“You aren’t worried about the Formorians then, Asmund?” Captain Lind asked, over a cup of mycobrew.

The tip of her long, elegant nose was stained pink from her careless gulps, but the merry glow in her cheeks and her big open smiles were proof she wasn’t too far into her cups yet, else she’d have been dozing on the bed.

“That’s Major Asmund to you,” Kyrja reminded her from across the table, grinning at their junior.

Where Lind was easygoing, Kyrja was strict – a focused and ambitious woman, spare with smiles or laughter – but she came to life when it was just the three of them.

“Pah, we’re not in the mess now,” Lind retorted, waving vaguely about with her free hand at his quarters. “You’ve got a really nice place here, Asmund, low down and spacious. Even got extra space to share with Alva! I need to get promoted to major already too now I’ve seen how the deep officers live.”

“It takes brains to be a major, Lind,” Asmund replied, joining the laughter.

“And no, I’m not afraid of a few horned maggots. I told Alva the same when the warning came in. Alas she’s a worrier like you, although she knows how to hold her drink-”

“Hey, I remember a certain future-major throwing up less than an hour before meeting his lovely lady wife!” Lind retorted with a smug smirk.

“Yeah well a present-major has to know when to stop.”

“Majors also need a sense of perspective,” Kyrja added. “We’ve kept the supply lines to the surface open despite all the attacks, and with each crawler of gemstones we can reactivate more golems. Last report I heard the Formorians hadn’t even attempted to strike a convoy in three wheels.”

Lind brushed the suggestion away with her hand, fingers circling in an exaggerated dismissive arc.

“Sure sure, but what about the warning from that crawler the Deephold sent? Maybe they’re ignoring supply lines up above because they’re all headed down here. Gonna strike us from beneath and cut us off.”

“That’s why you and Kyrja are with us,” Asmund answered simply. “And all your forces too. Even if the risk is small, they’re taking the warning seriously.”

Kyrja gave a grunt as she finished her cup and reached for the bottle.

“The maggots better come! Don’t think I’m upset to get the trio back together, but we had to call off the attack on the harpies for this. Could have had their empress and princess both, if not for this Formorian scare.”

Lind chuckled. “General Reginn says the harpies can wait. He’s right too – they’re trapped in the Underworld without the numbers to break through the defenses at Southtown and the mines. We’ll smash the maggots here, and then maybe we can borrow you to go round the harpies up too, eh Asmund?”

“Now there’s a plan,” Asmund had said.

He recalled himself nodding keenly in his conviction.

“The three of us together again, destroying the enemies of the King, just like old times….”

“That’s it! No-one can handle our teamwork! Together we’re unstoppable!” Lind had cheered.

Or so Asmund recalled the events of the previous wheel.

The words sounded strange to his mind now, distant and hollow.

Ahead and above him was the dread form of their enemy, filling his vision. An army of foes merged into an abomination so vast it obscured his fortress home from sight.

The hraekadr roared, and he tightened his hands around the controls, lest his sharking fingers slip from the grips.

The titan descended towards the Varangians as if the whole cavern were falling in upon their heads, shrugging off the gouging lightning that leapt up to meet it, clawed fingers grasping towards them.

“Now!” he called into the voice gem.

A barrage of wind blades lacerated the monstrous face, cutting into parts of eyes and making the grotesque composite’s roar into a hissing screech, hands rising back up to cover its face against Kyrja’s assault.

That in turn was Asmund’s cue.

Solvaettr whined as pumps and motors went into overdrive, the essence focused in his core erupting out in twin plumes of billowing lightflame.

The expanding inferno ate through a warding arm, severing the limb at the first elbow and going on to bore into the belly of the monster.

But it was just too big.

Even as his squad behind him unleashed flame and thunder dozens more arms were coming for Asmund, to crush and shatter him along with Solvaettr.

Lind was already there, leaping up to meet the attack.

Horns shattered against Stalskjald’s domed shield, the composite limbs deflected away.

Lind moved her bulwark to block another swipe coming in from the side, her essence flaring with each impact as she anchored her machine in place, an immovable lynchpin to their defense.

But there were still more of them.

Coming from both sides now, hands made of monsters caged them in, and the hraekadr screamed in fury and pain as it threw its weight down upon the duo.

They had to fall back or they’d be crushed in an instant.

A shape loomed behind them, a bloodied and burnt towering mass that lunged towards Asmund.

