Separation 9: 10 — Steve Elliott

Sapphire Ritual: Dusk has finally confessed her love for Mura to everyone. Zea, naturally enough, strenuously objects to Dusk's announcement, but Mura startles her friends by saying that she has no objections to being loved by someone else. Thus begins an inconclusive debate about the morality of having multiple partners.The next startling event occurs when Dusk is arrested for robbery and thrown into jail. This scenario instigates a search for hidden clues to prove her innocence and culminates in the death of the very witness who had accused Dusk of the robbery. But, this isn't the end of the confusion.Thanks to Mura, the friends then find themselves on the trail of a coven of witches and warlocks who plan to use an item from the robbery to conjure hideous monsters. However, thanks to Mura's ability to skip dimensions, everyone escapes, but not for long. Pursued from world to world by these apparitions, and with Mura near death's door, a final journey lands everyone in the most impossible of places. Here, they encounter an inconceivable peculiarity, and one which may finally explain Mura's tenacious attachment to Zea.In a decisive battle, the spectral monsters are defeated, but not before the twins contemplate a very unusual arrangement with Dusk's jailer.Decisions: Everything is normal in the world of our group of friends. Well, as normal as is possible, that is. After all, Mura is able to travel between dimensions and is still prone to fits of insanity. Jamis is presently endeavoring to juggle his love life with the identical twins, Dusk and Dawn. Kar is actually from another planet and Zea is, ah, ..... Zea - obnoxious, opinionated, dictatorial, annoying and nosey! In other words, it's the usual brand of chaos everyone is used to having around. But then, something extraordinary happens to Mura. She's seen to be walking around town when she's undisputedly in bed at Zea's house. Hallucination? A lookalike? A twin? A clone? No one seems to know and Mura is just as confused. However, there's another problem facing our intrepid bunch of adventurers. Someone is trying to take over the world and Mura decides to stop him. How she intends to do this causes Zea to have heart palpitations because Mura's plan is extraordinarily bizarre and fraught with the utmost danger. But Mura insists and enacts her plan to take down the would-be conqueror. At the end of the final battle, Mura has to make a life-changing decision which will affect everyone, herself most of all.