Chapter Text
I wandered around the party, dressed in a black-and-silver Altean gown, and holding a cup of something called Nunvill in my hand. Coran had described it as ‘nectar of the gods’ when he cornered me and poured me a glass. I took a sip, and it took all my willpower not to spit it out all over my pretty dress. I forced myself to swallow with a grimace. Oh, void. I’d just managed to find something even worse than the prison jello.
Juni found me as I was feeding the remainder of my cup’s contents to a decorative plant.
“Hey, Caelia, have you seen Azura? I wanted to ask her to dance again.”
“I think she went back to her room. She said the crowd was giving her a headache.”
It was an excuse, but I couldn’t blame Azura. If I knew there were a spy in our midst and someone was after me, I would be anxious in a castle full of people, too. I thought the fact that she had shown up at all – wearing the dress coat Juni had made for her no less – spoke to how highly she regarded my enthusiastic friend.
“Oh.” Juni sat on the edge of the planter, crestfallen. She took a big swallow of her Nunvill without so much as a flinch and started playing with the new pair of glowing, levitating earrings she was wearing.
“Are those new?” I asked her, to change the topic.
“Yeah, Coran gave them to me. They float! Aren’t they neat?”
“They are cool. He just gave me a plain non-floaty bracelet to wear,” I said, showing her. It was a simple but expertly made gold band with a tiny engraving of a lion inside. He had said something about a debut tradition when he gave it to me, but we had been interrupted before he’d had the chance to elaborate. I wondered what small adornments he had given to the others, but I still hadn’t caught up with the others to look.
Juni took another swig of the Nunvill. “Do you think Azlan will dance with me?”
So much for distracting her.
“I’ll dance with you, Juniper Ntare,” I said, stashing the cup in the planter with one hand and offering her my other.
“Sure you aren’t going to make Ryo jealous?” She teased me as she took my hand.
“Why would he be jealous of me dancing with my friend? Besides, you know how he hates this kind of thing.”
“Hm, I’m sure he was looking for you earlier and giving those young officers dirty looks for a completely different reasonthen,” she said.
I’d seen him come in with Lance and Keith, the three of them looking a very handsome family in the style-matched long-tailed jackets Juni had made them. I’d wanted to talk to him, but before I’d had the chance, Azura had shown up with Mort, and then I’d been ambushed by a line of young Alchemists and IGF officers all wanting to dance with the Black Paladin. I’d only just gotten a moment to myself when Coran found me.
“Ryo really wanted to dance with me?” I said, amazed, as I spun Juni around.
“Pretty sure. He definitely wanted to talk to you.”
That made more sense, but it didn’t put me any more at ease. I’d been trying to find the right moment to talk to Ryo since he’d boarded the Red Lion, but it hadn’t happened. I felt a little guilty about that; what kind of friend was I?
The dance ended. Juni spotted Azlan in the crowd and waved him over, insisting that her lab partner couldn’t leave without dancing with her, never mind he didn’t know how to dance. I slipped away, then, to give the two of them some time and to give myself a moment alone.
The evening was cool and clear under the starlight. Out on the veranda, I caught sight of Lance trying to get Keith to dance. Like father, like son it would seem. Suddenly feeling very lonely, I wandered away from the party, politely declining invitations all the way.
I went to the Speeder hangar, where I wasn’t surprised to see Red’s speeder was missing. I climbed onto my own and headed for the Plaza. Red was still there when I arrived. When I approached, curious if Ryo was there, the door opened for me in invitation.
Inside, Red was a lot like Black, except smaller. She didn’t try to stop me as I walked up to the cockpit. Inside, Ryo was at the controls. He had just started to power everything up.
“Ryo?” I asked as I stepped over the threshold.
He spun around from his seat in the pilot’s chair. He had traded his dress clothes for his new Paladin armor. He stared at me. And stared. Finally, he stammered out, “Caeli? What are you doing here?”
“Red let me in. Juni said you were looking for me. Is everything okay?”
“I . . .I thought maybe I’d try to go out in a patrol. Hopefully bond with Red a little. I couldn’t just sit there at a fancy party, when I know someone is out there looking for Azura.”
A small chirp at my neck alerted me to an incoming message. I pressed against the comm Juni had sewn into the dress’ capelet.
“Caelia!” It was Juni, and she was distressed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Azlan can’t dance worth beans, so he and I just went up to see how Azura was doing, and she’s gone. The guard’s been knocked out.”
“Quiznack.” The escort Romelle had assigned to Azura for the evening was an undercover Blade. They would have been difficult to jump.
An alert flashed on Red’s screen. An Altean two-seat fighter was taking off from one of the nearby landing platforms. Azura missing, and now this? Red roared and pushed back onto her haunches. I grabbed hold of Ryo’s chair to keep from falling down. Ryo took the controls.
“Contact control and ask if they cleared the launch,” I told Ryo as we hit the air.
They hadn’t.
“Juni, get Lance and Keith. We’re pursing in Red, now.”
“We’re? Aren’t you supposed to be in the Black Lion?”
