To the Citadel and Back

[LordLeopold]

"Damn," Anthony Stevens coughed, shaking a wet shoe out as he emerged from a mudpuddle. Leopold, stopped under the dripping awning at the front of the inexplicably named "Silver Pub," shook his head silently, but there was a grin on his face. Silas Witherspoon, his red seersucker suit flashing garishly under his soaking slicker, rushed around the puddle, squelching in the mud seeping up between the street's poorly placed cobblestones. Clutching his huge suitcase to his chest, the tiny charlatan staggered up to the tiny dry sliver pushed up against the wall and leaned against it, breathing heavily. Petunia and Icarus, perched on either of Leopold's shoulders, flapped their wings abruptly, spraying everyone around them with droplets of water that bounced off their already sopping capes and cowls.

The night was as black as an inkwell. Oppressively low clouds had rolled over the city as soon as the sun had touched the horizon, ending the day before its full time had been spent. Now the clouds were emptying out all over the city, flooding the streets with sudden ponds and streams that swelled into carttracks and splashed up the pants of the few foolish enough to be on the streets. There were no moon or stars tonight, only rolling clouds and sheets of water filling the sky. Wind slapped the rain up against Stevens's face every now and again, making useless the covering provided by the monk accompanying him. Said monk stomped his feet back to life on the dry ground and blew into his fist, briefly warming his hand.

"Well," Leopold said, turning to the shaved bald, almost adolescent monk shivered beside him. "No doubt the ecclesiastical powers that be have a fine reason for dragging us through this deluge, but I would be much more comfortable knowing exactly what that reason is." The monk, peering up at Stevens through the darkness, frowned and shook his head.

"Strictest orders to take you back, no questions asked," the monk piped. "Everything will be made clear in the Citadel... Your Highness." The monk tacked the honorific on at the last second, as if it had just nearly slipped his mind. Sadly, Stevens thought to himself, it probably did. His newly acquired title, King of Salvar, was a clunky albatross around his neck with those whom he had known before, or those who only knew of him by the reputation he had developed before disappearing with the Entente of the Light into the inner reaches of Corone and the barren cold of Salvar. He had literally been out of touch with most of Radasanth, his old Althanas haunt, for several years. Once he had known almost all the monks in the Citadel, most of the shopkeepers in the Bazaar, and half the important personages of the city: all in all quite an impressive feat for someone who had literally washed ashore with no prior acquaintances. Now, having returned, he found himself a ghostly memory in most people's minds, and a complete nonentity in many's. He was remembered as a listless Duke, not a military figurehead, if he was remembered at all, and now he found it hard to relate to the few people he could still call his friends. "A cold night indeed," he muttered to himself.

"Eh?" Anthony cut in, leaning foward, rubbing his pence-nez with the hem of his cloak and then clipping them back on his nose. "Finally around the bend?" Leopold blinked several times and chuckled, patting Anthony on the shoulder, nearly upsetting Petunia, who clucked with indignation.

"Just pensive, old boy," Leopold said, winking. "Storms such as this lead one inwards." Anthony nodded slowly, squinting at his brother incredulously.

"Quite," he muttered.

"Shall we continue?" the weasely little monk tittered, and the Stevenses turned, Leopold's face strained and Anthony's face scowling. "My lords?" the monk added, giving a half-hearted bow which seemed to put him in physical pain. The brother sighed, and Leopold raised his arm. "Lead on," he said, and the four were off, racing through the rain, listening to the slap of water against their coats. It had been a dramatic day for Stevens's coterie. Called to Radasanth by the monks of Ai'Bron, they had slipped away from the Entente Army just before lunch, not giving notice to anyone except Peter O'Mally, hoping that von Ribbentrophen didn't catch a whiff of their departure and send a flight of dragons after them. They had fled across the plains of Corone, hoofing the nine or so miles from the Entente's new base camp to the hoary city. The sky had opened up as they were making their way into the outskirts, and in desperation they had entered the only open inn in the deserted section of the city they had the misfortune of bumbling into.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering Stevens's history in Althanas, they had come under the attack of a witch, who seemed ready to snuff them all out with the aide of a gang of drakes. Thankfully, with the help of one of the inn's surlier patrons, they had defeated the host. Unfortunately, their battle also destroyed the building. In a more populated or better policed section of town, there might have been trouble with the city guards, but the intercession of the monks of Ai'Bron extricated the four, and was now leading them ever closer to the Citadel. To what, Stevens had no idea.

((Closed.))

[EarlStevens]

In the still darkness of the monk's cell, a shape moves to a slightly more comfortable position on the straw-padded cot. Light flickers into the room through the slit between the edge of the moldly half-ton door and its frame. This meagre lighting barely silhouettes the contents of the room, throwing the scene into a confusion of shadows and barely perceptible, dancing spots of light. There is a stool in the corner, leaning drunkenly to the side. A basin sits in between it and a small metal plate with what look like the remains of some bread and cheese. There are no windows. If there is a ceiling, it's lost somewhere far above the floor. The room is damp, yet warm. It is long enough for the cot and wide enough for four men to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Skinny men.

The man lying on the cot is certainly skinny. From the remnant of torchlight that makes it way around the door, that is the only thing that can be discerned about him. His arms and legs are tangled up in such a way that it's difficult to really tell that he's even a man at all. A man, however, he is indeed. He seems asleep.

It quickly becomes apparent that he isn't. He suddenly leaps to his feet and scrambles to the basin, nearly falling on his face in his hurry. The handle of the door rattles to life. As the door creeks open, light slowly enters the room, casting a crepuscular glimmer over the cell. It is made of roughly hewn black stone, and seems to eat up the light, leaving a deep shadow in one of the far corners. A hunched figure stands in the doorway, tutting to itself as it shuffles forward to the crouching man, who is now affecting retching into the basin.

"There, there, my son," the monk, his brown cowl bunched across his shoulders, exposing his glinting bald head and rosy cheeks. He crouches down and places a comforting hand on our man's shoulder. "Perhaps if you were to eat more of your meals, your stomach would be better..." He does not complete his sentence. The skinny man on the floor swings around, metal dinner plate in hand, and dashes the dottering old man across his bare crown. The pudgy monk gasps and falls against the wall, smacking the other side of his head with an audible crack. Leaping up, his prisoner and adversary tosses aside the plate and looks down at the now unconscious friar.

"You have no idea," he says, straightening his grey jacket, "How long it took me to learn the difference between the sounds of one shambling monk and two shambling monks." Our man is dressed in a grey three piece suit with black tie and white undershirt. His face is quite thin, with somewhat baggy skin and a slighty too-wide collar that attest to his newly emaciated state. His shoes are black, and as he leans down under his cot we see him remove a grey fedora and push it down snugly over his light brown hair. His green eyes flash in the torchlight coming from the hallway outside. He reaches into his pocket and withdraws spectacles, which he looks through without unhinging and hooking onto his ears. Surveying the room around him, he nods and tucks the spectacles back into his jacket pocket.

"Come on," he says over his shoulder, and steps out of the cell. From the impenetrable shadow in the corner glides an impressively tall creature, itself seeming to be formed from shadow. It is formless, like a child playing a ghost at Hallowe'en, and black as a cat's pupil. At the top of its seven-foot span, resting where a face should be, is a skull-white mask, round as a button with two eyeholes leering out, and a half-moon smile grinning beneath them. It glides without stepping, sliding over the monk's body and following our man out into the hall.

[LordLeopold]

"If I may ask," Anthony Stevens muttered to the monk guiding him and his fellows, apparently aimlessly, through the streets of Radasanth, "By what circuitous route are you taking us? I'm sure there's an even more confusing one we can take if we double back and duck down that alleyway full of screeching tomcats." Leopold, his irritation at their pointless course somewhat dampened by reminescences of the fair city, waved his brother to be quiet as they followed the monk through a shortcut that appeared to be a no longer functioning fountain. Silas misstepped in a bit of muck and squealed, nearly toppling to the ground, and Anthony jumped to his aid, grabbing him under the armpits. The brief break this initiated gave Leopold a chance to close in on the monk, his green eyes begging the answer to his brother's question. The monk held back for a few seconds, apparently unsure of himself, before sighing and answering in a flurry of words before he could think better of it.

"Most of the minor gates in the Inner Wall have been closed from dusk until dawn since the Entente of the Light began encamping nearby," he whispered. Noting that Silas had been steadied, and ignoring a blood-curdling shriek let out by the poltergeist still trapped in his traveling suitcase, the monk nodded to himself and turned, taking off a brisk pace, splashing through puddles in his haste. Taken aback, Leopold was almost left behind as Silas, Anthony and his familiars, who had forsaken his shoulders as adequate transport, followed in the monk's wake. Shaking himself, the Duke trotted forward, gaining on the lad until he passed his fellows and felt he had put enough distance between them for a hush conversation to remain hushed. Swinging his cane in perhaps a too-nonchalant way, he leaned toward the fellow and continued a line of queries.

"Who made that decision?" he murmured, ducking to avoid a low-hanging blacksmith's signboard. The monk shrugged. Stevens snorted lightly, the best he could do under the stress that jogging was putting his lungs through, and sallied forth. "Do you know exactly when it was made, old boy?" he asked. The monk chewed his lip, took a sharp right down a sidestreet that nearly threw his followers, and then looked at Leopold out of the corner of his eye as they caught up.

"Sire," he responded, "After His Eminence traveled from the encampment to the city." Leopold's eyes widened, and he forgot to swing his walkingstick. Peter O'Mally himself, eh? That crafty old merekat... Stevens thought to himself, a smile crossing his lips. Peter O'Mally was one of the highest officials in the Entente of the Light, an emmisary of the Monks of Ai'Bron who had been with the army since its early days in the first Gisela Tournament. Apparently he was far more willing to act on his distrust of von Ribbentrophen than discuss it over a nightcap, not that he drank anyway. Leopold had long suspected O'Mally saw the military-dominated Entente as a threat to peace perhaps equal to the evil mages they were sworn to defeat, but this was certainly a surprise...

"The main gate, my lords," the monk said, his voice surprisingly free of sarcasm. Considering the location, however, it was perhaps not that surprising after all. The main gate could take the cynicism out of any man, at least for a few minutes. Stevens could only compare its awe-inspiring grandeur to three things: Montmartre, the Hindu-Kush, and the Citadel itself. The gate stood at least three times the height of the wall on either side of it that encircled the inner city of Radasanth. The Duke estimated its height as between seventy and eighty feet, topped with spires that glinted with leaf gold. The structure was made of marble of dozens of distinct colors, some blended together in what must have been a magical procedure to produce stunning patterns. Finely carved statues, representing important events in the history of the city, which had had an ancient past even when this ancient structure was formed, adorned the edges of the gate around its massive doors. The rain and gloom made it difficult for Stevens to make anything out, but he had seen the decorations before, and could make out many of the statues from memory. The Council of the Gods, the founding of the city, its leveling early in the War of the Tap, the demon siege and the construction of the Citadel were some of the more prominent statuary, breathtaking in their beauty and refinement.

In the night, however, the statues appeared more as threatening gargoyles than impressive heroes. Rain poured off their extended arms and swords in rivulets as dark as blood. The gate itself, fashioned from some magical metallurgy that was now long lost, was criss-crossed with patterns that, on this stormy night, looked more like the battle ensigns of a troll army than the ensignia of the City Guard. The memory of the gate during the day, however, managed to lessen the disquieting feeling in the pit of one's stomach produced by its nighttime appearance. Swallowing and licking their lips, the band slowly made their way to the base of the gate, dwarfed by one of its massive hinges.

At the side of the gate, imbedded in the stone among bas relief minatures that looked far more inviting in the shimmering glow of pine tar torches hanging at either side, was a small wooden door. The monk pushed his voluminous robes back from his bony fist and rapped quickly on the wood. Before he could even pull his hand away from the surface, a small slat at nose-level slid open, and a pair of milky blue eyes appeared.

"Who be there?" a growling voice made its way through the wood. The adolescent Ai'Bronist opened his mouth to respond, but with a hoot of laughter and a series of warm salutations, Silas, Anthony and Leopold stopped him. They crowded around the door, which was flung open before the slat was even closed. The three closed in on the doorframe, obscuring the old man who shivered in it and pushing aside the monk.

"Thaddeus! You old salt!" Leopold cried, shaking the man's gnarled, scarred hand warmly and grinning from ear to ear.

"You ragged old sod!" Anthony beamed, clapping him on his slumped shoulder and seizing him up from his long, stringy grey hair to his slippered feet, one far larger than the other.

"My fair fellow, what a happy coincidence! Might we partake in the warmth in which you have cocooned yourself like a bugbear under a child's floorboards?!" Silas cried, already shoving his way in against the rattling and moaning of his suitcase. The aged man, who was too busy laughing like an ancient bagpipe being trod on, pulled back and let the party into his cramped quarters. Sheafs of paper were stacked to the ceiling at every wall, obscuring the frescos painted on the woodpaneling which had been screwed into the marble. A rusty cutlass leaned against the masonry at the side of a small fireplace, where a copper kettle was stuttering out a whistle atop a crackling blaze, which kept the inside of the room, no bigger than a large closet, far warmer than the outside. In no time at all, the old man had cups full of tea in each man's hand, a bit of rawhide in Icarus' jaws, and a mite of corn in front of Petunia. Each made their own makeshift chair out of a pile of yellowed paper, and Thaddeus stood beside his cutlass, still laughing and rubbing his hands together.

"Quite a story, my boy!" Leopold crowed when the monk asked a stuttered series of questions. "You see, when the Entente made their way to Salvar on a fleet of ships we, erm..."

"Requisitioned for the good of Althanas were be the words that Nar'oth feller did use," Thaddeus interjected, his hunched frame now quivering with excitement instead of a draft. Anthony and Leopold laughed, and Silas nodded at the well-chosen words by von Ribbentrophen.

"Quite right!" Leopold said, sipping his tea and crinkling his eyes with his smile. "When we requisitioned that fleet, Thaddeus here was the Lord Admiral of the whole flotilla!" Thaddeus raised a hand, a blush showing through the white scars on his face.

"Now, now, my liege," he protested. "I did not be using such wording. I were merely a guide."

"Quite a guide!" Anthony responded. "Why, when our ships were frozen in harbor last winter, Thaddeus personally helped in the effort to shore up every boat's hull so it didn't split. He hefted a beam so heavy that the wood he was standing on buckled!" Thaddeus raised his other hand and held out his palms in protest, but Leopold continued.

"When we were attacked by the giant Northern Kraken, whose name I believe can be literally translated as 'The God of Cold Death,' Thaddeus leapt onto the monster's back and clove its eye in twain!" Thaddeus appeared less willing to contest this claim, but continued his gesticulations of objection.

"Why, when a waterspout touched down next to his ship, the good Captain Thaddeus jumped into the rigging himself when another poor soul was sucked into its whirling mawl, yanking the lines with tooth and hand until the ship saw its way through to safety!" Silas responded, hopping to his feet and acting out Thaddeus's risky gamble. The old mariner, by this time cowed by his friends' praise, merely laughed and corrected Silas's gestures. The whole party erupted into peals of laughter, giving each other knowing looks and reliving the thrill of the sea.

"Well!" Leopold said, setting his cup aside as the laughter died down. "How in Hades did you wind up here?" Thaddeus began stroking his chin, looking dreamily off into the distance.

"Why, it be a long story... a long story indeed..."

[EarlStevens]

The hallways of the great monastery in which our man has found himself are hardly less gloomy than the cell from which he has just escaped. He prowls through them, ducking from one tremulous spot of torchlight to another, creeping slowly through the dark and leaping quickly past each glowing pool. He has not yet been faced with another monk; the entire place seems almost entirely deserted. He assumes that his escape has not yet been detected. Judging from what he knows about prisons, once one of the inmates escapes, the gaolers make a more stringent attempt to find the convict than these monks seem to be, as of yet. Our man ponders how long he has. There are many possiblities.

He could be discovered by happenstance in the hallway, which seems unlikely considering the dearth of inhabitants. Suspicion might be aroused when his victim fails to rendez-vous with his fellows at whatever his next engagement is. Since our man has no knowledge of what these monastics, if that is even what they really are, do while they're not passing him food or reciting pious platitudes. Therefore, he disregards this possibility. The most likely outcome, it seems to him, is that the currently disabled man in his cell will come-to and go warn his fellows.

"Hangment!" he curses his under his breath and pushes his fist into his palm. "Should've closed that door." He looks over his shoulder at his shadowy manservant, gliding silently behind him, but stops himself before he asks whether the ghoul closed the door for him. When has he ever? This is obviously a problem. Our man has deducted the most likely source of his detection, but nothing more definitive than that. The monk could wake up in five minutes or an hour. Or never.

Our man stops dead on the spot at the thought. How hard did I hit him? Running his tongue over his teeth and shifting from foot to foot, he replays the scene in his mind's eye. His head did make a rather nasty sound against the wall. Standing there agonizing, the grey-clad man feels the chill of death rising up his spine. He shakes himself and turns around. It's only his manservant, hovering motionless, leering over his shoulder. Our man sniffs derisively at himself and begins back down the hallway at a trot.

Unlike his cell, with no visible ceiling and narrow as an upturned coffin, these hallways are low and squat, barely high enough for the pale mask of the fiendish fellow trailing him. The walls are pocked with doorframes at intervals that are growing increasingly irregular. They provide the only decoration in the spartan passage, with one every once and a while flourished with scrolls or fasces carved into the stone, flanking the thick, moist doors. Humidity hangs in the air, which is now too cool to make our man feel sticky, but rather clammy and ill. The floor is slightly slanted, giving him a feeling of having stumbled into a Verne novel, creeping towards the center of the earth through a subterranean passage.

As he reaches a slight curve in the hall, the now all-too familiar swish of robes, hushes voices and patter of soft leather soles alerts our man to the approach of some of his ministerial captors. He freezes, his eyes wide and his knees trembling. He has been a captor of these fellows for how many months he knows not: he cannot let them drag him back to his closet of a cell. He casts his gaze about frantically for something to hide behind, a door to jump through. Nothing but a sheer wall to one side, and a door too far behind him to be any good. If he runs to it, he will undoubtedly alert their attention, yet if he creeps they will quickly be upon him. His eyes pleadingly rest on his manservant's stoic mask. This is his final act of desperation, an acknowledgment of defeat - and yet in it he finds his salvation.

"Keep looking at me," he hisses, tip-toeing up beside the black-cloaked figure and slowly manoeuvring around the creature so that it is between him and the approaching monks. Surprisingly, it obeys him. Our man has only the perhaps misplaced hope that, in the deep shadow between each torch, his impentrably dark manservant will shield him from the eyes of the approaching monks.

"... we cannot trust them, by any means," a crisp Cornish voice becomes audible as the monks hustle around the bend in the hall. "We must assume there is some sort of plot afoot involving the Entente."

"Your Holiness is wise to suspect such malfeasance from the duke... rather, the king," a raspy Castilian accent responds, now louder as the men come closer. "High Priest O'Mally's warning made the danger clear. Leopold has been under the control of von Ribbentrophen since the Salvarian expedition. I, too, feel a dangerous ploy."

"Perhaps, perhaps," the glutteral tones of Munich concurs. "We must at least be on our guard. Visitors on a night like tonight are never the bringers of good tidings."

"Indeed," the crisp first voice says. The three voices are quickly approaching our man's hiding place, and he slowly begins to slide around the edge of his servant's body, trying with all his guile to keep entirely behind its shadow. He cannot see those from whom he is hiding around this shadow, but his curiousity is being entire quelled by his fear. The band shuffles silently for a few more seconds, and then pauses. Our man has made his way a quarter around his servant's body, and now stands, his back to the wall, sweat rolling into his eyes, looking up through his eyebrows at his servant's unchanging, gaping eyeholes.

"Willowby," the first, brisk voice snaps, and an as yet unheard monk audibly snaps to attention, joints popping. "Go to the armory and prepare the usual guard. And make sure they all know what they'll be facing."

"Yes, Your Holiness," the monk mutters, then turns and scurries the direction from which they had come. Chuckling, the other three men stride down the hall.

