Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

“You just need to practice. That’s how everyone learns. And yes, tears are appropriate here. If I had any left, I’d shed them. But I’ve seen so many people die, fought in so many desperate last-ditch battles, it’s hard for me to find room for such emotions. I have to be strong, unmoved, because everyone else needs me to be strong for them. I’d love to have the luxury of being weak again, Moon. To have someone else be strong, be the hero, so I could lean on them. It’s hard work being a living legend.”
    “Yes,” said Moon. “I remember you being a hero. You risked your life to open the Tomb of the Hadenmen after I failed. After I deserted you, leaving you and the others to fight the Empire while I went off on my own, convinced it was my destiny to reawaken my people. I was wrong. I won’t let you down again, Owen. I’ll never desert you again.”
    “Of course you won’t,” said Owen. “I never thought otherwise.” “There are more new things in me, apart from my emotions,” said Moon. “I recently attempted to run a diagnostic on my tech implants, the internal mechanisms that made me an augmented man. To my surprise, I found most of them to be missing. My body has absorbed them. But I am as strong and fast as I ever was, my senses as clear, my thoughts as sharp. It’s as though I don’t need the tech to be more than human anymore.”
    “It’s the Maze,” said Owen, nodding. “When you passed through with the rest of us, it put its mark on you too.”
    “I am neither man nor Hadenman anymore,” said Moon, frowning. “I’m becoming something else.
    Something different. My eyes still glow and my voice still buzzes, but perhaps only because I expect them to. You’re further down the road than me, Owen. What am I becoming?”
    “I don’t know,” said Owen. “Perhaps something we have no name or even concept for. Yet.”
    “I feel something when I consider this, Owen. I think… I’m scared.” “We all are. The unknown is always scary. But no doubt the caterpillar fears becoming a butterfly, even as its instincts compel it to construct its own cocoon. We have no control over what’s happening to us, so… enjoy the ride. And remember you’re among friends.”
    “I have observed the lepers. If they can face their changes with such courage, so can I.” He looked sideways at Owen. “I think… something new is developing in me. I can… sense things. Things not apparent to anyone else. It’s not telepathy. More like empathy perhaps. Either way, believe me when I say we’re not alone here. There’s something else out in the jungle. Something hidden and very powerful.”
    “The Hadenman army?”
    “No. I’d know my own people. This is alive, but it’s like nothing else I’ve ever encountered. It thinks slow thoughts, but it’s growing angry. And it knows where we are.”
    “Does it have a name? An identity?”
    “Oh, yes,” said Tobias Moon. “It’s the Red Brain.”
    Hazel d’Ark had joined up with her two alternate selves, trading gossip over their respective Owens, when a single leper woman approached them, limping tiredly into their path. The three women stopped abruptly rather than run her over, and the leper woman dropped to her knees before Hazel. “Forgive my impertinence, blessed one, but you are Hazel d’Ark, the liberator of Golgotha?”
    “Well, yes,” said Hazel. “Though I didn’t exactly do it alone. Was there something you wanted?”
    The leper pushed back her cowl, revealing a face half eaten away by rot. Patches of bare skull showed through the sparse remaining hair, and her teeth showed clearly where her left cheek should have been.
    Up close, the smell was appalling, though Hazel and the others tried hard not to show it. The leper woman produced one gray hand from under her cloak. It was skeletally thin, and only had two fingers on it. The leper woman held it out in supplication to Hazel.
    “You have been touched by God, lady. You have worked miracles. I have seen it on the holo. So work one more miracle, for me, I beg you. Heal me.” Hazel fell back a step, shocked. “I… I can’t. I don’t know how.” “You have healed your own terrible wounds. You are blessed by God. Only lay your hand on me, and I too shall be healed, I know it.” Hazel looked to Bonnie and Midnight for help, but they were stunned too. Hazel looked back at the leper woman before her, and didn’t have a damned clue what to say. So in the end she reached out