Section 3

         ah
         His shoulder jolted as his fingers clipped onto something solid, his entire body trying to mindlessly follow the tolitarian rule of gravity and march right down into oblivion. Only his hand kept that from happening. Tristian thought that he felt his joint nearly slip out of place. It didn't really hurt now, just a tingling numbness but he was sure that if he lived through this he'd be nursing a swollen and painful shoulder later.
         Later. If he lived. That was right, focus on the future. It gives you something to look forward to.
         Experimentally he kicked his legs out, trying to find some purchase so that he could heave himself back up. His efforts touched nothing. A brisk but not chilled wind caressed his face, and the smell of salt tinged his nostrils. That couldn't be right. Distantly he thought he heard the sound of lapping waves. Just like it had been back at Legoflas, sitting on the platforms and hearing the gently churning water a thousand feet below. Sometimes, when life became blurred in the midst of a crisis and nothing ever stopped moving, those were the only peaceful moments he could remember. Just him and the water and the world.
         If he could go back and just relive those moments for the rest of his days, part of him would do it in a second. But the rest of him would realize that when you had the power to help people, staying stationary wasn't an option. Because there are things in the world that exist to hurt and kill and cause pain and they never stop moving. And neither can you. If you want to look yourself in the eye and claim you made a difference, immobility is out of the question. Tristian knew that and some days he didn't enjoy it but he accepted it all the same.
         With time stretching out to a sloth infested infinity, all those thoughts rushed into his head just as his arm registered lancing streaks of pain. Tristian swung for a moment in total darkness before realizing that the darkness was only because he had closed his eyes.
         So he opened them, feeling a tad foolish.
         All he saw was the stars.
         It was night out, and the stars were wheeling their casual dance across the elegant ballroom floor of the sky. It hadn't been night out before, and he hadn't sensed any change in time.
         Bits of sand blew over him and he looked up to see a hole torn in the air, the edges of it flickering at a rate that made his eyes hurt if he stared at it for too long. Because it shouldn't be there, it was a contradiction of reality. Holes shouldn't exist. Teleporting only involves moving energy, forming holes requires taking your fist and smashing it through the plate glass membrance of reality for no other reason than because you don't care about the consequences. Through the hole was the land they had just left, the sun blazing down on him while grains of desert debris rolled down and past him.
         And Tristian was hanging onto the edge. He could barely see his hand for all the distortion there. The surprise nearly made him let go and he felt the stabbing fear that he might be losing his hand if he kept it there too long. But his hand felt just fine, unless that was an illusion too. He tried not to think about it, because the other alternatives weren't any better, as it turned out.
         The ocean air odor from before wasn't a fluke or his senses steering him wrong. It really was there, below him was nothing but ocean, foaming waves crawling over and on top of each other in an attempt to get a good look at the newcomer. Probably didn't get many visitors. Tristian looked to the left and right but he couldn't see land in any direction, only the gradual darkening of the falling horizon. And his arm was being infused with a slow burning as his muscles and fingers strained to maintain their hold on the hole, which the cheerfully rational part of his mind informed him could probably close at any moment, leaving him the choice of falling with his hand intact or slicing off some fingers and still plummeting anyway.
         He was fairly sure that he wouldn't have much time to decide. Fortunately events conspired to help make the decision easier. A noise not unlike that of cloth tearing violently sounded to his right and he craned his head to see reality parting again, the sun from the desert world shining through brightly.
         And then he saw a pair of booted feet, followed by the hem of a robe. Followed by the man inhabiting such clothing, still caught in the same rigid position from before, not even struggling as he fell through the hole at the proper rate. With a growing sense of horror, Tristian watched his partner plunge from the hole, falling perfectly straight, much as a diver would, a second later slicing into the water, leaving barely a ripple before sinking out of sight.
         Ranos! he shouted in his head, not caring if anyone else was listening in. No answer. Either the fall had rendered him unconscious or he had worse things to worry about. Like . . . oh no. Like learning how to swim. For a man raised in a desert environment, getting time to practice that skill was probably unlikely. Even if he wasn't paralyzed anymore
         Casting one last glance at the world they had just left, Tristian took a deep breath, tried not to think about what he was doing amd let go of the hole. A mad fear coursed through him as he spent a second in free fall, but he turned his body so that he was facing the water, sheathing the sword and replacing it at his belt as he fell. The water rushed up to embrace him, Tristian merely bit his lip and waited for impact.
