Norhill 715, aft spring

Athos called the laborer, the farmer, and the fishermen his first sons. Their skin, worn to brown leather, carried his mark of a wholesome life nestled to the earth. The scriptures said that an honest farmer weakened the power of the Shaitan and his foul Havoc by virtue of his steadfast life.

Benjamin noted wryly that Father Vitruvius had hands delicate as a princess.

"I understand you want to take a leave of absence?" remarked the Father, nestled in sumptuous robes and a veritable throne. Gold, white, and silver, his robe of office shone with filaments shot through his chest – the most refined colors, the holiest fire. Only two other priests in the land wore it, forming the triumvirate who governed every monk's life. He wore the power of his mantle and wealth with long familiarity, pausing to light a scented candle to help fight the stagnant air.

-Coiled up like the evil serpent from theater.- Ben shook his head and reminded himself that the Father was a foremost defender of Athos. "Yes, Father."

"Why, if I may ask? Your popularity and reach are at their zenith. The streets fill to bursting to hear your sermons."

The young brother flushed. Royal blood imparted blond hair and a slenderness that made his blush an attractive thing. Bad for a pious, God-minded monk...but all the better for Benjamin the Noble. "That's just it, sir. These distractions...cloud my thinking." He much preferred books and cloisters to crowds where you had to shout your message. "I want to make a small sojourn to the coast to return my mind to Athos."

The Father counted options for a moment. A priest of Ben's low rank required approval to set foot from church grounds unless accompanied by a superior. Brotherhood was a time of mentoring and reteaching where outside influences could be distracting. Yet on the other hand, Vitruvius planned on capitalizing on the boy's popularity for a long time to come. He could not afford to press too hard. "Very well. You have been most faithful. I have confidence that you will remain so outside the confines of the church."

"Thank you very much, Father."

-Finally free of old ladies who want to touch my robes! Of a crowd pestering my meditation! No more listening to the charlatans sell relics they claim I blessed!- Did the faithful of Athos have nothing better to do most days than stalk?

He scuttled from the Father's office to pack, a grin on his lips.

**********

At morning prayer that next morning, Father Vitruvius announced Benjamin's departure. Reactions varied from stark relief for many of the elders to green envy among the other brothers, the motley of politics for life-long shut ins. Here he joined the fellowship to escape bloodthirsty royal intrigue, only to discover that religion included its own. Religion was politics in God's name.

He stifled a dour frown. -Cheer up! You're getting a break! Fame fades as the fickle folk find new amusements.-

At least the personal farewells were warmer. Athos tucked a few scholars behind his coats, and the fellow scribes of all ages made sure to say goodbye individually. They argued everything from the nature of Havoc storms to the ethics of mana to the ravenous Guilds and the dastardly printing press, and sitting amongst them Ben felt like at least a handful of people in the world beyond the cynical royal tutors cared about scholarship.

"Take as long as you need," the eldest and informal leader, Kirke, rumbled. "When you return, perhaps you will bring an argument on alternative sources of mana that can hold its weight against Grandmaster Kenja's theorems!”

"You should have been a Wizard," Ben complained with a smile.

"Bah! I like the feel of grass between my toes too much for that!"

Full on goodbyes, the brother skulked the back paths of the church grounds to the grand cathedral on the bluff. Cove, the jewel and capitol of Elsia, stretched below in all of its opalescent glory, and the Rainbow Sea cast its titular band of light across the horizon. The view kept Benjamin consoled on days when he lamented the priesthood as the worst decision of his life. How he had expected change! Better people, less crass and petty. A better atmosphere, one where his standing would not be a card in someone's political hand.

-Benjamin the Noble. Ben, survivor of a Havoc attack that reduced a church of people to ash, blessed of Athos. Ben, little monkey dancing so more people come cough up to the coffers at the cathedral.-

Elsia tottered on verge of collapse while he played these damned games! Pirates, bandits, cults. As the nation's army consisted of two dozen vassals and their forces, it spent most of its time scattered to the wind, protecting selfish interests. No one watched for the men, women, and children who lived in perpetual fear of the horizon.

How the monk wanted to help! The stories they told - a son lost to tornado, a daughter turned by Havoc to stone, a farmer who lost eyes and home to mounted bandits. Perpetual famine, rampant greed by the Lydian Guilds, the hushed war between Wizards and rogues, beastman rebellions...

