See? I told you I'd update faster! Thanks for all of your lovely responses! I treasure each one. Now, on with the story!

EGEGEGEGEGEGEGEG

The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider.

He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him.

We will go where he leads.

-The Lord of the Rings

The autopilot chirped, indicating that their chosen trajectory and speed had been reached. Ender sat back in the pilot's chair, tracing his eyes along the curve of the earth as the ocean passed underneath them.

Behind him, in the rear of the ship, Petra, Dink, Alai, Bean, and Bernard sat and quietly talked. Enough space separated him from them that their voices faded to a pleasant murmur. Ender closed his eyes, sinking into the rhythm of their tones. A thrill of fatigue closed over him and he wondered if he might sleep – but then footsteps approached, clacking on the plated metal of the ship's floor. Ender opened his eyes.

Alai sat down in the copilot's chair, folding his hands in his lap and watching out the viewport for a moment. He turned to Ender and gave him a warm smile that softened his dark eyes.

"Hey, Ender."

"Alai," Ender replied.

"Thank you for inviting us," said Alai, looking back to the stars again. "It was a good funeral."

Ender huffed through his nose, glancing down. Alai remained silent for a moment.

"What next?" Alai finally wondered, raising an eyebrow and nodding towards the cockpit window. "I see that we have already passed by New York, and you never make mistakes, so you obviously aren't dropping Bean off. Or any of us."

Alai leaned forward in his chair, resting his forearms on his knees and locking his eyes on Ender. "Where are we going?"

Ender met Alai's watchful look for a moment longer, then faced forward again and tapped a button on the control screen to activate the descent sequence. The engines hummed and the ship angled down, filling their viewscreen with a brilliant vista of the planet.

"Somewhere safe," he answered.

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They hiked in silence. Ender led them on the same path he'd trod every day for two weeks on his leave from battle school, between the house where Bonzo had lain and the lake. Rustling trees marched tightly on either side of the path, forcing them to duck under outstretched branches. The wind, cold off the lake, drifted through the flickering leaves and caressed Ender's face, ruffling his hair.

When they had arrived, Ender had accessed the house and everyone who still wore a uniform changed into what spare clothing they could find inside – t-shirts, jeans, sweatpants. Tennis shoes. None of them had spoken since they had arrived. Ender could feel them waiting for him to be the first to talk.

At long last the trees opened like a curtain and revealed the shore. A grey pebbled beach sloped into crystalline azure water, reflecting a glorious array of mountains that surrounded the edges of the lake like the points of a crown. Dink whistled at the view, and Ender smiled. He approached the water, the rocks clacking as his footsteps sent the looser stones tumbling, and bent when he reached it, running his finger through the lapping shoreline. It was cold, too cold to swim in, and the breeze still carried a trace of winter's edge.

Ender shook the water from his hand, then rose and turned to them. They waited in a tight group, watching him.

"Spread out and look for wood," he called. "We'll need the longest logs we can find, and a lot of them."

"What for?" Bernard asked.

"Help me build a raft," Ender answered, and began striding down the beach towards the nearest bunch of driftwood he could see.

They immediately followed his words. Dink and Alai walked the coastline in the other direction, Petra joined Ender, and Bean and Dink crunched back into the forest to search for fallen branches. They brought the suitable logs they could find and piled them on the shore by the path, and Ender examined them to make sure they were long and sturdy enough. After they had gathered a large pile of rugged logs Ender set them to picking the thick grasses that grew in the woods to weave into rope. They worked in silence all the while, as the sun slowly rose higher in the sky and warmed their shoulders and necks.

When they had woven several lengths of rope, they began constructing the raft. They laid out sixteen of logs in a row, then bound sixteen logs to them perpendicularly, eight on top and eight on the bottom, using their woven rope to secure it all in place. Eventually Ender was satisfied. When it was finished, they stood side by side on the shore, laid their hands on the edge of the raft, and as one shoved it out into the water, hopping aboard as the water splashed around their ankles and waves sprayed onto the raft. They spread across it laid down paddled the raft out onto the lake using their hands. It was slow work, and the water chilled their forearms, but Ender plowed onward and no one said a word.

It was a thrill to have a goal again - even if that goal was as simple as getting a raft to the middle of a lake.

Eventually Ender called for them to stop. They had left the shores far behind, and the wind-blown water lightly splashed and surrounded them. The mountains towered to the sky even at this distance, and the sun sparkled on the restless waves. Though they had built the raft as well as Ender could have hoped, it wasn't water-tight by any means – a bit of water seeped up and dampened their clothes when minor swells passed underneath them.

Ender sat cross-legged on the coarse wood, just as he had when he had done on his own little raft when he come here for silence during his leave. The others sat along the edges of the raft to make sure it stayed balanced. The wood creaked, and the lake slopped against and underneath it. A constant wind buffeted them.

"What's up?" Dink asked. Ender looked up. He nodded.

"I need your help." He looked to all of them. They remained motionless. Petra's hair flapped in the wind like a flag. He took a breath. "I found something. Back on Eros."

And he told them everything. How the Queen had been using the mind game to speak to him, that the Formics had been trying to speak to them the whole time; how it had led him to the secret chamber in the ruins; and how he and promised to find them a new home.

No one interrupted while he spoke. They all watched with rapt attention, completely motionless.

When he finished they sat for a long moment, silent.

"Bastards," Dink muttered.

