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He finds him still holding onto Shia but it is as if she's on fire and the flames are running up his forearms. His face is drawn up in a silent anguished howl.

Then he remembers something Lyssan once told him. "I am a spirit given form and it is the belief of my followers that keeps me here. Without them, I am nothing. This life is the only one given to me and once it is over.... my existence will be no more. You will have no governing over me, I fear. For when I die, my life force wll return to that from which it came."

Beneath the flames, Emnast's scales are beginning to glow and shine.

Her head turns to him and in her eyes he sees an expanse of stars, planets of green and life overflowing.

"Don't...." she whispers in a voice quite distant. "I tried... to tell you... this would happen. You... you made... me... a promise.... remember...."

The fire has made it up to Emnast's shoulders and is moving down his back, bypassing his head. He too is fighting the transition, but it is consuming him slowly but surely, transforming him as it burns away his hate.

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder, aged and veined. Fizban acknowledges his vow and confirms it.

"No good comes from hatred so deep it blinds the inner eye, my son. And although I second your vow and recognize your right to carry it out, I pray you do not act as foolishly as the one who has brought us to this place in time. May her recklessness bring us some measure of honest apprehension. Think twice... nay... think a million times over all the consequences which may stem from the act ere you do it."

And elderly Emnast is indeed for even as his scales begin to glow with the shine of a true gold, his face grows lined and aged. He looks at Kerobian with tears in his eyes as the shape in his arms fades and in a final burst of fire, the flames which were consuming his body also claim his head.

He looks down through the flames at his hands and a shudder runs through him. Tears the size of buckets drop and sizzle down his cheeks.

"Luceil.... " he whispers hoarsely. "Help me... help me find my way...."

The aging process is speeding up, and now the gold of his scales is once again dulled but this time with the patina of age as opposed to the grime of hatred and spite. Fizban comes to stand by his head, his form evaporating and reforming into that of a great platinum dragon.

"Be brave..." he murmurs in a low rumbling voice that sends chills down Kerobian's spine. "Be ready Kero..." warns the god, "It will soon rebound... and we must stop the process at just the right moment or it will be as if he had never been born."

Emnast's head falls to his forearms and he begins to shake uncontrollably.

Paladine shelters the aging gold with his wing, supporting him from the side, watching him carefully.

Then, just as Kerobian begins to think he will need to pour a bit of energy into Emnast's failing body, the spell rebounds, rejuvenating him so quickly that he loses centuries by the minutes.

Glowing like the sun, Emnast grows smaller and smaller. Suddnely Paladine shouts. "Now, Kerobian... we halt it now...."

The spell dissolves in a shower of sparks and when they disperse, Kerobian finds himself looking at a young juvenile gold dragon, one barely older than he last truly remembers his brother as being.

Emnast blinks numbly at them both, the loss and pain in his eyes preventing any and all retorts. "She... she's gone..." he stammers in a voice so tight Kero expects him to burst into tears at the drop of a hat.

Paladine taps him on the head and shakes his own. "No, young one, she is here, within you... her memories, her love... her laughter and her joy... embrace it, rejoice in it... while you can. That spell was not designed to last forever."

Emnast nods. "I told her I... I didn't want to live in a world where she no longer existed." He looks at Kerobian and tries to smile. "She said you'd release me when the time comes... if I did what needed to be done."