He stumbled out of the hole in reality, barely seeming to care where he landed. He tripped and fell, nearly managing to impale his hands on the chipped and fractured marble of the steps as he did so. Cuts were added to those which hadn't quite managed to heal properly, and another tear was added to the knee of the combat trousers.

Sobbing quietly, the figure pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, staggering as he tried to keep his balance and look around.

The palace on whose steps he now found himself was in ruins. Some parts of it had collapsed altogether, while other parts still retained a thin veneer of normality. In its heyday it had clearly been both impressive and dramatic, declaring to the world that this was a place where lived important people who could have such marvels and wonders as this made to their ideal.

There were columns and frescos. The frescos depicted great figures and events past, showing the rise of a mighty empire and its rule of the lands. They spoke of the reign of great and wise kings who commanded fairly and were generous. And then they spoke of the way that those kings began to become more certain of themselves, less fair, and had begun to demand more from their subjects. There was nothing overt to tell of their wicked deeds or the things that they did; you simply followed the story until you found yourself nodding approvingly at the depiction of farmers being punished for no reported crime.

There were courtyards and halls, many of each and in varying sizes to allow for intimate moments or grand events. Greater halls, some of which must have been made of several levels at one time, were dotted around. Corridors and cloisters linked them all, with arches and bridges linking different islands that were almost small towns in their own right.

The layout allowed for many gardens, but had no room for farming; the people who built this place had no need for making their own food, relying on others to produce it for them. The gardens were mostly small, and in their day carefully tended and crafted to perfection. In a couple of places had stood larger parklands, demonstrations of the dominance of the designer over the mere forces of nature.

Over it all stood a palace, grander than the others. Here the frescos and arches and arabesques reached a pinnacle, the centre of a grand design now so grand that good taste no longer allowed for it to be acknowledged in the same manner as the rest of the complex. Here the creative powers of the architects and their masters had sought to improve upon the perfection of past days and had been found lacking when their merely Human ability met with the inadequacies of the materials and their designs; in trying to create nirvana they had instead collapsed on themselves, revealing a decadent heart and in their deficiency mistaking this for the greatness that they sought.

Over all of it the measure of their folly stood revealed. Decay and ruin had set in, scarring the beauty and perfection of the city that stretch halfway to the horizon. Overhead the clouds tumbled and roiled in a slow dance that was the colour of fire; lightning flashed occasionally in amongst the morass, and a low rumbling pulsated the arid air constantly. This pulsation was the only movement in the air though; despite the motion of the clouds everything was as still and silent as an empty tomb.

He looked out on this desolate ruin of a once proud nation's crowning glory, and tears came to his eyes. Tears indeed for the city, the lives lost, the desolation. But tears mostly for himself; for the weariness and pain he had thought he had escaped from by coming here, for the hole in his soul where hope had once lived, and for the wounds reopened by the irrefutable fact of this nation's downfall. Silent tears cast not to draw attention or seek sympathy, but simply because it hurt so much that no other action was possible.

He barely noticed when the wind picked up, wallowing in his grief at being thrown from one hell into another. It was when the tone of the distant pulsation changed to something more immediate that it finally dragged him up from his stupor and forced him to look out at the fallen city.

In the distance the clouds had dropped down to touch the horizon, no longer billowing but boiling and twisting. Where they touched the ground the buildings didn't even have the decency to explode dramatically; they simply crumbled to dust as the cloud advanced over them like a relentless tide reducing a sandcastle to a memory.

He watched this with a blank disinterest; it was happening, it was coming at him, it would soon arrive. Some part of him which ran on unstoppable intellect provided the information that it would be upon him in three minutes ± twenty seconds. But the pain the rest of him felt lent a kind of disconnection to events: "let it come," he seemed to say. "You can't do anything to me that would be worse than what has happened already."

The wind was whipping at him and the clouds were looming ominously close when he heard the voice calling to him. He wanted to ignore it; one more victim of this sad place would make little difference overall. There was no time to meet anyone more than in passing, and the end was, quite literally, in sight at this moment, approaching at what the intellectual part of him indicated to be approximately thirty three metres per second.

This voice carried easily though, despite the distance that it sounded like it was coming from. Even the wind didn't seem to impede it. Only the pain he felt damped it such that he barely acknowledged it when it came to him.

But this voice would not be denied. Even the barest touch of it kindled something within him, an interest that he might otherwise have simply shrugged off. Even without hearing the words that it spoke he knew that he had to respond.

"Now is not your time," the voice declared, speaking calmly and with patience. "Walk away from it."