"I believe you had an interesting view on the healing of demonic possession that might be pertinent tonight..." the crisp voice, apparently the leader's, continues. Our man does not concentrate long enough to hear any more. He has heard the words armory, and knows which way the monk had gone to get there. That is his next goal. The second he's half-certain the monks can no longer hear him, he bounds forward, following the unseen monk to the armory.

[LordLeopold]

"That is what I call a good yarn," Leopold exclaimed, grinning to Anthony and Silas, who nodded back. "There's nothing like sitting in front of a fire on a cold night and swapping tales." the party was back on their way through the streets of Radasanth, their spirits now a little higher and their bodies a little warmer. The rain had slacked off a bit, but was still drizzling enough, and the clouds were still menacing enough, to keep the entire city under a pall of wet darkness that made it look like a vast necropolis. After an hour of tales and counter-tales, the monk had finally gotten a word in edgewise and reminded them all of the impending engagement at the Citadel. With a sigh of remorse and a promise to return, the party had ducked back into the rain, this time on the other side of the gate, as they had been funneled through a secret side passage by their friend Thaddeus.

Leopold could feel the warmth in his body slowly seeping away as they plodded through the muck and grime towards the center of the city. Looming on the horizon, dominating the skyline like a mountain range, the Citadel stood, its size and weight seeming to pull the entire city towards itself, with the Stevenses and their entourage hopelessly tumbling towards it. On an average day, the Citadel's bulk was impressive; on a night like tonight, it was surreal and frightening. Periodically glancing up at its rapidly expanding shadow, Leopold felt the cheer in his chest melting away. The Citadel was cowing, pressing down on his soul.

The times he'd spent there began to run through his head. The battles spent, the good times had, the friends made. He felt he had made his name in the Citadel. It had been at a price, though. Even the magic of Ai'Bron could not completely erase his scars, which now peppered his body as heavily as any soldier's. The violence of the Citadel, and the dangerous affects it could have on one's mind or one's soul, had always been a nagging problem at the back of Stevens's mind. He was a gentleman, or at least thought of himself as such. Did engaging in violence for sport change that? Did it change the friendships he made in the process? Were they somehow unnatural? Devon and Findelfin, perhaps his most lasting friends from the Citadel, would probably disagree. Leopold thought he did, too.

"Sire?" the monk's voice broke the duke's reverie. Shaking his head, and noticing that the rain was coming down in buckets, flattening his hood against his head and dripping down his face. They had arrived. The Citadel soared over their heads, its spires and towers tickling the clouds above. Water cascaded down its masonry and out of the mouths of a thousand gargoyles leaping from its stone. Buttresses and stained glass gave the building the appearance of a church, but the slanted windows up and down its body and the crenulated balconies jutting out from its surface made it clear that this chuch to Ai'Bron served a second god - War. It was impossible to get a good view of the whole body of the Citadel; it was too wide to see around the corners and too tall to see where the towers jutting from atop it ended. Stevens knew that it also extended into the ground, connecting to a labyrinthine catacombs under the city. He had the sneaking suspicion that there were hallways and entire wings inside the building that there simply wasn't room for within these outer walls. Its stone and wood thrummed with the sonorous tune of magic, which could not be heard in the ear, but rather deep in one's gut, reverberating throughout the body. The front doors, the remains of a mighty tree that once stood over the holy spot where the first Pontiff had been consecrated, seemed to bar entrance on this cold and blustry night. Stevens could not remember a time when they had been closed. They bore down on the four men from atop the wide, shallow steps leading to the entrance, easily overwhelming the pillars standing in front of them, dissipating them in an overwhelming aura of mistrust and even anger. Stevens shivered. Petunia, now at his side and preening herself in the rain, as if nothing amiss surrounded her, made a reassuring sound through her feathers. The burst of warmth exuded through the bundle of feeling Petunia cast in his consciousness gave him a bit of confidence.

"Well," he said, nodding slowly, as if to himself. "Onward and upward." As he stepped forward, he was too focused on the doors ahead to hear the curses of his brother as a guard of four purple penguins waddled into view across the massive public square in front of the Citadel, patting across paving stones the size of a ballroom and squawking for the attention of their honored master.

"I thought I gave them the slip!" he moaned, leaping after his brother and Petunia. Silas, Icarus perched atop his head, followed.

[EarlStevens]

Our man makes his way as discreetly as possible after his quarry, bounding from tip-toe to tip-toe in an attempt to stifle his footsteps. The faint tred of the monk can be heard down the hallway, and it is his guide. Thankfully the hallways has yet to split or dead-end, which gives the pursuer a slightly better time of it. The air seems staler and the smell of mildew grows. Where exactly does this hallway lead?

The grey-clad man comes to a short stairwell and leaps down it, hitting the floor below on both feet and one hand. Cringing from the jolt, he lurches to his feet and moves onward, the noise of the monk almost imperceptibly louder. Almost chuckling in the thrill of the pursuit, our man quickens his pace to a gallop. Soon, he will be in the armory, and that will no doubt provide him with the means to escape.

Odd that there should be an armory in a monastery, he thinks to himself. Although, what can one expect in Faerie? He had read many books on the subject, all of which indicated that the magic realms beyond human lands adhered to no rules of logic or sensibility. He remembers his treatment for the past several months, and decides he agrees.

A breath of cool wind splashes against his face. Our man is surprised, but not deterred. If this path leads to the outside world, so be it; going to the armory is now unnecessary. One more worry out of the way. Heartened by the thought of seeing the sky again, he breaks into a full run, leaping around the edge of a bend in the hallway towards the increasingly loud rush of air. He stops, his jaw falling open. The hallway has opened up into a massive cavern, a whistling expanse whose far wall was indistinct across the dark chasm that gapes before him. The hallway ends here, tucked into the corner of the cave, hugging one of its sides. Feeling the presence of his manservant behind him, he turns and gives the implacable mask an incredulous stare.

"This is impossible," he breathes. Knees knocking, our man slowly makes his way to the point where the floor ends and the stone falls away into a void. Nothing glints through the darkness: The abyss merely stares back. Pale, he sidles back from the edge and scans what little can be made out by the dim light in the room. He notices the floor does not simply dead-end in space, but rather continues as a corniche in a precipitous climb up the face of the cavern. This wall the path clings to bulges out, like the wall of a well, so our man cannot see the path's ultimate destination, or whether it exits through the other side of the cave and continues on. A series of torches hangs on the walls, casting a pitiful glow across the crumbling stone. At one point, a rope seems to be bolted into the stone where the path has splintered and fallen off into the shadows below. Far ahead, snugly tucked in the wall, is a small door which seems to be ajar. Our man suddenly has a revelation. This wall encircles the armory.

Gulping, the grey clad man tightens his fedora over his crown and slowly gropes his way up the path, bending over with one hand on the wall beside him and one hand brushing against the floor. The path is far narrower than the hallway, and the inexplicable gusts of wind tearing at his clothes feel as if they will snatch him right off the path entirely and fling him out into space. Pausing for a breath, wiping his sweaty palms on the front of his jacket, he looks over his shoulder at his manservant, who is silently following him at several paces, unerringly straight and surefootedly sliding up the path. Blanching at the expanse to his left as he turns back to assess how close he is to the door, our man continues upward.

After what seems like hours, several of which are spent hanging onto a dingy rope with both hands and unsteadily stepping along the remains of the path, which coverts to pebbles under his tread and disappears into the abysm, he finally reaches the door, which is slowly wobbling back and forth in the wind. A bright light shines forth from within, almost blinding after weeks on end of dim torchlight. Bunching up the remains of his strength, our man clamps onto the door's handle and pushes it openly slowly, wincing at the slight squeak of the hinges and hoping that nothing threatening lies beyond.

[LordLeopold]

The grand entrance hall of the Citadel was, though silent as a crypt and almost as dark, a welcome sight for anyone coming in out of the night. As the doors slammed shut behind Stevens and his escort, the duke took a few minutes to investigate the building he had been away from for so long. Its vaults and arches sailed up far over his head, converging in a gothic array of fluting and embellishments that were dizzying to survey to their full height. A series of columns made an avenue towards the far end of the hall, where a statue of Ai'Bron herself stood, shrouded in her celestial robes, a hand raised towards the heavens, fingertips three men's height from the ground. The floor was a maze of patterned stone, sketching out emblems and designs which had long outlived those who swore allegiance to them. A bevy of monks hurried up to Stevens's party, taking their cloaks and cowls and bustling off with them toward some unseen hall or antechamber sprouting off from the main room.

"No welcoming committee, I see," Anthony muttered: The vast expanse of the room and its hieratical bearing seemed to impress him into muting his voice. "Hell of a strange way to call for someone." Leopold nodded, running his tongue over his teeth, and plucked his monocle from his jacket pocket, placing it in his eye and clenching it in place.

"Deuced pity if we didn't look 'round once before writing them off, eh?" he asked, looking from Anthony to Silas to Petunia. Seeing no strong objections - Petunia always looked somewhat reluctant to follow anyone else's directions, so he discounted her - the duke turned and began walking towards the statue of Ai'Bron, his wet shoes squeaking loudly. With a shrug to Silas, Anthony followed. The charlatan chewed his lip for a few seconds, contemplating as he always did the possibility of making a break for it and escaping his probation under Stevens's care, but resolved that now was not the time and squelched after them. The three men, one chicken, one dragon, four penguins and one haunted suitcase made their way across the room, moving like ants across its awesome span.

Stevens led the way, glacing between the columns on each side as he made his way. The lay-out of this section of the Citadel was much like a cathedral; high, narrow windows of colored glass, some patterned to portray parables or proverbs, alternated with the pillars, black with the lack of background light. Under them, tucked into grottoes tucked far into either side of the central space, were various shrines to Ai'Bron and the Mya. Rows of lighted candles flickered atop tables positioned to either side of statues of men and women in scenes of martyrdom or performing miracles. The most spectacular shrine, with twice as many candles as the next and a sumptuously painted statue of an elf with his arms extended skyward, apparently rising heavenwards, was dedicated to the first Pontiff, the organizer of the Ai'Bron religion who had become one of the Mya during the War of the Tap. Caught in the dancing light of the candelabras and torches lighting the room, it was quite a magnificent sight.

"Leopold Stevens," a high, clipped voice echoed through the room, reverberating off the hundreds of stone faces and catching Leopold off his guard. He turned back toward the statue of Ai'Bron opposite the main doors, and tried to bend his grimace into a frown. Walking carefully and measuredly toward him were three impressive looking men, each decked out in the clothing of a high official of Ai'Bron. All three were draped with robes that cascaded over their bodies and to the floor, obscuring their bodies under folds of luxuriant cloth. Ornate mantles covered their shoulder and upper bodies, and two were topped with a miter, absurdly tall peaked hats that seemed likely to topple off their heads if breathed on. Perhaps that was why they were walking so steadily and purposefully. Each also carried a crozier almost as tall as they were, the useless staffs swung lazily at their sides.

"Your Holiness. Your Eminences," Stevens said, dipping from the waist and walking to meet them. He didn't hear Silas and Anthony behind him; apparently they felt it more appropriate to hang behind. The duke made a note to give Anthony a dressing-down later. He approached the center man first. He was the tallest, with a long, crooked nose and a flowing white beard. His long fingers were wrapped loosely around his crosier, and his skin was slack around his jowls, but Stevens knew he was neither as weary or unawares as he looked. This was Bartholomew Brogh, the Pontiff of Ai'Bron, the highest priest in all of Althanas, Ai'Bron's corporeal emissary, the chief of the monks and one of the most powerful men - or perhaps half-elves - breathing. His robes were inlaid with gold and silver thread, woven throughout pure white silk. Stevens bent again from the waist down when he came face-to-face with the Pontiff, who proffered a ring-encrusted hand. The duke frowned at the hand, but took it with his and brought it close to his face. He spared the obsequious kiss. Petunia, standing at his side, clucked in exasperation at the whole affair and went back to the all-consuming process of preening herself.

Bending back up, he glanced from one of the men at his side to the other. To the left, garbed entirely in blood-red cloth, with a red crook at the end of his black crozier, was Alvar Desouza, High Priest of the coastal country of Esporantel. He had fled his nation two years before, in mysterious circumstances involving a rebellion against the royal house which had apparently ended in a massacre of government officials. The rumor had it that his predecessor as High Priest had been crucified by the rebels on the gates of the royal palace. He was now the regent of Esporantel, in care of the young princess. Stevens had had some limited contact with him during a failed attempt by the Entente to organize an army for the second Gisela tournament, and had little good to say of him.

To the right, clad all in black, with a crozier that ended in a silver crook, was Casper Knaut, the High Priest of Ozternberg, the most powerful member of the Entente. He was a confidant of Baron von Manfield, one of Stevens's close friends in the Entente Army and leader of the Entente's dragon air corps. His appearance beside these two surprised the duke; he found Knaut's presence with these two a bit incongruous, but tallied it up to priestly politics. Smiling as pleasantly as possible, he turned back to the Pontiff.

"I was called here by one of your emissaries this morning," he began. "I'm sorry for the delay, but I'm afraid we were accosted. Happily, some of your men retrieved us. Thus, here we are." Making another bow, feeling something like a sapling in hurricane, Stevens made a face that he thought best approximated polite curiosity. The Pontiff looked into his eyes, blinked, glanced from one of his minions to the other, and raised his free hand, palm upward, in a gesture of puzzlement.

"Your diligence is certainly worthy, my son, but you were not called for. Indeed, we only sent monks to intercept you because we were contacted by High Priest O'Mally and told of your departure toward Radasanth," Smiling purplexedly, but grimacing with his eyes, the Pontiff continued. "It was a stroke of luck that they found you at all; we had no way of knowing that the city was actually your final destination. But with a storm like this one brewing, we thought you should at least be guaranteed some shelter." An explosion of thunder outside, which seemed to shake the very foundations of the building, underlined his point. Stevens, taken aback, felt his monocle pop out of his eye. He deftly snatched it from midair and pushed it back into place.

"I received notice by carrier pigeon this morning. It carried the official imprimatur of the Citadel. There is no doubt about its authenticity." The Pontiff looked just as taken aback as Stevens, but hid it far more quickly. As he opened his mouth to respond, Knaut raised a grub-white hand and smiled a yellow smile.

"If I may, Your Holiness?" he cut in, and the Pontiff, though he looked perturbed, nodded and made a permissive flick of his wrist. Knaut nodded and continued. "I recieved a message from High Priest O'Mally earlier this evening, also by pigeon. He spoke of no letter, nor of being told of your intentions. Lacking knowledge of a letter at either end, we can only assume there has been some sort of misunderstanding..." The High Priest trailed off as half a dozen frightened looking monks, including one frail looking fellow with a knot on his head, hurried into the main chamber from around the base of the statue of Ai'Bron, whispering among themselves loudly enough to distract the priestly delegation conferring with Leopold. Their goal was obviously their leader. They approached, and Stevens quietly excused himself. He strode briskly back to his brother and Silas, swinging his walkingstick with just a hint of indignation.

"Well, Leo?" Anthony asked as Leopold approached, Petunia clucking at his side. "Has our all-important mission been derailed?"

"They don't know a thing about it, Tony," Leopold responded, rubbing his chin and squinting his eyes in thought. "He says he never sent us a letter."

"Nonsense, fiddlefaddle and horsefeathers," Silas responded, sneering in disbelief. "They're either the most forgetful men alive or the most mendacious. Such knavish..."

"Indeed, indeed," Anthony cut him off, rolling his eyes at Leopold and giving a half-hearted kick at a penguin who waddled too close to his leg. "There's obviously something nefarious afoot. We all saw that letter..."

"... and burned it so no one else would," Stevens responded. "We told literally no one and slipped out in secret, appeared in Radasanth in the dead of night and immediately burned down an inn before slipping into the Citadel at half past the witching hour. My good fellows, I'm not so sure that we haven't been duped into acting the fool." Silas gasped, horrified at the idea of being tricked himself for once, but Anthony merely scoffed.

"Listen to that accent," he said, pointing at the Pontiff, who was now gesturing with especial violence at the monk with a lump on his brow, his hushed ranting audible as an angry buzz. "He's obviously a Cornishman. Not only does he probably lie down with..."

"Not another livestock joke," Leopold said, pointing an accusatory finger at his brother. Anthony raised his hands in a gesture that clearly meant 'if the shoe fits...', but continued in slightly more restrained tone:

"Fine. He may not cuckold his rams. All that aside, why should we trust a bloody thing he says? Whether he's a Cornishman or not, he looks a deuced lot like the two types of people I know are the world's most enormous liars: politicians and Catholics. Who knows what ace he has up his liveried sleeve?" Silas nodded enthusiastically, although it was clear he wasn't quite sure what a Catholic was. Leopold was about to make a forceful and principled response when he heard the Pontiff clear his throat. Turning from his own short convocation, he bowed, yet again, to the willowy man, whose appearance had changed from an affectation of age and weariness to the cold anger of a powerful man who suddenly feels helpless.

"I'm afraid, my son, that I have dramatically important matters to attend to. High Priest Knaut will take care of you, I'm sure you're quite tired from your journey." Without waiting for a response, the Pontiff, the monks, and the swarthy High Priest Desouza turned sharply and marched like a battalion in the direction the monks had come. After they had disappeared down one of the many passages that sprouted from the far end of the hall, Knaut nodded to himself and dashed up to Stevens and company, his eyes flashing with urgency.

"Come with me, now." he said.

[EarlStevens]

Inside the armory, our man discovers, is as enormous and disquieting as outside. Entering the room, he finds himself standing on a wooden scaffold jutting out from the wall. The immediate platform ends a few feet from the door, a wooden gangway that follows the curvature of the wall in both directions until it disappears, obstructed by the other wooden constructs filling the room. Our man feels even more disconcerted standing on this rickety-feeling construct than he did crawling along the edge of the drop on the other side of the door. Looking through cracks in the floorboards below him, he swallows fearfully as it becomes clear that the drop here is no less deadly. Looking in either direction, he sees a series of narrow wooden planks that connect the outer gangway to an inner superstructure, built of sturdier planks and stone. It seems to be layered like a building mid-way through construction, with distinct floors that lack walls between themselves and the open outside air, a series of columns and trestles holding one floor above the other. Looking up, our man is no less disconcerted by the great height to which this room stretches than the depts to which it sinks. Again gulping a mouthful of air, he makes a dash across the plank bridge in front of him to the sturdier-appearing framework in the center of the armory.

It is quickly obvious that the room has not been lightly named. This floor of the building contains row after row, shelf upon shelf, of cases of weaponry. Most are simple: swords, shields and daggers of unadorned metal. Some are more complex: our man sees crowbows, blade-adorned poles, and wicked sickles leaning against a partition erected between two thick wooden columns. The building seems designed to allow platoons of warriors to quickly enter, find their allocated position, and snatch their particular weapons off the shelf like a mother at the grocer's picking up the necessary greens for dinner. If the system acts as he believes, then its deadly efficiency is disturbing to find in a building of religion. Our man skulks through the rows of death, mindful of the monks who are undoubtedly somewhere in the structure, glancing about for the towering profile of his silent manservant, who is predictably close on his heels at all times.

The armory, he slowly realizes as he surveys the room, is roughly a cylinder, with the wooden armory proper a smaller, rougher cylinder inside it. Wooden overhangs like the one he had stood upon after entering the door seem to jut from the walls every few storeys, but his entrance is the only door on the side he had entered. More are located on the other edge, but none of them are open that he can see. There is a soft ambient light in the armory, the source of which is uncertain; there are certainly no torches or candles. Faerie magicks, no doubt. Our man thinks to himself. The stone walls are far lighter than they were on the outside, where they were almost jade black. No lines from masonry or cracks in it are obvious. It almost appears natural, but our man isn't fooled. If the light is unnatural, this room almost assuredly is, as well.

He jumps as he hears the sound of voices, apparently coming from the floor above, and the tromp of bootheels. He scans for the location of stairs that might connect the floors. Between shelves such as he is, it is impossible to get a good view, but the one he can see descends from the ceiling in the direction he is facing, so that anyone coming down it will have their backs to him. He is, it appears, safe.

"The Leopold Stevens?" Our man jumps, clutching at his chest. They've discovered me! His head whips from side to side, searching for something to defend himself with. He clutches at a crossbow, but he realizes he has no idea how to use one. Leaping for a sheathed shortsword, he hears the name again.

