Draconnic Shennanigans - Episode 21

 Chapter 21: The Void Likes to Play

 Jeremiah looked round from his assessment of his remaining attributes, watching with an amused smile as Kaelin and Thorian continued their work of disposing of the fallen of the battle along side the handful of elves Zilvra had detailed to the task. He didn't notice that he was scratching at the bandages round his wounded arm while he did so. He glanced down at the now thoroughly deceased werewolf at his feet and considered retrieving his money from where it was lodged in the beast's throat. It was dribbling. Eyes still bulging, locked in its twisted end by asphyxiation, it was none the less drooling all over the floor. Jeremiah stepped back, fighting to keep the look of disgust off his face; the darn thing had nearly dribbled all over his boots and seeing as he had holes in his boots, that meant it had come disgustingly close to soaking his socks. Jeremiah shuddered at the thought and turned away.

Casually as he could manage he wandered out of the main gates and once the Ash Elf disposing of the bodies had headed back inside for yet more of the fallen, he risked a look over the crenelates into the chasm that separated one side of the cavern from the other. Far down in the depths, so far down that Jeremiah felt a moment of dizziness swept over him, a blue glow was building as streams and waterfalls of kerveads poured down into the cliff faces, hunting the smell of carrion through the tunnels of this subterranean world. Jeremiah found it to be most pleasing to the eye, watching the flow and tumble of light through the dark. Then the Ash Elf stepped passed him, more hastily than usual and tossed the hairy body he was dragging over the edge with less care than usual and a lot more hurry.

"My good sir," Jeremiah smiled ingratiatingly, "What ever is the matter?"

The Ash Elf didn't answer but instead pulled a small jar out of a poach and started swinging it back and forth across the bridge, a bright red powder sifting from the open mouth of the pot to settle as a barrier across the span of stone. Jeremiah was about to inquire why such a precaution was necessary when he saw what was coming towards them. He felt his mouth go dry as the torrent of bugs swarmed across the stone, their glow so bright en mass as they were that it hurt the eyes to look at them. His skin crawled as he realized that he could hear them. For the first time ever he could hear them, the buzzing clatter of all their hard exoskeletons rubbing together and the scratch-scrap of their hundreds of thousands of legs scuttling over the stone. There was also a click-clicking as mouth parts snipped and snapped in eager anticipation of the feast they had found. The tidal wave of insects speed towards them... and met the barrier of red dust the Ash Elf had just put down. It halted, the swell of clattering, scissoring horror juddered to a halt and mounted up, buzzing with frustration at the edge of the barrier drawn. Jeremiah stepped back, Hat droning with distress on the top of his mitre and nearly collided with the two Ash Elves that were barreling out of the main gates. Jeremiah only belatedly realized that they hadn't bothered to remove the heads of the fallen elves as the grizzly burdens flopped over the edge. He looked once more at the throbbing mass of bugs and then stepped back inside the courtyard of the citadel, only just avoiding being splashed with something horrible as Thorian thumped passed carrying two of the dead over his shoulders. Even Kaelin had dispensed with her precautions, scurrying around not unlike a bug herself, to collect all the smaller pieces she could find.

Jeremiah watched her bolt out of the gates and watched as she started throwing the pieces with all her strength along the bridge. The horde of insects drew back as it closed in over the offerings she'd give it.

"What are you doing, surface dweller?" one of the Ash Elves demanded, rounding on her.

"These thing can climb walls right?" she didn't stop throwing. The Ash Elf frowned, puzzled by a lower race answering with a question.

"They'll just climb round the powder on the outside of the bridge walls," Kaelin explained, "Unless you can guard every damn window we need to get them off the bridge, all the way off and encourage them to follow all the others down into the chasm or they'll just climb over on the underside of the bridge."

The Ash Elf open his mouth to say something, even while he was lifting a hand to strike her... then Jeremiah saw the moment that the image of what she was saying filtered through to him because it had also struck him. The Ash Elf grabbed the feet of the next corpse that was being brought out and twisted it so that it was thrown over the line of powder. The light surged back a pace to consume it and he was scattering powder down on the revealed stone, even as he was yelling what he'd been told to his comrades in his own language, gesturing with his free hand. They looked unconvinced until they noticed a lone kervead wandering along the balustrade towards them. With shrill yells they scattered powder down in the path of the bug and fled back inside to fetch more of the dead, although Jeremiah was sure that one scampered off inside the citadel. He smiled grimly as he approached his puppets. Every race had their cowards.

"You!" he snapped, pointing at his three blue eyed Ash Elves, "Pugh, Hugh and Dibble! Pick up all the dead pieces of Elf and Werewolf in this castle and throw them over the side of the bridge outside of those gates there." He pointed imperiously to the main gates. The Ash Elves gazed at him silently for a moment and then bent to begin their work.

Smiling to himself Jeremiah turned to the dead that still lay untended in the courtyard. He drew himself up and muttered under his breath, fingers weaving through the air. For a moment he felt his god's attention stir and then it faded away. He sighed in frustration. Apparently, it was too early to call again on his god's favor, or perhaps his god was becoming bored with him doing the same tricks over again. That was not a comfortable thought and he scratched his bandage while he considered it. He stopped as he realized something.

 "Kaelin! You child of a mangy dog! What have you done?" he roared, baring down on her like a pyroclastic flow.

 "You mean other than stopping you from becoming bug lunch?" she asked as she grabbed another body that needed disposing of.

"This!" Jeremiah bellowed, waving his arm about like a conductor's baton, "What filth have you put in me? You illiterate flea bag!"

She turned from feeding the swarm some more, the powder clinging to the soles of her boots. Jeremiah staggered a little as the Ash Elf he'd seen dash inside the main citadel squeezed passed him in the door way, clutching an armful of jars, out of which he started sprinkling the red powder as fast as he could go, covering up the bare patches were peoples footprints showed through the covering of powder. The realization that he had misjudged the Ash Elf's motives did not improve Jeremiah's temper.

"What vile poison have you inflicted on me? You tail wagging cur!" he thundered, making the cavern ring. There was a sharp crack from above followed by a whistling sound and then a sharpened chunk of dripped stone smashed only a hand's breadth from their feet, spraying shrapnel as sharp as razors in all directions.

The silence rang, disturbed only by the rustling of the swarm as it devoured.

Kaelin put a finger up to her face and wiped away a trail of red before turning without a word and heading back inside the courtyard to continue the grizzly clean up procedure.

One of the Ash Elves, senior in age if the look of him was anything to go by, turned to Jeremiah.

"We tolerate your presence, surface dweller, for the sake of the Lady and because you have proven yourself to be useful to the clan," he said coldly, "But you are more ignorant of the realities of life in the Underworld than any living thing has right to be here. Learn to curb your tongue and control your voice before you call down monsters that even your foul magics will find impossible to control."

"Oh I don't know," Jeremiah smiled back, "I think you are underestimating just how powerful I am." He lifted a hand and gestured to where, expressionless and tirelessly his three Ash Elf puppets were emerging from the main gates of the citadel to dispose with some more of the fallen. Several of the Ash Elves on the bridge twisted their fingers in gestures to ward off evil and misfortune as they edged round the blue eyed once members of their race but the older one seemed unmoved.

"Maybe I am," he admitted, "Or maybe I am not. Either way, the question is, do you want to bet, little surface man? Do you want to bet with your life?"

Jeremiah draw himself up and set his face, unwilling to admit that the Ash Elf's stillness was bothering him, then he turned away with a humph and strode back inside the citadel, finding himself a corner where he could nurse his arm in peace. It was tingling under the bandage now, as if dozens of hot ants were running over the surface of his skin round the wound. That wolf girl was going to pay for this, she had no right to inflict her dirty curse on him.

Inside the citadel, Ulrich lifted a hand from Peter the Centipede's chitinous hide and laid it over Lady Zilvra's fingers were they locked together round his chest. He could feel them shaking. She was trying to suppress it but he could still feel them shaking.

"How did they get in?" her whisper was strained, "How, by all the gods under Hestia, did they get in?"

Ulrich looked again at the destruction around him. The main entrance hall of the citadel was not directly connected with the main audience hall of the building, instead it seemed to be composed of many long corridors, joined at right angles at their ends to form a spiraling structure. It appeared at first glance to be funnel shaped, wide at the end with the door but narrowing sharply but that was a trick, each corridor being divided by angled walls that the defenders had cover while providing little to none for the attackers. In short, it was designed to turn each foot of space into a killing field but it seemed to have spectacularly failed, the bodies of Ash Elves sprawled across the stone floors, in some places piled high like snow drifts, their white hair stained red and brown as the liquid sea they were islands in clotted and set.

Ulrich realized that the back of his jacket was becoming wet. What chilled him all the more was that her crying was soundless. Even faced with the total destruction of her home, Zilvra couldn't give voice to her distress and there was something off about the pattern, the way the bodies had fallen. He sat a little straighter as he saw what she had seen.

"They were fighting from the inside out," she said it before he could give it voice.

"Does the citadel have a back door?" he asked, a frown ceasing the space between his eyebrows, wondering if their hairy, unwelcome, uninvited guests could come back with reinforcements for a second try.

"A what?" she shifted her head against his back, snapping out of her wretchedness.

"A back door, an escape tunnel, a second way in that a werewolf could have detected with their nose and forced open?" Ulrich explained as they turned yet another corner. Surely they had to be close now?

