“Victory, as always,” Endurance says, her back to me.

“Against what?”

“Do you have something to tell me, Lifeshaper? Something I should know—need to know?” Her armor flexes, ripples.

“Perhaps not,” I say. “Perhaps you already understand.”

“You are here to protect your husband. That much I would expect. Tell me how you would protect him, Lifeshaper.”

“The Didact is tired.”

“The Didact is highly energized and devoted.”

“The Didact is on the point of collapse.”

“I have not seen that.” Spoken with less firmness.

“The Didact is not thinking clearly,” I say.

“What evidence?” Endurance asks, slowly turning to face me again. Already she violates her honor, showing any willingness to hear my criticism of her commander. Her doubts must be deep. And they must be drawn up, exposed.

“He was interrogated by a Gravemind,” I say.

“I know that much.”

“If you were Gravemind, such an amalgam of ancient memory, Forerunner memory and experience—how would you forge a weapon to strike at the center of Forerunner defenses?”

She narrows her eyes severely. I have struck a strong chord—and a sour one. Her nostrils compress, as if she does not want to breathe the same air as me. But she folds her arms and continues to listen.

“An honorable and courageous leader is delivered unexpectedly into your control,” I say, “a leader whose return might bring hope and renewed strength to the Forerunner ecumene.”

“And?”

“And yet his return has brought nothing but sorrow and horrific destruction, not only to his own rate, but now to the humans as well. He’s become a foolish pawn in a dark game of revenge that began long ago.”

“The Primordial,” Endurance says.

“The Primordial. An experience so traumatic he kept the facts hidden from me for ten thousand years. Such a creature, with such a dark brilliance, would play upon his oldest fears, twist emotions made fragile during a lifetime of war and hardship and politics. Twist, intensify—and distort them.”

“Prometheans have for hundreds of thousands of years been proofed against that sort of pressure,” Endurance says. “Torture has never broken one of our rank.”

“They have no training against this adversary. No armor or protection against the heirs of those who created us. The Didact has been subjected to the examination of something so very close to a god … one related to those we assumed had passed the Mantle to us, but most definitely have not.”

“Enough, Lifeshaper! I will not listen to blasphemy, even from you.”

“Has he brought you into his plans? Made them clear?”

“Clear enough. I serve, I do not judge. He believes he will defeat the Flood with these new Prometheans, that the scattered remnants of Forerunners will survive, and that they will eventually reunite. He will summon them, then govern and reorganize. Requiem will become center for the Forerunner resurgence, the foundation upon which we will rightfully claim the Mantle.”

“And?”