Picking up the object, Squad feels an awareness on the gleaming frontiers of his mind, turning the item over in his hands to examine the gold casing.

"Should you really be touching that?" Anya asks.

"Good question," Squad replies. The item is about three feet in length and Squad opens the end of it, sliding another object out.

"It looks like a scroll," Anya says, nudging Squad out of the way and ablaze with interest, as she handles the scroll.

"So much for not touching it," Squad smiles.

Anya unfolds the paper and reads it. "It's a...bible. A very old one, by the looks of it."

"And that means?"

"Well, they say that the original text was written by Caliban—"

"Or God, as he's more properly known," Squad grins.

Anya's eyes never leave the text as she explains. "Well, the main god for the Western world – creator of the Elves and worshipped by many humans too. But organised religion is made up of mortal people and obviously, as the years go by, they introduce their own ideas, prejudices bleeding into every text and belief, becoming doctrine. This," she touches the scroll, "could be something else entirely. A bible from before mortal hands took hold of its message."

She looks startled. "Wait a minute! Something's been written here, added to the text—"

A noise causes Squad to shoot around, swords drawn. "Get ready!" he tells Anya.

Nothing happens, but Anya puts the scroll back in its case and slings it over her back.

"We should get moving," she tells Squad. "I want to find Indigo and Sig."

They march on, down into what might be a plain but the mist spreads like gauze, occluding their vision within a handful of metres. "There are projections on the mist," Squad cautions.

Anya nods; she can see and recognise some of the images. There's warmth in her eyes, but also something like a sweet crystalline cry, smothered quickly by her strength. She turns to Squad. "I see them. Let's keep moving."

Somewhere in his mind, Squad is putting together the images he's seeing, which are coming as flashes on the mist. He pretends not to be able to make sense of any of it. Then he asks anyway, because he can't help himself.

"I've never really asked you much about your family: what's your mum like?"

Anya turns and gives Squad a look that makes it clear she knows exactly why he's asking; he gives her the classic, no, I did not just see your life playing out on a magical mist look that's standard in these situations.

There's an instinctive shake of her head, but it's not bad-natured. "My mother would always limit my ambitions. If I said I wanted to be a military leader, she said military historian. If I said I wanted to advance the cause of women, she said I should invent a new hairclip."

Squad smiles gently. "She must have read Sig's book – Women and Their Practical Uses."

"Can you imagine if Sig actually wrote a book?" Anya asks.

"Can you imagine if Sig could read?"

Anya smirks and, where a patch of mist has cleared, looks out across the plain; a flock of birds move like a migraine across the sky, disappearing and then reappearing where they were five seconds before, on a loop.

"She's a complicated person, my mother. I don't think she was ready for Indigo's condition and it spoiled her attitude to children – maybe she was expecting it to be a transformative experience and when it turned out to be really difficult, she just packed up and left us with a nanny."

"And your dad?"

"I don't know who he is or if he's alive. It can't have helped my mum that he was never on the scene, but she would never mention him – never." She flashes a sardonic smile. "Maybe he lived in a different wing of our house."

"How many wings did your house have?"

"Too many. It was just Indigo and me and our books. Well, one of our employees—"

"One of your employees!?"

"I know. She was a maid, I suppose – I was very young and didn't think about these things. She took pity on Indigo and I and was nice to us, giving us little games to play or setting us small tasks."

Her voice is strangely heavy, weighted with emotion in a way Squad has never heard before. "This is so pathetic but...one of my defining childhood moments was showing her a little story I'd written for her. She asked me to read it to her." She shakes her head lightly, as if haunted by the ghost of a moment. "I only realised later that she couldn't read and this person I'd loved, or come as close to loving as I can, was so different to me that we could barely imagine each other's inner worlds. No one had ever told me that the employees were our true equals and, to my shame, I hadn't figured it out until that moment. It's horrifying to realise that I knew I was better than people without being directly taught it. From that moment on, I swore to always ask questions when other people looked away."

"What happened to your maid?"