"We are not stupid, surface dweller," she snapped, something of her old imperious manner coming back, "We know that such things are a weakness that we cannot afford. If a clan cannot defend itself then it deserves to die." She stuttered to a halt.

"Hard, isn't it? When you have to pass that judgement on your own people," Ulrich asked after a moment, "Just how many clans have died in the last few seasons?"

Her hands trembled against him again and for a moment he thought she wasn't going to answer.

"It started in the time of water," she admitted as they turned into another corner, "When the flood tunnels raged. Patrols started disappearing and not some silly, greenhorned youngsters, old veterans of the Underworld's moods. They would vanish and their packs be found days later, their camp attacked but not in a way we recognized. Or they would be injured and come back to us changed, speaking of a great hunt to come and a natural order in the world. They would leave again, leave without permission and they would turn on us, their own clans, if we tried to stop them. Slaves would be killed as they worked the mushroom caves and the algae farms. We thought it could be the normal predators, maybe driven up from below by unusually high floods but then the predators started turning up dead or malformed and we knew it wasn't that. Then, three time candles back, the fortress of the Kraken clan..."

She coughed on a mouthful of air and Ulrich rubbed her knuckles reassuringly.

"The fortress of the Kraken clan slid into the Undersea with no warning," she cleared her throat and sniffed.

"The fortress collapsed?" Ulrich looked back over his shoulder at her, disbelief in his eyes.

"I was on my way to claim a breeder from them," Zilvra burrowed her face into the back of his jacket, "I saw it with my own eyes. The whole cavern started shaking and there was this noise, like rock tearing and the whole fortress just slide sideways into the Undersea, all... all falling in on itself and splitting apart and then there was just dust and noise and when.... when it was quiet again... nobody came up out of the water." She shivered against him and Ulrich had to fight not to shiver too. He guessed he knew now what had driven the white Kraken out into Lake but what, by Heaven and Hestia, could just knock a whole citadel off its foundations like it was a house of cards? They were dealing with something that was a heck of a lot bigger than they had reckoned for.

"We few, we lucky few," he murmured.

"What?" Zilvra asked.

"Sorry," Ulrich said, "Just reflecting on..." He trailed off. They had found the main audience hall.

It was without doubt a complete and utter disaster. It appeared that some courtly function had been going on when what ever had struck had arrived, long tables flipped over, glasses and food scattered across the floor and the bodies piled high and thick. The Ash Elves had, to give them their due appeared to have fought like demons, at least to begin with, as there were a greater number of werewolf dead among the bodies that had fallen but that defense had obviously come undone at some point, though as to why...

Zilvra threw herself off the back of Peter the Centipede and ran, stumbling through, the bodies. She staggered several times as the space she thought was clear turned out to have an out flung hand or foot in it. She didn't turn or look back as Ulrich called after her, didn't seem to hear as the centipede's multitude of legs rippled over the gory carpet of the slain. She bounded up the steps of the dais and fell to her knees by the body stretched out on its side by the shattered remains of a grand chair.

Ulrich pulled the centipede to a halt as Zilvra's shoulders shook. Now he could hear her, a muffled, wretched whining, like a beaten child.

"Oh no," he breathed, "Is that...?"

"The Matriarch," Zilvra was openly and honestly crying now, "What do I do? What do I do? Nephthys help me, what do I do?"

"Shat," Ulrich breathed. With the Matriarch gone the back bone of the clan had been well and truly broken, especially if... Ulrich turned, swinging down from Peter's back, looked at the bodies. There, an older looking, more superior Ash Elf woman at the bottom of the deeply recessed stairs that lead up into the citadel's left side. And there, another one with status symbols near the doors leading out into the corridor that lead eventually to main doors. One after another he found them as Zilvra cried.

"How many Seniors did your Matriarch have?" he asked, cold with the certainty of what the answer would be.

"We had ten Sisters of the Depths," Zilvra replied, looking round at him. Ulrich realized that she had left the body of the Matriarch and had wandered across the dais. Well, if her mind was already occupying itself then hopefully she wasn't going to panic at any moment.

"I hate to tell you this," he began.

"They are dead," the tears were still streaming down her face but her voice was more level, "Who ever did this thing knew how to hurt us most. Look." Her finger pointed implacably at the dais behind the chair. Frowning Ulrich stepped up beside her and looked were he was commanded.

Parts were obscured by the fallen and the bloody spillage over the floor but the over arching pattern was still plain to see, branded as it has been into the very stones.

"Oh hell!" Ulrich crouched and pressed his fingers to the marks but they remained dormant under his touch, "It's the same ones as that Aft End used to bottle out after we flag stomped him! Shat, this was planned and by someone rocking a lot more power than any werewolf I've ever heard of before." He stood up, looking about distractedly, "Just what the hell is all this for?"

"I don't..." Zilvra stopped, her face turning ashen.

"What..." Ulrich started to reach for her.

She turned and bolted up the steps leading into the right side of the citadel.

"Zilvra?" Ulrich yelled, just as her body guards made it to the main hall. He didn't pay them any attention, whistling to Peter instead. With a rattling surge, Peter flowed over and around the fallen to reach his master's side. Ulrich swung on to Peter's back so fast the centipede didn't break stride as their speed after Zilvra. Even as they charged through the corridors Ulrich noticed something was off about the fallen here to. They had been retreating from the main hall and had then suddenly been ambushed from both sides... except that wasn't it either. The ones from the main hall had been retreating away from that massacre when they had backed into another group retreating from what ever Zilvra was now running towards.

Her break neck speed led them up stairs and down corridors until she ran up to a opening where the door hung askew and cracked across its middle. She stopped there, one hand flung out to catch at the frame of the way. Ulrich pulled Peter to a stop as he heard the dreadfully whinging keening noise that escaped Zilvra's shaking shoulders. Cold with what he thought he was going to see, he swung off Peter's back as Zilvra slid down the door frame, choking on her every breath. He heard her body guard clatter to a stop behind him but he didn't look round, this was too important for distractions. He walked slowly up behind her as she continued to shake and whistle with the grief trying to force its way out passed all her years of training.

"Zilvra?" he crouched slightly behind her slightly to one side, laying a hand on her shoulder. Then he looked in the room. For the rest of time he wished that he hadn't done that, he really wished he hadn't done that. The room had been the nursery for the youngest members of the clan, with the emphasis on the words 'had been'.

"Oh dear Gods," he could find nothing more to say.

Zilvra hissed with in drawn breath and then she threw back her head and screamed!

"What the..." Kaelin jerked round, the newest body slipping from her fingers to crack against the floor, smearing the red powder keeping the kerveads at bay. The scream was a ripping sound that shook the cavern and came laced with blue power. The swarming flood of insects swirled as it rolled over the top of them and then Kaelin saw the forms billowing out of the small smoke holes that dotted the top of the citadel towers. Small, four legged, their scales were a dry rustling as they came, swirling across stone, nearly the same color as the rock beneath them, bright eyes blinking. They congregated at the bridge, following along it and over it, scurrying over the inside of the balustrades and up and over the edge, clambering over the outer face of the bridge walls with no apparent fear of the fathoms deep drop below. Kaelin looked over the edge and swore she saw one slip over the edge, on to the underside of the bridge, as if it was merely walking down a set of steps. The little forms, no longer than the span of a hand paused at the far edge of the red powder, facing down the plague of kerveads as if considering the quality of the buffet before them and then little faces began darting forward. Pin toothed jaws snapped and snapped again on crunchy bodies while great round eyes blinked and blinked. Throats pulsed as mouthfuls were swallowed and then heads darted forward once move. Then Kaelin saw the others that had come to the dinner. Spiders the size of saucers, spiders the size of dinner plates, spiders with bodies the size of cricket balls, picked their way daintily between the lizards, rushing forward to seize bright bodied insects in their grasp and then retreat back with them into the safe zone of the red powder to pierce and suck dry their prey.

"Well that is something new," one of the Ash Elves observed as he straightened and knuckled his back.

"You what?" Kaelin shook her head slightly to snap her attention away from the hypnotic scene in front of her.

"Our pets don't usually leave the Eublepharidae alone like that," he stretched with an audible pop of a joint in his spine, "Usually the lizards are lunch for our pets but I guess the bounty is such...." he trailed off and looked back over his should at the citadel, "Unless, it is worse than I thought. If this is a reaction under extremeness... Oh Gehenna."

"That doesn't sound good," Kaelin hazarded the guess. The Ash Elf took a deep breath and walked back into the citadel to collect another body. The courtyard was just about cleared but the entrance hall was still choked with the dead.

"If our Lady is now the Matriarch," he said quietly as he lifted a body, "Then she could, under extreme circumstances, summon the guarding wards built into the very stones of the citadel. One of those wards is the commanding of the base creatures that live within the citadel to protect our people from invaders."

Kaelin kept pace beside him as she dragged a body of a werewolf behind her.

"If the Matriarchs can summon the creatures to protect you then why were we fighting the werewolves with no help?" she asked as they reached the bridge again. The Ash Elf tossed the body he was carrying over the railing and watched it disappear into the light below.

"Because she was already dead," he said dully and closed his eyes. "Would you... do me... a favor, is that the word?"

"If you want me to do something on the understanding that you'll do me something in return at an unknown future date then yes," Kaelin said cautiously.

"Would you go and discover what has happened to cause the Lady Zilvra's outburst?" he didn't look at her but his knuckles were white where he gripped the railing of the bridge's balustrade, "We will be able to manage the clean up now that we have the creatures of the citadel to aid us."

