Doctor Henry Quantos strolled down a corridor of the Glover Memorial Hospital, softly humming a tune to himself. He had just returned from a visit with Rose and little Amara, and they were both doing fine after the birth. As a director at the now-extinct scientific research and development firm, Malvan-X Inc, in Mandelovia for 15 years, Quantos had not had many opportunities to use his medical doctorate for anything other than the occasional sprained ankle when the official company doctor was not available. He certainly had not had any opportunities to deliver any new lives into the world until he came here, to La Perdita. Cicciotto's child had been just the most recent and rewarding of a number of births he had delivered over the past year since he established his medical clinic. Euro's family was growing larger all the time.

He idly wondered if he would ever live to have another child himself someday, one who shared his name, before putting it out of his mind. He was 64, pushing retirement age, and it wasn't likely he would become involved with any woman young enough to have a child by him.

Quantos chuckled to himself at this thought as he arrived at the double-glass doors in the lobby of the hospital. Glancing up he saw that the gentle Caribbean night was beginning, and everything looked peaceful outside.

He pushed both doors open with uncharacteristic fervour...

...and stopped in his tracks.

He had seen a peaceful sunset through the glass doors, but now that they were open, a completely new vision was set before his eyes:

The sky was stormy, clouds swirling in impossible formations as flashes of electrical light illuminated them from within. The air was positively charged with ionized energy, sending a chill down his spine. The exotic environment was only the least of the strangeness, however, as he looked down.

He stood on the edge of a precipice, his heels planted on the metal doorframe the only part of his body keeping him physically inside the hospital. He yelped suddenly and pushed himself back with the open doors, collapsing on the lobby ground painfully.

As he watched the double-doors close very slowly, he saw that there was a tiny stone path that seemed to rest on nothing but darkness below. This path twisted and turned, rising slowly upwards until it reached a hilly outcropping of rock, upon which sat a medieval-type stone castle lit from behind by the mosaic of lights in the sky behind it. As the doors came to a final close he could have sworn that the spires of that castle somehow beckoned to him, as if to come hither while there was still time, yet the scenes of normal La Perdita night-life could be seen through the glass window-doors.

He remained sitting on his ass, his hands splayed out behind him, propping him up, until an orderly walked up to him.

"Doctor Quantos?" Hernando said gently. "Doctor, are you all right?"

"No," said the good doctor. "I mean... I don't know. Maybe."

Hernando frowned at the older man and said, "Well, I'm just getting off work now, Doctor Quantos. Perhaps you would care to join me for a drink at Jake's?"

Quantos barely heard what the young orderly had said, still marvelling at the impossibility he had just seen.

Hernando waited a moment more for an answer, shrugged, and stepped over to the front door, reaching for the push-bars.

"N-no!" Quantos shouted. "Hernando, look out!"

But it was too late, and the door was wide open by the time Hernando stopped and looked behind him with an incredulous look at the old doctor. Everything outside was completely normal. Absolutely and completely normal. "Yes, doctor?"

Doctor Henry Quantos gulped and said, "N-never mind, Hernando."

"All right," said the orderly, muttering, "senile old lunatic" under his breath as he left the hospital.

***

On the little island nicknamed "Dawson Isle" some miles off the La Perdita coast, the battle had come to an end, yet the war for the Vanguardians seemed to have only just begun. They had been attacked by Jack Merlin, the man who had become their arch-enemy, and although the battle had the unintended effect of uniting the team in a way that it had not been since Danny Hearn's betrayal, it had spent a great deal of their energy. They needed all their stamina for the upcoming confrontation with Jack Merlin himself, as that infamous centenarian always had a few aces up his sleeve. He somehow turned his every defeat into another opportunity, rising again and again like a phoenix.

But enough of the mixed metaphors.

Rama Avatar felt absent, not quite himself, for at least as long as the team had left the island, maybe a little bit longer. He had reason for being distracted, however, which he had been mulling over in his mind for hours now. During all the battles he had been letting Caliburn do most of the work, setting himself on "auto-pilot" and simply going through the motions as his team expected he should.

Yet something had been nagging at him during the whole time.

