Getting through the check-point was easy; the vehicle was Kitezan in make, their fake IDs were flawless, a special-made contact lens for Gabriel’s solitary red eye covered that Limitless-given ‘tell,’ and with his ponytail braided and a hat placed, the red streaks in his hair were covered as well; it was the stone-cold shoulder that was unbearable.


    Ren could hardly stand it; Gabriel had been sulking in silence the entire trip so far.  Not knowing what else to do, she lifted her hands up and quickly slapped them down on her knees, “What do you want me to say?”


    The mediator was busying his hands with the removal of that false-color contact lens, and after he dropped it in, he daintily screwed the cap back onto the little liquid-containing vial it had originally come from.  Now revealed again, the red eye was the one that turned to look at her, “Doesn’t matter.  It’s in the file, it’s in the file, the secret to world peace and immortality is in the damn file.”


    Ren glowered, “It’s not my fault you decided to neglect the most basic thing about being a mentor.”


    “I wasn’t even allowed to look at the file for the first whole month you were assigned to me.  By the time I was, it seemed irrelevant.” He countered, a hand on his chest defensively, “So if it’s not irrelevant, then why don’t you just tell me?”


    “No.”


    Both eyes were open then, “No?”


    “No.” She repeated, and sat back in her seat with her arms crossed, “If you don’t have enough respect for me to read a simple dossier, then I’m not going to coddle you by telling you instead.”


    “It’s not a respect thing-“


    “Yes!  Yes, it is, Gabriel Lugios!” She harped, “Are you that upset that I might’ve been someone before you turned up?  You’re so damn worried about how you think everyone hates you because of where you came from, that you’ve become your own self-fulfilling prophecy.  You’re cranky most of the time, and turn people away from you who might otherwise actually like you somehow.  I know you’ve chased away every trainee you’ve ever had; I also thought, when I heard I was going to be next, that Lord Rylen was trying to punish me for my transfer somehow with it.  And after everything I’ve been through, and as hard as I’ve tried, you still just see me as the latest cadet who you’re trying to wash-out.”  She lambasted him in the most serious tone she’d presented thus far, and there wasn’t ‘sir’ to be heard in any of it, “But I can’t go back to where I used to be.  I’m stuck with you until I get through the program, or my situation gets much worse than just dealing with your shitty attitude.  I told you before that I admired you, and I was trying to make the most of this second chance in the Council…  Well, that’s just egg on my face, it seems.”  She crossed her arms and turned away, staring intently through the window at the passing countryside, “Lord Rylen was right to think of this as a punishment.  …Never meet your heroes.”


    Gabriel looked on in a complete daze.  He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and it stopped every word he might have otherwise found the wit to say.  For once, he was at a loss, and he could only sit there in humbled silence.


    Three hours later, the vehicle finally pulled off the main road and onto a private drive-way.  Since the vehicle hovered, it made hardly any sound on the way in, barely giving off a quiet hiss as a formality so no one would walk out in front of it unawares.  The drive-way was a half-mile long, flanked by trees, and barely hid the sight of the mountain-range on the eastern horizon that marked the Sargonian border.  To the north-west, however, was another, smaller and closer mountain range; that one, however, was the southern-most edge of the Exclusion Zone.  Decorative trees eventually gave way to the home that would be their destination.


    Sprawling and rustic, it was a wide, two-floor mansion, with pillars of stacked stone holding up the second floor; the first floor, behind the pillars and wall-length glass, was easy to miss under the glory of the main house.  The property itself seemed to be set into a recess in the hills, with more stacked-stones around the perimeter to act like a decorative wall.  The vehicle came to rest in an alcove with two other similar cars, and Ren couldn’t wait to get out.


    Boots tapped-down on the cobblestone landing, and Ren immediately started walking.  She slowed her pace only long enough to tap her knuckles on the driver’s window and give a wave, “Thanks for the ride.”


    “Be safe, Commander.”


    She pressed her palm to the glass in farewell, and started moving with purpose.  The front door was a short walk away, but she was too bitter about the earlier rant she’d thrown at her mentor to wait for him.  She could hear him get out, since she also heard the car-door close behind him, and the vehicle started to pull away as planned.  Ren rapped on the ornate glassy inlay, and took a step back.  Gabriel had made it as far as the patio before the door opened, and a tall, elderly man with long, wavy-curly white-grey hair answered.


