The human jail cell had turned into the very pit of Cynth's world, the center of which everything revolved around.

    Plunged into darkness, it was the unfettered quality of defeat, a twisted whirlpool of just black. Not even moonlight from the six moons beamed across the floors or made the bars of the cell gleam. Only calamitous shadows, their arms reaching out for Cynth, wrapping her in a choking embrace.

    But darkness always had to come before the light.

    A shroud of smoke would part to unveil the truth, the humans' power, decimating the sources and leaving the hibri in ruins. Cynth would part it herself, if she had to, but first, she had to get the fuck out of the cell, the fuck out of the dank.

    Chills rolled across her, igniting her as a glacier that was rapidly melting underneath the heat of her losses. Losses weren't meant for the Leeyungs.

    Rough breaths broke in and out of her lungs. Heavy and weighed down like rocks, Cynth felt each heartbeat drag her further into this nightmare. She had to piece it together, had to bring everything back to how it had to be, to how she needed to be.

    It was dark enough for her to slip her icy, calloused hand across her brow, and to pluck a singular hair from the first patch she grabbed. A ring of pain, almost a bell, rippled through her, fingers going numb from how many times she'd pulled in the past hour. Stop mutilating yourself.

    Zoya's forbidding, biting command never failed to leave Cynth frigid.

Thousands of thoughts continued to hit her as though they were Selino's multicolored lightning strikes.

What would her parents think of her roaming around Selino in an attempt to prove herself, yet only winding up worse than she had been before, the cracks of stress webbing themself around her and leaving her exposed, bleeding?

How had she gotten so close, then been taken so far? How had she lost everything she'd worked for in ten minutes, maybe less?

How had she fallen so far when she'd stood so tall?

Cynth pulled out an eyelash.

She tried to ignore it when her fingers tightened, burned, and deadened with the pressure.

Cynth couldn't focus on those things. She had larger things to turn to, larger things to push past.

Peeling her fingers apart, she let the eyelash fall to the ground, even if she couldn't see it from the lack of lighting in the cell.

Fight it, Cynth. You're too good to do this to yourself. You shouldn't.

She rose to her feet, silver fabric rustling around her, rippling like the water they'd found the source in, rippling like a nightmare that had made itself known to Cynth.

This was an advantage. Cynth couldn't let herself collapse on the inside, or else everything else that remained would collapse, too.

She was rebuilding, and the faster she got that done, the faster she'd be back to getting the sources. She could take the rana one back, she could find the others, and once that was done, she'd destroy them.

No more magic, no more people to fight the humans and their upcoming rule.

Cynth was in a better situation than she had been in moments ago, walking alongside the Voc (those damn rebel hibri) member who had her in his custody, Will being dragged close behind. He was going to bring her somewhere where escape would be a thought of the past, where her parents would fight for her return tooth and nail, where they would lose more to get her back.

If they even went for her to begin with.

They didn't care for her as a daughter. They cared for her as a political object. A leg up among their competitors, to make the humans seem more human.

Cynth fisted her hands in her too-baggy clothes instead of reaching for another hair.

Human guards had to be wandering around along the dim hallways. She could hear their footsteps, tapping incessantly as more and more passersby stumbled past the doors. In between those steps, the dripping of a leaky faucet, or the swaying of a stray, mostly burnt-out lightbulb, she could hear her name, spoken like a quiet curse.

Cynth Leeyung.

She was a Leeyung, and she had been jailed. They wanted the whole building to know it, too, it seemed, with the amount of gossip that hung in the hallways.

No amount of manipulation would make them cross her father. She was being backed up into a corner, and she needed to make sure that was changed. Fast.

If she didn't get out of the jail, Leon would have to retrieve her, and then she'd be back in the palms of the people who she needed to show she wasn't weak, all in her weakest state.

Then, of course, there was always the option that he wouldn't, that he no longer cared enough about his fool of a daughter who fell victim to her anxiety too easily, to get her from the jail.

Cynth's freedom was dissipating even more than it had in her family's estate.

