Before…

Alfvin limped into the elevator and slammed a bleeding fist against the button again and again until the door slowly groaned closed. He didn’t know where the elevator would lead and he didn’t care, he just needed to be away. A howl drifted through the noise of the elevator rumbling to life; the hydrid still chasing him.

He slumped against the far wall of the elevator and slid down to sitting, leaving a smear of blood behind him.

His armor was rent, some of it shattered, other pieces pulled away by sucking tentacles of water. His weapons were long gone. His current was almost spent. No matter what he had tried, the hydrid had fought back, stronger than him in every way and the water it surrounded itself with formed a shield he just couldn’t penetrate. He’d been lucky to escape with his life. Hopefully, the monster wouldn’t follow him down the elevator.

Void those scrapping kids. He had been so close. No, not just close. He had done it! He had proven to them, to the fleet, and to himself that no one was stalled. They could all still open the Gates of Power, they just had to go about it in a different way.

He had already been putting together a theory, even as the fight went poorly for him. Back on Titan 01, progressing had been about wanting it enough, training your body to its limits, deepening your current to its maximum depths. Here on 02, things were different. Here, it was about needing to progress.

Eclipse Iro had opened his Gate when he had no other choice, when Alfvin had threatened his friend. And then to prove the theory, Courage Emil had opened his Gate in the exact same circumstance but reversed. Proof! It was proof that they could progress. But it had come too late.

Alfvin stared down at the blood on his hands, feeling the elevator rumbled through his back. He hadn’t meant to kill Torben. He… It was a mistake. Alfvin had been so focused on controlling himself as he battered Iro, he had let himself slip just for a moment when Torben spoke out of place. Just for a moment. That was all it took. The blood on Alfvin’s hands wasn’t Torben’s, it was his own, but the boy’s blood was on his conscience.

A metallic scream from above drew his attention to the roof of the elevator. He stared, hoping it was nothing. He couldn’t fight anymore, could barely stand.

It was all so unfair. Those children, they didn’t understand. He could have cut them all down. He was holding back. The only reason they were alive was because of him and his restraint. So what if he slipped just once? So what if one weak child died because of it?

Something solid hit the elevator from above, causing it to shake. Alfvin groaned and pulled himself up, staggering over to the controls. He hit the button for the elevator to stop and waited painful seconds as it slowed to a halt at the next floor. The ceiling banged again and again. Water dripped through tiny gaps from above. The hydrid was still chasing him.

The door opened slowly. Alfvin forced himself through the widening gap and limped on, dragging his left leg, leaving a bloody smear behind him.

He needed to run. This wing of the titan wasn’t safe for him, not once the children got back to the fleet and told the council what he’d done. If only he had killed them all like he’d threatened, he could have claimed it was all a tragic accident. But no. He wouldn’t have done that. He would never have taken it so far.

Behind him, the elevator screamed as the hydrid tore the metal roof asunder and dropped into the cab. Alfvin turned down a corner and limped on. A round service corridor stretched out before him, curving, ducts above and below. He needed to find his way into a chamber, something large enough he could lose the hydrid, and hope he didn’t run into any more monsters.

Even if he survived, where could he go? Could he flee all the way to another wing? But to do that, he’d have to go through the titan core. He wasn’t strong enough for that. He’d never be strong enough. And what about the traps? He was a Corsair, not a Surveyor. He would never survive all on his own.

A watery howl gurgled behind him and Alfvin turned, lifting his hand to shine his vambrace-mounted flashlight. The hydrid was right there. It looked almost like a pale, pasty human, hairless and sexless, with long webbed fingers and toes. But its eyes… its eyes were black as the void and yet also somehow glowed. It was surrounded by a globe of water that pulled itself along the corridor with fluid tentacles, all while the hydrid floated in the middle of the mobile pool.

There was no escaping it here. No fighting it at all. Alfvin turned and limped as fast as he could. His foot struck a loose panel on the floor, rattling it. He stopped and shone his flashlight down. The panel was rusting, one bolt missing, the corner bending. He grit his teeth and slammed his bad foot down onto the panel. Pain like hot knives streaked through his leg, causing his vision to flare white, but Alfvin slammed his foot down again and again, all while the hydrid pulled itself closer in its floating ball of water.

The panel beneath Alfvin gave way and he dropped into darkness. His leg cracked when he landed and he screamed from the pain of it.

When he opened his eyes, Alfvin squinted as the lights in the chamber flickered once, twice, then came on full, lighting the room in bright neon white. Rows and rows of planters stretched away from him, each one empty save for a few morsels of mouldy dirt. There were chambers like this all over the wings, places where crops were grown in controlled environments, outside the artificial world of the domes. The Home Fleet used many such chambers back on titan 01, but this was the first one they’d found on 02.

He’d found. Alfvin had to correct himself. He wasn’t part of the Home Fleet anymore. No! He was still a member of the fleet. He would always be. Everything he had ever done had been for the good of the fleet.

A rapid chittering made him look up. A small globe of green scales lay on the metal floor just a few feet away. It trembled like dust on a struck drum. Alfvin looked around. There was more than one. Every few feet there was another of the green scaly globes, on and on and on.

He let out a sigh, felt close to tears. From the pain, from the unfairness. From the pointlessness of it all.

The nearest of the scaly globes uncurled into a twelve-legged insectoid monster with four claws, a stinger on its long tail, and a mouth full of rasping teeth. Then another uncurled, and another. Kharapids. Dozens upon dozens of kharapids. He had fallen into a scrapping nest.

Alfvin backed up, bumped into a planter. Behind it, another kharapid rose, rattling like a loose filter. Alfvin sighed. He had nowhere left to run. He was injured, had no weapon to focus what little current he had left. This was where his hope died. And it was all his fault. He could have prevented it if he’d just—

Between blinks, the colour drained from the world, leaving him standing in a colorless grayscale world.

