Kalea grit her teeth, and narrowed her eyes at the horizon as if trying to funnel her anger away from me. Her shoulders sagged, and she exhaled.

  “What did I do?” I asked.

  “Just,” she cut herself off, and worked her tongue behind her mouth as if strangling words she didn’t want to say. “I need to pull up camp. We’ll talk later.”

  As she worked to get the camping supplies back in the compartment in her suit, I hobbled out of the tent, and to the edge of the roof. I took a moment to focus my mind, and get myself ready to be back on the road. I tried not to dwell on whatever it was that I’d done, but it was pretty much all I could think about. We’d just met, and already she hated me.

  I was, maybe, responsible for an intergalactic diplomatic incident. And not even the fun kind! That sounds like par for the course for me.

  ‘Par for the course’… where did that phrase even come from? What even was a ‘par?’ Probably something my dad used to say.

  Kalea quickly squirmed back into her underlayer while I tried to ignore her nakedness. I should have washed up, too. I probably smelled rank.

  I’d tried to help her with the camp, but even so much as walking more than a step or two, was nearly impossible. I hoped that once I got back into Morrigan, that I’d be more mobile, or else we were in serious trouble.

  I watched the horizon. The world shone grey and radiated chill. The skyline had more holes in it than it should. How do you come back from this?

  We had before.

  I’d crossed a line that I didn’t know it was possible to cross. I wasn’t even sure of what I’d done, but I should probably apologize. I didn’t know how. And maybe it would just make things worse.

  My thoughts twisted into themselves.

  Could I do this? I mean, this fighting thing? I’d thought Knights were invincible. From the way Kalea talked about — or more clearly didn’t talk about — getting overrun, they obviously weren’t.

  And Paula. She’d been the best of them. I’d just barely survived that last fight.

  What could I possibly do?

  Could there really be a new rift? Back when the war was going proper, back when Aunt Em had first fought, it had taken everything humanity and our Somniferian allies could do to keep them contained. If another front opened up...

  God. Could I really save my brother in all this?

  I tried not to think about it.

  Had I really healed myself? That was a real doozy of a question too. Or was it Kalea? And what had I seen? Some part of herself, some part of what she had been through here.

  All this Bard stuff was so new to me.

  “Hey,” she said, the now roof free from supplies. Man, how deep were her storage compartments in that thing? “Can you do something for me?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Earlier, you barged into parts of my history I wasn’t ready to share. I would have shared, had you asked it. I want to share so much of myself with you. But I don’t know what’s proper. I don’t know how to do this right. But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I want you to know more about me.”

  “Okay,” I said. I felt a shock of nervousness run through me. This was serious, and that scared me.

  “You can’t fix me,” she said. “You can’t fix my hurt. But you can understand it better.”

  “Do we have time?” I asked. We’d already spent a long time on this roof.

  “It will only take a moment. And I think it will help.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She took a bowl, some kind of ceramic thing filled with water, stylized women — Somnifer? — around the rim, and set it down in front of me. She sat down cross legged. I also sat, with some difficulty.

  “Are we going to drink it?” I asked.

  “No, it’s to wash our face, after.”

  “Wait so what is going on —”

  “I need your trust. Do I have it?”

  I shut up. I nodded.

  She ran her fingers delicately through her floral culture, then brushed the tips of them across her face. Some kind of pollen, or something, painted her face in yellow stripes. Then she grabbed my hands, and moved her face close to mine. At first maybe I thought she was going to kiss me. I’d only ever been kissed twice, and despite that, neither were memorable. I couldn’t help but imagine a kiss from her would be memorable.

  My heart hammered in my chest.

  “Just breathe,” she said.

  I nodded. I put my face closer to hers. She breathed out spores. I took a deep breath. They didn’t stick in my throat this time. I felt it travel into my chest like cool mist.

  My vision tilted. I felt like I would fall over. She gripped my hands tighter. I gripped them back.

  I felt her forehead against mine.

  I took another deep breath.

  I am in the cool onyx hallways of The First Ship. Strips of soft blue light washes over us. The Assessitrix Prime, Fifth of the Matriarchy and my superior, floats in front of me. She’s impossibly beautiful. She possesses a perfect hourglass figure, and a long floral culture that dangles past her bare feet. Thin strips of ceremonial robes barely cover the regions of desire. The lotus palms poured spores all around her, lifting her into the air… I feel unworthy.

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  I prostrate myself on the cool floor.

  ‘Kalea,’ she says. ‘I was told that you are set in this course.’

  ‘My will is your desire,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, get up. Once you leave, I will be nothing to you. We speak as equals.’

  I stand.

  ‘Never,’ I say. ‘Tell me to stay, and I will send a petal at once to let them know I must remain.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ she says.

  The lotus petal in one palm closes, and she lowers gently to the earth. The luminous spores continue to pour from the other, and a cool feeling envelopes me with them.

  Kaleas fingers cupped my chin, bringing me out of my stupor just enough.

  “I don’t know if you can handle a second layer,” she said. “When we return to the dream, stay with me.”

  I didn’t nod. She breathed out more spores, and I felt myself falling again.

  ‘Then why have you come?’ I ask.

  ‘I have come to tell you once more what I see.’

  ‘And I listen.’

  ‘You will go to the pale blue dot. You will fall in the love-sickness there, and you will die. And in doing so, the prophesied child will strike a blow that rings throughout the Matriarchy.’

  ‘Praise the Goddess who uplifts us,’ I hear myself mutter. Pride and excitement mingle in my chest.

  ‘You only hear glory,’ the Assessitrix says. ‘I have just told you of your death.’

