Over time and for hundreds of generations past, stories about certain kinds of supernatural beings circulated; some thrilling and some uninteresting. All retold the same tale, but Waverly thought it an utter frustration that in all the stories she had heard about ghosts, no one pointed out that they could be overwhelmingly talkative.

Until they arrived The Coath, Ghost never paused. Not once. He did not even stop to breathe. She doubted he had any air to. He talked about things she understood and those she did not. To get to The Coath, he claimed they needed to wait for Zors' pet, Reek, to take them.

"What is that?" She had asked.

Just before a gigantic doglike thing lifted its large head over the cliff side and barked in her face. Originally hesitant to climb aboard such a creature, she only conceded after Ghost assured that Reek was friendly.

"He never even bore a hatred for whosoever killed him." Ghost said, patting the creature's large nose. "Simple Reek. He is a good Aur."

Waverly retracted a few steps, more from sincere dizziness than fear. "Aur?"

"Yes." Ghost nodded and ushered her unto Reek's back. "Once he was a valiant warrior, but was ended in battle. . . by someone, of course. Only, he does not remember who."

As soon as she settled into a seating position, Reek flipped with severity and the landscape with it. Her eyeballs might have rolled into her forehead and back again. Her insides went berserk with sickness and as she returned upright, every organ jingled inside her body.

"We are here." Ghost announced, after concluding his take on contention amongst the upcoming ruling powers in The Balderdash.

She felt too sick to ask what he was talking about. Thankfully, he clarified.

"Balderdash is the name for those babbling creatures that cannot speak in words like I do. There are a cursing number of them flooded in The Hoax; orderless, they are, and bloody-minded fools. Every one says he wants to rule, but he refuses to be a subject first."

At first, the gnawing sickness from the unexpected somersault motion began to slowly ease away. Waverly, who laid face flat on the ground, was feeling just a slight hint of relief when a second wave hit. She moaned and turned over. Her skin was crawling as if a basket of roaches had been emptied right over her; the back of her eyes felt steaming hot and whatever little surviving substance in the form of food left in her stomach was indecisive on whether to come out or stay put. Temperature rose and fell about and her throat felt like dry season.

In spite of audible signs of her uneasiness, Ghost kept on talking and a helpless part of her listened to him.

"Thank you so much for your help, Reek. Until next time, eh?" He dismissed kindly and the creature left in silence. "As I said before, bloody-minded fools. Zors tells me he proposed a coordinated vote twice and nobody paid him ear. They hack themselves to pieces over the smallest misunderstanding. Lousy things. I wonder if at all Nys truly sees what goes on in. . ."

At that moment, he turned in a fleeting moment and noticed Waverly writhing on the ground.

"Oh, oh dear!" He exclaimed and floated toward her. "You are being affected by the atmosphere."

"Why?" She managed, clutching her gut and digging fingers with the other across the sand.

"Because it is pestilence. The Coath is pestilence, and you suffer it because you are not a dead thing yet."

"Why. . . did you bring me here?" Even the words were bitter as she said them. It seemed as though the entire atmosphere was dominated by the Night's Plague or something twice as strong.

"I told you that the witch goddess will not follow you here. She despises The Coath. Her domain is simply The Forefront, which is the Edge of Nys. Other layers are of no interest to her."

Curiosity sparked inside Waverly and she managed to push herself up even though it hurt tremendously. "There are layers in the Edge of Nys?"

Ghost held out both arms to help her rise, seemingly forgetting that he could not touch her. His limbs broke into smoke and reformed just as fast. He heaved a miserable sigh.

"I wish I could help you. We are in open territory now. It is dangerous to be in open territory." He turned and pointed to a terrain in the distance. "See that rise? You will be safer there. Muster your strength and come along now. I will tell you all about the layers of Nys when we get to the rise, but quickly, we must get there. Quickly and first. Gossips may spot us and whisper to the witch goddess. She may not come, but she will have you fished out and brought to her. Too many serve her here. Too many. Hurry now! On your feet, one member at a time."

With a lot of encouragement from Ghost, Waverly found herself limping and trudging, traipsing and toddling over a strange plane. It was dotted with little bumps that resembled rocks and protuberances that felt like haunting statues rising from the ground. Overhead, the sky was colorless and bleak much like the foremath of an ocean storm. A strong odor tainted the air that could not be identified, and each time she inhaled, she regretted it. The sole of her feet felt tender and numbing pain coursed the flesh there whenever she stepped. Her sense of balance changed and caused a constant sway as she walked, and the rise seemed frustratingly farther with every second.

