Chapter 44

44.

         It’s not over.
         Oh, there are endings and there are endings, some of them even faintly relevant. But it’s all synthetic, divisions put into place to give ourselves some sense of security, trying to convince ourselves that the world stops when we look away, that when one of our presumed endings comes, all creation pauses and takes a breath to reflect. None of that happens. Matters continue as they always have.
         I should know. I’ve seen enough endings to know how false they truly are. And this is no ending. Not for me. Not in any rational sense.
         They killed Tolin. I felt his spark go out, the erratic fire of his mind snuffed out with barely a flare. Right until the last second he believed it all. His mind was always too rigid but could become pliable given the right stimulus, and once molded retained its shape no matter what the outer pressure might become.
         They killed Tolin. It became his job to protect us from harm, and he hated it. He knew nothing of defense, only attack. I don’t think I ever heard him complain. He had no true wit to speak of, and if you won his loyalty you never lost it, no matter the circumstances. Rather sad, given what eventually happened. And he’s dead now, exited from a world that will carry on regardless. His ending is already past and beneath the Universe’s consideration. Eventually he’ll fade from memory and be gone. It’s no more or less than he deserves. I think on some nights, I might even miss him.
         They killed Tolin. He won’t be the last. I don’t think they’ll stop until we’re all gone. Maybe it is destiny. We tried to escape for a time, but we’re racing against a beast that doesn’t tire. At least Tolin went quietly, submerged in his delusions. Better that, than to be torn apart and slaughtered.
         I’m not sure where I am now. I don’t know if I can move. But I can feel his mind, searching for me, coming in brief, erratic pulses, quantum signals from the edge of creation. Whatever message is being sent, it’s old now and has lost whatever meaning it once possessed. I wonder what he’d even say to me now, after all that’s passed. I wonder what he could say that would even remotely interest me.
         They’ll kill me if they find me. He’ll kill me when he finds me. But I am not Tolin. I do not simply sigh and expire. The trick to becoming good at anything is to simply do it for a long time. I have been living for a long time. And I am not very good at letting go.
         So he thinks he deserves the truth. Very well, if he wishes it dispensed, I can make it so. But the time is short and they are coming to kill us. And he wants to kill me. And I am diminished, but not without defenses. If there is one trick I learned from dear departed Tolin, something you have to strike before the danger looms.
         Please, Valreck, show yourself. We have much to discuss and you may even get a chance to do so before the end arrives. Not the end, of course, but an end. The only end you’ll need to care about. The only end you’ll ever experience.
         Toward his clenched fist, I stretch out an open hand.

* * * * *

         “. . . and then he dropped a what on you?”
         Rising slightly from the ground and staring at Kara almost cockeyed through his undamaged eye, Tritan replied, “Unless I am mistaken, I believe it was a dwelling.”
         “Yeah, I . . . I think it was,” Kara said distantly, her gaze drifting to the deformed pile of vaguely recognizable rubble squatting some feet away from them. After a moment passed, all she said was, “Wow.”
         “See, Tritan, I told you it would be a hit with the ladies,” Prescotte noted, standing over his friend and staring into the horizon, squinting at the faintest tendrils of dawn that were creeping over the edge. The thin haze of dust still coating the air refracted what little illumination there was, causing shafts of slim light to pierce the air around them. “Emerging intact from physical harm never fails to impress them.”
         “Indeed, friend Prescotte,” Tritan agreed genially. He sank back down to the ground again, an odd rattling infusing his breathing. Kara’s eyes widened in concern and one hand reached out to lightly brush against his hardened skin. “Though would you say that I . . . emerged intact?”
         “Of course you did,” Prescotte answered, without looking down. “You’re still here, aren’t you? You’re still alive, right? You didn’t let something stupid like a falling house stop you. That’s something right there. Hell, you have me beat. Nobody has ever dropped anything on me before.”
         “A house,” Kara said, shaking her head in disbelief. “An entire house.”
         “I would not . . . recommend the experience,” Tritan said with a hint of something that might have been sarcasm on the alien’s part. But it was hard to tell. Even his voice didn’t fit his words. They seemed to drip down from the air itself, fully formed, sound with substance, thoughts without a host. “It was not particularly . . . agreeable.”
         “I can imagine,” Prescotte said, the tip of his sword tracing a line in the dirt. The man looked out of sorts, his thoughts otherwise occupied. He kept staring into the sun as if trying to prevent himself from seeing something else, like the brightness might not only blind him, but sear other impulses from his mind. One corner of his mouth kept twitching downward, in a way that suggested he had swallowed something unpleasant but was doing his best to keep it down anyway, perhaps so as not to alarm others. “But it’s almost over now, okay? A little while longer and we can all go back and take a nice vacation.”
         “Are you going to be okay, Tritan?” Kara asked him, half sitting on the ground, the fingers of one hand stirring at the dust. The blue in the Slashtir’s eyes seemed somehow dulled, though that might have been a trick of the faded light. “Maybe I can help you heal . . .”
         “Do not bother,” Tritan said, his steady voice taking on a brief note of urgency. “My body is incompatible with your mind, you may harm yourself in the process-“
         ”I understand that, Tritan,” Kara said icily, her voice abruptly cutting off the alien’s resonant tones. There was a hard glint to her eyes suddenly. “But you’re bleeding all over the place, okay . . .” her hand pressed against his leg, where a long gash leaked viscous fluid onto his skin, flowing with a steady if slow pulse to the ground. “And if we don’t get you someplace soon, it’s going to get a lot worse.” The Slashtir was staring at her without replying.
         “Kid,” Prescotte chimed in, “listen, I know you’re concerned but there’s no point in screwing yourself up. He says he can hold out-“
         ”But he can’t,” Kara said forcefully, grabbing Tritan’s arm roughly. “Can you?” Her tone demanded an answer. “Tritan, I swear, don’t lie to me . . .”
          The alien emitted another wet rattle, his head bowing and nearly brushing against the dirt. “The truth?” he said, somehow sounding almost amused. “The truth is . . . I do not know. Does anyone know how much time truly remains to them?”
         Prescotte was bending down now, sheathing his sword to give himself two free hands. Grabbing his friend by the shoulder, he said, “Dammit, Tritan, enough of the scholarly crap, this isn’t any time for damned heroics. If you can’t hold out, then just come out and say it . . .”
         “He just did,” Kara said quietly. Her eyes were running over his body, her fingers touching the various gashes and lacerations all over his body. It was impossible to tell if the odd splashes of color on his skin were due to massive bruises or just natural coloration. “He just told us that he’s dying. Didn’t you, Tritan? Isn’t that what you said?”
         “You bastard!” Prescotte suddenly growled, shaking the Slashtir slightly. “You told me you were all right! I wouldn’t have left if I thought you were . . . if you were going to start . . .” he stopped just as his voice began to rise further, reining himself in with a visible effort and rubbing his face with both hands slowly. “Dammit, I don’t understand you sometimes,” he added softly, his voice concealing a slim lament. “Some days I just don’t get you.”
         The Slashtir didn’t answer, perhaps conserving his strength. The fingers on one hand kept clenching and unclenching rhythmically, creating deep gouges in the dirt. Kara bit her lip and probed at a wound, tracing an invisible line with her hand, one that led nearly all the way to his chest.
         “There has to be something we can do,” Prescotte said to her. Kara’s eyes met his and what he saw there gave him a brief, sick feeling in his stomach. “If we get him back to where we landed, we can have the Time Patrol pick him up maybe . . .”
         “I don’t know if we have that kind of time, or if they can even help him . . . I don’t know if there’s ever been any Slashtirs in the Time Patrol.” Her eyes were clear, her face chillingly honest. “They might still not know what to do, and we’d have wasted time getting him there.”
         “It’s the Time Patrol,” Prescotte said flatly. “Can’t they go into the future to where they have his people in their little army and figure it out that way?”
         “I’m not sure if that’s possible-“
         ”Then what the hell good are they?” Prescotte raged briefly, starting to rise to his feet, dropping back into a crouch at another muted shudder from his friend. “Everyone is always so damned afraid of them, all these damned stories about how powerful they are but when we need them, what the hell can they do for us, they might as well be-“ He stopped again, springing to his feet, pacing in a tight circle, fairly pulsing with wiry energy.
         “I might be able to help him,” Kara said quietly. One finger touched his head, traced the outline of his broken eye. Kara frowned, her brow furrowing in concentration.
         “He’s an alien, kid, you heard him before, there’s nothing you can really do,” Prescotte protested, his argument already weakened, his voice laced with a desperate need to be proven wrong. “You’ll only get yourself hurt and then where will we be?”
         “I can help him,” Kara insisted, shifting his position so that she was sitting on her knees, the stance making her seem strangely compact. “I think I know how I can buy him some more time . . .”
         “Kara . . .” Prescotte warned. The masked and ambiguous pleading in his voice made their surroundings somehow seem even more desolate. A pale light was trying to gain a foothold on the side of his face. At his feet Tritan shook silently, his body possessed of an odd and rigorous tension.
         “We have no other choice,” Kara said, slowly rubbing her hands together, then wearily gathering the length of her hair in a makeshift ponytail before letting go and allowing it to spill back over her shoulders. “I’m the only one around who has any chance of helping him. Neither of us want him to get any worse. And if we keep arguing, that’s what going to happen. Is that what you want?”
         “What I want is for both of you not to get hurt,” Prescotte replied evenly, through narrowed eyes. “And maybe it’s too late for Tritan, but I saw what happened when the mindbenders tried to do stuff to him, it messed with their heads, Kara, that’s exactly what happened.”
         “To them,” Kara pointed out. A hint of a smile made its ghostly way across her face. “In case you haven’t noticed, Prescotte, people keep telling me I’m not an ordinary mindbender.”
         Something in her voice defused further argument. Prescotte opened his mouth to speak again, abruptly closed it and then after a short span, said quietly, “Yeah, I guess that’s what they say.” He didn’t sound convinced at all.
         “They do,” Kara agreed. “And maybe it’s time I started earning my reputation, huh?” Without waiting for Prescotte to answer or approve, she pressed both hands against Tritan’s skin, her eyes half closing from the internal effort. “Just have to find the . . .” she murmured, as Prescotte slowly circled around the Slashtir, watching her intently. “So many . . . there’s just so much to . . .”
         Then suddenly, she gasped, her fingers turning into near claws against his skin, her breath spewing from her lips in a thin hiss, even as her shoulders tensed and she nearly threw her head back, her arms stiffening and her mouth opening in a long gasp. “Ah . . .” she said, hardly a word at all, “ah . . .”
         “Kara!” Prescotte yelled, crossing the final two steps toward her, ready to pull her away. “I’m right here, I’ll-“
         ”Don’t touch me!” she snarled to him, the words almost projected bluntly into his head, causing him to reel backwards two steps, heels digging into the dirt. Kara’s head was bowed slightly now, teeth gently depressing her lower lip. “Don’t touch me,” she repeated, a little calmer, her voice panting somewhat, as if she were out of breath. “You’ll get hurt,” she said, and it wasn’t clear who she meant.
         Prescotte slid forward a few inches closer, got down on one knee, braced himself and never took his eyes off her. “Give me a reason not to,” he said intently.
         “It’s so . . . alien in here,” Kara muttered, her face confused. “Nothing makes any sense, nothing makes any sort of . . .” she gave a small gasp again, causing Prescotte to tense. “Everything is . . . is rearranged, nothing is where it’s supposed to be . . .”
         “He’s an alien, Kara,” Prescotte told her, not sure if she could even hear him. “Don’t forget that. Don’t try to put things in human terms. Put yourself in his place, make things work for him instead for you. That’s what you have to do.” Is this what Ranos does? I have no idea what I’m even saying.
         “I have to find something . . . something familiar . . . keep going . . . going down,” she hissed. Tritan was absolutely unmoving before her, oblivious to her efforts. “Past his biology, it makes no sense, I have to find . . .”
         “That’s it,” Prescotte said, resisting the urge to grab her, to make sure she heard. A snippet of words from a lecture he only half listened to back on Legoflas came to him, barely containing context. “There’s a level where . . . where everything is the same . . .” no, that wasn’t how to say it, “where all the processes, where it works the same no matter what kind of race you are, what kind of alien . . . fundamental laws don’t change, that’s the thing, that’s what-“
         ”It’s the cells,” Kara whispered, a strange reverence to her voice, “in the cells, down deeper, in the cells I just have to convince, to coax them to all . . . you have to heal, I know it hurts, I know it . . .” she fell silent then, her breathing falling into an odd irregular rhythm, her thoughts almost becoming tangible. Prescotte didn’t know what to do. He had helped save the Universe but this was completely out of his league. For the first time he saw Kara not as Tristian’s daughter but as someone more along the lines of the Agents, inexplicably powerful and more than just a little frightening. He had to take a deep breath to calm himself down, the sodden emotions of the moment seeping into him, threatening to take him over. He had taught this girl how to play cards. She hadn’t changed. Just his perception. Perhaps for the first time, he was truly seeing.
         And then, without warning, Kara suddenly barked out a word that hurt his ears and didn’t seem possible to be emerging from her throat, so vicious was its assault on the air. Her back arched and she threw her head back far, eyes closed, and snarled out one more phrase without words, lanced into his brain without speaking, even as her hands disconnected from the Slashtir and she went staggering back, nearly falling hard onto her rear in the process.
         She would have, had Prescotte not rushed forward the crucial few inches and grabbed her, steadied her. He fully expected to feel some kind of pain upon touching her but all he grasped was the arms was a normal teenage girl. She sagged into him briefly, her breathing steady and deep, somehow human once again. He noticed that her arms were covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
         “God . . . oh God . . .” she whispered, pushing away from him, trying to find her own footing. “That was . . . oh . . .” she pushed a damp strand of hair out of her face, blinked roughly, rocked forward onto the balls of her feet and massaged the sides of her face. “That was . . . weird,” she admitted after a moment, her voice puzzled.
         Meanwhile, Prescotte had crept forward, closer to Tritan to inspect his wounds. Would you look at that, he marveled silently, his hands probing some of the deeper gashes, none of which were oozing any kind of fluid anymore. Tritan didn’t look any different but somehow he seemed more stable, with a firmer hold on the land of the living, if the Slashtirs had some sort of equivalent for that.
         “You did it, kid,” Prescotte said approvingly, twisting slightly to face her. “I think he’ll stay in the clear.”
         “For the moment,” Kara said, resting her chin on her folded hands, her elbows perched on her knees. “I, um, I managed to convince his cells to start to try and heal . . . I think.” Shrugging slightly, she added, “At least that’s what it seemed like I was doing.”
         “It worked, whatever the hell it was,” Prescotte said. He clapped the Slashtir lightly on the shoulder. “You hear that, pal, you’re going to be just fine. We’ll get you put back together in no time at all.” The hopeful note in his voice didn’t penetrate all the way through to his face. As he spoke his gaze fell over the silent village and its cluster of empty houses.
         “Until then . . .” he added softly, “there’s some loose ends to be tied up.”
         Kara’s head shot up at his last words, catching their veiled meaning even as Prescotte turned to face her again. “How are you feeling? You okay with being on your own face for a little bit?”
         Kara didn’t answer immediately, her face searching his. Perhaps she was probing his mind too. It didn’t matter, he was keeping no secrets here. “Where are you going?” she asked.
         “Nowhere, if you’re not okay. That didn’t answer my question.”
         Kara considered for a moment. “I’m . . . no worse than before, I guess. That thing with Tritan knocked the wind out of me but . . . it wasn’t anything too draining. I can manage.” A sly look caught the tilted angle of her face. “Now you have to answer my question.”
         “There’s a father and son still in the village,” Prescotte said soberly, “I lost track of them some time ago, when Valreck was looking for them for some reason. I don’t know what happened to them, the last time I saw the son . . .” he broke off, seemed to shake himself harshly. “Either way, the two of them went through a lot of crap with me and Tritan. They deserve a way out of this mess. They deserve better than what they got.”
         “And what are you going to do when you find them?” Kara asked, her voice more curious than penetrating, the comment less a critique than honest inquiry. “Where will they go?”
         “I don’t know,” Prescotte answered, unsheathing his sword. “Somewhere. Anywhere. Away from here. But I won’t just abandon because we’re finished here. I don’t make a mess without cleaning it up.” A faraway look lingered in his gaze. “Some day that needs to be explained to your father and the Commander. Some day I’ll get the nerve to say it,” he added softly.
         Perched on her heels, Kara eyed him without speaking, hands resting on her knees.
         “So I’ll be back soon,” Prescotte told her, taking a step away. “But if anything happens, I want you to get the hell out of here, don’t hesitate for even a second, I don’t care what the reason is. And if you need to rip me out of wherever I am and bring me here, don’t hesitate to do that either.” A jaunty smile crept over his face. “I think I’m the only one who hasn’t lost you yet, and this really isn’t the day I want to join that club.”
         Kara didn’t return the expression. “You’re going just to look for them, then?”
         Prescotte nodded. “That’s the plan.”
         “Then why are you drawing your sword?”
         He hardly seemed surprised by the question. “Why?” There was a hard, harsh glint to his face. “Because,” he said plainly, grimly, “I think there’s a good chance one of them might not be on our side anymore.”

