Echoes. Assonant, carpeted reverberations that crawled up the walls like poisonous vines. Wordless sounds— long consonants, hisses, and openmouthed, whispered contempt.

The air was stagnant and cold. It was always cold now— a thick, humid, unbreathable curtain that cemented the lungs. A leaden foot made an impossible pivot on solid ground— one that lasted centuries. A turn in slow motion. A child's laughter.

A ticking clock hung suspended in mid-air, but ran perfectly. The inevitability of passing seconds was a beautiful thing; there was some comfort to be had there.

Long, stiff fingers felt out black surroundings. There was clarity, yes— a kind of surety one would recognize as he made his blind, nightly stumble into a familiar bed. Unseeing, but not uncertain. She had been here before.

Flat palms pressed against four walls. They were cold and unrelenting— a glass prison. The space could not have been more than seven feet in area. The ticking slowed.

"Who are you?"

Words that were harmless and musical rung within the confined box. As the ticking resumed, Sivanna turned again. This time, a blonde, angelic little girl smiled up at her.

"Who are you?" the cleric repeated, surprised at the hoarseness in her own voice. The child beamed a brilliant grin that did not meet her eyes.

"I know who I am."

The elfess felt a weight furrow her brow. That didn't answer her question.

"What are you doing here?" she pressed. A tiny hand slid into hers as the girl giggled.

"I belong here. Why are you here?"

"I'm' not sure," the cleric echoed warily, not liking the feeling of the child's hand in hers. Then again, she never did enjoy the company of children.

"That's a silly thing to say," returned the elfess's company in wry amusement.

The ticking slowed; the air became thinner and difficult to breathe. On the other side of the glass was an unfamiliar place. Rows and rows of mahogany pews led up to some kind of ornate altar with a hanging crucifix. Thunder sounded above the raftered, vaulted ceiling, and to her right and left, the colorful, paneled saints shed tears.

A shapely figure stumbled down the center aisle until it reached its destination. Desperately, a Kirn's teary face pressed against the glass between herself and Sivanna.

"Sivanna" please don't!" cried Misty, scraping her nails along the glass. The elfess was taken aback a moment, then shook her head furiously.

"I didn't do anything, mellonamin. I only had words with her. I didn't hurt her; I didn't hurt anyone, I promise you!"

"That's a silly thing to promise," sounded a quiet, amused voice beside her.

"Sivanna" please! Don't!" the Kirn repeated in anguish. In a terrifying scream, the glass between the cleric and her friend was splattered violently with blood.

"Misty!" MISTY!?" shrieked Sivanna, clawing at the barrier. Through the slimy veil of red, the elfess just made out not one, but several pieces slumping to the ground.

"Let me out!" screamed the cleric hysterically, bashing her shoulder against the unbreakable pane of glass. "Let me out! I'll destroy that thing! MISTY!"

"Shhh. You're going to wake the doctor," crooned the girlish voice beside her. Sivanna's head snapped toward the opposite wall within her prison. Inside a familiar dueling ring, a tall, intimidating figure stooped over Anya as she lay prostrate on the ground. He was fitting her with something.

In a dark chuckle, the Egyptian smirked and closed a steel collar around the good doctor's neck.

"No"!" croaked Sivanna hoarsely. "No! Let me out! I'll kill him! I won't let you take her! You can't take her!" she shrieked, trying all her weight in violent crashes against the glass.

The ticking slowed. As Anya was heaved up by a handful hair, she stared wide-eyed at Sivanna.

"Please, don't!" her friend begged voicelessly.

"Anya, I'm—!"

A nauseating ripping sounded, followed by the thick splatter of wet on pavement. Heaps of both male and female bodies dropped, drowned out in an agonizing shriek that tore from the cleric's lungs.

What have you done"

"I didn't—"

Slowly, Sivanna reached outward. The glass was gone. Nothing separated her from the misshapen piles of red.

"See" Now no one can take her," chimed the entertained voice beside her in a giggle.

"What have you done??" breathed the cleric shakily, looking down at the girl in horror. Brightly, the child let go of Sivanna's hand and stepped back.

"Me" What ever makes you think it was me?" she bubbled with a cold smile.

As her hand was released, the elfess stared at it. It was wet. Her arms" her clothes were wet. Holding her fingers close to her eyes, Sivanna screamed.

She was covered in blood. Their blood.

—-

A gasp escaped her lips as the cleric shot up in bed. Instantly, she brought her hands within inches of her face and turned them over time and again, expecting to see the blood. Expecting the nightmare to be real.

They were clean. It wasn't real.

Inhaling short, ragged gasps, Sivanna gazed down at her side to comfortingly find her husband lying there, eyes closed peacefully and breathing deeply in what many would misconstrue as sleep.

It wasn't real, but it could be.

Trembling, the cleric lay down beside Alec again and drew the covers up to her mouth. Stealing warmth from the journeyman's Ippon heat beneath the blankets, she focused desperately on keeping her tremors to a minimum, closed her eyes, and wept.

It could be.

