Xindii watched over the body of Gwendolyn Pendragon in the Brentish morgue. Her body was face down. The wound Brick's gun had done to her body had severed the spine, blasted it away to the point where there would be debris in the pit of her gut and shrapnel in the throat. The bullet should have split her in two! Yet here she was, clinically dead, yet the tissue of her back and the cells of her body were regenerating.

The Flea King was cornered. It had nowhere left to run, its gospel ended here. There was no other hole for it to fester and sleep, no other mind to nurture and corrupt. Tyke, Gwendolyn, was the last.

He had to meet it half way. End it once and for all. He had to enter the Baroness's mind.

The door opened and the Don hobbled in, his arm in a sling.

'You should be resting old friend.'

'Can't. Church is actually quite tranquil but the place chills me to the bone.'

The Mapper sighed. 'Well, it's become a great deal more chilly in here I'm afraid.' He passed the Don the file he was holding.

He rested the clipboard on the slab and sifted through the findings with his solitary paw. 'It's not possible, Xindii. She is dead. There is no pulse. Nothing cognitive. I checked her myself at White Lillies.'

'I did the test myself, Tatterfox. Her cells are regenerating.'

'Practically at the sub atomic level, Xindii. It will take years for the body to become anew. Possibly decades.'

'I know. I know. But it's in there, Tatterfox. Skulking.'

'Possibly.'

'I know it.'

'Then you have decades to find a way to destroy it, Xindii.'

'I could do it today. Finish it once and for all.'

The Don turned away, the newly fluent Mapper knew what was coming and he despised the idea.

'You can't do that.'

'There is no other option.'

'Walk away, Xindii. She isn't going anywhere. You've done enough. Solved the crime, unmasked the culprits.'

'That isn't enough. I owe her. I saw her life before she met me or Hadigan. She's been a victim for too long. Today it stops.'

The Don still had his back turned. He nodded. 'For Sally whats-her-name from Nuttergut Hill, eh?'

Xindii smiled. 'That's the ticket.'

The Tatterfox turned about. 'You are a selfless man Heironymous Xindii. And a fool. If you enter her mind you will be lost. Even if you face that damn flea and win you will be lost to the Murk. Adrift.'

'I got back before.'

'Through luck. No being should have to wander through that dead space. And if they do return they are never the same again.'

Xindii nodded. 'That's where she is now. Alone. If we lose ourselves at least she won't be on her own.'

'It's baited you, Xindii. It's reeling you in. You didn't see what I saw at White Lillies. It gave me a glimpse. Its emptiness. The monster under the bed. The hollowness of man. Burn it.'

'What?'

'Burn it!'

'That is not an option, Tatterfox. I need your help. Will you shun me now after all our adventures together?'

'I will not send my friend idly into the jaws of death.'

'Every story ends sometime my dear Tatterfox. The last page of the gospel yearns to be turned.'

'You don't intend to return do you?'

'Even if I destroy it – and I haven't a clue how to do it – it will try to gain a foothold within me to be sure. I can't let that happen. This must end today.'

The Don sighed deeply and looked to the floor. 'My arm aches. I need to sit.'

Both of them sat down at the coroner's desk, staring idly into the ether before they resumed their chat.

'We stand at a crossroads of belief. Not with just ourselves but with the faiths and religions of millions of people, Xindii. Entropy laps at the walls of our world ever more and faiths and dream try to gain a footprint in the sands of the Construct. Clambering for warmth in the last ember.

'The Flea King uttered my mate's name. A name I have told no one about . . . even you. But her name is common knowledge to deities and Popes. In the God House they talked of dreams walking the streets and the dream pool overflowing. A sentience exists there reaching out with designs of Reverie. Nothing it seems is tangible these days.'

'Don't listen to their rants, Tatterfox. It will drive you mad. A war is coming . . . a war of faiths. What you hear is nothing new. Propaganda for the masses, dangling the carrot of light. An indoctrination of lies.'

'Perhaps it's not a bad thing with you not around. I could gain some serious respite. Whatever happened to the simple cases, eh? Everything seems more . . . furious these days. I'm getting old, Xindii. I shouldn't be learning dreamurlurgy at my age let alone practicing it. And the fencing, goodness me. My calves ache like buggery.'

'You loved it. You will be bored behind that desk without me.'

The Don smiled. 'Very true. Just do one thing for me when you get in there!'

'What's that?'

'Show that thing what it means to be in the Gospel of Xindii.'

'I will.'

The Don nodded. 'I would do well to erase this dreamurlurgy from my brain. Don't want me getting any ideas.'

'Leave it,' the Mapper quickly asked, 'for a day at least. I'll need you to help me cross.'

'Why?'

'It's not the usual kind of crossing.'

The Don raised his eyebrows, intrigued, yet slightly perturbed.

'We must make ready. Have the Baroness transported to Varosium. We have everything at the ready there. It's time we finished the Gospel of the Flea King once and for all.'

Brick carefully meandered through the Mapper's laboratory. Babar followed him longingly. The tough Krazzi felt a little battered and bruised from Hadigan's vicious onslaught. The Nelly-Doose was apathetic to his bruised ego, much to the Inspector's annoyance.

