Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

the wall.
    Owen cried out in pain and shock, and there was blood in his mouth. He cried out again as the knives were pulled back out of him, and then the knives were plunging into him again and again, the dark figures jostling each other in their eagerness to get at him. The strength went out of Owen's legs, and he slid down the wall, leaving a thick bloody trail behind him. The knives jerked in and out.
    Owen sat down suddenly, in the dirty, bloody snow, his back still pressed against the wall. His chin fell forward onto his chest. Some of them were still stabbing him. He couldn't feel it anymore, though his body shuddered under the impact. He watched almost disinterestedly as his arm slowly lowered, still holding his sword. His hand hit the snowy ground, bounced once, and then lay still. The numb fingers slowly opened, releasing the sword.
    A fur-clad figure darted forward to grab it. Owen thought he saw a familiar face. His eyelids were slowly closing. He felt cold. He recognized the young girl's face before him. It was the same girl he'd crippled and killed. In a past that was her future. He smiled at her, and thought she smiled at him.
    Time. Full circle. And redemption, of a kind.
    Hazel?
    After he was dead, they stole his boots.

    Orbiting above the Wolfling World, the battered remains of what had once been two fine ships: the Dauntless and the Sunstrider. Hazel on her bridge, Silence and Carrion on theirs, talking a little bemusedly via their viewscreens. Silence had just received a message from a relieved but startled Golgotha; the entire Recreated fleet had vanished, between one moment and the next, and showed no signs of reappearing.
    "Did we beat them?" said Hazel. "I mean; it sure didn't feel like we were beating them."
    "Maybe they just got tired of kicking us around," said Silence. "Stranger things have happened."
    "That's for sure," said Carrion.
    It is over, said a voice, thundering suddenly in their heads. Owen Deathstalker has saved you all. He kept the Recreated occupied, till all could be put right again. And now it will be.
    And everyone on the Dauntless and the Sunstrider cried out in wonder as the baby in the crystal concentrated his thoughts, and relit the thousand suns in the Darkvoid. Their lights blazed again, for the first time in over nine hundred years, and the Darkvoid was dark no longer. The baby concentrated, and
    revitalized the dead planets around those suns, and made them warm and intact and life-bearing again, just as they had been before. And then he reached out to the Recreated, still hanging lost and helpless in Time, and returned them to their old bodies, back on their own worlds, where they belonged. They would remember nothing of what they had been, and done. None of it had really been their fault.
    Humanity's long nightmare was finally over.
    The baby reached out further, and Unseeli blossomed again, the metallic forests reaching once again from pole to pole. And then he sent the reborn Ashrai home again, to tend their forests as they always had. Silence and Carrion watched all this, and both of them had tears in their eyes.
    And having done all that, the baby decided that enough was enough, and any more would be interfering. He had put right all the things that he had unwittingly destroyed or created, all those years ago, and that would do, for now. He sighed once, put his thumb back in his mouth, and went back to sleep again. To dream, and learn from the Maze, and grow slowly in peace. While he waited for Humanity to catch up with him.
    He was looking forward to that.
    On board the Dauntless, Silence and Carrion looked at each other in amazement.
    On the Sunstrider, Hazel was slowly shaking her head.
    "What about Owen?" she said. "Where's Owen?"
    I'm sorry, said the voice. Owen is dead. I've left a record of all we said in your computers, and in Silence's. It explains everything. Be proud of Owen. He made all this possible. But remember my warning. Humanity must prepare. The Terror are coming.
    "He died alone," said Hazel. "I wasn't with him."
    He died well, a warrior to the end.
    "The last Deathstalker," Silence said.
    No. That would be the baby. Or perhaps he's a new beginning. All will become clear, in Time.
    Hazel let out a howl of grief and rage that almost tore her throat apart. She powered up the Sunstrider's engines, and sped away from the Wolfling World, and all that had happened there.
    "Owen; you lied to me. You promised me we'd always be together. Forever and