Black gave way to white and then to red. When the three minds connected, Black Fountain saw a light glowing far above him.

“Windaji?” he said. He heard Vala laugh.

“Sorry, my friend. You’re not going to Valhalla just yet.

He tried to rise, but he felt no ties to his arms and legs.

“You’re still mending,” Vala said.

He felt her small hand on his chest. Through Yama’s panoramic eyes, he could see without much movement that he was in an immense cavern, and that they had lain him on a table and covered him with a blanket. Portions of the blanket glowed. “Where are we?”

“Niche,” Vala said.

A gangly looking girl in a gown entered Ayu’s field of view. “Hello, Colonel,” she said with a salute.

Vala smirked. “When his own people salute him, they use three hands.”

“They do not,” he hissed. “Where are we?”

“Where we discovered the object, Colonel,” said the girl.

“You were caught in the destruction.”

“Yes, sir. I was scattered all over the cave, but the residual energy in the room helped me to reform.”

“It’s doing the same for you,” said Vala. “You were a puddle of blood and chalk when we found you.”

“I have no arms or legs.”

“Not yet, Colonel,” Niche said, “but they’ll form soon.”

“Tell him, Niche.”

The girl looked nervous. “I no longer need my harness. I’m expecting you won’t either.”

He was quiet, still processing his situation, the implications of what Niche told him trickling through his more personal thoughts. “What are you saying?”

“She can channel her radiance unassisted,” said Vala.

“Into her ordinance?”

The girl smiled, no longer nervous. “Ordinance, equipment… I can even recharge batteries.”

“Her radiance flows free,” Vala said. “She now needs only to train her own endurance. The confines of human progress no longer restrict her own.”

He felt a sensation on the edges of his bed.

“Colonel, look,” said the girl.

“Fountain,” Vala gasped.

He strained to lift his necks, but only Yama had the resolve. Claws creeped out from under the fringe of his blanket, and he felt the forming of his fingers and toes behind them. A process once regulated by his harness, now occurring autonomously by the pkwer of his own essence. Ayu chuckled and Yama snapped. “Ramses?”

“He’s here,” said Vala. But he’s all nerves and lacteals now. Niche devised a device to hold him while he reshapes.”

“It seems the Archeus caused changes to him that he had to reverse,” Niche said. “so he’s only just now begun to reform.”

Black Fountain’s heads all hurt. “So many questions.”

“Yes,” said Vala, “and we’ll have them answered. I requested reinforcements and a research team for Niche to lead. General Sensus and Director Omri sent the best Albion has.”

“When?”

“They arrived yesterday, and not a moment too soon. Orak himself is leading an assault on this location. The non-rads have begun constructing an anti-bombardment grid along with orbital patrols. Orak has more ships than us, though, so our best chance is to lure him planetside and beat him in a ground war. I’ve sent out an all-teams rally call to that effect. Every Harbinger in the sector is currently enroute.”

He growled, as if doing so would speed his reformation.

“Easy, my brother,” said Vala. “You’ll be ready in time. Trust Imogen’s gift.”

His flesh knit around the surface of light, and beneath that cover knuckles formed. “I trust those who stay true. And I trust my own hands.”

Vala patted his armless shoulder. “You’re the bravest warrior I know, Fountain. Without you we’d have much less hope.”

And she left him to rest.

His death dreams were strange, being of a familiar nature to his waking remembrance. His first blinking moments after being kindled, looking up at the stalwart leader he would come to know as Vala. Her mouth spoke nonsense in his dream, but he knew what she had said to him. Welcome, soldier. Stand and say your oaths, so your service may begin. And the words rang true in his dream as they did on memory. From there he dreamt of victory and defeat, of trial and learning, and while the events and words and people involved seemed randomized, they were the people he knew and he was the figure in all. He wondered; was this how the non-radiants dreamt? It seemed a much more practical endeavor than the torturous hallucinations Harbingers endured.

He felt calm when he woke again, and was pleased to see his limbs had nearly formed. He passed the day in quiet thought, occasionally listening to reports of the coming battle. Vala visited him when she could, and Niche made observations on his recovery. When night came again and he drifted off to sleep, his dreams were darker, more fragmented, laced with memories of hurtful things he did not himself know. It seemed his respite from the death dreams was brief.

The third day he woke was cold. Winds rushed in from outside, followed by the sound of engines, cranes and heavy equipment. His limbs were weak, but curiosity drove him to stand. He slipped and fell, bringing his cot down with him.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Niche came running.

“I’m fine,” he said. He managed to roll over and raise to all sixes.

Niche stood close bye despite Yama’s hissing. He stretched his arms and tried for a seated position, but his hips buckled and he fell again. Ayu sniffed the ground, found a smell he liked, then gave it a lick.

Niche went to work setting his cot back up.

“No more laying down,” he said.

“I can get you a chair, Colonel.”

“I’m done resting.”

“Colonel, you fell from very high up. You need time to heal…”

“Orak…”

“Colonel, with all due respect, you need to be patient. The energy in this room is accelerating your healing process. If you leave, it will take you even longer.”

He shook all three heads, though Ayu was doing so more slowly, and at a different temp. “Take me to the tower.”