    “Dame Ren, I presume?”


    “Yes, Judge.  And that’s Gabriel in the back.” She answered, thumbing behind herself; the pointed lack of an honorific was noticed, “We’re here to let Seth know it’s time to come home.”


    “A few days sooner than expected, but I suppose it can’t be helped.” The former Magistrate nodded, and gestured for the duo to come inside, “Let me show you where you’ll be staying tonight, and then I’ll take you to Seth.  Are you hungry or thirsty?”


    Ren followed inside, and Gabriel sluggishly pulled-up the back.


    Just as soon as they’d arrive, it felt like they were in another car, as Judge Mallerd drove them halfway across his property to a very particular location.  He parked a good distance away from it though; something about the destination had caused the grass to die in long, slithering tendrils from its epicenter.  Gabriel already had a bad feeling about it, but he seemed to be the only one, so he didn’t say anything.  Grass crunched underfoot as they exited, and there was no doubt about it; they were in the presence of a Void Scar.


    Hovering about 2ft off the ground, the scar itself was roughly 8ft tall, 3-4ft wide, and warbled like the reflection of the moon on night-time waters.  No matter what direction one looked at it from, it always appeared to be open towards them, yawning and contracting in constant flux.  It gave off a subtle sound, too, like crackling wood combined with the distant whistle of ghostly birds.  At a distance, there were data panels floating in the air, taking constant real-time measurements of the scar, and further out, equipment tables…and a lot of burned, melted, and otherwise-vaporized sample-gathering tools.


    Ren looked around cautiously, and she gave the scar a wide berth, but she had a goal in mind and wasn’t about to get distracted.  On the far end of the field, with his back to her, was the 17-year-old Knight-cadet of the First Wing; Setharion Rydell.  There wasn’t a drop of obvious Luminary paraphernalia on him, with one exception; his glasses.  Cadets, and those who opted for them, were issued special glasses that would enable them to access the World Cloud.  In Seth’s case, given the lack of a World Cloud in Kitez, he used a limited personal supply that had been brought with him in a series of spherical cannisters, which lay open and empty under one of the nearby tables.  At age 18, if desired, one could trade the glasses for a pair of permanently-interfacing nodule-like implants, which would be embedded under the skin superficial to the obliquus capitis superior muscles; one on each side of the base of the skull.  The size of a dried haricot bean, the nodules could be set and then forgotten about, linking directly into the user’s neural pathways to give unparalleled, accurate control of their visual overlays.


    Ren rubbed the side of her neck nervously, but she supposed Seth could tell someone was watching him, and he suddenly turned around; long-coat and scarf whipped in the wind dramatically.  Those pale green eyes and upward-spikey pale-blonde hair were characteristic of the Rydells for the last several generations, and it did not skip Seth at all.  Those eyes were wide at the sight of her, and Ren could only swallow her pride - and a nervous lump in her throat.


    “…Miss Ren…?” His voice was inaudible from the distance between them, and he knew it.  He quickly abandoned his work and followed a safe path around the Void Scar, walking at first, but then jogging, until he finally hit a sprint at the end to close the distance, “Miss Ren!”


    “Hey, Seth.”


    He all-but launched at her, only to stop dead in his tracks at the last second, and just stared at her.  Mystified at first, then disbelieving, then…angry, “You ghosted me!”


    She lifted her arms to clasp them around herself, “Sorry…”


    “Four months!  You left four months ago!  Not one word!  Do you know how worried I was about you!?  I tried to call you so many times, but it was like you got a new number or something!  I had to find out what happened to you through peasant means!”


    Ren quirked a brow, “What are peasant means?”


    “You know my brother knows more than anyone about what’s going on in the Council.  He should have been able to tell me where you went, but he was tight-lipped!  He was in such a sorry state after you left that it was like he wouldn’t tell me!” Seth complained, “Every time I brought it up, he’d ask me not to!  So…peasant means had to be used!  I had to look you up myself!”


    She laughed quietly, “Oh no.”


