“Execution is too far. He doesn’t deserve that.”

“He was your friend,” Loridas replies. “But he is not that man anymore. His experiments would corrupt our very way of life. They pervert everything that is pure about Lorien. It cannot be allowed to continue. He must be removed entirely. Erased from our history. Even his seat on the Elders shall not be filled, he has damaged it so. His malignance cannot be allowed to take root and spread.”

“I heard all this when we convened, Loridas.”

“If I bore you, then why are you still here?”

Pittacus sighs deeply. He looks down at his hands.

“We grew up together. You named us Elders together. We . . .” His voice trembles and he pauses to steady himself. “I want to be the one to do it.”

Loridas locks eyes with Pittacus. Satisfied that the younger man is serious, he nods.

“I thought you might.”

Loridas activates his Aeturnus, his features slowly smoothing out until he looks much younger. Pittacus watches this with a raised eyebrow.

“He took your Legacies the last time you met,” Loridas says. “Beat you into retreat.”

“It won’t happen again,” Pittacus replies, voice a growl.

“Show me.”

Pittacus focuses on Loridas. A moment later, the skin on Loridas’s face turns saggy and wrinkled, his hairline recedes drastically and his body withers within his ceremonial Elder robe. He looks even older than before and I quickly realize this is his true appearance. Somehow, Pittacus just took away his Legacy.

“Good,” Loridas says, voice raspy. “Now give an old man back his dignity.”

With a wave of his hand, Pittacus restores Loridas’s Legacies. The Elder changes shape again, still old, but not disconcertingly so.

“How many Legacies have you mastered with your Ximic, Elder Lore?”

Pittacus rubs the back of his neck, looking modest. “Dreynen makes seventy-four. Never bothered learning it before. Didn’t think I’d ever need to use it.”

Dreynen, that’s my Legacy, one of the few I share with my grandfather, which lets us take away Legacies by touch or by charging projectiles.

“Impressive,” Loridas replies, turning his attention back to the object spread out on the table before him. “Ximic is the rarest of our Legacies, Pittacus. The ability to copy and master any Legacy that you’ve observed. It is not a gift to be taken lightly.”

“My Cêpan used to give me lectures about that,” Pittacus replies. “I understand the responsibility that comes with power. I’ve tried to live my life with that in mind.”

“Yes, and we are fortunate that Legacy found you and not someone else. Imagine, Pittacus, if your friend Setrákus found a way to duplicate your power. To make it his own. Or grant it to anyone he chose.”

Pittacus grits his teeth. “I won’t let that happen.”

Loridas holds up the object he’s been working on. It looks like a rope, except the braided material isn’t similar to anything I’ve ever seen on Earth. It’s thick and sturdy, about twenty feet long, and one end is knotted into a complex noose. The noose portion of the rope has been molded and hardened, one edge razor sharp. Loridas demonstrates tightening the noose and, when he does, the lethal edge makes a shink sound.

Pittacus makes a face. “A little old-fashioned, don’t you think?”

“It has been centuries and you are young, but this is how we once punished treason. Sometimes, the old ways are best. It is made from the Voron tree, a plant almost as rare as you. The wounds caused by Voron cannot be healed by Legacies.” Loridas motions Pittacus over. “Come. Let me borrow that Dreynen of yours.”

Pittacus walks around the table and rests his hand on Loridas’s shoulder. I can’t see it happen but I can sense—Legacy can sense—that Pittacus uses a Legacy-transferring power just like Nine has, granting Loridas use of his Dreynen. Loridas concentrates on the noose. It begins to emit a faint crimson glow, exactly like when I’ve charged an object with my leeching power.

“You will have this charged with Dreynen now, in case he takes your Legacies before you can take his,” Loridas explains, carefully swinging the sharpened edge of the noose. “Collar him with this and—”

“I know how it works,” Pittacus interrupts.

“It will be quick, Pittacus.”

Pittacus takes the rope from Loridas, careful not to touch the charged noose. He clenches the rope tightly, his expression grim and determined.

“I know what I must do, Loridas.”

And we—the ones watching him here in the future—we know that he screws up big time.

Setrákus crawls across the canyon floor, smeared with dirt and ash, his face and head covered in small cuts. In the background, a team of Garde commanding all kinds of different elements lay waste to his Liberator. The machine belches huge plumes of black smoke as it begins to collapse. The bodies of his assistants litter the ground. They weren’t killed by the Garde, though. No, something sinister and black seeps from their pores even in death.

“I’m not the one who’s crazy . . . ,” Setrákus says, spitting blood into the dirt as he drags himself away from his dig site. He doesn’t look back when his machine explodes, although a look of almost physical pain does cross his face. “The rest of you, all of you—you’re the wrong ones. You don’t understand progress.”