Why? demanded Martin Reinheiser, using internal communication now-no need to renew the fight over control of the mouth. He felt a portion of the body relax, a movement he had come to recognize as a resigned shrug from his counterpart.

Twenty years, Morgan Thalasi replied, again internally. How long will we battle before the spirit of one of us fades away or is forced out?

The body will die first, Reinheiser reasoned.

And still we will battle, Thalasi assured him. Willing the corpse into an undead state so that our struggles will have some material battleground.

Reinheiser did not doubt it for a minute. Already he could understand that their willpower would live on after death. The body should have long ago died, rarely eating and always tormented, nourished only by the strength of the minds and the hatred that refused to relinquish control.

Yet to harm you is to harm myself, sneered Reinheiser. But still I-we-fight! And ever we will! Thalasi could not disagree. He had not foreseen these problems of cohabitation of the body, had not realized the deep sense of violation that could not be resolved, or the uncontrollable battles the two beings were forced to wage. Instincts too primal to be realized guided their struggle, instincts too base for rational thinking to defeat.

Thus they were a doomed thing.

They stumbled and fell, and then crawled back to the stone throne of Talas-dun, knowing that the war was about to begin anew.

But even as the telltale trembling began, as pain became general throughout the limbs and torso, the door to the Throne Room burst open, an interruption that neither of the beings could ignore.

Together the ravaged body’s eyes snapped at the figure bold enough to enter without permission.