I released the comm button and turned my attention back to the chase. I should have had Ryo bring me back to Black, but there wasn’t time for that; the fighter was making a b-line for the upper atmosphere at its full power, and those new fighters were fast. We’d just passed the orbital rings when a wormhole opened in front of the fighter. Ryo pursued, pressing forward with all Red’s speed. We passed through it just before it closed.
Inside the spacetime tunnel, the fighter accelerated. Red closed the distance between us. Ryo fired a warning shot across its bow, and the fighter swerved. Then it did something totally unexpected: it changed course and plunged through the side of the wormhole.
“Hold on!” Ryo cried as he turned to follow.
-----
“Why isn’t Caelia in Black?” I shouted as I raced up the ramp into Blue and jumped into her control chair. Black was already active on her platform, courtesy of Keith.
“Red just took off. There wasn’t time,” Azlan said from behind me.
“But why was Caelia in Red at all?”
“My fault,” Juni said from my other side. “She went to find Ryo when I said he was looking for her.”
“Focus,” Keith said over the comms. “We need to find them and fast. Juni, did the control tower get a ping on that wormhole? Do we know where it went?”
“No, it was opened remotely, as far as they could tell. No recorded signature.”
Not good. We needed to find them fast. Whoever took Azura probably had powerful allies enroute to the rendezvous. Red wasn’t the strongest solo Lion, and with Ryo still not fully bonded, Red wouldn’t even have access to her most powerful weapons. There was little doubt, she’d still fight though – which is what I was afraid of.
Azlan chewed his lip for a moment. “If we can get the observation logs, I might be able to cross reference. . .”
“No time for that. Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” I said.
I closed my eyes and connected to Blue, then reached out with her through the cosmos. My Markings flared as I searched for the feeling of Red. After searching the cosmos for Yellow and the even more elusive Green, finding the active Red Lion with whom I shared a bond would be no trouble at all.
It wasn’t. I laughed aloud, pleasantly surprised by how little time it took me to get a ping. Maybe I wasn’t half bad at this after all! Blue translated and sent the coordinates to the Altean control tower. A dobosh later, the glittering weave of a wormhole opened into space above us.
“Hang on Azura, we’re coming.”
-----
We burst through into real-space just above the atmosphere of a terrestrial planet. Red reeled from the shock of breaking through the wormhole’s energy field, and I slid hard against the pilot’s chair.
“Caeli? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I groaned. “Where did that fighter go?”
He scanned through Red’s sensors, searching for the fighter. He found it entering the planet’s atmosphere.
“You got an ID on that planet?” I asked.
Ryo looked at the screens. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Send it to the others and the IGF before we chase after them again. We do not want to back that spy into a corner alone.” I wanted to end up at the spy’s rendezvous without backup even less.
Especially without Black, or even armor for that matter.
Red once again had other ideas. We descended through the planet’s atmosphere, chasing the Altean fighter. From the readouts of Red’s scan data, it looked like it wasn’t inherently dangerous. We wouldn’t be able to breathe it for long without ill effects – too much CO2 -- but it wouldn’t kill us immediately. There were a lot of strange EM signatures, though.
We cleared the lowest cloud layer, and the fighter turned toward a rock formation of tight arches, then dove through. Red barely fit through the first one. The fighter passed through another, smaller, one and then dove down into a nearby canyon.
“What are you doing?” Azura’s panicked voice cracked across the comms.
“Rescuing you! Hold on!” Ryo answered.
Alerts flashed, and a geyser erupted from the side of the canyon. It slammed into us, and we crashed into the canyon wall. I only barely managed to hold myself in place. Ryo cursed loudly as the fighter put distance between us. He pushed up out of the rock and increased speed. I slid over and attempted to get Red’s scanners to tell us something about the occupants of the fighter. How many kidnappers we were dealing with, at least.
I spotted another geyser up ahead. “Ryo!”
“I see it!” He spun under the just of steam and water.
The fighter changed its path again and headed toward a spot where Red detected several potential geysers.
“Give us back our friend,” Ryo growled.
I gave up on doing anything aside from holding on for dear life as we spun, flipped, and circled our way through the geyser field, performing maneuvers I never would have been able to accomplish in Black. Whatever had been blocking Ryo from synching with Red before had been left behind in our pursuit of Azura.
We closed distance once more on the other side of the geyser field. I finally got a sensor fix on the fighter. What I saw changed the game entirely.
“Ryo. There’s only one occupant in that fighter.”
“What?” Ryo flipped on the comms. “Azura, what the Quiznack are you doing?”
“She’s running away,” I whispered as I realized what was happening.
“What? Why?”
Azura answered over the comms. “Artor and the Regent – they won’t let me go. They will come for me. It is only a matter of time. You, the refugees, I’m putting anyone I’m with in danger. I won’t do that to you, after you’ve shown me such kindness. I won’t.”
Ryo shouted back: “Azura, you don’t need to run! I know you want to leave, but we made contact with Azlan’s people! They are willing to help you. Even if you don’t trust us to keep you safe, the Blades will!” He didn’t bother to hide the hurt in his voice.
Azura’s tone went cold. “Kolivan is at war, Ryo, and I am his enemy. I have no illusions of what his ‘help’ for me will be. No, I am better off alone.”
