Then, as he knew he must, he turned and faced Jesmind. She had tears in her eyes, and she hugged him fiercely, drawing blood from his back with her claws. "I want you to talk to me every day," she whispered fiercely, then she kissed him with all the emotion she was feeling at that moment. "Every day. I'll go crazy if I don't know you're alright."

"Every day," he promised. Then he reached down and picked up Jasana, hugging her tightly. "I want you to be good for your mother," he told her. "Don't give her any more gray hair."

"I'll try not to, Papa," she said diplomatically, sniffling. "Come home soon, alright?"

"As soon as I can," he promised, handing her to Jesmind. Then he turned to Jula, and to her surprise, embraced her. "Listen to Jenna, daughter," he commanded. "And listen to Jesmind. While I'm gone, she speaks with my voice. Obey her like she was your mother."

"I will," she said with a sad smile. "Come home soon. Father."

He smiled and gave her a kiss on the cheek, then looked at the ship. It was grand, clean, luxuriant, everything a ship had to be to carry the monarch of Wikuna. It woudl be his home for the next month, and then on another ship for the journey to find the Firestaff. Try as he might, he couldn't deny that the time had come. It was time to go.

Strange, how things turned out. Before reaching Aldreth, he wouldn't have cared to go, but now he did. Now he had a mate and two daughters waiting for him to come back. Now, he had a family. So much had changed in his life. He had conquered his ferality. He had discovered a daughter he never knew he had, and rediscovered a mate he thought he'd lost. He'd found newfound strength inside him, found new friends, and protected his Goddess from great harm. Too much.

He looked back at them. They were all there, but there were some missing faces. Ariana, for one. And Var and Denai. He hadn't so much as seen them during the whole time at Suld, and he hoped for a moment that they were alright. Then again, odds were, Denai was already pregnant, the way those two carried on, and had had to return home. A Selani would not fight pregnant, and the woman's husband also would not fight to protect the interests of the child. Three of the five Cambisi weren't there, and Ulger hadn't come down to see them off.

And there was no Faalken.

Sighing, he kissed his mate goodbye one more time, then turned to follow Keritanima and Allia as they started for the gangplank.

One more thing, kitten, the voice of the Goddess reached him. I want you to give the Book of Ages to Jenna. It belongs to her now.

Without batting an eye, he paced back over to his sister and parents. "Jenna, you take this," he said, taking the book out of the elsewhere and then handing it to her. "Guard it, sister. It holds many secrets we don't want falling into the wrong hands."

Jenna looked reverently at the book, then cradled it to her breast. "With my life, brother," she assured him with a serious look. "With my life."

"Then it's in good hands," he smiled. "Be good," he told his parents, kissing his mother on the cheek one more time, then hugging his father. "I'll keep Jenna up to date on what's going on," he told them. "So you won't be out of touch."

"Be careful, my son," Eron said seriously.

"Come back to us, Tarrin," Elke pleaded.

"If I have to swim back," he assured her. Keritanima shouted at him that he was keeping them at the dock, so he turned and padded away from friends, family, and people he did not want to leave. Jesmind made sure to pull away, step back so she wouldn't try to stop him, and part of him wanted her to do it. He stepped onto the gangplank, and it was pulled as soon as his feet were off of it, on the deck. Wikuni sailors moved quickly and efficiently, slipping the hawsers, and the grand ship immediately began to be pulled away from the quay, pulled out in the direction of the open sea.

Tarrin stood on the sterncastle with his companions, and they all looked back to their friends on the dock, waving to them and hearing them wish them safe journey. But Tarrin's eyes saw no one but his mate and his daughters, standing at the back of the group, his mate having trouble looking in his direction. When she did, he saw her tears, and that almost made him jump over the rail and swim back to her. But he couldn't do that, and he knew he couldn't.

Rewards, the Goddess said. There would be rewards. He knew of his reward now, and it stood on that dock watching him leave. All the reward he ever wanted was his mate and his daughters. His family. There could be no greater reward than that.

But they were behind him now. He turned slowly, deliberately, and looked over the length of the ship, out over the open ocean. It was all going to happen out there. Everything that he'd been doing for the last two years was upon him, and the end of his quest now had a solid, definable conclusion. Now he wasn't chasing after some misty dream, he was pursuing the very object the Goddess needed him to find. He would find it, he would find it and defend it, keep it out of reach of those who wanted it until the appointed day came and gone, and it posed no more threat. He would not fail the Goddess.

He would get his reward.

To: Title EoF

Epilogue

The icy plains of the tundra generated its own weather, but that day was almost warm, blowing winds not carrying the bite of the arctic ice upon them as they whipped across the rolling terrain of moss, lichen, and in some patches, sturdy grass. Caribou and wolves and white-furred foxes skulked about the landscape, as did lemmings and small biting insects, eking out a meager existence in the remote, barren, harsh landscape.

But they had all fled from one particular area, an area now inhabited by man. Many humans, as well as many Goblinoids, all gathered around a strange thing that all the wildlife avoided, a thing that radiated a comforting heat, but also a sense of darkness, of evil , that distressed the wildlife enough to avoid it despite its comforting warmth. It was a pyramid made of black stone, a strange building nearly five hundred spans high and a longspan long at any one side's base. It had been there for thousands of years, a forgotten monument built in a barren tundra that had not known the footstep of man in a thousand years.

But now they had returned, preying on the caribou and scaring the wolves away, forcing the wildlife to flee from the region. They had began to arrive during the harsh winter, a winter that was eight months of the year's ten, bundled in layers of fur to protect against the lethal cold. More and more arrived as the winter thawed into spring, and now as summer had begun to set into the land, the men and Goblinoids had stopped coming. They did nothing, only camped around the pyramid, as if they were waiting for something.

Within the pyramid, there was nothing but darkness. A single corridor led from the north face into its depths, a bleak passage that swallowed the light of the torches lining the walls, making each torch seem as a small star in the endless black sky. At the center of the pyramid was a massive chamber whose dimensions were concealed by the blackness within, with only a dais and several writing tables upon it really easy to make out.

Those, and the statue.

It stood at the center of the platform, which had steps on all four sides leading to the floor some thirty spans down, a statue made of basalt or some other black rock, a statue of a human-like figure in robes, its arms crossed before it and a stern look on its face. It was all inky blackness, except for its eyes. Eyes that glowed with a pulsating white radiance.

They have failed me, a voice emanated from the statue, directed to a tall, thin woman standing before it, a woman with black hair and dark, glittering eyes. But it is of no moment. Only the failure of Shaz'beka disappoints me. I expected more from her.