John mopped away at his forehead with a wet cloth from the bucket as he walked away from the sparring fields.

“Thanks for that John, I might not be good yet, but I'm getting somewhere!” The man he had just been training with called out after him.

John turned around and waved to the man rather than responding as he continued walking away from the field. He had a habit of getting sucked back in whenever someone complimented him, and he had a feeling the soldiers in training were starting to realize it. It was a bit uncomfortable how dependent on him they had gotten over the last couple weeks as more and more common workers were pulled into the catacombs either by chance or their own decisions.

There was a certain distinction, a separation between the average man and the soldiers that had made up the bulk of Dei's initial forces. Both Charity and Xei had sure brought bulk to their numbers, but what was it really doing to the integrity of the group? John shook his head as he pondered the situation he was stuck in now, halfway between the two groups as he had become the de facto fighting trainer for many of the unskilled fighters from the new recruits.

The fact that the more skilled individuals they picked up were immediately scalped from his ranks and turned over to Xei and the mercenaries for one on one training caused the supposed divide to widen even further in a noticeable way. Workers ate separately from the warriors in the catacombs, even to the point that some of the fighters with families had stopped eating with their loved ones.

And then there was John.

He wasn't a bad fighter, but any time the group tried to take him out on a raid, he just kind of clammed up for some reason. Too many memories of a distant fight in a forrest that happened long ago. He was no longer the odd one out by the fact that he had been forcibly recruited to the cause, but that did little good for his heart. So after the third or fourth time he had turned down an offer to join with the raiding party, well, they just hadn't invited him anymore.

And that was fine with him.

The cool water dripped down his neck and into the folds of the loose linen shirt that he wore, day on, day off. Self assured steps led him down the halls on a path that he had walked many times before after the daily training sessions he held with the recruits, leading to his favorite place. The distant sounds of busy work greeted him as he turned the corner into the doorless room that had become his oasis. A bar.

He'd originally been alone in the caverns when he found the somewhat hidden room with a built-in stone L shaped table, but as soon as he explored behind the counter he understood immediately what the room was meant to be used for. The kegs were a little bit harder to come by at first, rolling entire barrels of stout and ale down the stone hallways between the store room and the bar. Some of the looks people gave him as they saw him coming through were pretty damning, but eventually he had built a home away from home for himself.

That was all well and good as far as things went, but then the unthinkable had happened. Somehow, someway, a barkeep that Charity had recruited from Tallowton managed to find the same room, and evidently had the same exact response as John had had.

When he had walked back to his little oasis that day to find a man already there behind the counter, cleaning away at the mugs with a dry towel, he had thought he was hallucinating. The two stopped short as they met eyes, neither quite believing that the other one was real until the man spoke to him.

“So. Is this your bar then?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Mind if I help out around here?”

John nodded stupidly and suddenly he had not only stocked the wares for his very own bar, but a surprise barkeep had arrived by the providence of chance itself. Or he supposed it was the providence of the goddess, considering their current company. Hard to keep up that charade all the time though.

What had once been his secret hideout to relax and feel a sense of purpose, had quickly turned into a small get together place for people in the know. So when John arrived today, he wasn't entirely surprised to see that several other people were already seated at the bar while Connor kept the taps running whenever they needed a refill.

The only downside to that was that sometimes his favorite spot would get taken. Today it was a rather large girl in worker's clothing that looked like she was guzzling down the mugs one after another.

“Another!” She called over to Connor who fulfilled the request with a bit of concern in his eyes. It wasn't every day that you saw someone try and drown their sorrows in the catacombs, but when you saw it, it had a tendency of getting messy down here. One of the downsides of everyone knowing everyone in the close quarters.

John took the next seat over from his usual place, only a little bit uncomfortable with the fact that his line of sight was just that bit off from its normal position. Nothing he couldn't live with however.

Connor served the girl beside him, then nodded to John as he walked back to pour a mug of his usual, a fine stout that he'd originally found hidden far in the back of the general store room. Hopefully no one would end up missing it too much as it marked the pinnacle of taste in John's very own bar and tavern.

