Bascoroch, Saptra, Dolore.

Lieze hadn’t devoted so much as a single thought to any of Tonberg’s sisters over the past few weeks. With the royalists’ dominion well and truly dismantled, however, she could afford to expand her horizons. Sokalar had seeded the cities with his thralls to prevent them from being recaptured once they were abandoned, and with his death, those undead had become free for the taking.

Marché had previous experience gathering thralls from the dead cities, and so it was only natural that he was chosen to shepherd the lost flocks towards their new master. Without the need for skulduggery, progress was faster than Lieze could have ever hoped. Not a day passed by when Gravewalkers weren’t being ferried into the city on the covered backs of wagons.

In the meantime, she had her own duties to attend to. With Tonberg’s liberation came an irresistible opportunity to plumb the city’s stores of knowledge; libraries, archives, scriptoriums, and bookstores provided her with ample reading material from every sphere of discipline.

She studied history. The lost and forbidden ages of strife pervaded by religious persecution and holy wars. Copied works of the Sages and their esoteric theories on the nature of existence. She pored over the church’s grimoires and alchemy textbooks. The applications of quicksilver. She searched for every last mention of Mercuria, devouring entire theses just to catch a glimpse of the term.

Finally, she turned to the intricacies of symbolism. Though every second of it pained her, she delved into scripture and fables in search of hidden meanings. Drayya was very partial to her demands for pilfered treasures and artefacts, which the girl gleefully stole from every cathedral and church she and the Deathguards could possibly find.

Rhetoric. Design. Cosmology. Theism. Thaumaturgy. Lieze identified new patterns in the texts and discarded those which had led her to dead ends. Before she could even understand the depths of her own obsession with answers, an entire week had come to pass.

The guest room she appropriated for her own ends was half-buried in tomes stacked to the ceiling. In the early morning of her eighth day in study, her interest was focused on the Church’s enigmatic ‘Kingdom of Faith’ - a philosophy coined and perpetrated by a handful of the country’s first scholars. Her eyes scanned and re-scanned the table-sized pages with pleading fatigue.

The door to the room cracked open, illuminating motes of dust in the air as light flooded in. Lieze peered over her shoulder to see Drayya slipping through the gap, a plate held in one hand.

“You haven’t changed a bit, do you know that?” She said, “Leader of the Order, conqueror of Tonberg - yet still the same recluse you always were.”

The room smelled like ink and paper. It was a nostalgic scent. Drayya knocked down a tower of books atop a nearby bed and leaned over to drop the plate in front of Lieze before taking a seat. Cuts of venison still pink in the middle and lathered with runny gravy stimulated Lieze’s appetite. She couldn’t be certain of how much time had passed since she stepped outside, or how many hours ago she had last eaten.

“Roland used to work in the kitchen. Do you remember?” Drayya asked, “Every time a foolish traveller was murdered, you and I would always tear apart their packs looking for meat. Roland was the only one with any idea of how to treat it.”

“I do remember.” Lieze replied, “-And he hated frogs, strangely enough.”

“I think you were the only one who actually enjoyed eating frogs, Lieze.” Drayya smiled, “He’s ecstatic now. All the fresh ingredients he could ever want are plentiful here. We won’t be starving to death for as long as he sticks around.”

“That’s one problem dealt with, at least.” Lieze said, returning her gaze to the gargantuan tome splayed across her desk. Drayya remained on the bed, kicking her legs for a minute or two and observing the girl’s imperishable concentration.

“What are you looking for?” She asked.

“...Anything.” Lieze replied, “The Mercuria. Quicksilver. The Light in Chains. There are too many unanswered questions regarding the Scions.”

“We could have kept Alistair alive.” She said, “I’m sure he would have had something interesting to say on the subject.”

“Would that I hadn’t offered him a quick death. But it wouldn’t have been our way to betray that expectation.” Lieze paused, “...When I start thinking about it, I begin to lose faith that ‘our way’ is the truth. How can we declare anything with certainty when there are still so many mysteries yet to be unravelled?”

There was a time when Drayya wouldn’t have hesitated to demand Lieze’s death for suggesting something so heinous, but with all she had witnessed in stock, denying the possibility would be an exercise in futility.

“What good are these tomes to me?” Lieze continued, “Any one of these scholars could be lying through their teeth, writing whatever is necessary to maintain the status quo. I can’t be sure of anything unless I see it with my own eyes. But where do I even begin? And how do I confirm any of my suspicions when this world is filled with so many lies?”

Her tirade came to an end when a hand came to rest upon her own. Drayya’s fingers took care to avoid pricking themselves on the barbed thorns sprouting from Lieze’s unsightly, corrupted skin as they slid between the gaps of her own.

“You’ve got a bad habit of overthinking everything.” Drayya said, “That was Sokalar’s folly, and I’m not about to sit idly by and watch you make the same mistake.”

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Lieze separated their hands with a shake.

“This is all I can rely on.” She said, “Even imperfect, diving into the history of the world’s faith is the only way I will uncover any answers. There’s nothing else I can do.”

