Awards ceremonies come in many forms, from small private occasions to lavish public spectacles. For Zyla though, they always came with an undercurrent of anxiety.

“Zy, are you ok?” Yael asked.

“Yes,” Zyla said, staring at the door beyond which her future awaited her.

“Good, cause there’s nothing to worry about,” Yael said. “After today you’ll be a free woman.”

“Yes,” Zyla said, still staring at the door.

“You know I remember your trial,” Yael said. “You were much more relaxed then. I think I even got you to crack a smile.”

“Yes,” Zyla said and glanced over at Yael. A small and obviously forced smile gracing her face briefly before Zyla returned her gaze to the door.

“When I was a kid, we had awards ceremonies all the time,” Yael said. “It got a little boring after a while to be honest.”

“You grew up on Safsalla didn’t you?” Zyla asked. “I thought that was one of the barren worlds.”

“It was,” Yael said. “Still is in fact.”

“The Empire hasn’t provided aid for you?” Zyla asked.

“Safsalla is barren of macroscopic life, except for the colony warrens where we lived,” Yael said. “On a microbiological level though its a wonderland. There are reagents and anima filtrants there that are found nowhere else in the galaxy.”

“That sounds like a treasure trove of wealth but you said your family was a poor one I thought?” Zyla asked.

“They were,” Zyla said. “The colony warrens, basically the cities, had a long history of isolation from each other and the galaxy at large. We lived like spacers for the most part, reclaiming and recycling everything because we couldn’t draw much sustenance from the planet around us.”

“And then the Empire conquered you and everything was better?” Zyla asked.

“Come on, we’ve worked together for how long now?” Yael asked. “You know the Empire doesn’t work like that.”

“I guess they don’t,” Zyla said.

“They showed up, judged we weren’t a threat to anyone and offered us membership in the Empire,” Yael said. “Some of the warrens took it, most passed. I was born in the one of the ones that passed on membership for a while, so we didn’t have much.”

“So what were the awards ceremonies for?” Zyla asked.

“At the time I thought they were for great achievements but looking back I think they were just little rituals to help divide up the time and keep people from going crazy,” Yael said.

“Did it work?” Zyla asked.

“I don’t know. I think in place of a generalized lunacy, we developed a more focused variety,” Yael said. “Most people were mostly reasonable about the awards, but some got far too obsessed with them.”

“What were the survival ratios like?” Zyla asked.

“I don’t know of anyone killing over a contest,” Yael said.

“You weren’t that crazy then,” Zyla said.

“What about you?” Yael asked. She voiced the question lightly, the subject of Zyla’s youth being a painful one in general.

“We had awards ceremonies too,” Zyla said. “Frequent ones.”

“How did you do in them?” Yael asked.

“I’m still here,” Zyla said. “So therefor I won an award at all of them.”

“How harsh was the Khan on his children?” Yael asked.

“He didn’t lay a hand on us,” Zyla said. “Most of the time. He let us compete for our place in his Circles, and encouraged us to use whatever tactics and methods were available to secure our positions.”

“So those who didn’t measure up?” Yael asked.

“They stayed in the lower circles,” Zyla said. “Or we destroyed them.”

“I should have guessed that,” Yael said.

“Yes,” Zyla said and closed her eyes for a moment.

“This isn’t like that,” Yael said and laid a hand on Zyla’s shoulder. “There’s no competition here. This is a celebration and recognition of the work you’ve done since your case was first adjudicated.”

“The work we’ve done,” Zyla said.

“I’ve gotten my accolades,” Yael said. “Today is about recognizing you. But I can understand how that could feel uncomfortable with your history.”

“Yes,” Zyla said.

“It’s already a small ceremony,” Yael said. “We can make it a brief one too if you like?”

“That’s not…” Zyla started to say. “That’s not  necessary.”

“We could skip it altogether and hop the next freighter to the rim?” Yael said, trying to put a real smile on Zyla’s face.

“I wish we could,” Zyla said.

There was a silence that stretched on a hair longer than was comfortable. Yael broke the awkward moment by first standing up and then turning to kneel in front of where Zyla was sitting.

“What’s stopping us?” Yael asked.

“What?” Zyla twitched back away from Yael.