There had to be another out, another way that she could exit the jail without having to sweet talk those who ran it. Cynth exhaled and tore her hands through her wig, but not aggressively enough to pull it out of place.

Will and the Voc member were somewhere in the cell, but that didn't mean either of them would be any help. The rebel was on the wrong damn side. Giving into his own demise would help him, but instead, he was defiant, and fought against the humans. He wouldn't be a playing piece in the plan that Cynth needed to concoct.

Will... Willa Fen.

Cynth wasn't even going to try with her.

She was on her own, fumbling to make everything connect, because if it didn't connect... she'd be more fucked than she already was.

"Where the hell are you two?" she demanded in a hushed voice, circling around the cell. When her foot collided with a crumpled form on the ground, and a muffled grunt followed, Cynth assumed she had found Will. "Dumbass one, accounted for. Go hole up in a corner instead of the middle of the floor."

Based on the rustling noises that followed, fabric colliding with cobblestone, Cynth was fully certain that Will had just rolled into the distance.

Annoyed, Cynth rubbed her temples. She was the only intelligent person in the building, at that point.

Cynth surveyed the cell, hoping that her eyes would accommodate to the sour amount of brightness in the area, but had no luck. It was almost as though she'd been pulled out into a starless night, floating among the oblivion, falling farther and farther away from her target.

She asked, "Rebel?" Her voice was clipped and strained. He didn't deserve her attention.

"I have a name, you know," came his reply, from a corner that was opposite of Will's.

"You hibri don't deserve to be called by your names." Cynth paused, if only for the effect, and then finished, "Rebel."

He corrected her, "Damon, actually."

Cynth snapped around to his direction, graying eyes blazing like arrows ready to be shot. With a sneer, she sniped at him, "Shut the fuck up."

Rebel — or, rather, 'Damon, actually' — really didn't deserve her attention, Cynth came to find, especially when he said, "You swear too much. Takes the edge off."

"Rebel, this edge is going to stab you if you don't do what I say."

If only she had her knife. Multiple would've served better, but Cynth was peeved enough that she was certain she could knock him unconscious with a brick.

"Rude." A sigh rattled off from Damon.

Thankfully, he fell silent soon after, leaving Cynth to almost-silence, broken by the guards scuttling about outside.

There was no light at the end of the tunnel in sight, and if Cynth had to carve a hole into the end of it with her supposed edge to catch the light, she would.

First, she had to walk to the end of the tunnel.

Cynth began pacing around their confinements, hundreds of thoughts zig-zagging through her mind as though they were stray lasers unleashed from the barrel of her gun. Each one incinerated a preceding through to ashes, which fell flat against her hopes of escape.

The heels of her combat boots slammed against the floor with each shot, each concept or idea. Click, clack, bang.

She had to wait for someone to bring them something, or to fetch them for something. Food and water, or maybe they would pull her out to question her so they could reach Leon. Even though the latter was a stretch, they wouldn't go without feeding the daughter of Altiu's most important politician. He'd raise hell about it later, if only to make a display to the public that he cared for her.

Which he did not.

That didn't particularly rub Cynth the wrong way, because she didn't quite give a shit about him, either.

Click, clack, bang.

    All she had to do was wait for one of the guards to bring them food. Considering the fact that there was no light in the entire damn cell, they would have to have a flashlight, or something of the sort. They would also have to have a weapon.

    Click, clack, bang.

    If Cynth loitered around the door, when they brought her food, hopefully with a light in-hand, too, she could make a reach for the weapon and —

    "You've got the most annoying shoes I've ever heard."

    Damon's obnoxious quips had returned. Cynth froze where she stood, but only for a second, as she abruptly lifted her foot and slammed the heel down onto the floor as loud as she could muster.

    The noise rang through the walls, clung to the bars, and most importantly, was a terrible, irritating sound. Despite the circumstances, a smile tugged at the corners of Cynth's lips. "And you have the most annoying voice, Rebel. As I said earlier, shut the fuck up."

