Year 941,

“You're a real piece of shit, Melfis! What a mess! And the thing that pisses me off the most is that you don't feel sorry at all!” Lorana had been yelling since they boarded the galley they were assigned to, and Viryl was starting to have a slight headache.

“Come on Lorana, nobody died,” Melfis justified himself once again.

“What’s the fucking point are you trying to make? They're the ones who want us dead!”

“Who? Brombelt and Bellum? They can both suck my dick.”

Lyndabel was staring out into the black waves, her elbows resting on the gunwale of the forecastle. When she looked so gloomy, Viryl had learned to stay away from her.

Before leaving the armory, Melfis had cast the “Toxic Cloud” spell and sealed the blacksmith inside. The poor guy had spent the next three hours with red watering eyes, running nose, and vomiting, and was still convalescing and half-paralyzed on a bed in the infirmary.

Viryl had sworn up and down that he had nothing to do with that little incident, but Lyndabel hadn’t believed him. Or maybe she had believed him but still resented him because he had done nothing to help and had just laughed his ass off. There was nothing to laugh about, in Lyndabel’s opinion.

“Just Brombelt and Bellum? Did you even see the faces of Jossolt and the others when they pulled that poor guy out?!” Lorana screamed in hysteria.

“Lorana, dear, try to understand me. It's a matter of principle. If I can't have a fully functional Exoplion, then neither can those two assholes,” Melfis explained, making an argument that from his point of view was perfectly convincing.

Lorana let out a long sigh of exasperation. There was no doubt that Brombelt and Bellum were assholes, but Melfis's childish spite seemed even more of a asshole move.

Taking advantage of the brief pause in Melfis and Lorana’s bickering, Lyndabel stretched and straightened her back. Turning to her companions, she announced coldly, “The shore is near. We’ll have to disembark any minute.”

Melfis smiled and went over to Viryl to pat him on the back. “Even though we’re a little low on fuel, you and I, we’ll hold our own against those shitty infidels! Right?”

“That’s for sure,” Viryl answered, coughing a bit. He was starting to think Melfis was a little rough. Not that he was particularly bothered by the way he interacted.

The captain of the galley came to warn the knights that he was about to give the order to drop anchor: it was not safe to approach any closer. Once the ship was secured in its position, they proceeded to disembark. The rowboats were lowered and filled with soldiers, and at the head of the formation was the one on which the four knights were placed.

With vigorous strokes they proceeded until the keel of the boat scraped the bottom, and then the knights jumped down into the water that reached their waists. They ran accompanied by the surf of the sea, raising salty sprays of gray foam, to the shore. Behind them the troop of soldiers churned up the waters like a storm.

Standing on the shore, Viryl looked around him and imagined that under the sun he would be surrounded by sand dunes. The moons were at the end of their revolutions, and it was the darkest night. His eyes had nothing to hold on to, and the beach was just a vast patch of pitch black with no clear edges, like the forest on the slope in front of him, like the sea behind him. Only the sky stood out above the horizon, with its stars and its shades of blue and purple.

Lyndabel was the only one unaffected by the visibility problem, and with the echolocation of the “Sound Vision” spell she had managed to get a precise idea of the space around her. She stated resolutely, “All clear,” and led the others toward the center of the beach.

In groups of a few dozen each, the soldiers emerged from the water and gathered around the knights. When almost all of them had arrived, Lorana spoke up and proclaimed, “Crusaders, we are at Arvis!”

Excited cheers and banging of shields echoed all around. Viryl was taken aback by the racket. They hadn't summoned glowing orbs so as not to alarm Arvis's defense forces, and now they were in danger of ruining everything with all that noise. He let them do their exultations anyway.

“We are on the south beach, and we must ascend the hill you see to the north, through the forest, to join the rest of the battalion at the gates of the city. Needless to say, this place is full of Infidels and the beasts that follow them.”

This part of the speech did not please the soldiers, and the shouting turned into muffled murmurs. Among them there were some who had taken part in the siege of Malgadra, and none of them wanted to meet a Ferenkelt again.

“But you need not worry about monsters. Melfis, Lyndabel, and Viryl will clear the path to the city, while I wait here with you to keep you safe from whatever abomination dares attack us from the woods.”

Melfis placed a hand on Lorana's shoulder and continued in her place, “You will wait for us here, and when we return we will advance together.”

