"The air was cold, though he did not feel it. Adebar’s senses were numb, his feet leaden, and his skull throbbed from the red wine he’d nursed over the last hours. Huis had truly not spared any expense.

The nightly streets of Streissen were coated in a light mist, and, though it was dark, Mannslieb and Morrslieb above granted their sickly illumination, guiding his impaired course through the creek quarter, where the lower craftsmen, and the truly poor, made their homes. Once Adebar von Bolstedt, scion of Altdorf nobility, would not even have considered striding through these streets by day, but two years spent on the road, in the woodlands and backwaters of the Empire, had hardened his senses, and, even in his tipsy state, he could not fathom any danger the sleepy university-town could bring to bear on him, that Dark Gods, witches and murderous cults had not already flung at him. Streissen’s rebellious days lay long behind it, he had been told. He intended to leave on the morrow, unless some truly pressing matter presented itself. This place bored him already."

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