"You were ours even when you did the bidding of the others.... when you entered his sanctum and wounded him fatally. Even when you acted at their will.... you were following our path."
"No," Sonovar whispered. "How did you know...?" He had told no one, not ever. Not Kalain, not Takier, no one.
He had told no one that, just as the fleets of his people circled above Earth, when he was nothing but a servant to the Grey Council, he, on the orders of the mysterious Vorlons, had gone to kill one of his own..
"You wanted the truth?" Forell observed mockingly. "We know. We have always known. You were nothing but a tool to us, and now your usefulness is ended. What is done, is done."
The thing around his neck became clear. It had one eye which flicked open, radiating a sheer malevolence, a pure and unbridled hatred.
"Now do you know who we are?"
"You won't win...." he rasped. "I'll destroy you all! Every single one of you!"
"No.... not you. Others, perhaps, but not you. It is possible we will not win. It is possible that the time has come at last for a decision, for one of us, Order or Chaos.... to triumph at last.... but should we lose, then we will leave behind our legacy.
"Congratulate yourself, great lord. You were vital to the nurture of our legacy. Our greatest weapon against the others is the enemy you tried and failed to kill."
"Sinoval," he whispered.
"Yes. Sinoval."
"No!" Sonovar roared, moving forward. Forell knew what was coming, but did not react. He could have tried to sidestep, to block, to move away, but he did nothing. The pike tore through his bone and his flesh, crushing skull and mind and heart. Sonovar continued to rain blows upon the body until there was nothing left but a mass of flesh and blood and broken bone.
Trembling, he stepped backwards. His mind was strangely clear, and he knew what he had to do. He could see so much now. He had broken his people apart, not for glory, not for power, not because it was right, but because an ancient race of evil had incited him.
"What was done.... what is broken, can always be repaired," he whispered to himself. "There is redemption, reparation...." He was thinking of what to tell Takier. He at least could salvage something from this. An order to surrender would be given. The Minbari must be united. This war must end. Now he saw that. He would fight for glory, but never for the whims of another.
"Redemption.... Reunification.... And of course...." His eyes flared, and he raised his pike.
"Revenge!"
Time shifted, faded, dissipated. As Kazomi 7 recovered from the assault of the Fist of Darkness and the near–destruction of the entire world, as John Sheridan waged unrelenting and bloody war on the Shadows, as Proxima 3 suffered famine and hardship, as Centauri Prime once again went up in flames.... Sinoval worked to heal the fractured wounds of his people.
He received Takier and his followers in person. Lanniel was freed and returned to her duties as Sinoval's guard. Takier requested the right of morr'dechai - an ancient right to suicide last practised in the early days of Valen's reign - but Sinoval denied him permission. Takier, Tirivail and the other leaders of the Storm Dancers clan were imprisoned, while those who could be trusted were set to guarding the trade routes between the sparse Minbari worlds.
Sinoval continued to watch for Sonovar, but he had seemingly disappeared. Reports came, whispers through the Vindrizi, through the Well of Souls. Shadow ships had been attacked, their bases threatened, their warriors hunted down and killed. Some of these were surely fabrications or exaggerations, but in some there were footprints that could only be Sonovar's.
Sinoval was content to wait, however. Since he had taken the title of Primarch he had learned patience. He could sense that events were being played out and that he would meet Sonovar again when the time was right.
On the day the Dark Star ships fought the Shadows at Velatastat, on the day Lord–General Marrago faced down the Shadow Criers in the throne room, Sinoval finally uncovered Sonovar's last place of refuge.
The ship was floating dead in space, broken, shattered, finished. It was nothing, nothing at all, hidden in a nowhere place far from anywhere. This was the place Sonovar had come to die.
Sinoval stood alone on the pinnacle of Cathedral and looked across at the ship. Sonovar's flagship, the place where he had stood and plotted and raved, the place where he had imprisoned Kats and Kozorr, the place where he had dealt with the Tak'cha, the place where he had continued the long process of tearing apart the Minbari people.
And that process would end here.
No. Sinoval shook his head. It would not end here. It would end somewhere else, when he carried out the deed he had been warned was necessary. The day he had taken the role and the name of Primarch Majestus et Conclavus, he had asked the Well of Souls what he would have to do to heal his people.
He wished he had never heard the answer.
That would end the strife, that would reunite his people.
"You are there, Sonovar," he whispered. "I can feel you. You aren't dead yet."
No, Sonovar was a warrior. He had chosen his last place. He was preparing himself, waiting. He was not dead yet, but soon.... very soon, he would die a warrior's death.
Sinoval closed his eyes and let the Well of Souls wash over him. He was unsure how the previous Primarch had felt this experience, but then he had been present at the actual creation of the Well and had known that he was a conduit, an extension of it. Sinoval had lived thinking of the Soul Hunters as abominations, monsters, demons from legend. For any true Minbari the very concept of the Well of Souls was a terrifying thought, a strike at the heart of everything he believed in and cherished.
Sinoval was no longer fully Minbari, but then he was not yet fully a Soul Hunter either. He was somewhere between the two, and so his thoughts were mixed.
He was not and never had been a poet, or he might have been able to put the experience into words. As it was he could envisage only the whispers of countless voices, as if he could hear the entire conversation of a planet just inside the next room. Different voices, different languages, different ages.... all in one, and yet separate. A musical symphony of a million different instruments and voices.
Sinoval gave up. He simply could not describe it. The Well existed on an entirely separate plane from this one. It could see through to this realm however. It could see the dying.... and the damned.
Sonovar was there, on the bridge of his ship. He was the last Minbari alive. Blood stained his hands and face. Not all of it was his own. Some of it came from those who had chosen to follow him. Sinoval sensed the thing that the Shadows had sent after him. Sonovar was evidently too insignificant for them to concern themselves with directly, so they had sent one of their minions.
The Well could feel it, and each voice trembled slightly. They knew what it was. Just one being, just one monster, but that was enough. It crackled its presence across both realities, poisoning the worlds of the dead. It was a true abomination, once a member of a great, enlightened and noble race that had fallen, and fallen far. It now lived only for death, to kill, and to raise up those it had killed, desecrating the bodies and souls of the dead, creating an army to serve itself.
Did you know I would be here? Sinoval asked himself. Is that why, of all the countless minions in your servitude - the Drakh, the Zener, the Z'shailyl, the Wykhheran.... is that why, of all of them, you unleashed this?