The Human Experience

Quarter P, day 30, 3418.

I had to let my travelling companions go. Despite passing through the most radiation-dense areas, their minds are drained, exhausted. Zorion was speaking more to ‘the missus’ than to us. Syfer often blanked out, withdrawing into himself so completely that I had to keep him from falling off his camel every hour or so. If they don’t hurry, the catatonia will claim them before Alignment day.

How long has Kaed been Infected? He didn’t show the same symptoms as the others. Maybe it’s because he’s a Helm. Or maybe it’s because he’s been carrying radiation-emitting rocks with him for a long time. But what about me? I know my friends all got Infected long before me, but I should be exhibiting some symptoms by now. Absent-mindedness, fatigue, mental lethargy. Why am I not?

It could be that, when I’m Lykus, my Voice detaches and my mind is able to rest. But I haven’t been Lykus since...that evening.

Scientists say that strong-minded individuals last longer against the Voices. Now I know that isn’t true.

It’s the empty-minded that last – people like me who drink themselves senseless to avoid thinking. Fewer thoughts for the Voices to feed on. That’s why I don’t feel any different.

After all, what further damage can a Voice do to a mind as damaged as mine?

Everyone spilled into the streets to watch the Alignment. Priests dragged enormous basalt and alabaster idols from their temples, mounted them in the city squares for terrified civilians to make offerings to. Hector had taken a string of cured sausages from the feet of some fertility god. Syfer was no longer here to pay his way through inns and meals, and Hector’s coins had long been spent. Mostly on rum. He’d climbed a water pipe on a three-story tavern and now sat on the roof’s lip, sullenly chewing the stolen sausages.

The Akkútians didn’t even keep the Star-Gods. Celestial worship wasn’t practised farther east than Inaultis, and either way Akkút was opposed to anything even mildly Vangardian. These fretting fools were dragging out their gods instead of the Quintet, but did they know the Alignment-apocalypse prophecy was based off of Vangardian holy scripture?

Well, that and the trivial detail that apocalypse happened to come last Alignment.

Right. His Voice. The rum had blocked it out for a while. Another reason to loathe sobriety.

Oh, come on. I’m not that bad.

He reflexively groped for his empty canteen.

If you’re trying to hurt my feelings, that’s kind-of a lost cause.

Then why did it sound a little stung?

A single thought is more complex than it seems, you know. It’s not just a sentence in the mind; it involves emotions, sounds, images, and every other sense. Your thoughts have made me understand sight, though I cannot see, and sounds though I cannot hear. Similarly, I understand emotions, though I cannot feel.

So you’re just imitating, then? Hector shot, tearing angrily into the sausage. You’re made up of thoughts. All you have is my experience of emotions, the emotions I store in my memories. You suck out thoughts and mix them together to create new ones, but those still aren’t yours. You can’t generate your own ideas. You can’t do anything but recite what those before you once thought. It’s just mimicry, like a mockingbird. You’re not conscious, you’re not human, so stop trying to bond with me. I don’t talk to mockingbirds.

It shut up for a while, leaving Hector to sulk in peace. But still there wasn’t peace. Another goddamned voice started. This one was all him, though. That conscience son-of-a-bitch. It reminded him that once, he hadn’t felt emotions, either. He’d functioned by feeding off of others feelings, too. He’d crawled beneath Delia’s skin with a purpose. Lykus had never felt, but that hadn’t stopped him from leeching off others’ sentiments.

A mimicry of sentience. Like the Voices.

Has it dawned on you yet? Damned hypocrite.

Hector perked up on the ledge. That was new: it had never insulted him before. It had always been so...nice. But the fact that it was becoming more human only meant in due time he’d become less so, even if he showed no signs of it now. How long before he started spacing out like Varali had?

Tomorrow he’d start back through Rakkhat, to the statue of Irhaap the Conqueror. Maybe he’d live there, set up a sleeping bag near it and claim it his ‘spot.’ He’d probably have to beat up a few vagabonds for it, but that wasn’t an issue. His Voice could feed off the statue’s radiation until Orcadis came to kill him or someone else knifed him for the spot.

How come you never told the others’ Voices I was a traitor? Hector wondered. Did you hope to get to Lady’s Fist before the Alignment? Whatever the Liberator planned probably won’t work, anyways.

The Voice was silent for a while. Then it said, I can’t worry, and I thought you didn’t talk to mockingbirds?

