EL-HAZARD : MORTAL ENGINES

                        by Alan Harnum

          Chapter Eleven - Verklaerte Nacht : Grave
           
El-Hazard is a copyright of AIC/Pioneer LDC.  This story, 
however, belongs to me, and I request that you don't publicly
post or archive it without my permission.

This copy of the story is from my centralized fanfiction archive
at http://www.thekeep.org/~harnums/fanfic.  I can be reached by
e-mail at harnums@thekeep.org

* * *

     Laughter obviously hadn't been in Lethiaphan's design, but
it was making do.  Unable to vary pitch and inflection beyond the
necessity of its monotonic pronunciation, the Demon-God was 
simply doing its best with different volumes of the syllable 
"ha".  They rose and fell over the waves in cold echoes of sound
as passionless as binary code.  A parody of emotion; but why was
it laughing?

     "Jinnai probably told it to," Makoto reasoned as he clung 
tightly to Afura's waist.  "Trying to throw us off guard."  The 
laughter did share something of the same relentless quality of 
Jinnai's.  "Frighten us."

     "Just keep quiet and get ready to do your thing.  And watch
where you put those hands."  He and Afura floated slowly upon a
cushion of air; when the time came, when Lethiaphan was 
sufficiently distracted by the others, she would fly him in as
fast as she could, so that he could link with the Demon-God and
shut it down.  All theory, at this point; but it seemed like a
workable plan.  Hit from both flanks at once--by Shayla skimming
the water like a burning stone, and by Miz and Fujisawa-sensei,
who rode the swell of the only wave upon the unnaturally 
flattened field of the sea--Lethiaphan wouldn't even see the
third attack coming.

     In theory.  The problem with theory was that it was only as
reliable as the premises it was based upon.  One of those 
premises was that they'd seen most of what Lethiaphan was capable
of when it savaged the Gannan fleet.  They hadn't.  Still 
laughing as best it could, the war machine touched its trident to
the sea, and the calm expanse of water Miz had caused suddenly
began to surge as though storm-tossed.  To add to the trouble,
thick fog began to rise in patches from the roilings of the 
waves.

     Afura, airborne, had no difficulty; neither did Miz, who was
easily capable of navigating rough seas.  Shayla, however, whose
position even upon the flat water had been only a little less
precarious than that of a skipped stone, was flung headlong by
one massive wave, and dropped below the surface with a strangled
yelp.  Fog, terribly purposeful in its swirlings, closed over 
where she had been, even as the ocean slid back to calm as
quickly as it had departed from it.

     "Shayla!" Makoto yelled.
     
     A sudden increase in speed made his stomach drop like a 
stone.  "Stick to the plan!" Afura cried, as the wind howled in
his ears.  Lethiaphan was only a vague figure in the vapours--or
was that Miz and Fujisawa?  He couldn't tell.

     The air around them throbbed with green light, as Afura 
gathered her power and threw out winds of gale force that 
briefly tore the fog into ribbons for a few moments, before it
gathered itself again with a seeming malign sentience.  In the
interval, they saw Shayla floating in the water, helpless to
relight her flames, with Lethiaphan closing in fast.  Miz and
Fujisawa were on an intercept course; could they get there in
time?  Everything was happening too fast; the fog came down
again, burying the scene.

     All was silence for a moment, and then an explosion echoed
from within the cloud.  Tongues of fire licked out from the fog.
Afura smiled grimly.  "Possum.  Clever."

     Makoto tried to find a calm centre, but lost it as they
plunged into the thick of the fog.  The vapours shared the cold
malevolence of their maker, and stroked against his face icily as
they flew.  Though Afura's presence and power thinned them, they
threatened to thicken as soon as she relaxed, and visiblity still
wasn't perfect.  Up ahead, Shayla tread water resignedly, one 
hand held arm's-length above the water; a small ball of fire
floated above the palm.

     "I nailed it," the fire priestess crowed triumphantly.  
"Sank like a stone.  Miz and Fujisawa went down after it."

     "That wasn't part of the plan," Makoto muttered.  He was
beginning to get a strong dislike for hanging precariously from
Afura in mid-air.  
     
