Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

green and peaceful forest bathed in the autumn sunlight. "This isn't real. None of this is real. Virimonde is light-years from here. But it looks just the way I remember."
    "Of course it does," said Frost. "Marlowe took the images from your mind, and had his nanos recreate them for you. Same way he produced me."
    Silence reached out with his mind, trying to reestablish the old mental link he and Frost had once shared, but it was like looking into a mirror, with only his own face looking back at him.
    "Sorry," said Frost. "But I'm not real either. Just a memory, given shape and form by nanotech and a madman's power. I'm just real enough not to want to be used as a weapon against you. Come on, Captain; you really only needed to say goodbye properly, and we've done that. It's time to let me go, and get back to dealing with Marlowe. He may think he's the Son of God, but he's actually quite limited in what he can do."
    "There was… so much I wanted to say to you," said Silence.
    "Then you should have said it while I was still alive," said Frost. "I probably
    knew it all anyway. Goodbye, John."
    She walked away into the forest, and Silence stood and watched her go, knowing he'd never see her again. When she'd passed completely out of sight, he took a deep breath and let it go, and then glared at the trees around him.
    "I don't believe in you," he said firmly. "None of this is real. I deny you.
    Damn you, Marlowe, stop this. Damn your soul to hell, stop this right now."
    Something moved within him, as his own power stirred reluctantly from its rest, uncoiling and reaching out in strange directions. And one by one, the trees began to crumble and fall apart, into dust and less than dust.

    Micah Barron reined in his horse, and dismounted. A low wind was blowing, sending the red sands dancing this way and that. His father dismounted too, and the two young men stood facing each other for a long moment. They looked more like brothers than father and son.
    "I think we've gone as far as we're going," said Micah. "We've said all we needed to say."
    "Yes," said Ricard. "Time to say goodbye. Any last thing I can do for you, son?"
    "Yes," said Micah. "Hug me, as a father hugs his son, because I don't remember that at all."
    Ricard looked at him expressionlessly. "You know what you're asking, Micah? What you'll have to do?"
    "Oh yes. I'll have to drop my force shield, and let you in. But that's what I want, Father. What I've always wanted. So we'll never be apart again."
    He keyed the right combination into the control pad at his waist, and the
    shimmering force field around him snapped out in a moment. Ricard stepped forward and took his son in his arms. They held each other, and the nanos went to work. The two forms merged, and Micah Barren finally became what he most wanted. His father.

    Silence walked out of the disappearing forest of Virimonde, and suddenly found himself walking among the metallic trees of Unseeli. He didn't need to ask whose dream he was walking through now. He paused a moment to look at the Ashrai flying overhead, and tried to feel guilty, but it was all so long ago. Still; it had been a long time since he'd seen them in flight. They were… marvelous.
    He found Carrion easily enough. Marlowe, or Jesus, or whatever the hell he was now, hadn't bothered to recreate much of the metallic forest. Silence walked quickly through it, and there he was, sitting peacefully in full lotus, with his back against the smooth trunk of a golden tree, his eyes closed. Silence had never seen him look so happy. Even if he was still wearing his traitor's black.
    "Sean," he said sternly. "Time to wake up. Time to go."
    "Go away, John," said Carrion, without opening his eyes. "You have no place here. You don't belong here. I have come home, and everything's all right again."
    "Nothing's right! This isn't real; it's just a nanotech recreation."
    "Do you think I don't know that?" Carrion's voice remained calm, but he still refused to open his eyes, as though denying Silence's presence. "I know this isn't real, and I don't care. I have found peace, and heart's content, that I never thought to know again. I will stay here."
    "Then you'll die."
    "Yes, John. That's what I want, really. What I've always wanted. Don't you know
    that?"
    Silence knelt down beside him. "I need you, Sean."
    "You always need someone. You used that argument to drag me away from peace last time. Made me live again, when all I wanted was to die. Leave me