He delved into the labyrinth-like cloisters to immerse himself within a thousand years of collected dreamurlurgy ephemera. Books and scrolls. Prayer mats from Tish and the stuffed carcasses of numerous fictional creatures brought to life with the light of the Beat. Some beguiling, others frightening. Most, unforgettable.

He began a gradual descent, darkness swallowed him and he entered a bizarre entrance of dark metal and brown wood. Faint yet buoyant lamplight guided his way and he continued into the pit of Varosium.

Here among an orange hue and – for some reason the scent of oranges – glass cabinets of yellow formaldehyde, he gazed upon the Mappers who never were. A living gallery of those who had tried to achieve the impossible and paid the price, hidden from view in the vaults of the learned capital.

The Contortionists, two would be Mappers that had fallen in love and tried to explore the confines and limitless possibilities of the flesh and the mind, flesh curdled; fused forever. Brains and skull also. Limbs a sexual expression of their deep rooted love.

Tomas Fry, the man who tried to peer beyond the veils of the world, suspended in his tank upside down, the pure weight of his eyes had haemorrhaged the brain. Each eyeball weighed over ninety two kilograms in weight. They anchored him in the tank as his minuscule frame bobbed against the glass.

Sunasi Ren, the ravager of the Lint. Her insanity without boundaries. She had gone mad with the practice of dreamurlurgy, turning nail into claw, flesh into fur until her resolve finally withered and her power. Her body a bizarre amalgamation of wolf and woman, bird and reptile.

'It was one of Xindii's first cases as Mapper,' the Don clarified, his right arm hanging across his chest. 'First cattle. Sheep and Cows. Then she branched out. Men, women. Children.

'It wasn't until the death of a family when Xindii was called. Their cottage on the Lint, ravaged. Claw marks that defied belief. Footprints that didn't fit. He soon deduced that it was a transformation of the flesh with the hallmarks of dreamurlurgy. Such power can corrupt; rot the soul. Not many Mapper live to a ripe old age. The spoils of the art catch up in the end.'

'You seem to be doing okay?'

'Alas, I'm still a student I fear.'

The Don showed him the way to the sanctum where they were going to perform the crossing.

'Is he up for this, I mean really?'

'Xindii is adamant that it must be performed. What kind of men would we be to leave a girl alone in the dark with a monster snapping at her heels?'

'But you can't save every child?'

'You tell him that, Inspector.'

The Tatterfox pushed the doors open to an airy and musty room of bizarre scientific apparatus and dark wood panels. The mustard-like cobbles of the floor were uneven yet strangely warming. A small log fire burned in the corner, just to take the edge off the cool and fetid air that had lingered for so long.

'Inspector. You made it.'

The sound of the Mapper's voice made the Nelly-Doose canter to its master, its trunk happily curling around the Mapper's right leg. 'Oh, Babar. I love you too.'

Brick walked up to the corpse-like body of the Baroness. The apple scented shroud covering her ruptured back. The Krazzi noticed the wires leading to the small and cumbersome apparatus on the trolley next to her.

'I'm . . . I'm not even going to ask but . . . I got the feeling you're gonna jump into her brain, right?'

The Don smiled. 'Makes it seem almost easy.'

'It ain't easy, is it?'

The Mapper stepped forward.

'No. Foolhardy. Reckless. Possibly catastrophic.'

'Well I wouldn't expect anything less from you, pal.'

'Thank you for your vote of confidence, Inspector.'

'You're welcome. So why the hell do you need me?'

The Mapper smiled and looked to the Don. The Tatterfox turned his back and produced the original gospel recovered from White Lillies. Bound in slate and bone.

'You guys haven't read it, have ya?'

'You can relax on that front, Inspector,' replied the Mapper.

'You're giving it to me, seriously?'

'As its envoy, nothing more,' the Don responded, reaching into his jacket and producing a ticket.

Brick held the gospel in one hand and his ticket in the other. 'This is a ticket to Bish. A ticket to Bish for a month. All inclusive?'

'We decided you needed a break,' Xindii said. 'Eat, sleep, read – except not that.'

'Then why am I taking this?' Brick asked, waving the gospel around.

'Your ship will take you directly over the Pazrali Trench. The deepest place on the Construct. Weight it. Secure it with Kissledawn steel and drop it at the coordinates written on the back of the ticket. That's all we ask.'

'Why let it out of your sight? Surely it would be safer with you guys?'

'We can't afford to take that risk. What I do today . . . I may not return. And if I do then I'm afraid I might bring something back with me.'

The Inspector just stood there for a minute, observing them both. He smiled and nodded and then offered his hand. The Mapper took it first and then the Don, awkwardly shaking with his left.

'See you when I get back, Mapper. Your grace.'

'Inspector,' the Don nodded.

Brick walked from the cloister and then stopped and gazed back. They smiled and he made his way out clutching the gospel.

'Are you ready?' asked the Mapper.

'One last hurrah? The Mapper and the Don.'