Lacy’s chest was hollow, and her head heavy. Her fingers twitched, and Danny’s grip on the gun pulsed. His hands were shaking- he hadn’t had a drink in a while. He was afraid. 

Good. He should be. 

A calm settled over Lacy, like none she’d ever known before. 

“Now then,” Mrs. Woodrow said, “You’ll be coming with us. You can come quietly or I can render you unconscious. The choice is yours.”

From out of the darkness, Drew said, “Lacy, what are you thinking right now?”

“Nothing,” Lacy said. 

“What?” Danny said. 

“I’m not thinking of anything at all,” she said in monotone.

Mrs. Woodrow arched her thin eyebrow. “What does that have to do with anyth-”

Aiming at me. Everyone’s aiming at me, Lacy thought.

“Fairy wind.” Lacy twitched her fingers, and the wind rose from the floor in a layer of pure kinetic force. Danny’s shaking hands lost their grip on the gun. Mrs. Woodrow’s high heels betrayed her and she fell to the floor. 

Lacy pivoted towards Danny and delivered a punch square to his nose, cartilage crunching underneath her fist. Her mind was a blank page of white hot rage, propelling her forward. She landed another punch, then another, then another, bleeding his face and bruising his chest, knocking him backwards, pushing herself forward to keep the pain flowing. They left the bank, and entered streets running rampant with chaos. 

Lacy swung, and this time Danny dodged. She stumbled over her momentum, and Danny scrambled up the pile of cars to leave the kill-box he’d set for himself. Lacy picked herself up and climbed the car-pile, her rage dulling out the parts of her brain that wanted to focus elsewhere. To focus on the pain, the shock, the disbelief, the sheer fucking betrayal of it all-

No. Not now. Make him pay first. He betrayed you. Isabella betrayed you. Gwen betrayed you- shouldn’t have forgiven her so easily. She abandoned you, lied to you, manipulated you- she’s as bad as any of them and YOU FORGAVE HER LIKE AN IDIOT WHEN SHE DID NOTHING TO EARN IT!

“Lacy,” Drew said as she finished the ascent up the car-pile and stood atop it, her vision narrowing in on Danny as he ran away like the cowardly little bitch he was. “You need to breathe. This is a trap you’re being lured into here.”

“You couldn’t have warned me about that before now?” Lacy said.

“I try not to speak to you two when you’re around each other.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because then you might both see me.”

She descended the car pile and shot down the street like an arrow. “How does that work? You’re a figment of my imagination.”

“No, Lacy. I’m not. I was kind of hoping you’d have picked that up by now.”

“Then why can’t you talk to both Danny and I at once?”

“It’s against the rules.”

“What rules?” Lacy said, barreling down the street after Danny. 

“The rules of engagement with the Starbound. I’m only supposed to speak to you one at a time. And at the moment, I’m talking to you.”

“Well Danny apparently has one of these fucking things as well,” Lacy said, her adrenaline carrying her meagre weight as she began to close the gap between herself and Danny.
“So why haven’t you tried talking to him?”

“Because I’ve been talking to you.”

“Not all the time you haven’t.”

“Ah. Right. I forgot.”

“Forgot to talk to him?” Lacy said, skidding to a stop as Danny turned left up the street. She rerouted herself to follow him. Around her, people cried for help, and it seemed miles and miles away. She couldn’t help them. She couldn’t even help herself- that was patently fucking obvious at this point.

“Forgot how much slower time passes for you than it does for me,” Drew said. 

“What the hell’s that mean? The clock runs faster in the afterlife?” Lacy spat.

“Huh. Right. That is what you thought I am, isn’t it? Drew’s ghost?”

“No. You’re a mental illness,” she said, picking back up her speed. 

“No, Lacy. I’m not.”

“Then what the hell are you?!”

A ghoul broke into a building, and the screams of women shattered Lacy’s concentration. She slowed, looked, then went back to her chase. 

“See, the trouble with you is that it’s taken you this long to ask that question,” Drew said.

“You couldn’t have offered the information yourself?”

“No, that’s against the rules.”

“What fucking rules?!” Lacy screamed. 