     "Neither was this damn fog," Shayla pointed out.  "The 
plan's toast, Makoto; now we impro--"

     In mid-sentence, without even time to cry out, she was
dragged below the water and out of sight.  A few bubbles rose;
then nothing.  The sea below them abruptly depressed as though
struck by a great weight; water swelled up to massive heights all
around them, threatening to trap them within a spinning vortex.
Afura kicked into high gear and shot up towards the rapidly
disappearing hole; beneath them, the water level dropped further,
as more and more surged up to join the trap.
     
     They nearly made it.  As freedom loomed mere feet ahead, the
column surrounding them abruptly clenched.  Pseudopods of living
water flailed out from the foaming sides; one caught Afura 
heavily in the back, and she cried out and dropped Makoto.  The 
last he saw of her as he fell into the depths was the top of the 
vortex swallowing her.

     He hit the water painfully, back-first and arms flailing.  
Breath fled his lungs at the stinging impact of the water, but he
had enough presence of mind to clamp his mouth shut as the sea
closed over his head.  Awkwardly positioned, sinking rapidly,
tasting salt upon his lips, he struggled to orient himself
properly and fight for the surface.  The baggy Roshtarian 
clothing he wore soaked up water like a sponge, and was about as
easy to swim in as a lead suit.  Even worse than that, the water
was aboil with cross-currents and tiny vortices, the aftereffects 
of Lethiaphan's water manipulation.  The salt made it painful to
open his eyes; then again, he wouldn't be able to see any of the
others through the disturbed water anyway.

     Everyone had to be okay, of course.  The plan couldn't have
failed that badly.  Could it?  Things weren't supposed to work
this way.  Terrible thoughts ran through his head as he struggled
his way to the surface, avoiding currents that threatened to snag
and pull him down into the immeasurable depths below.

     Not a moment too soon, his head broke the waters, and he
gulped grateful gasps of air while frantically scanning the flat
canvas of the ocean.  Nothing except the distant form of the 
ship.

     "Shayla?  Afura?  Fujisawa-sensei?  Miz?"
     
     His voice echoed back to him, over and over again.  He 
waited, called out again--nothing.  They're all dead, he thought;
Katsuhiko hates me so much, he had it kill them all, but leave me
alive, because he knew that would hurt me more than my own death.
Eyes already irritated by exposure to salt water began to itch
with imminent tears.  Afloat on the ocean, convinced his friends
were gone, Makoto considered his options.  He could swim back to
the cutter--Alielle would be waiting, Alielle had to be waiting--
or he could swim to the island; nearly equal distance to either
one.  The island had a pleasant beach overhung by cliffs of dark
basalt that threw their shadow lazily across the sand; his eyes
found green forests and traced the dip and rise of mountain peaks
barely visible that called out come to us, and then something
wrapped itself around his water-kicking ankles tight as a noose.

     Panic set in; he thrashed and cried out.  Cold, slippery
tentacles of water caught his wrists; another intertwined thick
and violating about his thighs and groin; a final one looped 
about his neck and filled his nostrils with a dead-fish-sea-salt
smell.  Struggle though he did, he could do nothing to resist
being lifted out of the water and high into the air.

     Ahead of him, a narrow ripple ran the length of the ocean as
far as he could see.  Shayla and Afura and Miz and Fujisawa-
sensei emerged from the ocean, pale and waterlogged, held in 
bonds identical to his.  The tentacles slowly shifted and 
wavered, hung with his friends like baited hooks.

     Despite his state, exuberance filled him.  He momentarily
forgot his predicament, and called out their names, one by one.
No answers; so pale they were.  How long had they been under?  
How much time had he floated alone, drawing easy breaths, while 
they lay drowning beneath the waves?

     Shayla coughed.  The thin, weak sound reached out across the
still waters and reached Makoto's ears like a note of joy.  
Shayla lived, and that meant the others probably did, they had to
have survived.

     Flat voice: "They live."  Lethiaphan rose into the space
between Makoto and his friends.  They had damaged it; the bladed
arm was held protectively over the pale green flesh of the chest,
as though to hold in the thin and very dark plumes of smoke that
spiralled up from beneath the cover of the arm.  

