Attempt resuscitation.
Tell Dirge to go away, eloquently. Make sure Charlie is actually dead.
If she is, mourn.
There is no "we". You left because you would never work for Stone. All he would do is march to destroy the foxes. You know that there's another way – you don't know what it is, but it's there.
Go to check on Charlie.
Check out Charlie. Please let her be alive.
No. No commands now: you do as you please.
Be bold, be bold, but not too bold
Lest that your heart's blood run cold.
Those old familiar words come back to you, and at last, almost without noticing, you identify them. It is the refrain from the old story of Mr Fox, who kills those he marries and is in turn killed when his latest wife-to-be discovers where he keeps the bodies. The desert is certainly rife with Mr Foxes; but you are no longer a bride to the slaughter. You are finished with being manipulated. You will be bold, as bold as you like, even
too bold, and let your heart's blood be damned.
You stand there for a long time, looking Dirge in the eye, until he gets the message.
“Really.” He does not seem impressed. “You might have missed the fact that I wasn't giving you a choice.”
You walk past him, heading for Charlie. That surprises him, even now; you suspect that, petty god that he is here, Dirge isn't used to being disobeyed.
“Come on,” he says, talking to your retreating back. “Do you really think this can end without you coming with me?” You make no answer. “Is it because you killed the fox? They're tough, yes, but you got lucky. There's no magic stone you can stick on me to turn my fire off.”
Footsteps crunch behind you. Dirge is following you, back down into the crater and up the other side. Charlie is close now: just a few yards beyond this next rise.
“Listen,” says Dirge, and now his voice, like Zavarat's on the roof, seems to come from just behind your ear. You feel a heat that cannot be mere sunlight on your back. “We only need you to activate the stone, you know. I don't have to bring you back intact. I'm being – God damn it, I'm being
kind, and djinn aren't kind. I've been kind to you so far because I enjoy your company and because, technically, I suppose you're a hero. But if there's one thing I'm not and can never be, it's patient. Come back, or I come and get you.”
A figure shifts up ahead, and the pair of you freeze for a moment – but it soon becomes clear that there's no threat. An ancient Alakazam, fur silvering with age, raises themself effortfully up on one elbow. You stare. It's the High Lover, and somehow they are not dead.
They raise a hand weakly and the air shimmers; you turn and see Dirge, alight with inner fire, stumble slightly as the dirt shifts beneath his feet. Waves of heat roll from his mouth as he speaks.
“Is that it? Is this the best defence you have to offer?” He raises one hand, and you see the lines of his palm glowing red like cracks in the skin of a volcano. Look, they say, what Dirge can do to you. “Last chance.”
EARTH, the Lover whispers, their voice filling your head like the atmosphere of a desert ruin.
THE EARTH.
You realise.
“What?” says Dirge, and you shoot five times into the dirt at his feet.
He stares.
“Do you feel better having got that out of your system?” he asks, walking briskly forwards. “Come on―”
He is just reaching out to take hold of you when the ground shivers.
Dirge meets your eyes in a blind panic.
“No,” he says. “No, once was already too many―”
He leaps into the air, becoming in a flash some indefinable mass too bright to see – but you have no desire to see it; you are turning, scrambling up the hill as fast as you can, slipping on soil that gives way beneath you, jolted almost off your feet with every coming tremor―
The ground bursts behind you, and as you tumble forwards to join the Lover on the other side you look back and see the living wall of stone and steel coursing straight up into the air with a rumble and the smell of damp. It was too big to make out any details – but damn detail: the important thing is that it was close enough, after the chaos earlier, to feel the vibration of the bullets hitting the ground. And now you see, as the spark of light flits higher, the top of the impossible creature splitting open – and those stones as long as you are must be teeth – and that thing like a vertical road must be a tongue – and suddenly the whole requiem comes into focus, and you realise with a kind of hysteria that this really is alive, one monstrously, obscenely vast creature and
still not fully grown―
If Dirge screams, you never hear him. The snap of the requiem's jaws is too loud: one air-cracking boom, like a thunderclap in a clear blue sky. You see the fire though, bursting in coils of light and smoke from atop the pillar of living earth – and then nothing. The requiem sinks, sliding back down its breach hole in the base of the crater, and whatever embers are left of Dirge's fire sink with it into the depths of the earth.