“What you need to do is close that door stop of a thesis, have something to eat, and then step outside for an hour or two.” Drayya countered, “We’ve accomplished much this past week. The streets are surging with thralls. Lüngen is thinking of planning an expedition to see if we can’t track down some powerful monsters. Why not come and have a look?”

“As soon as I’m done with my analysis of this tome.”

That wasn’t the answer Drayya wanted to hear. Seconds later, Lieze found herself being yanked out of the room like a stubborn pet, holding the plate in both hands as if she was about to offer it up to the Gods. She didn’t resist the attempt, knowing full-well that trying to dissuade Drayya from something she had made up her mind about was a quick road to madness.

A chill air blew in from the throne room’s broken ceiling. Most of the thralls had been relocated elsewhere for the sake of sanitation, leaving it just as lonely as it was on the day of Alistair’s death. Lieze clenched her eyes to resist the glaring sunlight as Drayya escorted her beyond the castle grounds, bounding towards the city’s southern district where most of the Order had taken up temporary residence.

The doors of the Golden Flagon flew open. A fog of acrid smoke permeated the interior. Its source was Lüngen, who had spent the better part of that morning enjoying a novel and stuffing his pipe. He watched with reserved amusement from the bar as Drayya forced Lieze onto a chair.

“Did we really have to walk all the way-”

“Shut up.” Drayya shook her head to one side, casting spindles of raven hair from her features. She tapped her finger against the table, “Eat.”

There was no arguing with her. A knife and fork had been laid out as if Lieze’s arrival was expected all along. Her stomach whined with impatience. Starvation had been ground into her psyche as one of the most effective forms of motivation - ground in by Sokalar, that is. The mere thought of the Lich still having some modicum of control over her life quietened any complaints about satisfying her hunger.

Drayya waved a hand in front of her face to dispel the smoke while approaching the bar. Lüngen closed his book and reached beneath the counter to retrieve a well-polished glass.

“She’s not dead, then.” He said, “That’s nice to hear.”

“If only.” Drayya rolled her eyes, “What are you doing?”

Lüngen narrowed his eyes to read the label on a bottle half-filled with bronze liquor. A powerful scent wafted from the neck as he unscrewed the top and poured some into the glass.

“I’m having a drink.” He answered as if it couldn’t have been more obvious, “I would ask if you’d like one, too, but you’re much too young for something like this.”

“It’s nice to see you’re taking all of this very seriously.” A wrinkle formed on Drayya’s forehead, “-And I absolutely am old enough to be having a drink, thank you very much.”

He paused, “...How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-four.”

“Twenty-four…” He repeated, “It feels like yesterday when you were just a babe in her crib. Bran was hysterical when you were born, you know. I had to take over many of his responsibilities while he made certain you weren’t crawling into the catacombs every hour of the day.”

“My father was hysterical?” She asked, “I think whatever you’re smoking might be affecting your memories, Lüngen.”

“No, no.” He shook his head, “Unlike most other members, who were all too happy to hand their kin over to the caretakers, Bran made more than a handful of sacrifices to ensure that he could spend his days with you. I’m not surprised you don’t remember, considering how young you were when…”

“When he died.” Drayya finished.

“Mm. Perhaps you should have a drink, Drayya.” Lüngen reached for another glass, “This bottle was a Saptra brewery’s attempt to replicate the flavour of Dwarven liquor.”

“How successful was that?” She asked.

“Well, I’ll put it this way - there are twenty bottles of it in that cabinet behind me, and I was the first one to open any of them.” He poured again, “So it’s not a question of how successful it was, but whether it was successful at all - and the answer was a quiet ‘no’.”

“Why drink it, then?” Drayya lifted the glass.

“Because I prefer Dwarven liquor, even if it isn’t a particularly good imitation.” Lüngen answered, “Human ale is really just an excuse to inebriate oneself. I don’t believe anyone drinks it for the flavour. On the other hand, Dwarves have a particular culture surrounding their love of drinking, so it only stands to reason that they would want it to taste good.”

Drayya stared through the golden brew, “What makes you think I’ll like it?”

“Perhaps you won’t.” Lüngen raised his glass, “Cheers.”

The enthusiasm with which he downed the glass revealed a side of Lüngen that had long since been flattened by age and wisdom. Drayya found herself swallowing involuntarily before bringing the glass up. She was surprised to feel her lips tingling with the flavour of rich spices. A grimace formed to cope with the sudden burn.

“Ugh!” She sniffed, “It’s like drinking fire…”

“Once you get used to it, the flavours underneath are quite complex.” Lüngen sighed contentedly, “The real thing is even more wicked, but there’s nothing quite like it.”

She placed the glass down and pushed it to the other side of the bar, “...Lieze would like that, I think.”

“I disagree.”

Drayya recoiled as the girl’s voice emerged from closer than she would have expected. Lieze rounded her back and took a seat of her own.

“Drayya tells me you’re planning an expedition, Lüngen.” She said.

“That’s right.” He replied, “There is no shortage of ruins and caverns nearby, as a few of the Deathguards have discovered. With any luck, we might find a beast or two in prime condition to reinforce our army.”