"I cannot stress the utter severity of this situation," Kalon Aleanraheal, veteran overseer to the Council of Silvanost for nine-hundred and twenty-one years, commented with surprising nonchalance to his peers within the Tower of the Stars. Nine regal, statuesque elves, all male, sat at ease in elegant rattan and mahogany armchairs in a semicircle within the great hall. Columns of pure white marble, engraved with the names of generations of Silvanesti ancestors, stood as testaments to the ancient supremacy of their race on Krynn. Gold and silver tiles no larger than the size of a half dollar made elegant mosaics underfoot what chronicled the histories of the Elven kingdom in Ansalon, ranging from significant moments during the Cataclysm, to impressive battles during the Great Wars, the Kinslayer Wars, the War of Souls, and thereafter in the Wars of the Lance.

From the outside, within the safety of the city, the Tower of the Stars was a sublime architectural marvel. Solid white, marble walls that stretched for three stories were inlaid with thousands of diamonds and rubies to reflect the natural light of the red and white Krynnish moons, Lunitari and Solinari. The black moon of Nuitari, of course, could only be seen by his disciples" and those few that were discovered within Silvanost, or in the entire Elven kingdom itself, were exiled without hesitation. Paladine's blessing could not be tested by the presence of a dark-minded god. Not within the holy walls of Silvanost.

Despite its vital role in Krynn's colorful background, the Silvanesti architects had only in the past six hundred years built a bridge that would permit access into the capital city of Silvanost, which lay secluded on the isle of Than-Thalas. Gates were high— seemingly thin, but surprisingly resilient. By the state of the arcane seal upon them, they had not opened in many a year. Not until that day' or what passed as a day at that point in time. Paladine, it would have seemed, had long turned his back on his honored chosen. Sunlight that filtered through sparse greenery of the underfed foliage above brought no warmth, nor comfort. No breeze carried the fragrant, robust aroma of the moss-covered forests of Eru through the deserted streets leading to the Tower. The air hung thickly and lowly— dank and dead like the lifeless, tainted air within a crypt. Nothing thrived that day. Not even pretense of life would be had within the capital's walls, with the exception of the small gathering within the Tower of the Stars.

When the weather permitted, the Council often opened wide the mammoth stained-glass windows to the edifice, but that day they remained closed; perhaps it was some vain effort at keeping the nauseating smell of death at bay. Any effort was futile in that regard. The stench lingered still within those blessed, magnificent walls. It spoiled the splendor and magnanimity that visits to the Tower always brought the Silvanesti elves— One in particular.

Sivanna Cyredghymn was a statue to Overseer Aleanraheal as he circled her like a vulture would a rotting carcass. To her immediate right and left stood four Silvanesti officers; the gold on their collars and cuffs suggested they were of high rank, but the silver, braided cord that lay secure over their left shoulder confirmed they were all members of the Augural and Alchemical Regiment— the commander of which stood between them with her hands bound behind her back.

"How many of our kin had to die to sate this one's lust for power?" barked the Overseer, cutting a wrist through the air in a violent gesture to Sivanna as he readdressed his fellow council members. "Thousands wasted away under the ravaging effects of her Shield," he spat, emphasizing the general's adept defense mechanism a skeptical flick of his fingers. "This absolutely cannot stand!"

Dular Orleaer, an aged elf of grand stature (lessened not in the least by his gold-embossed robes and pointed shoulder pads) reclined in his armchair and shook his head placidly.

"And yet, these many years, the good general has kept our borders secure from foreign invasion; exactly what we instructed for her to do," rebutted Orleaer, speaking through steepled fingers resting on his colorless lips.

"But at what cost!" bellowed Kordul Banea, his tainted bloodline evident for the way his voiced hoarsened and his cheeks flushed in ire. Banea was one of three elves and three elves only within all of Silvanesti with a full head of coppery red hair. His colleagues often made backhanded implications of his ancestors" likely roots in Kal-Thax, the first Dwarven kingdom of Ansalon. After all, Banea was at least four inches shy of average. What he lacked in stature, however, he made up for in presence.

Banea's unnaturally red head stood out like a flame in a moonless night as he deserted his seat and stamped over to the general on trial. Abandoning all sense of Council propriety, his fingers hooked around the braided, silk cord tethered to the uniform around Sivanna's shoulder and under her arm, and yanked. It tore off her peony tweed garment with surprising ease, and once the Councilor had the accessory firmly in hand, he let it fall to the ground and crushed it underfoot.

"We would have been better off fighting off an invasion from Karthay' or every one of the Blood Sea Isles, for that matter! At least then we could account for the deaths of our people!" snapped Banea, not giving the general the honor of even a disgusted look.

"I am inclined to agree, Speaker," uttered Sylaral Auvreaeplith, a stunningly soft-spoken, middle-aged High Elf that originally hailed from the neighboring lands Qualinesti. Though his frame was frail and his demeanor passive, all within the Tower hushed as he directed his address toward the seated elf in the center of the semicircle. "Despite what her reasons may have been, all evidence points against her."

Banea retreated back to his seat, but remained standing as he glared at the addressed expectantly. "Thousands have died, Speaker. All that matters now is that their blood is on her hands!" he cursed, pointing a deliberate finger at the accused.

At long last, Sivanna found it within herself to cast the shaerylaer, the befouled a scathing look. Every effort she had made to maintain that Shield was in the service of Silvanost, and no one— not even the Council— could convince her otherwise.

For nearly a decade, every waking moment of the cleric's existence had been spent pouring her resources into a protective, invisible barrier around Silvanost that would keep their people in and their enemies out. And, for nearly a decade, she had prevailed.

