The End of All Things: The SenZar Evolution, #3

By Todd King

Dave Newton and Todd King present: 
THE SENZAR EVOLUTION - BOOK THREE: THE END OF ALL THINGS BY TODD KING  
In this third book of The SenZar Evolution, we witness the Nemeses Wars, as the Seven Stars, now fully armed, face off against their Shadar Nemeses, who have also been reborn as new immortals to counter the cosmic balance of the newly reborn Anshadar. In league with the Triad, three of Lord Valthrustra's most powerful minions, the Shadar battle the Seven Stars, who have, in place of the missing Sigil Talisman, the mysterious being called Fantus the Usurper to guide them. The Seven Stars must defeat their powerful foes in order to discover the location of Lord Valthrustra before he can merge with the Dragon itself and shape reality to his own dark will. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anshadar, LLC
• Release date: Apr 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985200348

Book preview

Graphic Design: Dave Newton

Cover Art: Faith Newton

Edited By: Dave Newton, Todd King, & The Brüne

SenZar Created By: Todd King, The Brüne & Joseph Giacone

Original Copyrights:

The Seven Stars © 1994 by Todd King. Book I of The Saga of the Seven Stars.

SenZar © 1994, 1996 by Nova Eth Publishing, Inc.

The Saga of the Seven Stars © 1998 by Nova Eth Publishing, Inc. First Printing. All rights reserved.

VoidSpawn © 1998 by Nova Eth Publishing, Inc. First Printing. All rights reserved.

The End of All Things – Book III of the SenZar Evolution ©, The Seven Stars ©, SenZar ©, The Saga of the Seven Stars ©, and VoidSpawn © are copyrights of Anshadar LLC. Visit www.anshadar.com for more information.

PREFACE 

Completing its 1990s Terran Timeline, The End of All Things – Book III of The SenZar Evolution is now up, the third novel in the series.  

Once more, if you’re of the discerning sort, you’ll pick up on some themes, characters, and scenarios that we created in SenZar which have made it into the public domain, pop culture, and Zeitgeist since the early 1990s. We did not edit out, augment, or bring up-to-date the original content, and you might be shocked to see what we have shaped on Terra. In the preface of the SenZar sourcebook, we predicted that we were going to shape the face of gaming, and we certainly did. Both on the tabletop, and in the virtual world.   

In this third book of The SenZar Evolution, we witness the Nemeses Wars, as the Seven Stars, now fully armed, face off against their Shadar Nemeses, who have also been reborn as new immortals to counter the cosmic balance of the newly reborn Anshadar. In league with the Triad, three of Lord Valthrustra’s most powerful minions, the Shadar battle the Seven Stars, who have, in place of the missing Sigil Talisman, the mysterious being called Fantus the Usurper to guide them. The Seven Stars must defeat their powerful foes in order to discover the location of Lord Valthrustra before he can merge with the Dragon itself and shape reality to his own dark will.   

Enjoy the trip, my fellow travelers. It’s a doozy.

INTRODUCTION

WHO ARE THE SEVEN STARS?

Mad Sam Sprunge, Luckster , Master Rogue, and living creation of Maelstromm the Mad. Tal'N Hawkwind, Master of Shy'R, and Prince of Petra. Rhiannazaar, the four-armed Azaar warrior, bearer of Tark. Guthal Dirge, proud Khazak and forsaken heir to the throne of the Kaza-Ka. Silverdancer, daughter of the Thin Man, Mistress of Assassins, wielder of the Soulsword. Sigil Talisman, Archimage of Krystallmyst and loyal servant of the Dragon. Tatternorn VoidSpawn, Spellsinger and living embodiment of the Pact of the Impossible Blade, Skurge.

The greatest champions of SenZar who do what they do best: Kill in the name of the Cause. In final battle with Lord Valthrustra on SenZar, they die while in the midst of The Dragon’s Breath, only to have their screaming souls blasted through the Dream Barrier to be reborn on Terra at behest of the Dragon. In this new world they must integrate their new Terran souls with their SenZar souls in order to become realized as Anshadar, and thus to seek out and destroy Lord Valthrustra, who has designs of conquering the magick-blind world of Terra and its sleeping Dragon in order to achieve his ultimate destiny of becoming All That All Which Is, and All That All Which Binds.