“Why can’t we just grab a ship and head out?” Yael asked. “The paperwork’s already been put through. You’ve been a free woman since yesterday. This ceremony is just a formality. Why don’t we blow it off?”

“We can’t do that,” Zyla said.

“Zy, I haven’t seen you this upset since we first met,” Yael said. “We can totally do this.”

“I don’t mind the ceremony,” Zyla said. “Or I do, but I know it’s not like the ones my father hosted.”

“What’s wrong then?” Yael asked. “Please, tell me. I want to help.”

“It’s…” Zyla struggled to find the right words before settling on, “It’s premature.”

“Premature?” Yael said. “Are you nuts? This is long overdue!”

“No it’s not,” Zyla said.

“Zy, you’ve proven yourself so many times so far. You’ve satisfied every condition of your parole a hundred times over. The Empire has every reason to trust you now!”

“I didn’t do any of those things for the Empire,” Zyla said. “And I don’t think you’re right. I haven’t balanced the scales.”

Yael sighed and settled back to sit on the floor. She drew her knees up to her chest and regarded Zyla over them.

“Tell me about it,” Yael said. “Tell me what is weighing down the other side of the scale.”

“It’s not one thing,” Zyla said.

“I’ve never pried into your past,” Yael said. “Do you know why that is?”

“Afraid of what you’d find there?” Zyla said.

“Yeah,” Yael said. “I was. I was afraid I’d find something that would really hurt you.”

“My past can’t hurt me,” Zyla said.

“Really? Cause it looks like it’s killing you at the moment,” Yael said.

“I’m fine,” Zyla said.

“No, you’re not fine,” Yael said. “I’m not fine either. My magic is all screwed up and I can barely see anything two seconds ahead.”

“I’m messing things up,” Zyla said.

“It’s not your fault,” Yael said. “I can’t see anything because…”

Yael stopped herself and took a breath.

“Can you see anything?” she asked. “What does the future look like to you?”

“I don’t know,” Zyla said.

“What do you want it to look like?” Yael asked.

“I don’t know,” Zyla said.

Yael dropped her head onto her raised knees.

“We’re a great pair of fate wizards aren’t we?” she said after a long moment.

“I didn’t think it would be this hard,” Zyla said.

“Really?” Yael asked.

“I’ve been blind to this for a while. I couldn’t see how today was going to go at all,” Zyla said. “I still can’t.”

“My Master taught me a technique for dealing with blocks like this,” Yael said, relaxing as she spoke.

“Why do Guardians refer to their Elders as Masters,” Zyla asked. “That’s always seemed wrong to me.”

“The word has meant a lot of different things over the years,” Yael asked. “We take it from its early use in describing a ‘Master and their Apprentice’. It’s not required, and some Guardian mentors dislike the formality of it, but with Opal it always felt right.”

“You respect her a lot don’t you?” Zyla asked.

“I do,” Yael said. “She’s a very wise lady. She was the one who suggested I work with you for example.”

“So what was her technique for seeing through blocks like this?” Zyla asked.

“We start with meditation,” Yael said and scooted backwards on her butt to make room for Zyla on the floor.

The two women folded their legs into a half lotus position and sat upright facing each other.

“Simple breathing exercises to start with,” Yael said, and together they inhaled for a long ten count and exhaled for a slightly quicker five count. They repeated the measured breaths again and again, silently seeking the stillness in the center of their being.

“There are a lot of things that can block our foresight,” Yael said.

“Like a certain Void anima caster who hasn’t left the planet yet,” Zyla said.

“Yes,” Yael said. “Mel is a pain in the butt.”

“But a useful one sometimes,” Zyla said, a rare smile breaking across her lips like a wave.

“External influences are only one of the things that can cloud our vision though,” Yael said. “More often we’re blinded by what’s inside us.”

“I know,” Zyla said. “We were taught from as early as I can remember to kill our emotions.”

Yael winced.

“The Khan wasn’t alone in sponsoring that approach,” she said. “A lot of people see how chaotic the mind can be and they seek to lock it up, to carve away the pieces they can’t control. They try to remove emotions from their equations or they go the other direction and embrace utter madness.”

“Only a rare few can manage that sort of purity,” Zyla said. “I came close for a while but I’m much weaker now.”

