Face The Strange - Chapter 8/11: Out Of Time free porn video

FACE THE STRANGE by Crazy Baron Chapter 8: Out of Time "Yes?" Rupert Giles prompted me. "What is it?" I was tongue-tied and could only stare him in the eyes. He was standing right in front of me, gazing at me with an extremely concerned expression on his face. "Uh, I---" I stuttered and looked around, disoriented and thoroughly confused. I had been preparing to fight a demon in the forest outside of Greensville mere fractions of a second ago. The fiend was charging at me with its mouth hanging open, and I had my axe ready to give it a fatal blow. The monster had inexplicably morphed into the neatly dressed, friendly British man. My legs threatened to give way, and I lurched dizzily forward. Giles opened his arms and reached out to catch me, but I managed to steady myself in the nick of time and remained on my feet. As before, I was outdoors and surrounded by a forest, but the air was warmer and softer than in Greensville. The bright daylight was gone as well. For some reason, seeing the black sky and its innumerable little stars above me was the crucial perception that helped my addled brain to straighten itself out for the most part. I had returned to the Buffyverse and was once more in the shoes of the heroine herself. This was the druidic retreat in Breakers Woods, I remembered; we were at the top of a hill, in a small clearing, where a pitched battle had just been fought. The revolting smell that issued from the carcasses of the slain Sathir'na demons littering the ground suddenly registered in my mind, and even though my sense of balance didn't threaten to fail me anymore, the stench was almost equally effective in incapacitating me as the dimensional shift had been. "Can we go home?" Dawn's tired voice begged. She was right beside me, a foot or so away, and she closed the distance, took my hand and pressed herself gently against me in a bid for both affection and protection. I was briefly confounded to see her again as a thirteen- year-old as opposed to the somewhat older and more mature girl Scott had become, and a wave of endearment, mixed with acute concern for her safety, washed over me. "Yeah," I said and swallowed hard. "We're going. We'll leave for Sunnydale immediately." "Not quite immediately, I'm afraid," Giles corrected me in a sympathetic and apologetic tone. "There's still the matter of finding and destroying the Angronok talisman." "So this was all because of some stupid old amulet?" my sister moaned in exasperation. She was fortunately as good as unhurt after her kidnapping and captivity at the hands of the Sathir'na, but that half a day of her life had to have been extremely harrowing. Since she naturally had no clue as to what the talisman was and what powers it held, her embittered and disbelieving reaction was perfectly understandable. "What have you gotten me into, Buffy? Why is this happening?" "It's a bit difficult to explain," I replied. She hugged me and sobbed quietly against my shoulder, and I held her and stroked her hair. "I'll tell you the whole story when... when we get home. The talisman's extremely important. We have to find it, because if it falls into the wrong hands, somebody could use it to summon a super demon and end the world. It's a big deal, Dawnie, and you didn't suffer for nothing, but I'm so sorry you got involved. We didn't take that possibility into account. I was worried sick when I thought... We were all worried for you." A few dozen yards away, steadily radiating its faint bluish shine and completely unperturbed by the events around it, was the round outline of the transdimensional gateway. My heart sank at the sight. The spell "Willow" and "Tara" had cast in Greensville had not had any visible effect on the portal, much less closed it for good. Maybe their magic simply hadn't worked, or perhaps Tara, the former Bucko Griffin, had not recalled the invocation correctly; or maybe the demons who had attacked us had routed and killed our counterparts there, at the other end of the portal, before the spell was finished. As soon as this thought had occurred to me, I spotted Willow out of the corner of my eye. She was holding a half-burnt, blown out candle and, giving a wince of slight pain, showing both the candle and her hand to Giles. Since she was alive and well in this reality, Jake White's consciousness had most likely not yet passed irrevocably over to the great unknown. I couldn't help but smile at the happy thought. This relief aside, it was not as if everything were straightforward and clear now. The monsters that had come out of the gateway in Greensville hadn't entered the portal here, that much was obvious; we had seen no signs of demons or vampires other than the Sathir'na and Spike's gang--fortunately, as they had been challenging enough for us to beat. Although I had no real understanding of the mechanics of the portal, my observations strongly suggested that it had more than two ends. The invading demons had to be from a place other than Breakers Woods, possibly from an entirely different plane of existence. If that was true, then barging heedlessly into the portal with Dawn and holding out hope we would miraculously end up in Greensville instead of some unimaginable hell dimension was plain idiotic. Dawn let go of me slowly and wiped a tiny tear off her cheek. Making an attempt at a brave smile, she said, "I'll live, I guess. I never doubted you were going to find and rescue me." "And you never should," I told her emphatically. "You'll have me looking after you as long as I live, whether you want it or not." "Uh, guys?" Xander spoke up. He and Oz had been walking over the site together, presumably searching for the talisman, but they had stopped near the first trees on the far side of the clearing. "What do you think that thing over there is?" He gestured at the light ring. As Giles turned to look, his eyes widened for a moment, but he rapidly regained his perfect composure and he concentrated his attention on the strange phenomenon. Wearing a keen, matter-of-fact expression, he made his way intently towards the portal, stepping across two large Sathir'na bodies in the process. True to his diligent and prudent character, however, he didn't touch the light circle, keeping a distance of a few feet between it and himself. He studied it intently for quite a while, taking his glasses off and then putting them back on. "Astounding," he commented. "Absolutely astounding. I haven't encountered anything like this ever before." "What is it?" Angel asked him. "It, um, appears to be an aperture of some kind," the Watcher explained. Despite his thorough education and expertise in occult topics, he was clearly struggling to find the suitable terms to describe what he was seeing. "If I'm not mistaken, I-I believe this is one end of the dimensional gateway that the acolytes of Angronok are attempting to create." Xander was the next to speak. "It's already open? All our favorite Old One has to do is wake up and say, 'Oh look, the cell door's unlocked and the guards are on vacation'? Must be his lucky day!" "No, I shouldn't think so," Giles replied without taking his eyes off the portal. "We'd be dead by now if that was the case. It seems to me the gate is not fully active and whoever tried to open it wasn't entirely successful." "Who could've done that, anyway?" Willow wondered. "The demons?" Giles rubbed his temples, as if suffering from a headache, and finally turned his back to the wormhole. "Perhaps," he mused. "I would've thought it unlikely that they possess the requisite knowledge and skills to perform the ritual, or even the interest to do so, but I must admit I can't come up with a plausible alternative explanation. This place has intrinsic properties that amplify magic, and that could have facilitated their spell." "Or," Xander added, "in plain English: bad guy still locked up, good guys still breathing, good guys happy." "Something like that, apart from the last part. We're certainly not in the clear yet. The talisman must be recovered and destroyed immediately, and then---" "Will that shut down the portal?" Faith interjected. "I'm not positive, but it should do the trick. Angronok's power is what