(Page 79) "Guardian. No one has stood where you are since the Queen closed these doors."      Shadow can't help but gaze at the faintly familiar surroundings in wide eyed wonder. "It's beautiful..." For once, her anger for the Queen's Wrath is quelled.      "Welcome home, cousin."      Shadow splutters, about to deny such an asinine claim that she'd ever be kin with Petra, but a glare from her ghost keeps the guardian quiet.      "I'll get to you as fast as I can."      Anxiety claws at Shadow's chest, reminding her she has a limited time to do what she needs to do.      Glittering stone and massive arching hallways catch her eye, call out to her, but the hunter continues onward without pausing. She hears Glitch behind her, examining, scanning. Grateful for him being distracted, she leaps through a portal into the ascendant plane. Her comms buzz. "Variks?"      No response.      "Damn."      She moves on, shuddering at the eerie silence and smothering darkness.      "Open the door, brother."      The powerful voice echoes around Shadow, who whips back and forth in search of a source. No, it couldn't be. "Mara...?" [i]    "Open the door!"[/i]      "I can't... No..."      That was the voice of Uldren Sov.      "The line between dimensional planes is thin here." Her ghost catches up to her, hovers over her shoulder.      Shadow ignores him, taking the opportunity to use her comms whenever it presented itself. "Variks—" Her heart begins to race. "I heard Uldren. And Mara."      Silence.      She can practically feel Variks's unease. He must think she's lost her mind as well. "Listen, I heard her voice," she hurriedly explains. "There's something strange going on. I'm going to find him."      "Do what you must," the eliksni croaks eventually.      Upon entering the ascendant plane once more, she hears the voice again.      "Free me, O brother mine..."     No, that wasn't the Queen.      "No. No, no, no, no! ... Something's wrong."      "Uldren!" At the panicked voice of the prince, the hunter breaks into a run.  "Hang on, I'm coming!"