Completed In the Eye of the City

[Josai]

An enemy uncovered, a call to action. It seemed like so long ago that the Knights of Anathaeum had gathered, to speak of the Everwatcher, and all the threats they posed. And now? Now the hunt for their enemy was real. The dark trace of their foul magicks a deep line that wafted through the air when seen through the magick light of Loch blue eyes.

To think. That so much doubt had been cast upon the pursuit. Josai's fingers curled against her spear at the memory. At the harsh words spat and the insults traded. Even as her bone charm rattled against silver bell and onyx marble so tied and dangling from the neck of her spear, she could see the distrust in their eyes. The doubt. But a moment of it. She saw it in his eyes then too. Did she see it now?

"Syr Lenry, on guard," the spear witch warned, and her off hand signaled to the building ahead of them.

It was a slouched thing, walls buckled and bowed, roof moss-covered, for it was in the shade of the wall itself. Funny, Josai thought, how the walls were always close to those too poor to live surely behind them. Those fortunate enough to find themselves behind them, still there before their shadow, the first to burn when they broke. Then there were those beyond them, outside their high rise.


"Understood," the foul tempered dawnling noted, and strode closer to the structure.

The air was cold around it. And Josai could see the fumes of a horrid magick emanating from it.

"There is no telling what lies beyond that gate, Syr Lenry," she warned him.

The Dawnling smirked with a bit of teeth. "Suppose we just sit back and watch?"

Josai hesitated, her blue-glow eyes scanned the building. Could see nothing behind the stones. "It is warded, Lenry," she emphasized. "I cannot pierce the veil of their spell."

A click of his teeth. A look of disappointment in his eyes. "Stand behind me then, and watch what the dawn does to those that hide in the shadows," he pressed himself against the stone wall, just outside the door.

Josai let out a cold breath, made frigid with fear, her hand held tight her spear, and her other hand signed seals to stir the magicks of wind and water. The brim of her wide hat shuttered and shook, and the silver bell charm flared along its blue string.

This would be a foul task. She felt it in her bones.

 

[Ysilia Iliandar]

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Alliria ...

The first fleeting rays of the dawn sun had scarcely yet begun to peek o'er the edges of the walls surrounding the Inner Circle. A faint chill of morning mist still clings to the empty streets, still wrapped as they were in that rarely witnessed lull of gentle stillness between the hustle of the night and the bustle of the morning; the time when even Alliria falls silent.

Powdered duskfoil. Sable root.

Ashrose Apothecary, located as it was at the end of a quiet street between the rears of the nearby houses, was no outward exception to the general quietude of the early morning. The gentle white stone of the unassuming building's walls gleams with a faintly rosy hue, the merest reflection of the approaching light of dawn. No movement to be seen but the shifting of shadows before the rising sun; no sound to be heard but the gentle creaking of the wooden sign that hangs above the front stoop, adorned not with words but rather with an elaborately painted silver rose; no light to be found in the brass-framed storefront window, framed and filled from within with the shadows of the crawling vines and potted plants that mostly obscure the Apothecary's interior from any outside observer.

A dash of cinnabar. Sparing, now, lest it spoil the rest.

Inside the walls, however, past the dim-lit, apothecary with its rows of shelves filled with phials and flasks and its walls lined with hanging herbs both dried and fresh, past the enclosed inner courtyard with its small stone benches and gravel paths so artfully interspersed with the carefully-tended flowerbeds that surround the flowering sweetplum tree in the center, past the slightly forbidding iron-bound doors set into the larger main building at the courtyard's rear, wakeful movement is in full sway, heedless of the early hour; in fact, it has been for some time.

Lastly, crushed shell from a siltsparrow egg. Let the crucible heat 'till the ashes blend.

The room, much like that of the apothecary storefront, is filled with the musk of a thousand mingling odors fair and foul alike. Countless tiny drawers line the walls from floor to ceiling, the brass candle sconces between them hanging unlit and unused. The room is warm; heat spreads from the crucible that hangs above a small charcoal brazier atop one of the stone-topped counters that fill the room's center.

With infinite care, Ysilia places the crucible's lid atop it with a long pair of metal tongs, her frail form focused and still, blind eyes focused unseeingly upon her work, before setting the tongs to one side. Each movement is measured and deliberate, like that of fragile clockwork come alive. One corner of her pale lips twitches slightly; from her, the equivalent of a wide smile of satisfaction.

"An hour's wait, at most. Perhaps a hair's breadth longer, but an hour should suffice." Her voice, soft and thin as a gently misting rain, nonetheless carries through the relative silence of the room, rivaled only by the gentle hissing of the flames beneath the crucible. No response from the towering, dark-haired man looming just behind and to her left; Alan might as well have been a statue, for all he reacted. But it seemed she had communicated all that was needed; with a measured turn, the Blind Healer shuffled slowly to the door, one hand gently tracing along the countertop for balance, her gaze as ever focused straight ahead on all the nothing she can see. Reaching the door, she paused, leaning against the wall for a moment as if to rest. "Come. We ought to open the shop; Rya will tend it once she wakes."

The door's aging hinges whined painfully as Ysilia opened it out into a hallway just as dark and unlit as the workroom she was leaving. With all the comfortable deliberateness of a memorized routine, she began her measured walk towards the doors out to the courtyard, one hand trailing along the wall to her right. Alan, after quietly shutting the workroom door behind him, follows patiently after his frail mistress like a vast, silent second shadow.

 

[Josai]

Hours before sunrise, in the outer ring.

Words of power fell from Lenry's lips, old words. Words that sounded of growls and roars and biting teeth. Words of the Wyld.

Gnash and tear,
with strength of claw and bear
Wyld howl
Wyld's call
Grant me power here!

Lenry's teeth seemed to grow sharper, his eyes wilder as the hairs along his skin grew thicker and his bulk swelled beneath his leathers and chainmail. Breath hot in the cold air of pre-dawn, a rattle in his throat. The dawnling snarled and surged forward, the heel of his boot smashed into the wooden door with a harsh crack and the barrier shook. He kicked it again, and again, and the door cracked open.

Josai regripped her long weapon. You will not be effective in there. Some part of her mind reminded her. Still, her speer was her focus, her charms helped her channel and weave magicks. She would have to make due. She would have to rely on Syr Lenry.

In they went. In to the dark belly of the bloated beast. Shadows swallowed them up. Josai's eyes went wide.

---

As the sun rises, at the Ashrose

There was a clamor at the door of the Ashrose. Rushed and hurried bangs against the barrier.

Syr Lenry shouldered the slumped Josai, her head hung weakly between her frame, deep red ran down her side, stained her blue robes, and his own hands were stained with crimson ichor. "Come on, come on," the dawnling huffed, as his fist rapped at the door once more. "Blind Healer!" he called out. "The Order is in need of your aid!"

His eyes darted one way, then the other. People were beginning to stir from their homes as dawn's sun peered over the walls of the city. Some of the peoples' eyes were wide with confusion, others with horror born from awareness. Blood had followed the man who pounded on the door of the Ashrose. Blood was being printed onto its door.

"I told you," Josai said meekly. "I could not see through the veil,"

Lenry snarled, tears run down his cheek as he rapped at the door once more. "Please! One of ours bleeds to death!"

 

[Ysilia Iliandar]

Mid-knock, the door swung abruptly inwards, nearly causing the Lenry to stumble forward as he found himself suddenly rapping his fist against thin air. Framed against the dim light within was the looming figure of a tall, dark-haired man with heavy bags beneath his eyes and—though he seemed otherwise fit—a slightly waxy complexion; a figure that, while perhaps intimidating to outsiders, was instantly recognizable to any past visitors to the Apothecary as being Alan, Ysilia's silent ... bodyguard? Servant? Perhaps all of the above, not that any of that mattered now.

Just inside and behind him, leaning with one hand against a nearby shelf, was the hunched, frail figure of the Blind Healer herself. She seemed all the tinier in comparison to her towering servant, who even now turned his head back towards her as if awaiting instruction. Her silvery, unseeing gaze was fixed in the direction of the now-open doorway.

There was a brief pause. Then—

"Carry her in, Alan. Quickly, now."