Kaelin glanced to where the geckos and spiders were still crunching their way through the ever shifting wave of kerveads that ebbed and flowed at the edge of the powder boarder line.

"Sure," she said after a moment and turned to head into the citadel. Thorian clumped out on her way in, dragging the bodies two at a time, Jeremiah's Ash Elves following him. Kaelin felt a stab of uneasy when she noticed that one of the blue eyed puppets wasn't carrying the body like a sack of potatoes to be thrown away but as a body of someone it had cared for. She glanced over to where Jeremiah sat in the shadows of the courtyard, nursing his arm and his bruised ego. Just how sure was he that he had control?

She turned away and pushed the thought from her mind. She had more important things to worry about now, including the stink filling the corridors beyond the main doors. The smell of terror and death, of rage and pain hit her nose like a punch on the snout. Squinting against the acid feeling in her sinuses she walked the spiraling corridor to the main hall. Tracking Ulrich's scent led her to the runic circle. The hair stood up along her arms.

This was where Greely, that shat bag, had got in. His smell made the beast crawl up her throat and snarl, the change bubbling just under the surface. Damn it, he'd been prepared. They'd known just who to hit and damn it, they must have known when. Kaelin doubted if a people so used to scheming and lies as the Ash Elves regularly gathered their whole ruling class together in one place. Shell crack on a dragon egg! They had some how known. They must have had...

Kaelin kicked a battered chair into the wall with a resounding smash. They must have infected someone inside the clan, someone who had been strong enough to resist the early symptoms but weak enough that they're loyalty to the clan could be broken. That or someone who would willingly trade away their clan for their own desires. That book of Ulrich's might say that such a thing was rare to almost be unimaginable but there again so were Ash Elves who were willing to leave not only clan and kin but the Underworld all together and they had met such a one running Nether Wallop for pity's sake. If an Ash Elf could leave then an Ash Elf could turn on clan and kin as well. With Werewolf venom running in their veins, distorting their perceptions and thought patterns even more then, well, the result lay all around her.

Kaelin swore for several minutes. This was where her screwing blackguard of a grandfather was getting his troops and then he was entering arrangements with some of the Ash Elf clans, who were undoubtedly ignorant of the fact that he was the source of all their trouble in the first place, to pull in even more. She didn't doubt that he'd play them along for as long as he could and then turn on them the moment he was sure that he could infect as many as possible.

She kicked another chair. This was what came of not making sure of the job herself. Well, she was well served. The next time she and her sadly unlamented grand sire crossed paths she'd do the damn job herself and this time she'd make sure that he burned.

Argh-gan-gah-gan-argh! Haggis agreed. Kaelin calmed herself down patting him and then turned her attention back to trying to find out were Ulrich and his lady friend had gone. It didn't take her long to follow their scent but she stopped at the sight of the Ash Elf bodyguard standing in the corridor looking confused while someone sobbed uncontrollably. Her mouth thinned to a line, Kaelin pushed through their ranks until she could see Ulrich knelt in a door way, the Lady Zilvra a sobbing, gasping mess in his arms. He looked up as Kaelin drew closer.

"They hit the nursery," he said in quiet, dead sounding voice, "You don't want to look. Trust me on this, you don't want to look."

"It's the end of the clan," one of the Ash Elves said, his thousand mile stare looking through everything before him.

"You what?" Kaelin asked.

"It's the end of the clan," he repeated, not looking round, "They have destroyed the other women and we are all brothers and cousins of Lady Zilvra. Only close family were allowed to go with her to the temple. We are the last of the clan and we cannot breed. The Snake Clan is ended."

Kaelin looked at the rest of the body guard in the corridor but none of them moved to gain say him. Her stomach dropped as she realized that all he had spoken was the complete and utter truth, hence why none moved to chastise him. It was also why Lady Zilvra had gone to complete and utter pieces. She had known the truth the moment she had seen the wreck of the nursery. The werewolves had been out to totally destroy the clan and in all ways that mattered they had succeeded. She turned away, a sour taste in her mouth as she realized that they weren't even bothering to blame her for the disaster and they must all know that she was connected to the pack now; in the face of such a disaster even vengeance was not enough to rouse them. Even vengeance was no longer enough to give life meaning.

Kaelin bit her lip as sympathetic pain pushed water to her eyes. For so damn long she thought no one could relate to all the gruesome ways in which she was damaged, to the ways in which her grandfather had damaged her and now she had finally found them, first her pack and now her family and they were people that others would never forgive for the raids that had been happening on the surface.

"Kaelin," Ulrich called quietly.

"Yes," Kaelin's voice stuck and then she managed to clear it, "Yes?"

"They were fighting from two directions at once," Ulrich explained, "Zilvra said there is no back door into the citadel. I'm sure you saw the runic array in the main hall." He paused while she nodded. "I'm sure there are others some where in the citadel. If we can find them, then perhaps we can tell just who helped them get in because I am sure that no werewolf alone pulled off this stunt."

"You are right there," Kaelin fought not to snarl as Ulrich wasn't the one she was angry with, "Unless grandfather has managed to bite a wizard of some high degree and bring them to heel and I highly doubt that."

"Could you have a quick sniff around and see if you can find it please?" Ulrich looked down at Lady Zilvra, "I think I'm going to be here a while."

"On it," Kaelin nodded and turned back down the corridor. She reached the end and stopped and sniffed. The smells were too mixed up. She looked back at the others.

"I'm going to have to change," she said, "I can't sort all the smells out like this so no need to freak out, I'm not losing control."

The Ash Elf body guards looked at each other, looked at where Lady Zilvra lay crumpled against Ulrich and looked back at her, a guard weariness in their eyes. Kaelin took that as permission and turned her head away as she let the beast rise up. There was a savage sounding crack as her bones reformed and she fought down a growl, telling the beast that they were there to do a job, not start another war. It did not like this idea, it wanted violence and it wanted violence right now but it came to heel.

Kaelin sniffed again and in her mind the corridor light up like a firework display. The smell from the nursery was a stomach churning mixture of gore red, pained brown and black death scent. The scent from the Lady Zilvra and Ash Elves were a depressed mix of sickly blues and yellows over their base natural grey. The werewolves... Kaelin sniffed deeper and sneezed as she tried to deny the evidence her nose was giving her but there it was again. The werewolves were a muddy, musky brown shot through with the reds of rage and fury and hunger but that was a cover coat over what they had originally been. There were a fair number of humans, with their sharp, acrid stink and even a Overworld Elf, if the bright silver of the tarnished scent was anything to go by but what worried Kaelin was the sheer number of werewolves that had a grey undertone to their scent. She had known it at an instinctive level but to have it confirmed... Her grandfather was becoming even more powerful if he could now turn someone against their family so damn quickly. She shivered and rubbed the hair on her arms flat.

Setting off down the corridor, she sniff and snuffled her way back down the trail. It was deeper into the substructure of the citadel than she'd expected but she found it. She snatched her head back, snorting and rubbing at her muzzle. What ever had made this circle of cooling runes was definitely not a werewolf, not by the way it smelt. That was worse than sniffing up a fluff bunny, felting like she'd just sniffed silver filings up her nose. She rubbed harder and shuddered as the beast retreated, her bones cracking as they realigned.

"Right," she looked round at were she was, "The barracks, makes perfect sense. Ow." She rubbed her nose again, sniffed and sneezed, explosively. It took her a few minutes to find a piece of cloth that she was willing to use to clean up her face. "Oh, well that's better, I suppose." She gave her nose a final rub and looked again at the circle. "Bother it, I can't make this out at all." She rolled her eyes as she realized who she was going to need to ask. "Double bugger it." With a final huff she walked out of the room.

Jeremiah was still sat outside in the courtyard even though, by main effort Thorian, the living Ash Elves and Jeremiah's puppets were making good in roads on the mess in the first corridor. Kaelin checked the bridge and between the efforts to clear the bodies and the predation of the citadel's animal inhabitants the harrowing light of the kerveads was being kept at bay. With that worry assured, she turned to the more pressing problem.

"Oh most brilliant and esteemed blubber house," she began, unable to completely swallow her pride, "Most wonderful and intelligent priest of the great nameless god," she also refused to say that name, just thinking of it made her hair try to crawl off of her scalp and the beast whimpered, tucking its metaphorical tale between its legs, "Oh mighty and powerful student of the hidden and unknown arts. Would you fore bare to look down upon us lowly beings and bless us with your knowledge?" There, that ought to do it, she pandered to his pride enough.

"Oh," Jeremiah said, rising to his feet, "Oh, I see how it is. Now that you have a use for me, now that you want something out of me, now you are willing to come and give me the respect I deserve. Well you can go and take a running jump off of that bridge as far as I'm concerned, you and all your vermin ridden kind!"

"And as far as I am concerned I really ought to have bitten you on the face so everyone and anyone who meets you would know you are a back stabbing toady who's crawling to the sort of god any rational person would run a million miles away from," Kaelin replied, folding her arms.

"Oh looks who's talking," Jeremiah's face turned red, "The illegitimate spawn of a werewolf or three or four! Since when did you have the right to be all high and mighty, huh? Seeing as your unholy kind is trying to over run the Underworld, causing all this mayhem in the first place! If it wasn't for you and yours we won't even be here. This is all your fault!"

"So you'd rather the King didn't have a job to send us on?" Kaelin raised an eyebrow, "Now how would that have worked out? Let me see, ho hum. Oh yes, it would have resulted in all of us dancing the hemp fandango about two weeks back now. Didn't think about that, did you?"