Hector smiled to himself, a weight lifting from his heart. “Thank you.”

What for?

“You’ve stopped sounding like Varali.”

He breathed deeply, wiping greasy fingers on his cloak, and turned his attention to the heavens. From four celestial bodies there remained two. Amaris, goddess of deception, subtlety, and patience, hid behind Delmira, keeping to the shadows where legend said she lurked. Pyrrhus was a dark silhouette in front of Tychon, small and insignificant and with no liberty to exert his own will. Delmira, goddess of protection and peace, and Tychon, god of order, leadership, and power, inched ever closer together.

A low drumbeat carried through the streets. Hector looked down, seeing the Akkh’s soldiers stationed at equal intervals along the sandy road – probably to keep panic and looting in check. They beat a solemn rhythm on their animal-skin drums, and from somewhere out of sight a street musician began a fife tribute.

The evening darkened. Delmira crept across Tychon’s surface, swallowing his golden light...

“Hector!”

The sound of his name made him look down. A head of chestnut waves was threading through the static crowd. Heart stalling, he brought his legs up into a crouch on the roof. Kaed?

“Hector! Where are you?” the teenager called again, struggling to shove his skinny body through the masses.

Hector pounced, catching the water pipe and swinging down to land in a squat on the trampled sand. He rushed after the boy.

Sand rose in a cloud behind him. He pushed past sobbing women and praying men, following the youth. Hector quickly closed in behind Kaed and reached out to grab his shoulder, pulling him to a halt.

Kaed spun around to face him, panting. “Hector! My Voice told me you were still–”

He pulled the boy into a grateful hug, clutching him so tightly that Kaed wrestled out of the embrace looking alarmed. “What the hell is wrong?”

“Sorry,” Hector said, breathless. He felt himself smiling like an idiot, but he couldn’t help it. “I...I thought I’d lost you.”

Kaed grinned. “Thought Father would kill you?”

“No. I just didn’t want to lose you. You’re my friend, Kaed.”

The boy looked momentarily startled, as if he’d never heard a word as alien as friend and didn’t know whether to feel suspicious of it or not. After a moment his lips twitched tentatively upward, but then his eyes lowered to Hector’s canteen, hanging empty off his belt, and he frowned. Hector chuckled, cuffing him lightly on the shoulder.

They walked back to the bar whose rooftop Hector had claimed for watching the Alignment. He scaled the pipe easily, swung up, and extended a hand to help the boy. When they were both sitting on the roof’s lip, Delmira having covered half of Tychon’s surface, Hector said, “What happened to you in that Swarm, Kaed?”

“What happens to me in any Swarm,” Kaed said lightly. “It just goes to show, Father would rather have a dead son than an Infected son. He implanted this...this chip in my brain. It detects approaching Swarms and makes me lose consciousness whenever one is near. That way I can’t get Infected.” He sneered. “I can get trampled to death, though. And it’s not sensitive enough to detect a single Voice, hence why I’m Infected.”

Sometimes Orcadis’s insanity struck Hector so hard it even made him look normal. He grimaced. “Well, what do you know? We both have computers in our heads. Never thought I’d meet a fellow cyborg.”

Kaed laughed softly, and before Hector knew it he was laughing, too. Everything was just so absurd that he couldn’t help it. His laughter seemed to infect Kaed. The boy laughed harder, until Hector’s sides ached and both of them were shaking from the intensity of it.

There they sat in Tychon’s expanding shadow, laughing for no reason like madmen, their ringing voices misplaced amid cries of terror and mourning.

Finally, when Delmira had covered half of Tychon’s surface, they stopped to catch their breath. The moment of lightheaded madness passed, and Hector again felt gravity tug at his heart, setting it low and heavy in his chest where it belonged. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to Kaed, growing serious. “I...I should have listened to you. It made me so damned angry to see you being trampled in the streets like that. People walk all over you enough as it is; there’s no need for them to do it literally, too.”

Kaed shrugged. “Nothing new. A few scratches and bruises, no harm done. Not like it matters. We’re all going to die, anyways.”

Hector half-smiled, glancing at Kaed. “Don’t tell me you believe in the prophecy?”

Kaed shook his head. Hector’s smile faltered as he noticed the haunted vacancy in the boy’s eyes. “I wasn’t going to tell you anymore. What good will it do? You can’t do anything. We can’t...” He swallowed heavily. “We can’t stop it now.”

