Revelation

get Makara go fly the ship there. She wouldn’t budge. Said her place was with the army. So that morning, I left, with nothing but my pack and my katana.”

“What about your bike?” I asked.

She shrugged. “That old thing broke down. Tried for hours to fix it, and just ended up leaving it there.” She stopped, looking up at me. “I knew, even at the time, that going east after you was stupid. But I figured if you could be stupid about something you believed in, why couldn’t I be, also?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. Her logic was flawless.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I flew back on that Askala there, and…”

“Askala?”

“Yeah. His name is Askal, and he is an Askala.” I smiled. “It’s what their entire species is called.”

Anna laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Told you they weren’t dragons.”

I laughed as well. I remembered our conversation from earlier, of how Anna hated for them to be called dragons. I wasn’t even thinking of that when I decided on the name.

“I guess we all got what we wanted, in the end.”

Anna gazed over my shoulder, at the Askala. “You just got on that thing and flew away, like you owned it. There was no hesitation.” She paused. “I couldn’t have done that.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You might have, if you knew what I knew.”

Anna stared off doubtfully. I brushed a strand of hair out of her face.

“You’ll never believe what happened to me,” I said.

She looked at me. “You went to the Great Blight.”

“How did you know that? You mentioned it a second ago, but…”

“It really wasn’t that hard to figure out. With the way your eyes were, I thought you were one of them. I thought you went to go join them. I planned on doing the same thing.”

“What?”

“Well, I don’t know what I planned, really. The thought did cross my mind, though. I thought it would all make sense, when I got there.”

She took a few steps toward Askal. She didn’t seem afraid of him. Admittedly, for an Askala, he was on the cute side. The dragon, in turn, gazed at Anna silently with his white eyes. Anna smiled.

“Funny name,” she said. “Askal.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.”

“He can talk?”

“To me, at least. It’s a side effect of…”

I didn’t finish my sentence, but Anna pieced together the rest on her own.

“You are infected, then.”

“Yes. But it’s not what you think. I will actually be okay. At least, for a while.”

“What do you mean by that?”

As she looked at me with worry, I explained everything I had gone through, leaving nothing out. I told Anna about my dreams of the Wanderer while the rest of them had been fighting for their lives. I told her about how Askal had taken me to the broken Xenolith, and about the pool beneath its roots. I told her what the Wanderer had related to me on the island — about the Elekai and the Radaskim. Finally, I got to the part where I had agreed to try and fight the Radaskim Xenomind, by infecting it with the Elekai version of the xenovirus. She was a little confused when I said that that Wanderer had called the Radaskim Xenomind Askala, so maybe I could have chosen my name for the Askala better. The Wanderer had also called Askala the Dark Voice. That, at least, was enough to differentiate that Xenomind from the Wanderer, who was the Elekai Voice.

Anna said nothing once I was finished telling her my story. I wanted to give her time, so I waited for her to break the silence. Such things took time to process.

The first thing she said, however, was unexpected.

“The prophecy is true, then. I thought when I saw you here, safe, that perhaps I would have more time.” She sighed. “The old man was right, in the end.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Wanderer told me that I would lose someone I loved. So, I stopped trying…to love, I mean.”

Anna said nothing more, and I felt myself tearing up. What she was saying I couldn’t believe. She loved me? She hadn’t said it directly, but…

“I had no idea,” I said. “And…”

I didn’t know how to go on. Instead, I held her as her eyes watered up. Her tears fell to the cold dust. Finally, she looked up at me, her eyes haunted.

“You can’t go dying,” she said. “We need you still.”

She broke down in tears. I could do nothing but hold her.

“It’s alright,” I said. “It will all work out, somehow.”

“No, it won’t! You’re going to die, you know? You’ve just told me that much.”

“Maybe there’s a chance I won’t die.” I knew it was a long shot, but I just didn’t want Anna to be sad anymore. “He just said ‘sacrifice.’ He didn’t say that sacrifice was me dying.”

“Everyone else’s prophecy came true, didn’t it? Why wouldn’t mine? Why wouldn’t yours? They are one and the same.”

I didn’t have an answer for that. Instead, I kissed her. She stilled, settling into me, her muscles going slack.

“It is the only way,” I said, when we parted. “If this is my path, and if it saves everyone, I have to do it. He told me, in that cave, that it all hinged on me. I know what I have to do.”

From far in the past, a thought came to me. Something my father always told me. I said it now.

“A man does not do what he wants. He does what he must.”

She pulled back, wiping her eyes. “There has to be another way. We’ll find it. We’ll talk to the Wanderer, together, and we’ll make him tell us.”

I felt only sadness. Though the Wanderer was an Elekai Xenomind with millions of years of memory and knowledge, he did not know everything. All he knew was what it would take to win. And that meant infecting the Radaskim Xenomind, and bringing about the end of the invasion.

“We have to find Askala,” I said. “The Wanderer said that she is like the mother of all the Radaskim. She is the source of the Great Blight’s power. She directs it, and without her, they would be powerless. If she is infected, then it all reverts to the Elekai’s control. The invasion will be stopped in its tracks.”

“You don’t know that,” Anna said, stubbornly. “If we can just kill her, somehow…”

“Another Xenomind would rise up and fill her place,” I said. “All the memories are preserved in the xenofungus. All it would take is a new body to manifest them. Askala cannot be killed. She can only be converted.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Anna said. “Still — I’m not giving up.”

I loved her for saying that. And looking into her eyes, I believed her. I hoped, foolishly perhaps, that she would find a way. If only it were that easy.

Askal snorted from behind — probably impatient to be off. I turned, seeing him watch us with his alien, white eyes.

“Now that I can see one up close,” Anna said, walking toward Askal, “they are kind of endearing, aren’t they?”

Askal cooed in answer to Anna’s statement. This Askala knew how to play his cards. It was a strange sound to be coming from a creature so large and so dangerous.

We went to stand before the dragon together. Askal regarded Anna with his white, intelligent eyes.

“Can I touch him?” she asked.