Kisea stepped out of the barrier.

Biserai's attack had the force of desperation behind it, a projection of raw emotion, rage at and terror of multiple things all braided together into a whip that snapped against Kisea's armour and skated across it, tearing loose fragments.

*Oh, please,* Kisea flung at them. *I've lived with anger and fear every day for the last decade. You think those are going to stop me? That isn't even worth the effort to counter.*

*You are exactly what we killed controllers to try to prevent,* Chimo said bitterly.

*You are, I suppose, what we made you,* Biserai said, in much the same tone.

*How dare you claim any credit for what I am?* Kisea snapped. *What you almost created was a corpse. What you could have created was another self-serving twisted parasite like that bogslime that attacked Matt. What I am, I am because even after I ran, I remembered what trust and love and gentleness felt like, and even if you tried to make sure I could never have them again, I could at least try to help others reach solid ground to look for them. What I am is because of Matt and my own choices, despite you, not because of you. I've done things I'm not proud of, but I have never tried to rationalize it as having some exalted purpose.*

*And you don't think,* said the third telepath, *your whole superior attitude is any different from any other controller? What you want, the world has to roll over on its back and give you. What you think is right is what's going to happen. No matter how many lives you destroy in the process.*

*I don't destroy lives. I save them. Unless I'm attacked first.*

*And just what makes your life so valuable?*

*Ask anyone I've healed after their hearts and souls have been torn apart by people who think like you.*

*Oh, yes, we read that. A bunch of crossbreeds, mainly, most of them not even able to pay what a healer normally earns. Siren sluts wailing about being raped when it was their own fault, villagers whining about being afraid of the dark, one stupid alasir who tossed aside a title for no good reason.*

She hadn't realized she could be more angry.

*It cost every one of them more than you'll ever understand just to keep going day after day!*

*And Caalden would be so much poorer a place for losing them, wouldn't it? *

*I'd rather share the world with them than you!*

*I'd rather,* Chimo mocked. *Because what you want is all that matters, isn't it? Because that's what controllers are. Twist the world and everyone around them into what they want, and what others want doesn't matter.*

*All these people you supposedly healed,* Biserai said contemptuously. *Did a little rearranging while you were at it, did you? Convince them that you've created a miracle, and that you'd done something no one else could? Just to make sure that they're grateful enough to satisfy your ego and give you things that you want, whether they otherwise would or not?*

Her visualized combat zone trembled, the ground under them shaking with her fury.

I'm going to kill them. Horribly, and listen to them scream, and wring a hundred tears from them for every one I've shed because of them.

No. I can't. That would make me what they think I am. How could I ever ask even Matt to trust me after that?

*How many lives,* the Southerner said, *of good men with families have you ruined because those men had inaccurate information about sirens and you threw a tantrum? It isn't like you haven't had plenty of men between your legs if you're like any other siren. You're oh-so-noble, but you'd rather rip their minds apart?*

*Are you seriously telling me that fighting back against being raped is unethical?* Kisea said in disbelief. *Right. Man, and Southerner. No clue about anything outside your own monochrome little reality, despite living with sirens around you on all sides at the College. How many sirens have you raped? You have a quarter-siren bedroom toy, one with no gift to help her fight back? Or are you just hoping for one? The world will be so much poorer a place without another overly-privileged bigot with a small mind and smaller heart.*

*Which, of course, is your right to decide, unilaterally,* Chimo mocked.

What are they doing? They aren't attacking, don't have much left by the way of defences, they can't really think that words are going to make me turn tail and run!

*You want me angry,* she said slowly. *You want me to lose control and kill you or wipe your minds. That's it, isn't it? You know that you have absolutely no escape. There's nowhere for you to run or hide. But if I kill you, then you get to look justified in at least the eyes of the people who will always be scared of controllers. That isn't going to happen. Unless you can kill or disable me first, I'm going to strip you defenceless and hand you back to the part of the Assembly that values life.*

She began to circle around them again, examining the barrier in front of her. Every instinct told her it was the only one left, that on the other side they had at most their personal shields.

*Matt wants you alive and intact because he believes in justice. He believes that no one should do you any harm until you've had a fair trial and if you're guilty then someone with the legal authority to do it gets to decide what to do with you.*

This barrier was simply... darkness. A dense roiling darkness so thick she could all but feel it, so bitter it stung her skin like acid. She kept circling, contemplating the best approach.

*I want you alive because I don't want you to get out of the consequences of your actions that easily. I want you to pay. I want to ram everything down your throats until you choke on it. Every parent and sibling and friend who cried because someone who should have had a bright future never came home. Every controller who's been living on scraps in the shadows, terrified to stand up for themselves against abuse. Everyone hurt by a controller who believed the whole world hates them and that they must be monsters and so they acted the part. If there was a way to name all the people who could have been mindhealed by someone like me and give you all the pain and fear and despair they could have been spared, and their loved ones, I'd do it. I'm a much less nice person than Matt is, and what I believe in is much less abstract. But then, his life has been relatively sheltered and safe. Something like yours, but there's an enormous difference: he doesn't think he's entitled to it and somehow innately superior because of it. He thinks absolutely everyone deserves safety from violence and want and injustice.*

Somehow fitting, that this final barrier should be vulnerable to imagery drawn from Matt.