         It came shortly after, the water slamming into his body with enough force to add to the numerous bruises that were no doubt lining up for appear on his skin already, splitting as he parted the surface, plunging down as bubbles exploded all around him. He turned, leaving waves in his wake, his eyes scouring the dark waters to try and find Ranos.
         There. The dim shape floating limply had to be Ranos, Tristian didn't even see anything else living down here. No doubt the Hierophant had killed everything here as well. But why bring them into the middle of the ocean, it wasn't like water was very conducive to the existence of fire. Which meant he knew something they didn't. Which made Tristian more than a little nervous, but it wasn't something he could waste time with. Pointing his body toward Ranos, he made his way to his partner, swimming with strong, broad strokes, cutting through the water as fast as the increased drag and his suddenly soggy clothes would let him. Each second he moved, he felt the nagging urge that something was watching him, that any moment fire would come lashing down from the skies, seeking them out and making the Hierophant's pronouncements come true.
         Immediately when he reached Ranos he slipped his arms around the man and started to head for the surface, pushing up with all his energy, hoping that he hadn't confused his directions and the pale light about ten feet above him wasn't ten feet farther into the ocean. His lungs were already starting to beg for air, but he was intent on holding his breath until he absolutely couldn't anymore. Ranos was oddly light but that could been the gravity warping effects of the buoyant water, in this strange, cold desert, Tristian felt that any second he might come upon an abandoned city, spires rising for a sky that much farther away now, fleshless bodies plump and water logged in this airless, endless night. Everything felt foreign, they were visitors to a strange world within a world that wouldn't remember not care about their passage through.
         The load in his arms stirred just a little even as Tristian made the final push for the surface, breaking through, opening his lungs to the sweet air at the same time, shaking out wet hair that kept sticking to his face, feeling rivers running cold tracks down his body. But they were still alive. For the moment, Tristian reveled in that, as the night chilled his face even as the water tried to sap his heat. They were alive. That was all that mattered.
         Ranos coughed violently, water seeping from his mouth as he opened his eyes. Those same eyes widened a little as their current surroundings registered in his head, a second later narrowing as he twisted to regard Tristian, slipping from his grasp and treading water, his arms floating on the same plane as the ocean, perpendicular to his body.
         Tristian somehow found the energy to flash a reckless grin. "You're welcome," he told his partner solemnly.
         Ranos only snorted, causing water to trickle down his chin. "Once I had regained my senses, I would have been able to breath down there until I could figure something else out. The danger was never especially great."
         "That's good to know," Tristian replied, "but how about we not put off that swimming lesson next time we get the chance. You know . . . just in case."
         Ranos allowed himself a brief smile. "Agreed." The smile abruptly vanished, and the man arched his neck to stare around at the featureless night. "We've shifted planets again," he stated after a second. "The stars are changed. But not by much, so we must be nearby."
         "Probably on the other world we saw," Tristian said, floating back a little, trying to keep the feeling circulating in his legs and lower body, knowing that staying ready was the key to surviving this. Any lag in the response of his reflexes could prove fatal the way things had been going so far.
         "Probably," Ranos responded, his voice sounding distracted. His eyes half closed in concentration. "He's still nearby," he told Tristian after a second, his voice neutral. Ranos wanted to finish this as much as he did, Tristian realized.
         Tristian sighed, curling up slightly in the water to converse heat as he did so. "You know," he said, glancing at Ranos, "every time you say that we nearly get killed. Maybe he just waits for you to say that."
         "He's going to attack again," Ranos breathed, indirectly proving Tristian correct, as much as the man hated being deemed right in this case. "He's letting me into his mind, there aren't any barriers, the extent, by all the . . . I never realized what he was capable . . ." Ranos suddenly stopped talking and gasped, his hand reaching out and clutching Tristian's shoulder. The sudden pressure was uncomfortable and Tristian was about to ask Ranos what the problem was when the man brutally shoved him right under the water.
         Tristian barely had a chance to suck in air before his head went down into the ocean and even so some water flowed into his mouth, which he couldn't spit out so it had to tumble around in there while he tried to figure out what had just happened. Even as he was scrambling for an explanation, Ranos' body twisted and plunged under the water with him, the man's hands pushing him farther down.
         What is it? Tristian asked. What is going-
         Snarling light flooded the water, spotlights turning on the day.
