After getting out of the underground, Shawn vowed never to go subterranean without a shotgun and heavier armor. The cuts on his arms from the rat cws still needed proper attention and cleaning.

  He was immensely relieved by the sight of trees and the specter of the vast nebu above them, and let out a slight cry of triumph. Nightfall must have just occurred. “Suck it, Revarik! Monsters aren’t enough to kill me now!” he bellowed out.

  Garrett regarded this with a wry smile. "So, do you always celebrate near-death encounters with triumphant roars?”

  "Yes, I do! This has not been a normal week for me." He rubbed at the sore wounds still on his arms and hands and was gd they could finally stretch his wings to their full length. "So, can we fly back?”

  "I don't suppose why not. But, if you pass out in flight, I'm not going to be able to catch you, Shawn. You'll turn into a missile, and smash into the forest. Now, do you remember your lessons from earlier in the week?”

  Shawn shifted his legs uneasily and dug a talon into the ground. "Yep. Let’s get–”

  He heard a cry from above, and grabbed his rifle out of instinct, aiming high. But it was Garrett’s rexed stance beside him, and that crease of a smile crossing his beak, that caused Shawn to lower his weapon. Then it hit him:

  It was Regia. She was flying at a breakneck pace, with a dozen others. A team of six Vorhunde and three vulpines bounded through the forest, weapons held low as they spotted them, and a roar of triumph emerged from them, and there were shrill cries of triumph from above.

  Seeing other people coming to their aid wasn't lost upon him. He slung his weapon and felt a tremble down his spine. A welling feeling of relief filled him that threatened to send him to tears. Garrett could read the mood, and put one arm around his shoulder, pointing to the approaching flock of Aveeran.

  “Battle formations are a little sloppy. But damn did she make good time,” Garrett said, shaking his head even as he allowed a little emotion in the upbeat look on his face. “Hey, stand up tall, Shawn. You’re a tough son of a bitch, you know that? Getting through that series of battles? I would have been hard-pressed to kill the ursinas on my own, let alone the tunnel viper.”

  “I may break down a bit. Just a forewarning.” Garrett chuckled beside him.

  “Yeah. I’ll say I saw nothing.”

  Twenty seconds ter, Regia, Telga, Varrick, and several others nded, and Regia took one look at their battered state, a hand held to her beak. “I said bring him back in one piece, Garrett,” she spat, eyes alight with fury.

  “There were some complications,” Garrett sighed. “Hello to you too, by the–oof.”

  That was Shawn’s reaction, too, as she nudged Garrett aside, and wrapped her arms around Shawn tightly in a friendly embrace, and her beak trembled a little. “Damn it, Shawn, I don’t know how you do it, sometimes.” Her fingers gently ran through the feathers on the back of his head, and this felt just a little too cozy in front of this many people.

  “You told me I might make a decent Aveeran someday. I was just trying to live up to expectations,” he replied. She ughed bitterly at that.

  “That is not what I meant, you crazy fool! You weren’t supposed to be fighting monsters and getting buried underground and–” She let out a soft sigh, resting her lower beak on his shoulder. “I still might punch you ter, for your recklessness!”

  “Regia? I fought a pack of giant rats, and was chased from one end of the caverns to the other. I had a giant ursina chase me up a cliff. I fought a giant freaking snake that spat acid at me. I just need to know if Cire’s alright. And Raine.”

  She pulled away gently, eyes filled with wonder. “Are…were you serious when you said that?”

  “Which part? The one where I was worried about Cire and Raine? Or the parade of Remaria’s finest freaks trying to make me into their next meal?” he asked dryly. She let out an anxious ughter, and pulled Garrett in for a hug, too. His protests did nothing to deter her iron grip on both of them.

  “Cire's okay, she’s in town now with Menie, Chakra’s wife. Raine and Trask are alright, too.” She let out a breath of relief, before letting the two of them go. “You two look like you’re beaten bloody, by the way. Chakra, get them healed up so we can fly back to Vea’nt, or Cire might murder me.”

  Telga pushed forward, eyes narrowed as she examined Shawn. “Shawn, there’s something different about you.”

  “I’ve been battle-tested, and smell like giant magical mushrooms. I mean mushrooms of a magical nature, but not…never mind,” he sighed. “We have some discoveries and questions–”

  But, she reached for Chakra, and whispered something in his ear. Shawn couldn’t make it out, but he peered at him with that Aveeran intensity he’d slowly gotten used to. Especially with the way they looked at others. It wasn’t cultural, so much as just their physiology. “Guys, I don’t know about you, but I’m tired, dirty, and…” he trailed off as Chakra whispered something to Telga, whose eyes widened.

  “Shawn? Can you expin what Chakra just told me?” her voice barely came over a whisper, and a few others looked around anxiously. Garrett knew what this might be about.

  “Telga, we will debrief when we are in town. Shawn and I just survived an ordeal that would have killed many lesser individuals. There are things we need to discuss that should be done so in privacy until we are certain they are safe to divulge,” Garrett replied in a low tone, and nodded to Regia, who raised a feathered brow.

