-green sky above Hamal.

From the corner of an eye, I got a glimpse of tall, slim silhouette of a white-clad man calmly striding on empty air, striding toward a jumpship miles away from us--Spica. While the black coils were closing around Hamal and I like the falling night, I watched, numb, Cinaed set foot onto Spica’s hull, his long, flowing russet-gold hair teased by a gentle breeze that bore a spicy-sweet scent in its folds. Ithiel was busy fighting shadows and gathering his power to help me break the hold on us. He didn’t, couldn’t feel Cinaed approaching, and Cinaed--

Cinaed had understood that Ithiel was the key, the strongest among us.

“No!” I howled even as the serpent’s coils started to crush Hamal in their deadly embrace, and I tore at all that was still burning within me.

Hamal shifted outside of reality, and reappeared right next to Spica. My mind empty, I teleported myself and shoved Ithiel aside. “No!” I snarled, looking into Cinaed’s blood red eyes. “I’ll never let you kill anyone again!” There was no time for thought or strategy. In a heartbeat, he would swat me like an insect, and the scorching Fire that he was would consume Ithiel. Using all the power left to me, I flung both my fists at his chest. I called forth Aries’ golden light and willed it to glove my hands as I struck.

They went through. My fists speared through his chest as if he had no substance, and met with blazing heat inside.

Fire, pure and boundless.

It scorched my fingers despite the protection of Aries. The Gold Cloth would melt, it would evaporate in an instant-- I refused the thought, and closed my hands upon those flames. I strangled them, and willed them to die.

Cinaed’s eyes widened, and light glowed in his gaze, laughter which spilled form him in a crystalline cascade of music. Laughter, not pain. Not fear, not even doubts. Here, the thought rippled through my mind, let me show you how it’s done. Then he plunged the left hand inside my chest. There was no sick noise of torn flesh and broken bones, no sound of my Gold Cloth shattering on the point of impact.

There was pain.

Nameless, horrible pain which drowned my being in a heartbeat.

I couldn’t scream it.

I couldn’t flee it.

I couldn’t shield myself from it.

It encompassed all that I was, body and soul. It was the essence of my being, the Fire in the deepest, most secret part of my spirit that he had grasped with ethereal fingers. He would pull and tear me apart. In a desperate effort of will, I tried to use my own hold on him, but I was a puppet without strings.

Lifeless.

From a million lightyears away, I felt myself drop to the knees. The sluggish motion stretched my arms as my head tilted down, as if I was bowing before him. My hands came out of his chest, and started falling to my sides.

Something caught them. Fingers grasped my palms and held them. I didn’t fight their grip. I had neither will, nor strength left. I had only pain, so harsh that each breath I could drag inside my lungs was burning inside. All right, then. Cinaed’s silent words were an almost imperceptible breeze teasing the surface of my soul, meant for me alone. The awful sensation of his tearing me apart diminished, and winked out even as something brushed against my hair, right above the brow. Soft. Little flame.

He released my hands, which fell limply to my sides.

Fiammetta! Someone was pulling me up, none too gently. Damn you, Aries! Get yourself together, you moronic Ram! I blinked, recognizing those thoughts and the sharp, blinding presence that accompanied them.

“Ithiel?” I heard my own voice come out as a slur, as if I was completely drunk. Blinking again, I managed to look up, in time to see the Virgo Saint holding me up, worry swirling in his haughty blue gaze. “Since when did you open your eyes?” I was babbling like a fool, drunk indeed--drunk with the feeling of Fire returning to my starved heart. “What happened?” I asked, a bit more steady now.

Ithiel snorted. “You meddled. You presumed to shield me, and I thought you’d pay for that mistake with your worthless life. Then you fell to your knees before him. He--” Ithiel looked away and hissed, “he took your hands in his as if you’d been some vassal paying homage and he some kind of liege lord accepting an oath.” He spat out that last word, then faced me again. “Then he was gone. They were all gone!” He gestured toward our surroundings.

The shadows were gone, as were the leaves and the gentle breeze they had used as wings.

Eleven jumpships were hovering in silvery-green emptiness, set in a circle around Hamal and Spica. Pilots in battered Cloths and Scales were staring at us, the subdued light of their cosmo and the too rapid rising and falling of their shoulders as they were fighting to draw air inside their lungs the only sign of how close we had all come to collapse and defeat. Still clinging to Ithiel for support, I looked at each of them in turn, and eventually said, “I don’t understand.”

At last, Sachiko broke the heavy silence, and shrugged. “Neither do we.” The hint of a smile crept up her lips. “What matters is we’re alive, and that the enemy had withdrawn.” Glancing up, she added, “We need to get back to our decks.”

Above us, cracks had appeared in the sky of silvery-green, and they were growing, zigzagging and forking.

