Drawing the chaos in with his domain was very nearly the last thing he ever did. As far as experiments went, there weren't many things more stupid he could have tried.

Ambient miasma, full of malignant intent, struck the moment he opened a path to the interior of his soul. Hector's domain aperture was in the middle of the operation that performed chaotic emergence into cosmic energy. It wasn't ready to fight for his survival.

Oblivious to what was happening on his back, Rover Fred carried Hector through the maze of ridge tops and shallow valleys. Hector maintained his aura but otherwise had his entire focus bent on battling the miasma he had foolishly allowed to enter his soul. It was just a sliver, but it moved with dreadful purpose. Hector fought back with cosmic energy.

Fortunately, the energy within his soul did not need to be expended in the battle. It only had to be moved about. He prevented the miasma from contacting the walls of his soul. So far only his domain aperture had been in direct contact with the miasma, and that had been brief enough that he didn't think any permanent damage had been done.

So no serious repercussions yet. Just the fact that a puff of miasma was loose inside his soul, threatening to destroy him from within. Hector didn't have a clue how he would eject the poison. Indeed, he didn't have the bandwidth to ponder any methods. The battle took almost his entire concentration. It was a stalemate where the miasma could afford to lose but Hector very much could not. He had to win every round or he was dead.

Once more he had the impression that he was arm wrestling the miasma. It was an exhausting grind, the two of them battling for supremacy. Whoever surrendered first would cease to exist. Hector directed streams of cosmic energy to redirect the flight of miasma, preventing the darting serpent from contacting any sensitive surface.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he figured out a way to pin the miasma in place with a vortex of cosmic energy. His opponent twisted in place, raging against its confinement. Free of the need to out-think attacks, Hector could focus on the deeper layer of battle.

All his impressions of a battle of wills, as naive as they initially seemed, had been right. There was a struggle to assert resonance. It had been unconscious before, but now that Hector was aware of it he couldn't not sense what happened. He resonated with a certain collection of truths. All the things he was – that humans in general were – vibrated at certain frequencies, he sensed. The miasma vibrated at a horrible counter-frequency that sought to undo Hector at a fundamental level.

They fought conceptually. Hector threw his weight behind 'life'. The miasma insisted upon 'death'. 'Human form' versus 'melting corpse'. 'Existence' versus 'non-existence'. 'Cosmic energy' versus 'miasma'.

Their resonant conflict grew ever more insistent. Particularly that last note of discord. Whatever miasma thought it was triggered his insight something awful. It was like a chip on a tooth that the tongue couldn't stop prodding. Hector shouldn't get caught up in obsessing over something like that while he was in a strange conceptual battle, but he couldn't let it go.

Something was very wrong. Or maybe it was right? He couldn't tell.

The argument went back and forth. He felt himself fading as his willpower exhausted. The miasma was no better, though. It was a real question which of them would collapse first. Hector dug deep, determined not to lose. He had a lot he still wanted to do and death was not on that list. Vague impressions of his father at his end came to him. Despite all the love and respect Hector felt for Terry Thoreaux, he couldn't help but think his father's capitulation to the inevitability of death had been wrong. The proper response was to rage against the end. He felt that in his bones.

The miasma rallied for one last effort. Hector felt its attempt and struck.

The concept he pushed was the only one he truly believed in. The only one that he knew inside and out. The only one that touched upon the grand vista of ultimate reality.

Hector insisted that chaos was cosmic energy.

And the incarcerated miasma unraveled.

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The evil intent vanished, revealing a twist of chaos beneath, which obeyed the insistence of his insight and transformed into cosmic energy.

Hector became aware of his surroundings. He was still on Fred and they were zipping across flat ground once more, free of the miasma mist. "Fuck me," Hector cursed.

"My antenna don't work at the moment, so I can't oblige."

Hector sat up, blinking at the bright sky. "I take it the daddy sword legs didn't get back up?"

"It sure didn't. We got a big win. Now we just need to get home before my chassis falls apart. Which it will. I'm full of stress fractures."