"Sir, Lord, Esquire, Duke? Yeah, that Leopold Stevens," a brusquer, sarcastic voice responds. Puzzled, our man pauses. Something about this is entirely wrong. Duke? Esquire? Lord?

"I thought he was fighting for our side," another voice piped up. A chorus of affirmation replied, the conversation getting louder as our man hears the contingent walk directly over him.

"It's that Ribbentrophen," the second voice says, with an authoritative air. "Duke Leopold is alright, but he's being yanked around by him. Why do you think the Entente is camping out a day's march from here? It's Ribbentrophen. The Duke'd would know better."

"Crikeys," the first voice says, bewildered. "But if it's Ribbentrophen, why doesn't the Pontiff trust Leopold?" There are mutters in response, and the general noise of several heads shaking in agreement. The booted legs of monks begin to appear on the slats of stairs in front of our man. He watches the swish of their robes and then the shining plate mail strapped over their woolen garmets, the halberds they use as staffs, and the helmets clamped over their heads.

"Must have some sort of reason," the second voice, who seems to be the leader, responds. "He is the Pontiff, after all." There are general rumbles of agreement as the group trundles off to the closest plank, filing out one of the doors in the far wall. Our man slowly follows them to the edge of the structure, his mind a racing confusion.

"What the devil were they talking about?" he mutters aloud, turning to his manservant with a questioning gaze, then realizing the futility of doing so. "You're no help," he hisses, and glances about himself, rubbing his hands compulsively. His gaze falls on something which briefly alleviates his nervousness, and he grabs something from the shelf in front of him. It is his walkingstick, apparently unscathed. He twists the knob, and a foot-long blade slides noiselessly out of its other end. Nodding, he twists it again and retracts the blade.

"This is curiouser and curiouser," he says, turning back to his manservant, who has glided to within a few inches of his master and is now eeriely peering over his shoulder. Slightly surprised, our man tilts his head up and looks into the unexpressive eyeholds above him. "You are the number one reason I haven't been invited to a dinner party in the past five years." He says. Wisely not expecting a response, he turns and sighs. "Our best option, I believe, is following those gossiping monks and finding out more about this other Leopold Stevens fellow. Right? Right." With that, the two strike out.

[LordLeopold]

"Stay here," Knaut ordered, pointing a gnarled, pale finger at Anthony and Silas. "My men will attend to you shortly. They will take you to safety. If you are questioned by any armed monks, don't respond." Both men, puzzled, looked to Leopold for guidance. Just as confused as they, he simply nodded, giving a mask of certainty.

"But where are you going?" Anthony asked, turning back to Knaut. The high priest's brow furrowed like lumpy dough, and he waved his hand dismissively.

"Sir Stevens," he responded, "It is better that you not know." With that, he grabbed Leopold by the arm and, spinning him around, half-dragged him from the main chamber. The duke had barely enough time to look over his shoulder and watch Silas and Anthony fade away into the shadows at the edge of the candlelight as he was yanked onward. At the end of the entranceway were several high doorways, their doors flung open, the mouths to hallways snaking off into the bowels of the Citadel. Without pausing to decide between the half-dozen choices, Knaut charged through the center one, immediately plunging the two into air that was as thick and mouldy as a forgotten wine cellar's.

"Lord Stevens," the priest said breathlessly after a few minutes of racing down the low-ceiling hallway and taking a series of staircases two steps at a time, "What I am about to tell you is important: very important. It will affect the rest of your life in Althanas. After hearing it, you will never be able to return to thinking about the world the same way you did before. Everything will change. You will, in an instant, lose faith in most of what you know about how this world works and your place in it. This would frighten most men," the priest glanced at the Duke briefly from the corner of his eye. "I would hestitate to tell you this if I thought you were like most men."

"Quite a compliment, old bean," Stevens responded between heavy breaths. "It's not often I'm praised so highly. If it is praise." The priest chuckled, suddenly changed course to duck through an inconspicuous archway, and waited for Stevens to correct his own course and catch up with the break-neck pace.

"I would be surprised if anyone, on first impression, pegged you as an especially strong man," the priest continued. "You have a way of masking your inner fire." Silence, except for frantic foot-falls, again fell over the two. Stevens digested this brief exchange, steeling himself against whatever was to come. No one says something like that unless they have something quite serious waiting in the wings, the duke thought to himself. Indeed, it seemed to be true, as Knaut scrunched up his face, apparently searching for the words to continue.

"Leopold," he began, apparently finding them. "What if I told you that everything you know about the Citadel is a lie? That the very basis of the monks isn't what it seems?" Stevens's eyebrow went up, his monocle wobbbling dangerously in his eye. He didn't respond, but waited for the priest to collect himself again. "It's hard to know exactly how to tell you this, so I'll start very simply. You are aware of most of these things already, of course, but it's important to reiterate them. In fact, I think it is vital." Stevens, swinging his cane so quickly it made a blur beside his pumping legs, nodded. Knaut sighed.

"The cloud of the Forgotten Five has hung over Althanas for milennia," he said. "Children in Radasanth fear the Scarlet Witch is hiding in the rafters of their homes. Men in Salvar have nightmares about the incantations of Zhum'xud. Mariners pray against sudden storms they call 'Denebriel's Breath.' There is not a man alive between Lornius and Okatani who has forgotten that Nyvengaal and Aesphestos probably killed one of his ancestors. You can be thrown out of inns if your last name is the same as a man who betrayed the owner's friend's family to the partisans of the Forgotten in the War of the Tap. For as long as I can remember, a fear of the dark sorcerers has bubbled under the surface of our society. When word of the Forgotten Five's return broke out, that fear percolated up again."

As if on cue, the two pushed through a half-open door and emerged into a room draped with tapestries showing ancient battles against armies of black-clad men and green-skinned drakes. Stevens was stunned; he had never been here before. As he continued along with Knaut, scenes of war and destruction wipped past his eyes. Bloody swaths of vermillion coated the waves of men and wizards clashing against each other. Piles of dead horses burned next to piles of children. The ruins of a city smoldered as living skeletons held up their hands in surrender to swordsmen on horseback who chopped them down like saplings. The most lasting image, on the last tapestry before they broke free through another doorway and into a dark, dingy hall, was a portrait of Aesphestos garbed in red and gold, embelled by wings of flame and a black crown hovering over his head, standing atop the Citadel. He held a long sword over his head and a sceptre of power at his side. A scroll wrapped around his legs read "Aephestos, Lord of Death - Here But For the Mya." His piercing blue eyes remained in Stevens head, even after the cloth was long behind him.

"Those tapestries hang in the minds of all our fellow men," the priest continued, in a substantially hushed tone. "Imagine the power one can wield by conjuring them up and offering protection against them." Knaut turned his head entirely, staring Stevens square in the eyes before quickly turning forward again, taking a fork in the path. Stevens's mouth tightened into a straight, white line.

"von Ribbentrophen," he muttered, his heart pounding. The military leader had controlled the Army of the Entente, built to defeat the forces of the Forgotten Five, for several years. He had conceived of the failed conquest of Salvar, and ruled the Entente's army as a de facto dictator, with his own secret police and torture chambers. Most important, he had claimed to be the Nar'oth, the messiah of Ozternberg, the most powerful member of the Entente, and used the power this gave him to gain almost complete autonomy from any outside influence. He was too dangerous to lead an army, but too popular to resist. Stevens knew this was the person the priest was referring to, but Knaut shook his head and sighed.

"The Citadel," he continued, "Has served an important purpose since before the War of the Tap. It was built by the heroes of Althanas to defend against the rising power of Aesphestos and his allies, and since has been the center of resistance against evil and greed. How does it do so?" Stevens, slightly irked by this Socratic approach, nevertheless responded smoothly.

"Mediation and introspection through battle, the honing of the body and mind, and the control given by experience in warcraft," he said, repeating back from memory the lines he had heard noviate monks reciting before dinner in the Citadel mess. The priest chuckled, probably reminescing about his own adolescence, but shook his head again.

"A facade," he responded. "Complete dross." Stevens straighted his neck, drawing back his head in surprise, but didn't respond. Knaut, pausing briefly in front of a door with 'No Entrance - Dangerous' written across it, pushed the door open anyway and lead Stevens out across a narrow finger of a stone bridge, hanging precariously over what looked like a very deep, thirty foot wide well. Stevens gulped as they shimmied across the expanse, watching droplets of condensation from the edge of the cracked stone drip off into the pit. "No, the point of the Citadel is to train an army." The priest continued as they exited the hole and continued down a sloping, torch-lit hallway. "The largest army possible, that can be trained and called to arms for almost no expense." Stevens, initially puzzled, suddenly let his jaw drop.

"You mean to say that Radasanth..." he began, but the priest's vigorous nods cut him off.

"The Citadel is the training grounds, command tent and barracks for the popular Army of Radasanth," he completed Stevens's thought. The duke swallowed an enormous quantity of air, his knees, already weakened from hours of walking, wobbling under him. "It is only the largest and oldest of a series of citadels across Althanas, and each High Priest is only an ostentatiously garbed general. When the forces of destruction rise from the breeding ground of human despair, the forces trained here are the ones who go to arms and put them down. There is a reason that new kings are crowned by the Pontiff and not the other way 'round." Stevens shook his head in disbelief, but couldn't resist how obvious it was.

"The Gisela makes perfect sense now," he said, and the priest grunted assent.

"Our most blatant gamble, but the most effective," Knaut responded. "Now we have our lieutenants and corporals for the coming campaign earmarked." Silence once again descended over the two men, as Stevens was given another hunk of information to chew. The Citadel, the proving ground of the army that would fight against the Forgotten Five and the Dark One. The most powerful tool against evil, in plain sight and yet hidden so masterfully that Aesphestos would not see his enemy until it rose up against him, and then he could not machinate to fight against it.

"And how, might I ask, does that fit in with what you were saying earlier?" Stevens asked after an appropriate time of savouring how easy victory over Aesphestos seemed. The priest, who was lost in thoughts of his own, jolted back to consciousness, dodged an errant torch, and grimaced.

"A man needs only three things to become a despot," he continued. "A source of power, the will to use it, and the ability to use it. A greedy man has the will. A greedy man who controls the Citadel has the source. At this moment, that is..."

"... the Pontiff," Stevens completed the thought, his mouth running dry. "And he certainly has the ability to use it. Althanas implicitly trusts him, and judging from the latched main gate and the closed doors to the Citadel, Radasanth certainly doesn't trust the Entente, at least while its on their doorstep. Zounds, thank goodness he's on our... oh good Lord," Stevens said, stopping in his tracks and feeling his sweat run cold. Knaut, anticipating such a reaction, stopped alongside him.

"I would not be telling you any of this unless I knew that Pontiff Bartholomew long ago forsook the side of the Entente in the battle against the Forgotten," Knaut said, his voice suddenly quivering with an urgency it had not had before. The quaking torchlight reflecting in his eyes made them seem to be alive with a fervent and indignant spirit. "He has many allies in the Order of Ai'Bron. Some wish to overthrow von Ribbentrophen, the dark Messiah. Others think that passive peace is more virtuous than active aggression. Most have no idea what part they are playing. The Pontiff has had a plan in motion for weeks to gain complete control of Radasanth, break the Entente and prepare the way for Aesphestos across Corone." Stevens, his arms now shaking as well as his knees, nearly dropped his walkingstick.

"But... but... no," Stevens stuttered, finding himself without words. "Bartholomew organized Gisela. I saw him fight Aesphestos with my own eyes. Without him, the Entente would be nothing..."

"My lord," Knaut said, stepping forward and placing his cadaverous hand on Stevens's shoulder, "I would not be telling you this unless I had uncovered it and verified it myself. It is impossible for me to fully explain to you now how I have done so. I can only tell you that the Tap is returning to the world. Abilities long lost are trickling back to us. The foresight and clairvoyance that the Tap gives me are not wrong. They simply can't be." A flash of uncertainty rippled across the priest's face, and a brief humanity, separate from his righteous rage, gleamed in his eyes. In that flash of ambivalence, however ephemeral, Stevens was convinced.

"High Priest O'Mally and I have been in correspondance for some time," Knaut said, his grip on Stevens's shoulder tightening. "It was I who called you here. In a short time, O'Mally will bring us the assistance we need to prevent the Pontiff's plot from coming to fruition. Tonight, Bartholomew was caught off balance, as the Tap predicted. We have an opportunity to exploit and bring a new guiding force forward." The stare with which the priest fixed Stevens made it clear who that force would be. A few pregnant seconds followed as both men stared into each other's eyes.

"What must I do?" Stevens replied, finding his limbs no less unstable, but his resolve quickly cementing. The priest smiled.

[EarlStevens]

When the monks disappear in the fog of shadows ahead of him, our man follows the clink of their armor and their gruff voices instead of the backs of their heads, slowly creeping along behind them, his manservant at his side. As they pass from each orb of torchlight into a shadow, the black giant fades into the darkness around him, briefly leaving his master alone but for his floating pale mask. Our man's own dark clothing keeps him hidden, if not as well, from any backwards glances the monks may throw at the unexpected sound of a footstep or click of his walkingstick. The pursuit is a slow one, yet is as equally unnerving as a quick run down an ally or across a public square. It seems impossible that this monastery-cum-gaol could be as empty as it is, even if it is the middle of the night, and at any point our man expects to be stumbled upon by a sleepy-eyed monk or a staff-wielding bishop. That his path has been clear is a stroke of luck that he hopes continues.

The sound of armored strides and nervous jokes ahead dies down, and our man creeps to a halt, peering into the smoky light ahead, trying to perceive what the platoon is about. Their figures are indistinct, but it is clear that they are standing in place, shifting as they lean closer to whisper to each other, the man who is apparently their leader standing a bit ahead and to the side. Instead of being bunched together like a division of soldiers on the march, they are spread out in a rough line, jostling against each other slightly as if trying to get a better view of something lying in front of them. Our man grimaces at his incomprehension and moves a few silent steps forward in the dark, keeping as far from the torch on the other side of the hall as possible. The silence is complete now, no sound echoing across the stone except the sputter and crackle of torches. Who lights all these bloody torches? our man thinks to himself, crouching near to the ground and sliding between the splotches of light. The view is somewhat clearer the closer he gets; now it's obvious that the monks are silently gaping at something on the floor in front of them. What isn't obvious is what exactly that thing is. Still frowning, our man tries to move closer without alerting the monks to his presence. He knows the danger of continually creeping closer, but he has been hit by a twinge of curiosity which is impossible to ignore. Whenever men bearing arms pause on their rounds, something serious and therefore morbidly interesting is amiss.

"Who could have done this?" he hears one monk ask in a quiet voice that booms in the silence. There is no response for a few seconds. The ostensible leader of the men turns back to face his underlings. He clears his throat, and even from his shadowy hiding place our man can feel a miasma of fear and uncertainty displace the smoky, mouldy air around him.

"It doesn't matter," he says, reaching for the sword at his side. "Whoever did it, they're here, right in the hall with us, hiding in the shadows." The line of monks begins shifting and muttering, their heads moving from side to side, sweeping the shadows around them for the perpetrator. Their leader raises his hand, pointing behind them. Straight at our man. His eyes widen and his bowels slacken. His cover is blown. He has no way to defend himself against a dozen armed men, especially after not having eaten half of what was offered him for the past few weeks. He can only hope to turn and escape the way he has come, perhaps losing them in the byzantine corridors and finding some protection, perhaps in the armory. He rises to his full height and presses his fedora down more firmly, watching the monks turn and withdraw their weapons.

"As they say," he directs towards his manservant, somewhere behind him. "The jig is up." He turns, clutching his cane viciously and bracing his jaw, preparing to make a dash for it. Unexpectedly, however, his manservant is not there. Momentarily startled, our man realizes that he is not alone at all. Two shorter figures are lurking in the shadows in front of him, both more obviously human than his usual companion but both standing quite rigid. After brief consideration, our man decides that the fellows in the shadows in front of him are far less frightening than the twelve angry men behind him, and bravely takes his first step forward. Immediately the figures in front of him spring to life, marching stiffly from the shadows toward him, swinging shortswords in front of them menacingly. They are deadly pale, their eyes black and staring, their mouths held into tight frowns. Both have narrow faces and gaunt, dark brown hair hanging down from under spiked helmets perching untidily on their heads. One has a blunt, hooked nose, and another lacks an ear. Their clothes are black uniforms, weighed down by thick, knee-high boots and accented by armbands tied around the right arm. Together they are altogether fearsome opponents. Seeing no way out, our man raises his cane, twisting the end. His blade extends, a shining silver finger in the dark, and with a snap it sets into place. God, I hope I can use this as well as I did ten years ago... Both men bear down on our hero, their swords uncomfortably thicker and longer than his own.

A silent, sudden shadow glides out of nowhere between our man and his opponents. Its height and slenderness make its identity clear: our man's servant has been hiding in the dark as effectively as it had hid from the priests earlier in the evening. His two enemies pause their onslaught momentarily, creening their necks up to take in this new opponent's full height. Undeterred, they strike forward.

The first attacker lunges forward, thrusting his sword into the willowy shadow. He encounters little resistance, and finds his entire sword and part of his arm jutting out the servant's back, his shoulder almost immersed in the black sheet of the ghoul's body. There is a wet snap, like celery being broken, and the soldier's hand twists, dropping the sword with a clatter. The attacker makes no cry of pain as his arm is broken, nor as his opponent's body bulges out and tosses him like a dead puppy into the wall, where his neck shatters and his head slams against his shoulder, his broken arm flapping. Our man yelps in surprise at the spray of blood following the ragged body, and stumbles backwards, dropping his walkingstick. Lunging to pick it back up, he yells at his manservant's back. "You can do that but you can't make tea?" Sweat breaking out across his forehead and face, his teeth chattering with the shock of the battle, our man turns to see the bevy of monks approaching, waving their halberds and now screaming with an angry and reckless abandon.

The scream of unheated metal being ripped and the crunch of splintering bones makes our man turn back around to the battle at hand. He is quick enough to see another limb body fly through the air and collide with the original attacker, who is, shockingly, pushing himself to his feet with his one good arm, his head rolling uselessly from side to side. The soldiers connect with a tangle of broken limbs and roll down the hall, still not uttering a squeal of pain. Almost as afraid of the creature ahead of him as the monks behind, our man strides forward, turning to looks his manservant in the face. On either side of the beast he can see monks rushing through successive pools of light, waving their weapons, howling angrily. They will arrive in a matter of seconds.

"A repeat performance?" our man suggests, licking his dry lips and trying to smile. His horrifically grinning manservant simply stares back down at him, unchanged by the skirmish. He stares back at it, unsure of what fate he is about to meet. He expects the monks to immediately appear and attempt to disembowel him. Perhaps he stands a fighting chance with this new revealed power, but even if his manservant survives the attack, he will probably not. He has heard that people facing death find themselves at peace, or experience their life flashing before them. Our man does not. He only feels frustration at his powerlessness, anger at having died here in this bizarre fairie gaol, and a deep fear of the force he hopes will protect him. It is impossible for him to rid the poetic commemoration of the light bridage's charge from his head. Did it have to be that poem?

But death does not come. The war cries have stopped, the rush of monk's sandals is hushed. Our man leans around the edge of his servant's cloak of shadow, peeking at the enemies ahead. They are standing in place, their eyes fixed on a spot somewhere behind him. His grimace wider and more heartfelt than ever, our man slowly turns, gripping his swordcane tightly and preparing for the worst. Behind him stand five men, each far taller than he, clad in black armor from toe to top, hefting swords that seem impossible for a man to lift with both hands, giant shields emblazoned with rampant white dragons. Maces hang at their sides. At their feet, the two half-destroyed soldiers are slowly untangling themselves, exposed broken bones glinting in the torchlight, still inexplicably alive.

"Christ," our man breathes to himself. "Jesus goddamn Christ."

[LordLeopold]

"The Pontiff's position has one weakness," Knaut said, leading Stevens down the remainder of the corridor. "He needs the people's support to effect any of his plans." They paused at an intersection with another corridor, peeking down the hall in both directions before dashing forward. The high priest's revelation had bound them in an unexpected conspiracy that now made them far wearier than before. No longer did they feel comfortable boldly striding down corridors. Now they were fugitives among the monks.

