Her declaration was met with silence. The pirate captains looked at her with open mouths, and the hologram of the admiral started to shake his head.

“You apparently don’t even know what Fornax is,” the admiral said.

“She knows,” Omor answered. “She and Orphelia both were there, they both have seen it.”

“You didn’t just sent a probe there?” Surprise and horror were in the admiral’s voice. “Two princesses there, without any training on how to shield their mind?”

“You didn’t know they were princesses as well, so how were we supposed to know?” Omor turned to the admiral and glared at him.

“You shouldn’t have abducted them in the first place!” The admiral’s eyes seemed as if they were on fire.

Lia kept her eyes on Ludwig, who hadn’t shown any visible reaction. “There has to be a way to defeat him,” she said.

“Maybe, but I need to know what Fornax is.” Ludwig looked at the pirates, the admirals and then back at her.

“For–“

“This is classified information!” the admiral shouted.

Lia looked at the bearded man and channeled Ludwig again. “If I really am a princess or even the queen, then I am declassifying that information now.” She sounded completely calm, but felt anything but. Had Orphelia felt like this, too?

“You still have to proove …”

“You want me to do the same dance Orphelia had to do?” Lia took a deep breath and bit her lower lip to find a bit of calm. “Are you sure? I accidentally erased Amir’s mind. There are several imperi that can testify.”

The admiral didn’t answer immediately.

“Good.” Lia turned back to Ludwig. “Fornax is, as far as I have understood it, a former king that tried to ascend. I was told that it went wrong, but I fear it also worked to a certain degree. The presence left on that broken planet threatened Orphelia before and took control when she and Amir finally met.”

“A presence on a broken planet?” Ludwig looked at the pirates and then at the admiral himself.

“It’s hard to describe if you haven’t been there,” Lillian added. “But yes, the planet broke. Everyone there died, but a presence was left behind that attacks the minds of those that come close. Members of the royal family and imperi are hit the strongest, then donar, and non-magical people are the least affected.”

“You can’t fight a broken planet,” the admiral said, sounding defeated.

“I do not want to fight the broken planet. I want to fight the presence there. And Lillian has already demonstrated that it’s possible to defeat him. With the donar we managed to free.” Lia felt a bit more confident the longer she spoke. It was possible. It had to be. For all the donar, and for her friend who had died because of Fornax.

“Impossible.” The admiral snorted. “You have to touch the people you use mind magic on.”

“That’s not quite true,” the principal said. “We usually install in everyone capable of using mind magic a mind block that stops them from using it at a large scale. Neither Orphelia nor Lia have said block. Lia is still able to do it from a distance.”

“What?” Everyone sounded perplex.

“Did you really think we’d allow anyone, or even the military, access to that kind of power? It is a decree of the first queen, that’s been upheld in the Rose-Family for centuries.” The principal shook his head, and then mumbled barely loud enough for her to hear: “Can’t have you remember this afterwards either …”

“Captain?” one of the crew asked. “We should do something about them.”

Lia turned to look at the donar. It was almost as if all of them were in a shimmering bubble, with Leda in the center, and all of them were coming at the Lagrange.

“They’re trying to breach us!”

“Seems like we have other problems now. Get every mage-pair that can fight to their entry point. Lia and I will try to free them.” Lillian turned around and ran down the corridor. “Tell me where to go!”

Lia gulped, but followed Lillian a moment later, while a crew-member’s voice resounded through the ship’s intercom: “Downstairs, left, left again, now right …”

It didn’t take them long to reach the corridor where the breach was happening. The outer wall was already curling back and outside like a metal flower that bloomed toward the empty space.

On the other side she could see all the donar, arrayed around Mr. Leda, magic swirling between them.

Lia gulped. Could they even prevail against all of them?

The winter captain arrived next to them and touched Lillians back. Immediately, more magic sprang to life, blocking some of the incoming donar.

“Lia, I hope you watched carefully, because you have to free them. Now.” Lillian’s voice sounded strained, and the former queen didn’t even look at her.