He resisted. The part of him that ached saw nothing in the voice but the chance to hurt more. The intellectual part of him saw no way of escaping the oncoming cloud. Moving at all hurt from the myriad cuts and bruises he had sustained. What reason was there to even acknowledge the voice?

The voice did not allow him respite however, seeming determined to keep tugging at him. "This is not who you are," it insisted, deep and resonant. "It is not who you have to be. Come to me," the voice insisted, taking on an edge of urgency. "Come to me!"

There was something in that tone of command which reached past all of the pain. Though that voice had reached out from the far side of creation, he would have answered it instantly. Mere intrusions of time and space would be no impediments to his movement.

He lunged around, dashing to where he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, the voice came from. A stone arch leading into a cul-de-sac loomed in front of him as the wind blew up to a gale; the cloud descended and removed the roof of a nearby hall as he charged through the archway.

Abruptly he lost his footing once more. The wind had cut off, and beneath his feet were grass and roots rather than solid stone flooring. His landing this time, no more co-ordinated than the last, was at least on something softer.

He lay there, trembling, where he fell. To have an escape from this pain so close, so complete and utter, and then to be forced to give it up. Not the pain, but the escape. The agony still burned within him, and would now continue to burn. The relief was now further away than ever.

The sound of deep breathing stilled him for a moment, reflexes honed by too many people trying to kill him kicking in with lethal intent. In a second he knew the shape of the place he was in, had spotted most of the obstacles in it, and triangulated the direction and distance that the breathing was coming from.

Something was wrong though. He could pick up the outline of a cave, even as he lay with his face down into the grass. But the inside of that cave... There was nothing. No heat, no electricity, nothing solid, no thought...

The breathing continued, openly as if whatever it was had no reason to hide. Yet they were hiding very impressively inside that cave...

In a single explosive movement he came to his feet, the weapon being pulled from beneath his jacket; a slim lump of metal it sat in his hand easily from long practise and was wielded with skill and economy of motion that spoke of long experience. The stubby barrel lined up on the cave before he was even standing properly and his will focused as he concentrated, preparing to fire on whatever might be in the cave.

"Desist," the voice instructed from within the cave. That same voice, carrying the same tone and power of command, which had previously called him from the ruined city, now halted him before he could try to harm it.

He stood for a second, frozen like a statue by the voice, trying to work out what to do next. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"You know who I am," replied the voice, deep and thoughtful. Where some might have made such a statement to be cryptic or mysterious, this voice did not; it clearly meant what it said literally, and provided no more than this only as a sign of respect to his intelligence.

He was in no mood for even the appearance of word-games though. He raised his weapon again, fury burning in his eyes.

"Why did you bring me here!?" His voice cut through the near silence of the area in a way that made him feel uncomfortable; even in his current state he was aware that there was something significant about the silence here.

"I did not bring you here," the voice from the cave replied. "I called to you, and you came. But if you had not wanted to come then you would have remained where you were."

"You think I wanted to come here? To escape that? I wanted that! It was all going to end, everything was going to go away and leave me in peace." His voice had choked back almost to a sob as the pain overwhelmed his anger and his weapon came down as he sagged.

"If you truly sought to end your life then you could do it now," the voice pointed out. "You have your focus and your sword. You could end your life easily enough."

He looked down at the focus in his hand, a weapon tuned to his own mind and body. Yes, he could. Just bring it up and end everything. Idly, as if not sure it was really happening, he watched as the weapon came up, stopping just short of actually pointing at his head. A tremble ran through his body as the vast part of him willed it to complete the move, to come closer and fulfil one last act.

Somewhere though, some small and desperate part of him fought back, seeing that it didn't have to be this way. It was a small part, barely noticeable, but something about this place and the voice in the cave gave it new hope.

"Do you truly seek your own end?" the voice wondered aloud, the question finding its way inside his head as effectively as if it had been his own thought. "It would seem that you do not."

Immediately the focus swung away, angling back towards the cave and the undetectable thing within it; nothing stopped it, though even in his rage and pain he felt something hold him back from firing.

"Don't tell me what to think!" he shouted, his talents coming into play and his words twisting in the air, carrying their own edge of command that any human would have found irresistible.

Compared to the voice from the cave though, whose quiet presence was there even in the silence, the Voice was pitiful and only revealed itself thus in the process of the attempt.

"I cannot put thoughts into your head," the voice replied, the tone certain and sure, with a degree of conviction that he found himself believing without even bothering to question. "All I can do is ask you to see if you are really sure of this course of action."

He shook, the mixture of rage and pain and crashing adrenaline all afflicting him at once. "Who are you!? Who..." He trailed off to another sob, feeling the futility of it all assailing him once more.

