They are buried alive and the weight of Lea Monde is overhead. It's a small tomb they're enclosed in, a living immortal, a corpse, and two ghosts belonging to one soul.

The Child Sydney says, "Please, we must hurry. I must talk with my father."

"Hush," Ashley says, waving a hand at it, and it shifts into the adult Sydney again, clad in leather pants and a white shirt that seeps through with blood.

"You won't find a way out, Vagrant," Sydney says, and he has stopped calling Ashley Riskbreaker from the moment he died. "I've examined this - we're lucky it didn't crush you. It's solid rock thirty feet in all directions, at the least."

Ashley runs a hand over the seam of stone. "I will not wait for death."

"Oh," Sydney says. "You will not die, Vagrant." There's a smirk Ashley can see faintly on his luminescent face. "But it would be good if you could leave. We must teach you to teleport."

Ashley shook his head. "I know how to teleport," he said. "But there is no magic circle."

"Your back is a circle," Sydney said. He stepped forward, ran shiveringly cold dead metal fingers over Ashley's bared back. "You must learn to use it."

Stepping forward, Ashley pulls away from the ghost's touch and nearly trips over Sydney's corpse. "A man could go mad in here."

"You are already mad," Sydney says patiently."But we must leave soon." His form starts to shift again and Ashley, without looking, reaches behind him, puts a steadying hand on Sydney's shoulder. "...thank you. But I do not mind him."

"I do." Ashley turns back towards him. "Teach me, then."

Sydney steps forward, and again. Ashley's shoulders tense but he holds his ground. "Hush," Sydney murmurs, and pust a false, dead hand on Ashley's face. He leans up.

"This is not-" Ashley says.

"Hush," Sydney says again, patient. "Every Rood-Bearer bears each previous bearer inside him. You must take me in."

Stomach turning, Ashley shakes his head. "I will not... devour your soul, or-"

Sydney laughs, leans up. Ashley's head jerks back. "Vagrant," Sydney murmurs. "Just close your eyes. It's that simple. The Rood on your back is my Rood. Let me connect to it again and help you."

Ashley exhales heavily, then shuts his eyes.

The mouth on his tastes like fresh air and Ashley startles, inhales the cool taste of it, shudders as he feels his blood trickle cold, as he feels someone else's control twitch at his muscles, at the flex of fingers, arm, legs.

"Good," Sydney murmurs, opening Ashley's eyes. "We leave, now."