Fast.

I had barely enough time to will myself Inside Hamal. All around us, the illusory heaven crumbled into bits and pieces of silvery-green, which dissolved into shining filaments of dust. In less than a minute, there was nothing left. Blackness engulfed our jumpships, marred by a stark white light shining before us.

Achernar.

The black hole was gone, as were the dark stains devouring the white star’s surface.

Our confrontation was over, as abruptly as it had begun--its conclusion as absurd as the flimsy, whimsical tides of the sea of chaos.

A pebble rolled on the ground disturbed by the unwary feet whose approaching steps were intruding into my low humming song. For the time of a heartbeat, the thin thread of golden light shimmered, as if hesitating, and I gently guided it back on the broken shoulder of the golden lion statue set before me. Singing to Cloths while repairing them always made the job easier, these last times even more so than before. “You’re early,” I whispered with an absentminded shrug, even as two shadows disturbed mine and cut me from the sunlight--bleak, weak sunlight that felt colder than it ever had, even when considering that Winter was still rattling at the Sanctuary’s door.

“Sorry,” Tau said, embarrassment plain in the tone of his voice, which earned him another shrug from me.

It didn’t matter in the slightest whether he was sorry or not. Haughty, silent Virgo beside him most certainly wasn’t. Anyway, what was important was the almost invisible, stubborn crack on the Leo Gold Cloth’s shoulder. My eyes narrowed, I pursed my lips for a second, then I blew a bit of the remaining stardust off the palm of my hand. Softly it glowed as it showered upon the wounded spot.

“There,” I smiled, “all better.” With a pat on the Cloth’s proud lion head, I unhooked my legs and stood up, pivoting to meet my guests. “Now you’re right on time,” I told them, taking a step to the left so I could once more be in the sun’s faint light. I drew in a deep breath as the barely warm rays gloved my hands and cloaked my body, then I released it in a sigh. “You can have your Cloths back.” I gestured toward the two Cloths set close to the roots of the thick, ancient olive tree growing next to the House of Aries. Tau’s dark eyes flicked to his Gold Cloth, then back to me. Ithiel didn’t even look like he had heard me. “Unless there’s more to your visit this low on the great Stairs,” I mused, cocking my head to the side. “Have you two been talking to Theirn lately?”

“Fi, since when do you spend your days under that tree and repair Cloths outside of your House?” Worry was tainting Tau’s gaze and straining his voice.

“You have been talking to Theirn,” I nodded to myself, then I stared at Leo and Virgo, whose presence here together was as likely as my having tea and a piece of cake with Haizea at five in the afternoon. “How are things upstream?” I asked them in a pleasant tone. “Are Scorpio and Sagittarius still trying to figure out what it is I betrayed to save my life back then?”

“No!” In a slow motion, I bobbed my head and gave a detached look at Tau’s fingers clutching my right forearm. Their pressure was a distant sensation, their touch barely warm. “Fi, nobody thinks that, nobody would dare!”

Discarding Leo Tau, the closest friend I had left, I glanced at Ithiel. “Are you still angry?” I asked him, unconcerned.

I thought he would smile or laugh and mock me. Instead, he bowed his head, ever so slightly. “No. You’re right,” he heaved out a faint sigh, “I was angry, but not at you. At myself, mostly, and at him. Because what he did--” Ithiel clamped his jaws shut.

I stared at him, I stared at proud Virgo’s bowed head, and I felt something warm stir within--distant echoes, memories of others which were haunting the sixth temple and kept telling a tale of heartrending friendship and grief. It must not rise, this feeling. It must not be. Ithiel had tiptoed around it for years, while I had spent my time despising him and calling him a snake and a bastard. Ancient bonds had deep roots, so tearing them out could be hard, unless one knew how to proceed. “I don’t care,” I told him gently, “we’re not friends, you and I.” Once that barbered arrow was delivered, I titled my head backward and stepped back, until my shoulder blades hit the olive tree’s knotty, twisted trunk. That way, I didn’t see Ithiel start, almost imperceptibly.

But I felt him flinch.

The bark of the trunk was too rough under my fingers. It should be smoother, I knew. Perfectly smooth. I peered up at the silvery-green back of the leaves, at the sunlight filtering through the low canopy, and felt a smile tug at my lips. “It’s not an olive tree, you know,” I heard myself say. “I think I know what it is.” My smiled widened, and warmth spread within me as the memory engulfed me. “An ash tree.”

Around us, the wind rose and I blinked. It wasn’t carrying the scent of basil and honeysuckle and oregano. It was full of salt and water, and--my vision wavered. It had risen from the Aegean sea, bearing drops of meerschaum all the way here, to the side of the House of Aries.

Aries.

