Then Reality reasserted itself, and he was free to savor existence again. "Get up," said a voice.

Jadeite grumbled. He didn't want to get up, and he wasn't going to if he didn't damn well feel like it.

"Get up," repeated the voice.

"Go away," Jadeite said. He turned over, and promptly muffled a shriek of pain. His entire midriff and chest felt like it had been charred then rubbed over with sandpaper.

"Jadeite," said the voice, absolutely dripping with detached serpentine truthfulness, "if you do not get up this instant I shall leave you to the lesser demons. Do you understand?"

Jadeite got up as quickly as he was able to do so. He recognized the deep sibilant baritone now: the voice of the Dai Shahre.

He couldn't see anything worth a damn: the surrounding landscape (if that's what you wanted to call it) was a cold mist of nothingness. There wasn't even a color: not black, not gray, not white, not purple. It was simply -- nothingness. Jadeite couldn't even see his body, which was beginning to scare him. No sooner had this thought crossed his mind, however, when he was able to ascertain various colors swirling around where he assumed his body to be; when the colors coalesced into firm substance, Jadeite saw, to his relief, that his body was again visible, standing on/in/surrounded by nothing. The Dai Shahre materialized to his left. The Shondarin warlord was still wearing that damned heavy cloak that enveloped him from throat to floor (?); even though Jadeite was practically broiling from the acrid heat, the Dai Shahre was shivering, as if in severe cold. The staff upon which the crippled warlord habitually leaned was gone; Jadeite was too preoccupied with his pain and his shock to think about this.

"Where are we?" Jadeite managed.

The Dai Shahre smiled. It was a real smile, one that looked actually happy. This scared the crap out of Jadeite. The Dai Shahre wasn't the sort of man who smiled about anything.

"We are in the Void," said the Dai Shahre.

________________________________________________________________________

Sailoruranus opened her eyes, reached up a hand to find out what the sticky stuff on her face might be.

She brought away her hand gooey purple. It wasn't her blood then; as far she could recall, human blood was red.

She raised herself up, looking around for Sailormoon. The Princess had to be kept safe; Uranus hated herself for it, but she would willingly sacrifice even her beloved Michiru if by that means the Moon Princess could be kept free of harm.

Uranus shakily stood, noted that she was literally covered in purple blood. Most of it had dried to a thick clotty gooey mess of deep rich imperial purple; some of it was still fresh, slimily coursing its way down her body. Her Space Sword was also rimed with gore; however, some of it was red. Oh, terrific. Which one of my girls did I accidentally hit during that quake?

Leaning against the stone wall, Uranus looked around, focussing her blurry vision on a point that glowed crimson, towards the center of the chamber. As more details swam into her vision, Uranus smiled weakly. She'd found both of the people for whom she was searching: Sailormoon and Sailorneptune.

Painfully, Uranus limped towards the dimly-scarlet plinth. She noted in passing that there were a helluva lot of black-clad bodies on the floor. She only cared, or indeed noticed, because they presented an obstacle course between her and her destination.

Finally, she reached the plinth and the Senshi. Everyone was there: Venus and Mars sitting weakly on the ground, talking to a copper-maned, androgynously beautiful young man; Jupiter and a white-haired white-cloaked man with a grim expression stood watch over the small group on the floor; Mercury, the winged Eternal Sailormoon, and Neptune clustered around the body of a young woman whose throat had been torn open by a sharp blade. Kneeling by the girl, eyeing the three Senshi with annoyance, was a golden-skinned, black-clad man with eyes of sapphire ice.

Veteran of wounds and war though she was, Uranus couldn't help but gag at the sight of the gash in the girl's throat.

Neptune looked up at her, wearily brushing away aqua-colored hair from her brow. "Hello, love," Neptune sighed. "None of that blood is yours, correct?"

Uranus spared a glance down at herself. She grinned. "Nope. All purple, therefore it all belongs to the flippin' Silver Flames."

The golden-skinned man looked up at that. "How clever of you," he said tonelessly. The words carried a bite that stung, even though Uranus could have sworn that the man didn't change expression. "You wear the lifeblood of four of my comrades. Would you like me to claim blood-price on it?"

Uranus glared. "If you think you can take it," she challenged him.

Neptune winced. "Please, love," she said softly. She laid a placating hand on her impetuous lover's arm. "We can't heal the Princess if kel'Dhearec is not here to act as anchor."

Automatically, Uranus looked at Sailormoon, who, aside from a small gash on her cheek, seemed to be unharmed. "But the Princess is fine," Uranus said, puzzled.

"That Princess," Neptune said, pointing at the prone golden body of the girl.

"She's dead," Uranus said bluntly. "She can't not be."

"She's not dead," said Dhearec. "A very interesting case. Her body ought to be dead, but her soul won't go away. Dai'Merolan shall not be happy."

"Oh, who gives a damn," Uranus muttered. She knelt by the golden woman, caught in her breath as she looked at the still face for the first time. "I'll... be.... damned," she said at last. "Amaterasu."

Dhearec said, "Who?"

"It's not Amaterasu," said two voices at once, both extremely irritated. Tuxedo Kamen gestured for Kunzite to speak first; the silver-haired general nodded his thanks.

"The girl is not the Imperial Goddess," Kunzite said coldly. "She's one of them." He nodded towards Dhearec, the gesture somehow managing to encompass every black-clad Silver Flame in the Dark Kingdom. "And I'd like to know what she's done that the Warlord struck her down."

Dhearec didn't answer; ostensibly he was running through a Healing matrix, trying to coax the spell into infusing the lifeless body with new energy. Sailormoon piped up, "Yes. Why'd that guy kill her, anyway? I mean, just cuz he was gorgeous didn't mean that he's allowed to kill poor defenseless girls --"

"I'm sorry?" said Tuxedo Kamen, looking down at his love. "What was that reason?"

"Nothing," said Moon, trying to look innocent. "Nothing at all."

"Well, I'm free to say that he was beautiful," declared Venus, eyes sparkling.

"He looked just like my sempai," sighed Jupiter, momentarily relaxing her imposing scowl at anyone who ventured too close to Sailormoon.

Zoisite snorted indelicately. "If he looked like your sempai, or to be more accurate if your sempai looked like him," said the copper-maned general, "I'll eat my hat."

He ducked as Jupiter's face clouded over and she aimed a not-entirely-playful punch at his shoulder. "Smartass," she growled under her breath. "He did look like my sempai."

"Yes, well," said Uranus, covering a sigh. "I'd just like to ask a few questions."

"Go right straight on ahead," said Zoisite. "Me being the most intelligent, wonderful, gorgeous, flawless person here, I shall answer them. That is, if Kunzaito-sama won't." He gazed up at his lover from under impossibly long golden lashes; Kunzite smiled in spite of himself and lovingly stroked Zoisite's coppery tresses.

"First question: what in hell just happened?"

Dhearec spoke up immediately. "As soon as the Dai Shahre touched the sigil of Amberlin Jalia, which Jadeite wore on his coat, Reality twisted, taking with it the Dai Shahre, Jadeite, and the ArchDemon."

"Why?" asked Zoisite.

"Why not?"

Zoisite glared at Dhearec; the azure-eyed Shondarin returned the gaze blandly, and said, "The Dai Shahre is a holy man. Did you not see how he greeted the Senshi as if he knew them intimately, how he named them as members of the Host of Heaven? He is the very antithesis of a demon; all of Shondar knows this. For him to actually come into contact with an ArchDemon would necessarily throw both of them into the Void, where presumably the Dai Shahre fights the ArchDemon where they can both unleash their full power." He frowned down at Amberlin Jalia. But if the Dai Shahre is holy, a voice in his mind argued coldly, then how could he strike down a girl whom most believe to be a Saint reborn? He stuffed the irrelevancy behind his eyebrows and concentrated on his task.