He thought at first it was his personal protective reaction for Brianna as he guessed that the young woman had been seduced by that philanderer Montag (who was thus proven to be every bit the scoundrel that his ancestor was in the Swordsman's mind), a guess that had recently been all but confirmed, but as concerned as he felt inwardly about that situation, and as much as he knew he had to confront that Lothario once all this was over with, he knew that could not be what was provoking this peculiar reaction. No, it seemed somehow familiar. A scent, or a sound, something tactile, perhaps, yet most probably none of those things.

He felt the same way now as he had felt when the team was undergoing that apparent hallucination of the future brought on by Merlin. The same feeling had struck him then as it did now, and he was not at all convinced that Merlin had told them the truth. As improbable as that future vision seemed, it felt no less real than the battle he had just recently undergone. And therein lay the mystery.

His fellow Vanguardians (and the stragglers they had as usual picked up along the way) were too busy contemplating their next move. It was obvious: Jack Merlin had to be taken down now. Finally. Once and for all. All their enemies had to be slaughtered so that they could not, too, rise again to defeat them in the future.

Rama Avatar breathed deeply the acrid smell of metal and blood, the remnants of battle. He smelled something else on the wind as well, however, something unexpected which shocked him to his core. He followed the smell.

He felt somewhat light-headed and giddy as he came closer and closer to a writhing figure who was trying her best to free herself from her captivity without success. She was facing the other direction, but as he neared she stopped and slowly twisted her face to see him, her visage twisted with a horrible grin.

"My, my... Mister Templar, you have been working out, haven't you?" Jia said with a tone that seemed at once both a snarl and a laugh. "And the Caribbean sun has done wonders for your former Irish complexion," she snickered.

"Jia," Rama Avatar breathed, a rage slowly boiling up from inside of him.

"Ah, but there's more to it than that, isn't there?" Jia said with mock sympathy. "I do believe I've... hurt you, haven't I? Oh, my poor, poor man. Someone should have told you that my lovers never survive our nuptial bliss. Yet here you are before me, a new man. Tell me, Mister Templar, if that's what you still call yourself, what did it feel like to... die?"

Rama Avatar answered her taunts by raising his sword, the uncharacteristic rage boiling over suddenly as his voice seemed to revert to his former life: "What did it feel like? I'LL TEACH YOU HOW IT FEELS!" he bellowed as he brought his sword up in an arc to bring it down with as much force upon her neck as possible... until her next words stopped him.

"You're a daddy!" she shrieked accusingly, pausing as the Swordsman stopped the path of his sword, suddenly confused. "You wouldn't hurt the mother of your own child... would you?" she snarled with a cautiously triumphant tone. She could still survive, she thought, worm her way out of this situation to live another day.

"What...?" Rama breathed. He was in a state of shock, his mind conflating two situations at once. He had been a father once, at least as far as he could remember, and that had already been on his mind for other reasons. This new information confused him. "What did you say?"

"I thought that would catch your attention, lover," Jia said in a sultry voice. "He's beautiful, Mason, a perfect combination of mother and father, taking on the best qualities of both. Oh, he wasn't the only one -- he was born with eleven other brothers and sisters, each of which he devoured shortly after birth, as he was the strongest of them all. The worthiest. I call him Cryptis, in honor of his mysterious father."

Rama's face was steely. "You are a liar."

"A liar, am I? Are you so sure about that? Are you willing to bet your son's life on it? He may be the strongest of our spawn, swordsman, but he still needs a mother's love in his fragile infancy. I intend to raise him to be as strong as his father. You must meet him someday, husband. His soul is pure, free from all constraints of morality. He will finish the job I began." At this, she playfully licked her lips as she glanced at the side of Rama's stomach.

The Swordsman continued to stand as Jia stared at him, seeing what effect her words had on him. She had cut through to his very soul -- she could tell.

Rama opened his mouth finally and said, "I've given it some thought, and I realize I simply do not care to listen to you any longer."

Jia said, "But--"

"Goodbye."

At that, Rama Avatar struck the side of Jia's head with the flat of his sword, rendering her unconscious. He then proceeded to slice off each of Jia's arms and legs with his sword, which flashed green as it cauterized her wounds cleanly, turning her into a harmless amputee. "Mother of lies," he muttered under his breath.