This is not discontinued. I was working on Of the Dragon, of the Stars. So enjoy, and I hope you're still reading (well, if you read this message, you are).

/.-.-… --. / Bone \.--— -- --. .-..\

Slowly, Distantlight crept through the damp and murk of the pipe, hoping that he would reach the end soon. The sounds of the battle behind him were gradually becoming fainter and fainter; the darkness now reigned as he traversed the dark tunnel, the air humid and warm.

Not a trace of slime or algae remained on the walls, though they were moist under his fingers. Was it that Ergoth's curse of darkness had killed them all off?

Light suddenly faded into being far ahead of him, up along the slanted pipe. The rays shone down through a grill in stripes, upon the grey rock of the tunnel, he soon realized as he neared.

Distantlight took in a grateful breath of air below the grille, before he pushed it out of its place and pulled himself out of the hole.

There was a huge bouncing purple thing before him. There were more, all around the room. And in the far corner, at least fifty feet away, he saw a cupboard, the door marked with nine roughly elliptical holes. Was it worth searching that?

Quickly, he took another glance around, planning the trip he would take to get past all these strange creatures. He raced through the first opening gap he could find between the creatures, and found himself surrounded. The monsters suddenly closed in on him, their purple bodies leaping closer and closer, threatening to smother him.

"Slash Blast!" he called out loudly, desperate to keep them off. He swung his axe around in a flaming red attack. They were knocked back, torn by the passing, ripping blade.

The warrior blinked in surprise. They were around his level! He could hit them.

"Power Strike!" Over and over, he attacked, fighting his way through the monsters to reach the cupboard. Some fell apart at his weapon, and let go of a strange oval object that resembled an animal's skull. He picked each one up as it fell, realizing that they were the shape of the holes in the cupboard. It went without saying that they were the keys to the wooden closet.

Suddenly, Distantlight was before the cupboard. Fumbling with the tiny skulls, he stuck one into each of the nine holes—they fit into them like missing puzzle pieces.

The door clicked and swung open. Then Distantlight found a huge golden object glinting brilliantly right before his eyes. The crown.

Snatching it up, he turned and ran back through the remaining purple monsters, and leapt into the pipeline, eager to return to the guild and share his finding.

"Great! We've got everything now," Crystalriver's response was excited, more than he had ever seen before. It had been her idea to halt their quest to bury the dead king, after all.

All over the Waterway, smashed remains of gargoyles lay half submerged in the water at their feet. They turned to follow the stone lion, leaving the broken bodies behind.

Again, they found their way through the corridors, back to where Sharen III's skeleton lay, bones pale against the grey of the floor.

Crystalriver had all the clothes in her hands. His body had to be sent off in the proper fashion. She began to clothe him, ignoring the fact that she was holding bones that once held the flesh of someone living. Rich red cloth covered the bare bones, gold adorned the pale skull. There was such irony in what Distantlight saw, but over everything, he felt pity the most deeply.

As Crystalriver laid the body down, the bones jerked in her hands. She let go quickly, the body falling lightly to the ground. And indistinct whiteness suddenly rose up around the clothed body, and there was a sound like a sigh all around the wide hall, and a wave of invisible power that coursed through the air. The blue seal over the gate at the end of the hall, the door to the throne room, broke to pieces in a shower of shining dust, and the door beyond was revealed.

Smile widening, Crystalriver ran over to the door and tried to turn the knob. She frowned in puzzlement, when she found that it would not open.

"No one enters the throne room without doing as his Highness orders," the gatekeeper said in a low voice.

"Not your rules again!" Smokywindow shouted. The rest dared not to move. "You know that your master is dead! You saw his body!"

It shook its head. "It's rule he placed," it replied. "To open the door—in the past, and still the rule stands—you must place a pair of earrings in the keyhole."

Crystalriver suddenly understood what that meant. "But wouldn't that…kill the person?"

It nodded sadly. "His Highness thought that it was the ultimate proof of worth of any group of people."

The guild leader glanced back at the members of the guild, in a dilemma. "I can't let—any of you die…" Her words were full of fear.

Suddenly, Distantlight felt as if all their eyes were boring into him. Him, the low-levelled one, the one who could do nothing should they face Ergoth…

He stepped forward. "Let me do it." He shook his head at their protests and walked to the door. It was for the guild, for the vengeance of the Sharenians, for the purging of darkness from the castle.

Fast as he could, he pulled the earrings off and stuffed them into the keyhole below the doorknob. It clicked in satisfyingly.

Then he tried to breathe once more. It came suddenly. Nothing entered his lungs, not a drop of air, life-giving air. His instinct took over, and he began to thrash with his arms, falling upon the floor, the world spinning about him, growing dimmer, dimmer, the pain closing in on his skull as he fought helplessly for air, for life…

Everything darkened. And suddenly he was free, free of life's burdens, alone on his way to the world of the dead.

Cliffhanger! Reviews, please.