'Back to life,' he said. 'Back to reality. Of sorts.'
They took the great leap together.
2
Though the small campfire burned continually in the cave, it couldn't dispel the bitterness of the unending winter outside, nor the chill in Miller's heart. He had tended to Hunter, Jack and Virginia night and day, but had now reached the point of ultimate despair: their decline had accelerated and he was forced to accept the impossibility of keeping them all alive.
Surviving on occasional birds and rabbits he trapped in the snow while constantly evading the roaming Fomorii had taken its toll, both physically and emotionally; drawing on his healing force so often was also sapping his own powers of recuperation. The futility of it ate into his bones much more deeply than the aching cold. While there was life he had to keep on trying, but now he had to make the choice he had dreaded: sacrifice one in the hope that it would leave him strong enough to save the other two.
Tears froze on his cheeks. He'd been crying on and off for most of the afternoon while he wrestled with the arguments and his own corrosive guilt, but finally he had made the decision he'd known he would have to make all along.
Crawling over to where Hunter lay, eyes closed as if he were sleeping, Miller laid one hand on his friend's barely beating heart. Choking on the words, he whispered, 'I don't know if you can hear me… I hope you can. I'm so sorry, Hunter.' He took a deep breath. 'I've thought long and hard… I've prayed. I can't see another way out. Every life is equal to me, Hunter, but not every life is equal for what Church wants us to do.
'You're a Brother of Dragons… you're important, but Jack is one of the Two Keys. Him and me, we're needed somehow if we're ever going to stop the Void. And Virginia… if I can ever get her back to Church… she knows a way into the Fortress. She's vital to us striking right at the heart of the Enemy. And that leaves you. We need you, of course we do. But not as much as we need the other two.'
Laying his head on Hunter's chest, he whispered, 'Why do I have to make this choice? It's not fair.' After a moment, he sat up and dried his eyes. 'No, I'm up to this. That's what's expected of me. Hunter, I'm going to have to stop keeping you alive, and transfer all the power I've got left to the other two in the hope that I can cure them completely. If you can hear me, please forgive me.'
There. It was done.
Taking a moment to steady himself, he went to Virginia and drew up the searing blue light inside him. Once that was done, he moved on to Jack, and then flopped, exhausted, against the foot of the cave wall, and cried some more.
His eyes had barely dried when he noticed blood trickling from his nose. It was accompanied by the sickening sensation of a heaviness in his head as if something was moving around inside his skull. Faces of departed friends and family flashed across his mind, but it was Hunter's that came back repeatedly, looming larger each time.
'Leave me alone,' he whispered, scared now.
The death-images came harder, threatening to destroy his sanity.
'Bring him out.' The voice rolled in from the wilderness beyond the cave mouth, colder than the winds of Winter-side.
'No,' Miller whispered defiantly.
'My brother. My death-brother. Bring him out.'
Miller was too weak to fight. With a last, great effort, Miller dragged Hunter into the swirling snow.
Further down the slope stood the giant that Hunter had freed from its prison far beneath the Halls of the Drakusa. He still wore his hood, but although Miller had never seen him before, his brain crackled with images of the devastated, melted-wax face that lay beneath, as the cold, alien intellect teased and probed. Dread consumed him so deeply, he thought he would die from the weight of it, but the giant would not let him; his thoughts were too weak to resist its control.
'I am El-Di-Gah-Wis-Lor, the final judgement of the Drakusa, the dark at the end, the breath of the grave,' the giant said. 'I am death, and I bring death. Brought to being for one purpose, to end the plague of the Caraprix, I was not allowed to fulfil my destiny. But now, in that one, I see another purpose.'
'You can't have him,' Miller croaked futilely.
'He whispers on the edge of death. I hear him now, when I could not hear him before. His whispers ring out across the mountains of this place, and deep into the darkest places beneath the mountains. He is death, and I am death, and we share a destiny. He can teach me. He can give me purpose.'
Miller realised that a connection had been forged between the giant and Hunter once the healing had been withdrawn.
'Give him to me.'
'No.'
'Give him to me, and I will give him life, so he can join me in the pursuit of death.'
'You… you can save him?'
'That I cannot do. But I can give him life.'
Hesitating for just a moment, Miller stumbled through the thick snow to the giant without a thought for his own safety. The giant took Hunter from his arms with surprising tenderness and turned back down the slope. Miller followed.
In the lee of some rocks, there was a large cave entrance that Miller had not come across before in his random searches for food. Striding into the dark, the giant continued into a tunnel large enough to accommodate his height. It drove deep into the heart of the mountain through a series of forgotten chambers once occupied by the Drakusa, their floors now covered with shattered masonry and discarded weapons.
For what felt like miles, the tunnel sloped down sharply until Miller became convinced they were going to the core of the world. Finally, they entered a chamber in the deepest part of the complex. It stretched far into the dark on all sides, the echoes so dim it could well have gone on for ever.
Fear gripped Miller when he saw that the chamber was filled with an army of Fomorii warriors, waiting silently in ranks, their black skin gleaming over shields and weapons grown from their own bodies. They could have been glorious obsidian statues except for the humming waves of power that washed off them.
Miller trembled as he followed the giant amongst the horde, but they never even acknowledged his presence. Can the giant control so many ferocious beings? he wondered. How powerful is he?
The giant came to a halt before a large stone well more than twenty feet across. Blue light radiated from the depths, shimmering like the sun off water. Miller could feel the rejuvenating force of the Blue Fire long before he neared the lip.
'What is this?' he asked in awe.
'The Well Between Worlds.' Standing with his head bowed and his body tense, the giant remained in the shadows just beyond the pool of light. 'This was the last desperate act of the Drakusa. Their last great act. While they created me to destroy the Caraprix, they also constructed this conduit to the very heart of Existence itself.'
'Why?'
'They thought if they could not destroy the Caraprix, they could return them to the Source.'
'The Caraprix come from Existence?'
'The Caraprix are Existence.'
'But I… I thought they were a danger. They destroyed the Drakusa, didn't they? How can they belong to Existence if they go against Life?'
After a moment of humming silence, the giant said, 'The well shows that the Drakusa were capable of miraculous things, yet they were given over to war and destruction. This… To reach into the very heart of all there is… How great is that achievement? So many have tried to touch Existence, even to begin to approach it, and in their last desperate hours the Drakusa did what no other had.' An odd note of regret laced his voice.
'Bring Hunter here, then,' Miller said excitedly. 'I can use this to heal him.'
'I cannot approach. The Blue Fire is anathema to me. I am death.'
