The prey was swift.

The Disciple wove its way through the streets and alleyways of Bephal without pause or hesitation. It seemed to change directions at random, without putting a moment's thought into its choice of path or direction... just as long as it kept moving. It's cape... the tattered remnants of a bloody sheet... fluttered noisily behind it as it made a ninety-degree turn and scurried down an alley in its curious half-run, half-glide.

Above, Gallows changed directions to follow it. Trailing the thing was child's play. Even without the flutter of the cape, the rotting stench, or the hundred other physical traces the Disciple left in its wake, Gallows could have followed it with the ease of a moth drawn to a bonfire.

In a way, that's exactly what he was going. The waves of rancor pouring off of the Disciple were a bonfire the likes of which Gallows had never encountered before. He could feel the hatred from several streets away, even when the creature producing it was out of sight. No... tracking the Disciple was not going to be a problem. Nor would keeping up with it.

With a running start that was little more than a hob, Gallows leapt from one rooftop to the adjacent one. He landed softly, his own cape settling silently around him as he paused to watch his quarry change directions twice more. Then he moved... not to follow it, but to cut it off. Two silent leaps later, Gallows was watching the Disciple run past him on the street below.

The assassin held his miniature crossbow steady, letting the Disciple run into... then through... then out of his sights. The shot was wrong. Gallows could have hit the creature with ease... but it wasn't right. The shot wasn't right... the chase wasn't right... nothing was right.

"Hmmmm...." Gallows leaned back and crouched on the corner of the roof. He watched.... he watched not as an assassin tracking a target, but as a man would watch an opponent's strategy unfold on a chess board. Gallows didn't play chess, but he had tracked enough intelligent prey... men and other things... to know when he was being lead around by the nose. He knew what a trap looked like, and it looked a lot like what he was seeing now.

But what kind of trap was it?

Contrary to popular perception, there really WAS more than one way to find out...

---

"I want to know what he meant by that!" Francesca demanded. She held Casey close to her, as if defending him from N'Doki.

It was nonsense, of course... had N'Doki wanted the boy, he would have taken great glee in ripping Francesca's arms off to get him. But that was not necessary. Yet. December hoped that it would not become necessary, but Francesca's protectiveness was becoming tiresome. The boy was clearly the key to what was going on in Bephal. The spirits of the town had protected him... but why? And from what, exactly? If the boy did not know, then the spirits knew... and the boy was the key to getting their cooperation.

"You said maybe they already had him," she repeated the necromancer's suspicious statement from earlier. "You said the ghosts already-"

"I know what I said-"

"Further questioning is clearly required," December interrupted. He had to... if Francesca angered the necromancer any further, things would get ugly.

"You've questioned him already!"

"Francesca, let them talk to the boy one more time," Floyd demanded. "Put the boy down and-"

"I don't take orders from you!" the woman spat. "Not from any of you! This is MY son-"

"With certain rare exceptions, sons require TWO parents," said December. "A mother AND a father. The child's father has an interest in this as well, and for your sake we had best find out the nature of that interest before he returns."

"You... you told them?" Francesca turned to her father. "You TOLD them?"

"Every damned bit of it," said Floyd. "If there was more to tell, I'd be shouting it to the heavens right now... but there isn't. Except maybe for what's locked away in that boy's head."

"All these years you SWEAR me to secrecy... even though everybody in the damned town already knows the truth! And now this... this CRIMINAL walks through the door and you throw our dirty laundry at his feet like an offering!!"

Downstairs, the front door opened... its one remaining hinge protested loudly.

"Don't mind us..." Emerson Shaw called. "Nobody came out to see about us, so we just picked the lock and came in! Anybody home!? HELLOOO!?"

"Pardon me, Mr. D'Arcy," said December. With a stern, steadying glance at N'Doki, December left the bedroom. He descended to the first floor. The Night's Bloom... minus Gallows... stood in the living room, looking very much like they had lost a fight with a tribe of angry ogres.

"Sorry we let the beastie get in," said Hars. "Everything okay in here?"

"We are unharmed," December replied. He paused halfway down the stairs. "Your assistance is appreciated."

"Hear that..." Emerson whispered, nudging his brother in the side. "...he likes us!"

"I don't think we were quite quick enough, though," Hars said apologetically. "I mean... don't see how we could have done any different, but..."

"Apologies are not necessary. As I said, no one has been harmed."

"You sure about that?" said Hars, clearly trying to imply something. December was in no mood for implications.

"I assume you have something to say?" said December.

"Yeahhh," Hars licked his lips, looked away for a second, then swung his gaze slowly up the stairs until the rested on December's face. "It's about J'Hasp. That thing under the ground must have grabbed him when he left us. Emerson came across him in the lair-"

"That's me," Emerson raised his hand. "Emerson Shaw... nice to meet you..."

"He tried to fish the little fella out, but it just wasn't meant to be. He barely made it out himself. I'm sorry."

December peered down at the men for a long, uncomfortable pause. At the foot of the stairs, a thick tide of cold air rolled slowly across the Night's Bloom.

"Show me," December said finally.

"Show you what?"

"You say that you tracked this creature to it's lair. Show it to me."

"You want to GO there?" said Yexhill Thane.

"Oh, no, no, no," Emerson objected. "You'd NEVER fit in that hole. You're too big-"

"Then we shall widen it. N'Doki!"

At December's shout, a figure appeared at the top of the stairs. It was not N'Doki.

"These men with you?" said Floyd. The old man looked doubtfully at the collection of rogues gathered in his living room. His eyes traveled from one face to another, stopping at Emerson. Or, more exactly, at the golden dagger hanging from a leather loop on Emerson's belt. A look of worried recognition drew across the old man's face.

"Yes, they are with me," December replied. "N'Doki and I encountered them on the road to-"

"Where did you get blade?" Floyd interrupted.

"It's mine!" Emerson's hand snapped to the knife's hilt.

"He found it near the creature's lair," said Hemingway. "Why... is it yours?"

"Noooo, because its MINE!"

"May I see it?"

"Nope," said Emerson. "Mine. Can't touch it-"

The back of Hemingway's right hand smacked Emerson across the forehead... a glancing blow just hard enough to draw Emerson's attention away from the blade... which had miraculously ended up in Hemingway's left hand.

"OUCH!"

"Here..." Hemingway stepped forward. Both Floyd and December descended the rest of the way to the living room. Floyd took the knife and examined it... holding it not like a weapon or a valuable piece of gold... but more like a piece of bloody meat that he was trying to identify. He touched it with the very tips of his fingers and held it at a distance while squinting furiously at it. Floyd scowled so deeply that his face almost folded in half.

"Where did you say you found this?"

"What is it?" said December.

"It's mine,that's what it is-

"Doesn't really matter whose it is now-" Floyd said slowly.

"-the hell it doesn't!-"

"What matters is who it belonged to thirty years ago... fellow by the name of Berston Groad."

"And he is...?"

"I think you're going to like this," said Floyd, talking to December. "He was a member of the town guard. Him and his two partners were the best law-men this town ever saw. Best of friends, they were... inseparable. These three put more of Bephal's monsters in the Pit... and in prison... than any men before or since. But you know what they say about fighting monsters, Mr. December?"

"Men who do so must beware, lest they become monsters themselves. Yes, I am familiar with the adage."

"Well, that's what happened to the first... and last, until now... man to carry that blade. I guess staring evil in the face day after day finally got to them. Hell, most of the town guard was already corrupt by then... all except for those three. They resisted the threats and the bribes for a long, long time, until finally they had had enough. They 'reorganized' the town guard... none of them having the authority to do so... and killed anybody who wouldn't go along. Then they did the same to the rest of the town. They took it over. Not everybody liked that idea, and so there were fresh corpses in the streets every day until all the dissenters were dead or gone. Things got better after that. Those three controlled everything that happened in this town, and Bephal was a better place for it... as long as you didn't get in the way of things or stick your nose where it didn't belong."

"Sounds familiar," Hars said gruffly, earning himself a stern but quick glance from December.

"Those men brought order to this town: Berston Groad with his sword and that magic dagger, Chester Fanning with his crossbow, and the ring-leader... a mage that eventually put the other two in their graves when they betrayed him. His name was-"

"Jeremiah Trisk," December finished. Floyd nodded... a slow, reverent movement of his head.

"That knife be Jeremiah's doing. He made it for Berston... enchanted it himself, back when the three of them were on the guard. There was a lot more magic in Bephal those days; a good man... or a not-so-good one... needed a bit for himself if he was to keep up with his enemies. That went double for the town guard. Hell, it seemed like everybody with a cheap trick or a magic wand that got run out of Montfort ended up here. That's what got Trisk onto the town guard; he was the only magic-user among 'em. They regretted that in the end, I suppose."

"An enchanted blade," said December. His mind traveled back to his encounter with ANOTHER enchanted blade connected with Jeremiah's Trisk. Perhaps this golden blade was a precursor to the one Trisk's daughter had tried to kill him with. If it was, then it was likely to be quite dangerous.

"Yeah," said Floyd. "Don't know what it does...."

"Makes you more of what you are," said Hemingway, glancing at Emerson. "At the cost of someone else."

Floyd shrugged.

"Never got close enough to find out, and Groad wasn't the type to tolerate a lot of personal questions. Old Groad was a hell of a swordsman, though. Seems that some times he was a lot better than other times... so I guess you could be right. And you say you found this where that monster lives?"

"Underground," said Hars. "East end of town. The thing makes tunnels.... the lad found the blade in one of them."

"East?" Floyd frowned again. "EAST, you say? Not west... not under the old cemetery?"

"No, there were no cemeteries where we were." Hemingway said suspiciously. "Why?"

"Because the last time I saw this blade, it was laying in Berston Groad's casket just before they sealed it. He was buried with it. Buried in a cemetery... and all the cemeteries are on the WEST side of town."

"The beastie moves underground, like I said," said Hars. "It could have disturbed the graves where this man was buried. In fact... Emerson, didn't you say there were bodies in that lair?"

"Yeah, but those were FRESH bodies," said Emerson. "Shriveled, but still... uhhh.... juicy. It was feedin' on 'em, I think. Like a spider... ya know." Emerson made a loud slurping noise, then shivered when the sound send a chill down his own spine. "Eeewww...."

