"Someone was in my room last night," Dusty said. "Not for the first time, either. Is anyone mildly concerned about that?" he asked.

"You would appear to be," Tabai said. "How do you even know someone's been in there?"

"Maybe because all of my materials are continuously pushed around. Maybe because I've been hearing voices. There are a good number of reasons I feel like I'm going to foam at the mouth, and frankly, may I say that's not a fun feeling? Not a fun feeling. Tabai, do you have anything to say on this matter, perhaps?"

"That was probably the seraph," Tabai said, her heart beating out of time.

"Seraph has been fairly prevalent on our ship these last few days," Alexa said. "That's interesting."

"Would you like to discuss alternate hypotheses?" asked Tabai. "I assure you I would be delighted if you could find evidence for any outlandish claims regarding the seraph's supposed intervention on the ship, but to me, at the moment, it does just seem like you're postulating, and postulating incorrectly, at that. Furthermore, Dusty, you might want to try some of the herbal remedies upstairs. There are good ones for soothing the nerves--"

"Oh, yes, I will absolutely allow you to poison me. Let me go on up there and get a headstart, now," Dusty said.

"It's not poison. I had some. It's just venomously mediocre tea," Alexa said.

"Dusty d-d-doesn't b-b-believe in anything not made of metal and m-mathematical principle," Pechi interjected.

"Oh really? And what do your trees have to say about th-th-the next place we get off at? Anything useful, or are you two going to continue criticizing us while being expendable?" Dusty asked.

Tabai, given her precarious position and the unusual amount of help she'd supplied in their last mission, which should likely go unsaid for the time being, stayed silent, even though she found Dusty's mockery of Pechi's stutter particularly cruel.

"Easy mission," Pechi said. "J-j-just have to go straight down. T-t-trees say there's a s-s-simple solution, a k-kind of k-key. "

Dusty nodded as if this were all very interesting.

"We'll be there by the end of the 'day," Alexa said, though all of them had been off the proper day-night cycle since Cassie had left, regardless of how dark the corridors were and weren't, and had gotten around to sleeping when they felt like it, waking up to do some approximation of work, and returning to rest. The only exception would be Alexa, who as far as Tabai could tell, not only never slept, but had some magic means of always being at the helm or next to it, relieved by Dusty for long enough to grab food or be in the corridors to menace Tabai or Pechi with her presence. "Rest up."

"I'll go do maintenance," Dusty said.

"Ch-check out Cassie's list," said Pechi.

"That's from the-- damn, what season are we in now?" he asked.

"D-d-doesn't matter. Half the r-r-repairs on it haven't been made."

Dusty fumed and with a defeated drop of his tail, entered the elevator opposite Tabai and Pechi. Both groups exited onto the main floor, where Tabai followed Pechi like a shadow.

The white Canira glanced back, confused, and when she got to her door, finally asked, "Y-you don't have somewhere to go?"

"I wanted to see someone," Tabai said.

With a roll of her eyes so hard that the little Canira ran the risk of going blind, she allowed Tabai into her room. The pair sat in the dark, with Pechi dragging out one of her luminescent cubes in the corner so she could hop up on it and get at her ceiling map, while Tabai touched up the decorations around G'ana and Benn. She stole a few glances at Pechi, who was deeply involved in her work, and bit her tongue. Any moment would be the right one to ask. She was biding her time well enough, wasn't she? Surely action wouldn't hurt, now...

Pechi looked blankly out at her, her front paws curled against her chest as she stood on her hindlegs, precariously. "What are you thinking about?"

"I tend to keep my mind on matters at paw," Tabai confessed. "If you're busy, I can come here tomorrow and fix this up again. Somehow, Cassie's paintings keep going skew, but I know it's silly to attribute that to any kind of intervention on her part... do they have any magical properties? For all we know, they could attempting to contact us."

"No," Pechi said, curtly. "You should find something e-e-else to do with your f-freetime."

"Well," Tabai said. This was going poorly. "I apologize."