"You are not yet ready to see me," the voice from the cave declared. "Rest now, and we will talk when you are ready."

"I want answers-" he began, only to be interrupted.

"Rest," the voice insisted. "Wake when you are ready."

"Wait..." Even as he spoke he felt the strength draining from him as all of the weariness of the last six years crept up on him and overpowered his body in a single moment. He fell to his knees, the weapon falling from his hand as he collapsed, unconscious.

You wake slowly. Daylight is filtering through the leaves overhead, confusing you for a moment. This isn't your bunk; the command staff might have decoration like this in their rooms, but you haven't been allowed forward of bulkhead fifty after displeasing the consort the last time you were summoned to her chambers. Your unit still aren't happy about that, since they don't get invited that often any more...

No, this isn't a bunk, and doesn't belong to any of the command staff. Where else could it be? A free trader ship? Some of them, especially the vastamis from Calia, included trees, or actually were trees. Were they? You can't actually remember one way or the other; the Emperor doesn't approve of them, so you might not have heard more than rumours. They don't approve of imperial troops either, so the chances of you being here like this... Unlikely.

One of the trenches? Surely you would remember if you'd been assigned to a world like this. Besides, flattening trees is one of the first things that they do when they build a trench; you've never approved of that part, and they've never been willing to explain why they do it. Unless you've managed to land in a grove on the throneworld where they didn't dare destroy the trees...

No, if that was going to happen then you'd have been dead already; practical considerations of how long the war would need to last before the throneworld was in danger aside, you're not popular enough to have been kept alive that long, and would have been sacrificed in plenty of time not to see this place.

So, a world? One that hasn't been hit by the war badly enough for the trenches to go down? Not likely. Getting away from your unit for long enough to reach such a place would be unlikely at best. You can't reasonably expect to see a planet that hasn't been attacked before unless you're the first person out of the dropship when your unit invades it.

Memories filter in. The trench on Vertisan... They had hit in the middle of shift-change, when you were about to head out for a rest period. Half of you on the firestep had been barely functional from exhaustion and the other half wired from wake-up drugs. The sharp shriek of pulse rifles and the deep whirr of shredder cannons shaped the air beneath the shield dome for two minutes before you had even been aware of the first return fire.

Disruptive weapons turned soldiers against each other. Your units held together through the first volley, with only a single execution of someone three spaces down from you. You weren't sure who he was at the time, and the sergeant's life-arc had damaged his body too much for you to recognise him afterwards. You remember thinking that you would need to look him up later.

The second volley was more insidious; ghost-mist that made flickering images on the edge of your sight and whispered dark secrets into your brain. Through it had stalked eight of their reapers; you remember barely gunning one of them down with combined fire from six other troopers who were dragged back to the present by threats and force. Your own grip on your sanity had been flimsy at best... How many of your people were dead by then... two or three hundred at least, at the hands of eight reapers and their own allies.

The third and fourth waves had come almost at the same time. Something had collapsed the shield over your head, leaving you and the remains of your unit exposed to the dire-midges that descended in a relentless tide upon you. Tales abound about the poisons and toxins that they carry, the wounds that open faster than a medic can patch them up, or the living death that promotes decay but inhibits death...

You couldn't tell what it was in their stings. It hurt when they fell upon you, but then... You remember being disconnected. Like it wasn't entirely real. It almost didn't matter when the fel-storms and the harvesters, led by two of the Somekind, blew in the side of the trench and marched into it, conducting their war as they went.

Your escape... It wasn't real, so your unit didn't matter. They broke around you anyway, those that ran. A few stood and waiting as the harvesters fell upon them. None of them mattered though. Even you weren't entirely real. Like the whole thing was less than a dream; at least in a dream you are aware of yourself to some degree. Here you are just disconnected.

You evaded them somehow, and hid out. When your sergeant died you knew immediately as the blockers failed at the same instant. Years of weariness battered at you, nearly three decades of unending war coming down on your shoulders in a single instant. You had been minutes from completing your escape and leaving entirely at that point, and had somehow kept going...

Then the ruined city. Three decades of war, followed by an ending so total... Had you arrived somewhere peaceful, then... But you hadn't. War so total, to ruin so total, had destroyed your resolve, which combined with the shock and withdrawal from the blockers and other augmentations being taken away to leave you without the will even to live.

Then the voice calling you away to... Here?

You stir for the first time, grunting as bits of you react disapprovingly to the sudden movement. Trees are overhead. You're in a dell. It's maybe ten metres wide, with no discernable way in or out, aside from the cave that-

Movement startles you, and you turn in time to see someone scamper off behind you, passing into the bark of a tree as if it was little more than a trick of the light. You stumble clumsily to your feet, aware that some of your clothing has been removed and your wounds tended; how much use that was when your body is telling you that you have been in a healing trance for a long time is dubious, but it's a nice thought at least.

