The Homunculus Knight

"One of the greatest strengths we possess in our war for our world's rulership is our weakness. We are tiny, weak, gnat-lived things when compared to our would-be oppressors, and they know it. In fact, they know that truth so well, it becomes their undoing. For what is easily dismissed as lesser is also too easily dismissed as a threat. To win, we must not fight like lions but like rats, gnawing away at their strength from a place of such weakness they do not even notice us before it is too late."- General Verru Gens Fabia of the early Iskan Imperium.

The man wept as he dug, his spade cutting through disturbed soil bit by bit, slowly uncovering the ground's terrible prize. Gaunt and haggard, the man wore layered rags that stunk of old filth and fresh decay. His hair and beard were long, matted things, covering his sallow features in a variable bramble. Yet, beneath all this detritus was a survivor, someone who'd persisted long after they'd lost everything worth living for. He was one of the last living people in Harmas, a living ruin, so damaged it couldn't collapse in on itself anymore; that is, not without an external push.

A wet clunk cut through the overgrown garden as the shovel finally struck its target. Staring down at what he'd uncovered, the man stood unmoving, except for his racking sobs, unwilling to do what would come next without being forced.

"Finish digging and bring it here."

Wolfgang's words cut into the man's mind, flaying away what little resistance remained. Hands now gripping the shovel so tightly they bled, the man dug faster, revealing what he himself had buried here mere weeks ago. It was a large clay pot, the type that grain or similar might be stored in over the winter months. Indeed, that's what the meter-tall ceramic had done, until the grain ran out, and grief gave it a new purpose.

Using the worn spade and his bleeding hands, the man tried to hoist the pot up out of the ground, but its weight proved too much for his malnutrition-wracked body. After the third failed effort, the Black Fly sighed and gestured to the four grinners beside him. They clambered down into the pit and started to help the man. With a cry, the man brought his shovel up to strike one, but stopped as the vampire's will crushed that bit of defiance. So, as his tears cut furrows in the grime covering his face, the man watched as the giant urn was pulled from its grave.

As Wolfgang set his hands on the pot's lid, the man spoke for the last time, using every last drop of his broken will to say: "Damn you."

The Black Fly muttered absently. "I already am."

He broke the simple seal keeping the urn shut, then, and let its heavy ceramic top fall to the damp garden soil with a crack. Within was a small, feeble corpse, that of a child. Despite being several months old, the remains were in decent condition, and Wolfgang could see a certain tell-tale mottling of a terrible rash upon the body's dried skin.

For the first time since he'd been forced into Gens Silva's memories, the Black Fly smiled. It had taken a few nights of necromantic interrogation and Aetheric dousing, but he'd finally found a perfect sample of his chosen disease. Not that Wolfgang would ever admit it to him, but Scapino had been right; this city was a veritable feast of opportunities for discovery and experimentation. There had been so many different brutal pathogens available to him, all clinging to life in this dead city, that he could afford to be picky. So picky, in fact, he'd spent precious time hunting after this particular corpse.

Reaching into the open urn, he began a preliminary examination of the body. "Sealed in an air-tight container until the ground thawed. Excellent."

The man's sobs became heavy, wracking things, and Wolfgang looked to the broken survivor in annoyance. With a thought, he commanded the grinners to grab the man and haul him to the vampire's side. Looking down at the weeping wretch, he couldn't help but feel annoyed at his own inadequacies. Mind manipulation had never been his forte, but he should at least be able to keep a mortal properly docile. Still, he'd gotten everything he needed from the man, well, almost everything.

Fast as a snake, Wolfgang sank his fangs into the man's throat and drank. Blood, and life with it, flowed from the broken survivor into Wolfgang with an oily ecstasy. Previously, he'd never been one to feed so wastefully, preferring to sip from thralls and chattel, but the necessities of Harmas were forcing him to reconsider. To take a life was to grow stronger, and right now, all Wolfgang desired was the strength to be free.