The rest of the table was a bit on the quiet side like it always was. You could talk to other people just about anywhere else in the catacombs, but here. Here it was just you, the mug, and the ambiance. Until the woman sitting next to him started to speak at least.

“So what's got you spending time here John?” She asked.

He decided to look over at the girl now that she'd adressed him, actually paying attention to who she was and was shocked to find Major Connely staring right back at him with red eyes. Had she been crying?

“Uh, nice to see you too, Connely. It's been a while hasn't it?”

“No, it really hasn't.” She went back to staring down into her mug as quickly as she had opened the conversation, seemingly no longer interested.

“Sure. Sorry, I guess?” he said.

She shrugged him off as Connor finally came over with the mug, though it didn't quite taste as sweet as it normally had at the bar.

“So. What's got you feeling so down that you ended up here?” John asked.

Connely spun around to face him as she started to spill her information out far too quickly.

“Well tomorrow is the winter solstice, and that means that me and my boss might have just hit a dead end in terms of our involvement in the whole place, so i'm just kinda not sure what I should even be doing anymore. You know?” Her words weren't quite slurred, but they also didn't seem like the normal Major that John had only somewhat talked to in the past.

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“Uh, yeah. I know.” He wasn't sure what he was agreeing to, but it sounded right.

She continued, “So, how do you do it John? How do you betray everything you know and still serve your country at the same time?”

John's gaze slowly panned back over to his mug once again, raising it up to drown out whatever pit of a discussion this woman had just decided to drag them into. How was he supposed to answer that?

He didn't even know a good answer to that question for himself.

“Um. I don't think I've figured that part out yet.” He told her honestly.

She looked at him for a couple seconds, the first time she seemed to have considered her own words since the conversation started.

“It doesn't matter I guess. It's pretty much over already.” She said, slinking back to her own mug just like John.

The two continued to avoid looking at each other as the other patrons nursed their own flagons in between small interactions with Connor.

“The answer is that I do what I can to try and not be a…traitor.” The word hitched in his throat when he said it. Just what was he really doing here? Training a group of militarist cultists that were trying to overthrow the Prince of Whispers? Was that really the same as just keeping his head down?

“And what should I do if everything feels like a betrayal at this point?” Connely asked him.

“Run.” The answer came to him by mistake. Staring down at the bottom of a mug looking at the leftover sip or two that sloshed around as he absentmindedly waved his hand back and forth. It was nearly a treasonous statement in of itself. It could get him killed if the wrong person heard it. And it was also the one word that had been bouncing around his mind for the last couple weeks any time that he was alone.

Run.

—

The stone cobble streets blurred away beneath Janette as she was set free upon the city once again. After that fateful night with the monster that killed her aunt Galeide, she'd hid the key to her window and bided her time until her father had replaced her outer door. A couple more days after starting to keep the wooden door closed, using the excuse of the recent attack on the manor to explain her actions, Janette built herself an alibi.

All for this.

She was free once again. Free of the dresses, and the lies, and the conniving bastards who used her at balls while saying it was for her own good. Nobility wasn't all that people thought it was cracked up to be. Janette would attest to that any day of the week.

There was a certain allure to the idea of being just a normal person. After all, the one thing that brought her the most joy in life was the one thing that wasn't directly connected to her nobility.

Force powers. The magic that gave her control over the world around her. And it was fairly free to anyone with enough drive to ask for the opportunity in the first place.

Force magic happened to be generally regarded as the second most painful blessing a person could receive next to flamers, and the number of mages in the Princedom definitely reflected that fact. To try and at least maintain some level of comparative power with the nearby countries, it meant that the lord of whispers needed to be far more lenient with his mages than any other shard-bearer, just to entice people to take him up on his offer in the first place. So what might have become a factor of nobility or direct subservience to the military, had become something of an open offer to the people of the Princedom.

“When you accept this power, you accept the duty to answer the call when I need you most, one day in the future. Use it for the benefit of the country, and I will reward you well. Use it to aid our enemies, and I will strip you of everything you hold dear.” He had said, then allowed her to go on her way as though nothing had happened at all.

