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properly interpret the aethereal realm as it was in actuality.
    "Better," Gellor replied as he stopped and gazed first at the young thief, then at himself. "Less than beacons, now, we two, but bright still. I think we will bring attention to ourselves despite your best efforts, Gord."
    Gellor's young companion shook his dark head. "Normally I would agree with you, but look at the distortion just in the near distance. See the paling of colors? The dimming of light?"
    "Yes," Gellor admitted, having studied all that surrounded them for the space of many heartbeats. "There is something wrong. ..."
    Gord shrugged. "Wrong? Perhaps, perhaps not. But there is something unnatural to this plane. It seems to screen us from it — it from us, too. Were Basiliv extant in the world I'd think he had managed it, but with the Demiurge passed elsewhere, I think we are being cloaked by another agency."
    "So which force aids us?" Gellor asked uncertainly.
    "The one of Entropy," Gord replied flatly. "And I don't believe that one interposes for our real benefit."
    "So?"
    "So we forge onward," the champion of neutrality said, shooting the troubador a hard smile. "I plan nothing good for such a thing as it is, either; that makes us even . . . once the greatest of evils is dealt with!"
    Gellor shook his head, wondering if Gord was suddenly overcome with a hubris brought on by the infusion of power he had been granted. Yet he said nothing further and followed Gord's lead. There were whorls and streamers of various hues evident in the milky nebulousness of the aether. Where these colors were most intense they went, passing through the fringes of the elemental spheres to gain the manifold branches and loops of the Plane of Probability. In all time and none at all the two heroes traversed the elemental planes and probability's sphere and could thus pass onto the astral realm. It was as if they suddenly stepped into the center of an infinite bubble. There was nothing supporting them, yet their feet were firmly planted. Above them the cosmos grew bright and brilliant, while beneath their armored feet spread gloom of somber and ugly hues. Gellor gestured toward a well of inky darkness.
    The Abyss," Gord agreed. "Let us hurry."
    * * *
    That is how the pair came to the insanity-provoking maelstrom that now surrounded them, moments before Gord had said they had to face and conquer the many strata of the realm of demonkind. When he heard his friend speak thus, Gellor commented, "No two can ever subjugate such a madness as this place, Gord. Not if we had every atom of energy of every deify opposed to the demons!"
    That's no more than the simple truth," the young thief agreed with a smile of encouragement. "When I said we must make this place our own I meant we would venture through it, dispossess those opposed to our purposes, and bend the others to our will. Never would any but those of netherspawn dream of actually possessing this vile agglomeration of forsaken planes!"
    The grizzled bard had to chuckle at that "Thinking aloud, as it were, has definite disadvantages now that both of us employ mind speech, mind search. Instant thoughts allow no modification through reflection in the course of articulation of the basic ideas. We are both being too literal, too serious."
    "I get your point. This is a serious business, yet we must keep our good humor, uplifted spirit, the sense of true reality in the multiverse. If we dwell too much on the abyssal realms, both of us will surely lose perspective — even sanity."
    That and more," Gellor agreed telepathically. "So what do we face here in the vestibule of demons?"
    "I see this area as a no-demon's-land, more or less," Gord told the troubador aloud. He needed to hear the sound of his own voice to bring himself firmly into the reality of the Abyss as a mere portion of an infinite series of places, states, conditions and energies. "It is the common entry point to the hundreds of realms which are below, a wilderness of