    There was a brief, heartbeat of a cease in the conversation, if you could even call their passive, stilted exchange a conversation. Then, Damon inquired in a sing-song voice, "What's the magic word?"

    Cynth wanted to give him an unfriendly gesture, but the darkness stalled her capability to do that. Instead, she settled for, "Disrespectfully, Rebel, the magic word is fuck off."

    "That's two words."

    Cynth reached out for the bars closest to her, twining her fingers around the metal, which cast a shroud of ice across her already corpse-cold fingertips. She smashed her words together, keeping her face painfully blank as she said, "Fuckoff."

"Creative." Damon feigned an impressed tone.

"I like to think I'm an imaginative girl."

"Yes well, everyone's sense of self tends to slip after several hours in a cell." Cynth assumed he was giving her the most unexpressive face in the history of unexpressive faces.

Damon believed he was a lot more important than he actually was. In reality, he was a mere bump along the road, meant to be stepped on, just like the rest of the hibri company he kept. With a scowl, Cynth told him, "Your sense of your place in society seems to be slipping, too, Rebel."

"Does she always call people belittling names when they don't do what she wants?"

Will's tired voice followed, "Yes. I'm Willa."

"And for good reason." Cynth recalled when Will had failed with securing half of the map on the beach, after she'd fought those miserable hibri. That was one time among many in which Will had fucked up monumentally.

The exchange of ripostes fell slack, and Cynth tried to tear herself away from the rest of the world, tried to fall back into the welcomed rhythm of planning and thinking and anything to get her out of this immensely dire situation.

But she was interrupted before she could enter the swing of things again.

Words, different from the chit-chat about her family's power, their influence, and contacting them, echoed down into the cell. Smooth words, relaxed with the weight of leadership.

"I should've just taken her myself. Lyla, Aidyn, I promise this won't happen again."

Cynth had heard that voice before.

And it belonged to the goddamned maxi hibri who had fought her — Cynth refused to say beaten — and it meant that she was here now. To get her. To bring her back to the patrias jail, to once again use her as nothing more than a bargaining chip.

When would she stop being used?

Cynth's heart began to race, thudding against her chest with a vigor that only came from fight or flight situations. Poisonous adrenaline warped her veins, replaced the blood with desperation, coiled around her, and shook her. She had to stay alert, she had to get out of this before the hibri, Ryne, got her hands on her.

But by the looks of it, she'd brought company.

Aidyn. Lyla.

Three hibri. That was what she was up against, all on her own, because Willa was useless, and Damon was a rebel.

    Shit. Shit. Shit.

    Cynth didn't move an inch, she didn't even inhale. It was so dark that if they didn't bring a light with them, they would have to search for her in the cell. And if everything went as planned with that, maybe she could unarm them in the darkness?

    Then again, attempting to stay unmoving was a lacking idea, considering she was fairly certain that they could hear her heartbeat.

    Footfalls bounced upon the floor outside, and then a question from one of the guards, Cynth supposed.

    "This is a human jail, hibri. What are you three doing here?" A far more serious voice, compared to the guard that had imprisoned them in the human jail in the beginning. They weren't going to get lucky again with an amateur.

    "You may have two captives of ours, along with a fellow member. There was a mishap, and we've been searching for them; just let us take a look, and we'll be well on our way."

    A mishap that had been spurred by Cynth, herself. If they got their hands on her again, she'd be fucked. Absolutely fucked. Anything they had planned for her would be amplified.

    Cynth drowned out the need to curse beneath her breath as she tried to listen in on the rest of the conversation.

A sigh, followed up with, "Place any weapons you may have on the floor. Don't try to hide any. Past this checkpoint, unpermitted weapons set off an alarm."

Cynth wouldn't have to disarm them, could avoid letting their magic be used on her. A slow, thankful breath loosened out of her mouth.

Metal collided with cobblestone and the telltale noise of blades hitting the ground and guns rocking against the floor rocked the building. They were giving way to their own loss, they were giving way, and they would fall, just like she had. If they fell, she could stand tall again.

She could make everyone know how wrong they had been to ever doubt her.

