CHAPTER EIGHT

     "I fail to see the significance of this," said Tarc,
staring dubiously at the reddish thing stuck on the end of
his stick.
     "It's a hot dog," said Kei.  "Haven't you ever roasted
hot dogs over a fire before?"  She took a bite out of her
own.
     "No.  What animal did this use to be?"
     Yuri smiled.  "Kei and I have found that some questions
are better left unanswered."
     Tarc grimaced.  "I'll pass, thank you."  He passed the
stick to Kei.
     "Suit yourself."  Kei stuck it in the fire.
     "By the way Kei," said Yuri, turning her hot dog over,
"good job getting the fire started."
     "It was nothing any Girl Scout couldn't have done."
     "You were a Girl Scout?" Yuri asked incredulously.
     "For about a year.  Until they kicked me out.  I beat up
a bunch of Boy Scouts on a joint campout."
     It was a beautiful night.  Platonia's two moons provided
enough light to see by, but not enough to overpower the
stars.  The gentle sound of the waves, combined with the
crackle of the fire, made for a soothing backdrop to the
conversation.
     Tarc took a deep breath and let it out.  "Perhaps I
should begin."
     "Sure," said Yuri.  "I'd love to know what's going on."
     "I'm not sure that you will, but I'll try my best."
Tarc paused as if to gather his thoughts.  "A long time ago,
I don't know exactly how long, the world was for a brief time
ruled by demons."
     "Which world?" asked Kei.  "This one?"
     "There is only one world, as far as I am aware.  True,
it has greatly increased in size since my last life, thanks
to the invention of your ships that sail between stars.  But
it is still the world."

     As I was saying (Tarc continued), the world was for a
time ruled by demons.  The demons gained their power when the
world's gods at that time came to blows and destroyed each
other in a cataclysmic war.  Wars such as that usually
destroy the world, and this nearly did.
     However, enough of humanity survived to begin again.
Unfortunately, so did several score of the most powerful
demons, who had served as lieutenants to the Dark Gods during
the wars.  These demons became known as the Controllers, as
they staked out portions of territory and ruled them with a
terrible hand, doling out life and death as they saw fit.
     The war left great scars upon the land.  Perhaps "scars"
is not the correct term, as these scars could not be seen,
nor did they exist in any one place.  Rather, these scars
were weakenings of the boundary between this realm and the
realm that had once played home to the gods and the demons.
Those who were strong of will could manipulate the forces
there, bend them to their will.  These people became known as
sorcerers.
     But there were no sorcerers like the Controllers.  The
demons had, after all, come from that realm in the first
place.  For them, the manipulation of those forces was
effortless.  It was for this reason that nearly a score of
years passed before the Controllers faced any serious
opposition.
     When opposition did come, it came in the form of the
Crystal Knights.  These Knights brandished swords of purest
crystal, like my own, that could destroy lesser demons with a
touch.  The Crystal Wars had begun.
     I'm sorry, I have to laugh when I say that.  The truth
is that, for the first two years, the glorious Crystal Wars
were nothing but a series of minor skirmishes.  For all the
power in their swords, the Knights were unable to attack even
the weakest Controller.  They survived only by hiding their
base of operations.  When the base was discovered, the
Controllers sent their forces en masse.  The Knighthood was
nearly wiped out, scattered across the entire realm.
     But Crystal Knights are able to sense each other, and so
the Knights were able to slowly regather over a period of two
years, despite the Controllers' success at hunting them down.
     It was during the second gathering that I joined their
number, at seventeen years of age.  I had considered myself
an accomplished swordsman, but I was embarrassed the first
time I tested a Knight.  Still, they must have seen something
in me, for they accepted me as a squire.
     A little more than a year later, I was shown how to
produce my crystal sword out of the fabric of my soul.  By
that time the number of the Knights stood at fully thirty
score.  The Wars were now to begin in earnest, and I was to
be part of them.
     We had discovered through our sorcerers that the
Controllers gained much of their power from gateways to their
realm which had remained open after the god war.  If those
gateways could be sealed, the demons would still be terribly
strong, but perhaps not unstoppable.  With that information,
we were able to secure the alliance of most of the world's
human armies.
     We pressed the attack and forced the more minor of the
Controllers away from their gates, but we did not know how to
close them, and distance from the gates only lessened the
Controller's power somewhat; it did not remove it.  So for
three years all we did was hold the small continents where
those gates were located as we attempted to find some way to
seal them.
     Help came from an unexpected source, in the form of a
small demon child named Orin, who stole the secret of the
gates from his master and gave them to us under the condition
that he be allowed to remain on our plane after we destroyed
the Controllers.
     The gates on the minor continents were quickly closed
and sealed.  Armed with the knowledge that the demons would
now be considerably weaker, we attacked.
     Now that they knew we could cut off their source of
power, the demons gathered on the main continent of Halarm to
protect the remaining gates.  There was nothing to do but
fight a horrible war of attrition.
     The battle went on almost without pause for four years,
fought by sword and by sorcery, by honor and by treachery, by
any means possible.  The lesser warriors of both sides fell
like insects, their bodies littering the land like leaves in
autumn.  The Crystal Knights survived better than the other
humans, partly because of our skill, partly because the
others would sacrifice ten of their number to save one
Knight.  This they did because they saw us as their only
means of salvation.  We were.  Even still, our own numbers
were being significantly reduced.
     For two years, the war was a stalemate.  Then our forces
were blessed with a series of victories.  Each victory meant
a gate was closed and sealed, which further weakened the
Controllers, paving the way to future victories.  After one
year more, there remained only one gate, the largest, most
powerful one at the top of Mount Kalorm.
     It took us six months and countless lives to fight our
way up the mountain, but at last we made it to the hideous
shrine they had built to house the gate.  Our sorcerers got
to work and closed the gate but, in one of fate's cruel
twists, Mount Kalorm became active and erupted.  The shrine
collapsed before the sorcerers were able to seal the gate.
The sorcerers barely managed to teleport me and the rest of
the Knights present to safety before they were crushed to
death under tons of rubble.
     The gate was not sealed, but it was closed, and being as
it was, buried under tons of rock, the Controllers had no
immediate way to reopen it.  Victory was ours.  It was just a
matter of how long it would take.  It took another half-year.
When it was over, the remaining Controller Demons had
scattered all over the world, and the Crystal Knights had
been reduced from a proud thirty score to a scarred and
battle-weary eleven.
     Our purpose did not end with the close of the war,
however, not as long as a single one of those creatures
remained in our realm.  We split up and became travelers.
For six years we sought out the demons and did battle with
them.  Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost.  When a battle
was lost and a Knight died, we all felt it, wherever we were.
     Eventually, our number was reduced to two, myself and my
friend Jayse.  We took to travelling together, the better to
prevent either of us from becoming the last of our kind.  We
had carefully kept track of the greater demons left
unaccounted for after the end of the Crystal Wars.  There was
only one left, the last of the Great Controllers,
Nag'sharath.
     We spent a year tracking Nag'sharath and finally engaged
it in the land of Agenta, near the southeastern shore of
Halarm.  The battle did not go as planned and Jayse was
struck down.  I was nearly killed myself, but I gathered the
last of my strength and fought on.  At last, I ran the
creature through with my sword, and obliterated it.
    I had won.  The Crystal Knights had won.  There was now
but one of our number left, but we had outlived the
Controllers.

