A cave, one he hadn't explored before. No one had, not for years. But this is where he'd find the greatest treasure, according to his research. Treasure to make the Phoenix look like a bauble. This was a thing he couldn't pass up. Not the possession of it; he'd never worked to that end, no matter what the others might have thought. <Well, the Phoenix was that way. But that was for Rachel...> No, in most cases, it was the thrill of finding something that had lain for centuries, forgotten in the mists of time. The thrill of looking on something that no man had seen for years, centuries, ages. And here it was. In this chest.

The small box was locked, but there was no trap. No danger; it had just been placed in storage, once, and never retrieved. He thought about breaking the box open, but that could damage the treasure, so he did it the hard way. He was the world's greatest treasure hunter; no mere lock could stop him! In a matter of seconds he was rewarded with a click. The lock fell away. He opened the box. <A... painting?>

He stared in shock. A painting. Of his friends, the unlikely group that had saved the world. "Of course. The greatest treasure..." He smiled.

The world once more intruded. He had once been magic-dead, but the espers that had imbued him with their now-vanished power had also left him sensitive. A flash of magic mightier than almost any he had encountered swept over Locke, and his body began to stir. He finally was pulled back to awareness moments later, as a second wave of magic washed over him.

His first thought: <I'm alive..?>

His second thought: <Magic? What..?>

His eyes snapped open and he blinked several times in surprise. An old but regal man stood next to his bed, with a concerned-looking woman at his left. A beautiful woman. With wings. Her voice was strangely musical. "...seems to have recovered very quickly, your majesty. I don't know why."

The man--<A king?>--replied, "Perhaps he has some magic of his own. Or perhaps he has magical equipment other than the dagger."

The winged woman nodded. Locke, skilled at reading body language, decided that she'd already reached the same conclusion, and that she wanted to placate the... king? <Well, I owe them my life, I guess I should tell them...> "It's my red cap," he said, in a thin but audible voice.

Both of them stopped and peered at him quizzically. Locke gathered that he wasn't supposed to be capable of speech yet. "It increases my vitality," he managed.

The man decided it was his place to answer. "Indeed? That is fortunate. Quite possibly it saved your life."

"Where am I?"

The king looked annoyed at the interruption. "Hrrmph. You're in the Land of Summoned Monsters, of course. I don't have time for this. Tell him," he ordered the woman, and without another word he turned to stalk out of the room.

"Wait..."

"Don't mind him," the woman chimed. "He hasn't had a good century. I'm sure he'll feel better in a few more decades. I'm Kyria, a Sylph." She smiled at Locke's dumbfounded look. "I'm not surprised you haven't heard of us. We keep to ourselves. Although there was that nice young man, oh, one or two thousand years ago. He fell right from the world above, can you believe it? Took my sisters and I quite a while to nurse to health. Not that I'm complaining. It would have been a boring year without him. He healed, of course, and we took him back to the surface, past the dangerous floor sections... they're no trouble for us, we can fly, but for land beings like you, it would hurt. Besides, we have an agreement with the monsters. Anyway, that nice man helped save the world... and he even came back to visit every now and then! We miss him..."

Kyria sighed and Locke seized the chance to get a word in edgewise. "Dangerous floors? Land of Summoned Monsters? World above? I mean... thank you for rescuing me, but I really must leave. I'm needed... elsewhere. Is there a way to get out of this land?"

The winged woman--<Sylph,> he corrected himself--paused. "The floors are dangerous. You would need magic to escape. I'd take you, but I'm needed here. Maybe you can find something in the library? It's the biggest one in the world, you know. There's no need to hurry either."

Locke frowned. "What do you mean? Time is of the essence..."

"Oh, didn't you know? Time passes more quickly here than in the world above. You can spend years here and only weeks will pass above..." She stopped. "Oh, I'd forgotten! There's about to be another shift!"

At his puzzled glance, she continued, "Time is changing. In a short time, it will pass more slowly here than above!"

Locke groaned. "I'd better get started. Can you give me directions to the library?"

She did. "But you're too weak to get up for another week at least..." She stopped as he slid out of bed. "Oh. That must be some cap."

He nodded. "Thank you for your help, Kyria. I'd love to talk to you some more, but I have to start looking for a way out," he added apologetically.

"That's all right, I should really be working with these others. But it's so nice to talk to a human for a change." She pouted. "Will you come back to visit before you go back to the world above?"

"Of course," Locke promised. "But for now..."

