Antic Round -- Chapter 1 -- Wandr'ing written by Ashley @ casualvillain.com Ashley was nervous. They wouldn't leave him alone. Why in the hell was every guard in the Graylands so on edge tonight!? Bah. Amusing how it always took a drowning before a dangerous well might be sealed, or a fire that roasted an entire family before a backdoor was ever installed in their home. It took catastrophe to prove weakness, disaster to find flaws. Last week, John Hardin had ferreted out every weakness in the defenses of Duke Bardorba's Manor, opening the very doors up to Müllenkamp's dark purposes. What an embarrassment that little event had been to Bardorba and his city. It had been so easy for the cultists to infiltrate the ducal home and take exactly what they'd wanted. The city's forces were trying to correct their own flawed defenses now. A shame it was a week too late. Dressed in civilian clothes, Ashley tread the shadowed streets around Bardorba's secondary residence, occasionally casting an eye through the rain and up towards the few lit windows of the estate. The rain was light and silvery but it was a nuisance, sticking his cloak to his shoulders and his hair to his forehead. He was nervous. He was terribly nervous. He was waiting for Sydney to emerge from the manor and he was terribly terribly nervous. He hated this. He hadn't been nervous in years, not even on the most excruciatingly pain-staking, life-threatening assignments for the VKP. If he'd died then, he'd deserved to die. If he lived, he was lucky. Nothing had mattered and his mind had been dark with guilt. Now that guilt was gone and his soul been reborn into something he still didn't truly understand. Sydney was the only one who understood it and he'd spent the last week with him, trying to learn all he could. He'd gone from planning to kill the cult leader to depending on him for his very sanity and any semblance of direction he was ever going to have in his life. He trusted Sydney. He even admired him. He sensed that the admiration was mutual and it filled him with a strange, unsettling pleasure. Knowing that his new mentor had been planning to kill his father tonight... alone... had filled Ashley Riot with more unease than every monster he'd seen in Leá Monde last week ever had. How was he going to get past the guards? The servants? Sydney was weak from his ordeal in the City, he could barely walk, and here he was, going to tackle Bardorba's entire household. Yet Ashley almost had to smile. That was just so like him. Having allowed his thoughts to drift from reality, Ashley whispered a silent curse to now hear a pair of guards approaching from behind. He was supposed to stay unseen, out of sight tonight. Sydney had said their days in the Graylands were numbered, that Ashley should leave the city and find sanctuary somewhere else. He'd never reported back with LeSait. For all the VKP knew, he'd died in Leá Monde with the countless cultists and Knights of the Cross. Pulling the collar of his cloak up close around his jaw, Ashley waited until the sentinels had come a bit closer to where he stood beneath the awning of a blacksmith's, then concentrated on moving his body as quick as it would to across the street, feeling himself dissolving into the very shadows of an alley as though he were no more substantial than the darkness itself. He reappeared where he wanted, shaken and breathing a little too hard, but he hadn't been seen. The guards passed his refuge without speaking a word and the former Riskbreaker breathed a barely audible sigh of relief. He did not like using his new abilities. He felt less than human when he did so, or, or... more than human. Monstrous, whichever it was. No longer did he feel like he owned his own body, it had become more like some vessel for the Dark, like a plaything or a conduit for foreign energies and manifestations. The change was frightening. But the way the Dark blew through him when he summoned it... the way the voice of that woman played in his mind and played through his memories... how she came to him in his dreams... and the burning of the bright red Blood-Sin on his back, especially in the eventide... Ashley did not like any of it. Sydney insisted he would become acclimated to the sensations and the control but Ashley saw the incomprehension in the cultist's eyes when he tried to explain his unease. Sydney had always known the ways of the Dark. He liked the damn stuff and the power it gave him over people. He couldn't understand why it wasn't the same with Müllenkamp's new successor. Bah. Loneliness and other people's misunderstanding of his emotions wasn't exactly anything Ashley wasn't used to. He would overcome this though. Sydney insisted he would lose more and more of himself to Müllenkamp and the Dark that had claimed his soul but the warrior wouldn't dare believe that. He would master this new magick as he had always mastered the challenges in his life. Rebelliously flicking his head, Riot leaned against the warm wet brick of his shadowy alley and peered up through the rain. The Dark blew through him, excited over something, and he shivered at the sensation. It made him more anxious than he already was, ready to jump up and scream and he had to control himself or be driven completely from his skull. Somewhat weary, he looked again towards the Manor and wondered when in the hell his new tutor would return. The Duke's winter home was luxurious and fortified, becoming another world all of its own. It was nothing like his manor of course, there was no sprawling chapel nor sweeping, echoing ballroom, but this second home of his spared no expense and managed to make even a visitor like Sydney Losstarot feel unquestionably welcome and warm despite the silver sheen of the heavy rains outside. They winked at him in all their cold brilliance, those rains. Pensive, Sydney had situated himself stiffly before a thick leaded glass window in a little alcove, his lean body folded into the space, his cool grey eyes staring out at the quiet beauty. He let his forehead touch the glass and his weighty iron-worked right hand tap a few delicate fingers against the panes. Both of his claws were buried somewhere in Leá Monde, most likely smashed to ruin beneath fallen blocks or collapsed masonry and it was just as well, he hadn't needed them this past week. He'd had no more enemies to fight nor any further trickery to pull. He'd needed neither their protection nor the quality of intimidation they leant him. What a figure he'd cut a week ago in Leá Monde. He had to grin now to remember it because memories were all that was left of the leader of Müllenkamp's cult. What a figure that leader always had been, ever since the night of his ascension nearly thirteen years before. He was horrible, a monster of a man and yet in that very horror there was amazing haughtiness and the potential for him to strike awe in every one he ever encountered. 'Charismatic'. It was a word he'd heard to describe himself a thousand times over by those he baffled. It was an easy word but it was not quite accurate. Sydney knew he was hypnotizing, beautiful, terrible, and strong. Even now with his immortality seceded and his power halved he could take on any man alive. The cultist smiled out at the rain, far more pleased with himself than sad. He'd been sad all day and still was sad now, with the night newly fallen and the rain coming in buckets from the heavens. But he had only to think upon Ashley and the sadness lifted like a morning fog struck by the sun. Ashley was his legacy, his salvation, his pupil, and his comfort. Sydney latched onto the image of his face desperately now, for the sadness was threatening to return and he couldn't bear it. Ashley Riot... Dark brown eyes, clever and quick though whatever went on behind them was seldom expressed through words; wild hair forever in his face, caught by the winds off the ruins of Leá Monde and trailing at his back; his face itself, handsome and frank, terrible when angry and terrible when anguished. Sydney would never forget the tears that had stood out on those ruddy cheeks as he'd thrust those visions of Tia and Marco's murders before him. How callous he'd been... curious about the Riskbreaker hounding him, he'd let his own delving into his soul become too visible, images strung from both their minds making the past as real as a painting or a stage play. He hadn't cared that he'd made the VKP bastard cry. Let him cry and let him crumble. He could wail his lamentations up to the very ceilings of the catacombs. Another babbling soul lost in the labyrinthine corridors of the city of hell. Those were ignorant thoughts now though. Sydney was much too fond of Ashley to go wishing eternal damnation upon him anymore. Oh, no. They'd come to understand each other far too well since that initial encounter in the manor. The rain beat against the roof. This hallway with its alcoves and windows was long and fitfully lit, sconces on the walls throwing meager warm light onto the thickly-masoned stones and plush velvet carpeting. There was such warmth and elegance here that Sydney wanted to stay forever, become lost in comfort and perhaps believe he was the little boy again who used to run through these halls summoning the dead to play with. He'd called upon the damned to be his friends while the Duke was away at Parliament and the servants all were too terrified to dare approach a little boy flocked by pale shades and embittered ghosts. He'd sit in this very hallway, crouched low with his bony knees sunk into the carpeting, listening enraptured to the tales they told him. Or sometimes he'd tell the tales, pulling pasts from minds too long dead to remember them anymore. They'd love him for that, pet him, coo over him and call him grand. A little boy never minded praise and love, especially a little boy as love-starved as Sydney Bardorba. He'd made best friends of boys who'd been dead for centuries. Spirits became his comforts on stormy nights where lightening was frightening and the thunder roared. Servants too cold or ignorant could be ignored so long as the other voices kept him company. And then... then there had been that one remarkable spirit, that one divine and grand spectre with the dark eyes and full red lips who would come to call and tell him the most delicious secrets... ... Müllenkamp Sydney jerked about suddenly as though struck in the back, looking quickly out into the hallway. But Müllenkamp wasn't there. Of course not. She never came to him anymore, not since he'd lost his arms. Perhaps because she'd become a part of him that night, he honestly wasn't sure. The dead rarely came to him at all now actually. He would sometimes see the occasional wand'ring spirit but most were too scared to approach him anymore in all his blinding glory and power. His soul glowed like a god's and was too splendid a thing to be attractive to the meek and frightened dead. It was almost sad that he'd lost that. But Müllenkamp's successor couldn't let those things occupy his thoughts, regrets were useless, especially such childish ones. For a moment though, he almost saw the little boy he'd been. Such a lovely creature, very far removed from what he'd become. Seeing him made into such a real-seeming spectre in Leá Monde had hurt. Wretched city. It cared nothing for the human heart nor the power and pain of memories. It had tossed its power around regardless of who it hurt and they all had suffered-- Something tickled Sydney's right ear, something cold and gentle. He snapped his gaze away from the window and saw again nothing but the empty hallway with the flickering wall sconces and richly red carpet. Servants circled like hawks but he was only a Riskbreaker to them, only Ashley Riot, representative of the VKP awaiting an audience with their Lord Duke Bardorba. They would not disturb the most feared Riskbreaker out of the batch. Still, that presence remained and when the cult leader tried to turn back to staring out at the rain, it tickled his ear again, running what felt like a single chilly forefinger down the side of his neck. "Hardin..." he growled lowly, "Be calm, be patient, and be not so envious that I am yet alive. I assure you, this shan't last long. It may not be allowed to." Perhaps that appeased him for Sydney sensed a set of eyes suddenly remove themselves from his own countenance. He smiled down at the window sill, narrowing his gaze out through the rain again. The sadness creeped at his edges like spilled ink over parchment and he pressed a little harder into the pane with his hard and heavy right hand. A hairline crack appeared in the glass but he caught himself, pulling the hand back and letting the sleeve of his robe fall over it before he could break the window entirely. He was trembling all over suddenly and through the fabric of his robe he felt a hand on his shoulder, a comforting hand but a hand that was no longer of the physical world, a hand made a hand only out of pure will and power of thought. "Thank you, Hardin," he whispered, leaning his head back against one side of the little alcove. The warmth of the Duke's home was creeping away from him and this rain was settling over his body and bones in a wash of cold that let the sadness overwhelm. He couldn't see Ashley through this rain, though he knew he wandered the Graylands tonight, watching and waiting for the news he knew would come. But he couldn't see him and no longer had he the strength of mind to conjure up pictures of the man he knew was to be his saviour in all of this. It was just too unfair to bear or think too carefully upon. All of it. "Hardin..." he called, not turning from the rain, "Is it very cold? So very dark? I think of it now and I lose my nerve." The hand tightened on his shoulder. "Perhaps I never should have gone with Müllenkamp. If I hadn't, I could have lived a long life like the Duke and died an old man in my bed. It all must end so violently and yet it does not really end. Is this 'incomplete death' truly a boon and a blessing? Or will it merely make us into two more of those wand'ring damned wretches we saw in such abundance last week? In the end, good Hardin, despite everything I know, I fear I've only become another living man who harbours a million questions for the dead. And you, what have you to say but 'Wait and see'?" Sydney thought he heard the chuckles of his friend but with the steady rhythm of the rain, nothing was really discernible. Are you laughing at me? he wanted to ask. Or are you perhaps simply thrilled to finally be just a little more sure of things than Sydney Losstarot? "Buffoon," was all he finally whispered, the comforting hand upon his shoulder lifting for a moment and punching him playfully in the back. What would I have done without Hardin...? It isn't a pleasant thought to think upon. "Agent Riot?" Startled, Sydney looked up from the rain and down the hall. An impatient, bearded man stood respectfully waiting half in/half out of the shadows of a barely opened door, his posture as starched and unyielding as money could buy. The Duke insisted upon luxury, insisted upon absolute loyalty and devotion in all of those around him. He'd passed that onto his son. Straightening carefully, keeping the grimace from his face, Sydney stepped from the tiny alcove. The slightest brush of his robe's fabric against his back was complete agony. He'd endured a week of sleepless nights trying to find peace despite his body's shuddering with pain. The galling wound on his back was torture, plain and simple, and Ashley hadn't allowed him to bandage the wound, insisting that could only make it worse. Amusing, that. The Riskbreaker didn't know that his new tutor intended to die, he hadn't been told. But by all rights Sydney should