His lightflame blade severed a ‘finger’, but three more came on, the pieces of the amputated limb screaming and spitting along with the main body. Even as they were dying, the malevolent eyes of the conjoined bodies were aglow with deathless hatred, mouths gnashing teeth like knives as the giant ‘hand’ tore at his armor, the horns of the ‘pieces’ of the hraekadr ripping at Solvaettr.

With retreat blocked they had no hope.

Essence exploded above, a painful shockwave flashing out.

The hraekadr recoiled, the gargantuan body lifted back upright by an impact equally titanic.

In that brief moment Lind slammed down into the severed appendage, crushing the hateful thing to a cacophony of hissing wails and billowing grey fumes and clearing the way for their retreat.

Overhead the Calamity struck again, swinging a torn metal beam a hundred times her size as easily as if it were a sword. The absurd weapon burst apart against the horns of the hraekadr, knocking that giant head sideways with the force, sending it crashing down onto its elongated flank.

“Thank you!” Asmund called up to her, as he and Lind were circling around the collapsing mountain which was their foe.

It seemed impossible she would hear him, but he saw Safkhet wave back to him and shout something. He couldn’t hear the words over the din of battle at that range, but she pointed back at the brutalized fortress. The once shining and impenetrable wall was marred by a hole almost through to the dock, the floodlights destroyed or disabled. The remaining weapons had fallen silent too, the whole fortress gone dark.

Safkhet’s inattention was a mistake however – a pair of giant hands closed fast around the creature as she looked away.

A pillar of storm-wind drilled into one, blasting the arm back again.

Taking the opportunity the Cataclysm kicked off the other to escape, giving a wave to Major Kyrja as she passed her by.

“How much longer?!” the major shouted in his ears, as her exquisite machine dove between towering limbs of the enemy, striking at the exposed eyes and mouths that lined the hide.

The trio had become a quartet, a surreal, impossible alliance between the monster from the surface and the Varangians of the depths, united against the horror of the Formorian Hordes. Somehow, together, they were holding on against the titan.

It was clear that it couldn’t last however. Thanks to the Cataclysm’s addition they’d stopped the attack on the fortress, but even if Safkhet’s energy seemed limitless, she couldn’t unleash more than a fraction of that terrifying power. The others were desperately squeezing every last mote of essence from their gemstone cores and their own bodies, and still they barely endured.

Even if they’d had stamina to match the Cataclysm, there was no time to try to bleed an entire hraekadr to death through sheer number of wounds. Behind them the hordes were still advancing. The production-model Skidbladnir and remaining golems were dedicated to stopping that inexorable mass from reaching the broken walls, while the crawler teams were shooting down packs that tried to crawl over the ceiling, but the enemy assault seemed inexorable.

“Now! Get clear!” bellowed another voice in his ear.

It was Northastr Control.

“Get away!” Asmund ordered, echoing the warning, as he diverted all power to the gemstones in Solvaettr’s chest.

Safhket might not have heard the voice, but she couldn’t have missed the surging energy at her back – even Asmund could feel the sheer magnitude of the essence accumulated into the fortress weapons. Every other system had been drained to channel all possible energy into this one attack. Turrets crackled with overloading mana, the very air vibrating with compressed charge. Asmund begged the fortress aulogemscics to hold, just for that one shot.

Hovering in the air above, their unlikely ally was gathering energy too, chanting an incantation in the strange supernatural surface tongue. Essence roiled and crackled all about her.

With the diminutive Skidbladnir pulling back the hraekadr reared up once more, charging towards Safkhet and Northastr, its own mountainous crown of chitin shining with intense supernal potency. One more strike like that and it would break through.

“Kings grace, please let this work,” he whispered to himself.

“Major Asmund to all units! Get down!”

With that it was Solvaettr’s turn. Alarms chimed in his ears as his core discharged everything it had through those twin burning eyes. The demonic sun shone out brighter than ever, radiance whiting out all else in a flash that even a titan should fear. This was what Solvaettr was built for; to bring the terror of the Sun to the loathsome Formorians.

With so many ‘faces’ the hraekadr was, if anything, more vulnerable than its kin – the agonizing radiance turned the horror aside in its charge, immense arms moving to shield compound eyes as the light seared it.

That was the signal, to Safkhet and Control both.

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Lind leapt over him, pushing Solvaettr to the ground as she enclosed them both in her domed shield.

Savage as the primal skies far above, the great fortress of Northastr erupted with booming lightning. Blinding white roots tore shrieking through the air, energy orders of magnitude beyond anything Solvaettr could command leaping out from every turret, all focusing together to a single point, the countless arcs uniting to birth a new Sun more dreadful even than his own.

