Khan glanced at his bat and saw that the jewels were gone, he turned, and a shard stabs him in the chest. He gasps as the zealot he left in the desert grabbed him and threw him down the stairs. Khan gets up and desperately limps away clutching the wound. He collapsed and tried to crawl as the zealot followed him. He forms a knife and was about to kill Khan, but the cape suddenly wrapped around his face. It violently slams his head against the floor. The Warp Ring jewel fell out of his pocket. Khan grabbed it and put it back into his bat. Khan weakly stands up and tries to form a portal. He staggers through into a hospital cupboard. He stumbles out with him leaving blood on the wall. A cat ran up to him "Sir, how can I help you?" "Doctor Perci, where is she?". She realised he had been stabbed "Sir, we need to get-" "Where is she!?" "The nurse's station". Khan still remembered where that was "Perci!". She appeared at the end of the corridor and her eyes opened wide "Khan? Oh my- Oh, Gaia". She ran over and helped him "Get me into an operating theatre now. Just you. Now! I haven't any time". She helped him inside "I was stabbed. Cardiac tamponade". She put him on the operating bed and examines him "Chest cavity is clear" "No, the blood is in the pericardial sac. I…" Khan slowly closes his eyes and faints. Perci shook him "No, no, no. Khan!". Khan's astral form appeared but could not be seen by Perci. He sees her about to inject a syringe into his body. Khan opened a blue portal and pushed through allowing his astral form to be visible "Just a little higher". Perci screamed and jumped back.
She stared at the talking ghost in front of her. Khan raised his hands calmingly "Please be careful with the needle" "Khan…. What… What am I looking at?" "My astral body". Perci looked down at Khan's real body "Oh, Gaia. Are you dead?". Khan pointed at his body "No, but I am dying" "Right. Yeah. Alright". She steps forwards and holds the syringe. Khan put's his astral hand into his body's chest illuminating his veins. Perci inserts the needle "I've never seen a wound like this. What were you stabbed with?" "I don't know". Khan then sees the astral form of the zealot that attacked him fly through the door "I'm gonna have to vanish now" "What?" "Keep me alive, will you?" he said casually. He disappears back through the portal and Perci looks around "Okay". She held the syringe, but she suddenly felt like something went through her "Holy shit!". Astral Khan and the zealot fought as Perci got a defibrillator on the real Khan. Khan sees this and gets an idea; he starts chanting a spell he remembers seeing in one of the first books he read. When the defibrillator hit his body the spell transferred the electricity to his astral form and hits the Zealot with the energy blasting him away. Khan makes himself visible again "Hit me again". She jumps "Stop doing that!" "Up the voltage and hit me again" "What. No, your heart is beating. Full power would...". Khan shook his head "Just do it!". He disappeared again and held the zealot. He started chanting again as Perci hit him full power with the deliberator. The energy travelled through into the zealot. He started screaming as his astral form blew up. His real body in the sanctum spasmed painfully and died. Khan flies back into his body and wakes up scaring Perci "Oh, Gaia! Are you alright?". Khan breathed exhausted "Oh, yeah".
Perci was stitching up Khan's wound "After all this time you just show up here flying out of your body" "Yeah, I know. I missed you, too, by the way. I wrote you emails, but you never responded". Perci stared at him "Why would I?". Khan sighed "Perci, I am so, so sorry. For all of it. You were right. I was a complete asshole. I treated you so horribly. And you deserved so much more". Perci smirked "Stop. You're clearly in shock", Khan laughed. She frowned "What the hell is happening? Where have you been?" "Well, after Western medicine failed me, I headed east, and I ended up in Dream Valley. I went to a a coffee shop called the Groovy Train which turned out to actually be a school for wizards. I then talked to someone called the Ancient One". Perci rose her eyebrows "Oh. So, you joined a cult" "No, I didn't. No, not exactly. No. They did teach me to tap into power that I never even knew existed" "Yeah. That sounds like a cult". Khan softly shook his head "It's not a cult" "Well, that's what a cultist would say" "Oh, no". Khan tried to get up, but she stopped him "Wait. Khan, wait. What do you think you're doing?" "I'm late for a cult meeting". She helps him walk out "This is insane" "Yeah" "Where are you going?". Khan didn't answer, "Can you tell me the truth?" "Well, a powerful sorcerer who gave himself over to an ancient entity can bend the very laws of physics, tried very hard to kill me. But I left him chained up in Station Square and the quickest way back there is through a dimensional gateway that I opened up in the mop closet". Perci sighed "I really wish you lied". Khan walks into the cupboard and through the portal. Perci watches amazed as the portal closes.
Khan strolls over to the dead Zealot as the cape hovered over it. Khan kneels down and checks the zealot for a pulse. He stares at the body stone faced before rising up. He takes hold of the cape and puts it on as he walks through into the relic room. He finds that Omen has escaped the bindings "Khan!". He turns to see Merlina "You're okay" "A relative term. But yeah, I'm okay". Merlina noticed the cape "The Cloak of Nimbus. It came to you". Ebony then entered "No minor feat. It's a fickle thing". Khan glared at her "Omen escaped. He can fold space and matter at will". This surprised Ebony "He folds matter outside of the Special Zone? In the real world?" "Yeah. He had two others with him. I stranded one in the desert…". He paused, "And the other?" "His body is in the hall. Master Drumm is in the foyer". Merlina lowered her head respectfully "He's been taken back" "The Knothole Sanctum has fallen. Only Station Square and Chun-Nan remain now to shield us from the Special Zone. You defended the Station Square Sanctum from attack. With its master gone, it needs another. Master Khan". Khan stops for a moment and then "No. It is Doctor Khan. Not Master Khan. Not Mister Khan. Doctor Khan. And when I became a doctor, I swore an oath to do no harm. And I have just killed a man! I'm not doing that again! I became a doctor to save lives, not take them". Ebony remained calm "You became a doctor to save one life above all others. Your own". Khan scoffs "Still seeing through me, are you?" "I see what I've always seen: your over-inflated ego. You want to go back to the delusion that you can control anything, even death which no one can control. Not even the great Doctor Monkey Khan". Khan glared directly at her "Not even Feist. He offers immortality" "It is our fear of death that gives Feist life. He feeds off it". Khan stepped closer to her "Like you feed off him? You talk to me about controlling death? Oh, I know how you do it. I've seen the missing rituals from the book". Ebony suddenly looked very intimidating "Measure your next words very carefully, doctor" "Because you might not like them?" "Because you may not know what you speak". Merlina stared at Ebony "What is he talking about?".