When Vorzii returned from patrol, it often came back with refugees. As Veralla learned, while Terra Para had always been sparsely populated, many settlements had been founded over the centuries. Besides the main civilization centers of Kryoon City, Arcolant, and the Radiant Knights' former headquarters at the Shard, numerous other places existed amidst the hostile wilderness, forming what was known as the Beacon Highway. Some of them were small, barely an outpost of isolated people huddling around an E-beacon, while others were large and thriving communities like Dragon Retreat had been.

All of them, however, had come under siege when Ferrtau had unleashed his Revenant and when the Consortium and the Union had gone to war.

So the Radiant Knights, led by Airo, went out there to offer them shelter, and people gladly accepted. Just as Tehalix had said in the dining hall, the Order's hidden base had filled with refugees in a matter of days. It made the once empty hallways and gathering chambers seem less abandoned, and the living quarters became considerably more bustling.

Veralla liked to explore anytime new arrivals came. The refugees were colorful people, each community very different from the rest. Some of them were examples of transhumanism pushed to its limit; many had chosen to live on this far-flung planet to enjoy the ability to pursue complete freedom, including in terms of appearance. There were hybrids between humans and uplimals, or several uplimal species spliced together in so-called 'chimeras'. Cryptids – non-existing creatures – were also a popular choice of morphology, as well as – to Veralla's surprise and delight – morphs that imitated dragons in form or design. Synthetic bodies, from unusual to bizarre, and nanoswarm clouds were quite prevalent, and purely digital individuals too. Cloned, forked, hive-organized, gestalt – the forms of consciousness were dizzying in their variety. It was like all these people were aliens from across the whole galaxy.

In essence, they were: within the mirror of the inner cosmos, not the medium of the outer world, Veralla realized.

Even so divergent, the refugees were very tolerant of each other, since they had lived within the enlightening influence of the Radiant Knights, the original colonists of the planet. Veralla walked among them in her free time, amazed by the unfamiliar sights, peculiar sounds, and multitudes of curious scenes she came across during such strolls. She was particularly fascinated by the dendroos, whose bark-covered bodies grew strands of leaves and colorful blossoms, and had the ability to subsist almost entirely on light and little else, which she found amazing.

The refugees were equally astonished by her appearance and name, though only at first. They readily accepted her, offering friendly smiles, kind gestures, soothing soundwaves, warm-hued lights, and other even stranger methods of communication. They all thanked her for the help and shelter the Radiant Knights provided, even though she did not do anything herself. Still, it warmed her soul to see so many people who were peaceful and good. It was most endearing when she managed to witness their expression of love toward their families, their friends, and its more intimate variants toward their mates.

She felt happy, yet she also wished to have the same. She started to miss Airo very much, and while she was happy when she was among the refugees or the Radiant Knights, she felt something lacking in herself, as if she was not truly a complete being.

Veralla decided to visit Kiana and Zuckeroff to see if this lacking would persist in their company, since she has known the two of them for the longest time after Airo. One afternoon, when she was having a day off from training, she went to the residential section where they lived now; their old rooms were restructured into dormitories to accommodate the large influx of people, and Kiana and Zuckeroff had been assigned to one such revamped lodging.

She followed a complex route through grav-shafts, hallways, and intersections, already familiar enough with Ilsorin's layout so she could navigate without accessing the Viirt for guidance. She stopped on her way to marvel at a group of tall-framed idoru transhumans reciting poetry. She then arrived at a large room, divided into several smaller sections, each making a tiny apartment. She pinged the door to Kiana and Zuckeroff's room. Zuckeroff called her in, and she entered.

Inside, Veralla found Kiana was absent. Zuckeroff, meanwhile, sat on a hover chair before a computer terminal wearing a headset, his attention focused to the simple flatscreen.

"Hey!" Veralla greeted him.

"Hi there! Give me a sec, we're just finishing." Zuckeroff turned back to the monitor, his hands moving furiously over the analog controls. "DeSabre, guard our six! Me and Sparkcloud are gonna take the last control point!"

Veralla watched Zuckeroff play with interest. Fond memories of her and Airo doing the same crossed her mind.

However, as the astrior's 'just finishing' stretched into almost ten minutes, she realized the game he played was full of violence. The insight bewildered her: she still thought the game was fun and did not sense any negative energies coming from things happening on the screen. But while nobody was hurt, an uneasy feeling rose inside her, for the game made her think about her traumatic experiences.

Zuckeroff whooped when he won. "Yeah! We've done it, dudes! Champs of the day! Congratulations to the losing team, too! You definitely gave us the run for our augments, yo! Same deal tomorrow? I'm scheduled aboard Vorzii from Highday onward. Um, right! See ya!"

