Inside the Dancing Duck, Korlac, Drez, and Ezekiel all sat at a table by a warm hearth, eating steaming bowls of stew. Onyx was under the table, chewing on a haunch of mutton vigorously while Korlac was on his third mug of ale and Drez was still working on a mug of apple juice. Ezekiel had to spend a few minutes at the bar explaining to the innkeeper that when Drez was asking for a pint, he really wanted apple juice, which naturally led to the man asking why didn't the goblin just ask for apple juice instead. Eventually the matter was settled with a gold coin, and both Korlac and Drez were drinking their respective mugs, the mood of the group greatly improved with the food, drink, and music of the tavern.

As the evening wore on, Korlac kept looking nervously at the tavern door, straightening up in his seat every time it opened, then slumping down dejectedly whenever a stranger entered instead of Liarra.

"You care a great deal about her, don't you?" Ezekiel asked.

"I do."

"You mentioned something about being a slave? Was she involved in freeing you?" Ezekiel probed.

Korlac nodded, taking a long swig from his pint as he wolfed down the remainder of his food.

"I was serving in a militia, not getting paid, forced to fight for some noble. We mostly worked out of Farwall, chasing escaped convicts and sending them back to the city. They never seemed like criminals. They just seemed like people. Normal people, crying and begging for us not to take them back to the city. I'm not sure why they were in jail, or why they were desperate to escape, but we were told if we didn't chase them and bring them back, that we'd serve in their cells instead of them."

Drez kicked his feet in the chair as he listened to Korlac's story while trying to sneak food from his plate to Onyx under the table. Ezekiel noticed it, but grinned as Onyx took the food then nuzzled Drez's hand. He turned his attention back to Korlac, who he was shocked was sharing so much. During their entire trip on the road, the orc never said more than one or two sentences to him, and this was the most he'd heard from the gentle giant in one sitting.

"So where did Liarra come in?"

"One day we were tasked with retrieving another escaped convict from Farwall, but this wasn't a normal prisoner. Apparently, he was some captured general in the Iron Fist army from up north. We went after him, same as we would any other convict, but we chased him straight into an ambush from soldiers who were rescuing him. Have you ever fought hobgoblins?” Korlac asked.

"Yes, a very, very long time ago. Their military dominance was legendary even back then."

"Well, that hasn't changed. We walked into their ambush without a second thought. They outnumbered us four to one. I swung as fast and as hard as I could, taking down several soldiers, but it wasn't enough. Eventually they overwhelmed me and left me for dead."

"And Liarra...?" Ezekiel asked.

"Oh, she was working with them. They contracted her to have an alchemist at hand in case the general was injured and needed elixirs for his wounds. He was fine, but she noticed I was still alive at the end of the fight. She convinced the soldiers to take me with them as well. Apparently, she screamed something fierce at them to make it happen. She tended to my injuries and helped me recover. The hobgoblins were worried I'd just end up fighting them all over again, but I was happy just to be out of the militia. We spent a season with the Iron Fist, and I learned from their battlemasters while we lived with them. Eventually, Liarra wanted to move on to another contract, and she asked if I'd go with her."

Ezekiel absorbed the whole tale as he finished his tea, not sure what to make of the story. Liarra never came across as particularly nefarious to the summoner, but also never seemed selfless, either, so he wasn't sure what her motivation was for saving the orc. Ezekiel thought that there surely had to be more to the story that Korlac didn't know.

"Well, I'm exhausted. Drez, are you staying here with Korlac?"

The little water goblin looked up at Ezekiel with big green eyes, then back at Korlac.

"He said the bard would play any song if we gave him a silver piece. Do you think he'd do it for a seashell?" Drez asked.

Reaching into his coat pocket, Ezekiel placed two gold coins on the table before Drez’s widening eyes.

"Tell him to play whatever you want for the rest of the evening," Ezekiel explained with a grin.