Soft and thin though the alchemist's voice might have been, it carried with it an air of unquestionable authority. Offering the barest of nods, the hulking man stepped out, leaning down to lift the injured woman up into a comfortable carrying position with no seemingly no more effort than that required to lift a feather. Turning back and ducking his head to clear the door, he moved swiftly over to Ysilia, who reached out carefully, resting her palm gently against Josai's forehead.

Her touch was cold. Her expression, now fixed unseeingly upon her patient, remained as blank and empty as ever, but there was a new note of tension in the alchemist's voice when she again spoke: "Josai. What—" Her words were abruptly cut off by a ragged, albeit quiet, series of coughs. Grimacing, she swallowed, letting her hand drop from the Knight's forehead; a faint seeming numbness lingered behind a moment in its absence. "—what happened?" But then, Ysilia shook her head slightly, immediately contradicting her own question. "No; save your breath."

Her head turned towards Lenry, almost as if she could actually see him. "You, Syr. What happened to you two?" Though the words themselves carried with them a sense of urgency, Ysilia's tone was almost icily calm and controlled; a bedrock of quiet competence amidst the rising panic of the situation.

 

[Josai]

Lenry clicked his teeth as he watched Alan carry his counterpart away. His instincts urged him to follow the big man but icy words gave him pause.

"What?" he almost growled, his voice a low rumble in his throat. "Is now the-" he huffed a breath, some part of his Wyld touched blood recalling what had transpired as he looked to the sticky red that coated his fingers, nails still formed into thick claws. "We happened upon a hide-out, we were hunting..." his eyes narrowed, and his lips tightened to a grim line. "Cultists,"

---

They broke through the door, the pupil of Lenry's eyes dilated as they scanned left and right, wide. His nostrils flared as he checked the scent of the still air. "Blood," he stated.

"Lots of it," Josai agreed, still at the door. In her magicked eyes she could see the long chains of rusted iron hanging from the ceiling. 'Its a butcher's hut," she said through gritted teeth.

Movement to their left.

"Hold the door, Josai!" Lenry growled as he rushed to intercept.

---

"They had warded the building with sigils," he narrowed his eyes. "Josai had tried to warn me," his still-clawed hand gripped into a fist. "It was a whole den of them, more than half a dozen," he looked to the healer, determined despite her blindness. "One caught her with a cursed weapon," he said, eyes twitching with a hint of shame behind them. "She warded their blows on my account, but I failed to hold them away from her," he admitted.

 

[Ysilia Iliandar]

Nothing seemed to change in Ysilia's expression as the Knight spoke; neither judgment nor reassurance could be read there. However, as she listened, she reached with her free hand into a small satchel hanging at her side. The distinct faint clicking of glass objects shifting against one another offers some faint hint into what lies within.

"Room three."

Though her unseeing gaze does not turn from Lenry, this directive, apparently, was not directed at him: Alan gave a single curt nod before—without any other outward acknowledgment—swiftly moving to carry Josai toward the back of the shop. As they departed, the alchemist withdrew something from her satchel: a small glass phial, filled with a silvery-blue liquid and neatly stoppered with a metal cork embossed with the same rose symbol as adorned the sign above the shop. Once Lenry had finished speaking, she held it out to him.

"Drink this. It will calm your nerves." The blind woman's head tilted slightly. Almost assessingly. "And ... cleanse yourself. Basin in the back, to the left of the counter. I'll have no more blood trailed through here." Though the words were spoken just as softly as before, there was once again something underlying Ysilia's tone that brooked no argument.

 

[Josai]

Lenry looked down at the phial, took it into his hands, with a clink of claw against glass, saw how the blood that coated his fingers stuck to the polished surface, how small bits of viscera clung there too. The healers words struck him like a lash.

Was he not a knight of the dawn? Was he not more capable than this.

The Dawnling bowed his head. "As you will, Healer," he mustered, and strode down to the basin, and began to rinse off the blood. With the cool clear water.

He recalled his training. Reports, tediuos, and strenuous in the heat of the moment, relayed valuable information. Helped act with more swiftness. Prevented further loss.

The basin was dark with Lenry's work. He stared at it a moment longer. Turned away and pulled the tab off the vial and quickly tossed it back. It was bitter stuff, and his face scrunched up to show his displeasure. He let out a cool breath, and looked to the healer anew.

"The weapons," he continued. "They bit through our guards, even if we blocked them, our flesh felt their bite," he looked down at himself, saw the red mouths that wept thin ribbons of red along his arms. "My wyld magic was able to deter most of the damage I would have taken, steel flesh, and life's ward," he wasn't sure if she was familiar with the martial spellcraft of the order, but maybe it would help.

"But they were many, two escaped after wounding Josai," he shook his head. "Their den is full of foul magicks, effigies to their...Everwatcher," he spat. "I must go back," but he knew to do so would likely be the death of him. He shook his head. "It was a butchering ground, Healer, a place where they made ready the bodies of their victims,"

---

The chains rattled as Lenry rushed in. She knew the man could see in the near pitch of the room, and so could she, the traces of bloodied objects and magicked weapons glowed as if lantern-kissed within the pools of her loch touched eyes.

Her spear point down, she guarded against the rush of the cultists. Paid little mind to their disfigured visages. The red pustules of sickness that scarred and scabbed about their missing eyes. She kept her heart steady, even as she thrust her weapon into the chest of one.

"On your left, Lenry!" she shout as she pulled free her weapon with a rightward twist of her hips, and a raise of her left hand, fingers pressed into the sign of a circle.

Blood coalesced about Lenry, the water there in its vital fluid called by the spear-witches' magick, and it hardened into ice to catch the blow of one cultist's wild swing.

---

"We were lucky in one thing, Healer," Lenry went on. "Their spellweavers were not there for this encounter,"

 

[Ysilia Iliandar]

The initial bitterness of the elixir quickly faded, replaced by a sweet aftertaste reminiscent of fresh almonds. A feeling of gentle, soothing cold spread down Lenry's throat, into his upper body, out to his arms, down his legs ... swiftly filling him, relaxing his muscles and focusing his mind.

Ysilia simply stood in silence, listening without comment as the Knight related his tale. However, his mention of the Everwatcher, at last, merited a reaction, albeit a small one: her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, pale face creasing into something resembling the ghost of a frown. As Lenry finished his account, the frail alchemist shuffled forward, reaching up to rest a thin hand against his shoulder. Even through his armor, her touch was cold, accentuating the already vaguely numbing effect of the medicine.

"Come, Syr. To the courtyard. Relax, while I—" she pauses a moment, swallowing what might be another coughing fit with a faint grimace, before continuing. "—while I aid Josai. I assure you ... she will be fine."

Dropping her hand from his shoulder, Ysilia turned away, taking her usual slow, measured steps toward the door at the rear of the shop, one hand against the edge of the adjacent counter for balance. Reaching the still-open exit—a finely-carved double door of dark chestnut, with frosted glass windows set into its upper half that, when it was closed, offered a blurry view of the almost idyllic courtyard beyond—through which Alan and Josai had passed but a moment ago, she simply continued through and on into the courtyard beyond without waiting to see if Lenry would follow.

---

As Alan carried Josai down the winding gravel paths of the courtyard and towards the (perhaps slightly forbidding) iron-bound double doors that represented the sole point of entry to the larger main building—the Ashrose Apothecary's supporting clinic and laboratory—at the back, the rosy gleam of the morning sun was at last fully beginning to spread across the sky, tinting the many-hued petals of the various flowerbeds with a gently bloody hue. The light seemed to gather in the petals of the myriad tiny golden flowers of the central sweetplum tree; it was in full bloom, though it would be some time before the flowers turned pink and bore their saccharine fruit.

Not that any of this beauty was much appreciated by Josai at this moment, of course. Even had her towering bearer paused long enough for her to stop and smell the sweetplums, the loss of blood was taking its toll; moreover, that curious numbness yet lingered from the Blind Healer's touch, blessedly easing the pain, but also clouding sense and mind alike. Or perhaps that was merely the shock? Hard to say what was real and what was not ...

Through the door, with its petulantly whining iron-bound hinges. Down the hall, dimly lit only by the light streaming through the entryway behind them, past the door on the left in which Ysilia had been working less than an hour before. On to the second door on the right, just in front of the familiarly iron-bound double doors at the end of the hall and facing an identical door across from it. Alan reached down with one hand, lifting the latch before shouldering it open and proceeding in almost without pause.