Wiping the last dregs of the dead man from his lips, the Black Fly commanded the ghouls to pick up the urn. As he turned to leave the small urban garden, turned graveyard, the Black Fly regarded his latest kill and the old corpse. "I'll put your child to good use."

Yara's shock at Kit's pronouncement quickly fell away, replaced by another emotion, one so alien it took her a moment to place: hope. "They came for us?"

Grinning wildly, the magi returned to his workspace and started sweeping up the gemshards. "Yep! I don't know how Cole got into the city, but he surely didn't waste any time."

"Just Cole?" Now, that little bit of foreign hope had gained a bitter quality. Had her mistress not come to rescue her as well?

"The spell was made to look for concentrations of holy power, so I didn't get a dousing of Natalie, but I doubt she's far from him. Those two are pretty much inseparable afterall."

Mood buoyed by this, Yara wanted to set out immediately, but her mistress's orders and her own instincts forced her to pause. She'd been commanded to survive, and judging from Kit's recent record, following his ideas blindly wasn't the best way to do that. "Since the gem exploded, how do you know if the spell worked right?"

Kit seemed to consider this for a moment before he handed her one of the shards he'd been collecting. To Yara's surprise, the splintered gem was bitterly cold to the touch, as if it had been left out in a blizzard, not detonated by some arcane accident.

"This, and the hourglass blastmark seem pretty good portents, but it's smart not to just rely on divine signs." The magi then picked up his lantern and gestured with it. "The spell I was working on sends out ripples through the Aether, ripples that would reflect off certain resonances. With my lantern, I can read those returning ripples and tell from them where they made contact with the resonance source."

Frowning, Yara tried to translate what he'd just said into something more understandable, but before she had any real success, Kit elaborated. "Imagine you're walking at night and come across a pond, you can't see how big or deep it is, so you throw a large stone into it. Then, if you listen carefully to the splash, you can use it to get a rough idea of the pond's size. What I did was the magical equivalent of that, except my lantern lets me be damn sure about every detail of the splash."

Well, that washed away some of her concerns, but still left her stained with a mix of embarrassment and fear. "Sorry"

"For?" Kit seemed genuinely confused.

Unwilling to meet his eyes, she replied. "You needing to explain twice."

There was a pause then, one filled with the ugly memories of a furious father and failed chores. But before the recollection could pull her deep, Kit broke the silence with a smile. "I like explaining things, so it's not a problem."

Still unable to meet his eyes, but also unable to look away from his smile, Yara nodded slightly, as her insides squirmed strangely. This wasn't the first time the magi had gotten her feeling like this, but it never got any less uncomfortable.

Leaving her to stew in her discomfort, Kit started gathering up materials from his workspace and checking them over. "Now, give me like ten minutes to finish this ur-craft and we'll be able to reach Cole safely."

Fingers dancing between metal wires and infused stones, the magi got to work, leaving Yara, as ever, to silently observe him. He moved with both a craftsman's certainty and an artist's flourish, hands never stopping, their work. Only then did Yara realize she'd actually never asked him what in the world's name he was making. She'd just, as ever, done as she'd been told. Strangely, that notion didn't bring her the usual comfort it usually did. Kit wasn't her master; he didn't control her fate, and yet she'd risked herself repeatedly for him. Why?

"There we go!" Kit's words nearly made her jump. Turning about, he brandished his left wrist, showing off a bracelet of woven copper and knot-bound gems. After giving his hand a few experimental shakes and twists, Kit gestured for Yara to sit next to him. "Can you put your arm out, so I can attach yours?"

Yara found herself complying before she'd even noticed, pausing only as her forearm was about to settle next to a similar but unfinished bracelet. "What does it do?"

