The Savior Divine was staring at his hands.

Only moments ago, the Savior Divine had been conversing with someone. *A human, who was far across the galaxy - or further than that. Now, he was silent.

*Why? Laykis wondered.

Perhaps the light from the Heart - from all those thousands of asymmetric metal panels, brilliant with captured energy - was making him see things.

Another hallucination?

Or perhaps it was something the other human said...

But Laykis was here to serve, not to intrude. It was not her place to guide the Savior. Only the Promised One could guide himself. So, she kept her distance, and watched.

But… Poire was not speaking at all, now.

He was kneeling before the terminal in front of the gate, and holding his fingers in front of his face. Looking at the backs of his hands, as if there was something wrong with his skin. As if he could read the veins, illuminated by all that light, and find some critical answer.

But what is the question? Laykis burned to know. Everything he did, everything he said, everything he thought - she kept in her mind. Treasuring every moment of his presence, like a miser loves her coins.

The Maker told her to find him, and she had. The Maker told her to protect him, and so she did. With every fiber of her being, she waited for any chance to prove herself.

Only now, the Savior Divine was doing nothing at all. Moments passed. Then, minutes. Clouds of mist roared in the distance, making a blistering-white wall that encircled the grid, blocking out the rest of the world. As if they were all alone, with nothing save the miles of metal panels, sloping up. And the sky above, growing dark.

The fourth moon of Thrass et Yunum was rolling away, its beam of light long-since extinguished. And still, the Savior did not move.

She could not help it anymore. Laykis was no algorithm, enslaved to her code. She was Tython, and her desire to know and to help and to share in the Savior Divine’s torments overruled all else. Torment. That is what this was. She could see it plainly on his face. The focused lines of his brow. The pained squint of his eyes. His jaw clenched so tightly, she wondered if he might crack his teeth.

Laykis’s feet clanked on the metal panels as she approached.

“Divine One?”

Poire looked up at her. Blinking, but not because of the light. It was almost as though he didn’t know where he was.

“Why are you here, Laykis? Why have come all this way with me?”

“It is my deepest honor to walk with you, Divine One. To serve you is my highest purpose. There is none more important than you in all the worlds. You are the one who was foretold.” She bowed her head in deference to him.

“The one who was foretold…” Poire said, echoing her words slowly. As if he took some other meaning.

“Many have waited for your return. Many have spoken of your awakening. The words are written in the Unfinished Book, for the First Children themselves have seen what was, and what will be. Your advent was foretold.”

“How?”

“On the world called Kaya,” Laykis quoted, “Deep in the flourishing jungles. From a den of ice and feather, there will he awake from the ages long past. The Savior. The one who will deliver us all.”

“And then what?” Poire asked.

Laykis refreshed her eye feeds. Outwardly, she blinked. There was a quality in the Savior’s voice, an emotion she couldn’t name. She cocked her head, to allow for the vibrations in his words to enter her aural sensors at a slightly different angle.

“I don’t understand,” Laykis said.

“This Savior - whoever they are - what does your Book say they will actually do? How am I supposed to save anyone?”

For thousands of years, Laykis had wandered. Following the string of mangled prophecies and half-truths across the scattered worlds. Crossing gate after gate, many of which slowly leaked their light away into the void.

Long, had she pursued this goal, and this goal alone: find the Savior. An impossible dream, she had known this since the beginning. Her own Maker had told her that the universe was against her, and the odds would never be in her favor.

So little cause had she to ever think beyond reaching that one, single goal.

“The Unfinished Book is still being written,” Laykis said.

“So you don’t know? You don’t know if this Savior actually does anything good?”

“You have already saved millions, Divine One.”

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“I turned the power on. I put a shield up. That’s it. Anyone could’ve done that.”

Perhaps, Laykis thought. But none did, until you came.

“It is a fine start to your prophetic rise.”

The Savior Divine asked, “And what if I am destined for worse things?”

Laykis felt a million signals in her core, all freezing in place.

“Worse things?”

“Laykis, what do you know about the Herald?”

Laykis blinked a few times, stalling as she soft-refreshed her core. This question needed time to percolate through her problem-solving systems. That word dredged up forgotten memories from her dormant storage. Memories that the Maker had given her.

“The Bringer of the Change,” Laykis said. She narrowed her eyes, to show her disdain for the idea. “The Maker called it a poisonous myth. He put no stake in those claims. He called them an attack, a belief, designed to infect the minds of humanity. To pit one against another.”

Something flickered in the Savior Divine’s eyes. And then it was gone.

“But he had the dreams, didn’t he?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “He had the dreams. He simply did not agree with them.”

Laykis thought for a long moment. How long since she had seen the Maker’s ancient, hairless face? Lined and wrinkled and spotted with such painful age, his eyes almost milky white, so that he had to use implants to see anything at all.

And the black veins, running up from his neck, under his chin, starting to eat away at his lips, no matter how much nanite he used to replace flesh with metal. The vision disease, it was called.

Poire’s eyes were searching her face. “How do you know?” he asked. “How do you know what is right?”

Laykis turned her head. She had never contemplated that before. The Maker was infallible. That was at the core of her understanding. He had always been right.