sustains the gateway, and in his absence the sole source of that power can be the talisman." Oz had apparently deemed this exchange less than captivating and had resumed searching the ground. Poking around near a couple of the fallen demons, he suddenly bent down and picked up something small. He held the object in his fingertips, turned it around and inquired in his trademark understated and unexcitable tone, "Is this it?" Giles wasted no time. He almost ran to Oz, who handed his discovery to the older man without delay. As it rested on Giles' palm, I could see that it was a flat disk, not much bigger than a large coin and reflecting the light of the fire in shades of gold. It was precisely identical to the item I had witnessed the Sathir'na boss handle just before the previous battle against the demons in the abandoned factory. The talisman was seemingly as harmless and plain as anything, an object that might hold the interest of a devoted numismatician but scarcely anyone else. Giles perused it much in the same manner he had examined the mouth of the gateway, with little apart from the glow in his eyes and his concentrated expression revealing his awe at encountering something that he had so far only seen mentioned in obscure books, and then in passing or with the qualification that the thing in question may not actually exist. Xander broke the reverent silence. "We're going to destroy it now-ish, right?" "What?" Giles snapped out of his trance. "Destroy? Ah, yes, of course. We must carry on with that, forthwith." "I'm glad to hear you say that," Xander commented. "For a moment there, I was starting to fear you might go all Gollum on us and claim the itsy bitsy world-dominating trinket for yourself." "No danger of that happening, I can assure you," the Watcher retorted dryly. "Faith, do you have the Gromoth gem?" "Yeah, right here," she replied and approached Giles. She dug into her jacket pocket and pulled out an item wrapped in brown paper. Faith peeled the wrapping off and revealed a round, smooth gemstone or pearl, milky white in color and about the size of the egg of a small bird. She handed it to Giles, who received it with utmost care, making sure not to drop it. He had the talisman in his other hand so the two couldn't come into direct contact. The scientist in me, who had been semi-permanently banished to passively lurking in the background, might have imagined him as a nuclear physicist handling two barely sub-critical masses of plutonium, but to the Slayer me, Giles was my Watcher, preparing to perform a vitally important magical ritual. "It's been a while since I last saw one of those," Angel said. "They're not easy to come by." "My boss is pretty well connected," Faith commented smugly and gave a smirk. "That can pay off sometimes." "What is that, anyway?" Oz inquired in his turn. "A jewel?" "Um, not exactly," the Watcher said. "But it's called a gem nevertheless?" "Yes." "Intriguing." "So, it's a gem but it's not a gem," Xander recapitulated. "A fine statement, if you're into quantum mysticism and subjective realities and that kind of stuff, but I have to admit you lost me." "I'm inclined to believe you don't want a detailed description," Giles told him. "You know, maybe I do. It'd be nice to have a basic understanding of at least something that goes on around you, for a change." "Very well," the Watcher sighed. "The gem originates from the parallel dimension inhabited by the Gromoth demons. It's highly priced because it is both difficult to obtain and effective in canceling the magic of other inanimate objects. For example, if you have an enchanted blade and press a Gromoth gem against it, the metal will lose its magical properties and become just ordinary steel. In this case, the talisman is crafted with such powerful spells that the gem alone is not enough to make it inert, but we can use the gem to weaken the binding forces in the talisman so that it'll be vulnerable to destruction by ordinary means, such as heating." "See? I'm still listening and moderately interested. Learning really is cool, folks. So, what's the gem made of?" "It's crystallized biological material that's secreted by the spongy upper gonads of the male Gromoth. It builds up inside their secondary seminal ducts, rather like pearls, and the gems are harvested by, uh, killing the demons a-and... cutting off and dissecting their genitals." A stunned and somewhat disgusted silence followed Giles' summary, with just Angel (and, to a lesser extent, Oz) more or less undisturbed. Even Faith briefly grimaced out of revulsion. "Am I the only one who gets the queasy vibe around here?" Xander finally piped up, evidently oblivious to the reaction of the others. He came casually a little closer to me. "I mean, it's not like I haven't run into some pretty weird and gross things before, because it's pretty much a given by this point that I have, but..." "Men, albeit demon men, getting their balls torn off so we could have nice magical amulets? Kinda makes you wonder if the Creator God of your home universe is actually a balding male feminist with daddy issues," I said to him flippantly and added a subdued chuckle at the end. "Huh?" he blurted out, nonplussed. "Say what?" "Um, nothing. Just a joke." Giles apparently felt that we had better get on with the rest of our mission, and so he initiated the ritual. Closing his eyes and holding both of his hands in front of him, with their palms up, he recited a short spell in a muttering voice and a language that I didn't recognize. He stood unmoving and quiet for a few more seconds, presumably to focus his willpower, until he opened his eyes and started to rub the gem against the talisman. There was no external indication of anything out of the ordinary happening. Neither the talisman nor the gem emitted sparkles of light, strange sounds or mysterious smells that my senses could detect. However, I noticed that the gem was breaking up. It was obviously softer than the material of which the talisman was made, and little by little it crumbled into fine dust that fell through Giles' fingers. Soon, just a tiny piece remained, and then that disappeared in a matter of moments. I had no idea if the gem wearing out and being obliterated in this manner was the expected outcome or not. However, Giles didn't express any surprise or dismay, even in his typical restrained manner, and I took this as a good sign. With the last of the gem gone, Giles held the talisman up again and looked it over. He didn't say anything, but there was an air of very cautious satisfaction about him, according to my interpretation. In any case, I was unable to see a difference in the talisman, compared to how it had appeared before the gem was applied to it. For all I could see, the gem had left no mark whatsoever on the disk. "I'm ready, the 'Eww!' factor aside," Willow announced eagerly. "How do we do the destruction spell?" "There is no actual spell to be performed, as such," Giles explained. "We have the demons' campfire at our disposal, and if I have so far managed to avoid any grievous, uh, cockups, we just need to toss the talisman in. Combined with the effects of the Gromoth gem, that should be enough." "Oh," she said with a crestfallen look. "I was under the impression we'd do an incantation a-and sprinkle some powder on the amulet and call on the forces of Higher Beings and... fun things like that. But apparently not." "The simpler the ritual," Giles remarked, "the less likely it is to go wrong." "I guess. Hey, is there anything else I can do to help? Can I throw it in the flames?" "I'll take care of that. If I'm not mistaken, there is a small chance the talisman's energy will dissipate explosively, and I'm unwilling to expose anyone but myself. If something does go wrong, I may well require your assistance and medical attention. Your offer is at any rate very much appreciated, Willow." "Okay," she said and managed a faint smile, but it failed to hide her disappointment completely. We, the others, retreated some distance away from the fire, while Giles remained standing close to it, still holding the talisman. No one could say what the magical explosion might be like and what its effects would be, so we had no idea whether or not we