It was well past dark by the time Rhys was able to slip away from camp. He didn’t like powering up within the borders guarded by Mauvians – an extra too-pure Transcended aura for them to suppress just didn’t seem fair. Besides, the farther out he was, the less likely someone would catch him and try to talk him out of going to his Wonder.

Safely away from the main camp, he powered up, and Ploutonion Transcendent Knight of Saturn curled his fingers around his staff, the faint purple glow of his dragonscale markings providing a little extra bit of illumination.

“I pledge my life and loyalty to Saturn, and to Ploutonion. Grant me your protection, so that I may grant you mine.”

It was tiring, these days, even attempting to go to his Wonder, but Ploutonion stubbornly insisted upon doing it as often as he could, rather than as often as he needed to. Twice a week, he was in the cathedral, rooting for its secrets. In theory, he had an army of ghosts locked behind his Gates, and if he could just get the damned things to open, they would have their victory. His army of the dead would overrun Metallia’s host, they would take back the city, and that would be that, neatly tied up with a bow.

Not that there was much hope of that, anymore. Surely after nearly five years of examining his Wonder’s every secret, he would know by now if there were a switch or a trigger to swing the Gates wide, rationality said. But stubbornness and desperation had him looking and looking and looking.

Once he was in the center of the Cathedral, Plouton dismissed his staff and peeled off his gloves, making use of the bright scale-lines on the back of his hands as an extra light source, beyond the strange magic-fire torches that lit whenever he arrived, as he returned to his eternal project – trying the walls of the cathedral for secret passages. It was significantly bigger on the outside than on the inside, he had realized that much on his very first visit years and years ago, and he had already found a few doors, leading to fascinating but ultimately unhelpful places. Mostly they were entrances into the expansive catacombs under Ploutonion, as much a part of the Wonder as the cathedral and gate. He wondered, perhaps, if that was where the Gates would lead if he ever opened them physically, some secret part of the catacombs reserved for the Dead Army. That seemed as likely as anything else.

It was easy to lose track of time, alone in the flickering light of his Transcendence markings and of pale violet magical torches, as he tried, again, at the walls nearest to the great Gates that gave his Wonder its name.

He glanced at the Gates, and for a moment, he swore he saw an almost-recognizable scene – a camp, overrun, its defenders struggling…

And he shook his head and the battle on the Gate changed again, as it always did.

“Well ******** you too,” he snapped at the Gate – as if the scene were a personal affront, designed to shake him and remind him of what was likely to come. “I’m not the one that’s stood here for millennia with a damned army and never coughed up the goods!”

Except in a way, he was. It was his Wonder, an army of oathbreakers sworn once to Ploutonion, whose oath would only be fulfilled under his command, or his reincarnation’s (because he had certainly left no descendants to carry the name.)

He growled bitterly, and slammed his hand against the Gate, pounding on it over and over.

“Why won’t you open, damned thing? It’s the end of the ******** world down there, in case you haven’t noticed!”

It was pointless, it was always pointless.

“Can’t you at least give me a sign that you aren’t empty? That there’s something back there and I’m not wasting my time here?” He demanded, fist continuing to beat against the Gates. “Anything! A creepy wail, a rattle, I don’t care, just something!”

He had made the same demand before. He had done all of this before a thousand times, for weeks and months and years.

And just as every time before, only silence answered.