     This close, Lethiaphan's bonded presence felt almost like a
second mind within his, cold and steely like a blade, filled with
memories of old killing and an obedience reaching beyond 
fanaticism into something purer, deadly and simple and 
relentless.  How could human hands have designed something so
alien?
     
     As though in answer, Lethiaphan spoke:
     
     "Cruelty has a human heart,
      And Jealousy a human face;
      Terror the human form divine,
      And Secrecy the human dress.
      
      The human dress is forged iron,
      The human form a fiery forge,
      The human face a furnace seal'd,
      The human heart its hungry gorge."
      
      Having finished its monotone recitation, Lethiaphan bowed, 
one arm still pressed against its dark-smoking chest.  Makoto 
struggled to reconcile this inconsistency with his previous 
experience of Lethiaphan, failed to achieve that, and simply gave
up.

     "What... how..."
     
     Water-tentacles swayed in unison, as though in the act of
hypnosis.  He thought he saw Miz raise her head a little, but it
might just have been a motion caused by the movements of her
bonds.

     "I," Lethiaphan said, "require that you bleed for me."  The
trident flew towards him, spinning like a drill, tines 
glittering cruelly.  Makoto screamed and closed his eyes; when
there was no pain after a few seconds, he opened them again, to
see the trident hanging in the air before him.  Like a twirled
baton, it slowly rotated upon the central point of its shaft; in
the depths of the opalesque green sphere below the head, black
and crackling sylphs of electricity danced seductively.

     Abruptly, the cold manacles upon his wrists fell away, and
his hands were free.  They flopped limply, full of the pins and
needles of pinched nerves.  As the feeling slowly came back to 
them, he rubbed one wrist and then the other in an attempt to
recover sensation quicker.

     "Prick your finger, Makoto Mizuhara," Lethiaphan ordered.
"Upon the tines.  Bleed for me."

     Cryogenic coldness of Lethiaphan's xenolithic presence in
his mind bringing back childhood night-terrors, the creak of a
closet door opening due to a faulty latch sending him scurrying
under the covers, unable to stare through the darkness of his
room at the gaping maw within the wall that wanted to swallow
him down...  His hand came up as though in rebellion against his
own will, stretched out, and the black dancers in the shining orb
flared somehow hungrily for blood warmth light for an opening of
the veins for an opening--

     "They're rusty."
     
     His hand stopped.
     
     "I might get tetanus."  Play for time...
     
     "Bleed."
     
     "Don't you have something cleaner?"  A wheedling note in his
voice would do it, yes.  All those days in the Shakespeare 
Society of Shinanome were paying off, he'd seen Jinnai do Caliban
two years ago, he knew how to whine...

     "Bleed."
     
     The tentacle holding Shayla lifted high, higher than the 
others, and seemed to stiffen; the threat was implicit in the
singling-out: bleed for me or watch her die.  The thespis mask
slipped, and could not be recovered; had he done it?  

     "Okay, I'll do it."
     
     Voluntarily this time, he raised his hand.  And snapped his
fingers.  A cannon-shell, glowing red-hot, smashed into 
Lethiaphan and exploded thunderously, engulfing it in a cloud of 
smoke and roaring flame.

     Alielle's voice sang out from across the waters.  "You 
forgot about me..."

     Backup plans were always good, Makoto thought.  As the 
water-tentacles began to loosen and dissolve, the obscuring smoke
vanished.  Suddenly exhausted, Makoto splashed down into the
water as his bonds released.  Before he did, though, he saw that 
nothing was left of Lethiaphan but a smoking patch of ink-dark 
fluid upon the surface of the sea, and he felt the merciful 
retreat of its haunting presence from his mind.

* * *
     
     For nearly three seconds, Ifurita stared at the head 
growing out of the boy's back which had just greeted her by name.  
Then she said calmly, "Hello, Osilis."

     The head of Osilis smiled; dark eyes twinkled in the 
perpetually-bronzed face, beneath bushy eyebrows.  "How long
since we last met, Ifurita?"

     "At the siege of Zalambar," she replied.  "You escaped 
before I could destroy you."

     "As you did poor Mardruk."  Osilis's voice was full of mock
sadness.