The room beyond, to the spear-witch's untrained eyes, was almost pitch-black; the dim silhouettes of stone countertops and drawer-lined walls that, had she seen the other workroom, would have seemed nigh-identical except for their lack of present use. Still carrying her gently in one arm like a baby, Alan reached down to the side of the first counter and swung open the cabinet, withdrawing a thick, rolled white sheet. Straightening and shutting the cabinet with his foot, he unfurled the sheet across the countertop with a single neat flick of the wrist, before gently setting Josai down on it with practiced ease. There was something almost robotic about the motions; the sort of casual efficiency of one who had performed this same task a thousand times before.

The sheet was surprisingly soft and comfortable; hard to identify the material, particularly in near-total darkness and in a less-than-lucid state. The room, too, thanks to its surrounding stonework construction, was comfortably cool without being too chilly. Alan, having completed his appointed task, stepped back and stood next to the door, a silent watcher waiting for the alchemist's arrival.

 

[Bebin Theros]

In the hours of the pre-dawn, as the Butcher's Hut is raided

It was difficult work. Though few understood it. A series of pools and tributaries, a web, like a chain of rivers and lakes. Always seeking to flow, to escape. But that was why he was there, a Pursuant of Loch, to tend the fragile system he and his fellow Duskers had anchored together through this wild of stone and mortar, with rune and glyph stones set as points to connect their artificial leylines. Threads of magick, upon which so many psyches skipped and swam, feint traces of thought that stirred the flow of mind's waters.

A domain of magick, a field of communion they wove in the dark of night.

Through the sewers, they were able to move about the city, setting points of connection with their rune-stones. Filth, beyond anything the wilds would ever allow, a putrid stench of ceaseless waste. Still, it was in this waste that the city bound itself to the greater wylds. To the untamed seas that were the source of so much of its power. This same power that would aid the Knights of Anathaeum, so far from home.

It was down in the sewers that the Basilisk sat. Face scrunched into stony grimace, eyes shut as he delved into the realm of the Loch. His breath steady, his legs crossed, his mind between the the waking world and the subconscious. It was in that space, where up was down and down was up, that he could see the feint tethers of their linked minds.

Pride. Steel. Panic. Rage. Agony.

Bebin's lips twitched with disgust as he felt but ripples of what thy felt. His sworn kin. Josai and Lenry.

The Ashrose, he sent.

It passed, and so too did the wake of their minds. Their psyches carried off by raging currents. Away from the field, away from the domain they had so painstakingly prepared.

Faramund, went a pulse of thought across the brick-minded Dawnling's fortress of perplexity.

Petra, went a pulse across grey matter of the dragon rider turned Knight of the order.

Lenry and Josai are out of the field. Josai is wounded, potentially out of comission. His mind worked to communicate to them. What words whispered through the flow of Loch, only they would know, but he could feel them still, patrolling about their area of operations, within the field of communion they had set up. So Bebin, would make sure if they heard one thing, it would be the last pulse of thought. Our enemy is here. And their minds would be drawn to the butchering hut.

A long breath left the Pursuant's lungs. He was tired. But there was much work left to be done. Bebin rose, and dusted what dirt had clung to his coat. He would make his way to the Butcher's hut, and trust that the Blind Healer remained loyal to the Order. For there was blood to answer for, and threats to quell.

 

[Ysilia Iliandar]

The Ashrose Apothecary, just after dawn ...

The soft clicking of slow, measured footsteps pierced Josai's uneasy reverie. Turning her head from her prone position, she would see the frail, spectral figure of the Blind Healer silhouetted in the door. In the dim light filtering in from the hallway, there was something vaguely ethereal and unsettling about that image. Not that the Knight had anything to be afraid of, of course; after all, of all people, Ysilia Iliandar would never hurt a fly, let alone a patient in need.

"Clean shop. Help Rya when she wakes."

At the curt order, Alan merely nodded once, before turning to make his way past the alchemist and into the hallway. The hulking manservant's oddly quiet footsteps could be heard receding down the hall, followed by the distinctive squeal of the entryway's unoiled hinges and the slam of the iron-bound door closing. Ysilia, meanwhile, turned her unseeing gaze toward her patient, shutting the door behind her with a proportionally much softer "click" and plunging the two of them into darkness.

"I'll need you to sleep, Josai. It will make this ... easier."

A faint movement, in the darkness. A pale, slender hand emerging from the shadow, frail fingers resting across Josai's eyes and forehead. A numbing chill, spreading from that touch, filling her with something between relaxation and exhaustion. That soft, soothing voice with its eternal icy calm, lulling the Knight into the deepest depths of dreaming.

"To sleep ..."

---

As Josai drifted into a deep slumber, Ysilia straightened, breathing in deeply and pausing for a moment. Not for too long, of course; a moment, and no longer. But then, it was so difficult not to savor it, after all ...

Swiftly now, lest the curse spread further.

And so the Blind Healer went about her work. The tools first, as ever; with practiced ease, she drifted from one end of the room to the other, opening drawers and withdrawing their contents with the casual precision of one who knew every last inch of her space down to the most minute details.

First, the starglass knife: razor-sharp and razor-thin; harder than steel, yet light as a feather. The metal would have revolutionized the marketplaces of warfare long ago, had the world's smiths only had the wit to learn its make—and, perhaps more importantly, a willing tutor. To the countertop, it went.

Then, the brazier, set beside the knife on the counter. Pre-loaded with tiny cubes of charcoal as it was, it took but a twist of the ingenious knob at the base to set the spark and light the flame. A brass bowl was placed atop it, filled with what might at first seem like ordinary water but for the strange, sickeningly sweet smell that filled the air as it slowly heated to a boil.

Next, the gloves. Fashioned of dark leather; tight-fitting, extending nearly to Ysilia's elbows; marked with curiously embroidered runes on the backs of the hands. Neatly folded, they were placed beside the brazier.

An ivory needle, accompanied by an impossibly thin yet nigh-unbreakable silvery twine. A washbasin of slightly warm water with a faintly minty scent. A pair of tweezers, as long and thin as the alchemist herself. Assorted freestanding bowls and trays. A copper mixing rod. Various flasks and phials, all filled with strangely-colored liquids. A roll of bandages. A mortar and pestle. Each item was set in its proper place along the counter, laid out with almost uncanny precision. And last of all, from a drawer at the very back of the room, one of the few fastened with an actual lock whose key was kept in Ysilia's satchel, a small elmwood box bound and fastened with the purest silver, which was placed at a healthy distance from the other items on the countertop.

A light touch, remember; as light as a baby's breath.

Taking up the starglass knife and placing her free hand ever-so-gently at the injury to guide herself, the alchemist took a steadying breath and—with infinite care—neatly sliced away the armor and fabric surrounding the hideous wound in Josai's side in a perfect square, all without so much as nicking the skin beneath. No need for tedious disrobing or risking aggravating the injury; this was at once both quicker and cleaner.

The fabric was cast aside, and a dampened cloth used to gently sponge the wound clean of the caked blood and grime. Had Ysilia been able to see, she might well have grimaced at the unpleasant sight that was thus revealed in the flickering light cast by the brazier: the gash was both long and deep, the edges puckered and dark, and an unnatural blue-black shadow was spreading out from the injury, just beneath the skin; the curse was spreading. But, free as she was from the disadvantages of sight, the alchemist continued about her work unflinchingly.

Now for the Læchstone.

Donning the gloves and flexing the fingers to check their nimbleness, the alchemist reached for the elmwood box, opening it with what one who knew her well might have recognized as a certain decisive trepidation. From within, she carefully withdrew a small, porous stone, pitch-black in shade, so dark that it seemed almost to swallow the very light. Upon contact, the runes on the backs of the gloves abruptly flared with an ugly reddish light, a hint of which ever-so-faintly limned the gloves themselves. Without hesitation, Ysilia turned back to the counter on which Josai lay and pressed the stone to the center of the wound.

