CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: EMUNAH
"Emunah's awake." I heard Kerith say.
I opened my eyes. The light from the fire was dazzling. I felt hot, cold, dizzy and nauseous. My skin was raw. Beth came into my field of vision.
"Hey, Emmy." she greeted me. "How ya doing?"
"Zero by zero." I told her. "What's wrong with me?"
"Kez says you picked up some bug. You're real sick." Bethany took a breath. "In fact, you're dying." Her eyes were wet.
"Well, shit."
"Your inception's reversing itself." said Kerith. "Grissecon* isn't feasible; we don't have the proper combination of essences and knowledge. I could summon help but it's unlikely you'd survive the wait."
"So there's nothing you can do, then?" I asked her.
"We've got something that might work." said Bethany. "Basically, we re-incept you. Kerith knows of an interrupted inception that got fixed that way, but..."
"Ara's ill, too." said Kerith. "So we'll have to use paragine blood. You're both hara so this is unknown territory."
I wailed with frustration and dismay. "Red's got the germ, too? Fuck!"
"He's got it worse." said Shahar, coming into view with a transfusion kit. "His original inception was imperfect. The energy centres in his soume-lam** are malformed. The one's in his ouana-lim never formed at all."
"Do you consent to this procedure?" Kerith asked.
"Hell, yeah!" I replied. I grabbed Bethany's hand, squeezed it. "I wish I'd jumped your bones back in Sunnydale. Willow's too."
"Why didn't you?" asked Beth.
"It would've been wicked fun. But I didn't want to ruin our friendship." I told her with total seriousness.
Bethany frowned. I gave an inner sigh. She still had no sense of humour. None at all.
* An act of ritual sex magic.
** The female generative organs of Wraeththu.