"Oh doh!" Jeremiah seemed on the verge of exploding with frustration, "You jumped up, snippety, little fuzz ball!"

"And you're an over weigh pudding pie doll, who's only losing weigh because we're been on the march for so long. Worn the fat off of your feet yet?" Kaelin retorted, almost smiling. Urgency aside, this was almost fun, picking a verbal fight with the disgraced priest. She hadn't had a spat like this in months. In fact the last time she'd had a spat like this had been her litter mate, Dismon. Neither of them had liked their grandfather's way and had found the easiest way to avoid being called out as weak was to have noisy 'fights' with lots of inventive insult yelling and rolling around in the dust. It always seemed to work at keeping Grandpa's attention away. Part of her hoped that Dismon had survived and got away.

"My feet are none of your concern!" Jeremiah roared, "What should be your concern is this!" He began waving his arm around again, looking for all the world like an insane conductor trying to control a orchestra of monkeys.

"What's wrong with your arm?" Kaelin raised her eyebrows, "The way you are waving it about I would presume that it is nearly healed already. I assumed that your god had helped you out again, seeing as you bought his favor with just a minor amount of betrayal."

"That is just it!" Jeremiah thundered, "Klu'ga-nath had no hand in this healing. Just what have you done to me? You mangy, dim witted cur!"

"I bit you," Kaelin rubbed an ear. Really his voice was becoming over penetrating and did he forget what happened the last time he raised his voice. "I bit you as punishment for murdering Stink of the Midden and his friend. I bit you for betraying our allies. I bit you for your treason to the pack. Maybe you should remember that if you hadn't committed murder then I wouldn't have bit you."

"I don't care if you think you had reasons, you impoverished, squalid mongrel! I want to know what you have done to me!" Jeremiah was definitely in danger of bursting something in a moment, "I want to know what I can do to stop this wretched infection! I do not want to be a worthless, dog breathed bimbo!"

Kaelin looked down for a moment as if she was contrite. She was actually biting her lip to not burst out laughing in his face. It would have taken a lot more than her bite to turn him into a bimbo but she could not explain that with a straight face.

"You can rest assured that you will not be a worthless, dog breathed bimbo," she managed to say with a straight face as she lifted her head but she was never sure how she managed that effort. "It would take a power far beyond mine to be able to perform such a feet. The only thing you are likely to need to worry about are the fleas once a month."

"What do you mean by that?" Jeremiah demanded, arm finally lowering.

"Only that roughly once a month you are likely to need a bath and possibly a razor with which to deal with the extra growth of hair," Kaelin observed, "You can however rest assured that you will never need to worry about going bald."

Jeremiah glared, not entirely trusting her.

"Of course, someone of your amazing knowledge and book skill should surely be able to find out if there is any cure for such a condition," Kaelin continued, "Come to think of it I wouldn't mind it myself if someone could find out a way of making the animal a little easier to control. I wouldn't even mind it if it was a case of having to take a potion each and every day for the rest of my life, as long as it wasn't too ridiculously expensive. After all, if they prices me out of the market I might have to resort to killing people in order to pay for it. I'm not entirely sure that the King has a bounty hunter system in place but I'm sure that I'd be able to find someone willing to pay." She smiled as she half turned away, cupping her chin with one hand, "Come to think of it, there's a certain Abbey which I'm pretty sure would be very interested in paying for the return of a certain ex-member of the clergy there. I wonder if I should look in with them on the way back to the capital."

"You won't dare," Jeremiah blustered.

"Well seeing as nobody has come up with that potion I don't really have a need to do I?" Kaelin let her hand flop over, "But if someone should come up with that potion then they should consider the fact that they will get a whole lot more customers if they keep their profit margin reasonable, wouldn't you say?"

Jeremiah frowned as he considered it.

"That maybe half way sensible," he admitted at last, "But I want to be able to go through the library in the Wizard's Tower on our way back to the Capital."

"Now that's an easy thing to agree to," Kaelin nodded, "So in the effort to speed up us getting there, how about you come and have a look at the runic circles we've found inside? If we find out where they came from then we might be able to stop all of this in the next few days and be out of here."

Jeremiah closed his eyes and practiced deep breathing until his color had just about returned to normal.

"Fine," he grated out, "But only because I want access to those books as quickly as possible."

"Deal," Kaelin held out her hand on instinct but was glad when Jeremiah huffed passed her without taking it. Sometimes his rudeness really did help the world to go round better.

Jeremiah huffed and puffed along the corridors, not quite complaining about the 'mess' that was still all over the floor. He was minimally interested in the grand circle on the floor of the main hall but it was when Kaelin led him to the one in the barracks that he really became interested.

"Well now," he smiled as he bent over to peer more closely at the marks beginning to fade out on the floor, "Maybe you are useful for something other than collecting fleas."

"You're welcome," Kaelin rolled her eyes as she muttered.

Jeremiah flexed his knuckles and set to work, muttering under his breath as he passed his hands through the air above the circle. The fading symbols sharpened, their forms looking as if they were raising back up out of the stone of the floor until they lay there more perfect and clear than even when Kaelin had first found them. Jeremiah continued muttering, fingers beginning to trace symbols of his own in the air. A sickly yellowish green light began to infuse the runes, crawling through them. Kaelin felt the hair on her arms beginning to stand up on end.

With a sharp fizz and crackle the runes flared and burnt out, leaving only the nose tweaking stink of burnt hair but Jeremiah grinned expansively.

"It turns out that you were more intelligent than your usual standard when you brought this matter to my attention, my dear," his grin reminded Kaelin of a pike fish grinning at its prey just before it struck so she folded her arms and said nothing about his back handed complement, "They used three of those runic circles to break into the citadel and I know exactly where to find the site of the last one."

"And we'd want to find it because?" Kaelin asked deadpan.

"Because I think it is still active," Jeremiah's grin did not falter, "There is a vast magically signature in the cellar area of this complex and if I'm right then we might be able to catch the last few stragglers as they leave." 

"They were leaving?" Kaelin raised an eyebrow, "Now that does surprise me."

"Really my dear," Jeremiah smiled, "Do you really think that they would have all stayed for the after battle feast?"

"Yes," Kaelin was blunt, "What surprises me was that Grandpa could convince any of them to leave once the dinner gong had sounded, normally...." She trailed off.

"My dear Kaelin, are you feeling alright?" Jeremiah asked with sickly sweet concern.

"He was here," Kaelin's eyes were wide but her pupils had shrunk down to pin pricks, "Holy heaven help us, he was here!"

"My dear, I don't understand, who..."

"Grandfather!" Kaelin roared, "Grandfather was here! He was here in person because he's the only one who could have forced them to leave off chewing up everything inside this place!" She continued to curse and swear for several minutes, turning on the spot, unable to decide what she wanted to hit or throw.

"There's something else you need to know," Jeremiah said carefully but not out of concern for her but rather trying to judge how much distress he could cause her.

"What?" Kaelin stilled, "What else?"

"Oh, just a little something," Jeremiah looked away and scratched his arm. Hat buzzed on the top of his miter.

"What else!?!" Kaelin roared, the whites of her eyes turning red with the force of it.

"Oh just that some of the werewolves that attacked here were Ash Elves, once upon a time," Jeremiah shrugged as he said it. Kaelin's face went pale again.

"Oh squit," she breathed. The secret was well and truly out of the bag now. Her intellect had told her, her nose had told her and now someone who had every reason to tell the truth because he knew it would hurt her had told her.

Ulrich and Zilvra arrived in time to see Kaelin sitting down on a cot, holding her head in her hands to stop her fingers trembling. She was taking long deep breaths but appeared to be shivering with each one.

"What did you do?" Ulrich's sardonic tone was totally lost on Jeremiah.

"I merely answered the question she asked me," Jeremiah spread his hands benevolently. 

"Do you remember Elisha telling us that there were more and more of the 'men-beasts' that could match a Damned Soul on the battle field?" Kaelin asked, "Do you remember the fact that he said some of them fought as if they were being driven by a will outside of their own?"

Ulrich frowned for a moment and then snapped his fingers.

"First day we were there," he stated, "The dinner on the terrace."

"Yes," Kaelin nodded, "Do you remember how I said 'they'll be infecting people, whole towns at a time'?"

"Ye-s-s-s-s," Ulrich said slowly, a nagging suspicion rearing its ugly head.

"We just found the town," Kaelin confirmed that suspicion in an instance, "They are infecting the Ash Elves, whole citadels at a time. What we are seeing dead here are the ones strong enough to fight, fight the infection and fight the will behind it. The weaker ones are being forcibly recruited and once they are infected there's no going back." She looked at Zilvra. "You had better check the bodies in the main hall again. Grandpa would have wanted one of the Matriarch's favorites as his new breeder."

Lady Zilvra put her hand to her mouth, her skin going dove grey, eyes wide with horror.

"I thought that wolves mate for life with only one partner," Jeremiah's smile wasn't pleasant.

"Wolves do," Kaelin confirmed, "Werewolves on the other hand, or at least werewolves of my grandfather's bent... My grandmother wasn't the only women he had at his beck and call and none of them were his true mate. None were his equal, all he was interested in was having his full quiver. Why do you suppose that natural wolves despise werewolves almost as much as humans do? Werewolves are a perversion of both human and wolf, the worst traits of both and none of the decency of either. If I hadn't run when I did, well you saw Greely. My guess would be that I had been promised to Grandpa's right hand man as a reward for being his most loyal minion, if I was..." her mouth twisted, "Worthy of having a litter. Guess I should be grateful for always being the runt."

