"Hello, Hawk. I hope you enjoyed the meal. I'm sorry if the conversation ran a little monotonously, but they do so much like to remember the various times they served in my capacity. It is a reverie for them. It's harmless as far as my job is concerned, so I let them be happy in their memories. Now, questions."

I sat perfectly still, waiting on the questions.

"No, no, my dear boy. You have questions for me."

I sat silent for a moment, contemplating what was happening.

"Yes, it's all happening, and I am real. Here, feel this."

He reached out and pinched me.

"Where am I?"

"Ah, so you do speak. Good. Telepathy is such an intrusion on personal privacy, don't you think? Well, where are you? That is a good question. This would be what you refer to as one of the higher planes, though it's really only parallel to your own. Don't get me wrong, though. There are some higher, and some lower as well, but they tend to be either far too stuffy for our tastes, or just down right nasty. We like it here in the game rooms."

"I don't understand."

"You asked a question, I believe, which was 'Where am I.' I just answered you."

"No, I mean, why am I here?"

"Well, if you meant that, why didn't you say that?"

"What?"

"Never mind, it's a little game I play with the others, but you're not one, are you? Well. This is a part of the pivot in the Balance. We are the keepers of the Balance, or, rather, I am the current keeper of the Balance, and the others are past and future keepers of the Balance. We take turns, you see. When one of us gets tired of the problems, another volunteers to keep it for a while. I guess this is a surprise to you. You were expecting gods, I assume. Well, if you want a god, pull out your sword and call on our messenger. He's a small god, of a sort. He also works for us, though, so he might not be what you want either.

"How did I get here?"

"Questions, questions. Don't you ever stop? Well, Electrix built a field to protect you from the plane shifting then directed you here. That's how you got here.

"Why?"

"Well, we need you. Actually, I need you. The others are just watching. They think I'm doing a pretty good job so far, and want to see this version succeed. So, I need to know a couple of things from you. Are you really ready to fight Krynchara?"

"Who?"

"Krynchara. Ah, I see the problem. He broke the rules again. You don't know who you're fighting. Well, now, let's take a look at your reality for a minute."

He took out a crystal ball and looked into it for a moment or two, his face changing expressions very rapidly as, apparently, he watched different events take place. Several "ooh's" and "aah's" broke the silence, then he put the ball away.

"So, you don't know him as Krynchara. Well, have I got a story for you."

"What are you talking about? Who are you? Why should I listen to you?"

"All three good questions that deserve good answers. The Balance. Roland. Because I asked you to. Now, listen. Before there was a Carousel, there was a round planet, like a ball. Originally, it was controlled by the lords of law and chaos. Then came a prophet for another theory concerning only two deities, good and evil, and offered immortality to those who championed the good. Billions believed, weakening the power of the higher lords because, as you already know, the higher lords have only as much power as you allow them to have. Anyway, they worked to eliminate these twin deities of good and evil, using all their power to offer hints to the inhabitants of this planet on how to become rulers of their own destinies. These hints led to three wars, the third ending in the destruction of the planet and the twin gods. The lords of the higher planes then took the remains of the planet and bound it together again with the bridges, creating the Carousel. Without the new gods, the higher lords created their new races, the elves and dwarves and..., well, you get the general idea. Finally, they created men, since men fear the gods more than the other races who are more closely related to them. You inherited that fear, as well as the teachings of the other races.

"Anyway, originally, power was divided evenly between the lords, and all were happy with that. Each force, law and chaos, held sway over half of the Carousel. Then, some of the chaos lords got greedy and started betraying each other in order to hold sway over a greater portion of the chaos half. Finally, the battle came down to two lords of chaos, Denev and Krynchara. Krynchara made a pact with the lords of law, offering them a portion of what he was to gain if they helped him defeat Denev. The pansies believed him and together Krynchara and the lords of law defeated Denev. Then Krynchara reneged on his side of the bargain and took all of chaos' half, becoming sole lord of chaos. The lords of law retreated to their own dimension planning revenge and plotting. They are still plotting. Since then, it has been up to us, the keepers of the Balance, to find champions to send against Krynchara in his many forms. So far, none have been completely adequate, though they have performed well and, though they are dead, are living in nice places, some existing still in four dimensions in Neverwhere. Karnelian was one of our champions."

This last statement pulled me out of my complete disbelief.

