Chapter 84

~~Damien~~

One of the hunters came out of the shadows. He recognized this one. A woman, short, thick with muscle, and with a shotgun in her hand.

“ ... you’re dead,” Damien said. “You were one of the hunters killed in the chaos, in the—”

“In Sándor’s chamber, yeah.” She came closer, tilted her head, and showed them her neck. There was a giant scar where an Uratha had torn into her.

“How!?” Matt asked, growling as he began to pace. The big guy put himself between the group of them, and the hunter, a protective instinct shining through. He probably thought of the four of them as his temporary pack, at least in some capacity. Good for them, they needed a frontliner.

“Oh, sorry, let me just spill all our secrets, and our master plan. Get me in a monologue, right?” Sighing, the hunter began to pace the barrier, going from wall to wall, mirroring Matt’s pacing. Matt was trapped in the circular trap though, while she was blocked by the previous barrier, straight as it cut across the tunnel. So she couldn’t cross the barrier made with black soot, while the amber circle beneath the paranormals trapped them. Or at least, that’s how it looked.

Perhaps they were in a stalemate? Unlikely. The trap had been set with a purpose. Perhaps she intended to undo the wall barrier, and then kill Damien and his group with the shotgun? If she did that, she opened herself up to being shot back, as the amber circle didn’t seem to block things like his sword. Both barriers were magical in nature, though, and perhaps the hunter had a way to attack through it.

He had to think. Think. Figure a way out of here, before the hunter took advantage somehow, and shot them like fish in a barrel.

“Tell me what I want to know,” the hunter said.

Matt growled, still pacing, while everyone else stood in the center. Damien found himself partly holding an arm out, keeping it between Fiona and the hunter. Vicky and Parker, naturally, stood furthest back, with quiet and unassuming faces. At least they weren’t panicking; Damien could appreciate that.

“We’re na gonna tell ye nothin!” Fiona said, frowning and sticking her tongue out.

The hunter raised an eyebrow, looking at Fiona with an obvious look of confusion, before she returned the frown. “Don’t do that.”

Fiona blinked, and looked to Damien before the hunter again. “Do what?”

“Act like that.”

“ ... like what?”

“Like a person.”

Everyone looked at everyone else, vampires, monster, and werewolf trading glances with each other, as they digested that comment. The hunter didn’t think they were people. How far did that belief go?

“Tae fuck? I’m a person!” Fiona’s frown grew, and she stomped her feet.

“You’re a soulless monster and a murderer.”

Damien sighed, and pressed his arm against Fiona as she tried to move forward, blocking her. So the hunter’s belief extended into such an extreme, believing that paranormals didn’t have souls. He knew he did. His faith reminded him of that every night. And, even without faith, vampires, werewolves, and monsters never abandoned their internal struggle with morality and ethics. If that did not prove existence of the soul, then what did?

But trying to prove that to a human was pointless. Once upon a time, Jack would have disagreed, and said that communication was worth it. Now, Damien doubted it.

“Ye dinnae ken! Ye ... dinnae get tae say that!”

Damien blinked, and looked down at the tiny redhead. There were tears in her eyes.

“I don’t? How many humans have you killed, monster?”

Sniffing, Fiona wiped her tears away with fists, and stepped behind Damien. Less a shield from potential physical harm, and more a shield to hide her face, he could see.

“I’ve only killed the mean ones.”

The hunter rolled her eyes and pointed at Matthew. “And you, werewolf. How many humans have you killed? Vamps need blood, monsters need lots of different things, usually got from crushing humans into mulch. But you, werewolf? You don’t need to eat humans. I bet you’ve killed plenty, though.”

This hunter knew a little about them, more than Matthew had predicted. That information alone was valuable, if a bit late.

“I’ve killed,” Matt said, glaring at the hunter as he squeezed his fists until they cracked. “I killed a crack dealer that had ruined a neighborhood, South of where I lived. I killed a few murderers, once I managed to get my hands on them. And I’ve killed one hunter, some dumbass who thought I should die.” The aggression rose in the man’s voice, and Damien found himself stepping back from the large Uratha, pushing Fiona back along with him. It was hard to tell if Matt was talking about some past killing, or he was implying the inevitable with the hunter in front of him.

