"That was..." Avery begins, when we are safely on the outskirts of the city.

"A fiasco?" begins Fyera.

"So much better than expected." Avery says. "Gale, you're going to be doing double patrols for days when we get back, assuming I don't come up with an even worse punishment for you before we get to that."

"Worth it." Gale says. Everyone casts him a rueful glare.

"Auma, take the group back, portal as soon as you hit the Teeth, and put the knife in the last vault. Send me back news as soon as this is done. I trust the rest of you can handle this on your own? You're quite the entourage." Avery says, turning away from the path and off towards the side, where a sandy path winds through the bushes.

"So we are on an actual mission," Ignis says.

"Yes, and it's one of greater importance than you might realize." Avery nods.

"Where are you going?" asks Auma.

"I need to visit some associates. Can you set up a portal routed to the current location of the Nimbus?" she asks.

"Absolutely." Auma breathes. Darkness blossoms into being down the path, slitting open a line of shadow before rounding itself out into a massive, gaping hole in existence. "Best of luck." She leads the others in the opposite direction with the same dignified, intimidating step I've learned to expect from Avery, but as the humble party begins to fall away, I hit a wing before I can follow them.

"I want you to come with me." Avery says.

"Why?"

"Primarily because I would prefer if you were with me as opposed to hanging around the others. I understand this all must seem very silly to you, but I think the two of us are long overdue for a conversation."

"We are?" I ask, "But I heard you all the time while I was recovering from the Dog Days."

"You heard me talking with Arazel. It's entirely different." Avery says, gesturing towards the darkness. "Come with me."

We fall through shadow and into a field of dry grass. The bleak yellows are occasionally broken apart by the even crueller white of bones, and the whole field is cast in darkness. When I look up, I see a massive cloud front rolling overhead, the white cloud surging outwards at the edge. It resembles a waterfall, pulsing with movement, and yet it remains sedentary in the sky. Regardless, it is far too close to us to be a real cloud as I know them, as well as too large. Its presence blocks out the sun in any direction, so that it is even darker than night where we stand. Deep dread fills my heart, and when I hear the grass crumpling, all the fur on my tail stands on end, as well as my feathers. A light shines in the gloom, pulsing and revealing the pink body of another Sentient, whose face is obscured from view until they practically stand against us.

"Lieutenant Shine." Avery calls.

Avery's perfect twin bears a lantern in her mouth. Two feathers lie dormant against the side of her head, and her fur is stained by deep blue residue, enhancing the blue stripes that already exist across her pelt. She drops the lantern to the ground, gently placing it in the grasses, which rise up like talons to grasp it. "So this is the fabled Auspicia you've been telling me about. Well, if she is a fake, you've done an excellent job." Shine gives me a quick sniff, and her breath is warm but not unpleasant, and her fur smells like berries and wind. I jerk my head back when her nose almost touches my horns. "Ah. Three. There can be no denying it, then."

Avery nods. "I'm really shocked by how much you and Verde expect me to lie. Insulted, even."

"Well, what were we supposed to expect? Apologies. I can't believe I just had to use 'we' when referring to myself and that... aberration of a prey species, and daren't he forget it."

"He has, and we would do well to forget such matters. In the end of times, when we rise again as one kind, we will have no need for such petty distinctions. At the very least, we should make sure to let their words inform our actions towards members of other species before our biases do."

"You're such an altruist." Shine even has Avery's breathy sigh. Her eyes are bright with warmth all the while, and the slow wave of her tail indicates a mutual companionship. "But you talked to him?" she asks.

Avery nods.

"And it went..."
"It went well enough." She drops her head. Her figure is silvered by the endless darkness of the land we currently inhabit.

"You had to tell him first, didn't you?"

"He had the knife." Avery retaliates.

"The knife you gave him." Shine's eyes narrow, the yellow glimmers of lantern light within them narrowing to daggers sharp as any knife.

"He was reliable."

"You had other allies."

"I had many, many other allies. Most of them had just gone up in flames with the only place I ever considered home. I don't understand what you possibly expected me to do." Avery says, and her voice hits a high, desperate keening laugh.

Shine presses herself to Avery and I understand, finally, why we have come here. The two of them meet in the depths of the field, and I step back, my nose reviling in the scent of the fields. Something grew here not long ago, my nose tells me. The cloud inches across the sky, taking two new trees into its shadow. I can sense the branches of the trees fall.

"Is this your home?" I ask.

"Yes. We live in the sky. A long time ago, we used to protect a barrier that stretched across the whole world, chasing down weak spots in a city in the clouds." Shine spreads her wings, the two feathers swinging in a sudden, sourceless wind. "It is a noble heritage. We've long been protectors of this land, even before Defenders were as they are today. We even have the ancient gift of song... I don't imagine you've sung to her much, Avery?"

