Byzantine

Byzantine

1. Of, relating to, or characterized by intrigue; scheming or devious.
2. Highly complicated; intricate and involved.

All your spirit rack abuses come to haunt you back by day -
All your Byzantine excuses, given time, give you away.
So don't be surprised, when daylight comes...

The ink in his inkwell had ice in it. Cael Inkfinger stared at the well where it balanced on his knee. He should take that as a sign to leave, probably. In years previous, weather like this had driven him indoors, or further south – closer to the big cities with their Aeromancers keeping things more clement. Now, he simply pulled his silk robe tighter around his shoulders, rubbing at his fingertips and pointedly ignoring the snowflakes melting around the ice crystals.

He sat in the doorway of a deserted inn in the equally-deserted village of Heivernok, in a small fiefdom whose name he couldn’t quite be bothered to remember. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing there in the first place. That seemed to be his lot in life the past few years – to drift from disaster to disaster, and to be dragged in to help. He’d given up fighting it, really, instead just going wherever the wind blew...

And the wind was blowing, streaking the still-damp ink on his parchment in smears. He cursed under his breath when a new gust obliterated an entire line of the letter he was writing, reducing it to a line of black across the page. The following pen-stroke tore through the paper. Oh, bloody… the following string of curses could have turned any listener’s ears blue – if there had been listeners, that is, and if the temperature hadn’t done that already. He let the notebook fall shut with a snap, wiping the pen off on the hem of his already-stained trousers and sliding it into its pocket in his sleeve.

No use even trying to write here anymore.

It took him a few tries, aided by the handle of the inn’s door, to climb to his feet. His leg was stiff and sore from the temperature, scarred musculature not adapting as well to the change in climate as the rest of him did. It was, simply, yet another sign of his life as something other than a scribe. There had been far better results from his past decisions, but the leg’s scarring was, by far, the most visible.

He stood on the stoop for a moment, willing some of the feeling back into his toes, watching the snow drift across the broad, smooth street. The fine layer of white was untouched. No one had traveled the thoroughfare since his arrival – his tracks were already gone from the snow that had begun earlier that morning, and it was likely that no one unexpected would come this way until the snow stopped. And, in Salvar, who knew how long that would truly be? He let out a silent sigh, tucked his notebook to his side, and opened the inn door.

The inn – the Broken Gryphon, if the sign above the door was to be taken seriously – had once been a popular place, judging by the size of its dining rooms, the thick tapestries on the walls, and the intricate carvings on the bar. The winter had forced it into disuse - a fine layer of dust coated nearly every surface, his leather boots leaving tracks of melting snow behind him, transmuting the gray grit into mud. He ignored the slush, stripping his coat off and throwing it over the bar; setting his notebook down more sedately before he made his limping way to the table next to the fireplace.

He’d cleared the candlesticks and silken cloth off when he’d arrived and found the town utterly deserted - they wouldn't be needed when the only patrons weren't supposed to be there in the first place. In retrospect, he should have taken the odd looks from the few people he had passed on the road here as warnings of the desolation - but how was he to know the whole village had just up and left?

Not that I blame them, he thought, setting his inkwell on the fireplace mantel, next to a small carved stone pendent shaped like a scarab. I wouldn't want to wait out winter here if I had a choice.

The village’s location wasn’t the best for most people: a full day's walk from the nearest road (also, helpfully, from the nearest reliable source of firewood), three days longer than that to the next village, and a full week from Knife's Edge. He had been surprised the village even existed when Ludvik had shown it to him, pointing it out on a well-worn map.

It had to have something to do with the nearby river – a tributary from the Western Sea to the lake of Ashkalov, if the map was to be trusted – that was frozen solid now. Perhaps it was merely a summer village, making profits off of the fishing, or something in the clay, or…anything, really; anything that would be affected by the harsh cold.

Not that it mattered. All that truly mattered right now was that it was here, and that it was deserted, and would, therefore, serve his - serve their - purposes. He collapsed into the chair nearest the fire, running a mottled hand through his hair to dislodge the snow caught there, turning his hair dark gold as it melted.

His current project rested upon that table, a parchment stretched tight on the smooth surface, tacked to the wood. It already had a few rows of carefully lettered script, the intricate flowing letters and flowery speech generally found in legal documents. The light was wrong now - the windows letting in only an odd, bluish gloom, beginning to show the darkness outside as the sun set behind the clouds – to finish the calligraphy tonight.

That paper could, in all likelihood, get him killed if the wrong person saw him writing it. But that was all well and good, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as if anyone would catch him making it here. He had a second parchment sticking out of the top flap of his pack, already neatly transformed into a document of the same importance, but for the Church instead of the State.

He left both parchments be for now, reaching out to take up the half-folded paper crane perched on the edge of the table. It was carefully crafted from a previous attempt at one of the documents, and it only took him a few small folds and creases to complete. He set it down to retrieve his pen, groaning when he realized he’d left his notebook on the bar.

He limped back across the room and retrieved the book, snagging the arm of a chair and dragging it back with him as he did. The fire was going to die down soon enough, and he didn’t want to have to get up again for something as trivial as firewood. He’d pay for it - eventually, of course - but right now he needed it more than the inn’s owner.

He took his pen back out of its pocket, reaching out to dip it in the now-pure-liquid inkwell, and quickly sketched the appropriate double-infinity symbol on one of the crane’s wings. The sign flashed so quickly that he would have missed it if he had blinked. All the writing on the crane faded as if it was being soaked into the paper, and then the paper moved. Shifted, small wings flapping once. A tiny beak opened, and –

“Are you sure this is wise?” The words floated through the air between the halves of the beak, noiselessly. Cael chuffed low in his throat, cleaning the pen off again as an excuse not to look at the familiar.

“Is that your new motto or something?”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t like it. For the record and all.”

It felt nice to speak Salvic again, the words flowing easily and smoothly from his mouth, none of the accent that still plagued his tradespeak. It still ‘spoke’ in that language, giving him a look that felt like a disapproving stare, despite its lack of eyes. “Didn’t ask if you liked it.”

Cael rolled his eyes, setting the pen down on the table and moving the inkwell onto the table’s far corner. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He held his hand out. The crane hopped onto his fingertips without further comment, balancing easily as he stood. “Hopefully,” Cael continued, “We’ll only be here a few days.” Hopefully.

And hopefully, those coming to rescue him from the monotony of the past two days would be people who his brother had passed the paper on to – trustworthy people - and not members of the Church or monarchy looking to remove his head from his shoulders for such insurrection.

He’d spent enough time in Knife’s Edge during his apprenticeship to know that – if they disapproved, and he somehow got the feeling that they would – he’d be lucky if it was that quick.

The paper – the whole famine-and-hunger fighting plan – had seemed such a good idea when it was…well, just that. An idea. Now that the gears were all in motion, he couldn’t help but worry. What if no one came? What if, as he feared all the more, the wrong people came? Had he written the inn name right? The name of the village, the fiefdom, for that matter? There so many things to go wrong…

He was beginning to wish they’d picked a village closer to civilization.

Or further.

He wasn't really sure which.

The winter-bright sun was streaming golden light through the windows and Cael’s fifth cup of tea was lukewarm by the time he finished the papers the next morning. He absently stirred the murky liquid with his index finger as he stared down at the document. It seemed to stare back, burning black words into the back of his brain. He almost considered ripping it up, but where would that leave him, after all those hours of work? He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes and looking down just in time to catch It’s words.

“So, what do you do if nobody shows?”

He tried to keep his ill-ease hidden, absent-mindedly tracing lazy designs on a ruined compress paper with his tea-dripping fingertips, trying to think of how to answer it. It didn’t help that the familiar was voicing his fears.

"I don’t know," he finally said, carefully, still watching his hands flicking over the paper – it was easier than watching the familiar’s words right now. "I can’t do this on my own, and Ludvik’s already put so much work into it…" His voice came low and hesitant, coated in a layer of worry. “But-”

The wooden reverberations of the door slamming open and hitting the wall cut his words off. He scrabbled out of his cocoon of tapestries and linens in an instinctive panic, toppling the table over in a scattering of pens, papers and inkwell as he fumbled for the shaft of his naginata, sliding clumsily behind the bar. His sore fingertips hit polished wood, his half-trained muscles sliding into an awkward – but serviceable – defensive position behind the bar before he really let the scene at the doorway register, convinced he was about to die for a country he didn’t even really like that much. He peeked around the edge of the table, clinging to the weapon – and blinked.

The doorway was all but blocked by the massive man who stood there, a broad-shouldered behemoth who almost seemed to glimmer a vivid blue shade in the sun. Cael gulped, ducking back behind the bar before he heard the voice.

“Oh for Sway’s sake, Damyan, get out of my way, you probably scared him half to death.” The voice was high, clear and bordering on a whine. It was also reassuringly, terrifyingly familiar.

“…F’bael?” Cael popped back up from behind the bar, eyes wide, just in time to see the dark elf squirm his way gracefully between the doorframe and the man blocking most of it. He felt an almost overwhelming surge of relief. “F’bael! It is you!”

“The one and only, spotty!” The elf brushed his dark hands over his jacket to smooth the rumples out of the wine-colored fabric. He eyed the naginata with a skeptical look, one white eyebrow raised, but he didn’t seem half as surprised as Cael. “Expecting someone else?”

Cael set the weapon back down on the bar, feeling sheepish. F’bael had been his landlord during the time he’d spent in Knife’s Edge as a young man. He wouldn’t need the naginata.

“I, uh. Maybe?” He scratched behind his ear, looking almost everywhere but at his old friend. “I didn’t…I mean, I wasn’t…um. Just…it’s good to see you! I never thought you of all people-”

He looked down to see It shaking its head, the words “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” flickering across its open mouth lightening quick. He cut off the rest of the sentence.

“Who’s your friend?” He nodded at the huge man with a shaky smile to try and cover the reaction he’d had. It was just nerves. You haven’t seen him in six years!

The man in the doorway stepped into the inn proper, stretching his massive shoulders. Out of silhouette, he was still, in fact, blue. It wasn’t his skin, it was his scales: thick, heavy scales that covered every inch of visible flesh. He towered above Cael, his reptilian face split in a polite smile, and his horns almost brushed the ceiling.

“Damyan Partwyrm,” the man rumbled back, holding out one hand. His claws were clipped down and filed smooth, gleaming black against the cerulean, and his hand was as cold as ice. Cael shook it, and let go quickly, almost imagining his hand going numb from the short contact.

F’bael pushed the hood of his coat down, shaking his short white hair free. “So, what, is it just us?” He flopped down on one of the seats, tugging at his boot. Cael nodded, slowly, the unpleasant reality creeping in on the heels of the relief at seeing a friendly face.

“Just the three of us, so far,” he admitted, leaning against the bar. “I was hoping for more, but-”

“Four.” F’bael interrupted, golden eyes dancing in the sunlight.

Cael tilted his head. “What?”

“It’s not, three, it’s four.” F’bael waved at the door, and to the young man stepping through. The man, at a glance, was younger than Cael; scruffy, with a compact, muscular build and what looked like a pitiful attempt at a beard gracing his cheeks. He looked, truth be told, like a soldier; a fact that would have had Cael almost instantly on edge if it hadn’t been for the sad look in his eyes. Cael straightened his threadbare undershirt, and tried to look the part of a tough revolutionary at his respectful nod.

“Oh. Ok. Four.” As if that’s so much better. He kept the thought to himself as F’bael waved between them.

“Kamen, Cael. Cael, this is Kamen. He traveled with us,” His waving grew to include Damyan, “From Sulgolok.” Those strange golden eyes landed on Cael, and Cael felt driven to nod at Kamen again. At least F’bael had understood about no surnames.

“Good to have you aboard.”

An awkward silence fell in the inn once the introductions were done. Damyan wandered off a few paces to look at one of the tapestries. Kamen went digging through his pack, leaving Cael standing where he was, at a loss to understand what, exactly, he was expecting them to do.