have been dead already. After Guildenstern's butchering he'd lost enough blood to kill a normal man yet... well, he was hardly a normal man. And Ashley's magick was very strong. The Riskbreaker had truly been blessed by the Dark. Assuming Riot's swaggering gait, pushing the pain of his wounds away, Sydney took a few experimental paces down the hallway. He thought he heard Hardin's ghostly chuckling again. He was probably quite a spectacle to the dead man. Hardin could see past this simple illusion and easily make out the sight of a robed and de-clawed Sydney Losstarot, swaggering down the hallway as though he had the bulk of a titan. This was a difficult appearance to maintain, his actual iron limbs were heavy and dragged at his sides, they always gave Sydney's natural gait a strange rocking motion and his narrow torso swung heavily from right to left with his strides. Ashley had a more natural and graceful way of walking, every muscle trained and every step sure. Sydney had stood hidden in the shadows of the cellars and watched him making his way, mutely marvelling at every nuance of his appearance. The cult leader had been struck by the Riskbreaker from that first moment in the manor. Perhaps Cupid's arrow had pierced his heart the same instant Riot's arrow had. But what a foolish thought... The sound of every footfall was lost amidst this sea of velvet red. The flickering of the sconces became somewhat sinister. Sydney's brief distraction dissipated and the sadness was eating at his mind again so that it felt as though a ball of hot lead sat in his throat. He slowed his strides, glad that the manservant at the end of the hall had turned away and re-entered the Duke's personal chambers. They watched the old man morning and evening now, he hadn't many days left to him. "I have heard it called consumption," he said to Hardin beneath his breath, "But I believe his troubled spirit eats away at his health. He frets over the comings and goings of Valendia far too much. Parliamentary duties strain his mind and that strains his body. The Duke never truly allowed himself a moment's peace, not since the war's end. And the Cardinal dogs him." There could be no answer from Hardin but Sydney knew his friend was there. He listened. The door was black and relentless here at the end of the hall. Fear stood out cold in the pit of the cult leader's stomach and his steps faltered, something Riot's would never do. He took a deep breath and stopped for a moment, listening to the rain. He let himself imagine the entire world out beyond the walls of this warm ducal home. A thousand children sleeping in their beds; warm breaths blowing against soft pillows as mothers watched them dreaming; hands fluttering to smooth silken hair behind ears, careful not to shatter the peace of a world turned beautiful in the eventide. He'd never known a mother's love but the images were calming and he accredited them to Müllenkamp's care. Beyond and far away from this sombre mansion, all of Valendia was quiet beneath silvery rain. It slumbered unaware of sacrifices or promises made and even behind the storm clouds, the stars shone down. They would shine there always and would never falter in their light. They were constancy and comfort. They would be there whether Sydney was or not. They would be there in a thousand years and so would the breaths of children, their mothers' hands, the dreams that spun in innocent minds. His own breaths, his own dreams... they had only been a few of many of the world's. And the world was a little better, a little brighter... because of them. What more could any man ask of his life? This hallway was silent and still yet the sinister air remained. Sydney was at the doorway now, careful to keep his hard metal hands from brushing the door frame, knowing it might give away his identity. The manservant seemed none the wiser, standing like a living statue and waiting for the Riskbreaker to pass. Sydney's bitter fear would not leave. He embraced his life now so desperately that he almost couldn't imagine it leaving him. Ashley and Hardin and the gentle souls of the cultists, the gentle soul of the Duke who'd loved him the best way he'd ever known how, who'd given him all he could to ease his own sins; countless faces tickled his memories and consumed his thoughts yet there was no way he could retract what had happened nor stop what now had to happen. The Duke had quietly offered options but Sydney had shot them all down. It was best now that they both end it. Still this trembling, still this fear. Still this silent horror of being so unanchored and cold in a world he did not know. How he loved his life, even his life as the monster he imagined himself to be. Life was grand and beautiful, warm and full of love, if you allowed it to be so. It was the greatest gift that the gods bestowed... Yet Sydney found himself assuming Ashley's strides again. Almost casually, he gestured for Hardin to remain outside and set his own face in stone, moving smoothly into his father's chambers. The servant bowed and stepped away, walking far enough into the hall to be out of earshot of a conversation that he had no right to hear. It was pleasant inside and the scent of the Duke filled the room: cloves, spice, pipe smoke. Old familiar smells that spoke of quiet evenings in the den with the fire roaring and father and son sitting opposite each other over a chessboard. Heavy velvet curtains had been drawn over the windows and an air of oppressiveness hung in the room. Still, a narrow sliver of window peeped from between the drapings and the flash of rain was there. You could hear it against the roof even now, defying the home's thick stone walls. Sydney found the noise beautiful and suiting. He certainly could have asked for no better requiem. A lavish island in a sea of carpeting and priceless furniture, the Duke's bed sat imposing and tall against the far wall. Sydney approached it unflinchingly, suddenly so glad to see the old man propped against the pillows that he could barely remember his fears or sadness. He moved quickly to stand by him, to smell him, to be close to him, even if it could only be for so short a while. He wanted to cry out a thousand things yet as always their relationship was restricted by mutual self-control. It had always been thus, it could never be different because too much emotion would prove too painful and make their separation and sacrifices nearly unbearable to endure. The Duke greeted him warmly but simply though the light in his dying eyes spoke volumes. Sydney pushed tears away to answer him. "Time passed much too quickly for my tastes," the younger one said. Words were halted on Duke Bardorba's lips. His chin tilted a few degrees down and suddenly his face was in the candlelight so that the man before him saw the age there and the sickness. His heart broke but still he kept restrained, doing nothing but laying a hand on the bedclothes. "You do not look well, Father," Sydney said, desperate to see the pain pass from the Duke's weakened eyes, "I'm sorry to make you wait this week but I needed the time..." "No!" Bardorba interrupted passionately, then calmed himself, "It is I who am sorry. Never apologize again to me, Sydney, I can't bear it. I would give you the world, this week was nothing. You've suffered much and what have I endured? A few months sickness and a lifetime of power... you... you're just barely in your twenty-eighth year... you haven't lived at all and that life you've experienced has been one shaped by the designs of a woman long dead and a destiny you could never escape..." "I chose this destiny, Father," Sydney reprimanded gently, "I do not regret it." "Nay, I chose it for you..." The Duke looked away, thoughtful. "To bring a child into the world and then bind him in a cage, leave him with those monsters... of course you would choose the path they taught you. You did as you were raised to do and when the time arrived, you gladly became what they wanted." Sydney shook his head. "I only did what I knew in my heart was right. But Father, there's no need for you to flay yourself over decisions made ages ago. It's all in the past. You did as you felt was necessary and perhaps it was... a harsh decision... even if that's so, with Leá Monde's destruction, you've redeemed yourself." "Nay." Bardorba seemed feeble suddenly, grasping for words and gasping for breath. Sydney thought to offer him water but the Duke had always scorned aid. His son knew that if he truly wanted a drink, he'd find the strength and presence of mind to reach for it himself. So he waited until that control was clenched again and he continued. "Nay. All that could redeem me is your forgiveness. You've done so much for me and never has there been a dram of bitterness in your soul. How did you escape that, Sydney? Even I was bitter upon being forced to surrender you. You've such a pure soul, such light amid the Darkness you worship. I want to know, Sydney, why you've given up everything for me. I'm naught save a tired old man who could have suffered hell if you'd not listened. I curse myself for ever asking, for being so weak." "I'd have heard even if you'd never said a word, Milord," Sydney replied with a smile, absently smoothing the soft satin quilt beneath his iron hands, "And I'd have acted no matter the costs. Be at peace, Father, please. I ask for no thing more. All is well and everything that caused you worry is dealt with. Even the Cardinal. Valendia sleeps peacefully tonight, can you not hear the breaths of a thousand slumbering babes in their cradles?" "You are still a babe in his cradle..." Bardorba whispered, slowly reaching a hand down to grasp his son's, ignoring its icy chill, "Neither touched nor tainted by a cold world. Must I put you to sleep now?" "I'll do it myself," Sydney growled, disgusted at the fear creeping over him anew. There was a shimmer on the bedclothes. A dagger, as bejewelled and splendid as the Duke had ever owned. Sydney reached a trembling hand towards it but Bardorba halted his action with a single glance. "Let me do this for you..." he said, "I know not what awaits you, only that I shall not be at your side. Do not hold on to your life, let it go..." "The Dark makes that hard," Sydney answered quietly, "I think upon that man Grissom and wonder if I am not just as desperate to live..." It was true and he hated to say it but Sydney had no desire to die. He put on bravery for his Father but that was only a mask with very sharp corners. Behind it he wanted his life so deeply he could taste it. Just as Hardin had wanted to live, just as Grissom... such desires were far from absurd and dangerous to say the least for any man who'd ever embraced the Dark. "Tell me that you won't hold onto it," Bardorba pleaded, moving his hand and arm over the dagger as though he could hide it and its intent from his son, "This world is full of the bitter dead. I simply cannot do what must be done if I know that you'll become one of them. Please, Sydney... perhaps there is a Heaven for sinners such as we. Or better yet, I think there is oblivion. I wish to sleep with you at my side for I have no more use for my soul and neither have you. Your mother is there, wherever it is that 'there' may be. Leave this world to the wretched living." "I shall," Sydney said, his voice quavering because he knew he was lying. He could hear Hardin's protests but he would not heed them. "I leave it to Ashley." "Aye," Bardorba whispered brokenly, nodding, "Aye, leave it to him. And forgive me, Sydney... for being so selfish... for stealing this from you... for not being the father that I should have been..." Hardin still was protesting, begging for reassurance. Sydney could feel his loneliness and the loneliness of countless souls. He was drenched suddenly in the ice of death and he could smell decay, lick the taste of it from his lips. He thought upon Ashley as he'd found himself doing often that week and suddenly even that couldn't push his sadness away. The sadness of his wasted life passed through him like a breath of air, leaving him hollow and weeping inside. He was just another stepping stone in a cursed line of people and now, with his burden passed on, he had to die to protect that very line. This body with its tainted blood was cursed. His very soul with its sacrosanct secrets could not be suffered to continue. The Duke was wrong. Sydney was suddenly terribly bitter about the entire situation. And yet... To look down at his Father now, Sydney didn't taste regret for helping him. The old man's eyes were full of a sort of fathomless love and understanding that no gold could buy. A man could live his entire life and never see that kind of love directed towards him. Perhaps just these few brief moments could be worth an entire lifetime. Sydney felt a tightening in his chest that sparked a memory of a little boy standing crying in a doorway, looking out desperately to see a retreating hooded figure making his way down a tunnel, disappearing finally when the light grew too dim to see. How that little boy had beat his fists into the walls and screamed for his papa, even when papa became little more than fragmented memories that were hard to grasp: chess games, pipe smoke, tender kisses, and bedtime stories of knights and dragons... Sydney had always wanted to be the dragon in those tales... In desperation, Hardin called his name but was ignored now for the warmth of the living. Sydney pressed against his Father's bed, his robe rustling to touch the silk. He could embrace him now, couldn't he? What need had they for fronts and control anymore... there would be no tomorrow and regret had no more meaning for either of them. Sydney felt the damp standing out in his eyes, blurring the Duke's time-worn features until he was the very man of his youth, the father who'd sacrificed his son. The son had come home at last and the little boy buried himself in his father's chest, wetting his robe with tears of relief. He barely felt the dagger when it came. It was just a bit of icy cold interrupting the warmth of their embrace. Still, Sydney drew away with a sharp hiss. He felt another chill, two chilly hands grabbing for his shoulders to steady him and he heard Hardin crying his pleas again. Sydney knew fear then but he only smiled, his attention engrossed with Father's face. The Duke watched as though from a great distance, and his son thought he saw the shine of tears in his tired eyes. Tears... in twenty-eight years he'd never seen him cry. Men did not cry, especially members of Parliament and war-heroes. Sydney wanted to stay those tears yet his tongue was heavy and thoughts were scattered. He thought once more of Ashley and that face was on his mind even as he died. Words, pictures, ideas assaulted him, a great weight lifted away and he felt himself drawn along until whatever force had pulled at him suddenly lost its hold, as though he were too broken and insubstantial a thing to maintain a grip of. He heard Hardin only whatever he was saying made no sense. The whole world was suddenly nothing but light and then nothing but dark, each coming and going in a haphazard fashion that would have made him dizzy if he could actually see any of it. He heard voices and then something moved past him yet there was nothing to discern. His father's voice, was that it? He sounded unfettered and free like a very young men just unloosed into the world. Usually he seemed so very tired and sad, frustrated too. A pang of anguish struck Sydney, accompanied by pain so real that memories exploded in his consciousness before he could tame them and put them away, as he so often did. Memories were useless things and he hated regret, found it utterly pointless. Perhaps it was a