Zoisite said, "Um, yes."

Moon said, "I don't care what just happened, all I want to know is: Is that nasty piece-of-work Metallia gone for good?"

"Probably," said Dhearec.

"PROBABLY?" screamed Sailormars. "What the hell is 'PROBABLY?' Why don't you know?"

Uranus cut in: "Will all of you shut up! I want to know if we can leave!"

Everyone stared at her. She said thinly, "Look. This is not Senshi business. The evil is gone. Can't you feel that the air in here is already cleansed? Can't you see that the evil taint is gone from this chamber?"

"Well, yeah," said Moon.

"Yes," said Mars. "I noticed that straightaway. Why is it important? We've already established that Metallia's gone. Good riddance."

"If the evil is gone, then I want to get out of here before I start killing Silver Flames," Uranus said. "They seriously pissed me off, and I just want to say that if I have to look at many more of them, I'm gonna start killing anyone wearing a black coat."

Dhearec glanced down at his uniform, and without batting an eyelash changed his coat to gray.

"Oh, that's hilarious," snapped Uranus. "Clever as hell, you are. Sailormoon. Can we or can we not go home and get the hell outta here?"

Sailormoon bit her lip. "I don't want her to die," she said finally, indicating the fallen Princess Amberlin Jalia. "She was an innocent, and it's not right that she should die."

Dhearec said tonelessly, "The Dai Shahre declared her sacer and nefas, and therefore by Shondarin law she was dead in any case. He merely carried out the sentence." He seemed to be trying to convince himself of this; certainly, his hands never stopped moving over Amberlin Jalia's body, trying out Healing spell after spell.

"To hell with your law," Sailormoon said crossly. "I'm not gonna let her die, you jerk."

Uranus thought she saw Dhearec hide a smile. "Be that as it may," the Madros lord said, "there really isn't anything you can do about it, Sailormoon. I suggest that you take Sailoruranus' suggestion and get out of the Dark Kingdom immediately. Children do not belong on the battlefield."

"Battlefield?" Zoisite said. "The battle, if you want to call it that, is OVER, Shondarin. Didja notice?"

"The battle has not started yet," Dhearec said. "If you haven't noticed, Lord Zoisite, the last act that Metallia made was to reestablish Its links to the youma. I should imagine that every single elemental spirit in the Dark Kingdom should be on its way to attack the Silver Flame outposts. However strong your powers are, you will certainly not be exempt, and we cannot spare any soldiers to protect you. Or, more accurately, we will spare soldiers to protect you, as the safety of children is paramount, but we can ill afford to take those fighters away from the front."

"Great," said Uranus. "We're gone, as soon as Sailormoon gives the OK." "Lords Kunzite and Zoisite," Dhearec said, momentarily giving up with his attempts to revive Amberlin Jalia. "You will wish to go with the Senshi, of course."

Zoisite and Kunzite glanced at each other. Zoisite spoke for both of them: "No way in hell."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, NO, you pompous young snot," Zoisite explained kindly. "Once you Silver Flames get out, we're going to have to help Jadeite with the Dark Kingdom, now won't we, and we really don't feel like leaving the kingdom in your less-than-capable hands. Knowing you aliens, you'll probably find some way to sabotage the midplane so that as soon as the last of you gets out, it'll collapse around our ears."

Dhearec was silent a moment, looking thoughtful. "How interesting. Is that how you think of us?"

Zoisite grinned nastily. "It certainly is, Dhearec-san. So go ahead and get the Senshi out of here. Kunzaito-sama and I will stay and fight. It's been quite some time since I got to kill demons."

The Senshi all looked surprised at this, even though Zoisite and Kunzite had already told them about their rebirths as Endymion's Lord Generals. The Senshi had been inclined to take this with a grain of salt; Tuxedo Kamen had had to dip into his memories of the Silver Millennium to persuade the Senshi that Kunzite and Zoisite were telling the truth. Mars had grudgingly pronounced both of them free of any evil taint, and that had been the end of the matter, even though Moon and Venus still darted suspicious glances at the two Lord Generals from time to time.

Venus said wistfully, "I want to stay, too. I wanna kick some youma butt." Moon hushed her.

"Well, I do," Venus persisted. Jupiter was beginning to look interested. Sailor Venus went on, "Shee, think about how long it's been since we've fought against anyone really cool. There was that business with Galaxia, and before that with Nehelenia, and before that with the Deathbusters, and before that with Dimando and the Black Moon --"

"Dimando looked just like my sempai," sighed Jupiter. "Only he had a purple cape, and I can't remember my sempai ever wearing --"

Uranus roared, "Will the pair of you shut up? Honestly, the amount of nonsense you two spout is likely to drive me maaaaaaaad."

Kunzite took advantage of the thunderstruck silence to say, "Sailoruranus is correct. The Senshi and Prince Endymion -- " Kunzite could not quite bring himself to say 'Tuxedo Kamen' -- "must leave; we will stay behind and fight with the Silver Flames."

A few seconds of silence greeted this rather high-handed decree; then every single Senshi opened her mouth and the uproar began.

________________________________________________________________________

After a couple of moments spent looking around in hopes of any ground markers so he could soothe his roiling stomach, Jadeite gave up. It gave him a distinctly creepy feeling to be standing in the middle of nowhere. It was like the ultimate in sensory deprivation. It was, in fact, a helluva lot like his experience in the crystal. He was feeling very very edgy.

So of course the Dai Shahre's observations about the Void were not at all welcome.

"This is the primary plane of the demons," dai'Merolan said. It didn't help Jadeite's already-queasy stomach to see that dai'Merolan was standing on a different plane altogether, and thus appeared at right angles to Jadeite. The general thought crossly that the Dai Shahre was trying to freak him out on purpose, even though he knew that dai'Merolan was doing nothing of the sort. The Shondarin warlord was far too self-centered to play nasty psychological tricks on people; Merolan was simply far too absorbed in what he was doing to think of people as being important enough to be nasty to.

"We were brought here when I touched you, and my touch freed Metallia Who was channeling through you."

"Why did your touch free an ArchDemon?" Jadeite said. "Something about how Aneiron was going on, that you're some sort of living Saint, or whatever he was saying? Must be interesting," he murmured sarcastically, "being a living god." He closed his eyes in the futile hope that the loss of vision might stem his nausea. Amazingly, it worked.

He could practically hear the bitter smile in the Dai Shahre's voice. "Because I am Awake now, Jadeite, and, being Awake, my will is stronger than that of an ArchDemon."

Jadeite puzzled over this for a moment. Well, whatever. Aneiron had never mentioned that, but it probably wasn't the sort of thing that just popped up in conversation... "So how do we get out of the Void?" He thought of another interesting question. "So Metallia is stuck here forever? She -- I mean, It can't get out again?"

dai'Merolan said calmly, "Metallia is here, yes; I still must change Its Name so It will feel less inclined to get out again. As for ourselves getting out, we will not leave until I am finished."

This was too much. "I don't recall asking to be brought along on your vendetta," Jadeite said coldly, his eyes still closed. "I wish to return to the Dark Kingdom at once."

"Do you dictate to me, now?" the Dai Shahre asked softly. "I don't believe it would be wise, under the circumstances."

