Aster struggled to help Cat to his feet. He slipped out of her arms and thudded onto the ground.

“He made himself too heavy,” said Forge. He grabbed Cat by the handle on the back of his ballistic collar and hoisted him to his feet, then moved his hands in a circle around his skullfort.

“What are you doing?” Aster asked.

“He has too much density,” Forge answered. A field of light followed his hands as he pulled them away from Cat, and when he spread his fingers wide the field dispersed back into Cat’s body. He then stood with ease.

“Thank you, Forge,” Cat said.

“How are you?” Aster asked.

“I’m fine, Aster.”

She smiled. Don’t be cold to me, Cat. Not now.

“You okay, girl?” asked Haruspex.

Aster hugged Ru again. “I’m so glad to see you.”

When they let go, Ishtar was waiting for her turn, and when they released Ru went to Eukary who stood shivering.

“I remembered things,” she said.

“I know,” said Ru. “I did too.”

Aster felt paralyzed. What had happened? Surely not what she remembered. They weren’t children. They’d never been children. Or had they? Eukary had tears raining down her cheeks but was trying to appear stoic. But then her shoulders shook, and she lost it. Aster was glad to see Ru there holding her. She turned to check on Cat, hoping to feel her mood lighten, but what she saw broke her heart even more than Eukary’s breakdown.

Cat’s hands were fading, turning into raw light. Forge was using hus own radiance to bolster his effort to keep his form, but Reev was distracting him with jokes, and that helped Forge to put Cat’s hands back together.

“Hey,” said Ishtar.

Aster turned to her and faked a smile. “Hey.”

And they both broke down, and soon it seemed the whole team was in tears, even Cat.

They eventually simulated a campfire, casting a glow over a pile of rocks that emitted heat when radiance was cast upon it.

“Our auras have a strange effect here,” Forge said.

Aster felt comforted to hear him talk about how things worked. It reminded her o fthe long hours they’d spent on ops, or together in the barracks back on Albion.

“How so?” asked Ru.

“You haven’t felt it?”

Reev shrugged.

Forge lifted his hand and it glowed. The space around it looked alive. Microbes grew and clung and burned and were reborn.

“This universe is even more alive than our own,” Aster said.

“I beg to differ,” Forge replied.

“What do you mean?” Ishtar asked.

Aster noticed that when Ishtar spoke, Eukary stifled a glare.

“Look.” He intensified the glow, and heightened his aura’s potency, drawing luminescent outlines around the particles floating in the air as they took different shapes.

Reev stood and sat close to Forge, leaning close to his shimmering gauntlet.

“Our radiance gives life,” Reev said.

“This is all Detritus,” said Forge, “but it comes to life when given a fuel source, so to speak.”

“Do you have a theory?” Cat asked.

Aster felt better. This was how it often went. Reev would fill in the blanks of what Forge was figuring out, and Cat would put the information together to report to Sensus.

“This place is quantum,” Forge said.

“So, we’re tiny?” asked Reev.

Forge shook his head, then nodded.

“Well,” said Reev, “which is it? Shake or nod?”

“Both,” said Forge. “I meant this place is quantum in its behavior. It’s powered by observation. Only radiance has life of its own, and what passes for spacetime in Ulro is instantly animated when it manifests.”

“Do you think we can use this information?” Cat asked.

“I think so. I’ll gather some samples for the Artifexus.”

“How?” asked Eukary. “Nothing here is real. How will you gather samples? Samples of what, Forge? Samples of some twisted monster’s imagination?”

“Euk, you okay?” Reev asked.

Ru was sitting by her. She patted Eukary on the back. Eukary leaned forward and hugged her knees to her chest.

“She’s right,” said Forge. He raised his arm and looked at his vam. “Nothing here is genuine. There’s rules and laws to how it all works, but it’s all generated by radiance.”

“Well, that’s useful,” said Aster, desperate for an escape from her feelings. “Think about it. The Tangents are radiant, just like us.”

