Seph knew it was a nightmare, but knowing and feeling were different.

This one was sinister in that it had changed nothing. Seph found himself exactly where, all those years ago, he'd huddled in a stone dwelling with his mother. Fiova Tarmin was a striking woman; she always had been. Tall and slender, her bronzed skin was a stark contrast to Seph's pale tones. His only resemblance to his mother was his hair, the dark curls almost identical to her long tresses. Fiova always looked like she expected the world to bow before her, and most of the time, it did. Seph knew his father would do anything for her. So would Farris, though he wouldn't realize that until cycles later.

Right now, she looked like a scared girl, her eyes wide and limbs trembling.

"Mommy?" Seph asked, tugging her sleeve as she stared out toward the harbor. "Mommy, are you okay?"

Fiova looked at him like she'd seen a ghost. "Yes, Sephyr. Of course. I'm just worried for your father, is all." She mastered her fear, though it threatened to slip its leash as the obsidian void on the horizon inched ever closer.

"Dad is strong!" Seph cried, leaping up and flexing his biceps like he'd seen the older boys do in the market. "He's never lost a fight! And with Uncle Farris there, they can do anything!"

"Of course," Fiana smiled tightly. "I'm sure his ship will be back any moment. Then he and Uncle Farris can see something wonderful. The Fortress himself might come today, Sephyr."

"Really?!" Seph exclaimed, his eyes shining. The giganti Lutetium was a hero to the children of Tuwallo, the aegis behind which they sheltered from the dangers of Asin. Seph had heard the thunder last cycle when Jandus Lailatt had taken on a Stonesworn Leviathan, and though a Hollow like him couldn't see the clash, he could feel it. His bones had reverberated in spurts for almost a day, and the waves had obliterated some of the buildings closest to the bay. Despite all that, in the end, The Nacre Fortress slew the Leviathan and mounted its skull at Xenta's beachhead as a warning for its kin.

Seph had reenacted the imagined scene enough times that even Nax wouldn't entertain it now.

"I can't wait to see him," Seph continued. "Is he here to fix the reef? I heard Pon saying it would take a really strong vulcanite no time at all to fix the reef! Then Dad and Farris wouldn't have to go out so far to fish!"

Fiova winced at the reminder. The Fortress' clash with the Leviathan had battered the nearby reef like a bundle of twigs, and some of the pearl divers had investigated to see just how bad the damage was. When they slipped beneath the waves, they didn't see a broken reef in the depths. There was no reef at all.

"I don't think so, Sephyr. It looks like the Sunscourge might head this way."

The boy sobered immediately. "Oh."

Even in his eighth cycle, Seph knew about the Sunscourge. He looked out at the horizon with dread now instead of wonder. He turned to his mother in a whisper, eyes never leaving the darkness above the Thale Sea. "Is Dad on his way home?"

"Of course, my boy. He and Farris know better than to stay out while the Sunscourge approaches."

Time moved forward in a raging torrent, the agonizing minutes they'd waited together passing in a dream-addled miasma until the Sunscourge filled the horizon with a curtain of shadows.

They still hadn't seen the ship his father worked on coming in. The world seemed to slow as Seph watched, hoping with everything he had for the moment the Fortress would appear with his father in hand, dropping him off to Seph and his mother before battling the Sunscourge.

The moment never came. Jandus Lailatt did, but it was when the Sunscourge had nearly entered Tuwallo's harbor. The ships at dock were already dragging toward the enormous storm front of darkness, and Seph could see a few lines snapping as less careful captains lost their vessels to the Sunscourge's pull.

That was when the Nacre Fortress fell from the heavens, his rainbow-hued jewelry catching the light as he impacted the water to the east of the black sky.

The giganti was everything Seph had imagined. More than twice even Farris' height, gray-skinned and white-tusked, the massive Lutetium was bedecked in necklaces, bangles, and piercings made from his mother-of-pearl namesake. One of his earrings could have bought their dwelling outright and fed them for another cycle besides, and his fan-like ears carried hundreds of them. He wore only a loincloth, supposedly tanned leather from the Stonesworn Leviathan he'd felled, and his tusks were banded with platinum.

