"Oh, wow," Aoife said, grabbing Tvorh's hand. Her head swiveled as she gazed about her, and Tvorh was back to envying her her sight. "It's amazing, Tvorh. It's like being in sunlight at noon, if the sun was even sunnier."

Tvorh extruded his nerves into Aoife's as they strode down the pillar-lined avenue toward the enormous doors of the palace, and a dazzling miniature Tellus sprang into being. Light refracted and diffused through the lesser amber dome above and the palace walls before them, bounced off the amber paving, warmed him as if he was outside on the sunniest day instead of beneath multiple layers of transparent amber and a reflective spore cloud.

Aoife leaned in closer as they followed the speaking Chimera toward the open doors of the palace.

"Many sleeps since the others thought," the Chimera said. One of its wolfish legs limped as if it had received an old injury. "Now they think again. The one who came awakened the Master-Mind." He led them up the stairs to the palace entryway.

"The Tool at the center?" Eztli asked.

"I do not know this word, Tool." The Chimera led them into an entry hallway. Carpets and tapestries had long since rotted away, and even wooden furniture had only left behind shards and dust. But there were amber, steel, and gold in abundance: urns atop display pillars, weapons on the walls, filigree on windows of what appeared to be glass. Certainly it drooped like ancient glass.

In that moment, Tvorh wanted his eyes back more than anything in the world. More than proving himself to Gens Nethress, more than making sure his sisters would have a home. He squeezed Aoife's hand tightly.

She squeezed back, sending a thrill up his arm.

"Do you have a name?" Eztli asked.

"Do you have a reason for existence?" Senrii muttered under her breath.

"No name. No reason. We are few. Many births, but few thinkers." The Chimera led them to a closed bone door, filigreed with gold, at the end of the entry hallway. A few scarlet motes of paint long-since eroded from the door speckled the floor. The Chimera paused there. "Only Harbinger."

"What's Harbinger?" Aoife asked.

"Knows the twin suns. Knows the silver desert. Knows the secrets. A thinker, but not..." the Chimera cleared its monstrous throat. "Not good thinking. He knows the..." He looked at Senrii. "The reason. Awful reason."

"Silver desert?" Senrii blurted. "I saw a silver desert. Same day I met you, Tvorh, actually."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Senrii crossed her arms. "I thought it was just a hallucination."

The Chimera shuddered. If something could scare a Chimera, what did it bode for the rest of them? "No. Real."

"Hey, Eztli." Senrii smirked at the other Ductrix. "You look a little pale. Something you ate not sitting right?"

Eztli spoke as if she was reciting something. "If deserts of silver sand swallowed their herds, poisoned their powertrees, and consumed their crops, would we still fight to claim their land?"

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

"Whatever, Miss Cryptic." Senrii pointed at the closed door. "Thiyyatt is in here, working on the Tool, then?"

"The one who came is with the Master-Mind?" Eztli translated.

The Chimera nodded. As Senrii reached for the door, the Chimera shied away. "Master-Mind," it whimpered, the fear plain in its voice.

Senrii pushed the door open, revealing the palace's throne room.

More pillars, these holding up the ceiling three stories above their heads. More metal, precious and priceless, used like common building materials. More residue of hangings and decorations, more paintings long since rotted away in empty golden frames, more piles of dust next to gleaming amber tables.

And at the other end of the room, a throne of silver and amber on a dais a single step up. A solitary chunk of amber about the size of a person lay unceremoniously in a clump before the throne.

The throne's backrest stretched up a story and a half. Why did the throne seem like a rainbow from certain angles? As Aoife stared at it, Tvorh realized there were green growths inside the chair.

And outside it. Some of the greenery was extruding from pores in the throne, curling down, and wrapping around--

Indigo.

Blue veins pumped into and out of Thiyyatt. Black nerves jammed into her skull. She writhed on the throne in obvious torment, whimpering like a dreaming dog.

"That's her." Tvorh stepped forward, hauling Aoife forward.