Again I blinked at the olive tree’s roof of silvery-green leaves, at the olives pulling its branches down toward the rocky ground. The fruits were almost ripe, it would soon be time for Theirn to harvest them. Perhaps this time he’d remember the recipe to prepare them correctly. “I’m going mad,” I breathed, the smile now trembling on my lips. I ached to look away from the olive tree’s canopy, and in the same time I couldn’t bear to do so. Just as I couldn’t bear to see the sadness and compassion that must be shining in Tau’s dark eyes. So I dragged in a breath and told them instead, “Go away.” In silence, they complied. Still I waited, until the echo of their steps had faded completely. Then I looked at the House of Aries before me, at my home whose familiar shadows had grown cold and alien to me.

Fiammetta, you didn’t betray anything or anyone. Ithiel’s thought splashed over me and enveloped me. You never will, no matter what you do or where your path leads you.

A dissonant chuckle escaped me. I’m going mad, Ithiel.

No. Short, and harsh.

Are you blind for real? I sent his way. I’m waning. I can feel myself wane day after day. This time, no reply came--no reply other than a sudden gust of wind’s crushing hug, that bore a whiff of deep sorrow and absolute acceptance in its folds. I stood very still, until it left me at last to go haunt the valley below.

Since when had it been like this? I leant the palm of my left hand flat against the wall of my small temple, and glanced up. The stone felt warm where it should be hot, the azure blue of the sky bright where it should be blinding. Everything Tau had said was true, and the consequences of my shying away from my own House, of my spending my days under the olive tree’s shadow, the reasons for all that.... It couldn’t go on like this. Already I was moving, pushing and hurting others, rising up high walls around me. It was past time for me to face the why of it, no matter that that simple thought sent my mind reeling and directed my eyes toward the refuge of the olive tree’s silvery-green canopy of leaves--like now. Forcefully I tore my gaze away from the sparkling beads of sunshine. “Enough with this,” I told my self. On impulse, I closed my eyes and reached out.

There, taking a stroll next to the new apprentices’ training ground.

Refusing to let myself dwell on the action, I willed myself there with a thought.

“Fiammetta.” There was no hint of surprise in Thomas’ voice as he turned toward me and bowed his head in greeting. “It’s rare to see you away from your House these days.” The deep blue eyes were set on me, knowing.

Denying the painful lurch in my heartbeats, I snorted. “Shit, does everyone here have nothing better to do than to gossip about me? Like wondering why the hell we’re still alive and when the next attack will come?”

The light in Thomas’ gaze didn’t vary when he replied, “Gossip is a way of letting one’s mind puzzle out the true questions in the background.”

I gave him a look. That had to be the stupidest justification I had ever heard in defense of gossip, and yet--I started, as the words and their tone fully registered in my brain. He meant all of us, me included, and how he could be aware of-- I hissed out a breath. “I can’t think about that, Thomas. I can hardly think about anything these days.” With a brisk motion of the head, I stared away, and watched a score of boys and girls going through endless sequences of exercises and kata on the gymnasium on our right. “Thomas, I need your permission,” I said in a murmur, not facing him, “to go up Star Hill.”

“And why,” he retorted, untroubled, “would you want to do something as crazy and hard as that?”

For a moment I didn’t react, then I let out a faint chortle. “Fuck, Thomas, I thought you listened to gossip!” Thanks to an effort of will, I swallowed back the nasty laughter bubbling up my throat. “There’s something broken, deep inside me,” I heaved out a sigh, and stared at the path of flat stones set before us, “like a hole in my heart. It’s been there since the day we fought them at Achernar. Every day,” I added in a quiet voice, “it grows and I lose myself a little bit more. I’m waning, Thomas,” I smiled, “and while I’m doing so, I’m pushing people away, and I’m hurting them in the process. It’ll grow worse. I don’t know how to stop it, or what to do. I need guidance, I need it badly, and before it’s too late. So I’m asking you, Thomas. If need be,” I came to stand before him and gave him a deep bow, “I’m prepared to beg.”

Silence settled over us, a heavy blanket disturbed only by the sound of feet shuffling and running on dusty earth on our right, accompanied by the echo of short, ragged breaths and an occasional groan. “What the stars reveal there are jumbled glimpses into what might be,” Thomas said at last, his voice very soft. “They’re angry ghosts which claw at the soul and taunt the mind with tidbits of answers, only to tear them apart if you’re naïve enough or desperate enough to fall into that trap.” A hand rested on my right shoulder, gentle, and I looked up to meet Thomas’ deep blue eyes. “Fiammetta, there’s no guidance to be found there, so I won’t let you go up Star Hill. I’m sorry,” he finished, his tone not unkind.

