Mystic vanishes in a snap of her fingers, but one finger is left behind.

  A bloody one.

  The one that was wearing the ring made from Tendo’s metal.

  Machinist metal. The metal of Cassandra’s father.

  “No!” Ryomen stomps his foot. “She got away! Yorumi, go after—”

  A wall of iron explodes from the bleeding scars on Anvil’s chest. Yorumi is forced to let go of him and is thrown up into the air.

  Anvil takes the metal wall he’s summoned and strikes Yorumi with the blunted edge of it, smashing their orb-like body to the floor.

  Anvil then charges Ryomen with the same wall he struck Yorumi with, utilizing the metal mass like the nce of a heroic knight.

  The hawks fly to Kaga’s aid, freeing Cassandra. As the birds push Anvil back, Cassandra runs across the stage and leaps atop Ryomen. She tackles him and punches his face until the hawks flutter back over to her.

  Anvil drops the wall as the birds envelop him, scratching feverishly with their talons.

  Ryomen rises with a bloody face, “Children,” He scoffs as Yorumi hovers over him. The hawks return to his shoulders.

  Cassandra has to catch her breath, but Anvil hasn’t even broken a sweat. She thinks that he looks more remorseful than anything.

  “Life is precious, don’t make me kill.”

  Kaga snarls, “I won’t make you do anything, you oaf. You should have surrendered after I cut off the little one's finger.”

  Anvil makes a fist.

  Where have you run off to, Mystic? Cassandra questions as she clenches two fists of her own. Her eyes dart to her violin on the stage. If she’s quick, she should be able to—

  A metal spear flies over her head.

  A metal block restrains her hands.

  She sees Anvil’s eyes go wide.

  Then she sees Yorumi floating above her. “You don’t belong with them, sister.”

  Anvil leaps to attack the Lungoza. Yorumi summons another spear.

  It stabs Anvil. He screams. Kaga smiles.

  “Zero,” he says.

  Cassandra falls to her knees.

  She can’t remember what happened next.

  She was led through a door. A door of stone.

  Runes littered the stone, tracing it. Her fingers traced it. She used to trace the cracks in the walls of the alleys she lived in. The alleys she was raised in.

  The castle she was in now had no cracks. Father said it was as perfect and as beautiful as the woman who was her Mother now.

  White and red. White and red. My hands are all white and red.

  Cassandra thought that something was bleeding. She thinks she’s bleeding. She must be. There’s blood on the stone floor beneath her.

  Am I imagining the floor? Please don’t tell me that I’m imagining the floor.

  There are voices behind her.

  “She can’t be her, Ryomen.”

  “Mother, please. I awakened her abilities myself. I saw them. She’s Tendo’s daughter, I know it.”

  Tendo? Yes, that is her father’s name.

  Dad’s name. Dad always told me not to go anywhere that he couldn’t see or hear me. That changed when we met her...

  Why did that change?

  Her thoughts slip through her fingers like sand. She can’t catch them. They don’t make sense. The things in her head don’t make sense, and neither do the voices.

  “Tendo was a Machinist. I told you not to trust metal Ryomen.”

  “How else were you supposed to have more children for the ritual, Mother?”

  Mother?

  I never knew my Mother.

  Dad said that Vanessa was my Mother. He said she had to be. I yelled at him once, “Why do I need a Mother?”

  Dad always said it was so we didn’t have to live on the street, but I liked the street.

  Cassandra’s fingers trace the cracks in the street again. The cracks she would slip on. The cracks she would walk on.

  There is blood in the cracks now.

  “Triminiv was to be the Builder vessel.”

  “Mother, I told you, the Lady Triminiv is dead. I brought her head back to you from Rome.”

  I’ve been to Rome.

  Cassandra grabs that thought. Rome was bleeding. It is bleeding now. Right beneath her. She can see it carved in the stone. It is burning now.

  Something is walking in the ashes. It roars and unfurls its wings made of bone.

  The girl with white hair looks to her with her blue eyes. Those uncanny blue eyes. She wants to tell her something. Something about the beast flying over them.

  You were wrong? Why do I want to tell Mystic she was wrong? Wrong about what?

  “Elves were made to live forever. They were here long before you, my son.”

  “And now they are all but gone, Mother. Them and the stone giants. The Squideels, Fluoredons, Humans, Martians, and Lungozas are all we have now.”

  Lungozas?

  A Lungoza was my friend once. But they were only pretending. I don’t have many friends. Smith, Anvil, and Mystic were my friends, but I don’t know where they are now. I really did want Adamus to be my friend, but he didn’t want me.

  He ughs at her atop the Pza. That beacon of gss sitting in the middle of Rome. Even that beacon burned.

  I don’t want anyone to ever be kind to me.

  Because then I would love them in an instant.

  I don’t think that my heart could take that.

  She feels Mitika holding her hand again. She’s crying. They both are.

  Her thoughts drift again. Drift like sand through her fingers and the stone numbers beneath her.

  “That is untrue, my son. You have me as well.”

  “Yes, Mother. That is true.”