“Yeah, uh huh,” the hunter said. “And the possessed? Ones with spirits riding inside them? They could be saved, but how many times did you just kill the human helplessly caught in the middle of your hunt?”

That was enough to stun Matt. The hunter knew way, way more than they could have predicted.

“That ... We avoid that as often as possible.”

“Uh huh.” She didn’t sound convinced. “I’m looking for a reason to not kill you all, right now. Cursory poking suggests there’s no reason to spare any of you.”

Damien snarled, and withdrew his pistol, holding it in his right hand while holding his sword in his left. He pointed it at her, and predictably, she smirked at him.

“Because if you lower the barrier to kill us, we’ll shoot you. Is that not a good reason?”

Laughing, the hunter pulled something out of her belt. It took them all a second to recognize it, but she flipped the clear top off of some sort of small handheld metal tube, and showed the red button. A detonator.

Everyone looked at each other with raised eyebrow, confused, but Damien figured it out faster. He looked down and around, before he looked up at the ceiling above. Where were the explosives? It wasn’t like the hunters could have simply dug into the concrete of the tunnel. Getting through that material required serious work.

A bluff? Maybe. Damien stared at her, watched her close, and continued to look for any signs of hidden explosives, until the others caught on, and gasped.

“You c-could cause a cave in!” Vicky said.

Yeah, she could, if she wasn’t lying. A cave in would kill the hunters, and potentially kill Matthew and Fiona from lack of oxygen. Could Fiona dig them one of her special tunnels into her nightmare world in that circumstance? He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out in that situation.

“Smell any traces of anything, Matt?” he said.

The big man shook his head. “I don’t smell traces of anything, somehow. Not ... not even things I should be smelling.”

Their sense of smell was being blocked, or mitigated. Shit.

“Crazy, right?” the hunter said with a laugh. “We have ways. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’re not your average hunters. We’re organized, and we’re—”

“Working with monsters,” Damien said, slowly rotating his wrist with sword in hand.

“Just one.”

“One? I counted four.” Jeremiah, Angela, Elen, and the Begotten.

The hunter woman paused, spent a few seconds longer thinking about his words than Damien expected, before she started pacing again. “Jeremiah is a great man. Been hunting monsters for decades. Sold a big part of his humanity, to become a tool capable of destroying wicked things like you. Some would call that righteous.”

Matt snarled as he paced, though big as he was, the circle was a little cramped for his pacing. “He’s a psychopath. He’ll throw you to the wolves the moment we find and circle him.”

Damien smiled at Matt and his personal twist on the ‘throw you to the wolves’ line, before looking back to the hunter. “Elen, the shaman woman. How long have you known her?” No answer. “How old is she?” No answer. “How does she perform her strange magic?” No answer. “ ... how can you accept the murder of innocent people to fuel her—”

“She didn’t kill innocent people.” The hunter laughed and shrugged. “Dealers? Rapists? Scum who’ve not only thrown their lives away, but dragged other people down with them? Not one of us is crying over their deaths. World is better off without them.”

He frowned and raised a brow. That was harsh. These hunters had a steel resolve if they didn’t see a problem with that way of thinking, that was for sure. It was something Kindred and Uratha did, sure, kill humans they felt worth killing, in pursuit of their agendas. But humans killing humans was a different matter.

Damien put up his hands, though he kept pistol in one, sword in the other. “You seem willing to talk, while your comrades are not. Why?”

“I like to know my enemy. And maybe you’ll tell me what I want to know.”

“That’s it?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Shrugging, the short woman approached the barrier, and reached out to press a palm against it in front of her, eye level. She leaned her weight into the palm, too, proving how secure the flat barrier was. Two barriers seemed overkill to Damien, but then, these hunters were probably sick of failing in their encounters with the Kindred of Dolareido.

Sighing, Damien lowered his hands, and gestured to the rest of the paranormals trapped with him. “I’d appreciate it if you let us go.”

She laughed. “Why would I do that? You’re all monsters.”

“Because if you let us go, we’ll let you go. I’ll report back to my superiors that not all the hunters are psychopath killers that need to die.”

“Ha! Mercy, from a vampire?”

Damien shrugged. “God has mercy for humans, and plenty of it. Not for us, but for you.”

That earned two raised brows from the woman. She pushed off the barrier to stand up straight again, and stared at him, tilting her head to the side. “I thought the Lancea et Sanctum were wiped out in this city.”