“You are far from weak,” Yael said. “Denying who you are? Or giving up all control of yourself? Those are illusions of strength. You can walk those paths and gain power but you lose part of yourself in the process and are limited by that loss.”

“The children of the First Circle were far more powerful than I was,” Zyla said.

“Yes, because they’d trained more and been more fortunate,” Yael said. “But they weren’t more powerful than you can be. They were at the peak of what they could ever hope to be. You have so much more potential than that.”

“Right now, I can’t see anything,” Zyla said. “I don’t know what tomorrow holds, I don’t even know what’s going to happen ten seconds from now.”

“I know,” Yael said. “That’s what this technique will help with.”

“So what do we do?” Zyla asked.

“We be honest,” Yael said. “With ourselves above all else. I can’t see my future because this moment is too important for me. It feels like I’m blind, but when I look, when I really try to see what’s to come, I see too many futures, all overlaying each other and its too much. Too many that I want too strongly and too many that I can’t live with and too many where I can’t tell the difference.”

“I was taught to look only for the future that fulfilled the objective you were given,” Zyla said.

“What objective have you given yourself then?” Yael asked.

“I don’t know,” Zyla said.

“Is that the problem?” Yael asked. “Do you not know what future you want or is there some other conflict holding you back? You don’t have to tell me, but you’ve got to tell yourself.”

Zyla was still and silent for a long time. After a minute of holding her breath she finally spoke.

“I know what I want, and I know that I don’t deserve it,” she said.

“I’m prepared to argue with you pretty thoroughly on how much you deserve to get what you want,” Yael said. “But my thoughts aren’t what’s important here. All I can ask is that you consider how you’re measuring what you do and don’t deserve.”

“I’ve done some good,” Zyla said. “But almost all of it has been with you. And before then, on my own, I was very different.”

“We met as enemies,” Yael said. “So I think I know a little about what you were like then. I know how you clung to your honor like a lifeline. How you hated being what the Khan had forced you to be.”

“He didn’t have to force us,” Zyla said. “It was how we were born.”

“You weren’t born cruel, that was taught to you, from before you could even cast a spell or speak the word for it,” Yael said.

“That doesn’t change what I did,” Zyla said. “That doesn’t make me right, or even ok, or worthy of special consideration. I’m not a good person. I’m just good when I’m around you.”

“I destroyed my home warren.” Yael said.

“What?” Zyla asked.

“I destroyed my home.” Yael said. “When I was little. I figured out how to cast Aetherial spells and I hid my abilities from everyone. Made sure the tests didn’t show any aptitude for casting because I was afraid the Empire would come and take me away. And then one day I got mad, really mad, and I cursed the warren.”

“What happened?” Zyla asked.

“The Empire came and took me away,” Yael said. “They figured out what I did pretty easily. You’ve seen what an Imperial Auditor can do. I was too dangerous to leave on Safsalla, so they paired me up with Master Opal.”

“So you were on parole too?” Zyla asked.

“For a few years,” Yael said. “Longer than you in fact. Master Opal helped me work a lot of thing out though.”

“What about the people from your home city?” Zyla asked.

“I made amends where I could,” Yael said. “The Empire evacuated everyone to an orbital station though so I’m not exactly the most popular person there anymore. Someday I’m hoping to go back and undo the curse, but I’m not quite strong enough yet, and there’s not much left of the warren to make it a worthwhile endeavor.”

“You saved an entire planet,” Zyla said. “How can you not be strong enough?”

“I’m only that good with you,” Yael said. “See I can’t break the curse because a part of me is still mad at the warren. Until I really forgive them I won’t have the strength to undo what I did.”

“So are you saying I should forgive my father?” Zyla asked.

“No, I’m saying you should forgive yourself, who you are now matters as much as who you were then and who you chose to be matters more than either of those,” Yael said. “And I should take my own advice.”

“To be forgiving?” Zyla asked.

“No, to be honest,” Yael said. She breathed in, held the breath and then raised her head and opened her eyes to look directly at Zyla. “I know why I can’t see the future at the moment, I know what’s got my heart so flustered, and I hope I’m guessing correctly at what you want the future to be. I know all that, but I don’t want to cause you any pain or put any pressure on you. All I can ask is whether you want me to share that with you.”