There were shouts of agreement. Melfis searched for Viryl’s gaze in the darkness and motioned for him to go. Lyndabel saw their expressions and went ahead of them, beginning her march toward the woods. As the three advanced, the crowd of crusaders parted to allow them to pass. There were a good number of pikemen, a few gunners, a small number of engineers, and a few service personnel carrying equipment and supplies. The shadowy shapes of their baggage and weapons were faintly highlighted by the starlight.

When they were past the troop, Viryl took a deep breath, and shook out his boots. Sand was seeping into them. Lyndabel and Melfis didn’t seem to have the same problem and they moved forward unperturbed. Viryl sprinted forward to catch up with them. His boots filled up again, and he cursed under his breath.

Soon they reached the grass and shrubs of the garrigue and Viryl was relieved to feel solid ground under his feet, even as the sprigs of rosemary and helichrysum tickled his face.

“Stay behind me,” Lyndabel urged both of the knights. “The wooded area begins ahead, and it will be even darker in there.”

There would have been no need for that observation. Viryl and Melfis couldn't see a damn thing already, and they had no desire to run nose-first into a log.

They entered the thicket of holm oaks, junipers and wild olives, and walked with difficulty for about ten minutes. There was no sign of a path, and the ground was thickly covered with low, tough, thorny vegetation.

The peace that surrounded them was unnatural. Aside from the solitary call of a scops owl and the gentle rustling of the land breeze, there was no suspicious noise. Furthermore, the reptilian vision spell that Viryl kept constantly active did not reveal any large animals. Yet a nagging premonition continued to grip him. According to Ollante's reconnaissance, the island's woods should be teeming with enemies, and the knight expected that in order to free a path to the clearing in front of the city walls there would be a carnage to make. There was no way everything could go so smoothly.

Melfis was even more nervous than him. He walked with his knees slightly bent and his arms outstretched before him, ready to summon his ethereal armor.

Somewhat impatiently, Viryl whispered to Lyndabel, “Nothing?”

“No. No tents, no dens, no nothing,” Lyndabel replied.

Melfis scratched his chin, “Too weird. we’re a quarter of the way there already.”

Lyndabel shrugged and continued forward through the bushes. Viryl was intent on following her steps when a crackling sound surprised him from the right. A clawed limb came out of the ground and struck him in the side, tearing through uniform, skin, and muscle. He was thrown sideways, and didn’t even have time to scream in pain.

A second clawed paw reached out toward Melfis, but he had good enough reflexes to summon his ethereal spiked mace and intercept the blow. Sparks flew from the collision between the steel of the mace and the hard keratin of the claws.

Hearing the noises behind her, Lyndabel whirled around, and saw to her left a triangular muzzle protruding from the ground, with blank eyes and an almost piggy snout, and two sinewy, four-toed, clawed paws that could crush rock. She shouted, “Crushing Moles!”

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Holding his wounded side with his right hand, Viryl reached into his belt for a potion of cerulean infusion and downed it in one gulp. He felt vibrations under his buttocks, and in a split second he summoned his ethereal armor and launched himself into the air with his levitation spell. Two more large paws emerged from the bushes that had broken his fall and lapped at him, closing in. Viryl summoned a glowing orb to better examine by its glimmer the features of the beast's hairy head as it gasped and tried to rise and grab him.

At the same time as Viryl, Lyndabel and Melfis also summoned their ethereal armor and a glowing orb each. A third Crushing Mole emerged from behind Lyndabel and dove at her, slamming her with its bulk. Lyndabel heard the crack and met the impact with her shield enchanted with “denial” and “reflect.” The mole bounced back with cracked claws and fell onto its back, then began to thrash around in an attempt to get up.

Viryl darted between the trunks, flew past Lyndabel, and planted his spears at the base of the upside-down mole’s neck, then cast the basic “cleavage pulse” spell and decapitated it. With the first Ferenkelt defeated, he landed and coughed. His wounds still hurt, but they were healing already. He looked for the monster that had tried to grab him, but he could no longer see it in the darkness. It was back in its burrow and was digging.

Meanwhile, Melfis confronted the Crushing Mole which had started the ambush. He struck it with a couple of blows, but the mole responded by deflecting the blows with its forelimbs while hiding the rest of its body in the ground.

The knight of Libertas muttered through gritted teeth, “I have no time to waste with you, sucker!” and slammed his mace into the ground. The ground exploded in a shower of glowing blue concretions, and the mole was thrown out of its burrow. The beast squeaked in pain and tried to move out of Melfis’s attack range, but its lower body was paralyzed. The fur on its hind legs and part of its abdomen was white and crusty, and it gave off a thin layer of steam.

