~A heartbeat and a glance away, Tyler's blue eyes stared unblinking beyond what those who stood around him could see. Tajmere watched them both, the man in the bed and man seated beside him, with worry lacing the unmoving gold of her eyes. She said nothing, not when Merlynn stood with her, not when Saudi stared from the doorway, not even when Palen's tears fell at her feet.

"I should not have asked him." One pale morning hand reached to touch Tyler rough robe but pulled away quickly. "What have I done?"

"He would have gone," Tajmere said at last, "whether you had asked him or no. His guilt drives him."

"What is happening?" The voice was Lien's at the doorway, and Palen shook his head slowly and Mystic took a long, ragged breath. ~

The hall was long and wet. I could both feel and hear the water trickling around me and onto my shoulders, cold and heavy. The torch could barely light the close walls so thick was the age of the place. Mystic was not thirty years old, but that place felt older and sadder than the sky, as if it had waited for an eternity for something that never came. My footsteps rang dull and did not echo and the walls were smooth and bare but for the dark stains of water.

It seemed just as long I walked straight, neither on incline or decline, the hall always rolling out before my light and curling up again behind me. After thousands of heartbeats and perhaps a lifetime or two another darkness sprang at my side and I held the torch against a larger entrance way. This one was peaked at the arch and studded in musty gems whose color could no longer be distinguished. I hesitated long under that arch, pushing the light as far as I could without moving my feet and seeing only cobbled floor and smooth walls fading into dark. Something smelled salty and rich and the path lead somewhat down from where I stood. I would have moved on, afraid of descending into darkness, when a breeze licked my ears and reminded me of things I had felt so long ago in the world, away from the windless inside. I hesitated no longer but followed the zephyr that played through the stagnant air.

~Tyler saw as soon as he entered the hall that those walls were different, ornately carved and perhaps, though it was hard to tell in the damp color and the flickering light, gilded in faded gold. The carvings were deep and strange, more like stone constellations that wove with their own life, unmoving and yet always changing, through the grain of the walls. His light found their crevices and enhanced their shadow until he felt himself crawl inside them and walk through their maze of twisted meanings and forgotten words, if words they were at all. Like firebrand they seemed to sear themselves to his eyes until he could see each one laid delicate in the darkness before him before it glinted out in the blaze of the torch.~

I could not tell how far I had come or if I was making any progress at all. My legs and lungs were not sore for wandering in the intangible does not weary muscle. I had rounded one corner, cautiously, with the torch before me, but otherwise the hall had cloven straight through the stone it had been carved from. I considered stopping, perhaps turning back, when panic shot through my spine. For a moment I froze and stared with fear into the dark around me, but it had not been my own panic. Something desperate had happened, something terrible, behind me in the labyrinth I had walked through. I was running out of time.

~They had moved him to a bed for lack of knowing anything better to do. He lay as still as death, stiller than Mystic, stiller than stone. His eyes were open and alone moved, following some pathway none of them could imagine. He could neither hear them nor feel their hands, for he made no recognition of voice or touch.

"What do you think he found?" Feyl asked Palen, but received no response. "It has been days. Surely–"

"He will come back to us when his work is complete. Or–" There Palen paused. "We will lose them both."~

I was running down the corridor, the feeling of terror driving my blood through me like lightning. I thought of Mystic in the dark and the hot breath that curled around the corners of the room, that heavy presence I could not see. It was while I was running my boots were suddenly soaked and I felt water splash up against my legs as I ran. Before I could stop, I was knee deep in water so cold I felt it in my teeth, water that curled around my knees and broke behind me against the stone path I had been following. My torch showed nothing but more water and more darkness and the tiny waves glinted orange under the light. I could smell vast space and emptiness and the small breeze had swelled to a chill in the air that touched my bones, but there seemed no way for me to cross the water.

~Tyler backed out of the dark ocean slowly, his eyes following the imagined horizon before him. His only solution seemed to be returning and searching a different way. He felt time crawling over him like flies and something beyond the water held him in place, his boots lapped by the water. As he stared and thought, he felt the waves brush shyly against his legs, nearly to his knees with each splash. With a new urgency he backed up the stone hall as the ripples and waves came ever closer, ever larger. Something besides the air was stirring.~

I could see nothing but the arcs of water in my torch light, but the air was suddenly warmer, though not pleasantly so. Whatever was under the surface of that sea was moving, churning the surface, perhaps coming closer. I would have run again, eager to be away from the dark mystery and rising terror, but suddenly the whole cavern was clammy with breath and blacker than pitch, as if someone had snapped close a door on my sight. Only my torch, now small and smoldering, gave of any kind of light and that was thin and shivering, as afraid of the darkness as me. I heard the water break and felt the wind hot with foul air stir around me, and the fire caught a crimson glint before me.

~Out of the cold, black water rose a storm of shadow and flesh Tyler's quavering torch could not fathom. With pulsing silence, it seemed at once to be the very walls of the cavern coiling into life and the water and air fighting in flesh. There was no sound but the rustle of water, but the smell of a final winter no spring could break froze his lungs. Tyler wanted to run. He had no sword, he had no hope. He had only the flame, and that he thrust toward the throbbing darkness and felt his voice clot in his throat. The torch light was caught in the blackness before him like two oceans of fire as two eyes burst into life before the light. Tyler saw them wink and shudder as they swallowed and reflected the torch light as if each had a heart of fire. All around those ebony orbs began a breathing, first like a low hiss that slithered over the water and around Tyler's ankles, rising to an audible growl that rolled from the water and the walls. The eyes blinked.~

I knew the hunter. I felt the hatred for the fire in his coils down under the water, fathoms further than imagination. I could feel him under my feet, breathing. I could feel him in the walls and in my own lungs. He was larger than the sea he moved in, larger than the space he filled. He was not inside Mystic's core; he was coiled around it and inside it all at once. I had not found him. He had found me. But he would not move toward the flame. "I command thee!" I found myself shouting, though my voice was swallowed in his size. "Leave these halls, or I shall force thee from them."

~Whether the hiss that licked the edges of his words was laughter or anger, Tyler couldn't tell, but it was followed by a voice of smoke and steel. ~

"You come to fight, mortal. You come to fight me in my own halls. You come to find, to find, to find. You found, you found. Now follow!" The water surged around me when he broke his stare suddenly and lunged away, diving back into his watery fortress and nearly drowning me in a wave a blood cold water. In a wild fear I fled the water, holding the torch above me, but whether it was my own speed that kept the flame alive or some power still clinging to Mystic's last refuge, I cannot tell. I still had my weapon, but I was suddenly without an enemy.

~Before Tyler lay a mirror still black surface and only the lingering taste of the hunter's voice.~