Years after destroying a tower, not long after a Holy Man and a girl from a world of death to a world of life and wealth and light, Riddick made his way deep into the outer darkness. Outside even the uncivilized worlds.
To his surprise, he'd saved two people from monsters, and regretted not saving more. To his surprise, he'd connected deeply to one of them. He missed her.
He had considered taking her with him. She would have come. Once he had started teaching her to fight, it was like he had known her forever and he knew, in a distant way, that she loved him. But the only way to keep her safe would have been to bring her out into the darkness, with him. Alone with him. With the only thing he had to teach her, how to be a better killer. What sort of man does that to a child he cares about?
And it would be better, he thought, if he wasn't lurking, tempting her into the dark places. She was already too much like him; too ready to kill. The universe did not need another one of him. The holy man would keep her in the light, he figured. Best thing to do was just disappear forever.
That decision was old, and he still regretted it, sometimes. But he slept well.
Sleep increasingly full of dreams.
He dreamed he was walking through forest dripping with blood from bodies hanging in the trees over bones scattered on the ground, some nearly ground into earth. Some of the bodies in the trees had died recently. Some had struggled to the end. Others looked peaceful, joyous. Willing sacrifices, happy to die.
He was walking through the green of the trees and the red of the blood with a Viking of a man. The man's skin was dark and golden, and he was playing with a heavy golden coin. A man who could have been his brother. Riddick looked at him sideways.
"Do I know you?"
The man smiled. "In a way."
They kept walking.
Riddick tried again. "Who are you?"
"The question is," the stranger said "who are you? Once upon a time, you were me. We are variations on a theme."
They walked on in silence.
The man finally continued, as if quoting from a sacred text. "I died on the tree. Someone brought me back." He started passing the coin from hand to hand, dropping in from his right to his left, revealing an empty left hand.
"I am – we are – every hero who ever stood between the firelight and the darkness and wiped the blood of something inhuman from our sword. We are the thing the darkness fears. We are the heroes who storm the gates of hell."
Riddick shook his head. "Not a hero."
They kept walking. The man took the coin out of a corpse's ear.
"We are not always the hero. Sometimes, we are the monster. Sometimes, we are the child thrown to the wolves.
"We always have the capacity to be a hero." He stopped talking, started focusing on the coin, spinning it up into the air and down again.
The silence continued, broken only by the creaking of tree limbs. The stranger took a coin from a corpse's mouth.
At last, the man continued. "I'm luckier than you. You were an infant when they first threw you to the wolves. I wasn't. My mother hid me from my father. But if he'd never found me, I never would have become who I was. Who we are. Chosen ones."
They walked in silence.
"Like you, I didn't want my destiny. My father killed my wife so he could trick me into fighting for him," the stranger said, quietly.
The man finally turned and met his eyes, the coin still at last. "The question is not whether you are a hero or a monster, Beowulf or Grendel, this time. You are both.
"You've killed. Just like me. You've served time. Just like me. You saved a child from the wolves once. Just like me. You liked it. Just like me.
"The question is, are you going to become who you were born to be." He started to toss the coin again. "Our father still eats his children."
"You didn't kill him?"
"In a way." He looked at Riddick through partially slitted eyes. "Death is different when you are like us."
They walked into a grove full of the bodies of men Riddick had killed, gently swaying in the gentle breeze. He knew their faces. Some of their faces.
"Here we are," said the man, stopping at the biggest tree Riddick had ever seen, with roots that went down to the underworld and branches reaching into heaven. "The paths we walk have been carved deep. There are only so many ways the story wants to be told."
The man reached up to a branch that seemed impossibly above their heads, and swung himself up effortlessly. He smiled down. "Thing is," he said "you can play the role; you can rewrite the role; or you can get played."
"Catch!" he called, and tossed the gold coin high in the air. It caught the sun light and bathed the grotto on a golden glow. In that golden glow, the bodies all melted sweetly into the leaves and twigs and branches. Riddick caught the coin out of the air, still warm from the other man's hand.
The man stood on the branch. "Someone is going to die on the tree for you," he called down. "Don't waste that. And it doesn't have to be an end.
"You'll just have to know where to look." But when Riddick looked up, there was nothing left but branches and leaves and the chattering of a squirrel.
When he woke up, he could still feel the coin in his hand. It just wasn't there.
In the Throne Room of the Major Arcana; Kyra.
Nearly a year and a half on Helion Prime, Kyra still felt like a stranger.
The Imam had been kind. Treated her as a friend. Even let her use his name.
He married a childhood sweetheart he loved devotedly. The woman also tried to be kind. But she was clearly afraid of Kyra; or at least, afraid of the potential lurking behind her. A child who had lived on the street; who had lived through that brutal night on a far away planet. A child who had slept, it was whispered (though both she and the Imam denied it) in the arms of a killer.
Riddick's arms were damn comforting, Kyra thought bitterly, even as she denied their existence. He could even keep away the nightmares.
But with every season, the pain lessened. She was doing well at a good school. The Imam seemed eager to pay for any activity that got her out of the house.
Tonight she was dreaming, and it did not seem to be a nightmare. She dreamed she walked through a pillared palace, full of light and shadows. She could hear laughter and conversation. She followed it into a room whose ceiling was lost in the clouds. Beautiful people, more real than any she had ever seen, were milling around. Most smiled at her. The crowd inexorably led her forward, towards a double row of thrones.
