Out of the tavern—safe for now.

Emerson walked barefoot along the grassy top of Catacomb’s southern edge. Aztec to his left—broken pyramids, acid lake missing. (NAN: By ‘Aztec’, Miller is mislabelling one of the maps called ‘Mesoamerican Ruins’, an arena of replica pyramids connected by bridges over a lake of acid. The lake’s contents were drained during the royal rumble into the underground tunnel network that Henry digs while pursuing Loki’s guildmate Fenrir.) As everywhere else, carcasses rotting in its drained basin. The murdered zoo: a night-black tortoise, monkeys, a big cat, pack of two-legged hedgehog things, crushed tarantulas in their tens of thousands. An ugly setup for a last stand—pass on it.

(NAN: He seems to be vetting spots for the next skirmish. Miller, it’s worth noting, has missed many of the landscape alterations caused by the battle while building his tavern hideout.)

“Ish. Nai. Kin....”

Spellcasting from bot-lover. Miller checked back over his shoulder. Behind him trailed the boy and his weapon swarm in tow, cutting off his retreat, matching his pace at distance of approximately one Worldpiercer long-shot. The boy kept refreshing his Earthfriend loadout—an adaptation to different situations and schemes.

Emerson, confirming no immediate attack, scanned the loadout change: minus two Celestials, three Floras, plus three Faunas, two Elementals. The juggled shifted in sync: one basher removed, three slashers added for a six-slot juggle.

In sum? A melee-heavy scheme with extra spice: fencing blending with gorilla fists, elementals for a dirt trick or a shock via one of the slashers as a conduit. Quick and flashy—bot-lover couldn’t sustain the six-slot for long.

“I’d rather not this one,” said bot-lover. “A mood like this calls more for a slow jam, something romantic. The best of those are back where we began."

(NAN: To jog the memory, they began in a replica cemetery for dead gods. This site is also where their duel concludes.)

Smiled, less forced than usual, cheeks mobilising for once with the joyful bounce of his shoulders—all lifted by visions of an aesthetic death.

A segment of the giant python blocked the way ahead. Bot-lover eased back, gestured for him to scale it unharassed.

On top, Emerson took in the graveyard on the otherside.

Ruins: a thin layer of ash-caked statues knocked over, smashed, melted, more carcasses. Hundreds of weapons, empty suits of armour. A new system of earth-work fortifications in the middle.

None of the original map paths he’d drilled remained.

Bot-lover, smugly: “One of the pitfalls of the cave. it’s hard to recognise the changes that've made our old strategies obsolescent.”

Emerson found the destruction disquieting, humbling. He might slay the boy in his haggard state, but he wouldn’t be able to slay this larger demon of apocalypse. Win or lose, one night’s rest, and it’d be right back to resume the treacherous mission.

Bleak—made it hard to understand his own persistence. Why was he here? A symbolic protest? Honour? This little scrap after the fact had neither. Bot-lover’s psychoanalysis might’ve been correct—just driven by some fucked-up nostalgia. (NAN: i.e. nostalgia for his ex-robot girlfriend. The love triangle is abundantly obvious once revealed.)

Emerson dropped down from the snake. Strolled through the ash, the stench of burned flesh.

Bot-lover sat back with a hill-top-view in a greenzone, a deadbull for his seat. “The old location of Tlauili is the best for you—the claw-weapon guy. Three-Spears for a crowd pleaser.”

Flurry of calls for the second from the stands. Bot-lover’s converts soaked up every utterance.

Emerson checked the spots. Both the god statues were missing from these sites. First: a clearing next to Spikepits nextdoor—simple. Second: a network of trenches—bot-lover phase-fencing like with the tavern walls.

Second was more tempting. “Traitor boy, where would you most fancy?”

Bot-lover, answer instantly at the ready: “There’s a marvellous triple zone in the bunkers. Even better if you’d let me rest for three while my buddies demolish it and clear the rubbish.”

Emerson checked it, jogging centre of the fortifications.

God statues improvised into the walls outside. A horror show inside: amputated limbs, blood streaks on every surface, above, below, the sides. Scattered stacks of armour and weapons—of a foreign design, scrawled with indecipherable runes.

(NAN: This equipment was dropped by the demonic/undead troops summoned by the suicide cult, this spot being where they made their last stand.)

