Pittacus follows along behind Setrákus. The noose dangles from his hands. His strong jaw is set and determined, but his eyes are glistening.
“Please, Setrákus. Stop talking.”
Setrákus knows that he can’t escape, so he stops trying to crawl away. He rolls over onto his back, flat in the dirt, and looks up at Pittacus.
“How can I be wrong, Pittacus?” Setrákus asks breathlessly. “Lorien itself gave me the power to dominate other Garde, to strip their Legacies as I see fit. That’s the planet’s way of saying that it wants me in control.”
Pittacus shakes his head and stands over his friend. “Listen to yourself. First you decry the way Lorien gives out its gifts at random, and now you claim that your Legacies are destiny. I’m not sure which thought I find more disturbing.”
“We could rule together, Pittacus,” Setrákus pleads. “Please. You are like a brother to me!”
Pittacus swallows hard. With his telekinesis, he loops the noose around Setrákus’s throat. He crouches down so he’s straddling his fellow Elder, his hand poised on the thick knot of rope that will tighten the noose.
“You went too far,” Pittacus says. “I am sorry, Setrákus. But what you’ve done . . .”
Pittacus begins to tighten the noose. He should do this quickly, but he can’t quite bring himself to end things, not yet. The sharpened edge bites into Setrákus’s neck. My grandfather gasps at the pain, yet doesn’t fight against it. There’s a sudden knowledge in his eyes, a resignation. Setrákus leans back. The noose bites deeper into his flesh. He stares up at the sky.
“There will be two moons tonight,” he says. “They’ll dance on the beach like we used to, Pittacus.”
Blood darkens the ground beneath my grandfather. He begins to weep, so he closes his eyes to hide this.
Pittacus can’t go through with it. He pulls the noose from around Setrákus’s throat, tosses it aside and stands up. He doesn’t make eye contact with Setrákus. Instead, he peers off towards the Liberator and Setrákus’s research area, watching as the entire place is put to the torch. He believes in his heart that this means it’s over. He believes that Setrákus can come back from this, that he has realized the error in his ways. He still sees his old friend there, lying in the dirt. He doesn’t know the monster he will become.
The Liberator is a long way off. No one back there notices when Pittacus uses telekinesis to drag one of Setrákus’s already-dead assistants across the dirt towards them. While Setrákus watches, wide-eyed, Pittacus uses his Lumen to set the body on fire until all that remains is a charred and unrecognizable corpse. When it’s done, Pittacus looks away.
“You are dead,” Pittacus says. “Leave here. Never return. Maybe one day, you can find a way to heal what’s been damaged, here and inside you. Until that day comes . . . good-bye, Setrákus.”
Pittacus takes the burned body with him and leaves Setrákus there in the dirt. He stays perfectly still, letting his blood pool from the circular wound carved into his pale neck. Eventually, he wipes the tears out of his eyes.
Then, Setrákus smiles.
We linger in that canyon as the years begin to fly by. The ash from the battle is blown away, the scorch marks fading from sunlight. The remains of Setrákus Ra’s machine erode, eaten away by the red dust and the winds that whip through the mountains.
Every year, when there are two moons in the sky, Pittacus Lore returns here. He stares at the wreckage of the Liberator and considers what he did. What he almost did. What he didn’t do.
How many years go by like this? It’s hard to tell. Pittacus never ages thanks to his Aeturnus.
And then, one day, as Pittacus stands in the very spot where he should’ve killed my grandfather, an ugly insectoid ship cuts across the sunset and zooms down towards him. It looks just like an older version of the Mogadorian Skimmers that I’ve seen so many times. As the ship lands in front of him, Pittacus lets flames curl over one hand, the other encased in a spiky ball of ice.
The ship opens and Celwe steps out. Unlike Pittacus, she has aged. Her once-auburn hair now gray, her face deeply lined. Pittacus’s eyes widen when he sees her.
“Hello, Pittacus,” she says, self-consciously tucking strands of hair behind her ears. “You haven’t aged a day.”
“Celwe,” Pittacus breathes, at a loss for words. He takes her in his arms, she hugs him back and they linger for a long moment. Eventually, Pittacus speaks. “I never thought I’d see you again. When Setrákus Ra—when he—I didn’t expect you to go into exile with him, Celwe.”
“I was raised that we Loric mate for life,” Celwe replies, not coldly.
Pittacus raises a skeptical eyebrow at this but says nothing. Instead, he looks past Celwe towards the old-model Skimmer. “That ship. Is it . . . ?”
“Mogadorian,” Celwe replies simply.
“Is that where he’s been hiding all these years? Where you’ve been living?”
Celwe nods. “What better place than one the Garde are forbidden to travel to?”
Pittacus shakes his head. “He should come back. It has been decades. The Elders have erased him from the histories, his name forgotten by everyone but us. I truly believe after all these years that his crimes could be forgiven.”
“But the crimes have never stopped, Pittacus.”
That’s when he notices it. The telltale black veins running along Celwe’s neck. Pittacus takes a step back, his expression hardening.
“Why have you returned now, Celwe?”
In answer, Celwe turns back to her Skimmer. “Come here,” she says and, a moment later, a timid girl, no more than three years old, peeks out from the Skimmer’s entrance. She has Celwe’s auburn hair and Setrákus Ra’s stern features and suddenly I’m reminded of Crayton’s letter. Setrákus Ra may call me his granddaughter, but I’m actually his great-granddaughter. There’s no denying it now—not just because Legacy knows, but because I recognize myself in her—this child will grow up and give birth to Raylan, my father.
“This is Parrwyn,” Celwe says. “My daughter.”
Pittacus stares at the child. “She’s beautiful, Celwe. But . . .” He looks at the elderly face before him. “I am sorry, but how is it possible?”
“I know I am old to be a mother,” Celwe replies, a distant look in her eyes. “Fertility is Setrákus Ra’s speciality now. Fertility and genetics, to help uplift the Mogadorians. They call him Beloved Leader.” She scoffs at this, shaking her head. “Yet he wouldn’t see his only child raised among them. So here we are.”
Parrwyn creeps forward, hiding behind her mother’s leg. Pittacus Lore crouches down, waves his hand over the canyon’s lifeless rocks and causes a single blue flower to bloom from the sandstone. He plucks it and hands it to Parrwyn. The girl smiles brightly.
“I will arrange for your protection here,” Pittacus says to Celwe, not looking at her but her daughter. “You can live a normal life. Keep her safe. Do not tell her of . . . of him.”
Celwe nods. “He will come back one day, Pittacus. You know that, right? Except it won’t be like you imagine. He won’t be seeking forgiveness.”
Pittacus touches his throat, running a hand along the place where Setrákus Ra’s scar is located.
“I will be ready for him,” Pittacus says.
He wasn’t.
The vision ends and the darkness returns. There are starbursts of Loric energy all around me. Once again, I’m floating through the warm space that is Legacy.
“What now?” I ask. “Why did you show us that?”
So you would know, its voice replies gently. And so knowing, now you will meet.