"Hold your hellbeasts, kid," Senrii said, but Tvorh ignored her, stepping up to the dais and over the misplaced chunk of amber on the floor.

As he did so, Tvorh realized that it was a woman encased in resin. Fine raiment glittered through the surface, and a crown was upon her head. Her legs were bent as if she'd been sitting down.

She must have held that position for millennia, until Thiyyatt had flung her from the seat.

Tvorh reached out with his own ears and Aoife's eyes, studying Thiyyatt as the veins and nerves crawled over her. "She's screaming," he said.

"Serves her right," Senrii said.

"Yet she is our charge," Piotr said. Senrii flashed him a look of fond annoyance. "Without her, Gens Nethress will never truly be free of Nxtlu's attempt to slaughter us."

"Not all Nxtlu," Eztli said. "This is what we are here to do, is it not? We must cut the girl free. For your family, Ductrix. And for mine."

"But mostly mine." Senrii ran a hand through her hair agitatedly. "Fine. Let's get to it." She reached for her sword, then seemed to think better of it. "Hey, Piotr. I don't like those viney grabby bits. Your halberd's got reach."

Piotr slipped out of his bulky shortsphere backpack. It clattered to the ground as he stepped forward. The vines on the throne stretched out as if they sensed his presence, but they couldn't reach him.

His first blow struck an armrest, severing the growths there. Blood and chlorophyll-infused water splashed, and Thiyyatt shuddered and twisted in a silent, unconscious scream.

Piotr slashed again and again, loosening the growths' hold on Thiyyatt, until Thiyyatt shifted, then pitched forward from the throne.

Without thinking, Tvorh dove forward. His nerves tore out of Aoife and his vision vanished as he made a not-very-graceful attempt to catch Thiyyatt before she hit the floor. Aoife's scream blinded him with surprise, but he still managed to keep the princess's head from knocking against the ground.

"Good catch, Tvorh. Way to protect your girlfriend," Senrii said, then added in a stage whisper, "But your other girlfriend looks pissed."

Aoife was sucking on a liquidy wound at the base of her palm where their nerves had linked and staring at Tvorh with a look of abject betrayal.

"I'm really sorry, Aoife," Tvorh said. "I just--we couldn't afford for Thiyyatt--"

Thiyyatt's eyes snapped open and she loosed a blood-curdling scream that scrambled Tvorh's senses. "Get off me!" she howled, pushing Tvorh away with frantic and unexpected strength. She scrambled to her feet, then slapped at her head. Her hair shifted to serpents, lashed the air like whips wielded by a madman. "Let go. The control is broken. The control is broken! They were never ours to command. Never ours, never ours, never ours. Let go of me. Let go of me!"

"Hey," Senrii said, stepping forward, palms out placatingly. "Calm down. Nobody's touching you."

Thiyyatt shoved Senrii wildly. The Ductrix grunted as she flew back and impacted the throne with a sickening crunch.

"Ductrix, no," Piotr shouted, surprising Tvorh, as the vines reached down toward the floor and plunged into Senrii's skin. The tutela stepped forward, drew the halberd back, and slashed at the vines.

"They are coming," Thiyyatt moaned, thrashing from side to side. "They are coming!"

Howls drifted in from the entryway.

Their Chimerical guide staggered into the room. "Harbinger," he moaned. "He rallies us now. We enter."

Eztli growled and moved like a flash toward Thiyyatt. The crazed girl tried to slap her away, but Eztli moved beneath the princess's arms, swam upward in an expert grapple and--

Planted her lips on Thiyyatt's?

"Stop staring," Aoife hissed at Tvorh. How did she know? He didn't have eyes!

Thiyyatt's eyelids fluttered closed, and the princess wilted in Eztli's arms. "Safety, for now." Eztli let Thiyyatt gently to the floor. "Acolyte. Erus. Tutela. We must hold the entry hall against the swarm."

Piotr growled, a most un-Piotr sound, and ignored the command. Blood from the extrusions continued to splatter Senrii as he hacked, but he was losing ground; she was practically cocooned by now.

