Blood. Gaping. Oozing. As if the flesh had simply decided to shed layer after layer, unzipping a dark and juicy centre filled with pain. It had happened as Stark watched on. One moment it was smooth, spotless, and pale, the next it had just opened. His arm bled, and it bled because it wanted to. He wanted it to.

Stark had heard of such a gift before. Zhaan had always been capable of taking and sharing certain degrees of pain, but never like this, never as visceral, as disgusting and as beautiful, as this. It was pure love that had enabled him to do this. Pure empathy. It astounded and terrified Stark.

Jurnus writhed involuntarily, beads of glistening sweat streaming down his bald face. His eye sockets were deep grey pockets. Stark tried to steady the whites of those eyes.

"Jurnus…" he said.

He let go of his arm, and with his gloved hands he reached to undo the straps of his mask, but Jurnus stopped him.

"Don't take my pain…"

Then the wound closed, one layer of flesh and muscle reconnecting one fibre at a time, as if Jurnus' body was catching on to the alien happening and that it hadn't actually been cut. It had just been dreaming, and then the dream became too real. A phantom pain turned reality for only a moment. The wound was still bleeding, but it had significantly been reduced. Jurnus tore a strip of cloth from his tattered shirt and bound it around his wrist. He groaned as he tightened it, and Stark sighed when he was done.

Stark did the same to his mask. The cold edges of the bronze sculpture pressed into his nose. He was relieved their wounds had healed as they had, and that the worst had been averted. When he'd ran into this room and found the body of the beautiful Ando'reen with her arms hanging over the side of her bloodied bed and her wrists cut, he didn't know what to do. But Jurnus ran to the girl's bed and bade her back from the beyond. Ando'reen was awake now, panting as Jurnus had as the pains receded. She felt her wrists. Red bleeding marks remained like shallow cuts. Jurnus had absorbed everything else.

"Why'd you do that, priest?" She cried. Jurnus took her arms and kissed the blood, and Stark felt like crying too.

Of all the souls he'd encountered on his many wandering ways, his had been the most beautiful.

****

Stark spent the next few solar days pondering over what he had seen, from the room he wasn't allowed to leave. A prison of brick and mortar, with a door that wasn't locked.

He pounded his skull with a flat hand, squeezing the muscles around his eye shut. "It's all in my head, it's all in my head, it's all in my head…"

A dark mood had come over him, like a cloud that had moved in front of the sun, and it wouldn't go away. It'd just come over him, crawling into his mind like a thousand insects. It was there. Like it always had come and gone. The voices of inadequacy, insecurity, of fear and doubt. There, just there, paralyzing him on his own bed, making all efforts seem pointless and stupid.

Doubt was good. He could use doubt. But doubt without answers could turn toxic. A simple curiosity could turn into a gnawing, biting insecurity that burned through flesh like acid. What would he do? What would he say? What had he done?

Could he succeed? Could he move on? Could he return? Could he fight it, or flee it or accept it?

Jurnus came to him, just like he had come bursting through the door of the girl. Because he needed him. Jurnus cared because he had no choice but to care. But Stark had a choice, yes, Stark had a choice. He was not cursed to love like Jurnus was.

With a simple twist of Jurnus' wrist, Stark fell to the ground. He seemed to have touched some mysterious pressure point on Stark's body, some exposed nerve ending connected to the outside world, like a machine's off button. Stark didn't even know he had one. And most of the pain slipped away from him, as if by holding on he'd just been boiling it and cultivating it. Madness breeds by obsession. Yet ignoring it won't make it go away either.

It's why he had come here. It's why he had sought help.

"I don't think I am of much use to you anymore," Stark said, lying helplessly on the ground.

"I am so sorry, my friend," Jurnus said. His voice was soothing, but dry and unused. He dressed like a monk in tattered robes two sizes too big for him, with the texture of a woven reed basket. He was practically naked underneath, but in this hot atmosphere layers were made for survival, not for comfort or discretion.

"You're like a lightning rod. So sensitive. You're much like myself in that regard. Which is why I need you. It's why I chose you to be my apprentice."

