No, you’re not just powerful, Knight Leader – how could she ever reveal to him all the things that fluttered in her fast-beating chest? – What you did for the other soldiers? Going back to save them? She didn’t think ‘knights’, because you’re only a knight if you know what you’re doing in that carapace, and those losers were nothing compared to this knight, her knight. That was really… she gulped.

  -Heroic.

  And then he suddenly opened all up to her, like his mind had rushed to her side and now his ghost was sidling up in her cot with her in the reaver, his presence laying his head upon her chest, his begging eyes looking up at her to…

  -to know more?

  What is heroic? It was equal parts newfound intimacy as much as it was curiosity.

  Oh Goddess.

  She quickly scryed his comprehension.

  scry(

  target: Knight Leader,

  search parameter: heroism,

  )

  

  Redacted? Really, Amefrid? What does this accomplish?

  She couldn’t just package an abstract concept into a well formulated thought, where would she start? She was piecing the ideas together in her head as she thought, well, heroic means being worthy to be called a hero, and a hero is someone who does something really noble. He sacrifices something of his own to protect others.

  Curiouser and curiouser, what’s noble?

  He really was like a child, this soldier.

  Okay, noble. It means good. You know, someone who will do the right thing.

  It was hard to explain, morality and ethics. Truth be told it required a very complicated, and very boring philosophical architecture that girded it: an ability to reason and be outside yourself, and empathize, and take the original position, the position of not even having been born, an ability to see that what is just- must be just and fair for all. That one should treat others as they would treat themselves. The concept of Rawlsian justice, and the obligation that is the Categorical Imperative.

  Fundamentally, and much more precisely, that one should never do what one could not abide to be done to anyone else. Or, adapted into a much rougher and simpler idea, treat others as you wish to be treated. The Golden Rule. But how could she explain all that to him? Where did she even learn all this?

  But it didn’t need needlessly complicated words, for altruism is a pure feeling.

  I get it. He thought back.

  An old soldier like me? A hero?

  And now he was almost embarrassed, he was so unused to praise. I just did what felt natural. I don’t know why, really. I’m so frayed.

  Vilithe smiled.

  Aren’t we all? We’re vassals. Take it easy on yourself, soldier.

  Thank you, conduit. Really. But he didn’t need to think ‘really’, because how could she not know his gratitude? She was inside his head. But still it was very cute how he tried his best to add a little psionic emphasis. He’s learning!

  Suddenly it dawned on him. Wait, I don’t even know your name!

  And that was the first time anyone had asked Vilithe her name. Every single member of Clan Callethe simply knew her name without having to ask, this was intrinsic to all elvans of the same clan. And there was absolutely no reason for anyone to refer to her as anything other than vassal, or at best conduit, in vassalage.

  She giggled. Well, you don’t even know yours!

  Annoyed. Aw, rub it in why don’t you.

  Okay, okay. It’s Vilithe. Vilithe Callethe.

  Callethe?!

  Every elvan knew of the legend of Clan Callethe in the era before the clan wars. How could they not? At least a basic history of how they came to be was supplied to all broodling minds, it doesn’t matter who you are, you must know where you belong. Something so deep and primal to the formation of their race that it was just impossible to redact.

  The Clan that chose to strike off to Phyros, all by themselves!

  She filled his understanding in with more detail and now their thoughts were synchronous.

  The Clan that decried the bickering and fighting over resources of Reath, the Clan whose Queen passionately tried to unify for one common cause that did not ask of spilling of mutant or orcan blood, to help them all understand that the problem they inherited from the Godlikes, the portent of forbidden fire, had never been solved.

  Unstoppable climate feedback effects – methane clathrates on the ocean floors, water vapor itself – would continue even when the forbidden fire ceased, but it had not. It probably never would if elvans and orcans breathed. It would continue even after that.

  That if they kept doing what they were doing it could get even worse and Reath could one rotation become like Phyros. Or worse, that it was already inevitable.

  It was the teleological trajectory of the Catastrophe. When no other Queen took her words seriously, she decided to prove them with action. Mother Queen Danelle told them all If Reath were to become like Phyros due to all of your short-sighted actions, then my clan shall prepare the way, for it seems we’re the only ones willing to.