         A rippled image of a fireball appeared above the water, right where their heads had just been, growing larger with every second. Tristian could already feel the ambient temperature of the water starting to rise, which wasn't completely unpleasant but the knowledge of what was about to hit them ruined any tentative enjoyment he might get out of the changing situation.
         This is the way he killed everything here, Ranos' oddly breathless voice sounded. Tristian wondered how you could be out of breath when you didn't use air to speak. A question for another day. They thought they were all safe underneath the water, they thought that his fire abilities couldn't reach this far. That water canceled out fire.
         A sun was falling out of the sky toward them.
         They were wrong, Ranos told his partner, kicking his feet clumsily, sodden robes becoming entangled constantly and trying to get deeper into the water. He let me see it in his mind, Tristian, he's got it all figured out, he realized that the basic elements don't oppose each other, it was all a myth-
         A falling star kissed the water.
         Tristian grabbed Ranos and with a show of strength that amazed him, yanked the other man away from the thick friction of the water, nearly flinging him, pain tearing at his arms and at his chest as he did so.
         The fireball entered the water. Furious bubbles obscured his view of it but he could feel the heat radiating down, the surface seemed to be vomiting a large glowing ball toward them, reverse regurgitation. It all comes back down. This was the mistake Ranos had been talking about. Water doesn't cancel fire out, that's not how it goes at all.
         Above their heads, the fireball carved a road of steam toward them. The water became almost painfully hot. The water didn't slow its progress at all. That's what happens. That must have been what did them all in. Because they never realized. They never realized that when you go to sterilize something, you go and boil some water. Grade school stuff. But the scale never occured to them. And so they died. Just like Tristian and Ranos were about to do, when either the fireball hit or the raging steam scalded them into a tattered mass of bone and ragged flesh.          All his motions were far too slow, watery hands kept trying to hold him back, the effortless grace of his land actions were nothing more than gymnastics done in high gravity, every changed position an effort taxing his sagging energies. There was nowhere to go, the flaming sphere was barely diminished in size as it came raging down on them. The only sounds were the sizzling of the dying water being changed into gas and sailing into the sky on wisps of heated air. Tristian dove farther down but how much farther could he go before he wouldn't be able to get back up to refresh his lungs. The wake was growing larger every second, and his skin was prickling all over with painful burning sensations. The light was filling his eyes. It was filling his eyes and blotting out the world.
         Tristian. Brace yourself.
         Somehow managing to turn in this endless burning pressure of night, Tristian saw Ranos facing him, his eyes shimmering like a cat's in the morbidly bland light. Giggling streams of heated water sliced past him, but he barely them a glance. His lips almost seemed to be moving like he was trying to say something but nobody could talk underwater. That was impossible, their ears weren't configured right. But there seemed to be an ongoing roaring reaching his hearing, the plowing of everything into nothing. Altered states. Liquid turns to gas. Natural processes perverted into a sick agenda. This is how he killed everyone, Tristian for some reason couldn't stop thinking about that. But he didn't want his last thoughts to be about such things, he wanted to focus on hope and the fact that if he was alive there was still hope.
         He turned to stare right into the oncoming fireball, with its withering wall of screaming liquid transformed in its passage. For the first time, daylight visited the dark.
         Steam rushed at his eyes even as the light bent his eyelids closed and he twisted, one last attempt to get out of the way of a train wreck the size of the world.
         In all the excitement, he forgot about Ranos' warning.
         shift
         Space wrenched him, as the air popped around his body. He distantly sensed a vacuum and water rushing to fill a gap even as all his senses dove into a giant well for the briefest of seconds, giving him nothing to hold onto, sight and sound scrambling for some sanity to hold onto, thin lines of red and white torn down his nonvision, taking the unexplainable and reformatting it to make sense to his battered mind. A band kept playing the same note over and over again, ultrasonic jamming carrying the slack even as the beat fights back against their mundane advances. Light bent gravity, instead of the other way around. Mass ceased to have meaning, caught in the limits of relativity, physics became a game of multiple choice.
         In the eternity of nothingness, his mind screamed.
         And with a wrenching jolt, he was back again.
         His eyes were open but he saw nothing for a few seconds, just blended colors, his head whirling with contradictory sensations still, the residue of the teleport still clinging to him like dirty lint. God, he hated teleporting, this wasn't as bad as with certain others but it definitely gave him the feeling of riding a rollar coaster in half the time and without the brakes.
