He swings at me with one of the chilly fists, and I close my eyes, steadying myself in my Center, until I feel control of the Psynergy surrounding me. When I look again, time has elongated between us, stretching his punch so that his fist is still inches from my face.
Dodging it, I say, So now you punish innocent people in return?
He stumbles when his fist doesn’t connect with anything, and then he glares at me, his fists shrinking back down. You made me what I am. You and all the Guardians. You twisted my miracle into everlasting bondage. His primordial eyes burn at me through the ice. You can’t conceive the torture I have endured, the unbearable solitude of my exile, desolation without end.
His body twists and deforms as he moves, and to my surprise, it looks like he’s suffering genuine distress. You are the strongest of the twelve, but even you can’t kill me. Each time we meet, I hope.
You hope? I ask. That I’ll kill you?
End my torment, yes. He disintegrates as he speaks, and his icy form evaporates. For an instant, I almost pity him. Then he rematerializes and with a mocking hiss says, I dare you.
His eyes flare blacker than pure Space—like Dark Matter itself. He swells into a giant ice wraith, and reflected in his glassy stare are the faces of his victims. Mathias. My father. My friends. I force myself to remain still.
Fight me! he roars.
All I want is to batter his desiccated corpse with every fiber I possess. But instinct warns me that’s useless, so I hold steady. I need to regain my strength in the Psy, so I play his psychological game.
Besides, as long as he’s with me, he’s not sending Psynergy strikes on the rest of the armada. I won’t survive this, but maybe I can buy Hysan and Sirna a chance to escape.
Ophiuchus, I want to set you free.
Do you? How kind you are. He morphs into a blast of needle-sharp sleet that cuts into my face. I turn aside, and a spray of red droplets trails me. The sting is agony, and I clench my muscles tight, struggling to keep sane through the pain.
Then I hear him cough. I look over, and now he’s stooped and gaunt, an old broken man, half-eaten by time.
Even though I loathe him, even though his thirst for slaughter revolts me, the wetness of that cough and the droop of his crippled spine tug at my compassion. And for a fleeting instant, I actually feel the visceral agony of his never-ending death in life.
How old are you?
Ah, now you begin to understand. His eyes grow dull, and his long, bony arm stretches to point toward Helios. Ask the Lord of Light what eons I have endured.
The cuts on my face throb, and a bloody film swirls in the air around my head. Ochus withers away, then reforms. When I was a young man, I was as fresh and idealistic as you are now. I was an alchemist, striving to heal the sick and find a cure for death. I dreamed of a never-ending galaxy as the highest blessing mankind might achieve. He eases into a new position, grimacing as if his tortured body might break. Now I know. Immortality is hell.
Then let me help you die, I offer too eagerly.
Halt. I can’t move. He’s trapped me in a coat of ice. His laugh blasts through my frozen bones, and then he says, You think this is real? How easily you fall for my cunning. I have no wish to die, mortal!
When he morphs back into a man’s shape, he’s larger, stronger, more heavily muscled in rippling ice. I can’t believe I tried to help him.
Paralyzed, my hatred comes raging back. I strain to break free and strike him, but his iceberg of Psynergy holds me rigid.
Are you comfortable, little girl? You look quite fetching in your glossy new skin. His booming laughter vibrates in my ears. Why should I wish for death when the glory of my House will soon be restored? You read the prediction written in the stars. I will endure any torment to get what’s been promised to me.
I jerk and wrench, but I can’t escape. I can’t even speak.
You have amused me long enough, child. Let’s end this battle.
He’s going to kill me now. When he raises his hand for the deathblow, I stare at him through the glaze of my frozen blood. I see the murder in his eyes.
“Cancer sustains you.” Mathias’s words whisper through my mind, and I sink into my Center. There, I pull on Cancer’s Psynergy with everything I’ve got, until time lengthens again, only now it’s moving so slow, it’s practically stopped.
Light waves bend, and Space curls in on itself. Milliseconds stretch toward infinity, and my breathing slows. My muscles relax. I’ve never experienced life like this before—it’s as if time is a rubber band being stretched to its limit—and I’m seeing every particle that makes up every instant of our existence.