I stand on the observation deck of my system-runner, looking out at the stars. At my reflection in the armaglass. I am still thinner than I’d like. Still recovering from Dimmamar, and the undercroft. From letting go of Sofika. For weeks, I have eaten little, and trained less. I have slept the sleep of the dead. No dreams. Just darkness. Edgeless and depthless, like the gateway Sofika closed on Dimmamar.
Until last night.
‘What was it you saw, lord?’
I glance at Zoric’s reflection in the viewport. He is standing beside me with his arms folded across his chest.
‘Mountains,’ I tell him, thinking of my dream. ‘With the sun coming up behind them.’
I look at him sidelong. The scarring on his face is clearer to see, then. Even deeper, in reality.
‘A spire tower, burning.’
Zoric unfolds his arms, the bionics catching the starlight. The replacement limbs go as far up as the elbow, his house-brand and his burn scars all lost when the Valedictor was destroyed.
‘Sounds like a bad sign,’ he says.
I shrug. ‘Perhaps,’ I say. ‘Perhaps not.’
‘But either way, it is a sign,’ Yumia says.
She is standing on the other side of me, her new killcords laced around her arms. Yumia’s narrow face is even more so, now. Her eyes are circled with shadows. Like me, she has yet to regain the strength she lost in the undercroft.
‘So,’ Zoric asks, ‘where is it that you want us to go?’
I pause for a moment, certain for just the barest instant that I can see another reflection in the armaglass, beside my own. One with pale hair, and mountain-sky eyes.
I shake my head. Shake the image away.
‘Home,’ I tell him. ‘Back to Marleya.’