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Chapter Text

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Chapter One: Hostages

Glimmer paced the length of her cell and rehearsed for the thousandth time in her head what she would say to the officers that would come with their morning meal.

At least a week had passed since Catra convinced Horde Prime to spare her life. At least a week since both were captured aboard his citadel and thrown in a cell together. No new information about her friends back on Etheria had come, despite her every effort to get any of Prime’s officers to drop so much as a hint. It didn’t matter if they were clone or alien, or even vaguely Etherian looking themselves—no one had said a word.

Maybe if I physically get between them and the door when they come in, she thought.

Horde Prime had spared them for a reason. He wouldn’t let his prisoners—or ‘guests’ as he liked to call them—be harmed, would he? Glimmer hoped it was the slender looking officers that came today. If it was them, then maybe she’d stand a chance intimidating them; if it were those giant hulking walls of muscle, however? Or worse, if it were Prime’s clones themselves this time around…?

“Do you really have to keep pacing like that?” Catra lay in the bottom bunk of their cell, staring at her as her tail twitched. She was dehydrated, if the vague molasses lilt of her voice gave any indication.

Glimmer tried to ignore her, and instead stared out the large window at the back of their cell.  A smattering of stars and nebulae stood as a backdrop with Etheria’s curve taking up most of the remaining real-estate. She frowned. The planet seemed to somehow mock her. A whole week, gone. And for all Glimmer knew, her friends could already be dead. Where were Bow and Adora and the other princesses? Fighting on the surface no doubt but were they okay? Were they safe?

“Whatever it is you’re thinking, it’s not going to work,” Catra said. “Horde Prime may have spared our lives, but that doesn’t mean his officers won’t retaliate if you do something to them.”

Glimmer clenched her jaw. “I’m not going to do anything to them,” she said.

“Liar. I can tell you’re planning something stupid this time because you’re pacing harder than normal.”

Glimmer rounded on her and snarled, pushing magic to her fists. But no magic came, and the stark reminder she was too far away from Etheria’s surface to use any of it slapped her in the face. Catra leveled her with a placid, unfazed expression atop the bed, and Glimmer deflated.

Catra had saved her life not once, but twice since they had gotten stuck up on Horde Prime’s citadel. She couldn’t remember much of what happened, just that, one day, she woke in the infirmary instead of the cell. The nurses, fragile, spindly looking aliens all of them, filled her in: Her body had gone into shock, likely as an aftereffect of her activating the Heart and it shoving a great amount of magic through her all at once. Her body wasn’t prepared to handle it, and if it weren’t for Catra, dozens of towels, and bowls of cold water from their shared bathroom keeping her from overheating, she likely would have died.

“She wouldn’t stop whining at the camera in there,” one of the nurses had said, faint disdain on its blunted features. “It was so incessant and annoying that someone was sent to check and they brought you to us.”

Glimmer took a deep breath and centered herself. Catra cocked an eyebrow at her and Glimmer tried for the hundredth time to picture her dragging her into the bathroom and taking care of her. Catra barely looked functional herself, like she’d immediately collapse under her own weight from weakness the moment she stood up. Imagining this person taking care of her wasn’t just an inability to believe a former enemy had actually helped her, it was a logistical problem too.

“Can you at least stop pacing?” Catra asked. “It’s driving me insane. Really.”

Glimmer massaged her face until her scowl loosened up, pulled out one of the chairs pushed under their shared table in the center of the room, and sat. As much as she wanted to squeeze the life out of Catra’s body with her own two hands for being so dang annoying, she fought to give her the benefit of the doubt. If sitting rather than pacing helped ease Catra’s frustration, well then Glimmer would oblige. They were enemies, but she was indebted and wanted to dig herself out from under that debt as soon as possible.

“Thank you,” Catra said.

The doors to their cell slid open just as Glimmer grunted out a response, and she immediately stood and whirled around to face whoever had come. She had rehearsed this moment in her head time and time again. Now it was time to act. Except, her willingness to do so seeped out of her as soon as she saw who had come: four clones stepped in, two holding a tray of food each and two flanking them as extra security.

It had always been actual aliens, Horde Officers of various races and genders, that had brought their food and done their wellness checks. But never the clones. In fact, she had only ever seen them the one time in the throne room when they first arrived. To say she was surprised to see not one, but four of them step into their room with their afternoon rations was an understatement. Even Catra, finally sitting up in the bunk with her hair all matted, seemed surprised.

“Lord Prime will come for you soon,” the first clone said, stepping forward. He made a show of craning his neck and glancing behind Glimmer at Catra. “Your friend has not eaten since arriving. She must be presentable when Lord Prime comes for you. He would not like the idea that our honored guests are in such a disheveled state. It would reflect poorly on him as host.”

“If he doesn’t want to be seen as a poor host, then maybe he shouldn’t lock his ‘honored guests’ in a cell aboard his ship.” Glimmer stood as straight as she could and put her best approximation of a ‘Queenly demeanor’ in her voice.

The clone, three heads taller than her and staring nearly straight down, blinked once with a vacant expression on its face. It slid around her and placed the tray on the table. “If she will not eat, then we will make her. It will not be pleasant.”

The clone carrying the second tray of food followed suit. All four of them then swept out of the room before Glimmer could decide whether to chance her original plan, and the door hissed shut behind them.

Glimmer stared at the trays in front of them. Everything there looked foreign to her with no native Etherian dishes—not that she expected there to be any. Fortunately, Glimmer could at least mentally categorize each of them based off their taste and texture: some kind of meat, a vegetable medley, and a type of sweet dessert. Thankfully all the food they had eaten thus far had sat well with their stomachs too.

Well, her stomach at least. She finally looked over to Catra and found her exactly how she expected her to be: curled up on the bed now the clones had left, shivering under the covers, facing the wall with her back toward her. Glimmer hadn’t seen Catra move from that position since she had returned from the med bay, and despite her inability to tell exact time aboard the ship, she knew at least a day or two had passed since then.

Glimmer sighed and prepared herself for an uphill battle. “Food is here Catra, come over and eat.”  When Catra didn’t stir, she rolled her eyes. “You can’t groan and whine about listening to me walk around the cell and then immediately after pretend not to hear me talking to you.”

Catra snorted and turned around. Her face was sunken and pale, her eyes bloodshot and sagging, and her fur stuck up in every which odd direction. “You weren’t walking, Sparkles, you were pacing. There’s a difference.”

Glimmer felt on the verge of bursting a vein. She picked up one of the trays to give her hands something to grasp aside from Catra’s scrawny neck and shuffled over to her. Catra eyed her as she did, fur puffing out in warning as she got closer.

“Come on, it’s time to eat,” Glimmer said, speaking through clenched teeth.

“Not hungry.”

“I didn’t ask if you were hungry, I said it’s time to eat.” Glimmer plonked the tray down on the nearby nightstand and dragged the whole thing over next to Catra on the bed. It screeched as if it were a live animal being dunked in scalding water, and the sound made Catra hiss with her ears pinned back flat against her head.

Glimmer didn’t try very hard to suppress her amusement at that. “Now, let’s eat. Okay?”

Catra narrowed her eyes at her and Glimmer swore she saw the moment the other girl decided to continue fighting her. Catra had her ‘shit-stirring persona’ down to a science. “What are you going to do if I say no? Force me?”

“Did you not hear what those clones just said? If they come back and see you still haven’t touched your food, they aren’t just going to take it away like before. They’re going to tie you down and force it down your gullet.”

“That’s kinda kinky,” Catra said, laughing, and Glimmer felt her hands inch toward the other girl’s neck. She only stopped when Catra’s gaze turned morose. “If I had to choose between you or the clones,” she said. “I would choose you.”

Glimmer blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Forcing me to eat. If it were between you or the clones, you’d probably be gentler, at least.”

Glimmer narrowed her eyes at her. Was she making another crude joke or trying to be sincere about how Glimmer wouldn’t hurt her? It was hard to tell with the way she jumped from one extreme to the other, and she almost asked before she saw the little smirk flit across Catra’s lips.

How the hell could she be making jokes at a time like this? She felt a perverse sense of glee overcome her as she realized something else: two could play that game.

“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “Bow has told me on numerous occasions that I roughhouse like his brothers. I like him and I’m not all that gentle—just imagine what it’d be like for you.” A thought came to her. “How the heck are you still even alive? I don’t think I’ve seen you touch any food at all, and I’m pretty sure it’s been at least a week we’ve been here.”

Catra shrugged and spoke in a casual tone. “I have an efficient metabolism. Never ate much, even when we got double rations in the Horde.”

Glimmer chuckled at that and Catra joined her. She couldn’t believe it; they were bonding over being brats to each other. It was almost a nice feeling, until she suddenly remembered she was standing across from the person that essentially took her mother from her. She could sense the moment her features turned dark because Catra immediately stopped laughing and averted her eyes.

In an effort to distract herself, Glimmer reached over and speared some ‘meat’ and ‘vegetables’ with the fork on the tray holding it out for her. She fully intended to get into a shouting match if needed. Catra would eat, even if she came away with scars up and down her arms and a black eye. It wasn’t until Glimmer actually looked at Catra—really looked at her—that she saw how Catra had recoiled from her. Fear and terror danced in her eyes.

“Touch me and I swear I’ll claw your eyes out,” Catra said.

Adora had looked at Shadow Weaver that same way shortly after healing her with She Ra’s power. Her surprise visit to Bright Moon had shaken her, and Glimmer would never forget how her heart ached seeing her friend look so much like a cornered animal. Seeing that same look now directed at her calmed the anger threatening to boil over in Glimmer’s chest.

She placed the fork back on the tray and turned it so it was instead pointing handle-first in Catra’s direction. “If you won’t eat, then I won’t either,” she said as she made her way back to the table and sat, leaving Catra’s food within arm’s reach of the bunk.

“What?” The tip of Catra’s tail twitched and betrayed her unease.

“You heard me. If you won’t eat, neither will I.”

Catra groaned and ran her hands through her hair. “I told you I’m not hungry.”

“And I told you that I didn’t ask if you were hungry. You need to eat or else we’re both going to have something unpleasant done to us. Do you want those clones to come in here and force you to eat after all? Because I sure don’t.”

Glimmer wasn’t certain if Catra was about to attack or start crying by the way she looked at her until, finally, Catra turned her attention to her tray, picked up the fork with a shaky hand, and ate what Glimmer had speared for her in the first place.

“S’good,” Catra said. Her eyes darted down to the tray, as if noticing it for the first time. She dropped the fork with a clatter and instead started shoveling everything she could into her mouth as fast as possible. Glimmer couldn’t tell if she even took the time to chew before swallowing, only to make room for the next handful of food she had ready to cram into her face. A moment later and Catra’s entire platter was empty. Her eyes shot toward Glimmer’s tray, still sitting untouched in front of her on the table.

Glimmer didn’t miss how ravenous she looked. Catra must have caught the look of astonishment she was giving her because she immediately looked away, embarrassed, then covered that embarrassment with the darkest scowl Glimmer had seen her make yet. Despite herself, she found it almost endearing.

“Not hungry, huh?” She made sure to really push the teasing lilt in her voice, if only to unbalance Catra even further. “You know, someone else I know from the Horde had that exact same reaction the first time they ate real food.”

Catra’s scowl deepened. She hugged her knees close to her chest, like she thought it possible to disappear from view entirely if she made her body small enough. It wasn’t the reaction Glimmer was hoping for, and she immediately realized why what she said seemed to make Catra descend into self loathing rather than embarrassment: she was talking about Adora, but Adora was probably the last person Catra wanted to think about in that moment.

“Uhh…it was Scorpia!” Glimmer said. She didn’t know why she was suddenly trying to spare Catra’s feelings. “She came to us and the first time she tried strawberries I swear it was like she didn’t know something like that could exist in the first place. Frosta told me later that she didn’t know food came in sizes and textures other than ‘ration bar.’”

Catra softened at hearing that and Glimmer breathed a sigh of relief.  “Scorpia’s with you?” she asked after a moment.

Glimmer weighed the many responses that flitted through her head before settling on one she thought was the best. “Yes, she is.”

“How is she?” Catra asked, curling tighter again. “Is she…happy?”

Glimmer softened, suddenly feeling…something—what, exactly, she wasn’t sure. “Yeah, I think she’s happy.”

Catra stayed silent, and Glimmer thought that was the end of their longest and deepest conversation yet, until…

“Good,” Catra said, voice quavering with her hands. “That’s good. I’m glad. She deserves that, to be happy… she deserves to be happy.”

 Glimmer studied Catra. Was this the same person that only weeks ago they were kicking and punching and biting each other inside an exploding military base? Was this the same person she was ready to end on the ruined floors of the Fright Zone? She sighed and approached Catra once more, this time carrying her own tray of food. Catra eyed her with barely disguised apprehension until Glimmer tipped her tray toward Catra’s empty one and scraped half her meal onto it.

Catra’s eyes blew wide. “That’s your food.” She sounded as if she didn’t trust herself to speak at all.

“Nothing gets past you, does it?” Glimmer suppressed the urge to snort at the look of confusion on Catra’s face. “You need it more than me. Efficient metabolism or no, you haven’t eaten in far too long. I’d feel better if you made up for it by eating some of mine.”

“And you think that I want to do anything to help you feel better because why?”

Glimmer shrugged and said nothing. She went over to place her tray with its remaining food on a second nightstand, picked it up so it wouldn’t scrape across the ground, and waddled over and placed it opposite Catra’s own tray and nightstand. Then she grabbed the chair she was using earlier and sat down across from her at their makeshift table.

“You didn’t have to call for doctors when I was sick,” Glimmer said. She noticed how Catra immediately refused to look her in the eye when she spoke. “But you did it anyways. And even when no one came at first, you kept calling until they had no choice but to come.” She gestured to their trays and Catra followed her hands. “I don’t have to give you my food either, but I’m doing it for the same reason you helped me.”

“And what reason is that?” Catra had finally glanced up and locked eyes with her.

Glimmer wasn’t about to say it out loud, but Catra seemed to get that she didn’t need to in order to understand what that reason was.

 “Stop being difficult and just eat it already,” Glimmer said. “Please.”

Another long moment hung in the air. Catra averted her eyes again and took a deep, sniveling breath. She brought her arm up and rubbed it back and forth across her face like she was trying to strip her skin raw. Then, in one quick motion, scooted forward, picked up the fork this time, and began spearing and slowly eating the extra food Glimmer had given her.

Opting to provide her at least a small chance to save face, Glimmer busied herself with her own food. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Catra alternate between eating and rubbing at her face. The occasional sniffle accompanied the sound of their utensils clacking on the tin.

She thought of her mother again. For the first time since being stuck in the same room as her, Glimmer didn’t feel the familiar tug of anger or resentment.

A smile spread across her face as another thought came to her, and she glanced at Etheria out the window: whatever her friends were doing down there, she hoped they were making the same kind of progress against the Emperor’s forces that she and Catra were making together up here with each other. If that were true, then it would only be a matter of time before they beat him. She had faith.

Prime stood no chance.

Chapter Text

Dread gripped Adora’s heart as she stood atop one of the great spires at Bright Moon castle and looked out at the castle town below. Prime clones and Horde warbots combed the empty streets, stepping over rubble and through flaming debris in their search for hostages. Thankfully, the Rebellion had managed to move everyone inside the walls of the castle proper before any civilians were taken. Plumes of smoke rose in the lands beyond the town, likely from the scorched earth and scarred fields of the many villages and settlements in the distance Prime’s forces had already annihilated.

A sound built up overhead, like roaring thunder, and Adora looked up at a massive warship orbiting above. It was the source of all this destruction and chaos to begin with. Light from a cannon on its underside pulsed and illuminated the smooth surface of its hull. The cannon flashed, blinding bright, and a beam as large as one of the castle’s own turret towers shot from the belly of the ship and streaked toward them. It smashed into a massive magic shield separating them from the attacking enemy, and the cannon-fire dissipated across the dome, lighting up an intricate pattern of geodesic lines and kaleidoscope swirls that spanned the shield’s surface.

The ground shook with the impact of the blast and Adora grimaced. That warship was the sole reason their entire resistance had fallen, mere hours after returning with Bow. After defying Light Hope and breaking the Sword of Protection to stop the Heart of Etheria from firing, they both sped back to Bright Moon atop Swift Wind. That warship descended upon them almost immediately thereafter, spitting fire and beaming clone troops and killer bots to the surface to demolish and occupy everything in sight. It was a miracle the princesses and Elite Bright Moon guard had jumped into action as quickly and efficiently as they had. She didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if Micah and Shadow Weaver hadn’t worked together to erect that shield so quickly. It was probably the only thing successfully keeping the enemy forces at bay.

Another burst of fire from the ship and another rumble in the earth sent Adora clutching at her ribs in pain.

“Adora, you should really get that looked at,” King Micah said, standing next to her. “Please.”

“I can’t do that, sir,” Adora said.

A clone or warbot—she wasn’t sure which—had grazed her with blaster fire earlier, when she couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. She counted herself lucky to get away with what was likely just a bruise, since the final push to get civilians inside the castle walls had been a brutal fight. Her armor was ruined and she could no longer wear it, but at least she was alive.

“The next wave could come at any minute,” she said. “I have to be ready for it.”

“We have to be ready,” Micah said, “not just you. You should be able to take a break or go and get yourself examined if need be. The rest of us are here protecting the castle, too.”

Adora didn’t say anything. She really didn’t want to get into this right now and hoped Micah would let it go if she didn’t engage.

“The sword is broken and She Ra is gone for now,” he said. “You made the choice you thought was right in the moment and I don’t blame you for it in the slightest. But there’s no use in dwelling on that any longer.” He swept his hands at the wreckage and enemy soldiers on the other side of the barrier. “This is a fight we’ll have to win without her. I’ll need you in top shape if we’re to stand any chance.”

Adora opened her mouth to respond when Entrapta’s voice blared through the transceiver at Micah’s belt.

“We have a signal and we’re being hailed! It’s coming—oh gosh, it’s coming directly from Horde Prime’s citadel in orbit. It’s coming now! Hurry!”

Adora and Micah spared each other knowing glances before they both took off at a dead sprint down the spire’s stairs. Adora did what she could to keep her mind from spiraling. They raced down the hallway, passing huddles of refugees from the surrounding area and pockets of battered Bright Moon soldiers. Everyone looked so exhausted, and Adora had a feeling she wasn’t faring much better in their eyes either.

When they finally skidded around a sharp turn and burst through the high double doors into the castle’s war room, the princesses and Shadow Weaver were already there, huddled around a frantic Bow and manic Entrapta. The two of them worked furiously at a briefcase-sized device on the table. It was undoubtedly one of Entrapta’s creations, judging by its haphazard, jury-rigged appearance.

“Hurry!” Entrapta said to Bow. “You need to amplify the capture signal or we’re going to lose it!”

“Get the transmission up,” Micah said, striding in with a confidence that betrayed nothing of the fact he and Adora were sprinting like mad moments earlier.

Bow yanked at a handful of dials and knobs on the device and dashed over to a hole in the floor. Massive cables snaked from the box through the hole into the foundations of the castle underneath, and the sound of Bow exerting himself echoed out the moment he jumped inside. Entrapta keyed a few commands into the tablet she held in her left hand, furrowed her brow at the box when it apparently didn’t do what she was expecting it to, and pounded the top of the device once with a closed fist.

A life-sized hologram of Horde Prime flickered into existence next to them and bathed the room in a green light.

“Greetings, Etherians,” he said with his hands folded behind his back and a cool expression on his face. “I have come to negotiate terms of your surrender, for Prime is merciful, and the newest addition to our Galactic Empire should not suffer such bloodshed and destruction needlessly. Who among you has the authority to treat with an Emperor?”

A murmur of uncertainty spread through the group as the princesses looked at each other. Adora felt their eyes linger on her, then turn away. They didn’t mean anything by it. She knew they were just uncertain whether they should place such a burden on someone who had just lost She Ra at their most desperate hour, but that didn’t stop the pang of guilt that shot through her in response.

“I can speak with you,” Micah said, stepping forward. “I am Micah, King of Brightmoon. What terms of surrender do you propose?”

Horde Prime turned and regarded Micah with a genteel expression. The earlier murmur of uncertainty from the princesses turned into alarm, and Adora looked at Micah as if to say what the heck are you doing? He was talking to her of winning the battle without She Ra not even moments earlier. Why all of a sudden did he seem to jump at the chance to talk of surrender?

Except, the look Micah returned to her suggested something else was at play. Prime spoke then of unconditional surrender and an immediate vacating of the castle. He wanted them to march out beyond the magic shield with arms behind their heads. Micah instead countered with questions about guaranteeing their safety. It wasn’t long before Adora realized what he was doing: he was stalling. Purposefully.

Adora didn’t think, she just moved. They had to capitalize on Micah’s distraction—come up with a plan of some sort.

“Entrapta,” she said, shuffling around Prime toward her and gritting her teeth, trying to eke out the syllables without moving her lips. “Can you get the transmission’s coordinates?”

Entrapta looked up at her with a confused expression. “It’s coming from Horde Prime’s citadel? You know, since that’s where he is?”

“No that’s not what I—“ Adora sighed and suppressed the urge to turn on Entrapta and shake her right then and there. “We need to know where on that station he’s broadcasting from. Can you work your magic and get us the exact coordinates of the transmission?”

Realization dawned on Entrapta’s face. “Ohhhh, yeah I can get that. It will take a moment so make sure you keep him talking.”

Adora was about to point out that’s exactly what Micah was already doing, but Entrapta had already turned and was busy tapping commands into her data-pad and adjusting the knobs and dials on the projector. Adora and the princesses exchanged wide-eyed looks of horror as she worked. Prime only had to turn around, and he would see they were up to something.

Fortunately, Micah was doing a wonderful job irritating the Emperor with increasingly ludicrous questions about their surrender.

“All I’m asking is who is going to pay for repairs to the castle town and surrounding countryside?” he said. “My people have no homes, and their livelihoods have been erased because of the consequences of the invasion.”

Micah gestured with strong, sweeping motions of his arms as he spoke. Adora couldn’t help but feel impressed at how convincingly he led Horde Prime around by the nose with his tangents. For someone who had been stuck for years on Beast Island and proclaimed to not be used to speaking, he was doing a damn good job of it right when they needed him.

The same can’t be said for you and She Ra, though. The thought came uninvited to her head, and she pushed it out. She had to focus.

“Not to mention the cost of rebuilding the other kingdoms,” Micah said. “If the level of destruction in Bright Moon is indicative of how the other domains are faring, then it is safe to say we as a planet cannot fund our own rebuilding effort. Not fully, anyway, and not without significant stagnation in our global economy. Our ability to thrive as a subject under your rule would be severely hampered.”

One of the extra eyes on Horde Prime’s face twitched, and his lips tugged upward in a snarl. “You will leave those details to me. The Empire will decide how best to help you rebuild and integrate. All you and your band of holdouts need concern yourselves with is vacating your castle and letting my forces take custody of it and of you.”

“Yes, but what if—“

“Enough!” Horde Prime seemed to grow even taller in his fury. He balled his fists at his side and the tendrils on his head coiled like dancing snakes. “You are beaten, King of Bright Moon. Do you not realize this? You and your castle are the last resistance still standing on your planet. You will surrender peacefully or you will all die, but you will not be standing come morning.”

The room stilled and Prime relaxed, uncurling his fists and combing his fingers through his tendril-hairs with a deep breath through the nose. “I have grown to appreciate the benefits of negotiating peace as opposed to long conquests and their brutality. I had hoped to extend the same offer for peaceful surrender to your people, but that seems to have unintentionally emboldened you. Maybe this will help you understand.” Prime gestured and an image fizzled to life in the space next to him. When they recognized what the image was, everyone in the room gasped.

It was surveillance video of a single, sanitary-white room. One bunk bed was shoved into the wall, and a table with chairs sat in the center. The camera was placed high in the corner, judging by the perspective. Catra was standing underneath, looking directly up at them, eyes wide with fear and hair sticking out every which direction. She looked skinnier and was yelling something repeatedly at the camera, although Adora couldn’t tell what, since there was no sound. Glimmer lay on the bottom bunk, clearly not doing well. Was she dead? Is that why Catra looked so panicked?

An icy feeling seized Adora by the gut and she forced herself to look away. Instead, she glanced at her friends. The princesses all looked shocked, and Bow had stepped forward with a murderous glint in his eyes. King Micah, on the other hand, held his hand out like he had tried to reach through the image to pull his daughter through to him. He looked absolutely devastated. Heartbroken.

Entrapta flagged Adora down with exaggerated movements of her hair and, somehow, Prime still hadn’t caught on. I have the coordinates, she mouthed soundlessly to her. Adora nodded. A fire felt like it had suddenly lit itself inside her.

“Ah, it seems that did indeed get your attention,” Prime said to Micah. “You have no power to negotiate in this exchange. You will surrender to my forces outside your castle immediately.”

“No, we will not,” Adora said.

Everyone turned to her in surprise. Prime blinked once, twice. He looked like he didn’t quite trust what he heard.

“Say that again?” he asked.

Adora took a step forward and pushed her chin out at him. Prime was several heads taller than her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make him feel like she was the one looking down on him. “I said no. We will not be surrendering. You will return Glimmer and Catra to us immediately or there will be hell to pay.”

“Oh? And who are you? Your King must truly be daring if he allows his subjects to make such demands in his stead.”

“I am Adora, Princess of Power. If you do not return Queen Glimmer and Catra to us at once, then we will come for them ourselves. I’m warning you, Horde Prime…if you’ve done anything to them, anything at all, then I will make you pay. On this I swear as a citizen of Bright Moon, and as She Ra of Etheria.”

Horde Prime crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at her. “Hm.” His holographic figure stuttered, then disappeared entirely, leaving them alone in the war room.

“He cut the signal,” Entrapta said.

Adora immediately went to Micah who was shaking with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, forcing himself to calm down. “I saw her there in the back and I just…I just froze.”

‘It’s okay, sir,” Adora said. She beckoned to the others who hurried over to comfort him. “We were all shocked to see that too, but you haven’t seen Glimmer in years. I can’t imagine trying to keep a clear head if I were in your shoes. I could barely keep it together as is.”

Micah flashed her a grateful look.

“This does beg the question though,” said a voice off to the side. Shadow Weaver, who up to that point had remained quiet in the corner, glided toward them. “What do we do, now that you have taken any chance of negotiation unequivocally off the table?”

Adora felt another piece in her plan fall into place and smiled. “You’ve teleported before, haven’t you? Twice, each over long distances if I remember correctly. The first when you came to Bright Moon from the Fright Zone, and the second when you, Bow, and Glimmer all came to rescue me.”

Shadow Weaver gave her a skeptical look. “Indeed, I did use a teleportation spell for each of those instances, and for others. I feel I must warn you—whatever it is you are thinking in your head of doing, teleporting is not easy nor straightforward. It’s incredibly difficult.”

Adora nodded, “I understand that, but it’s going to be difficult regardless if we intend to do anything other than give up. Entrapta pulled the coordinates from Prime’s broadcast. The exact coordinates.”

Entrapta’s eyes lit up. She seemed to suddenly piece together what Adora was getting at. “Those coordinates should not only just tell us where on the ship he is, but where exactly in space he is. XYZ coordinates. If we combine that with a teleportation spell, then—“

“Then we can teleport right in front of him and take him out.” Micah said, finishing her sentence with a nod. “It would be incredibly difficult, and we’d have to get it exactly right, but…” he glanced at Shadow Weaver, who looked like she very much didn’t want to go ahead with that plan but couldn’t find a good reason to refuse. “We should be able to do it.”

“Good,” Adora said and all eyes turned back to her. “Entrapta, you work with King Micah and Shadow Weaver on getting us there, by any means necessary. As soon as you give us the green light we’ll go.”

“This sounds awfully like a suicide mission to me,” Mermista said, looking at the other princesses, likely to gauge how many of them felt the same as her. “If we screw this up at all, even slightly, we’re done. No more Princess Alliance, no more princesses. Possibly no more Etheria.”

“That’s already going to happen if we don’t do anything at all,” Adora said. “I understand the hesitation, but think about if this works. We’ll be able to get right in front of Prime without him even expecting it and grab him, either for ransom or something else. We should probably decide what to do with him before we go, but either way: if this works, we can turn this invasion on its head with one swift stroke.”

There was another low murmur through the group, but Adora didn’t hear any consensus around rejecting her plan.

“Uhh, guys?” Bow said. He had made his way to the war room’s general controls during their discussion, and was looking at the reading on the console with a nervous expression. “You should take a look at this.” He punched a few commands into the console and a large screen in the room blinked to life.

Multiple surveillance videos splayed across the monitor showed fresh clones pushing through the barrier like they were wading through molasses, regrouping in ordered formations on the inside. Other video feeds showed additional troops, and now tanks and armored vehicles, materializing on the outside of the barrier, beamed in from the warship overhead. They too pushed through the barrier and formed up with their fellows on the other side.

“Battle stations everyone,” Adora said. “We’ve got another assault!”

The rest of the princesses sprinted out the war room and to their respective posts. Bow punched another command into the system and a siren blared in the distance, warning the guards to gear up and join them outside.

“Entrapta, Shadow Weaver, Micah, you three know what to do,” Adora said. “Let us know as soon as you’re ready. And please, hurry!” The three of them nodded, and Adora rushed off to join the others in battle.

Chapter Text

Although the clones had warned her Horde Prime would come for them soon, it still took Glimmer by surprise when he did. The door to their cell hissed open a few hours after they finished eating and he stepped through, flanked by a half dozen clone guards.

 “Greetings, Queen Glimmer.” He smiled at her and bowed deep with a flourish. Something about him didn’t seem right, but Glimmer couldn’t figure out what. “I am glad to see you are doing better than when we first brought you aboard. My apologies it took so long for us to check up on you.”

Glimmer shifted to give Catra, who had peeled herself off the bed and shuffled over to them, room to stand next to her. “That is quite alright,” she said. “I understand conquering a planet can get complicated enough that other things”—she made a dismissive gesture with her hands—”just slip through the cracks.”

Prime didn’t miss the sarcasm in her voice. His smile widened and Glimmer finally realized what was bugging her the moment she saw him: he smiled as if doing so came naturally, but the impression he gave when she focused on only his eyes was that of a man one step away from reaching out and strangling her. Catra visibly shivered nearby.

 “Your kingdom is feisty,” he said. “The soldiers of Bright Moon are the only fighters that have managed to mount a successful defense against my forces. I recently contacted them to discuss a peaceful surrender, however your king proved to be…less than cooperative.”

“Wait,” Glimmer said, “what do you mean you spoke to the king of Bright Moon?” Her sense of unease from earlier threatened to boil over. There was no king of Bright Moon. Not unless…no, that couldn’t be it. That was impossible.

Prime held up a small, circular emitter in the palm of his hand. It whirred to life and a still holographic image of Micah appeared.

Glimmer gasped and covered her hands with her mouth. “Dad?”

He looked much older than when she last remembered seeing him, but that was without a doubt her father. He was alive! She had no idea how, but he was, and she wanted nothing more than for him to be real and standing physically in front of her so she could run into his arms. Then she saw the look on Prime’s face, and reality reasserted itself, as did the sudden urge to cry.

“Ah, so he’s your father,” Prime said. “That explains the reaction.”

Glimmer balled her hands into fists. “What did you do to him?” Just looking at Prime’s face, she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.

Prime placed a hand to his chest and feigned hurt. “Me? I did nothing at all.” Then he dropped the act and his grin returned. “Nothing yet, at least. As I said, I reached out to discuss terms for a peaceful surrender and he felt it a better use of his time to waste mine. I showed him a recording from your first night as my guest and, instead of realizing he was in no position to make demands of me, he froze.” Prime’s smiled devolved into a vaguely irritated expression. “Then one of your other subjects—she called herself the Princess of Power—swore that she would personally come rescue the both of you.”

Something reinvigorated Glimmer her at the mention of Adora’s title. Even Catra seemed to perk up next to her.

“Oh, you’re in trouble now,” Glimmer said. “If my dad and Adora are coming, then it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be begging us for peaceful terms of surrender for yourself.”

Prime laughed. “Yes, well, I have decided to just conquer the stronghold the old-fashioned way. Bright Moon shall fall by the time the morning sun rises on your kingdom, then Etheria will join a long list of worlds that have been subjugated and annexed into my empire.”

He stepped forward and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. Glimmer shuddered and resisted the urge to bite his fingers.

“What I need from you now, though,” he said, “is information on the weapon. You will come with me and tell me everything you know about the Heart of Etheria. I need to know exactly who among the princesses I capture need to be kept alive to operate it. Everyone else will be made a severe example of.”

Glimmer scoffed. “I’m not telling you anything.” To her surprise, that only seemed to make Prime more excited.

“That’s quite alright,” he said. The tendrils atop his head started to unfurl. “You don’t need to speak at all if you don’t want to. I intend to get the information I desire by other means.” The tips of those tendrils peeled back, revealing six needles on the ends, each of them poised like serpents about to strike.

If him stepping so close and violating her personal space hadn’t done enough to deter her, the tendrils made up the difference. As soon as she saw them point at her, she realized what he intended to do, and the fiery, defiant feeling that had spurred her forward suddenly snuffed out. All of a sudden, it seemed a very good idea to run as far and fast away from him as she could.

Prime gestured to his clone guards and they surged forward. Two of them grabbed her under the arms and lifted her so her feet came off the ground. Glimmer struggled, shouting and kicking and yelling and screaming for them to put her down. Prime merely turned and began to stalk out the room while the clones followed suit, dragging her along with them.

“Wait!”

Glimmer craned her neck around and saw Catra standing there, one hand outstretched as if to physically grab hold of her, pupils constricted into pinprick slits, ears pinned and tail low and subdued under her body. Prime turned and cocked an eyebrow at her. He didn’t speak.

Catra swallowed. “Take me instead,” she said, smoothing her mane down. “I’m a safer bet for interrogation than she is, at least to start.”

“Oh?” Prime turned fully and snapped his fingers. The clones lowered Glimmer to the ground and she jerked out of their grasp. “And why is that?”

“B-because you don’t know how probing her mind with those will go,” Catra said, indicating his tendrils. “It might be fine and you’d have the information you want, or it might go horribly and you might kill one of the pieces you definitely need to work the Heart. It will be safer to start with me. If I die, then you still have another chance with her. Besides, I already have experience….” Catra shuddered and looked away as if remembering something horrible. When she next spoke, her voice was low and sounded like she felt disgusted with herself. “I already have experience having my mind probed anyway.”

Prime seemed to think on her words for a moment. Finally, he nodded. “You Etherians are all so defiant. Normally I’d just crush you and be done with it for speaking out of turn, but it is especially vexing given the recent state of the Empire. At least you are the first I’ve come across to argue with some sense.” He gestured again to his clones. “Take them both.”

Half the clones moved to surround Catra too. She shrugged them off and pushed them away when they moved to grab her, much like Glimmer had. “There’s no need for that,” she said, ducking away from the grasp of another clone. “I’ll come willingly.”

One of the clones grabbed Catra by the shoulder, violently torqued his body, and slammed a fist deep into her gut. The muscles in his arm and shoulder rippled with the impact, and Glimmer gasped. Catra yelped, then fell to the floor and threw up the only food she had eaten in days. Prime sneered at the sight, then turned and stalked out of the cell without looking back.

Catra continued to wretch even as the clones grabbed her by the armpits and dragged her limp body through her sick and out the door behind Prime. Glimmer didn’t put up any further fight when her own escorting clones lifted her and followed the rest of them at the back.

They continued on down a long hall and piled in to an elevate at the end. Glimmer stole glances in Catra’s direction as she felt the elevator pull them up. Her head lolled to the side, and Glimmer didn’t think she’d have been able to stand if the clones let go of her. She pleaded in her head for Catra not to give them any further reason to hurt her. Enemy or not, she didn’t want that for her.

When the lift doors opened, they exited out into a perfectly circular room. Massive windows to the stars outside stretched from floor to ceiling along the room’s perimeter in lieu of bulkheads, and because this unbroken panorama showed far more of their surroundings than the window of their holding cell, Glimmer also saw something she hadn’t before: a titanic fleet of warships, stretching endlessly in the distance all around them, parading in neat rows and columns like a never-ending field of crops orbiting Etheria’s curve. It was an observation deck situated at the top of Prime’s citadel. Suddenly, the long elevator ride made sense.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Prime said. “Only the most elite and distinguished soldiers and officers comprise my Vanguard. They do not typically leave the Heartlands, but I take a fraction of them along when I travel.” He frowned. “Unfortunately, conflict among the border has necessitated that many of them be redeployed to the front lines.”

Glimmer barely registered what he said out of her concern for Catra. She seemed to have recovered somewhat. Her head no longer lolled to the side, and she no longer hung completely limp between her escort, but there was no telling what Prime had planned for the both of them or how they would fare through it.

The clones dragged them to the center of the room where a group of figures wearing white robes with deep hoods stood in a tight ring. They admitted them into the circle when they approached, where Glimmer saw two examination chairs inside, angled facing each other with restraining belts hanging off their frames. A set of consoles stood nearby, and the two clones that weren’t supporting her or Catra moved to man them.

Another man, wearing the same robes as the others except gilded in green, stood next to the first chair and glanced over at them. Gaunt features and sunken eyes stared out at them from inside the hood. Then he lowered it and revealed a prominent widow’s peak, and greying hair worn slicked back. A beak-shaped nose accented his profile and gave Glimmer the firm impression of a malnourished bird of prey masquerading as a man.

“This is Salas,” Prime said. He snapped his fingers and the clones let them down to stand on their own two feet. Catra wobbled, but they supported her. “Salas is my advisor and an Imperial Battlemage of the Enclave. I believe the closest analogy to your planet’s institutions would be the Mages Association at Mystacor.”

Glimmer blanched. Powerful spells shrouded Mystacor to render it invisible and keep it safe. If Prime knew of it and of the Mages Association, did that also mean he had already conquered it? What did that mean for her Aunt? She wouldn’t have let it fall…not without a fight…

Prime leered at her and Glimmer couldn’t finish the thought.

The man—Salas was what Prime said his name was? It was hard to remember with everything happening—she couldn’t read his expression. Instead of giving Prime the satisfaction of seeing her panic over Mystacor, she swallowed the lump growing in her throat, turned to face Salas, and said, “Nice to meet you.” Her voice didn’t come out nearly as confident as she’d hoped it’d be.

She heard a thunk and a yell as one of the clones shoved Catra onto one of the chairs and begain strapping her in. Catra, dazed, started to struggle against them and another clone rammed its fist into her gut once again before Glimmer could react.

“Don’t hurt her!” she said, lunging toward them, determined to get them to stop.

The other clones held her back, but otherwise didn’t harm her. She hated how gentle they were with her. Why couldn’t they do the same with Catra?

Catra doubled over, coughing and hacking and spitting up on the floor. The clones shoved her upright into the back of the chair and finished strapping her in without any further protest. Catra groaned, her breathing coming out in ragged, wheezing gasps. Glimmer looked away and tried to drown out the sound of her suffering.

“Hurry and finish your preparations,” Prime said to Salas. “I want as much information as possible before the Seraph arrives and makes things difficult, since your order was so adamant about sending her.”

Salas nodded and gestured to the other chair. “Queen Glimmer, please take your seat so we may begin.” His voice was surprisingly sturdy, despite his appearance.

Glimmer hesitated, and Horde Prime extended a clawed finger and caught Catra underneath the chin. “Salas is ever a polite man,” he said to her. “But contrary to his tone, that was not a request. You will take your seat and cooperate or Catra will suffer the consequences for your insolence.”  Catra whimpered and stuck her chin high in the air to avoid Prime’s claw, but he followed her movement and didn’t let up. A thin line of blood ran from under her chin, down Prime’s finger.

“Fine, fine, fine,” Glimmer said, darting in to the chair. “Just don’t hurt her any more. Let’s just talk, okay? Whatever information you need, just ask us and we’ll cooperate. There’s no need to do whatever you’re about to do. This doesn’t need to be an interrogation.”

Prime laughed and slid around behind Catra’s chair. She panicked and her eyes darted as she twisted in her restraints trying to watch what he was doing. Prime reached up over the head rest, palmed her entire head in his hand, and pulled it back so it was flush against the chair. Glimmer got the sense he was doing this on purpose to drive a point home.

“Shhhh, it’s okay, shhh,” Prime bent over low and whispered into Catra’s ear as her panic deepened. When she screwed her eyes shut and stilled as if tensing for another beating, Prime turned and looked Glimmer in the eyes and unfurled his tendrils. “A thousand apologies, Queen Glimmer,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “We unfortunately do not have the luxury of time on our side. This is simply the most efficient way—it’s nothing personal. When I have thoroughly sucked every usable tidbit of information from this creature’s mind”—he jerked Catra’s head side to side like it was a joystick—“I will turn my attention to you. I have a feeling you will offer scant resistance after watching what happens to your friend.” He cracked a wicked grin and nodded at Salas.

“Whatever you do,” said a voice startlingly close to her. “Do not get out of this chair no matter how agonizing it is to stay. Your friend will thank you for it.” Salas had taken up a position near her, and had spoken in a low enough voice that Horde Prime hadn’t seemed to hear. Glimmer stared up at him and swallowed.

Salas looked around at the hooded figures in the circle and gestured. Suddenly, every member of the circle tilted their heads down, extended their arms out in front of them, and splayed their fingers. A low chanting filled the air and washed out the ambient beeping and whirring of the station’s life support. A hush then descended upon them, covering them like a blanket. A chill ran down Glimmer’s spine, and goosebumps sprang up along her flesh.

Patterns began to etch themselves into the metal of the floor. Glimmer watched them weave and curl like serpents performing an intricate dance. Within moments, the lines began to connect, and soon a whole circular design underneath them was there, flourished and strangely beautiful.

It’s a magic rune, Glimmer realized with a start. She had learned many of them during her short time as Shadow Weaver’s student, but none of them nearly as intricate or large as this.

She tried to pinpoint what each area of the rune did—that part is a feedback loop for the magic energy, that area over there is a smoothing agent—but quickly pulled her attention away; just looking at it seemed to pull a fog over her mind. Instead, she glanced up at Salas and tried to see if watching him would hint at their plans.

Salas made a quick gesture with one hand and Glimmer felt magic ripple out from where he stood. Another pattern formed in the floor, this one with an even more intense light emanating from his design as it burned itself into the ground. The new pattern directly intersected and, at times, complimented what the other mages had made. A pressure built in Glimmer’s head the more he drew.

“How does it feel, Salas?” Prime asked, when the man was done. “Is Etheria everything that wretched girl said it would be?”

Salas seemed surprised Horde Prime had asked him that question. “If anything, my lord, I think Evelyn underestimated this place. We are high up enough the magic should be only a fraction of its real strength on the surface, but what I feel is staggering, even here.”

Prime frowned. “I had her wiped from the histories for a reason, and you would do well to remember that. Never say her name again.”

“I apologize,” Salas said with a shallow nod. “It shall not happen again. Our preparations are complete. Please begin at your leisure.”

Prime’s eyes lit up and he once again stooped over behind Catra’s chair so he was roughly equal-height with her. Two of his uncoiled tendrils reared back, then shot one after the other into either side of Catra’s head at the temples. The pressure at the back of Glimmer’s head from earlier exploded. Abject terror ripped into her. It blew out every other sense and instinct she had.

Insolent child. You have never been anything but a disappointment to me.

Voices in her head. There were voices in her head. Glimmer slammed her eyes shut and tried to shake the voices free, tried to drown them out.

Shadow Weaver wasn’t there…she just wasn’t. It was a trick of her mind. It was whatever spell Salas and his men had tangled her in, making her hear things.

Something came from that pressure, threatening to smash her head like a grapefruit—a command to keep her eyes open. She obeyed.

Catra screamed and struggled in the chair across from her, straining the belts hard enough to show muscles and veins popping and rippling under her skin. Her nails dug into the arm rests and her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

Rise, Force Captain Catra. Pride burned within Glimmer’s chest at the words and she realized with a chill that the rune underneath them had linked her mind with Catra’s. Whatever emotions and images Horde Prime was dragging from her memories were also on full display for her as well

The scene shifted in her head and sorrow took her. Glimmer felt as if a young Adora stood before her, sensed it happening without seeing it with her own eyes. She could almost imagine Adora’s giant, friendly, blue eyes and hesitant smile as she looked at her—at them.

It doesn’t matter what they do to us, y’know? You look out for me, and I look out for you. Nothing really bad can happen as long as we have each other.

“Adora!” Catra spoke aloud. Screamed. She twisted against her restraints. “Adora, help me!”

Prime held her head still for the tendrils. Lines of blood slid down her face where his claws pricked her trying to hold tight, and two larger rivers of red streaked down from where his tendrils intersected her temples.

Something about the magic around them abated somewhat. Glimmer realized she could once more feel her own sensations and emotions when the urge to lunge forward and physically wrestle Prime away from Catra grew overpowering.

Don’t get out of that chair.

Salas’ words came to her as if he spoke directly into her head. Glimmer looked to him and, surprisingly, saw him looking back.

Your friend needs you to hold onto, he said. If you break the connection, then she will be lost at sea. She will never recover. Stay in the chair and stop fighting me.

Glimmer grit her teeth in frustration and indecision. She had no way of knowing if Salas was telling the truth, but he spoke of Catra recovering and that was enough for her. The pinprick of hope was there and she chose to cling to it. She forced herself to relax, and her vision misted over the moment she did. Salas, Prime, Catra, the mages, and the whole observation deck disappeared as if a heavy fog descended upon them.

Shapes and angles appeared in the fog like shadows, and Glimmer recognized the new setting as it pulled into focus. She was in some sort of lab deep in the Fright Zone. Boxes lay stacked nearby in the corner and a terminal whirred in front of her. ‘DANGER!’ flashed red on the giant screen above. A voice echoed from somewhere Glimmer couldn’t pinpoint.

“This time, I am going to win. I don’t care what it takes, we are opening that portal, now!”

Glimmer looked around for Catra. It was her voice, no doubt about that, but she didn’t see anyone there with her. She swung back around and nearly fell backward in fright when it was Entrapta standing there instead of Catra, looking up at her with fear in her eyes.

“No!” Entrapta said. “I won’t! I need to tell Hordak. He’ll understa—“

Glimmer’s body wasn’t her own. She realized that as she lunged forward and rammed a stun baton she hadn’t noticed she was carrying into Entrapta’s back when she turned to run. Entrapta fell to the ground unconscious, and Glimmer dropped the baton. Her hands flew to cover her mouth.

What have I done? she thought. What did I do to Entrapta?

Glimmer turned to run away, only to see a brand-new sight before and around her. She was no longer in the lab with Entrapta, but a new area of the Fright Zone—one that lay in ruins. Broken machinery lay strewn about. Pipes all around leaked oil and steam, and fires burned everywhere she turned, emanating smoke that burned her throat and made her eye’s water.

This time, Glimmer saw Catra. She was standing in the distance, one arm crossed over to hold the elbow of the other, terrified.

“Catra?” Glimmer ran toward her, stepping over debris and shards of broken glass. “Catra, something’s going on. I don’t know what’s happening, but something is wrong. I can feel it.” What happened to Horde Prime’s ship? What happened to all the clones? They needed to get out of there. They needed to—

A second Catra stepped toward the first—one that Glimmer hadn’t seen until she rounded a pile of burning equipment and the full scene beyond came into view. Glimmer skidded to a halt and tried to figure out what the hell was happening.

“You try so hard to play the big, bad villain,” said the second Catra, invading the first’s personal space and rubbing up against her. “But your heart’s never been in it, has it?”

First Catra panicked. “What? What are you...? No, stop. Stop it!” She lunged. Second Catra dodged and grabbed her by the wrist.

“People have hurt you, haven’t they?” she said as she transformed into Shadow Weaver. “They didn’t believe in you.” Shadow Weaver transformed into Hordak, “They didn’t trust you.” Hordak transformed into Adora. “Didn’t need you. Left you.”

Catra yelped and scrabbled backward, falling to the floor. Adora transformed into Double Trouble, who stepped forward and continued to press her.

“But did you ever stop to think maybe they’re not the problem?” they said. They transformed again and a moment later it was Scorpia who towered above Catra. “It’s you. You drive them away, Wildcat.”

Catra stared up at Scorpia in anguish. “Why are you doing this?”

Glimmer reached out to Catra and the scene began to melt back into the fog from before. The ruins of the Fright Zone turned back into shapes and shadows in mist as Glimmer called out Catra’s name. Nothing kept the scene from continuing to devolve, no matter how many times she shouted and no matter how loud. She was powerless to stop whatever it was, pulling her out. A chorus of new voices chased her back to oblivion.

…It’s for your own good, darling. We both know this isn’t what you really wanted…

…Never been anything but a disappointment to me…

…Because you left me! Don’t you see, Adora…?

Reality reasserted itself so abruptly Glimmer almost fell out of her chair. Her heart pounded like war drums in her ears, drowning out anything she might have been able to focus on around her. She realized she was back in the interrogation chair as she blinked the blur out of her vision. The rune on the floor was still there, as was Salas and his circle of robed mages. Prime’s two clones monitoring the consoles off to the side exchanged confused glances with one another. Catra still screamed and flailed in the chair opposite her.

It was only Horde Prime that looked any different. Whereas before he had worn a face filled with glee, now he seemed annoyed.

“Why can’t I see anything more relevant?” he asked, glancing up at Salas and narrowing his eyes. “Why can’t I see anything about the weapon?”

“Memories are complicated my lord,” Salas said. “She is not one of your clones, so it will require time, alongside my skill and finesse.”

“W-why are you doing this?” Catra’s voice came out in hoarse croaks and she screwed her eyes shut in pain. “I t-told you already, I don’t know anything else about the w-weapon. I’m sor-…I’m sorry, just…just please. Please don’t. No more. Please.”

“You’re lying,” Prime said, his sing-song voice making it clear how much he enjoyed hurting her. “And if I find out you really do know nothing, that you lied about having information in the first place to spare the Queen, then I will make sure you come back as nothing more intelligent than a vegetable.”

“Uh, sir?” one of the clones at the terminal said. “Lord Prime, we are being pinged. It’s a priority one message sir, and the identification code is confirmed. It’s from the Constable, transmitting in hyperspace.”

Prime cursed. “You stall her, damn it. You tell her I am busy, that it is an emergency—I don’t care. Just keep her away.”

The clone looked up with a distressed expression. “I can’t reject the request, sir. My access has been overridden. It’s connecting on its own.”

A section of the nearby panorama window turned opaque and a young woman appeared on screen. “Lord Prime,” she said. “Hello.”

Her projection onto the massive windows made her appear several times larger than life. Glimmer could only see the top half of her, but judging from the officer’s cap atop her head and the medals decorating the standing collar and breast of her jacket, it was obvious this new person was someone important.

The woman studied him for a long moment, her eyes never leaving his. “In the middle of something, I see? Sorry for interrupting. I only wished to inform you that I have been dispatched to oversee the Etheria project and will arrive soon.”

Horde Prime grimaced and stood up straight, disconnecting his tendrils from Catra’s head but still keeping his hand firm on her head. “Taline,” he said. “What a surprise. Who would have guessed the Enclave would send you to handle their affairs in this matter.”

Catra moaned and her eyes fluttered open. Glimmer felt another urge to rush to her side and stamped it down when she remembered Salas’ words from earlier. She needed to be in the chair, to be the rock Catra held onto through this ordeal.

Taline frowned, looking down at the both of them in the chairs. “My lord, I feel compelled to remind you that you explicitly promised the Enclave full operational authority over Etheria once it reappeared. Why are you torturing its subjects and invading the planet? This is a direct violation of our agreement.”

Prime smiled and made a conciliatory gesture. “I’m securing both the planet and necessary information on the weapon before you arrive. Think of it like me giving you a running start on what is no doubt going to become a long assignment.”

Taline’s frown deepened and she didn’t respond for several moments. When she again spoke, it was clear she had taken the time to consider her words carefully.

“You and I both know this mission concerns more than just your rule. It’s entirely safe to say that if we fail then the entire galaxy is at risk, not just the Empire. I need them in one piece when I arrive. All of them. I can’t do my job if their subjects are broken and everything has already been thrown into chaos.”

Prime’s smile tightened. “I understand. Rest assured that I will not hinder you in your mission. The planet is under my control save for a small rebel group at the kingdom of Bright Moon.” He gestured to Glimmer and sneered. “I have their Queen, and they will do nothing while she is in danger. I will guarantee their safety until you arrive. Is this sufficient for you?”

“It is, lord Prime. Thank you. I shall arrive within a day and will hail you again once I do.”

She glanced for the briefest of moments in Salas’ direction and nodded. Then she turned back to Prime, gave a sharp salute, and disappeared from the viewscreen as it turned transparent. Etheria, the stars, and the warships of Prime’s armada appeared there once more.

The smile on Prime’s face morphed into a look of barely concealed rage. “Get the Queen back to her cell,” he said. The clones nearest her grabbed Glimmer under the arms and hauled her off the chair.

“My lord, what of the cat girl?” Salas asked.

“I promised your colleague that no further harm would come to Bright Moon or its citizens and I intend to keep that promise,” he said, squeezing Catra’s head in his claws and forcing another whimper from her mouth. “But this one is one of my defective brother’s underlings—a citizen of ‘The Fright Zone,’ as it were. She is not included, and I will finish my interrogation with your assistance.”

Glimmer panicked. She was supposed to stay in the chair…she had to stay. She fought the clones as they dragged her back out the circle and toward the elevator, hating the fact they didn’t punch her into submission like they did Catra. She couldn’t leave. She had to stay and help.

Salas locked eyes with her a moment, and Glimmer saw in his look that he hadn’t expected this to happen. The thought should have given her hope that maybe he really was trying to help them, but it only served to make her panic more the further she was dragged away. Salas glanced from her back toward Catra and set his lips in a thin line, as if a renewed sense of resolve invaded him.

Glimmer turned her attention back to Catra and didn’t take her eyes off her until the mages reformed their circle and blocked her view. As soon as the clones pulled her far enough away that she came off the magic rune, she felt her connection to Catra break. All the horror and rage and despair that she felt earlier vanished, leaving a cavernous void inside where emotion and memory once roiled. She gasped, feeling very much like ice water had been thrown over her.

The clones had gotten her inside the elevator. The last thing Glimmer heard as the doors sealed shut in front of her was Catra’s unbridled, full-throated wail for the one person she hoped beyond hope would save her.

“Adora!”

Chapter Text

Glimmer wasn’t sure how many hours she had passed pacing around the table in the cell after her return, all she knew was Catra had been gone too long. So long in fact, she had started to fear Horde Prime really had killed her in that chair back on the observation tower.

Finally, at long last, the doors slid open and two Prime clones dumped her body inside the threshold like a sack of bricks. They left without a second glance back, and Glimmer rushed to kneel at her side.

“Catra? Catra wake up. It’s me, Glimmer.”

For a second time, Glimmer feared she was dead—feared Prime had decided to play a cruel joke on her by dumping her cell-mate’s dead body back in there with her instead of disposing of it. Catra was already malnourished and dehydrated to begin with. Adding the dried blood caked into her face and the sweat and grime matting the rest of her fur, she was near indiscernible from a corpse. Glimmer watched her carefully, searching for the rise and fall of her chest.

Finally, Catra moaned and Glimmer breathed a sigh of relief. Catra’s eyes peeled open and she looked up at her. Her inner eyelids refused to pull back all the way. Glimmer could see her pupils trying to focus, see Catra’s mind begin to piece together where she was and what was going on.

“Get away from me!” Catra unsheathed claws and swiped at her, forcing Glimmer back. “I told you I don’t know anything. Get out of my head! No more hallucinations. I’m sorry! I don’t know anything, just…no more. Please. Haven’t you taken enough?”

Catra scurried to a corner of the room, wincing with every movement as if her whole body itself was an open sore, and Glimmer felt her heart break. Even with all the adrenaline coursing through her veins, Catra could still feel the pain. This wasn’t the Horde Commander that nearly destroyed Bright Moon all those years ago, wasn’t the Horde Commander that Adora obsessed over being outsmarted by, and definitely wasn’t the same Horde Commander that opened a portal in the Fright Zone that took her mother from her. This was a broken shell of a person, pressing herself into the corner like she thought it was the only way to survive.

“Catra, I’m not a hallucination,” Glimmer said, inching forward on her knees and holding an open palm to her. “It’s me, Glimmer—the real Glimmer. You’re back in our cell, and Horde Prime isn’t here. He can’t hurt you anymore, okay? It’s just you and me.”

Catra pushed further into the wall as Glimmer approached. Her pupils narrowed to hairline slits and she hissed, although she stopped short of lashing out again. Glimmer continued to close the distance inch by inch, until she was finally close enough to touch her. Catra flinched and hissed again when Glimmer lay the back of her hand gently against her forehead, but from there seemed to calm.

“My god, you are burning up,” Glimmer said.

Hearing her voice in conjunction with the touch seemed to do the trick. The tension in Catra’s shoulders relaxed and she stopped baring fangs at her. Glimmer adjusted herself so their knees touched, and move to stroke Catra’s cheek instead of her forehead. Catra’s tail thrashed less with each caress, and some form of recognition seemed to return to the look in her eyes.

“It’s…really cold,” Catra said, voice dipping low into a rasp. A shiver ran down her body and, nodding, Glimmer took her hand away and slowly scooted backward.

Catra tracked her as she crossed the cell to their bunk bed and yanked a pillow and sheets from the bottom bunk. She came back around and, after taking a second look at her, thought of something else.

“I’m going to grab some stuff from the bathroom and try and clean you up a bit, okay?” Glimmer chose to lean down and placed the bedding on the floor next to Catra rather than tossing it, in case the sudden movement startled her. When she glimpsed the uncertain look in Catra’s eyes, she said, “I’m not leaving. I’ll be just behind that door over there for like, two seconds and I’ll be right back.”

She pointed to their bathroom and edged toward it. Catra gave a jerky nod as she pulled the blankets closer to her.

Glimmer slipped into the bathroom as quickly as she could. Even if Catra watched her walk in here, she didn’t want to risk her lapsing into another paranoid episode being left alone outside. So, she did the only thing she could do, and talked to her in the other room.

“I’m surprised we have such a nice bathroom,” she said, throwing open the linen cabinet and scooping as many towels as she could into her arms. “Horde Prime is such a bastard, but at least there’s stuff in here we can use.” She grabbed a wash basin and shoved it under the sink, turning the faucet on full blast. A first aid kit sat in the medicine cabinet when she opened it and she nabbed that as well. “It’s kind of like the ‘cell’ we have at Bright Moon, except our place is nice. We don’t like treating people badly, even if they’re an enemy, so our ‘prison’ just seems like any other room in the castle.” Glimmer had a feeling Prime only gave his prisoners nice things to instill a false sense of security.

She hurried out of the bathroom, balancing the linens in one hand and the full wash basin in the other. Catra had propped her pillow behind her in the corner where Glimmer had left her, and had pulled her blankets up half-heartedly over her lap. She likely didn’t have the strength to do much more than that, now that the adrenaline had left her.

Glimmer knelt back down in front of her. “I’m going to try and get as much of the blood off you as I can, okay?” She held up the rag to show Catra she wasn’t planning on doing anything threatening. “You’ll feel better once I get you cleaned up a bit.”

Catra eyed her and the washcloth, but didn’t refuse. Taking that as permission to proceed, Glimmer dipped the first towel in the water and dabbed at Catra’s temple, where the freshest and nastiest wound lay. Catra flinched, hissing and baring her teeth once again. Glimmer paused but didn’t move away, and when Catra stilled, she resumed dabbing at the wound.

The rag came away almost immediately soaked through in blood, and Glimmer wasn’t sure whether or not she was just making it worse. She dipped the cloth back in the basin and watched as her hand underneath the water disappeared into a sea of red. Fortunately, this time when she resumed cleaning, the blood seemed to clear up some. By the time she felt she had done as much as she could on the first wound and moved on to the second at her other temple, Catra had calmed enough to lie in a fetal position, sideways with her head resting on Glimmer’s lap.

“They went on for a while after they took you away,” Catra said in a low voice. “I have no idea how long. It felt like forever.”

Glimmer looked away out of guilt and paused her dabbing. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there. They grabbed me and I just…I fought, but I couldn’t get away.”

Catra shrugged. “It’s not like you could have done anything even if you had. Those clones are strong—I’m pretty sure I have a bruised rib or two from where they slugged me.” She paused, and when Glimmer glanced back at her, she saw Catra looking up at her out the corner of her eye. “Thanks for trying though.”

“Why did you volunteer to take my place?” Glimmer hated how resigned to it all Catra sounded. She exchanged the rag for a fresh one and worked at the grime and blood elsewhere on Catra’s face. The injuries at her temples looked as clean as she thought she were going to get them, and now it was time to move on to the rest of her.

“What do you mean? I was strapped down to a chair, so it’s not like I really had a choice.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Glimmer said. “Horde Prime was going to take just me at first. You were the one that jumped in and convinced him to start with you. Why?”

Catra cracked a smile. “Can’t a girl just do something nice for once? You’re welcome.”

“You and I have very different ideas of ‘nice,’ ” Glimmer said, making a face. “Volunteering for torture in lieu of someone else is called ‘masochistic’ in my book.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Catra closed her eyes and chuckled when her face suddenly contorted in pain. She curled into herself on Glimmer’s lap as deep, hacking coughs wracked her body.

“Hey, come on now.” Glimmer dropped the rag, tilted Catra further forward to gain better access to her back, and rubbed at the knots there with firm, smoothing gestures. “I know for you it’s probably impossible to resist, but don’t go making smart-ass comments if you’re just going to end up hurting yourself.”

Catra made several high-pitched gasps for air between coughs, but steadily relaxed against Glimmer’s movements. Her breathing evened out until, finally, the tension in her body released. She gave another shiver under the blankets, and Glimmer pulled them up to better insulate her.

“You’re hopeless,” Glimmer said. Without even thinking about it, she moved her hands from Catra’s back and began running her fingers through her mane instead.

“Mmm shut up.” A purr rumbled out from her. “You sound like Adora.”

Glimmer froze, her fingers halfway down the length of Catra’s hair. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have thought twice if someone compared her to Adora—it was a compliment. But these were far from normal circumstances, and Catra’s relationship both to her and to Adora was complicated at best. Had Catra meant that in a positive way? Even if she hadn’t, did it really matter? Glimmer shrugged and decided it really didn’t, and resumed combing her fingers through Catra’s hair.

“I have a little more experience with mind probes than I’m guessing you do,” Catra said, looking at her again after a long moment of silence.

“After what happened up there with Prime and those mages? No doubt about it.” Glimmer was surprised to hear Catra speak at all. She thought she had fallen asleep in her lap.

“I’m answering your question, stupid.” Catra and averted her eyes. “I wasn’t lying when I told Prime earlier that I already had prior experience. I figured, out of the two of us, I’d break less easily and…well…I didn’t want to take the chance things wouldn’t go well for you. So, I stepped up.”

Glimmer fought to keep the anger out of her voice when she next spoke. “When were you mind probed before?” Catra squeezed her eyes shut and tensed her shoulders, and Glimmer gave voice to the guess that had first popped into her head. “Shadow Weaver did that to you? Why?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that one out for as long as I can remember,” Catra said, her voice small. “I just figured that, since I already know what it’s like, I might do better going first. Prime would be less likely to push your limits if he already pushed mine.”

“Did you really just asked him to test drive you first?” Glimmer asked. “So he’d be less likely to break me on accident the second time around?” She pulled her hands out of Catra’s hair before she started inadvertently fisting it in anger. “That’s it? That was your genius idea?”

“I just didn’t expect it to hurt as much…or go on as long.”

Catra spoke as if admitting the words to herself. As if everything she said were merely an afterthought and not a confession of pure martyrdom to Glimmer’s ears.

“I thought you had some sort of plan, Catra.” All the fight had left Glimmer in a rush, like someone had exorcised it from her, leaving behind only the sadness she felt for the body curled against her. “You always had plans when we fought. Why is it now that we’re just trying to survive together that you throw yourself forward like some kind of sacrifice?”

“I did have a plan” Catra said, opening her eyes and glaring up at her again. Some of the fight that had abandoned Glimmer seemed to have seeped into her instead. “Wanting to keep you from getting hurt was the main reason, but I didn’t just throw myself forward at him.”

“Alright, and what was this grand plan of yours then?”

Catra huffed again. “Shadow Weaver never told me about this—it definitely wasn’t something she wanted me to know. But if you were probed enough times, you’d eventually pick up on the fact those probes are a two-way street. Prime went digging in my head for answers about the Heart, but I was also able to feel about a little in his head as well.”

Glimmer’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You were? What did you find?” Separately, she wondered in the back of her mind how many probes Catra had been subjected to for her to have learned that little trick, and resolved to revisit Shadow Weaver’s license to freely roam Bright Moon if she ever made it home.

“That woman,” Catra said.  “The one that contacted him right before you were taken away—I think Prime called her Taline…he’s afraid of her.” Catra swallowed, as if telling of Prime’s thoughts forced her to revisit the torture session anew. “He’s afraid of her, and he’s afraid of her order—the Enclave. He bottles it up so it doesn’t show outwardly, but it’s there.”

Glimmer furrowed her brow. “Afraid as in like, she’s the true power behind the throne or…?”

Catra shook her head. “I can’t tell for sure, but I don’t think so. That’s not what it felt like.  He doesn’t fear her necessarily, he hates her. But he fears what her coming here means…fears what she represents.” She growled, as if frustrated she couldn’t find the right words. “I don’t know how to describe it better than that.”

“It’s okay,” Glimmer said. She wrung the water out of yet another rag and resumed dabbing at Catra’s forehead with it. Sometime during their conversation, she remembered how nasty of a fever Catra had, and Glimmer wanted to do what she could to bring it down quickly. “Whoever this Taline person is—and whatever it is she’s coming to do—we’ll get through it together. I don’t care if those clones dislocate my arm trying to hold me back or cart me off somewhere, I’m not getting separated from you again.”

Catra hummed at that and closed her eyes while Glimmer worked on her. Within moments she fell into a deep sleep.

Glimmer woke at some point, not having realized she had closed her eyes at all to begin with.

Her back ached sitting against the wall, even with the pillow propped behind her. Catra was pulling out of her lap, and Glimmer quickly shook the grogginess from her mind to get up and help her stand. She half expected Catra to shy away from her touch and argue with her, and when she didn’t, Glimmer helped support her to the bathroom, leaving her be after handing over one of the unused towels from earlier and a fresh set of clothes from the storage bin under their bunk.

The clones brought food while she was sat next to the closed bathroom doorway, ready in case Catra needed help and actually called for it. They came in and left the trays on the table like they always had, never speaking a word. Today was a big bowl of soup for each of them.

Before long, Catra stepped out of the bathroom with a cloud of steam and heat billowing out behind her. The clean clothes Glimmer had given her hung off her bones, already soaked almost all the way through as she stood there and dripped bath water on the floor: she hadn’t had the strength or energy to fully dry herself off, and instead merely draped the towel around her neck and over her shoulders.

She bared her teeth at Glimmer when she stood up to help her. “Don’t touch me,” Catra said, pulling away from her and clung to the wall as she skirted the perimeter of the cell toward the bunk. She lost her balance and would have fallen to the floor if Glimmer hadn’t darted in and held her up.

Catra grumbled but didn’t fight her as she guided them the rest of the way and eased her into a sitting position on the bed. When Glimmer took the towel from her shoulders and moved to dry her off, Catra hissed and said, “I can do it myself!”

Glimmer huffed and dropped the towel in her lap. She had no idea why Catra was suddenly so prickly. Did the humidity from her shower make her forget that Glimmer had cleaned her wounds, practically petted her to sleep, and then helped her into the bathroom in the first place? She slogged back to the table and sat, gritting her teeth as she watched Catra’s pitiful attempt to dry off without her help. She eventually shoved the towel to the floor with a snarl after giving up, and Glimmer picked up one of the trays of soup to bring over to her, refusing to utter a single word.

“I’m not hungry,” Catra said, glaring at her approach.

“We aren’t doing this again.” Glimmer scowled at her. “Stop being stubborn and just eat.”

Catra scoffed and Glimmer slammed the tray down hard onto her lap. Soup sloshed out and scalded her knees and thighs, and she bit back another hiss with her eyes screwed shut. Glimmer didn’t even try to hide how satisfied shutting Catra up made her feel as she spooned a bit of soup and held it in front of her face for her to sip on.

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Catra said, leaning away from the spoon. “I was wrong. Maybe you wouldn’t be gentler than the clones. Let me at least feed myself?”

Glimmer shrugged and dropped the spoon back into the bowl, splashing more soup and sending Catra into another hissing fit. She was far past the point of caring. If Catra wanted to go back to being a stubborn pain in the ass, then she’d respond in kind. It made no difference to her.

Catra fished spoon out of the bowl with shaky fingers and, when she realized she couldn’t grip them strong enough, resorted to palming the handle between the heels of both her hands. The spoon rattled against the bowl and shook violently as she slowly tried to bring it to her mouth. She grew increasingly frustrated the longer she tried. Even Glimmer winced watching her struggle.

She ultimately stopped her, shooting out an arm to grab both Catra’s wrists before she made an even larger mess all over the bed. She suppressed the urge to smack Catra upside the head when she gave her another glare and, instead, pulled the chair around in front of her to sit on, scooped up a healthier portion of soup, and held it up a second time with steady hands for her to eat from.

“Well?” Glimmer said after watching Catra’s gaze dart between her and the spoon. When Catra inched forward and took a bite, Glimmer smirked. “See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Catra refused to look her in the eyes, but continued to dutifully eat every spoonful Glimmer presented her with.

“Why are you doing this?” Catra asked after a while.

“You think someone else is going to step up and make sure you get food in you if you can’t do it yourself? Last I checked, it’s just us two in here.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Catra said, taking another bite. Again, she sounded small rather than combative, and Glimmer wondered when this roller coaster of hot and cold between them would level out. “I meant…why are you helping me at all? Why go to all this trouble when I’ve been such an asshole to you and all your precious princess friends?”

“Isn’t that just the question of the century?”

Glimmer gave a derisive laugh, only to let it die out after seeing the stony look Catra returned her. She was being serious, but Glimmer had no idea how to respond. It was a lot to unpack—what the heck was she supposed to say?

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I’m just doing what I can to help. Not really thinking about the ‘why’ behind anything right now.”

“I opened the portal.”

Glimmer grit her teeth. “I know.” This was where she wanted to go with this?

“It nearly destroyed the entire planet.” Catra didn’t break eye contact with Glimmer, as if to say ‘yeah, we’re having this conversation and we’re having it now.’ Her tail thrashed about behind her. “It allowed Hordak to send a message to Horde Prime. He’s here because of me.”

“I know.” Glimmer felt the metal from the spoon handle cut into her fingers because she gripped it so tight.

“You’re not a princess anymore, you’re a queen. That happened right after the portal closed and your mom didn’t come back. I’m not stupid, I know what happened.” Catra hugged herself and shivered. She seemed to physically buckle under the weight of her words. “Hordak mentioned she’s not dead so much as she’s just floating out there in the nothingness. But unless Entrapta’s figured out some way to access the space between realities, then she’s as good as gone, right? I killed her, Sparkles. I killed your mom.”

Glimmer saw red and she swore she’d already have magic at her fingertips ready to strike were they back on Etheria. She thought her mom had well and truly died. Finding out she was instead likely just lost in a pocket dimension—dead for all intents and purposes rather than actually killed—had taken her by surprise as much as it had rekindled her anger and plunged her back into grief.

“What’s your point?” she asked, not bothering to mask the acid in her voice.

“You shouldn’t be helping me. You should be mad. You should be murderous.”

“And do you seriously think that this”—she balled her free hand into a fist and raised it as if she were about to pummel Catra in the face—”doesn’t look like I’m not on the verge of literally drowning you in your soup?”

Catra didn’t flinch away. “You could do it, you know,” she said, breaking eye contact only to look purposefully at Glimmer’s hands. “I’m too weak to put up much of a fight. None of your friends would have to find out. We both know I’d deserve it…”

Something in the way Catra looked at her fist and spoke as if she were hoping Glimmer would make good on her threats jolted her, and her brain pump the breaks, hard. All the tension flushed from her body. She placed the spoon back in the bowl and moved the whole tray to the table behind her. All her movements were purposeful and robotic, as if she were controlling someone else’s hands instead of her own.

It wasn’t until she went to clasp Catra’s hands in her own that she finally flinched—as if that gesture above all others was the one that would harm her. Glimmer held firm and didn’t let her go when she tried to pull away. Instead, she guided her hands forward, closer to her.

“I know all that,” she said. “Well, not the part about my mom being stuck instead of dead, but I have a feeling that doesn’t matter very much in the end.” She waited, and when Catra only let out a strangled sound instead of a real response, she said, “You and I beat each other pretty bad at that secret outpost back in the Whispering Woods. If it were that Catra stuck with me in this cell, then maybe I’d have it in me to really do something to you.”

Catra gulped and looked away. “It is the same person. I’m right in front of you.”

“But you’re not though.” Glimmer ran her thumbs along Catra’s knuckles and kept the pressure on when Catra gave another scoff. “I’m serious, Catra. As cheesy as it sounds, you aren’t the same crazy idiot that wanted to destroy the world not all that long ago. Am I supposed to believe that’s the same person who let themselves get strapped to a chair and mind probed in my place?”

“What do you even know?” Catra said, muttering under her.

“More than you give me credit for, that’s for sure,” Glimmer said. “Why did you volunteer in my place?”

Catra paused and looked at her as if she had gone crazy. “We’ve already had this conversation, stupid. Or did Prime come grab you and scramble your brains while I was passed out on top of you?”

“You hoped going first would make it easier for me to survive going second, and you made some joke about being ‘nice’ for once. But that’s the thing—why even do that in the first place?”

Catra’s expression faltered, as if she realized she was slowly being cornered into a trap, and she redoubled her efforts to pull away. “I don’t need a reason. And even if I did have one, I’m not required to tell.”

Glimmer held tighter to Catra’s hands and refused to let her escape. “Horde Prime very nearly killed me the moment he teleported me onto this citadel. It was because you stepped in that he didn’t. And then I almost died again a few days later in this cell until you cried loud enough and long enough at that”—she gestured to the camera mounted at the ceiling corner opposite them—"until they took me to the medical bay.”

Now Catra really struggled, panic evident on her face as she tried to yank out of Glimmer’s iron grip. “No, I’m not…I didn’t—”

“Look at me and tell me you did all those things for selfish reasons, Catra.” Glimmer pulled hard enough that Catra had no choice but to face her. “Look at me and tell me that it’s all some secret ulterior plan you’ve dreamt up I just haven’t figured out yet. Look me in the eyes and swear to me that it isn’t because you’re trying to change and do the right thing for once. Swear it on every happy memory you’ve ever had growing up with Adora in the Horde.”

Catra froze and stared at her with giant, glassy eyes. Glimmer knew from what Adora had shared with her that her memories with Catra were one of the few things she considered ‘happy’ growing up in the Fright Zone, and judging by Catra’s reaction, the same was true for her. Glimmer’s gamble invoking Adora’s name had paid off.

“I….I…” Catra started twice before cutting off and taking in choked breaths. “I’ve hurt too many people. It’s all I do…all I’m good at. I can’t bring your mom back to you…I can’t make up for all the mistakes I made.”

“No,” Glimmer said. “No, you can’t. But that’s not really the point, is it?”

Catra swallowed, and her voice was thick with emotion when she spoke again. “I can’t make up for it, but I want to do everything I can.”

Glimmer sighed and finally let Catra’s hands go. She pulled them back, sluggish and despondent.

“I’m not completely blameless either, to be honest with you,” Glimmer said. “I said some…pretty horrible things to Adora and to Bow before I got picked up by Prime. I almost finished what you started after activating the Heart, despite literally everyone warning me not to. I got so blinded by winning, by beating you and the rest of the Horde, that I hurt my friends and nearly killed everyone.”

Catra watched her through watery eyes, and Glimmer gripped the fabric of her pants to try and steady herself. She still wasn’t sure she had the courage to say what was coming next.

“I can’t express how sorry I am to them, and I’m even more terrified they’re going to turn me away when I try and apologize, but the point is that I understand. It doesn’t make the things you did right, but I understand where they came from. Shadow Weaver abused you growing up, Adora leaving the Horde probably felt like the biggest betrayal from someone you never imagined getting that from. Heck, even Double Trouble screwed you. So, I get it—life sucked for you, just like it sucked for me when my mom disappeared. You wanted to stand on top of the world and be able to tell it that you had beaten it, even for a moment.”

Glimmer realized she had gone off on a tangent when she noticed Catra’s gaze turn from fearful to curious, and she coughed, suddenly embarrassed. “That last part could apply to either of us, by the way. In any case, the point I was trying to make is that even if you can’t fix all your mistakes, the fact you’re trying to be better is all the proof I need that the Catra who opened the portal and the Catra sitting across from me right now, barely choking down alien soup are different people. You may have burned a heck of a lot of bridges, but you haven’t completely burned away your bridge with me. Not yet.”

Catra stared at her, unblinking, for a long moment. “Are you sure Horde Prime didn’t steal you away while I was sleeping and turn you into someone too forgiving for your own good?” She sounded like she privately couldn’t believe what she heard, but happy about it nonetheless, and Glimmer smiled in response.

“How can I face Bow and Adora and hope they’ll forgive me if I can’t even do that for you?” Glimmer paused and frowned as she hit upon a realization. “You uh…don’t have a secret ulterior plan I haven’t figured out yet, right? You never did answer my question earlier.”

Catra shook her head so hard Glimmer thought she’d give herself a concussion. “No secret plan, no hidden agenda, I swear. I know I can’t make up for everything, but if I can do something—anything—to help make it better, I want to try.”

Glimmer nodded and pulled Catra’s bowl of soup back into her lap. “Good. First order of business is somehow getting off this station. And you can’t do that or help fix anything afterward if you die from starvation. So, let’s focus on staying alive, yeah?”

She spooned more soup and held it up. Catra nodded and took a bite, then waited for Glimmer to scoop another with an eager gleam in her eyes.

Hours later, and Glimmer listened to the tiny snores Catra let out while she was fast asleep, splayed out on the bottom bunk with a full belly.  Glimmer was sat at the table, spooning her portion of now cold soup into her mouth while she thought on her conversation with Catra from earlier.

A starship blinked into existence outside their viewport and she turned to look. Several dozen more followed the first, cascaded into existence outside. Each had a single insignia stamped onto the side of their hulls—one which was different from Prime’s Imperial Horde motif. Glimmer didn’t recognize the pattern, but she knew what it represented.

Taline had arrived.

Chapter Text

Catra was having a nightmare. It was the usual one, the one she almost always had whenever she managed to win a few precious hours of sleep after first throwing that switch to the portal in the Fright Zone.

“Why did you do it?”

Adora stared at her from in front of the portal, her eyes every bit a storm as the vortex at her back. It didn’t matter that Catra always anticipated this scene, and it didn’t matter that she always tried to run away—knowing she was in the middle of a nightmare never seemed to make it feel less scary, and nothing she did ever changed the outcome of what inevitably happened next.

She fell.

This time, rather than fight it, Catra closed her eyes and let herself go, felt herself get swept off her feet and sucked backward into the portal behind Adora. She was eager to wake up and calm her heart she knew was hammering in her chest.

Except, the nightmare didn’t end when she opened her eyes again. Instead, she found herself in a grand throne room—Horde Prime’s throne room. And she was the one sitting on the throne.

“What of the program?” she heard herself ask. “That AI? The one that helped her to decipher the ancient writings.”

A woman was kneeling before her, head down, wearing a military cap with a visor that obscured her face. “We didn’t find anything on her,” she said. “No data chips on her body, and nothing out of the ordinary with the rest of her implants—all standard issue, science-grade.”

“And what of her remains?”

“C-cremated, my lord.” The woman said, fists trembling at her sides. “Since she was denied military honors or a marked grave, I decided to take her with me, instead.”

Anger leaked from the woman’s voice and Catra felt herself grin. “It doesn’t matter that her actions ended the war,” Catra said. “Had she obeyed my commands from the beginning, had she furthered the research she brought to me in the first place, then many more trillions of lives would have been saved. As it stands, all she’s bought us is more time. And at what cost? Outing the remainder of the Daiamid and driving them to extinction?” Catra scoffed. “Traitors don’t become martyrs, they become nameless. Your sister shall be forgotten by history, and any who dare utter her name shall share her fate. You’re lucky I’m not punishing you for helping her, Taline.”

Taline looked up at her, and Catra finally saw her face. Rage flared in her eyes, tears streamed down her face, and Catra felt a perverse sense of glee ripple in her chest at the sight. She wanted Taline to act on that anger and give Catra the excuse she needed to put her down and humiliate her further. Retaliating now after what happened would make Catra look weak in front of her subjects, but if Taline attacked her? That would be good enough reason to pay her back a hundred times over for the humiliation she had subjected her to in the earlier battle.

Taline relaxed and looked away. “Thank you for your discretion, sir.” Even though it sounded as if speaking the words made her sick, Catra couldn’t help but feel disappointed she’d chosen to deescalate.

Catra gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “If that program wasn’t on her person, then I’m certain a copy of it is stored on her private research servers. Who from your team is in charge of tearing apart that lab the Daiamid gave her?”

“I have Diallo en route to the planet as we speak, my lord,” she said, standing.

Diallo? Now there was a man with aspirations far larger than his abilities. Catra wondered what strange force had possessed Taline to put him in charge. Thanks to her near-perfect memory recall—helped in part by the implants that allowed her full access to her clones’ experiences—Catra knew almost every important subject of her empire by name. But Diallo was so unremarkable, he threatened to shake himself loose and fall between the gaps in her memory.

“Good,” Catra said, preferring not to read too deeply into it. “I want a fully itemized list of his findings within a week, and I want everything in that lab brought to my personal storage facilities on Acheron Prime.” She raised a finger in warning. “And don’t think I won’t know if something is missing, Taline. Prime knows all.” Taline gave a muted ‘Yes sir,’ and Catra made another dismissive gesture at her. “Now get out of my sight.”

Catra’s mind wandered as Taline turned and headed for the exit at the far end of the throne room. In her thousands of years alive, hopping through clone bodies as they aged beyond use in a never-ending mission to conquer both death and the galaxy, her fate had always been her own to make. Now her empire tottered on the brink of collapse, and the only way to ensure its survival was to wait for the appearance of a magic planet, lost in the space between dimensions, before the barrier holding back that hell-spawn creature burst through and put an end to them for good.

That same empire had thrived for many hundreds of thousands of years because they not only had the technology to make her essentially immortal, but also had the means to shove great fleets into the void and pluck them out on the other side of the galaxy faster than the speed of light. Yet despite this, they could not locate a single, massive planet stuck within that same void and pull it through to their own reality? Why was Catra forced to wait for it to show up on its own terms instead of on hers?

She took a deep breath and smoothed the worry lines she felt cropping up on her face. The scientists had said it would be easier to locate a single person and return them from the void than it would be to locate a whole planet and do the same—something about their inability to read the energy signature of a thing that massive because of the sensitivity of their instruments. The specifics never made sense to her, but that was why she had her advisors in the first place: to deal with the specifics. In any case, although she had damned her to anonymity, Taline’s blasted sister had never once been wrong about her predictions once they started coming to her, and she likely wouldn’t be wrong about this one. Etheria would show, and the Enclave—Taline especially—would be on constant lookout for it.

That didn’t stop Catra from feeling powerless over the fact all this was out of her hands, however. She hated that feeling. She needed to do something to return that sense of control.

“Taline?” Catra called, her voice echoing in the great sanctum and stopping her just shy of the exit. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Taline stiffened, and Catra thought she might ignore her and walk straight through the doors. Then, she did a quick about-face, clicked her heels together, and thrust an open hand to her visor in an aggressive salute. “Hail the Horde Empire! Hail Horde Prime!”

Anguish flared anew on her face. She didn’t break eye contact with Catra as she held the salute for a long five seconds. Then she stowed her salute, and marched out of the throne room. Catra listened to sound of Taline’s boots echo down the hall outside, growing quieter the farther away she got. Before long, her vision faded to black…

…And she finally woke, back aboard Prime’s citadel.

Her heart hammered in her chest, like she expected it to back when she first fell into the portal at the beginning of the nightmare. Her head hurt. It felt like someone took an axe to her head. Even still, Catra never thought she’d ever feel relieved to see the stars outside their window, or the halogen strip lights on the ceiling of their cell. They bathed the room in light harsh enough to make her nauseous, but at least she was herself again.

The pain in her head grew suddenly worse, and her vision blurred out. The room began to spin. It wasn’t until a dull pain radiated from her knees and hands up to her hips and elbows that she realized she had fallen off the bottom bunk and caught herself on the floor.

Someone kneeled in front of her and held her by the shoulders. Catra tried to focus on their face but it was impossible to get her eyes to focus or the room to stop spinning. All she could make out through the pain was the vague pink tones of their hair.

“Glimmer?” she asked, before chastising herself in her head. Of course it was Glimmer. Who the hell else would it be? Glimmer was the only other person in this cell with her.

Catra shivered, remembering their conversation from earlier. She didn’t deserve Glimmer’s kindness, and part of her wish she’d withhold it and spare Catra the shame. Her vision focused enough to make out Glimmer’s features, only to immediately realize that this person in front of her wasn’t actually Glimmer at all.

“You don’t look so good,” Angella said, supporting the back of Catra’s head with one hand as she swayed.

“This is another dream,” Catra said, feeling panic well up inside her again. “It has to be. You aren’t here. You….you can’t be here.”

Angella frowned at her. “Your mind can’t keep up with what happened to it. Go to sleep now. Things will be better when you wake up, I promise.” Angella pressed her thumb and index finger to Catra’s forehead, and she fell back into unconsciousness.

This time, there were no nightmares.

Glimmer hadn't slept. The warships outside had reminded her that someone powerful enough to make Horde Prime change course was coming for them, and that unnerved her. Catra’s sudden tossing and turning and moaning in bed hadn’t helped either, and Glimmer had been moments away from going to check on her when she heard loud voices and footsteps approaching from outside the cell.

The doors slid open a moment later and a woman stepped through, straight-backed, wearing a crisp military uniform. She doffed her cap, stowed it under one arm, and swept the room with a gaze of ice. Two soldiers encased head to toe in body armor joined her. A stylized faceplate covered their faces and prevented Glimmer from reading their expressions or intentions.

A thud sounded off to the side before Glimmer could properly react, and all attention turned to Catra. She had fallen off the bed and lay there spasming on her hands and knees. Glimmer yelped and rushed forward when both guards intercepted her. One of them grabbed her arm to hold her back while the other barred her path forward.

Panicking, Glimmer swung with her free hand at the one in front. Pain radiated up her arm when flesh met armor, and she cursed, yanking out of the other soldier’s hold to nurse her throbbing hand.

“Please don’t punch my Sentinels,” the woman said. Glimmer looked over and found her cradling a now unconscious Catra in her arms, one hand supporting the back of her head while the other pressed her thumb and index finger to Catra’s forehead. “I’m terrible with healing runes and, frankly, I don’t have the time to send you to the medical bays either. It would be terribly inconvenient if you had to go and break your hand, not to mention painful and unnecessary.”

“You’re Taline,” Glimmer said, leering at the Sentinels while trying to keep an eye on her. “I recognize you from when you interrupted Prime’s fun with us.”

“You’re welcome for that, although I did find out later that he didn’t stop torturing this one.” Taline stood with a grimace on her face, lifting Catra bridal style between her arms. She motioned to the Sentinel closest to her—the one blocking Glimmer’s path—and deposited Catra in their arms, murmuring a quick order to bring her to the infirmary.

“Don’t worry,” Taline said after seeing the look Glimmer gave them carrying Catra out the door. “Your friend will be ok. I just helped calm her mind somewhat. It’s still processing what it went through with the Emperor. He gets…impatient when he probes a mind that isn’t cloned from his own, and although Salas is proficient enough to keep him from damaging them beyond saving, there’s still an adjustment period afterward, shall we say.”

Glimmer narrowed her eyes at her, not entirely sure what to make of her words. “Is that your armada out there?” she asked, gesturing to the window.

“Armada?” Taline seemed confused as she looked out the window too.  Then gave a soft laugh. “I’d hardly call that an armada, but yes. Those are my ships.”

“And what, pray tell, are you planning on doing to us? Horde Prime didn’t get anything out of Catra about the Heart because she doesn’t actually know anything, and neither do I. Not really.”

Glimmer shut her mouth when fear started to make her voice quaver. She obviously didn’t want to be the subject of another torture session, not at Horde Prime’s hands nor any other. But she couldn’t think of any good reason for why someone like Taline would be there in the first place if it wasn’t to extract more information.

“I’m not here to do anything to you,” Taline said. “I’m here because I need your help.”

Glimmer blinked as if she hadn’t heard her correctly. Even if she didn’t trust Taline further than she could throw her, hearing that come out of her mouth was unexpected. “What exactly is it you need my help with?”

“I need you to help me convince the Emperor to leave this planet the hell alone.”

Chapter Text

Glimmer flew down the hallway and struggled to keep pace with the rapid clip Taline had set—wherever she was leading her, it was in a hurry. The other guard (Sentinel?), the one that hadn’t taken Catra from the cell, didn’t seem to struggle nearly as much as her despite the rifle strapped to their chest piece and the giant knife strapped to their leg over the armor. While this was the second time in a short period Glimmer traveled down this exact hallway, the context felt different. This time, she wasn’t being manhandled in Horde Prime’s wake on the way to a torture chamber, but was instead coming along to…help?

That’s what Taline had told her, at least, and that’s what Glimmer chose to focus on instead of her uncertainty over Catra’s whereabouts. They piled into the elevator at the end of the hall, and no sooner had Taline selected the floor they needed to travel to did the sound of radio chatter echo out from the armor of the Sentinel next to her.

“TF 12 is reporting back, Ma’am,” the Sentinel said, pressing a gloved hand to the side of their helmet. Despite the modulation, Glimmer could tell it was a woman underneath all that protection. “Still no return signal from the holdouts. Shall I order them to continue attempting contact?”

“No, I’ll take care of it,” Taline said. The elevator dropped them down and she tapped a few commands into a holographic screen built into a bracer on her arm before letting loose a sigh. “Didn’t I tell you this was going to happen, Miri? Didn’t I call it years ago that the Emperor was going to do this exact thing once Etheria finally showed up?”

“You did say so,” Miri said. She and Taline must have had this conversation many times in the past, judging by her tone of voice. “I’ve never disagreed with you on it either. I’m just glad we got here before he decided on an orbital bombardment.”

“Yeah well, even with that luck it might still be too late. The only people he hasn’t conquered yet are refusing to even—yes, hello? Alan?” Taline shook the device on her wrist with an annoyed expression and brought it closer to her face, muttering about ‘shitty connection.’ “Hi, yes, it’s Taline. No, it’s okay, you don’t need to keep pinging them, it’s obvious they’re ignoring us on purpose. Try and get a visual of what they’re doing inside that castle of theirs—they’ve been holed up inside for hours since Prime’s last wave.”

Glimmer tried to make sense of what she overheard, and wished she could make out more of the person’s response on the other line than just muffled comms chatter. This was the most information she had about her friends back on the surface since being beamed into the citadel in the first place, and it was frustrating how little she could glean from it.

“Yes, I realize there’s likely plenty of wounded inside,” Taline said. “But I won’t risk sending down a landing party if they’re just going to think it’s another invasion force. I’m going to see the Emperor right now and ask about taking over the hologram emitters he’s placed planet-side already. If they won’t take our hails, we’ll just project a message to them they can’t turn off.”

The sound of the other person’s response murmured out against the whirring of the elevator as they shot through Prime’s citadel. After a last brief exchange of words, Taline cut the line, and leaned against the far wall with arms crossed and a heavy sigh. Glimmer got the sense she was seeing a rarely-displayed side of her, looking so frustrated as she did, although that realization garnered no sympathy from her: overhearing that conversation put a new worry at the front of her mind.

“Did I just hear you say there are wounded?” Glimmer asked. “What’s been going on down there?”

Taline regarded her out the corner of her eye. “Bright Moon is still holding out after the Emperor’s latest attacks. The rest of the planet fell fast, but there’s a group down there that’s fought off two invasion forces of his now. Your people, I’m assuming?”

“All of Etheria but Bright Moon is conquered? But I can’t have been away for much longer than a week at most.” Glimmer remembered hearing something about final holdouts when Prime first talked to Taline during the interrogation, but she hadn’t been paying attention on account of everything else going on. She gave a self-satisfied laugh and said, “Bright Moon is my kingdom. I’ll take it as a point of pride that Adora and the others are still standing.”

“Yes, well, capitulating fast is a good thing, if curbing casualties is of any concern to you. The longer they resist, the angrier the Emperor grows and the more people die. We’ll have a hard enough time as it is convincing him to disengage after they thwarted him twice.”

“And so that’s where I come in? I’m to just ‘stand there and look vaguely pathetic while you do the talking’, was it? You didn’t exactly mince words back at the cell.” The idea of Glimmer’s friends ultimately prevailing over Prime had never been brought up. Maybe that was fair, considering they were the only ones left after so little time at war.

“There’s more, obviously,” Taline said. “But let’s focus on the first step to start, okay? As much as I’m sure you hope your friends can succeed against him, I’m sorry to say they won’t. The goal is to deescalate both sides.”

“He started it!” Righteous anger boiled over in Glimmer’s mind, and she rounded on Taline with wide, aggressive gestures. “He kidnapped Catra and I, then laid waste to the rest of the planet. People are dead—my friends are dead—because he just showed up and started killing!”

“And more will die if we don’t work together, me with the Emperor and you with your friends on the surface. Horde Prime is a prideful son of a bitch. Need proof? Just look at how he promised me he’d keep everyone safe before I arrived and then continued torturing your friend. Being rebuffed twice will only make him push harder and kill more. But he gets distracted by displays of weakness. If you stand there looking scared and slightly out of your element, he’ll take that as a sign of victory and I’ll be able to more effectively massage him into doing what we need.”

“Coming to the table for a ceasefire?”

“Now you’re catching on. The problem is, your friends down below are justifiably pissed off and ignoring any attempt my team makes at contacting them. Horde Prime agreeing to hold off won’t matter at all if we send a peaceful landing party down and the people of Bright Moon attack out of an assumption it’s a hostile force. The Emperor will just push a third assault. One more ruthless than the others because he’d take that as them spitting on his hand when trying to show mercy.”

“I can help,” Glimmer said. “You mentioned getting some hologram emitters? If we can project a message to them, I can record it. They’d be more likely to listen if it’s me telling them to come out and talk.”

“Good.” Some of the tension in Taline’s stance smoothed away. She almost looked relieved. “That’s exactly what I had in mind.”

“I want something in return though,” Glimmer said, refusing to back down when both Taline’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I want a guarantee no one else gets hurt. If I help you with this, my friends remain safe, and everyone who needs it gets immediate medical attention.”

“Done.”

Glimmer blinked in surprise, somewhat confused. “Done? That’s it? That easy?”

“That easy.” Taline nodded. “This invasion wasn’t supposed to happen in the first place. The Emperor wasn’t supposed to come anywhere near your planet when it finally emerged.” The irritated creases in Taline’s brow returned, deeper this time. “I was supposed to make first contact with your world. Peaceful first contact. Maybe I haven’t been clear about this so far, and if that’s the case then I’m sorry. But I want as much death and destruction in this as you do. None. We’re both on the same side here.”

Glimmer wasn’t sure she’d go that far, but she’d take what she could get. If Taline wanted her help to bring hostilities to an end, especially in a fight where her side was so horridly outmatched, then she’d do what she could to help. Even if that meant keeping her mouth shut and pretending to look beaten.

A perverse sense of amusement washed over her then as she realized there had been more similarity between her and Catra than she initially acknowledged. Prime wouldn’t have come if she hadn’t activated the Heart and pulled Etheria out of Despondos in the first place. They both were ‘doing what they could’ to right their wrongs, in a sense. Glimmer’s mind wandered to Catra, and she hoped she was doing better in the infirmary.

The elevator pulled to a halt and the doors swished. She, Taline, and the Sentinel Miri stepped out into Horde Prime’s massive throne room where the second Sentinel, the one who had taken Catra away, was already there waiting for them. Did he really bring Catra to the infirmary that quickly? Together, the four of them approached the Emperor, surrounded by intelligence screens and lounging on his throne at the far end of the chamber.

“Lord Prime,” Taline said, taking a knee when they reached the first step of the dais. She nudged Glimmer, who hurried to follow her example. “Have you considered my request? I would like to use the projectors you installed on the planet’s surface.”

Prime inspected his nails, leaning back with one leg crossed over the other on his throne. Two clone guards holding staves stood on either side, and Salas stood inside on Prime’s left with his hands held behind his back. He looked strangely clammy and worn out, more so than when she last saw him up in the interrogation room. It was almost as if someone had stretched him too thin, too quickly.

One of Prime’s extra eyes turned to look at them. “I have considered,” he said. “And I don’t feel sufficiently convinced I should give them to you. I’m not about to hand over my equipment when you have the resources to install your own projectors. You were adamant about this world being under your jurisdiction, Taline. A good commander solves their own problems.”

Glimmer couldn’t believe how petty the Emperor had become compared to the almost nightmarish figure from their prior meeting. It almost made her feel bad for Taline, having to navigate the situation. She redoubled her efforts to look sufficiently cowed in his presence.

“My lord, that would take time we simply do not have,” Taline said. “The rebels in the castle refuse to answer my hails. I fear they are planning something while I am trying to call an end to the hostilities.”

“Planning something, you say?” The Emperor’s eyes lit up with glee. “A counterattack perhaps?”

“It’s possible, but I can’t be certain as of yet.” Taline stood, and Glimmer followed her, hugging one arm close to her body with the other. “My men are working on getting us eyes inside their stronghold as we speak.”

“That may be amusing to see play out,” Prime said. “Nothing about their technology indicates they would pose a threat to me all the way up here. Now I’m especially tempted to withhold the projectors from you, if only to see what they come up with.”

“My lord, I implore you to remember why we are here on Etheria in the first place.” Taline took the first step up the dais to the throne. The clone guards on either side strode forward, pointing their staves at her. She didn’t so much as look at them. “There is no time for detours and no time to play games like this. Our analysts’ projections are generous, but we still have no idea the level of complexity we are about to encounter researching the Heart.

“Ignominite took three months to discover, and Imperial R&D continues to make advancements with it to this day. The Barrier and its algorithm took three years to implement, and no progress whatsoever has been made trying to perfect it despite eight years of trying. We may have plenty of time or barely enough at all, but if the Barrier fails before we have the weapon then everything is lost. We cannot afford distractions, no matter how tempting.”

Horde Prime narrowed his eyes at them and sat forward, uncrossing his legs. If he looked disinterested and bored earlier, he looked downright furious now. Glimmer had no idea what Taline was talking about, but she could tell whatever point she made had struck a nerve with Prime. She half expected him to refuse to help out of spite. This was her cue.

“Lord Prime, please,” Glimmer said, taking a tentative step forward. When all eyes turned on her, she swallowed and bowed low. “I may be a young Queen, but I am no fool. I recognize that we are thoroughly beaten.” She chanced a glance up. Taline and even Salas seemed surprised she spoke up at all, but Prime looked pleased.

“You have already conquered Etheria,” she said. “Even if my own subjects haven’t yet caught on to that fact. And if it’s indeed Adora that you talked to when you first reached out, then there’s no doubt in my mind she is planning a counter attack. As queen it’s my responsibility to look out for the safety of my people, and I know there will be nothing left of them if they go down that path. Please sir. Let Taline use your projectors. Let them see that I am safe and let us negotiate a ceasefire, I beg you.”

Horde Prime studied her through narrowed eyes. Glimmer could practically see him turning her words over in his head, and despite the look of drunk satisfaction on his face, she feared she hadn’t done enough—that he’d still refuse, even after she groveled. It was Salas that, after stepping up to whisper something in his ear, made him nod.

“Very well,” he said. “I am not a cruel ruler. I see potential when an opponent recognizes they are beaten and asks for mercy, and I too wish to avoid unnecessary bloodshed where possible. I will grant you access to the projectors, Taline. Record your message on the communications bridge, and I will inform my Relay Master that he is to transmit whatever you give him.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Taline said with another quick bow. “Hail the Horde. Hail Horde Prime.” She grabbed Glimmer by the arm and the four of retreated back toward the elevators. “That was perfect,” she said when they arrived, mashing the ‘call’ button on the elevator panel. “What you just did there? That was exactly what we needed.”

“I helped you, just like you asked,” Glimmer said, frowning. “You’d better hold up your end of the deal. What do we do now?”

“Now we get to the communications bridge like he said. You’ll record a message telling everyone that you are safe and that they are to come out of the castle and surrender. We’ll be able to land safely, make their surrender official, and begin our research right away.”

“Hold on a minute,” Glimmer said, crossing her arms and taking a step back. “Surrender? That’s not what we agreed on.”

“We agreed on safety for your friends and medical attention to those who needed it. How do you think we’re going to keep anyone safe if they don’t surrender?”

“I thought we were going to negotiate a ceasefire. Surrender is too much.”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened, but no one stepped inside. Taline shot Glimmer a withering glare.

“Do you seriously expect the Emperor to sit there on his throne and not execute every single one of your people in front of your eyes if they refuse to submit to him? What did you think was going to happen? That we’d stop the fighting and you could negotiate him into leaving you alone? He came here and conquered your planet in a week, you said so yourself.”

“This isn’t what we agreed to,” Glimmer said, taking another step back. “I don’t know what it is you need our planet for so badly, but you went straight from wanting to end hostilities and keep people safe to jumping right into your little research project the minute you got what you wanted.”

“Glimmer, we don’t have time to—”

“No, you don’t have time to waste,” Glimmer said. She didn’t care that she was probably causing a scene near enough for the Emperor to notice. “How do I even know I can trust you? How do I know you aren’t going to just throw us back to the wolves as soon as you have what you want? Did you even bring Catra to the infirmary like you said, or did this guy”—she jerked her thumb toward the larger of the two Sentinels still with them—“just dump her body out an airlock or something?”

The elevator doors closed without them aboard, the quiet hissing sound amplified against the silence Glimmer let hang over them after she finished speaking. Taline looked disgusted with her, and a small voice at the back of the head suggested to Glimmer that maybe she shouldn’t be pushing the buttons of the only person that seemed to be on their side and giving her answers. Still, she refused to trust blindly, and there was at least one thing she believed could be reasonably used as leverage.

“You need to get the Heart working, right?” Glimmer asked. “You need it to fight whatever war is threatening your precious empire? Well, let me cut to the chase and let you in on a little secret. The Heart is defective.”

Taline’s look of disgust mellowed out into one of irritation and interest. “Go on,” she said.

“The only way you can activate it is if you have all the princesses, my friends, channel their power into it at once. And even if you somehow managed to get them to cooperate with you, the planet blows up. It’s unstable. I’m changing the terms of our agreement, since it’s clear the Heart is the only thing you care about. You need to take me back down to the planet personally to talk to everyone. Either that, or you show me some other kind of proof you’re going to keep your word and make sure my friends are safe if we surrender.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I don’t lift a finger to help you any further than I already have.”

Taline’s eyes hardened and she squared her shoulders. A surge of adrenaline pumped through Glimmer’s veins upon seeing that, and she responded in kind, ready for a fight.

“Fine,” Taline said after a tense moment. “Have it your way. We don’t have time to make a trip to the surface, so I’ll go get your cellmate from the infirmary and prove to you she’s better and that I didn’t have her done away with. Is that enough for you?”

Glimmer was surprised and grateful things didn’t escalate into violence, especially since she was certain she wouldn’t come out the victor when Taline had two armored Sentinels at her side. She considered Taline’s proposal, and ultimately decided that it would be proof enough. If she had actually taken care of Catra when she could have just as easily killed her and lied about it to secure Glimmer’s cooperation, then that was probably enough to say she wouldn’t abandon her friends once they disarmed themselves.

“Good,” Taline said when Glimmer nodded at her. “You’re going to head to the communications center like we originally planned, and I’ll be along shortly thereafter with your friend.” She turned to the Sentinels at her side and said, “Guard her. The clones and especially other officers may give her a hard time if I’m not there and we can’t risk that. I don’t care who you have to step between, make sure no harm comes to the queen for any reason. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal clear, ma’am.” Both Sentinels spoke and snapped off sharp salutes at the same time, and Taline turned back to address Glimmer.

“Follow their lead. This citadel is a monstrosity, but they’ll know how to get you to communications. No detours.”

“No detours,” Glimmer agreed, nodding.

Taline stared at her a moment longer, as if looking for any sign of subterfuge. Seemingly finding none, she turned and took off at a quick march toward a set of doors farther away. Glimmer watched her exit after the guards posted there scrambled to get out of her way, then she turned to look at the Sentinels left behind to guard her. She still hadn’t seen their faces, completely covered in body armor as they were.

“Shall we get going?” the taller of the two asked. “We’ll take the elevator up and escort you to communications.”

Glimmer thought back to the orders Taline gave them—thought about how oddly specific it was that Taline told them she didn’t care who they needed to step between in order to keep her safe. An idea sprung to her in her quest to feel better in control over her predicament.

“You’re Miri,” she said, pointing to the smaller of the two, before gesturing to the larger. “But what’s your name?”

“I am called Narre, Queen Glimmer,” the other said.

“Well, Miri and Narre…Taline did give you a set of pretty specific orders. But I have something I want to try first.”

The Sentinels glanced at each other. Glimmer took one look at the elevator the two of them were clearly hoping she would get aboard, pointedly turned away, and marched instead back toward the Emperor on his throne.

Chapter Text

Adora sat on the floor in the hallway right outside the castle war room and leaned against the wall, letting the white onyx touch as much of her back as she could to cool her down. The battle had been rough. They had just barely pushed the enemy forces into retreat once the ship above finally stopped spitting out reinforcements. If it hadn’t been for Entrapta and the cadre of fighting war bots she had been stockpiling for exactly that kind of desperate moment, they might not have made it.

Many of the foot soldiers who hadn’t died were in critical condition, and even the majority of the princesses were in no shape to fight, although they hadn’t lost any of them permanently, thank god. In fact, when Adora went through her mental catalogue of the injuries, she and Scorpia were the only two not in the infirmary.

Pain flared at her abdomen. Adora screwed her eyes shut and grit her teeth. Maybe Scorpia was the only one who had come out in one piece after all. Adora really should have joined the others in the infirmary, but they were stretched too thin as it was and she couldn’t afford to let Catra and Glimmer down by sitting out the upcoming assault on Horde Prime’s citadel. If anyone saw her in pain, they’d bench her, so she did her best to power through it.

“You don’t look so good,” a voice directly in front of her said.

Adora snapped her eyes open and looked up. Lonnie stood there looking down at her, covered in bruises and lacerations. One eye had nearly swollen shut on her, and Rogelio stood at her left, missing an arm.

“Neither do the two of you,” Adora said, forcing a laugh.

“I was the luckiest of the three of us,” she said. “Gonna be sore and in pain for months, probably, but at least nothing’s broken. Rogelio’s got a few cracked ribs but they’ll heal quick, and that arm of his will grow back too.”

“What about Kyle?”

“Kyle…wasn’t so lucky.”

“Did…did he not make it?” The mood between them grew dark. Rogelio dipped his head and Lonnie rubbed his back.

“No, he’s not dead,” Lonnie said, sighing. “He’ll be fine, thank god. He just…won’t regrow the leg. They propped him up on a chair in the infirmary as many of the beds as possible need to be free for people who actually need them. He’s really pissed at me for making him stay behind for the assault, though.”

“It’s the right decision,” Adora said, breathing a sigh of relief and flinching with another jolt of pain through her ribs. “Normally I’d suggest Rogelio stay behind too, but at least you can still move and somewhat fight without an arm. Kyle without a leg though? Different story.”

Rogelio gave a grunt in affirmation and, when Lonnie cracked a smile at her, Adora couldn’t help smiling back. When Horde Prime first arrived, she had worried she’d hold back the other princesses without her powers, but Kyle, Lonnie, and Rogelio had shown up at Bright Moon before the first wave and immediately jumped to aid their defense. Adora had fallen in with them sometime during the fighting, and the result was staggering.

Fighting techniques and homegrown squad tactics Adora hadn’t practiced since leaving the Horde came back to her amidst a tidal wave of nostalgia, and the four of them had taken down more enemies together than Adora thought possible without She Ra. For the first time since breaking the sword, she felt like an asset rather than a liability. To say she felt grateful the three of them had appeared when they did was a grave understatement.

“You on the other hand,” Lonnie said, her tone and expression turning serious. “You sure you’re okay to fight? I watched you take that blaster hit directly to the armor back in that first wave, and you weren’t exactly all there this time around either. I was worried about you, moving around without that breastplate of yours.”

“I’m fine, I promise.” Adora made her point by moving to stand, and the muscles in her side started to seize. Rogelio helped her get the rest of the way upright, and the disapproving look on Lonnie’s face deepened.

“You look like you’re literally about to pass out,” Lonnie said. “Maybe you should sit this one out too.”

“I can’t.” Adora turned away from them when she heard her voice grow thick with emotion. She wasn’t going to lose it in front of them—they’d really make her stay behind if she did. “I can’t, Lonnie.” She took a shuddering breath, ground her teeth against yet another spike of pain as she did so, and forced herself to look Lonnie in the eyes. She just wished the tears in her own had gone away before she did. “Catra and Glimmer are up there. I’m not staying here while everyone else goes to save them.”

Lonnie studied her for a moment before letting out a long breath. “Alright,” she said, shaking her head. “Glimmer’s a tough one, and Catra’s no pushover either. I’m sure they’re alright. We’ll zap in there together, all of us will kick Horde Prime’s alien ass, and get everyone home. And that includes you too, so you’d better have your shit together up there, Adora.” She jabbed Adora in the shoulder hard enough to make her take a step back.

Adora grinned back at her, smug. “No one gets it together better than me. I’m really glad I’m fighting next to the both of you again. Thank you for coming to help us.”

Lonnie and Rogelio nodded. As cohorts growing up together, nothing else needed to be said.

The doors to the war room opened and the smiles on their collective faces disappeared when Shadow Weaver stepped out into the hall.

“We’re almost ready,” she said, giving them a once-over. “Entrapta, Micah and I will test some final adjustments, but I think it’s time we all have a plan for when we are finally aboard.”

Adora, Lonnie, and Rogelio exchanged looks, then they followed Shadow Weaver inside. The war room looked completely different compared to how it was before the last wave.

Micah stood at the center of the room with one hand drumming his fingers on his chin while he stared down at an impossibly complex magic rune drawn into the floor. Entrapta darted around him, yammering with expansive gestures about calculations and probabilities and statistics while occasionally tapping furious commands into an oversized tablet she wore strapped to a forearm. The large boardroom table that had previously been the centerpiece of the room had been pushed off to the side. Scorpia sat alone at one end of it, glassy eyes staring right through everything.

Lonnie and Rogelio shuffled over to her after bidding Adora farewell and Scorpia perked up, imploring them to pull up a chair and sit with her after noticing them. Shadow Weaver strode toward Entrapta and Micah, and Adora followed.

“Adora, there you are,” Micah said, interrupting Entrapta mid-sentence as they approached. “I was afraid something may have happened to you after finding out how many people we lost in that last wave.”

Adora shook her head. “I’m okay, sir, I got luckier than most. Sorry for making you worry. How are we doing with the teleportation spell?”

“I think we have it,” Micah said, gesturing to the designs on the floor. “It’s not perfect, but I think it’s as close as we’re going to get it.” He turned to Entrapta, who had busied herself with the tablet on her arm.

“I’ve run the calculations over and over again a thousand times,” she said. “While Emily was assisting Bow, I also had her run several hundred thousand variations on her unused CPU threads, and we’re 99.98% certain that the coordinate parameters we’ve used in conjunction with this rune should teleport you right into the heart of the citadel’s throne room. Any adjustments, however slight, yield a less accurate arrival percentage.”

“What happens in that two hundredths of a percent situation?” Adora asked.

Entrapta gave her a sheepish look. “You’ll uh…end up in the vacuum of space most likely. It’s not just the calculations. If the spell misfires or one of you puts too much or too little energy into it, then you may even teleport halfway inside one of the citadel’s bulkheads or between decks. Maybe even inside one of the warships around it instead of the citadel itself.”

“There’s also the chance we may not reappear at all,” Shadow Weaver said. “Entering the void between dimensions to teleport is easy enough, but coming back? We may get stuck with no way to return, much like a certain other queen I won’t mention by name.”

“It’s like threading a needle,” Micah said. If he had caught Shadow Weaver’s jab at Angella, he didn’t show it. “Sadly, this is the only option we have of getting up there. We either do this, or we hope the Emperor doesn’t hold Adora’s words against us when we agree to surrender after all.”

Thinking of surrendering made Adora grimace. The ache from earlier flared, and she clutched at her side in pain before she could stop herself.

“Are you alright?” Micah asked, stepping closer to her. “I told you fighting in your condition was no good even before the second wave. You’re pushing yourself too hard, Adora.”

Adora was about to protest when Shadow Weaver interrupted.

“She has several bruised ribs on her side and still can’t get in touch with her powers,” she said. “But with how few fighters we have left, I’m not sure we can spare her.”

Adora couldn’t help her open-mouthed surprise at hearing Shadow Weaver vouching for her to keep fighting. Even as a child, she encouraged her to rest when needed, although Adora was certain it was out of a desire to keep her performing perfectly rather than any actual love the woman had for her. Hearing her advocate to keep pushing when even she could admit privately to herself that she wasn’t at her best was unexpected. She shut her mouth and averted her eyes the moment she saw Shadow Weaver notice her reaction.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be putting this on you seeing as I am both the King and old enough to be your father,” Micah said. “But Shadow Weaver is right—we don’t have the luxury to lose more people. I will go along with whatever you decide, but I want you to be certain of your decision. Are you well enough to fight and are we really going to go up there to take the fight to Horde Prime directly? There will be no one here to defend the injured if Horde Prime sends a third wave while we are up there.”

Adora balked and looked around the room. She hadn’t considered they fact the castle would be defenseless when they left. There weren’t even enough Bright Moon guards to man the front gates. Would it even make a difference what she did? There were only eight of them in total including her. Seven if you took out Entrapta, since she was staying behind after handing over all of her fighting bots that still functioned.

Scorpia and her were the only princesses. Then there were the two badly injured Ex-Horde soldiers, King Micah, Shadow Weaver, and Bow when he got back from the armory. No She Ra. Were they really going to assault Horde Prime’s citadel with just that?  Could she really order everyone to go with such dismal odds?

A clamor sounded off behind them, and Bow hurried through the double doors into the room. He clutched a golden breastplate tight to his chest, and Emily followed close behind, pushing a purple hover cart laden with gadgets and weapons. Bow stopped to look around as soon as he got inside, and marched over to Adora as when he spotted her.

“I did it,” he said to her, out of breath. “I fixed it up as best I could.” He turned the breastplate to display for her and Adora felt her mouth drop when she looked.

She had raided Bright Moon’s armory before the first wave, reasoning that if she couldn’t transform into She Ra, then she’d have to make do with a normal-sized set of armor, different from the one she had worn when Catra first assaulted the castle years prior. That armor had let her walk away with her bruised ribs instead of a gaping, cauterized hole in her chest where the blaster fire had hit her, but it had left nearly the entire left hemisphere of the breastplate shattered beyond recognition. Adora had given it to Bow hours earlier, pretty much having written off ever wearing it again. What he had done to fix it was nothing short of a miracle.

“Bow, this is incredible,” she said, tracing her fingers along its near-pristine surface.

“I managed to get it pretty much back in fighting shape,” he said, turning the breastplate slightly so she could get a clear look at its curves and angles. “You can still see where it was originally damaged, but it should protect you almost as good as if that break didn’t happen in the first place.”

Adora took it from him to inspect closer. Sure enough, there was a thin indent down the side where the laser had hit, but she’d be kidding herself if she thought that would cause any problems. “I really didn’t think you’d be able to fix it,” she said. “It was a mess when I first handed it over.”

Bow gave her a bright smile that clashed with the bags under his eyes. “I couldn’t let you go out there without it. It saved your life the first time, and that meant I needed to get it ready just in case it needed to do so a second time.”

Adora pulled him into a hug and squeezed tight. “Thank you Bow.”

Bow hesitated, seemingly taken aback, before hugging her back. Happiness radiated from him for a moment when they pulled away, before the melancholy that had followed him around like a shadow since learning of Glimmer’s abduction returned. He looked away from her, and Adora felt her own mood plummet in response. Lonnie, Rogelio, and Scorpia were crowding the purple cart Emily had wheeled in, examining the weapons and equipment and planning out who would use what and how.

“We’re going,” Adora said, turning back around to face Micah and Shadow Weaver with a renewed sense of determination. “We’ve already seen how ruthless Horde Prime is in conquering this planet. Surrender is not an option for us, and although I’d much rather have way more than just the seven of us going, I know that we’ll succeed. We’ll rescue Glimmer, we’ll rescue Catra, we’ll take Horde Prime as our prisoner if we can, or we’ll end his life if we have no other choice. But one way or the other, we’re putting an end to this invasion once and for all.”

Lonnie and Scorpia gave an excited whoop as they smacked hand to claw, and Micah’s eyes twinkled with inspiration.

“That’s the spirit,” he said. He nodded to Entrapta who tapped a command into her tablet, and a holographic schematic of what Adora guessed was Horde Prime’s throne room appeared. Micah stepped close and peered at it. “Entrapta went to a lot of trouble to give us these layouts. They’re only estimations from her scans into space, but they’re the best we have."

A smile spread across Adora’s face when she saw the layouts. “This is more than enough. Alright. We come up with a solid plan of attack, and go. There’s no more time to waste.”

Chapter Text

Catra woke when a sharp feeling pinched her arm. She blinked the sleep out her eyes and looked down. A thin alien, dressed in white and wearing a surgical mask, sat on a rolling stool and pushed a needle into her forearm.

“Get away from me!” She yanked away and hissed, causing the doctor to scramble backward in the stool with a yelp. The syringe dropped to the floor and shattered, dashing the liquid inside across the linoleum and sending the needle skittering off somewhere under the bed.

“Miss, you are not well,” the doctor said, putting his hands up for her to see and inching forward once more. “Please, if you will just let me—“

“Don’t come any closer!” Catra leapt up into a crouch atop the bed with every hair on her body standing on edge. “Where am I? Where’s Glimmer?”

When the doctor hesitated, a door in the corner of the room slid open and a woman in a sharp military uniform walked through.

“You’re in one of the private medical wards in the Emperor’s citadel,” she said, taking off her cap and stowing it under her arm. “The same one Glimmer went to when she got sick.”

Catra studied the woman’s face. “I remember you from the observation deck,” she said, although she couldn’t remember the name Prime had called her by at the time.

“Well at least you aren’t hallucinating anymore. That’s a good sign.” The woman turned to the doctor, who looked to be at a complete loss for what to do next. “That will be all. I can take it from here.”

The doctor nodded and hurried out of the room, relief plain on his face. The woman approached and Catra gave another hiss in warning. The room then lurched and spun, and all of Catra’s efforts suddenly went into keeping her from falling off the bed and faceplanting into the floor.

“Relax,” the woman said, pulling up the stool to sit on and digging through a wire rack of drawers next to the bed. “My name is Taline. Not that this will make any sense to you right now, but I’m a Battlemage of the Enclave, a protectorate within the Galactic Horde. I’ve been sent to assimilate your world into the empire and lead a research team in studying the Heart of Etheria.”

She pulled another syringe and a second small vial filled with liquid from the drawers. Catra’s mind screamed danger at her as she watched Taline stick the syringe through the top of the vial and draw out its contents, but the room now spun so fast she couldn’t do anything about it.

“This is a sedative,” Taline said, turning to face her. “A mild one to help with the vertigo and the nausea. Your brain is still sorting itself out after the Emperor’s little romp through it.” Without waiting for her go ahead, Taline grabbed Catra by the arm, swabbed her with an antiseptic pad she hadn’t even seen her pull out, and plunged the needle in while Catra reeled from the smell of alcohol that overpowered her nose.

Catra tried to pull away and hiss again, but Taline’s grip was too strong. She panicked, thinking she for sure was either going to die or fall unconscious and wake up strapped to another interrogation chair. But by the time Taline emptied the syringe’s contents into her, the room had stopped spinning, and Catra already felt better.

“Huh,” she said, flexing her fingers in front of her and tilting her head to test her equilibrium. “That works so fast.”

“Glimmer will be at the communications bridge,” Taline said, pulling away and disposing of the syringe. “You should be in good enough condition to walk after a few minutes. We’ll head over there and meet up with her when you are.”

“Communications bridge?” Catra asked. “You let her wander around outside alone? What the hell were you thinking?” She always had the nagging feeling in the back of her mind the cell was as much for their protection on the citadel as it was for Horde Prime to keep them in one place. It was why she never fought against being locked up in the first place.

“She’ll be fine, since both my Sentinels are watching over her,” Taline said.

“Both your what?” Catra shook her head. “Never mind, just…as long as she’s safe. Whatever. Why is she not in our cell anymore?”

Taline brought Catra up to speed on what had happened, although speaking with a tone of voice that implied her patience was running empty. “Your queen helped me persuade the Emperor to let us use some of the holographic projectors he’s already set up on the surface,” she said as she wrapped up. “My men are escorting her to communications so we could record a message for everyone still resisting on the planet’s surface.”

“She’s not my queen,” Catra said, her tail twitching in irritation.

“No? She seemed to care a great deal about you. And that wasn’t just out of skepticism for me, although I don’t blame her for that in the slightest. She agreed to cooperate if I brought you to her and proved you were okay. I guess she thought I might have done away with you as soon as was convenient for me.”

Catra didn’t know what to think of that. Glimmer wanted to know she was safe? They had been acting almost like allies during their captivity so far, sure, but she had chalked that up to both of them leaning on one another for survival and nothing more. Catra didn’t actually matter, so why did Glimmer care if she was safe or not?

“She convinced the Emperor to help, huh?” Catra asked, trying to distract herself from thinking any further about it. “Forgive me if I find anything you say hard to believe. Horde Prime just laid waste to all of Etheria and practically conquered the planet, according to you. I’ve seen the army of ships he has orbiting the planet. Why the hell would he listen to anything you or anyone else has to say?”

A look spread across Taline’s face—one that Catra recognized the meaning behind immediately. She had made the same face before: once, months ago, when she had been trying to finalize battle plans for an upcoming assault and Scorpia tumbled through, trying to balance two teacups on the ends of her pincers before dropping them. She had also made that face on the multiple occasions she had tried to keep Entrapta’s focus on an important project, only to find her thoroughly distracted by some piece of scrap or new tech off in a corner.

It was the look of someone far and away overwhelmed with what they felt was a flood of inane roadblocks, while doing everything they can to keep from falling apart. Yes, Catra had been there many times before, but seeing it on another person’s face was a new experience.

“Horde Prime is a sadistic pain in the ass,” Taline said.  “I’ve said as much to Glimmer. And you’re right to think he’d normally ignore anyone’s opinion but his own. But he’s not suicidal. In fact, his instinct for survival is strong enough to override even his pride. Once Glimmer helped soothe his ego, and I reminded him we don’t have the luxury of getting distracted conquering planets, he came around and remembered why he agreed to let us lead Etheria’s assimilation in the first place.”

Taline looked at her as if that explained everything, and didn’t instead fill Catra with more questions than answers.

“Okay?” Catra said. “I don’t understand how that makes anything clearer for me.”

Taline sighed and rubbed at the crease in her brow. “I came in with twenty-three warships maybe four hours ago. The Emperor has over a thousand hovering above this planet alone. And yet, he’s agreed to defer to my authority here despite how irritated he feels about it. What in the world do you think would cause him to do so?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Catra said exaggerating the sarcasm in her voice. “How about nothing? There’s nothing that would get him to do that, and you’re just manipulating me. Is there a prize for guessing the right answer?”

“Stop thinking with your fear and start thinking with your brain,” Taline said. “You’re a smart girl. You’re intelligent enough to already have asked some good questions, so don’t stop because you’re getting frustrated. Why would Horde Prime back off?”

Catra paused. Had she just complimented her? No one had ever called Catra smart before, even in the obscurely condescending way Taline had put it. Catra pressed her lips into a thin line and considered what they had talked about, rolling the words ‘instinct for survival’ and the image of Horde Prime’s massive fleet around in her head.

“There’s a threat,” she said at last. “One big enough he’d rather have your cooperation than lose it going against you.”

“There you go,” Taline said. “What else?”

Catra looked away before Taline saw how her encouragement affected her. It was pathetic, really, how the words of a stranger—especially one who had drugged her moments earlier—affected her. But what could she say? Aside from Adora, she hadn’t gotten an ounce of positive reinforcement growing up. She was starved.

“I don’t understand how you’re expected to help if you’ve brought even less firepower than Horde Prime already has,” Catra said. “And why would he need help in the first place if he has such a strong military? Something that can threaten a force that size has to be…unprecedented.”

“’Unprecedented’ is putting it lightly,” Taline said with a grimace. She pointed to the badge on the front of her officer’s jacket. “You see this insignia?”

Catra nodded. She had noticed the instant Taline walked in. Everyone aboard this damned citadel wore the Horde insignia—upturned wings flanking a diamond in the center.  This new insignia, however, was the opposite: a smooth, stylized chevron with wings that pointed down instead of up, and a teardrop shape in the center instead of a diamond. Unlike the stark red of Hordak’s forces or the dull grey of Horde Prime’s, Taline’s shone bright silver and cut a sharp contrast when placed against the black of her uniform.

“This is the crest of my order, the Enclave Protectorate. And this"—she angled herself to the side and pointed to another insignia there: a truncated pentagram within a circle, also embroidered in silver—“marks me as a battlemage within that order. It’s one of the highest military ranks you can attain. My peers refer to me as the Seraph of Archanas.”

“Congratulations,” Catra said, trying to mask her interest by forcing her voice to go flat. “That supposed to mean something to me?”

“I’m not telling you this to flatter myself,” Taline said. “All of this should be telling you why Horde Prime is willing to disengage despite being, you know, Emperor of the known galaxy.”

More memories, senses, and emotions that had been swirling in the fog at the back of Catra’s mind came to the forefront, almost as if Taline’s words helped massage them free. “I met your colleague,” Catra said. “Salas. Prime introduced him as his advisor, right before he helped him with the mind probe. You Enclave aren’t just extra military….Prime relies on you for your expertise. But in what? Magic?”

“You catch on quick,” Taline said. “We’re a protectorate, which means we retain full autonomy as a vassal state. In exchange the Emperor consults with us when magic beyond his understanding comes into play. It’s a good system, as long as he doesn’t ever feel like his ‘divine omnipotence’ is threatened by our presence.”

“So this threat that has him putting you in charge is what? A magic army?”

Taline laughed and shook her head. “If only it were that simple. You’ll find out soon enough, but we’ve spent enough time sitting. You should be fine to walk now and we need to go. The sooner we get Glimmer’s message out the—“

A buzz at Taline’s wrist interrupted her, and she extended her arm to expose a thin bracer of electronics underneath her sleeve. When she tapped at it, a holographic screen sprang up in front of her, and she cursed under her breath.

“What is it?” Catra asked.

“Do all you Etherians have some sort of death wish?” Taline asked. “First everyone in that castle seemed to think it was a better idea to bunker up and fight off a thousand orbiting ships instead of surrender, and now this.” She tapped at the screen and what had once been a blank white panel—ostensibly to keep whoever was sitting opposite her from looking at its contents—turned transparent. “My tactical officer got a visual of the inside of the castle.”

Catra perked up at the still image: a blurry photo of eight people standing around an enormous design painted on the floor. It looked not unlike the one she saw beneath her during her interrogation. She squinted and leaned in closer, trying to identify everyone. Lonnie and Rogelio were there with Scorpia, checking out a cart of tech. Adora stood nearby with Arrow Boy—wasn’t his name Bow?—and they were both embracing each other. Someone she didn’t recognize, likely Glimmer’s dad, stood there too next to Entrapta, tapping at a comically large tablet strapped to her arm.

Then Catra saw Shadow Weaver and that nauseous, nervous feeling that had followed her constantly since childhood returned. She backed away from the image and felt the room begin to tilt again.

“Do you recognize that rune?” Taline asked.

Catra shook her head and immediately regretted it when that threatened to fling her off the bed. She gripped the mattress harder to steady herself.

“That’s a teleportation spell,” Taline said. “Judging by how complicated it is, they’re going to try and do a recall without a mark to anchor their exit.”

“I don’t understand what that means,” Catra said through gritted teeth.

“It means they’re going to teleport without a concrete beacon to help them reappear where they need to be. It’s extremely dangerous, like trying to land a cargo-liner on an ocean platform with zero visibility or instrumental guidance.” She zoomed the picture to focus on the rune and pursed her lips. “This is ridiculous. It looks like they’re going to try and come out right here in the station.”

Catra forced a laugh. “That sounds about right for that group of idiots. They’re always doing crazy shit without thinking it through.”

“That’s not all,” Taline said, her frown deepening. “Glimmer is still in the throne room, mouthing off to the Emperor.”

Those words struck Catra hard enough to almost make her forget her vertigo. “She’s what!?”

“My men sent me a note about it. I told her to head to the communications bridge and meet us there, but she’s gone and done something stupid instead.”

Catra struggled to breathe. Images of Prime combing through her mind atop in the interrogation chamber flashed through her head, and a sudden, unshakeable fear that Glimmer would push him too far grabbed hold of her. She knew exactly how unbalanced the Emperor was from seeing into his head. Glimmer had no idea what she was poking at.

“She’s going to get herself killed,” Catra said, kicking her legs out the side of the bed. “We should go. Now.”

“She’ll be fine,” Taline said, sounding more irritated than worried. “Unless she says something particularly egregious, he won’t risk an incident with my Sentinels there.” Taline gave her a look. “Hey, are you okay? I might have misjudged…you don’t look steady enough to—"

Catra pushed off to stand and felt her legs turn to jelly the moment her feet touched the floor. Taline snapped forward faster than Catra thought her capable of moving, sending the stool clattering backward and catching her under the arms before she fully collapsed to the floor.

“Alright, I’m fully convinced. All of you are crazy and do indeed have a death wish. Nothing you say can convince me otherwise.” Taline manhandled Catra back onto the bed.

Catra’s mind raced. She couldn’t keep up with the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions. She was herself one moment, then was Horde Prime the next—she was here, in the infirmary during one beat of her heart, then somewhere else in time and space before she could get her bearings. Images flickered before her eyes one after the other, each throwing her off balance and thrusting her into a deepening spiral of decay. She was drowning.

Adora was reaching for her…begging Catra to follow her to the Rebellion.

Catra was on some distant planet, leading a siege against an alien fortress, commanding her clones. She’d slaughtered millions already on this world, and would slaughter millions more before the campaign was done.

Shadow Weaver was standing over her, terrorizing her for staring at the Black Garnet again. She should have known better than to let herself get caught.

She was at the head of a military tribunal, screaming at the defendants: a young man and a young woman—Taline’s sister. Taline sat to Catra's right, one of the seven justices in the court proceedings. She looked…conflicted.

Glimmer and her were fighting. She had found Catra in her secret base and was coming for her. Catra had to escape, before everything burned down around her.

She was outside, on the steps of the Enclave’s massive judiciary. Soldiers and other battlemages were fighting to keep the insurrectionists from escaping, and she watched Taline let loose a blinding fork of magic lightning at the man who was standing on the defendant dais only moments earlier. She probably wouldn’t win the fight—not when Catra knew who the man was—but she hoped, nonetheless.

Catra was hiding behind a pile of rubble on Horde Prime’s citadel. She watched him approach Glimmer, watched him lay a palm against her cheek. It was a lie…Catra had to stop him before he killed her.

A hand cupped the side of her face just as she watched Horde Prime do the same to Glimmer, and the visions dispersed. She was back in the medical bay, looking up at Taline, who’s own expression bored into her with concern. Catra yelped and tried to jump away but Taline shot her hand forward, gripped her behind the head, and held her in place.

Catra swung at her with extended claws. Taline threw her other arm up and blocked, twisting the moment their bodies made contact to grip at Catra’s wrist like a vice. Catra yelled, ready to scratch with her other hand, to ram her forehead into Taline’s face, to kick and bite and scream to get away.

In one smooth motion, Taline let go of her wrist and pushed a palm gently against Catra’s forehead. A light appeared there, and Catra felt a cool sensation cascade down her body, calming her. Finally, the room stopped spinning, and she stopped fighting.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were spiraling again?” Taline asked. “I could have helped stabilize you before all that happened.”

Catra pulled away and Taline let her go. “I don’t need your help,” she said.

“Clearly. You do a good job hiding yourself, pretending everything is okay. I really didn’t catch on until you almost dumped yourself to the floor.”

“I have plenty of practice pretending things are fine when they’re not,” Catra said. Another image of Shadow Weaver flashed by and she suppressed a shudder. “Kind of had to.”

“I know.”

Catra looked over and saw her staring back with a hard expression: Taline must have glimpsed the same visions Catra was having. Those eyes of concern from earlier were gone, replaced with a look of barely concealed anger. Not at her, but at what she had experienced. Catra didn’t know why she suddenly felt ashamed. Why should she care what Taline thought of her after seeing glimpses of her pathetic life?

“Come on,” Taline said, urging her to stand once more. “It’s only a small spell, but it should brace your mind and prevent more flare ups in the short term. We should get to the throne room now, before Glimmer finds something more stupid to do.”

“They’re not going to go for it,” Catra said as Taline headed for the door. She stopped and turned with a confused expression on her face.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the Rebellion. They’re not going to go for surrender, even if you get Glimmer up on a giant projection asking them to.” Taline’s frown deepened and Catra pressed on. 

“It’s just like you said. Everyone on Etheria is crazy. Them especially. I would know, since I’ve been fighting them for a while. The Rebellion has never surrendered. Even when I had them up against impossible odds, they’ve always come out on top, and it’s given them a hugely inflated sense of invulnerability. I think they’d sooner try and teleport up here to attack Horde Prime directly than surrender to you, even if you do parade Glimmer out there as bait.”

“They’re all going to die,” Taline said, fully turned around to face Catra again. “What can I do to get them to stand down?”

“Who’s to say they aren’t going to die anyways if they do surrender?”

“I do,” Taline said, her voice devoid of any humor. “I’ll promise you like I promised Glimmer—no harm will come to them if they lay down their arms.”

Despite how foggy much of her still felt, Catra furrowed her brow and thought. She didn’t trust Taline—that would be stupid, after all. Especially after seeing that she had a few suspicious appearances in Horde Prime’s memories as well. But, surprisingly, Catra found that she didn’t distrust her.

And she was right: if the Rebellion didn’t stand down, they would die. She had seen the Emperor kill countless without blinking, after all. She hated the Rebellion. They took everything from her, including Adora, but that didn’t mean she wanted to see them and everyone on the planet slaughtered. What could they do to get them to stop fighting?

Strangely, she found when she wracked her brain there were…more memories than just the ones she saw flash before her earlier. More memories of an irate Emperor, sitting on his throne, contemplating his empire. They had the technology to shove great fleets into the void and pluck them out on the other side of the galaxy faster than even light could travel. It had frustrated him they couldn’t locate Etheria in Despondos before it emerged on its own.

The scientists had said it would be easier to locate a single person and return them from the void than to do that for something as large as a planet.

Catra gasped, pulling herself out of the memories. She had let guilt get the better of her one day, and Hordak surprised her by answering her question for once: Queen Angella wasn’t technically dead, just…lost beyond where anyone could reach. She was gone for good.

But that was then, and this was now. The Horde Empire—the true Galactic Horde Empire—could obviously do a lot more than Hordak could in his dinky lab she had trashed to bits when they fought.

“You’ve thought of something,” Taline said, still looking her in the eyes. “We have some time. Crazy as your friends are, if they know magic well enough to craft that rune, then they’ll spend several hours testing it before they do anything. Talk to me.”

Catra bit her lip. Was this crazy to suggest? Would it really work? “If, hypothetically, someone got stuck in one of those portals, like they tried cast that teleportation spell and couldn’t come out the other side…would you be able reach in and grab them?”

Taline cocked an eyebrow and pulled the stool around to sit on it again, clearly intrigued by her line of reasoning. “It’s not easy.”

“But not impossible, right?” Catra sighed and decided there was no going back. “They won’t just listen to Glimmer, since they’ll think she’s just being forced into saying whatever. But if you were to start talking about what you could do for someone they lost? Someone they’d do anything to get back? Well, that’d be a different story, wouldn’t it?”

“And if my mom were here, she’d kick your ass too,” Glimmer said, enjoying the thoroughly annoyed expression on Horde Prime’s face as he stared at the intel on the screens around his throne instead of her. “But that’s okay, because She Ra is more than enough to take you, all by herself even.”

Glimmer didn’t know why she was doing this. Intentionally trying to get a rise out of the Emperor was probably the dumbest thing she could have chosen to do. She should have listened to Taline and gone to the communications bridge; she should have just gotten in the elevator like the Sentinels had urged her to, but something about being left to her own devices with an armed guard demolished her better judgement. She was just surprised Narre and Miri hadn’t picked her up and carted her away by force. Instead, they had followed her back to the throne.

Prime finally turned away from the screens and looked at her. “Was all that groveling and cowering you did moments earlier just a ruse? You would have made a good actress, were you born into my empire rather than a queen on a backwater planet.”

The muscles in his jaw tightened with each word he spoke, and Glimmer felt a tinge of adrenaline shoot through on noticing. She was getting to him.

“You’ve never met She Ra, have you?” she asked, ignoring his dig at her entirely. “You don’t know who she is.”

“Should I have?” Prime asked, his voice, clipped. “It doesn’t really make a difference who she is. I’ve conquered more worlds than you can imagine. Each of them had their own champions they put forward, confident they’d put a stop to me. All of them failed.”

Glimmer smirked and pushed her tone to be as smug and condescending as possible. “I’m sure you have, but I bet none of them could hold a candle to She Ra. She’s eight feet tall and all muscle and magic. You wouldn’t like her. Like I said, if it were you and her in a fight, she’d beat you to a pulp.”

Salas, who this entire time had been standing next to Horde Prime amidst his clone guards, sighed and looked off in the distance. He looked paler and clammier than before up in the interrogation room, like at any moment he’d keel over from anemia. He also looked like he’d rather slit his own throat if it meant he didn’t have to stand there listening to her bicker with his emperor.

Glimmer felt strangely proud of that. She had no idea what he had meant back on the observation deck telling her to stay in the chair. It sounded like he was trying to help, but she couldn’t look past the fact he essentially facilitated Catra’s torture, and it felt to Glimmer like she had turned the tables on him somewhat, subjecting him to this argument.

Horde Prime rolled his four eyes. “Little girl, I’ve lived for thousands of years and conquered tens of thousands of planets in my life, like I said. By contrast, your entire lived experience thus far is but a flicker before my eyes. Do you think your words scare me? I’ve known many, many people—proud people who have thought like you and lashed out irrationally in some vain attempt to wrest back a semblance of control despite their circumstances. All of them are dead now, and their worlds are under my rule. Or did you miss that part when I said they failed to stop me?”

Glimmer flinched. Prime had seen through her even when she herself couldn’t figure out what had come over her. Everything clicked into place all of a sudden. She had felt so helpless up here for days, unable to escape, unable to use her powers, unable to even help Catra in her time of need. The need to feel in control of at least something amid that sea of helplessness had overwhelmed her, and now she was ‘lashing out’, as he had put it. And that realization did nothing to tamp down her frustration.

“I may only have been alive for so long,” she said. “But even I know when someone is too proud to admit they’re scared. Too weak to admit it.”

Prime narrowed his eyes to slits. “What was that?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Glimmer asked, drawing on what Catra had shared with her about him in the cell after being probed. “An all-powerful Emperor, absolute ruler of tens of thousands of worlds, torturing a helpless girl strapped to a chair for hours on end? Normally I’d just peg you as a sadist and leave it at that, but then someone comes aboard to take over your invasion, and you just let her?” Glimmer gave a harsh laugh. “I don’t know what it is, but you’re afraid of something. Afraid enough to let Taline come here and order you around.”

Horde Prime tightened his hands around the arms of his throne hard enough the metal crimped. Salas’ eyes darted to the same place, and he took a tentative step forward.

“She is not ordering me around,” Prime said, voice low enough to be a growl.

“No? She comes here saying she doesn’t have time to conquer the planet and neither do you. She tells you to stand down and manipulates you into giving her access to your projectors so she can call a ceasefire. Who’s subordinate to who here?” She scoffed and gave a flip of her hair, hoping it looked as obnoxious as it felt to do. “It’s probably better for you in the long run she wants to negotiate. If my friends refuse then you’d end up meeting She Ra on the battlefield, and then you’d know I was right about her being able to kick your ass.”

Prime jumped to his feet, eyes flaring and tendrils uncoiling from around his head. Glimmer stepped back in spite of herself. For all her swagger, Horde Prime was a truly ferocious sight, and this was the first time she had seen him fully lose his composure. His clone guards looked to each other, startled, and the Sentinels, who until this point had stood quietly behind her, put themselves physically between her and Prime, unhooking the rifles they wore strapped to the front of their breastplates.

“My Lord,” Salas said, taking a confident step toward the Emperor and resting a hand on his shoulder. “It is like you said. She is naïve and brash, and she is lashing out for control. Control that you will be giving her if you respond to her provocations.”

Glimmer looked to the Sentinels as if noticing they were there for the first time. How was it she  was acknowledging the stupidity of her original idea only after it had already worked? Taline had told them to protect her against any threat, and while Glimmer hadn’t really believed that applied to the Emperor himself, the fact it had was nothing short of awe inspiring to her. Glimmer had no idea how the command structure in the Enclave worked, but if Taline’s people followed her orders to the letter like this, then maybe she was mistaken to have doubted her in the first place.

Feeling strangely emboldened, Glimmer laughed again. “What did I say? Now even your own advisor is giving you orders? Be a good evil conqueror and do as he says, won’t you?”

Horde Prime snarled and took a step toward her. The Sentinels snapped their rifles up, aiming them straight at his chest. The clone guards moved to stand in the line of fire, their staves held high and poised to throw.

“Lord Prime!” Salas’ voice cracked in the air like a whip. The tension in the air was so palpable Glimmer didn’t dare move or breath. “We cannot risk an incident. Not with the Enclave, not now. Please, employ some of the restraint that got us through the last crisis. We need it now more than ever.”

Horde Prime tensed further and Glimmer was certain he’d ignore Salas’ words. Then he relaxed and sat back down in his chair.

“I believe you were told to be on the communications bridge,” he said, voice eerily calm once more. “I suggest you find your way there while you still have two functioning legs.”

Glimmer bristled but knew she had lost. Unable to get a rise out of the Emperor, she instead glared at Salas for interfering. Salas merely regarded her with a weary look before shaking his head at her. Glimmer then turned on her heel and marched toward the elevator at the back. She heard the Sentinels fall in behind her, but otherwise paid them no attention. Her mind was elsewhere, trying to recover even a sliver of the dignity and control she had felt earlier before Salas had ripped it away.

She stopped midstride. Something didn’t feel right. She glanced around, trying to figure out why she suddenly heard static and felt goosebumps form on her skin. Judging by their body language when Glimmer checked behind her, the Sentinels had picked up on it as well.

Miri suddenly lunged toward her, while Narre jumped and rolled away. Light exploded right next to her, just as Miri grabbed her and threw her in the air away from the blast. She yelped and sailed through the air before crashing into the floor at Narre’s feet.

Dazed and blinded, she let Narre help her up. Several people were yelling in the distance, sounding as if they were at the other end of a long tunnel. When Glimmer focused enough to look up, Miri was nowhere to be seen. Standing in her place, inside a smoldering circular scorch mark in the floor, were reinforcements.

Adora, Lonnie, Rogelio, Bow, and Scorpia were crouched low in a tight formation inside the circle. Standing at the circle’s edges, were Shadow Weaver and her father, King Micah of Bright Moon.

Footsteps thundered past her as dozens of clone soldiers surged forward to confront them. Even more purple spider bots crawled out from where Glimmer’s friends and family now stood, fanning out to meet them headlong in battle. Purple and black magic flared at her father’s and Shadow Weaver’s respective fingers. Adora gripped the staff she held in both hands, and the rest readied themselves with determination glinting in their eyes.

“Now!” Adora shouted. The throne room descended into madness as Rebellion clashed against Imperial Horde.

Chapter Text

“I thought you said we had at least a few more hours!” Catra said, sprinting down the hallway after Taline.  An explosion in the distance rumbled the ground and she struggled to maintain her footing. Just as she had wrapped up talking about Angella, an alarm had blared alongside a call to arms: the throne room had been invaded.

“I seem to have underestimated just how bullheaded your friends on the surface are,” Taline said, pushing past a group of clone and alien technicians plugging up the hallway and sending them sprawling. “It’s a miracle what they did worked. Any sane person would have put that spell through more testing before sending anyone through it.”

“Yeah well, what did I tell you?” Catra vaulted over the bodies Taline left in her wake, amazed at how light she felt now that the world wasn’t threatening to pull itself out from underneath her. That sedative she had given her and whatever spell she cast on her head worked wonders. “They’re crazy people, all of them, and they don’t ever plan. They just jump headfirst into everything and figure it out as they go. Honestly, it’s worked for them so far.”

“Maybe so, but this is the end of the line for them. They’ve attacked the Emperor in his own throne room.”

Anxiety seized her at hearing those words. They rounded the corner and Catra pumped her legs to run alongside Taline instead of behind her. “Is there any hope for a ceasefire still if we can get them to stand down?”

“I don’t know,” Taline said. “Prime is not the type to forgive this, but a lot has changed in the past eight years.”

“You’ll need all the princesses to make the Heart work,” Catra said. “If they die, you may as well kiss your precious weapon goodbye.” They got to the door that emptied out into the throne room and Catra could hear the sounds of blaster fire and violent magic on the other side.

“You don’t know that,” Taline said, giving her a sidelong glance. “Terrible as it was for you, the Emperor expressed his…frustrations with finding nothing of use in your head. You don’t know anything. You just said what you had to in order to keep yourself and Glimmer alive.” Catra jutted her chin out, about to bite back with some clever retort when Taline shook her head and cut her off. “Still,” she said. “I’d like to prevent more deaths if I can.”

Taline palmed the scanner to the door to open it. The scene that unfolded in front of them was worse than Catra imagined. The throne room was enormous—far larger than Catra had remembered it being when she was first beamed aboard. Many of the metal panels making up the floor had been ripped from their installations, bent upwards to form dozens of makeshift barriers the clone soldiers used as cover against the attackers. Purple fighting spider bots Catra assumed could only have come from Entrapta’s handiwork crawled along the floor and walls and ceiling, blasting and slashing and biting at the clones.

A large purple dome of pure energy blazed in the center of the room, far enough away from the throne that the clones concentrating their fire there could employ full squad tactics in the space between. Shadow Weaver and a bearded man Catra didn’t recognize maintained the shield while immolating clones with well-aimed magic bolts. She could also clearly see Scorpia and Lonnie and Rogelio inside, sheltering against the attacks. Suddenly, they fanned out, darting behind the metal barriers and pressing their backs against them with laser rifles hugged close to their chests.

Bow was there too, sheltering behind a different metal panel, sniping clones that left themselves open with his arrows. He shifted to look out from behind cover, and that’s when Catra saw Adora there next to him. Sweat sheened her skin and plastered her hair flat to her forehead. She gripped a staff in both hands and breathed hard as if she were winded. A golden breastplate covered her chest.

Why isn’t she transforming? Catra thought as she searched Adora for any sign of the sword. Adora wouldn’t come here and not use She Ra. Not unless…

“That one right there,” Catra said, pointing her out to Taline. “That’s Adora. She’s one of the leaders. Usually she can…well, transform. Into this huge glowing warrior princess, but I think she might be holding back to turn the battle when it gets tight. She’s the one we need to convince.”

“There’s also Glimmer’s father,” Taline said, pointing to the bearded man. “The Emperor talked to him a few days ago. He thought he might have gotten through to him until Adora stepped in, but he’s technically the king. We might be able to convince him, too.” She paused and looked Catra in the eye. “Stay close to me.”

Catra cast an uncertain glance at her.

“You’re still recovering,” Taline said. “And you aren’t equipped for a fight in the first place.”

She had a point. Catra still had the same loose clothes she had changed into after her shower back in the cell and, despite feeling much better, she was still unsteady on her feet and generally weak from a lack of eating.

 “I’ll try and force an opening for us,” Taline said. “The Emperor’s clones are the only soldiers allowed in here, and they won’t hesitate against his will. If we want to keep your friends alive, we need to get them to surrender. If they don’t, Prime will crush them without mercy and kill them all, guaranteed. He won’t take prisoners. Not after this.”

Catra nodded and sprinted after Taline as they both entered the fray.

It took several seconds for Glimmer to notice the shimmer in the corner of her eye. Salas had blanketed nearly the entire throne room in small runes after Adora and her dad arrived, and he had used those runes to pull up the metal paneling in the floors to provide cover for Prime’s soldiers. Narre had already dragged her almost all the way back to the throne and behind one of those panels before she regained her sense of direction. Everything had moved so fast; it was that glinting in her peripheral vision that she first noticed as soon as she caught her breath. When she looked, she saw an ornate dagger laying there, gleaming amid the rubble.

It was Miri’s knife. Glimmer had seen it strapped to the armor of her leg when they first met, although she didn’t think anything of it until that moment. It must have been all that was left of her after getting caught in her dad’s teleportation spell. The mere fact she could find nothing else of the Sentinel except her blade that had been flung halfway across the throne room was a testament to just how powerful of a spell they had needed to use to get up here. Glimmer suppressed a shudder at the thought—Miri had saved her life, preventing her friends and her dad from inadvertently killing her in their attempt at a rescue.

A thunderous clap rang out, and Glimmer looked up to see Shadow Weaver cast a spell. A black tendril of energy raced out from her hands past the energy shield her father had put up to guard them. It streaked toward the Emperor like a python moving in for a kill.

Salas stepped in front of the Emperor and gestured with his hands. An intricate rune appeared and twisted in the air in front of him. A shield far larger than her dad’s appeared with the rune, blanketing the throne and a good third of the remaining room, including Glimmer and Narre. Shadow Weaver’s magic slammed into the shield. Salas slid back across the floor a number of inches, straining from the impact, but the shield held and the magic tendril dissipated.