Frozen, I stared at him. I searched his face for clues, but found none. He wouldn’t budge from that position. Nothing I could say or do would change his mind. I dragged in a shuddering breath. “Curse it, Thomas--” I went silent when the sound of my shaking voice reached my ears, and shook my head.

“I think,” Thomas’ hand squeezed my shoulder, “that you already have your own answer lurking within, and that what you seek isn’t guidance so much as certitude or reassurance. Star Hill won’t give you those, Fiammetta. Star Hill will only claw at your soul and hurt you.” There was no denying the painful sincerity in Gemini Thomas’ gaze. This was what he experienced each time he climbed up that mountain peak, he whose task it was to lead us all. “I think,” he drew in a breath, “that you’ve taught a fantastic apprentice all you could teach, and that he’s ready.” He smiled, a smile full of sorrow that knifed through my heart. I couldn’t look away from him, no matter how I wanted to. I couldn’t. “If what you need from me is release, then I release you, Fiammetta. Do what you must do, with the Sanctuary’s blessing and the love of Athena--the love of us all.” For a few seconds, the words hovered between us, then I bowed my head. When I looked up, Thomas was gone.

Unblinking, I stared at the training apprentices without seeing them. It was true, all that Thomas had told me. Beyond the wavering silhouettes of young people before me, what my eyes kept seeing was a soft silvery-green glow. Eventually I turned away, and trudged back up the Stairs, to the House of Aries.

Of their own volition, my feet led my reluctant self to my room in the small temple, where a golden case was resting on an old, worn out wooden chair. In a slow motion, I squatted down before it and laid the palms of both hands flat against it. Eyes closed, I focused on the sensation of every single delicate carving in the metal.

Smooth.

Warm.

It was humming softly inside my mind, a song laden with sadness.

“I love you,” I murmured, and touched my brow to the gold. Tendrils of gentle light rose from the case and enfolded me. I didn’t need to see them: I could feel them woven to the essence of my being. “Take good care of him,” I requested humbly. Then I pushed away and straightened. As I was making to turn back, I found Theirn standing on the threshold of my room.

“Take good care of whom?” He asked in a voice as quiet as he could muster, but from which he couldn’t stifle the slightest trembling. His eyes were bright, and his mouth was drawn in a taut line. The stiffness in his shoulders was so bad that it must hurt.

I dragged in a breath, and steeled my heart. “Take good care of you,” I replied, summoning a smile to my lips, “as you knew before asking.”

“You’re leaving.” He shook his head. “But you don’t have to.” Before I could say anything, he waved the air before him aside with the left hand. “You don’t have to!” He repeated, adamant. “I don’t care if you’re harsh or if you hurt me, or if you want to spend nights as well as days under the olive tree!” The tone of his voice had risen without his realizing it. He was losing the tight control he had tried to keep on his emotions.

It was too hard for him. My decision was made final in that moment. All of a sudden, it became so clear that I felt like a fool for agonizing over it for long weeks since our return to Earth. “Yes, I do have to,” I countered with a faint sigh. “Trust me to know that, Theirn. I know it hurts,” my lips thinned into a line, I went on, “I know, and I’m sorry. But,” I drew on another smile, “you’ll have Aries and Hamal, and they’ll bring you more joy than you can imagine--as well as little pieces of me, of master Nominoë and all those who came before him. You’ll never be alone.”

For a moment Theirn just stood rooted to the floor, silent, the light in his eyes even brighter than before. Then abruptly he flung himself at me--fast, and tickling old Einstein’s laws so I couldn’t have time to avoid his charge. The adolescent’s arms wrapped around me in an embrace tight enough to bruise. I could feel Theirn’s frantic heartbeats against my chest. He was trembling from head to toe. “You said you’d be Aries till your last breath!” He exclaimed in what wasn’t quite a sob. “You say you’re going away,” he went on in a husky voice. “To what? To die?”

I closed my eyes and reached up, letting the fingers of my right hand tousle his hair in a gesture I had never allowed myself until now. “I don’t know,” I replied softly. “It’s possible, even likely, but I don’t know.” Focusing on the silky sensation of his short-cropped hair, I added, “Banish the grief and treasure the memories. Cherish the love. I love you, Theirn. I always will.” With that, I pushed him away as gently as I could. It was hard not to will myself far away at once, but it would have made it even harder for him. So I walked to the entrance of my House, and froze on the threshold.

Ithiel was waiting on the parvis. “Fuck!” I snarled at him. “Will you all form a line to bid me a final farewell?!” I gulped a breath of air inside my lungs, and released it slowly. Then, willing irony to my tone, I asked him, “Is this some kind of revenge, of ploy to check that I’m truly set on leaving?”

“No,” he smiled, “although you’d sure deserve it. I came to tell you something you should know. When I reached out to you during your time trapped in that tree, I managed to touch you in particular circumstances. I tried many times from the House of Virgo, and failed. The only time I managed to feel hints of you was when I reached out while sailing the sea of chaos with Spica.”

