text: Roh's defenses burst. He lost his hold on Para and slid across the wet floor. Three arrows seethed through the broken defenses and sank into his guts. He rolled over, gasping. A wave of Tai Mora came at him. Saradyn roared and positioned himself in front of Roh, shielding him. The orbs of the orrery shimmered and danced in the room, obscuring his view, causing confusion and chaos. The trickling sound of water had become a constant stream, the mutter of multiple waterfalls. The water rose around him.
  
  A wave of chittering figures burst forth from the wink that opened onto the plateau. Saradyn roared and threw himself at the figures. They hissed and broke around him, as if fearful or in thrall to him. He laughed, a great guffaw.
  
  Saradyn grabbed Roh by the arm and hauled him up. Blood wept from Roh's guts. Pain made him woozy.
  
  "The circle," Roh said. He looked back to where Lilia sat, weeping. "Get Lilia. I can go a while on my own."
  
  The wasp-waisted figures continued to ignore him and Saradyn. Saradyn kept hold of Roh's arm, dragging him painfully through the water.
  
  Saradyn looped another arm under Lilia's. Roh noted her wound. Gave one last look to the pedestals where Kadaan, Maralah, Anavha and Taigan were locked into the device. Luna's crumpled body was just visible on the other side of the main pedestal. The man this new Kirana had called Suari stood atop the pedestal, hand outstretched to the new Kirana.
  
  Saradyn got them within six paces of the great green circle on the floor before an ax took him in the back. He went over, dropping them both.
  
  Roh fumbled at the arrows in his guts. Snapped off the ends of them, and took Lilia by the collar.
  
  "What did I do?" Lilia cried. "What did–"
  
  Roh dragged Lilia back into the circle where they had arrived while the temple heaved around them. The stones groaned. Water continued to rise all around them. It was as deep as his shins now, rushing up faster and faster.
  
  Roh took Lilia by the shoulders and shook her. "Listen to me! Would you listen? I told you."
  
  "I didn't… I did the right–"
  
  "You did the selfish thing," he said. "Don't you understand yet, Li? There's always another monster, another and another, behind them. You kill them, you become them, you lose everything you ever cared for." He was crying too, remembering what he had done to the Patron of Saiduan, and the path that had brought him here. All the selfish, terrible choices. "We made poor choices, Li. We are terrible, selfish people. We aren't Dhai at all."
  
  Another surge of water rolled over them. Lilia gasped and spit water. Roh's knees weakened. He sank to the floor, arms wrapped around Lilia.
  
  He closed his eyes. "I need to go back," he said. "Please, back to Oma's Temple. Not the Assembly Chamber… somewhere we can hide… please, can you do that, keeper? Can you hear me at all?"
  
  Nothing. No voice. No help. After all this time, all this work getting them here, and they were going to let them die?"
  
  "Temple keeper!" Roh said. "You made me your Guide. We're dying! We're going to–"
  
  The floor swallowed them.
  
  Darkness.
  
  An absence of pain. Relief. Oma, he was so relieved, he was nothing but a wave of warm emotions.
  
  My Guide.
  
  "We failed," Roh said, or thought he said, because all was blackness and he could not feel his body.
  
  Everyone does, my Guide. Perhaps we always choose wrong.
  
  "You don't," Roh said. "We do."
  
  Always the same choices.
  
  "Give us another chance."
  
  I can't do that. I'm just a beast.
  
  "We can make better choices."
  
  It's not your choice, the temple said. It's hers.
  
  "Then give her another chance."
  
  You believe in her?
  
  "I always have."
  
  A glimmer in the darkness. Brilliant white light.