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said with that look of steely determination Catherine had not seen for a very long time. “Pan’s around here somewhere, I can feel him. And I don’t imagine he’s left all of this up to chance. He’s going to need our help.”
    ***
    Twelve hours until the moon was to pass in front of the Earth, a rare event arrived that would see an eclipse happen during a peak period of solar activity.
    For the past four months the sun had been passing through a highly energetic area of the galaxy, absorbing nearly ten percent more plasma current activity than it was used to. The instability was going to come at a cost. Two massive solar flares were released, and NASA tracked both of them.
    Both of them were not pointed at the Earth; had they been, mankind would have been ejected back to the stone age as every electronic and electrical device on the planet fried itself from the additional incoming energy from Earth’s sky.
    The additional energy would graze the planet however. The only noticeable damage would be a few localized power outages, surprisingly some of them along the line of the eclipse as the moon would act like a focusing ring for the incoming storm.
    One event would go unnoticed by all but a few. The Key knew what was coming, it could sense the buildup of energy the past few months. This was a dangerous time, and it had known that the bearer would be attacked prior to the eclipse. Time was a concept held by the bearer, not by itself. The Key was not sentient, exactly, but it was a focus of energy from other dimensions, other realms of life. It was not sentient, but it could, on occasion, reason.
    It also did not take sides, but generally did not like change, which is why the elevated energies of an eclipse were required to change the bearer. All else being equal, it would prefer the company of those like the bearer, or at least closer in temperament.
    For the first time in over ten thousand years it would be forced to remove itself in order to protect itself. Last time, the world was plunged into catastrophe as endless streams of meteors and comet fragments plummeted into the Earth, and wiped the civilization that had called itself Atlantis into history. They had been unable to use the Key to protect themselves, and almost ninety percent of all mankind was wiped out in that event. Man had been forced to rebuild literally from scratch.
    All because the Key refused to take sides.
    It could not sense any incoming meteor storm this time, but it would not have mattered to it in any case.
    No, this time the bearer would not have an influence during the crisis.
    It would let the two future candidates decide.
    But even the Key could be surprised .
    ***
    John was chilled in front of the fire, blanket or no blanket.
    The woods were surprisingly silent this night, no moon to keep the animals awake. “The one thing I never liked about camping,” he said. “Cold food.”
    Pan shot him a sideways glance, and a grin. “So don’t eat it cold.”
    John thought about it. His head was filled with ideas, swimming, drowning. How the hell do you undo thirty years of wrong-headed teaching? With drugs, it turned out. Not just any drug, the very one that history had called the Philosophers Stone. Philosophers stoned was more like it.
    A white powder that Pan put into a bottle of water, and within seconds of John drinking it the world had changed.
    The universe was nothing like he knew. The last hundred years of science were a lie, a misdirection. Other dimensions, other densities, the construction of stars, how the galaxy came together...Pan was trying to cram so much into him in such a short period of time he didn’t know if he could take all of it. Or if he believed it. Yet...
    It was compelling, logically consistent, he had to admit.
    And the Key at the centre of it all. No, not at the centre he corrected, but certainly a player in this ridiculous drama. An artificial construction designed to cross the boundary between densities, a power