Aegis' return to the sewers had been completely uneventful. He hadn't been afraid of his journey to begin with. No one would suspect him for heading down into the sewers after the sirens.

Cleaning the sludge underground regularly was part of his job. One of the perks of being a slave was being randomly summoned to clean something one of the nobles disliked.

As Aegis was told, more than just the royal family lived in the large palace. Various dignitaries from around the surface apparently took shelter in the palace. The palace was equipped with everything they could possibly need, including the only sanitarium in the city.

So he was expected to randomly blitz off in the middle of the night, all the slaves were.

Aegis had traversed to the manhole as silently as he could, ensuring he shut the lid tightly once he had begun his descent into the sewers. The ladder from the manhole led him down into a familiar labyrinth of tunnels, tunnels that were larger than the hall he slept in.

Suspicious, green and sometimes brown liquid ran down the length of the tunnel.

Aegis had to be very careful and walk on the railings on either side of the narrow maze, which wasn't very hard. He really couldn't risk getting muck on his white garbs, mainly since a slave wasn't really allowed more than one bath a month. He wasn't going to smell like royal shit for the rest of the month just for the sake of discretion.

Balancing himself on the railing and then leaping nimbly back onto the ladder came very naturally to him. Whatever had affected his memory, hadn't quite impacted everything. He could speak, read and cartwheel better than any of the slaves.

Everything about his world was so bizarre. He was a gardener in the smallest garden of an extravagant golden palace in a city called Lichtma. A city that was supposedly thousands of feet underwater. The palace sat upon a hill that overlooked an impressive circular city.

But Aegis saw no dome over the cloudy sky even though everyone assured him it existed. He wasn't sure how they could be underwater and still have the sun above them.

They called it technology, yet he was sure nothing could turn the underwater abyss around them into a starry night sky. If they were really underwater, he didn't understand how nothing moved around them like the plants under the pond in his garden did.

Aegis let out a small sigh as he completed his final ascent out of the sewers. He had just hopped up the final step on the ladder and out to the fresh air again when the dread returned.

A man was standing by the mouth of the manhole, an older man with slick greying blond hair and a clean-shaven, stern face. If there was such a thing as a head slave, this man would be it. He never slept with the other slaves and his garbs were always extraordinarily white and crisp.

"What were you doing in there?" he demanded, his grey eyebrows arching so high they may as well have been part of his scalp.

"What do people normally do in sewers, Kovolic?" Aegis shrugged coolly. The old man had a knack for pissing him off. In fact, he had irked Aegis more with one remark than Ska had managed to in the entirety of their conversation. Nosy old moron, couldn't mind his own business for one night!

Kovolic's eyebrows stayed haughtily up as his expression hardened, "Don't forget your place boy."

"I haven't," Aegis assured the old nuisance coolly, "which is exactly why I was in the sewers and not on the throne."

That was a stupid thing to say, he wasn't supposed to know about his royal lineage. For all he knew Kovolic was part of 'them,' his twin's enemies. It would at least explain why he was always so clean and smelled good. No one smelled that good after constantly putting up with menial labour like the rest of the slaves did.

Aegis kept his face just as impassive though, this wasn't the first time he had been tart with the pretentious idiot. Although, he couldn't remember if he had ever made a snarky comment about being on the throne before. He hoped for his own sake that he had and that Kovolic wouldn't look for any deeper meaning in his words.

"Don't you have other slaves to annoy?" Aegis then demanded, feeling slightly satisfied as the idiot's face twisted into an ugly snarl.

"Listen here, you little—"

But Aegis didn't really get to hear exactly what 'little' nickname he was going to be called, his head had turned towards the other side. He could hear voices and high fake laughter.

Nobles.

This was probably the best present fate could have dropped onto his lap. As a slave, he wasn't allowed to be seen or heard by anyone above his stature. Especially not by anyone in the palace. He didn't even need an excuse to jump back down into the sewers. The only problem, though extremely unlikely, was that Kovolic might follow him. As bad as spending time in the sewers was, spending it with Kovolic was infinitely worse.

He still skipped back down, shutting the manhole lid as tightly as he could behind him, in an effort to deter Kovolic. He was certain the old codger was already gone by now though, the nobles sounded like they were right above him.

Aegis turned away from the entrance. Officially, he was supposed to wait until they left and then return to his 'duties,' but he needed air. He knew exactly where to go to get some without being hushed away like vermin.