"With all due respect" Stark spoke darkly, from the depths of his mood, "I'm not your friend. I did not come here to be your apprentice."

"And I didn't come here to be your physician." He lifted Stark off the floor and handed him an earthen bowl filled with white sloshing liquid. It smelled of flowers. "Drink. I made it this morning."

Stark wasn't thirsty, except he was. When Jurnus handed the bowl to him, he did not decline.

Stark zipped uneasily, keeping his eye on Jurnus's pale and gaunt face. The old priests's eyes were always twinkling, his mouth was always smiling, but Stark knew he had to be hiding some terrible secret. Something so heinous he exiled himself here to this barren wasteland, to this dead castle in the red desert.

"It's good," Stark said, wiping his lips. As he sighed, he also forgot.

"I'll show you how to make it later. Let us meditate first."

"No, no, no, no…" Stark objected and Jurnus simply smiled.

"I know you don't like to be alone right now, " he said. "But you won't be. I'll be meditating too."

"No, no, no, it's not that. I know I'm not alone. I'm never alone. And I think that's the problem…"

Jurnus reached out and touched Stark's mask. A frown creased the old man's face.

"Last night," Jurnus said. "You've seen what I can do."

His sleeve slid down his arm and exposed the fresh wound still throbbing underneath his wrist.

"My whole body is a scar. One hurt after the other. But you carry your scars in here." He tapped the bronze mask and sighed. "It's one wound I cannot take from you, and I think I wouldn't even want to."

"It's my gift…" Stark said. He questioned the words after they escaped his lips.

"Come."

Stark held the bowl in his hands like a treasure. He didn't want to spill any of the fruit drink as they made their way on to the landing outside the room. Dawn crept through small slits carved into the ancient and crumbling stone walls and sometimes Stark could feel a gust of sand, as if the surrounding desert crept inside the castle to remind them they were not alone. A stone staircase wound itself around the negative space like a coiling snake, and they tread the steps carefully down into the levels below. Stark looked up and imagined himself climbing down the bottom of a dried up well.

A sharp pain struck his temple and something trickled down the steps and fell down into the hole. Another rock hit the stones and missed him by a hair. "Torryn, stop that! Stop that right now!" Jurnus could be angry too, and Stark feared him when he got angry.

Torryn sped away into his mother's room, laughing while he dropped the rocks from his hands. The boy was older than he looked, older than his mother treated him, and would always pelt rocks at Stark when nobody was looking. Always teasing and always tormenting him. Children could always sense weakness.

When the bell rang, more people joined the walk down the stairs of the tower. Their footfalls against the dry stone slabs became a rhythm of flesh against rock, as they pattered barefoot into the depths. Thirteen of them in total. Thirteen patients. And Jurnus.

They all settled down in a large semi-circle around Jurnus, as per habit and Jurnus' previous instructions, on a large carpet that covered the enormous round chamber at the bottom of the tower. Jurnus lit three torches to provide light where the sun couldn't reach.

"How do you pay for all this?" Stark asked Jurnus as he handed out their portions for the day. Once opened, smoke billowed from the refrigeration units. The crackers were tough to chew and chilled to the touch and tasted like recycled processed waste. Stark's question lingered in the silence, ignored.

Every few weekens or so supplies would be delivered by a mute. The yellow-eyed mercenary with skin as red as clay never spoke or even looked at them as he wheeled down some crates of crackers from the back of his spacecraft and flew off again. He only seemed to care for the priest's blessing. Besides him, they practically had no contact with the outside world at all. Jurnus only had a makeshift generator to provide a semblance of power and protection against the elements beyond the castle walls, and a small communications array seemingly ripped straight out of a Peacekeeper motherboard. Stark had no idea how Jurnus had managed to make that work, but it did.

Jurnus lit up when surrounded by his patients. He smiled, even laughed, like a man who was used to being alone. Once everyone had settled down, Jurnus wrung his hands and sighed, as if he failed to find the right words to begin his habitual speech.

"Can I help?" Stark asked. "I can lead the morning prayer with a Conglorian chant of Harmony, or possibly a Hynerian wail of Abstinence…"

"A few words will do just fine, Stark, but I think it's me they want to hear."

