Bruce Cannon opened the steel door of the nondescript factory. Nestled in one the more run-down parts of Detroit, it possessed the perfect camouflage. Cannon bid Victor Adams and Jacob Sisyphus a warm welcome as the factory belched dark smoke into the air. The active pollution was perhaps the building’s only distinguishing feature as its peers in the neighborhood had fallen largely silent following the economic downturn.

“I trust you found it easily enough,” he made small talk as they wandered through the facility, until the grinding noises of the work overpowered any conversation. All the workers on the floor wore a lapel pin bearing a seven pointed star, identifying them as cultists from the Heptobscurantum.

Near a giant turbine, Cannon threw a combination of levers. A hatch hissed opened revealing a secret passage leading below ground. As the three walked ahead, the portal sealed behind them. Behind the door, the factory noise was all but eliminated enabling the men to speak freely.

“I think you will be quite impressed with Doctor Walther,” Cannon stated. “Pietro Walther has been working in the psuedosciences for his entire career.”

“If he’s so brilliant,” Adams said with a hint of warning in his voice, “then why is this the first time The Seven has ever heard of him?”

“Thornton has known of him all along,” Cannon hedged. “He’s financed the lab from his oil operations’ R and D budget. But to answer your question, this is perhaps the first relevant breakthrough for our purposes. It could radically impact our chances of completing the Great Awakening, even should Nitthogr attempt to prevent us from moving forward.”

The stairwell emptied out onto a large laboratory. Technologies both old and new scattered the grounds; equipment and notes lay heaped over benches and desks as if some scientific hoarder had nested below the factory.

Spotting the doctor as he worked on a project in the distance, Cannon paused with his accomplices. “I must warn you, neither Doctor Walther nor his assistants are members of the Heptobscurantum. He is interested purely in the science and accomplishment of discovery. To him, Sh’logath is an incorporeal idea… a philosophical ideal. Let us not mention the Awakening, or our true purposes.”

Adams and Sisyphus nodded. They followed and Cannon made introductions, which Walther largely ignored as he tinkered; he only paused to do a double take at Sisyphus, but then discounted whatever thoughts had occurred to him.

The machine he tweaked looked like a hybrid of ancient artifacts that were attached to the internals of a space shuttle; a wheeled section of carpentry scaffolding contained the body of the turboencabulator-style machine. Circuit boards hung at random places and an entire spool of industrial copper wire had been emptied; the cables wrapped all around the scaffolding and snaked away in trails across the floor.

“I assume you gentlemen are here to see my work?” He glared sidelong at Cannon. “And if it doesn’t perform adequately I suppose you will defund me?”

Cannon sighed and shook his head. “For the last time, Pietro, I am not going to pull your funding. These men are merely here to see it. And besides, I’ve already seen it work. You have nothing to worry about.”

Walther finally looked at his guests. He glanced again at the newest of The Seven. “You. Has anyone told you that you look like Jacob Sisyphus?”

The massive man only grinned through his ever-present five o’clock shadow. He ran his fingers through his thick hair and shook out his mullet. Besides the growing paunch on his belly, he was a very recognizable figure in some circles. “I should. I’m the one and only. You are a fan from the golden, glory years?”

Walther’s lip curled in a smile. “I’ll admit that professional wrestling has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. How ironic. I had no idea that you were interested in science.”

Cannon shot Sisyphus a look of warning.

“Always,” Sisyphus merely replied. “I’ve never believed that this,” he pinched his flesh for emphasis, “is all there is.”

“Then be prepared to have that belief empirically proven.” He turned to an assistant. “Mizz Heiderscheidt, a vial of blood, please?”

His aide quickly walked to a gurney nearby. A sedated man, homeless by the looks of him, lay strapped to the rails of an old medical bed. The lab assistant drew a full syringe of blood and returned, handing it over to Doctor Walther.

“Gentlemen,” the eccentric scientist emphatically announced, “prepare to see the laws of reality broken.” He turned, injected the blood into a catheter tube, and cranked a dial. The ancient pieces of technology seemed to vibrate and glow with a supernatural light.

Walther pulled a set of welding goggles over his eyes and slammed a large red button affixed to the scaffolding with duct tape. Three brilliant beams of energy shot out from laser projectors welded to the machine; they met at a blinding point of impact fifteen feet from the machine. Walther wheeled on an industrial dial; the beams shifted apart slowly as he turned the wheel and a triangular portal opened.