“So now what?” F’bael’s soft voice came as the dark elf reached out and gently picked It up from the counter. The familiar seemed to bristle. Cael reached out to take him back from F’bael with a helpless shrug.

“We wait. Still.” He rolled his eyes, limping around the bar to clean up his scattered tools. “Been all waiting the last few days…” Though, this time, he had something to speed up the process, now that someone was here.

The parchment had survived unscathed, still tacked firmly to the table top. He righted his inkwell, wiping the black off on his pants as he pried the thin tacks up, peeling the parchment loose carefully. He used the motion to thumb the strange, scarab shaped pendant in his pocket, almost wincing when he felt the thing heat, briefly, before crumbling away to nothing. F’bael looked dignifiedly bewildered, running a long finger over the bartop, as if looking for dust.

“Wait?”

“For Scarab.” Cael said, simply. They weren’t going to use full names, and Ludvik had left them blessedly free of codenames, but Ulric had insisted on not giving anyone other than the brothers his real name. “My one set contact.” He heaved the table back upright, leaning on it for a moment until his leg adjusted to standing. “He wasn’t coming until I signaled for him.”

“But how’s he to get here?” Kamen spoke, for the first time, his voice strangely deep for one who looked so young. Cael managed a real, warm smile.

“Same way we’re going to do our job.” He pulled his robe off the end of the bar, shrugging into it and sliding his best pen into its pocket. “Come along, I’ll show you.” He looked over the room, spotting Damyan about to head up the stairs. “We’ll be at the church,” he called up to the hulking figure. “Are you coming?”

The man shook his head. “I ss'all remain ‘ere,” He replied. “I will send anyone elsse along, if t'ey arrive.” There wasn’t really any condemnation in his voice at that ‘if’. He had that, at least. Cael slammed the door behind him.

The cold wind bit harder in the daylight; the sun scattered by the pristine snow gave no warmth, though that same sun made it seem as if it should be warmer. Cael tugged his robe closer, and stepped off the porch and into the snow, leading the way through the village with brisk steps, fingers like ice blocks in his pockets.

The frozen fields of ice spread out into the distance, visible between the short, squat houses, reflecting the sun back bright enough to blind. He stopped looking long before it had a chance to hurt his eyes, drawing to a stop at the small, rustic church built on the outskirts of the village, along the bank of the river. He sketched a mocking bow towards the door. “If you would be so kind,” He said in F’bael’s direction; the dark elf had always been good at getting his doors open when he locked himself out. F’bael returned the bow with faux dignity, sliding an old, familiar strip of metal out of his pocket.

“Allow me, my good man.”

Kamen stared, brown eyes wide. “You’re…breaking into the church?”

Cael had been watching F’bael work. His head came up to blink at Kamen owlishly as F’bael continued working at the lock. The young soldier was staring at them, rather aghast.

“Well, I was considering knocking on the window and waiting for the door to open on its own,” F’bael said blithely, before Cael had a chance to explain that if he was so horrified over a little unauthorized entry he probably should go home, “But that didn’t seem likely to happen, so we’re going to play nice. I could have broken the glass...” There was a tiny click, and the door swung open. “There.”

Kamen still looked horrified, but followed when Cael led the way into the tiny church anyways. It was quiet and still, deserted like the rest of the town; but the inside was polished and clean, nothing like the church’s rough exterior. The walls were polished golden wood, the pews sanded as smooth as silk, and the candles before the stained glass saints were in delicate crystal holders, though they had long since guttered out, leaving the sanctuary dim.

The portal was down a narrow winding stair behind the gilded pulpit, sequestered in a tiny room beneath the sanctuary. The room was cold, but dry, and the walls were marble instead of wood, carved and glowing dimly in the light filtering through the translucent panels at the top. The room had the feeling of a tomb or mausoleum, and Cael wasn’t surprised to see Kamen shifting from foot to foot nervously.

“Right, then,” Cael spoke mostly to hear someone speak, cracking his knuckles carefully. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the cramped quarters. He stepped up to the portal, eying it almost suspiciously - it just looked like a doorway into open air. He could see the white wall behind it. It didn’t look like anything special. It most certainly didn’t look like anything remotely helpful. He reached out to brush a hand over the milk-smooth stone…

And the carvings etched on the inside of the arch lit up, glowing with a pure white light that reflected off the polished floors and walls. He jerked his hand away as if he had been burned, taking several hasty steps backwards.

There was a low buzzing drone that slowly rose in pitch, like a finger run along the edge of a wine glass, and the space between the arches’ sides exploded with a silent puff of white-hot light. When the light faded, there was a man standing in the arch.

Kamen just stared, finally finding his tongue. “What was that?”

Cael grinned, striding forward with a hand outstretched. “That’s our way out of here. Or should I say he’s our way out of here. Kamen, meet Scarab.”

Ulric, the second familiar face of the day, was the very picture of a successful mage; tall but not overly so, thin but (again) not overly so, with neatly trimmed black hair and a carefully clipped beard. His clothes were rich, made of high-quality cloth, but nothing fancy, unlike the ornate church robes he’d worn when he’d first met Cael a week ago. The tiny topaz beetle glittering on his collar was the only sign he had of his codename.

He seemed to radiate confidence from his smile and his eyes, and his voice was a warm baritone. “It’s good to see I was expected! Last village, they weren’t expecting me, and the church had been barricaded…had to dig my way through.” He shook Kamen’s hand, and F’bael’s, and paused when he reached Cael, as if gauging.

Is everything alright? The look seemed to ask.

Cael merely nodded, silently. Everything was smaller than he’d hoped, but it was alright.

They moved the base of operations from the inn to the church after the snowstorm nearly threw off the first assignment.

The blizzard-strength wind had blown and twirled the snow into a nigh-impassible wall of white, where Cael could barely see his hand in front of his face. It had taken Damyan doing...something Cael hadn't quite been able to catch to get through it; tossing a small sphere of glowing golden-green into the air before them. It had seemed to disintegrate the snow that entered the radius of its light as it floated.

That was the first real sign that the wyrmfolk man was a magician of some sort. Ulric just grinned, clapping him on the shoulder as they made the rest of the way to the church in record time.

It was still cold inside, but after outside, no one was going to complain. Ulric led the way down the stairs, cloak flapping behind him.

“Alright, believe it or not,” he began once they were halfway down the stairs, “This is a simple process. We’ve got…arrangements,” his eyes flickered when he said that word, silently amused, "With Aouk, where someone’s got connections in Alerar whose got contacts somewhere elseto get food in." F’bael grinned, broadly, but Ulric just waved for him to stay quiet. "Don't ask where the food's coming from, it's just rude and you'll probably get stabbed for asking things you shouldn't be asking. Mind your own business as much as you can."

He stepped up onto the portal's dais, a figure of easy confidence. "They've got carts, but don't ask about stuff to draw it by. You've got a couple of big strong guys here," He nodded at Kamen respectfully, but didn't really look at Damyan. As if that would have been too obvious. "Can you imagine trying to get oxen up stairs and out of a church?" He shook his head and continued.

"First sign of trouble, scatter. I'll find you, just lay low."

The lecture was starting to make Cael nervous again. He was relieved when Ulric reached out to brush his hand down the side of the portal. The same white light flickered into existence. Ulric waved them through.

"After you."

Cael went through last. The sensation of stepping into the light felt almost like burning with no pain - just an itching, licking sensation up and down his limbs, and the disquieting impression that he was falling to pieces so small that he'd never be put back right again. He stumbled out before the feeling really had a chance to set in, feet protesting the solid ground beneath his feet before he could really realize that - for a few seconds that felt like an eternity - the floor was gone.

"That," Kamen was more animated than he had seen the man yet, eyes practically sparkling, "Was incredible! Does it always feel like that, is it always that fast, does-"

"Yes, yes unless something is terribly wrong, and no more questions!" Ulric interrupted, shoving him out of the way so Cael could catch his balance and inspect their new surroundings.

The church they stepped out into was much larger; the roof towering above them, vaulted and painted with the same saints that the Heivernok's chapel had on their windows. The stale chill in the air was the same, though, and there was, against all logic, an ox cart on the dais.

If Ulric was disappointed that they didn't even get to see the Aouk contacts, he didn't show it. He reached out a hand that glinted with silver wires between the fingers, and tapped the cart. There was a puff of air, and something shimmered out of existence around it, a forcefield that Cael hadn't even realized he'd been seeing.

"Right." It poked its' head out of his pocket, nudging him with its' nose. "We need to work on your observational skills; I could smell that from here."

"Oh shut up."

Getting the cart through the portal and back to Heivernok was easy. Getting it out of the church in the next village proved to be a bit more difficult. There were church troops in this town, and they came running into the portal room before the white glow had even faded....

It was also the first real test of Cael's forgery skills. Ulric's robes were almost enough to convince them that they should let the ragtag band through, until one of them had had the wise idea that maybe this was a test.

They must have been really bored, itching for something - anything - other than guarding this town, the way they all congregated in the sanctuary.

They almost seemed disappointed when he produced the papers -permissions from the Church itself, sealed with wax, stamped with a special marking...

Once they left, Cael could finally breathe again.

He was really beginning to regret volunteering for this.

One week later, Kamen finally stopped looking like an awestruck child every time the portals flickered to life, and had, instead, moved on to complaining.

“I don’t understand,” he griped as he and Cael carefully pulled the sacks of grain off the ox cart. “Why is it night here if it was day where we left?”

“Magic, probably,” was Cael’s throwaway, short-of-breath answer as he struggled to keep from dropping the sack he was carrying. The things didn’t exactly feel like pillows. He rubbed his back, only then catching the incredulous look Kamen gave him. “I don’t know. It probably has something to do with distances or something; I’m a scribe not an encyclopedia.”

Kamen fell silent again, shouldering three of the grain sacks with an ease that put Cael to shame. He looked back at the cart and the one remaining sack before shaking his head and following on the former soldier’s heels.

This was the third village they had reached, and Cael was already seeing problems with this whole scheme. It was working now, sure, but…it had only been a week. It wouldn't be that long before someone caught on and-

His thoughts were interrupted when he ran into Kamen’s back. The alleyway from the church was barricaded by a bored looking soldier in monarchy colors. He had an outstretched hand. "Papers?"

Cael had a brief moment of heart-stopping panic when he couldn’t remember which papers were where. "Of course, sir, ah. Right away..." He stalled, setting down the bag of flour as he patted down his jacket, trying to remember, and trying to not look like that was what he was doing. "Terrible weather we've been having lately, aye?" He thought he heard Kamen groan, but he was too busy trying to look innocent to see.

The soldier raised an eyebrow. "Awful." He answered, in a voice as dry and bored as his expression. One of his hands hovered dangerously close to his sword hilt. "My old granny's been having a hell of a time with her arthritis."

"Is that so? Been playin' with most of the scribes, too; makes the ink freeze to your skin." Cael flexed a chapped hand with a grimace, forcing himself to continue the small talk. "Have you ever had something freeze to your flesh? It's not - ahha! Here they are...I could have sworn I checked there," He muttered, finally pulling the thick sheaf of documents from what he desperately hoped was the correct pocket. He slid one hand into one of his outer pockets to cross his fingers, holding the papers out in a hand that quavered with his nerves.

The soldier didn’t look twice at his shaking; the blessing-curse of Salvar’s winter winds presented him with the perfect excuse. He stripped off one leather glove, and ran a practiced thumb over the raised seal. Cael held his breath – the Church's seal had passed earlier, but the Monarchy's seal had taken him hours and hours to learn how to make look just right, years ago when it had all just been for a joke…

"Alright." The soldier folded the parchment again and shoved it in the envelope, offering it back to Cael. Cael managed to start breathing without it being too obvious, feeling dizzy. “Everything seems to be in order…" Cael took the envelope, shoving it back in his pocket. When he looked back up, the soldier was holding out his gloves as well. "Take ‘em." Warm green eyes met his. "You need ‘em more than I do."

