I don't know what to do. I can't believe it's over. Initially I was happy at the ending, Raul, however clueless, is easy to identify with in certain ways and seeing him reunite with Aenea was great. Yet I'm also sad that he has to do so knowing he only has a little less than two years with her, and then that's it. He raises this version of her, god help him if it's a girl, and he's never going to be able to love again. And then knowing that when she leaves, to her she will be experiencing everything on T'ien Shen (i audiobooked it, not sure if that's right) and eventually her death. I mean, he could know to the day in the future, that she would experience her death, relative to the amount of time that's passed to him. What a mind fuck.

Questions I still have...

Why can't Raul or anyone else eventually learn to farcast through time like Aenea or the Shrike? She says they'll have forever together before they leave, but did she mean that literally in some way or was that just a metaphor?

Ok, so the Shrike is partially Kassad, but this DNA is taken from him after he beats the Shrike in the future and dies. Paradox, but I'd be willing to accept that his 'first' life didn't result in the shrike fight, but when the shrike was created and the timelines changed, kassads future was altered to the fight. Now...

Were the thousands of shrikes that Kassad saw before he fought it literal, or just different versions of the same one?

We still don't know who initially created the Shrike besides the 'reapers' right?

The fact that the Shrike stood over Martins grave (and damn was that a powerful moment) would seem to imply that there was some of Kassad's sentience (or enough of some) to show emotion towards the death of Silenus. Especially considering that he was on the shrike tree for awhile. So I still don't get the shrike tree given all of this. Do we know it's purpose? Is the core feeding off of the pain in the way that the cruciforms fed off of the creativity prior to death? What is up with the pilgrammages prior to this? Was the shrike ever granting one persons wish and killing the others? Why?

Dure... damn, wake up, throat slashed, an instant later, wake up, throat slashed, instant later...

A. Bettik, I'm pissed I didn't think of that earlier.

Weird to think it's all over, I don't know what to do with myself now...