    Seth just stopped there though, and pulled his glasses off so he could rub his eyes on the back of one sleeve.  He drew in a long breath, but before he could continue, Ren had already closed the gap between them and wrapped her arms over his thin shoulders, “I thought we were friends…”


    Ren felt those words like a kick to the chest, “We are, Seth…but…things got so complicated in such a hurry…”


    “What happened?  Why did you leave?” He looked up as he hugged her tightly back, “Furion would never tell me…  No one would…”Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    She pet the teen’s head, and pushed his bangs out of his eyes, “Just a little old fashioned insubordination, I’m afraid.”


    “Heh?”


    Nearly all the way back at the car, Gabriel stayed behind with the Judge, watching the pair reunite from a distance too far to hear anything they said.  Gavin stepped up with a horse’s-head cane in-hand, “So you’re the famous Sir Gabriel Lugios, hm?”


    “Depends.  What kind of famous is he out here?” He asked stiffly.


    “Kitez-born and bred, but spirited away to become an Eidolon’s boy.  No one knew you existed until you were gone.  Isn’t that strange.”


    “Not really, considering where I got plucked from.” He nudged his head towards the forested hill-country in the distance, “I didn’t even really know there was an outside world until that day.  I’d heard stories, obviously…but, nothing ever did justice to the sight of a real SkyFortress, or the ghosts who made their bodies from dust-sized machines.  There was also the small matter of being terrorized by winged death.”


    “Ah…you must mean the Fafnir Knights.” The Judge surmised, “The ones who attacked your…community?  Village?”


    “Rancid hovel.” Gabriel corrected, “By comparison to everything else I’ve seen since then.”


    “Then how do you get along with Dame Ren so well?”


    He turned to gape at the older man, “What’s that supposed to mean?”


    “…You know she’s a Fafnir Knight, right?  One of the youngest Wing Commanders in history; gives the Captain himself a run for his money, and that’s on a bad day.”


    Those bicolored eyes looked at Ren again, but in a new way, and Gabriel wasn’t sure what to think about her anymore, “…The Fafnir massacred everyone I ever knew that day, including my mom, as she tried to protect me from the same fate.”


    “…You really didn’t know.”


    “Well, I know she’s not a Fafnir now…”


    “…She isn’t?  But…when?”


    Gabriel couldn’t help but lower down until he sat on the dead grass, still bewildered, “Dunno.  She got stuck with me about four months back.  I have a bad habit of not wanting to know anything about the people I have to train.  Makes it easier to let them go when they leave.  …Now, I wish I knew less.”


    “After more than twenty years, I’d be shocked if any of the same soldiers were still active Fafnir now,” Judge Mallerd shrugged, “Now I worry about saying anything in regards to Seth.”


    “Yeah…let’s not.  I don’t want to hate him before I’ve met him.”


    “You’re going to have a rough day regardless, I’m afraid.  He’s not even the only one here.”


    Gabriel looked up, leering from beneath the brim of his hat, “Come again?”


    Gavin nudged his head over at one of the only trees in the nearby grassy plains, and as Gabriel looked, he noticed a single leg dangling – and slowly waving back and forth - from behind one of the heavy branches, just-barely in that leafy canopy, “That’s Sir Issak Noardin, though he prefers to go by Ianori.  He’s…”


    “…Also a Fafnir Knight.” He grumbled, and crossed his arms, “He wasn’t in the brief.”


    “I think he’s here unofficially, as a favor to Seth’s older brother.”


    “I can’t even begin to understand what the Hell is going on right now.” Gabriel slouched against his crossed knees.


    Ren busied herself with helping to straighten-out Seth’a coat and scarf again, and followed him over towards the base of that large tree.  Seth slapped his hands against the bark and looked up high into the boughs, “Mr. Ianori!  You won’t believe who Lord Rylen sent to come get us!”


    The man above snorted as he was startled out of a nap, “Huh?  Wha?”


    “Down below!”


    Sitting up, and with a carefully-balanced stretch, was a well-built man in his late-20s, with dark brown hair; shaved on the sides and fluffed backward on the top, with a sleek line was razored down to the skin just above his ears.  He wore the same dressed-down kind of ‘ultra normal-mode’ costume the others did, but after a satisfying yawn, he hopped down the 15ft from branch to ground, combat-boots hitting the dirt with a heavy thud.  When he stood upright again, he looked straight at that unexpected face, and as if on instinct, immediately saluted, “Commander!”