         A bit dizzy, he stepped back to fix his center of gravity to avoid toppling over, which would have been a bit embarrassing.
         His foot pressed into something yielding and pliable.
         Tristian shuffled his weight in surprise and heard nothing but the sound of dripping water. The barriers in his vision finally parted, and he saw the surface of the ocean right below his feet. The water was slightly and he could see straight down into it. Behind him, clouds of steam drifted lazily past, and he could hear water angerily bubbling, its rage at being breached and disturbed not yet quenched.
         "How the hell . . ." he asked himself, lifting his foot up experimentally, seeing water dripping off the sole of his shoe. Gently, he placed it back down, finding that it was like pressing down into foam, he sank a little but didn't break the surface. Curious, he lifted his foot again, ready to stamp it down into the ocean.
         "I wouldn't keep playing like that," Ranos said, standing a short distance away. "It's hard enough keeping this active without you testing its limits."
         Startled, as if caught in some game that he shouldn't have been participating in, Tristian stood up straight, splashing water as he did so. Ranos was regarding him calmly, his hands tucked into his robes which looked much drier than they should have been. Tristian, on the other hand, felt absolutely miserable, having been nearly set on fire and drowned in one day. No doubt this was going to give him some sort of illness. All in a day's work, it seemed lately.
         "Since when can you alter surface tension?" Tristian asked, gingerly crossing the water to reach his partner. Looking around as he did so, he realized that his first impressions from up high were just as correct down here. Nothing but rolling water all around, breezes stirring the waves but creating nothing spectacular. The sky was a beautiful and stark shade of black, with the stars infinite jewels fixed to the firmament. The end result was almost peaceful and inwardly Tristian regretted that this supremely placid moment would be forever bookended by displays of brutal violence. But that was life in a nutshell, he told himself, not completely kidding. Moments of great horror interspersed with great beauty to remind you what it was all about.
         Ranos merely raised an eyebrow at the question. "Is that what I'm doing? I prefer to just admit that we're walking on water and leave it at that."
         "And don't I feel sacrilegious," Tristian muttered, finally making his way over to Ranos. He stared at his warped reflection in the rippled mirror of the water, idly disturbing it by moving his foot. Scanning the vaulted sky, he asked quietly, "Where is he now?"
         Shaking his head, Ranos responded, "I'm not sure. He's not very close, but I can't expand the field out any farther . . . unless you want to teach me how to swim right now," he finished with a straight face.
         "Why isn't he pressing his attack?" Tristian nearly growled, clenching his hands into fists. "He's been making fools out of us the entire time . . . it's taken everything we've got to stay alive this long and . . ." he paced a few steps angerily, trying to ignore the squishing sounds his waterlogged clothing was making. God, this was uncomfortable. "And all he had to do nail us with one of those fireballs when we came out of the teleport . . . but he didn't . . . why?" Tristian whirled and threw his question at his partner, who only shrugged, his face seeming to suggest that Tristian shouldn't stare too deeply into that question. "He's clearly not stupid . . . if he can be believed, he's eliminated two entire worlds, what the hell is the problem with us? Every time he leaves us alive is another moment we get a chance to gain the upper hand." Tristian didn't want to sound ungrateful that events had led to the end result of the two of them still being alive to complain about that fact, but something clearly wasn't right here.
         "Perhaps," and a searing light burned down from the sky, causing both men to raise their hands to cover their eyes, "I was just being cautious." Tristian moved his leg back a step, leaning so that he could see into the air. But there was very little to see. Just the undiluted view of the sky and the stars.
         Then from what appeared to be random points, pinpricks of light detached themselves from the sky, racing to a spot above the two mercenaries where they began to congeal into the same star filled outline that had menaced them before. Only this time the outline had bright arms clasped behind its back, a starry robe gently brushing the tops of its pointed shoes and glittering eyes that did their best to pierce them right into their very centers.
         Get ready for anything, Tristian said unecessarily to his partner. He could already feel the whipcord threads of Ranos' mind preparing for action. Once when Ranos had tried to explain his powers and how they worked, he had called those cords "weaves" and that he bound several together, forming a mosiac that in the end bent reality, allowing men to teleport, survive fire and walk across the surface of water itself. Still, stating such things made him feel like him more in command of the situation than he actually was.
         His presence is more solid now, there's almost texture to his form now, Ranos shot back tersely. Like back when we ran into him at the tower, only we have a target this time.
         Should we just say the hell with it and rush him then?