"Considering what's happened so far, I'm not all that surprised that Groad's blade has found its way back to the surface," said Floyd. "...as long as nothing else has come along with it."

"Perhaps Dorath Chesterson is not the only enlivened corpse we will have to contend with," said December. "However, the involvement of Trisk's magic does raise possibilities that we cannot ignore."

"You still think all this is Trisk's doing?" said Floyd.

"Quite possibly," December replied. "Unfortunately, we can no longer sit and wait for answers to come to us. Now we must go out and seek them ourselves."

"Uh-oh," Yexhill Thane said quietly. "I don't think I like the sound of that."

"Blackshear. Emerson Shaw. You will take me to this lair."

"Why? What for?"

"You KNOW what for," Hars snapped... also quietly. "We've still got a missing man-"

"That thing? That thing's dead, I TOLD you-""

"HUSH, or you'll get us all killed!" Hars punctuated his words with a non-gentle nudge that nearly knocked Emerson over.

"Thane and Hemingway will investigate the source of this dagger. Mr. D'Arcy.... you will accompany them."

"Hey, now wait a minute, I'm an old man-"

"As am I," December glared at Floyd.

"I'll... uhhh.... I'll get dressed."

"AHEM!" Emerson cleared his throat in a blatant cry for attention. "Before you scurry off, there's still the matter of my property, eh?"

"eh? OH!" Floyd gave the golden knife back to Hemingway. "Here, take it." The blade stayed in Hemingway's grasp for perhaps a half-second before Emerson snatched it away and returned it to his belt. Floyd hurried up the stairs, moving quite quickly for an 'old man.'"

December waited for him to leave, then he turned to Hemingway.

"You will watch him closely," December said with voice lowered. "You will remember and report every word he says. Every word."

"You don't trust this guy?" Thane asked.

December didn't answer the question. The fact that Thane had even ASKED it was a sign that Thane himself wasn't completely worthy of trust. Not that anyone ever was...

"What if we run into that thing?" said Yexhill. "...or that OTHER thing?"

"Combat is not advised. I suggest evasion."

"Gee, thanks."

"What about..." Hars paused. "...him. You know. We could use some magic on our side. If ya don't wanna call in the others from Montfort, then at least-"

"N'Doki will remain here," This last was spoken not by December, but by N'Doki himself. The necromancer was descending the stairs from a point three-quarters of the way up, where he had been standing... cloaked in shadows... for the moment December had called his name. Floyd had walked right past him without knowing. December had known of his presence all along, but the others were caught by surprise. "... remain here to protect de innocent. HA!"

"The boy can protect himself," said December, turning to face N'Doki.

"Den perhaps N'Doki will do what N'Doki does, eh..."

"The child has answers that we need," December lowered his voice even further. "Answers that he may not even know he has. Retrieve them. Use any means at your disposal, the time for niceties has passed."

"Ahhh, now DIS is de December dat I know!"

"However, I expect him to still be alive when I return. His mother, as well."

The flash of disappointment on the necromancer's face passed quickly, replaced with a sinister smile.

"Let us proceed," said December. He called up the stairs: "MR. D'ARCY, WE ARE WAITING!"

"Coming!" Floyd shouted from upstairs.

"I suggest you stop and acquire the necessary tools along the way," December's said to Hemingway.

"Tools?" said Thane. "Tools for what?"

"For digging," Hemingway answered. He didn't sound at all pleased with his own answer. "For digging up graves."

"For digging our OWN graves is more like it," said Thane.

---

The Disciple's lithe, yet still rotting form came to a brief halt at the corner of Monroe and Main streets. The creature's ever-billowing cloak, looking very much like the old tattered sheet that it was, settled around its body while the Disciple lowered itself into a crouch halfway out of the shadows. It did not worry about being seen... in fact, it WANTED to be seen. But at the moment, there was no one to oblige him. The rooftops and alleyways were as empty as the streets. The thieves and other miscreants who would normally have inhabited such places had abandoned Bephal years ago... leaving a town that was quiet and safe only by virtue of the fact that all the rats had already deserted the floundering ship. But it was not thieves that the Disciple wanted. Nor did he want the townspeople that were now stirring in the homes around him.

Actually... he DID want them. But not now. Right now, the desires of the thing that was Dorath Chesterson were very specific. Specific, and now... somehow... thwarted.

Where was the follower?

The deliciously dark soul that had been following him since the boarding house (must return... must kill HIM!) was nowhere to be seen. Or heard. The Disciple had led him on an animated chase, bouncing from rooftop to rooftop, street to street, and alley to alley. The reasons for the chase were unknown to the Disciple, as was its intended destination. The creature simply followed the urges that mysteriously appeared in its mind at critical junctures: Go here. Turn Here. Wait. Go Now. Likewise, the location of the follower was known to him by some remote instinct rather than by direct use of his senses. No matter which way he turned or how fast he went, he always knew where his pursuer was... right down to the exact rooftop the follower occupied at any point in the chase.

But suddenly, that was no longer true. The flow of remote knowledge had been suddenly replaced by emptiness... and then confusion. It was as if the man following him and unexpectedly vanished, bringing the 'chase' to a sudden and perhaps permanent halt.

The Disciple waited.

Then, acting on unheard and unspoken orders, he ventured further out into the open. He waited again.

Nothing.

He continued to wait. As he did, the Disciple's idling mind churned the compacting layers of rage that fueled its body. It had seen the old (DIE!) man. It had been to the house... been within striking distance. But it had been prevented from exacting its vengeance. There was too much power there. He could not go back just yet, but perhaps his vengeance need not go totally unslaked. There was another... yes...

The Disciple's face turned southward-

*click*
Thwanng!

The two stationary sounds came from above (above!?) and were immediately followed by a third that rapidly approached from that direction:

zzzzz-THOCK!

A single crossbow-launched shaft sank into the back of the Disciple's skull. The unexpected impact launched the creature forward. The Disciple stumbled, but its cloak flew out around it and tilted him back into balance, while spinning him to face the surprise attacker-

But there was no one there.

No one behind him. No one on the rooftops above.

Then came a fourth sound, the gentle rising sssssSSSSSS!!! of acid eating away at the contents of his skull. The arrow, still protruding from his head, was spraying acid into his cranium.

The Disciple was not concerned with the acid. He could not feel pain, and he did not need the contents of his skull any more than a living human needed an appendix... or a sixth finger. And even if that particular lump of flesh WERE vital, it would simply grow back in a few seconds anyway.

So, with a thick grayish ooze drooling out of the widening hole in the back of its head, the Disciple began to scan the other rooftops. He still saw no one. He FELT no one... the instinct that told him where to go and what to do was strangely silent. Its Master... the source of that instinct... sensed no attacker in the area.

But yet, someone HAD attacked-

*click*
Thwanng!
zzzzz-THWoCK!

Another arrow. Acid began to burn its way down from the hole in its chest. The arrow had struck at a downward angle, and the acid it unleashed would scorch a path through its lungs, obliterate its diaphragm, eat through his stomach and intestines, and would just begin to tickle its crotch by the time it had run it course.

Again, the Disciple needed none of these things, so it ignored the arrow and the damage it caused. Instead, it thrashed about in the street, trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive archer.

"Hnnnnnnnn," The Disciple growled. Barely subdued rage began to bubble to the surface. If a suitable target did not present itself soon-

*click*
Thwanng!

The Disciple caught the movement in enough time to dodge the speeding missile (not that it mattered), but it took a fraction of a second to comprehend what it was seeing:

Crouching on a rooftop that was not there!? Now moving...

In that brief span of time, the formerly silent instinct erupted into a blaze of information.

Rooftop! Behind him! Run West!

The Disciple moved like smoke in the wind, streaking along the fronts of several houses and then veering out into the street. Behind him, the archer followed... leaping from rooftop to rooftop to-

??????

Gone AGAIN???

NO! There! Several houses away from where it had vanished.

Turn here!

The Disciple turned as an arrow zipped past its head.

The alley!

The Disciple vanished down a narrow space between two houses, emerged on the other side...

Gone Again. No, Go South!

The instructions never came as words, but as a throbbing insistent desire to go a certain direction. In this case, it was southward....

The Disciple turned and leapt... up.... over the top of a half-collapsed house... landed on the other side and ran between two other houses. He was headed south.

Gallows wasn't far behind.

The archer touched down lightly, not on the ground, but perched on the edge of a rooftop four houses away from the one the Disciple had just cleared. He did not remain long. Before his muscles had fully absorbed the light impact of his landing, he was thrusting himself forward again. He had stashed his crossbow on his belt and now grabbed the edge of his cape with both hands...

"Glide," he whispered.

The cape caught the air and lifted him, carrying him over the next rooftop to the house beyond. The glide was gentle and unhurried... he landed, turned 90-degrees to the right, and leapt again. He sailed over two houses, then went south... then cut back over again... completely avoiding the house that the Disciple had leapt over.

That leap had been too obvious, and Gallows wasn't going to fall for it.

He had satisfied himself that his quarry was indeed leading him into a trap. Why else would it have stopped running when it lost sight of him?

And just how had it lost sight of him? That, too, was the confirmation of a theory. The creature and Gallows weren't the only things touring the town this night. The quarry was not alone. It had company.... something that was either controlling or was controlled BY the thing Gallows followed. Something that could track Gallows by the vibrations he made when he touched the ground, or touched something else that touched the ground... like a building.

That ability, coupled with the fact that Gallows could see no overt signs of pursuit, probably meant that the creature in question was underground.

It was all beginning to come together now.

"Glide," Gallows said again. His cape carried him over another rooftop. At the highest point in his arc, Gallows glanced briefly at the Disciple and then looked down at the houses below. "Hmmmmm..."

From his vantage point, Gallows noticed something about his quarry's path. The undead thing was leading him out of the heart of the city and out into the more cluttered, residential areas. Large brick and stone buildings with multiple levels had given way to single-floor structures made of wood and thatch.

There was something significant about that, but Gallows couldn't quite figure out what it was. As he thought, the glide came to an end. Gallows perched on the trim of a small house, then decided to leap over the next one.