"Close the gate," begged the Chimera. "Close the gate." It pointed at the throne.

The throne that had Senrii in its writhing grip.

Oh, fathers. This was going to hurt.

Tvorh popped a calorie pack in his mouth. "Piotr! I got this."

Piotr frowned. Tvorh stepped up to him and put a hand on his arm. "Trust me. Help Ductrix Eztli. You, too, Aoife."

"Who are you to order me around?" Aoife said between sucks on her bleeding palm.

"I'm sorry, Aoife."

She flinched as if he'd dumped cold water on her head.

"And I've gotta do this." Tvorh turned back to the throne. "Hold the palace until I can close the gate and get Senrii out. Please."

"Take this." Eztli tossed him the vial of Thiyyatt's blood.

Maybe Thiyyatt was a Key and her blood would help. Maybe she wasn't and it wouldn't. Couldn't hurt, though, right? And they weren't using the blood for anything else. Tvorh poured the remainder of the blood over his palm, fought down a wave of guilt as it washed over the spot where he'd linked with Aoife, then took a deep breath as he turned to the Tool.

No problem. Just like the Archives in Acerbia.

Because that had turned out so well.

Tvorh stepped toward the throne, bloody hand outstretched.

One of the vines reared back and plunged itself into his palm.

***

Waves of thought battered at Tvorh, straining his senses to the breaking point.

His eyes didn't work, but he could see again. Images appeared in his brain, far firmer than any hallucination--flashes of reality swimming in a sea of emptiness that was to black what black was to white.

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"Hello?" he called, but no sound came out, or else a crushing roar like tinnitus overwhelmed it.

Did a voice respond across the black ocean, or was it his imagination?

Hundreds, thousands; millions; no, billions of stars swam in the ocean of ink, drifting without ever touching. A terribly few nearby stars were blue; many other nearby stars were a sickly green.

And at the edges of the infinite abyss, silver stars lit the void. A few of them prowled nearby, shedding silver stardust from their glowing forms.

Where was the control mechanism of the Tool? Tvorh had to get the gate closed and Senrii free. He swept out his arms, or thoughts of his arms, seeking the Tool.

He brushed one of the blue stars nearby.

A bullet whizzed past Eztli's head as she placed another bullet in the guts of one of the Chimeras. Its corpse fell down the steps toward the gleaming amber avenue below, bowling into its fellows as it fell.

Eztli reached out, flinging flesheater bacteria into the midst of the Chimeras' line as they came running towards the palace's steps. Where had they learned to fight with such coordination, to battle? She had to keep moving. Dodge back, funnel them into the doorway to the palace--

"Eztli?" Tvorh said.

"Erus?" Eztli stumbled right into the grasp of a Chimera whose arms were as long as a giraffe's neck. It dragged her back toward the Chimeras' line.

Oh, fathers. Tvorh had botched that one, big time. But another star was brushing up against him now. A green one, dusted with silver flecks.

Eztli shot and shot, but the bullets just disappeared in the monster's flesh as it dragged her toward a circular maw of razor teeth.

Tvorh's mind grabbed at the green star.

Hungry, so hungry, and barely able to breathe in this stifling atmosphere, and rage, and silver sands in its vision always just out of sight, and an invisible whip driving it from behind, and one of them in its arms, making pain with her pain-stick--

Tvorh reached frantically for the Chimera's mind.

And met resistance as a green-silver star slammed into him. Eight eyes peered back at him, dancing and parrying, as his thoughts scrabbled to touch the Chimera's body.

Tvorh's star dodged back from the newcomer's, slipped around the pure green star, and grappled it. He got his fingertips into the monster's thoughts. Only for a moment. Long enough to give it--

--A new directive. Pain-stick-girl not so important. Wait for a heartbeat--

Crack.

A bullet entered Tvorh's--no, the Chimera's--head, and Tvorh tumbled screaming back into Eztli's thoughts.