"We were told she'd went away and a while later I found out she'd actually died. I was still a young kid, so I went back to the place we used to go (I thought of it as a cupboard then, but it was actually her room) and I could swear that I saw her. It hadn't been given away to another staff member yet and was still dusty but, in the spot where the light crept in from the window, meeting the dark in a ghostly grin, I saw her standing there, a warm, fat smile on her face. I told Indigo about it and he couldn't understand; I told my mum and she said I'd imagined it, but I knew what I saw and a part of me, the part I suppose that strives towards love, believed that she was really there." She laughs gently. "Perhaps that part still believes it now but I haven't lived according to its values, so..."

Their glances meet and lock and race like rivers, as the sun's dying light flows over her hair and down her shoulders so that she appears, for a moment, to embody the memory evoked so vividly from her mind. Squad pictures the little girl standing in the empty room once occupied by her only friend and believing that she could see that friend in the sun's quivering rays. He never wants that hope to flicker and cease to breathe.

"What's that?" he asks, wandering forward as something sweeps them in.

*

Sitting on a tree branch, the little starling's eyes hang with motionless curiosity on a young woman below and the even younger man at her side, his wild adventurer's hand resting on her soft wrist. Many hundreds of metres away, a manor house looms over the fresh and vibrant lawn and, right in front of the young couple, the gleaming mail of the lake offers a world of possibilities.

Sixteen-year-old Lord Scipio, before he was a lord, takes in the young woman with a gaze, the power of which would go on to entrance many friends and foes alike, his eyes gulping down every detail then rising slowly to meet hers. Emily's eyes are as clear and green as sea stones – she's ten years older than Scipio, more experienced though still young.

"You don't really love me," Emily teases. Her eyes touch the ground, as if there's a nasty truth there. "There's nothing to love about me." She eyes Scipio, half willing, and expecting, him to contradict her but deep down she believes what she's saying. "You're a handsome young spectre candidate and I'm just a little rich girl."

"There's a lot to be said for being rich," Scipio smiles, his glance grasping her attention.

She moves to give him a playful tap on the cheek but his hand grasps hers and their eyes meet, a gleam of savage understanding shared there. The kiss is sudden, passionate and prolonged, Emily hooking her arms around his strong body. She's never believed in herself and, because he loves her, that damaged her opinion of him but, when they kiss, her faith in him, as if it can't help itself, returns like a gentle little tide— and, slowly, she starts to believe that maybe she is worth something.

*

Amazed, Squad turns to Anya, who is gazing into the distance with a look of shock of her face.

"I felt all of Scipio's emotions," Squad tells Anya. "It was incredible, like I was actually there. Did you—"

He spots the look on her face and quietens.

*

Scipio sneaks through a hallway, alert for danger from the doors on either side. He hears a hideous, high-pitched laugh and the last peeling traces that his partner's family might be alive are ripped away. His spectre partner has been tackling crime in the Undercity and a figure from that world has come to the surface world, tracked down his family and taken them captive in their own home.

"You're too late, little spectre," the voice is high-pitched, teasing, coming from a room at the end of the hallway.

Scipio stands to his full-height and walks forward, his eyes wielding a hot peril, glinting with bloody intentions. He kicks open the door and charges into the dark room, where half a dozen hired killers await.

Several of them are mages and they spin their halberds with magical energy, sparks fluttering into the darkness as they close on Scipio from several sides. Two of them leap at Scipio, their attacks slicing in at all angles and forcing him back until the spectre finds the perfect moment, darting to the left and ducking under the attacker on that side's swing, slashing with all his might through the man's knee; as the man falls, Scipio places two fingers on the back of his head and, with a bang like a piano being dropped from a great height, the man's head explodes, covering his colleague in gore.

Scipio leaps across the gap like a cat, knocking the thug flat on his back and plunging his sword through his chest. Turning, he deflects several poisoned darts and charges into the others, cutting through them in a storm of steel, catching a halberd over his head as the opponent strikes from behind then, still gripping the weapon, flipping backwards over the man's head and plunging his sword through his chest.

He cuts through the rest with a wild-eyed absorption, until they all lie dead, then he turns to look at what's left of his partner's family. A wife and two children cut to pieces. To be a spectre means climbing a steep pathway of blood, and Scipio had always known this – but he'd never really felt it until now. This is why most spectres don't have a family.

He takes one last look at the culled innocents, to reinforce him for what's to come, then he puts it in the drawer of memory and closes it forever.

*

"It's over between us," Scipio tells Emily, in an inconspicuous spectre safehouse.

