The Catacombs of Scara Brae: Dead Sun Rising

[Caden Law]

Sortasolo. Sortanot. You'll see.

The University of Scara Brae was, if nothing else, progressive: It actually had a Wizard on staff, despite heavy opposition from the well-connected twists over at the Ordo Malleus. The Provost, a hard-nosed ex-knight who still kept his axe for grinding, had a nasty habit of telling them where to shove their libraries of arcane knowledge if they didn't want someone thoroughly trained in the safe handling and maintenance of it on staff at all times.

The Wizard in question was one of only a handful of such practitioners on the entire island. The only ones actually sanctioned by the Crown to operate out in the open. Scara Brae had a certain problem with amateurs and outright criminals, particularly with the wyrmfolk brood-covens and the lethal magi sometimes employed by the Scourge. That was where the Ordo came in. But the Ordo, much like its Salvic inspirations, had a nasty habit of getting out pitchforks and torches and letting the Thaynes sort the ashes. Those who operated with sanction didn't sleep much. And the University's Wizard, who spent his spare time researching what lurked in the shadows beneath Scara Brae, slept even less than the rest of them.

His name was Judd Eisenmas, though the plate on his study's door only listed it in Sideways Diamonic and most of his students, if you could call them that, knew him by his Sorcerous Name of Redwind. He was a man with a pasty Salvic complexion, brown hair and eyes that looked red in the proper lighting. He had a stubble-beard on his chin and a permanent case of five-o'-clock shadow everywhere else. His hair was a badly trimmed mess and he was rail thin from not eating nearly enough. He actually looked right for the type of practitioners the Malleus was so hellbent on burning at the stake. One of the core reasons they didn't was the fact that Judd had spent several years working in the City Guard as the founding member of its forensic alchemy squad. He still had personal connections to Left-Handed Durris. Still went out for drinks with some of his old Guard buddies, when they could haul him off University grounds.

And he still spent long nights poring over information about something the rest of the city had seemingly forgotten: the Catacombs of Scara Brae.

Two years ago, the Catacombs were discovered by accident when a low-level Scourge decoy fell down an empty well in the Temple district. Durris had managed to convince the Queen to authorize expeditions into the Catacombs, but only a few parties ventured in and...something strange happened.

They never came out, except for when they never went in.

Judd spent the better part of two months trying to figure it out. A number of adventurers went into the Catacombs -- he knew all of their names and had several of their wills as a precaution -- but they didn't seem to have ever gone in at all. One, Teric Bloodrose, had apparently left Scara Brae more than a month before he set foot in the Catacombs. Rumor had it that this was the same man who helped to kill Saint Denebriel. Another, Xen Dasen, didn't even seem to exist at all. Judd had hair samples of him, had tried tracking spells, and still couldn't prove the man had ever existed. Another still actually sent Judd a letter once -- an Aeraul Smythe -- commenting that he had memories of going in but none of coming out.

Judd almost discounted him when the man added that he could remember taking part in some odd tournament. But too many of the descriptions he gave seemed to match obscure bits of lore that kept turning up in Judd's studies of the University archives.

Research was slow going. Judd was retired from forensics, but the Guard still called him in as a consultant from time to time. He had to contend with class after class of rookie witch-hunters looking to pick him apart; to study him as if he was their enemy, rather than someone trying to teach them about the enemy. And he taught some of the amateurs too, just enough to keep them from killing themselves. His personal library was never the same room for more than a week at a time either. It didn't move, didn't change; the books rotated. It was a concession to the Ordo. Every week, Malleus inquisitors came calling, ransacked the joint, then threw everything back in no real order. Judd had to spend days just trying to find where everything was, and then they'd wreck it again.

This week was, fortunately, less hellish than others. Judd sat alone at his desk, clad in his red bedroom robe with his Hat standing off to the side. He heard the steady patter of rain, was bathed in the flickering glow of lamplight from several directions at once, and had the security of two concentric layers of hexagrammatical wards built into the room. It wasn't enough to keep him from having nightmares whenever he dozed off, but Judd was a Wizard. He would take what he could get.

And tonight, he had gotten a phrase.

