We felt a wrenching of irresistible power, and our soul fled that body, time and place. We soared outward into darkness, our silver cord trailing away behind us. It stretched to its full extent, vibrated frantically for a moment like an overtightened viol string, then snapped with an utter finality that left us feeling sick. The cord trailed along behind us for a moment, then disintegrated. And at that instant I experienced a wrenching sensation of separation.

The soul of Alexander Robbins continued on its way to the Other Side, as it was supposed to. I was diverted to some other destination.

As I streaked through the void, I found myself thinking, Wow! Now I understand why Shaun was so adamant about Wish and me not facing Castevet together; we're too close! If she were endangered, I'd blow my concentration so bad that I wouldn't be able to focus on fighting Castevet decently! Castevet obviously knew that as Swarthmoore, and he played on it. And Alex and Bridget and Sir Alfred all lost their lives because of it. But not this time around!

And then another thought occurred to me: The longer I was there, the more I found myself thinking in the way people spoke, back then! It was like I was absorbing everything about who I was, in that past life!

From beside me, I heard someone say, "Of course. That was the entire purpose of the exercise. By now you should know everything Alex knew, so far as psychic development is concerned. In combination with what you already knew, it should be sufficient to make you a powerful adversary to the demon we face."

I looked around, and found Running Fox beside me, and he was changing form, morphing toward something animal-like. Startled, I looked to the other side and found Burnett there, grinning like a fox eating corn, and morphing toward an animal form as well. I looked down at myself, and realized with some surprise that I was taking on an animal form too!

I looked back up at Running Fox to ask what in the world was going on, and in place of the figure of a man was now a white fox: A fox with three brown eyes.

I gulped and looked back around at Burnett, and found a hulking red bear beside me.

I looked down at myself, and discovered that I'd been transformed into a massive, golden lion: A creature easily three times the size of the bear!

Before I could gather my wits enough to speak, light and heat exploded into being around us, and the three of us were coming to a landing on a ledge running along the perimeter of a massive, roughly circular cavern. The center of the cavern was a lake of fire. What looked like a volcanic vent in the wall on the far side spewed yellow-hot lava into the lake, keeping the inferno going nonstop. At the center of the volcanic lake, a massive outcropping of rock reared from the lava, ending in a mesa-like top a hundred feet and more above the flames. And crouching at the center of this plateau was something I'd only seen in books on mythology: A basilisk!

According to legend, a basilisk hatches out from the unfertilized egg of a chicken. The front half looks like a rooster down to just below the legs, and where the bird-tail should be is the body of a serpent. That was what this thing looked like, except that it was done up in various shades of black, with only a rim of blood-red to its beak, a blazing red comb and wattles, red-tipped claws on its feet and fiery red snake eyes to give any real touches of color. From head to tail, it must have measured twenty feet in length, at the very least.

That first assessment didn't hold for long. Its size seemed to be a changeable thing. One instant it looked no more than twenty long, and the next it looked almost fifty feet long, and correspondingly larger in all pertinent dimensions. I didn't like the looks of that at all.

It spotted us as we settled to the ledge on the edge of the lake of fire and reared up, flapping its too-small wings, reaching for us with its claws, and opening its beak to scream at us in challenge. Its scream sounded more like the cry of Godzilla than any bird I'd ever heard. I had no doubts as to who and what this thing was. Everything about it said Nicodemus Castevet. And it meant to destroy us all, if it could.

Running Fox gathered himself for a leap and glanced around at me, all three brown eyes squinted against the glare of the lake. "Be wary of its breath, The breath of basilisks is legended to be poison. And some basilisks were reported to be able to breathe fire, like dragons."

He leaped out over the lake, soaring above the flames like a bird. Even though he had no wings, he could fly, here, just as I had in my lucid dreams.

On the other side of me, Burnett flashed me a tense grin - which, since he had the facial features of a bear, now, turned out to be an intimidating sight - and added, "And never look into its eyes directly. According to legend, the stare of a basilisk can turn a living creature to stone. Here, I don't know what its stare can do, but you can bet on it being bad news!"

I nodded acknowledgment. He gathered himself and leaped away across the lake after Running Fox. I took a deep breath, nearly choked on the sulfurous fumes coming off the lake of fire, gathered myself and leaped after them. If they could fly across this inferno, so could I. Besides, I'd flown on my way in to this place, so if I'd done it before, I could do it again. I kept that thought firmly in mind, and sure enough, I sailed across the inferno, well above the flames. But not quite high enough, apparently; the flames were hot enough to singe the fur on my legs and belly, but - thankfully - not enough to do me any real harm.

The basilisk reared up to meet us, voicing another challenge, then it came to meet us. Its wings were too small to carry it effectively, so it had to move by fluttering its wings to support the forward part of its body as much as possible, dragging itself along with its massive, serpentine coils.

As we reached the plateau and tried to land, the basilisk reared up at us, supporting its forward body on its fluttering wings and uncoiling its lower body violently in order to push itself into the air. It slashed at Running Fox with its beak and claws, and if it had touched him, it probably would have torn him to shreds on the spot.

But Running Fox lived up to the last word in his name, and his astral image. Just as the basilisk reared up at him, he sideslipped and shot past his attacker, coming down behind the monster. He whirled upon touching the plateau, and sank his teeth into the basilisk's tail, wringing a roar of pain and surprise from the creature. The basilisk thrashed wildly, dislodging Running Fox and hurling him halfway across the plateau. He landed on all fours, catlike, and streaked back to the attack.

