A Darkness in My Soul

I

Trapped within the convoluted miasma of Child's mind, I eventually lost all consideration of what was real and what was not. Here, in the fascinating chiaroscuro ruins of his subconscious mind, the shattered mental analogues were every bit as concrete as the world I had known outside of Child. The stones were textured by the weather as they were in the world beyond; the trees had as many leaves of as many different shades of green as any I had seen before; the wind was not a constant, but changed from bitter cold to almost suffocating warmth, and was moderate more often than not. There were birds and a wide variety of land-bound animals, which, though subtly different or wildly mutated from their "real" parallels, were always believable, detailed and rich with color and habits. At first, I catalogued the differences, the fine points of distinction between the real world and this analogue of Child's interior, but that only made me melancholy, unsatisfied, and soon had me acting like a manic-depressive. I realized that, if this were to be my home for the remainder of my days, I would have to forget the other world I had known. And for my own peace of mind, I would also have to forget that when Child died, we all died, trapped here inside him. It was bizarre, but it was my new reality and required my swift adaptation.

So I adapted.

At first, there had been a time of madness. When I recovered my wits, I did not know how much time had passed, and I could not remember much of what I had done. I remembered running along canyons of stone which shimmered and changed colors around me, thrust up, dissolved, formed new projections, a living rock that sang mournful dirges and sometime burst into long, wailing screams that made me fall and cover my ears and scream in sympathy. There were visions of mottled skies that were sometimes all shades of yellow, sometimes all shades of red, sometimes an ugly whirl of black and brown. I had climbed in cold places and had followed descending trails into warm ones. I had been on strange seas with waters thick like syrup, and in lakes where the surface reeked of brandy. I had seen dark shapes, like huge spiders, dancing along endless webs of sticky white thread, and I had seen maggots crawling in the walls, disappearing in the stone when I came close enough to examine them. At times, a force of monumental strength passed me, a whirling madness of surging energy, which was He, which was God, the maddest of the three of us. And then I was sane, lying on the floors of a wide tunnel, stretched full length, as if I had fallen while running from something that terrified me.

I sat up, looked around me, knew that it was so, that I was trapped here, and decided there was nothing to do but make the most of it.

Besides, I nurtured a grain of hope. Perhaps the mind of the wizened boy, this Child, would regain its sanity.

Perhaps, then, there would be a way out, a way to return to my own body. They would keep me alive, back there in AC, feed me through my veins, keep my body processes functioning, hoping for my return just as I was. If Child returned to normal, I could go upwards through the nowblocked conscious mind and return to my own flesh. Free.

With even the smallest minim of such hope, it was better to maintain my sanity instead of losing it again and being able to return to my own body as a madman.

And, too, there was the possibility that, with my mind intact, I could search out this nightmare landscape and find some chink in the cold stone that kept me from leaving. I could explore for days on end, having nothing better to do, and perhaps discover the passage out. I knew the chances were small. Child's mental analogue was immense, as big as an entire world. It would require years and years just to investigate each corner of it. And a mind destroyed, a mind seeking total refuge from reality, would hardly leave any breach of its seal against the world, no matter how small that breach and no matter in what distant corner it existed.

But I had hope. It was all I had, and it was warmly nourished.

II

Sane and determined, I set out on foot to know the place where I now found myself. There was no need to provision for the journey, no matter what its length, for I no longer held the needs of flesh. There was no such thing as hunger, only a vague memory of what thirst had once been. I couldn't know pain, nor pleasure-except on an emotional, mental level. Though the world seemed physically as tangible as the real one, I moved through it like a spirit, autonomous. I could have formed food and drink from the air-as I had formed that sword to fight off the Minotaur, for I still contained the same level of psychic energy. But it would have been a charade with but a single purpose: to make this world less alien and more like the one I had left. And I had decided that I could only survive by forgetting that other reality and accepting this one fully.

There was no need to rest as I walked, for my analogue body did not tire. I could run, letting the wind whip my hair, for hours on end, without feeling a sore muscle, the tugging fingers of gravity.