Seph felt his heart stir at the sight of the enormous Lutetium, but he couldn't bring the feeling to the forefront. His father and Farris were still missing.

He waited for Lailatt to rush into combat with the Sunscourge, for him to enter the dark cloud and blast it back just like he had the Leviathan. Instead, the man shone with an opalescent light like a beacon, power rolling off of him that even Seph could see with his crucible cold and dark.

The Sunscourge's inexorable advance slowed, a dog smelling a nearby treat, and then it began moving toward the Lutetium with the same speed it had approached Tuwallo. Lailatt strode over the ocean, his large, padded feet pressing against the surf and arresting his fall through the water. The giganti was still ablaze with power, and every step towards the horizon brought the Sunscourge further away from Tuwallo.

Seph and his mother watched as the Fortress led the void in the horizon away until they could no longer see where the world became black.

Farris stumbled into their hut the next morning.

Seph knew the scene, and though the words were lost to him now, the intent remained. Lailatt had walked the Sunscourge right past the ship Farris and his father had been on. It had reduced the vessel to kindling, and Farris was only saved from the hungry void because he was thrown so far through the water by a wave from Lailatt's passing.

He'd been picked up by a fishing trawler following behind the Sunscourge, hoping to catch whatever ocean denizens were lurking just outside its pull. As far as he knew, the rest of his crew was gone.

Here Seph expected to wake up, as he had so many times before. His father lost, his mother in shambles, his uncle broken and battered by the forces of vulcanites so far beyond any of them they might as well be insects.

Instead, the dream continued into something that had not happened. Seph's mother left the hut, turning her back on his younger self as he screamed for her. Farris ran after Fiova. She struck him harder than Seph had ever seen anyone hit, and his uncle fell to earth like he'd plummeted from the stars.

She turned back, eyes cold where before they shone with all-encompassing terror. "You will die, Seph Tarmin. Just as your father did, this world will wither and crumble around you until nothing remains for you to love."

Awareness returned, and with it the emotions he'd felt all those years ago as a boy. The dream was a lie. Almost always, something was different. His mind flayed him in his dreams with both truth and invented horrors.

His mother had left almost a cycle later, and she'd done it in the dead of night so no one could stop her. Farris had taken him in afterward, adding him to the growing list of children he protected without parents due to the Sunscourge's advance.

Never mind that The Fortress had led the Sunscourge right to Seph's father.

As he got older, Seph's anger at Jandus Lailatt hadn't cooled; it had crystallized. The clarity of age had helped him realize that his blind fury at the Fortress' negligence was neither rational nor productive. The giganti had done what he could, luring the Sunscourge away from Tuwallo with his own animus offered as a tasty morsel. But Tuwallo's reef was gone because Lailatt had fought another great enemy and left Hollows to suffer for it. Someone like Lailatt, a vulcanite at the heights of power, a Lutetium capable of changing the very landscape of Asin, could have most certainly contained the shockwaves from his conflict with the Stonesworn. Seph had found numerous incidents in Asin's history of similar feats by Lutetium vulcanites, some as recent as Haegren Xhanner's battle against an Icefang Leviathan that had tried to make landfall in Terundria. The people nearby didn't learn of the conflict until Haegren gifted them the creature's meat.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Lailatt, on the other hand, did no such thing. He simply hadn't cared. And that was the thinking fundamental to vulcanite society that Seph looked to change. The Nacre Fortress, The Iron Rain, The Crescent Moon, The Sundered Chain, even The Windswept Tandem; all of them let Hollows suffer and die to feed their unending conquests. The only reason The Legion Remade wasn't on the list was the debate about whether they were a person at all.

Haegren Xhanner, better known as The Winterforge, was the only Lutetium he couldn't find doing the same. Whether that was excellent propaganda from the man or the truth, he didn't know.

What he did know was that the world couldn't go on as it had. Hollows were less than nothing to most vulcanites, more faceless things than people, but they outnumbered ignited individuals almost a thousand to one. Let the Hollows die out, and the vulcanites would be left trying to pick up the pieces of an entire civilization collapsing around them.

Seph knew The Fortress possessed a brilliant mind - you couldn't reach Lutetium without one - but did he know anything about public waste disposal engineering and its effects on the health of major cities? Somehow, Seph doubted it.

