"You're going to kill her?" Orsertro yelled, his voice becoming a sudden falsetto in surprise and disgust.

"No!" Nico shook his head vigorously, "You don't understand. It's like..."

"Even if you wanted to," Orsertro was on his feet now, both hands on the table and leaning forward towards the brothers, "Doesn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose of our immortality?"

"It's not killing," Belmadir tried to explain, shaking his head too. "It's just making her... not alive for a while. Until we know what to do with her."

"I can't believe you! Either of you! Don't you care about her at all, after all she's done for us? We wouldn't be here without her, we'd be up to our necks in demons, and you can be sure that she –"

"It's not about caring for her," Nico was obviously making a huge effort to keep his voice steady, "It's not about being friends, or whatever other kinds of feelings certain people might have towards her. Because that's the whole problem. How much do you know about our world?"

"We're leading these people into sentience," Gethrase Evi spoke up at last. He was almost always the strong silent type at council sessions, and everyone expected it would be just the same at this smaller, informal meeting. "They do not belong to–"

"No," Belmadir interrupted, "Not the Pangean Empire. Our world, the world we came from. Mimas, or whatever the human astrologers call it. Do you remember how our society worked?"

"People were born into their roles," someone said. Orsertro wasn't paying attention to the speaker, his eyes were just on Belmadir and Belnichraithor now. "You're born to be a researcher, or a meditator, or a worker. Destiny was built into our racial structure, like we were pre-programmed. That's why we're having so much trouble with human emotions. Two incarnations ago, the thought of someone having an urge that didn't perfectly align with their function in society... we couldn't even have understood the concept."

"Right," Nico picked up the thread, "And that's where our abilities come from. Our function within the council, which we maintain even though this race's physiology is divided up by gender, rather than by a destined role. If one of us is tainted, that all falls down. If we give in to human emotion, we could become human. Do you understand? We would lose our memories. We would lose our abilities. The Pangean Empire would crumble to dust, just because of one person who can't keep control of her hormones, and wants to know what they mean by 'love'."

He almost spat the word, and after that the room fell into silence. As much as they'd all felt some stirrings of human emotion, and they wanted to sympathise with Ammadrine, they knew that the Empire had to come first. The incubator of a new civilisation, carrying on all the knowledge and wisdom of a dying race, was larger than any one person. Even one of their friends.

"You can't," Orsertro's voice cracked, and he shook his head. "Even if you think it could affect her powers, it's–"

"It's not just her powers. It's all of us. That's why we created this," Belmadir put the spirit totem on the table in front of him with a click. It was a replica of Ammadrine's body, cast in diamond and ruby that fused together into a single hybrid crystal. And inside the thing, there were little flecks of coloured light that jogged and danced; a computer core that was similar to the one ruling the city, but completely separate from it. Nico had the good grace to look away and blush slightly. Though he said they had been working together on something, it was clear to everyone that he had only allowed his name to be attached to the device out of a sense of duty.

"What does it do?" Orsertro growled, "This the... totem thing... you've been telling us about?"

"It's an artificial body. I believe that if we transfer her spirit into this, then her physical body could be folded into a spirit energy pocket, meaning that her judgement can't be corrupted by hormones or anything of that kind. She wouldn't die, she's still immortal, she just wouldn't be technically alive. And the crystals here actually include all of the major gemstones whose resonant frequencies our various technologies have been attuned to. That means that it can act as a conduit between members of the Council, allowing us to use each other's abilities when in sufficient proximity. In the same way that her unique abilities magnify all of us, we could magnify each other. It would only ever be to give her a break, but she would at least be able to step back from the one causing her so much turmoil..." And there Madir's voice turned into a growl, and he couldn't say any more.

"For one who talks about suppressing emotion so much, you've having a hard time with that anger," Roudi sounded like he might actually be joking, drawing real amusement from the irony of that. He was the only one who didn't take the whole business so seriously.

"I think it's crazy, after all she's done for us." Orsertro shook his head. "You can't."

"We haven't got the choice," Nico couldn't even meet Orsertro's eyes as he spoke, "The way it's going now, the demons are close to overrunning some reaches of the Empire. I wonder if you're just hesitating because you'll have to thank Madir for finding a way to fix this."

"Yeah. Whose fault is all this? I wonder who should have been standing guard when that portal opened, and who didn't seal it in time. Don't go blaming us for coming up with solutions you don't like, when the problem's all on your head."

"Belmadir!" Irvetrani rose to his feet, angry. He was wearing the greater portion of his armour, and the gauntlets were heavy enough to send a spray of blood across the room as he slapped Madir to underscore his point, "That is enough. We are here to find a solution, not to lay blame. And if we have to fall back on such a troublesome means of making the Empire safe again, I would be a lot more confident if you didn't seem to be enjoying it so much. I was going to say this is a necessary evil, but every time you speak I'm more convinced that you're getting a thrill out of this. Your words are calculated to hurt, and that is not acceptable here."

He turned to face the others then, while Madir tried to channel some fragment of power to heal a broken jaw.

"I want to say that this whole meeting was a mistake, but Belmadir is right about one thing. We can't just let things go on the way they have. I don't think this totem is the right answer, and I certainly won't help to trap one of our own. But if we can't find some better solution..."

"Maybe we don't have a choice," Roudi nodded sadly. "We can't be friends, we can't feel love, or hate, or any of the other complexities of human existence. In order to make the Empire safe, we must put aside all emotion, and work purely towards our purpose."

"Agreed. We have to stop our own feelings, and each other's. We refer to each other by title only, like the humans do. We speak only where necessary to fulfil our function. And if a fellow Lord tries to share any emotional connection, we must stop them."

"Does that mean the Princess too?" Orsertro wondered who was speaking for half a second, before he recognised his own voice and knew he'd spoken his thoughts aloud.

"Of course. She wants us to be friends, she wants these bonds of emotion and empathy to strengthen us, but we must make it clear that this is impossible. Even for Her Excellency. Especially for her, we cannot be friends any more. If she becomes tainted and loses her powers, then destiny itself could be brought to an end. Remember, it is her ability that allows us to reincarnate since our world ended."

Nobody wanted to admit it. Nobody had wanted to say it. But it was, at least, preferable to Belmadir's solution. Slowly, one by one, the gathered Lords nodded their assent. They would try to keep their emotions to themselves, and to enforce the same rules on those not present. They would do their best to keep from acting like humans, even when it hurt them and those they cared about the most. Because they knew that with the demons almost at the barrier mountains, it was either this or Madir's invention. And that was one step too far.

Cyradin Belmadir did not nod. Once his body was healed, he stood up and took the prototype totem doll. He didn't respond to anyone else's half-formed questions, but stormed out of the room without another word. Even Nico's hand on his arm couldn't make him stay.