To The Citadel and Back, Part 2 (Closed)

[LordLeopold]

((Solo.))

Although the sky was the pale blue of a desert morning, with no whisp of cloud or shadow of rain, the ground was sopping. Puddles the size of small ponds filled stretches of the marketplace's cobblestone and dirt street, soaking men's trousers up to the knee and sending rolling ripples out across the street each time a donkey cart or running child splashed through them. It was impossible not to tromp through the sticky mud, and the milling mass in the market had stopped trying to leap from dry spot to dry spot a long time ago, instead resigning themselves to fighting the ooze for possession of their shoes. Their boots and carts churned up the mud into an almost frothy mixture, filling the air with the organic stench of muck.

Sir Leopold Lord Stevens, trying to put the splatters of mud across his shoes and pants out of his mind, ducked between two tall men burdened with sacks of potatoes, and scanned the marketplace for the appropriate booth. He was in the Bazaar, the famous - some might say infamous - trading center in Radasanth. The main stretch of the Bazaar was this wide boulevard, really more of an elongated courtyard. On either side of the road were the buildings housing the more prosperous merchants' stores, some of them filled with rare and impressive magical instruments of uncertain use, many stuffed with the horrid-looking instruments of war, most filled with useless tchotchke that caught the eyes of inexperienced hayseeds who came here to sell their produce and walked away with more trinkets and dodads than they had imagined they could carry. That was the hyponotic power of the Bazaar merchants, and it had made many men a fortune. Stevens himself had, for a time, worked in the Bazaar to make his way during the earliest months of his life in Althanas. He remembered the work with a mixture of fondness and revulsion. After all, he had been forced to deal with the scum of humanity as well as the kindliest of the lot. But no matter who you dealt with, commerce left a man feeling sapped. It was a lot like war - long periods of drudgery with short bursts of excitement one later regretted. Stevens's nostalgia was tempered, however, by the fact that the booths and stores had already changed so much in the few years that he had been gone that the Bazaar was barely recognizable to an old hand.

In front of the buildings, enclosed in shanties and some of the sturdier booths, were the shops of the middling merchants. Most sold an array of goods of several different types that, on their own, couldn't support a larger establishment. This ramshackle market extended out from the larger boutiques, expanded slowly over the years out into the street, to the point where it created its own impermanent city block, with unintended streets and alleyways behind the poorly planned construction, branching out to the doorways of the merchants' buildings behind. Stevens knew there were only two reasons to buy anything from the merchants between the street and the older establishments: If you wanted to get gypped, or if you were looking for something so arcane that the only way to pick it up was stumbling across it by the sheer luck that proliferated in those tumbledown stalls.

The duke wanted to get in and out of this mudhole as quickly as possible and head back to the Citadel. The previous night had been quite a trying one, and despite the healing and tending of the monks, weariness tugged at him. Magic could only do so much for a body that needed sleep. He was sure that his brother was nestled in a bed somewhere in the fortress, probably snoring. Petunia, he could feel, was also conked out. After a night like last night, he didn't blame them.

He also wanted to get this item he meant to sell off his hands as quickly as possible. At his side was his sword-cane, which he had had for nearly four years now. It had served him well in many battles, vanquishing opponents from common ruffians to drakes to powerful mages. Now, however, he knew he had to part from it. It was seeped in blood. His Citadel-smeared hands could never be wiped clean as long as he held onto it. He wished he had been able to send someone else to do the job, but the monks were too busy undoing the chaos in the Citadel. Aesphestos had revealed himself in their midst, the revolt among the Ai'Bron had shattered their unity, and battles were still raging between schismatics throughout the building. It was a horrible situation, and Leopold knew he shouldn't divert any of the Ai'Bron from their task. He felt guilty leaving at such a critical time, but this had to be done, if only for himself. He reconnoitered a section of the Bazaar that looked like it might be receptive towards offers of selling weaponry, and schlepped through the mud towards it.

At either end of the Bazaar, meanwhile, large bands of men were moving into position, hauling in wooden barriers leaning against barrels filled with rainwater, pulling horses and reinforcements into position. The installation of the roadblocks was quick, silent and sudden, just as it was throughout the city. The men manning the barriers were clad in light armor and chain mail, rapiers and dirks hanging from their belts, green plumes poking up from their helmets. A picture of the Citadel with a monk and a nobleman grasping hands in front of it was emblazoned on the front of their armor and across the backs of their heavy gloves. These were the City Guardsmen of Radasanth, moving into positions sent out by courier from the baron's palace at the center of the city. Officers, perched on their unsteady steeds, were handing out pieces of parchment to each of their men. On these broadsides were sketched several rough drawings of men from the chest up. In the dead center of the parchment, monocle and a jauntily perched top hat added for emphasis, was a picture of Leopold Stevens.

[LordLeopold]

Stevens scanned the nearest stalls for the tell-tale signs of a weaponry store: swords and axes hanging from flimsy wooden walls, nearly dragging it down with their weight, the battle-scarred salesman, the misspelled title of the store painted on a sign drunkenly leaning against the wood paneling. He picked his way around a large mud puddle, skirting the edge of a gaggle of grumbling peasant women. The nearest stalls were all unpromising. One was covered in piles of dirty rags. Another's inventory seemed to consist entirely of rotting skulls. Between the two was a pile of charcoal and steaming dirt, the remains of a petty arson. The duke, seeming no way around the ocean of a puddle at his feet, grimaced and picked his way through it, leaping from toe to toe, splashing like a puppy in spring. Upon reaching the other side of the water, he huffed out his cheeks in resignation and attempted to brush water from his front and sides.

As he straightened up, an enticing possibility caught his eye. A large stall hammered together from massive panels of rotting wood took up one of the corners made between the Bazaar boulevard and a side alleyway. It took up the entire corner, and by looking across the splintery countertop, Stevens could see right through the interior shop out to the alley on the other side. It was clouded in shadow from the huge canvas sheets draped from each stall to the next like the billowing sails of a bobbing armada. They seemed designed to block the street below from blistering sunlight or pounding rain, but served only to create a festering swampland. Layers of cotton allowed water to splash down to the trampled earth below while blocking the sun from calling it back to the sky. It was even more damp there than in the main street, which made it positively boggy. Stevens thought he could hear the chirp of frogs coming from around the corner.

He approached the stop and leaned up against the countertop. It came up almost to his chest, and was thick enough to have been pilfered from a fortress wall. A brass bar was bolted near the ground, providing a comfortable place for the tall to rest their feet and the short to boost themselves high enough to do business. The whole construction reminded Stevens of a bar, including the drunken peasant slumped across the counter. As the duke passed the drunkard, he burped and fell to the ground with a squish. Leopold stepped over him delicately, making his way around the edge of the heavy stall, looking for the proprietor. A small pig was grunting atop the counter, snuffling in a small trough of moldy cheese. The duke curled his upper lip in mild disgust and focused on the weaponry hanging along the back wall and suspended from the lurking ceiling like vicious fruit.

They were deliciously cruel looking. Serrated long swords and whips studded with glass shards glinted in the sunlight, swaying from their leather loop holsters in a light breeze. A series of daggers was lined up in a mismatched set along the back wall. Stevens glanced over them, from a glowing red dirk to a thick, stumpy scimitar covered in painted eyes. Leopold convinced himself he didn't see one of the eyes blink before his own orbs fell on the last dagger. He shuddered, pulling his walking stick to his chest. It was curved, smooth, thick with a razor edge. There was no shine on its surface like obsidian or a beetle's back: It sucked up the small amount of light that made it into the back of the store, like tyre rubber poured into a knife's mould. Horror quickly overtook recognition, and he felt goosepimples dance across his skin. "Poten-fah," Stevens gasped.

"Quite an eye," a growling voice replied at Stevens's elbow. The duke leapt back, swinging his head back and forth, looking for a creeping salesman. Realization dawned upon him, a realization that could only come from a mind that had lived in Althanas for too long.

"Of course," Stevens muttered, wiping cold sweat from the corners of his eyes. "Why not a pig?"

"No shit," the white and black porker grunted, spraying crumbs. The small animal licked its thin lips noisy and trotted out closer to Stevens, its curly tail twitching. "You know your daggers." The duke stepped forward, still a bit uneasy about this salesman, and placed his hands on the counter, laying his cane flat atop it and lifting one foot onto the brass railing. He clenched his monocle a bit tighter in his eye.

"Yes," he replied cautiously. "I was once quite an aficionado." The pig made a noncommittal noise and scratched its belly with a back trotter. "I was, er, rather committed to them in the Citadel." He gritted his teeth and glanced down at his hands, which were slightly trembling along the length of his sword cane.

"Citadel, schimtadel," the pig responded, sitting down on its haunches. Stevens grimaced and stiffened, tilting his head and rather ostentatiously looking down his nose at the pig. The beast ignored him, instead attempting a regal gaze out over the Bazaar. "Half these jokers are committed to one damn thing or another in the Citadel. You want to hear about the Citadel, take my job for an afternoon. You'll hear about the Citadel. Any half-baked jackass has stories about the Citadel. You had a hard time in a battle, you think I didn't know that when I saw you, okay? I knew you before you opened your mouth. You got a dozen reasons to hate the Citadel and a dozen more reasons to keep going back. What do I care, I heard it before. You're either here selling something you hate," the pig glanced at the sword cane, "Or buying something you hate." It turned its head to the poten fah dagger and snorted. "You gotta tell me though, prince. If you hate it, why didya have it long enough to sell it?"

[LordLeopold]

Stevens, taken aback, lifted his cane and stepped back from the booth, frowning in shock at the porcine purveyor. It was one thing to talk to a pig, and quite another to be chastised and insulted by one. Glancing around him, the duke saw no surprised passers-by stopping to stare at the chattering pig. Apparently he was something of an institution in the Bazaar; one of the local wags, doing his best to shatter the golden calves of Althanas, and by now the population had become inured to him, regarding him only with slightly strained amusement. Or perhaps he was just too irritating for most people to bother a response. Stevens glanced around the customers rushing by, trying to meet someone's gaze to share in his indignation. They all rushed by, their eyes at their feet or the next stretch of rainwater. Finding no confirmation of how he had been slighted, Stevens shook his head, and then chuckled. How absurd! Being insulted by a pig!

"You're quite a philosopher, old boy," Leopold quipped, returning to his place at the counter. "But how seriously do you expect me to take you while you're munching on rotten cheese, eh?" The pig turned to its trough with an approving eye and belched tinnily. Snuffling at the edge of the stinky mound, the pig seemed to smile, as best a pig could.

"You're gonna deny me my one pleasure in life?" the pig said. "The last thing that keeps me from trottin' on out of this sty you call 'the Bazaar'?" Stevens gave a snort of a laugh through his nose and nodded in understanding.

"There's little joy in commerce," the duke responded. "Sheets of accounting, tables of merchandise, tallies of pay..." The pig blew a raspberry and shook its head.

"I don't care about that, I just pay someone to keep up with it. Besides, no thumbs," The point was driven home by the pig stomping its little hooves on the wood. "It's the people I can't stand. You'd think the whole damn world was at war, the way these baboons buy my stuff," Stevens raised one of his fingers and opened his mouth to point out that, indeed, the world was at war, but stopped himself. He was tired of thinking about the Forgotten and their dark crusade. Still, images began flashing through his head of the nearly four years he'd spent in campaign. Dark elves falling upon his Gisela army. Drakes appearing out of magic portals. Aesphestos rising into the air, flinging fire across the Citadel. Monks of Ai'Bron staining their hands with each other's blood. Dragons breathing flame. von Ribbentrophen's burned black scars. Indeed, the world was at war.

Stevens, lost in his memories, and the pig, lost in his misanthropy, didn't notice the quiet changes in the crowd around them. It was slowly thinning, the shrinking numbers moving ever faster across the wet ground. The chatter and laughter of a normal day in Radasanth's streets was muted, fading off into the tromp of boots and mumbles of people bumping against each other in haste. Carts and mules had disappeared. Moving slowly through the decreasing crowds were the green smears of the city guards' uniforms, like damselflies humming through clouds of gnats. Guards reached out at people rushing past them, grabbing them by their cloaks or shirts, pulling them close and shoving the broadsides in their faces. When the shoppers responded with a shrug or shake of the head, the guards pushed them away roughly, cursing and shaking their gloved fists. Sealing off the Bazaar at either end were the mounted guards and their heavy wooden roadblocks, turning away shoppers, many of whom were still rubbing sleep out of their eyes. One impetuous fellow began screaming angrily at the guards, waving his arms and wagging his finger at a cavalryman angrily. He was knocked to the ground, unconscious, by the handle of a guardsman's rapier. People turned their heads as they passed him, lying in the mud where the guards left him.

None of this was apparent to Stevens and his conversation partner. The duke, whose eyes had returned to the poten fah dagger on the wall, was sucking his teeth in consternation while the pig blew spit bubbles on the tip of its tongue. It was like looking at a wound, staring at this dagger. Stevens was horrified by it, and could feel his stomach churning at the mere sight of the dark, cold weapon. His heart was beating so hard and fast, it was as if it was trying to pump molasses. But he could not turn away. Merely seeing it brought back the memories of when he first received it, emerging from a rough encounter with a witch in the Radasanthia Academy Library. All that had been left of the huge, scuttling poten-fah the witch had conjured up was this one small dagger, forged from its poison stinger. Like a fool he had picked it up and taken it with him as a spoil from the battle. Even the battle itself horrified Stevens in retrospect: He had been fighting a tottering old man, some sort of librarian, and destroyed an ocean of priceless books in the pointless skirmish. The duke could still feel the cold place between his shoulderblades where he had once tucked the weapon. He knew one of the best things he'd ever done for himself was to toss it away. And now it had returned.

"Are you buying that poten fah dagger or what," the pig asked grumpily. "I've got other customers waiting for me." Stevens looked around at the emptying street, seeing only himself and the passed out drunkard within twenty feet. Raising an eyebrow, Stevens turned to the pig and pursed his lips. The porker gave him a withering stare in return. "And in any event, it looks like you've attracted someone's attention." The pig motioned its snout across the alleyway, and Stevens turned to see two plumed guardsmen pushing a hobo up against the side of a booth. Unshaven, with a withered arm and spittle dribbling down his chin, he was no match for two armed bullies, and seemed to know it. His arm was outstretched, one finger pointing in Stevens's direction. The duke scratched his chin, confused, watching the guards toss the hobo to the ground and begin marching towards him, their hands venturing to their weapons.

"I haven't seen city guards that wary since Saint Vikkitus' Day," Stevens said to the pig, who nodded sagely.

[EarlStevens]

Our hero follows the close-packed monks through the winding halls of the Citadel, digging with them down into the bowels of the earth. They are marching in an almost perfect lock step, like wind-up soldiers on the march through a child's playpen. In front of them, running a double-march pace which keeps his billowing robes bouncing up around his shoulders, is one of the clan chiefs of the Kahh'jami, the strange robed wogs who showed up in the Citadel the night before. He seemed like an Arab, but his English had a harsher, more discordant accent to it. Behind them trots our man and his servant, who glides silently in their wake, sliding from torchlight to torchlight, flickering in and out of sight, except for a continually visible ghostly white mask, an eternal smile grinning through the dark. Muted yells, the grind of metal, and the thud of battle resonate through the passageway, whispering through the stone and creeping along with the troupe, continually growing stronger.

Our man, awake only an hour or two, is sweating slightly, but more from exertion than nervousness. Last night, after trying to escape from this monastic fortress, he learned a lesson about this fairie world he has found himself in that he will not forget: It is ruled by battle, and one must learn to fight if one ever wishes to escape it. His attempt at slinking through the shadows, wiggling out like a snake in the night, had failed utterly - the walls were too thick, the halls too full of these bald warriors. Watching the army of sorcerers and magical beasts burst through the huge doors of the Citadel like self-assured burglars, throwing the entire fortress into disarray, he felt the strength that raw power could have here. Being swept up in the marching monks, as he is now, the strength of motion and the will to seize power flowed through him, imbuing him with a sense of purpose.

Now he is following his new course. Pockets of monks who had pledged to follow their false pontiff into war, heretics against this religious order, are still scattered throughout the Citadel, buried deep in its corridors, a hidden plague that must be extirpated. He had known as soon as the first platoon of monks marched past him to their internecine battle that he must join them. Fairie folk like this, who only understood the language of blood and sweat and steel, could be impressed by such action, however foolhardy.

"Stop!" commands the Arabian magician at the lead, bringing the column skittering to a standstill. The turbaned fellow, wrapped in blue trim and sand-colored cloth, raises his head, making sense of the miscellany of sound echoing down the hallway. On either side are rows of doors, each hiding behind it a magical portal to another realm of fairie. Our man can feel the bumps and rustles of magic surrounding the doors. His long training to open and create such portals, years of schooling in the making, gives him a special sense of them, like a vintner naming a wine by its smell. One door seems off, standing out among the rest. The shape, the feel of the magic emanating from it is incorrect somehow, twisted and deformed. He can tell the robed magician feels it, too.

"It is scarred closed," the magician announces, pointing at the door. Our man feels a chill of excitement. Exactly the idiom I learned at university, he thinks to himself. By God! "Which of you... men," the magician turns to the monks, stroking his moustaches, "Can open this?" The monks are caught off guard by the question, shifting from foot to foot, turning to each other, their armor clanking as it shifts over their shoulders and chests. Murmuring breaks out among their hitherto silent ranks. Our man snickers and shakes his head in amazement. A magician with no knowledge of doorways! Pathetic. He steps forward, weaving between the ranks of monks, clearing his throat loudly.

"It's simple enough," our hero sneers. "The back-to-front scarring is held together by very loose bonding. Snap them and the whole thing unravels." The magician stares back at him, frowning at his own impotence. It is obvious he understands what our hero has said, but is it equally obvious he doesn't know what to do about it. Our man heaves a sigh and raises his hand toward his servant.

"A grammel knife," he orders. The pillar of shadow behind him, his grinning mask looming down from near the ceiling, slides a little closer. What monks haven't already slid a few feet away from the ghoulish being make a quick dash out of its way. Extending from the impermeable shadow of its body is a small, shining object. Our man smiles and snatches it deftly from the silent surface of the demon's body. Blunt and rounded like a butter knife, but twice as long, the instrument seems ungainly, but our man carries it with an easy hand. He steps up to the door, stepping on the magician's flowing robes, and jams the knife in a crack in the wood. He turns to the crowd, bows, and then drags the knife down the surface of the door. A horrible noise, like a cat being stepped on, howls out of the door, but he continues dragging the knife along until he almost hits the floor. A series of loud pops bursts from the door and then it falls open.

