xXx

"So what's left, Sym?" asked the woman on the seat of the throne, elegantly perched on cloven hooves. Her hair tumbled down around her shoulders, she rested her elbows on her knees and laced her fingers together.

"We have about half of each ninja left," the huge dark demon grunted, and he took a puff on his foul cigar. "What they have to say is useless, mostly terrified babbling and the occasional 'Oh it hurts, it hurts,' nothing we haven't heard." He shrugged. "Do you want to keep them alive, Swordbearer?"

The Swordbearer sighed. "I can't think we'd improve the world by setting them loose in it," she said. "Use your discretion."

A slow smile showed all the translucent black teeth of the big demon. "Sym likes the sound of that."

"I suspected you might," she said, standing in a smooth motion. "If you don't mind, I have homework to do. Scat. I need an hour or two uninterrupted."

"Your whim is my reality, O Queen," the big demon said, bowing in supplication.

"You're a pip, Sym," the Swordbearer said. He grinned, and trotted off. The ground echoed his footfalls back. She hopped down and dragged out a few books, stacking them on a stone slab she was using as a table. She lightly sprang up on the table, lay full length, and pulled out the first book. "Wish I could use a highlighter on these texts," she grumbled as she flopped open the first hoary tome of magic.

xXx

She raised her dripping face and looked in the mirror. Then she toweled her face vigorously. She let out a deep breath, then she stepped into the other room.

The guest room was dim. She breathed the air deeply, tasting the ancient spice and dust of Strange's house. Somehow, the place was a comfort right now. She sat on the thick cushion on the floor, listening to the old clock tick quietly to itself; it seemed slower than a normal clock, and it was paced just right for meditation. She settled into the old familiar posture, began running her mind through exercises she learned what seemed like an age ago.

"I must find my inner peace," she murmured, "if I am to mirror it in my outer world." She began breathing with discipline, focusing her body to reflect the stilling of her whirling thoughts. "I must become," she thought, "what I wish the world to be."

She began her meditation.

xXx

From the bridge in the park, you could see over the back fence into the industrial district. Between the park and the river was a square concrete pump station, for sewer overflow. It had been built decades ago, before the sewer system was as high tech as it had become. The building was probably abandoned.

Nonetheless, a tourist raised his opera glasses and looked at it for a long moment.

"Scuse me sir," said a policeman, strolling up to him.

"Yes?" said the tourist, blinking in surprise.

"This your wallet?" the policeman said, holding up a battered leather bifold.

"Yes! Yes it is! I'm Ebert Schwinn! I didn't even know I'd lost it." He slapped at his back pocket.

The policeman nodded. "You have to be more alert about these things. Come on with me and we'll sign some paperwork, and you can be on your way. This is New York. Can't be too careful, right?" he said with a winning smile.

Lock lay still in the tree and watched the ninja guide the tourist away. She released her influence on the tourist's mind. So. The ninja were making sure no one paid any special attention to the pump station. Every clue she had uncovered had led her here. Today was August seventh. Today or tomorrow, the Jonin would use the Hand ninja clan to abduct Illyana and Valeria for a Great Ceremony. Lock sighed. Enough ruining the day of poor tourists. The ninja would get suspicious, even if he didn't feel her touch. She rolled out of the tree and dropped.

The Jonin was near. She could feel him looking for her as she looked for him. Both were careful to be as oblique in their search as possible, neither wanted to give away their position. But she felt him, brooding, near.

She'd just have to be careful, then, wouldn't she.

xXx

"Quite a maze you have there," the thin man in the red coat said.

"Like it, do you?" said the creature hunched in the center of a vast loom.

"Not even a little," the thin man shrugged. "I have come because I need your help, Enitharmon."

The creature chuckled. "Good to see you again, Strange. Still pleased with my reshaping of your cloak?"

Strange shifted in his red coat. "It saves me considerable illusion and effort," he said. "It is a consummate masterpiece, as usual."

"Enough chit chat. I hear you're wanting to know what force has infiltrated Prime."

"That's the rumor," Strange said, looking around.

Enitharmon's realm was a vast perfectly ordered tangle of woven reality, and at the center the short purple creature was hunched in a loom complex, with weaving stranded out in all directions while he worked, pulling in raw materials of all sorts and crafting networks no mortal mind could grasp. Strange found a relatively clear spot and sat on the floor, careful not to touch anything.

Enitharmon clicked away like a mad spider. "It is not possible for you to get the first strike, or even a direct strike against the threat that faces your world," the weaver said. "You can never banish it, for it has a rightful place on your world. But you must keep the balance, it's your task to do, and this creature threatens that."

"Singular?" Strange asked.

"Yes," the weaver nodded. "One creature with hundreds of thousands of minions. Some are unwitting, some are greedy, some are frightened. They do not matter. Only the one. You cannot face it on Prime, for if it ever does manifest fully your dimension will have to cease to be Prime to accommodate it. If you confront it where it dwells in darkness, your power will wilt and its will wax strong until you are destroyed. A few seconds, tops," the weaver nodded to himself.

"But my situation is not without hope," Strange prodded.

The weaver glanced at him, his lavender beak's flesh upturned in a smile. "Of course not. You must follow your wisdom, as you have, and use agents, as your enemy does. Its plans can be defeated on Prime, and in these times that's all you can ask."

"What makes these times different than any other, old friend?" Strange smiled.

"I don't know what you mean," the weaver said, echoing Strange's smile. "Things are completely different, just like they have always been."

