Avery is packing the next time I slide into the strategist's room. She gathers all kinds of artifacts from the walls and shoves them into a pack, pausing in one corner to brush in a journal, which she regards with an intimate fondness. I sniff the air, tasting an unfamiliar place on it, the memory of something that should be too valuable for me to have forgotten, and I move forwards to meet her in the center of the room.

"You can't go. Something terrible is going to happen." I say.

She nods, understanding. "That's why I want you to come with me, Rena."

The other Defenders watch me with diamond eyes. Surra, Axel, and Rain all crowd the edges, unspeaking, until Rain offers, "It would be good supplementary material to your studies, of course, but we're also happy to have you for field missions." When Avery gives her a look, Rain specifies, "You'd be on very easy missions. We wouldn't want to tax you, and more importantly, we wouldn't want you to get hurt."

"I'm a Defender." I state. This is the sole tenet between me and oblivion, and yet... I did make a promise in that room. I turn to Avery. "Do what you will with me."

Avery nods again. She looks at the room, the two of us taking in the same air, and I remember the two of us pacing a room alongside each other, striding down castle halls, white on white like the bones beneath the Nimbus set up against stars. We were inseparable for a time, our domain all the world's armies and all the world's policies, and she was always trailing my side.

"I'm going to be the Auspicia again, aren't I?" I ask.

"You sound so sad."

"I like Rena. I think... she's afraid... that she's going to die when she gets all of her powers back." I remember this fear, too. "Aislyn was scared. The first Auspicia? When she took all that power on, upon first coming here. She was scared that she would be gone. I think I'm scared, too, but I- if I need to do this, I'll do it for you."

"I want to have you by my side, but I can't make you. I have enough proof just from--" she leans forwards and pricks a small feather from one of the more tender parts of my wings. I yelp in pain, but it's brief and borne more out of surprise than pain. "--this to make my argument. Anyone worth their spot on a Defender team of old could sniff this and instantly tell that there are powerful divine magyks at play here. Your magyks, of course... no, I see the way you're looking at me. You don't need to be in control of them yet. Remember, the other half of that magic is out there somewhere. When I get back, we can work at that, too." Avery taps her nose to mine. "For now, just do your best, Rena. Being you."

She looks to the strategists in the room, and I can see all those intricate conversations passing between them. Their eyes flash with mutual understanding, the likes of which I would die just to be privvy to, and I dip my head. "I'll do my best," I offer.

"We'll do our best, too." Axel says. "All we ever do."

Avery exits through the wall, passing through what appears on first glance to be a mirror into another realm as easily as if slipping through water. Seeing her disappear fills me with another spasm of dread, but the words I could have used to defend myself have all ran and hid. I stand on my own, muttering nothing, and the others wait around me, forming a cluster.

Oh, no. I can't be your leader. Please don't tell me you want something out of me I can't give, because I won't give it...

"You have something to do today, I trust?" Surra asks.

"Not until you assign it." I say.

"Preferences?" Axel draws up what looks like a sheet, using her magnets to grasp it and place it onto the table proper. For such bulky devices, she wields them with incredible accuracy, and several other sets of dual plates (primarily smaller ones) are scattered across the room. I peer at the sheet, but if I had to read this to save my own life, I would just as soon be dead.

"Would you offer preferences to any other newbie?" I ask, anxiously.

"You've earned it." Rain assures me.

I stamp my foot. "But I haven't earned it organically. You're just giving it to me because I'm her."

Rain sighs through her nose. "You'd be surprised what pushovers we are for a little bit of courtesy. It just so happens to be something lacking amongst your peers."

"Surprise me," I insist.

"Yes, your majesty, her Highest Auspicia." Axel drolls.

"Stop that!" I gasp, turning around, and the whole group laughs. Only when I realize it was all meant to be a joke do I join in, but even then, the echo of the obnoxious title follows me through the not-so-random patrol I take out with Indy and Fyera. If I am destined to rule the world, the first thing I do will be to change the title into something more informal.

I want to be called by my name.

"Rena Swift," calls Indy from up the path. "Would you say you're more of an egg nog kind of Canis, or hard cider?"

Precisely.

---

The air is dense when I return, similar to under the Nimbus... everything is under the Nimbus, these days. I look at lights and see the lantern waving in the gloom, or I'll touch the edge of a stool and suddenly I am looking at bones. It does not help that the irritable, weary expressions of several of the other Defenders during Avery's absence make them look like the walking dead.

Not like I see very much of Gale.