Immediately, and without warning, the magician and the monks rush in, knocking our man through the door and almost onto his face. He has no time to prepare himself for what jumps into his vision as the muted noises from outside explode into an awful din. He is standing on the edge of a huge sheet of ice that spreads out as far as the eye can see. Ankle deep in the snow, he watches the magician and the monk skid out across the ice, nearly collapsing on top of each other several times. A stand of trees, sprinkled with snow, huddles off to his right at the very edge of the ice. A creek, frozen in mid-cascade over a series of small boulders, sits among them. Long fingers of cloud drag across the pale blue sky, bleached almost white. There is no sun to be seen, only two glowing crescent moons hovering on the horizon, itself barely visible where the reflective ice melds into the pale sky. Clustered only fifty or sixty feet away on the glassy surface are several dozen men, bumbling across the ice in a sort of farcical battle. Monks leap at monks, crashing into each other and sliding across the ice, gouging into it with their armor and weapons. Blood is spreading out across the ice in several places. In the middle of the fray is a glowing figure, magic crackling around its red robes and black staff, monks who dare to venture too close being tossed away from it like rag dolls. The Arabian magician, a small tornado of wind forming around his body, is racing towards this figure, a long narrow sword appearing in his hand.

"All hangment," our hero curses. His manservant silently slides up beside him, his sword cane appearing from amidst its shadowy innards. He pulls the weapon to him, pushing his knife into the depths by way of replacement. Twisting the handle, he forces out its hidden blade and smiles. "Once more into the breach, dear friends!"

[LordLeopold]

The guards stopped a few yards away from Stevens, their hands still gripping their weapons, their faces still furrowed into steel masks. Warily, Stevens brought his walking stick down from the countertop, holding it at his side, running his pointer finger back and forth over the silver handle. Four pairs of eyes glanced back and forth between each other, all unsure what to expect. The few sounds coming from the emptying street faded away into a buzz of nervous anticipation. Color and motion washed out into a split-second. Then, one of the guards cleared his throat, a wavering nervousness in the cough, and the word snapped back to the fast, loud pace of reality.

"Leopold Stevens," the older looking of the guards, with two silver bars on his shoulder, barked, "By order of the Baron of Radasanth, you are hereby placed under arrest for high treason, armed malfeasance and disrupting the peace of the city." Stevens, the shocks of the day compounding upon him, only let out a coughing laugh of disbelief. Apparently this was not a reaction normally experienced by the guards, who glanced at each other, a hint of panic in their eyes. The jolt of the unexpected quickly wore off, however, and the guards took a step forward, pulling their rapiers a few inches from their sheaths. Glinting steel pulled a painful realization to Stevens's mind. These men were not playing some kind of joke. This was not a gag. He was being arrested. Horror crept up his throat from his heart to his mouth. Matching their step forward, he pulled back, bumping against the counter. Pinned against it, he could only look from the approaching guards to the pig. "If you don't surrender, we'll take you by force," the older guard said, more coolly this time, withdrawing his blade another inch. The duke looked over their shoulders at the Bazaar beyond for some comfort. He saw only dozens of green plumes combing through the remains of the crowd.

"Oh dear," Stevens said to himself, trying to imagine what he'd done wrong. "Oh dear, oh dear." As the men took another step forward, the duke could hear a snuffling chuckle at his elbow. He glanced down at the small pig, which was grunting out a bestial giggle. Licking his dry lips, Stevens muttered out of the corner of his mouth: "Yes, I think this is very funny, too."

"Well," the pig chuckled in response, "It's just that I thought they finally found out why the armory keeps coming up short on swords, is all." Stevens couldn't bring himself to even fake a smile as the guards came another squelching step closer. "Oh, well," the pig continued, "They'll probably take me in as an accomplice to whatever you did. Thanks for that." It was then that the most unexpected thing of all happened. The pig hunched its back, tensed its legs, and leapt from the edge of the counter right at the two guards, who barely had time to blink. A blur through the air, the pig scrunched up in mid-flight, let out a squeal of effort, and with a noise like a balloon popping burst outward like an ostrich hatching from an Easter egg. Its body expanded into a massive, trembling hunk of muscle, dark hair sprouting from its back, its trotters turned into tearing claws. Tusks like butcher knives curved out from its mouth, its eyes two glaring red coals behind a snout as long as a horse's. Its squeal became a low, rumbling bellow of primordial rage. Crashing to the ground on all fours, the roaring boar slammed into the older guard, knocking him across the mud, and attacked the second, pinning him to the ground with a slathering, wet jaw.

"Get the hell out!" the beast rumbled at Stevens. "The back door!" With the understanding given by shared anxiety and anger, the duke turned, hauling himself clumsily over the counter, and fell to the wooden slants that floored the stand. He swayed to his feet, and looked over his shoulder at the dozen or so guards rushing at the fiery boar. As it collided with a mounted guard, knocking horse and man to the ground, Stevens jumped at the back wall, knocking aside weapons, grasping at a brass handle drilled into the wood. He yanked at the door, nearly tearing it off its hinges in his haste, flinging it open. It slapped against the wall, and the duke was about to leap out through the opening when he felt his body slowing down, his racing mind keeping to a halt. His head turned to a spot in the shadows darker than the rest, like a horse's eye looking out from its black coat. Poten-fah, Stevens thought, gazing at the lightless dagger. It was thicker than the rest, bulging at the sides. Unlike the straight, narrow knives around it, the poten-fah stinger curved to a point, a scorpion's stinger of a weapon. One edge was sharp, narrowed into a blade. The handle seamlessly melded into the weapon, just as lifeless and fearsome. Unthinkingly, Stevens reached out, snatched it from the wall, and jumped through the door, tucking the weapon in his pocket.

With that, the dagger disappeared from his mind entirely as he raced from the stall. He was in some sort of narrow passage created by the back ends of the wooden stalls. Maids and servants sped through corridors like these in the baronial mansions of Britain, threading neatly, unseen, through their masters' lives. The duke wondered if those passages were as untidy as this. The floor was either a wet canvas, loosely laid wooden boards, or stretches of packed dirt. Above were a series of wooden roofs and tarp hangings that kept the elements at bay. The walls were the back walls of the poorly constructed stalls, mismatched wood panels and doors, some of which were open to the world outside, most of which were closed. Boxes and sacks littered the floor of the corridor, and in some places, cots and stacks of bowls seemed to indicate the merchants' quarters. Stevens got the feeling, running as fast as he could down the passage, nearly falling over the detritus scattered about, that he had entered a sanctum of the Bazaar that no unexpected visitors should penetrate. Chillingly, the feeling that he might not have found a safe haven after all began to fall over him.

He jogged past a half-naked woman, breastfeeding her child, who screamed and turned away, cursing him loudly. Trying to heave a breathless apology over his shoulder, he leapt over a dented brass shield and nearly collided with a naked child washing himself in a puddle. Don't these people have any clothes? he wondered as he stumbled past the child, dodging his father's fist, and picked up his gasping run. Glancing through one of the open back doors to his right, he saw a flash of green plume and grimaced. If he could break out through one of the stalls near the buildings at the edge of the Bazaar, he might find his way out of this mess and disappear into the city. He might even stumble across one of his old business associates and find some place to hide and wait for the whole thing to blow over. Ducking a poorly placed beam, he began plotting out an escape route back to the Citadel in his head.

[EarlStevens]

Our man rushes into the melee, his weapon at the ready. His first few steps onto the ice nearly spill him, his shoes sliding out from under his body in unexpected directions. Using his weapon as an oversized ice pick, he jabs into the ice, steadying himself like an aged drunk. With his bumbling, stabbing gait, he closes in on the battle, watching monks slashing at each other, themselves painfully unsteady on the frozen lake. He looks over his shoulder at his manservant, whose silent slide is unaffected by the glassy surface. Our man feels a deep shiver in his chest at the sight of the towering ghoul, its still face and silent mouth haunting the afterimage on the back of his eyelids. The night before is still inexplicable and even fearsome to him. Snapping bone and slicing flesh still sound in his ears, and the sight of a leaping, writhing shadow attacking black-suited soldiers slinks through his mind. Shaking it away, our man turns back to battle.

A monk's fist, clenching a leather mace, swings for his chest. Gasping, our man lifts his arms, a brief futile gesture that unbalances him. He falls to the ice, his head thudding against the ice. Spots flashing before his eyes, he looks up at the monk swaying above him, his own balance thrown off. The bald holy warrior swings the mace wildly, trying to find his footing again, cursing some ancient, unfamiliar saints. Almost without thinking, our man raises his weapon, and with one swift motion, stabs up at his befuddled attacker. The blade hits the monk under the edge of his chain mail, which is flailing with the monk's wild motion. Our man feels a surprising amount of resistance as the blade strikes through cloak and muscle, but it is not enough to stop the ineluctable course of the weapon. Dropping his mace, his mouth and eyes falling wide open, the monk grabs at the cane stabbing into his body, exhaling heavily. He leans against the cane, pushing the blade further into his rasping frame, grasping at the smooth wood. Yanking sharply, our man pulls the weapon from the monk's body, the monk's flesh and ragged wound tugging at the steel. Blood pours from the monk's body as he falls to the ice, gurgling senselessly. The monk, who is quickly becoming a corpse, hits the ice beside our man, and a full moon of blood begins to expand around him, sliding across the ice, seeping into the milky-clear lake's surface.

Our man stares into the fallen monk's green eyes, freezing into grey stillness, slowly moving across his own face. His lips are moving slowly and wordlessly, the tongue thick and motionless. The flush of battle is seeping away through his punctured stomach, pale death chasing it from its last redoubts. Our man saw a man die once, in hospital. He had been slowly gasping for breath, his skin blistered, a wet gurgle in his throat. Hundreds of people had been rushing by, draped in white and red, thick stockings and pressed pants swishing against each other in a quiet frenzy of fear and hopelessness. That man's flush had been from fever, not battle, but its slow fading was no different. Nor was the panicked grapple with infinity lurking behind the slowly moving eyes. It was impossible to think or speak when such an image appeared before one's eyes. Then, our man could only bring himself to say one word, a word which returns to his lips again.

"Father!"

He pushes himself from the fading body, trying to wipe the lifeblood from his blade on the ice. His eyes glance all around him, trying to rest on anything but the body on the ice. He fixes his gaze on the two battling sorcerers in the middle of the skirmish, elevated slightly by their own magic power. They are hovering in a crackling cloud of magic, knocking back any monks who come too close. Although knocking at each other with fist and staff, they don't touch each other, and our man has an eerie feeling that this is not their battle; there is an unseen struggle taking place between the two which can only be felt in the tingling along the back of his neck. A crackling explosion, which had no source among the battling monks, rolled across the ice as a flash of light surrounded the two warriors for a fleeting second, momentarily blinding our hero. In its echo, a splintering ruckus rattles in the ice below our man's fingers. The frozen water beneath him shivers and wobbles, and grinding and more splintering rattles in his bones.

Suddenly, the ice he is lying on shakes and tilts dramatically as a crack that sounds like a splitting skull sounds beside him. He looks toward the monk's body, only to see the ice disappearing beneath it and black water rushing up toward him. Confused and disoriented, our man feels himself sliding toward the roiling, inky lake rushing around the ice. He flails uselessly against the ice, rolling down, tumbling shoulders over legs, and hits the water. A vice closes around his head and chest, squeezing all the air out of his lungs and slamming his temples. Our man loses all sense of where he is, or what is rushing around him. Thus, he doesn't realize it when the sheet of ice slams into place over his head, encasing him in the lake into which he is quickly sinking.

[LordLeopold]

Stevens crashed through an uneven stack of porcelain plates, raising a horrible noise not unlike a chest of drawers falling down a flight of stairs. Ignoring the dozens of shopkeepers who appeared at their doors, investigating the crash, some of whom cried out at him, grabbing for his shirtsleeve, Stevens ran on, clumsily brushing shards of dishes from his hair and shoulders. Weariness was beginning to descend over him, his legs and shoulders aching, his lungs seemingly shrinking, taking in less and less air. Gadzooks, how far can it be to the storefronts? the duke thought to himself. It was difficult to see more than a few yards ahead, as stacks of goods and loose canvas hanging from the walls obscured his line of sight. The narrowness of the passage amplified even the most insubstantial barrier into a near-impassable roadblock and smokescreen. Adding to the problem was the intoxicating blend of fear, confusion and exhaustion that was ebbing through his body. Stevens doubted he could even tell if the exit from this passage was only a few feet in front of him.

He was proved right, as a small clapboard door jumped out from behind a waving sheet of canvas, leaping out and filling his shocked vision. His flying feet and the loose mud below them made it impossible to stop in time. He could only brace himself, holding an arm over his face. He crashed through the door, knocking it open and off its hinges. Both he and the thin piece of wood fell to the ground, rolling into the middle of the narrow street between the sturdy rock and brick buildings and the insubstantial wooden stalls. Taking a few deep breaths, and pulling himself to his feet, brushing flecks of mud and straw off his clothes, Stevens shook his head and coughed, taking in his surroundings as fast as he could. At any moment, he expected a platoon of green soldiers to stomp around the corner and chop him to bits. He glanced hurriedly around himself, stumbling toward the brown walls ahead. This narrow alley, the space between the ramshackle Bazaar of wooden stalls and the permanent one of mortar and brick, went in either direction, narrowing to a pinpoint at either end of the boulevard. At his back were the stalls, some open, most closed, toothless wooden mouths gaping out, few shopkeepers slinking inside them. The street was muddy and covered in a thin layer of straw, serving little purpose except to give a dash of color to the bland brown of the street. The shops ahead were cold, unwelcoming places, with short doors burrowed into the stone walls, hunching below swinging shingles that announced the wares within. No cheery windows winked out at potential customers, and only a few men were standing in front of them, looking from one shingle to the next for their desired good.

"Son of a bitch, that's him!" A winded voice called out, and Stevens turned around to see two guards emerging from around the corner, reaching for their swords, grimacing at him. He turned and tensed himself to sprint away as best he could. Looking ahead, he saw only one man, heaving a sack with a trickle of sand pouring from a tear in the corner, plodding towards a thin ladder that looked like it could never support him, leaning against the side of one of the shops. It lead to the second-story rooftop, where a wooden skeleton and a tall stack of baked bricks indicated the construction of a third floor. With a flash of inspiration, Stevens ran for the ladder, pushing the man aside. He howled as he fell into the mud, but Stevens ignored him, grabbing a hold of the ladder and hauling himself up rung by rung, his swordcane grasped ungainly in one hand. Hearing the rapid squelch of approaching guards, he increased his pace, making his way as quickly up the ladder as he could, feeling the wood creek and bend under his weight. Cursing and the sound of a low-level squabble below, followed by a rocking of the ladder as another man climbed onto it, alerted Stevens to how futile his escape plan was.

He was already to the second floor, but looking around him, he saw that most of the buildings on either side were only one story. He felt the sinking fear of entrapment. Out of the frying pan... Stevens thought to himself as he got to the top of the ladder, his head peeking over the roof. He saw two workmen, their hammers at their sides, listening to a green-plumed guard with a large sheet of paper in his hands. Stevens's jaw dropped, and he looked from the roof to the ladder below him at the two approaching guards.

"Well, bugger," Stevens sighed, and glanced over his shoulder at the Bazaar, hoping to get a glimpse of his porcine friend for a bit of reassurance. He couldn't see the boar, but he did see a veritable sea of wood and canvas, stretching to either side as far as the eye could see. A sea empty of any green plumes. "Mercy me," Stevens muttered to himself as a plan hatched in his mind. "I hope this idea's better than the last one." With that, the duke pushed out against the building, pushing the ladder away from the wall, wobbling out away from the mortar. Howling below him, the guards began hurriedly scrambling back down the ladder as it tilted slowly to the vertical. Running out of arm length, Stevens reached out with his cane, poking at the brick and pushing out farther.

With a final jab, the ladder wiggled out, swayed for a second, and toppled back toward the stalls. As it swung down, both the guards fell from it onto the mud while Stevens hung to the thin frame for dear life, feeling the wind whip around his ears. The duke came down on the roofing harder and faster than he had expected; although he landed on a wet stretch of canvas roofing above the alleyway he had just run out of, the wind was taken out of his lungs by the force which with he landed. A splintering crash signaled the snapping in half of the ladder, and a cracking noise seemed to indicate the canvas wouldn’t hold up much longer. He rolled out of the puddle, climbing slowly up out of the sagging cloth valley, and crawled as quickly as he could manage to his feet, trotting painfully out across the uneven wooden roofs. His back, neck, shoulders and arms screamed in pain, but he still managed to hobble out across the desert of warped and bleached wood. Several hateful grakals beat their wings and croaked angrily at him as he passed, taking off into the air, but he paid them no mind. He only hoped that he could find a way down off the stalls and to safety once he got to the edge. Most of the guards, he reckoned, would be racing in the direction they saw him flee from the pig’s stall, and thus he could escape across the tops of the booths, cross the main boulevard, and flee through the buildings on the other side. With the edge of the booths in sight, Stevens felt his heart, furiously beating as it was, rising in his chest.

He stopped at the edge of the booths, hovering, his heart sinking. Standing on the ground below were half a dozen guards carrying crossbows, all pointed at his heart. Two men on horseback stood at either end of them, their mounts pawing the ground impatiently. Nearly a dozen more guards clumped behind them, holding their naked rapiers. Beside the ground was the shopkeeper, rolling on its back, hogtied and muzzled. One of the men on horseback, broad shouldered with a graying, clipped goatee, smiled and called out to him, the silver and gold bars on his shoulders glinting in the morning sun.

“Good morning, my lord! I am hereby placing you under arrest.”

[EarlStevens]

Our hero awakens in a room vibrating with the energy of a field hospital. He slowly leans forward, pulling himself into an upright sitting position, touching himself, feeling for anything misplaced or damaged. It all seems in order – the last thing he remembers is falling into the jagged, cold teeth of the water and sinking into the dark depths. The dead monk springs to his mind, and he pressed the heel of his palms against his forehead, feeling a tingling spreading throughout his chest. Groaning, he massages his skull. The image is not one he wishes to dwell upon. Finding no solace in his closed eyes, he opens them and looks about his surroundings. They are not immediately familiar, but mirror experiences dating back to primary school. He is sprawled out on a musty cot, covered by a thin blanket, one in two lines of cots arranged along either side of a long room. Each cot is home to another man, either deep in sleep or rising out of it, sometimes violently lurching out of bed and rushing toward the nearest door, totally revitalized. Monks are passing back and forth between cots, dozens of them rapidly attending to each man recovering from a battle. Although they are not panicked or terrified, the monks do have a certain grim determination about them that speaks of a hidden anxiety. They are determined to dedicate all attention to the task at hand, lest their mind stray to some grim reality they don’t care to focus on. Sunlight beams in through windows clustered near the ceiling, as if in a shallow basement.

It does not take long for our man to spot his manservant, hovering silently at the foot of his bed, an exclamation point of shadow in the glowing room. The bone-colored, smiling mask looks down at him, revealing nothing. Monks weave around the spindly figure, trying not to look at it for too long, whispering among themselves as they pass. Our man ignores the hisses of fear and suspicion, and finding himself fully dressed, leaps to his feet. His cane leans against a stool beside the cot, his hat perched on the silver knob, and he snatches both up, donning the fedora and swinging the stick. “Shall we?” he asks his manservant, who without a nod follows him between the cots and out the door at the far end of the room. The passageway outside is no less hectic than the hospital behind him. Two monks rush past, a grimly pale holy man slung in a stretcher between them. His clothes are torn and bloody, but the skin beneath the tears is whole and unscarred. The healing has done its work. Our man waits for a few moments, trying to sense where the most monks are headed, and follows them down the hall, dodging the fiercest looking clumps of men and threading between the single runners. His servant follows, parting the crowd as it glides at his heels.

