Through Stone and Sea

EPILOGUE

Darkness … awareness … dormancy …

These realizations came, each one feeding upon the previous.

Sau'ilahk wanted to wail out the horror he had swallowed at the moment of his second death.

So why was he now aware of anything at all?

Over a thousand years had passed since his first death and the anguish it had taught him. He would linger forever without flesh—without beauty. For an instant, that remembrance tore away relief amid confusion.

Death is not punishment … enough.

Sau'ilahk's fears welled as he felt Beloved's presence.

It is release … it is freedom.

He found himself standing in a desert night. Uncountable stars glinted in a clear black sky. He shielded his eyes, as if every point of brilliance shone only upon him.

And he saw his hands.

No longer wrapped in black cloth, they were whole and tan, as they had been in life. But this was not real. It was only to torment him.

Why should an impudent servant, my priest, gain freedom so easily … when his god remains the first slave of all?

Sau'ilahk watched stars fall.

They struck dark dunes, and he whirled, about to run, but they were all around him. Great mounds of sand shifted, growing black beneath pinprick glints … like a glare reflected upon black scales. Beloved's roiling coils turned endlessly around him, closing as they twisted tighter upon themselves.

Sau'ilahk had failed in the one task given to him. He had disobeyed a warning. And more of his god's enemies knew of his existence. But surely his destruction had erased that transgression. Surely that was enough for leniency, if his god had saved him.

"Pity, my Beloved!" he cried out with the memory of a voice he had raised in supplication a thousand years ago. "Forgive … I beg you!"

The wall of coils closed, blocking out the sky, as he heard them grinding the dunes.

You remain my tool, like all who step beyond life yet linger, dead but not dead.

One black scale, as large as a mounted rider, caught the edge of Sau'ilahk's cloak. It dragged him into those coils as the fabric tore and shredded.

You will serve… .

Sau'ilahk screamed as flesh tore from his remembered bones.

Your release comes only when Existence ends … and I am free.