Several ghouls and humans all turned from their spots to look at her. 

The ghouls, seven of them, all charged her at once. 

Lacy gritted her teeth as the monsters came for her. Monsters. All of them. Everyone. All monsters trying to trick her, use her, hurt her. All of them. Her parents. Isabella. Gwen. Danny. 

As her Star caught up to her from a dozen yards behind, heat gathered in her palms and swelled a raging pyre. She unleashed her fire, and the ghouls burned. 

For a moment, a rapturous sense of relief was all she felt. Her rage left her, satisfied, channeled for once into something useful. A pleasantly hollow feeling saturated her, like all the poison in her body had evaporated all at once. 

She’d used fire. 

SHE’D USED- “Holy shit I used fire!” she said, jumping up and down as she did so. 

And then more ghouls came upon her, running out from all directions, like the city’s white blood cells coming to purge an infection. 

Let them try. 

She breathed in, reached for Starlight, ignited it on the spark in her heart. She unleashed a swirling nova of red-orange flame that lapped up everyone who came near her. Beads of sweat pooled on her forehead and mid-back, trickling down and evaporating on her skin. She wiped her brow, and she smiled. 

More opponents came for her, and comets of pure flame shot from her hands and devoured her enemies. It was a purifying feeling. It was only a millisecond, but it was an intoxicating feeling, relief like none she’d ever known. 

A squad of ghouls armed with Entropy Staves came crawling from the burning wreckage towards her, but they were stopped by the thunderous arrival of a new squad of opponents. 

Zombies. A pack of zombies. 

What- who-

“Gwen,” Lacy said as she put it together. 

The zombies attacked the ghouls, and cleared a path forward. 

Gwen hadn’t betrayed her. Gwen wasn’t working for her family- she probably had no idea who Danny was. 

“Oh thank God,” Lacy said. 

A familiar heartbeat underscored the chaos. A trigger was squeezed, and a bullet careened through the air and grazed her right arm. “Gah!” she said, clutching the cut with her dominant hand. Another shot, this one cutting much closer against the same shoulder. A biting pain sunk into her flesh, and she jumped for cover behind an upturned car before the next shot was fired. 

“Danny,” she growled. 

“By the look of things, yes,” Drew said. 

“Not now, Drew.”

“But when?”

“After this. Assuming I live. I’ve got a lot of questions for you.”

“‘Bout damn time for that,” Drew said. “I’ve had all this exposition I’ve wanted to unload on you, and you just haven’t been interested.”

“Shut up a minute!” Lacy said. “I need to focus.”

Common sense screaming in opposition, she closed her eyes, and she listened. All around was death and chaos and destruction, fire, fires she’d set, fires she’d worked to put out. People screaming- they needed her help. 

She needed to help herself first.

Danny was near. The shot had come at a severe angle, the bullets diving into the ground after grazing her. He was up high. But where specifically? Across the street was a row of wooden buildings, all lined up next to each other. The highest was ten stories, and from atop that one was the sound of hurried, aggravated heartbeat. Between its manic undulations was the sound of a gun reloading. Danny had always had better aim than she had. 

“Any suggestions?” Lacy asked Drew. 

“Oh, so now you ask for my help?”

“Fine, be that way,” Lacy said. She held out her palm and reached with Starlight into a fire hydrant at the end of the street. She channeled her will into it, and the water pressurized and exploded out the hydrant, the metal components flying everywhere and the water itself shooting like a geyser. She wrapped her Starlight around it, and it swirled and shot like a snake in the direction of Danny’s building. It collided with the roof and bit a chunk off the wood. 

Danny yelped.

Lacy sprinted across the street before he could recover and kicked open the door to the building. It was a bodega, lined with snacks and cigarettes and sodas. From behind the counter a man appeared, wielding a shotgun. He was in his late forties, with short-cropped gray-blonde hair and once-youthful face that had settled gradually into middle age. His hands were shaking, and he was bleeding from his nose and his left arm. 

“You gonna shoot me?” Lacy said, stepping forward.. 

The man with the gun said nothing. 