"N-no you don't, b-b-because you're s-s-still here. I've t-t-told you I don't want your help," Pechi said. "I don't w-w-want your help with this room, or w-w-with the two of them, and I th-think you're involved in m-making Dusty act like that, and I d-don't like th-that you won't fess up to it."

"My scent would have been in the room. Only thing I could cover it up with is herbs. Only one who's been in there is Dusty, continuously, and if you ask me, that's questionable. Never mind that you all ignored the fact that it would appear Alexa's made the occasional midnight stop in Dusty's room. Doesn't that seem like a massive lead to you? The kind that warrants investigation? Interrogation, even?"
"It seems l-like a l-l-long con, and o-o-only s-s-some of us on this sh-ship have motives. Y-y-you can't make D-D-Dusty and A-Alexa fight, Tabai. They sh-shut down whenever it seems like they m-might make some confrontation with each other," admits Pechi.

"Exactly! Isn't that unsettling to you?" asked Tabai.

"D-doesn't matter. You don't want a friend. You want an ally. Benn would have joined you. Cassie would have felt for you. G'ana would have e-e-empathized with you. I'm n-none of them. I'm not what you want as an ally, and on p-pragmatic principles alone, I'm n-n-not going to help you with this," Pechi said. "P-please leave my room."

"I'm not behind all this. It's the repercussions of their own decisions haunting them," warned Tabai.

"I w-w-wish there were that kind of justice in a-any universe," Pechi said. "But w-we d-don't get r-r-reimbursed for our b-b-beliefs. W-w-we're going to be judged."

Tabai let the door close on her way out, Pechi's dead stare still haunting her. She hoped, or at least she had wanted, to detect some kind of sympathy in the Canira's gaze, but those eyes were still glassy and useless, her head still tilted as if trying to figure out what Tabai was really onto. She was likely on their side out of necessity. There just weren't the numbers she needed to bring around change on here. She couldn't convince them, so what hope did she have of convincing a whole planet...?

Tabai let herself settle. There would be an easy mission today, or tomorrow, or whatever passed for the passage of time in this hellscape. There would be four more, and then they would be home, and she would have her body, if she wanted it, or she could find some other mission to backpack onto, and eventually, she'd find someone who said, "That's a wonderful idea." Maybe she'd just spend her whole life waiting for a sun to walk under, but when she found one, Tabai, in her own form, would walk under the light of a sun.

It felt beautiful already.

---

The next day was the descent pattern. The planet was two mountains, set opposite of each other, and each mountain was poked full of holes. Pechi could not have been more correct about her inference regarding the 'key', which was either a lot of really uncanny guesses drawn together into what seemed like psychic inference, or it was psychic inference that covered well as a bunch of uncanny guesses. The ground, like the last planet's, was mainly dust, but Tabai was fine without a suit on it despite the heat. Pechi had confirmed this for her when she'd exited, and Tabai had been thrilled, naturally, that this meant she got to participate in the now season-or-so-old tradition the group had of walking into vast landscapes and arguing furiously while torturing locals.

Tabai wanted to perish.

Pechi trotted past her, and Alexa by her side, leaving her in the back of the group. Tabai moved forwards, if only because the last few Sentients to ride in the back of the group were no longer with the group, and breathed in the thick scent of ash that covered the air around them. It was almost a comforting scent, although it was one usually preferred in a domestic fire, where it could be left and returned to at the digression of whoever was tending it. The debris got everywhere, too, leaving Pechi so dark she could barely see her 'natural' green coloration under the soot.

"Do we know what we're looking for?" asked Tabai.

"Down," said Pechi. The landscape was beginning to slope, but so gradually that it hardly even felt like a hill. Still, the incline offered a view, through the smoky air, of what appeared to be thousands of graves, lined up side by side. They were not dug into the earth, but rather more like doors, which, though handleless, would be no problem at all for a Canis.

Wonderful.

Alexa approached the first and opened it. Tabai turned away, hoping not to see a body, but it was only a suspiciously shaped hole, which dragged downwards in such a manner that it contorted and seemed to glow from the inside, like a forge. "Well, that's unfortunate," said Alexa. "I take it none of us want to be contorted to death and subsequently burned to a crisp."

