A young child, judging by the size of her hands. She was sitting crisscross in a patch of amber grass that swayed in the wind. Native to Uulveca, Valen realized.

The girl was playing with a doll. A newly fashioned one, for when the child turned the doll around, Valen saw the rouged lips, the ringlet curls, the golden crown nestled atop the doll’s head.

It was Nor.

The child giggled as she made the doll dance.

“Worship your queen,” Valen whispered into her mind. “Worship her, carry out her commands, and you will have peace.”

He felt the compulsion sink into the child. Like a parasite nestling in deeper, beside one that had already been there, growing steadily day by day.

Valen extracted himself from the child’s mind, pulling away from the cell door and back out into the hallway of his castle. He took a few steps farther, whistling to himself, his cloak dragging soundlessly across the stones behind him. The cold kissed his cheeks, and he felt alive.

Electric.

When he was doing this work, he mattered. No one disobeyed him. No one dared to defy him, for how could they, beneath the weight of his compulsion?

He picked another cell door.

An elderly man stood at the bow of a hovercraft, the glistening silver ship soaring just above the surface of a flat, motionless sea. The terraformed water sector of Adhira. Valen had always wished to visit, and now he could, through the mind of this man.

“We’ll find it today, won’t we, Oyneko?” a voice asked.

The old man turned, and Valen saw as he saw. A young Adhiran man, skin purple and smile bright, held a torpedo-shaped camera in his hands. He wore a gray work suit, salt stains crusting around the collar from his sweat.

“If the Godstars shine their light on us today, then perhaps we will,” the old man said. “There were hundreds of varillium ships lost in this sea during the war. If we can find them, Rantyi, we’ll have served the queen in a way few ever could. She’ll finally be able to finish building Nexus.”

“All hail the queen,” the young Adhiran said, then tossed the camera into the sea.

Valen whispered his compulsion into the old man’s mind, pressing in the desire to serve Nor. Igniting a hunger to keep working until he uncovered the lost varillium for Nexus. Then he pulled himself away from the old man, back into the castle halls.

Valen didn’t know how long he spent pressing thoughts into minds, compelling them to stay loyal, to stay true to his sister’s reign. Time moved differently inside his mind fortress.

Usually, Valen’s energy heightened in this space. But as he worked today, he found himself beginning to grow tired. He walked more slowly, stopping often to catch his breath as he passed by aisle after aisle of cells.