There is a cell, cold and dimly washed in blue light. There is a door, fortified by plastic and metal instead of an aegis, things Misery can’t yet bend to her will. A wide scoop of Monkglass has been excised of its holy obsidian, the gravity within an echo of the pull from other floors, and in the middle of it is Misery Nomaki, prisoner of the Faithful. A ring of brushed aluminium circles her ankle, tethering her to the ground. She floats in a bitter haze, furious and alone. Imprisoned. Hungry. Unsure of her future. In these cowardly actions she can taste the fear of her captors, afraid that she might once again casually gut the station to escape their grasp.

They should be. If she could, she would.

In its final blow the Edgeless Blade disabled her archangel mech with its dark magic, locking Misery from the unit’s controls. She, the bearer of the Larex Forge’s greatest gift, was reduced to a mere spectator as her captain’s ship met its fiery end. Could only watch, helpless, as the remaining siegeships aided the scattered servings assigned to Monkglass in rounding them up. Dragged them back to the hangar and pulled them from their units at gunpoint. All the pilots survived: she, Lightning, Spider, Ghost. She remembers watching rage boil in the princess, furious and violent, as she was shackled. The disbelief and despair rising in Spider, as though a pipe had burst. They were pumped full of salves to keep them docile, enough brain-fuzzing chemicals she can’t feel her hands and feet. They marched her to her cell that way, she a synth model in a video plaza, someone rigging her arms and legs, correcting the unsteadiness in her walk cycle.

Misery replays these memories over and over, hoping that divine insight will come to her and show her the seams where things went wrong, where the treacheries of the void seeped in and cracked the foundations of their plan. Over and over she has been betrayed by those whose loyalties should have lain with the Larex Forge, but had turned away from Hir light and embraced the chaos of the nullvoid. She catalogues them, picking at the edges of each wound:

—The Emperor and the Throne, mealy-mouthed cowards with their desire for reconciliation;

—Jericho, full of sweet lies and a heart of deceit, whom she trusted too easily, who used her weaknesses to fool her over and over again;

—The Lady Storm, repaying her sibling’s love and devotion with slick treachery;

—General Tsung, who had seemed so receptive to her message, whom she had thought the most reliable ally in this fight against evil, who had abandoned her at the most critical juncture, and she doesn’t even know why.