“I have to free them?” Lia looked from her to the donar and at all the swirling bits and pieces of magic around them.

“Yes. I can’t act on them from here. You can. You also need to learn how to use spirit magic, if you want to stand a chance against HIM.”

Lia gulped and looked at all the donar before her. All of them staring at her. It made her feel uneasy. But Lillian was right, she had to do something.

Omor arrived with a few more people, probably donar from the crew, to support Lillian, and Lia reached out with her magic. Only to hesitate just as it was about to touch the first donar.

“You have to do it!” Lillian urged her on. “It’s the only chance to save at least some of them!”

Lia felt tears prickle in her eyes, and her hands shook, as she brought herself to touch the first possessed donar with her spirit magic. She wasn’t ready for this, but she had no other choice. She had to do this.

Prickly magic answered her poking, and the donar before her fought back, having the same kind of magic she was using. With the connection established, the donar didn’t seem to have any problems or reservations fighting back. Lia had to succeed, or succumb to whatever Fornax would be doing. Slowly she increased the power behind her own attack and pushed him back, while around her magic clashed against magic, pushing air, metal objects and plasma around. Small spheres of blackness pulled against each other and flashes of light threatened to break her concentration.

Slowly she clawed her way to the donar’s mind and to the numerous spikes that were embedded into it. The big problem was that she knew she had to be careful with those, but also no idea how to practically deal with them. First she tried pulling the foreign influence out, but when the spike finally came loose, she had the impression, that she removed more than what she was supposed to remove.

For the next one, she tried to be more careful, working around the spike, but she could barely tell where Fornax’s influence began and where the donar’s mind ended. She knew she couldn’t leave any of HIS influence behind, but she didn’t want to cripple the donar’s mind more than necessary.

Suddenly she was pushed back by a gust of wind, almost losing her connection because of it.

“Don’t struggle,” Leda’s voice said. It had a strange subtone that made it clear who was speaking. “Just come to me, little source.”

“Don’t you have enough mana already?” Lia pressed through her lips and got back to concentrating on the donar she was trying to free.

“Oh, naive little one.” Another wave hit her, and somehow the donar she was trying to free stopped resisting her, but started attacking her own mind. “It’s not about quantity but quality!”

Darkness encroached on her vision and she was suddenly busy pushing back against him. He was far stronger than her, far more experienced. There was no way that she could win.

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“Don’t give in,” someone shouted.

It was so hard to keep up, the pressure coming from him being too much.

“You have more power than that donar, you just have to endure.” Another voice, but whose? And why was he so sure? She had already used a lot of mana today …

“You can do it,” another familiar but soft spoken voice resounded in her mind.

“Orphelia?” she wondered. Somehow the thought of her friend allowed her to find hidden energy reserves, and she managed to push back against Fornax’s presence. Everything was still mostly dark, concealed by a veil of darkness, but when she looked, she could see the donar she was attempting to free breathe heavily, and sweat glistened on his forehead whenever magic flashed around him.

Maybe that person earlier was right, and she still had enough reserves to push through this.

Pulling at her reserves, she pushed back. Suddenly the pressure on her vanished, and her own magic almost blasted against all the donar out there. Did she erase anyone’s mind by accident? The one she had contested with levitated unconscious just outside the ship’s hull.

“Why are you resisting your god?”

She tried to ignore the raspy, shivers inducing voice, and probed the mind of the donar she had tried to free. With no idea what she was doing, she couldn’t tell, how much damage she had done, but it felt as if parts of his mind were missing.

Somehow she pushed her bad feeling about this aside. Her conscience silenced by the fact that she was still in danger. Gulping, she removed the last spikes from his mind and concentrated on the next donar.

Someone moved the body of the now unconscious donar, while she felt out how Fornax was controlling the next donar. There were numerous spikes in his mind as if Fornax needed to subvert more of him to control his actions. She tried to be more careful this time, but once again, she noticed that she didn’t have any experience in using spirit magic. Especially not at all to the degree Lillian had demonstrated. Lia had to wonder whether the former queen learned that kind of control during her school days or while sitting on the throne.