“Reev was saying so when he was in the thermos,” said Ishtar.

“Well,” said Revol, “I was thinking more than Solomon had to be here in order to learn how to take an Archeus apart.”

“You noticed that too?” said Ru.

“We’ve gotta get back,” said Cat. “The Artifexus needs to know everything we’ve seen.”

“Reev and I were thinking we should do some recon while we’re here,” said Ru.

Cat shook his head. “There’s no time.”

“Sir,” said Reev, “I recommend we gather more intelligence. We can learn...”

“Solomon already has,” Cat interrupted. “If he manipulated us into coming here, then odds are whatever he hoped would happen to us has.”

Everyone reflexively looked at Forge. Everyone but Euk. She stared into the glow of the campfire.

Forge nodded. “I agree. Something has definitely happened to us, but we won’t learn what until we have the contrast of our native space. Although...” He trailed off.

“Say it,” said Cat.

“I think this is our native space. I can’t explain right now, so don’t ask. As soon as I have a proper hypothesis, I’ll write it up for you.”

“More reason to get back to Albion,” said Cat.

“I want to see Sol,” Aster said. “I need him to make sense of this place for us. I don’t know about all of you, but I learned a lot about the person who once wore this body. I had questions answered that I’d never thought to ask.”

“The death dreams....” Ishtar began to say.

“... aren’t dreams,” Euk finished.

“Yeah,” said Ru. “I always thought of this body as mine, but I thought of it as an outfit almost.”

“Are we flesh, or are we light?” Reev mused.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Aster was happy to hear his signature sarcasm. She missed it.

“You joke,” said Forge, “but that’s the real question.”

“I don’t joke. Well, I do, but I’m not joking now. We need to learn more about...”

“Sol already has,” said Cat. “This isn’t open for discussion. We’re leaving,” he stood, “now.”

Euk was on her feet in an instant. She held her hands in the position one did when they held a rifle, and a weapon materialized into place.

“Hold on,” said Rev as he stood. “Okay, you’re in charge, Cat. But Ru, where’s Netz?”

“She was...” Ru was looking around.

“Netz? Aster asked. “That little lightbulb thingy? I thought I heard it talk.”

“She spoke,” said Reev. “I don’t trust her. We saw her floating around, but then you guys took shape, and we lost track.”

Ru formed a rifle as Euk had. Aster did the same. Soon the whole team was armed.

“What are we afraid of, exactly,” asked Forge.

They formed a circle around the fire, keeping their weapons trained slightly upwards.

She appeared then, harmlessly floating over the top of a nearby hill. She shined a beam of light, first in the direction she came from, then at them.

“Mr. Barrus,” Aster said. She felt suddenly cold.

A withered man-like being the size of a warship appeared. It was gaunt, gangrel formed, an animated corpse with a rack of spindly grey horns. Flesh hung from stone like calcified rags.

“It’s so gross!” said Reev.

The abomination moved forward and its waist rose above the hilltop.

“Oh thank god it doesn’t have a penis.”

“Reev!” shouted Cat.

Aster smiled. She missed Reev. He made threats seem small. They could have used him before.

Cat ordered them to face the monster in a line, then to walk slowly back with their weapons steady, facing their foe at all times.

“We need to get airborne,” he said. “Reev, Ru, how do we get off the ground?”

“Think of a wonderful thought?”

“Reev, when we make it back, I’m going to…”

Fire roared. Green jets of flame spewed like vomit out of the creature’s empty eye sockets, and flames of pale blue and tainted lilac flowed over its weapon; a two-handed morning star the size of a missile tower.

You are pleasure, a whisper said to Aster. You crave knowledge. I knew you as Ahania when I spoke to your vessel’s past. Seek what you crave. It will save you all.

Aster’s flesh was frozen still, but her spirit shouted joyously. The colors of the moony world and the colors of the beast; they were not the same.

“This is not his land!” She howled above the roar of his flames. She lifted herself off the ground and into the still and worried wind.

“How did she do that?” she heard Cat ask.

