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The earth turned, and thus the sun rose, the grass grew, and -- somewhere, at all times -- the day began. Living things woke and went about their business, or sought some dark place beneath the ground to sleep. Tides crept in and out, chancing the shore. Life on Earth was an ever-changing bustle of activity.

Here in space, it wasn't so.

The sun neither rose nor fell on the Temple of Hvergelmir. Starlight kept the sky instead, and kept it well: here, so desperately close to the very center of the galaxy, there was light enough from a profusion of stars that the whole of the island was basked perpetually in a night as bright as dim and quiet day.

The stars, in a haze all about the island, were certainly its chief sight to take in -- but the island itself was all pale whites and grays, capped here and there with a coppery-pink metal gone to tarnish and rust. The marble underfoot and on benches was worn smooth to a shine, so thoroughly tempered with age that it felt almost soft to the touch.

In the distance, Hvergelmir could see the long pier, white-silvery metal, stretching out into space. Behind her would be the temple where she'd once lived, and close by, the plot where a garden had once grown, its land now mostly cleared after repeated visits. They were on the steps by the Well itself -- near where she'd landed before, with Zippeite.

The island was small, but this was the heart of it. Perhaps, on some level, she'd chosen the place where they'd arrived -- far from the edge -- safe -- but she didn't know. Perhaps it was simply that the Well itself drew her most easily.

It stood two more steps up from where they were. At the top of the great flat dais, ringed with white stone and surrounded here and there by benches, celebrated round-by with a crown of massive, sky-reaching Doric columns, there lay the Well of Hvergelmir, the life source of her Wonder. It was round, perhaps thirty feet across -- and the waters within it stretched deep down into blackness, reflecting in perfect, churning mirror the impossibly starry sky above.

If all senshi and knights originated from within the Milky Way, then Hvergelmir had taken Bischofite about half as far as he could conceivably go from Earth. To go farther, he'd need someone from the unobservable side of the galaxy -- some star from the Norma or the Scutum-Centaurus, one of the long arms that was labeled on a map in her temple bedroom. Hvergelmir wondered if many senshi actually knew where in the galaxy their homeworlds were located.

Well, halfway was still extremely far. And -- though she didn't think it would be wise to point out -- they were as close as could be managed to the Space Cauldron. Chaos had little foothold here.

"You can let go," she confirmed. "How do you feel?"

Hvergelmir nodded, watching Bischofite carefully for any sign of what he was going to do. His long feathers brushed against her leg, ticklish, and she flicked her gaze downward instinctively just to see what it was -- but there was an odd, sort of pleasurable torment in tolerating it, so she didn't move away. Sudden movements were dangerous around frightened, wild things. She could be still.

"There's power here," she acknowledged, joining in his slow gaze around. It was always interesting to see the place through someone else's eyes. "I've been to Ida -- it's very beautiful. The colors are warm and alive. This place is smaller, but I suppose you could say its presence is concentrated -- there's little more here than what suits the needs of a single occupant."

Her. The knight of the Well -- left to dwell alone by the beating heart of Creation, just at the edge of its echo.

"L’appel du vide," she said, looking off into the white noise of space. "Try to ignore it." Listening to his confessed reactions, she added, "This is a temple -- a place of rest and renewal. It will bring you no harm."

Hvergelmir turned to lead him onward, to offer some meager tour of the place -- attentive to his reactions as they went. The fear, the dread he felt -- was it Metallia trying to drive him away? Did the Well, in some way, try to reject him on its own, repulsed by the proximity of Chaos? Was it their nearness to the Space Cauldron itself, radiant with so much power that it leaked to places like this?

Her footsteps followed the path around the well. She could see, for the first time, the faint glimmer of what seemed to be a shield capping the great well, and wondered if it had always been there. It was nearly invisible, except in faint glimmers of light that caught her eye once or twice, decorated with the embellished symbol of the vesica piscis. She moved on.

The path from the Well leading away to the temple proper was lined with polished stone. It bore the speckled splotches of dried blood a few months old, never properly cleaned up. (Laney always had been a bit of a slob.)

"There used to be a garden over there -- and a stable around the back of the temple itself, which is -- " She indicated the size of the island, the nonexistent amounts of running space for the kind of animal that might live in a stable. " -- hilariously odd."

With a glance over her shoulder to see if Bischofite was following, she said, "The pier's only what you see. The grooves you can see in the stone that run in that direction are carrying water out to the pier's edge, but otherwise it's simple metal -- not much to tour."

Beyond the things she'd indicated, the island was mostly smooth white stone, dotted occasionally with marble benches and raised tables on little columns -- nothing much to interrupt the view. At the outer edges of the island, the rock fell away into the hollow of space with a somewhat beautiful lack of ceremony. There were no fences or railings anywhere.