  “I can’t leave you two alone for five minutes without you making a mess of things, can I?”

  “You reckless, crazy goddamn enginerd bird!”

  Shawn let the insults fly from Cire, eyes alight with fury, making her displeasure clear as day. Five seconds ter, she hugged him and caused a few wounds to reopen. “Don’t tell me to run off while you put yourself in danger ever again, Shawn! Or I’ll take my chances with that magic rock sitting in storage!”

  “Cire? Don’t do that. Do not even attempt it, please.” He would detail why, but Telga had given him wary gnces the entire time.

  In the meantime, Chakra refused to let Shawn and Garrett do any debriefing until he gave them a thorough check-over. After he was satisfied, they began detailing the events of the mine. Cire sat in a chair next to him after she finished chewing him out. Shawn decided to tell the entire story. He did not leave any details out on this one, and the discussion took a while.

  Regia, Telga, and the others held their questions for a while, and Garrett had been scribbling notes. They went over the colpse. Shawn’s absorption of the ursina. The nonstop battle across the caverns. The second ursina, the battle with the tunnel viper and the trapper house, deep in the caverns, plus the discoveries within.

  Telga peered at Shawn with curiosity. “And you managed all that?”

  “I doubt either of us alone could have taken on the viper,” he conceded. “But Telga, I need answers. Cicero detailed two very strange things. A mention of bio-Etteria in organisms possibly decades ago, and a sketch of a disturbingly familiar device.” All their gazes went to Varrick, looking stoic; everyone knew that’s where they stored the remaining primal Etteria crystal. “We need answers.”

  “As do I.” Varrick lit his pipe, and he could smell a slightly sweet, burnt scent of this world's equivalent of tobacco. He pointed at the journal and the ominously familiar device. “Telga, you lied to me when you said you had only two samples. This is now a third. Or proof that others exist.”

  “I wasn’t aware there were any more. I thought such devices didn’t exist or could be replicated anymore.” She shook her head, her feathers bristled in reaction. “This is not good.”

  “First, tell me why it’s not good.” Shawn peered at her intensely. “Just say it. You had no idea what you had, or what might happen. You gambled with my life when you let me use the primal Etteria. So tell us what you know.”

  Shawn, are you sure you want to push this line of query?

  I don’t have a choice, Halsey. Chakra told her that my Etteria network developed again. We need to get all the details on this one, fast. And whether it works to our advantage–

  Shawn. What if there are others like me, trapped in the Etteria? Surely, the thought has crossed your mind? Or, more disturbing, is how I was pced there? I remember…I remember fading echoes.

  Halsey, keep it together. There is nothing we can do about that, in this junction of time. I want answers, too. All eyes were on Telga. There was hesitation in her mannerisms, the way she wrung her hands. “Shawn, do you know why the primal Etteria is special?” she finally asked. “Do you know why I initially wanted to study it?”

  “I wouldn’t know, but I have a few theories. I’m guessing Regia doesn’t know, either.” Shawn gazed at her, and she slowly nodded. “Otherwise, I think she would have told me.”

  “There was a slight omission on my part. We didn’t find those two devices in a sealed chamber. Revarik did. They were stored in one of his arcanist bs. I knew they were some prized item due to how well guarded they were, but Telga didn’t say why–we grabbed them on our exit.” Regia bristled her feathers. “Telga, I can’t be kept in the dark anymore. You need to tell me why almost everyone else died for these damn things. I need to know why Trace, Shei, and Celes died on our trip down to the core world! We were supposed to kill Revarik, and it turned into a sughter! Or were the crystals always the pn?”

  Oh shit. He still wasn’t clear about what happened when Telga went to the core world, and Regia had been silent on it, too. But that barrier was about to be violently burst open. This was the wedge that had split Regia’s trust in Telga like splitting logs with a sharpened axe. Telga’s deafening silence only agitated Regia further, and Shawn could feel that draw of energy in the air from Regia, water churning around her arms.

  “Do you really want to do that, Regia?” Telga warned, light glowing from her fingertips. “You’re acting on your anger, but you don’t know all the facts.”

  “You have lied to all of us,” Regia snarled, water making sharp, violent motions along her arms. “You knew we couldn’t kill Revarik. You knew everyone was on a one-way suicide mission. Everyone who came with us died, save for myself and Kaiden. A team of twelve! Why did they have to die?!”

  He had to diffuse this now, or he knew Regia might do something rash. He racked his brain for the answers–and the absurd one was the first one that popped into his mind.

  “A primal Etteria crystal can create a Radiant. Can’t it?” All eyes were on him, and he swore he felt a tingle of energy from his core, as he said that. “That’s why it’s important.”

  Regia turned to look at him, her eyes etched with fading anger, then her beak went agape, for a second. The water faded back into the nothingness it had come from. “Shawn, that’s not true. That can’t be true.”

  “Is it? No one’s expined to me what truly sets the Radiants aside. Where they came from, or where they gained their powers. Maybe because the truth is too terrible to bear. Isn’t it, Telga?” Shawn asked, and deliberately put himself between Regia and Telga. “These prized crystals are a rarity of untold power. But first come, first served, right? And your brother got to them first. He could give them to his little zealots and have his army of unstoppable Radiants.”