"Glide," he whispered as his legs thrust him skyward. Gallows' dark figure soared, and he kept trying to piece together the exact nature of the trap he was avoiding. Something about the houses. He'd been lead to this part of town intentionally. Why?

Smaller houses. Weaker materials. Single levels instead of multiple floors. Lower ceilings...

Uh-oh.

CRASH!

Three large tentacles erupted through the roof below him, sending wood and debris hurtling into the air. Behind the debris, the tentacles unfurled out of the wrecked house like gigantic whips. They sliced at the night sky, clenching and coiling in wild, random spasms all around Gallows...

The creature did not know where he was, but it knew he was up there somewhere, so if it flailed around enough-

Gallows clutched his cape even tighter and inhaled, preparing to speak a command, but just then, the creature got lucky. One of its tentacles retracted into the house and then exploded skyward again, whirling around-

WHAM!

"GAH!" Gallows gasped as something hard struck him in the small of his back. Not only did the blow nearly crack his spine, but it ruined both his balance AND concentration. The airborne archer spun out of control, his glide turning into a nose-dive that carried him away from the thrashing tentacle...

...and toward the ground what would most certainly open up and swallow him the instant he hit.

The landing was less than graceful. Gallows slammed into the dirt with a grunt, and immediately he tucked his head and let his momentum carry him forward into a roll-

Not far away, three large tentacles vanished from the gray morning sky, rapidly retracting back into the hole from which they had sprung.

The ground around the house they had demolished began to vibrate.

Gallows rolled once, and when his feet were in position, he leapt.

"UP!" He hissed, grabbing his cape with both hands and spreading it around him. His feet left the ground an instant before the ground vanished... replaced by a rapidly-widening sinkhole that resembled a yawning mouth. Gallows shot skyward at a steep angle. Below him, one large tentacle and a squirming cluster of smaller ones slithered out of the sinkhole, slashing back and forth across the ground in search of their now-airborne meal.

Gallows hovered some sixty feet overhead. His cape fluttered around him, while the man himself was motionless... giving the impression that he was standing on solid ground in a stiff wind. But neither the ground nor the wind existed. He watched with mild interest as the tentacles searched for him. That interest turned to slight dismay... very slight... when the few townsfolk that still lived in this area began streaming out of their homes to investigate the sounds. At first it was just one or two... but soon there was a crowd of more than two dozen. They spotted the demolished house and headed toward it.

Their emotions tasted wrong. The fear was almost minimal... only a trickle. Mostly they were curious. Not just regular curiosity, either... There had been a loud noise in their neighborhood, possibly an explosion. But these people hadn't come to help a potential neighbor in trouble, as most other small townsfolk would have... they had come to watch. They wanted a show.

"Idiots," Gallows said as he drew his crossbow. He loaded a single bolt and fired it at the crowd. It hit the ground thirty feet in front of them and exploded in a with a thunderous boom and a painfully brilliant ball of light.... both of which were completely harmless.

Thinking that lightning had struck only a few feet away, the crowd retreated. There was much screaming and pushing, but, thankfully, no one was headed in the general direction of the...

"Hmmm..."

The tentacles were gone. Gallows had seen the movement from the corner of his eye, but had assumed that it was just a renewed burst of thrashing. It wasn't. Not only were the tentacles gone, but the creature had filled in the sinkhole... the one in the open AND the one nestled in the ruins of the house. Now there was no sign it had ever been there, except for the house which had a large hole where its roof should have been.

It had covered its tracks. Why? Why did it leave? Certainly, Gallows' arrow hadn't frightened it away.... so why had it run away from a potential smorgasbord of nice, juicy townsfolk?

"Interesting," Gallows mused. He tried to tune in to the creature's emotions, but he could not. Every time he tried, all he got was the bubbling hatred of the undead thing he'd been following... hatred so bright that it drowned out the more subdued traces of the subterranean creature.

"Very clever," he said, assuming that this emotional interference was intentional. He rotated in the air, turning to face the direction that the Disciple's emotions were coming from. South. South... and different. The creature's rage had changed slightly. They was sharper, more insistent.

It was up to something new.

"All right," said Gallows, floating slightly higher and beginning to move southward. "You've had your shot at me... now its my turn..."

---

"Shouldn't the sun have come up by now?" Emerson remarked as he, Hars, and December headed for the outskirts of town... their path taking them back to the farmhouse where the Night's Bloom had discovered the underground passage. Emerson was squinting up at the sky, which was only slightly lighter than it had been an hour ago.

"The sun HAS come up," said December. "The fact that you cannot see it in no way implies that it is not there."

Emerson supposed that December was right. Somewhere behind the voluminous layers of thick, gray clouds, there probably WAS a sun. Probably. But the clouds that had appeared shortly before dawn kept Bephal cloaked in near-darkness despite the sun's rays. There was barely enough light to see without a torch.

"Funny how there's no wind," said Emerson, still looking up.

"Eh?" Harrison, who had been ignoring Emerson's non-stop commentary since they'd left the others, glanced skyward as well.

"Those clouds aren't moving," Emerson continued. "Four hours ago there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and now you can't even SEE the sky. But there's been no wind. Those clouds up here aren't moving."

Harrison looked expectantly at December, who was walking behind them.

"Apparently, whatever besieges this town feels that it has an advantage in darkness... as well as the power to create that advantage if necessary."

"And this doesn't bother you?" said Hars.

"No," December replied simply.

"Yeah, you scared of the dark, Harrison?" Emerson chided.

"Of the dark... no. Of things that can create dark whenever they feel like it... maybe."

They walked a short distance in silence. Then Emerson spoke again.

"Mind if I ask you a question," He was talking to December.

"Yes, I do."

"Oh. Can I ask it anyway?"

"No."

"Why are you so damn cold?" Emerson asked. December leveled his harsh, slightly glowing gaze at the man. "That wasn't the question I wanted to ask, but since I couldn't ask that one-"

"Just ignore him," said Hars.

"And just how old ARE you, anyway? You don't look old. Sure, you've got the white hair going, but I once knew a guy in the circus that looked like he was eighty, but was actually just a kid. See, he had some kind of disease..."

Emerson kept talking, even though it was obvious that no one was listening.

December glanced at the sky, then fixed his gaze on the path in front of them. They had left Bephal proper, with its orderly blocks of streets and buildings, and were now following a single dirt path that wound its way around the eastern edge of the town. Ahead, a second path veered off of the main road. It bisected a pair of small hills and faded into the false night. Harrison took this path. December and Emerson followed. At the top of the hill, they saw that the land beyond was a small farm.

"That way," Harrison pointed. "Over there."

They followed the path a short distance, then they left it and took off through the grass, walking in merciful silence for a few minutes.

Then Harrison stopped.

"What the hell?"

"Are we lost?" said December.

"No, but the farmhouse is. Its supposed to be straight ahead, but I don't see it. Even in this dark I should be able to see it from here."

"Yeahhh," Emerson added.

There was nothing ahead of them except tall grass... and the nearest edge of what may have been a clearing, where the grass gave way to flat hard-packed dirt. If there had been anything IN the clearing... a house, for instance... its outline would have been clearly visible.

"I'm starting not to like this," said Hars.

Eyes flickering slightly, December scanned the land surrounding them. Then, without a word, he started walking. The others followed.

When they reached the clearing they found that the house was, in fact, there. If they had had tools, a dozen men, and a few weeks to work, they would easily have been able to re-assemble the pile of wood and debris to restore the farmhouse to its former dilapidated glory. The house had been demolished... its old but still inhabitable shell had been torn down, leaving nothing but a mound of wreckage.

"This house was still standing when we left it," said Hars. "I swear."

"What happened? Did a storm-"

"The debris is not scattered," December said. "It rests in a singular pile. Nor is the surrounding grass disturbed. Both of these are inconsistent with wind damage."

"What, then?"

"The creature must have returned after you departed."

"But why destroy the house?"

"To cover its tracks," said December. "Which implies that it has something to fear... either from us, or from something else on the surface. However, the gaps in the debris appear large enough to accommodate a small human.... Emerson,"

"Hold on," Hars protested. "You can't send him in there-"

"I can, and I am."

"Errr, what exactly am I going in there FOR?" said Emerson. "I mean.... ya know? Why? Because if yer sending me in there after that J'Hasp thing, then I'm sorry. He's gone."

"How can you be sure?" said December.

"Because I saw him down there and he was a goner. Those roots was pumpin' him full of all kinds of goo... he was turning GREEN for gods' sake. And that was HOURS ago! By now, he's probably all shriveled up and yucky like those other bodies I saw. And even if he WAS still alive... which he isn't... then there's still the matter of that monster. I barely made it out of there the first time, and I sure as hell won't make it again if I'm dragging your pet whatchamacallit behind me!"

"You are refusing an order." It was unclear whether December was making a statement or asking a question. It sounded like both.

"Well..." Emerson glanced past December at Hars, but he didn't like the look he saw on Hars' face. "Looook," Emerson said with as much fake empathy as he could muster. It wasn't much. "I'm sorry about... whatever it is. But I know hopeless when I see it. And when I went down there, I saw hopeless."

"Hopeless," December repeated. He took a step toward Emerson, who was quickly bathed in the sub-freezing air that was pouring off of his employer. "Tell me, Mr. Shaw... if your brother were trapped down there, would the situation still be as hopeless as you claim now?"

"Uhhh... wh-what are you trying to say? I-is that a threat?"

"No. It is a question."

"But that thing isn't my brother. And he damn sure isn't YOUR brother, so you see-"

Emerson DID see. He looked at December's face, and he saw.

"Okay," he said. "That's all ya had to say. I'll go take another look around for ya; no problem."

Emerson walked around the remains of the house, squinting at the jumble of boards and broken beams. He paused at one opening into the mound, considered it for a moment, then continued around to a smaller, but more stable aperture. He knelt down and looked in.

"What am I supposed to do for light?" he called back to the others.

December retrieved a small item from his pocket and tossed it to Emerson. It was an oblong gemstone, two inches along its longest diameter.

"What's this?" Emerson said when he saw what he had caught. He looked into the heart of the gem and saw that there was something inside it... either an engraving, or perhaps something trapped inside the stone.

The instant his eyes touched the mysterious 'thing', the gem lit up, releasing a strong, insistent glow not unlike sunlight.