"Ah," Stevens replied, a cocked grin on his face, "So I'm to regain my status as a popular figurehead." Knaut looked at him uncomfortably, as if unsure whether to laugh along with the duke or comisserate with him.

"Er, yes," he replied, averting his eyes. "There is a way for you to, uh, do that." They came to a spiral staircase, bored into the stone like a worm's trail, and quickly descended its dizzying length. "I was reminded of the response among the monks and the Entente after you slew Aesphestos in your battle with that pugnacious daemon several years ago."

"Ter'Thok," Stevens responded quickly, his head beginning to spin from the twirling rush downward. "I say, I would have been significantly more comfortable with that acclaim if anyone actually believed that Aesphestos isn't actually dead." Knaut nodded, sighing heavily, skipping gingerly over a broken and sagging step.

"We monks were not happy about that, either, my lord" he replied. "Aesphestos is too close to the Darkness to be destroyed that easily. The tales of the War of the Tap tell us he has cheated death many times. A swordcane through the neck is no exception, I've no doubt. Alas..."

"He appeared to me in the Citadel not long afterwards," Stevens said quietly, slowing his pace and lowering his chin onto his chest introspectively. The priest paused, taking a few steps with a slowing pace, and looked back at Stevens with an anxious face. Stevens stared into space for a few moments before looking up and locking eyes with Knaut. He nodded. "A battle after the celebration feast. It wasn't quite the escapism I'd hoped for." Knaut chewed on his lip, his eyes bulging, but he slowly seemed to lose his worry, and his pupils returned to normal size.

"I wish you had told someone about that before," he muttered. "Oh, with all due respect of course!" he added as Stevens gave him a sharp look. "It could explain quite a bit, though," the priest nodded to himself, drumming his fingers against his staff contemplatively. A few more moments passed before both men seemed to realize their prior mission, and without further ado continued down the stairs.

"Back to the matter at hand," Knaut said as they leveled out onto a flat, damp mezzanine which emptied out through an arch into a long, dark hallway in front of them. "For several months now, we've been housing something in the Citadel. Well, that is, someone. Maybe." Seeing Stevens's face become a mask of confusion, the priest sighed and shook his head, apparently frustrated with himself. "I really don't know how to describe him... it." He fumbled with the description, spitting out the ill-formed sentence. Stevens squinted back at him through his monocle, unsure how to respond. "It's really not something you can believe without seeing," he continued, holding up a hand against Stevens's incredulous visage. "But it's almost certainly a trick by the Forgotten Five and the Pontiff, an integral part of their plot. I can imagine a host of horrible things they could accomplish by its use." Stevens stepped forward, placing a hand on Knaut's heavily garbed shoulder, and gave him the most comforting face he could muster.

"Your Eminence," Leopold said, approximating the manner of a confidant, "Tell me what part I have to play." They locked eyes again, and the priest set his jaw.

"Do what you did to Aesphestos to this... thing," he replied. "Destroy it." Stevens stepped back, lowering his hand and running his tongue over his teeth. "Once we present you as the vanquisher of a plot to turn the Citadel over to Aesphestos, you will again become a rallying point for the monks and Radasanth. We can wrest power away from the Pontiff." Stevens took another step back, rubbing his chin, looking at the floor. Fearfully, the priest stepped forward, trying to draw the duke's eyes back up to his face. "This is our only chance to stop him," he said, a pleading tone edging into his voice. "You can't let it pass."

"And I suppose," Stevens riposted almost immediately. "There will need to be a new Pontiff afterward, hm?" His eyes jerked up and glared into Knaut's, driving him back a half-step. His mouth opened a sliver, but Stevens gestured him into silence with a flick of his wrist. "It is a very good plan: Aesphestos' hangman purges the Citadel of his last minion. Radasanth is saved and von Ribbentrophen is undermined in the Entente. It is very lucky that two High Priests should find themselves in just the right places tonight - oh, and me as well. I certainly wouldn't be expected to turn down this offer, coming off the Salvarian throne as I am, wandering aimlessly in Corone with a listless army that I never controlled to begin with. And we all turn out better in the end." Knaut lowered his head, looking severely at Stevens through his eyebrows, crossing his free arm over his chest, his fist tight. Stevens returned his gaze equally, feeling the priest's soul reach out to him. A minute passed.

"Battle in the Citadel is one thing," Stevens murmured. "You're asking me to murder." The priest cocked his head, frowning.

"If your conscience is the only thing you're worried about tonight," he hissed back, "You may not be the man I thought you were." Stevens's eyebrow arched.

"Apparently not," The duke snapped, twisting the handle of his swordcane and withdrawing the long, narrow blade. It threw off torchlight across the walls and ceiling, shining blinding lines across the stone. Leopold saw a rat scurry into a hole as the light danced across its face. "I'll do what I think needs to be done. When you have also felt Aesphestos' lifeblood on your hands, I will defer to you." The priest stood before him, not responding, his mouth now tightly sealed. The two looked at each other, their faces drawn against their skulls, their fingernails digging into their palms.

"I assure you, my lord," the priest responded, slowly stepping aside and pointing through the arch to the hallway beyond. "When the time comes, you will know in your soul what to do. Whether you do it will determine not only your salvation." Stevens turned slightly, giving Knaut one last cold look, and then quietly, steadily, walked toward the arch, his blade at his side.

[EarlStevens]

"It's Lord Leopold!" a chorus of cheers explodes behind our man. He jumps, as his nerves are already stretched to the breaking point by the exigencies of the past few hours. He whips his head back and forth, looking from the revitalized monks behind him to the approaching, clanking dark knights in front of him. He is unsure, in this world, who he should fear more. Knowing the tricks that can be played by fairies, he is unwilling to move to his supporters or to his attackers. Either one could be, and probably is, equally dangerous. After all, aren't those men on a mission to hunt down a man named Leopold Stevens? That puts our hero in a decidedly poor position. He swallows, his throat rough and dry, and decides to throw caution to the wind. He raises his cane in the air, its blade shining in the dark. The monks roar with approval, and launch themselves forward, hoisting their weapons above their heads.

Our man has never been in a battle per se. Once he was in a barroom brawl that broke up after the local constabulary came in and hawled a few of the temporary toughs back to their wives. He hardly considers himself a fighting man, much less a warrior; his physical strength and temperament prohibit it. Now is hardly the time to shirk from the melee, however, as he finds himself in the middle of the onrushing warriors. The monks rush around him like a stream around a fisherman's thighs, and he turns to follow them as they launch themselves against their massive opponents. Several monks leap into the air with surprising vigour, swinging their halberds down at the knights' heads. The heavy shields move into place, knocking the axeheads aside and splintering one of the shafts. Slowly and methodically, like pieces of machinery in a steel factory, the knights swing back their huge longswords and lurch forward, their weapons more like battering rams than blades. Monks scatter as steel beats against stone, cascading sparks across the hall. One monk falls to the ground, grasping at his leg and screaming. A horrible spurting and crunching noise as a sword crashes down a second time ends his moans.

Our man, shocked by the sudden violence, but thankful for the shadows which garb its harsher details, swallows again and bunches up his shoulders. "Seems to me," he says to his manservant just loudly enough to be heard over the noise of battle, "We have an opportunity to get the bloody hell out of here." Unsurprisingly, his ghastly follower doesn't respond, but tilts its mask from his face to a spot somewhere up and behind him. Hearing a clink and realizing the appropriateness of the height, our man ducks to the floor, making a clumsy roll to the side as a piece of black steel whistles through the space where his shoulders quite recently were. The sword hits the fearsome butler's cloak, but bounces off it silently, as if smacking a stone pillar covered in pillows. The misstep knocks the knight holding the sword off balance, and it stumbles, nearly dropping its weapon. Keeping mum, the manservant springs forward, its body spreading out into a voluminous cloak as it lifts through the air, spreading out like oil on a pond's surface. Muffled and distorted clanging can be heard through the manservant's body as the knight falls backward, its sword clanging to the floor.

Agape, our man pushes himself to his feet, grasping at his swordcane. As his manservant and foe bumble backwards, scraping against the wall, another knight rears up before him, the tatters of a monk's habit hanging from its sword. Our hero, his mortality more apparent to him than ever before, lifts his swordcane up, the blade pointing toward the knight's armored chest, giving his most spirited battle face. Undeterred, his opponent continues forward, its face hidden behind the slits in its helmet, no trace of humanity which might be amenable to fervent pleading visible.

"Screw your courage to the sticking place, old man," our hero whispers to himself, "And we'll not fail." Taking a deep breath, he watches the knight approach him, heaving its sword high. He waits until the knight seems about to bear down on him, close enough so their breath will mingle in the air. Then the moment comes. The knight swings down, and our man dodges to the side, leaping just in time to feel the sword nearly upset his fedora. He jabs towards the knight's face with his swordcane, and continues his leap to the side, carrying his movement through, as the blow is defected off the corner of the brute's shield. An unexpected unevenness in the floor, or perhaps a too-slow moving foot, through our man off balance, and he tumbles to the floor, falling into the corner at the bottom of the wall. Feeling a knot build on the side of his head, our man shakes the stars from his eyes in time to see the knight swinging its sword down upon him. With a yelp, he rolls again, with the grace of a tumbleweed, and hears the grate of metal against stone.

[LordLeopold]

Stevens strode through the archway, trembling slightly with a mixture of nervousness and anger. He was now finding it quite difficult to place his trust in the man he had just pledged to aid. The plot was too amorphous and sketchy for the duke to put together in his head. He was expected to kill someone or something - his reservations about this made his hands clammy - without knowing what, or even exactly why. What was the Pontiff's motivation in this: merely power? Had he made a Faustian bargain because he was truly Aesphestos' disiciple, or was he being coerced into this plot? Stevens remembered well the events of the final battle of the Gisela tournament, before Bartholomew had become Pontiff. Aesphestos had used dark magic to gain control of the priest's mind, and used him to lure Stevens into a trap. Bartholomew had broken the control and lashed out against the dark sorcerer, and both had disappeared in a flash of fire. Upon his return, Bartholomew told a riveting story of being magically transported to Salvar and battling Aesphestos to a stand-still on the snowy steppes. It had made for a fair fireside yarn at the time, but looking back it seemed as suspect as this new tale. Was he ever under Aesphestos' control at all? Perhaps he had been the wizard's minion that long ago. Perhaps this was all a lie made up by Knaut in some mysterious attempt to overthrow the Pontiff and take control of it all - the Entente, the Citadel and Radasanth. Was O'Mally really in on it? The questions swimming in Stevens's head eroded his little certainty and made him want to just sit down in the middle of the hallway and wait the whole dashed mess out.

Through the archway, the hallway widened and split out into two staircases that sloped down the opposing sides of the hall to a lower level about a storey below. Between the stairs was a stone bannister standing at the edge of the floor, overlooking the hallway below, which entered and exited the expanded room through wide, squat arches at either side. Several dozen candles lit the room from an iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The posts at the bottom of each staircase's railings were carved into narrow statuettes of high priests. Faint sounds that sounded suspiciously like the clash and cry of battle wafted up from the floor below. Stevens walked to the bannister and looked over the edge, cautious against what might be waiting below. The only thing that spoke to the possibility of a battle was a splayed figure on the ground below, covered in a loose brown robe, dead hands clutching at a pool of blood congealing on the marble beside it.

"Oh God," Stevens muttered, feeling his insides jump toward his throat. Holding back gorge, he hurried along the bannister and down the stairs to his left, keeping his eyes on the obviously dead body. When he hit the end of the stairs, he leapt for the corpse, hitting his knees and half-crawling towards the dead monk. Clutching at the man's robes, he pulled the body onto its back, looking into the dead face. "Oh God," he repeated, holding his hand up to his face. "Cliffton." Stevens scrambled back, landing on his rear. The man's cloudy eyes and pale, puffy skin couldn't hide his identity, and Stevens knew him: A gruff yet warm-hearted monk who had let Stevens into the monks' pantry many nights spent recovering in the triage. Stevens pressed his hands to his eyes for a few seconds, rasping in breaths. Clutching for his monocle and swordcane, he forced himself to look back upon the body. His chest and stomach were perforated with a series of crimson, triangular wounds surrounded by wet red-brown smears across the front of his tunic. Stevens's eyes fixed on the wounds. He had only seen men carrying weapons that could make wounds like that once. They had been Aesphestos' footsoldiers.

"He wasn't lying," Stevens said aloud, stretching out his hand and pushing Cliffton's eyelids closed. The duke sat for a few more minutes, grappling with the emotions tearing through him. The noises down the hall slowly crept into his consciousness, pulling him out of his thoughts. He turned, looking down the smoky, poorly lit hall. A melee of shadowy figures was moving back and forth down the corridor, crashes and the sounds of wounded men drifting into the duke's ears. He pulled himself up, lifting his swordcane and drawing his mouth tight. Another time that tries men's souls. Stevens thought to himself, and with another glance back at his dead friend, charged down the hall as fast as his ageing body would carry him.

As he approached the battle, he could make out the shadows of what seemed to be monks, hopping between larger shadows clad in armor and hefting shields, jabbing and swinging at them with pikes or halberds, yelling battle calls and dodging blows from their opponents' longswords. The duke had no doubt that these larger, cruder warriors were Aesphestos' men. They grew in size and volume as Stevens approached until he could hear the blades sing and the armour grind. A battle it was. Seeing some poor soul fall to the ground and roll out of the way of a fearsome sword strike, the duke directed his path and jumped to his aid. Tossing aside his swordcane's wooden sheath, he leapt forward, stepping on the thick blade of the armoured beheamouth's sword, embedded in the corner between the floor and the wall, pushing through with his momentum to step forward onto the fellow's arm. The joint buckled under his step, but Stevens only needed a fraction of a second for the danger to pay off. Jabbing his swordpoint onto the grate of the knight's helmet, balancing on his arm, the duke adjusted his grip on the handle of the sword slightly, in a strange and imperceptible way he could never adequately describe or imitate afterwards.

A jet of flame and lightning roared forth from the sword's tip, blasting the knight's helmet and heating it to a glowing white mass. Feeling his support give way, Stevens clumsily jumped to the side, stumbling and falling to the ground, feeling his ankle twist painfully. He crawled away from the knight as quickly as possible, expecting a nasty tumble from the now-burning monster. He had no time to plan his next move or appraise the battle around him, only to slither to safety.

[EarlStevens]

Our man is blundering to his feet, clutching his swordcane to his chest, as a man runs past him in a flash, leaping onto the attacking knight's body. Surprised, he flees to the other side of the hall, reaching the stone on the other side just in time to feel himself buffeted by the heat and roar of some sort of explosion. Flipping around and holding his back to the wall, he holds up an arm, the cascade of hellfire engulfing his enemy casting a shadow across his eyes. He still needs to hold them half-closed against the light, his eyelashes obscuring his view. A blue dash across his vision remains after the fire abruptly ends, like a faucet being cut off, and he blinks in a vain attempt to push it away. His saviour's face is obscured by the mixture of poor lighting and after-image smeared across his vision, and he doesn't have time to wait to penetrate either. Another knight clunks aside him, swinging its sword like a switch about its head. Eeriely voiceless, it closes in, filling our man's clouded vision. He raises his swordcane, preparing to jab at the closest exposed place between pieces of armor.

Another flash across his vision obliviates this over-optismistic plan. A monk, launching himself through the air like a flying squirrel, slams into the knight's side, burying the head of a halberd with a splindered pole between its helmet and shoulder. A spray of black blood speckles our man, and he balks at the acrid stench and stinging sensation it makes on his skin. There is a crash as the knight falls to the ground, apparently far less resilient than its smaller allies. The monk, covered in nasty looking cuts and blood smears, heaves his chest and pulls the axe out of the knight's flesh and blood bubbles up from the chink in the armor. Our man looks at the monk, who is taking deep breaths and surveying the damage he has caused, and tries to keep his disgust and amazement hidden beneath his face. The monk looks into our hero's eyes and nods in recognition.

"Alright there, Lord Leopold?" he asks. Our hero stares back, unsure of how to respond. Figuring him alright, the monk turns and runs towards the denouement of the battle, where five monks are digging their weapons into a tottering knight. It is already over, as quickly and unexpectedly at it began. He looks over the dead knight before him, frowning, and then quickly jabs it in the side through a slit between the front and back plates. Feeling he has contributed to its defeat, he looks up and sees his manservant approaching, gliding between discarded weapons and puddles of blood, a black stain at the very edge of its otherwise pure white face. The inscrutable smile is unchanged.

"Good to see you got out of it alright," our man says as the ghoul hovers in front of him, leering over the dead knight. "He didn't, obviously." he points to the body with his still exposed, bloody blade. Our man thinks he can detect a hint of incredulity in the blank, unmoving stare he receives, and feels indignant. He is about to say something when the servant turns slowly, looking towards the man who had saved our hero only seconds before. He wags a finger at his servant, as if to say "Right you are," and turns to face his protector. It is, to say the least, a jostling experience.

Our man steps backwards, banging the back of his head on the marble. He is beyond noticing. The other man's face is only visible in profile, a torch casting a pale light against his face, but it is unmistakable. The face may be somewhat pudgier, perhaps a bit more wizened, a monocle instead of spectacles over the eye, the nose perhaps a bit longer, but these changes don't alter the character that springs to mind immediately. Our hero reaches up with one hand, touching the side of his own face, feeling the contours, pressing skin against skin. Has the battle shell-shocked him without shells?

He had once had a nightmare as a child that the standing mirror in the parlor of his home had come to life and rattled across the floor towards him, his own reflecting growing in front of him until he was swallowed up by the glass. Quivering, a surreal feeling coming over him, our man finds himself reliving that dream, for the man standing before him in the hall is none other than a reflection of himself. Dressed differently, perhaps, carrying himself straighter, but it is impossible to look at him and see another man. He is looking at himself. It is terrifying. Our hero raises his walkingstick, putting the tembling blade between himself and this apparition. He clears his throat to speak, and overcomes his chattering teeth to force out a meek question:

"Who... who... what are you?"

[LordLeopold]

The smoldering ruin of the knight's upper body made a sickening noise as it hit the stone floor, falling on its back and avoiding the duke entirely. Stevens, slowly standing, avoiding putting too much pressure on one foot, brushed the front of his jacket off with his free hand and heaved a few mighty breaths. His sprint and assault had worn out his already tired body; he expected that had he not been healed by the monks who had retrieved him from the ruins of the inn a few hours ago, he would now be too exhausted to do anything but faint on the spot. Leopold scanned the shadowy battle around him, watching a monk level another knight out of the corner of his eye, but focusing on the last major part of the battle, about twenty feet in front of him, where five monks were finishing off the last knight. They leapt like fleas onto a dog, digging in with their fists and axe handles, some with shortswords drawn, stabbing in soft spaces between armour plates, coating themselves in jets of black blood. A monk who looked almost certainly dead, his surely horrific wounds masked by the insufficient light, lay a few paces away from Stevens, he quickly avoided his gaze. Two other hieratics were lifting another one to his feet in the shadows outside the reach of the nearest torch's light. He moaned weakly, and Stevens averted his eyes once again.

"Alright there, Lord Leopold?" a voice asked somewhere to his left. The duke waved his still-smoking blade absentmindedly, giving a weak display of his continuing health. He was looking fixedly at the monks who were disentangling themselves from the fallen giant. Although smeared with copious amounts of the devil's stinking ichor, the fact that they were encased in armour - chest plates, helmets, braces, shin guards - was obvious. These monks had come down the hall prepared for battle. Whether it was a coincidence or not that they had found it was unclear. These knights must be the spawn of Aesphestos, Stevens surmised, hence the characteristic blade marks on Cliffton's chest. So whose side were the monks on?

"Who... who... what are you?" Stevens heard to his left. He raised an eyebrow at the oddly familiar voice, nearly upsetting his monocle, and turned, still wheezing slightly from his expended effort. His wheeze became a gasp, and then a faint-inducing series of quick, shallow breaths. He put a hand to his chest, stumbling backwards. As if in a dream, or more appropriately a nightmare, his vision seemed to blur around the face in front of him, hovering behind an outstretched blade. The face was a little thin, the skin sallow, the nose surely a bit long, but it was undoubtedly the same face Stevens had seen in the looking glass every morning for years. Stevens was looking at himself.

