Many revs in the future, on the planet Skea.

A silent scream shattered Kore's hard-won tranquility. Ricocheting and repeating inside his head, the soundless petition reminded him yet again that he was not like the others of his clan.

Ignoring the disruptive mind-noise, he baited two more hooks with animal viscera then dropped the weighted gut-line over the side of his small grendoak boat. The surrounding waters splashed, alive with predacious gothia. Cinnabar in hue, cannibalistic in eating habit, the fish were his for the catching. Cut the line, pull them in, and he would fill his empty belly.

Kore unsheathed his blade, took the carved hilt in hand.

And the mute cry for help grew more insistent.

Be gone, demon! He answered in return, shoulders hunched, denying-nay-warding off the summons. Why would the husky voice not leave him alone?

When finally she sobbed, a distraught wail that tore at his innards, Kore gave up all pretense of fishing. Defeated, he narrowed his sharp gaze at the horizon.

Where are you?

A strange vessel bobbed in the distance. Its awkward keel told him the hull was taking on water. With nary a thought for his forfeited meal or his lost hooks, Kore dirked the baited gut-lines and shoved off, arms flexing on the oars, slicing through ink-black waves. He must reach the ship before it sank.

Hold on!

After tying his boat to the side of the odd craft, Kore stumbled aboard the glowing deck.

Heat, unnatural and vibrating, blasted his face, melted the soles of his hide boots and singed his feet. Casting aside twisted metal plates that resembled a warrior's armor and burned white-hot; Kore waded waist-deep in steam to the crumbled portal and squeezed through the narrowed opening. Inside the ruin that had once been the ship's hull, Kore narrowed his eyes once more.

WHERE-ARE-YOU?

Whirring noises. Blinking lights. An assortment of charred wreckage he could neither describe nor explain gleamed in the dark: radiant gears, hunks of phosphorescent metal, broken shiny objects, fractured reflective devices-

Bodies.

Tangled corpses floated amidst the stew of debris.

So much carnage. So many lost lives! And all carried the exotic look of her, the one who lived, the one who had called out to him.

The sole survivor, a sprite slight of frame and pale of complexion, was still strapped in her submerged seat. Head tilted back, graceful throat revealed, her long hair fanned the encroaching waters like seaweed for all that the tendrils were vermillion red, a shade deeper than that of the gothia fish but lighter than the rust-hued blood that surrounded her.

Steps led down into the shell. In his haste to get to her, he bypassed these and dropped smoking feet first into the flooded chamber.

"Be not afraid," he told her by way of reassurance. "I mean you no harm." Once he had freed her from the confining belt, Kore scooped the sprite up out of the rusty-black sea, holding her fast despite his blistered hands.

The female weighed no more than the feather of a grendle and was garbed in neither cloth nor fur, but in some tight scaly skin that sluiced off the water and clung to her shape like the silvery husk of a seed. Above an upright collar, her face shone bright-almost as bright as the third moon, Khalia. Clearly, she belonged to a breed apart. Who was this luminous creature? From whence did she hail?

He had no way to know. The deep sleep of the mortally wounded held her in sway; barely holding onto the thread of life, she could tell him naught. But if perchance she could hear him, he told her something of himself: "I am Kore, leader of the Hunters. Upon my Keht oath, you have naught to fear from me."

A long speech for him. To collect himself, he inhaled, and in the vapor that swirled thick around them, her scent, that illusive quality no two beings share, drifted up to his nostrils.

Mine.

The thought beat in him true and steady, as true and steady as his heart.

The sprite's heart beat a less robust refrain.

Not a trice to spare, Kore forded back to the steps with the injured female clutched high in his arms, her red seaweed hair writhing behind in the foaming surf. Wincing as the seething cauldron scalded his limbs through his hide braccae, he bounded up the treads four at a time.

He hesitated at the landing. The crumbled metal portal would not accommodate them both together and he refused to put her down. Instead, Kore pressed his shoulder to the smoldering barrier and gave a mighty push.

A thunderous boom, originating from the bowels of the ship, shook the vessel. A firestorm burst forth. Crackling and sizzling, the conflagration leapt at his face, a hot tongue searing his jaw and neck, its fiery kiss rippling his flesh.

Gnashing his teeth against the pain, Kore rounded his body over his charge. She had endured enough already; he would not have her also suffer the flames!

Another violent clap-a quake that rocked the ship once, then again-and the portal blew out, and he raced through the yawning hole for the deck. Fire lapping at his heels, he plunged with the sprite into the sea. When the strange vessel went down, a surge of turbulent white-water taking his small fishing boat with it, Kore kicked off for shore.

Upon reaching dry land, he collapsed, the female still locked in his arms. A touch to the pulse at her throat confirmed her waning spirit hovered at the edge of the void. Without help, she would cross over to the other side.

The Sald possessed healing knowledge. Using their unguents and poultices and splints, they could mend her ripped flesh, set her broken bones, make her all of one piece again. Kore asked favor of no one, but he would go to the coastal towers and beg the Elder to save the sprite's life.

He bent his knee to rise.

Light flickered before his eyes. A rumbling fit of coughing seized him. The fiery rescue had taxed his strength; the arduous swim had sapped what reserve remained. To save the sprite, he must relinquish her-he would never make the journey otherwise.

Placing her gently away from him, Kore forced himself to his feet. Allowing himself only one last look at the one who had summoned him, he staggered off alone for the Sald coastal towers.

Halfway there, a fit of bilious coughing doubled him over. His chest rattled and burned; his throat was afire, his breathing constricted as if by a birthing caul. Weaving on his feet, he continued on, fighting to remain conscious. Short of his destination, he lost his battle. In a field of tall-growing gris, his slow trek came to an abrupt end when a sharp pain felled him.

The four moons lit the night sky when finally he awakened.

The sprite!

On hands and knees part of the way, reeling the rest, Kore returned to the spot where he had left her.

Not even a shallow imprint remained in the ivory sands. The incoming tides had swept the sprite back out to sea . . .

If ever she had existed at all.