"Shit. What can I do?"

"Nothing. I need to get to the garage so they can swap out parts. I might be sent back to Union Central for a refit, actually."

Hector sank back down onto his back and let his mind return to the discovery he made. Miasma… was chaos. It was just animated by a specific intent and made to resonate. He didn't know if this was a game changing discovery or useless information. How could he take advantage of it? Suck up little bits of miasma and fight it to the death for a tiny amount of cosmic energy? That would be like playing Russian roulette for fun: guaranteed to eventually end in tragedy.

Rather than obsess any further over miasma, Hector reached out through his externality and began to refill his reserves. He might need to fight before long and would need to be ready.

Their rapid flight lasted until an hour before nightfall, when one of Fred's axles snapped. After a quick triage, Hector used a cable to hold Fred up while he crawled forward on his front wheels. Their rate of travel was only a quarter of what it had been before, but they still made it back to the Stronghold only two hours past nightfall.

Hector saw Fred to the garage, then had to report to the sergeant major. This was the same man who had provided his orientation a month and a half ago. He took down the information, scowling the entire time. Finally, the man put down his stylus.

"That's good enough. We'll speak to Fred after he has some time to recover." The sergeant major rubbed his eyes. "We couldn't stand to lose that many elites. They're talking about merging us with Stronghold Alpha. It remains to be seen which Stronghold will be abandoned."

"Are we really losing Aes?"

"We already lost it, Hector. We're just too stubborn to admit the fact."

With that depressing thought to keep him company, Hector returned to his bunker. The place was empty since everyone was currently pulling guard duty on the wall. Hector reached out to chaos with his domain. He didn't know how much longer training on Aes would be possible, so he didn't want to waste any time.

His halo glowed brighter than ever as he transformed chaos into cosmic energy. Having fought the miasma in a conceptual battle, he felt more incisive when forcing his insight upon reality. Barely any of the liberated energy escaped his collection now. In fact, most of the losses were in the form of visible light. Hector had no idea if it was possible to stop the glowing halo. He didn't know why it happened in the first place.

The Titans arrived in the morning and greeted him warmly. Their enthusiasm evaporated when he relayed the outcome of the mission: the base was safe from a major threat but almost everyone who went out to fight didn't come back. He almost wished he could have lied to them about the outcome. They were so weary of only hearing bad news.

Hector found the whole situation maddening. A tiny sliver of humanity was giving everything in the existential war. For everyone else, life went on as usual. Maybe that was what the soldiers were fighting for. But he couldn't help but think how many more bodies could be filling this Stronghold and going on critical missions.

It might be unreasonable, but he found himself upset with Esther and Mick as well. They could be doing more as Xian than the blatant money grab it was to sit safely within the Stronghold other than the basic weekly patrol. Of course no one wanted to risk their lives. But as a responsible member of society, sometimes you had to do things you didn't want to do.

If humanity fell, Hector thought it might be largely self-inflicted. They couldn't collectively get their shit together. All the facts supported the same conclusion. They needed to band together and fight with every resource available. None of this half-ass bullshit. Taking back Aes should have been a real campaign, not this disaster that saw level four through level seven dreamers and rogues from Union Central taking on the job.

And every whisper of politics Hector heard about Mercom and Svarga made it clear that the major parties of the Coalition Army were close to pulling their forces back. He could understand nations being tired of a war that had lasted almost half a century. But the alternative was cowering in fear while things got worse.

He went to the supply depot and secured several bottles of wine that he doctored up with vinegar and sugar. Then he drank them back to back, taking spirit pills at regular intervals. The resources restored about three percent of his reserves. Hector's cultivation got him another one percent, bringing him back to what he estimated as ten percent full.

The alcohol had calmed his righteous anger at humanity a bit, so Hector felt he was calm enough to go visit Fred at the garage. The Jinn mechanics had made it sound like patching up his friend would be simple stuff. Time to see if they were speaking truths or just had good bedside manners.

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