The observers’ jaws dropped and their eyes widened as the triangle grew larger. Within the boundary of the energy beams they could see another dimension.

“It’s quite stable,” Walther stated, taking a pigeon from its cage nearby. He walked to the portal and released the bird at the mouth of the energy gate; it flew through, crackling with a pop like static electricity as it crossed over. It immediately emerged on the other side of the portal and flew away, no worse for wear.

Walther turned and bowed. “We have broken the barrier between dimensions.” He pointed to a row of whiteboards boasting calculations spanning the distance. “I have identified twenty-seven specific dimensions so far, but my figures indicate either thirty-two or thirty-three that exist. But this one,” he pointed to the glowing door, “this one is the easiest to access. It is the root. We call it Prime; the rest of the realities, including our own, seem to derive from this singular plane of existence.”

The gate began to flicker slightly. “As the blood diminishes, the gate loses stability.” He took another pigeon and released it just as the portal flickered. The bird flew through as before, but when the signal strength slightly sputtered, the pigeon split into three pieces as if perfectly sliced apart. The dead creature fell to the burnt grass on the other side of the dimensional window. “Of course, the answer is to keep the machine powered. Feed it more blood.”

The three men nodded excitedly. “Now it is I who am a fan of you,” Sisyphus shook the doctor’s hand.

“Gentlemen,” Cannon stated. “We have some business to discuss.” He nodded with pleasure and bid farewell to the doctor, then he guided Adams and Sisyphus back towards the stairs.

“So,” Adams began, “you will finally tell us your purpose for this meeting? How do you suggest we use this technology to our ends?”

Cannon nodded. “We know we must pull Vivian to our side and set her against Nitthogr. This is the way we do that.”

“How do you mean?”

Cannon indicated Sisyphus. “For all his occult training and mastery, he cannot match Nitthogr’s raw power, no offense, Jacob, but it is fact, just as I could not best Vivian in a physical fight. There is some inherent strength in the people of the Prime, a kind of power.”

Intrigued Sisyphus nodded and asked, “And how does this help?”

“If you notice, this machine did not open at the portal locations, which Nitthogr seems to control. Science burrowed a way through the stuff of reality and forced open its own window. We can access the other dimensions without Nitthogr ever knowing, and we are not limited to the portal locations.”

Adams followed his train of thought. “We can send Vivian through to see what her mentor is up to behind her back?”

“Exactly! She is a true disciple of Sh’logath—I am sure of it. If she sees him secretly act contrary to the part he has publicly played for so long, she will come to our side.”

“But what if she tells him of our coup, instead?”

“Then he learns of it only a little earlier than anticipated,” Cannon said. “Very little changes except that we potentially gain a powerful ally against Nitthogr if he has truly departed from the true faith. And if he has not, then we might also learn that, too.”

His accomplices nodded. “And how do we convince her to spy on her master?”

Cannon grinned. “That part is easy. We need only tell her the truth: show her the facts and logic. These will demand that she vindicates his character. Her affection for him should motivate her. In her efforts to defend him, she will prove his defection.”

Adams nodded. “I will meet with her immediately.”

“Good,” he replied. “I have a slightly different job for you, Jacob Sisyphus.”

. . .

A pale, hollow light greeted Claire as her eyelids fluttered open in the morning. The cold had woken her; Rob’s body heat no longer warmed her in its absence. She crawled out from the split in the rock and found him staring into the distance.

He turned and greeted her. “I did not think we had gotten this far yet.”

She offered an inquisitive look.

“We are already well inside the Plains of Neggath.”

“Is that good?”

“Perhaps,” Rob said. “I’ve never actually been here before. I always thought it was further from Limbus, according to maps in the history books. The plains harbor many potential dangers—worse than mere unaligned vyrm rovers.”

Claire dug through the duffel and sorted through the food packets. She hoped to load up on calories before the hard trek. Only a few rations remained. “How much longer until our next stop?”

“Straruck lies that way,” he pointed to the horizon. “If we keep this pace, we may reach it this afternoon, even. An ancient religious university lies upon the flats surrounded by Straruck village.”

Finishing a bland applesauce packet, Claire nearly choked on the unpleasant texture. “Then let’s get moving. I always wanted to study abroad.”

Rob smiled. “I don’t think it’s anything like what you would expect. Long before the wars, Straruck was a hub of philosophy, religion, law, and medical research. In fact, they say that the cult of Sh’logath formed there as a joint venture between the religion and philosophy students.”

“Yeah,” Claire remarked. “Sounds an awful lot like Stanford, if you ask me.”

