The universe turns like a wheel.

  What is becomes what was, and what was will return. I wish I had taken that easy lesson when it was offered to me, but I could not accept the truth behind that statement until I felt it for myself. Until I experienced it and knew without a shadow in my mind for doubt to cower in that, inevitably, I had to arrive at this point.

  I felt it sitting in the alien cells on Yathir, waiting for the executors of a people that were not my own to drag me out of the dark. My mind turned from the dark in the cell to the dark within my mind, a somehow even drearier place to await my sentencing.

  What paths had I taken to reach there, and what could I have done differently? The gift of hindsight failed me then, for no matter how long I turned the dilemma over I could not see any new angles. No new paths presented themselves to mock me for the mistakes I might have avoided.

  There were regrets there. Old wounds never healed, the scabs gummy enough to peel away when poked. But looking back, I’m not sure what I could have done differently. How I might have changed the tides of war and brokered for peace. I don’t think I could have.

  And for that, I am most sorry.

  Should the Empress have known the whole reason behind my coming to Yathir, I doubted she would have ever approved it. Reaching for aid against our newest enemy was only secondary to my desire for… I don’t know.

  Absolution? I couldn’t have it, nor did I want it. Then punishment. If my sins could not be forgiven or wiped away, at least I might bleed for them. It was the least of what I owed the Yasheni.

  In time, they came for me. The portal door to my cell spiraled open to let in stinging white light. My time imprisoned had turned me into a subterranean creature, fearful and hateful toward that brightness, and I recoiled away. Before I could overcome instinct, two Yasheni guard marched in, each armored in plates of shimmering silver like moonlight made metal. Their masks were made from the same material and evoked the snarling visages of feral beasts.

  A third entered and lingered near the door, the aether-charged pistol in her hand aimed at my head.

  Not a stunner that might paralyze my muscles or a nerve disruptor that could shut down my peripheral nervous system with a glancing strike. Nor the weapons of pacification a normal prisoner would warrant. No, if I made a wrong move they meant to execute me on the spot.

  “Tei,” the rightmost one commanded as they grabbed my arms. I obeyed as much as they would allow me, but they dragged me more than I moved on my own. We came to a stop in front of a squad of seven similarly equipped Yasheni soldiers waiting outside in the corridor.

  Their masked faces hid the fear wafting off of them. Were I anyone but who I was, it would have slipped my notice, but underneath those flickering white lights it spread like a spider’s web sticking to every one of us. Their minds and the thoughts within remained their own, but this fear of theirs became mine.

  What did they expect me to do? The stories about my actions held under aetherlight, but I suspected the ones told about my abilities had been exaggerated as it is the nature of fear to conjure demons where there are none.

  “Kallei.” The first whisper caught my ear as they clamped manacles around my wrists and ankles. It repeated as the same two picked me up again by the arms and pulled me past sealed cell doors containing more condemned.

  Kallei they whispered again, thinking I could not hear. In the Empress’s own tongue, a witch.

  The title was spoken like a curse in their language, though I’ve heard the Yasheni to harbor more witches than humanity has ever tolerated. Their seers and fleshsculptors and aetherwerkers. I could sense them then hiding in places beyond physical sight, their extra senses grasping out.

  They dragged me from the blocks of prison cells through the long winding corridors that characterized the cities on Yathir. I had only briefly seen the surface from during the transfer from starship brig to planetary prison, but that had been enough to scar the image into my mind. The surface of the Yasheni’s homeworld was a desolate, lonely place with no company save for the wind and biting ultraviolet radiation from their dim sun.

  At least that was not my fault, and I hoped that might be enough. That the centuries these people spent underground rankled them so that they could forget their hatred of me and who I represented, and instead turn it toward that ancient foe.

  The tunnel ahead of us began to widen, the near identical stretches of plain gray metal breaking their norm in design to allow a semi-circular archway. The ground here and here alone was mirror-polished, reflecting the archway back at itself to form a perfect circle. A frieze of silver inlaid into the metal ran along the sides. It was impossible to tell where the story began or where it might end, only that the art did tell one.

  Gods and their creation mirrored against each other beside paradise and hell. The forest burns, the forest is seeded anew. Ships sailing for distant stars, and ones returning home. There at the apex, positioned directly in the top middlemost point, stood the Aspect Above, Mortality. Arms crossed over their chest, face turned down and hidden by featureless shadow.

  They alone did not show in the reflection below. In their place appeared a smooth and blank section of wall on the frieze.

  I had only a moment to wonder at this trick before I was pulled through. Thrown without ceremony onto the cold floor. The soldiers spread out to either side of me and I heard the whine of weapons charging in their gauntleted hands.

