From the moment the Endless Sunrise set off for Facility Six-Seven-Zero-Three, The Traveller could sense that Pratisha was growing even more unsettled than she had been in the presence of Darkhawk. It was unusual in the extreme for the ship to carry more than two - for most of its history, she had had a crew of just one - and the presence of The Hellion, a demon-like giantess, and five of the armoured Dracbrood of the Enhanced Squadron made the normally airy, roomy interior seem rather cramped - but it wasn't that that had Pratisha so on edge.

"I've never seen you like this", said The Traveller, when he had a moment to leave his station, and find his companion on her own. "Not even on 'Fortain's World'..."

"I don't want to sound like I'm insulting your goddess", said the elegant witch, "but... being in her presence was just too much for me. She-she represents something quite unnatural - a mortal mind imposing itself on nature. That... it's just... wrong."

"And you wonder why I've never taken you to my world", the explorer replied, trying to ease her mind with levity. "You're not the only one to be profoundly affected by that meeting, and I don't mean being granted self-perpetuating 'LifeLight'. Darkhawk has changed - before, she was much more like you and me..."

His words tailed off as The hellion strode past, a barbed sword in hand, and he saw Pratisha shudder. "...but that's not the whole of it, is it?", he continued. "Are our guests troubling you...?"

"That one - The 'Hellion' - she's got darkness wrapped around her", murmured the Indian woman. "She's not a demon herself, no matter what she looks like, but she carries an aura of the demonic around with her - and it's not the sword..."

"You're right", said The Traveller. "The Hellion may be a Child of Mystalorn, what you might think of as a creature of light, but she's a person all the same, a sum of the choices she's made. She worships a demon goddess, one of the most powerful - her choice, and ultimately, her fate."

"And your people are happy to have that as one pf their leaders?", gasped Pratisha. "I won't even pretend I understand."

"Of all the facets of reality, the minds and souls of mortals are the least clear, and the hardest to polish", remarked The Traveller. "Such is the way of things, I'm afraid."

"And then there are those 'Dracbrood'", continued Pratisha, sounding quite disgusted. "Human and serpent in one - such a slap in the face of nature..."

"So am I, essentially", said The Traveller, in a quite "matter of fact" way. "I was never meant to be - does that disgust you? Surely no-one is supposed to live for a thousand years...?"

"Not the same thing", muttered Pratisha. "Not in the slightest. You-you're the product of a different kind of nature, the natural order of an entirely different universe..."

"...brought into being by a mind you've already told me should not impose itself on reality", The Traveller reminded her.

"Oh shut up", snapped the witch. She'd been with him long enough to know when she wasn't going to win - the only way out of this predicament was not to play.

A gently purring alarm tone alerted The Traveller to the fact that the Endless Sunrise was reaching the end of her course, and he and Pratisha headed back to the central chamber of the ship, passing between two of the Dracbrood on the way. He'd gone some way towards stripping away Pratisha's air of unease, but The Traveller took note of the way his friend never once looked to either side as they passed the armoured creatures...

"And here was me thinking your state of mind was just a severe case of boot-envy", he remarked playfully as he reached the controls. It hadn't escaped his attention that all their guests wore rather glamorous thigh-high boots, much like Pratisha's preferred footwear.

Pratisha was equally playful as she lightly punched The Traveller on the arm, and glared at him. her expression softened soon after, and she was more her usual self when she asked her companion a curious question: "Just how do the Dracbrood get into those boots when they don't have any arms?"

"Slaves", replied The Traveller, plainly. "Lots and lots of slaves - or at least they used to be slaves. Now that the only Dracbrood population in existence lives exclusively in Dominion, transplanted there by Darkhawk herself, there's a waiting list several years long for people wanting to volunteer for the job. It's viewed as a great honour, to tend to The Mother's pets."

"Your world is... insane", sighed an incredulous Pratisha.

"No doubt about that", responded The Traveller. "It produced me, after all. Now, hold on to something - this could get... interesting."