"Things are a little bit messy inside," she warned. "I apologize in advance."

Hvergelmir took in Bischofite's commentary, considering it as they walked. In her memories, she'd spent most of her time in this place barefoot; she had the urge to take off her shoes even now, feel the bare stone beneath her feet.

"Oh," she said nonchalantly. She felt more comfortable in this place, somehow -- knowing it was her own territory, her place. "Well, in that case, I have a broom."

She did, in fact; her first few visits to the island had been dedicated to nothing more exciting than shoving piles of dust feet-deep off the sides of the island or into plastic bags, and she'd left the broom and other cleaning supplies here for future use. Hopefully not actually in sweeping up Bischofite, but she was entirely certain he was joking with her, in this case.

(That lifted her spirits appreciably. Any ability to crack a joke was a good sign, even a snide or a sarcastic joke. Even if the humor was a defensive reaction to a fear response because the island was unnerving him, that still meant he was getting a little bit of distance from himself, or from his youma.)

"You're looking at the previous occupant of the island," she answered first. "Such as she is. The stable is -- sort of a mystery to me, still. I haven't managed to remember anything useful about it. The pier's for receiving ships, though. This place is something like an interstellar rest stop."

She led them through the portico at the front of the temple. Within was a solemn, warmly-illuminated amphitheater-like area, which she ignored and walked straight through -- past a now-unfettered doorway and into the main, private area of the building.

The blood spatters on the ground led away into a sizable kitchen to the right of the hall, where they terminated in the center of the floor at a point where the spattered blood grew heavier and had been tracked through with footprints that belonged to an approximately average-sized woman. Here, of all the clutter in the building, it was obvious from the opened drawers and cabinets that this one room had been somewhat recently ransacked. (She'd been looking for a knife -- and, unhappily for the kitchen floor, found one.)

"Kitchen," she said perfunctorily. There was currently nothing in it worth eating.

"No one's been purified here that I can remember," she offered the belated answer, "but I don't see why they couldn't be. Other substantial magic's been done here. Malicious -- can you hear her thoughts? Do you communicate, at all?"

Babylon had been able to, with his ancestor -- but a youma was certainly not the same situation.

"The memories come and go," she admitted. "Sometimes, if I concentrate, I can rattle one up to the surface that's a little more useful than the others, but -- most of them are incomplete. Short. They've gotten a little longer with time, and since I've been a squire." She watched him rifle his way through the kitchen, agitated. "But in any event, you're not missing out on much here. The island was hardly different -- it's mostly the garden and the stable that were lost to time. Here and there, the marble's cracked where it never was before, and the metal's gone to tarnish and rust, but most of it still stands just like it did a thousand years ago."

Hvergelmir led them past a bathroom, door standing open -- a half-bath, properly: sink and mirror, pull-cord toilet, no shower or bath. "If you, um, need to. Feel free." There was a supply closet across the way, and at the end of the hall, a broad staircase winding up to the next floor.

"I've never tried taking more than one person. I could experiment with it, but I can only make the trip once every two weeks -- I can ask around with some of my fellow knights, first. No point reinventing the wheel just because it seems to be the popular tactic, right?"

It was, unfortunately. That was their great shortcoming, especially among knights, as far as she could tell -- communication was limited and difficult, so few people bothered to try. She often felt so sure that most of the information they needed to make sense of the war already existed between them, it was just -- harder to pull together than wringing blood from a stone.

But someone had to. It was the only way to ever dig out of their present hole.

"You're assimilating her, then -- well, that would be -- I mean, it's an ignoble way to lose a piece of yourself, but it's still -- a data point. If you can gradually absorb her, uh -- let's call it a soul, for argument's sake, unless you think you have a piece of her brain in yours? -- would your body start to absorb hers, too? Have you noticed any changes over time, physically? If not, it's... worth considering other options that would explain the difference. Asking whether or not absorbing Malicious's personality is really just an accidental side effect."

Hvergelmir led the way up the curved stairs, one hand trailing over the banister. "If you got your body back, that would be great," she allowed. "But you still wouldn't be able to spend your time as you please. I'll be happy for you when you're free of the Negaverse's hold. Nothing less."

At the next rise of flooring, the stairs opened back up onto another hallway, cut overhead with arched marble. To the left was a broad doorway to an open room that seemed, to all appearances, to lead back down to the ground level at the rear of the temple by a set of tiered crystal stairs. The floor, too, was a faintly iridescent crystal with nothing beneath it, offering a slightly filtered view of open space. On two sides, and above, the room had no walls. It appeared to be a large, outdoor porch, of sorts. Within it (if you could say anything was within or without a largely open room, Hvergelmir supposed) stood a well-preserved spinning wheel and a beautifully carved, floor-to-sky loom. She dispelled the invisible shielding over the doorway with a touch, then stepped through, out onto the crystal flooring.