I came out of the caves onto a ledge no more than two feet wide that wound out of sight along the side of an immense gray mountain studded with shrubs and gnarled, weathered trees whose extensive roots tangled through the rocks like tentacles. Above, mists obscured the skies, thick roiling masses of gray clouds that moved fast from horizon to horizon. Fingers of the fog came down now and then, slithered along the mountainside, touched the trees and wrapped my legs so that I could not even see my feet I walked upward along the trail, deeper into the darkness that lingered there. At places, the trail disappeared, and I had to climb across to where it started again. I feared nothing, for I could not be hurt. As long as Child lived and as long as I was trapped within him, I was invulnerable.

Days or perhaps weeks later, I had gained the summit of the great mountain. It was constructed of four pinnacles, each as tall as a man, which formed, between them, a nest large enough to stand in. I nestled there, hunched over, and looked out across the world that was his tortured mind.

The mists hung all about me and shrouded the path I had walked up on. It was cold and wet and left glistening droplets on my skin. I went naked, though, for cold could not harm me and was not a discomfort. It was merely a quantity now, much like light or darkness. I accepted it and watched the dew bead on the hairs on my arms and legs, like pearls in the shimmering gloom.

I looked out from the peak in all directions. At times, the curtains of gray would part, present a flash of some strange scenery. It was as if all parts of the world were equally near at hand from this summit-but a mile at most. I saw green fields and a silver river cutting through them like the winding body of a python. I saw a cold white plain where there was snow and where slabs of ice jutted upwards like broken teeth. I saw what seemed to be stretches of impenetrable jungle, black flowers blooming on the dark green foliage. I saw endless miles of sand, burnt white beneath a relentless sun, columns of the dried earth stirred upwards into the sky and winding erratically across the barren landscape. There was a land of broken ebony mountains where sunlight was reflected from polished Stygian surfaces and came back brown.

It was clear that I would have to explore all these places if I were ever to find the way out-if there happened to be a way out. I rose from the earth and left the four stone pillars, began the trek down the mountainside once more.

I was a third of the way down when the dark-winged creatures descended through the fog, swept by me, cutting the air with a sharp and unpleasant whine. I looked down where they had disappeared through the lowest layers of the mist. As I watched, they reappeared, rising gracefully toward me. There was a smooth coating of black down over their large, batlike bodies, giving them a warm, smooth, gentle look. Set in each of their faces were two wide eyes, deep brown things which looked back at me with an almost unbearable melancholy.

They settled onto the trail before me, their wings curling in on themselves, rolling into closed scrolls on their backs.

Distorted, many-fingered hands reached on tiny arms from the point where their shoulders and wings connected: useless arms.

"Where do you go?" the largest creature asked me.

"To all the lands," I said.

"They are wide. And many."

"I have time."

"That is true."

"Where do you come from?" I asked. I knew they were creatures fashioned by Child's mind, just as he peopled all the landscapes with animals of eerie forms. I was intrigued by their seeming intelligence.

"We are from-from the place where he is trapped."

"Where Child is trapped?" I asked,

"Yes," the smaller one said.

"Why doesn't Child come himself? Why must he take the form of birds?"

"He is trapped. He wants out, but there is no way but except through the dumb animals of his landscapes. He can reach into us and make us more than we once were and thus monitor this land through others' eyes."

"Can you take me to where Child is trapped?" I asked.

"We don't know."

"He can tell you."

"He doesn't know either," the smaller one said.

"Yet both of you are Child," I said. "In essence, you are your master." The wind buffeted us, but we did not mind it "I suppose," the larger bird said. "But there's really very little we can do about it. We can help him as he wishes. But he can only impart his general intelligence and psychic power to us. He cannot fully acquire us and speak through us in the direct manner he might wish."

The smaller bird stepped forward and bent conspiratorially. "You are aware, of course, that he is mad. And being mad, he has become separated from total control of this inner world of his. It remains, and he keeps it functioning.

But he does not share the harmony of it any longer."

"I understand," I said. "But why did you come to me?"

"We live in the mountains," the larger one said. "While you were here, it was our duty to speak with you about your journey."

"Speak," I said. It was raining slightly, a warm rain.

"We don't know what to say," the large bird said. "We have his general urgency in mind. We understand that he wishes us to say something to you concerning your idea to travel. But we cannot say exactly what he feels about it.

We think, ourselves, that he wants you to continue, that he wants us to urge you on. Perhaps he feels that you will find the place where he dwells and will liberate him."

