The girl wandered for a few days. She gated from one world to the next, iterating through the many addresses she knew. She could never however find a reason to stay longer than just long enough to find food, sleep, and gate to the next world. What she was looking for, she didn't know herself. If, that is, she was looking for anything at all. But with every world visited she knew that whatever it was, it wasn't here. And if it was anywhere at all it would be just beyond the gate she'd just come through.

Finally she came to Sari's home world. She realized she'd been avoiding this world because she knew she wouldn't find anything good there, but alas there were only so many worlds she knew.

It was snowing now and the cold stung her face as she made her way alone the familiar mountainside. She passed the old cabin the wraith had used and laughed when she saw the symbol carved on its door. She remembered having been so naive, thinking she could use a coin with the same markings as a form of payment. She scaled the mountain and went to the cave the wraith had made his laboratory in, only to find that it was empty. The shelves, empty crates, and the symbols the wraith had scrawled on the cave's walls were all that remained.

She descended into the valley passed the tavern she'd had her first meal. The wraith had culled the planet clean and there was a dead silence she defiled as the snow crunched beneath her feat. The wraith were hungry, she could understand that, but to leave nothing behind was irresponsible. Even for the wraith.

She found the remains of Sari's body on the lake's shore. A shriveled husk with no features, half covered with snow. She recognized the armband and the traditional dress Sari liked to wear. She shuddered at the thought of what it must have been like for her and fell to her knees beside Sari's corpse as a tempest of emotions took hold of her. She wasn't expecting anything different. She wasn't expecting that out of all the chimneys in the village smoke would still be rising out of hers, but seeing it for herself made it real somehow.

She remembered how god awfully cheerful Sari had always been, how Sari would beg her to help her with her chores, would almost cry when she declined, and would skip with giddy joy when she'd finally agree.

Although she would never admit it out loud, she missed how Sari would come running with open arms whenever they hadn't seen one another for any length of time. She realized she missed pushing her away whenever she got too close.

A knot tightened in her chest and an anger she could not explain boiled in her, but it didn't come alone, and was accompanied by a self loathing she very well could. She has angry with herself. But not because she had done nothing. Even as she had stood by and watched as the wraith culled Sari's village. There was nothing she could have done to save the girl or her people, and was what she despised.

The tribes and people of the Pegasus galaxy each had their own rituals for dealing with death. Some covered their dead with heavy stones or mounds of earth, others buried or burned the deceased alongside treasures at great expense. Some let their dead drift out into the sea in small boats made from hollowed out trees. Sari's people were of the burning variety. But the girl knew that all these things made no difference to the dead. She knew that these things served only to placate those they left behind. But it would do nothing for her. The girl wanted more, the girl needed revenge.