"What?"

"Yes, he championed our cause for twenty years before he died in your arms. Yes. We watched that and kicked ourselves because he wasn't supposed to have fought that demondarc, but Krynchara got to him before we could. So we instilled the sword with the Majestrix stone and Electrix, hoping that you would accept their aid. You did, and allowed us to begin working with you to free Sharmayn and give to you the powers that were destined to be Karnelian's."

"So, this Krynchara is the Dark Lord."

"I thought I had made that clear. Yes!"

"How do I defeat him?"

"Well, I can't tell you that. It wouldn't be fair. Besides, you already know. Now, you need to sleep. You've got a long journey in front of you, and not much time to prepare. Let me show you to your room."

Roland led me out of the room to another "wing" of the pivot to a small living quarters.

"There is a bath there and towels and clean linen are ready for you. Let me know if there is anything else you need."

He turned and left me to my thoughts.

"You already know." That's what he'd said. I didn't know the first thing about killing a god. How do I start? No, I already have started, and so far have done nothing but get my teacher and my lover captured by the enemy and good friends slaughtered. So, how do I finish?

I bathed and let the heat of the water lull me into sleep. It was dreamless, and I felt like I was floating, rather than lying down, as I awoke in a warm and very comfortable bed. Looking around the plush room, I saw on a table a chessboard in white and black. The white side was down to one pawn, one knight, one rook, and the king. The black side had won back all its pieces. Currently, the white knight was all that kept the black side occupied- the black king was in check with the knight.

"What does this mean," I asked aloud.

My sword hummed. I unsheathed it and laid it on the bed. The being known to me only as Electrix emerged and stood in its blue glory on the opposite side of the board. Again, it did not speak, but thought its message.

-we must all make decisions- -does knight take king-

"Yes! It must; that's the game."

-it is no game- -you are the knight-

Electrix then retreated into the sword, leaving me only a little less confused than before. I picked up the black king and felt a very powerful shock course through my body, forcing me to drop it. It broke into three pieces. I took the knight, carefully, but nothing happened. I placed it in the square recently vacated by the crushed king.

"Checkmate," I said.

The room changed very quickly into a war room. Roland was beside me, standing over a large map of the Carousel.

"We're glad you could join us, Hawklok. We were getting worried that you might not."

"What happened?"

"You made a decision, a very good one, if I may say so. This is the war room for the Balance. We have been plotting out this attack of ours against Krynchara, but we were missing a very crucial piece. I believe you have it."

He held out his hand, expecting me to provide something. I had no idea what he wanted.

"Am I missing something completely, or is this really way over my head"

"A good question, Hawk. Do you have the white knight or don't you?"

I handed him the playing piece and shuffled around while the lords of the Balance pushed and shoved other pieces around the map. Some areas of the map were crosshatched in black, others were white, and still others were outlined in a grey mist. Most of the Carousel was black. The white knight was currently outside the Carousel, floating, as it were.

"We can't include you yet," Roland stated offhandedly.

"What?"

"We can't include you yet. In the game."

"Why not?"

"Well, because you are here, of course. We can't very well put you in the Carousel when you're really not there, now, can we?"

"I guess not," I said rather stupidly.

I studied the map closely and noticed several pieces clustered together on the section representing Dark 'Ysle. One was an odd grey-green colored bishop, the other a dark grey stem with a crystal embedded in it.

"What are these?"

"Playing pieces."

"No, I mean, who do they represent?"

"The bishop is Moonflame and the mystic is your Myranda."

"Why are they together?"

"Because that is where Krynchara has put them."

"Then put me there!"

"We can't do that."

Roland just looked at me as he said it. "We can't do that. It's against the rules. You are a player currently out of the game. We cannot put you back in it where ever we want."

"Then I'll put me there."

I grabbed the knight and placed it in the center of the representation of Dark 'Ysle. There was a confusion of voices and a quick blur of darkness, then I was standing on parched earth at the base of a barren cliff face. The sky was clouded and darkly ominous. There were creatures flying there. I was on Dark 'Ysle.

I reached to pull Majestrix out of his sheath to protect me. My sword was not there. I had left it in the bedroom.

"Oh, gods! Get me out of here!"