Burnett took advantage of the basilisk's distraction to rake a massive, clawed forepaw along the basilisk's head, just behind and below the beak, as he came in for a landing, setting off another of those steam-whistle shrieks. The basilisk reared, shaking its head in pain and spraying droplets of a thick, dark liquid across the plateau...its version of blood, no doubt...and then turned and snapped at the red bear viciously as it dropped toward the plateau behind it. Burnett avoided the attack - just barely - and came down on the basilisk's tail in turn, sinking claws and teeth into it.

The basilisk reared and shrieked again. I took advantage of its distraction and swooped in to rake foreclaws across its comb. Black ichor sprayed across my fur, but that was the least of my worries.

As I touched down, Burnett charged past me, scrambling up the length of the basilisk's body. He leaped from the upper part of the monster's snake-body and slashed at the rooster-head, catching it just below the left eye.

The basilisk reared again, letting out a scream that shook the entire cavern and threatened to bring stalactites raining down on us. A huge wing caught Burnett and sent him tumbling away, to land heavily on the plateau's edge.

Before it could go after him, Running Fox hit it from the other side, trying for its right eye but missing because of the way the basilisk was thrashing about. Instead, he sank his teeth into the wattles below the eye and held on grimly, struggling and clawing and tearing at the fleshy flap determinedly, distracting the monster from Burnett.

Unfortunately, the ploy didn't work all that well. The basilisk shook him off and sent him flying away, tumbling and squalling like a drop-kicked puppy. With the irritation of the fox gone, it turned its attention to the bear that had just wounded it, and lunged.

It if got to Burnett, it could throw him off the plateau. Burnett had landed heavily, and he was obviously hurt somewhat by the impact. So if Castevet threw him off into the lake, he might not be able to get himself airborne in time to save himself. And considering what the passage over the lake of fire had done to the fur on my underside, I had no doubt that falling into that inferno could spell the end of Burnett; at least, for this lifetime. I couldn't allow that.

I lunged for the basilisk's tail, sank my teeth into it deep, and backed away, hard. The impact of the basilisk's massive body snapping to a halt because of this threatened to snap the bones in all four of my legs like candy canes and shred my paws on the rough stone of the plateau top, but I held on grimly and just tried all the harder. It worked. I managed to jerk it to a halt just short of its goal.

Running Fox charged in from the side and sank his teeth into its comb. The basilisk reared, shrieking even louder, this time. And when it came back down, Burnett gathered himself, reared up to meet it and slashed at an eye in an effort to blind it.

He was successful. He caught it squarely in the eye and it reared back, spraying more black ichor across the scene. Unfortunately, Burnett still wasn't properly recovered from his fall, and when the basilisk snapped at him in retaliation for the injury, it caught him in the shoulder.

Burnett roared in pain and backed away. Blood streamed down his shoulder, matting the red fur into a blackish-looking mess. The basilisk craned its head around, searching for the bear with its good eye, beak wide open. A vile-looking green fog began to spew from it. I couldn't let this monstrosity get its beak or claws on Burnett again, or gas him with something deadly. I sank my teeth in deeper, dug my foreclaws into its tail and began backing away with all my might. My legs felt as if they were going to shatter at every step, but this was more important than pain; we were fighting for our lives, and just possibly for the lives of every human being, cetacean and Great Ape on Planet Earth. If the demons won, they probably wouldn't stop with killing off Mankind. They'd probably kill every other sentient and borderline-sentient life-form on the planet as well, just for good measure.

Running Fox had managed to hang on through all the thrashing about. He braced all four feet against Castevet's head and began tearing at his comb just as hard as he could. The basilisk began thrashing about viciously, still spewing that poisonous fog, trying to shake both of us loose. Unfortunately, in the process Castevet caught Burnett in the side with the claws on his right foot, and Burnett went down on his side, covered in blood.

The battle disintegrated into a blur of clawing, biting, thrashing, poison-spewing, poison-avoiding, attack and counterattack. Every time we got a good grip on the monster, it threw us off and we had to dodge beak, claws, wings, tail and poison on the way back in for another attack. Sometimes we managed to avoid Castevet's defenses and counterattacks, sometimes we didn't. In fairly short order all of us were covered in blood, limping at every step and coughing from whatever-it-was the basilisk was blasting at us. It was coming down to hoping that we could defeat Castevet by wearing him down enough to be able to knock him into the inferno below us, and hoping even more that he wouldn't get the upper hand on us and throw us into the fire.

All the time this was going on, a part of my mind kept insisting, This makes no sense! The astral plane is a nonphysical place, so why are we attacking Castevet physically, and how is it we're doing physical damage to one another, and bleeding, and everything?

And then another part of my mind reminded the first part of what Ashtoreth had told me: "This is a manifestation of the astral plane that you can comprehend."

And through the battering I was getting from Castevet's basilisk form, I realized, Of course! Maybe the astral plane is a nonphysical place, but I'm accustomed only to the physical world, so some part of my mind is automatically interpreting whatever's happening here in physical terms! Maybe none of us - or even this place - is truly physical, but we are doing damage to one another in some way, and this is how my mind's interpreting it all!

Unfortunately, this realization did nothing to alleviate any of the pain or damage I was sustaining. We were all weakening steadily. I could see it in all of us, but all we could do was hang on, and hope for the best. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew this: We were in a place that had me, Burnett, and Running Fox at a disadvantage. The energies here were hostile to us. At the same time, those energies were beneficial to Castevet; but if he remained here for long, they'd begin to burn him out. He had to deal with us before he reached that point, or he lost. And by the same token, we had to hold out long enough to wear him down to the point where he'd begin overloading, no matter what those energies did to us!

I could see that Castevet was beginning to weaken as well, but he was losing ground far more slowly than we were; and that fact scared the living daylights out of me. The Professor had promised he'd be here when the battle came, but so far there'd been no sign of him, and I was beginning to lose hope...