The next few days passed fairly normally for Tine.  His body healed rapidly and, after the first day, he had been mostly unhindered in his exercises.  Then, one night as he laid in his bed thinking about what had happened, he heard a voice in his head.  It said one word: ‘Come’.

Tine sat up and looked around.  The call repeated. He quietly rose from his bed, walked out the door, and climbed the stairs.  At the top of the stairs, he saw four naked boys standing in a small cluster. They appeared to be the boys who wore the red tunics.  The door opened and Tine slipped in with them. 

A man stood in the hall, waiting, and led them down one hallway then another and another until Tine was certain he would not be able to find his way back to his own bed.  The other four boys did not make a sound, nor did they look to the left or the right.  As they disappeared into yet another door, Tine felt someone grab him.  He almost shouted in surprise, but managed to keep his mouth shut.

“Not yet, please, not yet,” a dark-haired youth whispered to him, “come with me, please.”

Tine was even more confused, the youth felt familiar, but he could not place why.  His gut told him to trust, so he did, leaving the others and going with the strange-yet-familiar youth back down several hallways to a small room with a window that opened to the courtyard below. 

“We can talk here,” the youth said softly as he stood too closely.

“Who are you?” Tine asked looking at the youth, trying to place where he had seen those eyes before.  They were unusual enough that Tine remembered them, but he didn’t remember the circumstances around the memory.

“I am called Bra-Neche.” 

Images of swirling eyes in a reptilian head flashed through Tine’s mind, “I know you.”

Bra-Neche nodded and moved closer yet. 

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why am I here?”

“Do you want to be elsewhere?”

Tine shook his head and breathed deeply of Bra-Neche’s intoxicating scent.

Bra-Neche smiled down on Tine, then took his hand, pulling it between them as he backed up a step, “Come with me, my soul…”

Tine felt a strange warmth creep along his skin as he took a step forward, then another as Bra-Neche led him across the room.   They stopped when Bra-Neche sat down on his sleeping couch, leaning back so that his robes parted.  Tine drank in the other youth’s dark beauty and felt odd sensations in his belly and below.  He leaned forward, their lips met…

… then blackness.