fitting tool to tame others with but Sydney Losstarot had no need for it. Regret, regret, regret, what had the Duke so regretted that had turned him into the very sad and very sorry man that his son had always known? Sydney remembered the tears and thought he felt his own but really he felt nothing save the pain of a million memories and unanchored voices all clawing at his mind. Where were his boundaries? Where were the measures of control and repression he always kept erected in order to fend off these blasted memories? Where was Hardin, where was his father? Where in the hell was Ashley and why had it become so suddenly difficult to even recall him? There was the walkway, the tunnel to the chapel. Bright orange torchlight thrown up on cracked stone walls. The ceiling rose and arched up into black obscurity, both ends receding into nothingness. But there wasn't nothingness. On the contrary, there was something very definite. Sydney knew exactly where both ends came out to. One lead to the street. It would be cobblestone and the moonlight would be shining down as horses click-clacked along its length pulling carriages while men and women walked arm in arm together alongside a beautiful white fountain of marble. Water flowed over the sculpture in the centre... a sculpture of St. Iocus blessing the oppressed people of Valendia. The Saint was a figure of supreme benevolence and the poor were ragged scarecrows at His knees, looking up into His face. The entire fountain was beautiful and white as snow, a gift given to the Graylands by the Church itself when it had built three new places of worship within the city's limits. But Father always scoffed at it and gave Sydney the most severe look whenever he said how pretty it was. Any mention of the Church at all, or of the Cardinal, of even Blessed St. Iocus... it always set off the deepest rage in Duke Bardorba. Sydney didn't understand it and yet he knew better than to question Father. They walked often by the fountain. It stood in one of the city's most prominent thoroughfares and that in itself seemed to aggravate the Duke more than anything else. He cursed the Church's upper hand. How tightly their fist closed around Valendia. Religious freedom was a mockery of a phrase intended to quell the rabble's feeble cries and the bloody Inquisition was a not too distant memory-- The tunnel... orange light... it flickered from torches and the shadows cast there were bright blue, like the sky at dawn. Sydney shook his head to rid it of memories and he wondered where his father was and where Hardin had gone. He suddenly feared for Hardin and that was something else sharp and cold to hurt his heart. He thought of a day in the rain that seemed not that long ago when he'd returned to his rooms from a gathering and found a strange man there with very serious, angry eyes. He'd said his name was John Hardin and that he hated the Church and the law it enforced... Sydney had read his heart quickly and welcomed him to Müllenkamp without hesitation. Damn the Church. Damn them all to hell... yet even memories of that old rage couldn't last. It flared up and then died out again and still there was that orange tunnel. Mold had eaten into the cracks of the walls, wet lichen licking its way up the stone weakening the mortar. Sydney knew where the other end led out to. The entrance to that street with the pretty fountain beneath a sky full of stars. It was always barred by a heavy wrought-iron gate that sat between two great brown stone buildings and bore no sign. Sydney thought it a terrible thing, that entryway into something without even a name to tame it. Father would look so sadly at the gate sometimes as they passed. He'd hold Sydney's hand a little tighter as they made their way to the Parliament building or to city hall or to his grandparent's home but the little boy only ever had eyes for the fountain and the pretty way the water slid over the marble like satin. But he was never allowed to sit in its shade like the other children! He'd get so cross sometimes when Father slapped his arm and led him off to a bench or a tree to take their rests. Father hated the fountain and the fact that the Church had built it. But how could he hate that selfless generosity? Father always had so few answers for him when he asked. "If you love an idea only because it's beautiful, Sydney, you'll soon be very disappointed to discovered there is absolutely nothing behind the beauty. A person's soul should not look for beauty but for truth. There is truth in the sky, in your heart, and in the spirits who walk the earth and tell you tales. That fountain and the Church who built it are a facade covering a greater Evil. Perhaps Iocus was a wonderful Man. But this religion that's come about because of Him is more evil than it's worth. More men have been slaughtered in the worship of His name than ever died from any plague or war. Always remember that. The gravest sin in the world is to kill a man in the name of a God. There can be nothing more meaningless." Long, big words with a lot of import to them yet they never told Sydney why he couldn't play in the fountain. Mother was a painting on the wall; a portrait of a lovely lady with large grey eyes and soft blonde hair. Supposedly Sydney looked more like his father save his hair and eyes but he couldn't truly judge, the woman had died giving birth to him and sometimes the servants whispered that the Duke's sadness was because of that. He'd wanted a family, been blessed with a wife he'd loved more than life itself and when it was discovered she'd give birth soon, no one could quell his joy. No one but a cruel Fate who'd killed her before she could ever pick her son up, giving her just enough time to name him before slipping away like a small delicate bud who'd been granted but a single day to flower. Sydney never thought upon her, she was an uninteresting notion, dead and uninteresting. Quite ignorant and selfish too. Spirits came to him to talk but where was Mother? If she didn't care enough to find him, he didn't care enough to grant her a single moment's contemplation. Father missed her dreadfully and only shrugged and sighed when asked why she wouldn't come when Sydney called. She had died a "complete death", the Duke said and left it at that. More mysteries. The little blonde-headed boy would simply scowl at his secrets and head back to his room to exchange stories with ghosts or frighten the maids by moving too fast for them to see. A very convenient way to get cookies before dinner, was that little trick. Displacing himself and other things was as easy as speaking with the dead; by the time he was five, Sydney was quite adept at it. Still, he was never anything more than mortal when Father was around. Bardorba frowned too deeply if Sydney ever showed his... prowess... in front of him, yet sometimes the boy saw his father shadow-fencing in the studies and thought it odd how quickly he could move. And sometimes... actually, only once on a very dark night when Sydney was supposed to be in bed, had he creeped into his Father's study and seen him conversing cheerily with a dead man dressed in armour. The conversation had been about the war and the good old days and it was strange that the Duke had never seemed happier or more at ease than he had when in conversation with that spirit. Father was so often ill at ease. He'd spend all day at Parliament, staying until late into the night trying to secure Valendia's independence from the iron-fisted Church. The Cardinal wanted to oversee all facets of government. He wanted all cults and lesser divisions of the Iocus Religion to be ferreted out and assimilated into the main branch of worship. Any who would not comply he insisted be labelled heretics and denied their freedom. The days of branding men with Blood-Sins were done but the Duke knew that fact was not something the Cardinal relished. He thirsted for utmost power and gold and for something else... the Duke knew exactly what that ‘something else' was and dreaded the day when he would grab for it. He still remembered the trembling of Leá Monde... he still remembered hiding in the wine cellars with those precious few survivors, running his sword through the stomachs of the Crimson Blades who'd branded everyone worshipping in Müllenkamp's temples as blasphemers and threats to the State. The Inquisition had come unexpected and without warning into Leá Monde. Knights of the Cross, acting under the orders of the Cardinal, had stormed the city and killed hundreds, slashing inverted Roods into the backs of every "sinner", marking them for the gates of hell. Or so they'd said. Most were simply slaughtered and the branded leaders sent to Valendia's capital for hearings and public execution. Others were put through the most horrendous forms of torture imaginable until they confessed their sins and renounced their religion. Afterwards, swift death was their reward. Examples had to be made of the Church's power afterall. It must seem as though the Church was blessed by God Himself. When the quake came and swallowed Leá Monde, it seemed to be a Sign. After that, the Cardinal could not be disputed, he was seen as the very hand of God. Bardorba and his household had been some of the last to be arrested. The Duke was a war hero after all and greatly respected, it had taken much threatening on the Cardinal's behalf and much brainwashing of the people to ever bring the Blades to his door. In Leá Monde, in front of the judgement of heartless Inquisitors, the Duke's power granted him nothing save the tattoos they marked he, his three year old son, and the Duke's major-domo with before sending them off to court. The travelling party had only just left the city when the quakes began taking it all. The very earth seemed to open up without warning and buildings toppled as though made of paper, entire streets collapsing underground while waters rose to flood the alleyways and separate the city from the mainland. The dying screamed without end and Bardorba had collapsed to his knees, holding a sobbing little boy in his arms as the Blades had kicked him fiercely, demanding he cooperate and move as told lest they "cleave the sin-soiled flesh from his bones". Leá Monde was destroyed as though by God. It had been the devil's own city and redemption was an impossibility for it. So the Church had preached afterwards. God's Judgement was swift and without mercy. Repent, repent, repent. Places of worship had been flooded with the newly converted for months after the terrible death of Leá Monde's citizenry. They simpered for divinity and forgiveness and the priests spoon-fed both to them. After such earth-shattering miracles and irrefutable judgements upon sinners from almighty God Himself, the Church had come very close to gaining complete power. Using his money, his connections and his sway, Bardorba kept that from happening. He paid for his own freedom with money he'd hoarded in the banks of Valendia, narrowly escaping being burned at the stake as a heretic by paying a priest to plead for his soul. Afterwards, he publicly converted his faith and took a Parliamentary position offered to him years ago but that he'd always declined. He became a public figure. He was granted his title, moving into lavish apartments in the Graylands where the entire city could watch him and find a figure besides the Church to come to for aid. Bardorba kept Parliament unbiased and secured religious freedom at the cost of his own soul. He used his gifts of persuasion to stymie the Cardinal's invasion. He convinced the former General of Valendia's army, LeSait, to found the VKP and begin training an offensive power that could act in the Parliament's name. Never, not once, did anyone see the Blood-Sin burned into his back. But all knew it was there and all knew that Bardorba would never allow such a thing to be done to another man. He would say that loudly and with great sincerity whenever people questioned his motives. No one defied Duke Aldous Byron Bardorba. Not even the Cardinal dared to publicly denounce him. While life went on and the Church and Parliament fought silent battles with each other, Leá Monde festered over the sea like a sore growing gangrenous with rot. Thousands upon thousand had died there yet Sydney had no memories of it really; just dim recollections of much shouting and crying. He remembered his Father grabbing a hold of him and then other hands, less loving, pulling him away and doing horrible things as Father yelled. He remembered pain but not really. Mainly he remembered Father yelling and the mumbling of clerics from the Church. "Hairy-tick, hairy-tick, hairy-tick," they'd all cried. What nonsense it had seemed to him at the time. All of that was so distant now. Sydney lived in a beautiful Mansion with a beautiful beautiful fountain outside and a lot of things to do and see and listen to everyday. The only dark part of his life were the occasional frowns from his father and uneasy glances whenever they would pass that gate and the glowing orange tunnel behind it. Even being denied playing in the fountain was a trivial matter that rarely stayed on his mind. Hardin was calling... wasn't he? What words were it that he spoke? Stay... with me...? No, what foolishness, where was Ashley? Sydney's vision was filled with lights and darks and faces with names he knew and loved and hated. Then there was the orange tunnel with the blue shadows and suddenly he heard the souls crying in Leá Monde; the little sobs of spectre children who couldn't find their mothers buried beneath the rubble... but Valendia was safe, wasn't it? Hadn't the Duke said that all little children were sleeping and dreaming ever so peacefully in their beds tonight? Or perhaps he'd said it himself... either way it had been said and so it was most likely true. Ach... where was Hardin and where was Sydney? The orange tunnel with the mouldy bricks and crumbling mortar... it was all he could see. It was only a week before he was to turn six years old and he and Father were walking past the fountain on a beautiful blue spring day with bulbous white clouds moving so swiftly in the sky that they seemed only just out of reach. Sydney had grabbed for them and asked, "Papa, get me a cloud, I want one!" only Father was in bad spirits today. But today was supposed to be grand! Father'd been away at the Capitol for almost a month and Sydney had been heartsick with loneliness. This was the first day they'd been together, the first they'd seen of each other. And yet Father would not turn his sad blue eyes down to look at his son. Deep heavy lines were gouged into his face and he looked older than he ever had before. The harsh white sun revealed his pale pale features, the sickly lines around his eyes, and then Sydney turned to hug them away and lighten his spirits. Father had struck him firmly on the cheek and pushed him off. "Tell me your name," he hissed, pulling them both out of the street away from prying eyes, into an alley only a few blocks down from the Manor. Sydney was too shocked to cry and too shocked to even raise his fingers to soothe his stinging cheek. He didn't know what to say until the Duke struck him again with the back of his hand and repeated his words. "S-sydney, Papa!" the little boy cried out, "Did you forget?" "You're Sydney Bardorba, aren't you?" the Duke whispered, his composure breaking and his stern frown creeping away. He dropped to his knees and scooped his son up in a hug, crushing his slender frame into his own massive chest. "I am sorry... I am so so sorry, Sydney... I want to forget who you are. I've left you this past month to try and forget that you exist but I cannot. I cannot forget you anymore than I could ever forget your mother. Cruel this is, too cruel, too cruel. A year with her and only six with you. I lose you both and my hands are tied to try and stop it." "Papa, papa, it's okay. I'm here, it's okay." It was mid-afternoon and much too hot out for hugs. Sydney tried to squirm out of his father's arms but found himself trapped between him and the alleywall. Sweat ran down the back of his tunic and the little boy tugged uncomfortably at his collar. The Duke grabbed a hold of his right hand and kissed it. "You have to leave me, Sydney," he whispered fervently, "You have to leave today forever. I took you from the Manor this afternoon because I knew they'd come to the very front door to steal you and it would be better if we go to them ourselves, of our own will. Because we must always be brave about confronting fate and destiny and things we cannot change. Don't let fate come to you, you march to fate. 