“Yes,” Zyla said, her voice clipping on even so small a word.

“I can’t see the future because of my feelings for you,” Yael said. “You’re too important to me, and this conversation, this moment, could go too many different ways. I could lose you forever here, and I would give almost anything to avoid that.”

Zyla looked down, hiding her eyes from Yael and forcing her breathing to a pace that was close to even.

“They said I would be free after the ceremony and that I could go wherever I wanted,” Zyla said. “But since the day we met, I haven’t wanted to be anywhere except by your side.”

“So the future you want has me in it then?” Yael asked and reached her hands forward.

“Forever,” Zyla said, taking Yael’s hands into her own. “If you’ll have me.”

“For as long as you’ll have me,” Yael said.

Little motes of light, anima that had been bound and trapped inside them began to float around the room as the future opened up before them at last.

“I thought we couldn’t be together,” Zyla said. “That your oath as a Crystal Guardian forbid it.

“Not at all,” Yael said. “We’re supposed to lead the most balanced lives that we can, and you help keep me sane better than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“I thought I was going to go crazy being with you, but then the thought of losing you felt even more insane,” Zyla said.

“How do you feel now?” Yael asked.

“Like I’ve woken up into a dream,” Zyla said. “I didn’t even want to hope that we’d get to stay together. I thought you’d be sent off on another mission and I’d be left to find my way in the galaxy all alone.”

“I never want you to feel alone,” Yael said. “Even if we’re apart, I want you to know that the best part of me will always be with you.”

“Can I kiss you now?” Zyla asked.

“I’ve been waiting three years for you to ask that question!” Yael said and slid her arms around her partner, her companion, her best friend and her truest love.

As cantinas went, the nameless little dive on the third ring of Belarion Orbital Habitat held a singular charm. It was blissfully quiet. So many other cantinas felt the need to blare whatever passed for jaunty music in the local system. The nameless dive didn’t have that problem, largely because its enchanted music synthesizer had been blasted into ten thousand tiny pieces.

Even that wasn’t a guarantee of tranquility though. When music was missing, cantinas tended to have noisy patrons who filled the silence in with whatever idiocy came to their minds. The nameless cantina didn’t have that problem either however since its patrons were all mercifully unconscious.

Darius pulled up a chair to the table where Captain Okoro was sitting and plopped the last unbroken bottle of green spirits down beside a pair of small, mostly intact, glasses.

“They packed more of a punch than I expected,” Darius said, surveying the dozens of prone forms that were draped over the furniture or sprawled across the floor.

“It’s always the ones you don’t expect who put up the biggest fights,” Hanq said.

“Think Mel will be mad she missed this brawl?” Darius asked.

“Only if we tell her about it,” Hanq said with a smile.

“So how many guys would you say were here?” Darius asked. “Two hundred? Three hundred?”

“Oh clearly this was an entire militia hide out. Fully armed. Probably a thousand in enchanted power armor,” Hanq said.

“She’s going to murder us,” Darius said, unable to keep from giggling at the prospect of teasing his beloved brawler.

“I don’t know how you keep up with her,” Hanq said.

“What do you mean?” Darius said. “You’re the one who trained her. You’ve been keeping up with her since she was little right?”

“That girl? Nine hells no, she’s always set her own pace,” Hanq said. “Best I’ve done is managed to nudge her away from the really stupid mistakes I made when I was her age.”

“How did you two ever meet?” Darius asked. “I could never believe that she just stumbled onto a former Warlord who was also a master martial artist just when she needed training.”

“I know. You’d think there was some kind of spell at work there, but believe me, I checked and there wasn’t,” Hanq said. “How I remember it is that our meeting was all Mel’s idea.”

“What do you mean?” Darius asked.

“Well, you have to understand where I was at the time,” Hanq said. “I’d just gotten my crew together and conquered my first system when the Crystal Empress broke onto the scene. Like a lot of the Warlords in those days, I was young, strong as hell and smart enough to see the value of allies, especially ones you could sacrifice if the need arose.”

“That doesn’t seem like a solid long term strategy,” Darius said.