were safe. Regardless, leaving the opening altogether was equally unpalatable as staying too near when the talisman and its forces broke up, since that would have essentially meant abandoning Giles to face the hazard alone. "Infectum fias!" the Watcher exclaimed as he swung his arm back and lobbed the talisman carefully and accurately into the fire. It landed in the middle of the burning pieces of wood and caused a little shower of sparks. I stared at the fire, held my breath and waited, but nothing happened for several seconds. The talisman was so small that it easily disappeared in the glow, making it impossible to see if it was in any way affected. The campfire itself was nowhere near hot enough to melt bronze, let alone gold, so whatever occurred would be the result of the magical forces alone, Angronok's power bound in the amulet and our ritual that was intended to undo it. Just as I was wondering if the talisman was simply going to vanish unceremoniously, or if the magic in it would fizzle out of existence without giving us anything to see or hear, the light show began. A loud crackle burst out, and brilliant tongue of blue-green-white flame shot up from the fire, grew rapidly in height and reached for the sky. I closed my eyes when a wave of intense heat hit my face. The moment of truth had arrived. The talisman was being destroyed. Angronok would forever be barred from entering our world, and with any luck, the reality changes would also come to an end. Perhaps I would soon be back where I belonged, as myself. I braced for another abrupt shift in my surroundings and prayed silently that it would be the last. Almost at once, the heat began to wane and the dazzling light died out; the vast forces once contained in the amulet had been drained and released. I opened my eyes, only to see the fire burning in front of me as before. I spun around to look at the portal. The glowing ghostly ring seemed to dim and flicker very briefly, and then it disappeared, exactly as though someone had powered it off by flipping a switch. Now there was nothing where the circle had floated seconds ago, except for the backdrop of trees standing as quiet, dark figures in the calm night. "It's done," Giles declared in a low voice. He was thankfully uninjured by the blast, as were the rest of us. Someone let out a relieved sigh. It would be an understatement to say that my feelings were mixed. We had won, that much was virtually guaranteed, but if my sensations were to be trusted, I was still firmly planted in the Buffyverse. No reality warp had whisked me back to Greensville or my city apartment. The people around me were a collection of TV show characters, albeit in the form of flesh-and-blood, living and breathing actual human beings (Angel partially excepted). What was more, the dimensional portal that could theoretically have offered a way home for me and my friends had been wiped out. The apprehension soon began to change into a devastating certainty, and it dawned on me that I might after all be doomed to live as Buffy Summers until I, or she, died. I had once been resigned to this fate, but then temporarily reprieved and taken to an unhinged future reality, next to Greensville for a few days, and eventually back here, probably to stay. The disappointment was overwhelming. A few moments of such reflection was sufficient to have me on the verge of crying openly, but I knew that breaking down wouldn't have done any good. I had to wait until I was back in Sunnydale and alone before I could allow the tears to flow. The will that was toying with me might easily have more surprises in store, and one day it could conceivably release me and let me continue with my own life, but it seemed foolish to trust it to take pity on me, considering how it had treated me so far. Even if did leave me alone at some point, the mental wounds I had suffered might never heal entirely. Where I found the reserve of strength I needed to pull myself together again, I have no clue. Perhaps I had my own streak of intrinsic fatalism to thank, but the recovery was much more likely due to the Buffy personality and its unarguably brighter outlook. We had stopped the Big Bad and saved not only this world but all the others as well; that was a fantastic triumph. My personal sacrifice was ultimately insignificant in comparison to what we had achieved. Even if I had to stay in Sunnydale for the rest of my days and go through innumerable nightmarish experiences in Buffy's place, I could at least take solace in the fact that Angronok would never again be able to threaten my family and friends in Greensville. So be it, I said to myself. Bring it on. I took a deep, slow breath and felt reinvigorated, once more ready to deal with whatever was to come. Despondency was beginning to fade out and to give room for determination and defiance. I had bounced back from the doldrums much as I had in Greensville, before the battle in the woods, as though someone had given me an unspoken reassurance that I would win in the end. The enigmatic force responsible for my adventures would not have the sadistic pleasure to see me crumble. The last laugh was mine. With the bleak emotions and thoughts mostly set aside, my mind gradually returned to the present. There were practical problems that we had to tackle right away. Given that Dawn was safe, no issue was more pressing to me than the question of Faith's loyalty. The destruction of the talisman had removed our common interest, and if she were to stay true to her character, she would resume her role as the sidekick to the Mayor of Sunnydale, a major bad guy in his own right. While Richard Wilkins III was luckily not as powerful as Angronok, he was hardly any less evil than his hellgod competitor. "Faith?" I addressed the brunette Slayer. "Can I have a word with you?" "Sure thing, B," she replied in a conversational tone and stepped closer. "What's on your mind?" "I was thinking that maybe we should talk in private." "Fine by me." She joined me, and we walked across the clearing to the shade of the tall trees, not far from where the portal had hovered. The others gave us a few intrigued looks but were too tactful to offer any comments. "Okay," she prompted. "Lay it on." She didn't bother to lower the volume of her speech much, and we understood that we were not fully out of earshot of the rest of the Gang, but in the name of politeness, each party acted as though it couldn't overhear the other. "I have a question," I began and punctuated the sentence with a short pause. "What happens now?" "What do you mean?" she asked back. "We go home, and that pretty much wraps things up for the night. Or do you have, like, other plans I should know about?" "No, it's not that." "I was kinda hoping for you guys to give me a ride back to town. Don't feel like walking all the way to Sunnydale, though the weather's alright." "I'm talking about us," I clarified, a little annoyed at her feigned obtuseness. "What's going to happen between you and me?" "Oh, didn't really see that one coming," she chuckled, reacting with mock, poorly faked surprise. "Are you about to reveal something big about yourself?" "You mind cutting that out and being serious for a moment?" I chided her. "Our work here is done, and Angronok's world domination is off the table. Where does that leave us?" "Right where we started, far as I can see," she replied without hesitation, giving the impression that the whole matter of her allegiance and the ongoing conflict between her and the Scooby Gang bordered on irrelevancy. "You go your way, I go mine. We both do our own thing and see how stuff turns out in the end. Nothing to it." "That's all well and good in principle, but I hate to remind you there are a couple of speed bumps up ahead--or actually head-on collisions. Your boss is preparing to become a demon, he's looking to eat half of the population of Sunnydale for his first dinner, and you and I have a death match marked in our planners. That doesn't exactly spell out 'nothing to it' to me." "You're way overthinking this," she retorted. "Loosen up, Buffy. Worry about tomorrow when it's here. We're not doomed to some prescribed destiny that was carved in stone when the world was made. It doesn't