Startled, Emerson almost dropped the stone. He juggled it for a few moments until he realized that, despite the glow, the stone was not hot.

"Lovvorn?" Hars mumbled. December nodded.

"All right, I'll be back in a few," said Emerson. He lay flat on his stomach and eased himself forward, sliding effortlessly into the pile of rubble. For a few minutes, beams of light poured out of gaps in the debris, their shafts clearly defined by the dust that still hung in the air. The light illuminated the rubble from within, but it weakened as the stone... and the man carrying it... wiggled its way deeper into the wreckage. Soon, the light was gone altogether.

---

"Are you sure this is the right one?" said Yexhill Thane with unveiled annoyance. Floyd D'Arcy had led them on a circuitous grand tour of Bephal's cemeteries, apparently unable to find the one containing the grave of Berston Groad. Thane wasn't actually SURPRISED by this... Bephal had more cemeteries than any city he'd ever seen. Most were small, and almost all of them looked like they haven't seen any new occupants in five or six generations. But understanding the old man's confusion didn't mean he was happy about it.

"Well..." Floyd said cautiously. At the moment, they were standing at the entrance to yet another crumbling graveyard. The old man surveyed the rows of headstones, frowning.

Thane didn't like that frown. He had seen it before... in the LAST three graveyards, just before Floyd told them they were in the wrong place. Again.

"I honestly thought they planted old Berston in Valiant's Field-"

...Valiant's Field was four cemeteries ago...

"-but I guess I was mistaken."

There actually HAD been a grave marked with the single name 'Burston'... but Floyd informed them that it wasn't the man they were looking for.

"Is he here or not?" Thane growled. If this went on much longer...

"I think we should take a look," said Hemingway.

For Hemingway to say that it was worth a look around actually meant something... because Hemingway was carrying the digging equipment. Two picks (one large, one small) and two shovels (both huge), in addition to his immense war-hammer made for a truly staggering load. Hemingway carried it with ease, without so much as a grunt.

"See this grave?" Hemingway pointed to the closest headstone. The name was unreadable, but the date was from 20 years ago. "We're in the right time frame, at least. And these markers look like a higher quality stone. You'd have to have money to get this kind of rock, and this Groad character was rich wasn't he?"

Floyd nodded.

"You're a regular detective aren't you, Shaw?" said Thane.

"Just observant."

"Looks like the vaults are in the back," said Thane, pointing at the rows of rectangular structures barely visible in the distance. "That's where the rich folks would be."

"Yes, Groad's grave was in the rear of the cemetery ... and it had this hideous statue of him out in front of it."

"Can't see any statues..." Hemingway said, squinting. "But it could have fallen over. Let's take a look."

"This had better be it, old man," Thane shot a hard look at Floyd.

Hemingway took the lead. An overgrown path lead down the center of the cemetery, with rows of graves stretching out to either side of it like the bones in a bird's wing. Thane couldn't help but remark at the shear number of them.

"...there sure are a lot of dead people in Bephal," he said.

"It's a hard town," said Floyd.

"Yeah, but you've got enough corpses in these cemeteries for four or five towns Bephal's size."

"Naaah, just your imagination," said Floyd. "The dead always outnumber the living anyway..."

"Good thing they're dead then, eh?"

"Dead doesn't necessarily mean harmless," said Hemingway. "...as we all know from earlier tonight. Speaking of night..." Hemingway looked up at the sky. "Where'd those clouds come from?"

Thane looked up as well. Dark gray clouds... like storm clouds, only less turbulent and more ominous... blotted out the sky.

"Oh, that's nice," said Thane. "This normal for Bephal, old man?"

"Not really," said Floyd. "But I've seen it before."

Hemingway and Thane stopped walking. They both turned to Floyd D'Arcy for an explanation.

"...I can't remember," Floyd said. "Long time ago the sky got dark like this. Can't say when.... caused a big fuss. Much ado about nothing, really."

"Storm?" said Hemingway.

"Nope. Just went away. All that fuss for nothing."

"Well what WE'RE concerned with is under the ground, not in the sky," said Thane.

The cemetery path ended abruptly at the last row of headstones. Beyond it sat a continuous row of above-ground vaults and tombs, but between the last of the headstones and the first of the vaults were a scattering of smaller structures: large rectangular slabs of carved stone that protruded a few feet above ground level. Some of the slabs were plain, but others were shaped like the rooftops of miniature buildings... as if a regular above-ground vault had been sucked down into the ground, leaving only the top exposed. Almost all were flanked by small statues, markers, columns, or other decorative stonework.

"Semi-submerged vault," Floyd explained. "Was all the rage a few years back. Expensive stuff."

"Groad was buried in one of these?"

Floyd nodded.

"The body is underground, but the top of the vault sticks up above the ground, for decoration."

"Which one is Groad's?" said Thane.

"Uhhhh...." Floyd looked around. "I don't see the statue..."

"Great."

"That one-" Hemingway pointed to one of the stones. It was one of the largest... a roof-like structure that rose to almost four feet in height, all of it covered with relief-sculptures carved into the stone. Beside it was a large stone block... a pedestal. Sitting on top of the pedestal was... a pair of feet.

The rest of the statue was nowhere to be seen... only a the feet remained, fixed in place atop the stone block like a pair of boots on display in a store.

"Heh!" Floyd chuckled. "Now why would somebody wanna do that!"

"Who cares. How do we open it?"

"Never seen one opened before." Floyd shrugged. "Not SUPPOSED to be opened, as far as I know. These are made to keep the grave-robbers out, ya see."

"Great," said Thane.

"I wouldn't worry about getting in," said Hemingway. He dropped his tools at the foot of the.... feet... and unsnapped the clasp of his hammer. He slid the weapon free of his belt and held at his side, clasping it with both hands...

"Ladies and Gentlemen!" Hemingway announced, raising his voice to something less than a shout, but more than is proper for a cemetery. "Children of all ages! Come and see the amazing Hemingway Shaw, the Strongest Man Alive! See him bend iron with his bare hands! See him lift the weight of a fully loaded wagon! See him reduce huge boulders to pebbles with but a single swing of his mighty...HAMMER-"

Hemingway swung the hammer up over he head and brought it down upon the carved stone.

THOOM!

The thunderous impact moved Thane back a step. Floyd D'Arcy squealed and clapped his hands to his ears. Both men closed their eyes and winced... causing them to miss the small shower of sparks that sprayed from the stone where Hemingway's hammer struck it.

"Aaaagh, give a guy some WARNING before you do that!" Thane grunted.

"I thought that's what I was doing," said Hemingway.

When Thane opened his eyes, he saw Hemingway leaning over the vaulted mini-'rooftop', examining it. The stone was still in one piece, but its surface was crisscrossed by dozens of deep fissures, all of which radiated from the place where Hemingway's hammer struck. The former circus strongman had fractured it with a single blow.

Hemingway examined the cracks with a frown, as if he had been expecting something else.

"Now this is some strong stuff," he said. "Oh well... if at first..."

Hemingway stepped back and swung his hammer.

Floyd and Thane closed their eyes, plugged their ears, and turned away at the last instant

THOOM!
THOOM!
THUUMMM-KRRrrrk

There were several deep 'thuds' as pieces of the stone fell away.

This time, when Thane opened his eyes, he saw Hemingway standing amid a cluster of rocks surrounding a rectangular hole in the ground. Hemingway was examining his hammer.

"I think I've ruined my hammer," he said in a small, disappointed voice that sounded a lot like Emerson's. The hammer looked fine to Thane.

Floyd D'Arcy crept forward and looked in the hole.

"Yup," he said.

"'Yup' what?" said Thane as he joined the old man at the grave. He looked down and saw... another stone slab, this one flat and unadorned. The edges of it were fastened down with metal latches.

"Got metal bars running through the stone on these," said Floyd. "I told ya... these things were made to keep people out."

"Hemm," Thane sighed. "Better get the picks..."

---

Hars and December stood side by side in absolute silence. Not a word passed between them as they watched the lack of activity from within the pile of rubble. Hars' thoughts were split equally between Emerson's well being, and his own lack of a backbone. Hars had never considered himself a coward, but he had certainly acted like one earlier. He'd let December send one of his men into some damned suicide-hole without so much as a single syllable in Emerson's defense. And worse... Emerson had looked to him for some kind of support. It was only a quick glance, but it was the kind of 'quick glance' that lasted for hours. Hars kept seeing that expectant look in Emerson's eyes. He was looking for help, but all Hars had done was stand there and shrug.

It was Emerson's choice, he was thinking. His decision if he wants to go down in that hole or not. He chose to go.

Nonsense.

Emerson chose to go because he didn't HAVE a choice. Hars hadn't backed him up... he didn't come to his defense. He turned his back without actually turning his back... it was a mental abandonment, which in Hars' opinion, was worse.

But what was he SUPPOSED to do... stand up to December? Nobody stood up to December. Well, that wasn't true. N'Doki and Eric Hood could get away with it on occasion. But N'Doki was already dead (Dead several times over, if the rumors were true), and Hood was... well... Hood. But even THEY knew their limits, and he doubted that either one of them would have defended Emerson when December ordered him down that hole. So why should HE do it?

Because Emerson was his man, that's why. Emerson worked for HIM, not December. And HE had sworn not to lose another lad. So why had he stood by and done nothing? Why had-

"What would YOU have done, Harrison?"

It took Hars a split second to realize that someone had spoken, and that that someone wasn't him. He looked to December, who standing beside him arms folded, eyes staring into the depths of the wreckage like some kind of guardian statue.

"What?" Hars said cautiously, unsure if he'd heard anything at all. "You say something?"

"I asked what you would have done," December repeated. "If one of your men... Rivus, for example... were trapped below. What would you do?"

An uneasy feeling crept over Hars. He swallowed, and frowned slightly. Hars hadn't expected this question... which was even more disturbing since December had asked Emerson almost the same thing before the lad 'agreed' to go. At the time, Hars had, like Emerson, assumed that it was some kind of veiled threat. But it wasn't.

December was waiting for an answer.

"I'd go myself," Hars said.

"And if you could not? Would you leave your charge to die merely because you YOURSELF could not rescue him?"

