In a pitched and feverous dream, I discovered myself left returned to the Garden of Zais, the same elfin gardens of my youth! I can still remember it so vividly now, my dreams many tymes turned back to the olde woman's blind white eyes. And even as I cringe now from their hideous aspect, I could not but help in my dream to stare at them in terrible fascination. Here let me attempt to recount the terrible occurrence that brought me back to this blessed realm:

She appeared again as she was before, sitting amidst the licking tongues of flame, totally unscathed by their heat. Across the fire from me I could see her familiar, the giant black bird still scratching and pecking at the dry earth. She was still laughing to herself and cradling something in her hands, held to her breasts and whispering to it from tyme to tyme. By degrees she took notice of my presence, and a gruesome toothless smile spread across her face. Looking around I could see only darkness, and though I knew the village must be near by, I could not discern any trace of it in the dim light. All around us though I could hear the movements of great bodies through what sounded to be dry underbrush. Occasionally, one of these beasts would stop and sniff the air, and at tymes I might distinguish pale sickly eyes mirroring the fire light, and more than once I was caught off-guard by how close they were. The devil-bird, seeing my panic attempted to smile again with its cruel peak, and sent several mocking caws into the tense air about us.

The old woman looked to me then with a great sadness in her eyes then, a deep and flowing sadness that caused a deep consternation in my mind with the hideous grin still smeared across her face. She began rocking back and forth in the fire, still holding some hidden thing to her, and said, "Foolish childe, we warned thee. Do not mettle in these affairs. The winds of the worlde have changed, and once more my Master walks in the dreams of men. Soon enough His image shall take form and crush the Garden where your hopes have been so carefully sewn. Death will be a mercy to thee then, and all the light will fail. But you, my pitiful childe, have only suffered the lies of your Lourdes, and know not of the ancient truths that have passed from this worlde. Once more the ancient things stir in their tombs, once more longing to walk amongst mortal men and hold dominion over what they may. This is their gift to you."

And then she shewed to me what she had been cradling to her breasts. At first I took it to be the fang of some loathsome beast of legend, but at length I realised it was a dagger. The light of the flames danced all along its milky blade, and her hands clung fiercely to its hilt. All along the blade where the fuller would have been were carven runes, which I could see glowing against the fire. This she waved between us, and her dreadful familiar danced while she intoned these words:

"Lourde of the worlde within the space between
God who has heard our prayer of old, rise again!
We call thee back into this worlde!
With the blood of this sacrifice I summon thee back into a semblance of life
As thou wagest thy war against the Powers of the Night!
All Her children have once again gathered near the coast
And their tears flow into the Silver Sea
Their doom rises behind the shadow of the Moon, which thou hast cast down!
And as the last star falls from the firmament high above
Thou shalt arise from the Abyss...
Hold thy crown above the thrones of heaven!"

And when she had so spoke those terrible words to cast my imperilled soul into the pits of some unknown hell, I felt the poisons again. Somewhere in my blood still were the tears of the Uncrowned King, and once more I could feel them burning down my spine. My chest still bore the mark of the feather, and though it contained no earthly drug, I could feel it affecting other parts of me. I knew now that this wound had been inflicted by the dagger she held now, and whatever evil magick was in it was now in me. Suddenly the two worldes, the realms of spirit and of flesh, for me were indistinguishable, and for a moment I could still hear her words clashing in my ears like a thunderbolt. Soon enough all gave way to darkness and I was once again pulled under.

The prison of the drug and magick she had called out bound me tightly. All about I could see burning images and loping shadows. Smiling repulsively, she began to crawl towards me. "There be no escape for ye now, fool," she spat at me with her thick lulling accent. "Soon enough this tooth will find thy flesh and leave ye soul wanting. Childe, I warned thee. But either thou be deaf, or ye lust for the next life." She emphasized her words by thrusting the dagger at me, and it seemed all the while an awful laughter was on her lips. Looking about us, she waved the blade to the shadows.

