Aerrow sat on the corrugated metal of the Condor's lowered boarding ramp, knees pulled up to his chin, one hand lightly tracing the metal grooves near his feet. The faint glow of the setting sun tinting one side a warm orange, throwing the other into cold shadow; his fingers unconsciously lingered in the shadow. He thought again about the Voice, replaying its words in his mind. It was probably just a hallucination, he told himself; there was nothing else it could be. The doctors had thought it was stress, but nothing like it had happened to him before…

"Aerrow?" Piper called, coming to sit next to him.

"Hey," he said, forcing a smile.

She smiled back.

"Aerrow," she continued after a pause, "what were you going to ask me, when we were talking in the woods?"

"Oh…I was just wondering if you'd ever…seen a hallucination…before."

"I don't think so, why?"

He shrugged and went back to tracing the metal. Piper stared at his hand for a few minutes, and then placed her own on top of it, stopping his movement.

"You're hands are freezing," she muttered, "Aerrow, is that what happened? You had a hallucination?"

"Of a sort, yes" he said.

"Hey, guys!" Finn interrupted, running into the hanger. He beamed at them, noticed Piper's hand still on Aerrow's, his smile fell and then came back twice as big.

"I was gonna say dinner was ready, but if you two are too busy…" he snickered and ran away again before either of them could stand up.

They got to their feet and walked, a fair distance apart, to the bridge and the round table everyone was already seated at. They took their seats, Aerrow beside Junko and next to Piper who was beside Finn, and everyone dug in.

Everyone but the Sky Knight; Aerrow jabbed absently at the food on his plate, staring through it, oblivious to the other's stares.

"Something wrong?" Junko asked him, leaning around his already clean plate.

"No, I was just thinking."

"About?"

"Nothing in particular, uh, books?"

"Speaking of books, check this out!" Piper said energetically, reaching down to a cubby by her feet.

Finn rolled his eyes and stood to leave.

"Sit down Finn, this concerns you too. Stork, you come here too."

He sighed and turned the ship on autopilot, walking over from the controls and reclaiming his seat. Piper passed a little faded green book to Finn and told him to read it. He looked doubtfully at her and turned the book around, tried to open it. The thin, paper pages didn't give, remained clamped shut.

"Where's the key?" he asked.

"There is no key Finn, see? No lock."

He tried again, to the same results. Admitting defeat he passed the book back to Piper. Everyone watched her hands as she picked it up and flipped open the book easily.

"Hey! No fair!" Finn cried.

"Look at the pages," Piper said, ignoring Finn, holding the book out to show everyone.

The pages were old and completely black, with no discernable words, and there was a slight haze about this blackness that piqued curiosity. She closed the book and set it down on the table, looking at each person in turn, as if asking for an explanation. Finn snatched the book and tried to open it again, eventually passing it to Junko, who passed it to Aerrow; the ship drifted away from Atmosia, entering open air space.

Aerrow smiled and began to laugh, slowly at first, and then it built into a maniacal laughter that seemed to echo through the ship. The lights flickered and Aerrow kept laughing; and then the lights quit and the Condor was plunged into darkness.

"Aerrow?" Piper called in the sudden silence.

She reached out and gripped Finn's hand, squeezing it. He returned the pressure and Piper reached out with her right hand, her fingers searching blindly for him. They encountered only empty air,

"Aerrow!" she called more desperate now than before.

"What happened to the lights? Everything else seems to be working okay," Junko whispered from across the table. They could hear the engines, the flow of hot water through the pipes.

"Just a sec, here," Piper said, noticing how muffled her voice sounded. She reached back down to the little cubby at her feet and pulled out a Solaris crystal. As she came back up she looked in the vague direction the windows should have been, but she didn't see any stars.

"What happened to the stars?" she wondered aloud and activated the crystal.

Nothing much happened; the crystal glowed faintly, throwing only a tiny amount of light a few inches out from the diamond's edges.

"Maybe it's dead," she said.

"What's dead?"

"The Solaris crystal"

"How do you know its dead? Did you even try it?"

Her answering 'yes' was drowned out by more laughter, from the opposite end of the bridge.

"The saying that light will always conquer the dark is a lie," a voice hissed in the dark, "The only place that light prevails is in the world of fiction. But here, things are different. In the real world, the Darkness always wins!"

At the last word the lights came on again and Piper found that her eyes had already been adjusted to the light; the absence of light had been only in her mind. She focused on Aerrow, standing at the other end of the room, his arms raised and spread apart as if to show the physical elation he'd used on the last word.

Only, it didn't look quite like Aerrow. He was the same height and build, but his skin was paler than normal, almost translucent-looking. And his face was a stranger's for though it smiled there was something evil in the features that she had never seen before.

"Aerrow?" everyone shouted in surprise and horror.

"Not exactly," he laughed again insanely and Piper involuntarily leapt to her feet, "What would cause you more pain?" he asked throwing out an arm toward the front windows. Some invisible energy pulsed through him and out, shattered the glass. He stepped over the broken shards to the outside railing, "Which would give me something more to feed on besides your horror? To see him fall," everyone at the table found their legs and leapt up running to the window frame, as he scrambled up onto the side rail and spread his arms apart, staring at each of them with black, hateful eyes, "or to watch him jump?"

"No!" Piper screeched, taking another step farther. Junko held her back, his eyes wide.

"So be it."

He closed his eyes, breathed deep and when he opened them to look at the others his eyes were their normal green.

"I wish I could say I was sorry, but it just doesn't feel like you'd care. Maybe, this is for the best…" and he flung himself into open air, falling head first.

Everyone but Stork surged forward, leaning over the railing, crying his name and sobbing. Stork ran to the ship's controls and turned the Condor around, dipping down to look for Aerrow, and froze. He jerked the ship to a halt.

Aerrow was staring at him, floating under his own power in the sky; a thin, dark aura surrounded him. He had his arms folded across his chest and his grin was malicious.

"Ten hundred years!" he screamed, "I've waited ten hundred years for this!"

He flung out his hand again and Stork barely managed to keep the ship from flipping right over. Aerrow laughed again, his voice ringing through the silent expanse of the sky, and he reached out both his hands, slowly, clenching his fingers around the air in front of him; the Condor shuddered. He remained like that for a few more minutes and just as Stork felt his heart rate slow, he looked up again from the controls.

Aerrow stared right into his eyes, his mouth stretching farther in a wicked sneer, "This will hurt. I promise," and he whipped his hands down.

The Condor obeyed, seeming to fling itself downward in a sudden, violent motion and Stork gripped the controls for dear life. He heard nothing over the roaring wind through the shattered glass and sounds of his own screaming; saw nothing through the blinding white stars in his eyes. There was physical jolt as the ship hit and continued through the cloud layer, and he became aware that his death grip on the metal handles before him was all that kept him on his feet and in the ship.

He saw the red glow of the lava getting quickly brighter and gave a final, desperate pull upward on the ship's controls.