I looked back at him in silence. I didn’t ask him what that meant and how that could be useful to me. Insufferable as always, Ithiel had come to deliver cryptic bits of wisdom that amounted to little more than gibberish.

Ithiel had come.

“Thank you,” I nodded at him. On impulse, I stepped to his side and stared at the closed eyes. “Theirn is in there. Alone. He’s going to need someone. Be there for him, Ithiel. Please.”

He snorted at that. “Since when is it Virgo’s duty to care about Aries?”

Through the wavering light in my eyes, I smiled. “Since we’re not friends, you and I.” I pointed my forefinger to his face, and in a lightning quick motion, his right hand caught mine and clasped it. Hard. For a fraction of a second, the sight of our intertwined fingers filled my vision, and then I pulled away, even as he released me. “Be well, Ithiel.” I looked up and found the light grey eyes set on me. Try though I might, I didn’t manage to get the smallest glimpse of my reflection in haughty Virgo’s gaze. With what might have been a faint snort, I took a step back and sparked my cosmo. This time, I did whisk myself away.

Far.

Next to the Sanctuary was the Graad Foundation’s main spaceport in Europe. As I stepped inside the ultra-modern building of crystal, officials greeted me and ushered me to a VIP room. Thomas had apparently anticipated my actions, for I was treated like some kind of royalty while waiting for a ship bound to Pillar.

I went the way roving travelers do: I requested passage from station to station, staying mostly on freighters and paying with a bit of help along the hyperspace currents, sometimes disrupting jumpgate schedules and sparking a tiny bit of chaos here and there. From Threshold I went on to Confluence, and then Pillar. There I took the first Halo Side ship that’d have me, unwilling to be recognized. After a detour on Blue Cove, I finally arrived at Pelagia.

Pelagia, Greek for the high seas. The ocean.

Here was the edge of the world, the Rim, now that all Fringe Worlds had been engulfed by black holes. Buying an old mining ship was easy: the Graad Foundation’s credit was apparently still valid this far Halo Side. I didn’t bargain for it, which meant that some accountant back on Earth would be very unhappy with the absurd amount of money paid for a derelict ship. Thomas might even hear of it and scowl at my frivolity.

The ship’s way to the edge of Pelagia’s system was a painstakingly slow one as it clambered up the small red star’s weak gravity well. Once we reached our destination, I stared at the perfect, pitch black night spreading before me until infinity.

I was there. Almost.

It didn’t make any more sense than when I had left Earth, but I knew for certain that was where I must be. Drawing in a deep breath, I focused on the darkness beyond the Rim. Jumpships alone could sail the sea of chaos freely. Normal ships couldn’t, even if they were piloted by a Gold Saint. I would be tossed by the hyperspace waves and crushed by the currents. There was no way this creaking cockle shell could withstand the wildness of hyperspace’s tides.

None.

Reaching out in spirit, I closed ethereal fingers upon the hyperspace curtain and parted it before me. Then I pushed the protesting engines of the old ship as much as I could without having it blow up.

And the sea of chaos closed around us.

I gave a pat on the old ship’s battered hull, careful lest it crumbled into bits and pieces on the spot. It had seen its last run. Not even the best mechanic in all eight galactic octants could again breathe life into the melted engine core, or again make whole the torn metallic structure. Hyperspace had been the end of it, and would have been the end of me if a fickle undercurrent hadn’t tossed the small mining ship aside, to a silvery-green shore.

Turning my back on the ruined vessel, I climbed up a slight slope and looked at the wall of grey wood that was barring the horizon before me. The trunk was hundreds of miles distant, but still it was towering over me. Immense. Its roots were reaching far out, spreading in endless lines like mountain ranges. With a smile, I stared up at the sky of silvery-green leaves and at the far above maze of forking branches, and I tasted the lack of surprise inside me. It was that silvery-green light I had been thirsting after during all the hours I had spent under the olive tree.

I sniffed at a faint hint of breeze like an addict smelling pot in the air. It was that sweet, spicy scent I had searched in every gust of wind that had coursed through the Sanctuary’s valleys. During weeks, I had blindfolded myself to the truth, even as I was yielding to it further with each moment. The worm squirming in my gut was what had made me stay on Earth for so long--too long to make my departure a clean cut. That cold, viscous thing twisting my insides was still there, even now. It would turn my legs to jelly if I let it, just as the heaviness in my chest would paralyze me. It was fear, a deep, deep dread. And sorrow, love. Bonds I couldn’t allow to fetter me and hold me back.