“Form up!” Salas said. Two person-sized portals opened up on either side of him and the hooded mages from earlier on the interrogation deck poured through, flowing like water and arranging themselves like a choir at his back. In one motion, they moved and chanted in a harsh voice. The rune Salas maintained grew larger and more complex. Salas clapped his hands together and the rune dissipated, sending a shockwave across the battlefield.

Glimmer felt herself pull away from the floor, weightless. She made a split-second decision and leapt for the knife, grabbing and hugging it tight to her with one hand as she flailed about, trying to grab hold of anything that’d keep her attached to the ground before she pulled too far away. Strong arms grabbed her around the waist and she turned to see Narre, holding her tight with one arm while the other cradled his unholstered rifle. He oriented himself so his feet pointed back to the ground and slammed his heels together. The floor came rushing back until he stood upon it again like normal. Glimmer was still in danger of floating away without special boots of her own, so he continued to hold tight to her.

“Miri is dead,” he said, voice coming through the face plate heavily synthesized. “But my orders are still to keep you safe.”

“Bring me to my friends,” Glimmer said. “I need to get to them. Please”

Narre shook his head. “My orders are to keep you safe,” he said, repeating himself as if he hadn’t said it the first time. “That isn’t safe. Those are dead men and women walking.”

“No!” Glimmer kicked and struggled to get out of his grasp. His hold on her never weakened, but neither did it tighten. He was like an immovable force of nature, refusing to listen or let her loose, but refusing to hurt her in his attempt to keep her, either. Glimmer screamed, hating the feeling of hopelessness that grew steadily stronger inside her.

She fought to look for her friends, for her dad, and found some of them still firmly planted on the ground behind the shield. All of the clone soldiers must have had special boots like Narre’s, since none of them floated in the air with Salas’ spell either, but several of Entrapta’s purple bots had come loose from their stations and floated aimlessly in the air, kicking about and tumbling. When she looked up, Glimmer saw Scorpia, Lonnie, and Rogelio floating out in the open as well. They must have left the safety of her dad’s shield at some point, and had been caught up in Salas’ magic.

A half dozen Horde clones aimed for them and fired. The three of them jolted when hit and stilled in the air, heavy burn marks visible in their armor. Glimmer screamed and redoubled her efforts to escape Narre’s grip.

A second shockwave emanated from her dad’s shield and washed over them. Glimmer felt gravity impose itself upon them once more and her feet slammed to the ground; either her father or Shadow Weaver had negated the spell. She saw Scorpia, Lonnie, and Rogelio drop from the sky like bricks and rushed toward them as soon as Narre released her, only for him catch her by the arm and stop her once again.

“Let me go!” Glimmer said.

“You cannot save them.” Narre yanked her closer. “You will die if you go to them.”

“I don’t care, let me go!” Glimmer yanked again and still couldn’t get free. “They’re not dead yet. I have to help!”

“There’s nothing you can do. Live on and honor their memory.”

The emotion that tinged his voice was apparent even against the modulation from the armor, and it forced Glimmer to pause. Those were words from the heart—she could almost imagine the sadness in his eyes despite the helmet covering his face. Aside from Miri, it made her stop and wonder what else he had gone through serving under Taline.  Narre’s grip loosened and she jerked away from him, refusing to meet his gaze again.

Another explosion sounded off nearby. Salas and his team had deflected another bolt of Shadow Weaver’s dark magic, and were responding with a wall of fresh runes that spit fire and lighting back. Horde Prime stood just behind. Simmering rage played across his features as he called for reinforcements.

A spark of inspiration struck Glimmer at seeing that. Honor her friends’ memories, Narre had said? She didn’t have to wait until they died to start doing that. In fact, if she acted now, she might just prevent that whole ‘dying’ bit from happening altogether.

Glimmer gripped the knife still in her hand and vowed instead to honor Miri, someone already gone, having given her life to protect Glimmer’s. She evaded Narre when he reached for her once again, and took off at a dead sprint toward Horde Prime.

“Adora, come on! Stop fighting us and listen for a second, will you?” Catra danced around their zone of engagement, trying to keep as close as possible to Taline as she dodged Adora’s staff and Bow’s arrows.

Taline had protected the both of them when Salas’ antigravity spell hit, and Catra had watched Adora and Bow cling both to each other and the paneling they had taken cover behind to keep from floating away themselves. When Shadow Weaver and Micah—as Catra had come to learn his name was—dispelled it, they had both caught her and Taline’s approach when crashing back to the floor. It hadn’t taken more than a few seconds after that for them to engage.

“You saw Scorpia and Rogelio and Lonnie go down just a second ago,” Catra said to Adora, leaving Taline’s side to catch Bow in the middle of drawing an arrow back. He released just as she knocked his aim off, sending the arrow flying high over Taline’s head instead of at her chest. “Do you really think you’re going to win this? Your only hope out is to surrender.”

Adora grimaced, and Catra could tell she was getting through to her, even if she didn’t respond. Something about the way her attacks grew sloppier with their aggression and the way her eyes took on a wild look as she fought clued her in.

Bow dashed to the side and slid forward on his knees, another arrow already nocked and aimed. He let loose, and the arrow whistled straight at the back of Taline’s head. Catra already knew she wouldn’t get to it quick enough to intercept it.

Taline dodged the arrow, leaving Adora in front of her wide open to take the blow. Catra and Bow gasped and Adora’s eyes went wide seeing the arrowhead screaming straight for her face. Taline snatched it out of the air centimeters from impact.

“Arrow Boy, you stupid son of a—"

“I’m sorry! Adora! Oh my god.”

Catra turned and gave Bow her full attention, firing off punches and swipes with her claws, trying to sweep his leg, throwing blow after blow in rapid succession, anything to put him on the defensive and keep him from readying another arrow.

“You guys must be really desperate if you're going for headshots like this,” Catra said amidst another flurry of attacks. “Where’s She Ra? Why isn’t Adora transforming?”

Bow grunted, trying to put enough space between the two of them to get another arrow nocked. Catra was faster. She pushed closer and threw another series of punches, the last of which Bow wasn’t fast enough to fully step out from.

“She can’t transform, can she?” Catra asked as the blow grazed his shoulder. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? That’s why you all are fighting so sloppy. You don’t have She Ra anymore. You’re all desperate.”

Bow didn’t respond, but the grim expression on his face told Catra all she needed to know. He took a step backward to dodge another swipe and lost his balance when his feet tangled. Catra pressed the advantage and threw a haymaker. It connected with the side of his head and Catra swore she felt his consciousness leave his body. Bow crumpled boneless to the floor, and she turned around to look for Adora and Taline.

Catra was already worried about everyone surviving the fight, but if Adora couldn’t even use She Ra any longer, then the Rebellion was at an even bigger disadvantage than she originally thought. She found Taline and Adora trading blows not far from where she left them, and rushed to rejoin.

“This is insane, Adora,” she said, coming up on Taline’s left and giving the both of them a wide berth to continue dancing. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? Taline’s been trying to call a ceasefire ever since she got here. She’s taken over from Horde Prime and she isn’t here to conquer Etheria, so just surrender already so no one else has to get hurt!”

A flaming Entrapta bot flew over her head, chased by a flurry of blaster fire. Catra cursed and threw herself behind one of the metal barriers, then peeked out the edge to continue watching them.

Taline fought Adora as if she were waiting for her to transform at any moment. She kept her distance, goading Adora with false openings that she’d then take, only to inadvertently leave herself wide open to a counterattack. Except Taline wouldn’t press it. Instead, she’d retreat, leading Adora around in a wide circle that edged them closer to Micah and Shadow Weaver.

Adora glanced behind her and seemed to realize what Taline was trying to do. She roared and charged at her, fighting with a reckless abandon that Catra hadn’t ever seen her stoop to since they were barely-trained cadets.

Taline dodged and blocked each attack. Adora thrust her staff forward in a particularly sloppy jab, and Taline caught it between her arm and her side. She then torqued her lower body and shoved an open palm against its side. The staff broke in two at the impact point, and Taline quickly looked over her shoulder at Catra still ducking behind cover.

“I leave her to you!” she said. “I’m going to see what I can do with the king.”

Adora stepped in and threw a punch. Without looking, Taline gave a quick gesture of her hand and a rune appeared in her palm, as did small circlets of magic at Adora’s wrists and ankles. Taline gave another gesture and Adora flew up and over, landing in a heap right next to Catra, then she turned and ran off toward the Rebellion’s magic shield in the distance.

Magic crackled and roared in the distance, as did the sound of blaster fire, the scurrying of bots, and the shouting of clone soldiers as they coordinated, trying to flank the bots. Adora groaned nearby, dazed from impacting the ground, and Catra didn’t waste the opportunity to climb on top and restrain her before she came to her senses.

“What the hell, Catra?” Adora said, struggling to break free. Catra tightened her hands around her wrists and squeezed her thighs tighter around her abdomen, flexing the armor there. Adora bit back a cry of pain when she did, but Catra refused to let up.

“Come off it, Adora,” she said. “I know about She Ra. I know you can’t use her.”

Adora shot her a glare. ”So what? You think I’m just going to give up and let Glimmer die up here without trying to rescue her?” Tears welled up in her eyes, and venom seeped into her voice. “I was coming for you too, despite everything that happened. But it looks like you’ve chosen a different side. Again. How can you help them, Catra?”

“That’s not it,” Catra said with a growl. “I’m on your side this time, I really am. Horde Prime is going to kill all of you. I can’t stand by and just let that happen.”

“It sure seems to me that’s exactly what you’re trying to help him do.”

“I told you earlier!” Catra said, jostling Adora in her frustration. “Taline isn’t here to conquer the planet, she’s here to help. There’s some sort of…enemy the Empire is fighting against and Prime needs her help fighting it. Etheria, the Heart…they need it. Taline’s here trying to keep more people from dying so they can research it.”

“Is that what she told you?” Adora asked, both eyebrows shooting up in genuine disbelief. “Tell me you didn’t fall for that.”

Catra furrowed her brow, not expecting that reaction. “What do you mean?” She expected Adora to listen to her, or at least listen to reason. They were so far outmatched, but the way Adora responded to her just now sounded almost like she thought it was—

“That sounds like a straight up lie!” Adora said, tone so biting it made Catra flinch. “You’re smarter than this, Catra. ‘Some sort of enemy’ they’re fighting? That’s what got you to believe she was trying to help?”

Catra faltered. “I don’t…no. No, that’s not what—“

“Horde Prime conquered the entire planet except Bright Moon in three days. He would have finished us off too if it weren’t for Micah and Shadow Weaver and all the princesses and the entire Royal Guard coming together. We just barely turned their advance into a prolonged siege. And that was from one warship he sent down to us—he’s got thousands up here! Horde Prime doesn’t need help with some made up enemy, that woman is just using you to try and get us to surrender.”

A fresh onslaught of emotions attacked her. Lied to? Used? Again? How could she let this happen? How could she not see it coming? Why did everyone do this to her? Shadow Weaver had done it so many times, shown just a bit of compassion or tossed a morsel of approval here to get her to bend, and then…

Catra released Adora and slid off her, eyes staring through everything. Adora sat up and rubbed at her wrists, sending a pitying look in Catra’s direction. Catra turned away, embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” Adora said. “I shouldn’t have made it sound like you were stupid for believing it. I have no idea what you and Glimmer went through up here, and that may have…” she glanced over at her and Catra could feel her staring at the wounds at her temples where Horde Prime had probed.

“Lonnie, Rogelio, and Scorpia aren’t dead, but they’re down and out,” Adora said. “But Entrapta’s bots are still tying up Prime’s forces. Shadow Weaver and Micah are slowly whittling down their mage. He’s a lot more powerful than we expected, but they’re getting through him. And once they are, we’re taking the Emperor out and ending this.” Adora stood and extended a hand down to her. “Come on. I can’t let whoever ‘Taline’ is go and distract them. Help me. Please?”

Catra looked up and saw the guarded, hopeful look Adora was giving her. She bit back the urge to put herself down for being so naïve, and took Adora’s hand, reveling in the look of relief and happiness that passed across her face when she did.

Except something didn’t feel right.

Catra followed, this time hot on Adora’s heel instead of Taline’s, and tried to keep her head low to avoid stray blaster fire as they went. It was as she looked around that it gradually dawned on Catra just how disadvantaged the Rebellion was without She Ra. Lonnie, Rogelio, and Scorpia were tied together and unconscious off in a corner. Entrapta’s purple bots numbered only a handful now, and the clones were on the verge of wiping them out entirely. Once that happened, they’d have an unimpeded path to Shadow Weaver and Micah, and the battle would end the moment their protective shield went down.

The screaming and crunching and thundering of battlefield magic grew louder the closer Adora and Catra drew to Micah’s shield. Shivers ran down Catra’s spine with the rumbling that pulsed through the floor and up her body. She could feel Shadow Weaver’s magic there, and even though it mixed with Micah’s less toxic emanations, it took everything in her body to not shy away.

They came away from cover and in full sight of the battle. Shadow Weaver faced away from them, throwing black fireball after black fireball toward Salas and his chorus of mages. Micah held one hand high in the air where a rune twisted, maintaining the protective shield that insulated him and Shadow Weaver from Salas’ counter attacks. He held his other hand outstretched in front of him, a continuous beam of energy shooting forth from the rune in that palm and out at his opponent.

Taline stood six feet away, back toward them, feet planted wide, clothes and hair flapping ruthlessly in the blowback from Micah’s attack. She held both hands thrust in front of her where a massive rune of her own design twisted and gyrated, splitting Micah’s beam and sending it careening off in six different directions away from her. The sheer power emanating from the both of them physically buffeted Catra like a gust of wind, and her jaw hinged open in awe.

Adora crouched low and pull a knife from her boot, straining with every step forward, fighting for every inch of progress she made against the buffeting winds toward Taline. It was clear she intended to ambush her while distracted. Catra followed close behind, that gnawing feeling of something not being right growing stronger with every step.

“Micah, their sorcerer is running on empty, I can feel it,” Shadow Weaver said all of a sudden. Another thick black tendril of energy shot toward the throne from her extended palms. “How are you holding up back there?”

“Just fine!” Micah said, grimacing and clearly exerting himself trying to keep the shield up and take down Taline at the same time. “She’s got a strong defense, but I can handle it. I leave the Emperor to you!”

Catra stopped. Micah’s words made her remember what Taline had said only moments earlier.

I leave Adora to you.

Clarity dawned on her. She suddenly understood what that ‘wrong’ feeling was: if Taline was faring this well against Micah, then she must have had the upper hand the entire fight with Adora. Every feint she used to goad her into using She Ra had left Adora vulnerable to counterattack, and Taline hadn’t exploited a single opening. Taline could have ended Adora in an instant, but instead, had tossed her over to Catra so she could try and convince her to stand down instead.

Catra still wouldn’t go as far as to say she trusted Taline, but it was obvious she was doing everything she could to not kill them, and that was all Catra needed. She wasn’t about to gamble Adora’s life on the Rebellion’s half-brained plan, especially when it was going as poorly as it was.

If we want to keep them alive, we need to get them to surrender. It’s their only chance.

Adora stood and charged, knife poised in the air to strike. An image of Horde Prime conquering planets and slaughtering millions came at Catra. It was the same image she had glimpsed back in the infirmary. This time, all the faces of the victims had turned into Glimmer and Scorpia. Some were of Lonnie and Rogelio, too. One of them had Adora’s face, and that was when she made her decision.

“Stop!” Catra said, yelling as hard as she could. “Adora, stop!”

Adora didn’t hesitate, but Taline glanced behind her at Catra’s outburst and caught Adora in another magical hold before she could strike. Adora gasped and dropped the knife when Taline made a squeezing motion with her hand. The blade clattered to the ground and, for a terrible moment, Catra feared she had made the wrong choice…feared that Taline would squeeze the life out of her right then and there.

Instead, Taline made another gesture and Adora fell unconscious and limp in the air before dropping to the ground in a heap. Catra came up on Taline’s left, pushing against the shockwaves of magic that still buffeted her from Taline and Micah’s duel.

Micah bristled and reached out an arm in Adora’s direction. A tendril of purple energy sprang forth and grabbed her, pulling her to safety behind the shield before Taline could do anything further. The shield flickered a moment as Micah concentrated on getting Adora to safety, and Catra shot Taline a look, watching to see how she’d react to this sudden weakness. Taline instead turned to her.

“We’re out of options,” she said, shouting to be heard over the crackling of magic. She shunted power into her rune, and another shield large enough to cover the both of them sprung up to intercept a sudden attack from Micah that would have hit Catra were it not for Taline’s quick thinking. “Unless you can think of something else and quick, everything is about to come to an abrupt end. And not in your friends’ favor, I’m afraid.”

Catra’s thoughts went to the plan she had been brewing in the back of her mind the moment she surveyed the battle. “Do you know where Glimmer is?” she asked, feeling sick for what she was about to do. “Can you get me to her?”

Another explosion rocked the floor and Shadow Weaver cackled. “The mage is almost down!” she said. “I can feel him draining! Keep protecting us, Micah. We’re almost there!”

Taline grabbed Catra by the shoulders. “I can take you,” she said. “But you have to be quick. If this isn’t solved within the next few minutes then I’m putting an end to it, personally.”

She pulled her close and wrapped her in a tight hug. Catra felt as if something had hooked under her breastbone to pull, and everything faded to black.

Chapter Text

Glimmer screamed as she ran at Horde Prime, blade gripped tight in her hands. A thrill shot through her chest as she did—a mix of adrenaline and fear. The Emperor hadn’t noticed her yet. He seemed preoccupied, observing the battle and commanding his forces from safety behind Salas’ shield.

She leapt into the air, poised to strike, when Horde Prime turned and plucked her out of the air by the throat like an afterthought.

“You thought you could sneak up on me?” he asked, voice wild with rage. “I have three eyes on the right side of my head, girl. Three!”

He squeezed and Glimmer pounded against his forearm with her free hand for him to let go, coughing and hacking and choking for breath. Lessons Shadow Weaver had drilled into her over their short time together kicked into gear all on their own, and Glimmer pushed for calm in her mind amidst her panic. She had only seconds at most before Prime cut off enough blood to her head that she’d fall unconscious, and she spent those precious seconds trying to ground herself and feel the knife still held high in her other hand. She aimed the point toward the space where Prime’s shoulder met his neck, and plunged down.

Prime caught her by the forearm with his other hand, and all attempts at concentrating fled her. She was going to die.

Her senses dulled like she was slipping into a peaceful sleep, but it was the pain jolting up her limb that kept her awake. Prime was squeezing the forearm he caught, hard, the glint in his eyes turning wilder still. Glimmer heard a snap. She cried out, her voice barely a raspy whisper straining against his hold on her throat. She dropped the knife the when her broken arm could no longer make her hand grasp it. It clattered to the ground, a distant noise against the fog in her brain.

Glimmer forced her eyes to focus despite her tunnel vision growing tighter. Her arm bent in the center at an unnatural angle in Prime’s grip, and looking at it sent a fresh jolt of pain shooting through it to her shoulder. She clawed at the arm holding her throat with her other hand, desperate to breathe, and when she finally looked Prime in the eye, it was as if she finally acknowledged who Prime was: a warlord who conquered a galaxy, slaughtering all in his path.

She realized then, finally, that she should never have attacked him. She should have just gone with Taline immediately to push for a surrender, and now everyone would die because she hadn’t. Prime squeezed her throat harder still, and Glimmer wondered whether or not her neck would snap before she’d fall unconscious. Her grip on his hand weakened, her legs stopped kicking. It began to feel as if she were staring up at his cold eyes from the bottom of a very deep well.

And then she fell to the floor, coughing and hacking once more, clutching at her throat as she gasped deep raspy breaths. All her senses felt blown out, like they were compensating for having been muted earlier. When she glanced up, Prime was using his arms to shield himself from blaster fire. For a terrifying moment, Glimmer thought him invincible, since none of the blasts left any wounds or marks. But as he continued to take steps back to get away, she saw small markings appear about him like fireflies, intercepting the blaster bolts before they hit—he was wearing a personal shield, on top of what Salas was providing.

Narre came into view, taking confident steps forward as he assaulted the Emperor with bursts of fire from his rifle. The clone soldiers nearby turned to engage him and he pivoted, firing again and putting two, three, four, then five of them down on the ground with smoking holes in their chests. He whirled around to train his sights back on the Emperor, but he had taken advantage of Narre’s momentary distraction to close the distance between them. He knocked the rifle away with such force that it flew out of his grip and skittered along the ground.

Narre spun with the momentum and aimed a backhand at the Emperor’s head. Horde Prime blocked, and Narre stepped forward and head-butted him. The Sentinel’s helmet thudded against the Emperor’s skull, but he didn’t flinch and it was Narre instead who recoiled in pain. Prime surged forward and grabbed him by the shoulders, crimping his armor and lifting his feet off the ground as if he weighed almost nothing.

Narre gripped Horde Prime by the wrists and strained to force his hands apart. When that didn’t seem to work, he head-butted him again, sending cracks rippling through his helmet and faceplate.

“You dare?” Prime seemed unfazed in his wrath. His tendrils uncoiled and hovered at the sides of Narre’s helmet. “You dare join these…these lowlifes fighting in my own throne room? I will enjoy making an example out of all of you.” The tendrils pierced through the armor, and Narre went rigid in Prime’s grasp.

Glimmer screamed again. Miri’s knife she had dropped earlier laid nearby and glinted at her again. It was as if it were calling out to her. She crawled toward it, careful to guard her broken arm against further injury, when a massive spike of black energy impaled Salas’ shield around them. Hairline fractures snaked along the surface from the blow, and Glimmer watched several of Salas’ mages fly backward with the blowback from the blast. Their bodies disintegrated inside their cloaks, fabric floating gently back to the ground. Salas himself stayed alive, but fell to his knees amid the strain of holding back Shadow Weaver’s attacks.

Glimmer shook herself back to her senses and grabbed the knife. Narre continued to convulse nearby in Prime’s grip. They were right there in front of her, and Prime looked even more distracted than before. She could get up close and thrust the knife into his leg, slash at his heels, drive it deep into the space between his legs, something. The clones weren’t dragging her away like they did when Prime tortured Catra, and she wasn’t powerless in this situation any longer. She could help. She had to help.

“I can feel your thoughts,” Prime said, a rictus grin spreading across his face as he spoke to Narre. “Miri is dead and the only thing you can think of is joining her and the rest of your squad. Let me do you a favor and send you to them!” He leaned in close and whispered at the side of the Sentinel’s head. “And especially give my warm regards to Evelyn and Corynth.”

Prime cackled and Narre released his grip on the Emperor. He threw his right arm out to the side and a serrated blade extended from his bracer. Narre slashed up and caught Prime’s tendrils still latched to his head, severing them. Green liquid sprayed as the tendrils flailed about and Prime reeled, screaming. He made a fist in his agony and rammed it through Narre’s stomach. That fist burst out the other side of the Sentinel, covered in blood, and Glimmer and Prime both screamed again, one in horror and the other in feral rage.

Narre stilled, and Prime turned to fix all four eyes on Glimmer, pulling his bloody hand from the man’s body and dropping him to the floor with a thump. He advanced on her and she froze, her mind too caught up in fear to react.

Yet another explosion rocked the ground, and the cracks in Salas’ shield deepened, before it shattered completely and disappeared in a burst of mist. Salas and a handful of his remaining mages flew backward and landed in an unconscious heap near the throne. Horde Prime stopped and glanced over at them in surprise, then up at the Rebellion across the room. Another beam of Shadow Weaver’s magic streaked forth, flying over the small army of clones still sparring with Entrapta’s bots. It beelined straight for him, now near defenseless without his mage advisor’s magic shield.

A portal flashed into existence in front of him and disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. Taline stood in its place, steam dissipating off her body. She opened her arms to reveal Catra, who she had carried through the portal with her. She pushed Catra out of harm's way with one hand, then thrust the other one forward in front of her.

Bright spider webs of energy erupted across Taline’s body like lines on a circuit board. Shadow Weaver’s beam of dark energy struck her bare palm instead of the Emperor and, unlike Salas, she stood firm with her feet planted in the ground, moving not even an inch backward as her uniform flailed behind her in the blowback. Taline then took a step forward into the magic and physically pushed against it. The beam reflected off her back toward the Rebellion, and it slammed into Micah’s shield hard enough the floor rumbled again, forcing everyone on the battlefield aside from Taline to brace themselves once more to retain their footing.

Shadow Weaver’s spell dissipated, and Taline took another step forward. She curled her outstretched hand into a fist and held it tight to her chest. Twelve orbs of blue energy crackled into in an upright circle before her, and bolts of lightning shot out from each of them, arcing and buffeting the Rebellion’s shield in a continuous attack. Somewhere in the back of Glimmer’s mind she realized Taline had done all this without relying on any of the magic runes she had seen Salas and even her father employ thus far.

“Go!” Taline said without looking away. “You have until I break their shield to figure something out.”

Glimmer wasn’t certain to whom she was speaking, but Catra—who had stood nearby and stared at Taline’s display of power in awe much like Glimmer had—startled and hurried over to her.

“Come on Sparkles, on your feet,” she said as she wrapped her arm around Glimmer and helped her stand.

Glimmer didn’t fight her. Together the two of them stumbled away from the Emperor and, to Glimmer’s relief, toward the Rebellion—toward her friends. Toward her father. Catra looked at her with concern as they limped together, obviously trying to assess her. Her eyes darted from Glimmer’s broken arm to her other hand, the one that still held Miri’s knife in a white-knuckled grip.

“I couldn’t do anything,” Glimmer said, trying to keep the images of blood and death from overwhelming her. “I was right there, and Prime was distracted. If I had just moved…if I had just done something, maybe he wouldn’t have…”

Her throat constricted with emotion and she couldn’t finish her sentence. Catra’s eyes narrowed at her, as if she had made a decision or came to a realization about something. She pulled Glimmer quickly off to the side and behind one of the metal barriers.

“We don’t have much time to save everyone,” Catra said, speaking rapidly and cutting Glimmer off before she could ask what she was doing. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I need your help getting everyone to surrender.”

“It’s too late for that.” Glimmer said. “They’ve attacked him in his throne room. He said he was going to make an example of everyone, Catra. They’re all going to die because I couldn’t—“

“Would you just shut up for two seconds and let me finish?” Catra said, shaking her. “You heard Taline. We don’t have much time and if we’re going to do something, it has to be now before your dad’s spell breaks. Did you see how she just threw Shadow Weaver’s attack back at them? He’s not going to last long.”

Glimmer hyperventilated. Everyone was going to die. Everyone was going to die and it was all her fault. If she had just moved, if she had just attacked Prime while he was distracted, then they could have ended all this.

“Glimmer, listen to me.” Catra clapped her gently on the side of her head, squishing her cheeks together between her palms and forcing her to focus. “She can bring your mom back!”

That brought everything in Glimmer’s head to a screeching halt. “What did you just say?” she asked, focused at last. Catra had never called her by her real name before, and seeing the look of determination in her eyes reminded her that Catra had once been a proud and determined Horde Commander.

 “We can get Angella back,” Catra said. “She’s not dead. Taline can bring her back, but none of that is going to matter if she kills everybody before they surrender. We can’t hash this all out right now, but I already have a plan and I need your help.”

“I…I don’t—”

“Catra squeezed her harder and shook her head. “Look, I know this is probably too much to ask given our history, but we literally don’t have any more time. I need you to trust me. Please?”

Glimmer narrowed her eyes at her. Trust Catra? It was true that their relationship had…evolved since getting captured, but to go so far as to blindly trust her and Taline? But what choice did she have? It was either put her trust in Catra, or everyone was going to die. And if they could bring her mom back too…?

Glimmer pushed all reasoning out her head and focused on Catra’s eyes. “What do you need me to do?” she asked, praying she wasn’t going to regret her choice.

Catra smiled, relief plain on her face. “Hand me that knife, and follow my lead.”

Adora groaned and pushed up into a kneeling position, making sure to pick up the dagger laying nearby as she went. When had she dropped it? Her head pounded and everything looked blurry, but soon enough she got back on her feet. When had she fallen unconscious? What happened?

“Adora, you’re okay,” Micah said, breathing a sigh of relief through the strain in his voice as he shunted more magic power into the shield covering them. Shadow Weaver didn’t speak, likely preoccupied trying to bust through the other Horde mage’s shield.

“Alive, but far from okay I think,” Adora said, dusting off her legs and shoulders and breastplate.

“I’ll take it,” Micah said. “That sorceress with Catra, she disappeared and took over for the other mage as soon as Shadow Weaver brought him down.”

Adora looked and really studied Shadow Weaver now—watched her straining to push her magic against Taline in the distance while Micah defended against the forks of lightning she sent back.

“If she’s now over there,” Adora said, scanning the room and trying to piece together what had happened, “then did you see where Catra went? She was just behind me, so she couldn’t have gotten far.” Adora remembered Catra calling out to her, likely trying to warn her before Taline turned on her and…did whatever she did to her.

Micah frowned, sweat running down his face in beads. “I think Catra tipped her off that you were coming.”

Adora shook her head, fighting the chill that crept into her mind when she heard that. “N-no, no that can’t be it. I got through to her…she was going to help me. I could have sworn she was trying to warn me about something.”

“She called out to you and that woman turned around and caught you before you could attack. I only just barely pulled you to safety when you fell unconscious, then she grabbed Catra and they both teleported away.” Micah gave her a sympathetic look despite the tension in his face. “I’m sorry, Adora. I don’t think she was trying to help.”

 “She’s too strong,” Shadow Weaver said, straining. “She redirected my attack at us and is now tearing the shield apart. There’s nothing I can do to get through—her defense is maddening.”

Adora looked around at the battlefield again, both to assess the situation and to see if maybe she could spot Catra among the chaos. The scattered parts of Entrapta’s purple bots littered the field, and the clone forces still between them and the throne stood idle, all of them content to watch, none of them taking cover. It was as if they thought they had already won the fight.

It wasn’t until she thought about it that Adora realized they were conserving ammunition, likely until Micah’s shield went down. Their predicament all of a sudden felt much more dire. They couldn’t actually be losing, could they?

Micah’s shield started to crack, and she moved to support him from behind when he started to slide backward.

“I can handle it!” he said between grit teeth. Then he repeated himself, a little softer and with more confidence. “I can handle it. This plan we came up with is dead in the water. We’ll have to go with the backup. Shadow Weaver and I will continue to distract the sorceress while you take your shot. Do you still have that sidearm?”

“I’ve still got it,” Adora said, pulling a small blaster out from where she had stashed it inside her breastplate and checking to make sure it was still charged.

“I know you really didn’t want to have to use it,” Micah said, “but we’re really out of options here. Taking Horde Prime alive was always a best-case scenario. I just hope your aim is sharp—you’ll likely only get one shot.”

“Adora hefted the blaster in her hand to test the weight after moving her knife into her off hand. “One between the eyes, right? I think I can manage that.”

Micah nodded, then extended an arm in Taline’s direction. “You ready, Shadow Weaver?” At her acknowledgement, he formed another rune in his palm while still maintaining the shield. Taline’s lightning cracked and arced around it, sending deeper cracks into its surface. Adora was frankly impressed at how powerful he was, able to maintain such a strong defense while coordinating an attack with a second person.

A beam of purple energy shot forth from Micah’s hand, catching and disintegrating several dozen clones before they scrambled back behind cover. That beam intertwined with a fresh beam of dark magic from Shadow Weaver, and the combined attack slammed against a defensive rune Taline threw up at the last minute, before dissipating.

“That did something,” Shadow Weaver said. “We’ll do it again, but stronger. Blast her with everything we have, and you take the shot at Horde Prime immediately after, Adora. If we monopolize her defense, even for a moment, that will give you the opening you need. Just make sure you’re ready to—“

“Wait!” Adora said, heart leaping into her throat at what she glimpsed in the distance.

Micah, face creased and red from exertion, glanced about. “What? What is it?”

Shadow Weaver must have picked up on what Adora had noticed, because she touched his knee, pointed a shaking finger down range, and said, “look over there.”

Glimmer and Catra were supporting each other, limping toward them as quickly as they could between cover at the perimeter of the room. Glimmer held one, oddly bent arm close to her body, while Catra looked unsteady on her feet and ready to throw up.

Micah called out to them, and Shadow Weaver sent and a small amount of her black energy to him through her touch. The tension in his face lessened, and several of the cracks in their shield around them sealed up. She was helping support him with her own magic. Glimmer limped toward them faster at hearing Micah’s voice, and Catra did her best to keep up.

Adora’s heart swelled at seeing them, especially Catra. She just knew Catra wasn’t against them. Whatever happened up here on the citadel had shaken her enough that Adora was able to get through to her for once. Who knew it’d only take the threat of impending doom from an extraterrestrial conqueror to get them on the same side again? Whatever. She’d take it. Just as long as she could have her friend back—both her friends back.

“Okay, new plan,” Adora said. “Those two get in here safely, and then we do this. We’ll have to grab Bow and the others in the fallout, and it’ll be easier if Glimmer and Catra are inside the shield while we do. Don’t want to corral more people than absolutely necessary when all this goes down.”

Micah nodded. “Good idea. That one’s powerful” he said, referring to Taline still raining magic electricity down upon them, “but I think we can hold her a little longer. Right, Shadow Weaver?”

“Do I really have a say in the matter?” she asked.

Adora almost laughed at the irony in Shadow Weaver’s voice when she saw Catra, not even a half dozen steps away, push Glimmer in front of a wall of upturned metal and press a knife against her throat.

“Surrender Adora!” she said. “Surrender or Sparkles here dies!”

“What?” Adora’s jaw hinged open in disbelief. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“I swear to god Adora, surrender now!” Catra pressed the knife harder against Glimmer’s throat, and a thin line of blood started to trickle down and stain her shirt. Glimmer pulled back to edge away from the blade and whimpered.

“I don’t—“ Adora’s mind raced. What the hell was Catra doing? Was she really…she couldn’t really be…

The shield flickered. Adora glanced to her left and saw Micah, eyes wide in shock, reaching toward Glimmer like he had back at Bright Moon: as if he were trying to physically grab her and pull her out of harm’s way.

The shield flickered again.

No.

“Micah,” Shadow Weaver said, a warning clear in her voice.

No. This couldn’t be happening.

“Surrender now Adora! Do it!”

This wasn’t happening. They were about to lose everything because of her.

She heard Catra sob. “God damn it Adora, please!”

“Micah!” Shadow Weaver squeezed the King’s knee. “Micah, you have to concentrate. If you don’t—“

The shield broke. A deluge of clones poured out from behind cover and pointed their rifles at their now defenseless group.

“They surrender!” Catra said, dropping her knife and grabbing her hair by the fistful. “Oh my fucking god, they surrender.”

A high-pitched whine, the sound of hundreds of beam rifles powering up to fire, careened around the room, and Adora saw her life flash before her eyes.

Taline blinked into existence inches in front of her, eyes glowing neon blue. She thrust one hand behind her and caught Micah and Shadow Weaver in some sort of stasis spell. Adora took a step back and raised her blaster, only for it to immediately get ripped out of her hands and tossed aside. She tried to raise the knife next, and Taline stepped closer into her space, snatching Adora’s wrist like a viper.

“Drop the knife,” she said, voice low.

“I—“

“Don’t make your friends watch me kill you.” For some reason, her voice sounded desperate rather than dangerous. “You’ve lost, Adora. Drop the knife and surrender. Please.”

Adora swallowed and glanced over at the terrified look on Glimmer’s face and was surprised to see it mirrored on Catra’s expression as well. Why did she look concerned now of all times? After what she did?

Adora dropped the knife, defeated, and heard it clatter to the ground.

“Lower your weapons!” Taline said, shouting over her shoulder. ‘They’ve surrendered.”

The clones complied, then a group splintered off and surged forward to grab them. They weren’t gentle with any of them, least of all Adora. They kicked her to her knees and forced her hands behind her back to shackle her wrists together.

“Don’t cuff her!” she heard Catra yell in the distance. “Don’t! Her arm, it’s—“

Glimmer screamed and Adora seethed, fighting against the clones restraining her. One punched her in the face and she saw stars.

Taline gave them all a pitying look as the clones rounded up the rest of them. Soon, Bow, Lonnie, Rogelio, and Scorpia, all unconscious but thankfully alive despite their injuries, lay with them. Glimmer, shaking and pale with her busted arm bent at an even worse angle than before to fit into the cuffs, sat with her back to Catra, who had turned a sickening shade of pale green.

When the clones finished rounding them all up, they parted and Horde Prime stepped through. Two thick, truncated tentacles hung limp from his head, staining his shoulders green. He looked them over with eyes of steel.

“Execute them all,” he said.

The clones again aimed their blasters at them, and Taline physically stepped between them as a shield.

“My Lord, they are contained,” she said. “There is no reason to kill them.”

Horde Prime cocked an eyebrow and took a step toward her, every twitch of his body broadcasting danger. “No reason to kill them? They attacked me in my throne room.”

“They have surrendered, sir. We need them to research the Heart.”

“They have attacked me, Taline. In my throne room.”

“Lord Prime, please. I beg you once more to listen to reas—“

Horde Prime backhanded her across the face hard enough a deafening crack resounded off the walls. Taline stumbled several steps to the side, and Adora saw blood streak the floor.

“You do not speak to me of reason after what these rebels have done.” Prime said, voice shrill with hysteria. “To say nothing of your Sentinel who mutilated me.” He spat at the ground, “Traitorous blood runs in your veins, Taline. No, you do not speak to me of anything.” He turned and roared at the clones. “Kill them all! Kill them now!”

Another whine of hundreds of rifles powering up. Adora squeezed her eyes shut, but not before seeing Taline, four bloody gashes marring the side of her face, reach into her jacket and yank out a red crystal. She squeezed until it shattered in her hand.

Everything went white.

Chapter Text

Adora woke standing atop a hill. A breeze caressed her cheek, ran through her hair, and made the leaves and branches in the far away trees rustle and dance. Large, four-legged animals with spotted hides lumbered in the distance, occasionally dipping wide heads levered by thick necks to graze at the grass underfoot.

“Hello?” she asked, speaking aloud what she assumed would come out as only a thought in her mind. “Anyone there?”

Someone chuckled behind her and she turned. A tall woman garbed in white and gold stood before her, shoulders shaking with laughter.

“Hello Adora,” She Ra said. “Do you recognize me?”

Adora blinked. “She Ra? Of course I recognize you. How could I not?” She frowned. “Am I dead?”

She Ra’s eyes shaded with sadness. “No. No, you aren’t dead. I’m protecting you from a memory right now, actually.”

Adora frowned. “You’re protecting me…from a memory?”

“Yes. It’s quite an unpleasant one, really. Even with death, there are much better ways to have gone than what this person experienced. Unfortunately, while I can protect you from the memory itself, I can’t protect you from what killed her. Not fully, and not for much longer anyways.”

“I…I don’t understand.”

She Ra narrowed her eyes at Adora, and her entire demeanor shifted. “Well, I guess that puts us on an even playing field then, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Because I don’t understand either. Why did you choose to forsake myself and the sword, Adora? Why did you destroy it?”

Adora felt like she had been slapped. “Fors—…I didn’t forsake anything. The Heart was going to destroy the entire planet. Light Hope was going to force me, I had no choice but to—“

“No choice but to what?” She Ra asked. “Someone else was going to force you to use your sword? Your power? And you decided the best course of action was to break the sword turn your back on that power altogether?”

“Yes…no, wait. That’s not fair. That’s…” Adora frowned, suddenly unsure. She huffed, feeling attacked. “I didn’t just turn my back on it. What would you have had me do instead? Let the planet explode?”

“I would have had you control the power,” She Ra said, emphasizing her words. “I would have had you think to your friends and those you love. I would have had you dig deep and refuse to let it be used without your consent, not turn your back on it altogether because it overwhelmed you. You have forsaken me, Adora. You are not the person I thought you were.”

“I wasn’t about to be some pawn in the First One’s schemes! You think I turned my back on you, fine. We can agree to disagree on that.” Adora crossed her arms. “I refuse to power the Heart of Etheria. I refuse to be their weapon, and if that means I’ve ‘forsaken’ you and my powers, then so be it.”

“Do you even know what that weapon is destined for?”

“It doesn’t matter what it’s destined for,” Adora said, jutting her chin out. “If it’s powerful enough to destroy Etheria then it’s powerful enough to destroy other planets, kill trillions. I don’t want anything to do with it. I will not be responsible for genocide.”

“Foolish girl, it does not matter what the weapon can do, it only matters what you choose to do with it! I am far older than the First Ones, and so is the enemy that I—that we—are destined to face.” She took a step toward Adora. “Mara, in her ignorance, nearly cost us everything stranding the planet. And now you, when confronted with the notion that there is more to the Heart than you are aware of, wish to push your head further into the sand and stand behind a flimsy moral argument you made up with less than half the facts to begin with?”

She Ra seemed to have grown taller in her rage, and Adora flinched at how sudden it had come. Thunder rumbled in the distance and the landscape grew dark as black clouds rolled across the sky. Adora cleared her throat and tried to keep calm. This wasn’t how she thought this conversation would play out, not that she thought it would have come at all in the first place.

“Enemy?” she asked. “You’re not talking about the Horde, are you?” Those words made even less sense when she spoke them than they did in her head, and she couldn’t escape the feeling she was just grasping at straws to say anything back.

“The Horde is part of the reason there is still a galaxy left to save at all,” She Ra said. Some of the tension left her face, until she looked more sad than angry. “I only hope there is enough time.”

“I don’t understand,” Adora said, shaking her head. “Enough time for what? What enemy? Please, tell me what’s going on.”

A heavy presence blanketed the area, like something sinister was trying to smother them. She Ra’s face turned frantic. She took another step forward. “It’s found us. My magic can last only so long without your cooperation. It was only a matter of time.”

She took another step forward, reaching, and instinct forced Adora a step back.

“Tell me what’s going on.” Adora said. None of this felt right.

“Be brave. Remember, your friends believe in you and so do I, even after everything.” A mental image of Bow, Glimmer, Angella, Micah, the princesses—everyone, flashed in front of her eyes as She Ra took another faltering step forward. “I will still be with you.”

She disappeared, and Adora finally realized how dark it had become. The clouds had been letting up when she last paid attention, but now it was practically pitch black.

“She Ra?” Adora said, looking around. “Where did you go? Where am I?” Fear nearly paralyzed her when she reached out with both hands to feel about and couldn’t see them. How could it have gotten so dark she couldn’t see her own hands, groping about in front of her face?

“Hey Adora,” said a voice behind her.

Adora whirled and saw two eyes, one blue and one yellow, staring back at her. “Catra?”

“Who else would it be?” Catra asked.

Adora frowned. Her voice didn’t sound quite right. “What are you doing here? And where is ‘here’, exactly?” She looked around once more and still couldn’t make anything out except Catra’s eyes.

“You don’t know?” Catra asked. “You should have listened.”

“Should have listened to what?” She blinked, hoping that would help her eyes adjust. “Of course I don’t know where we are. I can’t see anything.”

Lightning struck high in the sky and illuminated their surroundings. Adora gasped, finally realizing what about Catra’s voice just seemed off: a dark void had swallowed the right half of her face and body. She looked as she had when she first chased Adora through the portal world.

“You should have listened when Light Hope told you to forget about me,” Catra said. “You should have listened when she told you to let go.”

Adora took a step back. “Catra, what are you—“

“You should have listened, Adora. I’m a distraction. I throw you off, make you second guess yourself.” Another crack of lightning spouted overhead and illuminated her in time for Adora to see her snap forward and grab her wrist.

“Why are you saying these things?” Adora tried to pull away, but Catra held firm. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt she was forgetting something important. It hit her the next moment, and she successfully yanked her arm away with a snarl. “You threatened Glimmer. We were going to take the Emperor down, but were waiting for the both of you.”

“There we go,” Catra said. Another flash of lightning illuminated the grin spread across her face.

“You forced our hand….we had to surrender. What the hell happened, Catra? You still went ahead and chose to help the Emperor after he kept you hostage up on the citadel? I saw what you looked like in that cell, you looked miserable.” Tears stung Adora’s eyes and she blinked them away. “What did he tell you to get you on his side? I thought we finally found common ground. I thought…I thought…”

“You thought what? That we’d be on the same side and fight together again? After you berated me and called me stupid?”

Adora opened her mouth just to close it without saying a word, her response already dead before it left her lips. She recalled Catra’s words from their argument in the throne room, and they gave new meaning to She Ra’s warning from earlier.

Taline isn’t here to conquer the planet, she’s here to help. There’s some sort of…enemy the Empire is fighting against and Prime needs her help fighting it. Etheria, the Heart…they need it.

The enemy Taline had mentioned to Catra…the one Adora so brazenly mocked her for believing…could that be…?

“It doesn’t matter,” Catra said, pulling Adora out of her thoughts. “Like I said, I’m a distraction. I make you second guess yourself. I hurt you.”

Adora shook her head. “Catra, no. I shouldn’t have dismissed you like that back in the throne room, I just—“

“How much more control over your powers would you have had if you didn’t spend half your time in the Rebellion trying to hedge against me?”

Adora gaped at her. “I…I don’t—”

“Do you think you would have had enough control to stop the Heart from firing prematurely instead of having to shatter the sword?”

“I don’t know,” Adora said, finally confident in at least one answer.

Another flash of lighting. This time it hung in the air as if frozen in time, illuminating their surroundings in harsh white light. Adora glanced about and couldn’t help the second gasp that tore free when she finally saw what was around them.

The surrounding greenery and trees and grazing animals had gone. In their place, lay a wasteland: dead, dry grass dotted the landscape, scattered among piles of bones as tall as people. A ruined playground lay at the bottom of the hill, rust and mold eating away at the fixtures. A city skyline loomed in the distance, the holes and chunks missing from dilapidated skyscraper husks telling her that everyone in that once gleaming, sprawling metropolis was long dead.

“What is this?” Adora clapped her hand to her mouth and felt tears trickle down her face.

“This is you, Adora,” Catra said. “This is what happens when you say ‘I don’t know’ to the things you should know, just like you should have known to listen to Light Hope when she told you to let me go. You would have seen this coming you know? If you weren’t so fixated on me.”

Adora turned to Catra. “This can’t be right. This isn’t real. There are no cities like this on Etheria, this hasn’t happened yet.”

Catra gave a small, sad smile and glanced away. “Always the optimist, aren’t you? Did you already forget we aren’t in Despondos anymore? We’re in the wider galaxy now, Adora. Well…a galaxy. One of many. This has already happened, on a world very far away. You were too late to stop it.”

Adora felt like she battled for every breath with the way her chest constricted. “How do you know all of this? This isn’t you.”

Catra looked back at her and quirked her eyebrow, as if confused by the question. “Look to the stars and you’ll see it too. You’ll see exactly what I see.”

Adora looked up. The lightning bolt still hung frozen in the sky. “I can’t see anything. It’s too bright, and the clouds are in the way.”

“Not those stars, idiot. Look at me.”

Adora looked back at Catra, not at all sure what she was trying to get at, when she saw small pinpricks of light emanating from the void-kissed parts of her body. “Is that…are those stars?” she asked, leaning in closer to get a better look.

And then she fell.

Fell through the void into the vastness of space, spinning and twirling, feeling like a log thrashed about and carried downstream in a whitewater torrent. She screwed her eyes shut, casting silent prayers in her mind for everything to just, for once, start making sense again. The vertigo pulling her in seemingly ten directions at once finally subsided, and she opened her eyes, this time looking at a beautiful, rotating universe that stretched out infinitely in front of her.

Adora saw everything. It was as if the atoms of creation itself were her eyes and ears. She saw the lumbering beasts from earlier, grazing atop the surface of the planet before its demise. She saw that planet hugging its central star in a tight orbit as part of a larger solar system, and saw that solar system following trillions of other systems as they rocketed a roughly elliptical orbit around the greater turn of one of the galaxy’s arms. And from there, she saw trillions upon trillions of other galaxies, just like that one, expanding ever outward. Some collided with one another in a majestic cosmic dance, while others at the outer fringes of reality were growing dim, then finally snuffing out like a candle at the end of its wax.

She saw countless people, dead. Bodies piled higher than castle parapets, children without their parents and parents missing their children. The balance of life in this reality had tipped. It overwhelmed her for a moment, witnessing all these things, before a strange peace blanketed her. She realized then that she had already felt and seen this all before, every time she transformed into She Ra. Only, she had always experienced it as a filtered, concentrated force back then. This felt raw and unfiltered. Amazing.

A small cluster of stars in the center of one of the galaxies flickered and went dark. That darkness spread, rapidly, until the galaxy itself ceased to exist, and Adora frowned.

That isn’t supposed to happen yet, a thought told her. Not for a world so young.

Scattered pockets of light in another nearby galaxy flickered and dimmed. Those pockets grew and collided with one another until, like a cancer, nothingness engulfed more than a third of that galaxy’s stars.

Adora felt a chill at seeing that, and she peered closer.

All the stars surrounding her blinked out of existence at once like she had suddenly fallen head first into a black hole. Her unease from earlier grew into unrestrained terror. She couldn’t tell up from down or left from right. There were no stars, no nebulae, nothing to orient her. She couldn’t tell if she was spinning and hurtling through space or if she had stagnated and stilled in the void.

And then she felt it: a presence, a distinct entity, separate from the vast nothingness, full of malice and anger and hostility. A great face appeared in the darkness and fixed its eyes on her. And when it spoke, it was as if the cosmic background radiation of reality itself had been given voice, projecting a stream of blown out white-noise directly into her head.

HELLO ADORA.

She gasped, and ragged sobs tore from her throat when she fell, again. Her palms were chained together, and they hit something cold and hard—a floor. She wasn’t in the void anymore. She was back in ruins of Horde Prime’s throne room, although when she had come back and for how long she had been away, she couldn’t tell.

Her friends were still there with her too, including Catra, who no longer seemed to be consumed by the blackness as she had been earlier. All of them sat nearby with hands still bound together. It seemed no time at all had passed, but the image of that…thing still burned in her mind and its voice continued to echo in her ears, a reminder that what she had seen hadn’t at all been just a dream.

Taline stood off to the side, trembling. Blood poured out of the gashes in her cheek, staining her uniform and dripping to the floor. Horde Prime approached her with a somber expression, and Taline immediately dropped to both knees in front of him.

“What have you done?” Prime asked. “Did you just…” his voice trailed off. Adora couldn’t shake how strange it felt seeing someone like the Emperor at such a loss for words.

“No, my Lord,” Taline said, shaking her head and keeping her eyes trained to a spot next to Prime’s feet. “It was only a memory.”

“Whose memory?”

Taline didn’t immediately answer, and he repeated himself with more force. She still did not speak, but her shoulders began to shake and Prime must have inferred the answer, because he grew enraged.

“I ordered her forgotten,” he said. “The mere mention of her name is forbidden. You dare defy me by subjecting my court and I to the memories of a damned woman?”

“She gave her life with the rest of them at Corynth’s command.” Taline’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “She helped stem the tide for as long as possible, but the Barrier is failing and the Beast is coming through once more. We need the weapon, and if it is indeed true that we need all the princesses alive for it to work, then we cannot risk killing them.”

Taline finally looked up, and she raised a shaky fist toward the Emperor as if presenting an offering. Slowly, she uncurled her fingers, revealing a dull red crystal, cracks and fissures running across its facets.

“She is gone, Lord Prime. Those memories were the last thing of hers that existed in this world, siphoned from her body before it was burned. Even still, the mere memory of the Beast is strong enough to transcend time and space and speak to us as if it were really there. Can we really afford to carelessly throw away lives if this is what we are to fight?”

Horde Prime reached out and plucked the crystal from Taline’s hand. He looked down at it as if it were an egg about to hatch a creature that would attack him.

“Please, my Lord,” Taline said. “I know it won’t be enough to pay for their transgressions, but punish me in their place. I will relinquish my claim on this planet when a suitable replacement is agreed upon, and I will openly accept whatever punishment you deem necessary in their stead. Just please…spare them so we may research the weapon. I beg you.”

Adora saw movement off to the side and looked. Catra sat there next to a pale and unconscious Glimmer, mouth open and eyes wide in unblinking surprise. She looked on the verge of saying something.

Anger welled in Adora’s chest, then. She wanted to yell at her and taunt her for having such a brazen reaction about someone who, moments ago, threatened to kill them all if she didn’t surrender. Instead, she kept quiet and simmered in her fury. Catra closed her mouth and averted her eyes in…was that shame?

You are so overwhelmed with emotion you can’t even speak? Adora thought. That’s never stopped you before. Where’re the smart quips now? The incessant, smug comments about everything and anything? Where’d they go, Catra?

Adora stopped herself and looked away, suddenly feeling shameful. She had never felt this angry before—not about anything and especially not toward Catra, even after the portal incident. The rage and pent-up hurt scared her almost as much as that creature in the void had.

Prime laughed, still standing over Taline. “Even after all these years you are still mocking me,” he said, speaking to the crystal as he studied it. He squeezed it in his hand until it shattered into a fine dust, then turned his palm to the side and let the pieces tumble to the floor. “Take them to their cells,” he said to his clones before turning to look Taline in the eye. “I believe you and I have some negotiating to do.”

The clones started grabbing people and dragging them off. No one struggled. They came for Adora last, and when she turned to look at Taline, still on both knees as the clones dragged her past, she saw how utterly broken the other woman looked. Tears mixed with the blood on the floor, and Taline gathered as many broken pieces of crystal as she could in her trembling hands, all while Prime looked on.

Chapter Text

Glimmer stared out a window of one of Bright Moon’s guest rooms and watched Enclave and Etherian laborers work in the sun. Four days had passed since the Rebellion had returned to the planet’s surface, and a whole two weeks since the citadel had been invaded. Horde Prime had taken his armada and abandoned Etheria altogether after a lengthy stint of negotiation. Glimmer hadn’t been present for it, but the result was acceptable nonetheless: Horde Prime had left only one member of his retinue behind.

She found him walking among the workers, occasionally referencing a large tablet held in his left hand, occasionally speaking with Adora and Micah who walked with him as they inspected the work. Salas had taken over organizing and leading the Enclave’s efforts to help Etheria rebuild.

“It’s still weird to see him walking around helping like that,” Catra said, standing to her left and looking out at the same view. “He was defending Horde Prime and fighting Shadow Weaver and your dad not all that long ago.”

Glimmer caught the hesitation in Catra’s words at her mention of Shadow Weaver. No one had seen her since the clones dragged them off to individual cells, and they had only recently found out Prime had taken her with him when he left.

“Taline told you its thanks to him you aren’t brain damaged, right?” Glimmer asked. “Apparently he linked our minds to give you something to hold onto when the Emperor probed you, and then used himself as an anchor after I was taken away.”

“She told me,” Catra said with a grimace and a nod. “He’s also the one who apparently pushed the medical team to come check on us when you first got sick, after he saw me screaming at the surveillance cameras. And I guess he’s the one who urged Taline herself to come check on me as soon as she arrived.”

“Taline had one of her Sentinels bring you to the infirmary, yeah,” Glimmer said. “But I didn’t know it was Salas who had her go to us first thing.” Her dad broke out in laughter down below at something Salas had whispered to him and Glimmer frowned. “He’s certainly more on our side than I expected. I’m surprised Taline got Horde Prime to back off as much as he did, leaving just him behind.”

“Me too,” Catra said.

Her father’s laughter grew stronger and he started nudging Adora with his elbow. When her shoulders visibly relaxed, Catra’s tighten as if in direct response.

“Even Adora is playing nice with him,” Catra said, putting her hands on the windowsill and gripping them hard enough her nails scratched the stone there.

“Have you talked to her yet?”

Catra tensed and Glimmer feared she had pushed their newfound comfortability around each other too far. “Not yet,” she said after a pause. “Every time I work up the courage to go to her, she gets dragged off to help with some other thing. It’s like she always has to be doing something. Can’t sit still for a second, and the universe conspires to help her with that at my expense.”

Glimmer “hmm’d”

“That’s Adora for you,” Catra said, after giving a wry laugh. “Always running off to play the hero. Always—” she cut off, holding the tension in her shoulders for a beat before releasing it with an exhale and speaking in a more subdued tone. “No. I haven’t gotten the chance to talk to her yet.”

Glimmer nodded, content to let those words just hang between them. Catra had grown less skittish with time, opening up about things Glimmer didn’t think her open to discussing in the first place. It surprised her, and that surprise compounded when she realized she was open to reciprocating.

“I haven’t gotten the chance to speak with her either yet,” Glimmer said. ”Or Bow. Not really.”

“Seriously?” Catra turned to her with an open expression of shock. “So many people have come to see you, all squealing in happiness that you’re back, but not Arrow Boy or Adora?”

Glimmer gave a rueful laugh and pulled her broken arm closer against her body in its sling. It was true that everyone from Frosta to Scorpia and even Kyle, Lonnie, and Rogelio—who had all miraculously made it out alive after taking blaster fire directly to their armor—had come to express absolute joy that she was back safe and sound. Salas and the rest of the princesses practically had to pull her dad away from her to help with the relief efforts because he didn’t want to leave her side. But Bow and Adora?

“Not Adora, but I have talked to Bow,” Glimmer said.

Both Catra’s eyebrows shot up when she heard the uncertainty in Glimmer’s voice. “And?”

“But we didn’t talk talk…if you get what I mean.” Glimmer sighed. “He’s just as busy as Adora with the reconstruction. Our ‘talk’, if you could even call it that, was…frostier than I hoped it’d be. I tried to apologize…he didn’t want to hear it.”

A long silence curled around them. Catra’s expression cycled out the corner of Glimmer’s eye—poor girl was trying to wrack her mind for words to say.

“Maybe once things settle down, he’ll be more open,” she said at last. “Probably just needs to process still, y’know?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Glimmer’s lips tugged up into a smirk despite the mood; she’d never imagined Catra of all people would try to comfort her, let alone that it might actually work. She swallowed and let the thought pass. “How do you like it in Bright Moon so far?” she asked.

Catra shrugged. ”S’fine, I guess.”

Glimmer scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Just fine? You do realize you’re not a prisoner here, right? Neither of us are on the citadel any more. You can wander and go find all the hidden spots in the castle I haven’t come across even after living here for twenty years. Do the kitchens not beckon to you with promises of food you never got to eat in the Horde? If all you can say is ‘it’s fine’ then you, Ma’am, haven’t taken advantage of all your freedoms here yet.”

Catra had the decency to at least smile at her attempt at levity. “Honestly? I don’t really feel welcome here after everything I’ve done,” Catra said, not taking her eye away from the window. “It’s got nothing to do with you…it’s just me. Aside from Taline, who’s been locked up in the war room with Entrapta since we got here, I’m not really getting my hopes up for any visitors.”

“Catra…”

 “I’m doing okay so far,” she said. “Really. Not good, not bad. Just okay, which is a hell of a lot better than either of us have been in a while.”

Glimmer couldn’t argue with that, although she did freeze at the mention of Taline and Entrapta working together. Catra hadn’t been joking when she said they could bring her mother back. It was the first thing Taline dragged Entrapta off to work on when Horde Prime finally left them alone. Catra had probably glossed over that topic on purpose, maybe to afford her the same respectful distance Glimmer had granted her by not delving into Shadow Weaver when she was brought up. But Glimmer decided it was worth delving into if it meant another opportunity for them to bond a little more. What could she say? Her time aboard the Citadel had endeared Catra to her, and she wasn’t too proud to push for a deeper friendship.

“I went down there myself a few hours ago,” Glimmer said. “They’ve really been working non-stop since they arrived. Thank god for the windows because the smell alone tells me they haven’t left once, not even to shower.”

Catra laughed. “Did they say when they might be ready?”

“Tomorrow, actually,” Glimmer said. “If everything keeps going smoothly. Entrapta was strangely excited about it because Taline apparently has something planned for her afterward. You don’t happen to know what that is, do you?”

“No idea whatsoever,” Catra said, her tone implying the exact opposite. She was the only one to have attended Taline’s negotiations with Prime and, although she refused to disclose exactly what had happened, the rumor was that Catra had played an important part in winning some key concessions from the Emperor.

“Fine,” Glimmer said with a laugh and a roll of her eyes. “Keep your secrets. If it’s half as amazing as bringing my mom back, then I’m sure it’s something special.”

A comfortable silence extended between them for a few moments. Adora, Micah, and Salas had long since disappeared from view, but they continued to watch the day’s reconstruction work until Glimmer spoke again.

“You said you weren’t expecting any visitors other than maybe Taline.” She knew she was easing into a touchy subject. “Why is that?”

 “I dunno.”

Glimmer cocked an eyebrow and chose to wait her out. Catra had a lot more to say and just didn’t know how to say it, she knew that much.

Catra gripped the stone windowsill again like she’d float away if she weren’t careful. “I guess…I guess it felt nice?” she said. “She wasn’t exactly gentle or cautious when she came to see me in the infirmary. She kinda just walked up and stuck a needle in my arm while I was having a panic attack. That sounds bad now that I say it out loud, but…I don’t know.” She huffed. “She was so calm when she explained everything to me, said everything she was going to do and everything that was going to happen. It was like, even though she wasn’t giving me a choice in things, I could trust that she was going to take care of me. It felt…well…”

“Safe?”

Catra nodded. “Yeah, safe. And then she complimented me when I was figuring out why she was even there taking over for the Emperor in the first place.” She frowned, her hold on the windowsill growing stronger. “I’m so used to people looking down on me I just…don’t know what to think when they don’t. Is that weird?”

Glimmer shook her head. “I don’t think that’s weird at all. Maybe she sees something in you.”

Catra scoffed. “Yeah right.”

“I’m serious. She didn’t call anyone else aside from you out of their cell to help her with negotiations, did she? Judging by the lack of Horde Prime presence and the fact we’re all still alive, I’d say they went well.”

Catra turned her head away from her so she couldn’t see her face and gave a wildly exaggerated shrug. She definitely said something that affected her, and Glimmer hoped it had been in a positive way.

“I don’t know about that,” Catra said. Another silence grew between them, one that Glimmer wasn’t sure Catra was going to dig herself out of as the seconds ticked by.

“Are you worried about her?” Glimmer asked. “She offered herself up in our place, and Horde Prime fully intended on killing us. Do you think…when she leaves…?”

Catra cringed, and Glimmer feared she had just made everything worse.

“No, he’s not going to kill her,” Catra said, relaxing after a moment. “I was only there for negotiations on Etheria’s behalf. Everything else was behind closed doors, but she did say she avoided an execution when I asked.”

“That’s a relief,” Glimmer said, not taking her eyes off Catra.

“He’s not going to kill her, but she’s still uneasy—I could just tell. Whatever he did decide on, it’s still terrible. And from what little I saw in the few memories of his I experienced, it makes sense. Killing her would have been too clean and easy an end. He wanted to put her down and humiliate her…watch her suffer.”

“Like, put her in a prison or torture chamber for the rest of her life?”

“I can’t be sure, but I don’t think that’s going to happen either. The way she phrased it, she’s too important to both the Enclave and the Empire for something like that.”

“If he’s not going to kill her and not going to lock her away in a torture chamber forever, then what the heck is he going to do?”

“Good question,” Catra said. She narrowed her eyes, still looking out the window, and sighed. “Now that I think about it, as much as I’d like it, I guess I don’t actually expect her to stop by and visit me either. She’s got a lot of other things to worry about. It’s just…you have so many visitors, but for me she’s the only one I can realistically see having any reason to come by. It’s not like Adora is going to come see me any time soon,  but I’m kind of hoping at least Taline does. I don’t know, it’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.” Glimmer reached over and placed a hand atop Catra’s on the windowsill. “And even if she doesn’t come, you’ll still have at least one visitor.”

Catra didn’t pull her hand away like Glimmer expected. Instead, she looked at her with a bewildered expression. “Who?”

“Me,” Glimmer said, teasing her with a grin. “I’m your visitor. And despite what you think, it’s not because I’m itching to relive our wonderful experience together in that cell.”

Catra laughed and Glimmer felt the air around them ease up.

“You know,” Glimmer said, feeling brave enough to push her luck with the touchy subjects. “I haven’t been able to sleep well since we got back. The nightmares have been keeping me up. I know you have them too.”

Catra’s hand tensed underneath hers and Glimmer gave a reassuring squeeze to bring her back down. They hadn’t talked about it. Up until that very moment, it had never felt like an appropriate time to address it. Strangely, only Adora, Catra, and herself seemed affected by them, if they glassy listless gaze constantly on their faces were any indication. The others on the citadel, her dad included, seemed unaffected. Whatever happened when Taline had broken that crystal seemed to have also broken something in their dreams as well.

Better nightmares than experiencing the actual memory, Taline had said to them, not long after they admitted to her what they had been suffering from. Adora at least had She Ra’s protection to shield her from them…I was relieved it left an imprint on so few people, and that your minds seemed to have stepped in anyways to protect you, on some level.

Still, as relieved as Taline sounded about them not seeing the actual memory inside the crystal, Glimmer couldn’t shake the visions she saw of Narre and Miri’s real deaths alongside her friends’ hypothetical ones in her head, no matter what she did to relax before drifting off most nights.

“I’m worried they’ll never go away,” Catra said in a tiny voice. “Every day I see…”

She faltered and Glimmer squeezed her hand harder. “I’m sure they’ll go away at some point. Or at least affect us less.”

Catra nodded. She turned her hand palm-up and gave Glimmer a squeeze back. “Thank you for visiting me.”

Glimmer laughed and nudged her with her elbow. “Come on now, I know you missed our bonding sessions back up in space. I figured, why deprive you of them when I could just come bother you for fun?” She watched Catra try and fail to hide the smile breaking out on her face.

“You are so full of it, you know that?” Catra said, shoving her back, careful not to catch her injured arm. “I’ll never know how I survived all that time together with you without ripping my hair out.”

“You’re one to talk,” Glimmer said with a smirk. “Worst cellmate ever.”

Catra lunged for her and Glimmer screamed, teleporting around the bed nearby while Catra darted left and right trying to catch her. Laughter pealed around the room as they continued, until Glimmer heard a knock. They both froze and turned to see a familiar face standing at the open door, holding an ice pack against the side of his head.

“Bow!” Glimmer said, smoothing out her outfit and fixing her hair. “H-how long have you been standing there?”

“Not too long,” Bow said. He cleared his throat. “Can we talk please?”

Glimmer chewed at the inside of her lip. He had a hard look in his eyes that set her even further on edge. “Sure, give me a second?”

Bow nodded. “I’ll wait in your room. Whenever you’re ready.” He turned to head back into the hall, but paused before turning back around. “Catra?” he said.

Catra gave a strangled noise before schooling her voice into a poor approximation of calm. “Yeah?

“I don’t know where I got it in my head you can't hit very hard because you’re small and stringy, but you pack one hell of a punch.” He pulled the ice pack away from his face, revealing a lump at the side of his head large enough to make Glimmer cringe. “It’s taken a while, but the swelling has finally started going down. Anyway, I wanted to say thank you for watching over Glimmer up there. I really appreciate it.”

“Y-yeah, don’t mention it,” Catra said. She seemed almost in disbelief that Bow had something nice to say to her at all.

Bow finally slipped out the door, and the unease Glimmer had felt earlier grew to full-blown panic. He was finally ready to talk, but what would he say? What was going to happen to them? A hand squeezed her shoulder, and she looked over to see Catra giving her an intense look, tail swishing behind her.

“It’ll be fine, Sparkles,” she said. “Just be chill.”

Glimmer bit her lip. “What if he doesn’t want to listen to me? What if I apologize and he still hates me?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “But even if that did happen…it’ll still be okay.”

“It will not be okay if that happens,” Glimmer said, making a face. She didn’t want to let her mind even wander down that road.

“It will,” Catra said, squeezing her harder. “Stop thinking with your fear and start thinking with your brain. I hated you for years after Adora left me to join your little rebellion. And you know what? In the span of a month…well, I don’t hate you anymore. Bow’s supposed to be your best friend, right? If I couldn’t keep hating you then what chance does he have? And if he really does say he’s done, then it will still be okay.”

The look in Catra’s eyes seemed to say “I lost it all and more, but here I am,” and Glimmer calmed. Yeah, things would be okay. She’d absolutely hate life for a long while if they didn’t make up, but she would be okay, one way or the other.

Glimmer pulled her into a hug. “You’re the best, Catra. Thank you.”

She pulled away before Catra could respond, caught the dumbstruck look on her face, and rushed to chase after Bow only to nearly barrel straight into Scorpia on her way out.

“Oh, uh hey Glimmer!” Scorpia said, careful not to slosh the two cups of tea she held in her claws while she braced against the door. “I was looking for Catra’s room and thought this was it. Oh geeze, did I get the wrong room?”

“You got the right place,” Glimmer said. She held the door open wider for Scorpia to peek inside. “She’s in there. I’m sure she’ll be really happy to see you.”

Scorpia’s eyes lit up and Glimmer felt a stab of elation for Catra upon seeing it; unlike Bow’s glare from earlier, Scorpia was actually looking forward to this meeting—looking forward to a heartfelt reconciliation. Glimmer shooed her inside and shut the door behind her to give them privacy. Catra’s cry of surprise echoed out from the other side moments later, and Glimmer couldn’t suppress the smile that broke out across her face.

Now if only she and Bow could get some of that. Maybe then that knot she had felt in her chest ever since returning to Etheria could begin to loosen.

Stop thinking with your fear and start thinking with your brain, she chanted to herself as she walked down the hall back to her own room. Whatever happens, it will be okay. It will.

They brought Queen Angella back the next day. Glimmer thought she’d cried all the tears her body could produce after Bow admitted with a morose face that he still didn’t feel right about things between them, but nothing compared to the reaction she experienced seeing Taline pull her mother through the giant portal they had set up in the war room.

Her mom was fine, if a bit surprised to see the sheer number of people surrounding her and openly weeping for joy. She seemed even more surprised to learn how much time had passed since her disappearance—to her, it had felt like only a few minutes since she parted from Adora. The Princesses, Bright Moon’s citizens, Royal Guards, Micah, all of them celebrated at Angella’s side until she suddenly grew disoriented and Salas motioned to the medical team on standby to pull her away.

“She’ll be okay,” Taline had said to her and her father, the ones least cooperative in letting her go. “Salas’ specialty is stabilizing minds. It’s why he excelled as Prime’s assistant. Angella is perfectly healthy, she just needs rest and time to ease back into this reality.”

Glimmer finally stopped protesting after she promised they could see her again soon, and she folded herself into her dad’s arms to cry even harder as the crowd dispersed. Frosta had actually brought her a glass of water shortly after in fear Glimmer would dehydrate herself crying so much, and when she moved to accept the glass, she also glimpsed Catra approaching Adora in the far corner of the room.

She rooted for her, until Adora turned on her heel and march away the moment she noticed Catra approaching. As quickly as it had come, the overwhelming happiness Glimmer experienced seeing her mom come back to them all at once colored with sorrow, and her tears suddenly felt bittersweet seeing the look of panicked dejection on Catra’s face.

Days passed, and that feeling unfortunately never went away. Despite the hours she spent at her mom’s bedside and despite the hours she spent with her dad helping rebuild Bright Moon alongside Salas and the Enclave, Glimmer only grew more uncomfortable the longer she spent time with…other people. The awkward, guarded words and unsteady, unreadable body language she got from Bow every time they spoke didn’t help, either.

No matter what she tried, she couldn’t figure out how to shake the sense she no longer belonged there either, same as Catra had said. It wasn’t the nightmares, which had finally subsided for the both of them. Taline had chalked it up to post traumatic stress when she finally spoke of it to her. For a time, that seemed an adequate explanation.

But then Glimmer and Adora made up—truly made up—and she witnessed first-hand how Adora seemed determined to train and spar herself into an early grave. The Enclave had helped her reforge the Sword of Protection, but she still hadn’t been able to transform into She Ra.

“It’s just a matter of time,” she’d hear Adora mutter to herself under her breath. “I just need to be stronger. Need to be faster. She’ll come back.”

Glimmer had a sneaking suspicion Adora’s nightmares hadn’t let up, and the more she witnessed her obsess over training, the stronger that “out of place” feeling hit. Soon enough, ‘stress’ no longer seemed a sufficient explanation.

“Whatever you do, don’t let it drive you to open a portal and destroy the world,” Catra said during one of their unofficial ‘meals together, just the two of them’ appointments. “And if you do, I wouldn’t bank on a second intergalactic empire swooping in and helping fix things. Seems like a once-a-campaign kind of thing, y’know?”

Her tone had been light, but they ended up speaking long into the night about how that “out of place-ness” was a daily constant for Catra like she had said in the beginning. It only solidified Glimmer’s inkling that her own issue went far deeper than she initially realized, and likely wouldn’t go away on its own.

It wasn’t until she almost interrupted her parents during a private moment that she finally understood what had happened to her. Micah sounded distraught, and Glimmer peeked through a crack in the doorway to find him openly weeping in Angella’s arms. He lamented having lost so many happy years together with her, openly expressed his sorrow at having missed out on seeing his own daughter grow up into a “fine young woman”, and spoke of his terror at having come home only to learn he might have lost them both forever.

And when, in the face of all this turmoil, Glimmer looked to her mom and saw her equally anguished expression—saw her also at a complete loss for what to say back—Glimmer finally realized that the “out of place” feeling she had been haunted by for weeks was only her picking up on how much everything and everyone around her had changed. Bright Moon was no longer the same. Glimmer herself was no longer the same. Her relationships were no longer the same.

She turned that very instant and raced down the hall as fast as she could with tears stinging her eyes, only to just make it to Taline’s temporary quarters before finally falling apart.

Taline, bless her heart, merely set Narre’s cracked helmet she had been cradling alone off to the side, got up to close the door behind Glimmer to give them privacy, and guided her to take a seat on the bed.

“What’s going on?” she asked, taking a seat next to her. “It’s visitation hours, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you be spending time with your mom and your dad? Why are you crying?”

It took Glimmer several false starts before she got any words out. Taline stayed quiet, rubbing her back until she finally could.

“You’re supposed to be leaving soon, right?” Glimmer asked between hiccups. “Within the next week or two?”

Taline frowned, and Glimmer tried to not let her gaze linger on the thick gauze still covering her cheek. Prime had apparently done some permanent damage if she still had to wear that thing after so much time. “Who told you when I was supposed to go?”

Everyone knew Taline would leave at some point; it was part of the deal she had struck with Prime to get him to leave first. But no one had an exact timeframe, and Taline’s reaction told Glimmer her guess wasn’t far off.

“Catra and I thought it would be soon,” she said. “Reconstruction is in full swing and research on the Heart will begin soon, right? I know it’s supposed to be a secret and I promise I won’t say anything until you announce it, but I just…I need to know.”

Taline thought for a long moment before nodding with a sigh. “Unless something drastic happens, my last day will be at the end of the week, two weeks from today.”

Glimmer sniffled and looked at Narre’s helmet, propped on the desk across from her. “I know I wasn’t exactly cooperative when we first met, but can I ask you for a favor before you go?”

Taline angled her head, the question plain on her face. Glimmer took a deep breath. She still had no idea what Taline was going to be doing after leaving, but if she had any authority left after Horde Prime was through with her, she had to take the chance.

The words came slow and halting at first, but she forced herself through them—forced herself to speak with Taline about what had been tossing around in her head ever since the “out of place” feeling first bothered her.

Chapter Text

Adora drummed her fingers on the war room’s conference table and tried to focus. The princesses all sat around the table, interspersed between the many heads of magic, engineering, and military affairs from the Enclave. Except for Micah and Angella who sat near the head of the table and Taline who sat opposite them, everyone was deep in animated conversation, and Adora was on the verge of snapping. She couldn’t string two coherent thoughts together in her head it was so loud.

After nearly a month of nonstop work streamlining Etheria’s rebuilding efforts, the “Alliance”—as they had named themselves the week prior, expanding on the old Princess Alliance to now include their Enclave allies—finally reached the point where the princesses could soon return home. They were to oversee the remainder of their respective kingdoms’ reconstructions while training under Enclave mentors in advanced forms of magic. King Micah had supposedly been tapped to help as well.

Entrapta, who practically hadn’t emerged from her lab since Angella’s return, had worked with the Enclave to reforge the Sword of Protection. Adora might have felt happy about that too, if it weren’t for the fact she still couldn’t connect with She Ra. The sword had reverted to a gauntlet the moment Entrapta pieced it together, and everything Adora tried made neither it nor her transform. She had redoubled her efforts in Bright Moon’s gym to help deal with her anxiety, but even coming straight from an intense workout session and shower wasn’t enough to soothe her in this particular moment.

Salas and Taline were finally going to brief them on the ‘threat’—whatever it was she had seen in her vision aboard the citadel. Whatever that voice she heard and face she saw speaking and looking at her almost every time she closed her eyes to sleep.

Glimmer had mentioned seeing similar nightmares, although she hadn’t gone into detail and Adora hadn’t pushed for them. Adora could see the bags under her eyes despite how far away she sat, and judging by how far Bow sat from her, it was obvious Glimmer hadn’t gotten much sleep and he hadn’t forgiven her enough yet to help with that. Bow had always been someone with sound judgement in Adora’s mind, but that whole situation convinced her he had a blind spot.

She caught sight of Catra, leaning with crossed arms and legs against a pillar in the far corner, and wanted to scream. Salas was late, seeing Catra just made her feel all the more conflicted, and Adora was doing everything she could to keep from flipping the whole table over in irritation. Could he just get there already and start? She needed everyone to quiet down so she could hear herself think, and she needed to know what this great enemy was they were all apparently conscripted into fighting.

At last, she saw the white and green of Salas’ robes as he hurried through the doors to them.

“Sorry I’m late, everyone,” he said, finally sweeping into the room with a harried expression. “There was a mix-up with the latest personnel arrivals and I had to sort it out first. Let’s begin.” He took up a position at the head of the table, nodding to Taline and Micah on either side of him, and keyed up a holographic presentation deck in the center of the table.

Most of what he walked them through initially, the princesses already knew from just existing alongside their Enclave counterparts for some time now: The Enclave was an autonomous Protectorate inside the Empire, blah blah blah. They were generally left alone to do their own thing in exchange for serving that Empire when it came to all things magic, yadda yadda yadda. It wasn’t until Salas dove into the next section that a hush descended upon the room.

“I understand many of you have been wondering for some time now why we’ve taken great pains to help rebuild your world, especially after it was our own Emperor that nearly destroyed it,” Salas said, as he flipped through images of ruined civilization after ruined civilization on the slide deck. “This is the reason why.”

One of the stills was an image of the hill upon which Adora stood in her vision aboard the citadel, complete with grazing aliens in the distance. She gasped and looked around at her friends, many of who had asked her previously why she had turned so readily from fighting the Enclave one moment, to wholeheartedly advocating they work together. She had only been able to shake her head at the time, unsure of how to explain the vision she saw in Horde Prime’s citadel, but the fact the very same world from that vision had showed up on Salas’ presentation only solidified her belief she had done the right thing. They didn’t have time to fight each other. Not with what was coming.

Thankfully, no one seemed to notice her freezing up in the middle of the room, and Salas quickly moved on with another half dozen images of other worlds.

“Contrary to what some of you I’m sure are thinking,” he said, “this is not the work of the Emperor conquering other planets. This is the work of an enemy we desperately need your help in defeating.”

The image shifted, and they watched a video of a black, amorphous blob writhe inside a clear box.

“It may not look intimidating in there,” Salas said. “But that’s just a sample one of our research teams captured back in the early days. If it actually gets free on a planet or in the vacuum of space, it will eat stars and worlds until there’s nothing left. Almost did, on multiple occasions in the past. Many ancient civilizations we’ve come across throughout the centuries reference the creature as well, and even your own ancestors, the Eternians, wrote extensively on a near-mythical phenomenon they named the World Eater.”

More images, this time of various ancient texts, paintings, and archaeological digs across barren planets flashed before them. By this point, some in the room had picked up hushed, worried conversations. The princesses looked to one another in confusion while Adora thought back to some of the last words She Ra had spoken to her: about how her power was destined to oppose something far older than the First Ones civilization itself.

“The Eternians were close to finding a way to stop its eventual return,” Salas said, “though they unfortunately didn’t finish by the time the Emperor conquered them several thousand years ago. We didn’t learn of their preparations until the thing suddenly appeared in our galaxy and started eating literal star system outright. By then, we had already given it a different name. The Beast.”

Salas flipped ahead, and the next several slides showed the Beast in various stages of agitation inside the containment box.

“Those images of destruction you saw earlier?” he said. “Those were taken before it even arrived on planet. Those were the result of unrest and sheer panic from the populace as they scrambled to evacuate. This“—he tapped at his console and the slide jumped forward—“is what those planets looked like from orbit once the Beast actually reached them.”

All conversation in the room died as the princesses gasped and their Enclave counterparts shot each other uncomfortable looks. Even Entrapta, who had sat with rapt attention between Scorpia and Perfuma, now held an uncertain look on her face. Adora felt an icy cold snake through her chest and squeeze her heart.

The writhing mass of black flesh from earlier covered the entire planet. Salas tapped the console again and the view zoomed out, revealing seven other black planets orbiting a black star. He tapped a third time and the image gradually pulled out to reveal a third of the galaxy in a similar state—as if some god had taken a bite out of it. Adora realized with a start that this was, again, the exact view she had seen in her vision right before the creature spoke to her.

“This was eight years ago,” Salas said, “at the end of a long campaign trying to stop its advance through our reality. The creature spread exponentially the more ground it covered. It grew smarter and bolder with each planet—with each person—it took. By this point, unless we did something to stop it immediately in its tracks, it would have grown too fast and too smart to stop at all. So, we mustered the entirety of the Imperial fleet and staged an assault. One final, massive stand to save our galaxy.”

Another slide popped up showing what must have been tens of thousands of warships against a backdrop of stars, battling a literal wave of darkness raging toward them.

“Even the Emperor, who until that point had stayed away from direct conflict out of fear the enemy would corrupt him, led personally on the battlefront.” Salas sighed, fatigue tingeing his voice. “Our victory, if you could even call it that, was pyrrhic at best, and temporary. If it weren’t for a breakthrough from one of our science teams, we wouldn’t have even had that. You all would have returned to a galaxy devoid of any life at all except for the Beast.”

Someone in the room—Adora wasn’t sure who, although she guessed Mermista—let out a long and low curse under their breath. It was quiet enough no one would have heard were it not for the complete, near suffocating silence in the war room. Salas ignored it.

“That team had researched much of what the Eternians left behind for us,” he said. “They had apparently been working on an ancient interdimensional prison named the Barrier before they fell. Much of the work had already been done long ago, as it already spanned a majority of the galaxy’s mid-rim systems. With the power of thousands of ‘nodes’ powered by stars, the Barrier had the potential to lock the Beast away in between dimensions forever.

“Unfortunately, Horde Prime wasn’t convinced that the Barrier was the answer we needed. You see, that same science team had also discovered a different technology earlier in the war. A mineral named Ignominite that could harm the Beast if imbued into munitions, or pacify it within crystals if caught.

“As the war took a particularly desperate turn, a few years before the final battle, they came to the Emperor in the Heartlands to petition him for the resources necessary to finish their research on unlocking and booting the Barrier system the Eternians had left behind. He instead ordered them to abandon the project altogether and focus on further advances with Ignominite. The head of the science team, someone I am forbidden from naming out loud, defied him.”

Salas’ eyes flicked to Taline, who sat there, stock still, eyes forward, and knuckles white from squeezing her hands into fists underneath the table. None of the other princesses seemed to notice, since, aside from her hands, Taline’s face looked like the epitome of calm. But Adora did notice how the other members of the Enclave reacted; some exchanged meaningful looks with one another while others glanced at Taline only out of the corner of their eyes. Each of them, for some reason, seemed invested in how she in particular reacted to Salas’ words.

“That would have been the end of it,” Salas said, jolting Adora out of her observations. “The Emperor ordered her death, and would have had it if her head of security, a young man named Corynth, hadn’t risen to defend her and her team. He, as it turned out, was a member of the Daiamid, a group that, up until the very moment he revealed himself, many had believed existed only in rumor and hearsay—in stories parents told their children to scare them into behaving for them. They were the Emperor’s supposed secret police. An ancient cabal of elite mages and assassins that did his bidding from the shadows.

“Corynth rallied the rest of his people and they followed, appearing in the spotlight to defy the very person they had served in secret. They chastised the Emperor for getting in the way of research that was supposedly key to saving our reality, and delivered a humiliating defeat to him at the capital before fleeing deep into the uncharted recesses of space.”

The slide skipped forward and displayed two enormous fleets, one of Horde white and green and another, the red and black of the Beast, clashing above a sea of fire and brimstone. It took Adora a moment to realize that sea was actually a view of the surface of an enormous planet, covered in the Beast and marred with massive oceans and rivers of lava along its surface.

“We fought the Beast not long after,” Salas said. “Our final stand, as I said. Despite our best efforts, it had taken a major hub world in the mid-rim earlier in the war. A planet named Archanas. It became too smart after that, and even steadfast optimists couldn’t bring themselves to still hope after it started outmaneuvering even our most brilliant tacticians. It was there, as we tried to take that world back, that the Daiamid returned.”

Another slide appeared, this one of a handful of ships in an impossibly tight formation shooting through the wave of black Beast vessels like an arrowhead through an air current.

 “Our fleet above Archanas punched a hole in the Beast’s defenses large enough for Corynth, the rest of his Daiamid Shapers, and the lead scientist to slip through and carry a payload directly into the maw of the enemy. Their research on the Barrier had paid off, and with one decisive blow, they sealed the Beast away at the cost of their own lives.”

Salas shut off the presentation. “Which brings us to the present moment,” he said. “The Barrier and its interlocking algorithm of keys is imperfect. What software the science team had used in that final payload to activate the Barrier was not what the Eternians had originally developed, but only the best approximation of it that could be put together in the intervening years since fleeing the Emperor. Just as you have returned from being lost in a pocket dimension, so too has the Beast begun to seep back into our reality from its prison.

“Your world, your Heart of Etheria, is another Eternian construct. It is repeatedly mentioned in their surviving documents, and just like the Barrier was designed to be the one cage capable of trapping the creature away forever, the Heart was to be the one weapon guaranteed to kill it outright. It is our last hope for survival, and now that you are here, our number one priority is to get it functioning as intended. We must destroy the Beast before it has the chance to fully escape and finish us off for good. Are there any questions?”

He swept the room with steel in his eyes before Mermista broke the silence.

“Are you seriously not kidding me with all this?” she asked. “That’s what we’re up against? Something that literally eats entire planets and stars like they’re lunch? How the hell are we supposed to beat that?”

All eyes shot to her, and Adora was relieved to see many of the princesses and even some younger members of the Enclave seeming to agree with her. Everything Salas said had terrified her. She had no idea how they were supposed to fight. The planet still couldn’t even fire the Heart.

“I understand this may be a lot for you all to absorb,” Taline said, rising in her chair and speaking for the first time since the meeting convened. “Every senior member of the Enclave here, including Salas and myself, lived through what you just saw. Lived through that war. To us, it wasn’t just a presentation, it was another reminder that we lost more than we care to dwell on. But I must stress to you that we are extremely optimistic about this. Our research team has been churning behind the scenes while everyone else has been busy rebuilding, and the preliminary analysis is very positive.

“Engineering fully believes they can get the Heart operationally sound within a handful of years. That includes doing the work necessary to make sure the planet doesn’t explode, too. In the meantime, the Imperial Armada is more than equipped to stem the tide of what does slip through the barrier while we work. If everyone keeps their heads down and focused on the goal, we will come out of this alive. Then the galaxy at large, including Horde Prime, will welcome you with open arms as saviors.”

The tension around the room lessened with each word she spoke. All seemed to take solace in her words, except for Adora, who only grew more anxious to reconnect with She Ra. Taline was an inspiring figure, and despite their clashing aboard the citadel, Adora held no hard feelings for her. But, functioning or not, the Heart depended on her as She ra to wield. She refused to let herself feel calm or confident until she made certain her connection to the Princess of Power remained unbroken.

Salas prompted further questions, and no one spoke up.

“Very well,” he said. “Unfortunately, due to the nature of the mission and the current state of the Empire, Etheria will remain hidden and not all of you will be permitted to venture off planet. Until our work together is done, only certain members of Etheria’s homegrown Horde will be allowed to conscript into the wider military and leave, by special invitation. We will break shortly to give everyone time to process what that means, and then reconvene to discuss specifics. But before we do, I think it prudent to mention—next week will be Taline’s last here with us.”

A low murmur of disappointment rumbled through the group. Everyone knew this was coming but didn’t want to face it. The princesses had all grown to like her, and it was obvious both young and experienced Enclave members alike all held some sort of muted reverence for her. Even Adora found herself feeling upset about the thought of her leaving.

“I just want to say it’s been an honor working with you all,” Taline said, looking them over. “I know some of us got off to a rough start together, but I want you all to know that I am grateful for the hospitality you’ve shown, and the trust you’ve chosen to give. Salas, as I’m sure you’ve all witnessed first-hand, is a fantastic choice to lead the research into the Heart. I’m thankful the Emperor agreed to let him take charge in my stead, and you are all in good hands with him.”

A quiet round of agreement rippled through the group, and Adora saw Micah and Angella glance at each other. Then, the room grew quiet as Micah got to his feet.

“I must admit, I knew of this shortly before the announcement,” Micah said, rubbing the back of his head with a sheepish expression as he looked at Taline. “Angie and I talked it out and we both agreed. Bright Moon will throw a grand feast, both to celebrate a great new partnership with the Enclave, and to thank you for vouching for us to Horde Prime.”

Taline blinked, true surprise flashing across her features for the first time in Adora’s recollection. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“But we will,” Angella said, giving her a smile. “We want to. Everyone here understands that without you personally stepping forward and defending us, then Bright Moon would likely not have lived through Horde Prime’s wrath. Please, accept this celebration as another expression of our gratitude to you.”

Taline, still reeling, agreed and thanked the two of them for the gesture. Micah returned to his chair and Salas adjourned for a small recess.

As the princesses and Enclave higher-ups turned to strike up conversations or shuffle out of the war room, Adora saw Glimmer get up from her chair and wander over to Taline with a determined expression. Angella and Micah, also watching her, exchanged glances with one another, and Adora wondered why they suddenly looked so sad.

Catra somehow caught Adora’s attention immediately after, although she wasn’t sure how since she was still leaning against the far pillar, tail swishing low behind her. Then she noticed the look in Catra’s eyes, at her with an unspoken question reflected there.

Can we talk?

Adora stood fast enough her chair made an obnoxious squeal as it scraped along the ground and she fled. She knew exactly what Catra wanted to talk about and had to avoid that confrontation at all costs. She made it past the doors and a half dozen steps down the hall when—

“Adora!”

She paused and fought with herself. If she just kept walking, she could pretend she hadn’t heard. Maybe it was the fact she felt guilty about the first time she did that, back when Angella first returned, but Adora couldn’t bring herself to move. Catra’s footsteps hurried after her; she was running.

“Adora, wait. Can we just—“

Adora took off. Whatever had kept her rooted to the spot her in the first place suddenly spurred her forward, twice as panicked as she was moments earlier. She hated herself for it, but she ran away—ran away from someone whose friendship used to mean the world to her growing up, and still meant just as much, if not more so, in the present.

“Adora, please!”

Catra’s voice bled with anguish. It echoed down the hall and chased her like a specter. Adora slammed her eyes shut and grit her teeth as her feet pounded the floor. She couldn’t face her. She couldn’t get distracted, not with so much on the line.

Chapter Text

Catra didn’t know how she had let Glimmer talk her into wearing the suit. It didn’t fit nearly as well as it did years ago. Despite the abundance of delicious food now available to her, she had lost weight, and the red and black suit which she once wore proudly to Princess Prom now hung off her frame and pooled in odd places. She frowned as she looked herself over in the mirror and let her mind wander.

Adora had blatantly rejected her the last time she tried to approach her. The first time could have been an honest mistake, when they brought Angella back, but that second time after the briefing? Despite her knack for self-deception, Catra couldn’t deny that Adora was deliberately avoiding her.

It hurt. So much so, she had thrown herself into assisting whatever reconstruction or research-infrastructure-building-whatever project she could get her hands on in the ensuing days. Even with the majority of major projects already well underway and fully-staffed, there was still plenty of work to be done. The only problem was that many of the ex-Horde employed on them didn’t want to work with her. Many Bright Moon citizens avoided her too, afraid of the once-Horde Commander that nearly conquered them before Prime did. Even the Enclave didn’t know what to do with her.

“You’re not a scientist,” they’d tell her. “I’m not sure I should let you handle any of this equipment.”

“Just give me something heavy and hard to break and tell me where you need it installed,” she’d say, hands already gripping whatever needed to be moved. She’d ignored everyone who gave her sidelong glances or snide remarks, and needled and pressured everyone else until they finally capitulated and gave her something to do.

She’d worked herself so far to the bone slaving through the hurt that, when Taline’s big going-away celebration finally came and all work ceased for everyone to partake, every inch of Catra’s body ached like all hell, and she had nothing to do except sit in her room with her sour, depressing, dark thoughts. Maybe that was why, when she barged into her room the day of and learned Catra hadn’t planned on attending, Glimmer had an easier time persuading her to go. After all, who’d have wanted to spend time alone with only their thoughts for company? Certainly not Catra.

Giving up on trying to feel better about her appearance, she pointedly turned away from the mirror and headed out to the grand hall. There was a feast she had been asked to attend, and she was determined to find some enjoyment out of the night even if it killed her.

A train of people wearing formalwear snaked down the main hallway to the entrance, and Catra followed. Angella and Micah were standing near the doorway greeting guests as they filed in, and Catra hung back to look for a group large enough for her to blend into and slip past without either of them noticing her. Catra hadn’t had much interaction with either the king or queen since returning to Etheria, and she preferred it that way; despite now being on the same side and despite Catra being partially responsible for Angella’s return, the thought of speaking face to face alone with either of them threatened to send her into a panic. There was just too much bad history between them.

A particularly large group of what Catra guessed were minor princesses and their dates filed past and she trailed them close behind. To any looking close, she’d stick out, since most of them wore frilly princess dresses. But Catra figured with a crowd that size, Angella and Micah would be too busy greeting them all and making small talk to notice her quickly slip past and inside.

She’d almost made it too, until Angella called out to her specifically.

“Excuse me, please enjoy the party,” Angella said, extricating herself from both the group and her husband when Catra froze.

“H-hey, Queen Angella,” Catra said, forcing a smile she had the sneaking suspicion looked more like a grimace than anything else. “Nice party!”

Smooth, she thought. Are you just going to stand there and pretend like you hadn’t hurt these people for years?

Angella thanked her, and Catra rushed to speak her next words before the conversation could get away from her.

“Uhm, listen…about everything that happened,” she said. “I wanted to say I’m really sorry about— “

Angella wrapped her in a tight hug and she immediately cut off, practically choking on her words. Getting pulled into a hug with the Queen was the last thing she expected to happen. Reluctantly, as if unsure this were really happening, she returned it and patted her on the back.

“There’s no need for you to apologize,” Angella said, pulling back. “Not to me. Sorry, by the way.”

“Sorry? What are you apologizing for?”

 “Glimmer mentioned you don’t like people touching you unexpectedly, but I didn’t know what else to do in the moment to tell you I’m not angry. I might have panicked just a little.”

The sheer bluntness of her words caught Catra off guard and she snorted with laughter. “It’s okay,” she said, suppressing the urge to bust up a second time. She frowned, suddenly feeling unsure. “Why aren’t you angry with me though? I was part of the Horde for years. I destroyed towns and villages trying to conquer you guys. I….I killed you and almost destroyed the world. How can you not be angry?”

“You kept our family together,” Micah said, walking over to join them. He slotted himself beside Angella and put a hand around her waist.

“I what?” Catra asked. She leaned back onto her heels as she remembered the look Micah gave her when she had threatened Glimmer aboard the citadel. Seeing the hope drain out of his eyes when she pressed that knife up against his daughter’s throat had been painful, even if her and Glimmer were both in on it together.

“Listen, Catra,” Angella said, taking Micah’s hand from her hip and adjusting so she could thread her fingers through his. “You may be ex-Horde, but so are a lot of other people, many of whom are helping diligently with the reconstruction effort just like you.”

“Ah.” Catra didn’t have the heart to say she was mostly doing that to keep her mind from wandering to Adora, but she figured Angella’s point still stood despite that.

“I’ve seen you out there slaving away, helping clear the rubble and put up new structures,” Micah said. “Don’t think I’m too busy to not have noticed you.”

“And yes, you did do a lot of damage in the past,” Angella said.  “There are still plenty of hurt feelings and simmering tensions, none of which will magically go away overnight. But the fact you are helping tells me enough. As for nearly killing me?” A smile crept onto Angella’s face and Catra gulped. “Let’s just say I’m not holding it against you. You aren’t a murderer. I know you didn’t intend to kill me and I also know you are part of the reason why I’m back.”

“Taline told you?” Catra asked, taken aback.

“Of course she did,” Angella said, nodding. “She said it was you who asked in the first place if it were possible at all.”

“Glimmer also told us what really happened on the citadel,” Micah said. “She told us your plan to get us to surrender and that she went along with it. She also said she probably wouldn’t have survived past the first few days if you weren’t there for her.” He gripped Angella’s hand tighter as she ran her fingers across his knuckles. “In any case, others may be slower to forgive what happened in the past, but we both wanted you to know there is no bad blood between us.” He stuck out his free hand for Catra to shake and she stared at it. “You are always welcome here in Bright Moon.”

Emotions she wasn’t prepared to handle bubbled up in her chest when she took his hand and squeezed. “T-thank you,” she said, swallowing past the lump in her throat.

“No, thank you,” Micah said, shaking his head. “I thought I’d lost my whole family the moment I got back to Bright Moon and Horde Prime invaded. We’re back together again thanks in large part to you, and we will never forget it. Well…back together for a short while at least.”

Angella and Micah exchanged a sad look, and Catra thought they were on the verge of saying more. They didn’t, and instead merely asked that she enjoy the party before excusing themselves back to the entrance. More guests continued to filter in and Catra wandered with a blank mind toward one of the still mostly vacant long tables.

Catra’s heart soared with such happiness she thought it would burst. Angella and Micah’s words made the thoughts in her head lighten up for the first time since Adora had first left the Horde. And, for some reason she could only assume was pride, she fought to steady her breath and keep the tears from flowing—she didn’t want anyone to see her cry.

“Holy shit,’ she said under her breath, glad that she had picked a table and a chair with no one near enough to pay attention to her yet.

The smell of food wafted, overpowered her other impulses when she calmed, and soon she shucked her suit jacket to drape behind her chair, claiming it from others before she hurried over to the buffet table pushed against the far wall. Despite the dizzying variety of meats, fruits, vegetables, and sweets on offer, Catra came away with barely a half-full plate sampled from only a handful of dishes. She knew if she ate too much too quickly, she’d likely just waste it being sick in the nearest wastebin not long after.

Strangely disappointed in herself about it, her mind defaulted to searching for Adora. She couldn’t find her. The seat at the head table next to the king and queen, reserved for special guests of honor like Salas and Taline, remained empty. She did, however, find Bow talking with animated gestures to Entrapta, who looked like she was only half listening. Suddenly, Entrapta bid Bow a clipped good bye and darted off with two whole plates piled high with food, much to Bow’s confusion. Catra had a hunch she knew where Entrapta was going off to, and she hoped Bow would take her sudden departure as an opportunity to spend time with Glimmer and hopefully make up with her, although she doubted it.

As she made her way back to her seat, Catra found something large and red sitting in the chair next to hers.

“Scorpia?” She placed her meager pickings on the table and reclaimed her spot.

“Hey, Wildcat,” Scorpia said through a mouthful of food. “Saw your jacket and figured I’d claim the seat next to yours before anyone else does. I, uh…hope that’s okay?”

“Y-yeah, it’s fine,” Catra said, wondering why Scorpia needed to even ask. An uncomfortable silence hovered over the both of them when she didn’t know what to say next. Desperate for it to go away, she said the first thing that came to mind. “Thanks for grabbing this suit for me from the Fri—er, Scorpion Kingdom,” she said, picking at the suit draping off her body. “Didn’t think I’d ever need it again to be honest, but then Sparkles somehow convinced me to come to this party.”

“No problem,” Scorpia said, swallowing another bite of food. “I’ve made several trips helping clean up what I could there, you know. Saw that outfit and figured I’d bring it back for you just in case.” Her eyes slid over to Catra’s plate and she frowned. “Don’t take this the wrong way Wildcat, but…is everything okay with you?  I thought you might have looked a little thin when we talked in your room. I swore I was just imagining things, but that suit definitely doesn’t fit the same way it once did. I’m worried about you.”

Catra face burned she looked away, embarrassed. “I’m fine, Scorpia. Really.” Why was she being so nice to her and worrying so much? Her and Entrapta. She had made up with the both of them already, but still felt like it was more than she deserved, even after how hard they had worked to convince her that wasn’t the case.

“Why are you even going out of your way to sit with me?” she asked, trying to push the attention off of her and how poorly she cleaned up, only to cringe when she heard the sound of her own words, at how aggressive she sounded without meaning to.

Scorpia, thankfully, took it in stride. “Never feels like going out of my way to spend a little time with you,” she said with a shrug.

“I meant why aren’t you sitting at the head table with the rest of the princesses? They didn’t forget to include you, did they? They couldn’t have.”

“Nah, I’ve got a spot next to Frosta and Perfuma,” Scorpia said. “But the party’s gonna go all night and we haven’t gotten to catch up much except for the one time.”

“Ah,” Catra said, words escaping her after realizing that trying to avoid being put in the spotlight only resulted in her receiving even more unfiltered personal attention. Not knowing what else to say, and feeling even more out of her element the longer the silence stretched between them, she purposefully speared a vegetable with her fork and popped it in her mouth. Concentrating on the taste ended up being just as difficult as fighting off the voice in her head urging her to make better conversation.

“So what are you planning on doing now?” Scorpia asked.

Holy fuck you’re not making it easy on me at all are you Scorpia, Catra thought, shocked at how she had pushed the conversation into an even harsher identity crisis for her. Please. Have mercy on a poor soul. “What do you mean?” she asked, trying to buy time to think of a good response.

“I mean Horde Prime is gone, and now we’ll be helping the Enclave perfect the Heart and fight the Beast. All us princesses will continue rebuilding our kingdoms and honing our magic so when the time comes, the Heart will work. What are you going to do now that there’s no more Horde? No more need to conquer the planet?”

“I really don’t know,” Catra said. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“You could come and work with me.” When Catra only looked to her with skepticism, Scorpia clacked her claws together. “I’m serious! Turns out the old Fright Zone is in pretty bad shape compared to the other Kingdoms, and I’ve had my connection to the Black Garnet only a fraction of the time the others have had their connections. I have extra reconstruction to help with and extra training to get up to speed magic-wise. The Enclave is supposed to assign me someone to help with organizing most of the rebuilding, but you’re Catra. You nearly conquered the entire world. I think you would do an amazing job helping put the old place back together.”

Scorpia grew more excited and animated with each word she spoke. Catra couldn’t help the emotion that tugged at her the longer she watched. Even after everything she had done, Scorpia still saw a good person in her. Vouched for her, to her. How did she ever make a friend like her?

“Ohh! And Entrapta will be there a lot too,” Scorpia said. “The Enclave apparently really likes what she’s done, what with bringing Angella back and helping integrate their tech with ours and everything. She’s going to be spending a lot of time at my new Kingdom, and I know she’d be super happy if you were there too. After all, you did convince Horde Prime to give back Ho—“

Catra hissed and surged forward, clapping a hand over Scorpia’s mouth and scanning the room to see if anyone heard what she was about to say. When she looked back at Scorpia and saw the surprise and confusion on her face, she pulled her hand back, and her ears drooped.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to overreact I just…”

“Was I not supposed to know?” Scorpia asked. “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. It’s just, she was so excited and happy she couldn’t keep it to herself and told me a few weeks ago and—”

“It’s fine,” Catra said, waving her hands to shut her up quick so no one overheard. “I should have expected something like that to happen, I just…can you make sure it doesn’t get out past the two of you? I told her to give it at least six months before she let anyone else know. Let him work on tech and whatever, and then tell people about it after he’s already done plenty to help. If they found out now so soon after everything is starting to calm down they’ll just freak.”

“I understand,” Scorpia said, nodding solemnly. “Totally get it, one hundred percent, yep.” She made a “lips sealed” gesture with her claws.

“Thanks,” Catra said. “And thank you for offering me a spot at the Scorpion Kingdom too, I just…I don’t know.”

“You don’t want to come?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to help you,” Catra said. “It’s just…” she sighed. “I think the Fright Zone just harbors too many bad memories for me. And I know it’s not the Fright Zone anymore and it’s your kingdom and everything, but I really think if I went back the only thing I would think about is what I suffered through there. As much as I want to help you, I just think being reminded about all the fucked up shit Shadow Weaver did to me, or how Adora and I would talk about running the place when we got older only to…” she trailed off as the mention of Adora brought fresher, more painful memories and she shook her head. “I just don’t think it’d be healthy for me. I’m sorry Scorpia, I hope that makes sense.”

Scorpia shook her head as if she were the one that had said something wrong and was scrambling to make up for it. “No! No, no that makes total sense to me, I should’ve realized that before I asked.” She made an exaggerated motion thunking herself on the forehead with her claw. “I get it. Once I get the place fixed up I don’t think it will look very much like the old Fright Zone, to be perfectly honest. And I hope you won’t let old memories stop you from coming to visit from time to time. You’d always be welcome.”

“Of course I’ll come visit,” Catra said, feeling more confusing emotions at hearing Scorpia say the same thing the king and queen had told her only moments earlier. “And I mean what I said before, I have no idea what I’m going to do now. All I know is that I really want to make things right with Adora again. Everything else I’ll figure out after.”

Something pricked at the corners of her awareness and she turned her head. Adora stood there, off in a shadowy corner of the banquet hall with her back facing her, gesturing with wide, angry movements at a stone-faced Glimmer.

“Mother of Etheria, do I have some sort of fucking sixth sense when it comes to her or something?” Catra said, more to herself than anything. She caught Scorpia following her line of sight and said, “don’t answer that. It was rhetorical.”

“You should go talk to her,” Scorpia said, reaching over to spear some of Catra’s vegetables off her plate.

“I’ve tried already. Twice! She keeps running away from me.”

Scorpia frowned and her eyes turned sad. “Adora’s been having a hard time. It’s not just me that’s noticed it, either. All the princesses talk about how she doesn’t seem to sleep and is way more irritable lately. I mean, just look at her with poor Glimmer over there.”

Catra didn’t respond and just chewed the inside of her cheek as she watched.

Scorpia nudged her gently with her elbow. “Go talk to her,” she said. “If she’s really having as hard a time as it looks then maybe what she needs most right now is a friend—one who really will go out of their way to show her she doesn’t have to bear this whole ‘save-the-galaxy’ stuff on her own.”

“What if she just runs away again?”

“I don’t think Glimmer will let her get away that easily if you ask me,” Scorpia said. “Besides, you guys grew up together. She’ll come around, just have to keep trying. True friends don’t give up that easily on each other, am I right?”

Scorpia nudged her again, this time with a wink. A whole new nuance to Scorpia’s sudden appearance at her table dawned on Catra upon seeing it.

 “Thanks Scorpia,” she said, a genuine appreciation welling up inside her. “For everything. Thank you.”

She stood and headed over to Adora and Glimmer as fast as she could, fearing that if she delayed even a little she might lose the sudden confidence she felt with Scorpia’s blessing. As she got closer, she caught the tail end of their conversation.

“—don’t know what else to say to you Adora. I was hoping you would be supportive about this. Hell, even my parents said they understood. We just barely got our family back together so of course they’re sad as shit too, but you don’t see them trying to change my mind.”

“Yeah? Have you thought about how we’re going to activate the Heart once it’s stabilized? We need someone connected to every runestone to get it to work. How the heck did she okay this?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten,” Glimmer said. “Have you forgotten that my mom has a connection too? And has had it for far longer? She’ll need to undergo less training than anyone else, and seeing as how she’s the most experienced out of everyone at actually running a kingdom, she’ll also be better suited than I am for leading the rest of the princesses.”

Adora frowned. “Just because Bow is being weird doesn’t mean you have to—“

“It’s not about Bow,” she said, interrupting her with a steel to her voice Catra hadn’t expected. When Adora didn’t respond, Glimmer said, “you know I’m right. Look, I know and there’s a lot of pressure on you and I sympathize with that, but that doesn’t change anything. It’s not Bow, it’s not you….I promise. The decision is made.”

“You mean you’ve made the decision. Don’t make it sound like it’s out of your hands when you’re the one that did it.” Adora stiffened as if realizing her and Glimmer weren’t alone. Then she turned and looked at Catra.

“Hey Adora.” Catra played with her fingers behind her back, not sure what else to do with them, and her tail flicked low to the ground in unease.

Adora’s eyes went wide and she turned to march away from the both of them. “It’s fine, Glimmer. Do what you want. I’ll see you—“

Glimmer teleported in front of her and spread her arms wide. “Adora, you can’t run away from this.”

“Get out of my way,” Adora said, gritting her teeth.

“You aren’t seriously trying to run away from this after telling me not to run away from my problems, are you?” Glimmer asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Glimmer—“

“No, Adora. Just no.” She let her arms down and crossed them over her chest, then jutted out her chin as if daring Adora to force her way through. “You keep talking about how you need to save the galaxy and how much is at stake but you can’t even turn around and talk to her. You’re the one that needs to stop running away from your problems. Not me.”

“Glimmer, please,” Adora voice had gone low and desperate, all of her cutting, judgmental tone from earlier having disappeared. Catra shifted on her feet and bit her lip. Maybe she shouldn’t have come over in the first place after all if Adora was that uncomfortable with her.

“I care about you,” Glimmer said, still speaking to Adora, her own voice growing soft. “I was terrified you would hate me for what I said and for what I did before Horde Prime arrived because I value your friendship so much. And no matter what happens to us, I will always be your friend. But that’s why, as your friend, I’m telling you to turn around and have this conversation. Don’t run away from this anymore.”

Adora stood there with her hands balled into shaking fists. She didn’t say anything for so long Catra almost gave up right then and there. Then Adora’s shoulders relaxed, she let out a shaky breath, and Glimmer nodded, satisfied. With lips pressed into a thin line, she walked past Adora and clapped Catra on the shoulder with one hand as she passed her.

“Come see me after you two finish talking please,” she whispered into Catra’s ear as she went. Then the two of them were finally alone, standing in the corner of the banquet room with the sounds of drunken celebration reverberating in the background.

Catra traced a crack in the marble flooring with her eyes, suddenly shy and uncomfortable in her own skin now that she was reasonably certain Adora wouldn’t run away. She opened her mouth to say something when Adora turned and pulled her by the wrist.

“Come on,” Adora said.

Catra let herself be dragged into the hallway connecting to the main room, the hairs all over her body threatening to stand on end. They stopped with enough distance put between them and the open doorway to give them privacy against anyone walking by, and Adora suddenly let go of Catra’s wrist and turned.

Catra rushed to get her words out first. “I know you’re still mad at me about—”

“I’m not mad at you,” Adora said, setting her jaw.

Catra scowled. “You’ve been running away from me every time I’ve approached you. It’s taken Sparkles giving you a tongue lashing just for us to get this far, how can you stand there and say you aren’t mad?” Anger flashed across Adora’s eyes before she schooled her expression into calm.

“Ok, we’ll talk,” Adora said. The calm in her voice set Catra further on edge. “We’ll talk, but I want to go first. I want to say everything that’s been running nonstop in my head for the past month. And as much as you are going to get the urge to interrupt, don’t. Let me get everything out first without you knocking me off track and twisting my words in ways that I don’t mean them, and then I’ll listen to everything you have to say without interrupting. Deal?”

Catra felt the immediate urge to challenge the accusation she twists Adora’s words before violently telling herself not to even start. By her own admission, she just got Adora to turn around and acknowledge her. Catra wasn’t about to violate the one requirement she put in place for this conversation before it even got off the ground. She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. “Sure. Go ahead.”

“I loved you.”

Catra thought her heart might stop. “W-what?”

Adora’s nostrils flared as she spoke, and she blinked so often Catra suspected she was trying to hold back tears, but Adora didn’t take her eyes off her as she battled for her words.

“We grew up together. Pulled each other through some of the darkest times in our childhoods. How could I not? You think I’m mad at you, but that’s not it Catra. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you…I loved you. I still love you, and that’s why I’m so terrified of having this conversation.”

Adora only looked at her after throwing that between them, daring her to say something. Catra, suppressing every instinct to press her for more, somehow managed to stay quiet.

“I’m not mad now, but I was…before,” Adora sounded as if she was sure her words would blow up in her face like a landmine with each syllable. “I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t come with me to the Rebellion, I didn’t understand why you’d turned so vicious in the Crystal Castle after I thought we were finally getting through to each other, or why you pulled the lever and opened the portal even after I begged you not to. I…didn’t understand why everything I said seemed to only make things worse and make you angrier with me.”

A single tear broke free and ran down Adora’s face. She took a sharp breath in and looked away. Catra couldn’t tell if she was hissing in anger or from sadness, but took a step forward, intent on comforting her. Adora took a step back as quickly as if she had burned her foot. She held up a hand to clearly tell Catra to keep her distance and, unsure of what to do, she complied. What else could she do?

“I’m not mad anymore,” Adora said.” I finally understood what it felt like to be you…to be so determined not to lose that you throw everything else out the window just to win. What you felt throwing the switch to that portal? I felt that ordering all of us to teleport onto the citadel—to fight even when I knew how likely the chances were that we’d die. I’m not mad about all the stuff you did anymore, Catra, because now I understand why you did it. How it felt.”

She gave a bitter, barking laugh and more tears welled up in her eyes. “And now I finally understand what it feels like to be abandoned. I always thought you were making a bigger deal out of it than it really was because I never felt like I was leaving you behind. It just felt like I was doing the right thing and you would have understood, especially if I invited you to the Rebellion with me. I had no idea it’d hurt this much, even when I understand why it’s happening. Glimmer’s right—it’s the best thing for her, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. If I had known this is what it felt like for you when I left…maybe I would have done things differently. I’m so sorry, Catra.”

Adora dragged a sleeve across her eyes and took a shuddering breath. More tears had spilled down her face as she had spoken, and Catra couldn’t keep herself restrained any longer. She took another step toward her.

“Adora, I—“

“Stop.” Adora said, voice so harsh it actually made Catra freeze mid-step. “You’re only going to make it harder for me to finish. You promised I could say everything first. You promised.”

On one hand, Catra wanted nothing more than to go and do whatever she could to comfort her, pride be damned. On the other, seeing the pleading look Adora gave her when she took that first step told her that, if she went any further, she’d yet again be betraying the very person she was trying to make amends with: her Adora. The war inside Catra’s mind had never raged so furiously before, and in the end, she decided to stay exactly where she was and pray that Adora didn’t sink herself before she gave permission for Catra to finally go to her.

“I can’t do this,” Adora said, running her other sleeve across her eyes and sniffling.

“What can’t you do?” Catra asked after Adora didn’t explain further. “You can’t keep having this conversation right now or…?”

“I can’t go through this with you.” Adora wouldn’t stop rubbing her eyes, one sleeve replacing the other over and over again. “Ever since I found that…god’s forsaken sword in the woods I’ve done nothing but second guess myself over you. I’ve spent more time agonizing over how to repair our friendship or how to prevent you from outsmarting the Rebellion than I spent trying to control my powers and accept responsibility over them.”

A sinking feeling in Catra’s stomach made itself known with each word Adora struggled to get out between hiccups and sniffles and shaky breaths. “What are you saying?” she asked. “What do you mean you can’t go through this with me?”

“When we fought in the Crystal Castle, I tried and hoped and wished with everything that you would come with me. And when you attacked Bright Moon, I hadn’t tried to embrace She Ra until it was almost too late. I kept thinking you would come to your senses and stop at some point. When you opened the portal, I spent more time trying to convince you to come with me and escape than I did trying to work out how to use She Ra and stop it. We lost Queen Angella because of it.”

“Adora, that’s not on you. That’s on—”

“And even though everything worked out in the end, I panicked when I saw you hold that knife against Glimmer’s throat up on the citadel. King Micah tried to tell me that you weren’t on our side, but I didn’t believe him. I wanted you to be on our side so badly I literally froze at the worst possible time because I refused to believe you had turned on us. Again.”

“I didn’t turn on you,” Catra said. “I didn’t! I know it looked like it at the time, but I was helping you. Horde Prime was going to kill you all if you didn’t surrender. I had to…I had to do something.” Catra felt the conversation getting away from her—felt the path Adora had gotten herself on with and where they ended. It terrified her.

“And what if Taline hadn’t been able to convince him?” Adora asked. “I saw your reaction when she offered herself to him in our stead for punishment. That surprised you. You weren’t expecting it.”

Adora was right, but Catra had to get her off this train of thought before it was too late. “I know but—”

“What if our only chance at living had been if I focused on my responsibilities in the first place?” Adora asked. “What if our only chance was if I had taken out Prime like we originally planned, without getting distracted? I’ve been lucky…things have worked out so far, but it’s not always going to be like that. It would be naïve and irresponsible for me to think that with so many lives at stake. The Beast is coming, we need to prepare, and I need to fulfill my destiny as She Ra or else trillions will die. Trillions have already died. There’s no getting around it this time. No more lucky breaks.”

Adora stopped rubbing her eyes and looked Catra head on. Only then did it dawn on her that Adora hadn’t been merely on the verge of tears and trying to hide it; she was already all out sobbing. Tears flowed nonstop and free down her face, and it broke Catra’s heart. She hadn’t seen Adora cry that hard since they were children. That realization took the creeping, uneasy, sinking feeling from earlier and pushed her into a near panic.

“So what are you saying?” Catra asked in a low voice.

“I can’t risk it,” Adora said. “I choked three times now because I was so focused on you…focused on us. If I do that again…” She shook her head. “You heard Salas. This weapon is the Galaxy’s last hope. It has to work.”

“Say what it is you’re trying to say, Adora. Just spit it out already.” Tears of Catra’s own prick the corners of her eyes, and she fought them back, shoveling venom into her voice instead.

“I can’t be second guessing myself because of how strong my feelings for you are. I can’t risk even just the possibly of it happening again, even if the both of us swear to be on the same side and work on our relationship. I can’t afford to be irresponsible. Naïve.” A sob escaped her. “When this banquet is over—“

Panic got the better of Catra. She suddenly didn’t want Adora to finish her sentence. “Adora, wait—”

 “—and when I get the sword back…when we all start training in earnest to use the Heart—“

“Just wait, don’t finish what you’re—“

“—I don’t want to see or hear from you again, Catra.”

That last phrase hung in the air between them and echoed down the hall. Catra had heard the phrase “waiting for the other shoe to drop” before, but now that it had finally happened, she realized it felt more like a cinderblock dropping through to the pit of her stomach than any shoe she knew.

“There,” Adora said, sniffling. “I’ve said everything. Your turn. Sorry to make you wait.”

“You don’t mean that,” Catra said, half begging and half asserting.

“I do mean it. That’s why I’ve been running away from this conversation for a month. I didn’t want to have it.”

“You can’t mean that, Adora…you can’t really mean that…”

“Please don’t make this harder than it already is.” Adora’s voice broke again. It was infuriating. What right did Adora have to beg her to not make things difficult after what she said? “I’ve fought myself for weeks over whether or not this is the right thing to do, and it is the right thing to do. I can’t let myself get distracted, not when so much is at stake. If you were ever in danger again, I would come do everything I could to help you without a second thought, but otherwise I don’t want to see you while I’m trying to figure this out…not until we defeat the Beast at the very least.”

Somewhere in Catra’s rattled mind she realized it was now finally her turn to speak freely, to tell Adora all the things she had been wanting to say. But just the thought of trying to come up with coherent words or thoughts sent her spiraling into even further swells of anxiety and despair.

She doesn’t want you anymore. You pushed everything too far. You’ve ruined it. She doesn’t want you. Adora doesn’t want you. You hurt her.

Catra’s thoughts ripped her to shreds, tearing into her without end. The hallway started closing in around her, trying to suffocate her. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. Everything had gone blurry with the tears in her eyes. Her heart beat so fast Catra was convinced it’d stop at any moment. Somewhere, she heard Adora’s muffled voice prompt her again, but all she could think to do was escape.

Catra turned and ran down the hall, nearly bowling over a blur of pink and purple on her way to the castle doors. Someone called out to her from behind her. She ignored them and ran for all she was worth.

Chapter Text

It was still dark outside when Catra finally regained enough of her senses to take stock of her surroundings. She was sitting up on a grassy knoll. The edge of the Whispering Woods began just in front of her and Bright Moon castle lay behind, with the lights and music from the feast still going strong. Despite losing all sense of time, she must not have been fighting her panic attack long enough for the party to die down. One of Taline’s Enclave star cruisers, the Constable, hovered high above, leaving a sharp, triangular patch of darkness amid the stars in the sky.

A breeze picked up, ruffling the grass and making the tree branches creak. Catra shivered and hugged her knees for warmth; she’d always been susceptible to the cold despite being covered in fine fur. Her jacket was still in the banquet hall, she realized, having forgotten about it completely in her rush to escape from the castle closing in on her. She considered returning for it before deciding it wasn’t worth it. What if she ran into Adora again? And even if she didn’t, being around people was the last thing she wanted at the moment.

Something rustled in the grass behind her and it didn’t sound like the breeze. She whipped around with ears perked, landing on all fours with fur bristled, teeth bared, and claws extended.

Taline stood before her holding a covered platter of what Catra assumed was food with both hands.

“Sorry,” Catra said, retracting her claws and forcing her fur to settle down. She had never enjoyed snapping at people before, but neither had she cared much when she had. Now, for some reason, baring her fangs at Taline even when she didn’t know it was her to begin with suddenly made her feel guilty. “Sorry,” she said again, looking to the side, embarrassed that she couldn’t even grasp at an excuse to give.

“It’s fine,” Taline said, shrugging. “I thought you’d have heard me coming a lot sooner. Too in your head tonight?”

“You could say that.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Why?” Catra cringed when Taline merely quirked an eyebrow at her and reached for something to smooth over how combative that had sounded. “You leave tomorrow. Don’t you want to, I don’t know, enjoy the party they’re all throwing for you before you have to go?”

“I wouldn’t be out here if that’s what I wanted to do,” Taline said. “Now can I join you or not? My arms are getting tired holding this thing.” She hefted the platter in her hands.

You were the one who hoped she’d come visit you, Catra thought, slamming her head against a wall in her mind. Why are you coming up with reasons for her to leave now that she’s finally here?

 “S-sure,” Catra said. “Sorry.”

Taline came up and sat next to her on the hill, facing away from the castle and toward the woods. Catra mirrored her, and Taline placed the tray on the grass before sliding it over in front of her.

“Glimmer came and found me,” Taline said. “She was worried about you after you stormed out of the castle. I actually had to pull up the Constable’s sensor scanner and show her you were just hanging out at the edge of the woods before she’d let it go.”

Catra thought back to the blur in the hallway she saw as she was running away. “I think I almost ran her over trying to escape,” she said with a chuckle, hugging her knees again rather than reach for the food. Catra startled, suddenly remembering something. “Oh shit. She wanted me to come talk to her after I finished with Adora. I totally forgot.”

“It’s fine,” Taline said, laughing through her nose. “I told her to let you cool off on your own out here for a while and she agreed. She’s a bullheaded and impulsive person, so if it were really that important, she’d have come found you on her own.”

The endearing tone with which Taline spoke had Catra laughing in spite of herself. Glimmer had told her how she went to antagonize Horde Prime instead of follow Taline’s orders, and Catra had told her how vexed Taline had looked when she found out about it. It seemed Taline didn’t hold onto any hard feelings from it, and Catra was glad for it.

“How are you?” Taline asked. Catra almost responded with one of her well-practiced deflections until she saw the way Taline looked at her. Instead, she deflated.

“Not good,” Catra said. “I shouldn’t be surprised Adora reacted the way she did after everything, but something in me still wished that bridge wasn’t already burnt beyond repair.” She had no idea how much Taline knew of what transpired earlier, but she guessed she was filled in enough already.

“You were hoping you could fix things?”

“Well, yeah of course. We’ve just been through so much growing up together, a part of me thought…well, hoped is a better word I guess—hoped that no matter how bad things got, we’d be able to get back to one another somehow.” Catra’s chest constricted, warning of another impending panic attack the more she talked. She hugged her knees closer and pricked her claws into her shins.

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as unconditional love, much as we all want to believe in it,” Taline said. “At least…as far as I’ve experienced. Closest I’ve ever seen is a parent’s love for their child, and you already know that’s not always the case.”

Catra didn’t move a muscle on her body except to dig her claws deeper. She had the sneaking suspicion Taline had long already knew of Shadow Weaver and who she was to Catra. Taline bringing her up in this way all but confirmed it. She laughed and shrugged, as if physically trying to shirk the conversation topic away.

Taline looked at her with an unreadable expression. “That said, I do think you and Adora have something special. I’ve seen the way she looks at you, even with all your…history. Maybe there’s a chance you two will reconcile in the future, learn how to lean on each other like you did as kids once more.”

“You think so?”

Taline shrugged. “Or maybe you won’t, who knows? I’m not an oracle. I wasn’t the member of my family blessed with that particular curse.”

Catra frowned, not exactly sure what Taline was referring to. She still felt so unsatisfied and frustrated about everything, despite Taline obviously trying to cheer her up in her own awkward way. “I just…I don’t know what to do now,” Catra said. She sighed, and after another moment of silence, she looked up at Taline, prompting her for a response.

 Taline startled. “Oh, you wanted me to give you an answer?” She blinked, clearly in thought. “I’m not sure if I have one, honestly. You may have grown up knowing only a primitive version of the Horde and the few relationships it entailed, but it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. That whole situation with Adora? Ball’s not in your court any longer, I’d say. You’ll be miserable if that’s the only thing you focus on, because you don’t have any influence over its outcome .”

“That’s…depressing to think about.”

Taline nodded. “It can be, if you choose to look at it that way. Or you can choose to see it as an opportunity to discover yourself, now that the relationships and foundations that have underpinned your entire life are now dissolved. You can choose to work on yourself—grow as a person in a direction you want.”

Catra narrowed her eyes, at a complete loss for words. Grow as a person in the direction she wanted? What the hell did that even mean?

Taline threw her head back and laughed so hard she snorted. “Too preachy?” she asked, wiping a tear from her eye. “Sorry, I’ve never seen that caught-in-the-headlights look from you before. It threw me.”

“Hell yeah it threw you, it threw me too!” Catra said. “Where did that come from? Here I thought you were just someone that throws magic lightning from her hands strong enough to blast Shadow Weaver on her ass. If I knew you gave sage advice I might have just gone and sought you out first.”

Taline smiled, before her demeanor turned somber and she sighed. “I’ve done a lot I’ve had to reflect on over the years. That ‘sage advice’ has been won at great personal cost.”

Catra nodded and swallowed, riding the wave of tension between them. She had a question she wanted to ask, and needed to ride her emotions until they brought her somewhere she could speak without her voice wavering or cracking.

“What was it like for you when you lost your sister?”

Taline narrowed her eyes and Catra feared she had overstepped. “You saw through his memories when the Emperor probed you, didn’t you?” she asked. “I had a feeling that’s what had happened. How else would you know she was my sister when no one dares even say her name, let alone admit she exists?” She looked away and set her lips in a thin line. “What did you see?”

“I was him for a moment in the throne room,” Catra said, picking her words carefully. “It was after a battle, I think. He was angry. You were there, and he asked what happened to the body.”

Taline didn’t say anything at first. Then…

 “That was maybe a week after the final battle above Archanas ended,” she said. “Salas didn’t mention it in the meeting, but I was the one leading our naval forces above the planet. Prime was not happy to learn I defied his order to retreat and made an opening for the Daiamid ships to get through instead, when they returned.”

“Is that how you earned your moniker?” Catra asked. “Is that where ‘Seraph of Archanas’ came from?”

Taline shook her head, a sudden sullenness coming to her expression. “It’s not. That came from something else entirely, but it doesn’t stop everybody in the empire thinking that’s where it came from—me defying the Emperor in the final battle.”

Catra gave her a confused look and Taline glanced away from her. “It’s…complicated. As much as people have good intentions when they invoke my title, it’s not exactly a pleasant memory for me to relive…how I actually got it. Maybe one of these days I’ll tell you, but for right now…?”

“No, no it’s fine,” Catra said, shaking her head. The last thing she wanted to do was push Taline away the moment they had an opportunity to talk. Is this what people felt like trying to get her to open up? Walking on eggshells? “Sorry I brought it up.”

Etheria’s nighttime wildlife chirped and crooned in the background with the rustling of leaves in the breeze. Catra stayed silent, praying she hadn’t alienated Taline already.

“After the battle,” Taline said, continuing off from their previous topic as if they hadn’t diverted in the first place. “I took a landing party down to the surface, where we found my sister’s body. There wasn’t anything worth taking off her corpse, so instead, the Emperor wanted me to get everything from the hidden lab she and her team had set up with the Daiamid after fleeing the Heartlands.” She leaned back, propping herself up with both hands behind her on the grass and stared up at the stars. “God, that was eight years ago now. I probably wasn’t much older than you are now.”

Those words didn’t initially jolt Catra. But, as she processed what Taline had said and the implications behind them, horror and anger built within her like a wave picking up speed the closer it sped toward the shore, threatening to crash her into rocks on the cliffside. Before long, just imagining herself in Taline’s shoes made Catra flinch. Shadow Weaver and the Horde had damaged her and, somewhere deep inside, she feared that damage was irreparable. But she couldn’t imagine losing someone in a battle and then having to scour the last of their belongings only to hand it over to Prime.

Not only that, but apparently nobody could even acknowledge she had existed. What was it Prime had said to her? Catra wracked her brain trying to remember specifics about that nightmare back on the citadel. She shuddered when it came to her.

Your sister shall be forgotten by history, and any who dare utter her name shall share her fate.

Something akin to empathy knotted itself in Catra’s chest, and she sat there in silence for a moment, watching the stars in the sky twinkle down at them.

“Tell me about her,” Catra asked. “Please?”

Taline studied her as if searching for any sign of Catra second guessing herself. Finally, she nodded and pulled at the sleeve of her uniform to expose the hardware sitting underneath. She tapped a few commands into the device on her forearm until a holographic interface appeared above her wrist.

“Captain,” Taline said. “I need you to shut off the passive trackers you have for me and the Etherian girl I’m with,” A moment passed as, Catra assumed, whoever was on the other line responded. “Yes, full privacy please,” Taline said. “No logs recorded, no timestamps. Nothing.” Another moment, then she killed the communicator and leaned back on her hands again with a sigh.

“Her name was Evelyn,” she said. “That’s the name Horde Prime has tried so hard to prevent anyone from speaking. We didn’t get along—not at first. I hated her when we were young, and it took a long while for me to come around.”

Catra had the decency to not hide the surprise she felt hearing that. The few times Catra imagined Taline’s nameless, near-faceless sister before then, she imagined them having a good relationship—imagined Taline being a model sister. Still, she rolled the name ‘Evelyn’ around in her mind, and prompted Taline to continue by not saying anything at all. Part of her feared by saying anything, whatever invisible spell had compelled Taline to open up to her would break.

“I was an orphan too, you know,” Taline said. “Just like you.”

“Really?” Catra stared at her, surprising even herself at just how quickly she gave up on keeping quiet.

Taline smiled and nodded. “Yes, really. My parents thought they couldn’t conceive, so they took me in. Things were good for a while, until they found out they actually could have a child of their own after all. That’s when Evelyn came—four years after me.”

“Did they treat you badly after she came?” Catra already felt a lump growing in her throat just asking the question. “Is that why you two didn’t get along?”

“Wouldn’t that be a convenient excuse if they had?” Taline asked, laughing to herself and shaking her head. “No, they loved both of us and were fantastic parents. I think that only made it harder for me though.”

“What do you mean?”

 “I mean that it was me,” Taline said. “I was the reason we didn’t get along. Not my parents. Not Evelyn.” She plucked grass from the dirt and sighed. “Just me. I was the one with the book smarts out of the two of us, and I pushed myself to use them. I studied for hours outside of school for perfect grades, and used them to get into a top university in the Heartlands. Evelyn struggled to maintain even a passing average, and that was with my tutoring. But no matter how much more I accomplished than her, no matter how much more I achieved, I could never be their biological child—that was always going to be Evelyn.”

Catra held her breath. She empathized with Taline even more now than moments before. It was a strange thing, being able to see both her and Adora’s struggle in Taline’s story; the urge to keep fighting and achieving, but forever feeling second rate. Forever feeling like someone undeserving of love and praise, despite it all.

“I only wish I realized how stupid I was being before it was too late,” Taline said. “Our parents were proud of her too, of course. She was just beginning her undergraduate at a minor vocational science school at around the same time I left to train with the Enclave. If I could go back in time and shake my past self, tell her I didn’t have to kill myself overachieving because the three of them already loved me, I would. But I wouldn’t learn that lesson until after our parents had died. Not until Evelyn and I had only each other left.”

“That sounds…I think I might understand some of that.” Catra couldn’t count how many times since returning to Etheria she wanted to grab her past self and shake her, too. Convince past Catra to be less…stupid.

Taline turned to look at her, startling her with how sudden the movement was. “Then you’ll probably understand when I say the answer to your question is it felt horrible, losing her. I lost my parents only to finally learn to appreciate Evelyn, and then I lost her because I didn’t know her well enough to realize she needed help. Seeing her body lying there in the ruins on Archanas…”

Taline trailed off, averting her eyes. To Catra, she looked strong—somehow seeming confident in a moment of weakness. What a strange juxtaposition.

“What do you mean you didn’t realize what was really going on with her?” Catra asked.

Taline chuckled again, nostalgia making her eyes shimmer as she reminisced. “Evelyn had no magic potential to speak of. In fact, she barely kept up with her studies while I was away. War had broken out with the Beast by the time she graduated, and I assumed she’d pick something nondescript as a job. Simple. Maybe an associate position at a minor lab in the Heartlands. I didn’t at all expect she’d sign onto a black site.”

Catra frowned and Taline must have picked up on her confusion, because she said, “they used hidden space stations to research the Beast—still do, to this day. Evelyn had accepted a position at one to help with the war effort and didn’t tell me. This was before she discovered ignominite…back when the two-year survival rate serving on one of those teams was damn near zero. When I found out, I nearly blew a gasket.”

“How did you find out, exactly?” Catra asked. “If the stations are supposed to be secret, how would you have known she joined one?”

“I didn’t know,” Taline said with a frown. “Not until it was almost too late. Her station had lost control of the Beast sample it was working with and exploded. All hands lost, except for two. I was serving on the front lines at the time and intercepted the distress signal. The captain of the ship I was on wasn’t very happy when I commandeered his carrier and forced it to respond, but what are you going to do? Say no to an Enclave Battlemage?” She laughed. “We got there, and it was only her and Corynth out of a team of seventy that survived.”

“That’s it?” Catra asked, astounded. “Two out of seventy?”

“The fact anyone survived at all was newsworthy in and of itself, Catra,” Taline said. “There had never been survivors before, ever. I should have known something was wrong right then and there, especially after Corynth told me he was a Battlemage too. I was supposed to be an exceedingly rare case, earning my own commission at the age I did. He couldn’t have been more than a few months older than me at the time.”

“He was there with her even back then?” Catra asked. “Corynth.”

“There from the very start.” Taline said with a nod. “He was only masquerading as a Battlemage, of course, but I wouldn’t have known that. The Daiamid were still just rumors and whispers at that point. There was no way I could have known he already had his claws in Evelyn at the time, manipulating her. I was just so happy to see her still alive…and what she told me once I finally got her alone surprised me so much I didn’t even think to look if anything was wrong in the first place.”

“What’d she say to you?” They weren’t talking about coping with loss any longer, but Catra couldn’t stop herself from asking. She was already far too invested in the story.

“She said her team finally found a promising trail of research on the Beast shortly before everything went to hell. Time was of the essence, and, as the only surviving member of her group, she was apparently the only person who could see it through to fruition. She begged me to help her get the resources she needed to finish her assignment.”

“You believed her?”

Taline grimaced. “How could I not? Like I said, I was so happy to see her alive, I didn’t think about looking into things deeper. She was the first ever recorded survivor of a black-site meltdown, and I was ready to believe anything that came out of her mouth.

“I pulled some strings. Got her a research station of her own. Within three months she discovered ignominite and changed the landscape of the war. Now, instead of containing the Beast in clear boxes, they shoved it into crystals made of the stuff, and Beast-related research deaths dropped to near zero overnight. When the military incorporated it into our munitions, suddenly we could now more effectively harm the thing…push it back. Treat it almost like a terrestrial enemy. Ignominite is such an important commodity, it makes up a significant chunk of the empire-wide GDP to this day.”

“That’s what Prime gambled on instead of the Barrier” Catra said, remembering what Salas mentioned at the briefing. “Ignominite.”

“You’ve been paying attention.” Taline smiled at her and Catra flushed. She was still so bad with compliments and authority figures.

“What is it?” she asked, after a moment. “I mean, I know why it’s important but…what is it, exactly?”

Taline made a face. “A bio-metallic alloy derived from the dead remains of the Beast itself. Lots of innate properties, most important of which is rendering the Beast docile. It’s extremely expensive to make. What it is isn’t as important as what it could do, and we still couldn’t win the war with it, even after we started using it wholesale. The creature had just grown too large to be stopped by conventional forces. Prime believed if we made a few more breakthroughs with it then we’d be able to turn the tide, but Evie was convinced he was wrong.

“She discovered the ruins of the First Ones…deciphered their notes on the Barrier. Then she outright refused to do anything other than pursue researching it, even with the threat of death looming upon her. I tried to convince her, but…” she shrugged, suddenly looking angry. “When the Emperor called for her head, Corynth and the rest of his people revealed themselves as members of the Daiamid. They took her and her team away to finish their research in secret.”

“Prime didn’t just let her walk out the door,” Catra said. “From the way Salas talked, it sounded as if—”

“As if there were a fight,” Taline said, nodding. “There was. It was vicious.” She sighed, taking a long moment before speaking once again. “I was one of the justices at her trial. I tried to convince her to admit guilt, privately. Prime promised me he wouldn’t kill her if she submitted. She refused, and he called for her head anyways, even after I voted to acquit.

“The Daiamid stepped in to defend her. They were…incredible sorcerers, far more powerful than the army of battlemages there that day for Evelyn’s trial. I didn’t want her executed, obviously, but I didn’t trust what they were going to do if they abducted her, either. I…tried my best to stop them. I thought that if I kept their insurrection from succeeding then I might have been able to sway Prime—convince him to still spare her life anyways. But…they got away, and Prime still hasn’t lived it down, as you can tell.”

Another image came to Catra—one she had seen in passing while her mind still flip-flopped in the citadel’s medical ward, before Taline stabilized her. She was there too, standing on the steps of the Enclave Judiciary, the setting sun casting a dramatic background while soldiers and Battlemages fought the insurgents. She had witnessed Taline let loose a blinding fork of magic at someone in a deep cloak, a black mask covering his face in Prime’s memories. Catra remembered the rage she felt—his rage—when she had watched him deflect Taline’s spell with nothing but a gloved hand, much like Taline had done to Shadow Weaver.

“I think…I think I might have seen glimpses of that as well,” Catra said, blinking away the memory to return to Etheria. How did Evelyn discover all this stuff? The Barrier, ignominite…she couldn’t have just stumbled upon it, right?

Taline sighed, suddenly looking exhausted and aged. “Some people have special reactions when they come into contact with the Beast, if they live through the experience. Normally you’d die when it comes into contact with you and overwhelms your mind. It would then use your body as a thrall, or worse, an Abomination. But in Evie’s case…”

“She had an incredibly powerful member of the Daiamid to protect that mind of hers?”

Taline nodded. “Corynth manipulated her. Just like Salas stabilized your mind against Prime’s influence, Corynth did so with Evelyn’s against the Beast, just on a grander scale. Instead of dying when she touched consciousnesses with the thing, she saw through time.”

“She what now?” Catra wasn’t sure she heard her right. Saw through time?

“I’m not kidding,” Taline said, turning to look at her. “It showed her glimpses of its previous conflicts with other civilizations. Memories and events from eons ago. She saw how one civilization nearly discovered ignominite before her, saw the First Ones and their Barrier…. she saw the Heart, which is how she knew of Etheria’s coming. She warned us to prepare for you.”

“And despite all of that, Horde Prime still decided to interfere and nearly screw everything up?”

“He was furious when she defied him,” Taline said, shrugging. “The public had already seen Corynth and his Shapers in action at the final battle. It would have been impossible to discredit them, so he exalted them instead and proclaimed them the true heroes of the war. Then he had Evie’s name wiped from existence to claw back any semblance of control he could.”

“And the Enclave just accepted that?” Catra asked, growing angry both at the injustice of it all and how seemingly resigned to it Taline looked. “You have all this clout to convince him not to conquer our planet and enough bargaining power to get him to leave us alone, but they just went along with erasing someone who saved all their asses because Prime was pissed off about it?”

Taline sighed. “It sparked days of debate in our political chambers, but they ultimately accepted without challenge.”

“Why the hell would they do that? Don’t you think that’s kind of a betrayal to you and your sister?”

“Yes.” Taline looked at her with hard eyes and steel in her voice, and Catra finally saw the rage and anguish she had expected to see from the start, simmering there under the surface. “Of course it’s a betrayal. I hated going along with it too, but the galaxy needed help picking itself back up after what happened. I’ve never forgiven myself for not seeing what was really happening to her…for seeing through Corynth and how he was manipulating her. For not stopping it before it was too late.”

Catra understood the feeling. For all that Adora tried to reach out to her after she left the Horde, she never understood exactly why Catra never went along with her. She never saw underneath the surface at what really was going on with her despite every effort to do so. If this was the end result of a path like that, then…

“I don’t know what to say,” Catra said at last. “That’s just…It’s…” she growled, feeling frustrated at not being able to find the words. “I’m sorry.”

Taline shook her head. “It was eight years ago. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it, but you learn to cope with the new normal. I told you about this because I want you to understand something. It’s okay to feel broken up about what happened between you and Adora. It’s okay if it takes you a long time to focus on something in your life other than her. But at some point, you have to move forward. If you don’t, you’ll end up like me.”

“That honestly doesn’t seem like a terrible thing, truth be told,” Catra said, earning a laugh.

 “You’ll end up like me eight years ago, Catra, not like me right now. I had let my bitterness and envy control my every interaction with Evie until it was too late. I wasted my chance to know her like a true sister, and in the end, it cost her life when I couldn’t see how she was being used. At least with Adora, both of you are still alive, and there’s the opportunity for your paths to cross again in the future.”

Catra sighed and considered that. “I don’t want to keep going through life trying to get back at her for leaving me,” she said. “Even if she had a good reason to. I just don’t know what to do now. The entire planet is going to be completely focused on the Heart. I’d like to help—heck, Scorpia even extended an invitation to come be an advisor in her new kingdom. But I feel like anything I do on this planet short of secluding myself deep in the woods or out in the Crimson Wastes is just going to remind me of her.”

“It would be pretty hard to get away from that considering how central to the Enclaves plans Adora is.”

Catra cursed under her breath and leaned back on her hands to stare up at the stars, matching Taline’s posture. “I’d leave if I could,” she said, thinking aloud. “See the galaxy, find a new place where I’d fit. But like Salas said at the briefing, only ex-Horde who are extended an invitation can go, and they’d be locked into a five-year term of service as front-line soldiers in the military. I’m not opposed to serving, I’ve been in Hordak’s version of the Horde my whole life, but I didn’t get an invitation to leave.”

She shifted, suddenly feeling exposed. She had burned even more bridges with her old squad mates and the Etherian Horde in general long before Horde Prime’s arrival. Her leadership under Hordak hadn’t been well-received—not by Lonnie or Rogelio or the others, and she had a feeling her lack of an invitation to come along stemmed in part from that.

When she had heard Salas make the announcement after reconvening their briefing, and when she found out she hadn’t been invited to serve like literally every other member of Hordak’s old group had, it nearly broke her. Just thinking about it now still made her uncomfortably sad, even though she wouldn’t admit it to anyone but herself.

“About that,” Taline said, a playful tone dancing at the edge of her words. “Why not come with me?”

One of Catra’s ears quirked. “I’m sorry, can you say that again? I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

“Glimmer’s coming too.”

“What!?”

Taline laughed. “Just so we’re clear, she approached me about it, I didn’t go to her. In fact, I was initially against it until she gave me a few good reasons to consider.”

“She just got both her parents back, why would she want to leave Etheria and come with you? No offense, but I don’t understand that.”

“It’s not my place to share,” Taline said. “If she wants to tell you then she will, and I won’t say anything more about it than that. But I’m offering you the same opportunity because of the same reasons I agreed to bring her along. The only difference is she asked me to take her and I’m offering to take you, if you want.”

 “And what reasons do you have for bringing us?”

“You’re both smart, resourceful—“

Catra scoffed and tried to wave her off.

“—you’re talented,” Taline said, leaning in and forcing her voice past Catra’s attempts to brush them away. “I mean it Catra. The both of you could use some distance from this place to grow, and the galaxy just so happens to be in a place where they could use your talents. Everything we’ve done on Etheria for the past month helping to rebuild we’ve also been doing throughout the whole galaxy for the past eight years. And now that the Beast is slowly returning, people are on edge. Our society is more fragile than ever.”

Catra narrowed her eyes in thought. Sparkles was leaving? She had just started to become comfortable with her after everything, and one of the few silver linings Catra held close to her heart was, if she had to stay on Etheria, at least she’d be on good terms with Glimmer. Maybe even get a job she didn’t hate and didn’t force her to interact with Adora every day. But now? Now that Sparkles too was leaving? Was that what she wanted to talk to her about earlier? Was that why she had asked Catra to find her after finishing with Adora?

Taline pulled out a thin, saucer-shaped object from her jacket’s breast pocket. She held it aloft between the two of them, and a holographic representation of what looked like a massive space station appeared above, rotating on its center axis.

“This is Phoenix Station,” Taline said. “My new assignment for the foreseeable future, possibly until retirement.”

“You agreed to accept whatever punishment Prime gave you in our place and he gave you command of a station?” Catra asked, incredulous.

“It’s more complicated than that, but essentially yes. He wanted me expelled from the Enclave and thrown in prison, but whereas the Enclave didn’t feel able to put their foot down with Evie, they stuck their necks out for me. I’m no longer a member of any of the Enclave’s legislative councils or any of its steering committees. I have no more sentinels, and I no longer have a strong military following. I just have Phoenix Station and my job keeping peace in the sector of space it administrates.”

She clicked a button and the spinning image transitioned into a visual of their spiral galaxy. A section of space in the middle rim highlighted in yellow.

“The station sits in this area of the mid-rim. You aren’t familiar with the Empire’s astrography so I’ll spare you the details, but it’s in an area that is decidedly tame. There’s little unrest, it’s not as crowded as the Heartlands and not as chaotic as the outer rim. It’s slow and boring and that’s part of the reason Prime put me there.

“None of this is a free ride, mind you. I’ll be training Glimmer in magic and putting her up for consideration with the Enclave since it’s the natural choice. You, on the other hand, have a few more options than she does, and still many more than your ex-Horde colleagues. You can’t do magic, but there are plenty of spots that can use your skills and attitude. You’ll have one year of probationary service under my sponsorship before you’re given official citizenship with the Empire. Normally it takes five years, but a sponsor from a member of the Enclave holds special weight.”

Catra ran scenarios through her mind so fast she was afraid she’d get whiplash. She could leave and start over! But then she’d be leaving the only home she’s known, ever. Sparkles would be there too! But what if it was worse for her out there than here? But she’d have a clean slate and this time, and the benefit of Taline’s guidance, rather than Shadow Weaver and the damned Fright Zone Horde.

“You don’t have to make a decision right away,” Taline said, resting a hand on Catra’s knee. “And you wouldn’t be saying goodbye to Etheria forever, either. The planet will make its debut on the galactic stage at some point in the future, whether in two years or five. I’ll see what I can do to get limited, periodic contact for the both of you in the meantime, but even if I can’t do that, it’s not like you’re saying goodbye forever.”

Another breeze swelled up around them causing Catra to shiver.

Taline stood. “We’re leaving tomorrow at 0900 sharp. A transport will land in the castle grounds to take us.” She stripped off her jacket and placed it around Catra’s shoulders. “Take the evening to think it over, and find me in the morning, if not to come with me then to at least say goodbye and to return my jacket.”

She winked at her and without another word, turned to stalk down the knoll they were sitting on and head back toward the castle. Catra watched her go, struck dumb at what had just happened. Another breeze picked up and she pulled the jacket tighter around her for more warmth.

“Oh, and remember,” Taline said, shouting over her shoulder as she went. “Not a word about Evelyn. Not. A. Word.”

Catra clicked her jaw shut and nodded vigorously, even though Taline wasn’t looking at her. She watched her go until she was a speck in the distance before she turned back around toward the Whispering Woods. The platter Taline brought from earlier caught her eye, and her stomach gave a mighty growl; she was starved and her body wasn’t going to let her get away with ignoring its needs any longer. Catra lifted the cover and a flurry of delicious smells assaulted her. Her mouth watered, immediately.

A swell of emotion nearly brought her to tears at the sheer display of kindness she had experienced that day. Despite the train wreck that happened with Adora, Sparkles’ parents both welcomed her with open arms, as did Scorpia. Taline’s kindness was the metaphorical boulder that broke the dam—it was almost too much to handle. Catra ate in silence and savored every bite, taking extra care to not accidentally spill anything on Taline’s jacket.

After a time, she craned her neck to get a look at the patches sewn into the fabric. The jacket felt comfortable, but looked even better. The Enclave and Battlemage insignias stood out crisp against the black material, and looking at them sent a strange feeling of pride through her similar to how she felt looking at the Force Captain badges for the first time.

“Phoenix Station, huh?” She said, staring up at the stars. Catra took another bite of food and thought of her future, her mind running wild with imagination.

Chapter Text

Glimmer anticipated the morning so much she hadn’t slept at all through the previous night. After the festivities ended and she had finished speaking to everyone else, she and her parents had stayed up, enjoying the last moments they would have together for the foreseeable future. Even Bow came. This time, with no tension in his voice or body, Glimmer had been able to pretend everything between them was as it had once been. At least for the night.

When it finally came time for her to meet Taline in the courtyard, she slung the small bag of possessions she had packed over her shoulder and opened the door to her room to find an unexpected visitor standing there in the hallway, poised to knock.

“Hey,” Adora said. Uncertainty flashed across her face; they had fought again after Catra nearly planted Glimmer into the floor in her haste to get away at the feast, and it was clear Adora wasn’t sure she’d be welcome.