He put down the headset, and turned to Veralla. "He-hey, cool dragon! What's going on?"

"Oh, everything is fine," she said. "I wanted to come and spend some time with you and Kiana."

"Cool, knock yourself out," Zuckeroff said. "Uh, that means, feel right at home." He rummaged into a container next to his desk. "Want some beer?"

"No, thank you. Say, what game were you playing?"

"Oh, that was Combat Element Zero. It's one of the oldies from the Ground Age. Maybe even from the time of the Ancients, I'm not sure. Very adrenaline-pumping, tho'!" Zuckeroff opened his beer can and took a gulp.

"Yes, it was quite energetic," Veralla agreed. "However, I noticed you killed twenty-eight people in the span of five-hundred seventy-two seconds."

"Huh?" Zuckeroff balked. "Yeah, sure. Um, so?"

"Well, nobody died really, since it is just a game," she said, "and I admit, the action seemed quite fun. But are you not upset that the main point of the game is to hurt others, even if said others exists only in a virtual environment?"

"Uh..."

"What I want to say," Veralla continued, "is the game tries to make hurting and killing fun, when in reality it is not."

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

"Oh, yea, that's über true," Zuckeroff said, sipping from his beer. "Killing for real is a buzzkill for every normal dude. Eh-heh, I made a pun. But there's no harm in fragging a few heads while you're behind the keyboard. Uh, provided said keyboard doesn't jam to a terminator drone or a starship battlestation, 'fcourse."

"But why one is fun, while the other feels so horrible?" Veralla asked.

"Well, um, in games you don't actually hurt people." Zuckeroff took another sip. "It's all imaginary. You just play, and when you reload the game everything's back to normal! No harm done. While in reality, uh, there are consequences. Bad consequences. Trust me, Veralla, I'm a professional when it comes to violence," the astrior added, winking.

"Oh," she said. "So you are trained to hurt and kill others?"

"Well... yeah," Zuckeroff said, frowning in recognition. "I guess I am."

"But do you not feel terrible when you are hurting another, or witnessing someone get hurt? It is even worse when someone is killed."

"Well, ah, it's certainly not pleasant to kill." Zuckeroff's cheerful attitude faded, replaced by a sober expression. "I didn't know that at first. I grew up with games and sports, and never experienced violence up close as a youngster. Back in my day Sol Force had those 'Be a soldier!' ads, um, showing all kinds of cool stuff. So I enlisted as an astrior, thinking I get to have an awesome time and wave a badass gun around."

"What happened then?" Veralla asked.

"I went through g-force milhab. It was hard, but I held on, thinking I was finally doing something worthwhile with my life. After basic training, the first years were quiet, without much action. So quiet, in fact, I decided to go to military university. There, everything was as I thought it was – there were parties, sex, and lots of cool stuff, like, uh, weapons, ACUs, power armors, and such. Ah, there was a lot of study also, but it was all right compared to basic training. Then I graduated, and earned a place among the Epsilon Corps."

"So you did not actually kill people, then? You were only trained to do so?"

"Um, no," Zuckeroff said. He drained the rest of his beer, and ah!-ed loudly. "When I was born, the Axiom Crusades were in full swing across the galaxy. My homeworld, Orelia, was attacked shortly after I became a super-ninja. It was, as you say, terrible – a giga-bunch of people died and lots of cities got orbital-bombarded. I killed a lot of people, too. That's when I understood life isn't always fun like in games."

"But why did you kill all those people?" Veralla asked. "Did you not feel unhappy or sad when you did so?"

"Not really, I guess," Zuckeroff said, scratching his head. "Most times it was just like in VR – you shoot at the bad dudes, and they die, then, um, more bad dudes come and you shoot at them again. Only... only when people on our side started to die, I realized what death actually was. Sure, they used cortex crystals to resurrect us, but some dudes came back wrong. And some never came back, obliterated in an explosion, or spaced into the void after a hull breach, or simply plasma burned on the battlefield, while their backup was corrupted in an infosec raid... When I saw friends die, I learned why war sucks. Uh, I mean, why it's bad."

"But did you not feel the same about those you killed? Surely they had friends and loved ones, too!"

"Well, they were the bad dudes," Zuckeroff shrugged. "I don't mean I liked killing them, but, um... if they didn't want to be killed, why did they attack our homeworld?"

Veralla paused, thinking. Her tail began to thump on the floor. She remembered what Airo had told her about war; how everyone thought only their side mattered when warring. Was that what enabled war in the first place? Perhaps humans, too, had some ability like battlefury which made it possible to block one's perception to the suffering of others.