"I'm glad you asked!" Kit then started pointing to the individual gems affixed by copper wire. "At the most basic level, it allows for me to tap into your subtlety aura at will without touching you, and for you to borrow some of my telekinetic ability. Besides that, it also lets us know where the other is, as long as we're less than, say, three kilometers apart. It should also make using your subtlety spell a little less draining, but not by much, as I went for stability over efficiency."

She just stared at the bracelet, words dry in her mouth. Frowning at this, Kit added. "I'm sorry if it's not that impressive. I'd wanted to add a few more features and see if I could further tap into your ancillia capabilities, but, y'know, time-."

Yara set herself next to him and finally forced free the dessicated words. "Thank you."

Kit's smile returned, and he got to work. "Gladly."

Deft fingers working quickly, he got closer to her, looped the bracelet around her wrist, and whistled a note that made the gems glow brighter. After maybe a minute of prodding and poking, he nodded to himself. "Okay, all set, let's- Oh! Are you alright?"

Yara blinked at him in surprise. "What?"

"Your face, it's all red."

Quickly turning away, wondering what was wrong with her, the thrall shrugged. "I'm nervous."

Thankfully, Kit accepted this without issue. "I am as well, but hopefully we'll be out of this accursed city soon enough."

After a few minutes of testing the bracelets, the pair set out, leaving a freshly trapped tower behind them as they headed east. Kit claimed Cole was somewhere on the city's left island, close to the southern bridge, which meant they weren't far as the crow flies. Unfortunately, they weren't crows; in fact, they right now had to resemble mice, scurrying between alleys and broken buildings, avoiding the tide's attention. While Kit insisted Yara's subtlety magic was potent, a claim reinforced by the phantom sensations of slick warmth coating the two, she refused to find out its limits. Better, they slipped between shadows with the magic's help, rather than risk the light and their undoing.

So onward they went, Kit's mental map guiding them steadily eastward even as Yara forced them to take a circuitous route around the various packs of ghouls. Slow and loud, the undead were thankfully easy to spot, but their sheer volume meant skirting past them wasn't simple. More than once, they found themselves skulking through smashed-open buildings, risking whatever dangers might lurk within, rather than take the ghoul-packed streets nearby. This worked well until they reached what Kit thought to be the mid-point of this perilous journey.

Before them awaited the southern bridge, a great span, covered in both debris and the dead. Several hundred ghouls wandered listlessly about the bridge's length, far too many for the pair to even consider risking slipping between. In those sorts of numbers, the ghouls wouldn't even need to pierce the subtlety spell to be dangerous. If anything roused them while Yara and Kit were in the thick of the swarm, they'd risk being trampled, let alone devoured.

"Do we head north? Go for the other bridge?" whispered Kit, from where he stood crouched behind an overturned writing desk.

Yara considered this; it would inevitably add hours to their journey, and there was no guarantee the other bridge would be any clearer. "No, if we're going to risk a crossing, better to do it here, closer to our destination."

The magi blew out a nervous breath. "Okay, then that means we'd need to lure them away from us."

That notion hadn't even crossed her mind. "How?"

In answer, Kit gestured towards a piece of splintered wood and whistled; the debris shot into his hand. "We use telekinesis to make a racket somewhere we aren't."

She really didn't like the idea of anything catching the ghouls' attention; better to pass by completely unnoticed, rather than risk a distraction failing. That being said, she couldn't think of a better plan; so after Kit explained his in detail, they got to work finding a sufficient noisemaker. It didn't take long, and they didn't even need to leave the ruined barrister offices they'd been hiding in, as Kit quickly located a full silver tea set in one of the closets.

"They probably trotted this out to woo wealthy clients," he muttered while inspecting the tarnished but ornately inlaid collection of pots, pitchers, plates, and cups. So for the second time in a concerningly short span, Yara helped steal a small fortune to aid one of Kit's schemes.

By the time they'd gotten the tea service out of the building and closer to the bridge's start, she was thoroughly convinced of this particular scheme's effectiveness, if not safety. Every step, every breath she took, the entire ornate collection rattled and clanked worse than Cole's armor.