  And so, she built the great aerostats – the Nimbii of Clan Callethe, of Phyros – even when Queen Maetra Amallark opposed her actions on the council and told her that she had no right to claim Phyros, that there was no elvan law to bind it, and that to do so was to defy the Council of the Clans on a project of folly. And she contested Queen Dannelle’s assessment, dismissing her caution as foolish. Reath could never become like Phyros.

  But Queen Dannelle Callethe was right. All the magickal study which Vilithe had exhaustively gone over all the time as a broodling pointed likewise: it was all sound!

  The temperature on Reath just kept rising, and water vapor itself could become forbidden fire, the very last act of a long death, before the realm was fully covered in the funerary wreath of death mist, just like Phyros. All of this, or at least whatever of it that Knight Leader could understand or know, was surely redacted. The Goddess did not let even her own clan know, nor even her own daughters know, just how dire the Catastrophe could really be. Although it was just a thesis, it was one that snuffed all hope.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  It would be the Catastrophe a thousand times fold.

  Wow this was depressing. Change of topic!

  He initiated. You’re a dragonrider? No wonder you’re so strong.

  He had surmised this himself. He had used simple logic to piece together what shattered remnants of what he once knew to figure out all by himself- something to know about her. It was actually a bit obvious, he felt, it was what Clan Callethe was known for.

  She teased, I’m only as strong as you are heroic, hoping it wasn’t getting too corny.

  They bathed in each other’s mutual admiration.

  Thank you for helping me, Vilithe Callethe. He thought. I would have surely died if you hadn’t protected me. He pondered a bit. Then he thought, you’re the real hero.

  She had to blush. A job’s a job, right? Humble just like him.

  Vilithe, do you think – it was a reach – do you think you can tell me my name?

  And the longing struck Vilithe. She had fixed many vassals who did not know their names, but she still had access to them as a psion. But this soldier… she tentatively thought forward and- ‘Ahk!’ she cried out as her head flared in a brief, harsh ache. And yet another migraine lasting from the psionic battle had just faded. But she probed no further and so the new headache flared no more.

  I’m sorry, Knight Leader – she grew quite fond of addressing him like that, it was a cool moniker – the Princess did a number on you. She’s flayed you badly. I can’t access it.

  Yeah, I figured. Sadness, but it was brief.

  Tell me more about yourself, he thought. All the flashes of that life you’ve lived before were a vassal, I wish I had those! I have none of my own memories. Won’t you share yours with me? I think it’s probably the easiest way to get to know you, don’t you think?

  Vilithe’s heart was singing. He wanted to get to know her better!

  But now she was so unsure what to think. She had never felt this before. Sisterly platonic affection, yes. Reverence for her Mother Queen, yes. But romance? I don’t know where to start-

  And he most certainly had never felt what this was either, he couldn’t even place the thought-word.

  Outside, the Aryssal sunset had begun. The soldiers inside couldn’t see it, but Vilithe could, through the many eyes that dotted the reaver. She shared the sight with the Knight Leader so that the darkness of the bacta was banished, and he found himself lying hovering above the Aryssal desert floor. She only wished she could have seen it all with her own eyes. She thought of being able to lean her head against his shoulder for real, but she quickly cut the fantasy off, before it became unbearable.

  Vi – he had never addressed her by that yet – thank you. He was breathless. Though he had seen the sunset from the visor of his carapace helm, to be able to gaze at it in peace, his eyes directed toward the sky. The air was too thin, and the light of the stars could not scatter across but mere Aryssal dust, and so there was nothing but a faint ochre hue. But still, the softness by which the light shifted from the radiant sun, blue-white from the Aryssal dust, to darker, reddish hues.

  It’s beautiful.

  Now the silence, both in sound and mind, was starting to stretch and grow from comfortable to awkward, even more awkward for Vilithe for her time contracted to figure out how to best convey who she was. But it had been so long since she thought about her own wants-

  It’s enough for this restless warrior just to be with you. The thought-words just popped right into his head. Where did they come from? She really moved him, surprised by his own eloquence.