Jadeite's eyes flared open, in a flash of sapphire fury. "Well, explain to me these circumstances, explicitly, and stop giving me Gaia-be-damned hints. You swore an oath to me, Dai Shahre, and I -- will -- not -- tolerate being treated as an infant. D'you hear me? I'll not tolerate you lording over me the way you manipulate Aneiron and Dhearec!"

The Dai Shahre looked unimpressed. "This is the Void," he said patiently. "I believe I already explained that. We are here in the flesh, which means that our bodies are physically present in this continuum, instead of our souls. We have phased over into a different concept of Reality. To wit, the Mer'Eliy reality. Everything in this realm must obey the will of the ArchDemons and the ShadowPrince. At this moment, there are literally countless lesser demons surrounding us in their native forms, swirls of chaotic thought and memes. Allaphors, if you will. You will know the greater demons, those who are intelligent enough to have a self-identity, a name, and a gender, by their very substance: a greater demon can form its self into whatever shape it chooses, instead of being forced to subsist as a strand of Shadowy chaos. The ArchDemons usually choose a recognizable mortal form; the ShadowPrince always incarnates Himself as a Shondarin, usually with columnar black eyes. This realm is governed by chaos and by Shadow; your mind tries to make sense of it, and eventually goes mad."

Jadeite digested this. Finally he said, "Charming place."

"It takes some getting used to," the Dai Shahre said cheerfully. "Don't worry. You will not go insane for quite some time, since you have, as you say, sworn an oath to me. Therefore, the Insanity imps will leave you alone unless I abandon you."

Jadeite eyed him. Perhaps he was mad already. Certainly he seemed to have jumped from his usual somber, irritable self to .... well, Jadeite wasn't sure how to characterize it. In any other man, it would have translated as good humor. In dai'Merolan, it seemed like almost manic insanity.

"I am not mad," dai'Merolan said, apparently hearing his thoughts. "And yes, I am reading your mind. I told you, I am Awake now. And as such, I have some influence on the Void." He laughed. "Come. We are going to change Metallia's Name. Or, rather, we shall change the Name of ArchDemon Wedxarxis. Before we found ourselves here, the ArchDemon confessed to being the ArchDemon of Hatred."

Jadeite stared at him. "You are completely nuts," he said.

dai'Merolan began shimmering in the throes of a teleport. "You had better hope not, Lord Jadeite," he said mockingly. "If I am, you had best give up to the lesser imps now, as they are a great deal less intelligent as I am. And a great deal less ... creative. Why do you think I keep around Xer'Dun?"

Jadeite shuddered. He was beginning to wish that Aneiron had never cracked open his crystal. As bad as sensory deprivation had been, surely this was worse. He walked over to the Dai Shahre, permitted himself to be drawn close to the taller man's body, shut his eyes as the teleport took place.

________________________________________________________________________

"ENOUGH," said Kunzite firmly. "Enough, I said!"

The tumult of noise that had gone on stopped as if cut off by a sound-proof curtain descending from the ceiling.

The silver-haired general breathed a sigh of relief. Blessed silence. As welcome as seeing the Senshi again was, hearing them again was another matter entirely. He'd either forgotten or chosen to block out how noisy teenage girls could be. But then, as a Lord General of Imperial Terra, he had very rarely come in contact with teenage girls anyway, even the Senshi.

"What makes you think you have the right to tell us what to do?" Sailormoon said at last, folding her arms over her chest. "I am the Princess of the Moon, and you are merely a Lord General of Earth. A former Lord General, anyway. You don't have any right to command me." She paused, and added, "Or any of my Court."

Uranus said nothing, but stood behind Sailormoon and glared, her chin up belligerently.

Dhearec shook his head, stood up. He left the Senshi and the two Earth generals to their quarrel and picked his way through the bodies of dead Silver Flames to the entrance of the chamber.

The massive rip in Reality that had followed Metallia's departure had shaken the Senshi, Dhearec, and those close to the plinth itself: Metallia's prison had been the eye of the storm, so to speak. But all around the plinth had raged uncontrollable Chaos. Almost every single Silver Flame in the chamber of Metalla, besides Dhearec, Feriom, Kwedja, Xer'Dun, and Aneiron, had died. Dhearec had sent Aneiron and the rest out of the chamber after it was discovered that Metallia was gone, and with It, the Dai Shahre and Jadeite. He had had the presence of mind to shield the lifeless body of the Princess from the sight of his fellow soldiers; Dhearec felt that, at that particular moment, it would have been too much for them to handle that the Rose of the Sun was apparently dead. Dhearec stepped out of the chamber and Sent out into the gloom, [FERIOM. REPORT.]

The brown young man stepped neatly out of his teleport vortex, saluted. "de'Dhearec, the youma are all closing on this point. We've withdrawn to a Legional-surround formation, with the Tenth, Fifth, Eighth, and Seventh on the outside, and the Second, Third, Fourth, and Ninth on the inside." Not mentioned were the First and the Sixth Legions; the First, because the First Legion of the Silver Flames was back in Shondar, patrolling the city of Erian. A good half of the Sixth Legion had been inside the chamber of Metallia. And, to a man, they had died: all 2,514 of them. Even Feriom's primus pilum centurion G'Nessarit had died.

Dhearec thought over Feriom's arrangement of the troops, nodded. "Commendable. I assume that they are staggered-formation, in blocks of Ledo's Sqaure inside their cohorts. Yes? Good. The mages are distributed evenly, and the heralds and Patterners are in star-matrix positions? Very good. There seems to be nothing that you have forgotten." He paused, looked almost human in the worry that flitted across his sapphire-ice eyes. "Where is Aneiron?" Feriom sneered; even under the black veil, Dhearec could still make out the expression of disdain. "Oh, him. Shall I send him to you, de'Dhearec? He's off on one of his tangents again."

Dhearec stared coldly at the brown man. "de'Aneiron," he said, voice rimed in ice, "is worth sixty of you. Send him to me, by all means."

He turned on his heel and went back into Metallia's chamber.

The Senshi and the Lord Generals were blessedly quieter now, talking in low, serious tones. As he approached, stepping over the piled-up bodies of three Silver Flames, Sailormoon and Lord Kunzite turned to him.

Kunzite spoke first, a bit dryly: "We have reached an agreement. All of us will stay to help you fight against the youma."

"Fine," said Dhearec. "Then you will all stay in here until I tell you that you may leave."

Sailoruranus gritted her teeth. "But then we can't fight! The youma are out there!"

"Very good," Dhearec told her. "You can think. I had been beginning to wonder. And yes, you are correct. You will not fight. You are children. Children do not belong on a battlefield."

Uranus said tightly, "We are soldiers. We are the Sailor Senshi, we're soldiers, it's part of the name."

"Ridiculous," Dhearec retorted. "The very word 'soldier' presupposes an army of which the soldier is a member. You have no army, Sailoruranus. You are not soldiers. At best, you children are merely guerrilla warriors. At worst, you are free-lance fighters. But you are not soldiers. No, you are not. Without an army to back up your claim, Sailoruranus, you are unable to claim the proud title of soldier. You are merely a child with a short skirt, a short sword, and a short temper. Do not try my patience with you; by allowing you to stay here at all, I run the risk of angering the Dai Shahre when he returns."

Zoisite snickered, very audibly. Uranus turned to him with murder in her eyes. If Neptune and Kunzite hadn't stepped between them, some serious stuff might have happened.

Dhearec was distracted by a redheaded blur that hurtled into the chamber, crossed over the piles of bodies strewn about the floor by the simple expedient of skimming through the air over them, and literally flung himself into Dhearec's arms.

Aneiron buried his face in Dhearec's shirt and wept. Dhearec gently stroked his hair, speaking to him soothingly in Shondarin, and glared over Aneiron's head at the open-mouthed Senshi. Zoisite was smirking from ear to ear.