At once, the still-unconscious Knight's lips parted in a strangled, agonized cry, her back arching as the breath was driven explosively from her lungs. The stone gleamed almost hungrily, gradually becoming suffused with a dark light of the same disturbing blue-black shade as the spreading curse. Her very veins ran black, visibly pulsing, the energies within flowing relentlessly toward the stone; her every muscle was tensed, yet held rigid in the grip of an unnatural paralysis. Her dreams of this would be dark, but then, that was as it should be: a poison to draw the venom from within.

Not too long, lest her magic be devoured by the stone as surely as by the curse.

After nearly three long, agonizing minutes that might as well have been three years, Ysilia withdrew the now-glowing stone, leaving Josai to collapse, shuddering faintly, tears streaming down her as-yet blessedly unconscious face. The alchemist remained as unmoved and expressionless as ever as she deposited the stone back in the box from whence it came, before removing the gloves and neatly folding them beside it.

A close thing. Only a few minutes longer, and it would have been too late.

Now, at least, matters grew simpler. The curse was gone; the patient's magic would recover, in time. All that was left was to treat this as any other wound. Reaching down, Ysilia felt for the leather straps coiled just beneath the edges of the countertop, spreading them across and fastening them on the other side to bind the Knight in place; after all, on the off-chance the patient woke, it was always safer for them to be immobilized.

First, to cleanse it. A drop of velanthol, no more.

A scrap of fabric, held delicately in the tweezers to avoid touching it directly, was soaked in the cloying, sweet-smelling fluid heating above the brazier and used to clean the wound in full.

Now to seal it. Freedom of movement, yet strength of binding.

This called for the spool of silvery thread, spun from an alloy akin to starglass. With the bone needle in hand, Ysilia set to work, neatly stitching the torn flesh together by touch alone. When the final knot was set, save for the faint glint of silver at regular neat intervals, one could scarcely tell there was a wound at all.

Lastly, the poultice. Wrappings to prevent infection.

A soft, gauzy fabric was soaked in various potions and concoctions, and powdered with dried herbs ground in the mortar and pestle. With the ease of long practice, Ysilia pressed it to the wound, before taking the bandages and wrapping them tightly and securely about Josai's midsection to hold it in place; her slender arms proved quite helpful here, allowing her to reach in through the gap cut earlier in the Knight's garb.

Finished, at last. Although the Blind Healer's expression did not change outwardly, there was a certain air of satisfaction about her as she unfastened the straps and stowed her equipment back in their various drawers among the myriad others that lined the walls. When all else was done and dealt with, Ysilia came at last to the elmwood box; snapping it shut, she slipped it carefully into the satchel at her side, before opening the door and shuffling out into the hall at her usual measured pace. Josai would be asleep for some time, and as such would need no attendance; the crucible she'd left burning nearly an hour past, however, was another matter entirely.

 

[Josai]

It had taken place in snippets. Flashes of light that made it through her heavy lidded eyes. Her side burning. She could feel something there, spreading through her veins. Like malignant roots, digging through the soil of her flesh.

Remember your training, Josai.

A feint voice called to her.

Though the storm winds howl, all is calm beneath the black mirror,

Dive, into the Loch,

Find peace, beneath its waves,

Find calm, bellow its depths,

Weightless there in its expanse, orient your mind.

While her mind was null to the waking world, it could still act in the Loch. Channel her energies to resist the curse and keep it from spreading so quickly through her own blood, through the rivers of her flesh. But there too in that pursuit of mind's waters, she could see them. They of Many Eyes. Minions of the Everwatcher. She could hear the voices of that distant council. Could still see that cloak of one hundred eyes, wreathed as it was in Loch's light.

Had it pierced that veil then, as she was unable to do today? For if their master lurked in the depths that was her pursuit, aided by the catalysts of blood and flesh, charged by the energies of suffering and agony. Could they not do more than she?

A mere sworn. A witch with a spear. A girl from a burned down village on the bayou.

She could still see one of those eyes, looking at her. Then as it did now. Opened up in the rendered flesh of her side. Pupil red and violent, turned to purple and blueish black. Like vile ink. She raised a hand to it. Willed her magicks contain it. Bu it only went on looking. Pupil searching. It drank in what light she wove against it. Until a greater glow burned beyond it. Beyond her. It drew in all that was there in the trace of her mind.

A hunger, most unnatural.

Agony spiked through her. Her whole body twist and contorted as it pulled at her strings, and breath left her lungs in a whimper and a cry.

Her nose was long before her eyes, covered in dark brown fur, her hands pink and clawed, grasped clumsily at her spear. The man smiled down at her, jagged blade in his hand. she raised her spear against him. Wood snapped like a broken bone. She lay face down in the mud, and the rain, the rain never stopped pouring, all against her skin. Beaded off her hair, rolled down the side of her dark haired snout.

Waves washed against her. Lapped all about her, lifted her off the silt and sand and in a draining suck pulled her out to sea. Dragged her out into the water. Dark and cold and relentless. It lapped and pound and pulled her out, ever out. She swam, for what else could she try to do but swim against the pull of something greater than her. Arms and legs struggled as pain pulsed and stabbed and strained at her side. How her tail whipped frantically, back and forth in figure S. How her body tucked and tried to cut through the brackish drain.

A maw. Dark as the moonless sky, if only the stars themselves had gone out. A maw, abyssal with but a distant fire burning down in its fathomless depths, yawned wide and bid her welcome.

All while so many eyes did watch, wide and open, in the place of all those vanished stars. They swirled about her. Near and far. They watched as she struggled. Watched as she paddled and swam, rat that she was, witch that she was, just trying to stay alive. Damn the order. Damn her kin. She just wanted to live. She just wanted to scream. But to scream would cause her to drown. To scream would give the eyes but one more lid from which to peer through.

Round and round they went. Down the hole they drained. Till all was quiet. All was black. Warm, peaceful, black.

 

[Faramund]

The Butcher's Hut reeked, but not of meat and blood. No, this place stinks of skulduggery, Faramund thought, standing in the doorway of the hut Bebin's message had led him to. A small, unassuming place, it blended in amongst the tenement blocks and warehouses and stores like a needle in a barn full of hay. On any other day, Fara might have ignored the place entirely. Not today, though.

Stepping over the threshold, the dawnling drew his sword. He felt his skin crawl as he passed under the mantel. Warded, he mused, smiling as he took in the room.

Beams of sunlight pierced the shuttered windows through broken slats. Dust motes danced there, innumerable and ever-shifting. In the half-light, the knight saw blood. Black blood. It stained the floorboards and the walls, and the old counter running the length of the back wall. There was a door beyond it, closed. The air stank of mould and decay and some sort of strange incense that the dawnling couldn't quite place.

The room to his left was empty, the space to his right... equally so.

Stepping deeper into the hut, Faramund made his way behind the counter. Studying the ground at his feet, he noted the patterns and swirls his brethren's passing had made in the dust. Spots of blood flecked the knotted wood, here, there. A dark streak led towards the door. Someone dragged a body through here, the knight surmised, hard eyes lifting towards the latched doorway.

Cautiously, quietly, he crept his way closer. The hut creaked and groaned around him, as if noticing a trespasser for the first time. Putting a hand to the door, Faramund eased it open, his grip tightening about his blade's hilt as the door swung wide. He half expected to find cultists within. Instead... another empty room. A table, a few chairs, cupboards.

Glancing around, the dawnling's eyes drifted lazily over a trapdoor in the floor. For some reason it hurt to look at the damn thing. Faramund already knew what it was even before his gaze returned to it. An illusion. Aye, that was what it was. A trick conjured up to disguise, and deflect. The cultists had done a good job with it, too. He wasn't sure how he knew that, only that he did.

Like an anomaly, it caught the knight's attention, and held it firm. Some considerable time had passed before Faramund heard footsteps approaching from outside. Sinking into the room's shadows, the dawnling waited for the owner to appear.

Bebin Theros Ysilia Iliandar

 

[Bebin Theros]

At the Butcher's Hut

Metal rang out through the hut. The familiar sound of chain skirts clinked against plate, set to the soft sound and rustle of cautious gates. Gasps caught in throats.

"Alliria preserve us," came a gruff and gravel voice from the main room. The sound of slow shuffling footfalls followed next.

"What in the hells were they doing here?" a young woman's voice came next.