"Possibly," I said.

"We know the place is dark. It is cold and there are things crawling on a blue floor, crawling all around him so that he does not have a moment's peace. That is the sum of our impression."

"I will watch for it," I said. "Now, I must be going."

Without a word, they leaped over the chasm, fell through the mists until their wings buoyed them up, then soared, beyond me, and were gone, making chattering noises like dice rattled on a felt table.

I went down, past the entrance to the inside of the mountain out of which I had come earlier. I walked for another day and reached the tree-shrouded floor of the valley, where the air smelled of pine and of flowers.

Waiting for me there was a creature much like a wolf, with a hugely swollen head and a mouth full of long teeth.

Eyes like chips of iron, gray and unperturbed.

"I'll guide you through the valley," it said, scratching paws in the earth. "I know it, and I can give you a look at every hole there is."

"Fine," I said.

"First, you must change yourself. Assume my form so that we can go more easily."

I had forgotten that the gossamer body analogue which I had assumed for my journey through Child's mental landscape was not the only shell I could use to contain my psychic energy. There was nothing essential about a humanoid form, for that psychic energy could take any form that I wished. Gently, I released the surface tension of the current, permitted my human body to shimmer and dissipate. I flowed, settled, grew lower and sleeker until I was a double for the wolf that waited for me.

I snuffled, scratched at the earth with razored claws and saw the dirt runnel before me. In this new body, I had a sense of power which I had never experienced before, a new perspective on the world about me. It seemed as if, I had been born to lycanthropy.

"Let's go," I said.

The wolf turned and loped away between the thick trees, his big paws scattering dry, brown pine needles which carpeted the forest floor. They rained over me as I hurried to follow his example.

As I ran, my breath steamed in the cold air, and my massive lungs heaved within my chest at the strenuous pace we set.

The ground flashed under me. Flimsy brush parted before me and closed, quivering, behind. To either side, small animals ran, chittering and whimpering with their fear. It was a completely structured reality, and it had made me the king of beasts in this part of the woods. I felt a burgeoning excitement at my omnipotence and my superiority over these lesser creatures. And while I savored this heady attitude, I never once realized the danger that was reaching cold fingers around me.

I enjoyed the muscular rhythm I had never known either as a man or spirit, closed the gap on the wolf, reached it by the time we broke through the pines into a grassy field. We ran side by side, easy, smoothly, sure of ourselves.

The journey had begun in earnest

III

We prowled the depths of the woods, sniffing through the underbrush for the scent of Child, the odor of his mental essence. There were times when I forgot everything but my powerful shoulders, my claws and my teeth, the keen powers of my black nostrils.

We rooted through the dark cavelets along the valley walls which opened on the floor of the forest, seeking into their darkest recesses, where our eyes refused to be totally blinded. We overturned old, rotting lop in the woods, seeking burrows through which the entrance to Child's prison might be found. We padded through the foaming cascade of a waterfall which issued from the valley rim a thousand feet above, searching the subterranean chambers beyond that wet curtain, finding nothing. If there was a place with a blue floor where Child lay encircled by undescribed creatures of a malignant nature, it was nowhere within this valley. Neither was there a doorway into the conscious mind, no exit from this place where I found myself trapped. The journey was not to have a swift conclusion.

For some reason, I was glad for the extension. There was a strong reluctance to part with the form I had taken, to return to the world and be, again, a man.

It was snowing outside as the wolf led me across the last expanse of open fields before the impenetrable wall of mist which separated this part of the analogue world from the next. Big white flakes clung to our coats and frosted us, kicked up in clouds as we pranced forward toward the distant veil of fog.

We were sidetracked by the scampering of a covey of quail-like animals off to our left. My lupine friend broke into a wild, breathtaking run, teeth bared ferociously, lips drawn back, slobber falling from his wide mouth.

I followed, feeling the wind and snow and scenting the flesh of small creatures.

I saw him leap: muscles taut. I saw him land: a spring's coils jammed together.

The air reverberated with the dying squeal of his prey.

In that instant, as the agony of death pierced the air and the pride of a successful hunt shook me, I was more wolf than man, and the danger began to grow more imminent.