Taking another step back, the duke felt his joints clinking as they rattled with nervousness, his skin crawling up his spine. He intuitively knows this isn't some trick of his eyes or a product of an incantation. There is humanity in his double's eyes. A humanity that by all rights shouldn't exist. Stevens moves his hand up to his throat, feeling the air flowing down and the blood flowing up, sensing the heat beneath his skin. The duke is obviously himself: Who does that make this other man? Fear and anxiety were rippling across the other Leopold's face, and it was obvious the same questions were occuring to him. As Stevens peered into the other Stevens's eyes, he suddenly knew exactly what Knaut had meant. I do know what to do.

Stevens charged forward, swiping at the other man's blade with his own, then flinging his weapon aside and grabbing at the lapels of his double's jacket with both hands, his eyes bulging and his face red, veins throbbing in his ears.

"Who sent you," he said, his question more a forceful accusation than a query. Stevens did not shout, but barked the words out with such force and suppressed anger that they hit his own ears like battering rams. "Who brought you here. What the hell do you want from me. With God as my witness, answer me or I will kill you."

[EarlStevens]

Our man is too shocked by his doppelganger's onrush to put up much of a fight. His swordcane is knocked away, and he is slammed up against the wall behind him, pinned down by surprisingly strong arms. He struggles meekly, grabbing at his assailer's arms and flailing his fists, trying to knock his double's head, but can field no strong resistance. This, he imagines, is what being mugged must be like. Or attacked by a thief. Maybe this is what his father felt like before he died. Helpless, confused, trapped.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he gasps, staring into his own eyes staring back at him. Seeing his own face appear before him was frightening enough, having it huffing a few inches in front of him is downright horrifying. He takes another weak swing at his captor's head. "I'm not here with anyone! God, get off me! Who do you think I am? My name is Leopold Stevens!"

[LordLeopold]

The punches bounced off Stevens's head ineffectively. Grunting heavily, the duke tried to imagine what is behind this face, his own face, gasping and terrified. He felt nothing but loathing towards this pseudo-Stevens. Such a thing shouldn't exist. When it speaks, the duke is even more incensed. He twisted his fists, trying to throw his opponent to the ground.

"I am Leopold Stevens," he roared back, reaching for his sword on the floor to finish this madness.

[EarlStevens]

The earl is thrown painfully to the ground, bouncing slightly on the stone. He writhes under the man standing over him, his own voice booming out of the alien mouth. The figure reaches for his sword. The end is near.

[LordLeopold]

There was no sound, or light, or air. Stevens floated in an unseen sea, unable to grope about himself, unable to feel anything but a sinking feeling in his chest. His mind was a blur. The last few seconds repeated in his head, stretched to an interminable length, creeping impossibly slowly by in his mind. He had a body then, but he can't feel now one. There had been fear and hatred in his veins, but he feels nothing: Neither veins nor emotion. Does he have a heart beat? Is he alive?

The duke realized he was sitting on the edge of a bed. He had been there for quite some time. No, he had just arrived. The room was familiar. No, it wasn't. The walls were close around him, puce and eggshell striped paper wallpaper covering them. The door had a doorframe, but the wall continued straight through it. There was no door. There were no windows. A lady's vanity stood in the corner, its mirror shattered, the wood behind it peaking around the few slivers of glass still attached to the molding. The floor wasn't carpeted, and dust and grime were collecting between the boards. The bed didn't feel very comfortable, and its green sheets felt thinned with years of washing in hard water. A lightbulb hung from the ceiling, but no light shone from its filament. Light diffused through the room like sun bouncing off dust particles.

"This room is ugly," Stevens said the only thought in his head. He turned to look behind him. A portrait of his father hung over the head of the bed. Neville Stevens was holding a heavy book on his lap, his hand resting on the black biding, his eyes severe above his handlebar moustache. Leopold could tell by the way the figure bunched his shoulders under his grey waistcoat that his father had been uncomfortable while the canvas was being painted. The eyes made it clear, too. They glared down. Feeling uncomfortable, the duke turned back around. Cliffton the monk was standing in front of him, his chest unpunctured, his robes not bloody. Stevens knew immediatley, however, that this wasn't Cliffton, or a ghost. Something else was taking Cliffton's form. He felt more comfortable looking at the pudgy monk's face than his father's. They faced each other for a few minutes, soaking in the silence.

"You're not God," Stevens said finally, not moving his hands from where they rested on the tops of his thighs. "He would be more dramatic. Therefore, I take it I'm not dead." Cliffton smiled and sat down on the bed beside the duke, his knees creaking. "Although I suppose I could be dead and you could be... someone else." Cliffton simply continued smiling. Unperturbed, Stevens stared forward at the seam between two sections of wallpaper, watching them peel from the gum on the wall.

"Don't you wonder," Cliffton said after a few more minutes, his voice warped and muffled by the small size of the room. "Why you didn't want to kill someone you'd never met, but five minutes later you wanted to kill someone who had only committed the sin of looking like you?" Stevens and Cliffton turned towards each other at the same time, the duke coolly meeting the monk's inquisitive gaze. He thought it over, and silence covered them both for a minute longer.

"I was frightened," Stevens stated simply. "And I felt I had to." Cliffton kept smiling as if his mouth wasn't made for anything else. The duke bobbed his head a few times to himself, mulling it over. "When I looked into his eyes, I felt something I've never felt before."

"The same thing an infant feels when it first sees itself in the mirror," Cliffton suggested with a certainty that precluded discussion. "You were conscious of yourself. Not that you existed. You knew that, of course." Stevens chuckled, and Cliffton patted his knee avuncularly. "You saw yourself as others see you. You saw yourself seeing yourself. Hence, you also saw that others can see you." Stevens wasn't quite sure what this meant, but raised his eyebrows as if he understood and thought this was quite profound. It was Cliffton's turn to chuckle. "You weren't quite sure what that meant, but you raised your eyebrows as if you understood and thought it was quite profound." Stevens knew he should feel taken aback by this invasion of his mind, but he just placed his finger beside his nose and winked. Cliffton chuckled again.

"You saw how you react when someone else commits violence. We both know you had a vague idea of that already, since once you were an infant who saw himself in the mirror. More or less, you have an idea of yourself. What you also saw, and what you liked far less, was seeing how you react when you commit violence." There was no chuckling this time. The silence, instead of muted like a bedchamber at dawn, was stifling as an open grave. "Guilt and embarassment are easy to repress. It's harder to deny yourself that ability. The amount of frustration in having that right taken from you, in realizing how you have condemned yourself, is not easy to imagine."

"One might be driven to kill," Stevens added quietly, rising to his feet and walking to the vanity, reaching out his arms and resting against it, bent from the waist and staring into the shards on the wood. Cliffton appeared at his side without the sound of approaching footsteps or the brush of his cloak against the floor.

"Killing him will not change what you have done. It will not alter what you have become." Stevens looked up from the rickety piece of furniture, coated in chipped paint, and drank in Cliffton's face, his sympathetic eyes and nuturing smile. The duke reached out and put his palm on the side of the monk's face, feeling the paunchy skin beneath, exchanging warmth between their bodies.

"If the infant breaks the mirror, he's still seen himself," Stevens concurred, flicking his head toward the shattered glass. "He still fears becoming fragmented. He fears not having seen himself at all." Cliffton placed his hand over Stevens's, his eyes transmitting his pleasure as effectively as an effusive nod. "I do, too." The duke stated, turning and clamping his other hand down on Cliffton's shoulder. "How can't I?"

"I cannot do anything about that," the sacerdotal spirit replied. "Your emotions are your own. You just used them to destroy. Your choice." Cliffton stepped back, withdrawing from Stevens. The duke lowered his hands and stepped forward, but the monk held out a hand as he continued to slowly back away. "Knaut was right. You will know what to do." Leopold didn't respond, merely watched the monk backpedal across the room, which was becoming impossibly large around them.

"You're a Mya." he said, simply. Cliffton smiled broadly, showing his teeth. The room disappeared.

[EarlStevens]

"I'm dead," our man says to himself, noticing there is nothing encasing his soul. His body and the world are blank. Like a dot on a piece of paper, he cannot comprehend what or where he is; maybe he feels something, but there's no way to tell what it is, or how it is, or why it is. No one else exists. He doesn't know how he thought anything to himself at all, but doesn't remember it anymore anyway. He was never born, he never knew anything, his life was a dream he's forgotten.

He is lying down on a chaise longue. Our man sits up, whipping his head around him, his eyes searching for some sign of how he has arrived here. He is in a parlor of some sort. The lights are very low - he hears the hiss of gas and doesn't have to look up to tell that lamps protruding from the walls are burning low, keeping the barely lit room at least a bit bright. The ceiling is decorated with plaster designs and the floor is coated in a thick Persian rug. A massive fireplace sulks on the other side of the room, no crackling logs held in its mouth. Portraits of one or another battle hang on the wall, and the profusion of black figures being bayonetted by men in khaki tells our man the owner of this parlor has been heavily decorated by Victoria Regina for finishing off a few tribes of Zulu or Igbo. Other, sturdier pieces of furniture are scattered throughout the room in what seems like a well thought-out pattern. Shades are drawn against the windows, and the doorway leading out to the foyer, although wide open, gives little hint at what lies in this house beyond this room. In the far corner, a grandfather clock ticks, its pendulum swinging lazily and catching the gas light at the middle of its swing, glinting in our hero's eye.

Our man realizes he is not alone on the chaise as a faint grunt can be heard behind him. Even twenty years later he knows that noise. His heart jangling in his chest and his palms breaking into a sweat, he turns with a mixture of horror and delight. Lying on the couch beside him, her hand under her head and her other bare arm splayed out haphazardly, is a young woman, wrapped in an incredibly heaving looking dress, which is cut low on her chest, exposing several freckles spread across her collarbone. Her neck is a porcelain curve swooping from her delicate shoulders up to her dainty chin and smooth jaw. Brown hair, drawn back but curling around her small ears and falling out of place around her soft, pink cheeks and long black eyelashes. Below the slightly upturned nose are two thin peach-colored lips, parted slightly in sleep. Our man feels his chest clenching up, and extends a quaking hand to cup her cheek, gently waking her up as he used to so many years ago. His fingers hover a few inches over her skin, quavering and unsure of themselves. He keeps his arm extended for a few seconds, unsure if he can make the slight movement necessary.

"You can't touch her," a voice rang out, shattering the stillness, drowning out the ticking of the clock and the methodical sighs of the woman's breathing. Our man is so surprised and shocked that he falls off the chaise, frantically searching the room for the source of the voice, reaching for his swordcane, which he sadly cannot find. The speaker becomes obvious as a man strides through the door from the foyer, one hand in his pocket and another grasping the lapel of his jacket. His brown three piece suit and scuffed boots give him away immediately.

"Uncle Ned?" our man asks, incredulously, climbing to his feet. His eyes widen and he clasps his hands over his mouth, turning to the sleeping beauty sprawled on the couch. She had not moved. Puzzled, our hero stares at her, tracing the curve of her body from the top of her head, down her neck, across the bulge of her breasts and the indent of her waist, back up her hips. These large dresses can be surprisingly revealing. The burly, squat man stomps up next to our man, chomping on a pipe, blowing out clouds of horrible smelling blue smoke.

"Corsets will do that," he sneers, snatching his pipe from his mouth and gesturing with the stem. "Worst damn contraptions invented since the Chinese started breaking girls' feet." Our man looks from the girl to Ned, unsure of whether he is confused, mortified, or elated. Uncle Ned still has a bushy moustache and poorly cut black hair, probably snipped himself, still spits flecks of phlegm when he speaks, and still has a personality that belies his size.

"How is this..." our man asks, gesturing from his uncle to the beauty and back again. Ned cuts him off, waving his pipe violently about, spraying tobacco ashes and cinders across the room.

"None of this is real, Leo" he booms, slapping his nephew on the back. Our man doesn't feel a thing. If Uncle Ned's backslaps don't take his breath away, he knows he must be either dreaming or...

"Is this one of those life flashing before my eyes... things?" our hero asks, cocking an eyebrow. Ned laughs, his barrel chest filling with air and bending out the windows with the sheer force of his guffaws.

"You aren't dead and neither am I! I can't speak for her, though! Check her pulse!" Ned roars, slapping our man on the back again. "OH WAIT! I forgot that you can't touch her!" He laughs again, and slams his pipe back into his mouth, clenching his huge teeth around it. Our man, appalled, grabs Ned's shoulder and tries to get his attention, a difficult affair.

"Where am I this time?" he asks, but Ned ignores him, instead looking pensively at the girl's creamy complexion, taking in her beauty.

"You can't touch her," he continues, not moving his gaze, "For the same reason you couldn't marry her." Our man narrows his eyes and takes his hand off his uncle's shoulder. "And you couldn't marry her," he goes on, this time turning to face his nephew, "For the same reason you were so afraid of that barmy old bat who just tried to kill you." Stevens began backing away, bumping into a small table and overturning a glass vase, which bounced on the carpet. Unnerved by this collision, our man stops, but is no less wary of the man standing before him, who is now obviously not the same uncle he left in London. Ned sucks on his pipe before realizing it has gone out, and reaches into his jacket, pulling out a box of matches. As he relights his pipe, he continues.

"Imagine that you are subsumed into a group of people. Parliament, for example," Ned smiles between puffs as his tobacco takes flame again. "Imagine that you become just like them. You can't help it, it's simple assocation. One man can't stand against a thousand others. Or five hundred, or a dozen. Or even one woman. Once you become part of a unit, you are no longer an individual." The room suddenly fills with people, all of whom seem to be at some sort of party. Our man immediately tenses up, but none of the partygoers can see him. They are all dressed in fin-de-siecle clothing, spouting fin-de-siecle banalities, but none of them can see our man. He feels no less tense.

"AH HA!" Ned hollers. "You see! You are no longer Leopold Stevens, defined by Leopold Stevens. You are party-goer Leopold Stevens, defined by the party you're in, accountable to party-goer Jane Doe and John Doe, your implacable rivals for self-definition. Not only implacable, indefatigable! They'll hound you till you leave, die, or kill them. A sad truth." The party disappears, but the girl who was lying on the chaise longue is left, standing vis-a-vis our man, smiling expansively, crinkling her blue eyes into happy crescents.

"So will she!" Ned says, pointing to the woman and moving in our man's line of sight, blocking the petite brunette. "Of course, you will say it is love, but what is love other than the emotional domination of one person by another?" Our hero, lost for words and utterly confused, steps back, but Ned is upon him, grabbing him by the lapels. "You are afraid of losing yourself. The only way you can protect the integrity of your mind, of your soul, is by being an individual. Apart, self-defined, unique." The parlor is replaced by a rushing crowd of people, all washed out like an old daguerreotype, no differences in their featureless faces, all hunched forward and racing towards an indeterminate goal. They rush to either side of Ned and our man, leaving them barely a hair's breadth of space on either side.

"But what if," Ned continues, "What if you are not an individual? What if there is not only you who is you? What if the universe's amor fati is such that there are two yous? Are you an individual any more? Have you just become part of a unit merely by trying not to be part of a unit?" Ned's brown eyes bore into our man's, and he realizes he is terrified. "Does that mean you have no control over yourself at all? Are you merely a recurrance of someone else's life? Are you actually a person?" The crowd rushing by disappears and they are back in the salon.

"I don't..." our man begins, but Ned holds up a hand, motioning him into silence.

"That is your fear. That is why you despise seeing yourself in Leopold Stevens: Because you are Leopold Stevens." There is a brief pause. "Do not let yourself be controlled by your weaknesses." Ned says with some finality. Our man swoons for a second, but catches himself. He looks at the woman lying on the chaise longue. He looks at Ned. His mind is made up. Pushing his uncle aside, he leaps to the side of the longue, bends down, and presses his lips against her neck. With that, he vanishes.

[LordLeopold]

Leopold was being pulled to his feet by a group of yammering monks, their hands grabbing at his clothes and arms, a confused whirl of voices surrounding him. He looked blankly from one blood-stained, screaming face to another. A monk was grabbing his ankle in his hands, murmuring some healing spell. Another monk was slapping his face lightly and calling his name, trying to lighten a spark in the duke's deadened eyes. He couldn't tell how long he had been away, or if he was even still in the same hallway. Twisting his neck, he could see a massive armour-clad body lying on the floor. The monks around him were still wearing their own helmets and plating, sweat pouring down some of their faces. Stevens looked in front of him, and seeing a huddled figure in gray clothing, attended by two monks, knew that whatever had just happened, he was still in the same hallway, on the same night. Nothing had changed.

"I'm alright," he said, pushing monks away from himself. They continued their squabbling, searching his body for wounds, feeling the surface of his head. Irritated, the duke pushed harder, managing to untangle himself. "Alright, my good monks," he said, brushing himself off and searching for his monocle, which he found swinging from its fob and reattached to his eye. "Thank you, thank you. But what the devil is going on? Who were these blighters? Are they the ones who're responsible for..." He couldn't bring himself to mention Cliffton's demise, but their nods made it clear they understood. "What do we know about them, then?" He waved toward two of the dead knights, trying to ignore the three monks huddled over the body of one of their own. The congregation seemed unsure of how to respond, most obviously itching to get back to looking for problems in his physique. A craggy monk who seemed to have the bearing of a leader stepped forward, peering at Stevens from beneath his conical helmet, which swooped down over his forehead and eyebrows.

"I know I'm not supposed to tell you this, m'lord," he said, his voice a furtive mutter, "But we only ran into them by mistake. We're actually supposed to be looking for you." Stevens had been surprised too many times tonight to do anything but take this in stride.

"Orders of the Pontiff, I've no doubt," he responded, scratching his chin. "And I imagine that you have orders in case you find, say, two Leopold Stevenses?" he continued, pointing to his double on the floor. The monk leader tugged his mouth sideways in a weird sort of grimace and nodded.

"We weren't sure what to make of that one until now," he said, rubbing the side of his neck with a grimy hand. "I guess it makes some sort of sick sense." Stevens ran his tongue over his teeth contemplatively, weighing the possibilities for action.

[EarlStevens]

Our hero comes to as two monks hover over him, pressing their hands to places on his body that look like they may be bruised and whispering under their breaths. He feels entirely fine, and so attempts to stand, pushing aside the invasive fingers. They push him back down, obviously helping him but their faces are unfriendly. Hesitating at what move to make next, he lets them continue their work, trying to take stock of what position he's in. He seems to be right where he was when his hallucination - or whatever it was - began. Little time has apparently passed, if the monks are still clustered around him. The other Leopold Stevens is standing not far away, consulting with the man who had been pegged as the leader earlier. Our hero feels his heart skip at least a beat when sees his mirror image, but swallows his horror at seeing his face saying words he isn't speaking and keeps scanning his surroundings.

His manservant is nowhere to be found. He feels a twinge of loneliness at this fact. Now that's unexpected, he thinks to himself. The day I start missing that ghoulish ghost is the day of Armageddon. Pausing for a second, digesting this thought, which is suddenly less ludicrious than he had intended, our man drums his fingers on the floor, ignoring the now largely pointless searches for wounds being carried out on his body. But of course, they probably weren't searching for wounds; they were probably searching for a reason to keep him seated in this corner. If I'm not trapped in a bloody box, they press me down on the ground like a rat in a trap. he thinks to himself, his mixture of fear and loneliness turning to indignation and irritation. Don't let myself be controlled by my weaknesses, eh? he stews. "But what if they're imposed?" He mutters, not realizing the wall between his mind and his mouth has been breached. The monks glance at each other, but apparently he's been accepted as far gone for some time.

"Stevens!" a voice booms down the corridor. Our man creens his neck around a monk's shoulder to get a view of the source of the cry. A jumble of footfalls and muted, monosyllabic grunts foreshadows the appearance of a corps of what look like two or three dozen monks, lacking armor, some swinging wooden poles or holding glinting pieces of metal that could either be small shields or frying pans. At their head is a tall, narrow-faced man, draped in the white and blue robes, mantle and miter of a cleric. His crozier and hat are slightly shorter than the ones carried by the men of the cloth our hero had seen earlier in the night. He is taller, however, than those three men were, and is obviously not one of them. Rushing at the head of his men, he approaches the other Stevens, surveying the damage around the hall with an appalled look on his face.

