“Are you certain of your decision, Thomas?” Ithlin asked, “Choosing this path merely because it is before you will not suffice. Does it call to you?”

Beams of the morning sun shone through the dome of Ithlin’s chambers, sparkling off the robot’s metallic form so brightly that Thomas had to squint. On every wall hung paintings, sculptures, masks, and a hundred other samplings of a hundred different cultures. Each one was preserved in individual alcoves, spared from the weathering of time.

“Be truthful, not to me, but to yourself. Do you accept this task and all that it entails?” Ithlin asked.

Thomas blinked. The faces of Edd, Campbell, and everyone else who had been burnt into nothingness on his behalf flashed through his mind. Then, like a floodgate, came the others. His mother, his father, Damien, and faces that he had forgotten he had known. His 2nd-grade teacher, a girl he had had a crush on, childhood friends he hadn’t seen in years. Some of them, he could picture with crystal clarity, and others felt worn away with only a few impressions to mark he had ever known them at all.

“To be honest, the only thing I’m sure of is that I want to go home,” Thomas said. “And if joining up with…this legion can help us get there, then I’m in.”

Her blue eyes studied him for a moment. “Out of all the reasons for one to go to war, wanting to go home is far from the worst. I will do everything in my power to make sure you get there. All of you.”

 ***

With his choice made, and the ordeal of the past week behind him, he could finally attend to the important task of lying in his bed in a self-induced coma. But during his few waking hours over the next three days, an energy seemed to charge within him. So much so that by the time he sat with the other initiates aboard the tram to take them to the commencement he couldn’t stop fidgeting in his seat.

Few of the initiates in the half-loaded car spoke, but the air buzzed with a common anticipation. Thomas didn’t know what to expect, but he still found himself surprised at the people around him. Nearly all were human, but only a few of them looked as if they were about to train to go to war. It was a near-even split between men and women. Some were lanky, and others heavier. Most of them looked to be in their twenties, but a handful looked like they were nearly forty.

I really hope I didn’t just sign my life away to a senile robot.

The only commonality, aside from their species, was the shared experience of the Exodus of Earth. Whether it was the circles under their eyes or the platinum prosthetics of a false limb, all of them shared in that.

A bony, dark haired young man in a grungy, gray hoodie took a seat next to him. He pushed his wide rimmed glasses up his nose and looked around the car, frowning, and then tapped Thomas’s arm.

“Hey, are you here for this legion thing?” he asked, tightening his seatbelt.

Thomas nodded, his eyes narrowing. He had heard that voice before.

The young man furrowed his brow and huddled in his seat. “This seems like a scam.”

Thomas narrowed his eyes at him. “What would a bunch of hyper-advanced robots have to gain by luring a bunch of refugees into a scam?”

The man shook his head. “Shit if I know, man. We have no idea what they’re history is or how they evolved… or were built. Their concept of logic and morals are probably… well, alien to us.”

“I mean…they did save us," Thomas said. “And housed us.”

The man moved his hand away from the buckle. “Maybe. But the worst assumption is usually the safest assumption.”

Thomas’s heart leaped from his chest. “Is your name Damien?”

Damien’s head swiveled towards his, and he broke into a toothy grin. “Thomas?”

Thomas nodded, and the two embraced in a clumsy side hug through their seatbelts.

“I would never have guessed that this would be how we finally meet in person,” Thomas said. Thomas felt himself loosen slightly, hearing Damien’s voice as if it were only another game night.

“I would have preferred to meet at a Con or something, but this’ll do,” Damien said. “How’d you end up here?”

Thomas’s smile wavered. “Ithlin and Maruch saved me during that Idex raid last week.”

“At that farming outpost? That’s where you’ve been this whole time?”

“Yeah, it was called Point Nemo.” Thomas looked down and felt the watch in his pocket. “How about you?”

Damien tilted his head and eyed him for a moment. “I ended up here in the Atrium with a bunch of the other refugees from New York, New Jersey, and all of the others in the northeast.”

“I’ll be honest,” Thomas said. “With how close you were to New York City…I thought you were dead.”

Damien swallowed. “If I had been a mile closer to Manhattan, then I would be.”

Both were silent for a moment before Thomas asked, “Have you heard anything from the rest of the guys.”

“No.”

Thomas’s shoulders drooped, but Damien grabbed his arm.

