Man, I was beat. Ever since that night of Gat s.h.i.+em's fire, I had been thrown into one situation after another.

There was no time to rest. I had to get Death back into his body and see that the world was safe. Especially now that it was clear of Moralta's intentions to transform h.e.l.l's Labyrinth into a big tsazcuth portal to Zyon. This would bring in a score of demons to destroy Sol.

I was still uncertain of Abraham Reiner and Aidoneus's visit to Gat s.h.i.+em. What were they really after that day? I probably should have asked that question before that X-scar freak fell off the platform. He may have slipped out some information unintentionally.

"Ugh!" I smacked my head. Hoped it would shake out smart thoughts. Nothing.

"Why're you beating yourself up? You figured out that horrible demon's plot for this place. Your good fortune has brought us this far. Think better of yourself, Baby Brother." Death's smooth voice rea.s.sured my self-esteem.

My mind reeled back to the time before the attacks at Gat s.h.i.+em.

I never saw the visitors because I was with Bulldog at the pond. Since it was hidden from the temple grounds, they would not have seen me either. It was evening when I had returned. So they would've been long gone. Pesti and the others had said nothing about their visit. I was none the wiser.

Why didn't Pesti tell me about the visitors? What did Abraham mean when he said he had owed a favor to the family Pesti had forgotten? Sure, it was common knowledge to all the monks that the four of us weren't blood related. This knowledge coming out of Abraham's mouth made me squeamish.

"Whether people know of our biological families are irrelevant. The four of us were surrendered children to Gat s.h.i.+em. We're a family. That's all that matters. I must be attentive now. Moralta and Brystagg are fighting with magic again." Death's voice became silent.

A light tap to my shoulder drew my attention back to Colin. I faced his thankful smile.

"Are you okay?" I weakly signed. My hands were still shaky from the earlier heavy lifting and hauling.

"Fantastic." Colin signed with a c.o.c.ky grin.

He looked up to the metal. His eyes were squinting through his gla.s.ses at a symbol of a blossoming lotus flower stamped into the square panel within arm's reach.

He raised his arm. Placed his palm on the symbol. Closed his eyes and became still like he was listening to the vibrations and sensations of the metal. An abrupt jolt made his hand recoil. He opened his eyes and faced me.

"This is the panel opening for the Lotus Core circuit board. It's the nervous system of the labyrinth. Basically controlling everything." He signed.

"How do you know this?"

"Anyone who wears a maplink knows. Why we should know is one of the unexplained facts. But I suspect it was a flaw in the bridge's design. Lucky for us," he answered and added a question. "How did you know I'd be aware of this?"

"I didn't. I just hoped that since you were a Captain and the Light Grimoire, you'd know something useful." I causally signed back and coped a stinging finger flick to my forehead.

Looks like I had insulted the man. Like I cared.

Shrill cries and a disturbance within the air reminded us of the battle occurring above us. No time for dawdling.

"Can you open the panel?" I asked

"And do what?"

"Reverse the dimension slip, so the Lotus Bridge is back in the correct time stream."

"I could. Fiddling with time is tricky. It's dangerous as you know. Then there's the interwork of the Lotus Core's—" Colin paused his explanation.

"Huh?! How did this knowledge come into my maplink?" He subconsciously signed out his surprise.

"Colin?" I prompted.

"The demon had used his own crystal for the dimension slip right? It may be possible to use a similar method. I would need zirconia or a similar crystal carrying residue of the correct time to lock on. Do you still have that key crystal I gave you?" Colin asked with surety.

I frowned, thinking that the crystal wouldn't work since it had been used in a spell and in another time period.

I searched the junk in my memory. Frustrated at the amount of useless stored trivia garnished from Bulldog's secret back editions of Velvet Rose news magazines and photogravure books. An image of a sparkly marble surfaced to mind.

I carefully rummaged through the inside of my belt pouch. Ignoring the strange emptiness I felt at not sensing Small Cap in there.

"I think I have something better," I whispered as I raised the Nikiaku Ball into Colin's view.

"Will this do? It's from our time. Been in my pouch since after my trip to a theater. Never touched it since then."

Colin responded with an overexcited grin and hand signage. "More than perfect for the job."

His hands gracefully danced around the lotus symbol as he said a spell.

The symbol glowed.

We heard four clicks triggered behind the panel. He pressed the square panel, so it came loose and pulled it off. We swapped objects. I took the metal from him. He held the nikiaku ball tightly.

The core's inside was a sight to behold. It was a white s.p.a.ce sectioned off in four distinct portions. Further, broken down by four diagonal lines to form eight pie sections.

Each section was lit up with tiny gold crystal dots that made constellation patterns and formed a series of gold paths, which intertwined with each other. There were also some gray, green and red dots twinkling in random spots, spread out across the pie sections.

I gasped with awe when I saw the gold dots move around, disappear and reappear; pus.h.i.+ng the other colored dots into different areas or making their lights turn off completely.

"They're the walls and everything moving about the labyrinth. Right?"

Colin nodded. His forehead was furrowed with a serious frown.

I followed his line of sight to the far left of the panel quadrants. Noticing the excessive white s.p.a.ce. It was a contradiction to the right margin area, which was almost off the edge where some dots dangled precariously. The top margin area was hidden from view and the bottom was a lot of white s.p.a.ce.

The sight made me gulp. The First Tier of h.e.l.l's Labyrinth was obviously out of kilter.

Colin's hand swiped over the pie section panels to change the colors of the crystal b.a.l.l.s.

The white was replaced with blue, the red to black, gray to orange and green to pink. A different tier? Likely, since he repeated the hand motion two more times, causing the crystal b.a.l.l.s to flash a different set of colors in different places.

He eventually returned to the first view with the abnormal quant.i.ty of s.p.a.ce at the left and bottom margins. The constellation panel was inching dangerously out of existence towards the right.

His hand danced around the left s.p.a.ce with a graceful motion. A lotus flower outline was drawn to the surface with fine threads of gold light from the tree roots dangling from the top margin. The flower's disc was a blank s.p.a.ce.

He held the nikiaku ball before the flower disc and said a spell. I hoped his fancy magi-mojo was the fix.

I gasped when the ball was sucked into the flower disc.

The scaffold trembled beneath us. I caught Colin's hint to hold to something tight when he grabbed the panel from me and slammed it over the Lotus Core to seal it back up.

Winds whipped our skin. Static charged the air, raising the tiny hairs on my arms and neck. My vision blurred. To be accurate. The vision before me blurred and churned out of focus. Almost like we were imploding!

"What happened?!" Death shouted in my inner ear.

"Hang tight to your knickers. s.h.i.+t, c.r.a.p, Buddha protect us. Think we're gonna implode!" I mentally c.r.a.pped myself.

"NO. WE'RE WARPING!" He yelped.

Howling and the clanging of metal a.s.saulted our eardrums. I held the scaffold's rails with all my might and groaned when I felt Colin's weight pressed against my body as he clung to the same rails.

The howling was unbearable. Flashes of white were blinding my eyes.

In a blink, I was—