  They had brought me to a courtroom, though the layout made it seem more like a coliseum. Rows of polished wooden benches—certainly a luxury on that world—surrounded the floor where the condemned must stand. My only company down there other than the guards were an iron wrought basin bolted into the ground several feet ahead of me and a Yasheni arbiter waiting beside it.

  The arbiter wore the plain robes of a bureaucrat, long and flowing but entirely bereft of decoration, and yet he wore them as finely as an aristocrat’s suit. Even without decoration he appeared fancier than those of noble blood in the Empire, who wore their lifeless charcoal fatigues and their various medals and awards like they would be soon banned, if only the Empress could show mercy.

  Then again, maybe this alien only struck me as such due to the utter state I was in. What does not appear to be riches when you yourself are in rags?

  “Kallei orr Hexenghast,” the judge intoned for the sake of the crowd gathered in the pews. The Witch of Hexenghast.

  I could not deny being a witch and I was born on the planet Hexenghast, so I supposed it was an accurate title they had given me, if uninspired. But I knew they meant it to mark my greatest, and worst, achievement in this pointless war.

  “Vivian is also fine,” I croaked in their language, drawing myself up to my knees. I could see the crystal-clear water in the basin beside him, felt the scratchy ache in my throat for want of it. Pointedly ignoring both my thirst and the growing whine of weapons readying to fire, I rose on shaky legs.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Vivian Brosch, at your service.” I attempted to bow and nearly fell again to my hands and knees as my head spun. It was only by the mercy of my captors that I did not, as a Yasheni man I had not noticed before then moved from beyond my field of vision to steady me.

  “Steady on, inquisitor.” The man spoke not in his native language as I expected, but in Imperial Standard.

  I knew that voice. I knew the man it belonged to. The universe turns like a wheel, returning to us the things it has taken. How cruel it is in this way. How beautiful.

  How beautiful Kel was then, a perfect match to the man that now lived only in memory. Whereas the others assembled before us wore their hair long and loose, gold and silver left to flow freely, his darker hair was cut short in military style. The dark freckles covering his face and neck further hinted at the human side of his heritage. I knew from experience they dappled him from his high cheekbones and pointed ears all the way down his chest, though currently a tightly-cut tunic hid the rest.

  Among the rest in the stands there was not a blemish to be spotted, not a patch of flawed skin on display. When arrayed together like that, it becomes a disconcerting sight, as if the hand of the artist has reached into the frame to distract you from appreciating their work.

  Make no mistake, the Yasheni took pride in their bodies as every artist must take pride in their artistry, and I don’t fault them for this. Only, it stirred me in a primordial emotion that I struggled to grasp. Once I knew the magic that went in to making them so physically perfect, it became all I could see.

  Staring at them, I pulled away from Kel and steadied myself on my own two feet. “I didn’t expect you to be here. I thought… I thought you wouldn’t be.”

  “I only arrived yesterday from the front. They…” He paused and I tore my gaze from the safety of the stands to look directly at him. He stared back at me, face kept carefully blanked. What he had to hide there, he revealed in his watery eyes.

  Terror and anger and grief, as I expected there to be. Mingled with things that hurt me worse to see—pity, compassion, and a softness that could be mistaken for love.

  I wanted only to reach out and touch his mind with mine, to feel these things and make them my own. Instead, I retreated to numb safety. Pushing aside his emotions, shutting them out alongside my own.

  “They?” I prompted when the silence dragged on too long.

  “They wanted an expert on hand, a person who was there and can help clarify matters,” he said. His calm breaking for a moment to allow a faint smile through, he added, “Not every day the Witch of Hexenghast gets put on trial.”

  His tone meant it as playful, but those words staggered me. I thought I had done a good job of hiding my reaction but perhaps Kel knew me too well, and saw the hurt he had caused. He tilted his head forward by way of apology. “I’m here to help. I plan to tell them why it happened. Hopefully they’ll listen to reason.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Kel had something else to say, but the arbiter cut in over him. “Does the accused stand ready?”

  “She does.” I turned slowly to face the judge and the basin once more. Or ready as I will ever be.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped forward until I stood at the far edge of its iron lip. Holding it in, I closed my eyes and forced myself to stillness. The Empress had drilled her prepared speech into me until I could mumble it in my sleep.

  “I come here by the authority of her August Majesty, the Empress of the Blood Imperial, the Architect’s Chosen, Changing Lord of our Empire Eternal and She Who Speaks With Humanity’s Voice…

  It is our sincerest wish that we might make peace with the kindred of Yasheni, in defiance of our greater enemy…

  As such, the Empress has authorized me to make certain concessions, to allow for…”

  Finally pushing the breath out and opening my eyes, I let those words fade into the void.