Water, you recall grimly, is not the only way to put out a fire.
Once the requiem has dived and the soil slid down to fill in its hole, you feel better. The giant Aggron are abominations of mass; humans, it seems, are not well equipped to conceive of life on such a scale. The tremors persist for a little while, but they are fainter now, and easier to ignore.
In the aftermath, you turn to the High Lover, and thank them.
I OWE YOU MORE THAN THAT, they reply. They are much smaller and frailer than
hs.ang; if they ever have been to war, it has not been for many, many years. How long do the Golden live, anyway? There is still so much you do not know – that you will have to discover, if you are to learn enough to find a way of dividing the land without war.
You offer them a hand and they pull themself up on their feet. They wince, but their injuries do not seem too serious. Perhaps their telekinesis shielded them from the worst of the first breach.
THANK YOU.
“Yes,” says a familiar dry voice. “Thank you.”
You turn, and see without surprise that Zavarat is hanging in the sky above the crater. She looks a little younger than before, and less solid – but it is definitely her.
“You took your gun back,” she says. “I considered it, as I told you, a victory. Not a big one, but perhaps the gateway to something greater.” She indicates the destruction below her. “And I wasn't wrong. Dirge is dead, and I am free.”
She descends a little, her edges merging hazily with the air around her.
“And Stone has nothing left to put between himself and me,” she continues with satisfaction. “Did Dirge tell you I'm hunting him? I suppose he did. He always loved to talk.” She waves a hand as if it might ward off digressions. “But enough of that. You and I share foes: we'll take one each. That's fair, isn't it? You've had Dirge. I'll take Stone, and gladly. I've long wanted to put him in his place.”
You nod. It seems fair; Stone will be in very capable hands indeed, and besides, you are tired of murdering people. You are a killer, of course, and perhaps you always will be – but now you are becoming something else well, and this new self is more interested in secrets than swordplay.
“I won't be staying here once I'm done with him,” Zavarat informs you. “But I hope you will come south one day. Humans like you are hard to come by, and the Amirate has its own problems to be solved.”
That is all. No goodbye – although Zavarat never was one for unnecessary talk, you recall. She simply rises up, dissolving into light and smoke, and arcs away to the west.
YOU HAVE POWERFUL FRIENDS, notes the Lover. If they are confused, they don't show it – or perhaps they do. You wouldn't know: you are no longer paying attention. Now that Zavarat is gone, Charlie has returned to fill your head, and you drift down the hillside towards her. You see her wounds; with a lurch your insides seem to disappear and leave you a walking skin, as hollow and fragile as a blown egg.
You look for the flame at the end of Charlie's tail, and find only orange scales and a little heap of cinders.
BRAVE CREATURE, says the Lover, joining you.
KE HAS SUFFERED MUCH. I HOPE KE WILL NOT AGAIN.
They are holding something – a glassy rock veined with amber and amethyst that can only be the Alakazam Mega Stone. As you watch, it lights up, not with the ferocious glare of Mega Evolution, but with a warm glimmer like a dormant fire being stirred back into life.
EVOLUTION IS OUR TOOL, the Lover says.
YOU, ONE-SHAPED, HAVE NEVER TRULY UNDERSTOOD IT, BUT WE – WE HAVE PLUMBED ITS DEPTHS.
A quick movement of their free hand and Charlie's Mega Stone floats free of the wrecked saddle, drifting into the Lover's palm.
MY POWER, MAGNIFIED. The Lover holds up their Stone.
THE POSSIBILITY OF CHANGE IN A DRAGON. They hold up the other.
WITH THE CORRECT TOOLS, ALL CHANGE IS REVERSIBLE.
Charlie stirs―
LIFE IS AN ACCIDENT OF MATTER.
―and her tail fire sparks―
WE MAKE BIRDS FROM BONES.
―and with a puff of smoke the flames catch, crackling merrily as if they had never gone out.
The Lover sinks to their knees, exhausted.
AND, SOMETIMES, WE CAN QUICKEN THE DEAD.
Charlie opens her eyes.
She is home.
And so are you.
*
Well, kid. What can I say? You did it. You made it right through the whole damn thing. Longer than even I thought – harder, too. So much happened that none of us were looking for.
But you did it. And for that, I think you deserve to hear how it ends.