"You must be out of your mind if you think I'm going to collaborate with her."

Marie's rebuke is aggravating, but not unexpected. She stands facing Sweep, who is watching with ruffled feathers. Her tail arc is spread wide, as if she's soaring in a heavy gale, and her snout is kneaded into a furious snarl. Her eyes are gold, matching Marie's verdant green, and they are the most terrifying things in the sky and sea.

"I'm sorry, am I getting in the way of your petty authority? Does my very presence aggravate you? Is that what this is about?" Sweep asks, her voice high as Quill's screeches.

"As a matter of fact, yes. It does aggravate me. It aggravates me that we've had an Evelscan in our court for years, doing nothing but sit around the library and mope. Could you think of anything more suspicious?"

Sweep's ears flatten in shock, swivelling around, and she cries, "You think I'm a spy after all these years? I can't even communicate with them. Look at my ear, Marie. There's no crystal- I pulled mine out myself." Her right ear twitches as she says it, the blackened flesh where the wound never quite healed right visible in the light of the plain conference room. Just squinting at it is like living the injury all over again, like imagining a sobbing Sweep goring herself, and even Marie, stoic Marie, is taken aback.

"... and that's why you've never been sent home... Damnit, Sweep, that's worse! Rebelling against them doesn't make you Opphemrian, it makes you no one. You think I want a deserter in my ranks?"

Sweep's face breaks into an awful snarl, all four wings extended in fury and indignation. "Call me a deserter again and I strip you to ribbons, fishface."

"Call me fishface again and I bash your pretty face in, featherbrain!" snarls Marie, circling the avian Canira, who returns the gesture.

I know a fighting circle when I see one, and before they can turn the full rounds required before a duel, I leap into the middle. Both of them look up, the rush of the adrenaline subsiding, and I take a deep breath. My own panic hasn't yet worn off, but I try to strike an expression of authority as I announce, "Look. If this is going to be a problem," I dryly glance at them both, "and it looks like it'll be a problem, I'll do the talking between you two- but I think you can do better than that. Sweep isn't a deserter, she's an intelligent and incredibly charismatic Defender who happens to be off-duty, and Marie, even if she's harsh sometimes, is a good general. That's what I love about you two- you're hardworking, incredible, and honestly, I've spent my whole life looking up to you. So please, please try to get along?"

(Oh yeah, totally spent a lot of time looking up at them. I spent a lot of time looking at them... let's just say I wasn't kidding about the "love", there.)

My plea seems to move them both, because Marie raises her muzzle and says, "Well, I can't argue with that logic. Not as if I'd wish to make an enemy of the Auspicia's protege, anyways. I look forwards to working with you in the future, Sweep, and I'll need you in HQ at twelve to discuss protocol for the new Evelscan Defenders coming over." With that, she slinks out of the conference room with a sweeping slash of her tail.

Sweep shakes her head once, closing her tail feathers, and doesn't look back as she approaches the door. "Thanks, Aves, but I can fight my own battles."

"What if you don't need to fight?"

Sweep's cut ear twitches, and with a pause, she folds her wings and leaves the room, tail low and head high. I listen for the furious close of the door behind her, but it doesn't come.

"Protege," I whisper, as if I hadn't heard the words from the Auspicia herself. It echoes through the empty room, and at least, I give myself the privilege of a few harsh, fast breaths. Hiding my fear earlier was easy enough, but when I'm alone, it all comes back. Dizzy from my own panic, I hold myself against the wall, head and front paws pressed into the unfeeling plaster.

When I feel more myself, I walk out, and the passing Sentients in the underground bunkers nod to me as I pass. I look no different, and doubtless few have been told about my new clearances. I turn into the simulations hall and enter my personal room, which is still alight with my old settings.

Load current quest? asks the wall in lettering, and I swipe up with a paw to begin. A vast, complicated landscape emerges before me, littered with legions of color-coded Defenders all clustered about the portal. From dragons to chimera, from Esdemel healers to the Ursus tanks, all Sentients are accounted for. Of course, my main source of power comes from the bulk of the Defender forces, a healthy blend of Canis and Canira, and my custom Canira troop at the front, Marie herself, reminds me just how much is at stake.

I'm working with the fifth drop zone, the one in the deserts of Opphemria, and the weather is far more thorough than the last time I came here. Hydration, heatstroke, and damage from wind are all factored in, painting a less-than-pretty picture. Saving civilian populations comes at a steep cost, and even if Marie's been relentless with her terrain training.

I tweak a few more troops, moving the dragons to the flank and working with the lazy hills and runs of the land, but there's not much to work with. Taking a deep breath, I run the simulation, and hell bursts loose onto the sands.

A downpour of darkness erupts through the portal. Obsidians rush forth in the thousands, taking small forms to fit and then exploding into larger combat-hardened shapes on the other side. The skies and ground are both thick with them, so that it's hard to see through their unending ranks. They move in perfect synchronicity into pre-scripted plans, and my allies burst into chaotic, frenzied motion.

It's not enough.

Never is.

The Obsidian onslaught continues as fire, lightning, and every elemental attack known to our kind rip through the air. In the pandemonium, shards of fallen Obsidian warriors fly through the air, impaling several of my own troops as a parting present from the bastards. A bloodied blue Canira falls down into the desert sands and disappears with the rest of the fallen troops. My heart stops for a second, but I have to keep my eye on the number in the corner. 2076.

Two thousand and seventy-six, and still mounting- Dreamland's most powerful warriors fall like flies in the hot sands. The support troops pour out, but they can not match the Obsidians in number. Several of our adversaries shapeshift until they eclipse the sky, taking dozens of Defenders each, and at last we are driven back. The casualty counter racks up further, even though I've only simulated a day, and one of the giant beasts, draconic in form with dozens of legs, leers straight through my wall at me.

