Bert Miller wrote:

The plot is really thickening now!  Awesome work!
 

    Why, thank you.  So without further ado, let's see what's what ...

"Oh, wow!  Carlina Val Cassanda?  She's incredible!

Heh.  Tighten that screw:  Usagi going fan-crazy
about Rei's long-time enemy...
 

    Yup.  I think Rei's gotten off fairly easy so far in terms of her 
past.  No matter how reformed she is, she was once one of the top 
Sisters in her order.  Usagi, having been raised by the White Order, is 
bound to have a very different view of Alieva's crew than Rei does, and 
there are bound to be emotional landmines lurking just under the surface 
waiting for the unwary to blunder into them.

     Whatever reply I was about to make died in my
throat as the shapes twirled easily in the air,
coming together.  I froze as something
began to take shape in the air, something familiar.
   The key.  They were forming the shape of the key.

This didn't quite work for me, somehow.  Maybe it's
that I can't quite picture this, but having Ranma
take off like a shot from this seemed weak.  You
might try reworking the description a bit; did the
succubi form an outline of the key?  A solid key?
Did it rotate, so that the Warden could see it from
whereever in the city he happened to be?
 

    That's a good point, particularly the last part.  They should 
definitely rotate so that the shape is visible from all angles.  A 
little more detail of how they formed the shape wouldn't be bad, either.

Alternatively, you might just have the real key give
Ranma a tug; presumably, once aligned with it, it
gives Ranma notice of outbreaks of the Dark or
something.
 

    There are only certain things the key reacts to at this point.  
Succubi may be bad news, but they're more small dark than big Dark, if 
you know what I mean.

     Well, she had it.  But she wasn't going to be
able to handle it.

And this seems odd too.  When did Ranma get so
confident that he can see off the vampire by
himself?  He has every reason to think otherwise,
as far as we know, and in fact DID think otherwise,
back when he confided his trap plan to the senshi
rather than carrying it out alone.
 

    He's not so much confident as pissed off.  The constant 
manipulations of peoples lives by dark forces are taking their toll on 
his battered soul.  He wants to end this thing.  And he knows the vamp 
won't be there in person, because it's still daylight ... but she is 
certainly not above killing a lot of innocent people just to get his 
attention.  In fact she has done that many times, as he recently 
discovered.  He's tired of being played and manipulated.  He wants to 
fight something.  The previous attempt to trap the wraiths gave him 
pause mostly because it depended so heavily on magick, something he is 
not very familiar with.

He may have come here from beyond the Zero Limit."
    "Oh, my," Hild breathed, turning the full force
of her derisive amusement upon the girl.  "That's
the thread of hope you've chosen to cling to?  You
were there, my dear.  You saw space and time rent
asunder by forces beyond the control of even those
you served.  There are no longer any worlds beyond
this sphere's Zero Limit.  This is it, Peorth.
This is all that remains."

Interesting.  Similar to, but slightly different
from, the implications of Illianka's words from
chapter 18.  Illianka and Dragon believe that this
sphere is the only non-Dark place left; Hild believes,
or at least wants Peorth to think she believes, that
no other place exists at all.  Could Hild have
misinterpreted Illianka's breaking of the hyperlinks
as the total destruction of all else?
 

    Hild and Illianka believe pretty much the same thing, actually; that 
this world alone remains of all that once were.  Remember, Illianka gave 
her life in breaking the remaining hyperlinks, an act that she believed 
would protect this world from the disaster that was destroying all the 
others.  Hild believes that Illianka succeeded, as, in fact, she did.  
What none of the survivors of that ancient battle seem to realise is 
that all the worlds outside were NOT destroyed.  The question that 
remains is: why weren't they, if Illianka and all these gods were so 
sure they were already lost?

But Dragon is not at the pretender's side.

Heh.  So what's Hild's rationale going to be when Dragon
changes his mind?  Which, I think, may yet happen...
 

    If Ranma toasts Fenrir, she may have to re-examine her rationale 
sooner than that.

The circle spanned the entire width and breadth of
the cold stone chamber, blood red lines connecting
the contained patterns.  It was a work of the most
sublime art, a mystic design that incorporated
powers lost to even the strongest of this world's
magick users.

A magic circle?  The ONLY thing we've seen those
used for is to move between dimensions, so it seems
possible that Wynneth's plan involves opening a
hyperlink to someplace else, possibly my first guess:
Wynneth's plan has to do with Shadow, perhaps to move
something large from it to here (something, perhaps,
in the sky?  Something which, at Baniesti, occupies
the "same" space as something else of similar size
and mass?)  And the Voice's plan is darker yet?  We
don't know if the Voice accepts the premise that only
this sphere remains.
 