"Wait... Come back," you say, almost pleading.

"You startled her," a voice informs you. It's the voice from the cave, but it sounds like it is coming from right behind you. Without turning you assess your surroundings, finding nothing but a blank space behind you where the source of the voice should be. "She was not expecting you to wake so soon."

"If I turn around," you wonder aloud, "what will I see?"

"You will see me," the voice assures you. "But you are not yet ready for that. You are not yet ready even to have woken."

"What do you mean?" you ask, curiosity fighting fear inside your mind, both telling you to turn and look at this thing behind you.

"You have suffered great hurts. You have healed from many of them, but there are many more that still need to be repaired. Once you have healed some more you will be able to face them properly. Until then you should sleep again." The voice is persuasive, gentle, a voice that carries nothing by kindness and concern. You want to trust it, and yet there is something that still burns within you, desperately wanting to escape the pain that is now returning to you.

"What if I don't want to?"

"If you can freely choose to leave, then you may do so," the voice declares. "You know what it means to freely choose something; are you able to do so now?"

"I think I am," you admit, but your tone is uncertain. Had anyone else asked, you wouldn't have had any problem insisting that you were sure. When this voice asks though... "I don't know..."

"That you know enough to question it should surely tell you that you are not fully healed," the voice said kindly. "Rest now; I will continue to tend you, with the dryads, and when you awake again you can begin to heal yourself."

Not daring to look back, you walk the few steps to where you had lain before and lie down again. The deep breathing of the voice follows you the entire way, and as your head touches the ground you feel warm breath on the back of your neck as the voice leans closer and whispers to you once more, "rest now, and sleep..."

The sunlight through the branches was coming at a different angle when I opened my eyes this time, and I lay there for a moment, feeling those same memories flood through me once more. I reached up a hand to touch the blocker at my temple, then paused as I caught sight of my hand. And yes, it was my hand. It wasn't a dream, it wasn't an illusion or a story that I was reading about. I was myself, and now that I knew this I could see what had been done to me before.

Grunting with the effort, I sat up, running my fingers across my bare temples, then over my ears and down the back of my neck. The blocker was gone.

Yes, it was gone. A quick search revealed it on the floor beside me, lying on the grass neatly beside my focus and sword, and the remains of my armour that had been removed when they had been tending me. It looked like it might still function, and a part of me wished desperately to put it on again and make the pain that was coming upon me go away. I could make it work even without the sergeant to authorise it.

With a hissed breath that was at least partly disgust and loathing at myself and what had been done to me, I came to my feet, ignoring my weapons and looking around.

The dell was empty now, the same covering of grass and ferns as had been there before, with only a few subtle differences... I checked my pulse, forcing my body's memory of itself into my conscious mind and tracing backwards through my own time. I had lain here for nearly a decade in total, which didn't seem possible, but would explain the general state of health that I was in. I seemed to have been fed during that time to some degree at least, though what I had eaten which had been taken in perfect and generated no waste in the process...

The cave was empty, nothing more than a hole a few metres deep. Even the blinding shadow that had covered it before was missing now. I took a few steps towards it, looking into it, and then shrugged to myself. Clearly it wasn't needed any more. I was about to turn back to my belongings when I heard and felt behind me that deep breath once more. I stopped, partly from those old combat reflexes, and partly in fear of what would come next.

"You are yourself now," the voice said, not entirely meaning it as a question.

"Yeah... Thanks for giving me time to sort myself out."

"You know what it was that afflicted you?"

"Nasty weapon. We didn't know their name for it, but we called it Third Person. Gets inside your head and disconnects you from reality. You just end up thinking about yourself and your actions as... Well, as if you were reading about a character in a story. It doesn't matter whether they live or die, just that something interesting happens." It's a relief to be able to talk about this, and a relief to know what has happened to you. "Soldiers who were affected had to be taken away from the front line. I got the impression that most were executed or went into labs so that we could find a cure for it."

"Really?" the voice asked, annoyingly perceptive.

"Okay... Maybe they were trying to reverse engineer it instead. I never found out and..." I shuddered at the thought of the blocker once more. "And I never wanted to. There's a lot I didn't want at that point."

"But you are yourself now," the voice said with reassurance, and I felt as it was said that it might be true. I could still feel the blocker pulling at me, the need to put it on again and make the world become simple once more... But I could live without it now. I would live without it. The pain though... That would take more time.