"There's your k-key," said Pechi. "One of these holes is p-probably us-shaped."

"So you want to lie in it," asked Alexa. "I can think of more fun ways to perish."

"Do you want to check the thousands of holes, either?" asked Tabai.

Pechi blinked. "I c-c-could probably s-s-start on th-that, but I d-d-dont exactly h-have any way of opening th-them. T-Tabai? Oh, w-wait..."

"What?" snapped Tabai.

Pechi leered. "L-look. A-Alexa, d-do you mind o-opening holes with me? M-meanwhile, T-Tabai, if y-you have any b-bright ideas on h-how to utilize this, th-that would be great."

Tabai stared down at the hole. "I suppose I can look into it."

"Try to do a little more than look," Alexa suggested. "Thanks."

Tabai looked into it. In the distance, Pechi and Alexa opened holes of shapes that could not possibly be those of living beings (organic as they appeared) and occasionally stuck or threw things inside. A few distant mutters of pain could be heard from inhabitants, but Tabai remained fixed at her station. Something about the place was sedative, which was likely how the Seraph coerced all the inhabitants into holes, but more threatening was the fact that some of the holes were empty. Tabai moved to one of those after Pechi and Alexa found the first one and sat there, watching what broiled underneath. It had hands, hands which licked at the sides of the hole with thousands of different appendages, and made the tides at the sides of the bottom of the hole look like something more than tides. A quiet echo beckoned up from the depths.

"I'm s-s-sure we'll find our hole tomorrow," Pechi said. "Th-the 'trees' d-did promise an e-e-easy way out of it, b-but I should have realized the easy was implied our s-s-sacrifice."

"I don't feel like sacrificing a crew member," Alexa said. "Again. I take it neither of you two are dumb enough to think that we'll get the seraph horn, defaultly, if we jump into one of those holes. Even if it's specifically shaped for us. If we don't find one shaped for us, though... I can't see how we're supposed to get in. It's too narrow."

"How are y-y-you and Dusty on spacial size manipulation?" asked Pechi.
"Not my forte, not going to learn it. Takes years of training back on Omnia," Alexa said. "Seraph knows that."

"Seraph knows e-e-everything about us," agreed Pechi. "He m-might have let us ch-cheat earlier, but n-not now, and l-likely never again."

The two of them stared into the depths of another hole, reflectively.

"Tomorrow?"

---

The next day was also fruitless. Tabai stared down into a hole that was not made for her, and then they stared into another hole, as a group. Alexa attempted to carve out the sides with a scythe from the ship, then a pickaxe, but the former made no impact and when the latter proved equally disappointing, Alexa moved it down towards the center, where it melted.

"I take it we're not fishing it out," said Tabai.

Alexa shook her head.

It was a little funny to see her fail, at least. Tabai could admit that. The three of them wandered up for what seemed like legions, Alexa throwing open all the holes and the others checking them. It was no longer entirely clear what they were searching for. There was no way into the holes without entering them. One could not teleport under the ground, and if one could, one would likely die in the mass of gold that may or may not have been alive.

They returned to the ship and docked, where Dusty was in his corner. Alexa tilted her head towards the dashboard. "Think you could help with the repairs? Ash is hell on my sensors."

"Seems like a repair we'll be making often. So much for a quick, easy mission," he said, with a pointed glance at Pechi. The Canira did not puff up at the insult, as perhaps Dusty, being Dusty, might have hoped.

She looked distantly past him, then said, "I'll l-l-look into it. Y-you consult your g-g-gods," her tail flicked as she entered the elevator. "Th-they've been s-so much kinder t-to you."

---

Around the tenth day, Tabai opened the third elevator and found it empty. They were down to five, which shouldn't have been too problematic, but in her mind years of working in rusting and decaying clothing opened before her, as well as the taste of ash in her mouth. She could hear Pechi coughing down the hallway.