     Tarc paused to take a drink from a bottle of water.
     "That was a great story," said Kei. "Don't get me wrong,
I love sword and sorcery stuff, but what does it have to do
with us?"
     "I'm not finished," Tarc replied.  "That was only the
first part of my story."

     I buried Jayse.  Then I spent a week healing myself.
After that, I pondered what to do next.  With the Controller
Demons all gone, there was no purpose in remaining a Crystal
Knight.  I considered putting away my sword for good.
     But something prevented me.  True, Nag'sharath was gone,
but I could still sense evil in the world.  There will always
be evil; it cannot be extinguished anymore than can good.
However, if the evil was strong enough for me to sense, it
meant that someone as strong as I was needed to combat it.
So I got on my horse, and I began to search for the evil.
     I searched for fifty years.  Along the way, I took part
in uncounted petty battles.  I played the hero, or sometimes
the mercenary, although such jobs had to be chosen with great
care.  If I chose a side that I did not believe in with all
my heart, I risked corrupting it and rendering my sword
useless, or worse.
     Eventually, I decided to lend my services, for a time,
to the Emperor of Muaarl.  Although the Empire was in decline
at the time, it was still the dominant nation in the land of
Halarm.  I felt that if the evil force I yet sensed was to
find a point of focus, it would have to involve the Empire in
some sense.  Still, I had my doubts as to the worthiness of
Empire's continued existence, which is why I had avoided that
course of action for so long.
     My sword had granted me an immortality of a sort, and
although I nearing eighty years of age, I still appeared a
man in his thirties.  A young sorcerer named Alton had taken
to travelling with me, and he planned as I did to enter the
service of the Emperor.
     It was in the small town of Shankara that I met with the
two lady warriors, Efera and Jiliora, half-sisters who had
been making quite a name for themselves at the time.  I had
been diverted to Shankara by the strong presence of a dark
magic in the town, only to find that the sorceress Efera had
already taken care of it by the time I arrived.
     Alton and Efera, it turned out, had been great friends
during their training by the sorcerer Guruk, and he
introduced me to the pair of young ladies.  Both Efera and
Jiliora were daughters of the Emperor of Muaarl, the
difference being that Jiliora was legitimate and the heir to
the throne.  Jiliora had renounced her claim to the throne,
however, to accompany her sister on her travels.  Certainly,
Jiliora didn't look like any princess I'd ever met, with wild
red hair, brilliant skill with the sword, and a tendency to
get foul-mouthed when angry.  Against my better judgement, I
found myself fascinated by her.
     To my utter astonishment, I found that the lady warriors
had a companion who traveled with them: none other than Orin,
the demon "child" who had helped the Crystal Knights turn the
tide against his masters.  Add to this the fact that Alton
and Efera's mentor, Guruk, had stood with me during the final
battle at Mount Kalorm, and it was clear fate was taking a
hand.
     Alton and Efera agreed with me, exchanging stories of
magical signs that had manifested recently, signs that were
almost certainly the harbinger of a much greater evil about
to take place.  We decided to set out for Muaarl the next
day.
     Or rather, all but one of us decided.  Jiliora was
reluctant to return to her homeland, fearing that her father
would never let her leave again.  Eventually she gave in,
though, and we began the trip.
     Once in Muaarl, we made our way to the capital city.
While resting, we were surprised to see pass by two men, both
of whom were known to us.  One was Shargan, an evil man whose
arranged marriage to Jiliora had been one of the principle
reasons for her running away.  The other was Dektar, who had
been one of the Sorcerer's Guild during the Crystal Wars
before being exiled for attempting to seize the power of a
demon's gate for himself.  The two conversed like business
partners.
     It was obvious the two had something to do with whatever
was about to occur.  However, Dektar's familiarity with me,
and Shargan's with Jiliora, was bound to make following them
difficult.
     While we debated how best to proceed, Orin slipped away
to follow them on his own.  He promptly disappeared.  Later
that day, we were attacked by several minor demons.  The
attack was unsuccessful, of course, but the message was
clear:  We know you're here.  Leave.  Which, of course, we
had no intention of doing.
     We waited for the next attack.  It wasn't long in
coming.  That night we were attacked individually by
assassins while we pretended to sleep.  All of us save for
Jiliora were able to defeat our opponents.  Jiliora found
herself the subject of a kidnap attempt by Shargan himself,
who had brought along several men.
     The rest of us arrived in time to assist Jiliora.  My
crystal sword revealed that several of Shargan's men were in
fact disguised demons, and I began to lay into them.  But
during the course of battle, I was tripped and dropped my
sword.  One of the enemy moved to finish me off.  Jiliora
grabbed my sword and, before I could scream at her to stop,
ran him through.
     To my utter horror, the man turned out not to be a
demon.  His blood coated the sword as Jiliora pulled it out.
I saw my sword begin to bubble and crack.  Then I blacked out
from the pain.
     When I awoke, I was on a hillside many miles from the
battle.  Alton and Efera had together worked a spell to
teleport us safely away.  But my sword had been coated with
human blood; why was I not dead?  Alton handed me my sword,
wrapped in a cloth which Efera had enchanted using her own
lifeforce.  It halted the sword's deterioration, but at the
cost of Efera's vitality.  The young sorceress lay on the
ground, conscious but barely able to move.  The truth was, I
did not feel much better myself.  We decided to head for the
one person we knew who could restore my sword, Guruk, Efera
and Alton's mentor.
     We mounted up and began riding.  We were a sorry lot.
Efera and I weren't worth much to the rest and, despite my
consolations, Jiliora blamed herself.  To make matters worse,
we were attacked again.
     This time, the battle was disastrous.  Demon's blood
killed our horses.  Efera was fouled by the stuff as well,
putting her minutes away from death.  Soon, Jiliora was also
stricken.  My friend Alton ordered me to drag the women away
from the battle, even though it meant his certain death.  I
did so.
     I could only think of one way out.  I unwrapped my
sword, causing the bubbling and cracking to begin anew.
Fighting the pain, I grasped the sword and whispered an
ancient spell the Crystal Knights had used during the war to
contact the nearest member of the Sorcerer's Guild.  I had no
idea if Guruk would still be aware of such a signal.
Thankfully he was, and Efera, Jiliora, and I were safely
teleported out of danger.  But not before I saw Alton struck
down.
     I awoke to find myself next to a smiling Guruk.  He had
repaired my sword and restored Efera's lifeforce.  We had
been transported to the nation of Grafton, and were under the
care of the Princess Rubiera, who, it seemed, owed the lady
warriors a favor.
     It was nighttime, and I walked out on a balcony to look
at the stars and get my thoughts together.  I was joined by
Jiliora, who was dressed, not in her usual warrior's garb,
but an elegant flowing gown more suitable for the heiress to
an empire.
     She smiled and said that the Princess had offered her a
place in the Grafton nobility.  She was almost certainly
going to turn it down, but had decided to try it for a day to
see how it felt to be a princess again.  She asked me what I
thought.  I thought I'd never seen such a beautiful woman,
and I told her.  She blushed.
     But I also told how much I needed her, how I needed her
warrior side, especially with Alton gone.  We talked for
hours.  She asked me about my past, I asked about hers.  We
talked about our families, our plans for the future.  One
thing led to another.
     That night, I compromised my purity.
     The next morning, Guruk called us to his side.  In a
scrying pool, he showed us two alarming appearances in a
nearby town.  One was Orin, looking not at all himself.  The
other was an ancient object which contained the lost spell
for opening gateways to the demon's dimension.  Not for
creating them, mind you, just for opening them.  There was
only one gate on which that spell would be of any use: the
big one atop Mount Kalorm, which the knights had been able to
close but not seal.
     Efera was having trouble dealing with Alton's death,
seeing it as a personal failure on her part.  She had not
recovered well from her injuries as a result of this.  It was
thus decided that Jiliora and I would split up and search for
the key.
     Before Guruk had lost the image, he had placed the key
in a nearby town, in the possession of a fellow in a purple
robe.

