“You are my champion, the greatest of all my students. None has ever taken to my teachings so quickly or so well. A prodigy of the blade. Truly you have a gift.”

“Thank you, my lord. I live to serve.”

“When I found you, lost and alone, you were nothing. From that nothing I have forged you into a weapon, bright and fierce. You shall be my right hand.”

“I am yours, my lord. Send me to battle that I may crush your enemies. All I want is to use my talents for your glory.”

A sigh.

“You have succeeded in all that I have ever asked of you. You are a commander and chief among men. Never have you failed me. Quick wits, strong arm, indomitable spirit.”

My head remained bowed. My eyes fixed to the ground as I knelt before my lord.

“Soon, we shall face the great enemy. Beware. His tongue is like honey. He speaks with words that are tempting and sweet. Do not believe his lies! Do not let him sway you from my side! Remember your loyalty. The battle will be fierce, and you shall face demons unlike anything you have ever known.”

“You may depend upon me, my lord. So long as I live, none shall touch you. I will drive your enemies to the ground and crush them for daring to raise a hand against you.”

A hand touched my shoulder.

“Yes, my son. Serve me well and life unending will be yours.”

I jerked awake. I had been dreaming. By habit, my hand touched upon Veritas’s hilt.

Paol? Is there something wrong?

“I had a dream. It… I don’t know. Sometimes I dream and it’s as if...you know that feeling you have? When you’re trying to think of a word that you know but it’s just out of reach? It’s like that. It feels so real to me as it’s happening, but the dream slips away from me when I wake up, like water through my fingers.”

Well, what do you recall? Tell me quickly before all of it is gone.

“I was kneeling. Someone was speaking to me. Someone important that I served and admired. We were going to be fighting soon, and I knew that it would be the greatest battle of my life.”

Okay. Is there anything else that you can remember? Anything at all?

“I was promised...promised...life unending.”

Life unending?

Veritas’s voice in my mind was troubled.

“Yes. I can remember the words clearly. Life unending.”

Something in my heart leaped at the phrase. Eternal life? Truly? Had I been given the gift of everlasting life? It would explain so much.

“That’s it, isn’t it? Someone gave me the gift. The ability to respawn.”

Paol, that’s not possible. That power doesn’t exist.

“But it must! Why else would I be able to respawn? And the person who made the promise must have been one of the Two Hundred!”

That can’t be right.

“Why not? I don’t know by what magic the Two Hundred are able to respawn, but why wouldn’t someone be able to bestow it upon another? It’s magic, and magic can do the impossible. If magic can allow the Two Hundred to respawn, why can’t it give me the ability, too?”

Because you’re not one of us, Paol. We’re fundamentally different.

“Why!”

I raged at her in my mind.

“Give me a clear answer for once! Who are the Two Hundred? Why are you different? You say you’re not gods but you seem to live forever, and even when you die you don’t truly die. Why should you hoard that magic only for yourselves?”

Paol, it’s not hoarding--not something we keep from others. It’s just…

“What is it! Why can’t you tell me?”

“Paol, are you well?”

Rafe was bending over me, a look of concern in his eyes.

I blinked. “Yes. I mean...yes.”

“You shouted.”

My grip on Veritas eased, and I removed my hand from her where she lay next to me.

“I...I’m sorry. I had a bad dream.”

The dark-haired man looked searchingly in my face.

“Care to talk about it?” he asked softly.

Looking around at the camp where everyone still slept, I whispered bitterly, “Now? Now you act like you care about me? If you really cared, you’d stop keeping secrets. More than anything I need to know who you are. Who Kyrie is. Why he saved me. What I am and how it is that I find myself consorting with gods and goddesses.”

He sat back on his haunches and considered me carefully.

“Maybe you’re right,” he murmured. “You’re like no other person in this world that I’ve ever met, so maybe you deserve to be told more than any other person in this world has ever known.”

My heart began thudding fast. Was he teasing me? I could just barely make out his face in the darkness. He looked uncertain at first but suddenly seemed to come to a decision. Rafe stood up and held a hand down to me.

“Come,” he commanded. “Get up and walk with me. The things I’m going to tell you are not meant to be heard by other ears.”

Was he serious? I took his hand, and he pulled me up easily. We made our way to the edge of the camp. I glanced around, wondering who was keeping watch. Understanding my concern, he was quick to reassure me.

“Don’t worry, it’s my turn to guard the camp, and I’ve placed wards around us that will warn me if they are crossed. They’re not perfect, but we’ve ridden hard and fast. I think we’re probably safe from pursuers.”

I nodded at him.

“Well now. Where to begin?” he muttered.

“How about the beginning?” I asked.

He seemed to take that in and then smiled.

“Yes, perhaps that makes the most sense. It will lay a foundation for the more troubling things that I have to tell you.”

I nodded eagerly.

His eyes were piercing as he warned me, “Paol, the things that I tell you will change how you see everything. You, me, the world, all of existence--everything. Prepare yourself. You may find what I have to say too incredible to believe. Or too disturbing.”

“Rafe,” I said acerbically. “I see words in my vision that no one else does--except you and one hundred and ninety-nine other people, I guess. I’ve returned from death and met a goddess as well as other beings who apparently live for millennia. I don’t think there’s anything you could tell me that would be too incredible to believe.”

He mouth quirked into a faint smile.

