Roiling fire tearing through climbing vines, gunshots so distant as they echoed through cavernous halls, and a watchful eye all flashed across Oscar's mind, blocking his perception of the Will and of Nalusa and the others as if they were obscured by an ashen haze. Oscar let out a scream, so paralyzed by the isolation and the visions of pain as they worked in tandem, tearing through him with an unmatched fury.

  Despite the isolating winds and buffeting pain, Oscar was aware of another. Close by writhed the body of his brother, terrified in his own right as he echoed Oscar's screams; or was Oscar echoing Nín's screams?

  So keenly he became convinced that Nín was the source of the pain as it bubbled up in a wellspring of madness. His power was growing, chaotic in a way Oscar had never felt from Ti Malis. Yet something was terribly wrong.

  The visions came again; a brushfire climbing to the heavens, gunshots so rapturous they begged Oscar tear at his ears, and a distant eye blinking in the deep recesses of a pool of endless night. Oscar and Nín both screamed again, alone and together.

  Oscar could now feel his brother as Nín rotated in and out of consciousness; screaming in wordless agony as he did. In the lull between agony he dragged himself over to Nín's side where he lay facedown on the floor and reached out to him.

  The pain came once more and Oscar strained to touch him. Suddenly Nín relaxed as Oscar put everything he had into enveloping his brother's spirit within the Will, separating him as the visions ceased.

  "Careful," Oscar said softly, "move slowly."

  "Ahh!" Nín cried as he tried to lift his neck.

  "No," Oscar ordered, holding Nín's head to the floor. "You've a break in your spine. Try not to speak. It will only make it feel worse."

  Nín looked up at him with wide and terrified eyes. He was trying to reach out to him through the Will, that much was clear, but Oscar was preventing it.

  "Silence is your friend. Rest now, you will regenerate quickly enough," he said as Nín finally relented and closed his eyes.

  Sitting back, Oscar let out a long sigh. He had never experienced such raw power before. In his whole life, not once had the Crown Paramount exuded such unabashed control as to not only cripple him, but cut him off from the community of the Will. Though, Oscar admitted, *he hadn't yet known a future Crown Paramount so soon after subsumption.

  "What the hell was that?" Nalusa asked through the Will as Oscar's full perception came back. "It felt as though I was eating knives."

  "Nín took a spill. I think all the killing caught him a little by surprise. He'll be fine, given time," Oscar explained. Nalusa remained uneasy but didn't force it further.

  "Where are you?" she asked.

  "Cargo," Oscar answered.

  Nalusa didn't respond but Oscar could feel her pick up her pace.

  With Nín recovering on the floor, and Nalusa due any moment, Oscar took the opportunity to resume the search for the life signs.

  The room was replete with ancient packing crates of all shapes and sizes. Some were stacked high, almost to the ceiling, while others were strewn about the decking as if they were accessed in a hurry, their contents spilled and left derelict. Oscar wondered what catalyst had precipitated such disregard as though they searched aimlessly for a prize. Had they found it?

  Kicking through the contents of a spilled crate he found nothing of value, at least not to him. Tarrare might take offence to the centuries old spoiled rations that had been crushed into the floor. Moving through several larger stacks, Oscar came to a wider gap between two rows near the back. Squeezing in, he heard an almost imperceptible hum.

  Tracing the bottoms of three of the larger crates, Oscar found a power umbilical resembling a splayed octopus neatly weaving its tentacles into junctions on each of the crates. Each of the crates were a crudely designed, but longterm stable method of deep cryo-storage. Oscar moved closer to each crate, spying through small reinforced glass windows to view their contents.

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  The first appeared to be a large collection of preserved crustaceans, though Oscar did not recognize their origin. The second and third were more familiar, bearing a striking similarity to a subservient form on the homeworld, but equally alien in form. Crate number two housed what looked to be a large beast of burden with what might've been burgeoning muscles and wide-reaching horns. The last and final cryo-crate contained a similar creature, though more graceful, with small horns and a heavy distended udder.

  Whatever these strange beasts were, it was clear to Oscar that they were meant as a breeding pair. Stepping closer it became clear that only one of the larger beasts was in stable condition. The larger, horned beast, was gaunt and desiccated, just as Oscar had found the original crew in the mess hall; their cryo-crate malfunctioned and his body had spoiled.

