"Lucian Augusti of House Corvo, Praetor and Magus Sollers of the Anthvean Empire; you have been found guilty of the assassination of Emperor Julian and sentenced to death. Do you have any last words?" the executioner intoned somberly.

The bristly tips of the old executioner's white moustache twitched as Lucian turned his attention to the man. His bald pate shined in the dim light cast by a single blue bulb. Lucian opened his mouth to speak, a dry tongue running across his cracked lips as he struggled to muster the words.

"He had it coming," he finally managed, grinning wryly despite the straps binding his head in place. "I face death without regrets, and look forward to my reception at the Bridge of Requiter."

The executioner nodded and looked over his shoulder to a scribe. "Did you get that?" he asked.

The younger fellow hunched over a desk in the corner was vigorously scribbling away at a massive codex. As he finished writing he dipped his pen one last time, scribbling his name across the bottom of the page. "Yes sir," he replied.

The executioner turned his attention once more to Lucian. With a surge of strength he flipped a switch, activating the circuit wired to the assassin’s chair and sending massive amounts of magical energy surging through his weakened frame. Lucian felt every muscle in his body seize powerfully, unbelievable pain drowning out all conscious thought as the world faded slowly to white. Finally, gratefully, he succumbed to unconsciousness.

With a gasp Lucian awoke lying in a field, the smell of burnt hair wafting through the cool night air. His hands leaped to his forehead, finding only thick locks of black hair tumbling down around his ears. The relief which surged through him in that moment was immense.

He was alive!

That joy was short lived. Realization struck him then, staring up at the night sky. The stars were unfamiliar, the constellations foreign. Even the moon was different, its surface a pale white rather than the deep, rich blue that he was familiar with.

Where in the name of all the Gods was he?

Pushing himself up into a sitting position, and then to his feet, Lucian surveyed his surroundings. He found himself at the top of a squat hill. Tall, dry grass stretched towards the horizon in every direction, the monotony broken only occasionally by a scraggly tree. The terrain reminded him distinctly of what he'd read regarding the steppes upon which nomads moved in vast hordes of men and horses, raiding and trading with the settled lands of the east in equal measure. Under the light of the pale white moon he watched a breeze roll across the plains, and instantly Lucian understood why so many authors described those distant lands as a sea of grass.

That same breeze which sent waves rolling across the steppe reminded him very distinctly of the fact that he was naked. A less than ideal circumstance, though the cold didn't particularly bother him and the ground was soft, if somewhat pebbly. He searched his surroundings for any identifying characteristics, and upon looking closer noticed a scar cutting across the landscape. It was subtle, but he thought it might have been a trail or a stream. Streams are supposed to lead to civilization, right?

A short hike down the hill brought Lucian to the edge of a strip of broken and trampled grass. He looked in either direction, but they were functionally identical, so he simply set off and hoped for the best. It was maybe an hour later, though he’d never been the best at telling time, that he arrived at a plain wooden gate in a plain wooden fence. Spiked wire was woven between the post, but whether it was to keep something in or keep intruders out Lucian wasn’t sure.

Either way he summoned a flame to his palm. It was the first time he'd been able to use magic in months, and gods but the surge of divine power felt good. With surgical precision he warped the flame into a beam of pure heat, with which he burnt a hole through the wooden post keeping the gate shut. It swung open freely on its hinges, and after passing through Lucian closed it, out of courtesy, with a stone rod ripped from the earth.

The trail he'd been following continued on the other side of the fence, and so Lucian saw no reason not to continue following it. Other paths branched off from the one which he followed, but all went in directions opposite from his own. Eventually Lucian spotted a structure outlined against the night sky, probably a home of some sort. It was either two stories or possessed of exceptionally high ceilings, and he could see what might have been a well in the yard. There were no lights visible inside, nor were there any other signs of life besides.

He considered the possibility of simply knocking on the door, but it seemed astronomically unlikely that he'd share a language with the locals. Wherever he was, it certainly wasn't Imperial territory. On the other hand, Lucian thought, even if he didn't necessarily share a language he could still communicate. It would be difficult and somewhat unwieldy, but surely a man of his talents could figure something out. That being said, he decided that it would probably be best to secure clothing, or at least a make-shift loincloth, before introducing himself.

Lucian continued forward, through another gate, and up to the walls of the house. Peering inside through the slats of the window shutters revealed a strange sight indeed. A massive iron construction dominated the room, with some sort of metal pipe leading up into the ceiling. Judging by the wood piled in the corner, he assumed it was some sort of furnace or hearth, but not of a form that he was familiar with. Various pots and pans hung from hooks on the wall, while plates and pitchers and various other assorted dishware was stacked upon shelves.

He surmised that he was looking at a kitchen, though a kitchen unlike any that he'd seen before. Lucian continued around to the side of the house, where he discovered a wooden colonnade housing several chairs and a set of double doors, presumably the home's main entrance. Clear glass windows were set into the doors themselves, of unmatched clarity and delicately carved with intricate patterns. Whoever owned the home must have been wealthy indeed to afford such luxuries.

Lucian also saw, much to his delight, a series of white linens hanging upon a clothesline strung between the house and a post in the yard. He made his way silently over to the hanging laundry and grabbed what was likely a bedsheet off the line. While perhaps not the ideal material for what he had in mind, it would serve in a pinch as a cloak. Channeling the divine power coursing through him, it was a simple matter to fashion a brooch from stone. An ugly, simplistic thing, but serviceable. Lucian draped the bedsheet about himself and pinned it over his right shoulder in the style of a paludamentum. It was long enough that it draped nearly to his ankles.

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Thus made at least somewhat presentable, Lucian returned to the colonnaded entryway. There was no knocker on the door, so he just used his fist, rapping his knuckles against the wood a handful of times. After waiting perhaps a minute he knocked again, and then a third time.