Most of the monks are headed toward the end of the hall, which opens up into a rather spacious, if windowless, refectory, nearly two stories from floor to ceiling. Most of the long, low tables and benches normally in the center of the room have been pushed to the edges, stacked atop each other at the foot of enormous tapestries. Round tables have been wheeled into the room instead, each piled high with papers and burning candles. Clustered around them are groups of important looking people. Around one are all the Kahh’jami magicians, in their flowing robes and turbans, fingering their moustaches and thin-bladed swords. They are bunched around the youngest looking of them, who is garbed entirely in pure white instead of sandy brown, his mouth twisted into a frown. They are poring over what seems to be a blue and red streaked quilt, knitted into uneven patterns and swirls. Our man notices the magician who accompanied him to the icy lake. Part of his loose turban seems singed, but other than that he appears as fresh as our man feels. Another table hosts several of the militant ecclesiastics, holding onto their crosiers as if they were quarterstaffs. Several unidentified men and women, wrapped in conservative gray and black nobles’ tunics and shawls, are huddled around another table, murmuring to each other. Our man sighs and glances from one table to the next, unsure which any are worth approaching. He feels an urge to undertake another battle; he already feels he has learned something from his short duel on the ice. Not only that, but the repulsive image of the monk, bleeding to death, tugs at him. If it is so horrifying, why does he want to repeat it?

“Leo! There you are!” An unfamiliar voice calls out. Our man turns his head toward it, cocking an eyebrow. Although he has no particular reason to think he’s the one being spoken to, he’s never heard of a fairie with the name Leo. From Bacon’s account, they’d all had names like Bloodmoon or Jack’s Uncle: Utter nonsense. Our man sees a motley group approaching him, lead by a mustachioed man whose face begins falling the second he gets a good look at our hero. “Ah, the fake Leopold,” he says, shaking his head and waving his bowler hat like a dismissive extension of his hand. “Forget it, Silas. I don’t blame you for the mistake, though.”

“Fake?” Our man coughs a laugh. “I’m the only Leopold I’ve ever known. Leopold Stevens, MP, Earl of Westchester-Beyond-Moor.” He sticks out his hand, his face cool. “And you might be?” The bowler-holding man makes a rather incredulous grimace, turning his face into a half-frown, half-sneer, but takes his hand.

“Sir Anthony Stevens, Viscount Darby,” he says. “Accompanying me is Silas T. Witherspoon, convicted felon,” the viscount motions to a short, brown haired man wearing a red seersucker suit, hauling what looked like a massive leather suitcase. Perched on his shoulder is a dark green winged lizard with rolling yellow eyes and a long, sinewy neck, which creeks with cough-like noises with each step the little man makes. Witherspoon rolls his eyes, but laughs obsequiously.

“That may be true, Anthony, but I prefer not to be introduced as such to nobility,” he says. “I am a professional traveling salesman, inconveniently and unexpectedly diverted into a series of misadventures with the Brothers Stevens.” The lizard on his shoulder flaps its wings and caws “Brothers Stevens!” several times in a voice not unlike a parrot. Silas reaches out a hand, leaning sideways from the weight of his luggage, and our man takes it uneasily. His hands are sweaty, but our man hides his disgust well. “Also, this feathered lady here is Petunia,” he motions to a Rhode Island red pecking nervously at his feet, “And my leathery-winged friend is the aptly named Icarus,” he continues, shrugging the shoulder where the impish dragon is perched. “And although Anthony cringes in pain whenever they’re mentioned, those purple penguins trotting across the mess hall towards us are his guard of honor, commissioned by the King of the Penguins for his bravery in defense of the penguins against two of the Forgotten Five,” Our man scowls at the four hobbling birds waddling between the tables, weaving between scurrying monks in an almost accidental fashion.

“Quite a menagerie,” he directs at the viscount, not bothering to introduce his own dark manservant. When one does not know someone’s name, it is best to keep quiet and let that someone do the introducing. The viscount nods, frowning as the penguins make formation around him, a bitter resignation collapsing about him. He pushes one a few inches further away with the tip of his umbrella, but does nothing when the penguin sidles back into place.

“A devil of a crew,” the viscount responded, withdrawing a pince-nez from within his three-piece suit and attaching it to his nose. “Please excuse me for sounding flippantly rude, but we are looking for the man we consider to be the real Leopold Stevens. He is my brother, Silas’s probation officer, and Petunia and Icarus’s familiar-master. As you can imagine, we all get a bit jumpy when he disappears, especially Silas.” Witherspoon manages a laugh, but our man doesn’t crack a smile.

“I haven’t seen him since last night, I’m afraid,” he responds. “Although quite frankly, I’ve no idea how much time has passed. For all I know, last night could be last week.” The viscount nods and clasps his hands atop the umbrella, which he has balanced on its tip between his feet.

“The healing of the monks is disorienting,” he replies. “But fortunately your intuition is correct. It’s mid-morning, only a few hours after that unpleasant incident with one of the Forgotten Ones.”

“Forgotten Five,” Witherspoon cuts in. The viscount smirks and shakes his head condescendingly.

“Forgotten Five sounds like something a journalist would make up to describe a gang of pickpockets,” he replies, and our man replies with a polite huff of laughter, despite having no idea who they devil they are taking about. The viscount looks to him to reply, but before he can is cut off by an approaching bald man in an archbishop’s vestments, swinging his crosier purposefully, his robes swishing loudly against the stone. His face has a kindly look, but is worn into creases around his eyes and mouth that give him an unusually grim expression: the face of a schoolmaster. The viscount turns and bows from the neck to him. He replies with a hand raised in some sort of sign.

“Peter O'Mally, High Priest of the Citadel," Darby mutters out of the corner of his mouth to our man. "He arrived here last night, helped ward off Aesphestos. Insufferably cryptic at times. Ah, Peter,” The viscount hails him, “We were just talking to the fake Leopold,” our man winces, “And he hasn’t seen Leo, either. If I didn’t know you had the whole situation under control, I’d be worried about him.” Our man is surprised at the sarcasm in the viscount’s voice, but not unimpressed. The archbishop frowns at him in the manner of an uncle scolding a nephew with whom he knows he has little fatherly sway.

“Sadly, Sir Anthony, I’ve some news that might help explain why we haven’t seen him since he left for the Bazaar,” Both Witherspoon’s and the viscount’s mouths fall open. The hen clucks angrily, flapping her wings and raising her feathers along her back like a cat, sending the penguins into hysterics. Both men began spewing forth indignant questions as to why the priest did not inform them of the other Leopold’s whereabouts, but he brushes them off with a prolonged blink and shake of his head. “He would not have wanted me to tell you where he was going. This was a personal matter, and I would expect both of you to respect his wishes first among any of the men here.” That silences them. “Now, I hope you are both not too upset to accompany me to the viewing gallery. I believe you’ll want to see this,” he looks from the viscount and Witherspoon to our man and his servant, who are both standing still and observant to the side. The priest fixes our man with a penetrating gaze, and he matches it, willing himself to put every iota of his spirit into meeting the stare of one of the men who had imprisoned him for so long. If the stare imparts guilt, the priest does not show it. “This may be of some interest to you, as well,” he states abruptly.

[LordLeopold]

Stevens twisted his wrists, testing the strength of the ropes binding them together, and found no leeway. Grimacing, he looked down at his ankles, manacled with a little more than a foot of chains. Fine accoutrements, he thought to himself. Very fine, indeed. The view to either side was not much better. Two green plumes, topping two unpleasantly grinning guards. One held a misshapen sack from which the end of his sword cane was poking. The other simply twirled the iron loop holding the keys to the manacles, clacking the small bits of metal together and whistling tunelessly through his teeth. They were standing in the middle of the Bazaar boulevard, watching an approaching wagon hauled by two oxen. Heavy bars held the tarred wood sides together, and a metal grate covered the tiny window Stevens could see behind the burly driver. Trotting at either side of it were mounted guards, crossbows strapped to their backs, swords at their sides, twitching with each motion they could detect him making. They were already on their guard, this far away from him. Grunting a few yards to the left was the owner of the weapons shop, grumbling through the cord tying its mouth shut.

“A bold escape attempt,” the colonel standing behind Stevens and his guard said, his foot rapidly tapping against the mud. “I don’t think it should be judged by its lack of success. You showed real ingenuity in the course of violating several laws.” Stevens raised an eyebrow sceptically. He wished he could clench his eye around his monocle, but it was now jangling somewhere in that bag at his side, along with everything else that had been in his pockets. “Yes, dealing in stolen goods, smuggling, petty theft, aiding and abetting an assault of the city guard, leaving the scene of a crime, failure to heed the city guard, trespassing, destruction of public and private property, scaling rooftops without a permit, disturbing the peace, hooliganism, circumventing martial law. And of course, the initial charges of which you stand accused.” The officer clicked his tongue against his teeth. “It’s no wonder the baron wants to see you under arrest.” Leopold smiled grimly as the heavy gaol wagon rolled toward him slowly, turning so it was at a right angle to the boulevard, and then backing up in a wide arc until the back door of the wagon loomed in his entire vision. It swung open, missing his nose by inches, and two guards leapt out, dirks more than a foot long at the ready. They menaced him with their blade tips, but the colonel snickered and waved them off.

“He may be a menace, lads, but I think I can keep the old man under control,” he said, nudging Stevens forward roughly. The duke stumbled, but caught the metal bar hanging down from the entranceway with his toe and stepped up into the small mouth of the wagon with a clumsy hop. Twilight hung around him, with little light poking through the narrow boxes cut through the surprisingly cramped wagon. He stumbled around, turning to face the doorway he had just come through, but the colonel swung in, slamming the door behind him. Twilight sank into darkness. Knocking on the roof twice, abruptly, the colonel set the portable gaol into motion, much more quickly than before. Stevens nearly crashed to the floor, unable to spread his feet wide enough for balance, and the colonel pushed him lightly toward the wall. Wobbling back, his thighs found a low, rough bench and he fell into a sitting position.

“Thank you,” Stevens muttered, unsure how far his manners should go with this brusque gaoler. “I’ve never been in an… uhm… paddy wagon before.” The colonel snickered in the darkness. Before he could reply, there was a brief sound of scuffling beside the wagon, punctuated by a high pitched squeal and a series of yelled curses. Stevens could barely make out the shape of the colonel in the darkness, moving through the shadows, his face suddenly brilliant in the light at the window, his graying beard and temples shining.

“What in the name of the Mya was that?” he cried out between the bars. A breathless voice responded after a few moments of confused yelling: “The pig escaped, sir. It… it shrank and the ropes didn’t fit it… or something. I didn’t see it, sir, but that’s what Tyrmal claims!” An indignant scoff and a series of yelps, perhaps the beginning of fisticuffs, erupted, but quickly faded into the distance. Muttering, the colonel moved back to the bench opposite Stevens’s, and sat for a few minutes, jostling with the cart. Tobacco filled the air; it wasn’t lit, but the moist, woody smell of it was unmistakable. For some reason, the man was stuffing his pipe. Althanas lacked matches, and without those the officer was out of luck in this stuffy wagon, but he seemed perfectly content with merely shoving leaf into the pipe’s bowl. A few more jostling minutes passed.

“Why am I being arrested?” Stevens asked. The colonel didn’t respond. Even though his eyes were becoming more accustomed to the light, he could only make out the vaguest of shapes in the wagon. The colonel appeared to be looking at him, his arms crossed. Perhaps he could see through the darkness. Four years in Althanas, and Stevens wouldn’t be too terribly surprised. “Well, it’s only,” Stevens continued, “I don’t know too terribly much about how you fellows try your accused. Never been on the wrong side of justice before, eh what? I’d at least know what to expect.” He’d been a solicitor in England, but it had been so long since he’d seriously practiced that he doubted he could make much headway in a British court, much less a Coronean one. For all I know, they may just summarily execute me. Stevens thought with a shiver. Corone did seem incredibly law-abiding for a city its size, and he had never heard anything about courts or gaols here. Oh God, Stevens thought to himself, suddenly taking his own fanciful thought seriously. What if they do execute me? And for what? I don’t even know! He began running his tongue over his lips anxiously. One of those guards had mentioned treason earlier. What had he possibly done that could be considered treasonous? Maybe he’d made a joke about the baron of Radasanth that someone took poorly. But that was preposterous, he’d never even met the man, much less even been in Corone for two years. That’s all there was for it. He would just have to tell whomever these guards turned him over to that this was all absurd. Maybe if he mentioned the monks, someone would get in touch with them, and he could have Peter O’Mally vouch for him. Oh mercy, he hoped so. A thump and a squeak as the wagon stopped and the door was flung open broke apart his fretting. The colonel rose to his feet and approached the doorway, where two men, veiled by the light shining around them, were looming.

“And so we’ve arrived,” he said, hauling Stevens up by his shirtsleeve. “The baron’s manor.”

[LordLeopold]

Stevens blinked rapidly as the bright sunlight drenched him, purging the shadows that stuck to him from the wagon’s interior. He could barely make out the colors on the uniforms of the two men pulling him away from the colonel, but he could already tell their plumes weren’t green. As his eyes painfully adjusted to the sun, he could make out three lions rampant facing a crescent moon on their chests, white and blue stitched into their robes, swords at their sides, bare heads except for their closely clipped hair. These men were not made for battle, or even keeping the odd drunkard at bay. They were almost entirely ornamental, from the lack of armor on their bodies and huge number of tassels hanging from their swordhandles, getting in the way of their soft, ungloved hands. Obviously palace guards. So the symbol on their chests must be the baron’s sigil. Stevens found it odd that he was now being manhandled by the baron’s own private soldiers instead of the city guard, but there was undoubtedly some feudal law that mandated it, and he knew little about such things.

It was difficult work keeping up with the guards’ fast pace, manacled as he was, but he managed. Immediately after leaving the wagon, they had rushed through a tall gateway that had slid, creaking, closed behind them. Marching across fine gravel, smoothed out by a rake or roller, they passed between clipped grass and fanciful topiaries in the shape of animals and mythical beasts. Stevens looked from a giraffe with two necks sprouting from its body to an elephant on its hind legs, caught in mid-jig. Had he been here in happier circumstances, he would have chuckled at the gardener’s imagination. As it was, he just sighed. Workmen and women rose from flowerbeds and hedges as he bustled past. Some of them seemed to recognize him, and scratched their heads, puzzled, but most returned to their work, placidly, as if seeing a bound man marched into the manor was a daily occurrence. Perhaps it was. The garden they were hurrying through seemed to be part of a large rectangle of greenery that provided a suitable buffer from the usually-busy streets bordering them. As if the space weren’t enough, a tall wall encased the entire city block, topped with hooked spikes.

The manor itself was an impressive understatement. It was three stories tall, not a tower in this city of ancient monuments and remodeled inns, but no dwarf. No statues or crenulations could be seen along the dark, flat stone of its walls. From what he could see as he approached, Stevens could make out two wings, sprouting out parallel from either end of a central hall. He counted five windows along the nearest wing on the top two floors, with no windows on the bottom. They were scurrying toward a large doorway hewn into the first floor of the side of the manor where the main body and the left wing hinged. A thick, thorny hedge grew all the way around the manor, pausing only for doorways, and then barely. As Stevens was squeezed between some of the hands-width long thorns, which grew out from the hedge far too far for comfort, he looked up at the sky, fearing it might be his last glimpse for quite a while.

Indeed, the doors slammed shut behind them, two more guards moving quietly into place from the shadows. Inside, the walls were as sparsely decorated as the exterior. One ragged tapestry that Stevens could see hung a few yards from the entranceway, but he was given little time to inspect his surroundings. The guards took a hard right, entering a stairwell, and dragged him up several short flights of stairs, broken up by small, cramped landings, before breaking out again into a narrow, poorly lit hallway. They hurried down it, toward a door at the end of the hall, only five or six yards away. Reaching it in no time, the guards paused, looking at each other out of the corner of their eyes. After a second or two, the taller of the two knocked three times, briskly.

“The prisoner has arrived, m’lord,” he called out, and the guards slid back a few feet, dragging Stevens with them. That one sentence was the last that Stevens had heard anyone say since leaving the wagon. He took it as a signal, however fleeting, to speak up.

“You gentlemen, er, might not know why I’ve been arrested, would you?” Stevens asked, his nervousness breaking into his voice. Both men looked down at him simultaneously, one with disdain, the other’s face blank. Stevens managed his most appealing smile, before the door slowly swung open and a figure appeared in it. Immediately, the two guards switched their attention to the woman who had just appeared in front of them. Bowing from the neck, they scrunched to one side of the hallway, nearly crushing Stevens as they made a pathway for her. Brushing her long, light brown hair aside, she looked at them with imperious black eyes and smiled a thin smile. She was short, even for a woman, but seemed to carry more weight with these men than a duke, even an imprisoned one. She swept past, her low-cut blue gown rippling along the carpeted floor, the lamps hanging from the ceiling flickering in her wake.

“Bring him in,” a phlegmy voice ordered from the room the woman had left, and the guards leapt back into position and herded Stevens into the room. For a moment, he was caught up in thoughts of the woman who had just passed. She hadn’t seemed to give Stevens a second glance, but there was something about the way her eyes flickered when they passed over him that unnerved him. She did look deuced familiar… “Ah, the mighty King of Salvar.” That same voice continued, bringing Stevens in from the hallway outside. He focused on the man and the room before him as the door shut at his back. It was, like the manor, understated. The furniture was unadorned, if polished to an unnatural gleam, and spindly. Two tables, one with the remains of breakfast, and several containers of wine, the other draped with several maps, were the most impressive furniture in the place. A bed hunched in the corner, and although it was a four-poster, the mattress did not puff out like a bubble of feathers. Fire crackled in the low, narrow fireplace, despite the warmness of the summer outside, and no tapestry hung on the walls, although the expansive carpet was rather ornate, if faded. Standing in the center of it all, in what, incredibly enough, seemed to be riding clothes, was Baron Marion of Radasanth. He was, Stevens noted with the mildest adjective he could muster, rotund. But for the bed, he was easily the largest single thing in the room, and he rivaled even that. His legs were thick, his stomach bulging, his neck a fleshy barrel. A beard speckled both his chins, his upper lip and his jowls, but it was too short to hide his flabbiness. Black hair clung to his head, and his eyes were squinted by fat, but seemed sharp nonetheless. He leaned against a ladder-backed chair, his mouth caught in a rubbery smile.

Stevens grimaced at the use of the title – quite frankly, he despised it – but ignored it with as much grace as possible under the circumstances. “Your grace,” he began, bowing slightly, “Sad that we should meet in such unhappy circumstances. I had always meant to make your acquaintance, but time was simply never on my side.” Marion laughed, a hearty, booming laugh that didn’t seemed forced, and walked around the chair. His girth knocked it slightly askance, despite his giving it a wide berth.