"Rises the Amethyst Sun," he read, translating from a variant of Diamonic that was so old most of the very concepts it relied on were barely understood anymore. The Althanas of today didn't have anything close to kébraffle, for instance, nor could it even be approximated in most modern languages. Judd had to translate it through several less ancient forms of Diamonic, then into Raiaeran, then into common. It was a patch job at best.

And Judd knew it was probably close to being right, since his speaking the words was immediately followed by an uncharacteristic crack of thunder and lightning outside. The storm was too soft for that. Should have been too soft for that.

Thunder again. Judd held up his hand and summoned his rod from the shelf. It was a metallic club covered in runes and oddly placed lines; a ferrourge's weapon of choice.

Judd waited patiently, not looking up from his notes.

There was no thunder this time. Just a hard rap at the door.

It was well past two in the morning. It was raining and thundering outside. Judd was tampering with forces he did not -- could not -- fully understand. And now he had a visitor.

"What could possibly be wrong about that," he wondered, taking aim on general principle.

[Caden Law]

The door did not explode.

This was noteworthy because the Wizard called Blueraven had seen a lot of doors explode over the years. He had blown more than a few to splinters and ash himself, and even kicked a couple right off the hinges with old fashioned Salvic manliness and heavy-duty boots he had no business owning. Let alone wearing. Constantly. He was about as close to perfectly familiar with exploding doors as you could get, to the point that he could tell you each and every phase of the blast -- especially when magic was involved. First, the door bulged a little bit at the point of impact. Then there might be a flash of light through the cracks or along the seams, especially if it was wood. Then the hinges would fail and the frame would warp.

Then it was all over but the bleeding. Splinters might not seem like much on their own, but set them on fire and throw them at a target with enough force and in large enough numbers...

Caden still remembered seeing his first fatality as an adventurer. It was a cannon fodder fighter the old Patton Ventures company had picked up in a town whose name Caden only remembered in notes. Young guy. A vampire's territorial blast-door trap reduced him to a spread of bloody hamburger meat all the way outside the building.

What happened to the door of Redwind's study was not like that. In point of fact, it was like little Caden had ever actually seen and it made him glad that he had the forethought of being Out of the Way when it happened. A tightly focused spray of debris -- metal shaving, dust, so on and so forth -- flayed right through the door like a weaponized sandblaster. The stream spread out almost instantly as it passed into open air, shaping into the outlines of a dozen different runes and interconnecting lines; anyone unfortunate enough to actually be standing there in front of the door would have lost a few internal organs in the process.

The runes slammed into the opposing wall, and lines of blue light shot out on opposite sides of the hallway. Caden was trapped. And the lines were already moving in.

He held up one hand, took a deep breath and inhaled, snapping his fingers as he did so.

The lines froze solid as he tore the energy out of them. The runes locked into place, and snow fell in layers along the path of every single grain of dust and metal shaving. It was a dirty trick, but it was an effective one. It bought him time to shout, "Judd! Stop being a dick!"

"...Caden?" Redwind called from his office. Caden patiently stepped up to the door, presenting himself. He had taken off the armor since Scara Brae was a lot more peaceful than most parts of the world nowadays. He still wore the trappings of brazen Wizardry though, now with the added burden of a staff of power and a soldier's sword that was still worn with some pride on his back. A rod hung off his belt, and there was a great big bowie knife opposite it.

And the scars. Caden could not take off the scars, or the Sorcerer's Mark forever branded on his cheek.

"How in seven hells have they not arrested you yet?" Judd asked. Caden could see one of his eyes through the improv peephole left by the metal spray. His old friend looked more exhausted than Caden did. And Caden had been in a damned war.

"My charming personality and the threat of divine retribution. I'm on a first-name basis with Y'edda," he replied with an easy shrug.

It took Judd a long, long second to realize that Blueraven wasn't joking.

"You're...we've got a lot to talk about, don't we."

"Bet your red Hat on it."

"Come in. I'll see to it we've got some tea. This is going to be a longer night than usual."

[Caden Law]

Wizards are secret keepers. It's one of the most defining things about them. The word arcane itself, used so often to define the powers they draw upon and the knowledge they burden themselves with, is an old word for something secretive. They are also an incredibly varied bunch, just as prone to knifing each other in the spine at the literal drop of a Hat as they are to defend each other tooth and bloody nail with no expectations of reward or thanks. Wizards are taught by individual masters, in universities, by old dusty books passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. Collectively, they are their own best friend and worst enemy. An old saying, recorded from the words of the White Lady Anon, puts it best: A Wizard Is.