How did these hunters know this much? It had to be Elen’s magic, or Jeremiah’s unusual skill set; or both.

“They were, except for me. I survived.”

“Yeah well, God doesn’t seem to give a shit about hunters, so you’re not going to sell me on converting.”

He sighed, louder this time. Dolareido didn’t care for religion, and neither did the hunters. The only people who thought God still existed was him, who spent fifty years hiding underneath streets and in filth, and a dried-up corpse vampire woman, whose lover and loyal servant of God was dead. With the way the world was going, he couldn’t blame people for their lack of faith. But a little faith could go a long way.

“Dolareido rarely had deaths, hunter, of those that didn’t deserve it. Even Azamel, for all the ire she’s earned, has done little since arriving. The Kindred of Dolareido have changed quite a bit since Tony and Viktor’s deaths. Surely we weren’t on any hunter radar.” Normally it’d be Jack saying these things, but the boy was in no mindset to be playing ambassador or peace talker; and he wasn’t here. If Damien could pull it off, well, the better for everyone.

“You’re right, you weren’t. But, you gave that elephant freak monster sanctuary. And besides that, you’re vampires. You’ll eventually cause problems. We might as well kill you along with all the other paranormals. Kind of like a crusade, you know? And hey, if you’re a God-fearing vamp, I’m sure you know what those are.”

Damien’s sigh turned into a quiet growl. Jack was right. There was no communicating with these people, and that was infuriating because he knew not all the hunters had to be mindless killing machines or genocidal crusaders, with zero consideration for specifics. The Devil is in the details, and that was a painful lesson Damien had learned the hard way, a lesson these hunters had yet to.

He glanced over his shoulder at Fiona. The smile on her face had faded, and her shoulders slumped. She had stayed close to him, and was peeking out from behind him at the hunter. Scared. This was the first time she’d ever faced a hunter, while forced to stay in her vulnerable human body. Worse, this was the first time she’d ever heard the words of a true believer of their cause, someone of complete faith in their views of the world, willing to kill her.

Vicky and Parker were pressing up against the other side of the circle, trying to get out. They were getting a little more panicked, each trying hard enough to escape to force their shoes to slide on the concrete beneath them.

“ ... Matthew,” he said, “transform. See if you can break through this.”

The big guy wasted no time. The juggernaut of strength began to grow, fur pouring out of him as muscle mass appeared from nowhere. Weight, solid, heavy, filled his body, turning the already big man into a Goliath of towering proportions. The hunter stepped back and stared up as Matthew hit seven feet in height, then eight, then nine, and nearly hit ten feet. He would have, if it wasn’t for how his head and neck set forward from the shoulders instead of above.

Damien had to step back to give the gargantuan creature his space. His arms were nearly as thick as Damien’s whole body, and with the wolf’s forward hunched posture, they dangled enough to almost reach the floor beneath him. His tail was big enough Damien had to step back several times to keep out of its way, and doing so drew his eyes to the beast’s feet. Not paws, but monstrous feet that looked more at home on a dinosaur than any wolf, with talons there were already starting to puncture the concrete with the Uratha’s weight.

The werewolf’s breath was slow, but loud and heavy, enormous lungs fueling the giant creature. His snout was thick and long, and his mane of fur around his neck thicker than the short fur on the rest of his body, almost like a lion. His ears were pointed at the hunter, and he rumbled animal aggression deep in his chest loud enough Damien felt the vibration through his shoes.

The hunter gulped, but managed to keep her eyes on Matt as she stared up at the hungry, angry beast. Brave, this woman.

“The reason I’m this close,” she said, “is because this detonator won’t punch through concrete from too far.”

However the barrier worked, it didn’t seem to block sound. From further down the tunnel, a couple of hunters appeared, each armed with assault rifles, grenades, knives, the works. Shit.

Matt started clawing at the barrier. He had to get through the ring barrier that circled them first; the second barrier could wait, if they were going to even attempt it. Three hunters were manageable, but not if the one with a detonator started the fight off with an—

Boom. The shock wave was immense, far greater than Damien could have predicted; which was stupid, now that he thought about it. Their attack on the Begotten’s nightmare had proven the hunters had access to heavy explosives. Why wouldn’t they use some now? Well, they were in a tunnel, and detonating a high-yield explosive could cause it to collapse, especially since it seemed to come from above. They must have dug it in there somehow, or concealed it, for no one to see it or smell it.