     "Hey!"  Kei interrupted.  "I know this part!"
     "You mean at the mall?" asked Yuri.
     "Sure!"  Kei told Tarc how, while chasing a man through
the mall, it was as if she had slipped into another world,
becoming someone else.
     Tarc nodded solemnly.  "Yes, I can see how that would
happen.  When presented with a similar situation, you began
reliving the experience of your previous life."
     Yuri looked puzzled.  "I thought you said you'd decided
we weren't really Efera and Jiliora."
     "I'm getting to that.  Let me finish."

     Jiliora caught up with the man first (continued Tarc),
only to find out that he'd already passed the key onto his
contact.  Worse, he wasn't a man at all, but a disguised
demon.  Only a quick strike by Jiliora saved her life.
     Moments later, she saw Orin in the crowd, waving to her.
She ran to him, and found herself ambushed by three large
demons, seemingly led by Orin himself.  Luckily, I caught up
to her and together we finished off the attackers.
     Part of me had never trusted Orin in the first place.  A
reformed demon?  The concept was alien to me.  So I was happy
to do what I felt should have been done more than fifty years
ago.  Despite Jiliora's pleas, I ran Orin through with my
sword.
      He screamed and fell unconscious, but, to my
astonishment, did not burst into flame like the other demons.
When he came to a moment later, he was once again as he had
been before his kidnapping, and completely unharmed by the
sword.  Jiliora cried joyfully and hugged him, thanking me.
She thought I had planned it that way.  I was too stunned to
correct her.
     When the three of us arrived back at the castle, we
found a healthy Efera waiting for us.  Guruk had had a
mentor-to-apprentice talk with her and she claimed to be
ready to join us.
     We had failed to retrieve the key, so we had to prevent
them from using it.  That meant travelling to Mount Kalorm.
Guruk teleported the rest of us part of the way, halfway up
the mountain, but could get us no closer, thanks to Dektar's
spells.
     As we ascended, we were attacked, time and again, by
increasingly larger hoards of demons and demonic creatures.
For awhile we were able to make progress, but eventually we
found ourselves overwhelmed by numbers.
     Before we left, Guruk had given to us three enchanted
parchments with instructions to tear them and throw the
pieces before us.  I tore the first, and from the fragments
rose a wall of fire, incinerating the enemy.  The wall rose
up the mountain and we followed.
     The wall died out, however, and we once again had to
rely on our swords to protect ourselves against the ever-
increasing demonic hoard.  I tore the second parchment and we
found ourselves surrounded by light.  The light did not hurt
our eyes, but it blinded the demons, and so we tore through
them easily as we continued towards the top.
     When the light died, we were close enough to see Dektar.
He was gesturing and shouting, maintaining a whirlwind spell
which hovered above the buried gate, sucking the debris into
the air.  I could also see a shadowy form next to Dektar.  It
was insubstantial, shimmering and wavering like a heat-ghost,
but I recognized it.  It was Nag'sharath, whom I now knew I
had failed to destroy fifty years ago.
     The reappearance of a Controller Demon filled me with
purpose.  The minor demons that continued to attack us became
more of a distraction to me than a threat, and I slew them
like flies.  But Efera and Jiliora did not have the advantage
of weapons that grew stronger with one's purity of purpose,
and I knew that they would soon fall.
     I tore the third parchment and we were surrounded by
wind.  The demons were swept away into the sky.  We were
lifted as well and deposited at the top of the mountain, just
as Dektar succeeded in clearing away the last of the debris.
Jiliora landed roughly and stayed down.
     Efera immediately began to recite the spell to seal the
gate.  Such a spell is worthy of an elder sorcerer, and she
had trouble casting it.  Still, the contradiction of her
spell made it impossible for Dektar to reopen the gate.  He
cursed her loudly and called upon Nag'sharath to summon more
demons.
     Nag'sharath could do no such thing, though, for I had it
on the defensive.  It was obviously very weak, for a
Controller, and one touch with my sword would be more than
enough to destroy it for good.  The demon swerved and
swooped, trying desperately to stay out of reach.
     Dektar ceased his attempts to reopen the gate and
instead turned his considerable power on Efera.  She found
herself unable to breathe, and collapsed.
