Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

who went on to be lionized by the people for his heroic actions against Shub and the Recreated. He passed through the Madness Maze, it is said, but if he acquired any powers or abilities, he never showed them. It is also said he loved an Investigator."
    "Poor bastard," said Jesamine. "Legend has it they were even more inhuman than the Hadenmen."
    There was a pause, and then an unexpected sixth figure appeared on the screen. There was nothing familiar about this man. Tall and whipcord lean, he dressed in black leathers under a billowing black cape. Jet black hair and coal black eyes, his face was pale and proud and utterly unyielding. His thin mouth had an arrogant curl, and his stance was openly defiant. And in his hand, one of the great lost weapons of the old Empire. The power lance.
    "Since you asked about him, this is Carrion. We know little about him, and what information we have been able to gather is often contradictory. A traitor to the Empire, he fought alongside the alien Ashrai, against Humanity. Deserted his ship and his crew, and killed his own friends and fellow officers, in defense of the planet Unseeli. The planet was scorched, the Ashrai were exterminated, but somehow Carrion survived there for years afterwards, living alone on a dead planet. He was Captain Silence's closest friend and companion. Carrion; a man of great power, possibly derived from the Maze, possibly from the dead Ashrai.
    "He was never a part of the legends, and barely mentioned even in the wildest apocrypha, but records exist that suggest he was a vital part of the history. That he gathered an army of the Ashrai, and flew unprotected through space with them under his own power, to oppose the Recreated in the last great battle. Which may be where the legends of Owen and the dragons came from. It may be that this Carrion knows things that we do not, that you will need to know. It is said that he lives still on the restored world of Unseeli, among the Ashrai, brought to life again by Owen and the Maze. If so, he is older than any other human, living among the alien Ashrai as one of them. Approach him with caution. No human has had contact with him for two hundred years, not least because the only human he ever cared for was his lost friend, Captain Silence. Unseeli is a forbidden world, Quarantined by order of Parliament, after the Ashrai turned down the offer of their own Seat in Parliament; the only alien species ever so honored. No ships land on Unseeli. The few that got past the Quarantine starcruiser were destroyed by the Ashrai."
    The viewscreen disappeared. Strange geometric shapes rose up out of the Dust Plains of Memory, revolving slowly, endlessly unfolding. Lewis looked at Jesamine, and then back at the crumbling gray figure still standing before them.
    "So," he said finally. "The only survivors from the days of legend are ... Owen, possibly, in the future.
    Hazel; missing. Diana Vertue, possibly, as part of the oversoul. And two ex-terrorists, Tobias Moon and Carrion. Not really what I was hoping to hear."
    The gray man shrugged, in a curiously jerky motion that temporarily lost him one of his shoulders as it flowed away down his arm. "Nothing is certain, where the Madness Maze is concerned. Whatever it does to people, it breaks every law of science we understand. All of these people became more than human. Perhaps for such as they . . . death is not the end. You must search out the history, the truth. Go to Mistworld, to Lachrymae Christi, to Unseeli. You are a Deathstalker; perhaps people will talk to you who would not talk to anyone else. And in searching out legends, it may be that you will become a legend yourself. Certainly only beings of power, like those in the old legends, can hope to protect us all from the Terror. So go now, Deathstalker ... and do what you have to do." The figure turned and walked away
    across the sighing surface of the Dust Plains of Memory. The Towers crumbled and fell, and were absorbed back into the gray sea along with all the other shapes, until all that remained of the last great receptacle of human history was a gently twitching surface, murmuring querulously to itself in overlapping voices.
    Emma Steel sat alone in her approved Paragon's apartment, holding an ice pack to her jaw. Her rank entitled her to use regen tech for even minor damage, but she felt too embarrassed to apply.
    Embarrassed, and angry with herself. It had been a long time since anybody had been able to catch her