Chapter 22

The room was silent except for Brynn's breathing. She lowered her hand slowly, the palm plate still cool to the touch. The second dummy stood across from her in the spotlight. It stared back at her, untouched, unimpressed. She exhaled sharply and dropped her arm. "I thought that would work," she muttered.

From the corner, Selenar didn't move. His voice came evenly, not without patience, but without coddling. "You want it to be simple. Predictable. Something you can name, touch, control."

She glanced at him. "Yes. Isn't that the whole point?"

"It is," he said. "But control doesn't begin with the spark. It begins with what lights it."

She frowned, turning away. "I thought anger would do it! I was angry." She sighed and clenched her fists. "I don't have the luxury of taking all this time to sort this out. I need to be ready when we find him, ready to break him out, ready for the fight that Xedrin says he is going to bring to them!"

He stepped forward, slow and steady. "You were frustrated. You were annoyed. That's not fire. That's smoke."

Brynn gritted her teeth, looking down at her hand. "Then what is it? What am I going to do to... to harness this?"

He stopped in front of her, gaze level. "That's what you're here to find." He watched her for a long moment, then said, "You're still looking outward."

Brynn rolled her eyes a little, her expression exasperated as she focused her gaze on him. "What does that even mean?"

"You keep reaching for things that happened to you, things you remember, or things you're reacting to." He stepped closer, not harsh, just focused. "But what are you trying to reach? That doesn't live in memory, or at the surface."

She blinked, still confused.

"The part of you that has survived," he continued. "That's where the fire lives. Not in the pain, but beneath it."

Brynn looked at the dummy again. "You want me to just... dig that out on command?"

"No," Selenar said. "I want you to remember that it was always there. You've just spent your whole life trying not to look at it."

Brynn frowned, tilting her head at him, her brow tightening and lips parting slightly--like she was watching someone wander straight into a campfire, half-certain it was a joke, but bracing herself just in case it wasn't. "That sounds like poetry, or some kind of nonsense, or something equally useful for this. Do you even know what that means?"

Selenar said nothing.

She sighed, pacing a few steps, shaking her head. "I don't know how to dig for something I don't even feel is there. I've never felt some hidden something inside of me. I've never heard a voice telling me to 'unleash my greatness' or whatever."

Her voice softened. "But..." She hesitated, her forehead wrinkling in thought. "There's this thing. I don't even know how to explain it. Every once in a while, when I look in the mirror... or when I'm alone... I get this feeling." She stared down at her palms. "Like someone else is in the room. Not physically, but just... watching, waiting. Like there's someone standing just out of sight, maybe in the corner. But then when I turn to find them, I'm alone." She looked up at Selenar, eyes uncertain. "Is that what you mean?"

Selenar didn't respond right away. Then he took a slow step forward, his voice quieter than before--not distant, just precise. "I have a theory," he said. "This feeling you have, like someone is always in the corner, just out of sight? It's not some mystical force. It's not a ghost or some kind of phantasm."

He looked at her, steady. "I think... it's you. Or... rather the version of you that your mind has created when you needed to survive. When freezing wasn't an option, when silence would've meant death, this part of you, it manifests."

He moved around her, not pacing--just giving her space. "It's always been there. Not in front of you. Just... pushed to the edge because you needed it there."

He stopped beside her again. "And every time... every time you clawed your way back from a place you thought you couldn't escape..."

Brynn stood still, her gaze drifting somewhere far beyond the room. She swallowed. "But... what am I supposed to do? How do I use that?" She shook her head, eyes narrowing a little. "What if I lose control again?"

Selenar didn't flinch at her question. He just nodded once, like he'd been waiting for her to ask it. "Because life split you into pieces," he said. "That's how you survived. One part served drinks. One part learned to fight. One part kept the pain quiet. And..."

She looked at him when he paused mid sentence, first with shock, then with curiosity. "What?"

He stepped forward, just enough to hold her eyes. "How else do you think you are alive? How else do you think you've made it this far?"

She shook her head. "I... I don't know. It's just kind of always... Worked out."