* * * * *

         “Wait.”
         “What?”
         “Something . . . did you hear that? Like a, like some kind of ringing, really low pitched, like it was . . . an arcing sort of sound. Just now, I heard it.”
         “It’s possible that’s just a side effect of the-“
         ”No, I’ve heard it before. Look closer. Listen.”
         “I . . . oh. I think I see. Hm. It was very subtle.”
         “So you do see. Great. Can you follow it?”
         “Perhaps, I . . . yes. Yes, I can. He’s not where we thought he’d be.”
         “They never are, but as long as we can visit, it really doesn’t make much of a difference. And this is something that he’s been owed for some time now. What do you say?”
         “Do you think they want visitors?”
         “I doubt it. But at this point, do you think it really matters?”

* * * * *

         Time inverts, follows the same gilded edge, rips him through. Darkness to darkness. The scene changes but stays the same. There’s a wash of warmth that keeps strafing him, but he’s so cold. Too cold. He can’t rid himself of the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach and the nagging sense that he’s trapped over a precipice that he can’t see anymore.
         He’s trying to remember the last time he felt like crying and he can’t. It’s not that he wants to now, it’s just that this was the type of situation that tends to bring about recollections of that sort. But it’s been a long time now. Not even when his friend died. Not even when he found out that all his friends had died. He wonders how he would have died, if he had stayed. Probably horribly, the same as the others. Too quickly, as well. At least . . . at least this way he gets to contemplate even as he begins the long slide, even as the voids in his vision outweigh the light.
         She’s holding him. They’re in a house and she’s holding him. The world is shaking but most likely it’s just him. He can feel the softness of her cheek against his ear. He can’t understand why she’s doing this now. Of all of them, she was always the most distant.
         “I’m so scared . . . I’m so frightened . . .” she admits to him in a whisper too cowed to emerge properly. His face is pressed against her shoulder and he can smell the stink of old blood there, of soaked and cracked bandages. In a way, he can even hear her heart, beating far too rapidly, counting down the seconds that are crumbling apart like stale cake, too small to gather properly, too broken to ever endure or be examined or enjoyed. “This is it, the end, he’s coming to kill us and there’s . . . there’s nothing we can do . . .”
         The naked emotion in her voice startles him. Toward him she was always guarded, seen through a wall of crafted distortion. So unlike any of the others. Tolin, Rathas, one some days he counted as near friends, on others merely comrades, regardless of their disagreements. Many times he had visited with Tolin and his wife and passed the time pleasantly. Rathas had always been an eager sounding board, willing to discuss even the most tedious details of his experiments. Even the other, she had never been less than unfailing cordial, although perhaps her upbringing left her unable to do otherwise, and no matter how opposed their encounters became, there was always a mannered understanding between them.
         It’s too difficult to move. His body is desolation, he feels all broken inside, a sack of bones held together by nothing less than willpower. If she squeezes him too hard his contours might be altered entirely. One of her hands is rubbing his arm and the hot flush of her skin touching his too cool flesh is slightly intoxicating, though closer to a drugged state than any sort of loose drunkenness. His throat is far too dry but he has to speak. He can’t let this moment pass in total silent. He will not let his last spoken words to be the name of a dead woman. It was not fitting.
         Trying to lift his head so he can see her face, Valreck finds he can only spy the darkened ceiling. Or maybe it’s only his imagination. “Wh . . .” he croaks through cracked lips, “why are you doing this . . . why did you . . .”
         “Because I’m afraid,” Junyul says again. “Because,” and this time her voice is so low that he only catches it through the vibration deep in her chest, “because I don’t want to die alone.”
         Something in her words provokes a flash of anger in him and with all the meager strength he can muster he thrusts himself from her, the loss of warmth a shock his system doesn’t want to accept. “Oh, is that so?” he retorts harshly, aware of what a mangled wreck his voice has become. He’s not invincible. He never thought he was. Awareness of his own mortality is what led him here, to this place, to evade the spectre that loomed over them all. And look at him now. Just look at him. There really is no escape, it seems. Not in any feasible fashion. “Not alone? Not like Kilun, right? You don’t want to die like that, is that it? Is it?” The long speech leads him to a ravaging cough. She puts her arms around him again, trying to still his body. He allows him, because for the life of him he can’t think of anything else to do. This place is trapped in zero time, all moments frozen, but he’s falling apart here piece by piece. Even the fractured blur of her features looks better than he does. There might be guilty pity in her expression, but in the dark it’s just impossible to tell for sure. He wishes he could sense the texture of her thoughts, run his mind over hers with the one sense that still works properly, but she is just as closed off as ever. Her reaching out is all facade, it seems. She never did let go. It’s possible she doesn’t know how.
         “Kilun didn’t die alone,” she whispers to him, her mouth close to his ear. “I’m sorry, he didn’t . . .” and he knows exactly what she’s apologizing for.
         “No, he didn’t,” Valreck spits back at her, his words mixed some blood. The blood hits the floor, he’s not sure where the words go. “Did he? He couldn’t have . . . because someone had to be there to move the body.” His one hand tries to tighten its grip on her damaged shoulder but he has no strength left in his grasp. She shudders against him anyway, her face pressed against his neck. Junyul’s so feverish that she might burst into flame and compared to her he’s already a corpse. “But is that all you did?”
         “I didn’t think they were going to kill him.”
         “That’s a lie,” he says softly, bitterly.
         “Not until that night I knew,” she amends. “I was only part of the aftermath, so they didn’t tell me everything. I thought they were just going to remove him . . .”
         “They did.”
         “No, take him somewhere else, so that you thought he was dead, hide him somewhere until we left.” Her voice is pleading with him to be believed, but it really doesn’t matter either way now. He could fling her away, brand her a liar, and it would make no real difference. Kilun would still be dead and he would still be dying. There’s nothing left in this world that could change either of those things. “But they killed him instead, and I . . . I took the body away, as quietly as I could.”
         “Where did you put him?” he demands, his words harsh enough that he feels her stiffen against him. “Where did you stuff his body?” He wants to sound angrier but all he can sound is tired now.
         “Out in the desert,” she answers mournfully, her voice a monotone. “As far away as I could without being noticed. I buried him as best I could. He might still be there, now.” She says this like there’s some chance he might be able to visit his friend’s makeshift grave. But he has more chance of running into him in whatever guilt infested underworld that is threatening to open up under him and suck him down, down into a tortured afterlife he never believed in.
         He really is gone. The confirmation doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it might. Maybe he really never did care. Or maybe he had resigned himself to the fact a long time before, the last time he visited his friend’s empty tent, his body and spirit having already departed for a place he was so close to touching now.
         “Do you regret it?” he asks her, with more gentleness than he intended. Can he really blame them?
         “Would you?” she shoots back, pulling away to look him directly in the eyes, her arms still holding him tightly. To her credit, her voice only trembles slightly. “They all died,” she tells him, her lips barely moving. “Every single one of them,” and he knows she really only means one person in particular. “Everyone died.”
         “And everyone dies, in the end,” he states plainly, with more fatalism than he really feels. “And was it worth it, then, to buy these few precious months, to trade one kind of death for another? Can all that be justified by just a simple death? Can it?” Maybe he’s shouting. There’s so little left to hear anymore. Fumbling for the conversational knife, he twists it, not even sure if it bites flesh. “I was ready to leave anyway . . .” a harsh laugh lingering like foam on his lips, “I had told . . . I had said to Kilun the night before, that he had to make his decision and if he chose not to go, then we would leave. Without him.” It hurt not to laugh, his chest felt too loose, it was ready to slide off completely his heart slackened its grip for even a second. “And the next night they killed him, and we left anyway.”
         “You’re lying,” she tells him, without rancor and he’s not sure what exactly he’s lying about. “You’re lying.”
         His mouth feels cracked, dry. His words are surprisingly similar. “Perhaps . . . perhaps I am. But that doesn’t change anything now, does it, Junyul?” What time is it? He’s not even sure anymore. Maybe days have passed, blurring, stretching, changing into years before the mind can even properly quantify it. Every day is the same, once, when they first arrived here, he used to get up early and drink in the morning sky, thinking this would be the morning he would know that Mandras had won, that destiny was now the guiding force in the Universe. But the sky never changed and night came in its usual fashion each time. If there had been a change, would he have noticed? Would anyone? The only changes we ever truly notice are the little ones, the ones that shouldn’t make any difference but always do. Like life. Or death. There’s no true difference, but we’re altered just the same.
         “No,” Junyul says finally, answering his self-evident question. “No, it doesn’t.” Her voice sounds defeated. Valreck wonders if he weren’t here, if she would cry, alone, in this dark place, and that’s how they would eventually find her, crying. It doesn’t seem right. He’d always thought she’d go down fighting, if she went down at all. “But, Valreck, I wanted to live, you don’t understand how badly I wanted to live . . .” and they’re wrapped in each other again, her supporting his deadened weight, his grasp on this world fading with each passing second. “And I used to look out, I used to walk around the camp and everyone . . . they looked so resigned, they’d stare at the lights from the people following us and it’s like . . . it’s like they all knew what was going to happen, that most of them weren’t . . . weren’t going to make it and the thing, the thing that . . . I couldn’t understand . . . no one cared, Valreck.” Her hand is touching his face, as if to reassure herself that he’s still there. Valreck isn’t so sure anymore. “And . . . and is that wrong, Valreck, to want to live, because I didn’t want to die then and I don’t want to die now and if it was a choice between dying then and dying now, I’d still choose to die now.” Junyul’s voice is nearly inaudible, almost part of the background, the timbre of the awakening day. “I’d grab every moment I can, because each one is different and I’m so scared . . .” maybe she’s crying now, quietly, it’s too hard to tell, “I’m so scared I’ll miss something and . . .” her words break, it’s a few seconds before she can speak again. When she does, it’s like she can barely breathe. “I’m so sorry, Valreck.” And her nails are burrowing into his skin. “I liked him. I wish he hadn’t died.”
         “He was my friend,” Valreck whispers, as if that explains everything. But he knows now, in this world, such a thing means nothing at all. Kilun died for no reason at all, and that was all the reason the Universe needed.
         “I know,” Junyul says. “I know. I wanted there to be another way.”
         She bows her head then, the tangled strands of her hair rustling against his neck. He can’t see exactly where they are. He’s not even sure what village this is. Are there people in the house who might find them here, like this? How long are they going to stay here, huddled together, waiting for the death that is moving closer with each second, whether they act to stall it or not? They should be seeking plans to escape, to leave this world entirely. But he’s too tired and Junyul is too drained. It’s very possible they will not leave this room alive. Or at all. The finality of that fact has not yet struck him. Some small part of him still exists in denial. But what body acknowledges its own death until right up to the point that it can’t deny anymore?
         “We can leave,” he tries to tell her, shifting his position that he can look at her. But all he can see is her basic outline, the rounded features of her face, the angular, almost exotic look to her contours. There’s an ageless look to her, especially when wrapped in the shadows, but he’s certain he’s older than she is. Soon, they’ll both be the exact same age. He can’t get himself used to the idea. He can’t.
         “What?” she asks him. Perhaps her eyes are closed. What’s worth seeing now?
         “We can escape, we can leave this place and go . . . maybe not far, but far enough that they won’t find us.” He hardly believes his own words. It’s the last spasm of a spent brain. “We don’t have to sit back and die, we can go when we want.” But he doesn’t move. “And that’s what we should do. We should go.” He doesn’t move at all.
         “Yes,” Junyul replies, her voice flat, agreeable, “we should.” Her nails dig into him a little harder. “Oh, Valreck, we have to.” But she makes no motion to leave and after a minute it’s clear that, much like him, she’s not going to.

