May 1906 E-10
—
The Second Councilman had said initially that the mission to Verdonia was diplomatic, hence the Neutral Interference Corps’ involvement. In his HOLOcall with Ev and Talis on the ANIC ship Ranidon, he had explained that the Verdoni wanted to meet with the new Emperor to discuss terms and customs relating to their sovereignty, in addition to requesting assistance with clearing out the Starspawn Ev’s portal mishap had set loose on their world. In short, it was a hunting excursion that doubled as a diplomatic visit between rulers.
Imagine Ev’s surprise when that floral, peaceful idea went right off the rails. Shocking.
The excursion to Verdonia lasted ten days—twice as long as planned. For one, more Starspawn had reached Verdonia than had been expected, and chasing them across the planet turned into an ordeal. And besides that, it seemed that “Emperor Razienne” was the opposite of popular in worlds outside of Aetheria centra, within and without the Empire. Especially after unleashing hordes of interdimensional wormhole-causing hellspawn into the inhabitable multiverse.
The Ranidon had been hovering in orbit around Verdonia for a week when the Verdoni declared the ship’s presence an occupation and attacked while Ev and Talis were on-world, in the middle of a call with the local government no less. The Ranidon called in for extraction support, which the Verdoni took as another sign of impending invasion and used as an excuse to escalate. In the end, the Ranidon and the two cruiser-class voidships that came to assist in the extraction escaped, all in need of serious repairs. Verdonia sent them packing, accompanied by a series of fuming messages to the Imperial Council whose point Ev couldn’t really discern.
Here was the thing: the Verdoni had called for Aetherian interference and presence of the Emperor of their own accord. Both things they had requested—removal of the Starspawn and talks with the Emperor—were in progress when Verdoni feelings evidently shifted and led them to target the Ranidon for what they believed was an incursion on their world and its sovereignty.
But what had the Empire done to threaten said sovereignty that the Verdoni themselves hadn't directly asked them to do? Ev, Talis, and a contingent of ANIC troopers were on-world, chasing Starspawn because the Verdonian government had requested it. That Ev and Talis were there at all was a polite result of the Verdonian request that they do so. The Ranidon certainly hadn’t done anything that constituted an incursion—it had stayed in high orbit, weapons offline, the entire time leading up to the attack! And still, the Verdoni cried “occupation.” From Talis’s point of view, it seemed like a planned betrayal. From Ev’s, it sounded like Verdoni knew something they didn’t. Neither option was one they enjoyed considering.
They mulled all of this over as they disembarked the gunship that had taken them from the shipyards to the voidport of Vesallia. The Ranidon had suffered too much damage to take them directly back to Aetheria centra, or their ultimate destination of Rêverelle. It’s warpcore had been damaged in the three-day battle in Verdonia’s orbit, as had the runic hyperdrive, so they had traveled in voidspace sublight until they reached Vesallia, an Aetherian satellite dimension. Vesallia was tethered directly to the Imperial core dimension, meaning it had a warp pad that could take them to the nearest terminal in Aetheria centra. The Emperor and Emperade were meant to visit the medical center here, replenish supplies, then warp to centra, and ultimately to Rêverelle.
Ev stopped a ways away from the gunship ramp to wait for Talis, who was a little behind. His right knee had been in a brace since he dislocated it in the ground extraction a few days ago. He winced as he crutched off the ramp, complaining under his breath about the crutches digging into his armpits, and joined them. They called him Talis now, much for the same reason he had stopped calling them “sir” or “Razienne” or “kid”—sometime after the third pass of the Verdoni ziois-class fighters, when they had both ended up in gunner positions on the understaffed ANIC diplomatic ship, they had decided it wasn't worth it to be assholes to each other anymore.
“Change of plans, Starkie,” he said, cringing as he shifted his weight and tried to adjust the bag slung across his chest. “The ASMC Commandant is here. We’ve got a situation in Lorena, a satellite one warp away from here. My old battalion is involved and the Council wants you to meet one of the generals in charge of quieting the insurrection there.”
Ev’s shoulders slumped. They had been really looking forward to some time off of voidships. They hadn’t gotten to see much of Aetherian besides centra and what little they could see through the ship’s viewports. As they turned to take in the sloping valley of Vesallia’s main island, they sighed and asked, “When do we leave?”