In the chaotic throes of the War of Souls, however, death was to be found within that protection. For it took no small amount of magic to raise a defense of such magnitude, and an even greater amount to feed it. Though the spell wasn't hers, Sivanna knew well from experience that it thrived on living magic. Her orders had been to sustain this particular defense, however" this particular spell, given to her by Cyan Bloodbane (who would later come to be known as the greatest traitor ever to curse the lands of Silvanesti) was the only responsibility she was to invest herself in. And so, when the first few hundred of Silvanost's inhabitants dropped dead from a mysterious, wasting illness, Sivanna did not question it.

When the first thousand were buried inside a mass grave in what used to be a splendorous garden rife with native greenery, Sivanna looked the other way.

When the number of deaths exceeded four thousand, the Council took notice. It was only then that the draining powers of the Shield were discovered, and Bloodbane's ulterior motives ferreted out. It took only a matter of days before nearly every one of the Augural Regiment was tried and executed. Naturally, the Council had deigned to leave the trial of the greatest "war criminal? for last.

"You know what they're going to do to you. They are going to kill you, General."

The words came from a slender elf in the corner of the room. He had been quiet for quite a long time; only stood there, his silvery tunic and ashen breeches camouflaged against one of four moist, ancient granite walls that served more as viral incubators or sarcophagi than humane detention facilities. The cells were Spartan in nature, lacking all furniture save for a washstand and a rattan bed frame and mattress. But despite tireless effort on the Silvanesti's part to maintain the facilities, the underground location ensured that the air within was stagnant and thick, not to mention humid. Moisture clung to those walls, giving them a slimy, living feeling. Some prisoners that had been confined within for extended periods of time screamed for fear those walls would soon swallow them up. Within two years of confinement, the trickery of candlelight on damp granite was no longer an illusion at all. Those walls breathed. Within five years, the room seemed smaller. Those walls moved.

And yet, on Night's Eye, the eleventh day upon Autumn Dark by the Silvanesti calendar on Krynn, those walls seemed perfectly stationary.

"It is a distinct possibility," Sivanna replied from her relaxed position on the cell's floor. Normally her Silvanesti uniform was far too confining for her to recline in any way but uncomfortably. But the mithril vest, canvas overcoat, and trio of belts that contributed to her formal officer's uniform had been confiscated the moment the cleric had descended the stairs that snaked into a maze beneath the city of Silvanost. Despite everything, the white, loose tunic and unfastened ashen breeches Sivanna was left in felt' pleasant. The knee-up posture she took as she sat on the floor gave off an impression of an almost boyish insouciance. With hardly a sound, the elfess rearranged her limbs to rest her wrists on those knees of hers. It was only then that it occurred to her just how small she felt without her uniform. Her frame was exceedingly slender, made moreso by the fact that she had not ingested one morsel of food in the past three days. The sentinels on the other side of the ward didn't seem to mind. Rumors of a public execution had reached even this far underground. As far as they were concerned, a weak general was all that much easier to dispatch.

With an aggravated sigh, the elf in the corner entered the scarce light permitted by a bewitched lantern on the corner of the washstand. Wispy, uneven platinum hair that reached the base of his neck seemed white against the ghastly, inhuman shadow that reflected off those cursed walls. And yet, viridian, almond-shaped eyes regarded Sivanna with disguised compassion.

"You did the right thing," the elf uttered faintly, the pleasing, resonant quality of his voice reminiscent of some kind of woodwind instrument. A chalumeau perhaps.

"Did you come all the way down here just to tell me that?" Sivanna shot back, finally allowing her steel eyes to meet her companion's rigidly. Two months the elfess had lingered in that cell, and not for a single second within a single day had she doubted her judgment with regards to her actions during the War of Souls. She certainly didn't need the reassurance of someone under her command.

"No," the elf replied, sparing a flick of a glance at the two guards posted on the other side of his superior's cell. "I came all the way down here to help you," he added, switching from an Elvish dialect to an archaic form of Drow that he knew the low-ranking prison guards would not understand.

A cold, amused smirk stole Sivanna's lips as she perceived the nervous glances on her guards" faces. Granted, it was only the shadow of a grimace beneath elegant dragonscale helmets, but the cleric could recognize doubt when she saw it. She had made a living on exploiting weaknesses, after all.

"Aelik, Aelik" What possibly makes you think anything you do will help me?" the general responded in an even more foreign dialect of Drow. It was an arrogant gesture, even in her position of vulnerability, designed to challenge her companion on an intellectual and an authoritative level. The challenge was met with only a carefree smile, for Aelik had long become accustomed to Sivanna's haughty, confrontational demeanor. In fact, he quite appreciated it.

"They speak of you as though you are a criminal, General. They speak of trials, of ruinment. I will not have you die a martyr," Aelik replied facilely, leveling his eyes on his former commanding officer.

When every member of the general's Augural and Alchemical Regiment had been executed, Aelik had been left alive. Perhaps it had been his bearing with the Council, or perhaps it was divine providence. But the situation was as Sivanna had feared. He planned to waste his gift of life with some haphazard escape attempt that would inevitably end in failure.

With a sigh, the general gazed up at the ceiling, confident that Paladine could not see her so deep in the ground.

"I will await the Council's decision," she announced plainly, her words heavy with a Drow accent and a terrible feeling of dread. She did not fear death; her only regret would be that she could no longer perform her duties in her country's best interests.