"It's all right, k'jiss, it's all right," Dhearec murmured. "Only one half-legion, k'jiss, k'jiss, my soul. It is all right. We have lost worse. Don't weep, my soul, k'jiss. It's all right."

Sailormoon stared at them both as if they were crazy. Dhearec glared hard at her, and she blushed and turned away. The rest of the Senshi followed suit, as did Tuxedo Kamen; Zoisite quite openly leered at them, grinning smugly. Not even Kunzite's whisper of "Don't be rude, love," could turn away the copper-haired man.

Gradually, Aneiron's tears lessened and then stopped altogether; he pulled his face away from Dhearec's now-wet shirtfront, and looked up at his partner. "The entire half of the Sixth is dead," he said, in a surprisingly normal tone of voice. Flat and cold. His poison-green eyes gleamed. "Poor Amberlin Jalia is dead, isn't she." It was not a question; Dhearec merely nodded. "And I suppose that the Dai Shahre and Lord Jadeite are gone with the ArchDemon, aren't they." Dhearec nodded again.

Aneiron's momentary calm broke again. "AND YOU WONDER WHY I'M CRYING?" He burst into tears again, pressing his face into Dhearec's comforting bulk. Dhearec shook him by the shoulders, but gently; he said, "Aneiron, k'jiss, stop it. Amberlin Jalia is not dead, she is merely gone."

"But you said," Aneiron started through a haze of red-tinged tears.

"I said no such thing. You did. Hush and listen. The Rose of the Sun is not dead; she is merely gone for awhile. I imagine that she will not be permitted to die until the Soul of Shondar is finished with her. And as for the Sixth Legion -- well, we will need to stagger in the remaining half of it with the other Legions. Instead of having nine full-strength legions, we will have eight slightly over-full ones. It will not make much of a difference, in any case: against a large, disorganized army like the youma mobs, we will need slightly smaller troop divisions."

Aneiron blew his nose on Dhearec's handkercheif, then released him, and began to think out loud. "Then we're gonna need, not maniples -- that's too small -- we're going to need the troops divided by cohort. That's the only division small enough to be easily wielded, and big enough to make a dent against a mob. Right?"

"Yes," said Dhearec. He brushed ineffectually at his sopping wet shirt and gave up. It was better that Aneiron got rid of his grief and shock at once; now that he had gotten all of that out of his system, the tiny redhead could focus on the job at hand. Which was quite all right with Dhearec: Dhearec could handle tactics and other quaestor-like jobs, like the accounting and organization of troops, but Aneiron was the strategist. In fact, in the Dai Shahre's absence, Aneiron was the Old Man himself, the commanding officer. In that at least, Dhearec was willing to acknowledge that Aneiron was the dominant half of their partnership.

Zoisite cleared his throat exaggeratedly; Moon peeked around, and poked Venus hard in the ribs.

"Well," drawled Zoisite, grinning broadly, "if that rather disgusting display of emotion is quite finished --"

Aneiron's eyes began to glitter; Zoisite either didn't notice or didn't care. "--then we have some unfinished business to attend to, don't we, Dhearec-sama," Zoisite ended. He couldn't resist ending it, "k'jiss."

That did it. Aneiron's boyish, cherubically-sweet face went stone-hard; his poison-green eyes locked wide-open and mad. The familiar madman's grin spread across his visage. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" he hollered, like a bad actor in a worse play. "And just who do you think you are, Madam Zoisite?"

Zoisite stiffened, the breath knocked out of him by the sheer malice he heard in Aneiron's tone.

"What, you don't know what you are?" Aneiron went on, never losing that madman's grin, that light sweet tone. "Then please allow me to tell you! You're a shameless sakura, a demon and a heartless fiend, a King who queens it, a tormentor of innocents, a dilettante who couldn't even get to the top without sleeping his way there, a dabbler who has no strength except sheer paltry viciousness, a weakling who has to depend on Kunzaito-sama to get anything done, -- and a traitor to your Prince, WITNESS YOUR DEFECTION TO BERYL!"

Zoisite literally could not help it - he had ice crystals in hand and was lunging for Aneiron's face before the last venomous words were out of the redhead's mouth.

________________________________________________________________________

They materialized again in an area that was, ostensibly, no different from the patch of swirling chaos that they had just left.

"OK, I give up," Jadeite said. "How do you teleport to a place that has no distinguishing characteristics?"

The Dai Shahre sat down, a deep armchair coming into reality around him. He looked up at Jadeite, black eyes glowing. "Oh, I didn't," he said automatically, no nastiness in it. "I merely told the Heart of the Shadow where I would like to be, and the Heart of the Shadow made it happen."

"Oh, of course," said Jadeite sarcastically. "I should have known."

The Dai Shahre looked a bit startled. "I don't see how you would have," he said. "I was fairly certain that I was the only mortal who knew of the existence of the Heart of the Shadow."

Jadeite decided to change the subject. "In that case, why don't you hurry up and change the Name of ArchDemon Wed-"

"Don't say it," the Dai Shahre said sharply. "I may be able to get away with it, but you certainly can't. And I will change Its/His Name when --"

"Its/His?" Jadeite interrupted.

"The ArchDemon Wedxarxis is one of those Who have a male/neutral gender. Technically androgynous, but tending towards masculinity. Usually, the only demons who assume full male gender are Lust-demons," the Dai Shan said. "And of coure the ShadowPrince. I really can't imagine what this whole Metallia business was. Perhaps it was only relating to Beryl's rather strong femininity, or perhaps It/He felt that only a female seeming could destroy the female power of the Queen of the Moon."

"Oh, yes," said Jadeite, who had no idea what the hell was going on. He hated this whole situation; Jadeite hated not being in control of himself, and he had no say in this entire set-up. Unlike Nephrite, who had been interested in all sorts of magic besides his beloved astrology, and Kunzite, who had seemingly been born with the knowledge of an archmage, Jadeite had never been either interested or skilled in necromancy or demonology. He might have found the Dai Shahre's apparent expertise in demons more interesting had they not been in the Void itself; just then, however, Jadeite was less interested in learning about demons, or Mer'Eliy as the Shondarins called them, than he was absolutely fascinated by the topic of getting out of the Void alive.

The Dai Shahre stood, pacing around as he spoke. His black cloak swirled around him, looking simply too romantic for words; Jadeite would have probably appreciated the effect much better had he been female. As it was, the divine beauty of the warlord escaped him. "Wedxarxis will be drawn here, to me, as will all the higher Demons. Possibly even the ShadowPrince will show up. Wedxarxis will put up an enormous fuss over having Its/His Name changed, but there is really nothing that It/He can do about it if I wish it so."

"Why are you so important to the demons that they'll do what you say?" Jadeite growled. "And you'd better have a good explanation for it, because it strikes me that if you don't have a good explanation then we're going to die."

The Dai Shahre grinned. "The demons worship me," he said matter-of-factly. "I am the son of the Heart of the Shadow; I am Merolan, Lord of Chaos, Prince of Darkness. I was born here in the Void, I was conceived here, I Awoke from the ephemeral dream here. This is my home and my domain, and if any demon dares defy me, the Heart of the Shadow, Merala the Lady of Chaos, will destroy it."

Jadeite stared at him. "Amaterasu," he murmured, understanding at last. "Gaia! So that was why you couldn't go near the ArchDemon, why you have your troops persuaded that you're too 'holy' to be present in the demon's chamber. That's why you hate Amberlin Jalia so much."