"Do I really want to know what constituted being 'worthy of a litter'?" Ulrich asked.

"Strong enough to survive in the wild forest but still submissive and meek to Grandpa and any others of the 'Pack'," Kaelin hunched her shoulders, not looking at him, "Some of my sisters were providing pups for the Pack before they finished their second decade."

Lady Zilvra hissed something between her teeth in her own language, the lilting tune of it gone flat and bitter with disgust.

"So how did they get in?" Ulrich asked, looking form one to the other, "That was what you were trying to find out when you left us at... at the nursery." He swallowed. He really did wish that he hadn't looked in that room. He'd never considered having children of his own, as a no-blood himself he hadn't wanted to lumber another generation with the taint of having unmarried parents. No way would his father have given permission for him to marry before he'd left the family estates and afterwards, well the life he'd been leading hardly lent itself to settling down but what had been left in the nursery... Gods above but there were some creatures that needed putting down.

"The runic circles," Jeremiah smiled, "Three of them but I do not think that they were crafted by a werewolf. The pack used them to come through and retreat with their prize but the magics used to hold those portal open were not werewolf in origin."

"Were they Ash Elf?" Ulrich asked.

"You dare?" Zilvra rounded on him.

"I do not mean someone in the Fastness of the Snake Clan," Ulrich held up his hands, "But when we were on the surface we came across Greely, the werewolf who spoke in the courtyard, leading a small squad and they were with one of your people."

"What?" Lady Zilvra whispered after a moment.

"They were with an Ash Elf, someone called..." Ulrich clicked his fingers a moment, "Deslin! The other elves there called him Lord Deslin. He was telling Greely and I quote, 'concern yourself not, you will have what you want once we have what we want'. Now I maybe misreading the situation but it sounds to me like one of the clans, some where, have a working agreement with Kaelin's Grandfather."

"Impossible," Lady Zilvra backed away, shaking her head, "None of the clans..."

"Maybe not one of the clans," Kaelin interrupted, earning a censory glare from the body guard standing in the doorway, "You said yourself that some of the weaker members of the clans sometimes leave and make it to the surface. What if this is a collection of such individuals? What if they believe that they can become a clan in their own right if they use the werewolves to weaken the other clans down here first?"

"That is a deliciously treacherous idea, my dear," Jeremiah smiled, "But it is incorrect I'm afraid. The being that created and controlled the circles has the taste of both dragon and the fey."

A cold silence fell as they all stared at him.

"I think I prefer it being a renegade group of Ash Elves," Ulrich said after a full minute.

"I take it that the fey are not nice people?" Kaelin asked, "But hang on, Felicity the Chest Weasel was a fey... thing. She didn't seem so bad."

"Speak for yourself," Jeremiah muttered.

"Unfortunately that is the problem with the Fey," Ulrich said, "Some of them are no worse than children who have had too many sweeties and not enough smacks on the bottom, others of them, ugh." He shuddered. "Have you ever heard the term 'hag ridden'?"

"Yes," Kaelin admitted.

"Well that's the very least of what a hag came do to you," Ulrich explained, "If a hag gets hold of you, you'll be lucky if you get out of there with all your limbs still on the right way round."

"Some say that you are lucky if she just straight up skins you for her cooking pot," Jeremiah interjected, "And if people would stop interrupting me I was going to tell you all, once again, that one of the circle is still active down in the cellar."

They all looked at him and as one turned to the door.

"Any idea of the numbers?" Ulrich asked as they trooped down the corridor, his centipede crawling along the wall beside them.

"I'm afraid that I only know that about thirty came through," Jeremiah replied as he walked along beside them, "As far as I can tell none of them have returned back through the circle."

Ulrich looked at Lady Zilvra and after a moment she nodded and stepped back among the ranks of her body guard. Wordlessly they clattered down the steps that led into the bowels of the citadel. It reminded Kaelin of the King's dungeon were they had been held before they were wielded together to make the current King's Special. However, the King's dungeon had not included the blood stains on the walls or the smears of something unnameable on the floor. Here and there, bits and pieces still lay on the floor. The werewolves had enjoyed their fun down here as well only...

"Jeremiah," Ulrich called, "I hate to break it to you but you've misjudged your magics."

"I beg your pardon?" Jeremiah demanded.

"I said you misjudged your magics," Ulrich crouched, one hand brushing the floor, "Cause I've just found the circle down here and it is as cold and dead as the werewolves that have been relieved of their heads."

"That's impossible," Jeremiah pushed through the shadows to his side, frowning as he gazed down at the circle of runes, "I can still feel that it is active and it's... over... there?" His anger faded as he realized that he was pointing at a heavy door that hung askew and split on its hinges. They stood facing the gaping maw of the doorway and Kaelin shivered as the hairs on her arms stood up on end. There was something subtly wrong about the way the shadows were moving, spilling out of that doorway like a questing tongue that slowly tasted the air and beckoned them in.

"My Lady Zilvra," Ulrich spoke over his shoulder, "I believe that it would be prudent for the sake of your family if you remain back here with your brothers while we investigate this."

"The clan is dead..." she began.

"But your family is not," Ulrich replied, "While you live your family endures. You are the last living part of the clan, while the family line endures with you then the clan has the chance of rebirth in a new form. If you die now then the clan remains dead. The Kraken clan is dead, the Snake clan has a chance of continuing in your blood line."

She opened her mouth to reply and then looked down at her hand. The tattoo of the serpent twitched across her skin and flicked its tongue. She lifted her head and said something to her brothers in her lilting tongue. They withdrew to one side of the cellar, down one of the side corridors so that they were out of the direct line of fire from the doorway.

Ulrich looked back to the doorway to find Jeremiah already filling it. Kaelin just shrugged, perfectly happy to let the unpleasant priest to take the risks for a change. Ulrich's curiosity compelled him to go closer. Rising on to his tip toes he craned to look over Jeremiah's shoulder. Beyond Jeremiah's bulk he could see a room built for the more valuable slaves. Laid out more like the barracks upstairs with proper, if simple beds, in two rows and a fire place at one end it never the less it seemed empty at first glance but then Ulrich spotted the crowd of men at the back of the room. The patterns of burn scars on some and the rock dust in the hair of others said louder than words that they were metal workers and stone masons but right now they were crowded against the left hand wall of the room like they really wished they could walk backwards through the solid stone, their eyes locked on...

On one of the beds on the right hand side of the room a young girl sat, her red bob cut hair falling around her face as she carved the small wooden figurine in her hands.

Jeremiah stepped into the room and something crunched under his foot. He looked down and saw what was unmistakably a rib bone, suck dry and bleached white, stripped of fat both inside and out, broken under his foot. Beside it lay a wolf skull but larger, more domed than any wolf skull could hope to be. As he looked up he realized that it was not the only werewolf skull littering this room. The girl on the bed was looking up at him, blinking through strange crystal lenses held in wire rims.

"Hello my dear, who are you?" Jeremiah asked with what he thought was a pleasant smile.

"I am Estella," she replied, brushing wood shavings off her foreign dress, "Estella Blackstar. And you would be?"

"I am merely a humble servant," Jeremiah bowed, pressing a hand over his heart. She looked like a girl, she sounded like a girl but there was the feeling of dragon magic about her and he remembered the feel of the Fey he had sensed earlier. It was never a good idea to give your name to the Fey.

She sniffed and tilted her head slightly.

"I think you are lying," she stated, "I don't think you are a servant and I don't think you are humble either."

"Well people of your age are rarely good judges of character, my dear," Jeremiah smiled again, "I assure you that I am the most humble and willing servant of King Tatsuya."

She frowned some more.

"You are," she stated, "You are lying. He doesn't like liars, he doesn't like liars at all."

Jeremiah frowned, stepping furthering into the room so he could face her properly. The craftsmen on the other side of the room cowered.

"I beg your pardon, my dear, but who doesn't like liars?" he asked.

Some thing squelched behind him. The noise was both fluid and solid at the same time, like bones being twisted out of their joints and then slowly being pulled from their flesh, a grizzly wrenching, twisting sucking sound and then the hot breath puffed on the back of his neck.

"Excuse me but do you know where around here I might find a completely soulless husk?"

The voice somehow both rumbled and bubbled at the same time, lovingly drawing out the last word.

Jeremiah twisted round so he could look over his shoulder. Some thing stood there, something that was straight out of a nightmare.

To call it a black dragon would have been way off the mark. It was black and it was a dragon but it was not just a black dragon. It fit inside the room but somehow the space around it seemed distorted, giving the impression that it was a much larger being seen at a distance, that it loomed over Jeremiah in all its liquid glory, the dark matter of the void of stars made form. Nebula shifted and flowed over its hide, a hide that rippled and swelled even when it was still. It wasn't liquid but it wasn't quite solid either, struggling to hold its form. It eyes were the sick glow of dying super novas.

Jeremiah didn't pee, not quite.

"Well I do believe that there is a whole courtyard of werewolves that have no further use for their mortal forms, you could take your pick," he suggested.

A tail, miles long and yet contained within the room, lashed.

"No I mean a still living soulless husk," it gurgled and hissed in the same breath.

"Well there is a still living werewolf outside this very room," Jeremiah fought not to smile and scream at the same moment, "I believe that some theologians consider werewolves to have bargained with the devil for their unnatural powers. After all, it is a well know fact that curses only afflict those that deserve them. Everything is god's will, such banes are the mark of moral failing..."