"You cannot be serious. We will need you again. They will need you again, Sivanna. If you allow them their way, we will be lost. Come away, if only for a few decades." Aelik's tone became urgent; pleading. His shoulders had stooped as he regarded Sivanna from above, as though he had already sensed his efforts would be futile.

"I serve Silvanesti, Aelik," Sivanna responded evenly, rotely; it was a declaration she had made for the past one hundred and some odd years. "If she wishes me gone, she need only ask."

"You can serve Silvanesti from afar!" the elf retorted sharply, drawing anxious glances from the guards. After a quick exchange between them, one abandoned his post and strode diligently away from the ward. To fetch a translator, no doubt. Or worse.

When Aelik looked back at Sivanna, he was shocked to observe the utter concern with which she scrutinized him. It seemed almost'

"What are you so afraid of?" she interrupted his thoughts, her voice as lulling and musical as a wind chime on a breezy day in the tree-built town of Solace. All at once, Aelik felt at peace. They were not soldiers at the moment. They were just' them.

The refined shape of Aelik's face contorted with pain, and for a moment, Sivanna expected him to weep. But no sooner had this happened then he concentrated on his superior again through wisps of platinum hair.

"Loss," the elf admitted honestly, surprised at himself for being so candid with the general herself.

Sivanna closed her eyes and smiled, leaning her head back against the cold, dead wall of her prison.

"Loss is just another form of change, my friend," the cleric replied, switching back to Elvish in order to give more meaning to her endearment of him. "You can let it stagger you, immobilize you, weaken you, or you can adapt."

Aelik had not failed to miss the endearment that slipped past his superior's lips. His blue-green eyes narrowed slightly, filling with some combination of sorrow and betrayal.

"It is a cycle, General," he rebutted coolly. "You think we evolve" We don't. No one ever changes; they only realize their mistakes in time to commit them yet again."

To this, the elfess let out a husky laugh, baring her teeth at him in an amused smile. "Perhaps."

As she spoke, three sets of footsteps were heard reaching the bottom steps at the end of the underground hallway. In only a few seconds, the departed guard reappeared, this time accompanied with a Council mage and an armed counterpart. The mage's lips appeared to move, and as they did, the guard slipped through the invisible ward that barred exit to Sivanna's cell. He extended a gauntleted and gloved hand to take Aelik by the arm.

"Aelik Norreathem. The Council requests your presence," he uttered dryly, as if the words were memorized. Perhaps they were.

Aelik turned back to Sivanna, his eyes alight with desperation and determination.

"I will not make their mistake, General," he burst out in draconic. "I know what is right; and I will follow you anywhere. You mustn't give in to them. We will need you again." With a grumble, the armed guard yanked Aelik through the ward by force and began propelling him down the hallway.

"We will need you again! You mustn't give in!" Sivanna heard him bellow again from the base of the stairs as her sentinels resumed their positions.

—-

Exhaustedly, Sivanna opened her eyes and gazed upward at the stars. Beneath her cheek, the abrasive sands were rubbing her skin raw where she had let her head fall off the pathetic roll of a cloak she called a pillow. Despite the two hours she had spent dozing, she felt entirely restless and drained. The bitter cold of the desert eve did nothing to soothe the fire in her veins. It was as though all of her nerves were fried. And yet, the past couple of days, she had done nothing but been vigilant with her husband. Stake outs never used to be this debilitating. But then again, she only became this conflicted an individual upon arriving in Rhy"Din.

Making no noise, Sivanna rolled onto her shoulder and dug into her satchel to fish out a crumpled telegram. Why she had packed it, she didn't even know. It likely would have done better to remain in her briefcase at home, or perhaps in her locked desk drawer where no one could get to it. And yet, as she reread the message for what felt like the hundredth time, the cleric let out a soft, nearly inaudible sigh.

Gazing up at the stars, Sivanna felt confident Paladine couldn't see her at all.

"I seem to have forgotten something important."

"You are the thing that changes according to what and who you are."

I can't see the world for the smoke.

There is fire around me; starving, unrelenting. Like a parasite eager to slake its bloodlust, it licks at my back, savoring the taste of my flesh. It revels in the way I cower before it— in the way I fearfully wrap my arms around something I must protect. The sweat that trickles between my shoulder blades evaporates almost instantly; it is lapped up. Appreciated. I can almost feel the flames breathing in anticipation behind me, brandishing their fangs to devour me entirely. They want what I have in my arms.

They cannot have it.

"We're no good to anyone if we die here. Get us out of here!" a voice rasps.

I cannot put a face to the words, but as I recall them, I feel as though I am falling. I can sense the end coming, the vertigo disrupting my sense of balance. I know it will come soon— that I will feel the sharp and inflexible crag of regret before it steals my last breath. But not now. Not yet. When I open my eyes again, I see oceans and oceans of blue staring back at me. The waves of his compassion are steady around my ankles, but do not wash over me any longer. I cannot remember the last time I allowed myself to float away.

"I can't swim, anyway."

The heat exhales softly and descends into darkness, leaving only the abrading, gravelly hem that is my voice to grate within like a fine, stinging dust.

Why did you save him"

I can see his eyes again. They are so full of life and promise. The water in him wears away the world until it yields enough to suit his purpose. The torrent is constant and unflagging, and the space between us so small. If I do not leave, I will drown. Something is encouraging me to stay.

"You don't understand. I can't swim."

Hold your breath.

"But I haven't breathed in so long."

