Serenity stared at the devastated World Core. He was shocked the planet had survived that much damage.

“What did she do?” Stojan Tasi looked at Serenity as if he expected his Sovereign to have an answer. “And why?”

“To advance her Death Affinity,” Serenity answered. He knew the reason, but it didn’t explain anything. Not really. He muttered to himself. “She probably also wanted to prevent anyone else from doing the same thing. I doubt she realized what else it would do. The thing is, I don’t understand how she did it. World Core crystal is tough. How could she shatter it like that? I didn’t get the impression that she put that much into it. Unless … did she steal something from the Vrak?”

Serenity wasn’t sure he’d ever know the answer. Tzintkra couldn’t tell him; it didn’t know. If the Voice knew, chances were that it couldn’t tell him either, at least not unless he had enough information to essentially already know the answer.

The past wasn’t what was important here now, at least not unless he could learn something about how Tzintkra survived so that he could help Earth. If he could learn something that would help him to allow Tzintkra to heal, he would do that, too.

Serenity snorted at his own thought. Maybe Blaze was right; maybe he could heal, even if it only applied to worlds already tinted with Death. There was nothing wrong with that; they needed healing too. The chances that he’d ever be a true healer like Blaze were slim, but he could easily see taking Senkovar’s knowledge and turning it into a Path of his own to support worlds as well as convincing worlds to aid their inhabitants. The two goals didn’t conflict.

Serenity moved forward and touched the outer edge of the partially fused crystal shards. He pushed his aura towards the crystal to see what it had to tell him and he felt the Death affinity in the crystal reach out to him.

It spoke. There were no words; he couldn’t even truly call it images. Even so, he knew.

Death’s Children moved around the core. They called themselves that, though in truth they had no connection to Death Herself; instead, they were Tzintkra’s children in every way possible. Born from her soil, they embodied the dichotomy of Tzintkra, life from death and death from life.

Serenity sent that dissonance back to whatever was telling the tale and he felt them adjust. There was even a slight note of apology. This definitely wasn’t just a memory; this was someone aware of the tale they told.

It definitely wasn’t Tzintkra, either, for all that this was Tzintkra’s core.

The Voice came, but its presence did not mean much. The children of Tzintkra continued to live their lives and die their deaths, each death feeding the next generation and each life honoring the dead. Very little changed, for all that some grew taller and others grew stronger; they were content.

Outsiders came. At first, the children of Tzintkra paid them no attention; they were simply another part of the world. Yes, they killed some of Tzintkra’s children, but Tzintkra’s children also killed some of them.

Tzintkra’s children watched and started to hope that they might have found another part of the great cycle, but the outsiders did not seem to like it when Tzintkra’s children took the bodies to guard and nourish the young. Worse, they simply left the bodies of those they killed where they died, dishonored and useless. This was saddening. Even worse was when the newcomers built walls and scoured Tzintkra’s children from within. Most were thrown outside the walls, but some simply vanished.

A few of the new ones traveled beyond the walls and learned something. It was not much, but it was something. Few could grasp the truth of the cycle, but those who did were welcomed under the light of Tzintkra’s star. They were not exempt from the cycle, but they were also not hunted.

Tzintkra’s children also learned from the newcomers. Much of what they learned was useful, but some learned to hate the cycle; they came to believe that life was everything, that their own life was everything. They did not want to die and feed the next generation.

They forgot what both life and death truly meant and turned the tools of death-in-life and life-in-death against those who followed the old ways. There was no war; instead, there was a slow, gradual corruption of the beliefs of the past into the tools of the present. All meaning was lost in the pursuit of power and neverending existence. In time, they decided that they should own their mother and that all others were merely parasites.

In a way, what was believed of Tzintkra’s children truly came to be: they became the harbingers of death for all others. Few remained who followed the old ways, scattered pods that rarely communicated with each other.

As was only natural, the change brought a harsh reaction from the newcomers, who now thought of Tzintkra as their world. Something changed and Tzintkra’s lost children gathered in a city, following the ways of the newcomers.

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Tzintkra’s true children did not know what the lost ones did, but it was a welcome relief. They were able to strengthen their roots and begin to rebuild their fractured cycles.

Only begin.

Wave after wave of Death swept across their home, sourceless and terrifying for there was no promise of Life to balance it. This was Death that left nothing behind, Death that lingered.

Tzintkra’s true children hid. It was the one thing they could do; all they needed was time to turn Death to Life.

They did not get the time. The waves had not even ceased when an even worse action happened. This time, it was not the doing of Tzintkra’s lost children but of a band of the newcomers. They willingly gave themselves up to Death to reach their goal, and reach it they did: Tzintkra’s core, buried at the heart of her children’s home.

