Chapter 1

Some time later...

Lisa enjoyed the insects and small mammals that burrowed into her Earth. She also liked the feel of tree roots growing down, right through her middle. It was a sensual existence, experiencing the enriched life of the forest as it burrowed into and took nutrients from her surroundings. If humans had existed, they would have called her a tree spirit, or perhaps a wood sprite, if they were primitive enough to recognize her presence. But there were no humans, and there wouldn't be for another three hundred million years.

But there was a sentient race extant on the surface – the Harrahs – guided by one of their own kind from so far in the future that Earth itself had perished and been forgotten. They had spent fifty million years learning and evolving and expanding their civilization across this tiny planet. Once they were able, mentally, to control their movements through space and time, most of them left Earth behind to join other species on other worlds, or travel to other places and times and evolve further.

Haxan was aware of Lisa and of where she had perished, if her existence can be said to have ended with the 'lavafication' of her body. He knew of her reputation as the Destroyer, a reputation Lisa had earned in her personal past, but still millions of years from now, when she had lived in the twenty-second century. It was he who had brought the Revered Mother, Béla, back to this time period where it was safe to give birth to the Harrah species, a paradox to end all paradoxes, and protect the infant spiders from Lisa, which was why she was called the Destroyer.

When she had appeared in this time period several thousand years ago, Haxan at first believed Lisa had come to finish her self-appointed task to destroy the Harrahs right down to the very last spider. Instead, she deliberately destroyed herself (and ten thousand square miles of forest) in one of the most spectacular super-volcanic suicidal eruptions ever to inflict itself on the Earth.

For a few thousand years, Haxan split his time between guiding his people and watching to see if Lisa used her powers to reawaken and continue her vendetta against his kind. In the meantime, he showed the others how to develop and use Phoenix fire as a tool, as a weapon, as a method of self-defense. In the end, he was certain that every Harrah Lisa believed she had killed would be capable of regenerating once she was gone and it was safe to do so.

And now that his teachings were complete, his race reaching out to awaken the universe, it was safe to awaken the Destroyer. She had exterminated herself before she had completed what was needed to be done in the far, distant future. She might be known to the Harrahs as the Destroyer, but whether she desired the mantel or not, she was also the Protector of Humankind.

'Wake up!'

Something was interrupting Lisa's dream. This was an old one, and one she hadn't had since ... well, since she'd died and become Lisa. She was surprised that she even remembered it. She had never quite solved the riddle it presented, assuming there was any truth to it at all, and it irritated her to be interrupted after not having thought about this unsolved vision for so long.

'It's been longer than you think, Destroyer. It is time for you to resume your place among the living. You have lingered here long enough.'

Lisa could feel the branches of the forest move as she searched for the ungracious being who had disturbed her. The living trees could not discover what was there, sensing the winds that carried the scent of every living thing through their myriad leaves. The forest was full of life, full of living and dying creatures and plants. The trees sensed nothing but the life around them that was always there.

Realizing that she herself was going to have to search for whomever had disturbed her, Lisa moved to pull the warm, comfortable blanket off from where she was resting. She had been lying here, so warm, so comfortable, so long...

'I can't move my arm!'

She tried again, harder. Her muscles simply didn't respond. Opening her eyes, she discovered she couldn't move her eyelids, either. In her increasingly upset state of mind, she tried to take a deep breath to settle her nerves.

'I can't breathe!'

Angry and frightened, Lisa exploded her Phoenix fire around her body in an effort to escape whatever trap she had allowed herself to fall into. The tree immediately above her had spent a thousand years growing to be one of the highest in the forest. It emitted a psychic shriek of pain and anguish as the fireball erupted beneath its deep, heavy roots and disintegrated its proud form.

The fire quickly spread to other nearby trees and Lisa's mind was assaulted with shrieks of agony and burning death. Anxious to protect those she cherished, Lisa pulled all the fire down back inside her and became a living pool of lava.

Contrite and ashamed of what she had done, and confused at the form in which she found herself, Lisa stood in the deep pit where, at least a millennia ago, she had passed out in ecstasy from the most incredible orgasm...

'I died here, ' she finally understood. 'And these trees fed on me ... on the loam the lava I became turned into ... Plants ... breaking me down into nutrients... '

She could feel the fear radiating from the trees that surrounded the burned out meadow she had just created, a deep, natural fear caused by the heat she radiated. In an effort to calm them, Lisa tried to solidify from pure energy into a more solid form. She quickly discovered she wasn't just energy, but lava; already material, although liquid and extremely hot.

Quelling her fire, she found that she was solidifying into stone. 'Lava is melted rock! This isn't going to work. How the hell did I get this way?' She concentrated harder, forcing the stone to soften, to become more pliant, more flexible, more like skin – flesh and bone. Her efforts caused her to release a lot of heat, and the trees were still shrieking their terror into her mind.

'Oh for Chrissake SHUT UP!' Lisa shouted at the trees in her mind, frustrated and upset at the difficulty she was having with her petrified, stony body. Every time she tried to move, something broke. She was rapidly disintegrating into a pile of hot, red-glowing gravel. 'Jesus! I look like a giant barbecue pit!'