Her sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed. “I have only seen stills from the war era. It appeared that the sands have laid claim to much of it. Perhaps karma has cosmically repaid them for their part in creating The Devourer? Nonetheless, I am excited to see it with my own eyes.”

Claire grinned at him as they plodded onward. “You sound a lot like my father.” She trailed off, thoughts turning dark.

Suddenly, both travelers stumbled and the ground trembled. Rob’s hand flew immediately to the Glaive at his back and he drew it from the scabbard. He held the bulky, engraved shard at the ready. Long seconds passed and its weight quickly tired his forearms. There were no immediate aftershocks and so he sheathed the weapon.

They traveled in silence for the next several hours, until the dim outline of foreign structures became visible in the distance; they ignored the minor, intermittent quakes. Towers and buildings bent at odd and broken angles as their foundations had shifted and crumbled through the long, harsh years. The land had done much to reclaim itself from the vyrm occupation.

Cautiously approaching, Rob and Claire often stopped to watch and wait, spying out any potential enemy positions. A magnificent structure at the center of the decayed village rose above the others; it was their obvious destination. The large dome may have once been splendorous and proud. Now, a huge section of the cupola had been blasted away and age had ripped wounds across the rounded top, exposing structural ribs beneath its stucco skin.

They slogged ahead at a quickened pace. Underfoot, fine-grained sand dunes had overtaken the ankle-biting shards. The silt caked most of the larger debris to the ground. Ground tremors seemed to increase as they neared the edge of Straruck. They rumbled as if they embodied the sickly heartbeat of a broken city.

Rob and Claire stalked silently through the maze of broken buildings. With no windows or doors remaining, there were few places for enemies to set ambushes for them. Still, despite the cover of darkness they’d had since Limbus and the promise of the Tarkhūn leader, they were reluctant to completely take Basilisk at his word.

As they rounded a final corner they entered the edge of the central campus. Most of the buildings had been either blasted away or fallen to the extreme decay of age and neglect. Those derelicts that still remained had become nearly cocooned within the fine silica sand.

Claire almost stepped around the corner when Rob grabbed her and pulled her back out of sight. He pointed and motioned to remain silent. He pointed to several sets of footprints in the sand ahead. They watched and listened for a few moments.

Following their patrol route, they spotted a group of well-armed Tarkhūn walking their circuit. The vyrm battle garb was well suited to the terrain and provided a modicum of camouflage within the rugged Plains of Neggath. They talked in a clicking kind of language.

Rob cocked his head, trying to understand it. The grimace on his face told Claire that he was unable to interpret it. “That’s not the traditional vyrm tongue.”

Claire felt a tingling rush in her mind. “The Tarkhūn commonly speak in a dialect of the old royal vyrm language. It was a part of Bithia’s studies.” She paused and listened. “They’re talking about an insect invasion and the boredom of guarding the travel portal. Apparently, sentry duty is not a high calling for the Tarkhūn.”

She cocked her head and blushed. “Also,” she smirked, “the one talking now enjoys telling dirty jokes.”

The guards suddenly started yelling and shooting at the sand. A crevasse formed near the Tarkhūn as Rob and Claire watched incredulously. A massive, grub-like worm erupted from the dune. Fiery plasma blasted from the lead Tarkhūn’s pistol. It tore through the translucent skin of the writhing monstrosity.

Shrieking, the worm leveled its multitudinous bank of shiny, black eyes at the guards. With hideous antennae twitching, its jaws elongated and it vomited forth a small army of dog-sized terrors. The heavily carapaced crawlers snaked towards their prey upon a thousand cilia-like legs. Their slimy feet crackled with a kind of necrotic energy as enzymatic electricity bounced around their millipede-like undercarriage.

Bellowing with rage, the two vyrm bravely stood their ground, blasting at both the wave of smaller crawlers and the giant parent that had carried them. One vyrm shouted a warning into the communications fob clipped on his shoulder. The momentary disruption was just enough for the swarm to surge forward and envelop him. They knocked him over, twisting around his feet.

The toppled guard screamed in anguish as the chemical electricity wreathed his body and wracked him with pain. His Tarkhūn companion quickly executed him with a single shot to the head. His communicator flooded with the sounds of another incident and he clicked a short response before fleeing the overtaken courtyard. Smoke erupted on the far side of the campus and the echoes of blaster fire drifted through the air. The surviving vyrm sprinted directly for the distant fracas.