The Chimera paused, and Aoife's shot plunged past Eztli into its forehead. It went limp, releasing Eztli. She couldn't take advantage of it, because now somebody was screaming into her brain.

Eztli quivered, crouched on the steps, her mind not working properly.

Tvorh gulped and heaved, trying to overcome the horror of experiencing the Chimera's death. He managed to get the panic down to a weak whimper.

A halberd flickered over Eztli's head in a crescent strike, clearing the space around her. Piotr's thick fingers closed on her shoulder, tugging her back up the stairs with him.

Tvorh retreated too before he got Eztli killed. His mind was scrambled and he just wanted to curl up into a ball and shake.

But he couldn't give up now. The silver-green star charged him again, but he drew himself up fully, and the star wavered. He realized he was much larger than it was.

The silver-green star zipped away into the dark, silent ocean.

No, not silent. In fact, there was a curious buzzing coming from Eztli's star. It drew him in, tempted him, made him want to return to it.

He turned away with difficulty, trying to get his bearings in this alien ocean filled with blue and green and silver lights.

Again a voice echoed over the deeps, too distant for him to make out--proof that he wasn't using his body's senses or its highly sensitive ears. "Help me... help me..."

The green stars drifted on the inky tide, floating toward Tvorh. Seeking him. Not only were they far more numerous than the blue stars, but there was a malevolence in them. They were hungry. They wanted to eat.

They wanted him. And the six degrees of horizon surrounding him showed nothing but silver. Distant silver; waiting, watching, as hunting parties of silver stars drifted through the deeps nearby.

"Help me." Was that Uxor Principis Oralie? The voice, its tone, its nature, put Tvorh in mind of her. The words flickered in time with a blue glow on the horizon.

Tvorh turned toward the glow. His mind moved through the terrifying ocean of thought, sliding past the crazed green monster-stars and the cold silver hunter-stars.

"Help me." Oralie's voice, and Tvorh was sure it was hers, was firmer now. Her blue glow didn't make the blackness of the ocean any better, but it suffused him more deeply as he drew in. Again the light flickered as Oralie spoke, and at last Tvorh caught sight of the blue star that was the source of the sound.

It was drowning beneath the waves, not because of the other but because silver stardust was smothering it.

"Goodbye..." Oralie sounded mournful. Resigned. And serious. If this wasn't some awful hallucination in Tvorh's head, then the uxor principis thought she was dying.

The uxor principis--originally, the Ductrix--had fed him when he came to Thorssel. He thought of her crooked smile, motherly and beautiful. She always liked to take Hrega and Bilr for rides. And there were the cookies.

No. Whatever was happening here, Tvorh wasn't going to let Oralie die. He wouldn't let the silver stardust of this alien ocean strangle her.

A shameful thought occurred to him: maybe if I help her, that'll make up for my mistakes, and maybe they won't kick Hrega and Bilr out.

Then he plunged his hand into the silver grains of sand throttling Oralie's anomalous blue glow.

Hunger fire sulfur heat magma volcano atmosphere life planet message sun space void. A dozen thoughts that Tvorh never could have had on his own assaulted him. He saw cathedrals of calderas across the landscape spewing smoke into the sky. He saw purple-leaved plants, sick and twisted, crawling out of silver sands and turning to seek the light of invisible spectra from twin suns.

He saw claws and jaws, muscles and spines, fur and flesh in configurations that Tellus had never experienced.

More than this, Tvorh was all of these things. For the moment that he lived them, they made sense to him.

Tvorh retreated, horrified, drawing his mind's hand back. The silver dust choking Oralie remained clustered about her glow, but the grains seeking Tvorh were almost close enough for him to touch.

Tvorh steeled himself and grabbed for the suffocating mass around Oralie again.

Space void eternities motion sleep sleep sleep--

--awakening.

Tvorh gritted nonexistent teeth and swept mind-fingers through silver sand grains, dragging them away from their victim.

