Chapter 6: Threshold

Andrea 2 shook her head. "We've gotta go back to Terra Prime first. We can't fight them, not without help. They killed that other girl who we don't even know who she was, they killed Joan..."

"She can't be dead," said Annafrid. "It's not possible."

"This is no damn time for denial!" shrieked Andrea 2. "She's dead, and there's not one goddamn thing we can do about it! She's dead! She's dead!"

"No, I mean it isn't possible!" roared Annfarid. "We're Eternal Champions. We can't die. I saw Death himself appear before me and strike my name from his book! [13219] And your eye will come back too, Jarlath! If I were to chop off my hand here and now it would grow back! Unless the Powers were lying to us..."

"Well, she sure looked dead to me," said Andrea 2. "Jarlath?"

Jarlath simply stared off into space. There was something about the look in his eyes and the smile on his face that was unpleasantly knowing. In the ten years since she'd arrived on Terra Prime, Andrea 2 had come to see that Jarlath really was just as human as she was. She'd even come to see him as a friend. But there were times when she still found him unnerving.

Jarlath laughed, a dry chuckle that Andrea 2 found all too familiar. "No," he said. "She isn't dead..."

What happens when a Champion dies?

The Highest Ones looked upon the worlds, and they saw that they are filled with terror and woe and death, and that all the good and beautiful things in all the worlds are swallowed up by Time and come to dust. And they saw that there needs must be something that abides forever. And so they Called the Champions and saw that it was good. The Champions cannot die. But that does not mean that Death does not touch them, for in all the worlds there is nothing without price. They must live through the deaths of their nations and their worlds and those they love who are not Called. And they must live through their own deaths.

The Highest Ones decreed that all Champions shall pass through Death alive. But none pass through Death unchanged. Even when they seem to act unchanged, their behavior and way of thinking changes in subtle ways that only another Champion can see. Sometimes they gain a subtle melancholy or fear, a sense of loss that never leaves them. Sometimes they gain a terrible wisdom or even the ability to see brief snatches of the future and the past, for they have moved beyond time. And sometimes their passage through Death is rough and storm-wracked. Sometimes they find themselves with no memory of who they are, or even sent to another world in another life. Sometimes they change in appearance and personality, much as in what the Time Lords call Regeneration. (For the first of the Time Lords, Rassilon, is himself a Champion, a secret no mortal knows.) And sometimes they are consumed by madness or become so broken that the Highest Ones can only take them to their last end as an act of mercy.

The Court of Champions of Gaia Prime, adoptive homeworld of the Elder Champions, calls this passage through death the Threshold. The Court of Terra Prime has no word for it yet...

Joan remembers the battle in brief, bright, terrifying flashes, though she could not put these memories into any clear order. She remembers the screams of fear from the native soldiers, like nothing she'd heard since she'd first been captured by the Orcs. She remembers the flash of swords and the twang of crossbows. She remembers slashing at a native soldier, horrified by her own actions, and the thunk of an arrow into her own chest. She remembers Rowena, the very image of her good friend, falling to the ground, her skull crushed by the horse's feet.

She does not remember how she came to stand at the edge of the Dragon's Caves.

There is no one else in sight. She can see the farmlands in the distance but they are blackened and charred. Perhaps the Dragon destroyed them? No, that wasn't right, she killed the Dragon. She remembers the beast's last cry of pain as the spells of her comrades. But no, it was not her dragon. She'd never had a chance to face it. Is this her own world?

"Yes," sneers a voice from behind her. She turns around and finds herself facing Lord Frederigo D'Honaire. Which one is he? He can't be one of the Champions, but there is something uncomfortably familiar about him.

"Who are you?" shouts Joan.

"I am the Lord Frederigo D'Honaire. The true Lord Frederigo D'Honaire. The one you should have been. Look at this." He pointed at all the charred land around them. "Think of all the people who once lived in this land. It's all because of you! You have abandoned your quest!"