  “I have come here willingly to seek retribution for the wrongs I have committed,” I said, waiting a moment after to draw in the assembled witnesses. I met the judge’s eyes and held them for that stretched silence.

  Then I lowered my head until I peered down into the calm waters before me. “But that is not my only reason for being here. I bring a warning from my master. There are worse things that dwell beyond the stars than your kindred or my humanity, creatures that are now returning to take what they previously lost. No longer are we fighting a war on only a single front.”

  Old demons rise from the depths of hell to curse the present. I thought of the arch’s perfect circle behind me, of the perfect circle of water created by the basin before me. I wondered, had I seen them depicted on that frieze as well? Surely I had as I saw them here, carved into the inner sides.

  Shallow depressions in the iron depicted dragons with lashing tendrils and mouths agape to scorch the universe barren. Winged beasts with too many eyes and a taste for flesh, whether it be human or Yasheni.

  Only the void they floated above matched the reality they represented, for within the basin waited an abyss empty as space far above. From the outside, the basin could not have been more than a couple feet deep, yet I perceived nothing of the bottom inside.

  The darkness drew me in. An urge to reach into the water overwhelmed me, overcome only by the arbiter’s voice. “And so your Empress has sent you to entreat with us, that she might turn her attentions away from us to face her new enemies? Tell us, why is the hand she uses to offer us mercy stained black with our blood?”

  The arbiter’s question was rhetorical. That was for the best as I lacked a response they would like to hear.

  Indignant murmuring arose from the witness’ gallery.

  An end to the hostilities might sound like a lovely idea upon first hearing. After all, who does not love peace as the foremost among our ideals? Who does not abhor war as the lowest of our accomplishments? Only monsters would preach otherwise.

  Yet we must all be monsters, for there are few hands that would release a bloodstained blade when it is pointed at a hated foe. And great in number are those that would only drop it when any other option is closed to them, when their hands are broken and unable to carry that hate any longer.

  Our past encounters had left them only wounded, not broken. As such, there were few foes the Yasheni hated more than my Empire. Few, but not none.

  “If I may continue?” I spoke barely above a whisper. It was enough. The chamber fell silent, allowing that old spider to crawl back in. It took most of my focus to tune out my own power and ignored the emotions festering in the people around me.

  In everyone except for two. Kel, of course, and the arbiter. The latter inclined his head barely forward to turn the floor back over to me.

  “There are two extenuating circumstances that should be of interest to the court, should it please them to hear it.”

  The arbiter’s eyebrow threatened to leap from his angularly sculpted features. “If the prisoner would like to reach her point, the court will listen.”

  I looked over to Kel one more time to steady myself, finding my resolve in his impassive expression. The crowd’s interest had stretched to its end, and with all of them watching me from the edge of their benches, I raised my head.

  “What we fight is not new to you,” I said simply, twisting my hands as far as the manacles would allow to present my palms face up. “Nor is it our enemy alone. The Guilds assembled around the Golden Meridian were the first to suffer attack. Two Worldstations were destroyed following a surprise attack.”

  The merchants of the Golden Meridian Tradeline took great pride in their moon-sized stations. Equipped with the best money could afford, even our Empire would think twice before assaulting a single one. Yet two coordinated together, felled in a single battle?

  Revealing that fact sent the shocked reaction I wanted rippling through the assembled Yasheni. The arbiter alone hid his reaction, but for the first time since I had been dragged in I could sense it wafting from him. Faint surprise.

  I hid my smile. It wasn’t true joy that conjured it, more so a reflex from the years I’d spent on the job. Revealing the truth to a captive audience used to be a rare sort of fun. “Following this initial assault, several pathfinder vessels, one helmed by myself, were sent to investigate the nature of this enemy. I won’t bore you with the specifics of that mission, but know this—I saw them with my own eyes. We fought them with the best the Empire has at its disposal. We lost.”

  I reached up to grab the collar of my ragged clothes, stopping halfway up as several guards stepped forward. The arbiter waved them back, and urging me to finish what I had started with a glance, I shifted the collar down to show the top of my right shoulder and chest. The scar burned into the flesh, at a glance only a cut from an aetherblade.

  The graying skin pulled taut around the wound hinted at its vile origin, that lifeless color still creeping further by the week. I wondered when it might finally kill me.

  Those in the audience could not tell the difference, but the arbiter could. Kel could as well. I met his gaze and watched him mouth the name I’d been teasing them with. “Raskai.”

  I let my hands fall back down in front of me. “The Children of the Dragons have returned.”

  The courtroom erupted into full chaos.