work like that. We can choose for ourselves and pick the path we want to travel." I looked into Faith's expressive brown eyes, trying to penetrate her armor and catch a glimpse of her hidden feelings, but I could detect nothing except relaxed confidence combined with contentment that almost bordered on full-blown arrogance. She was genuinely unfazed by the grim prospects of our future in this world, or else she concealed her misgivings and insecurity perfectly, outdoing her fictional counterpart in that respect. Larry Simmons, a dedicated Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, had eagerly embraced being Faith, and despite having to come to terms with her tragic side and her perilous calling, he had undeniably achieved a form of happiness and fulfillment as her. I would have to start striving for the same goal if I were to adapt to my new life in this world. "That may be what Faith's thinking," I remarked, "but I'd like to hear Leslie's insights. Or Larry's." "Don't you remember what I told you? Leslie and Larry don't exist anymore, simple as that. Gone for good. There's just me, like it or not." I glanced to the side and sighed quietly. "You know," I went on and gave her a wistful smile, "I really wish we could talk completely out of character, if only for one last time. It would be so much easier for both of us if we didn't have to keep up this... this charade. Besides, there were things I wanted to say to Larry. Unresolved stuff. I guess I'm never going to get the closure I was hoping for." "I feel you," she responded, "but I wouldn't let it bother me. Larry Simmons is no more, and the same goes for Mike Caldwell, so whatever bad blood there was between those two is none of our problem. And while we're at it, you'd better strike out the crapola about this being a charade. It's not; it's the reality now for you and me and our friends. This is who we are. I don't understand why you can't get that through your head." "I'm still Mike," I said. "Or a big part of me is. I think like him and I act and talk like him, most of the time." "No, you don't," she corrected me in an exultant tone. "You're totally out of it if you honestly believe what you just said. Nobody looks at you and goes, 'Hey, there's the dorky guy from the next dimension over', 'cause that guy has left the building. He's not around anymore, B. Maybe you don't notice it yourself, or maybe you refuse to, but everyone else sees you're Buffy, through and through. It's plain as day. So stop giving me the bullshit about being a man at heart and not wanting to let go. That got old long ago." I uttered a tired, dry laugh to conceal the disturbing effect that her words had had on me. "Seems like we start going in circles every time we talk about this stuff." "And you wanna know why that is?" she shot back, not missing a beat. I didn't mistake her rejoinder for anything other than a purely rhetorical question and also an ultimatum of sorts. I was supposed to concede her point and admit that I had indeed become one with Buffy, or alternatively close my mouth on the topic. Before I could humor her in either way, though, a blood-curdling screech pierced the night and gave everybody a start. It was a high- pitched, drawn out scream of unspeakable agony, one that could have come equally well from an animal, a human or a demon. Faith and I fell back on our instincts and looked around, scouring the shadows with our eyes for movement and immediate threats, but could see none. "A pretty creditable voice acting performance," Xander quipped when the sound had faded out. As was usual for him, the wisecrack served both to hide and to vent his fear so that he was able to maintain his composure. "It's been great fun, but I'm picturing us packing the picnic up and going home. Who's for some late night snack and a bit of cozy winding down?" He had barely finished speaking when another terrific scream cut through the air. While the first one had caught me completely by surprise, I was far more alert by this time and expecting something to happen. The source of the sound had to be in the heavily wooded area to our left, I estimated, and not very far. Faith had evidently drawn the same conclusions. "Stay here," she told the non-Slayer members of our group. "We'll go and check it out." "Be careful," Willow advised, but Faith had already taken off and was racing through the thicket roughly in the direction where I thought the howls had originated. I ran after her, ignoring the mild protests by the muscles in my limbs, which had been denied the opportunity to recuperate properly from the combat against the Sathir'na. Neither of us had any idea of what we would find. A couple of possibilities flashed through my mind during our sprint: an escaped demon, who was severely wounded and attempting to save itself by hiding in the woods, might have been in its death throes; or perhaps a few vampires from Spike's scattered posse were nearby and fighting with someone else or among themselves. I would much rather have followed Xander's suggestion and quit while we were ahead, but we had to ascertain there were no more enemies lurking around and poised to strike when we left the place at long last. The undergrowth was not very dense and the side of the hill sloped very gradually down towards the valley below, which was fortunate for us, considering how little light there was. Even so, I needed every advantage my sharpened vision and instincts could provide me to be able to speed through the woods without losing my footing or tripping over. In a short time, we reached another round grassy clearing, not more than about a hundred yards from the ritual site and much smaller than it. The spot appeared as though someone had, in an extremely deliberate manner, cut down a handful of trees to make a tiny opening in the otherwise undisturbed forest and then tended to it regularly for decades to prevent it from growing over. There, in the middle of the clearing, kneeling on the ground and leaning forward, was the haggard form of Dan Lee. I stopped in my tracks and assumed a ready stance, cursing under my breath that I had forgotten to bring a weapon with me. A scant second or two later, however, I grasped the fact that Dan no longer posed a threat, his previous demonstrations of fighting skills notwithstanding. His entire body was shaking violently, and the formerly meticulously clean green suit was stained by brown dirt and bits and pieces of vegetation. Dan was bareheaded, having dropped his fedora when he had fought against me at the ritual site. "What do we have here?" Faith spoke in an evilly pleased manner and started to circle closer to Dan, sizing him up. "You're the jerk who tried to buy the talisman from the Sathir'na, aren't you? You've been a bad boy, Danny, a real bad boy. You're gonna get a bit of disciplining because of that, you know." Her presence had not registered with Dan, who abruptly raised his head and bellowed again. I was tempted to plug my ears as another hellish scream burst out of his mouth. The inhuman screech raised in pitch until his voice cracked, and it changed into a series of loud, deep growls, intermingled with breathless sobs. Dan collapsed, and his whole body was wracked with spasms. "Something tells me you're a sore loser," Faith stated in her trademark sneering style, but I noticed that she was nonetheless slightly taken aback by the intensity of Dan's suffering. "Lemme guess. Your boss doesn't cut any slack for people who screw up, is that it?" "I think you're right, Faith," I said softly. I had figured out that her observation, though little more than an off-the-cuff taunt, must have hit the nail on the head. Angronok had sent Dan on a mission to get the talisman, and now the demon lord was cruelly punishing his servant for the failure to see the all-important task to its successful completion. The grass and bushes rustled behind me, and I tore my eyes off the convulsing Dan and spun on my heels to face the approaching shadow. As it emerged from the shade of the trees and came onto the clearing, I could see that it was Giles. He walked slowly and cautiously up to me, keeping his attention on the wretched man in green clothes. Giles had a flashlight, and he pointed the beam at Dan. It revealed that the young man's plump and homely face was twisted into an awful, gruesome grimace and his eyes were sunken and bloodshot. His hair, which had been covered by his hat until this point, was a collection of uneven patches of thin, frizzy black curls, which looked singed, downright charred in places. Meanwhile, Dan was being assaulted by another seizure. "No!" he yelled and slammed his fists against the ground. His voice was reduced to a hoarse whisper. "No! Don't... Don't leave me! Don't leave me now! I don't... I can't... I'm sorry! I don't want to go back! Don't make me go back! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" "Did you do something to him?" Giles asked me quickly and in a subdued voice. "No," I replied. "We found him like this." Dan's cries and anguished pleas devolved into wordless gurgling, as invisible hands were apparently throttling him. He rolled and quivered on the grass, his arms wrapped around his torso and his mouth gasping desperately for air. His master was certainly making him pay, I mused and to my amazement felt a smidgen of pity towards Dan Lee. I would have liked to save him from the clutches of the demon's power; on the other hand, considering what he had done and attempted to do, I would also have enjoyed nothing better than giving him a good, thorough beating. He had deserved it, and richly. In any event, we could do little besides watch. Unexpectedly, Dan went absolutely quiet and his movements ceased in a heartbeat. He lay on his stomach, with his head twisted to the side and his half-open, unblinking eyes reflecting the rays of the flashlight. I was convinced that he had died, but then, after at least ten seconds had passed, his hand twitched. He closed his eyes, opened them again and began to clamber to his feet stiffly and laboriously. Giles, acting out of spontaneous compassion and proper manners, stepped forward to help him, but Dan managed to get up and stand on his own, however barely. "How do you feel, Daniel?" Giles inquired considerately. "A-are you in pain? Can you breathe normally?" There was no answer. Dan, literally dumbstruck, stared at us with his mouth agape. The confident dandy persona had been ripped apart, leaving behind only vestiges and ruins of the retarded young man whom I had first seen walking on the road outside of Chesterton a small lifetime ago. The determination and persistence in his eyes had evaporated, and a dull, empty gaze, devoid of the smallest sign of intelligence, emotion or purpose, had taken their place. This change in him was no less shocking than the torment he had suffered. After scourging his body, Angronok had completed the punishment by crushing Dan's mind. I shuddered involuntarily when the extent of Dan's miserable fate started to become clear to me. Somehow, Angronok had lured the stupid and trusting Dan into his service and used him as long as the boy was useful, spoken through him and made him into a puppet that ran the hellgod's errands. Dan had been imbued with mystical powers and temporarily elevated above most mortals, but when the thrall could serve his function no more, he was thrown away like a torn, dirty shirt and broken up. "Daniel?" Giles addressed him again. "Are you---?" Dan, with his face frozen in the slack-jawed, blank state, paid the Watcher no attention. Instead, he turned slowly around and began to walk off with shaky, robotic steps. If he was aware of us, he regarded us as mere background noise to be filtered out. He was going directly forward, headed for an unknown fate and destination. "His mind has been irreparably damaged, I'd wager," Giles said when Dan's figure was almost completely out of sight. "Angronok probably takes greater pleasure in making him a hollow shell of a human than in simply killing him. I don't believe Dan can fend for himself, especially out here." "I hate to play the bad guy," I commented for my part, "but I say we let him go. What becomes of him is out of our hands. I gave him a ride once, and I'm not about to make that same mistake a second time." "Okay, whatever," Faith said brusquely. "He got what was coming to him, anyway." I pretended not to notice the quizzical look Giles aimed at me. Of course, neither he nor Faith had an inkling of the history that I shared with Dan's counterpart in one of the other realities, and I was at any rate too tired to explain the whole thing to them. "What was it?" Angel inquired as we returned to the clearing, Giles in the lead with his flashlight. Willow, Dawn, Xander and Oz had meanwhile gathered around the gradually dying fire to stay warm, and they eyed us expectantly. "Our acquaintance, Daniel Lee," the Watcher replied. "He, um, was in quite a lot of pain." "What happened to him?" Xander asked in his turn. "Did he attack you?" "No," I said. "He was too busy getting spanked by his boss, and when that was over, he walked away. It seems not getting the talisman before us cost Dan his magic and charisma, and now he's an average Joe, if that." "Yeah," Faith confirmed. "Not a factor anymore. By the looks of it, he pretty much got lobotomized by Angronok. The guy's spaced out and off to parts unknown." "Should we, like, go get him and take him somewhere?" Willow chimed in. "Or are we just leaving him behind?" "I'm not sure there's anything we can do for him," I said, cutting off Giles, who had opened his mouth to offer his views on the topic. I was beginning to have second thoughts about abandoning Dan, and so in truth, my statement was intended to justify my decision to myself as much as to the other people present. "Dawn is our first priority. If and when we bump into Dan again, we can take him in and care for him, but I'm not going to start combing the countryside for him tonight. There are people and houses a few miles down the road. He's bound to find help if he needs it." The expressions of Willow and Xander signaled a trace of dissent, and Oz, while maintaining his deadpan face otherwise, made a point to cast a questioning look at me. Nevertheless, none of them disagreed openly with my stance. "Our work here appears to be done," Giles observed. "If everyone is ready, I think we should make for the vans." "Hey," Dawn interjected. "First Priority speaking. In case you haven't noticed, I'm missing a shoe. I'm not walking back to the road in this condition. It's several miles!" "No, it's not," I corrected her. "We parked just below this slope. It can't be more than a couple of hundred yards." "A hundred yards or a hundred miles, I'm not walking anyway." She pouted, and I understood that we would never get to the vans unless I yielded to her demand. In the end, I carried her piggyback down the footpath. Dawn enjoyed every second of the ride, and she babbled about her plans for the next weekend. I replied mainly with short grunts. My curtness was not because of the exertion, which was next to negligible for my stamina, nor due to any kind of annoyance with her, as I was overjoyed to have her back safe and sound, but because of the environment. Even after what had transpired, we couldn't simply presume that no more enemies were hiding in the shadows. We arrived at the roadside without incident. Our means of transportation, the two vans, were in sight not more than twenty or thirty paces away. I was finally able to breathe a little more easily when we gathered on the grassy road shoulder, none the worse for wear. I stopped to let Dawn land on her feet and told her, "I bet Mom's going to feed you all the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches you can eat as soon as we come in through the front door, but in case you can't wait until we get there, we brought a few emergency rations. There's some food and spring water for you in Oz's van." "Thanks!" the girl said. "That sounds fantastic. I'm starving." The side door of the black van slid open, and Cordelia and Wesley stepped out. Although they appeared to be in good shape and no damage to speak of was visible on the vehicles either, they had been seriously rattled by something. Their eyes were wide, and Wesley's movements were distinctly skittish. In fact, I thought I could see his arms trembling a little. "W-what happened?" he asked with a