Quitetly, Quiggly stepped into the darkness as he stealthily approached and steeled himself. He was here, and that was all that mattered. He was in the place he had once dreamed of reaching. He could almost see it, if he tried, that very image he had had of the place as he closed his eyes. He could remember seeing a city of darkness under a vast night sky, and now he knew he was right. There it was! As he approached, he found himself slowing down. The distance was getting longer, and he could see that the city was miles in front of him. He was in a valley of ruins, a valley like none he had ever seen before. Not only was the city massive, but the landscape all around it was vast. There were no trees. There was nothing to make him think that this valley was even on a world, for there were no mountains or any mountainside formations whatsoever. This place did not appear to have once been the terrain of the land as it is today, but as a barren wasteland that had once been a desert or perhaps a moon of the sun. But what was all the more astounding was how the city seemed to glow. There was some luminescence to it. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but whatever it was, he could see it shining in the depths of night. When he looked more closely, he discovered that he could only see this luminescence on the highest parts of the buildings. There was no light in any of the windows, and no light seeped from within any of the structures. The entire city seemed to be one big dark building. But Quiggly thought he had heard something and turned his attention to a figure walking over the horizon. It was one of those beings that had given him such a fright before, and his fright now quickly turned to fascination, but one of the strangest things about this creature was that it walked on the backs of gigantic insects. He watched in terror and amazement as the monster walked on the backs of a half dozen large insects, at least eight feet across and twenty feet long. They had dark, feathery wings as wide as the beast was long, and the creature moved with preternatural ease as it strode across the barren land. He began to walk towards it slowly, and he could see that it had some kind of harness which seemed to hold it down to the ground. It made its way toward Quiggly, taking short steps as it walked. When it came closer, he could see that its flesh was a ghastly, bluish grey, and his instinct told him not to move any closer. Quiggly was sure that the creature was intelligent, for it had a strange, hawk-like face. The eyes that stared at him did not appear human, and when it raised its hands and opened its mouth in a terrible grinning roar, he froze in fear. He stood frozen with fright when the thing suddenly began to transform, first into the form of an ape, then of a bird, and finally into the form of a man. The transformation was so abrupt that Quiggly was not sure whether or not he had actually seen it, and he found himself standing paralyzed in the most unimaginable horror. He was sure that this creature had been some kind of alien demon, or perhaps some kind of insane beast, but whatever it was, he found himself rooted to the spot. As he stood there, he began to scream and was shaking from head to toe. He began to move and his speed was increased until he was sprinting at full speed. He was sprinting away from the monster, but it was not the creature who was following him. He realized that he was being followed, and that even more frightening than that was the fact that it was invisible. He would stop every so often to listen and try to understand the sounds that he heard. He kept seeing the creature and keeping it in sight, but it was always the same distance behind him. He tried to determine what it was, for it was not the thing that he had seen in the night. It was something that was all around him that he could hear and smell, and sometimes feel, but it was never seen by him. A sound was approaching him, he knew, and as he turned his head, he saw a shape growing in the distance. He had seen it many times before, even if he had only dreamed of it. It was a huge dragon, a flying, menacing dragon. He saw the figure grow bigger and bigger as it moved closer. There was nothing in the air with it. There was no wind, no air currents, and no drafts of hot air. It was a single form that came closer and closer to him and he knew that it was the creature he had seen earlier. He began to scream and turned to run, but there was no way to escape it. And in the same instant, he began to recognize it. As he ran from it, he saw the beast that had transformed into a man transform back into a bird, a bird the size of an eagle. The giant wings flapped with a thunderous flap as it charged after him, but as he kept running, he began to slow and was soon moving no faster than a slow walk. As he slowed, the creature had not caught up with him, and it seemed as if he was only a few hundred yards behind him. Quiggly noticed that they had come into a huge valley with boulders and rocks all around. He was standing on a very small mountain in the middle of a valley of stone and his sense of time was disoriented. In one blink of his eyes, the ground was under his feet and in the next blink, the ground had moved away to leave the giant bird in its place. The giant bird turned and was now overhead, its massive, white-feathered wings extended and flying in the shape of a huge arc. In one instant, the ground was asphalt. In the next, it was open water with dark waves about to smash him into the ground. It was as if the ground had just made a giant turn. Quiggly had now been through this before. He had heard a huge splash and felt the ground rumble. He remembered the giant bird that had been flying overhead, but had just risen from the water. He remembered what was on the other side of the wall, but at that moment, he did not know what or where to look for it. He would have taken one step toward the wall, but just as he was about to take that step, the ground began to crack and split apart. The wall before him turned to fog as it rushed away from him. He tried to run, but he felt as if he were running in quicksand. His feet seemed to sink into the soft soil. There was a terrible noise coming from deep beneath him, and he could feel the earth begin to rumble. There was a long pause as he was about to go over the edge of the tiny mountain. There was a rumbling noise. He could hear the sound. The ground shook and moved under him. And then, he could hear the ground begin to snap back in the other direction. It sounded as if a gigantic hand were reaching up through the ground from below. And then there was a scream of terror, a scream of someone in agony. And then Quiggly remembered! This was the last thought that went through his mind. He remembered what he had seen when he came to see if he could climb up. He had seen nothing but shadows. The ground had closed in around him. Quiggly did not understand how, but something had closed in on him, and he had been swallowed up in his own darkness. It was not a darkness that could be seen or felt, but one that seemed to fill his very mind. He was gone, even if he was still conscious. CHAPTER XVI The blackness continued to envelop him, but he was not dead. There was a feeling of dread. There was a feeling of unbridled terror, and a feeling of nothingness. For some reason he did not understand, this nothingness was worse than the darkness. This was a nothingness that was filled with nothing, and the nothing was everywhere. He could feel it in his hands and he could feel it in his face. It was not a nothingness, it was not a condition of the void. It was a being that seemed to have filled all that was around him. It was a nothingness that seemed to hold the nothing that was left in the world. He did not remember what had happened before he found himself trapped by the closing walls, but he knew that he had walked around for a long time in his darkness, as if he were a puppet on the end of a string. He found the way there for some reason, and he found the walls that held him. It was not at all hard to do. He knew he was only a very few steps from them, and yet, he walked for hours until he was standing in front of the towering blackness. As he was thinking these thoughts, he began to think of his past, and as he thought of his past, he did not remember. There was nothing he could not remember, but he realized that he did not know what he was or why he was here. There was a part of him that knew, but that part could not be explained, and when it tried, he found himself speaking without any reason. He did not know why he was here or even what he had just done to get here. He had not expected to find anything, but