"Of course not," said Hars.

"Then why should I not do the same?"

Hars' expression turned increasingly suspicious.

"You trying to convince me?" said Hars. "Don't bother. I really don't care why you do what you do."

"Apparently, Emerson Shaw does."

"So what are you saying... that you WOULDN'T have killed him right here if he'd said no?"

"I did not imply that."

"So it wasn't really a choice then, was it?"

"A man may follow orders because he has weighed their merits and found them worth following, or he may follow an order simply because it is an order. Or... he may chose not to follow it and face the consequences. There is always a choice. And choices always have consequences."

"So what would YOU have done, eh? If YOU were Emerson?"

December chuckled. Gods, how Hars hated that sound...

"Mr. Blackshear," December said. "I do not follow orders. I am many decades removed from such concerns."

"I see." Sometime in the many months preceding this moment, Harrison had forgotten how much of a pompous ass December really was. He supposed he should be thankful for the reminder. He DID see December's point, however.

Now, if he could only figure out how December knew to MAKE that point. How did he know what Hars was thinking? Could December read minds too?

"How-"

"A wise man once said," December spoke. "That predicting a man's thoughts is infinitely more valuable than reading them as they occur. And you, Mr. Blackshear, are quite predictable. If you were not, then it would have been necessary to kill you long before now."

Hars didn't know what to say... or think... so he stood there and watched the remains of the house.

"So... what is J'Hasp to you, anyway?"

December looked at him, then turned back to the house.

"Perhaps you should ask him," said December. Then he frowned. "Emerson returns."

A shaft of slightly golden light beamed out of the debris. Several more joined the first, and together they moved through the wreckage like a miniature searchlight.

"Emerson," said Hars, trying not to sigh with relief. The lad had only been gone a few minutes. When he emerged, Emerson was covered in dirt and dust.

"Guess what I found!" he announced loudly. When no one guessed, he finished: "Nothing!"

"What?"

"The hole is gone," said Emerson.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. The floor is still busted open, but there's no hole underneath. Just dirt... like it was never there."

"Not only has it blocked the entrance," said December. "It has filled in the underlying tunnel as well. The creature does not relish the idea of its lair being intruded upon again."

"So now what?" said Hars.

Hars and Emerson looked expectantly at December, who appeared lost in silent thought for a few seconds. Then he said what both men expected him to say, yet they still dreaded the words...

"We find another entrance."
---

Clank-
CLANK!

"Do you know what happens to water when it freezes..."

Clank-
CLANK!

"Other than the obvious?"

Clank-
CLANK!

Sparks and chips of rock... more of the second than the first, flew out of the hole as both pick-axes came down. Yexhill Thane and Hemingway Shaw continued to attack the recessed stone as they conversed. Both men were soaked with sweat. They had discarded their shirts an hour ago, and their muscular bodies glistened in the gray dawn. The metal-reinforced stone of Berston Groad's grave was not going to defeat them... but it wasn't going to give up easily, either.

"It expands..."

Clank-
CLANK!

"Is that right?" Thane said, clearly disinterested.

Clank-
CLANK!

"That's right. So it seems to me-"

CLANK!

Hemingway paused. Actually, it was Thane that paused, and when Hemingway heard one pick-axe strike in stead of two, he stopped to see what the problem was.

Thane shook his head.

"....I'm tired," he said reluctantly.

"We're almost through."

"Almost...." Thane looked at the rock below. They were actually standing on top of it, down in the grave itself, using their picks to chip a hole in the center of the slab. They had exposed the metal bars that Floyd had mentioned. The bars were for reinforcement, and they were doing a damn good job of holding the fragments of stone together under the combined assault of Thane and (especially) Hemingway. In order to get through, they would have to chip away almost all of the rock... leaving the metal bars with nothing to hold together.

They were probably a good half-hour away from that point.

"Doesn't look like it to me." Thane wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand.

"Oh, be a man about it, Thane," said Hemingway. "You're starting to sound like my brother."

"Well, if you put it that way-"

Clank-
CLANK!

"-anyway, as I was saying, water expands when it freezes."

Clank-
CLANK!

"So it seems to me that December, if he were REALLY interested in the contents of this grave-"

Clank-
CLANK!

"-should be the one out here in this cemetery with us. He could get in a lot faster than we could."

Clank!
CLANK!

"So now you expect the big boss-man to dig his own holes, eh? You're crazy."

Clank-
CLANK!

"No, not dig. Think about it. You hit this stone a few times-"

Clank-
CLANK!

"-get a few good cracks going through it. Then you soak it with water-"

Clank-
CLANK!

"-then he flash-freezes it. The expanding water-"

Clank-
CLANK!

"-forces the stone apart, widening the cracks until it just falls apart."

Clank-
CLANK!

"Your a genius, Hemingway," Thane smirked. "How about you got get December's while I fetch a bucket of water?"

Clank-
CLANK!

"Well I bet HE'S never thought of doing something like that..."

Clank-
CLANK!

"I bet he has."

Clank-
CLANK!

"Then why are the two of us out here doing this the hard way?"

Clank-
CLANK!

"Because-" Thane started to say. Suddenly, the stone beneath them shifted. "WHOA!" Both men scrambled out of the pit as the stone slab began to collapse.

"What happened... are you okay!?" Floyd D'Arcy... who'd been watching them work from his perch on the broken statue's pedestal.

"Fine," said Thane.

"Hmmmmmm..." Hemingway said as he looked down into the excavated grave.

"Don't tell me there's another rock," Thane began.

"No.... Mr. D'Arcy, how, exactly, did Berston Groad die?"

"Why?"

"Why... what's down th-..." Thane looked into the pit. "Oh,..." he began, followed the word with a particularly crude expletive.

Floyd looked in as well, and then repeated Thane's expletive. Several times.

"I think we'd better get December," said Hemingway. "Right...now..."

---

Gandrick settled into his chair and propped his bare feet up on the stool in front of him. It was already well past the normal beginning of his day, but that was one of the benefits of being a healer... he got to set his own hours. Or rather, his PATIENTS set his hours for him, and if no one got stabbed, burned, or beaten to a bloody pulp until noon, then he at least got the chance to relax until his work caught up with him. Of course, these days, stabbings and bloody beatings were few and far between in Bephal, but there was still the occasional accident victim to tend to. Why, just yesterday Luin Stark got on his mule's bad side and earned himself a swift kick to the chest, resulting in quite a mess for the old healer to clean up. It was a non-fatal mess, but a lot of work just the same.

The idea occurred to Gandrick that perhaps he should check in on Luin to see how he was doing. He considered it for a moment, then decided that he would do that very thing. Later. Assuming nothing more serious came up, of course.

"Ahh, who am I kiddinng," Gandrick sighed. "Nothinng ever happenns here." His voice was smooth for an old man, but his words had an odd, humming slowness to them... a hint of both a stutter and a slurr. "Annd for that, I amm eternnally grateful."

Gandrick's strange speech was not an accent, for he was born and raised in Bephal along with most of his patients. No, the slow, almost-but-not-quite stutter was a relatively recent addition. The stroke that had caused it had been frightening, but merciful, leaving him with only a slight quivering in his left hand, and a slowness in his speech. He considered himself lucky; the stroke that forced his father into retirement (he was also a healer) had turned the old man into a drooling vegetable in less than an hour's time.

"Grateful, Grateful, Grateful," Gandrick sighed again, lips curling up into the beginnings of a contented smile, yet halting just before the expression was fully formed. Gandrick didn't like to smile. No one had ever confirmed it, but the healer thought that his smile had been slightly... crooked... after the stroke. The left side of his mouth hung just a little bit too low... not enough to notice outright, but enough to suspect. So the quick retreat of the nascent smile from his lips wasn't from some change of demeanor, but rather a nervous habit he had acquired over the years. Inside, Gandrick was still as content as ever.

"I wonnder what I'll get today," he said, chuckling. "Sprainned finnger? Hanngnail? Or mmaybe a good old fashionned- eh?"

Gandrick's semi-slurred words came to an abrupt halt, and the doctor's eyes fixed on the window beside the front door.... drawn there not by something he had seen, but by something he was NOT seeing.

Sunlight.

Having awakened only a few minutes ago, Gandrick was only now realizing how dark it was in the room. By now, the window's south-eastern exposure should have been bringing him the first rays of the morning sun... but instead of golden beams, all he was getting was a dull, barely-luminescent dull gray.

"Yikes," Gandrick said as he got out of his chair and walked to the window. "Mmust be a hell of a stormm commmming. But whenn was the last time we had a stormm in the mmorning, hmmm? Maybe nnever?"

(Gandrick often spoke to himself aloud like this... even before the stroke.)

Gandrick drew back the curtain and peered upward. He could not see the sky. At least, he thought he couldn't. Surely that featureless gray thing up there wasn't the Bephal sky. The sun was missing, although the dull glow of the clouds was likely from the sun beaming down on them from above.

"Clouds?" he said aloud, squinting. "Nnoo, no... Looks like a CLOUD. Sinnngular."

Indeed it did. Smaller gray clouds seemed to be merging into one gigantic monstrosity that obscured the sky for as far as Gandrick could see.

"This is nno stormm," he said, thinking. "Where have I seenn this before, hmmm? The plague? Noo.. whennn?"

Gandrick backed away from the window... not in fear, but in search of his glasses. Maybe if he took a better look, the sky would make more sense. Gandrick's glasses were for up-close work, but sometimes he swore that they made far-away things clearer, too.

Gandrick went to the bedroom to fetch them, then grabbed the oil lamp from the kitchen. The house wasn't dark enough for lamps, but the doctor figured it wouldn't hurt to keep it handy. Finding the lamp empty, he filled it with oil from the container in the kitchen. He was just screwing the top back onto the glass oil globe when someone knocked on the door.

KNOCK!

Gandrick looked up from what he was going... and waited.

He was waiting for the other half of the knock.

When it didn't come, Gandrick frowned. It wasn't a knock... it sounded more like something hitting the door. Something hard and heavy.

"Bird?" Gandrick said... for no apparent reason. No bird could have made THAT sound.

