Byzantine

[Inkfinger]

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.

[Inkfinger]

"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."

[Inkfinger]

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.

[Inkfinger]

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.

[Inkfinger]

“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."

[Inkfinger]

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.

[Inkfinger]

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.

[Inkfinger]

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.

[Inkfinger]

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.

[Inkfinger]

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..."