Hood stares in disbelief, summoning a small orb of purple light. “M’A-bja?” he rasps.

“Shhhhh” it whispers again, looking skyward and raising a twisted and taloned finger to point at the above.

The creature from nightmares whickers a laugh from deep in its throat, its teeth chattering in accompaniment, clicking and clacking, leathery wings furling and unfurling, sweeping the ground as the claws from its hairy and gnarly hind legs skit across the floor.

Hood reaches out a hand and places it gently but firmly on the creature’s head, closing his eyes for a moment and breathing, welcoming his old friend but trying to understand what this means.

“I do hope that you’ve survived!” Mordette’s mocking voice echoes down from above. “Otherwise, I’ll have to throw this one down there too,” she threatens. “Oh, watch out,” she adds, not as a warning, but as a carefree aside of little consequence.

The jagged tear above ripples slightly and elongates, and a large shadow, at points rectangular, at others not, seems to float overhead, all the while changing but all the while seemingly getting larger. In the darkness Hood dives to one side, grasping M’A-bja, in the process, and pulling herm out of harm’s way. Again more splintering wood - this time accompanied by an almost deafening crash.

“Still there?..Oh yes…I see your little purple orb…Just remember I taught you that one.”

No you didn’t thinks Hood, I was casting that in my nappies.

Hood feels a slimy yet rough sensation on the side of his face and turns to see M’A-bja’s barbed, serpent-yellow tongue withdraw. He wipes his cheek with the back of his hand and pats M’A-bja affectionately on the head, returning the gesture.

Hood looks skyward again, narrowing his eyes and trying to think.

Mordette calls down once again in a tone of pure vicious contempt: “Let us, for the sake of your friend here, say that you have until, hmmm, I don’t know, the time it takes for me to lose my patience. So I suggest that you hurry little mouse, scurry little mouse, bring me my book lest the cat has a go at this one’s tongue again!”

Hood motions for M’A-bja to back away and, heeding the gesture, M’A-bja does so, keeping on the outskirts of the light, as Hood expands the orb and raises it into the air. As the sphere of light expands, slowly illuminating the chamber, it begins to tremble slightly, flickering and dimming. Hood truly is drained.

“Oh dear, oh dear!” more of Mordette’s mockery, comes filtering down “you truly have outdone yourself this time haven’t you? It’s like you’ve learnt nothing. And to think: that you believed you’d be able to wield the power of Pomegranite.”

Hood peers carefully through the dim purple light, exhaustion causing his shoulders to droop wearily. His nose is beginning to run and he sniffs occasionally as he casts about, trying to ascertain just what he is dealing with, before remembering why he had leapt to grab the parchment. Looking about, he locates it on what are definitely rice sacks and as he bends to pick the parchment up his face twists in confusion as he spies the trademark of the suppliers stamped in blue ink upon the burlap. These bags are definitely from Arkanthor, but how and why they are here when this chamber must have been sealed for hundreds of years is beyond Hood’s comprehension. M’A-bja grins from the shadows. Hood pauses and considers all the evidence very carefully, then frowns…no, it doesn’t make sense…or maybe…

Hood snaps out of his thinking - now is not the time. Madeleine is in danger and Helmet also, and all he has to do is find the book. He looks again at the chamber. Carefully cut and sanded stone forms the floor and walls. With the exception of the grain sacks, and the splintered table and chairs, the entire chamber is bare. To the north, east and west the stone walls have no remarkable features, but on the southern wall about an arm’s width in diameter, located just above the height of Hood’s head, there is a hole. Hood, placing his finger ends into the hole, pulls himself up as best he can to peer through, looking down its length. Shifting his head from side to side he catches something reflective with his eye. Painful as one hand is, he is unable to maintain the pressure in his fingers any longer, and drops back down. M’A-bja yawns a tremendously wide and evil looking yawn, exposing rings of what look like claw filled membranes in its throat. It looks at Hood as if to say: ‘hurry up’.

