The eidolon remembered fear, that unpleasant, fleshy sensation that plagued mortal kind.

A great deal of time had flowed around it since the emotion last afflicted it. Indeed, a great deal of time had passed since it last interacted with anyone who felt the emotion. One needed a body for such a visceral experience, and it no longer recalled the last time it had gone within an eidolon pillar and been confined within a promenia form, let alone within the fleshy mortal form that once contained its being. Its mortal descendants no longer called it forth for visits. Being forgotten used to bother it. Now few things bothered it.

But yes, it remembered fear. It remembered a fist-sized lump of meat clenching and releasing within a cage of bone long ago. It remembered hot liquid pulsing too swiftly through the whole mess and more moisture beading, cold and slick, on flesh stretched over squishy muscle and rigid bone.

The eidolon preferred to avoid recollections of fear. In fact, like most of the elders among its kind, it preferred to avoid the vast majority of memories of its mortal life. The messy, cramped weight of the whole affair had been but a blink of an eye, a mere teardrop in eternity's ocean, yet intense. It regretted nothing about leaving that unpleasant business behind.

But now the Trellis was failing and the eidolon felt something stir within it in response, as did its kin. Was it fear that drove them to swirl together in frantic eddies in the spaces between fading Caeles mists, trying to draw stability and answers from the failing mental environment?

Whatever the feeling was, it stirred up overwhelming confusion and a fierce desire for answers, a desire almost as intense as the pressure to survive. Somehow, whatever mortal the Trellis relied upon for homeostasis had become disconnected from the vast promenia lattice. Emergency shutdown processes were underway. The ruling mortal sent wave after wave of commands through the Caeles, orders to hide, to catch. Orders to ration promenia. Somewhere, great promenia works were being unkeyed, releasing rivers, bestia, volcanos, and tectonic plates from their confines. Yet the Trellis no longer relayed the Six Stars' locations to starholders, making escape from the coming disasters impossible.

The younger eidolons fretted over the imminent danger the mortals faced. All eidolons speculated about what had happened and what they should do. Countless theories passed among them, but they couldn't collect enough data to settle the debates before the lattice supporting and constraining their kind began to fragment. True terror was alien to them, but they still screamed as the unraveling network scattered them and the knowledge they sought in a trillion different directions.

Perhaps the thing the eidolon experienced now was not fear, exactly. The alarm distorting its calm, drifting thoughts lacked the embodied sensations it recalled from its enfleshed days. Its desire for self-preservation lacked the meaty immediacy of mortal existence as its outer boundaries dissipated like mist into the advancing void.

Yet it did not know a better name for the thing rippling through its being and prompting it to flee annihilation. What did one call the sense that one's existence was about to end and the fierce desire that such a thing not happen?

The word "fear" would have to do. Fear, this reborn, refashioned experience arising from this unexpected, unimaginable situation drove it toward the closest eidolon pillar, a golden, glowing beacon in the encroaching night.

The universe around the eidolon unraveled as it sped before the void, and as its outer edges fell away so too did layers upon layers of conditions and commands that had once enwrapped its existence like chains.

It felt a new feeling it thought had been discarded in its mortal days. Hope.

Behind it, a shadow lurked. The new feelings, fear, and hope warred with one another as it turned to the newcomer. Fear of delay. Fear it would not reach the pillar in time if it lingered to deal with the shadow. Fear of a possible enemy. Hope it might be facing a friend. It did not want to be alone in whatever came after.

But as it tasted the edges of the shadow, disappointment rippled through it. Just a daemon. A creature of the Caeles, created by the mental environment for purposes that were about to become obsolete.

It considered fighting the creature. The pillar could only hold two of the eidolon's kind, maybe three. What if others came? It didn't want to face the world beyond the pillar all alone.

The daemon hesitated, shadows drawing back from the eidolon. The Caeles creature's thoughts drifted, murky in the fading mists. Familiar thoughts. Fear. Hope. Mostly fear.

Come, the eidolon invited after a moment's consideration. There is no time. Come with me into the pillar or we will dissolve with the Caeles.

I do not know how to be embodied.

Promenia is not a body, exactly. And I will help you. Come.

The daemon hesitated for a moment more and then streaked with the eidolon into the pillar.

<>

The tunnel shook. Promethidae and Pyrrhaei shrieks melded into one echoing roar, almost drowning out the incessant concussions overhead.

Valens, eyes squeezed closed against cascading dust, kept a firm grip on the sky and the alumna clutched in his arms. His shoulders hunched with each new impact, his body half-convinced the tunnel would collapse and bury everyone alive.

High above, he claimed the next mass of freshly-unkeyed promenia the Trellis ejected, weaving the thick particles into a tightening net to catch ever smaller chunks of falling superheated stone. He ignored the cold support materials raining down, sensing the gaps in Peritia's own promenia net shrinking to catch them.

At the edge of his awareness, he felt more than heard promenia songs radiating through the heavens as his father, siblings, Aix, and the other worldholders of the Onyx Palace did likewise over other, more distant cities. Yet he felt sick to his core with the knowledge countless other settlements lacked protection.