"Ryne, I'm not waiting anymore. I can't." A masculine voice, presumably belonging to Aidyn.

And then a flurry of footsteps, down the hallway, closer, closer, closer. Cynth pressed herself against the wall closest to the door, braced herself, steeled herself into calmness, because fights like this were where she was calm. Where she knew what she was doing. Where she could win, if only she played a few factors in her favor.

Now the odds were tipping more in her direction. Ever so slowly. Ever so necessarily.

"Keys for cell five," called out another guard, and there was a sharp jingling that followed. The beaming of a flashlight, near burnt-out, swayed down the hallway, a dull, flat yellow. Only bright enough to allow them the time to open the lock to their cell.

Keys struck each other, and one entered the lock. One twisted the lock.

"Addy — we aren't cuffed!" called Damon's voice, ridden by distress.

But it was too late for them.

With a groan, the door opened.

Sweat dripped down Cynth's neck, even in the cold atmosphere. Adrenaline began to pump faster and faster through her. Too much of it too fast.

The flashlight connected with the human guard. A singular gun on his waistband, swinging there, already placed on red. Red like fire, anger, and the hundreds of ways that Cynth had to twist this into her success and their undoing.

Cynth threw herself forward, the wind smearing against her so quickly that it almost felt as though she hadn't moved at all, the world tilting around her, and the gun approaching her. Her hand curled around it, dragged it free from the holster attached to the belt, and flicked off the safety.

The gun surged with a mighty click, rushing with the burden of fatality.

The red light was powerful, submerging the cell into a frothy mass, illuminated by a charge that looked like it had come out of hell itself.

Cynth turned the gun at Damon.

Boiling red, boiling hot, and bursting with the ability to turn him to nothing more than a pile of ash, darker than the prison that they were locked up in. Darker than the death he would experience if she were to pull the trigger.

"No!" cried Aidyn's voice as he threw himself against the bars.

More footsteps continued, Ryne and Lyla making themselves present. Lyla, the caela that Cynth had shot the morning before, a dark sheet of hair sharp against the lines of her face. Ryne, the one who she had fought that same morning, too. The one who had taken her to the place where she was breaking out of, once and for all.

Aidyn, who, in the red lighting, Cynth found that she had also fought, on that shoreline. Technically, she'd won.

The human guard blocked all of them from entering the cell, shocked, with widened eyes and a half-agape mouth at seeing the Leeyung daughter in genuine action. Likely, he'd heard the tales of how quickly and effortlessly she wiped hibri off of the board, and likely, they were all coming back to him, swaying and dangling in front of him — a nightmare of a bait.

Killing Damon wouldn't do much for her.

But using him how others planned on using her... would.

Aidyn was already pushing off of the bars, moving to shove the human guard out of the doorway, desperation wild within his amber irises. "Stop!" Cynth shouted, securing her grip on the gun. "If any of you fuckers move one more step, one more inch, I swear on every hibri I've ever killed that he — " Cynth waved the gun toward Damon, "will be the next one."

Aidyn stopped dead in his tracks, shock-still. Panic burned within his eyes, but within a single second, it twisted into something with more depth, with more wrath: anger, rising around the flecks in his eyes faster than the whip he'd carried long ago. Voice low and blurred, he told her, "Step the fuck away from him."

"I'd suggest the same to you, Addy," Cynth smiled, using the same nickname that Damon had earlier. "Come any closer, and your dear Damon will be shot to ashes."

Aidyn opened and closed his mouth, letting his hands drop from the bars, and stepping away from the cell as the red laser blazed harder. Harder. Harder.

There were two types of red. One was hearth, home, romance, and hundreds of other happy, bright meanings. Then there was a different sort of red, the red that snapped and unfurled within the transparent barrel of the gun. Blood, anger, and fury, wholly ready to snap free.

All Cynth had to do was press the trigger.

Lyla reached out for Aidyn, grounding herself on his shoulder, or perhaps it was closer to grounding him with the reminder that she was there. A similar rage stretched across her expression, as though she could rip Cynth to shreds at any second.