It was because of those emotions that I was here. Because, in spite of the growing hole in my soul, love had remained enough for me to refuse to watch and do nothing, to wait while others around me suffered and hurt themselves while trying to help what could no longer be helped. Once cut off, a limb could no longer be mended. So I was, broken, a burden wasting away. With a shaking sigh, I discarded my empty reflections, I ignored the cold snake coiling up my spine, and I started down toward the trunk, wading through thick blades of grass so high they reached the level of my shoulders.

It took me long hours to reach my destination--or the blink of an eye, depending on how Time touched this alien part of the universe, if it touched it at all. I jogged and ran, keeping myself from flirting with old Einstein’s absolute limits.

In the end, I came to a stop less than a furlong away from the shore of a pool of black waters. Still, quiet waters whose surface was shivering under the constant tickles of a mischevous breeze. Miles away on the left and right, the tree’s roots abruptly thickened. On the right side, their blackness was marred by two emerald beads as bulky as a two-storey building. As I stared into its eyes, the serpent seemed to blink, but didn’t otherwise move or display awareness of an intruder’s presence.

“What’s up?” I asked it conversationally. “Aren’t you interested in finding out how human flesh tastes anymore?” In slow steps, I walked to the shore of the lake-sized pool. Still the monster didn’t move. “Don’t you care about my intrusion into your domain?” I challenged it. There was no reaction.

It won’t care until it’s done digesting whatever it last gobbled up. I whirled to the left, to find a middle-sized woman watching me, less than ten steps away. Her long, light-grey hair was reaching down to her ankles. Distantly I marveled at her ability to walk with such a cumbersome mane, and at the absence of twigs and leaves tangled in its locks. The woman’s thoughts were as icy as her pale blue eyes. I, on the other hand, will care. This is my domain, and you won’t soil it as you did my sister’s. Begone, or touch it and be gone also.

For a few seconds I stared back at her, immobile and fighting down the smile that wanted to curl up my lips and uncover my teeth. “Don’t tempt me,” I scoffed at her. Then, eyeing one of the lowest branches, I willed myself to be standing upon it.

“Fool!” I hissed at the empty air in front of me. I didn’t know whether the qualifier applied to the woman, myself or the both of us. I didn’t want to be here. I needed to be here. I was as lost as I had been in the Sanctuary, except for the hole in my soul which had stopped growing.

The scent of honeysuckle was filling the atmosphere, coming from the thousands of vines coiled up to the trunk those low on the tree. With a grimace, I turned my back on them, and willed myself higher. Up I went, until the vines stopped, and then beyond that level. I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t even know why I was going anywhere. At some point, I stopped my aimless ascent, and on impulse I stepped away from the trunk. In brisk strides, I started following the path of a branch so thick it seemed as wide as a twelve lanes freeway--toward the distant canopy of silvery-green leaves in the horizon.

When I reached the outer edge of the apparently endless branch, I noticed twists in the tree’s canopy, nests of smaller branches, each covered by a roof of leaves. This far from the trunk, there were quite a few specks of white all around, places where frost seemed to have cloaked the leaves and twigs in a delicate mantle of white crystal. I glanced away from those, and found my gaze straying back to the strange little nests. With a thought, I whisked myself inside the nearest one.

A silvery-green glow was cradling the place, gentle and warm, and familiar. The leaves all around felt safe, felt like home. All of a sudden, I realized I had sat down in a hollow of one of the branches. I had leant my head back against the wood’s smooth surface in order to have a better view of the emerald roof. There was a lump in my throat and a sensation of burn in my eyes which neither belonged, nor made sense.

It was beautiful, so much so that it hurt.

It was precious as a new dawn.

Abrupt silence tore me from the slight trance. A silence deep and absolute, like the calm before one of hyperspace’s lethal storms. The birds had stopped chirping, and the constant rustle of leaves had died down.

The breeze had died down.

In a sluggish, awkward motion, I stood up and stared at the wall of leaves less than twenty steps away from me. There was nothing to feel or glimpse, nothing at--

Ripples.

Ripples traversing the air.

Ethereal whispers, just outside of my hearing range.

Ice clawed at my guts, so sharp and harsh that it was all I could do not to double over and scream. On instinct, I clutched at the Fire inside my heart. The Crystal Wall would protect me, it would--no. With a desperate effort of will, I made myself release my hold on the eager flames. Instead of shielding myself, I stood there, unmoving, while the ripples glided toward me.

Slow.

Lazy.

“Ithiel,” I breathed when they engulfed me, a stupid, stupid thing to hope for. My knees buckled from under me as those insubstantial ripples resounded through my ribcage, accompanied by--voices.

Bits and pieces of voices.

Muffled and fearful.

Tidbits of ghosts stories.

Fragments of legends.