"Butchery, by the looks of it," the gruff and gravel voice remarked, and the sound of the large metal chains and hooks that hung from the ceiling clinked against each other, sharp and clear. "Smells like pig,"

"There is fresh blood smeared against the walls,"

A grunt of acknowledgment. "We already know two suspects fled the scene, Willard and Ront are on the trail,"

The footsteps drew closer to where Faramund hid. Cautious. Careful.

"Sargent Mardu!" came a new voice from the door, full of alarm. "We've trailed the suspects, they've hidden away in... well... the Ashrose,"

Sargent Mardu grumbled. "Of course they did," he cleared his throat. "Post a guard around this place, no telling who might lurk their way back here, Wendri,"

The soft footfalls stopped short of the doorway to the next room. "Sir?" she said as she called back.

"The healer seems to hate you the least, so, lets get on over there, we can call for another team to come sweep this place,"

Wendri made a sound of disapproval, small and to herself. "Right, on it, Sir," she said and the party shuffled out.

---

In the sewer tunnels

Bebin made his way through the tunnel systems, his mind able to feel faint traces of his allies as they moved about the area within the network of runes and leylines. Faramund had moved toward the hut... but what of Petra?

The sensation faded. The feedback that bounced from their minds, the tension of emotions and effort, dissipated, like so much mist beneath a high-noon sun.

"Someone has severed the leylines," he muttered to himself, and his eyes flashed with an all-seeing blue. His lips cut to smirk. "Veiled from the light of Loch?" he called out to the strange form that rippled and shimmered in obscurity before him. It made no sounds. Bebin narrowed his eyes. "Come on then," he growled as he drew his curved blade.

 

[Petra Darthinian]

The great beating of dragon wings moved to the same rhythm as Petra's anxious heart. Her curls slicked back against her skull as the inky tendrils danced into knots with the wind. Dragons, she delightfully found, were born with an innate sense of direction; so after briefly consulting with fellow Sworn at the monastery over a map of Alliria, she jumped into her saddle and Norvyk had set their course for the area of the Ashrose Apothecary as they answered a call to aid. That call being from one Knight of Loch, known to many, as the Basilisk. The urgency of his message acting like a pack of hounds snapping at her heels. Urging her ever forward, ever faster to his plea.

Not fast enough. Her intrusive thoughts argued. The elf had received no further contact from Bebin Theros. Only that a pair of Knights had faced opposition and one of them, Josai, had been hurt. The resulting trepidation from being stuck in the unknown, had her tightening her grip hard enough against the leather handholds of her saddle that she heard its creaking protests over the wind.

The saddle partially laid Petra's top half against the bottom length of her dragon's neck. The position keeping her secure in the saddle. While thankfully, Norvyk's head and neck blocked most of the prevailing gusts that resulted from how fast he cut through the air. His body shaped to rule the skies with terrifying might and agility.

She still was in awe of the craftsmanship that Rulgak had imbued into the saddle, she grew up with her father raising Farregryn horses, and had a good eye for quality made tack; and Rulgak's had been second to none, especially for her first time. The blacksmith had adhered admirably to every schematic request from the dragon rider duo. Even suggesting additions from her own ingenuity and experience in combat.

The most important addition being a wide leather belt that wrapped around Petra's waist and attached her at two forked points to the pommel of her saddle. The better to keep her in the saddle and her arms free during any sort of aerial battles they encountered.

But there was something other than the saddle that allowed Petra to enjoy dragonflight the most. She had been bitter for some time about the physical changes that the Harmonic bond had taken from her. Norvyk was aware of how she felt, but simply took it in stride. He claimed that all great magicks came with a price. And that what she paid was in equal value to what he had bestowed upon her. She may have lost the rich brown eyes she had inherited from her mother, Sinjé. But in turn, the dragon eyes that took their place, also came with a retractable clear eyelid to protect her vision from the wind as they flew. An invaluable asset that she had not anticipated needing. It had helped to shed new appreciation for the changes her body had gone through. Seen more now as a gift, than a curse. Or at least, that's what she tried to convince herself of.

Unfortunately, her gifts didn't come with the same  binocular vision of her dragon counter part; their kind able to spot prey from miles above, like a hawk, allowing them to focus quickly as they dove. Making them efficient and deadly predators, not including the innate magick each subspecies could command at will.

Static jumped up her legs from where they braced in the natural dip in front of Norvyk's shoulders. She could feel the predatory anticipation beginning to build through the gilded cord of their bond. He knew they were hunting a threat, and he was eager to render flesh from bone and to scream thunderous fear into the hearts of those that would oppose his might.

His rumbling baritone rolled into her head a moment later, "I believe I have found it, Rider. If you wish to see what I see, close your eyes and focus on the cord between us. Listen to my heartbeat. To its eager dance for the hunt. And imagine seeing through my eyes..."

In accordance to his instructions, Petra closed her eyes and turned her focus inward. Grabbing hold of that bright humming cord between them. She imagined seeing through the eyes of her storm dragon. Imagined experiencing the world with the sights that he beheld and the colors that he witnessed.

She felt herself falling into Norvyk's mind, a vast space not meant for mortals. She knew if she lingered too long here, she would be overwhelmed and rendered mad.

But instead of being swallowed by the enormity of him, he plucked her from his primordial mind and enveloped her in the luminance of his essence. Lightning sparked around her and with a sharp inhale, the cord bloomed into an active flame in her chest, searing her with its golden heat. The resulting music racing through her blood, the tempo gaining momentum in a symphonious climax.

"Open your eyes." Came his melodic voice from all around her.

The experience was a novel one, both difficult for her brain to process and even more so to try and explain. For she felt her body still in the saddle, the cold air stinging her cheeks. And yet, when she opened her eyes, the world was envisioned anew. The forest beneath them was in stark detail, so much life abounded within that she would have otherwise missed. And the clarity from this distance that she could never hope to achieve with her normal vision.

It startled a laugh from her throat. Their mission momentarily forgotten in her jubilant discovery.

"Why did I not know we could do this?!"

"There was no need until now."

"I beg to differ, you overgrown lizard!"

"Hmmm.." Came his noncommittal answer, colored by quiet amusement.

Another zap danced its way up her legs, followed by a stoic, "Focus. Look, there"

And she gasped at the experience of her vision shifting without any movement of her own body as Norvyk turned his bi-horned head to the east. Narrowing in on a seemingly inconspicuous white stone building at the end of a row of humble houses.

She noted a small patch of clearing near the shop.

"There!" She quipped.

He grunted in agreement. "Hold on."

She scoffed inwardly, "You don't have to tell me tw—"

He tucked his wings and dove. Petra swallowed her scream at the drastic change in force. Instinctively bracing herself closer to his body so as to become more aerodynamic, finally having learned after lifting from the saddle too many times before for her stomach's constitution.

Now she was experienced enough to feel nothing but the inherent dangerous thrill of flight.

The ground barreled closer to the them at dizzying speeds. But with the sight of her dragon, took in every detail she could, noting no obvious signs of a disturbance around the shop.

The storm dragon flared his wings moments before impact and landed with a dull thud. His muscles tense beneath her as he readied himself for anything.

With surprisingly little effort, Petra encouraged her mind to recede from Norvyk's. To breath deep and find her way back into her own body. And there was... some almost reluctance from that melodic cord to let her go. It's music trailing off and settling into that quiet hum that never quite left them.

Inhaling, the songweaver settled back into her own skin and opened her eyes. Blinking rapidly at not only the adjustment, but the startling lack of depth and color her normal vision only seemed capable of. She felt a small loss at its lackluster normality, but quickly shook herself back to reality as she narrowed her gaze onto the small shop.

She was a Knight of Anathaeum and she would not leave without answers or righteous vengeance on behalf of her kindred.

Josai Faramund Ysilia Iliandar

 

[Faramund]

At the Butcher's Hut...

Faramund listened as the voices began to recede. For a moment there, the knight thought he might have had to fight it out with the City Guard. An outcome none among the Order would have hoped for, that. But it would have been easier than explaining to them why he was at the Butcher's Hut. Indeed, Faramund had been over the scenario in his head many a time during the cultist hunt. And every time he had come up short, lost on what to say or how to say it.

He had never been good with words. Or the authorities, for that matter.

