The third and final chapter of this is coming along nicely
enough that I can release the second one without feeling too
antsy.  I don't know when the third will be out... sometime
within the next month, I hope.  

Anyway, here's the obligatory link to the place where I store the
rest of my stuff:  http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html

Commentary is welcomed and appreciated.

***

Eidolons

...


Two - Sanctum

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,
Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper�s eye,
Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon.
So, planing-heeled, I flew along my man
And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky.
-Dylan Thomas

     The cats of Ulthar were restless that night.  While the
village slept, they prowled the streets in packs, greeting other
clusters of their people as they did.  Far more gregarious than
the solitary cats of Earth, the felines of the Dreamlands were in
no place more sophisticated and numerous than in the small and
pleasant village of Ulthar.  Among its cobbled streets and atop
its arched roofs, they sunned themselves during the day, and at
night they crept and hunted and mated, in the alleys and dark
places under the light of the silvery moon.

     Stalkfast was the leader of the cats in that day, a 
tortoiseshell tom who looked fat and lazy but was in truth all
muscle and hard tendon.  He had just finished a rousing and
rather cacophonic copulation with an attractive young manx atop
the roof of a grocer's.  In Ulthar, where all were forbidden by 
law to harm a cat and no sane man would have dared to, the 
village residents had long grown accustomed to the nocturnal
couplings and caterwaulings or moved away.  Now he led a furry
crowd of cats young and old in nocturnal ramblings through 
Ulthar's streets, but at the edge of his quick and darting mind
was a faint calling.  It was this that made him lead Shadowfur
and Volecatch, Fishthief and Yellowpaws, old Ironeyes and the
half-grown Foxjaw, out into the fields near Ulthar.  They crossed
the bridge over the River Skai - offering up a silent prayer to 
the moaning thing that had been within it for so many centuries 
as they did - and ran silent as shadow through the streets of 
the neighbouring village of Nir.  

     They arrived at the edge of the Enchanted Wood just as the
weird-eyed zoogs were picking up the moss-wrapped form of Ranma
Saotome.  He was not the first to fall victim to one of the many
strange fauna that grew in the enchanted wood, and likely would
not be the last.  The zoogs themselves were immune to the effects
of most of the fungi, and in fact served a useful purpose for
this one by distributing its seeds in their spoor after they 
consumed the flesh of those entrapped by it.

     There were twenty of them, and less than half that number of
cats, but the zoogs had long ago learned to know the danger of
challenging the cats of Ulthar, at least when at the edge of
their domain like this.  Quick Foxjaw had snatched up one 
squeaking zoog and worried it to death before the zoog's fellows
knew what was happening, and cheerful Yellowpaws snarled deep in
his throat and knocked one half-dead with a quick blow of his
forepaw.  The zoogs fled then, chased a short distance by the
cats until the woods grew denser.  Returning to where Ranma lay
trapped and paralyzed, the seven cats circled him, sniffing with
deep interest and speaking back and forth about the strange 
sight.  Then they began to lick at the moss covering him, and 
because the cats of Ulthar were stranger in mind and power than
the cats of Earth, in a half-hour, he was completely uncovered by
the rough tendings of their pink tongues.

     Then the cats begans to dance in a circle around him, 
leaping and jumping, sometimes rising to sway with clumsy grace
upon their hind legs for a few seconds.  They called out to the 
gods of cats; to Meerclar, Bast, Tybalt, the One Who Grins and 
others.  A subtle spell they wove under the cold light of the 
moon, and when they were done an hour later, Ranma Saotome began 
to cough.  They butted him with their heads to turn him over onto 
his side, and he vomited up the spores of the fungus that had 
invaded his body onto the grass.

     Tails swished from side to side as the cats sat back on
their haunches, their night-seeing eyes trapping the moon's 
light, and waited for their new comrade to awake.

...

     Ranma woke up and looked into faces out of nightmare.  Cats.
All around him, cats.  Surrounding him.  Caging him.  Wouldn't
let him _out_.

     All thought of all else went away beneath the numb and
insensate terror.  Alien stars were forgotten.  Moss that 
invaded his body was forgotten.  

     Yellow eyes gleamed.  One of the cats raised a paw tipped
with razor-sharp flesh shredding claws, and Ranma whimpered deep
in his throat and looked around for escape but there was no 
escape because the cats were everywhere with claws and teeth so
bright and hard and sharp and terrible.

