Vy walked around the sitting room, switching on the telepathy gas emitters. She felt awkward, turning on telepathy gas when she was alone in a room, but members of her practice team would show up at any minute. Huchanu, Maerlo, Yishbaka, and Fru. They were mostly strangers to each other.

That was ideal. If Vy was going to share her mind, including intimate details of her life … well, she certainly wasn’t going to do it in front of Ariock! Some thoughts between a couple ought to remain secret. Otherwise, where was the fun?

Vy’s practice team hardly comprehended human biology. They wouldn’t judge her.

Now that the room was prepared, Vy made it cozier. She added another glowing orb to the windowsill. Her mom would approve of the glow, the mineral fragrances, and other touches that added warmth.

Her thoughts began to feel echoey. That was the telepathy gas, reflecting her own mind back upon her.

It ought to make her feel extra safe. As Thomas had put it, “Rogue Torth can’t attack you with a pain seizure or twist your mind as long as you’re on telepathy gas. You should use it frequently, until we can verify that all of the remaining death cultists have given up or surrendered.”

As long as Vy was in a telepathy zone, she was—in theory—on equal footing with an average mind reader. And she was armed with inhibitor micro-darts. Her prosthetic leg contained all kinds of weapons against Yeresunsa and other attackers.

And more than one superluminal tracker.

Ariock had insisted on that. He wouldn’t let Vy out of his sight unless she was trackable, capable in a fight, and among friends. He had even suggested importing the Hollander family. Since she spent most nights cuddled with Ariock in his huge bed, her suite went unused. She could loan it to a friend.

A mournful keening echoed from the streets below.

Vy stepped onto the open-air balcony and gazed down at the funerary procession. As the Torth Empire had died, so had one of its last super-geniuses. Serette had breathed her last breath as the Necrocosm collapsed for the final time.

The deceased super-genius had more mourners than might be expected. Ariock, Thomas, Kessa, and Varktezo walked at the head of the procession, the place of honor for close family members. Lanterns swung from yokes across their shoulders.

Unfortunately, most of the other mourners seemed insincere. Thousands of aliens trailed the bier, all dressed up and proud to participate in a public spectacle. Vy wondered how many of them took note of Mondoyo’s absence, and what they thought about it.

She gazed across the deepening dusk to where the Academy blended with cliffs. The Dragon Tower was an obvious silhouette, with only a few lit windows. Mondoyo was in one of those rooms.

Alone.

Vy worried about him. Gossip never stopped, but she didn’t think there was anything nefarious in Mondoyo’s request to skip Serette’s funerary procession. He had apparently asked to be left alone to mourn.

“If we are to avoid becoming Torth ourselves,” Kessa had said during the last council meeting, “we must stop branding people as ‘inferiors’ in a way that can never be changed.”

Vy had agreed. Ariock had agreed.

“But how do we accomplish that?” Cherise had asked. “A badge? That will only call attention to what they are. You can’t change people’s minds that easily.”

That was true. Anyone familiar with the penitents could see that they had a long road ahead of them, if they were ever going to be respectable members of society. Zai was an outstanding warrior, but it was hard to imagine anyone other than Ariock allowing her to command troops. Who would feel comfortable obeying a former Torth? Mondoyo was an elder super-genius, but if he floated down a street by himself, people were likely to throw garbage at him and ask where his overseer or lieutenant was.

“You’re right,” Kessa had acknowledged Cherise and the rest of the council. “But language is a direct path to people’s hearts and minds. I propose that we use a certain word for wholly redeemed penitents, to signify that they are equal to other citizens, rather than inferiors or superiors. Just as we influenced people to stop thinking of mind readers as godlike ’Torth’ and to instead think of them as ‘penitents’, in atonement for their cruelties, so we should do again, for the redeemed ones.”

“What word could we use?” Vy had been mystified. She could not imagine a word with that much power.

“Humans.” Kessa had looked at her. “The redeemed penitents are humans.”

Vy kept mulling that over in the back of her mind.

There was an enormous difference between Torth and humans. Still, she automatically accepted certain mind readers as human, at least on a provisional basis. Thomas was human. It didn’t matter that neither of his parents had been human. He was, and always would be, her brother.

Hadn’t Mondoyo earned a similar status?

Vy thought of the heroic deeds Mondoyo had done in order to prove his worth. He had defied the Torth Majority and risked his life in order to join Thomas, bringing liberated slaves and Zai with him. He had influenced Serette to join him as well.

Thanks to Mondoyo and Serette, Vy and Ariock were able to have an intimate love life. The Twins had created the inhibitor patches which Ariock used every time he and Vy were alone together.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

And later, immunity to the inhibitor had saved countless lives. The Twins were the reason why so many warriors survived today.

The Twins had broken the Torth Megacosm with a mental symphony.

And Mondoyo had done even more. He had invented improvements to military technology, empowering soldiers to defeat Torth in multiple battles. Mondoyo had personally dispensed real-time tactical advice during a few battles. According to rumors, he had actually predicted several Torth attacks, thereby saving entire city populations.

Who knew what other miracles Mondoyo would go on to invent or pioneer, after he received regeneration healing?

He has earned human status, Vy knew. Her own thoughts echoed the sentiment back to her, buoyed by telepathy gas.

Not all humans would adopt Mondoyo, Vy supposed. But she would be honored to include such a hero as a member of the human race, and even as a member of her family. Could she adopt him as her brother?