* * * * *

         Jaymes had to keep reminding himself that the village was empty.
         Too many times he wandered past houses he remembered, kept expecting to run into people that he once knew, slamming hands on windows to get his attention, emerging from front doors demanding to know what the hell he was doing, meandering around outside like that, at this time of the morning when decent people were supposed to be asleep. The sun really hadn’t come up yet but light was streaming in from somewhere, the air itself maybe. He used to think that light came from nowhere, he had never bothered to look up at the sky, not during the day and the idea that the light that was all around them came from just one source was just absurd. How could that be? No one was ever really able to explain it to me, he eventually figured it out for himself.
         Certainly his father had never bothered to explain. And yet Jaymes couldn’t dislike his father for that. His father had known farming, and that was all he had known and everything he had ever taught Jaymes was related to that. It had been his life. Everyone had to be good at something. His father had always said that as well. Was his father simple? He wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe. Maybe once he was. But could you stay simple in a world that refused to be? Jaymes couldn’t say. Perhaps he was no more complex than the people he knew.
         He ran down aisles of homes, past empty windows of memories. It had never occurred to him before that even though all the houses looked the same, he knew who lived in nearly every one. He knew the stories behind all of them. Jaymes stopped to rest, his breath hollow in his chest, against the house of an old man who used to come by the farm all the time, presumably to trade agricultural tidbits with his father. That wasn’t true at all. The old man had been a craftsman. His entire family had been wiped out by a plague years before and he was the only one left. Some days he just couldn’t stay in the village and so he started walking to get away from his memories and the distance led him to their farm. So he stayed and talked until he felt better and then went back. Jaymes wondered why he never moved on. Then he caught a glimpse of his own face in the dirty window and thought it was his mother standing behind him and he knew then why nobody ever did.
         Too many memories, some worse than others. He nearly stumbled past the house of a man who used to wave to them from his doorway every time they brought goods to the market. The last time he saw the man he was attempting to put his fist through their house. He barely made a dent. There was hardly anything left of his hand other than a mass of bone and blood. Jaymes never caught his name. The people next door to them had a daughter who used to haunt his dreams with her smile and the way the sunlight caught her pale skin. Every time he saw her he was unable to keep himself from staring. Even when she strolled with her lover, hand in hand, her head resting on his shoulder and a laugh perched on her lips, he couldn’t take his eyes off of them. Not even when they disappeared into his house, where he lived alone, where they would spend the day together without leaving. Don’t worry, boy, his father used to say, in those rare times when he couldn’t stop a damning facial twitch in time. A love like that, it burns out too fast, it never lasts. It consumes you and you’re spent and in the end you have nothing left. Better to create a small fire, you may be colder in the short term, but when the night does come, you’ll be comfortable enough.
         His father’s voice echoed in his head. He hoped it was another dream. He was dreaming of the future, he realized now. Under Valreck’s tutelage, he had sparked visions of the future in his brain. But they meant nothing to Valreck and even less to him. Even now his dreams were barely remembered entities, hardly more real than tangible sunlight or the invisible clockwork that ran the world. He had seen the future. He had seen what was to come. None of it had given him great comfort. All it had injected him with was foreboding. The problem was, every step he took was one into the future. If he stayed still, he was still shoved into the future. There was no true escape. The only sideways exit was one-way. It frightened him, he didn’t need this. He needed to find his father, he needed to get back and rebuild their farm and bury his life in ignorance. He had seen too much, and he wanted to find a salve that would obscure the scars torn into his brains, obscure them and hide them and rid himself of the clawing pain in his mind. But no amount could make it all go away. Memory was an insidious beast, always crouching, laying in wait to spring where you least expected it. He rounded a corner past a house where a young couple used to always sit in front on sunny days with their baby. The child used to wave to him, to everyone as they went past. The parents broke it against his house, slamming it on the windows again and again until he swore he heard something snap in two. They took turns. He didn’t remember hearing a baby’s cry. Maybe it was already dead. Jaymes wished he were making these things up. But only two sets of memories operated in his brain anymore. His real ones, and the ones that hadn’t happened yet. Both were true things, as far as he could tell. Both frightened him in utterly separate ways.
         Valreck’s house had been empty. The man hadn’t gone back there. The chair had been knocked over and broken. He was sure Prescotte had done it, in a fit of rage. It seemed like something the man would do, lashing out, tearing apart whatever was within reach. Valreck’s house had been spartan, had told him nothing about the man. But he trusted him. His belongings held no stories within them. He tried to think of the first time he had met Valreck and couldn’t. His father had once commented that it was like Valreck had been there their entire lives. That made no sense. Valreck was younger than his father. This house had belonged to someone else first, he could see it now, superimposed like a phantom over these furnishings, a ghostly home out of phase with the real world, banging at intangible doors, trying its best to get back in. But why try to return? This world held nothing but mottled shadows and the promise of a daytime that would never come.
         Jaymes wanted to understand the world, but he wanted to set the terms and it was clear now that the world didn’t work that way. The presence of Prescotte and his strange companion, of Valreck and other familiar strangers, it hinted to Jaymes that there was a world that existed separate from his own, that only touched his safe existence at certain points and where those points touched the worlds could cross over into each other. But no passage could be bought without payment, without loss. His mother, dying with an arrow in her throat, not understanding that she was the coin that made entrance possible. Prescotte and Tritan and Valreck were less men than symbols of a war that had spilled over into his life, a battle he couldn’t fathom and would either sweep past him, or drag him along with it, until he was either torn apart or he reached the end. He didn’t want to do any of that. He didn’t want of this. He didn’t want to die. Certainly not like that. Not like his mother. He had seen too much, understood too little and now he was running to try to find the exit from a world that looked far too much like his own. But everything was different now. Everything was just too damn different.
         His father wouldn’t have been in Valreck’s house but he had to check anyway. He didn’t want to find Valreck but he needed to see the man again. He wanted the man to explain, as best he could, what the hell this was all about. Why the dreams? Why the struggles? Where did it all come from? He didn’t think he would get those answers from Prescotte, not without bloodshed. Jaymes could still feel the point of the sword on his chest, the tip nearly salivating at its proximity to his heart. A single scratch and it would all come spilling out. Blood to organs, organs to oblivion. He had to find his father. He had to get the hell out of here. Nothing else mattered anymore. There was one other house to try. It had been the place Valreck had taken his father. He was fairly certain that Valreck wasn’t there anymore. The night had gone mad, swallowed them all up. Just before, he passed an empty space that was far too large, where a house might have once been. Dust kept rising, billowing, catching the sun’s opening rays not too far to the south, more than he thought possible. With his eyes closed, he had seen people flying. None of it made any sense. He had to get to the house.
         There were no dreams wrapped in his head anymore. Everything had let go. He almost didn’t find the house, had almost forgotten where it was. His memory was too porous and the gaps were stuffed with dreams. His father was waiting for him inside, he knew. His dreams never said that anything was wrong. If his dreams had told him one useful thing, it was that nothing had gone wrong. If they started rebuilding within the next few days, they could be ready for next season in no time at all. Maybe people would move into the village by then and everything would go back to normal. That’s all Jaymes really wanted. Normality and all it entailed. It didn’t seem like very much to ask.
         Except when he walked in the still wide open door to the house he knew that it was something he would never quite have.
         “Dad?” he said, as he stepped inside. His father was sitting in the corner, staring at him in that odd way of his. Just like normal. Just like when he was a kid and would come in to find his father sitting in his chair, watching the door, waiting.
         But everything was different. His gaze wasn’t the same, his eyes were half closed, perhaps the eyelids weighed down by the dried blood encrusting the upper lids, all leading by a forked trail back to the center of his forehead, where a void lay, a hole where all his dreams had leaked out and disintegrated upon contact with the world. This wasn’t the place they could live. This wasn’t the right environment.
         Jaymes was in another dream. He had to be. Stepping closer didn’t sharpen the focus any. His father had a loose limbed stance, like all his bones had been removed. It was quite clear that was absolutely motionless. In relation to the world, he had let go of all his kinetic energy. The pounding in his head was starting again. He was terribly afraid to touch his father, for fear he might crumble apart.
         “Dad . . . are you . . .” but it was a stupid question, not even worth an answer. Thankfully, he never finished. Dropping to his knees next to his father, he gently brushed his fingertips against his father’s face. The skin hung slack, was cool to the touch. A splatter of red and grey on the wall behind his head formed a pattern of dots that might showcase a memory if he stared at it long enough, if he found just the right perspective. There was an extra mouth on the back of his father’s head. Some sick impulse inside him made him want to touch it, to ensure that it was real, that it existed in this world. There was a dried line of drool and blood etched from the corner of his mouth to his chin. Jaymes was trying to take in all the components one at a time, trying to make sure they didn’t add up to the inevitable conclusion, the result he didn’t want to face. Broken down, it was far easier to examine. Up close, there seemed to be nothing wrong at all. It was only when he put the pieces together that the claws sought to rend his stomach and an involuntary wail to clutch at his throat.
         “Who . . . what happened, I don’t . . .” he was just spitting out words at random, occupying his mouth while his brain spiraled out of control. His balance left him and he fell backwards, keeping his father the whole time. Maybe he was just a puppet, one of those felt constructs that didn’t really live when you weren’t staring at them, that only existed when the show had started. Maybe the show was over now. He was staring at his father and he still wasn’t moving. The reality didn’t want to fit into his world, it was a jarring moment of illogic, so sharp that it hurt. He wanted to talk, his throat was swelling, full to bursting with sound, but there was nothing to say, nothing at all he could do.
         His father was gone. Just like that. He was gone. Even if he carved the words into his stomach he wouldn’t be able to make himself feel them. Just like his mother. He tried to remember the last thing his father had said to him and it was just dreams. There was no room for anything else in his head anymore. That sounded far too familiar. What had happened? What had Valreck done? Where was Valreck? Where was everyone? He was alone here, alone with his departed father and with his mother already buried there was just no one left. It kept repeating in his head, beating against the inside of his brain like a desperate man trying to escape his last prison. His father needed to move, he needed to live again. He couldn’t be dead, he couldn’t have died, those things never happened, they weren’t permanent, they had the future ahead of them, the two of them did, the future was there and his father was so rooted to the past now, he couldn’t progress further, already he seemed further and further away, a dot receding down a long tunnel, his features too small to be perceived, memory already fading. What did his voice sound like? How did he walk? How could these things vanish? What kind of world was this, that would let such vital things vanish and depart, leaving us diminished and worn, hardly ready for the next assault. Jaymes needed to blink. He needed to get out of here. He needed to leave. But what was the point? What the hell was the point? It was all just baby steps toward oblivion. That’s all it was.
         “Why did this happen?” Jaymes said, his voice raw. He had staggered backwards until he was in the opposite corner from his father, on the same wall, his back ill-fitting into the sharp angle, his feet sliding, trying to find purchase on the smooth skin of the world. His hands pressed into the walls, desperate not to let go, feeling it all slipping away with each second. It occurred to him that the blood on the wall was almost completely dried. His father had been dead for some time. Dead. Too simple of a world to describe eternity. His mind couldn’t handle it. It wasn’t possible. He didn’t accept it. “Who did this, why did it happen?” he sputtered, spewing words that had no meaning. “Why?”
         “Well, I can’t give you an immediate answer,” a too familiar voice said to his right, stony and taut. Jaymes twisted to see Prescotte’s long shadow and then Prescotte. There was a shadow for the sword too, needle thin and nearly as sharp as the blade itself.
         In the corner, Jaymes didn’t move, couldn’t move.
         Prescotte eyed him blandly, a casual danger to his gaze. “But if I had to guess,” he continued, “I’d say you wouldn’t have to look all that far for the reason.” The grin he flashed was absolutely devoid of humor. “After all, I didn’t have to. I went and looked, and, well, here you are.”

* * * * *

         There’s so little I can touch now. My senses are stunted, numb. I used to have an entire spectrum of sensations to stimulate me, but there’s so little to work with now. These people are frightened, closed off and scared. That’s no material, that’s nothing I can work with. I’m only as good as the proxies I possess. The little contact I can make is blurred, a cage with steamed walls, everything indistinct and buried. It’s little better than the situation I find myself in now, pinned down by my own body, my skills diminished and weakened. I’ll regain my strength and the full extent of my abilities, but it will take time. I don’t recover as fast as I used, one of the perils of age. But at least I made it this far to discover the perils.
         I keep thinking of the people I once knew, most long departed now. What would they have done, had their lives not been cut so short, as compared to mine? How would things had been different if the infinite consequences of the decisions we make had been thrown back into the pot of the Universe. How would things be different if I had not lived to do the things that I did. There are almost too many possibilities, when you stop to think about it, Mandras looks more and more like a raving madman, his talk of destiny nothing more than an elaborate cover for the empire he planned to rule. I never had any desire to rule domains, but what little do I claim as my own I wish to own body and soul. In the long run, I think my way has been far more satisfying.
         I keep thinking about death now and what it means. The fact that always frightened me, even as a young woman, was that no matter how long I lived, my death would be infinitely longer, stretching to the end of time itself, making my life no more than a mote of dust on an incredibly large canvas. Why not, then, cling to life as long as possible, even if those years mean nothing in the face of eternity. That’s why the Time Patrol always fascinated me, those endless men moving through time like one slips through dense fog, unseen and fluid. With their help, I would have made things the way they should have been. But not now. They’ll not deal with me, all my advantages have been stripped away. All I have left is waiting. Another opportunity will present itself eventually.
         I keep looking for Valreck. I want to know what he’s thinking. I want to hear the vitriol in his words, if he even has the energy anymore. He hasn’t died yet, the child wouldn’t have been able to kill him. For all his passiveness, he can be formidable when he wishes to be. The things I did, I never meant to do to him, but that was the way it turned out and for all the pain it may have caused him, I do not regret any of it. If he wants to be free from pain, he should try death. That wasn’t an option for me. It never was. It never will be. I want to grab him, to tell him that and see what kind of pitiful response he can come up with. But there is nothing he can say. Nothing that will have any sort of meaning to me.
         There. The combined flare of their minds is enough of a beacon. Junyul and Valreck, together. How touching. There’s others approaching too, their intent I can easily guess at. Yes, this drama will be over soon. All the players are gathering as I sit here. I’ll wait here and slip out when all is quiet. I may not go gently into oblivion, but if it means that I may continue living, then I will cause no ripples at all.
         Valreck’s life is sputtering, darting in and out of this world. He’s less than a day remaining to him, if even that. His will is strong but the child must have hurt him. His form is a shadowed blur to my mental eyes. I should tell him, before the opportunity is lost. Explain to him exactly why I did the things to him that I did. He’s no danger to me now, but I’d hate for him to depart this life while still harboring false illusions. Simple decorum, you see. In the end, it’s all we’re really left with. I don’t expect him to understand, or even accept, but he has a right to know, in these last moments.
         Do you hear me, Valreck? Can you even hear anymore? Junyul, tell him if you can, what it all meant, what we all tried to do. If I could speak through other lips, I would, but it’s always been my skill to look and act and hear, without talking. Junyul you have to tell him. I’ll give you the words. Reach out to me. Turn away. Reach out.
         We’re no threat to each other anymore. Let me tell you. Valreck? Let me say. Is anyone there? Can you hear me?
         And the light begins to grow and I hear their voices and I feel the heat and any second we’ll touch and you’ll know, you’ll just know. It will all make sense. It will.

* * * * *

         We interrupt this announcement to bring you a special broadcast
         Static fizzes like radio stations gone awry, bursts of cotton for cemented ears
         “I’ve got a name you see, I’ve got this name and it’s as big as the world”
         No rhythm to the rhyme, no rhyme to the cadence and the only thing for the cool kids to do is dance dance dance
         “I’ve seen the stars arc like divers through voided soup, expanding like obese craniums and flaring into a vibrant sort of death”
         The thing with the road, kid, you’ve got to lay the road down straight or else you don’t know where the hell you might end up
         Because the lips are big enough to pull you down into the condemned world of sensuality
         Are you ready to rock, I said, are you ready to rock
         “And I’ve got plasma in the nervous system where there should only be stagnant puddles and it’s racing along but who is it running against, who the hell is going to try and beat it”
         “And there was this time, this time when it was all out of whack and I saw all the versions of him at once, and that was just weird, man, I gotta tell you, it was damn strange”
         The power’s out
         The power’s out
         The power’s out
         Sir, we’d really appreciate it if you paid attention because you have to understand that it all, it all starts in the chest, you see, that’s where it all really begins
         A race, somewhere, can outrun light and scoops it up when it hits the dilation point, because light is just these radiant jewels, these beautiful floating bubbles, and they collect them and sell them to people who want to hold light in their hands for just the briefest moment, just the tiniest fraction
         Her hands are like ice, that’s such a turn-off
         “So the beast kept moving backwards in time, right, so that was the annoying thing is that I know I’ll kill it eventually, hell it even told me I would but I have to get to that point and it’s really so useless”
         Dust in the transistors, oh, it’s such a shame, oh, dust, oh dust dust dust
         Begins in the chest, it starts there and it spread out and down, down to the legs, you’ve got two legs, it’s not just that though because we’re more than just legs
         Go down to the electron pathways where the lights are always blinking dear God does it ever stop raining here in these cellular causeways
         Raise your hand if you care and it’s one, two, three down the dusky sidewalks and four, five, six something something something
         So, Zortag, we meet again, and this time I will make sure your screams echo off the vaults of eternity, my old enemy
         “The best thing about a good song is how it just extends into more than one dimension so it’s you that’s listening to it but all your alternate selves, which can lead to a lack of privacy but sometimes if you play it sideways then that limits the expansion somewhat and did I stop making sense at some point because you’re looking at me really strangely”
         It’s just tripped out fantastic, just plain tripped
         If he hadn’t died it’s pretty clear that no one would ever care it’s really the only thing he does all that well
         “I mean, it’s not vibrating at all on the right frequency, I can shiver right through it, it won’t work on me at all”
         We’ve got blood in the legs, it runs through tubes back and forth and forth and back pumping pumping pumping and it really doesn’t start or end, but like I said we’re more than legs
         And what mother says, she means with just more than her big meaty hands
         Just a part time punk, son, there ain’t enough time in the world to do this all the time
         “So we jumpshafted four levels down VortexSpace Prime, flopskittered past the SideWays Dimensions in the hopes that maybe we would shake the bastards but they did a crosssketch to a nearby WhirleyGate and nearly cut us off, but, ah, I had another bite of trickery up my distorted sleevelet”
         The heart is just one big muscle, don’t let anybody say otherwise, especially the lungs because those bastards are a bunch of liars through and through
         You’ve got a head, you see, it’s attached to the chest, not directly, oh God no that would make no sense, but it’s there and it’s not really important right now so moving on let’s move on
         You can tell by the way my walks uses me, I’m a talking woman with no time for men
         And so his face exploded, just like that, weirdest damn thing
         Nothing is right, nothing in the world is right, that’s the secret that nobody wants to know, if it got out that God was left handed everything would just collapse
         Whoa, who put that tree there, it might poke an eye out
         So the head’s not important and neither is the brain, no sir, but the arms, now there you have it, now you’re getting somewhere because the arms are where the story is going to be
         “Pieces of it were falling off as it descended up the halosphere, they were sidewhirling and everyone had to throw up ambient shields or risked getting diced out of time, I watched it from a mile away and saw five good men get retroversed, eventually they’ll just forget everything they had to remind themselves about”
         Bubbles of blood under her breath, she didn’t stop shaking until her heart stopped beating, God only knows who she thought I was
         Crap, this is just
         Crap, it’s really just
         Crap
         He can’t take his eyes off her skirt and oh God he loves the springtime oh to be free of winter’s shackles, the buoyant scent of her hair, this is the best time of his life
         Strain it all but half of the crap gets jammed in the filter
         The arms, now, sir, you’ve got two arms and they’re not as long as your legs but they do the job, now they’ve got blood and tubes and stuff in them too but that’s not the important part, that’s not at all
         There’s light in the air and light in the sky oh to be carefree again, to be free of dogged statistics
         Damn lies, fool, say it right, it’s all damn lies
         “Code Iridescent means he was sucked into the ship’s Totality Engine and was ejected through the hydroponics, we watched him wash back over us as musical rain, he was just crystals and fluid, more colors than the brain could touch, the doctors tell us he’s achieved a more pliant state of being but I can’t speak liquid so I guess I’ll never know for sure”
         These armies of the old, they’ll march right over you, unable to see properly, they’re still dangerous, don’t underestimate, by all means don’t do it
         I’m shooting a man and he doesn’t seem to care
         Get out of the way, get the hell out of the way
         I said before, sir, it’s not the important part, it’s not what we’re working towards, you’re not complete, that’s the problem, you’re not at all
         Run run run, if the minute is late and oh this won’t rhyme right, dammit, God dammit
         “They sounded the general alarm when the bastards started coming through, those two dimensional freaks, how the hell do you fight something that has no depth, I grabbed one and when I turned him sideways there was no one there so I just tore what I could feel and I heard a scream through only one ear and my hands were all wet but I couldn’t see anything”
         Complete, you’ve got legs and you’ve got a head and you’ve got arms but there’s something missing and it’s not your ears or your liver or your lymph nodes, hell you’ve got all that in spades, no that’s not the problem at all
         Help, I can hear her crying but where is she, where the hell is she, I can’t see anyone, I can’t see
         In the morning mother would cook pancakes with a batter like nectar and the syrup flowed just like honey, oh with the summer breeze coming through the screen door there’s no such place as heaven I know
         The first night someone woke up screaming I thought it was me but fortunately it wasn’t
         Because the arms are there with their nerves and their muscles but when you get down to it the arms aren’t complete without one thing
         “Repent, he told me, but I didn’t fight my way up these corroded streets just to say I’m sorry”
         And it’s so heavy, I mean, it’s not related to me, not like my brother or anything, but I can feel it bringing me down with every flickering second
         It’s the one thing that’s really two things, sir, if you’ll let me explain, sir, on each arm, right on the end, sir, you’ve got them there, it’s not really your arms
         Bang
         Bang bang bang
         “And to be perfectly honest, I’ve got no real use for it anymore”
         It’s your hands, your hands your hands your hands
         Sparks in the gateway, transits in the helmet, all systems are go
         your hands your hands your hands your hands
         “so I might as well just give it back to you, I’d hate to be thought of as a common thief”
         hands hands hands
         Break on through, break on by
         Applaud, you bastards, I said applaud
         With a gagging cough that started somewhere deep in his chest, the man woke up, jerked forward, nearly throwing himself off the couch. The world lurched sideways, became compressed, his head was too small for his brain, it was sloshing around inside, floating in the fluid, smacking against the sides of his skull, a pain he couldn’t feel.
         “Ahh . . . ahh . . .” his throat quivered, his voice strained, he was relearning all the tricks again, all the little cheats let him dodge around the world. It was too bright in here, even with the sickly sunlight seeping through from seemingly everywhere, but he couldn’t close his eyes fast enough and it was just stabbing into him. “Argh . . .”
         Muh . . . my . . . my . . .
         Images strafed his mind with dissonant nonlinearity, a life taken out of context, his head reshaping, realtering, everything changing, finding the mold, filling it back up again. “My . . .” he rasped, trying to echo his own discordant thoughts.
         I know . . . I know my . . .
         A fusion reaction went off in his head and his thoughts caught on fire. Moaning, he leaned forward further, his head nearly touching his knees. The silent room was too much, the stimulus too great. “Ah . . . my . . . nuh, my nay . . .” he tried to cough out the words, but they also shaved bloody slivers from his throat, nearly choking him.
         Oh God, I know, I know what . . .
         “Dammit!” he snarled, his first fully formed word, the effort bringing a new splash of pain to his head. “Ah, I know . . . I know that my . . . my name . . .”
         Not able to bear his own clumsy syllables, he tried to block them out, tried to seal it all away, and so he pushed the world aside, covering his throbbing ears with his hands.
         with his
         hands?
         hands
         I have
         The man opened his eyes wide, sucked in a breath so deeply and sharply that for a moment he seemed to have ceased breathing entirely. A long moment passed, with no movement at all. Looking at nothing, the man said softly, “I’m Joseph Brown.” The room absorbed the sounds but couldn’t suppress it completely. “My name is Joseph Brown.”
         Slowly, in wonder, he took his hands away from the side of his face, staring at them in mild awe, as if greeting long departed friends. Wiggling the fingers slightly, he ran them both through his hair, wincing as the strands became tangled. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, expelled his breath finally in a long sigh that seemed to deflate him slightly.
         “The question now is,” he whispered to himself, “how the hell long was I out while everyone else was running around?” A mad grin flickered to his face. “At least I know they can’t leave without me, eh?”
         Sighing again, he tilted his head back, rubbing the back of his neck and arching his spine to ease a stiffness that had developed. “Tristian would want me to stay here and wait for them to come back,” he noted matter of factly, placing his hands on his knees and looking around at the wreckage stretched out in the dimness before him. “He’d say that it was best I stayed the hell out of the way while they cleaned up out there.”
         Brown sat there for perhaps a full minute before shaking his head wryly and laughing quietly. “But he’d also know that there’s absolutely no chance at all I’d listen to him.”
         With a quick motion, he stood up, and as he did he heard a heavy thump as something tumbled from his lap to land on the floor. Making a face, he muttered, “Now what . . .” and crouched down to get a better look at it.
         What he saw first were the remains of the metal caps that had sat on the ends of his arms. They looked rather ordinary now, like giant thimbles, but the edges of both were crusted with blood and the inside seemed stuff with something particularly foul smelling. Brown also noticed that his sleeves and the legs of his pants were covered in dried blood. The idea wasn’t to just let me bleed all over the place, kids, he thought sardonically. Remind me not to go to those two jokers the next time I need first-aid.
         His fingers, brushing lightly on the floor, found the object a second later, its shape reassuring familiar, if somewhat out of place.
         Holding it up to his face and turning it this way and that, Brown hefted the object and said quietly, “My, my, my, now where the heck did you come from?”

