"I have discovered the answer."

Overhead Anin Chal cast sunlight down through the opening of the mountain. It was mid bright season, similar to earth's summer solstice and Chal was high overhead, a perfect sphere of burning light cast down through their opening where it glittered off snow white moss, and the cool blue pool around which they all sat.

Sunny rested on her knees both sets of hands resting on her thighs. Adam sat in a similar manner though his legs ached with the extended effort of sitting. Both Ramirez and Maverick sat cross legged . All around the circle they sat in one large group: Adam, Maverick, Sunny, Ramirez, Conn, Krill Eris, and, for their new additions.

Kelly and Celex.

They sat on the opposite side of the circle from each other, and around them burned two spheres of near identical crackling energy, one just slightly more orange than the other. A beat of sweat trickled down Adam's neck as Chal burned down upon them, but he didn't dare move.

At the head of the circle sat Naktan with his hands held out to either side one set of arms held high, the other set of arms held low. He sat with his legs crossed, which seemed like an unusual pose for a Drev, and with his eyes closed and his face serene, he looked like one of those classical depictions of the Hindu god Shiva all be it a few universes and one species removed.

His hard Gold eyes flickered open as he turned to look through the group of them eyes eventually falling upon Conn, "Join me." The starborn didn't bother to say anything sarcastic but nodded once closing his eyes for better concentration. Eris did the same.

Naktan then turned towards Celex, "Keep your mind open. And your flow of power stable."

Together the group of them closed their eyes, "everyone take hold."

Adam took the hand of Sunny on his right and Ramirez on his left. He resisted the urge to make some sort of joke, and bit down on his tongue. The small clearing remained silent for some time, and just as he was thinking nothing would happen.

He heard soemthing.

Or perhaps that statement was inaccurate. Perhaps he wasn't feeling it so much as sensing the vibration.

The eardrum is the most sensitive part of the body to vibration as its job is literally to pick up sound vibration in the air, and the more Adam listened the more he began to hear the slow steady thrumming. The tone was deep, and before it had been too low for him to sense, but now he could feel it pulsing through his fingers and into his hands, flaring up in his chest as he sat and waited.

The deep thrum pulsed like a heartbeat.

Electricity crackled over his skin, and now the feeling and sound were not simply feelings and sound.

He could feel the vibration rolling through him.

Adam cracked an eye and was shocked to find the entire circle glowing with mixed gold and orange energy. His companions eyes were closed, and their skin glowed softly.

Next to him, Sunny was particularly spectacular light glowing up from through her carapace a highlighting its different layers in strata of turquoise, and deep electric blue.

"Focus." Naktan ordered.

Adam quickly shut his eyes.

He wasn't sure how the old mystic had known, for his eyes hadn't been open, but he wasn't exactly in the habit of questioning people who had secret magic powers.

"Clear your minds."

Easier said than done, but Adam did his best . At first he tried to think about nothing, but then star wars references and random thoughts about what he wanted for lunch kept popping into his head, his inner dialogue continually asking when they were going to be done. If emptying his mind wasn't going to work, than he was just going to have to think about soemthing that was empty.

He settled on an image of space he had seen once before.

Afte Behemoth was gone, it had left behind it a few million lightyears of untouched space. Adam had once taken a ship out into that blackness and sat at the center where the Behemoth had sat. he had turned off all the lights and let the darkness leak in through the Empyrean's observation deck.

He imagined the stars spinning past him, He remembered the call of the black universe before him. He remembered the cool quiet calm that-

And then he was no longer alone.

Like a cool trickle of water he could feel conn and Eris permeate outwards from where they sat, filling the little bason with their presence. And with them they carried Naktan, his consciousness pulled away from his body and into the center of the circle.

He was now separate from his companions.

There was a ,uttering around the circle, though no one opened their eyes and no one dare speak more than uttered surprise . Power continued to trickle through him, as Naktan , with the help of Conn and Eris, rolled through their minds.

Adam tried to bring back the image of spinning space, letting the cool tide wash over him. Memories and thoughts that were not his own filled his head, and for a strange moment he felt as if he were not himself.

He watched from the edge of an obsidian peak as lava spouted into the air. Unbearably hot wind kicked up to caress his carapace as the roar of the flames consumed the land around him. The colors of the night were orange and red, and a strange flickering color he did not recognize.

And then he was in a long dark tunnel far away from the sunlight, and with him were the strange ones of his youth, pale and thin, short of limb who fed him and taught him the old ways. Their eyes were blind but they spoke as if they saw all.

And then he heard blades shredding over ice, felt the sure dancing of his feet as cool air cut past his cheeks.

