Then he remembers.
Something was wrong. Something happened to the Pyramid.
Liego disappeared, and then...
Ethan is there. Ethan kneels heavily, still clutching his own side. Ethan Wellington, Harvard graduate and decorated soldier, is an entity almost separate of Terian in Caine’s mind. Their wives are best friends. Their kids go to the same school. They vacation together, stood up at each other’s weddings. As Ethan crouches next to him, Galaith and Caine bleed over as well; for an instant, he believes his friend is there to help him.
Then he sees the gleam in Ethan’s eyes, the yellow glow behind brown irises, threads of those other fragments woven into the stable facade of his friend from Massachusetts.
The Pyramid shudders in those eyes...and the threads cross.
Caine feels grief. Fewer bodies exist in which Terian can hide. Fragments of his aleimi crystallized into darker stains weave in with the rest, looking through the same amber irises. Caine knows insanity lives there. He feels responsible.
Ethan leans closer. Anyone watching would see a concerned colleague reassuring his mortally-wounded friend.
“We may indeed prove to be the inferior race,” he breathes to Caine. “...But at least we can shoot straight.”
Gazing up at the antique lamps hanging over the war room table, Galaith chuckles, in spite of himself.
Then, emotion overcomes him, bringing tears to his eyes.
“Feigran,” he chokes through fluid. “Forgive me.”
He can no longer see the Bunker. Lying on the grass, he gazes up a dense clouds. He is surprised when an opening presents itself there, where for the barest instant, he sees the flames of a blue-white sun. But the sun does not brighten his eyes for very long.
Through that same gap, a glint of asteroids beckon, cold but beautiful. Below, in a room filled with humans, the body Galaith used in this very long lifetime finally gives out.
As it does, the Thousand roll over, claiming him for their own.
I feel Haldren expel his last breath. A flurry of lines and pulleys unravel as he does, leaving with what remains of him. I watch the Dreng gather up those fragments, pulling him into the cold, flaming center of their silver clouds, claiming him as one of their own. I watch his aleimi...or soul, or whatever is left of him now...as they take it away, disappear him into those dense, metallic strands.
I am shocked by a sharp flicker of grief.
But I cannot dwell on that for long, either.
His absence leaves a hole at the top of the Pyramid. The structure loses its silver sheen as the cold of the Dreng’s light evaporates. They disappear like inhaled smoke from the physical world, leaving an oddly full silence.
I send up a flare.
I don’t have long to wait. Vash and his seers: Yerin, Jalar, Mutkar, Fley, Maya, Itru, Tarsi, Samantha, Inde, Argo, Jet, Anale, Keeley, Maygar, Naomi, Hondo, Dorje, Tan, Inge, Derek, Ullysa, Mika, Chinja, Alex, Garensche, Tenzi, Cohen...they all come. They come separately and together, along with countless lights I don’t know, faces I’ve never seen in outside.
Late to the party, Revik joins us, too.
He is battered, beaten up, but he is there.
They greet me and one another, lights interwoven, combining and recombining in new patterns. I flash the plan, the plan they created, and we unite in concert...a single vision.
Human lights shine with us, too...Jon, Cass, Jaden, Sasquatch, Frankie, Angeline, Sarah, Nick, the man at the toll booth on the way into Canada, the couple who paused at the door of the diner because they were worried Revik would hurt me. The people on the Royal Faire cruise ship. My mom and dad. My uncle Stefan.
Feeling them all there together brings a wash of hope, a sudden laugh.
And then, in a flash, we disperse.
“NO!” Terian screams.
He watches the receding cloud of the Dreng, realizes the danger too late. He feels the shift below his feet, and struggles to counteract, to weave himself into the void above.
“NO! NO! NO!”
Out of nowhere, seers surround him.
These aren’t the seers of the Rooks. These wield a sharp, white, painful light, one that burns everything in its path, everything it touches, ripping through strands and connections that hang dead and lifeless, temporarily inert without the Dreng.
And not just seers...he feels humans among his attackers.
The Pyramid fights to reform, to pull him up and out, to align him with the top spot, but the murderers intervene, again and again, ripping apart threads each time they touch his light, killing or disconnecting more and more of his drones.
He feels her. She laughs at the carnage...laughs.
His hatred rises, a crushing need to kill, even as the last whispers of light connecting him to the Dreng’s clouds snap and fray.
The Pyramid teeters.
Pieces unlock, above and below. Terian hears it, as the cracks build momentum, as the fissures move from segment to segment, tearing through dark, quiet structures, one by one. More and more of them fall, breaking apart like compressed ash, until he can only stand there and watch, unable to believe what he is witnessing.