They held an ancient tool. It wasn’t made to be a weapon; it was simply a tool to alter the weather. That meant it was powerful. The newcomers harnessed that power, but instead of using it to make things more pleasant, they destroyed it and turned the power of life for Tzintkra’s children into death for Tzintkra Herself.

It was an understanding of the connection between Life and Death that Tzintkra’s true children did not believe these particular newcomers had, yet it was not one that they liked. There was no time to consider what truths the outsiders might know, instead, there was only time for Death and time for Life.

Many of Tzintkra’s true children chose Death. They paid their Lives to buy the Death of the enemy. They were able to stop almost all of the outsiders from escaping, yet it was a hollow victory. The one who escaped carried a fragment of Tzintkra’s core, which made the task of those who chose Life far harder.

The task of Life was to bind Tzintkra’s core in Death-become-Life the balance could tip once more. Never again might Tzintkra know true stability, yet a balance that tipped to one side or the other over time was still a cycle.

The ones who once saved Tzintkra were long since gone, yet the task was not complete. Each new generation took it up, pulling Tzintkra a little farther from the Death that does not give Life, giving their lives for death and their deaths to bring life.

The vision shifted from Tzintrka’s core to a battle that Serenity recognized; there was only one thing it could be. He saw the One Who Fled fight Death Himself and lose, returned to the ground with respect for the life the outsider’s form might bring, rather than kept as Life-In-Death or destroyed utterly. There was a sense of both relief and approval.

He saw the fragment of Tzintkra’s core taken by Death Himself and used to grant Life. The true children of Tzintkra felt only admiration for the one who could do that.

Serenity felt a sense of hope and greeting from them, as if they welcomed him.

With that, the connection dropped, but Serenity could see details he hadn’t noticed before. Under the threads of crystal that bound the scattered fragments of Tzintkra’s core together, there were tiny threads of plant matter. Vines or roots; Serenity couldn’t tell which. Either way, they formed a network that reinforced and joined the crystal where it was fractured, then gave the new crystalline growth a place to anchor.

That was surprising enough; it gave a rather significant clue to why the Vrak seemed to have disappeared. They had to be who the “children of Tzintkra” were, after all. If they were plant-based and tended to not move often, it was entirely possible that there were some out there and no one paid attention to them.

The other surprising thing was that he now knew there was a passageway hidden by a curtain ofvines covered in concealing crystalline growth that led to the remaining settlement of the “true children of Tzintkra.” Serenity was welcome there and they would not mind if Stojan Tasi came as well, since he was with Serenity.

Serenity had accomplished his goals for this trip already, unless he wanted to take some Vrak back to Earth with him to help stabilize the core if something happened. He didn’t think he wanted to; if Earth’s core was damaged that badly, he’d already lost.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to visit the Vrak, however. He ought to at least look in on them; they’d done him quite a service inadvertently when they saved Tzintkra, after all.

Serenity brushed the crystal-covered curtain to one side. It made a soft clinking noise; he’d somehow expected the note to be deeper. Behind the curtain was a very short flat area followed by another Vrak tunnel, a hole that led almost straight down. Serenity sighed and led the way. By now, he and Stojan Tasi had a routine.

Ten minutes (and two massive drops) later, they reached a flattened area that led into a large cave. Inside the cave, Serenity saw a sight he’d only half expected: a forest of thorns of different sizes. They resembled the Thorn Demons he encountered on Zon to an eerie degree, but the more he watched them the more he realized they were different.

The first difference was physical; they were more likely to be rooted into the ground and they also had an entire set of vine-like manipulators that the Thorn Demons lacked.

The second difference was social. The Thorn Demons seemed to hunt each other and anything else that entered their territory. The Vrak seemed to form clusters around the larger members, almost like families.

The third difference was that he could understand them; they all seemed to be happy and welcoming towards him and wary of Stojan Tasi. The Vrak seemed to be projective empaths. Serenity could only guess that that was probably the feature that Apollyon wanted the most when he kidnapped them for his demon-creation project.

“Welcome to our home,” one of the smaller Vrak, only about four feet tall, said as it crawled towards Serenity on its roots. It spoke clear, if heavily accented, Bridge. “Is the surface safe? It is a long journey; we have not looked in many years.”

“It is still heavily covered in Death-Affinity mana,” Serenity admitted. “Most people can only stay there for a limited time before they have to shelter and recover.”

The Vrak froze for more than a minute, then seemed to give a long wave of its upper part, almost a bow. “Some of the youngest shall travel and we shall see. If those who are not steeped in death can tolerate it for even a few days, some of us should thrive there. We would welcome the space.”