Her radiance beamed and she was comet, hurtling over names she knew; Blister, tower of healing, and the torture pits where the arrivals were taught to be peaceful. The green waves that hissed were the Sea of Decay, and beyond that was Nessus, where dwelt the queen of this moony world.

They walked through the dream of a goddess, feminine lovely with a whisper ever caught between her lips. Caught in a web of slime.

The Sea of Decay belched and frothed under Aster. She was three hundred feet above, sailing free on a current of will. As light freely rampages across Briah, she hurtled of her own accord overhead while the open ocean spat its deforming vapors into the toxic Nessus air.

She could feel through invisible chords the battle she left behind. Barrus was slow and enfeebled, but he was nigh ascendant still; a refugee of Beulah where the dream is real. His morning star crashed down, and chasms formed where its liquid lilac fire dripped. Napalm and worse splashed as he swung, and his lice dropped in a cloud to hold his enemies still. But the team was strong, using weapons familiar to their old carbon state, but here powered by ohr, the strata of Ulro and the nebulonic womb of the Harbinger’s strength. Seering blasts of their will shot paracausality in place of bullets, and Forge’s mortars and mines ripped through Barrus’s lice with strands that unmade them at the atomic level. Each foe was another bomb os his hands, and he alone freed the others to contend with the ancient guardian.

The Sea of Decay seemed endless, and Aster contemplated the nature of place and distance in Ulro while she flew. Then by will and urgent need she arrived, seeing afar the City of the Rotten. The fingers of its wall reached for her and she shattered one, chipped another, and through all the other crooked spires she passed untouched. Then she rose before the prime edifice Neopolypon; palace of Topar, who is Rosaria and Persephone and Sov and creature not previously written. The goddess rose from her crepuscular throne to observe the hubbub, snarling when reminded of the fetal bloom.

Aster felt her hate, both outward towards her and inward towards herself. She glowed brightly as she could, dissolving her borrowed flesh so she could become a beacon in the haze. Then she turned to fly back and bring Topar to the trespasser, only she could not. Something clutched her and she couldn’t move, not even her fingers or toes.

The palace, a twisting, spiraling, amorphous monstrosity, far too large and bulbous for any single structure to be, opened like a blooming rose. There the goddess showed her true self, and as she stood her projection faded. She had the form of a beautiful woman with six eyes, which meant six lids with six sets of lashes. Vapors spewed from a mouth like the fingers of a squid to shake the air with her shattering screams. Fingers long and bent flared from her back; wings of yellowed ivory and the deplumed tail of the peacock.

Aster struggled against the Tangent’s kinetic hold, but she found there was nothing to struggle against. She began to panic when her struggle met with nothing, but still she couldn’t move. Even her jaws held still, and her throat was closed.

You are pleasure and the desire for intelligence. You are Ahania. Ahania!

Aster still felt frozen. Something held her, and Topar was now lifted by a cluster of snakes so thick a village could have been built upon it. The snakes coiled endlessly, migrating from top to bottom and from east to west. As her writhing litter grew and spread to bring her close, the dead snakes, crushed by the movements she required of them, sloughed off and fell by the thousands. The rush to fill their space was furious.

Aster kept fighting. She managed to move her eyes and look around her, and what she saw sickened her. Deformed bodies; skeletal men with nothing but arms, or woman with bleeding slits cut into mouths grafted shut by blank flesh, all rose into the air and formed a bridge. Topar, naked save a thin, membranous gown, stepped off her litter onto the bridge. Once her feet left, the pillar of snakes fell, splattering in a wave of gummy flesh on impact with the distant ground.

Ahania, light the inward lamp!

Finally, it clicked. Topar’s throne was a bed, and all around her city were soft fungus and fleshy pillows. Aster relaxed her efforts and allowed herself to feel. Her flesh was flooded with gamma-aminobutyric acid. She relaxed further, freeing herself from effort and cortisol, and her radiance flared in the vacuum, purging the internal prison built by Topar.

