Grey looked down toward the AI Ninety-Seven, showing teeth. How unfortunate, he thought, that technology has no shell.

He looked around, eyes resting back on the trio. Mm, Grey subvocalized, Fear, confusion, uncertainty, annoyance...looks like a sunset.

"Come," he called out. As the word left his lips, a clicking noise sounded out from the back of the room. "It's time to go."

As he walked forward, he bade the many hidden estevek goodbye, their dormant gray and blue shells visible through the walls. He envisioned the clacking of their carapaces, the snapping of their claws, the thrumming of their countless feathery legs.

He gripped the android once more, dangling it out in front of him as he walked. It's finally shut up, he observed, now that it's recognized me as its master. I wonder, does that mean... Grey had his suspicions about this entire setup. Much of what he said was pieced together out of small clues, most coming straight from the android's talkative mouth. He'd played the trio behind him, acting as though he'd gleaned all that he knew from the books alone.

I almost feel bad, he thought, but I don't. He'd lied, when he told them this persona was the Cynic. I don't even think of myself in terms of personas, he murmured internally, climbing up through a tunnel to solid stone.

"Tycho, dig."

No, not personas...just me. Grey smiled to himself. Me, in this world of color, deceit painted in marigold yellow and ember orange.

"At last..." he stated as they reached the surface. Barkhad flopped off of Kisserin's back onto the land above, soaking in the white sun of this charcoal-gray planet. Kisserin uncoiled her body, stretching it out to its full length, while Tycho thumped his feet happily on the ground, stirring up dust.

"You're getting dust in my eye," Kisserin complained, glaring at Tycho. Tycho swishes his tail instead of thumping his legs, the action also stirring up dust.

"Everyone," Grey said, cocking his head. "Back. Into. The labyrinth."

Their shells swirl anger red, passion red, the unfurling of a rose, the rebirth of the phoenix. The sundering of death from the life-ridden corpse, resurrection of blood. Grey licked his dry lips. Confusion, pressed emerald velvet, twinkling. "You're confused, I know. We need to finish mapping out the network of tunnels beneath this planet. The Sizikguron Arc and the labyrinth are two separate entities." He stepped forward, feeling the pulse of vibrations through the Earth. He sighed, reveling in the feel of the ground's response. It speaks to me, when it never spoke before.

"There, Tycho, feel in that spot. Dig down; we're approximately three miles away from our entry point."

Tycho's eyes suddenly grew shiny, moisture filling their spherical surfaces. "Can we go back?" he whimpered. "I'm tired."

Grey's nostrils flared. The black and grey of fatigue, swirling around the sunset like impatient night. Storm clouds weeping. "All of you are tired. Why is only Tycho complaining?"

Emerald confusion returns, like weeds in a rainbow garden. He glared at them. The blue ocean of fear upon which the sun sets...it swells, like a tsunami. Beautiful. He snorted, then began to laugh lightly. "We'll return for now. Remember, you know what will happen if word of this gets out..."

---

Lisa and Bath pored over Juserin's star map, marking up a 1000% copy of the map carved into the surface of the office room's desk.

Lisa looked out to the side, squinting despite the shades covering the glass walls. Is this what city skyscrapers are like? she wondered. She'd seen towering glass skyscrapers before; she'd even visited the Empire State Building. However, she hadn't ever considered what it would be like to live in one. Or, at the very, work in one for several hours a day.

"Hey Bath," she said, looking out the side of the blinds. "I think we need a new strategy."

"Hmm?"

"Y'know, good cop, bad cop, that thing." She pointed to herself. "So far, in this partnership, I've been the good cop. You, the bad cop. Amiright?"

Bath raised an eyebrow. "Sure."

"Well, y'see, I think it'd be better if I was the bad cop. You can never be too nice, but you can be too intimidating. Since I, the illustrious kursi of this operation, can actually tell when too bad is too much, well, I think that I should naturally assume the bad cop position."

Bath covered his mouth with his hand, laughing. "We can try," he said after a moment, mouth curled into a wry grin. "You think you can handle bad cop?"

Lisa snorted. "You think you can handle good cop?" she asked.

Bath laughed once again, this time doing so freely. "We'll see, won't we?" he replied. "We should go over the neighborhood map Nevis made us."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "The neighborhood map, yep. The neighborhood gates."

Bath pulled in his seat and walked to the door. Just as Lisa reached the threshold, he slammed it in her face; she dodged just barely, relying on pure reflex.

"Bath!" she squealed.