He finished assembling the lamp, and that's when the second sound came.

k-k-k-k-kkkkkk-

Like something heavy being dragged across wood... something heavy with sharp edges. The wood in question was his front door, and it sounded like something was carving furrows into it with-

Claws.

Gandrick dismissed the thought.

"Donn't be ridiculous, old mmann," he said aloud. He turned to walk into the living room... where the sound was coming from... when the scratching sound ended and was replaced by something else. It was a repetition of the single-knock, but this time much harder.

So hard, in fact, that it smashed the door off of its hinges and sent it falling to the floor.

"OH!" Gandrick gasped. He ran into the living room to see what was happening. Had some impending storm hurled a piece of farm equipment into his house?

What he saw... standing atop the smashed door like a triumphant knight resting a foot atop his opponent's corpse... was NOT a piece of farm equipment.

Even though, with all that wire and cloth, it did bear a slight resemblance to some kind of torture device. A living torture device... one that still reeked of sweat, rot, and death. One that still had the rotting body of its last victim strapped to it.

Yes, that's exactly what it looks like, the healer thought.

For the first second or two, Gandrick eyed the motionless Disciple with intense curiosity. He put his glasses on... squinted, and then took them off again.

It was still there.

Curiosity gave way to mild shock, which soon began to transform into fear. The fear began to build... blossoming into a horrifying certainty:

"...I'mm having annnother stroke..." Gandrick squeaked, on the verge of tears. He was not afraid of the thing that had broken down his door, because that was obviously a hallucination. What he was afraid of was what might be going on in the spongy gray mass beneath his skull. Was this it? Was this the Big One? Of course it was... why else would he be hallucinating? And why, if he were NOT at the end of his life, would he be hallucinating THIS horrid thing?

While Gandrick's mind gathered the appropriate bits of his life together in order to flash them before his eyes, the Disciple began to approach. It had fixed the healer in its eye-less gaze, and now it placed one foot in front of the other- a single motion that sent an antique table and a coat-stand flying, knocked aside by the monster's self-billowing cloak. The table hit the wall and shattered with the sound of a casket lid slamming shut...

A casket... or an old wooden box with the tortured, yet still living body of the Bephal rapist trapped inside....

The shudder that went through Gandrick wasn't just physical; it was more like the unexpected taste of something shockingly foul thrust into his mouth. That foul thing was recognition... a realization from which his mind, body and soul revolted in unison.

"...Dorath..." Gandrick said with a weak, but surprisingly calm voice. His hands belied that calm, releasing the oil lamp and sending it crashing to the floor.

Gandrick's living room was small, and the Disciple had already crossed half the distance between the door and the healer. At the sound of his former name, Dorath Chesterson launched himself across the remaining distance. His cloak flew out around and before him, throwing the rest of the furniture out of his path as he came at Gandrick with arms extended.

For the span of one heartbeat, Gandrick did nothing. Then, he backed away... a move that would have been futile if it weren't for the oil on the floor.

The old man's foot slipped, and he fell backward... coming less than an inch from bashing his head against the wall behind him. Shards of glass stabbed into his legs and shoulders as he landed, but the pain was dwarfed by the sight... and smell!... of the Disciple flying over him... sharp claws having missed him by inches.

Bleeding from half a dozen cuts, Gandrick rolled over and tried to crawl away his hands and knees. Suddenly, pain exploded in his side as the Disciple kicked him. The rotting foot hit like a slug of iron, tossing across the floor to the wall. A few inches over and the kick would have surely ruptured the old man's stomach.... as it were, it may have ruptured a kidney, which was just as fatal.

In too much pain to scream, Gandrick tried to stand. When the black haze cleared from his eyes, he saw the Disciple once again bearing down on him.

He glanced at the remains of the front door. The rotting thing had kicked him toward it, and now...

Chest burning and abdomen swelling in bruised agony, Gandrick ran for the door.

Something grabbed him.

It didn't feel like an arm or a hand, it felt more like a tentacle. The Disciple's cloak encircled the sprinting doctor's waist and yanked the man off of his feet. Gandrick had the brief and wonderful sensation of rushing flight-

-that ended in more pain when he hit the wall. The cloak had thrown him across the room, and now he was leaving a bloody streak down the wall opposite the front door. Gandrick collapsed at the foot of the wall, with the doorway to the kitchen just three feet away. His left arm... all he could seem to move at the moment... reached for it.

Again, something grabbed him. This time it WAS a hand.

A shriveled, decomposed hand that clamped like a vise around his throat. The Disciple lifted him to his feet and thrust him back against the wall. The dull thud of Gandrick's head on the wood was lost in the storm of pain he already felt. Gandrick's lips trembled...

"...please..." he tried to say, but the Disciple's hand had cut off his air. He couldn't even manage a squeak.

Gandrick looked into the monster's face. There was very little there that could even be CALLED a face, let alone be recognizable as Dorath Chesterson's. But it WAS him. Gandrick knew it. He looked at the lips that he himself had sewn shut. The wire was still there, crude stitches that held the creature's mouth forever silent. The sheet they had wrapped him in was now a cape, and the wire with which they'd secured it now ran through the monster's flesh like an external nervous system.

Both of Gandrick's hands rose to the monster's arm. He pulled and pried; long curls of spongy flesh peeled away under Gandrick's fingernails, but he could not free himself from the maniacal grasp.

For the first few seconds, it seemed as though the Disciple was unsure of what to do with his prize. The monster held Gandrick by the throat, glaring at the old man but making no move to injure him any further than he already was.

He's trying to decide how to kill me, Gandrick thought. After all I did... he want's to make sure he pays me back in kind!

The monster soon came to its decision.

Its rotting hand crept up Gandrick's neck until it had grasped the old man by the jaw. The rusty wires running through the decomposing limb began to twist and coil out of shape, scraping across Gandrick's skin... almost as if they were probing it. With a half-dozen jarring pricks, the wires pierced the skin and began.... slowly... worming their way through the underlying flesh. Sharp needles of pain wiggled upward from Gandrick's jaw, following the curves and hollows of his face.

Gandrick gagged and tried not to wince. He locked his muscles and held himself as still as he could. If he jerked.... if he moved suddenly... he would rip the face right off of his skull!

The Disciple's other hand came up and hovered before his eyes. The fingertips had rotted away, revealing the sharp tips of bone beneath. But that wasn't quite sharp enough for the Disciple. As Gandrick watched... as the Disciple continued to wire its flesh into his.... tiny metal points began to push forward from somewhere beneath the decomposing stumps of fingers.

Nails.

Not finger nails... REAL nails. The nails that Gandrick and the others had driven into Dorath Chesterson to hold his mask and their makeshift shroud in place. Now they were coming back out.... Chesterson's fingers were giving birth to sharp, rusty, metal talons.

Gandrick gasped. Though only a country doctor with a speech impediment, he was no fool. His mind was still as sharp as ever, and it had already pieced together the method in which it was going to spend the last few seconds of existence. The monster was about to carve the skin off of the old man's skull one rusty slash at a time. And, if Gandrick pulled away, then the wires wiggling into position under his flesh would remove said face all at once... slicing it to tatters in one swift, bloody jerk.

"Mmmm!!!" Gandrick moaned into the creature's hand. With the monster's hand clamped over his jaw, he couldn't even beg for his life. And when the torture started... if he screamed... dear gods, what would happen if he SCREAMED!?

The Disciple hissed at him. The hiss rose into a sharp growl as the monster's free hand reached back.... inch-long nails protruding from its fingertips. The hand swept forward in a downward arc toward Gandrick's terrified face!

There was a flash of greenish light from above. Along with it came a very real sound:

zzzzzTHWOCK!

Something shot between his face and the Disciple's murderous hand. It was too fast for Gandrick to recognize, but something in the back of his terrified mind combined the object's speed with its sound and arrived at the conclusion:

ARROW!

The speeding missile sliced across the top of the Disciple's palm. The wide, razor-sharp arrowhead sent all four fingers tumbling across the room as the arrow itself sank into the floor not far away.

zzzzzTHWOCK!

Another flash of green flared overhead. The second arrow struck the wrist of the hand that was still weaving wire into Gandrick's face. The impact jerked the monster's hand... tendrils of wire ripped at Gandrick's skin. The old man screamed, and the tightening of his muscles tore even MORE of his flesh.

The arrow buried in the monster's wrist erupted in a small spray of clear liquid-

sSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

Droplets of it splattered across Gandrick's bleeding face and his hands, which were still wrapped helplessly around the creature's forearm. The droplets burned. They burned a LOT.

"AAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!" Gandrick screamed as the acid at into his skin. But it also at the Disciple. The hand holding the doctor's jaw came OFF like the rotted stump of a corpse... which, of course, it was. Free... yet with the monster's hand still dangling by wires from his jaw... Gandrick ran. The kitchen? The front door? Gandrick was in too much shock and pain to know or even care... he just RAN.

Behind him, the Disciple's shroud reached out him like a tentacle

BOOM!
K-KRASH!

The sound came from above. A section of the roof exploded, sending a huge chunk of wood collapsing straight down.... right on top of the Disciple.

Gandrick had been running for the wall directly in front of him. There was no door there, but there was a window. The old man didn't intend to stop and open it... in his terror, he was going to throw himself right through it, most likely killing himself in the process.

But at the sound of the roof's collapse, he slowed and turned to look behind him.

Gallows coasted down through the hole that his exploding arrow had just made in the roof. He descended at a steep angle, pointing first at the bleeding old man, and then at the front door.

"GO!" he ordered.

Suddenly the section of collapsed rooftop rose from the floor. The Disciple flung it aside with a sweep of its putrefied arm. It's shroud surged in two opposite directions.... on end of it reached for Gallows, the other for the door for the old man.

Gallows hadn't touched the floor yet. When he saw the shroud coming for him, he barked a quick command to his own cape, which quickly yanked him out of the way. But his cape was not meant for rapid changes of direction. Gallows lost control and dropped from the air like a stone. The drop was only a few feet. Gallows landed in a crouch, with one of his miniature crossbows drawn and ready-

WHAM!

The edge of the Disciple's shroud hit him in the face like a fist. A giant's fist.

Gallows flew backward, hitting the floor and sliding toward the kitchen just as the old man started screaming again.

Gandrick was being dragged across the floor by his feet. He had almost made it to the door.