Too bad the Stars aren't exactly the heroes that the legends of SenZar described. They've grown not only in power, but also in hatred as well. The Dragon's Game will never be the same again.

Death can do that to a soul.

All That All Which Is   

All That All Which Binds

The Beginning of All Things I Bind

Breath of Dragon     

Charm of Death and Life

Thy Song of Making

All That All Which Is   

All That All Which Binds

The End of All Things I Unbind

Nāmō the Creator —The Dragon’s Breath

CHAPTER 1: Darkness, Gathering

Lord Valthrustra traced a wicked black fingernail along the blasphemous writhing soul inscriptions on the Runic Wall before him. So, my chosen, he hissed, the Great Wheel goes round at last.

Yes, Dark One, the Great Wheel goes ‘round at last, Yorgl Darknoth, the eldest of the three Rotathian brothers known as the Triad, agreed confidently as he spoke for his silent brothers.

The Dark One made no sign of acknowledgment. Yorgl was silently thankful that the towering Shadar Overlord did not deem to turn around from his inspection of the Runic Wall to do so. To be forced to meet those thrice-damned eyes was something that no sane entity relished.

All goes as you have foreseen, Yorgl continued, steeling himself. Your great craft will soon reach fruition, my Dark Lord.

Even as he spoke, Yorgl Darknoth was careful beyond measure to keep his voice even and free of the fear that gnawed upon him like some rabid dog gnawing upon a splintered bone. The recent battle that he and his brothers had fought with—The Stranger? Was that not his blasted name?—had set his nerves to the very edge of sanity. Not even their earlier clash with the hated Sigil Talisman had affected him so deeply. Or so... strangely.

Yorgl’s more pressing concern, though, was that neither he nor his two brothers could remember much of their more recent battle with the strange faceless entity known only as the Stranger. Strange, he considered most ironically, that the very name itself should be so hard to remember; so distant, though the battle was not long in passing. Yorgl, Dred Veil Sorcerer that he was, instinctively knew that something had wiped both his and his brother's memories of that final battle clean; something heinously powerful, leaving only the general impression that they had somehow managed a last-second, soul-consuming victory over the... strange... being. He also knew, though, that such mind-warping things often happened in all-out sorcerous combat. One did not have to be of the rank of Dred Veil to realize such a thing, he reminded himself with a mental sneer.

Their shared amnesia, Yorgl prayed, was no doubt a result of the extremity of the cruel, mind-warping temporal magicks which they had been forced to employ in order to meet—The Stranger, was it not?—on what they truly believed were equal terms. And a mind-fogging temporal amnesia had been the price of their last second... victory?

Yorgl’s dark eyes clouded for a dangerously long second. Fortunately, the Dark One’s damning gaze was still locked upon the unfathomable mysteries of the Runic Wall as he looked into places that only he could see.

Fortunately.

Yorgl could have no doubt whatsoever about it: It had been a victory! For in this hellish, damned place of lost souls that the Dark One called his sanctum, doubt led to failure. And failure led directly to death.

But now, even as he finally came to terms with the nagging doubts that had been plaguing him, Yorgl’s report to the Dark One threatened to hurl him once again over that selfsame harrowing edge of sanity. Before him towered a living god, the head of the pantheon of Shadar Lords that he and his brothers had sacrificed souls to long ago on SenZar. And now he stood in His presence. His power. His glory. A nightmare come true.

It had been the Dark One’s twisted, far-reaching plan that had enabled them to so effectively rout Sigil Talisman, casting his shattered soul into the most fitting and most final resting place for one of his Dragon-serving kind. Only the fantastic mind of the Dark One could have possibly crafted the grand web of deceit that had allowed them to gain their revenge upon Sigil Talisman—a most fitting vengeance, Yorgl tittered inside, for what the thrice-damned Archimage had done to us on SenZar when we had been at the apex of our reign of terror. Sigil, their most hated foe, who had once been as wily as a fox in his methods of dispensing the so-called justice of the Dragon, was now no more than the victim of the Dark Wolf and his cosmos-spanning grand web of deceit. Sigil’s inescapable and inevitable demise reminded Yorgl of a trite though potent Zengaran saying: You can’t outfox the wolf. And truly was the Dark One the greatest of Dark Wolves.