"There's nothing that can come between us," she answers, trying to load her voice with the sum of all they've been. "If you trust me and I trust you, that's all that matters."

"That's not true: the world matters," Scipio continues. "I was too young when we met – the scandal would damage you."

"I don't care!" Emily cries, tears haunting her soft green eyes.

Scipio grasps her shoulders gently but with a speed that makes her flinch. "I do care!" he raises his voice, determined to seem harsh in her eyes. "Your father cares – he's an admiral, it'll wreck his reputation! It'll ruin any chance you have at a future." She opens her mouth to protest, but Scipio puts his face into hers, so one can feel the breath of the other. "I was never interested in you. I used you because I wanted to see what an older woman was like—and now I'm bored." Again, Emily tries to speak but Scipio shouts. "GET OUT!"

He moves his body to create a gap and, with a last look in his eyes, once warm to her but now so cold, Emily runs down the stairs and out the front door. When she's gone, Scipio sighs and looks out of the window at the city, the people, the country he's sworn to protect.

Outside, Emily hunches over and weeps quietly, her hand travelling slowly and protectively to her stomach, to the life growing there – buried deep down, a glowing diamond of fear.

*

A baby's cry fills the bedroom and the nurse holds out the new-born for his mother to see. "Look, Miss Fitzwallis, it's a beautiful baby boy! Do you have a name for him yet?" she asks, placing him at the young woman's side, cradled under her right arm.

Emily looks down at the little boy. "Yes," she says. "His name is Indigo." She looks down at the baby girl cradled in her left arm. "Anya, this is your twin brother."

*

A thin, blue, terribly-sharp moon hangs in the sky over the balcony, and a pair of light boots lands on perfect white marble eighteen floors up in The Crucible. Infiltration successful, Scipio stands to his full height and, now in his late-twenties or early-thirties, it's clear he's a man in his prime.

The Crucible is a vast complex of buildings, a city within a city in the elven country of Tyria, and home to the Calibanist religion, which is practised by hundreds of millions of people, mostly elves and humans. Sneaking through a series of corridors, Scipio finds his way to The Crucible archives, an unimaginably vast library filled with historical documents and magical artifacts acquired by The Crucible over many thousands of years: the archives hold many secrets and alternate histories.

Inside the darkened archives, Scipio's gloved hands grab a white-haired archivist by his black and red ceremonial robes, smashing the man into a wall.

"Where is it!?"

Eyes sharp with fear, the religious man mumbles a prayer and keeps his eyes closed: his own kind of courage, because he could speak and live, but he knows he mustn't. A voice laughs in Scipio's head and the archivist is invisibly torn from his hands, floating in the air, limbs moving in each direction like a puppet pulled against his will. He's ripped fully in half with a sickening crunch, shadows moving and taking shape all around the room. They're not shadows of anything but shadows by themselves.

Scipio hears a voice in his head, no more than a sibilant whisper.

"What you seek isn't here. The one you call The Spider has lied to you. He is not what he seems."

Looking up through the massive glass dome roof, Scipio catches the briefest flicker of something in the sky, there and then gone again – an immense black triangle.

*

The scene dissolves but Anya and Squad feel as if they're travelling at lightspeed through Scipio's memories, or impressions of Scipio's memories, moments rushing by at too fast a pace to recognise. The same whispering shadow voice says:

Find the gate.

Then again, perhaps part of a different conversation or later in the same one.

...If that fails, then Indulkar must die.

Pulled out of Scipio's memory, Squad sees that the mist has mostly cleared and that Anya is standing nearby, looking over the plains, her eyes full of the sky.

"Are you alright?" he gently asks.

She turns to him, currents of life beneath her steady gaze, but before she can answer they hear voices below them. Squad recognises the first as Sig's, in mid-conversation.

"You know, Indigo, I wish I was more like you."

"I could always teach—"

"Na!"

There's the sound of sniffing. "I can smell Squad's manly scent." Sig calls out. "Squad! Are you alive?"

"Yes."

"Great! You've already exceeded my wildest expectations!"

"Are we all here?" Squad shouts down to Sig.

"Yes, I can hear," Sig yells back.

Squad shakes his head and tries again. "No: are we all HERE?"

"Yes, I can HEAR!"

