~Tyler knew him for who he was. His eye sockets were empty and black, but he did not need eyes. The eyes are gateways to the soul and this was the soul who saw through Mystic's eyes. He looked curiously at Tyler, holding the torch close enough to reveal Tyler to himself. He was dressed not in his cobalt silk but in a black cloak and boots.~

"At last."

I heard him speak and shivered once all over for it; I was not feeling him speak, understanding the emotions that triggered speech. My ears were ringing with the sound, the real sound, of his voice, and he was speaking to me.

"I have waited a long time, in the dark."

"For what?"

I shuddered harder at my own voice. I felt it tickle my throat, come up over my tongue and through my teeth and echo in the vast emptiness of the hall, and I was speaking to him. He seemed, at first, to be a surprised as I.

"For you, I suppose. Come with me."

I followed him when he turned, as desperate to remain in the halo of light as anything. When he spoke, he did not sound like Mystic. Had it not been his face, I would have guessed another had found this place as I had, but he had always been here. He spoke differently, but in the same way he was a part of Mystic.

~Tyler and Mystic walked slowly through the hall, and Tyler could never seen beyond one arm and shoulder and face of his guide, nor much more than his own chest and shoulders. They shared conversation, Tyler speaking as he never had and hearing as he never would again. It was there in the mind that his language as spoken and, therefore, his voice was heard. Mystic told him very little, though it took a very long time to say. Past the subconscious was the being, the dwelling place of the soul. He had never known anything beyond the halls, and they had always been lit. And then, slowly at first, they were darkened and his walks through the labyrinth of halls and corridors became narrower. Soon, the whole range of his reach was blackness and he was isolated to the Core Root.~

I asked him what the Core Root was, and he never said anything. I felt it all around me, however, the pulsing of the air as if blood vessels strung the particles together. I could taste something like twilight and ginger, but very unlike both in its enormity and agelessness, and we standing in a room that spread out over me in a dome so high above out heads the torch's light only glinted across the rim. Mystic left me there and strode to the center of this room, and I saw a stone table come into view. On it I could see carvings of things I did not understand, but when I looked again they were not carvings, nor was the table stone. Mystic's torch rested in the center, held aloft by a tripod of intricate detailing, and just as his hand left the base the flame blossomed and spread to engulf then enormity of the space, and I could see him clearly for the first time.

"There is very little left anymore."

~His face and hand were, perhaps, all that really was left. Tyler could see his other arm now, or at least the shadow of where it had been. All across the black chest he could see raw openings leading into a blackness that was nothing. No ribs, no throbbing heart, just space that did not lead to his other side. Even his neck was decaying, peeling away to reveal that same blackness. Under his cloak, Tyler could not see more.~

He was dying, as a soul dies. I saw him rotting away even as we stood there, and yet he paid his peeling flesh no mind. His was not the hurt; that was the body's. But his was the decay.

"What is happening?"

"Something is here, in these halls."

I could not stop staring at the hollows in his chest, the emptiness of his robe, and he would not take the pressure of his eyeless sockets from my face.

"What is it? Is it doing that to you?"

~Mystic glanced down when Tyler pointed and ran a hand across his fragmented chest. His fingers left a ripple in the blackness which faded away and back into the black nothing inside him. ~

"Yes. I can not tell what it is, but it is always here. It is here now, still feasting."

I could see what he spoke of. Slowly, very slowly, pieces of black skin were falling away–no, in fact, merely dissolving–to reveal more emptiness.

"Can I help you?"

"That is why you are here."

~He moved again to the torch and lifted it, dimming its light nearly back to the confined halo of before but leaving enough to let Tyler see the floor he stood on, though the great domed ceiling fell away again into blackness.~

"It is weak in the light, and will not come too near. If I am in the darkness..."

He stopped speaking and I almost saw a wild terror flash through eyes that did not exist.

"I have no power over it. That is what became of me here–"

~Tyler saw the robe lift where an arm would have been, but saw only slivers of black skin and fingers, a crease in the air at the elbow, and a few shrinking patches by the shoulder. ~

"When the lights were going out. I have kept this burning since. Follow me."

He led me through the round room and I watched the torch light skip across the stone walls. There were carvings, just like on the table, that looked less like carvings than they did creases in flesh. Though nothing but the flame and ourselves moved, I could not help but think the room—the very walls—felt very much alive. I could understand nothing on the walls, though occasionally I thought I saw a letter I recognized stand out of its shadow, but when I looked it had melted into the twisting grooves that snaked like foliage across the wall.