“Well?” Lacy said. Forward. 

The man’s trembling worsened. 

“Well?!” She stood right in front of the barrel. 

The man passed out and began to fall to the floor. Lacy grabbed the gun from him before he hit the linoleum. 

“Great job, Lacy,” Drew said. “Just… Truly excellent work there.”

“I told you, we’ll talk when I’m not in mortal peril,” she said. 

“You’re always in mortal peril,” Drew said. “And you probably always will be.”

“Well isn’t that just dandy. I guess we’ll never talk then,” Lacy said, checking the man’s pulse. Still alive. 

“You don’t want that.”

“Do I?” Lacy said, tying her hair back. 

“No. You’re more curious than you let on. You want answers. That’s the kind of person you are. You like to listen.”

“That so?”

“Well except right now, apparently.”

“Damn right,” Lacy said, checking the cartridge on the rifle. Fully loaded. She cocked the gun and ran into the back and found the stairs. 

Ghouls ran down the stairs, jumping down the steps and coming upon her before she could fire her gun. One pinned her down, only the side of the barrel barring the rabid creature from sinking its teeth into her flesh. 

“He’s not an ‘it’, Lacy,” Drew said. “This is a person, somewhere deep in there.”

Lacy kept the ghoul back with a sinister-handed grip on the gun, and with her spare, her grazed shoulder throbbing, she reached for her knife and plunged it into the ghoul’s head. “Not anymore it’s not.” She fired off a shotgun round into the next ghoul. And then the next. And the next. And the next. When she was out of ammo, she swung the gun into the last ghoul’s skull, and hammered until it cracked like an eggshell. She stood over her kills, back hunched, breathing wild, eyes unblinking. She didn’t look at Drew, but could see him from her peripheral vision, a few steps up. “Neither is that one. Or that one. Or any of these. Now they’re just rotted meat.”

“Jesus Christ, Lacy,” Drew said. 

“I said NOT NOW!” Lacy bellowed. 

She ran up the stairs until she burst out the door to the roof. Danny had his gun on her as soon she opened the door. She drew her pistol, cocked the hammer and aimed just as quickly. Lacy faced her best friend as they stared each other down from behind loaded guns. A blue Star hung over her, and a red Star hung over him.

“So,” Danny said, “Have you got any quest-”

Lacy pulled the trigger. Danny did the same. 

Both empty. 

Lacy tossed her gun away, drew her knife. Danny did the same. They charged each other, swung with wild aplomb, blocking and dodging and deflecting, hacking and stabbing and slashing. Lacy’s blade sliced Danny’s shoulder, and Danny grazed Lacy’s existing wound, matching her verbatim. It was like he knew what she would do as she was doing it, and reacted perfectly in time. Lacy swept Danny’s leg, but he jumped back. Lacy backtracked herself, mirroring Danny. She raised her knife as Danny charged at her, and she tried to stay on the defensive, to work around his guard, to find a weak spot and exploit it. 

Bad idea. 

He had longer arms, longer legs, more muscle- she tried her best to dance around his strikes but found herself pushed to the edge of the roof. How the hell was he reacting this quickly? Where was all this energy coming from? Danny was hungover, out of shape, and underweight. He shouldn’t be able to match her this quickly.

Danny plunged his knife at her. Lacy ducked under it, and launched her blade at his chest. Danny rolled to his side and nearly stumbled over the edge of the roof, his knife slipping loose and falling to the street below. Lacy tripped over her feet in the process and lost her balance, her own knife falling free of her sweaty grip as she fell onto her hands and chest. 

The blade landed to her side.

Danny stampeded her. Lacy rolled out of the way, extending her hand over the ground and missing her knife by a narrow margin. Danny turned back towards her. 

Time to stop fucking around. 

Lacy raised her palm and unleashed her fire, a pyro-missile launching at him.

Danny raised his own hand, snapped his fingers. 

The fire died. 

Stars of red and blue circled the roof, just above the heads of their owners. 

“You’re a mage,” Lacy said, arms hanging limp, heartbeat a hydraulic press. 