“Gate Space,” Alfvin said, a hysterical laugh bubbling from his lips.

He’d all but given up hope of ever progressing again. It had been nearly a decade since he’d opened his third Gate of Power. In the time since, he’d seen friends like Rollo streak ahead, leaving him so far behind in power, he could no longer compete. And after titan 01 exploded, Alfvin had consigned himself to the meagre power he had already clawed out. He had given up hope. And that was when his path opened for him. Not when he wanted it, but when he needed it most.

Color was draining back into the chamber, starting near the ceiling, white light creeping down the silver walls, giving rust its color back. There were kharapids all around him, all frozen in place. Some were rearing up to attack, others just waking from their hibernation. Alfvin looked around for his Gate of Power. He needed to figure out how to open it before the color finished returning and his Gate Space vanished.

That’s when he saw it. Not his Gate, but the figures in ethereal gray. Eight of them, and he recognised them all. Eclipse Iro, Courage Emil, Bjorn, Eir, Ashvild, Arne, Ylfa, and Ingrid. His trainees. His surviving trainees, those he had left alive. They were scattered around the planters, in-between the kharapids, not corporeal, but as frozen as the monsters.

Alfvin limped towards the closest of the figures. It was Ingrid, tall and broad and plump. The figure was more like a doll written in dark gray than a real person. He stepped past the Ingrid figure. The color was halfway down the walls, returning too quickly. He needed to find his gate and figure out the trick to opening it.

His Gate was waiting between the gray doll of Iro and a rearing kharapid just uncurled from its hibernation. Alfvin rushed towards it. He noticed his blood was still red on his hands until it dropped, leaving gray droplets hanging in the air behind him. The Gate was small, looking much like a normal Eclipse doorway. Flat, silver metal, a seam running down the centre so each half of the door could retract into the wall. But there was no handle to pull, no button to push. Alfvin didn’t waste his precious time trying to pry it open. This was not his first time in Gate Space, he knew the Gate could not be forced. There was always a trick to opening them and he just had to figure it out. And there was always a clue.

Printed across the door in stencilled letters was a single word, written in a language he did not know, yet somehow understood. The word was CONVICTION.

Alfvin wasted only a second glaring at the word. He knew what it meant. It was, after all, a lack of conviction that had gotten him into this mess. He had wavered and held back. He had let them live, and it had cost him his life. Alfvin grit his teeth. No more! He was done wavering.

He turned with a shout, slashing his hand through the Iro doll. It scattered apart like smoke before a ventilation shaft.

Ignoring the screaming pain in his leg and the blood dripping behind him, Alfvin leapt at the next doll and the next, punching, slashing, breaking them all to dissipating dust until only Ingrid’s doll remained.

Ingrid. Torben’s twin sister. He had killed her brother, and though Ingrid was now out of his reach, her doll was not. Alfvin slashed his hand through her, then spun back to the Gate.

With a hydraulic hiss, the two halves of the Gate peeled backwards, leaving nothing but space between them.

The color was almost down to the floor now, the frozen kharapids looming in their shades of green. Even the blood droplets he left scattered in the air had regained their crimson. Alfvin leapt over a row of planters, his leg collapsing beneath him. He stumbled towards the Gate and threw himself between the open doors.

His Gate Space vanished. Time unfroze. The kharapids all around him hissed and chittered. His floating blood fell to the metal floor. New current burst from Alfvin’s skin like a torrent. Power, the likes of which he had never felt before flooded through his veins. This was the strength that Rollo had lorded over him for so long.

Howls erupted all around him, the kharapids driven into a frenzy by a Gate opening, drawn to the current he was exuding.

The closest kharapid reared up and slashed at him with a razor-sharp claw. Alfvin had no weapon, but he was a Fourth Gater now, and besides, he had something just as good. He had his unique talent.

He breathed in sharply and pulled on the kharapid before him. Pearlescent light shot from its mouth and into his own. Scales formed over his arm in an instant, growing into a scythe-like protrusion, and he raised his hand to block.

The strike never came. Alfvin felt something strange, a pull on his current he didn’t understand at first. It felt like he was using another talent, one he didn’t consciously activate.

The kharapid hung before him mid-strike, its claw poised. A glowing, golden three-pointed crown seared into light above the monster’s head.

The monster scuttled back a step and bowed in a submissive posture. All around him, the other kharapids, dozens of the insectoid monsters, did the same, crowns fizzing above each of their heads. They were bowing to him.

Alfvin lit his yellow crest up before him, staring at the vast circle of lines and symbols glowing in the air. His fourth lock was open now, the crest already extending beyond it. It took him a few seconds to locate his unique talent. The symbol of a horned face floating in the pathways of his crest, and now it had a line connecting it like a talent path. That line led to the symbol for his new talent, his passive talent, represented by a three-pointed crown.

Alfvin smiled. His passive talent keyed off his unique talent. He would call it Domination.

The hydrid howled as it dropped through the hole in the ceiling above. It landed with a wet splash as its globe of water floated around it. The monster locked its glowing black eyes on Alfvin and extended a webbed hand. A tentacle of water shot out towards him.

Alfvin pointed his own hand at the monster. “Kill it!”

The kharapids burst into motion, throwing themselves at the hydrid, tearing into the watery globe. It cut down a few of his new minions, but even as powerful as it was, the hydrid fell before the weight of bodies and crushing claws of the kharapids.

Alfvin smiled as he watched. He would have to test the limits of this new talent. How many monsters could he control at once? How long would it last? Would his control remain even once he let go of his stolen attribute? All questions he would have to answer. But he knew two things already.

First, he wasn’t alone anymore. And second, now he had the power to make his way into the titan core.