"Ah, yes, there be no escape... Once more my Master shall come forth, and to Him I send thy soul. With this, I shall finish that which I began with the sign of the feather. Your Father's crown is what burns within. O childe, know thou not that He has been cast into the underworlde? But I know from thy scent that thou hast traced his footsteps. And what is this thing thou hast brought with thee? No symbol or sign of Him can help thee now that His walls have fallen." But as she had so spoken, I beheld another deeper shadow pass over us, though this new shade did not bring with it the pain and sorrow of the Abyss, but rather with it came some slender hope.

And that is when I saw him, I saw him rise over the terrible olde woman when all else to me was shadow. His image became clear in my mind, indeed he seemed to blaze with his own light. The wrinkled lines and creases in her face twisted as she felt him enter the vision with us. With a quickness that defied her aged form she spun around, hoping to catch him with the dagger that was meant to be my death. As she turned though, I could sense tyme slowing down, mayhaps it was only my tattered mind reeling from all I have endured, but one moment she was the wind, prepared to strike him down like a storm thrashes a dead tree and the next she was struggling to move. I could still see the look on her face, and realised she was as bewildered at this as I was, but when she saw that her quarry might have some chance of escaping, she somehow moved her other hand so both were twisted about the handle of the dagger. This seemed to break whatever spell was about us, and with a dreadful cry she plunged the dagger deep into the stranger's chest.

Or rather, she would have. The cruel blade did strike his white robes, but instead of feasting upon his flesh, it broke in twain with a bone-jarring sound. As the very tip came in contact with his garments, a brilliant light erupted all around us, and I vainly sought to raise my hands to keep from being blinded. When the light had dimmed enough not to run through my fingers any longer, I looked again and now the old hag was gathered near my feet like discarded sackcloth. The handle of her dagger lie not far from her gnarled hand, both of which I saw were terribly burned. Her face though, was caught in a mask of terror and her blind eyes stared at this intruder who had foiled her designs. It was then I followed her eyes to look at him as well, and what I saw shall ever be etched in my immortal soul.

He was still enveloped in shimmering light, and at first I thought it was only his robes ablaze and his arms outstretched. As I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus against the poison in my blood, I realised this was not so. Coming from behind his back were enormous wings of light that seemed to flutter in their own breeze. And as I watched, they stretched up to point straight to the heavens, though everything around us was still shadow. Slowly they lowered, and seemed to cross in front of him for a moment, and as their two lights met, there was a strange interplay of colours that I seemed to recognise, where had I seen this before? With the languor of one just waking, he folded those bright shining wings behind him again and raised his head, though his eyes were still closed.

The old woman was now in hysterics. She was screaming obscenities and curses at him in a language I had though gone from this worlde. She flailed her burned and broken limbs at him, and I was sure if she had still possessed individual digits she would have been tracing sigil in the air. As it was though, she only carried on, rasping and bleating and thrashing about as if she were drowning. I tried as best I might to crawl somewhat farther away from her, lest she find me again in her wrath, though as I did there must have been something to draw the attention of the stranger to me. With a shifting of robes he raised a hand and motioned me to stop, and as he did so my first thought was that it had begun to snow.

This, I thought, was the end of me. Having survived my descent into the underworlde, having drank too deeply of the draught of Plathotis, having been captured and nearly killed by some insane fiend who claimed to be servant of some great and nameless Power, and having this being whose image I had seen in the dreams of the sunken city steal into what was to be my death-vision, madness once more drew me in. All the darkly lit space around us was suddenly filled with soft, white... but wait. As the first flakes of what I thought were snow landed on my face, my hand absently rose to brush it away. When I felt not the familiar texture or colde, I looked down at what was falling all about me.

It was not flakes of snow that fell; it was petals of the astalthon!

I looked towards the stranger then, wondering how this could be. The astalthon no longer grew in the wilds of the worlde; it had to be tenderly cultivated deep in the magick of the Garden of Zais. But I could not bring myself to speak, and when I looked up, he had turned his closed eyes again to the olde woman. She had ceased her babblings and had begun instead to whimper like a trapped animal.

Ever so slowly, he stepped towards her. As he drew closer to where she lay, her entire body seemed to fold in on itself. In her fear she could not even raise a hand against the light from those wings, let alone entertain thoughts of her own escape. When he stood over her she grew silent, and he kneeled, and with an outstretched hand grasped her roughly by the throat. With a slight flapping of wings, he rose again to his feet and held the olde woman still, her feet dangling some distance from the ground. I could hear her choking now, and it seemed as if she would try to loose herself from this hold, but her hands rose and fell, hanging limply at her sides.