"There's one flaw with your plan," said Alai slowly. "You know what will happen if you try to bring the Formics back."

"The IF will find them and destroy them," Bean finished with a nod. "Remember what Graff said? 'Their very existence is a threat.'"

"I know," Ender said quietly.

"What do you want from us?" Bernard asked, leaning forward where he sat. The raft rocked on the waves as Ender waited, methodically selecting his next words.

"They lied to us. They tricked us. They turned us into killers."

Ender lowered his hands to his lap and clenched them into white-knuckled fists.

"I offer … revenge."

He let that hang in the air, looking to each of them in turn. Their eyes narrowed – but no one looked shocked.

"I promised the Queen that I would find them a new home. We have to deliver on that promise. We owe them that."

Bernard nodded.

"But to do that…" Dink began slowly.

"We'd have to go public," said Alai, his brow furrowing. "And to do that we'd have to subvert the censors in the media."

"And we'd have to change public opinion about the Formics themselves," Dink added.

"Seventy years of fear and propaganda is hard to counter," said Bernard.

"And to prevent the IF from destroying the new formic civilization, we have to…" Dink breathed, his eyes widening.

"We have to destroy them," Bean growled. "Graff. The Strategos. Even Mazer Rackham."

"Treason," Petra murmured.

Ender's face was impassive.

"Of the highest order," he agreed.

They glanced back and forth amongst each other, conferring without words. Ender waited, watching them. Then they looked back to him in unison.

"We're in," said Bean.

Bernard, Petra, Dink, and Alai all added their assent.

Ender nodded and looked down, his chest swelling with pride.

"We are-" he murmured.

"Dragon," they replied.

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They sat out on the raft until the sun had fallen into the west and bathed the lake in colors of fire, laying out every facet, every eventuality of their plan. Nothing could go wrong. And nothing could be overlooked. When the sky began to darken, they set to paddling the raft back to the shore to keep from getting caught on the water when night fell.

The raft crunched against the pebbled shore and the five of them hopped off, splashing their sneakers into the edge of the water as they pulled the raft further onto the land to keep it from drifting away. The sun had fallen beyond the horizon and the details of the landscape had begun to fade into shadow.

A blast of light struck them all in the face.

Ender raised a hand, shielding his eyes, as the others let out surprised shouts.

"What the?"

A hundred yards away a pair of blinding headlights cut across the beach. Ender stayed in place, keeping his hand up.

"Is that a car?" Petra asked.

"Who knows we're here, Ender?" Dink asked. Ender's eyes narrowed. He waited.

"Keep calm," he ordered gently.

Something moved. The driver's door opened and a figure emerged. The snap of the door shutting popped against their ears, breaking the silence. The air had gone still after the sun had set.

The figure stepped around the car and into the headlights, striking a long, stretched shadow across the beach. It paused for a moment, then began to stride towards them.

No one moved.

Ender waited.

As the figure approached, details of its silhouette became clear: silver hair. A military unform. An older, slightly hunched bearing.

Ender's heart pummeled against his ribcage and a rock settled in his stomach.

"Colonel Graff," he finally managed.

Graff stopped in front of Ender, looking at the others for a moment, then dropped his eyes to him.

"Ender. It's been a while," he said, his voice gravelly as usual. He nodded to the others. "What brings them here?"

"We came here after Bonzo's funeral," said Petra, her voice soft. Ender could feel their fear pressing against his back. He struggled to manage his heartbeat, to betray nothing in his face, to keep meeting those eyes.

To hide his lust for murder.

"I could ask you the same question," Ender cut in, putting more force into his voice.

"What are you doing out here?" He murmured.

"I don't believe that's any of your concern," Ender shot back, with more edge than he had intended. He clenched his jaw and swallowed, trying to wet his drying throat.

"That's not your call," Graff retorted. He looked over Ender's head at the others. "So; a little Dragon Army reunion, huh?" He dropped his gaze to Ender again. "Why were you out on the lake?"

Ender refused to blink.

"Why are you here?" He snapped.

"I would imagine that, should someone try, it would be very hard to hear what you were saying out there. Even with enhanced listening devices. The wind, and everything. Don't you think, Petra?"

"I-I…" Petra stammered.

"Are you implying something, Colonel?" Ender growled.

"Should I be?"

"Hey Colonel," Bean interrupted loudly. Graff snapped his eyes up to him. "I just realized something – Ender here outranks you. Where's his salute?"

The fire in Graff's eyes dimmed. Ender would have laughed if he hadn't been so angry. Graff worked his jaw for a moment, then looked back to Ender and waved a half-salute to him.

"Be careful… Admiral," Graff muttered as his hand dropped.

Ender's eyes flashed.

"Don't pretend I don't know what's going on," he snarled in a low murmur. "You will get in your car, and you will leave."

Graff's expression didn't change. He saluted Ender one more time, accepting the order, then turned and strode away. Ender stood, unmoving, and watched him get into his car and drive away, the wheels crunching on the pebbled shore. Alai, Dink, Bean, Petra, and Bernard came to stand next to him, watching the headlights trail off up the road and into the countryside.

"That- was terrifying," said Petra, letting out a breath.

The others let out similar sighs of relief.

"Bring them on," said Bean.

EGEGEGEGEGEGEGEG

Thanks so much for reading! If you like it, please leave a review! Even if you just say 'I like it,' I always personally answer each one. They're what keep me going – I love hearing what my readers are thinking, and where they think I'll be going next!

-Michael