“ETD two hours,” he said. “Which means I need to get to the base medical bay so they can magick my leg back into shape. According to the Commandant, we’ll be making landfall in Lorena.”
Ev cringed and resisted an eye roll. Great. “I’ll come with you.”
“Appreciate it,” he grimaced, turning to crutch in the direction of the dock base’s medbay.
Ev took in the sights as they made their way across the boardwalk to the medical center, determined to memorize the small archipelago dimension of Vesallia while they had the chance. Thick blue-green pine trees dotted the mountainous landscape of the main island they were docked on, and Ev saw birds and small forest animals actively going about their business. And while Vesallia and Aetheria centra were both archipelago dimensions, there was something distinctly more physical about Vesallia’s islands than the cloud-wrapped, mystical skyscape of Aetheria centra. Except for the physics-defying part, it was eerily similar to home.
They reached the medical center doors and Talis handed his gear bag off to Ev and crutched back to the treatment wing that all personnel aboard the Ranidon had been directed to. Technically, Ev should have joined him. Instead, they wandered out onto the balcony that overlooked the populated valley and took in the sights and fresh air.
The Commandant had said, when she briefed the Emperor and Emperade on a transport out to the ASMC warship Arkinadon, that the insurrection in Lorena was deadly. Violent revolts, public executions of Imperial officials, an uprising of the criminal and the murderous. The insurgents knew the title of Emperor had just changed hands, meaning a lot of leadership changes were happening—Talis had explained that the leadership that operated under Emperor Tainnos had been executed all across the Empire following Ev’s coronation. The citizens of Lorena had seen their chance, a weak point, and taken it, attempting to free themselves from the Empire’s control and establish a bloody, tyrannical rule in its place.
That’s what the reports and the Commandant said. What the insurrection was really like, Ev wouldn't know. The whole ordeal took only four days to shut down, and of the two of them, only Talis had left the ship. He didn’t have much to say when he came back. No one told Ev any different.
But in Ev’s experience, what the people in power said was happening at an “insurrection” was often a skewed version of the truth. They couldn’t help but compare Lorena to Verdonia, and then compare their fights with the Empire to Cyresia’s fight against the Averonian Confederation. Insurrections against large institutions of power with questionable motives and far too much control. The comparisons didn’t paint a pretty picture in Ev’s mind.
They pondered these things the entire trip back from Lorena to the capital.
Weeks ago, when Talis explained the ranking systems of the Imperial Armed Forces, he had explained that the title “Emperor of Aetheria” was more perfunctory than not. Ae’teria Imperialis Empera may have become Ev’s title when they killed the previous emperor in ritual combat, and it may have granted them social status and perceived rank outside of the Empire, but inside the empire, there was very little true power attached to it. A show title.
In actuality, the full Imperial ranking system placed the Imperial Council at the top, with the top three Councilman (Heiro, Shas, and Deis) controlling almost everything. Talis called them the Trifecta.
The First Councilman, Heiro, had full executive authority over the Council, the government, and the military. The Second Councilman, Shas, was an enforcer with almost as much power as the First Councilman. The Third Councilman, Deis, as the commander in chief of the entire IAF, subject only to Shas and Heiro. Below the Trifecta were the Supreme Commandants of the Maintence Management Division, Councilmen Four and Five, then remaining forty-two members of the Imperial Council, divided into the Upper and Lower Houses. Then the branch Commandants. Then, finally, the Emperor and Emperade, ranked between the branch Commandants and the IAF High Council, which they technically led.
Ev knew all of this, logically. They’d been told the entire thing multiple times. Talis had ensured that they memorized it. But they hadn’t realized until Lorena just how literal that lack of power—their status as a puppet ruler—was. Ev and Talis, the Emperak, were more military assets than political figures, only serving as poster children for the Council to boast and show off in the name of a monarchical Empire that no longer existed.
On the first day of their slow trip back from Lorena, Ev posed this statement to Talis: “The New Aetherian Empire isn’t a monarchy, it’s a fascist oligarchy with the Trifecta at the top and us at the bottom.”
Talis just looked at them. After that, they hadn’t talked much.
