As he walked, he noted many of the shapes he had first thought to be sculptures were actually trophies of the hunt, stuffed or otherwise bodily preserved. He saw a tiger, an ettin, an amulet-wearing mummy, and other vanquished threats. He also saw a man in wizard's robes, a woman garbed in form fitting leather wielding a glowing punch dagger, and other humanoids similarly preserved.

The monk came to a wider space, circular, and fronted by several alabaster pillars. A creature claimed the opening's center. It glowed with the familiar radiance of the cliff face. The creature's shape was like a centaur, but sleeker. He had expected its skin to be stone, not flesh… though its surface was eerily milk white and fluid. Perhaps it was chalk of some enchanted variety after all.

"Welcome to my fortress," said the centaur-thing. "Would you look upon the soul shard?"

"Yes," replied Raidon, "but are you the Chalk Destrier? I at first thought the cliff we addressed answered to that name."

The centaur said, "What an impressive girth I could claim were that true, but no. I am as you see me." It leaned in and confided, "I tell you that without expectation of a gift."

"You are most kind," spoke the monk, though he wondered what kind of creature this Chalk Destrier was to expect payment for every exchange of words.

"Now then, look upon the Blade Cerulean, Angul, which shelters a splinter of a human soul. Afterward, I shall claim my last gift from you,"

"What do you mean?" asked Raidon. He glanced at the stuffed trophies.

The Chalk Destrier did not answer-it gestured with one milky palm. Light blazed like the rising sun, washing away Raidon's visual perception of the chamber.

Raidon blinked against the brilliance. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He wiped them away and saw a boulder, nearly five feet in diameter, now lying on the floor in the space between the monk and the pearly hued centaur. A long sword was plunged tip first into the boulder. The weapon was unblemished, the lines utilitarian, but the hilt was set with a cerulean-hued stone. The faintest of glimmers sparkled in the stone's depths.

"Is the soul extinguished?" asked Raidon. The last time he'd seen the blade, in its owner's hands some twenty years earlier, it had blazed with cerulean light and pulsed with righteous potency.

"It sleeps, that is all," replied the Chalk Destrier. It continued, "You have looked upon my treasure. Now I can claim my gift in return."

Even as the centaur spoke, the floor trembled. A sound identical to that which had accompanied the opening of the tunnel into the outer cliff face echoed in the chamber.

"You are sealing the entrance?" Raidon asked. He doubted it was opening wider.

"You are the gift," the Chalk Destrier announced, moving forward. "I wouldn't want you to scamper off." The creature raised one of its hands. The digits melted and flowed, becoming a long, thin blade, a skinning blade. "Please stand still; I do not like to reconstruct my trophies."

The monk loosed his concerns, reached for his focus that allowed his body and mind to become one. He hurdled the boulder pinning Angul, spinning so he only touched the stone with his palms. His time perception slowed. As he topped the rock, he pushed off with all his strength and training, feet toward his foe. He hammered the Chalk Destrier high on its humanlike chest with his feet.

The crack of contact jolted through Raidon's soles, calves, and knees. A network of fine cracks bloomed at the point of impact. He kicked himself away from his foe in a spray of rock chips, somersaulting back through the air. He landed, out of reach of the oversized creature's long arms, even the one that had become a blade.

The creature's milky pallor warmed until the Chalk Destrier was the color of freshly spilled blood. It leaped.

Raidon dived, avoiding the flashing ruby hooves and at the same time ducking beneath the centaur's slashing blade. As he dodged, he unleashed a punch of his own, striking the creature along its right flank. The impact punished his knuckles, and worse, seared him. The creature's red color was not mere show-it was red hot!

"Raidon, take the sword," Cynosure's voice urged.

"Angul can't help me against the Chalk Destrier," Raidon breathed as he avoided another charge. "As odd and amoral as this creature seems, I detect no aberrant hint. My own Sign remains quiescent."

"You must take the sword soon, or I'll not be able to extract you. The edifice in which you fight is receding, whether in space or time I can't discern. My connection with you is stretching. In another few heartbeats, it will snap. You'll be sealed in with the Chalk Destrier, perhaps forever, as one of its trophies."

The centaur reared, and then fell forward, its front legs kicking. The monk sidestepped, but the handblade sliced across Raidon's forearm. The creature was impossibly fast, hard as stone, and as hot as a forge fire. The monk flipped backward as if to flee, but it was a feint; while still standing on his hands, he heel-kicked, catching the creature in one flaring red eye as it leaned forward and down. A crunch like breaking crystal was music to Raidon's ears.

But the creature didn't react like a living thing would. It bore down with one hand and one blade, and very nearly skewered the monk. He reversed the back flip he'd initiated to draw the creature in, and flashed past the creature, trying to get behind it. Back on his feet and another five feet behind Destrier-

The centaur mule-kicked him. Years of rote training alone saved him then, so instead of staving in his head, the blow merely knocked stars into his vision and banging cymbals into his ears.

He dropped to the ground, just avoiding a second rear-leg kick from the centaur. The floor was cold and gritty beneath his fingers.

"The sword!" Cynosure urged again, his voice noticeably weaker, as if he were shouting from a great distance.

Raidon didn't waste breath explaining he'd been trying to follow the constructs advice all along.

"Now or never," came the construct's warning, half as loud.

Raidon threw himself sideways, rolling toward the boulder, knowing he was opening himself up to an attack. The Chalk Destrier did not disappoint. It stomped him once before he stood, pulling himself up the side of the rock.

As the cold pommel of Angul fell into Raidon's grip, the centaur reared up again, kicking him in the shoulder and stomach with its front hooves. He curled and rolled backward. The weight of his falling body wrenched Angul from the stone.

"Got you!" he heard Cynosure exclaim. A parabola of blue light spun out of nothing, engulfing him.

Anusha wondered what was happening back on the island. Anxiety prickled through her dream form.

She pulled her travel chest out of the hallway onto the main deck. The Green Siren's launch was gone, but two much smaller lifeboats remained. Lucky followed her, the dog's chain severed by a single stroke of her dream sword. To the eyes of any watching pirate, it would seem as if the chest slid along the oiled planks of the deck of its own accord.

"The ghost!"

A dark-haired, scarred woman stood between her and the closest lifeboat, her eyes wide. It was the same pirate responsible for nearly revealing Anusha's presence several days ago. The woman wasn't looking at her, but at Anusha's reflection in the dirty glass of a signal mirror mounted not three feet from the travel chest.

Annoyance briefly eclipsed her worry about Japheth. How many reflective surfaces were there on this blasted ship?

Anusha released the chest and summoned her dream sword. She smashed the signal mirror with the blade's tip. From now on, she decided, she would smash every mirror she came upon.