It's late when we're finally escorted to a room, which already smacks of Altair and I's old haunt. Since I've never been one for parallels, I settle down with the air that all this is irrelevant, even though the walls emanate her scent like a summer field trembles with heat. It's exactly what you'd expect from Illuet's old room, too, strung up with bright little stones and ribbon, with books lining the walls and a variety of vases where wilted flowers lay, strangled by age. The light of the fading sun beams in through a window, turning the white pelts she's been using for bedding a bloodied red.

"Well," I say, stomach swollen with food. "That was the nicest reception we've ever had."

"So this is your family," Altair says. "I didn't know there were many other family packs still out there."

"Tempasse isn't really a family pack. It's more a loose conglomeration of Sentients who I'd more describe as having the same moral codes. I'm just angry that that stupid waiter somehow knew we were up here. Have they been giving out their location? If they have, it's a miracle they're not dead. They're not fit to defend themselves!" Illuet exclaims, pacing back and forth across the floor at an astounding rate. "And don't you dare tell me they're nice. They're probably outside the window right now, checking in so I don't leave again, because they're so-- they're probably worried to death about me. That's so unfair!"

Altair looks glumly in my direction. "Kind of reminds me of someone."

"Oh, you shut your mouth," I snarl. "Illuet. Who's Day?"

"We shouldn't have come back," Illuet exits, dramatically closing the door behind us. Judging by the fact that she makes it halfway out of town, there isn't anyone watching through the window after all. I glare out at the quiet rice fields, where rows of irrigated ditches flow down the mountain, and notice that Illuet's taking a jagged path around them, down to some remote enclave. By now, she's just a white fleck on the horizon, indistinguishable from one of the stars, but at least she's in eyesight... for the moment.

"We're going to have to go after her, aren't we?" I ask Altair.

"We could give her time. After all, she's not the only one who's been cagey about what bothers her, and we've definitely given you the benefit of the doubt more times than your due," Altair replies, looking down at me with all the pretentious curtness he can muster.

My fur bristles. "I've been good ever since we left the city where we met Suvi! Is it too much to claim I had some kind of epiphany?"

"Absolutely. I know you haven't." In the yawning silence between us, Altair adds, "I've been worried. That's all."

"We'll be back soon." I assure him.

"That's the problem. We'll be home and you won't have changed, I won't have changed, and the world will still be like this, slowly degrading around us."

"That's why the world is stuck like this," I say.

"What?" Altair draws himself back from the window.

"Nothing changes." I open the window. Despite its seeming heft, it would appear it's not quite big enough for me to weasel myself through. Frustrated, I close the window again and tell Altair, "Guess we're going to go through the halls, like normal, civilized Sentients."

"Obviously."

It's a one-room house, which means Illuet must have been here recently-- if she was old enough to be out of her mother's house when she left, although her decorations are a touch juvenile-- and sure enough, there are essentially no guards. (Illuet's right. They should be more cautious.) There's just the distant swathes of vegetation blowing in a distressed wind, so that the whole world seems to shake and hiss whenever the air turns. Between that and the cold, it almost feels like nature is trying to twist a knife against our throats.

Altair steps ahead, cautiously, and we follow her tracks down the side of the mountain. There's a well-worn path that leads around the bottom of one of the rice paddocks, eventually coming to a path away from the wind that stands between us and a tremendous fall over the edge of the mountains. Altair and I exchange an uneasy look, since being raised by desert-loving Moonwalkers and living on a low-lying farm has taught us nothing about mountain traversal, but the path is surprisingly well-protected. Sure, if Altair were to bump me off...

That's sort of a stupid thing to be afraid of, but now I'm erring closer to the middle. My gaze flicks up to catch his, even though he's looking straight ahead. I don't know what sudden paranoia has gripped on me, but it's dawning on me now that perhaps we shouldn't have come here, and more importantly, either he or Illuet could kill me any time if they were to turn on me.

I need protection.

Seeds are back at home.

This has to be Cas in my head.

"Who's there?"

Illuet sits up ahead in a sheltered grove. The cliffs above on all sides of the clearing are sheer as the one it overlooks, such that the whole place appears to have been a bed for a waterfall the world has since abandoned. It's too small for trees, and yet foliage attempts to crawl out of it. All the plants bent back towards the village, the most striking of which is a vine-like plant about as woody and wide as a tree, free-standing, whose appendages almost graze us as we enter.

All the plants seem to crackle and shift with displeasure as our presence is made known. The lush grass underneath us, which has as much business being there as we do, hisses. Illuet asks, "Why did you come here?"
I open my mouth for a dumb comeback. Then I shut it again. I kick Altair in the leg. Altair says, formally, "You may not have been our companion long, Illuet, but we can tell when you're in distress. There's nothing more poisonous for your heart than grieving alone."