Shreds of tales told in the small mess hall of a minor Trader ship, told by senior crew to occupy the young minds of the kids they had hired on Pillar for this one run--kids spooked by the alien sensation of the sea of chaos splashing through their ship’s hull and the thin walls of the crew’s quarters, to coat them with ethereal meerschaum during the drop of eternity it took the jumpgate operators to pull them ashore to Blue Cove.

Echoes of beating hearts.

From very far away, I heard myself gasp for air. All around me, the vision of the little ship’s galley and of the huddled shapes of its crew lingered, refusing to let go.

Not Ithiel.

I dragged in a breath. No, of course not Ithiel, but a ship that had brushed against the tree during its short drift in the hyperspace currents. No more than that. Again, I felt the surface of the huge branch beneath my feet, and the insisting ghost released my mind.

White.

I blinked, uncomprehending. White, all around. White, sparkling like a myriad diamonds. My eyes widened as I took in the sight set before me. There was no roof of silvery-green above me anymore. I was standing in a cathedral of frozen leaves.

“No!” The shaking word resounded in the cavern of delicate, shining crystals as I stepped back, hands pressed against my mouth to stifle the feeling of horror overwhelming me. When my right foot encountered a knot in the wood, I staggered backward and flailed my arms wildly in a reflex to regain my balance. My right hand slammed into what had been a wall of silvery-green leaves.

The fragile wall of frost shattered with a sound not unlike tiny bell chimes.

“Goddess,” I breathed, and I looked at my hand. This part of the tree had just died before my eyes--killed.

It had been killed by a Trader ship transiting between Pillar and Blue Cove through the jumpgate and a short hyperspace dive.

Unwittingly.

Refusing to fall to my knees, I stared at the frozen leaves. “Is this why?” I heard myself ask the silence.

“Is this why?!” The fragile wall of crystal echoed the question in my own blanched voice. Hyperspace travel sent ripples through the fabric of the universe, through all eight galactic octants of the galaxy. This much Halo Side and Core Side scientists had surmised. But those ripples carried far beyond.

Beyond the Rim.

And they killed--no, not killed. No. A trembling smile came up my lips, unbidden, and I reached out to the lace-like frozen leaves. They weren’t dead, not really. Gathering the Fire in my heart, I selected the gentlest flames and blew them over a frozen leaf. As it had once before, the white veil enshrouding it shimmered, and faded into nothingness. On impulse, I cupped my right hand over the leaf right next to the one I had just freed, and I pulled more flames out of my heart.

And more.

And more.

And more.

Until my hazy, troubled vision showed me only silvery-green leaves all around me.

I hugged myself. They could be healed; the tree could be healed from the wounds we were inflicting. I trudged forward, fighting against the heaviness of my body and the painful, labored beatings of my heart. Without Aries, it was hard, incredibly so, but it didn’t matter. There were other wounds to heal, so many I wouldn’t have enough with a whole lifetime to touch even a third of them. “Later,” I berated myself between clenched teeth. “Get to work. Worry later.” As I stepped out of the nest, I scanned my surroundings for the closest white spot. It wasn’t hard to find.

Far, too far away to walk there.

“Damn gigantic proportions,” I muttered, and I drew at the flames inside my heart.

A sudden gust of ethereal wind embraced them and glided them of my reach.

Gentle wind.

Warm.

“Enough,” someone said from above me. “You have time.” The voice was pure and musical--deep and beautiful.

The lurch in my heartbeats was so painful it obscured my vision for an instant. Even as I was making myself look up, Cinaed appeared on my right, less than five steps away. He had chosen to come from the right side, the side from which I’d be able to see him. He had also chosen to use words, to speak as he never had before. It made little sense, but at least there was coherence there. “What does it matter to you?” I asked him, sustaining his steady gaze.

“Healing pulls upon your soul. It tears at your essence,” he told me in a quiet voice, as if I was still a young apprentice taking my first lessons from master Nominoë. I knew that full well, far better than he.

“What does it matter to you?” I asked again, and this time there was no reply. I let the silence stretch on, but it didn’t seem to disturb him. He was just standing there, immobile. Eventually I looked away, not in the mood for mind games. This was his world, his domain. He could be anywhere, do anything. He could end my existence with a thought. His presence didn’t matter. I made to turn my back on him, and paused. “Is this why?” I asked, my voice carefully devoid of emotions. Waving at the silvery-green nest behind us, I repeated, “Is this why?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Why do you ask questions when you know the answer?”

In a reflexive gesture, I clutched at my left arm and bowed my head. “It didn’t have to be,” I murmured, and blinked back the searing sensation in my eyes. “We didn’t know, we couldn’t know. If I could send warning, the jumpgates could be used differently, the jumpships would choose other streams--”

“Later,” he said, “there’s time. You’ve done enough for now.” I shivered when I heard the gentleness in his voice, and I whirled around to face him again.

