After Lirilith and I had gotten married, we’d pooled our resources to buy a house in the merchant’s district. It wasn’t much—a narrow, two-story building with little to differentiate it from its neighbors—but it was ours, an oasis from the scorn that we daily faced.

There was a garden in the back, Lirilith’s domain. I loved listening while she tended to her plants, addressing them in the same way she’d done with her troops during the war. It was very her.

But in this garden was a shed, my haven in our oasis.

Lirilith didn’t have the same disdain for science as the rest of the empire, but it didn’t much interest her, which would be fine if my indulgence in its study hadn’t been such an inconvenience at first. After a month or so, spent dealing with various experiments spread across the kitchen table, she’d had our old friends build the shed for me, adding a few modifications to the project at my behest once I’d found out about it.

So, here was where I messed with science, although Lirilith liked to be somewhere nearby when I did that. In the past, I’d had too many accidents for her to be comfortable otherwise. Here was where Arivor and I had brought Alouin’s body after stealing it.

When we’d lugged it through the house that day, we’d frozen on encountering my wife in the sitting room. Neither of us had expected her to be home, but she’d merely taken a sip of her tea, lifting an eyebrow at us, and said not a word. She’d gotten used to the antics of ‘her boys’, as she called us, long ago.

She was also the only reason I’d left my shed over the last week, tempting me outside with home-cooked meals and promises of soft pillows and her.

I was ever grateful to her for watching the shop while I’d been busy. Lirilith might not be as knowledgeable when it came to the healing arts, but she’d picked up some first-aid techniques during the war. That, combined with her natural charm, should be enough to keep the shop running for a while.

At least, I hoped it would be so because I was having no luck with my testing. At first, I’d tried a few, minimally invasive things with this current experiment, squeamish about poking around the insides of a dreaming man. We couldn’t know if he felt pain, and I hadn’t been sure if the rumors about his healing rate were true.

But the cautious approach had yielded nothing, and Arivor, by my side throughout this, had started acting… cranky, letting his desperation show itself. So, I’d moved on.

After that, we’d learned that the stories about Alouin were true. Half of my time spent messing with his body, I’d been racing to stay ahead of its ridiculous healing rate. Even still, I’d managed, systematically going through its many different parts, but I’d been at that for days.

This afternoon, I’d be sticking a needle into the filling of his neck’s bones. As I prepared for this, my stomach, lurching beneath my ribs, kept reminding me that I’d made the mistake of eating breakfast this morning, and I couldn’t help feeling like I needed to bathe. In between checking my various instruments, I scrubbed my arms, aware of Arivor watching me.

He was perched on the table where we’d lain Alouin’s body, sitting beside its head with his feet swinging, but this casual pose didn’t match the grim aura that was hovering over him. It was making my already rattled nerves flare more strongly.

We needed a distraction.

“Have you heard anything from your uncle about our trip to the temple?” I asked.

“No.”

Well, that had changed nothing. Maybe I should attack the source of my friend’s gloom, no matter how much that might scare me.

“How’s Rafe?” I asked.

This question got a reaction. Hopping off of the table, Arivor stormed to me, grabbing my wrist so he could slap a syringe into it.

“Stop stalling,” he said. “Let’s get started.”

I held still until he let me go before speaking.

“I know you’re stressed right now, but don’t touch me like that. It’s not ok.”

Swallowing hard, Arivor squeezed his eyes closed.

“I know.”

He rubbed his face.

“I’m sorry. It’s just Rafe… he hasn’t gotten out of bed for a week, and even when he’s in it, he can barely move. He hasn’t kept any food down for two days.”

Dropping his hands to his sides, he worked his jaw for a moment before opening his eyes, letting a solitary tear roll free.

“He asked me to make it stop last night, Eri,” he whispered.

Shit.

I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I could say to help Arivor, so I spoke not a word. Closing my fingers around the syringe, I marched to my subject, rolling Alouin’s body so that it was lying face down.

“You’ll have to support his head, otherwise I might mess up the angle on this,” I said, glancing at my friend.

Nodding, Arivor wiped his eyes before hurrying to me. He did as I’d asked, and I sucked on my lip, considering where I should start.

I’d need a tissue and fluid sample first. It was what I’d done with every body part we’d tested, hiding them in case the subject was taken from us.

These samples lay in the bolt hole that led out of this place. It was one of the modifications that I’d asked my wife to include during the shed’s construction, knowing that sooner or later, our neighbors would come after Lirilith and me with pitchforks.