“Adora?” Glimmer adjusted the pack to sit more comfortably on her shoulder and glanced back at Bow and her parents still in the room. Her mom flashed her an encouraging smile, while Bow was too engrossed in conversation with her dad to have noticed them. “I’m surprised you came to say goodbye after what happened last night.”

“I know, and I’m really sorry,” Adora said. “You’re right, I was afraid and overwhelmed hearing that you were leaving, and instead of being a good friend I got confrontational and hypocritical. But I’m sorry. Really, really sorry, and I really don’t want us to leave off on a bad note like that. Your friendship means a lot to me too. I don’t want to lose it.”

Glimmer smiled and opened her arms wide for a hug. “Thank you for saying that.”

Adora shuffled into her arms and they pulled each other into a strong embrace. Truth be told, Glimmer was just as relieved as Adora looked. She had worried about their relationship all night after that second fight—she didn’t want to lose the friendship either.

“So where exactly is she taking you?” Adora asked, keeping pace with Glimmer after she beckoned to everyone still in her room and their group of five began trekking down the hall.

“Phoenix Station. It’s apparently an administrative hub somewhere in one of the more quiet, mid-rim Empire systems.” Glimmer heard Bow and her parents chatting quietly from behind as they followed. She felt grateful that they were conscientious enough to give her and Adora some time to catch up alone. “It’s supposed to take a few days to get there, even with the FTL drives on the Constable. Space is a lot bigger than I’d ever imagined.”

“Well, I hope you get some sleep on the trip,” Adora said. “Seriously, you look ready to keel over any minute now.”

“You’re one to talk,” Glimmer said, laughing. “You look half dead. Did you not sleep last night either?”

“I didn’t. I was too worried about what happened between us to sleep, and just as I was starting to drift off, Salas pulled me into a very early meeting with Entrapta and some of the engineering team to talk about She Ra and the sword.” Adora made a comically pained expression. “They would have gone longer but I cut it short so I could come see you off.”

Glimmer rolled her eyes with a smirk on her face and Adora, watching her reaction, laughed. Then, realizing that they had arrived at the castle’s front entrance, both of them stopped and the mood between them dampened.

“Hey,” Glimmer said turning and taking Adora’s hands into her own and running her thumb along her calloused knuckles. “Promise me you won’t put too much pressure on yourself? I know your powers haven’t come back to you yet, but you can’t keep pushing yourself like this. Nonstop training sessions, meetings booked every moment you aren’t conditioning yourself… it’s not healthy. Promise me you’ll cut yourself some slack.”

Adora looked anywhere but her. “Would you believe me if I said I will?”

“No, but I want you to tell me you’re going to at least try. I know you have an important part to play in this, but don’t go placing the entire survival of the galaxy on your shoulders, okay? The Heart will fail all the same if it’s you being unable to activate it or Frosta being unable to control her runestone as precisely as possible or Entrapta and the Enclave being unable to stabilize the planet’s energy signature. And if you kill yourself from stress then there’s nothing any of us can do from there. Promise me.”

Adora sighed and finally looked at her. “I’ll do my best, I promise.”

Glimmer eyed her, not entirely convinced, when Bow came up from behind.

“I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for her,” he said, smirking at Adora when she glared at him.

“We all will,” her dad said, earning a nod from her mom.

Satisfied, Glimmer let Adora’s hands drop and turned to glance out the open door to the castle grounds. The transport that was supposed to ferry them up to the Constable idled no more than a hundred steps away.

“Catra is supposed to meet us,” Glimmer said. “Either she’s going to come along or decide to stay here, but she’s supposed to at least talk to Taline in person. Do you want to come talk to her too?”

Adora’s eyes lingered on the waiting transport. Glimmer expected to see anguish or at least surprise appear on her face learning Catra might be leaving too, but the look of conflict that sprung up suggested she had already anticipated this happening and was just struggling with how to respond to it.

Finally, Adora took a step back, hugging herself, still with an uncertain look on her face. “I’m not sure I should. After what I said last night…”

“You were emotional,” Glimmer said. “I also kind of forced you into it, which I don’t regret by the way, but if things came out wrong in the moment, now might be your last chance to iron things out before it’s too late.”

Adora bit her lip and thought. “No, I can’t do that,” she said after a moment, shaking her head. “You were right, I can’t keep running away from my problems and, at some point, I have to draw a line in the sand and stand behind it. It didn’t come out the way I wanted last night, but I meant everything that I said. I’m not going to be able to stick to anything at all if I tell her to give me space only to go back on that less than a day later.”

Glimmer thought Adora was making a mistake. She had caught the end of their conversation and had a sinking feeling the both of them got on separate pages despite having had the same conversation. But Adora had a point, and if she really wanted to focus on the Heart and her powers, who was Glimmer to force her to talk to Catra again? The first time had already been a disaster.

“Okay,” Glimmer said, after deciding it would only further damage her already fragile and recently made-up relationship with Adora to push the issue. “If you think that’s what’s best, then I understand.”

Adora nodded and everyone pulled together for a group hug.

“Be safe out there,” Adora said. “And as soon as you get some way to contact us, you’d better do it. I’m not going to feel better about anything until I hear that you’re doing okay.”

Glimmer grunted her affirmation into Adora’s shoulder and let her shirt soak up her tears.

Catra scrambled.

Shit shit shit I’m late.

She had woken up when the rays of the morning sun, peeking through the branches of the tree she had fallen asleep under, stabbed her in the eyes. One moment she had laid there boneless, Taline’s jacket draped over the front of her like a blanket, and the next she was a ball of speed and adrenaline, sprinting to the castle, hoping she hadn’t slept through Taline’s departure. It wasn’t until she saw the transport still idling on the castle grounds that she allowed herself to catch her breath.

She moved quickly then, heading back to her room and shoving the few belongings she had into a sack. She almost knocked on Scorpia’s and Entrapta’s doors as she passed their rooms in the castle’s guest quarter, but she chickened out and used the lack of time as an excuse to justify heading straight back to the transport. Taline, wearing a long coat that reached halfway down her booted calves, was halfway up the ramp into the belly of the craft as Catra rounded the corner out the side exit back onto the grounds.

“I’ve decided to come,” Catra said, handing Taline back her jacket after taking extra time to fold it as neatly as she could. “Phoenix Station sounds interesting. I’m curious to see what’s out there.”

“There’s still about ten minutes before we leave,” Taline said. “Take your time and say your goodbyes, the pilots still need to get through their pre-flight checklist.”

Well crap, Catra thought, looking around the grounds anxiously. She had made such a rush to get to the transport it felt like some of the wind had been taken out of her sails having to just wait.

She looked back toward the castle entrance and saw Sparkles, flanked by Arrow Boy and her parents, making their way toward them on foot. They all waved to her and Catra gave an awkward wave back. A thought hit her, and she looked around for Adora, fearing she’d tag along. Catra didn’t want to put up with the awkwardness trying to figure out how to act in front of her after what happened the previous night. Thankfully, Adora didn’t show, and Catra settled into a half-alert sense of security.

“Sooo,” Glimmer said, sidling up to Catra with Bow while her parents went to talk with Taline. “What did you decide?”

“I’m coming,” Catra said. “It just makes sense, I guess. And Etheria isn’t gone forever. I think being away for a bit might be good for me. I have to say though, I’m surprised you’re leaving too.”

“Yeah, part of me is still surprised myself, believe it or not. I’ll tell you why on the way.”

“Watch out for her while you two are out there, okay?” Bow said, looking Catra in the eyes. He seemed to refused to look in Glimmer’s direction.

“I will,” Catra said, not wanting to chance ruining the moment with some ill-timed deflection. Glimmer had told her Bow’s reaction to her apology, that they were not okay, and she was certain Glimmer was just as surprised hearing him say those words as Catra was surprised at hearing them asked of her.

Movement out the corner of her eye drew her attention, and Catra turned. Two people she didn’t at all expect to see were running toward her from the castle and waving their hands as if to flag down her attention.

“Scorpia? Entrapta?” she said, taking halting steps around Bow and toward them, not entirely sure she was seeing things correctly.

“Catra!” they both yelled at the same time.

Scorpia waved with even more energy when she realized Catra had seen them, while Entrapta was holding some sort of wrapped box in her hands. Catra glanced behind her to question Bow and Glimmer with a look, but they had both turned and headed back toward the King and Queen, conversing with Taline by the ramp.

“What are you guys doing here?” Catra asked, turning back to the two of them as they pulled up in front of her.

“What do you mean?” Scorpia asked, panting. “We heard you might be leaving, so of course we weren’t going to let you leave without at least seeing you off.”

“I can’t believe you were going to go and not say goodbye!” Entrapta said, her hair flying about. “After everything we’ve been through.”

Catra winced. “Actually, that’s uh…well part of the reason why I wasn’t sure if I shoul—“

Entrapta’s hair suddenly covered her mouth and cut her off. “Oh hush,” she said, a mad scientist’s grin plastered on her face. “You and I already had our talk and I’ve forgiven you. I’m just giving you a hard time, unless you have something else you wanted to talk about?” Catra quickly shook her head and Entrapta took her hair away before pushing the box she was holding into Catra’s hands. “Here. Scorpia and I wanted to give this to you.”

Catra looked down and stared at the box. A present?

She undid the latch and opened it at Scorpia’s and Entrapta’s excited prodding. Inside, propped up on the velvet-pillowed interior, sat what looked like a large screen attached to red straps.

“It’s a PDA!” Entrapta said, practically bouncing on her heels as she took the contraption out of the box. “Hold out your left arm. Wait, you’re left-handed if I remember correctly, right? Give me the right one instead. It has to go on your non-dominant arm.”

Catra, feeling the effects of years growing up with Shadow Weaver trying to train her out of using her dominant hand, stowed the box under her left arm and reluctantly raised her right.

“I’ve been working on this baby essentially since I finished helping bring Angella back,” Entrapta said, strapping the device to her. “The Enclave has some craaaaazy tech, and their wrist PDAs were just too cool for me to not try and replicate. I couldn’t think of anything to give you as a thank you for bringing you-know-who back, and then it hit me. I’ll give you my prototype!”

“You don’t have to do that,” Catra said, feeling awkward about Entrapta’s gratitude she didn’t think she deserved. Scorpia only watched with glee on her face and her claws pressed to her cheeks.

“I want to,” Entrapta said. “Actually, I gave you the second prototype. Mine is the first, just to test out a lot of the features.” Catra caught a glimpse of a second, far chunkier looking device under Entrapta’s own sleeve.

“I made the straps!” Scorpia said. “Genuine leather, with my own two claws.” She clicked them in front of her face and grinned.

“There,” Entrapta said, pulling the last buckle tight and turning Catra’s limb to expose the screen on the underside of her forearm. She tapped at it and a streamlined interface popped up on the LCD. “I didn’t have time to put in the holographic display so it’s not as cutting edge as I’d like it to be, but functionally everything is there.”

She started flitting through the icons while Catra looked on, overwhelmed both by her friends’ enthusiasm and from the fact she had friends like this at all after everything she had done.

“You’ve got your basic tools,” Entrapta said. “Calculator, scheduler, rudimentary speech recognition, picture and video capabilities. Oh! I like this one.”

She tapped one of the icons and a light at the front end of the device turned on.

“It’s a flashlight! But not just any flashlight.” A control widget had popped up when she selected the program and Entrapta slid it all the way to its most powerful setting. Despite it being morning and the daylight being in full effect, Catra had to shield her eyes as the light shooting from her wrist nearly blinded her.

“It’s suuuuuper powerful,” Entrapta said. “Be careful not to burn anyone’s eyes out with it.”

“This is…wow this is a lot,” Catra said after Entrapta turned off the light.

“Not really,” Entrapta said. “I just included the basics and rooted it as much as possible on the Enclave’s software infrastructure. I’m not sure what kind of tech and systems they have out there since I haven’t ever been to space, but it will theoretically talk to their computers. You should be able to upgrade it and add more software as you need.”

“Oh, oh, oh and there are little videos from us!” Scorpia came over and pressed one of the icons, bringing up a recorded video of her and Entrapta sitting in their guest room in the castle. Lamps lit the room and Catra could see stars in the sky out the window behind them. They must have recorded it the previous night.

“Hi Catra!” the both of them said, the excitement in their voices coming through the PDA’s speakers. “So, we’re kind of recording a lot of this one last minute since apparently you may be lea—”

Scorpia quickly cut off the recording and ran a claw along the back of her head with a sheepish expression. “May want to save that and watch it when you’re alone,” she said. “I got a little teared up in it, so…”

Catra just stared at the device strapped to her arm, then startled when Entrapta suddenly asked in a small voice if she didn’t like it.

“No! I mean…I mean, yes! It’s amazing, it’s just…wow. You did all this for me?”

Entrapta and Scorpia both nodded at the same time.

“I love it,” Catra said, the biggest grin spreading across her face.

Scorpia pulled the both of them into a fierce bear hug, and Catra felt the air squeeze out of her as her legs dangled. Then, giving in to the happiness filling her to near bursting, she wrapped her arms around the both of them before her brain had the chance to put the brakes on.”

“Super Pal Trio,” Scorpia said, setting the both of them on the ground. “Never forget.”

Entrapta and Catra both nodded with big smiles on their faces. “Super Pal Trio,” they both said.

The transport’s engines surged behind them, kicking up a gust of wind that buffeted the trees and threatened to bowl them all over.

“All aboard!” Taline said, standing tall at the threshold between the ramp and the interior, her long coat flapping furiously against the swell of the jet engines. “Always wanted to say that.”

Catra pulled her friends into one last quick hug, waved to Bow and Micah and Angella as Glimmer said her final goodbyes to them, and boarded. Glimmer followed soon after, and the both of them turned and stood on the inside precipice of the vessel, waving to their respective groups of friends as the ramp pulled up.

“I’m with the pilots in the cockpit,” Taline said after the ramp fully closed and sealed them in. “You and Glimmer just strap into one of the seats and enjoy the view.”

Row after row of austere seats lined the inside of the craft. Catra picked a forward-facing one near a bulkhead window and strapped herself into the full body harness. Glimmer, rubbing her eyes with her sleeve and looking like she was trying as hard as she could not to cry, threw herself into the backward facing chair directly across from her.

The g-forces picked up as the craft lifted off and Catra looked out the window. Everyone was still waving and continued to do so as the ground fell further and further away from them. Catra waved back even though she was certain they couldn’t see her, and she pushed away the mounting wave of bittersweet emotions growing inside. She glanced toward the castle’s main entrance and swore she saw a red jacket framing a patch of blonde hair, standing half hidden behind the open main entrance. But, when she squinted to take a closer look, they had already pushed high enough into the air she couldn’t make out any details.

Clouds blanketed the window for a moment and Catra leaned back into the chair to relax, feeling the vibrations of the ship as it shot through the atmosphere. Her jaw nearly dropped when they came out of the cloud covering and she saw Etheria’s curve and the sunrise in the distance. Stars twinkled above the horizon, growing clearer as the sky grew blacker.

“We’re really leaving, aren’t we?” Catra asked, staring up into space with awe.

She glanced over at Glimmer when she didn’t hear a response. Glimmer had her face smooshed against her own window, fast asleep, snoring softly with a bit of drool threatening to spool loose from her mouth. Catra cracked a smile, unable to keep from laughing. Glimmer looked terrible with the bags hanging under her eyes. It was good she was finally getting some sleep.

Unable to calm her own giddiness, Catra turned to the PDA strapped to her arm. She marveled at the gift and thought back on her friends as she flicked through the menus and got accustomed to the device. She finally figured out how to work the camera, and snapped a picture of Glimmer conked out in the chair.

The craft burned through the atmosphere and into space. It made slow, steady progress toward the cruiser idling in orbit, waiting to take them someplace new.

End of Part One

Chapter Text

Art commission done by SzethK. Linktree: Here

Chapter Seventeen: A New Normal

Glimmer sat forward in her chair with her elbows on the desk, rubbing at her temples to soothe the headache brewing there while she stared at Adora’s hopeful face through the ansible. It had been three years since they last saw each other in person, but to her eyes, god…Adora might as well have aged almost a decade.

“I haven’t been able to find any new information on the Daiamid,” Glimmer said. “It doesn’t look like the Enclave has any special records other than what’s already available to the general public.”

All the hope in Adora’s eyes vanished, as was expected, and Glimmer felt the wave of guilt she had prepared for hit her like a bus. She had been traveling for days in hyperspace aboard an Enclave cruiser, having just come off another deployment that taxed her more than she’d care to admit. Kicking Adora while she was down was exactly what she didn’t need right then and there.

“How is that possible?” Adora asked, brow creasing in thought. “How can they stop an apocalyptic event dead in its tracks but there’s literally almost no information about them?”

“I’m sorry,” Glimmer said. If only she could just reach through the stupid ansible and hug her, but communicating in real time across hundreds of light years of distance as they were was miracle enough, she supposed.

Adora shook her head. “It’s not your fault, I’m sorry for getting upset. It’s just, you’d think there would be something to go off of. There isn’t even a mention of where they came from.”

“They’re all dead and gone, Adora, and they were the Emperor’s personal assassins. He’s controlling the narrative, like he’s always done. I thought maybe there’d be something in the Enclave’s personal archives, but he must have had everything about them scrubbed even from there a long time ago.”

Adora blinked at her. “You’ve been doing that for a while now.”

“Doing what?”

“Calling him the Emperor.”

Glimmer sighed and slumped down a little further in the chair. “That’s because he is the Emperor, Adora. No one out here calls him Horde Prime.”

It really wasn’t as big a deal as Adora was making it out to be. One of the first things Glimmer had learned about the empire was, while Horde Prime was about as bad as they came, everyone else were just regular people like her or Catra or her parents, trying to live their lives. The Emperor was a despot, sure, but his empire was actually a stable place for most. Glimmer had come to understand Taline’s reluctance to fight for her sister’s name after learning how much doing so might have jeopardized the stability of all of society after the end of the war.

Still, even though Adora knew that about the empire, she wouldn’t understand it, and she was still sensitive to all the changes that had happened over the years since they parted. Glimmer couldn’t really blame her for being so constantly wound tight; even seeing her with her hair styled short with an undercut for the first time had knocked Adora off balance, and Glimmer was convinced it would only stun her again if she ever decided to grow it out to its original length she had as queen.

Adora sat forward toward the ansible and brought both hands up to fret at the braid tucked high at the back of her head. “It’s fine, I get it, just…what am I supposed to do now?”

“Have you asked Salas about it?” The look Adora gave her said everything she needed to know and Glimmer grew impatient. “Salas would know more than me in the first place, Adora. He’s been around longer, likely has access to more sensitive information than a rookie would have—“

“A genius rookie,” Adora said, interrupting her

Glimmer waved her off. “Whatever, you know what I mean. If there’s a single person who could point you in the right direction with the Daiamid, it’d be Salas. Why haven’t you asked him about it?”

Adora fidgeted and spoke in a quiet, almost shy voice. “I don’t want to bother him.”

“Are you for real right now?” Glimmer asked. One second, she wanted to hug her through the ansible and the next she wanted to reach through and wring her neck.

“What? He’s got a million and one other things on his mind he has to keep track of. I don’t want to get in the way of that just to ask him about some wild goose chase of a theory I have.”

“And why is it that you’ve come to this ‘wild goose chase’ of a theory in the first place? Oh yeah. Because despite everything you’ve tried for the past three straight years, you still haven’t been able to reconnect with She Ra. You’re desperate.”

Adora froze and her lip trembled and Glimmer immediately felt guilty. “I’m sorry.” she said with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to sound so angry about it. I’m coming off three deployments back-to-back and I can sense how stressed out you are. And that’s making me more stressed…like a feedback loop.”

Adora shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“It makes sense what you’re doing and I get why you want to look into it,” Glimmer said. “Especially since you’ve tried literally everything else. Extreme training sessions with Mermista and Scorpia? Beating the crap out of hundreds of Entrapta’s bots for hours with Frosta when she needs to blow off just as much steam as you? Endless magic training sessions with my parents?” Glimmer held up fingers as she counted off the crazy stories Adora had shared with her over the years, all in attempt after attempt to reconnect with her powers. “Remember when you tried those hallucinogenic leaves and went on a six-day meditation binge with Perfuma?”

Adora groaned and threw her head back in her chair, all trace of hurt replaced with embarrassment. “Don’t remind me,” she said. “I couldn’t tell up from down and those six days felt like six years.”

“You made out with one of those pretty royals from her court as well,” Glimmer said, a grin spreading across her face.

“Who told you about that!?” Adora covered her face with her hands. “Did Perfuma tell you?”

“You bet your ass she did! Oh my god, she said you made that poor noble walk around in a daze for a week because of that.” Glimmer snorted and almost fell off her chair with laughter.

Adora pulled her hands away from her face, revealing mortified eyes and a tomato-red complexion. “I needed to soak in the tub for hours just to feel clean again after that. And I still wasn’t any closer to getting She Ra back!”

“Yeah, but that’s probably the most relaxed I’d ever seen you since we took that trip to Mystacor and did the hot springs. You’ve tried everything except taking a vacation, Adora. The planning and political meetings will go on without you for a week or two, why don’t you just take some time off for the sake of your own sanity?”

Adora hemmed and hawed, talking about not being able to relax even if she took time off.

“If you’re not going to think about taking a break, then will you at least agree to talk to Salas?” Glimmer asked. “I mean it when I say your line of thinking makes sense. The Daiamid were powerful enough to rebuff Battlemages like Taline and shove the Beast on its ass. She Ra is just as powerful, if not more so. There has to be something you can learn from them if we can just get our hands on the information.”

“Salas has started pulling me from meetings,” Adora said, voice turning small again.

“He’s what?”

“You mentioned that planning and political meetings will go on without me, like that’s a good reason for me to take a break from them. But they’ve already been going on without me for a few weeks now. I haven’t been able to join the last few sessions. There’s a list you have to be on to be let in, and I’ve been removed. He’s the only one I can think of that would do that.”

Glimmer furrowed her brow. That didn’t seem right. “And let me guess, you haven’t gone and asked him about that either?”

Adora shook her head. “I think he’s starting to lose faith in me. Why else would he take me off? I know this sounds stupid, but I’m afraid to go and talk to him about it only to see him look back at me and tell me how I’m disappointing everyone…that I’m a failure for still not getting this.”

Glimmer nodded. “That’s not a stupid thing to be afraid of, Adora, especially since there’s a lot riding on your shoulders. But I don’t think you’re being excluded because he’s losing faith in you. You’re She Ra, they need you. My guess is he’s trying to forcefully give you more time for yourself rather than stress you out with more meetings.”

“I don’t know…” Adora said, rubbing her shoulders and looking away.

“You’re driving yourself insane trying to get back in touch with your powers. You’re right that it’s a matter of galactic concern that you haven’t been able to yet, but I also don’t think anyone has any room to judge. I would be clawing my eyes out if that was still happening to me after three years. Screw Salas and his busy schedule. Put yourself in front of him and tell him you need his help. I guarantee you he isn’t shutting you out, Adora. Your issues are worth being addressed.”

Glimmer had spoken to Salas more than a few times through the ansible since her departure; he was her main point of contact for updates on Etheria and the Heart project. That, coupled with what Taline had said about him during their time together, only cemented the idea in her head he was a strong and true ally despite their initial introductions.

Adora brightened, and she even gave Glimmer a small smile, although it didn’t reach to her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll think about it. I’m still invited to the Induction Ceremony in a few days, so I should have the perfect opportunity to get some one-on-one time with him.”

Glimmer grimaced. Adora’s mention of the ceremony made her think of Narre and Miri’s deaths aboard the Emperor’s citadel. Adora must have caught on because her smile disappeared.

“Are you okay?” Adora asked, leaning closer to the ansible to get a better look at her.

“Yeah, fine.” Glimmer rubbed harder at her temples. “How have the nightmares been for you recently?”

“They’ve started picking up again,” Adora said, looking troubled. “It’s always on the anniversary and it’s always of the same thing. I’m guessing it’s the same with you?”

Glimmer nodded. They didn’t say anything for a while after that. They didn’t need to. While the nightmares of the Beast subsided with time, they always returned for a bit around the anniversary of the Emperor’s invasion of Etheria—when Taline had first stepped between them and the Emperor back on the citadel.

“How is Catra doing?” Adora asked, breaking the silence.

A number of responses filtered through Glimmer’s brain with the surprise at hearing Adora ask that question. She chose to lead with the safest possible response. “I haven’t heard anything out of the ordinary, but that’s usually how it goes with her. I won’t hear about how it’s affecting her this year until I see her again in a few days.”

“You’re going back to Phoenix?”

Glimmer nodded. “I’ve been on too many deployments one after the other. You know better than most how hard the Enclave pushes their Battlemages, but even they know to give us time to recharge. I have two weeks of shore leave approved as soon as I arrive.” Glimmer had vented more than once to Adora when Taline’s training regiments pushed her too hard, so she understood just how unforgiving the Enclave could be.

“Now you’re just trying to guilt me into a vacation,” Adora said, keeping her voice light.

“Even if I am, I’m not apologizing for it,” she said, matching her tone. “You need a break, Adora. Even Catra would say so if she were here right now.”

Glimmer watched Adora’s expression change, watched her pull up her walls and hide behind them. Every other time she had brought either Catra up to Adora or Adora up to Catra it hadn’t ended well, so she chose her words carefully as she navigated the same minefield for the hundredth time.

“You know, a lot has changed since we left,” Glimmer said. “You aren’t the only one learning to let yourself lean on people a little bit again, asking me to look into the Daiamid for you.”

“What do you mean?” Adora asked.

“Catra asked me to look into something for her as well. I didn’t find much, but what little I did helped.”

“Catra asked you for help?” Adora looked at a complete loss for words.

 “Yep,” Glimmer said, nodding. “That should clue you in to how much she’s changed. It’s been a long time, Adora…maybe you should reach out to her? I can pass along a message from you if you don’t want to do something live though an ansible. Who knows, maybe having her rip you a new one and tell you to take a vacation will be the kick in the ass you need to actually do it.”

The corner of Adora’s lips tug up in a smirk and Glimmer nearly leapt off her chair and did a dance right then and there. That was the best reaction she’d seen Adora have toward Catra since ever.

A clamor echoed through the ansible and Adora turned to look somewhere off screen. Her expression turned irritated as the commotion grew louder, now mixing with the muffled sounds of people arguing nearby.

“Can you guys wait until I’m done in here before you start putting things down?” Adora asked, clearly trying to remain professional. “I’m in the middle of a call right now. It’s expensive.” A muffled, response came through. “No! No just, ugh…just put it down and get out please. I’m almost done.”

Another muffled reply, and then the sound of a door hissing shut, cutting the voices off.

“Sorry,” Adora said, turning to look back at her. “I’m at the Scorpion Kingdom and Entrapta has had delivery after delivery of all new tech into her lab. None of the delivery people know where to put the new machinery and they’ve just been stacking them wherever there’s space.”

Glimmer bit back an amused expression, fully understanding the kind of chaos that could swirl around Entrapta without her even trying. “I’m surprised you didn’t try and convince me you were already taking a vacation by going to the Scorpion Kingdom.”

Adora laughed. “Trust me, I thought about it. Bright Moon was getting a little too claustrophobic for me, so I agreed to come here and help Entrapta with whatever. She’s been going on about a pattern in the security breaches we’ve had and has been hyper focused on nailing it down.”

“Are you actually able to help with that stuff?”

“No, but she tells me it helps when she has someone to bounce ideas off of like a sounding board. Although I’m not sure why she still asked me to come when Hordak is down here with her as well.”

“Hordak is away from the fleet?” Glimmer asked, incredulous. Finding out Catra had pushed Taline to bring him back had thrown the princesses for a collective loop about a month after they left, but things had smoothed over considerably over the years. Salas had put him in charge of the Orbital Defense Fleet over the Etheria, and that was that.

“He’s uh…apparently on shore leave as well,” Adora said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat and refusing to look at her.

A beat passed between them before Glimmer laughed outright. “All this talk about vacations and even Hordak the notorious workaholic has you beat? Wow.”

Adora grumbled. “Yeah, I know, okay. I get it.” She sighed and leaned forward, resting her head on the table in front of the ansible. “I still can’t believe Salas managed to convince us to let him stick around and help, let alone give him command over parts of our fleet.”

“Hey, this is the same guy that managed to convince the Enclave High Council to give me communications clearance with Etheria. If he can do that, plus keep the Emperor off your backs while working on the Heart, anything else he manages to accomplish I’m not all that surprised by.”

“That’s true,” Adora said, picking her head up off the table and smoothing her hair.

“Go talk to him, Adora. I’m honestly surprised you came to me first, although I am flattered.”

“I will,” she said. “I already said I would, didn’t I?” She thought for a moment, scrunching her face in thought and reminding Glimmer of simpler times with the lack of conflict in her expression. “Yeah, I definitely said I’d go talk to him. Thanks for the pep talk, Glimmer.”

“Any time. How is everyone else doing?”

Adora shrugged. “Nothing much has changed since last month. Sea Hawk and Swift Wind are driving your Aunt nuts in Mystacor, Bow is here tinkering with incorporating more tech into his arrows, and Frosta is visiting as well. Entrapta and the Enclave are still pulling their hair out trying to figure out Light Hope.”

“Still?” Glimmer asked, concern dawning on her features. She ignored the fact Adora had slipped Bow’s name in there and chose to focus on the larger issue. “It’s been months and they haven’t made a single step forward?”

Adora shook her head. “No, they haven’t, unfortunately. That’s part of the reason she’s had so many deliveries. She hit a slump, then like a thousand new ideas hit her and she mass ordered a bunch of stuff to try it all.”

Glimmer laughed. “That sounds like Entrapta, all right.” A notification blipped on the top corner of the screen and she sighed. “My time is almost up. I have to go.”

Adora nodded, a sad expression coming across her face. “I know. Sorry for hogging the entire session this time. Especially since Bow didn’t…y’know.”

“No! No, it’s okay,” Glimmer said. Maybe it was a bit naïve for her to think Adora wouldn’t keep pushing when she didn’t react to Bow’s name the first time. He hadn’t passed a message through Salas for her this month, and with Adora taking up the whole hour on the ansible they had, it meant she wouldn’t hear from him until the following month at the earliest. Still, she refused to feel bad for helping her friend when she so clearly needed it.

Adora’s eyes narrowed in scrutinizing concern. “Glimmer…”

“I’m happy to help,” Glimmer said. “Really. Whatever you need, I’m here. I’m sure he’ll make it up to me next month.” She put on a smile for Adora’s sake and didn’t let it fade until it was obvious Adora wouldn’t push further. “Think about what I said with Catra,” she said. “Even if it’s just a recorded message, I’ll pass it along for you.”

“I’ll think about it,” Adora said. “Be safe out there.”

Glimmer hit the kill switch and the screen connecting her and Adora across lightyears of space flickered off. She sighed and leaned back in the chair. To her great relief, the melancholy that had been threatening to bubble up from under the surface didn’t return. There was still an exhaustion she felt in her bones, but that was something she knew how to handle. Deployments always deprived her of much needed sleep, and the nightmares would likely continue for a few days more. She knew what to expect.

Hopefully Taline wouldn’t be there to greet her when she disembarked on Phoenix Station in a few days, though. To the untrained eye Glimmer’s uniform looked pristine—Enclave patches and Battlemage pin undoubtedly level and immaculate. But the effects of her sleep deprived state bled through into its appearance in subtle ways Taline would no doubt pick up on. Despite having ridden her raw for over a year in training—thus helping her perform under pressure on her deployments and rocketing her to minor infamy within the Enclave, despite technically still being a rookie—her mentor wouldn’t take pity on her for nightmares.

Glimmer stretched further still, her joints letting loose a cascade of pops and cracks that felt as amazing as they’d have been off-putting to anyone who might have been sitting there with her. She tapped a few commands into the ansible’s control panel, connected it to her list of contacts stored on her wrist PDA, and navigated to Catra’s name. She typed a quick message and sent it off before heaving her body off the chair and padding out of the communications chamber, intent on finding something to eat and more caffeine to keep the dreams at bay.

Chapter Text

“For the honor of Grayskull!”

Adora cracked open an eye and looked up at the wooden training sword she held aloft. It hadn’t transformed like it was supposed to, and the runestone embedded in the gauntlet clasped to her forearm twinkled as if mocking her.  The purple hue of Entrapta’s lab within the Scorpion Kingdom did little to calm her nerves and Adora groaned, lowering the sword to her side.

“Still nothing, huh?” Bow said. Surrounded by crates piled high with Entrapta’s new experiment equipment, he knocked another arrow and sent it down the makeshift shooting range—the only part of the lab not currently crowded beyond use. It slammed into the center chest piece of a bot, powered off and tied to a post. “Did it feel any different that time?”

“No different than the other hundred-thousand times I’ve tried,” she said, tossing the sword to the ground with a clatter. “It’s there, I can feel it under the surface, it just…won’t come to me. I’m getting desperate here. How does holding a practice sword to bring the real one out even make sense?”

“Hey!” a nearby voice said. Frosta stared her down with an irate expression as she kicked her legs against the particularly tall stack of crates she sat upon.

“I mean, it’s true!” Adora said, leaning against another nearby crate.

“You thought it was a good enough idea when I suggested you give it a try,” Frosta said. She had traveled from her kingdom for the Induction Ceremony in Bright Moon, but a special attachment she had grown in the intervening years since the Enclave’s first appearance necessitated a detour to the old Fright Zone first. The doors leading into the lab hissed open and she turned a pointed look to the person who stepped through. “You thought it was a good idea too, right?”

Hordak didn’t even lift his eyes from the tablet he plucked at when he responded. “Did I think what was a good idea?” He made his way through the maze of crates to Entrapta, sitting hunched at her desk in the back, whispering rapidly to herself as she worked. She had spiraled into a funk trying and failing for so long to make any sort of progress on Light Hope that he had suggested she lock herself in the lab for a few days and work on something else.

He glanced up when no one responded, his eyes flicking to the wooden sword on the ground, then to Adora’s frustrated expression, then to Frosta’s expectant one before he seemed to realize what they were asking him. “You’re really getting desperate, aren’t you?” he asked Adora.

Adora threw her arms up in the air, nearly ready to tear her hair out. She felt agitated and sweaty all of a sudden, and reached up behind her head to feel at the braid tucked high and tight there. She had started tying it in that fashion to keep it out of the way while she trained, and found putting it up in that complicated style helped calm her in and of itself, almost like a meditative ritual. The only problem was her having made a habit of constantly checking to make sure it was still perfect; likely her body trying to find any excuse to undo and then redo it to pacify her mind.

“I don’t suppose you have any ideas of your own, do you?” she said to Hordak. “Might as well ask you since I’ve been making the rounds again, talking to anyone I can grab hold of to see what they think I could try next.”

“I don’t have anything new to suggest, no.” He turned his eyes back to his tablet, already unplugging from the conversation. Adora wasn’t ready to let him go.

“You pulled me from that portal as a baby,” she said, stepping up to him. “The first one you opened to try and reach Prime years ago. You brought me back to the Fright Zone, gave me to Shadow Weaver to raise me. Are you saying you had no idea about She Ra or my connection to the sword when you found me?” Adora set her jaw when she saw how Bow and Frosta reacted to her bringing up Shadow Weaver. They hadn’t seen or heard from her after she left with the Emperor, and everyone knew Adora never brought her up unless she was really spiraling. “Nothing comes to mind that you knew back then that might help me now?”

“Nothing,” Hordak said, shaking his head. “I saw an infant swaddled in a blanket with no one there to care for her, and decided it better to bring you with me than let you succumb to the elements. It was Shadow Weaver who insisted on raising you herself when I suggested we put you with the rest of the young orphans, and I allowed it if it meant she’d let me return to my experiments in peace.” He sighed and gave her a rarely-seen sympathetic look. “The other princesses, Frosta included, have been training diligently with Micah and the Enclave Mentors for years now. Have you tried them?”

“If you bothered to pay attention to anything other than the fleet up in orbit then you would have known I’ve done more training with them over the past three years than all the rest of the princesses combined,” Adora said. She ignored the way Frosta beamed at Hordak for referencing her. It was stupid, and she knew it, but even that small exchange only seemed to sour her mood further. At least Frosta was making measurable progress with them.

“Then I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer when it comes to fixing your…problem,” Hordak said. “I’m sorry.”

Adora deflated and sank back onto one of the crates again. Despite what she had expressed to Glimmer, Hordak had turned into a valuable asset and an unlikely ally since his reappearance. Even Frosta warmed up to him, to the extent she would purposefully seek out opportunities to spend time with him when he came down for leave on the surface; she had gravitated toward him like an unlikely father figure, which undoubtedly helped endear him to the last of the Etherians that still looked at him sideways.

Adora had learned to live with it, especially since he also made Entrapta happy, but she never fully acclimated to it. His presence was a permanent reminder to her that, while even their old enemies were contributing to the war preparations in unexpected ways, she still couldn’t manage the one thing that was expected of her: summon She Ra.

A hand rested on her shoulder and she turned. Bow was there, flashing her a reassuring look.

“It will be okay,” he said.

“Thanks.” Adora reached up to grab his hand with her own. “By the way,” she said, dipping her voice low and looking around to make sure the others weren’t listening in. “Glimmer.”

Bow’s face hardened. “I don’t—” He moved to pull his arm away, but Adora held it firm.

“She tried really hard to not let it show, but I know she was upset you didn’t write to her.” Adora leaned further into his space. “We only get to exchange messages once a month. The ansible gets used even less, and I took all the reservation this time. I know you’re still coming around, but why didn’t you at least send something?”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now,” he said. “Please, Adora.”

His eyes didn’t waver from hers for several long moments. When he moved to pull away a second time, she let him go with a sigh, knowing very well that he could flip the argument on its head and needle her about never having once reached out to Catra. Still, having to sit there and watch the sadness flit across Glimmer’s face through the ansible…having to sit there and watch her shove it far enough inside her she could fake a smile back…it had hurt. Knowing full well all that was just because Bow was being both stubborn and stuck made her want to wrestle him into coming around.

“Just…you never know when you might not have the opportunity to speak to her again, you know?” she said. “She’s on the front lines, after all.”

Bow sucked in a harsh breath. He averted his eyes, swallowed, and Adora felt a small amount of satisfaction seeing how her words had affected him.

Good¸ she thought. Maybe that will knock a little bit of sense into him.

“It was good of her to give you the whole meeting,” he said, still not meeting her eyes. “Did you learn anything?”

Adora sighed. “Not a thing. There’s literally nothing on the Daiamid she could find that we didn’t already know.”

Bow cursed under his breath and narrowed his eyes. “I wasn’t about to give up hope when neither of my dads turned anything up—what would two history nerds on Etheria be able to get their hands on anyways, right? But to think there was nothing even in the Enclave’s protected archives?”

“I just don’t get what else we’re supposed to try,” Adora said. “Where else are we supposed to look?”

“I don’t know,” Bow said. “I don’t know what the big secret is all about, but we’ll keep poking around and find something. Maybe it’s time to start digging in a different direction entirely.”

Adora closed her eyes and nodded, exhaling a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. She had no idea what “different direction” he had in mind, but the fact he was already thinking of their next step was reassuring. She let herself relax with the knowledge that, even if she felt like giving up, Bow wouldn’t let her.

“Speaking of surprises,” Entrapta said, making Adora jump with how abruptly it cut through the calm she had been settling back into. “I’ve found an interesting pattern with the security breaches. Come take a look at this.”

Everyone stood and shuffled over to Entrapta, still hunched over a terminal atop her tornado-wreck of a desk she had shoved into a corner of the lab. She tapped a few commands on the keyboard and a massive auxiliary screen nearby sprang to life. It showed a map of Etheria and its many kingdoms. A dizzying number of multicolored dots, icons, and flags dotted the landscape.

“This is a log of every “malfunction” in the Enclave’s security logging system since platform inception,” she said. “Don’t ask me how I got access to this, it’s a secret so shhhh. And also, don’t be alarmed by how many icons there are. This logs everything from power outages to someone accidentally oversleeping past the start of their shift.”

She tapped at the console and a large chunk of the icons disappeared. Adora could actually see the landmasses and kingdom names now.

“Take out all the missed shifts and other one-off errors and you get something easier to deal with,” Entrapta said. “When I went through the data here, I found something.”

A window popped up, showing a last-minute shift switch between one Enclave security guard and another.

“This doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary,” Bow said, stroking his chin and reading the change manifest through narrow eyes. “It looks like someone just subbed out for someone else last minute.”

“It wouldn’t be abnormal, especially since these kind of shift changes happen all the time,” Entrapta said. “Except, when you isolate for this specific employee ID—the one that replaces the other—and display only their recorded events, you get this.” The screen changed, showing only several dozen flags instead of several hundred.

“These are spread all across the continent,” Adora said, furrowing her brow.

“Is that not supposed to happen?” Frosta asked.

Adora shook her head. “Enclave standard operating procedure here is to assign people to one major location, maybe two. But all kingdoms within three years? That doesn’t seem right.”

“Not all kingdoms,” Entrapta said. “Whoever they are, they’ve hit everywhere except Bright Moon and the Fright Zo—er, Scorpion Kingdom. This data is a few months old though, so it’s entirely possible they’ve already gotten to one of those places. It gets even weirder when you apply a time series to the data.”

A scrolling date bar appeared above the map and all but a small handful of icons centered around Salineas disappeared. Entrapta slowly dragged the selector across the widget. As she did so, icons appeared and disappeared in rapid succession, all of them at first centering on Salineas before moving wholesale to Plumeria. As Entrapta continued to drag the cursor along the bar, so too did the icons popcorn from Plumeria to Dryl, the Kingdom of Snows, and finally Mystacor.

“This is troubling indeed,” Hordak said. “I wouldn’t say this alone would constitute a full red alert, but it’s certainly worth a deeper look.”

“I thought the same thing,” Entrapta said, “which is why I already did more digging.” She pulled up another window on the monitor and security footage of an ancient ruin somewhere Adora didn’t immediately recognize played. The timestamp showed a date three years in the past, when the Enclave was still in the midst of setting up.

“This is a First Ones’ dig site in Salineas,” Entrapta said, “before the Enclave could help us repair the damage Horde Prime did there. Watch carefully.”

The feed suddenly cut to static, although the videos’ scrub bar continued to crawl forward and the timestamp continued to count up. “The video cuts out for two hours,” Entrapta said, skipping forward to the point where the feed comes back online. Nothing looked out of the ordinary once it did.

“That’s odd, but not unheard of,” Hordak said. “The Enclave’s energy grid was far from reliable back then. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a camera or two to fail every now and then.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Entrapta said. “But if a piece of tech fails, it’s usually just the one, and they had backup generators installed for this very thing even back then. This was deliberate.” She tapped a command and the feed played over from the beginning, except this time splitting into six separate feeds, each showing the same dig site but from a different angle. At the exact moment the first feed cut off, so too did the other five.

“Now that’s decidedly not normal,” Bow said. “Especially for the Enclave. Their tech hygiene is too good, even for something thrown up overnight.”

“This was taken maybe a week after that person’s first shift change,” Entrapta said. “And the pattern continues across all instances of them showing up. They appear, roughly a week or two goes by, then a major site’s security footage goes down for a time. Sometimes it’s only for a few minutes, sometimes it’s for a few hours, but every camera goes down at the same time without the backup generators kicking in. Then they all mysteriously start back up again at the same exact time. This is consistent across all kingdoms and all records of them subbing out for someone else, even up to six months ago when they appeared in Mystacor.”

“Let me guess, no one has reported anything out of the ordinary?” Frosta asked.

“Nothing, nada, zippo,” Entrapta said, spinning around in her chair with a manic laugh and a wide grin. “The only reason I found this in the first place is my database scrapers flagged this one ID as abnormal, and it took three years of data to finally assess the abnormality with a ninety five percent confidence rate. I have a pretty high standard for personally turning my attention to something my bots pick up, but once I did it was easy to isolate the data and find the correlation with the closed-circuit footage.”

“Can you pull up any information on that person?” Adora asked, thinking Entrapta was far too happy for finding the anomaly in the first place. One security breach was no joke, let alone years of them.

“I can’t, unfortunately,” she said, using her hair to stop the chair from spinning any further and adopting a vaguely irritated expression. “All the personnel files are in a different database on a different server, and I haven’t been able to crack the security on that one no matter what I’ve tried.  It’s not nearly as complicated as Light Hope’s neural networks, but it’s still got a nasty firewall I can’t get past. As far as I know, only the Enclave department heads on-planet have access to that information.”

“Better get this over to Salas as soon as possible so he can look into it then,” Bow said, echoing Adora’s worried expression. “He’d definitely have access to that data too, and I don’t like the look of this at all.”

“Already have,” Entrapta said. “I sent him all the files and my full write up before I turned around and showed all of you. He responded almost immediately saying that he’s already looking into it.”

Adora grimaced. Whatever was going on here made her skin crawl. Bow was right, the Enclave was far too good for this to happen. Both him and Entrapta would wax for ages talking about how airtight their systems were, and despite Adora having the tech savvy of a rock, even she understood someone manipulating their system like this should be unheard of. The fact they got away with it for so long without anyone noticing was only more alarming.

The door to Entrapta’s personal lab opened and a group of Enclave workers team lifting even more crates shimmied in. The first one through the door looked around at the mass of boxes already inside and Adora saw him wilt.

“Where do you want these?” he asked.

“Oh, just anywhere you can find room,” Entrapta said, giving an emphatic shrug with her hair. “As long as you don’t pile any of them in Bow’s shooting range. I think he needs the space.”

She didn’t seem to comprehend there wasn’t much space at all for anything. The worker in question continued to look about for where he and his partner could drop off their crate, and grew more conflicted when it seemed the only space left was directly where Adora and the rest of them were already standing.

“Watch out, coming through,” said a gravelly voice from the back.

The laborers made as much room as they could and one of their own made his way to the front. His hair was disheveled and he walked with a resigned gait. He looked about the room like his colleague immediately before and, without missing a beat, headed straight for Entrapta’s desk and thunked the crate down right next to where Adora stood.

Adora saw him glance at the data on Entrapta’s screen and watched an expression she couldn’t decipher flit across his sunken eyes. They locked gazes for the briefest moment, and that was enough for Adora to confirm something was off about him. He turned to leave and she almost reached out to stop him before Entrapta shouted.

“Hey! What are you two doing in here?”

Everyone turned and saw two Prime clones idling at the doorway, glancing about the room like tourists at an exhibit.

“Ah, we transported your new hardware on our ship,” one of them said. “Since we came all this way to deliver from off world, we thought we’d come to the surface and see what kind—“

“Not allowed!” Entrapta said, bringing her hair tendrils up in front of her and making an “X” shape with them. “Prime clones are not allowed in here. This room is strictly off limits.”

Despite Salas’ repeated mentions that Prime could only see through the eyes of his clones if they were within a certain distance of him, no one trusted them to roam freely and everyone eyed them suspiciously as moles waiting to report back to Prime. Was it fair? Probably not. But, then again, neither was how Prime nearly destroyed their world to begin with.

“It’s all right, Entrapta,” Hordak said, the red of his eyes and blue of his hair setting him distinctly apart from the others. “I’ll take care of this. I suggest you give some concrete direction to these delivery people, or you might find yourself unable to use your lab when they’re done with their drop offs.”

He swept past all of them, squeezing through the rest of the laborers to reach the clones.

“Brothers,” Adora heard him say as he put on a cordial face and clapped them on the shoulders. “Please accept my apologies. The Etherians are still touchy about what happened with their world.”

He spun them around and guided them out the door with a gentle hand at both their backs. The laborers stepped forward, stacking crate after crate in two-man teams according to Entrapta’s direction. She apologized to Bow as she ordered them to stack a few of the crates in the firing range after all. Soon enough, Adora, Bow and Frosta had to clamber up onto the crates themselves to stay out of the way.

Adora tried to find the first worker who came in, the one looking on the verge of exhaustion, but despite scanning everyone’s faces multiple times, she couldn’t locate him. When the last team placed their crate down and left, something struck her that she hadn’t realized earlier: He was the only one to carry in his load alone. The rest of them had all worked two to a crate.

Chapter Text

Catra stared at the bottle of sleeping pills sitting in her locker at the precinct. It was nearly ten at night station time, and she had slept maybe eight hours total over the past three days. A battle raged in her head over what to do with the pills when she ran shaky hands through her hair and her heart started to race: there was much less hair for her to comb her fingers through than she anticipated.

Then she remembered.

She had cut it one of the first days she arrived on station three years ago and maintained it religiously since then—a shaggy, layered bob cut terminating at her jaw line. The nightmares starting up again recently had brought her mentally and emotionally back to a time when her life was falling apart at the seams, and forgetting how she had purposefully changed her appearance to mark the start of a new life proved how disassociating an effect the lack of sleep was having on her.

She grabbed the bottle of pills and eyed the trash can sitting in the far corner. Heart beating like a war drum, she overhanded it across half the locker room, sinking it into the receptacle with a definitive tinny gong just as the door next to it opened and her Section Chief walked in.

“Are you celebrating getting clean or declaring a start to it?” Dax asked, glancing into the can.

“Neither,” Catra said, pulling her security uniform from her locker and tossing it onto the bench behind her. “I pass all the drug screenings every time, even the random ones, so don’t bust my balls.”

Dax rolled his eyes with a smile and Catra couldn’t help cracking one of her own. He was technically her supervisor, but they got along well. Some of the new recruits—the ones hailing from more conservative worlds—had apparently balked at the idea of locker and shower rooms mixing genders and races, but that had been the norm in Etheria’s Horde as far as Catra was concerned. She figured the fact she gave him no lip service about it when she first came on had instantly elevated her in his eyes and made her a favorite.

“I ain’t busting nothin’.” He pulled open his own locker at the end of the hall and began stowing his belongings. “Those are basic over the counters anyway, and you look like shit. Why are you throwing perfectly fine sleeping pills away when it’s obvious you haven’t been getting any sleep?”

“Maybe I’ve been busy entertaining guests all night,” Catra said, tone brimming with innuendo as she pulled her casual wear off and shoved it into her locker. “What’s it to you what I do on my time off?”

“I’m just doing my job and making sure everyone under my command is in solid shape,” he said. “Also, I don’t buy that for a second. Glimmer’s been gone for months, there’s no way. Who the hell else would you be ‘entertaining’?”

Catra sputtered, her head caught in the neck of one of the clean undershirts she always kept neatly folded in the locker. “Glimmer? Why the hell would…no! Glimmer and I do not have that type of relationship.” Her face burned even though she spoke the truth and she focused on threading her arms through her dress shirt and buttoning it up.

Dax only shrugged as he started to button his service shirt. “Could have fooled me. Hell, I’d love to be close with someone who looks as good as her, let alone a Battlemage…” His eyes took on a faraway look and Catra swore she could see the gears of his imagination turning. “Hey,” he said, shaking himself back to reality and looking at her. “You wanna introduce us?”

Catra snorted, tugging on her uniform slacks and tucking the shirt in. “Not a chance in hell.”

Dax pouted. “Why not? If you aren’t with her, then…”

“We’ve known each other for how long now, Dax? Almost three years? You’d think if I wanted to do that it’d already have happened. Besides, you aren’t her type.”

“Not her type?” Dax spoke with a certain annoying lilt in his voice and Catra groaned. She’d never had an annoying older brother figure drive her to the brink of insanity from secondhand embarrassment, but Dax was coming close. “What is her type then?”

“Darker-skinned and more wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve than you are.” She turned to look him up and down in his half-dressed state, purposefully exaggerating the way her eyes roved over his body. “You need abs too. That’s important. Being unable to rock a crop top is a deal breaker for her, unfortunately.”

He furrowed his brow. “A crop top?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Catra said. She felt a little bad talking about Glimmer and Bow like that—especially since they still hadn’t made up on account of Bow’s stupidity—but Catra didn’t want to give Dax any sense of hope about it either; Glimmer wasn’t taking her eyes off that man any time soon, regardless of the fact Bow seemed determined to keep a wall between them.

“All kidding aside,” Dax said. “Are you sure you’re okay for this assignment?”

Catra pulled on her utility belt, checking to make sure her stun gun and electric baton were both fully charged before ramming them home into their holsters. “I’ll be fine, Dax. I threw the pills away because I don’t think I need them, not because I was afraid of abusing them.” She grabbed her cap and placed it on her head and shut the locker.

“Okay, but are you sure?”

“For the love of—yes, I’m sure!” She rolled her eyes before glaring at him, although she wasn’t actually mad. The fact he worried that much was more endearing than annoying. “They’re OTC like you said. I just don’t want to give my body any excuse to start needing stronger stuff. Best to just get rid of it now before it tempts me again.” In fact, that was the exact reason she had moved them from her small flat to her work locker in the first place.

“This isn’t some regular shift I put you on, Catra, this is Diallo and Moriarty we’re talking about—a System Governor and the Regional Admin himself. Security needs to be airtight.”

“I know, I know.” She walked over to him and punched his shoulder. “I’ll be fine dude, and I’ll be alert. I promise. Besides, I need the money. Graveyard shift pays well, and the assignment is a step up than the usual stuff.”

“You say that like you aren’t the one who’s been rejecting all the good shit I try and throw your way in the first place. I still don’t understand why you’ve turned down the promotions I’ve put you up for, either.” He stopped when something akin to an epiphany flashed across his face. “Does the fact you took this assignment mean anything about how you’ll take my recommendations at your next performance review?”

Catra frowned. How did she not see this line of questioning coming from a mile away? For all the idiocy and buffoonery Dax liked to shroud himself with to seem less threatening to his subordinates, he had a razor-sharp mind she had somehow forgotten about and had now gotten trapped by. Thankfully, a subtle rumble at her wrist came and she pushed back the sleeve of her uniform. The PDA Entrapta and Scorpia gifted her before she left Etheria chirped at her: Glimmer had sent her a message.

Hey you. I should be on Phoenix Station by the time you get this—time displacement and all that, you know how weird things get using an ansible in hyperspace. Let me know when you can meet up?

Catra couldn’t help the smirk tugging at her lips and the small swell of anticipation that welled up from inside.

“That thing is like an antique, I can’t believe you’re still using it,” Dax said, craning his neck to the side to try and read the screen. “Who’s that, one of your nighttime guests?”

Catra pulled her arm away and spun on her heel to head to the exit. “None of your business,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him over her shoulder as she went. “I’ll meet you at the staging area.”

“Hey, you still haven’t answered my question,” he said, calling after her. “I don’t want to recommend you for another promotion if you’re just going to shut me down again. Reviews are in a few weeks!”

“Hurry up or you’ll be late!” she said without slowing or turning to look back at him. “Tardiness is my shtick. Get your own.” She heard him groan behind her and she smiled as she exited the locker room. When the doors slid shut behind her, she brought up her PDA and opened a blank draft to respond to Glimmer.

Last minute graveyard shift tonight. I won’t get off until like two in the morning. Go ahead and get some sleep, we can meet up in the afternoon.

She sent the message off and was just about to head out when Glimmer, completely unlike herself, responded almost immediately. She had definitely already arrived.

You should have something from the Enclave today or tomorrow if they haven’t reached out already. I still have that bottle we bought. Been saving it.  Let’s open it whenever you hear from them, good or bad. You’ll tell me either way, right?

Catra’s stomach churned. She knew what Glimmer was talking about but had hoped to forget about it at least for the night. Especially since she knew the anticipating and the waiting would drive her crazy.

She started to type out a response, trying to stamp down the nerves. When the words didn’t come, she deleted the draft altogether and pulled her sleeve back over the device. She took a deep breath, then adjusted the cap on her head and the ‘Station Security’ badge pinned over her heart before starting off toward the station’s main hangar bays.

Hours later and finally Catra could anticipate completing the last (and arguably easiest) portion of the assignment. Sweeping the entire hangar for security vulnerabilities had taken an agonizingly long time, but she wasn’t complaining; the extra pay was well worth the hours of work, and the prestige wasn’t something to scoff at either. Other officers would have killed for the chance to join one of these high-level security assignments. All that was left was greeting the arrival party and escorting them to the executive levels.

 She fidgeted, standing as one uniformed station security officer among several hundred, arranged in a formation of two sets of neat rows and columns facing one another. The idea was to have the VIPs walk down the center with them on either side, like a parade. Dax stood to Moriarty’s left in the center aisle. He had somehow beaten her to the staging area despite Catra having left first, and the teasing looks from earlier in the locker room were gone. Instead, he wore a serious expression and stood straight-backed, his demeanor reflecting the gravity of their assignment.

She was right there with him. A sense of unease had permeated every member of the security detail too during their previous sweep, not just because of who they were protecting but because of who they were working with: Moriarty, the monstrously obese Regional Administrator, had a platoon of white and green-armored Imperial Vanguard soldiers plucked straight from the front lines as his personal guard. Everyone wondered what the hell the Emperor’s own, elite soldiers were doing on a quiet mid-rim station, and Dax, as supervisor, was the only one standing with Moriarty who was not Vanguard.

At least they aren’t clones, was all Catra could tell herself to keep from side-eyeing them the entire time.

Every head turned at once toward the energy barrier separating the hangar from the vacuum of space outside. A luxury transport, transit-foils folding up against its polished body, taxied across the barrier flanked on either side by escort fighters. The craft’s repulsor engines buffeted them, whipping everyone’s clothing violently around them in the air. Catra placed her hand atop her cap to keep it from flying away. The standby capture crew sprang into action, moving to guide the three craft to a safe landing before strapping them to the hangar floor.

The ships powered off as the crew plugged refueling hoses into them and ran diagnostics. The belly of the transport opened with a hiss. A ramp extended to the hangar floor.

“Company—Present Arms!”

The commanding Vanguard officer standing at Moriarty’s right, a soldier who had likely lived through more life-threatening battles than Catra had fingers with which to count, gave the command. Catra snapped to attention and gave a crisp salute toward the craft in time with every other standing member of the security force in attendance.

A middle-aged man who looked like he spent most of his time hunched over books descended the ramp. He pushed a pair of oval glasses up the bridge of his nose and looked around, clearly taken aback at seeing everyone gathered around. No one else descended the ramp after him.

“T-this is a bit much, don’t you think?” he said, ambling up to Moriarty and reaching out for a handshake. “The transport, the escort, all these guards. You d-didn’t do this any of my other visits.”

“I wasn’t up for reelection any of the previous years, Diallo,” Moriarty said, lunging forward with a speed that looked off-putting given how fat the man was. He gripped Diallo’s arm in a meaty, glove-covered hand that practically engulfed the entire limb and shook with such vigor that Catra swore Diallo’s feet left the ground.

“Yes, well t-there’s nothing I can say to argue against that,” Diallo said, rubbing his arm with a frown after Moriarty released it. It was the stutter that completed the package, Catra decided. Diallo seemed so frail it was a wonder Moriarty hadn’t broken his arm clean in two with that handshake. She caught a glimpse of Dax saluting just beyond, struggling to keep from laughing at the humor of the whole situation.

“Company—Order Arms!”

Catra stowed her salute in time with everyone else. The ripple of movement and sound across the hangar made Diallo startle and elicited a bark of a laugh from Moriarty.

“Come!” Moriarty said, sweeping his arms wide and thumping Diallo on the back hard enough he had to readjust his glasses. “The Beast may not be spreading as quickly as it had during the last war, but if anyone even gets the thought it might seep into a system soon, mass panic and evacuations ensue. You and the other System Governors play an important part in maintaining peace and order in my region. We have much to discuss.”

From there, the congregation broke out into squads and posts. Some quickly found their team and raced ahead to cover their assigned locations along the convoy’s pre-planned route, others stayed behind to look after the ships. Catra, along with two other officers she had served alongside in the past, had been assigned to a relatively important position: following the procession from the back to provide cover from behind.

“Hey rookie,” Keren said, nudging her in the side with her elbow. She was a purple alien twice Catra’s height and easily four times her weight, so the ‘slight nudge’ still put Catra back on her heels. “How’d a greenhorn like you get an assignment like this?”

“I’ve been on the force for nearly three years now,” Catra said, putting considerable force into a shove of her own that barely jostled her back. “That’s, what, one year less than you? I can pull these assignments no problem.”

Keren snorted and ruffled Catra’s hair, earning a squeak of protest. She had been one of Catra’s first friends when she started her new job, and by the end of the first week they had bonded over pancakes and orange juice at a diner adjacent to the precinct headquarters.

“Technically you are still a rookie, despite the tenure,” said the second person on their three-man assignment. Trayn was similarly built to Keren, tall and stocky and strong enough to punch holes into ship bulkheads. But where Keren was softer and squishier on the outside, Trayn was all bony protrusions and armor plating. He was the only one Catra got to unsheathe her claws on during sparring matches, and many of their fellow officers often joked that he didn’t even need the body armor or protective vests handed out to all officers when they went on patrol.

“Do not ask me why I keep turning down the promotions,” Catra said. She stepped quickly behind Moriarty and his entourage as they headed out the hangar bay, forcing the two of them to fall into formation on either side of her. “I don’t want to hear how I’m ‘technically a rookie’ because I’m still on the lowest rung,” she said, making air quotes as they walked. “That’s some quality bullshit right there.”

“No honey, what’s bullshit is you’re still on a cadet’s paygrade despite three years on the force,” Keren said, earning a sharp look from Catra. “Is it true even Taline herself recommended you get bumped up? Like, at least four levels?”

They had reached the massive industrial elevators at the end of the hangar compound and everyone shuffled in. Catra had a choice number of things she wanted to say back to Keren, but chose to keep her mouth shut to avoid an incident. Thankfully, she didn’t push her and neither did Trayn. Despite the elevators accommodating the whole group with room to spare, Catra didn’t want to start an argument where their voices would echo. It seemed her friends had the same idea, since they didn’t speak up either. The Regional Administrator, a System Governor, and a whole squad of Vanguard soldiers would bear witness to their arguing otherwise, and Dax would definitely think twice before ever giving any of them an assignment like this again.

The elevators deposited them onto one of the major rapid transit stations on Phoenix, and by the time the they rode the tram through the station’s guts and exited out onto the Atrium, the opportunity for sharp rebuttals had long passed; Keren and Trayn had already moved on to new topics of conversation.

“I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been up here,” Keren said once they disembarked, gazing up at the fountains and sculptures and sprawling levels of office space and luxury apartments towering all around them. Massive flags multiple stories tall hung from balconies and pillars, projecting the green and white of the Horde Imperial insignia for all to see. The Atrium was the pinnacle luxury ward aboard Phoenix Station.

“Dax tried assigning me up here once and I just couldn’t hack it,” Trayn said.

“Why not?” Catra asked. The procession continued forward and she kept her two-steps-to-their-one pace as they followed VIPs from a distance.

Trayn motioned vaguely at their surroundings, as if that were answer enough. Catra furrowed her brows and looked around. It took her a moment to realize he was indicating the people living in the Atrium district itself. They milled about, hanging out on their balconies high above or bustling to their destinations with eyes on their PDAs, generally just living their lives. None paid any attention to the massive clump of soldiers and officers protecting Diallo and Moriarty as they made their way through the walkways and gardens.

“They’re so in their bubble they don’t even bat an eye at any of this,” Trayn said. “Pompous assholes who are so used to their importance they don’t even register what’s going on around them. I wonder if they even realize everyone on the other levels are getting squeezed by poverty. The refugees aren’t making it easier either, but everyone up here is completely oblivious.”

“I lasted a month when Dax sent me up here the last time,” Keren said. “The most dangerous thing I think I helped address during that time was someone who claimed their wallet had been stolen. Trayn gets annoyed at seeing everyone live in luxury up here, but I just get bored. It’s too safe.”

Trayn snorted. “Did you catch whoever did it? Stole that precious planetary governess’ or whoever’s wallet?”

Keren shook her head, barely concealing her laughter. “No one stole shit. The man,” she said, emphasizing how Trayn’s assumptions about the victim had been wrong right down to the gender, “was a scion of one of the minor sects of the Vestamid. Apparently he had been shopping in one of the department stores and accidentally put his third credit card in his second wallet instead of the first one, like he normally did. He couldn’t find it and automatically assumed it was stolen. The expression on his face when he took a second look and found it was really something.”

“That sounds…annoying,” Catra said. She ignored the irony of someone from that fanatic religion having three credit cards and two wallets, and instead tried to picture how she’d have reacted in a similar situation.

“Yeah,” Keren said. “And remember, that was the most interesting thing that happened to me. It’s so boring and inane up here that I asked Dax to transfer me back to the lower wards as soon as possible. Can’t stand it up here. The place just makes me feel useless. Like some sort of glorified errand girl.”

“And look, still not even a refugee in sight,’ Trayn said, not bothering to mask his disgust. “When are they going to open up the Atrium for them? There’s way more room than in any of the other levels.”

Catra didn’t need to take a second look to know Trayn was right. With the Beast crisis snowballing, more worlds were evacuating in anticipation, flooding their neighboring systems and planets and stations with countless refugees. The lower wards and especially the bowels of the stations were practically overflowing with people. Hell, she could hardly get to her own modest apartment without stepping over hundreds of them. But up here? She saw a carefully curated and maintained veneer of perfection; a false utopia.

Conversation turned to less important topics for the remainder of the mission. When Moriarty, Diallo, and the Vanguard entered a gilded elevator at the end of a particularly lavish pavilion, Dax radioed the teams under his command and officially relieved them of their duties. Catra politely declined Keren and Trayn’s invitations to happy hour.

 “Glimmer just got in,” she said, angling her body away from them, “and I have to take care of some stuff and get some sleep before I see her tomorrow.” They oooh’d and awe’d and made kissy faces at her, and she flipped them her middle finger as she stalked away. Soon, they had disappeared from sight, and Catra was somewhere else in the Atrium, alone.

There was a reason she hadn’t contributed as much to the conversation as she normally would have when on the same shift with Trayn and Keren: she had spent more time on the Atrium than she wanted them to know about. Truthfully, she preferred the lower levels with their bustle of activity and crazy amalgamations of various cultures, but Glimmer spent almost all her time in the nicer areas of Phoenix when on-station, and Taline was practically unreachable when she wasn’t up here anyways. And so, here Catra would come whenever she had to meet one or both of them. Even though she’d spent less time here recently than in the past, it still wasn’t something she was racing to confess.

Her many visits also never seemed to prevent her from getting lost the next time she came, though.

Motherfuck, she thought, looking around. For the love of…where am I?

She tried to make sense of her surroundings, maybe find a landmark. A large sculpture loomed in the distance next to a bench, framed by the petals of an even larger cherry blossom tree, and Catra made a beeline for it. The one thing she never forgot about the Atrium levels was the statues. Most of them were of Horde Prime, a few of them were of other famous historical figures in the Empire’s history; all of them served as a kind of marker for where one could also find a station directory.

She came up on the statue from behind. Sure enough, as soon as she ambled around it, a large touchscreen taller than she was came into view. Advertisements flashed and scrolled their garish fonts and colors at her, and she was about to reach out to tap the screen when she made the mistake of looking up at the statue first, instead.

A towering figure, wrought in obsidian with flowing robes and a deep hood stood before her. It posed with one hand thrust high in the air and the other balled into a fist at its side. Whoever had completed the sculpture wanted to make it look as powerful and dynamic and imposing as possible. At its base lay a plaque.

Corynth—Last Shaper of the Daiamid. Savior of the Empire. Beast Slayer

Catra abandoned the directory and creeped closer to the statue, stepping as a timid but curious animal might. She stared up and squinted at the space inside the hood, where…

“Of course,” she said, giving a rueful laugh. “Never seen you before, but you’re always depicted the same no matter where on the station they put you, right?”

Catra had watched the documentaries and saw the paraphernalia everywhere: figurines, movies, books, artistic interpretations—she even managed to get her hands on a few seconds of legitimate, first hand footage of his last known sighting before the end of the war. Every depiction showed him wearing a mask, even the larger-than-life sculpture standing triumphant in front of her.

“You saved trillions upon trillions of people,” Catra said, speaking to it. “I know you didn’t do it alone, but everyone alive today is alive partially thanks to you. And yet no one, not a single person, knows your face. Knows what you really look like under there.”

She stared into the black holes in the mask where the eyes would have peeked through had it been a real person, letting the moment drag her into a rare contemplative mood.

“If someone were to ask Shadow Weaver about me, she’d probably go on and on about how terrible I was. She’d probably talk their ear off about how I was nothing but a nuisance and a failure. If someone were to ask Sparkles about me, they’d probably think I was some sort of superhuman genius.” She laughed, finding a kind of ironic humor from her words. Glimmer apparently always hyped Catra up to her circle whenever she came up in conversation.

“And you know what? There’s a little bit of truth to both, I want to say. Glimmer can get a bit carried away and would somehow make even my bad qualities sound good. I fucking hate Shadow Weaver but, as much as I hate to admit it, she probably knows me better than most. I can’t exactly bring myself to say she’s wrong when she says I’m a disappointment. How can someone who raised me and watched me almost my whole life be wrong about something like that?”

Catra still couldn’t point to one specific reason why she obsessed over Corynth ever since learning about him. Part of her thought that Taline’s hatred for him clashed so brilliantly with everyone else’s adoration, the juxtaposition alone made her curious. Another, simpler part of her couldn’t deny the similarities between Shadow Weaver wearing a mask and Corynth doing the same—simplistic as it was, it was enough for her to consider the possibility seriously. Regardless of where her fixation on him originated, it always seemed to bring her to moments like these: spilling some deep seated and closely held secrets to a statue, alone.

“If someone were to ask Taline about me? Well…” she trailed off, and frustrated tears pricked at her eyes when she realized she had no idea what she was trying to say. Instead, she gave another rueful, self-deprecating laugh. “Look at me, talking to a statue like a fucking crazy person.

“Taline hates your fucking guts and blames you for everything that happened, while everyone else thinks you’re some kind of legendary hero. I may be stupid and useless just like Shadow Weaver says, but even I know that the truth about you is probably somewhere in between.” She lowered her voice and, speaking more to herself, said, “just like I’m somewhere in between.”

She took another step toward the statue. She knew she looked ridiculous talking to it, should anyone have walked by at that moment. She was just projecting onto it, after all.

“Gotta admit that I’m at least a bit curious,” she said. “There was a real person behind that mask of yours and I’d love to know…who were you really, underneath it all?”

Something went ping! beside her the moment she finished her sentence, and she barely started rolling her eyes out of exasperation before the voice came.

“Hello there!” said a translucent, green hologram of a young woman with long, flowing hair standing next to her. “I am Hilda, virtual directory assistant aboard Phoenix Station. You are currently in the Atrium, first level.”

“How did I not realize that’d trigger you?” Catra asked in a deadpan. She turned and looked at the AI, and it tilted its head like a confused puppy, blinking at her.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand your query. Reverting to last understood question.” Hilda gestured to the statue. “This is a rendition of Corynth, last Shaper of the Diamid, Savior of the Galaxy, Be—“

“Yeah, yeah, yeah I know all that already,” Catra said, waving a hand through Hilda’s avatar and glitching out the projection. “Never mind him, can you help me find something here?”

The hologram paused again, churning her question through its answer matrix.

“Query understood. What would you like me to help you find?”

“A friend of mine is visiting. Should be here for a week or two and I want to spend some time with her up here. Do you know of any restaurants or stores or whatever that I can take her to and we can have a good time?” She tapped her foot, suddenly embarrassed. “It uh…needs to be within a certain price range.”

She cursed herself for getting shy at the end there. She shouldn’t be shy. Things up on the Atrium were ridiculously expensive, but she had saved money for this. Plus, the money from the shift she just finished would help, even though she wouldn’t get her hands on the funds until the next payday. She could afford to splurge a bit. No reason to be shy about that.

The hologram blinked and tilted its head again. “What price range would you like me to constrain my search to?”

Not long after and Catra had navigated her way through clump after clump of refugees and alley thugs in the station’s lower wards before pushing into her tiny flat and locking the door behind her.

She took everything back: there had been plenty of reason to feel shy, even though in hindsight it seemed dumb to feel that way in front of a damn software program. She knew the Atrium was pricey, but how the hell was she supposed to know it was that pricey? It wasn’t nearly that bad the last time she had looked at prices in the past, although that was years ago now. The stupid AI had just stood there ‘computing’ and blinking and tilting its head at her until she gave up on her own.

She hadn’t even gone back to the precinct to change before coming home she was so embarrassed. She stripped her uniform off and ran the bath, intent on just warming up some leftovers and throwing herself in front of the television until she passed out. It was when she came out of the bathroom to fish around her fridge that she saw it.

A small envelope lay on the floor next to her discarded uniform, and Catra already knew what it was before she picked it up. Despite how technologically advanced the Empire was, she got plenty of physical mail still: lots of paper bills that kept piling up, tons of junk mail she’d recycle, and countless catalogues she’d comb through for coupons. But the envelope? It was made of expensive cardstock and addressed to her in a flowy, handwritten calligraphy. She flipped it over and the wax seal there was stamped with the Enclave’s teardrop wing insignia.

Her breath hitched and her heart raced. With the bath and leftovers completely forgotten, Catra broke the seal and pulled the letter out with shaky fingers.

Chapter Text

Adora stood with Angella on a stage at the far end of Bright Moon castle’s lawn. The night moons hung high in the sky, and several hundred people had gathered around them, each holding candles that illuminated their faces and rows upon rows of tombstones all around. Frosta, Mermista, Scorpia, and Perfuma stood together in a group near the back, all of them except Frosta having arrived only a few hours earlier. The annual Induction Ceremony was in full swing, and near everybody important on Etheria was in attendance.

She angled her head to look at the queen, taking a moment to admire her. Angella had near single-handedly shepherded Bright Moon through a new age. Her being the one to run the kingdom and smooth over the growing pains and interpersonal arguments that came with accepting the Enclave had freed Micah to dedicate his time to the other kingdoms, training the Princess Alliance alongside the other Enclave mentors. Adora knew the responsibility hung heavy on Angella’s shoulders, but she still looked radiant and young and strong against the moonlight. She wondered how she did it, and if any of that radiance might rub off on her if she were to stick around her long enough.

“You know, to all these people here you are doing a magnificent job looking morose and in a contemplative mood,” Angella said. “But I’ve known you for too long to not notice.”

“What are you talking about?” A gust of wind blew through, and Adora jolted herself out of her daze, quickly covering the candle she held in her own hands to protect the flame from going out.

“Something is bothering you,” Angella said. “More so than usual.” Decorum insisted they maintain an appropriately somber expression and refrain from talking, so Angella didn’t take her eyes from the crowd and barely moved her lips as she spoke.

Adora only wished she could be as subtle. “I’m okay,” she said.

“That crease in your forehead hasn’t gone away once since this morning.”

Adora’s eyes went wide and she took her hand away from guarding the candle to cover her forehead. When she did, the gust extinguished the flame, and Adora groaned in pitiful frustration. Angella laughed under her breath and that only made it worse.

“Here,” Angella said. She reached over and snapped her fingers over the candle. A new flame sparked to life and danced on the end of the wick.

“Thanks.” Adora made sure to guard it from the elements properly this time. She thought Mermista might have locked eyes with her and grinned from the earlier display, but she couldn’t be sure. That still didn’t stop her from flushing with embarrassment.

Technically, reigniting the candle with magic should have been no problem for her to do herself. But, still unable to channel She Ra’s power, Adora was back to being her plain, magicless self. Re-forging the sword hadn’t changed anything and, although she knew her friends didn’t think less of her for it, she couldn’t stop feeling somehow broken and isolated. Like something was wrong with her. Having to finally opt out of magic training with Micah and the Enclave after years of trying had been heartbreaking, but she knew it was the right choice. Even when her friends insisted that she keep on, Adora had refused; she hadn’t felt right taking up time that could be better spent on them.

She tried to keep the admittedly small and inconsequential candle hiccup from getting her down as more people filled out the crowd. Except, the more she tried not to think about it the more she couldn’t help doing so. Adora, supposed She Ra and destined savior of the galaxy, couldn’t even relight a stupid candle with magic after so many years of trying to reconnect with her powers.

Everyone quieted as the ground beneath them suddenly rumbled. It wasn’t enough to shake anyone’s balance—in fact, it was barely enough to feel it if one didn’t know what to look out for. A kaleidoscope of colors shot up and engulfed the sky, as if some great God drew shut a curtain of ions around the heavens. Adora shut her eyes as lights flashed bright and whited everything else out. When the light died down and it was again night on Etheria, she opened her eyes and gazed at a new constellation pattern in the sky: Etheria had successfully traversed another portal and emerged in a new sector of space.

“Where’s Salas?” Adora asked, knowing that the ceremony was to soon conclude.

“Not coming.”

“I thought he’s supposed to lead the ceremony with you,” Adora said with a frown. “He did it the last two years, what’s going on?”

“He got some alarming data from Entrapta about security breaches in the kingdoms and he’s prioritized that over today’s ceremony. He didn’t mention anything to you?”

A pang of anxiety shot through Adora. He was losing faith in her…pushing her out. “No, he didn’t,” she said, her eyes beginning to mist over. If she hadn’t been literally standing there when Entrapta made the discovery, would no one have thought to tell her?

“He’s scatterbrained, Adora, not forgetting about you.”

“So...you’re doing the honors alone this time?” Adora tried to keep the uncertainty she felt from seeping into her voice.

“I have you here with me.”

Adora hadn’t expected to hear that. Decorum be damned, she couldn’t help it. She turned her head and looked at Angella, only to see her already looking back out the corner of her eye, wearing an expression with so much emotional nuance it was staggering. Only an immortal fairy ruler and beloved mother—someone with several lifetimes’ worth of exposure to the idiosyncrasies and emotions of others—could have pulled off that look. It both teased and grounded her, all with one sidelong glance.

“Me? I-I wouldn’t know what to say. I don’t have anything prepared, I—“

Angella laughed and Adora realized, her face burning, that she had overreacted. Again.

“Leave the talking to me then,” Angella said. “You just stand there and look like you’re comfortable having the weight of the universe on your shoulders. Just until we get off this platform, mind you. Also, hold my hand.”

Adora blinked. “What?”

Angella turned her attention back to the crowd and, without looking at her, subtly took one hand from her candle and extended it in Adora’s direction. Not entirely sure what she was getting herself into, Adora reached out and took it.

“My fellow Etherians and esteemed members of the Enclave,” Angella said, projecting her voice all the way to the back of the group. Adora had no doubt even the guards patrolling the inside of the castle in the distance could hear her speak. “Today marks the third anniversary of Etheria’s reemergence into the wider galaxy, the third anniversary of the start to our sacred partnership, and thus we hold our third annual Induction Ceremony to commemorate. Thank you all for being here.”

Her voice echoed in the night. Nothing but the breeze pushing its way through leaves and grass answered her.

“As many of you are already aware, the Beast continues its slow advance across the outer rim systems, just as our research—our efforts at reawakening the great weapon at the core of this world—continue its slow advance. And despite how it may seem to many of us, standing in the midst of this titanic effort and unable to see the forest from among the trees, we are winning the battle.”

Adora watched everyone’s faces reflected in the light of their candles. Shadows played across their faces as the flames danced and weaved. Hope and genuine admiration emanated from each of them. Even Adora herself couldn’t stop from feeling somewhat uplifted.

“A friend of mine recently reached out to me asking for help,” Angella said. “They didn’t come to me privately to express the sense of unease that had been growing like a cancer for some time in their heart. They didn’t pull me aside and use words to convey how hopeless they had been feeling. In fact, I suspect they said nothing and spoke to no one because they feared those feelings inside were contagious and would spread like the very enemy we are hoping to defeat. No, this friend cried out in other ways. And after noticing it, I couldn’t help but ask myself…how had I not seen this sooner?

“How had I not seen the way they no longer walked with shoulders back in a confident stride? How had I not noticed they no longer smiled when they spoke with their friends and loved ones? How had I missed the way their eyes no longer sparkled full of life and excitement?”

Adora gasped and almost dropped her candle outright. Was Angella speaking about her? There was no way she wasn’t, who else would it be? She moved to pull away, but Angella only gripped her tighter with a strength completely at odds with her delicate appearance.

 “When I finally did notice, I took a step back and realized I had inadvertently left them behind. I had grown too focused on the task at hand. I had lost sight of what was truly important. Look before you! Look at the tombstones standing here. Each represents a life given in sacrifice to bring us together so we may better fight the enemy. And for every single name engraved upon these slabs of granite and marble, ten more have died either escaping the newest incursion of the Beast or fighting on the front lines to slow its advance.

“Make no mistake that what we are striving for here will indeed decide whether our descendants thousands of generations in the future will have the privilege of traveling the stars and feeling the kiss of the sun against their skin. But regardless of our success—and believe me, we will emerge successful if Salas and Entrapta and your unwavering hard work have anything to say about it—all of us will pass on, only to be remembered by those who stare at our name on a tombstone and think upon our legacy.

“We have come a long way, all of us together, and there is still a long way for us to go. We have finally achieved stabilization for the weapon so our planet doesn’t break apart at the seams when it activates—a great achievement, thanks to your efforts. But despite this, progress on Light hope, the artificial intelligence that will mediate between the princesses, the massive store of energy in the core, and She Ra…it is elusive. We estimated that another two years of diligent research are required to solve this last hurdle, and chances are high that many of us will grow silently disillusioned with our progress now that it has slowed considerably.

“I ask that you recognize these moments of disillusionment for what they truly are: a call from within to take a step back, to look around, and to understand the importance of living in the present moment. Appreciate the fact you are all alive, here, now, today, regardless of how the state of the galaxy and our struggle evolves. I ask that you honor those who have died by lifting up and being there for those around you who still live—your fellow brothers and sisters in arms, toiling silently beside you.”

Angella paused. She held the crowd at the end of a string pulled taught with emotional tension and impact. Every person in the crowd gave her their full, undivided, rapt attention. Adora squeezed Angella’s hand so hard she feared she’d hurt her, but it was all she could do to keep from breaking down completely on stage.

“We now move into our fourth year of cooperation,” Angella said. “I will do all in my power to keep us pushing strong.” She held her candle high in the air. “To the fallen, this I swear.”

Adora raised her own candle along with everyone else in attendance. They all chanted the same phrase back in a muted chorus, and that murmur from the crowd masked the choked sob that escaped from Adora when she tried to say the phrase too. She quickly blew out her own candle and, unable to take it any longer, pulled her hand out of Angella’s grasp and retreated behind the blocked off prep area backstage.

A stool lay tucked away in the corner and she sat on it, putting her head between her knees and interlocking her fingers behind her neck. She breathed—quick, shallow breaths at first but gradually slowing them down until she could think straight.

“Adora?” Angella said, her footsteps tap tap tapping lightly on the floor as she came closer. “Adora are you okay? I’m sorry for what happened out there, I didn’t mean for my words to catch you off guard or overwhelm you.”

“I’m okay,” Adora said, her voice coming out hoarse. She fought the urge to redo her braid, and instead looked up. Angella was kneeling in front of her with a concerned expression. The room was nearly pitch black, the only light coming from the small crack between the curtains leading back to the vigil outside.

“Aren’t you supposed to be out there guiding the ceremony?” she asked. They were supposed to place their candle in front of one of the tombstones and whisper a message to the departed.

“I’m more worried about you,” Angella said, shaking her head. “I had hoped to get through to you and let you know you didn’t have to shoulder whatever was bothering you alone. I didn’t expect you to nearly have a panic attack and escape.”

“Sorry,” Adora said, taking another shaky breath. “I really liked what you said. I think I needed to hear it, just”—another her shaky breath. “I just...have too many thoughts right now. Too many emotions...I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to embarrass you up there so I just came back here.”

“Adora, it breaks my heart you think having an emotional breakthrough would be embarrassing for me.” She inched forward and placed a hand on Adora’s knee. “What’s on your mind?”

Adora frowned and kept her eye on the sliver of the outside she could see from where she sat, afraid that looking Angella in the eyes would get her too emotional again. “I feel like I’ve been slowly going crazy ever since I broke the sword,” she said, watching the people outside move about and place candles in front of tombstones. “Not a moment goes by that I don’t think about reconnecting with She Ra and feel frustrated that I still can’t do it.”

“She isn’t gone, though,” Angella said. “You can still feel her, right?”

Adora nodded. “She’s there under the surface. I just can’t get her to come to me when I reach. I’ve tried everything and I’ve listened to everyone’s advice—your advice, King Micah’s advice. I think I’ve gone to every Enclave magic trainer and mentor to listen to their advice too, but none of it has worked. Meanwhile everyone is chugging along at full speed, all the other princesses are getting stronger day by day, Glimmer is out there evacuating entire cities full of people to keep them alive, and Catra…” She trailed off, the courage she had been riding like a wave having disappeared.

Angella nodded but kept silent. It encouraged her and she took a moment to ground herself before continuing.

“I’ve had nightmares ever since that day aboard Horde Prime’s citadel. They get bad around the anniversary…really bad.”

Angella reached up and took Adora’s hands into her own. She hadn’t realized they had been shaking. “Glimmer mentioned something about them to me in the past. What kind of nightmares do you have?”

Adora swallowed. She had never spoken about them before to anyone. Sure, Glimmer knew she had them, but she didn’t know what they were about. “I saw it, Angella. I saw the Beast. It spoke to me.”

Angella raised both brows in surprise. Somehow, seeing her reaction felt validating, and the floodgates opened.

“I know Catra gets them too, but I’m not sure what she sees either. As far as I know, I’m the only one that saw it directly. When Taline released the memory…when she broke that crystal to keep the Emperor from killing us…it showed me everyone the Beast had eaten. It showed me all the worlds it had taken, all the suns it had devoured. There were so many of them…so many dead people I couldn’t save just…just looking at me!”

Angella pulled her into an embrace, holding the back of Adora’s head and pressing her face flush against her as she gripped Angela in a vice and sobbed. “Shhhh, it’s okay” she said, stroking Adora’s hair. “It’s okay. You’re here, I’m here with you. Just breathe.”

Adora rode out the waves and crashes of her breakdown as best she could. When she finally calmed enough, she pulled away and rubbed her eyes dry.

“Why didn’t you say anything about this earlier?” Angella asked. “We all knew you were struggling, Adora, but we had no idea about it being this bad.”

Adora sniffled and shrugged. “I don’t know. It didn’t even cross my mind to talk about it. I knew this sounds stupid, but it felt like it wasn’t something anyone else would be able to understand.” Being held and being heard…already she felt better. Was it really that simple to begin healing? To start to feel whole again?

“That’s not all,” Adora said. “I saw She Ra. And Catra too, before the Beast showed up.”

“Oh?” Angella said, reaching up and wiping away a tear that escaped down Adora’s cheek with one of her thumbs. “What did they say?”

“She Ra was disappointed I broke the sword, even though it really was the best option I could think of at the time. She said she wished I spent more time learning to hone my powers and control them instead of focus on Catra. And when Catra showed up, she said the same thing—that I’d have been able to resist firing the Heart against my will if I had spent more time training than obsessing over her. Then I wouldn’t have had to break the sword and my connection to She Ra in the first place.”

“Is that why you ended things with her back then?” Angella asked.

Adora closed her eyes and nodded. More tears leaked out and ran down her face. “It’s just so hard trying every day to get back in touch with my powers and failing. It’s not just because I gave up Catra for it…it’s knowing that everyone in the universe will also die if I don’t figure it out.”

“You have to stop thinking about it that way,” Angella said, wiping more tears away for her again.

“What?” she asked, furrowing her brow. “That is what will happen, isn’t it? If I don’t get back in touch with She Ra, the Beast will win.”

“That may happen, yes, but you’re forgetting that even if you awaken She Ra right this instant, we still can’t use the Heart. Entrapta and the Enclave have to figure out how to get Light Hope back online, and then everyone needs to come together and test the weapon before we can even think about using it. There’s still time, Adora. Putting this much pressure on yourself all the time until you’re literally falling apart in the back area of our little stage will only make things harder, not easier.”

Adora took another deep breath, feeling strangely light. “Okay,” she said. “I get it. I feel a lot better now too, thank you for listening.”

Angella cupped both her cheeks in her hands and looked her straight in the eyes. “I will always listen to you, and I’m sorry I didn’t catch on sooner. I would have dragged this out of you way earlier if I was paying better attention.”

“So, you’re saying I’ve gotten better at not being so obvious?” Adora said, making a play for levity. It worked, since Angella smiled.

“More like I got too focused on the day to day to notice, but nice try. You’re still an open book, like always.” Her face turned serious. “I want you to go talk with Salas about your nightmares.”

Anxiety started to crawl its way back into Adora’s chest. “What?”

“And I want you to talk to him about you being unable to channel She Ra.”

“Why?” More anxiety. She returned her attention to the outside. Someone was standing absolutely still over a grave, holding their candle between both hands. They must have been whispering a long message since most everyone else was starting to peter out

“Those nightmares are concerning,” Angella said, leaning to the side to capture Adora’s attention once more. “Especially since they’ve been affecting your ability to function.”

She held up a finger to keep Adora from speaking when she opened her mouth to protest. “And no, I don’t care that they only spike once a year. To me, that’s enough. Salas is the leader of the Enclave here, not to mention a genius when it comes to working literal magic on the mind. He’s got more first-hand experience with the Beast threat than probably anyone on the planet and, aside from my husband, he’s the only other person I’ve come to rely on for moral support when I start to feel the pressures of my own job. He stabilized and reoriented me after I came back through the portal. Do I need to keep going?”

“No, but—“

“No buts, Adora. I’m not going to take no for an answer on this one. Why is it you are so reluctant to go speak with him?”

Angella had gone from calming and holding her sobbing body one moment, to cornering her with no avenue for escape the next. She could be truly terrifying when she set her sights on something, and Adora came to regret forgetting that.

“I don’t know!” Adora said, letting her panic show brazenly on her face and through her gestures, despite knowing full well how irrational it was. “Maybe because he’s ‘the leader of the Enclave’ and a literal genius when it comes to magic? Maybe because he was able to actually hold his own for a time against both Micah and Shadow Weaver up on the citadel? Maybe because he spent decades as Horde Prime’s second in command and somehow managed to thrive despite advising a literal psychopath for longer than I’ve been alive? Or heck, maybe it’s because he really is the type of person even you’ve come to rely on as well? I don’t know.”

“He intimidates you,” Angella said. It was a statement, not a question.

Adora sighed. “I have a part to play in all this—an important part, even though you and everyone else tell me not to tie myself into knots over having difficulties with it. But it seems like I’m the only one that can’t deliver on my part.” Again, she looked past Angella and back out to the vigil-goers, lowering her voice and speaking the next part rapidly. “And yeah, maybe it’s a little intimidating to go up to someone you think is starting to grow impatient with you because they’ve removed you from all the meeting itineraries and just, I don’t know, have a normal conversation like I’m not at all massively letting him down.”

Angella laughed, driving higher the embarrassment she felt. She had to admit, her worries did sound a lot more serious in her head.

“He isn’t disappointed in you,” Angella said. “And he removed you from the itineraries because he worried they were only stressing you out. He wanted to give you more time to rest from your own training, since everyone could tell you were starting to pull back into yourself.”

“Wait, are you serious? That’s exactly what Glimmer said.”

“He was supposed to tell you, but I’m guessing that slipped his mind as well?”

Adora nodded and Angella deflated. “That man just has too much going on. Maybe we should invest in finding him another assistant. Either way, he’s not disappointed in you, just worried. He has a lot of wisdom to offer, and staying away from him because he’s a little intense just isn’t a smart idea.”

“I’ll go talk to him, I promise,” Adora said, feeling intensely relieved. She paused a moment before pulling Angella in for another hug. “Thank you for everything. I feel so much better now.”

“Of course,” Angella said, patting her on the back. “Anything for you.”

Adora grinned back, and then immediately dropped the smile when something outside caught her eye. The same person she saw who had been standing there earlier, staring at a tombstone and holding a candle, still stood there in the same spot despite the rest of the crowd having already thinned considerably.

She squinted her eyes and focused on their face, and something struck her as odd: whereas all the other vigil-goers had looked appropriately somber-faced, this man looked positively furious, with bloodshot eyes that suggested he had shed a large number of tears. The Induction Ceremony was a time for respect and quiet introspection, but she had never seen anyone genuinely anguished in the past.

“Have you ever seen that guy before?” Adora asked.

“Sorry?” Angella pulled back from the hug and gave Adora a quizzical look.

“Over there,” she said, pointing out the small crack in the curtains to the crowd outside. The man was no longer there. “Hold on,” she said, rocketing off the stool and throwing the curtains open to run back out onto the stage.

“Who were you trying to point out?” Angella said, joining her at her left. “I see a few people I recognize still in the crowd.”

Adora looked among every face as they went about, placing candles in front of tombstones and continuing to whisper their messages to the deceased. The princesses were all gone already, as was the man she had tried to point out earlier. He had stood in the same spot for far longer than the rest, and it just didn’t make sense. She swore he looked familiar too, on top of it all.

She made her way to the place she last saw him standing and looked down. There was a single gravestone with one candle in front of it, flickering peacefully in its holder. The names of Taline’s two Sentinels, killed in action protecting Glimmer aboard Horde Prime’s citadel three years prior, were engraved upon its surface.

To Narre and Miri, beloved friends, saviors, and loyal to the end.

Chapter Text

Catra stood in the middle of a lavish hallway, thirty floors up and deep in one of the Atrium’s hotel complexes, for what felt like hours before she gathered the courage to knock on the door. Then, she thunked her head forward against the doorframe in total defeat and waited. An intercom installed nearby chimed at her.

“Who is it?” Glimmer asked through the device. “Whoever you are, you’ll need to take your head off my door so I can see your face. I’m not opening up for strangers at three in the morning.”

Catra pulled away from the door and looked at the small camera on top of the intercom. Her head felt heavy, like someone had tied a cinderblock to her face.

“Catra? Is that you?”

“Hey Sparkles,” she said, her voice coming through as a despondent rasp. The door opened and Glimmer, wearing wrinkled, half-tucked-in pajamas, appeared.

“My god you look terrible,” she said, stifling a yawn and rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Speak for yourself,” Catra said, staring at the dark circles under her eyes and the unkempt tuft of hair on her head.

“Believe me, I know. I’ve refused to look at myself in a mirror since I got here.” She glanced down at the letter Catra held crimped in her hand and, without another word, pulled the door open wider in a clear invitation for her to come in.

“They always put you up in nice spots,” Catra said, glancing around the room as she entered. Glimmer hadn’t turned any lights on, but Catra’s night vision let her see once again just how extravagant living in the Atrium was. It was like this every other time she visited Glimmer as well, she had to stop being so surprised by it.

“Only the best for their esteemed Battlemages is what I’m always told,” Glimmer said with a strong hint of sarcastic irony. She shut the door behind her and locked it. “Although I keep telling them all this this is just unnecessary. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked for something smaller, maybe in the lower wards. I’m starting to think they don’t even have connections to accommodations anywhere but up here.”

Catra snorted. “I don’t think you’d like it in the lower wards,” she said, pulling out a stool at the bar separating the living room from the kitchen and jumping up to sit on it.

“Why not? I prefer cozy over spacious, believe it or not. It was cool the first time they put me up here, but now it just feels…I don’t know, artificial and cold? Not lived in?”

“Lower wards are the farthest thing from ‘cozy’ you can get right now,” she said, watching Glimmer feel around the kitchen for a light switch. She shielded her eyes when she finally found one and flipped it on. “Place outside my flat feels more “backside of a dumpster in an alleyway” nowadays than it does “lived in.” Besides, with all the refugees I don’t think there’d even be a cardboard slate and a street corner you could find to lay on right now.”

Catra placed the letter, crumpled from squeezing it so hard on the way over, on the bar top face down, then slid it far enough away she couldn’t inadvertently see it out of the corner of her eye. When she looked back up, Glimmer was standing on her toes on a step stool, reaching for an amber bottle sitting on a top shelf of an overhead cupboard. Catra knew Glimmer had an imposing reputation among her circle in the Enclave, and watching the 5’2” ex-murder-queen reach for all her worth for a bottle of alcohol was almost too amusing not to laugh at.

Almost.

“Don’t bring that out,” Catra said instead, not even a smile coming out of her. “That’s supposed to be for celebrating.”

“We are celebrating,” Glimmer said, tottering off the stepstool cradling the bottle like an infant.

Catra sighed. Leave it to Glimmer to be stubborn. “Dax asked about you by the way,” she said, raising an eyebrow when Glimmer shot her a confused look. “You know, my Statsec captain? He apparently was under the impression that this”—she gestured between them—“was a thing, and then asked if I could introduce you two when I told him we weren’t.”

Glimmer snorted and turned back to the lower cabinets to fish out two glasses. “What’d you tell him? Is he cute?”

“Okay, first of all, I’m the last person that should be commenting on his looks—”

“Because of what’s between his legs?”

“Because he’s my boss,” Catra said. “And second of all, I told him a certain someone back home had your attention so he was shit out of luck.” Glimmer was off the stool and halfway back to the bar when she froze and Catra caught the play of emotions that flickered across her face.

“I’m not…I mean, that’s not really—” Glimmer cut her sentence off and bit her lip. Averted her eyes.

“I mean, I can make the introduction if you want.” Catra shrugged and hoped it was convincing enough to mask how cautious she was really being with the whole conversation. “He’s at least a solid eight. That’s if, you know, I close my eyes and pretend I like dudes.”

She had hoped the joke would lighten the mood, but Glimmer only worried harder at her bottom lip. “I think I’m okay,” she said at last, shaking her head. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“You sure?” Catra suppressed a frustrated growl. She really thought she had gotten her this time. “Bow’s spent the last three years like his only goal with the two of you is to keep you at arm’s length. ‘Hello’ and a coffee with someone new isn’t gonna kill you.”

“Catra can we please not do this now?”

“Do what? I’m just sayin’...”

Glimmer groaned and hammered the bottle and glasses onto the bar-top. “Look. We’re about to get plastered on some expensive swill. Can we just focus on that?” She turned the bottle so Catra could see the label. She ignored it.

“I still don’t know why we’re celebrating in the first place,” she said. “I’m not exactly jumping up and down with excitement here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Exactly.” Glimmer uncorked the bottle with a pop that echoed around the room. “You’re obviously upset about whatever’s on that letter you death-gripped on your way over here, and I’m supposed to be your emotional support while we both get shitfaced. If we don’t drop it now, then we’re both going to be drunk and sad. See the problem?”

Catra sighed again and felt the urge to fight fade from her. Maybe it was a good idea to not push the ‘Bow’ issue right then and there. “They rejected me,” she said. “The Enclave turned me down from the Sentinel program.”

 Glimmer studied her a moment, then gestured toward the letter with a tilt of her head. “Can I?”

Catra shrugged and Glimmer reached for it. She smoothed out the paper and held it up with one hand, her eyes darting back and forth across the page as she read.

“You don’t care what happens to this, do you?” she asked when she finished.

“Not particularly, no. Why do you—hey!”

Glimmer ripped the page in half, then folded the halves and ripped those in two. She continued for several repetitions, purposefully ignoring Catra and her gaping jaw, until nothing more than shreds of the letter remained. Then she ambled out of the kitchen and threw the scraps into a waste bin sitting near the stools.

“Why the hell did you do that?” Catra asked, unsure whether she felt more shocked or angry at how Glimmer reacted.

“It’s done, Catra,” she said, turning to face her. “You gave it your best shot, they took your application seriously, and decided against moving forward. Now you can move on to better things.”

“You’re happy I didn’t get in, aren’t you?” Catra asked, emotion making her voice start to come out wet.

“What makes you say that?”

When Glimmer raised both eyebrows, Catra already knew she had uncovered a mine. It was too late to back out now. “I know how Taline’s Sentinels affected you,” she said.

“Catra, I’m the one who dug for information on how to apply in the first place since there’s literally no public knowledge about it. I wrote your letter of recommendation too!”

“I know that,” Catra said, trying to keep her voice level. “But Narre and Miri are part of your nightmares for crying out loud. It’s close to the anniversary…I know they’re flaring up for you too.”

“I’m not relieved about it,” she said, still on the offensive.

“You sure as hell don’t sound all that upset.”

“What do you want me to do, go curl up in a corner and sob because they didn’t take you? Will that make you feel better?”

Catra stopped short of saying the first response that came to mind. Despite how good it might have felt in the moment, she wouldn’t let the conversation devolve into a shouting match. The last thing she wanted was to fight with Glimmer on top of everything else. “Maybe you weren’t consciously thinking it, but I want to hear you at least admit that part of you is relieved I was turned down,” she said.

Glimmer looked away, conflict warring on her face. She sighed, visibly calmed, and sat on the stool next to Catra’s.

“I’m not relieved,” she said, turning and looking Catra in the eyes. “If you got in, Taline would likely have taken you directly under her wing. And with a Sentinel at her back again, she’d be able to finally come out of retirement. She’s a dang war hero and the emperor has just kept her chained behind a desk for the past three years. It would let her get back to the front lines with you in tow, and god knows we need all the help we can get out there.”

Catra stared at her with a placid face and Glimmer sighed. She leaned against one elbow propped up on the bar table and rubbed at her temple.

“I’ll admit that I was worried,” she said. “Even though I’m just part of the evacuation crew, what little I’ve seen first-hand is not pretty and I did worry about you being out there in that. But I’m not relieved they decided to pass on you. I know how hard you worked for this and how much you wanted it. I’m not relieved at all.”

Tears welled in Catra’s eyes and she blinked them down. “Sorry,” she said, looking away. Glimmer reached out, cupping both Catra’s cheeks and turning her so they faced one another again.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I get it. I just need you to know that I fully supported you in this. There isn’t any part of me that’s secretly happy it didn’t work out. Okay?”

Catra nodded dumbly and Glimmer let her face go.

“Good,” she said. “You’re amazing Catra, and I know that you don’t believe that, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are. You worked so damn hard, and I know they took you seriously, especially after they dug into your service history.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. Why else would they put you through the ringer for six whole months evaluating everything they could get their hands on? The Enclave doesn’t fuck around. If they knew from the start they couldn’t take you they would have said so. The fact you made it through all the way to the end is worth celebrating in and of itself. That’s why I brought the bottle out.”

Catra finally glanced at it sitting on the countertop and remembered when they had first bought it. It had sat on one of the merchandiser shelves in an Atrium artisan boutique long ago. She had reeled from sticker shock after seeing the price, the two of them having taken the day to explore the station, nearly six months into her cadet training and Glimmer’s Battlemage tutelage respectively. Glimmer had merely grabbed it off the shelf and paid for it without a second thought, talking about keeping it ‘for a special celebration’ while Catra gawked at her.

“So?” Glimmer asked, prompting her with the look in her eyes. “What do you say?”

“On second thought, I like the way you think, Sparkles. This whole ‘find the silver lining’ thing sounds like a good idea.”

“Oh thank god,” she said, visibly relaxing. “I was running out of inspiring things I could say to convince you.”

“We could keep going if you want to practice,” Catra said, teasing.

“Nope. No, that’s totally okay with me,” Glimmer leaned forward and reached for the bottle along with the two tumbler glasses. She froze mid-reach when Catra’s stomach gave a sudden and completely unprovoked rumble, ratcheting her head around to give her a shit eating grin. “Someone’s hungry.”

“Maybe we should eat something first before we tackle that bottle,” Catra said, covering her stomach with her arms. She really should have taken the time to at least eat the leftovers now sitting forgotten in her fridge before coming over.

Glimmer laughed and Catra felt her face go hot. Then she pushed Glimmer off the stool to get even with her for being so smug.

An hour later and the both of them sat in the dining room, the circular table in front of them stacked with boxes upon boxes of take out and a half-empty bottle of expensive drink.

“Oh my god,” Catra said, leaning back into the chair and undoing the button on her pants. “I can’t believe you actually ordered all of this.”

“I can’t believe you ate so much of it,” Glimmer said, a hiccup breaking up the laugh that escaped her as she reached across the table to pour more alcohol into Catra’s glass.

“Hey, it was good, okay? Don’t judge me for indulging if you order a bunch of food and place it in front of me.” She gestured to the remaining boxes. Despite both of them having eaten so much, more than half the haul still remained. “What are we going to do with all of this?”

“We’ll keep them in the fridge,” Glimmer said, shot-gunning her fourth glass (holy shit) and slamming it back down on the table. Alcohol made Glimmer quicker to express emotions other than excitability or aggression, and thus she tended to lean in whenever given the chance to indulge in it. “Plenty to snack on through the night if either of us wake up hungry, and whatever we don’t finish, you can take home and keep as leftovers.”

“Wait, are you for real?” Catra asked, sitting forward and appraising the piles with fresh enthusiasm.

Glimmer nodded. “I don’t ever want to see your fridge as empty as it was the last time I went over to your place. I was so sad for you.”

Catra grunted and decided not to argue, remembering the day Glimmer caught a glimpse of the inside of her fridge, only to promptly drag her to the nearest supermarket to stock her up. “So, what’s new with you?” she asked instead, watching in mild disbelief as Glimmer filled up her glass again. “Three deployments back-to-back and the Enclave finally said you can take some time off. How’d it feel being thrown around from planet to planet for eight months?”

“Do you see how many drinks I’m pouring myself here?” Glimmer asked, turning the bottle and shaking it to gauge how much was left. “It’s hard, exhausting work, both physically, mentally, and especially emotionally. I thought Taline’s training was grueling, but she was just preparing me for what it’d be like out there on the front lines.”

 “I remember how much you’d complain about those training sessions,” Catra said, sipping her glass. After a moment, she shrugged and downed the rest of it in one go, indicating to Glimmer to fill her up again. Normally she’d be a little more reserved, but Glimmer was here again for the first time in a long while, the alcohol gave her a nice burn, it felt good, and she didn’t have work the next day. Hence, plenty of excuse to indulge.

“I think they’re going to try and push me into a command role soon,” Glimmer said, staring off into the distance.

“That’s good!” Catra said. “Promotions are good.”

Glimmer shook her head. “No, they aren’t. Not when I can’t even think about leading people without having a full-blown panic attack about it.”

“It’s different when you’re in the thick of things.” Catra paused and considered if she really wanted to dive into this conversation or not. She knew what Glimmer saw in her nightmares, just as Glimmer knew of hers, but they hadn’t actually talked about their wider implications. She eventually decided it was now or never.

“Look, I know you keep seeing what happened on the citadel, and I know a lot of things trigger those memories for you. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I have some sort of answer to solve all of it, but I do know that when you’re out there in a life-or-death situation, you don’t have time to start thinking about what happened and you don’t have time to panic. You fall back on your training and just act. You already know this. You’re training is second to none. Just look at what happened on Rinne.”

Glimmer’s glare turned to acid at the mention of that name and Catra, flinched, berating herself in her head for being so careless. She likely just derailed one touchy conversation and got them onto something worse.

Thankfully, Glimmer just rolled her eyes and scoffed, downing her glass in three, four, five consecutive swallows. “You’re probably the fifth person I’ve heard that from. Even Taline’s tried talking me through it, but I just don’t see it. How can I justify accepting command over other soldiers, people whose lives depend on me being functional, when I can’t even fathom doing so without hyperventilating?”

“Maybe a leap of faith?”

Glimmer furrowed her brow. “Leap of what?”

“A leap of faith,” Catra repeated. “You aren’t going to figure out if you can handle an ‘official’ command of your own by sitting back and thinking about it. You’re fucking awesome, Glimmer. You’re the famous Angel of Archanas!”

Glimmer buried her head in her hands. “Nope. No, no, no we’re not talking about that story.”

Catra snickered, satisfied at having dodged one minefield by purposefully sending Glimmer down a spiral she knew was safe. Rinne might be a nuclear topic, but quoting the nickname she got from that nightmare campaign never sent her into dark, depressive moods so much as it just comically irritated the hell out of her.

“Fine, I’ll spare you this time,” Catra said. “But—”

“I haven’t even been to Archanas! Why couldn’t they just call me something else? Sure, Taline did some crazy shit there that helped end the war, but what does that have to do with me?”

Catra fought to keep her snicker from escalating into a full-blown belly laugh. They’d had this conversation about her now-famous moniker she inherited from Taline countless times in the past, but never with this much alcohol in their systems. Glimmer usually just scoffed and changed topics, so seeing her get legitimately pissed off about it was a refreshing change.

“Because you were her student,” Catra said, leaning in to emphasize her point. “And at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what you did to originally grab their attention. What does matter is that you reminded everyone that they can act decisively, even in the face of overwhelming odds. It reminded them of that ‘crazy shit’ Taline did, herself. You and I both know it wasn’t her fielding the fleet over that planet that earned her that ‘Seraph’ title, but that didn’t stop every living person in the galaxy from thinking that’s where it came from. If Taline isn’t exempt from that sort of thing, I don’t think you should feel too bad when it happens to you either.”

There. Rinne was off limits, but that was about the closest Catra could get to speaking tangentially about it without everything blowing up in her face.

“I think it just means everyone is dense,” Glimmer said. “I hate it.”

Catra barked out a laugh and decided to concede the point.

“But seriously, you made Battlemage in what?” she asked. “A year? You’re top rookie on the front lines six months after? There’s a reason they’re stretching you thin on so many assignments, dude. It’s because you’re doing an awesome job and impressing all the right people. And you’re forgetting that you’ve already led people in the ‘official’ way back on Etheria. You damn near singlehandedly kicked my ass overtaking my hidden base. I say just take baby steps.”

Glimmer laughed. “Tell me, what would ‘baby steps’ mean in this situation, then?”

“Accept the promotion and the command when they offer it, start with a small team on minor forward advances, maybe a few covering assignments to get people back to the evac stations. Stuff like that. You’ll find out pretty quickly if you start choking under pressure or not.”

“You’re telling me to accept a promotion when you’ve turned yours down how many times now?”

Catra stiffened, suddenly feeling an animosity emanating from Glimmer she hadn’t noticed before. Glimmer wasn’t actually mad, just defensive, and the alcohol exaggerated it. Still, even though Catra knew that, it was jarring to hear her tone of voice shift so suddenly.

“It makes sense,” Catra said, becoming acutely aware of how the room tilted, how fuzzy her head seemed, and how thick her tongue felt. She hoped she hadn’t slurred any of her words when she was trying to convey a serious thought.

“How is it you tell them four freaking times that you don’t want to get promoted and its fine, but everyone and their mother seems hell bent on getting me to command a squad? This is just like that time Adora got angry at me after I told her I was leaving and said I needed to stop running away from my problems.”

Catra’s ears drooped despite trying her hardest to not let it happen—they had a mind of their own. With horror, she finally realized the effect the alcohol was having on her. It was more than she anticipated, and she probably hadn’t caught on sooner because she was sitting stationary in a chair rather than trying to balance on two feet. But that was beside the point.

Normally she’d bite back with a scathing remark, throw her walls up, and metaphorically scratch and kick and verbally spar with Glimmer until, spent and thoroughly vented, they made amends (usually by crying-hugging it out). Now all she did was sulk. Alcohol tended to have that effect on her, depressing her moods. It was the reason she out of the two of them was the one who tended to nurse only one or two drinks the whole night.

Glimmer looked like she suddenly realized what she had said and her eyes misted over. ”Oh shit, I’m so sorry Catra. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”

Catra shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said, pushing the emotions deeper down and swallowing the lump that had been forming in her throat. “I know you didn’t. It’s okay.”

“I just…I can’t risk taking responsibility over peoples’ lives like that. Not when even the chance of me fucking up means they’ll die. I already choked aboard Horde Prime’s citadel, Catra. He had Narre in his grip and was distracted. I had the knife, I could have just—“ she gestured vaguely to finish her point. “But I didn’t do anything. I sat there frozen in fear, and he died because I couldn’t help. And Rinne? Well…we won’t even talk about that.” She sighed. “I can’t chance that happening again with other people. I won’t chance it. No matter what.”

Catra nodded, swallowing again. “Hey, I get it, trust me. We both have our things we’re struggling with. I shouldn’t have made those suggestions so casually. I know it’s not that easy.”

Glimmer quickly poured another glass for herself and, when hovering the bottle over Catra’s glass, she nodded and let her pour one for her as well. It would have been better had they both stopped, but Catra wanted to give some sort of indication she had accepted the apology.

“How is Adora?” Catra asked quietly, putting a false casualness into her tone as she picked up her glass and pretended to absentmindedly study its contents.

“You’re asking me about Adora?” Glimmer sounded like she couldn’t believe her ears.

Catra shrugged. “I guess I am.”

“She’s…well, stressing. She still hasn’t been able to get back in touch with her powers. It’s causing a bit of a crisis for her, I’m pretty sure.”

Catra gave a snort of laughter that sounded more forced and derisive than she intended it to be. “Yeah, that absolutely would throw her for a loop. Adora can’t stand letting people down, and that probably goes double if she’s somehow gone sterile.”

“I suppose it’s out of the question for me to suggest you reach out to her, is it?”

Catra arched a brow. “Why would that even be a question in the first place?”

“Well, I mean…she’s struggling, and… come on. We both know how much you struggled too at some point.”

“Still struggling,” Catra said, correcting her with a ruthless deadpan. “Just struggling in space instead of on Etheria, thank you. Remember my fridge?”

Glimmer rolled her eyes. “Fine, but you’ve got experience actually learning to open up to people and ask for help when you need it. I mean, you came and knocked on my door at three in the morning rather than wait. That’s light years of improvement compared to old Catra.”

Catra stared at her drink and tried to figure out if Glimmer was complimenting her or not.

“Adora used to know how to go to people too,” Glimmer said. “But I’ve been hearing from my parents and the other princesses for a while now how worried they all are about her. It sounds like she’s just kind of…retreated into herself? Does that make sense? She asked me to look into the Daiamid and I swear she was going to crumble into dust from sheer disappointment when I couldn’t find anything for her.”

“And you think I should reach out to her and help her realize the power of friendship blah blah blah all over again?” Catra asked.

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Glimmer said, pouting. “But yeah. A lot has changed since we left. Neither of you are the same person from when you last spoke. I think she could use your help.”

Catra considered that. Since leaving Etheria, Adora had never been far from her mind. The first few months were the worst, with her repeatedly catching herself ruminating on their last conversation, over and over and over again. More recently, however, she’d manage to go even longer without thinking of her once. It was only when something like this happened—her getting brought up unexpectedly—that everything would come rushing back in a storm of dull pain and anguish from old wounds reopening.

She downed the entire contents of her glass in one go and gestured for a refill. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Glimmer,” she said, seeing the reaction on her friend’s face when she addressed her by her actual name. “Maybe Adora would be open to hearing from me again, but she’s the one that said she wanted to focus on saving the world. She’s the one who asked me not to speak to her again.”

“I was there when she said that,” Glimmer said, tipping the bottle. “I caught the tail end of that conversation. I don’t think the two of you were on the same page about what that meant.”

“Yeah, but we all heard the same thing, didn’t we?” Catra said, leaning forward as she pushed authority into her voice. “It’s not my responsibility to overanalyze what Adora was trying to say, all I can speak for is what she did say, what I heard, and what I think that means. The ball is in her court, she can reach out if she wants. I plan on honoring her last request, even if it means I never see her again. I’ve made my peace with that.” It was a lie, but one she had managed to convince herself of on most occasions. She tipped her glass back and downed its contents again in one go.

Glimmer sighed and Catra could see the moment she decided to let the argument go. “Fair enough,” she said. “But I think you should go talk to Taline about your Sentinel application at least.”

Catra blinked. “What? Sparkles, that’s even more out of the question than talking to Adora again. Why in the world would you think that was a good idea?”

“I can’t put my finger on it, but I think something was weird with the application.”

“You just got done telling me they were seriously considering me because I made it through the whole process. Now you’re telling me the application might have been wrong?”

“I don’t know whether it was wrong or not, Catra, but that’s exactly why I’m saying you should talk to her about it. People had this sort of…weird look they gave me when I researched more into how the whole process worked. And when I actually showed up to give my recommendation and submit all your paperwork, all the people at the intake office kind of looked at each other and spoke with a weird tone. It was like they weren’t quite sure what to do with everything.”

“And you think that’s a good reason for why I should go confess to Taline that I tried to do this and also ended up failing miserably at it?”

“You didn’t fail miserably, Catra, don’t be dramatic.”

“Look, there was a reason I didn’t want her to know, okay? There was a reason I made you swear not to ask her about how any of it worked, even if it meant you wouldn’t find anything. That reason hasn’t changed. In fact, now that they rejected me, I especially don’t want her to know.”

“Yeah, but you have no idea why they didn’t take you, do you? They didn’t say so in the letter, and unless there’s another document you got that I didn’t see, then you have no idea what made them decide to ultimately pass.”

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Catra said, falling back on her tried-and-true defenses. “I’m a failure and useless, just like Shadow Weaver always said. No surprises there. They rejected me since everyone else does too.”

Glimmer rolled her eyes, clearly growing impatient. “Catra, I mean it. Stop talking like that, you’re only hurting yourself.”

Catra took a deep breath and centered herself. Glimmer was right, and she was letting her emotions run out of control. A lifetime of abuse meant a lifetime of learning to be kind to oneself, and it’d be irresponsible of her to take the lazy way out and bring herself down all on her own. “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine, it happens. I know you came close, and I know the very last thing Taline would do is make you feel worse about it. I get it’s a touchy subject so I won’t pry about why you don’t want to tell her, but I really think, if anyone is going to have any answers for you at this point, it’s her. So just…think about it, okay?”

Catra nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

 Satisfied, Glimmer leaned forward and reached for the bottle again. She looked and saw how it was practically almost gone, and then shrugged.

“Enough talk about work and depressing things,” she said, pouring Catra another glass before she could protest and then moving on to empty the rest of the bottle into her own glass. “I have two weeks of shore leave and I’m so excited to spend it doing nothing but stuffing my face and hanging out. Oh! And I have messages for you from Entrapta and Scorpia as well. They’re always super good about making sure their transmissions get included in my monthly download. Hand me your PDA and I’ll transfer the files.”

Catra laughed. She downed her glass before unstrapping the device from her arm and handing it over to a woozy Glimmer.

For several more hours they passed the time, just enjoying each other’s company and exchanging stories. It wasn’t until the light of the artificial sun on the station blared through the open window that Catra cracked an eye open. Sometime during the night, she and Glimmer ended up snuggled tight against each other on top of the pull-out couch in the center of the living room.

She had meant what she had said to Dax: she and Glimmer had a solid friendship, but nothing beyond that. In fact, that was plenty already. She hadn’t imagined ever being comfortable enough around another person to seek comfort in sleep next to them, especially after what had happened with Adora.

Maybe Glimmer was right. Maybe she had truly improved her life leaps and bounds beyond where she had been back on Etheria. And it wasn’t just her friendship with Glimmer either. It was Dax and her colleagues, Trayn and Keren as well. And of course, Taline too, although there was more to unpack there than she felt comfortable thinking about, even after three years.

She turned and studied Glimmer’s face. She looked so peaceful, like she was finally getting the deep sleep she had been missing out on for so long. Catra realized then that she hadn’t woken up in a cold sweat either, and the nightmares she had grown to anticipate during this time of the year hadn’t chased her to wakefulness. In fact, she was reasonably certain she hadn’t had any nightmare at all this time.

With a content sigh, she snuggled in closer, eliciting a half-awake groan from Glimmer as they adjusted and better molded their bodies against each other. Catra slowly drifted back to sleep, feeling Glimmer’s heart beat thump against her ear as she melted into her warmth.

Her last conscious thought was that maybe, just maybe, it might be a good idea to go and talk to Taline after all. If vulnerability with Glimmer felt this encouraging, what would it be like with her?

Chapter Text

A few days had passed since the Induction Ceremony. The other princesses had gone home to their respective kingdoms, and Adora finally had an audience with Salas. She felt on the verge of hyperventilating right outside his office, deep in Bright Moon castle. Strong hands pulled hers away from her braid when she moved to redo it, and Adora turned to see Bow giving her a knowing look.

“How many times have you messed with that in the past half hour?” he asked, releasing her wrists when she didn’t fight him and gripping her by the shoulders instead. “The braid is perfect, like always. Just focus on me instead. Breathe.”

“Okay.” She nodded and leaned into him as she closed her eyes and took deep breaths. The urge to fix her hair subsided. “I’m calm now,” she said after several moments. “Thanks, Bow.”

He flashed her a grin when she opened her eyes again. “If it gets a bit much in there, just remember that he doesn’t hate you,” he said. “He’s just scatterbrained with everything that’s going on. Angella said so herself, and if anyone has information that can help you it will be him. This is a good thing, you going to talk to him.”

“I don’t know what I would do without you,” Adora said. The relief that flooded her as she soaked in his words was hard to describe. “Are you going to be here when I get out?”

“Probably not,” he said, releasing her. “I promised Swift Wind I would fly with him right after this, and I wouldn’t feel right canceling last minute.”

“Ah.” Adora fought to keep her guilt from showing on her face. Bow had couched things in impressively non-confrontational language, but it still reminded Adora she hadn’t ridden Swift Wind in nearly two years. It wasn’t his fault things had deteriorated between them; it was hers. She had expected too much from him, thinking she could reconnect with She Ra through their bond. “Yeah, no problem. That’s…that’s probably a good idea.”

“Hey,” Bow said, shaking her loose from her thoughts. “It’s fine. Really. Him and I are overdue for some guy time is all.”

Adora wanted to argue—how could it be okay? But the look in his eyes and the expression on his face convinced her and, for the hundredth time that week, she wondered if she would have remained sane even a fraction as long as she had so far without him.

He promised they’d meet up the next day so she could share whatever she got from Salas, and Adora watched him recede down the hall and turn the corner, out of sight. She waited a little longer after he disappeared, just in case he came back, then quickly undid her braid and fixed it for the fourth time that afternoon. She took another steadying breath when she finished, and turned finally to face the door to Salas’ office.

You can do this, she thought. She raised a fist to the wood and knocked.

“Come in,” came his voice from inside.

Adora pushed inside, only to be assaulted with the sight of the messiest, most cluttered room she had ever seen in the castle. Salas stood behind an ebony desk, piled high with papers and books and other esoteric paraphernalia, holding up a document and squinting at it as he read.

“Hello Adora,” he said, glancing over his paper at her as she made slow, tentative steps inside. “Please, have a seat.”

She looked to the single chair in front of the desk. Piled atop the cushion sat another stack of books and papers. She almost said something, and then Salas gestured. A tiny ripple of magic billowed out from him, and a small spinning rune appeared over the stack, picking it up, floating it off the seat, and placing it gently somewhere to the side and out of the way.

“Thanks,” Adora said, taking the seat.

The stacks of books and papers on the desk itself obscured almost all of Salas standing behind it, and she wouldn’t have been able to look him in the eyes had he been sitting down. Salas made another gesture and several more runes appeared over each pile, moving them one after the other out of the way until the desk too was spotless. Once the spell finished, he took a seat on the other side and gave her his full attention.

“Angella mentioned a few days ago you’d be reaching out to me,” he said. “She also properly admonished me for not warning you about changing the meeting itineraries. I’m sorry about that, my mind has been all over the place keeping track of things. And now that Entrapta has sent me this log of security breaches to review”—he waved the document he still held in his hand—“I barely have time to sleep or eat, let alone remember the little details.” He put the paper down on the desk and slid it off to the side. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Adora fidgeted in the chair. Admittedly this wasn’t nearly as intimidating or stressful as she had imagined it beforehand to be. She knew better, had seen enough first-hand to know this wasn’t the case, but Salas looked positively harmless amidst a room full of books. That, and spoke in such a way it was hard to not feel welcome in his presence. Her unease, she realized with a small amount of surprise, wasn’t that he scared her, it was that she had no idea exactly what to say to him. How did she jumpstart that conversation about her fears and troubles, the Daiamid, and She Ra?

She took a deep breath and dove right in, starting with the nightmares. The entire time, he merely listened, sometimes asking clarifying questions and other times only nodding or leaning forward to show his investment in her words. Before she knew it, she had walked him through the entire vision that had plagued her for three years since that day aboard Prime’s citadel.

“This is a common phenomenon when coming into contact with the Beast I’m afraid,” Salas said, frowning slightly and giving her a sympathetic look.

“Is there anything I can do to make them stop? Or make them, I don’t know…less?”

“It’s not a perfect cure, but you could try to stop your obsessing over the Beast. Once you stop thinking about it day in and day out, the nightmares will gradually lose their potency.”

Adora frowned. “I don’t think about the Beast every day like that,” she said.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“And your constant, almost pathological physical training near daily for the past three years has nothing to do with the Beast? The hours upon hours you spend meditating in front of your runestone? The weeks at a time you’d lock yourself deep in the castle library or George and Lance’s collection, poring over old tomes and deciphering ancient writings?”

Adora frowned. He recalled a lot about her behavior for someone so busy they couldn’t be bothered to warn her about barring her from meetings. “All of that is so I can try and get back in touch with She Ra.”

“And then you can fire the Heart and defeat the Beast when it comes time. When that’s done, you’ve succeeded in saving trillions of lives. Then you can rest?” Salas let the words hang between them for several moments and something clicked in Adora’s head.

“Oh. Okay, I think I see what you’re trying to get at.” She narrowed her eyes. “So, your advice is to just stop worrying? ‘Hey Adora, have you tried solving your problem by, I don’t know…not having a problem?’ There’s a universe eating threat out there and I have the responsibility to stop it, Salas. I can’t force myself to just not care about it.”

Salas sighed. “You’re missing my point, so let me try a different approach. During the first conflict, you were considered extraordinarily lucky if you lived at all after exposure to the Beast in person. A small amount and you might have gotten out relatively unscathed, a tiny bit more and you’d lose your sanity if you were lucky enough to emerge at all. Any more than that and the Beast claimed you entirely and took you as a thrall. In fact, there are only a handful of people that we know for certain ever lived through a lethal exposure, one of them being Corynth and another being someone I explicitly am forbidden from discussing. I’m sure you know who I’m talking about.”

“Evelyn.”

Salas shut his eyes and hissed with tense shoulders. Adora let silence linger between them, until he relaxed and opened his eyes.

“How many times do I have to tell you it’s dangerous to utter that name?”

“We’re on a planet-sized black-site research station,” Adora said. “One that Horde Prime explicitly agreed not to spy on while we worked. You yourself told me about Taline’s sister not long after she left. If the Emperor was going to bring the hammer down on us for saying that name here, it would have happened already.”

“Yes, but I’m concerned about what happens later,” Salas said. “Etheria will enter the public sphere at some point, and when it does it will be the center of a great deal of attention and scrutiny. Just because you may be safe to utter that name now does not mean that will always be the case. If you were to slip up in a place where the emperor could pay attention—”

“Okay, okay I get it,” Adora said, deflating. “Sorry. I won’t let it happen again. Can we just get back to the part where you help me? Please?” She felt a little bad cutting him off like that, but another of his endless lectures was not something she was prepared to handle graciously. Not with her nerves as frayed as they were—she already felt the urge to fix her braid again.

Salas eyed her with exasperated eyes before he continued. “What you were exposed to aboard the citadel was merely this person’s last memories before they passed. The Beast wasn’t actually there, but seeing through her eyes as the thing consumed her must have been enough to influence your brain chemistry anyways.”

“I don’t actually remember seeing anything of her memories,” Adora said. “She Ra said she protected me from them. I just saw a vision of my own.”

“Even so, that mind of yours is ruminating,” Salas said. “It’s doing everything it can to re-analyze the threat it experienced that day, over and over again, turning it relentlessly to inspect every angle so it might know how to fight properly should it stumble across the Beast again. The only problem is, there isn’t really a threat. Not an immediate one, at least, because you aren’t in any immediate danger—you’re sitting here, in my study, with me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” Adora said, nodding. “I know the difference between training to fight this thing and actually being in the middle of a fight with it but…my brain doesn’t?”

“You are exactly right. If you can learn to step away and stay away, to separate your anxiety from yourself after a night terror, your mind will eventually pick up on the fact that you are safe, even if you don’t feel that way in the moment. Repeat that enough times, and eventually the nightmares will cease to have as strong an effect. Cognitive behavioral therapy in a nutshell.”

“Will the nightmares ever go away altogether, do you think?”

“Not fully,” Salas said. “I’m afraid they will likely be with you to some extent even far into the future, but they will lose their potency. They may spike in frequency or severity especially around anniversaries like now, but in time they will lessen to something more akin to an uncomfortable memory instead of a debilitating nightmare.”

Adora considered that.

“I also want to add that you aren’t the only one struggling with this sort of thing right now,” Salas said.

“What do you mean?” Adora asked. “Someone else is having nightmares too?” As far as she knew, only Glimmer and possibly Catra had them. Everyone else aboard the citadel when Taline exposed them—Scorpia, Micah, Bow, even Lonnie and Rogelio before they left—hadn’t experienced side effects.

Salas laughed. “Sometimes I forget how literal a person you are Adora. It’s endearing. I see why Angella speaks so fondly of you.”

Adora flushed and, thankfully, Salas continued without making a bigger deal of it.

“Morale is beginning to dip. The Light Hope roadblock is proving to be a real struggle for our scientists and engineers. Their frustrations are beginning to seep into the support structure around them, which is exactly why Angella gave the type of speech she did at the ceremony.”

“She didn’t say those things just to get through to me,” Adora said, replaying in her mind what Angella had said that night. It was explicitly worded for everyone to hear, but Adora had been so focused on her own problems and her own struggles she only saw it as Angella speaking directly to her in the moment. She forgot the queen had only used her as an example to inspire, even if her words were genuine.

“I’ve learned once Entrapta starts to feel the stress, then the others have likely been feeling it much worse for far longer,” Salas said. “Why do you think I approved Hordak’s shore leave early? Entrapta needed a break…Hordak needed a break. Everyone needs a break.” He smiled at her. “You especially.”

“I don’t know how I can do that though,” Adora said. She felt like they were finally getting to the root of the problem, the thing she hadn’t been able to voice out loud. “Even if I take time off and get away, I don’t think I’d be able to relax. I could be sitting in one of Mystacor’s spa pools and still be worrying about the Beast and my connection to She Ra. It’s like I’m missing a part of myself, Salas. You don’t just stop thinking about it because you decided to take a vacation.”

“That’s a fair point,” Salas said, sitting back in his chair and combing his hands through his hair. “Did you find anything helpful from Glimmer about the Daiamid?”

Adora did a double take. “How do you know about that?” she asked. The ansible communications were supposed to be private.

“I know everything that happens here,” he said, speaking as if that were common knowledge. “Why do you think my mind can’t tell up from down anymore? Too much to juggle for one old man.”

“Well apparently you didn’t know about all the security breaches,” Adora said, then immediately cringed when she heard how bad that sounded. She shot him a sheepish look when he glared at her. “Sorry.”

“Yes…well…” Salas adjusted his clothing and sat straighter in the chair. “I must admit I’m impressed she found those breaches in the first place. The crew schedules are supposed to be top secret.”

“How is someone able to manipulate the system like that for three years without anyone catching on?” Adora asked.

“They aren’t,” Salas said, narrowing his eyes and glancing toward the paper from earlier again. “Someone is helping them game the system.”

“We have a mole?”

“We have a mole,” Salas said nodding. “Although now that Entrapta has brought it to my attention, the charade is up. It’s only a matter of time before the intruder is found, and their inside man as well. The funny thing,” he said, grabbing the paper again and scanning it, “is their personnel file is only three years old. Same as the length of the breaches.”

“That’s…bad. That is bad, right?”

“Every person working here on the Heart has an extensive, recorded history either with the Enclave or the Empire, and their entire record should be available for me to see. It’s only the members of the standing navy in orbit that are more inexperienced, since we need as many veterans as possible slowing the Beast down on the front lines. But even they have service histories stretching back past three years. To find someone in the system that has no history before the Enclave took responsibility over Etheria in the first place is an anomaly.”

Salas flipped the paper over for her and Adora saw how little information was printed on it. A small photo of the person in question stared at her in the upper corner.

“That’s the guy I saw in Entrapta’s lab!” she said, pointing at the picture. “He was at the Induction Ceremony too, just standing there in front of Narre and Miri’s grave.”

“The name we have on file for him is Kalanthe, although I wouldn’t be too certain that’s his actual name.” Salas sighed and studied the paper again through narrow eyes. Having an inside man to move you around and get through security is one thing, but having a doctored Imperial service record is another. And when I looked into the Eternian dig sites this ‘Kalanthe’ character visited, none of them showed any signs of tampering at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those sites are incredibly complex for our team to work through. So much so, that we’re still breaking into them to this day. Eternian technology is several orders of magnitude more advanced than the current cutting edge of the Empire. But, once we inevitably do get in, there are no signs of someone else having been there in thousands of years. Whoever this person is, they’ve been doing something with the ruins, getting in and out over the course of a few hours, sometimes as little as thirty minutes, and leaving without a trace. It usually takes our best people weeks just to get the darn things open.”

“That sounds really serious,” Adora said.

 “Believe me, the fact he is able to do something with the ruins in that short amount of time is more concerning to me than the fact he’s been skulking about undetected for so long,” Salas drummed his fingers on the desk, a nervous tic. “If you see him again, do not engage him. I want you to call for back up and wait for it to arrive, okay?”

Adora agreed and Salas seemed to relax. “Now, I believe we were originally talking about the Daiamid?” he said. “I know you asked Glimmer to look into it, but I haven’t had the time yet to find out on my own what she told you.”

Adora wilted. “She couldn’t find anything. There’s nothing on them other than what everyone already knows. I don’t even know what a ‘Shaper’ is. Is there like, a special type of member they call a ‘Shaper of the Daiamid’ or…?”

“That’s just the official title someone in their ranks had,” Salas said. “They ‘shape’ their magic rather than relying on runes. Thus, ‘Shaper.’”

Adora gave him a look that said she didn’t find that at all helpful and Salas laughed.

“I’m not surprised you didn’t find anything, just to be clear,” he said. “The emperor is obsessive about controlling the narrative and flow of information surrounding the first Beast war. Corynth and the other Shapers are a large part of that.”

“I had hoped there might be something in the Enclave’s records that would tell me more about them,” Adora said. “I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, but I thought learning about them might help me reconnect with She Ra.”

Salas smoothed his hair back with his hands again and sighed. “You aren’t scraping the bottom of the barrel. The truth is they likely would have had a lot to teach you had they still been alive. They knew how to manipulate magic in the same way as you princesses, only without runestones of their own.”

“Glimmer mentioned you might have first-hand knowledge about them,” Adora said. “The fact they were considered myths before showing up wasn’t even in the public documents—I only knew that because you mentioned it before.”

“Of course I have first-hand knowledge,” Salas said. “I know more about the Daiamid than you’d ever learn looking for recordings in some archive, Enclave or no. I just can’t actually teach you what they would have when it came to your powers. Taline would have been better suited to that, if she were still here.”

Adora frowned. “Why would Taline be able to teach me what the Daiamid would have?”

“She would have been one of them if she hadn’t so brazenly planted her flag against them at her sister’s trial,” Salas said.

“Wait,” Adora said, heartrate picking up. “Wait, wait, wait…you’re saying she was going to join them? Then turned them down purposefully to oppose them? Why would she do that? Weren’t they trying to help her sister escape after Prime ordered her executed?”

“I don’t know,” Salas said. “She’s never told me, although not for lack of me asking, mind you. Taline was one of the jurors at the trial. I don’t think it ever even crossed her mind that her sister might have been acting out of a genuine belief she was right, but Taline was convinced the Daiamid were manipulating her sister into defying the emperor for their own purposes. She became one of the few people to fight them and live.”

“Taline fought the Daiamid?”

“Not just the Daiamid,” Salas said. His eyes glazed over in a look that told Adora he was reliving something vivid from his memories. “She fought Corynth himself. On the steps of the Imperial Judiciary, deep in the Heartlands. I’ll never forget that duel for as long as I live. I was there when Prime made the accusation of sedition…I was there when Corynth and every other Shaper present revealed their real identities and protected the scientists while they made their escape. I was there when Taline rebuffed Corynth’s offer for her to join them.”

“She must have had a good reason to do that. She had to.” Adora couldn’t imagine someone like Taline making decisions lightly, not after the way she looked her in the eye up on the citadel and commanded her to surrender.

“She must have,” Salas said, agreeing. “Although, again, she never told me what that reason was no matter how many times I asked. Never explained why she thought the Daiamid were manipulating rather than helping. All I know is she wasn’t faking it. The ferocity with which she fought that day…the look in her eyes as she did so...that was someone who truly thought she’d lose her sister forever if she didn’t turn Corynth into a red smear across the pavement.”

He laughed and, to Adora, it sounded sad. “Looking back on it now, that’s exactly what happened, actually. Still, powerful as she was even back then, Taline was no match for him. If Narre and Miri hadn’t stepped in when they did to pull her back…”

He trailed off and Adora’s imagination ran wild. She knew what kind of figure Corynth was—had seen some of the documentaries, watched some of the movies, read some of the biopics. That battle must have been unimaginable to witness and she wanted to ask Salas more, wanted to get him to tell her of it in greater detail. But, upon seeing the look of sadness and regret on his face, her tongue stilled. Instead, she refocused on why the topic had been brought up to begin with.

“Even if Taline was powerful enough to fight their leader, she never actually became one of them,” Adora said. “How would she be able to teach me what they would have about my powers?”

“It’s not just because she fought them,” Salas said. “It’s because she understands magic at a level even higher than myself. If Battlemages are the Enclave elite, then the Daiamid could justifiably be considered the Battlemage elite. They have a connection to the underlying chaos of the world unlike any other, and that allows them to ‘shape’ that chaos, and thus the world, as they see fit. Within reason, of course.

“What Taline did on Archanas to earn her ‘Seraph’ title…the fact she can cast magic without relying so heavily on runes…and just look at what she did with Glimmer. It takes five years on average for a top-class mage to earn a full Battlemage commission from the Enclave. Your friend is an incredibly talented person, but earning the Battlemage designation in little over a year is in large part thanks to Taline’s mentorship.”

Adora blinked at him. “Okay, she’s very talented. Maybe even a genius, sure. But you and the other mentors are no slouches, and Micah is considered a prodigy too. I don’t understand how she’d help me when they couldn’t. Glimmer is able to do runic magic even with her connection to the Moonstone being severed because she’s so far away. I couldn’t even light my candle for the Induction Ceremony when it went out.”

Salas rubbed his hands together and grumbled.

“I’m starting to believe you are purposefully looking for reasons to fail rather than for solutions. I mentioned runes, didn’t I? As mages, we concentrate on the study and application of runes as a medium for channeling magic. If you have the gift, understand the formulas, and can draw good, clean runes, you can cast powerful spells quite reliably. This is different from how you and the other princesses tap into magic through your runestones. The connection, at least in that instance, is more visceral. More…instinctual, you could say.

“Thankfully, since the majority of the princesses have had connections to their runestones for quite some time, the issue with training them is less about how to foster the connection, and more about how to hone it, develop it, and exercise even greater control over it. All of which are aspects that the Enclave and its philosophy around magic excel at.”

“But when it comes to me,” Adora said. “Someone who didn’t have a connection or even formal training for the majority of my life…”

“It’s a different hurdle entirely,” Salas said, nodding. “One in which we sadly have very little experience in. For us, you either have the gift and can connect or you cannot. We have no pedagogy for training someone to foster a connection in the first place. The Daiamid on the other hand? Taline? People who are skilled enough to cast reliably without relying on runes? They are in tune enough with magic to do so only because they’ve somehow fostered a connection far stronger than the average mage. Average Battlemage, even.”

Adora groaned and sat back in her chair. “But Taline is gone, and she’s expressly forbidden from participating in the Heart project in any way. She can’t help me. And I can’t just not ever connect to She Ra again. There’s so much riding on this and I’m literally driving myself insane. What am I supposed to do? I feel like a failure.”

“Adora, the one thing I can say is that you will learn to channel She Ra again one day.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind.”

“Well, I have enough doubt for the both of us then, and I’m the one that needs to perform here. How can you be so confident?”

“Because this isn’t an issue about whether or not you have a connection in the first place,” Salas said with a smile. “If you felt nothing when you reached for your power then I’d be more concerned, but this is about fostering your existing connection and learning to tap into it again, not learning how to reconnect something that was severed. If that were the case, not even Taline nor the Daiamid would have been able to help.”

Adora frowned and considered that. Was that supposed to make her feel better? She wasn’t cut off from her powers entirely, but practically speaking, was there any difference?

“You are afraid, Adora,” Salas said, bringing her out of her thoughts. “And I completely understand that feeling, especially with the weight you put on yourself. But you are not ready. You will be one day, but not right now, and that’s perfectly okay. Don’t rush it.”

Adora let out a big breath, finally understanding for the first time what everyone had been trying to tell her for so long. It was okay to not be ready. Lots of other things weren’t ready either, like Light Hope. They had time. She flashed Salas a small smile, then faltered a bit when she realized how foreign doing so had felt. It must have been some time since she had smiled last.

“The Heart project will continue,” Salas said. “And Entrapta has also floated some ideas for trying to activate and channel the Heart without relying on She Ra. You’d still be the first choice of course, but if she comes up with that breakthrough then the fate of the galaxy won’t rest on your ability to perform any longer.”

That made Adora feel even more at ease. Being able to fire the weapon without She Ra would be a huge boost, and it honestly would take away almost all the pressure she felt. She’d be able to reconnect with her powers at her own pace, without worrying about trillions dying if she failed. If it could be done at all, she knew full well Entrapta would be the one to figure out how.

“I think I’d like to take some time off,” Adora said, relief flooding through her as she finally said the words.

Salas didn’t miss a beat. “Done,” he said. “Next two weeks are yours to do with what you will. Just take your PDA with you and check in from time to time.”

Adora smiled wider, the sudden urge to collapse into a bed and sleep for a week straight hitting her hard. She stood, thanking Salas out loud for his time and thanking Angella and Glimmer in her head for pushing her to do this. As she made her way to the exit, she realized the overwhelming pressure that had been in her chest for so long had disappeared.

For the first time in a long while, she felt free.

Adora woke from a nap, hours later and long after the sun had set. The moons, framed by the alien constellations and nebulae of their new sector in space, shined through the tall window of her room and bathed her in their light. The triangular silhouettes of a half-dozen Orbital Defense carriers holding a parade formation loomed high overhead, standing stark against the night sky. She stood and stretched, feeling well rested for the first time in ages. To her surprise, the first thing her unburdened mind wandered to was Catra.

Her thoughts had edged toward her old friend every now and then in the past, typically in moments of quiet, and each time it had done so she’d been diligent about pushing them down in order to refocus on her training. But now, after a blissful sleep and with nothing on her plate for the next two weeks, she found that she didn’t actually want to push the thoughts away anymore.

How was Catra doing? What was it that she had asked Glimmer to look into for her? How was Phoenix Station? Did she miss her? Or had she made new friends and moved on already?

The last question in particular sent a stone of anxiousness plummeting through her stomach, and she wandered over to her PDA on her desk, hoping she’d find a distraction on its screen. Instead, seemingly without thought, she turned the device’s record feature on and started taping a message to Catra. She got all of two words in before she suddenly didn’t know what to say and quickly deleted the footage.

Now she didn’t want to think anything about Catra at all. She slipped the PDA onto one arm, clasped the gauntlet with her still-cracked runestone in it onto her other arm, and grabbed her fighting staff. When the (practically second-nature) urge to do her hair up in its tucked-in braid came, she ignored it and headed out the door, hair down for the first time in years, after slipping her shoes on. She had the sudden urge to make a trip to the Crystal Castle, and decided that a solo walk through the cool night air under the stars would do her well.

Feeling playful for the first time in ages, she made a game out of sneaking past the guards patrolling the hallways. They wouldn’t have stopped her had they seen her, but it gave her something to focus on, and kept her mind from inadvertently turning back toward Catra again out of idleness.

Soon, she made it out the castle and to the grounds. Dozens of new fortifications, barricades, and turrets littered the area, all of it set up during the Enclave’s previous three years. It was as clear and frightening a sign as any that they were preparing for war. She rounded a particularly tall guard tower when a voice called out to her from behind.

“Adora? Is that you?”

She turned around and saw Swift Wind not more than a dozen paces away, standing near one of the stables, giving her a confused look.

“Your hair is down,” he said. “Wow, it’s been ages since I’ve seen you like that.”

“Hey Swifty…” she said, trying to keep the apprehension she felt from seeping into her voice. Judging by how the hesitancy on his face only deepened, she probably didn’t do a good job of it. “What are you doing out here so late?”

Swift Wind blinked at her and turned to look at the stable behind him. “I live out here?”

Shit, way to go Adora, she thought. Way to not make things even more awkward.

“Oh yeah!” she said, forcing a laugh. “Silly me. Uhm…Bow told me you guys were going to hang out. How did that go?”

“Fine. Bow’s always a good time.” Swift Wind narrowed his eyes at her and took a tentative step forward. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Just going out for a bit. Need to clear my head.” Adora took a step back, angling her body away. She hoped he’d take the hint.

“Why don’t I come with you?” he said, perking up. “Feels like we haven’t talked in ages. Would be good to catch up.”

“Sorry I just”—Adora cringed when she saw hurt flash across his face—"I just really need to be alone right now. But yes! We do need to catch up. Soon, I promise. Okay?”

Swift Wind nodded, taking a step back. “Sure,” he said. “Soon.”

Adora grit her teeth and waited for him to turn away. When he didn’t break eye contact first, she did, and swore her heart broke a little because of it. She turned fully around and walked as quickly as she could away from him and away from the castle grounds. By the time she felt brave enough to look over her shoulder, he was long gone.

A good hour and a half later and she was deep in the Whispering Woods. Etheria always had a nasty chill at night, and she hugged her jacket closer to her as a breeze pushed past. The woods used to confuse her and easily get her turned around, but years escaping from Bright Moon and traversing its many trees eventually gave her an innate sense of direction. Soon, the spires of her castle peeked through the branches and leaves around her, and she power walked to the entrance.

Something felt off about the place the longer she looked at it, and it wasn’t until she got closer that she realized why: There were no guards at the front, and the door was already wide open. One of the first things the Enclave did was set up a rotation of guards for all the castles, hers included, and no one except her and a select few others had the credentials to open the door.

 “Hello? Is anyone there?” she whispered, as she poked around.

Something glinted in the moonlight off in the distance and she ran toward it. Two guards lay with their backs against the trunk of a large tree, placed in a way that no one would see them walking up from the front. Not unless they specifically came from off the beaten path.

“Hey, wake up,” she said, squatting down in front of them and snapping her fingers near their faces. They didn’t stir and, for a terrible moment, she thought they were dead. Then she pressed two fingers against each of their necks and felt a pulse.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she tapped at her PDA. Salas had told her not to engage and to call for backup if she ever encountered the intruder, and she had a strong inkling that was exactly who she’d find if she went inside. This “Kalanthe” apparently hadn’t visited the Scorpion Kingdom or Bright Moon yet when Entrapta had given her analysis, and Adora had seen him in both places since. If he was hitting First One’s locations and ruins, then the Crystal Castle would be a natural target.

She typed out a quick message to Bow, urging him to get backup, and pursed her lips when it kicked back an error. She pressed the call button next to his avatar and uttered a frantic curse under her breath when it didn’t even attempt to put her through: the stupid thing couldn’t pick up a signal.

She glanced at the door to the castle, to the unconscious guards against the tree, and back to her PDA, weighing her options. She could run back to the castle to get help, sit here and wait for a signal, or go in and confront whoever was in there herself.

The lack of connectivity wasn’t just a coincidence, she was sure of it. Blocking any and all communications in or out of an infiltration zone seemed like child’s play given the intruder could apparently hack into First Ones ruins in a matter of hours. Not to mention downing all of the surrounding surveillance cameras.

Running back to Bright Moon castle to physically bring reinforcements was out of the question as well, she decided. In that time, Kalanthe could escape, or worse, could come back and finish off these guards.

She made up her mind. Adora took a deep breath and, gripping her combat staff tight, she stood and ran into the castle.

Chapter Text

Glimmer didn’t get her shore leave. Not even a little.

Instead, she was deep in space, sat inside one of the private observation booths aboard the Horde Interstellar Vessel Omen-Kador, watching concentric Dyson rings rotate around the star they were orbiting. An emergency communication had come through early in the morning: she had been tapped for a last-minute deployment, non-negotiable, and had needed to scramble just to make it to the ship on time. She hadn’t even had time to wake Catra for a proper goodbye, only able to leave a hastily scrawled note behind instead.

The view screen had a powerful dampener activated, making the light from the star come through in a warm orange color, and the rings cast moving shadows inside the booth as the arms eclipsed that star at alternating intervals. She took a deep breath, letting the pattern of shadow dancing with orange almost entrance her.

 “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Taline said, speaking from the PDA Glimmer held up in front of her. “That’s oddly one of the things I miss about traveling the galaxy. Refueling at one of the Barrier nodes and watching it from your ship is a strangely meditative experience.”

“I remember the first time I saw one,” Glimmer said. “I didn’t want us to jump away after we finished resupplying.” She laughed. “I still can’t believe the thing keeping the Beast from overwhelming us relies on neutron stars and an AI to power it.”

“Algorithm,” Taline said. “Not an AI, an algorithm.”

“Yeah, that.”

Taline sighed across the connection. “No, not ‘that’,” she said, “You do know the difference, right? I spent hours drilling this into your head, Glimmer.”

“Yes, I know the difference,” Glimmer said, sidestepping Taline’s henpecking with faux indifference.

“Enlighten me.”

Glimmer pursed her lips and spoke in a deliberately indifferent tone, as if reading from a teleprompter. “The Barrier keeps the Beast at bay with an incredibly complicated ‘pattern’ anchored and powered by several hundred neutron stars,” she said. “An algorithm changes the ‘bars’ and ‘locks’ on the Barrier several thousand times a second in a near perfect oscillating pattern. But because the current algorithm is only nearly-perfect, it’s degrading, and slowly letting the Beast back into our reality. Hence the second wave of infections spreading across the Outer Realms.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed you had no idea what it is you just said.” Taline sounded exasperated through the feed.

“Yes, well, I have yet to find a single person who doesn’t understand all that about the Barrier,” Glimmer said, satisfied at having irked her mentor. “It’s practically hammered into everyone’s heads as part of any compulsory education. I understand having adults who want to matriculate into the Empire take it as part of a citizenship test, but this is included in the curriculum for primary-age schoolkids, Taline. Do you realize how nuts that is?”

Taline laughed and agreed with her, before turning serious.  “I’m sorry they cut your shore leave off so quickly by the way,” she said. “How are you feeling about the mission?”

“Nervous,” Glimmer wrung her hands. “They wouldn’t have pulled me out like that for another deployment unless it was serious.”

“No, they wouldn’t have,” Taline said. “I was going to call bullshit if you said you were fine, because I’m nervous for you. Have they given you any details about what’s going on?”

Glimmer shook her head. “Only that we’re resupplying here before jumping somewhere along the Kaloshi border.”

Both of Taline’s eyebrows shot up. “The Kaloshi border? That’s…that’s way closer to the mid rim than any of the previous incursions have been.”

