A/N As always, everything belongs to Emily Rodda, not myself. I thought of this idea recently as I re-reading Deltora Quest, and I've always felt it's a wonderful series. After the end of the Sister of the South, however, I felt a bit dejected that it had ended, and wondered if perhaps something happened afterwards. After all, it was said the Grey Tide was the end of the Shadow Lord's plots for the nonce in Deltora, but as we've learnt, the land itself can be as dangerous as the Enemy...

It was a night two years after Dragon Night and the end to the last of the Shadow Lord's plots that Lief found himself wandering through the streets of Del. He pulled the hooded cloak closer to him to hide his face, for it would not do if he was discovered. For all Doom and the others knew, he was in the palace at that moment, sleeping peacefully with Jasmine.

His thoughts strayed as he thought of her. Their marriage had been one of love, it is true, but it was difficult. Jasmine, for one, felt it was too early to have children and although Lief agreed he felt pain in his heart for Marilen, who still had to bear the burden of being the heir to the Belt that she had had to bear so many times before.

A least Jasmine and Lief both agreed that there was certain monotony to palace life. Even Lief, who had previously had no issue with the palace, had been exhausted by the endless petitions, political questions, and petty courtiers which he had been presented with. Jasmine had an even worse time; her birds gave her some peace, and Barda was always there to lighten the mood and Lindal with him, but it had simply become unbearable.

And so Lief found himself walking through the streets of Del at twilight, a shadowy cloak disguising him. The city, at least, held some excitement to it, and Lief had grown up on these streets so very long ago.

It feels like it was all a dream, Lief mused as he walked through rebuilt streets and new houses. The terror of the Shadow Lord, the life in the forge, the journey to restore the belt…all seemed so distant now. It was as if he was simply the king after King Gareth and the fall of Deltora had never happened, the four sisters had not happened, and the dragons had never died.

I must not forget. He reminded himself somberly and felt for the topax underneath his cloak, clearing his mind. The Shadow Lord is clever and sly, and to him a thousand years is the blink of an eye. I must be vigilant and prepared for him, even if for now he was well and truly vanquished. I will teach my children the same way and Deltora will be protected against him.

A stray thought entered his mind then, however, as he considered it all. What if there was something other than the Shadow Lord? The petitions had all been fused together in his mind by his lack of sleep, but perhaps there was something to them. He remembered troubling news from the other six tribes. Storms tore up trees and delayed the efforts of the Jalis to rebuild their homes in their lands. Floods ruined crops along the River Broad and an exceptionally bad drought had assailed the lands around Rithmere. The winter had not entirely stopped south of Dread Mountain, and Manus had told him worrying things of earthquakes and quicksand in the Ralad lands…

So caught up was he in his exhaustion and worrying that he did not notice the wall in front of him. Realizing where he was, Lief blinked; it was the old Pottery. He had chosen not to re-open it to remind the people of the pain the Shadow Lord caused, so they would not clear away it all and have it be forgotten as they did after Adin. He sometimes passed it by in his twilight walks, but this time it seems he had run into it out of pure luck.

He began to turn around and continue through the streets, when he heard a sound from inside the pottery. He immediately put his hand on the hilt of sword and walked to the entrance, seeing the old hinges had been broken. Frowning at such a blatant breaking of the law, Lief opened the door and went inside.

The Ol that was once called Dain spent his days and nights in much the same way in the accursed city of Del. In the day he would wander aimlessly like the pathetic beggars he so despised, and collect gold and food from the gutters and from the dole that the king had supplied. It was pitiful, horrible, unseemly, but the Ol was not a normal Ol. For one, as much as he tried, he could not break from the form which he had been given, that of the boy Dain he had so well impersonated. And secondly, he had a terrible new feeling which had never existed before, a disgusting and beastly push to survive.

This compulsion overrode his dignity, his hatred, his burning anger for the city and this land and this people. He knew that he had died, and he knew that he was now alive, for all the good it gave him. This was not life as he had known it; this was a sniveling existence at the boot of the boy who had killed him. He wondered whether the Shadow Lord had brought him back as a punishment for his failure, but knew that even his master did not have such power. And if the Master did that, why would he punish him for something he could not prevent? Was it truly his fault that Doom had come and distracted him? Or that he had underestimated the power of the accursed belt? Even now, when he thought of it, a shiver ran down his spine and his waist burnt with phantom pain.

The only thing that remained of his powers was some measure of his old strength. It was much-needed in the darker parts of the city where the thieves and robbers still tread, thinking him an easy target. Fools! Their strangled bodies decorated the gutters of Del, and at least there Dain had some power of life and death, to feel himself his own master.