Wizards are secret keepers. But it's best to remember exact wording: secret keepers. Plural. Among themselves, Wizards gossip like housewives. They form alliances, rivalries, friendships clad in adamantine and bitter hatreds that burn cities. The Wizards Blueraven and Redwind went back decades -- they both came from the same general order, anchored in the same region, and both left for roughly similar reasons at the same times in their lives. They met in Scara Brae just before the Corpse War in Raiaera and hit it off. And while they were Wizards, they were also men: friendships might get dusty, might get old, might even decay to nothing, but they are never forgotten and it doesn't take much to renew them.

Caden told Judd everything about the war. He told him everything about the trip north, about the death of Saint Denebriel, and Judd became the first -- possibly the only -- person to learn of the true death of Xem'zund. He took notes. Caden didn't mind. Judd even learned of his friend's ascension to Sorcerer, and dutifully recorded what Caden told him of the mechanics. He'd probably kill himself someday trying to obtain the same power or something close to it. He might even succeed. The Althanas of tomorrow could yet hold more like the Forgotten eras before it, but Caden didn't care.

When he was done explaining his own story, he took a long sip of tea and said, "None of that is why I'm here."

Judd stopped taking notes so abruptly his pen almost tore the paper. He adjusted his glasses, looked up and met Caden eye to eye from across a big, book-covered desk. He waited.

"Tell me what you know about the Catacombs of Scara Brae."

Thunder rolled, just as both of them knew it would. The universe operates on certain principles, after all, and one of the reasons Wizards can be bloody well lethal is that they're aware of them. Not necessarily well informed or particularly savvy about it since a lot of Wizards end up dying horribly by trying to lawyer around with the rules -- but still aware. Judd leaned back and fiddled with his glasses some more.

"Surprised you know about them. It's like everyone in the city but me has forgotten everything that doesn't involve keeping people out. I've gotten one or two parties -- literally one or two -- to go down there. The first died. The second...I don't even know what to make of it. How'd you hear of them?" he asked.

"N'Thayn'sal," Caden replied. "An alternate version of Althanas where everything that could go wrong, did, and in the worst way possible. Zombie empires, lichcraft, dying stars, wars in heaven, dead gods...the list goes on."

Judd stared at him.

"I'll tell you more later. Long story short: the Catacombs were mentioned in the tome I brought back with me. Which now rests with its original author, Greyspine. Something big is buried under this city. Big and nasty and viciously powerful."

After a pause, Judd shrugged. "Doesn't surprise me. Alright. The Catacombs are old. That's all I can say about them with absolute certainty, although I'm reasonably confident that whatever is down there is evil. Especially now that you've said that. It's a great big network of tunnels and chambers layered on and inside of each other, clearly affected by some kind of background magic. I can tell because what little I've got to go on about it hints at there being far larger chambers underground than should be possible; rooms with ceilings higher than the Palace rooftops, for instance. There're at least two full-blown civilizations down there. Maybe three, maybe more. Undead as well, for whatever they're worth. Whatever is down there is also...irradiated, I think would be a good term for it. Or maybe contaminated. Have you been to the Temple district yet?"

Caden shook his head no.

"Around the entrance -- a big, empty well and some statues -- bars keep etching themselves into the dirt. Leaves fall in strange patterns, and liquids spatter the same way. Blood too for what it's worth. Since the locals keep cleaning it all up, there's hardly any sign of whatever taint is spewing out of that thing. The best I've been able to do is guess at it being some kind of Diamonic, but even that's pushing it. You can feel it when you get close enough though, and it's...it's not as strong as it was when they first opened the Catacombs. Woke me out of a sound sleep and left me praying in a Guard privy for three days straight."

"Sounds like I'm up against worse than I thought," Caden said, though any nervousness didn't show on his face. "What did you mean by one or two though?"

Judd told him about the first team and how they were slaughtered, and about the second and how reality seemed to shift so that they'd never gone down at all.

"Weird," Caden said.

"Wyrd," Judd replied, using a Y just because he could. "Almost all of the adventurers who went down there the first time around have vanished. The only ones left are Teric Bloodrose, who you seem pretty...familiar with, who went on to kill Denebriel, and a half-orc named Aeraul Smythe. He's still on the island if you're interested..."