“I know,” Glimmer said, grimacing. The Barrier was supposed to be stronger the closer to the galactic core one got, alongside the increase in population density. “You haven’t heard anything on your end, have you?”

“I’m a disgraced Battlemage, stripped of my prestige and forced to act as a desk jockey on a quiet station,” she said with levity in her voice. “The Enclave didn’t expel me because they like me, but they’re not going to go feeding me classified operational information any time soon.”

“I figured as much.”

“That didn’t stop me from doing my own bit of digging, though,” Taline said, a mischievous twinkle sparkling in her eye.

“Why am I not surprised?” Glimmer said, smiling. “And? What did you find?”

“Nothing good,” Taline said, the levity from earlier disappearing from her voice. “I got my hands on the operation’s deployment plan. The number of ships they’ve pulled together for this is staggering. In fact, the Omen-Kador is slated to be one of the last vessels to arrive. Check your PDA.”

A notification from Taline appeared next to her face in the video stream, and Glimmer tapped it. A list of ships appeared, and she scrolled down as she scanned the names. And scrolled and scrolled and scrolled.

“My god, there must be dozens here.”

“Six dozen, to be exact,” Taline said. “Ninety-six carriers, cruisers, and dreadnoughts all deployed to one world. It has to be one of the major populations on the border, that’s the only reason I could think for them to mobilize like this. I already knew it would be bad just seeing the transit manifest, but I had no idea it was as close as Kaloshi.”

“I don’t like how this bodes for the war effort,” Glimmer said, scanning through the list again. “If the Beast is able to break into an area like that, it may force the analysts to reassess their projections.”

“Trust me, no one is happy thinking the Beast might be slipping through faster than anticipated. I’m sure it’s the number one thing on all their minds right now.” Taline sighed and Glimmer felt a familiar dread build at seeing her mentor’s change of tone. “They may tap you for command sooner, too,” she said. “Especially if things indeed are moving faster.”

“No,” Glimmer said.

“Glimmer, we’ve talked about this. You can’t just—“

“We’ve talked about this a lot, yes,” Glimmer said, cutting her off. “The answer is still no.”

Taline let out a long breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. A long beat of silence passed between them. “Do you remember what I said to you back on Etheria?” she said. “Back when you first asked me to take you with me off planet?”

Glimmer hadn’t expected the question. “Yes,” she said, before she recounted to Taline what she remembered of their conversation in the past—how she felt her home had changed too much. How Miri and Narre’s deaths, along with her own friends’ close calls had affected her. How she wanted to learn how to move past the trauma of that night.

“I said I wanted to learn how to be strong again,” she said, nearing the end of her recounting. “And I didn’t think I could learn to do that if I stayed behind.”

“That wasn’t what you told me at first,” Taline said. “You told me at first you just wanted to get away without any concrete reason, and I said—“

“That I needed to have a better reason to go than to just run away from my problems, yes I remember,” Glimmer said, hoping to rush them past an exchange she found embarrassing and preferred not to revisit.

“You were a model student, Glimmer,” Taline said. “You learned everything I had to teach you, and in such a short amount of time, too. You did a magnificent job.”

Glimmer blinked. Taline’s praise came rarely, and always made an impact when it did. “T-thank you,” she said.

“Even if you are not my student any longer, I still hope you’d to abide by what we agreed upon. You are running away from your problems again instead of facing them. The only difference is that I cannot be there and teach you how to overcome whatever is holding you back from confidently leading a team. You have to figure that out on your own, and until you do you will not have the kind of strength you told me you wanted to have when we first left your home.”

Glimmer tried to interject, but she couldn’t get out from underneath Taline’s words fast enough to lessen their impact. By the time she had finished speaking, Glimmer couldn’t even pretend to deny that Taline had a very good point.

“You’re right,” Glimmer said, deflating. “I just don’t know how to take that step.”

“You’ll be ready one day,” Taline said. “Maybe not today, but you will be soon. Just don’t try and stop it when it you see it coming.”

Glimmer scoffed. “When did you turn into a poet philosopher, Taline?”

“Hey, I just took something I heard Salas say once and put my own spin on it,” Taline said. A noise suddenly came through the connection—someone speaking—and she looked somewhere offscreen, likely at whoever had interrupted them. “I might have to go soon,” she said. “Diallo is on station for one of his quarterly visits and he’s going to monopolize a significant chunk of one of my days here pretty soon.”

“Again?” Glimmer asked, incredulous.

“Yes, unfortunately. And I can’t turn him away either, since I’m technically the reason he has his position in the first place.” She stiffened. “He’s going to try and get me to buy into another wild goose chase again, you know how it goes. I need to get some work done in advance before he comes or else I’ll fall behind.”

“You know, hearing you talk about your desk job like that sometimes makes me seriously question whether paperwork or evacuating planets from the Beast is worse.”

Taline laughed at that. “I wonder that too, sometimes.”

“Before I forget…” Glimmer said, catching an inquisitive look from Taline when she hesitated to speak further. “Catra may or may not come visit you.”

“Oh?” Taline looked genuinely surprised. “She’s never visited me before. What’s going on?”

“She’s visited plenty of times,” Glimmer said. “Just…you know, never in your office. I’ll let her explain it to you, just promise me you’ll see her if she does stop by? Don’t send her away and reschedule if you’re in the middle of something. You know how hard it is to get her to come out of her shell sometimes.”

“I do, just as I know she has no qualms about using that shell of hers to bulldoze her way around and make a mess, rather than just come out of it.” There was a fondness to Taline’s voice that made Glimmer smile. “I’ll be sure to see her, even if she has to walk in on Diallo in the middle of one of his ravings again.”

“Thank you,” Glimmer said. “And let’s hope so. I’d love to hear her reaction when she tells me what happened later. She always has a very colorful way of telling stories.” Another sound echoed behind Taline. “I’ll let you go,” she said. “Don’t want to keep you from the paperwork.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Glimmer blinked, wracking her brain and trying to think of something she may have missed. “No?” she said after coming up short.

“You’re supposed to show me your progress on the teleportation spell you’ve been working at.”

Glimmer groaned. Oh yeah, how could she have forgotten?

“Don’t give me that,” Taline said, making a face. “You asked me to help you dial it in.”

“Yeah, but that was back when I thought I’d have two weeks on Phoenix to relax and have you there to help focus me in person.”

“No time like the present. You have my undivided attention for the next sixty seconds—show me what you got.”

Glimmer sighed and tapped her PDA, opaquing a portion of the observation booth’s view screen and casting the video feed to it. With her hands free and Taline now having a full-body view of her, Glimmer stood, stretched her arms far enough that her joints popped, and started to draw a rune in the air in front of her.

“Slow down,” Taline said as Glimmer got about a third of the way through the design. “Speed is important on the battlefield, sure, but so is drawing smooth, accurate ley lines. Teleporting only half your squad—and by that, I mean half of each member of your squad and not half the number of them—is just as undesirable as not teleporting out of a sticky situation in time at all.”

Taline had deliberately made that example one of Glimmer leading a team to purposely vex her, she just knew it. Still, she redoubled her efforts to slow down and concentrate. Before long, she completed the circuit and a shining, intricate teleportation rune shimmered in front of her.

“Not bad,” Taline said. “Your diacritics invite room for interpretation so it may be a rocky transit, but I think you’d be able to get at least yourself through that if you activated it. Good job.”

Glimmer breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the rune. She didn’t understand why she took so quickly to all the other spells Taline had taught her only to run into hurdle after hurdle getting the teleportation spell correct. It was almost as if being so far away from Etheria and cut off from the Moonstone had made it that much harder for her to do it the ‘other’ way, rather than just poofing like she had all the other times in her life.

“Get in touch with me as soon as you arrive at your destination,” Taline said. “I want to hear you’re safe, as often as you can pull away to let me know. The time lag will be nasty even at the Kaloshi border, but please don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” Glimmer said. “I promise. Give my best to Catra when you see her, will you? I had to go in a hurry and could only leave a note. I feel bad.”

Taline promised she would and they exchanged quick salutes. The feed cut, and Glimmer collapsed onto the couch behind her to stare blankly out at the Barrier node once more.

So much for shore leave, she thought, unable to fully erase the tinge of bitterness that came with it.

She let her thoughts wander while the rings oscillating around the star lulled her into a second daze. Against her better judgement, she pulled up Bow’s contact on her PDA and drafted a letter to him. Halfway through the second sentence she bit at her lip in annoyance and deleted what she had written, only to start over fresh. She did the same for a third attempt. Then a fourth.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” a voice from behind said.

Glimmer swore and spun around on the couch, her heart pounding in her chest. A familiar face standing in the open doorway looked back at her. “Lonnie?” she said, standing. “My god it is you. How did I not even hear you open the door?”

“Hey Glim,” she said, cracking a smile. “You look pretty good for someone heading into their fourth straight deployment without a break. That’s edging close to Vanguard numbers. Isn’t it dangerous for you Battlemage types to go so long without a pause?”

Glimmer gaped at her, still not trusting what she saw. She hadn’t seen Lonnie since leaving Etheria, obviously, and seeing her standing there almost convinced Glimmer she had actually fallen asleep and started dreaming in the observation room altogether. Lonnie was dressed in the grey and green service uniform of the Horde standing navy, looking virtually unchanged from when Glimmer last saw her save for a thin line running from her scalp, past her eye, and disappearing under her chin. She must have had some sort of sub-dermal implant installed, but otherwise…

“Holy hell, you look fantastic!” Glimmer said, going in for a hug that was warmly received and enthusiastically returned. “How the heck did you get here? Were you just hanging out as part of an extra garrison or something?”

Lonnie shook her head. “Nope, transferred from my last assignment to yours. Old girl was a beater.” She made her way into the private booth and toward the view screen. “In fact,” she said, leaning forward and squinting at something in the distance. “If you look really hard, you can see her from here.”

Glimmer followed Lonnie’s finger where she pointed and squinted too. There, idling in the distance just past one of the rotating arms of the Barrier node, floated a modest-sized carrier.

“She looks like she’s seen better days,” Glimmer said, noting the blast marks and battle scars across its hull.

“Yeah, she’s emptying most of her personnel and traveling to a nearby shipyard on a skeleton crew. Needs heavy repairs and a retrofit.”

“Good. It honestly doesn’t look like it’d last another assignment.” Glimmer glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you say something about the Vanguard?”

Lonnie turned to the side and showed off one of the patches on the arm of her service uniform: a stylized crest with the Horde wing motif, combined with the spear and shield graphic made famous by the emperor’s personal elite force.

Glimmer whistled. “I shouldn’t be surprised, really, considering it’s you. But Vanguard is still impressive wherever you see them.”

“You’re not the only one out here making a name for yourself,” Lonnie said, waggling her eyebrows at her. “Angel of Archanas.”

Glimmer flushed. “Please, I’ve heard the story a million times, spare me the spotlight.”

Lonnie laughed and thumped Glimmer on the back of the shoulder. “Space has changed you, princess. The old you would have beamed and jumped at the chance to retell the time you saved all those people on Rinne by sprouting—“

“Yes, yes,” Glimmer said, waving to cut Lonnie off and beckoning her to take a seat on the couch before joining her. “I thought it was awesome too until I couldn’t go three steps anywhere without everyone turning around and whispering about me all excited. I didn’t sign on to the Enclave to be a celebrity.” She forced a laugh. “Enough about me, what about you? How did you get in with the Vanguard of all things? I didn’t even know you had left home.”

“Well, speaking of home…you know how after everything got settled and the Enclave made that announcement? How they let every member of Hordak’s old group sign up for service with the actual Imperial Horde if they wanted to?”

Glimmer nodded.

“Kyle, Rogelio, and I all signed on. None of us wanted to stay after what happened, and space just seemed so full of opportunities. It was rough at first, but we all promised to stay together as a team no matter what happened. Even turned down assignments if it meant us getting split up.”

“You guys always were such good friends.” Glimmer said.

“Yeah, and I guess we make a pretty damn good squad too, because we beat all the survival odds together. Nine deployments later, more successful missions than anyone has any right to, a lot of money lost for the people who bet against us, and we officially got scouted by the Vanguard. That was over a year ago.”

“Nine deployments?” Glimmer said. “Nine? In three years? Are you serious?”

“Nine in a year and a half, actually,” Lonnie said. “They got shorter but more numerous once we actually joined up with the emperor’s finest. This is my twenty-second deployment now. Thirteenth in the Vanguard.”

When Glimmer’s eyes threatened to bulge out of her head, Lonnie laughed. “It’s not like your Enclave assignments,” she said. “We don’t stay behind and help stabilize the worlds once the incursion is taken care of, and we don’t help relocate evacuees. For us, as soon as the Beast is pushed back and dealt with, we’re off. High impact missions only, then straight on to the next one as soon as the first is done.”

“That’s insane. I don’t know how you haven’t gone crazy from the stress yet,” Glimmer said. “And did I hear you correctly that it’s you and Kyle and Rogelio still together? If you’re in the Vanguard then does that mean…?”

Lonnie nodded. “Yep. We’re all in the same squad, after all.”

“Kyle is a member of the Vanguard?” Glimmer didn’t know how many more world-shattering revelations she could take.

“You wouldn’t recognize him,” Lonnie said, laughing. “He’s a hell of a pilot. Nerves of steel, and he’s gotten us and hundreds of others out of situations I didn’t think we’d make it through.”

“I believe you it’s just…wow. So much has changed.” A thought came to her and Glimmer furrowed her brow. “Hey, Vanguard got its name partially because you guys are almost always the first in on the battlefield, right? But the Omen-Kador is supposed to be one of the last ships arriving to assist. Was there like a mix-up with the transit manifests or something?”

Lonnie shot her a quizzical look. “You mean, you didn’t see the orders?”

“I haven’t seen anything,” Glimmer said, shaking her head. “I got pulled from shore leave last minute as an emergency and barely got myself to my staging zone on time.”

Lonnie reached into the breast pocket of her service jacket and handed Glimmer a small silicone chip. Glimmer felt her blood freeze over as she took it, already anticipating what was on the card without having to run it through a reader.

“I’ve been assigned to you as a section commander,” Lonnie said. She stood, clicked her heels together and snapped off a sharp salute. Then she broke decorum by shooting Glimmer a wide smile. “As soon as I found out who I’d be serving under, I couldn’t wait to get aboard and find you. I look forward to being a member of your first command, Ma’am.”

Glimmer felt like she was about to be sick. The only thing that ran through her mind as she tried to keep from hyperventilating on the spot was one thought:

Oh no.

Chapter Text

The elevator was crowded. So crowded in fact, that Catra might have decided to turn around and go home had she not already been operating on complete autopilot. Instead, she headed inside, selected one of the highest floors on the control panel, and slotted herself between a chubby, pink fellow faintly reminiscent of a bipedal piglet and a slender alien with six arms.

The nightmares had returned fiercer than they had ever been in the past, and she had woken in a cold sweat earlier in the day, alone on Glimmer’s couch. With her gone, Catra feared she was still in the midst of the nightmare still—one that had undergone a strange mutation, showing her a different reality in which, once again, her closest friend in this new life of hers had left her abandoned. It wasn’t until Catra managed to peel herself from the tangled mass of sheets and find the note written in Glimmer’s flourished princess-scrawl that she realized, no, she had already woken up. Glimmer had indeed gone, although she hadn’t abandoned her.

Pulled away on a last-minute assignment, the note had read. Sorry I can’t say bye properly, it’s an emergency. I’ll get in touch again as soon as I make landfall.

The elevator continued to rise, and Catra watched the ground floor of the Atrium get farther and farther away, continued to watch the people bustling among the trees and pathways and in and out of department stores and restaurants shrink smaller and smaller.

The elevator would stop with a pleasant ding. The doors would open and everyone inside would shift to let a subset of passengers off. No one got on. Catra remained lost in her thoughts.

What kind of emergency would pull Glimmer away from shore leave on such short notice she barely had time to scrawl a note to her? What did it mean that the nightmares got even worse after she left? Was she going backwards now? Losing the progress she had made since leaving home?

The elevator dinged again, bringing Catra out of her thoughts. Everyone else had gotten off already leaving her alone and on the highest level of the Atrium; only the Executive levels immediately above were any higher.

She stepped out into the Enclave Embassy and its spacious front lobby. Hand-carved columns of marble lined the sides and reached high to support a tall ceiling. The polished flooring made every clack of a heel or syllable of a conversation echo, giving the chamber a bustling atmosphere despite Catra only seeing a handful of people around. Two tall statues, one of Horde Prime and the other being yet another rendition of the Shaper Corynth, flanked another cherry blossom tree—the centerpiece of the room. Catra approached it, rubbing her shoulders and glancing about at everyone else as if she were afraid they might approach her. She didn’t belong here.

Catra had only ever visited the Embassy one time. It was when she first came to the station and started her citizenship paperwork with Glimmer at Taline’s behest. And regardless of the fact she’d get lost in the Atrium every time she went, Catra somehow always knew how to find her way back to the Embassies, despite never having gone a second time.

“H-hey, Hilda? You there?” Catra said, when she reached the statues. The holographic guide flickered into existence to Catra’s left and shot her a cheery smile.

“Hello Catra,” she said, tilting her head. “How may I be of assistance?”

“I’m looking for Taline’s office. I’ve never actually been…can you point me in the right direction?”

Hilda bowed her head in assent and gave directions, and Catra declined when she offered to walk her there personally. Paintings of the Embassy Consuls prior to Taline lined hallway after hallway alongside other pieces of fine art and sculpture. Catra made a game of trying to make as little sound as possible as she traipsed along.

She rounded a corner and into the waiting room of Taline’s embassy corner office. Several chairs lined the walls, each seat filled with someone either reading one of the magazines from the large center coffee table or playing on their PDA. One woman bounced an infant on her knee, trying to keep it quiet while entertaining a second toddler. More than a few people of various alien races and colors stood due to lack of seating.

The door to Taline’s office proper was shut, and a small fountain hung from the wall behind the front desk, immersing the room in the sound of falling water. Catra approached, and the receptionist, sitting before a computer and amidst several high stacks of papers piled high on the desk, typed rapidly at the keyboard. She seemed to be copying information from the surrounding documents, because as soon as she finished a spurt of typing, she’d move the top page from the nearest stack to another one, only to start the process over again. Catra thought she had it bad with paperwork back at the precinct.

“Hi, sorry,” she said, trying to get the receptionist to notice her.

“Consular Taline is busy with an important visitor at the moment,” the receptionist said, not even taking her eyes off the computer. “All appointments have been postponed until further notice. You’re free to take a seat if you’d prefer to see her as soon as she’s available and in the order of your appointment, or we can set a new time and date for you to come back.”

Catra turned and looked at the filled room. All these people wanted to wait for god knows how long just to see her? She knew Taline was popular on the station; she was the only member of administration who insisted on having her office somewhere other than up in the executive floors, and she was also the only member of the administration to hold open office hours. But Catra had no idea people would sit around waiting with no definite appointment time just to talk to her.

“Uhm, I don’t have an appointment, but can I make one?”

The woman put another page on the finished pile, grabbed the whole thing and dropped it with a thump onto the ground next to six other equally tall stacks that Catra hadn’t noticed before. Then she grabbed a third, unprocessed stack of papers and started working on those. Somewhere in that series of practiced movements, she had placed a palm scanner up on the desk platform for Catra to access.

“Hand on the reader, please. Bookings are filled for the next two months, but I can get you put in and on a waiting list. If someone cancels, we might bump you up. Just need your ID.”

Catra placed her hand on the scanner. It flashed as it read her prints and biometrics, and the woman behind the desk suddenly paused and looked up at her.

“Catra?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s me. Is something wrong?”

The woman shook her head. “Nothing wrong, I just…” She didn’t finish her sentence, and instead picked up the handset on her desk and put it to her ear. “Hello, Taline?”

Catra could hear the muffled sound of a man speaking frantically on the other side of the line. Then she heard Taline’s voice, still muffled but louder and closer to the handset on her end, although she still couldn’t make out the words.

“Yes, I understand you’re still with him,” the receptionist said, “but I thought it best to let you know that Catra is standing out here. She’s asking to make an appointment to see you.”

Taline’s voice came through again, and Catra grew nervous. What was she saying?

“You want me to”—a pause, and a nod—“…yes, I understand. Okay.” The receptionist hung up the phone and looked back at Catra. “She asked that I just send you in now.”

Catra’s ears flicked sideways and she took a step back. “Now? You just told me she was with someone.”

“I know.” She pressed a button on her desk and Catra heard the door to Taline’s office click as the lock disengaged. “I have a feeling she’d much rather visit with you than with who’s in there now though, so go right in. Also, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Uhh, nice to meet you too,” Catra said, unsure if that was the right thing to respond with or not. Catra ignored the looks she got from everyone else in the lobby and walked over to the door. Laying a hand on the lever, she took a deep breath and pushed inside.

The voice of someone in the middle of a passionate argument assaulted her, and she scrambled to get inside and click the door shut behind her before it caused a commotion out in the waiting room. A man sat in a chair on the other side of Taline’s desk. Catra recognized him—it was Diallo, the VIP she helped escort the previous day. His back was toward her and he gesticulated wildly as he spoke.

“No one just c-cuts budgets like that, Taline. Not that drastically. I’m telling you t-t-there’s something fishy going on with him. I don’t know if it has something to do with paranoia around his reelection, but I’m already at my l-limit as it is trying to keep my system in order.”

“I understand,” Taline said, sitting straight-backed and stone-faced in her chair. Instead of the black and silver Battlemage uniform Catra had seen her in when they first met, she wore simple Consular’s robes. “But I’m not sure what you expect me to do about it. Moriarty is the Regional Administrator of our section of the mid-rim. He has thousands of planets, hundreds of systems, and thus hundreds of System Governors like yourself to make decisions for. He may use my station as his base of operations, but he reports directly to the Emperor. There is nothing I can do for you.”

Diallo hadn’t noticed Catra come in, and although Taline faced in her direction, she made no indication to him she was there. Catra pushed herself up against the far wall and tried to be as small and unobtrusive as possible.

“You are a Battlemage of t-the Enclave, Taline,” Diallo said. “Moriarty doesn’t answer to you, but he m-must take your counsel into consideration. I cannot protect the planets under my jurisdiction with such heavy cuts into my budget.” He sat forward in his chair and put his palms together. “I became System Governor in the first place off y-your recommendation. I implore you to speak with him.”

Taline sighed. “You know I am no longer a Battlemage. I am simply Consular Taline now and have been for the past three years. No matter how many times you come visit me and ask for my help, it will not change the fact my job right now is ensuring the safety and wellbeing of this station and of its people. That’s it.”

“And what of the d-drive?” Diallo asked, holding up a thin electronic device Catra hadn’t noticed before.

Taline narrowed her eyes at him and lowered her voice. “That’s an incredibly dangerous thing you have there,” she said. “I have no idea how you got your hands on it, but if you want my suggestion, I would destroy it immediately and never mention it again.”

“This is concrete proof of what I’ve b-been telling you for years,” he said, practically hissing. “Every time you even caught a whiff of something like this on interstellar channels in the p-past you’d climb straight into a starship and leave me to manage your affairs until you came back. Why do you suddenly not even want to look at this now that I finally b-brought proof?”

“The Vestamid make up too large a portion of the GDP of the Empire, Diallo. Ignominite supply would be irreparably harmed if something were to happen to their production lines. I don’t understand why you are pushing so hard for me to look into this. Do you want a galaxy-wide incident to occur? With everything else going on?”

“I don’t remember when Taline, the Seraph of Archanas herself, would t-turn her nose up at an opportunity to investigate one of these ph-phantom algorithms.”

Taline flinched and her eyes hardened. “My student has taken up that name. It no longer means anything to me, and you have no idea how that drive is encrypted. No idea at all.”

 “That’s exactly my p-point,” Diallo said. “The encryption is uncrackable. The best software I’ve run it through d-doesn’t even know where to begin with it. The old you wouldn’t have flinched and g-gone straight to investigate, but now you’re p-protecting some militant sect of fanatics instead? Why are you suddenly refusing to even look?”

Taline pursed her lips. “Like I’ve said, my priority is this station. Nothing else. And believe it or not, if something happens to that ignominite supply your constituents provide, then the safety of everyone on this station, not to mention your own system itself, would be put at risk. I’m not getting into any more wild goose chases, Diallo. Corynth is dead, and for the sake of my own mental health I want to leave it at that.”

Catra felt a tickle at her nose and, despite trying everything she could to resist, she sneezed. Taline glanced up at her with a smirk and Diallo contorted his body around his chair to look at her.

“I d-didn’t realize I had someone secretly sitting in on a private conversation,” Diallo said, irritated.

“This is Catra,” Taline said, nodding in her direction. “She’s the second person I sponsored into the Empire after Glimmer. You two have already met, believe it or not.”

Diallo raised an eyebrow at her and Catra stepped forward, feeling exposed. “I’m a member of station security, under section chief Dax,” she said. “I was there when you arrived yesterday, as a member of the security detachment.”

“Oh?” Diallo looked surprised. “D-Dax is a good man. I like him.”

Catra only nodded, not sure what else to say. Diallo stood from his chair and turned back to Taline. “Well, it seems I’m once again t-taking up time you would otherwise be using to sit with those who actually have appointments w-with you. I’m glad you’ve kept up that tradition, by the way. Keeps you well c-connected to the common person under your care.” He held up the drive one more time before purposefully placing it on Taline’s desk. “I’ll leave this here. You can decide if you’d truly prefer it destroyed or if you want t-to see for yourself that I’ve finally brought your proof.”

With that, Diallo headed for the exit. He nodded to Catra as he went, his eyes lingering on her a moment longer than she thought necessary. Then the door clicked shut behind him and Catra and Taline were alone.

Taline slumped forward and held her head in both her hands with her elbows on the table. Catra took tentative steps toward her until she was at the chair Diallo just vacated.

“Thank you for coming,” Taline said, not lifting her head from her hands. “He’s been here for an hour and it’s felt like five. I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted if you hadn’t come along.”

“I didn’t do anything except stand there,” Catra said, lowering herself onto the chair.

“He didn’t want to talk in front of someone else, so you just standing there was enough to get him to leave.” She combed her fingers through her hair. “Diallo is a good man. Would have joined the Enclave himself if he had just a little more aptitude for magic. He was a great help categorizing and accounting for all the things we found in my sister’s second lab, but he’s always had an eccentric side. It’s almost strong enough sometimes to overshadow how meek and unassuming he seems.”

She lifted her head off the desk and frowned, accentuating the three silver scars running across her cheek from when the Emperor backhanded her aboard the citadel. “Actually, I’m fairly certain that eccentricity has only grown worse the longer I’ve known him. At times it’s merely off-putting, and at other times I feel like I barely recognize him.”

“You’re able to...” Catra trailed off, looked around, and lowered her voice. “You’re able to talk freely about your sister in here?”

Taline nodded. “It’s one of the few truly safe places to do so. No bugs, no hidden devices, completely sound insulated against the outside listening in. It’s one of the reasons Diallo felt comfortable talking about this particular thing so freely in here.” She gestured to the portable drive sitting untouched between them.

Catra nodded, remembering how loudly Diallo had spoken when she entered, and how she hadn’t heard even a murmur of it standing right outside the door. Taline looked like she was waiting for her to say something, so she started to panic. Silences were always uncomfortable around Taline, though through no fault of her own. Catra just felt bare and vulnerable, like Taline could see right through her. She always tried to avoid letting pauses linger during their conversations as much as possible.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Catra said, reaching for the first thing that popped into her mind. “You had a bunch of people out there waiting, but the receptionist just sent me in.”

“Of course,” Taline said. “I think this is the first time you’ve ever come all the way to my office, so it must be important for you to make the trip. What did you want to talk to me about?”

Catra cringed. Taline hadn’t meant to guilt her with that comment, but she felt guilty about it all the same. They visited with each other plenty of times! What did she have to feel bad about?

“I uh…well.” Catra deflated in the chair. “Glimmer left. And I was looking forward to hanging out with her. Dax turned me away when I tried to clock in for work because he already cleared me for PTO. Also, I guess I looked too hungover for him to feel comfortable letting me patrol.”

“You do look like you had a bit too much to drink last night,” Taline said nodding.

“Glimmer said I should come talk to you too since, well…y’know. The nightmares and everything.”

“Have they been getting worse?”

“No. Well…yes, but not really?” Taline gave her a confused look, and Catra wondered why she felt so sweaty all of a sudden. Why was it always so difficult for her to just talk like a normal person?

“You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that,” Taline said. “I tried reaching out. I hadn’t heard much from you since Glimmer was last on the station eight months ago. I was starting to worry…if the nightmares are getting worse and you’ve just been reticent to tell me, I promise I’m not going to judge.”

Another stab of guilt. Catra realized that the ‘plenty of times’ she and Taline had visited together had only been when Glimmer came along too, since Catra always felt too exposed and in the hot seat if it were just her and Taline. With Glimmer gone on so many consecutive deployments, it really had been the better part of a year since Catra last saw Taline in person.

“I don’t think they’re getting worse worse,” Catra said. “Maybe I just freaked out waking up and seeing Glimmer gone is all. I think it's fine.”

“You wouldn’t have come all the way up here if everything were fine though,” Taline said. “Is this about your Sentinel application?”

“You know about that!?” Catra shot up from the chair. Her tail thrashed behind her and her ears pinned to her head. “How did you find out? Did Glimmer tell you? I told her not to say anything!”

Taline gave her an exasperated look. It only got Catra’s hackles up further that she didn’t look the least bit surprised at her outburst. “Glimmer didn’t say a word to me. I found out from my other colleagues.”

Catra forced herself to calm down before she collapsed back into the chair with a sigh. There it was, the exact thing Glimmer had urged Catra to come and talk to her about. Taline had taken a sledgehammer up to her walls and, within minutes, knew exactly how and where to strike to make them crumble fast. No wonder Catra hesitated to spend time with her—Shadow Weaver knew how to do the same thing. And while she didn’t think Taline would ever use her weaknesses against her, she still hated how easily she unraveled. That wasn’t all, but this whole meeting was still a mistake.

“Why would they tell you about that?” Catra asked, folding her arms. She was angry, both with herself that she hadn’t built up the courage to broach the topic herself, and at Taline for not giving her the time to do so.

“Despite everything I told Diallo, I’m still well connected among my peers, Catra. This station may be my sole concern now, but the Enclave didn’t excommunicate me like the Emperor asked because the other members of the High Council didn’t want to do so. Seeing an application come in from you? One of the people I explicitly sponsored into the Empire? There’s no way they wouldn’t have told me about it. The very fact an application was sent in at all was news in and of itself.”

“What do you mean?” Catra asked, brows furrowed and tail flicking. That last sentence alone threatened to upend any sense of calm she had won back for herself.

“How did you know how to submit an application in the first place?”

“I…I don’t know. Glimmer looked into it for me.”

Taline leaned back in her chair, mild surprise on her face. “Glimmer helped you? That’s interesting. Is that why you didn’t want her to tell me anything?”

“No…I mean, that’s not why.” Catra’s heart raced. She couldn’t slow it down. There was no doubt about it; something about Taline’s tone and line of questioning had tipped her off. She had done something wrong with the application. “What’s interesting? Why would you say it’s interesting? Why would you say that it makes sense?”

Taline narrowed her eyes at her. “Are you okay? You seem—“

“I’m fine.” No she wasn’t. She couldn’t get her breathing under control. “Just tell me. Tell me what’s interesting.”

Taline spoke as if she were coaxing a startled animal from its hiding place. “No one has sent in a physical application like you did for hundreds of years, Catra. It’s an archaic practice.”

Oh shit.

“Archaic practice!? What the hell does that mean?” She was spiraling. “How do you guys get new Sentinels if no one sends applications?”

“It’s okay, Catra. It’s not a huge deal.”

It wasn’t okay. It was a big deal. Massive. What was she going on about?

“Everyone kind of got a good laugh at it,” Taline said. “It actually made them look at you more seriously because of it.”

“You’re saying everyone laughed at me? Laughed at the months of hard work they put me through, jumping through all those hurdles and all that red tape for them? That’s what was going on?”

“No, that’s not…” Taline trailed off, blinking rapidly in her surprise. “What’s going on? Why are you getting so upset?”

“I’m not upset.”

“You very clearly are. Just take a deep breath. It’s not as bad as you think.”

“I’m calm.” Catra tapped her foot on the ground and her tail thumped hard against the chair.

“Why are you so worked up right now?”

“Because I’m not like Evelyn!” Catra screamed the words, tearing at her hair.

Taline flinched. She looked like she had just been slapped. Everything crawled to a halt, and ice flooded Catra’s veins. She went instantly from not being able to get enough air no matter how quickly she breathed to holding her breath altogether, afraid of burning yet another bridge if she so much as opened her mouth to sip at the air.

“What does any of this have to do with Evelyn?” Taline asked, voice low.

Catra breathed out slow through her nose and counted heartbeats. “I’m not like Evelyn,” she said. “I can’t…I’m not…” She gritted her teeth. Why could she never find the right words? A thought occurred to her then: if she flipped the frustration on its head and asked a question instead, maybe then she could get a foothold into what she was trying to convey. “Did you only invite me off planet because I reminded you of her?”

Taline blinked, now looking taken aback. “No. Why would you think I did?”

Catra breathed a sigh of relief. She expected a different answer, but this helped put her mind at ease at least. “I just can’t figure out why you invited me off Etheria. You didn’t even invite Glimmer, she had to ask you to take her along. But you came and asked me, not just to come off planet with you, but also to advise you when you were negotiating with the Emperor. You came to me outside the castle that day I lost Adora. You brought food…encouraging words…you gave me your jacket. You encouraged me to turn my life around.”

“And you thought I only did those things because you reminded me of Evie?” Taline asked? “Is that really what you thought?”

“I couldn’t think of any other reason why! Why would you want to help someone like me?” Tears pricked her eyes and Catra strained to keep them at bay. She wouldn’t cry. She refused to cry. “Why would you bring me here and walk me through all the paperwork to get citizenship? Why would you set me up with a freaking job on the station? Even when you were busy training Glimmer to be a Battlemage on top of all your other responsibilities, you always went out of your way to check in with me and make sure I had everything I needed. Why would you do that for someone like me? The only thing I could think of was…well…”

“That I did so only because I saw you as a stand in for my sister,” Taline said, finishing what Catra couldn’t bring herself to say. “Because you don’t think you deserve any of it otherwise.”

Catra swallowed. She couldn’t deny it, even though she wanted so badly to.

 “Is this why you turned down all of my help?” Taline asked. “Why you avoid me unless Glimmer is there with you?” She paused, suddenly looking horrified. “I’ve written glowing character references for every one of your performance reviews. Tell me that doesn’t have anything to do with you rejecting all your promotions at work.”

Catra hung her head.

“Dax came to me last week and asked me not to submit anything on your behalf this time,” Taline said. “I didn’t understand why at the time but…now I do.”

Catra hated herself. She could hear the hurt in Taline’s voice, could hear how hard she fought to keep it from showing. “I love my police job,” she said, hands twisting in her lap. She didn’t trust herself to look Taline in the eyes. “But a small part of me always felt like I was only given that because of you. I didn’t want to take the promotions because I didn’t feel I earned them if you were just giving them to me as well.”

“Catra…”

“I asked Glimmer to look into the Sentinels,” she said, not wanting to give Taline the chance to interrupt. She needed to get this all out before she lost her nerve entirely. “You ordered Narre and Miri to protect Glimmer’s life, and then they did so against the freaking Emperor for crying out loud. I’m not stupid, I recognize how much you must have trusted them to give that kind of an order. I thought that, I don’t know…maybe if I applied and got accepted without you or anyone else even knowing, and I got in, then that would be something I earned on my own.”

She sniffled and dragged her sleeve across her face. “Then I could stand next to you and help you, not because you gave me a position but because I earned it—because I’m competent and worthy enough to hold it.”

Taline gave a great sigh, and the sound of her chair squeaking filled the silence in the room as she sat back in thought. “Look at me, Catra,” she said after a long pause.

Slowly, reluctantly, Catra edged her eyes up to meet Taline’s. She looked so heartbroken and sad that Catra immediately knew her entire thought process for all this held no weight.

“It’s true that in some ways you remind me of Evie,” Taline said, weary. “But that goes just the same for Glimmer. Even Adora, for the short amount of time I knew her, reminded me a little bit of her. I absolutely did not choose to help you—any of you—because of that. You are Catra. I don’t see you as anyone else. I chose to help you because of who you are and who I want to be, not because I’m trying to use you to replicate a relationship I can no longer have with Evie. Do you understand?”

Catra nodded and drug her sleeve across her eyes again. She had cried even though she promised herself she wouldn’t.

“Good.” Taline leaned forward and pressed a button on the phone on her desk. The receptionist outside greeted her on the other side of the line.

“Lyra,” Taline said. “Please tell everyone waiting out there that I’m extremely sorry, but we’ll have to reschedule their appointments for a different day.”

“Is everything okay?” Lyra asked.

“Don’t cancel all those peoples’ appointments just for me,” Catra said, mumbling. She was too emotionally drained to protest any harder, even though she did just inadvertently ruin everyone’s day outside.

Taline only held up an open palm to tell her to wait. “Everything is fine, just…something came up I won’t push off. Tell them that I will visit them at their homes for their rescheduled appointments as an apology for all the inconvenience.”

“Alright, I’ll get it done,” Lyra said. “You’ll let me know if you need anything else?”

“Of course I will.” Taline thanked her, then cut the connection and ran her hands through her hair again.

“Why did you do that?” Catra asked, hoarse.

“I have something I want to show you,” Taline said. She tapped a few commands into the computer at her desk before standing up and heading to a floor-to-ceiling display shelf behind her. Catra stood and approached to her left.

Taline pressed a section of the wall next to the shelves. It depressed, and then flipped around to reveal another palm scanner. She pressed her hand to it, waited for the scan to finish, and then stepped back. The entire shelving case and the section of wall it was fixed to suddenly jolted and slowly swung backward, revealing a pitch-black room hidden beyond.

“Aside from me, there is only one other person alive today who knows about this,” Taline said, stepping through the doorway and into the shadows.

“Who’s that?” Catra asked, following her in.

“You.”

Catra couldn’t see anything, despite her night vision. Taline flipped a switch to her right and Catra threw up one arm to shield her eyes against the sudden brightness. When she adjusted and looked around, a new room stretched out before her, completely at odds with the office behind them because of its sparse concrete design.

Wire-rack shelves stood in neat rows all the way to the back, filled with reams of papers, beakers, test-tubes, computers, and various dusty lab equipment. Wires, aluminum HVAC ducts, exposed piping and colorful industrial electric cords snaked through nearly every exposed surface. It felt like she had stepped into a room that belonged adjacent to the maintenance corridors of the station’s lower wards, rather than up in the embassies.

“What is this place?” Catra asked, eyes darting everywhere.

“Do you remember how I once told you of the research black-sites during the last war? How the Empire and Enclave used them to run experiments on the Beast?

Catra nodded.

“And do you remember how I mentioned Evelyn had demanded I give her a lab of her own shortly after we rescued her and Corynth?

Catra nodded again. “You said she told you she needed to finish the breakthrough they came across before everyone else on her team died.” Her jaw hinged open when she started to piece things together, and she looked open-mouthed at Taline, a silent question in her eyes.

“Phoenix Station’s original purpose was to serve as one of those secret research stations,” Taline said. “This is where she and Corynth first experimented with the Beast together. This is where they touched minds with it until she finally discovered ignominite. This is where the beginning of the end started.”

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe this is here,” Catra said, stalking through the corridors of wire-rack shelves, each filled with research equipment. Evelyn’s old lab was a marvel. “How did you manage to keep all of this hidden?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Taline said, walking with her. “The Enclave gutted this place shortly after Evie and the rest of her team first rebelled against the emperor. They closed it off and repurposed the station…built it out to be an administration hub like you see today. What they didn’t know was that Evie programmed back-door access for me. She left a recorded message saying as much among her things in the new lab she had occupied with the Daiamid.”

“So, all this stuff is from the second lab,” Catra asked, playing with the antennae of a piece of robotic equipment that looked like a bug. “Not the first?”

Taline nodded. “After she died, that second site was to be ransacked just like this one. The emperor wanted everything catalogued and transported to his personal storage facilities in the Heartlands. Diallo was actually in charge of the team that did the cataloguing and shipping—I met him shortly before and recommended him for the job when it turned out we worked well together.”

“If the emperor wanted everything stored in his personal vaults, how did all this stuff end up here?”

A sly smile spread across Taline’s face. “Diallo has no real love for the emperor either. Not really. He helped me secret a portion of the equipment away here. We managed to smuggle almost everything I wanted, everything of real or sentimental value. There was just one thing we couldn’t find no matter how hard we looked.”

“What was that?”

“The original sample of the Beast Evie researched. It wasn’t among her things in the second lab. I’m pretty sure either she destroyed it, or had Corynth do it for her before they left for Archanas.” Taline had grown somber and, as if suddenly realizing it herself, she shook her head and snapped out of it. “Anyways, almost no one knows this first lab even existed to begin with. Anyone who does, believes it is both empty and permanently sealed. Only I, and now you, know that it’s here and know what’s inside.”

“Wouldn’t Diallo know as well since he helped you?” Catra asked, leaning in closer to a shelf and trying not to get distracted at something sparkling up at her.

“He only knows this equipment was never sent to the emperor’s storage facilities,” Taline said. “He doesn’t know where I sent them to, and he doesn’t know this place exists. To him, they just disappeared into thin air after I got done going through them. Probably thinks I destroyed them just so the emperor couldn’t have them.”

“Entrapta would love all this stuff,” Catra said, studying at each piece of tech individually as she went. “Now I understand why you insisted on having your office here in the embassy instead of up in the executive level. And here I thought it was just because you found everyone up there to be too snobbish.” Catra wrinkled her nose and Taline chuckled.

“I do think they’re snobbish too though,” she said with a smile. “My office right outside here used to just be extra storage space. It wasn’t until after Etheria, when I was assigned here permanently, that I turned it into my lobby and office.”

“The emperor thought it’d be a kind of cruel, practical joke to assign you to your sister’s old station, didn’t he?” Catra asked, frowning as the reasoning came together in her head. “He might not know about all this equipment, but he would be one of the few people to know of the station’s history.”

“Yes, I guess he thought, if he couldn’t get me executed or expelled, the next best thing would be to chain me here and force me to relive her memory every day without ever being able to say a word of it to anyone else.” Taline gave a rueful laugh. “The joke’s on him though. Didn’t need his help to do that to myself almost every day on my own.”

“What do you mean?”

Catra gave her a questioning look, and Taline beckoned for her to follow. They threaded through the shelves until they opened up into a small, open, central area. An intricate rune twice as large across as a person was burned into the floor.

“Recognize this?” Taline asked, pointing to it.

“A mark rune?” Catra traced over the incalculable number of flourishes and diacritics inside the circle with her eyes. She had no ability to cast magic herself, but Glimmer had practiced these enough she knew what one generally looked like. It was just that this one looked so dense…

“You got it. It’s more complicated than most others, though, because it accounts for a vastly increased range of efficacy.”

“How far can you go and still teleport back here from?”

“Anywhere in the galaxy.”

Catra nearly choked. “A-anywhere in the…?” She took another look at it. The outright majesty of its design suddenly hit her after understanding exactly what it was capable of.

“It took me six months of work to put this together, burning it into the floor on my hands and knees with fire and lightning spells. Anywhere I go in the galaxy—whether to the core worlds in the Heartlands or to the very far reaches of the outer arms—if I concentrate, I can feel this mark and pull myself back here to this very spot.”

“Why in Mara’s name would you need something like this here?”

Taline smirked at her. That was Glimmer language. “Because I was convinced that a ghost would turn up here one day,” she said. “And I didn’t want to miss it when it happened.”

Catra turned and looked at her. Taline’s expression shifted. Was that anger in her eyes as she stared at the markings in the floor? No, there was regret and guilt mixed in there as well.

“You thought a ghost would show up here? I don’t understand what that means.”

Taline sighed and walked over to a nearby storage cabinet. “I get my own set of nightmares too, you know. They didn’t start during the war. Only after.” She pressed her hand against a scanner on the locker, and the door popped open.

“Do they spike around a particular time, too?” Catra asked. She was curious about the contents of those nightmares but knew better than to ask. “Glimmer and I have different ones, but they spike around the same time. Now.”

Taline nodded. “Mine come every year around the anniversary of Evie’s death.” she pulled the door open wider to reveal stacks of shoe-box sized containers filling the inside of the locker. “I always get a second spike shortly after Diallo’s visits too, but I haven’t had the heart to tell him. We spent so much time together after she died, I think my brain just associated him with her.”

“That seems like a difficult way to keep a friendship,” Catra said, watching as Taline pulled a number of boxes out and set them on the floor, only to dive back in and reach further to the back for whatever was crammed back there. “I don’t know if I’d be able to accept visits from someone if they triggered night terrors and a week of sleep deprivation.”

“It’s not really his fault,” Taline said, leaning forward to grab something at the very back. “It’s actually much more manageable now that he’s a System Governor. He used to work on this station as a staffer in the executive levels above, and would always make it a point to come see me every time I visited. It was part of the reason I got him the Governor job in the first place, aside from him being a truly competent pick for it.”

“With him off station, you didn’t have to see him every time you came,” Catra said. “Smart.”

“Doubly smart now after I got assigned here,” Taline said, pulling a large box twice the size of the others out of the back of the locker. “I might have gone crazy if I didn’t push him to take the job, and then have had to see him every day.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with ghosts and this rune though,” Catra said, eyeing the box. “What’s in there?”

Taline opened it. Inside, was a mask—the same mask Catra had seen time and time again, on dramatizations, media, busts, paintings. In fact, she had just seen that same mask rendered on the statue in the embassy lobby on her way there.

“Is that…that can’t be Corynth’s actual mask, can it?”

Taline nodded. “Our team found two things when we touched down onto Archanas after the final battle. Corynth and his Daiamid had delivered Evelyn’s payload to the Beast and sealed it away. Among the ruins and calcified Beast remains on the surface were her body and this.” She hefted the box.

“What happened to the bodies of the other Shapers?” Catra asked, marveling at the mask.

“Well, we counted over two hundred scorch marks roughly in the shape of humanoid bodies,” she said. “All the Shapers wore masks like these. Why Evelyn’s body and Corynth’s mask were the only things left in-tact, no one knows. And for years—years after that day, I obsessed over finding him. I thought him still alive. I saw not just my sister in my nightmares, but Corynth as well. Any whiff of something out of the ordinary coming through on interstellar channels and I’d already convinced myself it was him.”

Catra saw the madness she had been cured of a scant three years ago reflected briefly in Taline’s eyes as she spoke. She had nearly destroyed a planet trying to grab at Adora, after all. Taline’s words to her back on Etheria echoed in her head.

It’s okay if it takes you a long time to focus on something in your life other than her. But at some point, you have to move forward. If you don’t, you’ll end up like me.

“Maybe it was someone breaking in where they shouldn’t have been only to escape without a trace,” Taline said in the present, jolting Catra out of the memory. “Maybe it was an encrypted message sent between the stars that couldn’t be decoded. Whatever it was, if it was a mystery people found difficult to solve, I immediately left to investigate. I thought I’d wander into a room one day and see him just standing there, waiting for me.”

Diallo had mentioned her habit of once dropping everything and leaving in a starship to pursue leads. “You never found anything, did you?” Catra asked.

“Never once,” Taline said, shaking her head. “This rune is here because I always thought, if I didn’t find him first, then he’d eventually make his way here. The only other person who’d even know of this lab’s existence would be him, so if the alarm ever tripped, I would know the lab had been breached and who had breached it. I put this here so, if that were to ever happen, wherever I was in the galaxy and whatever I was doing, I could come back here and face him.”

“What would you have done if you ever found him?” Catra had a feeling she already knew the answer.

“I’d kill him.” Taline said it with the same gravity as someone talking about what they ate for lunch that day. “He’s the one who dragged my sister into the war. He decided to prey on someone fresh off their vocational education. Someone wide-eyed and naïve, working their first real job, in a black-site military research center of all places because they truly thought they’d be able to change the world.”

Taline’s posture turned wistful, and Catra was certain she wouldn’t have heard the next words out of her mouth if she didn’t have the hearing she did. “He preyed on us both.”

“They saved everyone, Taline,” Catra said, swallowing down hard the feeling she was staring at a mirror image of herself from years ago, pining after Adora. “You admitted it yourself…none of us would be here if it wasn’t for what they did.”

“Yeah.” Taline grimaced and spoke in a low voice, all trace of wistfulness gone. “They did. But that doesn’t change the fact he took my sister from me when he could have picked anyone else. I don’t care if he’s a war hero, her blood is on his hands just as it is mine. If I had seen him again, I would have killed him myself. I’m almost upset the enemy got to him before I did.”

“I thought the effects of being touched by the Beast were random?” Catra said. She didn’t want to stoke the fires of Taline’s passions any harder, but this was a rare conversation for them. She felt close to Taline in the moment. She wanted more. “Back on Etheria, when you first told me she could see through time….it sounded like that just happened to be the side effect she experienced when she came into contact with the thing. Are you saying that’s actually something Corynth used her for specifically? Planned for?”

“I can’t say for certain,” Taline said. “I can’t prove it. But it’s the only thing that makes sense. Evelyn didn’t have powers to begin with, remember? She couldn’t draw a rune to save her life let alone make it work. But Corynth? I fought that man when he first revealed himself. The things he was capable of doing…how the words he spoke could worm their way into a person and change them forever…I had never experienced or seen anything like it before in my life. It makes more sense to me that her future vision was a product of his manipulation than something natural or random.”

Catra frowned and considered that. All this magic stuff flew way over her head, and even though she got the gist of what Taline was saying, she also got the distinct feeling Taline wasn’t being one hundred percent honest with her.

“Glimmer has mentioned in passing you’ve taken an interest,” Taline said. “Do you linger on the statues too? Wonder what’s behind the mask? Stare at the eyes and wish they weren’t just stone sometimes?”

Catra’s first instinct was to deny, but then she caught sight of the way Taline looked at her and knew she could see right through her. She was paralyzed, unable to do anything except swallow and nod and then hang onto every ticking second afterward, waiting to hear what Taline would say next.

“If a statue of him holds that much sway,” Taline said, each of her syllables spooling out almost like a confession of guilt, “then imagine what seeing him face to face, looking him in the eyes might have been like.”

Catra caught it then, in that same laser-focused look Taline kept leveled at her: she wasn’t just seeing right through her, but telling her more, almost like she hoped Catra could understand what she was trying to convey just like she could glimpse the emperor’s memories when he went digging around in hers. It was all just out of reach for her—she couldn’t read it. Catra and Glimmer knew how to communicate with looks, hold whole conversations almost. But her and Taline?

Catra hadn’t visited enough for that.

“That was the old me,” Taline said with a sigh, sounding exhausted, jolting Catra out of yet another trance. She set the mask aside on a nearby table, rather than putting it with the rest of the boxes on the floor near the locker. “The more crazy witch hunts I went on, the less confident I was that he was actually still alive. I think I was just giving myself something to do other than face my guilt over letting Evelyn be manipulated like that—giving myself any excuse to not grieve.

“The nightmares have stopped affecting me as much. The paranoia, intrusive thoughts, all of it I’ve learned to move forward with. Evie and the Daiamid…they let themselves be collectively consumed by the Beast. They stalled it long enough for the Barrier to activate and trap it in the next dimension. No one could have survived that much infection, it’s just not possible. After I was assigned to this station, I made the conscious decision to go on no more wild goose chases. No more scanning broadcasts, no more combing through hours of news reels. I refused to go looking for things that didn’t exist.”

Catra looked at the mask still in the box on the desk and traced its outline with her eyes. She glanced down at the rune at her feet. Then she looked around at all the equipment in the room, all the shelves stacked with tech behind them.

“Glimmer doesn’t know any of this, does she?” Catra asked. “You said I was the only person aside from you who knows of this place now. Why tell me all of this?”

“I offered to take you with me off Etheria because I saw something in you, Catra. Not just because you reminded me in part of someone I had lost. I can repeat that to you over and over again until I’m blue in the face, but if you don’t believe me by now, then it doesn’t matter how else I put it or how often I say it.” Taline turned back to the open locker and pulled another box out from a lower shelf. “The fact you went to so much trouble trying to become a Sentinel, and the fact you did it for the reasons you did, tells me that this is the right thing to do.”

Taline opened the box and revealed a crystal and a vial inside. The crystal glowed a faint red against the cushion, while a fine sparkly powder filled the inside of the vial up to its cork stopper.

“Recognize this?” Taline asked, placing the box next to the mask and holding the crystal up between them.

Catra shook her head.

“This is an apeiron,” Taline said. “It’s an incredibly rare and expensive crystal, made almost entirely of ignominite. It’s similar to the runestones on your home world, except on a smaller scale and with a few more varied uses. It can hold a physical fragment of the Beast, if you want. That’s what all the research stations switched too as soon as Evie discovered the mineral—it’s what cut fatalities down to almost nothing. Or, in this case, it can be used to store information and memories. You’ve already been exposed to one in the past.”

“That crystal you destroyed on the emperor’s citadel,” Catra said. “That was an apeiron too?”

Taline nodded. “I gathered as much of what was left of it and put it in that vial. That one held a strong imprint of the Beast, since it was Evie’s last memories alive before she was consumed. This one holds my memories, instead.” She turned the crystal in front of both of them and Catra watched the light reflect off its facets. “Every painful memory of us fighting, every thought I’ve ever had or emotion I’ve ever felt grieving her loss, it’s all recorded in this.”

Catra’s mouth went dry hearing that. If the first apeiron she had been exposed to had subjected her to life-altering nightmares, she wondered what damage this one was capable of.

“I’d come every month after the war for years to sit with this,” Taline said. “And after being assigned as Consul on this station, I’ve come every day for the past three years. I’ve spent hours upon hours meditating on those thoughts, both to pay penance and to honor Evie’s memory. There are no pictures of her, no mention of her in any texts or recorded histories. No one speaks her name…all that remains of her now are the memories and emotions and thoughts of an older sister who didn’t deserve her, distilled and recorded in this.” Taline extended the crystal to Catra. “And now I think it’s time that I let her go. I want you to have it.”

Catra’s eyes threatened to bug out of her head and she took a step backward in shock.

“I can’t…Taline, no,” she said, looking anywhere but at the crystal. “I can’t take that. I just…I can’t.” Her thoughts and emotions spiraled. She didn’t know whether she felt flattered or overwhelmed or sad for Taline or confused. It was likely a combination of all of the above, although that realization did nothing to help calm her in the moment.

“She’s not truly gone, Catra. Not yet at least. As long as I’m alive, there will be at least one person who remembers her. Me wanting to give this to you is more than just a symbolic gesture.”

“What do you mean?” Catra still didn’t trust herself to look directly at the thing.

“I’ve spent so much time with it and imbued it with such strong memories over so many long years that it’s intrinsically tied to me. It’s like a portable mark-rune. Just like the rune on the floor, I can feel the presence of this crystal should I concentrate on it. And were it to break, I’d be able to lock onto its position in an instant, and pull myself through time and space to appear right next to it in a moment’s notice. If you are to become my Sentinel, I want you to have this. Not just because I want to give you my sister’s legacy, but because I want to know at all times that I can come to your aid should you ever need it.”

Catra blinked and let Taline’s words sink into her. Slowly she turned to look up at her.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “The Enclave rejected me from the program. I’m not going to be a Sentinel.”

Taline smirked and shook her head, amused. “Catra, there is no program.”

“What?” Now she was well and truly lost. “What do you mean there’s no program? What did I apply for?”

“You applied to be a Sentinel, but they didn’t reject you because you were unfit for some type of academy or training program or boot camp or anything of the sort. In fact, according to their assessments, you did remarkably. Your combat skills are sharp, your reflexes are sharp, your service record is stellar except for the fact you are habitually late to everything. You were a stellar candidate.”

“Why then? Why did they turn me away, and what exactly did I get turned away from?”

“You were rejected because you had no one to officially take you on.”

Catra furrowed her brow. “I still don’t understand.”

“Applications used to be commonplace back in the ancient days of the Enclave,” Taline said. “That’s why everyone had such a strange reaction to seeing one again. No one had actually applied in centuries. Modern Sentinels share a much more personal connection to their Battlemages than in the past—all of them are handpicked not just for their combat skills and experience, but because of the bond they have with the one they agree to watch over.”

“I was turned down because no one wanted me?”

Taline made a face. “You somehow always turn things into that. The answer is yes and no. People were interested, but there’s decorum to these things. I not only trained Glimmer, one of the most promising rookies in the Enclave to come around in generations, but did you forget that I sponsored you into the Empire as well? People were interested, Catra, but no one would reach over me and take you on. Even when I told them I had no intention of signing you, many feared straining their relationship with me and decided to hold off.”

Catra felt both relieved and saddened by those words. Relieved that people wanted her, but sad that Taline had explicitly said she didn’t. “Why wouldn’t you sign me when you saw my name come up?” Again, she felt small and hated herself for it, hated feeling things she had no right to. Taline had already done so much.

“Why would I have any reason to believe that’s what you’d want from me?” Taline said, sounding irritated for once. “You rejected any promotion or pay raise or commendation if my endorsement came alongside it. I’d get excuse after excuse any time I’d send you an invitation to lunch or coffee if Glimmer wasn’t to be there too. This is the first time in three years you’ve come to me on your own volition, and a very large part of me believes that’s only because Glimmer strong armed you into doing even that.”

Catra winced and shrank further into herself with every word Taline spoke. It’s not that she said it in a way that guilted her. In fact, she seemed intent on presenting everything as neutrally as possible, even if she did sound a little annoyed. But Catra well and truly felt guilty now that she saw first-hand how her treatment had made Taline feel.

“You asked Glimmer to look into this for you,” Taline said, “but explicitly asked her not to say anything at all to me, since you would have found out how archaic a practice your application was had you asked. What am I supposed to think after all that? I considered signing you for all of three seconds before I decided that was a terrible idea.” She sighed and deflated. “If my help is really that abhorrent to you then…well, it is what it is, I guess. But I don’t understand why you’d turn right around and get upset after I finally get the hint.”

Never in a million years had Catra thought she’d ever make another person feel unwanted, the same way Shadow Weaver had made her feel. Yet here she was. She took a step forward and shook her head vigorously, wringing her hands raw with remorse.

“That’s not it at all,” she said. “I just…I wanted to get in and surprise you, like I said. I wanted to be able to say ‘look at what I can accomplish’ and then planned to ask if I could serve as your Sentinel after the Enclave qualified me.” She hung her head and spoke in a small, embarrassed voice. “I’m an idiot. I didn’t know it was the other way around. I’m sorry.”

Taline didn’t say anything for a long moment and Catra looked back up at her, half afraid of what she’d see. She saw her standing there, face tense in thought and mired in confusion. Another beat passed, and all the tension evaporated from her face, replaced with unabashed relief and mirth. Her shoulders shook with quiet laughter.

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “I was half afraid you’d actually grown to hate me.”

Again, Catra shook her head. She’d have spoken, too, but the sting of fresh tears threatened to fall from her eyes, and she didn’t want to risk crying again.

“You aren’t an idiot either,” Taline said. “I understand why believing I only thought of you as a substitute for Evie made things hard. But we’ve cleared that up now, and can move past it. I will gladly accept you as my Sentinel, if that is what you still want.”

Catra couldn’t nod her head fast enough. She was going to pull a muscle with all the shaking and nodding she was doing. “Yes. Yes, I want that. Is it really that simple?”

“Sure,” Taline said with a smile. “Battlemages are entitled to handpick their Sentinels. There is one condition, however.”

“Anything. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

“You have to promise to kill me should I ever become corrupted by the Beast.”

Catra faltered. The conversation had taken a decidedly dark turn she was wholly unprepared for.

“You know what happens to someone the Beast touches right?” Taline asked, after seeing the shocked look on Catra’s face. “I’m not just talking about the dying part.”

Catra swallowed and nodded. “Glimmer might have mentioned something, but she didn’t go into too much detail. Said it gave her the creeps. It’s not the same for you as it is for regular people, right?”

Taline nodded. “The Beast makes thralls of people it consumes. It doesn’t matter if you are a soldier or a politician, royalty or a beggar on the streets. If it grabs hold of you, it consumes you. It takes your mind and adds it to its growing, collective intelligence, then uses your husk of a body as a thrall. That’s part of the reason why the emperor didn’t commit any of his clones on the battlefield until he was forced to. He was afraid if the Beast took one of them, then it would spread through his interconnected mental web and get to him.

“But if someone like Glimmer or I were to fall victim to the Beast? We still don’t understand why, but when the creature comes across someone with magical talent, it doesn’t subsume their consciousness into itself. Instead, it imbues a perfect copy of itself into that magic wielder much like a cell undergoing mitosis. It turns that mage into an Abomination—an entirely new, separate infectious center point with its own destructive intelligence.”

“Are…are only mages converted to Abominations? Is that how that works?”

“Almost all,” Taline said. “There were a few recorded cases of Abominations stemming from people without the talent, but it’s almost always a mage.”

“That’s how it was able to spread so quickly, isn’t it?” Catra asked, several more pieces of information she had picked up over the years clicking into place. “That’s why you’re technically not allowed to be deployed to the front lines, aside from the emperor explicitly forbidding it as punishment. You have no more Sentinels to watch over you.”

Taline nodded again. “That’s exactly it. Sentinels aren’t just there to watch over their Battlemages. With the advent of the Beast war, they evolved the additional responsibility of looking out for the wellbeing of the planets and systems their Battlemages were deployed to. An Abomination suddenly appearing on the field of battle, to this day, is the difference between a strike force being able to fend off a Beast attack to save a city at heavy cost, and having to abandon the entire planet and bombard it to hell from orbit.”

“Holy shit,” Catra said. Her fingers shook from the mental imagery of hundreds of ships nuking the surface of a planet with orbital cannons from space.

“That’s part of the reason why the number of new Sentinels has decreased so rapidly since the first war. It was one thing to serve with honor alongside someone you considered a friend. It’s something else entirely to kill that friend should they be corrupted. Most refuse to do so, which is why a lot of the responsibilities an Enclave Sentinel used to possess have gradually shifted to Imperial Vanguard soldiers assigned to Battlemages out in the field.”

Catra knit her brow, deep in thought over the implications of what becoming a Sentinel truly meant. It was wildly different from the image she had in her head going while drafting her application, but did that mean she no longer wanted it?

“Like I said before,” Taline said. “Nothing would make me happier than to take you on if that is what you want. But I don’t want to sugarcoat anything for you either—if I am ever corrupted, for the sake of everyone else around, you must kill me. Are you prepared to do something like that?”

Catra studied her shaking fingers and ran through her thought process one last time before she made up her mind. She squeezed her fingers into a fist to stop them from shaking, looked up and at Taline in the eyes, and nodded. “Yes. I’m prepared, if it ever comes to that.”

Taline smiled wider than Catra had seen ever before, and once again held out the crystal to her. “Then take this and let’s not speak of these depressing things again.”

Catra reached out, took the crystal from her, and stared at it in her hand. After burning an image of it into her brain trying to immortalize the moment forever in her memories, she put it in her pants pocket and patted it. “I’ll find a cord or something so I can wear it.”

“Just as long as you have it on you always,” Taline said. “There’s one last thing I want to give you.”

Catra thought she’d just about explode from all the emotions she’d already churned through. What else could there be?

Taline turned to a large box looming next to the storage locker. Catra thought it looked like a massive black refrigerator, except the number of cords and tubes connected to the back of it told her it likely wasn’t that. Taline keyed in a quick code on a number pad attached to it before scanning her palm again. A small drawer slid out, revealing a vaguely handgun-shaped object inside. She gripped its handle and pulled it out. It came free with a hiss, like it had been hooked up to pressurized air, and Catra recognized it as an injection gun.

“Hold out your arm, palm up please,” Taline said.

Catra held out her right arm, then quickly pulled it back and held out her left instead. She still had Entrapta’s PDA attached to the right like always.

Just the fact she did as Taline asked without hesitating spoke volumes. What would have caused her anxiety to spike not even three years ago, she didn’t think twice about now. In fact, she remembered a great deal of panic the first time Taline had injected her with something. How far she had come.

“This was a big project Evie worked on before her death,” Taline said, pressing the device to Catra’s exposed skin and pulling the trigger. Catra felt a pinch and took a sharp breath at the sensation.

“The emperor explicitly wanted it and was so mad when Diallo and I told him we couldn’t find it. It’s missing a lot of its functionality. I’m not sure if it was corrupted somehow or if she just never finished, but it’s incredibly useful despite me not being able to get any information about her out of it.”

“What is it?” Catra asked, rubbing her arm when Taline pulled the injector away and stowed it.

“I won’t ruin the surprise,” she said, shutting the drawer and turning to head out of the lab with Catra not far behind. “It will take a few days to calibrate to you, but you will know when it’s ready to go. I think you’ll like it.”

They exited, and Taline shut the door behind them. Catra felt buoyant, like she was floating above the clouds in pure bliss. So much had happened, she wasn’t sure how she’d process it all. But one thing she was certain of was that she was happy.

“Here,” Taline said, tossing something to her as Catra turned. She caught it mid-air and opened her palm to look: it was the storage drive Diallo had left on her desk. “Take that to our System Governor friend, will you please?”

“You don’t want to destroy it yourself?” Catra asked, turning the device around in her palm.

“Nope.” Taline pressed a button on the underside of her desk and the lock on her door disengaged. Catra hadn’t realized she had locked it in the first place. “Let him figure out what he wants to do with it. Like I said, I’m done chasing ghosts and going on wild goose chases. I have the station and its people I have to look out for. And now, I have you to officially mentor too.”

“This is really happening, isn’t it?” Catra asked. “I really get to have this?” She wasn’t talking about the drive.

“Of course you do,” Taline said. “The paperwork will take time. Lyra is already swamped as it is so I might do it myself, but Moriarty has a campaign speech I’m expected to be in attendance for in a few days. As soon as that’s done, I’ll come get you and we can hash out a concrete training plan. Once we get your skills honed a bit more, I should be allowed to at least leave the station on a few diplomatic missions. It will be a good chance for you to get out and see more of the galaxy too, instead of just this station.”

Catra nodded and bid her an excited farewell. She was all smiles as she waved goodbye to a bewildered Lyra, still trapped behind a prison of stacked paperwork on her desk, and she walked with a bounce in her step all the way back toward the embassy lobby. Diallo wouldn’t be too thrilled at having his drive returned to him uninvestigated, but Catra couldn’t find it in her to worry about that in the slightest.

She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so happy, either.

Chapter Text

Adora crept along the main hallway high up inside the Crystal Castle and tried to make as little noise as possible.

She had already climbed dozens of stories’ worth of stairs, bypassing practically every room in the castle in lieu of the one place she knew to look first. If an intruder looking for First One’s tech were to infiltrate her stronghold, the first place they’d be most likely to look was Light Hope’s central command room near the top.

She rounded a corner and heard a voice echo down the hallway. Heart hammering in her chest, she dashed behind a pillar and pressed her back against it.

“—done getting through the firewall,” said a female voice. “The security around the safe should be straightforward enough to expose it, but I’ll need to get the castle’s avatar booted up again if we’re to open it.”

“How close did Salas and the rest of them get to bringing it back online?” a second, male voice asked.

“Ehhh, it’s debatable. That girl with the purple hair appendages had a pretty good whack at it. I don’t think they’d have made the progress they already have without her, but it’s still a way’s off.”

“Good thing I have you then.”

Adora came out from behind the pillar and followed the voices to Light Hope’s main sanctum, gripping her combat staff tight in one hand. Gear from the Enclave’s work and Entrapta’s experiments littered the area. A man, dressed in the robes and armor of the Bright Moon castle guard, stood with his back toward her and tapped away at Light Hope’s command terminal in the center of the room. His helmet lay upright on a section of the curved console desk to his right, next to a bulky containment box and several more pieces of Enclave tech. A translucent hologram of a young woman with a pixie cut floated to his left like a specter.

“Funny seeing you in a Bright Moon guard uniform,” Adora said, circling behind them. “It’s Kalanthe, isn’t it? I thought you were supposed to be part of the Enclave’s security detail. Or was it supposed to be the science staff? That was you unloading Entrapta’s deliveries in the Scorpion Kingdom, wasn’t it?”

“Adora,” Kalanthe said, continuing to work at the console without turning around. “I’m surprised to see you here. Thought you’d be off obsessively training, if not asleep, right now.” He reached over to the containment box to his right, undid the clasps, and opened the lid.

“I got two weeks off,” she said, keeping up the banter for as long as possible to gauge her plan of attack. “Thought I’d take a walk and clear my head.” She hefted the staff in her arms, testing its weight and balance. “Who’s your little floaty friend over there?”

The translucent girl with the pixie cut turned to her. Her face lit up and she pointed to herself as if to ask ‘are you talking to me?’ Then she blinked out of existence and appeared again the next instant, floating right in front of Adora.

“Hi! My name’s Pip.” She grinned wide and Adora stumbled back, gripping her staff with both hands. “I’d shake your hand but I can’t actually physically do that. You understand, right?”

Adora looked her up and down. She could see clear through her, and saw Kalanthe pull a pair of glowing crystals out of the storage box and put them into a circular device up on the console dash. Adora glanced to the side and saw how this ‘Pip’ made herself corporeal: through the half a dozen holographic projectors littering the room, the ones Entrapta and the Enclave frequently used for various three-dimensional displays.

“I’m so glad those are there,” Pip said, following Adora’s trail of sight and positively beaming. She flew around the room, twirling and making loops, different projectors activating depending on where in the room she flew next. “Normally I’m not able to manifest like this, but with these projectors here I can go practically anywhere!”

“Can you focus please?” Kalanthe said, slotting a sixth crystal into the machine. He pressed a button and the cylinder holding the crystals rotated up and started to spin. Pip shot Adora an apologetic look before disappearing and reappearing right next to him.

“I can multitask you know,” she said to him, pouting. “That’s what I was designed to do, remember? The system has recognized the crystals, but I’m still working on getting everything else up and running. You’ll know when everything is ready.”

“Those guards you left outside behind that tree…” Adora said, inching toward them. “Did you kill them?”

“They aren’t dead, they’ll be fine,” Kalanthe said, returning to the console. He still hadn’t turned around. “I suggest you leave. What I’m doing here doesn’t concern you. It’d be better for you if you didn’t get involved.”

Adora laughed and got closer. “You’ve been sneaking around Etheria for three years. I see you in Entrapta’s lab, I see you at the Induction Ceremony, and now I see you in my own sanctuary castle? I have no idea what you’re doing, but I think it concerns me very much. Turn around.”

“Walk away, Adora,” Kalanthe said. He still hadn’t turned, but he stood eerily still, not touching the electronics or the computer, as if he were tensing for a fight. “We wouldn’t want them finding you in the morning next to the guards outside.”

“Out of the two of us, it’s going to be you they find out there,” Adora said. Then she paused, since that really didn’t make any sense. Why would she leave him outside unconscious for hours until morning? “Or…or dragged! Out of the two of us, it’s going to be you that’s going to get dragged, by me, to the Enclave. To answer for...sneaking about and…”

She trailed off and groaned, shaking her head. Moment ruined.

Hoping to at least catch him off guard, she snapped forward with the staff, thrusting one end up toward the back of his head. Kalanthe leaned to the side, letting the staff zoom past his ear. He spun low and aimed an open palm at her solar plexus.

Adora turned her body to the side and caught him between her abdomen and upper arm. He followed through, stepping into her space to deliver another blow. She met him halfway and rammed her skull into his head before he could strike first.

Stars danced in her vision, but pushing aggressively had taken the initiative away from him. She had the upper hand. Kalanthe stumbled backward, dazed, and Adora pressed the advantage. She stabbed left, then right with the staff, first high at the shoulder before angling it down for a strike at the legs, her hair whipping about with her movements, reminding her she had forgotten to tie it up since leaving Bright Moon.

She let the staff do most of the work, putting the forward momentum from another thrust into a lateral swipe aimed for his chest. She did everything she could to keep the attacks coming as quickly and aggressively as she could. Salas said he was dangerous. She had to keep him off balance.

He surprised her, taking a blow to the side against the plate armor there. Adora thought she had gotten him for a moment, until she realized it was a calculated move on his part.

Kalanthe stepped forward the moment his armor stopped the staff, grabbed it in one hand, and tried to pull it out of her grasp.

Adora let herself be yanked forward, faking being thrown off-balance only to put her forward momentum into a punch she aimed squarely for his head. Her fist collided with his face. She both felt and heard his nose snap under the blow.

Kalanthe cried out, letting go of Adora’s staff and stumbling backward holding his face.

“Ready to give up?” Adora said with a smirk, Adrenaline coursed through her. This felt good. She might not be able to draw upon She Ra still, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t fight. In fact, with the obsessive training she put herself through trying to get in touch with her powers again through sheer peak conditioning alone, she was an even better fighter as Adora than she’d ever been.

Kalanthe glared at her over the top of his hand which he held to his face. He pinched the bridge of his nose and set it. The sound of bone and cartilage sliding across each other sent a wet sound echoing around the room. Adora cringed, but Kalanthe didn’t take his eyes off her. He didn’t even flinch.

“I have to say,” Pip said, floating in a relaxed posture nearby on her back. “I’m somewhat disappointed. Have you gotten slower?”

Kalanthe gave her a look but didn’t respond. Turning his attention back to Adora, he pulled a set of pins under the shoulder plates of the palace guard armor and the robes fell to the floor. Then he undid the clasp at the neck and the rest of the ensemble went tumbling to the ground in a clatter. He stood there in nothing but a lightweight shirt and pants, and the pair of muddy boots he had on from the start.

He dashed forward, and the speed with which he did so was such a shock, Adora almost didn’t get out of the way in time to avoid his next strike.

So fast, she thought, barely able to keep up with the flurry of blows. Way too fast.

Adora parried a blow and set her feet. Kalanthe had dashed in a small arc in front of her, probably gearing up for a kick, so she aimed a thrust with her staff where she expected him to be. Except he wasn’t there, and her staff swished through the air to strike nothing. It shouldn’t have been possible. Not even Catra was able to cancel out her inertia like that.

Her leg gave out from behind and her knee slammed to the ground. Kalanthe had struck her there and forced her to kneel, only to reappear once again before her, poised for another strike. Panicking, Adora swung at him with a fist.

Kalanthe plucked her hand out of the air like he caught a ball someone had thrown him and clapped something onto her wrist. She looked up in surprise and saw a manacle attached to her. She twisted her body and moved to strike at him with the staff in her other hand, but he blocked, kneed her in the stomach, kicked the staff out of her grip when she tried to suck in a breath of air, and shackled her other wrist to the first.

Adora yelped and tried to torque out of his hold, but Kalanthe held the small strip of chain linking the manacles together with an iron grip. She couldn’t break free. She tried to stand again but he circled behind her and kicked the back of her leg once again to keep her down. He then yanked her arms over back and behind her head.

Adora glared up at him, and he stared back, down the bridge of his nose with an almost imperious gaze. He had stopped attacking her, for some reason choosing to hold her there in this trapped position rather than end the fight for good. Adora decided to take the opportunity to calm down, come up with a quick plan, and capitalize on it once she had lured him into a false sense of security.

Kalanthe stepped away from her, showing that he no longer held her arms back. Surprised and thrown entirely off guard, Adora tugged again and found she still couldn’t pull her arms free. She twisted, still kneeling on the ground, and saw a person-sized spider robot directly behind her, gripping the chain linking her handcuffs in its mandibles. It trilled at her and Adora screamed and yanked away from it again with more urgency. The bot held fast, all eight red eyes swiveling to look at her as it refused to let her go. Then six more bots came out of the shadows and joined their brother, surrounding her. These were Entrapta’s own security bots! Why were they going against her?

“That’s more like it,” Pip said, floating next to Kalanthe as he walked to the center of the room.

“Wouldn’t have needed to do that if you had cracked the system faster,” he said, rolling his shoulder as if it were stiff. “In fact, I wouldn’t have even had to deal with her at all if you remembered to shut the door behind us in the first place.”

“I’m sorry!” Pip said, throwing her hands up and sounding not sorry at all. “Old Eternian systems are so cumbersome, it just takes a while, okay? You have no idea how many threads I’m devoting to just waking up their administrator protocols right now. Forgetting to close a door here or there is a given, so cut me some slack.”

“Fine, fine,” he said, waving her off. He didn’t even sound winded, just mildly inconvenienced, and that realization infuriated Adora to no end. “How are we coming along on that?”

“Hey!” Adora tried again to yank away from the spider with no luck. At least they weren’t attacking her either. “What the hell? Let me out of here.”

“You, zip it,” Kalanthe said, turning and making a motion across his lips with a hand. “I told you to leave and you didn’t. Now just sit there and please shut up.”

Adora opened her mouth to protest and one of the spiders in front of her bayed, startling her she clicked her jaw shut instead and flinched.

“Still working on it, Boss,” Pip said, when Kalanthe gave her another look. “Maybe another few minutes and I’ll have it.” He sighed in response and walked back over to Adora. The spider that bayed at Adora scurried out of the way when he approached.

“Why don’t you go ahead and reach for She Ra?” he asked, kneeling in front of her so they were eye level with each other. “Should have no problem busting out of those cuffs and trashing these security bots if you can.”

Adora scowled at him through the threads of her hair hanging in front of her face. She found it odd that her enemy was not only suggesting ways she could beat him, but also giving her time to actually try it. Part of her wanted to refuse and bust out on her own without She Ra’s help purely out of spite, but she tried yanking the chains a third time and decided against it when they still didn’t give. It was like she was tied to a concrete post. So, she reached for the power, not expecting to be able to do much of anything with it.

The power wasn’t there.

Oh no.

Adora reached inside again, her heart racing, and confirmed her worst fear. Before, she could at least feel She Ra bubbling under the surface despite not being able to do anything with her. But now? When she reached for the power now, she felt nothing. The sound of despair that escaped on its own volition from her lips might have embarrassed her had she not been so swept up in her panic.

“Nothing, huh?” Kalanthe said, shooting her a bored look. “That’s a shame. Well, since you aren’t getting out of there and you aren’t going to call on She Ra any time soon, will you do me a huge favor and just sit here quietly for a few minutes? Thanks.”

Adora gaped at him, but was too shocked to respond. Where was She Ra? Why couldn’t she feel her at all now? She could sense her just minutes ago while she was wandering through the woods. What happened?

“I’m in,” Pip said.

Kalanthe stood and Light Hope materialized next to him.

“Administrator detected,” she said. “Hello, Kalanthe.”

“Are you kidding me right now?” Adora pulled so hard on the manacles that the spiders yanked her back fully onto her ass, all of them trilling a warning in unison this time.

“What did I just say about sitting quietly?” Kalanthe said.

How did he get Light Hope to work? Entrapta had worked so hard to make any sort of progress with this—it had taken months just to connect her bots to the system to act as security! And he just came along and reactivated her in the amount of time it took for them to fight? Not only that, why did Light Hope recognize him as an Administrator?

“Light Hope!” Adora said, yanking on the chain again. “It’s me, Adora. You remember me, right? She Ra?”

Light Hope looked at her then turned a shade of red. “Intruder detected. Beginning emergency interception protocol.”

The bugs trilled a third time, and it sounded even more menacing.

“It’s okay, Hope,” Kalanthe said, placing a hand on Adora’s shoulder as he spoke. It took everything in her to not jerk away from him. “Adora is a guest. Please don’t harm her.” He turned and spoke to her. “I won’t ask for your cooperation again. Say something else and I’ll have the bots gag you.” Two more spiders scurried about in front of her and rattled their abdomens at her as if to accentuate his point.

“I maaaaay have accidentally reset her memory banks when I turned her on,” Pip said with a sheepish look.

“Your companion informs me that you wish to access the vault,” Light Hope said, speaking once again to Kalanthe after returning to her usual shade of blue. Pip gave a thumbs up, floating off to the side.

“Yes please,” Kalanthe said. “I know we just met and it’s rude to talk business so suddenly, but this is urgent. You’ll see I’ve already provided the keys you need.”

“Yes. Six keys from six kingdoms,” Light Hope said, nodding. “All is as it should be, although I imagine it was difficult to convince the rulers of those kingdoms to part with their keys. I do not see them here with you.”

“No, it wasn’t easy,” he said, shooting a glare at Adora when she scoffed. “Three years and a lot of effort went into getting them for you. Some of those dig sites were challenging.”

Light Hope nodded. “I can only imagine. I will open the vault for you.”

Adora squirmed. “Don’t! Light Hope, I don’t know who this person is or what he’s trying to do, but he’s not an Administrator. He’s trying—“

One of the spider bots turned around and shot webbing at her mouth. It hardened instantly, preventing Adora from speaking.

“I told you what would happen,” Kalanthe said, looking down at her with tired eyes. “Why does no one ever listen?”

A portion of the flooring nearby opened up a pedestal emerged up out of it, turning like a screw as it rose. A large, partially cut amethyst the size of a person’s fist lay atop the pedestal, magnificent veins of red and black twisting and curling through the purple. Kalanthe approached it, and the pedestal stopped rising when it reached roughly chest-height.

“The Eye of Shukra is the shining masterpiece of Eternian crystal-work,” Light Hope said. “It contains the foundations of our mathematics and new theories of physics that have underpinned our efforts to shape Etheria into what it is today. The work of entire generations of scholars and engineers over millennia is now in the palm of your hand.”

Adora tried to yell, but her words only came out as muffled cries. Kalanthe ignored her.

“Can you access this as is or do you need me to hook more tech up for you?” he asked Pip, shooting her a quick look before stooping down and inspecting the crystal from the side. Pip hovered next to him, staring wide-eyed at it.

“Should be fine as is,” she said. “It’s really pretty.”

“It’s likely the most advanced of its kind we’ve ever come across,” he said, straightening, “so it will probably feel just as interesting as it looks when you go poking around in there. Have at it.”

“Yesser, Boss sir,” Pip said, slapping her hand to her head in a cartoonish salute and giggling.  She floated closer and plunged both hands into the crystal. Her eyes glossed over, turning an opaque white. Several moments passed, before: “Oh wow. Kal, if only you could see what I see as I go through this thing….it’s amazing.”

“Don’t get distracted,” Kalanthe said. “You can tell me all about it later, but the sooner we finish this the better, for everyone.”

Pip continued to work in silence, her face taking on all manner of expression—from surprise, to excitement, to wonder as her hands danced around the crystal. Suddenly, her brows knit together and she grunted.

“Uh, Kal?”

“What is it? Did you find it?”

“No I think…there’s something.” Pip’s avatar flickered and stuttered.

“Are you okay?” Kal asked. “What’s going on?”

“There’s something he—..there’s…ca—t…se—se—see—"

Pip disappeared and the lights in the control room shut off with a clang. Light Hope and the eyes of the bug robots continued to glow, the only source of illumination in the room.

“What the hell is going on?” Kalanthe said, his eyes casting about. “Pip? Where’d you go? I swear if this is another one of your practical jokes, I’m going to delete you. I’m serious, I don’t care how big you make your eyes this time when you apologize.”

Emergency lights came on, bathing them in a sea of red hues. Light Hope turned a matching shade of crimson.

“Intruder alert!” she said.

“Hope, it’s me, Administrator Kalanthe. Stand down.”

“Intruder detected! Intruder detected!” Hope blared like a siren. “Activating defensive measures.”

The spiderbot’s eyes glowed brighter and they rattled their frames hard enough Adora thought they’d break.

“Shit,” Kalanthe said. He grabbed Adora’s staff and destroyed each of them in short order before they could react. Then he ripped the sticky material from her mouth and unlocked her shackles, taking the handcuffs back and stowing them in his shirt.

Countless more red eyes lit up around them, in the shadowy crevices of the ceiling and walls and corners of the room. Light Hope continued to scream.

“Run!” Kalanthe said to her, before grabbing the crystal from the pedestal and making a break for the far exit.

The eyes in the dark multiplied, and the raucous chorus of hundreds of spider bots rattling their abdomens in warning created a thunderous white noise that filled the room, like a furious hailstorm beating down on a tin roof. All of the eyes suddenly surged down the walls like a sea of death coming to inundate them.

Adora didn’t think twice. She jumped to her feet and ran after him.

Chapter Text

Adora sprinted down hallways and around hairpin turns in the Crystal Castle. The flood of spider bots chasing just behind roared like a tsunami.

I can’t believe my own castle is attacking me, she thought. Her feet slid along the floor when she took a corner too hard and she almost slammed sideways into a wall. Why is my own castle attacking me!?

She saw Kalanthe ahead, her staff under his arm and the crystal he stole in the other hand as he sprinted. The speed with which he moved earlier during their fight wasn’t just a figment of her imagination—he truly was fast. Despite his head start, she wasn’t able to gain on him despite the years she spent on her grueling training regimen. In fact, he might have been putting even more distance between them. She’d see him disappear around one corner or fly up a flight of stairs, and when she’d round the same corner or clear the same staircase, he’d be back in her vision but even smaller and farther away.

The halls of the castle were dark, the emergency alarm lights casting everything in a low, ominous red. But despite the low visibility, Adora could readily and easily see Kalanthe against the backdrop. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said he was glowing. It was subtle, but she swore she could see it, outlining him clearly against the darkness.

The hallway opened up to the outside. Dozens of carriers and dreadnoughts orbited in formation high above. Stars and the moonlight from Etheria’s twelve satellites bathed Adora in a soft light when she blasted full tilt out onto the terrace near the top of the castle.

That light filtered through a pergola overhead, supported on either side by stone pillars lined up like an honor guard. It cast eerie, dancing shadows on her skin as she ran. The deluge of spider bots nipping at her heels continued, although the sound changed tone. It somehow sounded more overbearing, despite that sound no longer bouncing around the enclosed space of the hallway.

A flash of red high and to the right caught her attention and Adora looked up. There, balancing on tripod legs atop the roof of the terrace’s central turret tower, stood a particularly massive sentry bot. Its middle eye glowed with energy and tracked Kalanthe from high above as he ran ahead of her.

“Hey!” Adora said, waving her arms and hoping her voice carried far enough for him to hear. “Watch out! I think that thing is going to blast you!”

Kalanthe gave no indication he heard her and Adora grit her teeth. When she looked back up, the sentry was no longer tracking him. It was aiming for her.

Her vision saturated as a tight beam of energy shot out of the sentry’s eye, flashing everything red for a split second. Adora couldn’t see its trajectory, but she ducked her head low out of instinct and felt it just miss the top of her head. A pillar to her left exploded from the impact and wobbled. The pergola creaked and bent, before snapping altogether. Adora zig-zagged her course forward as giant planks of splintered wood careened down and struck the stone underfoot, like hail slamming to the earth. One caught her shoulder and Adora yelped in pain.

That broken pillar turned into a domino that crashed into its neighbor just ahead of her. A crack raced from the base of that second pillar to the top. It too started to fall just as Adora zagged in its direction. A jolt of adrenaline shot through her the moment she realized why its shadow grew suddenly and alarmingly larger and darker around her.

Her feet tangled. She fell forward, sliding to a stop just under the pillar as it toppled to the floor. She watched it get closer with wide eyes, then squeezed them shut and crossed her arms in front of her face. Any second and it’d slam into her, squashing her like a bug. Killing her.

Death never came.

Adora cracked an eye open and saw the pillar hovering above her as if held by invisible hands. She blinked in awe for all of two seconds before the storm of spider bots chasing from behind surged in to overwhelm her. The pillar shot forward, scraping along the ground, breaking into separate boulders and crushing several dozen bots caught in its wake.

It wasn’t enough. Dozens more of them still spilled around and over the now ruined chunks of rock and granite, gunning for her like a river. With another yelp of surprise, Adora picked herself up off the floor and started forward at another dead sprint. Her ankle didn’t support her when she put weight on it. She cried out in pain and nosedived to the floor once again just as the first bot reached her.

Its icepick legs dug into her skin as it crawled onto her back. Adora screamed, although the pain she felt dig into her like a scorching needle somehow killed her ability to hear. She reached around behind her to yank it off and throw it forward. She got one, two, three limping steps before a half-dozen bots converged on her anew.

“Get off, get off, get off!”

She twisted and rammed her fist into the side of one of them, not caring that the metal of its body bruised and cut her knuckles, only that it tumbled off her and died. She twisted again, punching and hurling away as many as she could get her hands on, scrambling backwards and away from them. It was no use. When she got rid of one, three more came to take its place. They nipped and bit and scratched and peeled away at her, and no matter how vigorously she struggled to get away, they kept coming. Adora thought she’d go mad from the pain.

One got up and sat right on her chest, pinning her flat to the ground. Adora got her scratched and bloody arms up and gripped the insides of its pincer-mouth as it lunged for her throat, snapping over and over again. She struggled, straining and pushing to keep it away from her neck as it death rattled at her.

Her staff came flying from out of sight and impaled the bot clean through its center. It seized a moment, its pincers baying and snapping uncontrolled, and then it slumped down on top of her. Adora whined from the effort as she half-pushed, half-slid it off her, and she breathed deep when the weight finally abated from her chest.

Something didn’t feel right. In another moment, Adora realized what: the sound of the bots rushing her had abated entirely, and she was no longer set upon by an avalanche of them trying to kill her. She pulled her head up off the floor and looked downrange. Hundreds of bots floated above the terrace floor, kicking uselessly about with their legs in the air like they were trying to swim.

Kalanthe is a mage, Adora thought with a sudden burst of inspiration. This and the pillar from earlier suddenly made sense. And if he had been using his magic to subtly speed his movements, that explained the fighting skill too—how he could move in ways that weren’t readable. She looked the floating mass of bugs over.

Runes, she thought. There were always runes, so where were they now?

When she squinted and still found nothing on the bots, she angled her head up-range instead and found the answer.

Kalanthe glowed with brilliant light. Ley lines stretched and pulsed across his skin much like the way the princesses glowed when the Heart first powered on. His eyes were like pits of starlight. Adora thought she might get sucked through into another reality if she looked at them for any longer than a moment.

He himself is the rune, she thought, amazed at how different magic could manifest from person to person.

The sentry bot from earlier powered its beam eye once more and recoiled when it fired again, this time at Kalanthe. The beam impacted a barrier he had somehow erected around him without even moving. It deflected at an angle, and sliced through a sizeable swathe of the spiderbots still swimming fruitlessly above Adora. They all exploded in turn, one after the other, and showered her with gears and springs and splatters of oil.

She heard another roar in the distance and worried their fighting had awakened something fearsome deep within the castle. Then, a ship rose over the far edge of the terrace, casting floodlights down on them and making Adora squint against the brightness. Kalanthe had been reduced to a silhouette against the light.

A missile sprouted from the ship. It pigtailed through the air before slamming into the sentry bot atop the tower. A dozen more missiles fired loose, screaming through the air before making short work of the remaining bots that hadn’t already been destroyed. Two more missiles shot past and slammed into the exit they came through, barricading the only hallway leading into or out of the terrace. Kalanthe seemed intent on preventing any more bots from following them, just in case.

Adora laid her head back down on the ground and sighed. She was safe. No more impending death from her own castle trying to murder her because it forgot who she was. Out of the top corner of her vision, she saw the ship rotate mid-air and touch down. With the light no longer shining on them, she saw Kalanthe, no longer glowing, head for a ramp leading into the hold of the ship that had just opened up.

“Wait,” Adora said, trying to call out to him. Her voice came out as a strained croak. “Wait, don’t go.”

She rolled onto her stomach and pushed into a kneeling position. Her adrenaline was already waning, and the weight of her injuries piled on top now that she could fully feel them.

“You can’t leave!”

Kalanthe locked eyes with her, and then he turned and disappeared inside the ship. The ramp rose slowly, as if daring her to do something about it. She heard the engines begin to build once again.

“No…stop!”

Her body didn’t want to cooperate, but she forced it. She forced herself to her feet. Forced herself to take one staggering step after another. Forced herself to begin to jog, then sprint. She pumped her legs faster and harder despite her ankle screaming at her that it couldn’t take any more abuse.

The engines spooled quicker, kicking up a small dust storm around the ship. The flaps on the wings extended and retracted, like a bird prepping for flight.

Her ankle twisted again and she crashed to the floor.

Move, Adora, she thought to herself. Get up. You have to get up!

Something buzzed at her wrist and she glanced down. Her PDA, scratched and busted almost beyond recognition, had come to life. Whatever phenomenon blocking any signal from reaching her when she first tried to use it had gone, and all the messages she had missed in the interim pinged over and over again. Messages from Bow. Several missed calls.

I got your text, he wrote. Where are you?

Another message: Angella checked your room. Your PDA and gauntlet and staff are gone and you aren’t there. Please tell me you aren’t at the castle already??

Yet another: Adora?? Pick up! Entrapta told me the castle just exploded. Are you alright?

The ship pulled away from the ground.

Get up now! Her mind screamed at her.

The PDA continued to buzz on her arm as more messages come in. New texts from Angella and Entrapta now, and even more messages from Bow. They were minutes away, but wouldn’t get there in time to help her stop the intruder from leaving. They were too late.

She fought with her body that refused to move, and her mind turned to her friends as she watched the craft slowly rise—watched the doors of her failure continue to close.

Thoughts of Bow came, images of him training relentlessly day after day to perfect his archery, tinkering with new tech that would allow him to be a fearsome foe on the battlefield; he had sworn to never go down again as quickly as he had when he last fought Catra. He still had faith in her. Adora felt like she was failing him somehow, unable to have that same faith in herself.

There was Glimmer, off in the galaxy on some alien planet, fighting on the front lines against the Beast to evacuate and save as many people from populated cities as possible. All the stories she had shared with Adora over the years…how terrifying it could be out there. What was Adora still doing on Etheria except stagnating?

She thought of Entrapta, working tirelessly to so that they’d be one step closer to stopping the Beast’s relentless advance. This Kalanthe person had managed to do what she struggled to achieve and activate Light Hope again in a matter of minutes. And he was escaping. Not just with the knowledge of how to do what they could not, but also with a mysterious crystal she never knew existed in her castle to begin with. Whatever it was, it was important and she was letting him get away with it. Letting him slip through their fingers like sand because she was too much of a failure for her own castle to acknowledge her as She Ra.

The ship pulled higher into the air. If she took a running jump at it now, she might have just be able to touch the underside. But her body still wouldn’t move! If she lost him, if she let him get away, all of her friends’ hard work would be lost. What if they couldn’t get the Heart to work again no matter what they tried? What if stopping Kalanthe and getting that crystal was the only way to succeed?

Another image she hadn’t expected flashed in front of her. It was of the day she looked Catra in the eyes and told her they were done—told her she didn’t want to hear from her any longer until they defeated the Beast.

She had wanted—no, needed—she had needed to focus on She Ra, damn it. But even after three years she was no closer than before. She had given up Catra for this! If she didn’t stop this person…if she didn’t succeed here, now, then even that sacrifice would have been meaningless.

Catra wasn’t meaningless. She wasn’t!

Rage and loathing boiled inside her at the thought of it. And as soon as she admitted that to herself, that she didn’t want giving up Catra to have been meaningless, she felt a power surge through her.

It wasn’t the same power she knew from when she still had She Ra (or maybe it was and it had just been so long she forgot what that felt like), but something other than more adrenaline coursed through her veins and made her feel lighter. Her ankle didn’t throb as hard when she stood, and the pain from the lacerations that seared across her knuckles and all around her body burned less. She looked down and confirmed the injuries hadn’t actually healed. She didn’t look any different.

Except, now she held a sword.

The gauntlet she had been so used to seeing for so long now was gone, and in her right hand she held the Sword of Protection. It was thinner and sleeker than the sword of old, and glowed with a healthy brilliance she hadn’t seen the old sword have.

Adora looked up at the ship, a full four stories off the ground, angling its nose to the stars to take off. She crouched low, concentrated every bit of energy she could muster into her legs, and with a banshee’s scream, she leapt. As high as she could. She soared through the sky, racing to meet the ship. At the zenith of her arc, she slammed the sword into the top of its fuselage, and it took off.

The ship raced through the clouds and jetted to the stars. Adora held on for dear life. The wind blew through her loose hair and screamed into her ears so loud she couldn’t hear anything else. She looked behind, surprised at how quickly the Crystal Castle and surrounding landscape grew smaller. The air got colder, and it got harder to breathe the more apparent Etheria’s curve on the horizon came to be. As quick and sudden as it had come to her, She Ra’s power began to fade.

No, she thought. No, no, no. Not right now. I have to get inside!

The last dregs of her power and energy disappeared, and her vision blurred. She tried to blink it back into focus, but somewhere around the third or fourth blink she realized the ship was suddenly getting smaller: she had let go without realizing, and was now free falling toward the planet’s surface.

Her body flipped around mid-air and she faced down. Etheria’s curve flattened gradually with the wind still whipping her hair and her face. The ground underneath came up to meet her much slower than she had initially left it. Somewhere in her head, alarm bells rang. Death loomed once more, but she was too exhausted to pay any attention to it. It was almost like an old friend by now.

Soon, individual trees among the forest below came into focus. In her daze, Adora felt as if she could just reach out and pluck them straight from the ground. Everything went black then, and she fainted.

Chapter Text

“Aratoth!”

Glimmer pounded on the bulkhead door to the Battlemage Commander’s private quarters. The HISV Omen-Kador was still an hour away from emerging out of hyperspace. She finally knew where they were going, but Glimmer needed to speak with him before they rendezvoused with the rest of the fleet in orbit above Scavria. She pounded harder on the door.

“Commander Aratoth, I know you can hear me. Please sir, I have to speak with you. Urgently!”

The door slid open and a harried man stood before her, only half changed into his service uniform and in the middle of brushing his teeth.

“Glimmer?” he said, words muffled by the toothbrush still in his mouth. He welcomed her inside before padding back to the bathroom only six paces away. “Why the sudden visit?” he asked, spitting into the sink. “I saw your messages. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to see you earlier.”

“I can’t lead the squad you assigned me,” Glimmer said, dancing on her toes and eschewing all decorum.

“I’m sorry?” Aratoth gave her a look that said he already didn’t like where the conversation was going.

Glimmer held up the data chip Lonnie had given her several days earlier. “I can’t take on this assignment, sir. I can’t lead people. Not on a mission like this. Not yet.” Glimmer had done her best to pretend like everything was fine after she and Lonnie spoke, but it had been obvious Lonnie sensed something was wrong, and Glimmer had spent the next few days avoiding her supposed new subordinates while she pushed as hard as possible for a meeting with the commander.

“I don’t remember asking about your opinion on your assignments, soldier,” Aratoth said, putting his toothbrush away and cleaning up. “These are good troops, three of them Vanguard. It’s a solid team.”

“Sir, I don’t think you understand—“

“Are you referring to your panic attacks and night terrors?” Aratoth said. He finished washing up and dried his hands, then walked back out to the main room.

“Yes, sir.” Glimmer scrambled out of the way when it was clear he was heading for the standing dresser directly behind her. Despite being of high enough rank that he had his own private quarters, space was still limited on the super carrier, and there were other commanders and people of importance to house too.

“We’re fighting the Beast,” he said, pulling open the dresser and revealing the rest of his uniform hanging neat inside, its black and silver motif looking stately as ever. “Everyone and their mothers experience varying levels of PTSD on and after these assignments. Hell, even just landing on an infected planet puts some people in the crazy wards. But last I checked, the general consensus from the doctors on your last three deployments is that you are cleared for service.”

“That’s true, but this is a different matter entirely, sir. Have you spoken with Consular Taline about the nature of my…attacks?”

“No,” Aratoth said with a bored tone. “I wasn’t under the impression I had to consult with the Seraph—who might I add is retired from active service despite her accomplishments—over actual medical doctors. Not when it comes to your ability to perform.” He gave her a look over his shoulder. “You aren’t suggesting you require her blessing to do your job, are you?”

“No sir!” Glimmer said, never having shaken her head ‘no’ so quickly before in her life. “I’ve just… never lead a squad before and I just think it’s a bit premature to be—“

“If you read those command orders,” he said, his eyes flicking to the data chip she still held, “and I know you have, then you’ll clearly see that you are to be leading only a small team of twelve soldiers. Two Vanguard riflemen, your pilot, and nine regular infantry is hardly a tall order for your first command. This especially since you will be reporting directly under me and learning from my example leading my own men. Compared to Rinne, this should be no problem.”

Glimmer flinched, not having expected him to bring up the last time she was put in charge of anything more important than a refugee processing station. Aratoth seemed not to notice. He began putting on the rest of his ensemble, threading his arms through sleeves and adjusting himself in the mirror on the inside of one of the wardrobe doors.

“Those marching orders were designed specifically with your lack of experience in mind,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve noticed the Beast is spreading faster than originally projected—the fact it’s cropped up on Scavria of all places is just more proof of that. Between that and those loonies from the Vestamid gumming up the political machine, arguing the futility of fighting their God now that it’s returned, we need more talented people who can lead, and we need them fast. You are at the top of that list of talent to cultivate.”

Glimmer balked. “Sir, I understand the situation, and believe me, I am the last person who wants to be on the sidelines and not pull her weight, but I wouldn’t approach you like this if it weren’t serious.”

“Are you trying to tell me that we need to bench you, soldier?” Aratoth said, looking Glimmer in the eyes through the mirror while he adjusted the buttons on his service shirt. “Is that the extent of these nightmares?”

“No sir! I can still serve,” Glimmer said, trying to keep her mind from racing. “I can still fight. Please, put me on my original assignment. Put me with the evac center so I can still help. If the forward stations get overwhelmed, I can still defend the refugees. I’m not a liability I just…I can’t lead the team you’ve given me.”

“If you are in good enough condition to fight and stable enough to function in the evac center, then you are perfectly fit and able to serve on the front lines, under me, with a team. Am I wrong?”

Glimmer was about to lose it. Every instinct in her body urged her to fight harder to prevent this, but her previous experience out in the field had already thoroughly broken any lofty and idealistic notions her younger self might have had about that approach working. If Aratoth still didn’t get what the problem was, even after bringing both Rinne and her nightmares up, then Glimmer wasn’t in a position to truly educate him. That would skirt dangerously close to revealing information about Etheria and the Emperor’s invasion of it, which was still classified above top secret even amongst colleagues in the Enclave. It was part of the reason Scorpia and Entrapta could only send their messages to Catra through Glimmer once a month, with Salas’ permission.

Oh, if only he had spoken to Taline! Even though she had warned her about this, Glimmer had no doubt in her mind she would have helped if she found out they wanted her in charge of something now. Hard as she might have been during Glimmer’s apprenticeship, Taline understood the trauma seeing Narre and Miri die on the citadel…understood the trauma of all of Glimmer’s friends nearly meeting the same fate. Understood how that trauma only compounded after Rinne…

“Speak candidly, Battlemage,” Aratoth said.

“Sir, I can’t explain why this is a bad idea, but I need to stress how strongly I believe that it is,” she said, trying to convey the frantic feeling knocking about inside her head threatening to make her scream without breaking decorum. “I had hoped by coming here and quite literally banging on your door while you were getting dressed and making my case would have shown that. If I lead this squad, people will die.”

Aratoth narrowed his eyes at her through the mirror and finished putting on the rest of his uniform. “You are an exemplary soldier and an incredibly promising Battlemage,” he said, shutting the dresser and turning to look at her properly. “People assigning you Taline’s moniker wasn’t just a fluke. You would have likely been given a different nickname, one that wasn’t so lofty, should the public have judged you unfit to carry her legacy. Which is why I hope you understand what I’m trying to get across when I say that the Enclave and especially the High Council have exceptionally high expectations from you. Turning to them and saying I cannot put you in command of a squad like they ordered because you have nightmares is simply not an option.”

Glimmer feared the conversation had shut and he had overridden her protests with finality. Then, when she thought on the strange way he emphasized the “because you have nightmares” and leaned into the nuance with his posture, it hit her. He wasn’t overriding her concerns, he was pointing her to an exit. An option where neither of them would lose face when inevitably forced to explain why they decided to supersede the High Councils orders. Her mind kicked into high gear. He had understood what she was trying to tell him between the lines; she just needed to find words that he could officially accept and use.

“Sir, I was about three hours into my first good night’s rest in almost a year when I was pulled on this emergency assignment,” Glimmer said, remembering with no small amount of frustration the disappointment she had felt at having to leave Catra and her vacation behind. “This is my fourth deployment without rest. I am mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted. And while I agree with the High Council’s assessment that we sorely need a strong pipeline of Battlemages with command experience, I wish to make the case that putting an inexperienced person running on fumes in charge of a squad for the very first time—in the middle of the largest Beast engagement in almost twelve years, by the way—is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention the fact that three of my assigned subordinates are personal friends I haven’t seen in years. The emotional connection on top of everything else will only serve to complicate an already handicapped attempt to expose me to a first command.”

Aratoth regarded her with cool eyes as he adjusted his sleeve cuffs. Glimmer wanted to go up to him, shake him, and yell at him to take her off the command. The thought of leading Lonnie and Kyle and Rogelio would sooner immobilize her in anxiety and fear than prove useful on the battlefield.

“For the record, I disagree with your sentiment,” he said. “Everyone has issues and we all need to pull our weight, especially in a war like this.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “But I also trust that you wouldn’t be coming to me making excuses if it weren’t serious. Lucky for us, despite being such a heavily populated planet, the Beast on Scavria is confined only to the capital city of Tir. Our forces there are already making steady progress pushing the creature back, and we may not end up needing the number of personnel we originally forecasted.”

“That’s fantastic news,” Glimmer said, bouncing again on her toes with a hopeful expression.

Aratoth studied her. “Out of respect for you and for your mentor, I will agree to change your assignment for this deployment. You will be relegated back to the evacuation center and resume normal duties. Your first command will have to wait until your next deployment, after you’ve taken your already well-earned shore leave. But make no mistake—should things turn south and more leaders are needed, I will reverse my decision and expect to see you on the front lines with your squad. Is that clear?”

“Crystal clear, sir. Thank you.”

Aratoth nodded. “We exit hyperspace in an hour and make landfall in two. I want you on the first lander planet-side. You are dismissed.”

Glimmer snapped off a sharp salute, barely registering the lackadaisical one Aratoth returned, before she beat a hasty retreat. She hurried down the hall, passing staffers and enlisted corpsmen walking and chatting as they headed from duty post to the mess hall, or from whatever recreation time they had come off of to their duty posts. A shift change was coming soon, and the hallways were more crowded than usual.

She pushed past a pair of ensigns whispering to each other. One of them called out to her in anger when she bumped him. She ignored him and trudged on without looking back, then ignored how his buddy shushed him and started whispering into his ear about who the pink-haired girl that just jostled him really was. Whispers of ‘Archanas’ and ‘Rinne’ followed her. She rounded a corner and found the door to her own room, punching her access code into the console next to the door and rushing inside when it slid open.

As Battlemage, Glimmer was afforded her own room as well, albeit an even smaller one than the one Commander Aratoth enjoyed. Heart pounding, head spinning, and thoughts racing, Glimmer headed straight to the bathroom attached to her room. She threw the door to the tiny shower open, barely large enough for her, stepped in, and yanked the ‘cold’ lever all the way to max power.

Cold showers were the worst. In fact, Glimmer had never touched the cold lever in her life, often waiting until she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face from the steam building in the room before letting the water touch her. This time, Glimmer barely registered the cold when it soaked her, uniform and all.

She breathed deep, quick breaths, nearly hyperventilating in her attempt to override her anxiety attack and just ground herself in reality. Finally, she sunk to the ground on her knees and pulled at her hair. And screamed. She screamed over and over and over again, trying to drown out the images of Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio surrounding her, dead on the field of battle because of her failure to lead.

When the Omen-Kador emerged from hyperspace an hour later and the landers in the hangar were loading up the first batch of people to take down, no one asked Glimmer to her face why she was sopping wet standing there in line with the rest of them. They did, however, whisper among themselves and shoot her concerned glances.

She ignored them all, and instead counted water droplets as they fell from her mussed hair to the floor. A puddle of shower water grew ever larger at her booted feet with each drip.

She didn’t come out of her stupor until stepping foot on Scavria’s surface—until the scent of death in the air gave her more important things to worry about.

Catra hummed and practically skipped along the pathways of the Atrium on her way to meet Diallo. She had asked Hilda where the System Governor had gone when she reached the embassy’s lobby, and she had sent him a message on her behalf asking to meet.

She took her time, however, because as she passed little shops and department stores and delicatessens, Catra couldn’t help but marvel at the items on display. What used to make her roll her eyes at the luxury of it all now made her want to stop and appreciate them in a new light, all on account of her being in a better mood than she had ever been in since her and Adora had their first secret sleepover as kids.

I still saved money to spend here with Sparkles, she thought as she looked through the window of a toy store, at the diorama of small dolls and trains on display. If it’s just me buying something celebratory, it won’t be nearly as expensive as a two-week extravaganza with her.

She remembered passing by a tiny specialty butcher not too long ago, thought about how good it smelled. She could have something from there, right? Maybe an expensive cut of jerky or something she could snack on. Boxes of leftovers still sat in Glimmer’s fridge, and Catra had been dying to get to them, but the thought of buying something expensive and savory as a present to herself was enticing all the same.

She shook her head. Diallo first, she thought. Give him the drive, buy jerky. In that order, Catra, damn you.

She had no issues finding their meeting spot on the Atrium, primarily because it was in a place she had already been to recently. Diallo sat alone on a bench, and adjusted the spectacles on his face. A great cherry blossom stood nearby, shading the statue of Corynth Catra had first mulled over a few days ago.

“Governor Diallo,” Catra said, striding up to him and extending her hand for a confident handshake. “It’s me again. Catra. From Taline’s office.”

“Yes, I remember,” Diallo said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose before reaching for her hand. He took it and, despite obviously putting energy behind the handshake, his grip was weak. “I got your message from the d-directory assistant and figured I’d w-wait for you. I hope you don’t m-mind meeting here on the ground floor. They’ve set me up with a temporary office up on the Executive l-level, but the food d-down on the Atrium has always b-been more agreeable with my stomach.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Catra said. She couldn’t fathom how someone like Diallo had worked with Taline during the height of the Beast wars, and then ended up in a relatively high-up position like a System Governorship. He was too…frail looking? Frail sounding? She couldn’t quite place it, but he gave impression he’d crumble to dust under the slightest bit of stress or pressure. Did his stutter make it hard for him to work with his staffers?

Then Catra considered maybe the fact he lived through the previous war, had helped catalogue Evelyn’s Beast research for Taline, and thus was likely exposed to a large amount of the Beast during his life might have contributed to his frailty and she felt bad.

“I hope they don’t work you too hard while you’re visiting,” she said, clearing her throat to hide her embarrassment.

“Not as much p-paperwork compared to being among my constituents, many more skull-numbing meetings that feel like they g-go nowhere,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “What is it you wanted to see m-me for, officer?”

Catra pulled the portable drive out of her pocket and held it out to him. “Taline asked that I return this to you. She apologized, but said she was firm in her decision to return it, and thought it best not to get involved.” Catra admitted to herself she had embellished the message to make it land softer. Diallo didn’t look like the kind of person whose buttons she’d enjoy pushing. It’d probably feel more cruel than entertaining, if she were honest.

Diallo raised both eyebrows but made no move to collect the drive. “Interesting,” he said. He looked from the drive to Catra and seemed to study her.

“Uh…Governor Diallo? Your drive?” She held it a little closer for him, just in case reaching for it from the bench was uncomfortable.

“What were her w-words exactly when she asked you to bring it to me?”

“She said to let you decide what to do with it and that she was done chasing ghosts. Said she had the people on the station to look after and…uhm….” Catra trailed off, unsure if she was allowed to mention the fact Taline had taken her or not.

“V-very interesting,” Diallo said.

“What’s interesting?” Catra asked, bristling. She wished he’d just take the damn thing already.

“You can k-keep the drive, Catra,” Diallo said, shaking his head. “I believe I understand what Taline is trying to s-say. You are going to help me instead of her.”

“What? No. No, no, no, that’s not at all what she said.”

“You w-would understand why the Consul cannot just speak freely about how to handle that device if you knew w-what it contained,” he said. “Taline would not send a s-simple errand girl to return it to me, and she certainly w-wouldn’t have gotten a member of station security of all people involved unless it w-was specifically to help me in her stead.”

“No, that doesn’t sound right,” Catra said, although she suddenly felt uncertain given how confidently Diallo spoke. How could someone both stutter their words and sound so sure of themselves? “Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s taken you on, h-hasn’t she? Taline sponsored you into the Empire, and n-now she’s taken you on as a Sentinel.”

“I…No, she hasn’t,” Catra said, although she didn’t sound as full of conviction as she had hoped. If no one was supposed to find out about this yet, then she was in deep shit. “Look, sir, I’m just here to give back the drive. Please take it.”

Diallo grinned wider and Catra whined in frustration. She recognized the look of someone who just hit upon an epiphany.

“T-tell me,” Diallo said, suddenly sitting forward with an excitement in his voice. “What exactly did she tell you was to happen n-next after she took you on? Did she talk to you about training, or perhaps a f-first assignment?”

Catra wilted and spoke in a small voice, once again feeling exposed. “She said she’d get a training plan together after she got the paperwork done. She’s got a weird sense of humor, and it felt oddly like she was implying this was my ‘first assignment,’ returning your property. And I’m one hundred percent serious when I say she didn’t actually tell me that, and I’m pretty sure it would have been a joke even if she were implying it.”

Diallo sat back and slapped his knee in a laugh. “W-wonderful! Absolutely wonderful. Let me guess, she mentioned n-none of the training would likely h-happen until after Moriarty’s campaign speech to the station?”

Catra nodded but didn’t say anything. She had gone from feeling on top of the world to feeling suddenly entirely out of the loop. She hated it. Diallo seemed to sense her discomfort and instead of getting even more excited, he calmed and patted a space next to the bench. Catra eyed it warily for a moment, then stalked over and lowered herself down onto the bench next to him.

“I take back everything I s-said back in her office,” Diallo said, keeping his eyes forward instead of looking at her as he spoke. “With her new responsibilities and the Emperor keeping a c-closer eye on her than before, she doesn’t have the freedom to m-move about that she used to.”

“Diallo, sir, I’m not sure what you are talking about right now.”

“Just Diallo, p-please,” he said. “Sir isn’t n-necessary. Tell me, Catra, were you ever acquainted with Taline’s previous Sentinels? Narre and Miri?”

“Very briefly,” Catra said, nodding. “I never spoke or interacted with them, but I saw them once.”

Diallo nodded. “Very sad, what h-happened to them. Taline was vague on the details but I understood enough—it’s unfortunately just p-part of the job sometimes. Working with a Battlemage is not without its risks. I’m assuming she t-told you what the actual duty of a Sentinel is?”

Catra nodded. “Protect her, both from outside threats and from being corrupted. I’m to kill her before she becomes an Abomination if the Beast were to ever get to her.” Diallo didn’t respond when she finished, as if he were waiting for her to continue. “W-was there more? She didn’t mention any more.”

“No, she likely wouldn’t have. A Sentinel is not j-just a bodyguard, Catra. I’m assuming she told you how they’re handpicked by the Battlemages that f-field them?”

“How do you know about that?” Catra asked, her tail swishing and brushing the floor in agitation. “I couldn’t find that out no matter where I looked.” She decided to leave Glimmer’s name out of it for the time being.

Diallo chuckled. “It’s an open secret, r-really. Not written down anywhere but f-freely shared if you only ask a Battlemage or a Sentinel you are on personal terms with. In the past, I worked extensively b-both with Narre and Miri when Taline herself couldn’t meet with me. She also frequently sent one of them off to represent her if she were busy and unable to go herself.”

“They act in her stead for her?” Catra asked.

“Sometimes,” Diallo said, nodding. “Why do you think a Sentinel traditionally shares such a tight b-bond with their Battlemages before being chosen? If a competent b-bodyguard was all they needed, hiring mercenaries or partnering with the Imperial Vanguard was always an option. A Sentinel is given far more trust and r-responsibility in the affairs of their Battlemage than any common bodyguard.”

Catra’s pride swelled. Even after her heart to heart with Taline, she still woefully underestimated what it meant to inherit the title she just recently earned. Thinking back on it, she felt incredibly foolish for having thought she could just apply and get in.

“That d-drive in your hand,” Diallo said, still not look at her. “It c-contains what I believe to be a phantom algorithm. Are you familiar with the term?”

Catra shook her head.

“They’re encryption algorithms that are uncrackable by any deciphering s-software we currently possess. They’re named so because, to this d-day, no one has come across one. This, despite many purporting to have created one or f-found one of their own when intercepting encrypted messages. Hence the ‘phantom’ in the n-name.”

Catra laughed. “Uncrackable, huh? I’d like to see how it stands up to my precinct’s deciphering AI. Nothing we’ve fed it has ever been able to stump it.”

“I guarantee you t-this will be the first to do so. Phantom algorithms are like f-folk tales or urban legends to cryptologists, many of whom just indulge in the fantasy because it p-passes the time and is novel. But to people like Taline and m-myself, we know they exist. And up until Taline got s-stationed here permanently, we’d both hunted obsessively to find one, l-leaping into action at the merest sign one had appeared.”

“How are you so certain they exist?”

 “There’s one already hiding in plain sight, p-protecting us all.”

Catra furrowed her brow. “Are you talking about…the Barrier?”

Diallo grinned. “That exactly,” he said. “You s-see, despite the Barrier itself being different from an encryption, it is still powered by an algorithm. An imperfect one to be sure, but one that that no current s-system has been able to crack. No one knows how it w-works.”

“And you think what’s on this drive is encrypted using a similar thing to the Barrier?”

“Not a s-similar thing, the exact same one. There is only one ‘phantom algorithm’, and if the tests I’ve ran it through m-mean anything, then yes—a variant of the Barrier n-node algorithm is indeed keeping the contents of that disk under h-heavy encrypted lock and key.”

“Why are the both of you so worried about whether or not someone’s figured out that algorithm in the first place? Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t that mean someone could improve it and maybe shore up the imperfections letting the Beast slip through?”

“Th-think about it like this,” Diallo said. “The greatest scientific minds in the galaxy have been working nonstop f-for over eight years since the Daiamid started up the Barrier, trying to understand h-how it works, and they have made n-no progress on it. Its design is completely alien in n-nature, and the processing power needed to execute it, l-let alone analyze it, requires literally hundreds of Dyson spheres s-spread across the galaxy. There’s only one plausible answer to wh-who can employ this technology.”

Catra tilted her head in thought. “Who?”

“Corynth.”

Catra shook her head. “Corynth is dead. Long dead.” She glanced over to the statue of him looming over them.

“That’s what everyone th-thinks,” Diallo said. “That’s what Taline wants to th-think too. But if this indeed is the Barrier algorithm, then it’s indisputable proof he is s-still alive. He is the only one who would have access to it. Think about it—all the scientists that worked on the project with the Daiamid are either in th-the emperor’s employ or dead, and all the Shapers are long gone. No one except Corynth, were he to still be alive, would have ever h-had direct access to the algorithm when it was first developed.”

He took his glasses off and cleaned them with a cloth he pulled out from a pocket. Catra waited for him to finish, not sure what to say. When he finally slotted the frames back onto his face, he said, “you tell me what m-makes more sense—that some nobody scientist discovered the answer and is using it to h-help his underworld buddies conceal their messages, or that Corynth actually survived the last battle and he’s using it to hide his secret dealings. Why do you think his mask and not the remains of his charred body was f-found on Archanas?”

Catra bit her lip in thought. What Diallo said made sense, but she still didn’t want to buy into it so readily. It felt foolish.

“If that w-wasn’t enough to get the gears of conspiracy turning in your head,” Diallo said, then you should know I intercepted th-this from a messenger meant to deliver the drive personally. It’s supposed to go to Moriarty, and it comes f-from the Vestamid.”

Catra finally looked at Diallo when he mentioned the two names, and he was looking directly back at her.

“The Vestamid? You can’t be serious.” Their name had dropped back in Taline’s office, but she hadn’t thought twice about it at the time. “If this tripped any alarms, they’d have the entire Imperial Armada shoved down their throats in an audit. They’re too big a threat to Prime and the Empire to risk drawing this kind of attention.”

“Another way to look at it is that’s exactly the narrative the emperor w-wants everyone to see,” Diallo said. “No one’s mind n-needs to wander into colorful territory regarding their relationship if everyone thinks the empire’s largest s-supplier of ignominite is chafing the emperor’s sense of absolute control.”

“You mean they’re just pretending to be capitalist religious zealots to hide the fact they’re secretly state-sponsored?”

Diallo shrugged. “Again, w-we’re talking about phantom algorithms and conspiracies. I know just as much as the average Imperial citizen, despite being p-placed pretty high in the political hierarchy myself.”

“And Moriarty?”

“He’s been cutting f-funding from dozens of systems for months now with explanations that barely h-hold water. On top of that, he helped f-fast track approval for one of the Vestamid’s energy storage p-projects about two years ago. Now they’re sending him encrypted messages on a ph-physical drive during a heavily contested election year? I have no idea what the correlation is, but if we were to just p-prove without a doubt that a correlation does indeed exist, Taline would blow this th-thing wide open.”

“And this is where I come in?” Catra asked, starting to grow uncomfortable with where the conversation was heading.

“Th-this is where you come in,” Diallo said, nodding. “The computer in Moriarty’s office should be primed to unlock th-the encoded messages, since they’re addressed to him in the first place. I n-need you to sneak into that office and pull those m-messages so we can see what the Vestamid is having him do. Then I need you to get a copy of the pattern used to decrypt the message from the same computer. With that pattern, we should be able to m-map the algorithm used t-to scramble the message in the first place, and determine if it is r-really is based off the Barrier algorithm or not.”

Catra balked. “I…I don’t know about that,” she said. “That really doesn’t seem like something Taline would ask me to do.”

“It’s not,” Diallo said. “Just like it’s not s-something she would have outright asked Narre or Miri to do either, had they s-still been alive. But remember, you are able to act as an extra p-pair of arms and legs and eyes and ears to do and see and go where sh-she cannot. It’s plausible deniability, Catra. Should you get caught, she can tell the truth and s-say she never ordered you to do anything.”

That set Catra on edge. “I…I’m still not sure. Let me think about it? Maybe I’ll reach out to her and see if that’s really what she intended. I don’t like the idea of going behind her back to do something like this, especially against such a powerful political elite like Moriarty. I don’t want to be the thing that makes an enemy out of him for her.”

Diallo nodded. “We h-have time, since Moriarty’s speech isn’t for a few days. But you’re unlikely to get ahold of h-her with everything she has to do to get ready. And even if you were to get a chance to speak with her, she w-would deny everything. For an espionage job like this, she’s not going to outright sp-spell it out for you.”

He sighed. “Listen, Catra. You and I just met and this is the f-first real conversation we’ve had, but I’ve worked with Taline long enough n-now that I know she wouldn’t have chosen you if you weren’t smart and couldn’t read between the lines. She’s relying on you to l-look into this, just like I’m relying on you f-for your help. You want to impress her and do a good job on your first assignment, r-right?”

Catra frowned and nodded, slowly.

“Good. Keep the drive, th-think about what I’ve said. Try and get ahold of her if you want, but I’m telling you, nothing will come of it. Destroy the drive or agree to h-help me, but come find me and tell me your decision before the day of Moriarty’s s-speech. Our window to act on th-this will close by then.” With that, Diallo pushed off the bench and hobbled over to the far elevator, bidding her a cheery goodbye and saying he needed to return to his work.

Catra’s stomach churned. She looked up again at the statue of Corynth looming nearby.

“You’re not still alive, are you?” she asked, murmuring as if speaking to herself. “You’re dead. You have to be dead.”

She sat on that bench and contemplated for a long while. Her good mood never did return. In the end, she made her way back to the leftovers in Glimmer’s fridge, all thought of stopping by a shop to buy a gift for herself long forgotten.

End of Part Two

Chapter Text

Art commission done by SzethK. Linktree: Here

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Hinterlands of Fate

Adora opened her eyes and groaned. A metal bulkhead ceiling and a pair of halogen lights hanging overhead came into focus. She tried to sit up and immediately gave up on it when the throbbing in her head only got worse. Her body ached. Somewhere off in the distance she heard a voice.

“—knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?” A muffled response she couldn’t make out, and then: “Well I couldn’t just let her fall to her death now, could I?”

Adora pushed into a sitting position, forcing herself through the pain shooting through her body. The room lurched sideways and she tumbled off the bed, falling to the ground with a thud.

“She’s awake,” the voice said. “I just heard her fall off the bed.”

A note of panic poked at the back of her mind, and she heard the voice say goodbye to whomever it was speaking to. There was an annoying pinching feeling at her arm. Something was screeching at her—had been since she fell—but she couldn’t orient herself enough to understand anything beyond that. Getting the room to stop spinning was the only thing her brain could focus on.

The far door slid open and someone stepped through. Adora pulled her head up and focused long enough to see who it was.

“Kalanthe,” she said. “If that’s even your real name.” She tried to sound threatening, but only succeeding in slurring her words. Even to her vertigo-addled mind, she could hear how off balance she sounded.

“Just Kal will do,” he said, looking down at her with an impassive face and speaking with a deadpan. “And it’s just as real as any other name, I suppose. You know, I considered strapping you down to the bed so this wouldn’t happen, but it’d probably have freaked you out to wake up like that. Welcome to the Dzivia.” He stepped forward to help her up and she scooted back, bumping into the bed still behind her.

“Get away from me,” she said, weak. “Don’t touch me.”

Kal frowned and stepped off to the side. Adora tracked him as he walked along the perimeter of the room until he reached a monitor at the back. It was flashing an ‘ERROR’ signal at him, until he reached behind and flipped a switch there to turn it off. The incessant screeching from earlier ceased.

Adora reached for the bed to try and pull herself up, and saw that a catheter had been inserted into her forearm, dangling free there. Blood seeped out from under the adhesive tape; she had almost ripped the needle out of her arm when she fell.

“What did you do to me?” she said, trying to weather another lurch of the room that spiked with her adrenaline. “Did you…did you drug me?”

“Not unless you consider a saline drip to be a drug.”

Adora frowned and, giving up on the bed for the time being, looked herself over as best she could sprawled out on the floor. Kal had taped sensors to her body, and most of them had come undone when she fell as well. Suddenly it made sense why the monitor in the corner was blaring; he was watching her vitals.

Much of her clothing was ripped—her pants had been reduced to shorts that cut off mid-thigh, and the arms had been ripped off her top along with the entire midsection. More skin than she ever would have been comfortable showing voluntarily might have been out on display, except for the fact that nearly every inch of her that would have exposed had instead been wrapped in thick gauze and adhesive bandages. When she traced the bandages around her stomach and felt just how high up her chest they reached, she turned a murderous glare in Kal’s direction.

“I didn’t do anything to you,” he said, annoyance now coming through in his voice. “I left as much clothing on you as I could, but I had to dress your wounds. You would have either bled out or gotten an infection if I hadn’t. You’re welcome.”

That did make sense, if she remembered correctly how the spiderbots at her castle nearly ripped her limb from limb. And at least she was still wearing what was left of her original clothes instead of something new entirely. Still, she didn’t like it.

 “Now, can I help you get back on the bed or are you going to keep glaring at me?” Kal asked, moving back to stand in front of her. “You’ll feel better once you’re elevated a bit.”

He squatted down in front of her, but Adora didn’t answer him. Kal rolled his eyes and hooked his arms under her to help her stand. She didn’t fight him. Despite how gaunt and emaciated he looked, he had no trouble supporting her weight. The cords of his muscles rippled underneath his baggy clothes as he helped maneuver her back into a sitting position on top of the examination bed. This was the same guy who carried a whole crate by himself into Entrapta’s lab, while everyone else worked in twos. He looked harmless almost, and Adora knew even through the fog in her head that was a lie.

“Take me back to Etheria,” she said as soon as he let her go. “My friends will come for me and make you regret it if you don’t.”

The room had stopped spinning, but all she could feel was annoyed. Annoyed that he was helping her, annoyed that he was right about getting elevated. Annoyed that should couldn’t stop him from escaping and now was depending on him.

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” he said, skirting around the bed and fishing through an overhead cabinet nearby. A moment later, he came away with a large rag. “Besides, they would have caught me already if they were ever going to. We’ve been traveling through hyperspace for three days now.”

“I’ve been asleep for three days?” Adora choked the words out. A wave of dread crashed into her, nearly overpowering her nausea. “Where are you taking me?”

“I’m not taking you anywhere,” Kal said, coming over and reaching for Adora’s arm. He frowned when she pulled it away from him. “You’re the one that tried to stow away.” He pointed to her arm. “Can I have that please? I’m trying to help.”

“I wasn’t trying to stow away,” Adora said, although she didn’t fight when Kal reached across and pulled her arm closer to him.

“Then what the hell were you trying to do?” he asked, dabbing at the blood coming out from under the IV, already drying on her skin.

“You were getting away.” Adora grimaced when the room tilted to the side again. “I was trying to stop you.”

“Yeah, that worked out wonderfully,” he said, giving a dry laugh as he worked. “Looks like someone forgot that the air gets too thin to breathe if you go high enough. You fell unconscious, and I had to turn around and catch you with a tractor beam before you hit the ground. Then I had to stop and spend hours fixing the hole you put in my ship with your sword.”

More of what happened came back to her, and Adora remembered the power she felt as she watched him start flying away; she had somehow awoken She Ra again, although she had no idea how. Quietly, she reached for the power. When she felt it there, bubbling under the surface as it always had, relief flooded her. At least the power wasn’t missing entirely, as it had when she fought him. That nearly gave her a heart attack. It wasn’t until Kal finished cleaning up the blood on her arm the she realized her bracer and runestone were missing.

“Relax,” Kal said, pulling her from her thoughts. Adora glanced up and saw him looking straight into her eyes. “Your stuff is over there.” He inclined his head toward a table at the far end of the room. Her bracer and busted PDA lay next to piles of tech, a surgical kit, and a bowl full of bloody rags.

Adora tried to slide off the bed to go get it, but Kal put his hand on her shoulder to keep her from moving.

“Let go of me,” she said, shooting him another dangerous look.

“Didn’t we just go through this? I’m not helping you again if you dump yourself onto the floor a second time.”

“I said, let me go.” She grabbed onto his arm and tried to pry his hand off her. Despite her straining, she couldn’t get him to let go.

“I don’t understand the hostility,” he said. “I’m trying to help you, Adora. I’m not your enemy.”

“If you think that just because you saved my life I—“

“Three times.”

Adora blinked, confused and thrown off balance. “What?”

“I saved your life three times,” he said, face and voice impassive. “First was that pillar that almost squashed you, second was when all those spiderbots nearly minced you, and third was the falling to Etheria.”

“It doesn’t matter if you saved me a hundred times,” Adora said, “If you think I’m going to trust you after seeing you steal something from my castle, then you have another thing coming.”

“You don’t even know what that thing is, do you?” He asked. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t call it a ‘thing.’”

“I know it must be important if it was locked away. I know that no one except you even knew it was there, and I also know that you somehow made Light Hope think you’re an administrator when you aren’t so you could take it and escape with it. That’s enough for me to know you can’t be trusted.”

“That apeiron, which is the actual name for one of those things by the way, is what’s going to put a stop to the Beast invading the galaxy once and for all.”

Adora frowned. “That…what? No it isn’t, that’s what the Heart of Etheria is for. The Enclave has spent the past three years researching a way to get it to work again.” Her frown deepened as she remembered something, and she rounded on him, more hostile than before. “You’ve been around the whole time! You know about all that, what am I doing saying it as if you don’t know?”

Kal shook his head. “The Enclave couldn’t even figure out how to turn Light Hope on. I watched them try. What makes you think they know how to stop the Beast? They had no idea that crystal exists or what it does.” He laughed. “Hell, you didn’t know it existed until I pulled it out of that vault right in front of you.”

“How the hell was I supposed to know it was there?”

“It’s your castle. You didn’t ever once think, ‘gee I wonder why it’s called the Crystal fucking Castle?’”

Adora could only gape at him. Who was this guy? She was about to give him another piece of her mind when he shook his head again and squeezed her shoulder.

“You don’t trust me, even after I saved your life?” he said. “That’s fine, but that doesn’t make me your enemy. And as much as it’d make my life easier, I’m not about to throw you out of an airlock because you annoy me. Unless you volunteer to do it yourself, then we’re stuck with one another. Trust or no trust, we can at least be civil. I’m sorry for yelling.”

Adora narrowed her eyes at him. “And what exactly is your idea of ‘being civil’?”

“We’ll make it to our destination soon, and despite the fact you’ve healed up quite nicely and regained consciousness, you still can’t stand on your own two feet.” He gestured around at the room then at himself. “There’s nowhere for you to go and you’ve already seen that I’m not going to hurt you, so why don’t you lay back down and focus on regaining your strength? I’d prefer to take you along with me when we arrive, rather than lock you in here because you’re too weak to move.”

Adora narrowed her eyes at him even further, scrutinizing him. He didn’t back down.

“Fine,” she said, letting him guide her head back down to the pillow underneath. “But this conversation isn’t over. I still don’t trust you, and I have a lot of questions.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said, voice devoid of emotion. “Rest now.”

Adora wanted to say something back just to have the last word. This whole situation aggravated her, even more so than the wounds on her body. She thought about being petty—staying awake and pestering him with some of the many questions she had churning in her head—but as soon as her head hit the pillow, all thought of rebelling disappeared. Sleep beckoned, and within moments, she drifted off despite her every attempt to keep awake.

Chapter Text

Catra sat at her desk in the precinct, staring at her computer screen and unable to keep her hands from shaking as she reached for her cup of coffee.

“Holy hell,” Keren said from her desk next to her. “Catra, how many cups of coffee are you planning on drinking today? That has to be your third already.”

“Fourth actually,” Catra said after downing the mug. She stood from her chair. “Time for number five.”

“It’s not even been an hour since you clocked in, dude. Are you okay?”

“’M’fine.” Catra ignored the look Keren gave her as she walked past, mug in hand, and headed for the break room.

The nightmares had only gotten worse since Glimmer left. Normally, they would have subsided by now. Instead, she woke most mornings in a cold sweat, usually after staring at Adora’s grief-stricken face in her dreams, or sometimes Shadow Weaver’s, or even an evil copy of herself. It had gotten so bad that Catra started seeing them while still awake, sometimes looking back at her from poorly lit areas of the station or in the moments she’d lay down with her eyes closed before sleep claimed her. It was distressing, to say the least. Last night had been particularly rough after the position Diallo had put her in.

More coffee, was the only thought she could focus on.

Catra threaded through the crowd of officers rushing around the office. The precinct was more crowded than she had ever seen it before on account of the influx of refugees and the spike in unrest on the station. The Beast crisis was starting to spiral out of control, and she had a first-hand view of its consequences. When she finally made it to the break room in the back corner, she was surprised, though not ungrateful, to find it empty. Her mind wandered as she placed her cup under the coffee machine’s spout and selected the option with the most caffeine.

Glimmer hadn’t checked in, even though she promised she would after reaching her assignment. Catra had tried reaching out, but none of her messages would send. That meant Glimmer was either still in transit, or all inbound and outbound communications had been blocked for her deployment. Catra hoped it was the first reason and not the latter; if a moratorium had been placed on all nonessential communications…well, she preferred not to dwell on it.

Her thoughts started to drift toward Adora instead and Catra grabbed her mug and sped out of the breakroom. That was one topic she refused to think about, especially now. She was so fixated on what was in her head that, when something large rushed at her and her body dashed to the side seemingly all on its own, she didn’t realize what had happened until after the yelling already started.

“Hey, get back here!”

It was Trayn’s voice, and every head in the precinct snapped up and swiveled to look at her. Catra blinked, and then realized a moment later that they weren’t staring at her, but staring past her. She spun around saw a massive alien, two pairs of handcuffs chaining four beefy wrists together, standing behind her, baying like an animal about to charge.

Her mind rewound the past few seconds. That alien was a suspect on its way to being booked. He—or she? It? Catra couldn’t tell—had yanked out of Trayn’s grasp, bum rushed forward, and had almost knocked Catra flat on her ass. If it weren’t for the fact she had moved out of the way without even realizing it, she might have become paste on the linoleum.

Four-arms must have realized it was heading further into the precinct rather than out because it had pivoted—faster than anything its size had any right to move—and now stood opposite Catra, locking eyes with her. A spike of alarm shot through her when Four-arms sniffed and pawed at the ground, challenging her. With the exit behind her, Catra was a direct obstacle in its path to freedom.

It charged. Once again without thinking, Catra spun to the side, carrying her inertia into a roundhouse kick that connected with Four-arms’ face. She felt the shock from the blow travel up her leg and rattle her pelvis, heard a crack emanate from the suspect’s head. Its legs gave out from underneath and it crashed to the floor, unconscious, with a thump that rocked the nearby desks.

A half-dozen officers pushed through the mob surrounding them, yelling. Each held stun batons poised to strike, only to look from the heap muscle in front of them to each other, blinking in surprise.

“Where did that come from?” Trayn asked, looking at Catra. The words came out with breathless surprise. “One second I’m trying to book that guy and the next he’s already out on the ground before I even realize he’s escaped. Don’t tell me you’ve been holding back during our sparring sessions.”

“Uhhh.” Catra balked at the expectant look he gave her and he pointed to her side.

“You didn’t even spill your coffee.”

Catra looked down at the mug in her hand. Trayn was right: she hadn’t spilled even a drop.

“Lucky blow,” Catra said. “I was keeping my eye on him since he looked like he was about to try something.”

Trayn raised an eyebrow then shrugged. “Well, thanks I guess,” he said, seeming to buy it. “He’ll be easier to book like this, at least.”

The commotion died down soon after, and the other officers went back to their average-if-hectic day to day. It should have been concerning that someone had almost escaped the middle of the precinct, but the fact no one seemed to find it in themselves to react to it spoke volumes about the amount of stress and overwork all her fellow officers were under. Had been under for some time now. The refugee problem was starting to break the system.

Catra watched Four-arms get dragged off by five of her colleagues working together and frowned. Even though she said she had kept on eye on him to pacify Trayn, the truth was even now she was barely even aware of her surroundings. Her body had reacted on its own, almost as if being controlled by another person. She looked down at her free hand and flexed her fingers open and closed, as if expecting her body to, again, do something surprising. When nothing happened, she frowned deeper and made her way back toward the main floor.

When had she even clocked in to work that morning? Everything was a blur. She rounded the corner and found Dax leaning against her desk. Keren was still sat nearby as she always had, except she was shooting Catra a surreptitious, worried look while Dax wasn’t paying attention.

“Catra, with me,” Dax said as she approached. Catra’s heart sank. He didn’t sound angry or upset. Just apprehensive, but that didn’t do much to help.

“Hey Dax,” she said after following him to his office and clicking the door shut behind her.

“I just got a message from Taline, and the paperwork to begin transferring you directly underneath her,” he said, taking his seat behind his desk and offering a chair on the other side to her.

Catra stood behind the chair and rested her hands on the back, but didn’t take a seat. “I swear I was going to tell you,” she said, tail swishing low to the ground. “It hasn’t even been a whole day yet. I didn’t think you’d have gotten the orders already.”

“I’m not mad,” Dax said. “Just…wow. Didn’t expect it, is all. I’m guessing you turning down all your promotions was more about not wanting to wade too deep into this job?”

“It’s complicated,” Catra said. “I don’t really know what else to say about it other than that. I like this job, Dax. Really like it, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else after working with people like you and Keren and Trayn. It’s just…” she shrugged. “This came up.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” he said. “Really, I get it. Working with Taline, and as her Sentinel for crying out loud…I can’t imagine anyone willingly passing that up. Congratulations.”

He gave her a reassuring smile, but all Catra could focus on was how tired he looked. Did she look just as worn out in his eyes?

Dax propped his elbows up on the table and leaned forward to rest his head in his hands. “I’m a little sad to see you go, honestly. But I feel like that about most everyone that works under me. I’m just glad you have something else to jump to.”

Catra’s tail stilled. The way he phrased that…something didn’t feel right. “What’s going on?”

“Our budget is getting slashed,” Dax said. “I have to let almost half the precinct go because we don’t have the funds any more after this fiscal quarter is up.”

“What?” Catra had, at best, only rudimentary budgeting skills. She had learned them as part and parcel of becoming independent after leaving Etheria. But even she knew that cutting half the precinct wasn’t just the department shedding some excess weight.

“I just got the news from Moriarty’s aides this morning,” Dax said. “Apparently cutting costs and funneling as much capital as possible to Imperial R&D is a huge part of his reelection campaign. A lot of it he’s going to announce during his rally in a few days.”

Catra threw her arm out and gestured with open palms and exaggerated movements at the chaos outside Dax’s floor-to-ceiling office windows. “How the hell does Moriarty expect you or any of the other Section Chiefs to control all this with half the staff?”

“I had the same question…”

 “We’re barely keeping the unrest from spilling over with the influx of refugees as it is. And more will come.”

“Catra, I know…”

“I mean, he’s not even elected in the first place. It’s all just political posturing bullshit. All that matters is that the emperor wants him as governor, he doesn’t actually give two shits what the people want from their—“

“Catra!” Dax spoke loud enough to get through to her. Then he lowered his voice and spoke easier. “I know. I tried making all the same points, but the decision is made. Like I said, you’re lucky you’re getting pulled into something new. Can’t imagine you’d have to worry about job security as a Sentinel.”

“No, but I do have to worry extra hard about ‘life security’ in exchange.” She sighed. “Have you told anyone else yet?”

Dax shook his head. “Just you, since you’re going to be on your way out soon. I’m dreading making the announcement, to be honest. It’s going to get ugly out there.”

“It’s going to get even uglier when there are tens of thousands of refugees on the station and only half the security around to help keep the peace, not to mention everyone being out of work. It’s not like there’s a surplus of jobs to be had with everything else going on.”

“Trust me Catra, I know,” Dax said, letting loose a groan and slumping further into his desk. “You’re preaching to the choir on this one. It’s Moriarty calling the shots, but I can’t retain people if I don’t have a budget. Apparently, he’s making cuts all across the board. It’s not just us.”

Catra pursed her lips as she remembered pieces of Diallo’s conversation with Taline. “I overheard Diallo complaining about having his resources gutted too,” she said.

“Diallo?” Dax said, picking his head up off the desk.

“The System Governor,” Catra said, trying to jog his memory. “You know, the one we escorted a few days ago with Moriarty?”

“I know who he is, Catra, but how did you know he’s”—Dax cut off, like he suddenly remembered why he had called Catra into his office to begin with. “Oh. Are you already getting higher level briefings, or…?”

Catra shook her head. “I was serious when I said I wasn’t expecting the paperwork to come in as soon as it had. Taline and I talked just yesterday, and I came in at the tail end of her conversation with Diallo. She hasn’t briefed me on anything, yet.”

Dax nodded. “Got it. Yeah, that makes sense.” Then he frowned in thought. “I’m not surprised he’s getting his own resources cut too, though. Moriarty seems to be sacrificing everything to R&D this election cycle. I have no idea what they’ve cooked up now that requires starving the rest of the empire’s infrastructure, but rumor is it’s somehow related to that project Moriarty greenlit a while ago. You remember that thing with the Vestamid?”

Nothing immediately came to mind and Catra wracked her brain for something relevant. It wasn’t like she was ignorant of the goings on of the empire, but she didn’t go out of her way to pay attention to it either. To her, the Vestamid were a bunch of crazy religious nuts that bothered her on her way home from the precinct, not a major economic force in the known galaxy. That’s how little they had affected her day to day.

Finally, she remembered something she had heard playing over the news reels not too long ago: a story about a paradigm-shift in energy storage the Vestamid were pioneering on one of their major mining facilities. It had apparently caused a lot of controversy with how quickly the approvals had been rammed through for it. Catra remembered that Diallo had also alluded to it when they spoke at the Atrium, and she asked if that’s what Dax was referring to.

“That’s the one,” he said, nodding.

“So, something fishy was going on with that after all?” Catra asked, all monotone. “What a surprise.”

Dax nodded, and then deflated again. “I just wish there were something I could do, but Moriarty is practically untouchable. Once he’s made up his mind, that’s it. The only way he’d ever even think about maybe not stripping all of us bare is if the emperor himself came down from the Heartlands and commanded it so.”

Diallo’s storage drive lay in one of Catra’s pockets along with the apeiron crystal Taline had given her, and Catra felt at both. Taline had lamented Moriarty’s influence and his politics during their meeting, but had made it clear that she couldn’t get involved. That was only moments before she brought Catra on as her Sentinel, and with such enthusiasm that…

I’ve worked with Taline long enough now that I know she wouldn’t have chosen you if you weren’t smart and couldn’t read between the lines. Diallo’s words to her came back all on their own. She’s relying on you to look into this, just like I’m relying on you for your help.

Catra turned and glanced out Dax’s office windows at the precinct floor. She watched Keren and Trayn and everyone else she had worked with over the past three years, and imagined how they might fare once Dax had let them go. Under Moriarty’s policies, they’d only suffer.

“I’m sure things will work out,” she said, distracted. “They always do.” It felt odd, her being the one to offer reassuring words this time. “Hey, out of curiosity, how sophisticated is our encryption cracking software?”

Dax arched an eyebrow at her and, for a moment, Catra feared he would press her on the sudden conversation shift. Then he shrugged, as if to visibly say that it wasn’t news for Catra to come to him with odd questions.

“It’s the best you can get,” he said.

“Better than, say, what a System Governor would be able to get their hands on?”

“Better or just as good as,” Dax said, voice growing more suspicious. “Depends on which governor. Those in the Heartlands with the Emperor would likely have something cutting edge like ours, but someone running only a few planets out in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t have the resources to get ahold of what we have. Why?”

“Just curious,” Catra said.

“Well, whatever is drawing your curiosity, if you need to make use of our system, I suggest you do it sooner rather than later. I don’t doubt you’d still have access to it when your Sentinel paperwork goes through, but who knows how long we’ll be able to maintain it with three quarters of our budget disappearing overnight.”

Catra agreed and gave Dax another round of what she hoped were reassuring words. She shut the door behind her on her way out and the windows of his office turned opaque the moment she did; he probably wanted some privacy while he figured out exactly how to break the news to everyone else.

Then, heart racing and mind burdened with too many cycling thoughts, Catra made her way past the other officers, visitors, and suspects being booked, and toward the record room at the back of the precinct instead of her desk. She palmed the scanner next to the door and pushed inside after it unlocked, then quickly turned and shut herself inside. She took several deep breaths to steady herself, not really sure why she was so worked up to begin with.

The records room was cold. There were no papers or locked file cabinets maintaining physical documents. Instead, the room was filled with rows upon rows of computer servers, each twice as tall as Catra. She stalked along until she came to what she was looking for: an open space in the center of the server configuration where a waist-height donut-shaped access console stood.

Catra vaulted over the console so she stood in the middle of it, preferring to lean on her athletics to get the blood flowing rather than just open the hinged bar-flap door like a normal person would. The ‘Mother Brain’, as she liked to call it, woke from idle when her feet touched the central platform, and a holographic screen appeared that extended around her in a perfect 360-degree panorama.

Hello, Catra.

The greeting appeared in front of her all on its own, and the text caret blinked at her after the last letter in her name; the thing already knew who was interfacing with it. Normally, as a greenhorn cadet still at the first rung of the advancement ladder despite her years on the force, her access was limited. But, since Dax already received the paperwork to get her transfer started, she wondered…

Query current access credentials

She typed the question into the interface and the answer popped up nearly as soon as she hit the return key.

Access level: Black

Catra was glad the record room had a strict no drink policy, because if she had taken her coffee in with her, she would have spat it out all over the electronics.

How in the hell did she already have top-level security clearance? That alone opened up so many possibilities. Practically every level of the station except private offices, residences, and the very top Executive floor above the Atrium were open to her. So many ideas for mischief flooded her mind, and she pushed them aside to focus.

She pulled out the storage drive from her uniform’s pants pocket and laid it on top of a flat section of the console to her right. The console lit up, indicating Mother Brain had detected the hardware and was interfacing with it. An icon blipped into existed high up on the interface, and Catra reached up on tiptoes to tap it with three fingers. She felt a rumble against her fingertips when she did so, the subtle tactile feedback indicating she had successfully ‘double-clicked’ on the device—whatever that meant. She wasn’t good with electronics.

A window opened up and there was nothing inside. Catra frowned, and typed out another query ordering it more explicitly to display the contents of the drive.

No contents to display.

“That can’t be right,” she said to herself, chewing her bottom lip. When she ordered the system to display information on the drive itself, rather than the contents inside it, an overwhelming amount of information cascaded down and across the screen. There was more data than she’d expect to see in even a multi-year detective’s case file, and splayed across the entire panorama around her, taking up the entire 360 degrees of real-estate. She spun slowly as her eyes darted across everything, trying to make as much sense of it as she could.

“How the hell can you have this much information about what’s inside the drive, but not be able to show any of it?” she asked, more to herself than anything.

Drive is encrypted, she typed into the console. Decrypt contents and display.

For a production-level interface, Mother Brain thankfully had state of the art natural language processing. For someone as technologically illiterate as Catra, that meant she didn’t have to write programming calls or understand code libraries to use its more advanced functions. Still, giving commands how one talked to another flesh and blood person or alien took considerable processing power, even for a system as complex as this.

Catra watched the circular wheel animation as Mother Brain processed her command.

No encryption detected, it said after a while. All contents are currently displayed.

The window supposedly holding the contents of the drive still showed nothing, and Catra threw her head back and groaned.

“What the fuck?” Her frustration spiked, but this time, she felt something new come along too. It was like an instinct—one she couldn’t fight as her hands came up to the interface once more and started hammering at breakneck speed at the keys.

Her fingers danced, seemingly on their own volition, sending a blazing inferno of tactile lights and bleeps and bloops flying about with every keystroke. Entrapta had sent over a long video one month a while back that walked her through basic electrical jury rigging for the PDA currently still strapped to her forearm, and she had also learned a thing or two about messing with its code to keep everything running smooth, but Catra still hadn’t considered herself tech-savvy by any means. What she watched her body do right in front of her eyes was nothing short of extraordinary. It was like she was communicating with the Mother Brain on a visceral level.

After a rapid succession of what she could only assume were low-level system calls and forced overrides, Catra sent a new command off to the computer and stepped back as if to admire her handiwork, and the computer got to work processing.

A string of errors cascaded down the screen not long after, while she was still trying to figure out what had just happened. The screen itself flickered before shutting down entirely.

Uh oh.

Catra stepped forward and started tapping at the keys, trying to get a response from the system. It had frozen, and she started to panic. Had she just crashed the central mainframe for Phoenix Station’s entire security force? She didn’t even know how to explain what had just happened to her body, let alone what she had done to Mother Brain. If some auditor or forensics team got involved about this, she’d have no idea what to say.