'Tis the way our family has always been. The Bardorba line has never cowered nor ran away. Remember that and remember that you are always Sydney Bardorba. No matter what happens nor whomever it is you become." "Papa, I don't understand..." Tears were welling up in his eyes and the Duke wiped them from the little boy's cheeks. "Can't we go home?" "We can never go home." Bardorba examined Sydney's face. He ran his hands up and down his arms, clasping him by the wrists. He let his fingers move upwards and find the soft locks of blonde that framed the boy's brow, entwining themselves in the downy tresses. He watched his son as though memorizing him; his tear-filled grey eyes, his little round mouth and bright pink lips; the sandy freckles brushed over his nose. "I love you so much," he whispered, then grabbed him by the hand and led him from the alley. The street around the fountain of St. Iocus was one of the most beautiful and lively in the city. Vendors came to sell their wares here, sitting out on blankets spread on the courtyard with goods of all sorts surrounding them. There were all kinds of things to smell and buy and eat. The air here was always full of exotic scents and the mist thrown from the fountain itself kept everything damp and cool. It was a lovely little oasis and there were always children about taking advantage of that. Sydney had few friends among them. His position as the ducal heir kept him buried in the walls of the Manor, and so he could find no friendly faces in the crowd of people he and his Father now walked through. Men and women jostled them both and children ran underfoot with their dogs, nabbing things from the vendors when their backs were turned. The air was full of colour and sound; laughter, chatter, market cries, and dogs barking. Such fun it usually was to walk through it. But Sydney's cheek still stung and the Duke wouldn't look at him. And today, they were making their way past the fountain in a way they never had before. "Papa, you're hurting me--!" Bardorba's grip on his wrist was unrelenting and harsh. Sydney found himself practically dragged through the crowd and it was all he could do to keep on his feet. He doubled his paces, almost running, trying to walk at his father's side. A drunkard blocked his path suddenly but the boy couldn't dodge in time, receiving a hard knock from his elbow into his jaw. He saw stars for a moment but shook them off, too confused to cry about it. There was the glare of orange behind iron from ahead and panic welled in his heart. It was the barred gate. Never did the Duke want to approach that gate, it often stole his cheer and planted a frown on his face to even pass it. Why did they now walk so firmly towards it? "Papa..." Sydney whimpered, clawing at the grip of iron around his wrist, "Papa, where are we going?" Bardorba wouldn't answer and he seemed to lack the courage to even turn to face him. The crowds ignored the pair and life spun on in a way that was almost sinister, relentlessly disregarding the small drama in its midst. Sydney wanted to scream out for someone to help him, he could feel black claws, invisible but there nonetheless, suddenly reaching for his throat. The gate and the orange tunnel behind it were things that often woke him up in the middle of the night and now Father wanted to take them both there?! "I want to go home..." Why couldn't they both go home? Or perhaps go to Parliament and Sydney could sit in the cool front galleries while Father talked with the Statesmen? Such fun was that, to sit in the velvet-cushioned chairs and watch the people come and go, sometimes picking out thoughts from their very open minds and amusing himself with things he should not have been able to see. There was nothing good in that tunnel. But suddenly they were there. Bardorba kept one hand on his son and tucked the other into his greatcoat, drawing out a large black key. The key was ornate and almost pretty. Customarily, Sydney might have asked to hold it. "Papa! Papa!!" Why wouldn't he listen?? The little boy clawed at the iron grip about his wrist, scratching with his fingernails and even drawing blood, fully expecting to be struck for his disrespect. Yet nothing came, not even a glance. Why was he suddenly such a pariah to Father? Wasn't he now who he'd always been? Nothing had changed and yet suddenly he was a ghost! He was a ghost to the living and a ghost to Father, just like the ghosts who came to wail at his feet because no one would acknowledge them and they could barely believe they were dead. The Duke seemed to think so, having eyes only for the bit of pretty key in his hand. He squeezed Sydney's delicate wrist so tightly that the bones grated together and nothing could ease that hold. With the crowd jostling the two and a thousand impatient peasants all scrabbling to get past, Bardorba fought his way through some wordless struggle and held the key to his lips, searching for the strength to continue. Sydney saw him win his battle, the key suddenly raised to be fit into a small shiny lock on the heavy iron gate. It turned and opened an entryway for them, the wrought-iron swinging backwards with a screech. "I don't want to..." Sydney whimpered, clawing again at the Duke's hand. He was pulled through and nearly blinded as the dim tunnel veritably sucked the bright glow of the afternoon street from his eyes. The gate slammed shut in the pair's wake and the echo bounced down the entire length of the flickering orange tunnel. Father! Hardin--! What was this terrible place that haunted him?! The ground was such filth, such mold-covered stone, unevenly paved with mud and sewage puddled in the cracks and water dripped from above, thick and warm, striking the top of Sydney's blonde head and running down the back of his neck like blood. He wanted to wipe it away yet all he could do was beat at Father's hand and try to think of what he'd done wrong that he must now be punished like this. He looked about desperately but the walls were unfriendly and ugly; large blocks of rock lit by flickering orange torchlight. Pools of shadows lay in intervals where they receded back into alcoves with statues of Saints he'd never seen before erected in them. The torches threw up ghastly black darkness into the figures' faces and made monsters of them while the sconces themselves were in the shape of holy Roods cast of bronze so that they glowed wicked and sharp in the firelight. Rats skittered from the shadows and their red eyes glowed, fangs leering and yellow beneath glistening wet whiskers. There were bats too but they hid in the cracks between the stones, chirping in their restless sleeps. The sombreness of the air hushed Sydney's panic and he walked at his Father's side wordless now, his free hand wrapped up in the Duke's robe and his face pressed close into his hip. His eyes were wide in fear and yet Father could bring no comfort. Father was his captor. They walked for what seemed like forever, both silent, the sounds of their footfalls splashing beneath them all that let their presence be known to the rats and other crawly things. Sydney saw the tunnel slope very gradually downwards and yet the horror of the place never receded. If anything it only intensified as his imagination picked out monsters in the shadows and the sound of distant running water grew loud, like something roaring. Street noises died away and he couldn't even see the glow of the gate any longer. He and Father had lost themselves in some place set apart from time. Blackness before them, blackness behind, and the torches burned on, making everything cruel and cut out in shades of dark and orange. But that could not last forever. And as horrible as the possibility was that they would be stranded in this Netherworld till the apocalypse came, it was doubly horrible when a faint white light began to glow from up ahead and Bardorba quickened his paces, dragging Sydney along with him. After a few hundred feet, the tunnel opened up dramatically into an echoing chamber, a chapel actually. It was high ceilinged and wide, stretching to a huge double-doorway with a painted wooden Rood strung above it. The room stank of grandeur-turned-decay. Carved statues lined the walls that had been splendid ages ago, bright with gilt and paint yet it all had cracked and flaked away. The marble tiled floor was uneven and broken, the original mosaic design lost beneath years of grime. Pillars lay broken and crumbling, an alter was little more than an iron shell, and many of the statues were missing limbs or laying in pieces on the floor. Shafts of daylight from high above filtered in through shuttered vents near the ceiling. Sydney held his breath to behold the destruction they illuminated, still hanging on dearly to the Duke. There were no spirits in this place and yet he was sure he heard cries; the wails of the dead echoed in his ears. After a bit of an inspection of the chapel, Bardorba sighed and led them both to the great doors at the end. These were massive and solid still, seemingly unmoveable. Yet they slid silently open with just a touch from the Duke's hand. The room beyond was immediately more humble. A small antechamber, lit by tall tapers, lined in books and full of tables. Three men in robes were seated at one of them and paid no heed to the sudden visitors. Sydney stared, pushing so tightly into the Duke's side that it seemed he wanted to simply sink into him. "Where is Valk?" Father roared suddenly, stepping boldly into the room. There were various doors leading from this new place off into strange dark hallways and Sydney was frightened of what people might emerge. No one came however, and no answer was granted to the Duke until one of the robed men at the table stood and approached very slowly, as though he couldn't be bothered with any of this at all. "Are you Aldous?" he asked in a bored tone of voice, not glancing once towards the child. The Duke curled a lip up and sneered his reply. "I'll speak to no one but Valk. Is he yet here?" "He went to your Manor." "Has he returned?" The robed man smiled softly. "We thought that you'd fled, Aldous." "I would never flee," the Duke growled in a very horrible, very low tone of voice. Sydney rarely heard that voice, it was Bardorba's most deadly. By nature he grew quieter the more agitated he got and by the sound of it, he was now approaching the seventh level of fury. "His sixth year. Do you think I would forget? I would not flee and neither would he." "You must understand why Valk is concerned. You are the Parliament's lamb. You renounce your brethren and side with our murderers in the name of a freedom you have yet to truly--" "Still your tongue!" The interruption came not from the Duke but a new voice that called from one of the halls. Sydney turned to see the entrance of a very tall man with broad shoulders and a well-built form. Dressed only in a sleeveless robe hanging to the middle of his calves, he had long hair tied into a single thin braid and very thick black brows. Heavy gold earrings rattled as he moved. "Aldous, you've come," he greeted, approaching quickly and laying a hand on the Duke's shoulder, "I never had doubts." "Truly?" Bardorba asked, ire in his tone. "Your acolyte here told a different tale. Valk, I'll ask once more if there may be a reprieve. You do not know what it is for me to do this. This is like dying. This is like having him die." "There can be no reprieve nor alternative. But fear not, Aldous, this is nothing so horrible." "Papa...?" Sydney clutched at the Duke's robes, the material oozing from between his fingers. Suddenly all eyes were upon him and he buried his face away. Valk grabbed him roughly by the collar. "Who are you, boy?" he asked, shaking him once and forcing his head to jerk back so he'd have to look up. Bardorba flinched and ground his teeth together but said nothing. "Leave me alone!" Sydney demanded, pulling at the fist clenching his tunic. Valk frowned and shoved him away, moving to stand between the little boy and his Father. When he tried to run back to the Duke, the well-built man grabbed his shoulder roughly and then motioned for Bardorba to leave. "N-no... wait, I have gold for you," the Duke said, fumbling for the little purse hanging from his belt, "He'll not go without. You must treat him well, Valk, and if anything happens to him... if anything happens to him I do not care who it is that you are, I will come and cleave you navel to neck. I'll cut you open like a trout from the river, do you hear me?" "Papa!! No, don't leave me here!" Valk grimaced and Sydney saw on his face what he would see there afterwards many times: anger. He found himself shoved backwards to the floor so hard that his head knocked against a table leg and bright lights went off before his eyes. He heard Father cursing and then Valk was insisting that he leave. Sydney did nothing but call for the Duke and beg to be taken home, speaking as well as he could through the sobs now tearing through him. He tried to rise, still calling out, and then Valk hissed, "He is not your Father any more, little boy!" and that one sentence tore the Duke in twain. His face collapsed inwards in anguish and he almost fell backwards out into the chapel, clutching at the front of his robes. He threw his pouch of gold to the floor and then turned to flee. Sydney jumped to his feet and started to give chase but Valk's fist came at him without a moment's warning. He slammed a hand into the boy's jaw and sent him sprawling. He tried to get up again but the whole room was spinning. All he could do was push up on his elbows and watch the muted glimmer of the gold trim on Father's robe as he rushed through the chapel and back out into that horrible tunnel. Father's head was bowed and he wouldn't turn to look no matter how loud Sydney screamed. Then Valk shut the heavy doors and it would be almost fourteen years until Sydney saw him again. He was left with a bleeding lip and a ringing head. He was far from used to such rough treatment and so he could do nothing save sit on the dirty floor and cry into his sleeves for Papa to come back. Valk did not allow such a thing to continue for very long. With the three robed men from before looking on smugly, he grabbed Sydney by the waist and marched off with him back into one of the dark hallways. Sydney struggled against his hold, fighting with his fists and then with his teeth, but the man gave him such a sound blow to his head that he was dazed for a moment and the next thing he knew, they'd passed through a dark corridor and come out into a hallway full of heavy wooden doors. Valk shoved one open and entered, dropping his whimpering hostage onto the bed inside. Cold and stale, the little room smelled of mold and Sydney sat up on the bed with a tear-streaked face and a frown of distaste. He drew his knees up close and