"The next question," the voice continued, "is whether you know who I am?"

I hesitated, still sensing that void behind me, still unsure about a great number of things. But I had heard that voice calling to me in the ruins of the city, and I had known even then who was speaking. I hadn't allowed myself to acknowledge or believe it because of that damned Third Person poison in my brain and the pain that was still inside my soul, but now I was myself once more I could acknowledge it.

I turned, looking at the person who had called me back from suicide and tended me for a decade as I lay healing. A lion, big by the standards of lions with his eyes level with my own. His mane and coat were healthy and shining. His eyes though focused on me with the most intelligent and understanding look I had ever been subjected to. Those eyes looked into my heart and soul and knew me inside and out in an instant. I was laid bare before them, found wanting in my inadequacies, and forgiven those failings in an instant.

I went down onto one knee without even thinking about it, bowing my head in submission. "Aslan..."

"Rise, Benjamin Foreman," Aslan said, coming closer to me and nuzzling my head with his nose. "You have no need to bow before me."

I rose uncertainly, and a bit unwillingly. That gaze was still on me when I looked up, but veiled somehow, as if now wary of breaking me when I was in a delicate state. I no longer felt it boring into me as it had before. "I'm not so certain."

"You may be certain," Aslan informed me. "You have done the best you were able or knew how, in situations where others would have faltered. That you have suffered and your deeds and motives become suspect does not reflect on you."

"That's basically what they told me when this happened the first time," I admitted. "It took a while for me to believe it."

Aslan nodded slowly, then looked over my shoulder at something behind me. I turned and found a gap had opened between two of the trees and a couple of fauns had come in bearing wooden platters with food and drink on them. They bowed to Aslan, somehow avoiding spilling anything, and then to me as well which was confusing. Once they had placed the platters on some flat ground they retreated and the bushes wound their way back into place.

"Please, eat," Aslan insisted. "You have been lying there for a very long time. You will need to eat properly before you leave."

I sat, my heart rising at the thought of being able to leave, but also sinking at the thought of leaving Aslan behind. Aslan came and sat beside me, and had anyone else tried it they would have appeared truly comical. For Aslan, being a lion taller than I was and with his sheer presence, there was nothing comical about it.

The food was wholesome, if plain; bread and cheese, with some fruit and a drink which I tentatively identified as some kind of beer. Without my consciously thinking about it my body rallied, nullifying the alcohol before it could affect me.

There was something that I came to realise was disturbing about the presence of Aslan as I ate and drank. That he was silent and allowed me time to finish wasn't a surprise. That he was visible to me wasn't a surprise. But to my other senses... "May I...?" I reached a hand partway to him, then hesitated.

"You may," he declared, lowering his head so that I could touch his muzzle and mane. They were both comfortably solid and real, and I withdrew my hand after a few seconds.

"I'm sorry about that," I said cautiously. "But..." I paused, not sure how to phrase this. "You're not entirely there."

"I am here," Aslan assured me. "I am wondering whether your full range of senses is ready for me yet."

"If it's all the same to you," I said apologetically, "I'd prefer that you were there properly. It's..."

"It disturbs you to see and yet not feel me here, when your hand tells you that I am." Aslan nodded, and abruptly, as if a curtain had been pulled back, he was there. Heat and flickers of power along his nerves, and a real tactile body... There was still no mind there, but, I reasoned, if I hadn't been ready to look at him earlier, then I definitely wouldn't have been ready to see his mind.

"Thank you. So... What happens now?"

Aslan looked at me carefully, and I felt a measure of that awareness of me creep back into him. "That will depend on you," he admitted. "You still have much pain inside you, though you are now able to handle it better than you were. You must heal properly, and to do that you will require time to think. And, I think, something to remind you of the good things in life; you cannot heal while all around you is in pain, or while in a place like this."

"This seems like a good place," I commented.

"It is a place to heal," Aslan informed me. "Not a place to grow or to live. No, you need more than this place can offer." He looked around himself for a moment, then back at me. "Are you willing to take a task? Will you accept a mission that will last you many years and place you in peril and danger?"

I paused. My time with the empire had been bad, with missions and tasks and assignments. When even sleep was denied to you, you had plenty of time for working.

This though... It would be different. A mission that I chose to accept, which would leave me able to find my own way again... "What would it involve?"

"There is a world which will be in peril," Aslan explained. "And there are times when it will need help. There are others who must lead, and who must cause things to happen. But you must be there to ensure that things remain on their course. You will not be alone, and I will ensure that you know in plenty of time where you are needed and what you must do."

"It sounds good," I admitted as I downed the last of the beer. "When do I start?"