Getting the needle into the neck bone properly would be difficult. I’d never done it before and for good reason. Every medical text I’d read—both those from a tear and from the time when Alouin had walked among us—advised against penetrating the spine this high, recommending an entry point much lower. Doing it here could have severe consequences.

Which was partially the point. I needed to see how many ways this body could heal itself.

Given that, I supposed it didn’t matter how clumsy I was with this. Once I was finished, we’d begin the laborious process of peeling apart skin and breaking bone to reach the tissue within. I could get a sample then.

So, I jammed the syringe into my subject’s neck, only careful to avoid bone, and when I did, something besides candlelight flared inside the shed. Startled, I jerked the needle out, and that artificial light died.

Breathing hard, I met Arivor’s eyes. Besides his healing, that had been the first unusual reaction we’d gotten from my subject, and it made me cautious.

“Eri, is this…?” Arivor started. “Do you think-?”

“Maybe. We’ll find out,” I said, “but first, I’ll put Lirilith on standby, in case this blows up in our faces.”

“Smart,” Arivor said. “Hurry it up, then!”

Grinning, I bounded to the door, sucking in a breath as I yanked it open.

“Lirili-!”

"By the stars, you’re loud.”

My wife frowned up at me from where she was kneeling beside a garden bed.

“What do you want, most obnoxious and wonderful of husbands?” she asked.

“I’m about to do something hazardous for my health,” I said, forcing solemnity into my voice. “Thought you should know.”

Turning back to her task, Lirilith waved a pair of gardening shears overhead.

“I’ll be out here, listening for screams, then,” she said.

Hell, I loved her.

Returning to my subject and my friend, I lifted the syringe.

“Ready?” I asked with a mischievous grin.

Was he ready for a chance at a cure? Was he ready for the likelihood that this chance was as empty as the others? Was I ready to face another of the world’s marvels, to unravel it until it was mine to understand?

Arivor jerked his head in a nod, and once more, I sank the needle into my subject’s neck.

And nothing happened.

Groaning, I leaned my elbows on the table, dragging my hands over my face, while Arivor held perfectly still.

“Great. Just great,” I said. “Another dead end.”

At least, it seemed that way now. I’d have to poke at this part of my subject a little more before I could definitively declare it useless for our goal, but from how things had been going for us so far, I didn’t think much would change between now and then.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Arivor woodenly rounded the table to flop against its leg, jostling it. On the tabletop, the body jumped, making its hand slip over the edge, and when that appendage landed, it was wedged between the back of my friend’s head and the table’s leg.

If he found the touch of a living-dead man disturbing, Arivor didn’t show it. He stared into nothing while all of him was loosened with defeat. I’d never seen him like this, not even during our short captivity with the humans during the war.

“My son is going to die, and nothing can change that,” he said, surprisingly calm. “I should never have hoped for something else. Every time we think we can cure him, the possibility gets ripped away, and I can’t do it anymore.”

How did I pull him free of this despair? He was my best friend, and he was hurting, and I had to fix him. That was what healers did, right? Fix what was broken?

“I know it’s hard, Arivor. I do, but you have to hold onto hope for a little while longer,” I said. “I’m not finished with this body yet. Until I’m done, can you hold out? Please?”

Slowly, Arivor rolled his head until he could see me, almost letting the hand on him slip free, and I suppressed a shudder.

“What else is left?” he asked.

“Oh, a handful of grisly bits and pieces,” I said, “and I need to wrap up this part.”

With a half-smile, I flicked the syringe, still sticking out the body, and Arivor’s face went slack. His eyes emptied of his presence before he toppled to the side.

For a precious few seconds, I was stuck staring at this scene with my bewildered brain trying to figure out what had happened, but then, I was on my knees, rolling my friend over.

He looked dead. I’d seen enough corpses to know what it looked like when someone’s essence had left their body, but although that visage was what shrouded my friend—oh stars above, Clariss was going to kill me—he was still breathing.

Like Alouin was.

In a haze, I hauled Arivor upright, pinning Alouin’s hand behind his neck once more. Precariously holding this arrangement together, I flicked the syringe again, but as when I’d inserted it for a second time, nothing happened. Grabbing the end of it, I jimmied it back and forth, dragging its needle in a circle.

When white light collected around the hand that I’d pinned, I paused, but Arivor didn’t move, so I continued with my breathing going ragged. Had I killed my friend?

Well… he wasn’t dead, but in many ways, that might be worse. Had I- had I done this to him?

Coughing jarred the stream of my frantic thoughts while the hand behind Arivor, still filled with light, lifted to slap on the table. Much slipping and sliding occurred first, but the body on the table… Alouin pushed himself upright.

