Sandra closed her eyes for a moment, then turned around and answered Erik’s prompt.

"No Erik, they lead to Miss Universe 1943."

"Sorry."

Sandra sighed and put a hand to her forehead. "No, it’s me. I guess I’m nervous."

"That all?"

"And a little more shook up over Elihad than I thought."

"He was your brother. Human or not, that still means something."

"I guess your right." She waved the back of her hand up the stairs. "Go ahead! I don’t think you need me to guide up a couple of flights of stairs…"

Erik smiled, then turned and walked past Sandra up the stairs. They were silent as they walked up the plain, silvery-metal staircase that seemed like stone knives and bear skins compared to the rooms they were leaving behind.

Pushing open the square storm-door set at the top of the stairs, Erik looked out at the swirling mass of dark storm-clouds around them. He almost slipped on the rocky ground, the moisture from the clouds having coated everything in a thick, almost uninterrupted coating of rain. They were too high to get rain from the clouds surrounding them, hard, driving pellets of water still drove at them. Wondering why, Erik looked up.

Only a few dozen feet above them, an enormous mass of clouds, white and gray and black, swirled, slowly spiraling towards the center, creeping towards but not reaching it. As Erik watched, they crept closer, the points of the clouds razor sharp, as if closing some exotic door, shutting out the blue sky that shone defiantly through the gap of only a hundred feet.

A deep, rumbling thunder reached his ears at almost the same instant as a bright, searing bolt of lightning crashed a dozen yards away, sending him to shield his eyes with his arm and cry out as compressed air hammered him a step back.

As the soul-numbing vibration and sound faded, Erik was left hearing a deep, manly laughter. As he brought his arm away from his eyes and looked up, the laughter grew louder, clearer. Only a few paces away stood Julius.

"Hello, Erik." He said in his strangely accented voice.

The last thing Erik remembered was a sharp, hard thump to the base of his skull, and then blackness.

<><><>

Josh cursed. He cursed at the elevator. He cursed again.

"Josh…"

He glared at Rachel in the dim light and continued to curse under his breath.

"What’s your problem?"

"Her."

"Laury? What’s this got to do with her?"

Will shook his head and reached into the ceiling of the elevator, letting the others continue the "discussion." It wasn’t difficult to find the door in the darkness—a soft red emergency glow surrounded the cracks of the door that led to the top of the elevator.

"If it weren’t for her little boyfriend we wouldn’t be on this stupid egg hunt."

Rachel’s voice was incredulous, her eyes soft. "Erik died, Josh."

"Probably good riddance, too."

Cold blue fire blazed, burning life into the distant eyes of Laury. With a curse she threw herself at Josh, screaming obscenities and leaping about the small mobile room, trying to land a blow on the too-nimble and quick Josh.

"Excuse me…"

Josh’s eyes held a frightened anger, burning their gaze on the frozen form of Laury’s fist, cocked back, a mere twitch from slamming into his face. The hand that pressed him against the wall, having surpassed his own quickness in anger and hurt, felt as if it were dry ice, so cold that it burned him, numbed him.

Laury’s own eyes were burning ice, flickering blue lights that saw Josh’s anger, his soul, one that froze even his agility, staring in a pained rage into Josh’s own eyes, surpassing even the hate that Josh felt.

Rachel’s own eyes were wide, saucers that flicked at an impossible speed between Laury, Josh, Laury’s fist, Laury’s eyes, Josh’s eyes, the blueness of skin that radiated out from Laury’s hand on Josh’s neck, Will’s tired head hanging from the square in the corner of the ceiling, and back to Laury, finally resting on Will’s eyes as though in doing so she found her voice. "Yes?" she whispered.

"If you three are finished down there, you can come on up. Of course, if you want to take your chances in an elevator with no power and four brakes—excuse me, about to be three brakes—and chance falling, be my guests. All up to you."

And with that, his head disappeared back up into that dark square.

With a strange sound of disgust, Laury, pushed off Josh and leapt up into the square, quickly hauling herself up. Rachel followed, finally watching Josh emerge. Above her, Laury was already thirty feet up the shaft, climbing on one of the cables. Next to her, Will knelt, positioning a dagger in one of the four brakes that held the elevator secure.

Rachel took her turn, finding it much harder than she had thought, pulling herself up the cable.

"Don’t kick. Just let your legs dangle." Will called from below.

Rachel took the advice and found it slightly easier.

She heard Josh start to climb after her, then looked down. Will looked up at them.