The Dai Shahre looked rather pleased with himself. "When I am in the mortal plane, I live as a mortal -- Asleep and dormant. There, my divinity represents itself merely as phenomenal luck and somewhat erratic sorcerous powers, which for some reason my children chose to interpret as my holiness, being touched by the Saints and chosen by the Host of Heaven. But here I am Awake and strong.... And as for the Rose of the Sun... She will trouble me no longer," he said. "The Rose of the Sun is dead, and her soul is undoubtedly recalled to the Hall of Judgement for some very sharp explanation of why she can't seem to keep an ephemeral body for more than twenty-four years at a time. Later, of course, I shall have some use for her soul, but for right now I shall savor the sensation of having absolutely no one to call me Meran. You have no idea how much I despise that nickname, truly you don't."

"You're a monster," said Jadeite flatly. "You told me that Beryl was unworthy to be a queen because she killed merely because she felt like it. You killed a child and a Princess and the sister of your blood-brother and Emperor, just because you were annoyed by her. You're as bad as Beryl ever was; you're worse, because obviously you know better and choose to disregard it. You're a monster, and I take back my oath to you; I'd rather die than be allied with a demon ever again."

"Not a wise thing to say, in this place," dai'Merolan observed. He paced again; this time Jadeite noticed what was wrong with the action. It was too smooth, too fluid, too graceful to be the gait of a cripple.

"And I suppose you lied about having a unHealable thigh wound, then, too," Jadeite said sarcastically. "You're obviously in no pain from it now, your limp is gone, you don't even have to lean on that damned staff."

"How observant you are, little one," the Dai Shahre said. He kept looking up and glancing around, as if he expected someone. "Ordinarily, yes I am crippled. It is a wound that will not leave me, since it was dealt me by the Champion of Light, the Rose of the Sun; it would be the same if I had -- oh, slit Amberlin Jalia's throat. UnHealable." He smiled; the expression sent chills up Jadeite's spine. The Dai Shahre's perfect beauty made him a god, yes; but a god of darkness, a god of death, a god of cruelty. Probably the nasty type of god who insists on sacrifices of entire villages and tiny children being thrown live into the furnaces.

The kind of god that Metallia had been to the Dark Kingdom for so long. And if the Dai Shan was telling the truth, then he was Metallia's -- no, an ArchDemon's -- master. "Gaia and Amaterasu," Jadeite murmured, trying very hard not to be sick.

"But here in the Void, here in my own domain, I am my true self: Awake, alive, uncrippled, vital," said the Dai Shahre complacently. "Here I am master of everything."

"You're a monster," Jadeite repeated quietly. He turned his back on the Dai Shahre.

He truly wished that he had not, because facing him were the Nine ArchDemons, seated on thrones; in the center, on the high throne apparently carved from one single emerald, sat the ShadowPrince. Jadeite couldn't decide whether to be surprised or not that the ShadowPrince wore a body identical to that of Merolan al'Ledo.

"HELLO, JADEITE," said the ShadowPrince gently. "WOULD YOU LIKE TO CALL MY SON A MONSTER AGAIN, HERE IN FRONT OF MY PRINCES?"

Jadeite, for perhaps the first time in his life, found himself absolutely speechless. No smart remarks, no meaningless and rather melodramatic blather about revenge, no pithy retorts that would linger down through history as the proper rejoinder to a ShadowPrince.

He swallowed. What he actually said was pretty good, considering that it was on spur of the moment and he was quite sure that he faced imminent and painful death.

"Oh, fuckin' A," he said.

"Vulgar but strangely appropriate," the Dai Shahre remarked, walking up beside Jadeite. "He is, after all, a Lust-demon." The Dai Shahre nodded quite civilly to the ShadowPrince. "Salve, Morshaejaris, Lord Darkfire. Give me Wedxarxis. And leave this mortal alone."

"WHY?" came the query. "I WANT THIS MORTAL, MEROLAN. HE HAS CAUSED NO END OF ANNOYANCE FOR ME, AND FOR MY PRINCE WEDXARXIS WHO WAS STUCK IN THE MIDPLANE FOR MILLENNIA BECAUSE OF THIS MORTAL'S MASTER. GIVE ME A GOOD REASON WHY I SHOULD ACCEDE TO YOUR DEMAND."

The Dai Shahre looked straight at him. "Do You want the soul of Amberlin Jalia, or not?" he said coldly. "It should be flitting around me soon enough, seeking vengeance. If I give You the soul of the Demonsbane Reborn, will You give me this mortal and Wedxarxis? You surely can't have any use for an ArchDemon Who gets Itself/Himself caught as easily as Wedxarxis did. I will give Wedxarxis back to You, after I change Its/His Name; It/He will be stronger and therefore more useful to You."

There was a lot more of it. Jadeite stopped listening, after he had ascertained that everyone was ignoring him. He would have briefly considered hightailing it out of the circle of Demons, but the Dai Shahre's gauntletted hand descended on his shoulder and gripped him so hard that Jadeite was certain there would be a nasty bruise.

He wasn't going to die. That was the only thing that his brain had any capacity left to digest. He was not going to die. The Dai Shahre was going to take him home, after the Dai Shahre finished whatever business he might have with the ShadowPrince. Jadeite was not going to die.

And then his thoughts began to catch up with him. Specifically, certain statements of the Dai Shahre's and of his own. "I'd rather die than be allied with a demon ever again." "If I give You the soul of the Demonsbane Reborn -"

"Do You want the soul of Amberlin Jalia or not?" "She will trouble me no longer."

"Amaterasu," Jadeite whispered. "I'm throwing your soul to the demons, so I can get out alive." Gaia! He was going back on himself. Just when he'd thought that he might turn out to be a decent person after all, he could do something like this -- stand by and watch as the Dai Shahre, a monster with the face of a saint and the body of a god, gave away the soul of a lovely child who hadn't done anything wrong save annoy Merolan al'Ledo. Gaia. But he would be safe. He would get home back to the Dark Kingdom. No one would ever know; everyone would think that Amberlin Jalia was dead anyway. No one would ever know... But... Jadeite would. The Dai Shahre would. And the Demons would. The Demons would know that Jadeite was the kind of person who would throw away the soul of a good, kind, sweet young woman, just to save his own miserable skin.

"Yes," said the Dai Shahre, watching him carefully. "We will know. I will know. I will never tell; why should I care that you choose your own survival over the soul of a girl who, after all, scarcely even knew you? Why should I care that you value your own life over that of a brat who has no value to anyone? My colleagues, my fellow Lords of the Shadow, will never tell; indeed, when do They ever converse with ephemerals? It would be your own secret, Jadeite. No one in the Dark Kingdom would ever know that after your supposed conversion to the Light, back to the teachings of Imperial Amaterasu, that you chose your own life over the soul of an alien girl."

Jadeite gritted his teeth. This wasn't fair. This was so not fair. How did they expect him to choose? It should be an easy decision. If he chose his own life, the Dai Shahre would point at ArchDemon Wedxarxis, say "Your Name is no longer Wedxarxis, it is something else," or whatever the Dai Shahre was going to do -- Jadeite wasn't up to all of this Demon crap -- and then Jadeite would go home. He would be home, in his kingdom, with true friends Kunzite and Zoisite, running the midplane more efficiently than Beryl had ever dreamed. And no one would ever dream that the Dark Kingdom had been bought and paid for by the soul of Amberlin Jalia Lalandra, the Rose of the Sun.

And if he chose to fight for the soul of Amberlin Jalia, then he was instantly dead.

