the
....
the
power!
He called out his
name
and
hyperspace parted.
The door opened and
closed
behind him.
Sinoval the Accursed, Primarch Majestus et Conclavus, stumbled back to real space, reeling and nauseous. He fell to his knees, the welcome weight of Stormbringer at his side. Around him power crackled, burning and forceful and pounding.
He looked up, his head almost too heavy to lift.
'Primarch Sinoval, I presume?'
Susan ran as fast as she could, until she thought her lungs were going to burst into flames and her legs collapse into jelly. Never in her life had she moved with more urgency.
Each step leading to the precipice seemed steeper and higher than the last.
The Well had been angry, dark whispers resounding in her mind. It wasn't as if she wanted to hear that gibberish. Death, lots of warnings about death.
And danger.
Of course there was danger. They were about to besiege a space station housing the most important people in the Alliance and guarded by a massive Vorlon fleet. Of course there was danger.
And where was Sinoval?
She thought she knew, but she prayed she was wrong.
There was a figure standing on the precipice, but it wasn't Sinoval.
Moreil turned sinuously to face her.
'The Chaos–Bringer is not here,' he hissed, his ugly, rasping voice hitting her like fingernails on slate.
'No,' she whispered, trying to get her breath back.
'He has gone ahead of us, to bring the war to the enemy.'
'Yes,' she breathed.
Yes, gone ahead to take on the Vorlons in single combat, presumably. God save her from all this death–or– glory rubbish.
'Then we must follow him, and spread the fire with our footsteps.'
She looked at the alien, the Shadow–spawned alien, and she saw the fanatical zeal and passion in his twisted, wrong eyes. She knew why Sinoval had spared his life, and she knew he could be used, but she didn't like it, and she didn't like associating with him.
But as she raised her head and looked at the fleet arrayed in hyperspace around Cathedral, waiting for the order, and as she remembered her purpose, she made the decision that Sinoval had always known she would have to make.
She never completed that thought. Instead she looked at Moreil.
'Yes,' she said.
No one troubled him.
No one stopped him.
No one interfered or even looked at him
Anyone who passed him by ducked to one side, pressing themselves tightly against the corridor rather than meet his gaze.
John Sheridan had acquired a reputation amongst the Minbari when he was younger. He was the Starkiller, and more than one Minbari child had woken from nightmare visions of his face in the dark. The John Sheridan who walked through the corridors of Babylon 5 was more terrible by far than all of those dream images put together.
He reached the door he wanted, a door that was unguarded, for who would want to break in here?
It opened at his touch, and closed behind him.
From here, he could see everything around him - the Vorlon ships massed and ready, the myriad jump points opening to admit the invading fleet. He should be there to defend his station from the invaders, but he was not needed.
<We have been waiting for you,> came the voice from the bone–white Vorlon.
He paused, and looked around at the beginning of the battle.
'I'm here now ,' he said at last.
Chapter 4
He liked to think he did not feel, this creature of Order, of cold and passionless regimen and duty. That was what he had been told before he was.... changed, that he would never feel again.
And certainly, that was mostly true. He had felt no fear since the day he had been reborn. He had felt no doubt. Uncertainty and grief were now just words to him, or tools with which to manipulate others.
But there were emotions there. He sometimes thought of these as wrong, but at other times he recognised