"Hold on!" He called, placing a hand on the cables, the other on his dagger. With a twist, he jerked the dagger free, breaking loose whatever mechanism—presumably the brake—it had been in. At the same time, the elevator dropped, pulling the cable down about a foot, until it caught again, causing Rachel to slide down a few inches despite her tight grip. When she looked down again, heart pounding, she saw Will starting to pull himself up.

Above her, Laury was another twenty feet ahead, so Rachel started the tough accent again.

<><><>

In the hallway, outside the elevator that Will and company had just exited and stopped to keep it from powering back up and killing them, there was pitch blackness. All around the entire floor, lights were out, any windows non-existent. Suddenly, against the elevator door, a loud thud was heard, accompanied by someone’s fluid, male voice cursing someone who had been given a rather colorful name.

Matt could normally see nothing in the darkness, but one of the easier skills he had picked up from Sandra was enhancing what he saw and what he felt with his being. Slowly, he used his lower, subconscious thoughts to provide an insanely enhanced night vision, far beyond a normal person’s ability to interpret the light. One by one, he was able to concentrate his thoughts, feeling, using his instincts, not even knowing they were being channeled. In the effort to concentrate on his soul, he closed his eyes for a moment. A sudden, sharp tingling throughout his body, especially his eyes, caused him to jerk his eyelids open. He was seeing as if in the dawn’s half-light, everything dim but color still there. The tingling slowly faded, and with it a lock of hair fell in is eye.

Immediately he noticed the difference. There was no longer the ending of bright-blue hair that he had dyed—it was all black, his natural color. It was as if anything he used to change his appearance was gone. His robe and clothes were now as much a part of him as his arm, though they didn’t feel. But the dye, he had only had that recently.

Coming out of his shock, he looked around, seeing through the darkness that made him question a question that until now had had an obvious answer: Is darkness the absence of light, or light the absence of darkness?

He followed what he remembered of Sandra’s floor-plan, trying to find his way back to a stairway, still pondering this newly challenging question.

<><><>

"Do we have Erik?"

Again, Larent trembled from the mere tales of what the Master had done, trying to find the voice to answer him. "Yes…"

"Good. You are finished."

New hope gripped Larent. He could get paid and leave this hellish hole in the sky. He spoke eagerly, ignoring Julius’s smirk.

"I may get paid and leave, Master?"

"No."

Confusion now took its hold on Larent’s soul, crushing the hope and pushing the fear higher. Only when he looked down as his feet in a gesture of impatience, attempting to demand payment, did he understand.

Pain ripped at him, fear exploded in him as dark, inhuman clawed hands, grotesque in their appearance, leapt from the ground, burst and flaming, to lock Larent’s feet. As he tried to pull away, his feet remained where they were, and he lost balance, falling over on his back.

No sooner did he touch the stone floor than more of the grotesque hands gripped him, holding him down, his screams inhuman. More burnt, hellish hands, long, viscous claws or glowing, white-hot fingertips, or hands dripping in boiling lava, complete with insane arms, reached out and began to slowly torture Larent, all the while slowly pulling him apart.

His screams were heard and ignored by Julius and the Master, who carried on as if nothing had happened.

"Are you ready to destroy Erik’s soul, my faithful right hand?"

Julius smiled, as if he didn’t hear the chilling scream or crunch as a leg was pulled millimeter by millimeter, off of Larent. "I have my ‘shop’ ready, Master. It will be a swift destruction of the soul, and a slow, painful death to the body before then."

"Good. But, before you destroy his troublesome existence, bring his bound and chained and in someway restrained friends to watch. Especially Josh. This will be his final test to see if he will take Larent’s place. You will have a machine ready here, when you are prepared."

Speaking of Larent, he was particularly annoying when he still had a windpipe and arteries but no voicebox to channel through. Julius grinned, then withdrew into his robe’s shadowy hood. "Yes, my Master."

The barely channeled rush of air that escaped from Larent’s lips and throat only fueled the spread of oil through his lungs and mouth as lava burned him off from the upper waist down.

<><><>

Pain. Stinging. Force pushing head. Head snapping. Groggy. Little light. Stinging. Wrists hurt. Arm need blood. A moment passed, and Erik’s mind was still interpreting the bare minimum. Blood not enough. Need extra boost. Adrenaline glands working…

Mere seconds later, as just a few milliliters of adrenaline coursed through his blood, Erik’s head snapped up, on full alert. The natural wonder-drug had overreacted, sending too much into him and setting him off like a hyper-active five year-old on fifty sugar highs.