    I can honestly say that you will definitely find out next chapter 
whether or not you are right.

...as she sensed the nearness of a familiar
darkness.  Yes, it should make landfall within the
quarter hour, providing the final impetus for her
spell.

Interesting...

She wanted those girls.  She needed them.
    It was time to set in motion the next stage of
her plan.
    She reached out to a knot of slumbering minds,
kindling them to full wakefulness, then to a roiling
maelstrom of rage.

These would be the wraithes which pour out of the
Sphere in the next scene...

Also, I'm not sure we yet know WHY wynneth thinks she
needs all the Senshi.  Presumably they play a part in her
plan, but in what way?  Previously we'd been given to
understand that Wynneth has specific plans for Hotaru.
 

    Yes, need is different from want.  They are powerful, and definitely 
would be valuable assets for a new vampire-goddess, but is that all, or 
do they play a larger role in her schemes? 

     Hild would soon learn not to trifle with her
betters.

Now this is certainly odd, that a vampire, no matter
how old, thinks herself the better of the top demoness,
who should be the equal of any of the gods.
This does not seem to be the thoughts of the Voice,
either, given the lack of caution evident here.
 

    Wynneth thinks she's better than everyone, of course.  But there is 
more to it, as you hint above.  She mentions how Hild has "unwittingly" 
served Wynneth's own purposes in the past, implying that she has managed 
to manipulate Hild without the demon queen's knowledge.  Could it have 
something to do with Shadow?  We know that Hild manipulated events to 
set Alieva against Dasma.  The defeat of Dasma and her most powerful 
priestesses meant the loss of the most powerful Shadow magicks, leaving 
Shadow Realm virtually inviolate from mortal incursion for over a 
century.  Could that also have served Wynneth's plans?  Hmmmm ...

In fact, where is the Voice?  Busy perhaps?  Its
attention preoccupied by, say, the prayers of its
followers, suddenly subject to a unprecedented
attack?
 

    It's in a bad cell.  "Can you hear me NOW?"

"His entire branch of the family died in that
incident in Haakan Province some years back

Heh.  Handy accident, that, if someone wanted to
assume the guise of someone else...
 

    Handy, yes.  But are you implying that it's so handy as to be 
suspiciously convenient?

A sudden storm was bearing down on the city,
catching the Royal Weather Service with their pants
down.  That usually meant magick...

Wynneth's, to be specific, this being the dark item
she is awaiting the landfall of...

"The sphere was linked subspatially with a
subterranean source, deep under the city.  It looks
like the other source was within ... some sort of
structure?"
    "A tower," Hild sighed, a feeling of dread
settling over her.  "Silkaine's stronghold within
Vasta Min.  The rumours were true."

Heh.  Gee, why did we somehow suspect that Vasta
Min wasn't such a conspiracy theory after all?
So much for Mars' being the perceptive one regarding
ancient history...
 

    There'll be no living with Minako if this gets out.  And Rei hates 
being wrong.

   "At a very low level," Hild conceded.  "But now
the destruction of the sphere has blown the damned
thing wide open.  If the human queen thought she
had monster problems before, she is in for quite a
nasty shock."

And now we know the purpose of all that musing over
where monsters come from in chapter 18...
 

    The issue of the city's monster problem has been cropping up 
regularly, too, with discussion even before that chapter about Project 
Nestegg and the disasterous attempts by the police to locate the source 
of the monster infestation in previous years.

But this seems to give the lie to Hild's earlier
pose.  She has known, apparently, that this gateway
to the Darkness Outside has been operational ever
since the Genrous, i.e. for a couple of thousand
years at least.  Or does she think monsters come

>from as-yet-unmentioned dimension of this sphere?

    Exactly.  Spheres, as Peorth and Hild refer to them, consist of the 
world we know as well as its attendant planes, dimensions, and assorted 
levels, such as Aethyr, Shadow, and so forth.  Hild knows that Silkaine 
was plumbing the darkest depths of space and time, using this Halo 
Generator to create portals into very bad places, but she also knows 
that even the Genrous could not create a gate that led beyond the Zero 
Limit of this sphere.  As far as Hild is concerned, this sphere is it.

Even back before the cataclysm that had stranded
them here, in this last, lonely sphere...

Again with the "only" sphere bit...  So Peorth
herself really believes it too, at least in her
pessimistic moods.
 