     After uncounted attempts, I managed to brush
Nag'sharath's ghostly form with my sword.  The demon screamed
in agony, but did not vanish.  I stopped dead in my tracks.
The touch should have finished it, but it didn't.
     Something was horribly wrong.  I searched my mind for
anything out of place, anything that would explain my
weakness.  I found it.  Deep in my mind, I feared for
Jiliora's safety.  I found desires, to hang up my sword and
take her as my wife, to spend the rest of my life at her
side.  I found memories of the night I had spent in her arms.
All this I had buried, for fear it would compromise my sense
of purpose, but it had anyway.  Worse, now that I had
unburied these images, I found myself unable to rebury them.
I was filled with doubt, and Nag'sharath could tell.
     Dektar continued to kill Efera, but he neglected to pay
attention to Jiliora, who had come around.  With one thrust
of her sword, she ended his threat.
     Nag'sharath howled as the man it had used as its tool
crumpled to the ground.  It raced to Dektar's side and flowed
into his body through the mouth.  Nag'sharath rose as Dektar,
the wound instantly healed.
     The demon would have the power of itself and Dektar
combined, as long as it could keep its new body from falling
apart from the stress.  With a gesture, it caused Mount
Kalorm to reawaken.  The ground trembled and quaked as the
volcano began building up to an eruption that would
completely destroy the mountaintop on which we stood.
     The ground opened up, forming a ghastly crack in the
ground which led down into a river of molten rock.  Nag
gestured once more and Efera and Jiliora were hurled into the
abyss.
     It was as if the life had drained out of me.  My sword's
glow dimmed to pale shimmer.  The demon laughed, a deep
hearty laugh, and produced its own sword, a twisted blade of
obsidian that was as much of an expression of its soul as my
crystal blade was of mine.  We went at it, but my heart was
not in it, and I began to lose.
     My side was slashed, and my own blood splashed onto my
sword, contaminating it once more.  The blade again began to
bubble and crack.  I fell to my knees as I felt death
approach.  I could see Jayse welcoming me to his side.
     Then I heard the voices of Efera and Jiliora calling to
me.  At first I thought their ghosts were summoning me from
the other side, but no, they urged me to fight on, offered to
lend me their strength.
     Nag'sharath's expression changed from glee to worry as I
struggled to my feet.  Although moments away from
destruction, my sword glowed brighter than it had in fifty
years.  With a yell I charged and buried the sword into the
demon's chest.  A second later, the sword exploded, taking
Nag'sharath with it.
     The quakes ceased.  I collapsed.  The remaining
fragments of my sword melted like ice, and I knew I wouldn't
be far in following them to oblivion.
     What saddened me was that I knew I hadn't done my job.
In the state my sword had been in, it couldn't possibly have
killed Nag'sharath, no matter how brightly it had glowed.
Nag'sharath's essence had most likely been imprisoned in the
rocks surrounding the gate.  They would hold the demon for a
few years, but eventually someone would wander up here and
set it free, and I would no longer be around to oppose it.
     Efera's voice consoled me.  She told me that there was a
way I could continue the fight, a way Guruk had discovered.
Her voice came from a swirling mist.  I thought it to be her
ghost, but the mist formed itself into Jiliora and Efera,
alive and unharmed.
     When Dektar had died, his protection spells had slowly
faded away.  As Jiliora and Efera had fallen, they had left
Nag'sharath's sphere of influence, and Guruk had barely been
able to teleport them out of danger.
     Efera explained how my soul could be kept intact,
flowing from one existence to the next, ready to become aware
again whenever Nag'sharath resurfaced.  She would have to
accept the same fate as I in order for the spell to work.
She and I would be bound, to fight once more as a team
against the enemy.
     Jiliora protested at this point.  Holding back tears,
she demanded to be let into the deal.  If her best friend was
to be bound to a quest for all eternity, she would go with
her.  Efera was touched, and agreed.
     The three of us held hands.  The last sound I heard was
Efera's soft voice reciting the spell.  As we were bound, I
became intimately aware of Efera and Jiliora, of their souls
as well as their bodies.  They were beside me, within me, a
part of me.  I marveled at how beautiful they were.  Then I
died.

