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Then it began to shake in my hands Not vibrate Shake

And then it exploded

Shards of it flew everywhere - powdery bits, larger fraged out massive craters as they skidded The pohipped away on the wind, a radioactive cloud that glowed hot green in the aetheric

And one fraght up, into the eye of the storh the portal in our world, then the aetheric, and then through every plane stacked above it, ripping a hole just large enough for a single drop of darkness to squeeze through

It trembled pendulously, then fell from the portal - a dozen feet across, ed toward David, trying to push hi to save me

We collided at the center, and the black drop ca down on us

I wrapped o around h and around us

Then the darkness hit us, and the world ended

I never expected to wake up, and I was really sorry I did Ion the rocks for hours, cold and wet and cramped; my muscles were so stiff and strained that I whi to shift ht sky, thick with constellations, and a bright yellow moon, three-quarters full

Wind rustled over the island

"David?"

No answer I pushed ht, I saw nothing but black rock and sea spray

"David?"

There was a body lying a few feet away, half hidden behind a boulder

Bad Bob, not David He’d died hard and ugly So him neatly in half from the crown of his head to somewhere around his navel He’d been dead for hours The blood was htly of decay

More dead Sentinels littered the landscape Moira was still draped over the stones where Rahel had left her Lars Petrie’s severed head rocked gently in the tropical wind

There was a cruise ship standing off the island, all its lights ablaze, but it was too far to swi as cramped and cold as I already was God, I felt awful

It was a mystery to me hoas still alive, or why

"David?" I fu to find that silvery cord that connected us on the aetheric

I couldn’t find it Or the aetheric

I’d gone co beyond my own normal human senses

I’d lost my access to power

"David!" I screamed it in panic this ti, trapped inside my own skin

So alone I scrale- more and more panicked with every silent second

I found hi on a boulder at the very tip of the island He was naked and shivering

"David? Oh God - honey - "

He was different Very different

When he raised his head, I saw that his eyes had gone plain brown

Human brown

I crouched down beside hi came out "My God What happened to us?"

He couldn’t tell nal the ship anchored out there, let them knoere still alive, but when I reached out for a spark of power, I found nothing Nothing at all Not a single tingle of energy that wasn’t fueled by the rapidly diar

I had no supernatural power at all

Neither did David, as far as I could tell

He got over a little bit of his violent shivering - enough to talk again "B-b-black corner," he whispered

I knehat that e that had destroyed the ability of the planet to channel energy to this part of the world Most black corners were small; a few measured as much as a city block, but those were rare

This one there was no way to kno far it extended, but inside it Wardens wouldn’t have power, and Djinn wouldn’t be anythingas their stored energy ran out