After setting the accursed thing down on the cobblestones, Yara looked all around, half-expecting a small swarm to be approaching them by now, but by some miracle, her subtlety aura had held. "What now?"

In answer, Kit squatted down and got to work scratching a symbol onto each piece of the set. The speckled silver gave way easily to pilfered jeweler's tools and soon, the tea service sported a new guildmark, one resembling a stylized violin with butterfly wings. After giving his work an admiring nod, Kit explained. "My personal rune will make this next part easier. Now let's find somewhere high up to hide."

Five minutes later, they sat amidst mouldering parchment, nestled together in the barrister's office's top-floor records room. As the magi peered out a grimy window down at his work, Yara was thankful for how complete his focus was; otherwise, he might have noticed the strange red warmth spreading across her cheeks.

"Alright, here we go," muttered Kit, and then he started to play invisible strings. Near instantly, a gods-awful scraping, banging clatter exploded up from the street below. Nervously peering over Kit's shoulder, Yara watched as the entire tea set rolled and rattled itself down the street towards the bridge. Soon enough, dozens of smudged figures started lurching towards the noise, and after Kit wiped away their shared breath on the window, she could see the pots and pans bouncing up and down, their expensive metal bodies screaming 'come and get me' with every impact.

Once the closest ghoul was within arm's reach of the tea set, Kit changed his phantom tune, and the lure started to skitter and clank down the street. Slowly but unbelievably loudly, the dented silver pulled the ghouls off the bridge and down the main thoroughfare below them. By now, the tea service was out of sight, but that didn't seem to bother Kit much as his own eyes were shut and his playing became more intense.

Gaze flicking between the corpse parade shuffling below and the magi's sweat-slicked face, Yara found herself drifting closer to him. There was a focus to him, an intensity of mind and effort that kept pulling her attention even when she should be watching for any stray ghouls. They sat like that for close to an hour, Kit keeping the bait moving away from them until the only ghoul left on the street was a particularly unlucky specimen missing both its legs and one arm.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Kit opened his eyes then and started to untense. "There we go, all-"

The clatter of falling scrolls interrupted him as Yara pulled back so quickly she bumped her head on one of the shelves. They both stared at each other then, his confusion meeting her embarrassment. "Are you alright?"

Rubbing her throbbing crown, Yara nodded. "Let's go, before they come back."

"Good idea, no telling what other sort of attention that distraction might bring."

Passing over the empty bridge was eerie, being out in the open, so exposed, had Yara's neck hairs standing up. But they still managed the crossing without issue and reached the city's eastern wing. With their destination so close, Yara couldn't help but feel a strange giddiness. They'd survived, and soon enough, she'd be back with her mistress. All they had to do was find Cole, and considering the immortal paladin's usual lack of subtlety, that wouldn't be hard.

Sure enough, after maybe twenty minutes of careful prowling, they found signs of extreme violence. The only problem is that it didn't seem the right kind of extreme violence. Yara had seen Cole fight on numerous occasions; she'd even seen the aftermath of whatever happened outside Azyge's walls, but what she and Kit found coating an alleyway went beyond even his capacity for destruction.

Scraps of rotting tissue, splatters of dead blood, splinters of bone, alongside a fair number of metal shards, covered the cracked brick walls and disturbed cobblestones. Yara couldn't even begin to guess how many people or former people had died here, let alone what was responsible. Staring out at the carnage, her growing hope started to gutter. What if Kit had been wrong? What if this wasn't Cole's work, or worst still, this mess was Cole? Yara had no idea how his unnatural body worked, but doubted that any magic could repair such total destruction.

The sound of Kit wretching beside her did little to assuage her doubts about his dousing. In fact, she was only here in Harmas because of his mistakes, his failings. Why had she thought his stunt with the exploding gemstone could lead to anything good? Fist clenching, Yara was furious at herself for constantly disobeying her mistress's orders and risking herself for this stupid, brash, arrogant spellweaver.