    She believes it.  We know that they're all wrong, of course.  Wonder 
what will happen if they find out where Ranma's really from?

Records from the period between the disappearance
of the Keymakers and the rise of the Wardens were
sketchy, unreliable, as chaos had overtaken
civilisation.

Heh.  Nice echoes of Rei's and Ami's musings back
in chapter 9, except with a vastly expanded time
scale.  We're probably talking hundreds of thousands
of years here.
 

    Yes, a very long timeline indeed.  Lots of room for stories in 
there, let me tell you.

...then this boy was something older than a Warden.
Something wilder.
    Takzvyrmishammir.
    Fist of the Tempest Dragon.

Heh.  Same name from chapter 18, where we understood
it to be the name of an Underlord.  Can the two
references be reconciled?
 

    V speculated that it might be the name of one of the Underlords, 
given its location, but there was no real evidence to support that.  The 
only way the two might be reconciled is if the Underlords, or some of 
them, were descendents of those ancient regulators who preceded the 
Wardens.  Hmmmm ...

Underlords existed in this world earlier than the gods,
and were driven out by the gods, and cannot be summoned
back if their names are forgotten.  Ranma knows this
name.  Peorth's references are to entities who existed
earlier than the gods, at least in this world, and were
superceded by Wardens, whom the gods served.
And it certainly looks as if one has been summoned back to
Gaea...
 

    The Underlords were not superceded by the Wardens, though, at least 
not in this world (unless you're referring to the takzvyrmishammir and 
the like in general). The Underlords may have been this world's version 
of gods, in much the same way as the Norse pantheon (Peorth and the 
others) were gods in their world.  At the very least they were powerful 
beings, although whether they were good, evil, or something in between 
and just how they used their power in conjunction with the peoples of 
Gaia is really a mystery, largely because of the efforts of the new 
gods.  Remember, Illianka was the last Warden, and she died in the event 
that stranded the gods in this sphere.  The gods were the ones who 
decided, for whatever reason, to drive the local pantheon out.  Were the 
gods somehow threatened by the mere existence of the Underlords?  Hmmmm ...

    "Nameless," she whispered.
    "Majesty?"  Tam's face was ghost white, but
she had no time.  It was coming.
    "Raine!  CLEAR THE WATCH!"

My first reading of this line indicated that Kendra
was up on the Watch, alone, when it was riven by
black lightning, but that need not be the case.  She
could be saying "get everyone off the watch and down
into the shelters below the palace" rather than
saying that she's going to climb up to the Watch
alone to duel the Nameless with Galiraithe.  So she
may not yet be dead.
 

    You are right in the first instance.  She was in the palace's crisis 
centre, her order was to get everyone off the watch and under cover.  
For all the good that might have done.  As for the second, her ultimate 
fate remains to be seen ...

Those terrible lances of power momentarily formed
a pattern within the maelstrom, something clearly
artificial

So Wynneth summoned not just the storm, but something
inside it.  Something like, say, Crimson Thorn, perhaps?
Something known to the Queen as "The Nameless", at
any rate.  And, now that I think about it, the natural
supposition about Galiraithe's origin, given the
Queen's thought, is that it came from Desidinder,
but she doesn't say so.  It might equally well
have come from Crimson Thorn.
 

    The Queen may not have been naming something particularly, though.  
Nameless might merely have been an appellation referring to the 
Underlords.  The Underlords have no names, remember.  And they have left 
behind a vengeful legacy, spoiled power, curlded and wildly destructive 
magicks.  As for Galiraithe, the sword's origin has not been specified, 
but Crimson Thorn is a good possibility (better when you consider that 
nobody seems able to approach Desidinder).

    And then V's world was filled with the sight
of an onrushing dragon, blazing with brilliant
blue fire.

Well, _maybe_ this is a dramatic development; but
given your last few cliffhangers, my bet is that
Fenrir is right behind V, out of her line of sight,
and Ranma is doing the old "aiming just over the
good guy's shoulder to hit the bad guy behind her"
trick.
 

    Well, time will tell.

    V: AHHHHH!
    Ranma: Psych!  Just getting that big wolf behind you.
    V: Grrrr!  Venus Vengeance Beam!
    Ranma:  Jeez!  Women!

    Um.  Or not.

Anyway, thank you VERY much for writing and
sharing, and I am very much looking forward to the
next chapter(s); whenever they may be coming out.
 

    Thank you for taking the time once again to C&C these two chapters.  
I'm hard at work on the next chapter, and it promises to be a doozy.  
See you next time!

Mark

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