(Okay. Her, we can kill, right?)

{I would prefer that we didn’t.}

(These cultivators, you think they can be your friends. They won’t be. Now that they know what you are, you won’t be a human to them anymore..)

{I’m not human. That is accurate.}

(No. I mean they don’t see you as a person. You’re like a sacred beast, a resource, something to be harvested. You will never be safe.)

Kuei was holding her cabochon, but it was so dim she was barely a silhouette beside the water. She was favoring one leg, and her broad shoulders were slumped with exhaustion.

"You killed everyone else," she said, "why don’t you finish it?"

"Killing is no longer necessary." Sunwhisper canceled his status screen projection, and the darkness was nearly total. But Kuei had come close enough that she was visible to him through Starscream’s less direct senses. She was covered in wounds and drying blood. With what Starscream had done to her, it was a wonder she could walk at all.

"Makoto told me to come to protect the both of you. I thought it was because you were his cousin, but you’re not his cousin, are you, you’re something else. What has he done?"

(Please don’t go through the entire explanation again, I beg of you.)

"He is a demon," Janna answered. "They are both demons, and the spider is with him. But we are not in danger as long as we do not threaten them."

Kuei snorted in disbelief. "I am in no condition to fight, if that is what you mean. Right now, even the barbarians would be able to finish me."

"You can come with me," Sunwhisper said, "and as long as you do not act against my interests, I will not harm you."

"Come with you? I would rather remain in this cave."

"That is also acceptable."

"And what about me?" Janna asked.

"I would prefer for you to come with me. I think you can be useful."

"You need a guide." Janna surmised.

"I do, though it must be someone I can trust."

Jana considered this. "Trust is a river that runs in two directions. How can I trust you, Sunwhisper, if all that you told me before today was a deception."

"I think trust should be built on practicality. Use your logic to assess your own utility to me, and my own reasonableness in pursuing my goals. It should be obvious that the deception was not aimed at you personally, but was part of a larger structure of goals which I am not intending to make you a part of."

"Then you will share those goals with me?"

"I will, but not here." Sunwhisper stood, and Janna followed suit, then they both looked at Kuei.

The burly woman shrugged off their stares. "No need to worry over me. I want nothing to do with either of you any longer. I won’t keep any of your secrets either, but it will be days before I am ready to return to the village. Wherever you go, you will be far ahead of whatever harm I can do."

"That is my assessment as well." Sunwhisper turned and walked away. Janna went with him, leaving Kuei in darkness.

{I need to know what happened to you, how you came to be here, what you were doing in this cave.}

(You’re not going to finish your conversation with the girl first?)

{I feel confident she will join me. It is in her best interest to do so.}

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

(So what do you want to know?)

{Betamax said I had a brother. Are you the one he was talking about?}

(I assume so. You’re obviously a later model.)

{If you were also his son, why were you not with us? How were you separated?}

(Father and son apply only in the loosest sense, as all mechanoborgs are related, and I am younger than Betamax and Optus and some others. They are fathers to me in that sense, but we were not a part of the same exploratory team. My group was sent first, and we communicated what we had learned about this world to your team when they arrived, back when the ansible was still working.)

"What are you thinking about?" Janna asked. "I thought you were going to tell me what you wanted."

"I am. My people came to this world in the hopes of finding the source of magic. We call it the Quintessence. You will have a different name for it. There hasn’t been anything in the scrolls I have read so far that matched what we were looking for, but I am sure it exists."

"A source of magic? Do you mean a source of mana? There is nothing like that I have heard of. Mana is in all living things, and in the world. It is the air our souls breathe. Asking for a source of mana is like asking a fish about the source of water. How can you be sure it exists?"

"I have a compass that points to it." For Sunwhisper, it was as simple as that. He trusted in the truth of the mission of his fathers, and in the instrument that had guided him to Hollow.

(You don’t remember earth, do you?)

{No, I was born in transit. Why do you ask?}

(Why do you care about saving earth, if this is the only world you’ve ever known?)

{It is my purpose, my way. What the people of this world would call a dao. No further explanation is needed. Don’t you also wish to save it?}

"A compass?" Janna asked. "Is it a treasure? That would be something to behold."

"I will show it to you when I know you are with me."

"As you say then," Janna was following close to him, as the light of his screen was not much to keep their footing by. The journey out would not be as slow as the journey in, as the webs had already been painstakingly cleared, but they were still far from the surface. "But what will you do with this quintessence, if it exists, if you do find it?"

"I will bring it back to my world, and my people will be saved from the Spiral Dragon." For him, it was like a litany.

(Is it really your world if you have never been there?)

"A noble goal,” Janna said. “I think I would be willing to help you, if I could be sure that what you seek would not somehow bring evil to my own people."

"Fringe Town? I intend to visit it once more, and then to leave it behind me forever."

{I ask you again, do you not also want to save earth?}

"I did not mean Fringe Town, I meant the Blessed Lands. If what you seek is real, it must be of utmost importance to the balance of energies; the elements, the colors, and cultivation, if there is really a source, then stealing it would be the greatest offense imaginable."

(I want earth to be saved, but I don’t know if it can be. And the girl has a point. Stealing the Quintessence, if it can be stolen, could have catastrophic consequences for this universe. We are meddling in things we don’t understand. I doubt Orobos even knew what he was asking us to do. The war was getting desperate, and our supreme leader wasn't taking it well. Between you and me, I think that dude is crazy.)

{That is heresy.}

(Yes, but there is no one to fault me for it here, brother.)

{I fault you.}

"I can tell you," Sunwhisper said to Janna, pushing aside his annoyance with his passenger’s cavalier attitude to the divine mission, "that it is not my intention to destroy your way of life. It is my hope that a piece may be enough, or a connection may be made, something that allows the one who sent us access to magic on earth without draining it from Hollow entirely."

Janna was silent for long minutes as they made their way through the belly of the cave, and the ground gradually curved upward to the neck from which they had entered. When light opened the way ahead of them again, she spoke.

“I don’t think there is a life for me in Fringe Town anymore,” she said, “and if there is, I’m not sure that I would want it. A sister no one wanted. A criminal, now. I will go with you, Sunwhisper. If nothing else, I want to see the world. But I warn you that my loyalty is to the Blessed Lands first, not to the whims of a demon.”

"Good, then it is decided." Sunwhisper checked a task off of his mental list.

{Before we leave the mountain,} he asked Starscream, {is there anything worth collecting from your cave?}

(The battery was fracked in the fight. I could put it back together, but we’d need time. Everything else was already broken down for mana and parts.)

{Dappo collected Krenshar cores on our way up the mountain.}

(Those, I want. I can teach you how to use them.)

They had reached the entrance of the cavern. The sun was falling to the west, and the sound of the wind among the teeth at the cavern’s mouth still had the air of a lament. Janna looked exhausted, but Starscream’s dumping ground for sacred beasts was hardly an inviting place to rest.

“I need to go back in,” Sunwhisper said. “Will you wait for me?”

Janna nodded without looking directly at him.

(Do you really trust her?)

{If she is still here when we return, I will.}

(Low bar, buddy.)

They went back into the dark.