Hadn’t he?

“What if every step I take is the wrong one?” Poire asked.

Laykis narrowed her eyes, focusing her vision tightly on Poire’s face. On the microexpressions crossing his lips, his eyes, his cheeks, his brow.

“What if I am no one’s savior?”

“Impossible,” Laykis said, without thinking. “I have delved through dark ruins and temples that exist only by the gifts of your people. On too many worlds, the highest Kings and lowest tribes sing to your glory. Even the crumbling remains of ancient xeno civilizations, forgotten by all but time, bear the dedications to the Savior. They all speak of you.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Poire said. “They spoke of me. Of me. I’m no one. I’ve never been anything more than Poire, born on a Kayan conclave. How long has it been since you’ve seen a human? How easy would it be for them to get it all wrong?”

“What did she say to you?” Laykis asked. Her voice buzzed cautiously as she spoke, as she tried to keep her own emotions - the fear, the trepidation, the electrical changes inside her core - under control.

Poire turned his head up towards the sky. His eyes searching the stars.

“She said it was me. She said I’m the one they dreamed of. The Herald.”

“No,” Laykis said firmly. There was no point in restraining her emotions now, not when such an awful lie was placed before her. “It’s not possible.”

“How do you know?!” Poire shouted, and then he lowered his voice. “How can anyone know?”

Her fists did not clench - they snapped shut. Every piece of her core was spinning at maximum, heating up the center of her chassis. Trying to wrap her thoughts around this untruth. She could see the red light of her own eyes, reflected in the whites of Poire’s.

So small.

So vulnerable.

Why would anyone want to destroy him?

“Laykis,” he said, and something about his voice seeped into her aural sensors. Like cool oil, thin and liquid, soothing her core. Calming her.

Bringing her back down.

Laykis twitched, as if she could clear the emotions gathering inside her, blocking up her reasoning faculties, just by tossing it out with a shake of her head.

“She lies,” Laykis said. “The other human must be lying.”

“She believes what she says.”

“To believe in a lie does not make it true.”

As the words tumbled out of Laykis’s speaker, vibrating gently from underneath her mask, she could hear it. She could hear the question that Poire had been asking.

“Exactly,” Poire said. “So, how am I supposed to separate the lies from the truth?”

“The truth was written.”

“Anything can be written. Vorpei calls the Emperor a tyrant, yet I have seen what she does to her own people. The avians think I’m a god. The cyrans, too. But I’ve met their gods. The Emperor isn’t even human anymore. You think I was sent here? To save, not just the xenos, but everything? What would humanity say to that? Who would you listen to, if you could hear their voices?”

There were tears welling in his eyes. His breath shuddered in his chest. Laykis could feel the thrum of his heart, pulsing too hard.

What did the Book say about this? He was not supposed to feel doubt. The Savior was a force of action, of certainty.

Nowhere had she read about this.

What should I do?

Her hands answered her own question. They moved to embrace Poire’s slight, slender shoulders. She held him, and he sank into her. Shoving his face into the crook of her hard, metal shoulder, where her joints and her armor and her chassis all blended together. And she held him, and he held her back.

“I know my place,” she said, “Whatever you choose to believe, Poire. I am here with you.”

“Thank you, Laykis.”

She did not let go, and neither did he. He took a few more shuddering breaths, and sobbed gently into her shoulder. When his arms left her sides, she felt suddenly cold. Like his touch had been the only thing that warmed her. Like a piece of her had been cut away.

Poire lifted his chin, and looked her in the eyes. She had known him only a few months, but already he was growing taller. One day, the child would leave him.

“I know what I have to do,” Poire said. “But I need you to promise me something.”

“Divine One?”

“Laykis,” He said, his voice ragged and serious. Suddenly, he sounded so much older than he was. As if the child was already gone. “If you ever meet her, promise you won’t hurt her.”

“Why?” Laykis could feel her core warming up again. That feeling, rising through the integrated channels of her limbs. Making her joints surge with energy. “Poire, what are you going to do?”

Poire dusted himself off. Straightened his muddy, ruined clothes as best he could. The liquid armor rose up, lapping at his fingertips, as if it was trying to help.

“She’s going to die, unless I help. Isn’t that what a savior would do?” He smiled at her, a sad, tearful smile. “I’m going to save the only other human alive.”

Poire padded over to the terminal, to one of the nodes jutting up from the corner of the gate. Though his lips did not move, the gate seemed to respond to his call.

The huge semicircles of metal, dozens of them surrounding the gate, began to separate. They lifted, and hovered in place. Slowly, so slowly, they began their first revolution.

All around the Heart, the roaring walls of white mist froze in place. And then, instead of rising up, they began to crash down. As if something was pulling all that sparkling mist back beneath the ground. Back, into the Heart.

Before, the metal panels of the Heart were merely reflecting light.

Now, they were glowing with it.

Poire was at the center, his hands flat on the terminal. His eyes closed as he communed with the Heart.

All the panels of the Heart grew more luminous. Brighter and brighter, until Laykis could not see anything at all. Until she was as blind as the day the Maker made her.