I have felt the taint even more lately. Rhy"Din is degenerating into a putrid hovel of deceit, and as I linger, I taste the foul potation of benighted decay on my tongue like rancid meat. It is smooth and sticks to my palate; even my favorite Lembas bread savors of ash and death. Why am I the only one who notices"

"You are the one," croons another voice, even and uniform as the cold floor that touches her feet. Her speech grounds her, but her words float and envelop me like a blanket of snow. I would be perfectly content to slumber within this tundra and never awake. The rest of Rhy"Din should be so lucky.

"It is you whom my son has bequeathed a fallen Tear of mine," she clarifies. The weight of her gaze heavies the jewel around my neck. "There are two powers in contention," she tells me. "One cannot claim that which is already claimed until the other revokes its protection."

Even as time slows about her, my hands grow numb. Her breath tick-tocks like the seconds on the water clock behind her. Time is unscrupulous, but her iron gaze is excruciatingly fair. What she knows, she won't tell me.

"Even if I could, I wouldn't want to ask."

What are you waiting for"

"To put down the Rhy"Din newsprint. For the last of the color to fade away."

Maybe the color is there for a reason.

"All beings have a purpose," her voice reminds me. I scoff. I search her eyes for humor, but find none. They remind me of her son's— calm and collected but with a perfect confidence and subtle glow that I can't quite place. I can see the fire behind his gaze in my mind's eye, and am reminded of how vibrant that color truly is.

"What am I forgetting" Why can I not seem to remember what is missing?"

What is missing"

"Something simple."

Something which drives the taint away.

"The taint isn't on me. It won't touch me."

Why"

That query reverberates on the walls of my mind. Why won't it touch me" Why does it devour everyone but a select few"

You're running out of time.

Memories all catapult by save for a few. A few pairs of eyes that still have some color to them. Two sets of hazel. Copper. Impossible blue.

A burnt umber— nearly black. Rust.

There is always fire there. A significant kind of warmth. It brings me back to Belleza. I can feel the curtain of flame threatening to strangle me once more.

What is missing"

The heat is stifling. I can't see the world for the smoke.

—-

Untangling from sheets moistened by her clammy perspiration, Sivanna rolled out of bed. Dizziness buoyed her head as a stagger-stumble carried her into a nearby bathroom, where she promptly began shedding her clothes. Every part of her screamed to find some basin to be immediately sick into, but ignoring her greater instincts, a frantic reach was made past a curtain to turn an Ippon knob, jetting icy water onto her heavy body as she crawled inside. Tilting her head against the side of the stall, Sivanna closed her eyes and willed herself to breathe— to taste the subtle flavor of peppermint body wash that she (and sometimes even her husband, when he wanted to guarantee a hands-on reaction from his wife) often used. Anything to bring her circulation back to normal, and not leave it pooling on the backs of her legs, gluing her to the floor. A teardrop jewel hung reassuringly around her neck and settled coolly and comfortingly on her sternum. As she inhaled the crisp aroma, filling her lungs with relief, Sivanna let out a weak laugh.

"I can still taste it."

Maybe there was still time.

((Some of this scene is adapted from play with Faye Random and Neo Eternity. Thank you so much!))

It wasn't a dream. Never in Aelik's life had he felt more awake then at that moment, with his general pointing an alien weapon at his head.

The cleric watched as he cautiously crawled off his lumpy mattress and set his booted feet to the hollow floorboards. Instinctively, he lifted a tiny leather pouch that hung by a strap from one of the bed frame's tarnished brass knobs and palmed it discreetly. His wariness and vigilance did not go unnoticed, for as he circled around the room— navigating past a scarred end table balancing precariously on three legs— Sivanna followed him with her eyes and with her weapon. When the elf drew to a stop five feet from her, the cleric's arm tensed, her gloved finger tightening over that alien trigger she didn't seem to feel, but was painfully aware of. He didn't know the extent of damage the device could do or the speed at which it could do it. Sivanna counted on that, he was certain.

"What do you mean, I have to leave?" the elf asked cautiously, too-green eyes focused not on Sivanna, but rather on the piece of equipment she held.

"I mean it is time for you to go home, Aelik," Sivanna replied softly. Despite the calm restraint with which she spoke, the cleric couldn't disguise the tinny and hollow-sounding ounce of anxiety that bled into her words.

Aelik always did have the sharpest sense of hearing, anyway.

"I can't go home, General," Aelik mumbled. Even the ragged throatiness of his speech was rendered beautiful and perfect by fluent Elvish. He could doubtlessly make an insult sound lovely without trying. Perhaps once upon a time it was distracting to Sivanna, but not tonight.

"I came here for you," the elf added, almond-shaped eyes narrowing on his former mentor. "I will not leave without you."

Smothering a brewing sigh, Sivanna held the SigSauer P229 rigidly, willing her shoulder to paralyze and disguise any potential trembling.

"No. You have to go now. I can't return with you," she breathed. "Please understand that this about more than you and me."

"You cannot seriously be considering deserting your home country because of these" these" barbarians?" Aelik retorted through his teeth.

"No," Sivanna snapped back, lividly. Reining in her fury, she regarded the elf with an iciness she only reserved for a select few. "Aelik" I can't do anything for them," she concluded weakly. For a moment, she looked about to say more, but then her lips clamped shut. The surreptitiousness was infuriating.