Every night, he prayed. Athos, how he prayed until tears coated his cheeks! But he just didn't have the power that the common people attributed to him. No one could command the weather and the Havoc.

Late for services again, Ben drew ripples of recognition from the congregation as he ducked into the pews beside the other brothers. Famous or no, he refused to accept some fancy rank and fancier seat on the dais (especially since that would exacerbate all the pomp). The people could see no wrong - they called it humility.

Were he to dance naked on a roof, they would probably call him free spirited.

The sermon passed in a blink, all muscle memory of when to stand and what to sing. Then, nearing the holy noon hour, Father Vitruvius announced the news. New parish in old Norhill lands. Army at work pushing back pirate incursions on the seas and bandits on the trade routes. "...and our very own Brother Benjamin announces that the mighty Athos commands him on a sojourn of the soul to locations that we may not divulge."

Benjamin nearly exploded, mouth hanging like an old attic door and face knotted in rage. -Sojourn to secret locations? I'm going to my cousin's summer villa!-

Strike the earlier accord. Father Vitruvius, that blasted viper, that swollen whore, no knight of God at all, could burn on the spit of the Shaitan himself!

Rather than make a scene, he forced himself to exit the chapel with head bowed. Enough of the flock mistook his flight as an attempt to humbly slip out the side door, and that only heightened the mystery.

-Their lives are hard, days uncertain, and miracles few. What few they find, they cling to, letting nothing taint the illusion they so desperately crave. By Athos, if only I did not understand, I could simply hate them and be done with it!-

**********

Crown Princess Aurora often vacationed to her villa on the coast of the Rainbow Sea. A serene hamlet perched on a steep cliff behind fearsome walls and their grave soldiers, on a clear day you could see the faint shadows of the distant atolls where pirates dwelt. They looked serene from such a distance, hopping further and further north to the Edge of the world. Great Havoc storms routinely ravaged the islands, and even such a scholar as Benjamin did not know how the pirates continued to thrive out there.

Perhaps the old rumor was true, and every Havoc hurricane had a placid eye where the a man could find safety.

More interesting to Benjamin was the way Havoc pushed further from shore as the years passed. A record of Havoc storms from early Norhill days called the Rainbow Sea a corridor of death, and it said the only people to populate the beaten coastline were beastmen. Yet here he poised on cliff's edge on a halcyon day, clothed in finery and tanning nicely.

-Havoc retreats by Athos' will. Every day our faith grows stronger, Shaitan is pushed farther back.-

Such academic wonders filled his head, but did little to still restless feet.

"God, I'm bored."

He'd read through cousin Aurora's new books in the first week: a manuscript on beastmen, their noble savage culture, and theories on their apparently innate Havoc resistance; the new field of a Lydian monk, dubbed genetics, to explain why mixing the races always produced sterile children; hymns from the last survivor of a Norhill orchestra, the composer now tottering on ninety years old; an analysis of the Guilds and vocal opposition to the freedom of printing press, using rogue Wizards as a prime example of abuse. Now it was just him and Aurora's coterie.

Two of the doves floated past his cold stone seat, scarlet skirts aflutter in the sea breeze, and chattered about the view. The monk felt himself stir, warming the seat, and shifted. He forced his eyes to the beauty of Athos' creation...not the beauty of cleavage.

-Why do they have to dress like that even here? Few men are trusted enough to be within reach of the Crown Princess. Certainly not any with so much as a hint of desire to toy with a nubile noble daughter. I'm the only man in sight, what with the spring hunts on, and I'm celibate!-

He did not understand the amount of amusement that a constipated, longing expression on the face of a famous monk gave the duo. Well worth the dust on their shoes. They giggled in conspiracy all the way past, disappearing down the slope towards the beaches.

With a sigh, Benjamin abandoned his view for the tidy street of the estate. Everywhere, girls and women lounging, gossiping, playing sports or cards. All the tickling laughter and complicated conspiracies made him feel sore out of place, a bald weed sticking out of a strange garden. At least they had given up trying to draw him into the constant wars of cliques; nothing killed one's appeal like quoting scriptures.

-I miss childhood days when Aurora and our other cousins could play here in simplicity. Now its all which house slept with which and polite words for cut throat meanings.- How did Aurora stand it? She had it worse of them all. When the King died to plague, a stampede of lesser relatives bore down on the throne, only to find his Queen - that soft-spoken socialite - to be a hurricane in her own right. Thus her only daughter grew knowing that men would court her as an empty shell, an easier route to the crown than assassination or war. Not unlike a noble monk, viewed an avenue to cures and miracles instead of a real person.