For a brief moment, I lost my hold on the world. The next thing I knew, I was on the other side of the shed with Arivor behind me, and Alouin had his hands lifted, frowning at one full of light and the other filled with darkness.

“What on earth?” he said.

A distracted look overtook him, and when focus returned, he widened his eyes to saucers.

“Oh, fuck. Why are those sequences initia-?”

Grunting, he curled on himself with a continuous string of curses spilling from his mouth. As if pushing against something solid, he brought his hands together at an agonizingly slow rate, gritting his teeth, and when they came together, a pained whine filled the shed.

At it, I scooted Arivor and myself further back, glancing toward the door. I didn’t think we could escape from here unnoticed, not with my friend in his current state. Instead, we thunked into a wall, and my already abused heart skipped a beat when the candle on a nearby table almost fell to the floor.

What was I doing? I should keep my eyes fixed on the- the god in my shed.

When I found him again, though, I squeaked. Gray mist, or maybe fog, was jetting from Alouin’s hands to a point in front of him, one where the air was doing something that I couldn’t quite comprehend, but it made my head hurt.

Almost, I looked away from this point. Before I could, though, the stream of mist causing it trickled to a stop. With it gone, Alouin limply fell to the table, flipping over it to tumble onto the floor.

Meanwhile, at the place where the mist had stopped, the air… shattered, and a hairline crack appeared. It expanded until it had made a pinhole, and streams of black and white flowed toward it from Alouin. Around the pinhole, the black trickle formed an oval while the white bits outlined this shape.

And the shed was still.

I was stuck in place with fear singing in every part of me. Fear worse than the moments before a battle. Fear worse than facing down an empire’s leader.

Lirilith hadn’t come to help us, but I couldn’t blame her for that. To this point, everything had been relatively quiet, or as quiet as my typical experiments went. She probably thought that everything was fine and dandy in here.

When Alouin stirred, I stopped breathing. He got to his feet, quickly locating the oval.

“Damnit, this iteration didn’t need another one of those.”

Continuing to swear, he kneaded his arms one at a time while looking over his surroundings.

And his eyes landed on me.

Swallowing hard, I tried to smile. It must not have come off well because Alouin stormed toward me with a grumpy look carved into his face.

“Is this your work?” he asked. “Hell, this is what I get for trusting Max and Wye with my body: some primitive forcing me into it again. Damn. I was doing something important…”

Standing over me, he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Where am I, and what did you do to me?”

My mouth was left flapping. I knew I should answer Alouin’s questions, but I couldn’t force my focus away from a single point of interest.

“For ships’ sake, man, speak up!” Alouin snapped.

Licking my lips, I pointed at his chin level.

“Um. You have a…” I said. “My syringe?”

“What?”

Furrowing his brow, Alouin patted at the back of his neck—

“Oh.”

—before pulling my syringe free. To my surprise, he returned it to me without a change of expression, rather than breaking it as I’d expected.

“That explains why I was stuck here,” he said. “Hell, you’ve messed with my sequence organization, but since I’m not using this body, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

And finally, finally, my dumb, piece of shit self realized something that I should have considered from the second Alouin had woken up.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I- I have no right to speak with you after what I’ve done-”

“Debatable,” Alouin interrupted. “After everything I’ve suffered in my life, this was merely an inconvenience. But please. Do go on.”

Frantically, I found the trailing thread of my thoughts.

“My friend has a son who’s sick. Dying,” I said. “That’s why I was experimenting… is there any way you’d help me heal him? I know it’s a lot to ask.”

I didn’t know if I could figure out Arivor’s situation on my own, not any more than I had with Rafe’s at least, but I doubted I’d get more than one favor, if that, from this man, especially when he should be punching my face in.

Rafe needed the help more. If he were here, Arivor would understand. He’d probably kill me if I wasted this chance on him.

Cocking his head, Alouin examined me with narrowed eyes.

“I’ve seen a lot of miserably sick kids in my life, accompanied by their desperate parents,” he said, “but never a parent’s friend who’d go so far to help, especially alone. Where’s this kid’s mom, dad, or guardian?”

“Um…”

I was saying that a lot.

“He’s here, actually.”

Scrambling to my feet, I dusted my hands off, glancing over my shoulder with pinched lips.

“Something happened while-”

“Shit.”

That curse had been so quiet I almost didn’t hear it, but when I turned back to Alouin, he was eyeing my friend with anguished fascination.

“It’s that time, is it?” he said before turning his gaze on me.

What I saw there chilled me to the core.

“And here you are, the perfect sacrifice,” he said.

“…I’m sorry?” I said.