It must have been a freezing spell, and a very powerful one. Melfis certainly wasn't sparing his already meager Fuligine Stone.

As Viryl and Lyndabel watched Melfis repeatedly bring his spiked club down on the beast's head, which was still trying to protect itself with its forepaws, a bark came from deep within the forest, and then the gallop of a rapidly approaching multitude. In unison with the bark, the mole that had been hiding in its tunnel leaped out from between the bushes and tried to strike Melfis with a paw, perhaps in a desperate attempt to rescue its fellow.

Viryl ignored the menacing clatter of the beasts charging behind him, and grabbed one of the blue stone fragments Melfis had turned over with his “advanced telekinesis” spell, then hurled it at the newly emerged mole's snout, carving out a depressed, white lesion.

The mole stopped its attack and put its nose between its paws, grunting in pain. Viryl yelled at Lyndabel, “Finish it off!” and turned to brace for the second wave of beasts.

Lyndabel grasped Viryl's command, loaded the spell "light spear" into her dagger, leapt with a high jump onto the mole's head and plunged the dagger into its thick skull, then released the energy of the spell. Rays of light shot from the monster's eye sockets, nostrils and throat, and when they died, the mole fell lifeless to the ground.

Melfis, although aware of what was happening behind him, did not distract himself from the mauling, and continued to mangle the Ferenkelt until its limbs, head and chest were reduced to an inanimate and bloody pulp.

Viryl waited with his spear-rifles pointed deep into the woods, loaded with blinding bullets. When Melfis and Lyndabel had finished dealing with the moles, they both took up positions behind him.

A few moments of unnerving tension followed, broken by the sudden flexing of a Black Goitered Mastiff's muscles in the gleam of the glowing orbs. Instantly Viryl fired both rifles, and a flash struck through the tender spring leaves, bathing the night sky in countless shafts of white light.

Lyndabel blindly cast the “Earth Sinking” spell on the ground in front of her, and Melfis grabbed his mace in both hands.

Before the flash of the blinding bullets died down, Viryl felt a rush of air as a Black Goiter Mastiff leapt forward, its jaws wide open, and aimed at the gorget of his armor. Viryl tried to retreat before his neck fell into the beast's grip, but was beaten to it by Melfis, who with a clean swing of his mace, struck the mastiff square in the chest and hurled it away.

As the blaze of the blinding bullets faded, Viryl realized they had been surrounded. There were two Black Goiter Mastiffs to their right and three to their left, including the one Melfis had struck. Three more had been trapped by Lyndabel's spell, and a pair were advancing on either side of a large insectoid Ferenkelt, a Reaper Mantis.

Viryl couldn’t even catch his breath before six of the ten mastiffs launched an attack. They were wolf-like beasts as large as horses, with shiny gray skin - except for a black spot under the jaw - hairless, hard as leather, with a carnivorous set of teeth composed of two rows of yellow fangs two inches long each.

Lyndabel focused on those coming from the left, Melfis on those coming from the right. The two knights found themselves back to back, and Viryl darted forward to intercept those coming alongside the Mantis.

The four hounds on the sides snapped their jaws at once, and Melfis and Lyndabel fought hand-to-hand to defend themselves.

Melfis, with his inhuman strength, landed a first forehand strike on the teeth of the mastiff that had aimed at his right arm, then struck a backhand blow at the monster that was aiming at his left shoulder. Melfis's spiked club ended up in the second canine's bite just above the hilt. With a jerk of his sinewy neck, the Black Goitered Mastiff tried to destabilize Melfis's posture and bit again towards the end of the club to grab the knight's right forearm and tear it away. But Melfis let go with his right hand, and with his left he searched his belt for steel spikes and quickly planted them in the beast's neck. Then he cast the spell "melt metal" on the spikes, and the beast retreated, arching back its neck burned by the streams of molten steel.

Without wasting a moment, Melfis rematerialized his mace in his right hand and enchanted it with his freezing spell, and delivered a low, upward blow to the retreating Hound's abdomen. The impact was enough to knock the beast backward, which fell onto its back and immediately tried to get up.

The Mastiff who had been hit in the teeth lunged forward again, and Melfis hit him in the right eye socket, shattering it and exploding its eyeball. The force of the strike and the thermal shock both damaged the animal’s brain, and it collapsed, vomiting yellow gall.

