The time we spend in the false room, drinking in sunlight that's little more than a reflection of our own desires to bask in true light, creates a kind of disconnect between us and the world. Our dreams still resemble those meadows and forests, which isn't helping matters. Every time someone enters or leaves the room, I feel surge of relief, followed by envy in the pit of my stomach. Usually, they're shadowy beings behind the glass, glaring down at us like uncaring gods, but sometimes the guards come in with food, reassurance, or to take us around the castle. Iris went after a guard once, tries to sneak out from their grip, and even tackled them into the ground, but all it earns her is a night of somewhat reduced rations and a straight day with no visitor.

"We could break out," she insists, "For real, if you'd only play along a little."

"This is why we haven't gotten out yet." I say. "They took us in, haven't interrogated us, give us good food and drink and let us out around the castle sometimes. We owe them."

"We don't owe them anything," Iris says, her snarl synthetic at the back of her throat. Every line of her body, which I've come to know well as my own, is sharp and angular. Her eyes, narrowed to cruel slits, complete the look.

The two of us look like weapons.

I wouldn't want to let us out, either.

I don't argue with her, instead, I lay my head down on the grass and press against it. The texture is abrasive, and it doesn't give the way fur does. The individual bristles of it poke against my neck, and I'm left wondering if this is how real grass works or just how I expect it to work.

The door opens, the dark rectangle cleaving itself from nothing and then forming a void in the artificial landscape. I'm afraid Iris will bolt for it again, but we both restrain ourselves when we see the friendly face at the door. It's Spira, who comes around regularly, and though she tries to work up a reassuring tail wag, I can scent a thick musk of fear. This turns our heads, since in all my time here, short though it may be, I've never seen stoic Spira afraid.

"They're ready for you," she tells me, her voice hushed.

Iris looks to me, and I know she's thinking that we could be gone, right now, if we were brave enough. I press against her, because I don't know where we're going and I want to be close enough that I can feel the sun that pulses beneath her skin. As we stalk the halls, glorious as ever, and adorned now in decorations, Iris lifts her head and asks, "Who needs us, and where are we going?"

"Natrina has come." Spira says, dazed. "Natrina, sister of the Keeper of Hope; Natrina, immortal; Natrina of myth..."

The stained-glass images of the green Canis littered across the Font come to mind, gleaming and brilliant. Though we only saw the story of the Virtues in detail, just one spin around the Font is enough for anyone to learn Natrina is important, nearly as much so as the High Auspicia herself. Every speck of green has a one in two chance of being her.

A familiar blue-streaked Canira with folded wings joins us as we ascend the steps to the inner castle, and we emerge by the door behind which the Auspicia sits on her throne. Avery had mentioned it, in a hushed voice, but it's only on official business that anyone meets her there. If our first glance of Heilin had been intimidating, seeing her here would be that multiplied tenfold. I'm relieved to know Avery will be joining us.

Avery asks Spira, "Can you believe Natrina's here, in the castle of the Auspicia, after an entire reign of silence? She insisted on this meeting time, too, in alignment between the two moons..."

"Which means?" Iris asks.

"Ah, in superstition-"

"So it means nothing, essentially." Iris decides.

"Poor attitude to go in with." Spira replies, her gray fur shaking. "I won't be accompanying you in, but I'll be here at the entrance. I suggest you two be on your best behavior- Natrina is unlikely to be sympathetic to Obsidian-created lifeforms. She has no love for this whole set of affairs, or well, that's the rumor. To be quite fair, Natrina speaks little to anyone outside her court, and her court has tight jowls and vows of silence on the lot of them." Tossing her tail, she pulls a lever, and the two doors draw open to reveal the interior throne room with an noise that shakes us to our bones.

Avery steps forwards, and I lift my head and walk after her. Iris, too, follows in unison, and we look upon a room more ornate and incredible than a dozen Fonts. The cieling overhead is dark as the night sky, though waves of cover ripple through it on occasion like waves on the sea. Pricks of starlight open up and disappear, reflecting an ever-changing cosmos, and down below the ground is extravagant, the same midnight hue with enlaid stone just beneath our grasp, shaped into pawsteps of those who've come before. Tapestries of sixty-two Canii who despite physical differences, resemble Heilin, line the room. They must be the Auspicias, and their likenesses hang between golden pillars, with altars for each down below, lovingly tended to. Candles are lit and bundles of flowers are lain against the ground.

The Auspicia herself sits on a throne with a door to her left and right, a golden perch with blankets that cascade down from it, and behind her is a the likeness of another Canis, whose millions of tails seem to wrap about a small blue-and-green orb. Said Canis has three horns so long and so detailed that they can't be the horns of a real being, but just the depiction of them gives me chills.

Beneath the throne, a green Canis stands looking up at Heilin on her throne, radiating the same strength I felt from Vivian. I can feel her age and intensity, and life springs up around her. Her horns have vines and flowers wreathed across them, her back bares a garden, and down to her tail she is decorated in bouquets and ribbon which more plant matter is wrapped around. Despite her delicate beauty, her horns and claws have a grizzled quality to them, and when she turns to face them I see thousands of years of experience and pain in her eyes. "So it's you," she says, the gray fur brushed about her eyes and muzzle twitching, and with a flick of her tail she dismisses Heilin, a brusque gesture. "You still hold the traveller's scent on you. Have you been kept here ever since I was summoned?"

