…..:::::|. Havvenchael Seventh .|:::::…..

Something in Siin, something very angry, walked with full unwavering stride on the rope toward the mancer that gave such excellent chase. He raised an open palm and struck the mancer's chest with a pull of forces that seemed to be stealing his breath. The tendons and veins in Siin's palm strained against themselves to drain whatever lifeforce was coursing through the mancer's wicked body, away from the vile organs that needed it.

Elsa shot looks of fright at Siin as he didn't seem to remember or care that this was a seizure not a kill-quarry. She called to him in whispers in her own language and Siin, being a student of all languages, answered her in kind, the forfeiture of this man's own life.

As he came close to the entrapped mancer, Siin heard yet another language cross his ears.

“aBn! Quench!” At Veyorlin's address to the title he'd only earned a short time back, Siin released the mancer from drain and with quivering hands pulled from his waist the black marble for Wiylin’s containment and a water vial. The mage came down from his rage as he drank and gladly tossed the heavy thing, one-handed, toward Wiylin. The unfolding of muzzle and shackles made from sinking-library clamped around the mancer’s body and he went plummeting out of Elsa’s hold down to the cobbles of the square. He and the immeasurably heavy shackles cratered the street stones just as the aBn finished his fresh water vial.

Siin moved as if he were going to take a bold step off of the tightropes, yet only flashed down in bluish streaks to continue his walk safely on the street below. Elsa in her still-stalled amazement of this battlemage followed him down.

Crowds, headed toward the courts beneath this mast and web of ropes, erupted in cheers thinking this all a play for the grandest last day of May Rising.

…..:::::|. Third Gate Hamlet .|:::::…..

All she could hear was ringing and all she could see was an indigo haze where Shaw Warsun was slowly walking toward her.

She didn't know it and she couldn’t tell from his expression, but he was peering on her as if she should have been dead. And she should have been, as his called lightning had coursed through her and into the dirt and stone of the hill under her feet. Yet she stood there smoking, silver finishings on her armour all sparking and jumping with charge. Her marked hand darkly sparkling with its orange and purple glow. He quietly watched it fade as Halycind steadied her breathing.

Shaw Warsun, almost smiled.

“Why?” He asked simply, both within her mind and her hearing.

“It was crying.” Halycind unknowingly answered with both her thoughts and her words, eyes also welling.

“Look at it.” He tilted his teaching.

Halycind looked down to the creature under her and scuttled back from the sight she'd just taken in. The Aagenite's bones and fur and iridescent wings had all broken and folded in on themselves to reassemble into the bones and meat and visage of a young woman. Her eye was missing where the bolt struck her. Her neck bore a large puncture wound and her hand was crushed. Halycind again rushed to the wet naked woman as the rains of Shaw's storm moistened their skin. She was pretty and seemed of the same age as Halycind. There was one gold band about her neck that had been pierced by the bolt. Halycind crunched her face in repulsion, knowing it was a collar that mancer had bound around her neck. The girl rolled her head to Halycind and passed her the most grateful smile she had ever been given. And as her breaths lessened she muttered only one instruction, “End Shriam.” Her voice was so small Halycind could barely make out what she’d said, then she fell limp in her arms.

Halycind looked at the dead girl so long she felt as if she'd joined her in death, cold on the ground. She suddenly understood Veygornne's instruction about regret. With fervor she looked up to the man she was surely about to hate, “I didn't know. You—” Halycind began in a whimper. “I didn't know she was a—”

“She did.” He paused for Halycind to really look upon him. To know him. “She was the one who requested this hunt from the Queen.”

Halycind for a moment didn't know what to make of his words. She was gobsmacked with a mound of questions. But only one left her mouth. “Why did you make me think this was simple?”

“Because nothing ever is.” He turned to walk down from the roost. “And you'll find this to be true more than any of the others.” He was almost out of sight before he let out more words. “Bring her, she will be buried in Havvenchael's Hall of Stories and you've a littera to pen.”

...

On the ground, in his crater, squirming against impossibly heavy shackles, the mancer growled a long almost hurtful howl.

Veygornne furrowed then perked up an eyebrow. Kodlaa looked up at them in the know and raised her hands in a shrug. Veyorlin and Elsa both answered.

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“His pet is dead.”

Kodlaa made a face to the ground, imagining the horror it most likely faced at Halycind's hands. Then Halycind’s voice confirmed this over the Kawa stone in their pockets. Her voice was hoarse as if she’d been crying.

“Come soon.” Siin ordered.

“What's that he keeps mumbling, then? Pleading for?” Ruu asked.

“Hmm, the dead child said that too.” Kodlaa remembered, emerging from the stairs on to the street where they all were.

“It was the name of something?” Veygornne offered.

“Shree—am, Shreeaam. I do not know this word.” Veyorlin squinted.

“Shriam?! That's Kith-Cante, it means 'piss off'.” Siin concluded with an alarmed glare to the mancer.

“Why would anyone be pining for that?” Kodlaa furrowed.

“I think you and I need to speak with Dun'ahka.” Veygornne shook his head at Ruu, not making any sense of any of this.

“What I wanna know is when did you pick up the fake?” Siin asked of his colourful friend.