The thing was, Ev thought as they cleaned their gear in silence across from Talis’s bunk, if all that were true, why did Verdonia attack Ev and direct all blame onto them as Emperor for whatever their unseen fight with the Empire was over? Why did Lorena? More specifically, why did the insurrectionists at Lorena think the title of Emperor changing hands was a period of instability if the Emperor and their immediate administration (palace guards, former SIC, a few Councilmen) didn’t actually hold any power? Why not blame the Council?
The answer, they knew, must be that no one outside of the New Aetherian government knew the Empire was a fascist oligarchy, or that the Emperor was a puppet ruler. They doubted even parts of the Imperial Armed Forces knew. The High Council and branch Commandants seemed to, and Talis seemed to for some outlying reason, but Ev was willing to bet credits that the average Aetherian soldier didn’t. And that didn’t bode well.
Talis seemed to know a lot of things about the Imperial government that an average soldier wouldn’t, but he didn’t act like any of it was new information. He’d known for a long time, if his reaction to Ev’s statement about the Empire’s form of government was any indicator. What did that say about him? What did that say about the Vanguard, which he talked about less than the government, if it said anything?
Ev looked up from polishing their knife, the same one they’d woken up with almost two months ago, and studied him from across the room.
Talis had told them early on that the Imperial Vanguard was an elite division of the Aetherian military that was technically a subdivision of the AHDC, but operated as a separate entity altogether. They had their own internal ranking system (which he had yet to disclose), their own communication channels, different armor specs, and a complicated list of requirements to be accepted into their ranks. Talis had mentioned multiple times that some of what they did fit the literal definition of a vanguard: complex recon, early advancement into enemy territory, elite-level black ops missions. But other than that, he told them nothing. That bothered them almost as much as being a puppet ruler did.
The fact that he hadn’t talked to them since leaving Lorena bothered them too. Talis Errison, former Sergeant in the Vanguard’s 7th Battalion was not, they had learned, a quiet person. He liked to talk, whether it was to himself or someone in particular, and when he wasn’t talking, he was moving. Since he had refused to talk to them, he had spent the entire trip back to Rêverelle cleaning his gear, sparring with one of the commanders he knew onboard the Arkinadon, or sleeping. Or pretending to sleep. It was beginning to become worrying.
So while Talis refused to talk to them, Ev spent their time trying to fill the silence instead. They told him about the coast of Averon, where they grew up. How the cold months were short and it really didn’t get all that cold like it did in Aetheria. How their diet had mostly consisted of part local grains and meats, part nutrient-dense protein bars, and part plant mash stewed up with spices and sweeteners in varying portions.
They told him about the blue-green skies, and the cracks in the dimensional barrier they and their friends had charted for a school project, and how none of them had gone back after tenth grade when the longhouse was burned down by raiders. They told him about Viera and Cosanna, too. How Viera looked just like him despite being from another state and other parents, about all the times she forced him to check out holopads, old books, and datasticks from the library, the greenhouse, and the kitchen collection at the old farm just to keep up with her education. They told him about how they read everything she did just to keep up with her. They told him about Cosanna and her thick black hair and her permanent frown lines and the way she used to look at them when she thought they didn’t know—like Ev was some kind of anomaly she didn’t understand. How she stopped looking at Viera like that the first time Ev called her on it and told her that if she had a problem with Viera and her new name, they’d leave and take Viera with them.
The only times Talis had responded was to tell them that Cosanna sounded like a manipulator, which Ev agreed with, and to ask if Viera was trans. Ev hesitated, then. He didn’t ask again.
That gave Ev new things to think about. Of course Cosanna was manipulative, and prone to gaslighting, and set in her old ways. She was the one who raised them after their parents died, but that didn’t mean they liked her. She was the village healer and one of the oldest resistance fighters left at age sixty-five. They’d been old enough at twelve to realize that the village witch who took them in after the State killed their parents wasn’t, in any way, a nurturing guardian. But she kept them safe and made sure Kalei didn’t lure them into anything too stupid, and they respected her—somewhat. They told Talis as much and he didn’t respond.
By the time they had docked at the palace complex, Talis was still in his silent funk and they were still stewing about being inducted into an Empire of imperialist fascists against their will. He packed up his things and walked out of their shared bunk room without a word, and Ev let him. Four days together more or less in the same bunk room had driven a wedge between them anyways. They gathered up the rest of their gear, said goodbye to the captain of the company they had worked with, and made for the palace.
