It was hot daylight upon the plain again and the ancient crone tried to cough, the smell of dust and her impending death heavy in her nostrils. She hadn’t the strength. “We must stop.” the words barely rose over the sigh of the wind or the swish of the tall grass against the chests of the slowly plodding horses. It was repeated after a bit; “we must stop.”

This time the boy heard it. He relayed the message to the man. “Shadra says that we must stop!”

Storm reined his horse —the blue roan again— around in irritation. “We’re barely moving as it is! How would she even know we’d stopped?” But he cantered back the short distance to where Corwyn sat his saddle, the reins of the crone’s mount wrapped around his off wrist. He brought the speckled horse up on the far side of the boy’s and leaned over, peering beneath the makeshift tarp at the withered figure within its nest of rags.

“I’m dying,” Shadra of the Purest Light informed him without preamble.

He, of course, knew this. He’d known all along that she wouldn’t make it. The thing that was baffling him was how she’d made it this far. All he could do was nod his head.

“I know spells,” she wheezed. “To ward off... the grim lady. A few years, only... but sufficient.”

“He shrugged helplessly. “You want to do them here?”

She shook her head. “I cannot. I am too weak. I have no power.”

He felt for her, but couldn’t fathom what she wanted him to do about it.

She aimed a spider-like finger at him. “You have power.”

He sat upright, suddenly cautious. “So I’ve been told.”

“I knew it,” she husked. “I knew that... I could sense power.”

“But I have no magical training,” he tried to burst her bubble gently. “In fact, I only know one spell, to the best of my knowledge, if that’s even the word for it. And I couldn’t tell you how I do that one.”

She smiled weakly, struggling for the strength to continue. “Youngling, I have been... training in the arts... since before your grand... grandparents were... born. Lend me only some... some of your... power... and I shall... free us... of this snail’s crawl.”

He scrubbed a hand against his jaw, eyeing Corwyn askance as that one regarded him with a puzzled expression. Then he looked back at the crone. “I may kill you outright.”

A barely perceptible shrug, followed a long time later by, “Then I shall... be dead a few hours early. Or... late as it... as it suits you. But lend me... the... power and I shall... guide it. Even a dod... doddering old woman... may allow a... swifter pace... than a corpse. Don’t you think?”

“How’s it work?”

“Magic?” she seemed confused.

“This battery boost thing you want me to do,” he clarified. “How do I provide power?

She smiled. “Lift... me down.”

He dismounted, ground reining the mare, and moved to lift her inconsequential weight from its nest. Supported firmly in his arms, she pointed back along the way they’d come, to a small hillock they’d been rounding. At her instruction, he placed her at its peak and knelt before her. She looked awful, almost translucently thin and worn away. The sun beat down cruelly against her pallid flesh, but she held his eyes with hers.

Kneeling there, almost in tears at the frustration of trying to force unwilling muscles to obey her, Shadra finally bade the man to undo her bodice.”

“Beg pardon?” he demanded.

“There must be phys... physical contact for... the power trans... ference to work,” she wheezed, even this mild exertion telling within her voice. “Particularly since... since we haven’t... the aids or... substances the spell... normally demands.”

“Can it even be done without those things?” he asked.

“Oh, aye,” she admitted. “It can... although the ef...effects will be much... diminished. That is... why I picked... picked this mound... for the attempt. It bursts... with life energy. I could... feel it as we... passed.” She reached down with a frail hand and stroked the warmly golden grain upon which she knelt. “Perhaps... if there is... is enough of it... and if I’m... able to tap into your... latent power, the... combination will be enough... enough that I might... remove myself... from death’s door. Perhaps,” she grinned toothlessly, “even so far as death’s front gate?”

“So we’re not talking about a great leap here, are we?”

“Not so much a... leap as a good... sized step. In a few days... should I survive... and it work... we might try again... and gain a greater safe... safety margin.”

He tilted his head. “How many times in a row can you do this?”

Her head was sagging as she shook it, “per... perhaps we could... discuss thi... this afterwards? I fear that... I’ve not... not much longer in... in which I can... be of help... with the... process.”

He squared his shoulders. “Okay, what do I do?