At inconsistent intervals, she noticed that the ground would appear hazy then clear off. When the occurrence happened again, she quickly pointed it out to Ghost.

"You see that? Why does it do that?"

Turning to face her, he gave a little terrified yelp that near stopped her heart for a millisecond.

"What?"

"Y-You have gone very feeble in the face."

"Feeble?"

"Yes. Hoary and blanched, like a rose in the sunlight."

Waverly touched her face, wishing she could see what was happening to it that had frightened Ghost so much that he yelped. Then, in the next second, she forgot all about her ashen face and wore a soft expression.

"Do you remember what the sun looked like?"

Ghost appeared to be taken aback. His form fidgeted then relaxed. "Indeed, I do. Lovely and bright, yellow and warm. It is one of awfully little things that I am thankful have stayed - in whatever place of memory still exists within me."

"What other awfully little things do you remember?"

Ghost shrugged and it looked like his entire form was shifting upward like traveling smoke. Even the tiniest reactions made the whole of him move.

"Birds." He mused softly, and the tone of his voice made Waverly turn to look at him. He sounded calm and soothing, and everything unlike the bubbly version that had spoken only seconds before. "Not the demented kind that dwell here. Real birds; birds that sing and tweet lovely sounds and show off wonderful colors in the spring."

Gradually, the rise drew nearer and Waverly found that it comforted her along with Ghost's talk of spring. It felt as though a fresh one had burst open somewhere inside her chest. The feeling was both sweet and torturous.

"What else?"

They maneuvered past a scattered row of dead things that even the best of plant enthusiasts would have serious difficulty identifying. Tears pinched at Waverly's eyes because the sight suddenly reminded her of Judson again. He would have been capable of reviving them. She looked away immediately.

The rise itself was a huge mound - of stone or soil, she was uncertain, but it was a thick clump quite capable of maturing into a mountain should the diseased atmosphere permit healthy growth of any kind. Around it and about were other clumps no one would bother to notice, with dead plant life at their feet. From the corner of her blurring vision, she caught the unforgettable shape that was the half blooming, half-dead make of a turnsole.

The sound of rushing water reached her ears, forcing her to a sudden, anxious halt.

Vividly, she envisioned Dermot emerging from the distant corner to offer her his hand - an escape from a flood and the perfect invitation to greater harm.

"Flowers," Ghost went on, his solemn tone tarrying still. "Hundreds of them; hellebore, blue snowdrop, winter jasmine, carpets of gaillardia, blooms of myrtle and shrubs of forsythia, purple crocus, daisies and. . . " He paused and let out a most wistful sigh. "Roses."

"I love roses." Waverly whispered absentmindedly, still half expecting to see her dead Elven friend. Her mind was threatening to split in two.

Ghost chuckled. "Who does not, eh? Lovely things they are. Say, what have you been looking at?"

He floated onward and stopped where the rise curved into a conspicuous ravine. "This is where I aimed to bring you for a rest. Come along. It is safe, I promise."

Each time he promised a thing, Waverly realized that she easily believed it and trusted him too. So far, he had not brought her to any kind of obvious harm, which was a rare thing in such a horrible place. Then again, even if he did, she could not exactly harm him for misleading her seeing as they could not touch one another. She doubted there was any way to hurt Ghost, then quickly put the thought out of her head. She did not want to hurt him at all.

Carefully, she dragged her heavy self forward, until the mouth of the ravine was blowing humid air in her face. Luckily, it did not stink. The ground there seemed to have experienced an earthquake and then tried to patch itself up afterward because some of the earth rose in cracked ledges whilst others stayed flat and smooth. In the midst of it all was a deep depression; a kind of accidental pool, where loud, murky water sloshed into. Her eyes followed its singular trail up and found it to be a stream that ran a winding course from the far left to clash aimlessly into the pool. For a split second, the environment shivered and took on the image of a more beautiful ravine.

She quickly blinked the illusion away.

"Where-" She began.

"A cave is just underneath that precipice up there." Said Ghost, pointing. "No one knows it. No one will find you there, not even the witch goddess."

Caves made her uncomfortable, but Waverly had to risk it. She was greatly sick and needed to rest, and besides, anything to keep her away from Hekate was the greatest idea ever invented. Keeping very cautiously to the smooth parts of the pool bank, she followed Ghost. Humidity filtered into her hair and clothes, making her eye the water with an irritating kind of itch. Despite its murkiness, she felt very tempted to jump in and cool off.