Ev hadn’t been back to kes Pal’eca de-Rêve since disembarking with the 7th Battalion in March. They were thankful that, this time, they were entering with a host of other ASMC troops who knew where they were going, because they were pretty sure they would have gotten lost otherwise. They followed the crowd to weapons check in and learned where to throw their busted up armor. They pried everything off after logging their personal weapons and gear with the quartermaster, shoved every last flimsy plastoid piece into their assigned locker—the only one with Ae’teria Imperialis Empera printed on it—and even shucked off their boots which were, unfortunately, unsalvageable. They threw their boots down the recycler chute along with the most severely compromised pieces of armor, as directed. Then they followed the throng towards the barracks in hopes of finding a bunk to crash into, hot shower be damned.
Instead, as they rounded a corner rubbing at dry, tired eyes, they crashed into something more solid. A body, they registered, stepping back and taking in a white military jacket, a silver-red pauldron, and a blood red shoulder cape. The faux-porcelain mask identified them as a Councilman—blood red eyes set into black sclera, the eyes of their mask set with blue kohl. The only reason they knew they hadn’t just barrelled head-on into the First Councilman was the absence of a four-pronged steel crown.
“Councilman Deis,” Ev sputtered, remembering the right name at the last second. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you alright?”
The Third Councilman raised an aloof eyebrow, looking at them as if they weren’t aware they were walking around in their socks with no armor to speak of. “Says the one in their undersuit,” he said dryly.
They gave an awkward chuckle and stepped back again. He glossed over their awkward silence with a bored sigh and jerked his head towards the adjacent hallway, away from the nearby cacophony of the barracks.
“Come with me,” he said, heading in that direction. “Errison and Councilman Shas explained your memory of your first two weeks here was wiped when you exited the post-resurrection battle trance. You’re to be given an abbreviated tour of the complex and shown to your quarters. You will also be briefed on the Rules de Empera by your guides.”
Ev thought they remembered a bit about the Rules de Empera—mostly the bits about absolute neutrality down to one's pronouns and gender—but took that to mean he wouldn’t be giving them the tour.
He gave a loose chuckle and an icy buzz against their skin gave them goosebumps. “I’m a busy person, Empera. Your guides, I think you’ll find, are much more familiar to you and have ample freetime now that they are also on leave.”
Oh joy, they couldn't wait to figure out what that meant. Ev sighed and padded after him. “Am I going to have to walk the whole complex in my socks?” they asked.
“No.”
How descriptive.
Councilman Deis led them down a short, grandiose hallway into what must have been a second door to the armory, because across from them upon entry was the fabricator that had generated their first set of armor and gear before deployment. Deis punched in the required codes and in a matter of minutes the fabricator produced a pair of sturdy canvas boots identical to their first pair. He waited for them to don them, then led them out of another door and left them on the veranda of the long, columned building they had followed the crowd into from the docks. Then he left.
Ev looked up at the oversky, towards the stars peaking through the orange-to-plum sunset sky, and wondered when these imperials were going to start making any sort of sense.
They wandered down the veranda a ways, taking in the state of the courtyard since they had last seen it eight weeks ago. The paved walkways, marble ledges, and dormant blue-gray grass were still interspersed with scattered craters, blood stains, and the occasional tarped-over Starspawn corpse. Just like everywhere else, it seemed that the palace lacked ideas on how to dispose of the monsters’ corpses. The courtyard itself, which couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile long, was mostly trashed. The buildings lining all four sides were in various states of repair, some with more damage than others, all the way from the citadel proper to the gates opposite it that lead into the city. On either side of the courtyard were long, three-story, columned buildings which housed barracks, recreational areas for PT, and two separate medical wards. Ev couldn't remember what they looked like before the portal incident, but they hoped they’d look better than this after a few more weeks.
“Hey, I think I know you from somewhere!”
Ev squinted out across the courtyard to find two familiar faces awaiting them by the nearest fountain. They broke into a grin.