“Oh it wasn’t,” Hanq said. “The average reign for a Warlord was a decade at the outside. The smartest ones would pass their power onto a younger caster and retire somewhere with a shipload of money and enchanted objects.”

“Is that how you got the job?”

“No, I grabbed my system in a bloodless coup. The previous ruler was a cagey beast but he hadn’t kept up on the latest in security techniques. So I took the station that he had warded with spells a dozen levels deep and removed their ‘friend or foe’ recognition routines. Cut off his whole command infrastructure in one move.”

“I’m surprised it was bloodless.” Darius said.

“The old guy was smart enough to have the non-lethal defenses trigger first. Saved his life and left me with a clean conscience,” Hanq said. “Actually keeping the system wasn’t quite so bloodless though. Once word got out about the change in power a bunch of my neighbors decided to see if they could annex the system out from under me.”

“I’ve seen you work,” Darius said. “How many of their systems did you take?”

“Three,” Hanq said. “I didn’t even really want them but I had to collect a price for the trouble they caused.”

“Any of them live through it?” Darius asked.

“All of them actually, I needed allies after all and who better than a trio of Warlord I knew I could run rings around.”

“So what happened when the Empress showed up?” Darius asked.

“We had a huge battle. I almost had her at my mercy until all of my allies turned traitor,” Hanq said, hiding his expression with the glass of green liquer.

“Really?” Darius asked.

“No,” Hanq said. “Not even in my wildest day dreams. What really happened is one of her Crystal Guardians showed up. Not even one of the Prime ones.”

“They talked you into standing down peacefully?” Darius asked.

“Yes. She talked to us with her fists. I recall that her right cross made a very clear and concise case for why I should get out of the Warlord line of work and find something less dangerous like ‘stellar demolition’.”

“She beat you?”

“She beat all of us,” Hanq said. “All at the same time.”

“That’s when you took up martial arts seriously?” Darius asked.

“Oh no,” Hanq said. “I’d been serious about martial combat of all kinds for years. Since I could walk if fact. It’s why I was able to beat people into following me.”

“And the others didn’t betray you?”

“Not intentionally,” Hanq said. “We could have been better coordinated, but none of us were turncoats. We gave it our all, and hers was just better than that.”

“So what did you do afterwards?”

“After I got out of the Imperial medical facility?” Hanq said. “Well the first thing I did was refuse the commission they offered. My body was healed but my pride still in little pieces.”

“They let you go like that?” Darius asked.

“It was less a matter of ‘let me go’ and more a ‘failed to prevent my escape’,” Hanq said. “Since I was on the run I knew I had to disappear. Or at least that’s what I told myself at the time. Looking back, I wonder if I wasn’t running away from the guy I thought I was more than anything else.”

“Being a Warlord meant a lot to you?” Darius asked.

“At the time it was everything I was,” Hanq said. “You don’t get to a position like that without a certain mindset. I believed I was the strongest guy out there. And the smartest. And most fit to rule. Being a Warlord was about more than power. It was security. With me in charge I knew I could make sure nothing bad happened to the people that mattered.”

Hanq took a breath and looked down into the glass and the questionable green goo that sloshed inside it

“Then I wasn’t in charge,” he said. “And nothing bad happened. Things were even better in fact. And I wasn’t the strongest or the smartest or the most fit to rule.”

“That sounds brutal,” Darius said.

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Hanq said. “Well, one of the best.”

“That brings us back to Mel I’m guessing?” Darius said.

“Eventually,” Hanq said. “There were days I was convinced she was the worst disaster ever to land in my life though.”

“Why?” Darius asked.

“Because she never gave up,” Hanq said. “She was relentless. I didn’t want to train her, not at first anyways. I gave her all kind of crazy things to do and she just kept doing them.”

“Yeah, I can’t say I find that hard to believe,” Darius said.

“So there I am, broken down, as low as I’d ever been, convinced that I had nothing left to fight for and there’s this little fuzzy haired stick of a girl who just won’t leave me alone!”

Darius chuckled.

“Gods, I’m picturing a little Mel now being on your case 24 hours a day,” he said. “It’s horrifying.”

“You have no idea,” Hanq said. “The worst part was that she was terrible at martial arts. At least to start. But every day, she was there.”

“How long did it take her to get good?” Darius asked.

