The hunk of rock—which was black, with glittering crystal shards embedded into it, and stood at the center of the room—was twelve feet wide and had a circular opening roughly cut into it leading down into a shaft, or cylindrical chamber, so deep they could not fathom its bottom. Clouds of purple mist swirled above the opening. And above that, there floated what they had come here for: The ancient Sword of the Dragon-Slayers, Dràchynthyr itself. It was, by design, a longsword, similar to the size of a Claymour but much thinner. Its blade was made of solid glass—or something like glass—and was bright red and translucent, with metal edging at the diamond-like seams that formed it, as might the edging of a carefully-hewn jewel made out of rubies. The glass glowed a slight crimson color, and this glow gleamed off the metal edging like rays of sunlight glinting off a camera’s lens. At the top, they found the hilt and handle. The hilt, shaped out of gold, bore a resemblance to what Gadgorak knew a “Celtic Cross” would look like to Gadget, in his world, with a detailed golden statue of a serpent wrapped and spiraling around its circumference. The beams of the cross bore a golden, statuesque figure on both sides of it. This too, Gadgorak recognized from his knowledge of Gadget’s world; it was someone called “Da Vinci’s” spread-eagled man, his limbs at forty-five-degree half-angles to the beams of the Cross, with angel wings affixed to his back. The beams of the cross, and the golden glimpses of the circle within the serpent’s entwining grasp; some unknown entity had carved a set of symbolic glyphs onto into them, on both sides. These glyphs, after a moment’s thought, seemed to relate, in five stages, the evolution of man from ape, and then back to ape from man on the other side. At the center of edge corner-point of the cross, someone had carved a glyph resembling a cloud with rays coming out of it. What this meant, Gadgorak could only guess at. It was all in some “coded” language he did not know. The whole thing rang a bell with Gadget’s memories, though. Something from a book. A storybook. A book by a man whose powerful imagination bathed in blood and hellfire, but possessed the beating heart of a simple, joyous child within his chest. Gadgorak couldn’t pry the identity of the Author who had fashioned this in their mind in Gadget’s world, but he gathered fuzzy clues from elsewhere in Gadget’s lifelong readership of story-tomes, enough to know that this cross, itself, symbolized something. Some kind of dynamic change to not just the wielder of the sword, but to humankind itself—on all worlds, and within all possible realities. Here, they stood united in the Cross’s call to arms—for that’s what it seemed like; either that, or a great instrument of tremendous, dynamic change—and yes, all worlds; all realities. With none left out. The blade of the sword had writing on it too, on both sides and near either glass-and-metal edge . . . though in a different symbolic tongue than the writing on the Cross. Gadgorak could read it easily enough. It was written in one of the Ancient tongues of Aeòthánia. It said, roughly translated: Whosoever wieldeth this great Sword in battle with the Enemy, know this—fantasy and myth and what is real are all one thing made whole, one made manifest in thou, and all thou standeth for. Master this knowledge, and and Triumph over All Obstacles. Fail to know it, and perish in the Enemy’s Flaming Breath. The sword’s handle, this time of a gleaming metal not unlike silver, but with a faint bluish hue to it, stuck up out of the hilt a good foot or so—plenty of room with which to grab it and wield it.

  Gadgorak thought to himself: I wonder how heavy it is? But he didn’t have long to think; a deafening, lion-like roar bellowed through the room and echoed off the walls and floor. The sound had come from above. They all looked upward, and saw, spiraling down out of the clouds toward them, a great Griffin, twice the size of any man, but with a human head instead of an animal’s. The man’s face—for it clearly bore the face of a man—scowled at them angrily and bared his—fanged—teeth as his lion’s paws settled on the ground before them.

