Slowly, Juran returned to consciousness. Opening his eyes, he found himself lying on a long, narrow metallic bed. The cold touch of bare metal made him shiver. Looking around, he saw that he was in a small, white room. Except for the bed in which he was lying, the room was empty. There was no window in the room. Only a closed door stood at the opposite wall.

At first Juran couldn't remember anything. His head felt heavy. A dull ache throbbed inside it. Sitting up, he clutched it in his hands. What had happened? Why was he here in an unfamiliar room? He searched inside his mind for an answer.

Slowly, his memories started to float back. 'Yes, I had tried to engage the enemy so that they could escape,' he thought. 'But what happened after that? Have I been captured? How could a band of mercenaries defeat me and capture me there?'

He remembered the scenes from the battleground; the horses and rider going up in flames from his crazy attack. Then he remembered something else; the dark form of two giant wolves materializing from the darkness around; the dark rider cracking his fiery whip at them...

Juran's mind jerked into full consciousness. A chill went down his spine. 'The gloams!' He thought. 'How could anyone summon and control them? Weren't they just creatures of darkness appearing in random?'

But he couldn't disbelieve his own eyes. There was someone who could summon those abominable creatures and control them with his whip. 'It must have been a new Cereb technique then', he thought.

He remembered how he had managed to destroy the two gloams, only to be surrounded by the enemy. As he thought of charging blindly and taking a chance there, the dark rider had appeared before him and with a swift crack of his whip, had paralysed his horse, sending him crashing down with it. Before Juran could recover himself, the enemy had surrounded him, pointing their swords at him.

'That's when I had been captured, then!' He thought, wondering how they had managed to knock him out and where they had brought him to.

Just then someone opened the door from outside. Two men entered the room. From their uniform and insignia Juran knew that they were personal guards of the High Elder of the Council of Elders. He felt strangely elated. After so many years he was going to face his archenemy once again!

"Come with us," one of them said in a mechanical voice. Silently, Juran followed them out of the room and down a dimly lit narrow corridor. At the other end of the corridor stood a heavy, ornate door. The guard who had spoken before, knocked at the door lightly. Then he gently pushed the door open and stood at a side, holding the door, so that Juran could enter the room. Then he pulled the door close from outside.

As Juran entered the room, his eyes took some time to adjust themselves to the soft red glow emitted by the walls as well as the roof. The room bathed in that red glow, making it look like the bottom of a sea reddened with blood. 'A fit place for a bloodless killer!' Juran thought.

The room was scantily furnished. Only a large table and two chairs stood there across the room. A man was sitting at one of the chairs, looking at him intently. He was clad in heavily ornate scarlet robes; his features set in elegant, yet stern lines. His face looked youthful. He didn't seem to be more that twenty-five years of age.

'Snake Svald!' Juran thought bitterly. 'Looking as young and as unscathed as always! There's no way you can tell from his face what a scum he really is!'

'Snake' Svald looked unwavering in front of Juran's reproachful gaze. "Hello, Juran! Glad to meet you after so many years! Sit down, please! We need to talk." He said.

Juran sat down. "Is there really anything that we can talk about?" He said bitterly. Just the sight of this hated man had made his blood boil, but he chose not to reveal the turmoil in his heart. He knew that Svald had brought him there for something very important. He needed to know what it was.

"As you may have guessed already, I need some information from you," Svald said as he stood up from the chair and placing his hands at the table, leaned towards Juran. "Just where did this forger emerge from? He couldn't have appeared out of thin air, could he?" He hissed.

'So Dovak's camel-keepers couldn't give him full information about Ethan!' Juran thought. 'Snake hasn't yet suspected that he might have arrived here from another world.'

"I found him lying unconscious in the desert. He said that he had been travelling solo when desert hunters attacked him and took away everything he had. After that he had managed to survive without food and water for one day and two nights, before fatigue and hunger got the better of him," Juran said casually.

Svald stared at his eyes with an unblinking gaze. "Is that all?" He said. "Why didn't you hand him over at the city gate? Do you know that you have broken a rule there for which you already deserve some harsh punishment?"

"Why would I?" Juran said sarcastically. "After all, I've hardly been a law-abiding Citizen these past years! You know pretty well that if I weren't bound by the rules there, I'd have long ago cut off that forked tongue of yours."

For a second, Svald's blue eyes seemed to burn with rage, but then they resumed their unwavering coldness. "It's alright! Your slanders aren't going to affect me at all. Let's talk business now. Don't you want to know why you are still alive?" He said.

"Yes, I know pretty well that you need me so bad that you can't bring yourself to kill me," Juran sighed. "Before I start answering your questions you need to tell me one thing," Juran paused for a second and took in a deep breath. "Have you been using the Arcus of Cerulean Light for creating gloams and controlling them?"

"Yes, I guess I am?" Svald chuckled. "Do you have any objection with that?" He asked sarcastically.

Juran was speechless with hatred. When he spoke, his voice was full of bitterness. "Snake, do you really have to destroy everything here?" He asked. "Isn't it already enough that your distorted use of the Arcus has resulted in spawning those gloams randomly? Why are you going one step ahead and creating and controlling them purposefully? What is it that you are hankering after?"

Svald glared at Juran as he spoke in a tired voice. "Why am I doing it? Well, isn't it that till now we have devised weapons to get rid of them? Won't it be better if we start to make them useful instead of trying to eliminate them?"

'This man is definitely mad!' Juran said in his mind. 'He can't see that he is playing with fire there!'

Svald was talking again. "We are trying to know the reason behind the random appearances of gloams and in the process we have just been able to create them at our will. Now we need to know how to make them more powerful".

Juran stared at him silently. He knew what Svald would say next.

"We need to acquire full knowledge of Dark," he said after a brief pause. "And that is not possible without your help." He put emphasis on the word 'help' and chuckled. "Juran, you are to lead us to the Dark, or I'll make everything you still cherish just go up in flames," Svald paused and took in a deep breath so that his tongue clicked. "Including that girlfriend of yours, that Priestess of the Sun." He said in a cold voice, separating every syllable as he uttered them.