At least she did not have to fear both secular and religious games. Only eleven people had to die for Ben to be King, and if the priesthood was bad with him a simple brother...

-Ugh. I need something to make me stop thinking so much!-

Past the main street with its sparkling villas, the road split south to the walls and north to a maze of grove and grotto that hosted the local scandals - requited lovers, stolen affairs - and provided perfect shade for an afternoon turning staid and muggy. He relished losing his way in the labyrinth, daydreaming with lazy feet, without worry that priest or parish would rush after.

Wandering thus, the monk ducked through an archway hidden behind twin oaks, and there Crown Princess Aurora posed on an ivy-wreathed bench, her bare feet dipped in a viewing pond. Flicking coal idly across a canvas on her lap, the smudges never seemed to touch her fingers, nor the grass stains her aquamarine dress. How many years of coaching did it take to make relaxing an art? What must it be like to never take off the costume, always perfect in hair and dress and even breath?

"Hello, cousin Benjamin," she murmured, focused fast on her art.

"Bit dangerous to be alone here, so secluded, don't you think?" he teased.

"Who ever said I was alone? Melrissa."

A tree shivered, and a broad-shouldered, lanky woman with cocoa skin dropped into sight, chewing a cut of straw. On her shirt, interlaced sword, shield, and dagger - a Blademaster. In her scarred hands, a wicked blade, and his gut lurched before his mind connected the knife to the carving of a stallion half complete in her free hand.

"What happened to Uhric?"

"He retired. You know how that knee always troubled him."

"Never seemed that way when we were kids."

Aurora dabbed away the charcoal in a circle around the center with a handkerchief. "That was a long time ago."

Ben plopped down on the bench across the pool. Melrissa hopped back into the tree to watch both as her hands carved, comfortable as a monkey. Birds sang, clouds drifted, and he suppressed a sigh of boredom. His scalp itched; already time to shave again. How he envied the naturally bald when it came to the priesthood.

"Bored already?"

"Incredibly, cousin. This vacation is not helping at all."

"Really? I could send you on a mission, just like in the fairy tales." She began to fill Benjamin into her picture.

Ben smiled. "To do what, cousin?"

"Assassinate Lord Ellswick." She didn't smile back.

"The church does not assassinate."

"Neither does an innocent and naive princess."

"...he's causing that much trouble?"

"Oh yes. Besides sending his herd of sons to all try and 'court' me with love potions and sleeping elixirs, something happened to his Wizard." What a nice way of her to phrase the dangers of her life, casual as a cloud.

"The slave-maker?" Better if that one remained an urban legend. A blot across Elsia's wind-swept soul.

"Yes. We spent years trying to figure out how he maintained such quick turn around on his spells, only to learn last winter that the matter tied into some form of blood sacrifice. We confirmed that he was in communication with an unknown party in the Fault.”

“There isn't a living soul in the Fault.”

“Someone found a way.” She raised her head, catching his gaze. Violet eyes, intense as storms. “Not very long after, two of my agents made contact with survivors from those glaciers, canting about battles between gods and secret bandit armies.”

"Please don't say you want me to go explore the Fault!” Ben could hardly describe himself as the outdoors type. If the fellowship did not have its brothers help in the fields - a symbol of humility - he'd be fat as a pig!

"No." When she shook her head, her hair swished after. "The storms have hardly let up since then. The Havoc is strong enough I worry the chaos beyond will reclaim that land. I doubt even the best of pirates could ride them out, and I rather like you as a cousin, not a rock."

"Then travel to Ellswick's estate and infiltrate the staff to uncover his secrets?"

She giggled. "Your imagination always runs so far ahead! No, bookish cousin, I was going to ask you to see what information you could find in the church. They do not talk to me."

"Having an agnostic for a heir makes them nervous." If the beautiful and intelligent princess had a flaw in Ben's eyes, that was it. Her lack of faith.

"I believe in God just fine."

"But not Athos."

"Yes. But not Athos." Aurora savored the irony, but Ben could not see it.

-I lost a battle in there somewhere.- He squirmed. "Very well. So tomorrow morning I will make way to the cloisters near Ellswick and grace them with my visage."

"So soon?"

In careful neutrality, he shrugged.