Arrays of monsters plunged from the blackness of night toward lush plains and forest below. Not Chimeras; they were too regular. Tube-shaped, armored and bulkheaded, as long as a hundred skywhales, strange biochemical reactions at their tails glowing like fire to propel them downward.

Their bodies hit the atmosphere and flared as they entered, a hive of hungry meteors, plunging toward strange circular farmhouses below.

Off in the distance, there was a silhouette of an enormous thicket, its vines as tall as the hills surrounding it. No--not a thicket, but a city, dark and lifeless.

"Run!" Tvorh shouted to anybody, to nobody, hoping that somebody in the fields below would take his advice, but his voice came out a hissing groan that tore the air apart, and he realized with terror that he was one of the falling monsters.

He was one of them. Hungry.

If Tvorh could have wept he would have.

"Tvorh?" When Oralie spoke, the vision wavered. "Tvorh, is that you?"

The vision flickered, showing black, showing silver specks lit blue. His nonexistent fingers pulled furrows in the silver blob suffocating his liege's wife.

"Tvorh?" The blue glow shook, and some of the silver grains dislodged.

The vision returned. Tvorh's monstrous maw opened wide as he plunged down onto the farmhouses. A scream drew his vision, and he took notice, only for a split-second, of three pairs of black eyes set in alien gray faces, staring up at him in horror.

Then a luminous blue hand grabbed his wrist. The vision vanished.

A new one took its place and made him its own.

Cold, hungry, and tired, his dress dirty, his doll long since lost to the elements, he huddled in the cave. He didn't know how to make fire. Mama and Papa had never taught him how. They said that was for the servants.

Him? His body was strange. Small, a child's body, with a lower center of gravity. And he'd never in his life worn a dress.

Thoughts flickered between the two hemispheres of his brain twice as fast as he'd ever experienced--except for by extension, when he'd interwoven his mind with his sisters. Or Aoife. Or Thiyyatt.

Oh. Oh.

The cave was out of the rain, and that was good, and Mama and Papa would want him to stay put, but maybe, if he followed that dark path down, he could find a fire?

Mama and Papa wouldn't like that, but he had already been a bad girl and disobeyed their orders not to leave the grounds of La Table d'Or and go into the haunted crater. Surely they couldn't get any more cross.

He stumbled through dark passages until he was hopelessly lost. He heard the patter of rain from a distance, but he stayed away from it. He needed to find a fire.

Instead, he found a pool of water glowing gentle blue in the bowels of the earth. Thirsty beyond belief, he knelt down to drink from it.

He slipped on his dress and fell in instead.

Which one was he, again? Tvorh?

Or Oralie?

Man, or woman?

He stumbled out of the cave and into the forest within the crater. "Oralie, sun of my sky!" cried Papa, jumping down off of his riding crab and grabbing Oralie before any of the servants or the rest of the search party could get there first.

Oralie burst into tears and clung to Papa, thrusting his face into his prickly beard and thinking of how that horrible pool deep within the caves had tried to drown him.

"Oralie," Tvorh croaked, not sure if he was talking to her or to himself. "Sun of my sky."

Papa's prickly beard vanished. "Tvorh..."

Her light was so bright. The silver dust hesitated as if it wasn't sure whether to attack again.

Tvorh's sense of self returned one precious sliver at a time. "I'm here, Uxor Principis," Tvorh said. "I'm here."

"Erus Tvorh," Oralie's light pulsed. "Something awful has happened in the Nameless City. I'm terribly sorry that you're here, too."

"It's all right," Tvorh said, not knowing where to begin. "It's only temporary. We've found Thiyyatt, but Chimeras are attacking us. Right now I'm talking to a Tool. I don't know where it is, though. It's weird. It's not like the last few times I communed with Tools. Uxor Principis, is this Synapsis?"

Oralie was dim and silent for a moment. "Yes, Erus Tvorh. Synapsis, and more, I think."