He left the other two giggling over their small windfall as the bard suddenly picked up his tempo, playing a silly beat that Ezekiel knew had been requested by Drez, bringing a smile to his face. Onyx trudged up with him to the room. It was a double bed, not as tidy or as nice as the Firefly, but it was decent enough. Both beds had fresh sheets and there was a writing desk against one wall, and a window for some fresh air and sunlight.

Ezekiel took to his usual ritual of casting cleansing spells to freshen the room even more than it already was, to a degree he found acceptable. He pulled his grimoire from the depths of his tailcoat, along with several other supplies he wanted to review before they took off again in the morning.

First, he wrote a detailed list of supplies they’d need for the rest of the trip to the Citadel, including far more rations than they had brought previously.

"I'll keep them in my jacket this time. Less likely to lose them then," he mentioned offhand to Onyx who was snoring softly under the window.

His voice woke her slightly and she yawned in his direction, snorting as she shifted in her position on the floor.

"I know, I like Korlac and Drez, too."

Onyx snarled, her voice shifting into a slight growl.

"What, you actually trust her?" Ezekiel asked in shock.

Onyx simply snorted again as she placed a paw over her face covering her eyes.

"No, you need to explain this to me. She's been hounding me the entire trip, grilling me on every detail she can yank out. We know she didn't want to actually come to rescue Davis, or the town, so she must have an ulterior motive for coming, right?" Ezekiel snapped back, louder than he intended.

Onyx simply curled into her ball tighter, avoiding the argument that Ezekiel was becoming deeply invested in.

"Listen, she's already trying to separate Korlac from us, so we have to assume she plans on trying to get them to split from us once we leave this town. That means we have to plan for our assault on the Citadel using just you, me, and Drez. I know that sounds impossible, but we've tackled worse..." Ezekiel ranted as a knock at the door interrupted him.

Ezekiel got up, thinking that Drez had heard the bickering and was just being polite in knocking as he was coming to their shared room. He opened the door just as Onyx lifted her head from her position on the floor, sniffing the air with interest.

"Sorry, Onyx and I were just..." Ezekiel explained but stopped in shock. Two men were at the door, both wearing long dark leather dusters with matching plague doctor masks and wide brimmed hats. Upon opening the door, one of them reached out and immediately jabbed Ezekiel in the neck with a syringe, injecting him with a dark green liquid.

The summoner's head immediately started swirling, his balance thrown off as the room and hallway spun around him, the music from downstairs drowning out everything else.

The other man lunged towards him with a syringe as well, but this time Oynx was up and she pounced on the attacker, her jaw clamping down on his arm, causing him to scream violently as he fell to the ground under the weight of the metal cat.

Ezekiel's original attacker dropped his now empty syringe and pulled a rapier from his jacket, adopting a practiced stance as he readied to attack the summoner.

Head spinning, barely able to make sense of his surroundings, Ezekiel focused all his attention on the attacker before him as he felt his breath start to struggle. He knew he had been poisoned, and he wasn't sure how long he had until it rendered him completely immobile or dead. Conjuring quickly, he summoned a shield into both of his hands, parrying the rapier with all his might as Onyx continued her assault on the other attacker.

The original poisoner was good with a blade, and Ezekiel knew it was only a matter of time before the poison would do its job and slow him down enough to miss an attack. Measuring his options, Ezekiel decided there was only one course of action.

Throwing his conjured shield at his attacker staggered his opponent enough to give Ezekiel a second to react. Using what strength and balance he had left, he ran towards the window and threw himself at it with reckless abandon.

Glass shattered and wood splintered as Ezekiel broke through. He braced his head against his arm, hoping to avoid damaging his neck as the impact of the stone knocked the wind out of him. Ezekiel had an immediate need to vomit as the fall didn't help his poison induced vertigo, and soon he was covering the cobblestone road in front of the Dancing Duck with the stew he had eaten earlier that evening.

Ezekiel wasn't sure how injured he was, but the fall had the secondary benefit of alerting people inside the tavern as to his situation. Korlac and Drez were up and moving to him outside as Ezekiel's attacker dropped more elegantly from the broken window, his long leather coat billowing in the wind while the moonlight danced off his rapier's edge.