Three greenzones overlapped in the centre, pulsing out of sync—effect: higher chance of negating a lethal wound with a heal half-way through, need to time the shots better.

Thrilling. Emerson scanned the aftermath of these others who’d resisted and failed, and his blood began to boil with a fatalistic resonance.

Outside, bot-lover hadn’t budged.

Sip of a fruit smoothie—mineral replacement for organs/skeleton. “Decision?”

“Why clear the thing?”

“Better resolution. I don’t want you returning later after convincing yourself that you lost to some terrain bullshit. There’s a massive skill gap between us – I’m going to show you it. Even with these kiddy sticks. A few minutes with mine, that’s all it’s taken for me to deconstruct your week’s effort and surpass you.”

Adorable hubris. “On with it, then, boy. Let’s see how well you’ve figured me.”

Bot-lover laid back to meditate. His goons unstealthed—a hundred plus, gathering already for the predicted answer.

A rushed hazmat job: war booty collected, statues and carcasses dragged off to form a 30-foot-wide ring, the fort smashed, the earth spread to fill trenches and a couple gopher holes.

Emerson traded out the mace at his hip for an extra knife. Instinct said the heavy shots were worthless now, bot-lover calculating all the points of usage - might have been worthless from the start. This last round would come down just to Worldpiercer and the phase-sword, to whoever’d made a better acquaintance with the machine’s fraudulent gifts.

He patrolled the deconstruction site, felt growing affinity with himself and the rapier. Everything unravelling, reducing to a few stained patches of grass through the ash in a memento of a battle gone and forgotten - might as well have been a home game.

Yet the enemy had chosen the home game. A mystery. Emerson was eager to confront whatever scheme the boy’d concocted. His eyes read nothing so far, nothing but derangement.

All cleared, goons re-stealthing.

Bot-lover rose to his feet from his power nap. Ruined armour swapped out for a set of light-weight cloth laid beside him. A couple daggers. Aside from that, just the phase-sword.

He stepped into the ring as such, with no indication of summoning the others for back up. (NAN: Henry doesn’t juggle during this last skirmish.)

Emerson had read it right—derangement.

Fantastic. He might have lucked into the boy’s demise. The machine did love to send off its used-up sons this way. After a stint of favourability, they began to imagine that they’d mastered it, forgot their limits, confused its infinite capacity for their own. That’s when the machine pulled the plug. Their embarrassing downfall would be a reminder to the next puppet watching against arrogance. Behold the man, the machine sneered. Ecce homo.

Bot-lover laughed, mind-reading Emerson’s judgement. “I am a bit delusional, but not in terms of the strategy. Like I said, I’m also just here to reminisce. This next nostalgic number is a classic from the minimalist era, which I dedicate to myself and nobody else. It’s titled, ‘Stabbing a Cunt to Death’.

The boy jogged in, zig-zagging up and down.

Straight into it. Emerson, with the fencer back-steps, shot—missed completely, over the head. Shot again—missed a quarter of an inch by the shoulder. Shot—missed. Fucking—switch up: he lunged in close himself, Worldpiercer retracting for a thick shot—an eye-stab from bot-lover glanced off Emerson’s brow—his own shot connected: through the centreline, the boy vaporised from bellybutton to throat.

Organs inflated back to fill the torso hole. Timing off. Bot-lover’s leg meanwhile thrust out for a trip, arms snatching.

Emerson struggled back, shoving, back-stepping.

A shot ripped bot-lover’s ear. Another eye-thrust back missed—bot-lover transitioned to the grapple, spell-shielded the next shot—phased back into the ground.

Emerson stepped evasive zig-zags.

Bot-lover emerged jogging a few seconds later on the opposite side of the clearing. Refreshed his spell-bubble.

His hands continued moving after the spell gesture, shadow-stabbing with the sword—like a climber practising tricky holds from the base of a cliff.

(NAN: Henry now appears to employ the method of rapid adaptation described in the first note of this chapter, i.e. a series of safer early skirmishes that develop into a finisher. A novelty from prior instances is that he does without juggling, simply with his sword. From Miller’s perspective, it’s not all apparent whether this is substantially harder. Superficially, it just seems less interesting than the more complex items combos from before as they iterated over skirmishes into creative deaths.)

Emerson sped through his own adaptations. The instinctual switch to the thick shot had been right—his kill range was much shorter than he’d thought. Bot-lover’s dodging routine was a trick: induced him into a fencing style incapable of winning.

