Without the tiny blights darkening the air, the flowers and foliage were even brighter colors. A frog plopped into the pond as Jayesh crossed the lawn to its edge. He stood there, gazing across the rippling water with its lily pads to the little waterfall that cascaded down a cliff wall. The peace and stillness of this place soothed his taut nerves. He breathed the aromas of damp earth and flower perfume. If only Kari were here to share this with him. They could sit on one of those benches in the shade and enjoy the quiet. Maybe once the curse was broken ...

"I wish Kari could see this," he murmured to Phoenix.

Somewhere, a pair of jaws snapped shut. The universe rippled with power that seemed to grip Jayesh and wrench energy from him. He gasped and staggered.

Nearby, Limerick rose from where he had been sitting, unseen, behind a raised flower bed. Two spots of color stood in his pale cheeks, and his orange eyes burned with triumph. "Ah, such a small wish, yet such desire behind it."

Too late, Jayesh realized what he had said. "That didn't count! I wasn't really wishing it!"

"Yes, you were," Limerick replied. "I've granted your wish. Be careful what you say aloud, even when you believe yourself alone."

Jayesh stood still, horror hitting him like throwing knives. "Kari. What did you do to Kari?"

"You wished she could see this," Limerick said with a smug smile. "Now she can."

There were so many ways that could go badly. "Take it back!" Jayesh bellowed, summoning his fiery sword.

Limerick's smile widened. "Ooo, I've upset the Guardian. Please kill me, do." He pulled open his shirt to expose his bare chest. "Right in the heart, please."

Jayesh stood there, fire licking over his body, the Dawnblade sword blazing in his hand. And he couldn't do it. The blasted Ahamkara would win again. Slowly he let the sword fade and the fire go out.

"Aw." Limerick closed his shirt. "So disappointing. Maybe your next wish will be something much more dire. Perhaps for your family to join you? I could drag them straight through the Ascendant Realm and deliver them to you dead. Or insane. Either one would be amusing."

Jayesh snarled wordlessly, biting back words that could be twisted into another wish. He thought to Phoenix, "Send a message to Kari. Explain what happened. Find out if she's all right."

Phoenix obeyed, as furious and upset as his Guardian.

Jayesh whirled and stalked to the other end of the gardens, where a stone circle with a crystal floor took up the entire south end. He flung himself on a bench in the shade of the cliff and sat there, his heart racing. "Kari," he whispered. "Oh, Kari, what's he done to you?"

"Message sent," Phoenix said in his head. "But it'll be four hours before it reaches her."

Jayesh put his head in his hands, imagining all the ways Limerick might have twisted the wish. Hallucinations - overlaying the sight of the gardens onto everything she saw - making her a ghostly observer, forever stuck in one spot - and what would happen to Connor, if his mother couldn't see to take care of him?

Phoenix started to speak a couple of times, but stopped. The horror was simply too great for words.

When a gang of Taken showed up and milled around the stone circle, Jayesh barely paid attention to them. It wasn't until they noticed him and began shooting at him that he fired back and exterminated them. The woman wasn't among them. Maybe she only appeared once a day.

Jayesh cried out to the Traveler, inside his head. He poured out what he'd done and begged for help. The Traveler didn't reply, but it touched his Light, comforting and reassuring. Jayesh clung to that touch, terrified, helpless to do anything to save Kari.

He was still sitting there, hours later, when Madrid found him.

Limerick had left by then, and the gardens were empty. The sun had swung to the other end of the sky, and the shadows lay long and blue across the grass. Jayesh huddled on the bench, forehead against his knees, his ghost floating beside him. He alerted Jayesh to Madrid's presence, but Jayesh didn't stir.

Madrid reached them and stood looking at the crumpled warlock. "Something wrong?"

Jayesh didn't answer.

Phoenix flew forward. "We thought we were alone. He wished Kari could see the gardens. And Limerick was hiding nearby."

Madrid's eyes widened. He gripped his rifle and turned, surveying the pond and flowerbeds. "He granted the wish, the bastard. Of course he did."

"I can't fix it," Jayesh said, lifting his head. "I can't fix it, Madrid. I harmed Kari and it takes four hours to get a message out." He pressed his fists to his forehead and crumpled up again. "I don't even know what it's done to her."

Madrid stood there a long moment, cradling his scout rifle. "Well. Now we're in the same boat."

"What?" Jayesh looked up.