And thus, his plan. To flip the board, so to speak, of the game of power all the Lutetium played. But the problem was obvious. He needed that same power to do such a thing. Power he and Nax sorely lacked.

Becoming a vulcanite can only happen one way for the sentient races: another vulcanite tearing off a piece of their power and igniting a Hollow's cold crucible. Records indicate this was not always the case, but whatever methods the ancients used to ignite themselves were lost under the weight of thousands of cycles.

Attempts to reproduce non-sentients' ability to self-ignite have been both extensive and ultimately fruitless. And so, Seph resigned himself to always theorizing.

Until Nax's talent for the ring opened a door that had before been invisible.

With his efforts in the arena, paying for ignition was finally possible, at least in theory. And things had been going well until they'd reached too high, clutching for a windfall that had stung their outstretched hand spectacularly.

Nax's voice crashed through the wall of Seph's thoughts like a stone through glass. "Stop thinking so hard. Makes my head hurt."

Below them in the ring, Lume was dicing apart her opponent like the fisherman cleaned their catches. The boys watched together for a moment before Seph responded.

"Sorry. I dozed off. Between work and helping Lume, I'm sleeping maybe four hours a night." He yawned, the weight of his responsibilities seeming to grow even as he unburdened his lungs. "I had the dream again. My mother attacked Farris this time."

Nax was silent, his eyes following the fight even as Seph knew the wheels of his mind turned. Finally, he replied. "It was almost eleven cycles ago, Seph. Maybe we'll find her out there, somewhere, once we're all vulcanites."

"Why, so she can leave again?" Seph spat, his voice carrying a heat that he regretted almost immediately.

"I'm sorry," he sighed. "But even now, it still burns. I was eight, Nax. And she cast me aside like she was throwing a shell back into the surf. What sort of person would want to reconcile with that?"

"Someone who wants answers. Sound like anybody you know?"

Seph's laugh at that was thin, but it did come. "Fair enough. But no. Some truths should stay beneath the waves."

Now Nax turned to look at him, his skepticism coming through in his voice. "Telling me you don't want to know what happened? You, Seph Tarmin?"

"Yes. Let it be the only thing I don't learn in my rise to Lutetium."

Nax gazed at him for a long moment before returning to the fight. Lume had somehow managed to trap her opponent's arm in an elbow breaker while he looked away, and the man was signaling a surrender to the referee. "Sixteen wins. She's getting better every day."

"I'd say I don't believe it, but she's standing right there," Seph replied. "At this rate, she almost has me thinking she really can beat a Lithium."

Nax shook his head. "No. She's good. One of the best, even. But vulcanites are something different. They're like us pushed to the brink. You remember when Yilly lifted that hut off her little one after the tsunami?"

He did. The woman had moved hundreds of pounds of stone with only her starved frame.

"Yes. What about it?"

Nax gestured, his hands encompassing something only he could see. "That's a Lithium. Someone at the peak of what the human body can do all the time. "

"Or the giganti body, or gillfolk, or tyrranid, or-"

"You get the point, Seph," Nax interrupted.

"I do. And I know, but I suppose fighting it is more... Visceral."

Nax chuckled. "Your lips, the Fortress' ears. Knuckles still ache from that fight."

Seph fought the urge to smack Nax on the shoulder, visible as they were in the arena. Lume was already walking towards them after basking in the glow of victory with the enthusiastic crowd. He replied to Nax, "You know as well as I the pain is in your head."

"Course it is. That's the point."

Seph paused. "Fair enough," he said, standing to greet Lume.

"Whew!" She grinned, stretching her shoulders as she walked to the waiting areas with them. "He was a real gorilla! It was like fighting you, Surestrike!" She paused, a frown appearing slowly like a bird pushing its beak below the water. "Well, not really. But he was strong like you!"

"I'm sure he's very flattered," Seph replied. He clasped his hands in front of his chest, leaning in to bump against Nax's shoulder with starry eyes under his mask. "Big Surestrike, you're so strong! Please protect us with your enormous biceps!"

He was proud to duck the swipe that came for him at that.