"Ghost, is the water safe?"

Ghost stirred as if he had been falling asleep during the short walk. "Eh? Pamola? She does not entertain at all."

Gulping down her second question, Waverly steered her focus elsewhere. From Ghost's tone, she reasoned for herself that the guardian of the stream, Pamola, was not friendly. She had had her own fair share of unfriendly creatures in the past and even though she easily bonded with water folk, she doubted inhabitants of Nys's waters were as willing to start a healthy friendship.

The air blew stronger and thinner as they approached the precipice. Then, Waverly realized that the ground had been sloping upward without her notice. She glanced over the side and was shocked to see Pamola's pool about thirty feet below, but made no attempts to question anything. In the realm of Nys, it was easier to just accept whatever one saw.

Ghost floated into the entrance of a concave threshold that looked suspiciously like hole in a tooth. She followed with enough nonchalance to impress whoever was the god of nonchalance. Just like the outside, the inside of the cave was humid, but as a result of its bare stone walls, a bit cooler and welcoming. He ushered her to a stack of hay as thin as spiderwebs and she slumped into it without hesitation.

"You must rest a while. You still look feeble. It is alarming."

A weak sigh was the response. Waverly had already begun drifting to sleep even before her head touched the stack and Ghost's voice came to her like the funny bubbling of boiling liquid.

As quickly as sleep came, it cleared off because her eyes opened in what felt like mere moments later.

But she was in an entirely different scenario.

The first thing she registered was a tree branch, hanging dangerously close to her face. Had she sat up without fully waking, the branch would have reconstructed her nose. Just above the branch was another branch that, after several blinks, she realized someone was sitting on. She also realized that she laid comfortably on her back with both hands on her stomach when she had originally fallen asleep on her side.

Quietly, she tossed and slid out from under the branch, then rose to her feet to fully review the environment.

Everywhere, the ground was covered with brown leaves, grass and white flowers in what was a moderately open field. Bordering the space in a full circle were tall shrubs of shocking yellow forsythia that gave Waverly a queer feeling. Far beyond the field's horizon, the hazy sight of snow capped mountains rimmed with blue and white clouds were so thin they looked like seams on the mountainside.

She brought her gaze to the tree before her. It was a stout one with a stark white trunk and extremely long and white branches that extended sideways in a lazy bend. Its fury of leaves were bleached a brownish red hue, perhaps by harsh sunlight, and rained down softly at intervals. However, the sun was nowhere to be seen within the impressive outline of clouds.

The entire place looked paradisical on a believable level.

At last, Waverly's eyes rested on the stranger that was still seated with her back to the branch in a lying position, a single brown boot atop her middle and tiny items that looked like pins arranged on her light blue-green robe. There was also one in her mouth that she took out and glanced up, blinking lovely brown eyes with a faint yet friendly smile across her lips.

The forced mixture of a sigh and a gasp escaped Waverly.

"You grew taller!" The Elfin noted, then aimlessly gestured around. "You never came here, did you? It's my favorite place to get away when the noise grows too much for me to handle."

Waverly stood, speechless, staring at the greenish boot that she recognized all too well.

"Not so far from Gayl's temple, but you have to ride acres behind instead of ahead." The girl continued and stuck a few pins into the shoe with undivided attention. "It doesn't have a name, so I just call it aéolana. You know what that means."

She looked up. Her eyes were unforgettable, and the glint in them made Waverly almost believe she was real. She nodded in response to the question.

"But do you know why you came here of all the places you could have gone?"

"No."

The Elfin put down the boot. The pins stayed on her chest as she interlaced her fingers over its former position on her body.

"Because you desire peace, Waverly. And yet you cannot have it."

Waverly's eye twitched. There came a burning urge in the back of her head to hug her old friend very tight, but Havilah was only as real as the reflection of the moon in a bowl of water. For a while, she could only stare, and the Elfin stared back - calmly. She was not armed, yet Waverly feared the boot could come in handy to smack one upside the head. Although she could not think of one reason why Havilah should want to be violent toward her.

"You don't really know people." Havilah suddenly said. "You think you do, but you don't. What you know is but what they permit."

Slowly, she began to reach for the boot and deep hurt sliced through Waverly's chest.

Just then, the Elfin's form flickered and she returned to her former position - fingers interlaced across her midsection. "Because you desire peace, Waverly. And someday, you will have it."

The deepest crease outlined the latter's face at the sudden change of words. Her head tilted as she studied the Elfin. Something sluggishly began to click in the back of her head, but before it could take full form, the scenario dissolved and a familiar voice reached her ears.