     Then Ranma stopped being afraid because he realized all 
these nice cats were his friends.  They wouldn't hurt him if he 
was a nice cat just like them.  Ranma purred and stretched out
his body.  These were even nicer cats than he had thought, 
because they told him how they had made the bad moss go away.  
They said Ranma was one of the funniest looking cats they had 
ever seen, and all of them laughed.

     Into the night they ran together, leaping and bounding
through the fields and hills.  They climbed tall trees and called
their names to the stars from the tops of them.  They frightened 
flocks of silver- and ebony-winged birds into startled flight 
from their sleepy nests in the long grass.

     They ascended the lower slopes of the big mountain together,
which they said was called Mount Lerion.  Curious at first of the
strange dark tunnels from which the funny bright scents of iron
and sulphur wafted, Ranma stayed away from them after being
warned by grizzled Ironeyes.

     I will be a cat forever, Ranma thought.  How wonderful, how
glorious, to be a cat.  No more perfect a being exists in any
world.  Now they stood atop a spire of cool grey rock, crying out
in song to the stars and moon.

     Then, with a tensing of his hind legs and a spring, lean
Fishthief leapt up into the sky and sailed towards the moon.  
Ranma was confused at first, worried that his new friend would
fall.  But he did not, and soon was lost from sight amidst the
stars.

     Volecatch leapt, and Ironeyes, and half-grown Foxjaw.  Ranma
meowed unhappily, not understanding.  Even he couldn't jump that
high.

     Of course you can, Stalkfast told him with a derisive laugh.
And as if he had always known how, Ranma sprang from the spire
atop Mount Lerion and did not fall.  Up into the darkness he
hurtled, into the void of space.  Stars whirled by him, or seemed 
to.  It could not be that he came close enough to touch them.  
The stars were burning orbs greater than any planet, not just
painted lights upon the blackness of space.

     Perhaps the stars of this place are not the stars of Earth,
he thought, and then he thought, these are not the thoughts a cat
would think.  Then he thought, not a cat of Earth.  So when he
touched down upon a barren and icy surface pocked with craters, 
and saw that upon his skin and clothing a fine silver dust was
already drying up and disappearing, he did not wonder at what it 
was.  For a cat does not think of such things as that.

     The cats of Ulthar pranced around him.  They called for him
to follow in their yowling voices, and turned somersaults and
cartwheels and backflips in the shallow gravity of the moon, each
springy landing sending up puffs of the moon-dust to hover in the
air before slowy drifting down again.

     They chased each other over the dunes and played hide and
seek within the carbuncles of the moon's surface.  Ranma chanced 
to glance back at the cloud-bedecked blue surface of the world 
they had left behind, and for a moment a sense of very uncatlike
vertigo pitched over him as the tiny and trapped human part of 
him comprehended with numb terror the distance he had leaped.  

     Vague stirrings of human memory threatened the sanctity of 
his savage heart, but then Foxjaw ran laughing between his legs, 
and he pursued him over a rise in the cold lunar landscape to 
find himself gazing down upon an immense necropolis of worn 
temples.  The sight stopped him cold, and Foxjaw ran on into the 
great dead city and was lost to sight behind the shadowy span of 
a fallen archway.  

     It was a city composed of pillars and heavy blocks of stone, 
low squat buildings and slender towers whose spires seemed to 
prod the stars.  Dark granite, pale marble and black basalt 
dominated, as if the city had been born from the lunar landscape 
itself and strived like a child to emulate its parent.

     The pillars, which had once been magnificent, were falling
into ruin.  Spots of bright colour upon cold granite slabs and 
frosty marble buttresses told of the frescoes that might once 
have decorated them to break the icy monotony.  In the 
courtyards of some temples, dead fountains that seemed not to 
have known water since the dawn of time lay choked with dust, and 
the sparkling stones of mosaics had long ago been picked away by 
scavengers until only the spaces where they had been remained.  
Strange and baroque glyphs in ten thousand dead tongues adorned 
the temples, and as Ranma stared at them, they seemed to shift 
subtly beneath his eye.

     What is this place, Ranma said to the other cats.  He felt a
terrible and wearying sense of loss in his heart.  

     This is the place where the young gods come to die, 
Stalkfast said, and no more than that.

