It can't be gone! his ancestor insisted.

Baltak, Eldrinn and Alexa mentally echoed her alarm. Zarifar, however, shook his head. He's right; the pattern's changed.

Ridiculous! Q'arlynd thought. There must be some other answer. Sweat trickled down his sides, under his robe. He felt Seldszar, Urlryn, and Masoj staring at him. Waiting for the miracle. Q'arlynd's hands trembled above his head. "Negate the forcedome!" he shouted. "It's blocking the moon. I need to see it!"

Urlryn barked out a transmutation and pointed. A thin green beam shot from his fingertip and struck the forcedome, disintegrating it. All three masters looked up, apparently unperturbed by a sight that would have turned cold the blood of any surface elf. The moon had indeed vanished. A dark hole, bereft even of stars, punctured the sky where it had been. Only Selune's Tears remained.

Eilistraee! his ancestor wailed.

"I… can't continue," Q'arlynd stammered. "Not with the moon gone."

"What trickery is this?" Masoj said, his voice tight with suspicion. He wheeled on Seldszar and shook a bony finger. "I will expect payment, Master Seldszar. I performed my part of the bargain."

"You shall have it," Seldszar promised.

Masoj folded his arms, thrust his chin in the air, and teleported away.

Urlryn glared at Q'arlynd, his face darkening. "You were supposed to call down a miracle, not bore a hole in the ceiling!"

"That's…" Q'arlynd bit his tongue against the urge to tell the ignorant Urlryn that it was sky above them, not stone. He heard his apprentices' mental laughter. He shoved them out of his mind. "The disappearance of the moon wasn't my…" He faltered as he caught sight of the adamantine oval that adorned his wristband.

The glyph was gone from his House insignia. Vanished, just like the moon.

Seldszar drifted closer and stared at him over his dark lenses. "I was led to believe we would succeed," he said softly. From anyone else, it would have been a threat.

"Your visions predicted success?" Q'arlynd asked. He wet his lips. "Then why didn't-"

It will. But you must be willing to make the sacrifice.

"I don't understand," Q'arlynd protested aloud.

Trust in me, sang a female he hadn't heard before. The voice was soft, distant, and echoing. Take the next step in the dance. Leap!

Q'arlynd could see it now. The future. The end to everything he'd ever known. One tiny step would take him there-take them all there.

He squeezed his eyes shut in terror. He felt the same way he had the first time he'd dared a free-fall from Ched Nasad's streets. His heart pounded with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Memories flooded back and were absorbed by the lorestone on his forehead. The step off the edge. The plunge through space, wind tearing at his piwafwi. The wild laugh that had burst from his mouth. The sudden, dizzying jerk as his House insignia halted him just in time, preventing him from dashing his brains out on the cavern floor that had, a few heartbeats previously, been so far, far below.

So far…

"And yet so near," he whispered.

He squared his shoulders. Opened his eyes. "I'll do it." He lifted his hands and completed the prayer.

Beside him, Seldszar smiled. Within the kiira, so did his ancestors.

"Something's happening," Baltak bellowed a moment later. He pointed. "There!"

"And there! And there, and there!" Zarifar cried.

Q'arlynd lowered his hands and looked around. A faint green glow that crackled and wavered like Faerzress formed a circle around the spot where they stood. The circle of light broke apart an instant later into several sections, each of which collapsed into a circle itself, then to a point. A sapling sprouted from the center of each, uncurled, and opened glowing green leaves.

Q'arlynd heard Zarifar counting. "… nine, ten, eleven."

"The miracle?" Q'arlynd breathed.

The miracle, his ancestors confirmed.

Q'arlynd felt something warm and wet strike his head. Drops pattered against the ground, and the dry earth drank them in. The others started as the raindrops struck them. Q'arlynd smiled to himself. They'd probably never felt rain before. Then a drop trickled down Q'arlynd's face, to his lips. He tasted blood.

Startled, he wrenched his head back-and saw that the rain was falling only on this spot. Falling, as if being poured, from that terrible wound where the moon had been. He suddenly shivered, worried he'd sung the prayer incorrectly. Done something wrong. Was this the Dark Disaster, all over again? The legends said the sky had wept blood…

He heard a pop of in-rushing air-Urlryn, teleporting away. Of the three masters, only Seldszar remained. He stared at Q'arlynd through those dark lenses. "Let him go. This no longer concerns him."

Q'arlynd nodded. He watched, fascinated, as the saplings grew tall as the Darkfire Pillars. The trees bent inward, their branches twining together to form a dome overhead.

"They're caging us in," Baltak growled.

"Should we teleport away?" Alexa asked.

Eldrinn turned to Seldszar. "Father?"

The Master of Divination patted the air. Wait.

Zarifar stared up at the sky. He raised a hand above his head, fingers and thumb curled to form half of the moon-symbol Q'arlynd had just made. "The pattern's changed," he said. "Just like the moon."

Q'arlynd realized the blood rain had stopped. All that remained were drips, falling from the intertwined oak trees above. He looked up through their branches and saw that Zarifar was right. The moon had returned. It hung in the sky, a slim crescent of white, surrounded by a glittering halo that flickered from blue, to green, to lavender…

"Just like faerie fire," Eldrinn breathed.

The boy stood just to Q'arlynd's right, but Q'arlynd couldn't see him. He wondered why Eldrinn had cloaked himself in magical darkness, but realized the final transformation had at last come about. He could barely see any of his apprentices. Nor could he see Seldszar clearly, or the oak trees that had regrown in the shape of the temple, nor the forest beyond them. Everything was dim, and dark, and indistinct.

"What's happened?" Alexa's voice asked. "I can't see you-any of you!"

"Show yourselves!" Baltak roared.

Q'arlynd concentrated, and pointed at Baltak, but nothing happened. The faerie fire that should have outlined his apprentice failed to materialize. Instead he used an evocation. A flicker of fire danced above his outstretched palm.

He stared, wonderingly, at what the wavering light revealed. His skin was no longer black. It had turned brown. And his hair, when he flicked the braid forward over his shoulder, wasn't white any more. It had turned a glossy black.

He was no longer a drow.

Judging by the way his apprentices were fumbling about, they'd all been transformed as well. He laughed, realizing now what had drawn him to them, and to Seldszar: They shared a common ancestry.

"What's happened?" Baltak shouted. "Tell me!"

Seldszar's voice came from the darkness to Q'arlynd's left. It sounded cool and unruffled. "Our casting was successful. We've broken our link with the Faerzress. Just as the ancestors promised. We've undone the Descent. We're dark elves again."

The two shapes that were Eldrinn and Alexa gasped. The larger shape on Q'arlynd's left that was Baltak growled softly.

"Out of the darkness and into the light," Q'arlynd said. He felt triumph-they'd just reversed the magic of the Descent! Yet he also felt a looming dread. By transforming, they'd also condemned themselves.

Not condemned, but freed.

He caught a glimpse of moonlight glinting off glass: the dark lenses Seldszar was wearing. He smiled, realizing they hadn't been intended to shield his eyes from the light of the World Above. They were magical lenses, like those the surface elves needed in order to see when they ventured into the Underdark.