When Maeyune woke again, she ached in every place imaginable. But there was no more of that stabbing pain from before. That foreign poison in her body was gone, and she could no longer feel the slithering sensation underneath her skin.

Her head throbbed as if she had been spinning for hours on end, and bile rose up in her throat. She made no attempt to hold it all back. Overwhelmed with nausea, she heaved the contents of her stomach onto the black, stone floor underneath her. She spat, dignity being the last of her concerns.

It was a long time before she could gather her senses. In the wake of her sickness, her vision cleared, and she took in her capacious environment.

She was no longer in the room with those five, stone pillars, but in a different room twice as large and somewhere on top of a stone dais. A wide ramp led down from the dais, down to a closed, arched door.

Given the intricacies of the metal walls and interwoven stone, she was sure that she hadn't left the ship. But the room was empty--empty, save for whatever this thing was that held her prisoner with her limbs spread and outstretched.

She was restrained at the center of an enormous, torus-shaped contraption. It was a large ring made of metal parts, propped upright at the top of the dais. Embedded into the ring's metal were irregular, black stones--and on the stones, Maeyune saw carvings of symbols that appeared runelike.

Whatever this metal contraption was that held her, it looked to be some sort of machine.

Tiny versions of the ring contraption held her wrists and ankles in place to the machine. She squirmed, testing the shackles. But they were locked tight, and there was no space to allow any movement.

She attempted escape again. Seeing that her moon bracelet was empty, all she could do was summon what limited, natural energy she had to crush the shackles. But the moment her silver power danced across her skin to dismantle the metal, they seeped into the nearest batch of stones and disappeared. The rune symbols on the stones lit, then faded.

She tried pulling her hands out in frustration, but her wrists did not budge inside their restraints.

This machine absorbed my energy, she realized. If that was the case, then she knew why it was holding her prisoner.

She gritted her teeth. What had originally been a mission to capture the alien leader had resulted in her own capture.

Her, captured? Having had full faith in her own abilities, not once had she ever considered that possibility. Had she made a mistake?

She tried to recall the events that had occurred before the poison.

The mission. The Overlord. The ambush. Jaysek.

In the pit of her stomach, she felt a congested ball of confusion, shock, and anger.

Jaysek.

She shook her head without realizing it, closing her eyes tight as incredulity gnawed at her.

Why? Why?

Had he sided with the Wobeck? How long had he been working with the enemy, against his own people, against mankind? How could he do something like this?

Maeyune burned with loathing.

He had betrayed her. He had betrayed Aerylis.

Aerylis.

Maeyune's heart clenched as it gave way to grief.

In the blink of an eye, another friend was...gone.

Maeyune pushed her thoughts to the last memory of Aerylis, to the last look that Aerylis had given her. There had been no fury or hatred in the wind celestial's eyes. Only an apology.

Tears threatened escape, and Maeyune hung her head in shame. "I'm so sorry, Aer."

Trix, Benny, and now Aerylis. And Clover and Meera... Were they...?

The door at the bottom of the ramp slid open, and the blue Overlord with two other Wobeck entered. Maeyune sniffed, hiding traces of her grief and turning her face to rock. But her facade flickered as they climbed the ramp toward her.

When they at last stood several feet from her--paying little regard to the vomit she had discharged moments ago--she fixated her wide eyes on their faces, now revealed and helmetless.

She had once received a cursory glance at their features before--from the Wobeck she had captured in Nomenia. They all shared the wide, flat nose and pair of eyes, but their reptilian skins differed in various, muted hues. The two Wobeck flanking their leader were either a putrid green or a dull mustard. Both blinked at her with expressionless, pale blue eyes that had no white. There were only round, black pupils.

The Overlord's gray flesh had not a single tinge of color. However, Maeyune was sure she caught a faint, silver shimmer on his skin when he crossed underneath the room's lights.

The two ordinary Wobeck had pointed chins and larger foreheads, whereas their leader was more even and oval. And unlike the other two, a ring of small horns encircled the Overlord's head, with a few more horns gathered on his brow.

With the exception of their textured skin and the extreme proportions of their faces, they were uncannily similar to humans. Maeyune could not decide whether to be awed or disturbed.

She decided to be the first to speak, and questions poured from her lips. "Who are you? Where am I? What have you done with my friend?"

Ignoring her, the Overlord nodded tersely at one of his subjects. Maeyune paid no attention to the lesser Wobeck who went to stand at one side of the ring mechanism.

"Why have you come to our planet?" she demanded.

The Overlord's eyes turned on her again, and he finally responded, "Your planet?"

She was sure there had been amusement in his tone.

"We are here to claim what is rightfully ours," he continued, and said no more.

Baffled, Maeyune proclaimed, "This is our home."

"And where do you think it came from?"