"Hullo, hullo." Ghost was saying repeatedly. Thankfully, he did not sound panicked. "What a while you have slept for! I dare time to work at all in Nys, but you have slept a time. To Paloma I went to have a chat, then to Zors to hear what The Balderdash are doing about the election, then back again to Paloma. She complains she gets too lonely during elections and does not wish for it to occur again. Yet, you have been asleep through it all. Is that how much Humans sleep?"

Waverly sat up groggily and examined the cave. Nothing was different about it, but she did feel different. Better. The sickness was gone.

"Oh, pestilence only works out in the open," Ghost explained when she mentioned it. "But you will fall sick again the moment you step out of this cave and whenever you visit The Coath."

"You promised to tell me about. . . the layers of Nys." She reminded, swallowing humid air. The next time she was opportuned to have a drink, she would drink, until she replaced the oceans as a container of water.

"That I did. And I will. But first, you must permit me take leave to inform Paloma that our conversation is over. You see, I was speaking to her earlier and excused myself to come and take a peep at you."

With a curt nod, Ghost floated out of the cave. Waverly watched him go, feeling disoriented still. Her eyes fell to the ground and glimpsed the strange haze once more. This time, it was more vibrant. An uneasy haunch that the ground would crack open and slip Hekate into the cave made her scuttle backward.

Just then, Ghost returned, laughing. The sound of it was so misplaced that it took a few moments for her to find it comforting.

Who knew there could be anything as bright as laughter in a place of damnation?

"A long sense of humor that Paloma has, I keep saying it." Ghost chuckled then fixed himself next to the stack. "It's a pity no one else knows how funny she can get."

When he turned to Waverly, his chuckle gradually lowered into a gentle sigh. His strange features contorted into a frown as he leaned forward a few inches, staring intently at her face as if merely seeing it for the first time ever.

"Say," He mused in the same soft tone he had used to talk about birds. "I never saw such rare beauty in a pair of eyes before."

In a different setting, Waverly would have turned perfectly crimson. Nonetheless, the words tickled her pink and her cheeks heated with embarrassment. She blinked severally, unable to shake the feeling of warmth that clothed her from head to foot. Though it was difficult to tell its true cause - the humidity or Ghost's unexpected praise.

"I got them from my mother." She offered, clearing her throat and tossing her gaze away.

"A lovely mother you must have!" He commented. "Alas, I don't remember my mother, or if I had one at all. She would be disgraced and ashamed of me, that's a certain bit. Look how awfully wrong I've turned out."

At that, Waverly remembered the million and one questions she had wanted to ask him since their first meeting.

"What is your name?"

He shrugged and attempted to kick off a little pile of hay, but had no feet to do it. "I do not remember that either."

"Do you remember how you got here?"

"Yes, of course. I died, or at least, that is what Zors tells me."

"How long have you been here?"

A little sigh. "I cannot say. Zors said it could have been more than a lifetime or less because he came and found me here."

"So, you have stayed in the Edge of Nys long before Zors came?"

"Could be, yes. Time has no business down here with condemned, dead things. And I do not stay in the Edge of Nys. There is no such thing as home down here, but I consider The Coath to be a less torturous layer."

Waverly shot up straight. "About the layers. You said you'd tell me about them."

"Yes, indeed. I do warn that my knowledge is worn and all I know is from years of gossip and telltale, but eight layers of Nys there are. They say each reflects a personality of the terrible goddess to oppose the nature of her adversaries."

"Entonians." Waverly muttered.

"Eh, they call them that? Anyway, as you know now, there is The Forefront, which is simply the topmost layer and Edge of Nys's realm. After that is The Coath, and The Hoax after; the Loathe, Triste, Strife, Disharmony and the Blear, or as we like to call it, the Bottomless Gloom."

"Nature. . . health, life, love. . . happiness, peace, music. . . and light." She recounted in a mutter again. "Eight attributes to oppose all sixteen gods that represent them."

"Verily." Ghost confirmed. "You catch on faster than I expected."

"Why does Hekate rule over the Forefront alone? Is she not in league with Nys?"

"How in the orbicular world should I know that?" His voice suddenly took on an edge. "That witch goddess and her affairs are no business of mine. She best stay away from me and I from her."

Waverly gulped. "But you have helped me. I am an affair of hers. I am her prisoner."