moved away from Valk, who'd seated himself nearby, watching intently. "What is your name?" he was asked after a moment. "S-sydney Bardorba of the Graylands...." "Wrong." Valk drew his hand back and the little boy cowered, expecting another blow. But all he received was a less vicious slap across his right wrist. "You are not the son of the Duke any longer. You are a student here and you are simply Sydney. If any of the others ask, you must tell them only that. You are a student named Sydney. You may pick a surname when you're older but for now you are nothing more than another tree in the forest. Understand?" "But Papa..." Another slap. "It may not be known that Bardorba has any connection with us. And so, what is your name, boy?" Sydney's lower lip quivered and his mind turned over in confusion. The streets were outside, weren't they? Wasn't the beautiful white fountain where St. Iocus blessed the poor still surrounded by vendors and children and people walking beneath a smiling sun? Why was he in this horrible place? It was dark and dirty down here and there wasn't a single window, he could not see the sky! "P-please may I go home, sir?" Valk slapped him again, then rose from the stool he'd seated himself upon and approached the door. "When you can tell me your proper name, you may eat and then begin to study with the others. Until then, sit in this room and become familiar with it. It is yours." "Where has my Father gone?" "He's gone someplace you may not follow. You will come to know this refuge as your home and you will love it for it is the one place in Valendia aside from Leá Monde herself where you may find peace. You are a student of Müllenkamp now, boy." Valk stared at him for a long moment, his lips pursed into an expression of appraisal, but whether he found his new guest lacking or not, the man turned and quickly stepped from the room. It was with a very baleful sound that the heavy door closed behind him and then Sydney was alone. His mind spun. He sat in silence for hours, shocked, pressed into the corner of the tiny cell and listening to the distant noise of what seemed like chanting. It was a pretty song, whatever it was that was being sung, and it sparked memories that he could not quite grasp. Frightening images danced in his head and he wondered if there might not be some wand'ring spirit to lend a sympathetic ear to his plight. Yet there was none here. Even the beautiful woman who sometimes came to him would not appear. He felt so utterly alone. After he could stand his own silence no longer, Sydney started to cry, laying facefirst into the sheets of the little bed there wailing confusion out into a pillow. He wanted Papa to come and sweep him up in his arms and take him home to the big beautiful Manor where everyone smiled at him and he was the young Master, the heir to it all. When he'd cried himself dry, Sydney slept for a while and did not know whether it was night or day when he awoke, only that he was horribly hungry and thirsty. He pushed the discomforts away, approaching the door and laying his head close upon it, listening for sounds. There was more singing coming at him from a great distance and then the sound of bells chiming. Voices chittered back and forth, came nearer, then faded and were gone. It seemed like ages until Valk came again. He was asleep when the door creaked open and Sydney was awakened by the man ripping the fine shirt from his back. Kicking and pleading, he was stripped of his clothes and dressed in dull brown hose and tunic, feet and head left bare. "Who are you, boy?" Valk asked as he worked, playfully sweeping his right hand back through the child's locks. "S-sydney..." "Really!" Valk lifted him from the bed and set him on his feet. "There is not much to you, is there, Sydney? Yet you are Aldous' son, the wretched mark is on your back, surely enough. Very well. Tomorrow morning you begin lessons with the other children. Yet Sydney, you are not like the other children here. More is expected of you. Understand?" "...no..." he muttered miserably, hiding his hands in the sleeves of his too-big tunic and eyeing the floor. Valk chuckled. "You will soon enough. Now I have brought you lunch and you'll eat it because you need your strength. My name is Henry Valk. You shall call me Master Valk." Sydney looked up and for the first time there was anger in his large grey eyes. "I shall call you knave," he whispered, tugging at his collar, "I want my Father." "You'll watch your young tongue, boy," Valk warned pleasantly, patting his head, "I am your friend here yet I can be your enemy. You have nine years to prepare for the Trial. I recommend you use them well. The longer you persist in defiance, the harder it will be for you." Sydney looked as though he'd break into tears again and this time Valk was a touch more sympathetic. The man laid a hand on one of his little shoulders and squeezed. "Do not cry, young Sydney. 'Tis a greater destiny you've been thrust into than what you've been plucked from." ...who knew? Perhaps Valk's words were true. Sydney thrashed wildly amid nothingness and was haunted by the face of the little boy in that cell. The image twisted about in his mind until he thought he'd scream and then he saw Joshua and was disgusted at what levels of envy that child could bring him to. Had he kidnapped Joshua out of spite? Had he been so blasted jealous? Joshua had been spared all of it, he had not been the first-born. He had been conceived outside the walls of Leá Monde and escaped its sorcery while Sydney... Sydney had been born damned. What horrible, useless, degrading thoughts were these! Why did they rise to the surface now? This was a hell of speculation and regret and Sydney could not get his head above the water to find a breath of reason. But it had not been so terrible, never quite so bad as at first. No, there had been good times at that place and he'd had good times with the acolytes of Müllenkamp. He had to embrace those and not be fooled by this false bitterness. Yet it had been so bad at first. Lessons were everyday, beginning at dawn. Sydney had never had anything beyond a few private tutors and he was still young. The people of Müllenkamp taught him to read and write English, Latin, French, and Kildean, all at once, relentlessly. Mathematics and the arcane sciences were his studies in the afternoon and when he turned ten, they forced alchemy and astrology onto his palette. But ten, ten, ten took so long to reach. In the four years between his arrival at a place called simply 'The Barracks' and his tenth birthday, Sydney attempted to escape at least once a week. Most of the time he never made it past Valk's bedroom near the chapel doors but a few times he would find himself standing where that heavy iron gate had once stood and he'd looked through it so many times when he'd still been of the Bardorba name and the flickering orange tunnel beyond had been the object of his speculative terror. That gate was not there anymore though. They had bricked it off and it was only a blank wall. He could not even see out onto the streets and gaze upon St. Iocus' lovely fountain. He could not see the children running after each other through the endlessly busy thoroughfare. Sydney knew there must surely be some other entrance into the Barracks but he was never allowed to explore the massive underground complex enough to stumble upon it. There were no windows in the place and air was vented in through grates set high in the ceilings. Every room was dingy and candle-lit, shelved roughly and lined with books. There were books of all sorts there, tomes older than Valendia itself, full of mysterious entries and inscrutable passages. Sydney and most of the other students there, pale faced boys and girls who were mainly the orphaned children of heretics killed during the Inquisition, were forbidden from opening them or even entering some of the libraries where they were kept. All day long and all night too, men and women in robes would shuffle by with books in hands, muttering things amongst themselves and trying to translate them. These were usually Grimoires, arcane books of magick salvaged from Leá Monde, and whenever Sydney wasn't contemplating his next escape attempt, he was preoccupied with thinking about those books and how he might get his hands on one. Most of the students didn't care one way or the other for them but Sydney knew that some grand secret lay in the writings of the Ancients and he wanted in on it. By the time he was eleven, Sydney had mastered the languages required of him. Doing as Valk had recommended, he devoted his free time to studies and was easily the most advanced of the students in the Barracks. He still thought of that brightly lit mansion and the warm friendly man whom he'd once known as Father yet those memories were uncomfortably distant. Sometimes it was easiest to forget the past and concentrate on how things were now. There was a certain luscious power in knowing as much as he did. These were glorious things that the men and women teachers of the Barracks taught him and the others; the very makings of the universe. It was completely contradictory to what the preachers had always shouted from their podiums in the marketplace. Sydney could remember those wild-eyed lunatics and how they'd make the people in the crowds tremble with their prophecies and condemnations. Yet the world was not so evil and neither was God. God. Really, there was no God. That's what the teachers of the Barracks taught. Rather there was the soul. It was swayed by Dark and swayed by Light and swayed by the very real force of the human heart. The Light was a formless thing without power and it shaped men's destinies and swallowed men's souls, gaining its strength through Life. It was peace and apathy. Then there was the Dark. The Dark was all powerful and difficult. It existed in all things yet could not always manifest. It was the only force that could truly change destinies, gaining its strength through Death. Both it and the Light were controlled by the heart and they were the only forces of Divinity in existence. Other Divine figures carved themselves from those powers but a human was not Divine by their doing. They were either strong-hearted and able to control the forces or the forces favoured them and used them as tools. That was the basic dogma preached in the Barracks. Though Sydney didn't always quite believe it, he found it fascinating nonetheless. The goal, it seemed, of the people in the place Sydney found himself so suddenly a part of, was to control the Divine elements. They did not want to worship a God, they wanted to control the forces behind him. Rather than deify the long-dead priestess they called Müllenkamp, they idolized her and the control she had had over the Dark. Once he was older, Sydney found this fascinating as well. "I wonder why it is that we hide like rats here," he commented belligerently to Valk one day as they'd sat across from each other at the evening meal. Dinner at the Barracks was a noisy affair, the one time of day where propriety and respect were thrown from the windows and the students could act their ages. Sydney had started to learn of the history of Müllenkamp that day in his classes and had spent the night before talking to the priestess herself. He wondered sometimes if Valk knew that he talked to their idol. Did he know that Müllenkamp would not die? For two thousand years she'd walked the earth and even after all of that time she still found too much to enjoy to allow her soul to dissipate into the Light. The Light itself had no desire for her either, her own spirit was too imbued with the Dark, it would only be rejected. The Light and the Dark could not be combined, they slipped past each other, like oil and water. A human soul could absorb either and their destiny lay in that split. "Why do we hide, Master Valk? Is it from the Church that we shut ourselves away? Or do we hide out of greed, because we would not share our knowledge? Why does my Father not come? Does he disagree with we heretics?" Valk had looked up in an eternally patient way. He had acquired a method of dealing with the boy that was indescribably irritating. It consisted of never growing angry and never seeming to care. "He fights our battles on a different field. There is much honour in what he does because he has shunned the Dark to do it." "Nonsense," Sydney had said lightly. He was nearly twelve and uncannily bright. He had a habit of wearing his long blonde hair in a braid as his Master did and he seldom wore a shirt. He liked the stares that the teachers and other students gave him. He liked that they feared the Blood-Sin on his back. He liked that he was such an object of reverence, hatred, fear, and joy though he didn't understand the source of any of it. "The only power in the world lies in the power of the Dark. When do I learn the Grimoires, Master Valk?" "When you stop asking me," the man had answered disdainfully. He sipped at a goblet of wine near his plate, picking over what was left of a potato. Twenty or so girls and boys shouted to each other around him, singing songs and telling tales. "You are not strong enough to control the Dark yet, boy." "Ha, that's a lie," Sydney laughed, "Master Mallierde says I'm the strongest warlock in the Barracks." "Master Mallierde needs to watch his addlepated tongue," Valk muttered, looking darkly down the table towards where the adults sat soberly smoking. Valk always sat with Sydney though, he preferred his sparring with the boy over the zealotry of his peers. "I wish to learn all it is that you want me to learn," he answered bitterly, "So that I may leave this accursed place all the sooner and return to my Father. Languages, science, mathematics and your religion of the Dark. Almost six years of it and it's still bloody nonsense to me." "Yet you're a smart boy and you humour us," Valk cut in, "Because you know there is nothing else to do. You learn and you listen so that you may be free some day." "Oh, bugger off, Master Valk," Sydney sighed, picking at his carrots with a petulant fork, "'Tis no wonder Father never comes for me. I wouldn't come either if I had to endure your logicking." "Thou art such a sweetheart, Sydney," Valk smiled, "Eat your vegetables." "Father never made me eat my vegetables." "Come off it," Valk snapped, suddenly losing his patience, "You barely remember your Father. What is he at all but a face to you? Something you conjure up to make you feel superior. Little boy, you are nothing. If you don't learn that soon, I fear the Trial will swallow you whole." There was no answer to give, nor any kind of clever, cutting reply. The words were true, though they had been cruel for Valk to say. Sydney rested his chin on a hand and dove relentlessly into his supper. He tried to prove Master Valk wrong, he tried to remember certain things about the Duke but... but he couldn't remember the colour of his eyes, nor even how the Mansion had looked. He could not recall his own bedroom nor the view from his window. All he knew for certain was there was a white marble fountain of St. Iocus on the other side of the walled-in exit from the orange tunnel past the chapel. Beyond that... beyond that was a grand mansion and he'd used to live there with a wonderful man he'd called Father. Now he spent most of his days studying or chatting with the other students. He played chess with the Masters or drew pictures in the journals Master Valk brought him. Sometimes a spirit would wander into the Barracks but not often. They seemed unwilling to speak with him when they did. Only Müllenkamp would talk at length. She told wonderful stories of Leá Monde and of the carving of the glyphs and of the sorcerers