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elemental hydrogues, and her powers also extended to the faeros. She and her half-brothers and sisters—Nira’s children—were successes of the Dobro breeding program, just as the remaining misbreeds were the failures.
    She knew she still had the strength within her.
    Even from here, Osira’h felt her father struggling with the faeros, and knew that she had to help him. If he failed and the elemental beings careened across Mijistra, tens of thousands of Ildirans would be turned to ash. Breaking away from Nira, she grabbed the arms of her siblings Gale’nh and Muree’n standing next to her. “The Mage-Imperator needs us! I can connect with my father, and if you connect with me, we’ll be stronger together. Maybe strong enough.”
    They pushed through the crowd, some of whom were too young to remember when the fireballs had scorched the city and laid waste to other Ildiran colony worlds. But many of them knew that horror and realized that their future balanced precariously on what the Mage-Imperator did next. Osira’h wouldn’t let him do it alone. “We have to hurry!”
    Athletic Muree’n bounded ahead and cleared a way to the entrance arch. Tal Gale’nh, in his military uniform, wore a commanding expression as they hurried past the throngs. He had been fighting self-doubt ever since the shadows had engulfed the Kolpraxa and absorbed his hapless crew. Thanks to his halfbreed genetics, Gale’nh was able to resist the Shana Rei, and Osira’h now hoped that he could also find the inner strength to help forge an alliance with the fire elementals.
    The three of them ran up the steep spiraling staircases to the apex of the main tower. Osira’h could see the flickering backwash of faeros light through crystalline structural blocks. When she, Muree’n, and Gale’nh finally rushed out onto the high platform, the atmosphere was like a bonfire. Hot air seared Osira’h’s mouth and nose as she inhaled, and she could feel a crackle on her skin. She and Gale’nh reeled from the onslaught of heat, but Muree’n bowed her head and marched forward like a soldier about to take a strategic hill.
    Mage-Imperator Jora’h stood with his arms upraised before the fireballs, his glittersilk robes flapping in the fiery breezes, the edges singed brown. His sinuous hair flew loose, writhing around his head like a corona. He stretched out his hands and squeezed his eyes shut as he concentrated. His face was tight, his lips drawn back. He shouted into the thermal white noise. “You must help us. The pain of Rusa’h brought you.”
    The faeros loomed in the sky, rotating ellipsoids of flame as large as spaceships. The elementals throbbed as if they could hear him. Jora’h strained, but he could not make them understand.
    Osira’h could feel the fireballs all the way to the core of her being, a looming presence that was familiar to her—defiant, yet frightened. Rusa’h had called them here, and she doubted that her father could control them himself. He needed her—just as she needed her siblings. Together, they could get through to the capricious fiery elementals.
    Clasping hands with Gale’nh and Muree’n, she called out with her mind. Osira’h was the perfect combination of breeding: all the strength of the Mage-Imperator, and all the sensitivity and telepathy of a green priest. The Ildiran Empire had tried for generations, breeding and misbreeding, to create someone exactly like her. Muree’n and Gale’nh, similar attempts at developing just the right hybrid, each had a significant power, and Osira’h drew on them now.
    Not long ago, she and her half-brother Rod’h had gone out to find the faeros and beg them to make an alliance. But even though they made contact, the faeros had been too afraid of the creatures of darkness. It was unnerving to think that even the fire elementals were intimidated by the