  ‘They are two thorns of the same stem.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she says. Tears roll down either cheek, and she touches my chin. ‘Go with my blessing.’

  Then, I spend my days walking nearly empty halls as the Dreadnaught travels a great distance. I choose my crystal, and I train with He Relishes the Taste of the Dead, my Decapod trainer. But mostly I wait for the time when I will see this pale blue dot.

  Then I see it. It’s so small and fragile from here, so blue, not green like the colony I am used to.

  I’m taking my first steps onto the planet the pale ones call Earth, named for the dust that rises from the water of their planet, and I breathe in that dust, and I cough. This place seems so dry, so drab. They have flowers, but they are all so poorly tended to. A woman greets me, the Ambassador Dara. And she’s so small, not tall and luminous like the women I know.

  She smiles at my joke, and my heart soars. We embrace each other in the dark nights, and I learn so much about what breaking the rules feels like. It’s exhilarating. And now I know why my foremothers broke away to follow the Beacon.

  I fight next to her, and I know the first taste of glory.

  Then my sister dies. Then another. And then the taste of glory on my tongue is like ash.

  Most don’t even believe in the Prophecy anymore. Even Jill, the greatest of us, has given up hope.

  I refuse to give up hope.

  Then I see her. This child, this small little girl plinking at strings in a strange contraption, and suddenly I know. I know that she is the one. And suddenly I believe again. But it is too late. We’ve lost so much. Why didn’t she come sooner? Why did they keep her from us?

  I tore away from the dream. I felt wetness on my cheeks. What was shared seemed so intimate, so important, that talking seemed cheap in comparison.

  Kalea cupped her hands in the water and washed the yellow muck off of her face.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to close my eyes, but I also knew I was staring at her. She wiped something off of my chin with her damp hand. Then she took the bowl and gently poured the water onto her floral culture.

  “You are supposed to take some of the water too,” she said. “But you don’t have — you just have hair.”

  “I’ll take some on my hair.”

  She nodded and she poured the water over my head. It was cold! I laughed. She smiled.

  Then I thought for a moment.

  “You’re angry,” I said, “because you don’t want to die.”

  She looked at me with some kind of strange emotion I couldn’t place. Just moments ago, I understood her fully, but now the distance, the separateness of individuality reasserted itself.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What if you choose to believe in something else? What if I choose to believe in something else? I don’t get all this prophecy stuff. The future is what we make of it. You don’t have to die.”

  “I want to,” she said. “I want to do something that matters. If that means I must die, then I’ll pay that price. I just mourn for the timing of it. There is so much more I want to do.”

  “Once we get my brother back, I’ll help you, and we’ll go to the dreadnaught and we’ll come back with a hundred Knights and nobody has to die!”

  “That’s not how these things work.”

  Then a dark, diseased chord struck in me, like a playing an instrument with a broken string. Something was wrong. But what? Was it?

  Kalea's eyes went hard. She felt something too.

  I turned to the door that led down into the building, and saw what was absolutely a robot. It wasn’t like anything I’d seen down on the street, all sleek lines and triangular shapes, but still bipedal, and vaguely human like the rest of them. It must be an elite. A Recon Elite.

  I had just enough time to register that his hand was on the doorknob still, an oddly human-like affection — why not just bust the door down? — when his other hand shot out, and flung something that looked like a sharpened piece of metal. It struck Kalea in the shoulder, and tore through it, through to the other side. She flung herself backwards into her suit, just in time for two more to ping off her armor.

  I was still sitting on my ass.

  “Time to go!” she said, dragging me to my feet, more pieces of metal pinging off her armor. One found purchase between a plate. One bit into my shoulder. Kalea ripped it out.

  Pain shot up through my hip, and down my leg, and I stumbled. Whatever was wrong with it, was still preventing me from walking more than two steps. Kalea put her hands under my shoulders, and picked me up, tossing me into the air towards my suit.

  As soon as my back hit Morrigan, the suit slid over my skin to envelop me. And then I was falling. Maybe Kalea threw me too hard?

  I saw the edge of the building rush past me in the bright grey haze, sunlight glinting off of silver and gold windows, as I hurtled faster and faster toward the ground. And then came Kalea right over the edge too — her armor a slate grey, and black, and red — and a blur, as she hooked her axe under her shield.

  Woah. The elite just put his foot to the edge, and ran down towards us. You could do that? What, robots didn’t need gravity? Second one threw himself over the edge too.

  Shit.

  I tucked my arm under me, and struggled to turn my body towards the ground. Now what? Did I land? I didn’t even know if I could walk, much less land.

  Kalea’s arms encircled my body from behind as she collided with my back, knocking the wind out from me. I felt her scoop me into her arms.

  She landed with an enormous crash. The asphalt splintered and buckled. We both tumbled to the ground separately.

  The Rec-ite unit was on me. I had my sword out, and started parrying from my back like my life depended on it. I could feel him, static through the music, but struggled to keep up. His sword missed me by a hair. Kalea’s black armored fist connected with what should have been his head, and he flew into the building to my right. The second Rec-ite landed. Then a third.

  She pulled me to my feet again. My stance was steady. Maybe I would walk?

  “I need you to run, Kat,” Kalea said flatly over comms.

  “Maybe we can —”

  Kalea shoved me, and I nearly toppled over.

  “You’re in no shape, run!”

  She was rushing past me in long loping strides already.

  I took a deep breath. The Rec-ite was already back in the street and rushed after Kalea. The other two stalked towards me carefully. I turned my head, marking the creatures behind me on my map in my HUD, then ran. Pain shot through my leg and hip with every stride but I managed. I had no idea how long I could keep it up.

  They were gaining on me.