     "Yes."  She could not allow herself to dwell upon things she
had done in the past, while a hierodule; to do that would be to
risk the loss of this new and fragile self, the Ifurita with an
existence beyond killing.  But neither could she deny what she
had been in the past; to do so was to risk becoming it again.

     "You seem different, Ifurita."
     
     "I am."
     
     Nasalasalanasala and the boy's attendants moved back from
them, rejoining the circle of their tribe; the blue-skinned men,
women and children watched the conversation with fascination.

     "Then I need not fear my destruction?"
     
     Ifurita stared at the head flatly.  "You do not seem to, at 
this moment.  And you are, after all, only a head; hardly in a
position to be any kind of threat to me."

     "Alas, yes," Osilis sighed.  "My body was damaged.  The only
way to preserve myself was this."  His eyes turned scornfully 
upon the mindless expression of his host, narrowed; the boy's 
hand lifted tremblingly, then dropped slackly back to dangle at 
his side.  "The processes of the nervous system are extremely
complex, as you can see; I am quite helpless to do anything
physical."

     "How many bodies have you used up?" Ifurita asked softly.
     
     Osilis pursed his lips.  "It is a great strain upon them,"
he admitted.  "Perhaps fifty, over these last ten years."  As
though to lend credence to his words, the boy suddenly coughed
savagely, involuntary motions rocking Osilis back and forth, to
his extreme displeasure.

     "Ten years?  Were you not sent here by the Eye of God?"  She
had learned very little of the intervening three thousand years
since her sleep and her awakening, but the logic seemed sound;
this was the home dimension of the Phantom Tribe, and they had 
been brought from here to El-Hazard by the first firing of the 
Eye of God--or so Gallus had claimed.  In Makoto's memories, she
saw him, standing on the Eye of God as the darkess gathered in 
the sky, cursing El-Hazard bitterly, the hateful words dripping 
from his thin lips...

     Osilis spoke, and brought her back out of the memory.  "How
long has it been for you, Ifurita?"

     "Three thousand years passed in El-Hazard while I slept."
     
     "Then time does flow differently between the dimensions."
Osilis grinned at the new knowledge.  "Only affirming what I had 
theorized."

     Ifurita looked around at the observant--almost rapt--faces
of the Phantom Tribe.  "Why do they allow you to do it?"

     "To do what?"  The head sounded genuinely surprised.
     
     "To ride their bodies like steeds, and drain the life out of
them.  Do they... worship you?"

     It was impossible for Osilis to really throw back his head
and laugh, but he made a good effort.  "Worship?  No, no; not
that."  

     "Then why?  Answer!"
     
     "Poor, poor Ifurita," clucked Osilis.  "You are without a
master to serve now; don't you realize that we have no purpose
unless we have someone to obey?  Humans struggle and agonize
because of their unknowable God; they ponder endlessly the
existence or nonexistence of their maker and master, his nature,
what he wants.  That is why they are unhappy."  Strain came onto
his face; the body shuffled forward a foot or so closer.  "We are
lucky!  We can know our masters, face to face!  We know our 
makers!  How easy is our service!"

     "One's maker is not necessarily a worthy master," Ifurita
said softly.  "Nor is one you call master necessarily worthy of
your service."

     Lights dimmed, and a palpable cold came down upon the 
cavern.  As one, the gathered Phantom Tribe (hundreds of them
now, they must have come in while she talked to Osilis) rose up
and began to slowly chant a single syllable.

     "Na."
     
     Ifurita's arm blurred with speed as she reached for Osilis.
With a wet and sickening pop like a bone leaving the socket, the
Demon-God's head detached from its host and scuttled away across
the cavern floor on dozens of needle-sharp spider legs. She was
left holding only the shoulder of the host body, hand clamped 
over the bloodless, fist-sized hole where Osilis had ridden.

     "Na."
     
     The boy's limp head suddenly snapped to attention as though
piston-driven.  Hooded eyes opened wide, and in them sang 
electric blue.  

     "Na."
     
     Black fell like a cataract into the blue, like slicked oil 
on the ocean.  A high, fluting laughter rose from the boy's 
throat.  