Not before Cynth got around to cutting her pretty little wings off, though.

Ryne put her hands up, not stepping forward, but not stepping away, either. Her golden tail was more orange underneath the red, flicking about with crossness, with outrage.  "Miss Leeyung, this can be resolved. Put the gun down and tell us what you want."

Cynth was not going to put the damn gun down.

"I want to get out of prison, darling rebels. Do that much, and I might not be as obligated to shoot you to cinders."

There was a little tilt at the corner of her lips, melding with the cool detachment that was undisguised within her silvery, titanium eyes. Delight heaved itself through Cynth as she savored the moment.

The gun in her hand, the setting red. The black bricks and stones below turned the color of wilting poppies in the spring, all just as lethal as the trigger she wanted to pull. The rebel, face off-put and nearly stunned as the barrel aligned itself with his torso. Those outside, all shaken by her actions, all rattled and all lost amid the chaos, just how she had lost that morning.

It wouldn't happen again. It never fucking would. Leeyungs... don't... lose.

Cynth gritted her teeth as Damon tilted his head over to Aidyn, their eyes locking through the blazing fire of the laser, panic sharp within Aidyn's, and diluted alarm in Damon's as he told him, voice wavering, an arrangement of words in the caeli tongue. Cynth had heard scraps of the language before, the way that it all meshed together into an arrangement of clicks and rolling syllables. She could read a large majority of the tongue, but aloud?

Cynth didn't understand a thing, but she didn't have to. All she had to do was understand the negotiation for her freedom, so she could get back onto the path of recovering each of the sources and destroying them, destroying any semblance of power that the species had within their clutches.

Thoughts bled between Ryne's mind, Cynth could tell, as she carried her gaze across the room, not stopping until it rested directly on Cynth. They made eye contact, a rusty, bleached gold striking against silver-white, purged by black of the moon-speckled heaven's above.

"Tick tock." Cynth swung the gun around recklessly, as a bullet may fly out at any given second. There was still a venomous smile tearing at her lips. "Make your call, Ryne. Make your call, because if you don't, I might just run out of my patience and shoot him right now." Damon was stationary, but his brows were woven together with concern, stare bouncing between Aidyn, Cynth, and Ryne.

Silence submerged the jail, loaded with the emotions that were sprawled out. Worry, stress, tension, exhaustion, and determination, the latter attributed to Cynth more than anyone else. The whites of her bones peeked out from beneath her ghostly pale skin as she pulled her clasp tauter around the grip of the laser gun.

Before Ryne could make her decision, Aidyn nearly commanded his own leader, "If you don't let her go..." There was a flat gleam in his eyes, desperate, pleading, hand-in-hand with the slight threat sheathed underneath his words.

"We may have a deal, Miss Leeyung, but the terms are simple. You may go free with your... friend... over there, but — " Ryne gestured in Will's direction, who Cynth had essentially forgotten was there to begin with. She was flopped over, like a dying fish, on the cobblestone, in the corner that she had wobbled over to. Her deep brown hair was spilled across her dark skin, and she also looked like the most tired person Cynth had ever seen in her entire goddamn life. Ryne continued, "but Damon stays with us."

Cynth inhaled. That was a step forward. But also a step backward.

"Let Damon go with you?" Cynth tossed her head back with laughter, never once shifting her gun away from her intended target. "How can I trust you won't just dart back there, get your weapons, and grab us again?" She needed her leverage. Needed it. Without it, there was too large of a chance that they would hunt her down again. If she had a gun trained at his back on the highest setting the entire time, that meant they couldn't chase her down again. They didn't want Damon to be at risk.

Cynth didn't care if he was at risk or not, as long as this worked.

"Damon stays with us." Ryne's tail curled in on itself as she tilted her head at Cynth. "Those are the only terms we will agree to."

She could shoot them all, if they didn't let her take him. She wanted to rub it in, wanted to leave them hurting. Toting Damon around on her hunt for the sources wasn't the best thing to do, but she wanted to leave the people who had hurt her aching from a loss with such a great magnitude. Mostly Aidyn, whose face was still ironed into jutting lines of fury. Something like this would break him.