Unfixable. Truly, utterly unfixable, unless one had, somehow, the capacity to fit any of those holes. Alone in the kitchen, she thought of bending to the seraph's will, fitting every hole, nigh simultaneously, and entering, grabbing the horn with the ease of her last mission. It would be so simple if she could only get the solo mission. Perhaps she could just talk away while Pechi and Alexa were turned? No, even when Dusty came along, he would want a better explanation, this time. Every day they got here, their hunger for an answer grew.

She had imagined, near the beginning, trusting them with the secret early. She would be the weapon they never knew they needed, her talents used to their fullest extent. It was ridiculous how many times she would be of use, how many times Alexa and Dusty would be forced to eat their words, if only...

... or they could all starve on the ship, together. It was hard for Tabai to say they didn't deserve it.

A fitting way for the worst of Omnia to die, hungry, at the verge of a puzzle their rigid expectations could not mold themselves into.

"You're coming out, aren't you?" asked Alexa, from outside the door. "We're about to go back out for today."

"You keep bringing me on these missions," Tabai said.

"Dusty suggested it. He said you solved the last one easily, in fact, while he was out of sight. For some reason, he believes you're capable of pulling another miracle."

Tabai's fur rose as she open the door. There must have been some static pull from Alexa. Given the Canis's mess of fur, that was hardly surprising.

"The thing about miracles is that they're few and far between," Tabai said, sagely. "When you begin to expect them, as soon as they lose that incredulous luster, that's when you stop receiving them."

Alexa cast her a look as they entered the elevator, as if asking her to proceed.

"I've frequently found your lack of faith in my abilities disturbing, Alexa. Now, I find that you'd rather jump to the assumption that I had somehow mounted the impossible rather than accept that you undervalued me. If I may be so brash, I might venture you'd find that the turn of events was not as surprising as expected, if only--"

"One was using powers outside of the realm of what any normal Canis would be capable of."

"Please, Alexa, I'm referring to ingenuity," Tabai said.

The elevator opened on them both.

"Today could be the day, then," Alexa said. "Of impossible ingenuity."

It was not.

---

Alexa paced the ship. It was thirty days in, though it seemed silly to keep track. Thousands of doors lay open. Tabai had spoken to inhabitants, finally, or those who still had mouths, who insisted they were waiting to be taken into... whatever was at the core. Some kind of golden paradise. It was all next to incoherent and laden in worship for the seraph.

"We c-c-can't keep going d-d-down there," Pechi said.

"We have to," Alexa said.

"It's n-not w-w-working, and w-w-we're going to b-b-bust the ship. Y-y-you swerved the other day--"

"I did no such thing. That maneuver was entirely within my control," snapped Alexa.

"We-- we need to f-f-find some other way." Pechi said, running down a list of things they'd tried again. "I don't k-know why th-this one would be i-i-impossible when n-n-nothing else is, but maybe this is the seraph's way of getting us to t-t-turn around, or maybe there's s-s-something we're missing-- I don't k-know! It was always p-pointless. We're up against a g-g-god."

"Define a god," Alexa said.

"Irrelevant," muttered Tabai.

"Omnipotence?" suggested Pechi, nervously.

In heartbeats, Alexa had her down on the ground, trembling as her life lay within an inch of those startlingly white teeth. "Name one thing that separates me from a god, right now, and I let you go."

Pechi yelped. Tabai almost jumped on Alexa, who held her back with telekinesis that also felt like a mouth around the neck.

"O-o-omnipresence?"

"No. Verhamera's not out here," whispered Alexa, nice and low.

"O-o-mniscience?"

"If she knew everything, why would she set us up to fail?"

Pechi struggled under the grip. "I d-d-d-don't know, free will?"

"Gods giving us free will is an excuse for them to be lazy, Pechi! They've always been lazy with us. We're not going to turn around now and we sure aren't going to cave to this bastard seraph, because we are stronger than gods. You know this. I know this. It knows this, and it's afraid of us, so it's trying to turn us on each other."