The Dark Gathering is complete at long last, Yorgl resumed, his reverie broken. Involuntarily, he dabbed a rivulet of sweat from his dusky brow with the sleeve of his bilious midnight black robe. Despite the interference of the remnants of the Seven Stars and their thrice-accursed new ally... he desperately sought that damnable elusive name, ...the Stranger, who now basks in the glory of the Void along with Sigil Talisman himself.

Yorgl found himself pausing for another dangerously long second as his own mind called him a liar. He knew that something was not right. But there was nothing that he could say or do to indicate otherwise, except pause and wipe his hawkish forehead again with the sleeve of his robe.

The human host of the Fallen One was destroyed by his own companions, he continued hastily, exactly as you have foreseen, Dark One. His VoidSpawn transfiguration will proceed as you have foretold, and the Fallen One will arise from the ashes of his corpse. The Stars have retrieved their pathetic toys again, as you have foreseen, Dark One. But now, with no true spellcaster to lead them, they are powerless against us. Although they have somehow managed to shield themselves from our further passive scrying—no doubt the work of Maelstromm the Mad’s crafty creation, Mad Sam Sprunge—the five remaining fools are of little consequence to us now. Should you wish, Dark One, my brothers and I can concentrate our scrying efforts upon the remaining Stars, instead of wasting our time scrying those other nameless fools, he wished he could say. With the aid of the Tetrahedron's supreme scrying abilities, we could pinpoint them despite their efforts to remain hidden, and then march right in and crucify them all. It will be child's play, Dark One, Yorgl wheedled, eager for fresh souls. Child's play. Especially now that your eternal foe, Sigil Talisman, is—

Silence.

Yorgl Darknoth’s words died in his throat. As much as it galled him to act like some servile domestic while in the presence of the Dark One, he was no fool. To defy even the merest whit of Lord Valthrustra's whims was to court damnation itself. Even though the combined magickal powers and vile, genocidal reputations of Yorgl and his two brothers were more than enough to garner them an infamous chapter even in SenZar's sordid Seventh Age histories, Yorgl knew in what remained of his withered heart that, when compared to the aeons-old true power of Lord Valthrustra, he and his two brothers were nothing more than helpless insects before an angry, unfathomably powerful god. 

With a stiff, ingratiating bow, Yorgl returned to his place at the foot of the Runic Wall to stand beside his two brothers. He was silent, calculatingly cautious, so as not to arouse even an iota of ire from his master. Distantly, he realized that he had just come close to doing such a thing with his wheedling and cajoling. Oh, but the souls! he howled inside. The souls of that Starin bastard's very own chosen! There, so ripe for the plucking, and it is our task to... to monitor those other fools!

Despite his heated soul-stealing fervor, Yorgl was coolly aware that he was actually shaking beneath his robes; that only through force of his supreme Dred Veil willpower were his knobby knees not clacking together like the sacred dung beetle’s mandibles. Pausing a dangerous moment to clear the cobwebs from his fevered brain, Yorgl eventually managed to steel his mind to the point that his mania for stealing souls actually subsided. Then, satisfied, Yorgl turned to face his two brothers. As cowed by the nameless dread as he himself was, they averted their eyes from him. Then, they resumed their studious, unceasing scrying vigil upon the six who had been chosen to carry out the will of the Dark One.

Things were indeed going according to plan, Yorgl noted with a deep sigh of relief as he rejoined his brothers at the Tetrahedron. Once again, he was careful to keep his surface thoughts on the tedious, consuming efforts of his scrying tasks. Any stray thoughts, even from a mind as well-trained as his in the thought-masking ways of the Dred Veil, would be enough to ensure his immediate doom. Either from the Tetrahedron itself, or from the Dark One who had created the immensely powerful, plane-piercing scrying device. So, after cursing himself for being a one hundred fifty year old novice, Yorgl merged his full measure of thought with the glorious influx of raw power from the Tetrahedron, and once more renewed his near-omniscient contact with the two chosen ones over whom he had charge.

