One by one, the sparks found it: the death wish. They sank their hooks in that horrible desire and streamed backward.

From the snapping mouths of the beasts, the disciples emerged, drawing black strands behind them. They soared into the sky and converged, weaving together their webs of power. En masse, the disciples turned and plunged toward a single target.

Jeska.

"Here they come," Kamahl said quietly.

Blue points of light traced lines across his eyes. He knelt, holding his sister despite the virulent poison beneath her skin. He could only just bear to hold her, with three wurms within. In moments, when the blue sparks arrived, her touch would be death.

"You're getting your wish," he said.

Jeska's eyes were hard, but her voice pleaded. "Remember me, Kamahl. Remember what I do today, even if I never emerge again."

"Don't say that. You'll-"

A blue light soared in, smacked her forehead, and disappeared, dragging a black filament after it.

Jeska shuddered as the darkness drilled into her mind. A spark fled from between her lips.

Kamahl gaped, watching the line sink deeper. "No, Jeska… no!"

With a shriek of tortured air, the slender thread widened into a huge beast. It poured itself into Jeska. She convulsed and grew pale, and her flesh stung like nettles in Kamahl's hands.

He did not let her go. He would cling to her as long as she was Jeska.

Another blue spark impacted, and a third.

She thrashed her head, as if to break the black threads. They only plunged faster into her. Her limbs trembled, and her eyes glowed with evil flame. Two more sparks fled from her howling mouth.

Swallowing, she gasped out, "One more… and I will be gone, Kamahl… One more…"

The tails of the two wurms slipped into her brow.

Kamahl leaned over Jeska, tears streaming down his face. He embraced her one last time and kissed her pale cheek. "Good-bye, Sister." Laying her gently on the ground, Kamahl backed away.

A fourth spark struck, and a fifth, a sixth. Glowing creatures cascaded from the sky. They made Jeska bounce, writhe, and kick. The wurms were filling her, possessing her, but also healing her wound.

Jeska stood, her hands open wide to the influx of the monsters. She seemed a worshiper invoking a god.

Kamahl could not bear the sight. He turned away.

No wurms remained on the corpse-strewn battlefield. Few fought on in jungle and desert. All those that were left were connected by black threads to Jeska… to Phage. They drained across astral channels into her.

She was doing it. She was saving Otaria and damning herself.

In a flash of blue and white and black, it was done.

The wurms were gone.

Jeska was gone.

Only Phage remained.

Akroma saw it all. How she wished to kill that witch, and yet, Phage had saved Topos and Locus and Otaria.

Turning in the sky, Akroma winged toward Topos. If Ixidor was anywhere, he was there. She would seek him, find him, and turn her wrath on the one named Phage.

Kamahl sat in that sandy waste, the birthplace of a goddess.

Phage stood with her back to him. Her hands were yet lifted to the heavens, though they had poured out all their damnation already.

"Phage," Kamahl said reverently.

She turned. Her eyes were dark, no longer the eyes of Jeska. Without saying a word, she walked away.

"Don't waste yourself on the fights, on the Cabal," said Kamahl. "I won your freedom from all that. You can do anything you want, wander free. Why don't you come with me to Krosan? We can make a home for you there."

"We are enemies," she replied over her shoulder, "the saved and the damned."

EPILOGUE: JOURNEYS END AND BEGIN

Akroma flew above Topos and sought signs of Ixidor. Her paws dragged over the fronds of the forest and startled birds, red and gold among leaf shadows. They darted away, their cries silencing the howl of monkeys. Akroma spread her wings and soared out above a trampled trail.

A deathwurm had passed here, heading toward the lake.

Akroma followed the path. In two strokes, she reached the shore.

Once the lake had been sky-blue, but now it was gray, its bottom torn up. In the midst of the tainted waters, Locus rose. Its arches and towers gleamed despite the gray ooze that draped them, despite the failing mortar and crumbled ramparts. The deathwurm had climbed all across that glorious palace.

Akroma had never noticed how beautiful Topos had been.

Rising on heated air, she soared along the front gate. The slime trail led her up the wall, around the central tower, and to the master's balcony. With a final surge of her wings, Akroma vaulted over the dripping balustrade and landed.

The balcony was crossed with stress fractures. Beyond shattered glass doors lay a bedchamber in utter ruins. It seemed a gaping mouth. Ceiling, walls, and floor ran with gray ooze.

"Did you die here, Master?" wondered Akroma.

Never before had she allowed the thought that he might be dead. She knew he was gone, yes, but dead? It is a very different thing to serve a departed god than a dead one.

Leaping into the air, Akroma followed a second slime trail that spiraled down the wall. The path led through a ravaged garden, across rooftops to a shattered rose window. Akroma dived through the circle of shards and into a long gallery. Her breath caught. In the carnage of toppled statues and torn paintings, Ixidor was everywhere. His head lay here in stone, his arm there on canvas, his spirit throughout the chamber.

Lighting on the runner, Akroma took a deep breath. "This will be a shrine to you, Master. I will clean it and save every fragment of you, so that future generations will glimpse your face in the pieces."

The far wall of the gallery had been shattered by the wurm. Akroma winged through. The trail led across more rooftops and then precipitously down a wall and into the gray lake. A black hole lay in the bed below.

If the wurm had gone there, it must have followed Ixidor.

Akroma tucked her wings and dived. Air shrieked across her pinions, and then she clove into the water. The impact was like thunder. Waves opened around her and then clapped closed.

Akroma swam to the bottom of the lake and into the pit that the wurm had dug. It was a cold black throat. As she descended, walls of sand gave way to walls of mud, then to rock.

Akroma entered a wide, flooded chamber, its magic lamps gleaming eerily through the gray water. The place had been ravaged, ruined furniture trapped against the ceiling Someone stood there.

Master!

Akroma swam toward the silhouette of Ixidor, shimmering in the murk. As she neared, though, she realized it was not the creator but an unman. He was the doorway to where the creator had gone.

Using her wings like fins, Akroma propelled herself to the unman, and through him.

She spilled with tons of water out the other side and into an upper chamber of the palace. It was half-flooded. Its furnishings had already washed out the door. Water rushed into the corridor beyond and down the nearby stairs.

Ixidor was not here, nor the wurm. The unman would have closed if the creator had made it safely through.

He was gone. It was a certainty. He was dead. Her god was dead.

Akroma stood amid the shoving waters and wept.

Your journey is done. Mine only begins.