"What?"

"Just waiting."

"I can pack and talk at the same time."

"No, I'll wait."

This, of course, piqued my curiosity and I packed more vigorously. Finally, I finished. I sat beside her and hooked my arm around her waist.

"What?"

"I brought something for you."

"This is an intelligent conversation. I can see that you brought something for me. What is it."

She opened the box slowly. I was only half surprised by the blue light which flooded from the opening. She pulled from the box a set of two bracers, a boltstone set in each. She motioned for me to extend my arms so she could put the bracers on me. I did so.

"They are called omega-bands. Karnelian made these and gave them to me to give to my champion. Until now, I've never had one. They will protect you from many harmful spells, as well as complement your proficiency with the bolt."

"I will wear them with pride and love."

I pulled her closer and we kissed long and hard. The intensity of the previous night's love-making was still with us, even as we slept. Moonflame awakened me at midnight.

"It's time to go."

Giving a sleeping Myranda a final kiss on her cheek, I left. I promised myself not to be gone long. Why doesn't it ever work out that way?

Moonflame and I left on horseback, alone. The twins were to meet us outside the Caves that night. The trip was uneventful, for the most part. The more I saw of Neverwhere, though, the more I realized why the Elderonians had retreated there when the plague had hit them. It was, as I had noted before, a beautiful land. It had a calming effect on me. I asked Moonflame if this feeling was real, or just my imagination.

"No, it's real, certainly. Notice the sky: blue-green. It heals all wounds, eventually. You will notice, also, that the suns seem closer. They are. Closer, I mean. They give this land their magic. When the suns die, so will Neverwhere. But that won't be for millenia to come. Enjoy it. Soon, we will be nearing the Caves, and the light will be filtered by the mists there, then we shall be underground."

It was true. As we rode into the day, the suns' light began to grow less strong. Then I noticed the mists covering the ground around us. Already, it covered my steed's hooves and onward it promised to get thicker and deeper.

"How will we find Ahmail and Ahmahl?"

"They will meet us at the Caves' mouth. Have no fear. They'll be there."

Needless to say, they weren't. We reached the entrance at sundown, and neither of the twins responded to our continued hailings. We waited for nearly two hours, but they never showed. Against my better counsel, Moonflame insisted we enter alone. As Myshella crossed her high point in the sky, we entered the mists of the Caves.

"It's so cold."

"We are crossing through several planes now. The cold you feel is the nether worlds' atmospheres around us. We are protected from them by the magic of the Caves, for now. Our journey out may not be so easy. I fear that, once we get what we came for, these tunnels will no longer be inattentive to their inhabitants. Hurry."

Onward Moonflame led, onward and down into the depths of whatever plane we were on as we continued deeper into the mists. I felt a chill of premonition crawl up my spine and I drew forth Majestrix. He hummed a bit, and the friendly blue glow lit the mists for a few feet in front of me. I tried letting go of my mind, but something prevented me from doing so.

"It's the mist itself," explained Moonflame. "My magic is almost useless here as well. A few of my simpler charms will work, but my complex magics would require more concentration than these atmospheres will allow."

"That frightens me a bit."

"As it should. But that is why these mists are here: to test all who would steal from the Caves, and to keep others out."

"Others? LIke who?"

"Like legends and myths. Be quiet, and don't dream."

I didn't understand that last remark, but thought about it for a long time afterward. Mostly, it reminded me that I hadn't dreamt in quite a while, at least, not that I could remember.

"All creatures dream," Moonflame had once said, "even if they don't remember it. If they do not dream, they go mad."

I asked him then if he dreamed.

"As little as possible. Sometimes less than that."

"Then, are you mad?"

"I have been told so."

He laughed at his joke and finished his wine. That had been more than a month ago, on Qyn. My god, where had the time flown?

"So," said Moonflame, "you are beginning to notice it, too."

"Notice what?"

"The slippage in time."

"Yes."

"It's the Dark Lord making a play for the Carousel, trying to increase entropy and stop the fourth dimension of time."

"I don't understand."

"I don't expect you to, yet. But when the time comes, accept what happens with dignity."

Again, I thought about these words a long time.

We came, finally, to a very normal door of iron and wood. With a quick turn and a pull, Moonflame opened it. Within, the mists disappeared, and before us was a room of infinite size. Actually, it simply gave the impression of being that large. But within it were machines and mechanisms and strange vehicles, all covered in thick dust. Some were corroded to the skeletons, while others looked new, save for the dust. Moonflame went over to one of the larger vehicles and rapped on it with his hand. It rang hollowly, metallically, at each touch.

"Is that one of the Old World's vehicles?" I asked.

Stupid question.

"Of course it is," said Moonflame knowingly. "I believe, if I have deciphered this lettering correctly, it was called 'M-1'."

"Do we want this one? It looks rather large for two men to operate."

"According to the myths, these could be operated effectively by only one man. Strange that a race would actually create a machine so destructive, then give it to one man to use."

I looked around. "There are dozens of these things. How many did they have during the Old Times?"

"I don't know... thousands, hundreds of thousands. No written records remain from those times of death. But, are these machines so destructive that a good necromancer could not equal, if not surpass, its destructive force?"

"But, " I said, "magic can be undone by stronger magic. This, once it destroys, would continue to destroy. Nothing it did could be undone, save for the curing of time."

"Right. Now where?"

