They were Ravenna's words, not hers, Ember pondered, while she choked one of the guards until he went limp and colpsed in her grip. Have I misjudged the both of them after all?

  Progress had been steady, and surprisingly simple. She was a doctor - or had been, once - but everyone she'd worked with received basic hand-to-hand training for situations just like this, and the lessons were unforgettable. Regrettably, some days. At least it was paying off today; none of the site's hirelings, if that's what they were, seemed to be expecting company. And there weren't even that many of them; she was practically using them to pass the time as they continued descending, since Bernie could almost certainly handle the lot of them himself.

  Kind of sad, really, she mused, gncing over to see the bodyguard folding up his test target in the stairwell before waving her and Fern forward. I was expecting more of a workout from this lot after they took her, but either she's not as tough a nut to crack as she looks - or the front she puts up, rather - or whoever's running this show put all their chips on one slot, just to take her out.

  Well, too bad for them. She slipped down the stairs first, taking point with Bernie as usual to start neutralizing the next floor. When a bet goes wrong and you lose the shirt off your back, it's your own fault for being greedy.

  Fern followed after the other two, carefully reguting her own usage of the dark to cushion her steps and avoid any errant noises. They were scarily good at sneaking around, even without any aether, and the performance gap once more brought feelings of inadequacy as she stewed over it. How much of it is those... augments, and how much of it is just Bernie's own skill? I'm lucky he didn't kill me for real that night. And why am I even here? she groused internally, expanding her senses passively to look around the remaining floors. The best I can offer is being a walking direction-finder. It's embarrassing. I need astrology, more than anything - my own specialty, just for me.

  Bernie pulled a rare patrolling guard into the deeper shadows and squeezed the breath out of him with a tiny smile. These 'augments' are really something else. I hope Miz Grace lets me keep them, it'd be a shame to have to give them up.

  "This is a lot of trouble to go to," Ravenna mumbled drowsily. She was far too weak to move by now. Something had gone wrong - something else, rather, to add to the existing list - and now she couldn't even feel her legs. Didn't she get hit near the spine? Maybe it just took a little while, or something... Thinking was too much effort.

  The noble she still couldn't see clearly scoffed, though she sounded a little weary herself. "As if you don't deserve it. I risked everything I had, and now it's gone, because of you. I even had to defy my own family for this! And still it slipped away, thanks to you. There's no suffering I could inflict that would clear our bance, all I can do is tip the scales back my way a little so I can feel better after all this time."

  At least the woman was talkative. It was something to keep her mind off... everything else. "Maybe... you should've listened to your family," the dark mage murmured. Gods, it felt like she would doze off any minute. Maybe she had? Everything felt so hazy. "He was going to die... your marriage never would've even happened."

  "You're lying," she spat, and then - something might've happened. A shove, a strike. Ravenna wasn't sure. She didn't care. It was all just to pass time, anyway.

  "Nn. Not lying. Prince was... wanted man. Couldn't let succession happen. Everyone was trying to kill." A faint smile curled her lips. "So I guess... I saved her life. No one cared after she changed. So... you could still..."

  The noble growled, frustrated. "I don't care! I never cared about him! I wanted the marriage, you stupid little monster! The power! That's what you took from me, not some useless figurehead! Nobles don't care about petty things like love or friendships or any of that rot, only the power they represent! That's the most basic- ah, why even bother." She sighed, heavily. "Ugh... how could someone this weepy and pathetic ever be so much trouble?"

  How did I get here? Ravenna wondered idly, her mind drifting through the haze of pain, and beyond pain, again for a moment. "I have a sister," she mumbled softly. "Wonder how she's doing..."

  "Oh? Is she going to come and save your worthless skin?"

  "Doubt it... she's too busy just living." The dark mage closed her eyes. They weren't doing her any good at this point anyway. "She won't notice the letters missing for a while. I should've kept in touch better. Sent more."

  This time there was only silence in response.

  "Vivi was always the better of us two... She wouldn't be captured like this. People like her. They wouldn't do this to her. It's just me. Just... my fault. All of this happening... Fern leaving me..." She felt tears on her face again, leaking out of her. That was odd; she was just talking. Why was her body doing things like this?

  "You're disgusting," the woman finally said, the word sounding as if it took all the energy in her body to say. "Why don't you just die already?"

  Yeah... why don't I? Ravenna wondered. Why am I still hanging on? What's the purpose of it, of anything? Even if I crawled out of here, if I lived on my belly and fed on the vermin just to get enough blood to move, what would it matter? She's not waiting for me out there any more. She told me so. We're done.

  What does anything matter, if the world loses its color?

  She faded again; or maybe she already had. It was so hard to tell.

  This time after they cleared the floor, Ember motioned Bernie back up the stairwell to where Fern was standing, seemingly lost in thought. She reached out and gently nudged the fallen hero's shoulder. "How much further?" she whispered softly.