“I had the unpleasant misfortune of being one of the few men who didn’t meet you the night of the late Lord Nazroth’s infamous ball,” Marion said, clasping his hands atop his belly. Stevens immediately stiffened, searching the man’s face or words for some hint of irony. If the baron knew who Nazroth was, that he was not dead, that he was Aesphestos’ pawn, then it would go a long way toward explaining why Stevens had been arrested. If Nazroth counted as Aesphestos’ pawn, Marion would certainly be a rook. But there was nothing there that Stevens could detect, except bitterness over how the ball had ended. The duke certainly couldn’t imagine how embarrassing having an army of Kahh’jami warriors sneak into your own city, past your own guards, must have been, but the redness breaking through the fat on Marion’s cheeks gave him a clue.

“It was a pity,” Stevens replied, cautiously, “That it ended so poorly. Let us hope that we don’t see the likes of it again.” Marion snorted, this time far less amused, and grabbed for a pitcher of wine on a table he had to take three heavy strides to reach. Pouring himself a goblet, pointedly not offering any to Stevens, he smiled grimly.

“I’d be glad to hear you say that,” Marion said, and took a hard chug of wine, “If we hadn’t, already.” Stevens, puzzled, frowned, and Marion took another mouthful. Emptying the goblet, he tossed it onto the table carelessly, letting it roll back and forth, clanging against silverware and plates. “You’re coy, dare I say glib. If I want to talk to a jackass, Your Highness, I’ll go to the stables. We’re both men here, and we can talk to each other as men do.” Stevens, aghast at Marion’s brazenness, as well as the use of his ill-gotten title, took in a sharp breath, unsure of how to respond. He gave up looking for a polite way.

“Do not,” he bit off, “Refer to me as Your Highness. My time in Salvar is something I think is better forgotten.” Marion did laugh this time, as heartily and heavily as before.

“Do you?” he said, looping his thumbs in his thick belt, pushing his paunch out of the way to do so. “Forgive my impertinence, then, Sire. But you are still known as the King-in-Exile in my city. I was afraid to buck convention.” Marion took a step forward, spittle flying from his lips as he spoke. “Are you not also Generalissimo of the Army of the Light and Duke of Marlborough? I also believe you were given several titles by our friends the monks. Forgotten Slayer? Death Killer? It’s hard to keep track of your honorifics, Sire, you have so many. You’re a collector of sorts, it seems.” Marion wagged a finger, stepping closer until his pudgy hand was waving in Stevens’s face. He was a tall man, making his girth even more imposing. “How many titles will you seize by spilling blood?” Stevens, feeling his collar turning red, gritted his teeth. Curling back his lips, he responded best he could, trying to rein in the anger that was rapidly bubbling up within him.

“Interesting. You seem to collect baseless accusations. First you charge me with treason, now you throw these absurdities in my face. What’s next, perhaps naming me the sixth Forgotten?” Marion looped his thumb back in his belt and shook his head, wobbling his neck above his red vest.

“Not today,” he responded, and turned, walking toward the table with the maps draped across it at an almost leisurely pace. “I find it odd,” he said, “That you say my accusations are baseless. That’s quite wrong. But you weren’t wrong about my collections. I collect many things, but mainly facts. Events, numbers, names, dates. My head,” he tapped it with a thick finger as he walked around to the far side of the table. “Is like a whole floor of the Academy Library. I blame my father, he was always too interested in hearing recitations from his eldest son. You see, Sire,” he smiled, “I have the enviable talent of knowing a great deal about a great deal. And unlike most factotums, I can tie it all together into a coherent story. For instance: 82 battles to the death in the Citadel make you a friend of the Monks of Ai’Bron. Eight battles in a campaign make you Generalissimo of the Entente of the Light. Six months provoking civil war in a foreign land make you King. One man killed with your bare hands makes you the most honored man in Radasanth.” The baron’s voice had been steadily rising throughout the recitation, and now his face was red as he swung an accusatory arm at Stevens, his screams filling the room. “And now you must realize,” he cried, “Why I arrested the bloodiest killer in Corone when his army encircled my city and his sorcerers invaded it!” Stevens felt his heart pounding in his chest, his mouth going dry, and his mind buzzing with a mixture of grief, anger, fear and guilt. He hung his head, shaking it slightly, biting his lip fiercely. The words being thrown at him stung him, burning into his heart, but he couldn’t bring himself to respond. He simply quaked where he stood, thinking of his bloody swordcane, resting in his bloody hands.

“When are the armies attacking?” the baron asked, less of a question than an order. “When is the second strike coming?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stevens forced out after a full minute of uneasy silence. “What armies?” Marion made an incomprehensible sound and pounded his fist on the table. The crash was muffled by the parchment of the maps.

“Half your Entente is massed around Radasanth, and if you think I don’t know you’re a damned fool!” Marion crashed his way around the table, knocking a chair to the floor, and grabbed the side of Stevens’s head, yanking him up to eye level. If he was surprised to see the duke’s tears, he didn’t show it. “Messengers have been sent out to every army in Corone. It’s a matter of days, hours really, before they arrive. By tonight, the Citadel will have opened its doors to me and every last sorcerer turned out. Your army will find no stepping stones for you here. The diadem of Radasanthia is mine. You’ve failed. Spare your men’s lives and mine’s and tell me when the second strike comes. There is still time for parley.”

[EarlStevens]

Our man is rushing up a narrow, windowless spiral staircase, following the furiously stomping legs of Witherspoon directly in front of him. The stairs are so sharp and tall, the tube they rotate within so cramped, that he can barely see the man as he continually moves up and around, almost disappearing with each heavy step. Somewhere ahead are the priest and the viscount, their voices senselessly echoing off the stone, creating a vibrant cascade of noise that did nothing for understanding. Between them scuttled the birds these strange men carried along with them, flapping and cooing to each other. He couldn’t imagine how penguins and chickens could move this fast up such a dizzying height, but apparently they can. Behind him glides his manservant, but he dares not look back to see its progress. It’s enough seeing that unchanging face glare back at you without also risking a nasty fall.

The stairwell is dry and dusty, clouds leaping into the air with each footstep. There is no light source that our man can see, but so far up the exhausting climb it has been as light as a midsummer afternoon, and unfortunately enough just as warm. Wet patches are growing under his arms and on his chest, but he keeps moving. It isn’t as if he could get lost here – only two directions to go – but without the mildly reassuring sight of a man’s heels in front of him, he doubts he would have the willingness to keep the interminable dash upwards. With heaving lungs and moistened brow, he wonders how much longer they can continue upwards, and what exactly their destination is. They had ascended several wide flights of stairs, carrying them up a few stories from the ground, before reaching the empty eyehole of an entranceway to this stairway to infinity. He hopes that whatever the end to this mad climb is, it is half as rewarding as the priest seems to think it will be. A gust of cool, moist air brushes his cheek, and our man realizes with a rising heart that the end is indeed within his grasp.

Leaping up the final step, slapping his shoe soles on the stone threshold of the door at the top of the stairs, our man heaves a sigh of relief and feels his ears pop. He steps off the threshold and down onto an expansive stone platform, spreading out before him toward a high stone balustrade that wraps around whatever rooftop they have emerged onto. Above them, and really to all sides, hangs the sky, a huge upturned sieve from which clouds droop, brushing the top of his hat as they sail past. Our man spends several pregnant seconds staring up at that sky, his mouth slightly open, his eyes watering at the sheer scope of it. It has been months since he’s seen a sky like this. His brief breath of open air during the battle on the frozen lake had been nothing as impressive. The sky had hung low and cold, and he had still felt in the pit of his stomach that he had remained underground, among the moles and worms. An indescribable freedom fills him up, raining down from the free range clouds and fenceless blue ceiling.

“Birdwatching?” he hears the viscount’s voice and turns back to more worldly matters. Darby is stroking his moustache, cocking an eyebrow. Slightly embarrassed, our man simply nods once and steps forward toward the men and birds. The priest and Witherspoon seem to be ignoring him, which is all the better. They are looking out at the city spread around them. It was like being at the center of the world, a massive lodestone pulling the cities and peoples of the continents inward. From this gallery, there is an almost unmolested view of the expansive fairie city growing around them. It is a patchwork of brown and grey, as mismatched and incomprehensible as scattered small farms in winter, but the possibility of sense slowly appears in the mess as our man walks toward the balustrade. This holy fortress they stand upon, the towers and spires of which slope away from them in all directions, dominates a wide rectangle of crushed gravel, beaten down sand and sapling trees. It is narrower at the east and west sides of the building, only a street’s width, but the north and south sides it expands for several blocks, flat and motionless as a cricket field at midnight. Stone and wood buildings expand from there, bound in by wide boulevards and narrow alleyways that connect them. The arteries of the city. Our man can make out several heavy buildings lurking among them: A palace, a rotunda, a temple, an ornate monument archway. Small indents in the surface of roofs mark parks or public meeting spaces. A huge, wide boulevard with a shantytown sprouting within it sits nearly half a mile away, pushed up against a high wall. Following its periodic towers and gates, our man sees that wall encircles the interior of the city, hemming it in, sequestering the Old from the New. Beyond it stretches suburbs and neighborhoods, that meander off along invisible paths until they find their own place to disappear, fading into green plains. Several smudges, with black tendrils rising above them, smear the lush horizon.

“Half the Entente,” the priest says, motioning out to them. “There was no time to tell you until now, Sir Anthony, and frankly I wish I had told Lord Leopold before he left. But there they are, several thousand of them, in four camps around the city. They followed us here when we arrived last night, close on your heels. We had feared Aesphestos might have an army waiting within the city. Thank Ai’Bron we overestimated him.” His voice trails off as he stroked his chin, grimacing out at the horizon. The viscount chews his lip for a few seconds, digesting this information.

“I’m surprised Ribbentrophen let you fellows just walk out,” he replies, dropping an unfamiliar name. “A general is hardly worth the name if he lets half his army take off, especially if his own countrymen are among them.” The priest nods, sighing.

“Ah, well,” he said, nodding deferentially, “Very true. Sadly, Sir Anthony, few Ozternbergers came with us. They do have their Messiah to prostrate before. And you are right, I expected Nar’oth Ribbentrophen to prevent our leave, so some distraction was required.” He does nothing to elaborate, and our man feels uncomfortable broaching the subject, so he allows silence to descend over them as he watches the clouds. “However,” the priest continued, “That is not why I brought you all here. I brought you here for that,” he points down at the edge of the open expanse surrounding the Citadel. Our man follows the line from his finger, and frowns at the sight of several green-clad men pushing a huge wooden contraption, like a giant bow, into place with the aid of a few mules. It rolled into position, facing their gallery, and the tiny figures hopped to place blocks on either side of its wheels. Looking around the edges of the square, he sees dozens, if not hundreds, more of the little green figures, pushing more of the huge bows, stacking barrels and poles into makeshift barricades, trotting horses back and forth, herding groups of other people away from the public space and back up the streets.

“Scorpions,” Viscount Darby mutters, taking in the same scene “Roadblocks. Are those men pitching tents? Jesus Christ, Peter, this is a siege!” Our man, jolted, looks from the viscount to the priest, seeing the same mixture of shock and grimness fixing their faces into frowning masks.

“What is this,” he speaks up, causing both of them to turn to him, “Some sort of bloody war?” The viscount snorts a laugh and turns away, looking back over the city, searching for more green figures in the street. The priest nods.

“It does appear so,” he responds impassively.

[LordLeopold]

Pode slipped quietly across the stone floor, ignoring the groveling guards who bowed and muttered "my lady's" in her wake. These buffoons were as pathetic as the palace they guarded: Barely adorned, scrawny, and insufficient in every way. Not only that, but they were impossibly crude. Sometimes she felt their eyes resting on her and barely withstood the urge to disembowel them and scorch their entire mud-strewn city to ash. Her slippered feet slid across the stone floor, occasionally meeting a dusty rug or the sticky remains of some dropped goblet, guiding her across the top floor of the mansion to her own private quarters. It seemed like it had been a year since she had spent an entire night in her own bed. She shivered, disgusted, and swallowed her bile. Turning the corner, dodging a sputtering lamp and glancing needles at the adolescent guards who leapt to attention as she approached, the ancient sorceress pushed the door to her room open and slammed it closed.

An odd sensation, like passing through cotton, rippled across her skin as she stepped over the threshold. Without thinking, she pulled the Tap forth, snapped it together into half a dozen soul-destroying filaments, and lashed them throughout the room. They didn't touch anything material in her chamber, but if they touched the soul of the fool who had snuck into her room, he'd quickly find himself dead as a stone. A few seconds passed as she scoured the room, and a puzzled look spread over her face as no cold body fell out from behind a curtain or piece of furniture. The room was too small for her to avoid seeing a dead body; she doubted anyone could even hide behind the tattered curtains at the tiny window, or on the other side of her worm-bitten table or tiny armoire. Could her magical alarms have backfired? They wouldn't have alerted her unless someone was here.

"Sloppy," Aesphestos' voice echoed, as if through a metal pipe, and her hold of the Tap shattered, her destructive filaments fading out like a dying match. Pode felt her arms and legs stiffening, her black eyes freezing in mid-blink, her brown hair catching in air, strand by strand unmoving around her. She could not see him, feel his presence, or tell from where these magical binds were flowing. She could only stand, scarecrow still, waiting for him to tire of his game. "Sloppy protections around your room, sloppy attack, no defenses prepared, nothing." Unable to move her eyes, she could not turn to look at the spot from which his voice was beginning to project, but she had looked furtively around this room so many times, trying to make sense of her captivity here, that she knew immediately. The mirror. A full-length, bubbled and distorted mirror stood in the corner of the room, leaning drunkenly due to a loose fixture somewhere in its wooden frame. He used a mirror protection, she thought. Obvious!

"And yet so obvious you didn't prepare for it," Aesphestos walked out of the corner of her vision, changing from a blur to a distinct, tall, silver and red dressed man, a cape billowing behind him, thick riding boots on his feet. The Tap flowed around her, tying a protective bubble around the room, keeping any sounds from penetrating the cracks around the door. Her eyes were burning and watering, but she focused on his face, slightly creased at the eyes, hiding her discomfort away in a corner of her mind. "Tell me," he said, taking a step closer to her, smiling grimly, electricity coursing in the air between them. "What good is knowing someone's in your room if you can't deal with them?" Her muscles went loose again, the iron bands on her bones releasing, and she stumbled sideways, nearly collapsing with the sudden freedom, her eyes blinking, her lips quivering.

"I didn't expect someone as talented as you, Aesphestos," she said, straightening her dresses with sweaty palms. "I only expected some pimply peeping Tom, not the Lord of the Dark." Aesphestos' smile faded, the corners of his lips stretched thin, his face unreadable. He took another step forward, reached out with a gloved hand, and took her delicate chin between his gloved thumb and forefinger, lifting her face up to look at his.

"Let me look at you," he added, perfunctorily, and she didn't object. His eyes danced across her soft, pink features, moving from jaw line to hairline, from ear to ear, and then locked his eyes with hers for the briefest of seconds. Her heart raced, even as he released her and turned to walk to the nearest chair and easing himself into it, crossing his legs. "You've kept up well," he stated simply. She nodded, still standing, and matched his own inspection of her with a once-over of her own. Two silver embroidered badgers, raised on their hind legs, pawed at each other across his crimson chest. A ruby and emerald pin kept his cape about his shoulders, and a series of silver cufflinks strapped his sleeves close to his wrists, at the base of his drake hide gloves. Seeing them, she thought black thoughts of Denebriel, but pushed them away. From the wiry grin on his face, it was clear she hadn't done so quickly enough. A thin chain was visible at the sides of his neck, and his belt buckle was a heavy loop of spangles and intricate carving. All these jewels were more than mere baubles tugged up from the mud. They were adamantine, and all bore his specific imprint.

"You can make adamantine again," she stated, folding her hands at her waist. He did not reply, only looked back at her, observing her like a trainer observes a dog. His eyes bore a pressure down on her that she hadn't felt in a very long time. Trying to meet them for too long was difficult, and she felt a surge upward in her chest every time she did. Glancing at his boot's adamantine toe, she managed to continue the thought. "No one in Althanas can do that, now. And yet you were repulsed last night, anyway." Aesphestos' self-satisfied smile disappeared, and he rose to his feet, crossing his arms heavily. It was Pode's turn to smile.

"Even though the Scarlet Witch has become a scarlet woman," he replied, a blade slicing in his words, "She still speaks scorn to the Lord of Death." Pode, her cheeks flushing, clenched her teeth, but couldn't help raising her hands to the side of her head, mussing her hair and sighing. She quickly lowered them, surprised at herself, but let her fury continue bubbling.

"Enough!" She cried, "Why have you sent me here? Do you have any idea what it's like spending every night in his bed?" Her voice, although raised, remained firm and polished as steel, no shrill scream cracking its surface. "Why is it so necessary for me to be part of this inane scheme of yours?" Aesphestos shook his head, clicking his tongue on the back of his teeth, and sighed condescendingly.

"Pode, my dear," he replied, tilting his head sideways and giving her a look that showed he gave her outburst a poor appraisal. "To be fair, it is as much your scheme as mine." She widened her eyes, but kept silent. "And you know as well as I do that you are the only one I can truly trust with this mission. It requires a blend of intelligence and beauty with which I can only credit you." Her eyes narrowed this time, recognizing flattery from Aesphestos for what it was, but she stayed silent. "And in any event," he continued, again sitting down. "Your time of salvation is nigh. Our mission has come to fruition." Pode could not help herself this time. She rushed forward, lowering herself to her knees, her pink gown nearly ripping against her shins, and grasped one of his hands with her own, a light flaming in her eyes.

"That is why Stevens was here, isn't it?" she gushed, her eagerness spilling out in a torrent. "It's finally over!" Aesphestos smiled back at her, genuine now, and raised his other hand, placing it on top of hers.

"You've done well," he said. "Like I knew you would."

******

Aesphestos appeared at the roof of the tower, stepping through a portal through which the interior of a bedchamber could be briefly seen before he snapped it shut with a crack like a whip. He stood still for a few seconds, looking out across the flat marbled circle that was the tip of the tower, rubbing his gloves together and squinting out across the vista that spread in all directions to an interminable horizon of craggy peaks. This stone spire appeared to have risen in the middle of a giant bowl, a crater miles across, empty and lifeless except for a few brown birds that floated and flapped between the magician and the ground, thousands of feet below. After a few minutes of glancing around his surroundings, the undying wind tugging his cape, Aesphestos finally cleared his throat and said one word.

"Nyvengaal," he stated in an implicit command. Immediately, with a sound like a melon cracking open, a stumpy man, swathed in a black cloak and continually stooped, rubbing his hands together, appeared at his side. His face was hidden behind his cowl, and a continual babble of chuckles and giggles poured out from it. Aesphestos sighed, rolling his eyes, and clasped his hands behind his back, pinning his cloak down, staring out over the bland environment.