Just then, the floor began to vibrate.

Gallows drew one of his baptism arrows and fired, not at the Disciple, but at the length of cloth connecting the monster to the old man. The arrow's tip glowed red hot, and when it struck, it sprayed fire several feet in all directions, setting the cloak aflame. The old man tore free of the burning cloth... but instead of running, he just lay there screaming even louder than before. He was pulling at his face-

-the creature's severed hand was still hanging there, and now it had erupted into jerking, spastic motions that pulled painfully at the wires still buried in the old man's flesh.

Gallows couldn't help him with that.

The Disciple... completely ignoring Gallows... stormed toward the old man.

That, Gallows COULD help him with.

The assassin's hand touched his belt and came away not with an arrow, but with a spool of black ribbon. He threw the entire spool at the Disciple.

"CONSTRICT!" he shouted.

Ribbon flew off of the small spool and encircled the undead creature. The black tape wrapped around him once...twice... a dozen times before constricting tightly, pinning both arms and most of the cloak to its body.

"MMMMMM!!!!" The Disciple roared. It flexed its rotting muscles, fully expecting to snap the flimsy ribbon and continue on its path unhindered. But the ribbon not only resisted its strength, but the more the monster flexed, the tighter the ribbon got. The constricting tape was meant to strangle its victims, and, if they fought, it would draw tighter and tighter until their bones began to break.

"MMMMMMmmm-!!!"

-crack-
-crackle-

"mmm..."

The Disciple's cry of rage faded as it exhausted the air in its lungs. The creature didn't need to breathe, but it... like almost everything else, living or dead... needed air to vibrate its vocal cords. The assassin's ribbon prevented it from drawing a single breath.

The socket-less eyes squirmed angrily.

"Gotcha, ya bastard" said Gallows. "Like I said... no man escapes the-"

"AAAAAAAAAGHH!!"

Gallows winced at the sharp stab of pain... not from his own body, but conveyed from the old man via his empathic senses. Gandrick had finally torn the monster's hand from his jaw. Now bleeding badly, with the lower forth of his face in bloody tatters, the man was in too much pain to flee...

That was unfortunate...

...because at that moment, the steadily rising vibration beneath the floor reached its frightening crescendo.

CRASSH!

One large, thick, and utterly familiar tentacle burst up through the floorboards.

"Right on time," Gallows hissed sarcastically.

He could have escaped easily by running through the kitchen, but he wasn't going to leave the old man behind. The Disciple wanted that man for some reason, and it might be worthwhile to find out what that reason was.

Gallows drew his longbow and notched an arrow as he streaked across room, skirting around the hole in the floor. The tentacle snapped toward him like an enormous whip. Gallows leapt-

-fired an arrow while in the air-

and flipped over the end of the whipping tentacle just as the arrow struck home. Piercing the tentacle's flesh near the point where it emerged from the floor, the cinder-arrow's head glowed white-hot... and then disintegrated, fragmenting into almost a hundred burning fragments that spread in random directions, boring deeper into the creature's body.

In a human, the arrow would have lead to a VERY painful death, but Gallows doubted whether any of the tiny white-hot cinders would hit anything vital in the subterranean creature. The pain, however, might convince it to leave.

The tentacle writhed and retreated back into is hole.

But even as it vanished, several MORE tentacles emerged. These were smaller... about the thickness of a man's arm. But their size made them faster, more maneuverable, and harder to hit. And there were fifteen of them. MOST of them were tipped with a sharp barb that looked like stingers.

Fourteen of them came straight for Gallows.

The fifteenth went the other way and slashed its pointed barb down the Disciple's back. Had the Disciple been alive, then the wound would have killed it instantly. But the creature's attack wasn't an attack at all. The barb sliced cleanly through Gallows' black ribbon; most of the constricting loops fell away, allowing the Disciple to free itself of the few that remained.

"DAMN!" Gallows swore as he fired another missile.

The momentum-arrow hit the newly freed Disciple squarely in the chest, and the arrow's enchantment multiplied its own momentum an instant before it struck. When it hit, the missile had the same mass as a runaway carriage traveling at roughly the same speed as an arrow.

The result was almost comical.

Tearing away the last of the assassin's ribbon, the Disciple extended its arms (and cloak) and bellowed:

"MMMMMMM-"

WHAM!

Suddenly, both arms were flying freely in the air... torn off by the force of the impact. The rest of the Disciple's torso... minus one leg... was thrown back through the wall... out across the street... and through the wall of another house.

Gallows saw none of this.

Tentacles snaked through the air behind him as he grabbed the old man and bolted for the shattered front door.

"UP!" He shouted.

The assassin's soft black boots left the ground... and touched down again a second later. Gallows was carrying the old man in his arms, and the cape was only made to support his own weight.

"UP!" He commanded again... this time he helped the cape along with a slight running leap.

Gallows felt himself being lifted upward... slowly... sloooooowly.... The upper edge of a nearby building started to grow larger as he rose toward it.

"PLEASE!" he shouted, not daring to look behind him. "UP! UP! UP!"

The cape didn't rise any faster, and Gallows didn't expect it to. With both arms full of bleeding old man, he couldn't reach his weapons OR cast a spell. The assassin bent his knees and folded his legs underneath himself as he rose past the rooftop-

-yanking them out of the creature's reach just as a tentacle closed around the empty air where his ankle once was.

There came a loud CRASH from behind/below. Gallows glanced back and saw the old man's house vanishing into a widening hole in the ground. The tentacles vanished right behind it... and then the hole began to fill itself in as dirt pushed up from below.

"Sealing itself in again," said Gallows. "It doesn't want to be found. What's it afraid of...?"

"...are... are you an angel.. ?" the old man murmured in his arms. He was hurt bad. Gallows could tell that without looking. The man's pain buzzed in his head like a nest of angry wasps.

"Yes," said Gallows. He was searching the street below for signs of the Disciple. "I'll get you to a healer."

"Heh..." Gandrick chuckled as his consciousness faded. "...I am... a healer..."

"Well I guess we don't have far to go, then," Gallows replied. He felt the man's pain wink out like a candle. He was still alive, but he wouldn't be for very long.

With a subtle shift in balance, Gallows turned the angle of his flight back toward the house where December and the others were waiting. He hadn't killed OR captured the Disciple, but perhaps he had caught something better: Information.

Assuming he got there in time...

---

N'Doki did not return upstairs when the others left. At least, not immediately. He waited in the living room, observing the house with his various spiritual senses. He probed the ethereal currents that flowed through the house, searching for signs of corruption... or any hints of spiritual intrusion. He found more of both than was healthy for a house inhabited by living things. This was not alarming. Not to N'Doki... in fact, it was this very character that had drawn him here. He had assumed, correctly it seemed, that this place or something within it was related to the mysterious 'event' that he had sensed in Montfort. But, as he extended his focus outward from the house... out into the street beyond... and the houses beyond the street... he realized that he was at least partially mistaken.

It was not the house, but the entire town that was corrupt. And it had been so for quite some time. The city itself was crumbling. Not physically, but in that peculiar spiritual reality that most humans ignored completely. If he had had to explain it to someone else, the necromancer would have said that Bephal resembled a swamp-bed after the waters had drained away. A thick sludge of filth and decay clung to the town, slowly drying in place, forming a crust that would eventually choke the very life from it. One day, perhaps a thousand years from now, men would come to the place where Bephal sat and would become uneasy. They would say that the land was cursed... that the soil was poisoned... that some evil spirit (or the moldering remnants thereof) haunted this particular stretch of woods. They would make up all manner of unpleasant stories about things that happened here... some of which would be true. They would proclaim in whispered tones that this place was dead. Dead, decaying, and filling the spiritual ether with the stench of the stale and rotting evil. This non-physical stench would soon attract all manner of spiritual parasites, of which only the slightest few would be human. And, after festering for several more generations, perhaps a new town would be built in its place. A new town with some ridiculously innocuous name, like "Roanoke" or "Derry" or "October Falls." Names that the spirits sometimes whispered in passing. This new place would be cursed as well... cursed by mostly unseen and unnatural predators that had fallen dormant in the intervening years, but would awake with a hunger at the influx of fresh nourishment. Innocents and guilty alike would fall victim to strange afflictions, mysterious deaths, and epidemic waves of unsolved disappearances... and it would go on... and on... and on...

But Bephal was not that place yet, and the necromancer didn't bother wondering whether the fate could be avoided or not. Perhaps it could, but it was not his place intervene one way or another. Although, if the town and its inhabitants angered him he would be more than happy to hasten its demise.

N'Doki smiled at the thought.

Yes, it had indeed been a long time since he had destroyed a town. Ahhh, the memories...

N'Doki diverted his thoughts back onto the task at hand. Bephal was a doomed town, but yet it had somehow managed to spawn something of significance. N'Doki did not know what it was... he only knew that it was here. But the spirits knew. Oh, yes. The restless spirits of Bephal had many secrets to tell, and some of those secrets had a bearing on Montfort's... and December's... immediate future. Even now, those spirits floated through the walls of this house, whispering their words to young Casey D'Arcy. They spoke gently this time, so as not do startle the boy and betray their presence to his mother. They imagined that they hid from N'Doki as well, but they did not.

N'Doki listened, and he heard all of their comings and goings...

...but it was not comings and goings that interested him. He wanted their words, and THOSE they had found a way to hide from him. He knew they were here... had been here for many hours... but he could not tell what vital droplets of information they were feeding into the boy's ears. That was what he needed.

So, after spending several minutes fine-tuning his senses to try and hear their ephemeral spirits, N'Doki grew impatient.

There were much more efficient ways to get what he wanted.

N'Doki started up the stairs. He pounded the steps with his staff as he walked, and allowed the sound to echo loudly... ominously loud... all the way to the top. He felt the woman stir from her light slumber and prepare to meet him as he approached the bedroom.

She opened the door as he arrived.

"Is something happening?" she asked.

"I haf come for de boy," N'Doki said simply. "Step aside... or be moved aside."

Francesca D'Arcy withdrew as if stricken. Then she stepped forward defiantly, as if trying to move N'Doki back out into the hallway by the force of her presence alone. It did not work, and they ended up standing inches apart, with N'Doki looking down into the woman's scowling face.