  "After all this time..." Oscar said to the female beast, unblinking in its effortless stillness, "power enough still remains to sustain you. A pity then that you might be the end of your line. Much like I will be of mine own."

  Tracing the power umbilical back to the dead beast's tomb, Oscar realized the umbilical had been damaged. It bore signs of tampering with marks and gouges as if someone tried crudely to rob its inhabitants of a chance at life on new pastures, but never fully succeeding in disconnecting the large power lead. Following the umbilical back toward the wall it became clear why.

  From atop the thick cable, someone had similarly pried an opening in the tough insulation and a smaller set of wires were grafted into the opening. These wires fed to a much smaller container with a label that implied it was meant to house organs for transplant, that hummed louder than the others. Oscar knelt closer to the crude vessel and wiped a layer of dust from its top.

  At its centre, Oscar could make out an amorphous substance, black and viscous, despite the stillness subjected on it by the cryo-container. Unlike the lifeforms in the other crates, this was a substance he felt he knew, but couldn't quite place. It reminded him, strangely like home – of the marshlands just beyond the palace.

  That's when he knew what it was.

  Dormant to the point of near death, Oscar knew that this thing should be otherwise loquacious within the community of the Will.

  Pushing his mind outside the Will's breadth, Oscar looked around in the depths of the void, reaching until he found an entity in slumber.

  Seeing him as Oscar saw it, he knew it immediately to be another likemind. A likemind such as he, though in a different form, separate from the Will. Though this likemind was not embraced, closed off from the Will in a way that Oscar never was.

  Demanding answers Oscar opened the container, draining the life-sustaining cryo-fluids onto the decking and the likemind with it. It began to move with measured haste away from him and Oscar could feel its fear.

  Not giving it a chance to wriggle between the decking, Oscar clasped a hand around it, convinced he craved it.

  Visions flashed through his mind, though different than before. These were not harbingers of pain and torment, but of a coherent curiosity, as if the likemind wanted him to see it.

  The first images were of the Starfires landing in their discordant ships beset on a backdrop of glittering stars. Oscar saw the Wandering Evil of old as it skirts beyond the featureless surface of the homeworld.

  The images continue like a retelling of lost history [...], as some of the Starfires are taken and embraced by the Will, while others –stranger still– leave with trapped samples of the body of the Will aboard their ships. One such sample –this very sample, is returned to the Rys, separated forever from the community to languish alone, cut off and fading.

  Outside from the Will and lost in a trance, Oscar almost didn't notice the diminished presence of Nalusa where she had stopped in a corridor. She was anxious, speaking plainly and in a foreign tongue into a device Oscar did not recognize, though he understood her intention.

  "We had a deal," she spat into the device. On the other end a human male smirked with disdain.

  "I provided the boy, so you should provide a trade in-kind," the man snarled,

  "Your people should not have come back here, as we agreed," Nalusa shot back. "We were to provide a suitable subject for you upon our return!"

  "And you dispatched my people effortlessly, I might add. Bravo! The Rys is still yours, so water under the bridge and we shall still expect delivery in the coming weeks," the man replied.

  Oscar was distracted for only a moment– it was clear the boy was Nín, but what deal had Nalusa struck in his father's name that would permit such a trade?

  Curious now, the likemind called out and writhed. It begged and pleaded just like Oscar had, determined to know what he knows. Oscar shared what happened to its host following the integration of the Starfires, of the rise of great towers, of the proliferation of its subservients.

  It knew nothing of the Crown Paramount, nothing of the numerous augurs, captains and admirals nor what Transformative Power would arise.

  It knew only the Wandering Evil, the blackness of the void and the starry seas beneath.

  Oscar was confounded, so glad in this reunion yet so unsettled as though something yet remained to be said.

  The likemind had something –some apocryphal knowledge– that it was begging to share.

  That's when he saw it. A watchful eye in the black, foreboding if silent. He could feel its oscillations throughout the Will, loud and direct like rifle-fire overhead. The eye blinked and Oscar and the likemind knew it for what it was

  It was a god laying in wait deep in the recesses of the cosmos and Oscar spoke its name.

  "Cronsuwhede."