[Aeraul Smythe]

It was late into the afternoon the next day and the rain still hadn't let up. Life in the city went on. Especially if you knew where to look. Scara Brae was surprisingly clean as port cities and tourist traps go, but it still had places that were less than moral. Fight clubs were common in the shadows of the Dajas Pagoda, ranging from short-lived, spur-of-the-moment beatdowns that drew spectators to long-running enterprises organized and protected by the Scourge. Even the Guards got in on it from time to time. For her part, Queen Valeena didn't mind so much.

Scara Brae wasn't independent because it was nice, after all. One of the reasons that kept it from being invaded was that it had a large, combat-trained population whose members knew how to weaponize anything from corpse dust to shoe laces to beer and candle wicks -- and if the island was ever invaded, none of them would have anywhere to go or anything to lose. Bloodsport also helped break up the monotonous labor of the docks, the shouting of the shops, and the pounding of constant construction, demolition and renewal. Scara Brae was alive.

So was its most infamous, long-lasting fight club: the Zirnden. It had gone through no fewer than ten incarnations over the past decade alone. It had been burned down, torn down, busted by cops, annihilated by Scourge defectors, blown up by magi, ransacked by looters, and even ritually sacrificed to summon a demon -- and those were just some of the 'endings' that had become well known. But it came back. It always came back, whether under the old management or new; whether it had the cage or not. The Zirnden was more than a physical place nowadays. It was a concept, empowering and enduring, and it would not be brought low by the mere destruction of some shell made out of wood and metal and concrete.

The people of Scara Brae needed it. For implicit protection, for stress release, for sheer bloody thrills -- the Zirnden was there. And it always would be.

Of late, the Zirnden had been reincarnated as a large underground chamber far inland from the docks, carved into what must've been solid bedrock if the walls were any indication. It stood free and laughed blood under the weight of a Guard-owned supply house, but chief way in or out was a tunnel from the wine cellar of a tavern near the Pagoda. Caden had been over the tunnel's path and found that it actually passed right through part of the Catacombs, apparently without either interacting. He tested the walls as he passed where they should've intersected and found nothing but a slight chill.

When he actually made it to the Zirnden, he found about what you might expect of a place thriving on its own illegality. It was one part speak-easy, two floors of dining and drinking, and one enormous cage hanging over a deep, empty pit. The only ways in or out were a pair of doors bolted shut on opposing sides. The cage shuddered on heavy anchor chains, the kind that could still a galleon in a hurricane. It shuddered because people were fighting in it.

There were four of them all total. Another one lay in a broken heap in one of the corners, and the sixth actually hung backwards with his head stuck out of the cage wall. It was chaos, but there was a method to it and Caden could see as much even before he took a stand where the spectators were gathered at their thickest.

One of the dead men, and they were dead, wore a tunic marked by an anchor. So did one of the men still fighting. The other dead man sported a red hood that now hung in tatters from his burnt, broken, busted neck. So did one of the remaining fighters.

Their opponents were clearly established as a team by the arm bands they were wearing, which was about the only thing they had in common. Immediately, Caden focused in one the big one. He seemed to be in charge, and he fit the description Judd had provided.

He had most of a head on everyone else in the cage. He had the brutal musculature of an orc and the body language of a human martial artist -- although not a very good one. Years of warfare showed Caden flaws in the orc's stances almost before he shifted into them. His body language also gave away the fact that he normally wore longer, less practical clothes; Caden knew because that's what he did as a Wizard. Every kick, every sidestep, every jump; the orc was used to dressing in some kind of robe or long tunic that might get tangled between his legs or caught on his feet. He moved his hands during each punch or block, as if compensating for baggy sleeves even though his current shirt didn't have any.

He didn't fight like any orc Caden had ever laid eyes on. And that made him a few notches short of terrifying. This, he knew, was Aeraul Smythe.

At exactly the same instant Caden made the identification, Aeraul ducked under his opponent's right arm. It was a big man, not as tall as the half-orc was, but easily as muscular. One swing was literally enough to send blue sparks crackling through the air like a leashed lightning strike. Thunder rolled in the Zirnden and the cage walls glowed for a fraction of a second as Aeraul circled around.

A palm strike.