"I don't know who you are," she snapped. "And I don't know what you and December are REALLY doing here. But I do know that Casey has nothing to do with any of it. You helped him earlier, and for that you have my thanks... but you will NOT continue to bother him with your questions. He doesn't know anything! And even if he did, I will not have him questioned by strangers... CRIMINAL strangers, at that! Now you go back downstairs and you STAY there until my father gets back!"

The fire in the woman's voice was... amusing. Especially considering the fear that quivered just beneath the surface. She was terrified of him... and this after all the work N'Doki had done to disguise his true appearance. Yet, frightened though she was, she still confronted him with anger in her eyes to protect the boy.

Yes, very amusing.

N'Doki wondered what she would do if she saw what was in HIS eyes.

Perhaps he should show her.

Yes... perhaps he should.

N'Doki blinked... slowly. Smooth brown eyelids slid closed, and rough shriveled ones opened in their place, revealing two glowing orbs that were not eyes, but windows into the black pit that was N'Doki's soul.

Francesca D'Arcy shuddered and gasped as the pain shot through her. The slightest glimpse of the necromancer's eyes bathed her in the agony of a million whips bearing down on the backs of a million tortured slaves. Screams filled her ears, and blood poured down like rain into her eyes... but even through the red downpour she could still see the twisting landscape of pain... the unending fields of torment roiling behind N'Doki's eyes-

She lasted almost a second.

"AAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!"

Screaming and clutching at her own eyes, Francesca staggered back into the bedroom, clearing the doorway for N'Doki's entrance.

"Mama!" Casey... who had only been pretending to sleep, sat up in the bed.

"CASEY-"

"Sleep," said N'Doki. Instantly and in mid-scream, Francesca slept. N'Doki was surprised that she was able to remain conscious as long as she had. She must have indeed had a hard life... or she was, as Floyd implied... not completely sane to begin with.

But the woman was no longer a concern. N'Doki directed his attention to the boy, who was scrambling out of bed and preparing to run to his mother's side.

"Yerro," N'Doki said... invoking the name of a spirit that caused paralysis. The spirit responded... N'Doki felt the power move briefly through him and out through the fading vibrations of his voice.

Casey's muscles cramped and joints stiffened, freezing him in an awkward half-standing position. One foot was on the floor, the other was folded back, resting on the bed.

N'Doki waved his hand in the boy's direction. Several shapes, invisible to all but N'Doki and perhaps Casey, grabbed the boy by the arms... lifted him up, and threw him roughly down on the bed. The bankita straightened the boy's limbs, and then vanished.

The necromancer walked slowly to the boy's bedside.

The boy stared up at him in terror.

"Perhaps now, we get de truth from you, eh?"

"Nnn...nnnnn...." Casey tried to speak. The paralysis did not extend to his mouth, he was simply too frightened to move his lips.

"No?" said N'Doki. "You still not tell N'Doki what de spirits say to you?"

Casey trembled in the bed.

"You wish to keep dere secrets, no? But you cannot. N'Doki will rip what he wants from your soul, whether you wish to give it or not..."

N'Doki extended his right hand, holding it over the boy's paralyzed body. Tendrils of orange electricity began to dance between the necromancer's lengthening fingernails. The hissing crackle of power began to rise... sounding very much like a pit of angry snakes.

"NNoooo!!!" Casey screamed...

...and then white, amorphous forms began to pour forth from the walls as the spirits of Bephal began to manifest themselves. The first few swarmed angrily around N'Doki as dozens... then hundreds of them filled the room. They assaulted N'Doki with howling, angry screams... throwing their ephemeral bodies against him, battering him from all sides.

N'Doki did nothing... he waited as more and more spirits came to the boy's aid. They began to tear at him. His priestly robe was but an illusion, and their claws passed effortlessly through it, reaching for the flesh beneath. Their talons raked across his skin... piercing him like hundreds of fish hooks that all pulled in different directions-

-and then-

The thing that happened made no physical sound, but it FELT like a *snap.* A snap, and a sudden sensation of motion, like a compressed spring being released. N'Doki's power... which he had been gathering into himself since before he had come upstairs... exploded out of him. Not in all directions, but instead pouring forth only in one: Down.

Long, angry arcs of power shot across the floor, radiating outward from N'Doki's feet. They reached the walls and then started up... up to the ceiling, where they again changed directions and met again directly above N'Doki's head. Then, they all drew tight... pulling away from the walls with a sudden snap.

The lines of power had formed a net that completely enclosed the bedroom, and when the net drew shut, it snatched the rampaging spirits out of the air and compressed them into an angry, glowing ball that hovered in the center of the room. Now helpless, the spirits could do nothing but buzz angrily at their captor.

This, of course, had been N'Doki's objective all along. He smiled at the captured spirits, watching their forms struggle within the lines of power. The cage was hurting them. They THOUGHT they were in pain. But they weren't. Not yet.

"Perhaps it is better dat I get what I want straight from de source, eh? Dese spirits are so quick to protect you... now I will find out why."

The lines of power contracted, and the sound of the spirits' buzzing cries went up several octaves.

"Stop!" Casey shouted.

N'Doki looked behind him, and saw that Casey was sitting upright in the bed. He was moving.... slowly, but still moving.

"Yerro!" N'Doki snapped, strengthening the paralysis. Casey's muscles froze once again, and the necromancer turned back to the spirits.

"I care not for your town... or your souls. You will tell me what I want, or I will destroy you. Very slowly."

To emphasize his point, the lines of power that comprised the net began to crackle. The spirits trapped within it screamed.

N'Doki listened to the screams... but did not hear what he wanted. So he drew the net in tighter. Energy ate into the ephemeral 'flesh' of the souls.

"NOOOO!" Casey cried. "No, STOP!"

N'Doki ignored the boy... until he heard movement behind him. The necromancer paused his torture and turned once again.

Casey was kneeling on the bed now. Somehow he had been able to overcome N'Doki's paralysis...

"Mai-Gangaddi! SLEEP!" N'Doki shouted. Casey collapsed onto the bed. His sleep was not the peaceful slumber of his mother, but the restless, drowning dread of fever and nightmares. Already, the boy's skin was turning pale and beads of cold sweat were appearing on the child's brow.

"Noooww," N'Doki hissed, turning once again to his captives. He extended his hand, and burnt orange sparks leapt from his claws, transfixing the ball of spirits and causing them to wail and thrash uncontrollably.

Now the screams were beginning to take shape. Voices. Pleading. Begging. But no secrets.

N'Doki growled. These souls were more determined than he expected. He contracted the net, and sent even more power coursing through the crackling lines.

"...please..." a small voice said behind him.

"eh?"

The boy was awake. There was no way that it could have been... but it was. Casey had turned over onto his side, and was reaching one slender hand toward the spirits.

"...please don't hurt them," he pleaded. "...they're my friends..."

Friends. How interesting.

Interesting, but irrelevant.

"BIDDA!" N'Doki howled, re-paralyzing the boy, but this time adding waves of nausea. "JIHU!" The child's pale skin flushed deep red as fever consumed him. "RAKO!" The final spirit drained the strength out of Casey's body.

"....uhhhgh..." Case fell back again. His eyes rolled up into his head. N'Doki watched him for a moment. When the boy began to drool onto his pillow, N'Doki continued with the prisoners.

"Tell me who raised you... what power summoned you hear? Tell me of dis t'ing dat has returned to Bephal! SPEAK! N'Doki commands you!"

The spirits screamed and begged, but they would not answer.

N'Doki raised his staff and pointed it at the spirits... his eyes narrowed as he picked one at random.

The staff began to change... lengthening... sharpening... until it became a spear. He thrust the spearhead into the net, impaling one of the ghosts.

The sound of the spirit's dying scream was too high-pitched for human ears, but N'Doki's infernal senses bathed in the fullness of it. N'Doki's power lashed out through the spear, tearing the squealing ghost apart... slowly. But it did not stop there. N'Doki amplified the spirit's agony a few dozen times and fed it into all of the other captive ghosts.

Francesca D'Arcy's unconscious body convulsed on the floor. Her ears could not hear the torment that N'Doki had unleashed, but her soul could sense it... and it convulsed in terror and revulsion, causing her physical body to twitch.

"GIVE ME WHAT I WANT AND I WILL END DE SUFFERING!" N'Doki shouted.

The spirits shouted back... they were talking... yes... yesssss, finally...

"NO!"

The shout came from behind N'Doki... from the bed where he had left Casey paralyzed and helpless. But the voice that shouted was NOT Casey D'Arcy-

Startled, N'Doki turned...

...just as a red-hot fireball slammed into him, catching him in the side and throwing him across the room.... leaving a trail of sparks, fire, and burning flesh in its wake. N'Doki slammed shoulder-first into the wall... his shoulder shattered, and dagger-like fragments of bone sliced murderously through his flesh.

"AAAARRRRRRrrrgh!"

N'Doki's illusion of humanity faltered... shimmered... and faded. It was the necromancer's TRUE form... in all of its skeletal fury... that turned to face the bed where Casey stood defiant. The boy stood upright on the bed, with one hand closed into a tight fist. A tight globe of fire sizzled around that fist, and the other hand... limp at his side... was home to a nest of gleaming white lightning-bolts that slithered between the fingers like newly-hatched snakes.

Casey's lips moved... his throat vibrated... but the sound that emerged was not the voice of a child. It was that of a man. An old, angry, and very powerful man.

"End your meddling NOW, creature... scamper back to Montfort while you still have legs to carry you!"

"hhhhhhh..." N'Doki exhaled slowly as he stood upright, clutching his broken shoulder in his hand. Black blood oozed out from between the fingertips and drooled down his right arm. The remnants of the fireball that had hit him flickered across his scorched flesh. The flames danced for a moment... and then died away. "I see dat one of you has power..." he hissed. "Power enough to best N'Doki?... I t'ink not."

Casey's feet left the bed... the boy hovered in the air, floating to one side as the fireball around his fist swelled in preparation...

"You are out of your league, necromancer" the thing inside Casey snarled. "If it is a fight you want, then you shall have it! But you'll soon see that JEREMIAH'S TRISK is not to be underestimated!"

[To Be Continued]