Washing over the cadaver, the creatures writhed all over the dead Tarkhūn’s body. Their caustic feet fed upon the flesh of the fallen. Within seconds, the teeming mass cleared away. Nothing remained of the victim except for bones and inorganic material.

Rob turned away from the grisly scene as the giant queen sank back below the sands. Her minions roamed the courtyard ahead, infesting the ground with their presence. “Carrion worms?” he wondered aloud. “They aren’t native to the Desolation,” he concluded. “Someone must have intentionally released them here, possibly in order to soften up the local garrison before an invasion.”

“Nitthogr?” Claire asked.

Rob nodded. “I can’t think of anyone else with the knowledge or means to travel the planes.”

After checking the duffel bag, Rob slung the depleted sack across his chest. Their provisions had all but expired. He grabbed Claire by the hand. “If Nitthogr is here, then we shouldn’t be. It’s far too dangerous to risk him seeing you.” He frowned into the empty duffel. “But we’d never make it beyond the Plains on this.”

They skulked through the building, fleeing deeper within as the first carrion crawlers explored the doorway with curious, caustic tendrils. Sprinting through the dark halls, they put some distance between them and the invading creatures.

Pausing for a moment to breathe, Rob wiped the heavy, desert dust from a sign. It showed the layout of the grounds and displayed a network of paths in washed-out lines of color. They led from building to building via buried tunnels or suspended corridors. “It’s a student and visitor’s guide.” He traced his fingers along the faded, magenta line connecting their location to the central building. “Here’s our path!”

Echoes from millions of tiny insectoid feet began reverberating down the hallway behind them. Claire and Rob immediately turned a corner and sprinted forward; they ran up a winding, platformed staircase and into the next passage where a suspended causeway opened.

The suspended, aerial walkway looked in poor repair. Wind had badly battered the bridge over the millennia; it flowed through gaping holes where the glass had long since broken. Rob gave the floor a couple of probing steps. Some of the alloy meshwork underfoot proved spongy; the weather of so many years had oxidized the metal and large rust flakes took root at various intervals.

Scuttling noises in pursuit ensured they had no other avenue but this. One by one, Rob and Claire gingerly stepped along the stronger parts of the corridor, keeping to the edges as much as possible where the structural supports proved heavier.

An immense hole had been torn from the center of the skywalk floor. The breach nearly severed the entire line; only architectural scaffolding tied the two ends of the tube together. Rob first, and then Claire, jumped nimbly across the chasm. The metal framework bounced tenuously under their maneuvers. Once beyond, they fled to the other side just as their terrifying pursuit discovered a way forward, into the mouth of the metallic, skeletal tunnel.

The duo darted down the next corridor and around a bend. Claire ducked, diving into a room just in time to avoid the blaster fire from a Tarkhūn patrol. Rob leapt in behind her; chunks of plaster exploded above him as he dove forward. The echoes of the blaster fire would certainly draw more crawlers! He quickly peeked around the threshold and drew a volley of blasterfire.

“There’s a whole group of them camped at the end of the hall, and two more creeping up on our position.” Rob said. He grunted as his body stretched with a bone-cracking noise. His clothes split open at the seam points and his werewolf form overwhelmed the clothing’s tensile strength. Reaching over his left shoulder he drew the Stone Glaive just as the two vyrm scouts burst in.

Rob slashed the first across the chest with the blade; the sigils flashed when the keen edge tasted blood. Almost instantly the Tarkhūn turned to stone, forever immortalizing the surprised look upon his face; he fell backwards as he turned into a statue. No sooner did his body clear the doorframe than his agitated vyrm compatriots opened fire. Their burning rounds pulverized the stony form, blasting one of their own into hunks of rock and powder.

With a whirling kick, the second Tarkhūn booted Rob in the gut. The vyrm was so massive that he nearly matched Rob, even in his werewolf form. Grabbing Rob by the wrists, he dug his talons deep into Rob’s flesh, keeping the blade far from his reptilian skin. The ground vibrated slightly as the whelming tremors seemed to swell; the carrion crawlers drew nearer.

Rob and the Tarkhūn struggled, crashing back and forth in the room. The walls shook, freeing chunks of plaster and dust; anxiously, Claire dodged the entangled combatants as best as she could. The sounds of the approaching crawler horde began overwhelming the sounds of their struggle. In the hallway, the vyrm opened fire, trying to turn back the larval enemy.

The insect-like worms only seemed to pick up speed, perhaps an illusion based on their increasing number as they burgeoned within the campus. They bled through the windows and other structural cracks.