Once the magi was done wasting more of their meager rations, he pointed at the carnage. "This is battle magic. Specialized stuff as well."

Finger trailing downward, he then gestured at something Yara hadn't even noticed. The mess's edge was strangely clean, like there had been an extra wall cutting off the alley, a wall that was now missing. Staggering towards the line, Kit kneeled down and prodded it with his violin bow-turned-wand. "A kinetic ward, but not like any I've seen. It's weirdly brittle." Looking back towards Yara, he added. "I think this was a trap, one for ghouls."

Bizarrely, this got him to smile. "That's why the Paladin's here, we're near allies!"

Getting up, he started to step into the mess, only for Yara to stop him with a sharp yank on one arm. "What are you doing?"

"Trap's already triggered, isn't it?"

Yara pursed her lips, not liking any of this. She'd known some of the other vampires in Glockmire to protect their property through devious tricks, tricks that rarely had a single layer. Not letting go of Kit, she half-dragged him away from the viscera. "Let's find another way through."

Thankfully, the magi obliged, and they headed for another street, hoping to find a trap-free route. To Yara's ever-growing concern, this wasn't proving easy. Time and time again, she or Kit would spot something odd enough to make them change course. The runes daubed in chalk, paint, and other substances were the most obvious signs, but they were far from the only ones. Concerningly placed pottery, illogical cracks on otherwise solid walls, strange scuff marks on the stone, a basket dangling from a washing line; these and more spoke to a concentrated effort to defend this city section.

By the time it seemed they were going to make a full orbit around the protected borough, Yara was once again reconsidering this entire venture. Someone didn't want them here, and respecting those wishes seemed a good way to stay alive. But, before she could muster the courage to tell Kit they needed to go, he paused midstride and laughed.

The sound seemed louder than the entire ordeal with the tea set put together. Fear and frustration bubbling from the thrall she hissed. "What?"

Kit dragged one foot along the ground, and a distinct crunching followed his shoe. Bizarrely, he then pulled his leg up, standing on one foot, so he could show her his sole. "Salt dust!"

True enough, grains of the powder clung to his shoe, and by extension, they covered part of the road. Seeing Yara's confusion, Kit gestured wildly around them. "This many traps, you're just asking to walk into one by sheer accident. You'd need a safe path, one only you and your allies could walk."

She understood then. "The salt marks a trail, one ghouls can't follow."

"Exactly!" Kit set out then, following the salt with a veritable bounce in his step. After a moment's hesitation, Yara followed.

The salt took them on a bizarre route, through open windows, down winding side-streets, and at one point even over a half-collapsed garden wall. More than once, Yara stopped as she noticed some potential danger, but Kit simply waved off her fears with the simple certainty of a solved puzzle. The only thing that did make him pause was a rusting oil lantern dangling from a repurposed shop sign. Small and hanging at an angle, the lantern's glass was marked with a series of sigils that almost resembled an eye. Stranger still, it still held oil, or at least something like oil, as by Yara's reckoning the contents looked closer to pitch. Was it just lamp fuel gone bad, or something else?

"We're definitely on the right path." Muttered Kit before continuing onwards, while giving the lantern a wide berth.

Yara mimicked him. "Another trap?"

"I think so, but not one we have to worry about. I'd wager that's there for more dangerous undead, the type that could ignore the salt."

They encountered two more of the lanterns on their way, but no other potential dangers until they found the barricade. Stretching from cobblestones to eaves was a wall of timber and rubble. At its center was a repurposed heavy cellar door, and above this improvised gate was a symbol daubed in long dried paint, a ten-pointed star beneath an hourglass. This was a place of Master Time.

"Well, shit," muttered Kit, his shoulders slumping slightly. "I don't think Cole's here."