Wings, in which the light of ailing stars sputtered and shifted, flared at the same moment that Kaelin called, "I heard that!"

"No!" the festering voice seethed, "I mean a..."

It stilled or at least tried to, its form sagging in layers and then hauling itself back into shape, regarding Jeremiah with greater intensity. Jeremiah suppressed the urge to whimper and run. Targeted by those world ending eyes, he gritted his teeth to stop them chattering.

"Oh," it seeped, "Oh you're close, you're very close. You are quite the sack of shite, aren't you?"

Jeremiah glowered as he heard Kaelin snigger outside the room, then he closed his eyes as a muzzle of liquid jet and perishing suns lowered towards his, breathing in his scent.

"Gah!" the thing exclaimed, backing away, making the room bend around it to do so, sneezing and rubbing its muzzle, "Oh foul... disgusting... odious." It seemed to be struggling to clear whatever had offended its sensibilities out of its nasal passages. "Gah, you are one of his! Oh of all the ill luck, five hundred years of searching and the first truly deserving vessel has already tainted itself with HIM." It snorted and spat at Jeremiah's feet, a puke of a wriggling black sludge that writhed before curdling and evaporating.

"Oh very well," it sighed, dragging its claws over the flagstones, "I shall have to settle for the arrangement I already have."

Jeremiah heard Estella stand behind him.

"What arrangement would that..." he began, hating the fact he couldn't keep the nervousness out of his voice.

With a wordless cry of effort the thing liquefied fully, flooding passed Jeremiah in a raging torrent of dark goop. Jeremiah jumped away from it with a terrified squeak, turning in time to see it strike Estella full on. Her body jerked and flailed, arching backwards as it was embroiled in the tidal surge. Someone, and Jeremiah never admitted who, moaned in terror as he realized that it was forcing its way down her throat. Estella's upper half flopped forward as the last of it disappear but somehow she remained standing, then she straightened and Jeremiah stepped back, fingers arching in the Holy gesture of the god he had abandoned. Her eyes were completely black. She blinked, once, twice, thrice and the black faded, allowing her real eyes to look out at the world. She smacked her lips several times, a look of puzzlement crossing her face.

"Now I'm hungry," she said.

The craftsmen broke. Jeremiah found himself buffeted and shoved as the terrified men pushed passed him, heedless in their desperate need to be out of the room where Estella stood, sobbing in their terror. Their pounding footsteps faded into the distance.

"I think you scared them," Jeremiah observed to Estella. She sighed.

"Silly people," she shook her head, "If I was going to do anything to them I could have done it days ago and I don't like my food warm and wriggling." She bent, fished a small satchel out for under her bed and trotted out of the room. She looked up at Kaelin as she left and smiled.

"Hello, I don't suppose you know where the kitchens are?" she asked.

"Um, that way," Kaelin pointed to the stairs nonplussed.

"Thank you," Estella said cheerfully and bounced away through the dungeon and up the stairs as if this was all just routine for her.

Inside the room Jeremiah sank down on to one of the beds and waited for the shaking to stop.

Outside the room, Ulrich had been trying to keep the guards distracted with tails of his exploits while he was a member of the King's Special as well as some of the amusing situations Jeremiah had gotten himself into on their travels. Having seen what had boiled out of the shadows behind Jeremiah, he'd had no ready wish to step inside the room and potential draw its ire. Part of him had admired and been appalled that Kaelin had stood listening at the door and spoken loud enough to be heard inside the room.

As he had regaled them all, Lady Zilvra had openly smiled at his description of the deception he had carried out on board the Armored Dragon and even some of her brothers had started fighting not to smile. Ulrich took that as a win. He had faltered in his telling when the young girl skipped out of the room with a carefree smile on her face to greet Kaelin. Kaelin's response was more than he could have managed.

One of Zilvra's brothers went to bar the girl's way, an ugly look on his face but Zilvra stopped him, a hand on his wrist. Her brother looked at her with a great deal of fear in his eyes but Zilvra paused a moment obviously trying to formulate what she wanted to say.

"No," she said quietly, "We cannot stop her."

"Is this because of her power?" her brother replied carefully, a look of being ready to cower in his eyes, "Do we not need to keep her controlled?"

"No, or at least, not like that," Lady Zilvra corrected herself and paused again, pinching the space between her eyes, "We are without clan, without fastness, without power. We must learn the ways of the powerless, the ways of building alliances with others by making them want to be allies for the alliance's sake. We... we must learn the ways of the small, of the weak, for now... now we are one of them. We do not have the power any more to demand and have others do our will merely because we say so, we must be able to give on equal terms to those we wish to do our will. We..." She faltered again, struggling to find words for so massive a break with a life time of training.

"Give and so get," Ulrich finished, "It is not the whole of how we of the weak do it but it as good a place as any to start and it need not be a physical thing that you trade for what you want. After all, we of the King's Special traded our services as warriors and adventures in exchange for our lives so it maybe time to consider what skills you can offer to those of the surface in exchange for sanctuary."

"The Surface?" Zilvra was startled at that suggestion.

"Where else do you have to go?" Kaelin asked, "Can you safely stay down here in the Underworld? Yes you have this fortress but even I know you need a basic number of guards to man a place like this. Do you reckon you have enough? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that once the word gets round that the kerveads were drawn here by their thousands the other clans are going to know you've been well and truly mullered. Will they leave you alone? Or will that dragon spider hatchling of yours go to the highest bidder?"

Zilvra looked at Kaelin in shunned amazement and for the first time, discipline broke down among her bodyguards as they turned questioning, frightened gazes at each other.

They didn't have the numbers, Ulrich knew that at a glance, they wouldn't be able to hold this place, they would be little better than rats in a barrel. Kaelin went to say something more but Ulrich lifted a hand to still her. Zilvra's gaze had turned inward and she needed time to process everything Kaelin had just said.

Ulrich gestured Kaelin a little way away from Zilvra and her brothers faced up to the fact that their world was falling in on itself and they hadn't even really had a chance to defend it.

"Are you absolutely sure no one in the werewolf pack could have pulled off a stunt like those runes?" he asked quietly, "Gramp's couldn't have bitten a wizard and made them do it for him?"

"No," Kaelin shook her head, "Even if it was a dragon kin, which would explain why Jeremiah picked up a dragon signature to the magic, that wouldn't explain why he sensed Fey as well. A human wizard won't have tasted like dragon and fey plus there is the fact that a wizard would be too strong willed to be dominated by my Grandfather. You have to keep a strong hand on your sanity when you're a wizard or you wind up like the one Elisha dealt with and he was too insane for my Grandfather to get his claws into. No whatever this is, it is something that allied itself willingly with the pack and no I have no idea what Grandfather could be offering in return."

"Ah well," Ulrich shrugged, "Worth asking." He sobered. "Not really reassuring though," he observed.

"Tell me about it," Kaelin muttered then added, "Oh look out, here comes trouble." Jeremiah had just left the cell.

"Maybe we ought to ask Thorian to hold him down for a change," Ulrich murmured back, "Hang on, that's a point," Kaelin observed, he looked around, "Where is Thorian?"

"He was working in the courtyard to help clean up the mess out there," Kaelin remembered but she didn't get any further as Jeremiah stormed up to them.

"I thought we were the King's Special," Jeremiah looked like he was towing his own personal thunder cloud about on his brows, "I thought we were supposed to be a team!" Kaelin raised an eyebrow at that. "And where were you when I was facing down a monstrosity of the outer dark masquerading as an innocent? No where!"

"Well, dear boy," Ulrich smiled, turning Jeremiah's mannerisms back on him, "You seemed to be handling it quite well on your own. It seemed such a shame to interrupt and steal your thunder."

"Steal my thunder?" Jeremiah quivered, "I was having the fright of my life opposing an eldritch horror and the witch disguised as a child that undoubtedly the cause of the destruction of this clan and you think you would have been stealing my thunder?" Kaelin couldn't work out if Jeremiah was angry, still frightened or offended.

"Well you did accuse Hartseer of stealing Thorian's thunder that one time when we were in the Dead Swamp," Ulrich explained, "I did think you would object in the same way if I interfered and drove it off before you had the chance of dealing with it yourself."

"You... I..." Jeremiah spluttered. Kaelin raised her eyebrows. It was unlike Jeremiah to be this agitated and she wasn't sure why. Granted she hadn't seen exactly what had been in that cell with him but it had smelt of the clean, crisp deep frost of winter when the last reds of autumn were still on the trees, the sort of night that made you glad to be able to see the stars.

"I could have been its host!" Jeremiah burst out.

"Oh how terrible," Kaelin muttered, "What ever would we have done if Jerry had a new personality?"

"You I'm sure you would have been fine old boy," Ulrich said, "After all, if you have faith enough you can tell the mountains to go and throw themselves into the sea. I believe that is a quote from the Holy texts of the abbey you came from so it would stand to reason that your god would have protected your soul, even if you had to be the passenger in your own body for a while."

"Well you wouldn't have been!" Jeremiah yelled, "How do you think you would have stopped it if it had possessed me and then decided that you looked like a tasty little snack?"

Kaelin and Ulrich just looked at each other. Jeremiah glared at them, opened his mouth to say something more but then read their expressions.

"You wouldn't have..." he took a step back.

"I'd say that we would have had a lot more justification than the murderer of Stink of the Midden had," Kaelin's expression was one of flat dislike.