“What do you mean, Kaed?” Hector leaned in urgently. “Stop what? Tell me.”

“During the Swarm, another Infected group found me unconscious on the street. I woke up at their safe house. They wouldn’t let me go back to you and the others. They said my old group had probably left without me and I should go with them to Amaris’s Basin. So I did. I met the Liberator’s people, listened to their p-plans...” His voice broke and he trailed off, gripping the roof’s clay shingles tightly. Kaed turned to Hector with a lump trembling in his throat. “They’re insane. I barely escaped.”

Hector frowned. “You can’t possibly mean–”

Kaed grabbed Hector’s shirtfront, eyes brimming with an infectious terror. “Yes! They’re going to blow Amaris! The Liberator has bombs riddled throughout the moon. They all kept raving about how they’re going to send a ship to detonate them during the Alignment. I swear, they’re crazier than the Helms!”

“Calm down, Kaed, that can’t be right. Why would the Voices want to kill everyone? They’d die, too. They can’t actually be Tychon’s avengers, or whatever scripture says.”

The boy released Hector and slumped back against the chimney. The terror Hector had seen in his eyes drained and was replaced by the dead hopelessness that seemed to be his natural state. “I don’t know their purpose. Maybe the Infected plan to evacuate somehow. I only know what I heard. My Voice helped me find my way back through the desert to warn you, but I didn’t find you in time. There’s no way to stop that rocket now. In three days, when the rocket hits Amaris, expect the end, Hector.”

Kaed looked back down to the spectators with their heads thrown to the stars, his eyes glazed. Hector remembered what Del had told him. Jesreal Padon, building a rocket for the Radiant Thinkers. Could it be? The New Wolves had certainly thought so...

A shadow swept across the desert, bringing with it a dry gust of desert wind. Hector looked up. Delmira swallowed Tychon, reducing the sun to a fat crescent.

Below, a woman screamed. Several spectators crumpled to their knees.

The crescent got thinner. Thinner still. A curved strip of light hugging Delmira’s border. Night descended so quickly Hector had to blink to adjust his eyes.

“This is it,” he whispered. “Delmira hugs her sons tonight.” Hector clapped the boy’s shoulder. “For what it’s worth, if you’re right about the apocalypse, then I’m glad it’s you and me at the end, Kaed Durant.”

Kaed’s voice was faint but firm when he answered. “Nice knowing you, Hector.”

The moon slipped into place like a puzzle piece into a peg, faintly backlit by Tychon. Streamers of light undulated round Delmira’s edges, making it look like a flaming ring of gold in the black sky. The world held its breath.

Then, with a rumble, something like a shooting star lifted off from the east. Hector watched it rise into the night until it intercepted the Alignment and disappeared, only a faint trail of smoke in its wake.

His jaw fell open. “Well, son-of-a-bitch.”

Kaed chuckled mirthlessly. “Told you.”

When Hector dialled Orcadis with numbed fingers to warn that in three days, the Amaris moon would again rain down on the planet, triggering a second apocalypse, the man only smiled.

Then he laughed, like the crazy motherfucker he was. When he’d finished, eyes streaming with tears, he breathlessly said, “Wait there. I’ll pick you up shortly.”

The riots began. It was the Radiant Thinkers’ damned apocalypse ship that did it, Hector thought. He gazed down upon the tumult, saw glimpses of flailing limbs and fluttering sun-cloaks between the roused sand clouds. Before it had gotten out of hand, he’d hacked down the water pipe with a curved scythe he’d taken from one of Syfer’s saddlebags and hidden in the chimney. Occasionally peasants tried to climb the mud-bricks to the roof. Hector would meet them at the edge with his raised scythe, and they’d let themselves drop back into the chaos.

Even the Akkh’s men couldn’t rein them in. They beat back looters with spiked balls on chains, taking stances in front of merchants’ shops. A few even had hydraulic guns – though they’d set them to low power – and were shooting jets of pressurized water that blew grown men off their feet. The soldiers stood out in their white linens, red sashes belting their panelled capes and golden sandal-straps winding up their calves.

“Hector, watch–!”