Ghost chuckled. "Oh, ho ho, how wrong you are there. Prisoners of the witch goddess are always spineless worms. You, on the one hand, are no worm. Tars boasted a few hours after your arrival that he witnessed your scuffle with the witch." Here, his voice lowered in awe and question. "He says you wounded her many times with her own blade."

It was an insignificant achievement against someone as powerful as Hekate, but hearing Ghost glorify it made Waverly swell with secret pride.

"Less than what she truly deserved." She sneered.

"Will you tell me what the contention is?" Ghost put forth. "It's a true wonder that you still live. I can sense that some unfortunate event was what sent you here, but it is a rare thing for a mortal to wind up inside of Nys and survive this long."

A response was on the tip of Waverly's tongue when the ground turned hazy again and distracted her. This time, she crawled out of the hay to peer at it.

"It is. . ." She studied the occurrence, taking note of how transparent it appeared up close. "A passage."

"What is that, eh? The solid ground?" Ghost wondered. "Say, you're acting queer now, like you've gone bats."

Waverly briefly turned to him with a studious look and deducted that he could not see the phenomenon at all. It made sense since she was more extraordinary than he. And it also made her wonder if certain things were concealed from the eyes of the inhabitants of Nys.

She leaned forward carefully. Ghost gave an alarmed yelp.

"Oy, what on earth are you doing?"

A little further and she doubled over, coming up in the same position on her knees, but elsewhere. Ghost was absent. When she glanced up, she realized she was in a bedroom. A familiar bedroom. Her own back in Lake Borough.

With a gasp, she rose to her feet.

The place was comfortably quiet in a way that was reflective of a home whose inhabitants were asleep. The bedroom was clean and pleasantly scanty as always. A big old chair was positioned by the second window that caused her to beam. She was now grown enough to sit in it as opposed to when it was first gifted to her. Nothing other than a made bed and a trunk decorated the place.

It suddenly dawned on Waverly that her room had been shamefully poor in appearance.

"For a god's child," A voice came from everywhere.

She flinched, glancing up and around for the speaker, but they were nowhere within sight.

"You sure lived an inferior, beggarly life."

She straightened. "I lived humbly."

"There is a fine line between living humbly and being abjectly poor. You are intelligent enough to know the difference, moon spawn. Your so-called mother could have been more generous given the nature of her powers, but trust those Entonians to disappoint even their own offspring."

"Who are you?"

The whole place fell into eerie silence. Then, a lazy sigh came from beside the wardrobe, where darkness had suddenly taken the form of a person.

"I have followed your life closely since your birth." The newcomer said, emerging from the corner. Just like Tumut, the figure was purely outlined from darkness - in the shape of a woman.

In the back of her mind, the stranger's identity unveiled, but Waverly chose to deny it. "Who are you?"

"Yes, you may have lived humbly," The figure went on, ignoring the repeated question. "But we both know the life you had was not the one you wanted. Take your gemstones, for example."

A painful hum on Waverly's wrist made her shriek. Her veins first spasmed then glowed different colors. Through the false light, she glimpsed stones of several kinds fashioned to resemble her old twig bracelets.

"Did you ever think why it was so difficult to lose or give them away?"

"They were gifts, precious gifts. What mattered more was who gave them to me."

The figure chuckled. "Listen to yourself. Your lips lie even when your heart knows the truth. It was never just the giver who mattered, the gifts did as well. If the giver truly mattered more, then surely you would not have refused Opal now, would you?"

Waverly drew in a quiet breath. She recalled the goddess of riches alright. She remembered refusing the deity's free gift of eternal wealth and how it had itched badly to do so. She was not particularly greedy, but being able to live comfortably had always been a desire of hers and it seemed her present company was well aware of that.

"I did what I thought was right."

"To achieve a pressing goal at the time, yes, but what about now? Accept it or not, moon spawn, it has always been in your blood to want the most and the best. You cannot help it. You are your mother's daughter after all."

"Is this going to be regular?" She asked out of the blue.

"What is?" The figure sounded a tad stunned.

"You and your favorite sycophant, Hekate, taking turns in taunting me." She responded. "If it's going to be regular, then I would not mind you doing a little bit of introduction first - Nys, Hekate; you are both beginning to bear far too much likeness. I can't tell who is who anymore."

The figure, Nys, unexpectedly let out a shriek. "What? What likeness? Hekate is beneath me."

"And yet, she is slightly more skilled in verbal manipulation than you are." She tsked, wondering why she suddenly leaned toward lightening the atmosphere. It was something Brijjet would have thought to do.

"I made her what she is!" Nys stressed, her outline growing more defined. Waverly wished that her true form would show forth, but it did not. "Hekate serves me."