"I'm in full agreement. Furthermore, who's Day?" I ask, again.

Illuet raises her head and sighs in exasperation. "I may not have been here long, but somehow I already know what to expect from both of you. It's really none of your business, but I can see you're both curious-- oh, come off it, Altair, you too-- and I suppose I could... well. It's just that--"

"You don't have to talk about it if it's going to make you viscerally uncomfortable," suggests Altair.

"Of course not, but we'll bother you about it until you die if you don't just tell us now," I suggest, with equal vigor. "Come on, Illuet."

Illuet scuffs the dirt with her paw. "I was a healer before I met you. My magic isn't visible off the Dog Days, but everyone around me still seemed to know about it. I was told constantly how special I was, praised for things I barely understood how to do, and occasionally chastised for things that clearly weren't my fault on the basis of someone believing I needed to be taken down. I was taken in by the healers guild, early, and had my own room before most of my siblings could crawl. They wouldn't even teach me actual herbs. They'd just tell me, 'Go on, do it,' and I would heal the sick. I could see the hope flare in their eyes. We had Sentients coming from surrounding communities, rushing up the mountains to meet us, and then, of course, my best friend at the time fell ill." She pauses.

There are no stones to mark the dead, otherwise, I believe I know what I'd see.

"His condition was sudden and dramatic. I would stay by him and use my powers on him, urge miracles into his body, and he would burn up, his fever would break, and the next night he would be even hotter to the touch. One night, once all the others were asleep, I came to his bed and promised I would heal him. I began throwing all my energy into his body, and when he started to light up, I kept going, and going, until he began to cry out in pain. I felt something catch, and was sure, suddenly, that I had fixed the problem, and that he was becoming well... I had used so much magical energy that I rent his heart out of his body."

Altair and I stand dead still. It's the kind of preposterous claim only dark magicians have ever made, but with the conviction she says it with, we are certain, at once, that the death of death has taken place, that the spirit hosted in a body known as Day will never again return to this world.

"You must hate me," Illuet says. "I've never told anyone that."

My throat is dry. "Keep going."

Illuet dolefully nods. "He died in agony. Guild was furious, but they couldn't do much besides admonish me. The real punishment was sitting beside his house, or down here, replaying those last few moments in my mind, and I tried to throw myself into my work to fix it."

"Didn't fix it?" Altair asks.

"Didn't fix it. I was indiscriminate. I would come onto deathbeds and grieve when it was their natural time. I would wander down the mountain and find battlefields, healing, weeping, just living in pain. I gained a reputation. I began putting us at risk. Still, I could save everyone, or I could save no one, and if I couldn't save anyone... I wasn't going to be anyone. I started trying to heal myself, but whatever was wrong with me, it was something twisted deep inside, and 'hope' wouldn't fix it. I had learned how to use my own powers to enable tendencies of mine. I had worn down a rock in a river that was supposed to dam it up, and now, I could bring more water over, but I couldn't close it again."

"You didn't talk to your family about this?" Altair asks.

"They wouldn't-- I was a-- Everyone cared about my magic more than me. You don't ask a flower how it's doing when you pick it out of the ground, do you? I couldn't ask them for help. These Sentients are nice, but they understand one kind of illness, and that's the kind with a discernible beginning, a discernible end, and physical symptoms. I just figured they'd be fine, so I went, and now that I'm back, look! Everything is fine!" Illuet gives us a harsh laugh. "I just wanted to run somewhere. That's not... it's not so bad, is it?"

"I think we're all running," I say.

"Conning helps you run, huh?" she asks. "That's kind of sad."

"Is that all we can do? Altair asks. "Run?"
"We run or we choose a side," I ask. "We're putting off a decision between two bad answers. That's all."

"Maybe you both need to choose one," suggests Altair.

"Why do you con, then?" Illuet asks Altair.

"Hawk."

"No, you don't."

Altair hesitates. He taps a foot against the ground, looking up past us at the swathe of stars overhead. "Justice," Altair decides. "I want revenge on every poor look I've ever received, every pitying glance, let alone every time someone's almost taken a bite out of me. I want to be the predator instead of the prey for once, I want to bring things around-- I'm bringing things around."

"I..." Illuet begins.

"What, you don't have some pithy response for that?" he asks.

"No. I truly don't," Illuet says. "I wish there was some better way for you to express that, but even that kind of sounds condescending. Hawk?"

"Like you said, running," I start, but looking up at both of them, who seem as far away as the cliffs, and as potentially fatal, I think I want to make something worse happen. Something seizing up in my gut, I say, "There's nothing deeper than that. I'm just a coward."