"I had no choice!" said Joan, though the sight of the dead land made her less confident than she might have been. "That accursed mage changed me, and the demon sent me elsewhere. Do you think I don't fear for my house and my nation? But it is by the Lord's will that I was sent to another world with no way back. And I do not belong in that world now, for I am not the man I once was, to say the least. I have served my new world and my new family with all my might, and I have done so with honor!"

"Then why is it, that when that vile mage-scientist invented a way to find other worlds, you didn't seek your own, but went on a vacation to someone else's?" Joan was silent. "You did have a choice," said the man who said he was the true Fred. "You could have killed yourself as soon as that mage cursed you. You were a Dragonslayer! You were an enemy of all unnatural creatures of dark magic. Yet now you have not only become such a creature but you have embraced your curse! You do not fight the urge to dance that the mage cursed you with, but you enjoy it! You flaunt the form the necromancer gave you like a harlot! You are a disgrace to the name of D'Honaire."

At this Joan laughs. "I am not Lord Frederigo D'Honaire. There's plenty of him to go around. I am Joan D'Honaire, and I am more than you can ever be." She unsheathes the sword, an elegant foil, that hung at her side. Frederigo unsheathes his great longsword and they clash together.

Frederigo fights with all the might, strength and fury he can manage. But Joan is not the opponent he expects. Joan's movements are swift and fluid and elegant, the movements of a dancer. She is struck by how much freer her movements are than Fred's. "Do you mock my dancing?" she says. "Then let us see which of us can better dance the dance of the blade!"

It all seems to be over in one glorious instant. With ridiculous ease Joan slices Fred's head off his neck and he screams a terrifying scream. His corpse falls to the earth, spewing forth blood. Joan laughs once more. "Good riddance," she says.

Joan turns her back on the Dragon's caves once and for all and walks through the blighted lands. Charred corpses of men, women, and children lay scattered throughout the fields. Sometimes she sees a face she recognizes. Then, after how long she does not know, she sees a living man.

"Toby!" she shouts joyfully. Sir Tobias of Landridge is the Allarian knight who she had had a brief fling with once she arrived on Terra. He is perhaps not the most handsome man in the world, but he has an enormous appetite for life and love. They split up once she became a Champion and he married another and had three children. But even now they are still friends and she enjoys his company. His face is worn and haggard, but he lights up as soon as he sees Joan.

"My lovely Joan!" he shouts and enthusiastically embraces her. "It is good to see someone of such beauty in this terrible place." He is young and fresh, looking just as he did when she first saw her. But as soon as he touches her, his hair begins to turn gray. He now seems to be the Sir Toby she knows today. But he does not stop aging. His hair turns white and falls out, his teeth turn yellow, his flesh wrinkles and withers. He screams in agony and then falls to the ground, his corpse joining all the others.

Joan weeps quietly and briefly kneels to pray over his corpse. She would stay longer to grieve but she knows she must move on.

As she walks onward through the charred lands she sees another man ahead of her. This is not a living man. He is tall and blonde and wears an elegant dress suit from the Military's world. He is very handsome, but his skin is pale and his eyes are dead black. Joan instantly knows who he is.

"Is it Death that stands before me?" says Joan. "Am I called to my judgment at last?"

"Oh no," says Death. "You can't stay with me, alas. But perhaps you could spare me a dance?"

He holds out his hands and Joan takes them, feeling a giddy excitement. In her ten years as her current self she has learned and mastered as many forms of dancing as she can, from elegant ballroom dancing to more passionate forms like the tango to the belly dancing Belboz cursed her to perform. It is a ballroom dance that she and Death perform, with Death taking the lead.

And so they dance. Through countless battles and killing fields and cataclysms they dance. To the tune of the screams of dying soldiers and widowed mothers and orphaned children they dance. They stop at the edge of a vast mountain covered in snow, on the side of which is a black door inlaid with gold patterns. Death bows to her and opens the door...

1. And she steps through...

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