Azez Tazir ran a hand over his face.

All around him, there were the sounds of groaning. All around him, there were the sounds of a war being lost.

They'd made a temporary base on Rarun, a world of black snow and ice, but it was already clear that it wouldn't last them long. The enemy would find them again within the next few days. Granba's repair-crews had barely even managed to start the required work on their damaged cruisers, and Idra's healers had legions of injured soldiers still needing to be treated.

Time, time… there wasn't enough time. There was never enough time. When had the flow of things turned against them so much? What had happened?

The Gene Tyrants had gotten wise, that was what had happened. They couldn't oppose the Zeilan Morhan directly, sure, but they'd found loopholes upon loopholes. Using creations concocted by their own creations to add an extra degree of separation. Bribing the soldiers of other Tyrants to stage attacks on their behalf. Putting themselves in the paths of the Zeilan Morhan fleet's advance -- so that it became self-defense, and their bodies permitted them retaliation.

Azez sighed. The Zeilan Morhan's numbers, which had been swelling after they managed to spit in the Tyranny's eye, were beginning to dwindle. Every battle, every skirmish… they took their toll. Their army, their fleet… it was now only a little more than half the size it had been before this proxy campaign of the Tyrants had started.

There was a sound outside, and Azez pulled his fur coat tight around himself as he looked up to investigate. Hellywood, the Musca-Pugnant who'd been acting as Azez's personal guard, had shifted slightly in his post outside the tent.

"All good out there?" Azez called out.

"Don't know that I'd call anything good right now," Hellywood grumbled. "But there's no danger right here, if that's what you mean."

Hellywood was writing away in that journal of his, that little book in which he recorded the names of those he had lost. He seemed to be writing all the time these days. What level of despair would there be, Azez wondered, on the day that book was full?

He blew on his hands to warm them up. It was as Edgar had said, in the end. The people were inspired… the people had hope… but that could only take them so far.

Against odds like this, something more was needed.

Come on, Edgar, Azez thought to himself. You promised me a miracle.

"Do you ever feel bad?" Margarethe asked, her many eyes sorrowful within her containment suit.

"About what?" Edgar asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

The two of them were sitting in the break room, Margarethe's containment suit strapped down into the chair while her expertise wasn't needed. In order for Edgar to feel assured while working alone with a Gene Tyrant, they'd had to take quite extravagant measures. The suit Margarethe wore wasn't just her prison cell, but her execution chamber. At the first sign of danger, that helmet would light up crimson and she would be roasted alive, right then and there.

If that concerned her any, she didn't show it. Instead, her attention -- and perhaps a bit of her revulsion -- was squarely on Edgar.

"About all of it," she said quietly. "About any of it. You realize what we've been doing, right? What we've just done?"

Indeed, they'd just been very busy getting a new unit installed on the Sapphire Star. With the surgical automatic and Margarethe's directions, it was actually a fairly routine process by this point, but still… the work was delicate, he supposed.

But obviously that wasn't what Margarethe meant.

"I'm surprised to hear you ask me that, if I'm honest," Edgar replied, putting his mug down with a clink. "Even if you've defected, you're a Gene Tyrant. I expect you've done things worse than this before."

Margarethe shook her head. Edgar furrowed his brow.

"What?" he frowned.

"No," Margarethe replied, her voice even and steady. "I've never stuck a hundred people's brains together so they can figure out the secrets of the universe for me. I've never done something that bad. Perhaps some of the other Nobles have done things on that level, but not me. I'll admit to you that I'm bad -- that's why I came here in the first place. But I'm not that bad."

"You say that," Edgar pointed out. "But you're still here, helping me do it."

"I don't exactly have a choice."

"Oh, is it self-preservation?" Edgar blinked. "I suppose that makes sense. You're worried I'll make that suit kill you if you don't do what I say."

"No," Margarethe shook her head within that bulky helmet. "It's like I said when I met you people. I don't have any right to decide such things anymore. Whatever you want to do with me… you can do."

"So you're just considering yourself a resource now," Edgar considered. "A gun doesn't decide where it's pointed… is it something like that?"

"Call it whatever you want," Margarethe said. "You still haven't answered my question. Do you ever feel bad?"

"About this?"

"About anything."

Edgar finished his coffee before leaning back in his seat. "I don't really get why you're asking this, to be honest. Are you looking to cast judgement on me or something like that?"