The silence settles back on us.

"That's all?" asks Illuet.

"Few more days journey to home. We're almost there," Altair breathes, skirting right around the problem. "Should we go back to the room for now?"

The world stills. "Wait."

The moon peeks over the edge of the little basin we're in. All the plants hush, even though the wind still blows violently around them, and the moonlight paints all the plants in glorious fractal colors. One of the younger saplings bends slightly in the wind. Illuet lowers her head to the flower, and I hear the snap of branches, of teeth pulling apart. When my eyes refocus on the source of the noise, Illuet is still standing by the sapling, the world unchanged, and nothing has been taken or destroyed.

"Is that him?" asks Altair.

Illuet shakes her head. "He's gone. Whatever's left has... this is just the world's way of..." she chokes up, "Waving goodbye."
I close in from one side, Altair closes in from the other, and we stay there until the moon returns to the corners of the sky the plants here will never see. When it leaves them, they sigh, their many odors drifting up into the night and releasing in a swell of perfume, and then there's only us and the darkness. I get the sense, that as in a town heavy with bones, we are currently surrounded by bodies. Shouldn't it feel less ominous if this is a release instead of a capture?

Illuet beckons me, still a beacon in the darkness, and I follow her. She doesn't speak on the way back, neither does Altair (to be polite... silly deer), and I'm left to my own thoughts, which as established, is company I'd prefer not to keep. I can sense him hovering there, daring me to talk about the reasons I'd really like to continue running forever, or perhaps chiding me for wasting time, or... well, feel free to say it, Cassiver.

Your friend is mortifying.

I can't help but look over the cliffside on the way back. There's still a gaping chasm beneath us, even if the ambient darkness masks its depth, and it looks like an afterlife with no promise of reincarnation. The points on the cliffs on the way down are teeth on an ancient beast. There is a death we can barely process, since, by birthright as Sentients, we've already been damned to eternal salvation. It's close tonight, in the rice paddocks and in the nests of skysquirrels who roost around the town. It reminds us that no matter what happens to the bones, this will continue.

Forever.

I find myself trapped on the other side by the cliff wall, an unfeeling colossus of stone. I'm grabbing something with telekinesis, just to remind myself, that as a Sentient, I'm stronger than death, and I don't know if Illuet and Altair can tell why the air mutters with the reverberation of a rock breaking below us. I pause at the edge, hitting the stone against the cliff side over and over again, defanging death. I feel hatred rise like poison through my whole body, only growing stronger, and then I can't feel anything.

So this is death.

"So this is death," I say to the night. I awake into a dream, in a forest I don't know but have entered before. I have a coin clenched at my side.

Andulas sneaks out of the trees. Her companions flank her sides, equally unimpressed with me, and the three of them look down like gods, judging me before I pass over to the afterlife. I am aware, in some nagging place inside of me, that I should feel shame, but I guess getting the coin means that I won.

So nothing should be wrong.

"That would be the trinket you wasted Sentient life upon?" asks Andulas.

"You care about Sentient life since when?" I respond.

"Well, I'd say when it's ours, but I suppose just when it's life that could have continued to serve a useful purpose within our ranks. You're a waste of resources."

"It's a coin from off-world. Other worlds have these massive standardized systems of currency, because they don't have haemo, the pack system, or Sentients capable of object duplication," I tell them. "It's fascinatingly weird. This one has what looks like a glyph..."

"It's an animal," says Dominic.

"It's a bird," I tell them.

"I hope you like that coin. Your partner died for it," Andulas leers at me.

"I do like the coin. It was hard-won. Listen, I do whatever I need to accomplish these objectives. I take it that's what you want, isn't it?" I pass her the coin, telekinetically, and she catches it.

"Are you certain that's what we need to open the gates?" asks Reynard.

"For the Wail? Absolutely. You are working on securing my amplifier, aren't you?" I ask. "This could be the point where we move far past being a small-time gang of thieves. This is our big opportunity."

"That was one of our best operatives who fell to the authorities," Andulas looks to me, staring right through my eyes as to see me. "You did nothing about it."

"I did whatever I could do," I say, and they're not my words, but no matter what he thinks right now, Cassiver and I both know he's lying.

"Do you fear death?" asks Andulas.

"I fear being dead while living," I respond. "I have not failed a single mission of yours. I don't understand why you're being so obstinate, Andulas. Let me into that inner circle of yours. Open your heart."

Andulas looks to her two companions. "There is something you can do," she says. "If you really have no boundaries. There's something you can give me."

I already know what happens at the end of this mission.

I already know that Cassiver, long after death, is still on it.