Moonflame looked around absently at the walls so far away. He turned his head to left and right. I began to wonder if he really knew where to go.

"Of course I know where to go," he said rather annoyingly, though he muttered something under his breath that sounded too much like "I hope" to be misconstrued as anything else. He was nervous about something else, though, and he wasn't going to tell me.

"That way," he said, and he pointed almost randomly in a direction that, for the sake of familiarity, was east. I followed to where his finger pointed, searching for a logical reason to go in that direction as opposed to, say, west.

"Never, but never, try to find any logic in anything that any mortal, or any immortal for that matter, ever does or attempts to do. All logic is lost when we are taken from the Void to be given life here on the material planes. This way. No logic, just this way."

So we went east, dodging machines and vehicles of all shapes and sizes with only one thing in common: they were all designed for destruction. This was evident just from the feel they gave off. Myranda would have called it their aura. To me, it was just a feeling, but it was stronger than I had thought possible.

After quite a few minutes of walking, we came to the wall and proceeded to follow it "north." Several minutes later, we came to a door. A sign was attached to it, though it was inscribed with the same script as the machines behind us. Moonflame peered closer and read.

"Interesting."

"What? What does it say?"

"'Small Arms.' What do you suppose that means?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know? You're the expert."

Moonflame looked at me hard. His eyes were glowing then, red. His next words were an animalistic growl.

"You would rather lead, human?"

I was taken aback by this statement to say the least. His eyes were glowing even brighter and I must have registered some shock to this sight.

"Hawk? Hawklok, what's wrong?" Moonflame's voice was his normal one.

I tried to speak, but couldn't. Something was forming behind Moonflame, congealing from the darkness. The best I could manage was a point in the general direction. Moonflame remained confused.

"What is it, Hawk? What?"

I watched as the form became a solid body, humanoid. I managed to screech out a single syllable of a grunt while pointing. I was literally paralyzed by fear of whatever it was.

Moonflame turned in time to see the manlike form approaching him. Besides the general form, the only other visible features were its iridescent eyes and its sharp, vampyric teeth.

"By all the gods!"

A bolt of pure blackness so dark that it glowed against the relative darkness of the room hit Moonflame mid-chest and flung him many yards. Instead of levitating as I had expected, he landed hard, then did not move.

The creature came toward me. I was still too terrified to move or draw my sword, though I felt it quivering in its scabbard, wanting to be set free against the thing. But I could only stand there, pointing. Thus, I was simply standing there, ready, accepting my fate.

But I still thought. If I could just get Majestrix out, he could fight for me; I would only have to hold him. I could use a bolt on it, destroy it with less than a thought. I could....

In a flash of lightning-intense indigo, the thing melted screaming into the floor, leaving only a lingering feeling of dread in the air. I was mobile. I was drained. I had just unleashed the largest bolt I had ever dreamed of. It drained all of my strength in doing so, but I had done it. As I collapsed on the cold, metal floor, my thoughts raced through the combination of feelings my mind had just gone through.

First, fear so intense I was paralyzed. Next, the fall of Moonflame and the brief mind-link with Majestrix. A the tingling sensation through my right arm followed, climaxing with a surge of bolt energy from the bracer on my right arm to the creature. Finally came the complete draining of all physical strength in me.

I crawled slowly to Moonflame's side. He was bathed in a black florescence; a black glow covered his entire body. The air around him was condensing into mist. I tried to touch him, awaken him, but when I touched him, my hand burned with the cold. There was nothing I could do for my friend. I cried. I slept. I dreamed.

The multiverse was mine. All the stars and the worlds surrounding them were mine to do with as I pleased. I flew unrestrained through the cosmos which, supposedly, belonged only to the gods, the dead and the new. I was ecstatic. As I soared among the starry host, I felt a new presence beside me. I looked to my right and saw a girl of unearthly beauty gliding smoothly beside me, pacing me. She was more beautiful than any other creature I had ever seen. I reached out with my right hand. She took my hand in hers and we soared together through the night sky of the deities. Her hand was lithe and smooth, her skin white as silk. Her hair cascaded far behind her, and as she flew, new constellations formed. She slid close to me and kissed me lightly, then whispered her name.

"I am Sharmayn."

The winds of time and tempests of fire and ice whipped past us, and I elated in the knowledge that I had released the goddess Sharmayn, that I would be Her consort, that our children would be the new gods. Then, in the midsts of this shared warmth, an icy cold came over both of us. We were forced apart, and a blackness overcame Her. She disappeared into it, reaching for me. I heard one final word in my dream, but it was not Her voice.

"Hawk!"

"Myranda!"

I awoke sweating and screaming Myranda's name. I was in darkness and it reminded me of the black that I had felt in my dream, though I could remember nothing of the dream then. I reached for Majestrix, and the leather of his grip felt reassuring, even as much as the spark of electricity that leaped from the boltstone in the pommel of the sword to my palm did. I had my sword. I had all of my boltstones. My eyes adjusted to the darkness finally, and I saw Moonflame several feet away, still inert. I crawled to him and again tried to awaken him. He was no longer surrounded by the deathly chill as before, but he did not awaken.

I stood to see where we were. I could not see more than five feet before me, so I dared not venture far lest I lose my bearings and be lost forever in the complete darkness. There was nothing to see. We were in total isolation. I could neither see nor hear anything that gave me a clue as to where we were. I prayed that Moonflame would awaken and know the answers.

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