A thousand thousand screens, all displaying a lock. The dust blows through the clusters of images, somehow leaving the screens unscratched. Everything else is seen through the slightest fog, but the locks are clear. Mocking. Taunting.

A weary knight steps through. She is still only a Knight, yet the only survivor of Firestorm Citadel. Her allies-her friends-all Vanguards, all better and more experienced than her, better equipped.

And they gave their lives so she might live to see this-this cruel mocking of those who have given so much, only to be prevented from what is needed most. She doesn't see the need to be composed anymore. She is alone.

She weeps. She weeps for the death of her friends, a death she may have caused by not being skilled enough. She weeps for the futility of their mission when the Core itself mocks them. She weeps because there is nothing left for her.

...

A click.

A screen displays an open lock. She looks at it, just after the flicker of blackness that overcame the screen vanishes. She dries her eyes, regains her composure-her friends might still be gone, but she has her mission. There is no more time for tears.

She steps closer to the screen. It grays into static for a moment, then a silhouette appears.

"Who are you? Do you know how to access the core?"

"..."

"Answer me! I am a Knight of the Spiral Order, and we desperately need power!"

"..."

"Answer, goddammit! My friends DIED for this!"

A faint whisper, barely audible over the wind. "Power?"

"Yes. Our ship crashed and we need to power it."

A laugh. Still as faint as before, but somehow... Wrong. Less a laugh than what someone who had never heard laughter for would do attempting it. Closer in kin to the noise a serial killer would make before dismembering its prey.

"Not power."

"Yes power! If we don't get it, we'll be stuck here forever!"

"You want power?"

Her voice is shaky. She is unnerved-the creature she speaks to is something she knows is fundamentally wrong. The Snarbolax was a frothing, rabid beast, the Royal Jelly a monster, the Roarmulous Twins massive engines of destruction, and Vanaduke a fallen king tied to his dead people. Not nice. Not good.

But not wrong. She understood them all. This creature she speaks to? She does not. She feels she could know it, but something in her refuses to acknowledge it. Some instinctive part of her can feel that even knowing this creature would fracture her psyche, send her gibbering in madness over the edge of the platform to crash into the Core's shell, her bones breaking and her body dying as a release from the horror she would see, she would know.

But she has her mission.

The voice repeats itself.

"You want power?"

Her voice shaky. Unsure. She sounds as if she knows she will regret this-if she has a mind left to regret with.

But her statement is clear.

"Yes."