"Gaia," he said under his breath. "I want Nephrite and his stars, to tell me what to do. I want Zoisite to carve out a clear decision. I want Kunzite and his wisdom. I want Aneiron and his jokes. I want Dhearec and his logic. I even miss that bastard Xer'Dun. Amberlin Jalia Healed me, when I was going insane. She gifted me with weapons, my own mind, a link to the Soul of Shondar, which meant that I'd never be alone again.

"And now it's either my life or her soul."

"Precisely," said the Dai Shahre, who was still gripping him painfully by the shoulder. "Absolutely. Your life or her soul. I really didn't think that it was a hard decision, Jadeite. You had best make up your mind before the ShadowPrince decides what He is going to do."

Jadeite said quite nicely, "And what will He do with Amberlin's soul?"

"Probably incarnate her in her former beauty and keep her around as a toy," said the Dai Shahre. "He is, after all, a Lust-demon." The Dai Shahre sounded reflective. "Or He could put her into a temporary body, and kill her over and over again, in as many creatively sadistic ways as He can think of. Or He could -"

"Never mind," Jadeite said with a sigh. He'd made his decision already; he just hated it. "I'll take my life, thanks." After all, what did one girl mean to him? He didn't love her. He didn't owe her anything. Just one single memory of a divine smile, the look of the Imperial Goddess. He didn't owe her a thing.

The Dai Shahre clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man. Clever decision. Lord Darkfire! I will take my guest and I will change the Name of Wedxarxis; after that, I leave the Rose of the Sun to you."

He gestured, and Amberlin Jalia, goldenly translucent and shimmering as if she were made of frozen sunlight, sat huddled before the throne of the ShadowPrince.

She looked around, her expression lost. "Meran?" she said in a small voice. "Meran, Jadeite, where am I?"

"In the Void," said the Dai Shahre briefly. "You're here for good, infant. Put here by my will and the decision of Lord Jadeite. Feel free to curse me and/or my soul."

The golden eyes looked into Jadeite's in pure anguish. "Don't leave me here," she begged. "Please, you know Who I am. They'll take it out on me that I'm Lalandra Reborn."

Jadeite forced himself to look away. He said, more intensely than he meant to, "If you're Lalandra Reborn, if you're really the reincarnation of the greatest Saint and magician that Shondar has ever seen, then you don't need me to get you out of this." He turned his back on her.

And promptly froze in a wash of horror, loathing, and acute panic.

The Soul of Shondar roared into his brain, #What are you DOING, my son?#

________________________________________________________________________

Purely to keep himself from dying of boredom, Zoisite began to manufacture ice crystals. Just to give himself something to concentrate on, he focussed on making them extra-strong and extra-light, so he could throw twice as many in one blow, with a net effect of twice as much damage inflicted.

Sometimes it was useful to have a destructive hobby.

As he worked, he stole glances at Aneiron Jander and at his lover Kunzite. He still couldn't quite decide whether to forgive Kunzaito-sama for interfering when Zoisite had been about to kill the redheaded Shondarin. Aneiron had been purely hateful to him, and Zoisite never let people insult him. Especially not in public. Especially not when he hadn't done a thing to deserve it.

"I hate you," Zoisite said suddenly, directing a glare at Aneiron.

The redhead paused in the middle of shouting out orders, glanced down at Zoisite. "You just go right on thinkin' that, muffin," said Aneiron cheerfully. "So long as Dhearec and the Dai Shahre love me, I don't give a damn if you would like to rip out my hearts and feed them to something vile. But keep it quiet right now, sugar, since I'm kinda in the middle of a battle, and I'd sorta like to keep track of my troops in the middle of it, OK?"

Zoisite didn't reply to this, but gathered up his tidy pile of icy projectiles and moved ostentatiously somewhere else. Kunzite moved with him.

"You should not antagonize him right now, love," said Kunzite. The white-haired general perched on a rock, and peered over the heads of black-clad soldiers in front of them. "The Shondarins are the ones fighting to keep the Dark Kingdom relatively untouched."

"The Shondarins are the people who woke up Metallia in the first place," Zoisite said. He tested the point of one ice crystal with his finger, and winced when the razor-sharp tip sliced open his finger to the bone. "Heal this, Kunzaito-sama, please."

Kunzite obliged, giving the injured digit a kiss for good measure, and said, still holding Zoisite's slender hand, "I mean it. The youma are pouring in on this place. The very last command that Metallia gave before It quit this plane was for the youma to kill every non-youma in the Kingdom."

Zoisite nodded, a trifle approvingly. It was what he would have done, if he'd been forced to leave the field in the hands of his enemies. He could see the sense in it. Of course, the fact that he was on the side opposite all of those kamikaze youma meant that he appreciated its cleverness rather less than he might have otherwise.

Kunzite went on, "I know what they're doing, and I have to say that they are our only hope of keeping the Dark Kingdom safe for Jadeite."

"Why do we care about Jadeite?" Zoisite objected. "We can leave, escort Prince Endymion to safety. Wouldn't that be a lot more useful than hanging around here killing youma?" He paused, then added reluctantly, "Although it might be fun to wipe out a few demons. Just to keep our hands in."

"No," said Kunzite firmly. "We are not leaving. Jadeite is our friend, Zoi-chan, beloved. Plus, the Silver Flames have fought youma before, but they don't know the youma the way we do. Before we -- betrayed Endymion and succumbed to Beryl, we fought the youma for years. We know them. We know the most powerful ones, and we know the ways to counter them. I doubt that the Silver Flames, as good as they are, can possibly do without our special knowledge."

Zoisite threw back his head and screamed. The echoes bounced off the high ceiling, the vaulting walls. By no means everyone turned to stare at Zoisite -- military men are very practical creatures -- but the copper-haired man did garner his fair share of speculation.

"I feel slightly better now," Zoisite announced to his lover. "Very well, Kunzaito-sama. I'll be nice to them as long as you say to."

Kunzite knew that this was the best he was going to get. He left his lover fashioning more icy crystals for the defense, and walked over to Aneiron and Dhearec and Xer'Dun, who were drafting out the specifics of the battle plan. He studied the plan with care, and had to admit that it had a certain flair to it. Even if Aneiron Jander was an annoying little prat with delusions of adequacy, the redhead was a fairly brilliant tactician.

The entire plane of the Dark Kingdom centered around the stone chamber that had so long been the home of slumbering Metallia. If the throne room of Beryl had been the heart and brain of the Dark Kingdom, then the chamber of Metallia had been its soul. That was both metaphor and reality: the essence of the dormant ArchDemon had permeated the midplane, had been the ultimate influence upon anyone and everything in the Dark Kingdom.

Physically, the center of the Dark Kingdom was the great mountain in which Metallia's prison was contained: surrounding the mountain (called Metallia's Needle) was a great flat plane dotted here and there with minor hillocks. The hills were not really more than mounds of dirt and rock heaped in particularly inconvenient places where they obstructed a clear view of the mountain from most parts of the plain.

The Silver Flames, all eight available legions, were assembled rank-and-file around the largest and the most inconvenient of these hills. Aneiron's plan seemed to be centered around the fact that, while the million youma that marched on the mountain were an unled mob, the Silver Flames were quick, disciplined, and had an enormous amount of faith in the luck of the Dai Shahre, not to mention the luck of Aneiron Jander.

Aneiron apparently planned to wait until most of the youma mob was irrevocably committed to a charge against his forces. At that point, he would deploy the Seventh and the Ninth Legions to act as "wings" to come around and form a semi-circle bewteen the youma and the mountain. After that, the youma would keep ouring into the gap of the Silver Flame army, and the Shondarin martial skill would take over from there.

