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audio camouflage. Shelton squatted in the vent and duck-walked. I followed his lead. We arrived at a ninety-degree turn about ten feet away, turned, and stopped at the lip of the passage where it ended in another of the spider-web type filters. Shelton detached it and set it aside after rolling it up to reveal a massive room straight out of my memories.
    If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn I was back beneath Thunder Rock, an abandoned angel relic infested with all sorts of horrors that tried to kill me the first and only time I'd been there. I could almost see the oily black forms of infantile cherubs toddling from dark corners, arms outstretched, and rictus-shaped orifices crying, "Dah-nah" as they tried to suck the life out of me. I remembered running for my life. I remembered somehow activating one of the smaller arches and taking it for a terrifying ride which dropped me into the middle of El Dorado, another city of nightmares.
    A hand tightened on my bicep, and I snapped out of my trance.
    Shelton's concerned gaze greeted me. "Don't lose it now, kid," he said in a low hiss.
    I nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. He released a long sigh.
    Running my eyes across the room, I noted the familiar features. Arches just large enough to accommodate a person lined one side of the room, each one embedded on a platter of shiny onyx and ringed by silver—a safety measure I likened to the one around the much larger Obsidian Arch in the Grotto way station. The silver ring prevented the magical energy field from spilling outside and fracturing reality. Those cracks usually led to the Gloom, a place I didn't care to visit.
    These arches seemed intact, whereas the majority of the ones in Thunder Rock looked as though they'd been blasted with dynamite. But something else seemed different here. Something I couldn't quite place my finger on. I looked up and down the rows for a moment, before it occurred to me what was missing. In the center of the room beneath Thunder Rock stood a snowy-white arch veined with obsidian. I remembered that arch taking up far more real estate than the smaller arches—maybe three or four times more. This room didn't have that arch.
    Shelton nudged me and motioned toward the far side of the room.
    A map of the world towered over the bee-robed Arcane where he stood talking to Ivy and Eliza. Cyrinthian symbols lined the wall to the left of the map, each one linked to dozens of dully glowing stars dotting the map. The landmasses on the map only vaguely resembled the continents I knew. In my spare time, I'd looked over maps depicting the evolution of the world and realized whoever made the map in this room had most likely done so before humans had ever walked the earth.
    That simple fact stirred up a million questions, but a star in the approximate location of Atlanta began to brighten and fade in syncopation with a star in South Africa, distracting me like squirrel darting across a dog's path. The Arcane held up a finger to Eliza as a glowing white orb lifted from a pedestal centered before the map. He placed a hand atop it, and a steady hum rumbled through the room. Brilliant motes of light arced from one star to the other, alternating black and white as a klaxon blared from the Grotto way station housing the Obsidian Arch. A network of arches just like the one here spanned the globe, if the stars on the map were any indication.
    The crackling hum throbbed, building in volume, echoing in the huge cavern, and sending a vibration through my body. As the sound built, the light connecting the two stars pulsed faster and faster, until with a thunderous boom, it solidified into a sparkling beam of energy, no thicker than a pencil. Equal parts ultraviolet and brilliant white, it arched across the map from one point and down to meet the other.
    I watched in open-mouthed fascination as miniature silhouettes, some human-shaped, others much larger, streaked through the arced beam. They traversed it so quickly, only my