* * * * *

         Valreck hasn’t spoken in a while and he feels he needs to say something. To him, silence is death and the lack of talking scares him to some degree, makes him feel already dead. The room is too cold as it is, Junyul’s features too blurred. He feels heavy, ready to go to sleep. It’s not right. None of this is right.
         Nestled against her, he feels the strong shudder of her pulse. She’ll live through this, he’s sure, live through it and recover and go on with the rest of her life. His story ends here and that will be the end of it. There is no space relegated to him in the legends and the myths, his life is no more than dust, dispersed and forgotten without a care, carrying on in stunted form through the memories of others. But none of them will be legends either and soon enough his memory will be nothing as well and there will be nothing to state that he ever existed. The finality of this frightens him, like being close to an endlessly tall, endlessly dark wall and it seems impossibly solid but he knows that if he stumbles and falls into it, it will swallow him up as easily as a placid lake, with no stir of ripples to mark his passage. He’s so close to it now. And he’s unsteady, losing his balance. How much longer? He hates this waiting, this hovering on the boundaries. Let it be decided. Life or death. It shouldn’t be this difficult. It only takes a second to let go. But he can’t bring himself to do it. For all that’s happened, it’s still just too hard.
         He has to talk, distract himself. Maybe his fate will creep up on him in mid-sentence, and he won’t be any wiser. Quiet, like a curtain being thrown over his eyes. No pain at all. That would be a good death. If he must have one. If he must. He’s not so sure. But who ever is?
         He has no desire to tell Junyul any of these things. Instead, he says to her, with what remains of his voice, “The child . . . she said that Tolin didn’t do it.”
         Junyul might have fallen asleep. Her voice is a garbled mumble, barely audible. But maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s not her at all. What’s the first sense to go? He always thought it was the vision. “And how would she know that?”
         “Is it true?” He has no time for clever debate.
         Junyul doesn’t answer for a while and he fears that his abruptness has offended her. For some reason, he desperately wants to know the answers behind this. He has believed one thing for so long, only to discover that it wasn’t true at all and something else was, and now he is finding out that the new truth was false as well. Which is it?
         “To an extent,” she tells him, which still surprises him, although it’s the answer he expects to hear.
         “But . . .” and the world twists and tilts momentarily, as if defying him to speak further. He sways and Junyul places one hand on his stomach to steady him. He can’t see where her other hand is. It’s not important. “But I saw . . . I saw in a dream that . . . Tolin killed him, I was so sure, it was a memory, why would the dream . . .” his throat tightens and nothing else will emerge.
         “A dream,” Junyul says softly. Then, with a flat directness, she asks, “Whose dream was it?”
         “I . . .” of all the questions that were possible, this is the one he is least prepared for. It is a fact that he never before considered and all too well he sees the terrible flaw that has guided his logic. “I . . . don’t know. Kilun’s, maybe. I . . .” For far too long, he assumed that he was staring into a collective, objective pool of memories. But if fighting the Time Patrol these few hard days has taught him one thing, it is that memories are no better than stories etched into the consciousness and if there is one thing that stories do exceptionally well, it is obscure the truth.
         “There is remembering, and there is remembering,” Junyul tells him with a quiet gentleness, almost out of place coming from her, especially now, in this time of dissipated compassion. “If it was indeed Kilun’s memories that you saw, then you saw what he witnessed.” She paused and there was almost a smile in her voice then. “But what he saw may not have been what was. Do you understand?” Her fingers touch his head almost affectionately.
         “I know that I saw Tolin kill my friend,” Valreck says with all the sharpness his blunted voice can muster. Junyul doesn’t even flinch, but then she never would have. Of all the things in this world that she might have been afraid of, he was not one of them. “Now you are telling me that is not the case. What am I supposed to believe, Junyul?”
         “If you saw one of Tolin’s memories, the view might be something different entirely,” Junyul shoots back, confirming what he is already starting to suspect. Layers upon layers upon layers. Did they fear his wrath that much, that this elaborate construct had to be created?
         “Then spare me this dance, woman, and be out with it, already,” Valreck snarls, pressing forward, shoving against the wall with a strength that he knows will exhaust itself within seconds. His hands clutch at the front of her clothing, but there is no menace in his grasp. “If you have one shred of kindness left for me, then please,” and even with his garbled, rasped voice, it still sounds far too much like begging, “please tell me who did it. Was it Tolin? Which of you was it? What exactly did you do?”
         And there is a smile in her face that is merely for show and before him he watches as her eyes go cold and hard and alien and he knows that if she says anything in the next few seconds, it will be nothing that he wishes to hear.

* * * * *

         Contact.
         Valreck, I-
         Wait.
         Don’t-
         No.
         No.
         No!
         nonononononono-
         And with ungentle hands I am shoved into the smallest corner where I thrash and cannot escape while I watch the space I once occupied filled with a hideous stench and it’s all being hijacked and oh it’s so cramped there’s no room to even move and I have to warn them I have to tell them but there’s something in my mouth I’m stifled and silenced and too helpless there are strings strings everywhere but no there must be something no there has to be no no no

* * * * *

         From across the place the little man smiles and bows neatly at the waist.
         “Care to dance?” he asks, and with a flourish steps lightly back, and away, into the darkness beyond the spotlight.

* * * * *

         “Ssh,” Junyul tells Valreck, ignoring the hands pinning her loosely to the wall. “Ssh,” she says, softly, quietly, her arms close to her body. In the darkness her eyes are flinty velvet, giving in without moving, resisting without action. She hasn’t answered his question yet. If she choose to move against him, there’s nothing he can do to stop her. Already his adrenaline is wearing out, his strength draining, the world swims, spins, becomes liquid and swells up to greet him. Perhaps he falls, perhaps he lets go. It hardly seems to matter anymore.
         She catches him easily with one arm. “Ssh,” she says again, and both of them are on their knees. Suddenly he’s very conscious of the heat of her body, such a contrast to the worn chill of his own flesh, of the cruel softness of her skin, of the way her hand is gently gliding along the curves of his stomach, his chest. “Ssh,” and her face is too close to his, her features his world and if things were different he would move toward this woman and try to find some comfort in the slowly unraveling clock of this day. The taut cushion of her breasts brush against his chest.
         “Ssshh,” she says once more and all of a sudden it sounds wrong, less a quiet shushing than air escaping from a deflating man, a machine losing his heat to the uncaring vacuum. Something sparkles in the dark like pearls and too late his mind wraps around the idea.
         “Junyul,” he speaks, but she shushes him again, her lips too close to his ear. It’s then he sees. Too late, he sees.
         He feels no breath from her mouth. Her lips don’t move.
         It’s all in his head.
         A sharp tug of agony is all he feels immediately, the unexpected pain arching his body and causing him to twist away. He has time only to look down to see the hilt protruding from his side. Her hand is still wrapped around it. A quick glimpse of her eyes tells him nothing. It’s becoming clearer to him now, the beads coalescing into sharper focus, even as his vision tilts, wavers. There’s a dull pain forming in his ribs now, and a liquid warmth running down his side, soaking into his robes. There’s no smile on her face as she grips the knife harder, tightens her wrist. He swears he feels the blade scrape bone and the pain nearly takes him right then. He’s doing his best to scramble away from her without losing the knife. He can’t let her have it again, she’ll cut him into pieces. At least in his body he knows where it is, it can’t do anymore major damage.
         But then her other hand seeks his throat and instinct overtakes him. Without touching her, he strikes and he watches through veiled eyes as a portion of her nose ripples and nearly crumples completely, as her head twists brutally to the side and a dense arc of blood streaks the air, its lazy path a graceful dance even as it descends. Junyul falls back, then, releasing her grip on the knife, even as he falls forward. He sees it all then, the grey web surrounding her, its icy tendrils forming a cocoon for her brain, the fibers already well rooted.
         Instantly he recognizes the mark and marvels once again at how truly isolated has been. She could enter you at any time, he thinks darkly, watching as Junyul halts her fall, tumbles to her side. Did you know that? Did you allow it freely? The signature is as bold as a freshly exploded nova to him. I cannot see you being a pawn, but then I did not perceive the same fate for myself. Apparently it is not the lot of the pawn to realize his own truth.
         “My only surprise . . .” he gasps out, wrapping one hand around the slick hilt without attempting to remove it. From its epicenter the pain is spreading, both hot and cold, an ache he can feel all the way in his jaw. “My only surprise is that you have waited this long to try and kill me.”
         “What?” Junyul asks, falling back onto her knees, shaking her head. There is a patchwork of blood on her face and her voice is oddly nasal, almost compressed. She is herself again, but the strings are still there, quivering, tenacious. Feeling feverish, he tries to follow them to their source, already knowing where it must go. Her. Her stink pervades their whip-like ambiance.
         “By all the gods,” he hears Junyul exclaim, her breath fast. A scuffle of noise and she is near him again, supporting him, with both arms. He can feels the bristled legs of her mind running over him, her mental touch an intimacy he can’t reject. “Valreck, what have I done?”
         He tries to shove her roughly away, but only succeeds in making his intent known. The knife shifts inside him, reminds him of its presence. He swears he can taste blood. It’s all in his imagination. It has to be. He can’t remember the room being this warm, even with the door open. The cool whisper of the morning’s breezes have apparently ceased. “Not you,” he breathes, clasping his hand around the wound, unsure of which action will do the least harm to himself. He has never been stabbed before. “You did nothing, you were only the instrument.”
         Junyul’s eyes narrow. “Then,” she says, “this time she has gone too far.”
         “No,” Valreck counters, running intangible fingers along the fine wires slicing the air, feeling them vibrate beneath his touch, sending messages back to the source. “She has gone just as far as she wants. It’s just that . . . it was not far enough.” If he removes the knife, it will all spill out. With it in, he might last minutes. Removed, he would only have seconds. He touches a presence on the other end, feels it recoil, knows that this is it. “You’ve had your chance,” and he’s not sure if he’s speaking outloud anymore. “And that is all you will get.”
         He expects another attack but Junyul only puts a hand on each shoulder, presses him to the floor. Staring at him directly in the eyes, she asks, “Do you know where she is?”
         Taken aback by the question he can only answer honestly, with a barely imperceptible nod.
         She catches the gesture anyway, frowns with a grimness that fits in perfectly with the contours of her face. “Then let us go to her, and end it,” she proposes. “I have the strength and you have the will. Let this madness cease, finally.”
         Valreck only has the strength for an unspoken question, the intensity of which forces her to look away.
         “I saw . . . I know,” she answers by way of explanation, “what would have happened if . . . if we had stayed.” Her eyes bore into him with an honesty he can’t match. “You saved us, kept us all alive . . . it was your will that delivered us to this place . . .” her eyes cloud, her emotions briefly hazy. In a softer voice, she says, “And . . . if we die here, in this place, it will only be because we did not die at the camp, where we should have died with the rest, like the rest.” A shudder runs through her body, all too palpable to him. “I am glad I did not have to die . . . like that.” Her fingers brush his face, tenderly. There are strings outlining her like a cut-out puppet. Any moment the strands might tighten and he would be lost. “None of us ever thanked you for that, Valreck, and that was wrong.”
         He has no room to reply, but Junyul doesn’t seem to care. Following up her own comment, she adds, “And it is time that steps were taken to make it right.”
         With his life soaking into his robes and dripping each slow second onto the floor, Valreck thinks all he hears is brought on by delirium. Everything is hyper-real, the colors in this dull place far too vibrant, Junyul’s body far too solid. He should have taken the knife out a long time ago now, it’s poisoning him here. He has to find the strings, has to grab hold of them. Junyul is right, he needs her strength to finish this, to finish this right. It is the only way.
         But when the world crumbles, it does so all at once.
         Without any preamble, the room is flooded with crimson light.
         It obliterates all shadows, sketches a scar upon the air. The two of them turn simultaneously and in the doorway, framed by silhouette, they are there.
         “I’m sorry to interrupt,” the man with the sword says, taking a step into the room, his face set, dispassionate. “But I’m afraid this is over now.” A hollow pain leaks out from beneath his eyes. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us.”
         Valreck barely hears his words, focuses his attention on the man with the steel eyes standing just outside the door. Ranos, he thinks, and there is no temperature at all within the name. Near him, Junyul tenses and it’s not clear which she fears more.
         “I won’t run,” he might hear her whisper. Ranos’ thoughts infest the room almost immediately, a barbed wire skeleton, filling in the spaces between the air, infecting their lungs, the very atoms themselves. Immediately he senses the strings recoil, begin to constrict, pull back, away from Junyul, out of the room, back to the source.
         Propelled by the dense fear he might die before he sees his final threat invoked, Valreck reaches out, closes invisible fingers around a handful, is nearly yanked from the room by the desperate force. But he does not let go. He has to leave. He has to finish this. They cannot stand in his way.
         Perhaps Junyul senses it too. “Go,” she tells him, pushing him back, away from her, away from them. The man with the sword is moving closer, his blade seeking to bridge the distance. Ranos watches, doesn’t move at all.
         “I can’t,” Valreck admits to her. “I don’t have-“
         ”I’ll send you,” she tells him breathlessly, dropping into a loose crouch before the two intruders, their forms stark blackness in a grey world, flexible monoliths stepping directly out of some child’s nightmare. If monsters ever came for someone, this would be what they would look like and how they would come, silently, inexorably. “I’ll send you there, so you can finish this. Because it needs to be done.”
         “Listen,” the man with the sword says, the harsh light only accenting the monstrosity of his features, “there’s no need to turn this into a fight, we don’t need to-“
         ”Shut up,” Junyul snaps at him, sliding a pace backwards to keep away from him. “I’ll kill you if you speak again, I swear.”
         “No, you won’t,” is all the man says, with frightening calm.
         “Junyul, I won’t-“
         ”I’ll take care of them here, Valreck,” she says. “Let go, and let me send you.” The air is subtly charged, a trap is being laid by someone. He has no time to discern it’s origins. A grim smile twitches at her lips. “Let me spare you the death that you helped us avoid. I can do that much for you, I think.”
         The man raises the sword, presses the tip closer. It barely quivers, showcasing a brutal kind of beauty. “One more time. Stand down, now. We’ve all had enough of this.”
         Junyul ignores him. “Time to leave, Valreck. Remember me.”
         “Junyul, don’t-“
         ”Let go, now!” she orders and something yanks at him, hard, leaving him little choice but to loosen his grip on the room and slip away, the edges of Junyul’s last words to him horribly distorted. The last thing he sees of her, if it’s even true, is her lithe form being gradually eclipsed by the crimson and black shadows of the storybook men, until all the shadows blended together, leaving him only with a vision of absolute blackness.
         I’m coming, he thinks, not sure if thoughts have any place anymore.
         Maleth, stand ready. I am coming.
         And, then the room is gone, or he is gone, and it’s so hard to tell which is the case and what scares him is that in the end, it might turn out that one is the same as the other, and there was never any difference at all.