The Overlord's sudden reply silenced her and left her pondering on the meaning of his words. But she did not have long to contemplate. The Wobeck next to the machine lifted a hidden lever, and the contraption came to life with a low hum.

The hum soon whirled into a sharp blast. The runes on the machine began to glow, and Maeyune felt as if her body had ruptured into a million shards.

Her head flew back and her jaw fell to a gape, but her scream was soundless. She felt a strain on her body, on her life force as it was lured out from her core. Abiding a silent command from the machine, tendrils of her power escaped through the barrier of her flesh and into the runes.

She fought against the pull, squeezing her hands into fists as she struggled to draw her power back into herself.

But the silver light that bled from her skin turned to black, and when the rune symbols darkened in response, the Wobeck pulled down the lever and grunted in disapproval.

With its high-pitched wail dying, the machine deactivated, and Maeyune's head slumped forward in a daze.

The Wobeck muttered something to his Overlord, but Maeyune could hardly hear the guttural language over the buzzing ring in her ears.

"What...what are you doing to me?" she gasped.

The Overlord exhaled through his flat nose, the sound drawn out. With a note of disappointment in his voice, he remarked, "Your soul is no longer pure, Lehrach Gu'al."

She lifted her head and attempted to look at him through blurred vision. "Why do you call me that?"

He didn't answer her, only took a step forward, murmuring, "You have been tainted by darkness, a human disease. Shame."

He nodded at his subject and spoke something in the slurred Wobeck tongue. With a bit of effort, Maeyune reached out her telepathy, hoping that without their helmets, she would now be able to breach their minds. She could only access the Wobeck subject's head, and before the stone runes could claim her power again, she felt the translation in his thoughts and understood his leader's command.

"Put her on the edge of death, and send the call," the Overlord had said to him. "We will need the second vessel."

When the machine flared to life again, Maeyune could have sworn her body had truly torn in half. With her scream filling the cavernous space of the room, her vision turned white, and her mind escaped from the jail of her body.

She was tossed into a river of emerald light. Her mind followed its stream farther and farther from her limp body, sending her toward a destination she could not see.

Sights and sounds passed her as she traveled through this new and strange realm. They were sensory inputs that made her forget the pain inflicted on her body.

She felt wisps of the afternoon breeze, smelled the musk of a thousand trees, and counted every blade of grass that blanketed the world. She heard each chit and chat between the smallest of creatures, the buzz of insect wings that hovered over sweet-scented blossoms.

It all flooded into her, made her see.

Vaius. It was Vaius.

The world was alive, and she felt it--every breathing inch of it.

And the river in which she drifted, the swirling vortex of emeralds and jades...It was Vaius's life force.

She went deeper still, and she listened as the charming melody of nature distorted to plasma blasts and explosions.

There. Ahead.

Her vision cleared, and the river of green light thrust her out into the open. The sky above was blue, with only a few tufts of cirrus clouds that adorned its stretch. But underneath it was Pride Canyon where she found the battle between man and alien.

Beran and Wobeck aircrafts dashed like flies in and out of canyon valleys. Larger Beran ships hovered above the action, hurling their rays at their Wobeck mother ship adversaries. Maeyune identified a dozen green gunships that zipped in between.

Nomenian aircrafts, she perceived. The Nomenians had joined the fight.

The ground sparked with explosions. Bodies--both alive and dead--littered the canyon floor, caught in the vicious sea of magic, plasma and machine.

And on the far side of the valley, standing alone and at the center of a hundred, motionless Wobeck, was a man armored in gold with a tall crown of antlers.

Maeyune came to drift just a few feet behind him.

A single Wobeck knelt before him, head held firmly in between the golden warrior's palms. With a slick twist of his hands, the Wobeck's head snapped to the side. The creature's lifeless body collapsed and joined the rest of the deceased, and the warrior drew his sword out from a flash of gold.

But the moment he took a step away from her to join the rest of the battle, Maeyune's mind spoke of its own accord.

Reo.

He stilled, and his head shifted ever so slightly to the side--as if he had heard something in the air. Then, his face spun around, and his gold, blazing eyes glanced over his shoulder.

At emptiness. At her.

She was summoned back that very second. Her mind hurtled back through the miles of desert, grass and trees, back into her own weak body and the machine that held her prisoner.

The Wobeck who had activated the machine spoke to the Overlord, his tone much more optimistic than before.

"Good," the Overlord replied. Through her exhaustion, Maeyune nearly missed the translation from the lesser Wobeck's mind. "Prepare the second conduit. The vessel who bears the sun Guardian is on his way."

No...Reo...

Through half-lidded eyes, she followed the movements of both Wobeck subjects as they stepped away from their leader. Only then did Maeyune see the second torus contraption waiting beside her own.

She had lost all senses to her fingers and her toes. Sleep claimed her body, but before she succumbed to darkness a second time, she hoped to see sunlight again.