"Oh, my. Have the girls been picking on you again? You know, some of them are very important and smart vassal wives and daughters when they're not here. Believe it or not, women in a group can fall prey to the same group stupidity as any man.”

"Vassals," he scoffed. "A handful of self-obsessed braggarts all convinced that they deserve the throne. Huge power and too much free time. A few years in the fields would do them good.”

The princess stashed her charcoals, slipped her feet into slippers, and ignored his rant. "Very well. Be back soon. The suitors hover on the roof like a flock of crows, thicker every year, and I miss intelligent conversation..." she smirked, just a tiny bit of the boisterous child he knew slipping through. "...or at least, conversation that isn't tailor made to agree with my every point."

"I don't know how you do it," he admitted, shaking his head.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

When she rose, he moved to give her a hug. Aurora took a half step back, shaking her head ever so slightly, and curtsied instead.

A little offended, Ben nevertheless bowed in return.

Somehow, the Crown Princess managed to smile, twist, duck low branches, and make the grassy weave out of sight without crushing a single dandelion stem. The canvas lay abandoned on her bench. Moments later, her pet Blademaster appeared, bowed, signaled the faith of Athos (palms perpendicular, cupped over each other as if holding the sun) and strolled after.

Benjamin cringed. -Even here, still the Noble. Bowed to by Blademasters!- He crossed the pond and picked up the coal sketch. A portrait of a pensive scholar, caught in the agitation of shaken faith.

"Keep your heart open," it said in the squiggles of old Elsian along the borders, "and you will find what you seek. Promise. Love and friendship, your cousin, Aurora."

He folded it neatly for his travel pack, managed a wry smile at his own over-blown insecurities, and strode forth to brave the nobles once more.

The monk left the next morning at dawn, unannounced, like a dog chased away by the cats.

**********

Brother Benjamin followed the westward royal highway in relative comfort atop a fair-tempered mare. Quite possibly the safest road in Elsia, the highway dipped away from the troublesome coastal regions where the pirates plied their trade and then back to the coast away from the wide expanses of wild plain. Perhaps, he wondered, the road was to blame for noble laziness: secure in the hotels each night behind guarded walls, a noble could pretend the vast swaths of land were equally as comfortable. He certainly met his fair share of distant relatives, vassal wives, and boisterous princelings on the road; they invariably invited him to preach at the local congregation, which he could not in good faith refuse.

A strange inner peace became his mantle when he gathered wits and scripture to preach, and though his voice never rose, the faithful leaned in to hang onto his words. Athos wasn't about belief or apathy, doctrine or dogma, politics or proscriptions – he championed the wholesome life and an eternal fight against the Shaitan and chaos.

The priests who plied the noble highway frowned over him uncomfortably. Too few of them recognized his passages. So many seemed to do little more than rehash the same twenty pages and drink in the coffers of their congregation. Surely, they would claim, a smart man would let the vassals come to the truth in their own way, rather than risk their necks with controversy.

-Yes, we would hate to have ethical responsibility to our sharecroppers and slaves, now wouldn't we? Its such a drag. Piggish bastards.-

Lord Ellswick owned the farthest western chunk of Elsia. He claimed, among other things, the vast tundra that bordered the Fault, most of the Wastes, and the only river to flow through western Elsia. Of the three, the river by far gave rise to the most complaints, as the vassal pinched it for every drop of life on its way to the holdings further south. If his forces repelled pirates and bandits with far more success than his neighbors, he made up for it with the cruelty and greed with which he taxed the people.

As the monk neared the vassal's border, news darkened and conversation soured. Slave revolt across Ellswick estate, buildings burned, and Havoc unleashed to great damage and loss of life. When the military finally roused itself, it swept across farms cutting down beastmen regardless of allegiance, costing many a farm their only slave. Depending on the speaker, anywhere from a dozen to a million beastmen remained on the lamb, drooling for human blood.

Rural, urban, or noble, everyone on the highway took a moment to spit and ward themselves against the beastmen hordes. Benjamin wished he could parade their intolerance for the Queen. His mother's sister kept her moves quiet, but she fervently believed that Elsia would not survive another generation without the support of a willing beastman population. A declaration of freedom from all slavery waited in her desk, hidden, waiting the moment when it could see the light of day.