In the dark, when he and Kian and Shon could see, he still created light for her. Because her biology was different, but different didn't mean inferior, just something to acknowledge and accommodate. If he could do the mirror version for Shon during the day, he would.

But light wasn't just light. Fear had driven her to flee from Matt as much as from the College and Assembly; fear had kept her in hiding, had guided her hand as she hid the onyx charm in her own body. In her first few months alone, she'd been too blinded by fear to be entirely rational, and the fear had urged her into actions she'd come to regret deeply. Fear clouded the mind and wrapped the spirit in darkness, shutting out everything in order to stay safe but at the same time shutting out the light that could break down the fear itself.

That light, Matt and his cousins were doing everything they could to spread.

She held up her hands, thought of long ago, when he was still learning, creating fanciful illusory flowers for her that glowed with their own radiance to make her smile. She thought of being out on the road, on the way here, and Matt holding in his hands a tiny version of the blue larger moon before setting it free to shed its light gently over the night.

Neither was as bright as his spirit.

Nor was either as bright as the light in Rylina's eyes when she realized the fear was gone, the same light she'd seen so often. She'd tried, the first time, with a siren-blood youth much her own age who had been raped and even his human family refused to believe that he hadn't initiated it, and he was beginning to believe it himself but the conflict was tearing him apart. It hadn't been a smooth job, not like she'd learned to do later, but she'd broken the spiral, at least, and they'd left that village together. She'd seen him once, in Malachite, but had made sure he didn't see her; he'd been with a siren-alasir woman, the two obviously very close, and he'd shown every indication that he was prospering.

She'd only done it at all because when she'd felt alone and lost, Matt had held out a hand to her. Once she'd seen that light come back to pain-darkened eyes the first time, she'd known she'd do it again.

There was light in Matt's, too, often coloured by a mischievous satisfaction, when he found a way to make her laugh even in her most despondent moments.

The small moon in her hands strengthened and grew, dazzlingly brilliant, scintillating with countless colours.

She held it up, let its rays dance across the murk, which melted away under it, ice under summer sun.

The gloom was deep, a thick wall wrapped around the three telepaths, far more than just a few steps as the outer barriers had been, broader even than the icy ditch. Tentacles of it reached towards her, but always drew back, unable to penetrate the light she cradled in her hands.

Between one step and the next, she was out of the murk.

The light in her hands still glowed, though, and by it, she saw the three telepaths cringing away from her.

Three adults in shiny armour, reflecting the light away from them instead of allowing it to reach them, empty-handed because all their defences had failed and what they had for weapons had always been bluff and show.

And, at the same time, three terrified children.

Terrified of what they don't understand.

So terrified they never allowed themselves to even look at what they don't understand. They just hide from it, and if it's forced in front of them, they lash out blindly in fear. Throwing rocks into the darkness and hoping it will all go away.

I can hate choices, and actions, and consequences, and refusal to face the consequences.

I can't hate anyone for being afraid. I can only hate the fear itself.

She balanced the light in one hand, and offered the other palm-up and open. *The world is a scary place sometimes,* she said gently. *No one should have to live in fear all the time. Hiding from it and denying it only feeds it. Let me help. It would be more harm than good to just make it all go away, but I can fix the connections that are damaged and I can show you the way out of the fear.*

*Then what?* Chimo spat. *We go free, now reformed and acceptable and forgiven, different people?*

*No. I can forgive you, because I understand fear. But not everyone will, and there's nothing I can do, nothing it would be right for me to do, about facing the results of your own choices.*

*Then what's the point?*

*Understanding why it was wrong and why it had to stop. I don't know whether it's mercy or not to even offer a way to see what you've done without the fear to filter it through. That might be the worst punishment of all.*

*Stay out of my head, mindraper,* snarled the Southerner. *Enough with the mind-games. I'm not letting you in. Anything you want, you can show the world what kind of monster you are and take it.*

Kisea sighed, and paced towards him. *If you insist.*

He struggled, trying to deflect her with mirror-metalled arms, but she could still see the other image, the frightened child, and reached past to lay her palm against his forehead.

He slumped in place, briefly, and his psychic presence faded away.

*He's only asleep,* Kisea said, tossing the light upwards to hover above her, protecting her still from the murk.

Biserai lunged to her feet, gathering all her projective power into what Kisea's mind translated as a club, raising it to bring it crashing down.

Kisea stepped to the left, and gave the blow a further nudge towards the right with her re-summoned image of a staff. Two more strikes she blocked and bounced aside before she could touch Biserai's forehead and push her into sleep, despite Biserai's frantic resistance against the loss of consciousness.

*Only you left,* Kisea said to Chimo. *You knew right from that first meeting that you'd been caught. You didn't run then, although you could have gotten away clean.*

*And abandon everything to live like an animal somewhere? If it had stayed within the Assembly like it was supposed to, it could have been dealt with. You should have died like the other monsters, and then that other nuisance either would never have started asking questions or would at least have died like he was supposed to. We still could have salvaged everything and continued to keep Caalden safe if someone hadn't decided to tell everyone! And the sheep have no idea that they're asking wolves to protect them from the shepherd.*

*Shepherds,* Kisea pointed out, *manage flocks for their own purposes, not the good of the sheep. Shepherds wear wool and sheepskin and eat mutton and lamb. People deserve better.* Though he flinched away from her, there was nowhere to go, and like his partners, he collapsed.