All the tension, all the fear born of this ill-thought-out expedition exploded out of Yara then. "What!"

Sheepishly, the magi shrugged. "I could be wrong, but this looks to me like some final temple redoubt. Someplace survivors have held on, thanks in part to the Tenth God's blessing. My dousing reacted to is resonance in the Aether, and I… well, I assumed it was Cole, it felt like him, at least kind of"

Yara didn't know if she wanted to cry, tear out her hair, or punch Kit. She'd been so close, so close to her mistress, but not still close at all. Seeing her distress, he quickly added. "But this isn't bad news. We've needed somewhere safer, and this is it. Besides, where better to wait for Cole and Natalie than their patron god's holy site?"

It took so much self-control for Yara to speak instead of scream her next words. "I'm a thrall! They'll kill me!"

She probably would have gotten less of a reaction from Kit if she'd punched him. He seemed physically deflate like a burst waterskin, his excitement quickly turning to dawning horror. "Fire-and-iron, I didn't even consider that."

Looking over at the barricade, he muttered. "Maybe I could find a way to hide your… bite marks."

"They'd still be able to tell," replied Yara, a hint of bitterness in her voice. While she cared little about what people other than her mistress thought of her, the near-constant looks of disdain, pity, and outright disgust she got from Tenth Temple's members wore on her.

Kit didn't respond immediately; his gaze was still on the barricade. "Actually, I think we might have a different set of problems."

"What?"

He gestured to the makeshift wall and said. "The gate, it's ajar."

Sure enough, now that Yara looked closer, one of the heavy cellar doors was sticking out farther than its twin. Here, behind so many layers of traps and tricks, the final line of defense to this redoubt lay open.

Tentatively, the magi proposed. "Maybe, they're just confident enough in all they've built to…" He trailed off, clearly unconvinced by his own musings. No one left a gate like that unbarred, not in a place like this. Something here was very wrong.

"We should go, let's head back the way we came and find somewhere safer," said Yara, words tight, hand on her knife.

Kit slowly shook his head. "No, my dousing still detected something here, something holy and powerful. If we're going to survive, we can't ignore that kind of resource."

She didn't like this one bit; every instinct in her screamed to leave this strangeness, but Kit was already heading for the gate. As she watched him creep towards the repurposed cellar doors, Yara wished she could just run, just leave him to whatever wretched fate his curiosity had in store for him. But, despite knowing it was the smart thing to do, and that it was what her mistress had ordered in commanding her to survive, Yara just couldn't leave him like this. So against her better judgment, she followed after him, while hoping her ancilla blessings would be enough to keep them both safe.

The cellar doors were each several centimeters thick and covered in a series of irregular studs that seemed crudely hammered into their outer faces. Some were silver, others iron, but if there was a pattern to their arrangement, Yara couldn't guess at it. True enough, they were also ajar, with one being open enough to leave a gap for Kit to slip through without touching anything.

"Strange, no more runes and wards," he muttered before disappearing past Yara's sight. Unable to do anything else, she mimicked him, passing through the doorway and revealing a large warehouse with a connected stable yard. Sitting right in the center of a crudely fortified intersection, the building must have once been a place of logistics and commerce. Now, it seemed more like a monument to the dead. At the warehouse's front was a stretch of hard-packed dirt where horses would have waited for saddles and tack; someone had thrust close to a hundred wooden stakes into the dirt, each sticking up a meter into the air, and decorated with various tokens. Even Yara, with her almost non-existent religious education, knew what they'd found, a graveyard for those who couldn't be buried.

Cautiously, Kit walked towards the warehouse, following the unbroken salt trail, violin bow held out before him like a duelist's rapier. Padding after him, dagger drawn, Yara got a better look at the gravemarkers. Most had a name or set of initials carved or painted vertically on them, while their tops were marked by strips of tattered cloth or even dangling necklaces, hourglass necklaces in many cases. Strangely, the names on the older markers, judging by the condition of the cloth scraps, were recorded by a variety of hands, while the newer ones were far more uniform.