If Ben wanted to, he could probably start a civil war just by letting that little letter out. -Ah, my aunt! You fight against the tide. Hate and fear bind the beastmen beneath our feet. Our lords believe that if there is ill, it must be solved by harsher slavery, never by freedom.-

The monk admitted to himself, though, that to him slavery was a problem of economics. He knew no beastmen, as distant from the slaves who cleaned Cove's pearly streets as the sun. Slavery must end, first and foremost, because Elsia wasted away its resources shackling a third of its population while Lydia shoved its population ever farther into Norhill lands.

As he neared the Ellswick lands, Benjamin began to experience the nightmares again. The flock called him the Noble for more than his fair looks...

Pristine white church, immaculate pews, farmers with hair still wet from their baths. Cleanliness, not a mote of dust across the steeple, altar, or floor. A sign of faith from people usually coated in dust and sweat. Ben felt proud in the moment before the suicide.

Who could say why the man acted as he did? Hatred or ennui, perhaps. The disheveled farmer streaked down the aisles, arms wide, and for the first moment Ben thought he must be experiencing rapture. When he reached the steps to the altar, the man shouted not Athos' name, but the Forbidden Word.

Flame. Screams. Serpentine demons rising from the charred corpses, sensuous mermaids of fire and death. They laughed as they splashed out of the floor, melting the dirt to lava. Ben knew he would die at his first breath, the superheated air scouring his lungs.

Then a shadow, a figure full and feminine, spirited him away. It held him close, protected him against the blaze, and spirited him outside. An angel, he wondered?

It dropped him outside the door to the church that became an inferno, where the shocked survivors – stragglers to service, children left outside to play – could see him break and weep on the ground.

They claimed to see an angel deposit him safe, and that was the beginning of his hated title.

Benjamin still remembered that angel's softness, as full as any girl. Sometimes, when in the mood for private heresy, he wondered if Athos could be a woman, soft like that. Yet why would an angel bother to save him? (He conveniently forgot the things it had whispered in his ear as she saved him. Why would an angel deny her own existence?)

After the incident, rumor ran wild, and soon Benjamin found himself altogether too famous. -Some holy wonder I am. I'm the pretty boy front for the rot underneath, and little more.-

**********

Ill-rested and grumpy, Benjamin arrived at the cloister mid-morning to an execution crowd. Ready for formal service, he wore the brother's fire vestment, a swirl of plain red and yellow like fire across his heart. Another set waited in the bottom of his pack, ornate and tacky, but he frankly resented the silver and gold of such high rank. Father Vitruvius, like a vassal lord, gave gifts when he wanted a measure of control – a present to hook with.

He spied proceedings from a distance, edging closer on the deceptive distance of flat land. A tiny hangman led bestial figures onto a temporary gallows, a stone's throw away from the front door to the church. -Killing slaves at a holy shrine! Blasphemous. I almost wish Ellswick ordered it on the church porch so I could get the rotten bastard hung for heresy.-

By the time he arrived at the crowd's edge, already fraying as the heat rose, the last figure waited stoic for his turn in the noose while the executioner and bailiff argued.

“What do they argue for?” asked the monk of the crowd, scowling.

“The man with the wolf arm.” A youth pointed to the figure so patient on stage. “They can't figure out who he belongs to, so they don't know who has killin' rights.”

“What'd he do?” Ben fished out a copper coin for the boy. He used to pay more, but often times the ecstatic errand boys would end up mugged on their way home.

The boy grinned anyways. “Revolt! My pa says that a black beastman with a wolf arm and a temper roused the good slaves to rise up. He even said the beast planned to assassinate Ellswick, a Wizard, and the Queen!” The salacious news brought a happy gleam to the boy.

-Probably go ahead and blow up the sun, blot out the moon, and slay a god while he was at it, I'm sure.-

Noticing her son spreading talk good enough to get him hanged too, his mother hustled over and dragged him off with barely a nod to Ben on his mare.

Old farmer, another man spoke up. “My slave was on that gallows wit' the dawn. Calmest fellow I ever owned, a horse-blood who you could leave with the children. I tell ya, my boy was witched into it by that bastard waiting his noose up there. Came out of the Fault, he did, naked and crazy with the Shaitan's magics.” The farmer spat.

“The Fault you say?”

“Ya deaf?”

Ben smiled. “Depends on what's being said.” He weighed options. “Perhaps...I should intervene. If the Cursed One has that savage in his grips, a simple hanging may not do. As a brother of Athos, I can make sure his restless ghost does not plague the lands.”