His eyes flashed around at amazing speed, understanding and translating what they saw to be interpreted by a hyper accelerated brain. His cheek stung from something, and his body pumped blood there. His wrists were bound by cold metal restraints above him, his body hanging face down at a forty-five degree angle to the ground, feet feeling bound similarly to his hand below and behind him. He was stripped down to his shirt, pants, and boots. He was freezing cold in the harsh, fierce wind that seemed to come from below him.

Across from him, about a dozen feet away, there was a small, smoothed-over rectangular console, tilted away from him, two support struts leading down and curving away to either side to form a circle on the ground, out lining a raised platform eight or ten inches off the ground.

Looking around him, Erik saw that he was clamped hand and foot to a small circular platform in the center of a large machine that was arranged in a circular fashion around him, almost fifty feet across. Below him, the structure he was on was supported by a thick, curved pieces of metal, jutting out from the wall of a man-made canyon so deep Erik couldn’t see the bottom.

"Must be my lucky day."

Erik’s head whipped around to the source of the voice, a man in a black robe that whipped around him in the wind, standing near the un-railed edge of the canyon wall, ahead and to the side of the raised control platform. Julius went on as Erik glared at him.

"I just said ‘rise and shine’ and make my point with a little punch, and boom! Just like magic, he wakes up."

"Stuff it."

"Now, now, just because I’m going to torture you horrendously and then remove and destroy your soul, is no reason to be ill." Julius said cheerfully.

"Where’s Sandra?"

"Busy at work on other things."

"Slave labor?"

"Of a sort…"

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

Julius’s voice lowered. "Nothing that concerns you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some pain to send through your body…" he walked over to the platform, stepping up and resting a hand on the console.

Erik felt fear stab him, just as Julius’s hand moved and sent the first horrible wave of suffering through his body.

He cried out, screaming as his felt pain like no other. After a moment, when he was about to collapse, Julius let off.

"Like that?" he asked, as Erik panted like there was no tomorrow.

"I think I’ll increase the settings to half a percent this time. Oh, and just a random tidbit, that little machine over…well, one of them keeps you from slipping into unconsciousness. Quite useful."

Erik had no time to respond as another wave was sent through him.

<><><>

Echoes resounded everywhere, continuing to bounce as the long, low scream was continued. Julius’s brow furrowed; this wasn’t right. The sky was dark with dusk, the storm-clouds moving ever-so slowly together, miles above, reflecting the rich red of what must be a gorgeous sunset. The sky above was a dark, fluid blue, and a calm unbecoming of what happened below surrounded everything surreally. The light reflecting and flashed, playing on Julius’s midnight robe and dark blond hair. The light-green amulet that hung at his neck flashed, highlighting his features and sending them into the shadow once more time after time, sporadically, as if it were a show to be admired by special effects whizzes.

The scream continued, finally dropping off as Julius tapped control after control on the foreign panel before him. Erik’s body jerked, bucking as it was highlighted blue as huge lances of lightning struck from all around. A web of electricity entangled him, burning and cooling him all at once, making his heart pound and his eyes cloud.

Above him, some section of the huge circular torture machine he was clamped to suddenly exploded, with it a cease of electricity.

Erik laid limp, his breaths barely visible, head hanging as he concentrated on staying awake. The chaos around him seemed to be passing in slow motion.

The sparks of the explosions fell about him, diving into the abyss that seemed endless below. They glowed brightly, not making streaks, but seeming to be moving dots of light as time slowed. The wind continued to blow Erik’s clothes and hair about, even as chunks of the machine fell, small and large, jagged edges and pieces of wire and elements trailing, sparks forming blazing trails of fire, small secondary explosions destroying pieces to dust in midair. Erik’s body regained some of it’s strength, pulling itself up into a somewhat standing position. The largest piece that had made up the machine that exploded slowly cracked and fell, crashing and causing small explosions of sparks where it hit the rest of that huge device. It too fell to the deep, and with it’s passing a change began.

Burning so fiercely there were emeralds in themselves, Erik’s eyes glared and Julius. The heavy breathing, half-open mouth with clamped teeth, blood and wind blowing long strands and locks of dark brown hair about, the straight nose, the angled eyebrows, all conspired to strike a fear in Julius that he had never felt before. Nothing was so animalistic, nothing so terrifying. His stomach clenched into a knot, and then another, and those into a knot, over and over, until he was near panicking. But most of all, the eyes, which told so much with such a small burning green. Eyes that didn’t hide the new growth, the new truths learned, the vows to destroy him. The hidden potential that was quickly becoming discovered ability.

