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said, the word ‘her’ hung and echoed as the fire flickered in her dead eyes.
    The girl’s words may have been fantasy, but with it, came the reality of the situation. These people, just like his Renegade brothers and sisters, were dead . . . because of him. His fury was gone now, spent, and now, like always, despair and guilt fell over him, so heavy, it made him fall to his knees, then to all fours. His breath became wheezy, sporadic. He felt a panic attack coming on. The pressure inside him, it was so much now. If only he could cry, shed tears, anything to release it, but ever since the day of the rupture, not a drop had come, and none were coming now as he dry heaved, and sucked back in soot and rot filled air.
    If only he had a drink.
    Gisbo crawled forward, feeling broken glass dig into his knees, shins, and hands, but he didn’t even feel it as he desperately tried to find a bottle, anything to keep the pressure down, to keep the pain, the guilt, and the memories at bay. He found his way under the tables where just hours before, the fake Renegades were drinking, and he lifted up bottle after bottle upon the floor, and tilted them up to his lips, only to swallow cigar butts, tissues, backwash, and a host of other horrible things, but only minute traces. Not enough to break his insane level of tolerance.
    With a vicious curse, Gisbo tossed the last remaining bottle beneath the table and it shattered against the brick chimney, the only thing still standing, like a white flag of surrender within a battlefield.
    Surrender.
    This was a word that was foreign to him up until now.
    Surrender.
    There it was again. The word floated in his mind, wonderful, beautiful, and comforting like sweet lemonade going down a dry throat on a summer day in Heaven’s Shelter.
    Surrender.
    This had to stop. He knew it had to stop. Because of him, too many people had died and while he still lived, there would be many more.
    Surrender.
    Why didn’t he think of it before? All of it, the pain, the guilt, the memories, it could all end, all of it. He remembered then, something his father had tossed at him in one of his famous rants . . .
    “ When life is lived right, death becomes a reward.”
    Gisbo quickly grabbed at several of the broken glass shards around him, held the sharpest pieces up to his wrists, took in a deep breath, and slit them open in a variety of spots, up and down, left and right, then, he moved up to his neck, where his jugular veins lied, and did the same thing.
    Moments later, he was drenched in his own, hot blood. He saw his surroundings flicker in and out, like a viewing monitor’s screen turning off and on. Only moments away now, and he would be free. The world would go black, and he would finally have peace eternal, on his own terms, not Drakearons.
    And then, the monitor, his life, came back on.
    Shocked, Gisbo felt his neck and looked down to see that the Drakeness had already healed his would be fatal wounds shut and already, he felt new red blood cells being reformed within him, replicating in a numbing surge that filled his body.
    “FUCK!” Gisbo screamed, slamming his fists down over and over, trying to cry, trying to release his pain, his guilt, but nothing came. There was only one way out of this now.
    Gisbo quickly spied someone’s glinting dagger in the fire. He crawled to it, lifted it up, and held the dagger over a patch of fire, holding it there until the edge turned black, then a bright orange, hot as a poker. He knew that while the Drakeness could heal most any wound from minor ones, to major ones, there were certain things it couldn’t, like a stab through the heart for instance . . .
    He hovered the searing blade over his heart now, knowing the orange blade would pass clean through his chest as if it were butter, and release, would finally be his. He couldn’t help but think of his Aunt then, who had died, stabbing herself through on Gisbo’s own blade, giving her life to save many. And now,