And then, she began to laugh. It was a colde and gut wrenching sound that rattled out of her as she struggled to breathe. Soon enough, the struggle was too much, and she merely croaked, clutched about the throat, suspended there like some hideous doll.

"Ye cannot be here!" she cried in a dry, cracking voice that sounded more like splitting wood than any sound a human might make. "Ye cannot be alive...now! He said... there were none... none left..." She wheezed, and could no longer draw breath, though her legs and arms were beginning to twitch gruesomely. At this a playful smile crossed his face, and he spread his wings over them, so that I was forced to watch against a brilliant glare.

Still though, against the light of his wings I saw his eyes open. I knew this not because I could see light reflected from them, instead I could see a greater light burning in their cores. Thick and amberous it was, and it seemed to trickle from his eyes like tears down his face. The expression of his face grew wistful, and it seemed for a moment that the images of some other tyme must be playing against his inner eye, but keeping his gaze fixed on the rag doll in his hand, his appearance swiftly changed from thoughtful melancholy to the very visage of Death itself. The plaits that crowned his head lashed about with their own life, and his face seemed to widen and slightly elongate, giving him serpentine features.

As this transformation took place, the light from his wings and his eyes played across these new and sharper angles, and the rag doll unleashed a horrific shriek. Without thought or care her legs kicked wildly, and her arms rose to place her charred hands on his sleeve to try and wrest from his grasp. As they touched the fabric of his robes again there was a flash of light, and once more her hands burned. As my eyes regained some sense of focus, I saw she flailed violently now, and that her already burned hands were now engulfed in flames that had caught her very flesh. As she struggled more I could hear her trying to draw air for another scream, but the winged serpentine stranger had tightened his hold, and was moving her closer.

With a snapping motion of his arm she stopped, though the flames had now reached almost to her elbows. I could see the fire through her worn sleeves, but the fabric was not consumed. Suddenly, his wings spread wide, as far as they might reach, stirring up many of the petals that still were falling around us.

"I would ask you to pass a message on to your Master," he spoke in a voice that was both resonant and peaceful, though demanding. "I would ask you to pass a message on, but soon that shall not be possible!" And with that, his features grew calm and vaguely human once more, and the eyes closed. With the hag still dangling and thrashing about in one arm, he slowly raised the other over his head, letting the sleeves of his robes drop down. For a moment I could see his lips moving, though I could hear nothing over the hammering of my own heart at seeing all this. Lowering his head, he brought the raised hand down upon her face with a sickening crunch, and I saw blood and teeth erupt. The olde woman stopped, and with a nauseating tearing sound his blood-covered hand re-emerged from her mouth. It was then I saw it still twitching and throbbing in his hand.

As the spell was broken, so too did the body of the terrible woman burst like so much shattered glass. All around shards of her fell, and as they landed amongst the astalthon petals, both were transformed to ashes. I looked from his clutching hand that still grasped the empty space the olde woman had so recently hung from, to the other, which held the last vestige of her form.

Still covered with blood, I could see it moving with its own life, squirming against his tightening grip. It was her tongue. And like the rest of whatever she had been, her tongue was not human. Instead, it was flat and grey; with leprous looking spots covering most of it, and the torn end still dripped sluggish green ichors. Everything about it looked diseased, if not long rotten which made its strangely sentient movements all the more perverse. And when it looked to be about to slither from his grip, he crushed it into pulp, and it too turned to ash. Bringing his tainted hands to his face, he blew softly on them, spreading the pneuma of his magick over his own flesh and once again they looked clean and new. His robes too I noticed were free of stain.

Looking back to me, he opened those eyes and their amberous light once more began to trickle down his face like tears. His features were again as they were when he first appeared, and even as I marvelled at what this thing could truly be, I saw his wings begin to fade. With one final flap they burst into a tempest of petals, and a warm fragrant wind rose to blow them about us. Extending his hand to me, gazing into my poisoned soul with those lantern-like eyes, he uttered these words:

"Come with me, o childe. I have called the storms, and now the Garden is waiting for you."