Dilucos sits cross-legged on the floor of his room, gazing up at his amplification device, his eyes dull, shoulders slumped. His shadows slither around him, prodding him, eager for activity or conversation. He feels his mind drift aimlessly, not content to focus on only one thought at a time. The shadows each latch onto a separate thought and set to work. A few begin adjusting the mirrors on the amplifier. One starts tinkering with random bits and bobs in the corner. One tidies up after the mess the others leave behind. One remains by his side, keeping him company. But, each of them has something to say.

      The amplifier worked this time, that’s promising!

      Is she angry with me…?

      Mother knows. Mother knows and she doesn’t care.

      What would happen if I replaced the glass piece with an even larger one? Would it increase the output?

      Who cares if she’s angry? Look what she did.

      She did listen though.

      Sure, enough to spill everything to the first person she saw.

      What am I planning to do with this anyway? It’s not like I can move it from the table.

      Why did I trust her?

      Stupid mistake. Stupid, stupid choice.

      Not doing that again. 

      I have everything I need right here.

      Not if Father has anything to say about it.

      “Father,” shouldn’t even call him that anymore. 

      What else would I call him?

      The Sun.

      Daylight.

      Tyrant.

      Monster.

      Unworthy of his respect and position. How many people know what he’s really like? Call him their king? Bullshit. 

      He wants me silent. Quiet. Complacent.

      Like Mother. 

      Quiet.

      Father. Not Father.

      Sister. Not sister.

      Stay out of it.

      Quiet. Always quiet.

      I wasn’t trying to hurt her…

      Maybe it’s my turn to make some fucking noise-

      Dilucos buries his face in his hands, shielding himself from his shadows.

      “Quiet…” he says softly.

      Calm…

      No one can know.

      Why? What do I have to be ashamed of?

      Tell everyone! Make them see it!

      Make him bleed.

      Make him hurt.

      He wants terror? I’ll show him terror-

      Dilucos digs his fingers into his palm, gritting his teeth.

      “I said quiet,” he hisses.

      This was new. His magic had never manifested this way before…

      Before Sol.

      Oh, good name. Just a statement of fact, not attachment. I like it.

      …Before Sol. But, after his fire, his shadows had started acting like this. Their incessant chatter was exhausting, but they were typically quiet until he was alone. Well… Not exactly alone. He was never alone now. 

      Dilucos glances at the shadow that had curled up beside him.

      “Why did you tell me?” Aurora had asked.

      “I don’t know.”

      “Bullshit.”

      Dilucos sighs.

      “Fine,” he mutters to himself. “Because I didn’t want to be alone.”

      Not with this.

      He’d told Aurora the bare facts of what had happened, but he hadn’t said a word about what it had done to his magic. In the same way he didn’t know of another god in the pantheon who couldn’t see auras, he also didn’t know of another god who regularly argued with extensions of themselves. His lack of aura-reading was the source of all this in the first place. If anyone found out that his magic had broken a second time? He was already Sol’s greatest shame. No reason to add more fuel to his own pyre. In a moment of weakness, he might have told Aurora about the pain, but at least he’d had enough sense to keep quiet about the other half of the problem.

      None of them had ever understood his magic anyway. Didn’t care to. In that, he would always be alone.

      There’s a knock on his door, and his shadows all immediately stop what they’re doing, dropping various tools and pieces of glass everywhere. They scatter in alarm, like pests when you shine a light in a dark corner. One bumps into the amplification device as it slithers back to his side, and the device teeters on the edge of the table. Dilucos springs to his feet, reaching out to catch it. It slips between his hands, shattering on the ground.

      Dilucos slowly glares at the offender as it melds with the rest of his shadows behind him. 

      “Thanks for that,” he says icily.

      “Dilucos? Are… Are you okay?”

      Aurora’s voice. 

      What could she possibly want?

      He’s surprised she has the nerve to speak with him at all after their sparring session. Dilucos takes one last rueful look at his shattered amplifier before stepping to the door, his shadows now completely silent. He keeps his head high and shoulders back as he opens it. 