Madrid's hair hung in his eyes, and his face was creased with weariness. "Regrets for thoughtless action. Unforeseen consequences." He dropped onto the bench beside Jayesh. "Light, Jayesh. Sometimes you come off as the most self-righteous little asshole. Then you do something phenomenally stupid, like making a wish. Maybe you're not so bad, after all."

Jayesh grimaced. "This isn't very comforting."

Madrid grinned a little. "You know what? It is for me. We've both made giant, life-altering mistakes, now. Mistakes we can't fix. We'll be dealing with the consequences for the rest of our lives."

"Don't say that," Jayesh whispered. "Light, don't say Kari will be afflicted with - with my bad wish - forever. I can't stand it -" He wrapped his arms around his knees and hid his face. His shoulders shook.

Madrid sat there, watching the afternoon light play across the clouds. A certain lightness had entered his face, as if Jayesh's failure had encouraged him.

"The next Corsair to die will be Elledia," he told Jayesh.

Jayesh raised his head, his face contorted with tears. "I can't save her, Madrid. I couldn't save Wren."

"But you can try," Madrid said fiercely. "Light, you can't just mope like this. We have to fight every second of this time loop. What's happened to Kari can't be changed. But she's strong and resourceful. She'll figure it out. She's not dead. You hear me, Jayesh? She's alive. You're not stuck watching her die over and over."

Jayesh sat with his head bowed.

"Elledia dies on day seven," Madrid said. "Tomorrow is day six. Maybe we can change events enough to save her. I almost did, last time."

Jayesh slowly straightened, drying his eyes. "I guess ... you'd better explain how she dies."

The sun was setting as the two Guardians made their way back to their ships. It was a long walk, but it was a warm, pleasant evening, one of the few when the forces of Darkness wouldn't invade until later.

Madrid led Jayesh in a shortcut through the rocks, where a narrow, winding path climbed through a grove of trees. At one point, they looked down across a section of the landscape to a small gazebo built by itself on the hillside. A round plinth lay in the middle, and on this plinth was a human figure under a white sheet.

"What's that?" Jayesh asked, peering through his rifle scope. "That's an odd statue."

"It's where they laid Uldren's body," Madrid said shortly.

Jayesh's hands tightened on his rifle. That was a body under that sheet. "I thought they'd have buried him by now."

"The time loop won't let them," Madrid replied. "So there he sits, for now." Madrid walked on. Jayesh stood there a moment, gazing down at yet another failure. He couldn't heal Wren, couldn't save Kari from the effects of his wish, couldn't grant Uldren any kind of mercy.

"Phoenix," he whispered, "maybe I'm the one who's cursed. Everything I touch turns to dust."

"Don't think of it that way," his ghost replied. "Rather, there's forces in this universe stronger than you. And sometimes they have the upper hand."

"What do I do, then?" Jayesh said, gazing at that distant figure under its sheet. "Stop trying?"

"Never," Phoenix replied. "Keep fighting. I believe that good can still come out of all this."

Jayesh gave him an ironic look. "Sure."

"Not saying I know how," Phoenix snapped. "But ... somehow. Someday. You'll look back and be glad you didn't give up."

Jayesh sighed and continued up the path. "I hope you're right."

Jayesh returned to the Dasa compound and wrote a long letter to Kari detailing what he had done, trying to explain Phoenix's earlier message. He groveled and apologized, then sent the message in misery.

He lay awake a long time, trying to get a grip on himself, trying not to succumb to despair. Everything he had ever read about the reality-bending power of the Ahamkara played through his mind. One stupid accident, a thoughtless wish, and his family might pay for it for the rest of their immortal lives.

He dozed off and had nightmares about being lost in a Hive lair, wandering in circles, chasing something he couldn't see and could never catch up to.

The next morning, he had barely peeled his eyes open when he groped for his tablet to check for a message. Kari had replied. It was a few minutes before he could focus his eyes enough to read it.

"Dear Jay,

So that's what happened! I was cleaning the apartment, when all of a sudden I had a vision of the most lovely place, all grass and flowers. It went away after a few seconds. It kept happening all day. It got a little annoying, actually. I was worried that I had hurt my head somehow, when Phoenix's message came. Then I got your letter a few hours later.

Heartspark, don't beat yourself up. This is fairly minor, considering what Ahamkara are capable of. I don't mind having visions of such a pretty place. It makes me want to visit, actually. Is it really as beautiful as it looks?

I'll talk to Ikora tomorrow, but I have a hunch that this will wear off. From what you wrote about this Limerick, he's a young Ahamkara without much power. He won't be able to sustain this for years. A month or two, maybe."