“No shit, Sherlock,” Danny said, wiping the sweat from his ruddy red face. “That’s what the Star means. Have you ever heard of them bonding to a non-mage?”

“No. But there’s lots of things I don’t know. You care to explain yourself?” Lacy asked. 

“Oh, now you wanna listen? Just a second ago you were trying to kill me. You’d have never gotten answers if you’d done that. You just wanted bloody satisfaction.”

“So this is my fault?”

“I didn’t say that. You’re projecting, Lacy.”

“Okay, fine,” Lacy said, gathering her fingers into fists. “Then I’ll ask: why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s my Destiny.”

“What is?” Lacy demanded. “What’s your Destiny? To betray me? To get me killed?”

“Not everything is about you, Lacy.”

“Answer my fucking question!”

Danny gathered himself, and began circling Lacy from the same distance. “My Destiny is to help my family take over the world. To forge the greatest kingdom to ever exist, Camelot reborn.”

“Camelot reborn with ghouls.”

“Yes, exactly,” Danny said with a wide-eyed, manic grin. “I need to help my father build his kingdom.”

“You’re gonna help him take over the world? Are you fucking serious?”

“Is it any more insane than you taking over the world?” Danny asked, rolling his eyes. 

“Yes, because I’m quite em-fucking-phatically not going to do that!”

“And yet here we are.”

Lacy flared her nostrils as she exhaled. “Just tell me one thing: why did you keep this from me? How could you keep this from me?”

“You wanna know what’s been going on? Fine. My dad wants your Star,” Danny spat, completing a rotation around her and approaching the roof-access door. “He wants to kill you and eat your corpse to get it. But to do so, you needed to accept your Star and bond it. And you being you, that wasn’t gonna happen any time soon. So something had to change. Something had to spur you to action. I offered my parents a solution that wasn’t ‘kidnap you and torture you until you did what we said.’”

Lacy inhaled through her nose as the realization sank in. “My parents.”

“My idea,” Danny said, the self-satisfied grin on his face saying everything that needed to be said. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

A Star-flare of rage swelled inside Lacy, and the wind shot forward from in front of her and pinned Danny to the roof-access door. “You’re welcome? YOU’RE WELCOME?! Are you fucking insane?!”

Danny said, “I know it’s what you wanted. Deep down in the dark where you didn’t want to admit anything lived, it was something you’d fantasized about. And I gave you what you wanted in a way that you didn’t have to self-flagellate over. So yeah. You’re welcome.”

“How do you know that? How the fuck can you claim to know me so well?”

“My mom’s maiden name is Koenig. Does that sound familiar?” Danny said, very tired and very frustrated. 

“It’s one of the major Sovereignty houses.”

“Yeah, specializing in oneiromancy. Or at least that’s the idea- all I got was some basic emotion-reading. I can tell what you’re feeling, what everyone’s feeling. Always. It’s always there, on all sides, everyone else’s emotions trying to burn me away into nothing - why do you think I drink so much? It’s the only way I can shut it all out. But hey, it’s still more necromancy than I got from my old man, which is none at all.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you?” Lacy said, fists balled and shaking.

“No. Just to give you some perspective,” Danny said. “I don’t have your power. I’ve never had any real choice in this- my family could kill me whenever they wanted. I have to do this, or I’m dead. And like I said, you’re welcome- say whatever else you want, I gave you a fighting chance in this.”

Lacy pinched the bridge of her nose and gestured wildly with her free hand. “Who’s fucking side are you on here, man? I don’t understand this!”

“I’m on my family’s side,” Danny said. “But you’re my family as much as they are. I wanted you to wake up. But I can’t say no to them.”