Not wanting to give off signs that anything is wrong, Squad readies himself as Indigo and Sig come into view. Anya is still staring off into space. To buy her time, Squad plans to ask questions of the other two and possibly banter.

Squad asks the important question. "Did you guys see—"

"Each other's histories?" Indigo jumps in. "Yes. It was...disturbing."

"And interesting?" Sig offers hopefully.

"Mostly disturbing." Indigo turns to Anya and Squad.

Sig nods. "Listen, Indigo, I'm sorry you saw me masturbating at that weird angle."

Squad smirks. "That sounds like a disturbing flashback."

"It wasn't a flashback," Sig tells him.

Indigo lifts a hand. "Don't ask." He changes the subject. "Sig used to look up women's skirts as a child."

"Why did you dress as a child to do that?" Squad asks.

"I thought their mothering instincts would kick in and they might fuck me," Sig answers.

"...You come from quite a fucked-up family, don't you?" Anya asks, turning towards them with a smile on her face.

You're one to talk, Scipio's your dad! Squad thinks, but keeps quiet. He's looking at Anya as if she's a rabbit that's just been pulled from a hat—then vomited out its own clone, eaten that clone and turned into an elephant.

Indigo looks around. "I can hear The Kindred again," he says. "It's leading me over here."

A small aperture in the side of the hill leads into a mid-sized cavern and, when Indigo casts his spell of light, a large object glistens at the bottom of a slight incline: a large golden arc, like a doorway for giants, burning a hole in the dark. A strange writing is arched across the arc and, though it resembles a doorway, it leads to nothing but a pile of rubble.

Indigo gasps.

"A realm-gate."

Sig nods sagaciously. "...Yes. I've come to the same conclusion."

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"No," Sig answers. "But it felt right that I should say something intellectual, didn't it? From now on I'm going to walk around all uppity and pretend to like art." Anya clips Sig around the head and he complains in the tone of an upper-class gentleman. "Madame, I say!"

Indigo makes his way down through the rubble and runs his hand along the object, which appears to be made of some kind of metal. "A realm-gate is like a star-gate except, where a star-gate theoretically lets you travel between distant places in the same universe, a realm-gate is for travel between dimensions...or realms."

"Knew it!" Sig exclaims.

"You did not—" Squad begins, but Sig wordlessly hands him a small scrap of rolled-up paper, which the spectre unravels and reads aloud. "The gateway is a portal to other dimensions." Confused, he looks up at Sig. "But...we just found the realm-gate. You didn't have the time to write this."

Sig watches his friend's confusion with his arms crossed confidently across his chest, a look of utter self-satisfaction plastered across his features. He's loving this, his eyes flicking between Squad and the other two, to see if any of them have gotten it yet.

His investigator's hat on, Squad's eyes widen in realisation. "Have you...predicted all possible fates and scenarios, written them on scraps of paper and put them in your pockets, waiting for the chance to use them?" Sig just smiles and hands Squad another scrap of paper. Squad takes it and reads aloud. "Squad will be flabbergasted by my revelation. Anya and Indigo will look at us as if we're weird." Squad checks Anya and Indigo's faces. "It's true!"

Sig nods at his own brilliance, like a little prince surveying his kingdom.

Squad smiles and shakes his head – flabbergasted, you might say. "Yeah, but you can't predict—" Sig hands him a note and Squads reads it. "Squad will claim that I can't predict everything." Squad looks up, partly amused and partly annoyed. "This is ridiculous! I'm ending this now! Watch!

Squad claps his hands and starts gyrating like a python, then drops to his knees, crossing his arms and kicking out repeatedly with a stupid grin on his face; rising to his feet, he spins, claps his hands and points straight at Sig. "There! You didn't predict that—" He reads a piece of paper handed to him by Sig. "Squad will do a weird dance in an attempt to refute my theory." He meets Sig's eyes. "Oh, fuck you!" Squad storms off.

Sig wordlessly hands a piece of paper to Anya, which she reads. "Squad will say Fuck You and storm off." She looks at Sig with a quizzical smile on her face. "Have you predicted every possible—" Sig hands her a scrap of paper and she reads aloud. "The rebel army are gay for Nigel...what rebel army? Who's Nigel?"

Sig just shrugs his shoulders.

***

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