Dusty stole down the hallway towards Alexa. A maelstrom of thoughts troubled his mind, the likes of which he would not usually give light to, but this was the night he made his displeasure with Alexa's leadership known. There were things that he could say that no one else aboard could say, and when he said them, the precarious balance of power on this ship would finally tilt in favor of justice from the cold, cruel place it had been festering in.

It mattered little that Dusty was also dozing in his workshop, a roll of half-undone tape hanging from the ceiling and his body slumped across the grimy floor. He would wake up in the morning better rested than he had been in years.

Tabai was nothing if not exceedingly kind.

Pechi stood in front of the elevator. Dusty said, in a tough, crackling voice, "You should move out of the way. Alexa and I have to talk about things, and I don't know if you're entirely aware of your girth, but it appears to be blocking the elevator frame."

"Tabai," warned Pechi.

Tabai's heart froze. Dusty's face twitched into a snarl. "What are you on about?"

"Y-you sh-sh-shouldn't lie to me. I j-just walked p-p-past Dusty's workshop. Y-y-you're not exactly subtle." Pechi added, "I k-know what you are."

Tabai froze. This would be the point at which she could easily perish, had she not her wits about her, but she came prepared. "That's funny," Tabai said, the soothespeaker's grace about her speech. "I happen to know what you are as well."

Pechi blinked. "E-enlighten me."

Forgive me for this, thought Tabai, and almost meant it.

"I know your background, for starters." That was enough to widen Pechi's eyes a touch, just as Tabai swept around her side with her tail, putting on her usual girth and grace as she moved back into her Canis form. "Funny. For all that you crave beautiful things, you have such a greater capacity for burning them. Do you understand how many Sentients I would have murdered for a loving family? For a cause? For a chance to champion, when I was small, the beliefs of those who loved me? How about for everything you threw away, because of misplaced faith in a world that hated you, hated your family, and used you, and you did everything you could to support their cause even though your faith in them was shaky, at best. Seems silly, doesn't it? Doesn't it?" Tabai allowed herself a second to breathe, but the violence was at her again, growing like a violent flame inside her. "Your family's fate was entirely your fault, and one would think-- one would assume, one would conjecture that it was all in selfishness, and yet here you are, in deep space, in the least safe place to be. You couldn't even conjure the sense to save your sorry scruff when your whole family perished for it."

Pechi was spitting violently already, sounding like a dumb beast in a trap. Her fur prickled, but she could only manage a slight "F-f--", the words behind any sentiment still caught behind her tongue and in her head.

Tabai leered. "Now, why was that, Pechi? I think you came out here because you had nowhere left to go," Tabai continued, slipping into Cassie's form. Pechi's fur bristled further, and the Canira fell against the elevator, her eyes wide with desperate pain. "The Defenders never liked you, you paranoid, suspicious scrap of fur. Your family was dead. Where could you get away from yourself? Out in space, I suppose! And why not start over while you're at it, pretend there was anything moral in you, anything worth loving? You finally found someone who fit your fancy, broke through that cold, cold, cold selfish heart of yours, and yet when you told her everything, she hated you. You know she hated you."

Pechi closed her eyes. "Don't say that with her voice. She doesn't think that. Cassie doesn't hate me!"

"Did your trees tell you that?" keened Tabai, in Cassie's voice. "Do you know that because you sleep beside her petrified body, whispering things to her, because you know she can't contradict you anymore, you sick, sick animal? She was angry at you when she left. She probably became petrified still angry. Why would she want to hear from you? Don't you think she would be disgusted knowing you still wreathed your body around hers, as if you two were lovers? You're not lovers, Pechi. You didn't make some miraculous turnaround that would enable anyone to love a weasel like you. In fact, you did nothing at all as she calmly walked into death."

"I searched for her for weeks!" Pechi yelped.