who'd wandered the streets two-thousand years before, conjuring storms from a clear sky. Sydney would lay in his tiny room across his hard bed and she would sit on the end; wavering, beautiful, enchanting. She was so alive despite the chill about her form that Sydney sometimes wanted to rest his head in her lap and see if she would stroke his hair. Yet their conversations were not like that. They were fun and friendly yet there was always a certain distance to the womanly spectre. It was almost like she secretly despised him and the boy hoped that hunch was not true. Perhaps it was the natural disdain that all the dead held for the living. Yet it was more than that. Sydney knew it. Valk was still picking at his dinner. His student watched his every action through hooded grey eyes. There were so many secrets in this place. The Masters revealed little yet there was a grand design to everything, there had to be. Perhaps Master Valk knew more than any of them, Sydney wasn't sure. Valk was not head of the place, no, that was false by far, yet he was superior to all of the teachers. The Trial... those words had such meaning to them and whenever Sydney was lax in his studies or fell behind in anything, Valk reminded him of The Trial. Yet there was no telling just what exactly that was. It was something awful and important though, there could be no mistaking that. Staring at his Master, the boy's mind started to wander. He saw things in Valk's head: surface level things, the man hid his secrets too well and Sydney had never been able to read his mind to an extent enough to discover anything he truly wanted to know. He saw now simple absent thoughts of how empty the goblet in his hand had become and of how loud Morgan, the little boy next to him, was. But then Valk turned to look at the ring on his hand and there appeared the flash of a man crying and the man was Valk himself, only ten years younger with short wild hair. Sydney narrowed his eyes, then closed them entirely, listening. Valk cried a name and another voice answered it, answered, "Brother!" Then Valk's voice again, he shouted, "Tell them for God's sake!" "Sydney!" The boy opened his eyes suddenly, startled, and Valk was staring down at him furiously, his teeth grinding together. Confused, Sydney saw something moving to his left and turned to look. A ghostly man stood just behind him, his face smeared in blood. He looked like Valk in a way and after a moment it was obvious that he had been the brother he'd been calling for in his memories. Yet... yet his face was slick with red and he wasn't wearing clothes. Round scorchmarks covered his torso, steam rising from them and Sydney thought he could smell the stink of burning flesh before Valk punched him in the jaw and the image faded entirely. The room hushed and he could feel every set of eyes there trained upon him. "I'm-- I'm sorry," he stuttered, rising to his feet. He rubbed his jaw and there was a little indentation there: Master Valk's ring. He wanted to laugh at the irony but then he wanted to cry, turning slowly to walk to his room. He felt them staring even as he left. He felt Valk's stare and was surprised it didn't burn through him. He felt Müllenkamp nearby and he heard her laughing in a very cruel manner. If he closed his eyes, that bloody-faced man was there, and Valk was shouting, "Tell them for God's sake!" A year later, Sydney and four other students were taken further back into the Barracks than any of them had ever been allowed to venture. The front of the place, between the ruined chapel and the single dark hallway they now were walking through, was a maze of book-lined corridors and classrooms and the students were always given free access to all of that. Beyond the familiarity of their home though, the Barracks grew dark and archaic. A single bolted door, black with grime, marked the edge of their freedom. Valk had led the five youngsters through it and locked it tight behind them. Now they made their way through a lightless tunnel with only a single torch to guide their way. Master Valk walked in the lead and Sydney was right at his back, less nervous then the others since he could sense the minds of living things and therefore know if anything was approaching long before his eyes could actually see it. He now knew that even though there were bats and phantoms in these underground passages, the light was frightening to them and they fled long before Müllenkamp's acolytes arrived. By the light of their lone torch, they saw high vaulted ceilings and cobweb-covered portals leading into lightless galleries and crumbled alcoves. Ancient statues lay in ruins everywhere and always there were Roods; wooden, iron, marble, or gold, they adorned the walls and were designed into the very floors. Here, as in the chapel past the orange tunnel, were the wails of the dead. Yet there were no dead here. It was simply the very walls recalling their cries and Sydney heard those memories, shuddering at the sound. Hardin had always feared the sounds of the dead. Of course, he had not been raised in ruins, he was not so accustomed to the damned. Hardin. Who was Hardin? ~...forgive me, Sydney... for being so selfish... for stealing this from you... for not being the father that I should have been...~ Father?! Sydney shook his head quickly, grabbing onto the back of Master Valk's robe to steady himself. What wretched things this place whispered. ~...await the chapel. It shall end there, you know....~ What voice was that?! They walked for a long time through the dark place and the torch had nearly burnt itself away before Valk opened a door with a key he pulled from his pocket and ushered the group through. Immediate cheery yellow light greeted them all and Sydney found himself in a large airy room of white bricks, very different from the gloomy underground passages they'd travelled. "What is this?" one of the students asked, stepping forward and gesturing to the glyphs marked all over the walls. Valk looked bored and set his torch down. "This is where you'll begin to use Grimoires. This room is bound by a Ward and so it is safe for the rest of the Barracks should you make some disastrous mistake. You may still, however, die because of your own foolishness. The Dark is dangerous and cannot be controlled by the weak. You've been chosen by your Masters to begin true training yet that doesn't necessarily make you worthy. All that gives you any right to be in this room at all is the fact that you hail from Leá Monde and thusly were born into the Dark. You are the blessed of Müllenkamp and may wield the Dark to whatever degree your own soul allows. Now, Sydney, make fire and light the braziers." "Master Valk..." he began in surprise but was cut off. "Save it. I know that you've gone against your teachers' wishes and already devised your own magicks. Make fire, scamp." How did he know that? Had Valk read through his very journals? The snake! Sydney scowled towards his Master but complied with the command, setting the brass braziers on either side of the entrance to blazing and eliciting a few gasps from the four less experienced students. He wanted to yawn but kept himself from it. Amateurs. Valk looked his way for a moment, thoughtful, then turned to the others. "The Dark... is as it sounds," he said after a moment of contemplation, "It is not evil as the Iocus zealots would have you believe yet it is very negative and detrimental to the integrity of the soul. That is why only the strong may wield it, others are either killed by it or become controlled by it. 'Tis naught to desire. In fact, those who crave the Dark oft times cannot bear it when it comes." "If it is so horrible," Sydney interrupted in what was his usual cocky attitude, "Why bother with it at all?" Valk frowned. "Because it is the only true source of power any man may ever have. There is Light but Light is intangible and utterly uncontrollable. The Dark will bend to us, it can be chosen whereas Light is a sort of... default. Dark is power. It is as simple as that. It is extremely hard, however, to gather and manipulate. Due to the actions of an evil tyrant within the Iocus Church, there is now a wellspring called Leá Monde which festers oversea like a sore. One day you may go there and you will find Dark in abundance, as well as utter horror, Death, and the anguish of the souls of your ancestors. Until that day, you use the Dark in your own hearts and the gift that Müllenkamp's city gave you at birth." Valk looked each of his students in the eye and Sydney realized then that he was in fact a teacher. He was most likely a great teacher, yet Sydney found most of his spiel to be nonsense. He'd heard of what happened to Leá Monde ages ago from the others there and found nothing mystic about it at all. Yes, it was a great catastrophe but it was impossible that the Church could have caused destruction that massive on her own. Even with the grandest Grimoire in existence, it would take a warlock as great as Müllenkamp to summon demons on a scale large enough to crush the entire city. The Church knew nothing of the Dark, much less knew of a way to turn the ancient city into a source of it. Sydney wondered if Müllenkamp's tribe here wasn't just as bad as St. Iocus'. The Church used the catastrophe of Leá Monde to prove its own righteousness and now so was Müllenkamp, turning the religion that oppressed them into scapegoats. Foolishness. All of it. Yet Sydney never took his eyes nor ears from Valk that day. He memorized his first official spell in minutes and whined when he wasn't given a new book to read from. Not that he needed them. "You must not conjure on your own," Valk hissed at him as they were leaving the Ward-protected space and heading back towards the front of the Barracks, "Use the Grimoires. They've been in existence for thousands of years and are tested, true, safe. You would kill yourself with incantations you know naught of, fairy tales you've pulled out of your head. Be wise, Sydney." Be wise, be wise, he would not be wise. He would master everything and then he would leave this wretched place where no one spoke to him save Master Valk. He'd leave and he'd never come back and the Duke would welcome him home at once! Müllenkamp spoke complete foolishness to him that night in his room. She said that he could never go home, not even after he'd finished at the Barracks. She said that after the Trial, he would not want to. She said that she loved him and she wanted him forever at her side. This had surprised Sydney and he'd sat up in bad, the breath catching in his throat. "Why would you say that, Milady?" ~Because you are one of my people, my love. A descendant. My blood flows in your veins and so I love you as I might love a son. Once you've proven yourself, the Dark will love you as I love you and you shall live forever.~ "Live forever?" ~Aye. You will be my tongue in this backward era of clerics and condemnations. You will be my losst'arot, my priest, my prophet. You will be so happy.~ "Losst'arot...?" She always spoke to him in Kildean, she spoke it now, yet those two words stood out. 'Losst'arot'... Kildean for... 'beloved of God'... Two-thousand years ago, it was a term used to describe those who served the Temples of the Gods and lived a life of sacrifice, abandoning their souls for total devotion to the Divine. They'd been zealots, madmen. Fools, in Sydney's opinion. "Milady," he said somewhat condescendingly, "I am a nobody, and you are dead. Even this religion that's come about because of you is a small one, a dying one." ~Not so small, losst'arot, and not so dead. You will see soon enough.~ They went to the back sections of the Barracks with the protected rooms but four times a week, every other day. It was a welcome change from a stale schedule and Sydney even started talking to the four other students learning magick with him. It seemed easier to deal with social pleasantries in that smaller group than in the larger classes and there was a girl among them, Maria, who took to calling him Syd and braiding and unbraiding his hair during meal times. She was a tiny thing, thin as wire and a head shorter than he. It was most likely that delicacy of form that had made her such easy prey for the Dark. She'd been trying to tame fire one day when her spell overwhelmed her and burned her alive. They found the girl curled into a back corner of the Ward room, on her side with her head in her arms as though she'd lain down to go to sleep. Burned to nothing but ash and bones and Sydney had had flashes of her death when he'd looked at her corpse. He didn't understand how he could read the charred brain of the dead until he realized it was the air itself that held the memory of her screams. That was what he heard. Maria's death came and passed as surely as anything did. After a few months, no one really thought on her at all. Sydney waited eagerly to see her spirit, as he'd learned about the various kinds of deaths by then, yet she never appeared and he wondered if perhaps she truly had died as was proper. Master Valk was certain she had. He said that most people did unless they'd lived their entire lives with the Dark and were contaminated with it. Valk said he would surely die a complete death, he had no reason to live on as a wandering ghost. Sydney didn't understand that. Even if it meant an eternity of purposelessness and confusion, he'd take an incomplete death over the other easily. Life in any form was still life and who had need for oblivion? What could be done, learned, or achieved in oblivion? Nothing! After nearly three years, Sydney had mastered every Grimoire in the Barracks. The teachers all marvelled, saying such a thing had never before been done, no one could possibly work the highest, most intricate magicks at the age of fifteen. Yet he could and he could do so quite well and there wasn't a single person in the entire place who could rival him. Müllenkamp cooed over his strength and taught him even more, showing him how to shift in and out of visibility like a spectre, something no one in the Barracks had heard of and when he did it, they nearly supposed him a demonic phantom and exorcised him right out of the classroom. He was truly feared by everyone there, teacher and student, and Sydney could not understand that. He'd never done a single thing to hurt anyone and yet they treated him like a threat. They cringed when he chanted his spells, when he wove the Dark in a way that seemed deviously natural to him. The Masters were completely terrified of his strength, all save Valk who would simply smile and nod at Sydney's repeated successes, unsurprised by them, as though nothing else in the world would have made any sense. Sometimes Sydney feared himself though. He didn't understand why everything came so naturally and why every Grimoire seemed like something he'd already mastered a long long time ago and had now only to recall. Sometimes he feared Müllenkamp and the way she roared with laughter in the dead of night when only he could hear. He feared she'd developed the lunacy that many spirits suffered from. Really, he wanted her to leave him alone and stop saying she loved him. Sydney didn't want the love of a dead, maddened woman. There were many in the Barracks that offered their love to him though. At the beginning of his sixteenth year, Sydney was a fine specimen of a young man and his habit of keeping his hair long and his shirt off inspired a lot of attention. Affairs bloomed and died, nothing lasting. He loved them and left them and not because he found them unworthy, uninteresting, or unbeautiful but because he would sometimes, purely unintentionally, see such dark and horrible things in their minds. All the students and Masters in the