A godsdamned palm strike.

The man's entire skull visibly cracked and rippled from the point of impact, sending a squirt of blood from the opposite ear as veins burst in his eyes and half of his teeth came tumbling out of a broken, dislocated jaw. There was a wave of smoke accompanying the blow, quickly obscuring the damage it caused, and then the fighter's entire body snapped to one side and staggered a few paces as if on autopilot.

He collapsed on the spot.

Dead.

From one good palm strike.

"Well," Caden mumbled as the crowd literally roared into his ears. "Can see why Judd didn't interview him too many times."

Caden shifted to look at the other two fighters, but it was already over. Aeraul's partner, a human monk or someone dressed like it, had already killed his opponent. Caden looked just in time to see the man hit his own opponent from the cage's ceiling with what looked like a knee to the scalp. Head and neck trauma did the rest, with a lot less blood and show than Aeraul's palm hit had accomplished.

The winners were announced by a bona fide gnome with a crowd cone, running around the cage's roof and dragging out every vowel for all it was worth. Caden barely deciphered their names: Aeraul and some guy named Rowan or Rowen. They had a fancy team name in Black Sun orc-speak, which actually translated as the punchline to an Akashiman sex joke.

Caden waited as attendants brought ramps up to the doors and let the survivors out. He watched them get mobbed by fans, offered everything from spare change to free drinks to bared breasts, and then watched them as they claimed a table near the pit and started racking up a bar tab. Most of it was the human. Aeraul seemed fairly reasonable. At least, Caden hoped he was.

"Okay," the Wizard said to himself as he approached the table. "Let's see what happens next..."

[Aeraul Smythe]

Aeraul Smythe had been asked a lot of absurd questions tonight. Most of them came from half-drunk female fans asking whether or not the rumors about half-orcs were true. Aeraul wasn't aware what the rumors were and made it a point of not knowing. Half the reason he had partnered with someone like Rowan was because the human was better looking and had a habit of attracting most of the attention from fans of every race and gender. Aeraul had also been asked if he could set things on fire, if he'd like to go pro, where his horde was...so on and so forth.

But no one had ever asked him what the blue-clad Wizard did, let alone in the way that he did it.

Blueraven, as he identified himself, literally swept aside a crowd of people from the table. One second they were there, the next they were all being compressed on the far side of the room without anyone the wiser for how or why. As the Wizard sat down opposite Aeraul and an increasingly belligerent Rowan, ice literally formed in the air. It took a scholar's eye to spot how it appeared in rhythm with Blueraven's breathing. It was thin, tall enough to reach the ceiling, and leaving an area wide enough to fit the table and its remaining occupants in relative comfort.

If anyone had any ideas about attacking Blueraven for hogging their champions, they stopped the instant eyes were set upon the Wizard's wide-brimmed Hat, with its narrow point and thick supporting belt. How anyone could even balance those things must've been a form of magic in and of itself.

"We don't want any trouble," Rowan said, except he slurred it into we dohn wan enny trubblesh. Aeraul remained stone-faced at the display of power, though he was privately having a mild panic attack. It's not every day one gets visited by a Wizard. It's even rarer to be met by one with obvious power, and an absolute death sentence to time it the way Blueraven did.

"I'm sorry," the Wizard said, holding up a hand in surrender. "I didn't mean to make that big a mess of things. I'm the Wizard Blueraven and I just want to talk."

"About?" Aeraul asked.

"Your experiences in the Catacombs of Scara Brae," Blueraven replied, leaning forward and steepling his fingers.

"...I never went down there," Aeraul mumbled, in much the same way as any man who's convinced he's gone insane.

Blueraven's glasses glimmered almost opaque. He exhaled magic, materializing as ethereal feathers between his table-braced elbows. "Exactly," he said.

[Aeraul Smythe]

Aeraul told him everything. He told Blueraven details that he hadn't even shared with Redwind. He spoke above the drunken rumblings of his partner and below the external clamour of the Zirnden's patrons. He spoke at length of the Catacombs' strange atmosphere, of the countless eerie writings, and of the alien cultures dwelling in the dark. Kobolds that had degenerated into rabid pack hunters. Fungi that walked like men. Whispers in the dark, shadows that moved, and even the footprints he could only remember in hindsight.