The contact was like the warm penetration of a young lover to Yorgl. It was a dangerous thing; whispering and seductive—full of lies wrapped within half-truths. As the Tetrahedron whispered to him, Yorgl was forced to recall a string of memories that, despite their forced nature, somehow still pleased him. He was once again in hot, barren Rotath, its innumerable black pyramids stabbing toward the baleful Sun God, Ra, seeking his heart for the glory of the Dark One. In a state of rapture, Yorgl vividly recalled the numerous plump dancers that he had sacrificed to Chthon in the opulent tower that he had shared with his two brothers in the court of Rom Thutses, his beloved former lord of over a century before. He once again tasted the bitter saltiness of the blood sacrifice, and the wild carnal abandon of the necrophiliac Carnival of Corpses that followed on its heels. And the memories of those former days of glory filled Yorgl with the promise of an even greater ecstasy to come.

Yet Yorgl did not pursue that particularly lethal course of reminiscence, as much as he longed to recall those long ago and far away times. To give in to something as impotent as emotion would be his undoing. The Tetrahedron would seal his fate in a heartbeat if he strayed too far or too wide from the appointed task. But Yorgl’s mind was strong even for one of the Dred Veil. He was of the Triad. The Tetrahedron’s damnable temptations could hold little sway over the mind of one of the Triad so long as his mind was sharp like the desert hawk’s talons; so long as his thoughts were filled with the venom of the quick-striking asp.

Yorgl concentrated upon these thoughts for a moment to clear his head of the Tetrahedron’s seductive, whispering influence. It would not bode well if he faltered and gave in to his fleshy concerns while in contact with his two charges. Such a moment of weakness would be noted and acted upon even more sharply and swiftly than either the desert hawk or the quick-striking asp could ever hope to act.

Another warm drip of sweat pooled at the terminus of Yorgl’s long hawkish nose, where it fell to a steaming, sizzling end on the iridescent face of the Tetrahedron. For an awkwardly long moment it obscured the scrying split-screen images of Yorgl’s two charges.

The Black Bard, the more manageable of his two charges, was not his concern. His corrupt spellsinging soul would need very little in the way of goading for him to accomplish his goals, although even Yorgl’s Dred Veil mind could perceive little use for him now that the Spellsinger was no more.

Yorgl’s concern rested in the rebellious Enchantress’ soul of Tyche Soulthief, who now bore the unfortunate onus of being reborn here on this pathetic little magick-starved world as a late twentieth century woman. And a promiscuous little free-minded whore at that.  

He simply couldn’t understand it. Why had the Dark One chosen such a tempting slut as this strangely named Kerry Boudreaux to house the infusion of the soul of the legendary Fifth Age Queen of Pain, Tyche Soulthief? Yorgl could not discern the motive, though he desperately wished that he could. For with knowledge comes power! he needlessly reminded himself. Perhaps even power to rival that of—

The subtle psychic prod that Yorgl received from his youngest brother, Yrrkl, jolted him from his treacherous thoughts.

Brother! Keep your thoughts focused! For our souls, if not for your own!

Yorgl’s long-nailed brown fingers twitched once in rage, causing a dull scrabbling sound as they brushed the iridescent, crystalline face of the Tetrahedron. Then they were still, as if he had never been reprimanded by his youngest brother.

Wisely, Yorgl heeded his brother’s advice and harnessed his burning rage; smelting it into something black and poisonous that he hoped the Dark One would humor. Then he stabbed it into the very psychic heart of the pink haired temptress, crucifying the last remnants of her formidable human host’s resistance. Yorgl immediately seized the opportunity like the black spider that he was, willing her to stop her Terran sniveling; to honor the name and the soul of Tyche Soulthief; to act like the newborn Shadar that she was now; and, finally, to seek out her waiting Shadar companion and together destroy their Anshadar adversaries.