     "Na."
     
     The chanting voices, peaking towards an inevitable 
crescendo... Ifurita tore her gaze from the dark and seductive 
shadows in the boy's eyes, and began to release her grip on his 
shoulder.  Tried to; it was stuck fast with indissoluble bondage.  

     "Na."
     
     To the hells with the avoidance of killing!  Whatever it is
that was within the boy, her survival might very well depend on
her escape.  Fire, she pictured as she raised her other hand, a
concentrated ball, white-hot annihilation, the licking tongues of
the flames twining round her fingers like serpents--

     "Na."
     
     There were untold ecstasies in that single syllable as it
came out in one unified voice, surrounding Ifurita with a wall of
sound.  It sang the annihilitation of individuality; union in 
that one single syllable.  The dying of the self; the end of all
barriers.

     "Na."
     
     Tears came into Ifurita's eyes; the flames shrank.  
Desperately, she tried to cling to her own identity and memories,
but the chant rolled over them like tides erasing footprints in
the sand.  "Fire," she muttered.  "Fire, fire..."

     "Na."
     
     As though it had had fuel tossed upon it, the fireball 
roared up again.  Go! Ifurita cried, pointing.  Burn!  The 
projectile rose, moved a few inches through the short space 
between her and her captor.  And stopped dead.

     "Na."
     
     The ball collapsed upon itself like the end of a tiny 
universe.  The boy's hand seized her free wrist with a steely,
inhuman strength.  Grinning and laughing, still drooling, he
dragged himself towards her by his grip upon her wrist.

     "Na."
     
     Ifurita found, as she attempted to force her body to
struggle, that she had become almost entirely numb.  The arm
stuck to the boy's shoulder was engulfed to the elbow in a
cocoon of sluglike blackness.  It slowly flowed over pale flesh,
welling up seemingly interminably from within the wound beneath
her hand.

     "Na."
     
     "No!  NO!"
     
     "Na."
     
     The boy's grin spread, until his cheeks tore, and blackness
(no blood) came forth from beneath the flesh, until the skin of
his face (no blood) peeled away like the curtain rising on the
final act (The British Camp, near Dover.  Enter, in conquest...
Makoto's memories, oh God, he was stealing them he was taking
everything) and the true face below grinned and laughed and 
rolled its eyes at her.

     "Na."
     
     Joyous union...
     
     "Na."
     
     A scuttling of tiny sharp legs towards her as she fell...
     
     "Na."
     
     Pain...
     
     "Na."
     
     Fade...
     
* * *     

     "Please?"
     
     "No, Alielle."
     
     "But--"
     
     "Alielle, she's breathing.  She doesn't need you to give her
mouth-to-mouth."  Makoto looked down again at Afura.  "Now please
check on Fujisawa-sensei."

     "I never get to have any fun."

     After Alielle had picked him up, they had pulled the others,
semi-conscious and floating, from the sea.  Lethiaphan's 
destruction had brought the return of the calm, glass-still 
waters Miz and Afura had created, for which Makoto was immensely
grateful; without that, the seas might very well have taken his 
friends.
     
     Almost did take them, success of the backup plan or not, 
some part of him murmured... almost took them, and what happened
to Lethiaphan, why did it want me to bleed for it, why did I have
to _choose_ to bleed for it?

     "Ma...ko...to."
     
     Shayla's voice, weak and water-logged, dragged him away from
his dark thoughts.  He hurried over to her side, trailed by
Alielle; nearby, Fujisawa-sensei had already began to sit up.

     "Shayla, how do you feel?"
     
     "Like a drowned rat."  Shayla grimaced, and sat up with some
effort.  "What happened?  Last thing I remember is getting 
dragged under."

     "The backup plan worked," said Makoto, shakily grinning.  
"Alielle blew Lethiaphan to pieces."

     Fujisawa looked up from where he knelt at Miz's side.  "And
you're sure it's destroyed?"

     Makoto nodded.  "I can't feel its presence any more."
     
     Fujisawa stroked his stubbled chin, and peered at the deck
in seeming thought.  With a sigh, Shayla ran her hands through 
her damp hair, then looked to Alielle.

     "Alielle..." she began almost apologetically.
     