The letter went on, assuring him of her love, and how she longed to hold him and soothe away his fears. Jayesh missed her so much that his middle ached. He laid his tablet down and sighed, gazing at the ceiling as the morning light crept through the curtains.

Phoenix awoke and read the letter. "Oh," he said, turning with a smile emote. "She's all right. Just like Madrid said."

Jayesh smiled ruefully. "I hadn't even thought about how Limerick is a young Ahamkara. And she's fine. She likes it, even."

He flung one arm over his eyes. He lay there for a few minutes, unmoving. Then he said suddenly, "Phoenix, am I really a self-righteous asshole?"

"Maybe sometimes," Phoenix replied slowly. "But I know you, and Madrid doesn't. You mean well. Sometimes, you come off as kind of arrogant when you talk about the Traveler."

Jayesh sat up and raked his fingers through his brown hair, fluffing it. "Maybe this whole thing is a lesson in humility. It's certainly blown my ego full of holes." He grimaced and began to dress. "If I start coming off as self-righteous, poke me, will you?"

"Happily," Phoenix replied.

Elledia's death came about due to a certain chain of events. She went on patrol along a cliff side path at the foot of the Eleusinea tower. A gang of Scorn had encamped there, stationing a sniper higher on the hill. Elledia halted to battle the Scorn. No matter how carefully she kept to cover, the sniper always shot her through the temple. No healing rift would mend that.

Madrid had tried to change these events multiple times. He killed the sniper - and a different Scorn soldier shot Elledia. He hid her sparrow to keep her from going on patrol. She walked, instead, encountering the same aliens an hour later and dying to the sniper. He killed all the Scorn hours beforehand, only to have one of them spring to life from among the corpses and shoot Elledia.

On it went, loop after loop, trying and failing to break the links in the chain. As Madrid explained this in the Corsair hideout, Jayesh observed Elledia's hunched posture, the way she stood over the monitoring equipment, the way the other Corsairs patted her on the shoulder or back.

"Thank you for trying," Elledia told the Guardians. "It happens too quickly to hurt, not like poor Wren. I feel something hit me in the head. That's it."

"Do you ... see anything?" Jayesh asked. "On the other side?"

Elledia's eyes unfocused, gazing into the middle distance. "I'm always trying to leave. And I can't. There's a ... being. Like a giant, living net. It snares me and holds me back. Then I'm waking up, and it's the beginning of the next loop."

Jayesh gazed at her in fascination. "Are you in the Ascendant Realm? Or the Sea of Screams?"

"Neither," Elledia said. "I'm inside the net, and so is the Dreaming City. I'm aware of that much."

There was a short silence as the Corsairs and Guardians exchanged unnerved glances.

"The curse actually prevents souls from departing," Jayesh mused. "Fascinating. So, not even death is an escape. What are we dealing with? Is it Vex?"

The group fell to arguing possible causes of the loop. The Corsairs pointed out that Petra Venj had contacted Osiris, himself, expert on all things Vex. He had responded that only the Vex were capable of such a high fidelity time loop, but there were no Vex in the Dreaming City. It was a puzzle.

Jayesh and Madrid left to deal with the Scorn who would kill Elledia. Madrid out-sniped the sniper, while Jayesh handled the soldiers.

"These guys weren't even that strong," Jayesh observed, reloading his rifle. "And they still manage to kill Elledia every time?"

"Every time," Madrid said, putting an extra bullet through the head of each alien. Dark blue ether boiled out of each corpse. "Maybe this time we'll get lucky and outwit the curse."

"We can try," Jayesh said. He climbed a hill to the foot of the Eleusinea tower and stood gazing up at it. Fifty stories high, the top reached right out into space. The gates stood open, but he had no desire to go inside. That was where Riven had been, before Madrid and his team had killed her. Not that it had made much difference - the Ahamkara had fed off their desire to destroy her, and her death triggered the curse.

As he stood there, a single ghost in a dark pink shell flew up, scanning the tower's porch.

"Hello," Jayesh said. "What are you doing out here alone?"

"Looking for my Guardian," the ghost replied cheerfully, scanning a bush.

Jayesh watched the ghost, bemused. He'd seen unattached ghosts in the wild before, but this was the first one he'd seen who had made it all the way to the Dreaming City.

He watched the ghost scan each step, the door's lintel, and the carved pattern beside them. "Shouldn't you, I don't know, be looking for bones?"

"I like to be thorough," the ghost replied. "It took a long time to get here. I will search every inch. Have a nice day!" The ghost flew up the hill, scanning as he went.

