“Excuse me, sir.”

  “What is it?” Sinmartin sighs, annoyed not only by his young comrade but also troubled by Davon’s visit and the odd blue light that he disappeared into.

  Some strange things happened that night, and Sinmartin has spent all morning trying to contain the chaos caused by the strong shockwaves.

  The collateral damage has led to looting, rioting, and, most prominent and obnoxious of all, landlords swarming the banks demanding compensation for the various property damage.

  Sinmartin does not want and does not need another issue stacked on top of his already crumbling tower of troubles. He gathers every hope he has that whatever his comrade wants to inform him of won’t topple that tower.

  “There’s a giant in the forest under the cliffside.”

  Sinmartin’s face boils red with rage. “THERE’S A WHAT?”

  “Hello over there!” Granix waves at the wanderers at the edge of the cliffside by the waterfall. The giant’s loud, enthusiastic voice roars over the bustling village below.

  “Granix!” Nadeden shouts, taking a moment to step away from aiding in the reconstruction of Shanna’s cabin. “You need to keep a low profile!”

  Granix turns their granite eyes downward. “And you need time to heal from your injuries.”

  “They called us both out with that one, Nadeden.” Shanna laughs, setting down a large log with Panam’s help, before adjusting the leather harness that serves to secure the bandages on her shoulder where her left arm once rested.

  “I’m not the one who lost a limb.” Nadeden comments out of concern, walking back to the cabin to assist Smith with attaching the front door.

  “Well, arms can grow back, right?” Julius innocently asks from the rocking chair on the porch.

  “Not in any case that I know of.” Mr. Cusack groans, cracking his back as a fluoredon lifts a log singlehandedly.

  Both Julius and Nadeden’s moods sour at the old man’s statement. He clearly feels no need to soften the harsh facts of reality, and why should he?

  It was only a few days ago that Nadeden told him that his son was dead. That fact isn’t changing anytime soon.

  “Don’t worry, Julius.” Panam kneels down to her son, reassuring him, “Mr. Cusack can make her a new wooden one.”

  Mr. Cusack huffs and goes back to lifting logs with the fluoredon as Shanna smiles at her family.

  “Why don’t you help us rebuild Julius?”

  The boy leaps up in the chair. “I am helping! I’m overseeing construction! Just like Chief Triminiv!”

  Smith’s eyes wander to Triminiv standing at the village hall. Her blonde hair gleams in the sun as she wearily watches her villagers work from afar.

  “I need to go get some water,” Smith tells Nadeden once the pair finishes setting the birch door into its hinges.

  “Alright. Take all the time you need.” Nadeden nods, wiping sweat from her brow with a smile. Smith returns the smile, but quickly discards it as they walk toward the village hall.

  Some of the villagers glance at them as they depart, but fail to see them sit beside Triminiv. “What was that last night? Where did you get that power from?”

  Triminiv takes a moment to answer Smith in her ghastly voice, “I was born this way. I harnessed it over time. Learned to shift between tones that work to either repel or destroy. I swore to never use my abilities again, but I felt that I had to. I couldn’t let what happened twelve years ago happen again. I never would have been able to forgive myself.”

  “So you can’t build with it?”

  Triminiv squints at Smith’s strange question.

  A curiosity builds beneath her phantom tone as she speaks, “No. I can destroy and move objects, transport myself by turning into a wave of sound, and influence people if I use the correct phrases and gestures, but that’s it. Why do you ask?”

  Smith shakes their pale head.

  First Davon’s mystic portals and now this.

  What does it mean?

  “Nothing.” Smith sighs in frustration, “No reason, thanks anyway, Triminiv.”

  She grasps Smith’s hand as they stand. “Wait.”

  An energy surges within Triminiv that she thought she would never experience again. “I’ve lived countless years searching for an explanation behind my powers. If you have one, tell me.”

  Smith sits back down, realizing that she’s as desperate for answers as they are.

  “Some Machinists have the ability to build with metal by telling it with their voice to do so. The way you use it by shifting your tone of voice is the exact same way they do it. Just like how Davon snapped his fingers the same way Mystic Machinists do. Or-” Smith reluctantly corrects themself, “The way they did.”

  Triminiv rests a hand on her cheek. “Interesting. How do you know that it’s true? No one has seen a Machinist in centuries. I thought that they never left their home planet.”

  “I know because I’m a Machinist!” Smith blurts out in frustration.

  Of course, Triminiv is dismissing them.

  No one cares about the Machinists. They all might as well be dead, just like the Mystic said.

  “I see…” Triminiv’s hand moves to her chin, she taps it in thought.

  Smith has run out of patience.

  They tear the collar of their shirt down to reveal the hole in their chest. “I’m telling the truth! Look, that’s where Hadel and Nadeden placed the consciousness transfer device that saved my life! Why don’t you believe me?”