“Boots,” she wheezed. “And pan... pants. You must be... be one with the earth.”

Feeling almost more foolish than when he’d tried speaking wolf to the coyote, he shucked his boots and pants, rolling up the legs of the Lyrran skivvies. He knelt back before her a short arm’s reach back. “Now?”

“My... my bodice,” she insisted, voice the barest thread. “Place... place both... both hands... against... against my... h-heart.”

He undid the silken laces, exposing the crone’s chest, and pressed both hands against her heart, trying to ignore the hollow, sagging dugs. The beat of her heart was a faint and rapid staccato that put all thoughts of catching granny naked out of his head.

“Now... push,” she told him. “I will... guide, but... you must... push. With... all of your... will... you must push. See... with... with your... inner... inner eye. Close your outer... eyes. Concentrate on... on your center. See the spark of your life.... Foc– focus... on it. Reach into it and spr– spread it apart and see. See the life... all around you. Draw it... it in. Draw... it in fr...from the earth and... the air. Pull it into... into your core, and... push!”

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Feeling lost and out of his depth, Braedonnal Storm, late of Terra and points upward, hunched his shoulders and hunkered down, struggling to find the path to what she’d asked of him. See, she’d told him. See the life, be one with the earth. He followed that path, feeling the dirt and grain bite into the skin of his legs where they pressed into the hilltop.

He latched onto that connection and poured all of his will into it, focusing on it the way the grandfather had taught him to focus on a task all those long years ago until it filled his mind. Focus, that was the thing. Focus. If you could concentrate hard enough on a given subject to the exclusion of all else, the grandfather had always told him, you could do anything.

He narrowed his concentration to a pinpoint and reached, falling effortlessly past the cold place so quickly he never felt its passing, seeking the conduit she’d spoken of, and fell into that strange place he’d visited when fleeing the dragon. He could see now, the flow of life, of energy, all around and through him. He felt the coolness of the earth beneath him, but he could also see it now. Feel and see the heartbeats of the myriad creatures within and below.

Focusing his will, he reached harder, gathering in the lines of energy all around him. Far off, deep down, he felt the pulse of the waters flowing beneath the plain in their mighty rivers. Below them even, and he felt the very pulse of the world rumbling its molten beat. And he reached out for those.

Out and upward through the swirling light. He felt the grasses reaching for the sun, the grain, prickly with rebirth, on up into the air, heavy with the breath of life. And he gathered that in. Hungrily, greedily, hoarding all he could grasp, taking the elements of life, he packed them into a roiling, burning, coruscating knot of alive. And then he pushed.

As she began her own part of the spell, opening the pathways, preparing herself to receive the gift, Shadra watched with a small part of her mind as the man hunkered down and began the summoning. She watched his eyes close and his face go blank and then stern and she hoped he could muster sufficient concentration to create some sort of flow.

With the way open and even a trickle, she could assert a modicum of control and aid him. Even a tiny bit would help. He had it in him, she’d seen it, even that first night. If only—

Something was wrong! His face had closed down into hard lines and the air was beginning to shimmer with cold! The grass all around crackled with it, frost forming in an outrushing wave. Her eyes widened and she strained to reach for his hands. A cry escaped her lips; “NOO—!”

Thunder echoed across the prairie and an arc of light passed between the two figures atop the small hill, hurling the slighter of them a hundred feet through the air and sending the larger rolling over onto its back, arms outflung.

* * *

Far, far to the north, the queen mother collapsed without preamble. A short distance to their southeast, the mad boy king reeled in the saddle, losing his seat and flopping unceremoniously to the dust. And elsewhere on the plain, still far to the north and west, two sets of eyes, one blue, the other green, went wide with shock and fear.

* * *

Storm was the first to regain himself. God, his hands were on fire! He rolled over and levered himself to his knees and then his feet, all the while flailing his hands like windmills, trying to douse the invisible fires burning within them. On his feet, he raced drunkenly for the mound of rags that was Shadra of the Purest Light, Corwyn now hot on his heels.

She lay crumpled in the grass, an unruly mass of dirty white rags and long auburn hair... wait a minute....

“Ow,” the voice, while pain-filled, was clear and altogether too light.