Movement flashed behind him. He was thrown to the clay shingles, the figure’s weight crushing the air from his lungs. They rolled down the incline, over the roof’s lip, and into the sand cloud roiling below. Hector slammed into a cloth barrier. His hooded attacker landed in a graceful stoop beside him on the awning, metal flashing in its raised fist.

Hector barely had time to roll aside. The figure redirected its movement mid-swing, its jagged-toothed dagger punching toward Hector’s face.

There was no choice. He twisted back, letting himself fall head-first from the awning and into the riot. Bodies broke his fall. An elbow crunched his jaw, a torso bent his leg back, sending arcs of pain through him. Hector slammed into the warm, trampled sand, dazed, ribs stinging. He spat a mouthful of bloody sand as he turned onto his back.

The assassin sprang from the awning, silhouetted against a sky glowing rust-red from distant fires, its cloak spreading in the wind like great wings. Hector rolled aside, hearing the muted thud of booted feet landing by his ear. Before he could make another move it grabbed his hair, jerked his head back so quickly the muscles in his neck burned.

Hector caught the arm before it slammed a dagger into his throat. The determined fist quivered in its chainmail glove, the point of the dagger mere inches from his throat.

Chainmail glove. A Helm.

With his free hand, Hector ripped the hood from the attacker’s head, revealing a woman with closely-cropped hair and thin features. Solmay’s features betrayed nothing but determination. Duty.

Hector twisted her forearm until her lips pursed and he felt her shoulder joint straining, but Solmay didn’t release the dagger. She pushed on, the point nearly grazing Hector’s throat, her other hand still entangled in his hair.

He swung to hit her. She jerked out of the way. He hit again. Again she swerved. The bitch was good. Better than those clowns Orcadis had sent after him what seemed a lifetime ago.

There was only one way to beat a Helm this qualified, he realized as he forced Solmay’s dagger-hand aside.

Don’t think.

So he lashed out madly, flailing, kicking, still holding her forearm. She gasped, stumbling back as he slammed his feet into her abdomen. Hector swung to his feet before she’d regained her balance. He didn’t think. He just attacked on instinct, knocking the dagger from her hand, grabbing her throat and slamming her to the sand.

Her eyes rolled as she hit the ground, though her face still showed no traces of pain.

He tried to fight like Lykus. Hector whipped out a push dagger, slashed, barely registered the blood across Solmay’s cheek as he brought his arm down for another swing.

And stopped.

He wasn’t Lykus. He was Hector, and a woman was pinned before him. The dagger wavered in his hand.

An acute pain lanced up the muscles in his side. Hector grunted, fire spreading from the wound. He didn’t know when Solmay had retracted the bloody knife and spun out from under him. He grappled at his side, but the Helm was too fast – she’d already disarmed him. He stumbled to his feet.

Hector barely ducked Solmay’s flying dagger. Her elbow came out of nowhere, making blood spurt from his mouth and stars dance before his eyes as his head whiplashed from the blow. He spun, ignoring the warm ooze trickling down his ribs, and chopped the air, not knowing what part of Solmay he’d catch. He heard her collarbone crack beneath the side of his hand.

She flew back, turned her fall into a tuck-and-roll, and was again on her feet. Hector had scooped up his push dagger, now standing in a preparatory stance with it brandished.

For the first time he noticed that Akkútian pedestrians had cleared a perimeter around them. A few had stopped to watch, stolen goods forgotten in their arms. Even a nearby Akkh soldier gave them a wide berth. Nobody dared get between a Helm and her prey.

He only had one shot now: throw the dagger. Even Helms didn’t have the reflexes to avoid a spinning blade thrown at semi-close range. But with this woman’s ridiculously high pain threshold, where could he aim to disarm her without kill–?

Solmay’s arm was already up, the billowing sleeve of her robes falling in fringes down to her elbow, her own dagger poised to throw.

In a blur something dropped from the roof and landed on top of the Helm. They tumbled to the ground, Solmay’s barbed knife skidding some paces away. Kaed had her weapon-belt in his hand before Hector could blink. He tossed it aside as Hector rushed forth to press his blade to her throat.

Kaed rose to his feet, dusting off his cloak and then hoisting up the green pants that had fallen to expose several inches of similarly-coloured underwear.

“Orcadis sent you to kill me already?” Hector panted. Sweat had plastered his tunic to his skin, and he was annoyed to see Solmay breathing evenly, betraying no hint of exertion.