"Why in Haidia's flames did you build this thing?" Aesphestos asked, disdainfully glancing around the crater. "Oh, I see now. It's beautiful and inconspicuous." Nyvengaal didn't reply, only continued his cackling. "Alright," Aesphestos said after another few seconds. "I should have known when you asked me here how useless it would be to come. You're as insane as you were the last time, and the time before that." Aesphestos reached out for the Tap, preparing to rip another hole in the air.

"You smell like Pode," Nyvengaal retorted, his laughter ceasing, his voice as serious as death. Aesphestos paused, his eyes narrowing infinitesimally. "You tied her down this time. You're learning from Denebriel." Aesphestos turned slowly towards Nyvengaal, the man's black cloaks rippling outward in the wind like a storm cloud across a prairie.

"Your voyeurism is as disgusting as your insanity," he said, reached for the Tap, and disappeared in a blossom of fire. The moment the bright explosion faded, Nyvengaal began laughing again.

"The bells know," he muttered. "The bells know his fear. The bells know."

[EarlStevens]

Our man plunges out of the stairwell back into a hall of the holy fortress, shivering at the shock of damp air against his skin. It is wide and tall, like several dining halls pressed together, and seems to exist only to showcase a strange series of suits of armor that are propped up on either side of the room, in between doorways. The priest, the viscount and their entourage have already spilled out, and are moving towards a hesitant monk, shifting from one foot to the other like a small child sent to deliver bad news. And all around them bustles a hurrying mob that screams "bad news." Platoons of monks like the ones who have been rooting out their recalcitrant brothers in the labyrinth below are now marching in every direction, the priests and magicians at their heads leading them on with a stream of caustic orders. One of the living trees that appeared last night is treading slowly and heavily across the room, stooping so as not to break through the ceiling, humming a deep, vibrant tune to itself. Our hero watches the spindly oak walk past and duck below a very tall doorframe, leaves and twigs showering down from its body atop a group of Arabesque tribesmen who are rustling toward the front of the building. Feeling a cold breeze at his elbow, our man turns to his servant and shrugs.

"I suppose this is what war is like," he mutters, "I'd expected something bloodier." His manservant does not reply. Sighing at himself for futilely expecting a response for the thousandth hopeless time, our man turns back to face the viscount and bishop, who are approaching him, glancing back and forth to each other warily. Our man first looks to the viscount, whose face is a frowning blot of worry behind his moustache, and then to the priest, who has a resigned expression that masks a churning mind. "Let me guess," our man cuts in before either can speak. "In an ironic twist, the same buggers who've imprisoned me for so long, now need my help in some way." Both men are visibly taken aback, their eyebrows leaping up their scalps, but either speaks for a few seconds.

"I think I'd be best if he just followed us, Peter" the viscount says. "You're better at explaining things like this, so I'll leave that part of it to you." The bishop nods in agreement, reaches out with one hand, and steers our man to follow them. The viscount ticks his head at Witherspoon, who snaps to attention and follows, the dragon on his shoulder and the chicken and penguins on his heels. Breaking a pathway through the flitting crowds of people as they pass, the odd menagerie makes it way towards an invisible goal as the bishop leans in towards our man, his eyes cool but his voice kindly.

"I don't believe I've introduced myself, first of all," he begins as they make a leisurely pace through the room. "Although I know a fair amount about you, I doubt there is much you know about me. My name is Peter O'Mally, and I am the High Priest of this Citadel. For some time I have been part of the Entente of the Light, a coalition of armies meant to defend our world, Althanas, against the forces of evil." He smiles at the incredulous look on our man's face. "That's really beside the point, though, and I don't want to confuse you, so I'll let that be for now. It is important that you know, however, that we're fighting a war, but one without chivalry or pity. Our enemies don't wish merely to win over us, but to conquer and destroy us, as well. Their spies are everywhere, and we cannot be too cautious when dealing with possible threats." The group passes under a heavy doorframe and moves down a hall, three carriages wide but stuffed with people of every description and type, moving in every direction, yelling at each other indistinguishably.

"Eustace!" Roars O'Mally over the heads of the bobbing crowd, breaking off from our man. Another man, dressed in white and blue ecclesiastical robes, lifts his head over the sea, several paces ahead. "Move all the combatants to the center keep!" The other priest nods, and our man has O'Mally's full attention once again as the ford the human mass. "I believe you've met Lord Leopold," he continues, "Who bears a striking resemblance to you. Or vice versa. Either way, when you appeared on our doorstep so many months ago, you can imagine my surprise when I heard of two Leopold Stevenses running around. It was difficult to convince myself that you might not be a spy of our enemies, and so I ordered you imprisoned." Memories of months in a stone cell, unable to run or walk, cramped and smelly at night, constantly brushing up against the shadows of his manservant, eating disgusting food from a half-clean bowl, wash back over our hero. His fists clench and his mouth goes dry.

"Hell's bells," he replies, "Do you know what it's like in those cells?" O'Mally pauses for a second, gauging the anger simmering in our man's words, and then continues without missing a note.

"Yes," he replies, "All monks spend a year of their lives in such conditions to humble themselves before Ai'Bron." Our man moves his mouth to object, but finds no words. O'Mally continues as they burst through the end of the crowd and move down the hallway towards an open space that is barely visible at its end. "I'm not entirely sure you should be running around like this," O'Mally says, "But Lord Leopold has vouched for you." Admiration glows in his tone, but our man ignores it, blanking out memories of himself, looming up before him, slicing into his very being with his voice, his face, his eyes.

"I'm helping you in your fratricidal crusade," our man hisses, "Name a better fealty oath." O'Mally raises a man, bidding peace, and nods reverentially.

"I can't fault you for that," he replies, "And I thank you. Aesphestos' men are still among us. If you were his agent, I would be shocked if you helped us root them out." His voice is too bland and practiced to make him sound convinced, but our man choses to take him at face value, looking down the hallway, over the viscount's head, at the space expanding at the passage's end. It is the grand hallway he had been herded into last night during the monks' great battle, and it is once again filled with people, figures clumped together in small groups and towering trees swaying above the rest. The same air of war hovers about them, palpable even from this distance. Our man can feel the group about him steeling themselves for entry into the battle camp, ready to pierce the cordon that has been thrown up around the fortress.

"High Priest!" A reedy voice calls out behind them, and the whole party stops as O'Mally wheels around, swinging his staff and crosier dangerously. A man dressed in resplendant robes, heavy furs at his shoulders and on his boots, sweat slippery on his face even in this cool hallway, is marching behind them. His body is vibrating with a power that our man can sense at the very edge of his mind, a tugging, pushing, burning, freezing sensation, almost sensual and orgasmic in its confusion of feeling. It is obvious that this strange man is a sorcerer. As he approaches, the sensation spreads, pricking at him from the priest standing beside him. So this High Priest O'Mally is a magician, too? Our man thinks to himself. Odd, but interesting. The magician gives a cool glance at the tower of shadow hovering at our hero's side, but it is only a brief look, and he quickly turns back to O'Mally.

"A small pig broke through the city guards' lines," he says, simply, as if reporting the price of corn. "He claims that Generalissimo Lord Leopold has been arrested by the baron, on charges of treason. No doubt this will interest you, my lord," the magician turns to our hero, who opens his mouth slightly, and glances around the hall, searching for something to say. The viscount comes to his rescue, setting around him, slinging an arm over his shoulder.

"My brother is safe and sound with us, old bean," he replies, smiling lopsidedly. "Baron or no baron, your generalissimo is safe in the Citadel." The magician nods, smiling joylessly in return, and spins on his heel, marching back down the hall, his robes billowing. "Salvarian," the viscount mutters. "Hasn't gotten over the invasion yet." Winking as if this explained everything, he lowers his arm and turns to face O'Mally. "Well, I suppose there's nothing funny about saying pigs will talk when they can fly, eh?" He quips. O'Mally doesn't respond, only chews his lip and looks up toward the ceiling, momentarily deep in thought.

"I know that pig," he says after half a minute. "He's an irrepressible liar, but he wouldn't put himself in danger like that just to con us." After another half minute, O'Mally's eyes turn down and focus on our hero. "The fact that our sorcerer friend mistook you for Lord Leopold could be very important in the next hour. If anyone else thinks you're someone you're not, don't correct them."

[EarlStevens]

Our man has little time to reply as Peter O'Mally swirls around and marches toward the end of the hallway. The band follows, steeling themselves against the increasing noise and heat pushing in from the grand entrance hall. As they emerge, a thousand babbling noises, echoing off the ceiling and walls, slowly die down to a few scattered murmurs, the miter atop O'Mally's head drawing their attention and muting the room. Their surroundings are a crowd of soldiers, arranged in armored squares and rectangles, bunched around the feet of the towering, living trees and individual mages whose bodies shimmer with magic. At the far end of the hall, the doors are shut, but not barred, nervous guardsmen clustered at their base. Our man turns as his group makes it way down the hall, monks bowing and magicians nodding as they brush past, and focuses briefly on the heap of slag and scorched stone at the terminus of the room, the remains of a huge statue destroyed the night before. He shivers at the sight of it.

"One hell of a mess," he mutters, looking at his manservant's motionless face as he turns around. "Tragic," A voice responds, and our man jumps, eyes bugging, turning back toward the ghoul before realizing it was only the viscount's clipped response. Hoping that no one has noticed his jumpiness, he focuses on the feet of Witherspoon skipping along in front of him, his head tilted down. Staring down, he considers his position. In a cathedral built like a prison, besieged like a fortress, surrounded by those who didn't fully trust him, and who he could never trust, himself. And with a manservant who looked like he had just risen from a restless graveyard! He shivers again.

"a'Tol," O'Mally says as they reach the doorway after the long march down the entranceway. The group peeters to a halt and our man looks up, scrutinizing the man the bishop had just addressed. He is tall, with dark skin and hair, growing a narrowed beard, thin with youth. He is all in white, loose robes hung about his body, a band of silk tied around his head. His eyes, blue and narrowed, pierce our man, peeling back his skin and glaring into his heart. Our man swallows as surreptitiously as possible. Here is a man who has seen battle.

"You look odd, Leopold," he says in a rolling, purring accent, a heavy eyebrow raised, sarcasm tainting his voice. "The illness of traveling, perhaps?" O'Mally draws closer to a'Tol, frowning, and moves between our man and the white-clad stranger. "That might be good for a laugh later," he says, his voice lowered almost to whispering, "But mum's the word now. Only a few of us know about him," he gestures toward our man, "And it needs to stay that way for now." a'Tol looks down his small, sloping nose at our man over O'Mally's shoulder, and doesn't respond.

"Alright, men," O'Mally cries, stepping around a'Tol and motioning to the guards leaning against the door. "Open up!" With this brisk order, the guards hop to action, running away behind pillars, slipping behind ribbed columns and disappearing into hidden nooks and passageways. Our man looks around, puzzled, frowning at the men's disappearance, trying to make sense of the confusion of shadows surrounding the doors. A guillotine of blinding sunlight slices into his face, and our man realizes as the crack between the two doors widens that, where-ever those guards disappeared to, they are now flinging open the doors to the outside world. The doors swing silently to a shoulder's width, and our man stifles the urge to rush out, escaping this benighted prison forever. It would feel so relieving, so liberating to finally run out into the sun.

The foolishness of his desires becomes obvious as the doors open wider and his eyes adjust to the scoring light. The wide city square opens up before the doorway, empty of people, its puddles shrinking in the rising heat. Ringed around the streets and alleyways that open out onto the common are hundreds of little green and silver splashes, plumes and helmets and swords decorating the hundreds of guards. Tiny toys though they had been from atop the Citadel, on the ground they are a fearsome sight, men sulking as the midday approaches, thumbing their blades and hovering about the wooden wheels of their weapons of war. Our man can feel a collective swallow go down in the men around him as the entire scene descends into their consciousness.

In the middle of the square stand three men, indistinct at this distance, but obviously of some importance. The light catches on spangles and pieces of gold that didn't shine on any other green plume's shoulders. O'Mally looks at them, then to a'Tol, then to the viscount, and finally to our man, and then nods. Without further instruction, the group steps out the door and marches slowly and methodically towards the three men outside. They pass through sheets of dark and light as they walk, the sun streaming through the columns that line the front of the building, but soon are subject only to the sky's brutal dry rain. As if on cue, as the group steps down the steps leading to the entrance, a heaving, creaking noise fills the air, and a black, heavy tower creaks into view, rising up in the middle of a street off of one of the corners of the square. Ropes swing down from its straight, flat top and sides, hanging limply, as if around a discarded marionette. Our man's mouth goes even drier, and he stares quizzically at the sight. O'Mally mutters "Seige tower," under his breath, but makes no other sign of recognition. The viscount makes a groaning noise deep in his throat, but all else are quiet.

The three men expand as our heroic band approaches, and become distinct personalities. One is a broad, old man with a grey beard and a scar across his forehead, wearing a uniform similar to the green-garbed men surrounding the Citadel. He thumbs a pipe casually with one hand while ostentatiously brushing dust off his gold and silver epaulettes. To his right is an old, withered soul of a man, shrinking away from the sun, clutching a baton in his right hand. Although his body is lumpy and fat like an old pear, his arms and legs are thin and sinewy, looking like they are about to snap. He is dressed as a noble, although a sword hangs uselessly at his side and a sash covered in glazed medals is wrapped around his torso. Standing at his right is, from the waist up, a bare-chested man with long ears and burly arms, sweat beading on his smooth skin. From the waist down, he is supported by the body of a horse, its flesh twitching, one hoof pawing the ground. Our man looks at the centaur's lower body uneasily, and quickly turns his eyes elsewhere.

"I once tangled with a centaur on Malta," he mutters to Witherspoon, who has retreated slightly to walk next to our hero. "Let's just say he left a gelding." Witherspoon tittered politely, and the viscount glances over his shoulder, looking surprised at Witherspoon's relocation, but quickly turns back around. The small dragon perched on Witherspoon's seersucker shoulder gives a squeaking imitation of the laugh, as a parrot might, but all else is silent, except for the crunch of gravel beneath their shoes. As they approached, another groaning wail of wood and rope announces the raising of another siege tower, which swings into place three blocks over from the first, wobbling and flailing its rope ties.

Our hero feels panic clutching his stomach, as he realizes how out of his depth he is. Why is he here? What possible purpose could he serve? Was he even supposed to be here? No one had objected as he followed them, and it certainly seemed like the natural thing to do, if anything could be considered natural in these circumstances. The priest O'Mally had made it sound like he was supposed to tag along, but perhaps he had misunderstood something. Fairie worlds could be dashed misleading; he remembers the story of Erasmus and the fairie who tricked him into admitting the fallibility of God, and then added insult to injury by dropping a plate of apple tarts on his head. It had amused him as a child, but now the thought of being on the wrong side of a pastry strikes him as terrifying. As they approach the two men and centaur, he feels another layer of sweat running up over that which has already spread across his shoulders and forehead. All hangment, why did I ever go in that basement in Wight? I could have watched a cricket match instead!

[EarlStevens]

Our hero and the surrounding band come within twenty feet of the men and the centaur and stop, their eyes glancing back and forth, briefly locking with each other before moving to the next. He looks from the centaur's black orbs to the old man, whose eyes are too rheumy to give away any emotion, to the man with the pipe. The man's jaw clenches as their eyes lock, and our man swallows. The fellow pulls another bit of tobacco from the pouch at his belt and shoves it into the bowl fiercely, but seems to have no intention of lighting it. They stand, silent, the sound of shouts and wood slapping against wood echoing somewhere down a side street, the square dead except for their uneven breaths.

"The Baron of Radasanth," the old man wheezes out after half a minute, senility muting for him the tension in the air. "Has called upon us to offer you parley terms for the surrender of the Citadel." The words fall from the air onto their ears like a ton of bricks. Witherspoon swoons slightly, and the penguins clustered at Darby's feet shuffle their fat little feet uneasily. Our man can feel from here O'Mally's shoulders and neck pulling tight, his teeth grinding. He seems to have expected something like this - no man walks as certainly from a fortress in sight of his enemy without knowing what he's facing - but actually coming to grips with it is a different matter.

"Surely we all want to avoid bloodshed," he bites off acidly. "I speak for the Pontiff when I say the Monks are peace-loving, and would like nothing better than to see your weapons unused when the sun sets." Our man begins chewing at the corner of his mouth as he hears O'Mally mention the Pontiff. Even he knows that there is no more Pontiff. Their pope had disappeared in a shower of fire, emerging as a dark and powerful wizard. The scene had been so frightening that hundreds of monks had exploded into a fearful riot, running each other down in terror. But no one else as much as blinks. Apparently these folk are used to lying.

"Then you will accept our terms gladly," the pipe-wielding man, his eyes flickering rapidly from our man to O'Mally, replies. "We wish, as you do, only for an end to conflict in our city. For too long, armies have camped outside Radasanth, dipping their hands in our bowls and pricking our necks with their daggers. How can we have peace with armies prowling across our lands, taking our people's farms, disregarding..."

"Colonel," O'Mally raises a hand, frowning. "The force that entered Radasanth last night and the encampments outside the city are no threat to you. Do not let them concern the baron. We have lived for many years together, and I expect we'll manage a few more, at least. In only a few days, they will have left, and this unnecessary imposition of martial law can be suspended." The colonel snarls and turns to the old man, who hacks wetly, not bothering to cover his mouth, and then replies.

"As Marshal of the Barony of Radasanth, I shall act in Baron Marion's stead. Allow me to present our formal terms," Obviously irate at his words being ignored, O'Mally leans against his staff as if already wearied by the marshal's recitation. "First, we request that all armed men currently residing in the Citadel leave the city under armed guard. Second, that all armies within Radasanth not commissioned by the baron immediately depart his jurisdiction. Third, that the Citadel becomes a City Fortress under the jurisdiction of the City Guard. Fourth, that a pig who is now seeking refuge in the Citadel be released into my custody, on charges of aiding and abetting treason." Another dead silence falls over the small crowd. Darby looks at O'Mally coolly, his own mind obviously churning behind his sweat-smeared forehead. Witherspoon moves his lips silently, running through some sort of prayer. Our man looks over his shoulder at his manservant, whose eerie stoniness seems almost surly. The birds and dragon, he chooses to ignore. O'Mally lowers his eyelids and leans back slightly.

"In exchange, you won't besiege the Citadel?" he asks. Punctuating his question, a rasping roar fills the air as another siege tower lifts into place, a man-made sequoia forty feet tall. The colonel looks at the centaur from the corner of his eye and nods. Bending back an arm as thick as a man's chest, he pulls a bag off a strange sort of belt latched across his back and sides, and tosses it on the ground. The side bursts open, and a silver handle falls out of the burlap, slapping the half-dried mud. Darby gasps and Witherspoon makes a small yelp. The chicken runs forward, feathers mussed, clucking mournfully, tapping at the handle with her beak. Its owner is obvious. Leopold Stevens.

"We'll return the owner of those things," the colonel says, giving our man a frigid, yet smug, look. "And spare you a battle."