As much as they may have seemed like a labyrinth to most people, to him the sewage tunnels were easier to navigate than roads. So long as he didn't fall into the questionable water below, they gave him both privacy and solitude. It didn't really matter how dark they were, his eyes always adjusted sooner or later.

He knew exactly where to go and did so for a good part of an hour until the tunnels ended abruptly. Aegis had to skip to one side to avoid splashing in the sludge that poured out of the giant pipe and into the ground below.

He was in the city now.

Not the fancy part of it though. The royals seemed to think it was okay for their excrement to end up in the deprived part of the city. The tunnel opened up on the face of a short, rocky mountain beside a dark cave. Not far from him, barely a few yards away, the residents had pitched tents.

The first time Aegis had accidentally ended up here, he was taken back a little. Mainly because gleaming and towering quite a distance from him, was the large palace he had just exited atop a very green hill. He knew he had been going downhill in the sewers, they slanted that way, but he hadn't realised how far downhill he had gone until he was out.

To one side all he could see were more caverns that eventually ended in a forest. The forest Ska had wanted him to head towards. On the other side were tents and a single shoddy house with boarded windows. The small building always made him a little sick, even his lowly slave hall in the palace was in better condition than where these people lived.

The people here were nicer than most of the slaves Aegis had met too. They were also the only people that weren't affected by the siren, unlike the rest of the city. They were miners, and they had spent generations mining some translucent ore native to this magical little sphere. Day or night, they were required to work. It was why he sometimes popped over to them during the middle of the night.

Aegis made his way to the house. It wasn't actually a house, as much as it looked like one. The people in this part of the city were resourceful. They had figured out how to use their limited resources to make the best of their lives. One section of the small house had turned into a small office where they would collate information on their stock and sometimes temporarily store the ore. The back of the house, on the other hand, was the nursery where the younger children and babies slept.

He didn't care much for the ore. Precious stones always seemed to entice all the other slaves. He had constantly seen their greed everywhere and was disgusted by it. They would fight over anything they thought was valuable. It was why he had refused to touch, or even look at the ore. He was here for the people, the ore be damned.

He knocked politely before poking his head into the small office. An older man was crouched beside a small boy. Aegis recognised old Rick, the old man was the reason he had decided to pop over to the house. He had not expected to see a child in there though, much less a scrawny, bawling one begging to stay in the nursery.

"Your father did it before you and your grandfather before him," old Rick said kindly to the boy, "mining is not that hard."

Aegis attempted to silently retreat outside, his head was the only bit of his body that had really entered the house anyway.

"Stay, White," Rick's voice called, "we're nearly done."

Aegis let out a quiet sigh, he had almost shut the door too. Rick must have seen him anyway, 'White' was the miners' nickname for him. Whether it was because of his hair, clothes or skin he wasn't sure, but it gave him anonymity and he was grateful for that.

He had a bigger problem right now though. Now that his presence was known, he'd have to stand in the room awkwardly while the old man convinced another little boy that he was old enough to work in the mines.

He was not.

However, the rules in the city were different from the rules of the palace. He was taken aback a little when he learned that a child born of a slave would always be a slave. Yet it seemed like a blessing compared to the lives the miners lived, children were sent to work in the mines on their tenth birthday. And all the adults just accepted this. It was just as normal to them as the 'technology' that made their ceiling look like a real sky.

There was another reason he didn't like lingering in here for more than necessary. It always gave him a crippling headache, especially if he stayed inside for too long. He wasn't sure why, it wasn't like there were any fumes inside. They wouldn't have turned the adjacent room into a nursery if the office stored anything toxic.

Aegis watched quietly as the sniffling boy was led back to the nursery.

"It's never easy for the young ones." Rick somehow looked more tired on his return from the nursery. He made his way to a small disorganised desk across Aegis-one of the only pieces of furniture in the room-and pulled a chair back.

"I doubt it's easy for anyone," he countered the old man who was now separating the scattered papers on the desk into two small piles. The miners lived very difficult lives, it wasn't fair.

Rick gave a weary smile and shrugged, "We make do, son." He tapped the sheets against the tabletop to align them, "So, what brings you by today?"

"I have a few hours to kill." Aegis leaned against the wall to rest his back, it was suddenly and oddly sore.

"Maybe you should try sleeping one of these nights, White," the greying man suggested with a sly grin, "I've heard time skips ahead when you do."