"I just want to know."

Edgar considered it for a second… but only for a second.

"No," he said calmly. "I don't feel bad about any of it. I've never felt bad about anything in my entire life."

Margarethe's eyes widened.

"You don't have to look so surprised," Edgar smiled calmly. "I'm aware that this isn't a normal way of looking at the world. I assume something early on inadvertently damaged me beyond repair, or maybe I was just born wrong." He shrugged. "Either way, at some point I definitely missed my chance to develop into a person… but there's no point in crying over spilled milk. Since I'm like this, there are things that only I can do, right? Since I don't feel bad."

Margarethe said nothing.

Edgar raised an eyebrow. "I'm not really surprised, but you said you weren't going to cast judgement upon me. It looks like that's what you're doing, Margarethe."

The Gene Tyrant with which he'd spent the last few years of his life simply looked down at him. "No," she said after a long moment. "I just feel sorry for you."

"Okay," Edgar replied.

After a long moment, Margarethe leaned over the table, sighing heavily.

"Let me tell you, Edgar," she said. "I feel bad -- and it's like you say, it's bizarre for me of all people to feel this way… but it's not just because of what we're doing. It's because… Edgar, I have to be honest. We've been at this for a long while. I can't see it working anymore, I could barely see it working in the first place. I mean… you don't even know what you have those poor souls looking for."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Edgar looked over his shoulder as he strolled towards the sink to wash his cup. "We've gone over this so many times, though? We're looking for the method. The path from A to B that makes us able to defeat our enemy. There's a method for all things, Margarethe, all you have to do is find it. That's one of my few beliefs, so it's very precious to me."

He washed his hands -- but as far as he could see, they had been clean from the start.

"All we need is patience."

You keep thinking…

You keep thinking…

You keep thinking…

How long have you been thinking for now? You aren't exhausted. You are exhaustion. It radiates out from every aspect of your being… not your body of flesh, as that is now a distant distant memory, but your body of thought. Every aspect of you is screaming out for rest.

Who are you, anyway? That notion too is indistinct now, liquid. First you were one. Then you were many. Then you were many that became one. Then you were one splintering into many. The cycle of breakdown and reconstruction accelerates. The phase shift of madness grows brighter and more agonizing.

If you could laugh, you would have a mouth. No, that's not right. Or is it? You can't tell anymore. You can't tell anymore. Reason has finally disappeared for you.

And then, beyond reason, you spot it.

There is a light. There is a light before you, in the void beyond the corridors of sober thought. It would not be right to say that it was waiting for you. That would be to place far too much importance on yourself. This is a mountain that existed far before you and will exist long after.

You can see the mountain, and therefore climb it… but a mountain exists whether one climbs it or not.

You crawl forwards…

You see that it is not a mountain at all.

You crawl forwards…

You see that it is many strings, twisted into a shining rope of endless colour.

You crawl forwards… you crawl forwards… you crawl forwards… it's so close! IT'S NEARLY OVER!

You see that it is a light of the mind.

And everything begins to shine.

Edgar opened his eyes -- and just as he did so, he was forced to close them again, squinting. The light outside was just that bright.

As he sat up in bed, the possibilities formed an orderly queue in his mind. Was there some malfunction with the station's systems? Was the station under attack? No, those didn't seem likely. In either situation, he would be dead before he even had time to notice.

Besides, the blue light pouring in from under the door was cast by no flame.

Throwing on his clothes, Edgar opened the door -- and saw that the light pervaded everything beyond. The walls, the floor, the ceiling -- it was as if they had all been saturated, infused with this strange glow, as if they themselves were now emitting it. Edgar ran a hand along the wall beside him, and as he pulled it away a few pale sapphire lines followed after his fingers. They squirmed in the air like strings -- or perhaps they were crackling like sparks? It was difficult to tell at a glance.

Edgar looked up, and saw Margarethe on the other end of the corridor. She wasn't behind this, either. The shock and awe on her face was much too genuine for that to be the case.

Without a word, the two of them proceeded to what they knew -- what they of course knew -- to be the source of this phenomenon.

It was hard to even see in the Sapphire Star's chamber, the light was that potent, but Margarethe grew inner eyelids and Edgar shielded his own vision with a hand. With those precautions, they had little trouble stepping right through the bolts of flashing energy before them. It was like they were illusions, visual effects, not really there -- but something was definitely happening.