[LordLeopold]

Stevens interlocked and then released his fingers slowly, repeating the gesture over and over. As his hands pulled slightly apart, they pulled the robes binding his wrists taut almost immediately. He stared at the cords, watching their tough fibres tighten and loosen in a pointless cycle. It was impossible for him to watch his wrists move and not think of himself. Normally, he would stand up and walk toward the nearest window, stare outside and lose himself in the thoughts buzzing around in his head, but he didn't feel like doing any more moving than he was, already. His mind was as loose and heavy as his body, and moving either would be too much pain and effort. Sighing deeply, the duke slumped a little lower in his chair. But for these ropes, and the cough of a guard outside the door, he didn't feel much like a prisoner. This room was normally some sort of meeting place, perhaps for an advisory council or the notables of Radasanth. Tapestries, the finest he'd seen in the place, depicting an obscure moment in the city's history involving a cavalry charge, scattered by a naked noblewoman, her arms raised pitifully, hung off the walls. The floor was covered by an odiferous carpet, and a thick, worn circular table took up most of the space in the room. It was far wider than the door or the windows; the room must have been built up around it at some point in the past. A dozen chairs, scattered slightly, ringed the table.

Stevens sighed again and wondered what time it was. He had been awake more than twenty-four hours, and time was becoming a bewildering series of crawls and spurts. The sunlight coming through the windows was diffuse enough that he couldn't tell the direction of the sun, and even if he could, he had lost track of which direction the room faced. He slumped a little lower as darkness crept up at the edges of his vision and his head began tilting towards his chest.

Voice outside the room jolted him upright again. They were indistinct at first, but quickly became clearer, more defined, as if from men who were rushing down the hallway. They were also regrettably recognizable. Baron Marion and the pipe-wielding colonel. The hum of their voices formed into words and snatches of sentences: "monk trickery" and "impossible," "increase the guard" and "within the hour" were the clearest among them. With a quick grate of a key in a lock, the door was flung open, and four guards rushed in behind the colonel and Marion's waddling form. Stevens opened his mouth, but a guard rushed forward, lifting something between his hands. The shadow of a bag descended over the duke's face, covering his eyes and pressing against his mouth and nose. Yanked from his chair, Stevens stumbled forward, his path unclear, everything destroyed by a hot cloister around his head.

[EarlStevens]

Our man stands at the ramparts, peering through a slat in a hastily thrown up wooden barrier. Between the nubs of sawn-off table legs is a darkening sky, red and gold fleeing toward the horizon. Spots of fire are burning down in the square, a constellation of war drawing its strength as the sunlight fades. Tents and barricades of wood have been thrown up in gaps in the swarm of scorpions and onagers, hiding whatever dark designs are being unfurled for the coming battle. Wooden seige towers sprout up amid them, a spindly hand groping toward the Citadel, closing in with iron-tipped fingertips. Although it is silent along the roof of the castle, the hundreds of monks too nervous to speak or look into each other's faces, voices call out below in the fractured way that men cry to each other in the night. A ghost of a moon hangs in the sky, bitten in half. Squinting up at it, our hero thinks he sees a smaller, round outline, pink and glowing, edging out from behind the more familiar orb. He bares his teeth. Damned strange place.

He stands along the stone crenulations along the top of the Citadel, the sky open above him, granite and wood boxing him in against the cooling air and tense men out in the night. A few towers and spires are stretched out behind him, but beyond that he is at the peak of Radasanth. His manservant hovers somewhere in the growing shadows, peering over his master’s fedora to the city below. Monks are posted along the line, crouching behind the tables and chairs they have piled up, filling in the gaps in the stone until there are slits only wide enough for a longbowman’s needs. Helmeted monks peer through the slits, their shadows frozen in the tiny slices of sky showing through the shattered furniture. At some stations, scarecrows and piles of sandbags serve similar purposes. Now there seems to be one false soldier for every live one. A crow caws in the distance. Dozens of monks are still inside the Citadel, expunging the last of the rebellion from their midst. That war had seemed enclosed, a domesticated battle. It had, after all, taken place in rooms where bloodshed was the norm, even if monks were not typically those doing the kill. Out here the war is misplaced, the battle more fearsome by the novelty of its surroundings.

"Our ruse didn't work too well," he snarls at no one in particular, spilling out his barbed unease. Beside him, Darby clicks his teeth irritably and readjusts the heavy belt around his waist.

"If there's blame to be had, it's my lot," the viscount replies. "If I hadn't reacted like that when Leo's cane fell out in front of us..." he trails off, rubbing at his mouth with the palm of his hand. Our hero adjusts his hat and sneers behind his arm in a self-satisfied way. At least he hadn't been at fault. "It would have been splendid if seeing you had made them so confused that they called the whole thing off. Pity they saw you for a decoy. Although I doubt it made much of a difference," the viscount continues, more forcefully. "All these preparations and what have you. They undoubtedly didn't want to get dressed up with no place to go, eh?" The smile disappears from our man's face. It was true. No one went to this much trouble just to go home after being befuddled by a parlor trick.

"All hangment," he mutters, "You're right." He lets the words linger in the air. No one here wants a battle. No one ever really does, when dew is clinging to their boots and they're holding a piece of steel just like a thousand others pointed at their throats. When it came down to the wire, him being here was pure lunacy. At least these fools were at war because their religion was under assault. He, on the other hand, had volunteered to join in. They were fighting for their very way of life: He was fighting to learn bloodlust and a sense of how to push back against this world’s violence, to tame these fairies with their own whip. The caprice of his decision is frightening, even without the promise of a battle. I wish I knew some poetry about the paradox of war...

"I say old boy," Darby mutters, leaning in. "If you want to live in Althanas, battle isn't the only way." His prescience gives our man pause, but he turns to the viscount, trying to force his face blank. Darby’s is just as cool, but for a flicker in his eyes, a worried softening. He was another who hadn’t volunteered, but had none of the conviction of the others. The unnecessary excuses he had given while following our man here made it clear enough, and Witherspoon was nowhere to be seen. The penguins, however, are still clustered at the viscount’s back, brandishing their freshly polished miniature pikes. They have the same somewhat pleading look as their charge. Someone has assigned them to au pair duty. O’Mally.

“What was it that Diderot said about strangling the last priest?” he says with a half grin. Darby snorts incredulously.

“It was the king that got strangled,” he replies, leaning back to an erect position, almost grumpily, but with a secret smile curling the edge of his mouth. “Fair point nonetheless.” He lifts the weapon at his side to the top of an overturned chair, placing it at about sternum level, his feet planted more firmly than before. Our man notes it is the same cane tossed in the mud by the colonel earlier in the day. His brother’s. This isn’t the fight he wants either, our man realizes. There are other men he wants to run through, the men shackling his brother somewhere out in that city which has thrown up arms against them. And yet here he is, squaring his jaw, a war leering at him, stroking a silver cane handle absently and trying to figure out whether the permission of someone who looks like his brother outweighs a High Priest’s order.

“Take cover!” A strangled voice calls out from down the walkway, beginning a cascade of other cries and a scramble to duck behind the largest nearby slab of wood. Our man finds himself cringing down, cursing himself for shrinking like a child having a boil lanced. He forces himself to jump back to attention, noting angrily that the viscount has not budged. A meteor is burning through the air, smoke drifting behind it as it makes an oddly slow, sparking arc. Dreadful howling fills the air, a hollow wail that makes our man lift his hands to his ears and shirk back again. He draws back, but Darby reaches out and grabs his shirt by the elbow.

“Arbarians!” he cries over the wail. Our man looks back into his face, frenzied with confusion, and Darby points wordlessly behind him, a hint of condescension in the winkles of the corners of his mouth. He turns, his face paling as he follows the viscount’s finger. A thin, willowy figure is swinging out from behind one of the gothic towers of the Citadel, a sliver of silhouette against the purpling sky. It is one of the walking trees, its body waving nearly to toppling, its dangling arms nearly scraping the ground as it stomped out, perching at the edge of the walkway. Its head stretches out, its cave of a mouth pulling wide like a caricature of an opera singer. The ethereal moan is not coming from the approaching fireball, but from this towering man of a tree. Another loud roar joins the cry, and another figure heaves out further down the line. As the shock of the horrible song wears off, our man begins to feel the vicious strength of magic flowing around him, weaving in and out of his body, a thrilling burst of power resonating with the soul of the earth.

He turns back to the fiery bolt approaching from the square. It is not longer moving, but instead hangs in the sky, a bolt the size of a tree trunk with a burning spike at its end. It twitches, spins its point toward the ground, and falls straight down, the flames at its tip snuffing out before it hits the wet gravel below. As it burrows into the ground, a sharp splintering noise that can even be heard four stories above erupts from the wood as sprigs and branches begin sprouting from it. Green leaves, bright emeralds at dusk, begin springing up toward the sky.

“Not a mustard seed, but damned impressive,” our man mutters, taking a step forward and leaning over the top of the wood and stone barrier. A tree has blossomed, already whispering in the light wind. “Arbarians, eh?” he asks Darby, who nods.

“I can’t say much for their singing, but I’ll be blasted if they aren’t good gardeners,” he grins back. Our man can’t help but chuckle. A rousing cheer lifts up from the monks, and flickers of movement on the ground below belie the shock of the surrounding forces. Pricks of light begin dancing across the square as torches are lit or move toward the tips of missiles pointed at the Citadel. Hundreds of men are racing among the tents, diving behind the canvas, or fumbling with the equipment at the base of their wooden war machines. The rumble of wooden wheels and spokes begins to fill the air, and the tents below start shifting, as if in the wind.

"They're moving," Darby mutters. Our man nods slowly, watching the tents spread and grow like amoebae. Tendrils expand from the smaller ones, grasping toward the fortress. With screeches and bangs, the seige towers begin to wobble forward in a sick imitation of the arbarians moaning down at them. Men at the catapults begin drawing behind them, readying a full-forced blow. The battle has begun.

[EarlStevens]

"Prepare for bombardment!" an gravely voice rumbles along the castle top, magically projected, clapping down on our man's ears from every direction. He can feel the warm flow of magic around him, a web connecting the arbarians to magicians lurking among the lesser monks, and is thankful for it. His weapon is only a flimsy twig against the encroaching wooden monoliths, much less the flaming missiles below, a hairtrigger away from being flung into his face. Running his tongue over his teeth, he realizes his mouth is dry. His excitement is already being tempered by the cold realization of what approaches, not only from the front by from every side of this now-vulnerable castle.

And indeed, the bombardment comes. The scorpions launch their grotesque bolts, points dripping with flame, and the mangonels vomit up balls of ember and smoke. As they wail through the air, the magic weaving around him grows to a rushing fever, and the songs of the arbarians explode into a chorus of baritones. Balls of flame explode in mid-air with sharp pops that rattle his skull, and the scorpion bolts quiver like stringless kites before falling to the ground, springing into a green grove as they hit the ground. Some lances of flame, however, continue on their wicked paths, cicatrising the sky with tails of smoke. Monks yell to each other frantically, trying to project their paths, and leap out of the way as flaming leather and wood thuds against the stone, skidding across the roof, banging against stone spires, eventually smashing still against the raised center of the roof, which reaches up for another floor or two, the slowly dying flames licking to death against it. Directly below our man is a stained glass window the size of a door, and a hot orb slams against it, bouncing off with a noisy crunch. Fragments of colored glass fall along with the projectile to the ground below, seemingly taking hours in their slow descent. Our man watches them fall and shivers, imaging his body tumbling alongside.

Looking up from the remains of the failed assault, our man watches the tendrils of canvas continually spread out from the war tents. He can see small, flashing feet at the bottom of the tendrils, each pair corresponding to a slight lump in the roof of the man's height leg of tent. He points at them without speaking just as Darby is raising his own hand. The viscount looks at him.

"Indeed," he lowers his hand, resting it back on the handle of his brother's swordcane. "Some sort of siege tactic. Probably some sort of softening attack before those towers get here. Ladders, perhaps?" Our man nods sagaciously, hiding his confusion. He feels the urge to ask some question, keep Darby talking, fill the air with more than the various yells of monks warning each other about the likelihood of a coming strike, but not words come to mind.

"Ready your bows!" the same ethereal voice cries, and the monks up and down the ramparts reach as a unit for the quivers at their backs, notching arrows and focusing on the approaching lines of tent immediately. They are no more than a hundred paces from the front steps of the castle at this point, marching forward with a strange precision. Our man follows their tips to the parts of the Citadel wall he can see, and notes with a satisfying comprehension that narrow windows, just wide enough for a man to scramble through, are notched into the stone twenty feet from the ground. Guilt rises to mix with the satisfaction, and he quickly pushes both back, scrambling to pull back to his fading excitement.

"Fire!" It races back as he watches monks let their arrows fly with twangs and war hoots. The flurry of fletching swoops down on the closest of the attacking sprigs, pricking them like needles in a pincushion. Tinny cries reply to the assault as the tents collapse, legs and pools of blood spreading out from underneath the tarps. The end of a narrow ladder can be briefly seen as one of the man-sized lumps below crashes to the ground, but is quickly withdrawn. Darby nods to himself.

"Cover!" the eerie voice cries as a distracted man might. Our man blinks rapidly, confused, and then screams in terror as a sticky ball of fire slams into the chairs at his side, shooting splinters of wood and coating the ground with a burning, stinking goop. The leather boulder rolls away, spitting sparks, but the flames remain. Stumbling backward, our hero feels Darby's hand clenched on his shoulder. He moans and turns to viscount, stumbling slightly. "Good mercy!" the viscount gives a muted cry and snatches off his jacket, nearly ripping the seams, and slaps it around our hero's arm, clapping the cloth down. Our hero looks down at the acrid, smoldering place on his arm and moans again. He hadn't even realized he was on fire. With squawks and screeches, the penguins take up positions around the duo. Glancing around through hazy eyes, our man takes in the scene around him, blinking as smoke curls into his face. Up and down the line, monks are either scrambling back into position drunkenly or rolling across the ground, flames and smoke being snuffed out between their scalded flesh and the stone. Puddles of flame are smoldering along the roof, some catching on the wood piled up on the ramparts, most quickly dying.

"Not much harm, I'm sure," the viscount mutters to himself. "I've seen worse. You may feel dizzy for a bit. Don't try to take your coat off until a monk's seen to you, though." Our hero looks to him quizzically. "Oh, the cloth might have adhered to your skin, old crumb." Darby replies almost lazily. "Don't want to unpeel your whole arm, eh?" He already loses interest as he puts his jacket back on, frowning at the damage done to its black wool. Our man looks down at his arm, red, black and white, and grimaces. Noticing he has dropped his cane, he stoops down and snatches it back up with his good arm. Standing up straight again, he looks at his valet, who has inclined its mask slightly to peer down at him. Our man frowns. I do feel lightheaded...

More of the tent tendrils have made headway in the meantime, and several of the decimated attackers have regrouped, weaving back and forth as they approach the walls. One has even gotten to the stone itself, and a long wooden proboscis extends from its tip. Our man thinks of the raising of a Maypole as it swings to the slit, hitting the stone, some metal clamps swinging down to latch it to the cathedral. The monks seem to have lost their earlier order, and the haunting voice commanding them has silenced. Screaming to each other in a somewhat confused relay, they begin leaning out, taking a bead on the first green plumes appearing on the ladder and letting their arrows fly. A guard who has made it already halfway up the rungs falls, two shafts in his sides, and knocks another man down as he crashes to the gravel. A third appears, this one with a crossbow, and points upward, launching a bolt into the air that takes the top of a monk's head off. His brain is a clear pink splatter across the night sky, two scarecrows down, and our hero suppresses a bile-tinged scream. As he forces his last meal - it has been so long ago - back down, sense creeps back into his brain, and he wonders at the accuracy of these men in the darkening night. Only it's not so dark. He looks up above his head and gapes at a white, glowing orb hovering in the air. Half a dozen of the things are floating up and down the Citadel ramparts, lighting the front of the castle with a phosphorescent bath.

"Ingenious," he mutters. The arbarian song starts again, and he instinctively ducks, his lesson learned. No flames make it to the ramparts this time. Yes, the battle has certainly begun.

[EarlStevens]

Another round of fiery missiles has exploded in mid-air, flicking ash across the front of the Citadel. More green guards have reached the bottom of the wall, their canvas coverings apparently serving some purpose, bolts and arrows swarming back and forth up the stone, puncturing men and skittering along the stone. Their ladders swing up to the nearest windows, from which monks’ arms and swords reach out and bash down the guards that make it up the wobbling rungs. Trundling siege towers are rolling ever closer, ghastly under the light, ineffective longbow shots glancing off their heavy frames. Huge trains of oxen and bulls are grunting behind the rolling giants, pushing them slowly closer. Although monks have begun taking shots at the bovine slaves, few have fallen, and lively foam blows from their mouths as they close the trap.

“Ah, the Earl Stevens,” a voice mutters and our man turns around hazily at the noise. Hands reach out, clamping aside his head, and the glow of magic atop the cathedral leaps into his body. Euphoria briefly falls over him, and he imagines a slender, white neck and brown hair. Then razor blades draw across his arm.

“Good mercy!” he cries, clutching at his clawed burn. Feeling nothing but smooth skin through the holes seared in his coat, our hero looks up at the smiling face of High Priest O’Mally. He takes a few steps back, bumping against a smoldering chair leg. The priest inclines his head, looking down his nose at our newly-healed protagonist.

“It does often hurt,” he says, “Holding up well, Anthony?” the priest asks without turning his head. The viscount gives an indistinct reply, waving nonchalantly while nudging away a penguin with his toe. “Silas, Petunia and Icarus are missing the fighting,” O’Mally continues, still looking at our man. “Although I can’t say I see why.” Now he does turn his head, shuddering at the bodies and blood along the roof. Clusters of unarmored monks who seem to have accompanied the priest are scurrying down the line, grabbing at bodies and jerking them to life. Watching a corpse jump to its feel, teeth clenched and eyes flashing, makes our man feel like his stomach has dropped to the bottom of his shoes. He swallows, dry and hard.

“It’d be nice if one of you blokes could knock down those abominations,” Anthony speaks up, distinctly this time, dodging a ricocheting crossbow bolt, pointing at the siege towers, now barely a minute of rumbling away. O’Mally sighs and nods, tapping his staff on the stone.

“I think that centaur was a magician. He’s cast some bewildering hexes on us, and the arbarians refuse to directly attack living humans. Sadly, all we can do is tell you when another barrage is coming. I suppose he figured that wasn’t worth blocking. Although they do seem to have let up,” the priest looks up and sniffs, as if checking the wind for the smell of rain. “Well, I’m off to boost more morale.” He says, almost jovially, rustling off down the roof, half-hearted cheers following in his wake. Our man, eyes wide, looks after him, then turns to his manservant, which smiles back. Darby gives a sort of bitter laugh.

“What the bloody Hell?” he asks, shaking his head. Our man shrugs, still trying to untangle the jumble of the past minute, thankful that the noise of battle has temporarily fled from his mind.

“Seemed about as casual as a golfer,” our man notes, and Darby snorts again.

