At this point the hatchway is swallowed by darkness, that even Diamond’s goggles can’t penetrate (at least outside the reality bubble that she’s put up). She flies down, only to find her leg grabbed by the zombie on the ladder, which can apparently still see. Stephen jumps down, blindly hitting a zombie as he falls but keeping his balance. Diamond flies up into the light again, dragging the zombie with her and shooting its head as she goes.

Stephen is grappled and bitten by zombies, but concentrates on blindly firing towards where the chanting is coming from. Diamond flies down again, searching for Stephen, and starts to shoot the zombies off him. She then picks him up, and they head for the altar as he reloads; they’re hit by a lightning bolt on the way. Thorfin drops into the mass of zombies, landing badly, but his armour takes the brunt of the blow.

David shoots blindly into the darkness, hitting Stephen, though Stephen’s armour takes it. As Diamond drops Stephen onto the altar, she finds she’s impinging on another reality bubble; she chooses to invoke a reality storm. Stephen’s caught up in it, but keeps up a barrage of gunfire on the enchanter.

A zombie climbs out to attack David, but disintegrates as it touches his reality bubble. David climbs down to take care of the others.

As the reality storm dies away, Stephen shoots the enchanter one last time, and he’s no longer able to use possibility energy to redirect the attack.

The darkness vanishes; the zombies collapse. The remaining cultists seem to have been drained of possibility energy by the storm.

On a table, mixed with ritual equipment, are a map and a page torn out of a journal. The map shows the local area, with a line drawn from Belmopan to Flores in Guatemala, and then on to Tikal. The page is hard to read and rambling, but seems to imply that the writer is searching for the Darkness Device of Earth, which he thinks is in Tikal – but first he needs the Palenque Vase from a museum in Flores.