There was only one problem with this, as far as Kunzite could see.

"Aneiron Jander," he said, demanding the redhead's attention.

All three Shondarins looked up at him. Xer'Dun faintly smiled, in a derisive manner; he said nothing.

"Didja want something, Kunzite-sama?" Aneiron said cheerfully. "We're going over a battle plan here. See anything that needs fixing?"

He obviously expected no reply; and for that he could not be blamed. To anyone who did not know youma as Lord General Kunzite knew them, Aneiron's plan was perfect.

Kunzite said, "You are forgetting one very important thing, Aneiron-sama."

The redhead turned to smirk at Dhearec. "Hear that, junior, I'm an 'Aneiron-SAMA' now. That would mean they like me better than you."

"More than likely," Dhearec said tranquilly. "You are extraordinarily likable."

Xer'Dun looked disgusted.

"OK, what'm I forgetting, Kunzite-sama?" Aneiron said politely.

"Only that youma are just as likely as anyone to have very potent, very destructive sorcerous gifts," said Kunzite laconically. "Therefore,you can't really trust standard infantry against them. You've got a liability if your troops don't know that youma are very powerful indeed. You've only been dealing with them in pairs and in trios before, correct? But youma in mobs can be extremely... inconvenient."

No one moved.

"Dammit," sighed Aneiron. "OK, junior, change o' plans."

________________________________________________________________________

Jadeite stood quietly and listened as the Soul of Shondar poured information into him, too quickly for him to really pick up on the details. He managed to get the gist of it, though: the memories of Saint Lalandra as She defeated the First ShadowPrince, plus a quick tap on the memories of Merolan al'Ledo for all of his weaknesses.

#The Dai Shahre does not have many weaknesses at all,# noted the Soul of Shondar clinically. #His greatest physical weakness will always the point high on his inner left thigh, however much he may think that this plane Heals it. His greatest mental weakness is that he is fully aware that he has never been beaten. He thinks that this means that he can never be beaten. You are going to prove him wrong, my son.#

"Great," Jadeite muttered under his breath. He really, really, REALLY, did not want to be here, standing by himself as the Dai Shahre changed the Name of ArchDemon Wedxarxis. So far as he could see, this interesting little ritual consisted of the eight remaining ArchDemons standing around Their unlucky fellow; the Dai Shahre and the ShadowPrince stood in the center, along with the unfortunate ArchDemon Who had failed Its/His Prince. The Dai Shahre chanted the Name of the ArchDemon nine times; then he paused, said the Name backwards, then waited for the ArchDemon's shudders to die away. Already the form of the ArchDemon was beginning to lose shape and cohesiveness; the ego of the ArchDemon was starting to unravel as Its/His Name was altered. The Dai Shahre said calmly, "Thou art no longer an ArchDemon of Hatred, bent upon ruling the lesser ones, the creatures of meat and bone and blood. Now art Thou an ArchDemon of Insanity, devoted to an existence spent here in the Void, no longer breaking free into the Ephemeral Dream. This is Thy doom; this is Thy punishment. Fail me no longer -- ArchDemon Vristeras."

Wonderful. So Metallia/Wedxarxis now had an even stupider Name. Jadeite bit his lip to keep from laughing. Honestly. Vristeras? The Dai Shahre might be a military genius, but Jadeite hoped to Gaia that the Dai Shahre didn't get into the business of nomenclatoring.

He edged over to the silent golden form of Amberlin Jalia. She had stopped weeping a while ago, and was weaving spells with an intense expression on her face. Good. He couldn't stand seeing a woman cry; for one thing, it made him feel inexplicably guilty, and for another, it made him want to shake the woman silly. That wouldn't be advisable under these circumstances, since the Soul of Shondar had informed him that he needed the soul of Amberlin Jalia in order to make it out of this alive.

Jadeite thought that she was too busy with her sorcery to notice him; he was wrong. As he cautiously sidled closer to her, she remarked coolly, "Clever of Meran, actually. Hatred demons absolutely MUST venture outside the Void to practice their trade, while Insanity demons are perfectly content to stay in here and muck around with the lesser imps. I hate it that he's clever; it means that sooner or later he'll get the better of everyone. He certainly did get the better of me. I'm sorry; I'm babbling. Being dead does that to a person, I expect."

He stared down at her, then shook himself. "Amater-- Amberlin Jalia, we need to get out of here. We need the holy sword of Saint Lalandra, a golden rose, and a very very good wizard. Any ideas?"

Amberlin Jalia pushed some fire-golden hair back from her brow, thought about this. "The Blade of Fire is connected to you," she said. "I gave it to you, it ought to have bonded to your soul by now. Hmm. I guess it did come in handy. Concentrate on it being in your hand. It's a very intelligent sort of weapon, it will come to you. As for the golden rose, that would be me. As for the very very good wizard, that would also be me. I do hope that you don't object to me being dead. I'm fairly certain that it won't affect my power."

Jadeite nodded. The Blade of Fire was in his hands. It felt good there. Natural that it should be there. Come to think of it, it fitted his hand better than the diilyao ever had, much though he had liked that weapon.

The soul of Amberlin Jalia smiled. "Clever of you, you know," she remarked, placing her hand over his, on the hilt of the sword. She began to guide his hand, tracing the tip of the sword in all sorts of patterns in the air. "Waiting until Meran was distracted in changing the ArchDemon. Now that Wedxarxis is Vristeras, Hatred changed to Insanity, Metallia shall never come back. And -- no!" she said sharply as his wrist began to droop. "Don't do that, you'll have to start over with the patterns. I think."

"What do you mean, you think?" Jadeite said sharply. He darted an uneasy glance at the circle of Demons, none of which seemed to be paying any attention to the ordinary mortals trying to escape.

"Well, I've never broken loose of the Void before," shrugged Amberlin Jalia. "And I've never been dead before, either. I can't say that I enjoy either thing very much. One's difficult, and the other's boring."

Ridiculous girl; she was stuck in the Void and dead both, and she called it boring. He had to admire her spirit, even if she was driving him mad guiding his hand in the meaningless scrawls in the air.

Finally, she released him and stepped back. "Feel tired?" she said cheerfully. Jadeite nodded. He felt like he had been awake for at least three days, and probably four. Plus, his chest still burned from the searing touch of the Dai Shahre, back in the chamber of Metallia. He really ought to make a note to himself: "If I am ever again chosen to channel an ArchDemon, make sure that no one of pure demonic royal blood touches me."

A glimmering portal opened in space. It looked out into the chamber of Metallia.

"We should go," Amberlin Jalia said. She looked hopefully at her body, which lay wrapped in a Shondarin blanket by the scarlet ruins of Metallia's prison. "I hope that I can fit back in my body. I'm not sure I remember what exactly to do about resurrection; I'm fairly certain that the prayers and ceremonies will take a few days, and Dhearec will almost definitely lecture at me for hours because really it's not legal to bring people back to life who've been killed by demons. Something about disrupting the nature of Light and Darkness, you know."

Jadeite said, "Fine. Let's go."

A shadow fell over them. The Dai Shahre said, "Oh, but I want you to stay, Amberlin Jalia. Or, rather, the Lord Darkfire does."

________________________________________________________________________

Vast youma armies were not entities that a Napoleon or a Merolan al'Ledo would have desired for one moment, even had those two superlative generals ever had such military largesse offered to them. Forces must be small, flexible, maneuverable -- easily supplied, easily controlled, easily deployed. Aneiron had eight legions of superb if somewhat disreputable troops who knew his tactics as well as he did, plus a very neat present from the Saints in the form of Lord Generals Zoisite and Kunzite, who knew the youma and who were not unskilled mages to boot.