Jallurrauden Jorrveggan was one of the least important personnel at the Vaegsorsha base of the Vaggtshaersken; a member of the detachment of ground troops assigned to defend the secret and not entirely honourable activities of the Extreme Measures Division, and as such, it fell upon him to investigate a minor energy fluctuation in one of the rarely used storage areas. Such a task was beneath a proud warrior of Narthane, but orders were as a boulder on the road - irritating, but unavoidable...

Opening the door of Storage Bay 15, Jorrveggan only got part of a commonly used profanity - "By The Najestkaeragya's sagging..." - before Dracbrood jaws snapped shut over his head, biting it clean off at a single stroke. The armoured monster then slid into the passage, brushing aside the warrior's corpse with her tail, then The Hellion and three of the other members of The Enhanced Squadron followed, setting off to work their particular brutal brand of mayhem elsewhere.

"May the earth reclaim you, peace and joy be yours", murmured Pratisha as she stepped over the spreading pool of blood, with The Traveller by her side. She could not bring herself to look as the last of the Dracbrood paused, and stooped to lick at the sticky pool of crimson...

"Here we go", announced The Traveller, the compass-like Omnisensor in hand and scanning. "One sensor-trace for Dominium - no, make that five, but all in one place. Two levels up, and west of us. The inter-level transit tubes are bound to be security-locked, but that -"

Before The Traveller could explain his plan of action, the Dracchild looked up from the blood-pool, turned her head to the ceiling, and breathed out a bubble of seething fire. Energy-fields in her helmet, part of the shield that protected all the unarmoured parts of her body, constricted the flow of flame, condensing it into a blinding, almost blue-white beam of energy that leapt upwards, its touch melting metal and stone as ice might melt before a blowtorch.

"Or we could just go straight up", murmured Pratisha, amazement briefly supplanting her disgust.

The shaft cut by the breath-beam expanded rapidly as it broke through into open space between levels - the whole base was just a cylindrical box, dropped into a pre-carved hole in the surface of the planet Aas-Duvreem, and that quick-and-easy approach made life much easier for the invaders. The fire-spitting Dracchild leading the way, The Traveller and Pratisha ascended quickly, with the aid of the witch's magic, and without unwelcome intervention from Jorrveggan's fellow warriors.

That was, until they broke through onto the level where The Traveller had detected Dominium...

"Seven... ten life-signs, all Narthani", reported The Traveller, after consulting the Omnisensor. "They're waiting for us."

"I can send a cloud of choking vapour up there", offered Pratisha, obviously having had her fill of death, but the Dracchild was far less reluctant, the deadly, yet graceful creature leaping up through the hole she had just burned with a harsh, barking battle-cry. Once again, the two adventurers heard the high-pitched sizzling shriek of the fire-beam, not quite ear-splitting enough to drown out at least three voices, screaming in pain and horror.

The heat-beam ceased. There was a moment of awful silence, then high heels and a dragging tail could be heard near the hole, and the armoured snout of the dragon-woman dipped down into the shaft. "Done now", she hissed. "We go."

Four sliding doors along the corridor, they came to their destination, and The Traveller paused to offer an alternative to just burning their way in. "I can tap into the environmental systems, and flood the place with anaesthetic gas", he told Pratisha and the Dracchild, the latter growling softly in annoyance. "Our rescuee won't be affected."

Pratisha sensed that The Traveller was doing that to spare her more bloodshed, and she did all she could to support him. "I like it", she said, as quickly as she could after her companion had finished. "Let's do that."

"Dominion rescue mission", hissed the Dracchild. "Zharsa is Dominion. Traveller is Dominion. Pretty-thing is not Dominion."

"'Pretty-thing' is with me", muttered The Traveller, "so that makes her 'Dominion', too..."

It was Pratisha who saw the door open first, and she was first to see a dull metal sphere, the size of a fist, rolling out into the passage. The Dracchild was next to detect the device, and immediately pushed The Traveller aside, putting herself between the two adventurers and the grenade. There was a flash, and a dull thud as the dragon-woman extended her energy-shield to block off the passage, so that the grenade only left scorched walls, a part-melted door, and two interdimensional explorers very grateful for their sinuous reptilian companion.