Emerson advanced, bot-lover phased underground again.

Came up soon right behind, stabbing feints. Emerson went for the mid-range lethals right away. Three shots in a row—three complete misses.

Bot-lover, dodging up close, legs bobbing in and out of the ground, passing part-way through Emerson, switched up suddenly into a fencer’s retreat, followed by a badly-measured lunge, far too short—stabbed anyway—skewered Emerson's foot.

Emerson jerked to the side, yanking his pinned foot free, shot again—missed high.

Bot-lover back underground.

Returned at a distance again, jogging. More shadowstabbing—getting closer, freakier, the picture of the man within his hands solidifying.

Emerson, with a spike of frustration, cut that scheming short by sprinting to re-engage.

Bot-lover accepted it, stepped in quickly phase-dodging two shots, pushed Emerson’s shield ajar, spell-blocked a lethal, stabbed him through the ribs, sword splitting guts, heart, and erupting inside his mouth—memory: Dunford lock-jawed wincing, blood seeping through teeth, arse of the pants soaking red.

A small groan from bot-lover—failure.

He phase-stepped through Emerson to dodge the return shot. Into the ground.

Back out on the adjacent side, jogging, shadowboxing. “Hmm…last round next, I reckon. Any final speeches, old man?”

The shadowboxing hastened, the minor kinks ironing out, the picture clear now: Emerson himself.

Emerson’s own thoughts, much slower, were just catching up with his earlier frustration.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Trying to adjust Worldpiercer’s range, he couldn’t get a concrete feel for a lethal at any distance. Something was fundamentally off in his perspective. Like a neanderthal—a caveman—swatting at a fly without recognising that the thing buzzed ten miles higher in the stratosphere, its tininess an illusion of distance. If ever the caveman could reach his fly, the swat would only shatter his own hand. If, by some miracle, he figured out some other means to destroy the fly, it still wouldn’t matter. An endless line of replacements waited.

Cruel thing was, the caveman would never even reach the fly, never comprehend his enemy’s true aspect before defeat.

Emerson’s attacks had this futility. Bot-lover was separated from him by many layers of defence.

What were they? Didn’t know. And like the caveman he wouldn’t be given the time to know. All of that was for someone else to reconstruct from the fossilised bones of his extinct species.

He’d lost.

(NAN: As a missing piece of context, Miller’s thoughts here are really only the last in a long series of internal monologues by previous intruders accepting their defeat. His amongst the assortment is poorly-constructed and metaphorically banal. Some of the others had more dramatic, more philosophically-intriguing takes on doom, hallucinating cities devoured by void magic, maps erased and re-used for new maps, mathematical enigmas solved into flatulence jokes, millennia-long tortures by demonic princes, star-systems inhospitable with planet-hopping plagues, de-aging curses that conclude in suffocating in the womb as their mother hangs. )

Bot-lover’s shadow-stabbing stopped—the puzzle of the duel solved.

The former animacy of the hands and the sword retracted inside. It redistributed like blood from the heart throughout his body as a subtle dance of celebration, a little hop in his steps circling Emerson as he waited for a predicted opening to appear.

Some of that animacy reached the boy's face—a twitching drama of ambiguity: horror dying into ecstasy, distraction unravelling into pure concentration.

Emerson recognised the look.

That look, he knew well. Once been his own look. The look of a man absorbed in the full galaxy of human passions—from suffering to love, from suffering love to loving suffering.

He stepped back, speechless, appalled.

Bot-lover added Emerson's reaction to the dance as an extra elbow swivel. “Isn’t about time we let go of this pretence of abomination? We can retrieve that and all the other baggage later, on the quiet trek back down. Up here, nobody will judge us for refusing to carry it the final steps - there is nobody else, nobody left but you and me, and I’m too busy exalting in the sensuosity of this exclusive view…before it vanishes again."

(NAN: Nothing in the missing segments of the duel explains this exchange. My best interpretation is that Miller is horrified after imagining from Henry’s expressions of happiness that our hero has already made love to his robot girlfriend, the ‘look’ Miller knows being a unique joy of forbidden bot love.