    Ren shook her head, “You know as well as I do that I’m not.  Not anymore.”


    The salute faded, leaving just a man with a surprised-happy look on his face, “I knew you hadn’t abandoned us for good.  It’s great to see you.”  Ianori reached both arms forward, and Ren gladly accepted the greeting hug.  Standing in the embrace of someone as tall as one would envision a fighting soldier would be, Ren’s slim 5’5” frame looked as diminutive as ever.  With a fond back-and-forth shake, Ianori eventually let her go, and held both her shoulders in his hands, “It’s hard to believe it’s been so long.  Are you here to tell me to stop vying for your position?”


    “Oh, is that why you’re here?  Sucking up to Furio-…er…I mean, the Captain…so you can gun for a promotion?”


    “You’re closer to the truth than you think.” He answered with a wry smile, “And yet far from it.  The Captain’s refused to accept applicants for the spot so far.  He only told me he’d consider it if I came to watch-over his kid-brother.”


    “So you’ve been here with him all month?”


    “Yup.” Ianori nodded, and ruffled the teen’s head, “When we heard that a Void Scar had opened out here, a thousand wild horses couldn’t have kept this kid away.”


    “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!” Seth defended, “This is the first one that’s stayed open long enough for anyone to even get here to study it.  I’ll probably never see another one like it.”


    Ren turned her sights to the warbling void-gate, “Tell me about it.  This thing is practically a myth…and yet, there it is.”


    Seth clapped his hands excitedly, and skipped forward to get in front of the two Knights, “Let me present, for your viewing pleasure…the source of the catastrophe that brought down the colony fleet 350 years ago…  The Void Scar!” He waved his hands at it for dramatic effect, then held a finger up studiously, “As you know, humanity is not native to Hadira.  We came here some centuries ago and terraformed it to our needs.  But our arrival was not without consequence…  Dozens of ships appeared in these very skies, and were met with immediate catastrophe.  These void scars, void rifts, or void gates – as they are all known - opened up en masse around that original space-faring caravan, wreaking havoc on navigation systems and pilots alike, as they all tried to find a way to safely land.  Many didn’t make it.  Those that did, were scattered across the surface of this world, cut-off from one another for years.  We all know the basic tale of how each of those orphaned seed-ships were the origin of Hadira’s fledgling nations…with each nation repurposing the name of their own ship to be the name of their colony.  Sol-System Colony Fortress Kitez…SSCF Sargon…SSCF Mayrain, et cetera.”


    Ianori nudged Ren with an elbow, “I wonder how many people know that’s the case these days.”


    “Right?”


    Seth continued, “But anyway though…my point was that, something about the warp-maneuver used by that original fleet created a chain-reaction that opened up tens – maybe even hundreds – of these rifts.  No one’s sure how or why they ended up closing afterwards, but the prevailing theory is that they just kind of evaporated on their own after a while.”


    “That would explain why these feral rifts have such a short half-life, and expire before anyone can typically get to them.” Ren noted, and stepped up beside her young friend, “But that doesn’t explain exactly what it is.  Is it…a black hole of some kind?  Nothing’s being sucked into it…it’s just there.”


    “Nearest I can ascertain is that it’s another dimension.” Seth answered, making a point to hold both his hands up malevolently and wiggle his fingers, as though he was telling a scary story, “Black holes are different, because they’re gravity wells.  Things get sucked in, but they’re being crushed down infinitely into a single point, not being spat-out somewhere else.  After all, we’ve never found an ejection-site for the back-end of a worm-hole, so there’s no reason to believe they had one.  These things though…they’re gateways to somewhere.  Notice how it’s always open towards you no matter what direction you look at it from?”


    “Yeah.”