"Of course! But you never paid it any mind."

She shifted uneasily and looked at the floor. "Well... No..."

"You've been surviving in compartments. It worked. You're still alive!"

He gestured to the scorched wall, the other ruined dummy. "But why settle? Why settle for staying alive, for surviving, when you could choose to live!"

A pause. "Not as something separate... but as you."

She stood in silence for a long time. The dummy sat across the room, still staring blankly at her. Brynn wasn't looking at it. Her gaze had dropped to the floor. Something in what Selenar said had stuck.

Her voice came quiet. "All my life... I've been treated like I didn't matter. I've lived like I didn't matter..."

Selenar didn't interrupt.

"Not just by one person, or even one place, but everywhere. I was always a burden, a problem. Or something to consume or use, and then toss aside. Even when someone offered kindness, it felt like pity, like feeding a stray animal."

Her fists tightened, not from rage, but from the effort of holding the words together. "I learned not to want, not to hope. I learned to settle, because settling was... safe."

She blinked hard. "But maybe that's what broke me."

She looked up slowly. "I don't deserve that. I keep waiting for someone else to say it, or make it better. But... it has to start with me."

Selenar took a slow step forward, his voice low. "That's the first really honest thing you've said since you were delivered to me."

Brynn turned to face the dummy. She raised her hand. Selenar stepped closer, but didn't reach for her. His presence was steady, grounding. "You aren't a pawn," he said, his voice low and firm.

Brynn didn't look at him, but he saw her shoulders lift, just slightly, as the words landed.

"They treated you like baggage. Like you were in the way."

She looked down at her palm, staring at the plate, and felt her jaw clench as the indignation built inside of her.

She felt his hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. "You will need something more if we're to do this properly."

She wrinkled her forehead in confusion, looking up at him. "What do you mean?"

The corridor narrowed as they descended, the air turning damp and mineral-sharp. Brynn had followed in silence as Selenar led her down flights of stairs and through new passages she'd not seen before. After a while, she lost her bearings. She wasn't sure if they were still descending, or if they'd turned somewhere and inverted entirely. But more than anything, she was surprised that so much ship fit inside the hull.

They came to a stop and Brynn looked behind her one last time before turning back to Selenar. The light was dimmer than normal, but the corridor was not unlike every other corridor she'd seen in her time aboard. They stood outside an aperture-shaped passage, no different from the others she'd seen. This one felt different. She couldn't put her finger on it, but it made her uncomfortable.

The Ulratian stepped aside. "She waits," he said.

Brynn turned to him, then to the door, and back again. "Do I go in? Do I knock?"

She turned back to the threshold. It suddenly gaped open--expanding wide, though no one stood there. She glanced at Selenar one more time before she stepped into the room.

The room was dim. The walls were different, like some kind of stone masonry rather than bulkhead. There was a strangely aromatic scent filling the air that made the hair in her nose itch.

"Hello."

Brynn spun around suddenly to find the owner of the voice. She spoke in a husky, old voice, like someone who'd spent a lot of time screaming. She was a little hunched, her body cloaked in woven black--something coarse and knotted, like canvas that had been worked too many times by too many hands. A veil hung over her face, and when she pulled it back, Brynn saw eyes so black they seemed to swallow the light. A stark contrast to the swirling pearl white every other Ulratian had.

Brynn's eyes flicked up and down, looking her over. She shifted uncomfortably, swallowing to try to wet her throat. "Hi."

"You're taller than I'd imagined."

Brynn stared, but didn't know what to say.

"You need something." The woman's eyes thinned, almost closed. It made Brynn so uncomfortable.

Brynn flinched as the woman moved close, invading the space most people knew better than to cross. She hovered around her like some kind of hound hunting for prey.

"What is it?" she asked.

The woman didn't answer, just continued to examine her closely, sniffing the air between them. Then she stopped and moved to stand in front of her. She made a thoughtful noise and nodded. "Yes..."

Brynn's eyes grew wide. "Yes? Yes what? What do you mean?"

