She understood the Shadows. She was not their servant, but their ally. If they had been active thirty or forty years ago, her people might still be alive, might still be masters of the galaxy.

The Dilgar were dead, and would never rise again, but they would be remembered… She would build their monument, and how ironic it would be that the very race that had destroyed hers would create that monument on the ruins of the very race that had sheltered her.

Not for nothing was she called Deathwalker. She had made preparations… Her monument of blood was only just beginning.

Lyta crawled out from behind Susan. The Shadow agent had slumped down almost on top of her. She was still screaming.

Lyta was not sure exactly what she had done. She remembered the beating, she remembered the questions and Welles’ harshly ironic and scathing verbal assault on her. She remembered the sleepers. She remembered reaching out to touch Marcus’ mind and not being able to. She remembered a threat…

And she remembered one word. A word spoken in her mind by a voice she still did not understand.

“NO!”

And she had lashed out. Subconsciously, not understanding what or why or how, she lashed out with her powers, creating agony with a thought.

All she could see was Marcus. When he held her, for a moment she could forget where she was. For a moment she could take pleasure in the warmth of his presence.

But just for a moment…

The Shadows were moving. She saw them a mere instant before Marcus did, and she pushed him aside. She could hear the voice speaking to her, slowly and cautiously, directing her. She closed her eyes and reached deep inside, working past the sleepers, working past the pain and the numbness and the fear…

She lashed out again. The Shadows stopped and faltered. One of them bowed down, lowering its… she thought it was its head. The other one hesitated, as if recognising the taint of its ancient enemy within her.

Marcus acted. Scooping up Ivanova’s discarded pike, he struck at the nearest creature. He was not skilled with such a weapon, but that hardly mattered. Wielding it almost like a baseball bat, he gripped its end in both hands and swung it…

The first Shadow crumpled, its forelegs twitching. Marcus bashed its neck, once, twice, three times… It stopped twitching.

“Marcus!”

Lyta lost concentration for a moment, and the second Shadow rushed forward. It raised its foreleg and tore across Marcus’ chest. He fell back, and she struck out mentally again. The Shadow seemed unaffected. It certainly continued its charge over the fallen Marcus.

Acting on instinct with a weapon he had never before used, Marcus pushed up one end of the pike. The Shadow ran on to it with a sickening crunch and fell back. Marcus staggered to his feet and swung out with the pike as he had last time…

Lyta did not need telepathy to register the feelings of nausea and tiredness within him. She felt them as well, but she didn’t care. He dropped the weapon and winced at the pain of his injuries. She rushed forward and embraced him tightly, not caring about their pain, just caring that they were together.

She kissed him, for the first time without touching his mind with hers. It felt… better this time. Not as invasive. Ivanova had called her a mental rapist, and that felt true. Lyta had never felt more ashamed of the abuses to which she had put her powers.

She did not sense Ivanova’s attack. She had not even noticed that Ivanova had stopped screaming. Marcus had.

He threw Lyta aside and moved forward to confront Susan. She had picked up the pike, stained with blood and ichor and chitin. There was a madness in her eyes, a look of intense grief and anguish and a blood-rimmed, raging red fury…

She had already started her strike when Marcus pushed Lyta out of the way. It had been aimed at Lyta, but she seemed helpless to redirect it, and Marcus seemed just as helpless to stop it.

Ivanova wielded the weapon consummately. She had held it for nearly a year after all. It was almost a part of her.

Lyta later supposed that she had tried to pull the blow back at the last minute, as if she realised who she was attacking, but too late.

At the time Lyta could not notice this. She only saw the pike tear into Marcus’ chest, ripping apart the skin, crushing bone and muscle as it did so.

His heart broke.

It was an old story, a very old story, one he had listened to as a child. Listened to, and remembered and dreamed about.

The gallant knight, the fair maiden, the foul monsters, the wicked enchantress. A noble quest, infiltrating the fortress of evil, vanquishing the monsters and winning the hand of the fair lady.

Real life doesn’t always end like that.

Marcus Cole had read epic fantasy as a child, read and memorised, but most of all, he had read the Arthurian legends, he had read about Camelot, the Grail Quest, the Battle of Camlann… He had read of King Arthur and his fair Guinevere, of Lancelot the Brave, Galahad the Pure, Gawain and the Green Knight, Perceval Knight of the Grail, mysterious and wise Merlin, Gareth Knight of the Kitchen, the sorceress Morgana… Marcus Cole had dreamed about knights, about the Round Table, he had dreamed of becoming a knight, of living his life to a code, a purpose, a duty to something greater than he was.

He never found it.

Oh, he found a place, of sorts, but only after his home colony had been destroyed, only after his brother had been killed, only after he had lost everything.

Marcus Cole knew about the Shadows, he knew about what they could do, perhaps more than anyone else, for he alone of the people on Proxima – up until the fateful Battle of the Second Line – had seen them rising in their full, black, terrible fury. He still saw them in his dreams. He still heard their screams.

No one else understood. No one could. Captain Sheridan only saw them as an enemy to be fought, as did Commander Corwin. To Satai Delenn they were prophecy and destiny and fate. Not even Lyta understood properly, although she must have seen them in his mind as she touched him there.

No, one other person understood. Susan Ivanova. Ambassador of the Shadows. Marcus Cole had been set to watch her, to observe and record and report. She had known about his intentions of course, and the two had indulged in a battle of wits for months. And then something unexpected happened.

She understood him, better than anyone else. She also knew the sheer loss, the pain of losing everything, the pain of trying to rediscover dreams when the world has stolen them from you. She knew the need for companionship, for understanding, for peace…

In many ways, she was his kindred spirit, far more than Lyta could ever be, but Susan had given herself to the Shadows. Whether from force or from weakness or because she genuinely believed, she had given herself to the Darkness, and that was something Marcus Cole would never do, not even at the end.

It was the end.

In the skies above them, Minbari were fighting and dying. Drawn to Proxima 3 half out of necessity, half out of blood thirst, they had come, and the Shadows had been waiting for them. The Minbari were falling. Sheridan was there, as was an unlikely assortment of allies, brought together by the one other person who understood the Shadows as Marcus did, a person whom Marcus had met only very briefly, a meeting which could never forge the links they should have shared.

On the ground of Proxima 3 an equally deadly battle was taking place.

The gallant knight had rescued the fair maiden, but there was one small, tiny deviation from the classic.

The gallant knight was dead.

His blood slowly pooled on the floor…