Naktan was carried on the back of shields, his body, anointed and prepared by temple acolytes, wore no armor, though his yellow warpaint had been freshly applied in sunlight streaks over his black chitin. His hands had been folded solemnly over the haft of his spear.

Drev didn't hold funerals.

Not usually.

Naktan had died righteously in battle, with a spear in his heart and blood choking his lungs, but by drev standards there could have been no more worthy a death. In the way of the old traditions, his body should have been abandoned to rest where it fell, the corpse crawlers and carrion feeders welcome to pick at his bones. All across the fertile belt, the bleached white skeletons of a thousand other warriors lay still under a quiet sky, propagating moss as the years turned into centuries.

Somewhere, the bones of Sunny's father Lanus lay, bleached white by the sun, his armor and cape absent.

But not for Naktan.

As guardian of the sacred mountain, and the teacher of Drev saints, he was more than a simple warrior, and thought his end was an end in glory, there was still grieving to be done.

Sunny Lanusdaughter, saint of the sun, felt herself caught between two warring emotions joy, and sadness, though a third unrelated emotion, guilt, seemed to be winning out. Even standing by Naktan's pyre she couldn't shake the joy, turning her head downward to look at them:

Adam, tall for a human, with aged white hair he had fought to deserve, a strong jaw, and an iridescent green eye, that couldn't quite be matched by the mechanical fabrication, wide shoulders, narrow hips, and a beautiful pattern of stripes and swirls across his skin, invisible to the human eye but a pleasure for her viewing. He was strong, despite looking both dazed and bedraggled.

And with him, their first born, Kay: a chubby child of four years old, with big green eyes, and his grandfather's color, shining gold in the early morning dawn. He clutched at Adam's leg holding tight to his father by both arms looking up in both concern and fascination, an expression shared by the two large dogs that sat at his side, One of them, old and graying around the muzzle, wearing a Jeffrey snake like a boa scarf, and the other, large, black and desperate to wiggle out of her skin, though she valiantly stayed in place. All four of them looking up with both wonder, concern, and curiosity taking rounds across their faces.

Waffles sniffed the air, and pancake sat back on her hind legs to get a better look.

Kay tugged on his father's arm insistently enough that Adam finally relented, and gently lowered to one knee, tilting his arms so they could all see.

The two new additions to the family:

Astra

Nyx

The first pearl white, and the second a deep purple, a color she had inherited from her grandmother, and a fact that Sunny and Adam hoped no one would hold against her. Sunny had been pleasantly surprised and pleased with the names Adam had selected. They were both human names, but at least she could pronounce both of them.

As of now both of them were asleep, tiny bodies tucked into either of Adam's arms.

Krill had arrived later that night when he heard the news, miffed that Sunny had gone off and given birth on the edge of a volcano, but a stern look from her had shut up any of his protests. A thorough examination, done in the early morning, seemed to indicate that the twins had not gone without some difficulty, but they were otherwise healthy.

Nyx's missing hand was simply absent and didn't pain her to Sunny's relief.

Adam was already making plans to convince his daughter that she needed an arm cannon, or a multipurpose hand like the cook/kind-of-villain from treasure planet. Or a multipurpose hook hand that could turn into a hand cannon because that was one of its purposes.

And still both the guilt and pride welled up in her as she looked at them. Sunny had never thought she'd have a brood of her own, never thought it possible, and even had herself convinced at one point that she had never wanted it in the first place, but now, looking at them, she knew this is what she had always wanted even if she never knew it.

She looked back down at Naktan, lying atop his pyre, and the warring emotions came again.

Naktan was dead, killed by Kazna, and though death had stopped meaning much to them over the past few years, she knew that the old guardian would not be so lucky. Kazna had killed him, his Anima was forfeit, and they could only assume being used to harvest energy.

So one question remained.

Why?

Why had he sacrificed himself?