“Where I’m from,” he replies, “Golfers take themselves more seriously.” Both men chortle, and then catch each others’ eyes. Their faces go blank, and our man turns out to the approaching siege tower, red at the ears. The approaching spire quickly reminds our man of the wrenching feeling battle inspires. It wobbles slightly, no more than ten feet away from the edge of the roof. Narrow chinks, widening and closing slightly as the contraption rolls to a stop, show the shifting legs and plumes of guards packed into the boxy craft. Barked orders and murmurs of discontent can be heard within. Arrows burrow ineffectively into the beams, their thuds causing little hiccups in the warriors’ chatter. A sort of strange, fearful calm descends onto the roof as the last wobble from the tower’s stop shakes itself out, and the wooden monolith stands before our man, the punctuation of war. The men within in are quiet, the monks to either side draw back their bowstrings with a noiseless resolve. Darby and his penguins draw back, crouching toward the ground, and our man follows suit, gripping his spiked cane with a still-tingling arm. At that second, the whole battlefield crawls into a motionless second as a dozen of the towers pull into place, guards and monks glaring at each other sightlessly through splintered wood and stone.

With a roar and a squeak, the front of the towers unpeel, a mighty wooden drawbridge falling down, slapping onto the edge of the roof with a series of sickening crashes. Metal spikes latch down, burying among the wooden furniture thrown up against the crenulations, loosely penetrating the pile. Flurries of missiles whistle through the air, longbows and crossbows spitting at each other, men screaming and falling. Dozens of green plumes rush out, more bolts vomiting out, cutting down monks who are not fast enough to drop to the ground or notch another arrow. Our man watches the guards hop across the wooden bridge. One stumbles, falls, bangs his head against the edge of the platform as he tumbles over the side, and has no time to scream. Darby and his penguins, as yet unseen, jump forward as the last of the crossbowmen loosen their bolts, crashing with the first few swordsmen stumbling out, swordcanes and pikes flashing. Our hero feels their courage dragging him forward, and he leaps up, striking at a sweating man hurriedly cranking a crossbow. The guard drops the weapon and raises a hand, reaching for a dagger at his side, moaning a weak curse. His throat gives little resistance to the canepoint, and with a splatter of blood he stumbles back, gargling his own life in his throat, and collapses over the edge.

Our man stops, his sweat frigid. He knows most of the wetness on his face isn’t his sweat anymore – it smells coppery. A green plume swings at him, but falls back, two purple penguins shoving pikes into his stomach. The smell of vomit and feces wafts into his face, two monks rush around him, heaving maces, and someone screams. It all fades away into a rushing, sucking noise in his ears. His heartbeat. Our man steps back, his thoughts rushing back to this morning. The ice. The blood. A last sigh.

“Hey!” A cry in his face shakes him to life. He’s sitting on top of his leg, which has already done numb. Darby’s face hovers in front of his nose. Blood drips from the edge of his moustache, and his hat has been shorn partially from his head like a discarded anchovy tin. His eyes are wide and watering, and his tongue flickers in and out of his mouth, but he’s standing, a bloody weapon in one hand. “Hey!” he smacks our man lightly. Grunting, our hero pushes Anthony Stevens away and moves his wooden legs, a stringless marionette trying to rise.

“A spot of luck!” Darby cries, grabbing his shoulder and yanking him straight. “The Jerries’ sergeant fell off the platform, looks like, and they had no damn idea what way was up after that. Typical.” He pushes forward, tugging our man along, penguins scurrying at his feet. There are more screams and smells in the air now, but the buzzing in our man’s ears swooshes it all into confusion, a slowly receding sea of white noise.

“They’re Germans?” he asks, realizing he’s still clutching his bloody cane as it nicks his calf. Men are rushing ahead of them toward a boiling mass of steel and flesh tumbling out of a siege tower.

“Er, what?” Darby quizzically responds. “Oh, did I call them that? No matter.” A penguin caws beside him, and the viscount shakes his head. “Can’t go any slower, waddle faster.” He grins feverishly. “Oh yes, this is a good day.”

[LordLeopold]

Stevens felt a slight jabbing in his ribs, a sting from a steel wasp, and jerked straight, exhaling heavily. His eyelids had slid back down across his sightless eyes again, nearly toppling to his demise. He could sense the two rapiers hovering in the air to either side and feel the warmth of their wielders’ breath. There was a dark titter of laughter and then the pall of silence returned, the quiet of caves and the deep ocean. The quiet of a dungeon. Even with a dank sack over his head, the smell of wool and urine filling his nose and mouth, he could still feel himself burrowed deep in the city’s belly. How long he had been entrapped he couldn’t say. Aside from the crushing tiredness weighing down on his head and shoulders, pushing him down into a slippery pit of sleep, he felt nothing stirring across his consciousness. Worry, anger, sadness, fear, all the things that he felt when the bag first bit down over his head were now subsumed by the dark block of exhaustion. It seemed like weeks since he had climbed out of his cot in the Entente camp and faced the rising sun.

Cruel practice, Stevens thought thickly to himself. A torture that leaves no scars. He was sure that if he toppled over the men flanking him wouldn’t fulfill their promise to run him through, but the regular prick of the blade shook that certainty enough to keep him on his feet. Wrists and legs bound, teetering on what felt like an old stool, a cowl of shadow about him, he had only his slowly wandering mind to give him any comfort, but he had a feeling that soon he would have lost all direction over it. Colors and shapes flitted at the edge of his vision: A dog’s leg, a fleeting shuttlecock, a corner-of-your-eye glimpse of a woman’s face. The little energy he had was feeding into a fruitless battle against sleep and its eternal brother, Death.

A voice, muffled by the bag and distance, spoke somewhere behind and to his right. It seemed to be a young boy’s, but other than that the duke could not divine a thing. Words slurred together into a gurgle, growing softer and louder like a broken gramophone. The voice faded away entirely for a moment, and then spoke again, this time becoming slowly more distinct, coming closer and closer, the fast chatter of an excited lad filling his ears. At first Stevens had strained with what little concentration he could muster to make out the words, but as the voice grew louder, its squawking surrounding him, he began trying to shut it out, clenching his jaw and squeezing shut his drooping eyes.

“This one’s for the knacker, the knacker indeed,” the boy giggled, “We can cut him down from the collarbone and scoop out his guts for a brass farthing. A tisket, a tasket!” Sweat already slicked Stevens’s skin, but another wet layer oozed out under the grime smeared across his body. “La la la, we can make a vest from his skin, it would fit me just fine. Sweet doggy, what are you doing?” Stevens felt a snuffling against his leg and grunted, shuffling as best he could to the side without toppling. Someone made a surprised sound, clicking a tongue against a palate, and the child laughed. “Doggy doggy, foggy foggy,” it rhymed.

It was then that Stevens realized he was staring into the child’s face. He had blue eyes and a pale white face, black hair and was dressed in a ill-fitting pinstripe suit. “I took off your hood!” he exclaimed, and Stevens nodded, remembering it. He couldn’t speak, though, because his mouth had been sewn shut. “The crow did that,” the boy said, pointing to a bloody gash across his abdomen. “But I told him to stop. My dog likes you I think, your father told me that.” The duke frowned as his father walked into his field of vision, rubbing his hands, a cigar clenched in his mouth, a severed finger peeking over the top of his vest pocket.

“You again,” his father said, and without so much as a pause began walking backwards from whence he came, disappearing. “I’d hoped you’d stop writing letters.” Stevens turned his head, trying to keep his eyes on his father’s grimacing visage, but the feeling of wool brushing over his face, scratching his eyes, made him stop with a jolt. He moaned slightly, and felt another blade poke him in the ribs.

Hallucinations Stevens thought, though he couldn’t conjure up the word, only a dull sense of what a hallucination was, and that he was having one.

******

Pode smiled. She stood, with her arms crossed, her legs planted widely below a red gown, at the open door of Leopold Stevens’s narrow, dripping cell. Two guards stood at either side, a benign facsimile of the two armed men jabbing at the duke. He wobbled back and forth, hooded and shackled, atop a rotting wooden box, in the same position he’d been forced to hold all day. The Scarlet Witch narrowed her eyes, turning her smile cold and cruel, imaging what conjurations his tired mind was thrusting upon him. She had felt the magical wards clutching his body that the monks had woven, knew they could ward off his exhaustion for only so long. Those magical binds told her that the aging duke hadn’t had much sleep during the night, and his weary body and mind could only stay alert for so long. She shivered at the thought of his death. That was a punishment for the Lord of Death to mete out, when the time came. No, Stevens would not die tonight. Only feel how easily he could, from sword or starvation. An abashment that would teach him to truly fear those forces he could not control that slowly edged him toward destruction.

“My lady,” one of the baron’s guards bowed at her side, and she only slightly turned her head to see him better, keeping her focus on Stevens’s back. “Radasanth is under attack. The Baron wishes for you to move back to his palace.” Pode sneered openly, forgetting her obsequious façade for a moment, and shook her head.

“I’m not afraid of the battle at the Citadel getting out of the Colonel’s hands.” She replied, waving him off. “Tell his lordship that I shall stay where I please.” The guard made a strangled sound in his throat as he retreated a few steps, glancing from her to the stairway behind him that led to the armory above, and the open skies of Radasanth. He shifted from foot to foot, wringing his hands, until Pode finally tore her eyes from Stevens and turned to look straight on at the hesitant man. “Yes?” she coolly intoned.

“Ah,” he stuttered, raising a gloved hand as if to protect himself from an oncoming assault. “Yes. The Entente has entered Radasanth. They are about to breach the Inner Wall.” He stepped back, loosing an internal battle to keep his face calm, his lips trembling. “Please, my lady, the palace.”

[EarlStevens]

“Heee-yah!” Darby bellows, leaping atop the barrier of detritus and side-stepping two monks entangled with a heavily bleeding City Guardsman. He jumps down at another guard, knocking aside his short sword and running the screaming man through. His penguin guards squawk after him, rolling and stabbing into the melee, monks cheering them as cricket fans would a mascot. Our man pauses on the very edge of the skirmish, watching a monk being bludgeoned over the crown with the butt of a crossbow, his limp body falling against the furniture barrier, where his head hits a chair leg with a sickening crack and twists sideways. A frosty air whips around his head as his manservant moves past him, spreading its dark clutches out at a crossbowman taking aim at our hero’s fedora brim. The guard’s mouth falls open as his weapon shatters in his hands and the seamless shadow descends upon him, pressing him to the ground, where he disappears among the dark folds. Our man watches as his hand, which is outside the edge of his servant’s shadowy body, quickly recedes into the ghoul’s body. The creature straightens, like taffy being pulled from a loose blob into a narrow strand, and its body ripples slightly, a few fragments of green feather gusting out as if from a burst pillow. Our man feels his throat contract.

Apparently he is not the only one for whom this is a fearful sight, for the guards, already being beaten back to their tower, turn tail and, some screaming and tossing aside their weapons, rush into the siege tower, glancing back in horror at the dark ghost that has entirely swallowed one of their own. A few monks scream out a cheer and grab onto the extended platform, pushing it up, its latches easily coming free of the loose debris at the edge of the roof, and slam it shut. The rest, some deathly pale, are either standing in shock or slowly retreating from the voiceless demon in their midst. Darby, straightening his ruined hat and nodding in satisfaction at the penguins regrouping around him, seems the only one unaffected.

“Heat of battle!” he cries, gesturing wildly. “Ones does what one will do. The American General Sherman told us as much! Come, men!” he points with his sword cane to the next clutch of attackers, these seemingly getting the upper hand over the monks, thrusting and punching at the corner of the roof. “Tally-ho!” None move; it seems the fight has been plucked from them, suddenly and frighteningly. “Eh, fake Leopold?” Darby points to our man expectantly. “Keeping down your first taste of war?” Our man raises an unsteady finger to object, but has no time to force out any reply. Something snaps above him, a loud whip crack, and a forceful burst of magic can be felt rushing around him, whooshing and heaving as a river burst from its banks. The siege tower before him creaks slightly and then disappears from sight, toppling over and back. A rumbling explosion from below heralds its destruction on the square below.

“They’ve cracked that hex, it seems,” he says, a bit shocked. The first time he’s seen magic used to maim, and it kills a score of men in a wooden box. It is at the same time thrilling and disappointing.

“Well thank God, now we can see some real whizz-bangers!” Darby declares. As he spits out the last word, the boom of an artillery shell explosion rocks the roof, and the whole platoon ducks, clapping arms over heads, wincing at their rattling skulls. Our man looks up at the small battle Darby had pointed at earlier, and gapes at the column of smoke and flame rising from the remains of the tip of the wooden tower. Planks and hunks of iron are raining down from around the explosion, and guardsmen all along the roof have been floored, blood pouring from their ears, some vomiting across their fronts. The monks among them stand as if no more than a summer breeze has touched them, glancing around in shock at the effects of the unexpected magic attack. A series of chest-shaking detonations at the far end of the courtyard makes our man turn his gaze out across the field of battle, where catapults are being torn apart by geysers of earth and stone. The very ground under the tiny guardsmen’s feet is boiling up, hands of gravel reaching out and dragging them down to their waists, their half-buried bodies flailing angrily at their earthen prisons.

“Good Lord,” our man says, watching the courtyard turn into a fountain of earth as towering figures of stone push themselves into the open air and begin stomping into tents and siege machines, pounding them with huge fists, arrows bouncing harmlessly off their eyeless heads. A platoon of men rushes out from one of the tents, brandishing what look like sledge hammers and huge long swords, making for the closest stone golem, but scatter and spin across the ground as the wind whips into howling maelstroms around them, dirt devils of titanic size sweeping back and forth, flinging men like a child’s tin soldiers, bouncing them off each other, tossing their weapons high in the air. “No wonder they banned it…” he mutters, watching the last of the guardsmen drop their weapons and flee, disappearing down alleyways and main roads, some of their cries drifting up over the sounds of smashing wood and roaring wind below.

“Eh?” Darby asks, moving to his side, placing a hand on his shoulder. Our man glances at it, mouth pulled to one side, and the viscount removes it, chuckling awkwardly.

“Europeans haven’t used magic in battle since Napoleon,” he replies, blankly, shocked at himself for spouting history in the midst of such a vital moment. “Offensive magic was outlawed in the Congress of Vienna.”

“Ah,” Darby replies, obviously uninterested. The explosions below and around them, already intermittent, disappear entirely, and the stone golems in the courtyard below collapse in on themselves, piles of rock that burrow down back below the ground. The cyclones puff out into slight gusts that toss about the tattered remains of the war tents. As monks turn to each other, hugging or merely nodding in recognition of the battle they’ve just won, and the remaining guards on their feet raise their hands in surrender, flinging their weapons aside, some even tearing off the green plumes from their helmets, the ghostly lights hovering above the field begin to wink out, one by one erasing the battle entirely, smoothing out this unhealthy wrinkle on the face of the city. Figures, some with tall hats on their heads, others draped in arabesque robes, appear in the darkness, their shadows moving among the wounded, muttering and moving their hands, forcing life and health back into the causalities of war.

The arbarians, still swaying along the roof in the darkness, begin humming another song. It lacks the alien hollowness of their earlier melody, but is just as powerful, ringing in deep resonance somewhere in our man’s stomach, soothing his dark horror, an unexpected husk of battle left rotting within his body. It is easy to forget, caught up in this sonorous buzz, that he has killed men today and watched them pierce each other in battle, spreading their blood across a holy Citadel’s stone walls.

[LordLeopold]

Pode pushed aside two worried guardsmen as she emerged from the stairwell to the dungeon, snarling at the swearing torchlight burning against her eyes. They bumbled, nearly falling, but managed to fling themselves to attention as their commander followed her, still wringing his hands. She marched down the low hallway, the beams only a few hands’ breaths above her head, the guards stooping after her, scuffling along, smashed together by the thick stone walls. The sorceress slapped the hefty door at the end of the corridor open, lifting her skirts above the still-muddy courtyard of the armory with a band of the Tap, hands swinging free. Above, the sky was clear, bright moonlight streaming from the cloudless, black sky, stars feebly shining aside the glowing disks, the squat armory’s courtyard illuminated better than the rooms within. Two stories of tiny windows peered at her from all sides, pairs of trembling men scattered about the cramped open yard. A nag whinnied softly in a far corner. Broad gates to the outside world across the yard had just been slammed shut, a monstrous beam being pushed into place as a brace, the boom from their closure still shaking the stone. Several men were descending from the backs of foaming horses at the gate, pulling off helmets and shaking their hair free, barking angrily at each other. Pode strode toward them, the junior officer still scrambling at her heels.

“Colonel!” she called, recognizing the center man, who was pointing at a younger fellow and screaming, flecks of spit shining in the moonlight. “What news?” As she approached, the colonel finished his incomprehensible tirade, which seemed to have cowed his subordinate sufficiently, and reached into a pocket in his uniform, pulling out a pipe and shoving his thumb repeatedly in the empty bowl. He grimaced at her, obviously displeased. His knees and elbows were caked with dirt, his front all stained with blood.

“Our siege has failed,” he said simply, still thumbing the pipe bowl. Pode’s stride was broken ever so slightly, but she kept her slippered and muddy feet moving until she was an arm’s length from the officer, cocking her head to look up into his face. “My men are either dead, captured or surrendered, and the few protectors at the Main Gate are holding on by the skin of their teeth, last I heard.” Pode cursed a millennia-old curse, getting a quizzical look from the younger officers to either side of the colonel, and shot out strands of magic, bending the air in front of her into a Panopticon. A glowing oval of light appeared at her waist level, and several of the guardsmen yelped, leaping back. She ignored them, and bent the light, forcing into an image of a tall, ornate gate slowly opening, brown figures scuttling across the wall to either side of it. None of them wore green plumes. She cursed again and released the Panopticon, letting it fade and degrade into a ball of mist.

“The gate has fallen, damn you,” she hissed, spitting at the colonel’s feet. He shook his head, unfazed by the magic or the insult, and bared his teeth.

“I wondered why the Baron ordered such an idiotic attack on the Citadel with armies at all sides,” he bit off. “I suspect it might have been whispered in his ear by some dilettante. Perhaps you know something of that?” Pode snarled again and stepped forward, this time slapping the colonel across his face, twice. Although a dribble of blood was left on his face, he only laughed. “The centaur has also been captured, along with the Marshal,” he said, laughing angrily. Pode let her face crack into a horrified gape for a moment, and the colonel laughed again, slamming his thumb into his pipe so hard that the stem snapped. “The High Priest and his minions suddenly appeared in our command tent. The Maker only knows how, but the centaur was so shocked that his hexes collapsed. I escaped by sheer luck.” Realizing that the pipe he was thumbing was now shattered, he tossed it to the ground. “A tarp fell on top of me and they didn’t see me crawl away!” Pode clenched her narrow fists but didn’t speak again, only felt the blood rushing to her neck and face. So they’ve discovered Translocation! The Tap is returning, after all… She imagined what Aesphestos was thinking right now, wherever he was, and shivered.