You're next.

I slam the reset button with my paw before I can stop myself, panic creeping up my back like a swarm of spiders. The blank room, sympathetic but unyielding, pops up with the same conditions and that ugly, red number in the corner.

"Between our uncertainty about their numbers and the extent of their abilities, we're fighting an enemy we know nothing about, aren't we? Torch and Iris's eyewitness... observations going all the way back to the first Auspicia..." A sudden idea lights up my mind, a memory from a story I once read about the Gardenkeeper's Daughters, Natrina and Lotus, and one of the worlds they fought on. No- make that several ideas. "Can I simulate non-living assets?" I ask, and the gems across the wall light up in intricate patterns, like the flashing of a thousand fireflies across the night sky. When it settles, I sense a foreign presence against my mind, and as the shock ebbs elation fills me. This is about to become far more interesting.

The regular chambers don't have this kind of magic attached to them, and mind probing spells are of dubious legality and incredible rarity.

Shoving aside the incredible lengths Plumeria must've gone to to acquire one of these for me, I ask, "Simulate relative Obsidian thickness according to mass conservation."

A shape large enough to hold dozens of Defenders would have a solid form no more than a few hairs thick. If we placed a few, faster avian species on distraction, and then had one or two strikers try to make an impact... it could dramatically reduce the number of casualties and the troops I'd require. As for the inanimate objects, if they're going to aggress us through portals, why not give them a little surprise for when they get here? Two of my fire-based Canira step forwards with a superheated mesh of metal, so thick that no form an Obsidian could realistically take would allow them to fly through unscathed.

I run the simulation and the air is filled with not enemy combatants, but flaming chunks of Obsidian. I forgot to clear the area in front of said portal in my haste, which leads to a few uncalled for casualties, but I'm too busy bouncing up and down in excitement to care. At the same time as the last check, my number is...

One hundred ninety-seven.

The grate is down by now, and the scrambling begins anew, but the numbers have gone from impossible to something I could even call manageable. Amazed by my own success, I laugh, "That's a start."

The simulated Marie waves her tail in the depths of the desert, proudly standing at the front of her legion. An Evelscan Canis, by her side, dips her head. Really fancy simulation. Geez, Plumeria.

I smile anyways, in spite of myself. Time to go tell Plumeria.

"Tomorrow," I yell to the wall, "You're going down. All the way down."

It shuts off, and the door opens to reveal a deep green Canis outside the door, standing still as a shadow in the plain hallway. She's wearing a different assemblage of plant matter, adorning herself in complementary red and orange wildflowers that glisten on her fur like fire, and a dark set of thorns weaves around her horns. The only thing that remains unchanged is the white lily clutched against her heart.

"Natrina." I lower my head.

The imposing Canis regards me with sympathy, placing her paw down onto my shoulder. It's so large, it nearly touches my wings. "You're the Canira from yesterday, are you not?"

I nod, the sensation of her paw electric on my fur. I can feel the power she wields deep in my bones, sense her fury and grief and rage even beneath the calm of the surface. I want to duck away desperately, but it would be like attempting to escape a black hole with just my wings.

"It's been a long time... but I suppose this had to happen eventually." Natrina says, grimly, drawing her paw away.

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Across the aeons, the Auspicia has taken to walking alongside the powerful, the determined, and the simply motivated. In fact, she actively pursues the likes of you, Canira with strong wills and powerful hearts."

"I- thank you?" I heat up beneath my fur, but there's no kindness in her voice as she says it.

"Unlike them, you appear to be the first of your heartline. Your destiny echoes no prior lives, makes no parallels with the past. It is well and truly your own... as such, you are a rarity. A curiosity, a new soul in an old world... do not be too proud of it, and whatever you do, do not let the Auspicia 'collect' you. She does not own you, Avery."

A new heartline... When Dreamland is at a high in population, and all the current heartlines are in use, Sentients can be born with completely new heartlines and no previous incarnations. It is near impossible to distinguish one heartline from the next, but the lack of one is a completely different matter. Natrina, as one of the most powerful Sentients on this planet, probably noticed just by looking at me.

I wait for something inspiring to spring from my mouth, like the sudden flood of adrenaline I got in the throne room, but nothing comes. I sputter, "I'm not," and then clarify, "not hers."

But to be treasured by the Auspicia... to even be worthy of her praise...

Natrina's eyes, brown flecked with amber, search mine, and she dips her head. "I am sorry if I have intimidated you. I understand much stress has been placed upon you, and yet, I felt compelled to give you some kind of guidance." Natrina's tail swishes, "From experience. Best of luck to you, Avery."

As she walks down the hall, a goddess amongst mortals, I recall the last of my time in the throne room, trapped between the two of them.

"I've asked a lot of you." Heilin says, her booming voice echoing across the pillars and making the candle flames quiver and dance on their altars. "I understand this job may not be familiar, and that it stands as a strange departure from your previous job. I have a plan, a meticulous one at that, but still this may be an impossible battle, with impossible odds. I hope you can forgive me for entrusting you with part of that burden."

"I don't know what you see in me, or why I've been entrusted with so much in such a short time," I say, raising my head towards them, towards the stars. A flickering cosmos shines over my head, a sky so real I could almost fly through it. "but this world, from its past down to the glistening present, is my home. I have read every story I could get my paws on, learned every name, and to be living here, alongside legends, is the greatest honor I could imagine, and to fight along those who will one day be legends my greatest pleasure. If you ask me to rearrange the stars, so be it.

We are a civilization built on the act of accomplishing the impossible."

"Oh, Verhamera's tails." I whisper to myself, thinking of the incredible Sentients I've worked alongside, their eyes like unfiltered starlight and their coats as vibrant as nebulas. I walk in the pawsteps of giants. "I'm so over my head..."