It was stupid. There was no other word for it, but Julius was terrified. Him, Julius, the Master’s right hand, frightened of a child. But he was, and it was such a fear that he was close to running with knocking knees.

But what could Erik’s do? He was there, strapped by unbreakable metal clamps to a machine that was over a dozen feet across a miles-deep canyon. There was no way Erik could get over here, where he was, standing another thirty feet behind a console which had gone dark, being one of the most powerful masters, being afraid…

Some calm arrived at that realization, and for a moment Julius relaxed.

"That was unfortunate." He said at last.

Erik glared.

"Now we’ll have to move on straight to the end, and no more time for fun torture.

Julius waited for some kind of witty answer, some kind of loud shout, but there was only silence, a dark, empty silence after the loudness of before. The quiet, the quiet of those who were angry, those with quiet anger, the most dangerous kind, the most wild, the most unpredictable.

Erik’s eyes burned. They seemed so close, seemed to be swallowing him, seemed to be grabbing him, taking him…

Julius shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to the kind of quiet defiance Erik have him not, unused to the knifing it brought, the sharp fear. He shifted his eyes uneasily down to the control. It had flashed back on, flickering, in the time he had been caught up in the fire that wanted his blood.

"Well now, we’ll have to keep you out…" He said, pressing his finger lightly to a light-blue, rectangular button.

Erik’s body went limp for a moment. Julius started to back away from the control panel and extend the catwalk, but stopped.

The eyes captured him, grasping him, as the body grew tense once more and brought Erik’s head to burn it’s eyes even brighter at Julius.

Julius blinked. This was not right, not by a long shot. He hit the blue button again.

Erik did not move. He glared.

Julius pounded the button, fear overwhelming him as he looked about the panel frantically, mumbling. "Why doesn’t it… it only shows if it will function so… but…"

Erik glared, his eyes seeming to be so close, so large, so bright, so angry.

Julius looked up, glancing at Erik, and stopped, caught himself, watched. Erik’s eyes were so close now, so close, they were around him, they were grabbing him, throwing him, throwing into the abyss, to fall, fall, to fall… Julius was assaulted by memories, held-back memories of falling as a child, the fear, the insane terror of it, and sank to his knees, but he couldn’t sink to his knees, the eyes were grabbing him, throwing him, making him fall, and fall, and fall forever, but they kept throwing him, but he was falling, and being thrown, and falling, falling, his mind was swirling, falling, spinning, falling…

Erik’s eyes blinked back to normal as he looked at the pitiful, whimpering form of Julius. The unseeing eyes that stared as the body rocked, muttering incoherently about falling, about the eyes. The form that was that of those who go insane, who see what is not there, who see their fears, who see their deaths replayed over, and over, and over, and over again. Those that do not sleep, for they are always sleeping, dreaming of real of fantasy of life of real, always lost in themselves, swirling minds incoherent. Those of nothing. Those that do not know why they are insane, and that is why.

Julius whimpered softly and mumbled.

<><><>

Laury lay on her back, breathing hard. Her arms lay twitching at her sides, the muscles and veins bulging from use. Rachel was in a similar condition across from her, as was everyone—except for Will. It was obvious that he did that sort of thing often, for he was merely panting and pacing, his arms flexed but not twitching from use.

She look over at them all, especially Josh, and felt a tie she hadn’t felt as deep before. They shared things, secrets, lives, destinies—if there were such things—so deeply that no one could deny it. Suddenly she felt missing members of that tie, and was overwhelmed with fatigue.

"We should rest for the night." She suggested.

"How do you know it’s night?" Josh asked.

"She knows." Will said. "Because she knows. And it is." He pointed to a wristwatch. "And we should."

"Quit talking like that." Rachel said as she sighed. She sat up and took off her pack, unzipping it and reaching inside.

Laury did the same, pulling out food.

They ate in silence. Something about the day had changed them all, made them more vulnerable and not as weak.

Finally Laury broke the silence. "I wonder how this would have turned out if Erik were still here."

Rachel looked up from her extremely interesting meal at that. She stared at Laury for a moment, then saw that she wasn’t over his death, just realizing that she never would be and trying to live. "Probably the same. We’d still be here trying to hold the lost fort."