Stark sat back down again.

"A few weekens ago, I was still alone. A traveller came to me, wounded, frightened and on the run, and I did what anyone would do, and I helped him. I gave him the milk from the Habherass Tree, just as I gave it to you when you arrived. I patched him up and sent him on his way, with a few words of advice and a helping hand in the right direction. I had nothing, but I shared with him all I had. Then more travellers came, who had heard of me, who had come seeking the same guidance, the same council, the same milk, and I gave it to them, and sent them on their way. More and more came, and suddenly I was loved, and they called me Father. I am nobody's Father. I am just a child of the storm, such as yourselves, like we all are. I can give you what I have, share with you what I have found, if you promise you won't take more than you need."

Listening was what Stark did best. He tried to hear all what Jurnus had to say, until Torryn was back, sneaking up at him from behind. "Get back!" Stark hissed at the boy. The boy grabbed at Stark's bowl with both hands and in a bout of madness Stark bared his teeth at him, whispering: "It's mine! MINE!"

Torryn slapped the bowl from his hands and the liquid seeped in between the cracks of the stones.

Stark beat and chased the boy back to its mother, where the lanky wide-eyed youth hid beneath her wide skirt. She was oblivious, naturally, too busy noticing the blonde girl Ando'reen's cuts which she thought were tattoos. The mother slapped the boy and held him close. She didn't slap him half as hard as Stark would have wanted to, but not even double that violence would make that boy change his tormented ways.

"Stark, if you would be so kind…" Jurnus spoke. "We're out of Haberhass milk."

The earthen bowl lay toppled on the ground in a dry puddle of its own contents.

"But he…"

"The boy will be corrected. Please bring more flowers from the cellar."

Jurnus looked angry. Or just stern. Stark wondered if there was something he was trying to tell him, or whether it was something else. Stark didn't know. From across the room, Jurnus almost looked… disgusted.

"Of course."

Begrudgingly, Stark removed himself from the scene. He recalled a mantra to calm himself, with half forgotten words. He was glad to be going anyway. Ms Sond would be complaining about the heat in her room any microt now. Always the same cries about the loud noises at night and the heat at the bottom of the tower. Always complaining, whilst Stark always made do with whatever he had. He didn't know any better. It's how he survived. It's a lesson he learned a long time ago, and he was baffled why they hadn't embraced it too.

The doors of the atrium were heavy double doors barred with a large log rotten at its core. He lifted the log from its ancient bronze handles and set it at an angle against the wall. As he pulled the giant ringed knockers the doors creaked and moaned, as if they objected to being touched. Then a hot breeze touched Stark's nose. Closing them seemed easier, and then there was silence, and then he was alone.

Being alone gave him the time to set his thoughts in order, to breathe and let his anger out. He could complain without anyone hearing him. He imagined clawing his own ears off just thinking about Ms Sond's stupidity, or that horrible Torryn child doing whatever the hell it wants. Stark just wanted to be left alone.

And yet he was here, because he needed Jurnus. Because he needed people.

Down in the cellar, large vines covered the dark walls. The room stank. The air was so thick. Every wall was overgrown with plants. Stark could barely see the walls. Just darkness. When he stepped inside, he planted a foot right into one of the pods he was looking for. Milky goo covered his sandal.

Stark plucked five more from the walls, navigating the sharp thorns. Then something rustled through the vines and he could've sworn he saw something move, but when he watched, nothing happened, and he went on with his business harvesting the pods. They were round green cabbages the size of a fist, covered in pink leaves like a rose. They only grew in the dark and withered once they touched sunlight. If Stark had known its thorns were poisonous, he would've navigated through that room a bit more carefully.

He wondered whether this is where Jurnus farmed these flowers, so he could have the milk every day of the year. He wondered how nutritious it was.

As he filled his arms with the pods (he could probably fit five or six of them in his hands if he pressed them tightly against his chest) he heard someone whisper to him. He turned and saw Ydrib silhouetted in the doorway.

"What are you doing here?" Stark hissed at her, afraid to raise his voice in the dark. "You're not supposed to be here!"

"I came to help!"