Cael didn’t argue as he took them, feeling Kamen practically vibrating nervously next to him. He could have sworn he saw the soldier give him a quick wink, but by the time it really processed he was gone, disappearing into the distance down the lane.

Kamen tugged on his arm. "Let's get out of here."

There was magic dancing on the ceiling. It was reflecting from the vaults and up the short flight of stairs between his floor and the portals, and Viktor Janda couldn’t help but notice it as it glittered and skittered across the lenses of his spectacles, reflecting oddly on his cheeks. The clerk frowned, trying to manage to look at the lights on his face without scrunching it up like a pouting child. It didn’t work so well, so he resorted to simply removing his specs and continuing down the hall.

This was the second night in a row of the lights. Something didn’t seem quite right about that. It was no mystery what they were, mind – they were from the portal network, reflecting off the ceiling and walls up the stairs.

The mystery this time was why the portals would be active right now, with no mage downstairs to oversee them…he shivered to himself, hugging the stack of papers closer to his stomach as he hurried to Portal Keeper Atanas’s office. He spoke with no preamble, blurting out his question.

“Why are the portal markings glowing?”

The Portal Keeper looked up from the stack of papers on his desk, gray eyes confused. “Excuse me?”

Viktor dropped the fresh stack of sheets next to the pile Atanas was going through, trying to ignore the look of utter hatred the motion earned. “The markings. You know, the ones in the walls?” He traced a rough approximation in the air before he trailed off, realizing how silly it looked. “They’re, er. They’re glowing. Sir.”

Antanas stroked his beard once before he answered. Viktor watched his superior, feeling a slight pang of annoyance. He had the distinct impression that he was being patronized.

“I sent out a patrol out to Lovstok at dawn, Viktor.” Antanas yawned, setting aside a paper and picking a new one from the stack Viktor had just brought. “The portals retain much of the magic we use to activate them.”

Viktor tried to seem unconcerned, polishing his specs on his robe sleeve, feeling his ears heating just a bit. “It’s probably just the residual magic. It will fade in time.” Antanas’s face pulled in a strained approximation of a smile. "I swear, you’re worse than my wife, running every time something glows funny. I’ve told you time and time again it won’t hurt you.” Viktor had to admit that Antanas had done that, true, but this was different.

He kept that thought to himself as Antanas finished, waving one bony hand in dismissal. “Steal someone’s office to work in if they concern you that much.”

Viktor was almost fuming when he emerged, lips set in a thin line at the Portal Keeper’s answer. It wasn’t residual magic. He’d seen that before, plenty of times. This was something entirely different, but if Antanas didn’t want to pay any attention, that was his problem, wasn’t it? Not his job – he wasn’t being paid enough to watch out for weird things down below…

But the magic lights were still going when he returned to his small alcove four hours later. He frowned up at them for a long moment before picking up a pen and carefully marking the date and time down on a scrap of parchment.

There was something odd going on.

And he was going to find out what.

Ulric left after that first week as well, returning to Knife’s Edge where he belonged. Cael was sorry to see him go - it helped, to have someone who knew the larger game plan better than he did to steer him right when things were going wrong.

He’d pressed a box into Cael’s hand before he’d stepped back through the portal. “Take it. You’re the only one here that I really know. Use it well, alright?” He added another beetle-shaped stone, shoving it into Cael’s hand before he stepped back through the portal, disappearing in a flash of white.

Cael pocketed the box, and went back up the stairs, into the chaos of organizing the next day's drop offs. There was more paperwork to underground humanitarian work than he ever would have thought possible - records in code names of places where they actually received food, places where they were to drop it off, places to avoid at all costs. He was getting frighteningly good at reading sentences backwards and sideways and whatever ways the particular group they were contacting seemed to prefer.

He didn't get a chance to open the box until late that night. It was a flimsy box, made of low-quality wood and sealed like a letter with a dab of wax. He broke the wax and let it fall open.

There was a strange bracelet inside: a tangle of five strands of delicate, silver wire, twisted together to hold a small, rounded, scarab-shaped talisman. Exactly like the bracelet Ulric was always wearing...

He untangled the wires, and slipped his fingers between them the way he'd seen Ulric do. The strands seemed to tighten to hold the talisman in the middle of his wrist; the smooth, cool back of the pendent flush against his skin, the strings taut but not uncomfortable tight. His skin, where the talisman brushed, felt odd: sort of a crawling, skittering feeling that crept over the back of his hand and his wrist and continued up his arm. He twitched his fingers, noticing with ill-ease that the bracelet left shadowy black smudges where it touched. The feeling left when he stopped thinking about it. That -somehow- made it worse.

There was a map in the box as well, and he turned to that to distract himself from the creeping feeling between his fingers. The map short but wide and it had been folded six times to get it to fit in the box. It was intricate and everything looked up to date: downright accurate for a map of Salvar. He’d only seen one other map this detailed, and that was displayed in the lobby of the Cathedral of Saint Denebriel. He folded it back up, and laid it in the box almost reverently before he looked back at the bracelet.

The tiny scarab - of course it would be a scarab - had tiny designs worked into its back. He frowned, and held it closer to his eyes. The designs were familiar, almost a pattern. The realization made him stand up - box still clutched in his hand - and make his silent way down from the church's balcony to the portal, avoiding the stairs that creaked.

The portal room was brighter than the rest of the church, the walls seemed to contain an ambient light source that bathed the small room in pale blue. It almost looked like the room was underwater. Cael took a hesitant step up onto the dais and stared at the silent archway for a moment, working up the courage to reach out and brush his fingers across the stone.

The arch flared to brilliant life. Cael felt his stomach sink to his feet. Ulric had just made him a necessity to this quest.

He didn’t quite like that.

Ulric met with Ludvik Strandssen the day he returned to Knife’s Edge.

The ‘mastermind’ of this whole plan was at his day – and only paying – job, down in the cave-stables where the Church of the Ethereal Sway kept the ice drakes. Civil war or no civil war, siege or no siege, the beasts needed fed.

The water sloshing in the river that fed through the caves echoed off the walls and mingled with the beasts' roars to cover the conversation; and their stations alone - portals mage and drake trainer - would have provided ample reason to be speaking had anyone noticed.

“So who all knows about me?” Ludvik had the dignity to not ask that until he'd been told nearly everything else, and had checked most of the stables individual caves. They now headed for the hatchling cave. He'd stopped off to pick up a wicker basket before he looked over at Ulric with a curious tilt of his head. It really only served to make him look somewhat ridiculous in his coveralls and boots, the basket flung over his shoulder and the light reflecting off the water to make his face look mottled.

Ulric gave a polished shrug. “Just your brother, as near as I could figure,” he said, trimming his nails with the small folding knife he’d produced, seemingly out of thin air. “He seemed to know one of the gentlemen who did show up, but…well. There are only three of them. Your brother and I make five, and I’m not even going with them. Are you sure…”

“We’re a bit far to be second guessing that way, don’t you think? Cael knew what he was getting into when he agreed to help…" Ludvik sighed, stepping off the rocky bank and into the placid river. "I just wish I could help more."

The screeching squawks of hatchling ice drakes echoed off the vaulted ceiling of the chamber as Ludvik set about emptying a nearby fish trap into his basket. Ulric trod carefully from railing to railing on the fence that lined the river, but Ludvik walked knee deep in the icy water, ignoring it as it splashed his thighs.

“He picked up a spaceworker somewhere,” Ulric finally continued. “Big, wyrmfolk looking guy. He seemed trustworthy, but…I don’t know about the elf...you know of anyone named F'bael?”

There was a splash that made him look up from watching his feet. Ludvik had dropped the fish basket, and was staring, only half-paying attention to the fish escaping. “Wait, F'bael? Was that the one you said Cael knew? Dark elf, about yea tall?” He held a hand up to his shoulder height, laughing when Ulric nodded, shaking his head. "Gods. I’m surprised he made a trek that far out. The man's been practically city bound the whole time I’ve known him…”

Ulric drew to an abrupt halt, eyebrows coming together with concern, balanced on the railing. “Wait, he knows you?”

Ludvik looked up at the sharp, suspicious tone in Ulric’s voice. "Barely. Cael rented lodging from him a few years ago. We’ve only met a couple of times. We didn't get along." Ludvik hoisted the basket back up, sloshing back onto the shore to unlock the hatchlings' pen. "So..what? You don't trust him?"

"You could say that." Ulric flexed his fingers against the chill in the air. He couldn't believe Ludvik was actually sweating. "There was something...he's awfully...I don't know. Foxish."

"Oh, yeah." Ludvik waved a dismissive hand, shoving the basket through the gate and into the pen, slamming the gate shut again as a small wave of baby ice drakes came scrambling over to investigate. "Comes from bein' a landlord, I think. You don't go far in that business unless you're a bit sneaky. Especially not if you've got my brother for a tenant."

"I guess you're probably right..." Ulric leaned against the wall, still perched on the railing. "But...Cael knows to keep his eye out, right?"

Ludvik nodded, but didn't look at Ulric. "Yeah. He knows." He finally looked back at his friend, not entirely hiding the worry flickering in his eyes. "Whether or not he will, though, is another story."

There was magic dancing on the ceiling again.

Viktor lay on his bed in his quarters and stared at it, watching the white-blue light ebb and flow like a river, trickling across the intricate grooves worked into the walls. It was eerily beautiful.

It also wasn’t supposed to be happening.

He lay and watched it blur and twist, his arms crossed behind his head. The lights were a meaningless mess without his glasses. He wasn’t going to mention them this time. Not again. Not after the last time. He scowled, rubbing at his eyes resentfully as his train of thought went elsewhere.

Unfortunately, instead of daydreams of what he would do to Antanas if he were a magician, his thoughts took a more loyalist turn.

There was a war going on, wasn’t there? For all he knew, they could be under attack. Residual magic, his auntie’s nightgown!

He kicked the blanket off, sliding his feet into his slippers, and marched down the hall and up the four flights of steps to the Gate Keeper’s chambers.

“Why would a magical hypochondriac such as yourself pick such a place of employment?” Antanas asked, haughtily, the moment Viktor managed to get him out of bed. "Not every light is an invasion. Last month you thought it was Haidian demons fighting their way up from the pit, remember?"

Viktor merely scowled, shifting from foot to foot. He did remember, sadly. Was that why he was getting all the runaround? He was beginning to wish he’d never even heard of the cathedral. It wasn't turning out to be the glamorous job he had hoped for.

“I don’t know, sir,” he finally answered. Antanas snorted – the action made his thin mustache quiver. "But if you would just look..."

"Fine." Antanas took Viktor's moment of surprise at his surrender to shove him backward and out of the door. "In the morning."

The door slammed in his face.

Viktor stood there staring at the closed portal, scowling at himself for being so easily fooled. Antanas wanted to put him through this, did he? He'd figure out a way to make him listen, he thought as he started to pace down the hall. He'd have to see something, record something more than the sheet of dates and times he had downstairs in his rooms. Something...

He paced back and sat down with his back to the door. He could wait here to make sure the portal keeper saw him first thing and remembered his promise, of course. Not to avoid thinking about the twisting, flickering lights above his bed.

He fell asleep on the portal keeper's doorstep.

When they went down in the morning, the lights were gone.

Of course.

Cael stared at the map in front of him, and had the brief, irrational urge to shove it off onto the floor and stomp on it. Ulric may have thought it a good thing when he’d given it to him, but there was, simply, too much information on its weathered surface, written in thin, neat script that looked as if it was fading.

There was a tiny, color-coded ‘x’ for every fiefdom or village with a church – blue for the villages under the control or influence of the monarchy, red for those under the church’s sway, and green for those few villages that both factions had ignored, abandoned or not reached yet. Each village was surrounded by a further cloud of notes, written so small that Cael had to have his face mere inches away to read the writing.