As she opened the door and stepped through, he formed his right hand into a pistol and mock shot her. "Bad cop," he said before blowing the tip of his index finger.

Lisa struggled not to smile. "Yeah, bad cop," she said. "Who the hell were you trying to impersonate?"

Bath shrugged. "I don't like Westerns."

Lisa rolled her eyes up and to the left, looking at him from the side. "Bath, Westerns have outlaws and sheriffs," she stated, speaking slowly, as though talking to an infant. "Detective and crime shows have cops."

"That just shows how little you know," he replied stoically. Lisa sped up and swatted him against the arm, the two of them both breaking into laughter.

"Y'know," Lisa began. "I'm glad we haven't lost this: just...having fun." She looked out over the unobscured glass of the hallway, admiring the way the light of Illudis' sun hit the city below. The reds and golds looked absolutely resplendent in the sun's rays.

"Same," Bath agreed, holding the door to the conference room they had already set up for conquest strategy. Giving him the stink eye, Lisa walked cautiously through the threshold, eventually taking a seat in one of Illudis' levitating spinny chairs. She spun in place, pushing off on the ground to get herself going. When she perceived that Bath's black hole shell was also seated in a chair, she stopped.

"Best part about these boons," she said, "is that you can do this for years and never get dizzy."

Bath closed his eyes, a humorously tired expression coming over his features. "Wanna test that?"

"If I had a year to spare, I would spin in a spinny chair," she snorted, rhyming in a mock sing-song voice. "Anyways, let's see: we've already named the neighboring planets, so check...we already have a list of basic geography and land features based off of knowledge from our experiences, the encyclopedia and Lepochim..." Lisa flipped through a section of notes etched out onto a piece of paper. "How the hell did Nevis actually get Lepochim to supply this much information?"

Bath smiled innocently. "Who's to say?"

"Anyways," she repeated, "we need to figure out who's going where, when. We can keep Dean as the vanguard; he seems to be comfortable with the position." Which is surprising, but definitely a good thing. "We can do this two ways. One, we just let the vanguard try its best to make a full circuit back to Earth. In the mean time, we continue to circle around in a loop, bringing information and coordinating movements between planets. Two, we stay with the vanguard and go slowly."

"Two sounds much simpler," Bath noted, steepling his fingers. "What's the advantage of one?"

"Coordinating people...?"

Bath smirked. "People can handle themselves. Two."

Lisa raised an eyebrow. "I thought you'd choose one."

"Lisa," Bath began, grinning. "I'm still hungry. From the voyager, I didn't get the opportunity to explore any of the planets between Illudis and Earth. There are..." he counted on his hand. "Nine planets in between. I don't want to rush through; perhaps, in our haste on other planets, we missed something important."

Lisa nodded. We almost missed the tortus. "Alright. So, when do you want to leave for Vast Desert?"

Bath got out of his chair to inspect the map from a better angle. "Vast desert is demarcated as the easiest planet to traverse."

"...But on the flip side, the next planet, Equinox, has its gate in outer space."

"Right," Bath said, nodding and thrumming his fingers against the carved dragonleaf table top.

Lisa gave Bath a pointed look. "Have you made any progress toward maneuvering through that gate?"

Bath took a deep breath, then looked up. "I should be fine. In theory, I should be able to propel myself forward much as I do to accelerate while flying."

"You don't sound very confident," Lisa observed, putting a finger to her lower lip. "You're talking about moving by particle ejection, right?"

"Yes."

"You're right, it should work; actually, I'm not sure if you know, but some of the latest space ships are using that kind of technology." She didn't know the specifics, but she'd read about it somewhere.

"Huh; really?"

"Yeah, so don't psych yourself out. You'll be fine, right? Especially with your increased range."

Bath nodded dismissively. "Yeah, of course. Easy."

"Mhm, well, good. I think we should inform Dean, like, today, that we're planning to advance to Vast Desert."

"We should tell Juserin as well," Bath noted. "I'm not sure if he's offered, but I'm certain that our engineering team would profit immensely from discussions with technically-inclined verdora."

"I think they've been in contact," Lisa said. "The problem is that Juserin bought the voyager, and doesn't know how to make one. If we could just manufacture our own fleet of voyagers...damn." She sighed. "Though that's a long way ahead."

"Unfortunately," Bath sighed.

---

"Hello, I'm Jordan. Your name is...?"

"Thaddeus."

Jordan looked down over his glasses. After COTD's take over, psychologists were in incredibly high demand. While Jordan didn't charge money, since, well, that was outdated, he did accept Path Point donations. At the end of the day, however, the best reward was the experience of using his mental abilities.