They reached the warehouse front doors, the big set of rolling wooden shutters weren't open, but neither were they chained. Reaching up to the time-worn planks and peeling paint that once might have depicted religious symbols, Kit knocked. Yara grabbed his hand after the third strike, but it was too late, and his blows echoed around the eerily silent warehouse square.

"What was that?!" she hissed, while trying to pull the magi away from his latest attempt at suicide.

"Checking to see if anyone's home, while we're still out in the open and capable of running away."

That… that actually made a fair amount of sense, and as Yara let go of Kit, the warehouse door slowly opened on its own accord. Inside was a dusty cavern of stacked crates, empty shelves, and a concerning amount of broken glass. But before Yara could even start to wonder about the patches of glistening shards, a smell reached her nose, and she nearly threw up. Clutching at herself, she stumbled back from the entrance, trying not to breathe in any more of the wretched odor.

Kit, having not noticed her reaction, muttered absently. "Is that…? Stale beer?"

Yara's chest grew tight, and her very breath betrayed her, becoming fast and shallow as if to scoop up more of the stink and drown her in it. Oh gods, she'd not smelled this in years, but time had done nothing, nothing to dilute the animal panic the odor evoked. She knew what the stink of old beer meant; she knew what it foretold when it wafted into her home, her room, and… and

"What's wrong?" said a voice, a voice too close to be safe.

Driven by terror, the scared girl swung out with her knife, eliciting a surprised yelp followed by a thud. Something about those noises pulled at her, and she opened her eyes, having not even realized they were shut. Kit lay on the ground before her, staring up in shock, his coat now sporting a new cut, but thankfully, no red stained his shirt or her knife. But even if she had not stabbed him, his bewildered, fearful expression pierced her like cold steel.

Dropping the blade, she took a step back, unable to speak, unable to think, as that smell just wrapped itself around her, pressing on her, swallowing her. Turning away from the bewildered magi, she started to run, to flee, to escape from the pain in his eyes and the pain promised by the stink. She made it three strides before something whizzed through the air and struck her lower half. Harsh cord wrapped around her legs and sent her to the ground with a painful crack.

Wind knocked from her, stars dancing in her vision, she still managed to reach down to her binding, trying to free herself. But before she could do as much as touch the mix of ropes and metal weights that bound her, an incredible lethargy flowed through her, a cold numbness that stole the strength from her limbs and reminded her of the worst nights travelling with Dietrich, those times when the winter chill came close to killing her. It took all the strength she had just to roll onto her back and avoid suffocating in the dirt. Kit was kneeling next to her, eyes bright with terror, the stargent knife she'd dropped now clutched in both of his hands.

For a single moment, she thought he was about to kill her, as reprisal for her own failed attempt, but such fear-fueled delusions faded as he got to work cutting the rope. Yet, before he'd even made it halfway through a single section of the cord, he froze. Someone was behind him, right behind him, and judging by the magi's posture, pressing a sharp object into the small of his back.

A voice rough and phlegmy from underuse ordered. "Drop the knife and wand."

Kit complied after a second's hesitation. "Now, stand up, and unbuckle that lantern of yours."

The magi got to his feet but shook his head. "I can't, it's too dangerous."

"Do it!"

Hands raised, Kit tried to explain. "It's a magic artifact. If you don't know how to use it, then touching it alone-"

"I know exactly what that thing is, and what you are as well. So throw it over to your left, or I'll put this bolt in your eye; and in case you were wondering, its head is cold forged iron."

Kit's face lost several shades of color, but he did as he was told. The lantern hit the dirt and rolled a little way away, leaving an odd afterimage as it did. Now, comfortable in their powerlessness, the stranger stepped back from the magi, letting Yara get her first good look at him.