     All the other cats of Ulthar were gone now, and it was only
Ranma and old Stalkfast.  They walked down the slope towards the
necropolis, and Ranma kept close beside the older and wiser tom
as the two of them paced the basalt streets.  Uncertainty and 
fear pressed tight around him, and a dozen times he was convinced 
he saw shapes that might or might not have been men regarding him 
from within the shattered doorways of temples or watching from a 
high window of some towering ziggurat.

     Once, he was sure he saw a golden youth, mouth open in 
silent laughter as he tipped an everflowing pitcher of wine down 
his throat.  Fig leaves crowned his head, and he beckoned to 
Ranma from his place near a fallen column.  But Ranma looked 
away at the sound of Stalkfast's questiong meow, and when he 
turned his head back, the beautiful youth was gone and in his 
place a shattered wine jug dry as bone lay in faded fragments.

     In time, after they had gone so far among the labyrinth
streets of the city of dead gods that the first temples Ranma had
seen had long been lost to sight, they came to a temple that lay
in decrepitude like all the rest.  The roof had been pitted and
scarred as if by acid, and the gold and blue paint that might 
have identified what dead land the god of the temple had come 
from had long flaked away, leaving only remnants of colour upon
the cold grey pillars.  Slim and elegant, though cracked in 
places and seemingly in danger of snapping at any time, they 
marched in matched rows towards the darkened entrance of the 
temple.  Overhead, the strange stars burned alien constellations
into the lunar sky like cold eyes.  

     What is this place, Ranma asked.  But Stalkfast was already
running towards the shadowy entrance, mottled shape darting
between pillars in a splash of vibrant colour against the 
crushing sameness of the landscape.  A nervous meow escaped Ranma
as he followed, and he saw as he walked by the pillars that 
statues of cats lay at the foot of every one.  A fierce stone 
lion of Chinese style stood beside a rough carving of wood 
studded with iron nails for claws and whiskers.  Nearby, a chubby 
white cat with big blue eyes raised one paw in seeming blessing 
of the tiny brood of delicate porcelain kittens at his feet.  
There were cats of brass and copper who arched their backs and 
seemed ready to come to life hissing and spitting in fury, and 
there were tiny carvings of age-darkened bone no bigger than the 
nail of a thumb.  Golden sarcophagi such as the lords of Egypt 
might have used to bury their beloved pets rested against 
pillars, and more than once the button eyes of a child's stuffed 
toy stared blindly out the shadows.

     At the threshold of the dark entrance of the temple, he
reached out a nervous paw and mewed disconsolately.  Beyond was
black, a darkness so thick that the night-seeing eyes of a cat
could not look even an inch within.  He hadn't seen Stalkfast go
inside; in the moment his eye had been turned to a construction 
of twisted wire and saffron cloth that suggested the form if not
the reality of a cat, he had lost sight of his new friend.  Now
he was alone again.

     Hesitantly, he prodded at the darkness.  His paw sank into
it as if into a pool of ink, but there was no odd feeling.  His
paw touched down on what felt like cool stone beyond, and a
little of his nervousness left him.  Licking his lips, he stepped
into the darkness on his four legs.  As his head passed through,
there was a moment of absolute blindness.  Beyond, though, the
passageway was lit by an ambient and sourceless light that filled
the air with a pale amber glow.  The darkness hung like a
curtain, blocking off the view of the outside.  Passing through
it had been very cold, like plunging for a second into icy water, 
but now he was on the other side and had nothing to fear.  

     Within, the temple seemed to have weathered better the
desolation that had stricken the outer face of the city of dead 
gods.  The walls of the tall and narrow hallway he found himself
in were decorated with images of cats, as the pillared and roofed
courtyard had been strewn with their statues.  There seemed no
rhyme or reason to the composition; there were mosaics, frescoes,
paintings on black velvet of cats playing poker, ink drawings on
ivory-coloured paper, delicate miniature images on china plates.  

     Ranma stood on his hind legs and balanced on the wall to
gaze directly at one of the odder paintings.  A great lion stood 
amidst a winter landscape.  Around him, the snow was melting and 
flowers were springing up from the grass.  Human children knelt 
at his feet and wove the blossoms into his mane without fear.  
Ranma made an uncertain sound in his throat, then dropped back 
onto all four legs and ran down the hallway.  The amber glow lit 
his way as he searched for something without name or shape.  
Again he grew fearful as he wandered the twisting hallways of the 
temple, for always out of the corner of his eye he seemed to see 
things that were not there.