stutter. "H-how did it go?" "Good," Faith announced. "Got to kick some ass." "We had a clash with a group of vamps on the trail," I explained for my part, "and a biggish fight with the Sathir'na at the ritual site, but we came out on top. Everybody's in one piece and Dawn's here." "And the talisman?" "Not existing anymore," I said. "I performed the ritual and destroyed it," Giles elaborated. "After I rubbed the Gromoth gem against it, I cast the talisman into fire, and there was an intense burst of energy as its powers unraveled. Nothing remains of it that we could find." "I'm relieved to hear that," the young Watcher commented and cleared his throat. "Good show. Absolutely marvelous." "Unlike some other shows," Cordelia spoke up sharply. Her whole being exuded annoyance and irritation. "Four vamps attacked us while you guys were gone! It was really nice of you people to leave Wesley and me here alone to fight for our lives!" "You volunteered for the job, remember?" Xander cut in. "And you also wanted to come on this trip, even though you didn't have to." She was not swayed by these remarks. "There were four of them! I mean, I can understand one or two, but four? And they were way bigger than the ones you usually run into in Sunnydale! What's up with that, anyway?" "How'd you deal with them?" Oz asked. "I was outside when they attacked," Cordelia explained in an animated manner. "It was a total surprise, mind you. I kinda freaked out at first, 'cause I had no weapons handy, but Wesley threw me a couple of holy water bottles and a crucifix. Then he told me what to do when I held the vamps off and backed to the van. Two of them got pretty badly burned by the water. I would've been drained, if it wasn't for Wes." "Some timely material support and solid tactical advice made a big difference," the man noted with a touch of pride. "So, in other words," Xander summarized, "you stayed inside the van, threw stuff out for her and gave her pointers while she did the dirty work?" "I wouldn't go that far," Wesley defended himself, but his expression betrayed his shame. "I... um, covered her retreat by bombarding the vampires with water bottles, and, uh, quite effectively, I might add." "Can we pass on the pleasantries and debriefings and go already?" Dawn interrupted in a weary and impatient voice. "I'm so fed up with this place." "Certainly," Giles said. "Let's get a move on, shall we?" Nobody needed further encouragement. We loaded the weapons and other items in and climbed aboard the vans, with Dawn inserted in the Oz Mobile as it had more space available, and buckled up. Although our trust in Faith had been largely restored (for now, at least) and she was allowed to keep her knife, we nonetheless repeated the seating arrangement from the outbound part of the trip. She was again crammed between Angel and me in the back of the black van, a situation that seemed to amuse her. She flashed me a mischievous smile and squeezed my knee with her hand suggestively. Wesley manned the driver's position and Giles sat down on the other front seat. The engine woke effortlessly from its slumber and began to purr on idle. With precise and methodical maneuvering, Wesley had the nose of the van pointing in the direction we had come from in a very short time. His physical courage may not have been irreproachable, but his comment about his driving skills had not been an empty boast. In contrast, Oz was in for a struggle, first to get his van to start and then to turn it around. The starter whined continuously for several seconds and went quiet before Oz made another failed attempt and then one more. At long last, the engine rewarded him by firing and then settling on reasonably steady, if noisy, running. The bulky and boxy old wagon wobbled on its suspension as it wrenched itself sluggishly onto the gravel, accompanied by audible complaints from the clutch and gears. A good minute went by until we could embark on our journey home, but eventually Oz was ready, and his van began to roll forward at an easy pace. Wesley followed, careful to maintain a safe distance. Oz's dim red taillights shone in the dark in front of us, veering left and right, rising and falling as the road wound through the hilly terrain. He was carrying a precious cargo, I mused. Dawn, Willow, Xander and Cordelia were his passengers and depending on him to find the way. Wesley had mastered the fright that the skirmish with the vampires had given him, and he was unruffled and composed once more. Indeed, as he sat at the wheel and steered the van with relaxed confidence, he gave off a vague air of self-approval. He had no doubt somehow convinced himself that he had filled a pivotal role in the battle and had earned praise for his performance. Giles, on the other hand, had taken his glasses off and was leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed. The lack of proper rest that had accumulated over several days was beginning to catch up with him. "Chin up, old man," Wesley said playfully to his colleague. "You seem rather more pensive and brooding than the outcome of our mission would warrant." "I'm tired, that's all," Giles responded and rubbed his eyes wearily. However, he went on to add, "And... It's probably nothing, and I'd be foolish to give a vague hunch more weight than it deserves, but to tell the truth, I suspect the danger might not be completely over yet." Wesley raised his eyebrows. "Oh? What makes you think that?" "It's only a hunch, like I said, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was totally baseless. Maybe I have developed a tendency to fear the worst, even when there's no reason to assume it has any chance of happening." "I should think so. The talisman was destroyed, was it not? The texts are perfectly clear on the point that Angronok has no other means of regaining his freedom, and therefore we have nothing more to fear from him. Absent the talisman, he'll remain contained until the end of the Universe." "I don't want to be a contrarian, but you'd do well to bear in mind that our knowledge about Angronok and the workings and limits of his magic is sorely lacking in many respects. Not much was ever written on the topic." "If there really existed another feasible way for him to break out of confinement, why would his acolytes bother with the talisman? Why even create such a thing to begin with and put his power in it? It would be a liability to Angronok, not an asset." "You make a good point, and I'm not prepared to argue it with you right now. Just file my forebodings under 'Ramblings by a Jaded and Exhausted Watcher', if you will." The discussion between the two gradually drifted into prosaic and practical matters. I soon lost interest in what they were saying and became immersed in my own thoughts, to the point that I was hardly more than peripherally aware of the world around me. There was plenty for me to process. Giles' misgivings were one thing, but although I had great respect for the man's sheer knowledge and sound judgment in these matters (in and many others), I was inclined to write off his bad feelings this time. The portal was closed and the talisman vaporized, with the result that Angronok couldn't find his way into our dimension anymore. I was far more bothered by the fact that I was stuck in Buffy's world, albeit the low point of my emotions had passed. It had felt perfectly logical to assume that after this threat had been eliminated for good, I had nothing further to do here and the flow of events in Sunnydale could resume its normal course. Then again, that was something I had simply expected to be true. The favorite saying of one of my weapons handling instructors in the Guard re-emerged from some deep recess of my brain: "Always keep in mind, 'ass' is part of the word 'assume'!" He was a man who knew what he was talking about. It was no use nursing lost hopes and dreams. Wallowing in them would do little besides adding to my depression, so the best course of action was to look to the future. As a good place to start, I had to accept wholesale that being a Slayer was my immutable destiny, and that meant I had to be prepared. But prepared for what? A fair number of the episodes that I had seen had left some mark in my recollections, at