The top floor of Miasma’s main building was, unlike the building's outer appearance, remarkably mundane. It was split into three sections. The first section was a small lobby that wouldn't look out of place in a business drama. Several plastic chairs lined the gray walls, with only a water cooler breaking the sequence. A single attractive secretary sat behind her desk typing on her computer.

  She was the gatekeeper to guildmaster Chorzo’s inner sanctum. Anything that needed to go through the double doors she stood watch over would need to get permission from her, or her boss waiting somewhere on the other side.

  The next section was the guildmaster’s office. As one of the few guildmasters who was in fact the strongest member of the guild, Chorzo was in charge of Miasma’s more boring side. Expense reports, acquisitions, and training reports were all passed on to him, and he had to go through each of them to keep Miasma afloat.

  Past Chorzo’s office was his own personal training center, built entirely out of celestinite, a material made out of numerous others, not least of which was celestial remains. As the celestials were broken down, trace amounts of stellar essence remained, allowing the corpse to be used for countless things, including training centers and emergency shelters. Unfortunately for Chorzo, his training center had gone almost unused for a few months since the stargate cascade.

  At his large desk, Chorzo leaned back in his comfortable chair and glanced in the direction of the training room behind him. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to train as much when he created Miasma, but he didn’t expect it would be to this extent. To him, training was just as important for his mind as it was for his body. And recently, he had a lot on his mind. He turned his attention back to the expense reports in front of him, trying to elude the siren song of training.

  As he read through report after report, his thoughts became clouded once more. This time, he wasn’t thinking of training, but rather the strange duo somewhere down below. He was somewhat familiar with one of them, and the other was nearly a complete mystery to Chorzo. They were both people that he desperately wanted to recruit, and Chorzo had a hunch that most of the executives would agree with him.

  Arden was undoubtedly the less cryptic of the two, but that was only by virtue of having kept tabs on him for years at this point. An orphan who came to live in the slums with his sister after the passing of their parents. Constantly antagonized by Yaan. Despised by pretty much everyone in the slums for guarding a Blight Walker.

  Despite all of his struggles, or as Chorzo believed, because of Arden’s struggles, he was able to ascend. He became a Starborn and was now able to head out into the world on his own two feet. The day he emerged from his trial likely would have been the last day he'd spend in the slums.

  Fate was cruel, though.

  His sister was missing. It was unknown whether she was alive or dead, but Arden wasn't going to leave the slums without confirmation. As fate would have it, Arden’s sister was confirmed to be alive by both of Chorzo’s prisoners. Not only that, she was being held by the very man who spent most of his free time attacking Arden.

  Chorzo sighed and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Of course it would end up like this,” he bemoaned. “One of the most interesting prospective recruits in years, and it's the guy with nothing but grievances for Miasma.”

  The woman, Vera, was even more cryptic. She only started to live in the slums a few months back, so there was very little to note between then and now.

  The only thing that Miasma had found out about her was that she had been together with Arden since the day she appeared.

  “Childhood friends, perhaps?” Chorzo mused.

  It was unknown where she lived, but she was known to go and grab several days worth of food from the municipal building for several people.

  Only one of his people, Staz, ever made contact with the enigmatic woman, and it was for a short time, a few days before all hell broke loose. According to him, she was worried about Arden, but there was nothing else worth mentioning.

  It was during the cascade that the pair of them started to become known in certain groups. According to the files confiscated by the Starborn Association when their nearest branch was shut down, they were found after a successful stargate raid. A would-be assassin made his move on Arden after they were captured, but the slum rat prevailed.

  Shortly after the event, the branch office was overrun by Celestials. Sometime before that was when the duo began their respective trials, and emerged victorious only several hours apart from each other.

  Which led them to the events of three days ago, when they fought a pair of main sequence rogues, one of which was the prince of Miasma, and again Arden and Vera won.

  Having taken statements from the victims, as well as the cooperative prisoner, Chorzo was able to learn about the pair’s fighting style. Arden’s style wasn't all that special from what could be gleamed from the reports, but Vera's was something else entirely. She was able to back a more experienced Starborn into a corner with little effort.

