Kol-Eresh put Jackie down at the mouth of the cave.

The female was very pale and her purple eyes were fluttering shut every few moments. The diadon that was supposed to be glowing on her chest was flickering in and out of existence.

The signs were unmistakable.

"Fight, my love," Kol-Eresh said, pressing his hand against her cheek. "Don't let go."

"Yes," Jackie whispered in response, nodding her head slowly. "Yes."

She didn't say more. Couldn't, more likely.

Kol-Eresh listened to the caves below them. The voices were indistinguishable, but he was certain. There could be no one else out there with them but the Eternals and the tracks of the Abominations led him right there.

The only problem he had was that if he could hear them, could they hear him?

Caution wasn't going to save Jackie.

"Don't move," he told her. "I will be back."

Jackie couldn't even nod, but her eyes opened and closed, signaling that she'd heard him.

Kol-Eresh didn't waste another second. He stood and marched down the pathway. It was hard to leave Jackie behind with just the two Fermanoli coats to shield her from the growing storm, but he had to put everything on line.

As he headed down the path, the voices grew louder, which was to be expected.

Then Kol-Eresh froze in his tracks.

There were too many voices. Way more than three for sure and the last he'd checked, the Abominations didn't have voices. The mechanical gargles couldn't be mistaken for the voices of the warriors who commanded them.

The voices were raised, he heard that as well. The Eternals were arguing.

It served to mask his steps, but the situation had gone from dire to impossible in the course of seconds.

Three Eternals with their pets were horrible odds, but within the realm of possibility. More, much more, were the job for an army.

Kol-Eresh regretted now that he hadn't had the time to do some reconnaissance first. When he'd managed to track down the warriors he was searching for, he'd headed back right away. It was madness, but his options were incredibly limited.

The truth was dawning on the harbinger with each passing second.

What he'd found wasn't a small refuge for the small group of Eternals. The cave was the entrance to the true lair, the heart of their entire operation. It was so easy to miss and the heat signatures were so miniscule every search party had ruled them out as a possible life form. He had only been able to distinguish them because he'd traced the group from the beginning.

In addition to that, when Kol-Eresh got deeper into the system, he noticed that he was walking inside some vast, grand machinery. Just like the fortresses, the cave system was only a facade of the real bunker that laid far below the ground. In half a minute, he was walking down steeled walkways.

There were traces of explosives on the walls and the harbinger thought he had the Eternals finally figured out.

It wasn't reassuring to know just how much luck they'd had.

The Eternals had somehow figured out how to survive in the cave system, building a lost, hidden fortress there. The cave mouth he'd entered through was blown up during the storm and possibly when they were close to being discovered.

It was genius, in a way. All the fortresses were built into cliff sides, but the others showed their true colors. There were vast gates and pillars, stairs and outdoor halls to show where the fortress was. They weren't underground, exactly, just built into the planet itself deep enough to be safe from the storm.

Now he'd found the secret one.

Kol-Eresh had no idea why the mouth of the cave hadn't been blown up yet or why the Eternals were suddenly fighting among themselves, but all that worked in his favor.

The harbinger crept ahead, hiding his footsteps in the sounds of arguing and clashes of blades against blades.

He refused to believe they'd get so lucky as to have the Eternals wipe themselves out of existence.

Finally the pathway started to open up and Kol-Eresh saw that he'd been correct.

Up ahead, there was a large hall. Nothing like the stony interior of his fortress. No, this was the hideout of the Eternals.

It was lined from bottom to top with machinery he couldn't even begin to comprehend. Vast Abominations hung from the walls like lifeless corpses, strapped into harnesses, just waiting to come to life. There were pumps drilling into the ground in the distance, Kol-Eresh could hear them growling and caught a glimpse of things that looked like miniature versions of the Gechs.

Before him, the harbinger saw about thirty Eternals standing in the midst of the large hall, arguing sharply.

The words escaped him when Kol-Eresh contemplated the idea that that was it. If he was incredibly lucky, again, those were the only Eternals that remained on Luminos.

Thirty ancient, highly trained and brilliant warriors, but not hundreds like his brother harbingers had imagined. Not thousands, like it sometimes seemed.

"The female was right," he heard one of the Eternals bellow at the others.

It was hard to recognize faces, but Kol-Eresh was almost certain that it was the same one who'd caught Jackie.

"You have lost your mind, Jhaon," another Eternal growled back. "She might be right about the suggestion, but it is blasphemous! We will not start tampering with our own species! Nayanor physiology is perfect, we are the living proof of that! We are the tools of the gods!"

The warrior called Jhaon glared back at the speaker.

"You would rather have us go extinct than take harsh measures, Immeck?" he asked. "There is nothing great about a dying species. Who knows that better than us? We did this, don't you remember? We made the Nayanor females die out when we tried to make us invincible! We have already tampered enough! You had no problem with it when we were trying to make ourselves better, but now that we're trying to correct our terrible mistake, you shun away from what must be done!"

For a moment, angry voices buried the rest of the conversation.

Kol-Eresh was seething with rage. Some Nayanors, with healers like Forack, had suspected for a while that the loss of Nayanor females wasn't a natural event. Now he had the proof. Not only were the Eternals guilty of crimes against the females brought to Luminos, they were also to blame for everything else that had befallen on their species.

The harbinger wondered what the odds were that some Eternals had had a hand in setting off the first long night.

At that moment, he wouldn't have put it past them.

"Jhaon is right!" another Eternal yelled. "We have been trying to force the change upon the Terran females, but rebuilding their entire system to fix our faulty genes is impossible. They keep dying and our own people are turning against us. They don't even know we're doing it for them!

"It would be easier to fix us."

"Easier!?" Immeck roared. "The soul of our species is at stake!"

"The future of our species is at stake," Jhaon yelled back. "You want us all to die out, our pride intact and our species wiped out from the galaxy. I will not let that happen."

The warrior marched away, ignoring the calls of the others for him to return. The rest of the Eternals stayed behind, the fight continuing.

Kol-Eresh had everything that he needed.

All the answers, all the pieces of the puzzle. He ran back to Jackie before the Eternals decided to seal the hidden fortress.

When the harbinger reached her, Jackie was cold to touch. She opened her eyes when he kissed her, desperate to feel some warmth from her mouth.

"Kol," she whispered. "What's happening?"

"I know what I must do," he said. "I have to take you with me. Do you trust me?"

Jackie nodded, too weak to reply.

The life of his fated was in his hands. Kol-Eresh lifted her into his arms, holding her frail body tightly against his chest. His heart was beating a furious rhythm as he headed back to the fortress, thinking of how he was going to get past the Eternals without triggering any of the alarms they had to have in place.

It was a miracle they hadn't discovered him yet.

"Are you looking for me?" a voice asked behind him.

Kol-Eresh turned, Jackie looking up from his arms.

Jhaon stood in the middle of the pathway, his sword drawn and the deep dark eyes filled with cruel malice.

"You have chosen the wrong time to die," the Eternal said.