Not everyone had a loving family. Vy supposed that in one way, she was rich beyond measure.

She had been rich in this way even before becoming a galactic princess. She had been born rich; even more so than Ariock. She was wealthier than the richest Torth.

And she was only just now realizing it.

She had endured hardships, but there was always someone protecting her, cherishing her, giving her a prosthetic leg, showing concern for her well-being. Not everyone had that. And she’d had it all her life.

She wanted to share some of her wealth. She decided that she would offer to adopt Mondoyo. The poor kid was so alone.

Someone knocked on the big, ornate door. Ah, her practice team was beginning to arrive.

Vy hurried to cross the room—but a skeletal wraith in dirty white armor materialized in front of her.

!!!

Vy stepped back, not believing her eyes. Had her brain regurgitated a horrific fragment from her own memory banks? Was this a hallucinatory side effect of using telepathy gas? Was it possible to get a bad batch of the stuff?

But the smell was real.

Ozone, which meant teleportation. Plus an elderly smell that reminded Vy of a nursing home.

The Commander of All Living Things was so enhanced, she no longer looked quite human. Instead, she fell into an uncanny valley of human resemblance, all sinew and armored carapace. She wore her mantle of office. Twisting horns swept off her bony shoulders, supporting a shroud-like cape. The height of her mantle, combined with her space boots, made her tower over Vy.

And those empty eyes! She looked like a zombie, except she was aware.

Telepathy gas conveyed the Commander’s murderous intentions. She had survived the collapse of the Megacosm and the dissolution of the Torth Empire. She had just ghosted (across galactic space), found Vy alone, and now she was about to behead the girl (with the fake leg), then use the dregs of her strength to teleport again—along with the girl’s severed head—to the Death Architect (she knew where her lair was!) to show off what she had done. She planned to kill the Death Architect right after doing that.

The Commander drew her scimitar. Its curved blade glinted. Such blades could slice through armor, flesh, and bone with equal ease.

When she slashed, Vy was already in motion.

She ducked and spun away, sensing precisely where the blade aimed. She ignored the Commander’s surprised !!! reaction and tapped her prosthetic to open the compartment. One blast would end this fight.

But the Commander apparently knew where to find the Death Architect.

No one else knew that. Not even Thomas could learn that.

Vy aimed at the Commander’s legs instead of her head. This room was full of telepathy gas. Could Vy soak up the answer which Thomas sought? She needed to try. Doomsday was still a possibility unless Thomas confronted the Death Architect in person. He alone could twist her mind and force her to neutralize her universe-ending chain reaction.

!!!

The Commander stared at Vy with blank white eyes. Although she had the neutral expression of a corpse, she radiated emotion. Shock. Dismay. And a very stunned feeling of betrayal.

She had trusted the Death Architect.

Maybe not entirely, but a little bit. Enough to obey the little girl’s holographic message to assassinate Vy. She had been a death cultist, anticipating death to the enemies, not death to everything and everyone in existence.

Not death to All.

Vy sensed the Commander tighten her grip on her scimitar, but her focus had shifted off Vy. She wanted to go into a clairvoyant trance and ghost.

No, Vy thought with dread.

There was too much at stake. As Thomas had explained it, the Death Architect almost certainly had a dead man’s switch set up. When she died, the universe could go boom.

No one should approach the dangerous super-genius except for Thomas.

!? The Commander read Vy’s thoughts and was flooded with uncertainties. She wondered if (Thomas) the Conqueror had spread a pack of lies in order to manipulate his inferiors. Could the Death Architect actually destroy everything in existence? Weren’t there safeguards?

Well, no. The Commander remembered that laws were gone, science was gone, and the Majority was reduced to just her. A scheming super-genius could do whatever she wished without worrying about judgment.

Vy searched the Commander’s mind for a mental map.

The Commander took a step back. NO! radiated off her. She was unused to having her inner self accessed by a mere (human) primitive. She didn’t like it.

An insistent knock sounded at the door.

“Lady Vy?” someone called from the other side. “We’re here! Should we just come in?”

Vy tuned out her concern for her practice team. This was a matter of universal importance. She needed to locate the Death Architect, or detain the Commander so that someone else could fish out that information.

Vy worked her glove onto her hand.

At the same time, she dove deeper into the Commander’s mind. She examined runnels of determination until she found one that led to the Death Architect. She traced that runnel deeper, past resentment, past murderous intentions, and down to its bedrock of facts.

Mind probes were advanced telepathy. Vy was only a novice. She was painfully aware of her own inexperience, yet she had practiced enough to theorize how this might be done.

She drilled past facts she already knew, seeking more. She found a cosmic route.

It was too complex, too many steps to remember in a glance. She would need to study the route in order to learn it.

How (rude) dare you! The Commander took another step back, far enough to step out of range—if they were both Torth.

But they were not.

This was a roomful of telepathy gas, and their minds remained wide open to each other.

The door opened.

Someone gasped.

Vy sensed a flood of worried thoughts and a flurry of motion. Her teammates were grabbing weapons.

Aware that she only had milliseconds before her attacker would get shot, Vy invaded the Commander’s mind with all her determination and strength. She drilled down, seeking the key to the Death Architect’s lair.

She connected with a core and—

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! /

/ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Air exploded out of Vy’s lungs.