I stepped next to him and snuffled at his catch, watched him rend the flesh. Blood fountained up as an artery was struck, spurted crimson across his dark snout, stained his teeth, dotted the snow around us. It steamed in the cold air, this blood, and it had a smell uniquely its own.

I howled.

We tore at the animal together, and he kept his eyes on me for a long while, cold gray eyes that did not disclose the thoughts behind them. When we were done, our noses red and the snow around us sodden, I did not feel disgusted, but rather invigorated.

We turned back to our original pursuit and gained the shifting walls of mists through which I would have to pass.

"I want to return," I growled.

"So?" His breath reeked.

"May I return?"

"For what purpose?"

"To join your pack."

"That is most unwise. That is foolish, and you know it, and you must journey. Be gone."

Then he turned and loped away, head hunched between his rugged shoulders, eating up yards in a single bounding leap.

Looking up at the even gray of the sky, I felt a hollow longing within me, and I pawed the snow away from the earth, dug the ground into a crosshatch of runnels. I wiped my bloodied snout in the snow and lapped the stained whiteness. I wanted to remain here forever, without regard to my true heritage and nature, to bound after the disappearing wolf and follow him to his pack. In the night hours, there would be deep dens in hidden caves to sleep in warmth and to climb upon some sleek and lovely female with gray eyes and a shiny black snout. During the daylight hours, there would be prowling in the fields and in the sparsely treed grounds before the thickness of the forests themselves. There would be blood and camaraderie, running together, killing together, defying the leaden skies with my fellows

Yet there was some nagging reason why I should go beyond the mists to the next segment of this landscape, though I could not remember what it was. I stepped through the mists, tensed, but found no danger, only cool wetness. I growled deep in my throat and broke through to the other side.

The journey continued.

In the new section of the subconscious universe, there was a taste of Ireland: stony ground, rolling hills so low that one could be seen beyond the other, the smell of the sea, flat areas of land marshy with the backwash of the tidelands. Waiting for me by a column of limestone that stood like a proscenium pillar without benefit of its stage, was a centaur. His head was ringed with golden curls which fell to his shoulders and framed a face of striking masculinity: broad forehead above deep black eyes that spoke of perserverance and a strong will, high aristocratic cheekbones, a proud Roman nose, a blocky chin. His shoulders were brawny, his arms rippling with muscles that seemed to possess a will and intent of their own. From the middle of his flat belly on down, he was a black stallion of formidable proportions, the lines of a thoroughbred in his long legs.

"My name is Kasostrous, and you may call me Kas," he said.

"Call me Simeon," I growled, my voice a tangled hiss of barely understandable guttural syllables.

"You must now acquire the form of the centaur," Kas said, leaving the limestone thrust and ambling toward me.

His hooves clacked on the stony ground, sent sparks up once or twice. His long, flashing length of tail whipped in the breeze, tossed from side to side with lazy power.

"I like wolfhood," I said, pawing the ground, my nails whispering on the dew-damp rock. I continued to stroke, sharpening them for later kills.

"You like it too well," Kas said. "That is the trouble."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, staring up at him with my flint eyes, hoping to strike terror in him. I failed.

"You have fallen into the danger of identifying too closely with the analogue you permit your psychic energy to assume. Though such energy is malleable, the surface tension can grow stronger with time, sap the will to return to any other analogue, any other shape. Too long a time as a wolf, and you will find yourself trapped not only in the form, but in the character of the creature."

"Nonsense." But the word was said without conviction and in such a guttural rumble that it only reinforced what Kas said.

"You disprove your own words."

"I'm an esper," I said.

"So?"

"I understand these things."

"You do not grasp the difference of this subconscious universe," he said. "There is a certain thing about it which will trap you-you especially, given your past and your mental condition."

I pawed the earth. "Help me grasp it," I said at last, doubtful. I did not want to have to believe what he was saying. I only wanted to be free to run and tear flesh and mount the sleek females in the dark shadows of the dens.

"Child's mental landscape is peopled only with creatures from legends and mythology. He read extensively in those areas from the moment he could understand language, and he viewed hundreds of senso-tapes on the subject. It interested him, because he thought he might find a purpose even stronger than the one which was connected with the Christian mythos: the Second Coming which he believed was himself."

"But this wolf does not take the form of a mythological creature," I argued with my wolf-mouth.

