Fire Warrior

Lusha watched them closely. “I... I thought that you deserved to see,” he said, awkwardly. “He talks about you sometimes, the fio’vres say. He says you were his friends.”

Y’hol frowned. “We are his friends, Shas’el.”

“Were, Shas’ui,” Lusha corrected. “He thinks you’re dead. Or maybe he thinks he’s dead. Whichever it is, there are no friends in his world anymore.”

“How did he come to this?” Ju whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

Lusha chewed his lip, searching for words. “By going too far into a place that no tau should ever venture.”

“You mean that... that ‘pit’? The por’hui won’t give any details.”

Lusha laughed bitterly and tapped at his head.

“No, Ui’Y’hol. I mean into here. We all have darkness inside us. We hide it away and pretend it’s not there, but it is. And the only way to stay clear of it is the way of the tau’va. But even the One Path won’t light up every shadow. Kais went too far into the darkness.”

Ju shook her head, bewildered. “So he’s gone then? Lost forever?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. He needs time now, that’s all.”

“Why did you bring us here, Shas’el?” Y’hol didn’t take his eyes from the viewing panel as he talked. “The truth. You could have just told us.”

Lusha sighed. “Because someone needed to know, Shas’ui. La’Kais is a hero. He kept the machine grinding along so that no one else would have to admit to the... the Mont’au inside them. He gave himself up for the Greater Good, and no one will ever know.”

They stared. And time passed.

And they left.

Alone in his mind, Kais walked the path.

He walked the path and he fought the Mont’au devil.

He raged and he killed; he relaxed and he focused.

He went deep inside himself, and refused to come out until, one way or another, he knew which way along the path he was walking.

It wasn’t as lonely as it could be, because every time he dared to open his eyes — just to check that the real world was still there — he could look down at his one remaining hand, strapped carefully in place to the restraint pallet, and read the tiny fragment of display wafer that someone had placed there.

It was broken. Only a sliver of text remained, without context or meaning, but somehow... somehow it felt right.

It simply said: With pride.