  She fought with an elegance and a skill that was unheard of for a protostar. It was like she spent her whole life mastering her craft.

  “Who are you?” Chorzo muttered.

  A knock on the door snapped him back to reality.

  “Sir,” Chorzo’s secretary said. “Mr. Laurent and Mr. Santos are here to give their reports.”

  “Send them in, Pria.”

  When the two men entered, Chorzo stood from his seat to greet them, happy to get away from the paperwork. Nothing was said as they moved to the center of the office where a rectangular table sat, with couches alongside the longer sides, and a single chair at the head. Naturally, Chorzo sat in the chair, while his subordinates sat on opposite couches.

  Laurent grinned at his boss.

  “Enjoying the work, boss?”

  Chorzo gave a tired sigh.

  “It never stops. As soon as I finish one thing, another shows up. I feel more like a bureaucrat than a Starborn these days. I feel bad for all the mundane guildmasters. At least I have a stronger constitution. They don't even have that. If Pria ever becomes a Starborn, the first thing I'm going to do is offer her my job.”

  “At least we're past the worst of it now, sir. With the cascade under control, and reconstruction as much of a success as it could have been, we only have one or two loose ends to tie off.”

  Chorzo nodded then turned to the doctor.

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  “Were you able to get what you needed, Santos?”

  “Somewhat. His biology is very unique. He's not like other Starborn.”

  “That's to be expected,” Laurent reasoned. “All Starborn have different powers. It makes sense for them to be different.”

  “Not like this. Every Starborn, like every person, has unique DNA. We are all different, but we have similarities. Do either of you remember any of your science classes from school?”

  Both Laurent and Chorzo replied in the negative.

  “One of the things we were taught was the difference between cell types. Animal cells have a cell membrane, while plant cells have a cell wall. They are both eukaryotic cells, but they have distinctions. For sake of example, let's say that mundanes are plant cells and Starborn are animal cells.”

  “Go on,” Chorizo said.

  “Starborn have a unique distinction from mundanes in their biology. A Stellar Core. Think of that as our version of a cell membrane. It is what allows us to harness stellar essence and use it as we see fit. Whatever happened during the StarFall gave us this evolution. A mundane has no core, so they can’t use powers.”

  Laurent nodded along.

  “So what are you saying? That the kid is closer to a mundane than a Starborn? Doc, I kind of doubt that. We’ve all seen what he did to Yaan. He’s a Starborn.”

  “I’m not saying he’s a mundane. To go back to the earlier comparison, he doesn’t seem like either a plant or an animal. It’s like he's a prokaryotic cell, something else entirely from the eukaryotes that mundane and Starborn fall into. That’s what confuses me.”

  “How did you get to this conclusion?” Chorzo asked.

  “It started after he woke up during treatment. That’s when we learned that he doesn't use stellar essence like the rest of us.”

  “How is that possible?” Laurent asked. “You and I, we both saw his core last night. How can a Starborn not use stellar essence?”

  Chorzo answered.

  “It means he is either a special type of Starborn, or he’s not a Starborn at all.”

  “Correct.”

  “Special enough to not use stellar essence?” Laurent asked

  “It’s incredibly rare, but it's not unprecedented,” Chorzo said. “I know this goes without saying for everything we discuss in here, but even more for this. What I’m about to tell you is incredibly dangerous and confidential stuff. This must not leave this room.”

  He looked at his two subordinates looking at him with steady, intrigued eyes. Under normal circumstances, no one without the proper clearance would ever learn of something like this.

  “The only reason I’m telling you two this is because it pertains to our special situation. There have been a few Starborn since the StarFall to be similar to Arden. Officially, they were just some of the strongest Starborn the world has seen. Unofficially, they were so much more.”

  “Who were they?” Laurent asked, enraptured by the revelation.

  “The Starborn Six.”

  “The Starborn Six? The very first Starborn team?”

  Chorzo nodded.

  “Indeed. The ones who were the first to clear their first trial, second trial, and who lost their lives in Australia.”

  With the bombshell dropped, Santos and Laurent could only lean back and say nothing, mirroring what Chorzo normally did while doing his work.