"I'm so rusty." Avery says. "Not much to sing about when you're living in a time they'll someday write stories about."

"If we survive," Shine says. Her tail swings. "Well. Glad you brought her here. Glad you trusted me. I know you wouldn't come without a motive, though, given that you've been ignoring my invitations for a good while. What changed?"

"Plumeria and Icarus are dead." Avery says.

"Are they? What could've brought them down?"

"Shine."
Shine pauses.

"I need you to move the Nimbus. Order of the Auspicia."

"So I should tell them."

"Let the world know, but give no location."

"They'll kill me. They'll kill you."

"Verde might back me up.I'm only asking you to tell the highest level of security. Whatever's left of whatever Councils you can manage. Get everyone together. I've had enough of missions to the middle of nowhere in the hopes of procuring artifacts that may not exist, of suicide missions, of prayers sent up to a void that can't hear us. The future is staring us in the face. You're with us or against us, my friend, and if this means anything to you? I should hope you're for."

Shine lifts the lantern, which holds in her jaw as she decrees with the briefest flick of her ears, "These fields can't hold us long, anyways. I'll do what I can, but you know they won't be happy."

"I don't really care. I'm going to start telling my own allies soon as I'm home. It'll be a hard harvest moons ahead of me." Avery's eyes glint coldly, "Then again, I can think of few recent welcoming skies. The hard path it is."

"There's my girl," says Shine. "Take care of yourself."

"You too." Avery watches her retreat back into the gloom, and the image of another Canira dawns in my mind.

"Was she the one with the wings?" I ask.

"What?" asks Avery.

"The one you were in love with." I insist, frustrated.

"I... Heilin, are you in there?" Her voice rises again.

"What was the name of that Canira, with the bitten ear?" Another voice exits my mouth. An old affinity pulses inside me. There was something more... I wanted her to say. Welling back up into my own mind, slightly disoriented, I feel the stillness beginning to weigh on my fur, "And where are we?"

"This is the beautiful hell you rescued me from." Avery gently touches the pad of one of her paws to a skull.

"Did I?" I ask.

"It was the night of the storm, and I was thrown from the sky during a raid... the same kind that threw all these skeletons down here. The Nimbus has been here forever, and they've had... skirmishes. I would have died had you not come along and whisked me off to your palace. It was the kind of archetypal origins that I liked to believe marked me for greatness. I was so convinced that there had to be a reason for everything you did-- who you made me into--I mean--" Avery pauses, exhaling. "She. I'm so sorry, Rena."

"Don't worry about it. Everyone thinks of me like they think of her." I say, my eyes flicking upwards. Avery writhes beneath her thick, deeply colored fur, and begins pacing back into the darkness. It is so thick, like smoke, that I almost lose her the second she steps away, and as I stumble after her, I feel my face heavy with heat and disappointment. The air here is crushing my body. Every breath is like inhaling the air out of one of the ribcages in the darkness. My paws splinter grass and bone both. "Avery. Wait. Did I say something wrong?"

"No." she says. "No, please, don't think of it that way. I'm sorry. I really did just bring you out here again... as a tool... how cruel and irresponsible could I possibly be?"

"I wouldn't know what to say to all of these Sentients. I don't know them." I say. "I w-wish I was a real diplomat, like you, but I'm really just a scared pup. Like Verde and Shine said. Like everything thinks. It's okay if you speak for me a little. I'm still one of your Defenders, right?"

"You're more than that."

"Do I have to be?" I beg.

Avery gasps, and slowly, the tears come streaming down her face, running off her fur and wetting the grass that has seen no nutrition save blood in years. The yellowed blades, which by all accounts, should have been dead, move beneath her, and I can feel every one of them stand on end like the hairs of a great beast. All the magic in the air is ruinous.

"This is a place for the dead," I say. Something breathes in the dark and it isn't her, or me, or her, or her, or her, or her, all of the different Auspicias leaning in around another one of their toys. "We should go. Avery. Please? I'm sorry. Please don't get upset at me."
Avery sniffs. "I'm so sorry, Rena."

"Okay. If we're both sorry, and we don't want to feel... bad, maybe we could just... cancel each other out and both be okay? We need to go." I clarify. "Home."

"Home," Avery says. "It's been gone so long."

"We've been away for one day, Avery." I tilt my head.

The grass goes on forever, and ever, and some of the bodies are fresh. I can sense all of the Plague victims stirring, walking like ghosts amongst the ghosts, white bodies and deformed bodies and all the ashes of a place Avery and I are not ready to go fresh on our minds, a castle filled with ash coated in a different kind of darkness.

Avery speaks into a crystal at her neck, and a portal springs up.

Auma watches us enter when we return. There is so much concern in her eyes.

"Everything is okay," I assure her, supporting Avery with one wing.

I don't think she believes us.