Strange's smile faded. "What must I do, Weaver?"

Enitharmon sighed. "You must go to Churanalathitaras."

"The Deep Oracle?" Strange breathed. "I have never been so far from Prime as that. How will I survive the… energies of those distant expanses?"

For a moment it seemed Enitharmon's eyes grew sad. "I will show you the way, wizard," he said, almost to himself.

xXx

"It's been an hour," Sym said from outside the ring of standing stones. "The boys thought you could use a little study break. Some song and dance or something."

"No thanks," Swordbearer said wryly. "I'm not sure they're ready to open for a show on Broadway."

"How's studies?" Sym asked, daring a step inside the standing stones. He leaned against one, taking a deep drag on his ever-burning cigar.

"Studies suck," the Swordbearer said, whirling to a sitting position and kicking the book shut with one dainty hoof. "Serving in heaven sucks, and Strange won't let me be the sole ruler of hell, if you know what I mean."

"Sym does, he really does," Sym said, nodding sympathetically. "Sym might be able to help."

"Really," Swordbearer said, doubt and amusement written in her features.

Sym shrugged. "What if Sym could find a trick that only the ruler of the realm could do and not some carpetbagging wizard? Even a minor one?"

Her eyes brightened. "Do you think you could?"

"Hey," he shrugged. "Sym was here before wizards claimed this realm. If there's something like that here, Sym will find it."

"Thanks for the show of support," Swordbearer said, not sure whether to be touched or worried.

Sym bowed. "Sym lives to serve."

xXx

Valeria's breathing was one with the tides, with the cosmic swell, with the city traffic, with the expanding and contracting of steel and concrete and asphalt in the shifting of the seasons. She was unfocused, unmoored, everywhere, nowhere.

As she breathed, she practiced the defenses against magic first, working them until they were fresh in her mind, in her spirit. She knew she was stalling, but this was good practice too, and practice she had been neglecting for a week or so. She refreshed the mystic wards within and upon her. They were simple things, defenses taught to her by two masters in time past. They would serve to slow a mystic assault, possibly long enough for her to escape, but that's all they were good for.

Now for her psionic barriers. She breathed more deeply, touched the power of her own mind; she was not a psion, but she had been taught techniques of deflecting some of their probes and assaults. She opened herself.

As her senses focused on the realm of ether and the mind, she felt a sweeping touch like a lighthouse beam, and for a moment it shivered past her. Then in a snap it returned.

Who are you? came the simultaneous question.

Valeria swiftly dropped out of meditation, and sat shivering, breathing fast. What was that?

xXx

Sym squatted down next to the mutilated ninja. "Sym is back, did you miss Sym?" he grunted, and he laughed, a slow grating horrible sound. "Now tell us more about this Beast."

The ninja, half dead and delirious with blood loss, began to babble in Japanese. Sym paid close attention; the ideas in all languages moved through his mind, the details in none. Japanese was as good a language as any other that was not… native to his people.

"The Beast is powerful, it wishes to destroy the world, it gives us power, we are its servants, we must bring it into the world," the shredded man babbled. Sym reached down and gripped his face.

"How does the Swordbearer figure into this?" he rumbled.

"To bring the Beast—to bring it to our world—" the ninja said before he lapsed into unconsciousness from blood loss.

Sym grasped the dying ninja and sank his teeth into the wretch. A few minutes later, he knew a lot more about the Beast than the ninja had been given a chance to tell him. And he liked what he learned.

"Maybe Sym can summon this Beast to a meeting," Sym muttered. "Maybe this Beast and Sym have goals in common." His eyes narrowed. "Maybe the time has come for Sym to get underspace all to Sym's self."

He eyed the other ninja and a slow smile crept across his bloody features. "You'll do," he said, and he gripped the ninja and dragged him deeper into underspace.

xXx

Valeria stepped out of Strange's house, unable to shake the sense of being observed. This was a different feeling than she got from the ninja, though. She sensed none of the malevolence that radiated from them. She had felt it since she had meditated and, what? Made contact? Brushed someone else? She shook her head, unsure of what had happened or what it could mean. She trotted down the steps to the sidewalk and started strolling towards her apartment.

Around the corner and two blocks down, a man tottered to a lamp post and leaned against it, breathing heavily. He was close now to the mind he had felt in his meditation, the incredible strong pure mind that had, just for a moment, touched into the psi plane. He had never felt a mind like that.

He leaned back against the post, freely sweating. He closed his eyes for a moment. These days, he really should stay inside one of his few remaining safehouses and not venture out. But the lure of this mind… he shook his head. Incredible. Breathtaking potential. She even had rudimentary psi shields that protected her from casual scanning. That alone was intriguing.

And she should be coming around the corner any minute now.

He tugged off his baseball cap and rubbed his bald scalp briefly, then put his hat back on and stood looking down the street. She would round the corner any minute now and he would know who he was dealing with. If nothing else, he'd like to introduce himself…

A mind stirred, briefly, a mind that he had not detected before it moved. He froze.

Too late, his reaction was too late. A small dart whipped out from a blow gun and stung into his tear duct, delivering its venom almost instantaneously. The man who had fired it put the tube back under his arm and relaxed on the steps while a noose whipped down from the tree over the drugged man, looped around his arms and chest, and hauled him up with unnatural swiftness.

Valeria rounded the corner and saw nothing as the ninja spirited their prize away.