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And his heart ached to finish it

‘You’re tired, Grandfather,’ he said

And the spirit’s eyes ide He did not stop fighting; the ferocity behind his blows only increased, his roar took on a new savage desperation

‘No, Gariath,’ he snarled ‘I a as I have to I can’t let you throw everything away I can’t let you end up like--’

‘Go to sleep, Grandfather’

Blood leaked froht

When he opened the remained on the earth beneath him but spatters of his own blood

He claony Rather, his hed and his flesh complained Cries were for proud battles, wounds that had earned the right to scream out This was not such a battle

He carried his bleeding and battered body away to recover He wasn’t sure where the Shen ca to reach it The Shen were strong, after all They were Shen

And he was Rhega

So were those who lay in the lake behind hih That brief spark of life that had surged through them had died, and the world had died with it The as still The earth was quiet The waters were calain, as though it had never left Gariath tried to listen to it, his distaste for it gone It was preferable, he thought, for if he stopped long enough, if he let his ear-frills adjust to the silence, he could hear a single, solitary voice, not yet dead, far from alive

It drew in a quiet breath There was no breeze for its quiet sigh to be lost on

He tried to ignore it

There was ice

Everywhere in the cavern, Lenk stared back at himself, his face distorted by the crystalline rih holes in the ceiling reflected upon its surface At the aze a dozen tilances With each step deeper, the rime solidified, became cloudy and thick

His face becaated, flattened, crushed, reduced to a pink blob, shattered into a dozen jagged creases And through each mutation, each abo as they stared back at him

As he continued down into the cavern, the ice became thicker, cloudier He shivered It was not the callous, emotionless cold that chilled him Rather, the ice was heavier with more than just water, cloudier with more than just white

Hatred

It radiated off the cavern walls, a cold heavy with anger, crueller than any chill had a right to be, seeping through his flesh, into his bones and clawing at hiernails from the marrow out He felt it now, but while it was painful, it was not new He had known this cold before He had felt this hatred before

‘This can’t be right,’ he whispered, fearful of raising his voice that the ice‘There can’t be ice in this part of the world’

‘There is’

‘It can’t be natural’

‘You forsook the ability to deny the unnatural long, long ago’

He said nothing, staring deeper into the cavern’s ried, shifting frolow of … so else entirely He stared down it He did not want to do more than that

‘Go,’ the voice responded to his hesitation

‘I don’t think I want to’

‘Going back is not an option’

‘It could be,’ Lenk said

‘They betrayed you’

‘It’s hardly the first ti she said was rabbit meat and offered hed, of course, but it’s hard to feel bad when so to trick you into eating it, too’

‘Stop it’

‘What?’

‘Stop trying to justify it Stop trying to excuse it Stop denying what is apparent’

‘What’s that?’

‘And stop pretending you don’t know I speak froht less of you’

‘That’s not entirely true’

‘You brought the You never asked for any of them They came to you’

‘Yes, but--’

‘They used you You brought theht them reason The moment they had those, the moment you required aid, they abandoned you They betrayed you They betrayed us That cannot happen Not again’

‘Not again? What do you mean?’

‘Go into the cave’

‘I don’t know if--’

‘GO’

The co into his legs of a volition beyond his own In resisting it, he was sent to his knees, then to his hands as his body rebelled against him, torn between his will and another

‘Resist now I know you must, because I know you You will always resist, at first This is your strength When you come to accept it, when you eer for it’

He had no response, for he had no voice His throat swelled up, was sealed as if by a hand of ice that gripped his neck and squeezed tightly He gasped in breath, the cold cutting his lungs like knives He felt his body go numb, so nuainst the cavern’s floor

It was not a darkness that overtook hiht He did not fall, but he could feel hiht He went deaf to the world

Senses returned to hih

Through ears not his own, he heard the with frost, cold with hatred They ca in words that he had heard before, in the stream and outside the cavern

‘… unnatural The whole lot of them Look at their eyes They look at you and all they see is an obstacle They’d kill you, given half a chance Who cares if we’re on the saht for? Not ours, I can tell you …’

‘… this to What of it? The blasphee They would aid and abet the Aeons even as they ainst the Traitors of Heaven Whose side are they on? Can’t trust them, can’t trust them at all …’

‘… see what they did to the priest? All he was did was dedicate the battle to the Gods And they killed him They didn’t just kill him They did to him what they did to the de that way …’