  “Know me,” the man’s mouth whispered—though the sound filled the entire room—“and taste of the river Styx. Fail to know me, and taste of the river Styx. You cannot pry the Sword from my grasp. It is mine forever. See how it floats in the air above the clouds above the shaft? It is my power which makes that possible. I am its Guardian, charged with defending it with what shroud of life I have left. Those who wish to claim it . . . must Know me. And the only way to Know me—”

  “Is to fight you,” finished Gadgorak for it. The creature roared and gave him a wide-eyed, jaw-agape look—as if to say, “Insolence!”—as it reared up on its hind paws, clawing at the air in front of it with gleaming, extremely sharp metal talons that gleamed in the reddish glow of the Sword the color of blood bathed in moonlight. The Creature bared and widened the gap between its enormous fangs—distending its human mouth in the process—and glared at them with a terrible rage festering in its eyes, the mind-light of a cruel and merciless killer, a true Beast in every sense of the word.

  Gadgorak and his party stood before it, their backs to the Sword floating above the shaft—and stood ready for battle. Gadgorak had his particle-stream weapon at the ready; Teif, an arrow still nocked in her bow; Kranen, in a fighting stance used to cast the deadliest of spells. Gadgorak held up his hand, though, as if to signal—wait for me to act, first.

  He stowed his weapon’s wand on its backpack unit, and Teif and Kranen both exchanged raised eyebrows at the move. Gadgorak—summoning every ounce of bravery he had—took a few steps forward, toward the Griffin.

  “I have a bargain to propose,” he announced to the Griffin.

  “No bargains—you must fight me to claim the blade!”

  “What if,” said Gadgorak quietly, “we could change you back to Human form, and set you free of this place? The Wayfinder in the next room—beyond that corridor, there—he could enlighten you as to the way out; I’m certain he could, and would, if you wished it. Yes. Think of it. A way out. A way back to your life as a man. Moreover, back to the world, and to your family as the man they once knew—if they’re still alive, I would hope. I wouldn’t know for sure. But time does work differently here; we ourselves know that, and I’m sure you know it, as well.”

  “Aye, but one cannot work such miracles! If it were possible, I would know of a way! I know all, I see all!” growled the Griffin, pacing back and forth in front of them eagerly, clearly hungry. He licked the lips of his distended jaw, his fangs glimmering in the chamber’s half-light. “So no. It is not possible. You must defeat me in fair combat, or die trying. That is the only way.”

  “No,” said Gadget, calmly. “There are other ways. The way of compassion. Do you recognize this, perhaps? Teif!” He nodded at her, and she instantly knew his thoughts. She lowered her bow, easing back the string quickly, and dug around in her bag of holding. She pulled out the Erlenmeyer flask full of viscous, blue-glowing liquid, and handed it to Gadgorak. He held it up in front of the Griffin.

  The Beast’s eyes grew wide with hunger, desire, and fear. “But . . . It is not possible! That . . .” it whispered, agog, “that is the . . . I even recognize—remember—the vail! That is the cure for the curse laid upon me for failing to retrieve the blade! I lost it when I came here, ages ago, in a battle with the Tyroks! But it is of matter. No matter at all. None. My family is long dead, and the world—out there—has changed. Drastically. I wouldn’t know my place in it nor how to live in it. My place is here. Right here. To fight, and keep safe the blade from unworthy hands.”

  “I suppose that’s true, yes,” said Gadgorak. “And it was no accident that we found it, surely.”

  “Wh . . . where did you find it, exactly?” the Griffin asked. “I mean . . . perchance?”

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  “One of the Tyroks must’ve dropped it during our fight with them,” said Kranen. “Must’ve been carrying it around with him for a while, the little bugger. Probably thought it was some kind of magic jewel, or something.”

  “Give it to me!” snarled the Griffin, and he growled deep in his throat. “Or I will tear each of your heads off with only one bite each! And yours—you, with the strange looking machine on your back!—you will go last!”