least on a general, non- detailed level, and every scrap of that knowledge could be invaluable in the coming weeks, months and years. For instance, the Mayor would eventually be killed by being lured into the booby-trapped high school library after he had morphed into a huge snake-like demon during our graduation ceremony. However, for that to succeed, I needed Faith's knife to taunt him and bait him into following me there through the school building; and to get the knife, I had to fight Faith and wound her nearly mortally with that very same weapon. With the changes that the Angronok debacle and the hunt for the talisman had caused, the original chain of events might not take place at all and my foreknowledge would be useless, or even worse than useless, if I gave the others bad advice based on it. The same applied to dealing with any crisis and major enemy that had yet to enter the stage. All the same, I made one firm decision. As soon as I got home, I would take a notebook and a pen and write down everything I could remember happening in the show's story arc from this moment on. When the situations actually occurred, I would share the information with the Gang, careful never to reveal any more than was necessary. We could then go over it together and consider what to do. The troubling question of my identity had also resurfaced, thanks to Faith's bluntness, and I was constantly turning that over in my head. I did feel that I was not yet mentally one with Buffy, even though the opposite was true for my bodily form. While I had been occasionally worried that Joyce, Dawn, Giles, Xander, Angel and the others might sense something seriously wrong with me and that they would start asking me difficult questions, they had never once truly caught on. They had accepted me as their daughter, sister or favorite Slayer without reservations. I had to be playing the role far better than I had thought, and nothing in the manner I spoke and carried myself gave me away--or else the role had become my real self, regardless of what I wanted to believe. Maybe that point was drawing near. One morning not too many days from now, I would wake up and find that the last remnants of Mike had withered away during the night. His memories would stay with me, but I would no longer identify as him or miss him. I could look back, hopefully without pain, to what he was and what he did in his life, but his legacy would not define me. I would only be Buffy Anne Summers, and the conflict of personalities inside of me would forever be put to rest. Joyce and Dawn would be my only family and the Scoobies my actual friends, while Gail, Tony and Kate Caldwell would be relegated to a fuzzy, poorly defined existence on the borderline between dreams and faded recollections. "Let's see if the radio is in working order," Giles said and reached for the controls of the tuner, "and if I remember the frequency of that oldies station." The system came to life, with a male announcer's voice on the speakers. Giles turned the volume up in time for the next song, whose energetic string intro promptly filled the cabin. I recognized it well before the lyrics started and smiled to myself. It was as though the disk jockey had telepathically connected with me, with Mike, and chosen the song to lift my spirits. Buffy wouldn't have thought much of the tune, but Mike certainly enjoyed it. "What's this?" Wesley interposed. "I don't believe I've heard it before." "Not familiar with the Rolling Stones?" the older Watcher reacted with plain amusement. "I daresay I'm familiar with them. What I meant is that this version of the song---" "It's from the Allen Klein compilation album, 'Metamorphosis'," Giles explained. "If memory serves, he lifted the orchestra track from Chris Farlowe's cover and then combined it with Jagger's vocals. Of course, there are some, or actually many, who feel that anything done by or under Klein turned into a travesty, but I appreciate this version for its vibrancy." My smile widened at Giles' matter-of-fact expounding of rock trivia. Moments like this, seamlessly combining the sensible with the funny, did a great deal to endear me to the Brit and his company. "There's still the odd surprise from you every once in a while," Wesley said with a restrained little chuckle. "I always imagined that you leaned more towards classical music, perchance even to the exclusion of all else." "You do remember I was born in the 20th Century, I trust," Giles needled him in return. "Ah, but that wasn't intended as an insult. A varied taste in music is never a bad thing. In fact, while we're on the topic, I might confess that personally, I'm partial to Cat Stevens." "I don't intend to insult either, but I think that makes two surprised Watchers in this cabin." The song had reached its final chorus when, without any kind of warning, the car was hit by an extremely strong jolt. We were thrown against our seatbelts so hard that the air squeezed out of my lungs, and then the vehicle rolled sideways. It rose into the air for a split second and then slammed down in a fierce impact of crushing metal and breaking glass. Everything happened too fast for me to have time to be scared, apart from a flash of fright and confusion. My head struck against something hard and my eyes blacked out. ***** The first thought to form in my brain after the unconsciousness let go of me was that we had driven off the road and that the van was wrecked somewhere in the woods, likely upside down. There was not a second to lose. I had to get out and help the others if I could. I opened my eyes, but the darkness remained. It was like a veil pressed tightly against my face, without a single ray of light anywhere. I tried to turn my head, but to no avail. There was nothing to see in this vacuum, and nothing to hear either. As my mind gradually cleared, I realized that I had to be weightless. I had no way of telling any directions apart or how my body was oriented, except for the impression that my legs were stretched and my back was straight, meaning I was either standing upright or lying down. Regardless, I was in no pain or actual discomfort, aside from not being able to see and not knowing what had happened. Was I dead? My neck could have snapped as the van careened off the road, tumbled and hit a tree or a rock. Such a trauma would have been immediately fatal, even to a Slayer. My seatbelt was fastened, but that alone might not have saved me if the impact had been violent enough. For a brief while, the idea of my life having ended felt soothing and downright heartening. I had done everything I had been destined to do, and this was my reward. I could finally rest and be forever at peace. Nonetheless, I grasped almost instantly that I couldn't possibly have died. I was able to think somewhat coherently and I still had a body (or I believed I had). The next notion was accompanied with abject horror. Had I gone blind? Had I hit my head and suffered some sort of neurological damage that had destroyed my vision and most of my other senses as well? If that was the case, I'd have to come to terms with being severely disabled for the rest of my days, become accustomed to an existence where I would depend completely on others--and that in Sunnydale and in the midst of its various dangers. A painless death was a merciful and desirable fate in comparison. Being enclosed and trapped in the black void was suddenly unbearable. I had to get in contact with another person and break out of this maddening prison at any cost. I drew air into my lungs and cried out, "Giles! Angel! Can you hear me? Anyone?" I listened for a response and waited to feel someone touch me, but the silence and solitude remained unbroken. "Angel! Wesley! Giles! Anyone?" I repeated in anguish. "Are you there?" The sound of my words was immediately swallowed by the night around me. No one reached through to me. I was not even certain if anything audible had come out of my mouth. Perhaps I had only yelled and called the names in my mind, which was trapped in a broken, comatose body. I knew that my brain would react to this kind of isolation by compensating for the lack of sensory input with internal images and impulses. My mental health would