"My weaving room," she said, gliding a hand over the gold-painted lumber that formed the loom's towering frame. "Or porch, or something. I was pretty careful not to let all my clutter collect out here, I guess." He'd see that in some of the other upstairs rooms.

Hvergelmir turned back to look at her guest. "So now he asks about the war. Alright, then -- I'll tell you what little I know about its beginnings, and you -- I'm guessing -- will be suitably unimpressed at how paltry and incomplete the story is. And then I'll tell you that what I currently know is more than what most people in this war are even aware of, if the people I've spoken to are any indication." She smiled a little wryly. "Then you'll really be unimpressed."

Stepping farther out onto the crystal flooring, she turned again to offer her regard to the stars. "A thousand years ago, the galaxy stood generally at peace. The kingdom of the moon, known then as the Silver Millennium, was the most powerful empire in the galaxy -- matched only by the independent kingdom of the Earth. The moon was ruled by a queen -- Serenity -- and the Earth, I suppose, by its young prince -- Endymion. Endymion was betrothed to a young sorceress from Earth, named Beryl.

"During that time, Earth began to widen its contacts into space. The Academy of knights was founded, a pet project of Endymion's, together with his own closest soldiers -- and they took in students from across the galaxy, forming alliances as they went. During this time, Endymion met the young princess of the moon -- also Serenity, as I understand it -- and the two began an affair. They planned to -- elope, I guess you could say.

"Beryl was unhappy with this development, as you might expect. She made a contract with Chaos -- with Queen Metallia -- for power, and named herself Queen Beryl of the Negaverse. Earth's dark kingdom. She drew other knights to her side -- those who were suspicious of the increasing involvement with other planets and stars, who disliked the fear of their planet being brought into the moon's great empire -- and together they launched an attack on the Academy, sinking the Academy and all its inhabitants under the Earth to form the Rift, turning them all into youma."

She shrugged, watching the sky as though for answers to all the bigger, more important questions.

"Then, no one knows what happened. Presumably the Earth, under Beryl, went to war with the Moon, under Serenity -- but no one has any details of it. Then there was -- for some reason -- a long period of quiet, of no conflict. All the other worlds in the galaxy seem to have died out, leaving nothing but Earth. People began to be reborn here. Then, for reasons I still have yet to uncover, youma began emerging from the Rift again -- or were released -- and fighting began again, several years ago." She folded her arms beneath her chest, the old frustration rising up in her again. There were never any good answers, no matter who she asked. They really were all fighting over a cause none of them could quite put their fingers to. "That's all."

A stray piece of hair dangled in her face. She blew at it lightly. "If I had a role in that war, or any other war, I don't know it. Some of the time I was here -- but mostly, as far as I can recall, I traveled. I was a sort of ambassador, I think. People gave me gifts." She lifted one bare shoulder. "When I came here, it was mostly to be alone. I can't imagine myself a soldier, or this place a stronghold."

Bischofite had a talent, somehow, to always make Hvergelmir feel a little bit smaller than before. To ask her for help, favors, or information, only to tell her how terrible her efforts were. If he felt any closeness to her, she couldn't imagine it, any moreso than she could with her parents. He treated her like an irritating stranger he was perpetually forced to tolerate.

(A little too much like her parents, come to think of it. Maybe it was why she craved a positive word from him, someday. His cold disregard was familiar and painful.)

Hvergelmir looked back, watching as Bischofite toyed idly with her loom. When she was satisfied he didn't seem to be doing it any harm, she looked away again. "I don't have any memory of the Academy -- not yet, at least, I guess. But if you do go there and find anything, will you tell me about it?"

Maybe some of the old structure still stood. Maybe someday it, too, could be saved -- like she hoped Bischofite could.

Hvergelmir favored Bischofite with a smile. 'If I find it' wasn't exactly a promise. It wasn't even an offer. But it wasn't a dismissal, and that was something. It was -- she would almost categorize it as a kindness, for Alois. It made her heart flutter just a bit; faintly, like a ladybug taking flight.

"I collect novelty spoons," she suggested jokingly, but not entirely untruthfully. "There are some really weird ones in my treasury room -- foreign dignitaries were always giving them to me. If you're thinking of souvenirs."

Bischofite's claim that he was uncomfortable at her wonder didn't bother her as much as she might've expected it to. After all, if he found it about as comfortable to be there as at the Rift, that may not've meant he was very well at ease here -- but it meant he wasn't exactly longing for the Rift's sweet creature comforts, either. Malicious was feeding aversion to his human side -- but his human side still fed it back. Whether or not he knew it, he had a tenacious hold on his humanity.

They'd all keep trying.

"Alright," she said, extending a hand. "Let's go back."