13

You take a few steps forward, feeling quite lost. If you are still in the meeting room, you should be walking into the edge of its table any moment now.

Before that occurs, a curious creature canters out from behind a clutch of trees ahead of you. It is an androgynous centaur of astonishing beauty. A nimbus of unearthly radiance surrounds this magnificent creature, and you find it hard to tear your eyes away from it.

With a supreme effort of will, you screw your eyes up tight, and force yourself to become calmer. This being, whatever it is, is clearly no more real than the forest around you.

You open your eyes once more, in time to see the centaur's aura dimming. The creature itself is shifting. At last you see Electra, incongruously seated at a meeting table that has appeared in the heart of the forest. The centaur continues to change, and becomes a woman you don't recognize, seated next to Electra at the table.

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