The boy walks through vast halls, impossibly large....as though built for giants. The furniture, the tapestries and artwork decorating the walls, all are immense. More than that, they are all warped somehow. Distorted. Wrong. Statues leer as he passes them, figures in paintings undulate in twisted ecstacy, and behind him the boy hears whispers.

He does not turn. He knows that no one is there.

Eyes downcast, the boy winds his way through the corridors until he comes to a massive archway, flanked by a pair of silver-clad guards. "What do you want, freak?"

"....the Kyrul sent for refreshment...." Without looking up, the boy raises the tray, until it begins to shake.

A knowing smirk crosses one guard's face. "I can imagine. Very well, you may pass." He waves the boy through, and silken curtains lift out of the way.

Sounds call out to the boy as he makes his way through the grand chambers, sounds of lust and of pain, coming from ahead. The rustle of sheets, the sliding of skin against skin....sounds all too familiar to him, and, above them all, the harsh grunts of the Kyrul as he has his way, the whimpers of his latest plaything, forever ruined.

"Ah! Boy! Set that down!"

The Kyrul's voice booms in the boy's ears as he sets the tray upon the indicated table and turns to go. Yet something stops him, a sense of someone familiar. Raising his eyes for the first time, the boy looks upon the two figures in the bed. One is the Kyrul, oblivious to all but sating his hunger as he reaches for the tray, but the other—smaller, almost dwarfed by her tormentor's bulk—looks back at the boy with eyes that plead for rescue.

Eyes of solid color, so much like his own. Eyes of deepest azure.

+ + +

His lashes flew open wide as Ebon awoke suddenly, the night's silence broken only by the gentle rhythm of Phen's breathing beside him. It had been a dream, nothing more. A dream that he thought had been banished from his sleeping hours years before, after Bram's mindwar.

Why was it haunting him again?

After kissing his wife's forehead as she slept, Ebon rose and crossed the bedroom to the nursery alcove where Olivia lay in her crib, the charm gifted by Colleen keeping her safe. Then he threw a robe on over his nightclothes and slipped out of the room and down the hall, towards the children's rooms Doran was at the manor, but his other daughter remained here at the townhouse. "Azure," he whispered, easing the door open and softly stepping inside. Had the dream's return been a warning from her namesake that the child was in danger"

No. She slumbered peacefully, protected as her sister was by a charm. She was safe.

Yes, she's safe from me. For now.

The voice came from behind him, and Ebon's black eyes turned white-hot with fury as he spun around to see....nobody.

Then mocking laughter echoed in his ears, fading as if moving away, drawing him out. He followed that laugh through the townhouse, downstairs and out into the courtyard. "Enough!" he hissed, eyes still blazing. "Show yourself, you monster!"

Certainly. A speck of light flashed past, and another and another, building up with larger shapes interspersed, like something exploding in reverse. Which, in fact, is exactly what it was.

When it was done, a translucent figure stood before Ebon, clad in fine robes and topped with an ornate crown. Yet beneath that crown, the eye sockets lay open and empty, save for two cold, orange pinpoints of light. "Well, boy?" the apparition asked with a sneer. "Aren't you going to kneel before the Kyrul, your lord and master?"

To be continued....

The city around them had changed, grown indistinct; a faint mist hovered in the air. Ebon shoved the Kyrul away from him and moved into a fighting stance. "You'll have to be quicker than that to bring....me down." Realization struck at that moment.

He had touched the ghost.

Dark eyes turned towards the Kyrul. "What have you done?" Without waiting for a reply, he reached out with his mind to the rock he'd used earlier. If I can touch him, then this should- It didn't move.

"Hah!" Mocking laughter rang in Ebon's ears. "I've brought you into the realm of spirit, boy! You can no more touch the physical world with your mind than you can with your body! But I can touch you!" The Kyrul's fingers lengthened, stretching into lethal talons, and he leapt at Ebon, raking those claws across the man's chest. "Touch you, and hurt you!"

Ebon rolled with the attack, managing to turn a deep slice into a painful but bearable cut. He sprang to his feet and circled, keeping his attention focused on his foe. "You need to catch me first." Lunging to one side, he ducked under the Kyrul's counter and punched hard several times before finishing with a jumping kick that would've cracked the ribs of a living man and moving away once more. "Remember, though, that if I'm in your reach, you're in mine!"

The Kyrul's ghostly form lay still for a moment. Then his eyes flew open and turned towards Ebon. "You think so?" Both of his arms lashed out, lengthening to cross the distance between the two combatants. One hand gripped Ebon by the throat while the other took hold of his left arm and pulled. Feeling his shoulder tearing and dislocating, Ebon stifled a cry, not wanting to give the other any satisfaction.

Standing, the Kyrul approached his prey, still holding him fast. "Fool. I have had years to acclimate my consciousness to this realm!" The hand at Ebon's throat dropped low, once more shaping into talons that punched at his gut, driving deep within. "You never had a chance."

He is wrong, Ebon. A faint voice seemed to whisper in his ear. You have the strength of mind. You can defeat him!

As his captive slumped in his grip, the Kyrul released Ebon to drop into a heap at his feet. He leaned low, smirking in victory as he taunted the man. "I will enjoy having your essence in chains within as I possess your body, and with it, your life. Pity your wife and family, slain by unknown assailants before you could stop them. Your mongrel friends will die, and the people of this wretched city will weep as their children are taken forever at the slaves of my flock, and through it all you will watch through my eyes, your own no longer!" Pausing in his rant, the tyrant looked to the man lying before him. "Doesn't that just fill your heart with despair, with impotent rage?"

"No." Ebon's voice was low, but it held an determined edge like cold steel. "Because I won't let that happen."

Invisible waves of mental force flooded from Ebon, slamming into the Kyrul and lifting him high into the air. He gasped and tried to regain his grip, but his taloned fingers snapped and broke, dissolving into mist. It was the Kyrul's turn to scream. "AAAAAAAAAAAGH! How"!"

Standing, Ebon looked up at him, the ragged hole in his gut closing as his dislocated shoulder righted itself. "You talk too much." White fires gleamed in the depths of his jet-black eyes, and the force that held the Kyrul gripped more tightly. "You should have finished me quickly, before I had time to realize the truth of your earlier words, that my mind and body had the same limitations of touch. Of course, they also had the same abilities, so if my body could touch you, hold you, hurt you....so could my mind."

"You can't hold me here forever, though, boy!" The Kyrul's words were spewed like a cobra's venom. "You are still bound by the flesh, however strong your gifts. Even if you entrap me, in time you'll tire and then....you're mine!"