WHAT IT WAS: Chapter 53 of The Warlock, right after he remembers learning air magic.

Josh and Virginia Dare run from the courtyard of Alcatraz into a cellblock where Dee is throwing a huge tantrum. The sphinx, which he vaguely remembers, is in there with him. He's yelling about something being useless, and he throws a pile of papers up into the air; Virginia asks what he's talking about, and Josh picks up one of the texts, vaguely recognizing them as Egyptian hieroglyphs. Machiavelli, in a cell behind Dee, identifies them as the Book of the Dead, and Josh remembers that his father (heh) has pictures of it in his study.

Virginia gets Dee's attention, calms him down a little with sheer force of will, and gets Dee to tell her what happened. Apparently he tried to use the spells in the Book of the Dead to awaken one of the monsters, but it crumbles to dust. Virginia asks him if he mispronounced something, but Dee claims he's fluent in ancient Egyptian, and Machiavelli confirms it, but -- for obvious reasons -- declines to explain what went wrong.

Dee threatens to let the sphinx eat Machiavelli; the sphinx claims she loves Italian (heh), and tries to get Dee to give her Billy. She licks him and he snaps her tongue back like a rubber band. Dee tells Machiavelli he'll do it if he doesn't give him the information he needs, but Billy says not to and Machiavelli agrees. When both refuse, Dee tells the sphinx Billy's hers, but Virginia uses her flute to knock the sphinx clean out in mid-lunge as she's strangling him with her tongue.

Dee is so angry he's speechless, but Virginia tells him to be reasonable; she's known Billy a long time, and he's as close as she has to a friend, and she wants him to die with some dignity when he goes. She offers to bargain for his life, and after they exchange threats, Dee asks what she's offering. Virginia spins her flute -- and monsters stir in their sleep throughout the cell block.

Virginia explains that while she normally puts people to sleep, it's a simple variant of the spell to wake them up. Billy begs her not to do it, but she refuses to let him die like this and, when he asks about the people in San Francisco, says she doesn't know any of them -- or doesn't like them -- but she likes him. Machiavelli pleads with her to think of the bigger picture, even as he applauds what she's doing for her friend, and Dee says she is. Dare confirms it; she says Dee's promised her a world, no, all the worlds, and begins to play.

Both of the swords Josh is carrying, Clarent and Durendal, awaken in response to the music. His aura flares up, tinged with red; he feels a terrible hunger and a ferocious rage, until a red haze clouds his vision. And every trapped monster wakes up at once.

IN WHICH I RAMBLE:

This memory's lost a bunch of impact because he already knows how everything ends up, but it's still a punch in the gut. The big thing he'll come away with is a really visceral understanding of how clinging too tightly to friends can lead to darkness, in the Kingdom Hearts sense; Virginia Dare says it outright. ("I don't care about millions of innocent people I don't know, I put your well-being above theirs no matter what you say.")



EFFECTS/WHAT HE LEARNS

* ....wow, okay, bad choices were made.
* A lot of bad choices.
* Dee was really, really crazy towards the end.
* Virginia Dare is awesome but also not very sane.
* Why did he side with them again oh right, crazy
* ....d-do not want this whole situation.
* More belated creepiness about Osiris I WONDER WHY YOU HAD THE BOOK OF THE DEAD IN YOUR STUDY, DAD
* +100 respect for Machiavelli and Billy
* +50 understanding of KH darkness
* +50 KH light alignment.