The shadows on the walls seemed to writhe and squirm, reaching after Micah as he descended the stairs, though if he turned to look at them they only flickered with the irregular torchlight. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing weird, except that everything was weird. His life was probably never going to be normal again, and he didn't know quite how to think about that. He wasn't thinking about that, he was thinking about what was ahead. It was hard to think about what was ahead when you didn't ******** know.

His foot hit the floor harder than he'd meant to step, because he'd been concentrating on not thinking and missed that this step was the last step. When he looked up, he was confronted by a dimly-lit room, its walls covered with tiles. Big tiles with something engraved or impressed into them, and they looked like they were made of stone. There were narrow gaps between the tiles, and he frowned a little, temporarily forgetting his nerves and irritation in professional curiosity; how had these been made? How were they attached to the walls? He'd never seen anything quite like it. The walls seemed rough, though they might have been chiseled smooth behind the tiles to allow them to be adhered in place. It seemed like a lot of effort to to go for an empty room, unless it was actually made to display the tiles themselves, which made more sense. The tiles were probably hand-carved, in that case, and ...

... he remembered that he was supposed to be down here to get a weapon, and his irritation flared again as he realized that this was an empty room, no other exits in sight, and he had been punked after all. He turned to head back up the stairs, scowling.

Behind him, someone laughed, a delicate and tinkling giggle.

Micah whirled, his heart hammering in his chest. Nobody was there. "Where are you? Come out where I can see you!" he demanded. The laugh came again.

Come find me, and the voice was husky and sweet and mischievous, a woman's voice, sounding as though it was being whispered right into his ear. He turned sharply, looking for her, and found nothing and nobody.

You dumb, she crooned, come find me, we play hot-cold if you like!

"What -- I'm not -- no, no I ******** don't like," he snapped, and moved into the room, tense, shoulders squared and tautly on edge. "Where the ******** are you."

She laughed again. You fun already. Come here, come here, and he felt like something had plucked at his sleeve, guiding him ahead and slightly to the left. Begrudgingly, he followed the feeling toward the wall, frowning. He still had no idea what was going on, and he didn't like it. "What if I just left," he said aloud, testing the thought.

No! she shrieked, her voice going suddenly high and shrill. No, you no leave! YOU NO LEAVE! You can no leave, no leave me here! You for me, I done sleeping! The sensation of pulling shifted from his sleeve to somewhere within him, turning to a wrapping, cool, green feeling that wound itself into his ribs and tugged him forward.

He held back. "Don't call me dumb."

FINE! Not dumb, you not a dumb. Come get me. You mine. I done sleeping. The cool green tugging gentled, guided him toward the wall. He followed, reaching out instinctively for one of the tiles, one carved with something like a curled line, and caught at it with a yelp of startlement as it fell right off the wall. What the hell had it even been attached with, and why weren't the other ones falling off if they were that precariously held on?

You d - no. Not dumb, but not know. The weight in his hands changed, evaporated, turned into something else, something flexible and strange. A whip, its handle engraved with glowing green runes, its lash studded with bright, sharp blades. I your weapon. No other tablet come down for you.

"That's what he meant," Micah said to himself, and hefted the whip in his hands, the handle weighty in his right, the lash draped across his left, cautiously balancing between the blades. "You're in my head now?" Magic, he thought, trying out the sound of the word, because shadow people he could write off as paranoia and overactive imagination, and zombies were more of a ******** stretch but he'd still been able to explain them to himself as some kind of horrifying virus, but this was magic and there was no explaining it away as something else.

Not dumb, she purred. I with you now, with you until you dead.

"That's not creepy at all," he grumbled, and tried awkwardly to coil her lash into a loop. "How the hell am I supposed to carry you? You're all edges."

Desummon, she instructed, and nudged at his thoughts a little. After a moment, he found the right shape of thought for what she was urging him to do, and she dissolved out of his hands to reform in a delicately curvy silver and amber bracelet around his right wrist. I always with you, see now.

"Also not creepy at all." He turned back toward the stairs, paused as something occurred to him. "What am I supposed to call you?"

Nova, she said. I Nova.