Hood, breathes out a short sharp breath through his nose as if to say: ‘Okay then’, and using the rest of his magical energy shrinks the orb to the width of the hole, increases its luminescence till it blazes white, and with a wave of his hands sends the orb into the wall. Through the aetheric medium he can sense a slight waver as the orb passes through whatever it is that is located within the hole’s length and as it does so, a beam of light suddenly shoots from the hole to display a beautiful twisted and knotted circular pattern on the far northern wall. The pattern, or at least its style is identical to the moulding that Hood was tracing around the skirt of the ‘great clanger’ and Hood begins to realise why it is so familiar, recalling items and objects in a variety of places that he has traversed in the past that although unobtrusive have been sporting this similar design. As the light shines upon the wall, the pattern itself seems to ignite something upon it and as the pattern blazes to life the central section of stone contained within it seems to twist and almost turn to sand, and although it is there, it is not there. As this strange half-dissolving of the wall occurs M’A-bja takes flight, hier wings beating twice propelling hier forward to glide through the ‘opening’.

Hood watches M’A-bja’s flight and, following it, can see beyond, into another room, but as he approaches, a light blazes from above, and Mordette, holding Madeleine like a limp marionette in one hand, her cane ablaze and held aloft in the other, descends from above, gliding vertically downward, her feet gently coming to rest on the stone floor before him. Standing thus, Mordette lets go of Madeleine, who drops like a stone to the floor.

“I think some clearer direction is in order, don’t you, my little mouse?” she says menacingly. Placing the tip of her cane on Madeleine’s exposed throat, Mordette drops her head forwards. “Along with a little encouragement,” she says peering at Hood over the thick rims of her glasses, a puckered and foul smirk decorating her face. Deliberately she shifts her weight ever so slightly onto her cane to emphasise Hood’s helplessness. “Well my dear?” she arches an eyebrow malevolently. “Hurry and scurry!”

Hood looks at Madeleine then turns to the strange non-sense of wall. M’A-bja clearly had no fear so why should he? Although his emotions are boiling beneath the surface, he turns calmly, stepping up over the base of the glowing knotted design and into the suspended semi transparent sand substance. He feels like he is walking through glue. Feels that the glue, or whatever it is, is walking through him, and then finds himself stepping out into a small, polished chamber, seamlessly constructed of black obsidian-like stone hexagons, reminding him of snake skin. A strangely incongruous wooden lecturn is situated at the chamber’s centre, atop which sits M’A-bja, beneath whose claws a thick tome of a book rests, but what stops him in his tracks is Madeleine.

“Madeleine?!” Hood says in shocked astonishment as his overwrought mind struggles to make sense of what he’s seeing. Slowly he realises the error in his perception, for what he first perceived to be Madeleine, sitting in the corner smiling at him, is in fact a large straw mannequin upon the face of which rests Madeleine’s mask, or at least an identical mask to the one that Madeleine wears. The mask seems to shimmer, and Hood momentarily shakes his head to shake away both the mental and visual confusion, his mind returning to the task in hand, realising that the real Madeleine is in danger and time is of the essence. Thus refocussed, Hood turns his attention back to the lectern and moves towards it.

As Hood approaches, his eyes begin to blur, finding it difficult to focus on the book. Hood stops momentarily and shakes his head, again, trying to clear his vision, but it has no effect. In a weird way Hood feels that it is not his eyes that are at fault. Shifting his gaze to the walls he experiences the same phenomenon, peering at out of focus reflections of himself which seem to twist and move independently in ways and manners that seem as if there are other Hoods present and that he is simply just one existent sliver of a whole Hood that he is not fully cognisant of. Hood feels himself falling into the reflections, of losing himself within a greater sea of selves like falling out into the depths amongst the stars of the night sky, but M’A-bja opens hier mouth and emits an unearthly feral cry, tappings hier claws upon the book’s cover, hier orange glowing eyes holding Hood’s attention, seemingly demanding that Hood step forward and pick up the book. The cry of M’A-bja pierces Hood’s mind at its centre, bringing clarity and direction to his actions once more. With a deep breath Hood steps forward and picks up the book, the entire tome vibrating between his fingers. But strangely even though encouraged by M’A-bja to pick up the tome, M’A-bja refuses to relinquish it, holding it tightly in hier talons. Hood’s face wrinkles in confusion, not wanting to find himself at odds with his friend, but he steps back anyway, pulling the tome towards himself. M’A-bja opens up hier wings and flapping them frantically pulls in the opposite direction. Hood watches as a talon tears through the cover and M’A-bja flies backwards pulling the book with hier.

Hood stares in disbelief, staring at the book in his hands and then staring at the exact same book but not, held in the talons of M’A-bja. M’A-bja seeing the expression within Hood’s eyes grins ferociously and let’s out a laugh, bringing up a twisted finger to hier lips and whispering once again: “Shhhhhhh!”