Tvorh's mind gave Oralie's hand a squeeze. "You don't have to be formal, Uxor Principis." They'd just shared something intimate, even if it had been terrifying. "But we have to get out of here before the silver stardust stuff kills us, and I need to find the Tool. It's caught Senrii, and she's in trouble." No point in worrying Oralie by telling her that they were all in trouble.

The light pulsed firmly. "I'll find her."

The ocean flowed around Tvorh. They flashed like lightning through the deeps, then stopped as quickly as they'd started.

A familiar blue star gleamed in the blackness. Dark and silver-veined roots embraced it, rising in twining vines toward the empty sky.

"Your Tool," Oralie pulsed at him. "My daughter."

Gratitude welled deeply in Tvorh's heart. "How did you know?"

"I've always known," Oralie said, sounding terribly sad. "And now I'm a part of it."

"This is my exit. I'll help your daughter." My friend. Even, for a little while, my childish crush. "But what about you?"

"Don't worry about me," Oralie said.

"But--"

"Thank you for freeing me," Oralie pulsed. "I tried, but I don't know if I succeeded. If I never have the chance again, tell them I love them. Tell Senrii and Jorn and Norman. Tell Dorsin. Tell Rosabella."

"But--"

"Something terrible is coming. Fight for us, Erus Tvorh. Fight for our families." Oralie's light pulsed with force, flinging Tvorh away. He hit the roots of the Tool.

They sucked him up into the sky.

***

"Tool. Close external gates.

"Tool. Reset defenses and target all Chimeras.

"Tool. Release and retract."

***

Piotr snarled a warcry as he yanked his halberd's spike from the Chimera's skull, then swept it about in wide circles, clearing space as he advanced down the steps.

"Still pouring in!" Aoife shouted from above and behind. She was lying atop the steps beside one of the pillars, squinting into her scope. Her rifle cracked again and again, taking the troops of the incoming monstrous army in their eyes.

A salamander-owl charged Piotr. He retracted his halberd, then thrust and released the spring. The head sprang forward, plunging through the scales of the Chimera and into its stomach.

Quills clanked against his armored skin. They couldn't hold out much longer, not with Eztli recovering and Senrii--

Senrii...

Piotr roared again and swung, removing one of a deer-monster's two heads and hitting it so hard that the tumbling antlers impaled the spider-eel next to it.

"Wait!" Aoife shouted, then whooped. "The gate is closing! Oh, the walls went up in the courtyard. It caught a bunch of the Chimeras waiting to get through. Yeah, take that, you scum-dwelling leech-infested evolutionary dead-ends!"

"Less talking," Piotr grunted, though Aoife wouldn't hear him. "More shooting."

A wave of spores wafted past Piotr, and he danced back in panic before realizing that they had come from behind him. The spores settled on the Chimeras before him three rows deep.

And blossomed into bone-white thorns that tore through the Chimeras' bodies. Sixty monsters dropped on the spot.

Piotr glanced over his shoulder to see Eztli, weary but tall, standing with the bloodied finger of her skinsuit in her mouth.

The blood definitely wasn't hers.

She nodded, and he nodded back. Renewed, they took to battle again.

But too many of the Chimeras had made it through while the gate had been open. Piotr had made a great many last stands that had turned out to be nothing of the sort, but this was beginning to fit the actual description.

"Hold fire, friendly coming past," hollered a familiar voice from the palace. Piotr turned in surprise to see Senrii sailing through the air on threads of gossamer. As she passed over Piotr's head, a cloud of noxious flesheater bacteria puffed down from her.

She hit the ground in the middle of the monsters.

Followed by a small, dark figure. Tvorh landed beside her. There was a burst of heat and orange light from the snarling crowd, then the scent of singed flesh. Naphthgel.

The Magi had joined the battle.

"Told you hellbeast-hagfish halfbreeds you were going to get dead," Aoife screamed as another of her bullets took out a retroflex knee, sending the boat-headed owner crashing to the street.

Piotr buried his halberd's spike in the beast's skull. "Get dead," he agreed quietly.

Then he set his halberd and charged into the crowd to meet his Eri.