Alexandria Arabella Arkham, the rightful queen of the Centrum, awaited her accomplice in an empty latrine. In the section of Goldcrest Fortress she had claimed for her cabinet, this was the only room exempt from guild surveillance. It was a wet, slippery place, full of algae and small swarms of bioengineered maintenance insects. The algae and the insects were part of The Fortress’ arcane ecosystem, and despite Alexandria appreciated how effective they were. In the exile that had been her childhood, she had lived in homes that looked much like this latrine - only there the algae had been corrosive and the insects had been poisonous.

Two different girls lived within Alexandria’s gifted mind. The first was the queen that the world needed her to be. The second was a playful trickster who reveled in the thrill of adventure. Neither of these girls enjoyed the barbaric necessities of command, but the second found magic in moments such as these. Alexandria scooped a patch of algae gently from the wall. She jiggled it around in her palm, and it pulsed with peaceful light. The door to the latrine complex creaked open, and she pressed the algae gently back into the crack that was its home.

The man that had come to share in Alexandria’s crime was Magister Jeunock Bials. He was a thin, pale creature who seldom climbed above the fortress’ third block. The highest ceiling in the third block was ninety feet beneath the ground. Jeunock was a student of death, and the brilliant men and women who toiled in his laboratories seldom bothered to join the world of the living. So divorced was their world from the surface, that Jeunock had not been the slightest bit disturbed by the ending of human civilization.

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“Magister Bials.” Alexandria offered to shake Jeunock’s hand.

“Apolog gies my lad dy. Hypo hyp hypochondriasis.” Jeunock’s stutter always acted up when he was excited.

“Can you tell me where he is?” Alexandria pushed right to the point.

“Yes…yes.” Jeunock stared madly into Alexandria’s eyes. She wondered if he had forgotten.

“Tell me.”

“Oh! Oh. Yes. He, he is. Coffin six row thirteen of Cyric’s t-t-temple. Down. Downtown.”

Jeunock produced from his robe of white silk a scroll bound in human leather. He cradled it like a child before regretfully passing it to Alexandria. He shut her hand carefully over it, and plead with her that she should not allow any harm to befall it. She tolerated the magister’s violation of her personal space, and promised him she would guard it well. He turned to go.

“Magister, wait.” There were only a few men and women in the world who could resist her voice of command. Jeunock was not one of them. He froze, shivering, in his tracks. Alexandria unraveled the scroll to make sure that it contained the information she needed. It did.

“Go. Good night Magister Bials.”

Jeunock skittered from the latrine.