Flying high overhead in the centre of the cavern, the Cataclysm was at the centre of that rampaging, primal fury.

She disappeared, a mere speck evaporating amid the thunderous forces.

But that suffocating, crushing weight of essence remained. The lightning did not stop where it coalesced. It moved, drawn in, as if invisible hands directed all of the power to flow to a single point.

United, amplified and focused beyond belief, it struck in an instant.

Vaster than any river, lightning flowed from the Cataclysm to the hraekadr, reaching out like the hand of Creation itself to smite the foul aberration.

He couldn’t see past the shield to tell where it struck, but he felt the force resonating in his teeth and bones.

Thunder shattered the cavern and blinding light washed around the greatshield, burning Asmund’s eyes even through the filters. His last thought before he passed out was to wonder once more just how they had come to bet their lives and deaths on the strange creature from the surface.

She truly was a Cataclysm.

~~~

Major Asmund was snug and secure in his warren, Alva’s arm around him as they dozed together.

It was near wheelturn and all was dark.

Alva held him almost painfully tight as she whispered to him not to go, not to leave her.

Her voice was sharp, anxious… ringing in his ears… her hand driving painfully into his gut as she clutched at him.

“Asmund no!” she begged, shaking him.

But loathe as he might be, he had to go – he had his duties to attend to.

He felt his body rocking from side to side, his head knocking painfully against something hard where his pillow should have been.

“Asmund! Major Asmund!”

He opened his eyes, and the aches all over his body hit him all at once.

Solvaettr’s cockpit was dark, but the controls were lit. One was poking him in the stomach.

He checked himself over; two arms, two legs. Ringing in his ears and a splitting headache, but no bleeding or broken bones.

“Major, are you alive under there?”

Light flickered on his screens, piped down from Solvaettr’s eyes to his own, and he felt movement outside his cockpit.

“Yes, yes,” he answered, thumbing the voice gem. “I’m alive, I’m fine!”

A boulder bigger than his Skidbladnir turned over and the Underworld came back into sight. Lind appeared in its wake, her shining machine offering a hand to his.

“Good to see you again… sir,” she said, her grin audible as she helped him back to his feet.

“What’s the situation? How long was I out?!”

“Less than a minute,” Lind answered, as she retrieved the halves of her greatshield.

Checking the other voice frequencies and his external sound he was aghast to realize that battle was still raging – booms and shaking resounded through the cavern, setting debris tumbling down from the brutalized ceiling.

“The attack?! The hraekadr?!”

“It’s alright!” Kyrja answered from high overhead, “the titan’s retreating! The Cataclysm… Safkhet… she did it!”

The sounds and shaking were indeed more distant somehow, and an anxious look back at the fortress showed no signs of the hordes pouring in through the broken walls.

Surveying the rest of the battlefield, Major Asmund saw that the ceiling appeared to have risen several yards around where the baleful clash had occurred. Already the monstrosity was gone, retreating at speed back down the length of the cave, clutching its elongated body like a wounded animal. Chitinous plates had been blasted away to leave the thing drenched in blood and consumed by black burns, yet still it moved, even as blue blood smeared a grotesque slick behind it.

If only the girl had aimed a little higher Safkhet could have shattered the head of the horrendous monster and slain it outright.... Somehow it didn’t surprise him that she hadn’t.

“What happened to it- to her? What happened to Safkhet?”

“No idea. I was just trying to get clear. By the time I could see again she’d disappeared.”

Inscrutable, he thought. The Cataclysm’s actions made no sense even now, yet frightening as she was the young woman was no formorian, no monster devoted to their destruction.

She had saved them all, her supposed enemies, and she had risked her own life to do it.

Wondering about the strange surfacer would have to wait however.

The horde was pulling back with their titan, but still fighting a fierce rearguard action, keeping the Varangians from attacking the hraekadr as it fled.

They couldn’t let up yet. If the horde realized the fortress weapons were spent they could easily withdraw just far enough to rally their forces for another assault. Even without the titan they still had the numbers to threaten to punch through the exhausted and depleted defenders.

Asmund got to work giving out orders. They had to be certain to drive out every last foe, and secure the perimeter against any possible second wave until repairs could be made. That process could take weeks, months even – there was a lot of work to do.

All the same the major gave his orders with a grin.

The Formorian assault had failed.

~~~

Gastores’ head was pounding, his nostrils snorting for breath as he ran, eyebrow quivering at the exertion.

He had to find her.

He had to be sure Captain Encheiro was safe and with them before they could leave. He couldn’t abandon her again.