  “Fine,” said Gadgorak. “So here it is.” He took the bottle in hand, and, holding it in front of him and his other hand well away from any weapons, as a peaceful gesture, he approached the Griffin. “Okay. Now you don’t have hands, so I’ll have to do this part for you. Open your mouth.”

  “Wh . . . what?” the Griffin said. “What sort of trick is this!”

  “It’s not a trick of any kind,” said Gadgorak. “It’s the cure. I’m going to pour it into your mouth.”

  “Ack!” said the Griffin. “It is a trick! I know it! I can smell it on you! That is not the cure any longer . . . instead it is poison! Some kind of poison!”

  Gadget took the stopper out of the bottle—and he really hoped this didn’t turn him into anything—and dipped his finger in the liquid, then sucked it off his fingers with his mouth.

  “See?” he said. “It’s not poisoned. If it was, I’d have died just now.”

  “And besides,” said Kranen, speaking lore that Gadgorak knew that he knew backwards and forwards, “You can’t poison a Griffin. Their bodies are geared toward eating prey that’s still alive; and thus rooting out impurities or illnesses, or anything like that. Everyone knows that.”

  “I didn’t,” said Teif.

  “Shh! Be quiet!” said Kranen, putting a finger to his lips.

  “Don’t you tell me to be—!”

  “Very well,” said the Griffin slowly. “But if I sense—at any moment—that I am being made a fool of, all of you will die! This is your final warning!”

  “So it is,” nodded Gadgorak, and before the beast could protest, he stepped forward, tipped the flask to the creatures lips, and then poured. Even a sip would do the trick—if it worked like most potions did, that is. The Griffin blinked in shock, and took a few steps back from them, looking at them with terror in its eyes.

  “What—what have you—aargh!” The Griffin clenched his eyes shut and then rolled his mighty head around on his neck. He bellowed in pain, agony, unbearable suffering. Then he collapsed to the ground, and began . . . to change . . .

  His distended jaw suddenly shrank, and his fangs disappeared into the teeth of a man. He arched his spine and cried out again as it too shrank—Gadgorak winced; all over the creatures body, he could hear bones crackling as they reshaped themselves—and straightened, as well. The creature’s shoulders shifted, backward, and its mighty lion’s paws, with their sharp talons for claws, withered into merely human hands, the talons retracting, then vanishing. The man-Griffin cried out yet again, and rolled over onto the floor, and Gadget could see his genitals shrinking, his fur disappearing into his skin, his paws splintering into fingers and toes, and shrinking, as well. His eyes went from black as night to a crystal cerulean, and the split above his mouth closed up. His whole body contracted, and then expanded, and then contracted even further—the sound of bones cracking and skin smacking on stones as he beat his hands—now just hands—on the stone; the sounds persisted even when the change had all but stopped. Last but not least his tail nearly recoiled into his backside, above his buttocks, and with one last feral cry, he lay still, his eyes closed. Breathing—still alive—but nonetheless, Human.

  Gadgorak breathed a sigh of relief at the sight. Teif relaxed her grip on her bow’s string completely, and Kranen resumed his normal posture. He straightened his wizard’s cap on his head, as he and Teif both gawked at what they saw.

  Gadgorak wasn’t all that surprised really, and oddly, Kranen shouldn’t have been; as a Wizard, he’d probably transfigured dozens of Humans into animals, and vice versa. But something about this sure took his breath away, that much was certain.

  “Wait, look!” he said, pointing to he man’s chest. Gadgorak looked, and then saw it too—hanging around the man’s neck was a looped string, and on it, a silver key.

  “That’s it!” Cried Gadgorak. Hoping he didn’t wake the sleeping man—whoever he had once been—he lowered his voice. “I mean—that’s it. That’s got to be it. That’s literally the key that gets us the sword, I’m sure of it!”