Thankfully, everything seemed to reset after a moment, and the display came back just as responsive as before. Catra breathed a deep sigh of relief before she noticed one small difference: Mother Brain no longer recognized the drive sitting right next to her. No matter what she tried, it absolutely refused to acknowledge the drive’s presence. It seemed almost like it had been forced through a traumatic experience and refused to acknowledge its presence again, let alone interface with it.

Brow furrowed and mind racing with even more thoughts than before, Catra slipped the drive back into her pocket and left. She walked straight past Trayn, struggling to guide yet another massive suspect he was trying to book into the precinct. She also walked straight past Keren, still typing away at her computer. She neither looked at nor acknowledged either of them when they tried to flag her down, because there was only one thing on her mind: Diallo had been right.

She believed Dax when he said their system was cutting edge. Nothing had been able to stump it in the past, despite all the crazy cyphers and encryptions they had fed it over the years. Catra had scoffed when Diallo suggested it wouldn’t be able to read the drive, yet here she was, freaking out because that’s exactly what had just happened. And if Diallo had been right about the drive, then what else could he be right about?

Was he right about Taline hoping she’d read between the lines and act where she could not? Was he right in saying that Catra was supposed to help him in Taline’s stead? She found she had no proof to the contrary, and so, made her decision. She walked straight out of the precinct without looking back, intent on finding Diallo. He and Taline needed a tool to stop to Moriarty from gutting the region and leaving everyone unprotected.

She would be that tool.

Chapter Text

Adora opened her eyes and groaned, again. Everything still hurt and she had no idea how long she had been out for, but this time, when she pushed up into a sitting position, the room didn’t spin and she didn’t fall off the bed. She swung her legs around and dangled them off the side, taking careful stock of her equilibrium. Trusting her strength maybe a little too much, she pushed off and her legs thankfully held her weight.

She took shaky, excited steps to the far wall, where she grabbed her runestone bracer and PDA and slid them onto each arm. A fresh set of clothes lay folded neatly nearby and she changed into them. They were loose but comfortable—definitely Kal’s clothes, but Adora didn’t know how to reconcile her impression of the man with the ridiculous design on the front of the shirt.

She Ra’s power bubbled under the surface once more, just like it always had. Adora still hadn’t figured out what exactly happened back at the castle that had caused her to lose touch, and she briefly considered going all the way to try to bring her out again. She had done it once, kind of, so she should be able to again, right?

Ultimately, she decided against it after attempting to experimentally ‘nudge’ She Ra from deep inside and not feeling the reaction she had hoped for. There was none of that ‘warming, energizing’ feeling she had gotten back when she had summoned the sword. Being able to stand on her own two feet, move about, and feel her power once again was heartening enough already; she didn’t want to push her luck.

The entirety of the ship around her hummed, and she heard Kal’s voice somewhere in the distance. He sounded frustrated.

Feeling whole once more with her runestone and PDA returned to her, Adora stretched as much as her body would let her from its injuries, and left the tiny infirmary. She tottered along the narrow hallway outside, exposed wires and pipes threading through exposures in the bulkhead. Each footstep rang out, since the floor was actually a patterned metal grate that covered even more wires and tubes.

Kal’s voice echoed out again. He definitely was mad about something, and Adora followed his words, growing louder the farther she went, until she came to a closed door in a bend in the hallway. She palmed the reader next to the door and was mildly surprised when it actually slid open for her.

Beyond lay the cockpit. Gauges and levers and touch screens embedded in consoles encircled a pilot and co-pilot seat at the front, framing an expansive forward viewscreen. Through it, Adora could see they were hurtling down a multicolored tunnel. The kaleidoscope colors of hyperspace reminded Adora of that ‘trip’ she took the one time she agreed to a meditation binge with Perfuma, and that reminder was all that was needed for her stomach churn. She looked away and tried not to be sick.

Kal stood in the open space between the pilot chairs and the doorway, hunched over a makeshift workbench built into the side wall. Adora saw the giant sapphire crystal—the “apeiron” he had called it, although she decided right then and there she was never going to call it that—floating and tumbling gently in an antigravity well the circular device underneath it was emitting. That device was hooked into another machine, displaying flashing diagnostics and data streams to a holographic display spanning floor to ceiling between them.

“You’re awake,” he said, his voice tight with irritation. “How do you feel?”

“Fine I guess,” Adora said, watching him as he turned to face her. Instead of giving her his full attention, he focused on the holographic display and swiped impatiently at the information displaying between them. Adora stood there and waited for him to say something else. The longer he went without doing so, the more idiotic she felt, until at last she opened her mouth to say something and he cut her off.

“Was there something you—fucking hell, what is that supposed to mean?” He pinched the screen and zoomed into what looked like a birds-nest mass of clustered data points and lines. A significant portion of the center was completely devoid of any data, leaving what amounted to a giant hole in the web. “Where did all of this go? This is such a mess.”

Adora couldn’t tell if he was talking to her or to himself. When she didn’t answer and he didn’t repeat the question, she said, “I’m hungry.” Her stomach growled, as if her body conspired to drive her point home without her consent, and she tried to stifle the sound with her arms, embarrassed.

Kal seemed to forget about her entirely. He turned back to the workbench and, with more aggressive and irritated movements than before, tweaked more dials and knobs on the panel overhead, muttering dark words to himself.

“You were the one that said let’s be civil to one another,” Adora said, growing impatient when her stomach complained a second time. “Last I checked, feeding someone in your care is part of being civil.”

Kal started smacking the side of the overhead panel, repeatedly calling it a “piece of shit.” Adora was about ready to strangle him.

“Fine!” She threw up her arms. “I’ll find the food myself. Just don’t come complaining to me if I push a wrong button and the entire ship depressurizes or something.” With that, she stomped off, not caring to even look back to see if Kal finally paid any attention.

Her irritation only grew as wandered back down the hallway she came and she opened door after door on her way. She stuck her head into each room, only to come away disappointed; nothing she saw even remotely resembled a kitchen or dining area.

Food means a table, right? She thought, as she opened another room and found it completely empty. All of the spacefaring vessels she had toured back on Etheria, starting with Mara’s desolate ship out in the Crimson Wastes and ending with the Enclave cruisers and carriers orbiting the planet, had a dining area. Even the tiny corvettes she saw had at least a cupboard for the tandem crew to store nonperishables and a small nook to sit and eat at.

Finally, she came across a room with a modest table anchored in the center. A bench sat on either of the long ends, and the cupboards and countertops lining the far wall seemed to call out to her with the implicit promise of food. Her stomach complained again, and she hurried inside to look for something—anything at all—to eat. Kal said they had been in hyperspace for at least three days, so that meant it had been at least that long since she last ate something.

She threw open the first cupboard above the countertop she saw, and yanked out a dull grey box made of thick plastic. It was heavier than she anticipated. As soon as she got most of it out, she lost control and it fell out of the cupboard, smacking into the countertop with a loud noise and dumping several dozen brown pouches onto the floor.

Adora yelped and stood stock still as her heart pounded in her chest. Her eyes darted to the door she came through. She listened for the inevitable sound of Kal storming down the hall, angry at her for making a mess. Then, almost as if remembering how to breath again, she caught how stupid that sentiment was. Being on a strange ship with someone she barely knew, let alone trusted, must have awoken something primal in her; that part of her that wanted to never make a mistake, never leave a bad first impression, and never break something out of fear of being reprimanded. Adora frowned, shook away what Shadow Weaver had conditioned into her as a child, and reached down to pick up one of the pouches that had dumped out onto the floor.

“Acheron stuffed chicken,” she said, reading the script on the pouch out loud. She wasn’t sure if she was reading an alien language with She Ra’s help (she hoped that was the case) or if the pouches were actually labeled in standard Etherian (less likely). She furrowed her brow and turned the pouch over; there were no other labels. She shrugged, ripped open the top of the package, and scooped out a handful of the brownish-white powder from inside.

“Seems fine,” she said, bringing her face closer and inspecting the powder with careful eyes. She gave a tentative sniff and, sensing nothing was amiss, licked some of it off her hands.

It tasted like sand.

Adora spat, hacking and coughing after accidentally dropping the pouch and sending the “chicken-sand” concoction scattering and spreading all across the floor.

“How can anyone eat that?” Adora said after a moment, sputtering.

The taste lingered, and she scraped at her tongue out of desperation to get it to leave. When she could do no more, she eventually turned her attention to the other cupboards. Panic ensued with the thought that all the other cupboards were also filled with the same stuff. That couldn’t be all the food on this ship, could it? That stuff was inedible. What was she going to do?

Adora was spiraling with no way out when the far door slid open and Kal walked through, holding the crystal suspended in its antigravity well in one hand, and a small holo-projector puck in the other.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his eyes drifting from Adora, still covered in dust, to the pouches and powder and open case dumped out on the floor.

“I don’t know!” Adora said, suddenly afraid of getting a Shadow Weaver-level scolding for making a mess. “I told you something like this might happen. I have no idea where anything is on this ship, and why does all your food look and taste like sand?”

“That’s because you haven’t made any of it yet.” He looked like he was trying to decide between making fun of her, helping, or turning around and walking right back out the way he came. “Did you seriously just eat the raw powder?”

“I. Don’t. Know. What. Any. Of. This. Stuff. Is.” Adora scooped up armfuls of still-sealed pouches and dumped them back into the case with every punctuated word. She stopped and glared at Kal when she heard him laugh. He had moved further into the room to stand next to the table, placing the crystal and the puck atop it. He was smiling, and that seemed to erase ten years from his face. He still looked older than her, but no longer seemed within the same age range as Shadow Weaver or Micah.

“We can’t both be this neurotic at the same time,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ll end up at each other's throats before we get to Eden. I’ll tell you what—let’s trade. I’ll make the food, and you come take a look at this. Maybe you’ll be able to figure something out that I haven’t been able to yet.

“Look, I’m going to be honest because, again, you mentioned the ‘being civil’ thing and I’m trying since, you know, you didn’t let me fall to my death…but I have no idea what that is or what I’m supposed to do that you haven’t already tried.”

“Come here and just touch the crystal,” Kal said, leaning down and pulling out a pouch from the case still open on the floor. “You’re a magical being. Even if your connection to your magic is spotty, you should be able to pick up something from the apeiron if you reach. Would probably do better than me, actually.”

Adora scowled but decided to do as he asked. “You know, no one is supposed to know about me and She Ra,” she said, heading for the table.

“You’re joking, right? Everyone knows that you’re She Ra, even the random townspeople outside the kingdoms. If that was supposed to be a secret then it’s a shit secret.”

“No, I meant the fact I’ve been having a bit of trouble getting in touch with her.”

Kal snorted. “’A bit of trouble’ is putting it lightly.” Adora almost said something back, then he turned to her and held up a pouch in either hand. “You want the chicken or lasagna?”

Adora tilted her head. “What’s a luh-zahn-yuh?”

“Chicken it is, then.” He tossed one of the pouches back into the crate. Adora watched him grab a bowl from one of the cabinets under the countertop, dump the contents of the pouch inside and swirl some water from the far sink into the mix.

“Soooo,” she said, staring at the puck. She tapped it and a holographic screen popped up, displaying the web of data points and lines Kal had been staring at back in the cockpit. “What’s a member of the Enclave doing hiding from their own people for three years on Etheria? You not get assigned to the planet and decide to sneak onsite anyways?”

“I’m not with the Enclave,” he said.

“You’re not?” Adora said, narrowing her eyes at him through the holographics. “But you can do magic.”

“And you think everyone who can do magic is automatically a member of the Enclave?”

“Well, what else would you be?” Adora asked, watching him shove the bowl of water and powder inside a machine, close the door, and press a few buttons. It powered on and started to hum. “It’s not like you’re part of the Daiamid.”

“Three years on that planet and I forget all you Etherians are essentially hermits,” he said. “Just because I can do magic doesn’t mean I’m a member of the Enclave.”

“Fine, so you’re freely admitting to being a rogue mage then?”

Kal sighed. He was in the middle of preparing a second pouch. “By the very strict and narrow definition you have no doubt been fed, yes. I am a rogue mage.”

“Are rogue mages supposed to be trained enough to wield magic as well as you though? I was under the impression someone would need a whole team of assistants to do what you did back at the castle.” Adora was doing her best to bluff. Salas had needed a team, and so did many of the other Enclave mentors teaching the princesses. Aside from the princesses, who were supposed to be a special case entirely, only Taline had been able to single-handedly do extraordinary feats the one time she had seen her in action. It wasn’t supposed to be common, the level of magic Adora had witnessed atop her castle.

“I don’t see how this line of questioning is going to help either of us get along better,” he said. “Have you figured anything out about the aperion?” He glanced over in her direction in the middle of stirring the second bowl with a wooden spoon. “You haven’t even touched it yet, have you?”

Adora gave him a face, then grudgingly reached into the antigravity well to pull the crystal tumbling inside out. As soon as it came free from the threshold, Adora felt the full weight of the thing in her hand and she almost dropped it.

It was heavy.

She turned the thing in her hands, watching how the light glinted off the thousands of facets across the surface, making intricate shapes that seemed like they could easily mesmerize anyone who dared look at it for too long. It was much like the hyperspace tunnel she saw earlier, but strangely more entrancing, if that were possible. All that majesty and wonder, condensed into something so small in the palm of her hand

Then she felt something inside, much like how she often felt She Ra slumbering under the surface when she went reaching. So she reached again, except this time into the crystal. There was that strange sensation again, almost like something was slumbering deep inside. It was fainter, much fainter then even her lowest, most out of touch moment trying to reach out to She Ra, but it was undoubtedly there.

She was about to say as much to Kal when her eyes caught on the holographic web between them first. She looked at this time—really looked—and it finally clicked into place just what exactly that thing was. She had seen this type of data stream before, time and time again when Entrapta had left her screens open—the patterns back then had just been much less complicated.

“This AI,” she said, pointing to the screen. “The one with the giant holes missing from it…is this that girl from the castle that helped you turn on Light Hope?”

Kal turned to her with such excitement that all trace of the haggard, sleep-deprived grouch of a person she had seen slinking around Etheria and had fought with in the Crystal Castle disappeared. “Yes,” he said. “You recognize it? Don’t tell me you got something from the apeiron that showed you what happened to her?”

Adora shook her head. “I saw Entrapta poring over fragments of Light Hope’s code for hours on end, you’d think I’d recognize AI neural networks after they’re in front of my face for long enough.” She gestured to the screen once more when the excitement drained from Kal’s face. “Something this complex I fully believe can hack into Light Hope’s systems and wake her up. What I don’t understand is how you, a rogue mage hiding from the Enclave, has it. Our best scientists, Entrapta included, haven’t cracked open Light Hope yet. If you have the expertise to make something like this, why keep it hidden from the Enclave in the first place? Why not help them?”

“She’s not an ‘it’, her name is Pip,” Kal said. “And I didn’t make her. Not smart enough for that.”

“Then who gave you this…Pip?”

“She was a gift.”

“From who?”

Kal narrowed his eyes at her. “Not anyone that you would know, and not anyone that could help us now. Now, have you figured out anything from the apeiron or not? Stop changing the subject. I make food, you tell me what you feel from it. Let’s start there.”

Adora hefted the crystal in both her hands. She hadn’t figured out anything useful about it, but she Kal had looked so hopeful thinking she might have gleaned information from it he couldn’t. Because of her connection to She Ra? Like how she could read alien languages without ever having studied it before? She wanted to know more about the crystal too, since it was clear he was keeping thing from her. Judging by how he reacted when she asked about Pip, though, she didn’t think she’d get a straight answer if she just asked.

Two could play the subterfuge game, however.

“Yes, I’ve actually gotten a lot from it while we’ve been talking,” she said. “But I want some of my questions answered.” Already her hands felt slick with sweat, and she feared he’d catch onto her immediately just from the way her hands and her voice trembled in anticipation.

Kal, however, hadn’t seemed to notice. He gave her a sideways glance, as if to say “go on?”

“What is this thing?” she asked, hefting it in her hands again.

“I’ve already told you—it’s an apeiron. It holds information, memories, things. If it holds what I hope it does, then we’ve got the Beast dead to rights. We won’t need She Ra to defeat it.”

“It’s a crystal, I’m not calling it…whatever you called it.” Adora huffed. “And let me guess, you aren’t going to tell me what you hope is inside?”

“No use getting your hopes up with speculation. I’d rather say one way or the other once I know for certain what’s in there.” He gestured to the screen. “Pip was supposed to analyze it, but half her code got corrupted when she started scanning into it, as you can see. I have no idea how to fix her.”

“This isn’t doing very much for me when it comes to building trust between us, you know,” Adora said, grumbling more to herself than anything.

“I am literally about to feed you right now,” Kal said. “Are you usually this difficult with people trying to do you a favor?”

“Who was it you were talking to earlier?” Adora asked. She couldn’t lose control of the conversation. She had to press him and keep him off balance, just like she did back at the castle. “I heard you talking to someone on the other side of the door when I first woke up.”

“You mean right before you fell and ate shit?”

“Who were you talking to?” she asked again, choosing to ignore the swipe.

“My contact on Etheria,” he said. “They helped me get around.”

“They’re the one who got you past all the security?” Adora asked. “Salas mentioned there was a mole. This is the same person who gave you fake credentials and everything?”

“That’s the person, yep,” Kal said, nodding.

“So, who are they? Why are you being so defensive about this?”

Kal laughed outright in her face, and even Adora had to admit she felt a little foolish with that last question. They clearly weren’t allies, so why was she acting surprised about his dishonesty?

“Ok,” Kal said, after he had calmed down. “First of all, I’m not about to out one of my allies just because you asked nicely. And second of all, even if I did tell you, what the hell are you going to do about it? You’re stuck on this ship with me. You have no way to communicate with anyone on Etheria, and even if you did, the entire planet is locked down tighter than Prime’s prison planet on Theranis IV—no one can send transmissions or data to them.” Despite the nature of his words, Kal didn’t sound angry, just amused. As if he were trying to explain a drunk friend’s irrational behavior to them after they had sobered.

“They’re going to look for me,” Adora said. “As soon as they realize I’m missing they’re going to come looking for me.”

“No one is going to come looking for you,” he said. “At least, not the way you expect them to. Like I said before, it’s been days since you’ve been gone. If they were able to catch us in the first place, they would have done so already. No one is going to start a galaxy-wide manhunt for you.

“And what makes you so sure of that?”

“The planet portals around the galaxy every year just to keep people from finding its location on accident, Adora. You think they’re going to file a missing person report for you? For all intents and purposes, Etheria doesn’t exist. The entire planet itself is a black-site.”

“It’s funny,” Adora said, giving a rueful laugh. “I’ve only ever heard that term used in only one context. Horde Empire.” That was a lie, of course. She had used the term herself when she spoke to Salas, but Kal had derailed her completely, and she wasn’t handling it well.

“This should be good,” Kal said. The machine on the countertop with her food beeped, and he turned his back to her to get it. The two bowls he pulled out steamed, inundating the room in fragrances that would have made Adora’s mouth water were she not already hell-bent on having her say.

“You know what I think really is going on?” Adora pushed the holographic projector to the side to get an unobstructed view of him. Catra had always told her, both when they were growing up and when they were fighting on opposite sides, that Adora was too trusting a person. That it would her into trouble. Well, Adora liked to think she had finally grown out of that.

“Tell me,” Kal said. “I’m dying to know.”

“I think your ‘mole’ on Etheria isn’t really on Etheria to begin with,” she said. “I think it’s Horde Prime, and I think he’s using you to sneak around the planet, gather information for him, and sabotage our work. You even said yourself—there’s no way for us to contact anyone on the planet anymore, so why were you be able to talk to your contact earlier if they were still there?

“Horde Prime obviously hated the fact he agreed to leave so easily after what we did in his throne room. I think he sent you to spy, and that’s exactly what you were doing there for the past three years. Why else would you be in all the kingdoms? All those shift changes and sneaking around? That was for you to gather information, wasn’t it?”

“Interesting theory,” Kal said, preparing a third pouch of food in another bowl. “Let’s say you’re right and I’m a spy for the emperor. How would you explain what happened in the Crystal Castle? The whole empire is relying on the Enclave and your people to get Light Hope and the weapon working. But I—someone spying for that same empire—get in carrying an AI advanced enough to solve all the problems Entrapta and the Enclave have had with Light Hope in a just a few minutes. I don’t think I would be doing a very good job ‘sabotaging’ anything if that were the case, don’t you think?”

“I haven’t figured out how that part fits in yet,” Adora said. “But it makes a lot more sense to me that the Empire is capable of far more than a vassal state is. If you can turn Light Hope on as easily as you did, then you probably could sabotage Entrapta’s work just as easily without anyone knowing. That’s what happened at those ruined dig sites, isn’t it? It took you minutes to get in and get those keys, and no one after you had any idea you were in there because they didn’t find any traces of tampering.”

“I mean, you aren’t wrong,” Kal said. “I could have done a lot more than what I did without anyone knowing. But why would Horde Prime want to sabotage anything at all if his survival is just as dependent on Etheria as anyone else’s?”

“I don’t know yet,” Adora said. He had poked enough gaping holes in her thought process to make her pause, but something just didn’t feel right about him and she wasn’t about to cave because she didn’t have all the information. “I know you’re a spy, I just can’t prove it. My guess is whatever this thing is“—she gestured to the crystal—“it’s important enough for you to change your mission. No more spying and sabotaging, you’ve found something valuable and worthwhile no one else knew about. I’m guessing we’re on our way to meet up with Prime right now so you can hand it over to him, and you’re trying to get me to tell you more about it so you have impressive things to say to your boss.”

“Anything else?” Kal asked as he loaded up a platter with the three separate bowls he had been working on.

“That about sums it up,” she said, crossing her arms with a stony expression. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and refused to let the uncertainty she felt show on her face. Admittedly, Adora had reached pretty far at the end there, but she must have taken a page out of Catra’s book because she refused to reconsider her own stance. “What are you planning on getting for all this information? Were you going to ask for a System Governorship? Maybe ask to be appointed a Regional Administrator instead? Prime rewards people who perform for him, I’m sure.”

“Let me give you some advice,” Kal said, stalking over and placing the tray of food off to the side of the table. Adora refused to look at it, despite the smells wafting to her and despite her stomach begging her to just eat already. “Never make life or death decisions off of your hunches. Everything you just said was so wrong, I’d laugh in your face if it weren’t so insulting.

“First, I wasn’t moving around the kingdoms trying to spy for Horde Prime. When you saw me at the Induction Ceremony? I didn’t use that as ruse to get into Bright Moon. Regardless of my thoughts on the Enclave, on Taline, and on her Sentinels, I’ve made the trip to Narre and Miri’s graves every year to pay my respects. To have you even think otherwise is insulting to the people who saved your friend from certain death at Horde Prime’s hands.”

Adora flinched. She wasn’t expecting to hear the kind of emotion coming through in his voice, wasn’t expecting to see the anger in his eyes as he held her gaze. She had indeed struck a nerve after all, but it wasn’t panning out how she had hoped.

“Second,” Kal said. “I travelled across the kingdoms for three years of my life specifically to get the keys needed to retrieve this”—he pointed to the crystal—“from your castle. I didn’t trick anyone to get in. If I was playing the part of a guard, I guarded. That day you first recognized me? I was assigned to help deliver Entrapta’s things, and deliver her things I did. That’s it. I didn’t take those assignments because I needed a cover to get into the ruins—I could have done that anyways, any time I wanted. I took those assignments because you guys needed help, and I tried to do what I could while I was in the area.”

Adora shrank into herself with every word he spoke. Despite the fact he wasn’t yelling, she felt just as bad, maybe even worse, than when Shadow Weaver chewed her out when she was younger. Every word was telling her how disappointed he was in her without ever outright saying it, and the fact she felt affected by that was even more aggravating. She hoped he didn’t have a third topic to speak toward.

“And third—“

Oh no, there was a third.

“—I am not a Horde spy. Prime is too self-centered and proud to use something like spies in that way. After what happened last time, I doubt he’d try it again.”

“Wait,” Adora said, trying to cut in and shift the conversation before she imploded from feeling bad. “What did Prime do before with—“

“That crystal, apeiron, thing…whatever you want to call it,” Kal said, ignoring the fact she was trying to get a word in. “It’s exactly what I said earlier. If we can fix Pip and get her to read it, and if it contains what I hope it does, then you won’t have to worry about whether or not you can get in touch with She Ra again to save the universe. It will already have been taken care of.”

Kal took a step around the table and closer to her, leaned down to put his face closer to hers, and Adora actually shrank away from him. He met her eyes didn’t blink or flinch as he spoke, his next words each coming out in a measured, focused, intense way, like he was speaking to an unruly child and ensuring they understood him.

“Who gifted me Pip, who my contact on Etheria is, what my hopes are for what’s inside the apeiron? I’d only tell those things to someone I trust, and regardless of how you tried to go about it, trust isn’t something I give to people because they asked for it. Accusing someone of being a spy is far from ‘being civil.’ You’re back on your feet and have the strength to move around, but I want to leave you on the ship when we arrived more than ever right now.”

He grabbed the crystal from Adora’s hands, turned off the holographic display full of Pip’s code and grabbed that too. His hands shook as he reached for each, then he turned and headed for the exit. “Enjoy your meal,” he said, just before the door shut behind him.

Adora turned her attention to the platter and three bowls of food Kal had brought her. She almost couldn’t believe her eyes. In one bowl sat an entire roast chicken, steam rising from its crispy skin. Another bowl held some sort of rice in a creamy broth. The third bowl overflowed with vegetables. All of it looked delicious, and when Adora took her first bite, an uncomfortable mix of emotions flooded her.

Kal’s actions so far contradicted everything she had believed about him. He fought her and stole from her, but had given her the option to walk away first, and then saved her life when she didn’t. Then he asked for her help, and fed her when all she gave in return were accusations. Accusations she didn’t even feel fully confident in to begin with. Sure, he was definitely hiding things and she most assuredly didn’t trust him, but…but what, exactly?

In the midst of all of this, her mind wandered to Catra. She thought of how her old friend had acted to save her life and the lives of everyone aboard Horde Prime’s citadel in the months leading up to their separation. She thought of their last conversation.

“So much for being too trusting,” she said to herself at some point midway through the meal. “Three years, millions of light years away, and you’re still getting my head all sorts of mixed up, aren’t you?”

Chapter Text

The enormous spires and steeples of Scavria’s capital city of Tir loomed in the distance.

Plumes of smoke rose from the skyline, which stood proud in front of the expansive, snow-capped mountain range—also called Tir—from which the city derived its name. A great, rocky steppe, littered with pockets of tall grass and piles of stones, spanned the twenty-mile distance between the city and the evacuation compound Glimmer was stationed at. The staging area before her was packed. A small army of junior soldiers worked as gently as possible to corral the throng of refugees there, guiding them into roughly twenty ordered lines that fed into the processing stations lining the fenced-off entrance to the compound proper.

A shiver and a chill shot down Glimmer’s spine, and she wasn’t sure from where it had come—either from seeing the sheer number of living bodies she and the team still had to process after days already working nonstop, or from the actual, physical chill of the cold morning air that whistled over the mountains and in from the city. It was probably both, if she were honest; this cohort of people were even larger than the first that came three days ago, and the wind sounded vaguely like a thousand voices moaning low in agony all at once as it blew. None of this was pleasant.

Every evacuation she had been part of before had been similar: them setting up on the outskirts of a once thriving community that had been reduced to essentially a mass grave, scrambling to process in the fraction of the population that survived the initial Beast wave and shove them into titanic megaliths—ships ready to take off at a moment’s notice should the effort to retake whatever city had been hit fell through. A strange coldness had always permeated the air, smelling vaguely of death and despair. One could almost sense the life and color and potential for growth that had once been there, all but drained dry.

Maybe this time, it was the fact Tir was once a population of several hundred million before disaster struck, or maybe it was because this infection had started so close to the mid-rim, but for some reason, the feeling of destruction and hopelessness pervaded far deeper than any of her previous assignments. This, despite the fact they actually stood a decent chance at saving the city this time, unlike others.

Glimmer finished processing in a family, gestured for them to continue past her station to the gates beyond, and a new pair—a young man and woman, both Scavrian like the rest—shuffled up to her. They looked up and over her roofed stall, toward the megaliths oriented behind her in the compound, beyond the fencing.

“Hi there,” she to them, putting on the most inviting smile she could muster. It wasn’t much, considering she was halfway through a double shift without much sleep the previous night.

They didn’t respond, both still staring beyond her, wide-eyed and a little overwhelmed. Glimmer had seen this reaction more than once; on top of all the chaos these people were going through trying to evacuate in the middle of a Beast incursion, the megaliths themselves were a colossal sight to behold. Each were multiple stories in height, taller than even some skyscrapers over in their capital city, and as spacious as several stadiums put together. Usually there was only one, maybe two. The fact there were six of them this time, arranged in a circular pattern around a hastily erected courtyard in the compound, likely only made things feel more dire. It certainly did for Glimmer.

She cleared her throat, finally garnering their attention. “If you’ll please provide some kind of identifying information, I’ll get you through the intake as quickly as possible so you can get settled aboard a ship.”

The male, likely in his late teens or early twenties, hardened his expression. “We don’t have any documents,” he said. “We evacuated so quickly there wasn’t any time to grab our belongings. All we have are the clothes on our backs.”

“That’s not a problem,” Glimmer said, keeping her tone light. Tir in particular had been a rushed operation, since the task force believed they could save the city if they moved fast enough; people coming through without even a spare change of clothes let alone their official documents were the rule rather than the exception. She pulled out a portable palm scanner from her station’s equipment drawer and held it over the countertop for them. “We’ll can do a basic biometric read and that should be more than sufficient for intake.”

His expression hardened further, and he traded a quick glance with the girl at his side. Except for their vaguely elfin features, and for a pair of second eyelids that displayed only under extreme stress or illness, the Scavrians didn’t look all that different from Etherians, or any other humanoid races of the empire for that matter. That only made it easier for Glimmer to realize they were obviously terrified about something above and beyond just evacuating. That in and of itself wouldn’t have been an issue—she had seen a lot of second eyelids since landing planet-side—but this felt different. They looked they were afraid of her more than anything else.

“It’s a routine scan,” she said. “It’s really about accounting for missing persons instead of anything else. If the worst happens and we have to evacuate, any of your loved ones you might have gotten separated from can search the intake logs and see which megalith you’re stationed on. And even if we don’t have to take off, many people still rely on the manifest to make sure whoever they’re looking for is safe.” She left out the part about how anyone not on the official intake list were marked officially dead or missing after a time.

“Please don’t split us up, ma’am,” said the girl. She couldn’t be older than fourteen.

Glimmer was taken aback, and was about to ask why that’d even be an issue when a high-pitched screech roared overhead.

She looked up and caught sight of a large personnel transport on approach. By habit, she glanced down at her PDA and checked the air-traffic logs she had bookmarked. That was a transport, not a warbird, so it definitely wasn’t Kyle flying. Him and Lonnie and Rogelio were likely still clearing out the Beast from one of the last infected sectors of the city. But still, she had to check, and she didn’t let it go until she confirmed that vessel was just carrying a fresh batch of refugees in from Tir.

Her relief was palpable. Kyle, Lonnie, and Rogelio had found out Glimmer had rejected her command before they even touched down on Scavria’s surface. Glimmer had no idea who leaked the decision to them before she could tell them personally, but she had a bulleted list of things she’d do to that person if she ever found out who they were. Lonnie’s reaction was the only one she had seen, and she had been livid. So livid, in fact, Glimmer was worried about running into them again, afraid of seeing the same anger and disappointment on Kyle and Rogelio’s faces too. Weren’t reunions supposed to be happy?

The entire operation had been placed on a communications lockdown too, meaning Glimmer could neither check in with Catra or Taline, nor could she vent to them about what had happened. She was stuck out here alone, and had never felt lonelier.

“Is everything okay here?” said a voice off to the side.

An Imperial soldier, clad in the white munitions armor of the enlisted forces, had wandered over from his nearby post. He likely had seen Glimmer taking much longer than usual with the two Scavrians in front of her and had come to investigate.

“Everything is fine,” Glimmer said, careful to keep her tone neutral. “There’s just so many we need to process, bottlenecks with the system are bound to happen. Return to your post, please.”

The soldier nodded and ambled off. The two refugees watched him with barely concealed panic. Glimmer was happy she had successfully monopolized the soldier’s attention; if he saw how they looked at him, or if she were a little too quick to answer him, he might have sensed something going on and asked more questions. Glimmer studied them, and when they realized her attention was back on them, they balked and shuffled their feet under her gaze.

“We can pay you,” the older one said. “We have some money. How much to let us through without scanning us?”

Glimmer laughed. She had gotten that question more times than she cared to remember, but this was the first time it had come from someone who looked genuinely harmless. Everyone else seemed like they belonged on some unsavory blacklist.

“Look,” she said, leaning in and lowering her voice so no one else could hear. “We’re sworn to take in anybody as long as they aren’t terrorists or escaped convicts. The prisons have their own way of evacuating inmates. I don’t care who you are, but I do have to know you aren’t a danger to the rescue effort or other refugees.” She held out the bio scanner to them. “I’ll do only a basic outstanding arrest warrant check,” she said. “If you’re caught up on some petty theft charges or something then I won’t make a fuss about it, but you can’t get in until I issue you a certificate. If I promise not to dig further than the major police reports, will you agree to be scanned?”

The two exchanged looks once again, blinking their second eyelids at each other in rapid succession. Glimmer had a feeling a there was far more conversation exchanging between them than she was privy to. Finally, the male turned to her and gave a curt nod before extending a four-fingered hand and placing it on the scanner.

The readings came back empty, and they looked to each other in confusion when she told them so.

“I don’t know what it is that you both are so afraid of, but you are clean,” she said as she worked at the terminal for a moment. When she pressed a button on the console inside her booth, two plastic cards dispensed from a machine behind her and dropped into a tin catch with a clang.

“These are your boarding passes,” she said, handing them over. “They’re not new identities—not really, but they’ll get you around the megalith without anyone asking you too many questions. You can transfer whatever money you were going to bribe me with onto it and use it like a debit card for purchases.”

They took the cards from her and stared wide-eyed at them in their hands. “Are you certain you haven’t saved our information anywhere?” the girl asked, more skeptical now than scared.

Glimmer sighed. “Look around you,” she said, careful to not seem exasperated. “We’re optimistic about saving the city, but we still have thousands of your fellow citizens to process into the compound just in case the ships need to take off. What I did would cost me my job if anyone found out about it, but my priority is to help as many people as I can. If you aren’t on the list of the empire’s most wanted or aren’t an escaped serial killer, then it doesn’t really matter to me who you are or who you may have pissed off.” She shrugged. “All of us are the same in front of the Beast. We’re food. I’m not going to get any of you in trouble, since you don’t even show up on the warrant scans. I didn’t even check your names. Just don’t mention that I did this to anyone, okay?”

They nodded their heads, looking equal parts relieved and grateful. Glimmer made a ‘get going’ gesture with her head and they shuffled past to the compound beyond. One of the guards at the gate scanned their new ID cards and ushered them through. Another set of refugees had already approached her station, but Glimmer didn’t turn her attention to them until those two were fully through.

Several hours later and the work still hadn’t let up. The train of people she processed was endless, and soon, even the words of comfort she spoke to those walking scared past her station—the one part of the job she actually enjoyed—grew stale and meaningless in her mouth. She wasn’t even sure those words were coherent anymore, although the Scavrians on the receiving end seemed to relax and grow hopeful at hearing them.

That pair from earlier hadn’t been far from her mind as she worked, and every opportunity she could, Glimmer checked her PDA for Kyle’s flight log as well; even though everyone was no doubt still furious with her for turning them down, now that she knew they were on this deployment with her, she couldn’t stop checking in on them—checking that they were safe.

Scavria’s orange star flew high in the sky. It was almost lunchtime, and she was excited to go on break. Everything else notwithstanding, she had been thinking hard about how she might reconnect with Bow after he didn’t send her a message with her monthly download from Etheria, and she thought she might have finally figured out something. Her lunch break would be the perfect time to draft it up, and from there, once she got it queued for Salas, it was only a matter of waiting for the communication lines to open up for that message to go through.

Unfortunately, she made the mistake of looking over at the crowds again before clocking out. They seemed to have doubled since the morning, and she slumped against the back wall of her station, all excitement having fled from her. Then she noticed something: a young boy, no older than six, eyes wide in panic and cheeks streaked with tears, darting in and out of the refugees lined up before them. She watched him shuffle forward with the group he had fallen in with, then retreat further back into the crowd once he got to the front. He’d then poke around there for a while until inevitably finding his way into a different line, beginning the process all over again.

Poor boy must be lost, she thought. She left her station before another refugee group could monopolize her and marched out toward him.

“C-can you help me find my p-p-parents?” the boy asked her between hiccups and sobs the moment she crouched down in front of him.

“I sure can,” Glimmer said. “What’s your name, big man?”

“Newton,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Newton Durange.”

Glimmer nodded, offering her hand to him and guiding him past all the lines back to her booth, asking him questions along the way about why he had been wandering around alone.

He had gotten separated from his family, it turned out, when they were evacuated from deep inside the city. Newt—the nickname he asked her to call him by because “all my friends call me Newt”—couldn’t tell her much else. But, judging by how shaken up he sounded, Glimmer got the impression he was evacuated directly by one of the Battlemage and Vanguard combo squads combing the city streets. That was the only way she could make sense of how frantic his rendition of events seemed; he likely had been pulled directly from an active hotspot, rather than somewhere further away from an epicenter. The fact his parents still hadn’t turned up didn’t bode well either.

She propped Newt up on the desk in her booth, ignoring the way the other Imperial soldiers and even some of the refugees looked at her for cutting him to the front. His feet swung free, high off the ground, as she turned around to access the computer. Nothing popped up on when she put his last name through the system.

“Looks like your parents haven’t been put in the system yet either,” she said to him with a frown.

“What does that mean?” He had calmed considerably and no longer cried, likely because someone was finally paying attention to him.

“It just means that you got here before they did,” she said, purposefully leaving out the fact there was a good chance they might just never show up.

“Will they get here soon?” he asked, another hiccup trailing after his last word.

“I’m sure they will.” She smiled. “Tell you what, I’m about to get off for lunch. Why don’t we go get something to eat? And then I’ll take you somewhere you can meet a lot of new friends until your parents come.”

Newt nodded and Glimmer quickly processed him through. She grabbed his card when the machine spit it out and offered her hand to him again after he hopped off the desk. Someone took over her stall the moment she vacated it, and together, they walked through the security checkpoint, past the gates, and toward the compound in the distance.

The closer they got to the main square and the six surrounding megaliths, the more uneasy Glimmer felt. Newt toddled along next to her—two steps for every one of hers—seemingly oblivious to whatever was getting her hackles up. When they finally reached the center pavilion, Glimmer realized what was happening: a larger than expected mob of people were crowded there among the popup shops, field hospital, and administration offices, kicking up a scene with complaints and shouts and jeers. Glimmer found an off-duty clerk she had worked with previously and approached her with Newt in tow.

“What’s going on?” she asked the woman.

“Typical unrest,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Nothing out of the ordinary, except there’s more people here than ever before.”

It was true. With six megaliths to evacuate people and over ninety ships in orbit for Tir alone, not to mention the resources stationed at other parts of Scavria, this was by far the most infrastructure that had been deployed to one world since the first war—the most refugees they’d have to handle at once, too.

“It looks like the guards are having a hard time keeping things from spilling out of control this time,” Glimmer said.

“Doesn’t help that ninety-percent of the muscle is out in the city pushing back the infection,” the clerk said, looking over the crowd. She gave Glimmer a pointed look. “Ninety-nine percent, actually. You’re the only ‘muscle’ over here instead of out fighting. Who’s the kid?”

Glimmer grimaced but decided not to make a big deal about the comment. She wasn’t being irritating on purpose. “Little guy is waiting for his parents to catch up to him,” she said. “I was going to bring him to the Crechemaster’s office so they could watch over him after lunch.”

“Mmm, they’re overflowing with other kids whose parents haven’t shown up either, though. I don’t know if they’ll be able to take another.”

Glimmer looked down at Newt, thankful that he didn’t seem to register their conversation. “That’s not going to work. They have to take him, they can’t just turn him away because they’re running out of space.”

“Have you gone to see what it looks like there? If you had, you’d know trying to shove him in there is a bad idea.”

It couldn’t be that bad, could it? Glimmer was about to ask what she meant when a harsh crack resounded out from the crowd; someone had thrown a bottle and shattered it, and the crowd grew rowdier in response. A number of soldiers, who up until that point had been standing on raised platforms trying to shout and calm people down, started to finger at the rifles strapped to their chests and the handguns at their hips.

“Are you planning on doing anything about that?” the clerk asked.

Glimmer set her lips into a thin line and said, “Yeah,” dreading what she knew would come next. “It looks like it will get ugly if someone doesn’t step in soon. And who better to get their attention than me, the muscle, right?”

She kneeled in front of Newt, and he fixed his giant eyes on her. “Hey big man,” she said.  “I’m going to go talk to that crowd and get them to be a little nicer to one another. Would you do me a huge favor and stay here with my friend where it’s safer?”

Newt, who had been nothing but docile and compliant so far, squeezed her hand tighter and shook his head. “No, I want to stay with you.”

“It’s dangerous, and I don’t want you to get hurt. Please stay here.”

“No!” Newt shook his head and hugged Glimmer’s hand with his whole body.

Glimmer sighed. She wouldn’t be able to pull apart without hurting him, and the mob was quickly growing louder. They were building to a fever pitch, and unless she stepped in soon then someone on either side of the refugee-guard conflict might do something drastic. There was something she could try if Newt refused let go. It wasn’t her first choice but, on second thought, it might actually help calm everyone down faster.

“Alright,” she said. “You can stay with me, but I need you to not let go of my hand no matter what, okay? Even if things get scary, you can’t let go. Can you promise me?”

Newt nodded. “I promise.”

Glimmer rose and, together, they approached the mob, stopping only a few feet from the back of the outermost layer of refugees in the pavilion. The megaliths stood tall around them like six monstrous, looming guardians. Bits and pieces of coherency came through the noise.

“Where is my son? Where is my daughter? Where is my wife?”

“Will we be evacuated from the planet? Where will we go?”

“Why can I not get any answers about anything going on here?”

“How did the Empire let this happen in the first place?”

“Who’s in charge? No, not you, I want to speak to whoever really is in charge of this evacuation.”

“Why do I have to stay in the compound? My family lives in the next city over and I need to get to them. I thought this was an evacuation center, not a prison.”

Glimmer had heard all this time and time again on her other deployments. None of it was new, but it was exhausting to repeatedly address. After checking that Newt was as close to her as he could get, she gave a quick gesture in the air with her other hand.

A purple rune, wreathed in neon, etched itself under their feet. Newt stared at it in wide-eyed wonder, and Glimmer breathed a sigh of relief. She was afraid that might have startled him.

She completed the rune so that its circumference reached about an arm’s breadth from the center of their bodies—enough room for her to feel safe they wouldn’t fall off, but not so large she had to concentrate in order to maintain it. She gave another gesture, and the rune lifted them off the ground like a platform and floated them over the heads of the crowd toward the center.

The noise died down as more people saw Glimmer flying over them. By the time they hovered over the center of the mob, everyone had stopped shouting, and the few who weren’t staring up at her with open mouths were whispering to their neighbors in excitement and interest instead.

“It’s the Seraph,” she heard one person say. “The Seraph of Archanas is here.”

A person nearby nudged them and said, “No you idiot, the Seraph doesn’t have pink hair. That’s the other one, the Angel.”

“If she’s here then we must be safe, right?” the first asked.

“I don’t know. If they sent her, it might mean we need extra help. Do you see how many ships are up there in orbit?”

Glimmer struggled not to roll her eyes. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the impact she had on the lives of Imperial citizens, but the way many of them practically idolized her next to Taline and even Corynth bordered on creepy sometimes.

She cleared her throat instead, and said, “Excuse me.”

The whispering didn’t die down, so she cleared her throat a second time and projected her voice louder, all the way to the back. “Okay everyone, please calm down.”

Finally, the whispering ceased and she had the crowd’s full attention, including the soldiers still stationed nearby.

“I’m sure some of you are already aware of who I am,” she said. “For those unfamiliar, my name is Glimmer. I am the only Enclave Battlemage currently assigned to the evacuation site here.” She paused, waiting for an interruption she was sure would come. Someone in the back coughed, and the guards continued to fidget with their weapons, nervous.

“I understand your apprehension,” she said. “This infection was sudden and violent. Many of you have been ripped from your homes only to come here and receive no answers. I want you to understand that your questions and your concerns and your frustrations are nothing new. As cold as that might sound, please try to take that as a good thing—you are not alone. In my experience, everyone who has made it to one of these evacuation centers and the megaliths in the past has made it out of the infection alive. You have nothing to worry about.”

The whispering picked up, and Glimmer knew if she left it at that, it would only frustrate the crowd more.

“I also understand that’s not nearly enough information to make anyone satisfied,” she said, pushing her voice so it still carried over the noise. “It certainly wouldn’t satisfy me.  So, I will share what I can with you about the state of Scavria’s fight against the Beast.”

That seemed to calm people enough she didn’t have to fight as hard to be heard.

“I’ve been part of many evacuations since joining the Enclave,” she said. “To put concrete numbers on it, this is my fourth deployment and ninth city evacuation effort. My mentor, your ‘Seraph of Archanas,’  has also taken part in hundreds of planet-side battles and their ensuing evacuations during the first war.”

More whispers traveled around the crowd at her mention of Taline, and Glimmer suppressed the urge to shy away. This was to boost their morale, nothing more. It was fine. She was fine. No reason to panic, although she already felt the beginnings of an attack clawing at the edges of her psyche.

“So far the infection has only hit the capital city,” she said. “No other city on Scavria is currently fighting a Beast infection, and we have megaliths and fleets stationed nearby for them in any case. For those of you worried about friends and family in other places, please rest easy.

“Further, this is the largest fleet ever to respond to an infection before, and this was largely because this is the largest settlement the Beast has hit since the first war. We planned for a worst-case scenario and instead received something far less dire. Preliminary reports have come in, and Fleet Command is confident we can retake the city. Our mission will be a success, and it will be a success very soon.”

Excitement thrummed through the crowd. Glimmer wasn’t certain she was at liberty to share what she had. In fact, she’d surely broken several layers of classified intel security already, but it was far better than letting a mob devolve into violence.

“Be aware, everything will not go back to normal as soon as the city is retaken,” she said. “Rebuilding efforts will be strenuous, cataloguing and paying respects to lost loved ones will take its toll. But if we are successful, then you will not have to evacuate the planet. That is my sincere hope, and the sincerest hope of every officer here trying to keep the peace, and every Battlemage and Vanguard soldier out there fighting to retake the city. Please, cooperate with us a while longer. Help us help you retake your planet. We can’t let even one more civilization fall to the enemy.”

The crowd grew rowdy again, but this time in their agreement with her. Glimmer could already feel how morale soared. She smiled and looked down at Newt, saw him staring out at the crowd with vacant eyes. He seemed to not even notice that they were floating a dozen feet in the air.

“Is there a Crechemaster in this crowd by any chance?” Glimmer said, scanning the faces around for anyone familiar. “This child here is looking for his parents.”

The refugees checked with one another, briefly, before one spoke up and said there wasn’t anyone there to help, unfortunately. Glimmer figured as much, and she lowered the both of them to the ground when the crowd began to disperse.

“Well, that went better than I thought it would,” she said to Newt. Her panic was still there, but it wasn’t overpowering as it normally was after doing something like this. “It’s lunchtime. How about you and I go find something to eat, and then we can figure out what to do about—“

Newt suddenly jumped up and down on his toes, full of excitement. Glimmer followed his line of sight and saw the pair of refugees from earlier—the ones she had provided temporary cards to after they tried to bribe her—pushing their way through the crowd toward them.

“Ennis!” Newt said, pulling out of Glimmer’s hold to run toward the man. Newt jumped into his arms and Ennis spun him around with a smile on his face as his companion looked on.

Glimmer watched this as she approached, intrigued but still a little apprehensive. Both Scavrians looked happy to see him.

Ennis put Newt down and kneeled down eye-level with him. “Go play with Marcie, okay? I’ll be there in a minute.” Newt nodded, and the girl, Marcie, took him by the hand and lead him off a ways to give them privacy.

“You know each other?” Glimmer asked Ennis when they got far enough away to speak without being overheard.

“We do,” Ennis said. “Very well, actually. You said his parents haven’t shown up?”

“Nope,” Glimmer said, rubbing the back of her neck with her hand and watching Newt and Marcie play nearby. “Poor guy was wandering the crowds outside the compound looking for them. I was going to take him to the Crechemaster’s office after we got something to eat.”

“What are the chances they’ll turn up, you think?”

Glimmer almost asked him why he was so interested, but stopped short after seeing the sincerity on his face. “Not very likely,” she said in a low voice. “Once families get separated, it’s rare they find each other again, even with the intake logs. There’s just too much chaos going around.”

Ennis frowned. “We’ll take him in then.”

Glimmer raised a brow. "I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Marcie and I were servants to his parents,” Ennis said. “Had been for years. They took us off the streets, paid us a decent wage, gave us a roof over our heads, beds to sleep in, three meals a day…too much to recount. If he’s suddenly orphaned, then it’s the least we could do to take care of him.”

Glimmer narrowed her eyes at him. “Letting you in without a full scan and no questions asked is one thing, but I’m not about to let some lost kid go with you that easily. You tried to bribe me just a few hours ago.”

Ennis sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I understand that.” He seemed to fight with himself a moment before making a decision. “Marcie and I left their villa about a week ago when the infection first hit. His parents were convinced staying inside the walls of their compound would be safer than trying to leave. They wanted us to stay too, but we grew up on the streets as orphans. Our gut told us that staying was a bad idea, and it was our got that gut that helped us survive the streets in the first place, so we followed it.”

He cringed then before continuing. “We…we stole a bunch of their valuables on the way out. Fenced them for some money so that, wherever we ended up after evacuating, we wouldn’t be trying to start over penniless like before.”

Glimmer raised both her eyebrows this time. She knew there was something they were afraid of when they first spoke and she hadn’t pried, but hearing this was still unexpected.

“We were surprised they didn’t file police reports on us,” Ennis said. “Even with all the chaos going around, Tir’s infrastructure hadn’t crumbled yet and we figured…well.” He huffed, frustrated. “I guess maybe they died before they could report us. Or maybe they didn’t have it in their hearts to do it, even though we certainly would have deserved it. Either way, if Newt’s parents don’t come for him, then we want to be there for him. It wouldn’t sit right with either of us if we didn’t use some of the money we stole from his parents in the first place to help him, now that he’s likely on his own.”

Glimmer studied him. More than a few duplicitous people had crossed paths with her in her life, Shadow Weaver not even topping the list, so she had gotten good at identifying liars and cheats. Ennis had none of the ‘tells’ she had grown accustomed to detecting, but that still didn’t mean she was going to let it go that easily.

She pushed up the sleeve of her Enclave uniform to expose her own PDA on her wrist. A notification had pinged her sometime since she last checked the screen: Kyle, Lonnie, and Rogelio were off duty, likely either heading back to or already up at the Omen-Kador in orbit. She cleared the alert and navigated to the portable bio-scanner software included on the device.

“Let me run a full scan on you,” she said, holding out her arm for him. “We already know you don’t have warrants. I want to see that your story checks out before I make any decisions.”

Ennis glanced at the PDA, then at her, then back again. Finally, he reached out and placed a fingertip on the scanner.

Everything came back exactly as he said. He was a servant for House Durange, and had been for a long time. Newt’s parents had gone to the authorities before everything collapsed, but not to file a police report for theft; they had filed a missing person report instead. Both for him and for Marcie. Newt’s parents didn’t want them found for theft, they wanted them found out of a concern for their safety.

“The Crechemaster’s office is overflowing,” Ennis said. “They couldn’t take him, and even if they did, there’s a high chance he’d be neglected since they just don’t have the resources to watch over all those kids. Trust me, Marcie and I looked.” He put his palms together, not even bothering to hide how he was literally pleading with her. “Let us take care of him. You already see he’s comfortable with us, and having the three of us together, with cash, to watch out for one another will be much better than trying to stick him in an overcrowded humanitarian office.”

Glimmer looked over. Newt and Marcie were still playing nearby. They both looked so carefree and happy, and Ennis had such a sincere look on his face Glimmer couldn’t help but feel for him.

“Alright,” she said at last. “I’m going to be keeping an eye on you though. And if his parents show up, you have to bring him  right away, stolen goods or no.”

“Of course,” Ennis said. “There’s no question about that.”

“You’re nice for offering to do this, you know,” Glimmer said. “I know what living on the streets and fending for yourself is like. Not first hand, but a good friend of mine grew up that way. Two good friends, actually. Most people just…think about themselves and that’s it.”

“It does teach you to make hard decisions,” Ennis said, nodding his agreement. “I do have that mindset sometimes and work hard to not let it take over me. I wish I didn’t, truthfully. I still feel bad about fencing their stuff, but I know Marcie and I wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t. The streets…well, let’s just say that surviving them teaches you how to make decisions, even in the face of fear and death. Especially in the face of fear and death, maybe.”

Glimmer gave him a surprised look, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest like it wanted to break free. That’s exactly what Catra had tried to convey to her the last time they saw each other, just not in as few words. It’s exactly what she struggled to do herself, aboard the emperor’s citadel…on Rinne. Her mood plummeted, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that even this lone refugee would do a better job leading a team then she might. Ennis at least wouldn’t choke under pressure.

“Sorry,” Ennis said, shooting her a sheepish look as he yanked Glimmer out of her thoughts. “I didn’t mean to get that dark. Your speech was nice. I think having a Battlemage here will help calm peoples’ nerves a lot.” He turned away from her and gave a halfhearted wave. “Anyways, I’ll see you around. You mentioned lunch and I think it best the three of us grab something to eat sooner rather than later.”

Glimmer watched him go, waving at Newt when Ennis reached him and Marcie.

Ennis’ words were forcing her down another spiral. Thoughts and emotions she had been working for years to overcome surfaced with a relentless energy. This was worse than the panic attacks she’d feel coming on the other times she’s had to talk down unruly groups during prior evacuations. She wouldn’t be able to stop this one.

First a shore leave cut short, then having to turn down and disappoint Lonnie and the others, and now this. It wouldn’t be good for anyone if she had a breakdown in the middle of the square. Just as she felt herself start to hyperventilate anew, she turned and marched off. There was one secluded spot in the compound she knew of, and that’s where she needed to be.

Chapter Text

Opened packets littered the floor and a fine sheen of food-prep dust blanketed the countertops of the Dzivia’s tiny kitchen by the time Adora finally succeeded in preparing a second meal. The feast Kal had put in front of her normally would have sufficed, but something about waking up still injured after three days unconscious had made her ravenous. That, and she had grasped onto any excuse she could to stall having to see him again on account of how guilty she felt for their previous interaction.

Finally, with a second full-course meal in her stomach, Adora could prolong things no further—she had to go find Kal. She found him in the same place from the first time, in the cockpit, except this time he lounged in the pilot’s chair with his feet up on the forward console, seat reclined all the way back, staring blank-faced out the view screen at the warp tunnel.

He didn’t say anything to her. Didn’t even turn around when she came in, even though she knew he had heard her. The doors slid shut. She chewed her lip and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, unsure what to say.

“Just tell me one thing, Kal,” she said, when the silence between them grew too much for her to stand.

He didn’t immediately respond, and Adora swallowed the lump growing in her throat. He leaned back further, enough to look at her upside down in the chair, over the top of his raised brow and through the wispy strands of his hair.

“Are you here to help?”

“I told you I’m not you’re enemy,” he said.  “I’m not lying about that. I’m trying to help.”

Adora looked him in the eyes when he said it. She imagined he were Catra telling her three years ago that they were on the same side. She tried to walk herself through the motions of denying his words, tried to convince herself that he was lying to her and she was only being quick to trust as was in her nature. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that; not only did everything since their skirmish in the castle indicate he wasn’t trying to hurt her, even her own gut instinct urged to not see him as an enemy, although she couldn’t for the life of her understand why.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” she said, rubbing her shoulders even though there was no chill in the cockpit. “I…I think this is all starting to get too much for me. She Ra was gone entirely in the castle when we fought…I couldn’t…” she stopped and grabbed a breath, her train of thought already slipping away. “Then she all of a sudden comes back and I leap four stories onto your ship to stop you? It’s just…” She huffed. “That crystal of yours? That apeiron? I couldn’t feel anything more than a tiny hint of something in there when I reached…I lied when I said I gleaned a lot of information from it.”

He looked surprised at her words, and Adora didn’t want to give him the time to interject out of fear she’d lose it entirely if she was even slightly derailed.

“I’m on some mysterious ship with a mysterious person who, up until a few weeks ago, was sneaking around Etheria and breaking into First One’s vaults without anyone knowing. I just feel so far out of my element, I…you said you wanted to leave me behind. Please don’t leave me behind on the ship when we get to…well, wherever we’re going.”

Her words hung between them for a beat, then two, before Kal gestured toward the co-pilot seat. Adora shuffled forward, stretching a leg out to awkwardly straddle-hover over the center console, and tried not to wince too pitifully as she lowered herself into the chair. Her muscles and injuries screamed murder at her, but it was a small price to pay considering the alternative was falling to her death back on Etheria.

Dials and levers and sleek diagnostic readouts were built into the control panel before and around her. They seemed to vie for her attention, each one of them, and the hyperspace tunnel encompassing everything else on top of it nearly gave Adora sensory overload. She thought she might have to shut her eyes to keep from going insane, and there was a feeling she was moments away from being sucked out of the cockpit entirely and into the void beyond.

“You’ll get used to it,” Kal said, watching her adjust. “Hyperspace is something that takes the brain some time to acclimate to. Now that I think about it, it’s probably a good metaphor for everything else you’ll encounter soon, out in the wider galaxy.”

“Does the ‘getting used to it’ part of that metaphor apply to the ‘everything out in the galaxy’ too?” she asked. “Or just to this tunnel?”

Kal laughed, and it struck Adora that this was the first time she had ever heard him do so. It was light and casual and entirely at odds, again, with the image she had in her head of this interloper.

“I sure hope you acclimate to the rest of the galaxy too,” he said. “I’m guessing there was a time when you weren’t used to She Ra either, back when you could use her a little more readily. You got used to her after a time too, didn’t you?”

“My powers are…a larger issue,” she said, tamping down on the urge to already lash out at him for bringing it up. “I’ve always been able to feel her, even when I couldn’t draw her out. She was always there, under the surface.” A deep breath. “But, when we fought in the castle and you told me to bring her out, she was…she was…”

“Gone?”

Adora whirled in the chair to face him, barely able to keep from yelling and asking him how he knew. Kal must have read her question from her expression, because he reached up to the overhead controls and grabbed something dangling there she hadn’t noticed earlier. It was the circular manacles he had cuffed her with back when they fought.

“Don’t worry,” he said, a smile flickering across his face. He held them out for her and she shied away from them. “I’m not going to put them on you. Just…take them and try and reach for your power.”

Adora did so. Holding both cuffs, one in each hand, she reached for She Ra and felt…nothing. Frowning, she pushed harder and still felt no answer. There was no wall pushing back against her or blocking her from reaching for it, either. It was as if her powers weren’t there and had never been there at all to begin with. She placed the manacles up on the console off to her left and reached again, now that she wasn’t holding them. She Ra bubbled there under the surface like she had never left. Adora tried it again, just to be sure.

“You’re taking it better than most,” Kal said, watching her expression as she experimented. “Most magically-inclined have a complete meltdown the first time something like that happens to them.”

“Full disclosure, I did have a meltdown the first time it happened,” she said. “I almost freaked out on you just now, right when you brought it up.” She held up the cuffs by one manacle, letting the second one dangle and swing freely off the chain connecting it to the first. “What is this thing?”

“Ignominite cuffs. Extremely expensive. Slap one of those on someone and even a Battlemage like Taline wouldn’t be able to so much as light one of the candles at your Induction Ceremonies with her magic.”

“I thought ignominite was only imbued into crystals to trap the Beast,” Adora said, handing the manacles back to Kal and watching him hook them up on the overhead console again. “Like an apeiron, no?”

“That and forging them into bullets are the most common uses, yes,” he said. “They’re also used to restrain rogue mages, since physically touching the stuff blocks any use of magic. You didn’t lose your connection to She Ra back in the castle, I cut you off.”

“You egged me on,” Adora said, remembering what happened. “You told me to reach for She Ra after slapping those on me, knowing what would happen. You played me.”

“Yep,” he said, grinning. “At the time, I just wanted to bring your attention to the fact she was gone, rather than you trying to reach on your own and finding something wrong. Figured you’d freak out worse and make it harder for me to work if it were the latter. Sorry about that. It was mean.”

“It was mean,” Adora said, agreeing. To her surprise, relief flooded through instead of anger. Nothing was wrong with her connection, at least not any more wrong than it had been in the past. Kal still had that grin on his face as if the whole thing were a practical joke and, to her even greater surprise, she found it kind of funny too.

“My god,” she said, unable to keep a smile of her own from forming. “You damn near gave me a heart attack. You are such a jerk, I thought I lost her for good!” She felt so happy she almost reached over and slugged him in the arm, hard enough to bruise.

“Yeah, very jerk-like of me, I fully admit it,” he said. “Although I did pay for that bit of fun, in the end.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s nothing wrong with your powers. If anything, you seem to be coming back into them, slowly. When you managed to call on some of it and catch me, you put a giant hole in my ship that I spent forever repairing.”

“Serves you right,” she said with a smirk.

Adora didn’t tell him she was still worried, though. There were many times since waking up where she had quietly tried to transform, where she had tried thinking of her friends while reaching for her powers since that’s what had worked back at the castle. But despite her best efforts, she still couldn’t wield her powers at will. In fact, if Kal hadn’t just confirmed what had happened, she might have started to think that multi-story jump, sword in hand, was just a fever dream.

“I’m sorry too, by the way,” Kal said, shaking her from her thoughts.

‘You’re…sorry? I’m the one that accused you of being a spy.”

“You did, but I wasn’t exactly being very understanding either. I can’t imagine how strange it would have felt to be in your shoes, waking up on some random person’s ship bound for who knows where after fighting them for stealing something out of your castle? And I did steal from you—I won’t deny that.” He sighed. “Not the best introduction, I’ll admit.”

“Not really, no,” Adora said. It felt strange hearing him so openly acknowledge this. It almost made her want to drop her guard, although she knew better than that. Naïve Adora was a thing of the past.

“I was a member of the Enclave once,” he said. “That was the first thing you asked, and I said that I wasn’t, though I didn’t give you the full context.”

Adora considered that. “Why did you leave?”

Kal shrugged and turned back to stare at the warp tunnel, his grin long since faded into a stony expression. “I served for a handful of years during the first Beast war as a Battlemage. Saw too many of my friends and squad mates die, as is the case in war. I decided I was done with it all after the Daiamid emerged and I saw what a clusterfuck that caused.”

Adora barely kept her surprise from showing on her face. She had half expected Kal to admit to being kicked out of the order, her having asked why he left having been a loaded question. This, however, was a far more interesting development.

“Were you there in person when it happened?” she asked, “The trial where they revealed themselves? Or were you talking, like, more in a general sense? I was told news of the fighting that day reached all corners of the empire, pretty much.”

“I was there in person, just like Salas was,” Kal said. “In fact, I remember seeing him. And Prime. I watched the emperor put his ego ahead of the safety of his people and I watched the Enclave go along with it. About the only admirable thing I saw was watching Taline’s Sentinels jump literally into the heat of battle and pull her out—save her life before she lost it fighting against the Daiamid when they escaped. Although that wasn’t enough to stop me from leaving the Enclave as a whole after.” He glanced sidelong at her. “Hearing you accuse me of being a spy for the emperor after what he started…I didn’t react to it well.”

That made sense, but suddenly there were a million other things in her head that didn’t. He knew Salas? What did it say that Salas hadn’t seemed to recognize him when his face showed up tied to all the security breaches? Did Kal know of Salas but Salas didn’t know of Kal? And why was Kal avoiding the Enclave if their goals aligned? Everyone on Etheria, including the Enclave, were trying to find a way to stop the Beast. Was there something stopping them from working together, even if Kal was no longer one of them?

It was hard enough keeping the food she had eaten still inside her while sitting so close to the viewscreen. Deciding which question to ask next was another matter entirely, and it made her even more nauseous with anxiety. To keep from agonizing over it any longer, she picked the most straightforward thing she could ask.

“Is that what you were doing at the Induction Ceremony?” She remembered seeing him standing there before their graves with anguish on his face while she had a breakdown in Angella’s arms. “Paying respects to Narre and Miri because you admired what they did for Taline that day?”

“I visited all three times and did the same thing,” he said, voice light. “Honestly, I was surprised you didn’t notice until the last one.”

“I’ve been kind of unable to focus on anything at all except She Ra ever since Prime invaded,” Adora said. She cringed—that sounded so much more concerning out loud than it did in her head. “You seem to know a lot, so I’m sure you’re already well aware of how…single-minded I’ve been while you were wandering around the kingdoms.”

Kal’s silence was answer enough. Suddenly, she no longer wanted to ask any of the burning questions knocking about in her head. She felt too ashamed thinking back on how she had spent the past few years, and feared getting her questions answered might only exacerbate that for some reason.

There was a good reason for her wanting to get back in touch with She Ra, of course. No one could dispute that. But, still…three whole years doing nothing but training and agonizing over powers that never came to her? Her relationship with everyone but Bow and Glimmer had deteriorated, and as embarrassing as it was to admit, she only had herself to blame. Angella’s speech at the ceremony couldn’t have come sooner.

Kal took his feet off the dash and leaned forward. “We’re here,” he said.

He released a lock somewhere, and the throttle on the center console between them jumped back to a neutral position. The hyperspace tunnel fell away and a massive, yellow star filled the viewscreen, bathing them in a near-unbearable blinding light. Adora pushed herself into the back of the chair trying to get away from its brilliance, shielding her eyes with her hands.

“Should have put this up first,” Kal said, pressing another button. “Sorry about that.” The view screen polarized, muting the light of the star into a calming yellow glow.

Adora lowered her hands and her jaw followed. The surface of the star before her rippled and burst like a massive, singular plane of magma. The fact it covered nearly the entire viewscreen only added to her sense of awe.

“That’s Arcturus, by the way,” Kal said, steering the ship so the bow pointed toward the edge of the star rather than its center.

“We’re not landing on the star, are we?” Adora asked “That’s not a thing, right?”

Kal chuckled. “No, not quite.”

A small speck of darkness against the star-scape came into focus. Adora watched it grow larger and larger until she realized what they were approaching was actually a small, rocky planet.

“How has that thing not been pulled into its gravity?” Adora asked.

“That’s the least surprising thing about this place, believe it or not. Just wait until we get to the other side.”

Adora was about to ask what he meant by that when the ship’s computer blared at them. Two fighters off in the distance had locked onto them and were hailing to open a channel. Kal obliged, and a ragged looking fellow, a sheet of polished metal covering a portion of his face and an eye patch covering one of his six eyes, appeared on an opaqued section of the viewscreen.

“Attention unidentified craft,” he said. “You are entering a restricted Imperial no-fly zone. Provide identification immediately or turn away. Refusal will be met with deadly force.”

Adora tensed, but Kal reached out and pressed another button on the console without batting an eye.

“Sending identification codes now,” he said as he input another set of commands. The person on the other line glanced down.

“Identification checks out,” he said after a moment. “You can continue on.”

Kal smiled. “’Checks out’ isn’t standard Imperial comms language, you know.”

The man grumbled and cut the line.

“The outpost is built here specifically to deter people from stumbling across it by accident,” Kal said when Adora looked at him, confused. “Every now and then, the planet will still pop up on someone’s sensors and a curious explorer will come looking. They send out two or so fighters in unmarked warbirds to pretend this is an Imperial black-site.”

“It’s not?” Adora was a little ashamed to admit to herself that, for a brief moment, she imagined Kal having lied, her being right, and them being moments away from actually landing on a military outpost to meet Horde Prime as she had originally accused.

“No,” Kal said. “It’s the opposite actually.”

They shot past the planet. Jumping so close to a star might have startled Adora, but what she saw when Kal turned them around to face the sun side of the planet was jaw dropping.

A shimmering dome, made of what looked to Adora like a lattice of diamonds, covered the whole surface, protecting an enormous green landmass underneath. There was a glistening blue sea, what looked to be a beach, and the towering skyscrapers and winding highways of a megalopolis built nearby.

“Welcome to Eden,” Kal said to her. All Adora could do was gape.

The crackle of comms chatter opened up in the cockpit as they drew closer, and someone identifying themself as ‘Tower Control’ greeted them with a static-filled voice.

“Acknowledged Tower Control,” Kal said, responding to them. “This is the starship Dzivia coming in on heading four-seven-nine. Requesting approach vectors for landing.”

“Transmitting approach vectors for bay three now,” the voice said. “Prepare to release manual controls to your autopilot on my mark.”

“Negative Tower Control, my autopilot is malfunctioning.” Kal shot Adora a look as if to say ‘you broke it when you cut my ship,’ and she had the good manners to at least look sheepish. “I’ll take her in manually.”

There was a pause, as if they had to double check to make sure they heard Kal correctly, before:

“Acknowledged, Dzivia. Approach vector transmission complete. Follow those coordinates as best you can—we’ll keep an eye on you from here.”

A set of multi-digit coordinates broken up by decimals and dashes appeared onscreen. Kal guided the ship gently through the barrier and to one of the open landing platforms below. A team of marshallers, each wearing a reflective orange vest and hardhat, stood atop the landing bay and guided them in with glowing batons and exaggerated motions. When Kal touched them down and powered off, he leapt from the pilot’s seat and went to the workbench at the rear of the cockpit.

“They’re going to scan us when we get off the ship,” Kal said, taking the crystal still there and stuffing it into a small field bag. “You’ll be fine, but they’re going to spook when they get to me. Whatever you do, don’t provoke them and don’t get defensive. Just stay where you are and do whatever they tell you to do. You don’t have any weapons on you, do you?”

“What?” Adora glanced out the view screen and saw a small troop of armed guards dressed in brown already marching up to the craft in formation. “No, I don’t have anything on me. Why are they going to get aggressive?”

“It’s a long story,” he said, walking out the cockpit and through the halls to the back of the ship while she followed. “Whatever you do, just don’t give them any reason to shoot us.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better at all,” Adora said. She suppressed a high-pitched whine of anxiety when she waited for more of an explanation and he didn’t give her one.

When they reached the cargo bay, Kal pulled a lever next to the exit ramp and it descended in a flurry of steam and pneumatic groans. When the metal of the ship’s ramp touched the floor of the landing bay, he strode down and out to the soldiers waiting there. Adora matched his pace on his right. A shiver ran through her body at the cold air that kissed her skin. Despite being on a planet so close to the sun, the air was cool?

“Nothing to declare,” Kal said stopping just shy of the soldiers. “No weapons.”

“We still need to scan you,” the nearest soldier said, holding up a portable device. “Imperial presence in the sector is heightened. The Beast is seeping through into the Kaloshi border, so we aren’t letting anyone go without one.”

Kal shrugged and the soldier gestured for Adora to step forward first. She did, spreading her arms and her legs when they asked her to as they ran the scanner across her

“Clean,” the soldier said, jerking his thumb in a ‘get going’ gesture over his shoulder when they finished with her. Adora didn’t know where he wanted her to go, so she stayed put.

Kal took the same pose as her when they moved on to him, albeit with a lazier posture and a bored look on his face. The machine screamed as soon as they started the scan, and every guard on the platform suddenly jumped and trained their weapons on the both of them.

“Who the fuck are you?” the soldier said, jumping back a fair distance from the both of them.

“I’m Kal,” he said, tone placid.

“Don’t give me that bullshit.” The soldier pulled a sidearm from his holster and trained its barrel on him. “These magazines are loaded with full ignominite rounds. You either tell me who you are and what you’re doing here, or I’m going to put a bullet between your eyes.”

Kal’s unassuming expression shifted into something steely and dangerous. Adora’s body urged her to move, but her mind reminded her of what he said moments before—to give them no reason to shoot them. She didn’t move a muscle.

“You will do no such thing,” Kal said in a low voice. “Because in about five seconds, someone is going to walk through the doors to this hangar and order you to stand down. And you are going to listen to them.”

The soldier furrowed his brow. “I’m not going to entertain anything an Abomination says to me. My job is to keep this landing port safe.” He nodded to the rest of the squad. “Shoot them. Both of them.”

Weapons primed to fire, and for the second time in recent memory, Adora could feel the imminent approach of death. Then, a baritone voice blared over the hangar’s intercom.

“Belay that order.”

The soldiers looked to each other and then their leader in confusion. The voice spoke again, thick with an accent Adora couldn’t place, not that she was surprised.

“Lower your weapons, damnit!”

The soldiers complied, albeit warily, and the doors to the ground floor of what Adora assumed was the hangar’s security office in the far corner flew open. A burly man with a scarred face and a thick fur-collared jacket marched out and toward them. A smaller team of soldiers, dressed in sharp, blue uniforms that set them distinctly apart from the brown of the security soldiers before them, flanked him on either side.

“V-Vasher?” the first soldier said, turning to him and offering a shaky salute.

“Put that shit away, son,” Vasher said, voice gruff and face equal parts irritated and weary. “My guys and I will take it from here. Go on to your next security check—I think a transport just pulled into the bay next door.”

“But sir, this person tripped the scanner.” The soldier pointed at Kal, who just smiled and gave a cheeky wave. “We can’t let an Abo—“

“I’ve tried to be civil about this, Captain, but you don’t seem to get the hint.” Vasher’s tone grew more divorced from a human voice and more akin to a feral growl with every syllable. “Get the fuck off my landing platform.”

The captain saluted again, barked out orders to his men, and within a handful of seconds had them double-timing away. When the blast doors at the far end leading out of the hangar slid shut behind them, Vasher turned to regard Kal with a severe expression.

“Hey, man,” Kal said with all the tact of someone who hadn’t just been moments from death.

Vasher just blinked at him, incredulous. “I almost couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that the Dzivia was transmitting a landing request to Tower Control,” he said. “I was certain someone had somehow killed you and took your ship. Either that, or I was trapped in some nightmare where you actually thought it was a good idea to show up here again.”

“So, you’re saying that you aren’t happy to see me?” Kal asked, sounding as if he were trying to solve an incredible challenge of a puzzle.

Vasher grunted. “Yeah, that has to be you. No one else I know could be nearly as cheeky after having half a dozen rifles shoved in their face.” He glanced in Adora’s direction, and she gave him a wave and a nervous smile. Vasher only rolled his eyes and harrumphed again before turning his attention back to Kal. Adora tried not let her disappointment at having been so thoroughly ignored show on her face.

“So?” Vasher asked. “Three years and no word, not even a goodbye. What brings you back?”

“I need to see Ly.”

Vasher choked out a laugh. “Oh, like hell you do.”

Kal crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m serious. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for a good reason, just like I wouldn’t have left in the first place if it weren’t for a good reason either.”

“You ask for too much, Kal. Too much.” Vasher shook his head. “Do you realize how long it took me to calm her down after you left? She was disconsolate for months. I mean, hell, she doesn’t even know you’re here right now or else those warbirds would have blasted you to pieces without even hailing first.”

“That mad, huh?”

“Yes!” Vasher threw his arms up and waved them in aggressive, sweeping gestures. “You left, Kal. In the middle of a job. We were lucky to make it back here alive and doubly lucky that our employers didn’t mount our heads on spikes. How else are we supposed to feel?”

“You weren’t ever in any danger,” Kal said, frowning. “I wouldn’t have left if I thought either of you had the slightest chance of getting caught, and the deal we negotiated with the Vestamid was airtight. They wouldn’t have killed you.”

Vasher’s troops grew nervous at the mention of the Vestamid, and Vasher himself spoke with more restraint.

“We’re still paying off the debt from losing all their product,” he said.

“I know,” Kal said. “I’m sorry. You have every right to be angry, I’m not trying to dismiss that. But, please…I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t absolutely necessary.” He held up the sling bag in one hand for Vasher to get a good look at, and his eyes nearly bugged out of his head.

“Is that…?”

Kal only nodded.

“Then does that mean—“

“No,” Kal said, cutting him off. “Something went wrong with Pip and I need to talk to Ly, see if she can do anything about it. I haven’t been able to make any progress on my end.”

“You must be really desperate if you’ve come to ask her for that,” Vasher said. “How do you even know she’d be able to fix her?”

“I am desperate,” Kal said. “And I don’t know that she’d be able to fix anything, but she’s the best chance we have.” He slung the bag around his shoulder again. “Will you help me? Or am I going to have to hunt her down myself?”

Vasher looked him in the eyes for several moments before deflating. “She’s got a performance late tonight,” he said. “You won’t be able to get ahold of her before then, but I can put you both up in a room and get you a meeting after the show is done.”

“Same place?”

“Same place,” Vasher said nodding.

“Alright, thank you.” Kal pushed past Vasher and his guards, glancing briefly in Adora’s direction for her to follow. Adora power-walked to catch up and stuck close as they made their way to the blast doors at the back of the hangar—the same doors the security team that had first greeted them had fled through.

“Kal,” Vasher said, calling after them from behind loud enough for his voice to echo. When Kal stopped and turned to look at him, he said, “it’s good to see you again. I’m glad you’re back safe.”

“Me too,” he said. “Me too. And thank you for your help. I mean it.”

No more words were exchanged, and Adora followed him out the hangar, her mind scrambling to make sense of the whole exchange.

Chapter Text

Catra settled into the corner booth of the Tailchaser, a cozy pub situated deep in Phoenix Station’s mid-wards. The leather of the overstuffed seats creaked and crackled as she maneuvered into a comfortable position. A seat at the bar would have been preferable, but seeing as how most of the booths that would have been used to seat patrons were instead crammed full of mountains of packaged food and supplies, she was lucky enough as it was to have been let in and given one of the only open tables to begin with.

Vadim, the owner, came by and held a menu up for her to take. “Gonna browse?” he asked. “Or wanna do your regular?”

“I’ll do the regular, and a club soda or something if it’s not too much trouble?”

He raised both eyebrows. “You want a nonalcoholic drink?”

Catra rolled her eyes, bantering with him as they had for years by now. “I have a job too, you know. Can’t be under the influence on the clock.”

“You’re clocking in to the precinct after eating here?” he asked, confused. “But you typically come after your shifts are up. Is Dax giving you a hard time about accepting a promotion again?”

“I quit the force, actually,” Catra said, shaking her head. “Have a new gig lined up and this is my first day, I guess you could say. I don’t want to mess it up.” Diallo had been overjoyed to hear she was onboard when she went to him, days ago now. Together they had planned their move for when Moriarty was due to give his rally. Today.

Vadim studied her for a moment, then shrugged and wandered off to fulfill her order. Catra liked the Tailchaser and she liked Vadim, precisely because he knew where her line was and never crossed it. Diving unexpectedly into a topic that Catra felt was ‘too personal’ was never an issue with him. Not to mention she also really liked his cheese fries.

Her meeting with Diallo was in an hour—they were going to infiltrate Moriarty’s office together, and the fact she still hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest meant her nerves were frayed beyond belief; she needed every tool in her arsenal to keep calm, and wasn’t above scarfing down junk food in her favorite dive bar right before if it gave her clarity.

Just the fact I was able to get in here was a miracle in and of itself, she thought, watching the waitress who tried to block her at the door careen through the establishment. She nearly crashed into the bar in her haste to get to it, scooped up as many packaged boxes of food as she could, and tumbled back out toward the line of people outside the front door without sparing Catra anything beyond an annoyed glance.

The Catra from a previous life might have shot back a smug face, but the Catra sitting there at the booth kept it classy. More refugees had flooded in during the preceding days. More than even the most pessimistic of doomsday experts could predict, and administration had commandeered all establishments—from the station’s upper-wards down to the bowels—to provide emergency services for the influx. The line out the front door of the Tailchaser alone was massive, and Catra wasn’t technically supposed to even get seated, since no shops were conducting regular business. Vadim had made a special exception for her and she was grateful.

A catchy theme song drew her attention to one of the TVs mounted above the bar. Catra watched the logo for the largest news network in their region of space play onscreen. An anchor duo, a man and woman both dressed in suits, introduced themselves and their topic for that afternoon’s special: Moriarty and his upcoming rally, where he would outline his plan to keep the region safe and prosperous despite the Beast continuing to spread against ever more populous Imperial territories. The idea was to offer commentary both before and after the live airing of his rally speech.

“I’ve heard some concerning rumors lately,” Vadim said as he rounded the corner back to her, balancing a platter with one hand and carrying a folding stand in the other.

“What kind of rumors?” Catra asked, turning away from the broadcast.

He placed the platter on the tray stand. “I’ve heard that the ignominite munitions might be losing their efficacy. Bullets that once could put down a thrall like any other person aren’t working as well as they did in the last war anymore.”

“Really?” Catra asked. “I heard rumors that Moriarty will finally open up the Atrium for the refugees. Everyone thinks that’s going to be part of the rally speech.”

Vadim snorted. “I’m more concerned about whether he’s going to let more people dock in the station. Sure, open up the Atrium. I don’t mind seeing all those pompous rich assholes get the panties in a twist having to share space with the refugees like everyone else, but we can’t just keep funneling people here with no end. Sooner or later the station will reach capacity, and life support will stop being able to ‘support’ all the life on the station, regardless of where we put them. I’m barely able to keep up with the new emergency orders they put in for us.”

Catra sighed. “The universe is going to shit and I’m sitting alone in a dive bar to stress eat. Let’s hope they find a way to curb this sooner rather than later, then.” When she saw the mountain of cheese fries in the basket Vadim placed in front of her alongside the largest virgin Mai Tai she had ever seen, she squawked. “Vadim, that’s too much!”

“Nonsense,” he said with a scoff. “You’re the first person I’ve heard of getting a new job in this kind of climate, but if today’s your first day, then you need to be fueled up. Besides, how many times now have I told you that you’re thin as a rod? I don’t know how you made it three years as a cop looking like a string bean, but if your new gig is as physical as your old then you’ll need to pack on some more meat.”

“I’m lean, Vadim,” Catra said. “And we both know this isn’t what I’m supposed to eat if I want to bulk up. You’re going to ruin me.” Vadim only laughed.

“The extra is on me,” he said, referring to the comical portion sizes. “As a thank you for always being a loyal customer, and as an apology for the server at the door. She’s new-ish.”

“Don’t even worry about it,” Catra said, meaning it sincerely. “We’re all under a lot of weird stress right now, so I understand. Thanks for making an exception and letting me in.”

Vadim nodded and wandered off to help his staff hand out food at the front. Catra could hear the sounds of the crowd nearby, could hear the anguished and anxiety-stricken voice of men and women and children worried about where they’re going to shelter and where they’d get their next meal after this one. It intermixed with the measured, energetic voices of the anchors on the TV, who were entertaining a guest on their panel and drawing out his predictions for the kinds of announcements that were going to come out of Moriarty’s mouth within the hour.

Catra reached inside the collar of her shirt and pulled at the leather cord there. The apeiron Taline gifted her popped out, hanging at the end of the cord, shining blood-red, held in place by an elaborate knot that wrapped the entirety of the crystal. It was beautiful—a reminder of Taline’s trust in her as Sentinel—and Catra had made a habit of bringing it out and staring at it whenever she was alone.

She put it away, chastising herself for being so ready to expose something so valuable and irreplaceable in public, and instead busied herself with her PDA. She propped her left elbow on the table and flipped through the menus on the screen while she picked at individual fries in the basket and took small sips of the Mai Tai. She briefly considered reaching out to Taline, again, before quickly and vehemently rejecting that idea.

It was embarrassing, how many times she had hemmed and hawed about reaching out and telling her of her plans with Diallo. It was especially bad in the days after having approached him and agreeing to help, since it felt weird to be both officially and unofficially going behind Taline’s back on some undercover mission. And when she finally mustered the courage to actually do it—managed to actually send a call request through and wait—Taline had picked up, answering her with a harried voice, deep in the middle of preparing for Moriarty’s rally with twenty other very important-looking people.

And that hadn’t even been the worst part. Even after interrupting Taline’s meeting, even after hearing Taline’s concerned voice prompt her through the line, all the courage Catra had pulled together to make the call in the first place fled all at once, and she hung up after making a number of halting excuses Catra still couldn’t think back on without flushing in embarrassment. She had vowed, right then and there, to erase the term ‘butt dial’ from her vocabulary entirely.

Diallo had been right, again; if Taline had been asking Catra to read between the lines and commit espionage on her behalf when commissioning her as a Sentinel, what exactly was Catra expecting her to say when she called her in the middle of an administrative meeting to ask about it?

She felt another flush of embarrassment creep up her neck. To distract herself, she navigated to Glimmer’s contact card on her PDA and tapped the ‘resend’ button on the message waiting there—the one she had drafted and tried to send days earlier already. She watched the little ‘sending’ animation with bated breath, picking at another grouping of fries slathered with cheese from the basket and eating them.

The message failed to send, and Catra resisted the urge to rip the PDA off her arm and throw it at the wall. The PDA would be fine if she did, but then she’d have to apologize to Vadim for damaging his pub. Entrapta’s gadgets were near-indestructible, even so many years on.

Reaching out to Glimmer again was a bad idea; she was looking for a distraction, not more worries. The fact she hadn’t heard from her or couldn’t get ahold of her still was bad. The chances she was still in hyperspace were slim, which meant that wherever she had been sent off to, it was dangerous and top secret. The last time something like that happened was when she was deployed to Rinne, and Catra feared for Glimmer’s mental health as much as her physical safety if that’s the situation she had been thrust into once more. It also didn’t bode well for the conflict with the Beast as a whole, if yet another incident like that were to crop up.

When Catra dove back to her PDA a third time—desperate for a distraction from her original distraction—and came across Adora’s name, she almost shut the device off altogether. Out of everything she could tempt herself with, why was she tempting herself with Adora of all people? Why did she even still have her contact info at all? It wasn’t like she’d be able to send her a message. Writing anything to that contact of her’s in the PDA would only forward it to Glimmer, who’d forward it to Salas, who’d get it to Adora maybe in a month. By that time, whatever insanity might have possessed Catra to write to her in the first place would long have worn off.

Memories and thoughts and emotions about her old friend flooded back to her, and she was too sleep deprived and tense to fight the tide. Catra wondered what Adora was doing, wondered whether she ever thought about Catra as Catra was thinking about her in that moment, and wondered about if she found a way to use She Ra again, even though it had barely been a week since Glimmer told her she still hadn’t. All this while grabbing cheesy fries by the fist-full and shoving them into her mouth as quickly as possible, not caring that the cheese got all over her hands and stained her fingers with grease.

She was pulled out of her spiraling thoughts when a spike of alarm lanced through her mind. Catra’s ears perked up, and her fur stood on end. Her heart pounded and she knew her pupils were slits because of how laser-sharp her center of vision had grown when she snapped up and looked toward the front of the Tailchaser. It felt as if something were stalking her with the intent to kill, although she had no idea what. Even her claws were out.

Catra counted heartbeats.

…One...

…Two...

…Three...

Someone yelled out front. There was a crash, followed by the sound of shattering glass: someone—not the first person who yelled, but someone different—had fallen, dropping a half dozen glasses and shattering them on the floor by the sound of it. Catra almost got up from the booth to investigate, but she heard Vadim ask the person who fell if they were okay, heard the waitress she bumped into earlier respond saying she was fine, and heard the sounds of the refugees around them help her up. Another person offered to help clean up the shattered glass.

A moment passed, and the waitress came around the corner, the front of her serving uniform stained with drinks. She rushed into the women’s bathroom at the rear. Vadim popped back for a second too, grabbing a broom and dustpan before disappearing once again.

Weird, Catra thought. It was like she had picked up on something bad happening long before it actually did, almost like she had a premonition. That wasn’t the only weird thing to have happened recently either, she thought, as she reminisced about what happened with Trayn’s suspect and the Motherbrain back at the precinct. She really needed to get some sleep—pushing the gas this hard for this long couldn’t be healthy.

When she reached for the fries again, she saw a translucent young woman, about as tall as her drink glass, standing next to the basket on the table and staring at it with big eyes.

“Fucking hell!” Catra yanked her arm away and scrabbled as far back into the cushions of the booth as she could.

“Well, that’s rude,” said the miniature woman, cocking a hip and giving her a sour look.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Pip!” The woman turned and faced Catra full-on, legs wide, both hands on her hips, and a giant smile on her face that reached to her eyes. She was the embodiment of sunshine happiness, and it especially creeped Catra out.

I have to be going crazy, she thought, pulling into herself. All those sleepless nights, all those caffeine pills and coffee…they’ve all caught up to me. This is it. I’m nuts. She took a closer look at the girl. Why does she look strangely familiar?

Pip wandered closer toward her on the table and stared straight up at her. “Oh, come on now,” she said. “You aren’t crazy. Well, maybe you are just a bit. I haven’t seen much, but anyone would be a little crazy with all the nightmares you’ve been having.”

“You…you’re in my head?”

“Yes, of course I’m in your head, silly. I’ve been here for almost a week now. Don’t you remember?”

Catra thought. What happened a week ago? The only thing was her talk with Taline after Glimmer left. The first one, where she showed her Evelyn’s old lab and then…oh.

“You’re the big project Taline’s sister was working on before she died?” Catra asked, keeping her voice low. “You’re a program?”

“I prefer the term artificial intelligence, thank you very much. But yes, I was Evie’s last creation. Taline’s had me since she died, and now she’s passed me along to you.”

Catra narrowed her eyes at the girl. She had a pixie cut and wore a sun dress that twirled with her movements. Catra lowered herself so her face was level with the table, driven by instinct, and slowly extended a clawed finger to poke at Pip’s form. To her utter astonishment, she felt something when her finger passed through; Pip wasn’t corporeal, but she was there.

“Hey, stop, that tickles,” Pip said, avoiding a second prodding by disappearing and reappearing behind the drink glass.

“Why are you just showing up now?” Catra asked. “Taline gave you to me a while ago, didn’t she?”

“She injected the nanites that let me interact with you like this a week ago, but it still took some time for them to activate, and then more time for me to get familiar with your physiology and psyche.” Pip stepped out behind the glass and smoothed her dress. “I’m still not fully integrated, but I’m far enough along that I can finally manifest and talk to you like this.”

“Huh.” Catra sat back and considered that.

 “I have to say though,” Pip said. “I think your concern for your friends is really sweet.”

“You think my what?”

“You keep worrying about Glimmer. And Adora. Especially Adora.”

Catra’s heart froze.

“She shows up in all your dreams,” Pip said. “And just now you were wondering whether you should try and reach out to her again or not. It’s sweet.”

More images of Adora came flooding back, unbidden, and Catra panicked.

“See, you’re thinking about her now, too. Also, I like your little arm device. It’s old and really inefficient, but I could tell your other friends put a lot of effort into it. I mean, just look at all these messages.”

Catra’s PDA came to life on its own, and one of the first messages Entrapta and Scorpia recorded on it began to play on the screen.

“Hi Catra!” the both of them said, although Scorpia’s voice and face were thick with tears. “So, we’re kind of recording a lot of this one last minute since apparently you may be leaving tomorrow. We wanted to just—”

“Stop! Stop, stop, stop!” Catra mashed the exit icon. She had seen all the videos they had sent her over the years, including the ones Glimmer had transferred during their last meeting—she just hadn’t seen that video. It brought back too many powerful memories she didn’t know how to navigate.

The screen went dark and Catra rounded on Pip. “What the hell?” she said, practically exploding on her.

Pip shrank back with a fearful look on her face. “S-sorry,” she said. “I just thought it was really cool and…I didn’t know those were private. Sorry.”

Catra massaged the pinch in her brow away and took a deep breath. Part of her wanted to ask how she could not know it was private when she apparently knew everything else in her head, but Pip had admitted she wasn’t fully integrated yet either.

“It’s fine,” she said. “That video is…it comes with a lot of emotions attached to it. I still haven’t watched it. I was just…surprised, seeing it pop up all of a sudden.”

“I understand,” Pip said, with an apologetic look. “This is technically the first time we’re meeting so…I might have gotten a bit excited. Just, uh…just let me know if I start yanking up things I shouldn’t and I’ll back off.”

“It’s fine,” Catra said. “It just caught me off guard, like I said before. Warn me next time you do something like that.”

She had to admit, having Pip in her head felt a lot better than Shadow Weaver or the Emperor. Pip just felt like some overly happy buddy, eager for her company. That, along with the fact she was yet another example of the trust Taline had invested in her, was enough to make Catra actually feel happy about this development. Pip seemed to feel that emotion radiate off her too. The embarrassment wiped from her face, and the smile she had showed up with from the start reappeared.

Something else tugged at the corners of Catra’s awareness, again like a premonition, and she looked to the bathroom doors. The waitress who had rushed inside earlier had left, and was standing there, frozen mid-step on her way back to the front. She had a new shirt on, and was looking directly at Catra with a perturbed expression.

::She can’t see you, can she?:: Catra asked. To her surprise, the idea had formed in her mind, instead of as words on her lips.

“Nope, only you can see and hear me,” Pip said. “You’d better be careful what you say out loud or else people will think you’re just crazy talking to yourself. Good thing you’ve figured out how to communicate with me through your thoughts.”

::Noted,:: Catra said. The waitress shrugged her shoulders before stalking away, and Catra let out a breath of relief. She glanced back down at Pip, who was waving goodbye. ::Why are you waving to her if she can’t even see you?:: she asked, equal parts amused and exasperated.

“Well I don’t want to be rude!” Pip said.

Catra still wasn’t convinced she wasn’t actually having a conversation with a figment of her imagination, rather than a real AI. If later, she found out she had indeed been going nuts, then she honestly wouldn’t be surprised.

“I heard that,” Pip said, offended.

The television above the bar drew her attention again with its music, and the anchors returned.

“And now here comes Moriarty, walking up the stage to give his annual rally speech,” the female anchor said. “What kind of policies will he lay out for the denizens of Phoenix Station and the region in general? You’ve heard hours of speculation, now let’s tune in and find out from the man himself.”

::Time to go,:: Catra said to Pip, grabbing the last portion of cheese fries with both hands and stuffing them in her mouth before chugging her drink. ::I promised to meet Diallo as soon as the speech started. Unless you already knew that from being in my head for a week?::

“You’ve only been agonizing about it all day every day since agreeing to help him,” Pip said, all sarcasm.

::Yeah, yeah, okay I get it. Watch yourself you cheeky robot. You may be in my head and can read my thoughts, but that can be just as unpleasant for you as it is off-putting for me if you don’t behave.::

She had become aware of a fuzzy, roughly formed, separate entity in her consciousness that she guessed was Pip. Catra sent an amalgam of vaguely threatening impressions and emotions across the bridge connecting their psyches and felt a twinge of satisfaction when Pip squeaked next to her.

“Okay okay, I get the hint,” she said. “I’ll be good, I promise.”

Catra smirked. Good.

Vadim said everything was on the house, but she pulled out more than enough to cover what the charge would have been and left it on the table. Pip floated up and rested on her shoulder. Catra felt at the sidearm she had strapped to her hip and at the stun baton against her thigh, double checking that they were still there. Then left out the back to go find Diallo.

Chapter Text

A boulder stood behind one of the megaliths in the compound. Several stories tall, it had a good view of Tir in the distance and of the rocky steppe between. And because almost no one wandered in that corner area of the compound, it was Glimmer’s favorite spot to hide out at when she needed a break from everything.

The panic attack back at the pavilion had long since abated; it had only taken a few moments of solitude for her to calm down, but that only made room for another issue altogether. She sat there at the top of the rock, hunched over, knees high, with one hand grasping a fistful of hair and the other staring at yet another unfinished draft to Bow on her PDA.

She huffed and deleted the whole thing. Nothing she had typed seemed right, no matter how many times she tried. A simple “Hey what’s up?” sounded like she was playing ignorant to the tension between them still going strong after all these years. An “I miss you,” came on too strong for her liking, and a “why didn’t you send me anything last month?” was a sure way to guarantee he wouldn’t respond at all.

She pictured him somewhere on Etheria—maybe at Entrapta’s lab, maybe at Bright Moon with Adora, or, possibly, somewhere with Swift Wind and Sea Hawk. Then she imagined the irritation on his face at seeing a notification from her, bothering him with whatever she had sent, and gave up trying to draft a message altogether. Maybe it was too much to hope he’d forgive her for having left so soon after the emperor’s invasion, on top of everything she had done before first activating the Heart. It was funny, how three years could feel like an eternity and a blink of an eye at the same time.

She groaned and she leaned back on her hands, staring out at the city and the mountains in the distance. Judging by how low in the sky the sun was, she had likely been sitting there alone for hours already. How time flew when she thought of him, good or bad.

A sound echoed up to her atop the rock then. It sounded like a pair of people walking by, likely having come from using the secluded bathroom nearby that no one knew about. She listened to their voices talking excitedly to one another, their footsteps growing closer, and sat as still as she could. The footsteps and voices started to recede, and she thought she had made it through unnoticed until…

“Glimmer, is that you?” said one of the voices from down below.

“I’m off for the rest of the day,” she said, angling her voice down at them without turning to look. “I already cleared it with my shift leader and I’d rather be left alone right now. Please go away.”

“Is everything okay? You’re kind of high up there.”

Did they not understand what wanting to be left alone meant? Glimmer turned to shout at them and regretted it the moment she peeked over the lip of the rock to look down. Kyle and Rogelio were standing at the base, staring up at her.

Lonnie had told her she wouldn’t recognize Kyle if she saw him again and she was dead wrong. He had filled out somewhat and his face looked significantly less boyish and soft than it had when last she saw him, but she knew it was him the moment they locked eyes.

“I-I’m fine!” she said, suddenly wishing she could disappear. “Just not feeling well, so I took the rest of the day off.” She had assumed they had all returned to the Omen-Kador in orbit when her PDA warned her they had gotten off duty. What the heck were they both doing down in the compound?

“You should be in the infirmary, or at least resting if you aren’t feeling well,” Kyle said. “What are you doing up there on that rock?”

Glimmer slunk back to the center and hugged her knees closer. They couldn’t see her at all if she did that, and she hoped they’d eventually just leave her alone and be on their way. Instead, Glimmer heard Kyle say something else she couldn’t quite make out—likely to Rogelio—and then she heard a rhythmic clinking sound ring out from down below. When she peeked back over the edge, she saw Rogelio ambling off in some other direction, and saw Kyle scaling the boulder with an ice pick.

“What are you doing?” Glimmer asked, incredulous. “This rock is like, four stories tall. You’re going to hurt yourself!”

“Help me up then!” he said, slamming the pick into the rock again. “I’d rather not fall if I can help it.”

Glimmer threw her head back and groaned again before drawing a quick spell. It grabbed Kyle by the midsection and hoisted him up to the top to join her.

“Thanks,” he said when she let him down gently. “Way easier than doing that the other way.”

“Why do you even have an ice pick?”

“Would you believe me if I said it was standard pilot survival gear?”

Glimmer narrowed her eyes at him and Kyle laughed.

“It’s not standard,” he said, realizing she wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “But I always keep it on me. We crashed into the side of a cliff on one of my first missions and had to scale our way out. Didn’t want to be caught without something like this again after that.” He folded the pick into a compact form, rolled up his left pantleg, and clipped it to the innards of the prosthetic there. Glimmer’s eyes went from narrow to saucer-shaped when she saw.

“Is that…how did that happen?” she asked. “Did you lose your leg one of your deployments too?” When she realized she had been staring, she raised her eyes to look at Kyle instead. He was giving her a confused look with his head tilted to the side, and she feared she had asked something terribly insensitive. “Sorry,” she said, waving her hands. “I didn’t think when I asked that, I just—”

Kyle sat down cross-legged next to her. “It’s fine. I actually lost it way back on Bright Moon. The emperor’s first assault caught us completely off guard and I lost the leg in the attack. A ceiling beam fell on my leg and Adora and six more people had to lift it off me. The doctors couldn’t save it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Glimmer said. Kyle had lost it before they had even parted ways to begin with. How had she not noticed at all that someone was wandering around with either a whole leg missing or wobbling on a new prosthetic at the time?

“It’s fine, really.” Kyle chuckled and gave her an easy smile. “I’m more than used to it after so long. Besides, it lets me store the ice pick without having to really worry about putting it in a bag or something.”

Glimmer nodded and a beat passed between them. “You know, I’m a little surprised you wanted to come up here and talk to me.”

“Why would you say that?” Kyle asked. He seemed genuinely confused.

“Well, y’know…I kinda turned the three of you down from being your Battlemage leader.”

“Technically you turned down twelve of us,” Kyle said, and the words nailed Glimmer like a punch to the gut. “Me, Lonnie, Rogelio, and I think nine other non-Vanguard grunts?” When he saw how Glimmer shrank under each of his words, Kyle laughed again. “It’s fine, I’m not mad.”

“You aren’t? Why not?”

“Just aren’t,” Kyle said with a shrug. “Lonnie is a different story, but me? I was a little confused and worried when I found out. It just didn’t seem like the ‘you’ I had known to turn down an opportunity like that, but I wasn’t mad, really. Rogelio is fine too in case you were curious.”

Glimmer breathed a sigh of relief and stretched her legs, splaying them out before her on the stone. “A lot has happened since I left home…since that day in the emperor’s throne room and since…”

“Rinne?” Kyle finished for her what Glimmer couldn’t say aloud.

She swallowed, with some effort. “I’ve come a long way, especially after Taline’s mentorship, but leading and taking responsibility over someone else’s lives in battle is just not something I’m prepared for yet.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said, mirroring Glimmer’s posture. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I might have heard a thing or two here and there about what happened.”

Glimmer nodded. “So,” she said, after another beat of silence. “Vanguard pilot huh? And one hell of a good one from what Lonnie told me.”

“Last I checked, you have to be ‘one hell of a good whatever it is you are’ in order to be in the Vanguard,” Kyle said. “But yeah, I guess I’m okay.”

Glimmer snorted. Since when had Kyle developed such a fine balance between self-deprecation and a Catra-like smugness in his sense of humor? “How the heck did that happen? No offense, but I didn’t peg you for a daredevil pilot back home when we were on opposite sides.”

“You remember when we kidnapped you and Bow from Frosta’s Princess Prom?”

The fact Kyle brought that up, and so casually too, surprised her. “Yeah, I remember,” she said, carefully. “That wasn’t very fun.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Kyle said, shaking his head even though the nostalgia in his voice betrayed him. “And you probably don’t remember this part since Catra tied you both to a chair and blindfolded you after taking off, but Scorpia was the one piloting the ship at the time.”

Glimmer frowned, trying to remember what happened that night. It turned out she couldn’t remember much, her strongest recollections being of what happened after, when she arrived at the Fright Zone. “I do remember a lot of screaming and yelling on the trip out,” she said.

“She nearly crashed the ship. Three times. Catra and Lonnie were so pissed, and I was sick about four times during the journey and then another three times after we arrived. I promised myself that I’d never let her pilot a ship again if I could help it, so I started signing up for all the flight sims in the Fright Zone.”

“And you just, what? Tapped into something you didn’t know you had?”

It was Kyle’s turn to snort. “No, I was terrible. For a long time. It took so much practice to not just crash on every landing approach, even the easy ones. Lonnie and Rogelio were so nervous the first few times I took them out on a real flight.”

Kyle smiled as he reminisced, and the mood had relaxed enough between them Glimmer couldn’t help but smile too. She had gone from fearing that this person hated her guts to being grateful he was there sitting next to her. She hadn’t realized how lonely she had been, even after only a handful of days away from Phoenix Station.

 “Sorry if you really didn’t want to be bothered up here,” Kyle said, breaking the silence that had stretched between them. “Like I said, I was more worried than upset hearing you wouldn’t take us on, and seeing you up here by yourself only made me more worried.”

“It’s okay,” Glimmer said, waving him off. “I just like to find quiet spots sometimes to get away. I found this place the first day we hit the surface.”

“Do you ever come here because you feel overwhelmed with everything, or is it really just a break spot?”

Glimmer gave him a sidelong glance. “Both,” she said. “Usually the former.” She didn’t tell him a panic attack was what brought her out there that day to begin with.

“I saw Catra do the same thing when she’d get overwhelmed,” Kyle said, nodding. “Heck, I do it too sometimes, when it all gets too much.” He tilted his head and gave her a thoughtful look. “How are you feeling right now, with everything?”

“Maybe I am feeling a bit overwhelmed,” Glimmer said, leaning back on her hands. She hadn’t planned on volunteering that information on her own, but after he had asked, and in such a relaxed way too, she found she actually wanted to answer. A question played at the back of her mind then, something she was desperate to know but wasn’t brave enough to ask outright. She decided to skirt around the topic instead. “What do you think of Catra?”

“What do I think?”

“Well, what do you and Rogelio and Lonnie think of her, I suppose.”

“Lonnie can’t stand her,” Kyle said. “I wouldn’t put either of those two in a room together—they’re both incredibly hot-headed and emotional people. Rogelio likes to pretend he’s indifferent about her but I know he misses Catra from time to time too. They actually got along somewhat before Adora left and Catra…well, yeah.”

“And you?”

Kyle sighed. “My feelings are a little more complicated, I guess. She used to scare the crap out of me when we were younger. I kinda got the feeling Shadow Weaver was doing some shady stuff to her behind closed doors too, but…“ He trailed off and shrugged, not able to find the words. Glimmer didn’t blame him.

“’Shady’ is an understatement if I’ve ever heard one,” Glimmer said, remembering the first time Catra fully opened up to her about her relationship to Shadow Weaver.

“I probably don’t know the half of it then,” Kyle said. “But to me, I guess I just didn’t know how to be or act around her. Catra was so swayed by her emotions, all the time. I still remember when I first tried to talk to her after she came back from a private meeting with Shadow Weaver. I wanted to do something to help because she seemed so on edge, but it was like I poked a sleeping bear. She snapped at me and”—he whistled and made an ‘exploding’ gesture with his hands—“it just didn’t end well.”

“That’s Catra for you,” Glimmer said, looking away with a sad smile. “Textbook definition of a ticking time bomb. Or at least, she was. She’s gotten better now. A lot better.”

“I believe it,” Kyle said. “She was terrifying, you know, but she also inspired me quite a bit. Especially after Adora left.”

Now that was surprising. “Catra went off the deep end after Adora left,” Glimmer said, raising both eyebrows at Kyle. “You do realize that, right?”

“Yeah, of course I do,” he said. “She opened a portal that nearly swallowed the world, she was so far gone. I remember.”

“Okay, then what about all that was inspiring to you?”

“Definitely not the portal opening part,” Kyle said with a chuckle. “Like I said, it’s complicated…but if I had to put words to it, I would say it was inspiring to me how she took such huge blows to her pride, to her plans, to her relationships, and instead of crumbling under the stress, she doubled down on herself and worked harder the next time around.”

Glimmer furrowed her brow and considered that.

“She was pretty lazy growing up you know,” Kyle said. “She always showed up late to everything, always did the bare minimum, always gave everyone lip. I’m not saying it was justified, because it wasn’t, but she didn’t exactly make it hard for Shadow Weaver to find things to thrash her for. A lot of the other cadets started taking bets behind her back on how long it’d take her to crack when Adora defected.”

“That’s terrible,” Glimmer said, fixing him with an acid glare.

Kyle frowned and nodded. “It was,” he said, not looking her in the eye and instead staring out at the view. “That was one of the only times I stood up for someone before I became a pilot. I got my ass beat for it and felt good about it, strangely enough.”

“You…stood up for her?”

 “I was the only one who stood up for her at the time. I was the only one who said she wouldn’t crack when everyone was taking those bets.”

Glimmer tried to wrap her head around everything Kyle said. Adora had shared bits and pieces of what life in the Horde was like for her, but Glimmer had never thought too deeply into it. In fact, apart from that one conversation about Shadow Weaver, Catra hadn’t delved too deep into her childhood either, and Glimmer hadn’t pushed.

Kyle shifted next to her. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, when she felt at her lowest point, instead of giving in  and giving up, Catra chose to work her ass off instead. She wanted to prove to everyone she was somebody worth paying attention to.” He took a deep breath and Glimmer could tell he was working through some deep emotions to get his words out. 

“I admired her for that…her drive to prove herself in the face of all those setbacks. I guess seeing her do that inspired me to do the same. Not that it excuses some of the crazy shit she did and the horrible things she put us through when she was second in command, but I know I wouldn’t be half the pilot I am today if I didn’t see her work so hard back then. Whenever I felt like giving up on my own training, I’d just think about what I saw her put herself through, and suddenly all my problems seemed trivial by comparison.”

“I didn’t consider it like that,” Glimmer said. “Her and I didn’t start getting close until we were stuck in a room together on the emperor’s citadel.”

“We’ve all had our different interactions with her,” Kyle shrugged. “Like I said, if you ask Lonnie, you’d get a different response. Why did you want to know, anyway?”

“Why did I want to know what?”

“Why did you ask me what I thought about Catra?”

“Ah.” Glimmer fidgeted, suddenly feeling exposed. “Well, as much as I love her, I know that she’s a master at having burned her bridges in the past. She’s changed and we have a good relationship now, but I guess I was just curious how you and the others saw her after everything.”

“I haven’t heard of you burning any bridges though,” Kyle said. “If anything, I’ve heard some very interesting and inspiring things. All the refugees Rogelio and I passed out there in the compound were whispering about how they saw ‘The Angel of Archanas’ earlier.”

“Ugh.” Glimmer slapped her hand to her forehead and dragged it down her face.

“Not a fan of the nickname? I know you’ve never actually been to Archanas before.”

“It’s not the nickname itself really,” Glimmer said. “Some marketing nerd thought it’d be poetic to call me that because of what Taline did. It’s just…complicated, I guess, if I’m allowed to steal your own words from earlier.”

“Totally allowed to steal,” Kyle said. “And it’s no biggie. I won’t ask if you don’t want to explain it. But my point was, if anyone has public image issues, it’s not you.”

“That’s not really what I was trying to get at,” Glimmer admitted.

“Then what are you trying to get at?”

Glimmer realized then that the conversation would die of its own accord if she’d just let it, and she wondered why she kept poking at it. Then, staring out at Tir in the distance, she got an idea: the sun in the sky had set low enough that it cast a peculiar light on the spires and towers of the cityscape, and that contrasted with the orange-grey and orange-white of the mountains behind. She pointed it out to Kyle as a way to segue into her point.

“Have you heard what the natives have said about how the city looks against the mountains like that?” she asked.

Kyle narrowed his eyes, studying the view. “Not really. Was I supposed to have heard something?”

“All the Enclave and Imperial soldiers I’ve heard talk about it say the city looks beautiful, especially when the sun hits the skyline like that. But the locals all look at that and think it’s ugly.”

“What?” Kyle looked closer. “How does that make any sense?”

“The Scavrians all revere the mountain range behind it,” she said. “It’s holy land to them, although they aren’t as fanatical about it as some members of the Vestamid are about their own beliefs. The city, though, is new, relatively speaking—only a few hundred years old, and it was built purposefully in front of the mountains as a tribute to their majesty. But the natives, especially the older, more conservative ones, think it’s the height of hubris and pride to try and make the city just as magnificent as the mountains behind it.”

“It’s their capital city,” Kyle said, frowning. “Why would they build it that way if they didn’t like it?”

“It was a mandate from some Regional Governor to build a metropolis here and make it Scavria’s capital,” Glimmer said. “Or maybe even a mandate from the Heartlands itself, who knows. I guess whoever was in charge of the project thought naming it like that would help them build support from the locals, but it wasn’t the locals themselves that did it. They just went along with what the Empire demanded.”

“All the outsiders see a beautiful sprawling city with towers that reflect the sunlight and cast pretty colors,” Kyle said, “but the natives look at it like someone just took a spray can and drew graffiti before their ancient mountain.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m still not seeing how this has anything to do with Catra and bridges,” Kyle said.

“I’m the daughter of an immortal fairy queen and one of the most brilliant sorcerers in Etheria’s history,” Glimmer said. “And I left home to train under one of the Enclave’s most accomplished Battlemages. I’ve made Battlemage myself in less time than it takes most people to become citizens of the Empire, and I’ve even made a name for myself, what with all that ‘Angel of Archanas’ crap.”

Glimmer picked at a thread dangling from her uniform as she spoke. Taline had tried so hard to erase that nervous habit of hers, but it had stuck. “Despite all of that, I still can’t even think of leading a team without descending into panic attacks. Taline has tried to talk me through it, and I know she’s not ecstatic about me staying behind at the evacuation centers. I should be deep in the city, fighting with you guys. Bow is…okay, when he remembers to talk to me. None of us have seen anyone back home face to face in years, but…”

“You’re worried about whether the people who matter most to you see a beautiful city or some pale imitation when they think about you,” Kyle said, voicing aloud what Glimmer couldn’t.

Glimmer nodded, and Kyle took a deep breath.

“I see now,” he said. Another long silence stretched between them, this one much less comfortable than the others, before he finally spoke again. “Lonnie is mad, but then again Lonnie gets mad at everything. She’ll come around. I think once she calms enough to listen to your reasoning, she’ll understand. Rogelio feels the same way as me.”

“Which is?”

“That whatever you’re going through, you need to make decisions that are best for you. Everyone has expectations, especially for prodigy Battlemages during a time when people are looking for miracles.”

Glimmer smiled, and Kyle continued.

 “As for Bow and everyone else? I have no idea what’s going on back home. I’m not allowed to know. But I know they miss you, just like how I know you don’t have anything to worry about with them. Bow misses you the hardest, which is probably why he’s distant.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t, but also, I do,” Kyle said, grinning. “I have the gut instincts of a Vanguard pilot, and those instincts are telling me you have nothing to worry about. As for leading? Only you can say whether or not you are ready for it. It’s in the best interest of the squad that their leader be someone who feels fully confident in their ability…so, thank you for not putting us out in the field with you prematurely if you don’t feel ready.”

Glimmer felt like a weight had been lifted from her. She even believed him about Bow, oddly enough, and that was wonderful. She released her knees and stretched them out again. “Thanks Kyle…I think I needed to hear that.”

“No problem,” he said, glancing over the edge of the rock toward the ground. “Happy to help.”

“What do they have you and Lonnie and Rogelio doing since I turned down my original assignment?”

“Aratoth has taken us on and rotates us with some of his other soldiers,” Kyle said. “We still get field experience, not that we lack that in the first place, mind you, but he’s making sure we aren’t just sitting on the benches while everyone else tries to retake Tir. It’s risky, since he’s technically overstretched when we do go out with his group, but it’s worked out so far.”

Glimmer nodded, but didn’t say anything further. Things had worked out despite the fact she had refused to step up to the plate. So why did she still feel uneasy about everything?

Kyle nudged her gently with his shoulder, drawing her attention. “You don’t think you can set me back down on the ground, do you? I’ve really enjoyed catching up, but I’m technically still supposed to be on duty and I don’t think I can be missing for much longer before someone comes looking for me.”

Glimmer nodded again and floated both of them back down.

“There’s one thing I should say before I go, though,” Kyle said, turning to her when their feet touched the ground.

“What’s that?”

“I never had a moment where I felt ready to be a pilot,” he said. “And I never stopped worrying about whether or not I’d be able carry my team through danger before doing my first real field assignment. Simulations are one thing, but I always worried I’d just up and choke when the time came to perform with actual lives in my hands.”

“Do you still worry about that now?”

“Sometimes,” Kyle said. “But I mostly feel fine, aside from the typical adrenaline everyone gets.”

Glimmer balked as despair started to claw at her. “What was it that changed you?”

“One day it just so happened that I was the person most prepared to handle a mission. I had to go through training in the ‘real’ Horde after leaving Etheria, on top of all the training I did in Etheria’s Horde. About six months into my new training simulations, we were out on a campaign. They needed someone to fly out and extract a team that got pinned down, but all the other experienced pilots were tied up. Out of all the trainees there, I was the one with the best scores and most time in the simulator. It would have been irresponsible for me to let one of the younger guys fly in my place, even if I didn’t feel confident in myself, so I stepped up.”

Glimmer bit at her lip while she considered what he had said.

 “I meant what I said before,” Kyle said. “You should only take command when you feel ready. But in times like now, where war and death are coming in faster than our veterans can handle, you might not get the luxury to stick to doing only things you ‘should’ do. You might just have to step up one day when no one else can, and hope for the best.”

Kyle’s pocket vibrated. He pulled out a thin electronic device and glanced at the screen.

“I have to go,” he said. “I asked Rogelio to warn me if Lonnie started going on the war path looking for me, and he just pinged me. I should get out of here before she finds us.” He flashed her another quick smile and ran off.

Glimmer gave him a halfhearted wave goodbye and watched him go. Her mind was a mess—Kyle’s words somehow helped and hurt at the same time, and as much as she tried, she couldn’t figure out what she should do about it.

An explosion and a low moan sounded off in the distance, carried to her by the winds of a rapidly approaching Scavrian night. When she stilled and concentrated, Glimmer could hear the sounds of battle ringing out to her as well.

She stood there for a long moment, looking at Tir on the horizon. If one didn’t know any better, it almost looked as if the city weren’t besieged by a deadly spreading enemy.

Chapter Text

The first thing they did aboard Eden was look for a doctor. Adora had asked why Kal had set off the security scanners in the hangar, but all Kal said was that people “didn’t want to understand things that scared them,” and, instead of pointing out that answer only made her more confused, Adora decided to just follow him and enjoy her surroundings.

Together, they pushed through the massive superstructure of the spaceport terminal, weaving in and out of aliens of all shapes and sizes pushing carts and cargo, all while Kal continued to mutter darkly to himself; her question must have really set him off.

Adora, for her part, tried her best not to stare at those in the crowd, or fall too far behind when something new and exotic inevitably caught her eye. She was doing a good job, all things considered, until the moment they left the spaceport itself and stepped into the megabuilding adjacent it.

“Try and keep up,” Kal said as he made his way through the extra-wide central corridor of the main level. “And don’t lose your jaw on the floor.”

It was harder to do than Adora imagined. If the spaceport seemed exotic and interesting, the megabuilding was on a different plane of existence, novelty-wise. It seemed like every third step, an especially enticing store would draw her interest, or a particularly bizarre looking alien would cross their path, twice as freaky as anything she’d glimpsed back at the landing port. She almost lost track of Kal completely when she saw one particularly chunky alien, holding two of what she assumed were insect skewers, feasting on one skewer before lowering the second to its belly, where another mouth that unexpectedly appeared from the fat rolls there opened up and gorged.

“Did…did that just happen?” Adora asked, stopping in the middle of the walkway and staring. “Is that thing two people or one?” Kal hadn’t noticed her stop, and she ran to catch up to him when she came back to her senses enough to notice she was falling behind.

Eventually they found their way off the main path to a small clinic, built into a corner of a secluded alleyway. Adora would have protested being pulled away from what practically was a feast of novelty out in the main concourse, but as soon as they entered and she saw that nearly every member of the staff looked like a cross between a praying mantis and housefly, she let out a squeal that fell somewhere between delight and disgust. With all interest in exploring outside gone for the time being, she slammed her butt down in the nearest waiting room chair while Kal checked them in.

“Funny, I thought for sure you would freak out seeing all these Gorm in here,” Kal said, taking the open seat next to her after speaking to the attendant at the front desk.

“Is that what they’re called?” Adora asked, watching them buzz and hum at each other while they worked, their compound eyes never blinking. The aliens waiting in the lobby with them were of a comparable diversity to the mish mash of oddities she saw out on the concourse, but the Gorm were so intriguing she barely noticed the others.

“Why are we here anyways?” she asked. “We’ve been traveling for a while now, and even though I don’t exactly feel completely healed, I don’t feel half as bad as before.” She picked at the set of bandages wound around her chest to make her point. “If anything, I feel hungry, actually. Those instant sand pouches only do so much for you.”

“Okay first of all, the fact you can eat so many of them in one sitting and still be hungry is insane,” Kal said. “And second of all, we’re here to do a little more than just get your injuries checked out.”

Adora flushed. She was hungry a lot. So what? It took a lot to maintain her training and level of fitness. “What else are we here to do?” she asked, choosing not to address his first point. She had a feeling he’d tease her even worse if she tried to defend herself.

He didn’t answer, and she pulled her eyes away from the Gorm to look at him. He was watching someone discreetly, tracking them with his eyes without moving his head. When she followed his line of sight, she saw a tall, freakishly muscled man coming out of the examination rooms at the back, walking toward them. He must have stood about the same height as She Ra, and likely weighed the equivalent of three of her, by Adora’s estimations.

Kal stilled when he got close. Adora was about to look away and pretend she hadn’t been staring when he suddenly looked down at them and their gazes met. She averted her eyes anyways and held her breath.

Long seconds ticked by, but he eventually passed them. It took several seconds longer for her to calm down, for her heart to slow its frantic pounding in her chest.

“Who was that?” Adora asked. She had seen large, intimidating people before and hadn't blinked, so why was this time different? Maybe it was because she reacted off Kal. Seeing him turn stock still like he was tensing for a fight might have tipped her off that something wasn’t right.

“No idea,” Kal said. “Trouble.”

“How do you know?”

Kal shrugged. “Just do. You get a feel for these things after a while.” He relaxed and glanced sidelong at her. “We need to get you immunized.”

“Excuse me?”

Kal turned to face her fully and grinned. “You know, vaccines? The Enclave gave you all a battery of immunizations when they arrived, but places like Eden are even more of a melting pot than most places in the Empire. You’ll find all kinds of nasty strains of bacteria and viruses floating around you wouldn’t find elsewhere. Wouldn’t want you to get a case of Greyscale or Red Death while you’re out here, would we?”

Adora swallowed and Kal laughed. He really was getting a kick out of seeing her inexperience being off Etheria, although that was leagues better than fighting opposite him, she figured. Still, she folded her arms and pouted in the chair, sneaking glances at the Gorm and the other aliens in the waiting room until they were called into the back.

“So, what exactly are we doing here?” Adora asked, spearing another hunk of meat from the communal platter with her fork and popping it into her mouth. They had gotten her immunized and the Gorm doctor (so cool) confirmed she’d be able to take off the chest bandages after another day or so. Most of her other wounds had closed up nicely, giving Adora a much needed boost of confidence that maybe her healing factor from She Ra wasn’t totally out of commission. Now they were deep inside some sit-down place closer to the main walkway, eating something that Adora couldn’t pronounce but tasted fantastic.

Kal placed his fork down on the table and looked at her. “Okay, I get you asking that about the clinic, but we’ve been eating here for an hour and you’re still not sure what we’re doing?”

“No, I mean—” Adora cut off and narrowed her eyes when Kal smirked at her. “You’re just being annoying on purpose, aren’t you? I mean what are we doing here on Eden? What is this place? Who is Ly and why are we going to see her?”

“Eden,” Kal said, drumming his fingers on the table, “is a scoundrel’s paradise. It’s one of the few places people can go to keep clear of the emperor’s prying eyes.” He took a long pull from his flagon of bubbling whatever it was he was drinking and called for a refill. “Ly is an old friend of mine, same as Vasher. We all worked together during the waning years of the Beast war.”

“It sure sounds like she’s not going to be very happy to see you from the way Vasher put it,” Adora said.

“No, I imagine I’ll be lucky to survive that confrontation at all,” Kal said with a wry smile. “Working for the Vestamid hadn’t been very pleasant for either of them, and it’s likely just grown worse with me gone. We need to see her though. She’s the only one that can help us fix Pip.”

“And then Pip will help you read whatever’s on the crystal, and that should help with the current war effort?”

“If my hunch is correct.”

“If your hunch is correct,” Adora said, nodding. “So, who is she then? What kind of person can fix an AI that is way more complicated than anything even the Enclave has come across? I’m totally imagining her to be like Entrapta, but maybe ten times…y’know.” She made a tangled, jerky gesture with her hands and Kal laughed. “Entrapta struggled with Light Hope, so I’m super curious about who you think can fix the AI that woke her up in the end.”

“Actually, I think you’ll be quite surprised when you meet her. She’s not at all like how you expect, but she is brilliant. She was part of the original team that discovered ignominite and researched the Barrier. Ly didn’t build Pip, but she did put her in me, so I’m hoping she’ll be able to work something out.”

Adora almost choked on her food at hearing that. Kal caught the look in her eyes, and the question that was implicit in them.

“Yes,” he said. “Ly was a member of Evelyn’s science team.” He glanced about calmly after he spoke and then lowered his voice even further. “Although I wouldn’t get in the habit of saying her name still. As out of place as Eden is, it’s still not safe.”

A million questions flashed across Adora’s mind, but she only asked one: “You knew her?”

Kal’s eyes drifted to his flagon as he tapped a pensive beat on the table once more. He shook his head. “No one knew her. Corynth thought he knew her. Ly and Vasher like to think they did too, since they worked together for years. I don’t even pretend to have known her.”

Adora opened her mouth, but stopped short of saying the first thing that came to mind. Something about the way Kal spoke—about the tone of his voice and the slump in his body. It told her he was answering more than just her question on the surface.

He mentioned working with Ly and Vasher during the waning years of the war. He mentioned Corynth. Was Evelyn no longer around when Kal came along? But Evelyn and Corynth had died at the conclusion of the war—they were the conclusion of the war, as far as she knew. It was hard to not ask for clarity, but now that she was off Etheria, Salas’ warning about keeping that woman’s name out of her mouth came back to her. Even if this place was beyond the emperor’s reach, Kal too had still warned her to be careful, so careful she would be.

“You mentioned something just now that came up back on the landing bay,” Adora said instead. “The Vestamid. I’ve heard some things about them back home, but nothing much. Who are they?”

“An extremely dangerous and reclusive sect of cultists,” Kal said, “who also happen to hold a monopoly on production and distribution of ignominite throughout the empire.”

“You mean to tell me the very thing aside from the Barrier that’s helping hold the Beast back is entirely in the hands of a single group of fanatics? How does that even happen?”

“Do you know how we get the stuff in the first place?” Kal asked.

“I know we mine for it, but not much more than that.”

“It’s incredibly hard to mine,” he said after getting his refill from the waitress and thanking her. “That’s why it’s monopolized. It only comes from worlds the Beast had engulfed during the first war, since ignominite is technically the calcified remains of the Beast itself. The problem is, when you travel to one of those dead worlds to mine ignominite, you experience…side effects.”

“What kind of side effects are we talking about here? Doesn’t sound like just a stomach ache.”

Kal shook his head. “Some people have gone insane from just looking at planets like that from orbit, let alone landing on them for extended periods of time for a mining expedition. I’m talking about psychosis and permanent internments in a psyche ward. Some people succumb in a matter of hours, others take a few days, but no one will go mine for the stuff. It doesn’t matter how lucrative the contract, everyone steers clear.”

“Except the Vestamid,” Adora said. “How do they do it? Are all of them already crazy or something?”

“Essentially, yes.”

Adora blinked at him in surprise. She had meant it as a joke, but seriously?

“They’re religious zealots,” Kal said, seeing the disbelief on her face. “Extremely unorthodox theists who believe they are ‘vested’ so to speak with the authority of the late Daiamid Shapers. Hence the name ‘Vestamid.’ They worship the Beast as their God, and believe that the Shapers like Corynth were messiahs who communed with their deity.” He rolled his eyes while he laughed through his nose. “They think they are ‘doing God’s work’ so to speak by mining the Beast’s remains. All of the issues a normal person might experience on a dead planet, they just see as a divine experience—them communing with their God as the Shapers once did.”

“That’s…all sorts of screwed up,” Adora said, placing her fork down on the table too. Her appetite had suddenly vanished.

“Agreed,” Kal said, spearing a vegetable before chewing on it. “You think the galaxy at large idolize Corynth? Wait until you find out how fanatical the Vestamid are about him. Or about Taline.” He shuddered, and Adora frowned, thinking on that.

“One thing that doesn’t make sense to me,” Adora said, “is why would they help enable us to fight the Beast if they revere it as a god? They mine its remains, and the empire uses it in weapons to fight its thralls on a more equal footing. Wouldn’t that be like, I don’t know…heresy to them, or something?”

Kal shrugged. “Don’t ask me to explain their motivations or rationale,” he said. “I don’t understand them. No one is privy to their dogma, since they’re so protective about it, but there are some rumors floating around saying they view fighting against the Beast as a means of purging sin—that by giving their lives at the zenith of the last war to lock it away, the Shapers convinced it to let the people of the galaxy prove their sanctity in battle against it when it inevitably seeped out of its cage again.”

"They really spun being saved from total annihilation at the last minute into an allegory for purgatory?”

Kal shrugged again and Adora fought to keep from gaping at him. She shouldn’t be surprised, she reasoned; there were as many coping mechanisms for trauma as there were varieties of people, and she more than most should understand that. Still though, it was…hard to wrap her head around it, the beliefs of a fringe group such as the Vestamid.

“Ly and Vasher are working for these people?” she asked. “And you did too, sometime in the past?”

“In a sense,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” Adora forced herself to eat another bite of food. “Everyone back at the hangar except Vasher seemed uncomfortable when their name was brought up—like they were surprised and afraid to hear the name mentioned. I get that the Vestamid are weird, but why would they act as if they were surprised to hear the name if they’re working for them?”

“They don’t work for them directly, per se,” Kal said. “Nobody here is, technically, and certainly nobody here shares in their beliefs. On the surface, this Eden is run much like any other planetary settlement. They even had those warbirds come out to us and pretend to be Imperial Navy.” He took another swig from his drink. “But this place is far from normal, remember? It’s a hideout for criminals, like I said, sitting on the sunward side of a tiny planet that should have fallen into the star’s gravitational field long ago already. No one is supposed to know about it or find it unless they’re supposed to. Do you think the Vestamid would openly flaunt the fact they have a presence on a place like this?”

“You’re saying this is a front?” Adora asked. “They supply the empire and help the war in public, and then have connections to a hidden outlaw settlement in private?”

“Not just that,” Kal said. “No singular entity aside from the empire could afford the technology and the upkeep on a place like this. It’s being prevented from falling into the sun, for crying out loud. But the empire wouldn’t fund a location the emperor wouldn’t have eyes on. The Vestamid don’t just have a presence here, they own this planetoid outright, and no one is allowed to acknowledge it. Couple that with the fact this isn’t the only ‘Eden’ that exists, and you have the makings of a grand conspiracy.”

“How does Horde Prime not crack down on something like that?” Adora asked. “Isn’t he paranoid a group as powerful as them will cause problems? I have a hard time believing he has no idea about these underground sites, but even if he didn’t, why wouldn’t he at least move to take their monopoly away from them?”

“That,” Kal said, gesturing with his fork, “is a very good question. People on this station? They’ve already asked themselves all the questions you just did, and no one knows any answers for sure. Some suspect the emperor is actually working hand in hand with the Vestamid in secret. What the heck is the point to all these stations they maintain, aside from the fact its lucrative for them? What are they planning? Or is Horde Prime working with them behind the scenes for his own reasons? It’s shady as hell, which is why everyone reacts the way they do when their name is brought up.”

Adora paused before her mind ran away with the conspiracies, and thought back to what originally got them into that conversation to begin with.

“If they’re as powerful as some people think they are,” she said, “then it makes sense why Vasher and Ly would be hiding out here. I heard that Prime conscripted or killed everyone from that old science team.”

Kal nodded. “There are some still hiding out, and no one knows about it. Well, aside from me, and now you.” He grimaced all of a sudden and dropped his fork. It clattered to the table and he yanked his hand back, holding it in his other hand, close to his chest. He hissed in pain, and Adora could see his fingers shaking.

“Are you okay?” Adora asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine.” Kal forced the words out between gritted teeth and pulled away when she reached forward to touch him. The look he gave her wasn’t friendly. It reminded Adora that this was someone who, up until recently, she had thought of as an enemy.

“I saw the same thing happen to you back on the ship,” she said, remembering how his fingers shook when she first accused him of being a spy. She thought him just enraged then, but now she suspected differently. “What’s going on?”

“I’m fine,” Kal said again, squeezing his eyes shut as he took deep breaths. The tremors ceased and the tension in his shoulders abated. When he next spoke, his voice sounded tired. “It’s just blowback from using magic. Even after all this time, what I did on top of your castle to save your life is still affecting me.”

“I’ve heard of people getting tired from using too much magic,” Adora said. “Glimmer could barely use her powers for a while after Shadow Weaver got her hands on her, but it’s been days for you, Kal.”

“Turns out, coming into contact with the Beast as often as I did in the past has detrimental effects on a person,” Kal said, forcing a smile. “Who knew?”

Adora didn’t laugh with him, but to her surprise, he actually gave her more of an explanation this time.

“By all rights I should be dead,” he said. “Instead, I have these spells of pain every time I use…well, my spells.” He gave a little chuckle at his joke and it only made Adora worry more. It was scary almost, how he could look so feral for one moment then perfectly at ease the next.

“That first war must have been awful,” she said. “I know that’s probably putting it lightly, but just hearing and learning about what happened…it’s tough to even think about. I can’t imagine living through it, and I especially can’t imagine what fighting through it like you did was like.”

Kal didn’t say anything back, immediately. He sat there, flexing the hand that had trembled earlier as if to exercise it, and Adora chanced another question.

“Does that have anything to do with why you tripped the alarm back at the hangar?”

“Yes,” Kal said. “Those things are designed specifically to pick up concentrations of the Beast inside a person.”

“You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you? You already contacted Vasher by the time we landed.”

“I did,” Kal said, nodding. “Things would have turned out ugly if he hadn’t come. I’m…grateful he did.”

“They called you an Abomination,” Adora said. “I’ve heard that term used before too. But you don’t look or act like one, at least not from what I’ve been told about them.”

“I’m not an Abomination,” Kal said, glancing about when he said the room as if he were making sure no one overheard them. He sighed and leaned back into the seat, making it creak. “Abominations are intelligent, yes, but they’re malicious, and their only goal is to spread another infection. Not only that, but they don’t retain the memories of their host from before they were turned. You’d certainly not find an Abomination hanging around people like Ly and Vasher for eight years, or sneaking around Etheria for three.”

“You’ve been exposed to the Beast enough times that it hurts you to do magic, but it hasn’t actually turned you? I didn’t know there was that distinction.”

“Neither does most anyone else,” Kal said. “That’s what I meant when I said people don’t understand and don’t want to understand. All those security officers in the hangar saw was a scanner beeping at them saying I was tainted. They don’t care enough to distinguish between someone exposed and someone turned, they were afraid.” He blinked, looking morose. “Can’t say I blame them, though. It’s rare for someone to survive exposure at all, let alone enough to trip a scanner and still look relatively put together.”

A kindred feeling bloomed in Adora’s chest upon hearing that, and it took her completely by surprise. That feeling of isolation, of being rare and misunderstood and not by choice, she understood that. “How much can someone take before they turn, then?” she asked.

“It depends,” Kal said. “Remember how I said some people go crazy just looking at a planet covered by the dead remains of the Beast from space? The number of people with no tolerance is so high, it might as well be the be-all-end-all statistic. Some ‘lucky’ few actually have a tolerance.” He sighed. “Even still, the Beast doesn’t just leave you, given time. Your body can’t filter it out like other toxins. Even if only a small amount touches you, it will have a degrading effect that accumulates over the years. For me, it’s been over a decade of living with it, and every year gets harder to do magic without feeling the consequences.”

They lapsed into silence after that, neither speaking for a long time while they ate. It wasn’t lost on Adora how forthcoming Kal had been, and she appreciated it. “Thank you,” she said after some time had passed. “Thank you for telling me.”

Kal nodded.

Adora made him pay for a new wardrobe after they finished eating, only answering him with a raised eyebrow and a cocked hip when he asked what was wrong with the clothes he had loaned her. When she picked out something that fit better and didn’t have a ridiculous logo on the front of the top, they found an elevator and rode it down a few stories underground. Immediately, Adora felt how much cooler the air was. It  was even cooler than the hangar, and she tried to stave off the chill as she followed Kal all the way to the hotel room Vasher had promised to set them up with.

To her pleasant surprise, it was spacious and well-kept. They had a separate bedroom each, connected by a shared living space and bathroom. Low ceilings, warm lights, and a beige and black color scheme made the whole place feel cozy. Adora tested out the padding on the couch before heading to one of the rooms, saying she felt tired and was going to take a nap. Kal said nothing, so she clicked the door shut behind her and went to sit on the bed.

Truthfully, she wasn’t tired at all. What she wanted was a bit of privacy so she could finally do something she had wanted to since finding out she had left Etheria: contact Glimmer.

Out of habit, she ran her left hand along the embossed patterns on her gauntlet, fingering the runestone there before turning to her PDA on her other wrist, tapping it awake. It was cracked and busted from the fight atop the Crystal Castle, but still functional, so she navigated to Glimmer’s contact card and tried to send her a quick message.

It failed when the device couldn’t get a signal.

Adora grit her teeth and looked at all the connections the PDA could detect. Nothing showed up, which was weird because she knew there must be at least something on this rock.

You’re on a secret settlement that’s supposed to be a way stop for thugs and mercenaries, she thought to herself. What did you expect?

Still, the idea of not being able to contact anyone at all out there perturbed her. Despite their shaky alliance, Adora was under no impression that Kal was actually her friend. Even if she could admit she thought they were starting to warm up to each other, she had already learned first-hand what happened when you trusted people too easily.

Catra was her biggest lesson—someone she had grown up with and had considered her closest friend…maybe even something more than a friend. And despite that, Adora still got burned. No, she trusted to easily, and couldn’t make that mistake again, ever. She wouldn’t. Kal was right when he said trust wasn’t something to give out easily; she was just heeding his advice.

Adora tried again to find a connection and gave up in a huff when still nothing came.

“I’m gonna go out for a bit,” she said, stepping back out into the living area and announcing her plans to the open room without looking first to see if anyone was there to receive them.

Kal glanced up at her from his perch on the couch; he was hunched over the coffee table, tinkering again at the sprawling, cascading symbols and designs of Pips source code on the portable computer he had set up there. “You okay?”

Adora averted her gaze and kicked her toe into the carpeted floor. “I need to get out and just…I don’t know. Explore. For a bit.”

Kal nodded. “You should take some money with you then.” He fished around inside the bag next to him before pulling out the wad of cash Adora had seen him use to pay for everything so far. When he peeled off a few bills and placed them on the coffee table, he said, “just in case you see something you want to buy, y’know?” before turning back to focus on his work.

Adora stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. She had expected him to refuse her, or at least balk at the idea of her going out alone. Encouraging her and giving her spending change was literally the last reaction she was expecting to get. She padded over and grabbed the money, fingering it restlessly with both hands.

“Just like that?” she asked, finally pocketing the cash. “I can go?”

“Yeah?” He sounded confused, although he still didn’t look up from his work. “You know how I asked you if you were carrying any weapons before we got off? Yeah, no one else except for security and people the Vestamid consider ‘extra valuable’ are allowed to carry weapons. It’s still dangerous out there, of course, but you won’t get into any serious trouble unless you go looking, and I know you can take care of yourself if you do.”

“It’s really okay? You’re not going to try and convince me to stay or something?”

Kal furrowed his brow and finally looked up at her. “Did you want me to? I was under the impression you’d probably not give a damn what I’d say and leave anyway if I tried to stop you.”

Adora laughed at that. “You aren’t wrong. I’m just…surprised is all.”

Kal turned back to the code, and Adora couldn’t help but feel slighted. Was her desire to go wandering around on a supposedly dangerous settlement, alone and without any weapons really that inconsequential of a topic? Nothing she had done or chosen not to do had been inconsequential before.

“This is the first time you’ve ever left Etheria,” Kal said, filling the silence that had grown between them again. “And there’s plenty of interesting things to do here. Go have fun.”

Now Adora felt guilty for fighting the urge to trust him, although she pushed the thought aside as she headed for the exit. She turned back to look at him one more time before closing the door behind her. He was still leaned over, plugging away at the computer, not even sparing her a second look. She shut the door and heard the lock click, still feeling just as conflicted about what to think of him as ever.

As time went on and she wandered, that general feeling of unease and confusion still didn’t leave, as had hoped. She explored every section of the surrounding floors she could get to, heading back up to the main concourse on the ground level and exploring the dozens upon dozens of the shops that had caught her attention earlier. Giant department stores with magnificent cuts of clothes and exotic perfumes were lined up on either side as if waiting to be explored, but it was the tiny outlets in secluded alleyways, with their assortment of knick-knacks and baubles, that really piqued her interest.

One of them had a section selling figurines and paraphernalia about the Shaper, Corynth, and Adora suppressed a laugh and an eyeroll at seeing it. Glimmer had complained to her more than once in the past of how Catra would stop and scrutinize every one she’d come across when they went shopping together on their off time. Adora had no idea why Catra might have taken to him like most others in the galaxy had, and the notion seemed especially ridiculous after seeing how flippantly Kal had spoken of him back at the restaurant.

He might have saved the galaxy, sure, Adora thought, but he’s just a person at the end of the day. Is everyone going to make me look like a messiah if I save people this time?

She frowned and leaned closer, studying the mask on the closest figurine, before shuddering and pointedly turning away when it reminded her a little too much of Shadow Weaver. Maybe that was what had pulled Catra’s interest to begin with.

Before long, she found the food.

Stands and outlets bursting with snacks and sweets seemed to pop out at her on every third corner after she noticed the first one. Before long, she had to fight to stop buying every little thing just to get a taste, because she’d surely get sick otherwise. Most of the stuff she wasn’t even sure she could digest.

There was an arcade she explored, loud and obnoxious and flashy with games. She passed by someone up on the third floor playing an instrument she didn’t recognize. It sounded like a dying, wailing animal, and although a fair amount of people had gathered who seemed to actually like the music, she couldn’t get away from it fast enough. Despite her best effort to actually enjoy herself as Kal insisted, that uneasy feeling from before still followed her, clinging like a shadow no matter what she did to try and shake it.

Adora wandered through a less busy part of the megabuilding, dragging her feet, when she rounded the corner and came across a sight that actually managed to pull her out of her slump: a massive LCD screen stretched from one end of the wall to the other, as tall as she was, showing a beautiful view of trees and beaches and an ocean that stretched to the horizon. Come see Eden’s beautiful beachfront, read the caption at the top. The only beachfront this secluded in the entire galaxy.

She knew it was an advertisement, just like she knew there was no way that beach was natural, either. Likely, it was another artificial construction, maintained by the Vestamid, for the sole purpose of entertaining whichever guests had come to funnel money into their pockets and further their schemes. But still, despite how obvious the pandering was, it managed to lull Adora for a moment, pulling her somewhere full of water and beaches and forests and nature, despite being so far from home.

She sighed and stared at it a moment longer, letting herself pretend for a moment she was there instead of on some sterile compound. Then she checked her PDA, hoping that maybe being out of the hotel room would afford her a connection, or at least a way to pay to get one. There was still nothing—no  way to get in touch with Glimmer, or anyone else.

Adora sighed and tried to concentrate on the advertisement again, trying to squash that lonely feeling in her chest. If even a sliver of that positivity she had felt from the billboard moments earlier came back, she’d consider it a win. She was so lost in herself trying to relax that, when the voice behind her spoke, she startled.

“Well, well, well,” came the voice, low and gravelly. “I thought I might have recognized you from earlier.”

Adora yelped and spun around, putting easily ten feet of distance between her and whoever was there. She recognized him immediately, mostly because he was impossible to forget: it was the hulking mass of flesh and muscle she had locked eyes with back at the clinic. She should have heard him coming long before he got this close…how had she not picked up on it?

“No need to be so jumpy,” the man said. “It’s just a friendly hello.”

“Little close and sudden for a friendly hello if you ask me,” she said, stepping back to put even more distance between them.

“And she’s got a sense of humor too,” he said, taking a step forward and smiling wide enough to show all his teeth.

“What is it you want?”

“Oh, nothing much,” the man said. “I just couldn’t help noticing that little number you have on your arm there.”

Adora furrowed her brow and held up her PDA.

The man shook his head. “The other one.”

A stone felt like it dropped in Adora’s stomach at that. She had hoped he was talking about the PDA, even though she knew he wasn’t. Without thinking about it, she grabbed her runestone bracer with her other hand and angled herself away in an effort to hide it.

“That’s it,” the man said, taking another step forward and smiling wider. “I can feel something coming from it. It’s calling me. Hand it over and I’ll let you go.”

“This isn’t yours,” Adora said, tensing her body to run.

“Oh, but it will be soon,” the man said. “I can just take the whole arm, if you’d prefer.”

If Adora had ready and reliable access to She Ra, she might have challenged him, but the guy was a literal mountain and she couldn’t risk it. Not out here, alone, with no backup or any way to contact someone.

Adora took another step back and felt something cold and hard press up against her back. She glanced quickly behind her and felt the floor in her stomach open up, dropping the stone  there even further: the man had somehow maneuvered her against the billboard. How could she be so stupid? She had trained for years to handle scenarios exactly like this, and still had somehow been cornered so easily? Had she really let her guard down so much?

She bunched her hands into fists, preparing to fight just long enough to get away, when a voice off to the side drew both of their attentions.

“That’s enough.”

Vasher rounded the corner, striding toward them with a calm expression. “This one’s with me. I don’t know who you are and frankly I don’t care, but you better get out of here.”

Adora flicked her eyes from Vasher to the stranger and back. For a moment, she feared a fight would break out, especially when Vasher calmly but firmly rested his hand on the sidearm at his hip.

That’s right! she thought. Vasher was part of security, so he’d be allowed to carry.

Even if the stranger were twenty times stronger than either of them, he’d likely not survive a bullet. He seemed to think the same, because he harrumphed and stomped off and away without another word.

“Are you okay?” Vasher asked, turning to her. The thick accent Adora had heard back at the hangar somehow worked miracles to calm her nerves.

“I am now,” she said. “Thank you for coming to help me. I was right about to try and deck him in the nose and make a break for it.”

Vasher looked her up and down with one eyebrow quirked. “I know you can fight, but that man would have snapped you in two.” He made a ‘breaking’ gesture with both hands. “Like a twig.”

Adora shrunk into herself watching him make the same gesture a second and then third time. “I don’t doubt it,” she said. “How did you even find me anyway?”

“Kal asked me to watch out for you as a favor,” Vasher said. “I said okay, but he asks for too many favors.”

Adora gave a nervous laugh and rubbed the back of her neck. She wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or incensed about being essentially spied on. “Either way, thank you for scaring him off.”

“It’s no problem,” Vasher said, turning and beginning to stump off. When she didn’t follow him, he stopped and glanced at her over his shoulder. “We need to go now.”

“Go where?”

“The Garden.” He glanced quickly at his own PDA at his wrist. “It's almost time for Ly’s show. I’ll bring you”

It was time to see her already? Adora hadn’t even realized how much time had passed while she was exploring. Maybe she had been having a good time after all? Or maybe she was so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t realized how fast time was passing her by. The fact she couldn’t tell one from the other concerned her.

Uncertain of the correct answer, and uncertain about what and where exactly ‘The Garden’ was, Adora hurried to follow in Vasher’s wake, scanning her surroundings the entire time to make sure that massive stranger didn’t sneak up on them a second time.

Chapter Text

Adora watched the display on the elevator panel count down with growing apprehension. Wherever ‘The Garden’ was that Vasher was taking her to, it apparently lay deep in the bowels of Eden—far deeper than even their hotel underground was.

The elevator car slowed to a stop. A ding sounded, the doors slid open, and Adora followed Vasher out onto the central concourse of the 15th basement floor.

It was dark like night, and cold enough to make Adora want to rub her shoulders for warmth. Vasher offered his coat to her, but it smelled of smoke and whiskey, and she turned it down after imagining how comical she would look wearing it, like she had a fur-lined leather blanket engulfing her.

The longer they walked and the more of this level’s concourse she saw, the further Adora came to realize that the lower levels of Eden were meant to be like a completely different world compared to what was near the surface. The ceiling was painted in a way that made it seem like there was no ceiling at all—that they were instead walking under a vibrant night sky with stars twinkling in the black above their heads. The floor was made of cobblestone, and it gave off a muted clack with each of their steps, unlike the polished smooth flooring of the higher levels. Iron lampposts wrought in the style of old oil streetlamps lit the area in misty, muted tones.

The shops on either side of the main walkway beckoned to her with a different kind of energy than the shops above too. Each seemed to panhandle for attention with their bright neon signs and window coverings, all designed with advertisings and slogans that fueled a sense of mystique and primal curiosity inside her. Adora wondered what kinds of toys a shop named ‘Sappho’s Playthings’ sold, and what child would come so far down in a seemingly seedy part of the station for them.

“Hey there, big man,” said a voice off to the side. “Are you and your girlfriend looking for a fun time?”

Adora looked and saw a svelte man, wearing too much makeup and a fishnet outfit that showed off way more skin than she was prepared to see, standing off to the side with his hip cocked out and a coy expression on his face. Vasher turned just enough to give the man a dangerous look and he stopped short.

“Sorry Vasher, didn’t recognize you there.” The low light of the floor combined with his neon makeup and twisted the terrified expression on his face to a comical degree. “I saw the girl and thought…well, never mind. Please don’t tell Lysithea I tried to solicit you. She’ll have me by the balls come morning.”

Vasher grunted and Adora couldn’t tell whether that meant he’d agreed to keep silent or not, but it was enough for the man. He backed away slowly, nervous look still on his face, then turned completely around and rushed off. When he did so, Adora saw that the fishnet outfit he wore—which was already precariously designed just looking at it from the front—covered absolutely nothing of him from behind, and she got an eye full of bare-naked butt cheeks, glaring in the light because of how pale they were.

Oh…my…god.

She averted her gaze, but the damage was already done. That exchange had flipped a kind of switch in her, and suddenly she was acutely aware that many of the people on the concourse she had up until then only paid less than a passing glance at were dressed in a similar fashion. Couples walked arm in arm, some of them pointing excitedly at shops with furtive smiles, others strolling along in a more secretive and tentative manner with flushed faces, all of them whispering to each other in intimate voices. Even the ones not dressed as scantily as that man still wore clothes Adora wouldn’t describe as anything other than ‘brave.’ You certainly wouldn’t have caught her wearing anything like that; in fact, her and Vasher seemed to be one of only a handful on the concourse dressed appropriately at all.

Someone wandered by in a form hugging dress Adora swore was see through. Six shops in a row on either side of them had men, women, and aliens she wasn’t sure even had a gender to begin with all standing outside, soliciting those passing nearby for ‘company.’ Adora heard one of them outright ask a nearby couple if they wanted to ‘take turns watching them ride their partner like a bicycle,’ and Adora nearly choked.

“Where are we?” she asked, agitated and flushed. “Vasher. Where the hell are you taking me?”

She caught the small smile that flashed across his lips. He had been waiting to see this reaction from her.

