51: UNANIMOUS CONSENT
S’arric’s memories
He walked down a long, broad hallway tiled with weathered, cracked marble, the dim light bouncing off dust and ash in the air. Everything was gray and washed out, all the color pulled from it. Students hurried on their way to classes, pausing only to give S’arric dirty looks, glares.
It was the uniform. It was out of place there. Truthfully, it was out of place everywhere. People all over were debating if the military was even necessary anymore. After all, they’d found their happy ending, their promised land. Everyone was settling in just fine; it’d been years since they’d needed anything resembling a military. If there were a few problems—what was happening with the children, for example, or rumors of sea monsters bothering the voramer—everyone knew they’d figure it out eventually. The kids who roamed the halls were … not kids. There were no children. Not anywhere.
That was kind of the problem, wasn’t it?
But hey, they’d survived the death of an entire universe. What couldn’t they do?
Have children, apparently. Or die.
He ignored the resentful looks and continued until he reached the last doorway down the hall, shoving the double doors open.
“Hey, Revas, you about done?” he called down.
The large, wide room was unsettling, disconnected, as if someone had taken two different classrooms and taped them together with ragged seams. It was empty. Almost empty. His brother was down there. S’arric was always amazed at how little Rev’arric looked like him for someone who looked so much like him.1 Attitude was everything.
He looked up from his papers. “Solan? What are you doing here?”
S’arric sighed as he walked down the steps, taking them two at a time. “Right. Smartest man in two universes and you’d still forget to eat if someone didn’t remind you. I’m taking you to that new restaurant.” He pointed. “You asked me to rescue you, remember?”
Rev’arric blinked at him as though he didn’t quite understand the language S’arric was speaking. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“If it’s grading papers, I’m not just rescuing you, I’m saving your life.”
He was about to say something when they both heard a voice from the top of the stairs. “Professor? Do you have a moment?”
And then … nothing. A gap in the universe. Someone walked into the room. They didn’t have a face. They didn’t have … anything.
S’arric walked through the door and sank down in a chair, letting his arms fall at his sides as the temptation to succumb to exhaustion nearly took control. He resisted, but it was by the finest of margins.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and smiled, clasping it. “I didn’t think you’d make it,” he said, returning to smile at …
The person standing there didn’t have a face.
There was a gap, a blank spot. Nothing.
S’arric ran into the headquarters. The city was on fire, and nobody’d come close to stopping it. It was like an entire city had become haunted, all at the same time, spirits materializing out of nowhere and wreaking havoc again before vanishing as if they’d never been. And the dead bodies … the dead bodies should have been impossible, but the proof couldn’t be denied.
After how many thousands of years, finally they’d met an enemy that could kill them. And was. By the thousands … Up ahead, he saw … nothing. There’s a spot clipped out of the universe. He didn’t remember what happened next.
Janel’s story
Inside Vol Korath’s prison
Do you understand?
The voice lodged in Janel’s mind, an angry, furious roar.
Every blank spot is you.
“No, I—”
You didn’t just steal my memories of you. You stole flowers and sunshine. You took my memories of my parents, my lovers, and any good days I ever had with my brother. You took all the things that were bright and beautiful.
You stole hope.
Janel gasped, unable to keep it inside anymore. “I didn’t know,” she whispered.
Is it better because you thought you were saving me? Because you thought that you could just excise pain and trauma like a gangrenous wound? I don’t remember the day we met, but I remember the day you died. I don’t remember the birth of our child, but I remember her screams as she turned into a monster.
I don’t remember love, but you left me all the hate.
“S’arric, please … please…” Janel didn’t know what to say. The guilt was nearly overwhelming, because what had he said that was a lie? “I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t realize what it would do. Please forgive me.”
Never meant to hurt me? Forgiveness? His voice sounded incredulous. Why would you need forgiveness? Why wouldn’t you want to hurt me? I deserve your hate!
Janel lifted her head. “What?”
Are you forgetting I murdered you? How can you forget that I killed you! It’s one of the only memories of you I have left!
She didn’t understand what he meant for a second. When had he … But then she remembered the explosion. The explosion that had wiped Karolaen from the map, sent the whole globe into an early and prolonged winter, and, of course, sent C’indrol on from their first life to a succession of much shorter mortal ones.
Janel closed her eyes. “That was an accident,” she whispered. “I don’t blame you.”
She felt a whisper of a touch against her cheek, and a voice she very much recognized said, I do.
She opened her eyes and really looked at the creature who so terrified her.
Vol Karoth didn’t have a face. He didn’t have a face or a body, here, in this place, where he could look like anything he wanted. He could have looked like Kihrin if he wanted. He could have looked like S’arric, if he wanted. The only limit was his imagination.
But he was like Jarith, so tortured by pain and despair that he’d forgotten himself. Vol Karoth didn’t remember what S’arric looked like. He had nothing left of himself.
Except …
Except he had remorse. He had grief. He had jealousy and sorrow. And not all those qualities were bad. They were emotions that hadn’t been there when Elana Milligreest had finished with him all those years ago. This, like the intelligence, was new.
And Janel finally understood why.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “We didn’t understand.”
Thurvishar’s story
Inside Vol Korath’s prison
Thurvishar kept pressing and pressing, the whole time, knowing it was futile but trying with all his might to break through Vol Karoth’s defenses. If he could just get a message through.
And then he did.
There was no warning and no explanation for why Vol Karoth’s blocks were suddenly gone. They just were. Thurvishar didn’t hesitate. He grabbed at every mind he found.
[We have a chance to destroy Vol Karoth permanently,] he said to them. [But it’s not without cost.]
“Vol Karoth told us,” Kihrin said. “Was he telling the truth? Senera figured out a glyph that would hurl the entire Lighthouse into the Nythrawl Wound?”
[Yes. He was telling the truth.]
“Okay, then here’s what we’re going to do,” Kihrin said. “Thurvishar, you start getting people back into their bodies and get out of the Lighthouse. Me and one other person—”
“Kihrin, no,” Teraeth said.
“There’s no reason we all have to die, Teraeth!”
Teraeth took a larger-than-normal breath. He forced a smile on his face. “Idiot,” he told me, “if we start vanishing from this place, Vol Karoth will feel it, and I guarantee you that will snap him out of whatever lovely moment he is currently having with our girlfriend. If defeating him means staying here and dying, that’s what I’m going to do. We are in this together. I didn’t agree to be reincarnated just so I could watch you leap off a cliff without me.”
Kihrin made a small, choked noise.
“I’m staying too,” Qown said.
Kihrin stared at him. “You … you’re not the person who I expected to say that.”
Qown shrugged and looked embarrassed. “I don’t see why not. Clearly, I’m willing to do things I find uncomfortable if it means saving the world.” He turned to Galen and Sheloran. “You two should get out while you can, though.”
“Oh, hell no,” Galen said. “Have you met me? I’m a D’Mon.”
“We’re staying,” Sheloran said.
“I am too,” Lyrilyn said quietly. She gave Kihrin a sad smile. “It’s the least I can do. Do we know how Senera, Talea, and Xivan feel, though?”
[They were there when we came up with the plan. Fine. I’m going to need time to finish this, so please keep him distracted. He’s free in the tower at this point, so the only reason he won’t be able to stop me is because he isn’t trying.]
Kihrin sighed. “Yeah, I can do that.”
Thurvishar immediately knew what Kihrin was about to do. He could have tried to stop him, but they needed the time.
And if it all worked out, it wouldn’t matter, anyway.
Kihrin said, “Hey, Vol Karoth. You win. Let’s talk.”