"And the scale of it," he said at one point. "I could swear on my mother's grave, Blueraven, that the Catacombs host chambers larger than this entire city. Places that don't fit in our world. Stepping into them, it felt like we were stepping outside of time and space and going...somewhere else. I don't know how to explain it."

He actually stopped for a sip of his drink at that point. Rowan had fallen asleep on the table by now, sufficiently tanked and familiar with the story that he didn't care to hear it any further.

"And there was a laugh too. Ghostly but I could hear it. And...I think there were seven of us? Eight? People kept appearing and disappearing. I still think the thief girl was...taken by those things. We called them fungans. They didn't have bones, Wizard. I'll never forget how they moved, how they shot without eyes..."

"What's the last thing you remember?" Blueraven asked.

Aeraul thought carefully and said, "We, Teric and I, we managed to defeat this big knight-thing. It was a close fight. I broke ribs, I could swear it, and the old man was just worn to his bones from exhaustion. I don't think I've ever had to fight so hard in my life, even here. We couldn't kill it. Teric had to trick it into killing itself. Bounced its hammer off some kind of magic lock, crushed its own chest in. I took its sword after that and...and I can remember using it elsewhere," Aeraul admitted this last part somewhat hesitantly. "In a tournament or something..."

Blueraven nodded. "Focus on the Catacombs for now. What happened after you beat the guardian?"

"...nothing?" Aeraul shrugged. "Just...nothing. I woke up in bed the next day and it was actually two days earlier and life went on. I don't know what to make of any of it. What do you think could have happened?"

[Caden Law]

"Paradox," Caden said later that night, sitting alone on a bench in the middle of the city. He was just close enough to the Temple district to feel the taint that Judd had told him about. It was simultaneously dry and clammy on his sixth senses, and even on his skin for that matter. Caden felt the hairs of his arms and legs standing on end, and tasted something like cold vanilla on the tip of his tongue. Caden reached out with the same skills he used to detect and manipulate temperatures, and even with those he could feel a pattern.

And it was a damned disconcerting one.

Turning letters and even whole words Sideways is considered a vital skill to Wizardry. It keeps the uneducated from reaping the kinds of power that a Wizard can possess, nevermind the amount of paper it saves. To the uneducated eye, a Sideways word simply looks like a bar code. They can only see it the way they see murky water from a pier: only the surface and whatever happens to breach it. Metaphorically speaking, a Wizard dunks his head into the same water and finds it all crystal clear. Caden had heard rumors that some of the older, more experienced Wizards could turn whole books Sideways so that normals -- and even lesser Wizards like Caden -- could only see them as a single line.

The catch is that turning things Sideways requires some kind of surface to write on. Stone, paper, even human skin; it has to be solid and flat.

There were words floating in the air around the Temple district, hidden just out of sight of ordinary eyes. Words that Caden could only infer the presence of through his Wizard's senses and his ability to manipulate the arcane.

Every single one of them was Sideways. No matter what angle Caden tried to look at them from, they were Sideways. It was magically impossible, but it was happening anyway. All the words were in a language that reminded him of the Henge Sorcerous where he'd been Marked an equal to Forgotten magi past, but there was just enough of a difference that he could only guess at most of the meanings. Diamonic of any kind was like that: shift a single accent mark in a throwaway word and you could turn an entire love letter into a hellfire spewing death curse. Judd, who managed to top Caden when it came to written language, had been working on this for two years without fully cracking what was written around the district.

Caden, however, wasn't patient enough to put that much time or effort into it. He was on a timetable and he had put off Scara Brae long enough. The Wizard shut down his extra senses one by one, then looked around for the patterns that Judd had mentioned. He didn't spot anything until a lantern came tumbling out of a second floor window nearby; the result of a loud, spirited argument of some kind. The lantern hit the ground and shattered, spilling oil and fire all over well swept cobblestone.

It took an attentive eye to notice, but the fire and oil spread in the likeness of a claw. Each and every wisp of flame arced up into the brisk night air like claws reaching for the moon. Even the smoke, what little of it Caden could see in the near-dark of Scara Brae at night, seemed to grip at the air around it. Caden watched and waited. The fire burned out quickly enough, leaving behind a pitch black scorch mark on the ground.

And this too was shaped like a claw.

