Sleep avoided him.
Sunny lay on the seaweed and listened to the rumbling of the dark sea below, his eyes closed but his mind circling. The bruises ached. The ribs pulsed. The unfamiliar sound of two other people breathing nearby was simultaneously reassuring and disorienting after days of solitude. He was warm, and full, and relatively safe, and none of those things were enough to quiet the part of his brain that Anvil had trained to never stop processing.
Cassie's breathing changed first, deepening into the slow rhythm of sleep. She slept the way she did everything: carefully, curled on her side with the staff clutched against her chest, as though readiness was a habit that even unconsciousness couldn't break.
Nephis didn't sleep. She sat motionless against the coral formation, her posture unchanged from when Sunny had closed his eyes. In the darkness, with her silver hair and pale skin, she looked carved from stone.
Sunny opened his eyes and sat up. The motion was quiet, but Nephis heard it and turned her head toward the sound.
"Can't sleep?" she asked.
"Not yet."
Silence. The sea moved below them. Sunny decided to use the time productively, because time spent in proximity to the target without gathering information was time wasted.
"Can I ask you something?"
After a moment, she said: "Sure."
He already knew most of the answers to most of the questions he could ask about her background. Anvil's briefing had been thorough: the fall of the Immortal Flame, the systematic loss of their assets and protectors, the death of Broken Sword. All of it was in the file. But secondhand intelligence was only as reliable as its source, and verification required asking questions he already knew the answers to and comparing the responses.
"I thought Legacies came into the Spell with an arsenal of inherited Memories," he said. "How come you only had three?"
Nephis was quiet for a moment.
"Actually, I only had two. The rope came from Cassie."
"I see. But still, for a Legacy..."
Nephis was quiet long enough that Sunny thought she wouldn't answer. Then she added: "We lost most of our Memories when my father passed away. The ones that remained were sold one by one over the years, to keep the family afloat. The sword and armor came from my First Nightmare."
Everything consistent with the briefing. But hearing it from her was different from reading it in a file. The file had presented the fall of the Immortal Flame as strategic context, background data for the mission. Nephis presented it as something that had happened to her, and the difference between the two framings was larger than Sunny had expected.
He could have pressed further. The briefing had gaps. But pressing further would have been conspicuous, and conspicuousness was the opposite of what his position required.
After a moment of silence, Nephis turned her head toward him.
"Can I ask you something?"
Sunny kept his expression neutral. "Go ahead."
"How did you know I was a Legacy?"
The question was quiet and direct, the way all her questions were. Sunny let his Flaw build for a beat while he found the safest true answer available to him.
"I heard Caster mention it. He was telling the other Sleepers to treat you with respect."
She considered that, then gave a small nod and turned back toward the sea. Whatever she made of it, she kept to herself.
Sunny waited. Then he asked the question that had actually been forming since he'd watched her guide Cassie through the labyrinth.
He made sure Cassie was fully asleep and kept his voice low.
"Can I ask you something else?"
Nephis waited.
"Why are you burdening yourself with her?"
A corner of Changing Star's mouth curled up slightly.
"Why? Wouldn't you?"
His Flaw activated. The familiar pressure built behind his eyes, sharp and certain, and Sunny knew from experience that resistance only compounded the cost. He let the truth come.
"No."
The word came out flat and certain. The pressure eased immediately.
Nephis showed no reaction. She didn't judge him. After a few moments, she said:
"Because I want to."
Sunny waited for the rest. The strategic justification. The explanation of how Cassie's oracle Ability made her worth the cost. The tactical rationale that would make the decision comprehensible within his framework.
Nothing came.
"Because I want to" was the complete answer. She expected him to accept that she was putting her survival at risk, surrendering an Awakened-rank armor, guiding a blind girl through a labyrinth full of monsters, because it was something she simply wanted to do.
He lay back down on the seaweed and stared at the dark sky.
The more he thought about it, the more it unsettled him. Anvil had never done anything because he wanted to. Every action served a purpose, every purpose served the mission, and wanting without operational justification was waste. For Sunny, this had been a basic rule of life, as natural as gravity.
But Nephis had certain advantages in her upbringing that weren't measured in Memories or combat training. She had a mentality that could disregard need in favor of something as frivolous as desire, and the audacity to act on it in a place that punished sentiment with death. Maybe that mentality was the real barrier that separated Legacies from the rest of them, the advantage that no briefing could quantify.