Something like this would hinder his future searching for the sources.

But if she did turn to shoot them, how could she trust that Damon wouldn't lunge for her? If she did switch to this final track, this final Plan Z, she'd need to shoot faster than she had ever shot anyone before, all on oranges.

Because killing the most prominent member of the Voc would only paint a larger, more vibrant target on her back than what was already there.

Perhaps one more threat would do the trick, without Cynth having to take those risks, putting herself in the center of peril once more.

Her voice was honed down into a warning when she grinned, "He stays with us, or he stays as ash. Pick one, Ryne. There is no in-between." Cynth cocked her head, masquerading as blameless, even though she was far from it. "It truly would be shitty to lose one of your members, all because you couldn't make the right decision." She made sure they all saw it when she pressed her finger harder against the trigger, blood rising to her fingertip, the gun swelling with the expiration of her enemies.

Lyla tightened her grip on Aidyn and whispered to Ryne, "Ryne. Let him go with her. We can't lose him. Not after Dalia."

Doubt swirled within Ryne's face, twisting it up into sharp cuts and blurred lines of hesitation and certainty. Her tail swatted the heavy air again.

"I can't lose him," Aidyn breathed, voice so low that Cynth wouldn't have heard had she not been able to read his lips, which quivered when he spoke. "Not again."

Hesitation melted into absolute certainty within Ryne. The urging of her members pushed her over the edge, pushed her far enough to say, "You can take him." After the statement, she lowered her head, almost in disappointment at her failure to protect him, at her failure to secure Cynth.

"I see we've met at a consensus, in that case." Cynth didn't lower the gun, but she did fling the door farther open, the smile on her face not falling once. She swung closer to them, seeing imprints of her actions in their expressions. "Lovely doing business with you, rebels."

Cynth waved at the lot of them, tilting her head at the nearest human guard. He looked at her with a widened, doe-eyed look, terrified from watching the display unfold in front of him. "Tell your... aged coworker with shoulder-length hair that I appreciate the damn assistance."

She didn't take her gaze off of them, but did call over to Will, "Willa! We're leaving. Get the fuck up. Same for you, Rebel, unless you'd prefer I shoot you to nothing but ash." Cynth waved at them, and didn't stop doing so. Not until they were both by her side, Will with purple bags underneath her eyes, bags that shifted to dark magenta underneath the watchful, tragic inspection of the red lasers, and Damon with shock beaming over him as he stepped next to her.

They pressed forward, and Cynth never moved her gun, never let it fall, never drew it away. Drawing it away could possibly draw her demise into existence, and Cynth didn't want that.

Damon cast a final glance over at Aidyn, and Cynth swore that she saw them break down the center, a cutting scar that snaked down a porcelain glass. He murmured something else in Caeli, something that easily would have left anyone else heartbroken.

And Cynth? She really, really didn't fucking care. This was about her and what she needed, not who she broke apart to get it.

The guard looked over at Cynth, still stricken by the events of the night. "The closest exit," he began, raising a shaking hand down the hallway, "is down this corridor, take two rights."

Cynth didn't bother with thanking him. All she did was incline her head toward him, silent.

A single thought dangled in the center of her mind: What the hell was next?

Leaving. She had to get the fuck off of Altiu, because that would be where the target was painted the strongest. Cynth would plunge into the water between the continents and cleanse herself of the ash from any lasers she had shot on her journey to the jail, cleanse herself of the thick, dried paint. There were other sources. Just because they were out of one, that didn't mean that others weren't out there.

And she needed to get to them.

Resistant and combative of everything that had gotten her here, Cynth yanked Damon in front of her harshly, extracting a sullen grunt from him. She placed the barrel of the gun directly at the small of his back and instructed, "Take the directions the guard told us. Go out of place, and I won't delay shooting you." Damon stumbled ahead with a strained nod, and began to walk past their cell, cell five, but halted when Aidyn's voice entered the fray.