Iris nods. "We haven't been out of the room much," I say, and when her eyes blaze with fury, I add, "S-sorry."

"Heilin." admonishes Natrina, and Avery drops to her paws so fast I think she might hit the floor. "How could you hold these two Canira in your castle, like some kind of prisoners of war?"

"They're Obsidian experiments," Heilin responds, rising from her throne. Effortlessly, two wings spread from her sides, and she flutters down to our level. She lands with the clatter of her paws against the ground, and her brown eyes hold Natrina's. The pure energy rising off of them, invisible, is so strong that I bow as well, though Iris's reptilian gaze remains fixed on the High Auspicia's wings. "Can you imagine the pushback?"

"And pushback matters, now, to the demigod who rules the world. Pushback matters to the Canis who once fled Opphemria for a lifetime, the one who usurped the crown from a beloved leader all those millennia ago, pushback matters when you can do whatever you want? If there's pushback, it is you pushing against yourself, like the rain trying to fight the ocean. Water can not slam against water, the two bodies will meld into each other. There is no power that can hold against yours, everything in this land is within your reign and power. Everyone so much as close to your level of power is either a trusted ally, willing to bend to your every whim, or easily, easily disposed of."

"Athena, leader of Evelsca. The whole continent is furious that we're forcing evacuations." Heilin says. "Things are more strenuous than you could imagine, what, locked up in your castle, grieving for a death that happened thousands of years ago. Your sister, Keeper of Hope, may have passed on before most of this castle was built, yet you insist on holing yourself away, only to crawl out for a few years when I'm incapacitated at the beginning and end of my incarnations."

"Athena would argue justice for these two, and you know that. As for my sister, don't you dare bring her into this. I'm just waiting for whatever you need me to do, more often than not. You know this, did I not immediately come when you called? What am I if not your closest friend and greatest asset, your most perfect tool? Heilin, I've not holed myself away, my castle is just a day's journey from here. I'm close as I can get without having to deal with you daily, and stepping out of your way is the best thing I can do to ensure that crown fits snuggly around your head."

Heilin and Natrina lock eyes again, and though Avery is still quivering with fear, I roll up onto my paws. "Justice?" I ask.

"He speaks," Natrina says, "So you've not robbed that from him, too."

"I want them safe and I want them close." Heilin says.

"Was there anyone keeping us 'safe' and 'close' when we fulfilled our destinies, dear friend?"

"And we failed," Heilin sighs, "And your sister-"

"Lotus died because Vivian left us!" Natrina cries. "We failed because it was never our role to win the Obsidian war. We founded a great world, protected this land for ages, and had Vivian and Lotus stayed with us, with the living, their destinies could have been to bring their Virtues upon this world. If fate has bought these two Canira to this world, it hasn't brought them here to lie in cages like those of the Factory. It has brought them to a world that is greater than their dreams, than the scope of their imaginations, it has brought them to a world that they can fight for. Let them understand what it is what it is they are fighting for, let them live and fight even before they see another Obsidian. Don't let them succumb to the frustration and desperation that took my sister and our dearest friends."

"But the politics-"

"Never mattered. These aren't things that concern the young and idealistic. To them, the world is still a canvas waiting to be painted, and Heilin, it is only those who believe they have the potential to change the current state of affairs who can. If you believed that to do so was impossible, then why would you have bought young Avery here today? You see something in her, something that reminds you of yourself, don't you? You want to believe in her so badly that it hurts you. Heilin, she can take care of them just fine. The Defenders will be a good family for them. Let them go."

Heilin looks to Avery, who has just stumbled back to her paws, and dips her head. She tells us, "Whatever Marie has planned for you two, she can go ahead with it... have Spira take them back to the room for the night, and after that, they have eight months to prepare this world for its final battle. The danger will be real, but I have faith." She says, a deep, earnest strength to her words. A fire grips me, a determination to prove something to the both of them, and even Iris trembles with the implication of her words. We will leave the castle and run, run fast as our untested legs can take us. We will see the sun.

Natrina nods. "There's reason yet in you, Heilin."

"Let it never be said I don't appreciate your council."

"As if you've ever asked for it."

"I still need you, Natrina."

The words linger on the air, a light shines within the two ancient souls in bodies that barely fit them, and I step back. The doors open behind us, and Avery turns to go, her whole body trembling like a leaf in high wind, but Heilin stops her with little more than a word. "Not yet."

The doors shut behind us and we're sprawled back in the hall, which feels like entering a new world. I take a breath and can't believe my lungs still function the same as they did when I went in. The contrast between the celestial throne room and the well-decorated but still mortal castle interior is intense.

"Well?" Spira asks, and I want to leap onto her and explain everything, tail waving, but my body isn't reacting to my commands and my heart is out of sync with my mind. Was that real?

"We're not dead," I say.

True statement. We are not dead.

We are very, very much alive.

Iris looks back at the doors and their intricate carvings, a strange expression on her face. She still doesn't emote the same way I do, and her head tilt is unnatural, forced. "There's something familiar about that room," Iris mutters, "And the Auspicia. I can't place it, but it's driving me mad."

"Familiar from what?"

"I don't know." she says. "That's what scares me most about her."