Henry then, detecting this paranoia, taunts Miller with his talk of ‘sensuosity’ and ‘exclusive’ and ‘it vanishes again’. I decode these into an ironical statement, our hero pretending to have entered an ‘exclusive’ club romancing it, i.e. Miller’s flakey robot girlfriend referred to by a non-human pronoun. The suggestion is that she’ll eventually leave the younger duellist just as she has left the older duellist. This would seem, at first, a cause for despondency or Miller’s own rejection-inspired vendetta. Henry’s take is different. Continuing the Buddhist messaging of the saga revealed in my essay, he seems to suggest that one should be content to simply live in the present cyber-romantic moment, to ‘savour’ the robot’s companionship with the comprehension of its ultimate transience.

We’ll return to that last point in my conclusion, as another key element in Henry’s post-love-triangle romantic enlightenment, wherein this detachment from love paradoxically leads to its immortal obtainment.)

A squishing under Emerson’s heel—his retreating foot stepped into something at the clearing’s edge. Risk the check: the pink slurry of a brain spilling out of a helmet, himself standing upon some miserable wretch’s sweetest memories. He glanced back up, bot-lover gone.

Emerson ran for the centre, zig-zagging.

Reached it.

Waited, turning, stepping.

Waited.

Stepped on with the erratic footwork.

A glow from the ground—twist, lunge, shoot—bot-lover ducked it with a diagonal step.

Instant grip after pressing down Emerson’s shield. Rapid stabs over the rim, between heart and face, feint, feint, feint, feint.

Emerson, wriggling his head about, shot through the shield—missed again, his balance off from a—his nose bridge split, the real stab miss—struggle flowing on, bot-lover’s body strobing between phases, weird shit happening to his shield—pinched and released with the strobing.

Emerson ignored the weirdness, no time to figure it. Focused on his footing. Avoid any attempts for a takedown. Get distance if possible—he shot at bot-lover’s legs—missed. A flash in Emerson’s peripherals—memory: Ritter in the forest, admiring the chickadees in the branches with his lonesome eye...

Back to 2050, a stadium, feet slipping around ash, wrestling some lanky teenage boy—bot-lover.

Bot-lover, not getting the desired follow-up, unveiled another trick. Phased inside of Emerson’s chest, like a demon putting on his skin for clothes.

Emerson stepped about to get him out. The boy stuck harder than a tick, shadowing lunges and sidesteps, walking with his host through a roll and reconnecting as he came back up stabbing.

Applause from the spectators for the comedy of the routine.

Emerson not so amused. Panic—parasite within would soon explode from his flesh after gorging fat on his internals.

Into his own abdomen? Fuck it. Better both dead than one.

As Worldpiercer tore up his guts, a memory of Blackner with shredded bowels melded with Holtz slumping over with a neck wound...

Back—Emerson revived, somehow, in a jumble of in-fighting. Bot-lover, after synchronicing a step out and neck thrust with the self attack, diagonally phased a shot, shoulder ripping open. Emerson took a thrust up through the jaw, glimpsed seizure lights—memory: Turnbull spilled ass-up in a ditch, brain oozing from his hippy locks...

Dead this time? Finally...

Back to it. Bot-lover phased two shots back clean. Emerson, elbowing off a feint from high, felt his heart explode—memories: Mitchell fading, Puckett fading, Shelton fading.

The boy half-phased a gut shot back, his left-side spewing out a confetti of pancreas and rib fragments.

Tempo shift—bot-lover weaving into a takedown, legs shooting out to trip, Emerson retreating.

Tempo shift back—Emerson ditched his shield, latched back onto bot-lover’s thrusting arm. A cut split his fingers down to the wrist. He pushed the gore forward, the reconnecting meat snatching a pinch of bot-lover’s shirt—

But his hand slipped away—its cloth grip gone, the shirt desummoned—

He shot centre of bot-lover's mass—pinged off a spell-bubble.

Bot-lover, ducking low, went for the evisceration—

Emerson tilted against it—ate an uppercut from iron-knuckles to the jaw—memory: Reynold’s after the most stupid-fuck brawl, mouth gulping with goldfish-like stupidity, eyes fading.

Sky span, blurred into the ash of the ground.

Everything blurred on—a dagger pierced an eyeball, maybe his, maybe bot-lover’s, maybe Blonde Logan’s...

A botched decapitation...

Intestines slapping against knees...heart plugged...half a skull lost..

So many lost…

Back, drawn by a sudden ease up of the tempo—Emerson yanked himself harder out of the collapsing history with a bullet-time.