"There is a Tibetan legend which tells of monks transformed to wolves. They were men who loved luxury and betrayed the true intentions of their religion. They indulged in women and in drink, in jewels and in food, and all that was pretty and satisfying to the senses. Their god came to them after they had defiled mere children in a brothel contaminated with all manners of evil. In the disguise of demons, their god offered them immortality for their souls. It was a test to see if they were completely depraved, or whether there was still some minim of decency within them. But all nine of the monks eagerly grasped the straw of endless life at the sacrifice of nirvana, of eternal life on another plane. And so he gave them immortality and crushed their souls. But he gave them immortality as wolves, as vicious reeking creatures hated and feared by all, creatures who could no longer know a woman's form but must run in dank dens, creatures unable to make or appreciate the taste of wine or of a succulently prepared roast."

"And you want me now to be a centaur."

"Yes. The oftener you change, the less chance you have to be absorbed by any one particular mythical prototype.

And you, seeking some purpose beyond your human one, are ripe for such an end as threatens you now."

"I can withstand the pressure."

"You can't," Kas said. He shook golden curls but of his eyes. "You especially. All your life, just like Child, you have relied heavily upon a mythological ill-logic to justify your existence."

"Christian mythos," I corrected, wondering why I was still trying to defend it.

"These are of the same level of value as the Christian one. One will snare you as easily as the other. In all of them, you will find the same simplicity and attractive lack of complication as you found in Christianity's legends.

And you will never leave this place."

I thought, for the first time, of Melinda. I had been forcing her and everything else out of my mind, refusing to acknowledge her no-nonsense interviews in that other world, her quick wit, and her supple and willing body.

Now they all rose and crowded into my consciousness at the same moment, almost overwhelming me.

In time, as we stood there on the rolling earth under the flat sky, listening to the sea, Kas said, "Will you?"

"What?"

"Change?"

"I guess… guess so."

"Soon, then."

I hesitated.

"Soon."

And I changed.

Together, we started off across the hilly land, galloping under the steel blue of looming thunderhead clouds. My own golden hair streamed behind me. My tail rode straight out behind, fluttering in the fingers of the seatinged air.

If anything, this was better than the form of a wolf, carried more of a sense of freedom and delight.

Child was not to be found here, either. We searched everywhere, including the flat white beach where the surf curled. We trotted through the shushing foam of the sea, kicking up shells and sending crabs in frantic flight. We left our hoofprints in the sucking mud of the moors, in the rich black earth of the grasslands, in the sand by the ocean.

Sure-footed, we climbed the few small peaks and surveyed this sector of the world, looked for caves and came back down again. In time, when it was apparent there was no blue-floored room and no exit to Child's conscious mind, we reached the curtain of mist to another climate, another segment of the fractured reality that constituted Child's mind.

I was forced to say goodbye to Kas the centaur, though I longed to stay here and enjoy the horseman form a while longer. He lectured me about disassociating from my centaur form upon leaving this plane, and I listened and made my promises.

In the next landscape, I returned to my human analogue, though shedding the horseman form was painful and filled me with a sad need to feel my hooves striking stone.

There was no life here to imitate, so I did not have to worry about becoming inextricably meshed with a myth figure. This was the land of the broken black mountains which jagged up in slabs as big as houses, some even larger than that, like a world of broken crockery and shattered bottles. The sunlight was discolored by the refracting stone and became a depressing brown. The air was flat, as if it had been bottled for a long while, and no breeze moved in it. There were no sounds, no movements.

The sky was an even, ugly yellow, like dark mustard, and not a single cloud marked its expanse.

I walked forward.

The onyx rocks were smooth and cold against my bare feet.

As I scrabbled up the terrain, my fingers squeaked on the shiny surfaces. Those sounds seemed unendurably long in the ghostly silence. I did not like this place at all, wanted out of it as fast as I could move to the next veil of mist. But it was here that I found Child, found the place where he was trapped in his own madness

IV

As I made my way over the ebony land, I reached a chasm in the shattered rocks, perhaps a thousand yards long and three yards wide at the top, narrowing to two feet at the bottom. Down there, some three hundred feet below, a soft blue light glowed. It seemed to be the gentle blue of shallow water, but even this slight color branded my eyes in contrast to the sameness of the terrain I had been struggling across for some minutes.