         No! Being careful has gotten us this far . . . just stay alert . . . and talk this way as little as possible, I've got him shut out now but if things get intense I won't be able to and he can force his way in if he so desires . . .
         Gotcha. Now this sounds more like a plan.
         The man of burning lights beamed down at them, a smile as cold as that of the distant stars. His gaze seemed to be resting on Tristian. "I might have killed the two of you immediately except I recognized an . . . old energy on one of you." This time he did address Tristian, saying distinctly, "You are the host." As he said so, the image seemed to incline its head to him as a perverse gesture of respect.
         Basking in the ridged heat of the light bearing down on them from above, Tristian felt his blood run completely cold.
         What is he talking about? Ranos demanded suddenly in his head, forgetting his earlier warning. What host?
         I don't know, Tristian lied, somehow pulling it off in the often brutally honest context of the link. He must be mistaking me for someone else. He licked dry lips and tried to ignore the fact that his hands were suddenly shaking. This wasn't what he needed right now.
         He must be. Ranos didn't sound totally convinced. He'd have to work on that later. Play along then, it might buy us more time.
         Okay. It was all he could bear to say, anymore lying over the link would have torn him to pieces. Even now he felt jagged shards of ice bobbing to the surface of the previously still lake in his mind. God, he hated imagery. It just made it harder to concentrate.
         "I have always done my best to avoid their ire, you see," the Hierophant explained, "since I have no wish to test my powers against theirs." Almost admiringly he cast a glance around the pristine silence of the scenary. Tristian couldn't even hear his own breathing. "To that end I extended my plans over the centuries. None of this was done in a day, getting the orbits of the planets to intersect alone was a million years of gentle nudging." His gleaming mouth became a thin line of bright light. "With each task I undertook I feared imminent reprisals and so I worked silently, slowly, not seeing any need to hurry." A laugh echoing with the stolen cries of children erupted from that grimly glistening form, "Let the other fools dazzle the universe with their pyrotechnics and in doing so, call attention to their own follies. I needed none of that."
         I almost wish you were the host, he seems quite afraid of whatever that might represent. That could be useful now.
         Believe me, I sure as hell don't feel like a host right now.
         "But when you came," the Hierophant continued, either allowing their mental conversation because he felt there was nothing they could do, or not aware of it for some reason, "I felt if I had immediately killed you, it would only be a matter of moments before they came and enacted their revenge on me for performing such an act. So I did as much as I could, ready to flee at a moment's notice if your mentors appeared."
         "They may still come," Tristian vowed, trying to find the bravery to look the starred image square in the twinkling orbs. There seemed to be an added dimension to it now, like it had grown more solid in the last few minutes. The first time it had seemed almost fragile, ready to fall apart in a second if need be. Now for the first time Tristian felt he was facing the Hierophant. "If you kill me, they will come," Tristian said with more conviction than he felt, "and you will die. Is all this worth the risk of death? Can you honestly say that you would chance certain doom simply to kill us."
         "How little you understand my life and my work," the Hierophant replied with veiled menace. "But without my perspective and insight, I suspect that a lifetime of learning would not bring such knowledge to you. More the pity, I suppose." The image seemed to shrug, an odd gesture. "Even so, with all the danger you have been through, all the times death seemed certain, they still have not come."
         Uh-oh, Ranos, I think we've almost reached the end of our bluff here. Might be time to start really thinking of what to do.
         I would have to agree. I think . . . Tristian, stall him for a moment while I check something . . .
         Fumbling for words, Tristian took a step forward, hearing the rustling water as crystallized sound, the only pure thing in the entire world now. An entire world demolished for a vague plan that they could barely even fathom. But Tristian didn't care, the means were no excuse for the ends. Whatever way they could manage it, this ended tonight. It wasn't the first time he had vowed this during the sporadic battle but he had never been so sure of his motives as he was now.
         "They haven't come because they aren't my guardians," Tristian stated evenly, his hands resting lightly at his sides. Distantly, Ranos' voice was telling him to keep close to his sword, that he would be needing it soon. "I am the host, but I am my own man and the battles that I fight are mine to fight." Unspoken truth, truth that he hadn't realized up until recently, added renewed weight to his words. He hoped that aspect carried over to the Hierophant.
         "Then you have chosen poorly this time, little man," the dryly crumbling voice intoned. Just the sound of it made flash fires want to break out inside his skull, all the old clutter just catching that spark and setting it all ablaze. Focus. He had to stay focused, give Ranos time to come up with something, anything. Anything that would get them out alive.