  Reflexively, she thought, well, it’s enough for this wide-eyed wanderer that we got this far.

  He could feel that she really meant it. He tried to plumb the depths of the emotion carried with it, but she gently bounced him away, but not without carrying back a hint of how truly scared that he might have died. That same first feeling that felt so alien to him then but became more and more familiar now.

  Now she really didn’t know how to respond.

  But he did. What’s your favorite thing to do, Vilithe?

  There was no doubt in Vilithe’s mind what that was. The answer came to her immediately.

  Riding dragons.

  hallucinate(

  target: Talauth,

  param: memories of Phyros,

  );

  And just like that, she astrally lifted from her cot, for though her body was still, her mind had grabbed hold of the Knight Leader and whisked them both away to the forgotten paradises hidden in the recesses of her memories, soaring away from that dusty desert to the Realm of Clouds.

  And he gulped too, swallowing thick bacta, before burping out the last of the air trapped in his lungs.

  Malevolent thought- what was this, a reasoning token?

  And by this measure, orcan society was far more just than elvan society, for in the orcan original position, no matter what existence you were born into, you would always be able to transmogrify, you would always be a member of the Horde, you would always have your family, your village, your home of Orca. But in the elvan original position, you could be born as the God Empress of Elvankind, or a lobotomized, body-broken, vassal labor-soldier.

  Virtue. So simple. So ancient.

  The Knight Leader had only passed twenty four Reathean revolutions, but for a soldier that was senior.

  He’s stardust. We’re all stardust.

  Malevolent felt a pang of guilt about his early behavior towards Vilithe.

  The Knight Leader had never once thought of the God Empress of Elvankind by her real name and former station before.

  But like Seward’s Folly, Phyros was transformed into a rich field of resources no other elvans could claim, for Clan Callethe devised ways to capture volatile Phyroan gasses and plumb its molten depths with void-anchored realm escalators, miniature version of the Great Reathean Celestial Escalator.

  The Goddess stands corrected. What the Empress realized now, and what Princess Amefrid could not grok, was that if the orcans were allowed to continue multiplying exponentially and then keep burning forbidden fire as much as they wanted, this would be inevitable. Reath would be choked with so much forbidden fire that on its surface even the highest boiling point metals would melt. It would just take time. But eventually it could soar to over four hundred centigrade. All would take was the burning of more forbidden fire.

  And yet, Clan Callethe thrived on Phyros. And so, Clan Callethe itself was the bearer of hope for all Elvankind. Until the Traitor Empress massacred them. And so, it was Clan Amallark that snuffed out all hope. To destroy the Traitor Empress would be to avenge the elvan race.

  But Malevolent had to note that it certainly was.

  Malevolent started to get a little jealous of the Knight Leader. Vilithe was his Rogue Queen! Go get your own! You already have your mom, Talisa! They’re being so corny.

  Malevolent thought, what was this? No, you. No, you. Gross. But if he could be any color right now it would be green as an orc.

  Randomly, at this moment, she remembered that her favorite song ever was You’ve Got The Love (The XX Edit) - Florence and the Machine, which itself was a Candy Staton cover. Many names she didn’t care to remember. The only name she really wanted to know right now was the Knight Leader’s.

  Malevolent, having met the daemons inside Miz Dazey’s chamber that stored her favorite bits of the legacy, morosely telepathed to no daemon in particular: I can see what’s happening. They don’t have a clue!

  There’s a calm surrender to the rush of day, when the heat of a rolling wind can be turned away… He realized he was switching to the Elton John version but that was completely justified. It was way better.

  Malevolent thought, what the hell, and sent the line to the soldier boi. Let’s just see what happens. After all, Malevolent’s envy had begun to give way to vicariousness, especially considering that Malevolent couldn’t help but think – being in Vilithe’s mind all this time – that the K.L. was a cutie pie.

  A little bacta squirming its way out of the knight’s skin pore after delivering a payload of fibroblasts felt that this was ironic, considering he was supposed to be resting.

  If only he knew how derivative it was, thought the bacta.

  It’s enough to make queens and vagabonds believe the very best.

  She scolded Malevolent. Quit being a dork!