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“This is the face of your great love,” Lykar says. “He is nothing more than meat to them, and soon he will be nothing at all. Where is his power now? What can he hope to do? How can he save you from me, when he cannot even save himself?”
I turn and I throw my clenched fists at the faun-king. I want to hurt him. I want to make him bleed the same way my Vulcan is now bleeding, but I cannot, because I cannot even hit Lykar. He grabs my wrists and he holds me firm and he looks at me with that smirking, sneering gaze and I feel my hatred flare into a single note. When I open my mouth, it emerges in a shriek, but it isn’t sound that emerges. It is force which hits him square in his chest and sends him flying across the room as if he is nothing more than a feather.
His expression would make me laugh if I had any mirth left in me, if I could feel anything other than the most pure outrage.
“What… was that?” He picks himself up and looks at me with a confused expression, a mixture between disbelief and anger.
“That was me,” I tell him. “I am not Trelok’s sacrifice. I am not your princess. I am me. Tres.”
“Well, Tres,” Lykar says. “Your hero just died.”
I could scream. I want to scream, but instead, I sing. My voice has always been my power. If Vulcan’s soul is loose in the world, then I need to find it. I need to bring him to me.
“Stop that,” Lykar says, clapping a hand over my mouth. “Those bleats will deafen me and change nothing.”
Vulcan
Human death is strange. I suppose it’s scythkin death too. Actually, I don’t know what it is. Scythkin don’t really have legends around the afterlife. We don't have time for philosophy or conjecture. Right now, I’m standing in some kind of underground forest.
The way environments have been wrapping themselves around me lately is somewhat disorienting, but it is also the least of my problems. I wonder if I have gone anywhere since this began, or if I have been in the same place with events playing out around me one after the other, a biological movie with no sense or meaning besides the feelings I have for Tres.
Looking down at myself, I see much the same form as I am used to seeing, a fact which further adds to the strangeness of having passed. I am beginning to think that nobody ever goes anywhere. Time and space simply slip around us all, making us think we are the authors of our existence, but really it is nothing more than a consistent mirage.
“YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE.”
I had hoped to hear Tres’ voice, but that is not her voice. It is male and deep and it resonates. I turn toward the source of the voice, and see a tall, hooded figure coming toward me. I cannot see a face. It is holding a piece of gardening equipment in a bony hand while the other rises and points toward me, as if trying to clarify that I am the subject of what it is saying.”
“YOU… DO NOT… BELONG HERE,” it intones again. “BEGONE! BEGONE!”
I was not sure what kind of reception I would receive, but this hostility is entirely human - and utterly foolish. I have not come to the end of mortality to be told to leave.
“Give me Tres, and I will leave,” I say. “Your human mythologies speak many times about going into the underworld and then returning. I know it’s possible.”
“IT IS POSSIBLE. BUT. NOT TYPICAL.”
The being somehow shouts and whispers at the same time.
“But it happens, according to the tales, and it appears to be happening now. Bring me the girl Tres, and I will begone with her. She will never return to the world you guard. She will be taken to the stars and live for eternity there.”
“NO.”
“YES.” I mimic the creature’s tone. There is something officious about him, as if he feels as though he has the right to decide the fate of all. I do not listen to the one authority a scythkin is supposed to - the first hatched from the clutch. I will not listen to this gaunt creature who appears to be mostly garment.
“BRING ME TRES. NOW.”
“N…” He begins to refuse, but I will not ask again.
I grab him by the throat. The cloak gives under my hand until I am gripping nothing but ethereal cloth. He doesn’t have a neck, but it doesn’t matter. He gets my meaning - and meaning is all that matters here. I may not have a physical form any more than he does, but my soul is aflame with the intention to find her at any cost.