“I’m afraid that’s my line,” Alouin said. “You’re coming with me.”

I took a step back, banging my hip into something.

“Wha-?”

Alouin placed a finger on my forehead, and the world wrenched. When I could see again, dizziness made me cling to my knees.

I wasn’t in my shed. Instead, I was standing on a thin, gray line, running in front of me until it met the horizon, and when I looked behind me, the same was true. On one side of this, the world became a never-ending landscape of glowing white, or I assumed it was never ending. It was hard to tell. No colors differentiated the ground from the sky, and the same was true on the other side. The only difference between the two sides was that instead of spotless white, black night blotted out the world on my right.

Ahead of me, Arivor was lying with half of his body in the gray while the rest had disappeared into black. I tried to run for him, but a grip on my tunic’s neckline had me stumbling into Alouin, who pushed me upright.

“It’s true, then,” he said. “Daevetch has an avatar.”

“Daevetch?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.

Alouin answered me, but I didn’t hear what he’d said, too transfixed by the fingers of night that were creeping up my friend’s chest. What was that?

I didn’t like it. Something about it shivered disquiet into me, and so, tightening my lips, I again tried to reach my friend.

This time, Alouin’s tug on my wrist sent me sideways, twirling me until my back was to the white landscape. Facing me, the god dug his fingers into my shoulders.

“Do you love your friend?” he asked.

What kind of question was that?

“I would do anything for Arivor,” I said. “If it were needed, I would die for him.”

A tension that I hadn’t noticed before leaked from Alouin, even if his shoulders also drooped.

“And you will,” he said. “Many, many times.”

Many…? How did one die more than once?

“I’m so sorry.”

Before I could register what was happening, Alouin placed his hand on my chest, and with a pulse of light, I was sent flying, tumbling on landing. I was on my feet as soon as I could roll to them, sprinting for the gray line. If the black on Arivor had made a primal part of me hiss, then I could only assume this white light would too, if both sides worked the same way of course.

When I reached the line, however, Alouin was waiting for me with roiling night coating his arms.

“Don’t,” he said. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

I sneered at him, making to step into gray, but Alouin pointed down the line.

“Look at your feet and then, your friend,” he said.

Reluctantly, I glanced down, shivering on seeing a sheet of white rising up my legs. Arivor, on the other hand, was completely covered in black.

“He was already lost,” Alouin said. “This way, you’ll have one another.”

“What does that mean?" I shouted.

But Alouin was gone, and I was alone, keeping perfectly still until white light swept over my head.

When a jolt ran through me, I knew I was in my shed, even without looking, but that was mostly because I banged my hip into the table at my back.

The one that had had a candle on it.

My eyes flew open, and I watched while, as if in slow motion, the candle rocked off of the table, falling onto Arivor’s face. In a heartbeat, I was on my knees, plucking hardened beeswax free, but the damage was done.

The candle had landed with its wick on Arivor’s cheek. Its flame had made a red circle on his skin, one that would scar, and molten wax was drying in spatters and rivulets everywhere else. Painful, a bit disfiguring, but nothing like what we’d endured during the war.

He should still be screaming.

When I focused on Arivor, though, I found the same empty expression there.

He hadn’t returned yet. Was he coming back?

A quick check confirmed that Alouin had vanished, so I couldn’t ask him these questions. I’d have to wait, then.

Sitting on my heels, I touched Arivor’s cheek. I should get a salve for this, but no matter how much I wanted to treat my friend’s wound, I couldn’t leave his side. I had to know what he’d seen in that other world. I had to know that he was ok.

It should have been me. I’d knocked the candle off of the table. I’d flicked the syringe that had seen his essence fleeing his body. It should be me.

At this thought, heat bored into my face, spraying in pinpricks around its entry point, and with something between a yelp and a howl, I slapped my hand to it, which only made the pain worse. Of course.

I didn’t have the presence of mind to appreciate my idiocy, though, too busy hunching on myself and quietly hissing.

Even with my focus on the sting lancing my cheek, a crackle and pop teased at my ears while a concerning smell tickled at my nose. The smell of something burning.

I hadn’t put the candle out before tossing it aside.

Gasping, I straightened, meaning to put the fire out, when something familiar and unexpected slammed into me. An energy drain.

Dumbly, I swayed in place. Why was this-? I hadn’t used magic!

Another one walloped me, letting black eat into my vision, and somehow, I screamed for help before crumpling. As the world drained to pinpricks, Arivor’s face came into focus. He was still gone, his essence flown to that other world we’d visited, but…

No burns marked his skin.

Then, I was out like a light.