     "Yes?"  Alielle still sounded distant when she talked to
Shayla; the fight, the harsh words of the morning, had obviously
not been forgotten.

     "Good job," Shayla said, forcing down seeming reluctance.
"Thanks, kid."

     "Sister Shayla..." Alielle clasped her hands tightly 
together.  "I... I..."

     "Hey--"
     
     "Oh, Shayla!"
     
     "Aughh!  GET--okay, look, _just_ this once, because you
saved my life and everybody else's, and HEY! there are limits, I
didn't mean you could put your hands there--"

     Makoto turned away, leaving Shayla and Alielle to their own
particular brand of reconciliation.  "How's Miz, Sensei?"

     "She'll be fine," Fujisawa murmured, as he almost reverently
touched Miz's brow.  "She's the least likely person to be harmed
by a little water.  Afura?"

     "Breathing," Makoto said.  "Not much more than that, right
now.  She wasn't in any condition to fight again, but we didn't
have much of a choice..."

     "Listen, Makoto."  The teacher's voice dropped to a low
whisper.  "Are you sure Lethiaphan's gone?"

     "I saw the shell hit," Makoto softly declared.  "Dead on.
And it's gone from my mind; I can't feel any sort of link at all
any more."

     Fujisawa frowned.  "But what if Lethiaphan had some way to 
hide from you?  I was awake while it was talking to you, Makoto;
I didn't move because I didn't want to risk it hurting Miz, or 
anyone else.  Why did it act like that?  I doubt it did all that
at Jinnai's orders."

     "That's what I'm trying to figure out," Makoto replied, more
harshly that he meant to, almost snapping.

     Fujisawa held up his hands defensively.  "I'm just saying
better safe than sorry.  Can't you... search, or something?  
Exert yourself?"

     "Fine."  Trying but failing to keep a calm veil over his
inexplicable agitation, Makoto walked to the edge of the boat and
stared out at the featureless spot of sea that he thought was
where Lethiaphan had gone down.  He closed his eyes, focused 
down, imagined his consciousness receding into a space smaller
than a pinpoint, smaller than an atom, transmuting, and then 
_opening_ in an outward radarbeam sweep encompassing all 
creation--

     His eyes snapped open.  "What!?"
     
     "Makoto?"  Fujisawa crossed the deck to him in two long
strides.  "What is it?"
     
     "Mardruk."
     
     Blink.  "Who's Mardruk?"
     
     Makoto pointed to the vapour trail just becoming visible in
the western sky.  "He is."

     Fujisawa scratched his head.  "I think you've got some
explaining to do, kid."

     Makoto was only halfway through his explanation to Fujisawa 
and the others--except Afura, who was still unconscious--at the 
point where he had awakened Mardruk in the catacombs below the 
Royal Library, when the reason for his explanation arrived in a
stream of vapour and a booming of jets.  The one-armed Demon-God 
stopped on a dime above the boat, and dropped down to land upon 
the deck, stumbling on his twisted leg as he did.  The mangled
shoulder-stump appeared to have been cauterized; at the very 
least, it no longer leaked the red fluid it had before.

     Everyone stared warily at the new arrival, as Makoto stepped
forward.  "Why are you here?  You..."

     "In my dreams, I heard you cry out in fear," the Demon-God
replied.  His voice was soft, hard to understand because of 
static; in the full sunlight, the four red eyes within the depths
of the white visor covering eyes and nose were nearly invisible.
"By the tremblings of the cord that binds our souls, I felt 
Lethiaphan, but he was... changed."

     "Changed?  What..."
     
     "Look at my memories and see," Mardruk said, grievingly.  
"He was my... what I would call my brother."

     And the memories came in a flash.  A beautiful youth with 
sea-green locks (it had the face of a man), a whirling blade in
the place of one hand, a trident in the other, skin of pale jade,
leaping diving laughing through the ocean (the face of a man) 
except when ordered he must kill he cannot disobey he is 
hierodule, and overhead I fly (in the distance I can sense the
presence of my other brothers) 

     (the face of a man)
     
     (these images cannot be reconciled.  This is not my/your 
brother)

     (then what is he/it?)
     