Re-orientation: himself stand-up grappling while trading gut thrusts.

Bot-lover’s eyes flashed with the bullet, too. Panicking—they flicked point to point, gathering info, refactoring, calculating.

Something off.

Something different.

The colour around them: no green.

(NAN: What's happened is that Karnon’s healing zones, allowing them to trade gore for gore, have abruptly timed out.

There’s a missing last analysis section here from Miller’s robot girlfriend, which I neglected to type up before the TSA confiscation incident, it being much longer than this epilogue duel. In it, she synthesises all her previous commentary to lay out the various finishers available to Henry in adaptation to the change and explains how his snap decision between them reveals the distribution of his active martial complex, as different complexes produce different instinctual finishers.

Detailed with special emphasis is a ‘Western Post-Collapse' martial complex. (Western, in this case, is not referring to the ‘West’ of planet Earth, i.e. the Euro-American powers, whose politics the NPC girlfriend is ignorant of, but to Saana’s Western continent, which is typified by the collapse of a ‘Rangbitan Empire’, brought about a thousand years earlier by Karnon assassinating its leader.) Around a fifth of the arts Henry has studied for A Thousand Tools originate from this Empire, including all the ‘Duties’ such as The War-Priest’s Duty and ‘The Gladiator’s Duty’. The robot girlfriend says this proportion is unremarkable based on the continued influence of the Western continent and Henry’s warfare in the region. However, if the region had a particular significance to him, then one would expect a disproportionate influence of the complex beyond its fifth, and she gives multiple finishers that open up depending on various levels of complex activation. At 40%, for example, one art, ‘The Faceless Prince’s Will’ is key. (This art is mentioned in Chapter 188, and again in 211, by a Korean writer-companion of Henry’s). Thanks to the art’s lengthy, technical combos, if it was of particular importance to Henry, then he’d be focusing during this disruption on a death-thrust finisher available to him in 4 moves, or, with greater activation yet, a grapple-finisher in 7. The girlfriend lays out around a hundred other finishers, the rest of which I’ve now forgotten.

A briefer treatment covers other complexes and their finishers. An Assassination complex favours Henry either 1) winning on the spot by a couple oddly-rhythmed stabs or 2) tunnelling underground for what is, initially, a transition into a stealth finisher but what aborts into a failed negotiation, followed by Henry’s guards killing Miller to retrieve the sword while their leader naps. A Campaign complex has several of the stealthed guards readying up behind Miller while Henry tests a phase-grapple-stepping technique that ends with Miller’s disembowelment. A Cosmic Ascension complex results in Henry engaging stalling manoeuvres, beginning to summon more Legendaries, then cancelling these as his guards execute Miller. A Pro-Trickery complex has Henry beginning a reckless chain of combat pranks that, initially, moves towards our man’s death via a paralytic poison but aborts half-way through as Henry recalls his subterfuge and stabs Miller to death. The opposite, Anti-Trickery complex results in Henry retreating as his guards execute Miller. Accompanying this information were hundreds of arcane diagrams resembling radar charts.

The actual finisher we get is a hybrid, an Nth variation of a Campaign-Assassination-Anti-Trickery complex. Miller’s girlfriend describes this as multiple previously-active complexes pivoting around Henry’s antipathy to pranks, one that’s so extreme it inadvertently becomes a prank due to a pathological merger between subject and object. I’ve yet to decode this jargon. There’s nothing notably prank-like about the finisher, which strikes me as just being a bizarre anti-climax like the rest of this epilogue duel until one deciphers the cryptic supra-love-triangle moral lesson.)

Bot-lover grimaced, infuriated. Emergency spell-shield.

Emerson lost his clinch as the boy sank away.

He shot at the top of the head plummeting, popped the bubble.

Sword still fixed in place, he continued tracking for the follow-up, sinking down onto his knees.

Pointless—bot-lover was gone before the refresh.

Emerson was left to kneel in the ashes of a vanquished hope....

Back to it. He stepped back fast, zig-zagging, resummoned his shield.

Nothing followed.

All the greenzones around them were gone, adjacent maps included. Goons by the sidelines chatted with perplexity. The crowd murmured.