     Then the hallway began to widen out, and he heard the sounds
of many of his kin.  The mingled scent of them came to him, and
his heart leapt with joy.  He would be with his friends again.  
The warm amber light that filled the air grew brighter, and as he
entered the circular room that the passage led into, he saw that 
the source of it was a ball of roiling luminescence that hung
suspended in the air and shed its light across everything.  

     The room was filled with felines of all sizes and shapes.
Housecats, tigers, and lions padded through the room amidst
strange and alien cats who must not have been of Earth.  Some had
no hair, and their pale fleshy bodies were decorated with
swirling tattoos in all the colours of the rainbow.  Others had
marks upon their foreheads in the shapes of moons or stars or
comets.  One great creature was the size of an ox and bright 
blue; enormously fat, he lay propped against one wall and smoked
a thin pipe that he cradled in thumbed hands as small and 
delicate as a child's.  As he smoked, he regaled a rapt crowd of
kittens with fantastic tales in a deep bass voice.  He saw young
Foxjaw standing nearby and listening while pretending not to, and
he caught glimpses in the milling crowd of the other cats of 
Ulthar who had rescued him from the moss.

     Directly beneath the ball of light, a lovely woman with the 
head of a cat lounged with indolent weariness in a high-backed 
throne of gold-veined marble.  The cats circled in endless 
procession around her, paying her homage.

     "Come in, new one," she purred.  Her eyes were the same
amber as the ball of light, and her face was a darker shade of
tawny gold.  When she spoke, her voice was both the speech of
humans and of cats.  Again, Ranma's human thoughts stirred and
threatened to arise, but the memory of terror and pain made them
retreat deep back into him at the sight of so many cats.  The
wise eyes of the cats regarded him with interest as he padded
into the room and went before the throne, but none took exception
to his presence.  Only the Cats from Saturn were excluded from
this place, for they had long ago made dark alliances with other
gods and ceased to be cats in the minds of all other felines.  In
Ranma they saw that the fierce pride of the cat was embodied
despite his odd shape.

     "You do not know me, do you?"  The voice of the woman was
throaty and teasing, laden with sardonic amusement and a touch of
condescension.

     I have always known you, Ranma replied pleadingly.  I love
you.  I have always worshipped you.

     "You have denied me," she countered.  "You have hated me
with all your heart, and hated and feared your brothers and
sisters."

     Her disdain was withering.  Ranma rolled onto his back and
exposed his belly to her.  He closed his eyes, and heard her
footsteps as she rose from her throne and spoke a single word of
dismissal.  There was the sound of many soft feet leaving, and
some not so soft.  The impression of lean and agile bodies
rushing past broke through the darkness of his closed eyes.

     Be a crucible to me, he begged of the goddess.  Let me
please you.  Take from me this wrong that I have done and let me
be beautiful in your eyes.

     Fingers touched his stomach through his shirt.  In any
moment, the goddess would flex her hand and tear out his 
entrails.  He was nothing in her sight, and for that he loathed
himself.

     The hand moved away, and the goddess spoke again.  "You are
not meant to be of my people.  You are a half-breed thing, 
neither fully cat or human.  Your existence in this way offends
me."

     He opened his eyes to see the goddess standing over him
contemptously, hands upon her hips.  The room was empty of all
others but them, and the light had darkened in shade until it 
was menacing and bizarre, throwing wild shadows about the floor 
and walls.

     Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, he pleaded.  
     
     "No," the goddess said.  She reached down.  Claws flashed on
her fingers, which were both and neither those of human or cat.
A hot slash of pain tore across his body as she began to pull him
apart.

...

     The cats of Ulthar who had come with Ranma to the moon sat
nervously in the courtyard of the temple in the city of dead 
gods.  Their new friend had somehow drawn the wrath of the
goddess.  Embodiment and pinnacle of all that was feline, the one
whom the Egyptians had named Bast was fickle and capricious in 
the extreme.

     Around them, the strange and alien statues whose number grew
day by day upon the temple grounds seemed to watch with their
sightless eyes.  The other cats who had been visiting with the
goddess that night waited in the courtyard as well, more
comfortable under the protection of the courtyard's dessicated 
roof than beneath the sight of the stars.  The Fat One lounged
against a pillar and continued his endless stories in his
hypnotic voice.  A strange group of eyeless cats from a planet
whose name no cat of Ulthar had ever heard played a gambling game
for pieces of red crystal that winked like fire.  And reclusive
as always, the cats with the signs of the cosmos upon their 
foreheads gathered in a circle and sang dirges in a long-dead 
language for the destroyed homes of their ancestors.