“No,” the woman said coldly. “I sent myself. You may as well finish it now. Spare me the next fifty turns in the punishing room for losing you and the Infected.”

“What fifty turns? Wait three days, if you so want to die.”

If the comment confused her she didn’t show it. Instead she angled her eyes to Kaed. “I was saving you, idiot child. Or do you enjoy being a prisoner?”

Kaed kicked the silver coronet that she’d lost in the fight. “I’m a Helm, aren’t I? Actually, my captivity here is the freest I’ve ever been.”

“I...sensed no wavelengths from you to warn me of your intentions.”

“Being ignored does have its perks.”

She ignored him.

“Gorr ha-turhali rhaat,” said someone from the small, dumbfounded crowd that lingered around them. Hector risked looking over his shoulder. The peasant who’d spoken stabbed a finger toward him. “Rhaat turhali!” he said, louder. “Rhaat turhali!”

People gasped. A few broke away and ran. Others withdrew clubs and hammers. The one who’d spoken took a rock from the ground and threw it with a powerful swing.

In a blur, Kaed was in front of Hector, snatching the stone aimed for Hector’s face out of the air. He spoke something in the guttural Akkútian drawl, and the resentful-looking peasants slunk off to rejoin the riot.

“They guessed you were Infected,” Kaed said. “It’s the only reason a Helm would attack you, they said. I told them the next person who thinks about hurting you will have his skull bashed in before he finishes the thought.”

“Tychon’s fucking light, Kaed, you speak Akkútian? Could’ve saved Zorion the trouble of confusing us all with his translations! Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Kaed frowned. “I did.”

Hector bit his tongue. Damn it. I’m no better at listening to him than the Helms are. He looked back to Solmay. “What do we do with this one?”

“Tie her up and leave her?” Kaed suggested.

Hector hauled Solmay to her feet by the front of her cloak, firmly holding her wrists in his other hand. He blinked at Kaed in shock. “Shouldn’t we bring her with us, on your father’s evacuation ship?”

“Why?”

“Uh, because she’s one more human being we could save from the apocalypse.”

“No she’s not; she’s a Helm.” He stopped, seeming to debate with himself, then shrugged. “I guess you’re right. Come on – Father said to wait out in the desert, as far from the city as we can get.”

They bound Solmay’s hands with some manacles from her weapon-belt, then strapped the rest of the tools to their own belts and took back alleys out of Rakkhat to avoid the chaos in the streets. Most people avoided them, noting Solmay’s reversible cloak with its red velvet inside – exposed as wind flapped it around her – and the distinctive chainmail mesh over her tunic.

It was nightfall by the time they passed the last of the slums and climbed the sand dune on which Hector had exchanged farewells with Zorion and Syfer. Smoke rose from the city they left behind, the remnants of sacrificial burnings or shops set aflame in the lootings.

Hector had torn a piece of his cloak and wrapped it around his ribs to quell the bleeding where Solmay had stabbed him. The puncture wasn’t deep, but aggravated by sweat and the long trek, his side now tightened painfully when he drew deep breaths.

He pulled Solmay’s manacles to make the damned woman slow down, still clutching his side. She cast him an unimpressed gaze over her shoulder, eyes flicking down to his side as though disgusted that he couldn’t make it stop bleeding with his damned thoughts.

“Kaed, dig in the rucksack and see if we have anything for pain,” he grunted. When Solmay’s lip curled (this bitch made Syfer seem humble) he snapped, “For your collarbone.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

He remembered how she’d popped her shoulder back into its joint without batting an eye. Shaking his head, he tried, “Don’t you at least want to know where we’re going and why?”

The woman’s mouth twitched up. “I picked up everything I need to know from your poorly-guarded thoughts. And you mustn’t feel emasculated – I’m not unusually strong, just unusually motivated. That gives me my power.”

Heat prickled Hector’s ears. I would’ve damned well beaten you if we’d both been concerned about not killing the other.

He turned to share an annoyed look with Kaed, expecting to find the boy grinning and ready with one of his smart comments made bold by the expectation of being fully ignored. Instead he found Kaed ambling along with his hood drawn low over his eyes, staring absently at his feet. Now that Hector thought about it, Kaed had been unusually quiet throughout the journey. Quiet even for him. “Kaed?” he probed, stalling the youth with a hand on his shoulder. “You alright?”