Storm reached down, but his hands still wouldn’t work, and he was seeing stars into the bargain, as the aftershock of what he’d done began to make itself felt.

Shadra flopped herself over onto her back, repeating, “ow.” She opened her eyes and focused, eventually finding the two figures silhouetted in the sunlight, not moving. As her vision cleared, she noted more than that neither was moving. They were, in point of fact, simply standing there, open mouthed and stupid.

Levering herself up on her elbows, she followed their gaze and looked down at herself. Then she gaped. There were two angry red hand prints set perfectly upon the canvas of her firm, full, creamy white, otherwise unblemished, and upthrust breasts. She shook those back and forth, marveling at the way they bounced, rosy tips arcing skyward.

Tossing her head slowly, she watched silken auburn hair billow with the movement. She held up one hand, effortlessly supporting herself with the other as she examined it in minute detail.

No wrinkle, no age spot, no withered knuckle marred the silken perfection of the skin. The nails were long and smooth and clear, uncracked and unyellowed. Breath catching, she sent the hand beneath her petticoats. Gods, that was back as well!

She shook herself again. Then, seeing the reaction of her audience to that, she gathered up her gaping bodice and began angrily tying the laces.

“What in the forty-eight Medalosian hells are you?” she demanded of Storm in her high, clear, sixteen year old’s voice. And then she looked closer, squinting up into the sun. Something was wrong with him. No, not wrong... different.

“What is wrong with your face?” she demanded.

Storm struggled to tear his eyes and mind away from the results of what he’d done, bringing the backs of his burning hands gingerly to his face. “My face?”

Shadra peered up at him, still absently tying her clothing together. For the first time since he’d found her beneath the stable she could see him clearly in both realms, but that made the conundrum more difficult rather than less. There was about him the feeling of difference, but she couldn’t discern it’s nature separately from her own altered perception.

“Corwyn!” she snapped.

The boy measured himself and his mouth worked, though no sound issued forth.

“What is different?” she demanded.

“You’re... I... you’re–,” he stumbled.

“Not me, you young dolt!” she grated. “I know what’s different about me! What has changed with him?”

The boy turned to the man, face reddening. His gaze had barely reached its target before the answer was tumbling from his lips. “By the gods!” he exclaimed. “His face! It’s... the steel....”

Storm ran his hands along the prosthetic, heart pounding, trying to figure out what the boy was going on about. He was becoming aware, belatedly, of the scope of what he’d just done, and the magnitude of the blunder was gnawing at the base of his brain. That blast they’d have felt back home on the first world! He half expected to feel the hot wash of dragon breath against his neck at the thought. “This is gonna have to wait—” he began.

“What about the steel,” Shadra pressed.

“It’s...” Corwyn struggled to form the words. “It was clearly a mask before. The edges were sharp where it met the skin! It was a mask, Shadra! I know it was!”

Shadra nodded as the man’s words trailed off at the implication of Corwyn’s words. “I thought as much.”

“It is a mask!” Storm’s voice was flinty with sudden fear. “Or it approaches one for sufficient values of ‘mask’.” He still couldn’t feel much with his fingers, but he could feel the solid surface.

“Yes,” Shadra told him. “I’m sure it was.”

That was ominous. “Was?”

Shadra was climbing to her feet and swaying gracefully toward him. He didn’t quite flinch as her hand reached out and touched his face. Her fingertips were soft and cool, and he felt an electric tingle race through his body at the contact. She was vibrant and beautiful and the fact that he was thoroughly and happily married didn’t diminish the effect her touch had on his body.

She ran her fingertips gently along the juncture of prosthetic and organic along the mask’s entire circumference. Before she’d gotten more than a fraction of the way along, the chills racing through Storm’s body changed. Something was drastically wrong, and he felt the icy claws of fear tickle his spine.

She was leaning in close now, eyes peering at the edges of the mask as her fingers measured it, and he could no longer feel the effects of her new form even with the additional closeness. The mask had been a part of him for more than seven years and he knew its dimensions as intrinsically as he knew his own flesh. He’d run his own hands along it often enough in the first year, hadn’t he? But now.... He could feel her fingers. Feel her soft breath against his face. More than that, he could feel them against the mask!