“Why not?” Lacy asked, letting go of her wind-grip. Danny slumped to the ground in a lumpy pile. “We can fight them! Fight them with me and with Gwen! Together we can-”

“Gwen,” Danny growled. He stood back up, his arms hanging limp now, his pulse like levees crumbling in a flood. “I’m not working with her- I refuse to work with her. She’s a monster, Lacy. You taking her side- that’s why I can’t fight my parents with you. I’ll never take her side.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Why not-”

“She killed the rest of our family!” Danny screamed. “We had five more brothers and sisters, and they all died by Gwen’s hand! All of them, screaming in terror and begging for mercy while their precious sister plucked the life from their bodies one by one! She wouldn’t have stopped there, either- I was too young to do anything, but my mom got me away in time. Away from her. Anyone who can do that- anyone who would… Gwen killed them because they took our parents’ side over hers. She doesn’t care about her family! She just wants to use them for her own ends, and if they become inconvenient she throws them away like trash. She used you to take care of Elaine, and now me, and then after that she’ll be rid of you just like us.”

Lacy stepped back. It wasn’t true- it couldn’t be true. There was no way- “Elaine… What are you talking about- what does Elaine-”

And Danny… Laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed, like a sick man broken free of the hospital that wanted to euthanize him. “She still hasn’t told you, has she?”

“Told you what?”

“That Sovereignty thug you killed on your first hunt? That was Elaine Albrecht. Our sister. Gwen had been tracking her for years, hoping to finish her off. She aimed you like a gun and took out her last remaining sister. And then after that, you led her to me so she could finish the job. Become the last Albrecht standing.”

“That’s not true,” Lacy said, taking a step back. 

“It is. Elaine survived Gwen’s massacre the same as I did. Dad sent her away to one of his lieutenants for special training, ‘cause she was a necromancer. She was loyal to him. Probably she was glad to die for him, thought it was an honor or some bullshit. She was always a fuckin’ psycho.”

She’d killed- she’d killed her. She’d killed Gwen and Danny’s sister. Oh God, no- it had been an accident, but… But Gwen had recognized her. Gwen had known who Elaine was and kept it from Lacy. To what- spare her? Or to keep her further in the dark, dependent on Gwen for information and support? “It can’t be true. It can’t be. Gwen’s trying to save the world-”

“Yeah, our old man thinks he’s doing that too. Really, sincerely believes it. People who think that’s what they’re doing will use it to justify everything they do, no matter how personal, no matter petty, no matter how sick and twisted and evil.”

Lacy sneered. “You mean like what you’re doing. Right now.”

“Yes. Exactly like that.”

Her eyes narrowed. “... Repeat that.”

“Exactly like that,” he monotoned.

“So you’re… Aware that what you’re doing is wrong?” Lacy said, fists tightening again.

“Yeah.”

“So then why-”

“Because I have no choice! There’s never a choice with them, ‘cept the best of the bad options. So that’s what I picked.”

“How is this the best option? What the hell are you getting out of this besides your mom off your back?!”

“Peace and quiet. When this is over, my parents promised me I can have all the solitude I want. Which is exactly what you want, so don’t try to lie to me.”

Lacy gritted her teeth. “It was what I wanted.”

“‘Was.’ Gotcha. So what is it that you want now?”

Lacy gritted her teeth louder. 

“There it is. You haven’t thought…,” he waved his hands about, “Any of this through, have you? After you defeat my parents, what do you plan on doing? The Sovereignty doesn't begin and end with them- they have lieutenants, vassal families. And even if you defeat the sum total of Houses Albrecht and Koenig, there’s three more Houses to deal with. You really wanna spend the rest of your life fighting them for something you barely understand? For reasons you yourself can’t even articulate? Of course not- you’re just reacting, same as you always do. At least I’ve thought through what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. What the hell are you even doing any of this for?!”

Lacy stood there, body aching and mind falling apart, and finally she thought about it. Combed through the full implications of what she was doing, what it would lead to, of what this fight meant and what her winning, in the unlikely event that happened, would mean. She reached for her knife on the ground, held it in her hand.

The Stars reached for earth, the journey of their light slowed by the skin of ozone and pollution that wrapped around the planet. “I’m doing this for me,” Lacy said.

Danny sneered. “What the hell does that mean?”

Lacy’s Star wrapped around her orbit, and power swelled in her hand until lightning burst to life and channeled through her knife. “It means from now on living I’m on my own terms! It means I’m through running and I’m through hiding! It means anyone who wants to start something with me can come and get it! I’ll be gunning for them, all of them, and their broken bodies will be my goddamn calling card!”