  “No. That’s not the whole story, Shawn.” Telga’s voice found its footing again. Meanwhile, Halsey’s presence became anxious in his head.

  Shawn, drop this line of inquiry. Please.

  He felt a tingle at the back of his neck, a twinge of discomfort. Why?

  Because you can’t take it back, once you know.

  There was fear in Halsey’s voice. Genuine fear. Halsey, do you know something?

  Telga continued before Halsey could respond. “Shawn…do you know what happens when a Radiant dies?” He shook his head, and his sense of dread only grew. “I suppose you wouldn’t. No one in this room knows, except one.” Varrick's darkened gaze, the way he clutched his cws into his palm, suggested he did, indeed, know. Shawn wasn’t surprised–but, this man was always in firm control of his emotions…except for this.

  “Can I take a guess?” Shawn asked before Telga gave a soft nod of her beak. “The Etteria in them is not rendered inert or degraded, unlike people born or exposed to the normal Etteria. Maybe it’s not unlike the monsters I killed in the Termina mine.” Shawn felt his pulse spike. He knew. He knew where this was going. He did his best to keep his gaze calm but clenched his cws gently into his leg to keep himself steady. It was too te to put this genie back in the bottle.

  “When a Radiant dies…their Etteria core stays intact.” Telga continued while Halsey pleaded with him to turn away, walk out of the room, do anything but sit here and listen to the atomic bomb he could see dropping from the sky. She paced a few steps, and gestured to Cicero’s journal, one taloned finger resting on the crystalline device. “My brother and I researched Etteria–long before he turned down this dark path. We were trying to figure out its secrets, long lost after the cataclysm that sundered our world.”

  “Yeah, you guys call it the Great Sundering,” Shawn input quietly. Halsey was begging him to stop. But he couldn’t. “What does that have to do with now?”

  “We found two devices like this, designed to preserve the Etteria. Like the one currently sitting in Varrick’s smithy, a precious device stored in such a mundane, unsuspecting location.” Telga gazed out the window, to the trees and the night sky above, and wrung her hands behind her back gently. “There’s a tradition going back a ways, before our research started. The Radiants would preserve the crystals, keepsakes of our fallen. We knew they were special. We knew something made it different, but didn’t understand why, or how to use it. But we did know that sometimes, it works on someone without a gestalt.”

  “I knew that part,” Varrick conceded, and Shawn could hear the tension in his voice. “Telga…you really want to bring this up?”

  “I have to. Myself and Revarik found something new. Something that could have changed everything. The greatest power of the Radiants, Shawn, isn’t in the gestalt. It’s in the memories preserved within the crystals.”

  Shawn, run away, please! Just go!

  But he was rooted to his seat, unwilling to run away from this answer. “And what memories are preserved in the crystals, exactly?” He felt sick to his stomach–he knew the answer, now. He knew what Revarik discovered. He knew why he wanted the Etteria.

  “Those who came before.” Telga gnced down, her hand resting on that small locket he’d seen her looking in remembrance a few times. “Shawn, Cire…I’m not sure how to say this, but…Revarik and I had another sibling. She was brilliant. Brighter than the other two of us combined.” A knowing gaze at Garrett, who shied his eyes away, was all it took for her to confirm they knew, earlier. “She figured it out, from the smaller devices we found and tested. How the primal Etteria could not only preserve power…but the memories of the fallen, after careful research of so many pieced together notes, from archives and archaeological dives throughout Remaria.”

  Pieces clicked together in his head. Telga continued while a dull ache pulsed at his temples. “We were on the verge of a breakthrough. She wanted to share this knowledge with the other Radiants. We had a loose communication network with other Radiants who had arcanist and scientifically aligned minds–a community of academics if you will. She believed that knowledge was the key to fixing our broken world. Revarik cautioned that we should research in secret, and that we may unlock knowledge that could be dangerous.

  She paused for a second, and let out a soft huff. "I took my sister’s side, of course, because I knew Revarik could be self-absorbed. And ambitious. I figured with this knowledge…there might be ways to piece our world back together. This world isn’t right, Shawn. It hasn’t been right in a long time.”

  There was one sickening conclusion this was leading toward. Revarik desired the power…and the knowledge, of all the Radiants, contained within. “Telga…tell me it's not what I think it is.” Shawn felt his breath go shallow and felt slightly nauseous at what she was about to confirm for him.

  All he could hear was an anguished wail in his head. Telga gnced down, her hand resting on that small locket he’d seen her looking in remembrance a few times.

  “Revarik finished the research by testing a theory. A theory he knew none of us would ever dare test, because of what it would cost.”

  Her hand trembled gently as she opened the locket, looking down. All the liveliness her expression faded, what little had been left. It was that defeated look he'd seen on her, before Secturas sanctuary fell out of orbit.

  “Revarik killed her, to take her knowledge and power. He used that device to make it happen.”