"That’s an interesting way to put things." Will said.

"How so?" Laury asked.

"I don’t know, just interesting. I’ve never heard anything put that way. ‘The Lost Fort.’ Has a nice ring to it, like the title of a book or something." He replied.

"Yeah."

They relapsed into the silence, until Rachel finished and put away her food and took out her sleeping bag. "I wonder why all this is happening. I mean, we don’t even know who it is we’re traveling after, just a feeling that we need to press on."

"I’m going after Julius. I don’t know where you are all going." Will said. "I figured you knew."

"Well, we don’t." Laury said. "What do you know?"

"’I don’t know what you don’t know, so how can I know what I know that you don’t?’" Will quoted.

"I’ll ignore that confusing phrase and ask again: What is this all about?"

"Well… Like I said, I don’t know what you don’t know and so on, so forgive me if I repeat some fore-known knowledge." He started uneasily. "The Five Stones you already know about, I think… Four more just like the one Josh has, four that the Master holds…"

"The Master?"

"Julius’s Master. A Pokémon Master, just as you are, hopefully I one day, but that’s beside the point. The difference between the Master and a normal Master is that he has no elements, yet he has all the elements. It’s no single one, but he has none of the weaknesses and all of the strengths."

"So he’s unbeatable?"

"No. Not by a long shot, but he’s very tough. Supposed to be over seven feet tall. Hundreds of pounds of mostly muscle. Couple that with his elemental abilities, and you’ve got a fairly high-level master on your hands."

"You want to run that by me again?" Laury asked.

"What he’s saying is that the Master is a couple of hundred times more powerful than any of us put together." Josh said.

"Yep." Will said simply.

"So what does he want with the Five Stones?"

Will shrugged. He didn’t know. Great. They were back to square one.

"I believe I can answer that." A voice said.

They spun, looking to the source of the voice. A man, standing in a white lab coat, faced them, unarmed. He wore black boots, long, baggy jeans, a black belt and a dark blue shirt.

"A-At least, I hope I can." He said, looking through round glasses at them nervously.

"Who are you?" Laury asked.

"Me? I’m a nobody. But if you want to know my name, then it’s Christopher Yann."

"You? You’re Christopher Yann?" Rachel asked.

He blinked. "Call me Chris. You’ve heard of me?"

"You bet we have. What are you doing here? Weren’t you supposed to be researching the Stones?"

"W-Well, I was supposed to be, but I had come here to pick up the last one when Julius attacked… I heard the Dark Masters looking for me, trying to find me so that they could use me to unlock the Stone’s function, but I-I hid, and all they got were the few records I kept… I only have the secret of what they do in here." He tapped his temple.

"So what do they do?" Will asked.

"W-Well, I suppose you’re the invincible good guys, but if I were you, I’d sit down. This is a long story."

"Then we’ll shut up and let you talk. Talk and yap away, our scientist friend."

Chris grinned at that as they sat, relaxing.

"Now, now, where should I begin? Well, I suppose the start…

"For many years, almost all the way back to prehistory, we have had legends of The Five Stones. They were told to be blood-red powers that unlocked the power to an entire universe, but that’s all we know for sure. There have been such variations and wild changes in the legends that that’s all we can know for sure.

"It wasn’t until about five years ago that the Stones were found. It threw our cultures into chaos, the legends we had called fables now fact. We had just begun studying them, and I was lucky enough to make a series of breakthroughs.

"You see, up ‘till now, everyone has thought that each Stone contains a very large amount of power, power that can be used in the Stone alone, or multiplied with all the other Stones. But that’s incorrect. I had poured over the ancient texts, until I was ready to give up. I decided to go into translating the prophesies for a time, just until I could get a grant to do something else, and then it hit me—the Stones’ only true account is in plain view, in the prophesies.

"I didn’t get to translate it all, but what I did make out told that the Five stones, when three elements are channeled through each and they are brought into contact, they somehow open a gateway to a universe of fantasy. Whoever travels there – and only one person travels there – can control everything with his thoughts. If he wishes, he can pass on his reign, although he is immortal while he wants to be. He is practically a god, though there are many differences.

"Then we were puzzled by the last lines I deciphered—‘And the Gate of Thoughts will be close to death, and brought to that by the blade of the true, and the Dark One will be destroyed forever in his Hell.’"

Chris finished, and they were all silent.

Finally, Will spoke with a finality that could not be denied or answered. "And thus, the plot thickens…"