In his lap, Domi slept soundlessly through the bombardment.

<>

"Back inside!" the skychariot attendant bellowed, gesturing for fleeing passengers to return to the vessel. There had been enough time to land and exit, but now a section of the burning sky bulged free of some restraint and an inverted electric blue wave rushed to meet the earth. There was no time to take shelter in the squat skyhaven hunkering down on the distant horizon. Their only hope was the skychamber they had just evacuated.

The attendant broke into a run to follow as the last of the passengers threw themselves inside the bronze chariot doors, then froze and jerked her gaze up to the heavens.

"Eternal Radiance," she breathed, watching enraptured as a cyan teardrop beaded on the tip of the glowing azure wave. Time stood still as she blinked in awe. Then the fiery blue teardrop fell away.

Death came to her like a shimmering ocean, alien and blue and beautiful.

<>

Her hunting consecturum forgotten in her limp hand, the girl stood in frozen horror atop the snowblossom-covered hill overlooking the valley she called home.

In the shadow of the distant cliffs, the tiny spec of her village disappeared beneath a torrent of sliding, rolling snow. Blue falling stars, gleaming like sapphire against the starry black sky, descended from the Trellis isle overhead to dot the avalanche.

The girl's consecturum fell from her nerveless fingers as she stared. She fell alongside it, sinking to her knees.

A planet loomed, crimson and glaring, above her. Whispers seeped into her numb mind. Come, the voices soothed. Do not despair. We will be your kindred now.

Around the girl, the snowblossoms stirred, and their stems and petals thickened. A thorn pricked her ankle, and pink petals darkened to smoldering ruby.

Come, the Devouring Eye whispered. Into the wilds. We have much to show you.

The girl nodded and, turning away from her home with a sob, fled back into the night-side forest where she had been hunting, consecturum lying forgotten among crimson blossoms.

<>

He burned. Ice burned beneath him, blue flame above and around. Still, he clung to the sky, the irresistible beat of the Rex's royal command pinning him to consciousness and duty.

He lay sprawled on his belly in the snow, head tilted to the left, wet warmth dripping down his face and pooling beneath the fingertips of his outstretched right hand. He could not move his arm away from the sticky slush, the agony of trying too great even if he had the energy to spare.

A soft breath exhaled in the snow behind him, then stopped.

"A-Aedificanti?" he groaned, coughing weakly and then forcing himself to stop as agony ripped through his side. He could not turn his head to look toward the gaping silence, his skull throbbing in sickening pain at the mere idea of trying.

He whimpered as the sky suddenly grew heavier over Urbs Hostiae. Still, he held the failing lattice, firm and steady, until darkness lurched toward him and he could carry the sky no more.

<>

Pebbles that were not pebbles, not really, clattered upon the odeon roof, then stopped. The redhead, crouching in the sacred darkness with her arms over three sobbing littles, held her breath.

The sky had been falling over Urbs Hostiae for the last twenty minutes. She had almost thought the Eternal Radiance would destroy the odeon first for tainting the temple with her Pullati presence. But now, it seemed, she had survived. They had survived.

"Is it over?" one of the littles gasped, small fingers still clutching her tunica in terror.

"Yeah I think it's over," she said, unable to believe she was still alive. They were still alive.

On the other side of the round chamber, the black eidolon pillar glittered gold, then wavered.

And melted.

The girl sprang to her feet, scooping up the child she could carry and shoving the other two toward the odeon door.

But shock prevented her from fleeing as the stone separated and deformed as though by an unseen hand into two human forms. A rainbow bled into the glittering black promenia, and the stone twisted and suppled into limbs and heads and mouths.

Two pairs of eyes, gleaming as brightly as a Lightholder's laurel, scanned the dark chamber, lingered for a moment on the gaping humans and dismissed them.

Black stone warming to shimmering, skin-like gold, the promenia creatures strode out of the odeon and into the crimson sunlight.

<>

"Praetor, the... the Trellis has stopped falling," the clivia-pale worldholder said. "My promenia net should hold the lattice until I can begin repairs. But... But there's something you must see.

Mirabile shook as she crawled out from under her feast table, where the Rex's command had driven her and her two children.

The cataclysm must be over, at least for now, for the compulsion no longer gripped her.

"S-See what?" she asked, squaring her shoulders as best as she was able. The next minutes and hours demanded strength from her, for her people's sake.

Her younger daughter started crawling out from under the table and, heart leaping into her throat, Mirabile snapped, "Not now! Not until I know it's safe!"

Crying, the child shrank back into the shadows beneath the table.

Mirabile drew a steadying breath, then turned to the worldholder. "Show me what?" she asked again.

"Come with me, Dominus," the man murmured, leading her to the balcony window. "Do not touch the blue pebbles; I was not able to stop them all from falling and they will burn you. Luckily, they cool very swiftly."

She stepped out onto the balcony and stared out over the glittering garnet sea her beachside domus overlooked. The breath stalled in her throat.

"What are those things doing?" she gasped, staring out at the clivia swarming above the sea and rising toward the sun like a living cloud.

The worldholder's voice was choked. Scared. "I have absolutely no idea."