      Aurora looks surprised to see him there, as though she expected him to send a shadow again. Her eyes are a bit puffy, like she’d been crying recently. Maybe that should stir something in him, but his aura remains flat as ever at his feet. He’d washed away his own tears hours ago, immediately after they’d sparred. It’s strange that Aurora was still holding onto hers. 

      Aurora peers past him, trying to see into his room.

      “Did something break?” she asks.

      Dilucos pulls the door closer to him to block her view.

      “What do you want?”

      “To talk.”

      Dilucos looks at his sister, deadpan.

      “You never learn, do you?”

      Aurora’s protest is cut off as he slams the door in her face. 

      He barely has a chance to turn back to his amplifier before he hears the flutter of feathers coming from behind him.

      “I said that wrong. I don’t want to talk, I want to listen,” Aurora says.

      Dilucos shoots her a glare over his shoulder. The downside of having no ceilings in the palace is that it was incredibly easy to circumvent doorways, particularly for any god with wings. His sister is standing on top of the wall over his door, concern etched on her face. Dilucos scoffs and starts collecting the pieces of his device from the floor.

      “I have nothing more to say to you.”

      Aurora frowns. She hesitates for a moment before jumping down from the wall, landing lightly beside him, careful to avoid crushing any of the glass. She wordlessly begins collecting the pieces too, cradling them in her hands. Dilucos glances at her briefly, before looking back at the mixture of glass and obsidian components in his hands. The obsidian was easy enough for him to conjure on his own, but the glass would take time to repair, particularly to get them shaped correctly again. He starts separating them out on the table, glass from obsidian. Aurora quickly follows suit, adding more to the piles. Dilucos stares at the growing pile of obsidian.

      “Didn’t it hurt?” he asks softly.

      “What?”

      “... The dagger.”

      Aurora pauses, halfway between placing another large shard of glass on the table.

      “Not as much as your words,” she says finally.

      Dilucos says nothing, his aura rippling gently at his feet as he carefully stacks another piece of obsidian. Aurora watches his aura for a moment, her eyes flickering with light.

      “You know, ever since you touched Night, I can read it better now,” she says. “It’s almost like it’s more clear, more defined, more… You.”

      Dilucos smiles dryly as he begins reassembling the obsidian pieces, spinning his shadows around his fingers for a moment before sealing the cracks with them.

      “And what does it say?”

      Aurora adds a delicate piece of obsidian to the stack before him, the final broken part.

      “That you’re sad.”

      “Interesting… I don’t feel sad.”

      “Then what do you feel?”

      Dilucos props up the skeletal structure of his device as he adds another piece. His eyes glow softly and he tilts his head thoughtfully at it. That’s a question he doesn’t ask often. He normally doesn’t see the point in it. But, at the moment, posed so bluntly by Aurora, he finds it curious. 

      “A hole,” he says softly. “Like… I’m missing something.”

      “Like a void?”

      “No, more… Incomplete, I suppose.”

      Aurora says nothing to that as she studies the glass pieces. Dilucos looks at her hesitantly, his aura crinkling at the edges briefly. 

      “Have you ever felt that way?” he asks.

      Aurora blinks.

      “I can’t say that I have.”

      His aura smooths out again as he turns back to the skeletal device.

      “Didn’t think so…”

      He’s almost finished reassembling the frame when Aurora holds up two pieces of glass. 

      “Should these fit together?” she asks.

      Dilucos glances at them.

      “They broke, yes.”

      “Are you going to fix them?”

      “I can’t, I’ll have to cut new pieces. They’re useless now.”

      Aurora purses her lips.

      “I wonder…” she says thoughtfully.

      She lays the two pieces beside each other in the palm of her hand, silhouetted against the fiery red skin of her fingers. She takes a deep breath, her eyes beginning to glow steadily. As she releases her breath onto the glass in her hand, the pieces start to glow red hot. Aurora carefully pushes the two glass shards together until they merge along the seam. She allows the glass to cool for a moment before holding it up for her brother’s inspection.

      “Think that will work?”

      Dilucos takes the cooled glass from her and examines it critically, running his fingers along the faint seam. Now that he thinks about it, that small, extra plane of refraction introduced by the flaw might increase the amplification. He taps his fingers on the glass.

      “It’ll do,” he says, re-attaching the piece to his device.

      Aurora beams at him.