Jake felt Zamara smile. "Indeed there is. Although I sense you have something to say before I continue."

Zeratul nodded. "I should reciprocate with a story that is known only to the dark templar. A story of a hero. Only one, and yet more than one."

Riddles indeed. Was Zeratul finally going to tell them what had happened—why his outlook was so bleak?

Zeratul did not quite flinch, but the brightness in his eyes subsided for a moment. Of course, he had read Jake's thoughts.

"Nay. I would never call myself a hero, human. Not a villain, not quite, for I have ever acted for what I thought was best. But I am no hero. Nor would you think me one if—well." He turned his face to the soft, cooling spray of the waterfall and was silent for a moment.

"I will tell you of the Anakh Su'n—the Twilight Deliverer."

Jake felt unease for a moment. There was so very much at stake. He didn't want to hear some dark templar folktale, he wanted to do something. Zamara, despite her own driving needs, sent him calm. Zeratul does not indulge in idle chatter. If he wishes to tell this story, you may rest assured there is a very good reason.

Zeratul's eyes crinkled slightly. He definitely had not forgotten humor. Zamara is right, impatient youngling.

The rebuke had no sting. Jake found himself grinning a little despite the direness of the situation and settled back on the grass to listen.

"Zamara has the memories of the Discord. When the dark templar were rounded up like beasts, forced into an ancient ship, and expelled from the only world we had ever known. One among the protoss defended us. Adun. He disobeyed the Conclave's orders to have us executed, and instead tried to teach us to find new mental abilities and ways to control them, for our own protection. Ways that did not involve linking in the Khala, which we chose not to follow. His disobedience was discovered, but even then, he chose to do what he could to protect us. The Conclave would not consider integrating us into their society, but Adun mitigated their orders from death to banishment."

Jake nodded. This much he knew—this much he had actually seen through the memories of Vetraas.

"Yet even as we were leaving, violence broke out. It was Adun, again, who saved us. He called upon both light and dark powers to protect us, so that we might survive. He gave his life to save us."

"That's not the spin the Aiur protoss put on it," Jake said. "They saw it quite the opposite way—that Adun died to protect the sanctity of the Khala, where the protoss could link and find unity and strength. What's the phrase—"

"En taro Adun," Zamara replied.

"We dark templar also revere him in such a way. Except we say Adun toridas.. .commonly interpreted as 'May Adun give you sanctuary,' but literally and more bluntly, 'Adun hide you.'"

Jake thought about what Vetraas had seen, and rather agreed that the dark templar had the right of it. Adun had died protecting them.

"But did he die?" he blurted. "I mean—he vanished, certainly, and they couldn't sense him in the Khala. But no one is sure exactly what happened to him."

Zeratul was nodding. "That he was gone, is certain. But there was no body to give closure. No corpse to bear down the Road of Remembrance, to ritually bathe and sit with, and finally bury. Adun simply disappeared."

Jake stared at Zeratul. "You don't seem all that surprised. What do you think did happen to him then?"

Zamara remained silent, but Zeratul answered. "We believe he did not die. We believe he simply crossed to another plane of existence."

"Like Zamara."

"I am not Adun," Zamara demurred.

"No," Zeratul agreed. "But you have managed to live on in a fashion, through this terran."

"I could not have done this on my own. I used the energies of the temple to delay death until my memories could be transferred to another."

Zeratul gazed deep into Jake's eyes, seeing and speaking to both the human and the protoss who saw out of them. "True. It was a unique coinciding of need and opportunity. But you cannot argue that such another incarnation is impossible. You yourself, Zamara, are proof of that. Your spirit lives on...in another body. More than just your knowledge and memories are in Jacob's brain. You are."

Jake's stomach clenched at what Zeratul was implying. Somehow, once he'd gotten over the initial shock, the fact that he carried a protoss sentience in his head hadn't seemed all that weird. Jake was always the rational man. He understood that there were things like mental energies that could be scientifically explained. He hadn't used words like "soul" and "reincarnation." Now he wondered if he should. Despite all he had seen and experienced, with his own eyes or through the memories Zamara shared with him, he wasn't sure if he was ready to accept the ideas that Zeratul was tantalizingly putting forth.

"I had not thought of it in that fashion," Zamara said slowly. "It is intriguing. You are suggesting that something similar happened with Adun?"

"You survived, after a fashion, by using extremely powerful energies from a xel'naga temple. You were able to put your essence into Jacob. Adun was the first to wield both the mental energies traditional to the Aiur protoss, and the darker energies of the Void that we have wielded for over a thousand years. It is not illogical to assume that, for want of a better word, both you and Adun tapped into energies that had consequences far greater than anticipated."

The glowing eyes half closed and Zeratul tilted his head in amusement. "Although for us, the story of the Anakh Su'n, the Twilight Deliverer, is a bit more mystical than something so prosaic. We saw him ascend before our very eyes—sacrificing this existence to achieve another, higher spiritual plane. A prophecy slowly began to take shape around this remarkable incident. We believed Adun was waiting until a similarly great need arose to return to us—to all of us, Aiur protoss and dark templar alike. Did he not use both powers? Did he not die protecting us—not because we were different, but because we were the same as those who would have seen us dead or cast out?"

Zeratul's eyes flashed as he spoke, and Jake saw he was sitting up straighter. He remembered the image Zamara had given him of the prelate, before the disappointment of actually meeting him. Zeratul had seemed to him powerful, controlled and yet passionate, an inspiring presence. For the first time since Jake had met him, Zeratul seemed like that protoss.

"I firmly believe that while Adun wanted to keep us safe, he also wanted to keep the Aiur protoss from committing an atrocity from which they could never recover. To have slaughtered all of us—the stain of such a thing could not have been removed. We could never be a united people, with so vast a river of blood flowing between us. It was to help them as much as us that he summoned the powers he did and made his sacrifice."

Jake boggled at the depth of compassion it took for Zeratul—and by implication, all the dark templar—to see the incident in such a light.

"Those who had such talents meditated on the prophecy. They were given visions, signs to look for, for the return of Adun. How he would return we did not know. But return he would, once these signs had come to pass."

"And.. .you think he has?" Jake asked. At the same time as his lips formed the words—old habits died hard, and he found himself still speaking to the protoss rather than just thinking at them— Zamara asked, "What are the signs?"

Zeratul chuckled. "Ah. So many questions. I think I have said enough. Zamara has told a story—a poignant and powerful one." Heinclined his head respectfully. "I have told a story, a myth of my people that is not quite so fictional as it might seem to be at first. I think it is time that you, Jacob Jefferson Ramsey, told a story."