“Sir, I really think… you can’t walk and you’re very heavy. I suppose we could rig up a gurney…”

He thought of his brothers, Saviour’s Sword and Mastodon. They were strong, and many a time the three of them would carry others who were incapacitated to places where their bodies would be left alone to knit themselves. He was about to speak their names to Niche, but her heard his own name spoken with their voices in his thoughts. He felt a strange and peaceful stillness, and was quiet as Niche respectfully explained to him why she felt it was a bad idea for him to leave the cavern. He let her coax him back onto the cot and lay still, feeling threads sending subtle vibrations through his gut from afar.

He slept, woke, turned Ayu towards Ramses who was now a nervous system and a pair of eyes, slept again and woke to the speaking of his title.

One eye of each head opened.

“Colonel,” said Saviour’s Sword.

He opened his other eyes. Mastodon stood by the younger man. “Brothers.”

“We can’t explain it, sir,” said Mastodon, “but we both thought we heard you calling us over the comms, but you’re not in your armor.”

Imogen’s gift…

“I am light,” he said. “Carry me to the tower.”

Mastodon helped him to his feet while Saviour’s Sword found a robe he could wear. Shrouded in sky blue linen, he walked with the help of his younger brothers, passing through the camp with joy as their defenses took shape. When they reached the tower, he asked for them to pause. He looked upward, basking in the wind and the cold and distant sun. The beam that shot from the tower when Orak’s forces had since diminished, rising out of an ovular cloud that formed a significant distance from the zenith.

“You killed the enemy,” said Mastodon.

“No,” he answered, “I killed the Other.”

Through pain he climbed the steps, holding fast to his brothers while the harsh matter of stone pressed his skin cells together. In clutching at their arms, his hands too hardened, and muscles flexed themselves through the narrow door to the Aether. By the time they reached the pinnacle, his body was renewed to the full. He asked them to leave and he let his robe fall to the ground.

It seemed he sat there for years. Stars wheel overhead, reflected in his eyes, gleaming like seashells in low tide. His death dreams came to him while now awake, he could discern the truth from his fears, and he learned the former name of his vessel.

“I was a conqueror,” he said to himself. “I slaughtered millions.” But he felt no guilt, remembering from a distance that the wars waged were wars of unification, and if not for a most worthy assassin he would have erased his people’s borders and brought an age of peace.

“I died while tearing down our walls, and I live again to raise another.”

He saw her face in the empty air, young and beautiful. Not the beauty that stirs a man to lust, but the beauty of a weeping soul. Perhaps she was plain faced according to her kind, perhaps she was desired by all. What Black Fountain saw was a lattice made of tears in the shape of windblown hair. He reached up to caress her cheek, but an ethereal hand caught his wrist.

“You will not comfort me,” she said.

“Imogen…”

“Ehem…”

Ayu turned and grinned. Black Fountain turned. “Vala.”

“You look like you’ve recovered.”

He heard her footsteps coming close, but he ignored her, looking out across the space beyond the tower’s edge. “Is she a beauty?” he asked remotely. “I can’t judge your kind’s appearance.”

“She had a pleasant face. I loved her hair. But her real beauty was in her eyes. They looked sad to me, because each kindling dimmed them a little.”

He tested her, not wanting to be forceful, but to see if her specter was more than a figment. She let go his wrists and held her hands down to her sides. Light bled from her palms. “Vala…”

“Fountain…”

The specter flew through him, swooning in the center of the tower’s uncrowned spire. He turned to follow her, but her form vanished and Black Fountain stood alone in that osmium circle.

“I shouldn’t have come up here,” said Vala. “You were having a private experience.” She held his robe in his hands and offered it to him.

He took it and covered himself, hugging the linen around him tightly against the wind.

“You’ve recovered remarkably,” Vala told him.

He looked down, then where he’d first seen Imogen, and he swore that for a moment he heard music. He turned his head back to Vala, though Ayu looked right and Yama looked left.

“What did you see, Fountain?”

He wasn’t sure what to tell her, so he gave way to base interpretation. “I saw what I doubt. I saw what I lack. I saw what I owe.”

Vala nodded and folded her hands together. She seemed to have something she desperately wanted to say, but had decided to refrain. She even avoided eye contact with him, looking at the ground as she started to walk towards the stair. But she stopped, examining the stone floor of the zenith. “Have you looked at this?”

He hadn’t. All three heads examined the writing. The letters were foreign to him.

Vala, who wore her armor and harness sans her skullfort, cast a shine on the letters with her light and held up her vam. “’They who perish before death will be spared from death when at last it overtakes them.’ What is this place?”

Black Fountain searched the floor. It was dark, with only faint, heavily weathered markings. He swept the detritus away with his wide feet. “There is an animal in the center.” He walked around, kicking away debris. “It’s bleeding. There is a building around it.”

“Oh, I know this. It’s a castle. I’ve seen many in my death dreams. Look here, the castle is inside a circle.”

Black Fountain took off his robe and with it swept the tower roof completely clean, then wrapped himself again with the now soiled garment.

They walked in concentric circles, Black Fountain orbiting east, Vala orbiting west.

“There are eight rings,” Vala said.

“Surrounding a ninth,” said Black Fountain. He pointed to the bull and castle and they ring they were within.

“You’re right. What could it... are they stars?”

“Look.” He pointed to one ring, then crouched. He spat on the ground and polished inside the ring with his hand. There was an icon like a curved rod carved inside the ring. They went from ring to ring and cleaned them with their saliva, finding a curved ended rod in each.

“This is incredible,” said Vala. She pointed to the center ring with the castle and the bull. “We have to find that planet.”