“Rob!” Claire screamed as the first of the carrion worms broke the ranks of its dead brethren and turned from the small arms fire and slinked into their room.

Rob growled and opened his jaws. He quickly snapped them shut on the vyrm’s face and raked his sharp incisors across the surprised enemy’s eyes.

The giant Tarkhūn howled in pain, staggering backwards and rubbing his blinded eyes. He tripped over the first crawler and fell to his back, screaming in agony as the creatures swarmed over him.

Scooping Claire up in his free arm, Rob leveled his shoulder and charged through a nearby wall. He poured all of his might into ramming through and broke beyond the first wall like a cannonade, and then the second, and a third.

They stumbled through the last wall and into the corridor. Surprised at the intrusion, the encamped vyrm held their position as they poured hot fire into the living horde that pressed in ahead. The Tarkhūn hissed in surprise, but couldn’t spare the gunfire to take a shot at the humanoids.

Rob roared a warning which they seemed to heed. He and Claire turned the corner and didn’t slow for anything, not even the torturous shrieks behind them as the carrion crawlers overwhelmed the vyrm force. Rob finally stopped at a darkened descent into the mouth of an underpass.

Claire nodded to Rob as if saying, yes, I trust you. They cautiously stepped into the shadows. Several steps in, a loud tremor shook the tunnel with earthquake malevolence, and then passed. They pressed ahead through the darkness; what little light their rear exit provided seemed to dim as it writhed with the surging, maggoty legion.

The ground erupted ahead of them as the carrion queen burst up from the ground, barring a forward escape. Rob howled as he leapt towards the behemoth, stabbing the blade deep into beast’s face. The stony wound began to spread its effect across the titan head.

Squealing with an otherworldly panic, it snapped its arthropodic head forward like a whip, dashing Rob to the ground where the Stone Glaive clattered beyond his grasp. The monster thrashed in something like a death roll; lashing ferocious circles, it shredded its own flesh, tearing the stony portion away so that it could not continue infecting the queen with the transmutation.

The tunnel shook and partially collapsed under the violence. A large crack grew ominously above the giant worm as it hissed at its enemies. Closing in from behind, the worm’s children skittered anxiously toward their quarry.

Rob leapt for the ancient blade, but the queen shot a putrid secretion from her mouth; the viscous goo coated Rob’s fist, sticking it to the floor.

He ripped his arm up from the ground and screamed in pain as the acidic slime smoke and sizzled, eating away his flesh. Within a fraction of a second his right hand had been burnt so deeply that only fragments of tendon and exposed bone remained.

Rising even higher within the tunnel the queen splayed her legs and shrieked loudly, laying claim to her prize. Her piercing shriek reverberated so loudly that the walls shook and excited her drones. They chittered and pulsed forward happily, covering over the Stone Glaive, those closest turned to rock as they did so, but only the frenzy of the kill mattered to them.

Rob scrambled away from the powerful sword before the crawlers could reach him. The queen screeched with glee. Suddenly, the ceiling gave way and a large chunk of tunnel crushed the queen, opening the underground passage up to the sky.

With one arm hanging limp, Rob grabbed Claire with his good hand. “Come on!” he yelled, flinging them towards the ramp-like debris.

“But the sword? We can’t just leave it!”

“You are more important than any artifact!” His disabled arm hung useless as he glanced backwards regretfully.

They rushed up the shifting shale slope and broke out into the sky. Below, the wounded creature screeched and flailed, collapsing even more of the ground and opening new sinkholes as Claire and Rob fled.

Leaning against the foundation of the central dome, the escapees panted for air. Claire grabbed Rob’s destroyed arm near the wrist and examined it. He winced against the pain.

She looked him in the eyes, afraid her fearful face would scare him.

“Don’t worry about it.” Torment crept into his voice like the guttural growl of an angry canine. “It will heal.”

Even as Claire watched it, she could see the flesh slowly stitching back together, regenerating at a cellular level. Rob tried to flex it, balling his raw hand into a fist. He drew a sharp, pained breath and then relaxed it, convinced of his hands functionality, even if limited.

“This way,” he said, guiding her around the building, not wanting to lose their momentum. Rob peeked through a once grand vestibule, now drained of all her glory. He exhaled his nervousness.

A mammoth, double door made of inlaid mineral and precious metals had been blasted open from the inside. It lay twisted ajar, barely clinging to its hinges. A hazy, pulsing light radiated from within, illuminating the interior with shades of brown.