“You’re going to go blind if you keep that up,” F’bael said, coming down the stairs to the portal room with a pot of coffee. “It’s too dark in here. You need more light.” He set the coffee down on the table and leaned over Cael’s shoulder to peer down at the map. “I don’t see what you find so interesting about this,” he continued, straightening back up and giving Cael room to breathe. “It’s a map.”

“It’s a helpful map!” Cael countered, perplexed but managing to hide it until F’bael was out of the room. On a whim, he pulled Ulric’s talisman back until it no longer brushed his skin for just a second.

Every ‘x’ and dot of color on the parchment vanished as cleanly as if it had been erased from existence. That explained F’bael’s confusion – and his ongoing concern every time he saw Cael with the map in he days that followed.

Soon, though, he took to offering his assistance; apparently thinking Cael was working some form of divination to plot their haphazard course from portal to portal. He offered logic and reason and Cael had to keep his laughter to himself, turning him down politely. Logic and reason had nothing to do with it – besieged villages and neutral towns, however…

Damyan apparently figured out what was going on faster.

He, however, kept it to himself until one night when it was F’bael and Kamen’s turn to cook. Then the hulking man loomed over Cael’s shoulder, much like F’bael had, to tap one claw against the back of the talisman.

“It iss taking a lot out of you,” he said simply, when Cael’s mottled fingers twitched in reaction to the strange feeling the touch shot through his hand – not quite pain, exactly, but it didn’t feel nice. Cael looked up sharply to meet sapphire dark eyes. They held sympathy as their only emotion. “Not your ussual kind of magic, I take it?” He withdrew his hand, leaving impressions of moist cold on the back of Cael’s hand as he sat down. “I could 'elp wit' t'at.”

“Help me with what?”

“T'e pain.” Damyan’s big hand closed around his wrist this time, and this time it really was pain that lanced through his bones. He bit down on a whimper. Damyan pulled his hand away quickly. “Portal c'armss are picky t'ings. T'ey only like certain typess of magic.”

Cael understood. Really he did. But Ulric had trusted him with this. Ludvik had trusted him with this. He shook his head. “I can’t give it to you,” He muttered, rubbing at the talisman. The burning pain had faded, but it still itched. “I don’t even know if I can get it off.”

"O', no. I wouldn't be able to take it." Damyan touched Cael's hand instead of the talisman this time. The chill of his rough fingers felt nice against the fevered, crawling tingle of his skin. "It'ss for a 'uman, not a part-wyrm. Pluss itss joined to you now."

"Joined?"

"Yess. T'e black around t'e edgess?" He traced with his fee hand, not touching where his skin was darkened, much to Cael's relief. "T'will not come off now, unlesss you are dead. Or ssomeone cutss your 'and off."

"...oh." Cael lifted his hand to eye the black smears.

That was reassuring.

The Church of the Ethereal Sway had many interesting artifacts in the offices of its priests and workers, and the office of Portal Keeper Antanas Bukowski was no different. There were talismans and tokens and totems, and off in the corner was a small partial dome on a carved pedestal of white marble.

The dome was supposed to be used for scrying and summoning and communications in equal part - it hadn’t been used for those purposes in months, if not years. In fact, it hadn’t been used as anything but a reflective surface for him to use as a mirror to trim his beard with in a long, long time.

He was doing just that this particular morning, carefully…but not carefully enough to avoid scoring a vibrant red line across his own jaw when the thing actually spoke.

“Portal Keeper Antanas?” The voice that came through warbled as if it were traveling underwater: wavering and faint, but audible. Antanas scrabbled for a handkerchief to press to his cheek, staring at the surface of the dome. Sway, if it was one of the high priests and they’d seen him…!

"This is…" He stammered, "I-yes, I mean, I am Antanas, but how did you-"

"Does it really matter? All that matters is I did." There was a vocal tone very much like a smirk in that voice, audible through the warbling. "You may call me Foxlight. I possess some…information for you, and would look forward to continuing to give you this information for a...nominal fee. Do you have paper nearby?”

Antanas’s handkerchief stayed stuck to his cheek when he grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from a stack at random, ignoring Viktor's tight, paranoid scrawl that filled the front of the page. “Yes?”

The voice went on to tell him many things. Names. Many many names: names of villages and towns and fiefdoms, but never routes, roads or modes of transportation, and it seemed to go on forever. Antanas was almost dozing off to uneasy daydreams of insurgents on ice drakes when the voice suddenly cut off, leaving a silence so loud that it was almost a sound all on its own.

It did not speak again.

Antanas stared at the globe for a moment before he looked down at the first name on the long list of places. Aouk. They could get there easily enough…

He fetched a clean piece of paper and began drafting a request for a troop contingent.

"So how do I unjoin it?"

The idea of the thing being joined to him was still bothering Cael a week later, and the dark skin around the talisman was starting to match the dark circles beneath his eyes. He couldn't sleep anymore, not with his arm twitching the way it was. He kept waking up convinced his skin was trying to crawl away on its own.

Damyan shook his head.

"I already told you. You don't unlesss you die."

"How would you know?" Cael growled, irritably. It had been a busy day. Four villages meant he'd needed to open the portals eight times, and when he was touching the portals the itchy feeling spread up his spine all the way to his head. He was beginning to hate the thing attached to his hand.

"I 'elped to make t'ingss very much like that ssome time ago. We, ah. Sstopped becausse. Well. Jusst becausse."

"Because what?" Cael wouldn't let that one lie. He stopped, grabbing Damyan's sleeve. "What made you quit?"

Damyan looked down at him, and had just opened his mouth to speak when his eyes went wide. He backed into the alley they'd just left, dragging Cael with him easily.

"What-" Cael caught a glimpse of church colors, and fell silent so quickly it was if a switch had been flipped off, following Damyan without question as the wyrmfolk sped off down the alley.

Cael didn't speak again until they were halfway across the village. They had to backpedal three houses away from the church and its open-air portal.

...and its unfortunate yard-full of soldiers.

They wound up having to hop a garden wall to avoid an oncoming patrol before they could figure out what to do with those soldiers. Cael killed time by making a flock of butterflies out of the scraps of butcher paper heaped beside the wall. He inked them to life, and set them out over the gate, barely visible against the dingy gray snow.

"This is getting really, really old.” Cael spoke then, after a good half-hour of silence. It was mostly to break that silence, mostly so he wouldn’t feel as if he was about to panic and yell, crouched there behind the garden wall. The papers in his pockets felt warm, as if they were about to burst into flame and give them away, and the warmth seemed to be spreading to his itching arm.

“You could say t’at, yess.” Damyan rumbled from further back along the house wall. He looked ridiculous crouched down this way; his muscular arms tight around his knees, an oversized child playing hide and seek. His horns gleamed in the sun. “Are t’ey sstill t’ere?”

Cael closed one eye, feeling for the butterflies. His wordless request was met with a feeling of affirmation - when he popped his head up to scan the street, he had to duck down just as fast, feeling the butterflies frowning in his head.

There were more of them now.

“Y-yeah. They’re still there.”

“Sstay down.”

Damyan stood, scrambling over the garden wall easily, fingers glowing with violently-bright green light. Cael waited a second, listening to the startled shouting of the soldiers, and then levered himself up so he could just see the scene as it unfolded.

Damyan waved at the soldiers between him and their goal, grinning cheekily – and then flung his empty, flickering hands out as if he was throwing a ball. Cael squinted, following what would have been the trajectory had he thrown something...but nothing seemed to happen for several long moments.

Then there came a soft fwomph noise and a rush of displaced air. The snow and ice around the soldiers and the portal seemed to disappear, replaced by a sphere of tropical trees and vines. Cael could feel the warmth on his face from a block away…

And it was gone as quick as he could blink, along with the soldiers and the faint buzz of the butterflies.

Cael stared, slack-jawed, until Damyan returned, staying on the other side of the wall. “I t’ink we ss’ould be going,” he hissed, eyes still dancing mischievously.

Cael couldn’t agree more. He scrambled over the wall, following on the wyrmfolk’s heels. That had been...impressive. He tried to figure out why the man hadn't done it before, but the exhausted set of his shoulders seemed to be reason enough.

The next time he could see Damyan's hands, right outside the portal, there was a globe between his fingers and he could feel his butterflies again. Damyan kept rolling the globe, pinching off sections as if the sphere was clay in his hands, rolling the sections into smaller and smaller balls until they disappeared entirely, worn and worried out of existence.

Damyan noticed his stare and smiled, giving Cael just a glimpse of razor sharp incisors.

"Like I ssaid," he rumbled. "Portalss are not your natural magic. You will not remove t'at. Sspend your time t'inking of ssomething elsse."

Mikai, the next village, was a different sort of nightmare.

The Scarab had sent a list of special instructions for this one that had had Cael up until the wee hours of the morning, writing feverishly. He'd woken up with his head on the table and a crick in his neck, but with a pile of faked documents as well that he carefully folded and slid into the correct box.

They off-loaded the cart in the town hall, and when Cael straightened back up from dropping a box of dried beef onto the table, a short, stout man that he was fairly sure served as the town mayor poked him in the chest with a stubby, chapped finger.

“Where’s the rest of it?”

Cael stared, exchanging a quick, bewildered look with Damyan. Damyan stepped closer, his muscular arms crossed over his considerable chest. Confident that the man was there, Cael spoke. “Rest of…it…?”

The mayor poked him again, frowning so deep he almost looked like a fish as he waved at the small pile of provisions. “Oh, don’t you make cow eyes at me! Hrejd got twice as much as that!”

…oh, gods. There was a famine on and this bastard was going to play town rivalry?

Cael crossed his own arms, eyes narrowing dangerously. “Hrejd’s got twice as many people! And they don’t have a river!" And I didn't have to forge monarchy-sanctioned orders to get their kids out of Salvar!

"So?" The mayor was clearly not a man given over to logic. "What’s fair is fair! Our money's goin' to this food-"

“You gave a quarter of w'at 'rejd gave!” Damyan interjected, uncrossing his arms and coming to attention. Greater men had quelled at the motion, but the mayor ignored him, still poking Cael.

“-so we expect our share!”

Cael rubbed his hand through his hair. "Sir." He tried to keep the fact that he didn't entirely comprehend where the man was coming from, mayor or no mayor, hidden. "There's enough food there to last your people a month. We'll be coming though again," we hope, "But for now that's all we have. I'm sorr-"

The rest of his words were cut off by the mayor's sharp, open-handed slap. Cael blinked, more befuddled than hurt, and reached up to wipe his lip. It was bleeding in a thin trickle, smearing on his fingers. Funny. He thought, unable to hide the small smile, First blood in this whole stupid thing's drawn by our side.

"Don't laugh at me!" The mayor growled, launching himself at Cael's chest. The two men went down in a heap, Cael landing on a pile of grain-bags and trying to roll free before he completely undid what they had been here for in the first place. The mayor followed, grabbing the front of Cael's robes and slamming his fist into Cael's nose before Damyan's claws closed on the back of the mayor's robes, pulling him off and holding him aloft, easily.

"Are you alright, Cael?" Cael nodded, licking blood off his lip. His nose felt wrong, shifted out of place and bleeding like a fountain, but he would live. He had the briefest enjoyable mental image of asking the wyrmfolk mage to throw the mayor into one of those things he could make, but he shook it off quickly.

Damyan held the mayor kicking and raging for a moment longer, his dark blue eyes narrowing. "I won't even assk about t'iss brat," He grumbled, setting him down, but holding him in place with one huge hand. "Go for t'e portal, I will meet you t'ere."

"Don't hurt him," Cael managed to mutter as he followed Damyan's order. He paused on the town hall's steps for a moment, wiping his bleeding nose on the cuff of his sleeve. Idiot probably broke it, he thought as he made his careful, sore way back to the empty church. His nose hurt too bad to touch it, so he just kept walking into the sanctuary, flopping down in the front pew to wait for Damyan.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go at all. People were supposed to be grateful - not, mind, kissing the ground he walked on, but still. A little thanks for making sure we don't starve every now and then would be nice...