He could remember how their eyes had met though the chaos at Grand Chasm, a final parting glance as he was fleeing. Encheiro had smiled at him, smiled despite it all. She’d believed in him, believed that he would bring the Valkyries. Instead he had fled for his life, like a mindless animal driven by the flames and fright, arriving home before he knew what he was doing.

He’d gotten Petrino out, yes, but how many more lives might have been saved if help had come from the Shards that bit faster? Captain Encheiro might not have been the only one still with them.

Gastores had sworn to do better this time; to make things right. If anything went wrong; if by some chance she was left behind in her cell, it would be on him. All of it would be his fault, from her injury to her capture to her….

“Oi, slow down!” Ripides called from somewhere behind in the labyrinth of passageways. “Captain won’t be happy to see you if you hurl on her boots!”

The warning cry went unheeded, Gastores increasing his pace as the great fortress shuddered once again, another shock transmitted up through the floors.

Rounding the next corner he came upon another cage.

It was populated with ogres, many still clad in the leather overalls of mine workers and erdroot farmers. The faces turned towards him were confused and afraid, squinting towards the light of his torch, but they brightened immeasurably as he came closer and they recognized one of their own.

“Gastores!” one woman gasped. “Is it really you?!”

In the half-light her silhouette was obscured by those around her.

She stepped into the glow and he saw hair and recognized the face. His heart fell to see Hypata, the leatherworker from the house just below his own back home. Others recognized him too, muttering to each other in confusion. The commotion spread as the golems moved forward to unlock the cage.

“You came to save us?!” Hypata asked, as if the very notion were absurd.

“I came,” he gasped, “had to… get everyone back….”

“The boy came for us!” cheered Pelle, one of his parents’ farming friends.

“Encheiro, the captain,” he said, eye scanning the faces around him. “I have to find her….”

“Gastores saved us!” exclaimed Karzyna, the serving girl of his old local tavern.

Distantly he recalled the last time he’d spoken to her, and the sting as she’d slapped his cheek, but for her it was long forgotten.

“Gastores the hero!” she cried, throwing her arms around him as she emerged from the cell.

“The captain,” he tried to say, before another woman dragged his slighter frame into her arms.

“Gastores the hero!” others joined in, crowding around the local boy turned savior, their rescuer in their darkest hour.

“Wait until everyone at Chasm hears about this!” Pelle said, laughing in delight. “Never knew you had it in you, kid! We’d about given up with all the quakes and the lights going – you really are a hero!”

The words just made him sick, frustration and humiliation boiling together in his gut.

Hands were tousling his hair, slapping his shoulders and grabbing at his hands. One caught his bad hand, and he recoiled with a snarl, throwing back the people.

“Stop it!” he barked.

The faces all around froze in shock, sounds of mirth dying on their lips.

How could they be so happy, he wondered, when so many had died already… and when more lives were on the line.

“Captain Encheiro! Where is she?! I have to find her!”

Quiet looks passed between them at that.

His head was spinning as no-one stepped forwards. It made no sense… this was the cage with everyone else from those streets. She should have been there.

“Kid… Gastores,” Pelle spoke quietly, all amusement gone from the older man’s tone. “What are you talking about? You’re the first one to reach us… is Captain Encheiro here too?”

“No, no! How could she be with me?!” he asked, aghast. “She was captured in the attack, same as all of you!”

“She’s not with you?”

The voice was soft, the speaker little older than he was, but the sound was familiar, the realization making him sick to his stomach.

Turning to face the source seemed to take an eternity, and when he did he saw a figure limping forwards through the crowd. Supported on the shoulder of old Eophanes the cooper, the thin, fragile young man’s right leg was missing the lower quarter.

Gastores knew that leg. Looking up he saw a familiar face emerge into the torchlight. The face of Tavos… Eophanes’ apprentice… Encheiro’s youngest son….

“She… was… she was captured,” Gastores answered, his throat seizing as he spoke, as if trying to bury the words.

“She got captured… saving me….”

It was a plea more than an answer.

“But mom… mom isn’t here,” the boy said, his eye widening, trembling as he saw the grave expression Gastores wore.

It had been just a few years past that Encheiro had so proudly told them of Tavos’ new apprenticeship, her youngest finally all grown up, leaving home to find his place in Chasm. It was good work, she’d said, work where his leg wouldn’t hold him back. He could still see her smile as she’d cleaned them out at dice that night, so relieved and glad for her boy that she gave them each back her winnings.

