"Let's get out of here!" Damon shouted.

  Flowers grabbed at his and Kim's ankles like tiny, flowery WWE wrestlers, making them both pick up their feet and increase their speed. Fiora was a dot ahead of them. A dot that didn't look like it intended to slow down. To his surprise, whether it was the Metal Health points he'd received after leaving the dungeon or his own stamina, he could keep up with Kim. His newly grown hair flowed behind him in the wind. It had never been so thick and long.

  "How are you?" Damon asked between huffs.

  "Why are you asking that now?" Kim replied. She was not huffing.

  "Well, this is the first time since we arrived that we have neither a monster wanting to kill us, a wizard staring at us, nor a dragonspawn growling in our ears."

  She kept a tight grip on the bag Blayre had given them. "At the very base of my being, I am still screaming, 'wake up, wake up, wake up!' But I don't wake up."

  "Good," he said. "I mean, good that someone is in the same place as me, thought-wise. I've often visualized what it would be like to go through a portal to another world."

  "You visualized being in this world?" Kim said.

  "Well, not this one." Damon jumped over a particularly aggressive stabbing flower. "But in my head, it was a great escape to sneak through the wardrobe into Narnia or slide down the rabbit hole to Wonderland or float over the rainbow to Oz or go through the magic door on Howl's Moving—"

  "Let me get this straight," Kim interrupted. "You practiced visiting another world in your head?"

  "Yeah, doesn't everyone?" he said.

  "I didn't," she replied. "When I use visualization, it's to improve my karate or prep for an exam. Not to leave the world behind."

  He remembered the framed picture on the mantelpiece of his father holding a fishing rod and doing a devil horn sign. "Well, sometimes it was better to be somewhere else."

  "Did it help?" She asked this softly several steps later. At one point she'd mentioned her dad was dead. Perhaps she sensed what he was thinking about.

  "Yeah. Kind of." He sighed. He slowed down. "Can we stop for a second?"

  "Sure," she said, and they stopped. The flowers started moving closer, but they were far enough away he felt he had time to take a few deep breaths. "He really died because of socks."

  "Will you mind explaining that?" she asked gently.

  "Well, the short version is that one day he held up his pair of socks and said, 'holes. holes everywhere.' And then he drove to Fred Meyers—it's a store—to buy socks. On his way back, a semi hit our car."

  "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said.

  "It's dumb that I remember his socks announcement so clearly." Several flowers were now stretching across their path. "Dad was the biggest Judas Priest fan—he would have loved this world. He passed his metal obsession on to me."

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  "My dad tried to pass on his obsession on to me, but it didn't take." She looked out over the horizon. "My uncle took up the task. He has played so many of these metal songs or dragged me to concerts. It just doesn't stick. Dad died of adult leukemia, by the way."

  "That must have been hard," he said.

  She nodded, but didn't elaborate. "Dad worshipped Iron Maiden. I bet our dads would have liked each other."

  "You're right." Damon swung the Screaming Eagle Staff to knock away a beefy flower that lunged like a mugger. "Listen, try those shoes on."

  She tapped the trinket on the belt. "These?"

  "They are called Destroyer Boots Of Major Metal Destruction. They will help you."

  She held them in her hand. "But they're too small."

  He didn't have a spell that would help. Then it came to him. "It's like my guitar string. Just imagine them on your feet."

  "That won't work," she said. But she closed her eyes and was clearly imagining them. Nothing happened. "Maybe you have to say a magic word. Like 'friend'."

  He laughed as he smacked another flower away. "You may not be wrong," he said. He gave the shoes a once over. "Maybe just say, 'rock forever'." It was a sign she trusted him, because she immediately said, "Rock forever." She was suddenly four inches taller. The platform boots, much larger now, clad her feet, metal teeth digging into the path. "Oh, My. They feel amazing!" "I bet it's just the word rock that activated them," he said. "Stamp your feet." She did so and the hardened path cracked, and the earth shook, driving back the nearest attacking flowers. "They have some sort of destruction power," he explained.

  "They certain have good grips. And are comfy, too."

  "Let's hope they make you faster, too." A wall of flowers rose up behind them. "Run!"

  They ran.

  They were coming onto more level ground, which made it easier to run and talk. Her Destroyer Boots Of Major Metal Destruction kicked up the dirt behind them. A thick wall of fog hung in the distance, stretching across the horizon.

  Once he thought they had enough distance from the flowers he said. "Did you know you're a Lightbearer?"

  "And what does that mean?" she said.

  "It's labelled a Proclivity, so it's something you have a tendency to do. Fiora is a Shadow Walker. And the mindslayers were Norwegian."

  "Norwegian?" she asked.

  "I know. I can't figure that out. Are there any Norwegians here?" He let out an asthmatic cough. His lungs had grown tired. "It's your moral standard," he said, the answer dawning on him. "Lightbearer, that is. Lightbearer, Shadowalker, Norwegian. It's whether you have good in your heart. A Shadowalker is between good and evil."

  "And a Norwegian is evil?" she said. "But Norwegians like skiing and are a happy country."

  "They are. But the Norwegians have the darkest heavy metal—Black Metal. Lots of Satanic, thrashy, growly stuff! Like the band Mayhem. So, in this world, that name is equivalent to being evil."

  "Oh, I see," she said. "Should we tell Fiora about your clever ability?"

  "You think it's clever?" he said. He pushed aside a tall, half-dead flower that had darted at him.

  "It's an advantage. If our enemies can't see the numbers, then at least you know something they don't."

  "I think we should keep it a secret," he said.

  "Why?"

  "Oh, Fiora seems nice. But she said that I should tell her if I saw numbers. And it would be dealt with. It felt threatening to me."

  "We'll keep it a secret between us," Kim said. "She is our best chance of staying alive."

  "I kind of like her, too," he said.

  "I wouldn't go that far. But we are going to have to at least pretend to like her because we've caught up to her."

  Fiora was standing on a square of dead grass. In front of her was a grey wall of nothingness. So it wasn't fog, Damon thought. It was more like a curtain that stretched in either direction as far as his eyes could see.

  Fiora hadn't yet stepped over the threshold. She was tapping her clawed left foot. "It's about time you got here."

  When Damon squinted, she could see that the land on the other side of the see-through grey curtain was barren rock and barren land that sloped gently downwards. It was odd, of course, that the realm ended in a straight line. There wasn't a hint of colour.

  "Welcome to the Black Metal Realm," Fiora said, without even the slightest bit of dread. "Everyone who enters dies."