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“Most especially for a male Reaper. Females handle acute pain far betterthan we do so their first Transitions aren’t as hard on them as ours are onus.” He began hammering the gold strip. “The pain won’t ever be as severe afterthat initial conversion. It is bad, it hurts, but it doesn’t last as long andcomes quicker and easier with each Transition. After twenty years, Ailyn’sTransitions are more annoying to him than painful.”

“So he isn’t suffering,” she wantedclarified.

“Not physically, no.” He shrugged.“Mentally? That’s another story.”

“For all Reapers?”

“For Ailyn,” he replied softly. He liftedthe gold strip with the tongs and dropped it beside the other one in thebucket.

“What about our children?” she asked.

“Your sons,” he stated.

She knew the hellion would never allowfemale zygotes to live. “My sons,” she agreed.

“In Ailyn’s sub-generation of Reapers, hissperm is rife with the spores of the revenant worm but when a child isborn—unless both parents are Reapers—that child is not Reaper until he is givenhis own Transference.”

Shanee sucked in a surprised breath. “Hewon’t automatically become like his father?”

“Not in Ailyn’s sub-generation or thesub-generation of any of the men from R-9,” he replied. “Sons born of my racehowever, are born Reaper. They are born with a single parasite imbedded intheir kidneys. That is the way the goddess created our next generation of trueReapers.”

“See, now that’s something else I’m curiousabout because it wasn’t in the file on Reapers,” she said. “Ailyn told me yousaid Reapers came about because Morrigunia and a demon were at war.”

“Raphian,” Tariq said. “The Evil of Evils.It was His tainted seed that birthed the first Reaper and Morrigunia’s wisdomand compassion that gave us humanity.”

“How?” she asked.

“Raphian is a vile thing,” the Prime Reapersaid. “He is loathsome and depraved and for reasons that are His own. Hedespised the creation of the first human. He set about to destroy humanity, towipe it out of the megaverse by transforming it into creatures like Himself. Todo that, He ejaculated His contaminated seed into the Winds and those abhorrentkernels of evil traveled to wherever there was life. They fell upon many landsacross the megaverse, attracted by an irresistible chemical compound containedwithin a certain plant that drew the kernel like a magnet. The kernel and the plantbonded in an obscene parody of human fertilization and from that union a sporewas created. When the spore was taken into a living body—human or otherwise—itbecame a parasite and the parasite, which is called an obligate, grew into arevenant worm queen, infecting the body that had absorbed it.” He met her gaze.“Have you seen a hellion?”

“Aye,” she admitted. “It is disgusting.”

“Then you know what Raphian looks like. Therevenant is a miniature mirror image of the demon.”

Shanee grimaced at the thought.

“It is said the goddess had heard the voiceof a revenant worm, a hellion calling out to Raphian, and followed that call toa planet where a deranged woman was trying to kill a very handsome warrior. Thehellion was inside the woman. Being the all-knowing goddess that She is,Morrigunia could tell the hellion had great power—the power to make a warriorinvincible. Morrigunia took the woman’s life and allowed the hellion to enterthe warrior’s body, thus granting him the power and the abilities hinted at bythe hellion.”

“Surely the warrior used his powers on theside of good,” Shanee said.

“It is said he made many Reapers beforeMorrigunia allowed him to rest. Whether that is good or not, who is to say? Mypeople would not be here had he not created the first Reaper.”

“So while Morrigunia was using the Reapersfor good, Raphian was making them for evil?”

“She realized Raphian had deliberately laidplans to exterminate the human race by infecting them with His sperm. WhenMorrigunia saw what Raphian had done, She set out to undo His evil. She couldnot keep those infected with the parasite from changing but She could instillhuman traits in them to hold at bay the evil Raphian had unleashed. It was mypeople She granted Her benevolence. Our tribe is spread throughout themegaverse on planets such as Theristes and we are not allowed to leave thoseworlds. Morrigunia made it a law, a Greas, an obligation with which we mustabide.”

“Something else bothers me, Tariq. When youwere captured, people like the Burgon before Ryden Bakari saw the advantage inhaving nearly invincible warriors and set out to make more like you.” Shefrowned. “How did they know how to do that? Surely you didn’t tell them. I readwhere you were tortured horribly but I can’t believe you would have given themthe means to make more Reapers.”

Tariq shook his head. “No, I did not. Icould not have told them because I didn’t know such a thing was possible untilthe first prisoners were brought to the complex. Remember, children of my raceare born Reaper. We do not make them. When they took the first hellion from me,when I realized what they were going to do, I cried for the first time in mylife. The only explanation I can give you for what happened on R-9 is thatRaphian was involved. He influenced the Alliance to create the hell that wasRiezell-Nine.”

“Why didn’t Morrigunia intercede?” sheasked. “Why didn’t She stop what was happening there?”

“I don’t know, Shanee, but there is alegend that says She has a place somewhere in the megaverse where She breedsHer own very special Reapers, sons of Her body called the guirt. We alsoknow She creates them in Her guise as the Triune Goddess coming to a dyingwarrior on the battlefield.” He shook his head. “Why She does this, no oneknows, but I do know there are men like Gabriel Leveche who are Her creations.If She is making men like him elsewhere in the megaverse, Her purpose cannot beevil.”

Shanee let out a long breath. She wasreeling from the information Tariq had given her—far more than she had expectedhim to impart. “No, I suppose not.”

“That is enough for you to think on for oneday,” he told her, taking one of the gold strips out of the bucket and over tohis workbench. He sat down. “Your man is well and he is relatively calm—atleast as calm as