"I know what you need." She moved away and walked deeper into the room, disappearing around the side of a wall. She was back within a few moments, holding something on a short chain. It looked like a crystal, dark and cloudy, but then Brynn realized a liquid moved inside it.

She held the chain up and towards Brynn. Brynn reached and the woman nodded encouragingly. "Yes. Take it."

The woman laid the chain across Brynn's waiting fingers. She let it rest there for a beat before closing her hand around it. She examined it in her hand and looked up at the woman. "What is it?"

The woman grinned, a wide, toothy smile. "It's all you need."

"For what?"

She nodded at her. "You will know. Take it back to your room. Make sure you are on the floor. Drink the entire thing."

Brynn looked at the vial and then back at the woman. "And then what?"

"I can't tell you," the woman said. "Only you will know."

Brynn's brow furrowed. "I don't understand."

The woman gave a slow nod. "The result is different for everyone. I cannot tell you what will happen, only that it will be what you need."

That did not help. "So... is it a vision? A dream? What?"

The woman shrugged. "It is a path. You will choose to walk it, or you won't."

Brynn exhaled through her nose, frustrated. "Why does everything on this ship have to be so confusing!" She looked up at the ceiling, yelling at no one. "Does everything have to be so complicated?!"

The woman only gave a faint smile.

Brynn looked back at the woman, then held the crystal up closer to her face, staring at the vial again. Then she lowered it and looked at the woman. "You can't tell me anything?"

"You already have what you need," the woman said. "The rest... is between you and whatever answers you're brave enough to ask."

Brynn sighed through her nose, only further irritated. But then she grimaced and gave a reluctant nod. "Thank you," she said quietly.

The woman didn't respond. She just turned and disappeared back into the shadows of the room.

Brynn turned back to door and stepped back through it to find Selenar waiting. The hallway was colder than she remembered. They walked in silence, the vial still clutched in her hand, the chain wrapped loosely around her fingers. She kept glancing down at it. It didn't glow or pulse or do anything strange--just that slow churning swirl inside, like dark ink in water.

"Did you receive the assistance you were looking for?"

Brynn turned back to Selenar quickly, startled out of deep thought. "What?" Then she shook her head, her brain catching up to the question. "I... I am not sure. I don't know yet." She frowned and her shoulders slumped. "I just feel like there has not been a single thing that's been simple since I met Xedrin. Everything is complicated, confusing, or just completely infuriating."

When she reached her quarters, she stood at the edge of the door for a long moment. She turned to Selenar and sighed again. "Thank you, Selenar."

He nodded to her. "Of course. Come find me when... you have what you need." He grinned wide, in a way that made Brynn's hair stand on end.

Then she stood in the doorway for a long second before allowing it to seal shut behind her. She crossed to the center of the room, set the vial gently on the floor, and exhaled.

She sat with her back to the bed, looking down at the crystal on the floor. She picked it up again, holding it up to the dim light. The liquid looked almost still now, but there was something underneath. Not motion or life. Just... something. Like a color her eyes couldn't see or a sound she couldn't hear.

She frowned. It wasn't alive. But it wasn't neutral either. The closer it got to her skin, the more her nerves prickled.

She didn't understand it and couldn't name it.

She lifted it by the chain and slowly unscrewed the cap, peering down into the bottom. She shook the vial just a little, trying to see if anything jumped out at her. She pursed her lips, then tipped her head back, pouring the contents between her lips.

It slid into her mouth like water, but colder... heavier. Not a single trace of taste or scent. There was the sensation of something being there, moving through her.

She swallowed.

The room wavered, but not suddenly or violently.

The floor beneath her began to tip--not as if she were falling, but as if the room itself had become a seesaw, drifting to one side. Her balance tilted with it.

The walls blurred. The lights stretched. Sound faded like it was being pulled through a tunnel behind her. Brynn's breath caught as her body felt like it was sliding sideways--through the floor, through her thoughts, through something she couldn't name.

Darkness gathered in the corners of her vision. She tipped back, but the bed was gone, and her back never found the floor.