Xiiaoweii was falling. She was falling through a tunnel. A tunnel? So, xiiaoweii told herself, I’m dreaming. A nice dream, for a change. No crazy maplers, or big lumps of guards trying to stuff her into the back of a police van. She decided to relax and enjoy it.

The tunnel was so huge as to appear boundless. The illusion was shattered by rings of blue light that pulsated along its length like the heartbeat of some fantastic creature. Other dots floated in the slightly liquid air. Xiiaoweii realized these motes were, in fact, maplers.

Maplers floating in a tunnel? Hadn’t she heard it before? Something about a tunnel and a light.

So, xiiaoweii told herself: Path of Time. She waited for the revelation to have some tremendous impact on her, Nothing. No convulsions. No screaming or hitching sobs. It was as though the path itself had anaesthetized her mind.

Someone was calling her name. Xiiaoweii turned slowly. She wasn’t the only person floating on this particular current. Someone was spinning along beside her. Dark cloth and titanium armor filled this assailant with danger. Fearful. Yet strangely familiar.

‘What the-‘ xiiaoweii gasped,’The hermit who attacked me!’

The hermit grinned in grotesque evil. ‘Hi there, young one.’

‘Get stuffed, loser! You killed shadowlubu!’

The hermit was giving her the evil grin again. Spine tingling.

‘Murderer!’ xiiaoweii shouted.

The hermit would have smashed her brain. But he had other plans.

‘Get a grip, lady!’ he smirked,’Fret not ’cause we’re going to have a visit with someone special.’

The currents bore them along at a terrific speed. There was no friction. No winds whipping at their clothes or ballooning their cheeks. Just an increasing heat-blast from the lower branch of the tunnel.

Xiiaoweii could see the bottom of the pit clearly now. The red demon-eye glow of the tunnel creatures. The silvery glint of their prongs. The job satisfaction in their grin.

Then her course changed. Just a nudge to starboard, but enough to steer her away from the lower passage. A relieved sigh exploded from her lungs. Purgatory, limbo, reincarnation – she didn’t care. Anything was better than whatever waited at the end of the red path.

‘NOOO!’ the hermit fumed,’GET BACK HERE!!!’

Xiiaoweii had no time worrying about the dark assailant. Whatever power had been guiding her suddenly vanished, leaving her careering with the force of her own momentum.

The tunnel wall reared before her. It looked soft. Soft and blue. Please let it be soft…

No such luck. Xiiaoweii smashed into an unforgiving surface with an Earth speed of four hundred miles per hour. Not that speed makes any actual difference on the Path of Time where kinetics are out the window. That’s not to say that it didn’t hurt.