deteriorate, step by step, and I would go quietly mad inside my head. To be sure, there was a small chance that the reality changes had not ended yet and that I would at some point be transplanted into another world where I possessed a healthy physical form, but I couldn't put my faith in that. As if on cue, right after this thought had come and gone, I did detect a change. I had a vague but unmistakable perception that something, or rather someone, was present in this space with me. It was precisely like the feeling of having someone else's eyes on your back, a notion of being observed, although there is nothing to prove it and the observer is unseen. I intended to write the whole thing off as a hallucination or wishful thinking, but the impression quickly became more definite and more certain. In fact, I was soon convinced there was not one, but multiple persons nearby, try as I might to discard the mental picture or to put it down to the early symptoms of my terminal insanity. While those others reminded me of the one that had stopped and studied Gunner Bill, Dan and myself in the vicinity of the burning nameless town, my intuition told me that these beings were not of the same kind. I was virtually positive they were not malevolent, or at the very least not decidedly so. Instead, they were interested in me merely because I was there and they were curious. Their thoughts probed me unobtrusively and without a keen desire to know my every secret. They were much more distant than the demonic light spirit, maybe existing on an altogether higher level. I was like a toddler walking across a ballroom full of serious, smartly dressed, intelligent grownups. Some of them would give me a quick glance or a friendly smile from their lofty heights before carrying on with their business and socialization, while others ignored me completely as I waddled past. In the midst of the bafflement, another explanation for this state occurred to me. Maybe I was having a near-death experience, wandering somewhere in the uncharted wilderness between being fully dead and fully alive. I had once read a collection of accounts by people who had recovered from what amounted to clinical death, and although I had no definite opinion on the meaning of those stories, either from a scientific or a metaphysical viewpoint, I had regarded them as engrossing all the same. If I ever regained consciousness and the ability to interact with my surroundings, I would have a story of my own to tell. A dim blotch of diffuse blue light, no larger than my thumb, flickered into view in front of me. It remained still for a moment and then began to drift towards me slowly until it passed me to my left. An orange one followed, then a green one, and promptly many more in every color. The little lights floated leisurely in the air, came closer, gave off a tiny amount of warmth and disappeared behind me. None of them touched me; they always swerved to the side to make room. Courtesy of them, I now had the impression that I was moving forward instead of staying fixed in one place. As I was admiring the strange but tranquil and calming light show, my ears began to pick up a low sound, not unlike the buzzing of insects. It appeared to be coming from every direction, and I assumed at first that it had something to do with the lights. The sound became gradually louder and clearer, however, until it resolved into a multitude of human voices speaking, muttering, whispering, shouting and even singing or chanting off in the distance. I was certain that I could hear words, but they were too garbled to be intelligible since the voices overlapped and, most likely, spoke in strange languages. The lights continued to appear and float past me. Sadly, the agreeable sense of wonder was not to last. There was a perception of danger: I suddenly noticed that a distinctly malicious and powerful presence was close by. Its thoughts searched for me incessantly, trying to pin me down. Although the being to whom this consciousness belonged was one of the many around me, or similar to them in nature, it was also different from them. Unlike the others, it was plainly hostile. I wanted to run from it, to get away from it, but I had no control over my movement. The enemy entity followed me constantly and homed in, weaving deftly through a crowd of unwitting or neutral bystanders. I didn't know what the being was, why it was after me or what it would do if it caught me, but its attitude was not in question. My sole weapon against it was my own willpower and determination to resist, and I was painfully aware that those were too weak to give me any real protection. In desperation, I tried to reach for the lights with my hands and grab a few of them so I could put them between my enemy and myself in order to hide behind them, but I was unable to touch them. They slid through my invisible fingertips. Even so, the small flickering orbs did eventually react to me. A number of them stopped in mid-air right in front of me and began to grow and consolidate into one large, brightly glowing multicolored sheet. A gleam of hope awoke in my mind as I watched the sheet of light form. From a rational point of view, I had absolutely no reason to assume that I was being protected, that the lights could deter my enemy, or indeed that the phenomenon had anything to do with me in the first place, but I was distraught and willing to grasp any straw. The confirmation came without delay. I floated into the unified, mixed brilliance of the sheet and it engulfed me, banishing the darkness and blinding me temporarily. It had been like an open door leading into a well-lit room from the night outside. I closed my eyes tightly and reopened them to try to adjust to the change in illumination, and then to take in my new amazing surroundings. I was, it seemed, standing on a flat sandy beach next to a dark ocean. The water was completely calm, as was the air, and the only thing that broke the silence was the gentle chirping of birds. A small, silvery crescent moon shone high in the sky that was blazing in shades of red and orange. The sun had just dipped below the horizon. I had found a tailor-made paradise. I would have liked nothing better than to stay here and forget about my worries. However, I also comprehended that the place was not real. I didn't feel the air on my skin or the sand against the soles of my feet. It was nothing more than a vision or a hallucination without substance, conjured up by either my own mind or that of someone else for the purpose of comforting me, and it would not last longer than a fleeting moment. Another realization, or more accurately an intuition, followed on the heels of the first. If this imaginary world had been intended as my new home, it would have been built to be solid and tangible, as opposed to an ethereal dream scene. Perhaps it was actually a shelter to shield me, temporarily, from the force that was hunting me. Sure enough, I felt the predator's presence yet again, but this time the sensation was muted and transitory. With any luck, the evil being had lost track of me and had gone to look for me somewhere else. The daylight began to fade rapidly. Darkness, moving in and thickening like drifting black smoke, enveloped me and obscured the vision. I let out an instinctive groan of disappointment, but that emotion shifted to quickly mounting fear when I plunged into the black hole again. The shimmering orbs that had kept me company were nowhere to be seen, and if the mysterious beings were still present, I couldn't sense them anymore. What I had seen, no matter how incomprehensible or unnerving, was fascinating and infinitely preferable to the nothingness in which I had found myself at the start of this journey. In truth, anything at all, including being chased by a non-corporeal demon, would be better than being forever cut off from the rest of the Universe and being denied the faintest stimulus. I didn't mind if I was on my way to Hell; as far as I was concerned, I had experienced it already. For a short while, I was back in the void, fighting my anxiety and dread to try to stay focused and prepared for what was to come. Then, the light returned, and I was utterly stupefied by the sight before me.