The realities flashed through his mind, before other images did. A quick glance to Vicky, Parker, and Matt showed them all slowly turning their heads upward, to the source of the shock wave. The world had gone into slow motion, just like in the films. He brought his eyes to the small woman hiding behind him, and winced as he saw the shock painted on her face as she looked up.

His vampire discipline Celerity kicked into override, a thousand times more effective than any human’s adrenaline. Speed at his fingertips, absurd speed, the sort that had let him cut off Antoinette’s arm and leg, the sort that helped him save Fiona in the nightmare from the unrelenting gunfire, and now, it’d help him save her again, God willing.

Except, they were trapped inside the circle, and among the blast coming down for their heads, were giant blocks of concrete that would crush them into paste. Matt might live, but the rest of them weren’t going to be so lucky. And yet, that reality didn’t seem to stop him from trying. Parker was Daeva, another practitioner of Celerity, but the man wasn’t ready for this; lazy idiot. As the blocks slowly fell, Damien sped toward him, slammed a palm into his stomach so he’d start falling down, and then slammed a palm into Vicky’s back toward her partner, so she’d fall on top of him. He made sure his punches were downward angled, and strong enough to drive them into the floor fast so Vicky would land on him before the concrete did. She was a Ventrue, resilient, and had the better chance of survival.

He, on the other hand, was going to break like glass. Ah well. He threw a punch upward, hitting one of the falling blocks, the world still a slow motion symphony of falling death, and used the reversed momentum to drive himself down onto Fiona. Her golden brown eyes were wide with shock. He stared into them as he fell on top of her, smiling, and bracing his weight into his elbows as he put his chest over her head. With any luck, she’d live.

He didn’t look up as the explosion crashed into them. It wasn’t fire, napalm or such, thank the Lord. It was pure kinetic force though, and it crushed them all into the subway tunnel floor like pancakes. Pain wracked his body, a blanket of agony from head to feet, before the individual balls of pain joined in. Thud. Thud. Sickening crunches, sounds he recognized: bones breaking. He could hear them because they were inside his body, punching through the ringing deafness the explosion caused. Each crunch took a moment to echo with pain, but it did, and it wasn’t long before the sonata of agony overwhelmed him. The concrete came in two waves. The first fueled by the explosion’s punch, turning each giant block into enormous bullets, and with the second wave, larger chunks of concrete fell, slower, fueled by gravity.

One hit his back. Another hit his shoulder, then forearm of the same arm. Then the other arm, the hand. Another hit his lower back, and others hit his legs in various places. One falling block of death crashed into his ankle, and summoned a cacophony of misery through him as he felt the joint shatter. Another hit the floor in front of his head before toppling down onto his skull; lucky, or it’d have shattered his head like a glass jar.

Worse was the weight of the blocks. Jagged and misshapen, the heavy pieces of rubble crushed him into the ground, pinned him, dug into his broken limbs. He couldn’t move, the weight unrelenting, oppressive, and uncaring. And, with time, all was silent.

But, he was alive; as much as a Kindred could be. Groaning, he tried to push against the floor, and couldn’t. The very attempt reignited the pain into a concert of agony, and he groaned, unable to muster the energy for a proper cry or sob as his body shrieked in torment. A jagged, sharp piece of concrete was sitting on his head, but another was resting on that, pinning his skull down, and a mess of chaos and weight pinned his limbs. Bones were broken, a hand and wrist, an ankle, a leg, an arm, ribs, and he had the distinct impression one of his hips was, too.

The world was quiet. Underneath rubble, and lots of it, sound was muffled and turned into nothing more than quiet rumbles. Darkness. He groaned again as the pain danced up and down his body, demanding he move but knowing full well he couldn’t. A Gangrel or Ventrue would have been able to take the blows better, but not a Mekhet. Vicky was Ventrue, so, maybe she’d pull through?

An explosion ripped outward from the pile that buried him, and his groans turned into shouts as he felt the weight shift, and the darkness split with beams of light. Someone had torn their way out from under the rubble. Matthew.