* * * * *

         I can feel the blood but the knife it wasn’t me the knife it wasn’t me that you have to understand it was the trickster and his games we’re all pawns all of us are she’s going to die don’t if you leave there won’t be anyone to save her and you have to stop you have to listen before you do
         oh
         oh
         dammit
         and it no longer matters
         He is here.
         He is here.

* * * * *

         Tristian watched the man fade out without changing his stance. The woman still eyed him from across the room, her expression set. He could still see the dark blot of blood on her shoulder where he had wounded her before, the fabric glistening with fresh blood. She didn’t appear afraid of him at all. He wasn’t going to ask her to surrender again. He was tired offering chances to these people that they clearly didn’t want to take. If this was how it had to end, then it did. For what it was worth, it was out of his hands now.
         Not taking his eyes off her, he said to Ranos behind him, “Do you know where he went?”
         “Aye,” Ranos answered simply, unwilling to waste words. He wanted this over as much as Tristian did. Neither of them were young anymore and every second spent fighting was another second a mistake could be made. “It’s not far. I can go to him.”
         “Do it,” Tristian ordered, stepping to the side, trying to flank the woman. Balancing on the ball of one foot, the other leg outstretched, she pivoted, never saying a word, just watching him. “Go and get him.”
         “And if he resists?”
         “By this point, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Tristian replied, his mouth drawn into a tight line. “Do what you have to do. This has all gone far enough. These people are all adults, they’ve made their decisions.”
         Ranos didn’t answer immediately. Tristian felt a tickle in the back of his brain, his friend speaking without words. But Tristian didn’t understand anymore. Those days were long past.
         “Very well,” Ranos said eventually, the words coming out as an elongated sigh. “And what will you do?”
         “I’m not sure yet,” Tristian admitted. “It’s up to her.” The sword painted blood colors on the floor. “The next move is hers.”
         “Mm,” was all Ranos said. “And you’ll be-“
         ”I can take care of myself,” he snapped. “Just go. Before he teleports again and we lose him.”
         He felt more than heard Ranos’ departure, the cool whisper of inverted air on the back of his neck, the sense of mass being erased. In silence the woman faced him, her eyes dark jewels in the half-light.
         Tristian returned her gaze impassively. “You heard me,” he told her. “Your move.”
         Her lips parted in a feral smile and he had all the answer he was going to get.

* * * * *

         “I didn’t kill my father,” Jaymes said, trying to make himself heard over the deafening pounding of his heart. Prescotte, intentionally or otherwise, was blocking the only exit from the room.
         “Now did I say that?” Prescotte asked innocently, stepping into the room. His sword was gripped firmly in his right hand, the side that Jaymes would have to go around to escape Prescotte. He didn’t think the man was going to just kill him. But all the man needed was a weak excuse. “Here you go putting words into my mouth. I didn’t say that at all.” There was a tautness to the line of his jaw, as if he were trying to avoid screaming. “But now that you’ve mentioned it,” and the smile that fell across his face wasn’t amused at all, “why would I have a reason to go and say something like that? Can you think of any reasons, Jaymes?”
         “Leave me alone,” Jaymes said, struggling to his feet, debating how hard and where Prescotte would have to hit him with the sword in order for him to be unable to flee. He could take a cut to the arm, probably, maybe even a shallow one to the leg. But it wouldn’t stop him. It couldn’t. He didn’t move. “My father’s dead. Leave me alone.”
         “Yeah, he’s dead,” Prescotte noted, his voice carefully controlled. There was a stench of violence in the room. It was coming from Prescotte. He looked terrible, more bruise than man, his clothes stained with the ugly patterns of dried blood. “Funny thing is, he wasn’t like that when I last left him. He was very much alive. Looking for you, too. Fathers can often get like that, concerned for their sons. My father would have torn our town apart to look for me. That’s how he was, that’s how they are. He died while I was away at a battle, when I was in some place I don’t even remember the name of anymore. My mother had died the year before, so he died alone.” Prescotte’s voice was flat, a recitation of events long gone. “He caught a fever, lingered for three days while the neighbors took turns watching over him. He kept mistaking one fellow for me and didn’t stop holding onto the poor guy, crying and begging him not to go off to the war. The last word he ever spoke was my mother’s name. He died the next night.” Prescotte frowned, staring past Jaymes and into the wall, as if the events were replaying before his eyes. “They had no way to get word to me. By the time I got back, he had buried for nearly a year.” Jaymes pressed further back against the wall, trying not to breathe as Prescotte fell silent. He wished the other man would leave. He wished he were brave enough to make him leave. “I’m only telling you this in the hopes that you’ll understand what I’m about to do next.”
         “Prescotte, please-“
         In a motion that was casual in its brutality, Prescotte reached out and punched Jaymes in the face. Prepared as he was, he never saw it coming. His head bounced against the corner of the wall as his face seemed to catch fire and warp as something impossibly heavy struck it. Prescotte barely seemed to have moved. All of a sudden, he was right there, right on top of him, grabbing him roughly by the front of his shirt, nearly tearing the fabric, keeping him from falling to the floor. Jaymes hung suspended from his grasp, tasting blood through a rapidly swelling lip, an entire side of his face absolutely numb, looking up into Prescotte deadened expression and wondering what the hell the man was going to do to him.
         “What is wrong with you?” he asked Jaymes softly. Or maybe he shouted and Jaymes just couldn’t hear anymore.
         Detached from his own consciousness, Jaymes mumbled something, perhaps a prayer for Prescotte not to kill him.
         “Your own father,” Prescotte said, and then a thunderclap broke across his expression and he demonstrated to Jaymes what shouting really was. The world rattled and trembled and perhaps Prescotte was shaking him and his voice was just coming from everywhere, leaking from the air itself. “What the hell was wrong with you? Why the hell can’t you tell me that? After all we went through and you turn and you . . .” his voice failed, snarled, reversed and became coherent again. “What did he promise you? What did he offer was that good enough for your father to die?”
         “That . . . that wasn’t it . . .” Jaymes stammered, spat. He swore he saw the shadow of Prescotte’s fist, ready to hit him again. Where was the sword? He could feel it in his chest already. “I didn’t want . . . my father wasn’t supposed to . . .” he wished he could explain but he didn’t even know what he was trying to say. Everything was failing. It was all coming apart.
         “You tricked your father right into the Valreck’s arms,” Prescotte accused, his voice the deadly kind of calm, the few seconds of free floating bliss you were allotted before you impacted with the ground. “That was the only way Valreck could have gotten him. Then you tried to lure me and Tritan into a trap, so Tolin could kill us. These don’t sound like things you want to do to people who were nice to you, who raised you.” The smile on his face was razor sharp. “Go ahead, Jaymes. Tell me you were being controlled, that Valreck got into your head and made you do those things. Try to convince me of that and see how far you get.” Jaymes was about to answer something ineffectual when Prescotte raised his voice again, drowning out all rebuttals. “So did your father struggle or did Valreck just kill him when he had gotten what he needed out of the man? Did you have the decency to leave the room or did you stand there and watch while it was done? Which was it, kid? You’ve got all the answers, right? Tell me what happened. Tell me what genius thoughts led to this situation.” Jaymes bit his lip, wondered if he had wet himself. Prescotte shook him again, and his head nearly struck the wall. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
         But Jaymes had nothing to say, no words could sneak past the knot of fear lodged in his throat. The silence only seemed to anger Prescotte more and he sneered, “Nothing to say? Your father’s dead and you have nothing to say? What’s the reason, Jaymes? Why did you do it?” The sword seemed to be hovering just out of the edge of his vision. “Why?”
         “I . . . ah, I . . .” and whatever knot was lingering in his throat suddenly slipped and slid, going all the way down to his stomach, where it boiled, nearly tearing him in half. Something hot leapt to his eyes then and he twisted wildly, his arms going up to strike Prescotte, deciding halfway through it wasn’t a good idea and drawing them back to protect his face. “You . . .” he said, screamed, stammered, twisting again, startling the other man into dropping him, “it was you,” Jaymes snarled back at him, the descent to the floor taking far too long, his whole body vulnerable. He hit the ground hard, rolled and struck the wall hard with his shoulder, spitting his words out at Prescotte, trying to turn them into arrows, trying to draw blood on the man just for once, just once. “I didn’t want you to kill me. That’s why I did it, okay? I thought Valreck would keep you from killing me.”
         “What?” Prescotte asked quietly, nearly falling backwards as he readjusted his balance. “What are you talking about?” he added, stronger but still hushed, clearly startled. “You disappeared the night in the forest, where would think that I would-“
         ”I have dreams, okay?” Jaymes said to him, getting on his hands and knees and shooting the man the darkest look he could manage. There. He had said it. His dirty secret out. “I have dreams that show what’s going to happen. I think . . . I think Valreck was using that to . . . warn him of stuff coming to hurt him. But I know it’s true. My house burning down, I dreamed of that, a lot of things people said I heard in my dreams first, I . . . I even saw my father die.” Those last words were barely audible. He was beginning to hate the truth. What did it take for life to stop tormenting him? He couldn’t bear anymore revelations. He didn’t have the strength anymore. “It all happened, just the way it was supposed to and . . . and I had a dream where you . . . where you killed me.”
         “Why did you tell any of us?” Prescotte asked, his eyes narrowing. “Why didn’t you say-“
         ”Did you hear me?” Jaymes snapped, nearly leaping to his feet. Prescotte was unfazed but Jaymes felt his own arms trembling, his breathing becoming more ragged. “I had a dream you were going to kill me. I didn’t want to talk to you, I didn’t want to discuss it, I just wanted to get the hell away from you.” His chest was so tight, it was like the sword was already there. “And Valreck, he’d helped me before, I thought, I thought maybe he could figure out a way to keep it from happening.”
         “And the price, then, was your father,” Prescotte said tightly.
         “My father . . . he had dreams too, but they were . . . they were different, somehow, more useful to Valreck . . . I don’t know,” Jaymes said, trying not to sound desperate, sure that Prescotte was just waiting for him to finish talking because he didn’t want to kill in mid-sentence. Talking about his father reminded him that the man was gone forever and the heat flowed to his eyes again, making the room waver. “But he didn’t want to kill him, I know he didn’t, he just wanted to look at his dreams, someone else must have . . .” he withered under the man’s unblinking, veiled gaze, finally just looking away, turning his face into the wall, throwing his words to Prescotte in the vain hope it might create a wall that would keep him back. “I don’t know who killed him, it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Valreck, that wasn’t how it was supposed to go, I swear I just found him like this, I just . . .”
         A scraping of footsteps led him to believe that Prescotte was creeping closer, getting ready to silence him. It occurred to him that he should at least turn around and face his own death, but he couldn’t bring himself to stare the man in the face, even one last time. Let it come then, while he wallowed in ignorance. He hoped it wouldn’t hurt. He knew it would. He hoped it wouldn’t hurt for long.
         There was another soft shuffle of motion, farther away this time. Trying to quiet the raging thunderstorm that was his heartbeat, Jaymes uncurled from his near fetal position and took stock of the room again.
         Prescotte was still there, but across the room now, tending to his father’s body. The man was gently lifting his father’s slumped head, running a thumb over the edge of the hole in the man’s forehead, a sight that made Jaymes’ stomach churn for some reason. There was a queer look to Prescotte’s face, a questioning stare that looked somewhat disturbed, although far too at ease in the presence of a corpse. For the first time he noticed that his father’s eyes were still open, and he stared at Prescotte as if waiting for the man to finally pronounce him dead.
         Finally, the other man ran his fingers over the open eyes, closing them forever and letting the man’s head drop back to where it was before. “Shot,” Prescotte said grimly and Jaymes didn’t know what he was talking about. Standing up, Prescotte stared at him across the room and said, “Your father was shot in the head by something called a laser. I haven’t seen too many, but I know what the wounds look like close up by now.”
         “So . . . so what does that mean?” Jaymes asked, trying to press deeper into the wall, all too aware of the sword still dangling inches from the floor, the point looking all too sharp and quick for his liking.
         “I don’t know,” Prescotte admitted softly. “But I don’t think it was Valreck and I’m sure it wasn’t you who killed him.” The man seemed to sigh, a strange sadness infusing his frame. Jaymes tried not to hold his breath, unsure what the man would do next.
         Eventually the man stared at him oddly, asked him quietly, almost confused, “So, you thought I was going to kill you?”
         Jaymes only nodded, not knowing which words would be the proper answer.
         “Hm,” Prescotte mused, holding the blade of his sword aloft and staring at it with a bemused, tired expression. “Still think I’m going to?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the blade.
         Was there really an answer to that? His hands were shaking so much that he thought they might fall off. He couldn’t form a proper sentence at all anymore. His brain just couldn’t handle it. “Please . . . I don’t want to die . . . I don’t, I . . .” and it all came spilling out, blood from wounds still waiting to be dealt, the pressures of the last few days finally inverting him, turning him inside out and sending it all to the surface. “Because my mother is dead and my father is dead . . . and . . . and my house is gone and so . . . everything in the village is gone, too, and my parents and . . . what’s left? What the hell is left?” Maybe he was screaming. It hardly seemed to make any difference. Words had no impact here, screamed or otherwise. They were useless symphonies for the air, dissolving after spoken and leaving no meaning behind to worry about. “My life? That’s it, that’s all I’ve got. My family is gone, everyone I know is gone, what the hell else can you do to me, right? What else is left?” He was facing Prescotte now, though still curled up on the floor. He should stand and die. That’s what a man would do. His father was probably standing when he died. But he couldn’t do it. His legs wouldn’t work. Whatever then. Whatever. He’d done all he could. “I don’t want to die,” someone that might have been him said, and maybe it was the truest words he, or anyone else, had ever spoken. “Please. I don’t.”
         Prescotte said nothing for what seemed to be an exceptionally long time. It occurred to Jaymes that he could run now, he could, the door was free and open, and he could be out and gone before Prescotte had even started running. But that might force another whole new set of actions that might lead to his death. And he couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t run. Not now. Not now.
         “I’m not going to kill you,” Prescotte said and his voice was so even, almost blending in with the natural silence of the room, that Jaymes almost missed it at first. Slowly, like every muscle hurt, Prescotte sheathed his sword, and the hissing grind of metal against leather was the song of salvation to Jaymes. “How’s that for an answer?” Jaymes had no words anymore. “And if you’re wondering why, I could tell you that I never planned on doing it, ever, no matter what your dream said.” He looked down, rubbed one corner of his eyes, caught a bit of dirt and looked down at his hand, as if expecting something other than his fingers there. “And if you don’t like that answer, if you don’t want to believe that, then . . . I think you did a lot of stupid things, kid. But the things that have happened to you are punishment enough, I think. Even if one has nothing to do with the other, you’ve suffered more than enough, as far as I’m concerned. Anything more would be sadistic and maybe the world is like that, but I’m not, and if the world has more it wants to do to you, that’s up to the world, and not me.”
         “So you’re . . . you’re not going to . . .” he has no words, these ones are borrowed. He wanted to faint, or cry, or scream. Or wake up. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe it was going to happen soon. “Kill me? You’re not . . .”
         “No,” Prescotte said, softly, firmly. He fixed Jaymes with a hard gaze and said quite clearly, “Besides, don’t you think enough people have died?”
         “I . . . I . . .” and his gaze slid over involuntarily to the still form of his father, crouched in the corner like a discarded toy, all life departed, all presence gone. And in the end, he realized that there’s nothing else he could really say. “Yeah,” he murmured, just to fill the emptiness and it was all he could do and it was all he had left to do.

