Ammadrine crashed violently through a window and slammed into the wall, knocking all breath out of her slender body. She'd never flown so far or so fast before. As she picked herself up, she looked back and realised it wasn't the first wall that had stopped her, but the third. The first wall inside this dwelling was made of simple wooden board across a couple of struts to give it strength, and her armour was hard enough that she hadn't felt a thing as the flimsy structure slowed her down.

She was much more concerned by the changes in her mind. She had full command of all her powers, both physical strength and supernatural abilities. But she found it hard to remember who she should have been. Something was messing with her awareness, and she wasn't sure if that was a thing to be worried about or not. The fact that she wasn't immediately terrified by the thought of losing her self-identity, that was a clue. Something was playing with her perceptions.

She shook her head, pulled herself to her feet amid the chaos of shattered furniture, and focused on the tiny spot inside her soul where the key for the armour was connected. A tiny thought, and then the diamonds sheathing her body dissolved like morning mist. Unfortunately, an unforeseen side-effect, his normal clothes didn't reappear as the armour vanished. Ammad– Robin glanced around at the wreckage of his apartment, only recently decorated in a similar style to his old home, and swore loudly several times.

The power was everything he had hoped, but while he was wielding that power, it seemed it would be difficult to remember who he really was. He thought he could hold onto his goals, because he'd slapped that irritating boar thing back to where it had come from and left without doing anything else, but it was really disorienting when it took a second's introspection to remember his real name, or to stop thinking of himself as "she".

He shook his head again, realising that this was going to be hard in a completely different way from his expectations, and stepped carefully through the hole in his wall, back into his office. The box was on his desk here, not on a little shelf on the wall. It seemed strange, almost careless to have it on display among so many everyday items, but he hadn't expected to be touching it at all on his first day in a new job. Everything had moved faster than he hoped.

The totem was in his hand already, though there was no sign how it had got there. Had it been teleported to him when he spoke the words, or opened the lid itself and flown through the air towards him? He would have checked the window for a hole, if it weren't lying in pieces all across the floor. He half expected the totem to still be there when he unlatched that tiny box, but of course he knew it wouldn't be.

The totem was red and black, intricately carved. A sculpture of the demon, as she looked wearing robes almost like a shinto priest, rather than the diamond-and-ruby armour. He wondered if the robes were somehow symbolic, or if that had been what she actually wore when she wasn't fighting. He didn't know; all the memories she'd shared with him were in the armour.

He pried the tiny piece of dark diamond out of his palm, wincing at the lines it had pressed into his skin. He was sure it would be sore for quite some time. The box was lined with red velvet, with padding exactly shaped to fit the tiny doll. But this time, as he put it back in, the world exploded in a shower of blue-green fireworks.

"Treachery is its own reward," a voice called out of the shadows, with an accent that nobody but Robin would have been able to place. Because as well as a janitor, he was also an expert on myths and legends, and had spent several years in isolated villages around the world, learning the languages of native peoples on the brink of being wiped out or absorbed by their more civilised neighbours. He knew the languages he'd had to study in order to learn the magic words he'd so recently uttered; and he could hear the same compressed diphthongs from the man standing in front of him now.

"What?" he managed to force the words out. He was pretty sure from the light show that this guy was another ancient noble like the one that had possessed him. He didn't feel the need to curse, or to make some exclamation of surprise. This was unexpected, but not impossible. Still, being thrown to the ground in a pile of rubble made it hard to form more complex sentences, at least for now. "Who?"

"Show respect, human. I am the Master of Technologies, Lord Cyradin Belmadir. I assume that with your body used as a vessel, you are already aware of at least some of Ammadrine's story? Then I must inform you that she and I were both removed from the Council of Eight because certain members believed our romance would introduce undesirable complexity to the power dynamics of the ruling council. But they didn't understand my inventions, as always, and I was able to create a failsafe that would revive us both just as soon as she found a mortal host to share her body with. Though I must say, I am very surprised she chose one so weak and unappealing."

"You..."

"I do not approve of her betrayal, but Ammadrine is still my lover. I still intend to be with her, once this drama has played out. I have no interest in you, human. I will return when she has recovered enough that your consciousness is no longer present in that grotesque parody of a body."

With nothing left to say, Cyra strode out of the smoke and dust, and kicked aside Robin's security door to leave the building. He was more heavily built than Robin, but without a spare ounce of fat on him. He looked the kind of guy who spent every hour of every day in the gym, and could punch through a brick wall if he really needed to. The sweat on his muscles glistened with pale blue-green light, as arcs of cold lightning leapt from his body to every earthed surface. He was also naked, and that was a sight Robin was sure he never wanted to see again.

He half hoped that this ancient lord would be stopped on the street, maybe arrested for indecent exposure. But he knew there was little chance of the police posing any problem to the big guy. If his powers were even remotely comparable to the demon's he would walk straight through them without breaking a sweat.