"If I wanted to be nagged about things I couldn't do, I would have stayed in the palace," Aegis responded flatly and then cocked his head at old Rick with a wry smile of his own. He may have been just as cheeky with this old bugger as he was with Kovolic, but he expected a very different outcome.

The old man laughed, the lines around his eyes crinkling as he did, "I've always liked you, boy." He clapped his hands together, "Starving?"

"Always," Aegis admitted as his stomach grumbled loudly in agreement.

"Great!" He clapped his hands together again as he made his way to the door, "I think the boys scavenged some meat today, so you're in for a treat."

Aegis followed old Rick with a grin, it was almost like having a real family sometimes-having dinner with other people. People who were allowed to laugh and relax, who weren't constantly trying to steal his food away.

He stood behind the old man as he opened the door to the mines and then shielded his eyes. An unexpected intensity of light greeted him, turning his headache into a sickening, spinning mess. Aegis made to grab Rick to avoid losing his balance, but was shoved behind the door almost immediately.

He crashed onto the adjacent wall inside the office, knocking his head against it. His world was spinning and he was seeing things. The floor around him seemed to be shining blue. He wasn't even sure how he had ended up on the floor. Aegis tried to stand but slipped on the shiny floor, and banged his head again.

His world went dark.

And then it was bright again. Too bright. Almost unreal.

Aegis lay weakly on the floor in a small round room, sobbing silently. He knew he was himself and yet somehow he wasn't. His back was on fire. It hurt. It hurt so much. He had tried. He had really tried this time. But it had never made a difference. He was never strong enough.

If only he could fly away.

He would soar to a place where pain didn't exist. Where he could sleep and play all day.

Aegis felt a warm hand on his back, he nearly shrieked as he recoiled from the touch.

Not again, please not again.

"Shhh!" The voice wasn't scary, it sounded a little angry though. A boy? It had to be, the grown-ups had scary voices. "Stop moving," the boy whispered, "I'm making the pain go away."

"How?" Aegis wondered, was it his Gift?

"Shhh!"

He couldn't control the sob that followed. Everyone was so mean. Aegis wanted to fly away again, far away.

"I'm sorry," the boy said next, and he sounded sorry too, "you're too loud. He'll hear us."

"Sorry," Aegis repeated choking back another sob, an odd warmth spread across his back. The boy was right! The pain was going away!

"My name is Vilcība," the boy continued in a whisper, "what's your name?"

"Aegis."

And the world shifted again and somehow he was lying in the sky, he had to be. The floor beneath him was shining so extraordinarily bright, and it was blue. And he felt weightless. Was he flying? Was he still dreaming?

Aegis was slammed against the wall again as the worn office came back into view. A lot of things were clearer. Rick had pushed him away from the light outside the building, he must have hit his head hard and fainted. That bit made sense. The circular room with the boy was a dream, a weird one, but it made sense too. He hit his head and passed out so he had a dream. What didn't make sense was that old Rick was pinning Aegis against the wall, with a knife to his throat.

"What the hell!" Aegis shoved the old man away, or at least attempted to. Despite his gangly appearance, he was quite hard to push.

"You lied, White!" Rick's response was bitter, and Aegis couldn't even begin to imagine why.

"About what?!" Aegis shoved the old man again, futile as it was, it was getting his anger across.

"I saw the stones," he continued darkly, "they only shine for royalty, you told us you were a slave!" Aegis was slammed against the wall again, "Are you a spy? Are you a threat to my people?"

"What stone?!" But his anger vanished just as quickly as it had begun. Translucent oval stones were scattered across the part of the floor he had collapsed on-the blue light. It wasn't the sky. It was the stupid ores that were shining blue underneath him. The ores Rick had his miners spent generations digging out.

"Move," Aegis shoved Rick a third time, very gently this time though, and the old miner complied, stepping back to let him through.

He made his way to the scattered misshapen round stones-or ores, whatever they were, and held one firmly, he had to make sure that the glowing wasn't part of the dream. Aegis' head almost split open with the pain as the stone shone, like a brilliant blue ball of light in his palm.

Proof of his royal heritage.

"Why are you hiding amongst the slaves, White?" Rick still sounded menacing, but he didn't really care.

"I don't remember!" He felt just as frustrated and helpless as he had been in his dream, as he had been a year ago when he woke up.

His twin wasn't lying. He was both a prince and a slave.