Stunned by the direct hit from the energy weapon of the water being, the One-Who-Records fought his way upward through a universe shot through with whirling shapes of fire, to emerge on a plateau of mortal agony.
He tried to move, was shocked into paralysis by the cacophony of conflicting motor- and sense-impressions from shattered limbs and organs.
Then I, too, die, the thought came to him with utter finality. And with me dies the once-mighty song of Djann . . .
Failing, his mind groped outward, calling in vain for the familiar touch of his link brothers—and abruptly, a sharp sensation impinged on his sensitivity complex. Concepts of strange and alien shape drifted into his mind, beating at him with compelling urgency; concepts from a foreign brain:
Youth, aspirations, the ring of the bugle's call to arms. A white palace rearing up into yellow sunlight; a bright banner, rippling against the blue sky, and the shadows of great trees ranked on green lawns. The taste of grapes, and an odor of flowers; night, and the moon reflected from still water; the touch of a soft hand and the face of a woman, invested with a supernal beauty; chords of a remote music that spoke of the inexpressibly desirable, the irretrievably lost . . .
"Have we warred then, water beings?" the One-Who-Records sent his thought outward. "We who might have been brothers . . . ?" With a mighty effort, he summoned his waning strength, sounded a final chord in tribute to that which had been, and was no more.