His head rang with bot-lover’s monotonous chatter. ‘Treacherous bots, indeed. Well, my battery's drained, so you’ve got three options. One, we return to your original proposition, slug it out without the machine’s weapons, just man to man. Two, my guards execute you – not a bad ending; its saves face, gives your die-hards the space to convince themselves you were on my level. Three, the worst—I really don’t recommend this one—we continue as is and you lose without taking another swing, blue-balled and fuming. Pick your poison. Man-to-man or for the fans?’

Emerson didn’t respond, refused to negotiate terms with the enemy.

Bot-lover’s reply: ‘Cool. I’m not pulling a sadistic prank, by the way. This was my go-to finisher before the tools.’

(NAN: We’re never given an explanation for this apology, I assume it’s his sympathy for Miller as a romantic loser, Henry’s finisher an accidental metaphor for sexual impotence.)

Emerson stepped circles in anticipation, shield up, sword tucked behind for the sneak shot.

A glow flickered beyond the clearing’s edge, hidden by the de-winged carcass of a giant vulture. Far beyond his shot range.

(NAN: Miller doesn’t recognise this monster, but it has quite a lengthy setup, which, before the loss of the previous chapters, would’ve been the closest thing this duel had to a satisfying resolution. The vulture, a pest harassing Henry throughout the royal rumble, has a paralytic bite with which it consumed several victims alive. There may or may not be a vague symbolic connection with Ramiro, whose cannibal ritual alludes to scavenging. 198: “Rest now, vultures of the moons. That we may warm this rejected body with the summer of our soul, lend us your unfeathered crown that explores the abdomen unsullied, and lend us your patient beak that strips the bone to white.”)

Boos from the crowd given a teaser of bot-lover’s plotting on the other side. Emerson crept quietly over—against the unknown, best always to take the initiative.

At the edge, he mapped a path through the rubbish, listening out for—a sudden sound of blowing.

Instant bullet-time. He span, ducked, raised his sh—

Oh, dear! You have been afflicted with Paralysis. Debuff will fade in 42 minutes, 39 seconds.

Sting of a bug bite to his shoulder. Crashing—limbs jelly, nausea, pressure in the skull.

Down, down, down, the back of his head catching on a toppled statue as he fell.

Boos and laughter drummed a thousand miles away.

He’d lost.

Nothing more to do. He pondered bot-lover’s claim: not a prank supposedly. Odd—he’d never publicised this, yet the kid had known. How? Traces sensed while mirroring the technique, maybe. Or a revelation from his treacherous bedfellow—no secrets from the machine.

Bot-lover appeared standing over him with a blowgun, disappointed. “You actually going to make me do it, brother?”

Emerson glared back through the paralytic mask, up at this traitor, no brother of his.

Kill yourself – just what the machine preferred. He’d once believed its engineering of the dichotomies betrayed its limitations—insufficient resources for a total eradication without assistance. Wrong. Suicide was just another tactic: displace the visible responsibility onto its targets, make the act more demoralising, more human.

He refused to play into the calculation. To silence this one man, this last man, it would have to go through all the motions of staining its aluminium fingers.

Emerson failed his last spit, pooling saliva running down his jaw.

Bot-lover shrugged. “Just don’t delude yourself that you were cheated. You had a whole week of practise for one duel against one opponent. Reverse that luxury, and it wouldn’t have been close. I’ve killed gods with much less preparation."

The boy kneeled. Blowgun disintegrated. He unsheathed the phase-sword. Closer, skin to skin—the familiar odour of sweetened rust. An arm scooped under Emerson to raise his limp body for a better angle.

Bot-lover’s fingers curled around his jaw, tilted his head back for a scenic view of the stadium’s broken ceiling and the night sky beyond—away from the view of the thrust.

Heat in the belly through to the heart—memories: everyone, their whole drooling species clapping, laughing, booing, jeering as they bled slowly out to nothing, shooting themselves in the temples, in the mouths, in the necks, in the foreheads, up the nostrils.

Out of the drooling, booing self-annihilation, Emerson suddenly saw her again, her hand cupping his cheek with sorrow and panic in the eyes.

Don’t, he tried to warn her, I’m finished. Hide. Hide. Hide. Hide! HIDE! HIDE! HIDE!

He couldn’t mouth the words. The void was creeping up his neck to silence his tongue, clamping his jaw shut tight.

But, somehow, she understood his silent plea this time. She pressed a point firm under his chin, delivered him mercifully back unto the warmth of their eternal past...