The screams from above ceased as Onyx finished her opponent, and she was ready to leap down as well to try and save Ezekiel from his original attacker. All three, Korlac, Drez, and Onyx, were converging on his position, but in his drug induced haze Ezekiel knew none of them would be soon enough.

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On the ground, winded, with more than a few broken bones, Ezekiel gripped a piece of stone that jutted out more than the others, then dropped the ground from under both him and his assailant with a quickly cast pit spell. His attacker's eyes went wide in realization of what was happening as he dropped into the darkness suddenly beneath his feet, much further than he had dropped from the tavern window to get to the summoner.

Ezekiel fell, too, but his grip on the stone caused him to dangle from the side of the conjured pit, his strength holding him for just a brief moment. Just as his waning grip gave out, Korlac's firm hand enveloped the moon elf's forearm, pulling him up and out from the edge of the pit.

"Zeke...Ezekiel! Dismiss the pit, others from the tavern are about to come outside," a voice called to him.

Nearly unconscious as the poison was fully coursing through his body, Ezekiel was able to dismiss the spell just before he started convulsing.

The poisoner who had fallen dozens of feet and broken an ankle, suddenly found himself lying flat on the road near where Korlac was holding onto Ezekiel, trying to stop the elf from hurting himself as his body thrashed around.

Pulling his rapier off the ground, the poisoner was about to lunge at the summoner again until a foot came flying from the shadows, knocking the assassin back to the ground. Drez kicked the rapier out from the man's hand and slammed an elbow under his chin, knocking him out.

"You need to hold him still, Korlac. He's going to die in two minutes unless I can get this antidote down his throat," Liarra instructed as she worked swiftly through her alchemical reagents. She wasn't able to prepare the concoction ahead of time because she wasn't sure what poison they'd try to use on Ezekiel. Once she saw his physical reactions, she knew it was root rot poison.

Drez ran over to help and held Ezekiel's feet down as Korlac wrapped his arms around the summoner's chest. Their efforts kept the elf's thrashing to a minimum as Liarra forced his mouth open, pouring a deep blue liquid down his throat.

Ezekiel's convulsions ceased quickly, leaving him unconscious and snoring softly in Korlac's arms as the other tavern goers had gathered outside, gossiping loudly about the group on the floor of the road...

**********

"Ezekiel... Ezekiel."

Squeezing his eyes closed, the summoner rolled over in his bed, trying to tune out the voice awakening him from his slumber.

"Ezekiel, you need to wake up." The soft voice continued, pulling him further awake.

Snapping his eyes open, Ezekiel found himself in his conjured cabin on one of the bunks. Sierra was sitting on a stool next to his bed in black flowing robes with silver accents. She wore a silver holy symbol of an open circle with a line across the middle and a half circle pointing up in the middle.

"I'm sorry, I was just catching a quick cat nap. Am I needed in the front? Vash mentioned something about the line needing reinforcement today..." He rose from his bed, looking for his gear. The cabin was surprisingly sparse, with none of his usual supplies inside and no other bags from any other spellcasters or soldiers. It was just him, Sierra, and the usual furniture of the room.

"Ezekiel, you have to save the boy," Sierra explained slowly, her face calm and serene.

"Before she died, Elisa said he was safe in Far Wall, for now. After the war, I can go to Guildenstern to protect him, but first, we have to break through their western barricade. Then we have a chance to..." Ezekiel trailed off.

Squeezing his eyes shut again, Ezekiel placed a hand on his head as he tried to remember the last thing he said or did before going to bed. He remembered feeling groggy, falling, and being attacked in a tavern...

"Where am I?" Ezekiel asked as he turned to Sierra, his eyes darting around to see outside the windows of the cabin. The glass was unusually fogged up and fuzzy, obscuring anything beyond it.

"We're taking a moment to talk," Sierra explained.

Noticing her attire for the first time, Ezekiel sat on a chair at the table across from Sierra, trying to make sense of the situation.