     Foxjaw circled the older cats agitatedly, until Yellowpaws
made jokes at his nervouness and he sat down on his haunches and
began to glumly groom himself.  The Fat One finished one tale 
and launched into another.  From the crumbling temple across the
way, the faint sounds of merriment drifted, and the scent of such
herbs as are said to give visions of the future.  But no cat was
tempted, for all knew of the perils of following the remnants of 
the young gods into their own temples.

     From within the temple, the light padding of paws could be
heard, and then a great cry of delight came up from all the cats,
of Ulthar and otherwise, as Ranma came forth from beyond the 
sheeted darkness.  The goddess had transformed him into a form 
more pleasing to her eye; he was shaped like a housecat, though 
large as a lynx, and his fur was the colour of flames.  His eyes 
were the bright and piercing blue of a newborn kitten.

     It was, Stalkfast declared to the assembled cats, a sign 
that it was time for great deeds to be done.  The Fat One 
remarked that he had heard that the foul Cats from Saturn were 
arriving in greater numbers than usual on the Dark Side of the 
Moon, to make, no doubt, dark alliances with the rubbery beings 
who lived there in their towering basalt cities.  Some evil 
works, he concluded, were no doubt afoot.

     One of the tattooed cats of Mars suggested that a 
reconnaissance mission should be launched.  A great purple tiger 
of a species long-extinct on earth roared one of the oldest 
battle cries of the cats, and then all of them were rushing away 
into the streets of the necropolis with flame-furred Ranma at 
their head, and with the waddling form of The Fat One panting and 
struggling to keep up in the rear.  Their voices echoed from one 
end of the city of dead gods to another, and singing thus they 
passed out of its cold architecture and went to do great and 
heroic deeds against their ancient foes.

...
     
     There are a lot of worse ways to wake up then in bed next to
a beautiful woman.  Then again, there are better ways, 
particularly when you can't remember her name or how you got 
here, but you can remember that by every law of the universe you 
know, your fiancee is going to walk in and clobber the hell out 
of you at any moment.

     The woman grinned at Ranma as she sprawled seductively on 
the other side of the bed, her head propped up on one palm and
resting her elbow on a tasseled pillow.  Ranma tried to back 
away, and fell out of the bed onto the hard floor.  
     
     "Silly man," the woman purred.  Her voice was smooth and
liquid as honey.  Her lovely face peeked over the edge and looked
directly into his eyes, silky dark hair hanging around it like a
curtain.  Her skin was very dark.  The bright gold-flecked green
of her eyes caught his gaze like a trap.

     There had been... moss.  And cats.  Lots of cats.  He
couldn't remember anything else.  He certainly couldn't 
remember how he had ended up here.  The woman sat up, dangling
long and almost bare legs over the edge of the bed.  Her garments
were white and silky, and practically translucent.  Ranma vowed
that if he ever got back home, he was going to have a long
discussion with Cologne.

     "It's more comfortable up here" the woman said teasingly, 
moving lithely to the floor and lying down on her stomach.  She
rested her chin on her hands and placed her elbows on the floor
as she kicked one long leg up into the air.  Ranma got a sight
deep into the depths of her tunic, and the rich glitter of gold
necklaces amidst the cleavage of her rounded breasts was not
nearly as enticing as the purely natural sights therein.

     "Bahh," Ranma said.  
     
     The woman shifted again.  Her movements were flowing and
perfectly graceful, making it hard to see where one ended and
another began.  Now she sat up with one knee drawn to her chest
and her arms wrapped around it.  Her smile was dazzling.  "Oh, 
you are delightful.  Such an innocent."  She leaned forward 
slightly and placed one hand lightly upon his chest.  "Would you
like me to show you how to please a woman?"

     Ranma gulped.  "Gahh."
     
     "Hmm?"  She took his head between both hands and pulled him
up to a sitting position, until their faces were only inches
apart.  "Cat got your tongue?"

     "Umm... who are you?"
     
     The woman pouted and let him go.  As if he were no longer of
interest, she turned her back on him and walked away to a shelf 
on one wall of the richly decorated room.  There she poured 
herself a drink from a blue crystal flask and languidly moved to 
look at him again, sipping delicately from a silver goblet.  When 
she spoke again, her voice had lost all coquettish or teasing.  
"I am as you see me now because of my will and that alone."