"So then I said, if it curls up like that, with no chinks in the armor, how do you kill it? And he said, we wait a very long time." Indy says, "Alright, so it might have been funnier in context, but you have to understand, these were the biggest Sentients I'd ever seen. I imagined them sitting next to an armadillo for hours, looking cross, and I couldn't help myself. It might have been bad company to begin laughing hysterically in--I take that back. There is no bad company for laughing hysterically in."

"She's zoning, Indy." Glaze says, prodding my face with one of her paws.

"I'm paying attention." I insist, with my head on my paws. "I'm only tired."

"From today?"

"I'm more generally tired." I say, opening my mouth wide as it can go and yawning to demonstrate. "I've been... actually trying during missions."
"I'm glad we warrant your effort," calls Gale from the corner of the room as he passes through.

"Buzz off." Glaze calls back. She presses my face again. "He's such a waste of your time. You know that, right? He and Nina are always off spilling maggots about the rest of the group and it's so obnoxious I can't believe no one has confronted either of them yet. He just happens to be good at combat, but even then, he doesn't listen to anyone... I try to be fair to everyone, really, but he's awful. Like a squirt of lime in your milk."

"That sounds interesting." Indy says. "I'll have to try that."

"You are a culinary aberration, Indigo Odd Swift," Glaze murmurs.

Twitch stalks through the room, still alone, and all of our heads raise slightly. When he catches us there in the corner of his vision, he swings around violently, and snaps, "What?"

Indy looks appalled. "Nothing. Do you need help?"
"No." Twitch says, paws sparking with fire. "When's Avery going to get back? I've been working something out."

"You could... pass the message through us, potentially?" Indy offers.

"You're an imbecile." Twitch snarls. "I think I'll pass."

"Actually, I prefer to self-identify as a 'jester' or 'fool'. Imbecile is offensive."

"I should hope so." Twitch says, and then, beneath his breath, as if we can't hear him, "Kingdom of madness." He stomps back out of the room quickly as he'd come, leaving the three of us facing each other with our mouths wide open, revelling in the shock.

I feel guilty. A little guilty. Maybe a lot guilty. "Have you noticed he's been acting strange?"

"Moreso than usual? Maybe a little, at most. He and Thistle have fought before. It's really not as big a deal as it seems. At least this isn't as bad as the time Fyera and Ignis fought. That tore up the entire headquarters! We had to relegate them to separate departments to get them to work through their differences... Rena, are you alright?" Glaze puts a paw on one of mine.

I draw it away. "I'm not sure about this." I stand, stretching myself out, and walk after him.

"You have to let him burn himself out! You're just going to provoke him!" Indy calls after me. "It's okay!"

No. The air smells like carrion today. We are back under the Nimbus. The world is collected beneath a great stormcloud, and my eyes are the light carrying through the darkness, illuminating bone.

"Twitch."

He stands in the hall for what seems like a lifetime. "It's all your fault, you know?"
"What?"

"All of this. If not for you, I would never have been born to begin with." Twitch spreads his paws open wide. "Teeyus are born from magical springs when there are too few Sentients to hold heartlines. A magical phenomena. No parents, no offspring... only a single lifetime, threaded into a heartline, little more than a holdover period. It would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic. It's a quick dip, at least I have that. At least."

"Why would you ever wish that upon yourself?" I ask.

"I'm a mistake, Rena. The longest joke the universe ever played." Fire gleams spitefully in his eyes. "The smallest half of a whole."

"But Twitch--"
"You've laughed too. Don't count yourself out of this." He's ruffling that spot with his paw again. Clenching it to him as if it were an open wound, and yet, no blood flows from it now. "I hate you so much."

"You don't have to be what they want you to be." I offer. Tenuous string. Something to tie the heartline back into. Perhaps just what I want to see in the mirror when I wake up tomorrow, what I'd want to hear from Gale, back in the days... did Gale ever say such kind things? Wasn't it that brute honesty that drew me to him begin with? Something did. This isn't about you. Shut up.

"This is the trap I've fallen into my whole life," Twitch says. His eyes widen. "And yet I regret none of it."

"Twitch."

"Rena." His eyes are red, stained by the fire flickering up his body, and I see the beginnings of teeth growing over his current teeth. His ears split where they curve, which is more noticeable on the one that faces straight down, although he has expertly hidden both. I see the bite mark on his side, surrounded by fur scruffed up so many times it has been worn raw, shining bright in the fire. "Stay out of my way."

It would have been one of the last nice things I ever did for him.

But he's not my problem. I'm just a Defender.