“You’re gonna be fighting your entire life if you do this. You’re declaring war.”

“SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!” she said, thumping her chest with her spare hand. 

Danny breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. And then he drew a spare knife from his pocket and threw it at her, the blade carving a path as it spun; he ran behind it, and she slowed him and the blade alike with a gale. She pivoted and jabbed with her lightning-blade, and Danny leapt out of the way. The blow buried in the floor, leaving a smoking crater behind in its wake. 

Danny palmed a ball of fire and swung a blow towards Lacy. She held up her own hands, conjured her own fire, and the two canceled each other out, causing a rush of pure kinetic energy to shove them both backwards. Danny tumbled and nearly fell off the roof, while Lacy slammed into the door. Pain and frustration and anger and sorrow saturated her body. Everything was agony, but adrenaline surged through her to keep her awake. 

She got up. 

And Danny did the same. 

Between the two of them, one remaining knife stood plunged into the cement.

He was bleeding out his mouth and nose, clutching one of his shoulders, but still he rose to his feet. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Yeah it does,” Lacy said, charging him. “You made sure of that!”

He met her charge, both of them going for the knife. 

As their footsteps hit the floor, Lacy reached for the soundwaves of their patter and stretched them, wound them behind Danny. It sounded then like someone was behind him, someone was

There

There

There there there 

There

There 

There. 

He bought it. Flinched. Hesitated. Dumbass.

Lacy retrieved the knife and plunged it into Danny’s stomach. He lurched, spat blood. Lacy delivered another punch to his face, toppling him. She withdrew the knife as he fell, her rage boiling over as she pinned him to the ground and pressed the blade to his throat. 

“Tell me how to stop this,” she said. “TELL ME!”

Danny coughed and groaned. 

“For fuck’s sake- if you don’t tell me I swear I’ll-”

“Kill me?” Danny said. “Whatever. It won’t make any difference. Unless you’re trying to catch up to Gwen. If you get me and both my parents, you’ll be tied with her at four Albrecht’s apiece. I guess you can fight each other for the tiebreaker.”

“I’m not part of your gross fucking family, Danny,” Lacy hissed. 

And again Danny laughed, until it turned to a violent cough as more and more blood leaked out from his gut. How the hell was he even still conscious-

He spat, and the blood from his mouth got in her eyes. The sting overwhelmed her perception, and she wasn’t able to stop herself as she lost her grip on the knife. He rolled out from under her, groaning in pain as he did so, and when her vision cleared he delivered a blow to her face. Then another, and another, and another. 

She reached for gales, built walls, but he kept pushing through them, delivering blows even as she tried to block and to dodge. How the hell did he keep finding second winds- he’d been stabbed in the stomach!

Danny’s eyes burned with crimson light as he loomed over her, and he wound up a punch… Of course! That was it! He was an empath- his powers were mimicking her anger and adrenaline, keeping him going, probably helping to dull the pain he was in. Every time she got up, he was almost guaranteed to do the same. 

Means I have to end this NOW.

Lacy matched him, blue light filling her eyes, star-flame surging inside her and giving her strength even as it burned her.

She struck at his gut, he at her face. 

The two blows landed simultaneously, and the two old friends collapsed onto the roof. 

Pain occupied every nerve of Lacy’s body. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks bruising, her heart and lungs worked to exhaustion, her muscles threatening to break apart in a pile of brittle remnants. Everything hurt.

“Well,” Drew said, standing above his two former students, “You’ve certainly done a fine job with this one, kids.”

Lacy grunted. 

And Danny said, “What… the fuck… Drew? How the hell are you here?”

Lacy blinked rapidly, trying to fight through her rising need to pass out. That didn’t make sense- how could Danny see Drew? Drew wasn’t here- he wasn’t real. 

Was he?

The door opened, and Drew vanished as Mrs. Woodrow walked through. Her heels were hammers on the concrete floor, and before Lacy could say anything, Mrs. Woodrow snapped her fingers and a shard of white light flickered towards Lacy.

Finally, Lacy lost the fight and fell into an unwelcome sleep.