"What do they say?"

~Mystic stopped waking and turned to the wall, holding his torch closer to the stone. ~

"They tell of him, and his self, and they are always changing because he is, also. Now they are...they are lost, and do not know what to say."

His voice darkened the torch to a smouldering pile and just as suddenly I felt something in the swell of darkness, breathing. I saw his face tilt upward to look just behind my ears, and the torch flared again.

"What was that?"

~Mystic still stared behind Tyler, his face never changing.~

"That was the hunter. Come quickly."

We walked faster then, and I did not ask another question. I thought, or imagined, that I could hear a subtle scrapping just behind us, or leagues away, or inside the beating of my own heart—but always, always coming. I wondered what I could possibly do, what good I was, but then I thought—there is no one else.

~The halls Mystic led Tyler down were much the same as the hall in which Tyler had first found himself. It wound in great arches, seeming to curve around back in itself in places, twisting like a living serpent. Mystic's stride spoke of confidence, told Tyler he knew these passageways even without eyes, and so the derkin followed, one silver ear always titled back to listen for a pursuer. At last Mystic stopped walking and held the torch aloft. Tyler could see an arched entryway, but behind that a blackness that rang with immense space and smelled like stagnant water. Mystic sighed and the light burst open and spread, leaving Tyler's tongue numb.~

Before me was not a room. It could not have been a room, and yet there were walls, great, steep walls that fell sheer and treacherous into a sea. That sea rolled away from us into shadow, waves moving with a current that could not have existed, slapping against the walls. We stood above them, in a doorway that was part of one terrible wall. From our feet fell a stairway, but it was utterly useless. Many of the stairs were missing—not fallen, but merely missing like the pieces of Mystic's chest and arm—and more still were fading away, and they led directly into the sea. Above us was, perhaps, some kind of ceiling. When I looked, I almost thought I saw the glisten of—what was it? Stars. And yet I felt enclosed, despite the enormity, and I felt as if I was standing at the threshold of some surreal cathedral.

"This is how it is. The sea comes closer all the time. Slowly. The tide is rising slowly, but is always rising. Many, many rooms are gone, many halls are filled."

"What can I do?"

"If all the halls are filled, if all the rooms are washed away, I will drown and wash away with them. You must find the hunter."

~The waves made a hollow crashing roar that echoed through the expanse of the massive room, booming off pillars and slowly rotting away the living stone.~

"And then you must stop the slaughter."

~Tyler looked at his hands, as if suddenly remembering they were there. His fingers looked just as they had before, the creases of age and the weathered blisters not diminished even while he stood in the absence of time. They looked just as they must on his body beyond sight, back beyond Mystic's memory.~

"Tell me what I must do."

"You must find the Core Root."

"Is this not it? Was that room there not the Core?"

~Mystic's brows creased and the shadows in his sockets deepened.~

"That was not the Core Root. It has chased me from the Core, and it sleeps there. I have forgotten where it is. You must find it."

"Can I kill it?"

"It is not alive."

"How can I stop it?"

He was staring at me again, staring without expression, staring deeper than any eyes can look. Something was coming closer, something was coming, something I did not understand. He was asking me to rid the halls of Mystic's being of some evil, some evil that was no one but some thing that hid in a place even his soul could not remember. I wanted very much to run, to follow my trail back out of this dank, unreal place and leave Mystic to his terminal slumber.

"I do not know."

~Tyler did not run, did not move, but stared at the rolling black water. ~

"How long do I have?"

"There is no time here."

"Mystic is dying."

"You have until the rooms and halls are filled, until my flesh is nothing but shadow, until I forget what I am. Go quickly. Take this light."

He handed me his torch, his only defense against the surrounding terror.

"I can't take this."

"You must."

~Tyler stared baffled at Mystic.~

"Once you have taken the light, your time will begin to run out."

I took his torch and saw him last like a ghost on the sea, and he was gone behind me in the hollow black, the same that yawned shapeless before me. Even before the light had caught the stone edges of another hall entrance, I felt something swell up in the dark and fill the emptiness. Stale, stagnant air moved across me in a warm breath, and I heard him.

"Now!"