  “I do believe you. Now pull your shirt up before someone sees that. Consciousness transfer is a crime, Smith, even if it saved you.”

  Smith yanks the collar back up to cover their thin neck at Triminiv’s order, huffing as they do so, “I didn’t ask for this. Nadeden forced me to help her.”

  Triminiv shifts back at Smith’s hostility, she tries to consider how she could possibly comfort them when they seem to only want things to make sense in a plain and simple fashion. A question pops into her mind.

  “Do you like Nadeden?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Sorry.” Triminiv’s tone remains ghastly and restrained as she clarifies her inquiry, “It’s just that when you said she forced you to help her, it sounded like you resented her.”

  Do I? Smith wonders.

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  I suppose that I do resent her a little, especially for forcing me into this body and everything she put me through on Terra-gilma. Smith can still recall the sensation of rain on their skin that night as they were torn from their metal body into this human one.

  Yet Smith also remembers the clothes Nadeden handed them to stay warm.

  She does keep helping me. She taught me how to fight, and even though I was hesitant at first, I don’t regret my decision because I was able to help stop Davon.

  The fresh blood of the man’s corpse hangs in Smith’s mind. The lifeless eyes still stare into him.

  Does that also mean that I helped kill him? Well, he did cut off Shanna’s arm and probably would have caused even more damage if we hadn’t killed him.

  Besides, I had to help Nadeden. I couldn’t just stand back and watch her die.

  Smith recalls all the faces of those they’ve met and those they’ve failed to save, promising themselves that, I can’t do that with anyone. I can’t let anyone else die.

  “We’ve been through a lot together,” Smith sighs.

  “The whole reason we came to this planet is because I wanted to get her medical treatment to pay off the debt that I felt like I owed her. She keeps being reckless, though. I understand her a bit more after she finally told me about her life and what happened to her son, but it just seems to me like she’s struggled to care about anything except him. Maybe she does care about something, but one thing is for sure, she doesn’t care that much about me.”

  Smith stands, burying their hands into their pockets and staring at the villagers working together to rebuild the cabin in the distance, as Nadeden laughs with Shanna, Smith turns back to Triminiv to finally give their answer. “I do care about her, though. She’s gotten me this far after all.”

  Triminiv watches Smith fade away to rejoin the villagers in the distance with a heavy heart.

  Neither of the two got what they wanted from the other.

  She feels sorrow for Smith, for deep down, Triminiv knows that will always be the case for everyone they meet.

  “I used to think that all people were evil. That they were all heinous and selfish, all working toward their own ends without caring about who they hurt. It was only recently that I realized I felt that way because I am one of those selfish, heinous people.”

  Nadeden kneels to lay the stone daggers on the fresh grave, “I was a monster. A cold, harsh creature who valued survival above all else. But then…” her hand slowly drifts to rest atop the headstone. “I became a Mother.”

  She stands reading Davon’s name as the afternoon breeze touches her hair. “I don’t hate Davon for killing Adamus. I don’t hate Gelmidas either. I still wish that I could have watched Adamus grow up, but the past is the past. I can’t change it. Even if my arrows pierce the universe itself, he’ll still be dead, and I’ll still be here. So I’m the one who has to change.”

  “You won’t-” Her mind retorts.

  “I don’t need you anymore.”

  Gelmidas' ghost fades with Nadeden’s whisper.

  Her mind is done clinging to him.

  She breathes in the fresh air beneath the sun, the burns on her flesh now exposed to its light.

  “Life is precious. All life is. You taught me that, Smith.”

  Smith approaches Nadeden from behind, creeping along the grass. “What are you trying to say, Nadeden?”

  She huffs, placing a hand on Smith’s shoulder to look them in the eyes. “Would it be alright if I went to the Forge with you?”

  The silence that follows is louder than any possible word.

  The storm of thoughts between the pair are chaotic and jumbled enough to fill a galaxy. Their collision is inevitable, and it would be destructive were Smith not to push it all down as they always do.

  “Yes,” they say, although they wish they didn’t have to come to this decision, or any decision for that matter.

  As Nadeden hugs Smith, embracing them with open arms, it dawns on Smith that they are afraid now.

  They are afraid of what they are becoming because just as Nadeden felt nothing but emptiness when Davon died, Smith now feels nothing at this odd gesture.

  However, Smith tries not to fear what awaits them.

  The Forge will be safe when they get there.

  It has to be.

  It has to be.

  The sun sets over Granix, who stands idly over the village waiting to depart.

  “Why do you want us to take Davon’s coat?” Nadeden asks Shanna as she riffles through the basket that she and her family prepared for her and Smith.

  “Well, it doesn’t hurt to pack spare clothes. Think of it as a memento.”