"Wonderful, wonderful. As if she knows. You know, she was just so devastated by what you said... oh, I know what you said to her. Don't worry. It doesn't matter what you did or didn't say. Someday, you'll get your wish, as you expressed, and you'll die out here, so that you'll never have to go home... in oblivion, you'll finally get to hide from everything, won't you? Or maybe you won't. See, I've read up on afterlives. I'm sure you had to. There are all these theories on what happens to us when we are removed from this world. Stories say we are judged by our god, by foreign gods, by morality by itself, by friends and loved ones. Some say there's nothing. I've thought over all these possibilities myself, wondering what would happen if I was to perish on this mission..."

Pechi opened her eyes slightly, staring back into what was now Tabai's normal face, or as normal as this Canis form could be for her.

Tabai growled, "Oblivion is the nicest thing that could happen to something like you."

"I--I could t-t-tell them e-e-e-e-e-everything about y-y-you," warned Pechi.

"You won't. You're a coward," Tabai said, curtly. "Never lecture me about morals, and get out of my way."

Pechi stepped away from the elevator.

Tabai descended.

Down on her level, now. No problem. It was time to make some miracles happen. It was time to break silence. Soothespeak. There were a thousand auspicious things Tabai could mutter about such an event. She was well and away prepared to give a thesis on the events of the present, the events to come, perhaps she just wanted to open her mouth. She had tried so many times to stuff her ideals down Alexa's throat. Obviously, she had been the wrong speaker at the time.

'Dusty' entered the room. Alexa looked up at him with the tilted glare that distinguished anger. Her green eyes shone with the light of small stars, and Dusty would not cower, but Tabai had to. So the relationship wasn't terribly smooth after all.

"We need to talk," Dusty said.

"Oh," Alexa said. "Did you think over the proposition from last night?"

Dusty paused. Alexa and Dusty hadn't even been on the same floor the last night. "What proposition? I don't remember meeting with you last night, let alone a proposition. You sure this isn't some seraph delusion?"

"Oh, you know, the preposition where we finally handle Tabai," Alexa said.

Tabai pounced. The wheel swung sideways, and by extension, the ship, but it was rectified just as quickly. Alexa seized it up, sliding back out of Tabai's poor grip and onto her paws. Dusty's face formed a bloody snarl, but most of the blood trickled from his own nose, which had hit the stairs hard. Alexa jumped up onto her back paws and slammed a paw into the small of his neck, forcing him down. Tabai's heart shuddered, but the Canis had little to no physical strength. She could shift now. Her cover was good as blown anyways.

She remained still as death. "You knew."

"You don't sound like him," Alexa said. "It's not hard."

Tabai's eyes closed. "This is the part where you kill me?"

Alexa shook her head. "I hate you. That doesn't mean I want you to die."

Tabai shifted out of Dusty's body, throwing Alexa back. Alexa glared up, trying to move her back with telekinetic force, but dragons were notoriously immune to Canid tricks. It was something in the scales, or maybe something deep in the blood. A thin stream of smoke rose from Tabai's nostrils, and the green dragon moved forwards. Alexa opened her eyes, something not quite fearful but almost contemptuous in her eyes, and said, "Go on. You know that I am not a symbol. I'm not the only gatekeeper to the better world you're looking for. I'm just a part of the old and imperfect one, and the really terrifying thing, my indifference to your suffering, you can't fight that."

Tabai knocked her out against her dashboard.

Space turned in silence around her.

Tabai looked back to the elevators. She looked forwards to the dashboard. She took on Alexa's form, ignoring the bleeding Canis beside her, and decided to let her lie. G'ana looked on from the window.

"Do you know how to drive?" asked Tabai.

G'ana pointed to a button.

Tabai laughed. "Look at me. I'm talking to a ghost. I'm... I'm delirious, aren't I? Delirious, on the verge of death, likely, or else petrification, and I can't even hear you."

G'ana kept pointing at the button.

"I don't want to martyr myself for their cause," Tabai said.

She pressed the button. The undocking sequence began. G'ana continued to point at buttons, and Tabai moved through them one by one. When the comms came on from the real Dusty, just as she was landing, she ignored it. She felt the softer descent continue around her, and her orange eyes, draconic, watched the slumped body of Alexa, who hadn't stirred since. Tabai looked back up.