Captain Merias Garren, who they had just bid farewell to on the destroyer, waved at them as they made their way down the steps towards her. She was still completely geared up except for her missing pistols and miscellaneous blades. She was eye level with Ev in height, but the ribbed, red-brown horns protruding from her forehead made her seem taller. Her exhaustion was visible from her lax parade rest to the dark shadows under her violet eyes, and her hair, close-cropped with tiny ringlet curls, was an unusually dull shade of Aetherian pinkish-orange.
Next to her, to Ev’s misfortune, was Lieutenant Cassius Varril of the ANIC, an officer aboard the Ranidon that Ev had gotten in the way of one two many times during the air battle. Lieutenant Varril didn’t look much better than Ev suspected they did, despite having been on shore leave for the past week. He had gotten his broken horn capped since Ev saw him last. He was in his undersuit like them, but he also wore his greaves and the thick, metal-woven skirts the Vanguard and ANIC soldiers all wore—Talis called them akasures.
While they had gotten on well with Garren, who led the company they had worked with in Verdonia and briefly over Lorena, Ev and Varril hadn’t quite seen eye to eye. Ev suspected it had something to do with a long-standing feud between Varril and Talis, but nonetheless… He didn't offer them so much as a nod as they approached, and instead continued to scroll on his HOLOpad.
“Lieutenant Varril, Captain Garren,” they greeted awkwardly. “Are you two supposed to be my tour guides?”
“Apparently,” Garren said, scratching the back of her head. Her wrist was still wrapped from a recent sprain. “I just got out of the quartermasters’ office—delivering requisition forms. My commander just grabbed me and sent me out here.”
Ev grimaced sympathetically and turned away, looking towards the gates, which coincidentally pointed them towards the nearest Starspawn corpse. It was tarped over like the others, but part of a blue-green tail stuck out from under the edge. In Cyresia, they might have tried to salvage what parts of the hellions they could manage, but Starspawn were extremely volatile creatures. Their blood was highly acidic and ate through skin and bone, their fur was like fiberglass, and most of the rest of their body was composed of Void Magic or the same compounds as their blood, all equally toxic. They were unsalvageable, difficult to remove, and incredibly inconvenient decor.
She caught them scanning the courtyard again and cringed. “Yeah, still a bit of a mess isn’t it? Worse than when I left, that’s for sure.”
They winced but nodded in agreement. “When was the last time you were on leave here?”
She blew out her breath in a low whistle. “Stars, two years ago? Before you, and before everything went to shit in my sector. To be fair though, home base always did seem a little too quiet. In a way, it’s nice to see it still gets roughed up too.”
Ev could understand that, sort of.
Varril sighed deeply and stood, favoring his left leg slightly and clipping his HOLOpad to his belt. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”
He shoved past Ev, narrowly avoiding Garren, and headed in the vague direction of the gates. Captain Garren gave them a tired look as she followed after him, prompting Ev to do the same.
The tour dragged on for almost two hours and completely skimmed over whatever the Rules de Empera. Either Garren and Varril didn’t know what they were, didn’t know to explain them, or didn’t care.
It was dark by the time Ev was led back to the long barracks hall and deposited at the bottom of a grand staircase in the same barracks hall they had entered before. Varril and Garren had taken through one of the mess halls, stopping just long enough for each of them to grab a prepackaged ration bar and a bottle of water, but when faced with the sight of three flights of cold marble stairs, Ev’s strength flagged.
They waved off Varril and Garren, both of whom looked almost as bad as Ev felt (Garren especially, given she had been on the same deployment), and steeled their resolve. They kicked off their boots, which were so new they were tearing blisters into their heels and toes, and started upwards. By the time they reached the doors to what they had been told was their suite, the nightly Aetherian cold had settled in, seeping into their bones upward from the soles of their feet. They slipped past both grand, carved doors, deposited their boots next to a sleek, hard-edged desk, and dropped to the floor.
They remembered being in this room exactly once, likely during their two-week battle haze.
Almost two months ago.
Ev tipped their head back against the door and winced as pain lanced through their entire body. The consequences of this campaign were catching up to them.
This campaign. How many more were they going to be involved in? Where did it end? With the rest of the Starspawn being killed or subdued, or when the next challenger killed them in a duel a hundred years from now? The pressure of knowing they might have unconsciously signed their life away to a cause they knew nothing about, leading an Empire they had no business trying to mess with, began to squeeze their skull. Tears of exhaustion welled up behind their eyes at the thought, and began to fall as they thought of Cosanna, Viera, and what had become of them.