  “Well,” said Teif, stepping past him, “If you say so, let’s hope it’s so.” She yanked the key off, breaking the string from which it dangled. She held up the key and let out a small, disbelieving laugh, and smiled. She had such a pretty smile, thought Gadgorak. It went well will her pixieish haircut. She handed the key over to Gadgorak—subtly acknowledging that he was their leader—who turned it over in his hands, studying it. It looked like any other key he’d ever seen. Nothing really “special” or that made it stand out from any other he’d seen, that was for certain. Trouble was, now that they had it, what in blazes did they do with it? Gadgorak looked back and up at the sword; it still hovered over that impossibly deep shaft, right in the center, above the purple misty clouds. And then, he saw it, a minor detail he had missed the first once-over he’d given it: There, on the trapezoidal ring of stone that surrounded the shaft, right in the center, from where they stood, was a keyhole.

  Teif stopped Gadgorak as he started toward it hurriedly.

  “Wait!” she said, pressing her hand against his chest, an earnest sense of worry in her eyes. “Wait. What if it’s rigged to explode . . . or something . . . y’know, booby-trapped.”

  “I highly doubt the Griffin,” said Gadgorak, “being partly a man . . . No. That would’ve made him surrender it with much more ease than he did. We had to get that it off of him; it had been hiding in amidst the hair of his mane, so we didn’t see it at first. But if we had, I’m sure he would’ve been much less reluctant to give it to us, and let us die. No, something tells me that when I approached him, and he didn’t immediately kill me right there and then, that we were dealing with—something—someone who would be honest with us. Or at least, true to his purpose. Either way, he was honorable the whole time. I suspect his threat to ‘bite our heads off’ was a ruse. He didn’t want to fail at his job, thinking that if he could perform it, and well enough, that he would be set free of this place, a man once again. Well, we’ve given him that. And he’s given us the key. I say, we use it. Who’s against me?”

  Teif started to raise her hand but then stopped, and reconsidered. Kranen didn’t move.

  “Alright then,” said Gadgorak, “it’s decided, then. We put the key in the keyhole, and hope that I’m right.”

  He approached the shaft, out of which the strange glow emanated. He knelt down. Placed the key in the keyhole, and—very carefully—turned it. He heard something click into place, and suddenly, the sword fell from its midair hover, as though pushed out of the air, forward, the metal-edged glass of the blade ringing out as it hit the stone. It did not crack or even show any sign that it had been harmed. In fact, the pulsating scarlet glow coming off of the glass—from seemingly within the glass—grew brighter. Warily, Gadgorak walked over, and picked it up gently by the handle to get the feel and weight of it, its balance. All perfect. He suspected it would feel “perfect” in anyone’s hands . . . even someone untrained in combat, sword or otherwise.

  “I’ll take that, if you don’t mind,” said a loud, clear feminine voice, with a slight English accent to it. He whirled around to find the Sorceress, Lady Discordia, had arrived.

  “Sorceress? How in the bloody hell did you get here?” asked Kranen. He thought for a brief moment, then clenched his fists with rage. “If you could just come here at any moment, then why send us out to probably, most likely—though we didn’t—die like that?”

  “I had to know who was worthy to wield it in battle,” she said. “You see, the guardian of the blade only chooses the person most skilled at fighting it. That’s what it refers—” She looked over and saw the sleeping man, passed out on the floor naked. “That’s what it referred to when it said ‘worthy.’ The trouble is, in that department, no one other than the guardian is worthy of it; so it can never leave this place. But to show actual, genuine compassion to such an unholy abomination as that thing is—or rather, was—is a higher order of worthiness. I could’ve defeated the guardian easily, with magic. So could you, Kranen. But neither of us would be truly worthy of the sword. No, I’m afraid the only one among you who can wield it is Gadgorak, here. You’ve done well. You are more than I could’ve hoped for, and at that, even more than that. You are the one Destined to wield this sword, Gadgorak. Not I. Not either of them. You. So if you would—the three of you, all together—come with me now. Let us leave this awful place and go somewhere a bit . . . nicer. And certainly less filthy.”