"Come on now people," Ulrich held up his hands, "Let's not brood over what didn't happen. I think we have had enough of a spite for one day. If nothing else we all need to decide where we are going from here and I for one would like to discuss it in much more comfortable surroundings than we are in at the moment."

"You want to go up to where that child-thing has run off to?" Jeremiah demanded.

"Well I can't see any other way of getting out of here and if she wanted us dead, then she probably could have done it already," Ulrich shrugged and turned to Lady Zilvra, offering his arm, "My lady, shall we?"

After a moment she smiled, even it that expression was a little tired and sorrowful, before laying her hand on his arm.

Kaelin meanwhile bowed sardonically to Jeremiah.

"After you sir."

He glared at her but started huffing and puffing his way into main part of the fortress. As they reached the top of the stairs Kaelin started sniffing.

"What is it?" Ulrich asked, hand going to one of his sword hilts. If those mangy curds had come back for a second go...

"Frying," Kaelin said after a moment, "I smell something frying. I'm not sure what but something meaty is frying and I also think I can smell hot bread. Not butter though, I can't smell butter."

"What is butter?" Lady Zilvra asked. Kaelin went to look at her as though she thought Zilvra was as thick as a brick but Ulrich shook his head at her. Kaelin frowned.

"I believe that the Ash Elves are not that familiar with the beast known as a cow, are you?" he smiled at Lady Zilvra to show that the question was not meant as a disrespect to her or her people.

"What's a cow?" she frowned, that adorable little frown that made the end of her nose tilt up. As they wandered through the corridors Ulrich tried to explain what a cow was and therefore what such things as butter, cream and cheese were. Kaelin was pretty sure that Zilvra didn't believe a word of any of it. They pressed on, traveling closer to the smells of cooking and gradually others of their party picked up on different smells. They traveled through the fancy parts of the citadel and into the more utilitarian areas of the fortress. As they were walking do a plain but wide corridor something small nipped out of an open light doorway on the left hand side ahead of them. Jeremiah jerked his mace up as the small thing hoovered in front of them. Kaelin also blinked as it fanned its feathered wings in front of them, creating a noise not unlike a bumblebee. It chirruped and swiveled its pointed ears towards them, tiny paws posed in midair, its two toned brush flicking behind it. Kaelin found herself leaning towards the tiny, feathered winged fox, a creature so small that it could have sat in the palm of her hand. It chirruped again and then flipped in the air and speed back through the doorway.

"After you good sir?" Kaelin looked at Jeremiah.

"My dear, I have already been through a doorway first today," Jeremiah smiled at her, "And what I saw is going to haunt me for a very long time. I may not be the sharpest knife in the draw but I do hope that I can learn from my mistakes."

"If that is what you call it," Kaelin grunted and cautiously looked around the door frame.

Thorian sat at a long table in the middle of the room, a huge fire place with something equally huge turning on a spit behind him, a platter with some greasy looking meat heaped beside door stopping hunks of bread on the table top in front of him and a huge mug of something foaming in his hand. He was grinning and watching Estella as she finished putting the last touches on the little finch in her hands. She held it for a moment and then the color rushed up through it, turning it a deep crimson. It swiveled its head from side to side and then hopped round on Estella's hand to look at her before twittering to add its song to the six other strains of music that were chattering, chirruping and bleeping round the kitchen.

Thorian laughed in delight and then noticed Kaelin's upper half craning round the doorway to stare.

"What?" he asked, "I was hungry."

Kaelin opened and shut her mouth several times before she managed to shake her thoughts into any form of order.

"We wondered where you got to," she took the risk of stepping into the room. The little creatures swirled round her but flitted away when Estella called to them. Emboldened by that Kaelin stepped further into the room.

"As I said, I was hungry," Thorian took a swig out of his drink, "Its heavy work cleaning up all the mess in this place and you lot disappeared. Aye will say that her people were better than that." He gestured with his mug to were Zilvra was hovering anxiously in the doorway. "They stuck with me at the job until some of their friends who'd been with that funny dragon chick thing came to give them some time off. Found some wheel barrows some where so their getting faster at clearing this place out. When the first lot downed tools I thought I'd join them in having a break. Plenty of work to do here, still be there when I finish."

"And how did you come to meet our little enigma?" Lady Zilvra asked, sliding on to the end of the bench opposite Estella, watching the girl with a guarded expression.

"She walked in with her little friends," Thorian shrugged, "Cute little things." He rubbed the back of a rather lumpy looking toad on the table top. It inflated and then warbled a string of notes that sounded that they were made by a violin, turning a shifting pattern of purples as it did so.

"Now you don't see that everyday of the week," Ulrich slid on to the bench beside Zilvra.

Jeremiah stood near the door, arms folded and a glower on his face. The magical signatures of the little things around Estella were tiny, tiny and of a nature he didn't understand. It was sort of like the Fey but there was a dozen different threads woven into it as well. They buzzed and thrummed with life, a life that was brim full of the joy of life, a bubbling, blooming joy of life. He hated it. The winged fox swooped near him.

Everyone in the kitchen jerked round as the little fox screamed, Estella nearly falling over backwards as she tried to leap to her feet only to be imprisoned in the gap between the bench and the table. The winged fox was engulfed in a fist of embers and sparks that bored holes though it until its writhing form disintegrated. The other little creatures whirled in panicked circles, each yipping, yelping or crying in their own manner before diving back at Estella and piling back into her bag.

"Why did you do that!?!" Estella cried, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes.

"I agree," Zilvra stood more slowly, "What need was there to destroy the creature?"

"What's the matter, my dear?" Jeremiah's smile made Kaelin want to vomit, "A little uncomfortable now that your passenger has been diminished?"

"What?" Estella asked after a moment, apparently unable to process what he was accusing her of.

"You passenger," Jeremiah didn't stop smiling, "That perversion of a dragon that rides within you. Tell me, does he ride in your lungs? Or is it your stomach?"

"Stop being mean about Valodrael!" Estella bristled, "He's my friend!"

Everyone stared at her.

"Er, who are we talking about?" Thorian asked after a moment.

"This little girl," Estella clenched a fist at his words, "Has a passenger riding within her, a warped mockery of a dragon that apparently calls itself Valodrael. It is what is powering those little models of her. Just how much power did he lose when I destroyed your little parody of a living being?"

Estella drew herself up to her full high, eyes flashing. "Valodrael doesn't 'power' the talismans any more than I do! They're talisman wood, I only carve the form free of the excess. If you really new anything about magic you'd know that!"

She slipped into a foreign language that seemed to be mostly consonants and a couple of nasty sounding vowels. Nobody round the table knew exactly what she was saying but they all knew what she was saying. For once, Jeremiah didn't seem upset by the tirade but rather amused by the little slip of a girl trying to insult him. Estella drew an even deeper breath to yell some more and abruptly snapped it off behind her teeth, head jerking sideways as if listening to someone nobody else could heard. Expressions played themselves across her face, the play of a conversation conducted internally. Her eyes roved over the others at the table and then turned to gaze at Jeremiah. Her expression was more calculated and something about it made Jeremiah take a step back. It was no longer funny.

"Are the talismans something Valodrael taught you?" Zilvra asked carefully.

"Other way round," Estella said back down at the table and helped herself to a piece of bread, "I met him because of the talismans. Carving them had always been my way of escaping being lonely and my usual supply of the wood had been destroyed..." She trailed off for a moment and then rallied, "So I'd gone further a field than I usually did hunting for another supply. That and I needed some time away to find the strength to keep somethings under lock and key. And that's were I found him. He was hiding out in this crumbling shack in the back woods, surviving off what animals wandered his way. With..." She stopped a game, listening to that silent voice. "With his help I was able to leave home so we've been on the road ever since."

"And how did he wind up in a... shack?" Lady Zilvra asked, frowning with effort. Gently questioning a non-Ash Elf was not her forte but she was no longer a member of a powerful clan. The wheels of the world were turning in another way and she had to turn with them or be run under by them.

Estella shrugged.

"It was as far as he got after he had to flee the other continent," she took a bite of bread.

"The other continent?" Ulrich blinked.

"Yeah the other continent," Estella repeated and then looked up at their dumbfounded expressions, "You know - the other continent, the one beyond the eastern sea." They continued to blink at her. "Haven't you ever heard the rhyme? Further East than east, beyond the eastern shore, the burning land does to heaven soar." She waited a beat. "You really haven't ever heard of it?"

"I have heard of the eastern lands," Ulrich admitted, "But not that there was a land beyond that sea."

"There isn't, not really any more," Estella agreed, "It burnt about five hundred years ago. Valodrael managed to get out in time but precious few others did and they were all mortal races, they would have died ages ago."

Ulrich lent back on the bench as Thorian drew Estella's attention, asking her if she could carve him a talisman all of his very own. Hartseer had said several times that he had been stomping across the continent for four hundred and ninety seven years, looking for redemption but he hadn't said what exactly this Domili he had spoken of had looked like.

"Trouble in heaven?" Kaelin asked quietly.

"Just wondering how on Hestia you can contain something like Valodrael," Ulrich muttered, trying to hide his voice underneath Thorian's booming excitement, "And whether or not he is sometimes a little free in his interpretations of Estella's wishes. I'm wondering just how far away from himself he can work his magic from himself."

"You think Valodrael could have been the one who opened the portals? Without Estella noticing?" Kaelin asked, leaning towards him.

"He certainly seems like the sort of creature that would thrive on chaos," Ulrich murmured, "So I'm beginning to wonder if he could be the source of all the trouble down here..."