He wasn't sure what to do with that. Before he could gather his thoughts, Nephis spoke again.
"My turn."
She paused, then asked: "Do you know the legend of Odysseus?"
Sunny blinked. Of all the things she could have asked, this was not on the list.
"No," he said.
Nephis sighed softly. A few moments later, she began to speak, and the quality of her voice changed. In the darkness, stripped of her usual economy, her words came steadily and with a wistful rhythm that didn't sound like her at all.
"Odysseus was a hero in an ancient war. In the legends, some humans back then had powers similar to the Awakened. Achilles with an indestructible body. Diomedes, so ferocious even the God of War was wary of him. Ajax, as strong as a giant. Odysseus was not the strongest, and not the bravest. But he was the most cunning."
She paused.
"In the end, his cunning ended the war, and he prepared to sail home. But the gods cursed him to wander the seas endlessly, never to return. Over the years, he survived one horror after another and lost all of his companions. Then, shipwrecked, he found himself on an island where a beautiful fairy named Calypso lived."
Sunny listened with an attention that surprised him. The story had nothing to do with the Dream Realm or survival or any tactical consideration, and yet he couldn't look away from the pale girl telling it in the dark.
"Calypso fell in love with Odysseus and invited him to her palace. For many years, they lived together. The island was like a paradise, filled with wonders and delights. As long as Calypso was by his side, Odysseus was even immortal. But the longer he stayed, the more time he spent sitting on the shore, looking at the sea with bleak eyes."
Nephis smiled. In the dark, the smile was visible only to Sunny.
"In the end, Odysseus built a makeshift boat and abandoned the island, leaving all its delights, the beautiful fairy, and even his immortality behind. So, my question is: why did he leave?"
Sunny frowned, caught off guard by the fact that the story had turned into a question directed at him.
He thought about it for longer than he expected. Finally, he said:
"Because staying was surrender."
Nephis was quiet for a moment. The smile didn't come. She looked at him steadily, the way she looked at things she was still deciding what to make of.
"Surrender. Hm. Alright."
She turned away, and the conversation was apparently over.
Sunny lay down, but the image of Odysseus on the shore kept returning. A man who had everything and couldn't stop looking at the sea. After a while, he whispered into the dark:
"Did he make it? Back home?"
Nephis was quiet for a moment.
"Yes. He returned to his wife and son, and they lived happily ever after."
Sunny smiled and turned on his side.
When he was already half-asleep, he heard Changing Star's quiet voice one more time. It was barely audible, and aimless, as though not directed at anyone.
"Odysseus was the first human to break the will of gods."
In the morning, with the sun rising and the dark sea retreating, they made a fire and prepared a simple breakfast from the remaining scavenger meat.
Cassie was still asleep. Sunny and Nephis sat on opposite sides of the fire, and the silence between them was different from the night before. Lighter. As though the conversation had removed a layer of unfamiliarity without replacing it with anything as definite as trust.
Nephis spoke first.
"With what you told us about the scavengers crowding to the west, the logical step is to move east as soon as we can. It puts distance between us and the horde."
Sunny nodded.
"We've explored a little in that direction, but not enough to confidently reach the next high point in one day," Nephis continued. "The best course of action would be to spend today scouting a path to those cliffs and move the camp tomorrow."
"Do you have any idea where we are?" Sunny asked. "Is there a human Citadel in any direction?"
She shook her head. "I've never heard of a region that fits this place. We'll have to move to find out more. We'll either find a Citadel, encounter an unconquered Gateway..." She paused. "Or we won't."
At that moment, Cassie stirred. She sat up slowly, one hand pressing against the coral as though steadying herself, and for a moment she simply sat there with her eyes wide and her face pale. She looked like someone trying to find her way back from somewhere far away. Then her expression shifted, something tight and frightened giving way to something careful and bright, and she turned toward them.
"A vision. I had a vision."
Nephis's hand moved toward her sword. "Are we in danger?"
Cassie shook her head. "No, it's not that. People. I saw a castle full of people."
A castle meant a Citadel, which meant other humans, which meant survival on a scale that three Sleepers on a coral island couldn't achieve alone.
Cassie pointed with her finger.
"I don't know how far it is, but I'm sure it's in that direction."
Her small, delicate finger was pointing west. Toward the scavengers. Toward the statue. Toward the sea creatures that moved through the deep with slow patience.
Sunny stared at her outstretched hand and felt something cold settle into the pit of his stomach.
West. Of course it was west.