     "Huh?"
     
     "No doubt you do not remember," the woman said.  "You came
before me divided and from your divisions I have made two 
wholes."

     Ranma blinked.  Had this been what Cologne spoke of?  He
thought of cats.  It brought distaste, but not the crushing fear
that even the mere passing of the thought through his mind should
have.

     The woman nodded, as if his thoughts were open to her as a
book.  "Yes," she said.  "You are cured, as you put it.  In the
days when I was held in more esteem upon the Earth, rituals such
as those you underwent at your father's hand were performed to 
create warriors dedicated in my name."

     Ranma stood up and scratched his head.  He finally noted
with some relief that he was wearing all his clothes.  "Look, 
can't ya just tell me what's goin' on?"

     A sigh escaped the woman's perfect lips as if at his
unbelievable stupidity.  "I separated the cat side of your mind
from the human side, and created a form for the cat-mind to
inhabit.  Is that simple enough for you to understand?"

     "Umm... yeah."  His forehead wrinkled in thought.  "Umm...
how can you do that?"

     An old melancholy showed on the woman's lovely face.  "Such
is still within my power, at least within my own place.  Like all
the young gods of this city, my pride and my anger at the fall of 
my worshipper's civilization blinded me to the true nature of the 
Mirror-Lord and I made a pact with him.  Now my only power in 
this world is within this temple."

     "Oh," Ranma said.  He shrugged.  "Sorry to hear that.  
Listen, I really gotta get home..."

     Her eyes studied him coldly.  "Your passage through the veil
was not through normal means.  You have made use of magic that
has shifted your body through the walls of dimensions, from the
waking world of your Earth to this land."

     "What is this land?"
     
     "It is the Dreamlands," the goddess replied.  "Here the
dreams and nightmares of man mingle with those of the sleeping
gods to shape the structure of it."

     Ranma decided to turn on the charm.  "Look, this is all
really interestin' and stuff, and I'd love to stay around and
hear all about it, but I've been gone a long time and Akane's
probably gettin' mad, so if you'd just tell me how to get out of
this place and back to Earth, I'd be really grateful."

     The dark eyes of the goddess turned darker still, until they
were simply pools of night.  On the walls, the lamps that lit the 
room dimmed until shadows seethed all about them.  "Ungrateful 
mortal," she hissed in a low voice.  "Know you nothing of how to 
deal with gods?"

     "Err..."
     
     "I have done you a favour."  Barely-constrained savagery 
echoed in her voice.  "Now you shall do me one."

     "Sure, sure," Ranma agreed.  He saw a terrible power in the
goddess now.  Her shadow upon the floor was not human, but that 
of a great cat.  The sight sent shivers of fear down his spine,
but again, no threat of the dark retreat into a bestial state.

     "Past the end of the great street of the city of dead gods 
you shall find the domain of the Mirror-Lord.  You shall find for 
me the glass which holds the part of my soul that I gave to him 
in bargain.  You will break it, and when that is done I shall 
know, and use my power to send you back to your world.  
Otherwise, you shall remain here with me."  As suddenly as the 
wind, her mood shifted and she smiled lustily.  "I think I would 
enjoy that as well."

     Faced with going off to fight a foe of completely unknown
strength or having to stay with the capricious and extremely
seductive goddess, who frankly made him very nervous, Ranma 
didn't really have much choice in the matter.  "I'll do it," he
muttered grudgingly.  

     The goddess waved her hand at him.  Time and space wrenched
sickeningly, as if the earth had dropped out from underneath him
and pulled him into a fall of thousands of miles that passed in a
single second.

     Ranma found himself on his hands and knees in a roofed
couryard.  Statues of cats were everywhere amidst the crumbling
pillars.  A layer of grey dust covered the broken cobblestones of
the courtyard.  He drew a gasping breath and staggered up to his
feet, then walked out to where a road of black basalt cut down 
through an enormous city filled with buildings whose shapes all
seemed subtly wrong, as if built to a scale and geometry that was 
not that of humans.

     He looked up at the star-filled sky.  Still the unfamiliar
constellations mocked him.  Then his eye caught upon a large orb
of blue and green, wreathed in circling spirals of clouds.

     He looked around at the strange architecture of the place
and the grey dust.  "Ahh, hell."

     He was _really_ gonna get Cologne for this.
     
FIN TWO