They had checked. During some of their scattered downtime aboard the destroyers, Ev had checked.
Vodé-Cyresia, the tribal conglomeration that controlled Ev’s tiny spot of homeland on the eastern coast of Averon, had had a network. Their access to the holonet was much more limited and dated than the Aetherians’, but they had HOLOpads and old fashioned stationary computers, and they had made up a contact system for individual tribes to keep in touch.
They also used it to count their dead.
Ev had helped restructure the virtual defenses a few years ago, and with the advanced capabilities of Aetherian tech, slicing into the network was a piece of cake. The first thing they did was check the death rites. Pinned to the top of the page were the names of Ev’s entire tribe, wiped out in a single coordinated attack from the Confederation. A scout from the group across town and to the west had found and confirmed the dead, set their pyres, and submitted their names to the death toll. A tenday later, a message had pinned to the top of the homepage: a warning to any remaining tribe members to hide or run. The fight was over. The Cyresian rebellion was gone. They were all dead, and had died weeks before Ev had even woken up in Aetheria.
Ev was the only one left.
The weight of that fact, of their title and all it entailed, and the exhaustion they’d managed to somehow double up on in the last two hours was too much. Ev folded in on themselves, tears making tracks in the dried sweat on their face, and tried not to sob as fear and grief constricted their chest. Their temples throbbed as they cried into their knees silently, reaching for the leather strap that their obsidian blade and the ring Kalei had given them used to hang, which wasn’t there. All of it was gone—their sister, their aunt, their few friends, their home, their culture. They’d never see any of it again, even in ruins, if what they knew about their stupid new title—a fake title they didn’t even want, that they didn’t even choose to fight for—was right. They would never be allowed to leave.
And wasn’t that terrifying? The otherworldly, far-off empire that they’d heard stories and history lessons about as a child was now their home, their responsibility. Convoluted politics be damned, they were stuck in this mess now, responsible for things they didn’t even remember agreeing to. The only way out was to die again, and Ev wasn’t sure the rune on their chest worked twice. They didn’t want to find out.
They were twenty-two, dammit. They didn’t want to deal with any of this.
Ev didn’t realize they had backed themselves into the corner of the desk and the wall until socked feet appeared in front of them and a hand pushed them upright, making their shoulders touch the cold metal of the desk.
The collar of their undersuit was unzipped for them, a cup of something cool pressed into their hands along with another ration bar, then cool fingertips found their folded knee. Distantly, someone shushed them softly and encouraged them to drink.
Except when they lifted the plastic cup to their lips, it wasn’t liquid. It was a dozen crunchy looking cubes of ice.
“Eat one, it helps.”
Errison. A familiar squeeze at their shoulder confirmed it. Tentatively, and still distantly, their fingers brushed ice and popped a cube into their mouth. Their tongue began to freeze.
“I’ll be back. Turning on a light.”
Errison moved away and in the dark, Ev couldn’t see him anymore. They could sense him a little—a peripheral extra sense they’d been noticing recently, some sort of exaggerated spatial awareness—and they knew he didn’t go far. Soon enough, lights built into the baseboards of the room lit up a soft white, following the entire perimeter. Other lines of light crisscrossed the floor. They saw Talis walk back over from the wall to their right, where a short hallway split by an open door led into another room—his, probably. He sat down next to them, a good foot or so away, with his back against the doors.
“I left the conjoining door open so we could talk when you got back,” he said quietly, following their gaze, "because it’s weird that the Emperor and their second have conjoined rooms—some vestige of when Emperors were allowed to have partners, I guess. I didn’t want to spook you. That’s how I heard your panic attack start.”
Ev’s heart leapt into their throat, their eyes going wide. They knew this was an attack, of course they did, but it had been building for so long—they had an anxiety disorder, not a panic one. Errison didn't seem to care. He pointed at the ice and they frustratedly popped another one into their mouth.
“They use ice to help shell-shocked redsuits—new recruits—in most of the AAF,” Errison explained further. “They douse you in ice water to wake you up, force you to take ice baths after PT, and… this.” He gestured to their cup. “Works the first few times at least. It throws you off because ‘woah, why do you want me to eat ice?’ and shocks your body a bit. And you’re probably dehydrated, so win-win.”