     Dark guillotine fallen, severing the connection.
     
     All around him, the others, Miz Shayla Fujisawa Alielle,
clamouring voices, question after question which he cannot 
shallnot willnot answer, and, "SHUT UP!  Shut up!  Let me think!
Leave me be!"

     They shrink back; they have never heard him yell like that
before.  His fists clenched at his sides, he whirls from one to
the other, shouting:  "I don't know!  I don't have all the
answers!  I can't say!  I don't--"

     A gentle inhuman hand fell upon his shoulder.
     
     "Makoto."  He heard Ifurita's voice amid the tones,
Ifurita Mardruk's destroyer whom he has come to love in the hope
that Makoto will find it pleasing.  "Be calm."

     Ifurita.  It all broke from him in a rush, in a towering
wave of suppressed grief.  He'd pushed it all down in the face of
these new things, the pursuit of Jinnai, the mystery of 
Lethiaphan, but now it hammered at him with all the stored 
strength repression imparts.  

     I am going so that I can meet you.
     
     And she went, into the darkness.
     
     Wailing, sobbing like a child, Makoto shoved someone (he
didn't know who) out of the way and scrambled across the deck to
where the Power-Key Staff lay.  He grabbed it up and clung to it
like a spar on the ocean, hugged it to his chest until its sprues
and projections dug painfully into his flesh.

     Ifurita might meet his past self, but there was no 
guarantee, none at all, that _he_ would meet her again.  What if
what Gallus had done to the Eye of God had permanently damaged 
it?  What if the secret of dimensional travel did not lie hidden
within some ancient text?  What if he never saw her again?  How
could he endure that?  How could he live?  His soul was cleaved
to hers deeper than flesh to bone.  Without her there was no 
life.

     He didn't have any conscious perception of events outside 
his grief; didn't know who reached him first, to touch him, or 
how hard he slapped his or her hand back.  Nothing mattered.

     They stood around him in a circle, without questions; an
almost palpable love radiated from them, uncompromising, and it
was that which eventually allowed him to look up through red eyes
at all of them.
     
     "I'm sorry, everyone," he murmured, cheeks reddening with
shame and humiliation.  "I'm sorry, it's just... it won't happen
again, I won't break down ever again."  Control; control.  
Breathe deep.

     None of them, to his surprise, looked especially shocked by
his outburst.  Fujisawa knelt and touched his shoulder; this 
time, Makoto allowed the contact.

     "I was waiting for something like this," the teacher said
sagely.  "I was worried about you, kid; you've been pushing it
all down inside, ever since Ifurita left.  Good to see you let it
out."

     Shayla smiled down at him ruefully, almost sadly.  "Feels
kind of good, doesn't it?  Good to have some company in the
hysterical breakdown department."

     "A good cry is very healthy," Miz observed.  
     
     Makoto looked from face to smiling face; Afura had gotten 
up sometime during his time of separation, and even she looked
down at him beneficiently.  Mardruk sent love across the cord
that bound their souls, love love love.

     Suddenly, cleansingly, Makoto began to laugh.  He let 
Fujisawa help him to his feet; the others crowded around, giving
him small embraces, brief touches, gentle words.  He felt safe
and protected.  Loved.
     
     And, then, to cut into and destroy the safety of the moment, 
a voice made up of static feedback, broken mechanisms: "How 
touching; how very, very touching."

     They turned as one, to see a shape standing upon the waves:
vaguely like a man, but covered in bottom muck, tangled seaweed, 
the bloody skins of fish; not all was covered, though, and in
patches could be seen torn artificial flesh and microscopically 
complex mechanism covered in what looked like thick black oil--an
oil that bled black smoke wherever the sunlight touched it.  Atop 
it all, the gleaming faceless head; all the hair had burned away 
in the explosion that had nearly destroyed the body.  Would have, 
except for whatever it was that rode Lethiaphan and drove it 
darkly onwards.

     "But I must still require that you bleed for me."
     
     Mardruk stepped into the air as easily as a man ascends a
flight of steps, and walked off the boat.  "Head for shore," he
said quietly.  "I shall deal with what is left of my brother."

END OF CHAPTER 11