“To the Garden,” he said. “Like I told you earlier.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she said. “If we were going to some sleezy part of the settlement of all places, a little heads up in advance would have been nice, you know.” She stopped walking. “I’m not taking another step until you tell me exactly what the Garden is. I don’t want more surprises.”

“Are you uncomfortable?” Vasher asked, looking at her.

“Yes, I’m uncomfortable! How could I not be uncomfortable?”

“I thought Kal would have already explained. I’m sorry.”

Adora was about to go off when she saw Kal himself approaching from a distance.

“Explain what?” he asked, walking up to them and adjusting the strap of the backpack he carried so it didn’t bunch up the fabric of a fresh shirt he had put on. Thankfully, he came dressed like a normal person as well.

Adora looked up at the sign above the building they had stopped in front of. The words ‘the Garden’ were anchored above the entrance in cursive neon pink, and Adora wondered if it were life’s way of tormenting her, negating all the grandstanding she had done moments earlier on account of them having already arrived.

A long line of patrons snaked from the entrance and curved around the far corner out of sight. A bulky alien with four arms stood in front of the one open door with a glare on his face, checking slips of paper one by one at the front of the line before letting people in. Punchy music thrummed from the inside, reverberating through the cobblestone and coming through the front doors heavily muted.

“You said we were going to watch Ly’s show so we could meet with her after,” Adora said to both Kal and Vasher. “Why are we down here in what I can only assume is Eden’s red-light district?”

“Because Ly performs here,” Kal said, flashing her a toothy grin that matched Vasher’s own. They both of them were like hyenas eyeing prey they intended to play with. “I told you she wasn’t going to be what you expected.”

Adora grumbled but didn’t say anything more. She followed Kal and Vasher to the front door. They bypassed the line entirely, and the bouncer only nodded to Vasher before letting all three of them in. The music ratcheted louder the moment they walked through, the bass thumping hard enough Adora felt each pulse rattle her bones. When they got past the counter and to the main area, she finally recognized the Garden for what it truly was: a nightclub.

Whereas the outside concourse gave the impression of an artificial night out on the streets of an ancient city, the inside of the Garden was just dark. Neon lights rimmed the walls, giving her the general outline of a large room with a spacious center dance floor. A raised stage stood in the back with a floor-to-ceiling pole installed in its center, and a number of private booths lined the perimeter. The floor was packed, and a bar with six bartenders and a wall full of booze stood just far enough away to be separate but easily accessible.

“You have the booth closest to the stage,” Vasher said. “Let me take you.”

“You aren’t staying with us?” Kal asked, as both him and Adora followed him down the steps to skirt the far wall toward the stage.

“Not this time,” Vasher said. “I’m doing damage control. Ly is not happy.”

“You told her we were here?” Kal asked.

“I feared what leaving it a surprise would do.”

They reached the booth and Adora slid in after Kal. When she did, the music suddenly dampened.

“The booths all have noise suppressor fields installed under the seats,” Kal said, seeing her surprise. Despite speaking at a normal volume, Adora heard him easily, and still could enjoy the music in the background too.

“Come here often?” she asked, tone conveying either disapproval or curiosity—she honestly couldn’t tell which herself.

“It’s been three years, remember? But even before then, I wouldn’t come as often as you’d think. And not for the reasons you’d think either,” Kal said in a level voice completely at odds with the smug look on his face. “Ly started performing here as a hobby before I left. I have a feeling it’s her main gig now.”

“What did she do before?” Adora asked, only half paying attention as she watched the dancers on the floor, the DJ in the back, and the waitresses and waiters carrying platters of alcohol and food to and from the bar to the other occupied booths.

“Smuggling.”

That caught her attention. “She did what?”

“Smuggling,” Kal said again. “We all did. Lots of ignominite crystals and munitions across Imperial regional borders.”

“So, she went from smuggling contraband with you to working at a nightclub? How does that even happen?”

Their waitress came before Kal could answer, and all interest in hearing what that answer might have been vanished as soon as Adora saw her.

She was all smiles, holding a small tablet in one hand to take their order. An intricate dragon tattoo snaked from her exposed shoulder down the entire side-length of her body, peeking out from the deliberate rips in her top and skirt before coiling around her leg and terminating at her ankle. It glowed green against her skin from the blacklight in the club, and Adora could clearly see the chisel of muscle on the exposed parts of her body—the girl worked out. Adora couldn’t get enough.

She left, shooting her a wink as she turned.

“Wha?” Adora said, her brain having jumpstarted at the loss of attention. “Why’d she leave? I didn’t even get to order or see a menu.”

“She asked you what you wanted, but I don’t think you realized  it,” Kal said, barely suppressing his laughter. “You were too busy gawking at her, so I just ordered for the both of us. Did you really not notice her looking you in the face and talking to you?”

Adora was glad it was dark in the club because she felt herself flush so hard her face burned. Kal finally lost his restraint and burst out laughing in tears.

“Hey!” she said, wishing harder than she’d ever wished in her life for the floor to open up and swallow her whole. “I’ve been caught off guard more times than I can count in the past few days, okay? Don’t tease me.”

“I’m sorry,” Kal said, still trying to suppress laughter. “I’m not trying to be mean, I swear. It’s just, you’ve had such a sour face on this entire time, and to see your eyes almost pop out of their head like that because of some pretty waitress is just too funny.”

Adora was scandalized. “Sour face? I don’t have a sour face!”

“Yes, you do!” Kal said, leaning forward and gesturing over their shared table. “My god, yes you do. For three years I wandered around Etheria and saw you on broadcasts or on visits to kingdoms. I even saw you in person a few times before you recognized me. And every time I saw you, the only thing I could think of was how miserable you looked.”

“You’re one to talk,” Adora said. “I couldn’t tell if you were a person or a corpse when I first saw you, since you looked half-dead already.”

“Half dead and still kicked your ass up and down the room until your castle woke up.”

Adora scowled and he held up his hands in a peace offering, the ghost of a smile still on his lips. “You’re right though,” he said. “I’d been running myself ragged far, far too long by the time you realized I wasn’t supposed to be around. I was probably halfway there before I even set foot on Etheria, truth be told. That’s why I’m especially qualified to know what a sour face looks like. You need a vacation, and that’s coming from me of all people.”

Adora rolled her eyes but let the conversation die, trying instead to soak in the ambience of the club and actually maybe enjoy herself. As insufferable as Kal could be, he did have a point. Even wandering the station on her own earlier only left her more shaken after that man confronted her. He had wanted her runestone, and if he somehow got it away from her? So much for ever using She Ra or Heart…so much for defeating the Beast and saving the galaxy. Sacrificing her relationship with Catra…

She was spiraling again. It was so easy to get lost.

If she didn’t take the time to at least try and unwind like Glimmer and Angella and, god, even Salas and Kal had and were urging her to, then she’d truly be hopeless. Adora let her eyes wander the dance floor again, subtly trying to spot their waitress and her shiny dragon tattoo among the crowd.

The music turned down and Adora saw the DJ in the corner pull the mic mounted on his setup closer to his mouth.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Are you all having a good time at tonight?”

The crowd gave a muted cheer and the DJ shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like the shout of anyone really having a good time—let me try that again: are you all having a good time tonight  at the Garden?”

The crowd cheered even louder and the DJ flashed a wide grin. “Now that’s more like it! We have a special guest here to perform for you today, and I have the great pleasure of introducing her to the stage. So, ladies and gentlemen of all colors and races, please give a warm welcome to the Temptress herself: the one, the only, Lysithea of Tantrice!”

The crowd roared again and Adora turned her attention to the stage when it lit up. A woman in heels and a fur-lined dress that hugged her curves strutted out. She rested a hand up high on the pole in the center, and Adora felt the blood drain from her head; if she had found their waitress cute enough to gawk, she didn’t think she had the vocabulary to describe Lysithea or her own reaction at seeing her. She had never seen someone so intimidatingly attractive before.

The crowd’s cheering died down enough for Adora to hear that the DJ had put on a new track—something that started with only a simple drum pattern. Slowly, more layers added onto the track, countermelodies played by synthesized tenors and altos, contributing rhythms that turned the original melody into fleshed-out chords, and a low, thrumming, throaty bass that rounded out the sound.

Lysithea hadn’t moved from her pose—ratcheting up the tension in the room by standing firm against music that compelled others to dance—and the crowd only grew more excited. The music built, growing louder, its melody and counter melody weaving in and out of prominence with one another.

Finally—finally—in in the final four counts at the zenith of the buildup, Lysithia pulled her dress off and threw it to the floor in one smooth motion, revealing a stunning lace outfit. Adora thought her heart had stopped. Then Lysithea hoisted herself up on the pole just as the beat dropped, began her routine, and Adora reassessed: maybe it was a stroke she was in mortal peril of experiencing, and not a flatlining heart.

The crowd went nuts, and Adora could sense at the edge of her awareness that Kal was giving her a shit eating grin. She didn’t care that her mouth was wide open; she didn’t care how obvious it was she was entranced, and she didn’t care how blatantly she stared. The stroke or heart attack could turn literal, instead of metaphorical, and she’d die happy in that moment. The only thing her two remaining, working brain cells could focus on was not taking her eyes off the performance.

And what a performance it was. Lysithea was as flexible as she was strong, spinning on the pole in time with the music, capping particular high points in the songs with crazy, show-stopping poses. Adora had no idea how she managed it, let alone how she made it seem like pole dancing was as easy as walking or breathing.

Lysithea’s routine ended when, after having climbed near the top of the double-height ceiling, flipping upside down, and holding herself there by her thighs around the pole, she dropped straight down, stopping just shy of the floor in a dramatic pose in perfect time with the end of the final song.

The crowd roared their approval and Lysithia planted her feet back on solid ground. She grabbed her dress from the end of the stage, took a deep bow, and disappeared through the back with a wave and a smile.

“Told you she wasn’t what you’d expect,” Kal said, grin still plastered on his face.

“Holy shit,” Adora said, earning a look of mock surprise from Kal at having heard her swear. “That was amazing!”

The waitress returned and placed two drinks on the table between them. She shot Adora a smile. Thankfully, Adora had recovered enough to properly smile back and say thank you, but her reaction to seeing her and her tattoo again was far less powerful after the high Lysithea’s performance had given her.

Adora leaned forward to take one of the drinks from the table and sipped at it. It was bitter, and she probably wouldn’t have liked it enough to finish if it weren’t for the fact her throat had gone extremely dry. She took another sip, and another, and then another until it was practically gone.”

“Slow down,” Kal said, laughing. “I’m not promising to carry you out of here if you can’t walk on your own.” He picked up his own drink and swirled it around in the glass before taking a sip.

Adora saw Vasher and Lysithea, who had changed into more comfortable clothes, come out a side door and head straight for them. Lysithea did not look pleased, and Adora considered warning Kal until she saw he was already tracking her approach. She marched straight into their booth and right up to his face before—

SMACK

—she slapped him clean across the face with an open palm, sending the drink he had in his hand spilling all over him and the leather seat.

“How dare you,” she said.

The DJ had already moved on to another song, but the crack was loud enough to draw the attention of the closest club-goers. They looked their direction, glancing briefly at Vasher before pointedly turning away and back to their own partying. Vasher stepped into the booth and fiddled with something under the cushion. Suddenly, the music outside grew even dimmer, and Adora had a feeling that also meant it was harder for people outside the booth to hear.

“I deserved that,” Kal said, placing his now empty glass back on the table and rubbing at his cheek.

“You deserve a hell of a lot more than a smack to the face,” Lysithea said. Her anger seemed to boil over once more when she balled her hands into fists that shook at her side. “How fucking dare you show up here again after what you did. Do you realize I’m still paying off the debt from when you abandoned us on that job?”

“I had a feeling you might still be chipping away at it,” Kal said, not shying away from her anger but doing nothing to provoke it further.

“Thirteen thousand fucking pounds of raw ignominite in that package, and I find you just sitting here three years later, sipping a Sazerac in the Garden? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“I had a good reason for it, Ly,” he said. “You know I did.”

“You don’t get to call me Ly. It’s Lysithea to you, if I ever even let you speak to me again at all after this conversation is over, Kalanthe.” She gave a scornful laugh. “I’m surprised you go by that name still. Thought you’d change it to something even more obvious this time around.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him, looking for a reaction, and huffed when she didn’t get one. Adora tried to sit as still as she could and make absolutely no noise, hoping she might be invisible and passed over if she were surreptitious enough.

Lysithea glanced to her before doubling down on Kal again, eyes flaming anew. “And who the fuck is she? You pick up a new traveling companion after abandoning us?”

Adora winced and pushed further back into her seat. So much for being surreptitious. She tried to open her mouth and say something—introduce herself, at least—but the dryness in her throat from earlier returned and she got nothing but a pathetic gurgle out past her lips before shutting them, promising herself she’d never speak again as long as she lived.

“That’s Adora,” Kal said, evenly. “She’s the current holder of She Ra’s power.”

Much of the aggression and bluster in Lysithea’s demeanor vanished. She blinked, fully turning to inspect Adora, tilting her head to get a better look at her. “You’re not joking?”

“Would I joke with you, Lysithea?” he asked, emphasizing her full name.

She growled an insult out at him, and finally addressed her directly. “Is he being serious? Are you She Ra?”

Adora cleared her throat and forced words to come. “Yeah,” she said, clearing her throat a second time and wincing when her voice came out too gravelly. She held up her right arm to show the runestone in the bracer. “I’ve been having some trouble actually using my powers, though. Don’t ask me to transform in front of you or anything, but I do have the magic connection to her.”

Lysithea raised both eyebrows. “Well, isn’t that something,” she said, more to herself than anything. When she turned back to Kal, he was already holding up the backpack he had come in with earlier.

“I told you I had a good reason,” he said. “Every day for three years I’ve wished I didn’t have to leave you behind like I did. But Evelyn’s prediction came through and I finally got my hands on it. Even the AI managing the vault named it as such.”

“So that means…in that bag…”

“Is the Eye of Shukra,” Kal said, nodding. “And if Evie’s predictions about it are as true as her others have been, then…the original algorithm the Eternians hand-crafted for their Barrier…”

Lysithea’s breath hitched. “The imperfections in the version of it we reverse engineered…?”

Kal nodded. “We can fix them. Ly, we can finally shut the Beast away for good. Permanently.”

A beat of silence passed between all of them. The music from just outside thumped softly in the background. All trace of Lysithea’s prior anger had vanished.

“God damn it, Kal,” she said, sighing and shaking her head. “Why is it never easy with you?”

Chapter Text

Adora adjusted herself on the couch in the Garden’s back room, trying to find a comfortable position sandwiched between Vasher and Kal. It barely fit the three of them, and while there was a spot wide open on the couch across from them, Adora hadn’t trusted herself to not faceplant to the floor the moment she tried to get up. Lysithea had grabbed a second drink for her when she first ushered them all into the back room.

The bass of the music outside pounded away, muted, and for the third time in the half hour they had been back there, Lysithea stopped pacing. She took one hand from her hip to grab the Eye of Shukra from the low coffee table in front of them, then held it up to the musty halogen lights above to inspect it.

“So, let me get this straight, again,” she said, the light filtering through the crystal casting a spackled pattern across her face as she rotated it. “Pip tried to read this thing and she just…what? Broke?”

“More or less,” Kal said. “I’m not sure what happened exactly, but her internals are a mess.” He leaned forward, pulling out the same puck-shaped projector Adora looked at back on the ship and placed it on the coffee table. It powered on, displaying the three-dimensional hologram of Pip’s source code for all of them to see.

“What the hell did you do to her?” Ly said, her eyes going wide she saw the display, saw the pockets and craters of missing data spread throughout.

“I didn’t do anything! I told you, one moment she had the entire fortress under control including the AI connected to the place—“

“Light Hope,” Adora said. She felt more than heard the ends of her syllables beginning to slur.

“—and then the next thing you know, she starts glitching out, disappears completely, and then the whole castle attacks us.”

Lysithea squatted down eye-level with the hologram and used her free hand to pan the display. By the way she lingered on some areas and “hmmm’d” at others, Adora got the impression she was making several deep inferences far faster than Kal had, tinkering with it for the several days she had witnessed him doing so.

“Well, it looks like none of the bespoke programming got touched,” she said. “Whatever she came across in the Eye was enough to wreak havoc on her systems, but she had either enough time or enough sense to block off everything irreplaceable.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Kal asked.

“It means the thing that makes Pip distinctly her is still preserved,” Ly said, pointing to the islands of code still in-tact. “It’s only the scaffolding and boilerplate code that was either corrupted or deleted, at least from what I can tell from a first glance. It looks very deliberate…she must have felt whatever she came across start to affect her and made the decision to guide it to only the replaceable parts of her code.”

“Can you fix her?”

Lysithea shrugged. “I’m not sure. There are a few things I could try, maybe, if I had the right equipment—which I don’t. What I’m more curious about is what caused this in the first place.” She looked again at the Eye. “If this is supposed to hold whatever original calculations or mathematical foundations the Eternians intended to put in the Barrier in the first place…why would something like that corrupt her instead?”

“Do you think maybe it was too dense for her to churn through?” Vasher asked, drawing their attention. He looked Lysithea in the eyes. “I remember how frustrated you and Evelyn and everyone else got trying to reverse engineer the current algorithm…the long nights you all spent running Pip through iterations of it to mature her. Maybe the original is just too complicated?”

“I really doubt that,” Kal said with a frown. “She was telling me how amazing everything looked when she started digging into it…said she really wished she could show me what she was experiencing, and only started to panic after about a minute or two in. It sounded like she was trying to warn me of something she found, not that it was overloading her from the start.” He frowned, casting a quick glance at Adora before fixating back on the Eye. “There’s no ignominite in that thing,” he said. “Adora and I have actually been able to reach in out and feel around. There’s something there, Ly, we both felt it. We just can’t tell what it is or why it may have corrupted her like that.”

Lysithea’s eyes got wider and shinier the more Kal spoke. “Interesting,” she said. “Able to contain some sort of entity inside without using ignominite? It’s far more complicated than anyone could have guessed if that’s true, but I also think Kal has a point. Complexity wouldn’t corrupt portions of Pip’s code like that. In fact, complexity would have barred her from being able to double back and protect her code once she felt something was wrong, or prevented her from feeling something was wrong to begin with.

“Can someone explain why this thing is so important?” Adora asked, drawing all eyes in the room to her. Suddenly feeling exposed, bashful, and maybe too tipsy for her own comfort, she lowered her voice. “I’m hearing things about Barriers and algorithms and crystals that I only sorta understand. I just think it would…y’know, be kinda nice to get the whole picture, maybe.”

“You understand how the Barrier works, right?” Ly asked. “How it seals the Beast?” Adora nodded. “Our team researched enough of the Barrier to bring it online. The only problem was, the math behind getting it to lock correctly wasn’t there. We…well, mostly Evelyn and Pip…they did the best they could to come up with a replacement, but we were on a time crunch. It’s imperfect.”

“Mostly just the two of them?” Adora asked, dumbstruck. The idea of one person and an AI building something that complex was baffling.

Ly nodded. “I don’t question it, really. Evelyn could see through time because of her exposure to the Beast, so who knows what wisdom and knowledge she got looking through the timestream like that. It was enough for her to create Pip in the first place. Nothing else like her exists yet, she’s so advanced.”

Adora’s eyes drifted to the hologram of Pip’s piecemeal code. Ly hadn’t made the AI either…that was all the work of Taline’s late sister. Suddenly it made sense why Kal and Vasher and even Ly herself were unsure if they could fix her.

“She warned us the Barrier would fail too,” Lysithea said, hefting the Eye in her hand. “Kal believes this contains the original formula—the original algorithm the Eternians made to interface with the Barrier.”

“Ignominite was a good discovery,” Kal said. “But it was a step in the right direction that happened far too late in the course of the last war. By the time it got built into munitions and deployed to the front lines, the Beast was already far too large to defeat by conventional means. Salas and everyone on Etheria are looking at the Heart project like a be-all-end-all ignominite weapon. They think that once they get the Heart working, it will be no problem to quell any Beast threat no matter how large it gets.” He gestured to the Eye. “If we get that thing deciphered, however, and replace Evelyn’s old code with it, even at just one of the nodes, it will make the prison trapping the Beast outside our reality ironclad.”

“There won’t be any Beast incursions anymore,” Adora said, everything finally clicking together as she turned her attention away from Kal and back to the crystal. “That’s what you meant by bypassing She Ra. We won’t need her to fight or power the Heart at all if the Beast can’t escape ever again to begin with. We could take care of the existing hot spots and be done with it forever.”

“We would also deprive the emperor of a new weapon,” Vasher said. “Evelyn spoke of the Heart of Etheria too, before she died. She worried that if the only weapon guaranteed to quell the enemy fell into the emperor’s hands, he might withhold it from worlds under threat of the Beast if they did not respect his rule.”

Adora hadn’t even thought of that at all, having been so consumed with her own role in stopping the conflict. The Eye of Shukra just seemed like a good thing to explore—after all, any method to stop the Beast was worth going after in her books, especially if she was having this much trouble reconnecting with her powers still. But after hearing Vasher’s logic, getting the Barrier working suddenly jumped forward in her mental order of priorities. She’d do whatever she could if it meant depriving Horde Prime of a resource. She had broken the sword to begin with after leveraging her conviction to never become someone else’s weapon of mass destruction.

“Can you look into the Eye for us?” Kal asked. “And Pip? This station might not have the equipment you’re used to using, but anything you can do is better than nothing. At the very least, I need your expertise to tell me if what’s inside the Eye is really what we need.”

Lysithea met Kal’s eyes and held them for a moment. Adora couldn’t tell what the hesitation was for; it seemed like a no brainer to agree, but…

“What do you think?” Lysithea asked, suddenly turning to look at Vasher.

He seemed surprised to have been asked, blinking several times trying to regain his equilibrium. “I think we should help,” he said. “For once, Kal is not asking for too much. It’s what Evie would have wanted.”

Lysithea frowned. She looked back at the Eye in her hand, seeming even more conflicted after Vasher’s words. Adora didn’t understand why was this such a hard decision.

“I can’t help you,” she said at last, putting the crystal back down on the table next to the hologram puck.

“What?” Adora said, sitting forward.

“Why not?” Kal asked at the same time, similarly sitting forward with a deep frown on his face.

“It’s complicated,” Lysithea said, obviously uncomfortable and unsure of her answer. “I know it seems like an obvious choice, but there’s more to it than me just agreeing to look into this for you.”

Kal shook his head. “You were the team’s expert on crystal technology. Evelyn’s right hand. You were the one that figured out how to shape ignominite into crystals to capture the Beast in the first place. You are the reason Imperial R&D was able to study the enemy safely and ultimately figure out how to imbue ignominite into munitions to fight back. Out of everyone alive in the galaxy today, you are the most qualified to understand what’s inside the Eye. How is it any more complicated than that?”

“The Vestamid have been keeping an extremely close eye on the both of us since you left, Kal.”

“They aren’t going to make you start working for them,” he said. “They’re insane, but they also condemn breaches of contract no matter how small. We negotiated when we all started smuggling for them, remember? That under no circumstances would you or any of us assist in their business outside of strictly transportation?”

“They will not make us go against the contract, no,” Vasher said, playing with his fingers instead of looking at them. “But if she were to start touching equipment and working on anything in their labs, even just once, they would take that as a breach of contract on her end.” He looked up and at Kal. “You and I both know this. It is why she has taken up performing and I have agreed to be an enforcer for them on this station—it is the only way we could repay the debt after they barred us from smuggling for them.”

Kal looked away. “Even if they said the contract no longer applied and pressed you into service, they wouldn’t endanger you. At most they would stick you in a lab—this Eden’s lab, probably—and ask you to research improvements in their mining process or advances in the crystals they sell.” A beat of silence passed, then he squared his shoulders and looked Lysithea in the eye. “I have no right to ask this of you, I know, but it’d be a small price to pay for only a short amount of time to save the galaxy. Wouldn’t it?”

Ly sighed and Adora could tell she was warring with herself.

“Normally I would agree with you,” she said at last. “If doing lab work for the Vestamid here on the station or somewhere else were the only thing I’d get pushed into, then I’d gladly do it if it meant finding a way to shore up the Barrier for good.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She rubbed at one arm and bit her lip. It was the first real sign of hesitation and fear Adora saw in her since meeting they met.

“They’ve been getting bold behind the scenes. I don’t know how to describe it concretely, but the volume and contents of the rumors surrounding them have grown and shifted in the past few years. People whisper of experiments and abductions, politicians suddenly cut interviews short or pretend to suffer technical problems or feign indifference when pressed for answers. Not too long ago, there was a huge scandal about an energy system they installed at their primary mining facility.”

“Archanas is light years away from here and shrouded in superstition,” Kal said, shaking his head. “You and I both know you can’t tell truth from fantasy whenever it comes to that place.”

“These are specific accusations, Kal, not just idle talk. They somehow got a green light to implement their new project so quickly there’s no way they could have gone through any of the normal audits for that kind of thing. No one even knows what the project is, just that it got pushed through all the normal channels so fast there isn’t a tangible trail, no checks or balances for what they’re doing. People are certain they circumvented the processes entirely and have the Region’s governor directly in their pocket. Having free reign to do what they will on a planet like that? Even if it’s far away, one misstep could spell danger for the entire galaxy. Again.”

Kal scoffed, but Lysithea didn’t let it deter her.

“That’s not all,” she said. “I’m also fairly certain they’ve cultivated an Abomination here, on this very station.”

The mood shifted the moment she finished her sentence, a heavy feeling that blanketed them as soon as the words left Lysithea’s mouth. Adora watched Kal’s demeanor shift from that of someone merely frustrated, to that of genuine shock and focused concern.

“What gives you that idea?” he asked, voice low.

“A number of things,” she said. “Small things. Small enough that if I pointed to them individually, they wouldn’t amount to anything at all. But trust me, Kal…if you’d have been here watching the same channels I’ve been keeping an eye on, you would see it too. It’d jump out at you.”

“I’ll vouch for what she’s saying,” Vasher said. “I know it’s alarming to hear, but I’ve seen the same reports and the same clues she’s seen. I have no doubt in my mind that’s what they’ve been doing for a while now—trying to craft a reliable process for cultivating Abominations.”

“Just one so far?” Kal asked, looking Ly in the eyes again.

“I think so,” she said. “They definitely don’t have a process in place yet for mass producing them. I think they’re using this place as a test site, but I’m almost certain they’ve managed to successfully create at least one.”

Adora heard Kal say something colorful under his breath. “Do you know who it is?”

“Of course not.” Ly shook her head. “Even a lab grown Abomination would still be nearly impossible to tell apart from any regular person. They’d still have to reveal themself to you, try and start an infection. There’s no way they’d be as strong as a natural-born one either, but even if they’re weak compared to the real thing, I imagine it’d still have enough power to tear this station in two within a matter of minutes.”

“Well, fuck me,” Kal said, grimacing and running a hand through his hair. Both Adora’s eyebrows shot up—she hadn’t ever seen such a raw reaction from him before.

“Now do you understand why I’m hesitant to get involved?” Ly asked. “If I so much as look at this thing”—she gestured to the Eye—“and the Vestamid take that as me breaking the contract we signed with them? If they press me into service, it wouldn’t be me looking into their mining practices or researching more efficient crystals. They’d put me to work on this secret project they’ve been using this station as a testing site for. It’s the only reason I can think of as to why they haven’t outed either of us to Prime yet. They want me to help create Abominations for them.”

“We’ve been looking at leaving this place altogether, truthfully speaking,” Vasher said.

“How soon were you thinking of jumping ship?” Kal asked.

“If you came next month, we likely would have been gone already.”

Kal grimaced. “I understand there’s a lot at stake for you…but the stakes are even higher if we don’t get the Eye figured out. Please, Lysithea. I need your help.”

“I can’t,” she said, refusing to meet his eyes. “I know how important this is, but…but the Vestamid cannot be allowed to use me in their schemes. It could do just as much damage as the Beast or more if they ever figure out a way to manufacture and control Abominations. Going with the Heart may not be the best option, but it may be the safest in the end. Please don’t ask me to do this.”

“Ly, I wouldn’t be here if there was any other way. The Heart is a pipe dream at best, and if we don’t—“

“Enough, Kal!” Lysithea said, finally meeting his gaze with a glare of her own and gesturing with her whole body. Anger had replaced the fear and uncertainty in her demeanor, enough to make Adora flinch and press back into the couch. “I’ve already given you my answer and it isn’t going to change. I expect you to respect my choice, unless you plan on forcing me?”

Static seemed ready to spark in the air it was so charged. Lysithea stared Kal down and, to Adora’s great distress, Kal seemed to actually be mulling his options over. Then the tension fled. Kal set his jaw and nodded once. He grabbed the hologram puck and the Eye of Shukra from the table and stuffed them both back into the bag. Then he stood, slung it over his back, and headed for the exit without another word.

Adora looked to Lysithea and Vasher, who were both shooting barely-contained disturbed looks at one another. Adora then placed her unfinished drink on the table and thanked Ly for it before jumping up off the couch and rushing to follow Kal. Thankfully, she didn’t wobble or fall as she feared she might.

Kal stopped when they both reached the door leading back out onto the main floor and glanced back. Music from the nightclub blared back at full force when he pushed the door open. Lysithea looked on the verge of stopping him from leaving. When another moment passed and she still hadn’t, Kal stepped beyond the threshold, and Adora followed.

“I think we should head back to Etheria as soon as possible,” Adora said to Kal. They had arrived back at the hotel without a single word having been spoken between the two of them, and Adora couldn’t help but voice her opinion as soon as they were alone.

Kal stopped and turned to fix her with a confused expression before stripping the backpack off his shoulder and tossing it off into a corner. “Why?”

“What do you mean ‘why’?” she asked. “Lysithea refused to help us. That means the only other people who’d have a shot at cracking this thing would be Salas and Entrapta and everyone back home. We should leave as soon as we can.”

Kal chuckled, which unbalanced her because hadn’t he just been in a sour mood moments earlier after having been turned away? “Salas and Entrapta wouldn’t make a dent in this if you gave them a hundred lifetimes over to try, no offense to their intelligence. No, our only chance is for Ly to work on it. She has the expertise and the experience.”

“She just turned you down,” Adora said. “Are you seriously considering forcing her?”

Kal shot her a disgusted look. “Of course not. She’s going to come around and help us on her own.”

“I really don’t think that’s going to happen, Kal. She seemed pretty adamant about not helping.”

That wasn’t true, and Adora knew it. She saw how conflicted Lysithea and Vasher had both looked after turning Kal away. She even had an inkling as to why she refused to acknowledge it out loud: the look of anger and determination in Ly’s eyes as she made her decision, before the regret and uncertainty came, reminded Adora of someone else—someone similarly close to Adora, who had also dug their feet in the ground and refused to join her, only to maybe regret it later.

When he didn’t respond to her and instead started browsing through a nearby tablet that displayed options for room service, she grumbled and marched up to him.

“Look,” she said, taking the tablet from his hands and tamping down the swell of satisfaction she got when he looked surprised. “The Beast has been slipping through more and more as time goes on, so we don’t have time to waste, right? On top of that there’s apparently an Abomination wandering the station. We should get out of here now and head back.”

“Ly will come around,” he said, resting both hands gently on her shoulders. “You’re right, it is dangerous with that thing on the station, but the only thing we’re going to accomplish going back to Etheria is distracting them from researching the Heart. That’s the last resort to winning this fight against the Beast, and we don’t want to pull them away from making progress on it with something I know they won’t be able to understand. We’ll wait here for her to agree to help us.”

A strange feeling worked its way through Adora’s chest. It wasn’t the words Kal spoke, but the gentle tone of his voice, the reassuring pressure of his hands on her shoulders, and the sympathetic look he gave her. Instead of feeling confident in her own position (it made sense! It was logical!), she felt like she was unraveling.

“The galaxy doesn’t have time to wait for someone to change their mind once they already made it up,” Adora said. “She’s not coming back to you.”

Both of Kal’s eyebrows shot up at that last statement, and Adora sucked in a sharp breath. She hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t even anticipated it coming out of her mouth—it just…did. Her heart started to hammer in her chest. Something had lodged itself in her throat, and her eyes burned, although tears hadn’t yet fallen. She hated the feeling.

“How do you know she will?” Adora asked, pushing through the hoarseness in her voice to pressure Kal before he could say anything else that would undo her. Kal let her go and edged around her. Adora pivoted to follow as he did. “How can you be so certain she’ll change her mind?”

“She’s my friend.”

“She was your friend, and then you abandoned her to do the right thing. Abandoned her to spend three years of your life alone on Etheria, trying to get that crystal and save trillions of lives. It might make all the sense in the world to her, but you think she’s going to forgive you and come around? You’re going to stake the survival of the galaxy on that?”

Adora crossed her arms and huffed. She felt even more annoyed—her words weren’t doing anything to convince even herself. She didn’t want to think about how persuasive she was being toward Kal in the moment.

“She’s your ‘friend’…” Adora rolled her eyes and gave a dismissive shrug. “What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means I trust she’ll do the right thing,” Kal said. “You heard Vasher when she asked, he wants to help us because he knows it’s the right thing to do.” By this point, he was by the door to the outside hallway, turned fully toward her with a look on his face that told Adora he was fully aware she was only half talking about Lysithea still.

“Look, Adora…having faith isn’t the easiest thing in the world to practice. It took me a long time to learn it, learn that some things were out of my direct control and came with risk…learn that you could be seriously hurt if that risk doesn’t pan out. But sometimes, it’s all we have to go on, especially at the end of the world. It doesn’t always mean believing in a higher power, either. Sometimes it just means believing in your friends, even when things are strained between you.” He smiled and put his hand on the doorknob, and the tone from his next words informed Adora he was back to speaking of concrete matters. “The Heart is a viable backup, but taking the Eye to Etheria is a guaranteed dead end. In the meantime, we stay put and have faith my friends will pull through, just as they did in the last conflict.”

“W-where are you going?” Adora asked. She couldn’t explain why, but she suddenly felt extraordinarily sad. Depressed, almost.

“I’m going take a page out of your book and go exploring,” he said. “I need some air. I’ll be back in a bit, so try not to get yourself into trouble until I do, okay?” He stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him without waiting for an answer.

The door clicked shut behind him and Adora was alone. She hugged herself, gritting her teeth, still not understanding why she felt so upset. She fought back the tears that continued to well in her eyes and searched her mind for a reason—any reason—for why she’d been struck with such strong emotion.

When she couldn’t find one, she reached for her power in a fit of panic, wanting to prove that she had made some progress with She Ra—wanting to feel in control of something for once.

The power bubbled under the surface as it always had, and, as it always had, it refused to come to her when called.

Breath coming through faster and more ragged, Adora jabbed the PDA on her arm awake.

“Please work,” she said, whispering prayers to herself as she navigated to Glimmer’s contact card and typed out a test message. “Please. Please work.”

The message failed, again, like it was taunting her now. In a fit of desperate fury, Adora screamed, grabbed the room service tablet Kal had played with earlier from the desk and hurled it across the room. It smacked into the far wall and she heard the screen shatter when it hit the floor.

Her mind swam with thoughts, none of them pleasant. She stood there, counting heartbeats until the onslaught died down and she could hear herself think again. Out of instinct, she reached up to fix her braid, only to find that it wasn’t even done up to begin with. Adora hadn’t put her hair up since her conversation with Salas back on Etheria. She hadn’t felt the urge to do it up again until that very moment.

Unwilling to consider what that actually meant for her mental state, Adora instead looked at the bag sitting in the corner, letting her eyes wander across it as a thought entered her mind. Then, making her decision and refusing to think on it any further, she grabbed the bag and left the room.

Chapter Text

Catra watched the people on the Atrium ground floor shrink as she rode the VIP elevator. She’d been to the Atrium enough times already that month to last her the rest of the year, but this trip was different. This time, Diallo was with her, and together they were riding to the Executive wing—higher than she’d ever been before—to commit espionage against the Empire.

The Atrium was far more crowded than she had ever seen it before, too, and it wasn’t just because Administration had, only minutes earlier, opened it to refugees that were now starting to trickle in. No, it was also because Moriarty’s rally speech had drawn an enormous crowd. Catra narrowed her eyes and kept them trained on the pop-up stage below, where he and the rest of his entourage, Taline included, were to stand. Pip flitted into view at the corner of her vision, three inches tall and floating above the elevator handrail, humming as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

“You know, people used to meet gruesome ends f-falling to their deaths out there,” Diallo said, standing just behind and to her left, looking out at the same view. “Well, pushed to their deaths might be a better word than f-falling. Moriarty would assassinate his political opponents with spectacle like that to s-send a message back in the day—back before he consolidated p-power in this region.”

Catra angled her head and raised an eyebrow at him.

“They s-say he wears those white gloves of his as a symbol that his hands are clean.” Diallo scoffed. “I s-say you’d see the blood on his hands there still, if he only didn’t h-hide them like that.”

There were plenty of strange rumors around Moriarty, those white gloves of his being among the least concerning. Catra never paid it much attention before, but still…what a weird way to start a conversation.

Something about the casual, almost pedestrian way Diallo described people falling to their deaths flipped a switch in Catra’s mind, then. She crossed her arms and studied him.

“You’ve got a pretty good disguise going for you,” she said. “The stutter really drives it home.”

Diallo raised his eyebrows at her. “What do you m-mean?”

“Taline told me about how you two met,” Catra said, her tail flicking behind her. “She told me what you did to ‘help’ her with everything in a certain person’s hidden lab. You don’t succeed working with someone like Taline—or working under someone like Moriarty—by being weak. You’re craftier than you look.”

A smile grew across Diallo’s face as she spoke.

“I appreciate the compliment,” he said. “You’re quite perceptive yourself, although I would disagree with you on my stutter being the thing that makes people overlook me.”

“What else is there?” Catra asked, noting that he had just spoken a full phrase without stuttering once. Suddenly, she was doubting it was even a genuine tic. “You’re pretty unassuming, no offense.”

“The stutter draws attention,” he said, “but it’s these that make me successful.” He made a show of adjusting his glasses. “I feel more focused because of these. Level headed.”

“That usually goes with being able to see clearly.” Catra tried to imagine what it’d be like to not have her razor-sharp eyesight.

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Diallo said. “Most assume I just have bad eyes, but the glasses are much more than that. There’s sentimental value to them as well, I suppose. Not many people can say they have glasses with frames wrought from ignominite.”

Catra turned fully around to face him in surprise and leaned in closer to focus on his glasses. She stared, unblinking, for several moments until...there! It would have been impossible to see were she not trying so hard to notice, but she did see the tiniest hint of blood-read thread its way through the frames.

“How in Horde Prime’s nasty flaccid tentacle hairs did you afford a pair of ignominite glasses?”

“I didn’t have to afford them,” Diallo said. “They were a gift from the Vestamid.”

“What?” Catra sputtered. “Why would they give you anything?”

“Because I’m the Administrator in charge of one of their most important systems?” Diallo said, confused. “Their main production plant on Archanas is one of my major constituencies, even if their population is near nothing compared to many of the other surrounding systems.”

Catra’s jaw hinged open and she shut it with a click the moment she realized. “You’re in charge of that system?”

Diallo frowned. “Yes. Forgive me, I thought you already knew this. Didn’t Taline tell you?”

“No, she didn’t,” Catra said, crossing her arms and grumbling. “Not about that. Taline doesn’t talk about Archanas. She’s never told me or Glimmer anything about it, really.” She huffed. “I don’t even know what her ‘Seraph of Archanas’ title means or where it comes from.”

“What do you know about it, then? The planet?”

Catra shrugged. “What everyone else does, I suppose. It’s where the end of the last war happened, where the Beast got sealed away. Taline held a fleet above orbit and punched a hole in the planet’s defenses for the Daiamid to get through to the surface. I always just figured it was traumatic and she didn’t want to talk about it.”

Diallo “hmm’d” and Catra didn’t like the look he gave her—it made her feel like, once again, she was out of the loop on some key piece of information.

“That’s not to say I didn’t try looking you up on my own, though,” she said. “It's just…there wasn’t much there when I did. Your file is about as unassuming as you look, and no mention of Archanas at all in there either. I didn’t know that you were in charge of its Administration, just like I didn’t know there was a Vestamid mining operation there.” She paused, then huffed when the full weight of that statement hit her. “What the fuck. I thought the Empire quarantined that whole planet, on pain of death.”

Catra finished her sentence only to realize she had been talking for far too long and revealed far too much of her own ignorance. Diallo was studying her, and she suddenly regretted opening herself so wide to someone she had just correctly guessed was far smarter and better at manipulating people than she had originally expected.

“The Empire did quarantine the planet,” he said. “But, seeing as the Vestamid are such an integral part not only to the defense of the Empire against the Beast, but also, oddly enough, vitally important to the health of its economy, they are allowed access to it. It’s not common knowledge, and as such, my file is classified at a level much higher than even a newly minted Sentinel’s security clearance would have given you access to.”

Catra’s ears wilted, although she tried her hardest to keep them from doing so. And here she had thought that new security clearance was near ironclad.

“As for Taline being reticent to speak of the place,” Diallo said. “I don’t blame her for that either. You’re right in saying that planet is traumatic. It’s like a waking nightmare for her.”

“I wouldn’t want to talk about it either if I lost someone important there,” Catra said.

Diallo shook his head. “That’s not it.”

“What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t avoid talking about it because she lost someone. She doesn’t just avoid talking about it, but actively dodges any opportunity to come visit or have anything to do with it at all. Any report I’ve sent her in the past about its status has gone ignored. Losing someone wouldn’t necessitate such a vicious aversion—Taline has always attended to her responsibilities, even if it pained her. This goes beyond that.”

When Catra only furrowed her brow and shot him a confused look, Diallo sighed and pointed at her neckline.

“I know about the aperion she gave you—the one she spent years working at? Did she tell you what thoughts and emotions she imbued it with?”

Catra’s hand darted to the crystal, tied to its lanyard and lying flush against her breastbone under her outfit. She remembered Taline explaining it to her in the hidden lab, remembered how she explained she’d meditate on it for hours about her sister. Diallo’s point jumped out at her the moment she made that connection: Taline didn’t keep from talking about Archanas because of Evelyn’s death; there was something else—possibly something worse—making her avoid the topic at all costs.

Catra didn’t say anything, but satisfaction bloomed on Diallo’s face all the same. She hated how her realization somehow made him feel accomplished. Archanas hadn’t ever really crossed her mind before, but now she couldn’t help it. Diallo had aroused a suspicion in her about Taline she couldn’t shake, and she hated it—hated how easily she took to the paranoia.

“If she were trying to avoid dredging up memories of this nameless, formless person that, according to Imperial doctrine doesn’t even exist in the first place, well…that would be one thing,” Diallo said. “But it’s not like she’s avoided that at all to begin with. She sat with those thoughts, ruminating on them for a decade. She plunged head-first into them.”

Dozens of thoughts crowded Catra’s head then—guesses as to why Taline avoided any mention of the place before. Taline had told her once, back on Etheria, that she’d explain where her ‘Seraph of Archanas’ name came from, but any attempt on Catra’s part over the years to ask about it had been shut down before she’d get three words out. Over time, Catra just stopped asking. Now, those interactions fed the flames of her uncertainty.

“Tell me what happened,” Catra asked. “Why is it she avoids any mention of it if it’s not because she lost her family there? What do you know?”

Diallo didn’t respond. Catra got the feeling he was trying to decide whether or not he should talk and how much to say.

“Archanas is where the last war ended,” he said at last. “That, at least, is true. I was in the landing party when we touched down and saw what was left of the Daiamid and of Taline’s sister. And, yes, it's where she and I first met, before we left and ransacked the Daiamid base together afterwards. It was my first time ever visiting that planet, but it was not hers.”

Catra waited for him to continue, and suppressed a growl when he didn’t. “And?” she said. “What’s that supposed to tell me?”

Diallo shrugged and looked away. “I’ve said all I can about that. I’m trying to give you an avenue for further conversation with her on the matter, not to spill secrets that are not mine to give.”

“All I’m hearing is someone being suspiciously cagey.” Frustration bloomed in Catra’s chest and spread to her extremities. Her fur threatened to stand on end. Why did he bring this up in the first place if he wasn’t going to be forthright with her? “Archanas is a different world compared to back then. People are there spending their days mining for ignominite now, and you’re in charge of them.”

Diallo glanced at her from the corner of his eye and Catra decided that if he wasn’t going to come out and say what he was thinking, then she had no reason to beat around the bush.

 “I’m about to bring you dirt on your own constituents,” she said, patting her pants pocket where the encrypted drive lay. “This is from the Vestamid too, you said. You expect me to believe you aren’t up to anything having me break into Moriarty’s office trying to decrypt it? What’s your angle?”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything,” he said. “And frankly, I don’t care what you believe. But just to set the record straight—Taline and I worked well together because I helped her all those years ago, and I helped her because it was the right thing to do. Letting the Emperor take away the last remnants of her family’s work and get his hands on all of the Daiamid’s research? That would have been dangerous, let alone immoral.

“If you want the real reason Taline vouched for me in this position, it's because she knows I’ll do the right thing when it counts. Exposing the Vestamid and their schemes is the right thing to do. They’re too dangerous left unchecked, constituents of mine or not.”

Catra held his gaze a moment and, when he didn’t waver, she did.

“Sorry,” she said, averting her eyes. “I shouldn’t have implied….”

Diallo smiled. “It’s f-fine,” he said, his stutter returning as his demeanor backed off into something less severe. “I understand the h-hesitation. Caution is a g-good thing in your new line of work. Y-you haven’t hurt my f-feelings.”

Catra nodded and they both fell silent. Pip floated up from the handrail to Catra’s left.

“I get bad vibe from this guy,” she said, an uneasy expression on her face. “Something about this just doesn’t feel right.”

::He’s a veteran of the last Beast war and a politician:: Catra said to her. ::Of course he’s going to feel off. I feel it too, just look at how easily he can turn that stutter on and off.:: A thought came to her and she furrowed her brow. ::Have you never seen Diallo before?::

Pip shook her head. “Should I have?”

::Taline got this guy his job and he’s come to visit her enough times to drive her nuts. They’ve apparently been friends for years. How has she stewarded you all this time and you don’t remember seeing him before?::

She regretted the words the moment she thought them. Pip recoiled and wilted without a response, looking sullen. Catra was about to say something else to at least try and smooth over the comment, or maybe understand why it got that kind of reaction, but the view and ambient light coming through the elevator window suddenly disappeared as they shot through the Atrium’s ceiling. Then the doors opened when the elevator slowed to a halt, and the three of them exited onto the lobby of Phoenix Station’s Executive wing.

If Catra had been impressed and simultaneously intimidated by the Atrium when she first saw it, the splendor of the Executive level far outclassed it. Whereas the Atrium and its various shops and apartment stories and ceiling-level offices—the Enclave Embassies included—were wreathed in silver and marble, this level had a distinct motif of obsidian veined with leavened-gold.

Office workers and aids bustled about, infusing the triple-height lobby with a constant thrum of background noise and feeling of activity. Several dozen staffers hustled from one of the other half dozen elevator doors nearby and Catra caught a closer glimpse of their clothing. She noticed the cut and silhouettes of several of them. Each easily cost more than a year of her salary as security, from what she remembered when she saw the price tags, perusing the Atrium shops with Glimmer in the past.

Pip had grown uncharacteristically subdued, perched on her shoulder in a casual pose that looked forced. Catra swallowed and followed Diallo to the front desk. It housed easily two dozen receptionists behind its massive, semi-circular length. A waterfall mural with the Imperial Horde insignia emblazoned on the front petered out water behind them.

There’s no doubt whose influence owns the place, Catra thought, looking at the statues and reliefs of Horde Prime and Moriarty. He must head this level the same way Taline heads the Embassies on the floor below.

“Governor Diallo, h-here to badge in a guest,” Diallo said to the closest receptionist when they got to the front. He put his palm on the reader and the receptionist looked over to Catra, gesturing for her to do the same. When the scanner read her palm, the receptionist’s eyebrows shot up.

“Sentinel?” she said. “It’s been a while since the Seraph has had one of those. Stand still and look here.”

She adjusted a small spheroid camera on a stand on the desk and pointed it in Catra’s direction. Catra didn’t know whether to smile or not, so she kept her face even. After a few moments, the receptionist had printed out a small sticker with her picture and pertinent identifying information, and handed it over.

“Go ahead to the security checkpoint,” she said. “Make sure that guest badge is visible at all times.”

After pasting the sticker to her front, Catra followed Diallo off to the side, where a handful of body scanners lined up in a row were installed. For each scanner, two Imperial soldiers stood watch on either side, guiding the small backlog of staffers through the checkpoint.

Catra brushed fingers along the grip of her sidearm, holstered at her hip, and felt along the length of the stun baton hugging her outer thigh. She wasn’t station security anymore and technically shouldn’t have had either pieces of their standard-issue equipment on her, but leaving on an assignment (even an ‘undercover’ assignment, granted) without them felt wrong. But Catra just didn’t know what was going to happen once they got to the checkpoint. Would she even be allowed through with them?

“Weapons off,” the soldier to her right said as they got to the front of the line. “We’ll hold them for you and you can have them back when you leave.”

Catra considered arguing to keep them, but ultimately nodded and went to unholster the weapons. Pissing off the guards was one of the few things she felt instinctively was a bad idea; it would do her no good if she were to cause a stir before getting within even a hundred paces of Moriarty’s office.

“She’ll keep her equipment w-with her, thank you very much.”

Diallo’s voice cut through, and the soldiers, Catra, and even Pip all turned to look at him.

“Weapons are strictly forbidden beyond this point without a valid authorization,” the soldier said. “You cannot pass without relinquishing them.”

“It’s fine,” Catra said. “I had a feeling this might happen, it’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big d-deal,” Diallo said. “I’m giving explicit authorization for her to c-carry arms inside. She’s my bodyguard for the d-day with security so concentrated elsewhere for Moriarty’s r-rally. I want her armed. Check her visitor pass.”

Catra didn’t feel comfortable with this—she really didn’t want to draw attention to herself. The soldier leaned in and she stood stock-still, resisting the urge to swallow or fidget as he narrowed his eyes at her visitor badge.

“Sentinel?” he said, echoing the receptionist from earlier. Catra shrugged and he seemed to think for a moment before saying, “Alright. If Governor Diallo vouches for you and the front checked you out then you can go.”

The soldier jerked his thumb behind his shoulder to indicate she should head through the scanner. Catra walked through and the machine immediately beeped and screamed because of her weapons. She grimaced as it continued, drawing the attention of others in the lobby before finally going silent. Diallo went through next, and when it elicited no complaints from the scanner, the two of them continued to the back.

“That really wasn’t necessary,” Catra said in a low voice, moving to catch up to Diallo who was already ahead of her, setting a fast pace. “Isn’t the whole point of infiltrating to not draw attention in the first place? I won’t even need the weapons if no one catches me.”

“They headed through one of the large doors in the back and into a double-height room filled with cubicles. It was significantly quieter here than out in the lobby, and all noise died out almost entirely when the door shut behind them. It almost reminded Catra of a library, except for the fact it was obviously an office floor.

“True,” Diallo said. “You won’t n-need the weapons. Not until you d-do.”

“Is that you cryptically trying to imply that I’m going to get caught?” she hissed, keeping pace with him and glancing left and right at he staffers and corporate jockeys at their desks. Each of them either plugged away at holographic visuals or sat flush against the backs of their office chairs with VR headsets over their eyes. None seemed to notice them.

“It’s me s-saying that, when dealing with Moriarty in any way, you’d better be prepared. It’s b-better to have a weapon and not need it than need it and n-not have it.”

“Even if he’s sixty levels down on the Atrium floor?”

“He’s most d-dangerous when you expect n-not to run into him. Remember all those people I mentioned f-fell to their deaths because of him? How many thought they were safe moments before they found themselves r-racing to meet the floor, you think?”

Catra grunted and conceded the point, choosing to focus on keeping her head down remain inconspicuous as she followed Diallo through the office floor.

They passed a corner meeting room partitioned off with glass. Catra could see several people huddled around the long desk, staring at a large holo-screen mounted to the far wall. They were watching the live coverage of Moriarty’s rally speech. There he stood, up on the raised platform behind a podium, sweat dripping from his skin, smearing the pancake makeup covering his face and staining his white gloves a toxic shade of yellow.

He spoke and gestured with loud, expansive movements, and although she couldn’t actually hear him through the glass from where she stood, she got the impression she was watching someone on the precipice of sanity. The look in his eyes…she’d seen it in her own, looking back at her across the mirrors of the Fright Zone not long after she’d pulled the lever to the portal.

The camera panned out and she caught sight of Taline standing among the other officials in the region behind him, clad in her typical Consular robes, wearing a stony face. The words “Moriarty declares region on lockdown to future refugees. Phoenix station to ‘scrupulously vet’ all incoming traffic amid budgetary slashes” scrolled across the ticker at the bottom of the feed.

“That can’t be good,” Catra said, tracking the screen as they walked past.

“Did you ever r-reach out to Taline like you said you would?” Diallo asked, barely sparing the holo-screen a glance himself.

“I did,” Catra said, ignoring the knowing smirk she saw spread across Pip’s face and the flush of embarrassment beginning to spread across her own. “I uh…got ahold of her in the middle of prepping for that rally. And all the news interviews before and after it.”

“And? Did she confirm what I said about w-working with Narre and Miri? The occasional secret assignments they w-went on?”

“She didn’t,” Catra said, feeling her flush spread further. Pip started to cackle on her shoulder, all hint of melancholy from earlier having vanished, and Catra physically brushed her off with a huff. Her hand passed through the Pip’s translucent form without phasing her in the slightest. “All of a sudden it didn’t feel right to straight up ask if I’m supposed to do this. I mean, the mission is secretive in the first place, isn’t it? Either we get something good and she benefits from it, or we find nothing and no one is any wiser, right?”

Diallo didn’t speak for a while and she was afraid she’d made the wrong assumption.

“That’s a good s-sign then,” he said, finally. “The fact you were unsure and wanted to r-reach out means you have a healthy level of skepticism, but the fact you stopped short of divulging the whole operation is more promising. It s-shows you have some self-awareness for what you’re about to do. If you had g-gone all the way and actually asked her, Taline m-may have reconsidered her choice to conscript you. Good show of restraint, Catra.”

They took another turn within the cubicle farm and Catra knew she’d definitely have gotten lost if Diallo weren’t leading her directly.

“Where exactly is his office?” she asked, feeling her flush creep further still. All these years later and she’d still have such a visceral reaction to even the slightest bit of praise. It was embarrassing. “I feel like we’ve been walking for ages and I don’t see anything.”

Diallo pointed ahead and she looked, seeing a large square structure cantilevered off the second-floor loft in the far back corner of the room. Covered windows stretched to the ceiling, giving whoever was inside a clear panoramic view of the entire cube farm. A half-turn staircase leading to the access loft started at the very end of the hallway they were walking along.

“We have to be quick,” he said. “Moriarty should be gone for a while, but we have no idea if he’s scheduled anyone to do security checks while he’s away. He’s known to be paranoid and it’s only gotten worse in recent years.”

He spoke again in that dangerous, low voice devoid of even a stutter. It clashed so strongly with his normal demeanor it got Catra wondering about him, instead of focusing on the mission.

 “What did you do before?” she asked Diallo, eliciting a quick glance from Pip. She eyed her back and gave a shrug; she had no idea why she was asking either. The question just came naturally.

“Before wh-what?” Diallo asked, not breaking his stride.

“Before all this Beast stuff. Before you met Taline and became a politician.”

They reached the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor and Diallo stopped with one foot on the first step. He turned and fixed her with a curious look.

“No one’s ever asked m-me that before,” he said with his brow furrowed. He thought a moment, then adjusted his glasses. “Hm. Truth be t-told, I don’t remember very much of anything before m-meeting Taline. The war scrambled m-my brains a bit too much.”

“You don’t remember anything at all?” Catra asked. Diallo started to climb the stairs and she followed “No tidbits from before the war? Nothing from your childhood?”

“N-nothing striking, at least,” he said. “Selective traumatic amnesia, the d-doctors tell me.” When Catra looked to him  with something akin to pity in her eyes, he said, “It’s not the m-most pleasant thing, you know, not remembering. S-so I just like to pretend I had a pretty g-good childhood growing up.”

“That’s nice, I guess,” she said, thinking back on her own. “Mine wasn’t exactly pleasant.”

“Overbearing p-parents?”

“You have no idea.” Shadow Weaver flitted across her mind and Pip gave her a sympathetic look.

“What’s w-worse, I wonder,” Diallo said, musing out loud. “Not r-remembering anything of your childhood at all, or r-remembering for certain that it was terrible?”

The question was strikingly profound and made Catra delve deep into the recesses of her thoughts. So much so that, when they reached the top of the stairs and entered the lobby outside Moriarty’s office, Catra didn’t realize something was wrong until Diallo stopped in his tracks. She looked up and saw another receptionist sitting at her station, chatting with a man in a station security officer’s uniform leaned over the top of her desk. Upon further inspection, she realized the man in the uniform was Dax.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Catra said to Diallo, her panic forcing her voice into a stage whisper.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I w-was expecting only Moriarty’s receptionist to be present. With him here as w-well, it makes this difficult.”

They must have been speaking loud enough to be overheard, because both the receptionist and Dax turned and looked at them.

“Catra” Dax said, pulling away almost entirely from the receptionist’s desk. He looked like he had just been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. “What are you doing here?”

“Right back at you,” she said, following Diallo’s lead and actually walking in closer, pretending like they were supposed to be there rather than about to infiltrate the office. No use trying to slip away quietly now that they had been seen. “Aren’t you supposed to be overseeing security for the rally?”

“Hey, I have a legitimate reason to be here,” he said, shooting the receptionist a nervous smile before turning to Diallo. “Administrator Moriarty wanted someone up here to make sure nothing shady happened. He liked the job we did welcoming you onto the station, Governor Diallo, and asked that I personally see to it that nothing happened to his office.” The humor and joviality from his voice disappeared and he frowned. “And also, we’re so short staffed now that I have to step into the field without any backup just to cover everything that needs to be covered. Moriarty took all his Vanguard troops down to the Atrium with him, and almost all of my guys as auxiliary security.”

“I thought he l-looked familiar,” Diallo said, grumbling low enough so only Catra could hear.

The receptionist shot Dax a scandalized look. “You said you took this posting to come see me!”

“I did, sweetie, I did!” Dax said, turning to her and looking thoroughly panicked. “You know how it is, though. I can’t just come out and say I’ve taken the posting myself for that reason. I’m the supervisor, how would that look?”

Catra rolled her eyes. The truth was likely a mixture of both: they were short staffed enough that someone had to be up here alone to guard the office per Moriarty’s instructions, but Dax could have easily assigned any other officer to the task instead. Judging by how hard he was trying to appease the woman behind the desk, the reasons why he took the posting himself were obvious.

“F-forget about this,” Diallo said, still speaking in a low voice to only her while Dax and the receptionist bickered. “There are cameras around h-here too.”

Catra looked around where the ceiling met the walls and indeed saw small cameras installed at each juncture.

“If it were just the r-receptionist, I would have been able to d-distract her long enough to disable them so you could slip inside,” Diallo said. “But with your old s-supervisor here, there’s not a chance in hell. We’ll j-just have to try this another time.”

“Wait!” Pip said, zipping in front to grab Catra’s attention. Diallo would have seen her plain as day if Pip wasn’t invisible to everyone except her, and Catra was still getting used to that fact. She flinched, and then played it off when Diallo caught sight of it and gave her a look.

Pip squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating, as Diallo turned to leave.

All the lights in the lobby shut off, only to then turned back on again, dimmer than before. An alarm blared, and a recorded voice repeated to them over and over again to evacuate immediately.

“What did you do?” Catra asked out loud to Pip, whose eyes went wide in surprise as she made frantic shushing gestures back.

Chaos ensued. Someone grabbed her by the arm and, amidst the alarm blaring out the loudspeakers and the adrenaline pounding through her veins, Catra jumped and turned with claws extended to hiss. Diallo flinched, and Catra forced herself to calm.

“Sorry,” she said. “You spooked me.”

“I didn’t trip the alarm if that’s what you w-were asking before,” he said. “But whatever it is, w-we need to evacuate immediately.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Dax said, ushering the receptionist past them in a hurry. “I have no idea what's going on, but I’ll leave last and make sure everyone on the first floor below gets out safe.”

Diallo turned and watched them hurry down the stairs, out of sight. When they disappeared, he slipped behind the receptionist's desk and typed furiously at the computer there. In a moment, all the cameras around wilted and pointed down to the floor.

“I’ve killed the camera feed,” he said. “I have no idea what triggered that alarm, but we can’t let an opportunity like this go to waste. Get in there, decode the drive on his computer, and get out as quickly as you can, you hear?”

Catra nodded, registering the fact his stutter disappeared yet again, trying and failing to ignore Pip who was zipping around her head in a circle with a gleeful look on her face. “Got it,” she said.

Diallo turned and hurried out and down the stairs, hot on Dax and the receptionist’s heels. He’d have to leave too, so as to not draw suspicion on himself and to keep suspicion off Catra while she worked.

::Did you do that?:: she asked Pip as she headed straight for Moriarty’s office door, all obstacles now removed from her path. She tried the door. It was locked.

“Yep!” Pip said. “Been connected to the station mainframe for a while now and finally learned my way around a bit. Watch this.”

Catra heard the lock on the door click and she tried it again. The door swung wide open.

::Oh…that is useful.::

“Isn’t it though?” Pip said, wheeling around her head anew.

The alarm shut off and Catra wasted no time. She dashed inside the office and closed the door shut behind her.

Chapter Text

The Angel stood just inside the ground-floor maw of a megalith stationed on a Lost World, the massive, swirling clouds in the sky seemingly trying to drown them with rain. Great wings of magic emanated from the Angel’s back, stretching from one end of the opening to the other, wide enough to fit the hundred-odd refugees standing shoulder to shoulder behind her had they tried to walk past in one unbroken line. But they didn’t try to walk past, because the Angel was protecting those already inside from what was out—an army of thralls several thousand strong, once their own friends and family, rushing at them from across the rain-soaked plains like a wave.

Thousands had coalesced into one hive-minded creature with a singular goal, and the Angel would have stood there and rained fire and brimstone down upon them all with her runes, would have fought tooth and nail to buy enough time for those calling frantically to them over a short-band radio wave.

This is warbird Hermes-3 to megalith Tower of Liberation, the pilot said, their voice blaring over the loudspeakers to all inside the last remaining megalith on-planet, already prepped for emergency takeoff. We are less than a hundred clicks from your location and carrying a full load of refugees—the last survivors. You cannot leave, I repeat, you cannot leave. We are less than eighty clicks from your location now and burning fast to get to you. You cannot leave us. Do not depart. I repeat, do not depart!

Yes, the Angel would have moved heaven and earth, would have run herself so hot with magic output she would burn straight through and never cast again, all to buy those several dozen souls in that last warbird enough time and space to make it in.

Then, among the thralls dashing like mad toward them across the plains, she saw it. A bolt of thunder cracked overhead, splitting the cloud cover and illuminating the Trooper among its cousins. All time slowed to a stop as the Angel remembered what had been said of them.

Troopers are a sign of an awakening Abomination, the Seraph, her mentor, had told her once. The only reason we’ve been so successful in containing the outbreaks so far is because we haven’t let an infection grow enough it awakens a natural Abomination, and the contingencies we’ve put in place for an Abomination accelerating into maturity because of a sorcerer being taken are effective.

But even one Trooper on the field of battle is proof the Abomination is nearly done gestating, if it hasn’t fully awoken already. If you see one, you need to get out immediately, no matter the cost. The planet is already lost. Only Corynth and his Shapers knew how to handle an infestation at that stage with any permanence. I myself would be hard pressed to take even one singular Trooper down, and I’d need a partner to even attempt it.

And so, with tears of starlight falling from her glowing eyes, the Angel shut the doors of salvation and ordered the megalith to take off. The vessel shook as its engines roared. The roar mixed with the sounds of the refugees behind her sobbing, and the sounds of those damned wailing over the loudspeaker.

You cannot save them, a voice echoed in her head then, as gravity increased and they finally lifted off the ground. You will die if you go to them.

The Angel recognized the voice then as one from her past—one of the Seraph’s old protectors, a Sentinel who had similarly protected her.

There’s nothing you can do. Live on and honor their memory.

Narre’s last words mixed with the sobs and the wails and the sound of the engine roar, all of it coalescing into a monstrous noise that sounded more like the fires of hell, beckoning like a siren’s call.

Glimmer finally shot awake with a yell when the staff building shook, and for a moment she worried dream had become reality—the engine noise was still there, as loud as ever. She laid still and listened to the rattle of the building subside as the engine noise, having hit a peak, finally drew away.

Just a nightmare, she thought, checking in with herself and counting heartbeats. Not real…just a nightmare. You're on Scavria, nowhere else...just Scavria.

But what was with that engine roar? Transports were explicitly forbidden from flying directly into the compound, it was too much of a security risk. Unless…

She gasped and threw herself off the bunk, landing on both feet and pulling off her pajamas as quickly as possible to change. She ignored the other Enclave staffers who had also woken from the noise, rubbing at their eyes and wondering what was going on, and instead rushed out into the cool night air as soon as she was passably dressed.

Chaos and commotion. That was all her sleep-addled brain could latch onto when she saw the scene outside the barracks. A damaged warbird was kicking up a storm of dust as it landed in front of the compound’s central hospital building, its front floodlight trained on the nurses and emergency responders garbed in white rushing out the building to meet them. A platoon of regular Horde infantry stood in formation nearby, already prepped to receive them, and Glimmer sprinted toward them. Whatever she was afraid of before, this seemed worse.

While basic transports were not supposed to fly directly into the compound, warbirds—sleek fighter-transports  able to descend onto a planet’s surface from orbit and always carrying a full cadre of soldiers instead of evacuees—were never to approach so much as the landing pads outside the intake area. Seeing one fly past and all the way inside the compound proper was almost unthinkable. Whoever was piloting that ship was sure to be court martialed and possibly even dishonorably discharged, what with fears of military ships getting taken over by the Beast like in the previous war.

That only made Glimmer worry harder. The last time wartime operating procedure was violated so brazenly, she herself had been the one to do it on Rinne out of pure desperation for how far gone the rescue operation had deteriorated. They hadn’t even punished her for it in the end, all lukewarm thoughts of a court martial having disappeared from the High Council’s heads the minute ‘Angel of Archanas’ started appearing next to her name in the media. All on account of her ‘heroics.’

The warbird’s landing feet touched the ground and the engines revved down. Scavrian evacuees started gathering around the viewports and exposed balconies of their respective megaliths. Some of them had even come out of the wide, floor-level entrances to surround both the hospital and the warbird in curiosity. The soldiers there moved between the warbird and the gathering crowd, yelling strict commands to stay back. None raised weapons at the crowd, but each made it clear there were dire consequences waiting for anyone trying to get to close.

The doors to the warbird’s main troop compartment depressurized and slid open. Some of the soldiers peeled away from the group to reach in and pull a stretcher out of the cabin, the struts holding the wheels folding out as they pulled the gurney free. Glimmer saw Lonnie, dressed in full Vanguard armor, hop out and jog alongside the stretcher as it was wheeled to the main hospital entrance. She stooped low as she went, letting whoever was atop it whisper into her ear. When they reached the nurses waiting just outside the doors, Glimmer saw them take the stretcher and stop the two soldiers pushing it from coming inside. When they tried to stop Lonnie, she pushed passed them with a glare, and followed the stretcher inside.

“What’s going on?” Glimmer slid to a stop, gasping for breath, and choked the question out to no one in particular, hoping someone there knew what was going on and would fill her in.

“We were ambushed.”

Glimmer looked up and saw Kyle, sweat dripping down his face and oxygen mask dangling off his flight helmet instead of covering his mouth, climbing out of the open hatch of the cockpit to slide down the half-ladder hanging there.

“Ambushed? How do you get ambushed by Beast thralls? They’re supposed to be mindless.”

“Yeah, well tell that to all of them,” Kyle said, jumping off the last few rungs and gesturing to the rear cabin.

More stretchers came out of the warbird one by one, each with a white sheet that covered their occupant from head to toe and concealed their face. Glimmer heart sunk lower with each body that emerged. Soon a train of them leading into the hospital had formed. The refugees around them had thankfully taken the infantry’s warnings to heart and hadn’t approached any closer, but an audible whisper began to spread through the crowd, building.

“How did this happen?” she asked, near despondent.

“I don’t know,” Kyle said. He headed toward the hospital alongside the train of stretchers and Glimmer kept pace beside him. “We were supposed to have the city purged by the end of the month, damnit. I was only supposed to provide air support and surveillance. Aratoth and the team went into a building to clear it out and the next thing I know, I’m getting frantic calls for an emergency pickup.”

“Aratoth and the…” Glimmer couldn’t finish her sentence. She scanned the train of gurneys again and counted them: twelve bodies, which was already two more than a typical urban engagement squad was supposed to be, not counting Lonnie and whoever was in that first stretcher. She glanced behind her at the warbird. No one else emerged after them.

“He and Lonnie were the only ones to make it out,” Kyle said. “Although I don’t know if you’d call what happened to him ‘making it out.’ Rogelio thankfully wasn’t part of this one, but Lonnie had to take care of the rest of the team herself while I piloted us back.”

“What do you mean ‘take care of’?” Glimmer asked. They passed into the sterile, halogen-lighted hallways of the hospital interior. Glimmer thought for a moment that the guards on either side of the entrance would have stopped them like they had with the infantry bearing Aratoth’s stretcher, but they only glanced in her direction and pointedly didn’t interfere with her or Kyle entering.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “By the time I got them out of the city they were all already tainted beyond saving. She had to do what she had to before they fully turned.” Kyle formed a finger gun with one of his hands and made a shooting gesture with it pointed to his temple.

“Oh god,” Glimmer said, feeling like she was about to be sick.

A team of nurses in full protective gear sprinted past them. One of them was yelling into a transceiver about prepping for a massive influx of patients they needed to triage. The whole hospital seemed to be abuzz with frantic energy, and Glimmer was still adjusting to how juxtaposed that was with the relative calm of the barracks she had come from moments earlier.

“Looks like I got us back way before everyone else,” Kyle said. “There’s at least twenty other teams that got hit like us.”

“Aratoth wasn’t oversaturated?” Glimmer asked, already dreading the answer. She fought the urge to check her PDA, knowing that if  she were to look now, she’d only find a deluge of emergency communications that’d do nothing to help her keep a level head in the moment.

Kyle balked. “I really can’t tell these things, especially since I was flying the warbird. Lonnie didn’t get to him until last, but she’s still really shaken up. I really can’t say if she had her wits about her enough at the end there to make an objective call about it.” He sighed. “I got us back here before any of the other teams, obviously, but I don’t know…”

The train of gurneys took a turn up ahead as the infantry hurrying them along brought them to the hospital’s incinerator room. The room was typically shut to keep the smell from spilling out into the rest of the building, but Glimmer had a feeling they wouldn’t be able to  close the door for a while now. Someone was already loading bodies onto the conveyor.

They pressed on, leaving the incinerator and train of gurneys behind. Glimmer couldn’t trust herself to dwell there without throwing up. She realized with a startle that she didn’t actually know where Aratoth and Lonnie had gone since they hadn’t stopped at the front desk to ask. Fortunately, (or maybe unfortunately, depending on how she wanted to look at it) she and Kyle could both hear a voice echoing down the hall—Lonnie was throwing a monster of an outburst inside one of the open rooms up ahead.

“What do you mean he’s terminal?” Lonnie said to a harried nurse, just as Kyle and Glimmer dashed into the room. “I just shot twelve of my team in the head because they were terminal. I’ve been on more assignments than you’ve seen tainted soldiers first-hand, lady. Don’t tell me he’s terminal when he was the only one I spared exactly because he wasn’t!”

Rogelio stood there next to Lonnie. Glimmer wasn’t sure how he had gotten there before them—maybe Kyle had given him an advanced heads up—but he grunted at Lonnie with calming gestures while she was leaned forward, practically bellowing at the poor nurse. Someone had already unloaded Aratoth from the stretcher and onto a  bed. Glimmer could see him lying there with his eyes closed, blood and sweat caking his combat uniform and face, thin veins of poisonous black reaching from his collar up to his chin.

“Miss, please,” the nurse said, tapping at a tablet in her arm. “You’ve done your part helping bring them back here, but now it’s time to let me do my job. You’ve been through an ordeal yourself. You need to stop making a scene where the rest of the hospital patients can hear you and go back to the front desk so they can get you processed for a medical evaluation. You need to be checked out as well.”

Glimmer heard Kyle whisper a knowing ‘oh no’ under his breath just as she saw Lonnie’s face tinge purple in rage. Rogelio stepped in front of her then, and told her off with a stern face and a fusillade of clipped grunts. He looked over her shoulder, acknowledging Kyle and nodding at Glimmer. Lonnie turned to follow his gaze.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” Lonnie said, bellowing even louder than before. Kyle and Rogelio and the nurse all tried to step in and shush her but she wasn’t having it. “Don’t tell me to quiet down. Not when the fucking Battlemage who turned down her own assignment comes waltzing in to see the man who’s dying because of it!”

Glimmer felt like she had been kicked in the gut, not because of how vehemently Lonnie spoke but because of the words themselves. She kept her eyes trained on Aratoth, realizing that she wouldn’t have been able to tell if he was still alive or not if it weren’t for the cardiac monitor beeping erratically next to his bedside.

“That’s enough,” the nurse said, stamping her foot and shooting all four of them a death glare. “I don’t care who you are or what you’ve been through, I will not allow you to make a scene in this hospital. There are people here who can recover, and you are making it impossible for them to do so. You will remove yourselves and go to the front desk for checkups of your own or I will have you removed and brought there forcibly.”

Lonnie was fighting a war with herself if the expressions cycling on her face were any indicator. Glimmer, however, knew the nurse wasn’t bluffing—the hospital was staffed to near-overflowing with security now that the building was servicing troops in an emergency rather than catering primarily to injured refugees. She absolutely could (and probably would) call them in to take care of things if Lonnie gave any pushback, Vanguard or not.

Kyle and Rogelio seemed to have the same idea. “We’re so sorry,” Kyle said, grabbing Lonnie by the shoulders with Rogelio and turning her toward the door. “We’ll get out of your hair and let you do your job.”

They pushed her out the door, and Glimmer spared one last glance in Aratoth’s direction. A strange feeling of remorse and guilt tug at her, seeing him lie there on the edge of death like that. There was nothing she could do, though, so she turned and followed the others out the door shortly thereafter.

Lonnie had turned and was speaking in a low, choked-off voice to Rogelio and Kyle out in the hall. She froze when she saw Glimmer rejoin them, eyes wide in anger. Glimmer thought she’d say something or maybe even hit her, but Lonnie just turned and started power walking away toward the front.

Glimmer followed her, and Kyle and Rogelio followed after Glimmer, the three of them giving Lonnie plenty of space ahead of them as they trailed behind. When Lonnie reached the front desk, instead of stopping and asking to be processed for a post-op checkup like she was supposed to, she continued straight on toward the exit.

“Get the hell out of my way,” she said, when the infantry there tried to stop her. She shouldered past them and hung a hard right as soon as she stepped outside.

“Oh geeze,” Kyle said, watching her go. “We can’t just let her wander out there by herself.”

Rogelio grunted in agreement, and they tried to head out the front door to follow, but the infantry had recovered from Lonnie practically barreling through them and took a firmer stance with the two of them.

“Let us through,” Kyle said, trying to force his way past only to have one of the soldiers put his hand on his chest and hold him at arm’s length. “She shouldn’t be out there alone, she’s not okay right now.” A dangerous glint flashed in his eyes, and Rogelio pulled him back by the shoulder faster than even Glimmer could react.

“I’ll go after her,” Glimmer said, not sparing either of them a second glance as she passed. She went straight up to the infantry, daring them to stop her with a hard look of her own. Neither met her gaze, indicated they’d let her pass without argument.

Of course they wouldn’t say anything, Glimmer thought, shaking her head as she pushed past the doors and into the night. No one is going to try and stop the Battlemage from going where she needs to go. What a joke.

Five more warbirds had joined Kyle’s, idling outside, and Glimmer saw the silhouettes and engine trails of several more rocketing toward them against the stars in the sky. Most of the refugees that had gathered nearby earlier had dispersed, but that only meant they were instead wandering about the compound in small groups now, too shaken to return to their megaliths. Anxious whispers traded between them: something about Tir off in the distance had changed. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what, since visibility at night was low, but Glimmer could feel it just as much as the others could.

An ethereal wail traveled the distance from the city to the compound and everyone gasped in horror at hearing it. A child started to cry off to the left. Bright streaking comets flashed in the sky, their trajectory betraying them as fresh military reinforcement craft burning through the atmosphere from the main fleet orbiting high above on a direct intercept course for the city. The whispering grew more pronounced. A cat-like revving sounded off to the right and Glimmer caught sight of dozens of speeders shooting toward the city in formation, having just jetted off from the staging area right outside the compound fencing.

Glimmer forced herself to focus on her original goal and stalked off to find Lonnie. Eventually, she found her pacing a new circular footpath into the undergrowth nearby.

“Lonnie, what are you doing out here?” Glimmer said, coming up cautiously behind her. “You’ve just come out of a botched combat situation—you need to let the doctors check you out.”

“Like you know anything about seeing combat,” Lonnie said. She spun on her heel, growing vicious, and lunged, pushing Glimmer hard in the chest, faster than she could step out from.

Glimmer took the full brunt of it and took several steps back, trying keep her balance. Lonnie feigned a look of surprise. “Oh, silly me, what am I even saying? You have seen combat. Plenty of it!”

She lunged again for another push. Now that she was expecting it, Glimmer could have dodged, or even used Lonnie’s momentum against her to lock her in an armbar on the ground—she was emotional enough it might have worked. But instead, she took the shove head on again.

“What is this about, Lonnie?” she asked, staggering backward again. “Is this about me not picking you and the others up and leading?”

“Of course it is!” Lonnie shoved Glimmer a third time with a roar. “Of course it’s about that. Why the hell aren’t you fighting back, damnit?”

She lunged a fourth time, but Glimmer turned her body so the majority of the force behind the push angled off her. She whirled all the way around Lonnie before she could react and pushed her from behind instead.

She’s really going off the deep end emotionally if she’s this clumsy, was all Glimmer could think when she saw Lonnie stumble forward and almost fall. A bitter pit of worry began to form inside her at seeing that.

“This has nothing to do with me taking command,” Glimmer said, keeping a measured voice. “Kyle said you were ambushed in the city. He said there were plenty of others that were ambushed as well—at  least 20 teams! It would have happened no matter who was in charge and no matter who went in to respond. You can’t beat yourself up or get mad at me for it, this is just what happens sometimes.”

Lonnie whirled back around to face her and Glimmer got a clear look at the anguish radiating off her; tears were threatening to fall freely from her wide, bloodshot eyes, and her whole body was tensed for a fight. “I’m not beating myself up about any of this,” she said, voice quavering. “But I do think I want to beat the shit out of you right now.”

She put up two fists high and tight to her face and assumed a boxer’s stance, bouncing on her toes. Before Glimmer could respond, she closed the distance between them and threw a punch. It sailed just past Glimmer’s head, slipping the blow thanks only to the muscle memory Taline had instilled in her from hours upon hours of close quarters combat drills. Glimmer never understood why a Battlemage who could move mountains with spells had to train in martial combat as extensively as Taline had forced her to, but now she was thankful for it.

“Are you crazy?” Glimmer asked, dodging another blow. “You’re going to get court-martialed for this. Stop!” A number of people, including Horde Infantry, had noticed them and were starting to gather.

“Not if you join in,” Lonnie said as she feinted a punch. “Come on and fight back already. And don’t use any of that magic bullshit on me, it’s cheating.”

Something in the way Lonnie spoke tipped her off. Whether it was how each of her words came out clipped like she was afraid she’d burst into tears if she let them lengthen too much, or the way she seemed to almost be begging for a fight instead of demanding it, Glimmer wasn’t sure, but she got the sense that Lonnie needed this. Needed an outlet. So, half-wary and half-intrigued, she curled both her hands into fists too and squared up.

“Why did you turn us down?” Lonnie asked, inching forward. “Why didn’t you take us on like you were supposed to?”

“I’ve been pretty upfront with everyone I’ve reported to that I’m not to lead a team,” Glimmer said, dodging a blow and throwing one of her own. “The High Council wanted to try and pull a fast one and assign you to me without any warning. I spoke to Aratoth and he agreed in the end that it’d be a bad idea to force it. That’s why he took you off my roster.”

Lonnie scoffed and sidestepped a round of successive blows Glimmer fired off at her. “Yeah, right.”

“It’s true. I tried to come tell you almost immediately after we landed, but you wouldn’t listen.” Glimmer stepped around a jab, then grabbed Lonnie by the front of her armor and threw her from the hip. “I don’t understand why you’re so fixated on me leading,” she said. “We probably all would have died if I was there in charge, instead of you and Kyle at least getting out.”

“None of that shit would have happened in the first place if you were there!” Lonnie said, rolling as soon as she struck the ground and bouncing back up to her feet. “I don’t know why you have this idea you’re going to lock up the moment you wade into a battle. Is this because of what happened up on Prime’s citadel?”

“That’s part of it,” Glimmer said, darting backward to avoid another blow.

“That was years ago,” Lonnie said. “And if you ever doubted whether or not it still affected your ability to lead, what happened on Rinne should have more than proved that’s not the case.”

Glimmer reeled. Why did everyone bring that up? And why did she think Lonnie would have a different impression of what happened there compared to everyone else? “Rinne is different,” she said, forcing herself to say the words.

“Like hell it was different,” Lonnie said, setting upon her with a ferocious barrage of punches and kicks and sweeps at her legs, each of which Glimmer shied away from in turn. “Fighting is fighting. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it or what the circumstances are, it matters that you’ve done it and survived. And you’ve done way more than that, Glimmer.”

She threw one more blow that Glimmer dodged before stepping in and pushing her backward, hard.

“Rinne is the other part of it!”

To her credit, Lonnie looked stunned, although Glimmer didn’t push the advantage when her  guard dropped. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that Rinne is the other half of the reason why I know I can’t lead. I thought the same thing you did! I thought, ‘well gee, the emperor’s Citadel was years ago, maybe it’s fine’, but it wasn’t fine, Lonnie. Rinne…that whole situation was so fucked up. It’s not something to pull out and point to as an example of good leadership.”

“It isn’t?” Lonnie said, stumbling. “Seemed like great leadership to me, but you don’t have to take my word for it. The people all think so as well.”

“No, they don’t.”

“They gave you your name after that, didn’t they?” They call you an angel because you saved thousands of people when no one else could—”

Glimmer clapped her hands to her ears and shook her head. “Stop! You don’t understand!”

“Then make me understand, Glimmer! All I know is the number of people you—you alone—saved. And it may not have happened on Archanas, but you reminded all of us enough of what your own mentor accomplished that they decided to celebrate you anyways. You broke almost every rule doing what you did once the chain of command deteriorated enough you became in charge, but the High Council didn’t even put you in front of a tribunal for it. How can you point to that and use it as an example for why you shouldn’t be in charge?”

That finally set Glimmer off. She charged and threw a savage blow that connected perfectly with the front of Lonnie’s face. She heard a snap and felt no small satisfaction when Lonnie cried out and stumbled backwards with both hands cupped over her nose.

“I told you already,” Glimmer said, voice as hard and sturdy as steel. “Stop. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Lonnie narrowed her eyes one moment, and the next, Glimmer got a split-second glance of her closing the distance between them again with a mighty lunge. The world lurched and she saw stars as pain ripped across her jaw: Lonnie had connected with a haymaker so powerful it had knocked all sense of balance out of her. Unable to keep upright, she fell backward to the ground and put both hands in the grass trying to steady herself.

Lonnie padded over and loomed above her as the world continued to spin. She held one hand at her nose which dripped blood down to her chin, and the other she held still raised in a fist near her chest plate. A wet cracking noise filled the air when she set her nose, and Lonnie winced from it.

“If you have the gall to tell me what happened today is ‘just what happens’ after I put a bullet between the eyes of almost my entire team,” she said, “then you have no right tell me that what you did on that assignment wasn’t leadership in a tight spot. Especially not after you managed to actually save people.” She spat again and Glimmer saw more blood than spit  come out. Lonnie cursed under her breath.

“You might think you’re too compromised to lead, but unless some pinhead doctor who knows what they’re talking about discharges you for PTSD, what you think means jack shit when compared to what you can do on the battlefield, Glimmer.

“Aratoth took us on when he had no room to do so because he knew the statistics behind Vanguard teams without someone to lead them. I couldn’t do it. We would have been dead in days on our own out there without him, and instead, he gets to die because he tried to lead a squad that was too large. He needed you to step up—we all needed you to step up. Now, all they’ll get is a furnace and a gravestone. Their blood is on your hands.”

 Lonnie spat blood on the ground a second time and turned to walk away. The world began to right itself and Glimmer managed to push herself into a fully sitting position. Unfortunately, without the vertigo distracting her, she instead grew more aware of the horrible pain in her jaw and the headache beginning to throb at her temple.

She sat there for a long time with her thoughts, trying to beat away the feeling of dread emanating from Tir in the distance. After a while, she felt brave enough to push to her feet and slowly stumble back to the hospital, alone.

Chapter Text

Catra plunged into pitch black darkness the moment she shut the door to Moriarty’s office behind her with a click. The coverings over the windows preventing anyone in the cube farm outside from looking in also blocked out any ambient light, so she stilled, noting the interplay between her breathing and her heartbeat, trying to keep them balanced against each other and prevent either from spooling faster. Her night vision was superb, it just took a moment to kick in—a moment that, the longer it stretched on, she wished was shorter. The longer she stayed in that office, the higher her chances of getting caught.

Just when she finished that thought, a light appeared at her right wrist, powerful enough she hissed and tried to shy away from it on instinct. A moment later, she caught her bearings and realized it was emanating from her PDA.

It’s a flashlight! Entrapta had told her when she first gifted the thing to her. It’s super powerful. Be careful not to burn anyone’s eyes out with it. Catra mashed at the controls, scrambling to shut it off as quickly as possible.

“Oops,” Pip said, floating up to her left. She didn’t give off any light of her own, despite being clearly visible against the dark. “Did you not want me to do that?”

“No!” Catra hissed the words aloud now that they were alone. “My eyes will adjust on their own. I don’t want anyone accidentally seeing me in here. If that light is strong enough to blind someone, then it might be powerful enough to shine through the blackout curtains.”

“Sorry,” Pip said. At least she looked sheepish. “I’m still getting used to you, I guess. I felt that you wanted to see, now, and knew there was a light I could turn on for you.” She pursed her lips and sighed. “It will probably take a little longer until I can anticipate you better.”

Catra huffed but let it go, since the outlines and contours of the room were starting to come into focus for her. It was still dead silent inside. The blaring alarm from outside had turned off before she had fully gotten inside, but she also figured Moriarty was likely to have the same kind of sound dampening in his office that Taline had in hers. Letting silence draw her into a false sense of security was a sure way to get caught, so she pushed the worries clawing at her mind aside and focused on what she had come to do in the first place.

An executive-style desk sat in the middle of the office, carved out of one solid block of black wood. A computer terminal sat on top of it along with a number of documents and a tablet. A trophy case filled with awards and pictures and baubles stretched the entire length and width of the right side of the office, pushed against the wall. A small coat closet was tucked away in the opposite far corner, near a couch, coffee table, and aluminum planter.

“Pretty sparse office for the head of an entire region of space, aside from the trophies,” Catra said, stalking over to the desk.

Pip seemed confused. “Looks like a normal office to me. Taline’s got one too.”

“That’s exactly my point. Taline has a whole storage area filled with contraband lab equipment hidden away in hers. You’d think someone who reports directly to the emperor and answers to no one else would have an office that was less...”

“Unassuming?” Pip asked, finishing Catra’s sentence when she couldn’t find the word.

Catra smirked and winked at her. “Maybe you’ll start better anticipating me quicker than you think.”

Pip beamed at her in response and Catra, feeling satisfied, slid behind the desk, careful to avoid touching or displacing anything. When she tapped the console’s keyboard, a holographic screen popped up in front of her and prompted her for a password.

“Damn, I should have seen this coming,” Catra said, patting at the encrypted drive in her pocket. “You think if I just plug in the device, it will bypass the login?” Diallo had given her a list of passwords to try but she didn’t know how much time they had before someone came back. That alarm Pip set off outside was a good distraction, but it likely cut whatever time they would have had undetected short.

“I have a better idea,” Pip said, landing with gentle feet on the desk.

As Catra watched her pad over to the holo-screen with her bare feet, she wondered at the back of her mind if she could change her size at will. Pip was supposedly just a projection in her head. Catra had only seen her manifest roughly the size of a glass of water—was it possible for her to appear as tall as her? Or maybe even larger?

“There you go,” Pip said. The lock screen asking for a password replaced with Moriarty’s working desktop with all his applications and electronic documents ready for access. “And I can change my size by the way,” she said, briefly growing a few inches before returning back to her smaller size. “But it doesn’t really matter, since you’re the only one who can see me anyways. Giant seven-foot-tall women may be your thing, but I see no need to get into that if this size suits me just fine.”

Catra sputtered. “Giant seven foot—” She stared wide-eyed at Pip who raised an eyebrow at her and didn’t break eye contact, both hands resting on her hips. “That’s not my thing,” she said after schooling her voice and expression back into one of calm. “In fact, I don’t have a thing. At all.”

“If you say so,” Pip said with a shrug, finally breaking eye contact to stare with abject fascination at a Newton’s cradle sitting next to her on the desk.

Catra rolled her eyes. There really was no use arguing with her. Pip had been in her head, apparently had seen at least some of her memories, and could actively read her thoughts. She turned her attention back to the now unlocked computer, pulled out the drive from her pocket, and plugged it into the computer. A dialog box popped up, cycling through a number of log messages that flashed on-screen almost too quickly for her to read, and then a progress bar popped up with the words ‘deciphering’ displayed above it.

She watched the bar tick up to one percent after a handful of seconds, then turned her attention back to Pip. “This has to be one of the most secure places on the entire station, but you’re able to set off the general alarm and unlock not just Moriarty’s office door but his computer as well. Do you think you’d do any better at reading the data on the storage device?” She glanced back at the computer terminal. It had ticked up to two percent, finally. “It’s going to take forever this way.”

“Already tried that, Pip said, shaking her head. “ Didn’t work. I sat with that deciphering program back at the precinct, you know? Oh man, that poor guy was so confused about what we were trying to get him to do, it was almost comical.”

“That guy?”

“You know, your ‘Mother Brain’?” Pip said. “Funny you call him ‘mother’ when he’s a dude. He kept asking me what you wanted him to do since the disk looked empty to him. I kept trying to tell him there was this massive encryption around it…even borrowed your hands for a bit to try and force him to look at it after he pissed me off by implying I was the defective one for ‘seeing something that wasn’t there’.”

“Wait, you and the AI at the precinct talked to each other?” Catra asked, surprised. She blinked. “And Mother Brain is a guy? AI’s can have genders?”

Pip’s mouth parted slightly and her eyes narrowed, her whole face expressing an are you for real? sentiment as she gestured with both hands at her own body, clad in its frilly sundress.

Catra cleared her throat, feeling a flush tinge at her. “Silly question, perhaps. That was you doing all that crazy coding too? By…borrowing my hands?”

“More or less” Pip said. “I wasn’t actually borrowing anything—I can’t take over your body, if that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t want to bore you with the specifics, so I’ll just say that I make…suggestions. Suggestions that your body is very good at following, if you want to.

“As for talking to other AIs, the answer there is yes, too. All of the above, yes. Just like you and Diallo or Taline or Dax can talk to each other, I can talk to other programs and AI too. Most of them are pretty boring, some of them are nice. Like Hilda.”

“You’ve talked to Hilda? What do you guys even talk about?”

Pip laughed through here nose, then started to shimmer, and her features began to shift. Her blue hue, pixie cut, and sun dress turned into a green avatar of a woman with long flowing hair and a military-styled service uniform with the Imperial Horde insignia emblazoned on the front.

“She’s pretty nice,” the Pip/Hilda hybrid said, “I just can’t speak too much about her intelligence without being mean.” Pip turned back to her original self, brushing off imaginary dust from her shoulders when she finished. “I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to appear to other people. Hilda can go anywhere in the station using her holo-projectors. I thought about giving them a try myself, but…”

“But what?” Catra asked, when Pip trailed off.

“I dunno. They’re hers, I shouldn’t take over them just because I’m bored or curious.” She gave a low chuckle. “Besides, can you imagine someone calling for her at a terminal and I show up instead? Would probably give Taline a heart attack when auditors start digging into why a blue AI showed up out of nowhere. She was always very…careful. About not letting me get onto the main station network. Seems like a bad idea to go crazy now that I’ve finally gotten a chance to hook in, even if its hard to ignore all the freedom from time to time.”

“Yeah, I guess I can understand that,” Catra said, remembering how she had to coach herself the same way during her first few months off Etheria. It’s a big, wide galaxy, Catra, she’d said to herself every now and again, when the urge to do something self-destructive felt far more interesting than putting on her uniform and clocking in for her shift. Don’t go crazy with all the freedom, you’ll only make it harder to build a real life out here if you do.

She checked the computer again, anxiety creeping up her spine again when the decryption bar still had so much more to go. “So, you can’t take over my body, but just ‘suggest’,” Catra said. “But however you phrase it, we still did something to Mother Brain trying to force him to try and decrypt the drive.”

 “Yeah, but it didn’t work, remember? You could probably tell, since everything shut off while he rebooted. I think we short-circuited his brain for a bit, and when he turned back on, he just kept pretending there wasn’t a drive for him to look at to begin with.” Pip flashed a smirk and gave a low chuckle. “Serves him right. Shouldn’t have said I was defective for pointing out something he couldn’t see.”

“So, you could see the encryption, but the cutting-edge AI designed specifically to decrypt things couldn’t even register it was encrypted at all?”

“Yep, pretty much,” Pip said. “Although that’s as far as I could get too. I saw everything was scrambled but had no idea what to do with any of it. I would have said something sooner if I could have cracked it instead of, you know…letting you come all the way out here with that weird politician man. I don’t think Evie fully finished some of my modules before she died. Why else can I see the encryption but not do anything with it?”

“I don’t know,” Catra said. “Maybe you aren’t finished, but thank you for trying to help.” For some reason, the fact Pip already tried to decrypt the drive for her was touching. “You’re pretty amazing, you know that? Even if you might technically not be done, Evelyn must have been a real genius to have made you. I mean, I don’t think I’d have even gotten in here if it weren’t for you.”

“Thanks,” Pip said, flashing a quick smile. “And I’m sure she was great. I kinda wish I remembered her.”

“You mean you don’t remember anything about her?”

Pip shook her head, crossing one arm over her chest to rub the other. “Taline has asked me that question so many times I’ve lost count. I wish I remembered something about her, anything at all! But I can’t, and it’s frustrating.”

As curious as she was, Catra decided not to push for more answers or explanation after seeing how uncomfortable the topic was for Pip. A gentle wave of appreciation lapped at her consciousness from the other side of their connection in response. The progress bar on the monitor had just crested the 50% mark.

“Do you think Taline would approve of what we’re doing here?” Catra asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, doing this crazy undercover infiltration mission with Diallo.” Catra tapped her fingers on the desk. Thinking about this was making her more anxious than she had expected.

“You mean how he told you Sentinels are supposed to do undercover missions like this when their Battlemages can’t get directly involved?” Pip asked. Catra nodded, and she said, “I’m really not sure. She said to return the drive to Diallo, then this happened when you tried. I couldn’t tell you if this was what Taline wanted to happen originally, if her original order was code to be deciphered between the lines or not.”

Catra sighed. “Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but there’s something that just doesn’t add up to me,” she said, choosing her words carefully. Pip gave her a hesitant look and she continued. “You don’t remember ever seeing Diallo before, despite him apparently knowing Taline since the first war. You don’t remember anything about Evie, either, despite the fact she built you to begin with. And now you can’t tell me anything about Taline despite the fact she’s stewarded you for years. I don’t get it.”

Pip deflated and wandered over to the edge of the desk, sitting down on the hardwood and dangling her feet off the edge. “The thing is,” she said. “Taline always kept me on a very short leash and behind very high walls whenever it came to interacting with her. She didn’t want me reading any of her memories, didn’t want me reading any of her thoughts, especially didn’t want me getting onto the station’s network, like I said….She essentially kept me tied to a limited interface and almost exclusively had me comb through my memory banks or my own programming to see if I could remember anything about Evie.”

“That’s it?” Catra asked, surprised.

“Well, she’d also feed me files that she thought were encrypted with phantom algorithms, but I always cracked those because they weren’t actually phantom algorithms. Whatever’s on that drive Diallo handed off to her is way more complex than anything Taline gave me before.” Pip gave a rueful laugh at that. “The point is, she barely let me integrate with her at all and let me see even less of her thoughts and memories and experiences. I’ve never seen Diallo before. Not until I integrated with you and you talked to him. Despite being in Taline’s care for over eight years now, I know more about you—your thoughts, your intentions, your desires—after being connected with you for less than a week than I know about Taline.” She let out a sad sigh. “So, I really can’t say one way or the other how she’d feel about all of this. All I know is how you feel about it. I’m sorry.”

Catra grimaced and shook her head. “That’s okay…I’m sorry. Not just for asking, but I’m sorry that happened to you.” Truthfully, hearing the way Taline treated Pip surprised her and reminded her of some unpleasant associations with her past. “My guardian…she didn’t exactly want anything to do with me either unless it served some sort of ulterior motive, so I understand what it’s like to feel that way, and you have nothing to be sorry for about it.”

She stopped, suddenly realizing what she was admitting out loud. Although she hadn’t identified her by name, Catra had spoken about Shadow Weaver and her past to exactly zero people except Glimmer. The fact she felt so comfortable just airing out such emotionally charged thoughts to Pip was alarming. When she looked at her, Pip was looking back with a sympathetic expression and knowing eyes.

“You already know who I’m talking about, don’t you?” Catra asked, feeling as though she already knew the answer. Pip nodded and Catra gave a small laugh. “How much of my memories have you actually seen already? Y’know, just so we’re on the same page about it.”

“How mad would you be if I told you I’ve pretty much seen all of it?” Pip asked, fidgeting in anticipation.

“Not mad at all, believe it or not,” she said, giving a shrug. She had to admit, being laid bare was a lot less off-putting than she’d imagined, to the extent she surprised herself at how okay it all felt. Somewhere deep in her mind she rationalized that having someone, even an AI, see into her deepest thoughts and view her most private memories and still want to stick around and help despite it all made her feel strangely grateful (even if Pip was kind of a brat about things, although Catra considered it yet another thing they had in common).

“Well that’s a relief,” Pip said, letting out an exaggerated sigh. “I do have to say though, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Taline over the years, it’s that she’s not exactly what she appears to be on the surface.”

“What?” Catra felt another hand of ice squeeze her chest at hearing that, another association with Shadow Weaver threatening to solidify in her mind.

“No, nothing like that,” Pip said, standing up and waving her arms in front of her as if to chase away Catra’s fears. “I meant if you asked me before she gave me to you, I might have said that she was very cold and distant. She never let me see very deep, but what little I could glean from our interactions, she seemed angry and vengeful and single-minded. Then she left for a while, right when Etheria was discovered, and came back with those three mangled scars on her face from the emperor and a completely new attitude.”

“You’re saying she changed?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying. All she could think about when she came back was training her new apprentice or worrying over you. She went from almost obsessively thinking about hunting a dead man down and mentally flagellating herself over Evie’s death to asking me if now was the right time to let her go—asking for advice on how she might even do that. Catra, I heard her talk about you so often, I felt like I already half knew you before she handed me over. She told me that you were a special person to her and that I’d better do everything I can to take care of you.”

“She said that?” Catra asked, feeling her mouth go dry.

“She not only said it—but she gave me a glimpse, a true glimpse—into her mind when she did. She exposed herself fully to me in then so I could see for myself the depth of her emotions in the moment…how much she meant it. I never would have expected such a change in her given our history. That’s what I meant when I said she’s not what she seems on the surface.”

Catra hadn’t realized how fast her heart was beating and how dry her mouth had gone until that moment. She ran her hands through her hair several times, her sense of stability returning and the lump in her throat subsiding when she reaffirmed how short it was.

It felt so silly now, thinking Pip was about to share something negative about Taline. Truthfully, she felt slightly ashamed that was the conclusion she jumped to first. Taline deserved the benefit of the doubt, at the very least, but why did she have to try so hard in order to give it?

“Don’t beat yourself up so much,” Pip said, giving Catra’s hand she rested on the desk a nudge with her foot that, to Catra’s surprise, she felt.

“She tried so hard to connect with me,” Catra said, feeling tears sting her eyes and hating it. “A letter of recommendation sent straight to Dax for each of my performance reviews, invitations to coffee or brunch I’d brush off or find some flimsy excuse for… She brought me off world, Pip. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for her.”

“And you deserved all of her love and affection. It was hers to give and she gave it to you, willingly. You grew up and learned such displays were a manipulation, and it does no good to wallow in guilt now that you’ve realized it can be genuine too. You and Taline are nearly on the same page now, you’ve lowered the walls between you enough you can now see one another. You’re her Sentinel, Catra, and you’re here to do a job that is supposed to help her, right? Hopefully expose some hidden treachery that will protect this station, this region of space, and its people that Taline is trying to protect?”

Catra found empathy and understanding in Pip’s expression despite how scolding the words themselves were. It was enough to push back the guilt and regret swirling around her and focus.

The progress bar on the computer ticked past eighty percent, and Catra’s sentiments about how plain the office seemed came back to her. Taline had an entire hidden area full of equipment in her office, and Catra was almost certain Moriarty had even more to hide than her. She’d just have to find it.

She pulled the drawers and cabinets of Moriarty’s desk open and started rummaging through them. Nothing immediately caught her eye, until she pulled a cylindrical object out of one of the drawers and all racing thoughts came to an immediate, grinding halt.

“What’s that?” Pip asked, standing on her toes and trying to crane her head over top of Catra’s hand to look at the thing.

“It’s not good, is what it is,” Catra said, turning the pill bottle to show her the label. “These are antirejection drugs. Black market.”

“I haven’t read through any Imperial law yet, seemed boring. How serious is it to have those?”

“Very serious. They’re completely illegal, category one banned substance. Enough to get even Moriarty thrown in jail under a lengthy sentence if he were to be found with them. What the heck does he need to suppress his immune system this much for?”

She glanced down and a second bottle grabbed her attention. She picked that one up too and read the label.

“He’s got sleep narcotics as well,” she said, shaking the bottle. “Same deal—black market stuff.”

“Black market because they’re so powerful?”

Catra nodded. “I recognize these ones specifically, too. I was on a few task forces to tamp down on the supply coming into Phoenix last year. When the Beast took Rinne, people couldn’t sleep out of fear and they turned towards these and similar drugs to make do. It wasn’t until the stuck Glimmer with that name that public sentiment calmed enough the demand dropped.

“I threw my OTC sleepers into the trash because I didn’t want to end up using stronger versions. This here is also ridiculously illegal—probably ten times stronger than the strongest version you can get with an actual prescription. Either one of these will earn Moriarty ten years in prison, easy. What the heck is he doing with them?”

The progress bar jumped the last chunk of the way to completion and a flurry of characters and information cascaded down the screen, dragging her attention back to the terminal.

“Oh wow,” Pip said, staring at the screen. “Oh…oh wow.”

“Talk to me, Pip. I can read the screens but I don’t understand it.”

“I’m linked directly into the computer and…Catra, this is the real deal. I can see the encrypted data stream, and the unencrypted stuff right next to it, but I still can’t understand how they managed to go from one to the other, even when I’m staring right at the decryption key on Moriarty’s box.”

“What does that mean? I have, like, the technical understanding of a brick, so you’re going to have to spell it out for me.” She hadn’t taken her eyes off the screen, but the sheer number of windows opening up and messages displaying came so quickly it astonished her she could actually track the information. It shouldn’t have been possible.

“It means that whatever algorithm the Vestamid used on this to encrypt it really isn’t indexed in the Empire’s forensics database. That’s why the program you consulted at the precinct couldn’t understand or even see this either. As far as the empire is concerned, this type of technology doesn’t even exist yet.”

“The only algorithm in use not currently catalogued by the empire is the one the Barrier uses to the Beast caged. So Diallo was right again. This truly is a phantom algorithm. He found one, tying the Vestamid and Moriarty together.”

Pip nodded and Catra cursed. She didn’t realize until that moment that, although this scenario was the whole reason why she was infiltrating Moriarty’s office to begin with, she had actually hoped to find nothing at all. Opening this can of worms only complicated things so much more. For now, she had to get the decryption key copied over for Taline, and bring it to her immediately.

The stream of popups on the screen stopped, displaying the last piece of decryption information: a letter.

Moriarty —

Your assistance with the latest iteration of our storage silos is greatly appreciated and did not go unnoticed. Our mutual benefactor is impressed, and I assure you that we are indeed considering your request. Please understand, however, that touching God is not something to take or ask of lightly. We have made encouraging progress on our satellite settlement on Eden, but there is still much work to be done.

Remember, all ailments and ambitions are nothing in the face of God. There shall be nothing, only Him—so said the Prophet Corynth. Soon, all will come to know His grace, and you as one among many of the Emperor’s chosen shall be first in line. I ask that you exercise patience.

Forever your humble servant,  

Larian

Primate of the Vestamid, Archbishop of Archanas

“What the hell?” Catra asked, staring wide-eyed at the letter. “Prophet Corynth? Archbishop of Archanas?” Some part of her had prepared for this outcome—prepared for Diallo to be proven right. But seeing a letter spell it out so plain it was impossible to deny?

Something instinctual sounded off a warning in her head and scattered her thoughts like smoke. She snapped her head up to stare at the far door and, although she could still hear nothing and all was still. Another warning came, much like the premonition she had experienced back at Vadim’s Tailchaser pub, but far stronger.

“Hide!” Pip said. She floated up into Catra’s field of vision and shot her a desperate look.

“What’s going on?”

“They’re coming! Everything is soundproof in here so you can’t hear, but they’re coming. You have to hide. Now!”

Catra yanked the drive out of the computer and shoved it back in her pocket. Then she put the computer back to sleep, shut the monitor off, and darted over to the corner coat closet. She succeeding in squeezing herself inside and pulling the slatted door shut in front of her just as the doors to Moriarty’s office burst open.

“—telling you Diallo, this false alarm was nothing but a ploy from one of my political rivals,” Moriarty said.

The lights flicked on and Catra watched through an opening between two slats in the closet door. Moriarty stumped across the office with Diallo hot on his heels, throwing open the blackout curtains and slamming his girth into the office chair behind the desk. The chair squealed in protest at having to hold up his weight and Diallo flinched on the other side of the desk.”

“I’m s-sure it was just a system error, s-sir,” Diallo said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You have n-no more political rivals. Not f-for years, now.”

“Hah,” Moriarty said, leaning forward and eliciting another squeal from his chair. “An emergency alarm in the middle of my rally? Where conspicuously all the security cameras are off? I think not. It seems I’ll have to start throwing people off the balcony to the Atrium floor again when I find out who instigated this. It was a very effective means of sending a message back in the day, remember?”

Diallo meshed his fingers together and retained a placid demeanor. Moriarty studied him a moment, then huffed.

“You disapprove,” Moriarty said. It was a statement, not a question.

“I didn’t s-say anything, sir. Although I admit I f-find throwing people off the top floor of the Atrium so they s-splatter on the ground isn’t the most appealing thing to imagine.”

“Not that, you idiot. I’m talking about my rally speech. You didn’t show even though I invited you, but I know you watched it. You have the same sour look on your face right now that you had when I first told you about all the budget cuts.”

Diallo sighed. “Sir, my opinion on that h-hasn’t changed. I just don’t see h-how we can defend our systems against a Beast incursion w-with so little funding. Granted, the incursions are n-not as serious as they were so many years ago, but still. Even Phoenix Station right now is s-suffering immensely with the sheer number of people trying to apply for r-refugee status.”

“Which is exactly why I shut the station intake down,” Moriarty said, scratching at his jowls. “Look, Diallo, we’ve known each other for a little while now. I know you got your position because that Seraph bitch put you up for it, but despite my initial misgivings, you are quite the conniving fellow.”

“T-thank you sir?” Diallo said, looking around the room, probably looking for any traces of Catra having been there. Pip, on her shoulder, giggled when he looked toward the closet and didn’t linger.

“You’re very welcome,” Diallo said. “That’s the main reason I’m letting you in on a little secret right now. The Emperor has a few aces up his sleeve when it comes to dealing with the Beast. One of them I’m sure you’ve heard of already if you pay any attention at all to the rumor mill. Does the ‘Heart of Etheria’ sound familiar to you?”

Catra held her breath.

“I admit I’ve h-heard its name bandied about sir, although I h-haven’t paid much heed to rumors.”

“It’s the real deal. I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s a superweapon, and as soon as it’s revealed the Beast will cease to be a concern. That’s why I’m cutting the budgets. The money is going into the central Imperial coffers for the Vestamid.”

“S-sir?”

“The Beast nearly destroyed life in the galaxy. It still threatens to do so, and even if the threat were neutralized, the psychological trauma inflicted on the galaxy as a whole will remain. Would you believe that your very own Vestamid are pioneering a solution? They are intimately familiar with incorporating the trauma of the Beast into a functioning self-identity, after all.”

“M-my very own—Moriarty…sir, what are you s-saying, exactly?” Diallo was feigning surprise, Catra could tell. He already knew most of this. Maybe not the Heart of Etheria part—she wasn’t quite sure about that—but she now fully believed his suspicions around the Vestamid were well-placed.

“What I’m saying is…what’s this?” Moriarty cut off and Catra immediately felt ice flood her veins when he picking up the two pill bottles that were still resting on the top of his desk.

::Oh shit:: she said, sending as strong a sense of panic she could muster through her connection with Pip. She had forgotten to put those back where she found them!

Moriarty stood up from his chair. “Whoever is in here, you’d better reveal yourself now or so help me I will gut you and your whole extended family like a fish.”

Catra held her breath, each heartbeat hammering in her chest ringing loud enough in her ears she feared Moriarty could hear all the way across the room.

“I don’t think there is anyone in h-here besides—“

“Quiet,” Moriarty said. Catra saw him press something on the underside of the desk. “This is a code twelve,” he said, standing and leaning over to speak into one of the baubles sitting on the desk. “Send backup immediately.”

“He just sent out an emergency call on a private line,” Pip said, whispering into her ear despite the fact only Catra would have heard her even if she shouted. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now before even more people show up.”

::What the fuck am I supposed to do?!::

“I don’t know, but don’t just stand here!”

Catra took a deep breath and stepped out of the closet. A twisted grin spread across Moriarty’s face when he saw, while Diallo looked like he had just seen a ghost he went so pale.

“Administrator Moriarty,” Catra said, fighting to keep the waver out of her voice. “You are under arrest for possession of illicit category one narcotics. Turn around and place both of your hands behind your back.” She pulled the stun baton off her right thigh and activated it, sending a threatening crackle sound rippling through the air.

Moriarty laughed. “I know who you are. You’re that new Sentinel. Oh, I should have known Taline was playing dirty tricks behind my back while she was down there with me.” He turned to Diallo. “Did you have any hand in this? Is this why you weren’t at the rally? Because you were too busy helping her break into my office?”

Diallo backed away toward the trophy case with both palms up.

“I said turn around and put both hands behind your back,” Catra said. “Do it now!”

Moriarty scoffed and took a step toward her, rolls of fat rippling across his body as he did. “Oh, girl, didn’t you know that you can’t make arrests? You aren’t a cop anymore.” He tutted and shook his head. “Sentinel or no, Dax would be so disappointed to hear you’ve sold out to Taline just to play secret agent.”

Moriarty didn’t broadcast a thing. One moment he was several steps away, and the next he was directly in front of her, having lunged forward so quickly Catra felt the warning in her head before she noticed him move. He backhanded the stun baton out of her hand and sent it skittering across the ground until it slammed into the far wall.

Two things happened in the next instant. First, after realizing what happened, Catra understood she had far underestimated Diallo’s capabilities. Second, in the following split second after that realization, she felt another warning in her head and ducked, choosing to act on what the warning told her rather than wait to notice something with her eyes. And just as she ducked, a meaty fist that would have sent her flying across the room passed over her head, missing her entirely.

What? she thought. How did I react to that if I didn’t even—

“Don’t think!” Pip said. “Just move!”

Catra had no idea what she was reacting to—she still hadn’t seen or registered anything. But some visceral instinct inside her that had only been a passing sensation before suddenly screamed at her to sidestep, and sidestep she did. Moriarty followed through his haymaker with a forward lunge, intending to have rammed Catra’s entire body back against the closet with a thrust from his shoulder if she hadn’t gotten out of the way.

Catra unholstered the sidearm at her hip and raised it. Moriarty flailed and knocked her aim off just as she fired. The bullet flew wide and slammed into the window overlooking the cube farm below. The glass cracked and spider-webbed but didn’t shatter.

Another warning flashed in her head, but this time Catra already knew her body couldn’t physically move as quickly as the instinct urged her to. Still, she did her best, dashing to the side as Moriarty rounded on her again, grabbing her by the neck with one hand before she could fully step away.

Catra yelped as Moriarty picked her up off the floor and slammed her against the closet door as easily as one lifted a small animal. His hand engulfed her from jaw to clavicle, his fingers wrapping all the way around and meeting at her nape. Catra dropped the gun, hearing it clatter to the floor as she kicked and scratched and plied at his face with her claws. He reeled back and slammed her against the closet a second time, hard.

 Catra saw stars. Her vision swam and the room spun. She tried to struggle—her whole body was on fire, burning with the urge to fight, to live. She kicked and scratched, trying in vain to reach his face. But no matter how hard she struggled she couldn’t get free of the man’s grip around her throat. He squeezed, cutting off the air to her lungs and the blood flow to her head, and the edges of her vision started to close in on her.

She raked her hands down his arm, tearing at the flesh there and revealing a hard metallic endoskeleton under the skin. Both of Moriarty’s arms had been replaced with prosthetics.

Well, that explains the antirejection drugs she thought, almost comedically to herself, as she realized she was probably going to be strangled to death in a few moments. He must have felt some pretty harsh aftereffects from the augmentations if he needed such powerful narcotics to function. And, judging by how quickly he closed the distance between them the first time, his legs were probably augmented too.

The side effects of the drugs were there too, she just didn’t see it until looking him directly in the eyes: Moriarty was batshit insane.

“Years!” Moriarty said, squeezing her throat harder and forcing a choked gasp from her. “For years I haven’t been able to sleep because I couldn’t stop the voices, couldn’t stop seeing the shadows…couldn’t stop hearing them talk of this moment. Assassination!

“I thought giving it my arms, my legs…I thought sacrificing these things would appease”—he punched the closet with his free hand, sending splinters everywhere and showering them both with a fine blanket of pulverized dust—“but that still wouldn’t stop the voices. Everyone called me crazy. Crazy! Hah. At least them I could silence—a quick drop and a sudden stop…splat. But nothing would stop the voices, the shadows in the corners. I will stop you, and then they will stop. They have to stop.”

Catra felt her grip on his hand start to slip, her eyes beginning to roll up inside her head. The last pinpricks of her vision were in danger of being smothered entirely when the pressure around her throat disappeared all on its own.

She dropped to the ground, hacking and sputtering and coughing and gasping for breath. When she looked, Moriarty was lying face down on the ground. Diallo stood above him, breathing hard, eyes wide in terror and glasses sitting crooked on his face. He held up one of the metal trophies from the case against the far wall for a second strike, a sizeable dent in its side.

“Are y-you okay?” Diallo asked, shaking.

Catra tried to respond and only succeeded in coughing more. She held a thumbs up to him and nodded her head.

A hard thump came from the door into the office and both of them snapped their attention to it. Another thump, then a third. On the fourth, the door exploded inward in a shower of splinters and a squad of armored Vanguard soldiers thundered in, shouting rapid commands to get down on the ground while gesturing with the barrels of their rifles. One of came in close and kicked Catra’s pistol far out of reach.

She heard Diallo try and reason with them only to be grabbed and slammed against the desk while they cuffed him. Catra coughed and sputtered again, trying to catch her breath and say something, but another soldier approached and rammed the butt of his rifle into the side of her head.

Everything went black.

Chapter Text

Adora hugged the wall as she hurried along the hangar terminal. She wasn’t sneaking, not really, but she did her best to keep a low profile. A group of aliens, each a different race speaking a shared language she couldn’t parse, walked by and she squeezed the backpack she carrying closer to her chest. Kal had told her to stay put in the hotel room and out of trouble. She had stolen the Eye of Shukra instead, and couldn’t stop panicking.

…Bay 10…

…Bay 9….

…Bay 8…

The signposts for each hangar in the terminal passed her by at an agonizing pace, but she couldn’t walk any faster without outright sprinting and thus drawing more attention. She’d be discovered any moment now, she just knew it. She had to hurry.

The signpost for bay 3 lay up ahead. That was where the Dzivia was docked, and she again stifled the urge to run toward it. Kal was nowhere to be seen. It was fine. And although she had no idea where he went after telling her he was just going ‘out,’ a large part of her was paranoid he’d actually anticipated her plan to take the Eye back to Etheria without his consent—was paranoid he’d been following her.

Someone screamed behind her and Adora jumped, spinning around and holding the bag like a shield to ward off whatever was about to attack her. No attack came. Instead, a haggard old man with matted, thinning grey hair and dirt smudging his sallow cheekbones was rocking back and forth, squatted against the nearby wall. His eyes darted every direction, scanning the terminal and landing on Adora for the briefest of moments before moving on as if they hadn’t just locked eyes at all. He yelled again—yelled inane, incomprehensible things, and Adora noticed how everyone around them except her were pointedly ignoring him as they walked by.

Is that how I look right now? Adora thought, turning back around to make her way toward bay  3 again. She had the strongest urge to fix her hair into a braid again and she ignored it.

Of course, she didn’t actually believe she resembled someone quite possibly going through substance withdrawals and likely on their second or possibly third week without a proper shower, but the fact she saw some small part of her paranoia reflected in that man’s wasn’t lost on her.

I have no reason to be this paranoid, she thought. None at all.

Kal would be mad if he caught her, sure, but Adora was mad at him. Mad he was willing to put the lives of trillions at risk, and for what? Because he wanted to think a friend—one he abandoned three years ago, mind you—was going to change their mind and come around after giving the clearest ‘no’ that could possibly be given?

Adora rolled her eyes, shook her head, and walked faster. She was doing the right thing. She had spent years trying to convince Catra to defect with  her and  join the Rebellion and that never worked. No, there was no reason to feel guilty. She was doing the right thing.

She paused, confused. How had her thoughts switched so automatically from Kal over to Catra? Catra had nothing to do with this…Adora had to get back to Etheria and take the Eye to Entrapta and Salas for study, that was all.

By the time she regained her bearings, she had reached her destination and took a hard left into bay 3 with another forceful shake of her head.

The bay’s security control room was on her left—a modest two-story building looking out on the hangar below. Adora had watched Vasher and his team come out the ground floor entrance of that same control room when they landed and had almost gotten shot by security. Now, as Adora approached, she tried to keep as confident a look and stride as possible: whoever was inside watching over the ship would no doubt question why she had come back wanting to take it out without Kal there with her.

No one was inside.

Adora let out the breath she had been holding with an airy curse, pushed inside, and leaned against the door the moment she shut it behind her, trying slow her heartrate. What would cause an entire hangar—a sensitive location with supposedly ever-present security—to be abandoned? It wasn’t until she stepped forward far enough to get a clear glimpse through the window she realized she wasn’t alone after all: Ly was standing on the ground level alone, weight on one leg, arms folded, right in front of the Dzivia. All Adora could glean was that she seemed contemplative, like she was considering the ship as if it were some enigmatic sculpture at a gallery.

“I have to admit, I’m surprised to see you here,” Ly said, once Adora left the security room and approached. She hadn’t even turned to look at her. “My first guess was that I’d have maybe an hour here alone while you two argued about next steps, and my second was that I’d meet both of you here already prepping to leave if you hadn’t argued and both agreed to get out quick. I hadn’t expected only you to show.”

“Uhh…I don’t know what you said to security to get them to let you in,” Adora said, shuffling her feet. Her nerves were killing her all over again, could she just catch a break already? “But no one is up there in the security room anymore. It’s empty.”

“Who do you think told them to get lost in the first place?” Ly asked, finally turning around to face her. Her eyes immediately went to the bag. She frowned and Adora hugged it even closer on instinct. Would Ly know what she was there to do? Probably, given she was not only a book-smart scientist but also had the street smarts necessary to survive on a place like Eden for years. Ly wouldn’t be easy to dupe, either, and Adora already knew she was shit at lying to begin with.

She realized something else the moment after: that if push came to shove, she could probably take Ly in a fight. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, of course, but if it did she’d win. All the street smarts in the world and muscle from pole dancing routines wouldn’t hold against the years of military training and conditioning Adora had put herself through.

Ly burst out laughing instead, and Adora furrowed her brow in even deeper confusion. That reaction was far, far down the list of what she had expected to receive.

“Oh…wow,” Lysithea said, wiping tears from her eyes and falling into a fresh fit of laughter all over again. “Poor guy. He always seems gets involved with some of the most bullheaded, most stubborn people to ever live. First Evie, then me—probably the worst out of the bunch, really…or maybe Taline takes that one?—then Pip, and now you. She Ra of Etheria.” She chuckled again and shook her head as if she were forcing disdain for a terrible joke. “I’m surprised he hasn’t thrown himself off a bridge yet, to be perfectly honest.”

“What are you talking about?” Adora asked. “What’s so funny?” She still couldn’t tell what Ly was planning. This whole exchange was throwing her off.

“Let me guess,” Ly said, crossing her arms. “You thought it’d be for the best if you took the Eye back to the Enclave so they could work on it since I said no. Kal refused to leave until I had come around, and you decided to take matters into your own hands and try and take both the Eye and the ship back yourself, with or without him. Did I get that about right?”

“No!” Adora said, copying Ly and crossing her arms in front of her chest. Ly’s read on the situation was so accurate it scared her. “…Maybe! What are you doing here then, huh?” She jutted her chin out for effect, but only succeeded in feeling more foolish, especially when Ly just laughed at her yet again.

“I was coming to reminisce for a bit before I went to look for Kal and apologize. I’m ashamed to admit it took me a while to calm down and think straight, but I have come around.”

Adora blinked at her. “What?”

“I mean that you don’t have to worry about taking the Eye back to Etheria anymore. I’ve changed my mind—I’ll look at the Eye myself, I’ll see what I can do about fixing Pip too.” She paused a moment and then peered past Adora and up to the security building in the distance. “You really did come here without him, huh? He’s not trailing behind you or anything?” She shrugged. “Color me impressed, Adora. You have some nerve to actually try and steal the Dzivia from him. Didn’t think you’d have the stomach.”

Somehow, securing Ly’s tacit approval after being proven willing to hijack a starship didn’t make Adora feel very proud of herself. This especially in light of the fact her assumptions about Ly never changing her mind and agreeing to help were also dead wrong.

“Why the sudden change of heart?” she asked.

Ly shrugged. “Vasher waited until I had calmed down a bit to remind me that Kal and Evie were—are—our friends. And although choosing to jump ship and leave would be safer for us in the short term, it wouldn’t be right.” She gave a rueful sigh and turned to run her hand along Dzivia’s hull. “We’d all be either dead or in some sort of Imperial gulag in the Heartlands if it weren’t for Kal and Evie, and Kal would already be long dead if it weren’t for Evie and I. The Heart might still be a safer bet, but I’d never forgive myself if I just turned a blind eye when I could help. I’m not about to spit on Evie’s grave and turn my back on Kal like that…it’s just not something a friend would do.” She turned back around to look at Adora and frowned. “Are you okay?”

Adora was too late to stop the tears. “I’m fine,” she said, sniffling and rubbing her eyes. Somewhere along Ly’s explanation, a tidal wave of emotion had crashed into her along with a sudden realization: she had turned her back on Catra, all those years ago.

Maybe it was the safer bet, pushing her aside to focus on She Ra and the Heart—it certainly seemed that way at the time. But this was the first time Adora realized it could be both—that it could have been simultaneously the right choice and also an ultimate betrayal of someone she cherished for most of her life…that these things weren’t mutually exclusive.

She’d lost faith in Catra, standing there in Bright Moon’s hallway years ago, telling her she didn’t want to see her again. Adora felt guilty, and she realized then that she had never stopped feeling guilty. Not for three whole years.

She felt sick. Somewhere amidst the mire, she noticed Ly ducking down in front of her, trying to meet gazes.

“Adora?”

Another wave of emotion came and Adora spun away so she didn’t have to be seen when the shame and guilt finally toppled her.

Hadn’t Catra, for years, undermined her and fought as her enemy? Hadn’t Catra, for years, got in the way of every attempt she and the Princess Alliance had made to defeat the Horde? Yes. Yes, she had. She had not only refused every olive branch Adora had extended, but threw those olive branches back in her face and hurt her deeply.

And yet the only thing Adora could fixate on was how she had turned Catra away just as she had her own change of heart. Adora had wanted to prove that people—that Catra—wouldn’t change. She wanted to prove that Kal was wrong and that Ly wouldn’t come around either. She wanted to prove it so badly that, in a fit of emotion and paranoia, she took the Eye and fully intended to steal a ship in order to do so. But she was wrong. Wrong about Ly, and wrong about Catra.

You are not the person I thought you were. That was what She Ra had said to her back on Prime’s citadel, and maybe she had a point. Maybe Kal, who apparently had an unwavering trust in his friends when they had every right to forsake him, would have made a better She Ra.

Two firm hands grabbed her shoulders and spun her around.

“Hey, what’s going on with you?” Ly asked, shaking her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Adora said again, taking deep, gasping breaths and forcing herself to look Ly in the face. “I just realized I owe someone an apology as well. And if you’re embarrassed about it taking you an hour or two, guess how I feel after coming to the realization three years later.”

“Pretty shitty, I’d imagine,” Ly said. “Don’t feel too bad. Kal left Vasher and I with our pants down on a gig, remember? That was three years ago, too, and I’ve been mad about it this whole time. Him and I will get through that too. Vasher and I saved his life and pulled him out of hell once, a long time ago.”

“She saved my life too,” Adora said. “My person. On more than one occasion, I think.”

Ly clapped Adora on the shoulders, hard, and winked at her. “Then you have nothing to worry about. Takes more than some prolonged idiocy to kill a relationship like that, trust me.” She flashed a grin so wide Adora couldn’t help feeling lighter.

“Thank you. Really. I…I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything. Can we get out of here now, though? I want to find Kal and take a look at the Eye as fast as I can. The sooner the better. It still boggles my mind he really didn’t follow you here, how did you slip away without—"

Ly’s eyes again wandered past Adora and toward the security building as she spoke, only to narrow, her expression turning into a scowl as she cut off. Adora turned see what she was looking at and saw six people coming out of the building and heading straight toward them. None were dressed in a security uniform, though she did recognize one of them.

“I’ve seen him before,” Adora said, pointing out the burliest member of the six, standing a full three heads taller than the rest. “Twice. He was in a clinic Kal and I went to when we first landed, and he was harassing me before your show until Vasher stepped in.”

“You said you still can’t use your powers, right?” Ly said, stepping forward and putting herself between them and her. “I’ll take care of it.”

Adora gawked at her in surprise. Even with her training, Adora didn’t feel confident fighting six people, especially without She Ra. Hell, taking on the brute by himself didn’tseem feasible back before Ly’s show. What the hell did she mean she’d take care of it? She was about to pull Ly back and suggest they just make a break for it when Ly called out to them.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice projecting loud enough to echo around the hangar.

They didn’t answer, and instead fanned out in a broad semi-circle. They were flanking them, cutting off any avenue for escape. Adora reached for She Ra—she’d only answered the previous time because Adora was desperate, and the panic clawing at her anew at seeing all avenues for retreat blocked gave her a bewildering sense of hope as well: maybe She Ra would come now? The power certainly seemed more energetic, but would anything happen when she tried to grasp it?

 “Whoever you are, I suggest you turn around and head back right where you came from,” Ly said, tracking those at the farthest ends with her eyes. “We don’t want trouble.”

“I’ve come for the stones,” the giant said. “The on that girl’s arm and the one in her bag…I want them both. You will give them to me, and we will become one.”

Adora grabbed her runestone bracer with her other hand on instinct. The giant’s eyes darted from Ly to her when she did, and a chill ran down her spine. He could sense the Eye, too? All the way across the hangar? Adora had to hold the thing and concentrate to feel whatever was inside. This was way worse than their confrontation earlier, and it wasn’t just because the extra bodies he brought along to intimidate them. The air itself seemed stale now.

“You’re not very bright, are you?” Ly asked. “Big as you are, your guys would turn on you if they knew who I was. I’ll give you one last chance to leave, and maybe the Vestamid won’t hang you to from meat hooks to dry for fucking with me. Take one more step, though, and you won’t have to worry about that—I’ll drop all six of you before any of you can lay a finger on us.”

Adora had no idea how she planned to do that, but she concentrated harder on her powers, straining and poised to plunge in and grasp at a moment’s notice. The giant nodded once to the others and all five stepped forward without hesitation.

Ly stilled a moment, like how air and sound still moments before lightning strikes. Then she moved, fast enough Adora almost didn’t see it out the corner of her eye. One moment, five were advancing with predatory looks in their eyes, then all five were on the ground with singed holes in their heads, eyes staring without seeing up at the hangar ceiling.

Ly cursed under her breath, holding a sidearm with smoke trailing out the tip of its barrel still trained on the giant. “Vasher’s a fucking liar,” she said, quietly enough Adora reasoned she must be talking to herself. “It doesn’t matter how many nightmare scenarios you’ve already lived through, offing actual people is never easy.”

Blood began to pool under the corpses and Adora winced. Did I really just think to myself that I could take her in a fight if push came to shove? she thought.

Kal had mentioned that only security and people of special interest to the Vestamid got to carry weapons. Vasher had a weapon, of course, but if the Vestamid had hoped to recruit Ly then it also made sense for them to let her as well. She just didn’t put that train of thought together until five people were already dead on the floor.

“Come on,” Lysithea said to the giant as she reloaded. “Try me, I dare you. I’ve put down enough thralls in the last war to fill this hangar, and I wasn’t even a soldier. You might weigh five of me combined, but that won’t help you win a fight if a bullet puts you on the floor first.”

The giant, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Ly the entire exchange, chose then to look over the bodies of his men. He sniffed in disdain, as if merely acknowledging them was beneath him, before looking Ly directly in the eye again.

“You are arrogant,” he said. “You will learn.”

He took a step forward and Ly didn’t hesitate, firing off one bullet into each of his legs. He didn’t stop, didn’t even slow, and alarms started ringing in Adora’s head when she realized. Even Lysithea took a step back in surprise before firing off another two rounds into his kneecaps.

“What the fuck,” Ly said when that still didn’t so much as make him flinch.

She pulled her aim up and put two into his chest, then a third between his eyes. Adora glanced away, and heard rather than see him hit the ground.

“Emptying two full clips wasn’t exactly how I expected my night to go,” Ly said, taking a slow, deep breath. “He was being so nonchalant about his entire team dying before his eyes I wanted to humble him a bit with those rounds in his legs, but the fucker didn’t blink. I swear, the kinds of drugs seeping into the underworld nowadays are something else.”

Adora looked at her, feeling somewhat shocked at how easygoing she sounded after killing six people, even if they were moments away from likely killing them instead. It wasn’t until she saw the worry lines on Lysithea’s face and the way her hands shook as she struggled to eject the gun’s magazine slide that Adora realized she was likely just as shaken.

“Ly to Vasher, come in,” she said into her PDA her wrist. “Vasher, you there? This is Ly, answer me.” The worry lines on her face subsided and her features relaxed after a moment: Vasher had responded. “I’m fine, but maybe I should have let you come with me after all. Yes, I’m alright, I promise I just…some goons tried to mug us and I had to put them down.” Another pause. “Yeah, you heard right, I did say ‘us.’ She’s here with me. Let me guess, you’re with him?”

Adora, feeling strangely like she was intruding on a private conversation by the tone of Ly’s voice, busied herself by trying to find something of interest to look at in the hangar other than the bodies. Unfortunately, the moment she inevitably glanced at them, she saw something that made her blood freeze: blood hadn’t pooled out from underneath the giant’s corpse like they had for his men. Instead, it looked like his shadow had come alive, and it was reaching for each of the other corpses, slow as molasses.

“Ly?” Adora said, edging shuffling closer to her with an edge to her voice.

“You’re on your own with that one, unfortunately,” Ly said, still speaking to Vasher and not paying attention. She laughed through her nose. “Yeah, well, I’m not the one that made a bet with him that she’d try and steal his ship, now am I? Maybe if you lean into the fact he ditched us on a job he might feel bad enough not to collect—”

“Ly! Something’s wrong!”

Ly looked up just as the giant’s shadow engulfed the five other bodies and they started to move, picking themselves up of the ground with unnaturally bent and tangled limbs.

“Oh, fuck.” Ly rammed a fresh clip into the empty magazine well of her gun. “Vasher, I need you. Now!”

The body of the giant started to reconstitute as well, although it was taking considerably longer. Ly unloaded two rapid rounds into each thrall as the shambled toward them, slowing each one when the bullets struck center mass. Vasher’s voice blared through the PDA speaker at Ly’s wrist, loud enough Adora could parse out the overblown syllables in between them being drowned out by the gunfire.

“I found the Abomination,” she said, ejecting yet another magazine and pulling another from inside her jacket. “Or rather, it revealed itself to me. It’s got five thralls as far as I can tell, and you have maybe three minutes max before it starts infecting the rest of the station and we all die.” She released the slide and aimed. “I don’t have Ignominite rounds so I can’t stall it for long. You need to get here, now.”

Vasher’s voice kept coming through—it was clear they were on their way, but Adora got the sense he didn’t want to cut the call until they arrived. The stale feeling in the air from earlier returned then, stronger than ever, and Vasher’s voice cut off on its own. The line had gone dead, just as the giant reconstituted himself and rose to his feet.

“Like I said earlier,” the giant said, his voice sounding different than before, reverberating like a heavy metal slab being dragged across a cobblestone road might—all croaky consonants and clipped vowels. “You are arrogant. You will learn.”

The thralls continued to advance and Ly took aim at the nearest one, still a three dozen paces away. She emptied her entire ten round clip into one of its legs, hitting the same spot repeatedly, stripping cloth and skin and muscle and sinew away until the bone broke in half and the thrall fell to the floor in an awkward heap. It didn’t stop, just crawled slower than its siblings toward them on one knee and with two hands.

The giant threw its head back and laughed. “You are at an even greater disadvantage than I’d thought, without ignominite bullets. How many more clips do you have, one? Two?”

Ly’s fingers shook so hard she almost dropped the next magazine she had pulled. By the somber look on her face, Adora got the sense it was her last reload.

“I’ll try and reach for She Ra,” she said, whispering under her breath so only Ly could hear. “I’m sure I can—”

“No, don’t do anything,” Ly said, cutting her off with a pointed glare.

“But what if—”

“I said don’t!” Ly sounded downright terrified. Pleading, almost. And that was enough to give Adora pause, even more so than seeing the dead rise. “Maybe you can call on her if you’re desperate, and maybe you could actually put up a fight against that thing, but if you’re wrong?” Ly shook her head. “Not yet. Our only is to buy time, and as much of it as possible. Wait to try until you can’t anymore.”

“Even a thrall missing its leg can rip your face from your head, choke the life from your body,’ the Abomination said. “And I have five. You can do nothing, dead girl. Come and join with me.”

The four thralls still remaining upright screeched an unholy chorus together and rushed toward them faster than they had any right to move. Adora actually took a step back in surprise, thinking surely they wouldn’t have been able to sprint as fast as they were had they still been alive.

Ly stood like she were a boulder against a river current. She didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t blink.

“Dzivia, emergency override code Archanas, zero-five-one-five, The End, Lysithea.” The ship hummed awake behind them. “Bogies, thirty-yard enclosure. Activate containment protocol. Execute!”

A turret lowered from the belly of the ship, anchored right next to where the loading ramp would have descended. It swiveled as it unfurled, then railed each of the thralls with consecutive, rapid-fire rounds. Adora clapped both hands to her ears and ducked, watching the thralls explode one after the other in isolated fountains of viscera.

“Don’t need ignominite rounds if I have enough firepower to turn a body to dust!” Ly said, shouting at the Abomination loud enough Adora could hear through the ringing in her ears. “You’re next, motherfucker!”

The turret, having exploded the last thrall, finally swiveled to the Abomination, who threw its arm forward like it was going for a punch. Its arm to morphed into a thick, black tendril that shot forward, straight toward them. Ly and Adora both dove out of the way and it shot past, piercing the turret clean through. Electricity arced and sparks flew.

The turret guns powered off and pointed down with a depressing whine before the Abomination ripped the whole thing off its installation with enough force the entire Dzivia shifted. It swung for Adora then, using the newly mangled turret like a makeshift flail.

Ly crashed into her from the side, sending both of them sprawling on the floor but letting the turret pass overhead. Before Adora could get her bearings or even take a breath, Ly had rolled off her and into a crouched position, emptying her final round into the Abomination still halfway across the hangar bay.

As disadvantaged as Ly seemed without the right ammunition, it still seemed to have an effect. The Abomination flung the turret away with an annoyed grunt, eliciting a crash when it smashed into the far wall and then another when it hit the ground. Then it disappeared, seemingly morphing into the same material its black tentacle was made of, reforming itself near-instantaneously at the other terminus of that limb—right between Ly and Adora.

Ly rounded on him and it smacked the gun out of her hand with a mighty backhand. Then it lunged, grabbing her by the throat and lifting her off the ground with one hand. Her feet kicked freely, trying and failing to find purchase as she slammed one fist against its hand and tried to pry its fingers apart with the other.

Adora reacted on instinct, rising to her feet with one push, leaving the bag with the Eye where it lay on the ground. The Sword of Protection was already coalescing in her hand. It finished forming mid-swing, and she cut clean through the Abomination’s arm, leaving Ly free to land on her feet, gasping for air.

The Abomination roared in agony before quickly reforming its limb. It kicked Ly square in the chest before she had a chance to move, sending her careening backward, smacking into the side of the Dzivia with a sickening, tinny gong that reverberated out from its hull.

“No!”

Adora rounded on the Abomination again, furious anger thrumming through her like a wildfire. She still hadn’t unleashed all of She Ra, she could just tell, but she was still powerful.

She and the Abomination sparred, it dodging strikes and stabs from her sword, parrying and riposting with alternating limbs that turned into sharpened black tendrils too. Adora found a pattern in its movements and exploited it, stabbing clean through its chest with a roar.

Their fighting ceased, and everything stilled. Adora thought she had won, until the Abomination threw its head back and cackled.

“The power!” it said. “I knew I could feel something coming from that little wristband of yours, girl, but to think it held enough to do that? I would have never guessed.” It smiled, the width of its grin seeming to split its face in two. “I will very much enjoy taking it from you, and then making your corpse dance for the trouble.”

Adora tried to pull the sword from its body, only for it to get sucked further inside. She tried again to no avail, and when she thought to let go and try commanding it to reform in her hand as she had done in the past, six new tendrils shot from the Abomination’s back like a spider’s legs and pierced her from behind.

The air grew thick enough Adora felt like it was drowning her. She opened her mouth to scream and all sounds around ceased except for that of her heartbeat, which now pounded in her ears louder than anything else she might have been able to hear moments earlier.

Her head hurt enough she thought it might explode and her vision swam. The Abomination, from what little she could clearly see of its features, seemed to morph and shift with the distortion. Hot coals felt like they were searing against her flesh at six points in  her back, no doubt where the tendrils had pierced her to keep her rooted in place.

When the Abomination’s features finished reforming into a new face, Adora recognized who it was immediately.

“Hey, Adora.”

Catra stared back at her, each eye like a spotlight shining deep into Adora’s psyche. Adora couldn’t speak—she feared opening her mouth would only elicit screams. She did her best to project concepts like ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘help’ across, reasoning that if she just thought hard enough and wished fervently enough, Catra would understand.

“You said we’d always be together, Adora. You promised. Don’t you remember?”

Adora tried to open her mouth and speak the words this time, but she couldn’t.

“You won’t be able to keep your promise if you let this be the end,” Catra said. “Don’t let this be the end, Adora. Don’t let this be the end…”

Catra’s voice trailed off and disappeared into the nothing, like a leaf carried away in the wind. The effect it had on Adora was exactly the opposite.

A fire sparked within her, an unceasing will to fight and claw her way to survival. This wouldn’t be the end, and she repeated those words in her head over and over again like a ritual chant done on the eve of battle.

The world exploded back into clarity once more: the smell of burning flesh and death wafting all around, the taste of copper in her mouth, the sound of someone—hopefully Ly, calling her name in the distance. Catra was gone, the Abomination having returned and taken her place. Adora could see every pore and follicle of hair and wrinkle set into its sallow skin. Cracked veins of red creeped the length of each black tendril that held her in place, similarly pulsing like a heartbeat itself.

Fresh power coursed through Adora’s veins, far more than before. Far more even than what she had been able to draw on in the Crystal Castle.

“Interesting,” the Abomination said. The playfulness had left its voice. Now it seemed begrudgingly impressed, almost respectful. “That much power running through you, it can’t just be the stone.” It cocked its head to the side, studying her. “You’d be wasted as a thrall. Shame. But we all have to start somewhere, don’t we?”

The coals of fire still at Adora’s back grew hotter, and she screamed in agony. The clarity and strength she had been building, the foothold she had been slowly digging out for herself, disappeared as quickly as it had come. Whereas her vision swam and changed before, it disappeared entirely now—the Abomination had reimposed its will upon her tenfold and plunged her into darkness right there in the hangar, into a world devoid of any stimulus except for the sound of her heart and the pain ripping across her body.

There was no Catra this time to call out to her. No one and nothing came, except for one hazy image she strained to make out against the darkness. It was a face, androgynous and anonymous, like the features of thousands of beings had normalized into one supremely average, blank slate of a canvas.

ADORA

It called to her, a disembodied voice in her mind that spoke without its lips moving, its eyes trained unceasingly on her without blinking.

YOU ARE NOT SHE RA

YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH

NOT ENOUGH FOR EITHER OF THEM

Fear and remorse, dull and round and edgeless as everything else, whipped at her in the void with every syllable. She’d never get the chance to apologize to Catra for everything, never get the chance to reach out like she now realized she wanted to—like Glimmer had been urging her to for a while now. She realized with another muted blow of formless emotion that she’d never get to see Glimmer again either, or the other princesses. Or Micah, Bow…Swift Wind. She even miss Salas. Sadness and regret suffused her mindscape, and then even that too started to fade.

And then it didn’t.

Someone off in the far distance yelled loud enough for it to register, and she had already half come back to the world by the time she noticed.

Something cold lay against her face, and she realized a moment after that it was actually her, laying against the cold floor of the hangar. The Abomination had released her and she had fallen limp to the ground. She no longer glowed, and the Sword of Protection somehow ejected itself from the Abomination’s body and returned as a bracer on her arm.

With great effort, she craned her head up and saw why the she had been let go of in the first place.

The hangar was lit in small arms fire. Vasher and a team of twenty were fanned out in a similar formation to the goons from earlier, but in an obviously more controlled manner—they had drilled this.

They advanced steadily forward, firing automatic rifles rounds at the Abomination who had turned to face them with both arms up to shield its face. It yelled and grunted and shied away as the bullets tore endless holes into its body. Bullet wounds appeared and, although they were closing, they did so slowly with the same black substance that made up its tentacles.

“Ignominite…it burns…” the Abomination said, its voice now sounding like a chorus of many disembodied voices instead of one. “You are all so annoying.”

More tendrils lanced forward, spearing nearly half the men who couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. Those remaining turned immediately toward them and riddled them with holes so the Abomination couldn’t take them as thralls, which only seemed to agitate it even further. It swept its extended tendrils across the length of the hangar, cutting six more men clean in half. Vasher and the rest had dropped prone to the ground a split second earlier to avoid death, before rolling again to their feet and continuing to flank.

Someone peeled off from the group, although with Adora couldn’t clearly make out who since her vision was still going in and out of focus; all she could tell was this person wasn’t part of Vasher’s crew, since they weren’t wearing the dark blue uniform like everyone else. They moved faster than all the others, flanking almost completely to the side within moments. They weren’t firing either, only cradling their rifle with one hand as they ran.

The Abomination tracked them, sending a tendril screaming toward them. Their eyes glowed and they gestured with one free hand, mid sprint. The tendril veered off course as if slapped by an invisible hand.

It was Kal.

No sooner did Adora realize this than Kal changed course again, no longer flanking but now beelining straight for the Abomination.

It growled, turning its full attention to him when Vasher and his men stopped firing. Kal jumped and flew through the air, dodging a dozen new tendrils the Abomination shot forward to intercept him and redirecting a dozen more with invisible magic. He landed only a few feet away and dropped, using his momentum to slide along the hangar floor, ramming both his booted feet full force into the Abomination to come to a hard stop.

The Abomination grunted at the impact and dropped to both knees, its feet having been kicked out from under it. Only then did Adora realize why Kal hadn’t been firing with the rest: he wasn’t carrying a rifle, but a shotgun. One he already had aimed squarely at the Abomination’s chest.

The Abomination’s entire back exploded outward like two wings of black viscera when Kal pulled the trigger. It painted Adora. Howls of pain and wet, gurgling wretches echoed through the hangar, chasing the sound of the blast.

Already, the wound was beginning to stitch close, but Kal didn’t give the Abomination time to recover. He tossed the shotgun aside and leaptto his feet before grabbing its head with both hands, holding like he were trying to squeeze a watermelon.

Then Kal exploded with light.

When Adora first saw him use magic back atop the Crystal Castle, she was under the impression he had runes imprinted directly on his skin that glowed when he cast. But now, being this close to him, she saw that they were not runes at all, but ley-lines—circuits of blue-hot magic that spread across the entire surface area of his body. She and the rest of the Princesses had this happen to them when the Heart of Etheria first activated. Adora hadn’t even considered that a similar phenomenon could show up on someone else.

Kal’s hair floated in whisps around his head, like he was submerged underwater. His eyes had turned pure white, like pinprick stars so powerful the physicality of his body was insufficient a vessel to contain it.  And when he spoke, blue smoke accompanied the same light bursting from his mouth.

“Revealing yourself was the last mistake you shall ever make. The people of this station, of this galaxy, they shall have lifetimes and generations. I will not allow you to take it from them.”

The Abomination screeched. Its tendrils went spastic, flailing without intention or reason before going rigid, bursting into flames, and finally dissolving into ash. It clapped its hands to Kal’s own at either side of its head, like it was trying to pry them free, or merely hold its own head in agony.

“What are you!?” It screamed, ten thousand voices as one.

Kal leaned in and the light from his body grew bright enough to wash out everything else around. “You know who I am,” he said. “You felt me at the clinic when we first crossed paths. I have come for you.”

“But…but they spoke of you as one does a myth! The Shapers are all gone…Corynth is dead. You are dead!”

“You’ll feel I’m very much alive.”

The Abomnation gave one final scream before its whole body burst into flames, like its tendrils before. Adora reeled from the heat, squinting against the light to catch any glimpse of shape or form within. She saw the two of them blaze for several moments before the flames extinguished and the light dissipated.

Kal—or Corynth, as Adora suddenly realized that’s who he really was—stood there, body tense, steam rising off him. In his hands, he held a charred, blackened skull missing its lower jaw. It had detached from its body which lay nearby, charred, also with steam rising from its calcified remains. The Abomination was dead.

Corynth dropped the skull then and it tumbled across the floor. It collapsed into dust just as Corynth stumbled forward, seeming to be on the verge of collapse himself. While the blinding light from earlier had subsided, his eyes still sparked, his hair still floated around him like a halo, and Adora noticed veins of black creeping like vines up his neck.

Vasher hurried over and rested a firm hand on his shoulder, those few others still alive bringing up the rear.

“Corynth?” Vasher said. “Hey, look at me.”

The words didn’t seem to register. It wasn’t until Vasher gave him a slight shake that Corynth seemed to realize where he was.

“There you are,” Vasher said when Corynth finally looked at him. The concern hadn’t faded from his voice, though. “I need you to dissipate the magic now,  okay? Can you do that for me?”

“V-Vasher?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m here. The magic, Corynth. Or Kal? Shit, this feels so much like it before that I completely forgot…”

“Vasher…I…I—”

“The magic, Kal, the magic. You need to stop or you’re going to burn yourself straight through.”

“Vasher, w-where’s Evie? I have to…have…”

He went white the moment Evie’s name was spoken. “Shit,” he said, muttering under his breath before turning and bellowing over his shoulder: “Ly, I need you!”

Ly came running toward them from inside the Dzivia, flying down the now open ramp and across the hangar. Her face was battered and she clutched her ribs with one arm, but she was alive, to Adora’s great relief.

“I’ve got it,” Ly said, sliding to a stop in front of them. She had the ignominite cuffs Corynth had once used on Adora and held them up for him to see. “Hey bud, Evie’s in her lab working, you know how she always is. I need you to put these on.”

Corynth shook his head, seeming more animated than moments earlier despite the look in his eyes suggesting he was even further away than before. “Taline…coming. Have to…explain.”

“Shhh, no.” Ly shook her head, and Adora could see tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “Taline isn’t coming, you already kicked her ass and she still didn’t get it. Let me put these on, please.”

His eyes drifted down to the manacles and confusion bloomed on his face. “I—”

“Corynth, you just ate an entire juvenile Abomination. I know you had to do it, but there was a reason I made you fucking promise me to never exert yourself like this again after Archanas and this is why. If you can’t disengage on your own, I can help you but you have to meet me halfway. If I force it and you aren’t here with us…” She shook her head and the tears finally fell from her eyes. “Please. Evie is gone. Everyone is gone, it’s just us. I plunged through Taline’s stupid fleet blockade and a toxic atmosphere to get you because I couldn’t lose another person. I couldn’t do it then and I still can’t do it now. You left us alone for three fucking years already, don’t make it permanent! Kal!”

It was the desperate hoarseness in her voice or the use of his other name—Adora wasn’t sure which, but one or both seemed to ground him enough to understand. He nodded then slowly extended both hands forwards palm up.

Ly wasted no time in securing both manacles to his wrists. The moment she did so, the remaining magic flowing through him disappeared, his hair lay flat against his head again, and the black veins inching up his neck disappeared. The next moment, he collapsed unconscious against Vasher, who held him upright against one shoulder while he comforted Ly, who was shaking.