He listened to the quiet groaning of the city overhead as the cogs clicked and moaned. The dust of old churches and abandoned places filled his nose, but he moved with caution, for you never knew what you would stumble across here in the deep tunnels.

He remembered floating in an indistinct greenish serum, his mind half formed, unaware and confused. He remembered the sounds of voices filling up his head with images and words that only slow began to solidify .

He remembered the cold reaches of space, and the carcass of the queen looming over his body as he floated alone for a thousand years.

And through all of it he could feel the slow pulsing beat of a heart laid to rest in his hand, could feel the cool wet slick of muscle as it contracted and expanded.

But then the vision dissolved, and he was not seeing images, but feeling impulses, the firing of one neuron after another, traveling through a system worth a thousand miles in a matter of seconds. The further they traveled the wider the road came until they had reached a chasm. There was no visual input to identify the place they had stumbled across, and so his brain , feeling unnerved that it could not see, though it understood the location, chose to recreate a vision for him.

He saw, clouds and a distant sun.

There was no ground for it seemed as if he was high up.

He stood on burning white marble high in the sky, so high he could see the slow curvature of the earth bending away from him. The edges of the horizon were brighter blue until fading slowly upward to a deep indigo.

Before him, a white marble bridge spanned a chasm to the other side where a strange glittering mountain lay.

And on this mountain.

There was a tree.

It stuck out from the side of the hill, its branches cutting outward in all directions splitting off from one another.

A fractal

Every branch half the size of the one that had spawned it.

"Behold, the patterns of life."

The voice was from his own head, or perhaps it wasn't. It was difficult to tell, but as he looked, in the lines of the tree he could see a thousand more images, the branching of blood vessels, the spreading tendrils of the nervous system, the branching tributaries of a river. He saw the tissue that filled up the lungs, and the roots of trees plunging deep down into the soil.

He saw the underside of leaves and the blooming of flowers.

He saw the human eye.

And it never stopped.

Over and over again the symmetric patterns of the universe came to him like a slow march of proofs filling his brain from top to bottom.

Filing their brain.

For soon he didn't simply see the trees of earth, but the spiraling trunks of coil trees, and diagrams inside medical textbooks. He saw the webbing of cracks in the side of stone walls, and on the ice.

He saw the forking of lightning.

And then the bridge before him collapsed.

Adam felt as if he had been punched in the head, and he fell backwards, his eyes suddenly filled with blinding light His hand broke contact with his two companions and he spilled backwards onto the white moss. All around hin the world was a wash of dull grey, colorless, lifeless.

He felt as if he was outside of his body.

The world around him wasn't real

His body wasn't his.

This was not reality.

But those thoughts did not las long as he sprung ack into his body. He lay on the moss gasping for breath. All around him the others sat or knelt on their hands and knees shaking off a Daze. Ramirez was on his back staring up at the sun.

Maverick punched him, and Ramriez yelped.

Adam sat up.

Just in time to see Naktan wobble and topple forward into the water.

He leapt to his feet, but Eris was already there, grabbing Naktan by the back of his carapace and hauling him from the water onto his back. His limbs flopped lifelessly to either side. Krill was there before anyone else had time to react and was feeling for a pulse.

"No pulse."

Adam was by his side now, "What can we do, is there CPR for drev."

"Yes, but its more difficult."

"Why."

"The heart is under the carapace."

"Well shit."

"Yes, shit, so either we have to man handle him, or we have to cut his carapace off, which I don't think he would appreciate it unless it's a last resort. It will take two of you, Ramirez come here."

The two moved to do as Krill instructed, placing both of their hands on either side of Nathan's left side carapace. "You both go on beat, press as hard as you can, all your weight, a little slower than a human heartbeat. GO!"

Adam and Ramirez both slammed their palms downward, throwing all their weight into the compression.

It was like trying to restart a boulder. With his tough hide and thick plate it felt nearly impossible but krill assured them that it had depressed. They kept going, falling into a rhythm.

Krill pulled out his medical bag which he always kept with him and moved forward. Attaching some nodes to the skin of Nathan's body.

"Alright stop."

Krill checked something and then ordered them back.

They continued.

"Stop, I've got a rhythm."

They pulled back. Naktan twitched violently with electricity for a moment before his back slumped back down.

And then all was quiet

"I have a pulse."

The entire circle relaxed.

It was to everyone's surprise that a moment later Naktan opened his eyes. He was distant and foggy, surprisingly less mystical now that he had almost died. He muttered soemthing softly and they all gathered around to hear.

"Can't separate the soul from the body without stopping the heart." And then he passed out again. They were all left to sit and stare at each other with concern waiting for him to wake up