As Yorgl’s spike of hatred pierced the fragile defenses of the Earthborn soul host, his keen Dred Veil perception at last comprehended the hateful irony of the Dark One’s seemingly random choice of this late twentieth century whore.

Praise the Dark One, Yorgl whispered as comprehension at last dawned upon him. After one hundred fifty years he had at long last tasted the true measure of icy hatred that only the greatest of the Shadar Lords could ever conceive. At last, after so many decades of glorious genocide, Yorgl had finally found the one he could truly call Master.

With a barely contained glee, Yorgl sent a tendril of thought to his two brothers to share his discovery. Both Dorath and Yrrkl Darknoth suspended for a moment the mental domination that they held over each of their two charges. Both of them were rapt as they shared with Yorgl the threads of ironic evil that they, too, had discovered in the Dark One’s great web of deceit. The three Dred Veil Sorcerers were so consumed with shared black humor that the floor beneath their sandaled feet faintly seared with anticipation of the hunt to come.

Now, the Triad was again complete, as they had been in the glorious days of Rom Thutses, the Flesh Eater. Now, with the fruition of the Dark One’s great scheme, even that meddling Starin bastard who had tricked them into ignominious defeat a half-century ago and had imprisoned their souls within his blasphemous Krystallkeep would get his. If he ever managed to return from the Void, that is. Now that the Great Wheel had indeed gone round, this time with the hands of the Dark One himself guiding it.

Over the steady hum of the Runic Wall, the Triad hissed as one:

For His glory we all shall die! 

CHAPTER 2: Is There Anyone Who Smiles Without A Mask

Some afterlife this was turning out to be.

I really had no idea where I was, for one thing. There were no telltale signs of the typical afterlife functions or forms. No flitting, smiling harp-playing angels or prancing, cavorting, trident-waving fiends to torment me, either. So that pretty much ruled out either one of the two diametrically opposite eternal vacation spots. My dilemma: No St. Pete to welcome me, no Cerberus to steal my Poochie Yum Yums. 

And with both heaven and hell ruled out, according to my Southern Catholic upbringing, that left only Limbo for my final destination. And that was one dance that I’d always hated.

One thing kept nagging me, though, as I considered another cycle in that sad, still grey place of shadows: If this were really Limbo, then how the hell could I still feel pain?

It wasn’t horrible pain, mind you. Just the kind of scorching, searing pain that’s usually associated with being placed in a pizza oven and set on Atomic Melt. Maybe that was why I kept smelling pepperoni and getting hungry. Sick, I know, to have auto-cannibalistic cravings. But I did smell pepperoni, and I was really hungry.

With my senses returning somewhat, not to mention my warped sense of humor, I felt it my duty to rise, go forth, and consume mass quantities like the Conehead that I truly was. This did not turn out to be quite the case, though, starting from the part about rise.

Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to lift myself to a sitting position. And it was only now, after having failed to lift myself up, that I realized that I had been resting on something soft and comfy. Mr. Logic deduced that there was something—probably gravity, or something sucky like that—to hold me in place. Or some hefty restraints. Either way, that seemed to absolutely rule out Destination Number Three, as Limbo had neither gravity nor restraints to speak of. Or comfy beds.

Yep. I could feel the pillows under my head now that I was thinking about it. Big, cushy feather ones, too, from the feel of them. Too bad it was too dark for me to get a good look at my surroundings, because they had to look interesting. Something around here had to be interesting, because, for some strange reason or another, music was teasing my Bardic Ear—music like the soft, distant strains of dobro-heavy, tear-in-my-beer country music. Maybe I had gone to Limbo after all.

Since I couldn’t do much other than listen, I did. It was a definite change of pace for this country-raised, city-honed Bard who had lately become more of a headbanger than his old momma could have ever imagined. Literally a headbanger, that is, if my current condition were taken into account. The music was soft, soothing, calm—so long as I didn’t try to listen to the droning words, that is. No, that sort of thing would probably remind me too much of my hometown, and that was something I did not need to think about right now. Because at this point in time, I missed the living hell out of it, stinky mill and all.