"No wonder it's taken him so long," Phoenix muttered. "He's not even looking in the right places. But then, some ghosts are like that. They think they can apply a search pattern to the entire universe."

"You think he'll find his Guardian?"

"I hope so," Phoenix said. "We call him Pulled Pork, even though his proper name is Wil. Nice guy. He and I used to hunt our Guardians as a team, a few centuries back." Phoenix made a sound like a sigh. "I'd hoped he'd found his Guardian by now. I guess not."

"Does the time loop make him search the same places over and over?"

"Ghosts aren't affected by the time loop," Phoenix replied. "But the reset hurts." He shivered from his spot in phase. "Maybe it only hurts me."

Jayesh mentally patted him. "You have been injured before. Maybe it's the way old wounds ache when a storm is coming."

"That could be," Phoenix replied. "When the Osiris Cult got me ... and that chimera ... Maybe there's some wounds you never heal from."

Jayesh summoned Phoenix and peered into his blue eye. Phoenix gazed back, utterly trusting. Jayesh closed his hands around him and gently pried apart Phoenix's shell segments to check his core. The core still had rainbow oxidized spots from when the ghost had wielded the Dawnblade power and burned himself in the process.

"Is it these?" Jayesh asked, touching a burned spot.

"No," Phoenix replied, submitting to this handling without protest. "It's deeper inside me. Where the chimera's teeth went."

Jayesh gazed into his eye gravely. "They pierced your core?"

"Yes," Phoenix replied. "One did. It was as fine as a needle, and it hurt so awfully. I still feel it sometimes, when we've fought a lot of Taken and I'm tired."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Jayesh whispered.

"I did," Phoenix replied. "I told you it bit me. But your Well of Radiance healed it."

"You did sleep for about eight hours afterward," Jayesh muttered. "I thought it was strange, at the time." He clutched the ghost to his heart for a moment. "I didn't know you were hurt like that. I should have asked. I'm sorry."

"It's all right," Phoenix said, his voice muffled against Jayesh's robe. Jayesh let him go, and the ghost floated back to his spot above Jayesh's shoulder. "I'm fine most of the time. I think it's just that Riven's monster hurt me, and so does Riven's curse."

Jayesh gave him a worried look. "You always say you're fine. Then you're not."

"I'm fine right now," Phoenix said. "I have to be your brave ghost, remember? And that means ... not complaining."

"It's not complaining to tell me you're in pain," Jayesh said gently.

Phoenix shook his head. "You're usually in way worse shape than I am."

Jayesh opened his mouth, then closed it with an expression like he'd bitten a lemon.

He didn't say much for the rest of the day, patrolling for Taken with Madrid. The Taken woman didn't appear, so there wasn't even that distraction. When they parted ways for the night, Jayesh climbed the steep hillside to the tiny alcove with the cat statue in it.

He sat beside it and stroked the warm head, watching the sun set behind the mountains. Phoenix floated beside him, watching the scenery dreamily, his eye half dimmed.

"Wouldn't it be funny," Phoenix said, "if Pulled Pork resurrected Uldren?"

Jayesh rolled his eyes. "Yeah, no. The first Guardian to see them would murder them both. Besides, you saw Uldren. You know what he did. Why would the Traveler ever grant him Light?"

"Not saying it'll ever happen," Phoenix replied. "There's as much chance of that as there is of this cat suddenly walking around."

Jayesh fingered the sculpted, pointed ears. "I want to go home."

"Why?" Phoenix said. "Besides being lonely and homesick and all."

"Well, that," Jayesh said. "And also ... something about this place, Phoenix. It's showing me things about myself that I don't like."

"Like what?"

Jayesh leaned his elbows on his knees. "When you were telling me about being hurt ... and how you downplay your pain because I need you ... Light, I'm so selfish. I'm always so worried about myself, my fears, my goals, me, me, me. And when people around me are suffering, I don't even notice." He picked up a pebble and threw it down the hill, as if trying to cast away that part of himself. "So ... I'm going to stop focusing on myself. I'm going to focus on others, for a change. No more self-righteous asshole."

Phoenix laughed. "Maybe that's why the Traveler gave us this assignment. To knock off some of your rough edges."

"Maybe so." Jayesh thought about this for a while. "If it considers us family, then this is hauling me to the woodshed for a whipping. And Light, did I have it coming." He stroked the cat statue again. "Well, back to the Dasa compound for the night. Tomorrow, we'll see if we can save Elledia."

"She'll still die," Phoenix said. "She'll just die in some way we didn't foresee."

"I'm afraid you're right," Jayesh replied.