I called down, listened to the flat echo, but received no answer. If this was the place where Child waited, bound by his own insanity, circled by unnamed demons, he was unable to speak.

I swung over the jagged edge, looked to the bottom, then grew wings like those I had seen on the batlike creatures of the mountain. I descended gently, pulled the wings in and absorbed them as the way grew too narrow to glide. I dropped the last few feet onto the blue floor, found it was made of ice.

To the right, the rock wall cut off three feet above the ice, and the passage this created seemed to go on for some distance. Lying on my stomach, I slid along the shimmering ice; I was cold but not uncomfortable, exhilarated by the freshness of the air here. A hundred feet further on, the ceiling of black rock thrust suddenly upward, and I found myself in a full-sized cavern where I could stand.

On my feet again, I crossed the barren room to the far side where the ice-encrusted rock seemed to warp downward. There, I discovered steps roughly chiseled in the ice.

I went down them, cautiously, eventually came out in a shadowy chamber with another blue floor, though this one was not empty: Child sat in the center of it in an analogue version of his real body.

And

And: the things crawled around him, circling in mindlessness, yet with a certain uncompromising evil that terrified me even though I knew they could not do me any physical harm. They were much like scorpions though somewhat longer than a man's arm, with flared, knifeedged carapaces shielding their backs, and twenty spindly legs on either side. Their stinging tails forked at the end, each of the two prongs tipped with a trio of wicked spurs as long as my little finger and tapered to needle points.

They did riot look at me, nor did their sensory cilia, bursting like whiskers around their beaked mouths, in any way indicate that they realized my presence.

Their legs hissed on the ice, and their constant parade had worn shallow grooves in the cold floor.

There were different numbers of them at different moments. Now there might be as few as a dozen describing the wide circle-now a hundred of them, magically crystallizing out of the crisp air-now thirty, now a dozen, now two dozen. No matter how hard I looked, I could not catch one of them appearing or disappearing, though their numbers fluctuated with every passing second. I had the feeling that I was in a funhouse where there was a complicated array of trick mirrors and that there was actually but one of these creatures whose presence was magnified to one degree or another by ingenious, mirrored pyrotechnics.

"Child?" I called.

The withered dwarf paid no attention to me, but stared with morbid fascination at the nightmarish scorpion guards which kept him ringed in and obedient.

Since I had first been trapped in this subconscious reality, I had not spared the time or the energy to consider the reason and psychology behind many of the mental analogues that constituted this inner universe. I had merely accepted and tried to deal with them, to search through them for a way out, a way to freedom and my own body.

Now, as I watched the grisly parade before me, I began to wonder what this collection of monsters was representative of. Why was Child's core of energy and intelligence trapped in this place, bound to this single minim of his entire subconscious universe? What were these scorpions that surrounded him and maintained their constant, evil vigil?

I examined them more closely and discovered that they did not have that surface sheen of reality that the centaur and the wolf had possessed. They shifted, as if they were liquid, and fragments of thought associations whirled inside of them. It took only a moment to discover their true nature.

Consider the human mind: three main parts to it: the ego, the superego, and the id. The first is what we are and what we have reached through the ordeals of life; the second is what we think we are and what we attempt to delude others into considering us as; the third is all the things we want to be and do but which-either because of public condemnation or a conflict with our own superegos and guilt-we never dare consider. In the id, there are the dark facets of our human soul, pieces of racial heritage and other parts uniquely ours: blood lust and the desire to rend flesh; sexual longings of grotesque sorts and on grotesque scales; the urge to cannibalism, the hunger for the taste of human meat We repress the id and most of us do not even realize that it stirs within us like a worm in the apple, so complete is our veil of civilization.

These scorpion-tailed monstrosities were Child's id lusts, his ugly needs which he, like everyone, had always kept repressed. It was impossible to say how they had gotten free, how they had encircled him like this, but I ventured a guess or two as I watched them clack horny mandibles and lift rattling, bony legs. Perhaps, when he had considered himself the Second Coming, he had been unable to pretend the id lusts did not exist. Perhaps, finally, in order to continue thinking of himself as a deity, he had to rip the id from the other parts of his mind, tear it free of the ego and the superego. And now those lusts were attempting to integrate themselves with his mind, to establish contact with the ethereal fragments of his thought processes, where they belonged. Or perhaps the id had been broken loose of the rest of his mind when he had tipped into insanity. Either way, they had found him again, and they had spell-bound him with their evil. He held them off with his psychic energy, still unable to tolerate their being a part of him. (Did he still nurture the Second-Coming fantasy-or perhaps some equal legend from another mythology?) "Child?" I asked again.