"You know what's down there, and you know how easy it's going to be for me to fix it."

G'ana put her paw up against the glass.

"I want to go home," Tabai said, "But there's no home to go back to, and there's no better world out here, and there was never any home for me to begin with, and it's not fair, G'ana! It's not fair, and you know it's not fair, and everyone pretends it's just fine and that there's nothing we can do about it."

"Did you come out here to save the world?" asked G'ana.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Tabai thought of the way the sun rolled off her fur back home, and she thought of someone who was like the sun, once. She thought of Sentients she had known who were willing to take a nobody somewhere, of exchanges that had passed without any kind of exchange, and the way the Canis who had been reading her application dropped her jaw and asked her how much she knew about herbology, and if she might teach her. She wanted to tell G'ana about all the small moments that must have taught her young that that it was even worth having hope, and of the way she had believed, once, at least for a second, in those archetypal heroes who streaked across the history books, and she had wanted to be the one who brought her kin back into the light. "I want to believe that there's something worth saving," Tabai said. "The story can't end here, like this, with so much left to save, with so much progress left to make. Omnia needs to survive, because if it doesn't, we die broken."

G'ana nodded.

"And you?"

"I can't talk here."

"Where can you talk?" asked Tabai.

Alexa stirred. Tabai felt the old rage well up in her, but it was tinged with regret. She felt no more sympathy for the golden Canis, slumped across the floor, but now that she had at least bested her, she could feel a tinge of pity.

G'ana's form flickered. "You know."

Tabai opened the airlock, and a storm kicked up through it, knocking the tapestry askew again. It had not been bothered until this point, but the winds today were particularly bad, and they got the entire ship covered in soot, along with Alexa, and Tabai's scaled body. Tabai looked back, certain this might be the last time she ever saw it, and stumbled out onto the field. The world was still covered in dust, and Tabai thought of the lives the creatures on each world might have lived, unencumbered. She imagined that far more of them would be sad, and she thought she hated the seraph for that, but it was so hard to argue with it--

--nevertheless, she persisted. There was a hole not far off that was empty, though its glow had dimmed from its long exposure to the air. Tabai breathed deep and became a dragon, her form compacting as the dragon grew smaller, its spread wingspan growing smaller with its descent. The heat intensified, and Tabai felt golden limbs taking her in, incorporating her into the throbbing heat, and it pulled at her memories in a different way the strange creatures of the second world had.

You don't need that anymore, they told her.

It was so easy to relax into the golden mass of thousands of minds, all of them fully at peace, with no bodies, no forms to inhibit them. There was no way to tell one from the other,if nothing to point at and judge, to hate, and still Tabai cut through them like a knife, shifting into the closest approximation she could of what she had been. Even the Felis-like form, nine tails spread in all their glory, felt like a lie. The seraph horn was so close, but the gravity of the core, of the spirits within it, was closer, and they were all around her.

You don't need to be so sad, Tabai. Those are another world's problems. We've had ours fixed.

Tabai closed her eyes. There was no soothespeaking the mass, but more importantly, there was nothing she could say back. "I like my world broken, thanks?" "I prefer to be violently discriminated against?" How was one to explain that there was anything worthwhile when she was staring into heavens unknown to her kind? Was she supposed to spit in the face of all her ideals, admit she loved the sin that had taken her family, and return into Alexa's open grip so she could be dragged around by the mouth and killed that way?

You've fought so hard, but this is what you wanted. That better world does exist. It's right here. We can bring you to it.

Tabai was finding it harder to hold her consciousness. She couldn't feel her front or back legs, but she could feel someone else's there, holding her up. It was the only reminder that she had ever had a body at all, because there was something to hold.

G'ana was there. She had to be. Tabai could feel her body against her own, both of them growing indistinct in the mass save for as a ripple, a wave, thrashing out against the calmness that threatened to engulf them both.

You two deserved so much better than the world you received, the world called to them. Lie down. We know how to treat our heroes.