He had dozed off before Damyan returned to the church. He jolted awake the moment the door squeaked open, relaxing when he saw the familiar, hulking form. Damyan helped him to his feet.

"So what'd you do?" He asked as he woke the portal, fingers itching with a feeling like static. Damyan shrugged.

"Yelled at 'im a bit. Sscared 'im a bit. Didn't 'urt 'im, you assked me not to."

"Good." Cael all but stumbled through the portal. He didn't really know why that was so important, it just...was. "Good."

He had the briefest sensation of falling, and Damyan catching him, but he was asleep before he had a chance to notice anything else.

It took three days before they could really get anything else done. Mikai had apparently been talking, and if there was one thing that spread fast in Salvar, it was rumors.

Two villages had met them at the portals, insisting that they drop the stuff and leave. One village didn't even do that. They just left a note: "Place food here."

It took them until their next restock in Aouk to learn what was happening. Their supplier - an on-again-off-again young woman with a lean, wolfish face and a love of gossip - was all too pleased to inform them that (according to the local scuttlebutt) they had assaulted the mayor and run off with his daughter.

Stupid, yes.

Amusing, yes.

Damaging? Also yes.

They had to tread more carefully after that. No arguments. No short orders, no teasing, and certainly no fights.

That policy worked alright at the next two villages, gray on the Scarab Map, as he'd taken to calling it. The trouble hit at the last stop of the day. They'd barely made it through the portal when his arm panged, a jolt of pain that sent him to his knees and Damyan to his side.

"What is it?" Kamen asked, eyes wide and worried. Cael felt a rush of gratitude for the young man. He often seemed the only one to care about Cael-as-a-person over Cael-as-a-revolutionary-leader or (worse yet) Cael-as-a-money-making-target.

"Don't know," he managed to gasp out as he pulled the map from its inner pocket. He didn't have to unfold it all the way to catch a glimpse of the red 'x' currently superimposed over their current location. "Alright, we're going to have to be carefu..." Cael froze with one hand sliding the map back into his pocket.

The thick envelope with the church papers was gone; only thin fabric met his questing fingers. His companions stared at him, and he felt a surge of sickening panic at the what-ifs that shot through his brain. He swallowed, hard, and spoke.

“Change of plans. We’re going back to Heivernok.”

Damyan and F’bael, he noted as he spun on his heel and hurried back toward the sequestered church, both looked stricken. It did nothing to help quell his nausea.

The papers weren't anywhere in the church - not in his balcony, not in the portals room, not even in the section of the sanctuary where he occasionally fell asleep. He practically tore the place apart looking for them before he was forced to admit that they were gone.

He knew where they'd gone, too.

That mayor.

But there was nothing much he could do about that. Mikai had gone red on the map. There was no way they could go back and find the papers, even if the mayor hadn't so obviously snubbed them. Going back to what was now a church run village and asking for his forged papers back...

He might as well just shove a sword in his own gut while he was at it.

Kamen helped him raid what looked like the minister's office to find parchment even close to the quality he needed to make the new papers. “That bastard tried to get me –us!- killed!” Cael ranted as he stretched the parchment out on the table, spiking it in the corners with the viciousness of an angry man who can’t get at the source of his anger. “All because he…I...he just..." He inhaled a deep breath, and exhaled it all in one gust. "I don't get it.”

Kamen sat on the other side of the table, watching as Cael plunked the inkwell down on the edge of the parchment, almost sloshing ink onto the paper. “People are stupid,” he offered, sliding the well back a couple of inches before he crossed his arms and rested his chin on them. “They’ll do anything if they’re annoyed enough.”

"Annoyed? He wasn't annoyed, he was a greedy bastard. There was enough food there to last them a month, Kamen.” Cael sat down and took a deep breath, starting the top letters. This document entitles the bearer… "I got his son papers out of the country, you know that?"

"No."

"Yeah, well, I did. Faked permissions, signatures, even orders for half that village t'get the hells out of Salvar." Cael growled. And got Damyan not to pull his head off. "You'd think he could've showed a bit of gratitude, wouldn't you?"

Kamen didn't answer.

Perhaps he knew it wouldn't do any good.

“Oh, Sway, here he comes again.”

Viktor felt the flush creeping into his face already, but steeled himself and continued forward defiantly. He was somewhat heartened by the look of startled disdain the portal keeper’s companion gave him, clutching his sheets of parchment like a suit of armor against the gate keeper’s dislike. He held them out.

“Sir, I really really think you should look at these!”

Antanas sighed, dramatically, rolling his eyes towards the heavens. “Viktor. If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times.” He held out one spidery hand. Viktor reluctantly relinquished the thick pile of pages to him. “A little residual magic is perfectly natural-”

“Residual?”

Viktor couldn’t help but notice the sudden stillness in the stranger’s stance, the lack-of-motion finally making him realize that the stranger wore Magistrate robes.

Antanas, too busy ridiculing his underling, did not attend, carrying on blithely.

"Oh, yes, residual energy from when we use the portals to transport-"

“It’s the inverse.” Viktor interrupted, emboldened by the Magistrate’s attentive stare. Antanas trailed off, looking bewildered.

"Beg pardon?"

Viktor snatched the papers back - startling even himself with his daring - and spread them on the table. The pages were filled, front and back, with time tables and equations and doodles in the margins that had made sense at the time he’d drawn them, but only now served to make him look like a madman.

"The inverse. The energy's there up to twelve, fourteen hours, sometimes up to a full day after you sent them."

Antanas didn't respond. He just let out a haughty gasp, reaching out to delicately lift one of the sheets of paper. The Magistrate smacked his hand down with a growl. Antanas jerked his hand back, nursing his knuckles as he continued to say what he’d been about to sputter, voice less certain than it had been moments before.

“Where did you get that?”

“I stole it from your office.” Viktor admitted snappishly, before he continued with more confidence. “But you weren’t listening to me!"

"Well, you’re just-"

“How long has he been talking about this?” The Magistrate snapped in a voice that held no allowance for arguments. Antanas seemed to deflate.

“A…a month?”

The other man’s hands slammed down on the table so loudly that both of the churchmen jumped. “A month?!”

"Yes, sir, I started tra-"

"Magistrate Yvan, I-"

"Would both of you shut up?" Yvan glowered at Antanas. "I don't want to hear your excuses." Viktor almost took a step back when Yvan's icy gaze fell on him. "And you. Why didn't you approach someone else about this?"

The warm glow from finally having someone listen to him was gone, just like that - along with his voice. Viktor just stammered for a moment before Yvan started gathering up the papers, collecting them into a haphazard pile. He waved the pile at the door. "Get out of here while I try to clean up your mess."

The next town was just Cael and Kamen again, and after spending a week in the church with F'bael and Damyan snarling at one another, Cael was relishing the relative quiet.

Kamen had no pestering questions, no helpful advice about harassing portals, no thinly disguised jibes...

They just had to deal with the typical issues of illicit food delivery when they stepped from the portal to find a bored looking soldier waiting. Cael smiled, trying to look honest and earnest.

"Hello, sir, I know this is probably unexpected." He'd learned a lesson. The papers were now in the outside pocket: that meant less chances of getting shot for startling a soldier. "Last minute delivery and everything, you know? Rush orders and all that." He held the new papers out, still smiling, though he already felt the cold slime of sweat trickling down his spine.

The soldier didn't even speak. He didn't even really look at the paper - he just threw it a casual glance and waved them through. Either a testament to Cael's forgery skills...

Or just how bored the soldier was with portal guard duty.

For the first hour or so in the town, it looked like they were going to have a rare, once-in-a-blue-moon time where nothing went wrong.

To start, anyways.

They delivered the food to the local inn in companionable silence. The young woman who was waiting there seemed truly grateful. She also kept coming back to the bar as Kamen ate, speaking in low tones to him that Cael couldn't hear. He gave the younger man a wide grin, but kept his distance, content with a tall mug of beer and a moment to sit without having to think.

That moment was gone too soon. The door to the inn burst open just as Cael was lifting his mug for another sip, and a small, orderly line of soldiers poured in. Cael's eyes darted to the bar counter - the piles of food were gone, all secreted away before the soldiers had arrived. Good. That only left him and Kamen to worry about.

The soldiers approached Kamen first. Cael took that moment to slide the state permits out of his coat and shove them between the carved edge of the booth and the wall. He'd just redone the Church ones, he didn't want to have to remake confiscated state ones.

"I was discharged," Kamen was saying as Cael finally began listening. His city-bred accent was gone, replaced by the wide tones of a country boy. "'cuz of how my eyes is bad. I was hittin' my friends in training near as often as I hit enemies, an' I mean, look at me." He spread his hands wide, waving at the holes in his shirt. "I don't got money for specs or magics, so out I went."

The soldier seemed satisfied with his story, some of the hunting stance going out of his pose, but Cael was distracted by the soldier that slid into his booth.

"Papers, please."

Cael looked up to meet the same green eyes as the man who had given him the replacement gloves weeks ago. The soldier didn't give any sign that he recognized him, so Cael just pulled the papers from his pocket, sliding them across the table. The questions were exactly what he had expected - reasons of travel, what he was carrying, what he was doing there - and he answered them without even really needing to think about them.

"How'd you get the shiners?" That one wasn't what he'd expected, and he had to answer carefully. I got beaten up by the mayor of some horrible little village wouldn't exactly work.

"Got in a fight, sir," was all he said, trying to put just the right tone of nervousness in his voice. He could see Kamen watching him over the soldier's shoulder.

"Did you win?"

He managed a small smile that he didn't feel. "No, but you should see the other guy, sir."

Who I didn't even hit.

The soldier laughed, and stood, pushing his papers back. "That's what they all say."

And then they were gone.

Cael gave them half an hour to make sure, and then reluctantly collected Kamen from the woman at the counter, wishing to high heaven this was all just done. He'd had quite enough portals and soldiers...and winter wasn't even close to over.

Damyan returned before breakfast the next morning. Cael was the only one awake, drafting a letter to his father that he would never send. It helped, sometimes, just to get the thoughts out on paper before he burned them. Damyan grunted a greeting, about to head into the small section of the sanctuary he'd claimed as his own before Cael called out.

“Where’d you go yesterday?” He struggled to keep his voice casual, pulling his pen free from the inkwell. For a moment, the pen nib scraping the scrap paper was the only sound. Cael almost thought he wasn't going to get an answer as he dipped his pen again.

“Knife’s Edge.” Damyan finally admitted. Cael’s hand jerked on the pen, but he managed to hold still enough that the inkwell didn't topple. He let go of the pen, though.

"We’re two hundred miles away, how-" Cael remembered the globe, and bit down on the rest of the question, wondering, instead, why the wyrm even bothered to travel with them. He was obviously something more powerful. "Nevermind."

"You t'ink I ssent the ssoldierss." The dull way Damyan said it made it a statement, not a question. Cael sighed.

"I…don’t know what I think." He kept his eyes on the paper. It was easier than looking at the mage. “The timing does seem a bit...off.”

"You didn't assk F'bael w'ere 'e wass yessterday."

"...he was asleep the whole time we were gone." He didn't say it with as much confidence as he would have liked, and Damyan seemed to pick up on that fact.

"Really?" He reached out to grab Cael's arm, not letting go when the sudden pressure on the mottled lines made his arm throb. "You don't sseem sso ssure."

"Really?" Cael ground out between clenched teeth as Damyan inspected the talisman. "That's too bad, because I am..."

"Are you ssaying t'at becausse you are sscared of 'im, or becausse you t'ink itss impossible for 'im to 'ave done anyt'ing in the sspace of time you gave 'im?"