"No he's not," Estella interrupted in a sing-song voice, "If he was why would we have spent goodness only knows how long sat in that dismal little room? And why would the werewolves try to eat me if he was the one calling them in? Though..." she pouted a moment, "I suppose we could be why the trouble came here if the other dragon sensed Val and didn't want to share its territory."

"The other dragon?" Ulrich blinked.

"Yes the other dragon," Estella replied, "Val's been smelling her all over these caverns. It's why we were coming down here in the first place. We wouldn't have come near these caves if we hadn't smelt her. I know there's that big dragon down here but he smells old and lazy whereas this one stinks to high heaven of magic. That's what we were after. Val needs to find a way to get a new body of his own and to do that we need to track down some of the rarer sorts of magic, so if you're after her as well then I think we could work together on this."

"And what would Valodrael want in return for helping us to find the cause of all the troubles down here?" Ulrich asked carefully.

Estella closed her eyes for a moment, listening to some internal conversation.

"He wants first dibs on her library," she opened her eyes.

"And he won't try to eat us?" Ulrich dug for clarification.

"You? No," she turned and glared at Jeremiah, "Him? Possibly." Jeremiah smiled and bowed to her ironically.

"I do not think that he would much enjoy the experience my dear, after all my god might have words to say about such things."

"Indeed," Estella's eyes were flat with dislike.

"Well what to do?" Ulrich sat back and tapped his fingers together, "Who's more trustworthy? Jeremiah or a dragon? Jeremiah or a dragon? Jeremiah or a dragon?"

"It's Jeremiah we're talking about," Kaelin said wryly as she lend across to him.

"Good point," Ulrich smiled, "Dragon it is."

Estella smiled and then her eyes changed, the black of her pupils spilling out until they consumed the entirety of her eyes.

"We have an accord," the bubbling, rumbling voice spoke from her throat, "And I will see it honored." She/it turned their head to look at Jeremiah with a warning rumble before the black retreated back to where it should be.

"I am so glad that my companions agreed to launch themselves on this suicidal path before consulting me," Jeremiah said sourly. Zilvra tapped the table to get his attention.

"I think that you should know that if this Valodrael is what he says he is then he far more knowledgeable by far than any of us here," she informed him, "We have legends that the Void dragons and the Astra dragons were the only dragons that did not turn against the Begetters in the Time of Betrayal. It is said that they fled some where incredibly far away but their life spans put even other dragons to shame. The only ones that came close were the Titan-Silver dragons and they turned on each other in the god war that followed the Time of Betrayal. No one has seen either of them since. Valodrael maybe the only one who can tell you some of the power you so desperately seek."

"Oh," Jeremiah raised his eyebrows and looked back at Estella with a renewed light of interest in his eyes but she didn't change her expression from one of flat dislike.

"Try harder, Padre,"  she said flatly, "You hurt our friends. I learnt long ago not to forgive that easily."

"What joy," Jeremiah snarked, "We've picked up another unpleasant free wheeler, thanks to the inconsideration and impulsive decision making of my thoughtless companions."

"Well, technically it was Ulrich who made this decision," Kaelin passed the buck, "I'm just along for the ride to see how far we get before our new draconnic friend condemns your soul. Should be interesting to watch you have to play nice to keep on our young friend's good side. Got any particular rules or do you just make it up as you go along?" She turned to Estella.

"You are too nice," Estella, despite her youth, had a good grasp of irony, "But Valodrael doesn't trade in souls. His," she jabbed a finger at Jeremiah, "Patron claims that right, the right to judge souls worthy of existence but Valodrael doesn't. The Void Dragons never did, they allowed the small races to judge who among their number they didn't want so there no danger to your immortal souls just because you're going to journey with me."

"So which way do we go?" Ulrich asked cheerfully.

"Out of the building?" Estella suggested, making Kaelin snort to cover up a laugh.

"May I suggest that you rest here for a sleep cycle?" Zilvra offered, "It will take some time for the kerveads to clear, even if we manage to empty out all the dead in the next few hours and it will be dangerous to travel close to them while they are still swarming in such numbers."

"That sounds like a capital idea, good Lady," Ulrich smiled at her, "Would it also be permissible for us to resupply from your stocks?"

"You may as well," she said sadly, lowering her head into a hand, "Truth is that I don't know where to go. You are right that we cannot stay in the Underworld, with the clan so diminished we have no chance of protecting ourselves from our enemies but the surface world is foreign to us and we can hardly expect a warm welcome when the other clans have been raiding so frequently into the upper world."

"And you weren't?" Jeremiah folded his arms, not quite sneering.

"We had more pressing matters to concern us," Zilvra narrowed her eyes at him and then smiled as something slinked into the room, "Matters such as this little one." She reached down and rubbed the top of its head, making it close its many eyes in ecstasy. Ulrich frowned as he looked at the spider-dragon hatchling.

"Is it me or is he bigger already?" he asked of no one in particular.

"There were wounded beasts in the scholars dome," one of the Ash Elves that had arrived with the Hatchling informed him, "Ceann Mor has hunted well in his first hours."

"Splendid," Ulrich suppressed the shudder, "As for where you could go, you could try the Wizard's Tower." Lady Zilvra frowned. "It is in the area we surface dwellers call the Dead Swamp and at the moment he could do with a hand driving of the werewolves and the Ash Elves who are allied to them away."

"And you think he would accept us?" Lady Zilvra frowned.

"He is a... inactive member of the King's Special," Ulrich found the right word eventually, "He should understand that people sometimes have no choice but to change. The other one you could try talking to would be Risgath of Nether Wallop. He is an Ash Elf like yourself. Again they are being besieged by the other Ash Elf clans but he is the one who asked us to come down here and find out what all the trouble was about so he should have an open ear." He trailed off as he saw her expression of ecstatic joy. "Was it something I said?"

"Risgath? As in Risgath Zaphruan?" she asked, the light that had died when they discovered the body of the Matriarch finally back in her eyes.

"Yes," Ulrich nodded and fished out the book, "He gave me this, said it would help with our journey down here." To his astonishment Zilvra burst out laughing, a sound that he didn't believe her capable of. The spider-dragon hatchling chirruped in confusion. Still laughing she scratched its head again.

"I'm sorry," she still laughed, "I'm sorry, its just after all these years, finding out that little brother was right about everything..." She laughed again. After staring at her for a few more minutes Ulrich turned his head to look at the other Ash Elves. One of the oldest there cracked his mask of indifference enough to answer Ulrich's questioning look.

"Lady Zilvra was born as a twin to the one known as Risgath," he informed him, "Risgath left our clan, our people and our land many time candles ago. He was one of the canniest preys I have ever hunted and bares no scars because of that. Though it is frowned upon I always respected the fact that he had escaped us before we even realized that he was making the attempt. There is strong prey that can fight you into retreat but the strongest prey is that escapes you without a fight at all."

"As to what he was right about," Lady Zilvra wiped her eyes, "He told me once that our unkindness, our lack of care for other races would one day be visited upon us ten times over and we would be the ones left weeping in the ashes left behind. He told me that one day we would be the hunted and we would find all doors closed to us because we closed the doors in the faces of others. I thought he was a fool at the time and it turns out, he was right." She nodded, "We will try to... ask my brother for help. Maybe we have some skills that this King of yours will be interested in trading, especially if we can... bring some of our slaves to him, if we can find them, you seem to have scared them all thoroughly." She arched an eyebrow at Estella.

"What can I say?" Estella shrugged, "Lots of people find Valodrael off putting."

"I can't imagine why," Ulrich said cheerfully but found that cheer hard to maintain as she turned her gaze to him and something dark stirred behind it.

"Can't you?" she asked and there was something not young girl behind that expression, something that had fangs all of its own.

"Still," Estella continued, clapping her hands as she stood, "If we are going to be going on a journey tomorrow I suggest we have a feast so we don't leave much behind for the scavengers. Who's with me on this."

"Sounds..." Thorian burped, "Good."

"Well help me out then," Estella suggested and turned to the range.

While his friends and Zilvra's brothers began the task of preparing a big dinner for them all, a task hindered by the fact that most of the Ash Elves seemed unfamiliar with kitchen jobs, Ulrich lent over to Lady Zilvra.

"Just so you know," he murmured, "Though there are other countries that practice it, King Tatsuya does not permit the practice of slavery, so if you wish to bring your craftsmen with you then it would be best to present them as such without their chains. Personally, I would say that though the clan has practiced slavery in the past that you have no wish to continue it and that your craftsmen are free to go where ever they wish, if it goes as far as you having to seek an audience with h... the King." He corrected himself at the last moment. He still didn't believe that she was ready for the idea of a male King.

"No slavery?" she asked, "Then how do you... have anything built or grown or created. Who does those tasks?"

"People," Ulrich replied, "Simply people. Yes they are still seen as the bottom of the social status but they are still people, not slaves. It gets back to the give and so get principle. They give their labor to build and grow and create and in return, at the very lease, they are given shelter, food and other material needs. And if the standard of what they are given is not enough, they can leave. Conversely, if the quality of the labor they provide is not good enough, then they do not receive their material needs. It is not always perfect as a system but it does encourage mutual respect of fellow people. It is how such small people like us can drive such big people as Thorian's out of the plains and into the mountains. Does that help?"

"I think so," she said after a few moments, "I think so." She lent her elbows on the table top, mouth hidden behind interlaced fingers, frowning as she gazed at something not in front of her.

The wheels of the world turned.