    “It looks the same to everyone else at the same time, no matter how many people there are or angles it’s being looked at.  And, you can put stuff into it…” Seth explained, and hopped over towards one of the nearby tables, and the disfigured instruments he had set out on top of them.  He lifted one up, and pointed at the contorted tip, where one could assume a sample-collection reservoir once existed, “It looks melted, but there was never any heat-factor applied to it.  It’s just…as if the known laws of physics don’t apply on the other side.  Materials stop behaving the way we expect them to – they get destabilized and chaotic – but they still come out whole.  The weight is the same as prior to going in, the composition is maintained…there’s no residue or anything on them, so it didn’t bring anything back with it…  It just…went in, changed somehow, and came back in this new shape.  But…”  He put the long metal rod down again, and lifted up a tree-branch instead, “…when something organic goes in, it comes out with this weird, almost chitinous covering on it.”  He flicked at a leaf with said substance stuck to it, “I can’t figure out what it is though.  It’s nothing I’ve ever seen before.  The organic material itself is changed, too, like it was being repurposed somehow, or…I dunno, assimilated?  Into something that dimension recognizes.”


    Ren quirked a brow, “You sure you want to be touching it with your bare fingers?”


    “There’s nothing dangerous about it, so far as I’ve gleaned.  This branch, and the weird stuff growing on it, is still recognized by my instruments as a ‘carbon-based organic material,’ just like the original.  It’s like if you offered a Rubix-cube to someone on the other side of a door, they turned the faces on it, and gave it back.  It’s still the same thing as before, it’s just…changed.”  Seth shrugged though, and put the branch back on the table as well, “What I was really hoping for was to have an afflicted person come out here and help me…  There’s something between that rift and the Limitless that’s connected…I just know it.”


    “Why do you say that?” Ren wondered, casting a knowing look at her mentor way off in the distance.


    “Because the warp-capabilities of the original colony fleet weren’t an advanced technology that we lost in the crash-landing.  …They were the featured-ability of one specific Limitless-afflicted guy – Caeros - who guided the fleet, and brought it here.”


    The two Fafnir glanced at one another, then back at the proverbial mad-scientist in front of them, but Ren spoke again, “That’s not taught in basic histories…  Caeros sabotaged the fleet; that’s why it crashed.”


    Seth waved his hands back and forth, “Not so.  They say that history is written by the victors, not the victims…but in this case, the victims were the only ones left to tell the tale, so their bias leaked through in the retelling.  Caeros’ mistake was fleeing the scene of the crime, so his side couldn’t be told.”


    “And how do you know this?”


    “Because Lord Rylen told me himself.” He answered proudly, and leaned in closer, “Caeros’ full name is Caeros Vor’antiss…he was Lord Rylen’s son.”


    Both sets of eyes went wide, “…Yikes.”


    “The rifts didn’t just open randomly because the fleet showed up.  Hadira isn’t more-or-less prone to them than anywhere else.  The trick was that, in using his power to bring the aforementioned fleet here, it’s like he tore open a hole in reality, and all these smaller gates opened up as a result.  Lord Rylen said that, from what he saw, the main void gate opened for them to pass through – absorbing the fleet inside it, with the intent of releasing it at its destination – but then bits of it started breaking off, like embers from one of those fireworks sparklers.”


    Ren looked dubiously at the rift, and narrowed her eyes, “…Guess that explains why they sent him, too.”


    “Sent who, too?” Seth asked, looking around.  He squinted through the afternoon sunlight at the two figures standing a distance away.  He recognized the former Magistrate, but the second was a mystery.


    “Hang on.”


    Seth watched her go - walking with purpose - and turned to step closer to Ianori.  For a moment, he felt clueless, but then the realization hit him, “O-oh my god, they sent Gabriel Lugios!?  I thought that was Miss Ren’s driver!  Why would they send him here!?”


    Ianori could only shrug, “I mean, they’re supposed to be partnered or something…guess the bosses didn’t wanna split them up?”


    “But he’s the High Negotiator!  He’s second only to Lord Xanarken himself!  He’s…he’s too important to send here!”


    “Not to mention controversial…” The Fafnir could only rub the stubble on his chin, “Maybe the Commander’s just making the best of the situation and it wasn’t intended?”


    “You don’t just sent Gabriel Lugios into Kitez to pick someone up.”


    Ianori shrugged his shoulders up with a smirk, “Guess we’re going to find out.”