“I’ll get him to the infirmary,” Vasher said after a pause.

“No, I’ll go,” Ly said, swallowing and wiping her eyes before stepping out from his embrace. When Vasher gave her a strong loke, she said, “I was attacked too, and so was Adora. Pretty sure I have a few broken ribs at least, and Adora doesn’t look like she can even stand without help. We need to make sure this gets cleaned up and that no one comes snooping around to see what happened. There’s also a giant hole in the Dzivia that needs to get patched since the Abomination ripped a turret from its installation, and you’re the only person either of us can trust to stay here and coordinate all of that right now.”

Vasher hesitated and looked like he was about to argue, until Ly reached forward and laid a gentle hand on his knee.

“You got here in time,” she said, her voice dipping back into the tone Adora had heard her speak to him with before the Abomination reanimated. “We’re all alive. This didn’t happen because you didn’t come with me to this hangar, and nothing bad will happen because you don’t come with me to the infirmary. I promise.” She stood without waiting for an answer and turned to help hoist Adora to her feet. “Tell me if you need a break,” she said to her. “Or if anything hurts more than it should.”

Adora nodded, sweat already breaking out across her clammy skin. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Someone brought the bag with the Eye inside and Ly took it with a grateful nod.

Vasher handed Corynth off to two of his men, who he ordered to follow Ly. Then he surveyed the rest of the hangar, looking over the charred Abomination’s body, the bits and pieces of his men, the wrecked turret in the corner, and the countless pockets of blood and other bodily fluids smeared about.

Slowly, Ly stumped forward toward the security building in the distance and Adora kept pace, leaning as much of her weight as she dared against her for support. The two men carrying Corynth trailed them.

Logically, Adora knew the fact she had been traveling this whole time with Corynth of all people was a massive revelation, but after everything she had gone through, she didn’t have her wits about her enough to feel the emotion that should have been there. All she knew was that she hoped to never face another Abomination again in her life and that she hoped to reach back out and apologize to Catra as soon as humanly possible.

With Ly finally agreeing to look at the Eye and troubleshoot Pip, maybe both those things could actually happen.

Chapter Text

Glimmer stood inside her intake station and tried to catch her breath. A particularly large family of Scavrians had come through, and processing them had taken far more effort than she had to give at the moment. Things were dire, and trying to instill even a modicum of hope into those passing through to the Megaliths beyond felt like an impossible task. At least she had a few seconds’ break in the monotony before those next in line reached her, so she glanced out at Tir in the distance and let her thoughts overtake her.

 Aratoth had died a few hours after Kyle and Lonnie had gotten him to the field hospital. Only been a few days had passed since then and already Tir’s cityscape on the horizon looked transformed. Many of the spires and skyscrapers had collapsed, tumbling in heaps of noise and smoke periodically across the hours, the sounds of explosions and of nightmarish screams in the distance dogging the refugees and Enclave staffers like specters. Warbirds flew at all times of the day and night, a constant fixture in the sky now as they patrolled the skies and near-space orbit between Tir, the Megalith compound, and the fleet high above. Moans and screams of thralls in the distance echoed out constantly, weirdly harmonized at times, and always accompanied by percussive gunfire.

The compound itself was abuzz in martial activity. Refugees whispered to friends and loved ones and any who would listen about their suspicions surrounding the Empire’s ability to retake the city. If Tir fell, all of Scavria would likely fall with it within a matter of months. Would evacuations from other major cities and continents have time to complete? Would those in the countryside be saved, or were they essentially dead men and women walking if Tir wasn’t resolved? This and many other questions came hurling out of the mouths of the refugees at all times of the day and all through the night as they crowded the administrative centers of the compound scrabbling for answers, driven forward in a frenzy by fear and uncertainty.

Not even Glimmer had been able to avoid scrutiny. In fact, as the famed ‘Angel of Archanas,’ she probably had it worse, unable to count on both hands twice over how many times she’d been accosted by angry and scared refugees for answers. Yet she and everyone else with working knowledge of the Empire and Enclave’s efforts couldn’t say a word, and it had driven her nearly to despair over the past few days.

All knowledge of operations were classified, never to be disclosed to the refugees themselves in an effort to keep from setting false expectations or instigating further unrest. Glimmer’s earlier stunt in the central square, sharing her personal thoughts about a successful incursion against the Beast, had spurred the operational heads to issue an ironclad gag order on everything. So much as speculating aloud when the Megaliths themselves might lift off was not allowed.

Not that it mattered, though. The situation was plainly evident no matter how silent Glimmer and the rest of the Enclave and Empire were in the face of ceaseless pressure: things were not looking good. They would likely lose the city within a matter of weeks, now.

The next set of refugees up for processing reached the side of her station and sighed, breathing deep in preparation to dive back into the work. When she turned to address the newcomers with the best smile she could muster, she instead found Lonnie standing there with a mildly disturbed expression on her face. Glimmer’s smile dropped the moment she saw.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, feeling put out.

Lonnie leaned away from the station and made a show of craning her neck to the side to inspect the refugee staging area behind her. A violent bruise had spread across the bridge of her nose, and Glimmer and could tell it had been broken and splinted.

“Doesn’t look like you have very many left to process,” Lonnie said, sweeping her eyes over the near-empty expanse. “And there’s at least twenty others like you lined up in the stalls to help process them. Stealing a few minutes from you specifically won’t be too big a deal.”

The ache in Glimmer’s jaw flared with her irritation. Lonnie’s blow to the side of her face wasn’t anything to scoff. The swelling had largely gone down, but ugly bruises that had throbbed constantly through the preceding days still marred the side of her own face and had only recently started to shrink.

“The point,” Glimmer said, putting ice into her words and leaning over the countertop to get into Lonnie’s space, ”is that you’re keeping me from doing my job. You’re lucky they decided not to charge you for fighting outside the hospital, in front of all the refugees. Are you trying to get in trouble?”

“You fought back, last I remember,” Lonnie said. “And even landed the first blow—“

“Yeah, after you goaded me.”

“—so you’re just as lucky as I am we didn’t get reamed.”

Glimmer hands crept toward Lonnie’s throat and she forced them to still. Instead, she closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose, and took a breath, deep breath. “Did you just come to pick another fight? You won’t win a second time now that I know how fast you can move, you know.”

Lonnie put both hands up and shook her head. “I’m not here to fight, actually. I came to apologize.”

“What?” Glimmer wanted to tell her to lead with that next time, but held her tongue.

“I’m serious,” Lonnie said. “I’m sorry for what happened. It was my fault for starting it.”

“Well…you did goad me into fighting back.”

“I’m not just talking about that.” Lonnie blinked. “Although, yes, I did do that.”

Glimmer frowned. “What are you talking about, then?”

“I’m talking about how things between us have been tense ever since getting to this planet. That’s my fault and I’m sorry.”

“You were upset about me not taking the team on.”

Lonnie smirked. “Are you justifying my behavior? Now you’re just being nice, you don’t really think that.”

Glimmer frowned. Lonnie was right, she didn’t particularly feel forgiving and nice about the whole situation, but she was just trying to be polite. She forgot how forthcoming and blunt a person Lonnie was. “Well—”

“I punched you in the face and blamed you for Aratoth’s and everyone else’s deaths,” Lonnie said. “It wasn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry.”

“You lost your whole team,” Glimmer said. “You lost them after thinking I was going to be there because we were matched without me knowing. I’d feel resentful too, if that happened to me, even if I understood why things happened the way they did.” She leaned back and out of Lonnie’s space. “I appreciate the apology, and I don’t hold it against you.”

Lonnie shook her head. “It’s not just that.”

Glimmer raised both eyebrows, and Lonnie sighed, fidgeting under her gaze in an uncharacteristic show of discomfort.

“My expectations were too high before our paths even crossed again on the Omen-Kador,” Lonnie said. “The first time we ever saw each other, years ago when we were still back home and not even out of Despondos yet, you were just another Princess in my mind—another enemy to fight. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with what Shadow Weaver did to you after we grabbed you from the Princess Prom, but I admit, seeing you go through that and come out the other end still strong left an impression on me.

“And then we left home, and you…well, you know what you did. What you’ve been doing. How fast things spread in the galaxy.” She laughed. “Time lag for non-ansible messages is a thing, and the outer rim is only a few days behind the core Heartlands in terms of news. I’d already heard too many stories about you by the time we met again on the Omen-Kador. I was expecting to reunite with some mythical being, and I didn’t take it well when that didn’t happen.”

Glimmer bit her lip. She’d disliked how her name had spread through the galaxy before, how pressured she felt by it, but she had never considered how it impacted her personal relationships. She’d never seen it have an impact on her personal relationships. Now, she absolutely loathed the name ‘Angel of Archanas,’ both for how wildly inaccurate a portrait of her it painted in the minds of those who heard it, and especially for how it damaged potential friendships before they could even begin.

“Lonnie, I…” Glimmer didn’t know what to say, and she trailed off.

“They almost deployed us there, you know,” Lonnie said. “Kyle, Rogelio, and I. To Rinne. If it weren’t for the fact the entire planet fell so fast, we very well might have been.

“I’m glad you weren’t.”

“Sometimes I wish we did make it there,” Lonnie said, surprising Glimmer. “Everyone else only remembers how horrible it was, seeing how many ‘lost souls’ were reported scrolling across news tickers day after day. Me, though? The thing that stuck out to me—the thing I remember the most—was hearing about the survivors. Sometimes I catch myself wondering how many more might have made it out if we were there with you, helping.”

“I would have mourned at an empty grave for you three, or stared at your names on the monument they put up in the Heartland capital.”

“Maybe,” Lonnie said, before repeating the word again, quieter to herself. “I was amazed that anyone at all made it off that planet, though. It gave me hope. And when I saw you again on the Omen...”

“You thought your chance finally came to be part of that legacy—to be there the next time shit hits the fan so you can help, and maybe more people would be saved.”

Lonnie swallowed and nodded.

“And when I turned around and said no,” Glimmer said. “When I chose to stand here in this processing station instead of be out there, and then when people still died and, worst of all, you had to pull the trigger?” Glimmer bit her lip and looked away. “Yeah. I get why that would be upsetting to see.”

“If you’re thinking about apologizing to me now, then stop,” Lonnie said. “I sacrificed seeing you as an actual person so I could live in my little fantasy world about serving with a Battlemage that can save people from certain death. I’m apologizing for how selfish that is and that’s the only thing anyone should be apologizing for.”

“But—”

“You saved hundreds of people, Glimmer. Don’t apologize for all those you couldn’t. I’m sorry I ever asked you to, even in an abstract way.”

Glimmer pressed her lips together and thought. One moment she was loathing her nickname and the next, the very person that got mislead by it was telling her how much hope it had given them? Maybe being the Angel to so many people was a curse, but maybe it was also a blessing. Maybe it could be both.

“They really should have called me the Angel of Rinne,” she said, cracking a tentative smile to break the tension. “I’ve never even been to Archanas.”

Lonnie grinned in response and, for the first time since reuniting, Glimmer felt they were on the same page. “I doubt you’d ever want to go, even if you could get special dispensation to visit it. Empire made it a protected site for a reason.”

Glimmer laughed. “Yeah, it’s just a joke Catra and I have whenever it’s brought up—that I’ve never even been to the place they call me an Angel of.”

Lonnie’s eyes widened. “Catra’s still around?”

“Yep, she came with me off Etheria. Taline sponsored both of us. She’s a cop, now.”

“Lord above is that the last job I’d ever think she’d be fit for.”

Glimmer laughed. “You’d be surprised at how much she’s changed. We all have.” A beat passed between them, and she said, “Thanks for coming to see me. And apologizing. I’m glad we’re on the same page again, I hated being mad at you, even if we saw very little of one another.”

Lonnie’s expression turned melancholy. “I wanted to come and say something before it was too late.”

Glimmer froze. She hadn’t known Lonnie well back on Etheria, and although she had hoped she was the type of person to naturally dig deep, understand the root of a disagreement, and make peace, this whole about face in their relationship felt surreal. Now it made sense: something was wrong. Something that had spurred her to face what was really bothering her and make amends.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“We’re going on one last deployment into the city,” Lonnie said. “Fleet command doesn’t think we’ll be able to save it and wants to nuke it from space, but we’re to do one last incursion before that.”

“One last attack to try and get a foothold, huh?” Glimmer asked, trying to keep the knot of worry in her stomach from growing larger. “Sounds dangerous, but nothing you haven’t done a hundred times over already. Who are you serving under now that Aratoth has…?”

Lonnie’s expression turned cloudy, and that was all Glimmer needed to infer the answer.

“They’re sending you out there without a Battlemage commander?” she asked, the knot in her stomach quickly forming into a boulder. “They can’t do that. That’s practically suicide, you said so yourself. There are other commanders out there, why haven’t you been assigned under one of them for the assault?”

“Technically, we are,” she said. “We’ve been attached as an augment to one of the existing squads, but the Battlemage in charge has made it pretty clear they don’t intend on really overseeing us. At least, not how they should. I guess they heard what happened to Aratoth’s squad and assumed it happened because he spread himself too thin trying to command too large a group.”

“That’s bullshit!” Glimmer said. “He was stretched thin, sure, but I reviewed the action report. You guys were ambushed. It wouldn’t have made a difference if he had the right sized team or not, almost everyone would still be dead!”

“Yep,” Lonnie said, speaking in a defeated tone of voice that Glimmer absolutely hated hearing from her of all people. “But our orders are clear. Tag along, provide back up, stay out of the way and don’t expect further orders. That’s what Rogelio and I are working with.”

“And Kyle?”

Lonnie shrugged. “They split us up for this one. Our guy ‘in charge’ put us on a different warbird and Kyle is reinforcing another wing that lost a pilot recently.”

Glimmer cursed. She wanted to ask who the new commander was, but also knew that Lonnie likely wouldn’t say and it wouldn’t make a difference if she did. Battlemages were in charge of their own teams, and it would be supremely hypocritical for her to try and influence another person’s command after she turned down her own.

Lonnie looked down at the PDA on her wrist. “I have to get going,” she said. “It’s almost time.”

They locked eyes a moment. Glimmer wanted to say something. Maybe wish her luck, maybe tell her things were going to be okay—something. But in the end, she could only nod and watch Lonnie walk off back toward the compound.

The terrified faces of a fresh set of refugees took her place and she processed them in. Then another set came, and then another, and soon time passed in a blur once again, as it always had. At one point, a flurry of warbirds took off from the nearby staging area nearby and flew overhead toward Tir. Glimmer watched, having never felt more helpless before, standing on the ground inside her station, watching them go.

Not even Rinne, as hellish a landscape as that was, felt this foreboding.

The liftoff call came several hours later, after Glimmer had already finished her shift and was in the middle of forcing herself to eat something despite her nerves.

No one seemed surprised when the alarm started blaring. Everyone in her immediate vicinity looked up and around at one another, and all bodies jumped up to execute what they had drilled for: emergency evacuation.

Soon, a voice came over the compound’s PA system, accompanying the siren.

It told the refugees that evacuation procedures were underway. Told them to immediately return to their assigned megaliths. Told them that the city had been lost and that orbital bombardment would commence immediately to buy as much time for the megaliths stationed around the rest of the planet to pull out too.

Abject panic broke out in the compound then, as was expected. The refugees hadn’t drilled for anything, not like the staffers had, and it was their training that would salvage what they could from the botched operation.

Soldiers and general security rushed to their duty stations, yelling and commanding everyone into their assigned megaliths. Refugees abandoned whatever they were doing, leaving behind personal belongings to scoop up children and meet with loved ones, scrambling to follow orders. Within minutes, giant crowds had formed at the mouths of each of the great starships, and security worked diligently to funnel them inside as fast as they could.

More warbirds screamed overhead as they flew in formation toward Tir, likely to support whatever evacuation efforts that had been put into effect for those still fighting in the city. Additional soldiers scrambled out of nearby barracks, yelling and hollering as they ran toward speeder bikes idling outside the compound exit, waiting for whoever needed to use them.

The announcer rattled off a one hour timeline until liftoff and began folding that into their other instructions. One hour, and those inside were safe while those not yet on a ship would die.

A chime sounded at her wrist and Glimmer answered the notification on her PDA. Kyle’s face appeared on the holo-screen that projected in front of her.

“Glimmer!” he said. “Oh thank god, you answered.”

“One hour until liftoff,” she said. There was no time for idle talk.

“We were told ninety minutes until orbital bombardment.” From the feed, it looked like Kyle was still flying, the stars and ships of the fleet tumbling and twisting outside the canopy of his cockpit.

“I’m looking at the live feeds right now,” Glimmer said, scanning through the data while she kept a line open to him. “It looks like there are still tens of thousands of soldiers in Tir, fighting. Are they going to be able to get out in time?”

“We’re scrambling practically every available transport to get as many out as we can, but fleet command has made it explicitly clear the bombarding begins after the clock runs out, regardless of whoever is still down there. They can’t wait much longer than that or they’ll risk losing the whole planet faster than the other sites can get out.”

Glimmer cursed. “This is way more aggressive a timeline than what anyone’s trained to. It sounds like they set something off out there.” she said. “Did they stumble across the Abomination? Was it just hiding how far along it was from our mages?”

“I have no idea,” Kyle said. “They may have lost a Battlemage to it and now there’s two, who knows. I wouldn’t be surprised, given that Aratoth was nearly taken right then and there.” The background spun faster and Kyle paused as he hooked through the g-forces. “Listen, I can’t get ahold of Lonnie or Rogelio.”

Glimmer felt her blood go cold. She had been afraid of hearing those words, and yet there they were. “What do you mean you can’t get ahold of them?”

“Nearly everyone else is answering the evacuation calls and we can pick them up, but the team those two in particular were part of went dark. None of them are answering their pings and I can’t pinpoint their exact location.”

Shit, Glimmer thought. If they didn’t answer their pings then they won’t get picked up for evacuation at all. She had left people behind before—left the people of Rinne behind. Left Taline’s Battlemage Narre to die by the Emperor’s hand aboard his citadel. Left Bow and Adora and the other princesses behind to activate the Heart despite them pleading with her not to, so many years ago now.

Those memories, those realizations, came back one after the other as Kyle’s words echoed in her head. She was about to lose two more people, and there was one thought that came of that realization—the one thought that stood clear to her amid the panic:

Never again.

“Send me their last known location,” Glimmer said racing the other soldiers to the speeders at the edge of the compound. “Whatever is recorded for their last valid ping, give it to me. I’m going.”

“Are you sure about this?” Kyle asked. “We’re already at tremendous risk considering how many Battlemages are still down there. You’re going in without a team to take care of you if you get oversaturated. If we lose you...we could bombard the city with twice the armament from space and even the megaliths in our compound won’t have time to get free then, let alone the ones around the rest of the planet.”

“They’ll have time,” Glimmer said. “I know exactly how long it takes one to lift off. We pushed the absolute limit on Rinne. They’ll make it, even if I don’t.”

“Fuck.” Kyle breathed the word to himself, but Glimmer heard it come through clear as if he had shouted it at her.

She didn’t tell him that, if the Beast took her, she’d likely eat the whole region and start bleeding past the Kaloshi border, she’d be so powerful. They’d probably reinstate Taline just to put a stop to her. The thought made her laugh, privately, in a perverse, morbid sort of way.

“Keep an eye on my own tracker,” she said instead. “I’ll ping you when I’ve located them.”

“You have a ride in?”

“Working on it.”

Glimmer had reached the idling speeders outside the compound right as he asked and she mounted one, grabbing the helmet slung to its side putting it on while her PDA and its onboard systems integrated. The moment the speeder registered her rank, it roared to life. She pushed the throttle to max and shot off across the steppe, heading straight for Tir in the distance.

Chapter Text

Adora leaned heavy into Ly as they stumped forward through one of the industrial service coridors adjacent the landing bays, following two of Vasher’s blue-coated men and Corynth’s limp body they supported between them. Adora could barely focus, and several times during their jaunt she would have slipped and fallen face-first to the floor if Ly, amid a string of curses and strained words of encouragement, hadn’t been there to keep her upright.

At last they reached the end of the hall, where two sentries—clad in armor of a color and design Adora had only before seen in educational reels on Etheria—were guarding a pair of sliding, reinforced steel doors. The halted Vasher’s men, only to blink in surprise when they saw Ly bring up the rear and then scramble to get the door open.

“What are the Vanguard doing here?” Adora asked, as the doors slid open and they pushed through to the pitch black room beyond. “I thought this whole outpost was hidden from the Empire?”

“Curious, isn’t it?” Ly asked, eyeing them as they passed by. “Why would the Emperor send his elite here to oversee a Vestamid black site?”

From her tone, Adora got the sense Ly knew exactly what she was implying. Was Horde Prime coordinating Beast experimentation with the Vestamid without anyone knowing? Even the implication seemed earth shattering, although in her rattled state she couldn’t articulate why.

The lights cut on with a clang the next moment, robbing Adora of her train of thought. The room was huge and filled with countless tables and shelves filled with scientific equipment.

“It’s a spare lab,” Ly said, picking up on Adora’s curiosity. “No need to look so confused.”

“They just keep this stuff ready to go?”

“Correction, it’s the spare lab the Vestamid have been trying to bully me into occupying for a while now. Do they just keep this stuff ready to go normally? No, but do they keep it ready to go for me hoping I’d come around and use it?”

Ly inflected the end of her sentence in a way that answered it as she asked. Suddenly it made sense why the Vanguard just let them in.

“Can you believe I actually considered taking them up on their offer?” Ly asked. “That was before I suspected they were working on creating Abominations.” She scoffed. “I can only imagine what would have happened had I joined and finally realized what they were trying to do, but it doesn’t seem like my abstaining did anything. They still managed to create one.”

“That thing was terrifying…” Adora tried not to think back to her skirmish in the hangar, how it almost subsumed her entire consciousness inside itself even after powering up with a good chunk of She Ra’s power.

“You stood your ground against it.”

Adora shook her head. “I gave it a hard time, but that didn’t seem to phase it much. Kal…Corynth…” She nodded her head in his direction ahead of them as they wound through the lab. “How he managed to immolate it, I have no idea.”

“Yeah, and as you can clearly see, he’s not doing so hot right now.”

“Will he be okay?”

Ly pressed her lips together and knit her brow. “Don’t ask me that…”

“But—”

“I don’t know, Adora.” She huffed, and when her voice shook, Adora realized she was terrified and trying not to show it. “I really don’t know.”

They pushed on soundlessly until their group came to lab’s far back wall, where a floor to ceiling window looking into an operating room was installed. A team of doctors and nurses in full regalia were waiting for them, and they directed Vasher’s men to bring Corynth inside and deposit him on the central table. Adora couldn’t get a good look at him.

“Can you stand on your own for a bit?” Ly asked, pulling her attention away. When Adora nodded, Ly left her side and stopped the team before they could turn around and head inside after Corynth.

They spoke in hushed tones and Adora could hear almost nothing of their conversation, but judging by Ly’s harsh undertones and jerky body language, she was conveying a stern message.

“What was that about?” Adora asked, when Ly returned to her side and guided her away.

“Cat’s out of the bag, unfortunately,” Ly said, pursing her lips with a rueful expression. “Those are Vestamid doctors. I threatened them hoping they’ll keep their mouths shut about who they’re treating, but I doubt they will, even after they promised me.”

Adora remembered what little Corynth had told her of them, how they venerated him like a god, and she grimaced. “Well, at the very least I think they’ll have plenty of incentive to get him healthy again,” she said, forcing a tone she’d hoped would lighten the mood. “It’s not every day you get to meet one of your personal deities, is it?”

Ly laughed under her breath in a way that made it clear she was not helping, and Adora sighed.

“He’ll be okay,” she said, voice turning serious. Ly looked up at her and Adora held her gaze. “He lived through the end of the last war and just ate an Abomination. This won’t put him down.”

Ly didn’t say anything, but Adora liked to think she helped put her mind at ease, even a little bit.

The situation still baffled her. The Vestamid, one of the most powerful secret powers in the galaxy, venerated that guy? The legend of Corynth struck such a discordant note with who Adora had known as Kal for the majority of their time together that she still couldn’t wrap her head around it.

They went through another door in the side of the lab once they reached it, where another figure dressed in doctor’s robes helped her onto the examination table. Ly left them alone after promising she’d be back soon since she had to get her own injuries looked at.

The doctor was thorough, poking and prodding Adora in places she didn’t realize could be prodded, doing quick full body scans with a wand-shaped device that beeped and hummed as it passed over particularly painful parts of her body, writing down notes on the pad of paper held to their clipboard.

“Have you seen any shadows?” they asked, after wordlessly going through many tests already.

“Pardon?”

“Shadows. Ghosts. Hallucinations. Have you seen anything moving around in the shadows that wasn’t really there? Anything out of the corners of your eyes that disappeared once you turned to focus on them?”

“No, I don’t think so.” That sounded terrifying.

The doctor nodded and stood from their stool. “Well, your body is stitching itself back together faster than it has any right to, and I’m seeing nothing abnormal on the scans. If you’re not experiencing any side effects either—”

“My whole body really hurts.”

The doctor narrowed their eyes at her, as if trying to judge whether or not she were an intelligent lifeform or not. “Yes, well, that’s to be expected given the fact you went up against subject seventeen. Let’s just say the fact you are alive at all is abnormality enough.” They checked their clipboard of notes, their eyes scanning the page. “Your enhanced healing factor is interesting as well, although given what biological abnormalities I attend to on a daily basis, it isn’t worth my time to keep you for any further tests.”

Adora knit her brow and scowled. The doctor was insulting her, although his tone of voice was nothing but clinical and offhand, like someone discussing the weather in an elevator. Still, she might have felt incensed if she weren’t so spent, already.

“My suggestion is bed rest.” The doctor gestured with his head to a door in the side of the room. “There’s bedding in there. Get some sleep. We’ll monitor you for any changes.”

And with that, the doctor got up and walked right out of the room. Adora thought he might have at least stayed to help her, but it seemed he was too busy for even that.

With great effort, she lugged herself off the examination chair and into the other room, where a bed was indeed waiting for her. She left a crack in the doorway, not wanting to shut herself inside completely for some reason she couldn’t grasp. Sleep took her the moment her head hit the pillow.

Adora had no idea where she was when she woke. It was so dark that, for a terrifying moment, she feared she was deep in one of her nightmares. Even when her memory of the preceding events finally returned, she had no idea for how long she had been asleep.

The only light source was a thin line that seeped through the crack in the doorway leading back to the examination room. It gave Adora’s surroundings an eerie, liminal feel that set her on edge, so she rose from the bed and headed back out into the main lab as fast as she could, only feeling like she had fully returned to the world when she saw others there with her. She counted maybe a half-dozen of Vasher’s crew milling about, but no sign of Ly.

She followed the far wall, letting her fingers trace the cracks and divots in the concrete. Sounds of machinery now on and working echoed around, mixing with the tones of Vasher’s men and their various conversations, giving life to the lab where before there was none. Finally, she came to the emergency operating room where they had dropped Corynth off previously.

The window looking in was tinted dark and she couldn’t see through. Adora took that to mean the Vestamid doctors were still hard at work inside, but she wanted to make sure. She approached one of the two guards nearby and asked how long they had been in there.

“About three hours now?” they said, glancing over to their partner to confirm.

“Three and a half, actually,” they said.

That explains why I feel like I just rose from the dead, Adora thought. She hadn’t just taken a quick nap.

“Vasher and Lysithea are inside as well,” the first guard said. “Lysithea said she didn’t want to wake you. I’m sure she’ll be out soon enough. I’ll let you know you came looking for her when she does.”

Adora thanked them and wandered the lab, intent on finding a distraction from her mounting worries over Corynth’s health. It surprised her how much she wanted him to pull through, how scary the thought of their last interaction with one another being him saving her from an eldritch, planet-eating monster was. When had he gone from an aggravating and barely trusted traveling partner to someone she’d imagine inviting to the Queen’s Ball on Etheria?

Catra had taken an interest in him, that much she knew. She imagined a hypothetical situation far in the future, one with her sitting at the head table back on Etheria, with the other princesses and Catra there at her side. They'd have made up already, and become friends again, and Adora would be telling her these hilarious stories of her misadventures with Corynth when he was still “Kal” to her.

“Oh yeah,” she’d say, suppressing a giggle at Catra’s bewildered expression upon learning Adora had caught him breaking into the Crystal Castle. “I gave him no choice but to take me aboard his ship, and then he walked in on me trying to eat the unprepared food-sand in those instant meal packages, since I was starving and didn’t know what you were supposed to do with those.

Adora shook her head to clear the fantasy, returning to the hidden lab on a hidden station, deep somewhere in a likely hidden part of the galaxy, far from home. If Corynth didn’t pull through, and if Catra ever allowed herself to come back into Adora’s life (two very big ifs), then she’d likely be telling her of how he well and truly died in the end, saving her life. Or maybe she’d never bring it up and spare them both the pain. Maybe that was a better option…

She came across a large table pushed against a wall of computer servers. The Eye of Shukra was there, suspended in another gravity well maintained by a machine far larger than what Corynth used on the Dzivia to analyze it. Running diagnostics splayed across multiple screens surrounding the table, and another of Vasher’s guards stood nearby watching over everything. He nodded at her as she came into view, and Adora only nodded back before moving on. She rationalized that, whatever Ly was doing to the Eye, she’d best leave it be.

Eventually, she came to what looked like a conference room in the far corner, built against the corner with walls of glass cordoning it off from the lab. Adora pushed inside and, mind still wandering listless, she pulled out the closest chair at the end of the boardroom table and sat. A holo-screen was mounted to the concrete there. Seeing it made her think of her own cracked PDA screen still strapped to her forearm opposite her runestone bracer.

She tried to reach Glimmer again, not really expecting to succeed. Still, when the error message came through again, she sighed and slumped forward on the table, resting her head sideways on her arm. Of course she still couldn’t send any messages to her. She couldn’t send messages to anyone.

And then, on a whim, she pulled up something else on the PDA she rarely ever did: the collection of photographs she had imported onto it when the Enclave first gifted the thing to her. Maybe it was because now felt like the first time in years she actually had a moment to herself, or maybe it was out of guilt that she had never made the time to reminisce over the photographs in the past, despite how important they were to her. Maybe it was the fact she had nearly died in the hangar bay several hours ago. Either way, as she flipped through image after image of  her and Bow and Glimmer getting up to all sorts of trouble, she felt a part of her she hadn’t realized she’d lost in the first place begin to come back to her.

There were no recent photographs, all of them having been taken in that short period of time after the Enclave first arrived where reconstruction was going full swing and no one had had left yet. Heck, they hadn’t even reforged Adora’s runestone yet, so most of Adora’s worries had been contained to hypotheticals.

Catra was even in a number of them. Granted, neither Adora nor Catra looked particularly happy in any of the shots they shared together.

“Come on,” Glimmer would say, any time Adora expressed her displeasure. “We’re all on the same side. Catra did more for me up on Prime’s citadel than I think I can even put into words. She’s part of the Best Friend squad, and you’ll thank me for including her later, Adora.

Adora hadn’t realized it at the time, but Glimmer was right. Looking at the pictures now, even though she looked less than enthused to be within a hundred yards of Catra and Catra looked like she’d rather crawl under a rock than have her picture taken, Adora felt grateful. She hadn’t seen Catra in years. It had been too long.

“That’s a nice picture.”

Adora jumped up in her chair and spun around, shutting off the PDA screen in a hurry. Ly was standing behind her with an apologetic look on her face.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I thought for sure you heard me come in and call your name.” Ly moved to the chair facing Adora’s opposite the boardroom table. “You look much better than you did when we first got here,” she said after a moment. “Did you sleep well?”

Adora checked in with herself, realizing for the first time that she felt fine. Enhanced healing factor, or whatever the doctor had termed it, really wasn’t a joke. It might have taken a normal person months to recover from how she felt, but here she was, several hours later, feeling almost as good as new.

“I think so,” she said. “Was out for three straight hours and completely forgot where I was when I finally woke up. I feel brand new.”

“Lucky you. I was told I have several ribs with hairline fractures, among a number of other things. I think Vasher almost cried when he saw how bruised up my chest was.” She pulled the chair out and sat, wincing with the movement to emphasize her point. “Saw you passed the fuck out though and figured it’d be better not to wake you.”

“I was told I’m lucky to even be alive,” Adora said, glancing back down at her cracked PDA screen a moment. Already she wished she were back staring at the pictures, tricking herself into reliving a point in time that was marginally better than her current situation. At least then she had her friends with her.

“You fought an Abomination directly trying to corrupt you,” Ly said, leaning back in the chair. “I can chop off three of my fingers and my thumb from my left hand and still count how many people have done that and lived, aside from you.”

Adora frowned at the imagery and Ly laughed. “How is Corynth?”

Ly smiled. “He’ll live. I wouldn’t be as chipper as I am with half my body turning black and blue otherwise.”

Adora breathed a sigh of relief and actually slumped back against her chair. Well, at least now she won’t have to struggle about bringing bad news to Catra. Now she just needed to get on speaking terms with her again, which arguably was the harder of the two issues.

“Be honest with me,” Adora said, dampening the smile on Ly’s face with the seriousness of her tone. “How close did we get to being completely obliterated?”

Ly’s half-smile turned into a frown. “All of Eden was probably seconds away from being overtaken, if I’m to be honest. That Abomination was just a juvenile, and unleashed upon a much smaller populace than a planet, but even still…if Corynth hadn’t stepped in and taken care of it, we would have become a new epicenter.”

 “I’m sorry…maybe if I had better control over—“

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Ly said, cutting her off. “You bought us enough time for reinforcements to come. You might not have taken it down, but Corynth wouldn’t have gotten to us in time if it weren’t for you. You are just as much at fault for us still being alive as he is.” Ly winked at her after that last statement.

Adora laughed through her nose and lapsed back into silence. She didn’t feel very good about herself, despite Ly’s obvious attempt to cheer her up. She Ra was still a problem, despite whatever progress she’d made. Progress she still couldn’t reliably reproduce at will.

Ly nudged her under the table with her foot. “What’s wrong?”

“Why didn’t Corynth tell me who he really was?” Adora surprised herself with that response. Ly’s question had pierced through the silence, and it sounded so genuine and raw that she responded before she could think through it.

Another beat of silence passed between them before Ly let out a breath and leaned back against her own chair. “There are a few reasons I could think might be the case, just off the top of my head. You’ll have to ask him though, once he comes out of that operating room.”

“Tell me what you think the reasons might have been.” Really, Adora thought nearly having died was the thing on her mind, or maybe even Catra, still. Feeling lied to, or feeling upset at being kept in the dark? Yeah, that stung, but she hadn’t realized it until her body spoke before her mind had caught up.

“Well, for one thing, everyone thinks he’s dead. People finding out he’s actually alive would…upend a lot of things.”

“He’s a galactic hero,” Adora said. “Glimmer has mentioned on more than one occasion how many statues of him she’s seen around different worlds, and one of my other…someone else I know has apparently watched every documentary and drama about him that’s come out, and read the countless books they’ve put out about him too. Even on Etheria, we learned about what he supposedly did, when most everything else about the galaxy was kept secret trying to keep us ignorant. Nothing about him I’ve seen paints him in a remotely negative light. Hell, a whole religion apparently sprung up around him. Why would it be dangerous to reveal he’s actually still alive?” She thought. “And how the hell is he still alive to begin with?”

“You forget that he inspired a revolt against Horde Prime’s rule alongside Evelyn.” Ly said. “One thing they definitely won’t tell you is that he was firmly branded as terrorist threat number one for years until Archanas happened. It was only then, when Horde Prime thought he perished with everyone else, that he went back and declared Corynth a war hero. Prime shifted the collective opinion of the galaxy about him over the course of a few years. What do you think he’d do if he found out the very person who nearly toppled his regime was still alive?”

“The threat against his rule would be back and his control over the narrative would be lost…” Adora said, piecing things together. “Okay, maybe it makes sense not to reveal himself publicly, but why would he not tell me who he was? He saved my life…twice! I stopped being fully skeptical of him. I thought at the very least we were on friendly enough terms he’d be honest with me about his true identity.”

Ly grimaced and looked away. Adora got the sense she had just stepped onto a mine.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Corynth chose a new name for himself after Archanas. Vasher and I broke through the fleet blockading the planet after the final battle because we were still picking up life signs from his tracker. When we got there ready to evacuate him, he didn’t want to leave.”

“What?”

“I’m serious. He was cradling Evie’s head in her lap, saying he should have died with her and the other Shapers. That if the Beast didn’t take him like it did the others when they shut it away, then he was going to wait to join them shortly thereafter anyways.

“’Then let Corynth die,’ I said to him. ‘Let him die and we’ll rescue someone else from this rock. Whoever you want to be, just get on the ship and lets leave, already.’” Ly sighed again. “He placed his Shaper mask on Evie’s body, got in the ship, and we just started calling him Kallanthe from that day on. It was supposed to help him cope. I didn’t think it was going to be permanent.”

Adora studied Ly’s face, noticed the way she didn’t meet her gaze as she spoke. “Why do I get the sense there’s more to the story?”

Ly finally looked her in the eye, and Adora saw a great sadness in them. “Because I honestly don’t think that’s the answer, although that really did happen. I think he didn’t tell you who he really was because the last time he revealed himself to someone he cared about, they accused him of tricking them and then tried to kill him. Then continued trying to hunt him down and kill him for years afterward.”

“Why would…how does that even happen…?”

“The Daiamid were once the Emperor’s secret police. Their reputation before the Beast war was that of a mythical organization of incredibly powerful sorcerers that could turn family and lovers into mortal enemies, could reshape reality around them to fit their will…could entrance even the strongest minds and literally explode bodies into a million pieces merely by looking their victims in the eyes.

“When Corynth revealed himself at Evie’s trial…when he openly defied the Emperor and rallied his brothers and sisters to do the same…we were expecting Taline to follow suit. We thought if the rest of the Daiamid coalesced to back Corynth, then Taline, someone he had been seeing seriously for some time already, would almost without a doubt do the same.”

“Wait…wait, wait wait.” Adora’s mind reeled. Ly had just dropped several successive metaphorical bombs on her in a row. “Taline and Corynth were together?”

Ly nodded. “For years. We thought she’d be on our side when Corynth made his move. Instead, she took the whole revelation about who he was…very poorly. She accused him of bewitching her, said their entire history was a lie…said that he was doing the same thing to Evie and that’s why she refused to follow the Emperor’s orders even in the face of death. Taline believed the mythos surrounding the Daiamid to the extent she believed Corynth actually had her under a spell and had been manipulating her and Evie the whole time they’d known him.”

“That’s horrible…I can’t imagine how painful that must have been. For both of them.” Truthfully, Adora could key into it just a little. The paranoia she felt surrounding Catra’s final change of heart, the fear she felt wondering if she were just opening herself up to be duped yet again, seemed strangely similar to how Ly framed Taline’s hesitations.

“You’ll have to ask him, like I said, if you really want to know the truth. This is just what I could see the reason being from what I know.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

Ly nodded again, then gestured to Adora’s PDA. “What were you looking at earlier?” Ly asked. “Those pictures…were those your friends?”

“Friends of mine from back home,” she said, nodding and turning her PDA back on. She activated the setting that floating the screen as a holographic image above her wrist, and turned the transparency up so Lys could see it from across the table.

The picture she had left off on was one of the last ones they had taken before people started leaving: it showed her, Glimmer, Bow, and even Catra, who was pulled into the center with an uncomfortable look on her face that matched the aggravated one on Adora’s. What she wouldn’t give to have the four of them together again like that.

“I guess I was starting to get homesick,” Adora said, finding the lamest possible way to explain the image and why she had been looking it over.

“I recognize that one,” she said, pointing to Glimmer reflected in the picture. “That’s Taline’s mentee. She even has a nickname similar to hers after a botched campaign not long after she debuted.” When Adora gave her a questioning look, Ly said, “I’ve been keeping track of her over the years. Wanted to at least make sure she didn’t catch onto our trail well enough to actually show up and try to obliterate Corynth again out of the blue.”

“Her name is Glimmer,” Adora said, nodding. “She’s one of my closest friends. And that’s Bow. He’s still on Etheria.”

“And what about her?”

Ly had pointed to Catra and Adora’s whole body tensed as if readying for a fight. She didn’t even know where to begin to explain who Catra was in a rational, calm way. She’d not even said her name out loud likely more than a handful of times since their last conversation back home, years ago.

“That’s my Taline,” Adora said, voice coming out thick. “Or maybe I’m Taline and she’s Corynth in the scenario, judging by how I reacted the last time we spoke to one another.” She shrugged. “We’ve switched the roles we’ve played you could say, over the years. She smiled, more to herself than anything. “At one point, I was hoping she’d be my Vasher, if I were to pull  you into the analogy.”

Ly smiled. “You caught onto that, huh?”

“Believe me, I thought it was you and Corynth at first, judging by how strongly you slapped him back at the Garden.”

Ly made a face. “He deserved that slap, no matter how you rationalize it. I love Corynth, and so does Vasher. We wouldn’t have punched through Taline’s fleet blockade on Archanas to get to him if we didn’t, but we aren’t together. Not like Vasher and I are.” She laughed again as she leaned back and put her feet up on the desk. She barely winced this time as she did. “It was Corynth that got Vasher and I together to begin with, actually. I hated his guts at the start.”

Adora’s eyes widened. “Really? How did that happen?”

Ly waved her off and shook her head. “Story for another time. This is about you, girl. So, Catra’s your special person, and I’m under the impression you two aren’t on speaking terms. It’s been, what, three years for you two, if I remember correctly from what you said back in the hangar?”

Adora frowned and slumped down in her chair.

“Do you want to talk to her again?” Ly asked.

“I really fucked up. And it’s been a really long time since then. I’d be surprised if she’d ever want to hear from me again.”

“But you do want to talk to her?”

“Yes. Of course I want to talk to her, I’m just…scared. She’s more than just a friend to me, Ly.”

Ly nodded, keeping a modest smile on her face as she did. “Then all the more reason to finally reach out. I meant what I said before the Abomination showed up, you know? Better late than never.”

Adora gave a rueful laugh. “Yeah, well, even if I got the courage to, I haven’t been able to contact anyone at all. Can’t get a connection, and all my outbound messages error out.”

“Yeah, that’s because any unauthorized device is automatically blocked from doing anything on the network. This is a secret settlement. What, did you think they’d just let anyone connect and send outbound messages? You aren’t even allowed to carry a gun around here unless the Vestamid say its okay.”

Adora opened her mouth to respond, then shut it just as quickly. The fact she had never even considered that was embarrassing enough, she didn’t want to say something that only made it worse.

Ly held her hand out and Adora passed her PDA over. As she fiddled with it, she said, “this should let you send anything you want for the next hour. It’s the best I can do, since I’m technically not an admin on the network. Even getting the allowances to do that much from the Vestamid was a pain in the ass.”

A knock came at the door then, and they both looked up just as Vasher poked his head in the doorway.

“He’s coming around,” he said. “Seems stable, but I know you wanted me to get you the moment he opened his eyes.”

Ly took her feet off the desk but didn’t stand yet. “I’ll be right there, give me another moment or two with Adora.”

Vasher nodded and left. When Ly handed back the PDA, Adora said, “I really don’t know what to say to her. Do I just…come right out and apologize? Talk about how much I fucked up and want to make it right? How do I even start?”

“Well, I would definitely put that apology in as close to the start as you could manage,” Ly said, finally standing and heading to the door. She rested her hand on the doorknob and turned to look at Adora again. “Corynth’s advice to me, back when I was still under the impression I hated Vasher’s guts, was to just be honest and forthcoming. Don’t try to find the ‘right’ thing to say, just say what you intend, even if it doesn’t come out as eloquently as you’d hope. In fact, it definitely won’t, but if the other person still respects you enough and wants to give you another chance…wants to make things right…they’ll get the message.”

“And that worked?” Adora was already gearing up to make a fool out of herself again.

“Well, it helped me realize that my unquenchable desire to punch Vasher in the face actually stemmed from the fact I was so attracted to him it pissed me off.” Ly’s face went pink and she cleared her throat. “So, yeah, I’d say it worked. We’re still together.”

“Yeah, except your situation and my situation couldn’t be further apart from one another.”

“You know, there are some points I could argue there being similarity, but that’s beside the point. Adora, you’ll do fine. Everything will work out, just take the plunge. And if it doesn’t work out exactly how you hope, everything will still be fine, you’ll see.” She opened the door and said, “have some faith in yourself, for once,” then stepped through and clicked the door shut behind her.

Adora watched her go, watched her disappear around one of the racks of equipment in the lab, no doubt returning to the operating room to meet up with Corynth and Vasher. She then took a deep breath, tried to calm her frantic heart and flush her mind of all its frantic, panicking thoughts. Then she turned on her PDA’s record function, adjusted so her face was in the video frame, and began.

“Hey, Catra…”

Chapter Text

Catra initially suspected she wasn’t truly awake when she first realized she was in space, standing in a room and staring through a triple-paned window at a debris field floating against a backdrop of stars, nebulae, and dust. When the doors in the far back of the room hissed open and Taline walked through, only to ignore her and sit at a table opposite a life-sized and fully corporeal Pip, she knew for certain she wasn’t truly awake yet.

“Two visits in one day?” the real-Pip said, feigning surprise. “I’m touched.”

Taline sighed and slumped forward, running her hands through her hair. “Not right now, Evie.”

Catra gasped. It made sense now, why Pip had seemed so familiar when they first met. Catra had seen flashes of Evelyn way back on Prime’s citadel, through his memories and a few of Taline’s. She just hadn’t made the connection years on, when Pip first appeared.

“You’re the one stopping by my cell,” Evelyn said. “If you needed a minute, why didn’t you just take it before coming in?”

“First, it’s not a cell, and second, because I can’t take a minute out on my own. You don't personally commandeer a frigate and pull it from the front lines to respond to a distress signal without someone higher up the chain hearing about it and snooping for answers. Add to it the fact the captain has made such a big deal about it and any moment I don’t look like I’m actively doing something I have half a dozen officers hounding me to file my official report of the incident with High Command.”

Evelyn snorted. “Sounds like you need to get a Sentinel or two, then. You’d have no problem with people harassing you if you did. They’d put a stop to it.”

Taline made a non-committal expression. “Maybe. Rumor has it they’re going to be mandated for every Battlemage in a hot zone, given what they’ve just recently found out about Abominations. Getting one now won’t change the fact the captain is still pissed off and it’s my fault, though.”

“Oh, please.” Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Norognev will get over it, he’s a big boy.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “I know you, Tal. You wouldn’t just come here to hide. You’ve made progress.”

Taline nodded. “I’ve made more than just progress, I’ve gotten you what you wanted. There’s a station…Phoenix station. Small, but it’s got everything you told me you needed to finish this out. Was going to go to a new PhD from the Heartlands but I’m yanking it and giving it to you. That”—she reached into the breast of her Enclave uniform and withdrew a modest tablet, handing  it over to Evelyn—“and I’ve started looking at staff. Here’s where I think you could start.”

Evelyn’s eyes darted across the pad. Catra edged around to try and read it, but she couldn’t make sense of the words no matter what she tried.

“Lysithea, surname redacted…quite a juvenile record. Currently in prison for…” Evelyn trailed off. “Rewiring the multistory PA holo-projectors in her home world’s major commerce district to play, on repeat, a recorded performance of the punk idol group Spiritina and the Loo-Keys instead of the hourly Exaltations of Prime programming.” She lowered the tablet and fixed Taline with a look of surprise.

“She’s wicked smart, doesn’t just suck up to authority, and is cheap, since she’s currently incarcerated on the Emperor’s prison planet on Theranis IV.” Taline leaned back in the chair far enough her back popped and she grimaced. “There are others in there for you to look through too, but Lysithea is the only one that I think you wouldn’t be able to live without. Give me a list of six or seven more…might be able to swing eight, we’ll see. You’ll have enough funds for six months.”

Evelyn nodded. “More than enough time.”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Taline asked. “You started less than a year ago…you nearly died. The fact you didn’t is a miracle, and now you want to plunge right back in? And I’m helping you….Empire above, I can’t believe I’m helping. What would mom and dad have said?”

Evelyn reached forward and covered Taline’s hand with her own on the table. “I have to do this, Tal. My team and I were so close to a breakthrough, and I’m the only one that can finish it in such a short amount of time. Anyone else and it will take years to get them back up to speed, by which time it will be too late. Ignominite will change everything, I promise.”

A beat passed between them. When Taline nodded, Evelyn squeezed her hand, pulled back, and said, “I want Corynth on as my security again.”

Taline sighed once more and ran her hands through her hair a second time. “I’ll see what I can do about that, but my sway when it comes to the affairs of another Battlemage are nonexistent.”

“That’s fine, I already asked him to stay, and he said yes.”

Taline frowned. “Then why did you ask me to try and get him?”

Evelyn smirked. “Just wanted to see if you’d push back on it or not. You like him, don’t you.”

Both Catra’s eyebrows shot up as Taline pushed away from the table and stood so fast her chair nearly toppled backward.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Taline said, scowling when Evelyn started laughing.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Evelyn said, waving her hands and stifling another giggle. “You don’t have to play cold and aloof with me, sister. I’m impressed, really. Not just anyone can catch the eye of one of the youngest Battlemages in the Enclave’s thousand-year history.”

Taline gritted her teeth as she spoke. “He is currently the only person to have stood up to a manifesting Beast infestation and live, on top of saving your life. Forgive me for looking at him and feeling moderately impressed.”

“Well, I just wanted you to know that you can continue looking at him, a lot, and I can continue forgiving you for it, a lot, as long as you also come visit me on Phoenix. A lot.” She tilted her head in such a perfect rendition of the way Pip did it nearly broke Catra’s brain when she saw it and said, in the sweetest, most innocent voice, “Did I also mention Corynth is going to be there as well?”

Taline huffed and rolled her eyes. “Just get me the list of people you want,” she said, before storming out of the room.

Everything felt still once more after Catra watched her disappear down the hall. The door slid closed with a hiss. Another beat of silence. Then…

“Catra?”

She spun on her heel back at Evelyn, who was looking directly at her—seeing her.

“Catra, wake up.”

“What?” A deep foreboding feeling invaded the area. Darkness started to creep in from the corners of her vision, sticking with her when she turned, panicking.

“Catra….Catra, you need to wake up.”

She shot up out of the bunk, gasping for breath. Her hand went straight to her breastbone, feeling at the apeiron crystal still tied there, warm to the touch. Pip floated into view, blue once more and the size of a glass of water.

“Are you okay?” she asked, concern radiating from her big eyes. She had lost the deeply ingrained yet subtle expression of trauma-induced age Catra had noticed on Evelyn in the dream. Or was it a vision, technically?

::I’m alive,:: Catra said to her. ::Feels like I’m hanging on by a thread, honestly.::

She sat up, catching a glimpse of Diallo on the far side of the cell, sitting cross legged on another bed built into the wall. The next moment, a roaring headache stampeded through her head. Catra groaned, and pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes to block out the light.

“Is there anything I can do?” Pip asked. “How do you feel? You look like you’re in pain. Actually, dumb question, sorry, I know you’re in pain.”

Despite having closed her eyes, Catra could still hear her as clearly as if she were speaking directly into her ear. Each word grated on her consciousness.

::Please stop talking.:: She gritted her teeth. ::No offense, but I think you being in my head and saying things is making it worse. Just…sit still and stay quiet for a bit. Please?::

Pip sent an indescribable imprint of ‘understanding’ through their connection, and Catra finally managed to relax.

“How did we end up in here?” she asked, speaking aloud this time to Diallo.

“The Vanguard g-got in right after I bopped Moriarty on the h-head. Then they threw both of us in h-here after.” His voice seemed muted, and when Catra looked up, she noticed a thick sheet of glass stretched from floor to ceiling, separating their two cells. “They hit you pretty hard on the h-head. Do you not remember?”

Bits and pieces came back to her, and even if it hadn’t, the pain in her head would have been testament enough. She nodded, immediately regretting it when only pained her head worse.

“I remember,” she said. “You saved my life. He was either going to choke me out or crush my windpipe if you hadn’t stepped in, although I suppose that only made you look even more guilty to the Vanguard. Thank you anyways.”

“We were both dead if I didn’t stop h-him,” Diallo said. He took his glasses off and started cleaning it with his shirt, then replaced them on his face. “He began to s-suspect I was an insurgent too, near the end there.”

Catra nodded and smoothed her fingers through her hair before putting her throbbing head into her hands.

“How long have you had n-nightmares like that for?”

“What do you mean nightmares ‘like that’?” Catra asked. “Nightmares are nightmares.”

“Not like what you just w-woke from.” Diallo frowned. “I recognize it. The tossing, the s-screaming. You would not wake no matter h-how I called to you. I’ve only seen n-night terrors that bad from someone touched by the Beast.”

Catra glanced down to Pip sitting cross-legged on her knee. She nodded with a sad look on her face that seemed to say “he’s right, you know,” and Catra sighed.

“Three years now,” she said, reaching up and caressing the apeiron through her shirt. “That’s how long it’s been since I’ve been exposed to an imprint of its essence. Longer than that actually. The nightmares should have died down by now at least, but instead they’re getting worse. I don’t know what the deal is.” Catra didn’t feel comfortable disclosing what the nightmare was, how different it was from her usual fare. The best she could do was just say they were “getting worse.”

“Beast terrors evolve w-with time,” Diallo said. “They never remain s-static. Take it from someone who lived through the last w-war. It’s quite common actually…even Taline gets them.”

“I’ve never been directly exposed though. Just an imprint, like I said.”

“Then consider yourself l-lucky, although judging by your reactions wh-while asleep, you could have f-fooled me.”

That only made Catra more anxious. In truth, she worried over why her nightmares had not only failed to abate, but shifted entirely to now include moments that weren’t hers. Why was she visiting Taline’s memories in her dreams? Why had the apeiron crystal grown so hot when she woke up? Catra was already plenty fucked up to begin with having grown up in the Horde under Shadow Weaver’s care. A part of her feared her exposure to the Beast, no matter how far removed from actually touching it she had been, had only fucked her up worse over time.

Pip crossed her arms and shot her a stern look, no doubt reading her sentiments. Catra ignored her.

“So what now?” Catra asked, pushing the conversation with Diallo forward before Pip got the wise idea to actually try and say something to her about her warped self-opinion. “I don’t suppose we’re going to come out of this one with a slap on the wrist, huh? Undercover operatives typically don’t get out of jail. Look, they even took my tech away.” She held up her right arm in front of her to show Diallo her PDA was missing.

“I will be released because of my political position. You will be released because Taline will come for you.”

Catra perked up at that. “Really? What makes you so sure?

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Diallo said, his face darkening, stutter gone entirely. “She will not come for you out of any sense of altruism. She will come for you because you are her Sentinel, and Taline cannot sit by and let her new Sentinel rot in a hidden station prison cell.”

Any feeling of relief Catra might have been feeling fled the moment Diallo finished his sentence. “What are you talking about?”

“I understand Taline has been a huge help to you since arriving on station, but you’ve seen only a carefully curated side of her.”

Catra felt her fur stand on end and she scowled in time with Pip, sitting cross-legged on her knee. “Is this about Archanas again?”

“Among other things. She is not who she portrays herself to be, and I have a feeling you will discover that soon enough.”

“If you know something then just tell me.”

“I already told you it wasn’t the first time she stepped foot on that planet when her and I first met. After the final confrontation with the Beast, and after her sister’s passing. That period of time was filled with such atrocities that many who were lucky enough to live through it succumbed after the fact—from the nightmares that plagued them, from the horrors they couldn’t forget. Not atrocities done by the Beast, but acts of evil and self-interest perpetrated by the people themselves.”

“Yeah, it was a war,” Catra said, frowning. “Bad shit happens. People suffer.”

“Justify it however suits you,” Diallo said. “Evil begets evil, and malice and cruelty expressed in some engender more of the same in others. Everyone has skeletons in their closet, and she has more than most. Far more than most. It would be foolish of you to operate under the assumption she cares in the way you hope. That is all I’m trying to impress upon you. She did not make you her Sentinel out of a sense of charity.”

Catra growled and actually pushed away from the bed to stand, the shooting pain in her head be damned.

“I’m tired of this,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful you saved my life but speaking in these twisted half-implications reminds me of someone I’d really rather forget.” She stopped shy of the reinforced glass between them and slid all five claws down it. She couldn’t even leave a mark. “What did Taline do? Tell me now or shut the fuck up about it, forever.”

The sound of a heavy metal bolt sliding free echoed nearby, right outside in the hall. Catra, Diallo, and Pip all turned their attention toward the door. Two Vanguard soldiers dressed in full kit, rifle included, stepped into Diallo’s cell and flanked the exit, while a third walked all the way in and loomed over him sitting on the ground.

“Get up,” he said. “You’re free to go.”

Diallo looked unsurprised. He merely stood and headed for the exit, stopping just shy of it to turn and look at Catra, pushing his glasses up his nose again.

“That glass c-could withstand a direct hit f-from the guns of a fleet d-destroyer. I wouldn’t exert yourself upon it out of f-frustration. You’ll just b-break your hand.”

He disappeared through the door and out the adjacent cell without another word. One of the three Vanguard, Catra couldn’t tell who, muttered a phrase that contained the words  ‘special political privilege’ and ‘bastard’ in the same sentence before they too followed him out. The door shut behind them with a clang. Catra listened to the sounds of their feet retreat down the hall. After a moment, she heard another door open, then shut, and she was alone with Pip, once more in near complete silence.

“I don’t like that man,” Pip said, whispering in case she flared Catra’s headache again.

::I don’t like that he keeps implying things without explaining them,:: Catra said, returning to the bed and trying to keep her headache from spiraling further. ::Reminds me of a certain someone. She always used to imply in her tone of voice or choice of words that I was worthless and would never amount to much. And that was when she chose not to say it outright to my face, which also happened all the time, too.::

Pip flashed her a sympathetic look, then said, “You don’t seriously believe what he said, though, do you?” When Catra didn’t respond, she floated right up to her face and put both hands on her hips. “I don’t believe for a second anything that he said about Taline. She’s not perfect, but she isn’t a monster. She doesn’t have crazy secrets she’s hiding from you, she’s not playing some mind game, and she’s not just using you. Diallo doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“He’s worked with her, Pip. For years now, and Taline’s kept you on such a short leash you can barely tell me anything about her let alone yourself.” Pip moved to respond but Catra didn’t let her. “I don’t believe him, for the record, but I also don’t think he’s just making shit up out of thin air. People do fucked up things in war all the time. Hell, I’ve done fucked up shit just trying to get back at the Rebellion back home. As much as I look up to her, I’m under no impression that Taline is a saint. If she’s ashamed of something, she’d try to hide it just like anyone else.”

Catra had half a mind to ask about what she had seen in the dream. Did Pip know Evelyn had modeled her after herself? Pip couldn’t even recall being built by her.

“He’s playing with your emotions and your insecurities,” Pip said. “On purpose. Don’t listen to what he says.”

Catra heard the door at the far end of the hall outside her cell open up, heard another group of people approaching by the heaving thunking of their boots against the floor. The bolt to her own cell slid free and the door burst open, allowing Taline to stride through with two more Vanguard escorting her.

Taline locked eyes with her. “Wait outside,” she said to her escorts. She didn’t look happy, she didn’t sound happy, and she didn’t break eye contact with Catra waiting for the Vanguard to leave. They listened to their footsteps retreat down the hall. Again, the door in the distance opened and shut.

“What the hell did you do?”

Catra flinched. She’d already known Taline was frightening when upset. Never abusive like Shadow Weaver, but Glimmer had filled Catra in on just how scary her mentor could be on those rare times she’d slacked on her training or shown up late. Taline had just never directed that at her before, and no amount knowing beforehand that she was in store for a major ass chewing helped soften the blow when it finally arrived.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” Taline narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “Can you not explain to me why you broke into the office of one of the most powerful people in the empire next to Horde Prime himself? Can you not explain why, in the middle of one of the most important public appearances this person was to make in a long time, you’re up here setting off general alarms across all of Phoenix Station?”

“I had to—”

“What you had to do,” Taline said, interrupting her hard enough even Pip shied away, “what you were supposed to do, was return that drive I gave you to Diallo. Not play secret agent and paint a target on your back large enough even an anti-orbital canon could hit you with an indictment on charges of grand espionage!”

Dozens of responses came and went in Catra’s head. She tried to trap one of them, but they raced by too fast for her to corner. Her fur stood on end. Her heart somehow both beat so fast she feared it might stop, and simultaneously lodged itself in her throat, closing it up. This whole situation triggered images of Shadow Weaver, demons she thought she’d conquered long ago. Catra was reduced to a huddled mass, pushing into the corner of the cell. It’d been so long since she’d felt this ashamed.

Then Taline said something that broke the spell. Something that Shadow Weaver would never have said.

“I don’t understand, Catra. I may have a soft spot for you, but that doesn’t mean you can take advantage of your relationship with me for things like this.”

Catra stilled. The question, the change in demeanor…it was so different than anything Shadow Weaver would have ever done it actually stopped Catra in her tracks. “What did you say?”

“Did Diallo put you up to this? I know you were on rotation with Dax when he arrived. I know you were on his security detail. Did he talk to you before he came to see me? Is that why you stopped by at the same time? Did you accept being my Sentinel so you could do this? So he could try some new way to get me to go to that damned planet again?”

Tears welled in Taline’s eyes as she spoke. Catra could count on one hand how many times she had accidentally made Adora cry when they were growing up, how terrible it had made her feel and how quickly and effusively she had worked to mend things between them the handful of times it had happened before Adora’s defection. She couldn’t handle tears, and the thought of having brought Taline to the brink of them shook her.

“That’s ridiculous,” Catra said. “Taline, do you even hear what you’re saying? I sent a paper application in months before I’d ever met Diallo, how would I scheme with him for something like this? Why would I scheme with him? I wouldn’t do that to you, you mean too much to me.” As much as Catra wanted to make things right, Taline still looked moments away from ripping her head off despite the tears and she didn’t dare so much as move from the bed.

The three scars on Taline’s cheek, given to her by the Emperor when she defended them against his wrath and only visible if one were looking at her from a certain angle, seemed to shimmer in the low light of the cell. All at once, the light dimmed further. A suffocating feeling bloomed in the small space they shared, a strong sense that the walls were closing in on them.

The corners of her vision pulled in, darkness seeping around like an ever-marching creep of vines. From that darkness, shadows bloomed. Moving shadows, and voices in the air began to whisper. When Catra turned her head to look directly at whatever was lurking, she saw nothing except new shadows in the new corners of her vision. When she strained her ears to hear the whispers, the seemed to grow farther away and more vigorous at the same time, and she still couldn’t understand them.

“What’s going on?” Catra spoke the question out loud even though she intended it for Pip who, for her part, looked just as terrified as Catra felt.

“Lies!”

Catra jerked up and saw Taline, eyes ablaze and skin patterned with white-hot ley lines of magic, standing straight backed with her hands fisted and trembling at her sides. Her hair swirled about her, weightless amid her display of magic. Catra felt it buffet her in waves emanating from Taline, a miasma that seemed to incarnate the very concept of rage and betrayal.

I wouldn’t do that to you. Catra’s words from earlier echoed around the cell, incorporeal, and now spoken by a man whose voice she had never heard before. You mean too much to me.

“Lies, all of it lies! You lie!”

“Taline, what are you—”

Pip floated up between them before Catra could do anything. “She can’t see you,” she said. “She’s somewhere else right now. Don’t get up, it’s dangerous.”

The shadows grew more defined and pulled further toward Catra’s center vision. It almost seemed like she was in a different space entirely—a vast open courtyard, hundreds of stories up, surrounded by skyscraper buildings on all sides.

Dozens of persistent shadowed forms ran by or grouped up and moved as a team. It looked like they were fighting, if Catra had to guess, phasing in and out of the small area of the cell as they moved about. Judging by the frantic whispers around them, it almost sounded like they were fighting, too. Taline was looking through her, of that Catra was certain. There was no recognition in her eyes.

A crack formed in the ballistic glass behind her. That crack spread from its one pinprick center outward, scintillating their reflection—Catra’s looking at it and Taline facing away from it—into a thousand fractured splinters.

Catra nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw a new shadow reflected in those splinters. A tall, amorphous blob of a person stood there as if they were inside the reflection, and they had just one defining feature: two nearly perfect circular eyes like unblinking lamps of starlight, staring out at them from its mask of shadow.

You know me, Taline.

There was no logical reason to assume it was the figure in the glass speaking, but somehow, she knew.

You mean too much to me, and you know I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this. The Barrier is our only chance. We need you, now more than ever.

Taline spun on her heel and roared. “You’ve lied the entire time!” She lunged and threw a hand out, where a bolt of lightning lashed out and struck. It shattered the partition into pieces, obliterating the man in the reflection as shards of glass exploded outward.

Catra dashed forward from the bed and grabbed Taline by the shoulder, intent on shaking her out of whatever headspace she had dragged the both of them into. The moment her hand touched Taline’s skin, it burned, and Catra yanked back with a hiss and a curse.

Taline rounded on her, finally noticing she was there but clearly not registering where she was, what was going on, or even who Catra was. In fact, by the way her face contorted further in rage, it seemed like Taline mistook her for one of the shadowed figures still darting around about them—no doubt phantoms from her past.

A life-sized blur of blue materialized to Taline’s left, just as Catra was certain Taline was about to call forth another bolt of lightning for her specifically.

“Stop!” Pip stood there, corporeal and glowing, much larger than she had ever appeared before. “Taline, you need to snap out of it. You’re not in the Heartlands. Corynth and the Daiamid are gone, there are no insurrectionists. You’re scaring Catra half to death!”

Taline gasped and recoiled, taking a full three steps back before shaking her head and blinking rapidly. Pip disappeared and reappeared, miniature and see through once more, perched on Catra’s knee with a perturbed expression.

The shadows abated, and the grueling, suffocating feeling that had infused the cell retreated too, along with the voices. Taline’s eyes returned to their normal color, the ley lines disappeared, and her hair fell, mussed, back to her shoulders.

Catra sprung from the bed the moment Taline’s eyes shifted to the shattered glass and widened in horror, closing the distance between them in two wide steps and pulling her into a fierce hug. Taline tensed a moment, then embraced Catra back, squeezing hard enough there was no space between them. If those shadows and visions were a roaring sea storm threatening to put her under, then Taline clung to Catra like she were the one anchor there capable of keeping her grounded.

“Catra, I’m—”

“No,” Catra shook her head and pulled Taline in tighter. “No, don’t apologize. You scared the shit out of me but you didn’t hurt me. You came out of it before anything bad happened, I promise.”

Taline and Corynth had history. Personal history. He had apparently rescued Evelyn early on, had stood up to the Emperor, and also saved everyone on the galaxy. He had also betrayed Taline in doing so. Catra had no idea if it was a true betrayal or not, and part of her wondered if that even mattered. Adora had betrayed Catra, even though it made sense why and even though it was the right thing to do. Even after Catra herself understood, it didn’t change the fact it felt like a betrayal and hurt like a betrayal and, from a certain standpoint, that’s all that mattered.

So, yeah. Catra understood now, why Taline thought the things she thought. She didn’t even need the full context, she just understood. So many things, little things that she didn’t understand or otherwise overlooked…they made so much more sense now.

“I saw her.” Taline’s voice came muffled against Catra’s shoulder. “Evelyn was there. She pulled me out. I was lost and she pulled me out.”

Catra angled her head to scrutinize Pip behind her. Pip set her jaw and didn’t meet her eyes.

::Does she know?::

“The one time I showed myself to her was the only other time in all the years I’ve been with her that she had an episode like that,” Pip said through their link. “Seeing me triggered that in her. It’s part of the reason I didn’t pry her away from meditating on that apeiron around your neck after so many years. Until she gave it to you, I was afraid it was one of the few things still keeping her grounded.”

::And seeing you pop up just now was what grounded her, this time.:: Catra concentrated on breathing deep and steady, trying to match Taline’s pace and nonverbally lead her back to baseline. Idly at the back of her mind, she remembered how she had once gone to comfort Shadow Weaver when she was distraught only to be pushed away. What a difference this was.

::This has really been going on the whole time she’s stewarded you?” she asked Pip. ::Eleven years now?::

“It’s never been bad like this,” Pip said. “It’s been getting worse. Her nightmares have been getting worse with it. They’ve never gone away, Catra. It’s why I’m so worried about yours, too.”

Catra sighed and stepped back, holding Taline at shoulder length. “Diallo told me your other Sentinels used to run undercover jobs for you. Used to get things done for you without explicit orders, so they could push your goals forward without jeopardizing your public standing. When I tried to return the drive to him, he said this was one of those times—that by telling me my first ‘assignment’ was returning it to him, you were really telling me to infiltrate Moriarty’s office and crack the algorithm protecting the drive’s contents.” She shook her head, emphatically. “I’d never betray you, Taline. The thought had never even crossed my mind.”

Taline took a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re supposed to put a bullet in my head if I’m on the verge of becoming an Abomination. You only ever take orders from two people.”

Catra cocked her head. “Two?”

“Me, and yourself. Anyone else tries to get you to do something on my behalf, they’re lying to your face.”

Catra released her and stepped away, only just catching her jaw before it hinged open on its own accord. It was her turn to feel betrayed—Diallo had used her. “That fucking bastard.”

“One of the Emperor’s direct Imperial Administrators is being held on charges of conspiracy, collusion, and severe narcotics procurement. On top of stepping in as the new head of the station and its immediate surrounding regions while he is indisposed, I am likely going to be the one to personally execute him in a number of days when his trial concludes. The Emperor himself will likely come down from the Heartlands on a personal errand because of this, and if I thought my ass was under a microscope before then this will take it to a whole new level.”

She took another shivering breath and ran shaky fingers through her hair. “And now, concrete proof of a phantom algorithm. One tying the upper echelons of Imperial governance directly with the Vestamid. Diallo tricked and used you, yes, and he’s successfully blown the door wide open on something I cannot ignore.”

Catra nodded and studied Taline for a moment. “Are we okay?”

To her surprise, that actually got a chuckle. “Aren’t I supposed to be asking you that?” Taline asked, wiping a tear from her eye.

Catra smirked and nudged Taline with her elbow. “Nah. I’m okay. I didn’t really think you were going to hurt me anyways, although I did get my hand singed when I touched you.” She held her hand up, seeing that it was already starting to blister, and Taline grimaced.

“Put some salve on it and I’ll see what I can do to heal it once it’s sat for a bit. I’m still shit at healing runes, though.”

Catra nodded again, and the tension between them seemed to have melted all on its own. For her part, Catra was relieved. She could count on one hand how many times she had successfully reconciled with a person after fighting with them. She wasn’t upset with Taline, and Taline no longer seemed to be under the impression Catra was deceiving her.

“What happens next?” she asked. “Do I get to leave the prison too or do I have to stay here longer?”

Taline laughed. “Empire above, no. I’m getting you out right now.”

“Are you sure you can swing that?” Catra asked, grinning now. “Don’t you think springing your Sentinel from prison after they went rogue and attacked a Regional Administrator might look a certain way to people?”

Taline shrugged and walked past Catra toward the exit, shattered glass crunching underfoot as she went. “My reputation can take the hit, not that I really care. I’m heading off station and I want you there with me. You’ll need to pack for a few nights, maybe longer.”

“Off planet? Didn’t you just say you were put in charge of a lot more things now that Moriarty is out?” Catra trailed behind her and Pip sat straight-backed and cross-legged on her shoulder. When Taline didn’t immediately respond, she furrowed her brow and said, “Where are we going?”

“The Constable is already prepped and we push off in an hour.” Taline stopped at the precipice to the door and glanced back at her over her shoulder. “We’re going to Archanas.”

Chapter Text

Adora threaded her way through the lab, absently following the sound of voices talking in the distance, trying and failing to concentrate on where she was going. It’d take time for the message she had sent Catra to arrive, and more time for a response to come back, if one came back at all. That much she knew.

What concerned her now was how successful she’d be at concentrating on more pressing matters in the meantime. Ly had agreed to look at the Eye of Shukra, but that was no guarantee it contained the key to sealing the Barrier and trapping the Beast out of the galaxy for good like they hoped. If Ly couldn’t decipher the Eye, or if it didn’t contain what they needed, then what? The Beast would still be an ongoing threat, she still had an unreliable-at-best track record utilizing just a portion of She Ra’s power, and she still had no idea what kind of shape Corynth was in after his stint with the Vestamid doctors.

Adora yelped when, in her distracted state, she crashed front-first into a block of wire-rack shelving full of lab equipment. Only her quick reflexes reaching out and suctioning her whole body to the shelving kept it from falling over, and she didn’t dare let go of it until she was sure it was steady.

“I’d be careful if I were you.”

It was a voice off to the side and Adora spun around, heart racing. Ly was eyeing her over the top of a set of computer monitors bolted to a desk, sitting in the center of an open space. What looked to be server racks that stood even taller than the labyrinth of shelves surrounded her. The Eye was floating in a gravity well generated by a bulky machine sitting on the same desk as all the other computer equipment. Corynth and Vasher were there too, along with a cadre of Vasher’s blue-clad soldiers milling about.

Adora had made it to the others and hadn’t even realized it.

“The Vestamid will narrow their sights on you and hound you to the ends of the galaxy for repayment of their property if you break anything.” Ly blinked, as if hearing and considering her own words. “Actually, that might distract them from Vasher and I when we leave, so go right ahead.”

“I could just order them not to chase after you.” Corynth was lounging on a bulky piece of equipment nearby, his one leg swinging freely a few inches off the ground, booted foot hitting the side of his perch with a rhythmic thump. “They’d listen to me.”

Vasher, leaning against another piece of bulky equipment, crossed his arms and snorted into a laugh. “They’ve made dogma of passing comments you’ve made on the Beast, twisting it out of fanaticism. I’m sure they’ll find some way to turn ‘leave Lysithea and Vasher alone’ into ‘capture them for a blood sacrifice, the World Eater demands it.’”

The words themselves, mixed with Vasher’s gruff tone and accent, seemed severe, but there was an undercurrent of playfulness in their exchange Adora caught onto the same moment she noticed some of Vasher’s men cracking smiles of their own.

Corynth snickered. His snickering snowballed into a belly laugh, and then he started coughing, doubling over and wincing in pain. A cold streak of fear ran down Adora’s spine, then Ly started laughing too.

“The great Corynth, last Shaper of the Daiamid,” she said, effecting an official tone, “brought to death’s doorstep because of some gentle ribbing between friends.”

“Technically it was the proto-Abomination, but we can go with your thing too.”

Ly rolled her eyes with a smile still on her face. She still hadn’t turned away from the monitors. “Vasher, stop antagonizing him.” He shot her a look, mouth agape, like she had just slapped him and Adora suppressed a giggle. “And Corynth, as much as I know you enjoy sniping back and forth with your butt buddy, you need to focus on getting better. Stop playing into this game between the two of you if it’s just going to cause problems.”

“I’ll stop when he pays up,” Corynth said. He crossed his arms and tilted his nose up at Vasher, hints of a smile twitching at the corners of his lips. “I won the bet.”

A flash of metal at Corynth’s wrists caught Adora’s attention: he was still wearing the manacles Ly had put on him—the same ones he had first cuffed her with at the Crystal Castle—except the chain linking them together had been broken. Now they looked—and likely functioned—like simple forearm bracers.

“What did you guys bet on?” She wanted to ask about the cuffs, but was afraid she already knew the answer, so that question came out instead.

Corynth’s attention snapped to her, and the laser-sharp acuity with which he had leveled at Vasher moments before melted into something more delicate. Something gentler. Even his voice came out softer.

“We were trying to guess what you’d do after I left you alone in the hotel,” he said.

Vasher stood up a little taller, a proud look on his face. “I bet him a hundred imperial credits that you would stay put in the room, exactly like he asked you to.”

Adora’s jaw hinged open. Any and all concern she had over Corynth’s wellbeing melted away, replaced with disbelief.

“And you bet that I’d steal the Eye and steal your ship?” she said to Corynth. “You anticipated me doing that?” Adora didn’t know whether to feel mildly insulted they’d make a betting game over something like that or feel completely see-through, like she were transparent and utterly devoid of cunning.

Corynth’s gentle expression turned sheepish, as did his voice. “Well…I saw it as a good thing?” When that didn’t seem to have the effect he was hoping for, he shrugged, a bit helplessly. “I mean, I told you to walk away back at your castle and you decided it was a better idea to try and punch me in the head. If you didn’t listen to me back then, I seriously doubted you were going to just sit around the hotel room because I asked you to.”

Adora put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at him. She wasn’t actually mad, but seeing Corynth fidget under her gaze was a refreshing change in the power dynamic. Seeing Ly and Vasher smirk out the corners of her vision told her she wasn’t the only one enjoying it, either.

Corynth gestured with both hands at Ly. “She doesn’t just suck up to authority either,” he said. “It’s a good thing in my books, Adora. I’m happy you thought trying to steal my ship was a better option than doing nothing.” He paused. “That sounds kind of screwed up, all things considered.”

He was likely going to keep talking, except by then Adora had closed the distance between them and engulfed him in such a strong and sudden embrace she nearly sent them both to the floor.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, when he stiffened in her arms. “I’m really glad. Also, I’m so, so sorry for taking the Eye. And for trying to steal your ship. And also for trying to punch you in the head back on Etheria. Wow, that feels like forever ago, now.”

She felt him relax after a moment, then return the hug. “It’s okay. I’m glad you’re okay, too.”

Adora furrowed her brow at that. Why did he sound like he was suddenly in more pain? Then she remembered him coughing earlier and broke away from him so fast she nearly tripped over her own two feet attempting to retreat.

“Sorry! Shit, I completely forgot. Sorry.”

Corynth winced but still smiled up at her. He flashed her a quick thumbs up, keeping his other hand pressed to his side like he was trying to keep some unseen stitches there from ripping. Adora was about to feel bad again when Vasher pointed a finger at Corynth and laughed.

“She apologized to you,” he said. “I won the second bet.” He looked at Adora. “He didn’t think you were going to say sorry or be his friend anymore.”

Now Adora was truly surprised, and the open-mouthed expression of shock she fixed Corynth was real. “Ok, I will fully admit and own the fact I am not an easy traveling companion, but I like to think that, deep down, I’m fundamentally a decent person.” She raised both her eyebrows and widened her eyes in disbelief. “You seriously thought I was going to try and get one over on you and not feel bad about it at all?”

To his credit, Corynth looked apologetic. “It’s something I’m very glad to have been proven wrong about,” he said to her, before turning to Vasher and saying, “and it’s a bet I’m very glad to have lost. How about we just say our respective wins cancel each other out?”

Vasher shrugged. “Sure. I’ll just have to win whatever we bet on next. We have a three-year hiatus we need to catch up on.”

“You two are insane,” Adora said, shaking her head.

Their dynamic, this obsession over betting on stupid things like this, it was so comical that Adora didn’t think she could be mad about it even if she wanted to. Just flabbergasted. Two grown adults, one of them a textbook definition of a literal living god, behaving like teenagers after facing down a proto-Abomination and nearly dying. It was crazy.

Ly snorted off to the side. “Don’t get too worked up about it,” she said. “You can’t reason them out of it, either. They bet on almost everything.” She finally turned away from the computer monitors to look at Adora directly. “Corynth bet Vasher on whether or not him and I would get together, years ago. And Vasher took the bet.”

“I got so much money,” Corynth said. He sounded so proud of himself.

“And I got a fantastic relationship that’s still going,” Vasher said. “Who’s the real winner?”

“Definitely not Corynth.” Ly said, before winking at Adora, who felt like she was finally rediscovering what ‘female camaraderie’ meant, years after Glimmer had left home.

The machine twirling the Eye in its gravity well beeped and Ly turned back to the monitors. She studied it a moment, then let out a long sigh and shook her head.

“Bad news?” Corynth asked. He sat forward, and any trace of humor or lightheartedness was gone.

“Lukewarm news,” Ly said. She tapped a cadence of commands on the keyboard and a holographic projection materialized in the space between them. It was a web of points and intersecting lines, creating a three-dimensional tangle of light so concentrated and complicated it hurt Adora’s eyes just to look at it.

“This is the best approximation I could generate of what information is inside the Eye,” Ly said. “What you see here is maybe five percent of the total data volume, and even still there are several levels missing from the model. It is simply too complex to display everything, even from just this one small slice.”

“You can’t analyze it for the barrier algorithm, then,” Corynth said.

Ly shook her head. “I can’t get it, no, but I can confirm it’s in there.” At Corynth’s look of confusion, Ly tapped a few more commands  into the computer and a portion of the model broke away and highlighted. “There are bits and pieces that I know for certain are part of the original formula—they match up almost exactly to the bootlegged version of the algorithm Evelyn and I put in years ago. It’s just…”

“Too complex to get through,” Corynth said, completing her thought with a pensive expression.

“We thought what we had come up with back then was massive and complex at the time, but this?” Ly gestured to the model. “This is insane. The Eye has what the Barrier needs to seal fully, but Pip is the only thing that could extract the algorithm and apply it to the nodes directly. Cutting edge software is like “baby’s first plastic toolset” compared to this thing. We need Pip and whatever time-transcendent insanity Evelyn breathed into her when she made her in order to do it.”

Corynth hmm’d and leaned in closer. “What are those?” he asked as he pointed to subtle patches of red coloring inside the web Adora hadn’t noticed before.

“Those are traces of the Beast I found inside the Eye,” Ly said.

“You’re kidding me.”

“That’s what I sensed lurking there when I felt around inside?” Adora asked, surprised as well.

“I’m not kidding, and yes, that’s probably what you both felt,” Ly said. “The data in the Eye makes it so dense it’s able to contain a sample of the Beast without an ounce of ignominite to pacify it. It must be a fragment of the same infestation the Eternians were coming across when building out their countermeasures so many millennia ago, before the Emperor came.”

“Or it could be the sample they experimented on directly,” Corynth said, before turning to Adora. “It’s one of the first things Evie saw when she looked through the timestream—the Eternians discovering ignominite for the first time. She just replicated their findings for us to use now on Phoenix, after Taline got her what she needed.”

“If they already had ignominite when they were crafting their barrier,” Adora said, “then why didn’t they use the same technology to contain this sample here? Why is the Beast inside the Eye?”

“It could be because they needed an ‘unpacified’ sample for their tests,” Ly said. “Or they might have lost control of the sample they had and part of it got stuck inside the Eye when it ate their researchers, I have no clue. The important thing is I got it out.”

“You can’t analyze the data, but you were able to get all of the Beast out?” Adora asked.

Ly nodded and turned to a sealed case she had sitting nearby on the desk. It hissed and steam rose out when she undid the latches and opened the top.

“Running a basic diagnosis is a lot simpler than deriving insights from this thing, so I just had it comb through the whole structure with a basic extraction protocol. Still took an ass-load of time, though.” From the case, Ly pulled out a thin, metallic-red crystal that seemed to shift in shades and hues depending on which angle a surrounding light source struck it at. “I put it in here, fully pacified, and confirmed the rest of the Eye is now clean. When Pip looks at it this time, she’ll be able to get through the whole thing without getting corrupted.”

“I’ll take that,” Corynth said, holding his hand out. “It’s dangerous in the wrong hands.”

Ly looked from the tainted crystal to him, as did everyone else. For a moment, Adora wondered whether they would fight over it, before Ly set her lips in a thin line and nodded.

“It’s even more dangerous in the right ones,” she said, placing it in his upturned palm. “Still, you’re probably the best person to safekeep this kind of thing.”

He stowed the crystal away and Ly turned back to the table to tap out new commands on the keyboard. A new visualization replaced the old hologram between them. It was the same neural net pattern Adora had seen several times before: Pip’s source code, including the still-corrupted and entirely missing pockets of data as well.

“As for our favorite spritely AI,” Ly said. “No change from what I told you back at the Garden. She’s the only one who can read the Eye, and I can do nothing repair her. Her code is too far gone for me to piece back together. The gulfs between what remains intact are too wide.”

“So…Pip can’t come back?” Adora asked. She had only met her once, very briefly, and already felt sad. “Why are we talking about getting her to read the Eye if she’s just…gone?”

“I can’t do anything to fix her,” Ly said, “but that doesn’t mean she’s gone.” She stepped away from the table and circled the still-intact portions of Pip’s code with a finger, outlining them with a shimmering red highlight in the hologram. “The damage to her code is extensive but targeted—she was able to partition off the most important parts. Her personality, her memories, Evie’s module for decoding the Eternian language…it’s all still here and untouched. The missing parts are just the core framework and boilerplate that holds it together. The ‘glue’, so to speak.”

“If we replace the framework then she’ll still be her?” Adora asked.

“Yes.” It was good news, Adora thought, but the way Ly spoke and the way her gaze slid from the visual to Corynth betrayed her. “A master copy of her programming needs to be pulled and merged to get her functioning again.”

Silence draped over them at that, heavy with a feeling of forboding Adora couldn’t pinpoint or make sense of. Ly and Vasher looked morose, and Corynth wore a face of stone, seeming to stare unblinking straight through the visual without actually seeing it or anyone else. Vasher broke the silence with a small groan, putting his head in his hands.

Corynth finally blinked and made eye contact with Ly. Adora got the distinct feeling they exchanged a whole heated conversation between them with that one look than the entire exchange they all had since she almost knocked over that first piece of equipment.

“There’s no other way,” Ly said, quietly as if just to him. “I’m sorry.”

Corynth grimaced and deflated with a deep sigh. He sat back, leaning into the equipment he was sitting on for support as he ran shaky fingers through his hair. It struck Adora as odd; even when weakened or upset he had never seemed out of his depth before, for lack of a better word. Now, though? He looked like he’d rather be anywhere but sitting there, having listened to what Ly just said.

“What’s going on?” Adora asked. “This is good news, isn’t it? We can go get Pip restored, have her read the Eye now that it’s been scrubbed clean, and hopefully shore up the Barrier so the Beast can’t seep through and attack any more worlds. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“It would be a good thing, yeah,” Ly said, rubbing at her temples, “if it weren’t for where Pip’s original backup copy is located.”

Adora was about to ask where the backup was and why it was such a problem when all the lights in the lab shut off. Emergency lights snapped on a moment later, bathing them all in a blood-red hue. An alarm blared to life around them, screeching.

“What the hell is going on?” Adora asked, clapping both hands over her ears.

Vasher’s men had already, on their own, surrounded them in a protective formation with weapons drawn and pointed outward. Ly typed furiously away at the console on the desk. The alarm stopped blaring, but the red emergency lights remained. She read from one of the screens as it spit out a stream of new information at her.

“Shit,” she said, pausing for a moment to scrutinize the display before diving right back into another round of furious typing. “Those fucking Vestamid scum.”

“What happened?” Corynth had stood and shuffled over to her with Adora’s help.

“I made sure this workstation was completely disconnected from the network while it churned through the Eye,” she said. “And I triple extra checked before I started having it run diagnostics on Pip’s code. They must have put in a backdoor connection. Some kind of subroutine that made sure if any of this equipment was ever used, they’d be able to track it and what I did with it. Unfortunately, since Pip’s code got on the network anyways, it tried to automatically contact the server hosting her backup to try and rebuild her.”

She slammed two fists down on the table, making the equipment rattle. “That…fucking server sent back a booby-trapped file. It’s gotten into the guts of Eden’s entire infrastructure and is causing all sorts of problems.”

An explosion sounded off in the distance, rattling not just the equipment on the desk, but all the equipment on the racks spaced around the whole lab. Dust fell in sheets from the ceiling and  Adora tried not to breath it in.

Everyone froze and looked at each other in surprise, then. Everyone except Ly who stared wide-eyed in shock at the monitor as she read off new information, mouthing rapid-fire syllables under her breath, eyes darting across the screen.

“Ly?” Corynth asked. “What was that?”

“They’ve definitely been experimenting with more than that one Abomination.” There was a quaver in Ly’s voice when she spoke, now. “The emergency system is telling me there’s a massive infection spreading rapidly throughout the entire station.” She tapped another set of commands and another window popped up with a dense block of text scrolling down it. “An Imperial fleet within the system has been alerted to this as well. They must have picked up the infection on their scans. They’ll be here within minutes.”

“We have to leave,” Corynth said. “Now.”

Ly yanked the Eye from its gravity well and shoved it back in the same pack Adora and Corynth had it in previously, slinging it around her shoulder. Vasher barked a set of quick orders to his men and they pulled in closer, forming a tight, outward facing box around them. Adora anchored herself better under Corynth’s arm just like Ly had done for her when she couldn’t walk reliably on her own, and then all of them together moved as a cohesive group through the labyrinth of equipment racks and back toward the exit.

The blaring alarm siren wailed at them anew the moment the door leading out into the service corridor opened—Ly must have only shut off the thing inside the lab. Adora didn’t have any hands free to cover her ears. If they started bleeding before they got to their escape, she wouldn’t be surprised. At least Corynth kept up fine with her support. She was half afraid he’d be wholly unable to move.

When they hit the end of the service corridor that emptied back into the hangar terminals, Adora got a good sense of just how dire things had become.

People were in a panic, sprinting up and down the terminal, many crowding and pushing into and around the hangar bay entrances and trying to force their way through to their ships beyond. The Gorn doctors she had last seen in the clinic apparently had wings, since Adora saw more than a few of them buzzing around high above, trying to avoid the stampedes.

Adora only caught glimpses here and there of this—only the bits and pieces she could see through the tight gaps in the formation Vasher and his men maintained around them as they hurried down the terminal. With the alarms continuing to blare, the emergency lights, the shouting, the running, the creeping, snowballing feeling of existential dread that was slowly making itself know…it was overwhelming, all of it together. It was all Adora could to do focus on keeping Corynth supported and not tripping over herself in the process.

She ran straight into the back of one of the men when their whole group made a sudden stop. Their shouting commands to ‘get out of the way’ intensified, and two of them actually crouched down to grab at something.

A moment later, Adora realized what had happened: someone had tripped and fallen right in front of their group. She thought they might be leaning down to try and help. Then her blood ran cold in shock when she watched them grab the person in question and drag them out of the way. Two others filled in the gaps the first had left, and they continued forward as if nothing had stopped them in the first place.

She was about to say something when gunshots rang out somewhere off to the left. Every guard turned in unison to the sound, rifles already raised, and they fired back without waiting to see what had happened.

Adora screamed and turned away before she inadvertently caught sight of anything that’d feed her nightmares all over again. They hadn’t even waited to look at who they were shooting at. They just turned and fired back, hurrying them along even faster after they were done. What if they killed a civilian? Just another person trying to escape, like them? What if it was a family?

Corynth nudged her to grab her attention. When she looked over, his eyes radiated sympathy.

“It will be okay,” he said. “One foot in front of the other, just focus on that.”

Adora sucked in a breath, blinked away the tears, and focused on that. One foot in front of the other.

They made it to bay thirteen again, and that was when Corynth stopped them all.

“You have to get out of here,” he said to Ly and Vasher.

“But—”

“There’s no time.” Corynth cut Ly off with a shake of his head. “You go. We’ll make it the rest of the way on our own.”

“Just come with us,” Adora said. “We’re all going on the same ship, aren’t we?”

“They’re two of the most wanted people in the galaxy,” Corynth said. “They can’t go where we are. They’ll light up every security checkpoint we try and cross.”

Ly shot Vasher a glance before cursing and shrugging out of the backpack carrying the Eye. She handed it over to Adora, and pressed something else into her palm. It was a data disk.

“For when you get to your destination,” she said. “The Dzivia is all fixed up, but you’ll still need this.”

They turned and hurried off, already beyond shouting distance before Adora could get her bearings enough to ask after what Ly had given her. Instead, she and Corynth continued through the bay doors.

Amid the chaos still raging and the sense of dread and doom that was so loud now it seemed to be trying to kick her in the head, metaphorically speaking, she wondered why no one was trying to push past them to take the ship. She had seen countless others literally fighting to get into bays that certainly didn’t belong to them. Why wasn’t anyone trying the same with bay thirteen?

She got her answer when they reached the security tower.

Dozens of bodies littered the hangar floor. Pools, smears, and footprints of blood coated the whole stretch from the first floor door of the security room to the Dzivia itself. People had tried to take the ship. It’s just the auto turrets had taken care of them, and everyone else learned to steer clear.

“One foot in front of the other,” Corynth said, bringing Adora back. She whimpered and breathed through her mouth to avoid smelling the blood and corpses.

One foot in front of the other. Just put one foot in front of the other.

She chanted it like a mantra in her head as they made their way down the stairs and across the hangar floor.

Ignore the bodies. It’s not your fault. Just put one foot in front of the other.

Finally, they reached the ship, and Corynth keyed in the passcode to lower the ramp. Adora let him go and he beelined inside, disappearing from view. For her part, Adora remained at the foot of the ramp, hoping to dissuade anyone from coming at them if the pile of bodies didn’t do enough to make them turn back on their own. The last thing she wanted was those turrets coming down and turning someone else to paste right in front of her.

Instead of people trying to force their way in, she saw what she initially assumed to be a trick of the eyes: what little she could still see of the terminal beyond the hangar seemed to darken, like the air there was growing thicker. Those panicked settlement-goers still running around outside grew fainter, like they were disappearing into a fog. When she could no longer make them out and that same dark fog seemed to be seeping into the hangar proper, Adora knew it wasn’t a trick of the eyes. It was the Beast.

The ship’s engines revved to life, buffeting Adora with strong winds. Corynth called to her from deep inside loud enough it startled her to action. She darted up the ramp into the ship and ran through the cramped interior tunnels until she reached the cockpit.

“Strap in,” Corynth said, already in the pilot’s seat and working at the controls.

Adora threw herself into the copilot chair and fumbled with the harness straps as the engines revved higher.

They lifted off, rotating and pointing toward the energy barrier separating the hangar bay from the vacuum of space. Corynth guided them through as steadily as he could and accelerated hard the moment they broke free.

Adora’s body sunk into the seat cushioning as they rocketed away from the settlement and toward the star nearby. If seeing it take up almost the entire viewscreen still made her uneasy, the fact they were rocketing toward it at speed terrified her.

A warship, massive and ponderous, popped out of hyperspace and into existence right in front of them. Suddenly, instead of the star, all Adora could see was the Imperial Horde insignia emblazoned on the side of a hull.

Adora yelled and Corynth banked, just missing the ship by a hair as they ducked underneath. Twenty more ships warped in around them, appearing one after the other in a popcorn cascade around the first. The Dzivia’s computer screeched warning after warning at them: proximity alert, gravity well alert, dozens of scanning alerts all in a row as the incoming Horde naval vessels targeted and identified them.

Corynth reached up and began to tap furiously at the controls under a screen embedded in the overhead control panel between them.

Course set, the computer said to them, voice deceptively calm amid the chaos. Please confirm.

“Hey, they even fixed the autopilot and plotting assistant for us,” Corynth said. Adora thought the calm in his voice was completely out of place considering their situation. “Remember when you broke that trying to stow away in the first place?”

“Can you please just concentrate on flying the ship and not—”

A flurry of energy beams shot forth from each Horde warship and Adora screamed, holding onto the armchairs with a death grip. Corynth banked again, left and right, up, down and around to avoid them. It took Adora a moment to calm enough to realize the warships weren’t aiming for them in the first place.

Still, she screamed again as another beam shot past, far closer than the others. Corynth pitched them sideways, g-forces pushing her further into the chair as the ship carved a sharp 180-degree turn.

The warships and the star in the background pulled away, and they faced Eden once again, built onto the sun-facing surface of the planet in front of them. Except this time, instead of the lush settlement, beach, and body of water under the protective barrier, Adora saw the black mass of the Beast spreading slowly and steadily outward from the landing bays. Countless ships were pouring forth from the landing bays scattered around, each trying to escape. Adora hoped Ly and Vasher were among them.

The beams from the capital ships now behind them shot forward past the bow of the Dzivia and lasered into the planet, the barrier, the settlement. Consecutive explosions rippled across the surface. Dozens of escaping craft got caught in the crossfire.

Corynth reached for the throttle in the center console between him and Adora and slammed it forward. The viewscreen distorted into a psychedelic tunnel which, a moment later, swallowed them. Adora screamed a third time, and the Dzivia rocketed forward into hyperspace.

They had escaped an Eden under siege, both from the Beast and from the Empire, and that tiny screen embedded in the center overhead console blinked the name of their new destination at them:

Phoenix Station.

End of Part Three

Chapter Text

Art commission done by SzethK. Linktree: Here

Chapter Forty-Seven: Fugue

Glimmer raced across the steppe toward Tir in the distance.

The speeder, her PDA, the helmet covering her head, she’d synced all of it together, and she could see her current velocity—soaring with no end in sight—next to Kyle on video stream in her heads-up display. Judging by the fuzzy-at-best connection and the stars tumbling and twisting behind him, he was in space among the fleet, flying in formation with other warbird squadrons. All the better, she thought. He’d have an easier time tracking her out there than inside the Omen-Kador.

The comm system in her helmet crackled at her ear with his voice, and the distance between them made his words come out a half second delayed.

“We’re starting to lose any sort of instrumental visibility into the city,” he said. “Even looking down from space it seems like something is already forming on the surface. What the hell is happening down there?”

“The city is succumbing. The Abomination—it’s affecting the atmosphere. That’s what you’re starting to see.”

Already, a fog blanketed part of the city on the horizon. The Beast’s essence, its force of will manifesting like a physical force of nature, was eating the planet.

“Is this what Rinne was like?” Kyle asked.

Glimmer frowned and pushed the speeder harder. As experienced in the field as Kyle and Lonnie and Rogelio were, she was the only one out of the four of them that had seen a planet turn into a Lost World. She had forgotten that.

“Honestly, this seems more abrupt,” she said. “Rinne was tiny in comparison to this. We only had one megalith for the city. Tir has six.”

The Beast hadn’t taken any worlds this far in toward the galactic center since the war ended, so the fact they were moments away from losing Scavria was terrifying. She tried to focus on her one goal: getting Lonnie and Rogelio out.

The sound of several engines roaring like gatling thunder came from behind, drowning out her speeder and the howling wind. Glimmer looked and saw the six megaliths kicking up a cloud of dust as large as a mountain as they pushed off, lifting higher into the air. Dozens of warbirds circled them like escorting gnats, safeguarding the countless thousands of refugees inside.

The Scavrian race would turn into an endangered species within the next handful of hours. Glimmer turned her attention back to the city and tried not to think about it.

“Are you seeing what’s happening here?” she asked, when something unexpected caught her eye. “This isn’t just me, right?”

The tallest cluster of skyscrapers across the center of the skyline had disappeared fully, and the fog obscuring it had turned dark. An aura always hung around infected cities and planets—sometimes barely detectable and sometimes palpable enough to feel like a heavy dew coalescing around the body—but Glimmer hadn’t seen it grow this thick before. Obscured, yes, but completely blocked out like this?

“It’s not just you.” Kyle sounded shaken. “None of my sensors are picking up anything in that fog, either. Multiple channels of command are freaking the hell out right now.” He hesitated a beat. “How are you supposed to get in touch with me from in there if we can’t even get a topographical scan from up here? How am I supposed to know where you are?”

“You won’t. Not from in there.” Glimmer nudged the speeder enough to let her careen past a boulder without hitting it. “We just have to hope that thing doesn’t expand any further. I’ll pull Lonnie and Rogelio and anyone else out of the affected zone, then you’ll be able to come get us.”

“On a one-seated speeder?”

Another row of skyscrapers disappeared in the fog and Glimmer’s heart sank. So much for hoping it wouldn’t expand. It mushroomed out, blanketing more of Tir with each passing second like a tide rising on a sandy beach.

“Glimmer?”

“I see it.” She set her jaw. “I’ll figure something out. Just keep scanning for my PDA signal and be ready to move as soon as I come back online.”

“You have an hour until they start the orbital bombardment. If you aren’t out by then, none of you will—“

The fog exploded out far enough it engulfed Glimmer despite how she’d just reached the outer edges of the city suburbs. Kyle’s voice and image on her HUD disappeared, and her visibility cut to zero.

“Kyle?” She slowed, carving the speeder to the side until it stopped. “Kyle, can you hear me?” Static came through, but nothing else.

Glimmer sat back against saddle’s back and cursed. She couldn’t panic, not now. But considering how the Beast was powerful enough to suffocate her vision, it was difficult.

Stay calm, she chanted to herself. You’ve been through this before. Maybe not as drastically, but you’ve felt the Beast in the past. If you panic it just makes it that much easier to fall victim to it.

A light inside her helmet blinked red at her; it was looking to reconnect with Kyle but couldn’t get a signal. She listened to static in her ear for a heartbeat, then two, pretending it was just white noise to try and calm down. Once she’d ridden her anxiety to calmer waters, she removed the helmet and hung it on one of the speeder bike's handlebars. She was liable to feel claustrophobic again with it on, and she could get in touch with Kyle through her PDA once she found Lonnie and Rogelio and the others, anyway.

If anyone was still alive at all, to begin with.

She beat the thought off before it could send her spiraling again. Kyle had deliberately not brought up the fact everyone might already be dead—that there were no guarantees anyone was still themselves after disappearing in the fog in the first place.

Again, she spiraled. The Beast’s aura already beginning to seep into her psyche despite her best attempts to not let it. Despair, gloom, hopelessness—it had just never struck as quickly or as strong before, and this was becoming a recurring theme despite having plunged into the fog only seconds ago.

She needed to focus on getting to Lonnie and Rogelio’s last known location. Anything else was the Beast baiting her. Thankfully, Kyle had already briefed her, and the castle district deep in the heart of the city was an obvious place to travel to. Maybe it was the one lucky break she’d get: them broadcasting their location moments before going dark. But she wasn’t going to make it there if the fog kept her from seeing more than two feet in front of her face.

Her nerves chafed when she realized what that meant she’d have to do. She counted out ten deep and slow breaths, trying to center  herself. The near-suffocating presence of the Beast suffused every pore of her skin, trying to chip away at her sanity and sense of identity. She focused on feeling every beat of her heart, every wayward breeze against her skin—on every molecule of air filling her lungs, each breath seeming to barely keep that sense of looming oblivion at bay.

She dismounted from the speeder, the tap tap tap of her boots echoing as she stepped away. Maybe she couldn’t see the buildings and roads around her, but if she could touch them with her power, she could navigate from there. She reached out with her mind…

And recoiled as if burned.

Taline had explained it, once. If reaching out with your mind was a near-equivalent to touching something with your hand, then probing the Beast’s aura like this seemed on par with plunging an arm into a vat of molten lava. How did anyone the other Battlemages on the front lines deal with this?

The fact the Beast had won meant they didn’t, but Glimmer couldn’t think about that when she had a job to do.

Despite the initial shock, she found she could bear the exposure if she steeled herself. The more she groped around the more of her surroundings she could make out. Skyscrapers sprouted up around her like towering trees. She was closest to the right-hand side of the street and the sidewalk was only a few paces away. There was an intersection up ahead, and dozens upon dozens of abandoned vehicles littered the area.

“That’s odd,” she said, speaking aloud to ward off how isolated she felt. “I stopped at the outskirts of town, not here.”

The last thing she remembered seeing was a scattering of small buildings, but what she felt now was indicative of being deep downtown. She pushed the thought away and continued exploring. She had to learn to navigate by feeling the buildings like this, then she’d be able to mount the speeder again and move.

Except there was one thing she couldn’t feel. She spun on her heel and stared at the expanse of nothing in the direction she’d come and reached again.

Where did the speeder go?

She searched around, feeling blindly with her hands, now, as well as her mind, taking uncertain steps forward, hoping maybe she’d bump into it on accident. She heard something in the fog—voices, whispering indiscernible words as she fought another onslaught of panic. How long had she been wandering? She had only taken a few steps, only practiced feeling with her powers for a minute at most, right? She couldn’t have gotten far. Right?

One of the voices played devil’s advocate: she might have wandered far from the speeder and just didn’t remember. After all, the last thing she remembered before the fog hit was approaching the suburbs, and she wasn’t there, anymore. If she couldn’t find that speeder, her chances of getting to the others were slim to none.

Her hand bumped into something hard, something she hadn’t sensed at all, before. She yanked back, runes flaring at her fingertips. Her heart thrummed hard enough she felt it in her throat. Nothing happened, and when she’d reasoned nothing was about to kill her, she snuffed out the magic and reached a hand out again to touch it.

It was a chair. She could tell when she ran her hand along the fine-grain wood of the back and down to the cushion on the seat. She furrowed her brow, confused. What the hell was a chair doing out here in the middle of a suburb street?

“Who are you?”

A voice spoke from behind, and Glimmer yelped, whirling around with magic crackling in her hands again. A woman stood there, short hair framing a youthful face. A lab coat hung off her frame, and she stood only a little taller than Glimmer, herself.

“Who are you?” Glimmer asked, scowling at the woman and refusing to snuff her magic out again.

The scene around her had changed without her noticing. The fog was gone. Instead, she was standing inside a well-lit room, where computer monitors and machines and lab equipment stood anchored to a grated floor, pushed against the walls. There was a long table in the room’s center with chairs on each side. Glimmer was standing next to one of them.

“Ah, you’re one of those,” the woman said, beleaguered realization dawning on her face.

A knock came at the far door and Glimmer jumped.

“Come in,” the woman said, projecting her voice before looking back at Glimmer and saying, in a more subdued tone, “Grab a seat, and don’t distract me. No one else can see or hear you, but it still unnerves people when I pay attention to something that isn’t there.”

Glimmer scowled. ‘Something that isn’t there?’ She was standing right in front of her! The door opened before she could respond, and a man with windswept hair and bags under his eyes stepped through, shutting the door behind him with a clang. He took a moment to survey the room.

“Everything okay?” he asked. “I heard you talking to someone.”

The woman gave Glimmer a pointed look before slumping into one of the chairs at the table. “Everything is fine.”

The man sounded exasperated as he joined her at the table. “Evie, if you’re seeing things again you need to tell me.”

Glimmer gasped. She could tell Evie had heard her and was trying not to show it.

“Seeing things when you’re in touch with the Beast is one thing,” the man said, reaching across the table to lay his hand over hers, “but to still see them when we’re not touching it is something else.”

Evie pulled her hand back and held it close to her chest. “They’re just ghosts, Corynth.”

“Holy shit,” Glimmer said.

This got a reaction out of Evie. She shot Glimmer a death glare from across the table, and Corynth followed her line of sight too, although he seemed to stare past Glimmer instead of at her.

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Corynth asked, turning back to Evelyn. “Maybe we should cut back on the number of trips I orchestrate for you.”

Evie shook her head. “We can’t stop now, we’ve almost finished deciphering ignominite’s molecular structure. And I know where we need to dig next. There are some writings and artifacts I’ve seen that reference something, all of it written in ancient Eternian. Something about a wall or a barrier, I’m not sure yet.”

“Since when can you read dead languages?”

“I’ve been tinkering with a program that helps. It’s able to decipher enough of it to derive meaning. Whatever it’s finding, it’s important. We can’t stop.”

Corynth looked unconvinced and Evelyn huffed.

“It’s no worse than normal, I promise,” she said. “I’m just preoccupied with other things, obviously, and their presence is more irritating than usual.” She leaned forward, propping one elbow up on the table and putting her head in her hand. “Taline is alive.”

Corynth’s expression hardened. “She is.”

“I feel like I should be more relieved about it than I am. I don’t want to lose her, and if it’d taken her then Archanas would have fallen—”

“All of the mid rim would have fallen within days if she’d been taken, not just Archanas.”

Evelyn nodded. “Yeah. But it didn’t take her, and she’s alive, so why do I still feel apprehensive about it? Now there are two of you who can rebuff the Beast directly trying to corrupt you, but…”

“We have to deal with what comes next.” Corynth finished her sentence with just as much trepidation. Glimmer had never before been so invested in something she had no context for.

“What happens now?” Evie asked.

Corynth leaned back in his chair, staring up at the halogen lights in the ceiling. “The Daiamid will send someone to make contact,” he said. “She’s passed the ritual. The first in hundreds of generations to do so.”

“You passed it too,” Evie said, confused. She looked off to the side where a pedestal stood flush against the wall, holding up a pulsating red and black-veined crystal sealed inside a glass container. “You protected me against that thing when it took over the research station. You were the first.”

“Taline survived against a full-strength outbreak that was well on its way to taking an entire hub planet. It wasn’t just a singular space installation and a few dozen scientists and staff. News of this will fundamentally upend the Daiamid. Again.”

“Okay, fine. You were technically the first, then. She just did it better.”

Corynth chuckled and shook his head. “Another fully-fledged Shaper within a handful of years. The old guard wouldn’t even hold a candle to her, and she comes with far less baggage than I do.”

“You both have plenty of baggage,” Evie said, hints of a smile on her face, too. “Do you think they’ll send you to her?”

Corynth shook his head. “I’m not the pariah I was when I was working security for your old team,” he said. “But even with everything that’s happened, my standing is still poor. They’ll send someone less controversial.”

Evie chewed at her lip. “Maybe you should talk to her before they do. Tell her the truth.”

“Why would I do that? That sounds like a terrible idea.”

Evelyn rolled her eyes and shot him a ‘seriously?’ look. “The Daiamid are pure folktale. Scary stories told to children to get them to behave, and she’s already been through an ordeal. Some random person showing up to recruit her will go a lot smoother if someone she trusts eases her into the idea first.”

Corynth shook his head. “We have procedure for a reason. I can’t break it a second time.”

“But if you—”

“You haven’t forgotten what happened to the La Valettes.” Corynth’s eyes flared with indignation. “I know you haven’t forgotten. I was sentenced to death because I revealed who I was to them. Because I didn’t want to kill them, emperor’s orders be damned. And they still died anyway.”

A heavy silence came over them, interrupted by the ticking and whirring of the hardware surrounding them. Evie stood from her chair and made her way over to him. She knelt beside him and fished one of his hands out from his lap to hold in both of hers.

“They were dead the moment Horde Prime ordered your people to assassinate them,” she said, voice gentle. “If they didn’t send you, it would have been someone else and nothing would have changed. It was your empathy and refusal to eliminate an innocent family line that had them send you to me. Breaking protocol and revealing yourself to outsiders are just pretenses they used to justify it to the others.” She tugged at his hand, trying to get him to look at her. “And it brought us together. All of us. What happened to them was terrible, and what happened to you was terrible, but there was still good that came of it.”

Corynth refused to meet her eyes. His whole body was rigid with tension. Evie cupped the side of his face with one hand, startling him.

“If you’re still apprehensive about it, then I understand. Just promise me you will tell her about yourself after the Daiamid made contact. If she hears from anyone other than you that you aren’t really a Battlemage, she’ll feel betrayed. You aren’t breaking any rules by telling her if they’ve already reached out, right?”

Corynth relaxed and nodded. “I’ll tell her after.”

“It will still be a shock when they break the news to her, but at least she’ll have you there when she has to process everything after.”

“She’ll have you, too,” Corynth said. “You’re her sister. She loves you.”

Evie smiled wide. “She’ll have us both.”

The sound of shattering glass followed by shouting emanated from outside. Corynth and Evie both snapped their heads toward the door.

“Are Vasher and Ly fighting again?” Evie asked, letting go of Corynth and moving back when he stood from the chair.

“Have they ever stopped?” Corynth pressed his lips into a thin line. “One of these days I’m going to lock them both in a room until they figure it out.”

“They’ll either fuck, or one of them will be dead. Either way, it will be loud.”

“I’ll pick one of the sealed rooms we use with the Beast, then,” Corynth said.

He opened the door and stepped through, the yelling and screaming amplifying until he shut the door behind him with a clang. Corynth’s voice joined theirs, shouting above them, and after a few moments, all three arguing voices ceased altogether.

A moment passed in silence, then Evie turned and looked at Glimmer.

“You’re still here?” she asked.

“I—”

“You need to go back where you came from. And speak nothing of what you’ve seen here to anybody. If anyone finds you passed out in a barn or slumped over in a coffee shop or laying on the floor of your office, it will only get worse if you start talking about the Daiamid and these random people you saw in a lab on top of it.”

“You’re her.” Glimmer was still trying to find her equilibrium. “How am I seeing this?”

Evie stepped over to her and shook her head. “No, you can’t keep dwelling on this, it will just make it harder for you to reorient yourself back where you belong.”

She placed both hands on Glimmer’s shoulders. Her grip was strong and corporeal, and it shocked her.

“Think!” Evie said. “What was happening right before you found yourself here. What were you doing?”

Glimmer scrunched up her face and closed her eyes trying to remember. Bits and pieces came back. Being surrounded by fog, searching in the dark for her friends, blind. Voices began to echo around her, whispers from some collective anonymity that danced at the back of her consciousness, barely noticeable.

Then the rest of it came back in a rush, like freezing water drenching her. Scavria, Lonnie, and Rogelio, the emergency evacuation. Glimmer opened her eyes with a gasp and Evie, the lab, all of it was gone. She was in the fog once more.

The whispering grew louder, angrier, and there was no longer any doubt in Glimmer’s mind that she was indeed succumbing slowly to the Beast. Was that what Evie had been trying to warn her about? Was that why she seemed to almost panic when Glimmer wanted to dive further into the vision rather than find her way out?

A new presence was there in the far corners of her mind. No, multiple presences—a small crowd. Glimmer’s immediate thought was that she had been set upon by thralls, but that didn’t make sense. If they had found her, they would have rushed her already, not milled about aimlessly nearby like this. She  also would have detected them long before they got this close, since she’d already been feeling about with her powers.

One of those in the crowd shambled toward her. Magic flared at the palms of Glimmer’s hands, ready to strike. A bulky figure appeared, a dark, stained shadow against the fog. When it stepped into view, Glimmer recognized who it was.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” Narre said, modulated voice coming through the front of his helmet’s faceplate clear as crystal against the backdrop of whispers. His voice was just as she remembered it back on the emperor’s citadel. The Beast had turned Scavria into a sea of ghosts.

“What are you doing here?” Glimmer took faltered backward as he advanced. “You can’t be here. You’re dead.”

“Not a day goes by that you don’t think about me, and you think I’m dead?” Narre cocked his head to the side.

Glimmer grimaced and decided to stand her ground, instead. She raised a hand bristling with magic at him as a warning. “Not another step,” she said, pleased when Narre stopped. “What do you want?”

“We came to ask you something.”

“We?”

More figures appeared beside him, still obscured by the fog.

“Why didn’t you save us?” It was a different voice that spoke this time, and it came from behind.

Glimmer spun around to see even more figures. There were easily a hundred, maybe two. When they too stepped out of the fog and into view, Glimmer realized with horror that she recognized them as well.

“Why did you leave us behind?” said a small girl no older than five at the front of the group, holding her mother’s hand.

The Rinnite’s, like the Scavrians, had discernable features, too. Their lithe bodies and elfin features haunted Glimmer’s sleep and slipped beneath her eyelids every time she blinked. Seeing them stand before her now was like a waking nightmare.

“We aren’t remembered.” Another spoke the words, although the voice coming from their mouth was frayed and full of static, like the pilot who had pleaded with her to wait had sounded, begging through the loudspeaker. “No one speaks of Rinne, of the billions of lives left there. Yet the call you the Angel of Archanas.”

“No one remembers us,” they all said in unison.

“I  remember!” Glimmer said, voice hoarse. “I spoke of you when they first started calling me the Angel.”

“We are dead because of you!” The crowd—not just the Rinnites, but Narre and those with him—roared as one, blowing Glimmer back on her heels. “You are no Angel. You are the Demon of Rinne. You are a failure. A fraud. Coward!”

“I’m…” Glimmer shook her head. “No…I tried to save you. I wanted to save you, I just—“

“You just failed to act,” said a third voice.

Glimmer almost didn’t turn around again. She didn’t want to turn around.

Another person had stepped through the fog next to Narre, wearing the same fashion of armor but scorched nearly beyond recognition. Taline’s second Sentinel looked as Glimmer imagined she might have after sacrificing her own life, immolated by her dad’s portal when he brought the Rebellion to the emperor’s throne room.

“How is failing to act any different than being a fraud and a coward?” Miri’s voice dripped with  contempt. “I sacrificed myself to save you because Taline commanded it. But even with her mentorship, you still failed to act when Rinne needed you. Everyone here, their blood is on your hands.”

“That’s not what happened!” Glimmer clapped her hands to her ears. “No, that’s not…I couldn’t have…” There was no anchor for her to find, try as she might. No landmark for her to orient herself.

“I might still have been alive too if you had acted,” Narre said.

Glimmer looked up. He held both hands over his chest. When he let go, they came away covered in blood, and Glimmer saw the gaping hole in his armor that Prime had made when he killed him.

“If you had grabbed that knife, if you had attacked Prime before he could do this to me, I might still be alive.”

More figures stepped out of the fog, surrounding her. One by one, Angella, Micah, Catra, Adora, the other princesses revealed themselves. They looked unharmed and unchanged, save for the bottomless black holes where their eyes should have been. It looked as something had gouged them out, and only their sockets remained.

Glimmer clapped a hand to her mouth in horror. She had long ago extinguished her magic, no longer able to maintain it with the onslaught of emotions flooding. Finally, Bow pushed forward out of the group, stepping closer than any of the others.

“Are we next?” he asked. “Are we to fall and die because you don’t have what it takes to fight?”

“That’s not what happened!” Glimmer said. “Bow, please…”

She couldn’t let them drag her under like this. She had to keep fighting, had to say something, even if whatever she tried seemed no more effective than trying to keep her head above water in a tsunami by paddling.

“The Beast is coming,” everyone said, speaking together again, chanting. “Soon, we will all be as those of Rinne are now. At last, we shall be whole. At last, we shall be together.”

Adora stepped forward this time, her voice a solo. “Join with us, Glimmer. The fight is over.”

Something changed inside Glimmer at hearing that. There was insight and recognition where before there was none.

 Her friends wouldn’t speak that way, least of all Bow and Adora. It reminded her of where she was and what was happening, and Glimmer at last put enough distance between herself and her fear to think clearly.

The Beast had was corrupting her, and fast. If she didn’t act now, she’d succumb and turn into an Abomination. There would be no hope for the planet then, and billions more would die as she ripped through the surrounding sectors.

Glimmer pushed power to her hands again. She drew no runes; they weren’t needed for what she was about to do, and although she had never attempted something like this before, Taline had taught her what to do. Most can’t do this, she had been told, early on in her training. But you grew up with your connection to your runestone. You’re better prepared than most. Taline had drilled her over and over again to prepare her for a moment like this. A moment where she really might fall to the Beast.

You as an Abomination? she’d said, early during Glimmer’s mentorship. It wouldn’t just be a lost planet. You’d probably take a whole system with you, maybe a whole region before we stopped you. The emperor would likely reinstate me by special command to do it. Not as a punishment, but because the damage you’d cause and the power you’d wield would be so extensive, I’d be the only one who could excise you.

Glimmer shuddered at the memory and swore she heard the voice actually echo around her, amplified by the Beast. It was a stupid decision to risk herself like this for Lonnie and Rogelio, but she refused to regret it.

Everyone around her took a step forward. “Come, Glimmer,” they said, chanting again as one. “Don’t postpone the inevitable, join us. Join us now.” They took another step forward, and then another, growing closer, closing in.

Glimmer reached for than she had ever used at one time. The blue around her hands grew opaque, more defined. It writhed and oscillated, spinning faster and faster like a living thing stimulated and jolted by the sheer force of her will. Power raced up her arms and engulfed her body. She was on fire and still she did not stop reaching for more. She couldn’t afford to mess this up; it had to work on the first try. She needed more.

“It is hopeless, Glimmer,” the mob said. “Did you not hear us the first time? All will become one with us. We shall all be together again. You will no longer feel lonely and far away. You will never be far from your home because your home will be us. Do not prolong the inevitable.”

Glimmer set her feet and looked at her parents’ doppelgangers, staring into the endless voids where their eyes should have been.

“No!”

She released everything she’d gathered within at once. A shockwave of magic exploded out with her at its epicenter. The fog cleared, and within moments, entire blocks of the surrounding cityscape with its towering skyscrapers became visible. Fatigue crept into her bones, and remaining upright was a struggle, but her head finally cleared. Anxiety and adrenaline and fear no longer plagued her, and she could finally think straight now that the whispering voices had gone.

The mob had changed, too. Narre, Miri, everyone from Rinne, her parents and her friends—even Bow and Adora—they were all gone. Thralls stood in their place, shambling corpses with missing limbs and wrinkled, grey, half-decomposed skin, their clothes torn and tattered from the elements. Glimmer both sensed and saw them when the fog cleared, looking off in random directions as if never having noticed her to begin with. They all turned together, fixing cloudy eyes and empty eye sockets on her, each finding her at the same time.

One of them roared at her and charged. A rune sparked to life at the end of Glimmer’s palm, drawn instantly and with surgical precision won through years of grueling practice. A ball of magnificent purple shot forth from the rune and engulfed the thrall in white flame.

The others watched, and a steady thundering of anger grew and roiled among their ranks. The thrall on fire screeched and flailed before crumbling to ash. The mob roared together in fury, and Glimmer aimed her other hand with the first, bristling with magic, ready to fight.

The thralls stopped upon seeing it, and they didn’t attack immediately either. Silence stretched between them, tense. Glimmer knew they’d attack anyway, so why not immediately? Why would they hesitate?

The answer came not long after as thousands of voices screeched back in answer to the first. The sound bounced off the walls of the skyscrapers and reverberated down the wide streetway corridors. Thousands of thralls materialized out of the buildings, breaking through windows and crawling down the sides of the buildings like ants swarming. All of them rushed her.

Glimmer didn’t think. If she thought, she’d surely be overcome by fear. So instead, she threw her arms out to the side, hands palm-down, and cast a different spell.

A ring formed around her, wide enough to accommodate a small fireteam had she been leading one. Bright purple marks appeared on the outside perimeter. Once the markings were complete, she threw her hands high into the air. A wall of white fire twice as tall as she was roared to life, encircling her.

The first group of thralls to slam into it screamed in pain as they tried to push through. Glimmer couldn’t see them, since the fire immolated them to a crisp as soon as they touched it, but she could sense what was happening on the other side.

She could also sense the sheer number still approaching her, could see thousands more follow the thousands who came first, filing endlessly out from inside the surrounding skyscrapers. They were like a flood.

The fog began to encroach upon her once again, slowly blanketing the farthest street corners. She still couldn’t sense the speeder despite having cleared the fog earlier; wherever she had wandered off to before coming to her senses, it was far.

An arm stuck through the flame before it too crumbled to dust. Then a second arm, a leg, part of a face—half a thrall then got through before the flames stopped it. The screeching and roaring from the army outside continued to build. They were moments away from breaking through and tearing her to shreds.

I really wish I'd practiced this more, Glimmer thought, moments after deciding how to proceed.

She centered herself and reached out with her mind again. After a moment, she found what she was looking for: the castle district and its location relative to her. It wasn’t nearly as clear as she’d have liked, given how far away it was and the fact the fog still permeated the majority of the city, but she could approximate its location.

More thralls (and more parts of each thrall) continued to penetrate the wall, clawing for her before evaporating. She knelt, placed the tips of her fingers to the ground, and concentrated. Blinding purple magic began to etch itself steadily into the road. It arced away from her, twisting and turning like the roots of a plant growing far faster than anything natural.

 Glimmer went as fast as she dared, keeping in mind what Taline had told her the last time they spoke.

Speed is important on the battlefield, sure, but so is drawing smooth, accurate ley lines, she had said. Teleporting only half your squad—and by that, I mean half of each member of your squad and not half the number of them—is just as undesirable as not teleporting out of a sticky situation in time at all.

A thrall got through the fire as she finished. It charged at her with its body aflame. Glimmer looked into its eyes in shock and activated the spell just as it grabbed her.

A bright flash of light engulfed the both of them, then they were gone.

Chapter Text

Glimmer woke in a dark room.

It was night, judging by the moonlight coming through a row of high windows embedded in the brick wall to her left. Slatted blinds covering the top half of the windows blocked some of that moonlight and cast a pattern against the hardwood floor. She was dozens of stories off the ground, probably in the penthouse room of a skyscraper judging by the view.

A figure stood at the middle window, staring out. Thunder boomed overhead, making Glimmer jump, but she didn’t see the flash of lightning outside and the figure at the window otherwise didn’t respond.

“Hello?” Glimmer said. They didn’t turn. “Do you know where we are? How did I get here?”

Still, they didn’t turn and Glimmer couldn’t tell who it was from where they were standing. Shadow obscured half their face. They were muttering under their breath, each hand wringing the opposing wrist.

The sound of a lock disengaging came from behind and the person spun around. It was Taline. She looked younger than Glimmer had ever seen her, possibly the same age as her. She even looked happy—relieved—which was an expression she’d never seen on Taline’s face before either. What the hell was the Beast trying to do? Glimmer thought.

Taline’s look dissolved into confusion, then apprehension and concern. “Who are you?” she asked.

A man passed through Glimmer as if she were a ghost. Some nameless, featureless person she didn’t recognize. He wore a mask—one in a style similar to what Glimmer had seen sold as novelty items in shops and costume stores throughout the empire, although she had a feeling this mask in particular wasn’t some dress-up accessory.

“Disappointed to see me?” The man’s voice came warped. “Not who you were expecting?”

Taline frowned. “Is that mask supposed to do something for me? A simple robber or assassin might opt for something less ostentatious you’d think.” She turned back to the window, treating the intruder as if they were nothing worth paying attention to. “How did you get in here? There’s a biometric lock on the door and guards outside.”

“Not much of an obstacle for me, I’m afraid.” The man laughed and a phantom chill shot down Glimmer’s spine from how it echoed around the room. “Don’t worry. Your Corynth will be along shortly, but in the meantime you and I are due for a chat.”

Taline turned full around to face him. The moonlight bathed her from behind, outlining her body in a halo of white, which made it feel all the more fantastical with what happened next.

Her eyes glowed and her body burst alight, veined with white-hot magic ley lines, and her hair floated about her head like a crown of sun rays. She rose off the ground, the tips of her toes floating a few inches from the floor. When she spoke, it was like a hundred-strong  chorus chanted her words as one.

“You are too cavalier for a man courting death,” she said. “I have seen Death’s face, touched it and come away reborn. Who are you to talk to me as one would a child ignorant of the ways of the world? Who are you to come to me uninvited and demand my attention?”

Glimmer shied away from her brilliance. The man, however, didn’t step back, didn’t shield his eyes with his hand, and didn’t apologize.

Taline wavered, swaying in the air like she was suspended on wires and the person holding her on the other end was losing strength. Her hair dropped back to her shoulders and the ley lines disappeared from her body. Finally, when she lowered back to the ground and stumbled on her feet, her eyes returned to their normal color again, too.

“Impressive that you can call upon it again so soon,” the man said. “Although, without proper training you will never learn how to control it long enough to do anything useful.” He extended an arm and, after pushing up the sleeve of his robes to reveal the skin underneath, gestured with his hand.

New lines of magic erupted across his skin, more subdued and of a warmer color than Taline’s. Two chairs pulled out from a table shoved against the far corner. They floated through the air before arranging themselves in the center of the room, facing one another.

“Come,” he said, removing his mask with his other hand and revealing his face. Glimmer still didn’t recognize him. “We must speak.”

Thunder boomed again, rattling the room, then three more came one after the other. Taline and the man didn’t react at all, and suddenly Glimmer didn’t think the noise was thunder at all. Instead, it seemed like some unseen figure standing beyond was hammering at the invisible walls encasing this reality. When she next paid attention to her surroundings, Taline was standing in the center of the room with her arms folded, scowling at the man seated in one of the chairs.

“The Daiamid aren’t real,” she said, picking up midway through a conversation Glimmer had lost track of. “I’m not interested in children’s tales or conspiracy theories.” She turned to stalk back to the window. A hovercar flew  by, lighting the room with its headlights until it passed. “Leave, now. Before I make you.”

“The La Valette family thought the same as you, when our agent decided reveal themself against our creed,” the man said. “That arrogance is what prevented their offshoots from disappearing along with them in the extermination. Had the La Valette family spread their discovery, backed it with their name and given legitimacy to it, then we would have had to cull hundreds of their cadet branches. Possibly more.”

Taline froze mid-step and looked back over her shoulder, eyes wide in surprise. Then she turned to fully face him again for a second time. Anger, shock, and confusion played across her face.

“They were killed in a fire,” she said. “An arsonist was implicated, some slighted former servant in their household that was then executed. The Daiamid playing a part was just some fringe rumor no one listened to.”

“And it will remain that way, in all our dealings, for as long as the emperor demands it to be so.” The man tilted his head. “You wouldn’t think Horde Prime would parade his secret police out in the open for anyone and everyone to gawk at, would you?” He smiled wide, the white of his teeth glinting in the moonlight. “Assassins work best in the dark, after all.”

Taline sucked in a sharp breath, and although her face remained stony and neutral, she was shaking.

“Is that why you’ve come, then?” she asked, voice a whisper. “Am I your next target? Because I lost Archanas? Because of what I’ve become?”

The man’s face soured, but he shook his head. “Archanas was a regrettable loss, but understandable given the alternative. Hope is not lost. The emperor is confident in your sister’s discovery. Evelyn bringing us ignominite changes everything.”

“Then what is it?” Taline asked. “Why are you here?”

“I am here to bring you into the fold,” the man said. “You have touched the World Eater, communed with it, received its gifts. You will become one of the Daiamid. Quite possibly one of the most powerful we’ve seen in generations. Already, more raw power flows through your veins than does mine. Once trained, you would be a Shaper like those of old.”

Taline narrowed her eyes at him. She didn’t look happy. “And if I refuse?”

The man furrowed his brow. He didn’t seem to have anticipated this line of questioning. “Then you will not leave this room alive.” He spread his arms wide and gestured to himself. “I have revealed who we are to you. I cannot allow you to live if you refuse to join. And your friends, your sister, they will ask questions. They would not let your death fade into obscurity without concrete answers.”

He grimaced. “Corynth especially would not leave it alone until he knew the truth, I know that much of him. He would disseminate that truth to all who would listen. Any who would discover us are a threat. They cannot live, we could not allow it.”

Taline’s eyes flared and she balled hands into fists at her sides. “Couldn’t allow it?”

The look of cautious skepticism on the man deepened. Just as Glimmer was certain things between them would tip, another trio of booms sounded off above her, rattling the room and throwing her off balance.

“What the hell is going on?” Glimmer asked, staring up at the ceiling as if waiting for whatever was making those sounds to crash through and scoop her up in its hands.

Another boom sent her tumbling backward to the floor. She caught herself with both palms flat on the ground and hissed with eyes closed when pain shot up to her elbows.

The banging subsided. When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the penthouse room with Taline and the man. Instead, she was in a dank cell, sitting on wet cobblestone, staring up at motes of dust swirling against the singular ray of light that broke through the window above her.

Her body ached. Fatigue permeated her bones and made her wonder if she shouldn’t just shut her eyes again and go back to sleep. She blinked, trying to clear the blurriness away. The air felt still and stale—almost the opposite of the room she’d just come from.

Another bang—rumbling and rolling this time—shook the room. Two men opposite a set of metal bars separating her half of the room from theirs sat on chairs flanking a door. One looked asleep while the other stared up at the ceiling, at the sheets of dust cast down from the rafters.

Glimmer’s head pounded. She tried to cradle it between her hands, only to realize those hands were chained to the ground behind her, in the exact position she’d caught herself when she fell backward out of the vision. She struggled against the restraints, but only succeeded in making the guard staring at the ceiling notice her.

“Hey,” he said, nudging his partner. “H-hey! She’s awake. Get up, you idiot!”

The other guard snorted and startled upright, clasping the rifle laying against his lap. He locked eyes with Glimmer and the sleep plaguing his eyes cleared, replaced with fear.

“Go get her,” the first guard said. “I’ll watch and make sure she doesn’t try anything until you get back. Hurry.”

The second guard hesitated, then gave a curt nod and scrambled off his chair and out the room.

“Where am I?” Glimmer asked after the door slammed, throwing down another sheet of dust from the ceiling. “How did I get here, and why am chained to the wall?”

“Don’t!” The guard stood and pointed his rifle at her. “Don’t you dare say another word!”

She saw it then, the fear in his eyes, same as the other guard if not more pronounced. There was no use reasoning with him, not when he was like that. She’d have to force her way out and subdue him. Make sure he couldn’t harm her or himself. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but her hands were tied—literally—and she had no idea how long she had been out. It was the only way she was going to get answers, and  she couldn’t waste any time with an orbital bombardment on the way.

No magic came when she reached. Glimmer narrowed her eyes and tried again. It wasn’t just that it refused to come to her—it wasn’t there at all. There was no reserve. She’d always felt a reserve, bubbling under the surface, and now it was gone. Panic mounted. A part of her was missing. They had restrained her in ignominite chains, and no amount of pulling and yanking and straining loosened them.

“Stop struggling!” The guard cocked his rifle, looking down the iron sights at her. “Just…just sit there until the commander gets here or I swear I’ll blow your head off right now!”

His finger slipped inside the trigger guard and trembled. Glimmer froze. If that finger slipped, that was the end. The Angel of Archanas, killed in action not by the Beast, but by a fellow soldier in the field. Time seemed to slow, and she felt lifetimes pass between the beats of her heart. A noise on the other side of the door bled through, subtle at first, then growing louder.

The door opened and Lonnie stepped inside. Glimmer almost called to her. The guard barely acknowledged her arrival and kept his gun trained on her.

“Leave us,” Lonnie said to him without taking her eyes of Glimmer, either. “I’ll handle this.”

“Are you sure that’s safe, ma’am?”

“No.” The guard glanced sidelong at her, confused, but she didn’t waver. “Stand guard on the other side of the door. If I don’t come out in ten minutes, pull the pin off a grenade, toss it in here, and go reinforce your squad at the back of the wall.”

The guard hesitated, then saluted and left.

“Thank god,” Glimmer said the moment the door clicked shut behind him. “I’m glad to see you’re alive, but what the hell is going on?”

Lonnie approached her with a measured look and measured steps, dragging one of the stools behind her without responding.

Glimmer pulled the chains. “How did I get here, and why am I chained to a wall? Why with ignominite cuffs?”

Lonnie pulled the stool around between them and the bars, scraping its legs on the stone floor, and sat. She pulled her sidearm from its shoulder holster and pointed it at Glimmer’s head.

Glimmer recoiled. “What the fu—“

“Stop talking.” Lonnie’s voice was low and cut like steel. That steel bled into the look in her eyes. They were cold, detached, like she was appraising Glimmer as farm stock for processing. The fingers on Lonnie’s other hand shook, propped on her leg. Sweat sheened her forehead, her breathing came ragged, but the hand holding her gun didn’t falter and her finger on the trigger didn’t shake.

“What’s going on?” Glimmer kept her voice as level as possible. Another rumble in the distance came, although it didn’t shake the building. “Why are you doing this?”

“We found you unconscious just outside the compound walls with the burned-out remains of a thrall lying on top of you. I lost three men from the team I sent to get you, and I refuse to risk any more of them. You have three seconds to start talking and prove to me you aren’t an Abomination before I pull this trigger.”

Oh. Oh shit.

Glimmer wracked her brain for the last thing she could remember before waking up. It wasn’t the vision of Taline, that much she knew, but what came before?

There was the fog, and the Beast doing everything it could to corrupt her by conjuring apparitions of her friends and long dead victims, but she hadn’t succumbed. She’d made it! She’d teleported herself near enough to the old castle district for Lonnie and her after all.

But what could she say to prove any of this? Lonnie’s finger tightened over the trigger, and the one thing she’d hoped she’d never have to relive bubbled to the surface to save her life.

“Rinne!” She bit the words out as if they were painful to say. “I was at the battle of Rinne. It was such a disaster. The biggest disaster since the war first ended on Archanas. In fact, they’re so closely related in the public mind people sometimes forget  which parts Taline and I played, even though they happened years apart.”

Lonnie’s hand stilled, but she didn’t lower the gun. She’d want more, Glimmer thought. Abominations with a little bit of cunning still left to them could mimic their original selves. Delve into intimate memories, however? Abominations had no recollection of their host’s experiences before being turned, but recounting something as renowned as the Seraph and Angel of Archanas respectively wouldn’t be enough.

“It was the first planet we lost entirely to the Beast since the war last ended.” Glimmer shuddered  as she remembered, feeling like she was unlatching a trunk she’d shoved a nightmare creature into years prior. “There was only one megalith stationed next to the main population center I was attached to. That was all we needed.

“I’m still not sure what started it. Reports and rumors are all over the place, still talked about today, but I was on the ground. I could feel what was happening and I couldn’t tell you how it started. All I can say is we thought we had the planet rescued much like what’s happened here. We even started sending people back to the city to start rebuilding. Then the Beast swelled. It overwhelmed each of our entrenched forward positions, one after the other. Our deployment was too small to handle the wave, and within hours the city was lost. The fleet commanders gave the order to evacuate. Everyone who hadn’t returned to the city prepared to lift off.”

Another rumble in the distance. Glimmer thought it was the same phenomenon as before, until a scream trailed after the sound like an echo and, suddenly, she wasn’t sure. Now it sounded eerily similar to a megalith taking off—a sound that had chased her from more than one nightmare since Rinne.

“The ship malfunctioned and we couldn’t take off. Our presence on the planet was small already, since it was a less populated system. We didn’t have enough soldiers to defend the compound until the techs finished their repairs. I was the only Battlemage not stationed at the front lines. I led the defense.

“The amount of magic I forced through my body that day…” she shook her head trying to clear the feeling of static racing along her skin. “My wings”—another shake, more vigorous. Not the right thing to talk about if she wanted to avoid flashbacks—“It was stupid to push that hard, but I wasn’t thinking. I was just fighting as hard as I could. Some managed to make it back to the megalith while the repairs were going on. Every single one of them felt like I’d won a war, but I could only delay for so long. I didn’t want them to die. I didn’t want to die.”

By now, Lonnie had stopped pointing the weapon at her. Instead, she seemed to hang off her every word. Glimmer could stop there if she wanted. She’d more than proved she wasn’t an Abomination, but now that she’d started the story, she couldn’t stop. Swept away in the swell of emotions, it would have been easier to break the chains holding her down than it would have been to stop telling her story.

“We were about to close up the access doors and leave when we got an emergency communication from halfway out to the city—a final group of transports carrying the last surviving evacuees were on their way. The full might of the Beast infection, not just the thralls but the Beast itself, was right behind it. They… radioed us. Said they were thirty seconds out and to hold the door. They begged and pleaded for us to wait, but…”

Glimmer hissed and pulled on the manacles. Suddenly it seemed like a much better idea to actually try and break free than continue. The shackles dug into her wrists. A cutting, searing pain radiated up her arms, and she used that pain to force herself to finish.

“That’s when I snapped out of whatever daze I had been in. That’s when I looked at the number of thralls rushing us. Th-there were troopers too. No one had seen them since the war ended. When those people on that transport needed me to fight for them, I let fear take over me. I thought about everyone already safe aboard the megalith. I thought about them turning into thralls if we stayed behind. I thought about my parents and my friends, about never being able to see them again. I thought about all of that and I just…I—”

Why did you leave us behind? said a voice from nowhere. You are no Angel. You are a failure. A fraud. Coward!

Lonnie was there, wrapping her in a hug which Glimmer returned. Belatedly, she realized this meant she was free from the shackles. The barred door separating them was open, the stool Lonnie had been sitting on lay tipped over. She didn’t realize she’d been crying until Lonnie stroked the back of her head and the sensation pulled a sob out of her.

“Hey, hey it’s okay.” Lonnie said. “You’re okay. Breathe. Just breathe and focus. That’s it.”

Glimmer beat away the ghosts of the dead until Lonnie pulled back and held her at arm’s length. She looked scared and deeply concerned as she looked her over, as if searching for physical wounds she might patch up. It was a welcome change compared to the cold, detached look from earlier. Lonnie’s tightened her grip on Glimmer’s shoulders and she saw she was shaking. They both were.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” Lonnie said, dropping her head onto Glimmer’s shoulder like it were a leaden weight. “I thought for sure you were dead when I saw you out there, and when I found out you were still alive all I could think about was what I’d have to do if it turned out you’d been corrupted. I almost shot you, Glimmer.” Lonnie pulled her into a hug and pressed her head into the crook of her neck. “Goddesses above, I almost shot you. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

Parts of Lonnie’s armor dug into Glimmer, but she didn’t care. For as much as she expected to be taken aback at how uncharacteristic seeing Lonnie scared was, a bigger part of her was happy for the relief. Rinne had been a weight on her chest she’d never expected to share.

“I condemned all those people to die,” Glimmer said between shaking breaths. “It was a decision made because I was afraid. And this time it wasn’t a highly trained Sentinel half expecting death to come for them in combat anyways, but hundreds of civilians hoping to evacuate just like everyone else. I had one job, Lonnie…to help people evacuate, and I failed.”

“This is why you refused to take command of our team, isn’t it?” Lonnie’s voice was muffled from her speaking into Glimmer’s shoulder. “It’s not just Rinne. That’d be traumatic for anyone, but its tied up in what happened on the emperor’s citadel, isn’t it?”

Glimmer nodded. There was a reason the Beast manifested Narre and Miri alongside the Rinnites. Both were symbols of her previous failures. Glimmer told Lonnie all of it, the story slipping out in a rush, and Lonnie listened with rapt attention, sitting back on her heels as Glimmer detailed every facet of it.

“Those people didn’t die because you were too afraid to act,” Lonnie said once she’d finished. “You keep talking about how people died because you were too scared to act or acted rash because you were scared, but all I took from both stories was that you jumped into the fray anyways and aren’t giving yourself credit for it. You defended everyone at the megalith on Rinne until the thing was repaired and could take off, and you ignored Taline’s Sentinel telling you to stay back in favor of bum rushing the emperor with a dagger hoping to kill him and save the rest of us.”

“I failed, Lonnie.” Glimmer didn’t get what was so hard to understand about that. What point was Lonnie trying to make when the results spoke for themselves?

“Sure, if you want to see it that way.” Lonnie gave her an exasperated look. “I personally would disagree with you on calling the outcome of either of those situations a failure, but even still, you didn’t fail to act. You just didn’t save everyone.” She held up a hand to forestall Glimmer and said, “Those are different things, aren’t they? Maybe you froze and Narre died, but you didn’t freeze on Rinne, and you saved thousands. It’s not the same mistake, if you can even call it a mistake at all.”

When Glimmer still only gave her a skeptical look, Lonnie sighed, tapping an anxious rhythm with her fingertips on her armored thighs. “I had a friend once. A medic. Well, they were Kyle’s friend, because Kyle makes friends with everyone, but then they became my friend and Rogelio’s friend. This was before we were scouted for the Vanguards.” Lonnie’s tapping on her thigh became erratic. “They had family on Rinne and had to be put on suicide watch when news broke about what happened. A week later and they were gone.”

Glimmer covered her mouth with a hand. “Oh my god…I’m—I’m sorry.”

Lonnie shook her head. “It’s another casualty of the war, not your fault.” Glimmer bit back the urge to argue with her. “They were the first ones to explain triage to me and how it works. Funny how I’d grown up in a militaristic environment but never heard of something like that until my twenties.” Lonnie laughed, although there was no humor behind it. “Are you familiar with the term?”

Glimmer nodded. “Generally speaking, yeah. Categorizing extent of injury and likelihood of recovery if treatment resources are expended. I know a medic’s judgement on it often becomes the deciding line between life and death out in the field, nowadays especially.”

Lonnie nodded, staring past her. “I don’t know if its because he explained it well or because it was one of the last things I’d learned from him before…Anyway. You know how it is. Rinne was triage. You made a decision on peoples’ lives. Some were saved, many weren’t. It’s okay to feel beat up about it, just like it’s okay to carry the scars—mental scars—of that decision with you.

“But using their sacrifice as a shield to hide behind? Pointing to the fact you couldn’t save everyone from a Lost World and letting the guilt of that eat you alive for years? Even if they held you responsible, what does continuing to cudgel yourself over losing them accomplish except to tarnish the memory of their deaths?”

Glimmer glared at Lonnie. As much as the logic made sense, she didn’t appreciate hearing the same words she’d told herself over and over again repeated back to her. Instead of looking apologetic and backing off, Lonnie surprised her by reaching forward and laying a firm hand on her shoulder.

“For example,” she said, unabashed and without a trace of  humor. “I’ll be pretty mad if you have to sacrifice me. I’d sacrifice myself to save you or someone else in a heartbeat, but I’d only feel proud of doing so if you’d traded me to save a million.”

“A million?” Glimmer squinted at her. She couldn’t tell if Lonnie was joking or not—for as morbid a subject this was, her delivery perfectly straddled the line between deadpan humor and complete seriousness.

Lonnie nodded. “One million. And you aren’t allowed to beat yourself up about losing me, either. Otherwise, I will return from the grave and haunt your dreams. It will be never ending stories of our time as kids fighting each other back home and you will hate every moment of it.”

Glimmer couldn’t help it. She barked out a supremely unattractive laugh, covering her mouth immediately after, shoulders shaking with barely suppressed mirth. Lonnie smirked at her.

“You’re annoying,” Glimmer said, shoving Lonnie’s shoulder and rolling her eyes. She never thought she’d be one for gallows humor, but then again, she’d never been on the front lines enough to really appreciate it. She saw the draw, especially with it coming from Lonnie. Something told her she only joked like that with people like Kyle and Rogelio—comrades deep in the shit with her.

“That’s half my job description, you know,” Lonnie said, standing and holding out a hand for Glimmer to take. “Put bullets in thralls and annoy the shit out of Battlemages so they’re too agitated for the Beast to take them in.” A bang sounded overhead, shaking the room. Lonnie looked up with a frown. “Speak of the devil.”

“What is that?” Glimmer asked. “It’s been going on since before I even woke up here.”

Lonnie shot her a strange look and Glimmer realized that hadn’t made much sense. Instead of letting her clarify, however, she walked back toward the exit with Glimmer in tow and said, “Our jailer.”

Was Glimmer supposed to know what that meant? “I came here to rescue you and Rogelio and whoever else is here. I don’t know how long I’ve been out, but the fleet is supposed to begin their orbital bombardment any minute now. We have to get out before that happens. Kyle is on standby for an extraction.”

Lonnie stopped with her hand on the doorhandle. She regarded Glimmer with a careful expression over her shoulder. “You’ve been out for three hours since we found you. The bombardment’s been long underway, already. What do you think that banging is you’ve been hearing?”

“What?” Another bang overhead made her jump and sent her heart racing. “That’s the fleet bombarding us with dreadnought-class cannons from space? How in the hell are we still alive?”

Lonnie shot her another smirk, although it was clear this one was a mask for her anxiety. “It’d be easier to just show you.” She pulled the door open, light flooding into the dime and dingey room as she stepped through. “I hope you had a plan to get us out of here before you came. We all could use a morale boost right about now.”

Chapter Text

A rotting smell blanketed the air as they stepped out of the dungeon, a specter of death clinging to Glimmer’s skin and clothes and hair like a pall. Three seconds walking outside with Lonnie and already it felt like the smell would never leave her. Even if they were fortunate enough to make it off Scavria alive and she took half a dozen showers, Glimmer wasn’t sure she’d stop smelling like a dead body.

The overcast sky toned everything in a drab, muted light. The soldier standing guard outside the door to the dungeon they’d just vacated snapped off a sharp salute to Lonnie as they passed. When he caught sight of Glimmer coming up just behind her, his eyes widened in surprise.

“At ease,” Lonnie said. She held her hand out and, after a moment of hesitation, the soldier handed over Glimmer’s PDA which he’d been safekeeping. “She’s clean. Go join your squad at the rear. We need everybody we can muster at the wall.”

The soldier gave an over-compensating ‘yes Ma’am!’ and double-timed away. Lonnie handed over the PDA and Glimmer slid it back onto her arm as a second figure, taller and bulkier than the first, approached them. Glimmer recognized him immediately.

“What the hell are you doing up and about?” Lonnie said to Rogelio before Glimmer could squeal in happiness and hug him. “You’re injured. I need you to be resting.”

Rogelio grunted at her, barely an acknowledgement, and turned a concerned, questioning look on Glimmer. Large swathes of his body—anything not covered by the bits and pieces of his armor he could still wear—were covered in bandages. They were wrapped double thick and still blood had seeped through. His right arm was held close to his scratched-up breastplate in a sling, and upon closer inspection Glimmer saw it had been amputated just below the elbow.

“It’s me,” Glimmer said, voice gentle. “I’m not corrupted. How did this happen? Are you going to be okay?”

Rogelio grunted and nodded.

“My harness came loose in our transport,” Lonnie said, “and he undid his own to shield me. He took the brunt of the impact when we crashed not far from here.”

Rogelio turned his bad arm away and pulled Glimmer into a side hug with his good arm, strong enough to squeeze the breath out of her.

“Gave me one hell of a scare, but he’ll be okay. The arm will regrow.” To him, she said, “You’re too stubborn to let some surface wounds and a missing limb keep you down, aren’t you? Just like you’re too stubborn to do what I say and rest.”

Rogelio snorted and the corners of his lips pulled back in a smile. He released Glimmer and patted the grip of his blaster strapped to his side as if to say, ‘I’m well enough to fight, too.’ Lonnie rolled her eyes but didn’t argue further. Instead, she stalked off toward the fortified wall in the distance, beckoning for Glimmer and Rogelio to follow her.

The castle district was enormous. As a preserved historical site nestled inside an even larger garden complex at the heart of Tir, it was also sufficiently isolated from the rest of the surrounding city.

A stone tower keep stood the compound’s center clearing, and it loomed high over the surrounding buildings. Although it was shorter than the skyscrapers Glimmer felt on her way in, it dominated the district and imbued sense of ancient, regal power in the atmosphere that battled with the muted, drab suffocation the fog imposed.

“We were lucky we made it as close to our LZ as we did before we went down,” Lonnie said as they headed for the far wall. “Fleet command wanted us to secure this as a base of operations. They were planning to launch the last effort to retake the city from here before the emergency evacuation orders hit.”

“Why here?” Glimmer looked at the ancient buildings as they walked, but always returned to the tower. A pair of soldiers trucking a machine gun and reams of belted ammunition ran by and she shifted to avoid them. “Sure, these buildings were designed to protect against attack and fortify a position in the past, but that was thousands of years ago. How are stone and mortar going to protect against hordes of Beast thralls?”

“You’ll see why soon enough,” Lonnie said, nodding up ahead to the wall. Glimmer and Rogelio both followed her up a set of stairs jutting out the side of the wall. As they crested the top and they got a clear view of their surroundings from atop the wall, Glimmer finally understood why Lonnie and the few soldiers she’d seen since waking looked so grim.

“The fog…” Glimmer trailed off when words failed to describe what she saw.

“Yeah.” Lonnie answered each of her unspoken questions with the defeated tone of her response.