“That doesn’t mean anything, bro. It’s not like we can just call them anymore, y’know?” Damien said. “Give ‘em time. They’ll pop up.”

A metallic chime pinged throughout the train, and the fully loaded car shot forward into darkness. For several minutes, they remained underground until, in a flash, the black flicked into a blur of ultramarine. Looking out the window, Thomas saw the ghostly shapes of drowned towers whisk by, the bottoms shrouded from sight. After about an hour, the train began to slow down enough for him to see schools of bioluminescent fish glide around the track. Looking ahead, one of the sunken towers swallowed the track whole, plunging the car into darkness once again.

With a jolt, the train stopped and then lurched forward, and then stopped and then lurched forward again.

Damien gripped his seat. “Is motion sickness an alien concept to the Penitent?”

“I think you just answered your own question,” Thomas said.

Damien sighed. “Alright, I think I’m getting used to it.”

The train shot into motion again, only this time, straight down. Thomas’s stomach flew up into his throat. Damien pressed himself back into his seat, his eyes pinched shut. After a few minutes, Thomas’s stomach found its way back to where it should be, but he couldn’t tell if it was just because he had gotten used to it or if it was some hidden technology. At any rate, it made the next two hours of descent far less unpleasant.

“Y’know, I don’t think that was built for humans,” said Thomas as the train finally came to a stop.

“Shut up," said Damien.

The initiates unbuckled and grabbed their bags, filing down and out of the car and into a long corridor wide enough to fit two lanes of traffic. Thomas and Damien stayed close together.

“This way, initiates," said a squat-looking Penitent, shepherding them down the corridor. Looking around, Thomas saw that there were hundreds of initiates, maybe as many as a thousand. They were flanked on their sides by a retinue of armed humans and Pyreborn, and each separated into their own squads.

“I guess they don’t trust us completely either,” Damien said quietly.

“At least it’s Pyreborn and humans,” said Thomas.

The procession passed onto a glass bridge, and Thomas’s jaw went slack, his mind working overtime to catch up to his eyes. Beneath the glass floor of the bridge was a blue-violet sun in an indigo sky. Distant stars twinkled faintly, partially hidden by the dim sunlight, seemingly curving in one concurrent arc.

“How far down did we go?" Damien asked. Thomas looked up and saw that the bridge hung from a metal ceiling, curving away into infinity. The entire planet of Akkaven was a hollow shell.

“Do you think the Penitent built this?" Thomas asked after being prodded forward by one of their Pyreborn escorts.

“Either them or whoever made them," Damien said.

“Then why do they need us?" Thomas asked. He glanced at their armed escort, and although the Pyreborn still marched on, their heads craned slightly upward every so often. Maruch had said that the Pyreborn had been fighting the Idex across the galaxy for decades, and yet this seemed to be a marvel even to them.

They’re just observing their environment. You’re overthinking it.

He walked carefully across the bridge, mistrustful of the ground beneath his feet. How had he not known about this? Information among the human refugees was spread largely by word of mouth anymore, but he had never heard of anything like this. If anyone had seen this, it surely would have spread like wildfire, which meant that either Thomas was one of the first humans to lay eyes on it or it was being kept secret.

At the end of the bridge was what Thomas could only describe as an upside-down castle. It descended from the roof like a mass of blocky stalactites, glowing blue at the seams. Its scale dawned on him more and more as he crept closer like some sort of visitor to a ghost king’s court.      The squat Penitent at the head of the pack ushered them inside the citadel and into a vast, round hall with a glass floor. The initiates took their seats at long, silver tables. The air buzzed with chatter, their shared wonder making for a perfect icebreaker. The blue light of the sun below radiated up between the tables and danced on the reflective ceiling above.

“This place looks like the inside of a disco ball," Thomas said.

“I wonder if they excluded anyone with a fear of heights from their recruitment search," said Damien, looking down between his feet.

“What would happen if you fell?" said Thomas. “Would you just get sucked into the sun?”

Damien gulped. “Is it just me, or are all of the trainees human?”

Thomas looked around and saw that he was right. From what he could see, the prospective legionnaires were all human.

The hiss of hydraulics silenced the hall, and Ithlin and Maruch strode through a set of doors at the opposite end of the chamber. Ithlin had readopted the hunchbacked look that she had sported when Thomas had first met her while Maruch was in full armor, his face hidden beneath the crimson visor of his helmet. But behind him was another armored figure.