"Leopold Stevens!" he cries again as he reaches the standing Stevens, his voice a cautious mixture of trepedation and friendly cheer. "I'd heard that..." his eyes slide to our man, seated as he is on the floor. Noting that his monkish overseers have paused, staring at their superior and the army he has brought, our man breaks out from their encirclement, jumping to his feet. The priest scrutinizes him for a few seconds before becoming satisfied.

"So it's true," he says. "It appears Knaut is more trustworthy than I gave him credit for."

[LordLeopold]

"Hm," Stevens responded to the evangelion, a haughty character named Furlinghouse who had had sparing contact with him during his Citadel heyday. He had a feeling that Furlinghouse disliked being second-in-command under High Priest O'Mally, and was probably even more rankled by the fact that, despite the fact that O'Mally hadn't been a regular presence at the Citadel for closing on two years, he had not been bumped up to the rank of High Priest yet. He wore the blue and white of his rank like a scarlet letter of failure. Even if Knaut is telling the truth, it's interesting that he should include this malcontent in his plot. Stevens thought to himself. Indeed, Knaut's perspective on the other Stevens seemed a little skewed. If the spirit who had taken on Cliffton's appearance was indeed a Mya, then the duke had just experienced what could only be described as divine intervention. If the Mya didn't warn him of the danger of this other Stevens, then how dangerous could he be?

But how could the duke be sure that it really had been a Mya? These mystical creatures had apparently once walked upon Althanas side-by-side with men, slowly withdrawing into some sort of heavenly abode beyond the reach of humans and their magic, until they were a memory as vague and confused as the Garden of Eden. According to the priests of Ai'Bron who had discussed the Mya with him, no one was sure what they looked like, what their powers were, or what their true relationship with mankind and the corporeal realm was. The last time they had any contact with Althanas had been when they sealed Aesphestos and the rest of the Forgotten Five away in a series of magical binds, ending the War of the Tap several millennia ago. Even if Stevens was willing to tell anyone else about his little tete-a-tete, which he wasn't, there was no way to corroborate with any certainty that he had spoken with a Mya or done anything other than hallucinate. He was reminded of Scrooge's suggestions to Jacob Marley that the ghost was merely a crumb of cheese, poorly digested. Was this post-mortal Cliffton merely a dollop of gravy somewhere in his gut?

"I assume he's taken you into his confidence by now," Furlinghouse directed at Stevens. "And no doubt you know the extent of the plot against us." The duke opened his mouth to say that he did, but the priest cut him off. "The Pontiff has betrayed us to Lord Aesphestos and the time for us to rise against him is nigh." From the shocked and excited mutterings from the armoured monks around Stevens, the duke surmised that they had not been privvy to this plot. Leopold also realized that the priest hadn't been addressing him out of politeness, but rather to find a convincing way to break the news to the other monks and rally him to his cause. A crafty piece of work.

"Yes indeed," Stevens replied. "I say, it's a tough job, but we're obligated to do something." The chatterings from the monks increased. Several appeared hesitant, but their comrades soon convinced them: The Duke heard one of them pipe up "If Lord Leopold and the Evangelion believe it, I do too!" and smiled. "No doubt these monstrous minions were being kept here on Aesphestos' behalf by Bartholomew." he said, motioning to the lifeless bodies around him. Furlinghouse cast his eyes about, grimly taking in the destruction.

"But m'lord!" A monk squeaked from the other side of the massive corpses. "These men are wearing Ozternbergian uniforms! I'd know these helmets anywhere!" he lifted two spiked hats in the air, and it was obvious he was standing with one sandaled foot atop a twitching, broken man's body, garbed in black. Stevens shuddered at the sight, but the evangelion stepped forward, not missing a beat.

"That is meant to throw us off the scent," he stated, a definite air of finality in his voice. "If the Pontiff can convice us that the Ozternbergians and the Entente are the enemies, he can distract us long enough to destroy our own safety. He can make the Citadel into his fief, owing allegiance only to his own greed and that of the Lord of Death!" As if on cue, the three dozen monks behind him raised their fists in the air and gave a shout of condemnation. The duke, made slightly uncomfortable by this clash of mass politics, shifted from foot to foot and glanced at his double, shivering as he briefly made his eyes meet their mirror image. With a self-satisfied smirk, the evangelion took a step closer to Stevens, as if bringing him into a confidence.

"We are going to the armoury," he said, still loud enough for the other monks to hear. "We are equpping ourselves to meet the Pontiff before he can gather his loyalists and put his plan into action. Will you join us!?" He raised his staff in the air in an extraneous gesture of defiance against the corrupt Pontiff, and another roar rose from his men. Stevens, pursing his lips, sized up the priest before him and the men at his back. He looked around his feet at the gore and blood smearing the floor. He looked again at his double. At that point, he felt a tugging both in his heart and in his head. His head was tugging him to run to the armoury. His heart was telling him that now was the time to make sure his brother, friend and familiars were alright.

"Do you know where Anthony is?" Stevens asked, ignoring the screamed question. Furlinghouse, caught off balance, stared at him for a few seconds, blinking. The duke sighed. "Have you seen Petunia and a few other lost looking men bunched around her?" he asked. Furlinghouse's eyes lit up in recognition, and he nodded.

"I have not seen the delightful fowl," he resplied. "But all of Knaut's men have been rushing to the armoury. They are either being taken there for safekeeping, or..." Furlinghouse paused, weighing whether to continue, and then decided to take the plunge. "They may have been intercepted by the Pontiff's men. They are your friends, and therefore a threat. He deeply fears you, perhaps more than you can know." Another cheer from his men. The duke grimaced, uncertain of how to continue.

That's when he felt another tug in his head. This one wasn't an emotion or an obligation It was the bundle of feeling which was always jumbled at the back of his mind, the emotions and piques that made up most of Petunia's consciousness. Having lived with it for four years, he had almost gotten used to having two personalities in his skull. He had gotten enough of the hang of it to know that Petunia was feeling something strong right now. A very strong fear. He immediately began searching the floor for his swordcane, frantically trying to pierce the darkness. The evangelion gave him a perplexed look, also scanning the floor to see what Stevens was trying to find.

"I know where she is," the duke said, by way of explanation. "I can't go with you."

[EarlStevens]

Our man's eyes unfocus as the priest and the other Stevens address each other. He thinks back to his hallucination, or dream, or whatever it was. He's not sure how to explain it to himself. Was it caused by the stress of being attacked by a double of himself? Maybe his subconscious was rippling up to the surface of his mind. Perhaps it was some spell that one of these fairie monks had cast on him during the battle. Maybe it was an intervention by some sort of magical body beyond mortal reckoning. Whoever it was, they had been able to tap into his memories, his deep-seated emotions. Uncle Ned had been like an older brother or friendly cousin his entire life. If someone had wanted to send him a message, that had chosen their envoy well. And to bring her into it, at that. It was too perfect a tapping of his most deep-seated fears and memories to be anything but a mental revolt. The source, however, is less important than the warning. He must not walk in fear. A man who walks in fear is no longer his own master; he is a slave to his emotions and those who manacle him with them.

"I see," as our man slides out of his introspection, his eyes focus on the priest standing in front of him. "And this..." he asks, turning to our man. "He has been held here for several months. When two men have the same face, at least one of them can't be trusted. Perhaps you will allow us to take him under our care?" Our hero, feeling warning klaxons blaring in his head, steps forward, holding up his hand in mild protest.

"If I escaped on the same night as these events," he says, "I wouldn't doubt there is more than sheer luck at work. Some force is driving us together, and I for one do not hold much stock in tampering with fate." It sounds like absolute poppycock, but our hero knows that fairies and the magical folk of other worlds frequently have absurd superstitions and bizarre interpretations of events that rely on things like chance meetings and "fate." If the situation were more relaxed, our hero would be smiling self-deprecatingly. As it is, he keeps his tongue firmly in his cheek. The priest looks at him through half-open eyes, his gaze laconic under his tuft of black hair, but his unnaturally wide mouth pulled into a grimace that shows how obviously unconvinced he is.

"Very well," he says, shocking our man. The priest still looks incredulous, but apparently has bigger fish to fry. "We shall head for the depot. I wish you speed in finding your familiar." With a nod to the other Stevens, he is off, the monks who can keep up rushing after him.

[LordLeopold]

Stevens gave a grin of triumph as he found his sword, flecked with ash from his earlier fiery assault, and pulled it up from the ground. He looked at it contemplatively, feeling a dull dread creep from his fingers up to his chest. Such a small piece of metal, with such large consequences. He wonders if he should leave it. He wonders if he could even use it now. How horrifying the past several years of violence have been! Returning to them would be an abnegation of his new, albeit frightening, self-awareness. For what gain? Petunia is in danger, but striking against her tormentors, almost certainly monks of the Citadel whom he knows and has laughed and supped with, is an entirely different thing to rashly consider than to cold-bloodedly execute.

"What?" he responds to the priest's voice, only half-heard over the emotions rippling from the back of his mind. As the ranks of monks file away, the implications of what he's heard begin to sink into his consciousness. "Furlinghouse! No one told me he was here? Good Lord, you've had him here several months and never deigned to tell me? Furlinghouse!" Stevens's implorations echo hopelessly down the hallway, bouncing off the back of the retreating men's heads. This is a night of revelations, each less comforting than the last. The duke thinks to himself, feeling rage rising up through his fear and anxiety. The work of the Pontiff, no doubt. Although the supreme priest's machinations are hopelessly shrouded to Stevens - the connections between his double, the imposter Ozternbergians, and a plot to welcome in Aesphestos to the Citadel remain a puzzle he has no time to decipher - the duke feels a pang of personal betrayal that no one else has somehow revealed this man's existence to him. As if it wouldn't be important! It could mean the very nature of his unalienable soul. "Damnation," Stevens muttered, watching them march off towards the armoury. It's no use stewing about it now, however. He expects that tonight is no night to air personal greviances. Trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to put the matter out of his mind, he looked down at his uncovered blade and sucked on his teeth in consternation. He doesn't like the sight of this bare steel, and running around with an uncloaked blade is simply dangerous. His eyes again turned to the floor, searching for the wooden sheath of his sword, and saw it lying on the floor several yards away. He turned to his double, frowning and averting his, looking at a spot on the other Stevens's forehead.

"If you want to stick with me, my good fellow," Stevens quipped, trying to keep a jovial attitude. "You must keep up." As he began trotting towards his sheath, he looked over his shoulder and added, "And you have a lot of explaining to do."

[EarlStevens]

Our man frowns at the obviously forced bonhomie of the second Stevens, but holds back from making a smart remark. He follows in his double's wake, frowning at the back of his head and conjuring up excuses for not snapping back other than the tangible lump of fear in his chest. Most fear is to some extent irrational or contrafactual, our hero reasons, but this is especially so. The last time he was this afraid of something, it was somewhat more reasonable. He had been walking back to his flat from his club, swaying slightly in the foggy night, making his way from one lightpost to the next, stumbling through the dark until he hit a patch of light. As he bumbled into the glow of one streetlight, he noticed something odd about its light. The shadow seemed to be intruding into the orb it cast into the fog, a finger of darkness poking at the throbbing gas glimmer, a sort of silhouette hovering beside him, as if the light was behind instead of in front of it.

Our man had looked up at it, seeing the white mask glaring down from the top of the shadow, and immediately assumed it was a pooka. There had been a rash of sightings of the mischievous spirits that week, and he expected to soon find his belt missing and his pants around his ankles or his hat on fire. When the creature had just stood there, staring at him silently, cold terror had begun to run through his marrow as all the possibilities of what nasty things this ghoul could be ran through his head. Lacking any other defense, he had started talking with no real idea of what he was trying to achieve. At the very least it had made him feel better, especially after he realized this creepy follower wasn't going to leave his side for the foreseeable future. Following his past course of action, he swallows and starts talking, quickening his pace to break even with his double.

"My name is Leopold Stevens," he begins. "Although, I imagine you already know that, considering the fracas back there." Our man shivers, but forces himself to continue speaking. "I, er, I've been in this bleeding fortress for, well, for too damn long. They had me in a cell that was more like a broom closet. I came here from a place called the Isle of Wight, in a country called Great Britain. It's... er, not much like this fairie realm. Although, as a Magick Earl, I believe I do have some ancient and venerable rights here, not that these monks seem to care." The two Stevenses reach a series of stairways that zig-zag up from landing to landing as far as the eye can see either up or down. Too nervous to look through the cracks between railings, our man stops and waits for his double to choose a direction.

[LordLeopold]

Stevens stopped in front of the stairs, snapping his sword into his sheath, which he had scooped off the floor down the hallway. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and looked at the other Stevens's feet, his thoughts thrown into disarray. Isle of Wight? Britain? Magic earls? What the deuce? raced through his mind, and he had to give himself a sudden shake to snap back into the world of the living. The stairs in front of them were wide and flat, heading up a low incline towards the next landing, the ceiling above them almost too low to stand under. The immense height and depth of the stairs that was obvious in the space between the handrail of each flight was a shocking juxtaposition with the cramped space one entered to go up or down.

"What the devil is a magic earl?" Stevens said, his voice echoing up and down the stairwell. "I'm from Britain: The eighth Duke of Marlborough. I've had the peerage memorized since I had milkteeth, and I certainly don't recall any magic earls." Stevens paused again, trying to put his mind back to the matter at hand. Petunia was screaming to him in his mind, and he could feel her pull on him, but the way was unclear. This new information was throwing his mind into revolt, and it was impossible to put it all into place. This would be obvious if I was the only Leopold Stevens here! he grumbled to himself. "Is that a Freemasonry gimmick?" he asked his double, hoping to purge the confusion from his mind by some sort of explanation.

[EarlStevens]

Our man cocks an eyebrow at this response. Keeping his eyes from meeting the other Leopold's, he coughs into his fist, confused. There hasn't been a Duke of Marlborough for fifty years. He thinks, What sort of fairie trickery is this? The fact that he's stuck in a foreign world ruled by magic he can't hope to understand is violently brought back to his mind. Stories told by magicians and scientists who had made it to fairie worlds before the closure of the Western Gates told a variety of horrifying and mistifying stories of the tricks and tribulations to which Christians in fairie were subject. They ranged from sausages being stuck to quiet men's noses to belligerent knights being turned inside out. The only way out of being almost certainly tortured in some way by a fairie was to remain conversational and witty, and even then nothing was assured. The most intelligent and loquacious men had found themselves with problems as vexing as any other's. Our man wracks his brain for any instances where fairies had impersonated someone as part of a malicious trick. Eleven spring to mind. His fear spikes.

"Uh, urm.... uh, no. Freemasonry? What? No. What?" Our man rubs his hands nervously and runs his tongue over his teeth. "No, no, no. Ha!" he realizes how incoherent and ripe for assault he appears, and moans. "Oh, God, what is..." A whipcrack splitting the air cuts off our man, who claps his hand over his jaw, which is now chattering uncontrollably. It seems that the crack has literally split the air, as there is a bright white jagged line, like a tear in velvet, cutting through the air from the ceiling to the floor. It stands out against the dark stone of the stairs, a jagged lightning bolt frozen in place. Our man twists his cane reflexively, the blade hissing out, ready to strike at whatever this horrible phantasm could be. He draws back, sliding his wobbling legs weakly across the stone.

With a snap and a roar like wind howling down a chimney, the tear begins to open like a split seat on a bulging stomach. It spreads from the middle, opening up to a width of about two feet, gusts of air billowing out from it. Our man is even more surprised by what reaches out from within the cut. The figure of a man, wrapped in brown robes, holding down the folds of his clothes against the storm at his back, leaned out until he protruded from thin air from his waist forward. He is shaved bald, with no facial hair and jowls tightened like an ascetic's against his skull. Our man recognizes him as a monk, and gives a short yelp. Not knowing what else to do, he raises his cane to shoulder-height and tosses it like a javelin at the monk's head.

Not missing a beat, the monk reaches out, holding his hand palm outward. The blade strikes his skin but bounces off like a pencil thrown eraser-first at the floor, making a peculiar pinging noise. It skitters across the floor back to our man's feet, where it comes to a stop between his toes. He looks down at it for a second, his face pale, and then looks up to the monk leaning out at him. The churchman is giving him a perplexed look, his wizened eyes gleaming out under his clean pate with shock and confusion. He looks from one Stevens to another, and seems edified.

"I doubted you'd finish him off," the monk says to the other Stevens, rubbing the tip of his bulbous nose. "Knaut and I disagreed on that point. Now I wish I'd put some money on it."

[LordLeopold]

Stevens scrunched up his face in confusion as his double stumbled over his words, unable to articulate anything of substance. It was almost somewhat embarassing to hear his own voice struggle to say coherent words. If this doppelganger was some trick of the Forgotten Five, the duke had no idea how it could possibly be an effective one. The fascimile Stevens seemed alternately petrified with fright and utterly discombobulated by his surroundings. He seemed to genuinely feel that he was in some sort of foreign world, separated from the land of his upbringing. Although the story about being from Britain was almost certainly bunk, it was hard to detect any dissemblance in his demeanor. His emotions seemed genuine, and although his pantomime of Leopold was somewhat grosteque to the duke, he felt a rustle of sympathy in his embattled soul.

He was not given long to consider his relationship to this devil's masquerader. A shattering noise beside him caused him to leap back, gripping at his swordcane hilt. Vibrations of energy leaping from a crack in the air bounced off his body, raising his hair and warming his skin. His brow furrowing, Stevens withdrew his blade from his cane, steeling himself. He would have to strike out in anger. He loathed himself for pulling forth the blade, but he had no choice. Only a few times in his life had he seen the atmosphere open up like this. All of those times, the Forgotten Five or their minions had been on the other side of the gateway. At one point, he would have been surprised by the appearance of one of the ancient dark mages in the Citadel, but he could be no longer. Both Denebriel and Aesphestos had already made themselves known in the Citadel before, Aesphestos on multiple occasions. Somewhere in the magical edifice, which they had failed to pierce in the War of the Tap, they had finally found a crack, and were worming their way in. He could only hope it was Aesphestos and not one of the other four; at least with the Lord of Death he apparently had some protection. It was beyond his understanding, but all he knew was that Aesphestos had never touched him with his magic. The dark mage had killed Anthony and Silas in the battle with Ter'Thok, but hadn't been able to strike at Leopold. Hopefully the swordcane he held in his hand would be as useful against Aesphestos as it had been then.

As the tear opened up, the duke realized he had nothing to fear. He lowered his sword, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Leaning through the split in space was High Priest Peter O'Mally, the former top priest at the Citadel and now the liason between the monks of Ai'Bron and the Entente of the Light. He was garbed in the rough clothing of his underlings, the monks of the Citadel, without a stitch of gold or silk on his sleeves. Stevens was so glad to see him instead of Aesphestos that he ignored his double's attempted attack on the priest and shrugged off his jab about Knaut.

"I say, old chap, you have no idea how relieved I am to see you," Stevens said, sliding his sword into his cane and reaffixing his monocle, which had popped out when the portal first appeared. "I was almost certain..."

"... it was one of the Forgotten," O'Mally finished his sentence, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, old friend, but I didn't know of any other way to reach you without alerting the Pontiff. I doubt even he has recovered this ability." O'Mally glanced back at the horrified other Stevens, but apparently chalked him up as a lost cause. "We're on the move. Hopefully this will all be over soon, but in the meantime you must get somewhere safe. I can bring you to where we are if you give me your hands." O'Mally reached out, but Stevens didn't hestitate before waving his hand and shaking his head in a clear rejection.

"Nothing doing, old sport," Stevens said, "Petunia, Anthony and the rest are trapped somewhere in this fortress. I can't leave them here if they're in danger." O'Mally frowned, but Stevens's obvious resolve kept him from voicing any protestations.