As Edgar expected, the strange energy seemed to be coming from the Sapphire Star itself. The faux-lightning was flashing all around it, like it was a solid storm cloud, the energy flowing out into the rest of the station through this central point. Down below, the monitor was blinking with impossible colours -- it was trying to relay something outside of common sense, something that couldn't be understood so easily.

Words appeared on the monitor, uneven like a patchwork ransom note. Edgar read them.

THE POWER STRENGTHENS

THE POWER REMEMBERS

THE POWER IS A LIGHT OF THE MIND

Edgar frowned contemplatively. 'The Power'... was that what this strange energy was, then? Some kind of power source the Sapphire Star had discovered?

'A light of the mind'. What exactly did that mean?

The monitor answered him.

TO ACCESS THE POWER YOU MUST CONNECT TO THE POWER

TO CONNECT TO THE POWER YOU REQUIRE THE KEY OF YOUR STRING

THE KEY OF YOUR STRING IS A SENSATION OF YOUR SELF

EDGAR

EMPTY YOURSELF OF EMOTION

AND REACH FOR

"POWER"

Edgar swallowed.

It was a little surprising to be addressed like this. The Sapphire Star wasn't even supposed to be able to communicate directly like this… but clearly, it had decided otherwise. It felt distinctly like he was at the mercy of something right now.

Edgar and Margarethe exchanged a rare look of shared trepidation. Well, it was like they said… in for a 'penny', in for a 'pound' -- whatever those were.

Emptying himself of emotion wasn't terribly difficult. That was basically his default state. Edgar didn't know if the Star meant to reach out mentally or physically, so he just did both. Extending out a hand, he focused on the idea of becoming more powerful, of becoming more than he was right now.

For a moment, a long moment, nothing happened.

And then the world changed.

Edgar gasped softly as a spark of that same energy wound out of his finger and around before dissipating. It was slightly different from the light the Sapphire Star was producing -- a brighter blue, almost sparkling -- but it was definitely the same phenomenon. Whatever the Sapphire Star was bringing into this world, Edgar could bring it too.

And it was more than just light, it was like the monitor had said, this was power. Edgar could feel this force flowing down into his hand, into his fist -- if he wanted to, he was sure he could smash a dent into the wall right now.

The power strengthens.

Yes, yes, it did indeed. Edgar tested it, whipping his hand through the air, noting the ease of movement. There was barely any resistance at all.

"Edgar?" Margarethe whispered.

This was it. This was it. This was it! This was what they'd been spending so much time looking for! Power like this… if it could be taken further… if it could be taken so much further…!

There was a strange sound, too, like a mix between coughing and barking -- sounding out over and over again. Was that what this power sounded like? It was so odd!

"Edgar!" Margarethe said again, her voice aghast. Edgar looked at her, noted the unsettled expression on her face, and realized. He was the one making that noise.

Oh, he thought. I'm laughing.

It was his first time, so he wasn't very good at it. His mouth was just snapping open and closed, again and again, each time releasing a single sharp 'HA!" into the world. His head was angled back, eyes pointed up towards the ceiling but unseeing -- the gaze of a dead fish -- like the force of his own laughter was pushing his neck back.

It wasn't that he was amused, he was sure about that. Was this what it felt like to be happy? It was so much different than contentment, so much more vibrant.

This was truly a momentous occasion, if it could force his muted mind to explode like this.

"We did it, Margarethe," he finally managed to say, grinning so widely it felt like his face would break. "We found it, right out of the ether."

No, no, that didn't sound quite right, but still…

"Found what…?" Margarethe asked, pulling her arms tight around herself. Even within the safety of her suit, she still looked uneasy.

Beneath three-hundred screaming human souls, Edgar giggled in ecstasy.

"A miracle," he breathed.

A sudden, frenzied thought bubbled up to the forefront of his mind:

This is mine. This belongs to me.

But the miracle quickly became reality again, and the thought faded away. The radiance around them was just an unusual light. The words on the screen were just that -- words on a screen, relaying not wisdom but mere information. Even Edgar's giggles trailed off, his face returning to its usual serene smile.

Still letting the energy crackle around his hand, Edgar looked up at Margarethe.

"Well, that's Aether made," he said, casually settling upon a name for their discovery. "I'm going to get another coffee."