Mel opened his eyes, and looked around the crystal throne room. Amber was already here, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Partly because Monica was still willing to tolerate his presence, after the mess he'd made in her lounge.

"Mel!" Violet grinned, appearing out of thin air along with all the others, "We were so worried, you were dead!"

"The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated," he sighed, but nobody was really laughing.

"No, you were dead," Violet insisted, "I know what a dead body feels like. From the astral side, anyway. I couldn't sense where your soul went, I thought we'd lost you."

"How about I tell you, then? I was dreaming. At least, it felt like a dream to me. And then I came back and I was bleeding, I had no idea."

"You coughed out blood too," Amber added, "Just before you woke up. After Violet said, and you were so cold, you weren't breathing. I was so scared."

"I guess I'm in the same state now, if you look at my body. I'm sorry. But I had this dream. And I'm not sure, but now I focus, I can feel it. It wasn't just a dream, it was a memory. A memory of a past life, but I can only half make sense of it."

"One of Johannes's memories? Or Checheg?"

"No. I don't even know the language he was speaking, I don't think it exists any more, so I'll have to paraphrase the conversations as best I can. But they called me Lord Belnichraithor. One of seven lords ruling over the known world. Nico, the same thing Amber's wrench guy called me."

"He's the enemy, then," Jack nodded, "That's all the confirmation we need. If he knows the people we were... You'd better tell us the whole story."

It took a long time. Long enough that they had to send Amber back to her body, to sleep normally and avoid risk of being dead too long. Mel went back once as well, and returned to the throne room a half hour later. He knew that he would have to go over the story again and again, letting Alex take notes and the others ask every question that came to mind. It was a long process, but eventually he was sure that he'd said everything he could. And then they went on to asking both Mel and Amber about the events of the day. Alex and Jack had sensed an unfamiliar power near them, and Violet had grabbed Mel to let him know, visiting the world of the dead for just one second until he could run to find Amber.

"That guy has an ancestral spirit," he said as soon as Amber had finished describing what the guy looked like. "I saw it from around the corner, and wondered if he's one of us, or something else."

"A what?" Arnie interrupted, "Sorry, I don't quite know all this ghost terminology. Does that mean he's reincarnated, like us?"

"Kind of. Okay, crash course. This is primarily my power, but we can all learn to do it. You can see someone else's soul, the colour of it. Some hippie types reckon they can do it too, I haven't tested any of them to find out if it's all in their heads or if they can see the real thing."

"Like seeing auras?"

"Right. They're like these faint pastel colours inside a person. You just have to train yourself to not stop at the surface and look inside someone. It sounds crazy, but it seems so obvious once you've done it. But anyway, the six of us have something different. Spirits magnified through the cycle of reincarnation. They're so much brighter, primary colours. Not like the pastel shades everyone else has. Like Jack's green, and Violet is yellow. You can learn to see those colours in the real world as well. Anyway, Amber's talking to a guy whose spirit is so bright, I can hardly see his physical appearance. I couldn't make out his face or anything, it's like someone splashed paint all over him, red as a post box. But then I realised it's different. Like, he's got his own spirit and then this colour overlaid on top."

"I guess we don't have that?" Amber asked, not quite sure how this reincarnation worked. She was surprised to learn that the colours were something real, and not just something Violet was adding in the dream to go with the Rainbow Knight name.

"No. We're old souls, born again in a new body. But this guy has an ancestral spirit like ours, but he's got his own soul as well. I think this has to be the Enemy, taking over a human body. I didn't want to hurt him then, because I didn't know if the spirit would just jump to someone else. I don't want to hurt innocents, so I was fighting at a disadvantage." This time nobody had any questions, and nobody could disagree with that decision, so Mel just continued.

"I chased him into an alley, the one he'd come out of, I think. Then he disappeared from a dead end. I want to think he'd just walked through a wall, or flown away. I could believe he could do that. But I felt the ancestral soul vanish, and then I came around the corner and he wasn't there. I'm not sure, but I think he can somehow discorporate. I really, really want to think that I'm mistaken. But as soon as I thought about that, I knew it should be impossible. The way our powers work, there's no way we could do that no matter how much power we gained. It's like a completely different type of power. But that's the thing, I remember it. I remember that somewhere in one of my previous lives, I've known the circumstances in which that is possible. I can't remember what they are, I just know that it means we're in a hell of a lot of trouble."

"Did you try meditating on it?" Alex asked, "I'll try to look it up in the library here, but..."

"I think that's how I ended up in that weird dream. And yes, I'm pretty sure it was historical. All the way back to Pangea, that's what they called the kingdom. Why don't I remember whatever the modern name for it is? Normally memories translate themselves."

"Because Pangea is a modern name," Alex frowned, "But we've never had a memory like that before. If geological evidence is right, then the fall of Pangea would have been nearly two hundred million years ago. You're really sure you were there?"

"That's what we called it."

"I suppose a primitive people might have called their kingdom Pangea. But you had knights and pages in your story, and apparently advanced technology. That doesn't fit. Marble corridors, even. If you were recent enough for those kinds of buildings, then we couldn't have been lords without leaving a huge footprint in the history books. Any time our powers were widely known, it would have to be before writing."