Cael was about to answer that it was neither of those but, rather, loyalty to several years of friendship when the door swung open and F'bael appeared. He raised an eyebrow at Damyan's proximity, but yawned.

"G'morning." He disappeared out into the other room, leaving them alone again. Damyan let go of Cael's arm, shaking his head, sadly.

"Becausse you are rig't to be sscared of 'im. More rig't to be sscared of him t'an sscared of me."

"Are you talking about me?" F'bael stuck his head back through the door, chewing on an apple from the store room. "Because you keep going quiet every time I come through here, and if I didn't know better, I'd say you two lovebirds were plotting."

Cael managed a disgusted face as he worked the talisman back in place, but his heart wasn't in the teasing.

"Were you really sleeping?"

F'bael shrugged. "Most of the time," he said, speaking around a mouthful of apple.

"And the rest of the time?"

F'bael gave a fluid shrug.

"That's for me to know, and you to find out, love."

And then he was gone, leaving Damyan staring at Cael with a challenging look. Cael slouched down in his chair, feeling a headache forming behind his ears.

Cael had always heard that bad things came in threes. That, he thought now, was a rather silly saying. Bad things didn't come in little things like threes. They came in bakers' dozens.

The latest was a run-in in Aouk again. They hadn't seen soldiers there since Damyan's little disappearing act a month ago, but it always paid to be cautious.

Unfortunately, 'cautious' this time meant running into Fennick. Cael vaguely remembered the man from that first meeting at Ulric's, what seemed like years and years ago. He was a thin, nervous looking man with fox-red hair and big ears. He fit his code name.

He was also furious, and Cael had to dart out of the way to avoid a repeat of the Mayor of Mikai now that the black eyes were finally going away.

"What do you think you’re doing?!” Fennick had one of Ulric’s portal talismans on a silver cord around his wrist. Cael flexed his fingers nervously, half-hiding behind Damyan's reassuring bulk. His arm wasn't turning colors under the metal.

“’scuse me?”

“Y’think to be checkin’ on the towns once you leave ‘em?”

That wasn't what he had expected. Cael stepped out from behind the other man, and pawed at his bad ear, head tilted. Maybe he'd misheard? He answered anyways, carefully. "We haven’t had ti-"

“There wouldn’t be a point.” Fennick interrupted. “There’s no one left in Icewyne, half of Rildyke’s under house arrest…don't even get me started on that mess you made of Mikai..." Cael opened his mouth to protest, but Fennick just barreled on. "Of all the different groups workin’ here? You lot are the worst. You’re a bunch of ruddy plague rats. Something’s following you ‘round, and it doesn’t leave a pretty trail.”

Cael gawped, though he couldn’t help but notice that both F’bael and Damyan moved, both to glance at the door. Damyan’s hand closed around the pendant around his neck. F'bael just shifted nervously.

He was going to have to figure out what to do about them, and soon, before one - or both? - of them turned on him.

Kamen’s tan face. meanwhile, had gone as pale as death. He took an unsteady step forward. “And Maiscev?”

“Maiscev’s made it out okay so far,” Fennick said, as Cael realized why the name was familiar. That town was the town they'd been at the other day with the girl at the inn. From the way Kamen’s shoulders relaxed, Cael could tell that was the answer he had wanted to hear.

"But I...guys." Fennick ran a shaking hand through his hair, the anger from earlier fading away into fatigue. Cael knew how he felt. "Just. You have to be more careful, yeah? Please? If we want to make even the slightest difference in this shitty country?" He waved at the portal. "You can't go giving all of us a bad name, or we won't be able to do our job."

He disappeared through the portal in a flare of light, leaving the rest of them staring at one another, not knowing quite what to say after that.

Plague rats? The thought was a haunting one, and Cael tried not to think about it as they finished the rest of the day's work, but later that night, Cael took the map from his pocket and flipped it open. Maiscev was still gray on the parchment. He stared at the tiny x for a second – then made his hurried, silent way the portal.

The white fire felt like a familiar friend as he stepped through, so used to the feelings now that he barely noticed them, save the crawling itch up his arm. It was growing - the twisting, curling feeling, and the blackness. It spread its ink-like tendrils halfway up his arm now, dark and frightening, but nor - oddly enough - malevolent.

It was pitch black when he stepped out of the portal. Pitch black and dead silent - at first. Maiscev's chapel had had lit candles the last time they'd been here, and there had been a choir practicing somewhere...

The more he stood there, though, the more he realized there were sounds after all. Far off, and no matter how much he strained he couldn't pick them out from the Salvar winds blowing outside the windows.

He made his fumbling way through the church, placing silence higher on the list of priorities than speed. It took him five minutes to find the door, but by the time he had, the sounds in the distance were obvious.

Screaming. The crackling voice of a fire, and the loud yells of a band of soldiers.

He cracked the door open an inch, and peered out into a world of chaos that the windows of the church had hidden. Half the village was on fire, thatch and wood buildings ablaze like the last fields of summer in a wildfire. It reflected off the snow, and the puddles were the snow had melted, and everything seemed twice as bright.

The windows of the church had been tarred over. The thick, sticky substance still smelled hot, and it stuck to Cael's fingers when he raised a hand to touch it.

He caught a glimpse of a soldier in a monarchy uniform. He hurried to shut the door, but it was already too late. He'd been seen, judging from the yell.

He didn't try to be quiet this time. He merely scrambled over the backs of the pews, feeling books rip beneath his feet and against his scrabbling hands when he misjudged the distance in the dark. He had just made it to the portal and the empty air was just starting to glow when the door burst open.

"Halt!" A voice echoed through the sanctuary, the tone mocking and derisive and not at all like a soldier who was meaning to be taken seriously. "In the name of the ch-king!"

The momentary slip of the tongue was what caught Cael's attention, and he looked back as the portal flared to full-life. The man in the doorway, face thrown into stark light by the portal, was not a soldier of the king. He'd seen that same face the night before, staring at him over the uniform of a church soldier.

Cael dove through the portal before the soldier could repeat his order, collapsing on the hard floor and realizing what that meant. Fennick was right. His own suspicions were right.

Damyan or F'bael...

One of them had told the church about Maiscev.

It wasn't the only thing Fennick was right about, much to Cael's unspoken dismay. They were getting a reputation, and Maiscev's complete destruction only made it worse. They were further out in the country now, the people they were dealing with were mostly peasants...

And the church was taking great pains not to get on those same peasants' bad side.

The next town they managed to get into after what the peasants were calling the Maiscev Massacre (blamed, of course, on the monarchy, as the soldiers had taken care to ensure) was cold and suspicious. The instructions had said to take the food to a tavern, and that's what they did, but Cael made sure to stay near Kamen as much as possible; as far from either Damyan or F'bael as he could manage.

It didn't stop him from hearing the sentence being finished as he stepped through the door. They weren't even whispering.

“You know, the going price on insurrectionists these days…we could prolly get enough to get out of this hellhole. Enough for the whole damn town."

Silence fell once the sentence finished, the rest of the tavern's patrons staring at him. Cael stood in the doorway, a sack of grain and bread over his shoulder, and just looked at the nearest table, shaking his head - he felt like he should say something, but the words weren't coming.

He didn't move until Damyan gave him a gentle shove.

Then he merely made his way to the bar, set the bag on the floor next to the stool, and stormed out, unable to even think. He was risking his life - they were risking their lives - for this? Hard-hearted Salvic bastards only out for themselves?

Part of him said they didn't really mean it, but a larger part of him knew that they probably did.

And that made it all the worse.

Antanas had guests the next time Foxlight contacted him. Magistrate Yvan sat at his desk in his place, and Viktor leaned against the wall, a vindictive smirk on his face.

They let him speak, though. At least there was that.

He spoke accusingly the first time the dome flickered to life, not even letting the mysterious informant finish his sentence. “Why didn’t you tell us you were using the portals?”

There was a long, startled pause. Now it was Antanas's time to smirk.

“Because,” the voice finally snapped back, still sounding somewhat stunned. “I honestly thought you would be able to figure out something that blindingly obvious on your own? And I needed to keep some secrets.” The voice grumbled. "How'd you finally figure it out?"

"We have our ways," Magistrate Yvan spoke before Antanas could respond. Foxlight fell silent for a long time this time around before the voice spoke, that trace of smugness slowly returning.

"Magistrate Yvan, so good to hear your voice." Antanas and Viktor exchanged startled looks as Yvan stared down at the dome with an imperious sneer.

"Cut to the chase." He snarled. "And we'll see about you getting a reward instead of sharing in the punishment."

"Uhm." Foxlight seemed thrown by that. Antanas wasn't surprised - all the time he'd spoken to him, he'd never so much as mentioned punishment. Mostly because as a portal keeper he didn't have the authority...Yvan did, though. And Foxlight definitely seemed to know that. "T-tomorrow or the night after, they'll be in Lovstok...and I can get you more information if you can get me out."

Yvan grinned, wickedly. It was the first expression Antanas had seen on his face other than a scowl. It wasn't an improvement.

"Tell me more about this whole Lovstok thing..."

Cael was hesitant to even go out of the church after their last close call. If they people they were trying to protect and help were going to turn on them...

He was starting to think more of Gjovik and home nowadays, but Ludvik had outright forbid him to go home; there was another group handling it. The papers with requests were starting to build up in a pile on the floor next to the portal, so he finally, after five days, worked up the courage to touch the wall again.

The first few missions they had had that had been successes had included all four of them, so now, at what Cael rather suspected would be their last such mission, all four were going again. Lovstok had been the latest letter, two nights ago...

So Lovstok it was.

Maybe he'd get lucky and whichever one of them was the traitor would stab him in the back. It was that thought that made him retrieve his dusty naginata from the floor of the balcony and strap it on beneath his pack.

Kamen seemed to sense what was going on then.

"We're quitting then, sir?" He asked in a small voice when Cael stepped into the portal room. Cael nodded, rubbing his eyes, feeling his face burn where his gray fingers touched.

"Yeah," he said, in an equally small voice as Damyan and F'bael both came into the room. They each carried their gear, and they were both pointedly ignoring one another. "It's not...we've got to quit before we..." He looked at both of them with the same expression: mingled fear and defiance. "We're causing more harm than good."

F'bael met his eyes with a solemn nod. Damyan just looked at the floor. Cael felt a brief pang of worry, but tried to shrug it off with a smile. "Once this is done...you just say the village, I'll open it. You can go home, or you can stay together, but me...I'm not coming back."

It felt better to say the words out-loud. Cael squared his shoulders, and brushed his fingertips across the portal. It sputtered and hissed to life - and Cael climbed through.

There were four other groups standing in the tiny chapel's stained glass portal room -Fennick's, and three that Cael didn't recognize - when they climbed out. Cael drew to a sudden stop, blinking in bewilderment, his brief brush with confidence gone at this unexpected greeting.

"Um. Hello?"

"What do you mean, 'hello'?" Fennick countered, holding up a handful of papers that looked an awful lot like the papers Kamen had brought him - the ones he had folded and shoved in the very bottom of his pack. Cael licked his lips, moving to help Damyan with the cart, listening to Fennick speaking. "Didn't you...call..." He saw Cael's look, and trailed off. "...no?"

"I...would suggest moving fast and keeping an eye out," was all Cael trusted himself to say. "Everywhere."

The suggestion didn't seem to entirely mollify the others, but they fell in line behind him nonetheless. He led them out, reluctantly, already working through stories for why they were here, why they had so many people...how many people they had, exactly.

The mental fabrications seemed to be going pretty well as they made their raggedy way down the narrow streets. He steeled himself when they turned the corner onto the street with the drop-off point and he saw the line of soldiers still several blocks away.

"Alright," he took one more step forward. "Let me do the talking, and we'll be..." He heard an odd, thunderously loud explosion and felt a shower of marble splinters burst off the wall next to him. "...okay." There was a second explosion and several shouts, and when Cael turned it was to see F'bael collapse to his knees, blood pouring freely from a wound in his temple. A third, and Fennick was beside him, half of his face gone.

