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often in the past, Favian was beckoning him with a glittery hand: “This way! Come on!”
    A Harpy shrieked down at Rick out of the sky, its face half rotten. Rick swung Mariel’s blade with all his might, and the face was gone—the head was gone—and the body of the beast came crashing down. A huge skeletal Cobra rose up off the earth, baring its fangs, ready to strike. Rick didn’t even pause from the last blow but continued the motion, sweeping the blade back at the Cobra. The swordstruck hard, scattering the Cobra’s bones in a dozen different directions.
    And still the dead came on. Rick had to jump up onto the edge of the fountain’s basin to get away from their reaching claws and fangs. Balancing on the slippery marble, he ran around the basin’s arc, then leapt off it and onto the building’s steps. Another moment and he raced up to where Favian was standing—Favian with his features twisted in anxiety as he stared fearfully at the charging dead. Favian was more of a worrier than a warrior. He had never had much courage. He said so himself. And yet he had somehow always been able to come through when Rick needed him most. He stood his ground now until Rick was beside him.
    Then Favian moved like a flash. He always moved like that: like a flash of sparkling blue light, barely substantial. He flashed away through the building’s half-open door. And Rick, as he so often did, as he so often had to do to keep from getting himself killed, followed after him.
    He was inside. The blue streak of Favian shut the building’s door behind him. The cries of the dead outside instantly grew dim. The bright-yellow light of the sky was extinguished. For a few seconds, before his eyes adjusted, Rick couldn’t see. The shadows of the interior obscured everything.
    Then his vision cleared.
    He was in a church, a strange and beautiful church with colorful mosaics covering every inch of the walls. Adark, sad-eyed Virgin Mary gazed at him from a framed painting on one side of him. A sternly frowning Christ peered down at him from the ceiling above.
    The main portion of the church—the nave—was open. There were no pews, no statues, only a large floor, which, like the walls, was covered with richly complex and colorful mosaic tiles.
    There was nothing else there. Except the sarcophagus.
    More dead , thought Rick.
    Indeed, the sarcophagus could have held half a dozen corpses. It was a huge coffin, its sides covered with elaborate mosaics like the ceiling, walls, and floor. It was surrounded by four stout and towering columns, also covered with mosaics. And it was open—the coffin had no lid.
    Rick glanced at Favian—Favian, whose face was always pinched with worry and fear. “What is this place?” he asked him. “This city? How did we get here? I can’t remember . . .”
    Favian’s figure of fluctuating blue light shimmered. “Mariel and I had to sneak in when the darkness spread.”
    â€œThe darkness?”
    â€œIt spread over everything everywhere,” Favian told him. “The Scarlet Plain. The Blue Wood. The Ruins. Everything. This is all that’s left: the Golden City. It’s all that’s left of MindWar.”
    â€œThe Golden City,” Rick murmured. The heart of MindWar, the battery that fed the place with energy. But why was it full of dead creatures? And what was this darkness Favian was talking about?
    He did not really understand, but he turned away from Favian, back to the sarcophagus. He had the powerful sense that he should look inside, that he had to look inside—and at the same time, he knew that he very much did not want to look inside, not ever. He felt as if he were in one of those dreams where you have to do what you know you shouldn’t do.
    He took a long breath. He could still hear dead things outside the church. They were pounding on the great wooden door, crying for his blood. He ignored them.