Dusty looked blankly on at the precedings. Tabai wrest herself free of Alexa's grip and pounced on her, throwing her off Pechi. Alexa's face welled with bright red blood, turning her fur marigold from its usual electric yellow.

Alexa looked at Tabai, then slowly put her tongue to where the blood was beginning to well from the scratches the Canis had made across her face, right about her mouth. "Sharp claws for a Canis," Alexa said, finally, "Now that I think of it, strange name, too. Tabai, as in... an old Felis breed, isn't it?"

"Tabai, as in the Tabai Bay, in Western Opphemria. I was born there."

"Strange," Alexa said. "Rundown place. Barely inhabitable."

"We can't all be born in Evelscan cities, living life in the very lap of luxury," Tabai said. "I think you owe Pechi an apology."

Pechi hopped up. "N-n-no need. I'll b-b-be upstairs. Y-y-you all can t-take the next mission."

A profound silence settled on the room, like snow, as they watched Pechi go, unflinching. Alexa's tongue was still on the scratches. Dusty moved to the helm, keeping them in steady orbit around the irregular planetoid below. It was almost possible, even from this height, to see the swathe of open graves, like grass bent the long way sticks out amongst its brethren. They'd covered a quarter of the planet. There were no holes for them. All the holes were for Tabai.

"Alexa," asked Tabai, tilting her nose back so that she could almost catch the other Canis in the pearly gaze of her eyes. "If you define a god as something that is worthy of fear, what are you afraid of?"

Alexa stood back at the helm. "I fear incompetence," she said.

Tabai seethed. "You're cruel."

"Efficient."

"No. If you were efficient, we would be off this planet."

"Why is that?" asked Alexa.

Dusty's eyes glimmered, watery, as he stood beside her.

You know, thought Tabai. She stayed awake most of the night. She was worried about being stabbed in her sleep. Such a fate had befallen her parents. She had found their bloodied tails up on the wall at a hall years later, and she had burned the place down.

That was a god to be afraid of. Someone who pinned the small creatures down until they stopped screaming.

Tabai had been forcing back that god for years.

---

Dusty confronted Tabai in the halls.

"Have you been talking to Alexa?" Tabai asked.

"Yes."

"About me?"

"No."

"She should have asked follow up questions, shouldn't she?"

"That would force a confrontation."

Tabai's paws hurt from traversing a land and looking in opened graves. She had tracked dust all over the halls. At some point, wasn't there some small sweeper robot that was supposed to clean up behind him? Had she hallucinated that? The walls were almost plastered with dust. "And you can't have that."

"Nope."

Tabai couldn't trust him wouldn't trust him put on his skin and there he was still lying behind the smug smirking face he probably told her everything and she knew and she was baiting her out they were all waiting on her and they knew that she wasn't to be trusted and they would hurt her if she let them they would put her in the hole and let her burn they knew she would fit if she just got in the right way no matter what the shape was she thought of villages burning she thought of tails hung high she thought of the doors peppered with lilies and Tabai scraped the mirror with a feline's claws but they weren't hers.

What did her face look like?

---

Pechi, Tabai, and Alexa dragged themselves in from another day of opening graves.

"Eventually, we're going to run out of food," said Alexa. Her face was full of a cold indifference that Tabai wanted to rip from her. No. That wasn't it. At the least, that wasn't enough. Tabai wanted to open up Alexa. She wanted to prove her mortal. "You've thought about it. I've thought about it. You know we can't go back past the sun. We likely can't even get through the field, with our fuel, without beginning to risk breakdowns of the ship. It's not made for the number of jumps we'd need. If anyone has a solution, they should offer it now."

Tabai had a solution. She knew that Alexa knew that she knew and she was going to jump her one night. Then she'd save them all and they'd go onto the next planet and use her powers again, and again, because she was more useful than any of them, without fail. It was going to be so easy.

"Tabai?" asked Pechi. "Are you doing alright?"

"I think I saw a hole that I could almost fit into," Tabai said, thoughtfully. "Just the other day. Permission to be foolish?"

"Permission granted," Alexa said, "But the consequences are on you."

That was all Tabai needed to hear.