Cael took a step back.

"Oh hellgates, they’ve got guns." And they don't want us alive, "Fall back, fall back, get going!”

Cael’s desperate shrieked orders seemed to knock some sense into the resistance members left. Cael rubbed his temple as he moved, wishing that he was something – anything! – more effective than an ink mage. He limped around the corner, heading for the church as fast as he could manage without drawing further unwanted attention.

This section of the city was sheer chaos, madness maddened and let loose. Cael rounded a corner, his feet skidding out from under him. He caught himself on the wrong hand, almost crumpling into a ball at the needles and knives of pain that shot through his palm and up to his elbow. His wordless howl was drowned in Damyan's roar and the sharp crack of a gun.

"Cael!"

Cael braced himself against the wall, expecting to feel the sharp, biting impact of the bullet. What he felt, instead, was like being run into by an oxcart. He hit the ground for the second time in a minute, feeling hot blood trickling over his back, and the pressure of a body crushing down on him.

He sat up, desperately shoving the weight off and struggling to flip Damyan over onto his back. The big man had a gaping hole in his back, something far beyond anything Cael could even begin to think about. The wyrmfolf reached out a hand, fingers dripping with vividly blue blood. Cael reached out to grab it, trying to ignore the gaping exit wound in the man’s chest, but Damyan knocked his hand away, reaching over Cael’s fingers to press down on the talisman.

There came a horrible burning pain that seemed to sear through his skin and bones, and the talisman disintegrated the same way Ulric’s summoning stones had. The powder, this time, seemed to sink into his flesh, blackening it in its wake. He bit back a shriek of startled pain –

And, just like that, the pain had vanished, leaving only the streaks on his skin to indicate that the talisman had ever been there. The talisman itself was gone.

So was Damyan. The big man had a smile on his face, as if he was laughing at some private joke, but the shine in his eyes was already going dull...and the sniper had had time to reload. The wall next to Cael's head exploded, showering him with wood chips this time. Cael let go of Damyan's arm and made like a hunted jackrabbit, all the way back to Kamen and the other resistance members who had made it to the portal.

It was a pitifully small number.

Kamen's eyes went to his hand with a look of open concern. Cael managed a small, pained smile, reaching out to touch the portal. It flared up just as it always had before, and there wasn't a single squirming feeling.

He didn't miss it as they bolted through.

F'bael lay on the cold cobblestones, listening to the ill-prepared resistance scatter at Cael's half-hearted orders. It was hard not to laugh at just how obvious it came across that the scribe wasn't good at orders - and hard not to crawl away when the one resistance leader - Cael had called him something like Fennick?- slammed into the ground next to him, splattering him with blood and bone.

But he managed, not moving a muscle until the shouts and gunshot echoes had faded off into the distance.

Then he stood, smearing the handful of red paint off on his shirt with a shake of his head. Humans are so dense sometimes.

He took care to walk slowly, avoiding the major thoroughfares as his hand went to the communication pendant he'd been using for the last month to contact the Church agents.

"Magistrate Yvan," he called, as the pendant warmed to his touch. Cael, if he acted according to form, would run home to his big brother... "Portal Keeper Antanas."

F'bael waited until the voice spoke in his ear, far away and hollow. "Foxlight? Is that you?" Oh good, he thought with a grin when Antanas's voice came through instead of the Magistrate's. He's easier to confuse.

"I have some news for you."

“It’s not working.”

“Oh?”

Cael stood at Ludvik's window the next day, feeling the now-familiar traces creeping up and down his back. Was it the portals doing that, or his paranoia this time? The creeping, crawling sensations that had faded with Damyan's death had returned early this morning, but now they seemed to be assailing his whole body.

He shivered, trying to shake the feeling off, and turned away from the window. He didn't want to see a besieged city. He'd seen enough of both sides' soldiers to last him a lifetime.

“Don’t ‘oh’ me, ‘vik, you know it’s not working. What are we really accomplishing?”

“There are a couple villages north that are still standing ‘cuz you managed to get them food, give it ti-”

"Someone tried to sell us yesterday." Cael interrupted, and Ludvik stopped.

“They what?”

“We got there, there were soldiers. And the mayor.” Cael’s voice was strangely icy, it chilled even him. “And F’bael, Damyan? They're dead.” He brushed the cuts on his face from the marble splinters - he hadn't even noticed them yesterday. "Three inches over, and I wouldn’t be here." Damyan died to save me. "It’s not working, alright? We have to call it off."

"It’s too late, innit? We're started, we're established, we're-"

"Plague rats." Cael said, viscously, though he left off pointing out the obvious, that Ludvik hadn't even been there. "At least one, maybe two of my guys were traitors. There’s at least six different groups out there now," It had been seven until yesterday and Fennick... "And all of ‘em are having more success than we are, alright? We’re just not cut out for this. I'm not cut out for this. I feel like I'm going mad."

Who knows, maybe I am.

Ludvik stood by the window, playing with the home-sewn curtains with shaking fingers. Cael heaved a sigh, carding both hands through his hair until it stuck out like a dandelion's fluff. "Look. You're fine, 'less they catch me here. They don't know you were involved. I'll just...get out of Salvar again. I don't think I should have come home."

Ludvik looked as if he was about to respond to that - but his forehead creased with a thoughtful frown.

"Wait. You said F'bael...died?"

Cael heaved a frustrated sigh, gesticulating madly. "Yes. Yes I said that. Shot, right here." He tapped his fingers against his temple, eyes flaring. "Blood and brain and..." He lost steam rather quickly at the memory, finishing lamely. "...yes. Dead."

"But...I saw him. Downstairs. This morning."

Now it was Cael's turn to freeze, feeling his blood turn to ice.

Damn it. Damn it. He was seven kinds of idiot, he was a plague rat, he was going to get everyone he knew killed. He lunged and caught Ludvik's sleeve, dragging him towards the door.

"We gotta go. Now!"

Ludvik didn't react fast enough, trying to tug free to grab his coat. Cael bit back a whine, latched onto his arm, and dragged his heavier brother with all his might. "No time, just come on!"

Either he pulled hard enough or his sudden mixture of adrenaline and terror was contagious, because Ludvik finally allowed him to drag him out the door. The two men pelted down the stairs, Cael shrugging off his pack as he went, digging through the piles of junk he'd accumulated, looking for a very specific pile of papers.

They were halfway down the last flight of stairs to the portal room when he found it with a crow of triumph. Finally something had gone right! Ludvik started slowing down. Cael wound up missing a step and plowing into his back, but that was alright.

He set the papers down on the stairs, three per stair for five rows of stairs, with the circles he'd drawn last night face up. No one would jump that many stairs in here, they'd hit a wall before they hit the last one. That should slow them down just a bit when they did follow. He shoved Ludvik's shoulder, not letting the older man catch his breath. "I said keep going!"

The finally reached the portal room, both breathing in sawing, rasping breaths. Ludvik stared at the portal, the only way out in the dead end room, and flung up his hands.

"Great. Now what?"

Cael managed a sick smile.

"Trust me." He limped to the portal, and gently placed his hand against it. He could have kissed it when he felt the skitter lance up his arm, and saw the white fire.

Ludvik's jaw dropped, and he reached out to catch Cael's hand, looking the faded gray that smeared his arm up to his elbow. "What's happened to you?"

"Doesn't matter," Cael replied, waving at the portal. "What does matter is that goes to Gjovik. Get your wife, get your kids, get as far away from Knife's Edge as you possibly can."

Ludvik took a step toward the portal. "What about you?"

"I...can't go there. I have to go somewhere else so that if-" Not if, really, more when, "-if they check where you went, the portal will send them somewhere else first." He growled at Ludvik's look of incomprehension. "It's just so they won't know for certain where to start!"

"...you're not thinking about doing something stupid, are you?"

Cael shrugged, trying to not look as exhausted and sick as he felt.

"You mean like this whole damn month?"

"Caelric-"

"This conversation is done." He planted his feet, and tried to shove his brother into the portal. Ludvik planted his feet and stayed put. Cael dropped his arms and glared, reaching back to loosen the straps around his naginata. "Ludvik. Go through the portal." He could hear footsteps off up in the distance, and if he could hear them Ludvik could definitely hear them, and yet he still stayed, obstinately. Cael felt his naginata fall into his hand as Ludvik protested.

"I can't let you do that, Cael, Mother would kill-" he was still talking when the butt of the naginata slammed into his chin. Cael didn't stop to stare at what he'd done. He just bent down to shove his brother's inert form through the portal. He told himself not to worry when he stepped back. Gjovik still held church services. Ludvik would be found before he could freeze.

Cael waited, leaning on his naginata, his breath caught in his throat –probably blocked by his heart- for the white light to fade. he could hear the shouts of soldiers getting closer, and the sounds of heavy boots on the stone of the stairs.

It seemed to take forever for the room to go dark again. He had to work in that dark, still seeing spots in his eyes, to find the arch in his trembling fingers, not even thinking about where he would go; just knowing he had to go.

The white light finally sprang back into existence as the door behind him slammed open. He spun on his heel to force a defiant glower at whoever had stepped through the door, feeling a cold rage flickering up the sides of his stomach when he realized it was F’bael.

“Had to go and show up here, ruin everything?” The elf snarled, dried red paint still visible in the roots of his hair. “I could've been good and done with this already. Now I have to hunt down that stupid brother of yours…”

Cael glared. "Leave Ludvik alone."

"Why the seven hells would I do that?" F’bael cocked his head, golden eyes gleaming in the light flickering around the portal’s edges. “You’re a matching set now, worth more t’gether than you are apart…and if he’s as big an idiot as you are, he’s gonna come running back here the moment he realizes what you’ve done."

Possibly he would have, in the past, Cael reflected as he watched the dark elf warily. But in the past, he’d only had him and Cael and the rest of their brothers to worry about. Now, he had his wife and kids and the rest of the fledgling revolution...

If they get to Ludvik…

“Oy, 'bael, catch up with ‘im?” The rough voice echoing down the stairs jolted Cael back to the situation at hand. “I dunno what he did, floor’s been magicked or somethin’…”

“Yeah, I caught up with him,” F’bael yelled back, half-turned to look out the door. Cael’s hands tightened around the naginata shaft, shoulders tensing for the lunge. “You should be able to move again in a minute or two if you just sit tight…”

“Oh yeah? These paper things work on ‘im, then? Gotta few things I’d like to try on him when he can’t move…”

“I think you’ll get your chance then, officer…who knows," The dark elf was leering. Cael somehow knew he was thinking of Damyan again, and it only added to the cold anger gathering in his gut. "He might even like it. How about it, Caelri-” F’bael was in the process of turning, grinning like the cat who’d just eaten the canary – until Cael sprang, driving the blade of the naginata up and through his throat.

The dark elf’s eyes went wide as his knees gave out, hands closing on the naginata’s shaft. He twisted and writhed, breath catching and bubbling painfully, thickly. Cael had to keep his eyes squeezed shut tight just to keep his grip on the polearm’s shaft, just to force himself to finish the deed, just to convince himself he wasn’t making a horrible mistake.

The door smashed back open and Cael steeled himself - catching half-impressions of the ongoing rush of soldiers from the corner of his eyes - before forcing himself to reach out and grab F’bael’s shirt, pulling his twitching form into the portal. The elf was only halfway through when the white fire burned through in a raging, heatless inferno, taking them somewhere else entirely.

When reality reasserted itself - solid beneath his boots – and he could see again, Cael fell to his knees, driving the naginata, blade-down, into the packed snow as hard as he could manage.

The long blade pinned the elf’s bloodied corpse to the ground before Cael went down on his hands, hard, breath stolen again by the cold and the sheer enormity of what he'd just done.

Only half of the elf was even there anymore. He was just gone from the waist down, and the smell rising from the stained and steaming snow was too much for Cael to bear.