Needless to say, there was no answer, other than the still air. Then there came a whispering. I looked up and saw several demondarcs hovering above. I yelled to them to come down to fight, but they just looked inquisitively at me then vanished over the cliff.

"Come out, Krynchara! Come out of your hole! I am Hawklok, your challenger, and I defy you in the name of all the gods, new and old. Come out and face your death!"

I really expected no answer to my cry, yet I received one nonetheless.

"Who? Who knows my name? Who dares to call me from my castle?"

I looked up and there was a pair of glowing red eyes staring at me from the top of the cliff. They moved swiftly down the face of the cliff and leveled at a height of about ten feet. A body formed around them. Within moments, I was face to face with the Dark Lord, most powerful of the gods, weaponless and invading his home. He looked at me.

"I remember you, little one. Hawklok, is it not? I believe I have some things of great importance to you still in my possession. Certainly it wasn't you calling out the names of gods in a random fashion. That can be dangerous."

"I am Hawklok of the Rebuilt Cities, and I challenge you, Krynchara, to a battle to the death for the lives of my friends and the existence of the Carousel."

"You have found out my name, then, have you? And now you pretend power, yes, to challenge me on my home ground? I will fight you, boy, but only as long as it amuses me. Then I will kill you and consume your soul to replenish my energy. Then I will have all of you- your soul, your body, and your control over the Boltstones. You are too foolish. You should have remembered your pitiful teachings."

"Remembered."

Remembered.

-remember-

"Remember, the gods have only those powers over you that you allow them to have over you. That is most important of all."

A voice from the past echoed in my mind. I remembered. The shock of white in my hair was a reminder, and I had neglected it. Electrix, too. As these thoughts came into my mind, the Dark Lord ripped at my body with his mindgrasp. I could not resist, and fell unconscious.

How many minutes or hours passed I could not tell. I was being held by bare arms, but all was darkness and I could not see.

"He is awake, Moonflame."

The voice was Myranda's. I tried to talk to her, but I could not speak. I felt another presence. It was Moonflame. He touched me on the arm.

"Are you well? I mean, are you in too much pain to think?"

I thought about it for a minute and was about to answer when he did for me.

"If you had to think about it, then everything is fine. You shouldn't have come, Hawk, especially unarmed."

I tried to speak again, to explain what had happened, but could not. It was all very frustrating. I was then overcome by a feeling of dread, and the presences of my friends faded. The darkness was replaced by an even more foreboding grey-black. In front of me sat the Dark Lord in a throne of fabulous onyx and obsidian, studded here and there with bloodstones and rubies, representative, I imagine, of the lives and souls he fed off of.

"What, Hawklok?"

"Bastard!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. The echo resounded off the walls and struck me louder than any sound I had heard, knocking me down.

"Really, Hawklok, there is no need to yell. We are, after all, family here. All of us are creatures of Chaos, else we could not survive. But, as well, I am High Lord of Chaos and order you to give me what I want. Give me the Boltstones."

"I don't have them. They were left behind on the Balance."

"No. I have retrieved your puny sword and bracers and found nothing but very poor sapphires in the Boltstones' places. Give me the stones, boy, or your friend dies first, followed by the very slow and agonizing death of- Myranda- that is correct, isn't it?"

Then a thought hit me: it wasn't the boltstones he was after. It couldn't have been. Those he could have taken at any time while I slept.

"Then it's in me," I whispered to myself.

"What, man-child?"

"This power you want, this control of the Bolt, it's in me."

"My, we are becoming perceptive. Yes, it is in you, and what a frustration it must be. Do you feel the headaches? If not, let me give you one. Listen to your mind as your teacher begins to slowly roast."

I tried to shut it out, but as I did so, I felt a scream from Moonflame stretch from his throat and mind into mine.

"Stop! Why don't you just take it?"

"My dear little man, if I could take it, you would already be a corpse rotting in the deepest pits of Hell. You have to give it to me."

I considered what he said. My control over the Bolt was, at its best, sporadic, but I had also never had any formal training in the Deadly Arts in which the Bolt was created. If I surrendered this power, then the Dark Lord, no, Krynchara would possess control over both light and darkness. He would be absolute power. I, then, became the pivot in the Balance, a pivot with mind and power and will, not an uncaring entity concerned with rules and laws.

A new thought, a memory, crossed behind my eyes, shutting out, for a crucial moment, the pains Moonflame was feeling, something about the law.

