Only now does Requiem’s long-forgotten beauty greet me. Here, for thousands of kilometers on all sides, off into silvery-green haze, spreads a wide, high-ceilinged vista, illuminated by tiny sunlets flaring like brilliant green flowers. Sculptured mountain ranges sparkle with crystalline chunks of mineral-hard ice, awaiting heat to create another sanctuary for Lifeworker specimens. A stab of sharp pain at that sterile, unfinished landscape. But no Forerunners will be brought here.

All that I push back into the depths of mind and memory. I have but one duty now, and that is to see my husband locked in his Cryptum, and all of his crimes with him.

Once that is done, I will return to Erde-Tyrene.

* * *

Audacity comes to rest beside Mantle’s Approach on one side of a wide cylinder that plunges over a thousand kilometers below the dock’s cradling arms. The cylinder is likely a delivery tube for larger weapons, bigger than most of our ships, either already in place or soon to arrive, after which the tube will close off, along with all the gateways, and the outer shell of Requiem will be sealed.

I wonder where those weapons are arriving from. Or whether they will ever be installed …

At this point, I decide it is impractical to try to board the Didact’s ship without a proper understanding of Requiem’s situation. As well, my luck with the old Shield World might be stronger than with the vessel in which the Didact currently resides.

In this I am, so far, correct. Requiem assents to my permission to cross over, and provides me with an innocuous escort of servile sentinels.

I spend fully three hours moving through half-finished levels where Warrior-Servants might have once been quartered, but where now I see only ancilla-guided factories working at full speed to produce—what? Machines shaped like warriors? At last, I begin to see the faintest glimpse of his cruel scheme. Finally, in the antechamber to the Cryptum repository, I am met by a Warrior-Servant I have not seen in thousands of years—a Promethean! And giving me a bit of a shock. Someone I would never have expected, retired long ago, so I heard. A Promethean who under other circumstances might have led a quite different existence.

Had I not intervened.

Her name is Endurance-of-Will. She was adjutant to Bitterness-of-the-Vanquished during the human wars, as well as one of the ecumene’s top strategists, almost as brilliant as the Didact.

Her own expression, seeing me and the sentinels, is quite thoroughly controlled, though I notice a slight tightening of her wise, discerning eyes.

We stand a dozen meters apart. “Lifeshaper, we are honored and surprised by your presence,” she says.

Smaller than most of her rate and rank, but with a distinctive, catlike grace, she wears a uniquely simple style of battle armor: no decorations, no spikes, supple curves conveying quiet strength.

“Why is my husband not fully attended?” I ask.