“What is it to you?!” I hissed. “What is it to you if I drain myself of life?” Once more, silence was my only response. “Damn you!” I snarled. “Answer me!”

A shadow touched the eyes of pale blood, and then was gone. All of a sudden, he came to my side and seized my right wrist, his movements so quick that I had no time to escape. Sharply he pulled at me, and pressed the palm of my hand against his chest.

Flames crackled.

High walls of fire rose up beyond the sky and plunged deep beneath the ground.

Dancing flames, so bright and strong, twirled around me.

Rupture.

I staggered. The fire’s waltz was harsh. Jarred. Painful. It was shying away from a darker glow within its own heart.

Smoldering embers.

The flames kept recoiling every time they came close--they must come close, they must touch that dark blade at their core. It was a part of them, but it hurt them, it knifed into them, and so the flames’ dance was jarred.

Out of tune.

I drew a sharp intake of breath, and willed the vision away. Denying the snake now coiled up to my ribcage and crushing the bones there, I looked into Cinaed’s eyes. “I cannot heal,” he told me, his voice calm and unconcerned. “I am Fire, and too harsh. I can only scorch, not heal.” It was a sham, a lie. The dark embers smoldering in his heart had a name.

“Grief,” I stated. “Strings out of tune, you once said. It’s there, poisoning you as well.” A crooked smile was twisting the lines of my mouth.

He chuckled at that, a sad, beautiful sound, and again I blinked back what couldn’t be tears. “Mine is an old one,” he replied, “and I’ve tamed it. The one you sensed is yours.”

Of their own volition, my fingers clutched at the fabric of his shirt. “What?!” I growled.

A smile touched his lips and lit his gaze. “Did you think any one of us could grasp the other’s heart and remain unscarred?” I stared into those red eyes, silent, fighting to drag air inside my lungs, until at last I looked away.

“That’s why I thought I was going insane,” I heard myself say. “That’s why I came here.”

“That’s why I use sounds and words,” he retorted, “even though it was meaningless to me before. I use them because their music is familiar and reassuring, and because it soothes the human heart.”

With all of my will, I focused on the soft fabric of his shirt, and made myself face him. “You said I had time. How long?” The question was a hiss. We had pulled at each other’s essence. We had both draw something from the other as a consequence. We had lost, and gained. “How long?!” I repeated.

He gave another shrug. “Time doesn’t mean much here.”

I took a step back, and shook my head. “I won’t spend all of eternity here alone,” I said in a blanched voice. “I can’t.”

“You won’t.” I froze. “I’m here,” he said, this absurd angel of death, this beautiful Fire who had killed Murali. Laughter burst from me, broken and harsh. He was insane, even more than I was. “Hate me.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Hate me,” Cinaed repeated. Quietly. “Hate me if you must, and if it will help you bear the pain. Hate me. I’ll be there anyway. I’ll be there for you.”

His words coiled around me, dizzying. Dissonant. “You think you mean that.” I stared at the canopy of leaves and branches on my left. “You think you know what it is you’re saying.” My mouth drawn in a taut line, I gave another shake of the head. “You don’t. If you did--” I closed my eyes tightly shut, and swallowed back the ludicrous lump in my throat. “Call my name,” I challenged him, my eyes set on the shining white stains strewing the silvery-green sky.

Wounds humanity had inflicted--we had inflicted.

Withering leaves.

Lives snatched away.

On both sides.

He wouldn’t. How could he? How could a human name have meaning for him? It was as alien to him as--human grief.

“Little flame.” With desperate strength, I hugged myself, but still I felt my shoulders shake when the sound of his voice reached my ears. “Little flame,” he repeated, but I didn’t look at him. I refused to. “It’s how I named you when I grasped your heart. That’s who and what you are.” Still I stared at the foliage before me, without seeing it. “Fiammetta,” he called softly.

I bit my lower lip hard, but this time there was no helping the burning sensation in my eyes. “Help me,” I hissed between clenched teeth.

Fire enfolded me.

Gingerly.

“Help me,” I repeated, blindly groping for it. Tears had obscured my vision.

“I’m here,” Cinaed said, and his arms came around me in a hesitant, awkward gesture.

Careful, the fingers that pulled me against him and slid up my neck to start kneading through the short stands of my hair--a cat’s reflex.

Solid, the body pressed against mine.

Real, the feeling and spicy-sweet scent of him.

Gentle, the glow of the purring flames embracing me.

Soft, the silky fabric of his shirt as I buried my face into the hollow of his left shoulder.

Warm, the caress of his breath tickling my ear and my nape.

“So you are,” I chuckled through my tears, and I held him tight. Perhaps one day I would learn to call his name as well. As he had told me, there was time.

And there were many wounds to heal.

End.

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