One queen with a sword saluted her.
At the back of the room, there was a dais, and more thrones. On the right, a stern man with an iron crown and a naked sword on his lap sat without joy. Behind him a man stood with a cowl covering his face and a scythe, on guard. At the left the most beautiful woman she had ever seen lounged on an elaborately carved couch, crowned with leaves and stars, feeding grapes to a stunningly beautiful young man who gazed up at her adoringly. Behind her – Kyra swallowed convulsively – was a pillar topped by a cross bar. From it hung a dead man upside down, his legs crossed. Above that was a circle. They made a symbol. An ankh, she dimly remembered.
An infant boy, naked but for sunflowers entwined in his hair ran up to Kyra, laughed and grabbed her hands. His joy was infectious, and she swung him into her arms and kissed him. He pulled her hair delightedly. She swung him onto her hip and carried him forward.
A juggler was cavorting before the thrones, with ten golden balls dancing in the air. He saw her and smiled the most glorious smile she'd ever seen. "Nineteen," he said. And there were nineteen golden balls dancing around then. She put down the child and the juggler took her hands and swung her around in an ecstatic dance. She felt like she'd been dancing forever, dissolving into the most glorious music ever made. She laughed and all darkness she had ever known fled. She saw the Empress watching her for a moment before she leaned down to kiss the young man deeply. Guess it's an open marriage, she thought irrelevantly. The child wriggled. She put him down. The Emperor watched her.
Then the Emperor lifted a hand. The music stopped. The golden balls fell out of the air. He beckoned, and the juggler brought her forward. The juggler bowed deep.
"I see you've met our Magician," the Emperor said, nodding to the juggler, his voice the dry voice of steel and stone. He gestured, and she was on her knees at his feet, more bone deep terrified than she'd ever been, even when there was nothing between her and monsters but the whim of a killer.
The Emperor leaned forward, took her face in his steely hands. "My mark is already upon you," he said. "You are Mine. Why do you walk in the world?"
She shook her head, not knowing how to answer. He let her go and made an impatient gesture. "Mine," repeated the Emperor, and the man behind him stalked forward towards her. For a wild moment of hope, she thought it was Riddick; they moved with the same boneless grace, the size was right. Then the man pushed his cowl back, and he was not boneless at all. Instead of a face, the empty eye sockets of a skull gazed down implacably, under a black helm, his body armored in black and silver. In terror Kyra scrambled away, still on her knees, slipping on the golden balls, sprawling on the patterned floor. Death towered above her, grinning.
The Magician pulled her to her feet. He whispered into her ear. "Death's not so bad. Done it a million times. I'm always there to guide you through it."
But the Empress had risen from her throne and placed a warm hand on the arm of Death. She laughed, a laugh of trees heady with fruit; of fields heavy with grain. "My love. She walks in the world because one of your servants showed her mercy. You should too. She's not ripe yet. Why rip her apart before she has time to sweeten? Taste her now, she'll always be bitter. Let me have her until she grows up."
"What will you give me to wait for her?" the Emperor asked, amused. Death paused.
The Empress laughed again. She turned to the corpse behind her, kissed it deeply on the lips. As she did, the flesh regained its color, and changed. Where once a dead young man had hung, a living young woman stood. Robed in blue so dark it could call itself black, with a thin crescent moon tattooed on her forehead. She bowed deeply to the Empress, to the Emperor. While she was not as beautiful as the Empress, it was like the moon to the sun; beyond any other parallel.
The Empress turned to her mate and laughed again. "I'll give you an apple." She tossed him one.
The Emperor caught it with a low chuckle. He looked at Kyra again. "What say you? Will you clutch my wife's skirts for a few more years, or will you come with me right now? I'll make you a queen of the dark places."
The Empress smiled, leaned forward, and kissed Kyra on her forehead. For a moment, she felt the sun was blazing from between her eyes. "Before you make that choice, child," she said "let me show you the war I want you to fight. In a way, it will be easier with him; he'll make your choices for you."
A void opened up under her feet, and she saw New Mecca in flames. She saw the Iman dead. Zombie warriors marching through her flaming city.
Then the scene flipped to an idyllic planet, green and lush – with armed men stalking through, killing children.
Then it flipped again, and the glory of the universe filled her with a moment of joy – until the stars and the blackness froze and everything went gray. The agony of the lost beauty drove her to her knees again.
The Empress stepped out of the grey, and the stars were bright and the darkness was black again. She knelt in front of Kyra and said gently, "be one of my warriors, child. All solar heroes belong to me. Be one of them for now."
Kyra knew with all her heart that this was the right thing to do. "Yours," she whispered. "I want to be yours."
The Empress smiled, lifted her to her feet. "Be ready. We may need you to save the world at any time. And when he does come for you," and Kyra couldn't tell if she meant Death or the Emperor or someone else, "you might survive the night."
Already, a new body was hanging on the gibbet behind her, where the moon girl had once been. Already, Death stood back behind the Emperor. Both gazing speculatively at her. But the Magician pulled her in another dance, and the beautiful boy at the Empress's feet kissed her, and she was happy.
Kyra woke with the taste of apples in her mouth.