He heaved in a single wracking breath and vomited into the snow, feeling his eyes burning and his stomach lurching painfully. The adrenaline had left as swiftly as it had come, leaving him shivering on his hands and knees in the snow, feeling the cold seeping through his trousers and sinking into his sore muscles.

He’d done it.

He’d got Ludvik away, and he’d even got himself out in the process.

He’d…

He'd killed…

No. Everything is going to be okay now as long as I don’t think about F’bael, he’d just need a minute or two don’t think and then he could find Kamen, pick the fiefdom closest to the border don't think and…

He flopped onto his back, letting go of the naginata and closing his eyes. The ground was lumpy, hard, cold and uncomfortable, but he was alone. He was free. He didn't have to think about another trek through cities that he didn't understand, he wouldn't have to think of another lie, or more people dying on his account. Wouldn't have to think-

He heard the crunch of snow simultaneously with the sudden press of cold steel beneath his jaw; a stinging prick that drew a thin line of blood, hot against his skin. He went limp on the ground, letting his hands fall open - no threat, not armed - but feeling no real emotions. He was too drained for that - possibly too drained to feel anything else, ever again.

It was only then that it really processed that since he had meant to go to Heivernok, he was probably...

His eyes cracked open to give him a glimpse of the twisted framework of a stained glass window. The rubble pressing against his back had used to be the Heivernok church; now dismantled into soulless wood and stone and glass, all covered with a single night's dusting of snow.

He raised his eyes reluctantly - it was as if he was in a moment between moments, and acknowledging what he knew had happened would make it real - to see the circle of soldiers standing over him. Dark, emotionless eyes met his own, above a mouth with teeth bared in a dead smile that made the temperature drop another ninety degrees. He abruptly felt the terror creeping back into that empty space where his emotions belonged as he cringed against the twisted remains of the church.

"Caelric Stranddsen," The soldier's voice was as cold and dead as his smile and his eyes. "You are under arrest."

The only time he saw real light following that was when they dragged him out of his cell a week after what they called – mostly in jesting, jeering tones - his trial.

It was to make him watch them hang Kamen.

They had an execution chamber down here. Cael couldn't even put into words how wrong that seemed - in a church? He'd grown up in Salvar, spent his adolescence in Knife's Edge, he knew the stories as well as any man. Better, in all likelihood, since he'd helped spread them. But, once again, truth was worse than fiction.

The younger man – his clothes in tatters, his face smudged with dirt and dried blood - didn’t even look his way as they led him beneath the makeshift gallows. There was no crowd, just him, Cael, and four soldiers – two leading him, two guarding Cael.

Cael rather thought the guards were overkill. He was already in chains. He hadn’t slept more than three hours at a time in a month and a half now, and he hadn’t eaten a decent meal in longer than that.

What do they think I’m going to do, overcome them with the power of my mind?

"You’re going to watch, right," one of the guards at his elbow said, smiling amiably when Cael turned to look at him. "Or we," he jerked his thumb at his fellow, smile sliding into something more sinister. "We got the authority to carve your eyelids off. How’s that?"

"I’m going to watch," Cael managed to reply, voice low and subdued, already going hoarse from disuse. "If only because he deserves to know that someone knows he died for them…"

And if only so I can have another reason to hate you fucking bastards.

The soldier who hadn’t spoke yet spat in the dirt, full attention on the gallows. The one who had been doing all the speaking rolled his eyes, flopping down on the scaffolding’s stairs in a jangle of sword-belt and keys.

"Noble, aren’t ya? I bet ya five grace he don’t last a full minute."

Neither he nor Cael got a chance to tell, because Cael launched himself at him the moment he heard the trapdoor release, barreling him over in a lucky strike - the guard hadn't been expecting it any more than Cael had. He sank his teeth into the guard's shoulder and clamped down hard, until he could taste blood on his teeth and the sound of yelling blocked out the sounds of the rope and Kamen's gasping.

He didn't have to listen anymore when a sword hilt smacked his temple and everything went black.

some time later...

He didn’t really even remember why he was here anymore. He just knew that he was. He was here and he wasn’t supposed to be and everything, as usual, had gone horribly wrong.

There were checkmarks on the wall – forty? Maybe fifty? He hadn’t counted them in a while, he couldn’t remember – but even they were useless. There wasn’t an outside light to judge time by: only a torch burning in a sconce set into the wall on the other side of the hall, and sometimes even that went out for what felt like weeks on end.

He sat in the corner on his bare heels, back pressed against the wall, and stared at the dingy floor, scratched and bruised fingers pressed to his mouth. The intricate network of symbols he had scraped into dust stared back at him, accusingly. It was right, he knew it was right, but something was missing - something big was missing and it was making his skin twitch and crawl beneath the layer of grime and blood.

His tongue found one of the old cuts on his hand, and he worried at it with his teeth without thinking of what he was doing, the tiny sting nothing compared to the dull ache just barely beginning to fade in his back and his legs, weeks-old whip scores and burn marks and marks that he couldn't even remember what had made them.

The chain around his ankle jangled when he moved, jarring and loud, but he was so used to it by now that he didn’t even react.

He just stared at the symbols unblinkingly, trying to figure out what wasn't there so that his skin would stop crawling and maybe he could sleep without adding another scratch to the wall.

He had the sinking suspicion - just like the day before, and the day before that, and possibly even the day before that - that it wasn't going to happen.

To be continued.

...to find that memory prick your thumbs -
You'll tell them where we run to hide,
I'm already dead; it's a matter of time...
Afraid of Sunlight - Marillion

Out of Character:

Never missing a deadline again. Ow, my hands hurt. Typing this whole thing in such a short time felt like nano all over again, and it's not as polished as I had hoped, but hey! It's got the plot I wanted done in chapter two done and I have learned a powerful lesson about the evils of procrastination that I will inevitably ignore! Go me! "Spoils." -Belongings: Cael loses his personal freedom, and ownership of his personal belongings. Nothing is destroyed –as a matter of fact, most of it is in the cathedral, quite near where he’s being held prisoner - but he can’t get to it. Yet. +Portal Magic: Close proximity with Ulric’s amulet over the month of travel - and its subsequent merging with his person - coupled with his extensive use of the portal networks in that month has let him pick up a passive knowledge of the Salvic portal network: he can influence which portal he will emerge from once he’s actually started the process of traveling, and he can activate the portals without needing an amulet, despite him not being a portal-mage. This skill is more or less confined to being useful only in Salvar, though the portals in Haidia may react similarly.

Byzantine

Hey there! Sorry for the delay, though I’d like to say that I did forget claiming it and the tournament has been eating up a lot of my time. I will be getting this up ASAP though. Lol. And just as you requested, something between bare bones and too much… we’ll see how that goes. I tend to make a lot of notes as I go.

STORY (18/30)

~ Continuity ~ 6

~The backstory that you gave was well done, I got a good feel as to who you were and as it progressed, why you were there. However, what I didn’t get was how you got there. How did Cael get involved in the smuggling of food aide? I got that your brother and the mage you knew were helping out, which would be reason enough, but didn’t see it fully expounded upon.

~ Setting ~ 6

~From post to post the setting was consistent and well done. Though Salvar is pretty easy to get annoyingly bogged down in snow and wind, you did a good job of not being absorbed in a repetitious way of explaining where you were and how it looked. My only suggestion is to use it a bit more, like you did in a few posts of note. The opening post, with the ink being frozen over and blowing about the notes, that was well done. Things like that help, and ‘using’ the setting doesn’t always mean picking something up to fight with it, and can indeed be used in such a way as just to be interacting with it (or in this case it interacting with you).

~ Pacing ~ 6

~See First comment in Action.

~There were a couple times when it felt a little more rushed then it needed to be. The death of your drow friend-turned-traitor towards the end was somewhat sudden. So was falling through the portal and being caught by the guards. Slow down a little bit around the points that have combat or advance the plot in a bad way and you’ll be completely set. All in all the pacing was not bad though, the story flowed a bit slow on its own, since it was mostly just delivering foodstuffs and trying to worry about who the ‘plague rat’ was in the group. But still well done…


CHARACTER (21/30)

~ Dialogue ~ 8

~Everything was well done, realistic, and not overly done or cliché. Nothing really to note here, as you seem to have a very firm grasp on dialogue and the way it reflected in the characters.

~ Action~ 6

~In the 4th post you had a very sudden, seemingly rushed encounter with the soldiers of the Church. I had to read over it a second time to get the feel for what was happening. A little elaboration that would have helped out a lot, since it was sudden and made the pace go from slow to INSTANT. Haha.

~Oh my! Intrigue with the portal keepers! I loved the 6th post because it made me wonder, pulled me to the edge of my seat, so to speak. Wonderfully done without overly being done, or the information about the portals instantly being known. It also set up a very good side story, of sorts, that made me wonder what would happen next. The clerk’s notes, the disregard by his superiors, and the one sent to check it out without any real haste… very well done.

~ Persona ~ 7

~Only comment is that you showed a lot more than helped the reader ‘feel’ the characters out. Things that stood out were why was the drow turning on the group? Was he getting a really good pay out of it? I remember seeing maybe once or twice something about being paid, but nothing specific. Other than that the way you showed the characters was well done, and you have a good hold in your mind as you write to keep them consistent. A little bit more background for them, at least in the scope of how they relate to the quest, would do well to make this better as well.



WRITING STYLE (21/30)

~ Technique ~ 6

~It’s probably just the way you write, but it feels that hyphens are a bit overused. I counted about 20 in the second post alone. Other than that you tend to throw in advanced techniques at times, but not enough to really note. Try and spice up the writing and you’ll get the reader’s interest without question. I will not the multiple times you used foreshadowing, and how well it was done. I liked it, and would like to note that not a lot of people use it, and it is a relatively easy technique to use that sometimes gets passed over or missed by the reader. My only suggestion is to maybe disguise it a little more in the thread, so that it’s not BLUNTLY and explicitly punching the reader in the fact. Don’t feel bad about writing it out so that the reader questions what or who is doing what… because if it’s clarified later on it is fine as long as it’s not hard to follow and makes people unable to understand that it is, indeed, a fully thought out post. Not sure if I explained that correctly or not, if you don’t understand feel free to PM or IM me and I’ll help you out.

~ Mechanics ~ 7

~Just a few scattered spelling mistakes, or missed punctuation. Nothing major, as some of them were mistaken words that were easy to mess up and things that Word wouldn’t catch. Such as typing in ‘foot’ instead of ‘food’, things like that. I didn’t note all of them, for the sake of keeping this closer to the size that you requested, but did note things below that stood out aside from the spelling.

~ Clarity ~ 8

~Other than the note I made in actions regarding pacing, it was all clear and easy to follow. The note I made in technique regarding hyphens made it a little bit hard to read at times, but all in all it was pretty good.


WILD CARD!!! 7

General Notes

~ “He stood on the stoop for a moment, willing some of the feeling back into his toes, watching the snow drift across the broad, smooth street.” [2]~ You went from getting the ‘feeling back into his toes’ right into ‘watching’. It’d be fine, except for the small fact that you did it without a period or some notification that you were changing the subject of the sentence entirely. Something, either a period to separate the two different trains, or something before waiting will help with that.

~ “…they wouldn't be needed when the only patrons weren't supposed to be there in the first place.” [2]~ A confusion in text, since you are the only one there. I think it’s supposed to be ‘the only [patron wasn’t]’

~ “the beasts needed fed” [8]~ beast needed [food or feed].

TOTAL

(67/100)


GAINS/REWARDS!

Inkfinger receives 2400 exp; 425 gold

Due to the fact that we are ‘between chapters’ for the FQ, because it ended November, the exp and gp are not doubled. However, I did add a little extra to the gold for your troubles and because I really liked the quest. Good luck in future endeavors.

Exp doubled due to the FQ

Exp and GP added.

Someone needs to close this for me as well.