There was a pause, while this sank in.

“Yes, Kastyr Mortenn. I know where you’re going with this. He took our names with him, I’m afraid.

“Maybe, T-Temcar Cossoran. Maybe I’ll let you go.

“And no, Rathal Overlorn. Never. Is that really the death with which you’d choose to thread your soul, stitch the straitjacket tight? There is no escape from yourself that way. Don’t anchor your spirit to the darkness. You can’t imagine what it is, to descend forever.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? Hahahaha!”

I flinched, cringing, as the voice went on endlessly.

“You thought you were freeing yourselves from the Thirsty Tree, but now you’re going to have to sit here with me for eternity. Oh yes, time’s reins are in my fist! Hahahahahahahahaha! Could you even imagine it – please, look at each other – look at the looks on each others’ faces! Even with all my gifts, I couldn’t feign that sincerity! The purity of the horror you feel! Oh, you’ll come to love it here, my dear companions. Let’s take a look now, take a look in your heads and see… oooh… oh, my…”

We stood there in abject terror, and when the realisation came over me I reacted instantly, reaching for the only thing I thought might have a chance, a sliver of a possibility of getting through –

“No! What are you doing? Don’t –“

He wasn’t able to stop me exerting my power. He wasn’t an enchanter, exactly – just a telepath. Either that, or he wasn’t getting through my shield – if he had any sense, Tem would also be covering us from psychic invasion.

All we knew for sure was that this ethereal stranger with the child’s voice could stop the imps from entering. He possessed a barrier, of sorts, against interplanar travel. Something like a film, a valve I couldn’t penetrate with my power.

Maybe it could be punched-through. What I needed was an ethereal eldritch, to be my fist. The interaction with the alternate plane would be minimal. The barrier-film at its thinnest.

I channelled the jadeway, and when my most powerful fey appeared it was a swirling sheet of burning malachite that birthed her. I heard Avaelar gasp at the sight as she stepped clear.

The corrupted unicorn was taller than I remembered, black as midnight, the dark trident-horn atop her head sputtering with shadows. When she entered the cave, the ground under her hooves broke asunder in vast pieces. The wall behind her toppled as her portal melted, revealing nothing behind it – no stone, no passages or caverns.

Nothingness. The space between stars.

The whole illusion went snapping away into chasms, the ground crumbling under our feet, consuming us – and we fell down without moving, until everything joined with the emptiness around and above us. Zabalam held out a wavering light, now successfully clinging to Avaelar’s leg.

We stood, on the very surface of the void. Looking down, I felt like I’d stepped off a cliff in a time-lock, waiting for the irresistible downwards impulse to grip me. Yet there was nothing, no loss of control: if anything it was the opposite. I could even balance on the destroyed left foot.

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What is this non-space?

‘You can’t imagine what it is, to descend forever.’

The gremlin’s dim radiance didn’t touch Gilaela – she could only be seen in this absolute, impenetrable blackness by the whites of her eyes, shining like ivory, and the yet-deeper darkness of the unlight flickering between the splintered spurs of her horn.

“You did well to call on me, Master,” she said, her voice far sweeter than normal. Just as I’d expected, there was something severely off with her. “This is a particularly dangerous creature, and we are within it. I can sense its madness.” A tremor of rage entered the honeyed cadence, breaking through her facade: “I will very much enjoy watching it die.”

“Within it?” Tem cried. “What do you mean, ‘within it’?”

“Can you get us out of here?” I asked her directly. I had the same fears as Tem, but –

“No, I cannot,” she said – but then she lowered her head at Temcar. “He can.”

We all looked at him, but then I looked back at the horned horse.

How does she know what he is?

Her baleful eyes seemed to be fixed on him, like all the others’.

“Why didn’t you sense this, enchanter?” Then she bent her neck. “Or you, gremlin? You almost caused our master’s downfall!”

Zab lowered his face in shame, and his light dimmed yet further.

“No!” I stepped towards her, raising a hand to stroke her neck. “It’s not anyone’s fault. Let’s not start that.” I let the inky fur slip between my fingers, felt the taut muscles like boulders beneath her skin. “So, how do we proceed?”

Tem shrugged his shoulders, looking around blankly.

“Rath?”

The arch-diviner wouldn’t even meet my eyes.

But then I noticed that Zabalam had a devious expression slowly spreading across his piggy face. When I raised an eyebrow at him he hissed in glee.

“I understand it!” came the gremlin’s thin, reedy voice. “At least, I think I do. I can see the shape of its thoughts now. Urgh! It’s asleep? Thanks, Princess!”

Gilaela laughed amiably, and, for a second or two, I got the impression everything was going to turn out alright.

Then Zabalam reached for Temcar’s hand and focussed his fey-magic on the darkness about us.

This mad eldritch slumbered, and like a fool I’d unknowingly led everyone into its dream. Now the courtyard of its ancient mind unfolded, visible for the first time as the infinite-seeming darkness gave way, cracking apart as though it had been nothing more than a sphere of flawless black stone surrounding us, sealing us in all along.

The dream moved, and we moved with it.

We stood under ethereal twilight in an untended garden. Its high hedges crept with vines, silhouettes against a purple sky. The huge fountains were silent, still. Quiet but insistent winds pressed at my torn prisoner-clothing, guiding my torn prisoner-body, making me stagger and shake even as Avaelar took my weight to steady me.

And strewn all about the creature’s courtyard, its nightmare-garden, were anguished statues of silvery stone. Men and women naked, carved in their moment of ultimate distress. The creatures depicted were of varying species, size, recognisability… the crudeness of their shaping only lent to their inhuman plight. Each one had its hands upraised in supplication to the purple sunset sky, or clasped in agony over some grim wound. Their lips were parted in unending screams.

A memento, and a warning: this wasn’t a garden, was it? It was more like a graveyard.

Do these statues represent the parts of its consciousness that died?

There was no time to really think it over. Even as our psychics broke the seal of darkness and let us into the cursed landscape, the statues started to awaken, diorite sinews stretching, dry eyes shifting to sightlessly behold us.

Then they hopped down from their pedestals, leaden joints squealing as they headed towards us with eerie speed. They didn’t run, but walked methodically, surprising suppleness in their motions.

We were surrounded, outnumbered, dozens of formidable-looking foes surging in to confront us directly. They might’ve been fantastical constructions, more imagined than real, but they were no less real than we were right now, travelling as we were through the plane’s interpretation of the guardian’s madness, subject to the domain’s laws like all else to be found here.

It didn’t matter. I was pleased.

At last, I thought. Finally, something I’m used to.

Something I can fight.