* * * * *

         Even wounded she was graceful. Tristian gripped the sword with both hands, held it out before him, pivoted on one foot slowly, the blade parallel to the floor, the only spot of true color in the room.
         The air around her flickered, shivered with spots of neutral hues. He recognized it immediately and darted forward, the blade hissing in the air.
         She swept aside, cat-like, a swirl of dull textures rising to vibrant life. The sword bit into something invisible a few inches from her body, caused her to exhale in surprise, even as she maintained her stance. They wound up on opposite sides of the room again, looking much as before, with only the positions changed.
         “You put up a barrier,” Tristian said to her, turning the sword sideways, still clutching it lightly with both hands. She had no immediate response. “I wouldn’t waste the energy. I’ll cut through it.”
         He came at her again then, slicing underhanded, the blade carving a scar into the floor and lancing upwards. She hopped backwards, ducked to avoid the upswing and dodged under the sword, landing on the balls of her feet, with both her heels pressed together. Tristian brought the sword up and around and stayed where he had halted, poised.
         “You could teleport out,” he told her, almost daring her to do so. But his voice remained calm and even, merely stating what he felt was a fact. He leaned forward, the sword dancing in the air inches from her face. She didn’t budge, eyed him through the hazy afterimages the blade created. “The way you did before.”
         “I could,” she admitted and her voice was ice, possessed of an effortless calm to match his measured tones. It was not the mocking triumph he had heard before, when she had dropped him from the sky. It was the sound perhaps of a woman ready to die, or maybe just expecting to die, and making herself ready in case it happened. “But you would find me like you did before and this would start all over again.” Her eyes studied him, trying to pierce the crimson halos created by the weapon. “Better to decide it here, then to reenact half-measures over and over.”
         “Indeed,” Tristian agreed, moving in again, sword low to the ground, the blade casting ugly shadows on the floor. She never watched the blade, only stared at him, and when the blade came within inches of touching her, she leapt to the side, even matching his speed even as he changed direction, the blade pointing right for her face. A shield started to flicker into tentative existence again, a reflex that would do no good here. Its light went out a second later. She ducked, her arms outstretched for balance, careful to avoid being boxed into the corners, even as the sword seemed to track her with a mind of its own.
         He lunged at her then, switching to a one handed grip and cutting lengthwise, watching her dodge to the right, even as he switched hands with the sword and came at her from the other angle. Almost too late she realized it, the sword just brushing against her injured shoulder. There was the sound of air hissing tightly through clenched teeth as she threw herself backwards, hitting the wall with desperate grace, dropping down into a half crouch, still watching him. Tristian backed off a step, holding the sword two-handed again. For all his words before, he had no real desire to kill her if he didn’t have to, so he was feinting and darting, testing her skill, hoping to wear her down, but not to the point where she became so desperate she would try anything. It was ballet on a tightrope and a rash movement from either of them could bring the whole affair crashing down. Nets were not a luxury allowed here. This would be his only chance and his last chance.
         The sword wove microscopic scars in the air, crimson constellations in abstract shapes. Her eyes followed the sword without ever taking her gaze off of him. She tensed, prepared to move. He darted forward, the sword swinging back to achieve a better arc. She darted to the other side, to get away from the blade. But he was ready for it this time and his leg kicked out, a dark blur, connecting solidly with her stomach, causing all the air to rush out of her in a violent expulsion, bending her in half, bringing her down to one knee. Tristian bounced back a step, one foot poised a few inches over the floor, ready to strike again. It wasn’t a prospect he was looking forward to. It had been like kicking glass. He felt the shock rattling in his hip.
         Junyul coughed, spat something onto the floor that he couldn’t see. One arm was wrapped around her stomach. He waited, not willing to simply cut her down in cold blood if there was another chance. After a moment she looked up at him and what he saw in her face made that concept laughable.
         “I cannot . . . affect your mind,” she said, grimacing as the words uncurled from her lips. “But I can . . . see it as easily as any other, I can sense its texture.” The sword cut a diagonal warning across the air before her, but Junyul never flinched. “And I can see your desire for an . . . easy victory, for a bloodless capitulation.” A smile brushed across her face, the shadows giving her expression a gouged appearance. “You are a killer, but not a murderer, which is a laudable thing to be . . .” with a soft sound she wrenched herself to her feet, staggering back a step into the wall, one hand braced against it, the other gripping her stomach still. “But you underestimate,” she added, her smile now vanished, “how easy it is to save someone.” There might have been a drop of sadness in her voice, but it was impossible to tell for certain.
         Tristian said nothing, merely slid his leg back into a different stance, turning his body sideways, holding the sword two handed once more.
         Observing him with noted detachment, Junyul sighed and said to him, “So please, little myth, come now, we’re both tired, no more of these games,” gesturing toward him with a free hand. “Your best, for me, then. Your best.”

* * * * *

         “You’re dying,” she tells him and it’s not a question and Valreck is certain this isn’t the first time he’s heard the phrase today.
         His mouth is still in the throes of calling Junyul’s name when the world ripples back into view, the rest of his words trapped in whatever thin space lies between that room and this place. His nerves feel all disconnected, firing into a pitiless void, his muscles suddenly formless and gelatinous, unable to hold him up at all. There is dirt and dust and broken things under his hands. A cold sensation is slowly spreading from his ribs, into his stomach, snaking its way toward his chest. His head feels light, detached. The knife is still jutting from his body. He’d remove it, but it barely seems worth it now.
         “Valreck,” she says to him, and her voice is old paper rustling. He looks up, his brain attached to a body he can’t understand anymore, the rigors of the involuntary teleport causing him to shudder uncontrollably. Maleth, he thinks, remembering why he came, and the impression her name makes on his softening mind is enough to cause his heart to thud with a deeper rhythm, the blood pulsing out of his body with a sickening regularity, leaking around the too cold blade. The seal isn’t perfect. There’s always an escape, always an outlet.
         “You’re here to kill me,” she tells him, filling in the spaces his own fraying thoughts are leaving behind. “A friend for a friend is the price, I believe?” He can’t be sure if she’s saying these things outloud. Where is she? He’s doing his best to define the contours of the room but his mind isn’t responding, he keeps seeing the place he left behind, he keeps seeing the camp and all the departed, their mangled bodies achieving a still kind of brutal poetry. What is this? Is he supposed to join them? Someone is breathing with a rasp like dry leaves being crammed roughly through a sifter. It’s not him. He’s barely breathing at all anymore. “I suppose that’s only fair, now that you’ve found out. If there’s one thing you deserve after all of this, it’s a fair shot.”
         It’s too dark in here. Far too dark. He tries to recall what sunlight looked like, the texture of its scent, pulls a handful out of a memory and throws it into the uncaring air. Light. A sphere expands, outlines dark shadows, brightens his vision.
         “Ah-“ a voice whispers in surprise and he hears a weak rustling nearby. She’s here, definitely. The room is soaked with her presence. To his dismay he finds that he’s staring at the floor. His hands are disturbingly pale and strangely fuzzy at the edges. Life is out of focus now, everything is losing focus. He has to remember. He can’t forget why he’s here.
         “Heh,” comes a laugh in a dry croak. “So now you see, Valreck, eh? See what it comes down to.”
         He looks up then, finally, and sees her. Instantly he recognizes the place. This is her bedroom, at her house. The place is in shambles, the walls scarred with damage, from tears and fire and marks that nothing human could have made. The bed is still reasonably intact and that’s where she is, sprawled on top of the sheets, not moving, propped up just enough that she can look down on him, the same as always. She’s different somehow, more wizened, the light making the lines on her face into canyons, her body far too thin, like she has lost a dimension somewhere, like she’s fading as he’s watching and not even her bones will be left behind.
         “Maleth,” he murmurs through cracked lips, “what is-“
         ”What it comes down,” she repeats, without laughing. “The two of us. You and I.” The chuckle that emerges from her is torn, tattered and bleeding, from her throat. “The mortal enemies, joined in epic battle once more. How mighty. How historic.” He’s not if she can even see him through her pinprick wrinkles of eyes. “If you start crawling toward me now, we might both still be alive by the time you got close enough to strangle me, Valreck.” A strange, strained noise spirals from her. “What happened to us, Valreck? What has happened here?” and for the first time she sounds as old as she really is. “Why have we fallen so far?”
         He has no answer for her, of course. But there are other answers that she can supply him with, that, while they may not stave off his too close demise, might be able to send him into that dense darkness with a shred of peace clutched to his still breast. And if that isn’t enough, well, he has little else to hope for.
         Valreck discards the idea of standing up almost immediately, levers himself so that his back is partially supported by the rickety wall behind him. He tries not to touch the hilt of the dagger, preferring to pretend that it doesn’t exist. He barely hurts at all now. It cannot be a good thing.
         To Maleth he says, “It matters little now . . . to ask why. The reasons are meaningless. Instead, why don’t you tell me about . . . about Kilun.”
         From this angle he can see that she’s incredibly wasted, starving for so long that her insides have dissolved. She’s not looking at him but she can hear him anyway.
         “Indeed,” she says after a moment, a smile nearly curdling onto her face, “why don’t I? I think it might be a good thing . . . for you to hear.” That twitch that could be a grin comes again. “But are you sure . . . you’re ready to listen?”
         “Tell me,” is all he has the strength to say.
         And so she does.

* * * * *

         Lunge forward. Faster. Left. Strike. Strike. Step back. Pivot. Faster. Right. Left. Feint, then forward. Down. Don’t stay there. Don’t stop. Another feint. Dart to the left. Then back. Faster. Forward. Pressing. Forward. Keep moving. Dart, dodge. Spin right. Strike, while you. Quick. There’s no. Not even. Against the wall. Strike. Advantage. Don’t let her. She’s. Fake. Feint. Strike. Faster. There’s blood. There’s just blood. Right. Right. Pivot. Dodge. Try to get. Right. Forward. This corner is. Faster. Quick. Back. Back. Don’t let. She’s. Strike. But she’s. Strike. No. Back. She’s. Back. Get. She’s. You don’t. Her. It’s not. Her. Back. And. Faster. Hit. Faster. Don’t. Faster. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
         Silence.
         A rustle like dead feathers.
         Soft intake of breath.
         “Your best is . . . formidable, indeed.”
         “You can . . . stop this with a word.”
         “Oh, but why ever would I want to?”

* * * * *

         “By now I’m sure that you have guessed what the reason behind this quaint little conspiracy was,” Maleth is telling him like they are in her parlor again, discussing simple matters after tea and pastries. No. No. That never happened. Death is reshuffling reality for him. He can’t believe anything he hears. No, that’s not right either.
         “Quite simply, dear Valreck, we wanted to live. It was as pure as that.” She’s so frail sounding, if he could create a strong wind, he might disperse her completely. But she would just reform in the lungs of another. Cunning like hers is never lost, only transformed and reincarnated. “And your friend was getting in the way of us doing that.”
         “And . . . all of you wanted this?” he asks, grunting as the blade shifts inside of him again, nicking an organ perhaps. His hand brushes against the wound, comes away warm and slick. How can that be? He’s so cold. “Why didn’t you just . . . confront me, force the issue, if all of you-“
         ”Ah, but it wasn’t all of us, I’m afraid.” A trickle of humor eases into her face, settling uncomfortably into her deeply sunken eyes. “Tolin was actually on your side the entire time. Quite adamant, really. He refused to even discuss the subject.”
         That makes no sense. “But . . . I saw . . . I know, Tolin was the one who . . .” He’s too tired to argue, even his vitriol is spent. There is nothing to believe anymore.
         “Ah, yes, well we’ll get to that,” she says and even dying she is still unbearably condescending. If she happens to go before him, Valreck can’t see himself shedding many tears in the few minutes he has before he follows her down. “You see, so even if you had agreed to leave Kilun behind, there was every evidence that Tolin would have tried to stop us anyway. And whether you want to admit it or not, he . . . was the most powerful out of all of us. Any fight . . . wouldn’t have been a contest.”
         “He’s dead now . . . isn’t he?” Valreck says, just to hear the words spoken aloud, just to remind himself of what mortality is and how closely he is pressed against it.
         “Yes . . .” Maleth replies quietly. “He passed on an hour ago, at least. I thought you knew.”
         “I did, in a way,” he says, pressing his back harder against the wall even as the room becomes liquid, threatens to slip away. No. He has to stay. For a few more minutes at least. Then let fate claim from him whatever it wishes. Then he will be done. But not now. Not yet. “I just . . . just wanted to hear it from someone else.” Oddly, he feels nothing at the confirmation. He will either never see Tolin again, or they will be greeting each other shortly in whatever depthless space exists beyond this world. Either way, it hardly seems important.
         “And me being such the reliable source,” Maleth whispers with cruel humor. “Still sure you wish to hear the rest?”
         “If you are trying to waste . . . time,” he responds, distant pain warping his words, “then have the decency to admit it and stop talking . . .” He fixes her with an iron gaze he knows she can’t see and says, “Otherwise, continue. Tell me what changed Tolin’s mind, eventually.”
         “Changed?” she answers, and says nothing more for nearly a minute. For a second he thinks she has stopped breathing, but then she speaks up again. “It was my decision to have him killed, I want you to know.” If she’s trying to provoke him to anger, it’s too late. Whatever he had was dissipated in the teleport, and they are no threat to each other now. “I realized that even if we convinced you and Tolin to leave him behind, you would constantly want to go back and retrieve him, as long as there was a chance, you would be trying. And, in trying, perhaps endanger us.”
         “How noble,” he comments dryly, the room seeming to sway underneath his unmoving feet.
         “My reasons were nothing but selfish,” she admits, perhaps a little sadly, though he can’t imagine why. “I never pretended otherwise. I wished to live, and so Kilun had to die. I told you, it really was that simple, Valreck.”
         “I see . . .” and maybe he does. It was the desire to live that gave him the impetus to leave the camp, to escape, but those impulses are long departed now, having fled ahead of his life, their forlorn shapes already lost in the darkness. Now all he can do is wait. Even revenge holds nothing for him, although it should. This woman before him, she killed his friend, slew him for the most callous of reasons. But it’s all academic to him, now that he knows the truth, he finds it doesn’t interest him on a visceral level anymore. He couldn’t stand up even if he wanted to now. He’ll die here, inches from his goal, and only the stain of his dried blood will ever tell his story. “Then tell me . . . how was it done? I am sure you’re still . . . proud.”
         “In a sense . . . yes,” the old woman replies, with a glee that transcends this stagnant room, piercing through the thin leathery mask that has become her face. The bright light makes her expression look fake, human skin painted onto a crafted body. “After all, Valreck . . . it was very much a group effort.”