“Perhaps that’s true. Still, you may not want to believe.”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began, “Our world was in shambles. We had been poor stewards of our home, and it was coming back to haunt us. Poisons in the earth and the air. New, ever more fatal diseases raged through our population from year to year. And it wasn’t just the world that we despoiled. It was each other.”

His eyes had grown dreamy, and he stared into the darkness but seemed to see nothing.

“We were divided into great nations, and in our fear and mistrust of each other, we had built weapons that could destroy entire populations and devastate the land, making it unlivable for generations. Though we had the ability to feed everyone on the earth, multitudes of the poor starved, while the rich grew fat and turned a blind eye to others’ pain. It was both a wonderful and terrible time--mankind had wrought miracles such as you couldn’t imagine, Paol, yet selfishness and waste made a mockery of it all.”

He paused. Enraptured, I was utterly silent and still, praying that he’d continue.

“Eventually, as there always is when those with power wish to retain it or to gain more of it, war erupted. It began with a dispute between two small nations but spread like wildfire, drawing more and more peoples into the struggle until half the world was in ruins, and it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the world was destroyed as well.”

The picture he painted was epic and tragic. He hadn’t gone into a lot of detail--there was a vagueness to his tale--but I made myself be satisfied with it for now. I sensed that he was just laying the background for the real story.

“In the midst of that armageddon, one brilliant man pulled together a group of people--amazing people with gifts and abilities like few others in the world. He knew that humanity had little time left, so he decided we needed to flee the world and find a new home.”

I was confused.

“Flee the world? What do you mean?”

Rafe looked up, so I did, too.

“What do you see in the sky?” he asked.

“Darkness. Stars. The moon. Clouds if there are clouds and the sun during the day.”

“What would you say if I told you that every star that you see in the sky is a sun just like ours and that the only reason they look so small and dim is because they are so far away?”

I was dumbstruck. Could he be serious? Every star was a sun? How far away must those stars be? How vast was the universe?

He saw that I was flabbergasted and half-smiled at me.

“Just roll with it for now, eh? Even if it’s hard for you to believe, just pretend for the moment.”

I nodded mutely even as I wondered at his phrase “roll with it.”

“The stars are uncountable. Some are so far away that you can’t even see the glimmer of their light. Some are bigger or smaller or...well, that doesn’t really matter. What you do need to understand is that some of those stars will have a world next to them on which people can live. Just like this one.”

He tapped his foot on the dirt.

“The brilliant man that I was talking about knew that we needed to find another such world, so he built a ship--an ark--and brought together a few hundred of the most amazing people that he could find to give mankind a new beginning.”

I finally found my voice.

“So he made a ship that you could sail between worlds?”

“Yes, that’s probably the best way to put it.”

“And you came here? To this world?”

His next word dropped hard and tight.

“No.”

I blinked. “I don’t understand. Then where are we? Is this still the original world?”

“Paol, you need to understand that the distance between worlds is more than you can imagine, and the time it takes to sail that distance is such that generations of people could live and die before completing the journey. No one could make such a trip in their lifetime.”

“But--”

He held up a hand.

“Our leader, the brilliant man of whom I spoke, built for us beds--machines--that would keep us in stasis.”

At the confused look on my face, he hurriedly said, “A machine is something that a person builds that can do things for you that you might not be able to do with just your body or that you might do much more slowly. A loom is a good example. It is a machine that allows you to make cloth very quickly, at a much faster pace than with your two hands.”

I furrowed my brow. “Muh-sheen. Okay. I think I understand. And stasis?”

“That means that you are put in such a state that it is as if no time is passing for you. You do not age, but neither do you breathe or eat or do anything else that a person does who is alive. However, though the body could be put into this kind of hibernation, it was discovered that to place the mind into this state eventually quenched that mind.”

“You mean that people would die.”

“Yes. Our leader knew this, so he built a machine that could house our minds.”

I frowned. “You mean he took your brains out and put them into a different machine?”

Rafe shook his head.

“No, he linked our heads to a machine. The machine took our minds into itself--not the physical mind but the part of you that thinks and feels and understands--so that we could remain awake and active while our bodies slept.”

He shrugged.

“Don’t ask me how it works. Our leader was brilliant--a genius. Me? Not so much.”

“So the machine holds your...souls?”

Rafe’s eyebrows rose. “Hmmm...I guess that’s one way to think of it. I seem to recall that some of us made jokes about that, but it was all a little too metaphysical for me.”

I was still so confused. His explanation was a great story, but it wasn’t helping.

“I don’t understand,” I implored him.

He looked sorrowful.

“Through the machine, our leader created an imaginary world for our minds...souls...whatever...to live in while we traveled to a new earth.”

A sudden feeling of dread burrowed into my stomach. My body felt light while my head felt heavy, as if I could barely hold it up.

Rafe pointed a finger up and spun it in a slow circle.

“This world--everything you see around you--is that imaginary world. What you know to be reality is just an illusion. It isn’t real. None of it. It’s like a dream.”

I gasped, “That’s not possible. I’m here. You’re here. I can touch you.”

I reached out and grabbed his arm.

“I talk to other people and talk to them, too. My horse is over there. My sword--”

I fell silent.

He met my gaze steadily.

“None of this is real.”

His pupils were dark and huge.

“And neither are you.”