"I'm dreaming, aren't I? You're a cultist of Ophine, trying to get information from me."

"I assure you, I'm not," Sierra answered as she shook her head.

"Well, you never wore those robes before, and your holy symbol is all wrong. If you're not a cultist of Ophine, you sure dress like one."

"None of that is important right now. What is important is that you save the boy."

"What boy? What are you talking about?" Then he remembered. He remembered the events of Greencoast, traveling with Korlac, Drez, Liarra, and Onyx. He remembered everything.

"I'm not on the frontlines. I'm dead, aren't I? The poisoners killed me and you're here to take me to Ophine's realm for judgment and worse. Judged for failing Guildenstern 127 years ago, and for failing Davis now." Ezekiel postulated.

"You are not dead, and even if you were, there is no worse in store for you after death," Sierra explained.

"Atheists don't always fare well in the afterlife, largely because we tend to piss off all the gods," he countered.

"Sometimes, but none of that is important right now. What is important is that you need to save the boy."

"Davis? I'm trying, but why is he so important?"

"He represents a spark, something that could ignite the world and bring about... redemption," Sierra explained.

"Putting all that on the shoulders of a single boy seems a bit unfair," Ezekiel commented dryly as he leaned back in the chair.

"He's not alone. He has you," she countered with a smile.

Sierra rose from her seat and moved to the door, opening it to leave, but before she could Ezekiel was up from his own chair interrupting her.

"If you're not her, then who are you? And why do you dress in the garb of the Betrayer? Sierra was the Keeper of the Golden Flame, high priestess of Uphine. Wearing the colors and holy symbol of the light's twin sister and her killer seems a little... blasphemous.”

"Save the boy, Ezekiel. That's all that matters right now," Sierra said before the dream ended in a jolt.

**********

Thunder snapped his eyes open as he felt his body on fire, sore from the evening's activities. His muscles screamed in agony and his bones ached, popping in several locations as he tried to move in the small, cramped makeshift bed he was laying in.

Outside, rain poured on the streets of Millstone as Ezekiel saw he was in a small, abandoned building with only a single candle to light the place. Drez was asleep a pallet in the corner, and Onyx lay tucked into a ball on the floor near him. Korlac leaned against the wall, sharpening his falchion while Liarra had her alchemy kit open, warming a beaker over the candle with liquid lazily bubbling underneath.

"Whoa, slowly, don't move too fast. My healing tonics are good, but your body's been through a lot between your injuries and the poison." The alchemist came over to Ezekiel's side, checking his forehead.

"I broke my wrist and my ribs," he stated as he felt his chest, feeling no pressure or pain.

"Like I said, my healing tonics can work wonders, but they still rely on the body to gain some rest to do their best work, and the poison also took its toll on you. Frankly, it's amazing you're alive right now."

"Who were they?" He sat up in the bed, Onyx peeking at him through her paw to make sure he was okay.

"Poisoners, from the Guild. There's a pricey bounty on your head, and they were trying to collect."

"From whom?" Ezekiel asked.

"The Church," Liarra explained as she went back to her work, sitting on a crate to monitor her beaker.

"Just me?"

"Just you, for now. Though after tonight, I wouldn't be surprised if there were bounties placed on all of us," Liarra explained as she nodded to Korlac and Drez.

"It's okay, I've been wanted before," Korlac teased as his whetstone ran over the edge of his blade in a well-practiced motion.

"You saw my bounty, at your guild?" Ezekiel asked.

Liarra simply nodded as she poured another liquid into the beaker, causing the concoction to bubble violently.

"Did you think about it?" he asked.

"Did I think about what?"

"You know what I'm asking."

Rising from her work, Liarra stomped over to Ezekiel angrily, waving a finger at the moon elf.

"No, you don't get to take that tone, not after I saved your life!" she snapped angrily.

Korlac's sharpening paused, the tension in the air making him feel like he needed to do something. On the other side of the room Drez woke up at the argument, also feeling a bit confused as to how to react.

"To which I'm eternally grateful. I'm sorry for not thanking you when I first woke up, but I'm sure the thought went through your head when you saw it at the guild. It had to."