"If you lay a finger on him, I'll kill you."

She stopped with Damon and Will. A serpentine smile curled Cynth's full lips, and she taunted, "I'd like to see you try."

｡･ﾟﾟ･｡

The outskirts of Monsum City were bursting with undergrowth and sheltered forests, weighted with ample brown hues that blended to the black marble night, speckled with sugary spills of stars. Mountainous terrain extended forward, foreboding and elevated above all. Slate danced into the slivers of the mountaintops, interrupted by collections of the caelis' buildings, which were composed of old, oyster-pink bricks and roofs slotted over arched windows and beams.

    Cynth didn't pause to admire the scenery, but she did pause to acknowledge the path she would have to take. "Willa," she told the girl, who was hunched-over and dragging her feet along the grassy Selino ground. Her clothes were slowly drying after sinking into some of Monsum City's lakes, ponds, and other various bodies of water, but the dark surroundings of the jail, and now the dark surroundings of the forest, weren't doing much to help the matter. The fabric still clenched to her sides, rumpled and rippling. "Scratch the rana source, we can get that later. We're going to the port."

Altfem was the closest continent to where they were at that point, northeast Altiu. If Cynth could get to the port with the others, hijack some sort of boat... Altfem was where they would find the next source.

At least, that was what Cynth hoped. She had no leads, no connections, no anything.

But Altfem was where she was going.

"We're going to Altfem," Cynth told them just as much, marching forward and leaving footprints behind. Both of them followed, all the while Cynth made sure that her gun was still fully operational, the red laser still beaming inside of its barrel.

If Damon tried to run, Aidyn would be trying to kill her, soon.

Their funerals, not hers.

Cynth, guided by only the light of the six moons and the stars above, trekked ahead.

She was sensational with her sense of direction, navigational and thoughtful of where things could be, but finding a port, in the middle of one of the most chaotic cities on one of the most chaotic nights of the year, could prove to be a challenge.

Cynth withdrew the gun, and scrolled through one of the bars on the side, but not the bar that turned down the setting. The bar that showed scanned transcripts, information, and above all else, maps.

On her old gun, she'd scanned the information she'd taken from her father's office on Tercy Cess. But the maps of all of the continents and their capitals had been there, too.

Cynth wondered if a prison guard would have something similar.

She scrolled through prison schedules, maps of the prison layout, even a few emails, but only stopped when she got to ALTIU, a sharp, capitalized block of text that grabbed her attention. Cynth pressed the knob on the bar in, and opened up a projection of Altiu itself out of the barrel of the gun.

"Thank fuck," she exhaled beneath her breath.

Cynth beamed the barrel at the ground, eyeing Damon out of the corner of her perpetual glare in case he were to run. It was a physical and political map, showing the boundaries of cities like New Earth, Monsum, and Wirien, all upon the features that Altiu had to offer. She zeroed-in on Monsum City, and carved out a path to the port in the back of her mind.

Altiu spearheaded the exports of Selino, so there were ports on every corner of the continent, but all Cynth needed to know was what direction to go. She consulted the compass rose in the lower corner of the projection, and soon found that going west until they found it was all they had to do.

With a snap of her finger, Cynth closed up the projection, and leveled Damon with a singular glance. "I don't trust you for shit, but I also don't want to carry this gun around all fucking night. Just know that if you get out of line? My reflexes are damn good, and I won't hesitate to pull the gun and shoot you with a red." As though she'd been commenting on the cuteness of a pet, Cynth raised her brow and was all smiles at Damon.

He was unresponsive.

Taking it as a good thing, Cynth shoved the gun into her belt, turning the safety on. The red still flickered, even behind a layer of her silver clothes, guiding them forward.

That was all they had left to go.

Cynth raised her lashes to the moons above, and she walked.

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The ocean delivered a flash of blue in the moonlight, folding in on itself with each tide that rose. Wooden decks stretched out ahead of them, where arrangements of ships were docked. There were a few sailboats, algae creeping up on the bows from disuse. Cargo ships were the largest, most imposing objects on the horizon, hulls clad with metals and people scampering along the decks. Figures loaded and unloaded crates of Altiu's most important resources and exports.