     "Wow," said Kei, softly.  The fire had died down to a
flicker, and the three were lit only by the glowing embers
and by Platonia's larger moon.
     "So then you were reincarnated as Red Johnson?" asked
Yuri.
     Tarc laughed.  "Oh, no, that comes *much* later.  Let's
see, my next life was as Dempson Trit, a scholar who never
even held a sword before I came into his life.  When I became
aware, I searched for Efera and Jiliora.  I found them as
Hinna and Flira, two traveling traders.  They became their
old selves almost as soon as they recognized me.
     "By that time, the legend of the Threat of Mount Kalorm
was well known, and the local sorcerers had built a special
prison to hold the demon: a ring of stone arches.  It was
just a matter of getting the demon into the stone."
     "Why didn't you just kill it that time?" Kei asked.
     "I tried.  I couldn't.  I'm nowhere near as powerful as
I was in my first life.  And even then, a Crystal Knight
needed a lot of luck to defeat a Controller by himself."
     Yuri shifted her position and looked into the stars.
"So let me see if I've got this.  We're supposed to be Efera
and Jiliora reincarnated."
     "No," said Tarc.  "Not directly.  Let me try to
remember..." He thought for a moment.  "You are the
reincarnations of Tatiana and Chris, two explorers from the
early days of space exploration, who in turn were
reincarnations of Helena and Jasmine, two rebel leaders on
the Ganymede colony, who were previously Moira and Kyoko, a
singing group in Mega-Tokyo, who had been Gina and Tandy, two
cub reporters for the New York Times, who were--"
     "Okay, okay!" Yuri interupted.  "I get the point!"
     "How many lives have we led?" Kei asked Tarc.
     "I don't know.  I lost count long ago.  Scores.  I
suppose if I tried I could remember them all."
     "I feel old..." said Kei.
     "That's the problem, you see," said Tarc.  "With each
successive reincarnation, Efera and Jiliora grew more
distant.  At first, they remembered everything upon seeing
me.  As the eons passed, however, I found myself needing more
and more to convince them of who they were.  Until at last, I
met you.  I was unable to completely revive your memories,
because you can't really be said to be Efera and Jiliora
anymore.  There's just too much distance between you and
them."
     "But...the visions I had," Kei said.
     "Who do you think you are?" Tarc asked.
     "Kei."
     "Exactly.  You're a girl named Kei, with a few stray
memories of another life that will probably go away when I
do."
     Tarc stood up and walked slowly towards the ocean.  He
stared into the stars, lost in thought.
     Yuri began to feel awkward.  She cleared her throat.
"So, um, so what's the game?"
     "The game?"
     "You know, the `Game Eternal' you keep talking about.
The one you and this demon play."
     Tarc smiled.  "That's just my way of referring to our
conflict.  After the fifth life or so, I began to see a
pattern to our war.  Nag'sharath would awaken, take a human
host, and take over a city or nation.  I would then awaken.
It was my challenge then to find my partners, fight my way
into the city, confront the demon, and force it back into its
new prison.  It was like a game.  After awhile, I began to
enjoy it.  I would judge myself by how efficiently I could
achieve the goals, whether I took a few weeks or a few months
to defeat my enemy.  But it's all gone wrong this time."
     "So I've gathered," said Yuri.  "How?"
     Tarc turned and walked back to where Kei and Yuri were
sitting.  "Do you remember how I told you about when I ran
the friendly demon Orin through with my sword, but didn't
hurt him?"  The girls nodded.  "Well, when I first entered my
room at the tower hotel, Nag'sharath was waiting for me.  We
talked about many things--"
     Kei interrupted him.  "You talked?!  Why didn't you
finish it off right then?"
     Tarc gently waved her off.  "I was wearing a symbol of
truce at the time, the medallion I received at the
spaceport."
     "But still--!"
     "Every game has its rules, Kei, even an eternal game.
As I was about to say, she asked me to produce my sword.  To
my disbelief, she grasped the blade with her bare hand.  The
pain made her wince, but she received nothing more than a
minor burn."
     "Wait a minute," said Yuri.  "Why are you referring to
