Syd worked with the scrap the children had brought him, fashioning it with nothing more than his hands into intricate shapes and mechanisms.
    "Once there was a maiden who had yet to make her name. On the day she did, the sky was full of stars. And every star was a dying ship- one of ours..." he began as the toy began taking shape and the children listened with rapt faces. For them it was a story of the Dragon-Blooded officer who flew the unmasterable void-fighter, the Scarlet Empress, and single-handedly turned the tide of a devastating Primordial ambush on Autochthonia. For Syd, it was the day he had been Chosen.

    Syd stared at the experimental fighter, brooding about how the clever Solar sorcerer-engineers couldn't fix the thing. He took another long drink from the jug of bitter moonshine and threw a wrench at the tarp-covered void-fighter.
    "Next generation my ass. You don't even work! None of the Terrestrials can even fly you!" He didn't notice the half-filled circle that began to glitter then glow on his forehead, right where the soul-saving gem sat. He finished the moonshine in one last draught, then pulled the covering off the red and white machine. It was a thing of beauty, chased with the myriad sunny golds of orichalcum and accented with spots of black jade.
    "Well I'm going to see what's what with you." He climbed into the cockpit and his hands worked without conscious thought, tinkering with magitech mechanisms and ethereal programming.

    "I beg your pardon, Copper Spider, but I need this voidship..."
    The blaring alarms and constant announcements and rattling damage reports hadn't woken Syd up, but the crimson-haired woman in a flight suit's softly-spoken but urgent request had. He didn't clearly remember the last half-day or so, remembering only a vague sense of seizing a thread from the loom of Fate itself. He blinked away the haze in his eyes as he struggled to focus on the young Terrestrial officer's face. While she wore a polite face, he realized she was impatient. He also realized he was surrounded by the sunset colors marking him as a Twilight caste Solar. He nodded, realizing the situation must be dire if somebody had been sent to pilot the Scarlet Empress. He slapped the ignition button to start the machine up and hopped out. "She's all yours. The Maidens be with you." He never suspected how true those words would be at the time.

    Syd finished the story and the toy. He deftly twisted a few parts and the void-fighter toy became a red and white armored humanoid. And with a few twists, it was the flight mode of the Scarlet Empress again.