He was, however, one hell of a tracker. And with Syr Bebin acting as his dusk counterpart, the two had done a relatively good job of clearing the surrounding district of the Watcher's zealots. Yet for every den we clear, every evil we expunge, there is always another just waiting to be found, Faramund thought, standing in silence by the door as he waited, listening with ears peeled for signs of discovery.

Though they were making progress, it never did to be overzealous. Caution would serve better in this instance, he felt. Perhaps Syrs Lenry and Josai had believed different, but where had that got them? In a pinch, that's where. Faramund remembered Bebin's words well, and had repeated them more than once on the way over.

"Lenry and Josai are out of the field. Josai is wounded, potentially out of commission," he had said, sounding so very matter-of-fact about it all. The connection's doing, Faramund chose to believe. Bebin was a cold man when he needed to be, true, but he wasn't without a heart. The loss of a friend effected him in much the same way it did every other hot-blooded mortal. He had just gotten good at hiding it was all.

A minute passed as Faramund stood there, alone with his thoughts. The hut creaked eerily from time to time, and there was scuttling coming from the walls. Rats, perhaps. Watchers.

Stepping free of the encroaching shadows, Faramund made his way over the trapdoor. The guardsmen were gone for now, he reckoned. The serjeant's parting words to his subordinate had only reinforced the knight's belief in that regard. A couple would have been left behind to watch the hut. Fortunately, Faramund got the distinct feeling that he wouldn't be leaving through the front door.

Odds were he wouldn't be leaving at all if he ran into whatever had seen his comrades off. The big Sworn didn't mind all that much. Come what may, he would meet his fate with the same resolve he had shown atop that windswept plateau all those months ago, during his first confrontation with the Watcher. Live or die, I shall meet my Maker knowing I fell with steel in hand, and fire in my eye. Smiling wanly to himself, the knight of dawn heaved the trapdoor open.

Darkness loomed there, but deeper in... a flicker of light. Warmth. Hope?

Just a torch, he mused, descending into the unknown.

Bebin Theros Ysilia Iliandar Petra Darthinian

 

[Josai]

In the courtyard of the Ashrose
​

To be relegated to waiting. Sitting aside and out of the action. It was not something Lenry was used to. A combat specialist, with a gruff way about his mannerisms, he had his place. He spoke well enough, and was usually smart enough to know when to listen. And yet now. Now he felt adrift.

Oddly calm, given the direness of their circumstances. Of what they saw and faced. A butchers hut, yes. But people were not meant to be butchered like that. Split open like so much cattle. Their eyes, reduced to little more than angry red pits. Like mouths wide agape and screaming. Lenry shook his head. Did away with the dark memory. Gave in to the strange calm the Healer and induced in him.

Guilt could wait for later. Now he could only think of what else he could tell the Healer. What else might help them find and root out these cultists. A shadow, dark and large darted across the grass of the courtyard.

"What the," he looked up, and saw the trail of wings and a tail. "No..." he said to himself, in disbelief. "She brought the dragon?!" he growled beneath his breath, and hurried toward the street.

---

Outside the Ashrose ​

It had started as little more than squinted eyes and lazy fingers pointed up at the sky. What was that? So many mouths seemed to ask. Too big to be a bird. Too big to be even a griffon or a great eagle.

"That's a fookin dragon!" one sharp eyed bread-peddler called out, rolling his barrel of freshly baked goods away with hurry and alarm in their step.

People screamed, and hurried away as the large creature fell to the earth, like a stone let fall from fling of a distant catapult. Screams and shouts as mothers hurried their children indoors, and men grabbed up their things to run before death came. What guard were already on route to the Ashrose stopped.

Sargent Mardu blinked, his jaw dropped as he felt the shaft of his spear in hand. "Guard, forward, forward!" he called. "Loose formation, Wendri, Jesson, ready your crossbows, Filk, go and sound the alarm!" It was not too long ago a dragon visited Alliria. Brought in a whole army of dead, and necromancers out of who the fuck knows where. Left a whole mess of corpses walking about, and left a whole mess of shit for everyone to clean up. Sargent Mardu wasn't going to take any chances.

When the dragon landed, the guards, bravely, foolishly, tried to form up around it, their spear points aimed at the creature that would likely kill them with one breath, or snap of jaw, or whatever other treachery dragons wielded.

"Rider!" Wendri called out. "Sargent Mardu, there is a rider on that beast!" she warned. "Could be friendly?"

Mardu held his spear in hand, "Filk! Hold!" he bellowed. Somewhere down the street, Filk heard the old sargeants shout, and near tripped over his boots. Mardu squinted at the dragon and its rider, tucked behind a shield he knew would do little to save him, his spear still pointed out and with menace as his fellow guardsman stood about, on guard and with weapons drawn.

Everyone watched with baited breath. While those in the shadows scurried away.

Faramund Petra Darthinian Ysilia Iliandar

 

[Ysilia Iliandar]

Just inside the Ashrose Apothecary ...

The apothecary's floor, just a short while ago stained with Josai's blood, had been scrubbed to perfect cleanliness. It had not, however, been dried whatsoever, and the polished oaken floorboards were still slick with water and the remnants of various substances even more slippery. Even now, Alan had just crouched down to rummage through the cabinets behind the counter in search of a fresh rag to mop up the remnants of his cleaning.

As Lenry practically sprinted back into the main store of the Ashrose, slamming the door open in his heedless wake, he had no time to realize his mistake. The Knight had scarcely gone two steps when he hit the freshly-mopped pool of soapy water, sending him fully airborne into a glorious head-over-heels cartwheel more graceful than that of any acrobat before slamming down flat on his back hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. And also quite possibly hard enough to bash in his tailbone, to boot.

"No running in the apothecary, please."

The voice was both curt and dry, and above all, exceedingly disinterested. Looking up from his suddenly supine position, Lenry would see, looking down at him blandly from over the counter, a dark-haired woman who looked to be somewhere in her mid-twenties. Her eyes were a watery grey with a faint hint of tan, and everything about her—from her pale complexion to the dark circles under her eyes to the impassive, no-nonsense set of her expression—bespoke a certain impatient weariness.

Now, looking down at the Knight on the ground, the woman sighed in exasperation. "Ms. Iliandar has enough work without customers injuring themselves with tomfoolery, you know. As do I." With her admonishment delivered, she went back to what she had apparently been doing before the interruption: sorting through a bundle of dried flowers with long, spindly petals of a deep crimson shade. As she picked up each new flower, she neatly plucked the petals free with practiced efficiency, setting them to her right in a small ceramic bowl before discarding the stems in a heap to her left.

Behind her, Alan stood up, a colorless rag in one hand, and stepped out from behind the counter, kneeling down and beginning to scrub at the floor a foot or so behind Lenry's head. The hulking man didn't even bother to acknowledge the Knight's presence, simply working in characteristically disconcerting silence.

 

[Bebin Theros]

In the sewers of the outer district, in route to the butcher's hut

With long ragged breaths, Bebin held tight the curved blade of his weapon, sweat beading down his brow as he grinned a beast's grin, teeth bared and a wyldness in his eye. The thing before him, still shrouded in its ripples of light and shadow, near invisible in the darkness of the sewer system.

But the eye was only one facet of the Loch. For much was bound to the wiring streams of the fathomless pool, and more touched by its tributaries and branches. Even here, in this pit of waste, the waters of the greater sea did run, and the oceans might too, pulsed in the shallow strains of Alliria's sewers, so channeled by mason's stone and architect's visions.

Bebin smirked. For he could not see the creature. But he could feel it. With every hair along his being, and the wiry main of his beard. He could feel this thing that cloaked itself before him. For water was in the air itself, and he was no mere squire, new to the ways of the Loch.

The Pursuant's brow twitched, eyes widening as a shimmer struck forward, a length of glittering spike. The blue jewel in Bebin's bracer glowed bright, a bulwark of blue rippled out, like bubble blown from the silver hoop that set the stone, It formed into a shield, a dome of magick from which the spike did skirt away, veering off course before it struck into the brick wall just behind.

Bebin sprang forward, in toward the invisible mass, his sword low as his feet slapped against the wet stonework, the curved point of his weapon traced a line in the vile stream to his right. With a cut and shift, he brought the blade up, tendril of water trailing behind is edge like a razor whip.