Later that night he’d seen her crying.

“You wouldn’t understand, kid,” she’d told him, clutching a warm drink as they sat together. “You don’t have children. Don’t know what it’s like, bringing a little one into the world with a… part of them missing…. Worrying it’s your fault, that you did something wrong. Worrying what they’ll do, how they’ll get by when you’re not there to look after them….”

Gastores choked down tears of his own as those words repeated in his head. He hadn’t thought of that night even once since the attack… he’d only thought about himself, about his terror, his struggle to survive… his mistake… his grief….

“She must be with you,” Tavos was saying, “o-or back at Grand Chasm somewhere…. She has to be….”

Gastores shook his head, trying to form the words to reply.

“No… she… she….”

He couldn’t speak.

He couldn’t think.

Ripides came to his salvation, finally catching up and bursting out of the corridors behind them in time to hear the exchange.

“Kid… Tavos,” he said quietly, even as his chest heaved for air. “I’m sorry… the captain, she stayed back that night, fighting….”

“No body though,” he added quickly, seeing the fear on his face. “Never found a body or nothing! That means she gotta be with you all!”

“But I’ve not seen her anywhere,” Tavos whispered, his face as pale as death.

“Don’t worry, big place this, she must be in another sector is all!” Ripides said quickly, patting the younger man on the shoulder. “Now all you lot gotta get out! This way, sharp, our ride’s waiting!”

“Ride? You came on mounts?” Hypata asked incredulously.

“Nah, you’ll see, but you gotta go! We got Pharyes helpin’ us, but we all gotta be gone before the lot in the fortress get here! All you lot, hurry! You too Tavos, we’ll find the captain, everyone else too – so you just get safe while we do.”

The young ogre looked ready to argue, but his leg made it impossible for him to run.

The captives were under way before Ripides turned his attention back to Gastores, giving him time to recover from the confusion and shock. The nausea seemed there to stay, but that too would be gone, along with the knot into which his innards had tied themselves, as soon as he knew the captain was safe.

He could see her face as though she were right there with him, that hairless red head, covered in the scars of an old mining accident. She’d been fearsome when first they met, yet stern as she could be Gastores had found in her a warm heart and a caring friend, always thinking of him, nagging him to improve himself even as she took him and the others for all the fruit they were worth.

All the while she’d be sniffing and sneezing, complaining about the slightest trace of dust, yet in the training yard she was a demon, faster and stronger than any of them despite the extra weight from all those fruit rations and the quiet lifestyle of a guard captain. It was impossible to imagine Encheiro falling just to one spear strike, not when Pelle, Hypata and the others where there, safe and sound, not a scratch on any of them….

“Gas,” Ripides said quietly.

“You sure that the captain really-”

“We have to hurry,” he said, cutting the other’s words short.

Somehow it felt as though if he’d allowed him to finish, to say what was on their minds, that it would somehow make it true.

It couldn’t be true – there was no body in Chasm. That meant they took her. It could only mean that.

“We have to find the captain, and Calidae and everyone else, before the Varangians arrive.”

The search through the remaining sectors of the gaol was a frantic one, Ripides falling behind once again, puffing and calling out behind Gastores as he tore through corridors and searched the cages and yards.

There were no more people to release, the others among the rescue party having already spread out to free everyone and get them moving, but there were still plenty who had yet to evacuate, some helping the injured and infirm move, others reuniting joyously with their rescuers.

It was a few sectors over that he came upon Sulis.

She had been so fearful, so tense and anxious mere minutes before, yet as his eye found her the naiad’s elegant features were raised in a jubilant laugh, a radiant smile on her lips and tears rolling down her cheeks as she embraced another of her kind.

“Calidae! Calidae! Calidae!” she chanted the name as if it were a hymn, a prayer answered at last as she finally reunited with her brother.

“Sister!” he intoned, “Sister! You’re safe! You’re here!”

The two were eerily alike in color and patterns, but where she was feminine and curvaceous there was a more masculine shape to the form of the other. The tentacles of their arms were intertwined, coiling together in an embrace more intimate than any an ogre could be capable of, the two pressing their heads together as they shared their tears, their joy and their relief.

Gastores stepped back from the scene, but before he could leave Sulis looked up.

Pulling away from her brother she waved to the ogre excitedly.

“Gastores!”

Their eyes met and she shared with him that wonderful, warming smile that she had shown him only a few times before, the same smile she wore now for her brother.

“Gastores you… you were right, I found him! This is Calidae!”

