{Gait}

“This miscalculation continues to cost me.”

Korac—badass, convicted war criminal, and former General of the Icarean Army of the planet Cinder—lay beside the resurrection casket on the icy floor of the big cell. Pitch darkness shrouded the prison’s basement on Gait, the planet he regrettably called home. The nacre glass—unbreakable bonds—shackled his naked ass to said cold tiles, leaving him with no means of escape. The eerie field of nacre-deterring energy that blanketed the floor harmlessly skittered across his skin, hungry.

For a week, Korac railed and fought until his wrists and ankles bled. Until his hulking efforts broke his back and paralyzed him.

To save her.

Sagan’s screams died in the Seam—the world between conduits—two days ago, taking Korac’s sanity with her. Only Seamswalkers could enter there. In recent visits, his reason for any hope in this world confessed the monochromatic space tried to claim her. It whispered to her. Called for her to find the Atheneum—the lost library of the Ancients.

So, Korac helped Sagan anchor to this reality. Food, touch, sex, blood—all of this kept her with him. Until she stopped eating. Her duties to her people, the Shadow Progeny, kept her busy and exhausted. Each attack from their enemy, a terrorist group known as Imminent, meant ferrying her friends across the Vast Collective to their next missions. She rarely slept. He imagined she didn’t try outside of his arms, when he managed to keep her still. The innocent seductress knew how to distract him from his more tender duties to her person.

And somehow, all these current disruptions tied back to Razor, the Pain Curator of Gait.

Korac’s blond-haired, violet-eyed lover recently pursued the monster for intel on Imminent, the Tritans, and the entire Vast Collective.

Razor’s existence went back longer than the Icarean General’s memory. He got his claws into Sagan. Into her responsiveness to pain and control. With trust, her desire for it made for a perfect marriage of bliss and ecstasy. But the Pain Curator knew nothing of cultivating trust. Only of breaking it.

Now, he’d broken Sagan. And Korac couldn’t reach the door, let alone the Seam to save her.

Remorse.

That fucking Primary Tritan. After the Icarean General lost the confrontation with the Gargantuan god, Korac found himself here. That bastard. Haunting and stalking them since the former King of Cinder, Nox, was a child. Six million years at least, manipulating this operation for what Remorse desired. Which was what? The pieces of this multi-sided puzzle interconnected somehow and centered on their lives in ways Korac could only speculate.

From his minute perspective.

On this cold fucking floor.

“You must know something. Why else would they lock me in here with you?”

The resurrection casket, his only cellmate, remained silent.

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In the long hours of losing his mind, Korac took to speaking to the Tritan artifact. The machine reduced an entity to its nanite-controlling computer in its chest—its nacre. And likewise, when reversed, it reconstructed a person from their nacre. Made of an amber glass, this tiny pearl maintained the complex functions of most living beings in the Vast Collective.

Korac was the only known exception. He never needed a nacre. His body processed upgrades, transferred through exchanges of blood, without the need for one. Upgrades allowed compatible nanites to increase speed, agility, strength, soft and hard tissue repair, and, for the Icari and Progeny, granted them retractable wings.

This war criminal was a paragon of a specimen unlike any other entity in the Twelve Worlds. Not only was Korac nacre-less, but no one else looked like him. White hair and nearly white eyes marked him as exotic—A trophy to obtain. And yeah, sure. He played it up. Dressed for any occasion in high-class fashion or warrior gear tailored to emphasize the predatory beauty. To entice. To lure.

It wasn’t like that with Sagan. The Seamswalker had a way of looking at the Icarean General that stripped away his careful pretense. Because, for her, it wasn’t about the clothes. It wasn’t the arrangement of his hair or the stances he posed. The beautiful young woman—the successor General of his armies—melted at his smile. There weren’t words to describe the genuine virtue in her sweetness. In her love.

Korac strained against the set of chains on his left side, turning, pulling as far to the right as possible.

“Fucking unbreakable glass. Pehton! Pehton, where are you?!”

No sign of the tiny Lyriki warrior. Although she was the Executive Warden of Gait, the war criminal currently serving time in her prison recently spent much of his sentence with her. Together they aimed to solve several of the planet’s mysteries. Mysteries that once again revolved around Razor.

Where was Pehton? Surely, she’d think to check for him all over the prison. No. Korac suspected that somehow Remorse was responsible for her absence. As much as he was responsible for putting the Icarean General here.

Elden, please, let the dying of Sagan’s screams mean she settled into distraction. That she’s solving her own mysteries. Please don’t… It couldn’t mean…

No. Never her.

Korac howled into the four walls of the dark cell. It carried and resounded back to him. He sounded desperate. And heartbroken—

The lift whirred.

For seven days, he waited to hear the air brakes on the only way in and out of this place.

Finally.

It was too dark to make out the figure paused on the machine. He sniffed, taking in their scent. Recognizing the faint sexual neglect, Korac called out, “Executive Warden.”

No lights to see, but he remembered her pitch-black skin and fiery orange feathers. So short, she barely reached his elbow. Those carbuncle red eyes of hers took in everything. Even in the dark.

Pehton’s breath hitched, and salt filled the air. Tears. Whispering between sniffles, she confessed, “I’m not supposed to be here.”

Korac closed his eyes and let the relief wash over him. She wasn’t yet his enemy. Cutting to the chase, he started, “Pehton. Sagan… she needs our help—”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.” Pehton shuffled and activated the lift.

“No! Come back!”

“I’m so sorry, Korac.”

“Elden, damn it! She might die without us! Pehton! Pehton!” But his words fell on no one’s ears. She’d already gone.

Oh, not for the first time salt burned a trail from the corner of Korac’s eyes to his hair. Very little made him cry. The thought of the woman he loved dying alone and afraid left him lost. That Razor and Imminent gained from her death burned his heart.

Did the white hats defeat Nox and Korac on Volcano Day for this? To waste Korac betraying his King and his nobler efforts for the side of good by losing to Razor and Imminent?

Korac pulled, tore, and bent in his restraints. Nothing deterred his attempts. Not the gashes exposing the veins in his wrists. Not the snap of bones in his extremities. Nor the popping of his ligaments. In his madness, he considered chewing off a hand. But even nacres didn’t regenerate amputated limbs.

Far away, a tiny voice whimpered, “Korac.”

Sagan.

Alive.

Korac felt it in his bones.

“Whatever it takes… whatever I have to do. Amos, I promise with everything in me, I will find you.”