A/N: Me again. I know I've been ages, please don't hurt me… :cowers behind blast-shield: anyway, sorry for the kinda-short last chapter… (Oh, and see the previous chapters' disclaimers, I'm too lazy to retype it.)

Nita crouched over Kit, slapping his face gently. "Kit," she murmured. "Oh please Kit, wake up…" His eyes opened, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Kit sat up slowly in the near-total darkness. "What happened?" he asked muzzily. Last he remembered, it being this dark around them would have meant suffocation.

"You used too much of your energy to make that shield," Nita whispered to him, running a hand over the back of his head to see if he'd injured himself when he fell backwards. "It knocked you out, but gave me the time I needed to make a new one… and what I guess we have to do is use our own darkness to dim the light, so it doesn't kill us. Kit, I know where we are."

"Well where are we then, Einstein?" demanded Kit irritably.

"I… we… we're in Dairine."

"Uh…"

"That spell worked after all," Nita informed a stunned Kit. "It just took a while. And I usually do the whole lucid-dream thing, and I guess I pulled you in with me. And… there's something inside of her. It's new.

"Is it Him?" Asked Kit, a feeling of impending doom settling like a pile of bricks in his stomach.

Nita nodded. "Look at all this," she said, waving a hand at the darkness surrounding them both. "It's blacker than the evilest mortal could ever have. I think he's taken over."

"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"

"My sister," said Nita, voice breaking, "Is being possessed and held prisoner by the Lone Power. Oh, Kit… what're we gonna do…"

Kit stared. It was disconcerting to see the usually calm and composed Nita so close to breaking down. "We get her back, stupid. What else would we do? First, tell me how you figured it out, though."

"Thanks," said Nita with a sniffle and a watery smile. "So… well, I'm pretty sure that the Lone Power used Dari for a shell, and that she was that rogue wizard everyone was after. Remember when you yelled at me that the rogue's spell was a Callahan signature. Well, who's another Callahan wizard?"

"Dairine!" Kit exclaimed, inwardly beating himself for his stupidity at overlooking it."

"Yeah. Even though her power levels weren't at full strength, which means she was using some energy for something else, namely trying to fend off the Lone One. And… remember, you were having that little power outage of your own?"

"Uh-huh. But what has that got to do with—"

"And how her power feed short-circuited and left you even worse off? And how you got your power back the next morning when she vanished?"

Kit just blinked at her for a moment. Finally he said, "If I ever say I'm smart again, hit me."

"But," she went on, "I guess Dairine was starting to realize what was happening, so He just pulled her completely inside herself. And he had that handy little spell to make all the non-wizards forget about her. She's probably off robbing some store across town for the Lone One, while she's also in some funky inner prison trying to find a way out so she can take her body back. And we… we have to go find her," she concluded. "Right?" She looked at Kit for support.

"Duh! Didn't I just say that?"

"Oh yeah… maybe you did. Well, c'mon…" They both stood stiffly. Nita was stooped, unconsciously scared to stand straight and risk passing out of her protective sphere and being spotted by something –someone. Searching for a calm place inside of her that she had discovered when they had entered this strange world, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Reached around her with a rope of her magic. She sent her Speech down the rope, repelling the darkness, carefully replacing it with her own, which she drew out with her tube of magic. Then, the effort of the magic making beads of sweat roll down her forehead, she cast the rope about her, feeling for where it reached the least distance.

Partway around the swing, her rope encountered what felt like a solid wall of darkness. It would have fizzled out had Nita not snapped it back to her. "That way," she said breathlessly, leading Kit in the direction of the heavy dark. A part of her brain screamed at her for heading to the darkest part of this already foreboding place, but she knew that they could fine the Lone One where the darkness was thickest. And where he was, Dairine was too.

A/N: Short, I know, but better than my last stunted little chapter. (Geeeeeeez, is it really as short as it looks on the quick-edit thingie?) Sorry, I don't have much time for updates nowadays… I'm working on Rampage, I swear I am! A few more reviews might give me a little more incentive to update more often… ahem ahem…