Veronica sat on a ledge on the mountain that she and Eliza often climbed together, but at the moment she was alone. Things had gotten scary for her . . . scarier than they had ever been. And she had been in some bad situations, the most recent of which was being captured and tortured to within an inch of her life, only to be saved at the last moment by her half-dead lover and a Living Jewel. Kelik had used The Alchemist's Dream to mystically combine the two women, allowing them to share each other's strengths and minimizing their weaknesses until both women "evolved" into new life-forms entirely. They...