"Does she now? Because I remember clearly; she said that it was she who wrote all of mankind's history and never mentioned you."

"Not even once?" Nys quaked.

"Not even once." Waverly confirmed, starting to relax. "Some kind of partnership you have. Careful, she might leap at any chance to dethrone you and take your realm for herself. Can't trust an ambitious witch!"

A bloodcurdling scream came from Nys and just then, Hekate materialized.

"Enar anck!" She spat angrily and pushed Waverly in the chest. (You filth!)

Glass shattered loudly as Waverly crashed through the window and out. As she fell, she glimpsed the environment change from country to ocean air. Everything was disoriented. She registered pain firing about her hands and midsection.

When the blur in her vision faded, she was dangling from the edge of a cliff face by long, black shackles clasped tightly around her wrists. Far beneath were roaring waves and an angry sea. Thunder repeatedly struck the landscape above, sending the cliff into a heart stopping rattle.

"The nerve of you twit!" Hekate growled dangerously. Because of how she floated midair, Waverly was vaguely reminded of a witch she met once. A strange woman, who had appeared headless before her and all but altered her heart rate.

"What was it you dared to do?"

The shackles made it difficult to breathe even though they only binded her hands. "Thought I should befriend the god-in-charge since I'm going to be staying a while. You weren't feeling up to friendship so. . ."

"Why not give you enough time to practice those theatrics of yours?" Hekate sneered. "Stay a while you shall."

She flicked two fingers and the cliff began to grow taller. Waverly yelped and whimpered as she swung recklessly with the motion, praying her bonds would stay intact despite the tremor. It was better to remain in them than plunge a few hundred feet into unclear, icy cold waves. Jagged spikes rose from the waters until they were no more than a stone throwaway from the sole of her feet.

"See how much endurance you have soon, we will." Hekate taunted then left nothing but an evil cackle behind as she disappeared.

Waverly strained to look down and spied pointy black things. Having gone through a few realistic illusions already, she was starting to recognize one when she saw it, but Hekate's power proved more polish than she thought. It was hard to pinpoint what was false in the entire landscape. Left, right and all about was a dark blue sea, gray clouds, and the cliff face which somewhat stretched on both sides into highland. One could have easily found a seaside settlement there, though she doubted it.

Out of pure desperation to save her arms from gnawing numbness, she wished to have been chained elsewhere.

Perhaps, a grassland in a glade.

Rattling noises made her glance up with a gasp. Her chains snapped and she fell shortly and surprisingly into grass.

The sea was gone.

She pushed herself to sit up. Her chains were still intact, but the rest of the old landscape had disappeared. Walking forward, she inspected the new one. It looked like a hillside farmland. Sprinkles of houses, a field and an enclosed stream were all her eyes could take in, yet it seemed as though there was more. More she was meant to see, but could not for certain reasons.

"Go back." A voice said from behind.

She turned with a slight flinch to find Havilah. The Elfin looked regal in a plain brown dress that would have made anyone else look like a peasant.

"Back where?"

"The Coath." She paused, visibly hesitating. "You can alter it."

"Alter what?" The front of her head was beginning to ache, but Waverly ignored the pain and blinked cluelessly.

"You might not be able to create it, but you can alter it. You know how to. Use that to your advantage. Go back."

It took minutes, but at last, after she was gone, Waverly recognized that Havilah was talking about Hekate's illusion.

She looked down at her open hands. "I can. . . alter it."

"Won't be easy." Havilah was back again, dressed in armor. "These are no swindler tricks nor basic Gypsie magic. Her powers are ancient. It will fight back when you try to challenge it, but you must try."

Waverly nodded absentmindedly. "How do I-"

"I have no idea. I am not a witch nor a goddess, or a you. Now, go back!"

Again, the Elfin disappeared. She stood there a while, pondering how to execute alteration abilities and even tried several measures - stared hard, blinked thrice, used hand gestures - but the landscape stayed the same. She sighed in exasperation and mentally slapped herself in the face.

"Phyllis was right!" Havilah stated distastefully, squinting. "You sometimes act like your brain is full of spittle."

Waverly winced at the familiarity of the phrase, then almost immediately sensed that she had concretized the joke. Somehow, whether or not she actively thought of it, it had been right there in the back of her mind.

Instantly, the illusion died off and she was back in the cave again with Ghost peering at the ground.

"Hullo? Hullo? Where have you gone? Hullo."

A wily smile curved her lips. She had just discovered a major loophole.