She broke away from us again, this time aiming for one of those strange EM signatures.
“Red, what is that?” I just asked this time, instead of attempting to work the controls tandem to Ryo.
The console focused in on the EM signature and zoomed to the location on one corner of Ryo’s view screen. Shimmering dendritic patterns glittered across a section of the atmosphere. As we watched, a shaft of now-familiar white light began to open into the air.
“Oh no. Please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Ryo said.
“That’s a Rift,” I confirmed. From the dendrites, it looked like it was going to be a big one – big enough for Azura’s fighter. And she was headed straight for it.
“Azura, stop! Your ship isn’t made to traverse the quintessence field!” Ryo shouted at her.
“I can’t stay here! I won’t let you die for my sake. I’m not worth that.”
“Yes, you are!” I said as we both dove toward the newly opened Rift.
“Caelia. You have always shown me kindness. But you do not know me. You do not know what I have done. What I am capable of. I am dangerous. Why can’t you see that?”
To my shock, Ryo answered before I could. “So what? You have power? You’re scared you might hurt us? How do you think I feel, always holding back my strength, terrified what might happen to those I love if I slip up?”
I recalled Ryo’s hesitancy to fly Red, and the look on Ryo’s face when he threw me. I knew that he had been getting stronger, but I had thought it had been through his own training. I hadn’t considered that maybe the changes happening to him might be beyond his control.
“The Regent --”
“You’re not the only one the Druids would turn into a weapon, Azura! You’re not the only one who’s scared! Back at that base, those pirates were going to ship me off to them, said they could use fighters like me. If Caelia hadn’t found me when she did. . . .” He cut off the rest of the sentence with a growl.
So that was what had been bothering Ryo since then.
“Ryo. . .”
Ryo shook himself. “But we can’t be scared of ourselves, Azura! We can’t see ourselves as monsters!” Ryo cried.
Azura didn’t answer. She just headed for the Rift.
“Azura, you want to protect us, but this isn’t the way to do it! I understand now what Red has been trying to tell me. We can’t run away from who we are, we can’t hold back, because to defeat The Regent and protect the people we love, it’s going to take all the strength we have!”
Ahead, the engines on the fighter slowed.
He reached out to her again. “It’s time to stop running, Azura, and time to start fighting. For yourself, and everyone else. Together!”
For the first time, Azura’s face appeared on the comms screen. Her lip quivered, but no words came out.
“Come home, Azura,” I said to her.
Azura’s image on the screen disappeared. But in front of us, the Altean fighter’s forward thrust engines cut out entirely. Ryo let out a breath and I sank a little against the chair’s back.
Then I realized the shuttle was still moving toward the Rift.
Alerts flashed across Red’s screen as an EM burst spewed from the Rift, then pulled back in. Everything in the cockpit went blood-red with warning as we, too, were drawn toward the Rift with increasing velocity.
The fighter’s engines turned back on, sputtered once, and died. Azura’s face appeared once more on the screen, this time filled with panic.
“I can’t break free!”
The fighter was falling fast now. At Ryo’s command, trajectories traced across the screen for a capture, but all of them ended in failure. If I were in Black, we could boost to catch up, or even phase to rescue her. Red was fast, but we weren’t going to make it to Azura before the Rift captured her.
“Come on, Red! Let me see through your eyes,” Ryo whispered and shoved his Bayard into its slot. As he said the words, I felt the flow of quintessence between him and Red. It went both ways.
Then it dawned on me: I wasn’t in Black, but I still carried part of her within me, just like I carried a fragment of Shiro.
I reached deep inside myself to that glowing core that was becoming familiar. Sure enough, there were bits of glowing darkness threaded through that star. I grabbed hold of one of those fragments and put my hand over Ryo’s. Fire blossomed down my back as I visualized Red sprouting fiery wings.
Reality around us shimmered. For an instant, everything faded out except Ryo and me standing hand-in-hand in the void. Then we shot forward like a phoenix. Red caught hold of Azura’s craft, then blazed away from the still-growing Rift to safety.
*
We landed on a bluff and Azura got out of her craft and came running for Red. Inside, I caught her in my arms and held on as tight as I could. She hugged me back, then started crying big ugly tears. Ryo wrapped us both in a hug like he’d never let go.
In the sky above us, the light of a wormhole spread into existence, and the Blue and Black Lions came through.
“Sir, I see the Red Lion!” I heard Azlan’s voice on the comms.
“I see it,” Keith answered. “Ryo? Caelia? Are you there?”
“Azura!!” Juni yelled.
“It’s all right, Juni. We have her. She’s safe,” Ryo assured everyone.
“Oh, thank Quiznack,” Lance breathed. “Do you know how much of a heart attack I’ve just had?”
“You all came for me?” Azura whispered. The disbelief in her voice broke my heart.
My voice broke as I answered. “Of course they did. Because you matter. Whatever everyone else has told you, whatever mistakes you’ve made, whatever you’ve been forced to do, you’re not a monster, Azura. You matter. We’re not giving up on you. Not now, not ever. I promise.”