It felt like an eternity until she had him somewhat free, hoping that the holes in his mind weren’t too bad. When she refocused on the magic battle before her, she noticed that the glow of magic that clashed before her, had dimmed considerably. The hole in the ship’s hull, that had been sort-of neat and round before now looked like another battlefield. Chunks of metal were missing here and there, cut out as if someone had taken a knife to it. Or maybe overly large teeth. Behind her were deep cuts in the metal of the ship.

“You. Will. Be. Mine!” Fornax roared with Leda’s voice and suddenly all the magic threads gathered before her. The protective bubble around the donars attacking the ship dispersed. A gust of air pulled her toward the hole, before the imperi on her side reacted.

In that moment a large ball of magic, metal, air, plasma and light approached her, spreading out like a net. Instinctively she pushed back, forming several threads of her own just to push back. Just as she was concentrating on that, she was hit with some kind of black magic. A thread of spirit magic came from Leda, that, as far as she knew, couldn’t be his own. It took her a moment to realize that Fornax was attacking her directly.

Then her thoughts stopped as she was plunged into darkness.

* * *

Lia woke and stared at a blue sky above her. A bright sun shone down on her and clouds wandered over the sky. It felt somewhat surreal and yet was more than a hologram. She slowly got up and looked around. Next to her were flower beds and a bit further down a well—the same as in the academy. Beyond them were fields. Fields of flowers, fields with wheat that glowed golden under the sun. It was calm, peaceful and warm. The whole atmosphere reminded her of her home. Eo had been like this when they were half way through the cycle of circling the gas giant.

She slowly stood up, wondering how she got there. What was the last thing she’d been doing? No matter how much she thought about it, she just couldn’t remember.

Frowning, she tried to find a different memory. What was this place? The way the sun cawled slowly over the sky and how gravity worked seemed to support the theory that she was on some kind of planet. But what was she doing on a planet? She had grown up on a moon.

“So he got to you in the end.”

Lia whirled around to the voice, and stared at Orpehlia standing there, her green hair fluttering in the wind.

“You … You’re alive.” Lia felt tears stinging in her eyes and had this unprecedented sense of joy.

Orphelia slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry, Lia, but I am gone. What you see is just your memory of me. A memory you cherished and protected more than your own mind.”

“No, no, this can’t be.” Lia reached out to touch her friend.

Orphelia grabbed her hand and smiled. “It sadly can and is. But I am still glad that you protected your memory of me. I am the only thing you can remember, right?”

Lia gulped and nodded. She couldn’t remember much about herself. There was her past, and then the Academy and Orphelia. But she had no idea who “he” was. Or how she got here.

“What happened?”

“You lost to HIM.” Orphelia shook her head. “But its okay now. You’re safe here.”

“Where are we?” Lia looked around once more. The fields seemed endless and only in the distance, past the central garden where they stood, was the silhouette of a large structure.

“This is New Earth. The center of the empire.” Orphelia walked a bit away from her. “Nothing can touch you here.”

“New Earth?” Something tugged at her mind, as if there was some knowledge she had about this place that contradicted Orphelia’s information.

“Yes, it’s where the empire’s palace is located. Your palace,” Orphelia said and gestured to the large structure. “Want to see your new home?”

“My new … home …” Something just didn’t fit together. For one Orphelia said that she had lost to him. And then there was still the fact that she didn’t want to be queen. The feeling had been with her since Lillian had started calling her that.

“Come.” Orphelia offered her hand and waited patiently.

Lia took her friend’s hand and followed her through the beautiful flower beds. The roads around her feeling as if she was making an irrevocable decision when she crossed them. She stopped at the fountain and looked into the depths of the clear liquid inside. She didn’t see the bottom as she should’ve.

The place looked beautiful and yet something felt wrong. The more she concentrated on that feeling the more prevalent it got. And out of the corner of her eye she saw shadows in the flowerbeds.

“Is something the matter?” Orphelia looked at her, eyebrows raised in an expression of sorrow.