"It is part of the law, then, that you cannot take what is not rightfully yours."

"Yes, human. But you can give it to me. You are a creature of Chaos, like myself. Give me your power over the Bolt, and you can rule all the Carousel at my side. A generous offer, don't you think?"

He smiled, and as he smiled, I felt Moonflame submit to the pain and laps into unconsciousness. Myranda began to moan in agony in my thoughts.

"I surrender," I said. "I'll give you anything you want. But I hold you to this one law...."

"Anything, my young apprentice."

I spoke carefully in incomplete sentences to make my point even more precise.

"You. Have no control. Over. Me."

I said it just like that, in four distinct sentences. His face changed into one of extreme hatred.

"What? How dare you? How could you know?"

"You have no control over me. You cannot order me. You cannot harm me. I am your master when it comes to our relationship, and I hold your life in the Balance."

I clenched my fists and concentrated. Power filled my arms like never before. It was a clean, pure, white force, the purest of mystical energies. It flowed from all the planes into me, and, concentrated thus, shot outward from me into the Dark Lord.

"Know, Krynchara, know that I know your name. I know your limits, and I know your powers. You have the power over me that I allow you to have, and I allow nothing. I am your master, Krynchara, and now do to you what you did those centuries ago to your masters, to Devon, to the Lords of Law."

The light was blinding. Krynchara was bathed in it and was howling in pain. His being, all of his existence, was burning in a fire of greater intensity than any other before or since. He was screaming in my mind, but I ignored it, just as he ignored the pain and the screams of his tortured captives.

As the Bolts struck his body, I felt a presence in front of me. The Bolts took on the form of a sword, beginning at the hilt before my hands and stretching out into the darkness of Krynchara's being. I grasped the hilt of this mighty instrument of vengeance and justice and wasn't too surprised to find Majestrix settling comfortably into my hands. The Bolts were then multiplied both in power and number, causing the backs of my eyes to sting with the intensity of the light.

"You are dead to me, Krynchara. Dead and buried. Look into my eyes and see your destruction!"

For an instant, just a brief instant, he looked, and with a scream more horrible than you can imagine, he was shredded before my eyes, and each wisp of his soul melted into the mists surrounding his castle, burning still as they flowed. The battle, if such it could be called, was over.

I spoke to Majestrix, liking immediately the electric hum of recognition from the sentient being within.

"Take me to Myranda."

In an instant, I was transported to the cell where both Myranda and Moonflame were held. Both were guarded by demondarcs.

"Back, demons, or so help me I will shred you into the nothingness that has now enveloped your master."

One backed off, but the other remained, standing over Moonflame with a hand stretched out over Moonflame's chest.

"Come closer, little boy, and I shall pull out your teacher's soul and destroy all that he could have been. You shall watch him enter Hell. Good, now, drop the sword."

I did as I was told. The first demondarc used the opportunity to escape, but this second one remained, poised for death.

"I watched that touching scene many months ago between you and that pitiful man, Karnelian. His was an interesting death. His soul was, shall we say, seasoned."

"You are the one?"

"Oh, yes, little boy. I'll have your soul, too."

"How can you hope to kill a man who has destroyed a god?"

"Because I am no god. I need no belief to make me real. I can kill you as easily now as before. Now, die, mortal!"

He came at me with a speed unbelievable. I could do nothing. I held out my hand and felt his numbing coldness as my hand entered his body. But I felt something else there, too, a thin, almost intangible netting. I grasped and pulled, even as the demondarc began to tear at my flesh. As I pulled, though, the demondarc screamed in pain and tried to recoil, but he was fastened to me somehow. I pulled some more and opened my eyes to see a faint mist being pulled out behind him as he backed off. I had grasped his soul, if that is what it can be called. His whole life essence was in my control. I retrieved Majestrix with my free hand.

"I have your soul now, demon-thing. So, for Karnelian and Myranda and Moonflame. For C'ang Ling and the others. For all those you have slaughtered, I kill you and release their souls."

With that, I brought the lightning-engulfed blade slicing across the thin mists. There was an explosion of black fire and brimstone and a psychic scream of unimaginable proportions. The rest was silence.

I collapsed, exhausted, but filled with a life-energy not my own. For an instant, I felt Karnelian near me again, then the feeling was gone. He had said goodbye.

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