  “I’ll need to look into them again,” Santos said. “Its been years since I’ve heard about them. I guess that wraps up the first item on the agenda.”

  “What’s next?” Laurent said, still reeling from knowledge that his childhood heroes were something more than Starborn.

  ‘Starsent?’ he wondered.

  Santos laid four files onto the table. Two of which were labeled “Arden,” and the other two were labeled “Vera.” Arden’s was noticeably thicker.

  “Evaluations of both Arden and Vera, psychiatric and otherwise.”

  “Are they stable?” Chorzo asked. “The last thing I need is another butcher in my guild.”

  “In my opinion, yes. Arden is a bit more unique than Vera, I’d say.”

  “I can tell from how little you have on Vera,” Chorzo said, glancing at the thin Vera file. “What happened there?”

  “I haven't had the time to evaluate her properly just yet. Since he returned from Yaan’s cell, Vera has stuck to Arden for every moment. I was only able to get this much by observing her while I was doing the study on Arden.”

  Laurent picked up Vera’s file and looked through.

  “Subject appears to have an intense fear of abandonment due to a history of neglect and abuse within family?” he read aloud.

  “I guess that explains how she ended up here.” Chorzo said sadly, reading the same thing.

  “And how Arden managed to pull her.”

  “She is perfectly healthy,” Santos assured. “I recommend using her during the raid on Yaan’s base. Her skills alone will make her incredibly useful should you encounter any undesirables.”

  “What’s your take on Arden as a person?” Chorzo asked. “You said he’s unique. How?”

  “Well,” the doctor began. “I wouldn't say he revels in violence, but he’s not afraid of making things messy. Look at Yaan for example. It’s hard to tell if he did what he did to Yaan because of his grudge or because he needed to heal. By the way, it's all but confirmed that his power is life steal. That, mixed with his incredible pain tolerance makes him a valuable asset.”

  “You’re getting off topic. I wanted to know how he is as a person, not a Starborn.”

  “Of course. As I said before, he won’t hesitate to use violence if he believes it's the best way forward. Unfortunately, his idea of ‘best way forward’ is a bit…skewed.”

  The words of Savish in the car on the way to here rang through Chorzo’s mind. Something about him being a waitress.

  “Fortunately, this isn’t a deal breaker,” Santos continued. “He is for the most part pragmatic. Because he lived for so long as part of society’s lowest rung, he’s not arrogant. Only to people he doesn’t like.”

  “Like Yaan.”

  “Like Yaan. And as observed in both the attack yesterday and how he’s lived, while he’s not a model citizen, he doesn't actively antagonize anyone. Actually, he does what he can to prevent harm from coming to anyone, though he won't admit it. I believe that is why he lived on the periphery of the slums for so long, to prevent any danger to both his Blight Walker sister, and the mundanes who could end up becoming blighted.”

  “Self-sacrificng.”

  “Yes. And despite saying that he doesn’t like the spotlight, he won't hesitate to take advantage of it and have fun with it.”

  “I did hear about that. How he faked getting his throat slit so he could try and look cool and drop a one-liner.”

  “In my opinion, sir, Arden is an upright individual who likes to entertain himself. Whether that be with the affection of Vera, or the thrill of power, he likes to live in the moment.”

  “We can work with that. What are his motivations? What drives him forward? Same question goes to Vera.”

  “Food.”

  “I’m sorry?” Laurent asked.

  “Food.” Santos repeated. “When I spoke to him yesterday, he said that his main reason for wanting to become a Starborn was to eat food better than the ration sludge. That and he wanted to make his sister live happily before she succumbed to the Blight.”

  “And Vera?” Chorzo asked. “What’s her goal?”

  “I haven't figured that out yet. But from what I’ve seen of her, I think she just wants to be happy. Being with Arden is her way of achieving that. And Arden loves being with her as well.”

  “Arden said he’d do anything for Vera and his sister,” Laurent said. “When will he be healthy again?”

  “Tomorrow night at the latest. He’s taking potions.”

  Chorzo rubbed his chin.

  “Then in two days, Miasma will rescue Yaan’s victims.”