The lord of whispers had met with Janette on that fateful day when she officially became a force mage, a formal meeting which he held with every aspiring user of his strange magical abilities. She had originally thought that she would just be used as a messenger. A go between for telepathic messages that only left the user with mild to severe headaches after extended use of the skill. But after testing out her more direct applications of the force magic, Janette found that the pain inflicted upon herself by her own will and intentions was somehow far less difficult to deal with than pain inflicted on her by others.

She certainly wouldn't call the beatings her father gave her to be ‘constant’, but they were definitely severe in large part due to his own ability to wield force magic. It had crossed her mind more than once that it was possible that her father didn't even have a normal person's perception of what levels of pain should be like, continually buffered by the walloping blows that force magic thrown into the body throughout his own childhood training his skills.

Then again, considering the way that the man reacted to her own temptations to use the power as she did, she doubted he had been hurting her in the effort to train her. No, the anger that seemed to bubble off of him whenever he lashed out was far too real for it to be just in the name of bettering his daughter.

Janette pushed to the side, switching directions down the winding streets as her mind wandered in thought. The freedom of the night always felt like it allowed her to be a different person. To escape that lie of a perfect life that she was told to uphold whenever she lived in her fathers domain. Out here, she was her own person for once. And maybe that was why he feared it so much.

Janette passed over a moving shadow in the alleyway below, unsurprised by the fact that people were moving through the city at night, but then another shadow passed behind the first one just as quickly, like they were chasing each other. She spun around, pushing off in the opposite direction as the pair were moving so that she could try and get a better look at the two. Rumors had been spreading that several of the noble houses had devolved into night time attacks on one another, but she hadn't quite had a chance to see any of that for herself quite yet.

She caught up to the moving shadows relatively quickly. They were running fast, but for some reason they only moved along the alleyways instead of cutting over the buildings. Surely they couldn't merely be normal humans running through the night, nor with the rate the two were dashing through the streets.

The alleyways they were winding down made it extra hard to get a good look at either of them, so Janette decided to push a little bit in front of the two so that she might be able to find a lookout where she could watch them coming. The next street over, she landed on the tall steeple that had used to belong to one of the pre-shard bearer religions in the city. Looking back, she eagerly eyed the alleyway the two shadows had been moving toward only seconds before.

As she had expected, the first figure emerged from the alley with a blur of black and white as it stopped suddenly halfway into the street and looked up at Janette as she hung with one arm from the steeple. A single oval white face with three dark holes in its mask looked up at her, though Janette's heartbeat quickened as she noticed that shocking white claws protruding from both its hands and feet. She'd found it. The creature that had saved her that day, or at least given her another chance at freedom outside of closely monitored balls and tea parties.

It stood half-crouched, slightly hunched over as it balanced a little bit precariously on thin ankles with its arms drooping almost to the ground. It was more of a beast than a human as the two studied each other for less than a second before the second shadow appeared.

A massive wolfhound as tall as the strange servant jumped out at the small shadow who ducked below the strange white beast that sailed over its head. As Janette managed to get a closer look at the wolf it twisted into a roll as it landed, turning around to growl at the servant, its body shockingly white despite the near completely dark night caused by the lack of a moon in the sky.

The servant pointed up at Janet, drawing the wolfhound's attention as well, and she suddenly felt much less comfortable with the idea of two strange monsters looking in her direction rather than just one. The trio hesitated for a moment, seemingly deciding what would happen next before the giant dog monster and the servant started running in opposite directions down the street.

Janette wasn't sure what to do. Were they fleeing from her? That hardly made sense as she trailed the servant's body with her eyes as it continued running away down the street then stopped and looked back at her. Even from the now sizable distance, she could see the creature cock its head and put its hands on its hips. Janette simply stared at the creature as it jogged a little bit back towards her, eyes locked on hers the entire time until she finally decided to come down from her perch and pushed lazily into the road to join it.

As soon as she moved the servant creature changed direction once again and started sprinting in the opposite direction from the girl.

“Hey, wait!” She said, but the creature didn't listen. It evidently wasn't going to just talk with her without a chase. An unspoken request that Janette was more than happy to oblige. After all, she wanted answers that only this strange creature of the night seemed to be able to provide.

She pushed herself off the street, quickly speeding between the rows of wooden houses as her savior ran down the alleyways and into the shadows.