-A good long talk to divine exactly what this beastman saw in those frozen lands cannot hurt.-

Decided, the priest nodded to the crowd around him and pushed forward. “Executioner! Good servant! Stay your argument, please.”

They rounded on this equestrian newcomer, faces equally sour.

“My name is Benjamin, a brother of Athos. Am I to understand this beastman came from the Fault?”

“Straight from the Devil's arms,” asserted the executioner.

“Throw him to me, and I will purify his flesh.”

After a moment's consideration, both executioner and toady shrugged. Let the priesthood deal with the beast. The executioner spent a minute explaining his prisoner's bonds to Benjamin, dispensing tips on how to avoid strangulation in your sleep from a slave, and departed. Several beastmen stepped forward to remove the gallows and the corpses of their old comrades, never looking at the priest on his horse.

“Well,” Ben began, “Shall we step inside the chapel? I'm famished.”

The beastman studied him with eyes flat as granite. “Isn't it a sin for a beastman to step inside Athos' chapel?” he finally asked in poor Elsian.

“That depends on who you ask. What is your native tongue?”

“Lydian.”

“Then speak it. I know it.”

They moved to the chapel. “What's your name?” asked the monk. “I'm Benjamin Athosson. Priest, monk, and scholar.”

“Marcellus...of Lydia.” Significant pause – a name left out.

“Well, Marcellus, please excuse the wait. I must attend to my duties, and we we talk over lunch.”

“I understand.”

Lunch came late. The former Blademaster waited, still chained, in the corner of the chapel's main room while Benjamin organized new supplies, traded news and letters from other chapels, and orchestrated a small sermon for brothers Jeremy and Sashi. Both old men, priests of the land before the book, they took upon themselves to be shining examples of charity if only to counter Ellswick's long shadow. Many an overseer treated Marcellus worse as an employee, much less a slave.

Finally, the brother Benjamin returned with hare stew for them both. He regretted offering a handshake – that beast-arm crushed his knuckles into pulp! “Please, tell me about this revolt. Your truth.”

“I was passing through. Ellswick's land slaves took me in, but soon misunderstood me. They believed I worked for the Underground Passage, there to set them free. Rumors spread faster than I could quash, people got excited, and the militia got wind. Too many people started firing on both sides, and a lot of good people died for no damn reason.”

“Thank you. Where did you come from before here?”

“The Fault.” Marcellus casually set his unchained hand on his knee. Priests rarely knew anything about proper restraints. The executioner had known better than to take any chances.

Ben found himself leaning backwards. This beastman exuded rare physicality, as if his very gaze would kill. While the brother weighed little more than a lass of his size, Marcellus seemed to fill the air around his bulk in raw power. Gulping, he forced out the next question. “Are you a demon?”

Laughing, the mercenary shook his head. “No. Cursed for all I've done? Certainly. A danger to everything around me? Always. But a demon? No. I've never prayed to Athos harder than when I got this damned arm.”

“May you find peace in the warmth of his light.”

“Amen to us both, brother.”

They smiled at each other and turned to their food.

Marcellus sniffed twice. His nose picked up ten times the information he wanted. He gagged on the corpses outside, caught wind of ladies and perfume on the priest's vestments, and drooled over individual chunks of seasoned rabbit in his stew in a single blink of perception. Ears of a deer, eyes of a hawk, muscles with the energy of a young man – he was a paragon of beastman power, and it pissed him off.

Relax, counseled Arctic Howl from his Other perch. Let yourself sink into it as if a warm bath before you drown in your foolish thrashings.

-Shut up.-

He smelled other things which a human nose couldn't name. Bald head and beard both getting fuzzy with stubble, the young priest stank of honesty and passion.

“So what brings you to these parts, priest?”

“I'm on a circuit to visit the shrines all around Elsia.”

“Spying, huh? You're terrible at it already.”

Ben spat out his stew. “I said nothing of the -”

“Sort. You don't have to. You've got a furtive edge tucked away neatly. With a cover story like that, you should be feigning boredom.”

“I...that is...”

“So what did your friends tell you? They're good men.”

After a long pause, Benjamin decided that one poor decision might as well lead to another. “Ellswick cannot make any more pleasure slaves. His sales have stopped. His house Wizard is empty, crippled, possibly dead.”

“When did this happen?”

“Sometime in the winter.”

Marcellus nodded. “That makes sense...actually, that would explain his modus operandi.”