Topar’s screams halted, replaced by a gaping look of surprise, then her six eyes glared and her screams redoubled, but Aster had found the hardening of organs that Topar had caused, reforming enough of her nervous system to manipulate. She dissolved her form again into pure light so nothing of her opponent could touch her, then, like light in Briah does she moved with frightening speed.

Topar followed enraged. The Sea of Decay rose in massive swells under the wind of her passing, but Aster cut a hole through the thick, spongy waters each time they rose to swallow her. Still, she was not indestructible. Her singular form was draining, so she went at full tilt to her friends who were now fatigued and losing their battle with Barrus. Like them, she raced against weariness. She felt the drag of dead space there in Ulro. So many tiny things coming to life in her path, nibbling at her radiance with unsatiable hunger. By the time she saw the farther shore she was heavy with microscopic vampires. But she didn’t need to reach the shore. Barrus’s long limbs waved madly on the horizon, and Topar rushed past her, her finger-wings bent backwards for speed.

She saw her team with her own eyes, not feeling along those tender threads. They were spent, but not broken, regrouping for a daring charge.

Barrus turned at the screams of Topar and his old dry mouth opened, sending out a hollow sound that from a smaller cave would have been no more than a breath. He turned, slowly at first, eager it seemed to lock arms. The ground buckled under his foot as he pivoted. Aster flew low and took shape, swooping down over her team.

“There’s no how Cat,” she said, over the comms as they titans were loud. “You just do it.”

Forge was in the air, then Ishtar. Euk kept firing her rifle at Barrus. She wanted to move closer to Cat but she was captivated by the sight of the titans locking arms. Storms erupted when their fingers touched.

Aster shook herself and looked back to Cat. Reev was helping him while Ru scooped up Euk, who kicked and screamed and kept firing her rifle at Barrus. Aster flew beside Reev and Cat, looking over her shoulder at the titans. They stopped their fight as quickly as they began it, looking around for the team as one might search for a mosquito that crossed their field of view.

“Help him,” said Reev. He let go of Cat and fled back towards Barrus and Topar.

“What are you doing?” Ru asked urgently.

“Getting Forge his sample,” he answered.

They flew without stopping, gaining as much speed as they dared. Aster thought to recommend they disperse to move faster, but she felt frightened by the notion as soon as it entered her mind. The one brief effort she managed paralyzed her, causing her to fall slightly behind the others. She struggled to catch up, and in the end Reev helped her by extending his aura as he flew by.

Though there were no signs that they were being pursued, they flew as if they were, riding their fears along a staight and very narrow path to the very edge of what they could see. Back home in Briah, they would have measured the time perhaps in days. What Aster could tell was much simpler; she was tired. They stopped when they felt themselves weighed down, wading through muck, and saw signs that their movement had become an illusion.

Words came long after stopping. They hovered still, lazily drifted, and slowly regained strength.

“What did we just see?” asked Ru.

“Mr. Barrus,” Aster answered. She looked at the rest of the team, hoping for some sign of recognition, but the only one who gave such response was Eukary, and her eyes seethed.

“Two fo the Tangents fought,” said Catalyst. “Their past defeat must have done more damage than we thought.”

“They stopped fighting,” Aster said. She watched Cat for a response, but he only stared at the wall they could not traverse.

“We’ve got to figure out a way out of here,” he said. He turned to Reev and Ru.

Reev reached behind his waist and detached something from his belt. He brandished it to the team. It was another thermos.

“How did you make that?” asked Forge.

“Same way I made my armor and rifle.”

“But that’s a very complex and unique device.”

“Which I came to know intimately well. In fact, you could say I know it inside and out.”

“What’s in it?” asked Cat.

“Forge’s sample,” said Ru.

Reev turned a dial. “Allright, speak up now. How do we all get out of here?”

There was static.

Reev shook the thermos. “I’m not asking. I’ve got settings on this thing that can hurt you. How do we get out?”

The static crackled, and Aster heard Netz make a flurry of pleas for her life and freedom.