Don’t go gettin’ maudlin now, I reminded myself. Keep focused. Keep focused. Or lose it all right now, boyo.

Right. As if I hadn’t already.

As it was, even though I focused my full maudlin attention, I still could not pick out any of the sure to be mournful words, which was probably a good thing. But I caught most of the monotonous beat anyway and filed it away for future musical reference. It was only the typical sort of four-four pablum, but the diversion that analyzing the music gave me at least took my mind off of my growling stomach. And this too was a good thing. It also took my mind off of that constant, creeping, burning sensation that ruled the upper half of my body. And this was an even better thing. Too bad Samantha wasn’t here. Then I might have explained what the best thing was.

As my musician’s mania went to work on the monotonous music, the pain that racked my body seemed to grow more distant, almost as if it had become so bored with my ignoring it that it had decided to take a short break. Now I felt somewhat cool, almost calm, though still somewhat disconnected and numb from head to toe.

The sensation reminded me of an occasion from my undergrad years when I had volunteered for an experiment and had spent a few hours in an isolation tank much like the one from Altered States. I had liked the weightless, drifting feeling so much that the experimenters had literally had to drag me out of the damned thing. In fact, I had loved it so much that I had made Sammy break us into the lab after hours so that we could run our own little mind-warping experiments in the thing. We were both lucky that this was before the little blue sparks had started flying forth from my eyes, or we both probably would have gone bonkers. Not that we weren’t already at the time, mind you. Ol’ Poppa Luther had seen to that, but that’s another story.     

I was reliving those fractured, purple-hazy memories when the lights suddenly came back on. Startled by the new wave of searing pain that this evoked and in a definite country music mood, I responded as any normal small town born Billy Bob would: I came up swinging.

The blurry-looking, copper-faced angelic being who effortlessly caught my arms in his metallic hands smiled warmly and said, quite lovingly:

Chill out, Billy Bob! I’m tryin’ to help you!

Helpless as a newborn in the coppery angelic being’s grasp, I did the only thing that I could think of doing at the time: I foamed at the mouth and curled my middle fingers into what I took to be a passable version of the Double Finger. I think he smiled at this, but for some strange reason his face was still a coppery blur to me despite the flood of white light that plagued my eyes.

Just get some rest, man, he drawled, releasing his tenacious grip. My arms fell heavily back to my sides. I was powerless to move them. But I wasn’t so powerless that I couldn’t let him know just how I felt. Hell, even Billy Bobs get hungry once in a while.

UUUHHHDDD! I complained loudly, trying to say food.  

Instantly, I was embarrassed by my lack of useful sentence construction. Maybe I really was in Billy Bob mode. But, no. Hell, what I had just gurgled out was more Shadar than human in form, and that chilled me to the core, burning sensation or not.

No, you’re not Shadar, Tat, the angel guy smiled, his hands suddenly dancing in double-figure-eights as he wove some strange charm about me. And you can’t have any solid food yet. You’d only wind up gumming it to death, anyway. But you are going to get some more replenishing beauty sleep. And lots of it, too. Trust me. You need it.

With that, my eyelids began to flutter, and, of course, the hateful white light went away along with the pain. I tried to resist, but, try as I might, I was gone.

CHAPTER 3: Red, Red, REDRUM

Time.

How much, I had no way of knowing.

And things just seemed to keep getting worse.

My curiously blurry benefactor and I repeated our strange ceremony numerous times, each time with the same stimulus-response result. Same silly country music, same thoughts, same actions, same words, same responses. Boring. Predictable. Scary, too. It almost seemed as if I had suddenly been thrust into reliving the same series of events over and over again, like some helpless and extremely hungry temporal prisoner, doomed to some horrifically mind-numbing Nashville Limbo of the Lost. Or doomed to perpetually relive the events of some really bad episode of The Twilight Zone. If there were any bad episodes, that is.

Clearly, a pattern was beginning to develop.