“I don’t even know!” Hanq said. “Like I said, she was always there and it was so gradual that I don’t think I noticed for a while how good she’d become. I think it was about seven or eight years ago that I noticed I was using anima while I was sparring with her though. That was probably my first wake up call.”

“Wait, you were spell casting at her back when she couldn’t cast spells?” Darius asked.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds, but yes, I’d started casting cantrip buffs to edge up my speed or recover from some of the hits she was tagging me with. Nothing obvious or overwhelming, but it was still a pretty terrible thing to do.”

“It sounds like it really pushed her training into overdrive though,” Darius said.

“I suppose it did, but she never noticed it either,” Hanq said. “To her I was just staying tantalizing far ahead of her, but always beyond a level she could reach. What she didn’t see was that I was cheating more and more every day to maintain that lead.”

“Why did you keep training her if it was that hard?” Darius asked.

“You know, after a while I asked myself that too,” Hanq said. “The real answer took me a long time to work out though. At first I thought I had a responsibility to her. The streets on Belstarius weren’t friendly to kids and Mel’s disposition made them particularly hostile to her.”

“I’m having a hard time picturing how she survived as long as she did without magic to fall back on,” Darius said.

“Some of that was me, some of it was the Sisters of Water’s Mercy,” Hanq said. “For an order of holy women, they could sure raise unholy hell when they needed too. Mostly though I think it was just that damn determination of hers. She dragged herself to my place more times than I can count all busted up and broken from some fight or another.”

“A trend that continues to today,” Darius said and took another gulp from his glass.

“At least she’s learned to hang out with medics and a support staff,” Hanq said.

“Sounds like she always had a support staff, even if she didn’t know it,” Darius said.

“I guess she did,” Hanq said. “Even from that first day, even when I was trying as hard as I could to drive her away, I still couldn’t let anything really bad happen to that girl. Busted more than few heads for her that I’m hoping she never found out about.”

“Why?” Darius asked.

“She had a bit of a temper when she was younger,” Hanq said. “I was trying to teach her to control that by showing her a good example.”

“And?” Darius asked.

“Well, let’s just say sometimes I set a better example than others,” Hanq said. “I mean I was an ex-Warlord. There are certain threats I can laugh off and others? Well, sometimes its best that nobody is able to find those particular bodies.”

“You sound as protective as my Dads were,” Darius said.

“I guess I was,’ Hanq said. “For a long time I’ve thought of Mel as the daughter I’d never have.”

“For what it’s worth, I think she still regards you as the closest thing she has to a father,” Darius said.

“I’m happier for that than you can possibly understand,” Hanq said. “But thinking about it, even that’s not why I never pushed her away, not even during her incredibly bratty years.”

“It’s hard to imagine Mel as a brat,” Darius said.

“Oh do I have stories for you then,” Hanq said.

“I’m kind of terrified our daughter will turn out the same,” Darius said.

“Oh, you’re planning to have a family now?” Hanq asked.

“Well, not right now, but someday, maybe,” Darius said. “If she wants to.”

“The probably the kind of thing you should talk about with actual words,” Hanq said. “And for the record, I am in favor of grandchildren.”

“Her mother said the same thing,” Darius said. “But you were saying you didn’t stick with her because she was like a daughter to you?”

“Yeah, when I look back now what I see is that I was just being selfish. It’s as simple as that,” Hanq said.

“How so?” Darius asked.

“I was lower than low when I met Mel,” Hanq said. “And she wouldn’t let me stay there. She wouldn’t let me be the ‘washed up ex-Warlord’ that I thought I was. She made be her teacher. She made be this incredible martial master. And you know what? It worked. I didn’t want to but every day I got up and trained with her. She got better, I got better and I found something.”

“A new person you could be?” Darius asked.

“Yeah, or maybe it was the person I always was,” Hanq said. “Without that Crystal Guardians I would have continued on being a Warlord and odds are I’d be dead by now. Without Mel though, I’d have wasted away to nothing. My body might still be walking around but fifteen years of the guy I was back then would have left that body without a heart or a soul.”

Hanq looked at the glass and could only see his own, honest smile reflected back at him.

“Mel’s saved a lot of people, but the first person she saved was me.”