Nag'sharath as `she'?  You always said `it' before."
     "What makes a demon?" asked Tarc.
     "Huh?" said Kei and Yuri in unison.
     "What causes a creature to be a demon?  What is the
defining nature of the beast?"
     Kei and Yuri looked at each other, then shrugged.
"Demonology isn't one of my fields," Yuri admitted.
     "Is it their mystic nature?  Sorcerers are mystical.
Demons come from another dimension, but then so did elves
originally.  It's said they live off misery, but I've seen no
real evidence of that.  I think that tale was started simply
because misery follows them around so closely.  I do know
that demons feed off lifeforce, but so do we.  We just do it
indirectly.  So what makes a demon a demon?"
     "Well, they're evil, aren't they?" offered Kei.
     "Yes!" exclaimed Tarc.  "They're evil.  But that's not
enough.  Human history is filled with individuals who have
slaughtered thousands, even millions.  These people were
evil, but they weren't demons.  Demons are evil, mystical
beings from another dimension, who draw upon mystical energy
to accomplish their evil deeds."  Tarc sighed.  "Which brings
me to Nora MacPherson III."
     "You mean Nag'sharath?" asked Kei.
     "I mean Nag'sharath, alias Nora MacPherson III, alias
Nora MacPherson Jr., alias Nora MacPherson.  When Nag, as
Nora, arrived at the end of her two-year journey in a
cryogenic escape capsule, she found a world unlike any she'd
ever seen before.  She realized it would be a long time
before anyone found me, so she decided to explore for awhile
before she went about the process of setting up demonic rule
in some little pocket of civilization.
     "She found, to her delight, that she didn't need sorcery
to exercise power.  There was a power far greater than even
that:  money.  She spent time learning about the art of
manipulating this new power, how to use it to take anything
she wanted, to control, to destroy.
     "She started a business making the spaceships like the
one that had inadvertently set her free.  It turns out that
demons make extraordinarily good businesspeople.  They're
cunning and utterly ruthless.  Within ten years, she was a
millionaire.
     "She realized that, if she behaved herself, she could
gain nearly unlimited power, and yet have nothing to fear
from me when I was awakened.  For in this life, she has yet
to cast a spell that directly harms anyone.  So she's not
really a demon, just a controlled human.
      "If I attacked her with my sword, I would commit
murder.  Worse, human blood would contaminate my sword, and
without a sorceress to help me, that would be the end of me."
     Kei sneered.  "Well, I don't have any problems like
that.  I say Yuri and I should go waste her."
     "Kei, Tarc just said she's nothing more a ruthless
businesswoman.  You can't kill her for that!  Hell, we'd have
to blow away half the CEO's in the UG!"
     "I don't buy that, Yuri.  Hey Tarc, what was the demon's
goal?"
     Tarc looked puzzled.  "What do you mean?"
     "Well, your goal was to capture Nag and force it into a
prison.  If you had ever failed, what would have happened?"
     "Nag wanted to re-establish demonic rule.  First, it had
to destroy the existing society.  Once that had happened, it
would mop up the remaining splinters of civilization with its
own armies and take over."
     "How would it destroy the society?" asked Yuri.
     "By starting apocalyptic wars, or causing terrible
natural disasters.  Or both."
     "When I rescued you, you told Nora that you were sure
she was `still playing the game'."
     Tarc paused for a moment in recollection.  "When Nora
and I talked, she told me about how she planned to bring
everything down.  She could barely contain her excitement.
At the same time, though, she was mocking me, because she
knew I wouldn't be able to understand a word of it."
     Yuri's pulse quickened.  Maybe now she'd learn what the
Big Plot was.  "What did Nora say she was going to do?"
     "I didn't recognize the word.  But it's very big and
very powerful, and Nora is going to make it crash into
something."
     Yuri was disappointed.  "How will that destroy something
as big as the United Galactica?"
     "I have no idea," admitted Tarc.  "I'm sorry."
     Kei yawned and stretched.  "Let's sleep on it.  Maybe
it'll make more sense in the morning."  The others agreed
that it was a good idea.