Ev hummed indecisively. They didn’t like how well it was working. But they had been dehydrated, even after one tiny bottle of water from the mess. The ice would help. They exhaled through their nose and let their head hit the desk.
While their pulse leveled out, they closed their eyes and tried to think back through things. It didn’t help. They just kept coming up with worse and worse versions of how Viera, a fourteen year old who shouldn’t have been in a real firefight with the State, had died. Or about what they were facing as Emperor of Aetheria, show-title or not—the politics, the military responsibility, the publicity… They didn’t stop until Errison kicked them in the shin, jerking them out of it.
“Talk about it out loud instead of thinking in circles,” he suggested wryly. “And eat your ice and that ration bar.”
“Already ate.”
“Eat again. The ship medics kept saying your metabolism is crazy. Fuel up so you don’t feel like complete shit later.”
They grunted at him but popped another ice cube as they mulled over what to say. Where did they even begin? Eating, they supposed, was a good way to get out of talking.
“You were projecting a lot about your family, telepathically,” Talis said. “Would you like to just… talk about them? Not about what happened or anything, just- just talk to remember them?”
He had been there when they found the network and the death board. He hadn’t asked why they stormed out of their bunk room to pace the halls, or said anything when they came back two hours later after running laps on the exercise deck. He didn't know anything, about Cyresia or their family or otherwise. But he had a good point.
Ev told him about Viera and Cosanna again, but unlike on the ship, he actually acted like he was listening. They slipped and said something treasonous against the Confederation a couple times, but Talis didn’t comment on it. He just nodded along, poking little questions at them about what their broken little family was like, or what it was like growing up in a world with real seasons. He listened, they mourned, and by the end of it, they felt like they could stand again. They didn’t yet, and they still had a thousand burning questions, but it was better. They looked over at Errison, finally.
He had used the time between docking and Ev’s arrival to wash up. His warm brown skin and lighter patches of vitiligo glowed almost golden in the dim light of the baseboards, softer than the vibrant glow of his bright yellow eyes. His hair glowed in the dark too, which Ev already knew, and emitted a soft blue-green light that softened the broad angle of his shoulders. He was in sleep clothes—a battered standard issue undershirt and worn out sweats featuring some band they didn’t recognize. He looked exhausted. They looked past him to see his room in mild disarray, and the corner of a messy bed.
“You were asleep before I got back,” they surmised.
Talis perked up, looking over his shoulder, and shrugged. “Yeah, but not for long. I meant to stay up and greet you so we could talk.”
“Sorry.”
He shrugged again, the corners of his mouth turning up. “Don’t be. I do this a lot. The Vanguard redsuits are usually drafted from other branches, like me, but we all tend to have a rough go of it after transferring, even if our original branch showed us a lot of rough combat. I know what it’s like to be in an entirely new situation with mind control and excessive telepathic projection and unfamiliar high-grade weaponry.”
Ev shuddered at the mention of mind control. They hadn’t taken that into consideration to their spiraling, yet. They quietly noted that he had just associated it with the Vanguard. “What about convoluted politics?”
He groaned. “Yeah no, those are new for me too. My job was usually to just shoot who they told me to shoot and not ask questions.”
“Now I think we have to answer questions.” They froze. “Did I miss a debrief?”
“Yeah, but Deis explained where you were and filled in. He snatched your essential memories before you parted ways and gave your report for you, I guess.”
Ev’s stomach went cold and they shivered again. Yeah, no, that was a worse idea than just mind control. “Dia vitsas…”
For once, even Errison looked unnerved, which made it even more worrisome. He caught their fear, though, and replaced his uneasy expression with a smile. “Enough about that guy,” Errison said, elbowing them lightly and getting to his feet. “Are you okay for now? It’s late, we can talk about our fun little rooming situation in the morning.”
Ev nodded, pushing themselves unsteadily to their feet as well. “I’ll be fine. Thank you—for the ice, and for listening.”
He nodded. “Any time. I’ll be over here if you need me. Just knock.”
They smiled after him as he closed the door, his wispy tail curling around his ankles. They found their way to the shower, stripped, and must’ve eventually found their bed. They sank into too-soft sheets on a too-nice bed and were out cold.
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