[Caden Law]

"The hells you wanna talk about at this hour?" Judd asked at an hour perilously close to dawn. He didn't have mere bags under his eyes; he had luggage for a family of ten. Like most Wizards, he had gone to sleep in the kinds of clothes you could run for your life in: a long nightshirt accompanied by thickly sewn pants and socks that could make good tender if things got desperate. As was customary for Wizards of Judd's order, he actually slept in a Hat. This one was long and sloppy, ending in a soft point and lacking any sort of brim.

Judd hadn't worn it when Caden knew him a few years back. Judging by the wards blatantly sewn into it, he wore it now because he needed the damn thing just to keep the nightmares at bay.

"Sorry," he greeted, letting himself into his old friend's ramshackle apartment. Scara Brae was cosmopolitan and urbane, but it was still a living clash of progress and a total lack of foresight on the part of anyone near a set of blueprints. Judd's apartment was a two-room proof of that: it was a bedroom with a toilet room attached. No kitchen, no bath, nothing of the sort. Bad insulation meant that, at this time of year, it was already colder inside than out. Everything was a decent quality wood, the bed was surprisingly well made, and Judd had provided a shelf of arcane tomes to accompany his small work desk.

As was the case with most Wizards -- with most men in general -- Judd Eisenmas had a hell of a time separating Work from Life. The low wick and oil of his one lamp was ample proof of that.

"I've been digging around the city. I have an id-oh. Oh," Caden said, suddenly struck by how awkward the situation was. Judd had trouble separating Work from Life, but there were apparently exceptions to the rule. "Sorry to interrupt?" he asked in a whisper.

"...I'm not seeing double, am I?" Judd's lady friend asked. She was pretty enough. Not up to snuff with a lot of the Elves Caden had been blueballed by over the years, but certainly attractive in her own right. A brunette with hair dyed green at the ends, bright blue eyes and full red lips. She was paler than either of the Salvic-born men in the room with her, and wore little more than an Akashiman yukata and her Temple necklace to bed. The necklace was hemp and beads, accented by a few golden chainlinks.

"Not at all, dear," Judd yawned. "Just a friend from work who has no concept of sleeping. D'you mind if I step out?"

"Go for it," she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes and then grinning wickedly. Her teeth practically shined even in a room lit by nothing but moon and what was being cast off Caden's wand. "But you're gonna have to make it up to me..."

It didn't take a Wizard to figure out what that meant. Caden felt a pang of envy just thinking about it.

"Right then," Judd said hastily, then grabbed Caden by the shoulder and dragged him right back out into the hallway. "Let's take a walk."

"You have got to explain that one to me," Caden said once the door was safely shut. He whistled once they were down at ground level. "Guessing by the necklace...that was a Priestess of Y'edda?"

"Novitiate, yes. It's their second rank. There's Initiate, Novitiate, some crap I can't think of, then eventually you get to full-blown priests and priestesses. But for outsiders like us, they're all priestesses."

"Do they all not wear underwear?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Judd asked.

"...yes, actually. For research purposes," Caden said with an absolutely straight face.

[Caden Law]

Once Judd determined they were a safe distance from his apartment, he went from lockjawed nerd to outright braggart in ten seconds flat. Caden learned more of his fellow Wizard's sex life in ten minutes than he had ever wanted to know in a lifetime.

He also learned some relatively useful bits and pieces that could be distilled like so: "Her name is Rita Venker and she's a first year novitiate, just one year younger than me. I actually taught a class she was required to take as part of her magic awareness studies, then we hit it off over a game of Ten Thrones and it just went from there. We're not married. Or anything close to it. Juggling our duties to Temple and Arcana is a bit of a chore. Most nights, we just share a bed and mumble things at each other. Now and then though..."

Judd actually sighed here.

Caden considered his past experiences with women and managed to keep the bitterness out of his voice when he said, "She makes life worth living."

Judd chuckled. "Wouldn't go that far. But pretty damn close."

"I notice you were in such a hurry to leave her in peace that you left your rod," Caden said. "Sloppy."

Judd came a hair's breadth short of tripping as the realization struck him. It was little different from a slap to the face for one Wizard to point out that another was unarmed. Without so much as a word, Caden handed over his wand and Judd took up the task of lighting their path down the dreary, foggy streets of a Scara Brae pre-dawn.