     Kei waited until Yuri had fallen asleep, which didn't
take long.  Then she quietly crept over to where Tarc lay and
cuddled up to him.
     Tarc stirred.  "What?  Kei, no," he whispered.
     "Relax," said Kei, smiling.  "I thought you were asleep.
I'm not gonna try anything.  I thought we could, you know,
keep each other warm."
     "Your smile is warmth enough for me," said Tarc.  "But I
must decline even that.  I'm sorry."
     "But," Kei started, still blushing from Tarc's
compliment.  "But, I thought we, you know..."
     "The last time I allowed myself to fall in love, my
mission almost ended in disaster.  I can't allow--"
     Now Kei's cheeks were red for a different reason.
"Well, excuse me!  So sorry to get in the way of your great
purpose!"
     "Kei, please try to understand."
     "I understand perfectly!  Please, enjoy your purity!"
     Yuri woke up.  "What's going on?"
     "Nothing," grumbled Kei.  She curled up and fell asleep.
     Tarc did the same.  But only after staring sadly at Kei
for several minutes.

     Kei was dreaming.  In her dream she was flying.  She
liked dreams like that, especially when she realized she was
dreaming.  Then she could take over her dream and pretend she
was a superhero.  She was deciding which of the 3WA's
archenemies to fight when she saw Tarc and Nora standing
nearby, having a calm discussion.  They were standing in a
white void, two solid beings in an empty universe.
     <Great,> thought Kei.  <Now I can get that bitch back
for all she's done!>
     "BANZAIIII!" she yelled, and went into a power dive.
She went right through Nora.  "What?!  What kind of crappy
dream is this anyway?  Fall down when I hit you!"
     She made a few more passes, but was unable to affect
Nora in any way.  Kei stopped.
     "So that's the deal," said Nora.  "Give yourself up, and
I'll let your friends go.  In a day from now, there will be
no possible way for them to affect my plans anyhow."
     Tarc was silent.
     "Look," said Nora after a few moments.  "I know you want
to continue the fight.  But you have no comprehension of what
I'm about to do, so you have no hope of stopping me, save by
murdering my host, and I know you won't do that.  Come back
to the cryo-chamber.  There's no place for you here."
     "I can't," said Tarc.
     "So you condemn your friends to play the game with you.
Even though you know how it ends for them."
     Tarc stared at the "ground".
     Nora continued.  "Efera had an powerful mentor to save
her and Jiliora when you let them drop.  None of the others
were so lucky."
     "What are you talking about?!" asked Kei, floating above
them.
     Nora continued to talk, but Kei was distracted by
something that opened above her.  It looked to be a gate of
some sort.  Curious, Kei flew through.

     Her name was Tatiana, and she wore a bulky-drab colored
uniform.  Together with her co-pilot Chris, they searched the
Minakan asteroid belt for veins of minable ores.  A red-
haired scientist they had picked up for transport to a colony
was about to reveal his true identity.

     Kei disengaged herself from the memory.  Once free, she
saw that the other side of the gate was a corridor.  She
headed down it.

     Her name was Helena, and she was about to use whatever
means necessary to extract information from her prisoner,
when she noticed that the prisoner looked familiar.
     Her name was Moira.  Together with her partner Kyoko,
they had just brought the house down with a ninety-minute
set.  The winner of a "Meet the Angels" radio contest was a
red-haired young man, and he told them the Game had begun
again.
     Her name was Gina, and the city editor had assigned her
and Tandy a new photographer for their latest assignment.
They knew him, but couldn't say from where.

     Kei flew faster and faster down the corridor.  The lives
became a blur as she passed them.  They were interesting, but
Kei really only wanted to see one.  She flew and flew until
at last she reached the end of the corridor.

     Her name was Jiliora.  She was not wearing fur and
armor, but a one piece suit with a fox-tail attached to the
belt.  She wielded a sword inlaid with ruby.  She and Efera
had just succeeded in lifting a curse from the town of
Shankara, when the last of the Crystal Knights came riding
into town.

     All seemed as Tarc had relayed it before.  Kei "thought
ahead".

     She was in an ornate bedroom with Tarc Meridian, a tall,
handsome man, with his red hair pulled back into a short
ponytail.  She looked at herself in the mirror.  She was
dressed in a flowing gown, the clothing of the nobility.  "I
guess you're right," she sighed.  "This really doesn't suit
me, even though I grew up wearing the stuff."
     "Then please," said Tarc, "allow me to help you out of
it."
     Tarc began to unbutton her dress from the back.  She
didn't try to stop him.  The dress fell to the ground.  He
placed his hands on her shoulders and kissed the nape of her
neck.  Her pulse began to race.  Her breath came in shallow
gasps.  She turned and stood before him, naked from the waist
up.  She hesitated, then moved toward him.  He embraced her
and kissed her passionately.