"I can take you to them," he said. "I'm almost certain I can." The uncertainty in his voice and on his face made Stevens suddenly wish he had taken O'Mally up on his original offer, if only for a moment. O'Mally, a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead, stretched his arms out further. "Grab my wrists and you'll be there, no trouble." Stevens wavered, running his tongue over his teeth. It was clear, however, that this chance, however slim, was sadly his best to reach his Althanian family before hell broke loose. He forced himself forward, and reached out, clasping the priest's hands.

With an explosion of color and noise, they were gone.

[EarlStevens]

As the other Stevens reaches out to grab the priest's wrists, our man takes his chance. He cannot remain behind, trapped in this gloomy prison. If the chances of being locked away in a dingy, dank cell for several more months are even marginally lower whereever his double is going, it's worth taking the chance and jumping through this magic portal. Where it leads is unclear, and what horrible experience might lie between this tear in the air and the land beyond is totally unknown, but our man does not care. The horror of being trapped in a dark, cramped space like a foetus in a dying woman is too much to bear. Escape, despite the uncertainity and the risk, is worth it. Our man leaps forward, latching onto the priest's wrist just as the other Stevens's fingertips touch his skin. There is a split second in which our hero looks into the startled eyes of the monk, the shock at finding himself with another passenger spreading from his pupils down his face, his jaw dropping and his skin becoming sallow. With a burst of light and sound, it all disappears.

Our man bounces slightly off a marble floor, feeling his spine creek against his skull. The magical transportation reminds him of the shock of being sucked through a magical gateway in his own native England and being belched out in this foreign place. His joints ache and he feels slightly nauseated. His hearing seems muted, like there is a shaw wrapped around his head. Shadows surround him. Holding a hand to his temple, our man pats the floor beneath him with a spare palm to make sure it's truly steady, and feels along the cold stone to see if he's near a wall he can use to support himself. Finding one close to his side, he slowly hauls himself up to his feet, leaning against the slightly warm wall. He realises he doesn't have his swordcane, and feels quite alone.

Although his vision seems fine, it's hard to pierce the gloom surrounding him. He suspects that something went wrong with the translocation, for the musty smell and dim light of the room he is in are almost identical to the hallways of the fortress he had been wandering in tonight. There does seem to be more space around him than usual, however, as he has the sensation of being in someplace very open, quite distinctive considering the cramped confines in which he has found himself for the past several months. He hopes there aren't any monks nearby. Turning his head to look around, his hopes are quickly dashed.

Off to his side, about thirty feet away, the room he is in opens up into a well lit, enormous cavern of space. It's quite unlike the haunting cave he had crawled up the wall of earlier to get into the armory. Rather, from what he can see, it is open like a cathedral's sanctuary, only clear of furniture or pews, except for a series of candelabra standing alongside pillars that held up the ceiling, which hangs unseen far above. The room he is in is a poorly lit grotto, carved off from the main body of the room with a spacious yet comparatively, at least to the sanctuary outside, low ceiling. The room is separated off by partitions, made of wood and heavy paper, that extend from the wall to two pillars, about twenty feet away. The sanctuary beyond is filled with a teeming mass of monks, most capped with helmets, encased in armour and carrying a wicked looking, bladed weapon. They stand, only moving to shift their weight or their accoutrements, in apparently rapt attention, not speaking to one another, all facing the same direction. Our man's hearing is beginning to clear, and the voice which is keeping them all in place starts to penetrate his ears.

"... and so we followers of Ai'Bron have kept the peace in our noble city, for the benefit of all within and without," the voice, a clear and clipped Cornish brogue, rang through the makeshift auditorium, echoing off the stone like a brass horn in a concert hall. "We have not given ourselves to this life of the warrior ascetic for personal power, and we do not ask for more than what is justly any man's. Those who desire council receive it from us, just as we confide in our brothers and our goddess. Our goodwill and natural kindness have kept us apart from the rest of Althanas, this is true, but never have we used the separation our walls provide to retreat from the world, to leave it to consume itself in the fires of war or decimate itself by the privations of famine." The congegration nods along, enraptured. Our man, hoping that the words of whomever is speaking and the darkness he is shrouded in will provide him some protection, begins to slink towards the edge of his corniche, hoping to peep around to see the source of this peroration.

"And yet, we have been deeply abused by the world many times," the speech continues, its tenor becoming noteably enraged. "Often it has taken the form of a lack of gratitude. Sometimes it has been neglect of tithes. These are minor offenses, a matter of no consequence between neighbors. But now," the voice becomes shrill, "We have been offended gravely by those who are not our neighbors. We have been deceived, manipulated, and corrupted! For months we have cowered, trapped within our fortress, our defense turned against us, betrayed in a deep and terrible fashion." Our man creeps toward the far end of the room from the speaker, hoping to see him while still keeping as far from the assembled monks as possible. He reaches a point where most of the cathedral's interior is visible, while still himself hidden by the shadows, and squints to see the far end of the room more clearly.

Several men are standing on a platform that is raised a small amount above the rest of the room. Behind them is a massive statue of a woman, one hand raised, laced in full-length garments, a beatific gaze on her eight-span face. The men beneath the statue are dwarfed by her size, but still imposing. Three of them our man has seen before: The three priests he had hidden from behind his manservant in the hall less than an hour earlier. The bearded, tallest one stood in the center, flanked by his red and black garbed minions. On either side of this nucleus was a phalanx of men, garbed in shining silver armor, swords hanging at either side of their belts, indistinct emblems painted on their chests. It's clear that the center, bearded priest is the speaker. He is holding up his hand in a miniature aping of the statue behind him, one of his feet resting on the back of what looked like a black-garbed corpse.

"Tonight," the priest continues, his voice unnaturally magnified, "Our citadel was invaded by these men, the agents of the false Messiah and his corrupted entente! Their armbands and helmets bear testament to their true affiliation. You who fought them in our halls, in our cells, and in our meeting places, who felt their hot breath, cold blood and dark souls know all too well of what I speak. It is not the peace of our realm that they serve, but the Nar'oth and Ozternberg!" These names mean nothing to our man, but they certainly seem to rile the monks, who roar with displeasure, stomping their feet and slamming the butts of their halberds or spears against the ground. The priest waits for the outburst to subside, silent for several minutes, before continuing. "Not only have they betrayed our sacred trust, but so have the guards of Radasanth. The City Guard, who are bound by an ancient vow to keep the gates locked against intruders to their deaths, have allowed these spies to breach the impregnable city walls. You all well know who they serve: Baron Relvest and his council of sycophants!" These names, just as foreign to our man's ears, create another maelstrom of jeers from the audience. The speaker waits for calm to return, and our man can detect a hint of a smile in his voice as he continues:

"And by Ai'Bron, their tyranny must not last the night."

[LordLeopold]

Stevens finds himself, feeling every minute his 54 years, tangled in some relatively taut ropes, his feet off the ground, hanging somewhere in midair. The light striking his face was overwhelmingly bright and confusing, and a buzz of noise filled his ears. He had no idea where he was. The number of times he had travelled by magic gateway from one part of Althanas to another could be counted on one hand, but even in his limited experience he had never felt quite so odd after a magic transportation than he did now. It was sort of like having the flu, or another miserable disease that made one feel sicker than one actually was. Before he moved or made any noise, the duke waited for the confusion stimulus around him to die down, hoping that his senses would slowly right themselves and he would be able to make heads or tails of this mess. His patience paid off, and the light and sound cocooning him in a dizzying blanket began to melt away.

The light beating against his face was the flickering firelight of a popping, snapping blaze that was licking the sides of the huge hearth containing it. Leopold focused on the image of the fire, making sure the sounds of burning and what he saw below him matched. Whatever room he was in was long, wide and high-ceiling, and he was dangling somewhere closer to the ceiling than the floor. The side of the room he was facing was dominated by the yawning fireplace, which was decorated by a series of black metal skewers, pots and grates that jutted into the hearth like barbaric dental equipment into an open mouth. A kettle was whistling on the hot stone beside the burning logs, spewing steam into the air beside the boiling smoke. Looking around the rest of the room, careful not to upset the ropes he was loosely enveloped by, the duke took in the rest of the room as best he could. On either side of the room, crouching low against the walls, were wooden counters, some with marble tops attached to the block granite walls. Pots, pans, ladles and knives hung from hooks on the walls. There was a door off to the left of the fireplace, but no other entrances were readily apparent from the duke's vantagepoint. The ropes ensconcing him were tied to a metal latticework on the ceiling, and hung down to some wooden matrix below him, presumably from which other instruments like the ones on the walls were hanging. This, it appeared, was a kitchen.

There was no food to be seen, however, only a few lonely looking men standing or pacing between the countertops and a central counter that ran from the hearth down the middle of the kitchen. Four of them were monks, armed and armoured as well as the men the duke had encountered earlier in the hallway fighting Aesphestos' knights, but appearing far less certain of themselves. One was chewing his cuticle. The other men were, to Stevens's surprise and delight, obviously his brother and Silas Witherspoon. They were pacing, each with a path staked out next to the other, passing each other at the middle of their courses and then turning to face each other again for the return trip. Petunia and Icarus were perched on a side countertop, both looking far less placid than was normal. Stevens could still feel the hen's gradually abating fear tickling the back of his mind. Silas's leather case and Anthony's umbrella were laid out beside the two familiars on the countertop, the suitcase open and its contents spread out like a yard sale. Stevens's other swordcane, a teakettle, several leatherbound books and a folded-up piece of cardboard that looked like some sort of sign were the largest and most interesting of the paraphernalia.

"What the devil is going on?" Anthony barked at one of the monks after a few quick paces, turning on his heel like an expert drill sargeant. "High Priest Knaut told us we'd be kept safe, not prisoner." The monks didn't respond, but Stevens noted for the first time that their shortswords were unsheathed and glimmering in the firelight, their fingers twitching on the leather grips. Anthony sighed loudly and threw up his arms, returning to his pacing. Silas shook his head, clasping his hands behind his back and muttering to himself for several minutes in what sounded, from its tone, like a breathless diatribe.

Stevens hung in the ropes for a few minutes, his mind racing. First of all, how could be get down? Second of all, how could get rid of these monks and get out of here? He thought he knew roughly where in the Citadel this kitchen was, at least if it was close to the regular mess hall, so he imagined he could get at least to the main sanctuary, if not out of the building entirely, but it would be hard going with these four monks here. A plan was beginning to gestate in his brain as his eyes scanned over the materials lying on the countertop, and there was a glimmer behind his monocle as the pieces fell into place. The only thing he needed to do was somehow get Anthony or Silas's attention without attracting the monks, too.

His chance came as the sound of yells and stomping feet drifted out of the doorway beside the fireplace. All six men below looked at each other, the monks holding their swords a little tighter, unsure of what to do. The sounds only got louder. Frowning at each other, the monks began to gravitate towards the door, glancing from it to their charges. They seemed unwilling to leave their captives but equally hesitant about not seeing what the hubbub was about. As they got closer to the door, one opened his mouth, making a croaking noise, but closed it quickly and turned to follow his fellows, who were hovering at the entrance to the door, muttering amongst themselves. Stevens saw his chance. He hissed down - "Silas!" - and the charlatan looked around, confused, rubbing one ear. The duke frowned and hissed again through bared teeth. Silas looked up, almost directly above his head, and his mouth and eyes leapt open. He almost yelled out, grabbing at Anthony, who was watching the monks intently and chewing his cheek, but thought better of it, fixing his gaze on Leopold and mouthing "We're okay, are you?" Stevens nodded, jangling the ropes around him, and mouthed "Toss me the teakettle." Silas arched his eyebrows in confusion for a few seconds, and Leopold was about to give it up and just yell out at his friend, but the mountebank suddenly snapped to attention and smiled. He turned to the counter behind him, reached out, and lifted the teakettle from the marble.

Stevens could see a few errant hairs on the top of Silas's head begin to rise off his scalp, and smiled. All too easy. Silas, apparently a bit disoriented, backed up a bit too fast, barking his back on the central counter and giving a sharp yelp. One of the monks turned his head at the noise, and screwed it up in surprise. He raised a hand and opened his mouth, but before he could yell, Silas seemed to regain his bearings. With a vertical toss worthy of some professional sport, somewhere, he lobbed the teakettle up to Stevens. The duke stretched out his hands towards the kettle, and felt the ropes around him loosen and end his suspension. Gravity yanked him from the acrobat's tangle, but his fingers were on the teakettle.

His fall was arrested as the kettle's magical properties took hold of his body. His momentum kept him moving, but now he was shooting horizontally towards the wall in front of him. The duke, doing the best he could in the disorienting flight, twisted in the air, angling his legs feet towards the wall. He caught it unevenly, and when he pushed off, instead of shooting towards the monks as he intended, he spun off into the air, twirling ankles over crown, his twirling body knocking cooking utensils from countertops and into the air, his motion taking him in an odd diagonal towards the opposite corner of the room. He had hoped to soar directly at the monks, either bowling into them or coming up short, either way scaring them to death and causing them to flee. It was hard to imagine someone seeing a clumsy British lord soaring through the air and not being gripped with enough shock to knock them off balance for at least a few minutes. His clumsy attempt at air acrobatics, he thought to himself as blood alternately rushed toward his head and toes, was unlikely to do anything more than engender laughter.

Surprisingly, however, it achieved its purpose. One monk shrieked, and another threw down his weapon and unhinged his armour, tossing it to the ground and running out the door. In the time it took Stevens to rocket from the wall into a shelf full of spices at the opposite end of the room, a matter of two or three seconds, all the monks had hot-footed it out, some leaving their weapons in their wake. Stevens dropped the iron kettle to the floor, where it clanged to a stop, and felt gravity yank him downwards again. His rear slapped into the counter below him rather painfully, and a cloud of paprika billowed out around him, but other than that he felt amazingly good. He hopped down from the counter, winced at the pain that shot up from his tailbone, and rushed around the central counter to his brother and Silas.

"Sweet mercy," Anthony gawked, slapping his brother on the shoulder and spraying up a burst of oregano, "I didn't know you had it in you." Leopold laughed, and the two embraced. "Damn close one," Anthony chuckled after the spices in the air incurred a bout of sneezes. "I've never seen a bunch of men more afraid of each other than their own captives. You should have seen the face the other three made when one of them unsheathed his sword and pointed it at Petunia!" Leopold chortled again, and stepped toward Petunia, who kept her characteristically emotionless gaze locked on him. The two exchanged a look that required no words, which was good because Petunia wouldn't have been able to say them, anyway. Stevens then pretended to tip an invisible hat at Icarus, who bowed his tiny head and coughed up a "Good show, old sport, good show," in a parrot-like voice. Stevens turned to Silas, who was wiping the sweat off his palms on his red seeksucker jacket and puffing out his cheeks in a gusting breath of relief.

"Sire, you've outdone yourself once again. Although lacking in the grace I've come to expect from a personage such as yourself, and take that comment with no insult, for none is intended, your flight certainly served a noble purpose in freeing us from these inexperienced, albeit still threatening, captors," Anthony groaned, but Leopold waved him quiet.

"You have no idea how happy I am," Stevens said, a small smile on his face, "To see you all safe." Silas opened his mouth, but stood speechless for a few seconds before closing it and returning the smile. For once, for him, words were peripheral.

"Saints preserve us, is that a tear?" Anthony asked, tapping his brother on the cheek. Leopold's smile widened and he rubbed at his unmonocled eye, brushing away the younger Stevens's finger. "Mercy," Anthony sighed, and wiped away a last powdery spear of spice from his brother's traveling jacket. "Mercy."

The sounds of rushing, crowding people outside had not died down, and were now impossible to ignore. Clinking metal, the slap of leather and skin, the cry of the moving mob, drew the three men to the doorway just as they had the four monks. As Silas gathered up his materials, the brothers Stevens gaped at the passing crowd. Dozens of monks were rushing by, hefting weapons and calling out directions to those behind them that they had heard from those ahead. They were largely indistinguishable from the monks that had been holding Anthony and Silas, except for one critical difference: Their eyes. There was a fiery mission burning in their eyes. As more and more passed, Stevens realized he was not just seeing monks of the Citadel rush by. The mendicant monks of Concordia, wrapped in sackcloth, their belts dirty ropes, were patting by in bare feet, wielding wooden staffs. Hooded monks from the tournament circuit, tall pointed hoods covered their faces except for their eyes, shuffled past in silent knots, long daggers at the ready. Monks that looked to be no more than pixies, only waist-high with delicate features and bright blue eyes, carrying no visible weapons but at least as dedicated looking at the others, scurried in between the taller monks. Two very tall men, dressed in austere black trousers and jackets, with wide-brimmed hats Stevens had never seen before, strode past, carrying massive crossbows with scythes strapped to their backs. It was certainly a motley crew.

"My lords!" a familiar voice cried out. Furlinghouse, silver armor strapped around his body, the end of his crozier capped with a sharp spike that clicked against the stone floor as he used it as a staff. Leopold held back a frown as he approached, and Anthony openly scoffed, but the evangelion seemed unperturbed. "We go to challenge the Pontiff! Join us!" The flow of monks seemed to surge into the doorway, surrounding Stevens's entourage, and they found themselves swept up in the tide of armed humanity, streaming towards an ineluctable confrontation.

[EarlStevens]

"The Baron," the hoary priest continues, raising his other arm and stepping forward, superseding the statue and coterie around him on the dais, "Is a man as dangerous as the Nar'oth himself. von Ribbentrophen - I dare speak his name!" The priest roars at the visible shock that ripples through the congregation. "I dare speak his name because we cannot walk in fear," our man quivers at the phrase, which has so recently passed through his own mind, "of a false Messiah, who uses the false threat of a false dark army to weaken us. Ribbentrophen wants us to believe he is something he is not, that he has a power he does not. When we begin to use the name he has given himself, he has made us believe he has strength he does not. Enough! His name is Joseph von Ribbentrophen, and he is a man. Can one man stand against the force of Ai'Bron?" The monks leap to life at this, screaming and raising their fists and weapons into the air. "NO!" they roar, and the priest pumps a fist into the air. The yells are deafening. As they subside, the priest continues, as vituperative as before.

"The Baron is as dangerous as Ribbentrophen," he continues, to another round of cheers as he laconically spits out the name, "Because he has given him that strength, that unworthy power, which has been turned against us tonight. Tonight, the forces of greed and despotism defiled the sacred halls of Ai'Bron. Tonight, the Baron showed that he rejects the tide of history, which flows in our favor. Tonight, the Baron forfeited his right - no, his privledge - to hold power within sight of the citadel. Tonight we will avenge our brothers who died in the halls of the citadel as heroes!" Another roar from the crowd. "We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for Ai'Bron!"

It is at this moment that our man realizes he is not alone. The presence of others lurking in the dark forces him to tear his eyes from the spectacle in the sanctuary to the room behind him. It is no less crowded, he finds, in this niche than outside it. Dozens of monks are packed beside him, watching their friends and brothers roar with approval. One, standing beside our man, looks at him and rolls his eyes.

"Lord Leopold," he mutters. "By Ai'Bron, I'm glad you're here. We can't do this without you." Our man smiles, but feels like he is quickly treading into water that is way over his depth. He tries to burrow back into the crowd away from where the frontlines of any battle will surely be, but the division behind him is packed shoulder to shoulder, without room to slide in a piece of parchment between them. He is trapped. Hot sweat trickles down his back as the crowds on either side fill his vision. He starts losing track of time. Is it seconds or minutes? Or hours? How can these monks stand for so long like this, with battle a blade's breadth away? He feels the statue's stare upon him. This is the horror of battle. There is a collective intake of breath around him, a tensing of muscles. Then the dam breaks.

Monks rush from both sides of the sanctuary, streaming out of the niches on either side from hidden doorways, upsetting candelabra and partitions in their rush. The monks in the great hall, taken by surprise, collapse in on themselves in a clatter of dropped weapons and melee of screams, howls and confused questions. The onrushing monks lose momentum as they all enter the sanctuary, surrounding the suddenly very small looking body of monks in the center. Our man looks toward the dais, and sees a group of especially strong looking monks, garbed in black suits and hats, surrounding the surprised, petrified leaders on the stage. The statue of Ai'Bron looks onward.