"Of course it did. I'm not an idiot," Liarra snapped.

Silence fell over the group as the rain and thunder outside suddenly sounded overwhelming. Korlac's head fell as his falchion dropped from his hands.

"Kay, what's wrong with you?" Liarra asked with a tired sigh.

"You think I'm an idiot," the orc said softly.

"No, I don't! Of course I don't. Why would you think that?" Liarra pleaded, not sure how the conversation turned in this direction.

"Because I wouldn't have thought of turning him in for the money if I saw the bounty," Korlac explained.

"Kay, that's not what I..."

The hulking orc looked at her with sullen eyes and a sunken demeanor, his hulking frame somehow seeming small and defeated.

"I... I'm sorry, Kay, that's not what I meant. I did think about turning Zeke in for the bounty, for half a second, but then I came up with a better idea."

Korlac's tension softened, and he looked back to Liarra with a smile, her apology making him feel better. "Better idea?" he asked.

"Yeah, something I wanted to talk to Zeke about."

Ezekiel was on his feet, stretching to work out the kinks in his muscles. He saw that his jacket lay on a broken chair in the corner, and he checked his dimensional pocket, pulling out his grimoire. He was topless in just his trousers, his dress shirt resting under the jacket, torn up and bloodied from his encounter with the poisoners.

Liarra had noticed before when Korlac had carried Ezekiel into the abandoned building, but seeing him up and moving revealed the collection of scars all over Ezekiel's dark blueish skin. They were scattered all over his body with several long ones stretched over his entire back.

"I'm truly sorry, Liarra, I should have thanked you as soon as I woke up. I just... I had a confusing dream, and it put me on edge."

"It's okay. I realize we've been mixing about as well as oil and water."

"So what do we do about that?" Ezekiel asked as he stretched his shirt over the chair. Before Liarra could respond, Ezekiel spoke some quick arcane incantations while waving his hand. The first pass mended the damage from the rapier and the fall, returning the shirt to its original pristine integrity. The second pass cleansed it of dirt and blood, giving it a fresh smell. Liarra thought it even looked freshly pressed.

"Let's put all our cards on the table. I like Davis well enough, and I don't want to see him or Greencoast in danger, but I have expectations of a return for this kind of a risk."

"Understood. What are your terms?" Ezekiel asked, cutting to the chase.

"I have my own motivations for sticking it to the Church, something we don't need to get into. Specifically, I know that they hold information, and something the Guild values more than anything else is information. If we're attacking the Citadel, I want to raid their library. I want to haul out whatever we can get our hands on, specifically knowledge they refuse to let out to the public."

"Understandable. I think I can take that into account in our planning. Is that all?" He slipped his arms through the shirt.

"No. I also want access to your grimoire. Frankly, what's in there is worth more than the price on your head, possibly a lot more. Having access to it, and more importantly access to you to help translate and interpret it, could help me recreate formulae that have been lost to the guild for over a hundred years."

Ezekiel buttoned the dress shirt up to the top of his collar then tucked it into his trousers before throwing his jacket back on. Onyx purred slightly at seeing him standing back at full health as he fixed his cuffs under the sleeves.

"So long as freeing Davis is our top priority, I will agree to every stipulation you've set out. I'll give you full access to my spellbook, and I'll translate it for you. Heck, I did some alchemy work back at the Academae, so I might be able to assist with that part as well. Will that suffice?"

"Yes, it will, and thank you," Liarra said, giving Ezekiel an honest smile for the first time.

"Good, now, let me get my bearings so I can come up with a plan to get out of Millstone without attracting anymore would-be assassins.”

Korlac and Drez both giggled as they looked at Liarra who had a sheepish look on her face as she continued working on her concoction.

"What's got them in a twist?” Ezekiel asked.

"I've already got a plan to get you out of town, in fact I'm working on it right now," she explained.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, you're just going to need a different shirt and to answer a simple question."

"What's that?"

"Would you prefer blonde, or brunette?"