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The humans are very angry about the whole thing. I have to help them to catch me by more or less lying down for them and retracting the sharp ridges of my body so that the ropes they’re trying to bind me with stop breaking.
They chatter to one another, these blonde women with all their deformities. I notice that Trelok the coward will not come near me. He keeps his distance as the ladies paint their hands and press them against my skin, covering my ridges and valleys with the same paint Tres was covered in when I found her that first time. This is the sacrifice I will make, to follow Tres into the next human realm.
I am not certain what has happened in terms of time. I don't know if I’ve picked up where we left off, or if there was a skip back or a jump forward, but I sense she’s no longer on this planet. She has gone to the ancestors. And so must I. I must die like a human, and hope that I am taken through to the same dimension where the human dead are kept.
Dying as a human might is tedious. The ritual forces the women to labor up the mountain, scrabbling under my weight. The male does not help. He leads from the front, carrying nothing but a sharp stone knife which will do nothing if he tries to stab me with it except break.
The sweating, bleeding, grunting women carry me into the familiar cave. The one where Tres was left to die the first time. The one I carried her to after she passed in my arms. I didn't know why I did it, I just knew that it felt right for her to be here, in the place I first found her dying.
I can smell the blood from the wound on her head, the wound fate inflicted and I could not fix. I feel a rush of loathing and rage, but I have to quiet myself. I am here, with her. I am as close to her essence as I can get while still being clothed in flesh.
A scythkin cannot afford to be afraid of death I have always believed that death is not an end of existence, it is a phase shift of energy. Death is the greatest lie ever told, but it is a lie told by my meat which screams to continue being me. But I am not my meat. I never was, and nor was Tres. We were not two bodies who fell in love with one another. We were two souls, and I know mine will find her when it is free.
By dying here, I am surrendering myself to the mythology of this planet. All places have their alternate dimensions, their machine elves, their fairies, pixies, and the occasional gnome, to use the human words for it. They are considered to be outside of nature, but they are as firmly embedded in it as the stars in the sky, which is to say, they’re often on fire.
I will find these things. I will take them to task. I will not stop until I have Tres in my arms.
It takes an intolerably long time for the humans to slay me. They have to experiment with many methods. In the end, my own blades are used to cut into me. I take the pain, because it is what I deserve. At long last, my vision dims for the final time. I told Tres I would die for her, and now I am. The pain, such as it is, dulls too. Excellent. Everything is going to plan.
Tres
“Hmmm. Well. How interesting.”
Lykar has been staring into his mirror and making remarks for a while now. I have tried to ignore him. I sense he is trying to bait me into something, something I won’t like. His apology was a start, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am stuck here as his captive, and also, that he is a liar. I don’t have proof that he is lying, it is just the feeling I get whenever he looks at me with his laughing eyes.
“What?” I ask finally.
“You were right,” Lykar says, his smile devious. “Let me show you the bold monstrous beast who has come to save you. It’s going terribly well for him.”
Seeing Vulcan’s face makes my heart sing, but when I see what is happening to him, that song turns into a wail of sadness. He has returned to my tribe. Trelok’s tribe. He must have been looking for me.
They are killing him. Like vermin they swarm him. I see his power and his greatness amplified as the life goes out of his flesh. It seems to me that he is looking directly at me, calling me with his every thought.