“Care to fill me in on this one-sided conversation?” The brother tried to kid, but the mercenary scowled so fiercely that he regretted it.

“Alright, but if you try to make a joke again I'll punch you. Its worse than your spying.” Marcellus smiled slightly, though the boy quailed. -Blade humor. Civilians never like it.-

Over the afternoon, the duo life stories and information. The ex-Blademaster voiced his suspicions: Ellswick could have courted relationships with the Devourer decades ago, for all anyone knew, and thus nab his claws into a potent source of magic. When that foul god fell, any Wizards under his service would have collapsed as well.

“The river runs dry now, and that means Ellswick is going to have to change gears.”

Benjamin smacked his fist on the pew. “Yes! This explains so much. He built a miniature empire on the pleasures of the flesh and the money that resulted, but now he cannot finance that empire. We could never for the life of us figure his source out, and the Academies guard their internal affairs jealously. They are always convinced that even our most innocent attempts to ask questions are probings for their deep secrets. Even if they knew about what Ellswick was doing, they would never deign to tell us about it.”

“As little as I like them, the Academy's support would take Ellswick down in a heartbeat. Can you bribe them?”

“No...but we can force their hand.” The monk nodded to himself. “We can use his pleasure slaves against him. Rescue them and present them to the Crown and the Academy. The court Wizards have always claimed they can tell anyone's spell by its taste. Let them taste the blood on these poor slaves and prove it!”

“If this job will see Ellswick cast down on the rocks, I'll do it myself. No charge necessary, though if you let me do the execution that'd be nice.” He would have to face that dreaded homestead again, the vacant stares of destroyed minds...but damn if he was about to let that old cowardice stop him from a righteous task.

“Athos praise! When do we start?”

“I start on the morrow, scouting out to see what has changed. You get the Pits out of here.”

“What?” Ben displayed a naïve shock at the rejection.

“Seriously, kid. Benjamin the Noble, a spit and a knife away from the throne, hanging around on Ellswick's doorstep while his empire collapses? Do you think he will let you live?”

“He can't kill me. As you said, I'm too close to the Crown.”

Calm and deliberate, Marcellus folded his hands together and leaned in. “Even rabbits bite when you corner them. That bastard will throw every single thing he has at Elsia to save his own hide, including outright civil war. You don't know the first thing about surviving a war zone, while that happens to be something of a specialty of mine by now.”

“What...what am I supposed to do then?”

“Very publicly continue your tour. Sojourn of enlightenment, right? Be seen getting out of here to some place where you can't be blamed for the shit storm.”

The only place Benjamin could think of was that ruined church where the angel saved him. Source of his nightmares, yet he felt compelled to it the longer he thought. He could visit the dessicated remains and put the matter to rest. Far better than tromping back to Vitruvius' fat smirk...

Part of Benjamin worried that his faith in the church was about to slip away and leave him a drift.

Marcellus stood, fully unshackled. The brother started – when the Pits did that monster free himself?

“However you make up your mind, Athos bless. I'd prefer to sleep somewhere farther away from the people who believe me bedeviled.”

“Here. Take this.” A silver signet ring, one of several Ben carried in the secret folds of his pack. “I won't spare you my personal seal, lest you be discovered, but this one will hopefully buy you a few precious seconds to explain yourself if need be.”

“I like it. Thank you, brother.”

“Athos bless.”

Both listened to the crickets for a moment. Then they parted. After talking an entire day away, neither bothered with goodnights.

In the morning, Benjamin set off to the south east for his nightmares after another knuckle-crunching handshake.

Watching after, the Blademaster scowled - not from any antipathy to the monk, but the rancid taste in his mouth, a mixture of fear and blood thirst. All together too much animal. -What do you think of this?-

Arctic Howl, invisible watcher, licked his chops. The vassal slaughtered our little brothers for daring to rise against his cruelty. He must pay. The other Totema howl mourning for those lost without ever knowing the caress of pack – blood for blood!

Glancing at the gallows, Marcellus rubbed his neck. “Aye.”

Perhaps once under way, he would find more enthusiasm for the mission he dreamed of so often. A portion of his soul seethed at the mere thought of Ellswick, a bestial desire to rend and tear, but he smothered it.

Cursed savage or no, the ex-Blademaster was going to be damn professional about his rampage.