Kaed looked up, the tears in his eyes catching and refracting the glow of scattered fires. “Everyone I love will be dead in a few days,” he whispered. “You have it easy – you don’t love anyone.”

The words stung, but their truth hit Hector over the head like a mallet, leaving him dazed. Hector really hadn’t stopped to mourn the end of the world. Del would be with Orcadis on the ship, so the only thing he’d worried about was how he’d get Orcadis to pick his father up.

Only now did it hit him. What about Syfer, who really wasn’t so bad once you looked past the arrogance? When Hector had been throwing up at The Akkh’s Temple he’d suggested they leave without him, then went and ‘happened to find’ the best, most expensive medicine for his nonexistent stomach flu. And Zorion – dear, kind Zorion who’d helped save Del’s life and been the only person to befriend Hector without needing him for anything. Should he not care about them because of that whole spy ordeal Jesreal had put him through? And what about Avalyn’s parents, whom he thought of daily? The old man on the boat to Fort Neoma who’d talked to him about seasickness, what about him?

Everybody was somebody’s Varali. And everyone would be gone. People he’d never known and never would, but that he still somehow...loved? Maybe. Maybe that was it.

He shook his head, overwhelmed by the thought. “Orcadis said the evacuation ship is big enough to hold all the Helms plus the king’s men and the nobility,” he tried. “Your family will be safe. If there’s anyone else you want to bring, I’m sure your father will allow it.”

Kaed didn’t look consoled, though he nodded. They waited in silence until a speck grew between the clouds in the distance – the space pod Orcadis had sent for them. The mothership, as far as Hector knew, waited in orbit around the earth. It had been built in segments over the last century, each monarch contributing a few segments during his reign and launching them into space to be attached to the main body. He wasn’t sure how large the ship had gotten, but on the clearest nights it was visible with the naked eye.

Minutes later the pod landed amidst a swirl of sand, and out of the cloud strode Orcadis. He approached with a quick step, the coronet of the silver clasped hands glinting on his brow.

Orcadis stopped by his son. He surveyed him a moment, as if disapproving of his un-Helmly attire, then pushed the boy’s overgrown hair over his forehead to check for any cuts or scrapes. Then he smiled and held out his arms. Kaed obediently shuffled into them. Hector heard the air puff from the boy’s lungs as Orcadis crushed him in an embrace.

“He’s alright, is he?” the Iron Fist asked with a touch of a frown.

Hector sneered. “Ask him.”

But Orcadis didn’t. He clapped a huge hand on the boy’s head, sighing. “We’ll discuss your actions later, Lykus. For now, please, come in.” He indicated the pod. “Do have a glass of wine and something to eat. I arranged the cheese-platter myself. Solmay, child, what is that blood on your cheek?”

The woman brought two fingers to the gash on her face, blinking. Orcadis waved a hand. “Never mind. Everyone inside now.”

Kaed stepped in front of the doorway. His face was pasty. “Wait...you mean him too?”

Hector stupidly turned around before realizing the boy had meant him.

“Whatever is the problem, son?”

“You...you’re actually bringing him? He kidnapped me, he beat the shit out of me!”

“And we will discuss that later,” Orcadis said with a smile.

“No!” The boy’s face contorted in pain, his bucked front teeth showing. “Not him!”

Hector couldn’t breathe. A cold pain twisted in his gut, the kind of pain he’d felt when he’d learned Del had him captured in Van-Rath.

Betrayal.

Orcadis turned serious, every line of his face hard. “Kaed, step aside. Lykus is dear to me. Quickly now.”

Kaed took large gulps of air, scowling at his father, his face still pearly-white despite how worked up he was getting. “You can’t take him! You can’t! He’s not your son! I am, me, and no matter how much you hate me or my mother, you can’t change that!”

Crack. The Greathelm lashed out, open palm cracking across his son’s face. Kaed reeled from the blow, spinning to land face-down onto the sand.

“Solmay!” Orcadis boomed. He ripped the leather chain between her manacles with his bare hands. “Take him inside. Put something over his damned mouth.”

Hector stood, hollow, as the woman dragged the screaming Kaed into the pod. He looked to Orcadis with tears in his eyes. He didn’t know how they’d gotten there.

“I’m sorry, Lykus,” Orcadis said, taking his shoulder and steering him inside as well. “Sometimes he gets like this. It’s all for attention. The trick is not to give it to him.”