"It's just past us," G'ana said. "Tabai--"

Tabai wished more than ever that she had telekinesis, even though she knew it wouldn't help. She grabbed the seraph horn in her mouth, feeling more and more pained as they dragged her back. "I want to love the world," Tabai said. "I want to love our world. I want to believe there's something good that can be done with free will. I want to believe we deserve to have it and all I can see is evidence to the contrary, everywhere. That's what the seraph has been telling us since the beginning. He's saying we deserve to be encased in crystal, pulled apart, stripped of our bodies, who knows, call it a punishment, call it a blessing, but it fixed the problem."

G'ana yelled, "Tabai, go up! We just need to bring it up--"

"Heretic, liar, whatever they think of me--" Tabai couldn't feel her own mouth to move it. "And I'm supposed to take that, go back, and keep living?"

"They're going to fail without us!" said G'ana. "Someday there will be a place where we can find peace outside the seraph's peace. When we return home, we'll be heroes. We are going to write the stories that our children will hear, and someday, we're all going to win our narratives. We get to be the good that shapes this world." Tabai looked upwards, at the light which was rapidly fading above her, and she began to move. It was impossible to do, with her body imploding in on her, and she began shifting, rapidly, just to keep the atoms in place. She could almost keep her form straight, alternating between Canid and Felis, and as the surface grew closer, as she drew closer to the sound of G'ana's voice rattling in the ears she struggled to keep, she felt the grip pull back on her. "It'll be better, because it won't be the easy peace. It will be billions of lives, precariously balanced, and somehow, still, we'll find it in ourselves to do the right thing. We may never overcome ourselves, but we will always be in the process of overcoming, and Tabai, you said it yourself, if we fail now, then we never get the chance to prove the seraph wrong."

Tabai burst out of the gold, growing, wings shining as she emerged into the ash with the seraph horn in her mouth, and she looked over the land of millions of graves, of everyone who had done the right thing because they hadn't had the choice of having a wrong thing to do. Tabai thought of all the things she had done incorrectly, of Alexa, who was likely already sneaking out of the ship, and she almost dropped the horn. Exhausted, she fell to the ground, her wings pulling away.

The ground was soft and warm. Tabai felt herself melting into the dust, but as she did, she looked up at the mirage of G'ana.

Tabai's back leg was going rigid. "I failed?" she asked.

"No, you succeeded," G'ana said.

"I told Pechi every mean thing I could possibly say about her, drove Dusty crazy with paranoia, and knocked Alexa out. There is no way I succeeded," Tabai said. "I'm still turning... I'm still going to go."

G'ana nuzzled Tabai, but her muzzle went straight through. "Net positive," she said. "Best anyone on our ship could hope for."

"Wonderful," said Tabai, weakly. "And what are you, a god?"

"I'm no god yet, Tabai," G'ana said wistfully, "Or ever. Although I have been watching."

"And the others?"

"No, just me, because I made the deal."

Tabai's eyes widened. "You did make a deal."

"Bad deal," admitted G'ana. "I believed all of us were good, and I was... well, I won't admit I'm wrong yet. Neither will you."

Tabai curled up. Her tails were turning to stone. She had forgotten how nice they felt, but they were definitely hers. "My name's not Tabai," she admitted. "I just want to tell you, before I can't see you anymore. It's Anya, but that's a dead giveaway. It's a Felis name." She muttered, "I missed my body. It's so beautiful, and so sleek... why do they hate it so much?"

"If we succeed, I want to talk to you," G'ana said. "I want to go save the world, slowly, if necessary, but I want to save it. I want to believe there's something better out there for misfits like us, for the half-dragon, for the Nyuhenge, for everyone who's ever been told they weren't supposed to exist."

"Us, right?" Ayna said. "We'll do that. When we get home."

"Of course!" G'ana agreed. "We'll get home. You're really an excellent soothespeaker, you know that?"

"When I have something nice to say," agreed Ayna. The stone was edging up to her face now, and she could feel the universe closing in on her. "It's not all that often."