"Carroll....yeah it's me..."

"Yeah...yeah I know I don't sound good...look I need your help..."

"...I need to get clean...."

"Great ...thanks..."

Ryan walked over to the door and opened it as Carroll walked in. Ryan's mentor was a beautiful as ever as she looked at him with sad grey eyes. "I always told you this day would come my sweet.." Her voice was like wine, cloying and filling the room, soothing his already haggard nerves.

"Yeah...look here's the deal. I went out and bought a case of slim fast, and some food for you." He reached into his pocket and handed her a key-ring. "Seven days...here take these, it's the key to the lock box in the closet where the guns are...Seven days Carroll, you're the only one I can trust. Just stay here and make sure don't die."

"Of course my beloved.." The slender woman made her way across the room and sat down in an easy chair. "When ever you're ready...we'll begin."

Ryan walked into the bathroom and looked at the shoe box in front of him. He reached in and pulled out a sandwich bag bulging with white powder. It was about five-thousand dollars worth of cocaine Ryan thought as he opened the bag and dumped it in the toilet.

*flush*
...another five hundred dollars worth of Heroin...

*flush*
...Old prescriptions and borrowed ones...

*flush*
...A quarter bag of pot...

*flush*
The syringes he left; but all the drugs where flushed. He smoked one last cigarette then threw the almost full pack out the window. The liquor got poured down the drain.

Carroll sat idly watching a one of the many tapes of Star Trek while all this happened.

Finally Ryan went and lay down on the bed. Carroll smiled and went to the closet, pulling out an old blue duffel bag that they both knew all too well.

Gold nylon handles supported what was obviously a fair amount of weight as Carroll walked over to the bed and set the bag down with a clank. She unzipped it, the sound of the plastic zipper grating on Ryan's already frazzled nerves.

Ryan stretched out on the bed, hands out to the side, and Carroll walked over and quickly buckled one thick black leather cuff around each wrist. She checked the padding and tension, "Too tight?" she asked with a sweet voice.

He simply shook his head and then heard the click as she snapped the pad lock in place. The same procedure was repeated with the other wrist. Back to the bag Carroll produced a joined set of cuffs, similar in design to the first, but a little larger. She walked to the end of the bed and lifted the hems of Ryan's fatigues. The cuffs settled on his legs like they had never left, and again the click as the locks where put on.

Three lengths of rope where the next to leave the bag. Ryan turned his head and looked out the window. Beyond the thin sheet of glass a bird hovered in mid wing-stroke, turning back he say Carroll bent over the duffel about the stand up.

"Why are you doing it, Ryan?" the voice was ethereal, it's pitch and tone the absolute ideal of a voice. It was a voice Ryan knew all too well.

He looked at the foot of the bed and there she was. White robes hung over her slender form, and long silver hair cascaded over lithe shoulder down the narrow back in a sheet of light. The face was androgynous, beautiful, and utterly terrifying. The eyes flickered with flame, the pyres of thousand witches.

She was the Oracle of Delphi, she was Mercy and Cruelty, Agony and Ecsasty. She reveled the world to him, she called herself Khazial.

She was Ryan.

The pain was gone, and the jitters as well. Ryan lay there a moment, "The shoes have become my path. You know this already myself, my truest love."

"Good," her voice filled the room, Carroll a paling approximation. "I was worried that the threadcutter's words had dissuaded you.... I will leave you now.... but first... a gift before you sleep."

She stepped around the edge of the bed and walked past Carroll, her robes billowing slightly and brushing Ryan's mentor. She leaned over Ryan's prone form, and brought her lips close to his.

Her mouth tasted of Lilacs and the pleasure was greater and surer than any Ryan had known, but then came the cost. As she stepped away and faded from sight Ryan felt his eyes roll back into his head. His back arched and he let out a scream as the vision tore through him.