"You can't, or you won't?" replied the elf coldly. Sivanna did not disregard the pinch of sand he removed from the pouch he held.

"Listen to me." Sivanna had grown agitated; flicked nervous glances at the whitewashed window letting in eerie yellow light every half second. "I wish I could explain. I really do. But you can't be here, Aelik. It's dangerous. You need to go back to Krynn now." She seemed to desperately inject as much earnestness into her voice as she could. It might have even been sincere.

Aelik's jaw set. "Are you coming with me?"

"No."

The elf crossed his arms. "Then I'm not going anywhere."

At that point, Sivanna didn't bother to disguise her trembling. Her voice became like pumice on sandstone, her words pleading.

"You don't understand, Aelik. I don't want to do this. I don't want to leave you in the dark. But if you stay here any longer, you are putting all of Rhy"Din at risk. I won't let you."

It was Aelik's turn to speak icily, then. "What fancy words you speak, General. Did you rehearse this to soothe your new conscience?"

"Listen to me!" the cleric gasped shakily, desperately, as she spared a few dangerous glances toward the window. She was distracted. Too distracted. "By Paladine, if you ever trusted me, ever in your life, then do it now!" The weapon shook in her hand. "You can't be here. It'll find us." Emotion colored her words. Too much of it.

"What will?" replied her companion, baffled.

"I don't know," Sivanna wheezed, pressing the heel of her free hand into her forehead. "I know enough to know that you'll ruin us."

"Ruin what?" Aelik pleaded. The frustration was painfully evident on his face. "This so-called life that you have with these barbarians?"

"No!" The elfess nearly shrieked. "You'll take all of Rhy"Din down with you!" Fresh tears formed in her eyes. It wasn't like Sivanna to cry. "I can't risk you hurting them, my friend. Please. Just trust me, will you? Return to Silvanost tonight. We'll figure something out. I promise."

Hurt and betrayal flashed in Aelik's eyes. Sivanna wasn't giving him an inch— not a word of explanation, and she expected him to just pack up and leave"

"It's too late for that, General," the elf breathed. All at once, he coiled back like a spring, dug his heel into a crack in the floorboards and launched himself at the cleric, scattering the small pinch of Theores Ash he'd in hand at her feet in order to root her in place. The powder let out a loud charge as it connected with her boots. At the same time he collided with Sivanna's form, Aelik began mumbling a disjointed freezing spell in Drow— one he was confident Sivanna wouldn't know, even if she was fluent in the language.

He hardly spoke a word of it before his legs became heavy as lead.

In confusion, Aelik stared at Sivanna's widened eyes for long moments. He hadn't even seen her lips move. How had she managed to immobilize him' Clarity slowly came to him, and he tucked his chin to look down between their pressed bodies.

The weapon she held was smoking.

Numbly, Aelik dropped a hand and felt out where the barrel met his stomach. Impossibly slowly, he brought his fingers up to the light.

Red. He didn't remember wearing red that day.

Dimly aware of someone calling his name, the elf found himself having a better view of the ceiling on his back. His heavy wrists felt the vibration of Sivanna's weapon through the ground as she dropped it. His chest felt tight, but not because she was holding him.

Was this what death felt like"

"I'm so sorry, Aelik. I didn't mean' I didn't?" the elf heard Sivanna sputter. Something cold and wet hit his cheeks. Was it raining" Was he outside"

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Just' just stay with me, yes" I'll get you help. Just stay with me," his general stuttered thickly, her voice uneven and hoarse. He could feel her hands pressing the wetness of his clothes into someplace sore.

Stay' No. He wasn't staying. Sivanna had told him he had to leave.

It was time for him to leave.

"Sivanna?" Aelik murmured weakly. He watched dimly as her eyes widened while he reached for her throat, then widened more as he continued on toward her cheek.

Tenderly, he tucked a lock of champagne hair behind her ear.

"Don't blink."

Aelik's fingertips suddenly became very cold. Perhaps if he just let his hand fall back to the ground, they would be warmer. Rhy"Din was so very drafty.

Suddenly the cold didn't matter anymore. Maybe he was dreaming after all.

Six hours earlier"

This place stinks.

Curled up in the alleyway behind the Rhy'Din Horse and Tack, Sivanna gagged on a gust of thick, sour air as a happy family of four ambled by. By then the shop had long closed and the moon's half-smothered grin had widened over the cityscape, casting a wide net of ghostly diamonds onto the condensation sticking to the cobblestones beneath her. The subtle drip-drip-drip of stale water sounded beside her from an old gutter hanging overhead. It hadn't rained, but by the blue and violet wisps of clouds hanging ominously in the sky, it was certainly going to.

No amount of water is going to clean this place.

The cleric's tired eyes blinked open as she heard a childish pitter-patter of rubber soles growing uncomfortably close beside her alley. The high-pitched insistence of a little girl reached her sensitive Elvish ears, shrill with an obsessed yearning for some doll or plaything through a plate glass window. Something she would likely tire of before the week was over. People here were so fickle. It never ceased to amaze Sivanna just how selfish these creatures could be: children who craved nothing but material goods and limitless attention, while parents indulged their every whim and bankrupted themselves in the process. They were stolen from, these people— not only robbed of a life, but of a future.