"Brothers!" A new voice echoes through the chamber. Our man, who is at the forefront of the assualting monks, and is now panting heavily for breath in between two monks hefting round shields and broadswords, feeling very misplaced without armour or weaponry, looks up towards where the bearded priest was haranguing his men, and sees the black garbed priest standing where the older man, who is now being restrained by two powerful looking monks with scythes strapped to their banks, was speaking. This new man is pale as the older one's beard, his bone-white face contrasting painfully with his black clothing. Our man is reminded of his own manservant, but has little time to consider it. "Be wary of those who accuse others of their own deeds!" The surrounded monks look to each other, terrified, and the monks hemming them in look no less frightened.

"Remind yourself of the pledge you took when you joined the holy orders of Ai'Bron! Remember that you swore to instruct and protect, not defeat and subject! Ask yourself why you are asked to strike against the Entente, a force arrayed to defeat the Forgotten Five at the Last Battle! And compare yourselves..." the pale priest doesn't finish his thought. A sound like wet rags tearing ends his speech as the men holding back the older priest explode away from him, their innards smearing across the stone floor. The priest steps forward, blinding fire emanating from his body, and holds out a hand. Some horrific force clenches around the speaking priest, forcing his body rigid and lifting him in the air. Other monks spring toward the radiant old man, but they burst into flame, their bodies disintegrating to ash and smoke. Crackling energy jumps from the mage's fingertips, flinging aside the other men on the platform and popping and exploding in a stupefying display. The plot, it seems, has thickened.

[LordLeopold]

Stevens is yanked along by the crowd, hustled and pushed until he is no longer beside his brother or Silas, but all he sees as he is squeezed down hallways and through doors is a sea of unfamiliar faces, contorted into the grimace of battle, screaming encouragement to each other, only stopping when they stumble over their robes and must struggle upright against the weight of their armour. The onrush is frightening but invigorating, like an infantry charge against an unknown enemy or the arguing of a case against a legal genius. Stevens knows they are charging to counter the Pontiff, but how, and where, and even why are not entirely clear to him. He knows, however, that he is caught up in a struggle for men's lives, a struggle for the good of a society and for the end of evil. A struggle that he cannot possibly shy away from.

The multitude pours out an unexpected doorway, and Stevens finds himself launched from a cramped hallway into a massive, open space of dizzying height and awesome size. It is the entrance hall of the Citadel, and it it is filled with a number of monks that the duke never knew existed. Seemingly thousands of robed and helemted men are flowing into the room, surrounding those who they find there, jostling them into a defensive ring, the detritus of religion scattered about the hall caught up in their insurmountable rush. It is like watching the collapse of a dam and the resultant flood of water, except this flood is of a living, breathing, enflamed mass of men, bringing their swords to bear where their mere will cannot suffice. It is the movement of men's souls backed by their bodies, the epitome of the armed struggle for what is right and good. It is a revolution, and the duke feels in his heart a jolt from the realization that now, at this time, violence can achieve something, that a soul can strike out against another for something greater than either and survive. He does not even listen to the voices howling around and over him, he is just caught up in the irresistible pathos of it all.

The explosion of magic and fire at the front of the sanctuary does catch his attention, however. As lives are snuffed out before his eyes, Stevens gapes. The Pontiff, slinging magic across the stage, slaying a dozen men with a flick of his wrist, glowing with the horrible hatred of a man consumed with his own power, is reenacting a scene that the duke had seen not an hour before on the terrible tapestries of the War of the Tap. Men ripped in half, gruesomely burned, crippled and bent: It was almost too terrible to remember. He felt his spirit rise up within him in an insuppressible effervescence. His voice spilled out into the air.

"The Pontiff is our enemy, not the monks!" he cried. The sacerdotal soldiers around him paused, looking from side to side, taking each other in, surprised at where they had found themselves. Had they known what they were getting into? Did they actually know who they would be facing down here? They had stopped before striking out against their fellow monks. It could be their ingrained compassion, or it could be their shock and unease at finding themselves sword-to-shield with other followers of Ai'Bron. The explosive strength of the Pontiff stretches them to the breaking point of credulity, and they suddenly seem to lose their nerve. The Pontiff, his cackle crescendoing across the room, raised both hands, flinging Knaut aside and launching a booming gust of magic in front of him, knocking several rows of monks to their feet.

"The ploys of our enemy!" he screamed, his voice growing stronger and sterner, magnified with some invisible power. "You see, you have been goaded into revolt against the very thing you swore to defend! Do remember your vows! Remember what you saw in your head when you repeated them to yourself, day after day as an apprentice. You have turned this sacred building into a battleground. And for what?" A horrible wrenching noise and a deep rumble answered his question, shaking Citadel to its very foundations. Stevens turned to the source of the noise, and saw the huge doors of the Citadel swinging wide open, slamming heavily against the stone walls to either side, lightning streaking across the ebony night sky outside. A new group of figures entered the sanctuary, more slowly and measured than the flood of monks that had carried in Stevens. Their movements were more profound, and thrummed with an ancient power that the duke could feel flowing through his bones and out into the air. At the head of them all was Peter O'Mally, his hands gripped into fists, the same fists that had thrown open the doors with superhuman strength born of the Tap, the source of all Althanas's magic.

They marched in in several rows behind the priest. The first was made up of several men, dark skinned and curly haired, covered in flowing brown cloaks that flapped behind their voluminous pants and soft leather boots, extending from their wide belts and wrapped about their upper bodies and heads. They flanked one of their number, clad in pure white, who held up his hands in a mirror of the Pontiff. He was First Chief a'Tol of the Kahh'jami, and the five men on either side of him were the Tribe Chiefs, all masters of magic who had sworn allegiance to the Entente of the Light. Behind them marched a file of magicians from the Mage Guild, dressed in a variety of clothing from their respective lands, their faces twisted into concentrated masks as they drew upon the sources of their magic, pouring forth their power into the room. At their center marched, in a flowing dress and with her head held high, Hyllal Uriol, the weather mage who had fought with Stevens in the first Gisela, gusts of wind and cracking ball lightning blowing out from a glowing orb of magical power spinning around her. Behind them strode a row of priests of Ai'Bron, twirling their croziers and chanting incantations in loud, defiant voices.

At the end were several incredibly tall, willowy creatures, fused from tree branches, leaves and bark, their eyes sunken holes in their narrow heads, humming a deep, throbbing song that resontated throughout the chapel like a hymn. Each was over twenty feet tall, and in the center was one who must have reached sixty feet, swaying over the rest, its voice the deepest, its cadence and rhythm powerful enough to silence the the hundreds of monks caught in the hall. The Arbarians, as they were known, trod heavily forward, their steps surprisingly measured, their unbelievably long legs swinging majestly under them. Flanking the entire procession were a series of mages from the various nations of the Entente: Esporantel, Loirette, Ruska, Okatani, Bretellian. As if a procession of pilgrims at the end of a dangerous journey together to a foreign shrine, they stopped at the edge of the mass of monks, and stood silently, the indescribable power of their combined magic coursing through the assembly, causing some of the monks to sway and faint, as if in religious ecstacy.

"Pontiff Bartholomew," Peter O'Mally called out, his voice a clear, cold belltoll. Lightning crackled behind him, and thumber rolled through the door, mingling with the echoes of the name. "Your reign has ended."

[EarlStevens]

Our man has been in the most magically imbued places in Britain: Stonehenge, the Hebrides, the Western Gates, the Welsch Marches. He has never before felt the magical presence he now feels in the sanctuary turned battlefield. The immense power of the bearded priest, apparently Pontiff Bartholomew, is easily matched by the congregation of ancient and soul-shaking power emanating from the collection of magicians and magical creatures that has just entered from the stormy night outside. Our hero has little time to digest their appearances, or try to understand how their disparate natures meld together into a cohesive whole. Events are transpiring too fast, and his mind has been bent and stretched so many times tonight that further thought is pointless. He simply moves with his heart, not letting his mind get in the way. Right now, he feels a surge of pride and hope as the new forces array against the horrifying murderer before him. The Pontiff, apparently stunned for a moment, quickly regains his composure, the flames and light around him glowing hotter and brighter than ever, and roars back across the room at the priest, who our hero recognizes from his erstwhile magical trip.

"Pontiff Bartholomew? Bartholomew Brogh is not the Pontiff," he replies, rising into the air, pulled by a force that could only be felt by its resonation deep in some hidden recess of the soul. "Bartholomew Brogh has been dead for three years. I buried his bones on the plains of Salvar." This means nothing to our man, but the already confused and muttering men around him begin to chatter garbled questions, breaking their ranks, beginning to meld together, fear of the magical disruptions at either side of the sanctuary snapping their resolve. The glowing old man rises higher until he is level with the statue's serene face, burning so brightly it is impossible to look at him. Like a piece of the sun, he gives off an incandescence that warms our man's skin. He is sure the monks closer to the flaming man must be in pain from the heat and power radiating off his body.

"You see," the old man rumbled, "I am not who you believe me to be." With a loud bang and a bubble of flame, like a zeppelin catching afire, the glowing heat from the figure ends, the light flowing from his body fading immediately. There is a mere heartbeat of silence. Then the wail from the monks around our man overwhelms him, a more powerful and emotional scream than any during the earlier speech. The monks throw down their weapons and break into a rioting mob, rushing towards the exits, colliding into each other, clawing at one another's faces, only one word on their lips:

"Aesphestos!"

It is meaningless to our man, who is pushed to the ground by a panicked monk, and crouches there, his hands over his head, peeking up through a crack between his fingers. The figure hovering in front of the statue, which has been melted down to an indistinct pile of slag from the chest up, the remains of the arm dangling precariously, is certainly not the same one that ascended into the air. He is not an old man, nor garbed in white and gold robes. He has no beard, and his head is uncovered. In one hand he holds a long, curved sword, and the other is held a chest level beside him in a fist. He is clothed in a scarlet and silver uniform, buttoned down the front to his red trousers, which are tucked into slick black boots. A red cape hangs from his shoulders. Rampant beasts are stitched into the chest of his general's garb, and his collar is pressed up against the base of his neck. He has sandy brown hair, from what our man can see, and a sneer on his lips. The magic pouring forth from this man is impossibly greater now than it was before. Our man can feel the matter of his body being tugged and warped by the energy flowing into this sorcerer's frame. It is as if he is eating the world.

"Three years," A voice booms in our man's brain, nearly knocking him on his back. All other sounds are indistinct, reduced to a buzz in the background of this loudspeaker in his head. He can tell from the cringing, slinking postures of the monks around him that everyone in the room is feeling this hell in their skulls, also. "That is how long you have spent waiting for the Entente to defeat the Forgotten Five and send the Lord of Death back to the Darkness. How long you've spent in fear of the army that is meant to win the Last Battle and banish evil from Althanas forever. That is how long you served me. Ask yourself, why did you feel safer in the Citadel with the Lord of Death than in the care of the army designed to defeat Him?"

The voice in his head ends, but our man is too befuddled by the magical assault on his senses that he cannot tell what is going on around him. He does not see the forces who have just entered the sanctuary rise up a magical assault against the other side of the room. He does not see a laughing Aesphestos absorb the spiraling, exploding, electrifying attack and disappear in a burst of black flame. He does not see the panicking monks around him wear themselves out in a fruitless crush against the nearest escape routes. He does not hear the cries of the wounded and maimed. He is passed out on the cold stone floor.

[LordLeopold]

The night had passed, and the rain had stopped. Clouds were streaking across the sky in fragments of their former oppressive shield. All that was left of the night's horrendous storm were deep puddles pockmarking the courtyard in front of the Citadel, reflecting pieces of the motley sky on the ground. A mockingbird perched on a small figure carved into the Citadel's main doorway and twittered a happy tune before soaring back across the courtyard toward a nest hanging on an unused windowsill. Groups of men and women, hustling about the business of the day, were moving across the square from one street to another. Vendors were rolling in their carts, calling out the names of their wares. Two children poked at a long-suffering cat with a stick. Stevens sat on the stairs of the Citadel, feeling the wet stone soak the seat of his pants, and watched these Radasanthians. They were completely oblivious to the events of the night. All that was new to them was that the doors of the Citadel were finally open again, and that some strangely dressed men were guarding its doors. The Kahh'jami men, their hands resting on the hilts of their narrow swords, muttered to each other in their native, slurring tongue, stood to either side of the entranceway, glaring at men who dared walk too close to them.

Stevens knew that inside the Citadel, the peace and calm of its exterior could hardly be found. The monks who had stayed in the sanctuary were busy healing the injured who could be helped and carrying away the head who were too far gone. Some were righting the overturned altars and partitions. Several of the mages and Arbarians were directing their magic towards repairing the statue of Ai'Bron, but it looked like a cost cause. It appeared to be some kind of adamantine. The Tap might be returning, but the magic to create and repair that unbreakable material had not. Most of the monks, however, were nowhere to be found. They had feld the sanctuary in fear, and were either miles away by now or cowering in some secret alcove in the depths of the Citadel. The three evangelions were leading the search for them. Peter O'Mally was directing the gaoling of several of the higher priestly officials who had colluded with Aesphestos, in some of the less pleasant cells. Somewhere, someone was probably battling someone else in the Citadel, surrounded by an illusory world, incurring injuries that would be painlessly healed, trying to kill for the sheer sake of killing. The duke sighed. Petunia, seated beside him, rested her head on his knee, and he smiled, placing his hand on her back.

"Hell's bells," Anthony Stevens muttered, appearing from within the Citadel and flopping down beside his brother. He made a disgusted face as he realized his rear end was suddenly moist, but didn't get up, instead putting a hand on Leopold's shoulder. For a while the three sat, connected by their reassuring grasps, before anyone spoke. "Silas was hiding beneath a pile of robes in a storage room," Anthony said, watching a cloud pass behind a chimey on the city's low skyline. "He's drinking some soup in the kitchen." Leopold smiled grimly, and they lapsed into silence again. It was a few more minutes before anyone continued.

"What I don't understand," Anthony said, scratching his head through his bowler, "Is how Aesphestos made everyone think he was the Pontiff? How could he get the chance?" Leopold sighed and looked down at the cracks in the steps, plucking grass from between them and twirling the blades in his fingers.

"Before you appeared in Althanas," Leopold said. "There was a tournament called the Gisela. During one of the battles, Aesphestos appeared and fought Bartholomew, before he was the Pontiff. They fought to a standstill and then disappeared. When Bartholomew finally returned, he said he had escaped from Aesphestos after battling him across Salvar. No one questioned him. The monks of Ai'Bron are not known to lie." Anthony whistled in commentary and took up his brother's passtime, pulling up weeds and spinning them between his fingers until they disintegrated.

"I suppose Ribbentrophen won't be very excited that so many members of the Entente left in the middle of the night to come here," he continued. "I imagine he'll suspect some kind of plot." Leopold nodded, almost to himself, and ran his tongue over his teeth, mulling over this.

"I'm not going back," he said, simply. Anthony started, but didn't respond. The older Stevens looked at his younger brother, and smiled. "More happened tonight than you know about," he said. "And now, I know my future isn't with the Entente. Ultimately, I don't think that's how we'll beat Aesphestos and his minions, anyway." Stevens creakily pushed himself to his feet, and his brother stood up with him, a puzzled look on his face. Brushing himself off, Leopold looked at him and sighed, shaking his head. "I don't think I can explain it, Tony," he said. "But in some strange way, someone did tonight." He turned and walked towards the doorway of the Citadel, Petunia faithfully alongside him. Anthony stood in the sunlight for a few more seconds, watching the back of his brother's head, and coughed up a breathy laugh.

"Leopold, you daft old blighter," he said, quietly to himself, and followed his brother into the church.

[EarlStevens]

Our man comes to, and finds himself lying naked in a bed, the covers wrapped tight over his body, a shaft of sunlight lying across the sheets. His head aches dully, but other than that he feels fine. He turns his head from side to side, taking in the room, unwilling to move and disturb the pocket of warmth under his comforter. The room is nondescript, empty of furniture except for the bed, with a small, worn looking door on one side of the room. On the other side, lurking in the corner in a way that is oddly enough somewhat comforting, is the seven-foot-tall pillar of shadow that is our man's servant. He sighs, a grin on his face, and looks back at the silently glowering ghoul.

"Good to see you again," our man says, pleasantly. "I suppose you don't want to explain where you were last night?" It doesn't respond, but our man doesn't expect a response. He turns his head back toward the ceiling, looking at the cracks on the plaster overlying stone, and breathes out a contented breath. He doesn't try to make sense of what happened last night. Aesphestos, the Pontiff, the monks, the unusual intruders, the magical battle, all of it is too much to try to make heads or tails of without consulting someone.

The realization begins to creep over our hero that he is still in the fortress of his long imprisonment. Cursing, he leans up from the waist, uncovering his sunken chest and narrow arms, thin from so long denying himself food, and searches for the window from which the light is flowing. It is opposite his bed, perhaps narrow enough for him to slide through. If he can get out through the window, perhaps he can climb down the side of the building to safety. Once he hits the wet ground below, he'll take off running and not stop until he can't see this monstrous building on the skyline any longer. He searches for his clothes, trying to find them somewhere in the room, frantically moving his eyes across the floor.

"Ah," a voice calls out from the doorway, which has silently opened. Our man jumps, pulling his covers higher up his body, hiding his vitals. A monkish figure stands there, surrounded by light pouring in from the outside. Behind him, clouds stream across the blue sky, and the sun peeks around one of the corners of the doorway. It is the first time our man has seen the sky in five months, and it takes his breath away. Birdsong and the smells of spring waft through the opening, filling the room. "I see you've woken up. No one ever got a chance to say this before, so I'll say it now. Welcome to Althanas."

[Storm Veritas]

JUDGMENT TIME!

Absolutely wonderful quest. Fantastic writing, a fast-turning yet coherent script, terrific dialogue and clever insertion of some Althanian history. In short, this is the best quest I’ve read as a judge, hands down. It took me a while to read, because I wanted to actually enjoy this as the novel it is, and not skim through it and assess what a fair score would be. A masterpiece for a recreational young writer, although I’m sure you’ll be able to do more down the road.

Now then, for your scoring.

Introduction – 7 – I was a bit confused out the gate, and although you later clarified, figuring out the running stories that later came together, as well as the motivation at that point was quite difficult. At the same time, the writing was brilliant here.

Setting – 9 - Fantastic work here. A trifle inconsistent at times, I think there were a few rare occasions where a bit more environment could have helped out, but you also avoided redundant, gratuitous description. The way you tied in some Althanian lore and the conspiracy of the priests was brilliant.

Dialogue – 10 - The best I’ve ever read here, end of story. The benchmark, although your british vibe does give you a bit of an unfair advantage, since some things sound so peculiar and interesting.

Character – 8 - Outside of the detail that Leopold and Stevens are close to walking stereotypes in some respect, you did a great job providing motivation, internal thought, a balance of the physical and psychological, and an entertaining ride. Great work here.

Rising Action – 8 - Very solid, although the plot dragged at points. You had me on the edge of my seat in moments, and blown away by some of your creativity. Your shortened set of interacting posts was also a good break of the action leading to the climax, increasing the “speed” of the thread.

Climax – 9 - A nice twist, a good showdown, and a great tie in of modern struggles with a medieval feel. I loved it! Were it not so long coming, I would have enjoyed it more, but you did a long quest the right way.

Conclusion – 9 - A strong, fitting finish to a great quest. At this point, I was actually sort of upset it was over, and damned-near depressed that the sequel to this thread ISN’T a solo.

Writing Style – 10 - Yes, there were a couple of true typos – grammatical errors and things not caught by spellcheck. By and large, however, this thread was obviously very well edited, and your writing style was superb.

Strategy – 8 - There was nothing wrong with your strategy, but it is definitely a good deal easier to write when you don’t interact with someone else. Since that isn’t necessarily your fault, I give a very low deduction for this. I loved the way the whole thread worked out on the large part – although at this point I sound like a broken record.

Wild Card – 9 - That feels right.

Total Score – 87!!! By far the highest score I’ve awarded at Althanas. I will submit this to the mod-lounge for a potential Judge’s Choice. You certainly have my vote.

EXP – Leopold gets 5,370 EXP and 200 gold. I didn’t catch any request for gold in the thread or spoils, but you should get something

Earl Stevens gets 1985 EXP and 200 gold. The difference is based off a level 1 character.

[Thoracis]

EXP added.

EarlStevens gains a level!