 The newcomer’s armor looked as if it had been hewn from the same stone as the fortress in which they stood. Along the edges of each plate ran stripes of midnight blue that seemed to pulse in the light of the sun below. The helmet had rounder edges than the rest of the armor, with a knightly shape and a blazing gold visor.

“Greetings," said Ithlin warmly, stopping at the center of the hall. “I hope your journey here was pleasant.”

Damien made a quiet, grumbling noise. Maruch’s head jerked towards him, instantly finding the source. Damien squirmed and fell silent.

“Thank you for heeding our call," she continued, “You need no reminder of the threat that bears down upon us, for it has been burnt into the memory of all your kind. The fate of humanity, like so many other races, hangs by a thread. And it is only because of the Penitent that you still survive.”

A wave of uneasy shifting spread throughout the crowd, wary of how their rescuers might collect on this debt.

“For three and a half years, your kind has been harbored here," she continued, “but that is no longer possible. I say this to you not to levy guilt but to remind you of the heights you once reached, of what was taken from you. The time has come to take it back, and this is how you will do it.”

The armored figure stepped forward and removed the helmet. It was a human.

“In our tongue, we call it the Retsebik, which most closely translates to ‘Crucible’ in yours," Ithlin said, “The technology used in its forging is an ancient yet formidable one, and it offers far more than just physical protection.”

Thomas couldn’t take his eyes off it.

The exterior plating has to be a form of cermet. That’d be the only way to have both strength and heat resistance, which is what you would need against sanctifiers.

“The rescue of humanity was the most successful that we have yet undertaken, with nearly a billion rescued. It is why you shall be the vanguard of our new alliance. You may be endangered, but you are not extinct. The powers of this galaxy have languished upon the fruits of fallen empires, and to this day, they worry more about fighting over scraps than they do of the Idex.”

“Look around this room," said Maruch, his voice amplified by his helmet. “And you will not see warriors. You are a fearful mob, soft in flesh and in mind.”

No wonder he wore armor to this.

“But not in spirit," Maruch continued, “You would not be here if you were, and that, we can work with.”

“That is all that the Crucible armor requires," said Ithlin, “is a willing spirit. It shall mold you into the first bricks of a union long in the making, and together, we shall reclaim the stars.”

Thomas swallowed. Even Damien was leaning forward now.

“But you must understand, this armor is the only way you will be able to bear the burden ahead of you. And to wear the armor, there is one test each of you must face. Alone," Ithlin said. “Follow me.”

Thomas and the other initiates rose and began to follow Ithlin and the other Penitent. Maruch and the Pyreborn remained behind.

“What do you think this is?" Thomas asked.

“I don’t know, but if I see a sheet with bubbles, I’m leaving.," said Damien.

They came upon a long hall lined with doors upon doors, each one reserved for an initiate. Ithlin guided Thomas into his.

“Do not fear," she said, “All you must do, is be.”

And with that, Thomas was alone. The cell was small and bare, except for a strange contraption at the center of the room. Extending from a mount on the floor was a bronze headpiece with eye holes that reminded Thomas of one of the mounted binoculars that tourists looked through. Two hinged portions were unfolded to either side of it.

His blood turned to ice. Part of him wanted to leave. Run. Perhaps Damien had been right. How could he possibly hope to understand an alien’s morality or logic? This was yet another consequence of his foolish decisions.

But an even bigger part of him wanted to go home. He wanted to take back Earth, and Ithlin had given him no reason to suspect that he would be harmed. At least, not one that he had noticed.

He slowly stepped towards it, fighting every step, and hesitated before resting his head on the chinrest and aligning his eyes with the holes in the machine. All he saw was black.

Then, the two hinged portions clamped shut.

His own rapid breathing was all he could hear as he clawed at the helmet like a rat in a trap. This was the culmination of his idiocy. He should’ve stayed at the Atrium. He should have died at Point Nemo. He should have died on Earth.

‘All you must do, is be.’

He breathed slowly and deeply as he ceased his frantic attempts to open the machine. Panic would not serve him here.

A slight pressure warmed the base of his neck, and flickerings of color began to stir within the darkness. And then, the forging truly began.