* * * * *

         With a hand Junyul casually wiped some blood that was slowly oozing down her face from a shallow cut on her cheek. She was wedged in the corner, but Tristian was nowhere near her. He was crouched opposite her, across the room, his sword still held out defensively before him, his stance still set to rush forward, but a quiet shakiness in his legs and a ragged cadence to his breathing suggested that this fight might be won more due to attrition than was to his liking. A wan light peeked shyly through the open doorway, not touching either of them. There was the scent of morning and blood in the air. Tristian was trying to stay focused but the edges were growing hazier all the time, the blade of the sword threatening to widen into a too broad band the longer he let his attention wander. Through his slanted perception he could see Junyul was fading as well. He had scored several cuts on her, none of which were immediately fatal, but she had been able to strike back at him as well, the air becoming invisible razors and the floor erupting into a storm of stinging grit. None of her attacks had been totally successful either.
         So here they were.
         “Why are you protecting Valreck?” he had asked her at one point, during a lull in their ferocity. “What’s the point anymore?”
         “Because in a way, I have always admired him,” was the answer she gave him, her words an iron whisper, “and he has long deserved better.” A smile had danced across her lips then, a dagger he couldn’t stop. “I might ask you the same. Why pursue this? Myth you are, you’re not immortal. All stories fade, sometimes violently.”
         “It has to be done,” was all he could have said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just let you go. Too much has happened to simply walk away and forget.”
         “Ah, I agree,” she had told him with a delicate softness that contrasted with the splash of blood that had been across her face. He had never figured out if it was his or hers. “We’re locked into our respective courses then.”
         “If you want to put it that way, then yes, I suppose we are.”
         “Such persistence,” she said now, as his memories collided with the present. “Such unflagging persistence.” She dropped down onto the balls of her feet, one hand sweeping the floor lightly. “Is that what makes you a legend, I wonder? You refuse to give up and in doing so, pass into fiction and beyond? Is that how it is done?”
         A jagged ball leapt up from the floor, all trembling shards and eager velocity. A twitch of his wrist and the tip of the sword cleaved it into two. A dark shower sprayed the air. Tristian’s eyes never departed from Junyul. “I wouldn’t know,” he said simply.
         A smile bled over his face again. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” She paused, ducking her head as if trying to catch her breath. There was a long shallow gash running from her right shoulder to the near center of her chest. He had almost run her through then. He wasn’t sure if she had stopped him or if he had stopped himself. “But I wonder if it’s possible . . . for me . . .” the air flickered near his head and he darted in the opposite direction, the sword carving the air where he had seen the anomaly. It struck nothing he could see but he heard Junyul gasp again, whatever sentence she was phrasing falling apart abruptly. She regained her composure just as he regained his feet, although he had to fight to avoid stumbling sideways.
         “For me . . .” she continued, swallowing roughly and idly running her fingers along the bruise forming on one arm, as if testing to make sure sensation still existed, “to become like you, a legend.” Tristian thought to remark of how she was off to a bad start, but held his tongue. It didn’t seem worth the sting. “After all, have I not survived much? The deaths of all my comrades in the camp, the assault by your Time Patrol cousins, a brutal attack by Ranos.” Her mouth formed a hard line, a jagged scratch on her cheek pulling it into a crooked and insincere smile. “Ranos thought he would diminish me, but all he has done is to force me to transcend.” Tristian wasn’t actually sure what she was talking about. “I’ll survive you, as well. Perhaps I’ll even kill you.” A flash went off near his head, but he ignored it. He had given her enough time to recover.
         “Doubtful,” Tristian muttered, darting forward once more, the sword leading the charge, crossing the seemingly large gap between them in only a few steps, the blade drawing a bloody line in the air, an arrow pointing right to her. Junyul saw it coming from a lifetime away, of course. She dodged to the side, a shower of dirt coming up to cloak him like a curtain. He ignored it, pushed through, swung the sword down and kicked her instead, catching her just under the armpit, sending her spinning into the wall, trapped by the corner. The side of her face smacked into the wall and she grimaced, a trail of blood running from her nose almost immediately. A hammer of force slammed into him then, sending him reeling backwards, the sword cutting at the air ineffectively, not striking any targets. Through a blur, the world as seen through melted plastic, Junyul watched him with cold eyes, one arm outstretched. Maybe she was saying something to him. It didn’t matter. He staggered backwards, was almost driven to one knee when he threw all his weight forward, slashing at the air, somehow carving his way through, letting momentum carry him toward her. Her eyes widened slightly as she watched his approach, the moments sliding together, falling into a slow motion pattern, strobe pieces dividing the seconds. She was standing now, unaided, her face haloed by the oncoming weapon. There was no fear in her stance, only absolute calm. Another feint, maybe? Her hands were shaking. So were his. Maybe for different reasons. Maybe not.
         Just as he reached her, she stepped to the side, toward him, invisible hands clutching his arm and tossing him to the floor across the room, closer to the doorway. His boots skidded on the dirty floor and he almost lost his grip on the sword, the blade skimming the surface of the ground, gouging smooth marks where it touched. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her, smiling again, waiting for him to approach, daring him to come closer. It was all frozen seconds of motion to him. He twisted, recovered, angled his kinetic energy toward her again, moving in a darting, sinuous fashion. She would not touch him this time. That wasn’t how it was going to end.
         And she didn’t. Instead, just as the blade began to rise from the ground into a striking distance, Junyul leapt into the air, moving straight up, sailing over and past him. Tristian shifted gears, tried to follow, the sword cutting up, a spray of blood falling on his face like rain, indicating that he had struck something. The stinging liquid caused him to wince, spin around clumsily. Through a crimson haze he watched her land heavily and somehow gracefully, a scar of blood marking her path like the debris from a fallen star, leading to the deep gash he had caused on her leg. Already she seemed far too pale, fading into a chalk travesty.
         Pressing one hand to her leg, blood already oozing between the cracks between her fingers, Junyul stared at him as if he had become someone entirely different than who she had originally assumed. If she had thought him a myth before, it was possible he had suddenly become all too real.
         “Your strength is not your weapon . . .” she whispered, nearly falling backwards, biting her lip in pain, “and the sword, the sword is not . . .” he took a tentative step toward her as her head dropped, waiting for her to surrender, to call this off. It had gone far enough. It had to be over.
         He had taken two steps when her head snapped up and in a clear voice, she told him, “You are the weapon, the sword is merely a tool . . .” an unpleasantly callous grin spread slowly across her face as he felt invisible hands begin to take hold of his clothing, barbs and hooks digging in. “And a tool can used by anyone . . .” he felt his feet losing purchase on the floor and part of his arm went numb, “. . . even against the wielder . . .” What was happening?
         Tristian attempted to strain forward once more time, but a counter-force opposed him with perfect pressure and with a bone-wrenching jerk he was lifted from the floor, Junyul receding as if through a tunnel, the sword’s light all but absent, his back impacting with something far too solid, allowing for a brief moment of cascading pain before all sensation left him entirely.

* * * * *

         These fleeting seconds are creatures turned to dust far too soon, drifting through your closed hand before you can even understand the feel of their grit. There is no poetry in life or death, the meter of the verses don’t fit, the rhymes are nonsense and the overall meaning is far too clear. We sift through our piles of thought and find something comprehensible and string it together and call it a man. But it’s meaning assembled after the fact, a bridge constructed by pure accident. If it was all laid out to see, it would be a ramshackle affair, held together by disintegrating conviction. The only reason we don’t kill ourselves is because death is as equally meaningless as life, and inertia has a terrible grip. When there’s nothing to look forward to, only then can the story begin.
         It comes as some surprise to Jaymes that he has not experienced a dream in some time. Not since his father died. The corpse is there, slowly devolving into its components. Prescotte is standing in the doorway, talking about digging a grave or leaving this planet entirely or maybe saying to Jaymes how he shouldn’t give up. Perhaps he’s sharing a poignant anecdote. Jaymes isn’t listening. He hasn’t been for some time. He’s currently enjoying the fact that he has managed to put several coherent thoughts together in a row without being interrupted by messages from the future. For the first time in days he can feel he’s living completely in the present. It’s a weird, unattached feeling, a tugging that’s been removed from his soul. He no longer feels that he’s being pulled forward constantly, his feet finding no purchase on a nonexistence floor. For the first time, he’s merely drifting, content to see where Time takes him.
         In the doorway, Prescotte is still talking, and probably has been doing so for some time now. “Get you back to where Tritan and Kara are, and then we can see what has to be done from there. I think it’s all over, myself, once the big guns clean up the rest we can probably get the hell out of here.” His sword is sheathed and he’s leaning against the doorway with one arm casually raised over his shoulder. Tentative sunlight wraps his form in an off-kilter glow. Jaymes gets the sense that he’s speaking to work out a strain of unease. “I think they’ll give you a choice, in the end, if you want to stay here and start again or come with us and maybe make a different kind of start.” A snort of a laugh. “Trust me, it’s not an easy choice, some days I still wonder if I did the right thing. It’s weird out there, kid, you take the most bizarre thing you can think of and multiply it a thousand times and you haven’t even started. And once you go, you can’t come back, nothing feels right afterwards, the world just feels too small and you can’t help thinking about all the things that are going on that you’re not part of, the things you can do that might make a difference, the fate of everything pivoting on just one or two actions.”
         Jaymes is sitting on the floor, but a pain in his back makes him shift into a crouch, and then into a standing position. The drifting feeling is even stronger now, a humming he can sense in his teeth, a low drone underscoring Prescotte’s words. Those aren’t important. Nothing really is. Not his dreams, not his fears, not his hopes. It’s nothing that means anything. Jaymes thinks about the futility of it all and how sometimes the road ahead just isn’t finite enough and wonders why he’s not crying right now. He should be. He has nothing to look forward to. All Prescotte’s words are lies, or at the least well intentioned falsehoods. Perhaps Prescotte is just delusional himself. He should walk over to the man and tell him that, take him by the shoulder and tell him how things really are. It might bring them closer. He’s moving closer now, his legs wisps of fog, an unknown wind driving him across the room. The pain in his back stings again and it’s the only pain he’ll ever know.
         Putting a hand there to scratch the pained spot, Jaymes is somewhat surprised to find his hand touching cool metal tucked under his shirt, the blade scratching at the back of his neck. There’s nothing to say. What’s going on? He’s walking toward Prescotte now and he’s taking out the sword like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He’s never held a sword before. It’s perfectly balanced. It feels so right in his hand. He can’t stop moving. Inertia has taken over. He never believed in destiny. He’s not dreaming now and he’s forgotten what that means. It meant something once, to stop dreaming. But he can’t remember now. His thoughts are coiled, barely recognizable as his own anymore. It doesn’t matter. Who keeps saying that? It’s not him. It never was.
         “That’s what freaks me most about life in general, I think,” Prescotte is saying. “You can’t predict where you’re going, not even years from now, hell I can’t even predict what I’m going to be doing two hours from now . . .”
         Dying. You’re going to be dying. Who said that? Who is it? He can’t stop moving. His limbs are not his own. The execution of the perfect arc of the blade is embedded in his too malleable skull.
         “. . . and really, and this probably bothers me most of all, you never know which decisions you make are going to be the ones that haunt you ten years down the line . . .”
         Please. Make him stop moving. He can’t keep going forward. Of course you are. You’re performing a very valuable service in the scheme of things. There are icicles in his brain and they’re melting and the drops are forming words and the words are sizzling with a chill he can’t describe. How often do you get a front row seat for revenge?
         “. . . because it can really drive you nuts, I mean, you can never point to one single thing that got you to a certain moment, because everything you do affects everything else you do . . .”
         The blade will bite into his neck and blood will spurt like liquid mangled fingers and he will turn and there will be surprise and there will be fear in his eyes and he will start to turn and while he’s turning the light will go out and he’ll fall and he’ll never say a word because there won’t be any time at all.
         Please make this stop. These aren’t his thoughts. Or his actions. Make it all stop.
         Oh, it will soon. Just give it a minute. Have some patience.
         “. . . so by the time you go, crap, maybe that wasn’t such a really good idea . . .”
         Maybe a wad of blood will emerge from his mouth as he tries to craft some last words. I want you to understand something. Prescotte’s death will be beautiful. It doesn’t matter to me which of you overcomes. Each death is like a season, blooming and fading out all too quickly. The sword is clutched at the perfect angle. It’s all perfect. We will wring poetry out of this ripple of a life yet. In a sense you and your father are far too dangerous to let live. The two of you have caused more than enough damage, to be honest. Two more steps and he’ll be there. How did he get there so fast? Who is talking? Why does he feel so separate? He doesn’t want to do any of this. But he can’t stop. He is not himself. Himself is not him. So really, no matter what the outcome, I win either way.
         Oh no. It’s here. The sword is moving. His arm is moving. The world hasn’t stopped rotating. Not because of one man. It never has. It never will. All comprehension is lost. He keeps trying to dream and it’s only of a room without lights. The sword makes a faint whistle as he slices through this too thin air. It will end here. Who said that? Who’s there? This isn’t him. He’s never done any of this. The sword, rushing to intersect with Prescotte’s vulnerable skin. He can’t find a place here.
         And honestly, I’m doing nothing but helping you out here. After all, you have a reputation to keep, if I’m not mistaken.
         Was that a twitch? In this slow time? For nimble rooms with galloping laughter? You might press a road, if the ghouls could give you a second. Because the sky, pierced by cloth tangents, submerged in ecstatic highlights, damn every potent tent. Mama, you creep by eloquent snakes. In this pristine reverb. By the nuggets of a desolate lake. It’s a grim splinter of forced quiet, indeed. So much for mugging the old tyrant. I’ll say. I’ll said. Death’s face might shimmer in melancholy. I’ll give you a name, if you vow to strap silent. I’ll say a name, if you’ll tear a shed, just this last time. For peace. For that. Did you see the leaves today? Longwinded colors, all. I could have laid there and died, covered in autumn. I did, in some lost time. Before my children were young. Do you recollect? I can’t find.
         Because really, you don’t need to thank me. Helping to fulfill a prophecy, that’s really it’s own reward.
         It’s the air, that fragrant collision. I’ve got this stripped down to numerous pustules. I watched the elders pick themselves up and fall last night. It’s what we always had. Do you remember? The story I unrecorded to you, long ago? About the boy? Of course you can’t. There’s too much time ahead now and barely any left to scatter. What’s that. No. No. I’ll repeat again when the seconds are sharp. Why? Because hearing deserves a head. Don’t you see? We’ll never have this moment again. Until next time. Until the loop returns. Oh. I’ll be sure to touch you then. I’ve got winter in my eye. It hurts. Sh. Not for long. I can’t believe I’ll go forever without knowing you. Sh. At least we had this. I can shiver content, depressed in ample meadows. Hush. It’s dark now. Let me spy your eyes. Shh. No talking now. Dance this fire to sleep. In monotone night I’ll step away. I’ll go now. To leave. To start. I’ll spend wishes on my hollow words. Shush. It’s enough, to do this, to be that. It’s enough, to just know. It’s all true. I see now. Why didn’t you speak it earlier? We might have found awkwardness to skip the days. But I’ve got a touch of truth still in me. It’s fading fast. Catch it, as it goes. Or let it go. I care not. I’m finished. To the river it speeds. I’ll stay here, for you. Sh. I know. I know. It was never supposed to. But I see now, I swear. I see now. And I’m so happy.
         Why am I so
                             damn
                                       happy
                                       ah
                                       ah
                                       I see-

* * * * *

         Before her the alien stirs and she puts out a hand to calm it and keep it down but how do you relate to something that has nothing in common with you and does not think the same or breathe the same but if that was all it took to make us alien the world would be a closer place
         but before her the alien rises up and it rises and it tries to stand but she won’t let it and so through vocal cords financed through an evolution she can’t conceive it screams out a word that comes from no alphabet and threatens to rupture her eardrums sideways because there’s nothing there her brain can process but she has stop she has to grab him and force him down before he hurts before he
         and then he speaks another word that she knows instantly and smells in the rubber pressure of the air and it sounds so strange coming from his ridged tongue because if that’s emotion she can’t find it but it must be that’s all we have in common in the end that’s all we have for each other
         except the alien never says this, just one word, just one single simple word
         “Prescotte!”
         the alien yells and it strikes her in the front of her brain like a hammer.

* * * * *

         “What? Did you say-“ Prescotte muttered, looking briefly confused as he turned back toward the inside of the house, noting the patchwork flickering of shadows in the corner of his eye, light glinting off something that shouldn’t have been there.
         He saw the sword a second later, and he knew something wasn’t right.
         “Hey, what . . . ah!” he yelled, throwing himself to the side, slamming into the wall, his hand frantically reaching behind him to clutch at the sword strapped to his back, trying to race the blade reaching for his throat. With all his attention focused on the weapon, he could barely see his attacker, wrapped in sheets of velvet. But he knew, even without confirmation. He pressed against the wall, desperately, letting out a sharp hiss of breath as the point just scratched the soft skin of his neck, drawing a thin burning line. He batted the blade down with his forearm, but it was already returning, seeking him, moving too fast, a quicksilver spear aimed for his heart.
         Prescotte barely remembered acting. It was all instinct. Somehow his sword was drawn and he parried the other blade aside with far more force than necessary, nearly sending it thudding into the wall, the racket of the metal on metal clang causing him to wince. The second’s respite gave him a chance to step away from the world, take better stock of his situation and figure out what the hell to do.
         “What’s this, kid?” he asked, not sure why the hell he felt so damn afraid. “What the hell is this, huh?”
         Jaymes said nothing, just smiled and swung again.
         “What are you doing?” Prescotte demanded, parrying the blade again, listening to the grind of metal on metal as Jaymes pressed forward, the two blades scraping against each other, forcing Prescotte back further. “What the hell is wrong with you? Stop it, okay. It’s not-“
         Jaymes suddenly leaned in, his sword sliding off Prescotte’s and going straight for his chest. Prescotte yelled and moved to the side, swatting the blade down. “Stop this,” he panted, a heavy feeling residing suddenly in his stomach. Sweat dripped into the fresh cut on his neck, causing it to burn further. “Don’t do this. Don’t.” Jaymes was just swinging wildly now, the constant battering jarring Prescotte’s arm, the resulting cacophony drowning out his thoughts. He never took his eyes off Prescotte. “Dammit, stop looking at me like that . . . just . . .” the sword nearly struck his hand and Prescotte was saved from a severed limb by a quick dodge to the side, nearly tripping over himself in his haste. “. . . Lord, just stop this, and say something, all right, just-“
         But Jaymes dove forward again, the two swords colliding and sliding along each other again, the high pitched whine the scream of jilted lovers. This time, Prescotte didn’t back down, but pressed forward, until the blade was inches from his face, until he could stare Jaymes right in the face.
         “What are you doing?” he hissed, straining to maintain his ground. Jaymes said nothing, no clues lingered behind his eyes. Prescotte desperately wished he say something, shout an explanation, curse him or anything. “Stop staring at me and just tell me.”
         No response came, Jaymes didn’t even blink. The two of them held their positions for a few seconds longer before Prescotte suddenly jerked backwards a half-step, slid the sword downwards, flicked his wrist just as it reached Jaymes’ hand. “It’s over,” he said, as he watched the sword fly end over end out the doorway in a lazy arc. “You can stop now, it’s-“
         Without hesitation, Jaymes lunged toward him, arms outstretched.
         “Ah!” Prescotte yelled, fear causing him to hit the wall as he thrust his arms out before him in a panicked effort to keep Jaymes away. An instant later, the sword was wrenched from his grasp. In the end, he never knew if Jaymes had run into him, or he had done the deed himself.
         “Ah, oh Lord, ah damn . . .” he breathed, trying to swallow around the hard knot in his throat, trying to understand what had happened, what he was seeing.
         “Why did you do it?” he asked Jaymes, his eyes wide as he stared at the boy, the sword now jutting grotesquely from his chest, blood around pooling around the wound, leaking down his clothing in dark trails. The boy never said a word as he swayed and staggered backwards, never even coughed. “Tell me,” Prescotte said, more insistently, moving toward Jaymes before deciding against it and stopping. It was too late. There was nothing more he could do. “Dammit, just tell me why you did it. I said I wouldn’t kill you. I said.” The eyes never blinked, never wavered. There was blood running down his chin now, beginning to coat his neck. There was a tightness in Prescotte’s chest that couldn’t be real. “Just . . . just say something, don’t keep . . . just say something!” Prescotte said, his voice rising.
         Silently, Jaymes took another shallow step backwards and tumbled into a near sitting position. He made no move toward the sword in his chest. His gaze never left Prescotte. Prescotte couldn’t look away either. “I told you . . . at least stop looking . . . stop looking at me like that!” Prescotte finally screamed, as if the sheer force of his words might do that violence had failed to accomplish. “Lord, I mean it, stop!” and his throat was raw and scratched. “Look at you. I said to you I wouldn’t.”
         Finally, he added in a quieter tone once more, “Stop, please,” just as Jaymes fell backwards with a slow lumbering grace, landing face-up on the hard floor. His chest heaved once, twice and then ceased to move entirely. Jaymes’ eyes were still wide open now, but if they saw anything, it wasn’t in the room.
         Prescotte stared at the motionless boy for maybe half a minute, beginning to put a hand to his face to wipe off a coating of sweat that had developed there. His hand was shaking so badly he stopped before he reached his face. “Oh Lord,” he whispered, trying to think of a prayer that would help speed a soul to its final rest and finding that he couldn’t.
         “Dammit,” he murmured, his face gone utterly pale. “It’s okay,” he told himself, taking a deep, shuddering breath, trying to ignore the rattling in his chest. He put a hand to his neck and stared at the blood that was smeared onto his hands. “It’s okay,” he said again and something made him stare past his fingers and at Jaymes’ still body. “It’s . . .” he began once more, but stopped himself, turning without comment and almost falling out the door and into the outside, leaving the dead in his wake.
         A minute later, he was violently sick.
         Part of him welcomed it.