“Swiped it from a silver smith during Ruu's long-arsed story. Didn't matter, he saw me run with the real one anyway.” Now giving Siin a good once over, Kodlaa was stricken a bit off by him. “Ok, you do realize you're going to have to explain what that stuff is doing to you exactly. Because...um...yeah...teleport?”

He gave her a confident grin. “Our Efficacia? A direct effect of the aBn-sauce you all tease me about. It unlocks something different in each mage completing the series. Some aBn develop blazing speed. Some, a blind-sight. Some aBn...can fly.”

“Fly?! Wow, Ynggrloch, you are definitely not the nuisance I remember. You’re gettin’ far too sly for your own good.” She was seeing something new in him. “You know you never did tell us why you left the brothel. I'd always assumed it was because you chose to join the aBn Tera.”

“I never said, because I never really knew how I left the brothel. I don't know how old I was when I left, I only remember the day Percival freed my mind.”

“Freed it from what?”

Siin pointed at the contained mancer as they stepped over him. “I was a mancer's thrall.”

He left Kodlaa there, soaking in the reality of his words.

And he was thirty paces from her by the time she realized an actual cognitive thought.

For all intents he should have been dead or worst yet some unwitting, unnamed shell of a being, wasting away in some hovel in the woods. Thralls did not heal. Thralls did not have their own will. Their minds remained broken. What was he, that he was with them now? Sane.

Even as a solemn Halycind and Shaw Warsun walked upon the group cradling the dead thrall of Wiylin, Kodlaa could only think of what she now saw in him; this aBn Ynggr.

Many were seeing him as he was now, heroic, enchanting, alluring to an odd point as they passed carousers stricken by the scene. She was now wholly unsure what to even think of their role in this moment with these faces in the May Rising Solstice Crowds all staring at them as she ranked up with the Quarrymaster, Siin.

…..:::::|. Havvenchael Chancery .|:::::…..

It was the crossed legs of Percival Hollichek that met her vision in the Chancery office. Siin had been sent to hydrate and Kodlaa had been put in charge of the interment of the dead girl. The Chancellor could nay grok the reason for Halycind's readiness as she hugged the fair-haired man about the neck in his office nor field a reason why she'd need such comforts from him. She loosed Percival and sat prim and cross-legged in the comfortable chair.

“We've to pen a littera?” She said smoothly.

“Assuredly, Lady.” The Chancellor was thrown. Agents seemed so moved by their work. “T'is a concise matter, one expertly executed. All you need state is your—“

“I, one, Weroanqua Halycind Solveig Ylva of blood Carabaan and House Cashtiel, do commit pen to scroll in littera to one good WarQueen Brisbe-Hexandrea the Spearhanded of the region and province Cat'a, the greeting of her...” She paused for the clarity of her station. Percival nodded her on. “Agent...on charter and the well wish of good health and fine practice in her ladyship's daily trades.”

The Chancellor couldn't understand why she was now so happy to write a letter. She was panting and smiling between her over-complicated words. “Under the Sirdarship of one Exemplariat Percival Hollichek, myself along with Quarrymaster aBn Ynggr and Lady Eberhavven Kodlaa, do submit our collected quarry by the proffer of Shaw Warsun in its full requested completion.”

She continued in the collected descriptions of their joint investigation and hunt and damages in collateral from the chase of the mancer in question. Siin and Kodlaa had found it remarkably easy to remember the details. There were so many quick calculations a hunter had to make while running that it seemed adding a list of damages turned out to be second nature. As per the Queen's request, the mancer’s certificates of birth and notice of magus talent were to be made present along with the captee.

Halycind Solveig Ylva Carabaan Cashtiel rolled up those scrolls with a confident grin and handed them to the Chancellor. “When our aBn caught him, he had attempted to burn them. If Her Majesty asks. But the aBn froze his flame.”

The Chancellor pointed to the young one and turned his eye to Percival smirking. “He even got the papers. They hardly ever salvage their papers.”

“Yes. They may well turn out to be clean captors.”

Halycind eyed him with a solemn grin, thinking of the dead girl.

…..:::::|. Silver Street .|:::::…..

The two of them, having cleared that Agency business, walked through the markets and performers and mages, back to Havvenchael’s Seventh Sector.

“I must retrieve the WarQueen’s stain, Exemplariat.”

Percival nodded and struck Halycind on the back with a hard pat and chinned her with his fist. “You-know-who would be proud.”

She smiled, weakly.

“Be sure when you reach the inn to eat...and much.” He commanded of her as they split.

“Yes, Ser.” She nodded and disappeared into the Mixer’s Galleria.

She emerged, stain procured and head solemn. She wasn’t at all as pleased with this day as she thought she’d have been climbing up that slope to The Ladi. Halycind pushed open the door to The Fifty-Foot-O-Rope for some much needed rest.

They were there, Siin and Kodlaa, sitting in a sea of silence off to one side room, resting their thoughts on the events of their efforts. Kodlaa was not drinking and Siin only drank barrels of fresh water. The Agents were procuring things from the wenches while the wolaenki settled themselves.

Halycind only quietly made a mixture of food requests from the innkeep so she could go to her room and eat, alone.