"Heavy," he noted. "Could slap someone senseless with this thing. Heavy spiritually too. And...the synch is odd."

"It's from an alternate timeline," Caden told him. "N'Thayn'sal. I told you about it before."

"So you did," Judd sighed. "What is it you wanted, Caden? What did you find?"

"Confirmed the taint. Met with Smythe. I'm pretty sure someone managed to tweak his personal timeline somehow, with the net effects being that it changed everyone else's where the Catacombs are concerned. Has he been down there since?"

"No. Obviously, he's never been down there at all but-"

"But. When I...encountered Denebriel, and when I spoke to Zundalon, I learned that Time is...malleable. It's almost like a liquid, constantly shifting around without rhyme or reason or even a discernable pattern. And once you've moved through it, you become that much more resistant to any attempt to use it against you."

"Cut to the chase, Caden. I'm tired."

"I'm thinking about taking Smythe with me on an expedition into the Catacombs. Whatever's down there, I'm pretty sure we could kill it. Somehow."

Judd stopped walking. Caden kept on for a few more paces, then looked over his shoulder and waited.

"In that case," Judd started, stopped, thought, then continued: "You might want to look into taking his partner too."

[Leaf on the Wind]

It was just short of noon the next day when Rowan Stormwind heard a knock at his door. Which was more like a sledgehammer hitting a gong, given how hung over he was from last night. Hung over and sore besides. Competing in the Zirnden was a spectacularly bloody affair for the losers, but the winners rarely got out without being banged up in their own right. And he was still recovering from a particularly nasty stab wound he'd received less than a month earlier.

He scraped himself up out of bed and almost tripped over a pile of his own clothes en route to the door. He wore nothing more than a pair of pants and the gauze wrappings around his midsection. His sword, tied into its sheathe for much of the past two years, sat gathering dust in a corner. It was little more than a cane on most days.

"I'm comin', dammit!" he shouted, then propped himself up next to the door and waited for the pounding to stop. It didn't. If anything, it got worse. It was like listening to a demented pixie play drums behind his eyes, accompanied by a desert lodging itself securely in his mouth. Rowan's stomach churned as he undid the locks. It was an uphill struggle not to vomit as he pulled the door open...

...and found himself face to face with the debatably neutral Wizard Blueraven.

"'Syou," Rowan noted. "Whaddayou want?"

"Have you ever paid a visit to Scara Brae's Agatér Cemetary? The one with the mausoleums and the above-ground crypts for the Dasherhaven family, among others? Used to be tended by a big ugly oaf named Kellian Dirthauler? Ringing any bells yet or should I step out of the way right about...yeah."

Blueraven stepped to one side and, about a second later, Rowan demonstrated his talent at projectile vomiting. Ten feet, clear off the balcony-walkway that lead to his apartment, into a row of bushes and weeds that may as well have grown there specifically to catch it. Blueraven whistled once to show that he was impressed, then Rowan staggered by him and emptied the rest of his stomach off the balcony and into the shrubs.

"I'm guessing your neighbor below doesn't appreciate you doing that," Blueraven said.

"Not my problem," Rowan spat between hurls. When he was done, he had a cold sweat going and his hands were shaking. Blueraven studied him for a moment before obviously making the assumption that Rowan had thrown up so much over the past few years that he was able to aim it clear of his own lips. How his teeth were still white was anyone's guess. "What do you want?"

"Sober now?" Blueraven asked.

"Close as I'm gonna get for the day," Rowan answered, straightening off the balcony. "Answer the godsdamned question already."

"I want to know what happened the night you tried going into Agatér Cemetary."

Rowan visibly twitched. "I didn't."

"There are no records saying you did," Caden admitted. "No eyewitnesses to vouch for the fact that the dead were walking, or a little girl was found dead and mutilated near the gates...but you and I both know differently, Rowan. So let's cut to the chase. What happened?"

Rowan sneered and said nothing.

Blueraven waited, then sighed and bowed his head to inevitability. Rowan Stormwind's type were the kind of people who lived by ironclad ways of doing things, whether they admitted it or not. As a Wizard, Blueraven could see that. And he could dread it. And he could do nothing to avoid it.

"Okay," he said. "What would it take to make you tell me what I want to know?"

Rowan didn't smile much nowadays.

But he did grin like a maniac.