4

You, Alexius, Therko, Vecla, and the controllers prepare to set out before the sun burns off the morning mist. They argue quietly as you check your Byzantine tools: machetes and hatchets, matches and compasses.

"Remember," Control says, "that our plan, our goal, is escape. We must learn when we are, find suitable components with which to make repairs, and return to Dr. Sabbatine. Only then can we recapture the False Icon."

Therko says he will help you repair the Specular but does not believe the False Icon will make it easy. He believes he's at war now and must destroy the agents of the False Icon wherever you find them. You know he's thinking of Keimia. Left on his own, Therko retains the quiet anxiousness of an administrator, but whenever he thinks of Keimia's treachery and his dead master, his eyes grow hard, and then he truly looks like the last of the Painted Guardians.

"Good money to be made in war," Alexius muses. "I'm excited to get home, but not empty-handed. We're going to go home with a third of this world strapped to our backs, right, Crowchar?"

Vecla is afraid of war, afraid of the ophidians and the feathered apes, but it's not an irrational or directionless fear. She wants to protect her people, and her whole world, even in the strange silver light of the gray mountain.