Ydrib, a former consort of Zenetan pirates, bade him to be quiet and pressed a sweaty finger on to Stark's lips. Stark's hands were full, so he wriggled his face away by shaking it. Ydrib's face was framed by the same black markings the pirates had tattooed on to their faces. Two triangular black tattoos covered her eyes, like a mask.

"Listen…"

Ydrib explained that she came down with the intention of helping double the payload, until she heard a noise. Stark followed her into the tunnels, where she pressed her face against the rock wall.

"Can't you hear that?"

Stark heard nothing, and was getting impatient. It was strange. Usually he was the one to hear strange things, and usually he was the one to suffer the impatience and frustration of those that couldn't hear. Stark closed his eye and listened, but the air was empty. Just dead rock.

When Stark explained that Jurnus was waiting for him, Ydrib shooed him away. Stark shrugged and left.

****

"Is this enough?" Stark asked. "I mean, will it do?"

"Well we'll have to boil them first," Ms Sond said. "The milk. That's how it works, right?"

Stark stretched his neck looking around the atrium. "Where's Jurnus?"

Ms Sond tutted. "Gone. As usual. He didn't say where or when he was coming back. He said he was called somewhere. I don't know."

"You don't know…" Stark said it more to himself than to her. He wasn't surprised by her ignorance, and too busy to be ignored by it.

He didn't want to be stuck here in this room with these idiots. He wanted Jurnus. Needed Jurnus. He was supposed to help him.

Stark went from person to person asking if they knew where Jurnus had left. He stayed away from Torryn and his mother.

"Jurnus, Jurnus," Stark said to Ando'reen. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," Ando'reen said. She couldn't look him in the eye. Probably because of what he'd seen the night before. Probably because she was ashamed. She was still touching the marks on her wrists where she had cut herself, as if she still couldn't believe they were real.

"You were there…" she said.

"I'm sorry," Stark said. "I didn't mean to…"

"You saw me…"

"I did. Jurnus saved you. You're all right now."

"I'm not. I'm not all right. But I didn't die…"

"That's good. Dying's bad. Dying's really really bad. I mean, it's not…. There's light… and there's love, if you want there to be, and I could guide you…but that's not what you want."

Stark took her hand.

"Death is not the answer to pain. Not for the living, anyway. In life, we grow and become more than we are. In death, it just ends. It's the final destination. It's where we're all supposed to go. But not just yet."

"I thought last night was going to be my last night in this world."

"It wasn't. It won't be. We'll help you. Jurnus will help you."

"Jurnus!"

Jurnus returned through the atrium doors, looking moody, and downtrodden, his eyes turned to the floor. As he faced his patients, his smile widened but his eyes were crying.

"If you've all had your drinks, it's time to pray."

Stark tried to ask him where he'd been, but Jurnus just said something about the communications array and a delivery that was delayed, and Stark left it at that.

Jurnus sat down facing his guests. As he slowly breathed in and out, defining the rhythm, they all followed his example. He encouraged them to sit in a peculiar manner with their legs folded beneath them for a steady position, and likewise the group followed suit. They did everything he asked of them, but still, somehow, it wasn't enough. Jurnus was easily agitated. Stark sat next to him and listened to him breathing deeper and deeper, as if he was digging for something he couldn't reach. Ydrib, too, was one of the few with his eyes open, wide open even, listening not to the silence and the breathing, but to something else entirely. But she was known for her paranoia. She was unstable, that's why she was here. Stark wasn't going to be like that anymore. He wasn't. He wasn't. He wasn't.

Stark wasn't ever paranoid. It wasn't a delusion that the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans were after him. It was real.

Next to him, he could hear Ms Sond talking. She was crying. To what god was she praying? It was rude to listen in. Even Torryn was praying, reciting the same song his mother uttered into the eternal ether. He had a beautiful voice.

Stark decided to ignore the voices, as he always tried to do, respect the voices, as he always failed to do, and focus on calming his own woes, even though it never worked. At least, that's what he told himself. He knew a collection of prayers, a pantheon of gods, and he never knew which one was listening, or which one would answer. There were so many roads to take, so many places to see; Stark knew all of them and Stark knew none of them. He knew only what the voices told him.