* * * * *

         “The plan was surprisingly easy to put together, considering what we were attempting to accomplish,” Maleth says in her wasted croak of a voice, seeming to emanate from the shadowed walls themselves. The light Valreck created has dimmed, he’s tired, with no strength to maintain such luxuries anymore. The wound in his side has begun to hurt again, spiderlegs of pain spreading up into his chest. It’s too cold in here, he can barely feel his hands. “All of us fell easily into our roles. I’m sure you can put most of it together now, if you can spare the willpower.”
         “Junyul teleported his body out,” Valreck tells her, not sure if he’s even saying this outloud. Maleth gives no indication that she hears him. Is this a good death, for either of them? Preferable to the alternative, perhaps. But didn’t the alternative used to be life? He’s not so certain. “Tolin killed him, although I’m . . . waiting for you to tell me the . . . why. I imagine there’s . . . quite a bit more, I’m . . . missing.”
         “Not too much. We didn’t strive for anything complex.” There’s satisfied pride in her words and he could kill her right now for that. But how could she be otherwise? Killing his friend helped them live, it got them here. But they’re dying now. He can’t seem to reconcile the extremes anymore. “I entered Kilun myself, to make sure he stayed in place, to ensure he didn’t call out for help.”
         “Then you had an excellent view of his . . . demise,” Valreck says, somewhat pleased to find some bitterness in his words. At least he can still feel that much. At least he still has that much in him. “But you still haven’t explained how . . .”
         “Ah, yes, Tolin,” Maleth says, as if he has just reminded her. It occurs to him that breathing has become more of a conscious action in the last few minutes, and he stops actively trying, he’ll cease completely. “It was his hands that did the deed . . .”
         “Rathas,” Valreck suddenly spits, the final piece falling into place far too late, ashamed at himself that it took this long. “He controlled Tolin while he did the killing so any memories . . .” he can’t finish the sentence. So many layers. Then went through all this effort. The will to live was a fiendish thing indeed, if this was the result.
         “Yes,” Maleth hisses in return, with a queer sort of glee. “Tolin was used for outward . . . appearances . . . and then, the two of us made certain changes to his memories, implanted a desire to never say anything . . . about it.” A curious grinding rasp emerges from her body then and it takes Valreck a second to realize that she’s laughing. Dammit. If only he was stronger. “A delicate affair it was . . . . and it may have had consequences beyond what we intended . . . I don’t believe he was ever the same afterwards. Tell me, did he . . . ever truly have a wife?”
         “I don’t remember,” Valreck mutters, only half-listening to the question. Everything, it’s all been an elaborate charade. What he had once hoped was a gathering of people who shared the same ideals and didn’t wish to see those ideals perish had instead turned out to be a conspiracy of murder, with him as the target. He had been used, but so had Tolin and Junyul, in a sense. They all had used each other, but the end result had been the same. Had it been worth it? “He’s dead, it doesn’t matter anymore.” It was the perhaps the truest words that he had spoken all day. His chest was so tight now, he felt almost paralyzed, his muscles leaking out through his pores, leaving him with nothing. This death was too slow. But he couldn’t let go. If one aspect of himself was always true, it was that. His grip was not relinquished so easily. “Then, Rathas, what of him?”
         That grinding laugh comes again, interrupted mercifully by a spate of violent coughing. “The runt . . . makes out the best of all . . .” she says with poisonous amusement, “he’s maneuvered us to this point, to this end.” For the first time, he truly realizes that neither of them will leave this room alive. His vision fragments and threatens to disintegrate entirely. It this fair? He doesn’t know. “Of all of us, he . . . the only way to keep him in line was what I knew, of his complicity, that I might tell you . . .”
         “But that doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” Valreck remarks and he’s sure he doesn’t want to die with that phrase on his lips. “What did he want, that it came to this?” He doesn’t really want to know. What could be worth it?
         “What else?” she tells him, as if it’s too simple. “Escape.”
         “Ah,” is all he says, and there’s a horrible taste in his mouth, of maggots and decaying leaves, like he’s already buried in a sunken corner of the forest, with only scavengers and bacteria to pick at his bones. His vision narrows to a near point and it truly has become almost impossible to breath. “Ah . . .” he says again, thinking that this can’t be it. But some moment had to be. But it doesn’t feel right. Death should feel natural, like stepping through a door. This isn’t right at all. He’s not dying.
         He’s being pushed.
         From the bottom of a pitiless vacuum, Maleth’s voice slithers to him. “I am dying, Valreck. This house was mine, I invested all of myself into it, have not left it since we arrived here. Ranos reached in deep, tore of the soul of this place out, tossed it somewhere far away. You have no idea. You have no idea what it was like. But Ranos did. Ranos knew exactly what. It was like tearing out my nerves.” Is he hearing this right? Is this right? There’s no sense in his world anymore. “Since then I’ve been bleeding, and there’s hardly anything left. Everyone is leaving me. Tolin is dead and Ranos didn’t even care enough to finish what he started. Even the soldier has gone now. It’s just me here, and I’m fading. Ranos killed me and Rathas killed me and in a way you did as well.” Woman, is it not enough to simply let me go? “And while I cannot do anything about the first two, I can kill you.” He’s gasping now, all he can think about is trying to find the next slice of precious air. Something causes him to lurch forward, nearly falling onto his face. He can see the bed now, so far away, so huge, with a desiccated form lying on top of it, taunting him through distance, through inaccessibility. If only he can reach her. If only. “So relax and let an old woman have her last wish granted, Valreck. I want to die with the taste of revenge fulfilled. I do not think that is a bad goal to have.” All sound is fading. All sensation is evaporating. She’s in his mind like a worm, she always had been, burrowing her way to the center, rotting everything she touches. There’s no stopping her now. There’s no victory left to claim.
         no
         no!
         and it’s a short spiral down and he’s going down, trying to cough, to expel air but he needs it, his lungs are screaming, he’s starving and her voice Maleth her voice I’ll I have to I’ll
         with no energy left and no ability he can find he has to find with invisible hands he has to grab it’s cold it’s so cold in here but you’ve got the hilt oh Valreck it’s so obvious to you now isn’t it she gave you the final key
         I can’t thank her, there’s no words inside anymore, just grab it you don’t have hands not with the mind everyone is saying they always told me how much it would matter in these lasts blurs of gibberish I’ve got the sword and it’s cutting I’ve got all the weapon I need
         let it fly, Valreck
         let it go
         like a quicksilver dart it goes, it sails and he can’t watch it anymore because the world is so beautiful now the wooden floor with its dust and its ancient stories he’s got it all seeping into his cheek now and he barely hears the impact or her stifled gurgle
         because no matter no matter how much violence we’ve all we have in this life is hurt it’s what brings us here, the fear of it and the thrill of it drives us on to do these wonderful and terrible things that only we know how to do but it has to be worth it or the people we hurt won’t go on and we won’t go on and maybe I see now in this desolate stagnation I understand now that every second can be hoarded or snagged it has to be allowed to flow and when it ends it has to end and it’s not fair and it’s not right but nothing else is I have to see that now I can’t see the light is pouring out of me and there’s nothing left inside and all of you were right you don’t have to say anything just step aside and clear the way
         just step to one side
         I’m coming through
         no, no not you you can stay
         just tell me your name because it’s been so long I can’t
         oh
         oh yes
         and on these desert sands which maybe we never left because time time is a funny thing and even when we’re moving forward maybe we really aren’t moving at all and the two of us are here and there and I’m not where I’m supposed to be anymore and I’m staring and it’s been so long oh I thought I’d never see you again oh you don’t understand I never thought
         I never
         I
         can’t say anything
         just let me
         I
         I always wanted to yes
         I
         I love you
         I love you K-

* * * * *

         His feet weren’t touching the floor. The wall was at his back and there was a sick feeling in his stomach that he was constantly in danger of falling. His arms were outstretched perpendicular to his body and there was a harsh red glow he could see out of the corner of his eye on his left.
         Junyul was talking below him, in the center of the room, her features darkened by the absence of light, the weak glow of the doorway framing her from his perspective. She was crouching now, unsteadily, one arm dangling uselessly, one leg folded under her. Her eyes were collapsed stars in the dimness. He couldn’t move at all.
         “I cannot . . . affect you directly,” she said, but maybe it was something he was just remembering. Right then he felt a strange tugging in his left arm, a motion moving against his muscles. “I cannot hurt you with anything of mine . . .” He bit back a scream as his elbow suddenly bent, his arm shaking from the effort, the joint protesting with a silent howl. The glow became abruptly brighter and he knew then what Junyul had planned. Gritting his teeth, he strained, trying to pull his arm back. His feet kicked, searching for solid ground, any kind of purchase, anything to give him leverage, but it didn’t exist, it just wasn’t there.
         “But your weapon, it cuts through . . . anything,” Junyul told him and there was no enjoyment on her face, just an intent somberness. Through his peripheral vision, he saw it then, the steadily shining tip of the blade, trembling violently as it strived to reach him, strived to close the gap between it and him. He grunted, almost dislocated his shoulder, but it didn’t matter. Something less than courage kept him from looking away.
         “And it will cut, right to the heart of you . . .” she said then, as the blade lunged closer another precious half-inch and he knew with a sick realization that this was a tug of war he was going to lose and there was absolutely nothing he could do.

* * * * *

         Tritan had already calmed down and regained his equilibrium, shakily getting to his feet when Kara suddenly gasped and dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around her stomach and breathing very rapidly, almost hyperventilating, doubled in an invisible agony.
         “Dad!” she yelled, shaking her head back and forth quickly, pressing both hands to her forehead, her breathing coming in hiccuping bursts.
         “Kara . . . what is it . . . what is . . .” Tritan said, leaning down to help her, his weakness almost causing him to fall, his recovery not yet complete.
         “Tritan, my father’s in trouble,” Kara said, her words blurring together, slurring into an knife’s edge just this side of pure panic. She squeezed her eyes shut and added in a choked howl of a voice, “My father, oh my God he’s-“

* * * * *

         The sword was so close now, the blade was hovering a scant inch from his chest. All his attention was focused on it, his arm was screaming with the pain as he tried to keep the weapon away, tried to fight the iron grip on his arm.
         His gaze met Junyul’s then and the strain was evident on the woman’s face as well. But there was a cold resolve to her expression, a smoldering willpower in her sunken eyes. One hand was clenched tightly into a fist and with an absurd sense of detail he thought he could see tracks of blood leaking out from her between her fingers.
         Junyul gasped, went rigid.
         The tip of the sword touched his chest, just the barest brush.
         Tristian hissed and bit his lip hard enough to send the taste of copper flooding the inside of his mouth. He redoubled his efforts to resist but the sword crept in another fraction of an inch. Ah. Oh God. Oh my God. It was parting his skin like melted butter, it was hot and cold and no sensation at all. Oh God. He was liquid underneath, no barrier at all. He tried to slow his heartbeat but it was no use, he could barely breathe. It thudded wildly in his chest, as if anticipating the touch. Oh God. Was this what it felt like? Was this what he did to people? The crimson glow was his world and it seared him without wounds, without flames and without respite.
         Something made him look at Junyul again and maybe it was the light or maybe it was his near delirium but he swore he saw a placid smile caress her face. And why not? She had won. She had-
         The smile was still there on her face when a flash fixated the room, capturing it like an old photograph.
         In strange strobe time he saw her features flicker and waver, a brief surreal underwater effect. Maybe it took only a second. Maybe it was longer. A moment cannot be measured.
         It ended when her expression burst outward, dissolving into a cloud of blood and bone and brains, most of it striking the wall under his feet with a soft splatter, the rest leaving a trail of indecipherable runes. The unrecognizable mass that was once her face seemed to stare at him with one remaining distorted eye for another few seconds without comment.
         Then, in slowtime, her shoulders slumped, her body relaxed and then fell forward, hitting the floor with a wet thud.
         In the midst of this, Tristian was released from the hold with a suddeness that almost caused him to stab himself. Taken by surprise, he landed badly, twisting his ankle, nearly wrenching his knee, letting go of the sword in the process. He watched it roll away, finally coming to a rest a few feet from him, the blade of the sword pointing directly at Junyul. He made no move toward it.
         A scuffling noise across the room forced him to look beyond her body.
         Hands visibly shaking, both tightly clutching the laser, one end of it still glowing, Brown leaned heavily on the doorframe and stared at Junyul with a veiled, grim expression, his skin seemingly stretched too tightly, his face utterly pale.
         “Told you . . .” he said softly, accusingly, “. . . I told you they’d grow back.”

* * * * *

         Kara gasped again, turned her face away sharply, the motion of someone trying to avoid a blow they know is coming but can’t avoid.
         “Kara, what is happening-“ Tritan said to her, reaching out again.
         Both her hands gripped his forearm, stopping him. “He’s okay,” she said, with visible relief, though with a lingering sense of disquiet in her pale expression. “My father’s okay. He’s all right.”
         “I am glad to hear that,” the Slashtir said formally, gently prying Kara’s hands off his arm. “Perhaps now this grim affair will be completed.”
         “I hope so,” Kara replied, using her fingers to push wayward strands of air away from her face. “I want to get out of here and just pretend that none of this ever-“
         Kara!
         “I . . .” and she paused, wincing as the voice reverberated painfully in her head. But annoyed curiosity soon gave way to recognition as she identified the tone and its source.
         “Ranos?” she asked, although he was nowhere in sight.

* * * * *

         Long, graceful fingers gently pressed against the cold neck of the man on the floor, seeking life. There was none to be found, of course, but something made him check anyway.
         Standing up, the man regarded the still corpse on the floor, its face turned away and its expression hidden from him, except for the eyes which were wide open and vacant. The man regarded them for another second before bending down and with an odd tenderness ran his fingers over those eyes, closing them forever, giving the face some semblance of peace.
         Straightening up for a second time, he turned his attention to the grand, old bed that took up most of the room. An ancient woman lay on top of it, her head thrown back, her features almost mummified, her lipless and seemingly toothless mouth stretched agape in a near total expression of terror. Her hands were at her sides, bent into bony claws, the skin taut and rigid.
         A knife lay buried deep in her throat. If the man had any thoughts while he stared at it, he kept them to himself. No visible emotion crossed his dispassionate face.
         A second later, he turned away, burying his hands within the pockets of his robes, and stood unmoving for a few moments. He took a deep breath and let it out evenly, easily, his gaze steady on nothing.
         “Kara . . .” Ranos said in a near inaudible murmur, his words meant for somewhere beyond the air, “. . . tell your father. It’s over.”