Barracks were like that. So many dark secrets, hidden hatreds, dirty mysteries. It was disgusting. They would come and they would beg to be with him or maybe Sydney would approach them on his own. Either way, past that initial attraction, the day would inevitably come when thoughts turned too loud and too dark for him to bear. He cursed his own powers then and wished them away for it seemed they grew stronger every day, changing men and women to monsters. Such evil tapestries were woven in most of their heads that the very air seemed ranker when they were in the same room as he or laying in the same bed. The awful realizations failed to inspire any sort of real bitterness or misanthropy in him though. It would only make him sad, make him wonder if there might be a soul somewhere that didn't harbour such dark desires and hidden truths. Or at least maybe there was someone somewhere who didn't immediately drop their mental guards when Sydney undid their clothes and laid beside them in a bed. Everyday he grew just a little more lonesome and a little more adept at conjuring the Dark. Sometimes he thought those two were linked. Perhaps he paid for his strength with his heart. Sydney had a horrible thought one day that the Duke had left him in this place because he'd known that his son would become a monster utterly separated from the people around him. So he'd decided he no longer wanted aught to do with the child and left him in the care of heretic sorcerers. That was when Sydney first started thinking of himself as a monster. It made sense, did it not? His own powers kept him from being too close to others. Better to watch from afar, as though the people were monkeys in an oriental cage and he was amused by them; don't let them know that you wish you were in that cage too. Sydney lost himself in the Dark then. He read every book in the Barracks and travelled alone to the Ward rooms. He ignored Müllenkamp and any other wand'ring spirits and took to conjuring monsters of his own, nearly getting himself killed a few times in the process. It was on a Wednesday evening that he tried to summon a demon and woke up in a pool of blood. How Valk cursed him for that, coming after him when the entire underground structure of classrooms and libraries began shaking and a horrible sound came quickly and then died away from Sydney's bedroom. "Are you after your own death, boy?" he demanded, storming into the room and seeing his charge collapsed on the floor, fighting to breathe, a paper of words crushed in his hand. Valk ground his teeth together at the sight, kneeling at Sydney's side and then carrying him to his bed, wiping the bloody froth away from his mouth, "You cannot summon here! You cannot summon in a place like this! Unless you have the power of Müllenkamp herself, you must be at a wellspring or the Dark tears at your own flesh, looking for strength!" "I want to leave this place," Sydney answered listlessly, uninterested in the lecture or even in his own wounds. He coughed blood but spoke through it, impatient with the pain. "Duke Bardorba no longer cares for me. Fine, I'll accept that. But I must leave this place, Master Valk. There's nothing for me here." "Soon," Valk had answered with surprising tenderness, "Too soon, actually. Soon enough you'll not have to fear for yourself when you summon, for nothing will be able to hurt you." "That's ridiculous," Sydney scoffed half-heartedly, "You sound like that daft woman spirit." "Müllenkamp?" Valk clarified, stiffening slightly. "Aye, perhaps I do. That should be a compliment then, I suppose, for she is wise." "She is daft!" Sydney disagreed, not caring that she could probably hear and not caring that Valk now knew he conversed with her, "She's as daft as any ghost would be who's walked the earth alone for two millennia. She babbles in my ears about immortality and the apocalypse and I say it's all nonsense. When may I leave this hell, Master?!" His countenance a mask of trembling rage, Valk raised a hand over Sydney and slapped him strongly across the face. "She is not daft!" he hissed, "Take care, Sydney! You never take care! You dash around and you play with fire, you swallow swords and sip poison! Müllenkamp could hang your soul from her arm like a bangle, she could send you to hell for she forges hells with mere thought! You unthinking, ungrateful brat! You'll leave too soon, too soon for my liking, and Müllenkamp will be all there is to keep you from going insane. You'll come to have faith in her and she'll be your God, Sydney." "Why am I here?" the young man asked softly, rubbing his sore cheek and watching his Master with daggers for eyes, "Why did the Duke leave me here when I was six? Because of Leá Monde?" Valk looked away from his charge, gazing at his own right hand as though suddenly sorry for the blow he'd given. His eyes flicked over his ring and Sydney heard, "Tell them for God's sake!"; a faraway memory full of pain, screaming through the air. "Because of Leá Monde, aye. Because of Müllenkamp. Because of the Duke himself. Did you know that your father was an Elder of the Temple of Biere Masse in the city before it fell? And your mother was a Priestess of the Grand Cathedral, a very skilled weaver of the Dark before she died. All the Elders and all the people of the Cathedral were killed either by the quakes or during the Inquisition. All save Bardorba and you, you who were baptized into the ways of Müllenkamp before Leá Monde crumbled. "Sydney, the Cardinal's inquisitors didn't brand you with the Blood-Sin on your back. The priests of Müllenkamp did. You are of her line." "What?" He sat up on the bed and heard ghostly laughter in his ears. Sydney narrowed his eyes. "But I don't understand. The Church branded heretics during the Inquisition. The Blood-Sin was a way for the Cardinal to spit in our mouths and grind his boot-heels into our wounds. It's known in all circles that Müllenkamp had an inverted Rood carved into her flesh as a way to show her mockery towards the very powers of the Dark. She did not fear the Dark, she controlled it utterly and at will and so she took its symbol, the Holy Rood, and turned it upside-down. The Cardinal knew how that very fact was so respected by her followers and as a way to hurt them, to make them look foolish, to show his complete disdain for them and to mark them forever as pariahs and blasphemers, he burned that very same mark onto their backs." "Bastardly, was it not?" Valk seemed to catch himself suddenly, rising from Sydney's side and making for the door. "I'll fetch you water, you're ill from your own foolishness, any other child would be dead." "But I am not a child! Stay! Finish telling me what you began!" Sydney spit blood from his tongue. The Dark had turned on him a moment ago and he didn't care. He'd never had that happen but already it was pushed from his mind with his Master's few teasing words. Valk paused and closed his eyes, fists clenched at his sides. "The Cardinal did not know there was more to the inverted Rood than its involvement with Müllenkamp's legend, "he said quickly, knowing he'd stop his explanation if he let himself realize he was giving it at all, "No one outside of the inner circle of the Priesthood know the true secrets. Before she died, Müllenkamp declared that all of her successors, those strong as she'd been stong, those great as she'd been great, would bear her mark and live to defy the Dark. You are one of those successors, Sydney, and with that comes great responsibility, danger, and reward. To claim the rewards, you must offer sacrifice to the Dark. 'Tis a simple spellsong really, the reading of Kildean glyphs penned by Müllenkamp herself, but there are... the sacrifices. Your mother was the first. She died giving you unto Müllenkamp." Sydney shook his head. This was all too much at once. "Did... did she know?" "Your mother? Yes, she did. I was friends with her. Lily was quite taken with it all actually, she considered it a privilege. Your mother loved Müllenkamp, she was very devout in her practices. That is why you must never speak ill of her again, boy. You mother gave her life to Müllenkamp. "F-father knew?" Valk shrugged and stood from the stool he'd fallen onto. He paced absently about the tiny bedroom. "I don't know what he knew. I know he was devastated when she died and that he hasn't taken a wife since. He must at some point though, he'll have to have an heir." Barely breathing out of pure disbelief, Sydney frowned deeply, trying to keep from collapsing back onto his bed. The mysticism of it all meant nothing. Power, rewards, to hell with all of that. "Father thinks of me as though I'm dead, "he whispered, heart-broken, "What heir... what heir could I be to him? If it's found out that he's given his son to heretics, the Cardinal will have his head and take his seat in Parliament. The Duke is so pious, so respected within the Church... if it were discovered that he is a backer of Müllenkamp, it would all be over for him." "You see that, don't you then?" Valk asked, "Bardorba is our only real voice in Parliament. He must keep up his facade or all is lost. Already... already the Cardinal is waiting to seal our fate and permanently crown himself true ruler of Valendia. He panders to the King like a puppy." "Why didn't you tell me any of this before?" "You were too young," Valk answered wearily, "And you probably still are. Yet it won't be long until the day comes when you are our protector from the Church. Our religion has always been a hunted one and we have too many martyrs listed in our Book of Names. The Bardorba line and the lines before it, reaching back to Müllenkamp herself, have shielded us with their power from those who would destroy us completely. Müllenkamp's legacy is the blood that she left behind and the spells she wove during her final days to protect it." "I've no choice in this, do I?" "There's always a choice," the Master corrected, suddenly putting a hand atop Sydney's blonde head, "I've heard the wisest men of the Barracks say that the Trial is in three months for you. In three months, you may leave if you decide you do not want to become our leader. No one will try to stop you. The Blood-Sin does not damn you, it only gives you... another destiny. If you so choose to take it. The past ten years have solely been to prepare you for that destiny." "Her successor...? What- what exactly does that mean?" Turning again for the door suddenly, Valk answered, "I do not know. I... I only know that as privileged as she felt to be your Mother, Lily cried for weeks when Bardorba revealed his lineage to her. She cried for you, Sydney. She was sad for you. None of us knew that she would die in childbirth but I think Lily knew and I think it pained her to realize she could not be here for you. Does it make you weep to hear this?" Sydney didn't answer, his face turned to the wall. Valk left the room to give him his privacy, shaking himself after revealing his story. He'd never meant to speak a word and yet he'd always known he'd have to tell the tale sometime. Sometime had just come too soon. After the door closed softly, Sydney lay on his side and stared at the dusty, smooth bricks of the room that had been his for ten years. He wasn't crying as Master Valk had supposed though. He was simply thinking how desperately the Duke must despise him for killing his own mother. It was no wonder that he'd left him here, given him away. After a while, Sydney was himself again and he sat up on the edge of his bed, letting his legs dangle over the side. He waited for Valk to return with water but his Master never did. Perhaps he could not face the boy for a while, those few truths had had much meaning and obviously been difficult to say. Sydney waited for Müllenkamp to come; he anticipated it actually, he had a few choice words for the phantom. He'd speak his mind, tell her that he had no intention of becoming her little puppet and saving her idiot followers. He was Sydney Bardorba, damn it all to hell, not Sydney Losstarot. If the Duke would not have him, he'd head far away from these confining, prison walls and he'd make a new life for himself. A new destiny, his own destiny. Suddenly he hated the mark on his back. He'd thought it mocking and mysterious before, he'd flaunted it, but now he hated it and what it seemed to mean and how it was the very symbol of why these zealots had kept him caged like a dog his entire life. Sydney sat against the wall and started scraping his back lightly against it. He wanted to peel the very skin off and be rid of this mark. Father had it too. He remembered that now. Yet Father had no power and so perhaps he'd not chosen the destiny of successorship. He'd fought in the wars without relying on magick or trickery and suddenly Sydney felt a great surge of admiration and pride for him. He wished the Duke were here so he could ask him the million questions on his mind. Only Father would truly understand all this and be able to properly explain it. Why had he left him alone in this place?! Sydney didn't leave his room again that night. He cleaned his blood from the floor and threw away the summon spell he'd written,scrubbing his chalking from the wall. Perhaps if he asked Müllenkamp she would pen a spell for him yet he didn't want her help anymore. He despised her. She'd lied to him all these years. Besides, Sydney had wanted the spell in order to break free from this place. He'd been trying to call a Lich who might sneak through the walls and find the exit from the Barracks for him. Most likely Müllenkamp didn't want her little beloved songbird to escape his cage and wouldn't be so keen on aiding him. "Where are the true Masters of the Barracks?" Sydney asked Valk the moment he saw him the next day. They were in the Ward room with three other students and Valk shot the boy a stern warning glance that was immediately ignored. "They will not see you." "But they must, "Sydney answered quickly, laughing through his words, "For I only want to save them a bit of bother. Must I truly wait three months till I'm allowed to spit in their faces? Master Valk, I have no intention of going through with any of this. Let me leave now, don't make me wait. I curse Müllenkamp, her fool followers, the Masters, the students, the Barracks, I curse it all to hell. I have no interest in any of it. I must be allowed to go to my Father." Valk's eyes flickered towards the three students practicing diligently with their Grimoires. Sydney knew what he was thinking. "Master, I'll run screaming through the halls and do you know what words I'll be chanting?" The boy approached his teacher and moved his lips close to his ears. He whispered, "Lord Sydney Bardorba... Lord Sydney Bardorba... tell me prithee, how the Masters of the Barracks will like that? The secret will be out. All will be exposed." "You would reveal your Father?" Valk asked, eyes wide. Sydney knew he wanted to leap forward and punch him, Valk wasn't good at hiding his anger. But then the older man smiled a most sickening smile and shoved the boy away. "No, child, you wouldn't do that, you love him too much. You are too faithful and loyal a son." Sydney frowned, letting his back teeth grind together behind his lips. "Perhaps you're right," he relented, "But there are other things I might do. I might summon a wyvern into my room." "You would die in the attempt, you mean," Valk said mockingly. A dark smile crossed the boy's face. "Exactly. I would rather give my soul to the Dark than to the foolishness of that dead harlot Müllenkamp and you lot of bleating sheep." Valk paled though the words set off a spark of anger in his breast. One of the other students was calling for his help and he barely seemed to hear it, too absorbed in