The night, however, would dispel those notions. The Master had given him the power to imitate humans in their entirety, but he had never truly needed to sleep in those days. Now, however, he had to sleep as much as he resisted it, for his eyes drooped and he even yawned. Worst of all, unlike in those days, he was assailed with that most hated of human phenomena: dreams. Whatever had brought him back thought it amusing to show him a flash of locations in Deltora, from what appeared to be sand dunes to a cave with putrid smells to the ruins of an old city.

Through it all, like a drill into his mind came a rhyme he could not understand, but could not rid himself of. Each verse hammered into his head like a nail into the skull, shooting terrible pain through his body and making him convulse while he slept. A laughing voice not at all reminiscent of the Master but merrier in its delight of his suffering, and a feeling of ancient dread accompanied the verses. By now, for the several months since he had awoken in an alley of the city with his human form and his clothes, he memorized it and to give himself some peace whispered it to himself before he slept.

In seven tribes the climes that dwell,

That emerge once more from ancient shell,

Awakened by the songs of suffering,

Now roar with no hint of muffling.

Those mocking verses had decided today to attack him not only during the night but also during these twilight hours as he staggered through the city to find some sort of rest. Finally, he found it in the form of an abandoned pottery. His memory vaguely told him that the pottery had been marked by the Shadow Lord, and after he broke down the newly placed hinges he knew it was true. Inside were the abandoned remnants of the fools who had decided to challenge his will.

But were they truly foolish? The king has routed the Master's most cleverly placed plans. Plans formed through hundreds of years, honed in preparation, all destroyed…Dain shut away the annoying voice in his head that had become more prominent these last few months. Every Ol had learned, even he, that the Master had many plans, plans within plans, and even if the King had defeated what he thought was all of them, he certainly had not defeated all. Certainly!

Dain found a straw mat in the Pottery and settled in to sleep, a sudden shiver going down his spine, and his waist burned anew. Suddenly the previously drowsy Ol was awake, and he drew his concealed, if rusty dagger, prepared to face what was against him even as the burning burned to his very heart and forced him to his knees. Fear overtook him, despite his resistance, and the knife began to tremble in his hands as a figure stood at the door. No, not him, I do not wish to die once more, Master hear my plea…anyone…

And then the voice he had been dreading spoke up, and he lost all hint of composure.

"Dain?!" Called out the bane of his existence, and Dain could no longer control the burning coal of his hatred.

"Dain?!

Lief cried out in shock at the hunched over, violet-haired figure before him. He had expected a squatter, a thief, or some poor beggar that could not find another place to stay. Not this, never this. He pulled out his sword as Dain had his dagger, but it seemed that the Ol was not fighting him. He had not even changed shape. In fact, he was…shaking? The very sight of it chilled Lief to the very core. Many feelings had surrounded the death of Dain. Sometimes in his dreams the morphing faces of the boy he thought he knew as the ol died haunted him.

That is not to say he regretted killing the Ol, Dain. He mourned the friend he lost, not the Ol that died, that had tried to kill him, that had nearly made all their efforts for nothing. He would do it again if he had to, for Deltora and its people, to rid it of an evil. As he looked at the figure in front of him that was struggling even to stand as he held a trembling knife in his hands, he had an ounce of pity against his better judgment. Too many questions passed through his mind. How was Dain alive? How had an Ol managed to survive the magic of the belt and stay in Deltora? Was he perhaps suffering from it now which was why he was so weak?

Before he could contemplate these questions, Dain lurched forward in an attempt to attack Lief. His knifework was clumsy and it seemed that it took every effort of his body to move forward. Lief blocked his attack with the simplest ease and moved to attack himself, only for Dain to collapse then and there and fall to the ground in front of Lief in a heap.

Lief held his sword, prepared to pierce Dain's right side, but hesitated as he looked at the form so close to the friend he had once known. He kicked the knife away, prepared for a trick, but got none. The breathing of the form in front of him was labored, difficult, and beads of sweat rolled down his face onto the dusty ground of the pottery. None of this Lief had remembered a grade three Ol being able to do. Sudden curiosity got the better of Lief, and he reached out to feel Dain's beating heart, his sword in his other hand.

What he felt chilled him to his spine. For when Lief felt the right side of Dain's chest, he felt no beating. Instead, the beating heart was in an entirely different, human spot…on the left.

With the new realization he had found, Lief went against all logic and reason and hoisted the shaking, limp figure of Dain onto his shoulders. Jasmine would think him ridiculous, no doubt, and Doom would question whether he had lost his wits, but he felt something was very strange with Dain, and that there was a deeper mystery to be had here. As he looked down at the ruby, he noted it had not paled at all and with a final chill going down his spine proceeded up to the Palace of Del, the being once known as Dain on his shoulders.