It was a peculiar feeling, that creeping dread. Like a fire built up behind a door, waiting to backdraft. Faustite wasn't sure when it would burst, or on who, but he was sure that it would. He was sure that his human acquaintances would distrust him for the outburst, if they survived it. Faustite wasn't certain when he noticed it, or when it began its slow windup in his system, collecting like a storm off the coast. Felt like life was paced too slowly, bogged down with systems, with reports and tithes and visits and meetings and patrols.

He'd spent too much time around people, their customs, their routines and rituals. Allowed them to bog him down and recollect his human life. But Faustite hadn't wanted to be Eion, never wanted the possibility of Eion, and fitting Eion's role as an officer unsettled him.

The remedy: another visit to the Rift. The thought alone perked up his blaze, pulled him a little faster through the much-familiar halls of the Citadel. His firelight sparked in crystal reflections along the way, down myriad hallways and staircases and all the Escher inconveniences that baffled the lower rank. He passed a pair that stopped and stared. He heard them muttering about rumors of youmafied officers before he lost the sounds of their voices.

Out the double doors, into the Hall, the Hall of halls that exacted its respect from every officer in its confines. He walked on without eye contact, passing by the glass-flattened hands while his mind was full of effulgent crystalline fields and escarpments where youma ran off like blackwork waterfalls. Past their rasping whispers in their dead tongues, austite scampered on, curled his smokestep way down the endless stair into the blackest bowels of their castle.

Out in the austere light of the Rift, the youma General stopped and breathed deep of the dusty, dead air. Its reprieve was nostalgic -- reminded him of morning-after-their-long-trip waking on his dad's boat, coming out, watching the liquid gold sun brush its glittering fingers over every wave. Must've been the freedom, he reasoned. The selfsame capacity to just be.

But his youmafied body wasn't content to sit and stew in sleepy morning contemplations as Elex had -- the firefettered General raced down the lopsided parapets, the crumbling steppe, the long-aged curling tongue of the Citadel's edge that passed the colosseum ruins and laid restful in a long-dead city. He would not settle there; with every passing rank, Faustite found this husk's history less compelling, less meaningful of the unending sentence of their servitude. The fireborn youma roamed on, past the scalloped edge of the city, past the dusty dunes that drew down into its black tarred river.

Felt good to run, to move. Months passed since he fell ill, but it was only in the past week that he felt recovered enough to jog again. As he appeased the fire in him, youma uprooted themselves from their lackluster hibernations to see who trespassed on their territory. Some, satisfied with a look alone, returned to their sedentary hours under the dead city. Others followed along at a distance, chasing after their piqued curiosity. A scant few recognized the burning boy and sought him out.

Of these was a nutria clone, whose tail dragged on and on until it ended in the head of a viper. It moved quickest on its four mammalian legs, its snake tail sailing behind it like a streamer. Hardly a minute passed before it ran apace with the General. "Faustite!" It squeaked. Behind it, a lower, slower, methodical speech: "You're back with us again.

"Not for long," he answered, slowing down. They trailed the river to a bend, where a poison marshland lay beyond. Its quicksand-esque blighted ground took many unwary officers, and Faustite never chanced it. With a beckon, he led the pair of youma toward the craggy pathways that framed it.

"Spent enough time with you two. Had to resume my duties. Been meaning to ask you --"

"About the ch-ch-changeling?" Paws pressed together, the nutria gawked up at him. Crystalline teeth clacked together as the thing twitched and trembled with energy.

The youth halted, turned, squatted down to level with the thing. "You saw it."

"Of course we did. How long you've been gone. We've seen much without you. We have much we want to tell." The snake tail rose, detached itself from its nutria friend, who now had only a sucking maw where its tail should have been.

"Tell."

"We can't." Its forked tongue flickered out, sampled the air. "Someone's listening."