A lot of those places where old and abandoned, forgotten by time itself; their paths overgrown and overtaken by nature, and the afterlives they lead to were no longer receiving visitors, for there was no-one left that knew how to get there. How lonely those gods must be, Stark wondered.

He knew Zhaan would be hidden in the embrace of the eternal Goddess herself, one with Love and Eternity, with the Mother. Stark never knew his own mother. He liked the idea of a Mother, waiting for him. No doubt everyone did. So he prayed to her, and he prayed to the Hynerian gods in Rygel's stead, to plead on his behalf, for the old Dominar was many things, but he wasn't humble. That way at least they had his testimony to balance against Rygel's absent conscience.

He missed Moya, he realized. He even missed Talyn, but he didn't miss Crais. Crais could jump off the top of this tower, for all Stark cared. No, no hateful thoughts. Stark banished hateful thoughts for now. Crais was a blot of grey in an ink black sky in which the stars shone the brightest. And his Zhaan shone among them, always beckoning him. He missed her the most.

****

That night, a man died. He wasn't even the oldest in their group, Ms Sond was older, but without warning he seemingly lost his grip on life itself without any doctors around for several lightyears.

Jurnus tried to save him. Gasping for breath in between words, the old man begged to be heard, and when he touched the priest with his spotted hands, Jurnus winced. Light returned to the old man's pupils and strength returned to his hands, but his heart wouldn't budge. The pain was too much for Jurnus to bear.

"I can't…" he said and let go.

Ando'reen was there at his side, to bear witness, and to catch Jurnus when he fell.

"If I do this, there's no coming back. It's too much…. Just…. just too much…"

There was terror in the old man's eyes. There was terror in Jurnus' eyes. They could both see Death move closer and closer into that room. Stark could see it too.

Stark may not have known how to handle the living, but the dying? That was second nature to him.

With gentle steps he moved closer to the old man's bed, and he slowly loosened the straps of his mask along the way. None of them knew what he was about to do, but none of them dared to stop him. As soon as the light hit them, they felt its soothing presence.

"I will guide you," Stark said softly. Death was simple. Death was easy. He understood fear of death more than most. The fear of no more future. "Come towards the light. See what I see. Let go of your pain."

Stark watched the light flicker and leave the old man's eyes. A smile briefly lingered and then faded. Stark would remember it well. As their lives briefly connected, a part of the old man would stay with Stark forever, in his memories, in his soul. Stark remembered.

"It's done," he said. He awkwardly put on his mask again. He felt a bit ashamed to have been seen as exposed as he had been. Naked, almost. But he never said.

"What did you do?" Ando'reen asked.

"I helped him cross over to the other side," Stark said. "I calmed his spirit in his final moments and showed him the door to the other side."

"The other side? You mean…"

Stark nodded.

"What do you see on the other side?" Ando'reen asked.

Stark shrugged. "Nothing. I don't see anything. I only see them, and only they see what's on the other side. Perhaps we all see different things. Perhaps we all find our own way after death. I told you…"

"Death... is not the end," Jurnus said, as he closed the old man's eyes. Then he hugged Stark.

"Thank you," he said.

"I just know…" Stark said, his mouth pressed against Jurnus' shirt. "… that I know nothing."

Stark, not a fan of hugs, waited to be let go.

"Maybe that's all we need to know…"

"You are wiser than you think, my friend," Jurnus said. "You helped this man in ways I could never have. Thank you for allowing us to witness it."

"What do we do now?" Ando'reen asked. "His body?"

"I will take care of it," Jurnus said.

"What was his name?" Stark asked. "The old man, I mean…"

They all went silent for a bit, deep in thought.

"Quello," Ando'reen said. "I think."

"Let's all pray for Quello," Jurnus said. "May he rest now, undisturbed."

Jurnus placed the blanket over the old man's face, before he all motioned them to quietly leave the room.

"Sleep. Tomorrow is a new day," he told both Ando'reen and Stark. "A new beginning."

When Stark left for his room, he thought Jurnus would be going to sleep as well, instead he saw a candle move down the tower's steps into the dark below.