Lucian was beginning to fear that the house was empty when he saw a woman appear in the hallway, carrying a lit candlestick to light her way. She was perhaps thirty, slightly overweight, with a surprisingly muscular build for a woman. Her outfit, if it could even be called an outfit, was decidedly odd. It was a single article of clothing which combined ankle-length hose with a tight, long-sleeved shirt. The crotch appeared to be held in place by a flap, an innovation Lucian could only imagine made it easier to relieve oneself.

The woman peered at him through the window on the door, eyes widening slightly as she looked at him. "I don't suppose you understand what I'm saying, do you?" Lucian asked, raising his voice so that it might carry through the glass.

Confusion, and then recognition flashed across the woman's face. "To speak the bad Old Tongue," she said, the words slow and halting. Her grammar was awful, and her accent borderline unintelligible, but Lucian felt a surge of relief nonetheless knowing that he wouldn't have to mime his desires to her.

"To be nobility." She phrased it as a statement, but by the inflection in her voice he was pretty sure that she meant it as a question.

"I am nobility," Lucian replied, speaking slowly and overenunciating for her benefit. "Is there a person who speaks the 'Old Tongue' well?" he asked, using the simplest language that he could.

The woman stared at him, brow scrunched together in thought as she tried to puzzle out what he’d said. Eventually she nodded, though she seemed hesitant about it. She held up a finger, and then wandered back into the house. It was several minutes later that she returned with a young woman, probably in her early twenties, who still seemed bleary eyed from sleep.

The young woman grew much more awake at the sight of Lucian standing on the other side of the door. She was blonde, with an athletic build and soft features. Attractive, in a rustic sort of way. She was dressed in the same ridiculous uniform as the older woman, and he guessed that the two of them were sisters or otherwise related in some way.

"Hello," the younger woman greets him. "My name is Lysandra. What is your name?"

Her accent was still terrible, and she spoke as if she were a bad actress reciting lines for a play, but at least her grammar and vocabulary seemed better than her sister's. "My name is Lucian," he replied, still speaking slowly and clearly. "I am lost. Could you tell me where I am, and what is near here?" he asked.

Lysandra turned to the older woman and babbled something in an unintelligible, barbarian language. Perhaps every third word sounded vaguely familiar, but if it was descended from Lucian’s own language it was only distantly so. They carried on a conversation for some time, and he got the impression that they were arguing, but finally Lysandra turned her attention again to him. "Are you foreign? What languages do you speak?"

"I am foreign," he confirmed. Then Lucian proceeded to recite a collection of simple phrases in a variety of languages. He spoke several in addition to the Imperial tongue, including Nesali, Uscal, Sellinica, and Zabani, but only the Imperial tongue seemed familiar to Lysandra.

Once he'd exhausted his knowledge of foreign tongues, Lysandra and her sister again spoke among themselves. Lucian found it quite rude that they carried on in their own language knowing full well that he couldn't understand them, but kept his mouth shut. Eventually Lysandra turned to him again as the older woman wandered back into the hall. "What are you doing here, and how did you get here? The border is very far away."

"If I'm honest, I don't know," he lied. "I woke up on a hill a few miles from here, this is the first sign of civilization I've come across."

Lysandra frowned thoughtfully at that, and he got the sense that she was carefully considering her next words. "Were you abducted?" she finally asked.

The question struck him as odd. The word she used - 'raptus', it could mean snatched, robbed, or confiscated, but it was primarily a legal term used in the context of stolen property or a woman marrying without her father's permission, willingly or not. "I don't think so," he replied, somewhat hesitantly. "I don't remember being carried off by anyone - I simply woke up naked in the hills with no memory."

"There are," Lysandra began, trailing off as she waved a hand searchingly, as if she intended to pluck the word she was looking for from thin air. "Plants?" she ventured.

Lucian shrugged, and she forged ahead. "There are plants which can rob someone of their memories, make them confused and..." she trailed off again, and he got the impression that he was testing the limits of her vocabulary. "Suitable to be asked a favor of?"

"Obedient, submissive, vulnerable," he suggested.

Lysandra snapped her fingers, pointing at him. "Vulnerable! Some women use these plants to make men vulnerable and abduct them without facing punishment."

Lucian must have made a face, because Lysandra held up her hands apologetically. "I don't mean to suggest anything," she clarified. "Are you injured at all?"

"No, I'm in good health," he replied.

Lucian was about to repeat his earlier question, about where exactly he was, when the older woman he first spoke with returned. With her was a third woman, this one perhaps in her fifties. She was grey-haired and dressed similarly to the two younger women, though she'd thrown a coat on. She walked with the assistance of a cane, her right leg locked up at the knee.

At the old woman's side, helping her to support her weight, was an older man. He was younger than her, in his early to mid forties, with hair going grey at his temples. If Lucian had to describe him in one word, that word would be soft. From his facial features, to his gut, everything about him implied that he hadn't worked a day in his life. The man wore only a sheer, fur-trimmed nightgown that left very little to the imagination. This, Lucian decided, was not a good look for a man well past his prime.

"This is my sister Olivia, my father Devyn, and my mother Edith," Lysandra told him, indicating the woman with whom he first spoke, the older man, and the hobbled woman he accompanied. "Would you like to enter the house?" she asked. "We could make you a drink, and get you back to your women."

"That's alright," he reassured Lysandra. "If you could just tell me where I am, and what's near-by, I think I can make my way just fine."

Lysandra turned to her family, and they blathered at each other for a time. Then the distressingly dressed older gentleman opened the door, gesturing for Lucian to come inside. He really, honestly didn't want to, but it seemed rude to refuse, so reluctantly he allowed himself to be pulled through the door.