"Zharsa saves your lives", snapped the Dracchild. "Either you belong to Zharsa now, or you do as Zharsa says. Not soft way - hard."

The fire-beam licked at the plas-steel wall, which crumbled in seconds into a landslide of red-hot cinders. Zharsa strode into the laboratory, her battle-cry ringing in all ears, and before Pratisha and The Traveller could even see what was going on, the fire-beam had struck out twice, and four more voices were so briefly raised in agonised terror before being savagely stilled forever.

Through the chaos, one voice could be heard with no hint of pain or fear. "Stand down", called out a man, young but plainly intelligent. "Secure your... weapons, or I will destroy this one...!"

The Traveller glanced into the room, and from the shelter of Zharsa's extended wing, he saw a slender Narthani man, not the warrior breed, red hair held back by a winged headband of brass, holding a circular laser-saw to the throat of the limbless form of Captain Dominion...

"This isn't just some device", hissed the Narthani, green eyes flicking to his captive. "It contains a coherent psychic essence, a living mind. Fascinating, very fascinating - but I'd give up the chance to uncover its secrets in an instant!"

"We're here for him", The Traveller called out from behind the wall. "Nothing else. It's just us, not the rest of the Imperative - whatever argument you have with them, it's nothing to do with us..."

"Traitors", snapped the Vaggtshaersken agents. "Fools - the Confederacy is crumbling, Darkhawk is dead! The future les with the strongest that are left - the Darkwraths, the Khardans...!"

The Traveller held his tongue about Darkhawk. Any misconception represented a potential advantage, a foothold in negotiations - and besides, Pratisha, on the other side of the hole in the wall, appeared to have a plan, for she was casting a spell he'd seen her use before...

To buy her more time, The Traveller tried a little harder to engage the man's attention. "So, brave warrior - what's your name?"

"I am Lokai the Swift", declared the Narthani. "Ask your Confederacy allies about me - they know me all too well. The secrets I stole from them; the plans of the Titanium Warriors, the neural simulation routines for their combat robots - the truth about Kron'ai! Let me go, and I'll share all that with you. Isn't that worth allowing me to slip away...?"

Pratisha suddenly came out from behind the wall, and stepped into the room. "Take me instead", she called out to Lokai - her long leather jacket was unfastened almost to the navel, affording the Narthani a clean and alluring view of an expanse of tawny cleavage. "Your captive can't move - he has no legs..."

Zharsa hissed angrily, but Pratisha ignored her, and walked over to Lokai when the Narthani motioned to her to come to him. "Damn it, Pratisha!", shouted The Traveller - his use of her first name outside the Endless Sunrise his only way of showing her that he knew she had something in mind...

The moment Lokai touched Pratisha, her spell took effect. Skin of Frog was so called because it mimicked the effect of the secretions exuded by some species of amphibians - their skins were either distasteful to predators, or even harmful. Paralysis shot through the Narthani spy in between heartbeats, and frozen, he fell backwards...

...and as the man hit the floor, the laser-saw jarred loose from his numb fingers, and plunged into his chest.

Blood boiled on contact with the deadly instrument, and inspired by the scent of prey, Zharsa dived on the slain Narthani, slipping into a ravenous frenzy, and Pratisha stumbled away, shielding her tear-filled eyes from the carnage. The Traveller leapt in to pull her clear, in case she was next on the Dracchild's menu, and only when the cracking of bone and spattering of blood had ended did the explorer even consider looking back into the laboratory.

The Traveller cursed softly, under his breath, as he hugged his companion. He'd promised Pratisha wild and wonderful adventures, but nothing like this. He always tried his very best to avoid loss of life, but this time, he'd been powerless.

There was, however, still a life to save - and from the waning glow at the heart of Captain Dominion's crippled body, The Traveller could tell that there was little of that life left to save...

...to be concluded...