    Cynth didn't care about the sailboats or cargo ships, as the only thing they needed to get off of the continent was a speedboat.

    Cynth took the stairs down onto the main portion of the port two at a time, 'annoying' heels clanking against the soaked wood. She trudged down onto the lowest dock that contained the speed boats, examining her options. Each one was sleek and slim, equipped with the finest technological advancements that Selino had seen. Of course, humans had been responsible for those advancements.

    Hibri and patrias had always been inefficient.

    Cynth stood on the very edge of the dock, letting the toes of her boots dangle over the clear water. If she peered close enough, underneath the guidance of the moon, she could see grains of sand and swaying fish occupying the bottom.

    Will joined her, limbs appearing heavy. Damon was the last one to make his way over to the dock, annoyance pressed into his forehead, and gaze sharp for it being so late in the night. If Cynth had to guess, it was nearing two in the morning, but the port was still fully operational, day in and day out.

    A swish sounded off from their right, and Cynth whipped around, hand pressed onto her gun. She expected a hibri, a member of the Voc, the rebel group that was viciously anti-human, to appear before her, but there was only a human man, seemingly in his mid-twenties, clutching a rope. With the wind, his button-up shirt rustled, and his brown hair coiled. "Can I help you?" he asked, accent thick. Cynth couldn't entirely pinpoint it. "We don't typically grant citizens entry past midnight."

    "I'm not your typical citizen, you'll find," Cynth said, wrapping a coil of her wig around her finger. The man took her in, waiting to find anything particularly different about her.

    His mouth opened, when he saw her wig. "Miss Leeyung," he addressed, raising his head at her. "An honor."

    Cynth's mind was reeling. If he'd heard of her arrest, this could all crash and burn. She hoped that he hadn't, and continued on, "Could you perhaps provide a speed boat for our journeys? Official human business, you see. In preparation for some upcoming speeches my father is giving, I need to do some research for him. Excuse the hour of departure. It's last minute work."

    He gave her a wide grin, a gap between his teeth flashing. "Of course, Miss Leeyung." He turned around, striding down the dock and returned not even two minutes later, a set of keys swinging in his hand. "For the silver one," he gestured to the end of the line of boats. "I figured it would match your attire."

    "Thank you," was the only response that Cynth offered before pushing Will and Damon into the boat. They dropped onto the deck, and she swung herself into the boat, too, jostling the keys as she did so. She signaled to the man, and inserted the keys into the ignition. "Hang the fuck on," she told them. "I'm not slowing down."

    She'd never driven a boat before, but Cynth knew she could manage.

    Will and Damon scrambled to find a place to prop themselves up on as she turned the keys, forced a level all the way forward, and with a shower of fizzing, near-transparent water, took off across the tides.

    Took off to Altfem.

    Water pressed against them on all sides as Altiu became more and more of a thought of the past. Cynth took a sharp left turn, almost sending her two passengers overboard, and found herself thankful for the windshield in front of her. It blocked the majority of the wind, stopping her wig from flying off into the ocean.

    She kept her hands fixed on the wheel, viewing Altiu for one final time to her right as they bobbed against the dark waves.

    Projections, produced by fabri, burst into the sky, arranged as though they were fireworks. Logos of the patrias species, each their own symbols, dazzled the air, surrounding the stars, surrounding the celebration. A burst of cheers enveloped the night as the festival reached its peak.

    Cynth tilted her focus higher, and beheld the moons, all six of them. Six moons for six sources, all of which she would annihilate.

    Stop mutilating yourself, Zoya had always told her.

    And Cynth wanted to, but it would only happen when she had the magic of others to mutilate.

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Thanks cressio.

Almoons' final chapter will be out tomorrow at 11 AM EST.

With virtual hugs, purple Google features, and impending endings,

Gorgeous Full Chapters

(G.F.C.)