Ember hums happily, a half-remembered work song— which must be from Ceron, some round which ripples through the pack, yes. For it is the Ceronians who keep this spacefaring pleasure-palace alight. So what if there is so much to do that only a few of her sisters have come to join her in caring for the cavernous heart of this paradise, this oddly quiet furnace?

Head out of the clouds, Ember! Your lover needs you to focus! The right hand of the queen takes her time and carefully dons her ceremonial (and practical) armor, all green-grey metal without ornamentation. In Hestia’s heart, ornaments cannot survive; gilt would run, crystal would crack, and any carving into the surface of the material would be an unacceptable weakening, a stripping away of what might be a crucial layer of protection. (And yet it is not heavy enough to make her steps ponderous, and she moves fluidly in it. Mighty are the works of the craftsman, wise are the chemists and the engineers.)

Her tail wrapped around her stomach, she enters into the shrine with a polite bow of her head, a breath of praise and worship on her lips. It is not dark here, not anymore, not with the molecular bellows pumping hard. The walls are the color of predawn, and the gases that drag along the walls writhe like Azura coils, and the fusion spark’s steady light casts shifting, unreal shadows on all sides. But that’s all right. The spark’s what she’s here for.

The fuel is shaped into cubes, broken off one by one, and offered to the flame. It flows as creamy and white as butter once it leaves her fingers. She almost loses herself in the way that it runs down the gutters. Soon it will all be consumed, and the engine will be the purest light, the purest heat. Soon it will all be gone, and only energy will remain. But that’s too soon. Toss the last of the fuel into the pillar, stretching its limbs across the top of the sphere, and run, Ember, run!

Mosaic could have done this easily, if she were not battle-weary. (They say she threw all of Beri, and the thought isn’t real to Ember yet. She still imagines houses being pried up and being tossed one by one; no one has yet explained to her exactly how she has underestimated the woman she faithfully explores.) But it is to her consort’s credit that the gates do not stick as she hauls them open, and down the gutters run white serpents with tongues of fire, almost seeming to flick at the air as they vent— no, they tear the air down and rip out its vital gases, gorge themselves on heady chemical mixtures.

She laughs as she makes her way towards the exit, skirting the peril zone, averting her eyes from Hestia’s Spindle as it builds, reaction by reaction, into awe and splendor. If she were to look now, not even her faceplate’s automatic tint would be able to protect her from its divine glory. Her face is glowing, sunburnt, shining with sweat. Her body has aches running from her crest to her heels.

When she emerges, she must go from that wild run to a dead stop; she must stand and wait, armor groaning and sizzling, for it to drop to a safe temperature for removal. Until then, she will stand awkwardly still and bask in the applause from her sisters and that oh-so-friendly magi, aware that her touch is death until Hestia’s glory has passed from her shoulders. And she will hum happily, the words so close to the tip of her tongue, words that mean [i]exertion[/i] and [i]pack[/i] and [i]peril.[/i] If only she could remember.