The happy couple was dragged back past Sivanna's alley again, a massive beast of a man chortling merrily alongside his wife as his littlest, ringed finger was held hostage by a childish waif in red braids and a paisley dress. His robust woman grinned and giggled against his chest as they walked behind their daughter, crooning to him words of halfhearted discouragement for spoiling the selfish innocent. And yet, Sivanna was still convinced that the very last of the man's paycheck would be spent pampering the skinny, freckled imp in frills, even if it meant he had to work overtime for the next three weeks.

Their future was stolen from them. A future to be themselves. To want for only themselves and each other, the elfess thought in distaste as her dulled silver eyes chased them away from her alley.

The thought alone made her smirk. And here she thought they were selfish' There was probably something to be said about unconditional love, no doubt. She felt something of the sort for a certain man in her life. One who was slipping through her gloved fingers like the grains of sand burying the ruins of his ancestors. Ruminating on this, she felt the shallow burn of bile rising in her throat.

A rustling sound, however, brought her attention back to the present. Like a pendulum, her metallic gaze swung back to the break in the alley, where a child stood, frozen and silhouetted against the amber light emitted by a buzzing streetlamp behind him. He couldn't have been more than three, but the crystal blue eyes framed by a russet mop of messy curls seemed to gaze upon Sivanna with a kind of recognition or understanding that she wouldn't have attributed even to her foremost superiors back in Silvanost.

"Are you sick?" asked the child hesitantly, his voice colored with innocence as his stubby fingers fidgeted with one of the buckles to his weathered overalls. Sivanna smiled wryly.

"Yes. I suppose I am."

"Don't you have a doctor?"

Lashes obscured the elfess's vision as her gaze swept downward, images of a concerned Anya interrupting her brooding thoughts.

"She can't help me, I'm afraid."

The child took an unsteady, thick-legged step forward, stretching out a pair of chubby hands, and showing his dirty palms to her. "Don't be afraid. My mommy says that when it's over, you won't even remember being sick."

Sivanna opened up her mouth, then closed it, and smiled. This child was far wiser than many of the adults she knew.

I wonder" if I'd had a son with him, would he have been like you? she considered, her steel eyes softening. She allowed herself the luxury of that thought, the prospect of that future for only a moment before a gravelly voice rumbled past her alleyway. It cut through her reverie like a copper-tipped arrow and didn't permit her to return.

"Seamus! Come here, lad," bellowed the beast of a man from several yards away. For half a second, the child hesitated, as if he wanted to stay with her. The lines of her face smoothing, the cleric tipped her chin up in a gesture of absolution. He didn't belong in a filthy alleyway, and certainly not with someone as dangerous as she. What were his parents thinking letting him run off like that, anyway"

Without another beat, the freckled cherub wobbled back to his family. Sivanna almost smiled again, had not the revolting stink he left behind made her cover her mouth and her stomach heave.

It wasn't just him. The whole family smelled of the taint. She couldn't escape it now. It was closing in like a disease, cold and unseen, and smothering the citizens in their sleep. They woke as mindless walking corpses, completely unaware that everything around them had changed— that they were really just walking through a dream. No. A nightmare. It made her ill just to think about it.

Something moist that wasn't sweat rolled down her temple, followed closely behind by a rumbling, guttural thunder. It was half-swallowed, like the sky was clearing its throat. It had been warning her it seemed, for no sooner had Sivanna looked up than a steady shower began to pour onto her from above. The storm was rolling in from the south and looked dense, and the wind was rising. No doubt the torrential downpour would last a while.

With a sigh, the cleric heaved herself to her feet, staggering on stiletto heels rendered perilous stilts from gutter grime. Mindlessly she bent her knee and yanked the shoes off— first one, then the other— and let the things dangle from her index and middle finger by ruined suede straps. Some unseen current spurred her forward; perhaps a remnant of the Bond connection between herself and Alec told her to find shelter lest she be chastised. Her fleeting wanderings brought her through the alley and to a heavy oak door, and she became quite surprised at the amount of force it took to push it open. Once inside, an almost offensive fragrance of incense burned her nostrils. As she trudged forward it became bearable, and velvet greeted the aching, bare soles of her feet like the breeze over a burn. It made her sigh, and the outburst echoed too loudly against the insides of the building.

When she looked up to see why, Sivanna blinked, stunned at the sheer magnitude of the place. It was a magnificent feat of architecture from the inside. Perfectly-cut stones paved the floor beneath a scarlet carpet runner and climbed the walls, as if reaching upward with every intention to hang on the glorious, crisscrossed rafters offsetting— no, harmonizing the enormously peaked roof. Hundreds of mahogany benches lined up in perfect rows on either side of the spacious aisle, and for all the grandeur of the hall itself, for the brightly-colored windows that wept from the outside as rain poured upon them, the benches themselves seemed meek and small, humbled by a white marble altar situated in the front of the room. It passively occurred to Sivanna that this might be some kind of meeting place, but as she thought on it, she found her thoughts distracted by the sudden tremors that racked her body. It may not have been cold outside, but it was definitely freezing in this place, and she was soaked to the bone, with a skimpy black dress clinging to her slender form like a second skin. With a shiver, she wrapped her arms around herself.

"Good heavens, child. Are you all right?"

Steel eyes drifted upward to follow a balding, potbellied man in black as he waddled toward her with undue haste down the aisle. Beige crumbs that littered his white collar and the crumpled napkin in his hand told Sivanna that she had likely interrupted his late-night snack. She almost formed a smile.