"Say, Veralla," Zuckeroff called, pulling her out of her musings. The astrior had returned to his good-humored personality. "Don't overclock yourself on that deep stuff, like the Boss does. Relax, have a good beer, and enjoy life. Like my psych warfare instructor used to say, um, ah, 'Events and reality are objective by themselves, and only an observer determines their moral resonance'. Which I guess means that everything can be good or bad, depending how you look at it."

"But I do not understand," she said. "I can feel why hurting is bad, but how is it possible to be good?"

"Ah, well, it's mostly bad," Zuckeroff agreed. "Yet sometimes, hurting is good."

"But why?" Veralla asked with wide eyes.

"Because pain acts like a snooze alarm," Zuckeroff said with a smile. "If you push yourself too much, pain is gonna smack you right on the head to, uh, to remind you that you must relax. If you're hurt, you need to rest and heal. If you're stressed, you need to have fun. And those things, um, healing and fun, are good things."

"But can you not have fun and heal without being hurt first?"

"Sure you can. But it's easy to forget to enjoy life, like the Boss has. In that case, ah, hurting makes you feel alive."

"Feel alive?" she echoed.

"Yeah!" Zuckeroff nodded enthusiastically, excited by his own train of thought. "If you forget the good stuff about life, then only the bad stuff remains to remind you that you exists. That means, any time you are hurt or feel pain, you are actually told 'Hey, you're alive!'. And being alive is a good thing, yeah? So, being hurt is bad, but it makes you feel alive, which is good, which means hurting is good, too! Sometimes, 'fcourse."

"I... understand," Veralla said. She scratched the floor idly. "But surely not all bad things can lead to good things, yes? Can dying be good?"

Zuckeroff, who was about to open another beer, stopped midway. "Huh," he huffed, becoming pensive. Then, after several seconds, he smiled again and said, "Sure."

"Oh." She paused. "Really?"

"Yeah," the astrior said, his tone soft and confident. "Dying can be good, because sometimes life can be bad, despite what I said. In those cases, death gives freedom."

"How do you know that?"

"Ah, I don't. It's what the Celestial Way teaches. Personally, uh, I'm more of a Dudeist myself, but both philosophies say the same stuff about death – that it is never the end."

Veralla looked down. Death is never the end... "But what follows after death then?" she asked.

"Aw, c'mon, cool dragon, let's talk about something more lighthearted," Zuckeroff exclaimed, waving his second beer can. "I'm a man of simple pleasures, after all. Don't wanna become all moody like the Boss."

"Okay," she agreed meekly, although she burned with a desire for knowledge.

"Say, why don't you come to the NOC-AEO tournament this evening? It's the first time ever I'll get to see a live match, and it took me quite a while to, uh, organize the event."

She perked up at the sound of unfamiliar terminology. "NOC-AEO? What is that?"

"AEO is short for Æther Omega," Zuckeroff replied with sparkling eyes. "I still think skycast is the greatest sport ever, but AEO is the most spectacular thing the Æther Age has ever created. It's a sport where two or more Conduits fight with only their powers! You haven't seen anything until you've witnessed an AEO match. In this case NOC-AEO means non-contact AEO – so no brawling, only magic, hehe!"

"You said fighting? Does that mean the goal of the game is for the participants to hurt each other?" Veralla asked.

"Oh, no, no, no! It's sport, not a real battle." Zuckeroff chuckled. "The goal is to push your opponent into the off-limits zone, or, uh, make them surrender, which gives you points. Get enough points and you win."

"Oh, I understand."

"It was a bit tough to persuade these Knight dudes at first," the astrior blathered on. "Seeing how they're the only Conduits around besides Ki, and, uh, I guess some of the locals. So yeah, rather dull dudes, the Radiant Knights. They don't know how to have fun! They only train and train and train, sometimes having some light chat in the dining hall. Well, chatting isn't enough to have a good time! So I've taken upon myself to show them how to do fun! I've got a program of events lined right up in my omnitool for next week, and, um, I plan to make a regular calendar, featuring skycast, parkour, überball, maybe even some R-SES! It's good for the locals also, they're so many, clogging Viirt simulspaces, and anyway it'll be good for them to have physical exercises and entertainment besides–"

"Where is Kiana?" Veralla interrupted him. "I want to see her, too."

"Eh, she went to the dining hall, I think," Zuckeroff said pointing a thumb over his shoulder. "So, you'll come tonight, right?"

"Yes, I will come," she said. "Cloud, please tell me Kiana's current location," she said, craning her neck toward the ceiling.

"Of course, Veralla," came the friendly-voiced omnidirectional reply of Yeoman Cloud. "Sensor readings confirm Lieutenant Zuckeroff's approximation. Lieutenant Kiana is currently in the L2 southwestern observation dome, two sections away from the dining hall."

"Thanks," she said. "I shall be going now. Bye, St'aep'hon!"

"See ya, cool dragon!"