         "However they will not continue to turn a blind eye if you slay me," Tristian reminded. "There are some things they cannot ignore and my dying cries will echo throughout the stars, a beacon and a plea for vengeance." Narrowing his eyes, he stated darkly, "And they will come, do not deny that for a second. They will come and the Hierophant will die."
         Laying it on thick, aren't we?
         I don't do improv well under pressure, sorry. How about that brilliant plan you were about to explain to me? Let's not keep me in suspense here.
         I think I've . . . give me another second . . .
         "And if I let you go, why would you not just bring them back and have me slain anyway," the Hierophant questioned, his eyes shining with the beginnings of a truimphant light. "I had assumed you were the host and perhaps you are but all the evidence suggests that perhaps you are nothing more than a very lucky man."
         Um, Ranos, he's getting that look in his eyes again. Stuff is going to start exploding very soon.
         Yes . . . no doubt, Ranos sounded completely unhurried, as if he were working his way through a particularly difficult exam question.
         "And if they have not come as of yet, I do not believe they will at all . . ." two other stars fell from the sky, dropping right into his hands, where they started to glow brighter and brighter, until Tristian was squinting against the glow. "And in the end, death is not the only punishment I can give."
         Ranos . . . Tristian was already reaching for his sword, his hand closing around the hilt and unclipping it from his belt.
         Yes, Ranos hissed, unsheathe it, like it had been his idea in the first place.
         You have a plan.
         I do. Ignite the sword.
         Tristian was already two steps ahead of his partner, angling the stubby device in front of him, his finger already sliding along the recessed switch in the fashion that was all too familiar to him. It seemed to hum in recognition and the sudden crimson brightness that washed over his face as the blade extended didn't even make him flinch. This time, having that sword between him and the Hierophant was strangely comforting, as if they might just come for him, if the danger were great enough. And they could still appear, at this point he expected anything. But deep down inside, he didn't want them to. Because he knew that he and Ranos could do this on their own. Because they needed to. Because the Hierophant needed to be shown, for the last time that he didn't have the right. Age and power didn't give him the right. Someone had to tell him, teach him.
         The sword seemed to tremble in his hand suddenly even as the lights flared to blinding brightness in the Hierophant's hands.
         I'll take that.
         With a jerking wrench, the sword suddenly leapt from Tristian's hand, flying pointfirst toward the Hierophant, its red blade seeming to stretch into twice its length as it picked up speed, moving almost too fast for the eye to see.
         Tristian stood there dumbly for a second, staring at his empty hands. Surprise quickly gave way to slight indignation. Please warn me when you do stuff like that.
         Too much risk, Ranos replied tersely, the way he always did when concentrating intently. Now, quiet.
         Tristian braced himself to run, even as the blade arced toward the Hierophant biting into the spaces between the stars in his image, ramming right where his chest would be, the sword slipping into it as easily as a man dove into clear water. The Hierophant only took the time to look down at the last second, only having time to begin to move his hand to grab the swiftly moving sword.
         A scream twisted itself into a howl. Blood splattered the water like rain.
         Something dark flew back toward Tristian even as he ducked backwards, as the image of the Hierophant writhed overhead, clutching its chest, with one hand, the stars running down his body like melted butter, turning red as they slid off his image, falling to the water as nothing more than the serum that infused all of them.
         Incoming, Ranos warned even as the dark shape rounded on Tristian, heading right for him.
         Accepted, Tristian acknowledged, crouching down into a roll on the water, soaking his already wet clothing even more, coming up and trying not to think about what he was doing, his open hand already out to grab the flying sword. It settled back into his palm, like it belonged there. He finished the maneuver by leaping smoothly to his feet, the sword swinging precisely into the air, leaving red streaks as it did so, trails of its path simply cut. Telekinesis. Nice. Good thing I've got a walking bag of tricks for a partner.
         I believe the proper phrase is "never a dull moment".
         The now faded image was shedding stars, glittering snow drizzling down onto the water. The Hierophant had fallen onto one knee in the air, as if a glass sheet was stretched out under him. His face was distorted in pain, his labored breathing the only sound echoing over the calm waters.
         So it was just an illusion, that image?
         Yes, although cleverly disguised. I wasn't even really sure at the end, I gambled that my instincts were steering me correctly.
