There!' he told Lyraq; and Lyraq swung his music-rifle around, tuned it up to a 
high-pitched hum, and aimed it close to the creature's hiding place.
   Immediately, the creature reappeared, and Lyraq fired. With an ear-splitting chord, 
the creature burst apart into a shower of black fragments. But the fragments, instead of 
dropping sideways to the floor or down to the wall or wherever the Night Warriors might 
have expected them to drop, came hurtling toward them, and lashed into them in a stinging 
shower of broken shell and bits of claw. One of the spines caught Arkestrax across the 
cheek, and with a wild squeal of metal against marble, he almost lost control of his 
stone-cutter. Another piece stung Reblax across the shoulder and left a glutinous 
squiggle of thick yellow liquid across his faceplate.
   Now another cockroach-thing appeared at the door and scurried across the floor of the 
church; then another, and another, until the floor was thick with them.
   'How much longer with that damned staircase?' Oromas I shouted. 'All we want is a 
bridge, not St. Patrick's Cathedral!' Even before the echoes of his shouting had been 
blown away by the gusting gale, the air around the Night Warriors was stiff with flying 
insect-spines, thousands of them. They rattled and cascaded against their armor, stuck 
into their legs and arms, and bristled out of their helmets. The cockroach-things were 
lifting their claws and, with a sharp downward sweep, releasing scores of their own black 
spines.
   Ex'ii activated two of his discs, hesitated for a moment while he mentally programmed 
them, then let them fly. Glowing brightly, they flashed away from his helmet and flew in 
tight formation up through the gloomy church, weaving in and out between the pillars. The 
cockroach-things showered the discs with spines, but Ex'ii had anticipated that. The 
discs oscillated furiously, so that the spines were scattered in all directions.
   The discs swooped silently right to the upper quarter of the church, illuminating it 
for a moment with their rainbow brightness, and then without hesitation they came 
slashing down the left-hand wall in a perfect series of 6-shaped patterns, one after the 
other, at exactly the height of the cockroach-things' heads. The church was filled with a 
hideous screaming sound as hundreds of insect-heads dropped to the opposite wall in an 
unstoppable torrent, followed by shuddering, headless bodies. Within seconds, almost all 
of the cockroach-things were heaped up on the wall, their limbs still twitching, their 
jaws still opening and closing, but undeniably dead.
   'Way to go, Ex'ii!' said Lyraq. And now Arkestrax's stone staircase was complete, its 
last step fitting with a snug grating sound up against the curved side of one of the 
horizontal pillars.
   The storm that was blowing in through the windows beneath their feet grew even 
fiercer, and it began to rain. The Night Warriors struggled to the foot of Arkestrax's 
steps, and started to climb - Themesteroth first, with his rockets already activated, 
followed by Oromas II and Lyraq and Ex'ii.
   Oromas I was about to climb up when the building started to vibrate once again, low, 
thunderous vibration that they could feel right through their teeth. Arkestrax hesitated 
for a moment, and then he shouted. 'Off the staircase! Off!'
   Without hesitating, the Night Warriors jumped from the staircase down to the floor. 
Themesteroth landed badly, and lay on his side, winded. Lyraq's music-rifle clattered 
against the stone, one high-tension string snapping with an off-key bddoinkk! The 
building shook so violently that their vision was blurred, and massive lumps of masonry 
crashed down through the rows of pillars and bounced against the lower wall. Arkestrax's 
miraculously constructed staircase toppled, and they were left with nothing but smashed 
fragments of stone.
   Up in the church doorway, Reblax saw the dark flickering shape of the shadow-creature.
   'He's getting away!' Oromas I shouted. 'Themesteroth - hit him with a rocket!'
   Themesteroth tried to get up; but something must have been broken, because he fell 
back against the wall, grimacing underneath his faceplate. Oromas II knelt beside him, 
but there was no chance of him being able to fire a rocket without taking off 
Themesteroth's backpack and guidance equipment, and by then it would be far too late.
   'Oromas I - follow me!' yelled Reblax against the mounting screaming of the storm. He 
released the steel crescent from the palm of his hand, and whipped the wire out faster 
and faster and longer and longer, until he was poised on the wall of the church with a 
whistling wire nearly thirty feet long held high above his head.
   Sjffeeeeee, sfffeeeee, sfffeeeeel sang the wire. And then Reblax flicked his wrist, 
and the wire lashed itself tightly around one of the horizontal pillars above their heads.
   Reblax tugged it, to test that it was tight, then braced his feet against the wall, 
'Up!' he shouted at Oromas I. 'If we don't get that creature now, it's going to slash 
Dianne to pieces!'
   Oromas I didn't need to be told twice. He grasped the wire in one hand, clicked down 
two levers on his power-grille, and rose smoothly up the wire until he reached the 
pillar. Straddling the pillar like a lumberjack straddling a fallen tree, he reached down 
and hauled Reblax up to join him.
   Reblax called down to the rest of the Night Warriors, 'Wait here! If you see the 
shadow-creature come back -hit it with everything you've got! Negative power, remember!'
   Oromas II waved to Reblax to show that he had understood. Then Reblax balanced on the 
pillar and spun the wire around his head again, and lashed it around one of the second 
row of pillars, thirty feet above them.
   'Hold on to me!' he told Oromas I.
   Oromas I stood behind him and gripped him tightly around the waist. 'I hope you know 
what you're doing,' he breathed, his voice tinny inside his helmet.
   Trying to save some lives,' Reblax replied.
   The two of them hesitated for a moment, swaying on the rain-slick marble of the 
pillar. But then the building shook once again, and some of the pillars started to drop 
from their pedestals and shatter on the wall beneath them, Lightning flickered in through 
the windows, and they knew that it was now or never. 'Ashapola!' shouted Reblax, and 
launched himself into the air, with Oromas I still clinging to his back. They swung like 
a pendulum beneath the pillar; and then, as they swung toward the church's main doors, 
Reblax released the catch that locked the wire to his wrist. The two of them hurtled 
through the open doors like tumblers in a circus.
   'Grab something! Reblax yelled, snatching at the doorhandle. Oromas I reached out for 
the open door, but missed, and fell down the church's vertically angled steps and the 
mosaic courtyard in front of it, bouncing off a wall, rolling through an open gateway, 
and then plunging down a muddy street, trying to dig his fingers into the mud to slow 
himself down.
   Reblax, swinging precariously from the door-handle, glanced upward, and was just in 
time to see the black figure of the shadow-creature disappearing up an alleyway. But 
there was nothing he could do without Oromas I - Oromas I was his key to returning to the 
waking world. He swung twice more, then allowed himself to drop through the courtyard and 
fall through the gateway into the same muddy street.
   He rolled, slithered, bumped, and finished up colliding with a garden wall, where 
Oromas I had already come to rest. Winded but unhurt, he looked over the edge of the 
wall, and saw plum trees that grew sideways out of the grass, and birds that flew 
vertically up and down. But the oddity of the garden was nothing compared with the stark, 
vertiginous terror of looking down and seeing nothing but empty sky, and the sun burning