anger. He paced a few steps away from Sydney, searching for a reply. In the end, all he could say was, "You are setting yourself up for tragedy, child." "Master Valk! This third verse, how do you pronounce it? I think it's a variation from what's in the other!" It was a little boy calling, an eleven year old prodigy of the school who'd been taken to the Ward room early. He stood in the corner with an older friend and the both of them were peering over a Grimoire, their blunt little fingers tracing the words as they whispered them. Valk growled a curse at Sydney then turned to help. Bardorba's son glared at his back, grey eyes glinting from beneath lowered brows. How he hated all of them and their secrets, their spells, their nonsense. He saw the greed in that little boy's mind and how he lusted after Sydney's mastery of the Dark and how his friend was so wickedly jealous of the other boy's own talent, secretly hating him for it. He heard Valk cursing mentally and he could feel the anger there as hot as a burning coal and it stung him. He wanted someone to confide in, someone he could trust and yet there was no one like that here, there never had been. "Master, the ice is so much harder than the fire, you have to concentrate on water first then freeze that, it's doubly hard!" The little boy sounded so frustrated and in his mind, he was damning the fact that they wouldn't let him move onto more interesting, less tedious things. "This is ice," Sydney muttered darkly, whispering the beginnings of a chant that was as natural to him as breathing. He fled the Ward room as he felt the air freezing at his back. The braziers blew out and the light vanished, rendering it pitch black and terrifying. Ice formed in huge crystals raining from above and the boys hollered in fright as Master Valk swore lustily but Sydney didn't hear any of it, having already said words that would send him back to his bedroom. That night, Sydney dreamt. He was always a little boy in his dreams. He thought that cruel. When he awoke, he was the trapped and frustrated young man and reality seemed false, as though only his dreams and the boy in them were real. The wind was blowing hot and dry. It was the sort of wind that seemed to hold the potential to whither the world, turn it all into a brittle desert. It rattled shop signs, caught up the dust and threw it against hot brick walls, tore leaves from trees and slammed shutters on their hinges. The streets it blew through were empty, barren. They were empty in an unnatural way as it was now the middle of the afternoon and it seemed they should be teeming with life; knights with their swords, apprentices with their errands, fishwives with their laundry, merchants with their wares, children scampering at every corner, calling names and chasing dogs as the dry wind blew on and got dust in their eyes. Yet the people were missing and the streets were bare. There was only little Sydney, tip-toeing his way over the dusty cobblestones in fine cotton clothes and cobbled leather shoes with the sweat sticking his hair to the back of his neck in a most uncomfortable manner. Leá Monde seemed open to him. Sydney knew it was Leá Monde though he had no distinct memories of the city nor remembrance of the grand home he'd lived in there once. The place seemed friendly, welcoming. The hot wind was almost a comfort as the little boy seemed to recall a horrible coldness; a sort of chill settled over his bones or his soul; yes, his flesh felt as ice. This wind melted that and sent a shiver up his back. Quiet and thoughtful, he tread the empty street, peering into absent windows and carelessly ducking his head through open doorways. Corpses greeted his eyes only they were not repulsive at all. A man sat up at a table, fallen against the tools of his trade which had been set there to be oiled: pliers, tongs, hammer, chisel. A smith, surely. His wife lay on the floor behind him and the empty laundry basket was still in her hands though its contents spread outwards from her body in waves of white linen and fresh tunics. Fallen feathers, they seemed to be. A little girl snuggled into the clean washing, her face buried in the white. She looked asleep, they all did, though Sydney never doubted that they were dead as stones, the lot of them. He left that one house behind and moved on through the sombre city, meeting family after family of the quiet dead with every room he dared enter. After long enough, he began to feel very strange, as though he were in fact an intruder here and not a returning son. Was he the only living mortal in this entire expanse of homes and streets? Sydney felt alone and very frightened. Not frightened of the dead, for he'd never feared them, but frightened of himself and of the very life he possessed, as though that spark of life were in itself unnatural and wrong. In this world of death where life was fragile and precious, his own beating heart was the anomaly. Who was to say that dying was more terrifying than living? Just as many facets of it were mysteries, it was just as unknown, just as horrible, just as unexplainable. What made the heart beat? The lungs breathe? Those things in themselves made less sense than what it was that caused it all to stop! Sydney halted in his tracks, the thoughts zipping like crossbow bolts back and forth through his mind and he began to panic because there weren't any answers. "God... God..." he whispered, not in supplication but as a response to his own questions. God was the cause and the catalyst. God had started his heart's beating. God had made all the people who'd built Leá Monde and God had made all the people who'd killed its citizens and razed the city to the ground. But Master Valk said that God was dead. If there'd ever been one to begin with. Sydney sighed and stopped his wandering, plopping himself down on a set of stairs and resting his little chin in his hands. Moving only his eyes, he surveyed the bit of city around him, wondering if building this place had made the people feel more like Gods. He saw the tall dome of the Great Cathedral looming in the distance and wondered what had been so horrible about the religion of Leá Monde that the Iocus Church had decided it had to die. Had Father truly been such a holy man in his time? Or had he simply assumed that position because it was expected of him, hailing from a long line of worshippers and having fallen in love with a priestess of the Temple of Kiltia? What did that make Sydney? He had no idea and it suddenly struck him how anonymous he was, completely without identity. There were options opened to him and doorways he could pass through yet he wanted none of it. He'd never wanted to leave his Father's side. He'd never wanted to leave Leá Monde really. With a little jolt of surprise, Sydney realized he could remember Leá Monde. It had been a grand place of fountains and green spots, built of warm white stone that seemed to glow as brightly as the sun above. He remembered a grand mansion and many people, pretty clothes resplendent with colour and gold. He remembered sombre Father in his robes and the servants of their Manse. ~Do you remember me, Sydney?~ The little boy turned with a start and saw her standing in the street. How unspectacular her entrance, how humble her stance, and yet there was nothing either unspectacular nor humble about Müllenkamp. She watched him through a veil and yet her eyes pierced past the gauze, her heart beat past the ringing of the coins gilding her garments and the lines of her body burned through the teasing folds of her wrappings. For all of her splendid raiment she seemed naked and vulnerable, her very flesh too much for the meagre cloth to conceal or mute. The eyes though... the eyes were black and merciless, trained on Sydney and reading his heart. He could not answer her suddenly, his tongue heavy in his mouth. ~I was there when you were conceived in a dark bedroom and your mother wept to know how alone you'd someday be. Lily prayed to me for your soul. She knew your cursed Father's secrets and though she loved him, she despised how he ran from his responsibilities to me and my blood.~ "...papa is a great man..." Sydney whispered, staring at the woman's dark red lips as they formed words surprisingly interpretable, uncharacteristically un-cryptic. She smiled. ~Perhaps that is true. It is irrelevant. I have you to be great for me. You will be great, won't you?~ "I- I know not what you want of me." Müllenkamp approached quickly and caressed his cheek with feathery fingers, separating the fine blonde strands of his hair into golden threads that waved in the hot wind. ~You wonder what Life is, what Death is. Why there is a difference between the two, how the Dark has aught to do with it all and what is Evil, what is Good. There is a war now, Sydney. There has always been a war. Men do not know their hearts and so they fight against themselves. Men are evil creatures with the capacity to be good. It is not the other way around. I love all men, all women, and I love all Life simply because it is fleeting and delicate. I ask naught of you but to share my feelings. Embrace the wild of the Dark and tame it as it should be tamed: by human hands, the same that forged it. We must not allow the Evil of men to be used by men to forge new evil. It is fragile, a cycle, a repeating series of life and pain and death with the possibility for joy. That is existence, Sydney, and it is a rare man who accepts it at that.~ The little boy turned away and remembered Father suddenly, standing in the chapel as he would sometimes do, mouthing silent prayers to Gods that Sydney did not know. Then there was the marble-white Iocus, blessing the poor in the streets, waters rushing past him from the fountain and sparkling in the sun. "I know nothing of your dogma," he finally answered. Müllenkamp shook her head, still rubbing a hand against the smoothness of his cheek. ~You know nearly all of my dogma but you've yet to accept it. Do not lie to me out of fright, child, nor think I'll leave you be if you feign ignorance. God... God... I heard you whispering it moments ago. You'd have been your Father if you'd been allowed. You never would have questioned aught, I think. Now you question it all, the very workings of Life. And you hate it. You just want your little room in the Mansion and your friendly ghosts. You'd be a child forever and go to your grave a doddering, laughing, ignorant old man.~ Truly curious, Sydney glanced up into her eyes, adoring her touch yet fearing her words. "What would have been wrong with that, Milady?" Müllenkamp smiled her same mysterious, sourceless smile without end or beginning and then she was gone, the softness of her touch vanished with her. Sydney stood up in fear, knowing what that smile meant. It said, "Wait and see, wait and see." He hated her, he hated her, he hated her! Sudden hatred was bright and hot like a burning bud in his chest, flowing into his limbs and eyes like a river of molten gold. It had not long to smoulder though, there were distracting voices coming from a building down the street. How foreign they seemed in this dead city, like the whispers of the spirits when they used to call to him in the mansion on nights when only he and the servants were there, the Duke away at the capitol and the grounds quiet. As he always had been then drawn to the sound, so he was now, moving quickly down the streets and stepping over the corpses wedged between the buildings and road. Müllenkamp reappeared to walk at his side for a moment, touching the cold faces of the dead reverently, smoothing hair and closing eyes. She fawned over these bodies like playthings and Sydney walked faster until she'd fallen behind. He turned quickly to look and found her gone again. He started to run, terrified. Perhaps it would stop. It would all stop and he would die. Perhaps life itself was nothing more than an accident, a pendulum set in motion by a careless finger and gravity kept it swinging. Consider it too much, contemplate the meaning too much and mayhaps it would all stop! A stray thought jammed into the pendulum's path that would halt it and extinguish that unexplained spark of life. The voices from before grew louder as Sydney tore down the street, just waiting for Death to grab him like a big black bird and carry him into the sky or down to hell or wherever it was that Mother must be now. Perhaps he would become a wand'ring ghost like the others he'd seen. He did not want that. The dead always looked so sad. A chimney billowed smoke from ahead and he distractedly realized it was a sign of life. Sydney ran faster and the voices were like singers calling to him, comforting and familiar. He stopped in front of an open airy veranda where half a dozen figures were lounging in chairs, taking advantage of the warm afternoon. Father was one of them and he was a young man here, energetic, swinging a sword through the empty air and bantering to a pale-faced woman seated on an iron worked chair, fanning herself. Sydney peeked his face through the bars surrounding the veranda. Corpses were scattered everywhere yet the people didn't seem to notice them. Father kicked one away as he danced and sparred with some imaginary opponent. "They have threatened it... for years, for centuries!" he panted to the five others, "Batistum is the zealot, the real threat now. He... imagines himself king and we heretics... the only enemies he can find to battle!" Father stopped his swordplay and smeared sweat from his brow. He was not wearing a shirt and the Blood-Sin on his back glared like an eye. He approached the pale woman and sat down beside her. "Power," he said, "Is his only want. He'll make scapegoats of us. We must go to the Elders and insist upon a militia." "They will not comply, Aldous," the woman reminded gently, smiling at him in a fond way and smoothing his damp hair back away from his temples, "It is not their way." Father scowled but the ire wasn't aimed at her. He rose impatiently to his feet again and addressed two other young men lounging against the railing of the veranda. "What say you, Farkin, Nardier? Will you tell me too that it all is for naught? We will be run out of our own homes because of the whim of a man gone mad with ambition and his own ideals of divinity? I will not have it!" "We'll fight at your side, should it come to it," Nardier said with a shrug, eyeing the sword in his friend's hand, "But I don't believe it will. The Iocus have always preached much and done little. It is all words with no power behind them. They treat their Writings like rubies and yet what power do they possess? They are not Grimoires, they are not precious because of secrets they hold or gifts they bestow. They are like wine; maddening and sweet but gone in the morning. Words, words, words." Nardier smiled but Aldous would not have it. He swept the opinion from the air with a brush of his hand. "If I thought such things might happen because of simple religious fervour, I might not be so concerned, "he said, pacing, "Yet there is no God in Batistum, only ambition. He even dabbles in the Dark! Our own priests have gone to him for a bit of gold and permission to travel freely through Valendia, unrestricted by the Codes. He buys our very heritage, does that hypocritical titan. I fear what he may do with the knowledge." "That fool?" Farkin sneered, "Heh. You make mountains of mole-hills, Aldous. Too long away at the wars, I fear. Look to your wife and leave thoughts of Iocus to the Elders. Lily, should you not get out of this damned heat? I'm sure your child is fairly cooking in that oven." Farkin chuckled to himself, gesturing to the pale woman's swollen stomach and Lily laughed as well, rising quickly and taki