I woke in downy comfort, in a cabin built on the shore of a peaceful lake. Everything was as I remembered it. I had built the place, after all, even if my memories of doing so were false. Of course, I could put it back. I sat up on the bed, breathing deeply from the eternally autumn air, and I smiled sadly. This was going to be the last time I ever saw this place. But that was alright. All good things did have to come to an end, after all.

I rose from the bed and tiptoed quietly to the door into the hall. I was still wearing the clothes I had fought in, bloodstains and all. At my waist there hung a sword. The sanctity of this place had long since been broken. I wouldn't travel unarmed again, not even in my own mind. The hall was dark and bare. The pictures that had once decorated the walls were gone. I shivered and walked out into the cold living room, the wooden floorboards creaking beneath my feet. The furniture lay strewn randomly around. The couch was where it was supposed to be, but the chairs from the breakfast nook had all been smashed to kindling and strewn across the floor. I walked out through the wreckage to the French doors, which stood forlornly open. Barbas was standing at the end of the dock, staring out at the lake as the light faded in the sky above us.

Autumn splendor turned to rot and winter as I walked out to meet him, and as I drew level with the djinni, the forest around us stood barren and dead. Bare branches scraped at the heavens like a thousand hands rose in supplication. “The dream is dying,” I said, not turning to look at Barbas’ face.

“I know,” he replied, his voice ragged and empty. “Why did you bring me back here?”

I turned and met his gaze. The intact one was the same green as it had ever been, though the silver orb that had replaced the missing eye was gone, leaving sunken eyelids over an empty socket. He was bloodied and beaten, and a litany of wounds still oozed blood as he just stood there before me. Despite all that, he was still the handsome spirit I had come to love. Even after all that had happened, he was still my Qarin. “I came here to ask you a question, Barbas.”

“Ask it then.” The dead, despairing look in his eyes told me that he thought he already knew what I was going to say.

“That thing. The one that got a hold of you, the Dark One-”

“Emmeloch,” Barbas interrupted. “His name was Emmeloch.”

“Right. Emmeloch. Were you able to learn why he and his kind were imprisoned here?”

Barbas frowned. That had not been the question he expected. A little light came back into his eyes. “Yes. He crushed me into a corner, wore my face…” His face crumpled with grief for a moment, but he regained control. “But he couldn’t stop me from learning. I knew everything that he did, but I couldn’t do anything about it.”

“But you did,” I said, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder, trying to reassure him. “You broke the fabricator. You ruined his chances at building another tower to thaw the planet.”

Barbas' laugh was hollow. "That only made him come after you. The Eater King wasn't one of the Dark Ones; he just saw you as a threat after you killed one of his spawn and upended the power structure of the Erin-Vulur. When he sent a messenger to Emmeloch to tell him about you- I was sure that the Dark One would kill you. I thought I had doomed you with my little petty rebellion. He told me as much when we set up the trap for you and the Erinye."

"He would have come for me, anyway," I sighed. "But do you know why he and the others were imprisoned?"

“Yes,” Barbas answered simply. “They were imprisoned for hubris.”

“Well, that and the horrible things that they did to feed that hubris,” I said quickly.

“What is the point of this? Why did you bring me here? I know it wasn’t to bring me back into your head. You don’t trust me anymore.” He turned away from me and stared out at the lake. “You’ll never trust me again. You’ll never love me again.”

“Actually,” I said, smiling even as tears began to spill from my eyes, “I brought you here because you’re the only one I can trust with this.”

“What?” Barbas looked up again, his single eye wet, the tiniest glimmer of hope shining out from that bright green gaze. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that in all the history of that people, every single one of them was granted great power and it turned them into monsters. They might not have been humans, but they were like us. They were all corrupted by power, and it turned them into horrible things. Even Ravanur and Palamun, who did so much to fight them, were monsters in their own right, many times over. Given time, I’ll become a monster too, even though I have but a fraction of their strength. But I’ll make sure I die long before that. I’ll live a good, long life, and secure the future of this people, and then I’ll die like everyone else. My power will die with me. Volistad too.”

Barbas didn’t seem shocked. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Everything,” I replied, running a hand down his tear-stained cheek. “We’re all mortals. All of us gods, from the least of us to the oldest monsters in the core of this planet. We’re all fallible, selfish animals at our core, and we can‘t handle power like this, not for long.”

“But I’m not a person,” Barbas guessed, a note of bitterness coming into his voice.

“Oh, you are,” I corrected him. “You’re one of the finest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and loving. And if you weren’t the only person I could trust to do this, I would gladly take you back into my mind, Volistad or no.” I placed a gentle kiss on his forehead. “But no, Barbas, while you are a person, there is something that you are not- something that makes you different from me, and Ravanur, and all the other monsters out there that were given way too much power. You're not an animal.”

“Neither are you,” Barbas insisted, a note of anger lighting up his dead voice.

I smiled even as the tears continued to stream down my face. He was defending me, even now, even from the truth, even from myself. A shot rang out in my memory, and a broken skull with pale eyes hit the pavement with a hollow click. “You’ve seen my memories, ‘Bas. You know I am. But you are not. And you can do what I can’t.”

Barbas was weeping openly now, and I put my arms around his neck and wept with him. I wept for my lost childhood, for the pain I had suffered and the pain I had caused. I wept for the literal man of my dreams, who had been all but destroyed for me. Even in what could have been his last moments he had fought for me, and I wept for that sacrifice. Because I was about to ask him to make one more.

“What do you need me to do?” He smiled down at me through his tears. “You know I would do anything for you.”

I returned his smile, leaned in, and kissed him gently on the lips. Then I pulled back and disengaged myself from him. "I need you to do what none of us animals can do. I need you to become a god." Somewhere far from the cabin and the lake and the tatters of my heart, my body gave Volistad the signal. My hand rose sluggishly in the cold fluid of the tank and gave Volistad the thumbs-up. Back on the dock, I stepped close and pressed my lips against Barbas' again, kissing him hard for the last time as the world turned white around me.