  One, zero. The numbers read, “One, zero,” over and over again.

  A storm takes Cassandra’s mind. A storm of blood and fire.

  The blood is covering a field of darkness that a boy on fire sits in. Metal heads surround him.

  Cassandra calls out with her violin, but the boy does not answer. Blood drips from the child's mouth.

  The blood in the dark turns to metal, and the metal heads rust.

  A blue light is in the distance.

  Cassandra calls out with her violin again, louder this time.

  “What is happening with her now? She’s doing something, mumbling to herself…”

  “She’s been in the trance too long. I’ll wake her now.”

  The metal folds away to reveal a temple.

  Cassandra is screaming at the boy now. Screaming and screaming. Her voice has become the violin, and the boy has become one with the temple.

  Branches unfold from his head. From his arms. Wings unfurl as he roars.

  The light becomes a metal head.

  “One zero one.”

  The words, the numbers, wake Cassandra. She blinks rapidly. In reaching to rub her eyes, she finds her wrists bound in metal behind the wooden chair she sits in.

  Ryomen stands over her, clothed in a stained leather tunic. He grips her head and aims it down.

  That is when Cassandra feels the cold on her bare skin. As her eyes adjust to the low light, she sees that her clothes have been torn from her body.

  Ryomen smacks the back of her neck with his palm, forcing her head to remain down as footsteps echo in the dark stone coffin of a room.

  The steps are faint, small.

  Cassandra reads the numbers on the floor again. One zero one zero one zero one zero one zero one.

  A woman stands beneath Cassandra. But it can’t be a woman. Can it?

  She’s uncannily small. She’s even smaller than Mystic. Smaller than any child, for that matter.

  She’s as tall as Cassandra’s ankle, and the only thing shielding her against the elements is a scrap of cloth no rger than a thumb.

  “Do you know what I am, child?” The small woman asks.

  “A dwarf?” Cassandra unsurely answers.

  “That is but one thing I am child,” she coldly states, turning to Ryomen, “Stand her up.”

  Ryomen’s fingers bite into Cassandra’s shoulders as he pulls her to her feet. The small woman steps backwards and turns away. The wooden chair scrapes against Cassandra’s metal restraints.

  Pull it, she thinks. Catch it on the metal and smash it over Kaga’s head, then stomp the woman.

  Ryomen pushes her forward into the dark before she can act out the thoughts. The metal does not catch on the chair, but it does smack into Cassandra’s bare back.

  “I am the st of my species. I can only hope that you and Ryomen will not be the st of yours,” The dwarf woman states as she walks into the dark. Ryomen forces Cassandra to follow after her.

  Strangely, her heart and mind are not racing. No. Those scattered parts of her being are now fractured and shivering like the rest of her cold body.

  Where am I? She questions but does not dare to ask aloud. What happened to Anvil?

  Everything seems to grow colder and darker the further she follows the dwarf woman.

  The darkness appears eternal to Cassandra. She does not know what she is walking towards, and does not know if she walks up or down.

  Were it not for the footsteps behind and in front of her, she would think herself alone.

  As alone as I’ve always been, she scolds herself. Even with her mind scrambled like soup, she can’t help but scold herself.

  The dwarf woman speaks again, “Ryomen told me of the Machinists you traveled with. He told me of what you were seeking. Do you really want to know those answers, child?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Cassandra mutters without knowing the consequences of speaking out in such a way.

  “You do not,” The dwarf’s voice rings in the dark halls.

  The stone becomes filled with blue light that drips into the cracks where the numbers are engraved.

  One and zero, the illuminated numbers read. One and zero and one and zero and one and zero.

  Light takes the dark, and fear takes Cassandra.

  “You’re being a baby. This is for your one good,” Kiren scoffs at Jasper’s scream as she tightens the makeshift wooden brace around his broken leg.

  Jasper writhes with pain and bites his lip before gasping, “Why should I be quiet? Huh? We’re at least a hundred kiloclicks away from the prison by now, and no one’s followed us.”

  Kiren grits her teeth, “You don’t know that. They could be all around us, and you would never know.”

  Jasper has to roll his eyes at that. Yet as he does, he can’t help but recall the grisly sight of Kiren bashing the Officer’s head in with a rock.

  That Officer would have killed him otherwise. Somehow, this young girl managed to not only kill one man twice her size but two.

  Although Jasper did help with the other.

  He had picked the sword off the Officer that Kiren killed with the rock and driven it through the stomach of the second Officer she was wrestling with. Jasper was surprised by how easy it was.

  One second, the man was breathing, and then…

  Kiren hands Jasper that sword now. They’ve been sure to keep it, if for no other reason than it makes a good walking stick.

  With the assistance of the sword and the many sticks that Kiren helped him fashion into a brace, Jasper is able to finally stand without completely tripping over himself.

  The pain remains, though.

  Jasper feels like it will remain forever.

  “Come on,” Kiren motions for him to follow her, “There’s got to be a spaceport on this pnet somewhere, right?”

  Jasper trails behind her.

  They both walk into the forest as dusk falls over the pnet.