Half the rubble that covered Damien flew into the air, outside the barrier, including the block that pinned Damien’s head to the floor. With it gone, he managed to lift his head enough to look around, and force down his groan as he started taking stock of the situation. His spine was intact, at least, if he could move his head, and send agony into his limbs trying to move them, too.

Vicky and Parker were still buried under the rubble. He looked up higher, ignoring the pain in his spine and muscles, and looked back to the source of the noise. Matthew, on the rampage. The giant beast roared fury as he ripped through the tunnel, barriers destroyed by the explosion; or the titan had succeeded in tearing through them. The beast sprinted down the tunnel, and gunfire erupted, but it was outside Damien’s viewing angle.

“D-Damien?”

Oh thank God. He forced his head down to look at the face buried underneath his chest.

“Hey ... F-Fiona,” he said through clenched teeth. “Glad you’re ... alive.”

Fiona frowned up at him, and started hitting his chest. “Ye fuckin bawbag! Tae fuck is wrong wit ye! Ye ... didnae have tae ... do that.”

He tried to smile, and managed it for a second or two, before the impacts of her tiny fists against his chest triggered the assortment of broken ribs to revolt against him. He swallowed down the pain as best he could, and let his head collapse against the floor.

“You injured?”

“I’m fine, awright? And ye?”

“ ... not so fine.” He couldn’t find the resolve to dismiss his injuries, and more groans escaped him.

He could faintly remember the sight of Antoinette, filled with holes, a mangled corpse missing an arm and leg besides. She hadn’t whimpered, cried, sobbed, or groaned. The steel resolve of the woman in the face of such pain, while he had to bite back his tears as he tried to roll off Fiona, was a testament to the difference in their abilities and age. It was a degree of resolve he strove for, and right now, it was ten thousand leagues beyond him.

But he bit down his pain and groans, a little, and smiled down at Fiona. “Can you move?”

“Aye!” She slid out from under him, and he coughed up some blood through clenched teeth. Shit, that was not good. Kine bleeding through the mouth was problematic, but if he was, a Kindred, it meant his insides were a broken mess.

Once Fiona was free of his body, he collapsed completely, and a few blocks of concrete rolled down from the pile onto him. That earned a short-lived scream, pain he was not expecting.

“Damien! Damien, ye fucking moron.” She reached down, and tried to lift one of the blocks. She was a monster, after all, and spiders were strong for their size. But the blocks were heavy and large, and instead of lifting it straight off of him, she mostly rolled it off, and it crushed some flesh on the way off his body. “Shit fuck shit!” She set her hands on a block, and from a black silhouette of eight legs, started to spin webbing. The white thread, she shot out at the walls and ruined ceiling above, and its absolute stickiness was strong enough to get the weight off of him.

By the time she had the rubble off him, there were a dozen white threads latched onto what remained of the walls. Sighing, looking tired, she moved onto the rest of the pile, and started the same process. Damien lay there, and did his best to watch, but keeping his head up was proving impossible. He let it collapse, and listened.

“Vicky, Parker?” Damien said.

“They’re alive.” Sweating and grunting, Fiona continued to dig, and reached under some smaller rubble to grab their hands. It looked like his maneuver had been successful, and Vicky had protected Parker with her body. Ventrue resilience was a powerful tool, and in the moment, he was terribly envious.

More gunfire echoes filled the tunnels, along with animal roars that threatened to deafen anyone within half a mile; more than they already were. He felt the vibration of it through the tunnel floor, overshadowing the thunderous cracks of the rifles. Whatever was happening, it was beyond a bend in the tunnel, out of sight.

Vicky and Parker dragged themselves over to Damien, unable to stand, but in far better condition than him. With grunts and groans of their own, they reached out and took stock of him, lifting his broken hand, dented head, and other limbs. He shouted when they lifted his broken foot.

“If any hunters come back for us,” Parker said, “we’re fucked.”

Vicky sighed, rolling her eyes. “Mekhet and Daeva, you break like porcelain.”

Parker laughed. Damien clenched his jaw, until Parker peered down at him, and winced.

“Fiona,” Damien said, “catch up with Matthew, and see if he needs your help.”

“What? I’m na gonna leave ye, Damien, or the rest of ye. None of ye could fight a bee right now!”