**********

In the Border Guard, one spent many long hours in the strange jade surrealism of the Green Way. Serge often wondered - if there was a Green way, flying through the roots and leaves of the very Forest, then was there also a Red Way where one could fly through the blood and bones of people? Fascinating or terrifying, such thoughts beat brooding on the traitor queen for the thousandth time, as he coasted through the world of jade and light.

Miranda was no Queen, no matter what the elders said. A figurehead, at best, or a pawn. She let the elders decide everything in their councils across the Forest, blind to the quiet sectarian splits that already began to fester. Without the Monarch to unify them, each village would fall to its own land, no better than competing fire ants.

An intrepid nymph learned well by listening to the elders. The Great King's secrets trickled out under Miranda's rule. Serge planned to assemble them and find the deadly blow for the false queen's shoddy story.

A pocket approached, but the Green Way did not allow for minor deviations. He braced.

Turbulence hit like jumping into an arctic pool naked, if that pool was full of ironbark blades that tore at your extremities. The jade tunnel shifted into bruised blues and rotten blacks, an awful stench clogging Serge's throat and nose. On the edges of perception, the dead vines and wilted flowers twisted, forming into a hungry mouth with decaying leaves as its tongue.

As fast as it hit, the patch passed, and Serge shivered. -It used to be, dead pockets were rare, only possible in the most neglected of patches where the mors fail to linger. Now...now I see them even in the summer. Yanu should not be this weak.-

The mors would not wake for months yet to heal that ground, and Serge had no skill as a Grower. He passed on, settled into a deep scowl.

His assigned territory for the year was the farthest western reach, a strand of Forest jutting out to the Edge. Like a bluff, there solid land looked out over the formless chaos beyond. Shaky land, tottering out over the hungry Havoc.

No doubt Miranda wanted to keep the brother of her exiled nemesis as far away from New Capitol as a Dryad could get. The nation may have forgotten about the Maiden locked in her tree prison as soon as the dust settled, too busy kissing their own asses, but not Serge. Glisinda, the King, and Miranda went in to commune with the Maiden; only Glisinda and Miranda came out.

How to learn the truth? Rouse the Maiden again, nestled in the deathtrap of Old Capitol. Not a one of the elders was willing to back that mission though - the Green Way simply closed at Old Capital's edges. Hundreds of nymphs would have to carve down the thorn wall, one square at a time, at risk to life and limb. Given the Dryads spread so thin over their vast holding, the Border Guard relied almost exclusively on mobility through the Green Way to meet threats, and a couple months chipping away poison whipper vines would not help them against the influx of monsters.

-More abominations every month.- Maybe Miranda and her sniveling coterie would not see, but the Forest ruptured around them.

A moment later, he arrived at his destination. It should have been a tree house atop the tallest oak for miles, but the Green Way spat him out into a rambling hell.

The treehouse coiled and hissed, a structure given gnashing teeth, and Serge instinctively leaped into the open air. Around him, the trees shifted into tall towers of metal and glass, and the ground was a soup of boiling tar. Nothing, nowhere for him to land! The clouds roared, sucking away into the night sky's void, and a great landmass cruised through the air, its edges changing element by the second.

A Havoc hurricane!

Air around his skin whiplashed between temperature extremes, scalding his right hand to the bone and freezing the left until his fingers shattered. Then the flesh reversed itself, skipping back in time to heal. Then his fingertips ripped out into claws. He felt the bones on his arms and back punching out, spurs and barbs forming, and his organs trying to dance out of his stomach. In a flash of five seconds, he felt himself rearrange into a woman, and then back to a man, and then both, and neither. His body went from strong as a dozen ox to weak as a kitten. He aged backwards until he feared disappearing altogether, and then felt old age suck the marrow from his bones.

Screaming in desperation, he cast for the Green Way with all his might, barely able to think for the way his flesh rippled like liquid.

Serge could not tell if it was Yanu in benevolence or the sheer chance of Havoc that spat him back into the Green Way, mostly himself. Reconnected to the stability of the Cycle, his body returned to its memory...mostly. He winced as his elbow spines caught a rib. Jagged claws quivered at the end of each finger.

All he could feel was a numb thankfulness to be alive at all.

-Hurricanes in the Forest itself! Sun and moon, the Cycle is fraying at the edges.-

Their world could not afford to wait on Miranda and her flunkies. Soon there would be no more Forest at all!

If the elders and the wise would not wake the Maiden, then Serge would.