Flame eyes combed the landscape. Rotten, striated trees jutted up out of the swampland, and he heard the wretched calls of youma, but they weren't close enough to bother the three. He'd known the river to harbor skeletonized aquatics of their kind, typically too primitive to understand speech, but nothing disturbed the poisonous waters that day. That left the crags to their right --

"Oh," the General breathed. "He stood slowly, started in the direction of a pair of great, flat rocks that pressed together in prayer. "A clever one."

Black eyes, cropped hair that hung dead from its head. Pale as whalebone. It wore black and black and black, with hints of aubergine and gold that chased asymmetric patterns up to the point of its neck. Scrawny thing, underdeveloped. Weakened by the legacy of smoke that poured from its back. The creature crossed its blackened arms over its blackened chest.

A squeak-screech at his side cut in. "It looks like you, Boss."

"It was me. A perfect imitation of my Captaincy." He approached the thing in a steady stride, as his core flared, its fire churning molten.

He'd never watched himself before. Took care to avoid mirrors as a Lieutenant and a Captain, but the countenance before him was unmistakably his: his pointed chin, his high cheekbones, his nose a knife's sharp cut from his profile. He watched the thing's lids twitch as it watched him back. And the smoke -- he remembered choking in the hall, getting his back vented by Arsenopyrite. This thing, if nothing else, it was a simple reminder of how much he'd depended on other officers. How much he still did.

"Get gone," he warned as his core churned bright. The thing looked down, recognized the threat, and dissipated into a breath of fireflies. He watched the display as it faded over rock and crag. His thoughts followed it, until the screeching at his side pulled him back to their duty.

"We good now, right Salty?"

The viper approached languorously, and wrapped a loose coil about the loudmouthed nutria. A hiss left the creature, its fangs open and bared.

"Salthiss?" Wouldn't have been the first time the duo tried to dust each other.

But Salthiss relented. Its jaws snapped shut, empty. "We can speak now.

"We saw it loping by the crystal brambles. Something hurt it. Maybe one of your friends."

"Where was it headed?" Faustite squatted again, watched his firelight reflect in the reptilian youma's eyes. Some vestige of its creature habits remained, the flame one figured, for Salthiss always slithered too close to him.

"The scar," it answered with finality.

Faustite spread his hands."Which is?"

The nutria pushed its snake friend's head out of the way as it stepped into Faustite's purview. "It's this big ole' gouge in the ground. Big like your Castle, but lay it sideways and turn it black. Like the lightning struck it, yeah? The scar's what your friends call it."

"They're not my friends."

"Whatever. Look, it's where this big, huge greater youma got up one day and started walking. Thing was so big, and sat there for so long, that it dented the Rift. And it hasn't changed yet, so they call it the scar."

Faustite blinked slowly at the thing. He didn't recall anyone mentioning a greater youma's movement, and he'd not seen or heard anything of the sort during his time in the Rift. He'd never once heard someone mention the scar, either; the youma's timelessness must have warped its sense of present. But it didn't explain his target's movement patterns. "Why's it going there?"

"Why do you come here?" The snake hissed, having dropped its chin onto its companion's head. The nutria flailed, tried to push it off, but a quick loop of snake tail around its arms thwarted it.

Suppressing an eye roll, Faustite nodded at the fairness of the question. Hands braced on knees, he stood. "Where's the scar?"

"Go through these crags and past the hills. You will see it before you reach the edge."

Faustite nodded, mulling it over. He felt a boiling excitement at the thought, and Faustite struggled to temper his youma half's expectations. Better that he give in, he knew. "Thanks. Got some recon to do."

Its tail whipped about before it plugged back into the nutria, who squeaked in response. "Don't get lost, Fireball," it screeched in its pitched voice, before the pair scampered back toward the distant city. Salthiss stared back at him from Rudiment's rear. It hissed something about false figures, but Faustite couldn't hear all of it.

Didn't care to. This time, he wouldn't use so small a team. The Rift was infinite, its youma were infinite, and Faustite bid soldiers better than him to visit its depths. Emboldened by the news, Faustite would finish his run through the Rift by reaching that peak, overlooking the scar, and winding the long route back.

It would be enough to unwind a little, he knew. Spare Kamacite and Albite his impulsive ire.