         Remind me to thank your instincts when we get out of here.
         "This pain . . . is . . . nothing . . ." the Hierophant breathed, grimancing as he ran his hand over the bloody hole in his chest. The spaces between his fingers were glowing faintly, and the sound of sizzling flesh was sickeningly apparent. The man for the first time appeared real, and he looked much like he had in the starry image, except that his skin seemed stretched too tightly over his slightly elongated skull, his thin lips pulled back to show tiny teeth, his robes hanging loosely over a body ravaged by time but still holding together through sheer will. Wisps of dying hair clung to his otherwise naked head, and his spotted fingers clutched at the wound in his chest. Slowly he was coming down to rest on the water, barely even causing a dent in the surface, flames flickering around his body, the reflective ocean bending the images into fiery fingers reaching for the mercenary pair.
         This isn't good, Tristian noted, swearing under his breath.
         Press the advantage, Ranos nearly shouted.
         But Tristian was already moving, his feet splashing on the water, the sword rising up into the air, prepared to cleave if necessary. He hoped that the Hierophant wouldn't realize that the shield wouldn't stop the sword, but if he knew about the host there was no telling what else he had knowledge of.
         The Hierophant raised his face and his ancient eyes blazed with power, almost glowing in the night. His hand had fallen to the water, not breaking the surface. It was covered with a combination of dried and freshly wet blood. The wound on his chest was scarred over, clearly visible through the hole torn into his robes, the flesh blackened and burned, the faint image of a hand branded into his body. Tristian almost broke his stride when those eyes met his, such was the sheer will he saw lurking there. For the first time he saw the Hierophant not as some insane and bored immortal but a man driven to the point where he utterly refused to die, no matter how tempting the release. For the first time, Tristian saw dying not as a ending, but merely the easy way out that everyone took because they didn't know any better.
         A hollow laugh reached his ears. A few more steps. A few more steps and this would all be over. The link surged with power as Ranos prepared a counterstrike to back his up, something definite and final. The battle had ground both of them nearly into the soil and if they didn't collapse right after it was over, he'd very surprised. The Hierophant was raising his hand into the air, and his voice was the glass that washed over your face when a window shattered over your head as they threw your arms up to shield your body and avoid being cut to ribbons. The hand was making a half circle, droppings of sickly light trailing it. Tristian could see the glow of the sword as a pale reflection in the water. Funny how you notice details like that. Funny how they just come to you. Just like that.
         "Your valor means nothing," the Hierophant stated hoarsely and all too clearly, his hand thrusting out, a brutal glow flaring to violent life, "your bravery and your convictions and your finely laid plans . . ." a tearing sound began to erupt into the air, "all amount to the pathetic and panicked defenses of men who are scrambling for life like animals backed into a corner," the air in front of Tristian seemed to ripple even as he attempted to alter his trajectory, "too stupid to realize that they have lost, unable to give up because that might mean letting go of tightly held values," the last was said as a sneer but Tristian could barely hear any of it. A gash was opening in the air like a gaping laceration. Right in his path.
         Behind him there was a near frantic splashing and a similar gnawing and tearing sound. Like someone pulling the fabric of the world to pieces, despite its best attempts at resistance. Maybe they were just like animals, battling for life at all costs. And maybe they were blindly foolish. But there was a certian grim nobility in it at the same time. The attempt was everything, anything less was just shadow puppet motions, empty posturing and false emotion. When you came down to it, Tristian wanted to believe that if he did anything, it was sincere. In the end. Because he didn't know any other way to do it.
         Invisible hands grasped the looming slash in the air, yanking it wider. Bitterly cold air lashed his face, and he staggered as his feet straddled the hole, wavering in his attempts to step back without falling, to halt his inertia if he had to pull every muscle in his body.
         "No, I do insist . . . you first . . ." the venomous voice rasped, as an unseen force shoved him from behind. Knees buckling from the effort to stay upright, Tristian's balance gave up the fight and he tumbled through the hole, at least comforting himself with the small knowledge that he did it silently. Little things like that you collected when you could.
         He expected to fall forever, that his next sensation would be either the crushing impact of the ground rushing up to greet him, or perhaps the agonizing flash of plunging right into molten rock, or even the stabbing pains all over his body as he emerged into airless space, all the vessels and organs bursting like so much overripe fruit, blood splattering out into the void and turning into glittering crystals.
         Instead he fell face down onto ice.