  Nadeden folds the coat and places it back in the basket. “You just don’t want to have any Division gear around, don’t you?”

  Shanna hands Nadeden the basket to load into Granix with the other supplies, “Maybe you’re right, but I’m not telling.”

  “Too many bad memories?” Nadeden jokes after placing the basket down, she turns back to see a saddened expression on Shanna’s face.

  “Davon was my friend, Nadeden. Even though things turned out the way they did, I’m still going to miss him.” The two women choose to rest on one of the logs that is yet to join its brethren in the Cabin’s reconstruction.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Nadeden asks as she leans on the wood.

  Shanna runs her fingers across her absent arm. “I don’t know. I’m just not sure how to feel. Davon once said that he was going to be the one to keep Gelmidas in check, but then he goes and does something like this?”

  “It was all him.”

  “That’s my point, Nadeden.” Shanna sighs, “I guess that you just really got under his skin. The way he talked about you back then, all those years ago, it was-”

  “Strange?” Nadeden attempts to finish the sentence, finding that she’s failed to grasp Shanna’s point, “I was going to say manipulative.” She says it potently, stressing the last word and the weight it carries.

  “Well, he did want me to get into a relationship with Gelmidas,” Nadeden passively states, “And he also wanted me to kill Magnus.”

  “He was always obsessed with power, but in reality, he just wanted order.”

  Shanna’s conclusion resonates with Nadeden, “Maybe he really was made for Gelmidas then.” She chuckles, leaping off the log to grab the satchel containing her bow and arrows. Shanna stops her. “When I was on the battlefield, I would always do my best to think of something else, anything else. I gave Davon the same advice a long time ago. I always wondered if you did the same thing.”

  Nadeden stands firm, holding her head high. “To be perfectly honest, Shanna, I never could picture myself anywhere else than right where I am. I guess I just have a poor imagination.”

  Shanna laughs, “Goodbye, Nadeden.”

  Nadeden laughs back, “Goodbye, Shanna, I’ll see you around.”

  Granix bends down to lift her up to their mouth, which opens for her to step into. She freezes once she comes across Smith sitting by the path that leads toward Granix’s eyes. “Did you not want to say goodbye to anyone in the village?”

  Smith glances at Nadeden before rising, “No.”

  She watches helplessly as Smith walks up the path, shadows draping over them as their frail form vanishes.

  Nadeden knows that the village didn’t exactly throw the two of them a parade, but after spending nearly a week there, she expected Smith to at least feel some attachment toward it, especially considering that they’re usually so quick to lock onto and form such tight bonds with everything around them. Nadeden may not be a mind reader, but something is wrong with her friend; that much is clear.

  Granix’s mouth closes, their teeth lock as Nadeden follows Smith into the darkness.

  “It’s gone.”

  “What do you mean it’s gone!” Sinmartin shouts at the villager, dismounting from his Grogung to scold the woman up close.

  “How in the Gods does a stone giant just vanish into thin air! And what has happened to your home? Clearly something must have happened here!”

  Shanna shrugs at the Officer. “I don’t know. It just showed up and then it left. People just come and go sometimes. This planet is a tradeport after all.”

  The explanation does little to cool Sinmartin's nerves. His fellow Officers take a step back as he vehemently curses not just Shanna but everything in sight.

  “What about the Division’s Messenger?” He asks once his tantrum has expunged at least some of his frustration.

  “Who?” Shanna blankly inquires.

  Sinmartin slaps both his hands on his face, wishing to rip it off in anger. He sighs and collects himself upon realizing that he is unable to do so. “A man from the Division came by my Command Building yesterday and insisted that the Scorched Archer was here. He then disembarked just as suddenly as he arrived, whether he came to this village or not, I do not know, and frankly do not care, but the Division dogs who’ll be breathing down my neck once the union goes through sure will!”

  Shanna finds herself at a loss for words. Triminiv, on the other hand, knows exactly what to say. She slowly approaches Sinmartin and the other officers, finally choosing to leave the village hall where she’s stood like a sentry all day.

  Her blonde hair shines in the moonlight as she speaks to Sinmartin in her phantom tone, “Was the Division man a government official?”

  “Well, obviously…” Sinmartin’s voice trails off into the night, unsure of what Triminiv is getting at.

  “Then if someone killed him, they would have to face punishment?”

  “Yes, yes, they would,” Sinmartin answers with a grin.

  Shanna pulls the Elf aside. “What are you doing?” She whispers.

  “Last night I did something that I swore I would never do again. I know you care about this place, Shanna. I honestly think that you care about it more than I do now. Take care of it. I’m counting on you.”

  Triminiv gives a warm smile that only Shanna can see under the cover of darkness before she holds out her hands to surrender herself.

  “I did it, Sinmartin. I killed the Division’s Messenger.”