“Enemy at the gate!” a voice cried from the rooftop, and the colonel laughed again, more bitter than before. “Oh, my dear man,” he cackled. “They won’t stop there, oh no.” There was a rumbling at the far side of the doors, and they bulged slightly, the thick log holding them back but rattling dangerously in its constraints. The guards in the courtyard began screaming to each other, trying to decide whether to surrender or fight, some running inside the building, others drawing their swords and looking around for places to duck for cover. “Battering ram!” the voice called again over the escalating din, and continued incredulously, “They’ve knocked over a statue of the First Baron and they’re using it as a battering ram!” This was too much for the remaining defenders, who scampered away into the nearest stooping doorway, yelling instructions to the nearest escape to each other. Pode sighed, clutching magic around her, forcing it into the rudiments of fireballs and lightning bolts, preparing to blast her way out of the armory, if necessary. The colonel sighed and unhitched his saber from its belt, and his fellow officers followed suit, preparing to offer the surrender tokens as soon as possible. Another rattling thunder blow against the gates knocked an even larger bulge outward, and the metal bands holding up the log wept in loud, tearing screeches and the log crashed to the ground, the gates swinging loosely open. There was a heavy thud as the army outside dropped their battering ram, smashing the ancient stone, and with the yell of a crowd of beasts, a crowd of men, swinging scythes and swords, gnashing dirty teeth swept through the doors. One officer rode at their head on top of a piebald horse, his cloth hat tipped jauntily, cantering with the pride of a first victory.

Pode reached out to spin a ball of blue fire around her hand, but abruptly released it as she felt the familiar caress of Aesphestos’ magic brush against her cheeks. Smiling, she stepped back, feeling herself fall through a magic gash in the air, stepping out into a darkened room thousands of miles away. As the window to Radasanth closed, she watched two streams of black-clad soldiers, silver swords in hand, marching in clockwork lock step, flowing from either side of the colonel, whose face was finally registering shock. As the final sliver of the window closed, the black troops slammed into the attacking army with a spray of blood.

[LordLeopold]

Stevens’s universe was awash with crashing, gnashing noise. Men’s voices, curdled and frantic, echoed dully around him, filling his ears and sparking bright flashes across his vision, imaginings of wars and death. He felt oddly separated from the crowds filling his mind, as if they were thousands of miles away, clawing glacially towards him, cursing their impotence and his distance. These hallucinations were too much for him, and he felt his body beginning to shake, quivering up from the knees to his chest and shoulders. Soon he would no longer be able to stand. His head felt like it was expanding, his mind spreading outside himself, his body no longer containing his soul. It was unreal, this diffusion of his very being. In an odd moment of fuzzy clarity, he knew these hallucinations in his mind were not that at all, but the sounds of Hell using his tired mind as a conduit between the here and the hereafter. He was a fitting vessel, he supposed. The blood drenching him had primed him to obviate the gates to Hades – he would be the new Orpheus. In the last moment before he collapsed, he heard the grating laugh of the devil.

Clammy fingers forced his mouth open and groped down into his lungs, pushing him awake. Choking, he turned his head, cheek sinking in soft ground, and coughed out syrupy vomit. Light opened his eyes and sound pricked his ears, and, still coughing, he sat up straight. It was a bold move, but he felt as hard and solid as iron, and didn’t even feel dizzy as the blood sloshed around his head. Blinking rapidly, the duke looked around, looking into a series of worried eyes, hooded women with deep wrinkles and frowns, white stocks of hair and crooked noses. Stevens raised a hand to his mouth, wiping away the burning film, and stood up so abruptly that the women crouching around him nearly fell on their rear ends.

“Ladies,” Stevens said, bowing and then reaching down with an open hand to the nearest. “Your kindness is an honor.” These were the Ai’Bron nuns of Ozternberg, kindly crones who took the duke’s hand with sagacious smiles. “Now, where am I?” The duke asked emptily as the last of the half-dozen stooped old women were brought to their feet, brushing at their black workaday dresses. It was night, and the moonlight was bright around him. He looked up at the faint stars, breathing at them heavily, and then lowered his gaze, looking incuriously at the building flanking him at all sides. He clucked, unimpressed, and looked across the courtyard. His eyes widened as he saw Cerebus’ gate opened.

Bodies lay across the yard, split and twisted, guts and blood making a stinking stew. Some wore uniforms, others were cloaked in a black that mingled with the drying blood surrounding them until the whole ground appeared a drape of flies. Piled against one wall was a steaming, ashy heap. Stevens stepped toward it as the wind shifted and a horrible stench sank into his pores. He lifted a hand to his face, yelping and gasping. He saw a white hand lying atop the charred pile. Clenching his stomach, he turned and ran, head down.

“Friend Duke-Generalissimo!” A voice cried as two vices clamped on his shoulders, arresting him. He looked up, mouth still twisted in an agonized grimace, eyes watering. “Oh God, Max,” he moaned, collapsing against the Ozternbergian soldier. Superior Officer Max von Immelman, short and swarthy, in a grey uniform and spiked metal helmet, was pushed back by the weight but stepped forward, righting them both, his heavy boots making heavy thuds in the mud, his saber swinging violently. He moved to Stevens’s side, wrapping an arm around him, placing his hand against the duke’s arm. Raggedly gasping, Stevens shakily stepped forward, and Immelman guided him to an upturned barrel kicked in on one side. He slid the duke to the barrel, where Leopold clunked heavily, his hands over his face.

“My friend, my friend,” Immelman muttered, bending down, hands on Stevens’s shoulders. “We have won a great battle today. Radasanth is ours.” A note of pride entered his voice, and upon hearing it, Stevens lowered his hands, his eyes fierce.

“Great? No one who does such a thing is great,” he growled, pointing at the field of death. “Hell’s door was opened tonight. We both opened it!” A brown dragon’s head appeared over the far roof, fangs bared, slants of eyes peering at Stevens over Immelman’s shoulder. The duke scoffed. “So I see how you burned them. Rode in on a dragon. God, God.” The beast snorted, jets of smoke shooting from its nostrils, and lowered its head, and the duke scoffed again. “For what? They died, and for what? I brought you all here to die.” He buried his face back in his hands, a soft sob eking through his fingers. “I opened up Hell so you could all die.” The officer opened his mouth, but said nothing, only took his hands off Stevens and stood, raising one gloved palm to his mouth, looking down at the weeping old man. Around them passed other officers and soldiers, some leading green-plumed prisoners with bloody faces and throbbing bruises, some clapping each other on the back happily, most quietly regarding the armory they had just captured. The nuns who had revived the duke were now moving among the wounded and dead, pressing their hands to splintered arms and split heads. Most of the men in the courtyard didn’t wear uniforms at all – they were among the inchoate soldiers who had rushed through the battered doors, weapons picked from their barns and farmyards hefted across their shoulders lazily, the heat of battle still in their veins. A few were scuffing their boots against the black stain scarred into the ground by the dragon’s breath, a few pointing to the place along the roof where the dragon’s claws had grabbed stone and wood, crushing the roof under its immense weight as it perched, dispensing brimstone.

Immelman scratched his thin moustache, hand still over his mouth, and shifted from leg to leg, too uncertain to speak or remain silent. He reached out for Stevens’s shoulder again, but pulled back his hand almost immediately. A minute passed as Stevens heaved into his hands, pressing his fingers into his eyelids, groaning to himself. The officer watched a shooting star dip behind the armory roof, and made a futile wish.

“Alright,” Stevens said, suddenly standing, nearly knocking Immelman back. His eyes were still wet, but some resolve had been forged in his tears that kept his voice calm, imbuing him with purpose. “Am I to take it that you’re the uppermost officer in the Entente at the moment?” Immelman nodded, fumbling with his hands.

“When the Nar’oth and Friend Reinhardt left, I became the most superior officer in the Entente, yes,” he said, silently cursing how cumbersome his words seemed in the wake of the man's tears. Stevens nodded.

“Convene a conference of the senior officers,” Stevens said, in the clipped form of an order. “As soon as possible.” Immelman flinched slightly. It was the first time he had ever heard the Generalissimo give an order beyond requests for tea. He fingered his belt-buckle, but nodded vigorously.

“I can do you one better, Friend. We’ve established that the rendezvous point for the Entente should be the Baron’s palace. At noon tomorrow we’re holding a grand council.” Stevens made no visible response to this, only brushed past Immelman, wiping at his eyes. The officer watched the duke’s back for a few seconds as Stevens headed for the door of the courtyard, apparently following the walking wounded to the triage outside. As the duke moved into step alongside a limping, middle-aged man with a scythe leaning over his shoulder and a rusted scimitar at his side, exchanging a few words and a smile, Immelman placed his fists on his hips and sighed. The officer looked up into the sky, trying to find some guidance from above. A vulture circled overhead, passing in front of the moon. Immelman chuckled and saluted it.

[EarlStevens]

“Tonight, men, we won a battle. It was not a great battle, and the annals of history may not record it. It was not the first battle of this current war – nor the last. But for us here, tonight, who shed our blood and sweat in its course, that battle was but briefly the extent of the world. And we made it ours.”

Our man stands among an applauding, cheering crowd of monks, their voices rising around him as he watches the High Priest O’Mally raise a hand in generous recognition of their merit. O’Mally stands before the melted statue in the entrance hall of the Citadel, and his ecclesiastical brood are packed in before him, grinning tiredly as dawn climbs through the windows. Generals and priests are arrayed about him, their grim faces a sharp counter to the joyous men before them. Anthony Stevens, Viscount Darby, stands beside our hero, smiling behind his hand, which rests across his mouth and moustache, an odd mask to his jollity. His guards, unarmed, flap their wings appreciatively at his feet, the chicken Petunia and the dragon Icarus reserving any show of emotion, looking blankly from one purple bird to another. Witherspoon lurks at Stevens’s elbow, stealing reservedly indignant glances at the viscount.

“War has forged men’s lives on Althanas since the turning of history’s first page,” O’Mally continued. “And the life of the farmer or the fisherman has often been much the same as the life of the soldier or sailor. The sea may as well churn with blood for all that has been spilt by mankind. I say this not to excuse our fighting tonight, but rather to remind you all of the world’s violent wickedness. It has been our job, as followers of Ai’Bron, to fight that wickedness, to turn back its blows with our shields and staves as best we could. But we do not simply strike against it. No, we offer a salve to the world, a path to peace and the end of evil. And we offer this balm even to those we vanquish.”

The monks have taken off their armor, discarded their weapons, and now seem far smaller, like a small child taken out of a heavy winter coat. There is space between them that was filled by steel and leather the night before, before Aesphestos’ appearance, and now light flickering from dying torches and candles along the sides of the room easily passes between legs and arms, filling the entire space, opening it into a thicket of scrawny men in baggy habits. Nothing moves to close those gaps, and they only widen as one looks back toward the entrance doors, latched tightly shut. The night before, when the promise of battle was so pressing, the bodies crushed in upon our man, pushing in from either side as the monks clashed against each other. Now, it is impossible to feel near to anyone else. Although the monks cry and hurrah at all sides, some quiet reticence can be read on their faces, and our man sees that they feel it, too.

“Many city guards died last night, as did many of our own. But we reached down to both, regardless of the plumes or robes they wore, and pulled them back from death’s frigid abyss. They fought bravely, even if not for the purer cause, and we shall not judge them,” the platitude had the unspoken force of a command. “Punishment, if it is due, will be meted out to those who mislead them, fighting a war against the principles of humanity and kindness, the principles that have kept the monks at peace in Radasanth for a hundred generations.”

The words fade, buzzing quietly at the back of our man’s mind. He wonders where his manservant is – the ghoul had disappeared yet again, riding into the last shadows of dawn. Somewhere in the Citadel, a battle is still being fought, a battle that O’Mally only emphasizes by omitting it. Our man supposes he should feel some pity for those poor monks still fighting beneath the ground, killing other monks who no longer know what they are fighting for, but he feels little more than dullness, a silent counterpart to the buzzing in his ears. He remembers realizing he was sitting on top of his leg on the ramparts, thinks back to falling beneath the ice in the Citadel, remembers the last whispering gasps of his father. He feels tired and vaguely sick. He wishes he could slip out somehow, disappear behind a door and slide to the floor, sleeping before his hands fold together under his head.

An elbow nudges him, and he looks dully to the viscount, who is piercing him with a cold gaze, tapping his brother’s cane on the floor.

“Feeling tapped out?” he asks, rising from a mutter to a yell as the High Priest reaches a rhetorical crescendo and the monks around them rush the front in an ecstatic jubilee, leaping up and down, flailing their arms. Stevens nods without waiting for a response. “Typical. First battles depress most of us, but you’ll get over it once you kill a few more of them.” He nods, and turns away, a hint of a smile on his face.

Our man knows that, in this strange world, he is now completely alone.

[LordLeopold]

Stevens looked across his interlaced fingers at the colonel, steadying himself as their cart bounced along the unevenly dried roads. The colonel looked back at him, his face evincing none of the cruel triumph of earlier in the day, eyes dull, mouth working around a long stalk of hay stuck between two teeth, hands tied together and resting on his knees. Night lifted around them, day seeming to seep up from the ground, illuminating the dank cracks that the moonlight couldn’t break open. Although the cordons were unmanned or smashed, few people had ventured into the city; the duke thought he saw flashes of green plumes ducking down alleyways as the cart approached, but other than those glimpses the only humanity on the streets were men piling furniture and sacks on the backs of overburdened mules and horses that brayed their unhappiness at the weight. First of the refugees, they either fled back into their homes as the cart rattled past or glared out from under caps and furrowed brows.

Looking at the colonel, Stevens chuckled bitterly, realizing how soon before he’d made the same trip with this man, rattling in a cart through deserted streets. The colonel snorted in reply, apparently seeing the same black humor. They sat, suddenly drawn much closer, glumly looking into each other’s tired faces. Stevens didn’t know what the officer had been through the previous night, but he had heard enough about the battles at the Citadel and Armory to make a good guess. He’d waved off the viler details, silencing dozens of chattering militiamen with almost idle waves of his hand. They had been enlisted into the Entente by one foreign king or another, brought thousands of miles from home to an unfamiliar land, most without uniforms, many without suitable weapons, and yet still relished the pointless battle they’d been thrown in with little notice. It was too disturbing for Stevens to dwell upon. The idea of an attack on the Citadel was just as horrifying. It was his lodestone on Althanas, where he had been drawn in his first days in this strange world, and where, to a large degree, his life had been lived for many years since. Thinking of a war raging among its spires and towers shook him. Ironic, though, he thought to himself, Wars inside the Citadel never bothered me a whit. A quiver ran down his spine. Now they did.

Pushing bloody matters from his mind, the duke concentrated on the rendezvous ahead. By all accounts, it seemed the Entente was planning a treaty convention, council of war and criminal tribunal; an ambitious program, and one that called both he and this colonel to account. Immelman had tried to assign a guard to him before he left with this high-ranking prisoner, but Stevens had rebuked him soundly, and he now rode alone, although he thought he saw the bat-like wings of a dragon flap between rooftops several blocks to the north, a low-flying Ozternbergian spy in the sky. No matter. There was business to attend before returning to the baron’s mansion, and he intended to see to it, no matter Immelman’s thoughts on the matter. The trial and pontifications could wait. He leaned back, separating his hands, and looked down at his palms.

“Out, out damned spot…” he muttered, and sighed. It was time for an accounting. Far past time. He reached out, tapping the bulky driver on the shoulder. “Change of plans, old boy,” he cried over the creak of the wheels. “There are a few stops to make first…”

To Be Continued

[Ashiakin]

STORY

(Continuity - 7) Although I had not read part one of this series, I was able to figure out how everything fit together fairly early on. Still, I think this might be because I had some knowledge of your characters’ backgrounds that other people may not. You also didn’t seem to use the Corone information that has been posted on several occasions—you call the Baron of Radasanth Marion when he(she?) is listed as Paige Relvest. It also seems to me that in Radasanth the Baron is pretty much a figurehead and the Assembly holds most of the political power, but you have a pretty powerful Baron and I’m not sure you even mentioned the Assembly. Still, I’m not taking much off for this, since I think your story occurs almost in a self-contained world and you deserve a degree of artistic license.

(Setting - 8) There are plenty of threads that take place in Radasanth and feature the same sorts of descriptions of its landmarks—the Bazaar is bustling, the Citadel is big, etc. But you took these landmarks and really gave them a new life by using a lot of specific details that make them seem more alive. Your Radasanth seemed less like you were borrowing stock, common knowledge descriptions, but creating real ones.

(Pacing - 8) You moved back and forth between your two (pretty similar) characters easily and appropriately for the most part, without there ever being much confusion about who was where and what was going on. People say that writing solo quests are easier because you only have one vantage point, but with this you managed to lend a “solo” quest two distinct vantage points that were easy to separate, with even a few appropriate interjections from the Forgotten Ones thrown in to add more variety.

CHARACTER

(Dialogue - 9) The dialogue in regards both Leopolds and their British companions was, of course entertaining, but also appropriate. Still, the fact that you did a good job with the dialogue of the monks, the Forgotten Ones, and other characters shows that you can do more than British accents. All of your characters felt like real people—even though the Leopolds have accents, they are most certainly not gimmick characters.

(Action - 9) This was fantastic, basically. The “combat action” almost never let up, but instead of it being the mindless hack-and-slash action that dominates Althanas, it was entertaining and appropriate action that actually served to move the story forward. Everything else here was well-done—Leopold’s chase and capture, the chaos of the Citadel before and during the siege, and even the bits with the Forgotten Ones really served to add suspense. I can’t think of a time when things faltered.

(Persona - 8) Despite the fact that your two main characters are both pretty similar and are really seem to be based off stereotypes, you seemed to have portrayed them as remarkably real and dynamic people. They each have their different ambitions and moral quandaries and seem to deal with culture shock in different ways. You also had a great cast of supporting characters. My only complaint is that sometimes your villains seem to feel a little too Hollywood—but never to the degree that most people take it.

WRITING STYLE

(Technique - 9) I really enjoyed the commentary on the place of violence in Althanas that you addressed mainly through EarlStevens and his culture shock. The way you peppered that throughout your story and dealt with violence in a largely non-escapist fashion was pretty interesting. Still, I think my favorite part of this thread was where you talk about the distance between the monks when they’re no longer wearing armor—that was particularly cool and very nicely done, I thought.

(Mechanics - 10) You might have made a mistake somewhere along the line, but if you did, I honestly didn’t catch it. There’s no reason for me not to give you a ten here. Everything seemed punctuated and phrased properly.

(Clarity - 9) The fact that you had two fairly similar characters in alternating viewpoints might have been confusing to some, but I think that you handled switching back and forth between them and making them distinct in an admirable fashion. The fact that your narrative fit together well despite two pretty similar characters gives you a nine here.

OTHER

(Wild Card - 8) … There was a magic talking morphing pig! Awesome.

TOTAL – 85

EXP
LordLeopold receives 4460 EXP
EarlStevens receives 2030 EXP.

REPUTATION
LordLeopold gains five reputation in Corone.
EarlStevens gain five reputation in Corone.

REWARDS
LordLeopold receives the poten fah dagger and 200 GP.
EarlStevens receives 500 GP.

[Cyrus the virus]

EXP added.