Sliced. The shimmering form stumbled back, its cloak of obscuring light faded, and two spheres of pewter shimmered with blue refraction that traced along its shimmering coat.

Wide eyed, Bebin took in the creature's true form.

Taller than he. All spines and bones and malformed. A body like a terrible legged clam whose shell was made of splintered ribs and spiked with spines turned urchin's barbs. It looked hard and near metallic. Its sickly sleek surface glistened like putrid oils.

"Abomination," Bebin growled between gritted teeth.

Its twin spheres scraped and ground in their sockets, runework glowed purple and blue, and once more its cloak of obscuration grew back around its form.

With a jerk, the spine it had projected and shot out whipped back, and through Bebin's Loch lit eyes he could see the traces of water that still clung to the thing's outline. He could see its spines rattle and shake, though they made no sound his ears could hear. A second spine shot out, then a third.

Bebin braced for the blow to come. ​

Faramund

 

[Faramund]

The cellar was as dark and depthless as the Loch in which his brother liked to swim. But, unlike Syr Bebin's mind-lake, the cellar smelled. Of rot and mould. And... death. The trail that had begun upstairs in the shopfront ended at the last step. Blood specked the cold stone beneath Faramund's feet. Following the droplets with his gaze as they disappeared into the dark, the knight of dawn took a moment to allow his eyes to adjust. The shadows surrounding him seemed to shift whenever he wasn't looking, but when he did...

Stillness. Absence of life. A butcher's cellar, nothing more. So why then did he feel so ill at ease?

A lone torch burned at the far end of the cellar. Flame licked up the wall upon which it hung, pushing back the darkness that sought to snuff out it's eager life for good. Noises came from somewhere out of sight, around the corner at which the torch did blaze. Hushed voices, the rasp of hurried movement. A curse.

Flexing his sword hand, the dawnling made his way into the cellar with the same caution he had displayed thus far. It seemed odd to him that Bebin had not yet reached out to him through the bond, but the dusker was likely busy plotting his own course through the rank sewers of the city. Poor bastard, Faramund thought, trying his best to remember what the Dusk-Pursuant had taught him about the net in which all their minds were entangled.

His, Petra's, Josai's and Lenry's all. Prodding at the net with his mind, Faramund was unsurprised to find it unresponsive. Bad signal, he figured, knowing that in reality it was probably just him causing issues. Magick did not respond well to the dawnling, strangely enough. A mystery for another time.

Slow-walking his way through the cellar, Faramund stuck to the embattled shadows as he passed the torch by. The noises he had heard before had started to grow louder, and, as he sunk once more into the dark, he began to recognise words and individual voices.

'Burn it all! Hurry now! We haven't much time!'
'Bloody knights! How did we not see this coming?!'
'Easy now, Brokar, you keep movin' like that and yer gonna bleed out.'
'Bloody knights,' the voice of Brokar repeated, 'got the bloody buggers, didn't we?'
'One of them,' the first voice confirmed, 'now stop standing around and help me, Sasha! The Seer wants all these papers burned before the knights send for reinforcements.'

Like a daemon fresh from hell, Faramund entered the chamber without a sound. Brokar, watching his companions closely, turned as a shadow fell across him. Surprised, confused, he looked up in time to see the dawnling's blade as it started to fall. 'Oh, fu-' he croaked, forgetting what he wanted to say as the sword severed his head from his body.

Startled by the sudden noise, the other two cultists span around to see who dared disturb them. They froze. 'Hello,' Faramund greeted them, blood dripping from the blade held tightly in his fist. 'What're you two miscreants up to?'

Bebin Theros

 

[Bebin Theros]

Blood trickled down the Pursuant's arm, ran down his fingers and dripped onto the floor in fat steady drops. His left arm hung weekly at his side, the star sapphire set into its silver band cracked clean through, and a hole there in the arm of the Basilisk.

His eyes strained as he looked on at the form before him. Spiny and strange. Slow and lumbering. It moved with all the patience of things sure and without doubt. Things that knew their strength, and felt no threat. Only, one of its pewter spheres, the lower, had been cracked, its magicked cloak set to flicker, in and out.

A thing of artifice, Bebin thought. A network, that he had been able to disrupt. He grinned, his sword still raised and held firmly in his right hand, curved blade out long before him as it gleamed in the darkness with the feint light of loch.

Most his wounds were shallow. The steel body technique, had kept many blows he suffered from biting too deep. But that they could cut through his magicked flesh at all spoke of the nature of this foe. Its metal spines pierced magick, as well as flesh.

It stood still, its spines twitched and fanned in the thick sewer air. Like fingers splayed, they felt for a trace of the ethereal wind. The flows of magick. Bebin blinked. Realization sudden. He let his magicks diffuse, let his connection to the Loch wane to not but thin traces.

The creature's spheres of pewter ground about. One smoothly against its chitinous casing, the other, with a rough grind, harsh as its damaged form failed to glide across the walls of the socket it was fit into. It jammed and it crunched. The creature stepped forward. Its topmost sphere still ground about, spinning its runes.

Bebin recognized the sigils that flashed through the dark. Brighter now as they had to work harder without their tandem sign. Seals of scrying. Seals of vision and detection. Bebin sheathed his sword, and with his fingers twisting and striking gestures, he signed the sigils of obfuscation and misdirection.

The constructs sphere snapped far and behind the Pursuant, its sigils glowed bright as the pewter orb spun anew fixed on a rune, and its spines shuddered and shook before they shot out in weird arch of liquid metal.

---

Faramund

 

[Petra Darthinian]

Nausea.

Nausea settled belatedly into her gut at the decrease in force and speed as Norvyk landed heavily in the square that faced the Ashrose. She scrambled clumsily at the buckles that clipped to her saddle harness, her stomach roiling in protest.

"You would think after so much time in the saddle, that your constitution would have improved enough to hold your lunch."

Petra slid down the side of his barrel and groaned in answer. Her feet landed unsteadily beneath her, leaning against her dragon's side for but a moment before looking out at the guardsmen approaching them. The brief confusion was replaced by a wary alarm when the screams finally filtered through her fading dizziness.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Uh, well. This didn't exactly go as planned."

"I beg to differ. Now we have all the guards right where we need them to ask for their aid."

Petra slowly turned to glare at her dragon and caught the glint of mischief in his eyes before he flicked them away to observe the shaking shields of the men around them.

With a scaled hand supportively pressed against her stomach, the elf stepped forward confidently while raising her normal one in a placating halt motion to the men. She would argue that magic aside, there were no obvious weapons on her person to paint the picture of a threat. But then again, the scaly-winged lizard beast beside her would suggest otherwise.

"Good people of Alliria, stay your swords! For we have come on Monastery business to aid one of our own. This storm dragon is my companion and my dear friend. He shall not harm you. You have my word." She moved the scaled arm from her abdomen to thump decisively against her chest, above her heart. Her eyes beseeching the scared ones of the men. A rumble echoed from Norvyk's chest. Petra felt it was more blasé
than the situation called for, but hoped the crowd would pick up on his attempt at friendliness. As intimidating as it might still be.

Bebin Theros Ysilia Iliandar Faramund

 

[Faramund]

The fight that followed his arrival was barely worthy of being called such. Over in seconds, it ended with both surviving cultists on the ground and unresponsive. Wiping his blade clean on the dead cultist's robes, Faramund sheathed the weapon before stepping over to the table the two had been pouring over.

It was dark inside the cellar, but even he could see the lists of names, locations and brief reports linking the two together. Piled in no particular order, the sheets were covered in swirls of dark ink. Some possessed little more than words and dates and times. Others were black from head to foot in text. A rare few even held drawings or illustrations, though, what they were of and who they were for was a mystery to the knight.

Pulling his empty satchel up and off his shoulder, Faramund began to sort the gathered papers. The glow of the nearby fire lit his progress, and casted a long shadow on the wall off to his right.

Tall, hunched, it moved in ways its owner didn't. Faramund didn't notice. He was too busy sorting through the slabs of parchment to see it turn its gaze towards him, an arm drawing a sword still sheathed at his side.

On the floor nearby, one of the cultists stirred.