Lyndabel was less fortunate than Melfis: she hit one of the two attacking Hounds with her “reflex” enchanted shield and sent it bouncing back, but the other sank its teeth into her right shoulder, shattering the armor like a nut. Lyndabel screamed in pain, feeling her shoulder blade and upper arm explode into thousands of splinters of bone.

The scream caught Melfis's attention and he turned and brought his club down on the beast's skull, knocking it to the ground and taking Lyndabel with it.

The knight protested, while using her shield to push the Ferenkelt's frosted, brain-dripping head away from her fractured right arm. “Go easy, you idiot!”

“If I did, that thing would have taken your arm off,” Melfis retorted, turning around preparing to finish off the hound which had been hit in the belly and was now up and aiming for his neck again.

“Well, thank you very much then!” Lyndabel’s right arm dangled like a rag doll’s limb, as she stood up. The knight’s ethereal armor expanded back into its original shape, and with her left hand she reached into her belt for a vial of cerulean infusion, which she downed in one gulp after raising the visor of her helmet.

A dull thud marked the end of the third hound. “Oh, you’re welcome,” Melfis muttered, turning to her as he stood over the remains of his defeated foe.

“I was being sarcastic!” Lyndabel snarled angrily, and met a new charge of the Mastiffs’ that had already been repulsed again with her enchanted shield, only for it to comically bounce back once more. Then the knight cast the “spear of light” spell on the beast, piercing it through its chest.

As the heated exchange between Lyndabel and Melfis was taking place, the Mastiff which had started the fight by trying to bite Viryl had shaken himself out of the daze that the knight of Libertas had inflicted on him, and leaped with his forepaws at Lyndabel. Melfis caught him in mid-flight, throwing his ethereal mace at him, and before the weapon could fly away, he melted it with the “melt metal” spell, showering the creature with a jet of incandescent matter.

“Again, you’re welcome,” Melfis reiterated, materializing the ethereal mace in his hands once more.

“I have no reason to thank you: you are just a violent lout, Melfis Jawbreaker!” Lyndabel muttered, as she hurled another spear of light to finish off the fifth Hound.

“I take that as a compliment,” Melfis said, pointing a thumb into the depths of the forest. There, illuminated by the light of his glowing orb, Viryl looked in dire need of help.

Thirty-two years later, third day of Neviticus, 7:47 am, abandoned prison in the grounds of Morgraal Abbey,

“And then?” Dioryl pressed the Doctor Maximus.

“And then we managed to synthesize a formulation of the hypnotic molecule that we use on her with a prolonged release.”

“So it will no longer be necessary to administer continuous infusions?”

“Yes, from now on it will be enough to give her an injection and she will sleep through the night.”

“Well,” Dioryl smiled, “You are not capable of finding your damned receptacle, but at least you do something useful every now and then.”

“By the way, about the receptacle. I fear that so far our progress has been limited by the fact that the subjects on which we have had the opportunity to conduct our experiments have been of poor quality. At first we believed that the problem was exclusively related to the physical form of the slaves we managed to get our hands on. They were all weak and undernourished, so they quickly succumbed to pain and physical exertion. Then we tried with some prisoners —”

“I remember well, I was the one who procured for you some death row inmates from the prisons of Colonica and Yuthsenia,” Dioryl confirmed.

“Well, they died too. Their minds couldn’t take it. They went mad, stopped eating, lost control of their urination, couldn’t speak anymore and tried to mutilate themselves. At first I thought it was a good sign. I hoped their consciousness had faded to make room for that of the Ruler of the Dark Flame. But it didn’t go as I thought. In the end they tore their flesh off. We tried to stop them of course, but despite sedatives and ties, they still managed to kill themselves.”

“What are you getting at?” Dioryl asked, puzzled.

“We need to conduct our tests with a specimen in peak physical condition, but with a clear and brilliant mind and an iron will,” Doctor Maximus explained, lacing his fingers together and looking gravely at the Grand Master.

“So you’re basically asking me if you can use the knight I brought you?”

“You know… we’d start the experimentation as soon as possible, but I must reiterate the same thing I said about Coronice. Once we start, I’m afraid we won’t be able to give him back. So if he’s here just to be kept in custody — ”

Dioryl laughed heartily. “Oh, there’ll be no need to give him back. Do with him as you please.”