“I don’t know. This place feels wrong.” Lia looked back into the well. The darkness of the water didn’t change.

“You haven’t been on a planet before, right? I am sure the feeling will pass soon enough and you’ll get used to it.” Orphelia was still smiling.

Lia frowned, while looking into the dark of the well. Orphelia wouldn’t have dismissed her sorrow just like that. At least she thought so. “How was it?” Lia asked, not looking at her friend. She knew that what she was about to ask would hurt her, and she didn’t want to hurt her, especially not the last memory she had of her. “How did it feel when he …” She couldn’t quite remember what had happened, only that it involved this mysterious him and Orphelia.

When several moments passed without an answer, Lia looked up at Orphelia. Her friend was still smiling, something that she shouldn’t be doing.

“You really should see your new home,” Orphelia insisted, ignoring her question. The way she acted sent shivers down her spine, and Lia stepped back from the fountain, only to notice that she stood in strange black mist. The same mist she had seen several times in her dreams.

“You’re not Orphelia,” she whispered and stumbled into one of the flower beds,

“But of course not. I told you I’m not her, that I’m just a memory. I can’t know what you ask of me.” As Orphelia answered, something hissed behind her, and when Lia turned around, a black snake shot at her and coiled around her in seconds. She was trapped. The same way Orphelia had been trapped within her dreams.

Lia panicked. Her heart rate rose, she almost hyperventilated.

Orphelia walked toward her. “Let me show you your new home …”

Lia tried to struggle, to get away. Orphelia reached out to her. Then a sudden realization hit her: She had magic. Immediately light bloomed in front of her, ripping the dark shadows apart.

* * *

When the light faded, she was back in the ship. Mr. Leda floated before her, his mind … She couldn’t feel his mind anymore. The other donar floating in space were all unconscious and she could still feel a presence in them. Their mind and that of Fornax, but Leda, who had taught her, was gone. She had wiped someone else.

Lia stared at the infected donar while several mages worked on getting them on board. She felt numb and only noticed in passing that someone worked on closing the ship’s hull.

“Lia? Are you okay?” someone asked. That could’ve been Lilian. She didn’t know, she didn’t care. She had wiped another person. Where did she even take that much mana from? How did she do it? That just didn’t make any sense. All she did was defending herself, her mind. And yet …

“Lia!” Someone hit her in the face. The pain made her concentrate on the person before her. It wasn’t Lillian, it was Eclaire. “Come back to your senses!”

“I … I wiped another one,” she said and looked again to the unconscious form of the floating Mr. Leda.

“Lia,” Eclaire insisted, then put both hands on her shoulders. “Lia, look at me!”

She slowly turned to look at her friend again.

“You had no other choice. This is war, and war begets casualties!”

“But he, Mr. Leda, didn’t want to attack me. He didn’t sign up for this.”

“Almost no one that fights on a battlefield wants to be there.” Lillian walked to her and stood behind Eclaire. “They are there because they feel or are forced to be there. To protect the land they believe in, or because they have to listen to someone else. The only ones that want war are those that profit from it and never set a foot onto the battlefield themselves.”

Lia looked back to Mr. Leda and past him, into the vast emptiness of space. The hole in the hull was almost closed. “Then we … then I have to remove the one in the shadows,” she whispered. “And I have to do it as soon as possible.” She pushed all the uneasiness and bad feelings into a corner of her mind. “I have to do it now.” Suddenly, she felt determined.

“What are you talking about?” Lillian reached out to her and touched her head. She didn’t just do it to take her temperature, but also to probe her mind. She felt the strands of magic pushing against her very self. “You can’t even touch Fornax. There is just a presence there, let over from a failed ritual.”

Lia reached up and lifted the hand from her head. “We established that I am the only one that can attack him without having to touch him. I am the only one that can defeat him once and for all.” She turned to Omor. “I need to speak with Admiral Horologii.”

“What?” The pirate captain stopped what he was doing with his magic and looked at her. “You can’t be serious!”

Lia nodded once and stared at him. “I am serious. For this I will take on the mantle of queen, and I will end this. One way or another!”