The sky wasn’t actually overcast, it was the Beast’s fog surrounding them. The trees and lawns and artificial lakes of the gardens surrounding the compound disappeared abruptly behind what amounted to an unnaturally thick curtain. Glimmer couldn’t even see the sun. No wonder Kyle had lost their tracking signal; the Beast had trapped them here, just like it had almost trapped Glimmer in the city.

The sky lit up. The soldiers standing watch by the nearby parapets jumped and spoke in quick, hushed tones to one another, each wearing nervous faces.

“Lightning?” Glimmer asked, still staring up at the sky.

The ground began to shake in another tremor, and Lonnie reached for the closest parapet to keep stable. “That’s the fleet bombarding the planet from orbit.”

“How is that possible? There are at least ninety ships in orbit firing down on the city—we should have been space dust after the first silo. Is the Beast muting the salvos like that fog dome is some kind of shield?”

“I don’t know. This is the first I’ve seen something like this, and you said yourself you experienced some crazy things in that fog. Who knows what it’s capable of?” Her look hardened. “That’s not the only strange thing going on around here, either.”

“What do you mean?”

Lonnie gestured again for them to follow as she moved toward the soldiers standing guard together further along the wall. One of them noticed their approach and snapped off a salute.

“They’ve been quiet for some time, but I think they may be gearing up for another surge any minute now.”

“Is that you going off a hunch or have you actually seen something that would indicate that?” Lonnie clapped the soldier on the shoulder when he hesitated and walked past him without waiting for an answer. “Don’t make the mistake of guessing what they’d do like they were just any other group of thralls. That’s a one-way ticket to an early death. They’ve already shown us they aren’t like the others.”

She said the last part quietly as if to herself, and Glimmer wouldn’t have heard it had she not followed Lonnie closely to the very edge of the wall. When she looked over the parapets and down, she saw yet another unexpected sight.

“What are they doing?” she asked, staring down at a mob of thralls standing outside the wall, clumped together shoulder to shoulder and chest to back. “Why are they just standing there?” Thralls not only always attacked if they sensed you—typically rushing a position with mindless abandon and with no regard for their safety much like their namesake would imply—but they were also always spread out from each other. She had never seen them gather that close together before when there was plenty of space to roam.

“Beats me,” Lonnie shrugged, looking down at them as if studying an interesting bug. “They’re a lot harder to kill too. Our ammunition is coated with purer ignominite than most of what the rest of the armed forces use. It’s expensive as hell, but it usually means a thrall goes down in one shot. These guys? We’ve put enough holes in some of them to make until they’re unrecognizable before they finally drop.”

Glimmer frowned. “Are…are they developing some sort of immunity or something?” The implications behind that struck deep. Thralls resistant to ignominite would take away their one advantage in ground combat away. The empire had lost every conflict in the first war badly before Taline’s sister first discovered the stuff. The idea of regressing to that state of conflict was terrifying.

“I sure as shit hope not,” Lonnie said. “I’m just catching you up to speed with what we’ve experienced so far. We’ve walked the entire perimeter wall of the compound and there are no thralls anywhere except here, and you’re right that they’re acting super weird clumping together so tight like this. I don’t know why, just like I don’t know why they’re suddenly harder to kill and I don’t know why this damn fog is protecting us, either.”

Glimmer ‘hmmed’ and narrowed her eyes in thought. A breeze blew past, playing at the short strands of her hair just as another ripple of lightning and subtle shake of the ground occurred.

“What is it?” Lonnie stared at her like she might transform into a literal angel in front of her. “You’re thinking hard about something, that much I can tell.”

“There’s something off about this whole situation,” Glimmer said. “And I’m not just talking about the thralls. The way everything suddenly shifted as we were taking the city. How no one could tell what exactly happened that turned the tide against us. And then how quickly everything fell apart from there—it wasn’t even a few hours before the infection had engulfed most of the city once we lost it.”

Glimmer shook her head, not liking how any of this sounded now that she was speaking her thoughts aloud. “Taline warned me a long time ago about what would happen and what I’d experience if the Beast were ever to directly attempt to subvert me. I’ve experienced some of that, but…”

Lonnie raised an eyebrow at her. “But…?”

“But some of it seems so different, so far out of left field I can’t help but feel there is something else. I’ve been seeing things. Things that aren’t there.”

Lonnie snorted. “Yeah, we all have been seeing things. Damn shadows lurking in the corners of your vision. One of them snuck up on one of my guys taking a piss out behind one of the buildings and scared the shit out of him, but they’re pretty much harmless.”

Glimmer shook her head. “They weren’t shadows, Lonnie. I saw visions. Concrete ones, of things that I think have already happened, and of people who are long dead. One of them could see me as if I were there. Talk to me and ask me questions as if I were really there. They could touch me.”

Now Lonnie looked concerned. She leaned forward and, in a low voice meant to keep her words between them, said, “Are you sure you aren’t really an Abomination and just not telling me?”

Glimmer had been so ready to hear whatever secret bit of information Lonnie was about to share that having the rug yanked out from underneath her like that pulled a snort of laughter out of her in response.

“An Abomination would say no,” she said, rolling her eyes. “They also wouldn’t have told you about Rinne.”

“Fair.” Lonnie smirked before growing serious again. “Whatever it is that’s happening, we can figure it out once we get off this planet and somewhere else. Do you have a plan for getting out of here?”

“I might.” Glimmer gestured over the parapet wall to the idling mass below. “Do you have any idea why they might have concentrated here in particular rather than a different part of the wall? You said they weren’t anywhere else.”

“It’s weakest here.” Lonnie pointed to a spot behind Glimmer. “The entrance to the compound is back there, barred shut by a pair of heavy metal doors, but this section of the wall here is weakened structurally. I don’t know how, but they’ve managed to find it and have been occasionally trying to ram through it ever since we holed up in here.”

“They’re trying to ram through a fortified stone wall?” Glimmer asked, feeling all the more incredulous when Lonnie only nodded at her with a serious expression on her face. “Even weakened, you wouldn’t be able to break an entrance without a battering ram of some sort. Why don’t they just climb it? Thralls can’t scale walls with their hands any better than you or I could, but I’ve seen them pile on bodies layer after layer and then climb the mound like a hill. Trying to break through a wall in the first place just doesn’t make sense.”

“Reach over and touch the outside of the wall,” Lonnie said, gesturing toward the edge.

Glimmer wasn’t why Lonnie changed the subject so abruptly. She reached over the edge, expecting one of the thralls to leap up and bite her arm off, and touched her hand to the cool stone.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, yanking her hand back. “The walls are infused with ignominite, too? These structures are supposed to be ancient. When did they make the additions?”

“This whole compound was converted sometime after the last war to be a fortified storage facility against the Beast in an emergency,” Lonnie said. “The Vestamid, shady as they are, must have put a lot of resources into this area. We never tapped into it before because the threat was honestly so small and our response was so large that fleet command didn’t think it was needed. When things changed—“

“That’s when they decided to use this site to mount a more effective offense,” Glimmer said, understanding where Lonnie was going. “Geez, the cost that must have gone into preparing this is staggering.” As Etherian royalty and a Battlemage with a pay grade that reflected the status of one of the Enclave’s highest-ranked and most valuable combatants, Glimmer was intimately familiar with large sums of money. But even she blanched when she first learned the cost of a pair of high-quality ignominite restraints. Thinking of the cost to infuse a fortified wall that wrapped the entire perimeter of a compound was overwhelming.

“I don’t think about the cost,” Lonnie said, amused at whatever shocked expression had found its way to Glimmer’s face. “I’m just glad it’s kept us from being overrun so far. We’d last ten minutes max once they got through. Maybe not even that.”

Glimmer looked at the soldiers who had been listening to their conversation. There were five of them, including the two who had guarded her when she woke up in the dungeon. All were young. Three had lacerations on their faces and through the plating of their infantry armor, but otherwise seemed battle-ready, if out of their depth and nervous.

“Is this all you have?” Glimmer asked, surprised. “Five?”

“Five plus the two who ran by you with the machine gun earlier,” Lonnie said. “Aside from Rogelio and I, they have the most combat experience so I put them on the heavy repeater in front of the tower. Everyone else either died on impact when we crashed or fell to the thralls before we got inside the compound. Plus the three I sent outside to grab you when you just appeared. They didn’t make it either.”

Ah, right. She quashed the guilt roiling in her gut. Lonnie was giving her an appraisal of their situation, not blaming her for deaths that weren’t her fault. She had to stay focused—use that information in a sterile, surgical manner. To feel and process guilt was a privilege that would come after they’d escaped, not before. She resolved to ask Lonnie their names once they were safe, at least.

“We have to get out of here,” she said instead. “The Beast may be growing immune to the ignominite and its thralls may be growing smart enough to strategize, like a virus adapting after so many years. Kyle said he lost contact with you altogether as soon as the fog started expanding, but we’re going to need to get some kind of message to the fleet in order to get out of here. What’s going on with your communications?”

Explicit talk of escape caught the soldiers’ attention. Hope bloomed on their faces. They looked at one another with subtle smiles, and Lonnie knew to capitalize on it.

“We certainly have better chances of survival now that you’re here,” she said. “As for communications, we managed to yank the orbital radio from the Warbird when we crashed but haven’t gotten anything in or out. As far as we can tell, the fog is blocking all transmissions.”

Glimmer eyed her PDA and the blinking icon on the screen; it was still searching for a signal, trying to reconnect her to Kyle. The beginnings of a plan were brewing there, although she still wasn’t feeling confident about it. They’d have to do something about the fog dome. A dubious thing to contend with in the first place, but if they managed to disperse it, wouldn’t that just expose them to the fleet bombarding the surface?

An ethereal wail drifted up from below, startling everyone as it crescendoed to a chorus of screeches.

“They’re surging again!” one of the soldiers said, staring over the edge of the wall while the others press checked their rifles.

Glimmer had never seen anything like it. The mob of tightly packed thralls weren’t mindlessly scrabbling over one another trying to push forward. Instead, they were rearing back to charge the wall together as if they were one body comprised of hundreds. Like a living battering ram, they slamming into the ignominite-plated bricks with enough force to splatter those at the front of the charge into flying chunks of meat and viscera, spraying the surrounding grass with body matter.

The wall shook hard enough that Glimmer tottered to keep her balance. She could have sworn she heard the sound of the stone itself fracturing. The soldiers aimed their rifles down range over the parapets and fired coordinating bursts into the mob as they reared back for another thrust.

Glimmer felt grateful that the ignominite in their bullets didn’t seem to lose all its efficacy. Sure, they took more than one or two bullets to go down, but they did go down. A single thralls was frighteningly strong, and with them acting in coordination? The wall would go down, and sooner rather than later.

Lonnie grabbed onto a parapet to keep from falling over when the thralls impacted a second time. Rogelio grunted and widened his stance, his sidearm already out and ready to fire.

“You said you might have a plan,” Lonnie said to Glimmer. “So that means you’re in charge. I’ll command the troops, but you’re in the driver’s seat. Tell me what you need us to do, and I’ll make it happen.”

Rifles continued to rattle off beside her as Glimmer looked to the tower in the center of the compound. The top looked like an open roof, again with parapets from which to defend.

“We need to get to the top of that tower,” Glimmer said, pointing. “And hold off the thralls long enough for Kyle to get us. I’ll take care of the fog.”

Lonnie nodded and turned to the soldiers. “Change of plans boys,” she said, bellowing. “Those fish will jump out of the barrel and slap you dead, so we’re leaving. Get your asses to the tower and up to the top floor. Standard defensive formation, three plus me in the back providing cover, the rest up front, and we all move with the Battlemage, clear?” A chorus of ‘sir, yes sir!’ rang out and Lonnie smirked with a strong gesture of her fist. “Let’s go, move, move, move!”

The soldiers pulled off the wall one after the other like synchronized divers. Despite the fear plain on their faces, they moved with the automated professionalism of a team that had drilled scenarios like this enough to instill deep-rooted muscle memory. They encircled her and kept pace as she rushed down the wall, jumping the last four steps as she neared the bottom.

The wall burst as her boots hit dirt. Screeching, clambering thralls spilled into the interior courtyard like water through a crack in a dam.

“Keep going, don’t stop!” Lonnie said, grabbing one of the soldiers by the back of their neck guard and pulling them with her when they’d slowed to stare. “Stop and you’re dead. Are you trying to die? Remember the others?”

The automatic repeater stood mounted on its tripod before the entrance to the tower, one soldier behind it while the other held the belt of ignominite rounds feeding into it. As soon as Glimmer cleared past them, they opened fire, the sound of controlled automatic fire playing accompaniment to her pounding heart, wheezing gasps, and the sounds of thralls screeching louder as they fell.

“Get inside, all of you!” Lonnie said, throwing open the door and gesturing for everyone to hurry in. She and one other soldier remained as the two on the repeater dragged it back through the mud, continuing to hold off the flood as they eked to their escape.

As soon as Glimmer got in, she heard a scream and a gurgle out from outside. Thralls had caught up to them, piling on top of the gunner who was still firing into the mass as they tore into him.

“Get inside!” Lonnie bellowed, trying to pick them off before retreating with the other soldier inside. “Let it go and get in, both of you!”

The assistant, extra belt of ammo still hung across her shoulders, startled out of the paralysis that had gripped her. She turned, casting only one forlorn look back at her partner as they fell, and she sprinted toward them, thralls hot on her heels. She burst through the open doorway as one of them caught her arm. She screamed and her armor crimped in the thrall’s grip, sending a sick cracking sound echoing inside the chamber. The thrall yanked and pulled her off her feet, and began dragging her back outside.

“Let me go!” she said, screaming and kicking at the thing. Rogelio and three others have already pushed the door nearly shut, keeping more thralls from flooding in but unable to fully shut it since it’s caught on the arm of the first.

Another sickening crack and another cry as blood started running at the crevices of the soldier’s armor, staining the rest of her. Despite two others holding her back, she was slowly getting dragged out.

“I’m sorry for this,” Lonnie said, looking into the woman’s tear-streaked eyes. She threw her arm out and a wicked, serrated blade extended from her gauntlet. She slashed up, cleaving the woman’s arm off above the elbow.

They pulled apart, soldier and thrall, each yanked back from the sudden release. As the soldier tumbled to the ground inside, Rogelio and the others nearly got the door shut until another thrall took the place of the first, wedging itself inside the doorjamb.

“Fucking get back,” Lonnie said, voice growling low as she surged forward and stabbed through the opening with her serrated blade. Another screech from outside and now it was Lonnie getting pulled outside instead—her blade had gotten stuck.

Glimmer, healing rune twisting in her palm as she helped cauterize the soldier’s bleeding stump with magic, left here side and went to Lonnie’s with a new rune ready to activate.

“Damn it,” Lonnie said, fumbling for her sidearm and shoving it through the crack in the door, firing four, five, six rounds haphazardly outside. Glimmer was there the next moment, emitting a continuous stream of purple fire from her palm through the same opening. More screeching from the thralls outside, but still Lonnie was stuck.

“To hell with this,” she said, anchoring herself with both feet planted wide. With a jerk of her arm, she broke the blade off, ostensibly still embedded in whichever thrall she’d stabbed. She pulled her arm free, and the door slammed shut the moment it was clear. Glimmer was on it the next moment, casting a large sealing rune over it. The door bumped once, twice, three times as the thralls on the other side tried to break through, but the rune pulsed with light on each bump and held.

“That won’t last long,” Glimmer said, turning back to the group. “If they keep trying to barge in haphazardly it might hold, but as soon as they clump up and start working together again this door will fall. If they can break through the fortified outer wall, nothing here is going to hold them back forever.”

“Then we’d better climb,” Lonnie said. She looked to the wounded soldier. The others had used a belt as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, and a thick patch of cloth ripped from one of their uniforms covered the stump.

“I can move, too,” they said, sweat pouring down their clammy face. “I can make it. Just…"

Lonnie nodded, holding a hand up to cut her off in a silent command to rest for a few moments.

The thralls continued to bang on the door and Glimmer inspected the ground floor as they got situated. It was bare and musty with a wet feel to the air. Despite it being an ancient structure, bare lightbulbs attached to open wires ran the length of the wall near a spiral staircase and provided their only source of light—all the windows had been boarded up with ignominite-veined metal. There was no furniture, but several black cases lined the floor, filled to the brim with sparkling crystals.

“Are those…those can’t be apeirons can they?” Glimmer asked. On instinct, she reached with her mind to touch one and felt the surge of power living within. Taken together, a single case emanated a small star’s worth of magical energy just sitting there waiting to be used. And there were dozens of cases sitting there around them.

“I told you this was supposed to be a storage facility,” Lonnie said, holding the wounded soldier’s head up and dabbing at her sweat-streaked forehead with another strip of cloth she’d ripped from somewhere underneath her armor. “Deep breaths,” she said to them. “Come on, stay with me. We aren’t out of this yet.”

They groaned, skin pale and clammy, but had stopped bleeding all over the floor and all over Lonnie’s lap thanks to the tourniquet and cauterization. The door banged again, hard enough the hinges rattled.

“They’ve already started working together,” Glimmer said. “We have to go.”

Lonnie and Rogelio helped guide the injured soldier to her feet. She looked ready to pass out one moment until she got her bearings, then Lonnie traded places with another soldier and took up a position with two others at the rear, between Glimmer and the door.

Glimmer took her cue, made for the stairs, and climbed. The others molded and moved with her like a cadre of static electrons. The incessant banging—and soon enough, splintering—sound against the door from behind urged them to hurry the fuck up, and Glimmer balanced that with the need to make sure they didn’t push the injured soldier to the point of collapse. Rogelio didn’t have a second arm with which to carry them comfortably, and throwing them over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes probably wasn’t safe either.

Glimmer was on the same page with Lonnie about that one: they were all getting out alive if she could help it. The ones left still left breathing, at least.

They got to the second level—it too filled with chests brimming with apeirons—when the door burst. The sound of it rang up from the ground floor. Glimmer and Lonnie exchanged knowing looks while the grunts at the front whined in shock. The sound of thralls flooding the lower levels roared up at them like a fast-approaching torrential flood.

“Keep going!” Lonnie barked the orders to those at the front. “Don’t stop and don’t look back!”

Glimmer pushed magic to her hands. The thralls were close enough their screeching and scrambling was deafening. Lonnie and those with her at the back rattled off burst fire. Glimmer spun and held out both hands, eyes flaring neon as a large rune rotated before her palms. The rune pulsed and a stream of unbroken white-hot magic streaked past the back line and blasted the thralls surging up the stairs.

“The war engineers had the right idea fortifying this place,” Lonnie said. Advancing backward up the stairs without missing a step, she put three rounds into one thrall then kicked another down the stairs when it got too close. It fell back, taking a handful of its peers with it as it tumbled down. “It’s contained and the stairs are narrow, but that makes it easier to defend since we have the high ground.”

That was probably the only reason they’d made it this far without getting caught, honestly. Glimmer used the confined space to better augment her magical attacks. She planted flame runes on the walls and ceiling overhead, stuck stasis runes on the stairsteps underneath, and blasted lightning at a clumped-up wall of thralls impossible to miss. They’d get caught in the stasis, too slow to get out of the way while the flame runes next to and above them burned them to a crisp.

All they were doing was buying time. Time to survive just a few more seconds. Time to get up to the top of the tower in a final bid for rescue. Time that was quickly running out.

The thralls had only one goal, and that was to get to them. Shoving disabled or debilitated brothers and sisters off the stairs, or even grabbing them and tossing them toward Glimmer and Lonnie in an attempt to strike them, all of it was fair game. They didn’t fight like traditional, rational combatants. They didn’t even care for their own safety.

It was almost a surprise when they got to the top level. As soon as they burst through, every soldier in the group threw grenades back through the doorway. They exploded as the last of Glimmer’s stasis and fire runes went off. Competing against the shockwave looking to escape the interior was a challenge, and Glimmer twined six consecutive runes on the door to hold it for as long as possible, making sure to reinforce the hinges and stonework surrounding the opening, too.

Lonnie was back at the injured soldier’s side, lowering her to the ground against a nearby parapet with Rogelio’s assistance. She was still conscious, if not clammier and more soaked through with sweat than before. Glimmer guessed it wouldn’t be long before she went into shock.

Everyone else took a defensive position while she got situated, holding lines of sight that would allow all of them to cover the door with overwhelming crossfire as soon as the first thralls burst through. The door slammed from the inside. It was only a matter of time, and once the thralls got through again, there was nowhere else to go. Glimmer had to end this now.

Using so much magic earlier—the teleportation spell, the runes up the turret, clearing the fog the first time—drained her already. She couldn’t let up. Not when they were so close. She stumbled to the center of the rooftop and stared up at the fog dome overhead.

She centered herself and stretched her mind. The surging mass of thralls was there past the door—she could feel them. They reached down the tower and surrounded the whole compound. She could also feel the chests upon chests of apeirons inside the tower, too. So many of them, it was like a constellation of stable suns ready and waiting for release, twined within the tower like a central core.

Using them would be crazy. Hell, feeling around the stockpile was risky enough, like feeling around a floor laden with shattered glass in the dark, barefoot. But then again, she rationalized that what she was about to attempt with the Beast was even riskier.

“Hold onto this,” she said, yanking her PDA off her arm and handing it to Lonnie when she came over. “I might not have it in me to even speak once I’ve started, so you’ll have to talk to Kyle or whoever is on the other end of that line once the signal connects.”

Lonnie took it from her. She glanced at the screen and at the blinking icon still searching for a signal with a frown. Glimmer pulled some of the magic from the apeiron stockpiles, drawing it out like a nervous seamstress might unspool radioactive twine from a coil.

Someone had plunged a syringe of adrenaline into her. That was the only explanation for how lit on fire she felt the moment she took from the reserve—and so little of it, too. Cold electricity danced and arced in ribbons across her body, and every hair on her body stood on end.

No, she thought, stuffing the energy back inside when it pooled at two points inside her shoulder blades and started to spill out from there. Not here. Not yet. She had to use as much of it as she could. Channeling this much power without properly radiating the excess was mortally dangerous, but she’d only get one shot at this and it had to count.

 Lonnie’s eyes went wide at the display. Glimmer looked down at her hands and her body; she glowed with such concentrated magic the aura itself was almost fully opaque. When she felt as if holding the magic in even a moment longer made her liable to explode, Glimmer dug her heels into the stone underfoot and threw an open palm up as if to push away the sky.

Power exploded from her palm. A beam of energy wider than she was tall shot forth. It hit the dome with a heady impact that rattled her bones, pulled her mind from her body, and had her touching something impossibly large and violent.

Despite knowing what she was doing—despite anticipating what she’d meet—she recoiled in horror when the rest of her caught up to her rational mind and realized what she’d done:

The figure before her was massive and ponderous. Like a mountain that had taken notice of a singular ant crawling upon its surface, it turned to regard Glimmer, pushing the weight of its full attention onto her.

She had touched the Beast.

Chapter Text

Lonnie was still there next to her; Glimmer was certain of that much despite seeing nothing except the Beast in the blue. The pounding of the thralls against a reinforced door, countless thousands of individual threads of magic leading from each apeiron in its stash to her as she drew them in, and a gargantuan monster before her in her mental mindscape, but Lonnie was there. She called Glimmers name, and her voice came muffled from above water.

“Hey, can you hear me?” she asked, shouting to be heard against an alien damper. “What’s going on?”

She tugged at Glimmer’s shoulder and yanked her hand away with an expression of pain. Bristling with magic as Glimmer was, touching her was tantamount to touching an open flame—Lonnie had singed her hand.

Glimmer couldn’t warn her not to touch her again. That thing in front of her was all encompassing and it was taking more than she had to give just to keep from losing herself in abject panic. Maintaining the gargantuan flow of magic through her body was the only thing keeping her whole at this point—a warning shot across the bow to the Abomination not to come any closer, or else. It loomed before her in her mind, massive and pondering, and Glimmer had no doubt in her mind if it called her bluff and advanced anyway, she’d crumble.

And in the midst of this, a memory came unbidden to her. A memory of her mother.

A sailor rowed the seas in a tiny boat, Angella said to her, voice reaching through time and space to once more tell a story she used read to Glimmer before bedtime. He rowed to an island in the distance. Only, as he drew closer, he realized it was not an island at all he was rowing to, but the back of an enormous creature, the rest of it floating hidden under the water’s surface.

Glimmer remembered how that story terrified her when she was young and how she loved it all the more because of it. Now, she was that sailor, having dived from that boat and into the water. There was nothing but deep blue surrounding her. No light from the sun broke through the surface to her, and the Beast was the island monster—fog dome the island visible above the surface, and the rest of it visible to her now only because she’d left her earthly vessel to look upon it.

Oh, what a mistake that decision was.

The Beast was large enough it could swallow her whole and not even realize it. She was a speck floating in a vast nothingness—an intruder in its realm. She could no better confront it than a finless swimmer could outmaneuver a shark hunting by the smell of blood.

Have you had enough? a voice in her mind—hers and not hers—asked. Let go. Let go, and every problem in the world shall fade away.

She’d thought herself nearly enthralled before when she was lost in the fog. Now that it appeared before her, its attempts to ensnare her again were both harder to fight off and easier to direct her efforts toward.

“Begone!” she said, angling her chin up as if to look down upon it from below. “Leave this world!”

Fuck, was she even doing this right? Taline had told her once, when Glimmer had asked, that the Shapers of the Daiamid could vanquish an awakened Abomination in a contest of wills, overpowering it with sheer determination to ‘eat’ them, as they would apparently describe it. They were the only ones capable, as far as Taline knew. Everyone else, including the most accomplished of Enclave Battlemages, needed several dreadnoughts hammering the infected planet from space, and not even that was a guarantee of victory.

The Beast shifted in their shared mind-space, expanding like a great squid, posturing and encircling her. Glimmer, vaguely aware of fighting and yelling and the firing of ignominite bullets from rifles all about her on the physical plane, reached further into the stores of apeiron crystals littering the keep and held her ground as the Beast redoubled its efforts on her.

Their surroundings shifted. The Beast subsided, its presence diminishing to a thrum in the background as the endless blue of the ‘ocean’ fell away. To Glimmer’s surprise, the tower and surrounding castle district came back into focus. Lonnie, Rogelio, the other soldiers, the thralls, all of them were missing—she’d been returned somehow to the physical plane without them.

There was no great dome of fog obstructing her view anymore either. Instead, Scavria itself and the surrounding city of Tir stretched around her in its glory. Great spires and skyscrapers circled her like trees of a great redwood forest. Vehicles soared through the air in neatly patterned lines at different elevations. The setting sun reflected off both the glass windows of many of the buildings and against the snow of the holy mountains acting as backdrop.

Voices carried up from below and Glimmer rushed to the parapet edge to peer down. Dozens of individuals of various races, including Scavrian, wandered about the compound. Some looked at maps held out at arms-length as they walked; others pushed children in strollers. Some walked backward talking to groups that followed in their wake: tour guides, expounding upon the history of the ‘old castle district.’

One person in the crowd caught her attention immediately, and from there, everything fell apart.

Her dad walked among the others. His eyes sparkled as they cast every which direction, seemingly trying to take the entirety of the area in altogether. That alone would have been enough to shatter Glimmer, but then she noticed Adora walking next to him, grinning. She seemed so carefree, so light, and so unlike the Adora she’d seen only a handful of weeks earlier through the ansible, begging for any scraps of information on the Daiamid Glimmer had been unable to dig up for her to begin with.

“It’s too bad Catra wanted to stay behind for this trip,” she heard Adora say before turning to a burgundy cat-shaped being padding alongside her. “You’ll have tons of bragging rights about this place when we get back, that’s for sure.”

Glimmer recognized the thing Adora was speaking to, especially by its ephemeral mane and stark blue eyes. Krytis had been taken over by the Beast early in the first war. Taline, emboldened by the trust the war council had placed in her, had elected not to save the planet. A devastating sacrifice, Taline had written in her official report on the matter, leaving no Krytians left in the galaxy. They were all extinct. The fact Glimmer was seeing one right in front of her…

“These are lies!”

She spun back around and planted her feet. The Beast was still there, slinking in the background and almost imperceptible behind the illusion. The illusion fell away at her declaration and she was back in the endless blue. She wouldn’t allow the Beast to distract her, that’s how you got lost. And so, she resolved to face it head on, never blinking, until one of them burned out entirely.

Glimmer pulled enough magic into her she felt she’d sooner explode and demolish the whole keep, defendants included, before her standoff with the Beast would conclude. It reared up like a tidal wave, growing larger, looming higher, advancing on her.

Moments before the Beast  struck, the scene shifted once again. She was in a room, now. The same room she’d witnessed before waking up chained to the ground in a cell. Whereas back then, Taline was standing at the window bathed in moonlight and looking out at the night view, now rays from an alien sunrise flooded through the window blinds and illuminated the room.

Deep red was splattered across near every surface of the room. Glimmer had watched a live art show once, where an abstract painting came to life as a nameless artist threw gallons of paint on wall-sized canvases. The room looked much like those canvases had, except Glimmer had a feeling someone had been turned inside out to supply the paint.

The furniture lay in splintered pieces, most scattered across the floor but some embedded in the walls. A chunk of the granite dining table had broken off, likely ground to dust judging by the dust covering every surface that wasn’t already covered with blood. Glimmer spotted  a body—the man who’d come to visit Taline in the earlier vision—bisected at mid-chest, laying in two opposite corners. Taline herself was slumped against the far corner, a cloth stained red in her grip-less fingers as she pulled in shallow raspy breaths.

“Gods above,” a shaky voice cried out from behind. Evelyn ran past before Glimmer could react, sliding to a stop and dropping to her knees beside Taline. “What the fuck happened to you?”

Glimmer had no idea where the Beast had gone—she could no longer feel it in the background of this vision like she could in the other. Something told her this wasn’t something the Beast was throwing up in front of her as a distraction. This was different, somehow.

“Get your ass in here!” Evelyn said, shouting over her shoulder at someone Glimmer hadn’t yet seen. “She needs our help!”

Corynth swept through the door and strode to them with quick steps. Glimmer followed, keeping silent. Evelyn looked on the edge of hysteria as he knelt too, concern clear on his face despite the calm in his movements.

“There’s so much fucking blood, just…everywhere. Oh my god,” Evelyn said.

“It’s not all hers,” Corynth pressed two fingers to feel for Taline’s pulse at her neck. It was obvious she was still alive, judging from the breathing, so then why would he need to check? “Her pulse is weak,” he said after a moment.

“Even losing half this amount would be a death sentence. Can you heal her? Please tell me you can heal her.”

Corynth shook his head. “She already tried to heal herself. I can’t.”

“But she’s fucking horrible at healing runes! Why would she try and do this herself?”

Glimmer didn’t know why the statement surprised her. Maybe it was the gravity of the situation. It was common knowledge Taline was the worst at healing, but Glimmer had only reckoned with that fact in a humorous light, before. The great Seraph of Archanas being criminally bad at even simple healing spells did have its comedy, but now it seemed blasphemous considering Evelyn’s panic and Corynth’s hard-fought rationality.

“I don’t think she had a choice,” Corynth said. “She did what she had to.”

“And you’re here now, you you can do something. Help her.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

“Yes, it is. Set bone wrong, you break and reset it so it heals right. This is no different.”

“It’s very different. She’s liable to slip into shock if I interfere—its worse than resetting a bone. Magic has its consequences, especially when it comes to me.”

“Then what the hell do we do? Should paramedics even move her if it’s that serious? Should healers, if they even get here in time? You have to be able to do something.”

Corynth reached out and placed a hand over Taline’s bloody head, pressing his thumb to her forehead and two fingers to her temple. His eyes glowed and faint circuit lines of magic appeared, creeping up the stiff standing collar of his Enclave uniform. The tension in Taline’s face relaxed, and her breathing came easier.

“She’ll wake in a moment,” he said. “It won’t be pleasant for her, but it’s the best I can do. We don’t want her unconscious.” He turned to Evelyn and said, “Did you know this was going to happen? The guards outside are gone too, I checked. Did you already see this coming?”

 “I told you already, I only see what happened in the past, not the future. I’ve tried but…it’s fuzzy. I didn’t see this at all.” She gripped the fabric of her pants. To Glimmer, she looked almost guiltys. “I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

Taline stirred, coughing hard enough  she doubled over. Corynth had stopped glowing, stopped whatever he had been doing to help wake her up, and instead rubbed circles over her back to ease her through the spasms. Taline moaned when the coughing subsided, and Corynth and Evelyn both eased her back against the wall.

“You came,” she said, eyes wandering lazy and unfocused between him and Evelyn. “How long have I been…?”

“Long enough the fight had already finished before we got within earshot,” Corynth said. “We found you like this.”

Taline hummed something noncommittal, blinking slow. “Tried to fix myself up. Don’t think it helped any…” Her eyes slipped shut and she started to lean into Corynth, nodding off.

“Hey, hey, you can’t do that.” Corynth shook her back to consciousness, although it looked like it pained him to do so almost as much as it pained Taline to endure it. “I need you need to stay awake long enough for the medics to get here.” He glanced around the room, taking in the gore. “What happened?”

“He…he came for me”—a sharp intake of breath—“Was wearing a mask.”

Taline’s pupils dilated and constricted seemingly at random as she followed Corynth in taking in the room. Clarity and focus returned to her eyes, and with that clarity, rage and anguish came as well.

“He said he was a member of the Daiamid. That he’d come to welcome me into their ranks because of what happened on Archanas.”

Corynth’s and Evelyn exchanged a look. An understanding passed between them, Glimmer could tell, but Taline seemed to interpret it differently.

“I swear I’m telling the truth,” she said to them both. “They’re real, I swear  it. The Daiamid—"

Corynth squeezed her shoulders. “I’m not sure if—”

“He told me about what happened to the La Valettes. He…he could do what I can. He could cast magic without needing any runes. The ley lines…they w ere on his body. The Daiamid are real.”

Desperation tinged her voice as tears ran ruddy streaks down her face. Corynth and Evelyn’s expressions shifted from apprehension to concern.

“They’re going to kill me,” Taline said, voice breaking. It was the most scared Glimmer had ever heard her sound, and it broke something inside her at hearing it, too. “I refused their offer. And when he threatened to…I killed him when he…” She swallowed and shook her head. “They won’t let this go. They will come for me. I’m next.”

“Tal, no.” Corynth wiped her tears before guiding her into the crook of his neck. “They won’t come. And if they do, they aren’t going to get you.”

“You don’t know  that,” she said, voice muffled against his body. “I denied the Beast itself when it came for me, yet that man—that Shaper—nearly destroyed me. Are they all like this? No one stands a chance if they’re all like this. It’s no wonder the emperor has remained in power this long if they are yet another arm of his power.”

Corynth and Evelyn exchanged another look while Corynth worked his hands to smooth over Taline’s shaking shoulders. This time, Glimmer could almost read the message they passed between them.

Are you going to tell her? About you?

Corynth set his jaw, giving his answer. He peeled Taline off him as gently as one would replace a burn victim’s dressings and looked her in the eyes.

“Nothing will happen to you, I promise. As difficult as it was to endure, do you know how many other people are alive today after experiencing what you did on Archanas? How many people are still sane?”

Taline swallowed and said in a low, almost whispered voice, “Just you.”

Corynth laughed. “Well, the jury’s still out on my sanity, but I am still alive, I’ll give you that. But you’re right. Out of everyone the Beast  has ever touched, it’s just us that are still ourselves. The Daiamid may be real and they may be mad enough you killed one of their own to retaliate, but you killed them, Tal. In single combat. From one singular exposure to the Beast, you triumphed over folklore.”

“There will be others.”

“And how many times do you think I’ve opened myself up to the thing by now, guiding Evie in her research?”

“Too many to count.” Taline still mumbled the words, but Glimmer could tell Corynth’s logic was  having an effect.

“You’re damn right.” Corynth’s smile looked more encouraging than proud. “They aren’t going to get you because you aren’t going to let them, and neither will I.” He squeezed her shoulders again and wiped more tears away with his thumbs. “No harm will come to you. If I have to stand up and declare war upon the emperor himself and all his secret assassins in the shadows then I will, but no harm will come to you. I promise.”

Evelyn looked uncertain and apprehensive. Glimmer could almost hear her wondering how this would play out in her head.

The vision froze. It wasn’t obvious at first, especially since the room had been so still already, but Glimmer got the sense that whatever she’d been brought here to witness had fully played out. That’s why it was an especially great shock when Evelyn then turned her head, looked straight at her with a fire in her eyes, and said, “Seen enough? Are you enjoying traipsing through my memories behind my back as I’m trying to work?”

Glimmer yelped and scrabbled backward, only succeeding in landing flat on her ass in her attempt to get away.

Evelyn pursed her lips. “I swear. Hundreds of trips all across the galaxy to all sorts of different people and I have no issues when I speak to them of the Beast and who will emerge to save them, but you somehow go digging into things all on your own when I’m not paying attention.”

This Evelyn was different from the one kneeling stricken with Corynth at Taline’s side. This Evelyn looked older and wiser, but it wasn’t additional lines on her face or sag in her skin that gave that impression. No, it was her eyes. To Glimmer, those eyes gave the impression they had seen much, much more than the eyes of the version of Evelyn she’d met in the other visions. Behind the fires of irritation  that sparkled in her irises, there was a serene, aloof, borderline cold nature to them in their gaze. Almost like she’d lost her empathy.

“Why am I seeing these things?” Glimmer asked, getting to her feet and trying to wrest enough confidence to at least sound authoritative in front of this ghost of a woman. ”Why are you showing them to me?”

“I’m not showing you anything.” Evelyn peeled her gaze away and looked over at Corynth and Taline, still embracing and frozen in the memory. “You’ve gone looking all on your own, like I said, and at things I’d truly do not wish to revisit at this current time. Or ever again.”

She gave a sharp flick of her wrist and the vision dispersed. They were back in the blue ocean mind-space from before, and the Beast was gone.

“Is this you?” Glimmer asked, horror creeping up on her at the thought. “Are you the Abomination?”

Evie raised both eyebrows at her, like a detached empress looking upon a servant who had done something particularly stupid. “Really?” she asked.

Glimmer scrunched up her nose and reached with her mind again. False alarm. The Beast was still there after all, in recessed corners. Evelyn wasn’t the Abomination, but then why she was here now in the foreground?

“The creature had grown powerful enough it made short work of the remaining forces in the city,” Evelyn said. “They stood no chance.”

“But that doesn’t explain this,” Glimmer said, gesturing to her and their shared surroundings. “How are you here? Why are you here?”

“Someone has to keep you and your friends from succumbing to its influence.” The Beast surged in the background, fighting against invisible restraints before quieting down again. Evelyn side eyed it. “Just like someone had to keep that fleet in orbit from turning you all into space dust.”

Keep from succumbing? Protect from the fleet? Was she implying she was the one maintaining the protective fog dome over them?

“Why?” Glimmer asked, when she could think of no way to broach the myriad of more complicated questions she had. “Why are you protecting us?”

Evelyn tilted her head to the side and looked at Glimmer like the question made no sense. “Because you are needed.”

As if that made any sense. “So, where are you right now, exactly? In the past? Taline said you couldn’t cast magic to save your life, and that you couldn’t see into the future, only the past.”

“I couldn’t see well into the future,” Evelyn said, holding up a finger to correct her. “At least, not when her and I were still able to speak to one another. I’d had enough prescience to warn of Etheria’s imminent coming, after all.” She shrugged. “As for how I can do this? Use the Beast to traverse time and space a few hundred times yourself and you’ll become a natural, too, although without the kind of chaperone I had it might take longer.”

Glimmer had no idea what she meant by a chaperone, but she got the hint: the Beast had changed Evelyn beyond what even Taline had recognized. “You travelled forward in time to protect my team and I because ‘we’re needed’? Is that really it?”

“Don’t flatter yourself too much, now,” Evelyn said, shooting Glimmer a smirk that made her flush with indignation. “There are many pieces on the board—pieces I’ve been moving since long before the endgame you’ve now crossed into. Compared to some whose strings I’ve pulled, you are largely untouched.”

“Strings?”

“The Vestamid call me their Goddess. For as much as I’ve influenced their inception and subsequent devotion to Corynth, I find I cannot fault them for the name. I just pray you don’t take it up yourself.”

Glimmer knew exactly what Evelyn was telling her. She was the creator of the Vestamid. Visions—vivid ones—came then. Visions of Evelyn, still alive over a decade in the past during the apex of the first Beast war, traversing forward and backwards in time, prophesizing to future bishops and cardinals and priests of the coming of a great evil, of Corynth, and of his ultimate triumph on Archanas. One of the most powerful organized religious cults in the history of the empire had sprung up near overnight because of her—their Goddess.

As awestruck by the revelation as she was, Glimmer held steadfast to her pride and pragmatism. She stuck her chin up a little higher and said, “Goddess is a bit much, and I have little patience for flattery, both given and received. Tell me how to kill the Abomination. You’re able to hold it back, you must know how to destroy it so I and my team can get off this planet.”

“You won’t be able to kill it,” Evelyn said. “Not even together do we have the strength to do that, but you have already broken its stranglehold over this area.”

“What?” Glimmer frowned. “I have?” She reached out with her mind again and found…nothing. There was nothing there in the blue except her and Evelyn. The Beast was gone—fled to less contested parts of Scavria it could corrupt without challenge.

“I could only hold it at bay for you, and even that took a toll,” Evelyn said. Only then did Glimmer notice she looked stretched thin. “You’ve been actively pushing it out since you first touched it, even pushing into my own memories. Taline did a wonderful job teaching you, but you are extraordinary in your own right. To lose you here would be…”

She trailed off and shook her head. Their surroundings started to pull away, as did she, and Glimmer got the feeling she was being returned to the physical plane. The contours and outlines of the keep top came back, as did the figures of Lonnie, Rogelio, and the other soldiers she’d been with.

“Be careful on your way out,” Evelyn said. She seemed so far away all of a sudden. “The Abomination had fully awoken before you took care of it. That is still a dangerous thing, even with my blessing.”

Glimmer didn’t want to leave, not yet. She had so many questions. She didn’t want to step back into a raging battlefield with the cards still stacked against them, rolling a pair of dice to see if they’d make it out alive or not.

Reality reasserted itself and Glimmer killed the firehose of magic she’d been funneling through her body and up her arm. The enormous beam of energy she’d aimed at the sky dissipated and she fell to the cobblestone underfoot. Lonnie was at her side the moment her knees hit the stone, hooking under her arms and hauling her back to her feet.

“Kyle!” Lonnie’s voice rang loud, head craned as she shouted into the PDA embedded in her gauntlet as she kept Glimmer upright. “We need an immediate evac, now!”

Someone, probably Kyle, responded, though Glimmer couldn’t make out the words through the buzzing in her ears. She shook her head to clear it and pulled away from Lonnie.

“You broke us through!” Glee and awe were mixed in equal measures on her face. “I think hearing from us so suddenly nearly gave him a heart attack, but he’s on his way. He’ll be here within minutes.”

Glimmer looked up. She hadn’t fully rid them of the Beast, of course, but she’d indeed broken its hold over the area like Evelyn had said: a hole in the fog dome overhead had appeared—large enough she could see it was night, the stars overhead twinkling amongst the fleet bombarding the planet.

Good. Now they only had to hold out long enough for Kyle to arrive. Glimmer had no idea how long she’d been immersed in that separate mental plane, but judging from the fact they hadn’t been overwhelmed and killed by a horde of thralls in the interim, they could probably make it. Surveying the top of the keep to gauge how the fighting so far had gone, however, had only sparked more questions.

Dozens of inert thralls lay strewn around them, the stone underfoot slick with their blood. At the opposite end of the keep, dozens more still-alive thralls stood idle, just inside the doorway to the turret chamber, staring out at them with glassy eyes.

“We barely kept the first few waves back,” Lonnie said. “I was starting to get nervous, then they all just stopped. They’ve been like this for a little bit now.”

Rogelio, still missing his arm, was squatting down nearby, helping tend to the soldier whose arm Lonnie cut off in their retreat. There was something poetic about it that Glimmer couldn’t voice aloud even if she’d had the time and wherewithal to try. The looks of nervous agitation and full-blown terror on the other soldiers kept her grounded.

Their survival hinged on whether or not the thralls decided to surge for them once more. With no clear understanding of why they stopped in the first place, no one could say what would spur them to attack again, and it was the uncertainty of it all that was the worst. Was it because she had helped break the Abomination’s hold over this place?

The thralls pulled back into the shadows, glassy eyes like muted fireflies against the dark. A rhythmic sound came from beyond the doorway. Thump, thump, thumped, it grew louder until it shook the foundations of the keep. Something was coming.

The stones framing the doorway exploded out, raining dust and debris around them. A hulking monstrosity, three heads taller than any of the thralls, stepped through.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Lonnie asked, aiming her rifle at it and yelling at her squad to do the same when they stood dumbstruck, slack-jawed, and frozen.

Glimmer had only seen them once before, on Rinne. It had been far away, one amongst many of its lesser thrall cousins, but it was enough for Glimmer to heed Taline’s advice and leave immediately. Now another one stood barely twenty feet away: an amorphous, constantly shifting mass of pure Beast matter, formed into the viscera and striated muscles of an eight-foot-tall killing machine.

“It’s a Beast Trooper,” Glimmer said.

Even with half a dozen rifles pointed at the thing, Glimmer wasn’t keen on their odds for survival. She almost preferred the thralls rushed them, instead. Magic flared to life at her fingertips.

“Stay in as tight of a formation as you can,” she said. “As soon I unbalance it, we need to keep it off balance. We won’t win, but if we can hold out long enough for Kyle to get here, we might stand a chance at escaping.”

The Trooper struck before any could respond. It lunged, throwing an arm out as if to grab them, and that arm elongated and twisted through the air as it lanced across the distance toward them like a missile.

Glimmer threw up both hands high and wide. A purple shield manifested wide enough to cover the whole team. The Trooper’s arm crashed into the shield, sending spiderweb cracks fracturing out from the impact like electricity through a block of wood. As soon as it struck, Glimmer condensed the shield into an unbreakable cuff wrapped around the arm that anchored it in place.

Lonnie shouted a set of sharp commands. Glimmer gritted her teeth, straining as the Trooper pulled against the cuff. The soldiers split into two groups, scrambling out from behind her, a clumsier imitation of the same maneuvering she saw Salas’ own mages make when attending to him personally. Her soldiers flanked, pelting the Trooper it with a continuous stream of alternating burst-fire on either side.

As inspiring as it was to see them act, none of their attacks seemed to have any effect. A note of warning sounded off in Glimmer’s head, a shot across the bow, then the Trooper destabilized. Instead of trying to pull its arm free, its body dissolved, tracing along the line its extended limb cut across the rooftop. It reformed directly in front of Glimmer and would have used its inertia to follow through and shoulder Glimmer hard enough she flew off the building, except she released her hold on its arm and reform a shield once more at the last moment.

The Trooper’s body struck the shield with such force it shattered and sent Glimmer flying backward anway. Instead of flying off the building, she crashed into a parapet at the far end, landing in a slump on the ground next to the injured soldier, panicked and pale.

The world spun and Glimmer’s couldn’t make sense of her surroundings until she forced herself to her feet. The Trooper picked one of the flanking teams and advanced on them, cutting a soldier in half with an arm it had transformed into a scythe and spearing another through their chest plate with extrusions that shot forth from its abdomen like a spike trap.

The final soldier in the group had abandoned their weapon entirely and turned to flee. The Trooper’s entire central body cavity opened up like a gaping sideways mouth, revealing dozens of flailing tentacles inside. The tendrils shot forward, ensnaring the soldier, wrapping around their arms and their legs, chest, and even their neck. They struggled, screaming as they were dragged them backward and swallowed whole.

The screaming ceased, and the Trooper turned to Lonnie, Rogelio, and the last remaining handful of soldiers still alive.

Evelyn had warned her not to let her guard down—that the Abomination and its forces were still dangerous despite having broken its hold and driven it from this place. This was what she must have meant. Beast Troopers had been so controversial and damaging to troop morale during the last war that once the war had ended, their mere existence had been heavily censored. That’s how Taline had explained it to her, at least.

I myself would be hard pressed to take even one singular Trooper down, and I’d need a partner to even attempt it, she’d said in the past, trying to impress upon Glimmer just how impossible it was to face one. There’s a spot at their back where they have a weakness. A small spot that doesn’t morph or change like they do. If you can get behind it long enough to hit it with a blow, you might be able to harm it. Either that or overwhelm it with enough continuous, concentrated firepower it can’t act.

Glimmer gestured with a hand crackling with fresh magic. A line of sequential runes along the ground formed, running in an arc along the ground from her current position, past the remaining survivors, terminating at a spot behind the Trooper. She sucked in a breath and released.

Ice flooded her veins. Her body felt as if someone had scooped water from a frozen lake and dumped it on her. At the same instant, she surged forward, carving along the line of runes as if propelled on skates. When she crested the final rune in the sequence, time resumed its normal flow, and she’d emerged at the Trooper’s back with only a split second after drawing the path in the first place.

She pushed more magic to her hands again, tracing the pattern for a fire spell with quick fingers. The weak point at the Trooper’s back was small, but it was there, she saw it. Just as the spell finished—and not even a full two seconds after she’d emerged behind it—the Trooper spun around and grabbed her. Its hand was large enough the fingers wrapped around her torso and met at the small of her back. It lifted her off the ground with seemingly no effort before roaring at her, its shapeless head splitting open in six distinct flaps and revealing several rows of teeth deep in its new orifice.

The army of thralls that had receded from view before the Trooper’s arrival surged through the demolished turret and onto the top of the keep. Even if Glimmer could somehow get free before the Trooper killed her, she wouldn’t be able to make a second attempt at its weak spot with the hundreds of thralls now coming to its aid. The team wouldn’t be able to hold out for very long against them either, even if Glimmer somehow monopolized the Trooper’s full attention.

That only gave her one last option, according to Taline’s advice long ago: overwhelm it with enough firepower it couldn’t kill you.

Hundreds of munitions chests full to bursting with charged apeiron crystals still lay in the keep. What Glimmer had drawn out to bolster her in her confrontation with the Abomination had barely dented the store, at least according to her cursory feel of the stockpile with her mind.

She reached forth once more and overloaded every crystal she could feel, grabbing every chest and every apeiron within them in in the levels below, shattering all of them.

From there, Glimmer knew she had split seconds to act. She hadn’t drawn the power into herself either; that would have taken too long what with how dire things were. She’d instead released their contents uncontrolled to the world, and if she didn’t step in immediately to guide how that energy was released, the resulting discharge would blow up more than just the thralls and the Trooper.

Glimmer released her wings.

Again, just for a moment. It was so quick, Lonnie and Rogelio probably wouldn’t have seen them even if they were staring right at her, but holy hellfire did they burn, especially since she didn’t have the reserve that would have made it safe to do. Venting an enormous amount of magic from her body without having an enormous amount of magic to draw upon to begin with was a stupid thing to do, but she’d done more than enough stupid things coming here in the first place—what was one more?

The Trooper’s limb encasing her minced into a hundred different pieces and the creature roared. Glimmer dropped to the floor with the chunks of rent flesh. The pieces destabilized and coalesced, pieces attempting to reform into the whole. Glimmer used the handful of seconds she was free of its grasp to reach for the magic she felt exploding in the keep, reaching for the uncontrolled maelstrom of power flowing the only direction it could: up to them.

Flames as hot as a sun barreled through the wrecked turret tower leading up to the top of the keep. Like a great serpentine dragon it slithered, shooting into the air and then crashing down to the stones underfoot, writhing along and swallowing every thrall in its path. Hellfire of an unimaginable power, and Glimmer was trying to influence its motion. She felt like a lone sentry trying to divert a river with nothing but her hands.

The Trooper had finished reforming its hand before Glimmer could get all of the thralls. It rounded on her, forming its other limb into a scythe again, poised to cut her in two.

Rogelio barreled into it from the side, knocking it off balance. It stumble to the side, then planted its foot and torqued to swing the same moment Glimmer ducked. It’s blade arm missed her by a hair-length, and Glimmer somehow managed to maintain control of the energy.

Finally, with the last thrall burned to a crisp, she turned the giant fire snake on the Trooper. It shot up in the air once more and, just as both she and Rogelio rolled free, crashed down, swallowing the Trooper in a continuous inferno.

Even though they had distanced themselves enough to not get caught in the flames, they were hot enough Glimmer was certain her skin would blister within the hour. Rogelio had a gash on his leg, probably sustained while they were fighting off the first wave of thralls. Glimmer helped support him back to where Lonnie, two other soldiers, and the one with the amputated arm were waiting for them.

“Did you just kill that thing?” Lonnie asked. She hadn’t lowered her rifle, and it was still pointed at the flame-snake-turned-pillar-of-fire at the other end of the keep.

“At the very least I slowed it down,” Glimmer said. “That should keep it busy for as long as the power in those apeirons last. And there were a fuck-ton in those crates so I’d imagine it will last until Kyle manages to—”

Another roar—one familiar enough now it sent a shiver down Glimmer’s spine—came from the flames and the Trooper stepped out of it, nearly unscathed.

“Fuck me,” Lonnie said. She was out of breath, but racked the slide of her rifle and aimed down the sights as if this were just another routine training exercise.

Glimmer had no more tricks up her sleeve. She’d unleashed an entire military compound’s worth of stored magical energy on the creature and it barely stalled it for a few seconds. The thralls were gone, sure, but she was running on empty. That last attack had been their best shot.

The Trooper took another step toward them when a hole the size of Glimmer’s head appeared in its chest, flinging it backward with the force of the impact. Glimmer, shocked, glanced over at Lonnie. Lonnie, who looked equally as shocked, looked at her rifle.

“I hadn’t fired anything yet,” she said.

The squeal of stellar engines roared overhead as a figure burst through the small hole in the fog dome. Kyle’s Warbird screamed toward them, then banked hard and strafed, tracing a perfect circle in line with the perimeter of the rooftop as the gimbal gun on the nose of the craft fired endlessly at the Trooper.

Glimmer, Lonnie, and the others covered their ears. Rogelio and the injured soldier tried their best with their one arm. Within moments, the massive-caliber bullets from the warbird had loosed and kicked up enough rock and dust they couldn’t even see the silhouette of the Trooper anymore, although Glimmer had no doubt it was getting cut down faster than it could regenerate. And then, when Kyle seemingly deemed his efforts effective enough, he strafed another lap around until he was hovering just off the edge of the parapets closest to them.

The bay doors to the troop hold slid open, and Kyle yelled at them to ‘hurry the fuck inside’ from the cockpit.

Glimmer helped Rogelio grab the injured soldier under the arms and haul them inside. Just as Lonnie cleared the threshold—the last inside. Just as the doors closed and they pulled away, Glimmer saw the Trooper once again emerge from the dust, piecing itself back together again. It was a nightmare given form.

“Get us out of here!” Glimmer said, yelling to Kyle from across the vessel. “Now!”

Kyle peeled them away from the keep at a rapid clip and the doors shut. Glimmer only just managed to slam herself into the nearest bucket seat and get her harness on when he angled them up and accelerated.

G-forces stronger than she’d experienced in a long time pushed her deep into the seat and threatened to drop her back into unconsciousness; Kyle was burning them up to space, hard. The engine screamed, but they could see nothing through the tiny viewport windows, only the fog and the small tunnel Glimmer had opened in it for them from earlier.

They burst through the fog dome and Scavria’s curve appeared, monstrous and titanic against the backdrop of stars and starships. Blood rushed back to Glimmer’s head and her peripheral vision came back, only for her breath to squeeze from her lungs once more as Kyle angled them to the side and carved. A beam of energy as wide as the plane-tside keep was careened past them, lighting up the interior of the warbirds in a brilliant orange through the viewports.

The beam traveled down to the planet’s surface and struck the dome. Pockets of black pocked the surface under the fog as it finally started to clear. Kyle let off, only to bank again as dozens of beams from the other ships in the fleet streaked down to the surface, chasing the first. He pushed them further, dodging the bombardment, zig-zagging every which direction until they were safely out of the line of fire. From there, he slowed them to a safe cruising speed, and everyone breathed easier. At least, for a few more seconds they did.

“What is going on down there?” one of the soldiers said. They’d unstrapped from the seat and were pressing their face against the window.

Everyone followed and crowded one side of the Warbird—Glimmer’s side—to look. More than half the planet had been covered in a black substance, the same that had comprised the Trooper’s body from earlier. A collective gasp rang out from the group as a massive face, surrounded by tendrils in the black, appeared beneath the dissolving fog around Tir.

“That,” Glimmer said, pulling her attention away, unable to look at it any longer, “is what happens when an Abomination wakens during an infection.”

A heaviness descended upon the group then. Scavria was lost, just like Rinne had been lost and just like Archanas had been lost. Just like countless other worlds during the first conflict had been lost. Not even the elation they’d felt at escaping with their lives could offset that.

“All the refugee megaliths made it safely to the carriers,” Kyle said. The relief in his voice at having saved them was evident, the pall was still there. Billions of Scavrians, turned into thralls and burning to a crisp on the planet’s surface because of the bombardment. They’d become an endangered race.

Glimmer gripped the armrests of her seat until her knuckles turned white and her fingers hurt. Her body couldn’t decide whether to throw up, cry, or fall unconscious from the exertion. The pain in her wrists and joints from squeezing the chair so hard was the only thing keeping her grounded.

Kyle piloted the warbird back to the Omen-Kador in complete silence.

Chapter Text

Catra dodged strikes she couldn’t see. She marveled at the feeling of what felt akin to reading and reacting to the future on an instinctual level. Six enemies surrounded her, and she danced around their attacks like it was a game.

She struck at one’s throat with claws extended while at the same time contorting her body sideways to avoid a blow from a second. The first enemy dissolved into a fizzle of holographic dust, and Catra’s mental load evading (as well as the amount of fun she felt at this exercise) diminished by a sixth.

“You’re getting cocky,” Taline said to her from behind a console off to the side.

Irritation lanced through Catra. “Cocky? What are you talking about? I’m not—“

She didn’t register a strike coming from behind until it was too late. An enemy kicked her hard enough in the butt to send her careening forward, and even though she managed to turn her stumbling into a forward handspring, the other four pounced on her. Electricity powerful enough to send her hair standing on end arced through her. She fell to the floor as her muscles seized. When the electricity stopped, she rolled away, flipped back onto her feet, and rounded on them, ready for whatever counterattack they no doubt were already pressing.

The enemies were gone.

Pip floated into view off to the side, hands on her hips and shaking her head, and Catra clicked her tongue and folded her arms. She had gone through countless combat exercises aboard the Constable over the past few days as it made its way through hyperspace to Archanas, and this was the first time the simulation got the better of her so early. She’d only taken down one enemy.

“See?” Taline said without taking her eyes off the console. She tossed a bottled water to Catra and she caught it without needing to track it with her eyes.

“I wasn’t getting cocky.” Catra grumbled as she pressed the cold bottle to her forehead and stalked over to Taline.

“No, you weren’t actually.”

Catra sputtered. “Then why the hell—“

Taline looked Catra in the eyes with such a casually piercing gaze it derailed her. “You lost your focus as soon as I said something to throw you off.”

Catra ignored Pip’s quiet snickering on the side and grabbed a towel she had draped over one of the unused consoles nearby. “That’s hardly fair,” she said, dabbing her forehead.

“Battles aren’t fair,” Taline said. “Maybe you were going easy on the Rebellion when you fought them on Etheria. Maybe you thought it fun to play around with them at times, maybe not, but you were able to walk away from your defeats. When you fight alongside me, you don’t ‘play,’ you keep your head in the fight. We fight as a team, so if either one of us loses focus then neither of us will make it past the first engagement.” She returned her attention to the console and tapped a sequence of commands into it, an unusually somber expression on her face, even for her. “Engaging the Beast is never something to make a game of.”

“You think we’re going to get into it on Archanas?”

Taline shook her head. “Thankfully, the risk of being attacked there is close to zero, but I’m talking about future assignments. I’m not putting you in the field until I’m confident you understand the consequences of not staying one hundred percent focused at all times.”

Catra averted her eyes, no longer able to deflect her nerves with snippy comments. Of course Taline was being serious—she had heard more than enough from Glimmer about how intense she was during training. Catra had just never experienced it herself, how huge a difference there was compared to how Taline normally treated her. It was unnerving.

For a few days now they’d been traveling to Archanas through hyperspace, carrying a full contingent of forensic analysts whose job it was to tear apart the Vestamid computer systems at their destination and look for the software they’d used to encrypt Moriarty’s drive. However they’d applied the same uncrackable Barrier algorithm lock down the data on that drive, Taline needed to know. And luckily (or perhaps unluckily) for Catra, she’d used the spare time they’d had during their transit to begin training her directly.

“I-I understand,” she said, unsure of what else to say.

“How are the nightmares?”

Catra hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since before Diallo had arrived at Phoenix. The anniversary of Adora’s blitz aboard the emperor’s citadel—and thus the anniversary of Taline having broken one of her apeirons and exposing them to a memory of the Beast—had long since passed. But every time she’d closed her eyes, it was yet another nightmare and a gamble on whether she’d wake up the next morning feeling rested or restless.

“They’re still there,” she said, rubbing at her temples absentmindedly. “They seem to be worse than ever. I don’t understand why.”

“A lot has happened this year,” Taline said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s contributing. It does for my nightmares at least.” She tapped a rhythm with her fingers on the metal sides of the console and said,  “At any rate, they don’t seem to be affecting your ability to fight.”

“I haven’t been able to take on all six yet, though.”

“Still, you’re integrating with Pip much faster than I expected.”

Catra blinked. “I am?”

“Take a look.” Taline pressed a button on the console and the screen mirrored onto a holographic display cast above. What looked like hundreds of colored tangles of string, clumped vaguely together in a loose three-dimensional representation of a brain, rotated before them both.

“Is that…mine?”

“This is the brain of an average Vanguard soldier, not yours,” Taline said. “It was recorded during a routine training session similar to this one. Watch how long it takes for them to respond to a blow from an opponent they see coming”—an area at the back of the model lit up—“with an adequate block and then counterpunch.” After a moment, Catra saw an area at the top section of the model light up just as the portion at the back dimmed.

“There’s a gap,” Catra said, repeating what she saw out loud and hoping Taline would explain.

“One hundred seventy-five millisecond response time,” Taline said. “That footage is slowed down so you can actually see it. It’s not bad for a soldier with cybernetics of their own and the training needed to fight on an elite level. But you?”

She tapped another button and a new brain model replaced the old one. The colors on the ‘strings’ comprising this one were far more vibrant, as if all the neural connections at once were constantly at some low-level activity. Catra watched some parts of her brain light brighter sequentially and other, discrete parts light up together. It seemed haphazard. The area she knew was her motor cortex didn’t seem to light up in any discernable pattern, either.

“Eighty-nine millisecond response time on average across two hundred and thirty-four separate stimulus activation events,” Taline said. “Your brain is processing stimuli not just from your eyes, but from your hearing, and from your skin and fur as it detects subtle shifts in the air pressure around you. And on top of that, you are responding to those stimuli far faster than even most elite Imperial soldiers. Most of those blows you dodged you hadn’t seen with your eyes.”

“So, I wasn’t reading the future then,” Catra said, cracking open the seal on the water bottle and taking several large gulps while she watched the light show replay.

“Nope, just reacting extremely fast to stimuli you aren’t even consciously aware of,” Taline said. “Like a reflex. Although it does feel like you are processing things one or two seconds before they happen when you’re in the moment, doesn’t it? You don’t become consciously aware of your actions until after you’ve performed them”

The question surprised Catra and she looked at Pip, floating in plain sight right under Taline’s nose. She too was watching the recording of Catra’s brain model play, but Taline didn’t seem to know she was there.

“She integrated with me years go,” Pip said. “Just enough to sharpen her reflexes. That’s why she understands what it feels like.”

“You let yourself get distracted when you heard me say you were getting cocky, though,” Taline said. “You listened to what I said and thought about it, and your response time slowed. If it were a real fight you would have died.”

“I know, I felt the electric shock,” Catra said, grimacing.

“No, you don’t understand.” Again, Taline spoke with such nonchalant gravity despite outright contradicting her. “I didn’t trick you into making a mistake purposefully to be an asshole. When we get to Archanas, you’re going to find it especially hard to concentrate.”

Whenever Catra woke from a nightmare, there was  always the sharp taste of copper in her mouth. That taste started to bleed to the forefront of her senses now. “What do you mean?”

“Do you remember what happened in the cell?” Taline asked. “Those ghosts moving about in the dark? That oppressive feeling you said filled the air?”

How could Catra forget? She’d asked Taline about it and Taline had explained it to her, but Catra still didn’t understand what had happened. It was all very metaphysical. What was “shades or imprints of people in the past” supposed to mean, and why would they manifest around Taline during what she could only assume was a psychotic break?

“Archanas will be like that,” Taline said. “Except…more. I will be there to shield our group from the worst of it, but that’s no guarantee nothing won’t slip through. Your mind may seem to play tricks on you. There won’t be any enemies for you to face, except for what you allow yourself to conjure.”

Catra didn’t like the sound of that. The draconian preparations the crew had been subjected to before and during their jump into hyperspace suffocated her the more she understood the context behind them.

“What happened on that planet?” she asked.

Taline’s expression turned stony. “You already know what happened. You passed the empire’s naturalization exams with flying colors since you took such a strident interest in its history. Especially thee parts concerning the prior Beast war.” She turned an accusing look on Catra and said, “Why are we playing ignorant to that fact?”

Catra knew deflection when she saw it. Taline would never get one over on her in that regard. “Diallo told me you’d been to Archanas. Before the final conflict with the Beast. He didn’t elaborate, but I can only assume he meant before the planet became a Lost World, and that part definitely isn’t in the history texts.”

Taline narrowed her eyes and whispered something colorful under her breath. “Diallo doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.”

Catra couldn’t bring herself to disagree, not even privately, but she kept silent. To her surprise, the ire in Taline’s voice was gone by the time she spoke again.

“I know what you must be thinking,” Taline said. “I’m not keeping you in the dark on purpose, it’s just…”

Catra held her breath. She’d worried about this. What did it mean that Taline was purposefully hoping Catra hadn’t learned of this? Why wouldn’t she want her to know, and why would she be hesitant to say anything? Even if she didn’t have malicious reasons for shutting her out, still…

 “Archanas is complicated,” Taline said at last. “I didn’t know how to broach the subject, and now that it’s out in the open I don’t know how to explain it. I fear that no matter what, my explanation would just leave you confused and possibly with the wrong impression. I thought it might be better if you just saw for yourself once we got there.”

She averted her eyes, and to Catra’s surprise, it almost looked like she was worried Catra might get even more upset at her reasoning. “You’ll still have questions, naturally,” Taline said, “but it will be easier to explain once you’ve seen for yourself what it’s like there.”

It still surprised Catra whenever she remembered how she was essentially on equal footing in the power dynamic with someone as influential and storied as the Seraph of Archanas herself. It was easy to forget, and Catra rationalized that the only way she’d start to feel like an equal peer to Taline instead of a subordinate was if she started acting like one.

“You’ll fill me in once we get to the surface, then,” Catra said, earning a look of relief from Taline. “I’m sure there will be downtime as the analyst comb through the Vestamid’s systems. Although, I have to admit I’m even more interested in what I’ll see than before. And I was plenty interested already.”

“You might not feel so enamored by it all once we get there. Remember the ghosts?”

“I’m trying not to.”

Taline laughed and shook her head. “Let’s go again, then.” She tapped more commands into the console and reset the training room. “Try and block out any distractions, and let's go with seven this time instead of six.”

Catra downed her water bottle and sent it flying into a wastebin in the corner with an overhand toss over the shoulder. She draped her towel back over one of the unused consoles and walked back onto the training floor.

“Ready,” she said, once she reached the center.

She stood there for several moments with her back to Taline, ready for seven enemies to materialize and rush her. Nothing came. She looked back and found Taline staring at the console with a tense expression.

“Taline?” Catra turned fully around, uncertain. Was this another test?

“Change of plans,” Taline said, exiting her session on the console. “I have to go.”

“Go?” Catra took several hesitant steps forward, wringing her hands. She really didn’t like the change in Taline’s voice. “Go where? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I just got an emergency communication coded for my eyes only. I have to take it privately in my quarters.” Taline was already halfway to the exit at the other end of the training room. “We’ll make it to Archanas within a few hours. Go get some rest. I’ll come get you and fill you in as soon as I’m done.”

Catra watched her leave. Seeing Taline’s disappear through the door felt like something—a connection, a relationship starting to build firmer roots—was slipping away. Catra suppressed the urge to call out to her, and the door hissed shut amid silence.

You’re worrying about nothing, Catra chanted to herself in her head. She fought back the sudden image of Adora slipping away from her, too—something that had not emerged from the depths of her mind now for a while. She’s not leaving you. Stop imagining things that aren’t happening.

Pip was looking at her from a short distance away.

::What?:: Catra asked.

“I didn’t say anything.”

::You don’t need to say anything. You’re in my head. I can tell when you have an opinion you aren’t saying to my face.:: Truthfully, this was the first Catra realized she could do that, although the realization didn’t help things.

“I think Taline had good advice. You should get some rest.”

Catra rolled her eyes and huffed. What kind of message would force Taline to cut their training short and leave like that?

She grabbed her towel and another water bottle and headed for the exit, too. She had no idea how she was going to fall asleep when her thoughts were racing like this. Two bodies on either side of the doorway snapped to attention when the door slid open and Catra stepped through.

“Relax, it’s just me,” she said.

Trayn and Keren looked visibly relieved, and Catra nodded for them to follow as she hung left and padded down the ship’s hallway toward her quarters near the rear of the Constable. They were surprised to learn of Catra’s new role as Sentinel, but that surprise dropped to unconditional support the moment Catra had told them she’d vouched for their inclusion in the Archanas mission.

“How did it go?” Keren asked, falling into step at her right while Trayn mirrored to her left.

“I get distracted too easily, apparently,” Catra said.

“Seems to me Taline’s the one who was distracted,” Trayn said. “She sure left in a hurry, and without you. I don’t think she even noticed we were guarding the door.”

“Something came up.” Catra wasn’t paying much attention. “Seemed important, I don’t really know.”

“I’m sure she has a lot going on,” Keren said, her tone of voice implying she caught on to Catra’s reluctance to speak on it and was trying to cap it off. “We’re going to Archanas of all places and she has a new Sentinel to train. I don’t blame her for being a bit all over the place. Especially after she went out of her way to commission us for this mission.”

Catra grunted her agreement. Taline had the good sense to scoop up many of the officers from her old precinct as she could after Moriarty’s cuts left them out of a job. Catra had heard many of the other precinct captains weren’t easy to negotiate transfers with, even after lay-offs, but Dax had jumped at the chance to find his people new employment even if it was temporary. Catra had ensured Trayn and Keren were on the list, and they had been assigned to her for the duration of the trip. She was glad they were there—their presence helped temper some of her nerves.

“Even with the absolute gauntlet of tests we ran through before getting a contract it’s nice she kept us working,” Trayn said. “But she rushed off in such a hurry we didn’t get the chance to say thanks.” He earned a nasty look from Keren when it was clear he didn’t get the hint to let the topic drop.

“Mm.” Catra’s rumination grew worse the further they walked. She squeezed and relaxed the water bottle in her hand, hoping in vain that treating it like a stress toy might provide relief. Pip shot her worried glances from atop her perch on Trayn’s shoulder (with Trayn of course being none the wiser).

Evidence of their stiffer than usual preparations for Archanas were obvious. The cruiser’s singular observation deck was closed and nothing except Taline’s personal biometrics would open the door. Any viewports looking out were also shuttered, since just looking at their destination planet from orbit was enough to give people night terrors for a month.

Catra caught glimpses of the deck patrols making their circuits in pairs of three instead of the usual twos, a change Taline had ordered to better anticipate a situation where the typical two-buddy system ended with both on-duty staffers experiencing side effects at the same time. The contingency of medical personnel had been doubled, apparently, and Catra was surprised when she first came aboard to see even the viewports on the bridge had their blast shields down and permanently locked for the duration of the mission.

The ship was almost like a prison.

All the extra preparation had only made it harder for Catra to calm herself once she started spiraling. This, on top of whatever message had Taline practically running away from her. Even though this was the first time in years she’d be traveling off Phoenix Station, Catra already couldn’t wait for this assignment to finish so they could return. For all her interest in the previous war, she’d never thought she’d be landing on Archanas itself.

She wished Glimmer were here. She’d know how to help, even if ‘helping’ meant getting into a sniping match over something stupid.

Pip sucked in a sharp breath, Keren and Trayn both hesitate beside her, and both of these things happening at the same time was enough to pull Catra out of the fog and get her to look up. Diallo was there, walking the hall toward them. He was alone.

That was the other thing that had her on edge this entire time: despite the fact Diallo manipulated her, Archanas was his world, and Taline couldn’t leave him behind even if she wanted to. Although Catra understood the politics behind it, she still hated how he’d used her.

“H-hello,” he said, intercepting them in the hallway instead of letting them pass by each other in peace. “I h-heard Taline has been putting you through s-some rather intensive training recently. How is it?”

Catra squeezed the water bottle so hard her claws punctured holes in the plastic. Water spilled out onto the floor. “Really? After the shit you pulled, you think you can just walk up to me and strike up a conversation like nothing happened?”

Keren and Trayn gasped. Catra might have been surprised at her own reaction too, if Diallo had a predictable response to her violence. Instead, he smirked and spoke without his stutter.

“I did what was necessary to get Taline to act. For years I had been working to get her to even look into what was happening in my system and she refused. I don’t blame her, not after what happened, and you should not blame me.” He reached out a placed a heavy palm on her shoulder. “I was right, you know. Moriarty was corrupt, and the phantom algorithm his computer decrypted was all the evidence we needed to—“

Catra dropped the empty bottle and grabbed the hand he was touching her with She spun him and pushed his arm far enough up and against his back to cause pain, then shoved him forward hard enough the thump from his face slamming against the polished wall resounded down the hallway. His glasses flew off and skittered across the ground. Several crewmen and officers who had been walking the halls stopped in their tracks and stared open mouthed and wide eyed.

“Catra,” Keren said, hissing in apprehension. “What are you doing? You can’t just attack a System Governor!”

“You lied to me,” Catra said, ignoring her. “You used me and manipulated me knowing that I had no idea what I was doing. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you were right. If it weren’t for the fact we have to bring you along and I have to play nice because it’s your system we’re going to, I wouldn’t hesitate to give you two black eyes.” She leaned in, pressing him harder against the bulkhead, and growled into his ear. “But let me be one hundred percent clear with you—if you ever touch me like that again, or if you ever jeopardize my standing with Taline again, I will give you a legitimate reason to have a genuine stutter for the rest of your life.”

Diallo’s shoulders started to shake and, for a moment, Catra thought she had pushed him so hard he started crying. Then his voice broke through, and she realized he was actually laughing instead. Hearing it sent shivers down her spine.

“You’re still convinced she’s a good person, aren’t you?” he asked. “You’re still under the impression she cares about you? I warned you about this before, didn’t I? Did you not take me seriously?”

“I took you more seriously than I should have and you used that against me.” Catra shoved him harder against the wall. She’d hoped it would have shut him up, but instead it only sent him into further hysterics, and the people around them were starting to whisper among themselves in concern.

“What has she told you about Archanas? Or were you under the misguided impression that she was avoiding coming here because she really thought I had been chasing conspiracy theories?”

Catra didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of learning Taline hadn’t said anything yet, despite her having directly asked. She didn’t want him to see how conflicted it made her feel, and when she didn’t immediately say something, Diallo turned his head and looked at her while still pressed up against the wall. The gaze in his eyes made her feel like he was seeing straight through her, and Catra released him with a yelp and backed away.

“As I said before,” Diallo said, stooping to grab his glasses from the floor before slotting the back on his face with all the calm of someone who hadn’t just been attacked in the hallway. “Taline isn’t who she says she is. It would be wise of you to treat her with the same skepticism you now do with me because she wants something out of you, just like I did.”

He adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose and sent one last look in Catra’s direction. She recoiled.

“You will find out soon enough,” he said. “That, I promise.”

Diallo turned and continued down the hallway in the direction he was originally going, passing all the stunned bystanders with smiles and nods. Catra watched him go, a sudden restlessness attacking her.

She wanted to change course and go to Taline’s quarters. Instead, she quashed that urge and continued on to her own room, ignoring the concerned whispers of everyone around them.

“Hey, is everything okay?” Keren asked once they reached her door. Trayn, too, looked uncertain.

“It’s fine,” Catra said. She palmed the reader next to her door and it slid open with a beep. “Why don’t you guys take the rest of the time for yourself until we arrive? Go get some food and rest yourselves.”

They glanced at each other with skeptical looks.

“Are you sure?” Trayn asked. “Why not come with us to the cafeteria? We could eat together.”

Catra did her best not to lash out. They were worried about her, as friends were likely to do. “I promise I’m fine. I just need to get some sleep and be alone for a bit. I’m more worried about you guys once we arrive. I know they briefed you on what people have experienced on Archanas before it was quarantined. It’d probably be best that we’re all as well rested as we can be when we arrive.”

Keren and Trayn exchanged another set of reluctant glances before agreeing and heading off, sending cautious glances back at her over their shoulders every few steps.  They finally disappeared around a curve in the hall and Catra turned and stepped into her room, shutting the door behind her and encasing herself in near-complete darkness.

Pip floated into view, standing out against the pitch dark that surrounded Catra before her night vision fully kicked in.

“He and I meant it in different ways, you know,” she said.

“Meant what in different ways?” Catra asked, speaking aloud.

“That Taline isn’t who she says she is. I said the same thing in Moriarty’s office, remember?”

“I remember.” Catra had never forgotten in the first place. It had sent such a jolt of apprehension flooding through her at the time, there was no way she’d forget, even if Pip had later clarified it as a positive thing.

“Taline is distant and she can come off cold, trust me I understand,” Pip said, hovering in front of Catra while she pressed herself flat against the inside of her door. “You haven’t seen much if it because, well, you were the distant and cold one between the two of you for a while. But I’ve seen enough of her to know she isn’t a bad person. She opened up to both of us back in the prison cell. She’s not manipulating or using you, Catra, I would have seen it if she was.”

“I know.” Catra’s night vision was coming to her and she was starting to make out the shapes and subtle shadows of her quarter’s cramped interior. “I’ve known too many people that pretend to be things they aren’t, though. Shadow Weaver barely pretended to be a mother and I still hung on to any scraps of affection she would show. Hordak...well, that one I can’t really say much against him since I wasn’t exactly forthcoming with him either, but it still hurt when we finally fought.”

“And Adora?”

Catra balled her hands into fists tight enough her claws pricked the palms of her hands. “I thought Adora was my friend. Well…she was. She was my friend, until I…”

She trailed off when she remembered that Pip likely already understood everything she was trying to say anyways. She was doing this on purpose, the sneaky program, drawing out her emotions like she was unspooling string, tricking her into processing them aloud.

“I’m not tricking you,” Pip said, a hint of indignation in her voice.

“I just thought we were the kind of friends that’d find our way to each other again no matter what happened,” Catra said after a deep breath. “And I was wrong. I don’t blame her for cutting me off, I would have done it a long, long time ago if I were in her place. Sooner, even. But it still hurts to realize Adora wasn’t as forgiving a person as I thought. It doesn’t matter how well I rationalize it, either, it still hurts. All of it hurts.”

“I see.”

“I’m not writing off Taline,” Catra said, suddenly feeling the urge to defend her. This, again, despite the fact Pip already knew everything she was feeling. “Really. I think Taline is who she says she is, too. It’s just…it doesn’t take much to get me to start worrying again.”

“I know,” Pip said again, softer this time. “These things take time.”

Catra was about to ask how she—an AI locked in a server for the majority of her year—could speak so confidently about that when she saw a tiny flashing light out the corner of her eye. She hadn’t noticed it before, but here in the dark with her night vision fully kicked in, it stood out. She pulled up her arm and saw it was an indicator flashing on her PDA. With a furrowed brow she opened up the menu and her heart almost stopped when she saw what the alert was.

A message had come through for her. It was from Adora.

Chapter Text

“—just so cool! I don’t really know how to describe it, but he just slid right in and lit up like he was made of magic and burned the thing right out of its body. The spaceport would have been destroyed if he hadn’t stopped it, maybe even all of Eden probably, it was just…wow.”

Adora’s image flickered in the video stream, and Catra sat hunched over on a chair in Taline’s room, biting her nails and pumping her leg. This was her third time watching Adora’s message, while Taline stood off to the side with arms crossed, watching for the first time.

“Ly told me who he really is,” Adora said. “I always had a feeling his real name wasn’t Kal, but to think that’s who he really was? The same Corynth from the stories? Catra, this is the person Salas told me would be able to help me get in touch with She Ra again. He can train me.” She went quiet all of a sudden, curling into herself. “I know I shouldn’t be saying any of this to you but…I miss you. I made a mistake the last time we saw each other and it’s been eating away at me ever since.

“I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me enough to speak to me again. I don’t know if you’ll even get this message, or maybe you’ve moved on enough by now you wouldn’t care to open this once you see who it’s from.” An anguished look passed across her face. “But I just had to reach out and say that I’m sorry. And I miss you. And I hope we can see each other again soon, and I hope…Well, I hope for a lot of things. I think I should just leave it there.”

She cleared her throat and looked behind her shoulder. There was a lab behind her—people, soldiers maybe, in uniforms Catra didn’t recognize. When Adora turned back around, she said, “I have to go. Can you message me back something, even if it’s just to say you got this? I’d love to hear from you.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead reached for the camera, and the feed cut off.

Catra sat there, unable to process anything. The urge to replay the video a fourth time was near unstoppable. It wasn’t until she noticed Pip floating off to the side, glancing between her and Taline in concern, that she remembered why she’d come here in the first place.

“When did you get this message?” Taline asked, the calm in her voice at odds with how Catra felt.

“The timestamp says it came through about a half hour before our training session ended,” Catra said. “I just didn’t notice until I got back to my room. I watched it twice and then came straight here.”

Taline’s frown deepened. “Well, that settles it then,” she said, staring a hole into a point on the wall. “To think, everything I had been worrying about for years was actually true…that it wasn’t just paranoia. Corynth is alive, and Adora has been traveling with him.”

A memory came to mind for Catra, one of her looking up at Corynth’s statue in the Atrium. She remembered seeing his Shaper mask in the box Taline hid it in, deep inside the hidden room adjacent her office, and thinking whoever carved the statue got it looking just like the real thing.

“I’m not entirely convinced Adora knows what she’s talking about,” Catra said. “She’s been wrong before. Quite a lot actually, and she’s very impressionable. Super impressionable. It’s almost embarrassing. I’m sure she just thinks this person is Corynth...it can’t actually be him.”

“That emergency communication I took earlier informed me of Eden’s destruction.” Taline spoke with finality in her voice, and it sent a stone plummeting in Catra’s stomach.

Destroyed? Adora had just sent her a message from Eden, how could it be destroyed? Catra had to force herself to focus on Taline’s words when she started to speak again.

“It was a smuggler haven, hidden on the sun side of a rocky planet so close to its star it was considered uninhabitable. All scans of the planet had marked it as such and no one ever investigated further. The Vestamid were apparently using it as some sort of makeshift research settlement, and the Imperial naval forces stationed nearby responded when their scanners picked up a brand-new Beast infection spreading across its surface. To say the commander of the garrison there was surprised when the scans tripped would be an understatement.”

She stopped with a faraway look in her eyes. The ship creaked as it continued to rocket through hyperspace, the only sound alongside the humming of the life support system and thee rhythmic thumping of Catra’s leg still pumping away.

“They picked up a handful of survivors, those who had escaped before the response fleet obliterated everything. Some of those survivors had been called in to clean up the aftermath of the fight Adora recounted in her message—the one against the Abomination.

“There’s not a Battlemage alive that could have left behind what that cleanup crew said they had found. A burned-out husk missing a head? Calcified growths on the corpse that caused a severe mental reaction when touched? A whole team of Battlemages might kill an Abominations, as can an entire fleet bombarding the surface of a corrupted planet from orbit, but only the Shapers were powerful enough to do something that surgically precise to a fledgling Abomination.”

“Are you sure? People misremember things under stress. Eyewitness testimony is not reliable, its like the first thing I learned as an officer.”

Catra didn’t want to wrestle with the implications behind Corynth being alive and Adora having traveled with him, almost as much as she didn’t want to wrestle with the idea she might have died when the station supposedly broke apart.

Taline shook her head. “I’m certain. Those friends of hers Adora met along the way? Lysithea and Vasher? I recognize those names. Those are famous names, two of Evie’s original scientist faction, marked on official Imperial records as dead since no one could find any trace of them after the war ended. The fact Adora called them by name and said it was them who directly confirmed Corynth’s identity to her leave doubt in my mind. There’s too for this to be mere coincidence and faulty eyewitness testimony.”

“Are you saying Adora finally reached out to me wanting to, I don’t know, rekindle something after all these years and now she’s died before I’ve even got a chance to respond?” Catra’s breathing started to come in spurts. The corners of her vision were pulling in, signaling an oncoming panic attack.

Taline paused and looked at her—finally seemed to see her. She looked surprised, as if her mind were on a different topic and hadn’t expected to wander so far afield after assuming her and Catra had been on the same page.

“I’m not sure,” she said, sounding and looking far more sympathetic and comforting than moments earlier. It helped settle Catra’s nerves and she managed to get herself back under control.

“You said the station blew up.”

“I don’t know if she’s alive or not, Catra. I hope she is, but I’m operating on almost no information myself, either.” Taline ran a hand through her hair. “Corynth is still alive. If he survived what happened at Archanas the first time, then a station exploding wouldn’t be enough to take him down. And if he’s still alive, then Adora likely is too. Whatever his reasons, he wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble to take her from Etheria just to leave her to die. Not unless he was already done with her.”

Catra almost felt relieved until Taline got to the last part. “What do you mean ‘not unless he was already done with her?’ What’s he trying to do?”

“Nothing good, that’s for sure.”

Catra scowled. Taline was in her head again already, ruminating on overdrive because her strange fixation and paranoia over Corynth had reignited. Catra understood, since now she was doing the same thing about either reuniting with Adora or learning of her sudden death. Still, these non-answers and cryptic comments about things that had happened in the past were starting to grate on her.

“What’s your deal with him, anyways?” she asked.

Taline whirled on her, glaring this time, and Catra put both palms up to placate her.

 “I just don’t understand, is all. We talked about this before you made me your Sentinel, but you’d never explained what happened. You two used to be close. Now he’s someone you’ve thought about killing for years. Believe me when I say I get it, but context would be nice.”

Taline didn’t speak, and Catra crossed her arms and scowled at her. Being cagey about Archanas was one thing, but Catra had her limits, especially after having to talk to Diallo again.

“He stood up for Evie when she refused to bow to the emperor’s command,” she said, unfurling fingers as she listed things off. “He rallied all the rest of the Daiamid and whisked her and her scientists away so she could study the Barrier away from his wrath. When the time came, he brought them all back to Archanas and then you helped them spear through your blockading fleet and onto the planet’s surface so they could partially seal the Beast away.”

Taline averted her eyes midway through Catra’s words, and it was enough to convince her she was actually making some astute points. She’d not wanted to throw cold logic in the face of Taline’s emotions, however, so she gentled her voice.

“I’m missing something, obviously. You’re convinced he manipulated not just your sister, but you too—that he’d tapped into the depths of some horrific power to persuade Evie to abandon reason and defy the emperor despite the threat of death. And even though it ended with them helping save the galaxy, you haven’t forgiven him.

“What is it that I’m missing, then? I might have let it go before, but I’m your Sentinel now and I won’t fumble around making guesses on my own, not after what happened with Diallo and Moriarty. Fill in the blanks for me, please. I just don’t understand how someone who’d done all that so your sister had a shot at sealing the Beast away could earn such deep hatred from you.”

Taline bit her lip, eyes still averted. She closed them, took a deep breath, then tilted her head up to the ceiling and uttered something under her breath. To Catra it sounded like it might be a prayer, or perhaps a curse. Taline then padded across the room and leaned on one hip against the table pushed against the wall of her private quarters. The image of her there, arms crossed and contemplative, struck a strange chord with Catra when she saw it.

“There was a prominent family in the empire, once,” Taline said at last. “The La Valettes. They were old money…very old. ‘Roots dating back to the first decades after the founding of the empire’-kind of old money.” She gestured to herself and said, “They ran a scholarship that sponsored part of my education at the Enclave Academy when I was an initiate. That and endless shifts at the local tavern off campus helped pay for things.”

“You were a bar maid?”

“The scholarship didn’t cover living expenses, unfortunately,” Taline said, maybe a little indignant. “I took to the service aspect of the job well enough, believe it or not.”

“Is that why you’re the only member of Phoenix’s administration who could stomach personal office hours?”

“My secret is out.” Taline gave her a tired smile that disappeared the next moment. “The La Valettes were also extremely powerful, and it was for that reason Horde Prime wanted them gone. There was a fire at their estate one day, during a major gathering. Every important member of the main family branch was there. The fire consumed everything and razed it to the ground before emergency services got it contained. No survivors.”

Catra kept silent, nodding along with a somber expression.

“An ‘internal investigation’ found an arsonist.” Taline’s contempt for that investigation was clear in her tone of voice. “One of the family’s servants was implicated, arrested, then executed. It was a big affair. Everybody talked about it, and for days every news agency large and small ran near constant updates and opinions and roundtable sessions about it. And then, about a week after the execution, there was nothing. Nobody talked about it any longer, the news moved on to other prospects. It was as if the whole family were wiped from the face of galactic consciousness overnight.”

“Let me guess,” Catra said. “Anyone remotely questioning the arson narrative were called crazy and dismissed?”

“Yes. I thought it strange at the time, too, but what could you do aside from speculate endlessly with no proof of anything? It wasn’t until the Daiamid actually reached out directly to recruit me that I learned they had done it. It was an assassination, sanctioned by the emperor himself and then aggressively covered up. Those ‘conspiracy theorists’ calling foul on the arson narrative weren’t just dismissed, they were disappeared. All of it was the Daiamid working in the shadows.”

“Corynth told you?” Catra knew he’d practically begged Taline to come with them when they were escaping after Evelyn’s trial. Whatever atrocities the Daiamid committed against imperial citizens, they did a complete face-heel turn as soon as the verdict came down.

Catra watched Taline’s features harden—she was clenching her jaw. “Corynth didn’t tell me anything, he lied to my face. Someone else was sent to recruit me—not him. They told me what happened before the Daiamid ever went public.”

That…wasn’t what Catra had expected to hear. She was under the impression Corynth himself had tried to recruit her after they’d defected. This was the first she’d heard of Taline being a formal candidate to the Daiamid before they’d revealed their existence to anyone else.

“Their representative bragged about their accomplishment to me,” Taline said, before Catra could get a word in. “He thought because of the things I’d done already in the war that I’d be impressed they’d successfully culled one of the oldest, most revered families in the empire’s history without anyone discovering the truth. I was disgusted and I killed him, but not before he let slip that they’d almost failed the hit in the beginning. The La Valettes discovered the identity of the first agent the Daiamid had sent after them.”

“Pretty big accomplishment, considering no one knew about them at the time,” Catra said. “How’d they find out?”

“Corynth was the first agent.”

Catra’s jaw fell open. So many questions came to her at once, the only coherent thing she could get out was, “Him? How? Why?”

“He wasn’t always their leader,” Taline said. “Long before he became the ‘Last Shaper of the Daiamid’, he was sent to eliminate the family line, and he told them who he was. I don’t know why he was sent and I don’t know why he broke their most sacred rule to never reveal the nature of their existence, but he did. He told them who he was, but he didn’t tell me. Not when he had every opportunity to, and not until it was too late.”

Taline leaned further into the table and ran her fingers through her hair again, smoothing it back. Her fingers shook with her voice, although from anger or some other emotion, Catra couldn’t tell.

“The fight against their envoy nearly killed me,” she said. “My new powers weren’t enough at the time, so I had to over-rely on my runes. I kept up. I’m still not entirely sure how I won that fight, actually. And when Evie and Corynth found me later, half dead in the corner of my apartment, I told them what happened. I knew the Daiamid would come for me after I killed one of them. I was half afraid Corynth himself would be the one to do it, right there in front of Evie. I knew what he was. He still thought I had no idea.”

“But that didn’t happen,” Catra said, so invested in the story she forgot to breathe.

Taline shook her head. She was looking to some distant point off to the side, her sharp features standing in contrast against the light of the room. “No. He had no idea I knew what he was. He still thought I was in the dark. He could have told me. Do you want to know what he said to me instead of the truth?”

She looked at Catra with such a naked look of open pain and anger she froze. Then, realizing Taline was actually waiting on an answer, she swallowed and nodded. “Yeah.”

 “I’d told him I knew what happened with the La Valettes, but without explicitly saying I knew it was him who was sent to kill them to begin with. I wanted to see if he’d come clean. Instead, he said, to my face, that he wouldn’t allow the Daiamid to retaliate. ‘Nothing will happen to you, I promise,’ he said.” Taline effected a different tone of voice as she recited the words, each syllable dripping with contempt and hurt. “‘If I have to stand up and declare war upon the emperor himself and all his secret assassins in the shadows then I will, but no harm will come to you. I promise.’” She scoffed then, crossing her arms.

“He didn’t tell you something untrue,” Catra said. “He just…wasn’t fully honest with you.” Catra understood how damaging even that much could be.

“He promised no harm would come to me without realizing that he’d caused me more pain and suffering than any blatant assassin ever could.” Taline spoke with such force it felt to Catra like someone was driving a spike into her chest. “He was one of them, Catra. For years. For as long as him and I had known each other. For longer! The entire time, he was only pretending to be a Battlemage.

“These people served as the emperor’s secret enforcers in the shadows. The La Valettes were just one instance, and if even a fraction of just the most believable stories I’d heard whispered about them up to that point were true, the atrocities they’d committed in the name of the empire would be enough to make even the most forgiving person sick with hatred.”

She took a deep breath and smoothed her hair down, again. It was a nervous tick, one Catra hadn’t ever seen her do before because she’d never thought Taline of all people could even have a nervous tick.

“I knew where his allegiance lay that day. If he’d come forward and told me who he was that day, I might have been inclined to believe him when he said he cared about me and cared about saving the galaxy. But he didn’t.” She shrugged, throwing her hands up and letting them fall back down to her sides like she were giving up on something and saying ‘oh well.’ “How was I supposed to believe anything he’d said or done after that if he couldn’t even be forthright with me about who he was?”

Catra remembered wrestling with the same question when Adora first defected from the Horde—everything she’d come to believe about her growing up had been thrown into question. A betrayal like this wasn’t something straightforward to come back from. And with Corynth having been believed to be dead up until only minutes earlier, it was clear Taline had no way of reconciling the hurt. It had been festering for so long, she was certain it had turned into a knot of impossible to untangle emotions.

At least with Adora, both of you are still alive, and there’s the opportunity for your paths to cross again in the future.

Taline had said that to comfort her back on Etheria, when Catra and Adora had their final falling out. Those words came back to her, this time laden with a newer, deeper, more painful meaning. Catra could finally, finally admit she was decidedly not over Adora and had not moved past their shared history at all. Merely entertaining the possibility she might really have died on that station when it exploded threatened to send her into new spirals of anxiety-stricken grief.

“So, he’s alive,” Catra said, pushing all other thoughts out of her head to focus on getting back to the original conversation. “Corynth. What now?”

Taline tapped a restless rhythm the table she was still leaning against. “Our mission to Archanas is too important to divert from,” she said. “He had a hand in helping them crack the algorithm encrypting Moriarty’s files, I’m just sure of it. We can’t abandon that lead.”

“Why do I get the feeling there’s a ‘but’ coming in the next sentence?” Catra asked.

“But”—Taline smirked at Catra as she said it—“once we’re done on Archanas, I’ll need to set out again and hunt him down. He can’t be allowed to live.”

“But why, though?”

Taline shot her a genuinely puzzled look, and Catra sighed and shook her head in response.

“Why does he need to die? If he’s alive now that means he’s been alive for the past decade, too. It’s not like he’s been marauding around wreaking open havoc, and you two haven’t actually talked to each other in all this time either, just like Adora and I haven’t. Why can’t you just talk?”

“Talk?”

“Or start by talking, I don’t know!” Catra flailed her arms in a vague gesture to try and get her point across. “You two haven’t talked in all this time, just like Adora and I haven’t, and unless I’m mistaken, he was trying to reason with you and ask you to come with them when they escaped with your sister, right? Why does step one have to be throwing lightning bolts?”

Taline scowled and that was all the proof Catra needed to know, yet again, she’d made a good point. Taline had never gotten the opportunity for her feelings of betrayal to be validated. Just like Catra’s last conversation with Adora, they went their separate ways before reaching any sort of definite conclusion, each having to carry forward without any sense of closure good or bad. Adora had just reached out trying to mend things. Catra didn’t want to see Taline kill any chance of possibly getting the same for herself.

“We didn’t speak to one another after that day with the envoy,” Taline said. “Not until the trial. I’d planned on confronting him after, thinking Evie would agree to research ignominite and comply with the emperor’s wishes to avoid death. But she didn’t. It never crossed my mind that she might refuse him, and before I knew it, they were trying to escape and succeeding at it. By then, the only thing I could think of was getting Evie away from Corynth. I still half believe he had her under some kind of spell and she hadn’t made the decision to refuse Horde Prime of her own volition.”

“Can he even do that?” The look on Taline’s face when she asked was answer enough and Catra shook her head. “Never mind, I actually don’t want to know if he can mind control people. What if he was telling you the truth then, though?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if he really did care about you? Lies and half truths aside, what if the relationship you had before everything fell apart was real? What if he believed Evelyn and that was why he backed her up to the extent he revealed the existence of the Daiamid to everyone? He already did that much with the La Valettes and he said he’d do as much again in order to protect you, didn’t he? What if he was sincere?”

“Catra—"

 “He was part of a secretive group that committed countless atrocities, sure. He also kept that from you and broke any sense of trust you had for him, yes, but what if the only reason you or I or anyone else in this god’s forsaken galaxy is still alive is because he decided to step up and do the right thing when it really, really counted?”

Catra realized halfway through that she was repeating the same things she’d told herself when coming to terms with Adora’s betrayal, but this time to Taline on behalf of Corynth—someone she’d never actually met. Her breathing had turned labored, and she was gripping the leather of the chair she’d been sitting in so hard her claws were digging into the cushioning. Why was she pushing this so hard?

“What if one of you kills the other without either of you finding out the truth?” she asked.

Catra felt like Taline could see right through her the way she was looking at her. Much of her own feelings on redemption were getting tangled into this and she wasn’t doing a good job hiding it, she knew. She’d done horrible things as part of the Horde before Etheria came back into the wider universe and Taline had been the one to whisk her away from it all. Everything she’d built for herself was thanks in part to her.

A new, chilling thought came to her: was it fair to say she wasn’t deserving of those opportunities if Taline decided to dedicate her life once again to hunting down and executing someone else who’d also supposedly committed atrocities as part of a belligerent group? Was all of her progress thus far just some casual fluke that the universe would invalidate soon enough? It didn’t make any sense logically, of course, but it didn’t have to. The feelings were real enough.

Taline must have read all of that too, because she shook her head, went to her, and put a firm hand on her shoulder to ground her.

“It’s not like that,” Taline said. “I have to kill him because he’s too dangerous to be left alive, my personal feelings aside.”

Catra looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

“He survived the final confrontation on Archanas. The Beast infestation there was so strong and concentrated, it turned the other few hundred Shapers there with him to ash before the Barrier sealed the thing away, remember? Corynth was powerful, immensely so, but even he has limits. Archanas still drives people mad years after its death. Do you really think anyone could survive having touched the thing when it was living? Do you think they have any chance of still being sane, still being themselves, if they had?”

Ah, now Catra understood. Whoever Adora was traveling with, even if it looked and talked and proclaimed itself to be Corynth, it likely wasn’t the same person. Not really.

“You’re to kill me if the Beast corrupts me,” Taline said. “It’s your duty as my Sentinel. It’s my duty to kill Corynth, now that he’s surely corrupted beyond saving. Abominations, especially powerful ones like he no doubt is, could easily blend in for a decade, even longer. I’m likely the only person alive strong enough to have a chance at destroying him. I’m probably not strong enough, truth be told, but the opportunity for us to have talked things out is…long in the past, I’m afraid.”

Catra nodded. She couldn’t point out why, but Taline’s explanation just made her feel sad for her.

Taline gave Catra’s should a squeeze. “There’s something else.”

Already that sounded bad. What else could there possibly be, after that? Catra tried to stamp down the knot of anxiety that was growing unchecked under her sternum.

“That message I took earlier also mentioned that we lost another planet to the Beast. Scavria.”

“Scavria isn’t that far from Archanas,” Catra said, frowning. “They’re both on the Kaloshi Border. How concerned is Imperial Command about the local Barrier node? It’s within jumping distance, if I remember correctly”

“You are remembering correctly, and they’re fairly concerned,” Taline said with a sigh. “It also happens to be where Glimmer was deployed. An Abomination appeared in the capital city when they were on the verge of retaking it. The whole planet is lost.”

That knot of anxiety turned into a dense stone that dropped into her stomach. “Don’t tell me that Glimmer…”

“She’s alive,” Taline said quickly, shaking her head. “She’s alive, but somehow escaped only after several hours of orbital bombardment. She’s quarantined and receiving the best care aboard the Omen-Kador, the flagship. I happen to know the Admiral leading the detachment. He assured me she’s in good health, but were being coy with the details.”

Catra breathed a half sigh of relief. Glimmer was alright, thank god. But another planet lost? And this time to another confirmed Abomination? “Poor Glimmer,” Catra said, biting her lip. “First Rinne and now this?”

“From what I’ve heard, it took them by surprise. They didn’t want to say too much, but it seemed like the Beast was…different this time.”

“Different how?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Taline said. “We won’t be able to contact Glimmer yet until the mission is over. They blacked out all nonessential communications until the campaign officially concludes. But once they’ve bombarded the planet into submission, her assignment should be over and she’ll finally get her shore leave. Whatever happened there was likely traumatic—likely similar to Rinne, if not worse. She’ll need some time to adjust and it might be…rough at first when you see her again.”

“Whatever she needs,” Catra said, nodding. “And I’ll be there for her regardless.”

“I know you will.” Taline squeezed her shoulder a third time, and Catra used the gesture to drag herself out of spiraling thoughts and worries.

“Whatever it is that happened, both on Eden and on Scavria, we’ll find out,” Taline said. “If Adora is still alive, I promise you I won’t let anything else happen to her. Regardless of his motives, Corynth won’t have the chance to manipulating her anymore. Glimmer will come home, and if she needs something to help get her through her latest experiences, we’ll both be there to help her. It’s not all on you, I’m here as well. Ever since I took you from Etheria, I’ve been here and I will continue to be here. For you, for Glimmer, and soon for Adora.”

Pip floated into view and landed with dainty feet on top of Catra’s knee, looking up at her with a determined expression. Catra had forgotten she was there, but when Pip looked up at her with a determined expression and gave a single, firm nod as if to agree directly with Taline, she felt as if a weight had lifted from her shoulders.

“I know,” Catra reached up to lay her hand on top of Taline’s over her shoulder. “Thank you.”

Taline pulled away and, mentioning the need to check on the bridge as they make their arrival, left. Catra remained seated, watching her go. When the doors hissed shut and she was alone in Taline’s quarters, she slid over to the control console and played Adora’s message again from the beginning.

She and Pip watched the recording a fourth time and then a fifth. Neither said a word to one another.

Chapter Text

Adora sat in the copilot’s chair on the Dzivia, staring at the hyperspace tunnel bursting outside the view screens. The door at the back hissed open and she turned, already halfway out the seat to help Corynth. How had she not heard him wandering the ship, or noticed the empty infirmary bed on the security footage? She’d had it up on one of the forward screens specifically to keep an eye on him.

“I made it to the cockpit on my own,” Corynth said, waving her off before she got to him. “I can make it to the chair on my own, too.”

Adora settled back in, but didn’t take his eyes off him as he made his way to the front. The fact he was up and about on his own without her constant help was a big improvement, but he still wasn’t fully healed if the grimace on his face and subtle lines of exertion around his eyes as he lowered himself into the pilot’s chair were any indication.

Adora let him settle in. With him having spent most of the previous days recuperating in the same medical bay she’d first woken up in, it had fallen to her to learn how to make the sand-food concoctions in the kitchen for the both of them to eat. When she’d discovered boxes of ready-made snacks in one of the cupboards as well, she’d taken to carrying handfuls of them with her to eat whenever the mood struck.

A pile of such snack bars was sitting atop the dashboard, nearly depleted on account of her stress eating the previous hour. She grabbed one and held it out for him. Corynth took it with a muted ‘thanks,’ and Adora wordlessly tried to go back to what she’d been doing before he joined her: staring out at the hyperspace tunnel with a blank mind.

“What’s up with you?” Corynth asked after an indeterminate amount of time had passed in silence.

Adora turned to him, her eyes trailing down at the unopened snack still sitting in his lap before flicking back to his face. He seemed to be looking straight through her, and she suddenly wished she could just disappear.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask if anything was wrong,” Corynth said. “I just asked what was up with you.”

Adora frowned and tilted her head back until it lay flush against the headrest. Wasn’t that the same thing? Playing semantics was the last thing she wanted to do, but then again, she’d always been a terrible liar anyways.

“I’m worried about them,” she said. “Ly and Vasher. Eden looked like it blew apart seconds after we got free of it. I don’t know if they got out in time.”

“They’re fine,” Corynth said, adjusting himself in the pilot’s chair the way someone did when their whole body still ached. “Trust me. They’ve escaped far worse situations, and have pulled me out of spots I didn’t think I could get myself out of in the past as well. They’ll have made it out.”

Adora hmm’d  but didn’t say anything further. She hoped by not engaging and not even looking at him—by keeping her eyes trained on the tunnel in front of her—he’d stop probing her.

She wasn’t being truthful with him. Sure, she’d been worried about Ly and Vasher—how could she not?—but she’d only told him that to hopefully keep him from finding out what was actually bothering her. As soon as it became apparent he’d recover from his injuries, or at least not die outright because of them after they’d escaped, something else had plagued her mind. And Corynth, with nothing but his silence, somehow was able to communicate to Adora that he knew all of this and was waiting for her to come clean.

“Do you think I’ll get a response from Catra before we get to Phoenix Station?” she said instead, trying a second time to deflect.

Adora cringed the moment the words left her mouth. She’d already asked that question, and he had already answered it at least twice already. In the preceding days, Corynth had asked about her history with Catra, and she’d told him everything. And he’d helped get her anxiety over not hearing back—or worse, being actively rejected after so many years apart—to a manageable state, so the fact she was still deflecting again was even more obvious than the comment about Ly and Vasher.

“What is it really?” he asked. “You can ask me anything you’d like.”

Adora closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me who you really were?”

She felt like she was about to throw up. If she saw distrust—or worse, apathy—on his face after finally mustering the courage to confront him about this, she might just die. She didn’t want to open her eyes, didn’t want to look at him. Part of her knew she was being perhaps a little overdramatic, but she’d just come to admit she was grateful for having traveled off Etheria with him despite how rough of a start they got. Finding out he didn’t feel the same would be catastrophic.

“I don’t distrust you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Corynth said, gentler than Adora would have expected. She still didn’t look at him.

“I only attacked you the first time we met, chased after you, damaged your ship, then acted very distrusting of you when you patched me up afterward. But it’s not because you distrust me.” Adora gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Of course not.”

Corynth chuckled wit her and that only put her more on guard. She whirled in the chair to face him, a sharp comment defending herself from his teasing already on the tip of her tongue. When she saw his smirk and the mirth sparkling in his eyes, though, she came up short.

“You stared me down when I was helping deliver Entrapta’s equipment, but I got away before you could do anything,” he said. “Technically we fought the second time we met, if you’re counting by the number of times you saw me, too. More if not.”

“We crossed paths before then?”

“Did you forget that I was wandering all around Etheria for three years before you realized I was there?”

Adora crossed her arms and pouted, and Corynth laughed again.

“I’d heard all about you and had seen you in person several times already before you ever noticed me,” he said. “Even if we weren’t on good terms, and even if you didn’t trust me, I knew you wouldn’t betray me if I’d told you my name wasn’t really Kallanthe.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” she asked. “I probably wouldn’t have found out at all if that Abomination showed up. You would have just continued to pretend to be Kal.” The look on his face told her she was right, and her stomach plummeted. “Why keep me in the dark if not because you don’t trust me?”

Her eyes burned with unshed tears and she was convinced anything he said or didn’t say would end with her crying. Corynth took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair to stare at the hyperspace tunnel. Suddenly, he looked older and much more tired.

“I just didn’t know what to do and ended up saying nothing at all,” he said at last. “You were already on edge and I worried telling you would make it worse. Not because I didn’t trust you, but because I know you didn’t trust me. Any way I thought to put it, I was convinced it would just make things worse, so I didn’t say anything.” He frowned and glanced sidelong at her. “Truthfully, it’s never gone well in the past, either.”

Surprisingly, this answer got Adora more curious than upset. Him not saying anything because he’d worried she didn’t trust him instead of the other way around made sense, but…

“I would have been quicker to trust you if you told me who you were from the start,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yes! Why does it sound like you don’t believe me?”

“I have a hard time believing things people tell me.”

He’d said it like he was telling her what he’d eaten for breakfast, and Adora narrowed her eyes at him in disbelief. “You’ve seen some of the most outlandish things to ever happen in the galaxy, things that probably break the laws of physics, and you say you have a hard time believing what people say?”

Corynth shrugged and Adora tilted her head up to the cockpit ceiling and groaned. This man was a frustrating enigma, but he’d assuaged her fears about being distrusted or disliked, at least. And if someone with his life experience and power could get hung up on such trivial, pedestrian issues, then maybe her struggles with her powers weren’t such a far-fetched thing, either.

“What did you mean when you said it’s never gone well for you in the past?” Adora asked. “Are you talking about Taline? Salas had told me she was meant to join the Daiamid but fought against you after Evelyn was put on trial.”

To her surprise and relief, Corynth seemed to already know Salas had fed her information. “That’s an example of it working out poorly when I chose not to tell someone who I was. Before that, everything fell apart after I did tell someone who I was.” Corynth pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the armrest of the chair. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Me not saying anything to you wasn’t personal, Adora.”

“I know it wasn’t,” she said, “but what happened before, when you did tell someone? I’ve never heard that story before.”

Corynth laughed. “You wouldn’t have. It’s not something most anyone would know, actually. Even when I was one of the most wanted people in the empire for a time, they couldn’t propagandize that story to demonize me to the public either. I doubt anyone other than those who know me personally, know that story.”

Adora shifted in her seat, timid. “What happened?”

“You actually want to know?”

Of course she wanted to know, but Adora didn’t trust herself to speak. She nodded once, and the look on Corynth’s face betrayed his surprise. Or was it skepticism? She hoped it was surprise and not actually a reluctance to tell a story he apparently only shared with friends. What would it mean if he refused her, then? Adora didn’t want to think about it, so she instead forced herself to utter, “Please,” to hopefully nudge him to speak.

Finally—finally—Corynth spoke and told her everything. He told her how he’d been born into the secretive Daiamid sect, knew nothing about anything except what they groomed him for and, after initiating into their ranks as a full member, went on assassination mission after assassination mission as decreed by the emperor whom he served. Adora listened with rapt attention as he explained how, after a time, they’d sent him to exterminate a highly influential family—an aristocratic lineage called House La Valette with ties reaching back to the very founding of the empire.

“This was different from the other assignments,” he said. “Those were quick kills. This time, though, Prime wanted the entire family line gone in one go and he wanted it to look like an accident. Politically speaking, they were very powerful, which was part of the reason why he wanted them gone to begin with. The job took planning. There was infiltration on my part over the course of months to earn their trust.”

“You didn’t want to kill them once you got to know them,” Adora said. Strange that she could guess where the story was going before he’d explained, but something about the person she’d come to know—both over the course of their adventures and from how his friends spoke of him—told her that’s what had happened.

Corynth gave a humorless laugh and when he spoke, Adora could hear the bitterness tingeing his voice. “Imagine growing up in a death cult only to finally grow a conscience as a teenager. It would have been easier if I’d just become a fully entrenched psychopath like I was supposed to.”

 “Something tells me everyone would have died long time ago if that was the case.”

“Like I said, it would have been easier. Dead people don’t have hardships. They’re dead.”

The morbidity in his words shook Adora. It sounded like something he’d joke about, but she couldn’t hear any hint of a joke in his voice and that scared her. He didn’t really believe that, did he?

“I told them who I was,” Corynth said, bringing her back. “The La Valettes. I told them what I was there to do, and I tried to help them escape their fate. The Daiamid just sent someone else to finish the contract. As for me…the penalty for revealing the Daiamid’s existence to any unsanctioned outsider was death. They sent me to one of the empire’s black-site research stations as ‘security.’” He made air quotes, and the disdain in his voice was plain as he continued.

“At the time, serving on one of those stations was a guaranteed death sentence because Evelyn still hadn’t invented a reliable way to contain the Beast with ignominite yet. The plan back then was to progress with research before an infection inevitably broke out and everyone was killed, then another team with another two-to-four-month window would carry that research forward until a breakthrough.” He laughed, and it was derisive, sneering, and cold. “They didn’t plan on me or anyone else surviving the outbreak. I met Evelyn on that station, actually. I protected her when the outbreak occurred. No one else had been able to do such a thing. Not even my brothers and sisters who had condemned me.”

Corynth kept his eyes forward, staring out at the hyperspace tunnel as if it were the one reciting the story and his body were merely a vessel to convey the words. Unshed tears made his eyes look glossy, and they reflected the brilliant kaleidoscope of colors from the tunnel.

Adora didn’t take her eyes off him. She didn’t think she could if she’d tried.  For all the information littering the empire about him, the sheer humanity on display before her was staggering. This wasn’t the version of Corynth she’d come to know from the empire’s propaganda.

“I told the La Valettes of my true identity hoping to spare them death, yet death came for them all the same. Evelyn found who I really was after the station succumbed, too,” he said. “How could she not? Death came for her, too, in the end. Although, it took a little longer.”

Adora’s jaw hinged open, appalled. “You saved her!” she said. “You saved her, and she was able to research things that saved trillions more lives. We’re on our way to shore up the Barrier right now and end the Beast threat forever, something she discovered only because you saved her in the first place!”

Corynth smile was forced. “She said the same thing, years ago. I didn’t even bring the subject up, she just sensed I had a lot on my mind one day and said that to me.”

Adora pressed her lips into a thin line and refrained from saying anything further. What more could she say if the truth didn’t work? She’d been unable to reach Catra with it when she’d defected from the Horde, too. The only difference between her from then and now was now she was older and a little wiser. Now she understood that rational truth frequently did nothing productive in the face of emotion, and thus she could understand Corynth’s pessimism.

“I promised myself to do it differently with Taline,” he said. “Something had happened on Archanas, and the Daiamid reached out to recruit her. Evelyn wanted me to reveal my association with them before they did…she was worried Taline wouldn’t take their visit well. I didn’t want a repeat of what they had done to me the first time I broke their rules, especially with Evelyn and Taline’s lives potentially on the line if it went bad. I promised I’d tell her after they made contact with her first.

“She killed our envoy.” Corynth shook his head in disbelief with a smile and twinkling, reminiscing eyes. “I’d run every scenario in my head thinking up the best way to tell her who I was, thinking about how best to acclimate her to the idea of the Daiamid after they’d revealed themselves to her, but her outright killing the envoy had never once crossed my mind. I wasn’t even mad, I was amazed. I remember still having a hard time believing she’d done it even as I stared at his body lying in two separate corners of the room. And even though I wanted to, I couldn’t tell her who I was. Not after that.”

“Why not?” Adora asked.

“Because they were going to come for her. She spurned the invitation. They’d told her about what they did the La Valettes without implicating me, and Taline had decided if they could do away with such a powerful family with impunity, then it was only a matter of time before she’d fall victim to them out of revenge. She’d almost died killing the first one they’d sent.”

“But she’s not dead,” Adora said. “She’s alive, and all of the Daiamid except for you are dead.”

“Funny how that works, isn’t it? She was in danger, but they couldn’t come after her so soon after what had happened.” A reader on the cockpit beeped, indicating they’d traveled another AU closer to their destination. “Taline’s name had taken off like wildfire through the galaxy because of what she’d reportedly done on a recently infected world. You couldn’t go twenty minutes on even a backwater imperial settlement without hearing one story or another of the newly minted Seraph of Archanas. Those who led the Daiamid, the Old Guard, they knew that killing her then would only bring unwanted scrutiny that not even they could avoid. So, they played the long game. They wanted the fervor around her exploits to die down first, then kill her and make it look like an accident out in the field.”

“No one would think twice about her dying on another world fighting off a Beast infection,” Adora said. “It’d still draw attention, but it wouldn’t seem strange and the narrative would stick.”

Corynth nodded.

“What changed, then?” Adora asked. “You showed your hand at Evelyn’s trial. When Horde Prime ordered her executed for choosing to pursue research on the Barrier instead of follow his orders, you were in charge of the Daiamid. You revealed the entire sect to everyone watching. Every one of your brothers and sisters in that room followed your lead to protect her, not anyone else’s.”

“What changed is I became their new leader.” Corynth finally looked at her, and the glint in his eyes sent a shiver down her spine. The expressiveness of his face had gone, replaced with a mask as hard and cold as steel. “The Old Guard led through merciless brutality and were insulated from outside contact. It took planning and subterfuge on my end in order to get close enough to assassinate them and take over. It took time.”

Adora swallowed. “H-how did you pull it off?”

“I went along with their plans to kill Taline. In fact, I made myself a key component of those plans. I was an outcast after having survived my death sentence, so I portrayed someone desperate to regain favor in the Old Guard’s eyes. Because Taline and I were…involved, I put myself forward as a direct line to her. Any and all information about her whereabouts, her standing in the public—everything—I gave it to them. And shortly before Evelyn’s trial, I’d succeeded. I had curried enough favor to gain a direct audience.

“I murdered the entire Old Guard. All of them and their sympathizers, all at once. The most powerful and accomplished members of the Daiamid together could not stand up to me. Brutality and mercilessness was their legacy, so I killed them in a manner befitting that legacy. Some of my brothers and sisters were kind. Some were driven to do horrible things out of fear and ignorance of a different way despite how they wished they didn’t have to.

“I’d tried to emulate that for myself once, but”—he broke eye contact and drew in a shaky breath—“I ended up getting crushed all the same. It wasn’t until I came back with a bigger stick, for lack of a better phrase, that things could change. I executed the Old Guard in a way that freed those with empathy from murdering, and demanded complete obedience, if not begrudging respect, from everyone else who valued their lives.”

“And with everyone in line, either through fear or true respect, Taline was no longer in danger,” Adora said.

“It came at great cost, but…yes. Telling her of my involvement and identity before taking over wasn’t an option, since it would have only put her at further risk. My support for Evelyn, my decision to rebuke the emperor and reveal our existence to the public, it was a declaration of a new course I intended to take the Daiamid as an organization. It worked, since everyone either followed or fell in line and Evelyn’s science team were able to complete their research on the Barrier, but…”

“You lost Taline.”

Corynth nodded. “Among other things, but yes. The moment she found out who I was, I lost her.” He paused, then, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Adora’s eyes stung with welling tears. She no longer blamed him for keeping secrets. Hell, she wasn’t even upset at it having happened now that she had context. Instead, there was pain in his voice despite the look lingering in his eyes, and that had done enough to move her despite him turning his gaze back to the hyperspace tunnel.

“You know, Vasher and Ly would leave me in the cockpit for hours like this when we ran smuggling jobs,” he said. “Ly was the pilot, but she often gave me the space during transit. I’d stare out the viewscreen the whole time.”

“It is oddly therapeutic once you get used to it,” Adora said, for lack of anything better.

“Sometimes, if I stare long enough, I can almost hear her voice again. Taline has a beautiful singing voice, believe it or not, but I’d rarely ever hear it since she’d get embarrassed letting anyone listen. Usually, she’d be distracted with some chore and start humming to herself, forgetting anyone was there for a moment.

“Sometimes, it’d be the only thing that would help me get to sleep, and then she’d get mad-but-not-actually-mad at me for falling asleep in the middle of the day. She’d never actually wake me up once she realized I’d dozed off.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest. “It’s been so many years since I’d last heard her sing. And I’m so very, very tired.”

The steel in his eyes had faded, leaving nothing left. Even the beautiful colors of the hyperspace tunnel barely reflected there anymore, leaving him lifeless and empty, and Adora finally turned fully away to wipe quickly at the tears that had fallen down her cheeks. It had been a long time since she’d cried in earnest, and despite how she hated the feeling, something deep inside her began to unravel. Something she hadn’t realized was knotted there to begin with.

“I should thank you,” Corynth said after a moment.

Adora started to speak, then cleared her throat when her words came out thick and raspy. “Thank me for what?”

 “I’d run out of motivation after Pip failed to decode the Eye,” he said. “When you first confronted me in your castle, that was supposed to be the end of my mission. Pip was to bring the Barrier up to full strength with what she’d pull from the Eye. When that failed and the castle attacked us, that was the last straw for me. I was discouraged, and I saw no way to come back from it.”

He turned back to her and Adora nearly hid her face from him again, until she saw that the light in his eyes had come back, and he was smiling at her.

“Seeing you leap four stories in the air just to catch me got me going again, so, thank you for the inspiration.”

“I put a hole in your ship, dude. Then I yelled at you while you made me food.” Adora grinned when that pulled a laugh out of him. All the heaviness from earlier had evaporated. She felt light.

“Both of these are true,” Corynth said, playing with the still unopened snack bar in his lap. “If seeing you reawaken your powers just to chase me helped kick me into high gear, then putting up with you for the first leg of our journey kept me occupied enough not to slip back.”

Adora pursed her lips. “Partially reawaken my powers,” she said, correcting him as their shift in top jogged her memory. “Wait, you can help me with that! Salas told me.”

Corynth paused. “Salas…told you what, exactly?”

“I was struggling so much I went to talk to him. He said my powers, the way I draw them from my runestone, it’s not dissimilar to how you and the Daiamid shape your own magic. He said that Taline would have made a good teacher since she was supposed to join, but you’re here now. You can help me.”

She bounced in the chair from excitement, and wondered why Corynth didn’t seem as enthused.

He grimaced and said, “Salas was making a lot of assumptions.”

Adora’s bouncing slowed, then stopped. “Is that not how your powers work, pulling it from a source?”

“It’s an oversimplification. And even if it weren’t, there isn’t much I could do to help with your specific problem.”

Salas was wrong? He couldn’t be wrong; he was the only one who’d had anything helpful to say in the first place. Even Angella had vouched for him. “I don’t understand,” she said.

Corynth gave her what she thought was a sympathetic look. “How do you imagine the magic works in the first place, yours and mine?”

Adora chewed her lip and gave him the best rundown she could: that on Etheria, princesses like her and Glimmer drew it from their runestones to manipulate freely as they saw fit, while sorcerers like Micah would draw runes. Micah had explained it once, how Etherian and Enclave sorcerers used magic in similar. Admittedly, she didn’t know nearly as much as she thought she might have, given how little she could explain beyond that.

“The magic taught at Mystacor is a branch of Enclave magic, this is true,” Corynth said. “It was interesting researching the similarities while I was there. There are variations and dialectical differences in the actual runes they use and the effects those spells engender, but they are indeed cousins of a sort. Even the pedagogy that drive the education of Enclave and Mystacor initiates are similar.”

Adora had somehow forgotten Corynth was not only a mythically powerful magic user, but had also traveled for years to every kingdom on Etheria before having officially met. There was a reason he’d been able to successfully masquerade as a Battlemage to Taline in the decades prior, too. Seeing this expertise come out in explicit terms, however, was jarring compared to how he’d normally acted with her so far. It might have given her hope for maybe learning to unlock her powers from him, too, if he hadn’t already cast doubt on it.

“Transmutation of energy is difficult,” he said. “In all forms of teaching, it’s something that takes normal mages years of dedicated study and practice with runes to pull off. You Etherian princesses can do the same without the need to draw complicated circuitry first, provided you have an adequate source of energy such as your runestones. Doing even that much is an incredible feat of magical skill.”

“And the Daiamid?” Adora asked. “You said the similarities Salas told me about were an oversimplification.”

“We were known for casting powerful spells without the need for runes or a store of magic energy. We ‘shaped’ reality as we saw fit, purely from the strength of our will.”

“Okay…” Adora chewed her lip. “So, I get the link between Mystacor and the Enclave, but it still sounds like there is some sort of connection between the Daiamid and the princesses.”

“I never said there isn’t, I just said what Salas told you was an oversimplification. Once you access the magic in your runestones, the way you wield that magic is similar to how I shape mine.”

It should have been good news, since it seemed to Adora like a good reason for Corynth to be able to help her. The expression on his face, however, still didn’t give her hope.

“My people were once a dominant power in the galaxy thousands of years ago,” he said. “Before Horde Prime, we warred with the Eternians—your ancestors. Etheria was one of their colonies before it disappeared, and it was rife with magic energy back then, even more than it is today.

“I’m not sure how exactly those runestones were first created. Looking back in time with Evelyn never did yield answers, but whether they were a byproduct of Eternian technology or a natural occurrence that they merely harnessed, I’m not sure. What I am sure of, however, is that the Eternians took inspiration from my people, from our Shaper Kings of Old, when forging connections to those runestones. Connections that are hereditary to each kingdom’s princess and now underly the foundation of their power, generations later.”

Adora still didn’t understand what the problem was. “If we cast the same way, then why can’t you help me?”

“Because we don’t cast the same, Adora,” he said, agitated. “It is similar but not the same, and if you think that is too pedantic a difference to matter then you haven’t been paying attention to the lessons you received back home. The Eternians didn’t copy us, especially after they found out how the old Shapers’ magic worked, they only reverse engineered what they could to better arm themselves against us in a conflict. Their choice to tie the execution of their magic to runestones was deliberate.”

Adora narrowed her eyes at him. “You killed an Abomination before it had the chance to infect an entire settlement. Why do I get the sense that’s not even scratching the surface of what you’re capable of? I only held out against it for a handful of seconds.” When he didn’t respond, at first, she doubled down. “What exactly is the extent of your power?”

He laughed and said, “At this point, it’d probably be easier to categorize things I can’t do, rather than the extent of things I can.” Adora didn’t laugh with him and he sobered. “Not everyone in the old Daiamid kingdoms were sorcerers. Much like the dichotomy between Enclave mages and their standing army, there were rank and file Daiamid soldiers who couldn’t perform magic, led by those who could.

“And just as there is a distinction between an Enclave mage and an Enclave Battlemage—between those who assist Salas and Salas himself—among the old Daiamid Sorcerors, there were only a handful of Shaper Kings. Exceptionally powerful individuals that gained the power to shape reality itself after surviving an initiation ritual.

“In their hubris, they eventually fell. And once Horde Prime had conquered the known galaxy, he’d kept a small number of rank-and-file Daiamid sorcerers who swore fealty to him, exploiting their more-than-capable rune-less spellcasting for his own benefit,  enshrouding them in mystery and employing them for clandestine assassinations and espionage assignments. He called them ‘Shapers,’ perhaps as a way to subtly mock the old rulers he’d toppled, but the true Shaper Kings would never have bowed to him and so all were exterminated. Those that remained in the emperor’s faction were fake.”

“And what about you?”

“I am genuine,” he said, fixing her with a grave look. “I am the first in countless generations to wield the old magic in its purest form. I can bend the fabric of reality itself to my will. I can create fire from nothing and have it burn so hot it turns a person to ash within an instant. I can accelerate the flow of time and turn that same person to atoms instead of ash. If I so desire, I can reach back through time and enmesh it with our current reality.”

He leaned toward Adora and she shied away from him, unsure of what else to do in the face of his sudden intensity. “The great hall of some decrepit ancient castle can manifest newly built once again if I so desire, as can the people inside who once walked its halls but now lay buried in the ground. I could make them appear as they were thousands of years ago, drinking and singing and reveling with their loved ones. Here and now, should I but desire it strongly enough.”

Adora scowled at him. “Why don’t you just ‘wish’ the Beast away, then? If your so powerful you could resurrect the dead, why are we doing this whole song and dance running around the galaxy trying to seal it away with some giant crystal?”

“Where do you think the knowledge of all the old magic comes from? The power to do all of that?” 

“Your powers come from the Beast?”

He gave her a blank look and Adora slammed two fists down on her chair’s armrests.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Is it here because of you? Did you bring it?”

Corynth shook his head. “No. I became this way because of it. I didn’t bring it here.”

Adora watched him again, looking for any sign of a lie. She found none, although she didn’t trust her skill in reading faces enough to say for sure whether or not he was telling the truth. She sat back, crossing her arms and thought, trying to ignore how her heart raced.

“Your runestone is a receptacle for your powers,” Corynth said. He reached into the folds of his shirt to extract the blood-red ignominite crystal Ly had given him on Eden, containing the pieces of the Beast she’d extracted from the Eye of Shukra. “If we were to use the same analogy, then this would be like a runestone for me.”

“But you don’t need a runestone or apeiron or any other receptacle to use your powers,” Adora said. “You just told me. You were even able to cast back on Etheria before you had that.”

“Yes, well it was just an analogy to help explain,” he said, stowing the crystal away again. “Maybe a bad analogy. Anyway, when the Beast infected the Evie’s first research station—the same station I had been assigned to die on—I saved her from succumbing to the infection. And when I did that, I inadvertently completed the ancient ritual none of my people had been able to perform since Prime’s ascension. Because I somehow retained my sense of self, I became one of my people’s fabled Shaper Kings of old. The first in thousands of years.”

Adora considered that, the tension in her shoulders and adrenaline in her veins lessening the more she realized Corynth’s explanation of things made sense and was consistent. She was grateful they hadn’t devolved into another shouting match based on distrust for one another. “Now I understand how Salas’ explanation might have oversimplified things,” she said. “But I still think you can help me.”

She wasn’t about to let it go that easily. She’d run herself ragged for years trying for even the smallest of breakthroughs. She’d had several since leaving Etheria with him and was within grasping distance of another; she’d be damned if she let the opportunity just slip by.

“I know, I know,” she said when Corynth looked unconvinced. “Our powers work similarly but are fundamentally different. I get mine from a rock, and you get yours from some inter-dimensional eldritch horror that’s consuming our galaxy, fine. I might not know exactly how that works, but the point is, we both cast magic and the method through which you get it to work is the same as mine. You think of something, wish for something, ‘will’ it to happen, so to speak, and it happens. I used to be able to do the same with my runestone. I used to be able to call on She Ra and transform at will, and now I can’t.”

Adora felt as if the fate of the galaxy rested on how Corynth responded. The thought seemed dire, and for once she hoped she was just catastrophizing her feelings as per usual.

“How exactly do you imagine me helping?” he asked at last.

Adora scrunched up her nose like she’d smelled something repulsive. “I can’t believe I’m actually going to say this and give her credit, but Shadow Weaver helped get me through a particularly nasty block when I was trying to heal her. She explained exactly what was going on with me up in here”—she pointed to her head—“and guided me through the emotions and how to respond to them in the moment until I figured it out. Maybe you could do the same for me?”

She’d expected him to think it over, or worse, expected to see a refusal plain on his face. Instead, he looked away again and started playing with the wrapper of the still-unopened snack she’d given him. Was he…uncomfortable?

“There’s something else, isn’t there?” she asked. “What haven’t you told me?”

“The Eternian’s decision to tie their most powerful rulers to Etheria’s runestones was a deliberate choice, like I said, but they only came to that decision after too many failed attempts to recreate our method of casting magic in full, first.”

Adora didn’t like what that implied. “Explain.”

“We are Masters of the Universe.” Corynth effected an official tone that told Adora he was reciting something from memory. “We shape that which is. Reality persists at our sole discretion, and it is by our sole discretion that reality may change. To affect this power without the belief one is worthy of it—to put on the airs of a Shaper but hold not the substance of one within your heart of hearts—it is the height of hubris. It is anathema. It is Abomination.”

A beat passed between them. “Sound familiar?” he asked.

Adora shook her head.

“That is the first stanza of the Daiamid initiation ritual,” he said. “It’s more of a warning, really, to those who would take it on. It involved calling forth a strain of the World Eater, as we’d called it. If you survived touching it, if you kept your sense of self after it attempted to subsume you, then you were proclaimed ‘Shaper,’ able to wield power beyond recognition through the old magic. If you failed and the Beast took you instead, you were an Abomination, and subsequently executed before you could spread your corruption to others.”

He pointed to himself and said, “The only difference between myself and any of the countless Abominations that sprung up during the last war is that I was strong enough, both magically and in my self-identity, to survive being touched by the Beast. They were not.”

“Alright...” Adora said. She wasn’t sure what significance she was supposed to have gleaned from that. Why would that make Corynth hesitate to help her?

“The forbidden archives on Mystacor have written instructions on how to perform what’s known as the Spell of Obtainment. That stanza prefaces those instructions too. It’s the same text, warning practitioners of the risks involved in invoking the spell.”

“No.” Adora pressed herself further into the chair and squeezed her eyes shut. Micah had told her the story of ‘Light Spinner’ and what the Spell of Obtainment had turned his mentor—her foster mother—into. “No, no, no.”

“I understand it might be a lot to take in,” he said in a gentle voice. “But it’s true. The ties between Mystacor, the Enclave, and the Daiamid are concrete. If there—"

“Shadow Weaver is a Shaper?” Adora fixated on him, searching even harder this time for any sign of a lie, this time hoping to find one.

“Technically she is,” Corynth said. “While it did leave her malformed, from what I’ve heard, she retained her individuality. She is considered one of us.” He reached up and tapped his forehead with his index finger. “She even made a mask for herself in our same style. Probably to hide her disfigurement, sure, but the design had all the ritual and symbolic markers.”

Adora deflated, unsure of what to say, unsure of what to think. Maybe she’d never get up from that chair again. Shadow Weaver had been a sore subject even when she was still around, and the one silver lining to the pressures of the previous few years was that Adora had used it as excuse to pack everything ‘Shadow Weaver’ into a box in her head and shove it far, far down in her head. These revelations about her lust for power and its abstract ties to the man sitting next to her made her impossible to ignore anymore.

She’d used that magic to torture Catra. Torture Glimmer. Nearly wipe her own memory! The power to inflict that came from the same source Corynth had used to save everyone on Eden? Save her at the Crystal Castle? The very same source that had been eating away at the galaxy for years, planet by planet and system by system?

She was so in her head she startled when Corynth moved out the corner of her vision. He was holding out the snack bar she’d first offered him for her to take. It was such a random gesture she didn’t know how to respond, at first. She stared at it and at the ignominite manacle still clasped over his wrist.

“That’s for you,” she said, once she’d found her voice.

“Yes, but I’m not hungry. And knowing you, you’re probably moments away from starvation anyways, despite that mountain of opened wrappers on the dash.”

Indignation flared in her chest. Adora looked up from the shackle to scowl at him, only for that indignation to sputter out when she saw the smile on his face. His eyes now sparkled with more color and warmth than it possibly could have, were it merely reflecting the hyperspace tunnel. His eyes flicked past her, over her shoulder and ostensibly to the mountain of opened snack bar wrappers he’d mentioned before—remnants of her stress eating in the moments before he’d joined her in the cockpit.

Sheepish and embarrassed to the extent she could feel her flush on her cheeks, she reached for the snack bar only for him to hold fast to it when she tried to pull it from his grip.

“You know, in my culture, those masks were a symbol of your true self,” he said, ignoring the confused look Adora gave him. “An enemy removing it in battle was symbolic of defeat. Removing it yourself for them to see your face was a sign you saw them as an equal. Leaving it behind was tantamount to death.

“Symbolically, of course, although we didn’t see much difference between the symbolic and the literal. To us, a major setback could be just that, or it could be an analogy for something deep inside that needed tending to first. It all depended on how you looked at it.”

“Are you going to give me the snack or not?” Adora tugged again and he still didn’t let go.

“There’s nothing wrong with your powers,” he said, catching her eye and making her still before she gave up in a huff. “And there’s nothing wrong with you for not being able to use them reliably. Remember the ritual? ‘To affect the power without believing you are worthy’ is wrong. You aren’t in danger of becoming an Abomination, but it will still cause problems if your head and your heart aren’t in the right place. It’s not as easy as drawing a rune correctly or throwing a punch with the correct technique or passing some test, and that’s the point. Your belief in yourself and your self-identity are much more complicated to resolve issues between.”

“I’ve been trying for three years and have nothing to show for it!” She pulled at the snack bar again and growled at him, finally throwing her hands up in exasperation and abandoning any pretense of taking it back when still he didn’t let it go. He chuckled at her frustration which just made her bristle.

“You’ve spent those years exercising to the point of overtraining, getting next to no sleep, ruminating endlessly every day about the end of the world and how you don’t have results, and you’re surprised you haven’t made as much progress as you’d hoped? Do you think Catra has all her issues resolved after all this time, either?”

Adora scoffed and folded her arms. “Catra has a mentor, a job, and friends. She’s fine. Better off than she’d ever been with me in her life.”

“I doubt that.”

Again, his voice sounded so calm and patient and understanding, Adora had relaxed before she’d realized it. He offered her the snack bar again, and this time, he let her have it she tried to take it.

“You’ve made progress getting your powers back,” he said. “That progress will continue, you just have to breathe. Give yourself the space to work through it on your own time, instead of rushing for some arbitrary end goal like being able to transform at will.”

Adora was about to say she didn’t have the luxury of taking her time when he held up a hand to head her off.

“And before you argue about needing your powers back quickly to fight the Beast, no, you don’t. We’ll arrive at Phoenix soon enough. Once the Barrier is shored up with the algorithm contained within the Eye, the Beast will never come through again. And if that of all things fails to work for whatever reason, then I am still here to help. I just can’t help you with your powers—there’s no secret technique or incantation.”

He put his hand on her knee and squeezed. It was reassuring. Firm. Something stable she could anchor to amidst the turmoil still roiling in her head.

“Thank you,” she said, lowering her eyes and speaking quietly.

He nodded. “It’s a journey you need to traverse for yourself and no one else, but that doesn’t mean you’re alone, Adora. We’ll figure it out together, and I won’t just abandon you. I’m not trying to lose any more friends.”

Friends? Were they friends now?

Adora busied herself with opening the wrapper to the snack bar and tried not to show how much the words affected her. The rational part of her knew she had plenty of friends back home. Bow had even managed to break through her walls at intermittent periods and allow her to feel like she had friends, not just know she did.

She would have been happy moments earlier to walk away with someone she could refer to as a mentor. ‘Friends’ was not something that had crossed her mind to even hope for with Corynth given their short history, and yet, he’d been the one to label them as such.

Adora hummed to herself as she took her first bite, unable to wipe the small smile on her face away. She was friends with Corynth, the Last Shaper of the Daiamid.

Outstanding.

Chapter Text

“You did not. Tell me you didn’t do that, Adora. Tell me.”

Corynth stared slack-jawed at Adora from the pilot’s seat, the hyperspace tunnel outside the cockpit reflecting against his face. Hours had passed since he’d first joined her there earlier, but they were hours that had passed quickly. Except for one break Adora had used to dispose of the mountain of snack wrappers she’d collected and make a trip to the kitchen to bring back more, they’d spent the entire time talking.

Adora snorted. “Every inch of my body burned, and I swear I thought my hair was going to fall out it was so caustic. I had never seen Mermista that angry before when she found out what he’d done. She looked ready to grab one of his ears and twist it off, like he was some unruly child and she was his extremely angry mother.”

“Did it help, at least?”

“No! I couldn’t even concentrate enough to tell if the tingling on my skin was because my powers might have been coming back, or if it was his salve I’d slathered on. My skin turned as red as Scorpias claws for a whole week after, too.”

Corynth shook his head, incredulous. “I heard about that ‘spiritual retreat’ with Perfuma and what you did to that noble in her court—"

“I didn’t do anything to them, it was totally a consensual thing.”

“—And I’m pretty sure I was there when you tried to call She Ra by holding a wooden practice sword. But that? That is the craziest story by far. I heard everything else gossiped about back on Etheria, but how am I just now finding out about your experiments with caustic salve?”

“I swore any witnesses to secrecy,” Adora said. “Like, really swore. If Sea Hawk looked scared of Mermista after what she did to him, it didn’t compare to the way he looked at me when I told him what would happen if anyone found out. Even Mermista looked shocked.”

“Makes sense.”

Corynth nodded, but didn’t say anything further. Just as Adora relaxed in the chair and got comfortable with the silence, he spoke again as if a new thought jumpstarted him to life.

“How would that even work? I mean…Adora.” He sounded appalled in such a comical way Adora couldn’t help the smile that broke across her face. “What in the world went through that head of yours when you agreed to try that?”

“I don’t know! I was really that desperate to get in touch with She Ra again. I tried literally anything.” She shot him a scandalized look when his shoulders started to shake. “Don’t make fun of me! You promised you wouldn’t when I agreed to tell you the story.”

They bickered with each other laughing until Adora’s sides hurt. She called for truce moments before the Dzivia dropped out of hyperspace within range of Phoenix Station.

“That’s definitely not good,” Corynth said, sitting forward and suddenly serious. A parade of ships blockading the station filled up the viewscreen. Adora couldn’t count the number. “I know they put the station on lockdown, but this is excessive.”

“Will this help at all?” Adora pulled out the IFF chip Ly had given her shortly before they parted ways.

“That’s our ticket in,” Corynth said. “Lysithea, what would I do without you?” He paused as if realizing he’d said that out loud without meaning to. “Don’t tell her I said that, okay? I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“No promises,” Adora slotted the device into the ship’s dash and fake credentials for a ‘Commodore Nerelay Hofstra’ appeared on the screen. The blockade canvassed more of the viewscreen as they got closer, and soon the volume of ships and bulk of the station was all Adora could see instead of stars. The Dzivia’s computers registered one of the ships locking onto them, and a request for communication chimed at them.

“You’re up,” Corynth said.

“What? Why me?”

“Nerelay is a feminine name, it won’t work if I’m the one that talks. Just take the hail and pretend to be an extremely pissed-off officer. Try to intimidate them and don’t take no for an answer. Steamroll them if you have to.”

The hail chimed again, seemingly more insistent than before. Pretend to be an Imperial Naval Officer? And not only that, but do it while trying to intimidate the person on the other line? She was already out of her depth and they hadn’t even docked yet.

The chime came again, and she pressed the button to accept the hail before it terrorized her any further. A gruff-looking man with heavy stubble and an undone uniform collar appeared on stream against the viewscreen.

“Station’s closed,” he said, speaking in a drawl that betrayed the fact he had likely said this a hundred times already during his shift and was irritated at having to say it once again. “No one allowed in, only out. Find somewhere else to dock, we can’t take you.”

Adora’s first instinct was toward diplomacy, to acknowledge what the other person said, and then present something compelling to persuade them to her side. As uncomfortable as it was to do and as foolish as she felt doing so, she disregarded that instinct.

“Say that again?” she said, putting on a glower that felt forced.

The man hesitated. “I said we’re closed. Regional Administrator’s orders, we can’t take people in. You’ll have to go somewhere else.”

“You’d think you’d be smart enough to at least ID who you’re talking to before you start running your mouth like that.” She primed the IFF and sent the credentials over the line. The man’s face blanched when he looked down and saw.

“My apologies for speaking so casually, Commodore,” he said. “Unfortunately, I’m still not able to grant you access to dock. This lockdown was put in place by the Regional Administrator himself and I can’t just—“

“You can’t just what?” Adora said, crossing her arms and praying that her nerves read as anger over the feed. “I am on a classified assignment to meet with someone on Phoenix. I don’t care if the Regional Administrator is standing behind you pointing a blaster at your head and telling you not to let people dock, it will take either an act of God or of the emperor himself to deter me. Now, you either find me a bay to dock in or you will find yourself removed from that seat. The person to next inherit your job will be letting me onboard in your place with no arguments, I guarantee it.”

The man gaped at her, his mouth opening and closing like a fish removed from water. “Yes ma’am,” he said, head tilted down and eyes scanning frantically as he looked for a place to direct her. “Bay six is open for you. You are clear to proceed, and we’ll have a team out to greet you on your arrival.”

“That’s more like it.”

“My sincerest apologies, Commodore. Please enjoy your stay.”

The line cut and Adora let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.

“You aren’t used to bluffing your way through things, are you?” Corynth asked. He was smiling as he guided them through the blockade.

“No, I’m used to punching my way through things. I’m the punching guy, not the acting guy.”

“That’s okay. He was more shocked by the title that came through and saw your nerves as you just getting more and more annoyed with him. The real test is coming up.”

“What? What real test?”

“Didn’t you hear? They’re sending a greeting party to meet us when we dock,” he said. “You’ll have to play the part a little longer.” Adora balked and Corynth laughed. “It’s just until we get through customs, then we’ll have a good excuse to tell them to buzz off. Your line about having a confidential meeting was good.”

Even though the station looked large enough already, it was still another twenty minutes of tense, anxiety-filled silence for Adora before she saw the guiding lights of their landing bay, blinking just beyond the atmospheric barrier. By then, Adora had already run through every memory she had of her previous failed attempts to bluff her way out of something—everything from her time trying to play the occasional pranks on Shadow Weaver before she’d learned better, to sneaking around Bright Moon castle before she had grown comfortable there and getting caught, to trying to play the ‘tough guy’ act in the Crimson Wastes before getting to know Huntara. Her anxiety had never been higher.

Like the maw of an ocean whale slowly hinging wider to swallow them, the hangar opening grew larger until it eclipsed everything else in the viewscreen. A worker in an orange vest and white hardhat was on the floor, gesturing in sweeping motions with lit batons as Corynth guided them in.

An industrial door at the back of the hangar slid open, making way for a cadre of station security to hustle in. They were dressed in white with the Horde Empire logo emblazoned on the chest, and a terrible moment passed where Adora imagined Catra being among them—the last she’d heard from Glimmer, this was what Catra was doing, right?

She scanned their faces trying to find her, only calming once she double and triple-checked that, no, Catra was not among them.

“Relax,” Corynth said after touching the ship down, flipping several switches on the overhead board to down-cycle the engine and power it off. “You’ll do great.”

“I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” Adora said, gathering her hair by the fistful and braiding it in a way she hadn’t since on Etheria. “I’ve done this before. I’ve gone and tried to bluff my way through things in the past.”

“Has it ever worked?”

“Not once.”

Corynth laughed through his nose. “Then that’s probably why you’re nervous.”

He left the pilot’s seat and headed to the workstation at the back of the cockpit with Adora following close behind. He opened a metal box holding the Eye of Shukra and stuffed it back into the small shoulder pack he had used to carry it around on Eden. His hands shook as he did, and Adora didn’t miss the look of strained concentration on his face as he worked.

“How much longer do you need to wear those?” she asked, indicating the ignominite manacles he still wore as bracelets. “Having some of that godly Shaper magic might be helpful, just in case I screw things up and blow our cover. If you can manage it, that is,” she said, hastily tacking on the last part when she realized that may have been insensitive.

“For a while, still.”

“Using my powers never made me sick,” she said. “Not even when I had full control over them. I don’t know how I’d feel if She Ra left me drained like that whenever I called her.”

“If only either of us had the luxury to never need our powers.” Corynth inspected the manacles, turning them palm up, then down, then caressing one with light fingers. “Once I take these off, it will be for the last time.”

His expression and voice changed, becoming graver than Adora had ever seen before. It was gone before she could commit it to memory and ask about it—Corynth turned a placid smile on her like he’d forgotten she was there and only just remembered.

“Here,” he said, holding the bag with the Eye out for her to take. “Wearing the manacles right come in handy, actually. They’ll want to scan us like they did on Eden and inspect the ship. Let them do both, but don’t let them touch the bag. They see a huge apeiron like that and are bound to ask more questions.”

“Scanning is okay, looking at the ship is okay, don’t let them touch the bag,” Adora said, committing the instructions to memory. “Alright. This is fine. Everything will be fine.”

“Also, you aren’t dressed at all like an Imperial Officer,” he said, slipping on a pair of dark gloves that covered the manacles and reached up underneath his sleeve cuffs. “You cannot, under any circumstances, waver, no matter how they scrutinize you. You’re on a classified mission and you won’t be deterred.”

She slung the bag over her shoulder and followed him out the cockpit to the cargo bay. The greeting party was already waiting for them when Corynth lowered the ramp. The agent at the front—the one with the most embellished patch on the sleeve of his uniform, denoting him as the senior-most official in charge—did a double take when he saw Adora.

“Greetings, Commodore Hofstra,” he said, looking her up and down and speaking as if he were questioning every word that came out of his mouth. “Please stay aboard your craft until we have completed our inspection. We must at the very least follow standard lockdown procedure.”

Adora stepped back inside the bay and Corynth followed, indicating without saying a word that she’d acquiesce.

“We were not expecting your arrival,” the officer said. “In fact, there are no records of your transit manifest in the Imperial databases.”

“You wouldn’t find records were your pay grade tripled, dock officer,” Adora said, forcing a sneer. “Did that agent who spoke so flippantly to me on my approach explain nothing to you? The emperor would not send me on a classified mission out here and have my flight path from the Heartlands recorded. Get in here and conduct your inspections, already. I’m on a schedule and you are standing in the way of it.”

That seemed to do the trick. The officer paled, then turned and shouted at his men to get onboard. All but one of his team, including him, scrambled up the ramp to begin.

“I will oversee them personally, ma’am,” the officer said as he passed her. “We will be done before you know it.” He disappeared down the hallway and both Corynth and Adora watched him go. The sounds of the officer yelling at his men to move faster echoed from deep inside the Dzivia not long after.

“You’ve really never done this before?” Corynth asked, whispering from beside her. “Could have fooled me.”

“I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

Corynth laughed through his nose. “You’re doing great. Keep it together just a little longer.”

The last person from the group, the only one to not rush aboard the Dzivia to inspect it, carried a portable scanner—the same type the guards on Eden used on them to scan for the Beast.

“Begging your pardon, Commodore,” she said as she ascended the ramp. “But I’ll need to scan the both of you for infection before signing off for you.”

Adora couldn’t find it in her to actively try and be a jerk to this person. Judging by the fear in their eyes and sparse badging on their uniform, they were a bottom-rung enlistee. Adora figured they were probably close in age.

She crossed her arms and shrugged. “Do what you need to,” she said, hoping they wouldn’t pick up on her inward panic.

“It will only be a minute.” They tapped at the controls on the scanner to calibrated it, then held up the device in front of Adora. It gave three short, high-pitched beeps, paused, then gave a long tone—Adora was clear. No surprise there.