My leg pains me worse than ever. It took longer than I anticipated to reach this accursed tower. Distance here is not as it should be. For most of this night, it seemed as if I drew no closer to my destination than if I had not moved at all. Soon, I expect dawn will come. But at last, I have arrived at the tower with the illumination, and now I face a wide spiral staircase that spins up through the core of this massive structure. I hope that this staircase, at least, is honest and not another perversion of distance. I gaze up the steps that ascend into darkness. They look solid enough. At least the ones I can see from the pale light of the moon. There is nothing for it but to press on, one foot after another. I have come all this way, what is more agony in the sea of pain I have already endured?

I am too old for this. The stairs, of course, lied, just as much as this hateful city. My mind has begun to play tricks on me, telling me that I am dead and trapped in this endless, dark staircase that leads nowhere. If I had the energy I would curse this place, but I am done. I am at the last of my strength, the end of my will. Perhaps I should sit down, rest for a while, and ruminate on my failings. The temptation is strong, but forty cycles of determination are hard to change. Of their own volition, my legs go on, climbing, pulling my wasted, old body to Helios only knows where. I hope to my end. For that is all there is left for me now. At the very least I can leap from this tower. That thought brightens me, and my creaking, aching legs move a little faster. With each step I take I think: Soon it will end.

When I raise my foot for the next step, I lose my balance and tumble to my knees with a hard smack against the cold stone. Pain lances through me. I rub my bruised knees and wonder what to do next. Everything is soaked in darkness. I cannot even see my own hand in front of my face.

A sound reaches my ears, soft, familiar from another life. The rustle of silks. The scent of lilies, long-forgotten, fleet past my senses. I turn, abrupt, sensing someone right behind me, my flesh pricking in alarm. Nothing is right in this place.

"High Lord Zhveix," a feminine voice says, low and sensual, "I have been waiting for you."

Before I can digest the enormity of those words, brilliant white light slices through my dark-blinded eyes. Helpless, I cower under the onslaught feeling like an insect exposed, about to be crushed.

A gentle touch against my shoulder. I flinch. I have not been touched in decades and have forgotten what it is to have another's fingers on my skin.

"Look at me," she says, her voice steady, and calm, yet with that hint of sensuality that unnerves me. I know all about temptresses who deal in the Arcanic. Nothing good comes from trading with them. Fear ripples through me. If I were forty cycles younger I could handle this, but I am an old, crippled, weak, and tired man. A mockery of the powerful man I used to be.

"Zhveix," she says again, my name bared to the bone. I prefer it that way. I no longer deserve the title I abandoned for this reckless waste of my circuit. "You have done well. You have completed your journey."

I blink in disbelief. I turn. My gaze moves up a white silk gown shot with silver thread to a face far too breathtaking to be mortal. Thick, raven-black hair cascades down her shoulders past her buttocks, shimmering around her in the light, like a cloak. Surrounded by long dark lashes, and elegantly arched, dark brows, her eyes are an astonishing shade of emerald green, strangely familiar in their sharp intensity, and I realize with a start it was her who came to me as the she-wolf. She smiles, her lips full and appealing, the color of dark berries against her pale, almost translucent skin. Even white teeth flash behind them. She is far too beautiful to be real.

My flesh prickles again with anticipation. I pull myself to my knees and press my face to the stone floor, sensing I am the presence of much more than a temptress of the Arcanic. I wait, willing her to say more.

"My name is Xvanu," she says and I sense her smile through the words, her pleasure at having another to speak with. "Tens of thousands of years ago I was chosen by Helios's consort to be her eyes in the mortal realm long after she was banished. I was a mortal at the time."

Astonished, I lift my face to her and eye her openly. Xvanu notes my curiosity and continues, "I was Arch Queen of a great realm. Every year, when the moon was full, I had disturbing dreams. Messages of desperation from a goddess in a dark realm. At first, I was afraid, then as the dreams progressed, and I opened myself to her, I learned more, and what she was asking of me. I considered for a long time, and at last, I made my journey to this place. To this very spot where you are." She gestures to a massive doorway behind her, the source of the brilliant light. I cannot see what's inside, the light shifts and moves as if I will enter a portal. I regard it as she continues, both fearful and aching with the need to know what is on its other side.

"Like you," Xvanu says, "I also traveled far to reach this place. Even then it was as deserted and desolate as you found it. I entered this doorway, an old woman, weak, and wasted. In no better shape than you are now. I was more than ready to die after all I had gone through to reach this place." She pauses so I can shift my gaze from the strange doorway back to her, to take in her youthfulness, her health, her transcendent beauty. Again, the prickle of my flesh. I sense on the other side, I will be granted the longed-for gift of immortality. Strange, now the hoped-for reward is before me, I sense resistance, a desire to refuse it, my flesh repulsed, screaming in fear.

Xvanu eyes me and nods, as though she knows my thoughts. "But it was not a gift without cost," she says. She gestures to the doorway. "I have been trapped here, in this prism of space that hides me from Helios who would destroy me if he knew of my existence." She lowers an elegant hand to me. I take it and haul myself to my feet. Sharp pain shoots through my leg. I ignore it. Soon it will be over, I think. Soon, no more pain, ever again. "But you," she smiles, "you are the key to freeing both me and Helios's consort from her imprisonment."

I take that in, but it's too big. I still don't even know the name of Helios's consort or why she was banished. Questions pile up inside me. I want to know everything first.

She smiles at me. Kind. Tender. Like a mother. And it makes me feel things I have never felt in my life—a tumultuous mix of loss and longing for things I have never experienced slams into me—of eons unlived, of adventures never had, of loves never lost. Tears coat my eyes.

"Come," she says, still holding my hand, as though I am a child, "it is time to receive your reward."

She steps toward the doorway. A part of me warns if I go, there will be no turning back. That this heartbeat, right now, is where my path splits. Life or death. A forgotten mortal, or immortality without the chance to ever escape. I realize I haven't really thought this through. Thousands of years stretch out before me, the rise and fall of civilizations, of losing the ones I love to old age, and having to start over again and again and again, only to end up living in grief.

The price will be too great, my instincts cry. I ignore it. No. I want it all. Suddenly I am the man I was back in Azkarnu, the High Lord determined to live among mortals like a god. I came all this way. It will not be for nothing. 

I shut out my misgivings and let Xvanu lead me into the light.