He tugged on the sleeve of his blazer, pulling it over his watch. He pushed his glasses up with the butt of his pen, thinking over his next question.

"So, Thaddeus..."

"Call me Tad," the teen replied.

"Tad: what brings you to my office?" Jordan gestured to his fairly ornate dragonleaf-made space, clearly commissioned from an experienced land-shaper.

"I need assistance," he said.

Jordan smiled amiably. "Sure."

After a tangible stretch of silence, Tad began to speak. "I have a phobia."

"Nothing to be ashamed of," Jordan said. "Most people do." Jordan gleaned that this last comment irritated Tad, but wasn't sure why, so he continued on. "What is it a phobia of?"

"Empty spaces," Tad said. "Big, wide spaces, with nothing in them."

"What about empty spaces makes you uncomfortable?"

"I feel...like I'll get lost." He squirmed in his seat.

Why does that make him feel vulnerable? Jordan wondered. "Have your boons helped with that at all?" Jordan recognized that many people found comfort in their boons; fears of heights and deep water had declined as people realized jumping off a building wouldn't kill them and that drowning was nigh impossible.

Tad's eyes gained a sharpness. "What do boons have anything to do with this?"

Jordan backpedaled. Why does his reaction have me on the defensive? he wondered. My initial reaction is to back away, literally. Jordan knew just how odd this was: he was tall, somewhat gangly, but toned; people didn't normally intimidate him. And here was this random kid--a college student, maybe?--who had him leaning back in his seat.

Odd.

"Many people find their boons help to ease their fears," Jordan explained. "Has your enhanced eyesight or spatial perception helped at all?"

Tad cocked his head, narrowing his eyes almost imperceptibly. Almost, Jordan noted. I don't miss much, these days. "I'm not talking about a rural countryside," Tad said, his voice slightly demeaning. "I'm talking about...space. Empty, empty, space, stretching for thousands upon thousands of empty miles."

"So, outer space," Jordan said, voice clinical. What a strange fear, he noted.

"Or any kind of theoretically empty space of the like," he replied. "Some gates are off the surface of planets," he added, shifting gears. "So I could be talking about outer space."

He's...confusing, Jordan observed, suppressing the urge to shake his head in befuddlement. "Let's just assume we are talking about outer space. When do you anticipate you'll ever go through one of these gates?"

"Soon." Tad's gaze was unreadable.

"What do you think of when contemplating space?" Jordan asked.

"Entropy," Tad replied solemnly. "Nothingness." This last word sounded tired, to Jordan's ears.

"You mentioned that you feel like you'll get lost," Jordan said. "Do you think you'll ever go into space alone?"

Ted gave him a complex look. "Yes."

I'm not sure why he believes that, Jordan thought. Though I'll roll with it. "Have you told anyone about this fear?"

"Maybe," Tad replied, inclining his head slightly.

So, he keeps his fears to himself. "In all honesty, I'm not sure how to help you with this particular phobia."

Tad tensed up, evidencing clear frustration to Jordan's trained eyes.

"My advice would be to never go into space, to go with a friend, or to go in a ship, to acclimate yourself to the environment."

Tad chuckled dryly, the sound contrasting oddly with his innocent, youthful appearance. Actually, everything he's said and done after the first two minutes seems disconnected from his appearance. This is a kid who is not at all what he seems.

"So, I'm hopeless," Tad said, smiling sardonically. "This has been..." he rolled his eyes skyward. "Productive."

Is my advice all that terrible? Jordan wondered. Besides, when would any human be going into space alone and without a ship?

"Thanks, anyways," Tad said. He stood up, brushed off his pants, and left the room.

Jordan didn't stop him.

Bath hovered in the air, his yellow eyes glinting as he stared at the black beyond. The Spire twinkled in the distance, its glassy silhouette reflecting the light of the unfamiliar stars.

"I suppose, in the end, there's only one way," he murmured. He shot up, sending out particles behind him to rapidly accelerate. They dissipated as they reached the end of his 3.8-mile range, the loss of mass rocketing him forward.

Momentum, Bath thought to himself. I wonder how it works with my spontaneously generating and disappearing particles.

Bath assumed the guise of the Dragon, although a much smaller, streamlined form. He rose through Illudis' atmosphere, feeling the icy cold sting of the altitude set into his temporary bones. Higher and higher he flew, until...

He reached the end. The end. Nothingness.

And, fulfilling his own meager expectations, he panicked.