Arn'ovicht Lai'grenalad Bitari hated when it called her like this. It had been bothering her for decades, certainly, but every now and again, it dragged her into its territory and reminded her just who she belonged to. As if she would forget. It loomed above her, tattered monarchs lighting on the twisted hulks of metal before her.

"I need you to find him, my Cordell, and I need you to keep him safe for me in the realm of mortals, where I may not directly interfere."

It was another job. She could care less one way or another. She had stopped caring a long time ago. Neutrality and apathy had created a void which had consumed her heart.

*If he dies, you can easily restore him,* she reminded it.

It shook its shadowy head. "I have sent him to seek out Meeshal. He is to destroy her clerics. One shaman, my shaman, cannot stand against many. Weapons may not kill him, but the right words, the right touches, and he will be unravelled, unmade. I have kept you these decades, fulfilling my will, while I have prepared him. He is young. Thirty years make small marks on a boy who does not change. If he cannot change, he will not understand. You must keep him safe. He will do the rest."

She considered this and shifted her wings uneasily. *I am an exile of my clan - a willing exile. You have kept me for decades - alone. Now you wish me to be a comrade to a naiive whelp you've decided to spoil. This is too much. I will kill for you. I will be killed for you. I will not play nursemaid to your newest of many pets.*

It bared its face at her, just the slightest glimpse of what lay under the shifting shadows. She felt fears she had took pains to destroy or bury deep as they rose wickedly, violently to the surface. She swallowed hard.

"You will do this, Godiva. And you will not hesitate to do so."

She felt herself shaking nad struggled to stop it. *I will do this, gladly,* she affirmed quietly.

"Then go." And she was returned to her world, still shaken.

The city swept by, changing little by little under the elements, under the passage of men. Men and women he knew and spoke to often were growing older, growing wiser, day after day after day.

But days meant little to Cordell.

The tower beneath his feet sloped at a thirty-degree angle to the level of the ground. The sea crashed into it, eating away at its steel-and-concrete design. He stood, perched on the ancient antennae, what was left of it, and stared down into the sea. It once moved him, he knew, to stare into the sea. Just as it had once moved him, long ago, to stare into the stars. It was the fascination with infinity, with unendingness.

Maybe they should have called him Unendingness; it would have been more fitting.

He felt echoes, every now and again, of the boy he was, those days ago - days for him that passed as years for the men and women around him. It left him saddened, feeling an emptiness he couldn't describe to anyone, for who could understand it? They had all moved on as he had not. Surely, they had moved on without him when he was dead, but now...

He feared the future, staring into the infinity of the sea. The waves seemed to spell it out to him.

They would pass on. He would remain.

The truth of it struck him cold in the chest. It brought tears to his eyes, and he wondered at the futilty of grieving for something he never would have had to begin with. He was dead. He would not age as they did. It was will alone that insisted he remain.

And such a revalation chilled him, completely.

He stepped backwards to sit upon the tower itself, feeling himself shake unsteadily. Any fall he suffered that might kill him, again, would be fixed by his master, surely, but there was no need to worry his god if he didn't have to. Besides, who knew how much time would pass before he was restored again. Meeshal might get a better foothold.

That's right. There was work to be done. He didn't have time for this.

Work would distract him. Work would alleviate him of the pain he felt in his chest when he thought of the day's events.

Work wouldn't give Envisionment another week of life, but it would make his taking much easier to bear.

He was old, far too old to still live. His body had agreed, and it had begun to fail. The pain was too much, and he called for Cordell to see him out.

It had pained them both. Envisionment was the only one who seemed to truly understand just what he was, just what he did, just why he did it. His apprentice became Tyler's shaman this morning. Children would come to him in droves soon enough.

But Envisionment had been the one who mattered, the one who hadn't known the answers, who had marveled at his resolve, days or years ago. Envisionment had found him dead, and Envisionment had found him returned, years later.

Cordell shook with grief, begging his feet to find work for him, begging his hands to find work for him, begging his eyes to find work for him. Anything to end the sadness in his heart, still young, still human.

He didn't have it in him, and he sat on the tower, slanted thirty-five degrees over the sea, and he wept. He wept for the childhood he knew and lost, for the future of infinity that drew itself out before him, for the present without Envisionment. The old man had given him a battered steel charm, a tiny steel disc onto which a symbol of the sun had been etched on one side, the moon on the other. It was empty and meaningless, except to remember, on the road ahead, what had started this, how he had become what he had become.

He held the charm tightly in his hands, still weeping, still marvelling that he had it in him to weep. Still wondering, despite everything he was now, how much of the boy still lived in his heart.