Turning, Faramund drew the darksteel at his hip as the survivor rolled over onto their back. His shadow moved with him, and together they loomed over the cultist as life returned to their- her limbs. Bleary-eyed, and sporting a fresh bruise on the side of her head, the cultist craned her head to look at Faramund. Her breathing was laboured, her face ashen in the cold light. 'You!' she gasped, a hand brushing the blood matting her hair. 'I know you.'

Pausing, Faramund lowered his blade.

'You do?' he asked, not expecting to get much sense out of the woman. He hadn't exactly pulled his punches earlier; the other two could attest to that. 'And where is it you think you know me from?' he continued, watching closely as the woman pulled herself to her feet using the nearest table leg as a crutch.

Her breathing was ragged, he noted. Clearly she had been shaken by the experience that had left both of her comrades dead. 'You really don't know?' she asked, genuine confusion in her voice. 'You don't remember me at all? Or the others?'

Frowning, the knight gave her a hard look as he tapped the flat of his blade against his armoured thigh, impatience writ upon his face. 'Lady,' he began, 'I've never even met you before, let alone these buggers.' He gestured with his sword. A sliver of blood still adhered to the blade; it shone a deep red in the firelight, like a cup of wine by the hearth.

His shadow gestured with him, a step behind. A trick of the smoke, Faramund paid it no heed.

'What makes you think you know me?' he repeated himself, studying the cultist as she stared at her reddened hand, dazed.

'I just do, Faramund, son of Faramund.' Smiling wickedly, she raised her gaze towards him. There was something feral about her eyes now, something... wrong. Faramund fought the urge to take a step back. She knows my name, he thought, startled. How the fuck does she know my name?

'You look just like him, y'know? I mean, you look exactly like him. The beard, the scar... everything!' Smiling, her shoulders heaving in silent laughter, the cultist shook her head slowly. Amused. 'The Seer sure does work in mysterious ways, does He not?' Placing her hands on the table, she straightened up. The feral gleam was gone from her eyes now, the knight saw. Something softer, friendlier had replaced it.

To the dawnling, it almost looked like she pitied him. But why? What the fuck was going on?

Raising his blade, Faramund demanded to know just that. The cultist, unafraid, laughed as a manic energy began to fill her limbs. Doubling over, her laughter echoed around the chamber. The dead, stinking of blood and lying in awkward poses, seemed to laugh with her, their heads rolled back at unnatural angles.

Another trick of the smoke, Faramund told himself. He sincerely wished it were true.

'Can you remember your mother's face?' the Cultist asked suddenly, no longer laughing. 'Do you remember your life before the Order? Before the Sods met their ignoble end?' Looking into her eyes, his sword a leaden weight, Faramund realised he didn't.

He didn't remember his mother's face. He couldn't recall a name, or an age or anything about her, really. And the Sods! How the hell had he forgotten about them? He had served with them for nigh on a decade or more. How could he-

The world went black, and for a moment Faramund thought he could feel the ground beneath his feet slipping out from underneath him.

A moment was all it took for his blade to find the cultist's throat. Surprised by the sudden rush, and as shocked as her killer was, the cultist staggered back a step. Two. A hand already slick with blood probed at the gash in her neck. 'Wh-,' she tried to say, only for blood to bubble up around her lips. Sinking to her knees, the cultist tried to mend the horrid wound with her hands.

A futile attempt, it ended with her lying facedown on the stone with blood pooling around her head.

Staggering back, the taste of bile in his throat, Faramund turned away to gather up the rest of the documents laid before him. His hands shook violently as he worked. A few pages spiralled to the ground, missing the spreading pool by inches.

Snatching them up, his hands feeling clumsy, Faramund quickly secured the satchel's bindings. Without hesitation, he ran from the cellar, and didn't stop until he was well outside.

A voice challenged him as he appeared in the hut's doorway. Blind to its demands, he rushed out and up an alleyway to his left. The voice chased him until that, too, was lost. 'What the fuck?' Faramund whispered to himself, catching his breath in the shadows of a nearby tenement building. 'What the fuck? What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck!'

Petra Darthinian Bebin Theros Ysilia Iliandar

 

[Josai]

Lenry slowly worked himself up off his stinging tailbone and tender flesh, and groaned. "S-sorry," he managed as he stood back up. His feet near slipped once more, but when he arrived at the door to the Apothecary's he held his breath, and slid the seal off.


Outside the Ashrose the scene had grown no less tense, despite the dragon rider's proclamations. "Monastery?" the sergeant spat. "What bloody Monastery would that be? We are an Alliria woman, there are a hundred and one Monasteries!"

Wendri kept her crossbow trained on the rider. Her heart felt as if it was about to burst from her chest, it panged so heard against her bones.

"Go on, elf! State your business! And why you ride a dragon o'er the city of Alliria!" Mardu asked on, doing his damndest to keep his nerves from running off with him.

"Look at her arm, Sergeant, she's part dragon herself!"

"Bloody dragon ridin,"

"Cut it out!" Wndri hollared. "Get your bloody acts together and let the Sergeant handle this!"

The dragon rumbled, its terrible frame bristling with the unspoken threat all creatures so dreadful and great carried in them. For the playful swat of a cat could still kill a mouse. The guards held their spears tight, none gave up ground, and none lowered their weapons.

"I won't ask again, dragon rider, state your business plain as day, or surrender yourself and your beast to the city guard for further questioning," he raised a hand up, fingers bent and curled and flashed quick signs.

Filk nod in the distance, and made ready to run.


Petra Darthinian Chausm Faramund

 

[Petra Darthinian]

The pit in her stomach was acidic as the growing tension weighed itself on her chest. She paid a watchful eye to the tips of arrows that glinted her way in the sun. She was confident she could parry a few with magic. But Petra was more worried about what Norvyk would do to ensure her safety should she be struck.

The readied malice she could feel raging at the other end of her bond with the dragon, felt like a rabid wolf straining at a leash.

With placating motions of her hands, keeping them clear and in view, she looked to the one they called Sergeant. "Again, I say, good people of Alliria, I apologize if my sudden arrival has caused any alarm. My name is Petra, and I am a Knight of the Anathaeum from the Astenvale Monastery. This is my dragon, Norvyk. I came to this city with the intention of helping some of my brethren. I understand if my arrival may have been abrupt, and I regret any misunderstandings that may have arisen. So for my folly, I humbly apologize. Might I offer a compromise of sending my dragon from the city?" A disgruntled reptilian sigh from behind her, But she paid it no mind as she watched the city guardsmen, in hope of seeing the declining panic amongst them. In a diplomatic and beseeching tone she continued, "If we are now on more amicable terms with one another, I respectfully request your cooperation in not keeping me any longer from finding my fellow knights and ensuring their safety. I thank you for your understanding." She bowed dutifully, the sun reflecting off the metallic emblems on her cloak that identified her as a Knight of Dawn.

Bebin Theros Faramund Ysilia Iliandar

 

[Bebin Theros]

Bone and spine and sinew twisted and gleamed like oil dipped metals. The single pewter sphere ground and spun and searched the dank hold of the sewer system. It turned one way. It ground the other. Only one of its two tandem oculi functioned, as its fan of spikes stirred like excited fingers in the stink thick air.

It sensed nothing. Moved on with plodding heavy steps. Each one taken, saw the lone sphere of its sensory array, marked by glyphs that would take in the sights and vibrations of any living thing around it.

A scratch and skitter of tiny claws against the stonework. A pitiful squeak. The stone sphere ground with violent urgency. The glyph of sight glowed as it locked on line with the fleeing shape. The spine fingers rattled and waved, and two upon the left side shot out, liquid and stretched as they scraped and ran free.

They sunk into the brittle stonework of the old sewer. A squeal and a screech. A twitching and dying as the last bits of life left the rodent. The long spines-turned-blades retracted, slid back into the clam like shell of the construct. It held the rat up to the single functioning sphere. The orb spun. One way, then the other. Showed glyphs of sight, scent, hearing. It let the thing fall to the floor, and went on with its slow, plodding walk.

As the thing disappeared behind a bend in the tunnels, Bebin appeared from a cloak of shadows. His eyes opened, and his lungs drew in deep breath.

Faramund