Turning back to him, her arms reformed and in a moment the two were holding hands instead of tendrils, the young man allowing his sister to pull him over to where Gastores stood, towering over them both.

“This is my… new friend Gastores. It’s thanks to him we were able to reach you.”

“Thank you, Gastores, we both owe you very much….”

Bending his neck to look the ogre in the eye Calidae showed a smile not so different from his sister’s, toothy and earnest. His voice was deeper than hers, but with the same musical lilt.

Two of a kind, the naiads stared up together at him expectantly, smiling those matching smiles, hands still grasped tightly in one another.

It was too much. How could they be so happy at a time like this?

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but no sounds emerged.

“Gastores?” Sulis asked, her other hand rising towards his cheek.

Anger flared somewhere deep in his chest, a burning urge coming over him to strike that soft, pretty hand away.

They should have been searching for the captain and getting everyone out, not embracing there in the middle of the gaol, while fighting was raging outside!

He stepped back before she could touch him.

The look of shock on her face pierced through that short-lived madness. The fire burnt out in a flash, leaving only smoldering shame and sorrow and that dreadful sickening pit where his stomach should have been.

“I’m… very happy for you both,” he muttered, “but I have to go… I have to find Encheiro…. I’m sorry….”

“Gastores!”

He ran on, heedless to her calls after him.

What had he been doing, playing around with the naiad girl, or trying to be a leader or a hero, while Encheiro was missing?

Flying through open doors and past empty rooms, he saw fewer and fewer captives left in the evacuating complex. His lungs were on fire and his legs like lead, but he barely noticed either.

Finally he burst out into another yard packed with people. He recognized the gaping hole in the floor through which everyone was climbing, into the storage bays and the waiting crawler. Dozens of people were scrambling down the makeshift steps, the larger helping the smaller as they went. He’d gone in a complete circuit with not sign of Encheiro anywhere.

Searching about he scanned for some sign of her bald head and deeper red skin. There were a few older ogres without hair among the evacuees, and plenty with red skin, but none with both traits, never mind any that might have been his captain.

“Hey, you!” he called to one of the Skidbladnir around the hole.

“Gastores?” the woman answered, Lady Knall he thought by the sound of the voice. “What’s wrong? Should I get Lord Uldmar?”

“No, no,” he said, panting, “have you… been here the whole time? Have you seen an ogre… with burns on her head?”

Knall was already answering as he drew an urgent breath, but Gastores spoke over her as soon as he had the breath.

“She’s bald with red skin… older than me with a bit of a gut, but strong and fit too! Has she… already gone down to the crawler?!”

“I’m sorry Gastores, no-one like that has been through….”

“You’re sure?!”

“No-one like that at all.”

He clutched his head at her words, thoughts a whirl as he tried to think.

“Gastores?”

The words of Lady Knall were distant and unimportant now.

“Gastores!”

A wall loomed up ahead. He hadn’t meant to go anywhere, but he leant against it to support himself as he tried to catch his breath and make sense of it all.

“Hey! Gastores! Wake up already!”

A hand slapped his shoulder, and he reeled, looking over to find Ripides at his side, panting.

“You left me behind back there! Nearly ran the legs offa me!”

“Ripides… she’s… not here…. I can’t find her.”

The other ogre lent forward at those words, as if their weight were crushing him, but when he looked up again it was with a face full of worry, not for himself but for his younger friend. He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again, looking him over uneasily.

“Look forget about worrying about me, I have to go back, I have to look again,” Gastores muttered. “She could have been left behind in one of the cells….”

“Gas…,” Ripides said, his voice shaky. “She… the captain…. She’s-”

“I have to find her!” Gastores insisted, “I let her down, I let Tavos down… I have to fix this!”

“Gas, this… this isn’t what the captain woulda wanted. She’d be the first as to tell you to save yourself before worryin’ about her! Look over there too, we got at least a thousand folks still gotta get out… come on, maybe we’ll even find her as we help everyone through…. Come on, this way….”

Ripides gripped his hand, but as he squeezed the bleeding palm Gastores gave a snarl of pain and anguish, striking the touch away. His arm cracked against Ripides’ mouth and knocked the larger man back.

“It’s so easy for you!” he spat, “but it’s not like that for me! I can’t just write her off and go home to take over her job!”

Through his tears Gastores saw Ripides face twist in pain, but it wasn’t the split lip that had hurt him.

“Kid,” he said quietly, his voice hoarse, his own eye filled with tears too now. “I don’t… it’s not like that.... I just don’t wanna see any more friends get hurt….”

“You didn’t get her killed!”