Bors found himself alone, standing on the red-orange sands of Mars, bloody and dead tribesmen around him as he had found them years ago. He’d returned with money and weapons for his tribe from fighting as a mercenary and returned to death. Amongst the corpses were the four-armed Green Martians. It was a large party, but the Hidden Mountain Tribe had cut down many of their numbers as well. It was then that he’d found that his tribe’s treasure, the one thing they were to guard forever, the Soul of the Mother, had been taken. Yet Bors knew that it hung on his back even as he stood there.

A figure shimmered into view. At first, Bors gripped his new steel sword and took a stance, though something felt wrong. His chest hurt. His body was wracked by a coughing fit. He then felt dizzy as the reality hit him. He remembered the large bolt taking him in the chest and pitching him into the river. He remembered the bone-jarring cold that sapped his strength. The image of his friend, Rick trying to save Bors’s half-drowned body. Then falling through the air and the pain of slamming into the water again and blackness. He knew the form before him, the dark, shawl-wrapped form of Mother.

“Do you know why you are here?” Mother asked in her sepulchral voice.

“I am dying, and you are showing me my ancestors?”

The youthful-looking chin and mouth quirked into a twisted half-smile. “Something along those lines. But I can make you even stronger, my bearer. I can give you more of my strength. All you need do is ask.”

“No,” Bors said, looking away from her. “I will not lose more of myself to you.”

“Lose what?” Mother asked with a rasping, husky laugh. “You are the last of your tribe. You are alone.”

“I have friends! Tosh of House du’Val. Rick of the Space—”

“They would turn their backs on you if they knew what a murderer you were,” Mother said, her voice a whisper in his ear.

“No,” Bors said, closing his eyes. He knew she would try more.

And she did . . .

Bors was suddenly a child of ten, watching an even earlier raid as the last of the Tribe of the Hidden Mountain fought a bloody skirmish with the Green Martians. Even at a young age, he tried to help but was knocked aside as an elder came to his aid to take a mortal wound meant for Bors. The skirmishing group was slaughtered. Bors was trapped under the dead body of his mentor. He tried to move the body and couldn’t. He heard the growling, hissing laugh of a Green Martian as it crawled toward his trapped form. Murder was in the severely injured Martian’s eyes. It raised up on its smaller, lower hands with a dagger in a trembling overhead grasp. The Martian mumbled something in its language, sputtered, and coughed up a dark ichor. Succumbing to its wounds, the Green Martian simply dropped, landing atop the prone form of the Hidden Tribe elder Bors was trapped beneath.

“Without me, you are nothing,” Mother hissed as the creature moved closer and closer. “You are weak and worthless. I should never have saved you then.”

Bors shook his head, knowing what the Soul of the Mother was trying to do. He let out a roar, “Then I am nothing!”