She nodded. "I understand. I'll be waiting." She smiled, then flitted to the other side of the room to check on a female patient. <Not Driel... where is she?> With a quick wave, Locke left the room and headed to the library, pretending to be oblivious to the stares of the town's monstrous occupants. <Now I know how Umaro feels. Have these people ever seen a human before?> He remembered the Sylph's comment. <They have... but not for a few thousand years.>

He found the library. Kyria hadn't been exaggerating. The shelves of books filled the room. <Driel would love this.> He sighed. He didn't mind reading himself--it was the best way to find clues to hidden treasure--but this could take a lifetime.

He began to scan the titles of the books, grimly searching for anything that sounded promising, and nearly ran over a... creature. He couldn't tell whether it was male or female; it was wearing a voluminous one-piece outfit and had long hair. But it was more human-looking than anything he'd seen here except for the old king. It seemed lost, as though it was looking for something. <Well, so am I... Time to get to work.> He turned back to the endless rows of books.

The Sprite stood a few feet tall, with bushy red hair that dripped to its knees and ears extruding from that mass of hair. The Sprite wore a green cloak that tapered to his feet - Locke noticed the Sprite had unusually large feet. "For a midget, you have awfully large feet."

Redness covered the Sprite's face. "Oh yeah? At least I don't wear a funny looking bandana - what's your problem, your head injured?"

Locke, wishing to end the argument, replied, "Who are you?" Baffled, the Sprite had no answer. "Don't you remember?" continued Locke.

"No, I've lost my memory. That's why I'm here in this library - I hope to find some information about my past. I don't even know how I got to this world. One day, I woke up and found myself lying on a rock."

"Have you found any useful information?" The Sprite scratched its hair; Locke noticed stripes lining the Sprite's cheek. "Maybe you belong to some tribe or something."

"You mean the stripes on my cheeks? I don't even know why they're there. Maybe I do belong to a tribe." The Sprite pulled another book from the shelves, sifted through the pages and threw it back on the shelf. "This place is useless. I've been looking in here for days but it's full of garbage. I've even gone through a whole cook book that talked about 'seafood' and 'how to make shrimp pie.' I don't think I'll find anything that'll help me here.

"Say, what's your name, tall one with the bandana?"

"My name is Locke. What is your name, shrimp?"

"Remember, Locke, I lost my memory." The Sprite glanced over at the shelves again and pulled out another book. On it, the title read "The Trial of Lyle Menendyz." The Sprite paused, thought about the name "Lyle" and pondered upon its letters, then shrugged his head and said, "My name's Lile. Hey, Locke, what's this place called?"

"It's called the land of summoned monsters."

"Mwa ha, ha, Land of Summoned Monsters? Do you plan to get out of here?"

"Yes but I still need to find a way out."

"I'll come with you and help you then, Locke. First, though, I gotta grab my bag." The Sprite strolled around the shelves, picked up a sack and returned to Locke. Locke looked at the sack the Sprite was carrying and noticed something was moving inside.

"Is there something in your bag?"

"Yeah. When I woke up, I found this creature beside me. It calls itself Undine. Wanna look?"

"Sure," replied Locke.

"It'll cost you though. One hundred GPs. Mwaaa, ha, ha, I'm just jokin." The Sprite opened the sack and Locke noticed a tremendous surge of magic from the creature.

"Hey," Undine cried, "it's about time you gave me some air."

The Sprite laughed, "Mwaaa, haw, haw, sorry about keeping you inside. Locke, it calls itself an elemental. Don't know much about it though." Locke looked at the creature again. He could sense the creature was pure magic... magic, how could that be? The magical field springing forth from it was extremely strong, even stronger than any field he had felt from an esper...

His new companion the Sprite looked skeptical. "How's that again?"

"Just watch. Lend me your power," he told the Undine. He felt a surge of magic pass through him...

"Float!" Locke began to rise from the floor, slowly. An inch, two inches... He felt the magic desert him and he fell back to the floor.

"Very impressive," remarked Lile.

Locke closed his eyes for a moment. <How do I get myself into these situations?> "All right, all right," he grumbled. "Now help me look through these books."

********************

"I found something," Locke called out from somewhere in the fourth row of shelves. "Marander Jornal's 'Temporal Distortions and Their Effects on the Spatial Continuity.'"

"What?" returned Lile, from the middle of the sixth row.

"Temporal distortions. Changes in the flow of time. Like the one that's taking place here soon. And spatial continuity... maybe there's something here."

"Yeah, right. I just hope this works as well as your floating spell."

"You'd rather keep looking through these books?"

"You have a point."

Locke sat down and started to read. <This will take a while. This book was written for master magicians, not dabblers like me.>

********************

"And I'm hungry, too. Can't we take a break now?" Lile had been complaining for the last half hour, having finally tired of searching the shelves for something more comprehensible. It seemed the books were all written with centuries-old scholars in mind. In other circumstances, Locke would sympathize, but he was beginning to feel weary of his new companion. <Maybe I should just leave him here and walk...>

"Hey!"