The one brief salutatory skirmish had not been without Shondarin losses, chiefly because of a youma weapon. It was called dreadfire, and it came from a central group of youma who all but glowed to the naked eye with all the dark energy that filled them. Small light lumps of the dreadfire lobbed through the air ablaze and splattered as they landed, flaring up so hot and so incandescent that nothing could extinguish them or the fires that spread from them. They burned and they maimed -- but worse than that, they terrified. No one had ever experienced anything like them before. It didn't help Shondarin tempers to have Lord General Kunzite say a big "I told you so" to the lot of them. (To Kunzite's credit, he had really been unable to help it -- Xer'Dun was getting on his nerves.)

So when the emboldened youma moved their mighty force to attack the Silver Flames again, they failed to understand what a difference a mood could make. Every Shondarin in that tiny army was fed up -- fed up with a world that had no sun or stars or proper sky, with going so long as two years without fighting anyone except the occasional single band of renegade youma, with living in a place so far removed from their homes, with physical separation from the Soul of Shondar, with dreadfire, with humans, with their adored and beloved commander the Dai Shahre going missing, the Negaverse in general and youma in particular. From Aneiron to the centurions to the rest of the Silver Flames, all of them hungered for a good solid battle. And they cheered deliriously when Aneiron harangued them cheerfully in the pre-battle exhortation.

Promising Saint Ledo a special sacrifice, Aneiron girded his loins for the fray at about an hour after the initial youma attack. The siege lines of the mountain abandoned, the commander Aneiron occupied his original hill, which intervened between the advancing youma mass and the mountain, and made his dispositions. Though he couldn't have known, nor could Kunzite have warned him, that there was a large chunk of youma population missing from the main army that he might have to worry about, Aneiron did know exactly how to tempt the youma into an engagement: huddle his comparatively little force together and appear to be terrified by the size of the giant youma army. Since the youma were convinced by years of serving under Beryl that an army's strength was in its numbers, the youma would attack.

The youma did attack. What developed was a debacle. No one on the youma side, including Ninjana and Corbiba, seemed to comprehend the value of high ground. Nor, so much was clear to Aneiron and Kunzite as the seething host flowed up the Shondarin hill, had anyone in the youma chain of command thought to develop tactics or a strategy. The monster army was unleashed; no more was necessary, to the youma mind.

Taking his time, Aneiron dealt out frightful punishment from the top of his hill, worried only that the mountain of dead would end in hemming him in, foil a complete victory. But when he put the Ninth Legion under Xer'Dun's command to clearing lines through the youma fallen, the Silver Flames spread outward and downward like scythes through a field of wheat. The youma front disintegrated, pushing thousands of carapaced and otherwise hideously deformed foot soldiers into the ranks of the more fearsomely arrayed youma mages until the mages imploded from too much pressure, or the foot soliders themselves were crushed. More of the youma host died that way than the berserk Silver Flames had the numbers to kill.

Said Aneiron in the later aftermath in the chamber of Metallia, "Gee, I'm damn good at this. Over seventy hundred thousand youma dead, and fifteen Silver Flames dead or wounded."

________________________________________________________________________

"Amberlin Jalia," continued the Dai Shahre, holding out a hand to her. "Stop that at once. I truly do not want you to suffer; it is enough for me that you are dead and unable to be a threat to me anymore. If you like, I shall ask your new master to be kind to you, and let you sleep."

"Yes, I suppose that's rather nice of you, Meran; certainly it's nicer than wanting to flay me," she said. She turned and stepped through the portal out of the Void. Her voice came floating through it, a giggle somewhere lurking behind the words. "On the other hand, I can't help but wonder what's going to happen when the ShadowPrince realizes that I'm not here anymore. You ought to like it, Meran, it will be quite chaotic."

Jadeite looked at the Dai Shahre one more time before he went through the portal. "I've fulfilled my promise," said Jadeite. "I helped you and your soldiers right up until the ArchDemon was out of my kingdom."

Then he went through the Portal, and had the enormous satisfaction of watching it close behind him. The Dai Shahre was trapped in the Void. With a very annoyed ShadowPrince and nine hopefully annoyed ArchDemons.

Jadeite really didn't have time to think about any of it, because Aneiron Jander caught sight of him standing there and promptly screamed, "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! Where's the Dai Shahre? C'mon, where's Himself? Why've you got Amberlin Jalia with you? What's goin' ON, hey?"

He winced, tapped the side of his head. "No shouting," he said faintly. Sailormercury called, "Dhearec? She's alive...." her voice trailing off into incredulity.

Jadeite told Aneiron, "In the Void, thank you, and I won't answer any more questions because it would only depress me desperately."

Aneiron said, "Huh?"

Dhearec said, "Impossible."

And Zoisite fairly topped all of them, by proudly announcing, "The Silver Flames are leaving tomorrow morning, and I'm going to hold open the Gate until every single one of them is GONE."

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The Dai Shahre sighed, and shrugged. "No hard feelings, Lord Darkfire."

"NONE AT ALL. MERELY DISAPPOINTMENT. THE ROSE OF THE SUN SEEMS FAIRLY IMPOSSIBLE TO KILL, WHETHER IT BE BY YOUR HAND OR BY MY OWN. IN ANY CASE, LORD OF CHAOS, YOU WILL NEED TO SLEEP AGAIN WHEN YOU RE-ENTER THE EPHEMERAL DREAM. YOU CANNOT BE THE GREAT LORD OF THE SHADOW WHEN YOU ARE OUTSIDE THE VOID."

"True. A pity that I won't be able to remember Amberlin Jalia dead. I find that I like the idea enormously. I will forget my Awakening, and begin to Dream again as I pass through the Portal, don't worry on that account."

He opened a Portal to Shondar, stepped through it. He was going to have a lot to say to Aneiron once the Silver Flames got back to Shondar.

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King Jadeite of the Dark Kingdom formally traded his crown for a Lord General's sword three days after the Silver Flames left the Dark Kingdom.

King Kunzite and Prince-Consort Zoisite bade him farewell as he explained just exactly he would like most for a few years. A sabbatical of sorts. While he tried to figure some things out.

He disappeared from the Dark Kingdom, which was already flourishing from its own energy supply, set up by Kunzite and Dhearec before the Silver Flames left for good.

Jadeite reappeared in the blue and white robes of a shrine assistant, in a certain shrine at Cherry Hill.

He knelt in front of the sacred fire for a while, didn't turn around as he heard an indrawn breath.

"Rei," he said quietly, still staring straight into the fire, "I've noticed that Yuichiruu hasn't been working up to par lately. I wonder if this shrine needs another assistant. I have a few things about my soul that I'd like some spiritual guidance with. And I would welcome the company of an old friend." He wondered briefly if she was going to scream, get those nasty crows of hers to attack, or transform into Sailormars and burn him to a crisp for having dared enter her shrine.

Then he smiled as Rei, his old love and his new friend, laid a hand on his shoulder and said, "I think that would be all right. Everyone needs to be able to come to terms with their own soul."

That sounded just about perfect.

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THE ABSOLUTE END, DONE, FINIS, FINITO, I'VE ENDED, ET CETERA AD INFINITUM.

Thank you for reading this far. Thank you for all the wonderful comments. Thank you for putting up with me. Thank you for taking my word for it that Jillian Byar's books are worth crossing over into "Sailor Moon." And thank you, Claire Jinci Sarah Elanors Delilah Heather Aneiron Celestine AND Christa, not to mention Naoko Takeuchi.

This is Saint Erythros over and out.