Again: no answer.

If I could free him, if only for a moment, could contact him and jar him into a moment of sanity, perhaps I could get him to open a way into his conscious mind, a path to lead me out of his body. But as long as the scorpions were there, as long as he was transfixed by the sight of these lusts he had forgotten, I could not reach him.

For the third time since I had first entered his mind that day so long ago, I fashioned a sword from the air, a shimmering blue luminosity with a curving blade and a hilt of dazzling light. Stepping forward, I hacked at the first of the scorpions in my way, halved it. It vanished. I turned to a second of them, tore it through, then swung furiously, wading through the spinning members of the huge creatures, destroying them as fast as the magic mirrors brought them to my attention.

Their sound was a screeching cacophony, and their mandibles punctuated the wailing fury with a drumbeat of irregular snapping, thrumming clacks against the ice floor.

I do not know how long the battle lasted. It seemed that perhaps days passed, though there was no sunrise and sunset down there-and I did not tire in my analogue body, did not need to stop for food and drink. I was the irresistible force, wading into the legs and tails and shining carapaces. In time, the numbers of the scorpions began to grow smaller, and at last the air refused to disgorge more of them. I knew they were not gone forever, because they were nothing more than psychic energy, and that could never be truly destroyed. But by then, I would not care if they encircled him.

Child still sat on the ice, staring where the scorpions had marched but where there was now nothing but scored ice. Approaching his analogue cautiously, I touched him, hunkered before him.

"Child?"

Quiet.

"Child? Speak to me?"

He looked at me. He blinked his eyes. And then chaos broke loose as his insanity boiled through the surface tension of the analogue and swept over me!

I was swept up, up, on a tide of human flesh, of torn arms and legs, of bleeding mouths, broken teeth, shattered bones, burning flesh, splintered eyeballs. Monsters rose in the swell and came toward me, lumbering ogres and swimming reptilian horrors. The arms and mouths in the ocean of human parts attacked me, grasped me and tried to pull me down, bit me and chewed at my unreal psychic flesh.

I felt myself losing hold of my own equilibrium. In a moment, I would spiral over the edge, into madness for the second time. I had recovered only recently, and I knew a second plunge to the bottom of that well would be the last I would ever make. I would fall back into gibbering incoherency, and I would remain there forever. Twice mad is once too often, and the shores of detached logic would never be available to me again.

The nearest ogre reached for me, with his sevenfingered hands, each finger tipped with the fanged mouth of a yellow-eyed snake.

I rolled across the rippling floor of human parts, kicking pieces of bodies up as I went.

The snake fingers missed by inches.

A flurry of mutilated corpses clutched me and pulled me under the surface of the sea.

I fought to air again, through nightmare conglomerations of dead men and women,

"CHILD!" I screamed.

Another ogre thundered down on me.

In the last moment before I could be grasped and dismembered, I did the only thing that would save me. Giving myself over to the basest of my id lusts, radiating bloodhunger and sexual need of the vilest sort, I repelled the ogres and the dragons, forced back the tide of human bodies that tore at me. In seconds, I was back on the blue ice floor where again the analogue of Child sat, tranced.

I circled him. Now I was in the form of one of the great scorpion beasts, mandibles chattering, forked stinging tail raised above my back, ready to attack.

His psychic energy formed a wall against me, but I danced on, broached that wall with my own mind, and leaped upon him, thrashing with him on the floor. This time, rather than argue with him, rather than plead with him, I devoured his psychic energy, destroyed him, absorbed him, and dissipated his shattered mind throughout my own.

Child no longer existed. I had killed him. But now I was in total control of his body. I left that place, made it dissolve around me. I made the mountain appear, and I climbed it, entered the caves through which I had first come down into Child's subconscious mind. In moments, I had freed myself, and was looking out at the world through Child's eyes, encased, again, in real flesh