He sighed, and turned his head enough to look up at the ceiling. Somehow, the hunters had managed to get explosives deep into the concrete, powerful ones. They hid the scent too, of themselves and the explosives. On top of all that, they used two different sorts of magical barriers to set up a trap, and get information. Maybe they hadn’t counted on a werewolf springing the trap, especially Matthew, Avery’s juggernaut, hence the hunter and her back up fleeing.

Damien looked over to Fiona as she moved over to sit beside his shoulder, and set a hand down on his neck. She frowned at him and stroked his skin. It felt nice.

“You’re limping,” he said.

“Ye’re more broken than a crushed box. Stop worrying about me.” Fiona shrugged and looked down at her legs in front of her. One leg was torn up, blood dripping from the wound. It wasn’t like Damien’s legs managed to cover hers perfectly, after all. But at least nothing she had was broken. “Ye going to be ... ok, Damien? Ye’re ... ye’re beat up, in a bad way.”

He stared at the blood on her leg, the exposed, pale skin, and sniffed. As his vitae did its best to mend his wounds, at least enough so he’d be able to use his limbs, it drained quickly. In moments, he was starving, and staring at the slow, dripping blood, of Fiona’s leg.

Pain, white fire, almost cold like ice on his withered veins, demanded he heal. And he was healing, thick Kindred blood pulling into his wounds and forcing his bones back into alignment while mending ripped muscles and tendons. It was slow though, very slow compared to the Uratha. Hours, instead of minutes. He wouldn’t be able to completely heal his wounds without going to sleep for the day, and a belly full of blood.

There was no one to feed on, though. He could feed on Vicky or Parker, but the Vinculum was to be avoided at all costs, not to mention addiction to vitae.

There was Fiona. He stared at her wound, glared at her, and he felt his fangs start to emerge. Thoughts melted away, buried in the agony, and gave rise to an animal need inside him. He was vaguely aware it was there, demanding he give in and let it feed. How long had it been since the Beast in him was let out, frenzy driving Damien to feast? Decades. Many decades. It was a forgotten feeling, the rush and exhilaration of the animal within, caring about one thing and one thing alone. Blood.

He wanted hers.

~~Julias~~

The three of the Invictus council watched the screen, and sighed. In their primary meeting room where the three did their usual private conversations, the giant touch screen on the wall allowed them to sort large amounts of information and break it down together. Right now it was showing a blueprint of Dolareido, and had various glowing dots. GPS signals from the phones Invictus were carrying.

Unfortunately, it was only the Invictus showing up, and that provided no end of frustration to the council. Garry didn’t let them put trackers on his Kindred. Understandable, but still frustrating.

One of the lights lit up. Jonah’s light. A second later, the three council members received a message on their phones.

“Looks like Mister LeBrun’s run his distress app,” Maria said as she moved over to the table to sit. Jonah was a serious sort, so if he was the one pressing it, it was worth considering.

Michael sighed, growling at the phone. “Not the hunters one, though. Seems he’s in a fight with Carthians.”

“That’s Madam Herrington’s team.” Julias matched Michael’s sigh, and sat back, putting his ass to the edge of the table as he watched the screen. The three dots were moving around in the same area, instead of sweeping the area like they should have been. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she picked a fight with some Carthians.”

“Give my childe a break, Mister Mire. Herrington’s been learning to temper her impulsiveness.”

“I wonder,” Maria said, “if her relationship with the Uratha has helped calm her nerves? Having a strong man to hold her in his arms, instead of a host of weak and helpless ghouls, may be settling her.”

Julias laughed and shook his head. “Maybe, but I doubt it’ll last.”

“The relationship?”

“No, her being less impulsive, if she is. Sorry to say, Mister MacDonald, but I’ve got thousands of solid hours of work with Herrington at my side. Impulsiveness is in her bones.”

The man laughed and shrugged. “What do you propose we do about this situation?”

“We can’t let this go unanswered,” Julias said. “Whoever’s to blame for this scuffle needs to be punished. We’re busy hunting hunters. Covenant squabbles are not allowed.”

The two elders nodded.

“I’ll go deal with it,” Michael said.

Julias blinked at him, and watched as Michael headed for the door. He was a tall guy with a big frame, lot of muscle, with a shaved head and a single chain that connected nostril to ear. He looked like a Carthian, except for the ten-thousand-dollar suit he wore, a shade of blue so dark, it almost shined with stars.