He was short and stocky, not to the extent of a dwarf, but enough so that when combined with his dark hair and silver-streaked beard, he brought to mind a snarling badger. In what little space was available between his bushy eyebrows and greasy forelocks, his forehead was marked by spiraling knotwork tattoos that surrounded a central hourglass sigil. Yara found it better to stare at this strange skin art than to dare meet his eyes, as there was an intensity to his gaze that reminded her both of a cornered animal and a broken madman. His clothes seemed a collection of patches and sewn pockets whose gleaming metal contents were barely hinted at. While clutched in his arms was a heavy crossbow sporting similar knotwork carvings to his own tattoos, but this weapon of war and the large bolt aimed at Kit soon became secondary in Yara's eyes when compared to his smell. He reeked of cheap drink.

Darkness began to swim at the edge of Yara's vision as her hyperventilating compounded upon the magic binding her. This was a nightmare come true, and she didn't know how to wake up from it.

Lowering the crossbow enough that it would probably take Kit in the leg, instead of the chest, the stranger asked. "Now tell me why you are here, and don't try to lie, better than you have failed."

Kit looked at Yara, his expression flitting between worry, nervousness, and confusion before settling into a tense composure she recognized from the battle beneath the mountains. "We were looking for the paladin."

A deep silence filled the late afternoon air, stretching long enough to make Yara wonder if Kit's honesty wasn't believed.

Shifting his grip on the crossbow, the drunkard slowly grumbled. "The city's twin dooms couldn't reach me themselves, so they sent their tainted slaves instead. How predictable. So pray tell me, thrall and changeling, what was your plan once you found me? A knife in the dark, thanks to that subtlety spell? Or do you know how to use that lantern as more than a glorified compass?"

"What?"

"Surely, you had a better plan before the sting-slave there betrayed you? Or are the prince and the leeches really getting so lazy that they'd spend your lives on the mere chance you'd find me so plastered I couldn't even fight back?!" The stranger's words grew into a shout, his wild eyes blazing with something sicker than zeal.

Now properly desperate, Kit cried. "We weren't looking for you! I thought my dousing spell located a paladin of Master Time!"

Gaze hardening, the madman pointed his crossbow at Yara then. "I may not look it, but I've spent decades hunting down monsters worse than your ancestor and her owner."

It had been a long time since Yara had to read the expression of a belligerent drunk, but some skills just never fade away. This strange, dangerous man was affronted by Kit's words in the way only a failure might be. Whoever the drunkard was, he'd once been proud of himself, but that pride was long since shattered, leaving brittle, ugly shards that would cut anyone who got too close to him.

Somehow, this bit of bitter insight made Yara's panic-filled brain piece it all together. Forcing herself to speak before Kit got them both killed, she rasped. "Yo-your dousing was right, we were ju-just w-wrong about what it found."

Both magi and drunkard looked at her as she gestured at the latter, "H-he's a paladin."

For a moment, Kit's disbelief was palpable. This wretch holding them at bolt-point seemed as far from the ideal of a holy knight as possible. But then after a moment's consideration, he said. "I suppose Cole seems rough around the edges as well."

The drunkard nearly dropped his crossbow. "Cole? Did you just say Cole?"

Nodding vigorously, Kit explained. "We're allies of Paladin Cole! We thought you were him, that's why we came here!"

Brow furrowing, the drunken paladin asked. "What color are his eyes?"

"To be perfectly honest, I don't remember; his scars are more memorable than his eyes," was Kit's reply before adding. "He's really tall, really scarred, uses a halberd that turns into an axe, and is either very polite or extremely jagging frightening when you talk to him."

Adjusting his crossbow so the bolt was pointed at the ground, the man slowly said. "You two better have one hell of a story."

The magi slowly approached Yara, and when it seemed like the drunken paladin wasn't going to shoot him, he got to work unbinding her legs from the hexed rope. "We do, Sir….?"

"Call me Mak."