Nine digs around his Chest and I close my eyes. Tears roll down my face. I’m startled by something rough touching my left hand. I open my eyes to see it’s Bernie Kosar in his beagle form, licking my fingers.

“I don’t deserve that,” I tell him. “I’m a coward. I’m cursed.”

He notices my injuries and tears, and then sniffs Nine’s face before expanding into a horse.

“Whoa!” Nine jumps back. “What the hell are you?”

“Chimæra,” I whisper. “He’s a good guy. He’s Loric.”

Nine quickly pets BK’s muzzle and then presses a healing stone to my back. As it works through my system, I notice a menacing storm brewing over the mountain.

The sky suddenly rages with lightning and booming thunder, and I’m so grateful Six has returned that I stand, ignoring the remaining pain in my back. The clouds shift and stretch in a way I’ve never seen before, though, and the sky feels suddenly evil. This isn’t Six. She’s not back to help.

I watch the funnel cloud that I’ve only seen in my worst visions form.

Bernie Kosar rears backward as a perfectly spherical spaceship, milky white like a pearl, sweeps down through the tornado’s eye. The ship lands right in front of the mountain’s entrance, sending tremors through the ground. In the same way as I had seen in my visions, a door appears from out of nowhere on the ship’s side, simply melting away. The Mogadorian leader from my visions, he’s here.

Nine gasps. “Setrákus Ra. He’s here. This is it.”

I’m silent, frozen in fear. “So that’s his name,” I finally whisper.

“That was his name. For every day they tried to torture me and my Cêpan, I’m going to stab him with this.” The red pipe glows in Nine’s hand. Its ends expand with rotating blades. “I’m going to kill him. And you’re going to help me.”

Setrákus Ra walks towards the cave’s entrance but stops before going in, one massive silhouette, stark and spectral. Through the raging wind and torrential rain, he turns, lifting his gaze in our general direction. Even from as far away as I am, the faint glow of the three pendants is unmistakable around his thick neck.

Nine and I charge out of the trees with Bernie Kosar galloping behind, but it’s too late. Setrákus Ra has disappeared into the cave and the same bubbling blue force field that covered the prison cell doors appears over the entrance.

“No!” Nine yells. He slides to a stop and stabs the ground with his pipe.