“That door has remained sealed for millennia,” Rob breathed. “It is the birthplace of Sh’logath. No vyrm has dared breach the chamber for respect and fear of the ‘Thousand Elder’s Sacrifice.’”

Rob guided her around the dome’s foundation, trying to keep the building between them and the sounds of chaos and gunfire as much as possible. Creeping into the building via a crumbling access hatch they weaved through the outer court which gave the dome a very chapel-like motif. Creeping up a decayed stairwell, he led her to a rickety, metal catwalk.

Through the broken sections in a wall they could watch two vyrm forces battling against each other on the forsaken Plains of Neggath. Several buildings had been dashed away nearby where the ground reclaimed a large patch of flat land. Embroiled within the conflict, there, Rob spotted the vyrm general Regorik, He ferociously tore his way through his enemies; Rob wondered how long ago Regorik defected to the Black, betraying the Tarkhūn for Nitthogr.

From their vantage, they could see that both of the warring sides were flanked by the ravenous carrion worms. Regorik’s army ignored them while the Tarkhūn rear guard was forced to engage them. Nitthogr’s forces wielded some kind of ultrasonic emitter; whenever the worms drew too close, a vyrm scattered them with the device.

Rob tore his attention away from the battle and cleared away an aperture that lead into the main chamber. Inside was deathly silent. The stadium-like enclosure resembled a mass crypt.

He and Claire stared down at a sight that only two others had seen in thousands of years, aside from the army of the Black which had invaded through the nearby portal just recently. Dust caked the desiccated bodies which lay upon a thousand tables. They’d been arranged in neat rows, all seeming to point to the circle at the center.

“The Thousand Elders,” he whispered. “This is where it all started… where the philosophers and religious fanatics established reality from nonreality and birthed an ageless terror—calling the ancient agod from the purely conceptual into the visceral, yet noncorporeal.”

“Most of those words are antonyms of each other,” Claire stated of his illogical sentence. But the side of her that had melded with Bithia’s thought process completely understood what he’d said. The philosophical concept that God, as a force, must have an equal and an opposite, was mere conjecture—a falsehood according to all religious texts across the Tesseract—and yet the Thousand Elders had found a way around the metaphysical barriers. Through sheer faith they leant their flesh to birth the empirical form of the devourer: Sh’logath.

“This way.” Rob grabbed a long, rusty chain that hung from the catwalk. They crawled down it and he winced each time he had to grasp the chain with his bad hand.

Picking their way through the lines of weather-mummified bodies, Rob traced a finger across the chest of one. The dust was thinner atop the vyrm husk than it was on the table. Suddenly, the body on the nearest table drew one ragged breath, startling Claire.

The body exhaled a death rattle. Rivulets of dust rolled off his chest and settled upon the platform where he rested.

“They are in deep torpor,” Rob said in awe. He examined one only briefly before continuing onward. He guessed they each took perhaps one breath every several years. “Except for that one over there.” He pointed to a crumbling, mummified cadaver slumped in a heavy metal chair near the raised central stage.

Briskly, cautiously, they approached the dais. On the chair’s backrest, Claire could translate the word engraved behind the corpse. “The Voice.”

“This was the one who spoke on behalf of the Thousand Elders. The one who stayed back: their prophet and spokesperson. Legends say he remained in order to watch the rise of Sh’logath and instruct the followers in the rites and rituals to honor their agod. It was he that originally instructed Basilisk and Nitthogr.”

“I guess it took longer than he thought?” Claire whispered.

As they grew near the raised steps, sigils glowed on the floor nearest them. The portal remained active, glowing with a brownish hue. Rob withdrew the frayed chapter from the Grimmorium Nitthogr. He momentarily examined it and looked at Claire.

“Claire, you have a decision to make,” Rob said evenly. He didn’t want to try and influence her choice with his own desires. He could not bear the guilt of any repercussions. “This door leads to a couple possible destinations.”

She could sense his thoughts. “One of them is Earth?” Her thoughts turned to her father. She couldn’t stop thinking of Vivian, Caivev, torturing him.

“Yes.”

Claire grimaced and blinked back hot tears. She took Rob by the hands, carefully holding the wounded one which had almost completely healed by now. “I trust your judgment,” she said and then she embraced him, pressing her head against his midsection. “Do you still say that we must go to the Prime?”

Rob’s form melted down into his human shape, seamlessly continuing the embrace. “It is the only way we stand a chance,” he whispered into her ear.

“Then, we go to the Prime.”