So, the twentieth time or so that this bizarre ritual began, I got the bright idea to throw a wrench into things and attack this blurry bedside angel with only one hand so that I could save the other hand for something devious. Whether or not it had the desired effect of freeing me from the obvious temporal charm, I really did not care. I only wanted some small relief from the tedious boredom of sitting here on my ass like some Anshadar invalid. And maybe a slice of pepperoni pizza, too, so long as I was making a wish list.  

This time, when I came out the grey limbo of isolation tank-induced euphoria, I responded by swinging only one hand at the wavering image of the angelic creature before me. It caught my hand so fast that I couldn’t see the motion of its coppery hand. My angel, obviously taken aback by the fact that I had broken with tradition and had attacked him with only one hand, beamed a bright happy smile and said, quite unangelically:

Well that’s a fucking relief! You finally broke the charm. That means you might just live after all.

I tried my best to return his beaming smile, but I had trouble feeling my lips. So I gave him what I hoped was a suitable imitation of a smile. Then I flipped him off with my free hand.

Verrry funny, Tat, my angelic friend said, dropping my captured hand with a casual flick of his own.

UUUHHH! I moaned happily, in way of greeting. For some strange reason, my face was still completely numb. Charm lifted or not, it was as if I had just returned from a Dr. Giggles root canal job.

Take it easy for a while, man, my blurred host said in a fatherly, compassionate way. You’re still on death’s door, you know. So chill out and stop attacking me every time I come to check on you, you belligerent dipshit.

URRR! I foamed. Then I pulled my arms back to rest on my stomach, which seemed to be the only sensate part of my body at the moment. 

Yeah, right. All I had to do was open up my eyes to make that statement an all-out lie.

I knew, even with my blurry vision, that the upper-half of my body was wrapped in a film of mysta gauze. Nothing else could shine so brightly or tingle the flesh quite like that magickal, extraplanar metal. And I wasn’t so daft in the Oatmeal Department that I didn’t know what mysta bandages meant, either. Sammy could have pointed it out well enough for me—if he were here, that is, wherever here was—with his Maelstromm-powered brain. Our little pint-sized sage would probably have tilted his head to the side and pointed out the legendary regenerative qualities of a pure mysta poultice. All the while laughing his little head off that I would, of course, be the fool who would have to actually use something so lame as an ethereal Band Aid.

Yep. My bestest, littlest friend would have had a good laugh over the whole damned thing.

If he knew that I were still alive, that is.

But Fantus, my blurry bedside angel, was up to something. And of that, I had no doubt whatsoever.

AAANNNGGGUUUHHH! I gurgled, calling him no doubt by his True Name.  

What ya need now, Tat? came his distant, reverberating reply; almost as if he were on the far side of some vast underground cavern.

I saved my breath, realizing that he could, if he really wanted to, read my thoughts as easily as he could read the funny papers.

Dammit, Tat! Fantus complained in his patented southern twang as the soft echoes of his soulgem-studded slippers bounced nearer to my bed. "I was in the middle of The Far Side!"

’Nuff said.

In the space of several of my irregular heartbeats, Fantus the Usurper stood at the foot of my bed, his coppery form still blurry to my swollen, drunken eyes.

Feel like talkin’? he asked, crossing his arms. No more hittin’ me whenever you feel like it?

I nodded then shook my head, answering both of his questions in a painful economy of motion. Add neck, arms, and a finger or two to my stomach, and you now get the sum of my feeling parts. The rest of my parts were still numb. I guess pain had overloaded them.

Yeah, I know, Fantus said, shaking his head in sympathy. "I’ve tried my best to zap you with every healing spell that I know, short of a Wish, that is, but you just shake the damn things off like the little VoidSpawn bastard that you are."

Chills went down my spine as I listened to Fantus’ words with undisguised dread. So I guess you could now add spine to the list of feeling things, too.

Fantus, wasting no more time with an explanation, took my left hand in his and, quite painfully, inscribed with his right hand some mysterious inscription with the tip of his metallic fingernail upon my index finger. The parts of my body that I could feel immediately set to throbbing in painful syncopation with the flickering purple aura that now