     Kei reluctantly pulled away from the memory.  As much as
she was enjoying it, she didn't know how long she had before
she woke up.  She thought ahead.

     She was near the highest point of Mount Kalorm, trying
to stand up, to get away.  But she couldn't; the ground was
shaking too much.  She turned and saw Dektar's animated
corpse laughing with delight.  It gestured again and the
ground behind her split open.  She was barely able to roll
away as the crack widened into a gorge which glowed from the
light of the molten lava flowing within.  She tried again to
get to her feet.
     "What's this?" said Dektar's body.  "Would you like to
get up?"
     She stared at the thing, horrified.  Behind it, Efera
also struggled to stand.  Tarc was too far away to do
anything but scream at them.  He was trying to sing to his
sword, to set loose its blasting power as she had seen him do
before, but the noise from the quake was drowning him out.
     "Please," continued the demon.  "Let me help you."  It
gestured once more and she was lifted into the air.  Efera
was lifted as well, and the two of them collided as they were
thrown into the gorge.
     "Jiliora!!" screamed Tarc.  As they flew by, he reached
for her.  She stretched, and caught his grasp.

     <That's not how he told it,> thought Kei.

     She hung onto Tarc's hand for dear life.  Efera gripped
her leg.  Beneath them, the molten lava flowed and bubbled.
     The demon laughed.  "I seem to have discovered your
weakness, Tarc.  Please, do save them.  It will only take me
a minute to open the gate.  Of course," it added with a grin,
"if you let go of your sword, I'll obliterate you.  Now go do
what's right."  It laughed again and walked to the gate.
     Tarc tried to pull the two of them up with one hand,
grunting and heaving with the effort.  He tried again, to no
effect.  He looked back at Nag'sharath.  It had begun
conjuring, and the gate began to glow with new light.  Tarc
looked back at Kei, a look of despair in his eyes.  He wasn't
trying to pull them up anymore.
     "No," she heard herself say.  "P-Please.  You can't..."
     "He has to," said Efera.
     Tears began pouring out of Tarc's eyes, and he
whimpered.
     "No!" Kei said.  "Gods, no!"
     Tarc let go.

     Kei screamed as she fell.  As was usual when she fell in
a dream, she reflexively began to wake up.  As she did so, a
series of visions flashed before her eyes.
     She was in a burning room, and Tarc had stopped clearing
the debris from the door, lest he miss his chance to stop the
demon.
     She was in a car, underwater.  As water filled the
cabin, Tarc swam away in pursuit of his quarry.
     She and her partner were tied to a bomb.  Tarc had given
up trying to defuse it.
     She was in a room filling with nerve gas.
     She was hanging from the window on the 78th floor of a
skyscraper.
     She was in a shuttle, and the hull had been breached.
     She was about to executed by a firing squad.
     She was falling, burning, drowning, suffocating, dying.
     And in each and every case, there was Tarc, leaving.

     Kei woke up with a yell.
     "What's wrong?" asked Yuri, a little annoyed at Kei's
having woken her up twice in one night.  Tarc also woke, but
said nothing.
     Kei opened her mouth, about to tell Yuri angrily about
all she had seen and heard, about how the glorious Game
Eternal always ended with their tragic but necessary deaths,
about how the gallant and noble Tarc Meridian, last of the
Crystal Knights, sacrificed them each and every time to his
goal of, not killing Nag'sharath, but imprisoning it, so it
could awaken centuries later and kill both of them again.
     She wanted to scream, to rant and rave, to hurt Tarc for
all he'd put them through, for the eternity of being killed
he'd condemned them to.
     But as she started to say it, she couldn't see the
point.  The Game was over for them, as least as it had been
played in the past.  Tarc had said so himself.  To throw a
tantrum over past lives seemed worthless.
     "Nothing," said Kei.  "I just had a bad dream."  She
rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

     The next day found Kei and Yuri on the beach, working on
their tans.
     Kei yawned.  "Don't you feel the slightest bit guilty
about this, laying around in the sun while the MacPherson-
thing plans god-knows-what?"
     "Not really," Yuri replied.  "I mean, it can't be that
big a deal.  Tarc said she can't use magic in any harmful
way, so I can't see what she could do to destroy something as
huge as the UG."
     "He said she was going to crash something into
something."
     "Hmm," thought Yuri.  "Maybe she'll crash an asteroid
into Platonia an collect on the insurance."
     "Can you insure a planet?" asked Kei, sitting up.
     "I don't know."
     Kei lay back again and sighed.  "It a shame our
communications are cut off.  Whatever she has planned,
MacPherson stock is sure to go way up after it happens.  If
we could get a buy order in, we could make a killing on the
stock market."
     Tarc walked up them, rapidly.  "What did you just say?"
     "Huh?" said Kei, confused.  "We were just trying to
guess at what MacPherson has planned."
     Tarc shook his head.  "What was the last word you said?"
     Kei thought for a moment.  "You mean `stock market'?"
     "That's it!" Tarc shouted.  "That's what she's going to
crash!  One of those!"
     Kei and Yuri stared at each other, their eyes wide.
     "What's a `stokmarkett'?" asked Tarc.

END CHAPTER EIGHT