They entered the waiting rooms, but instead of responding, Seph watched Nax freeze like one of the dewfawn that grazed around Tuwallo. "Lume!" Nax shouted, springing into motion to fend off a blow from a man Seph hadn't even seen. Nax pushed him behind Lume even as he fought off the stranger.

The intruder wore muted grays, the same tone as most of the limestone around them that made up the arena, and a cloth mask covered his face from his nose upward.

Lume was a step behind, shielding Seph with her body as she checked the corridor they had just come from.

"Fuck," she cursed, catching sight of the two similarly garbed shadows detaching from the corridor walls. "Stay behind me. Two on this side!" She shouted.

"Heard," Nax replied, probing the gray man's defenses. "Stall," he grunted.

Seph fought the rising panic in his chest as Lume came to his defense. He turned to Nax, praying to all the Lutetiums who ever lived that he wasn't about to be gutted. He was treated to the sight of Nax crushing the man's throat with extended knuckles like it was a stalk of sugarcane. Before the stranger hit the ground, Nax was already beyond Seph and engaging the other attackers.

Lume hadn't taken two steps yet.

Seph watched as Nax went to work, warding blows from both strangers like he was moving through a crowd, landing strikes where he could and giving ground where he had to.

Seph was aware enough to realize these people were good. Exceptional, in truth.

Nax was better.

He caught one when they overstepped, slamming a straightened foot into their knee and folding it under them as they collapsed with a strangled scream. The last one tried to run.

Nax was on her in two paces. He slammed her into the wall, her skull impacting the limestone with an ugly crack. She slumped, her mask slipping from her head to reveal unfocused eyes.

Seph had never seen her in his life.

The woman gasped, her mouth opening like one of the enormous carps near Tuwallo's shallows. "Sundered shits! They said you w-were a fraud."

"They lied," Nax replied, his heel slamming into her temple and turning her eyes from unfocused to vacant. He turned to Lume and Seph.

"Stay or leave?"

Seph's mind raced. "Stay. They could be on the entrances, and only two can get to us in the corridors."

"I can handle two."

"I see that," Seph replied.

Lume's stiff posture returned to her usual feline grace as she moved toward the gray-garbed man with the broken knee. "I'm sorry. I was useless."

"Not true," Nax said. "You didn't get in my way."

Her expression darkened, and she leaned down towards the man cradling his injured leg like a sick dog. "Why?" Seph waited for the rest of the question, but it didn't come.

The man tried to spit on her, and she stepped on his shin until the tears of pain stained the cloth over his eyes. "Why?" She repeated.

"Paid!" He gasped. "We were paid! Don't know who. We just - scourge! - just came in from Matin. They shipped us over from Poltare, said there was a job for two - fuck!" He swore. "Two up-jumped fighters. Simple crippling, routine work. They said the big one was smoke and mirrors."

Nax snorted, rifling through the pockets of the woman he'd rendered unconscious with practiced speed. "Should've listened to the locals."

"I can - ugh! - I can see that," the man sighed, his head leaning against the wall behind him. "Just us, as far as I know. They wanted quiet." He let a slow breath go, seeming to stamp down his pain if not master it.

"Well, they got that," Seph replied. He crouched, keeping his distance from the man while bringing his eyes to level. "Let's say we let you go. What happens?"

"I take the first chains-damned ship back to Matin," the man replied. The country was a lawless waste loosely held together by The Sundered Chain, Tunari Salihf. This man's type often congregated there.

"And your friends?"

"What friends?" The man laughed. "Keiss is already blue, and you rattled Ulie's skull so hard if she wakes, she won't even be able to wipe her ass. She's just as dead as he is."

"Cold," Nax grunted.

"Fair," the man countered. "But the truth often is. Name's Izar, by the way."

"Doesn't matter," Nax said. His foot slammed Izar's head against the wall, the Poltare native's body finally relaxing now that his pain was in the ether. "Believe him?" He asked Seph.

"Yes," Seph replied. "They'd have a hard time finding someone willing to try a hit on you. Pulling three from another continent is two more than I would've bet on. Why not just hire a Lithium?"

"Fair. Let's go. I want us home by the time they're found. We move."