The young man knelt on the riverbank before the Twins. Sychte lounged on the far bank, strands of his long pale hair catching in the current.
"Are you here for your fortune or your future?" Sychte asked.
The man stood and said, "Both."
"You understand the peril of being here?" Antaua asked.
He nodded.
"Very well," Antaua said, and gestured to her brother.
Sychte's ice-pale eyes looked into the man's. All the forest creatures quieted. Sychte raised his hand, and a rainbow haze erupted from his palm. The haze dissipated to reveal Sychte's perfect face marred by sorrow.
"In losing everything, you shall succeed," he declared. "Equip him well, dear sister--his heart is noble."
Antaua drew a chain from her robes and said, "I can only give what the river allows. Yet I wish him the best."
The chain, which she wore always around her slender neck, was exceedingly delicate. She made a loop in it, which she dipped into the gurgling river.
Lifting the loop to her lips, she said to the man, "Choose wisely."
Before she could proceed, however, the shadows of the forest drew together into an ink-black creature whose head tangled in the branches.
"It seems I'm late," the stinking lizard-beast's voice boomed.
"You are unwelcome as ever, Niktel," Antaua said, the loop still held, dripping, between her fingers.
"As are your tricks," Sychte added. "Beware, for someday you may meet one who can best you at your own game."
Niktel's laugh rumbled in his black belly. "Like this lad? He is built of fear, my dear Twins."
Sychte's sad gaze touched the man again. "He is built of something far greater than you."
"Bah. Proceed, Antaua. Don't let me hold this man back from his fate."
Antaua lifted the loop to her lips and blew. A fluttering of iridescence burst from it, and the man's eyes darted this way and that until he pointed a finger.
"That one!" he shouted. He darted into the river and grabbed the bubble before it could burst against the stones. It balanced gently in his fingers while a hundred other worlds floated past.
Antaua nodded once, and the bubble took him into itself. Growling, Niktel opened his mouth wide and sucked in a breath. A hundred tiny bubbles soared towards his throat, and he snapped his jaws shut.
* * *
The young man found himself standing in a bustling city. He knew he had only moments--mere moments to destroy this innocent, unknown world. He had no strength of arms, no great power of intellect, but he did have his one magic. His curse.
All in this universe would be lost, either by his hand or by Niktel's. But if this world's undoing could be Niktel's . . . .
The man thought of his father, a mortal man; his mother had been the Sun. And now he made his choice to become a star, if for only a moment.
* * *
Niktel felt a fire upon his tongue, and he spat, but the heat grew and grew.
And he burned.