  Fern closed her eyes and made that little twitch that the healer had come to recognize as the sign of her sending out one of those sonar pulses, or whatever they were that she did. Weird stuff, but if it worked, it worked. "Two more floors... I think," she whispered back, after a moment.

  Ember frowned. It was extremely odd; everyone had been human, and hardly anyone worthwhile at that. They hadn't run across any sign of the mechanical wasps, or even any western scents at all. Very strange. She was starting to think this was a false lead from the ckluster resistance, but they didn't have anywhere else to go. No way to deal with her misgivings but to keep pushing. "How many?"

  "Unclear. Five or six." She closed her eyes again, and opened them after a moment. "Six. Last one so faint I can barely read it."

  The healer took in as silent a breath as she could manage. That was probably Ravenna, if whatever Fern was 'reading' was some measure of life force or something like that. And if she was that diminished already, when it had barely been half a day...

  No. She shouldn't say anything prematurely. Just focus on what she could do. She made a 'hurry it up' gesture to Bernie, and down they went into the darkness once more.

  Ravenna dreamed.

  She dreamed there was no pain any longer, that she was floating in the darkness, surrounded by gentle starlight. All the twinkling stars she'd always loved to look at. The beautiful sky, so close she could have reached out and touched it, if only she could move. But she was just so... tired. It was easier to rex, and y here (where was here?), and drift among the stars. So very easy to do nothing at all.

  She dreamed of a little box of stone, and inside it, a little sb with a woman on it who looked just like her. But it wasn't her, of course; she wasn't all bruised like that, or restrained with little glowing bands. She was free - floating in the darkness. That poor woman, she mused momentarily, she looks so miserable.

  The thought might have saddened her, but then she remembered it was just some woman she imagined in her dreams. It probably wasn't a real person at all, so being sad about it would be... silly. Pointless, even.

  Ravenna dreamed there was another woman there, in the box. She looked miserable too, but in a different way; her face was all... twisted, somehow. There were too many emotions in it for her to figure out when she was so tired and only wanted to drift her time away. The woman's mouth moved, and her hands gestured, but none of it made any sense; like a strange sort of puppet show with no sound to it, no music.

  It was confusing, and she didn't like it. She'd rather just look at the stars. But she kept looking back at the little stone box for some reason.

  Ravenna dreamed there was a door in the box; and it opened. The sad twisted woman jumped back to the wall; and then suddenly there was a man there, pinning her in pce. He looked like... Bernie? But his arms were a strange color; that didn't seem right. This dream was so confusing, but she felt compelled to keep watching it.

  Then, when she looked again, there were two more women by the sb. One looked like Ember, with her unforgettable red hair, and the other-

  The other one-

  Her mind felt like it was full of static, the stars around her fuzzing at their edges. No... that wasn't right. Fern wouldn't be here (where was here?); she couldn't be. She already came before, and left, didn't she? She wouldn't- she said- she-

  But why was that even a problem? This was just a dream, after all. A vision. A weird little... theater, in her mind. None of it was really, actually happening.

  It wasn't real. It didn't mean anything.

  She kept watching anyway.

  The woman who looked like Ember was saying something, and the woman who wasn't Fern was giving her things from within her coat. Potion bottles. A little box. A gem? No; she pced that on the woman's chest, instead.

  Ravenna blinked. She looked down at her own chest.

  The gem was there.

  No; the battery. Her battery. Full to the brim with sweet, sweet darkness. She craved it more than anything. More than water, more than air, she needed the aether twisting around inside this tiny little dot. Needed it too much to question its sudden appearance, to bother restraining her ravenous appetite.

  With everything she had, she reached out for it - and was denied. Cold cruel bands of light, around her wrists, around her ankles, around her neck. Keeping her from her prize. From her sustenance.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the woman who wasn't Fern say something, and point at the woman on the sb. Her hands came together and made some sort of gesture, the specifics of it unclear, but-

  Click.

  The sound - there was sound again! - echoed through the star-studded void. One of the bands around her ankle simply stopped existing; one moment it was there, the next - gone. As if it had been switched off with that sound.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Her wrists were free now. Not the wrists of the woman on the sb - well, hers too, apparently - but Ravenna's wrists. And with that freedom came a tingling of sensation, and then a dull haze of pain. She still couldn't move her arms, but she was starting to feel them again. To remember that she had a body, that she-

  Click.

  Like a starved animal, with pain coursing through her upper body and especially her head, Ravenna instinctively twisted the aether without moving a finger, emptying the contents of the entire battery into herself in one glorious instant. It made everything else hurt even worse than it already did, but something inside her started working again. The clockwork that had frozen began ticking once more.

  The stars faded. So did the stage and all its pyers.

  Like a swimmer surfacing at the very end of their breath, Ravenna woke up from the dream.