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The man behind her rattled the doors of the cell. When that didn't work, he was flipping through keys and fitting them to the lock of the door. Finally one fit, and he swung it open to duck inside the small, cramped space.

He reached out one hand to the shoulder of the man, but -- the man fell away. It wasn't a man at all. It was a jumbled assortment of clothes and a wadded-up blanket made to look as though somebody was sitting at the back of the cell. Uncovering the 'face', it was simply a pitted metal pan that somebody had (oddly enough) drawn sightless eyes upon and a great black gash of a mouth. Nothing else. Nothing more.

The man was hunched down in the darkness now, keys jangling from one finger. He said: "This place has been abandoned for a long time."

His profile was momentarily thrown into sharp relief as he looked at her. "Torch," he grunted. "We need light."

The torch flared, lighting the small mouldering space and the staring, empty eyes of the man-substitute. Her 'companion' was still looking around, peering at meaningless scratches on the walls and reaching out to touch them. "This place is magic," he said shortly. "I don't know whether he'd be around here. For one, I don't think it's real."

The clothes were getting tossed to the side as he searched through them. "The world knows too much about us," he said. Now he was looking at her. "This isn't any magic I know. If you meet any damned creatures of this place, don't trust them."

That was helpful. She'd met him, hadn't she?

He nodded -- was there a hint of grim appreciation in that expression? "If he's down here we'll look for him," he said, and that was that. "I brought nobody with me."

That was said with definite finality. I brought nobody with me. Folds of material were still being shaken out, the blanket was spread flat -- silverfish escaped it en masse -- the pot examined. Perhaps he was looking for weapons. He'd been so stuck on his sword. Eventually he gave up, and passed the torch to her as he ducked his way out of the smotheringly close space and left the man-faced pot to it. This time when he looked at her he was searching again, checking her face for some kind of artifice.

"We find your friend," he said. "We get out. In that order." Now he was turning away from her to stare down the dark corridor. "I don't leave a man behind, Nemesis."

It was human nature to pass off something aberrant as one's own mistake, to not believe your eyes. Or ears. He didn't even appear to hear her did I? as he cast the spitting torch down the corridor, ducking his head again as the roof ominously sank inwards, pacing past rows and rows of cells with empty -- or long-since deceased -- inhabitants. He cast the light into each room, but if nothing living caught his eye he walked on past. At one point they passed a pair of heavy iron tongs, and he picked them up as they turned a corner and down into the labyrinth.

Her companion wasn't much of a talker. They stopped at another corpse again, and he passed her the torch as he picked over the body. Most of the corpses appeared to be completely skeletal, or at best gobbets of flesh clinging to old bones. At one lying face-down in a corner, he stopped entirely: it was dressed in a plaid skirt with a long black cardigan and school shoes, discoloured brown ankle socks rotting around anklebones. The cardigan was fixed up with red starry buttons. He crouched by that one quite a long time.

He took the message. He looked away from the corpse and didn't look back, and the torch flashed on garish red buttons. The cardigan was half-burned at the bottom and there were scorch marks on the shoes. It was too modern. Every other corpse had been dressed in shapeless rags with bits of iron, belt-buckles in broken-down pelvises, pieces of ancient leather.

"Short skirt," he said. "Bow. Collar. Tiara. I'm not blind."

Admittedly, this was all completely true. The uniform differed from person to person (and certainly girl to boy), but there were a few elements that remained the same, screaming S E N S H I in big neon letters. Instead of gracing her with a name, he shone the torch into another empty cell and attracted a couple of confused moths.

"You've never met Cavalier Kunzite," he said, and there was a question implicit in the statement.

He rounded on her. "Think," he said, and he sounded impatient again. "You appear as your true self. Our powers are gone, but our appearances are left? Ask why. If we'd been teleported away, we'd still appear like our powerless selves. No magic but our glamour? It's reflecting us."

Just like an impatient teacher wanting you to know the answer. He'd turned away, boots gunshots on the cold stone underfoot. "Magic," he said, and it sounded as though he didn't like the concept. "I don't know who, because the only wizard I know who might do this would've killed us already if he was this powerful. Unless this is his idea of a sick ******** joke."

Once more the torch was pointed into a cell. A skeleton's fingers wrapped around rusty bars, slimy with mould. This was abandoned. "Question. Your friend another senshi?"

"I'm saying we haven't been teleported," he countered. He sounded as sick of this place as she was. "Not that we haven't moved. This isn't the work of any Great Crystal I know of."

He fell into silence. Once more the rhythm of their footsteps were all that filled the corridors. They came out into another, larger room, and he held the torch aloft so that they could see into the darkness. Right in front of them an iron maiden was leant against an old table, half-open, the spikes black with blood. He did not flinch.

"Here's the plan," he said. "We find your friend. We get out. Everything else is irrelevant." Past the iron maiden, a rack. Disturbingly these two things did not look as though they were covered in cobwebs and dust, though it all resembled something out of the Inquisition. "If we're attacked, stay behind me and out of my swing -- unless you want to get brained."

"I'm not dropping my guard," he said.

They subsided into quiet again. He still held those heavy tongs in his hand, so he really was worried that something might attack them. This didn't alleviate any of her worries. He kept moving, kept the torch going, kept it out of his eyes as he held it aloft -- it reeked of pitch but it was still going, which was good. Being down here without light would be hell. They'd passed a couple of smouldering braziers, but otherwise everything was shadowed and dim. If he wasn't telling her how he was going to execute things he did walk with the purpose of a man who knew anyway, which possibly meant he was leaving her out of the planning process. That was irritating.

The corridor split down into two. He picked the left. No signs of life. It was now an old, familiar, tiring process of checking the cells, walking past dripping ceilings, endless rows of bars and rust and the smell of death all around them.

Awkward silence. When he spoke, he shot his questions like machine-gun bullets.

"How long have you been fighting?"