The clouds parted then, drawing back across the sky as Chal made her grand entrance. Light burned down from above, bathing this section of the fertile belt in beautiful golden hues, and as the sun burned downward, a torch flared up next to her.

She was flanked on either side by four separate pairs of Clan Sentinels and their religious Magnates.

It felt strange to be surrounded by the old traditions of her past: armored Drev warriors some wizened with age and draped in tattered robes, others young and bright, clad in shining armor.

Never had gathering of Drev Consisted of so many leaders and not broken into violence.

It was impressive to see her own people have such restraint, a virtue for which they weren't often known.

Sunny sighed, and looked down, one final time, at Naktan's body.

If she had believed in prayer anymore, she might have said one on his behalf, but, somehow she felt that the Architect had better things to do. She didn't know if she believed in the spirits of Anin anymore, and it felt hollow to ask them for safe passage on his behalf when she well knew where his Anima was going.

She reached out with a solemn hand, the sadness winning over for the moment as she took the torch.

And lowered it to the dried os beneath the pyre.

The dry kindling caught instantly, and burned with a sweet pale smoke.

A forest of spears rose slowly into the air as the pyre began to burn.

Sunny lowered her head, taking a step back as the flames kicked up through the dry kindling and caught at the coiltree wood upon which his pyre sat. Flames crackled and licked at the air, filling the silence as a thousand bodies stood in a cluster around the small hill.

This was it.

This was goodbye.

Sunny continued to watch as the flames crawled upward, encasing Naktan in a wall of licking flame.

"Be at peace." She said softly, though she knew that was unlikely to be an option.

Flames licked up and around the edge of the pyre spilling upwards onto the flat tabletop where Naktan's body rested.

Seering orange flame rolled in great waves over the Pyre now, and the heat was almost unbearable. The first tongues of flame began licking their way over Naktan's body, and the moment the first flame caught, A shock wave seemed to emanate outward From Naktan's corpse. The ground below her feet shook and she staggered backward, feeling herself falling even as her vision went black.

A field of stars.

A twisted planet with two suns.

A towering black spire reaching upwards, impossibly high into the sky, dark black ruins crawling with void creatures. Golden energy poured inward from the top of the spire, filtering downward until it was spat back out as sickly orange light. Inside her head she could feel the screams and the pain as Anima were torn apart and knit back together.

Her head swam

The field of stars repeated again, and again, and again until a voice, soft and even appeared in her head.

"This was the only way.... To find the source."

And then came the eruption.

Sunny felt herself being flung back, landing hard on the ground and rolling. Her tired, aching body protested, even as her sight was returned to her. When the fuzz faded from her vision, the world resolved itself at all the wrong angles, the sky was up and the ground was down, and for a moment, she didn't know where she was.

Not until her brain finally oriented enough to realize where she was.

Lying at the blackened edge of a crater.

Naktan's body was gone, destroyed or scattered she didn't know.

All around her other Drev were staggering to their feet, capes tattered and billowing, eyes dazed and confused. Those who maintained their feet had drawn spears, and were now looking confusedly for the source of the attack. Sunny's roving eyes sought something else, and she sighed deeply in relief when she saw Adam kneeling with his back to her body curled around all three of their children.

In his arms the two little ones gave off startled cries and then began to squall in confusion and fear at the sudden loud noise. Adam did his best to comfort and hus them, Kay clung to him fear apparent in his own eyes, though he did not cry.

Sunny staggered to her feet a hand to her head, but as she did, Adam gave her a grim look, and she didn't need to ask to know what he was saying.

They had both seen something.

Something that Naktan had wanted them to know. In fact, the thing naktan had died to let them know.

The location where the void harvested Anima for their energy.

Sunny couldn't have said how Naktan knew, how he manipulated the world around him as he did, or even how he could have left such a message, but it had taken death, specifically by the hands of kazna, forfeiting his own life and Anima to be altered, for them to find this information.

And despite her simple desire to take her family home and be happy.

She knew there would be no rest.

She would have to leave her little ones sooner than planned.