The Sprite actually fell silent. Locke continued, "I think I found something. If we can get a strong enough magician to read this ritual during a time shift, as we step onto a teleporter, it should warp us all the way to the world above!"

"That's good. Will it work?"

Locke frowned. "I hope so. We need a skilled mage. Maybe that king would help."

"I'm a skilled mage! Well, I was, anyway."

"You are? Why didn't you mention that?"

"I just remembered. but I don't know if I still am. Or what spells I could cast."

"Great. I think we'd better ask the king, anyway. If this spell backfired, it could take us anywhere."

"That's what we want, right?"

"Including another planet. Or another time."

The Sprite considered. "Oh. That's bad. Okay, then."

"I thought you'd see it my way."

"Umm... that reminds me. Where does the spell put us if it works?"

Locke sighed. <I guess "I have no idea" wouldn't be very reassuring.> "It says it will deposit us in a castle called 'Baron'."

"Oh, good. Civilization. Where's Baron, exactly?"

He rolled his eyes. "I have no idea." The Sprite could turn a rather interesting shade of purple, Locke noticed. He briefly wondered whether that could possibly be a useful ability, then dismissed the thought. <I've been in this library too long.> He forestalled a shriek from the Sprite by holding up a hand and quickly adding, "But I've been all over the world. I'll recognize the place."

The Sprite returned to a normal hue, but still added, "If the place is on this world."

Locke winced. "Good point. But I don't see any other way out of this. Do you? Let's go see the king."

Lile grumbled something, but fell into step behind him as he walked the streets of the monsters' town, painfully aware that he was the first human to do so in hundreds of years.

The short grey-skinned creature looked up to Locke, who was twice its size. In a shrill voice, it stammered, "H-He left f-for the surface. W-With th-the others. Because of the t-t-time shift."

From behind Locke, Lile piped up. "I knew this was a bad idea. But nobody ever listens, no..."

Locke snapped his fingers. "I've got it!" He set off at a brisk pace, forcing the smaller Sprite to have to run to keep up.

"Where are you going?"

He grinned. "To keep a promise."

******************

"I'd be glad to help you, if you think I can. Reading that shouldn't take me nearly as long as flying would, and since I won't actually be leaving, I'm not abandoning these patients..."

Locke nodded enthusiastically. The warm smile on his face was genuine, despite the fact that it had taken him nearly two hours of conversation to approach the question. Usually, knowing that time was of the essence, he would be upset, but this time, strangely enough, he didn't mind. And he _had_ promised to visit the Sylph before he left...

Kyria smiled back at him. <She's always smiling.> Clapping her hands, she asked, "You're planning to do this at the beginning of the shift?" Without waiting for his assent, she continued, "It won't be long, then. We'd better get to the teleportal."

And Locke left the hospital for the second time, accompanied by the Sprite and the Sylph. "This portal usually leads to the cave you mentioned?"

Kyria nodded. "But with this, it will put you in Baron. The home of that hero... What was his name? He was a friend of that nice Karate man, Yang. I wonder if any of them are still alive..."

"How could they be? Thousands of years have passed."

"Well, Rydia is still alive. She hasn't called me or any of my sisters for a long time, though."

"Rydia?"

"The last Caller of Mist. She can call any of the monsters here to the world above. She's the last human to be here, too... well, I guess you are, now."

Lile muttered, "I'm the only Sprite."

Kyria stopped for a moment. "That's true. I wonder if Rydia could call you, if you stayed here."

Locke interrupted. "That's interesting, but I think we should start the ritual. Time might shift at any second."

The pair nodded reluctantly. Kyria opened the book to the mark. "We have to wait until..."

Locke was overwhelmed with a feeling of vertigo suddenly. He nearly toppled to his knees. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Lile also weaving, disoriented. A wave seemed to pass across his vision, blurring it.

Only Kyria seemed unaffected as she concluded, "...the temporal shift begins." She began to read the words printed in the book. The teleportal glowed unnaturally with a bilious green color.

<Maybe she's not strong enough to power the spell properly? This town is a magical place, and the death of magic will be felt here soon, if it hasn't been already...> Lile impatiently leapt onto the tile that formed the teleportal and vanished. <Well, it seems to work. I'd better go before the shift ends and I'm stuck here.>

"Thank you, Kyria. Goodbye!" He jumped onto the tile and felt a wrenching, as though he had struck a brick wall. He fell backwards, but there was no floor. He kept falling, tumbling into the darkness.

He couldn't even hear himself scream.