"I am terribly sorry," the elfess managed, her teeth chattering. "Just trying to get in out of the rain, if that is all right."

"Yes, yes, of course!" bubbled the portly gentleman. He ducked into one of the pews and inspected what appeared to be a discarded suede jacket before he brought it over to her. In a stunningly affectionate gesture, the complete stranger hung it over Sivanna's shoulders and chafed his hands along her upper arms through the fabric.

"Come have a seat over here, my child," he suggested, gesturing at the nearest pew. When Sivanna complied, he lowered himself onto the bench beside her and curled an arm around her trembling form. For long moments, he didn't speak, only breathed very loudly and occasionally moved his hand up and down her arm. During that silence, Sivanna permitted herself to study the man. Craters of pores covered his cheeks and bulbous nose, filling into a stringy, trimmed beard that might once have been a very lovely blonde if not for the obvious years that time had bleached out of it. When he caught her looking at him, the man turned his pale blue eyes on the cleric and smiled warmly.

"Better?"

Sivanna stiffened and managed a tightlipped smile. "Yes. Can you tell me where I am?" she asked curiously, surveying the magnificent room once more briefly.

"Why, you are in the house of God," he said simply.

The cleric eyed him blankly. When he didn't elaborate, she said, "Which one?"

"The parish in West End," he explained. Sivanna shook her head.

"No. Which god?"

For a heartbeat, the gentleman stared at her. Then he laughed, and it was round and lively as the belly that rolled beneath his button-up and strained at his buttons.

"There is only one God," he replied smilingly. "The Father Almighty. Maker of all creation." When she gave him a flat look, he patted her knee. It was a charmingly parental gesture, and nearly made Sivanna laugh, given that she was likely old enough to be his mother twice over.

Her mirth, however, disappeared when she set eyes upon a vivid effigy hanging above the altar. Upon a rood of some sort was nailed the likeness of a weary man wearing only a cloth around his waist and a crown of thorns. Blood was painted onto his hands and feet in a way Sivanna could only describe as distasteful and repellant. Was that was the ornament was" A warning of some sort' A 'this is what happens when you do not follow our laws"' She scowled.

"Is your almighty god of the inclination to mock the human race?" the cleric asked, her hardened eyes not leaving the crucifix. The priest beside her was silent for all of two seconds before she felt him shudder beside her, like a chicken fluffing its feathers.

"No, my child," he responded patiently. "That is His son, Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for our sins, only to rise again in fulfillment of our scriptures."

Rising from the dead in this place wasn't nearly as impressive as it should have been. When Sivanna looked at the man again, he was still smiling. Overwhelming kindness bled out of his enormous pores like an odor and relinquished any indignation Sivanna might have felt. Her shoulders drooping, she dipped her gaze to his odd white collar, which clashed with the black suit he was wearing.

"What do they call you?"

If it were possible, the man's smile broadened. "They call me Father John. I am a priest at this parish."

Though the title took her by surprise, Sivanna nodded. "Forgive me if I seem crass, Father, but I fail to see how someone can banish the sins of mankind by dying."

By the way Father John looked at her, Sivanna imagined that he had spent centuries answering questions like these. The amount of patience and tranquility in his eyes reminded her of someone she loved very much, and it passively occurred to her that Alec might have made a good priest.

"Our lord Jesus Christ was born to die for the salvation of man. He became sin for us, so that we might be declared righteous through him." His palm turned up, and he spoke the next as if he were reading from a scripture, "The punishment that brought us peace was upon him."

Sivanna's lips twitched. "So now all of you are perfect and infallible?"

"Not at all. He merely took our sins into him so that we could live, and, when it came our time to pass on, to spend eternity with God."

The cleric let out a soft gust of air, feeling her mouth stretching around an inaudible chuckle. Just as soon as her amusement arrived, however, it passed, and her expression smoothed.

"For the taint," she murmured. "He was tainted himself."

The priest blinked a few times, but nodded, the bristle of his beard scattering some of the crumbs on his collar into his lap. "It is said that he died an accursed death in order to save us."

It was then that Sivanna finally laughed, only it was so weak and helpless that it could only shake her shoulders. The priest must have thought she wept, for his arm tightened around her.

"Our church sponsors many shelters, my child. They can help those in your condition rehabilitate." His voice was soft with concern.

As she looked up, Sivanna blinked. Rehabilitate" The suggestion brought a wry smile to her lips. She hadn't eaten a full meal, nor slept the whole night through in weeks, and probably looked like death. And here she came, barefoot, in the middle of the night, during a rainstorm, into a "house of God." It was no wonder the priest thought she was an addict.

"I'm fine, thank you," she replied, moving to shrug out of the suede jacket. By shedding the musky garment she also shed the man's embrace, which she had to admit was very comforting. Father John rose alongside her, his bushy brows furrowing as she padded back to the enormous doors and wrapped gloved fingers around the brass handle.

"At least stay for a cup of tea" You needn't go out while it is still raining," Father John protested.

The man's generosity nearly made Sivanna's heart wrench. Were there really people like this in Rhy'Din? "No, it's fine. I don't belong here, anyway," she rebutted, tilting a half-smile at the priest, who returned one.

"Our God is ever-present, and his arms are always open. He welcomes children of every race and walk of life."

Sivanna opened her mouth to reply, and then closed it again, her almond-shaped eyes rounding. Uttering a tiny rasp of a frustrated sound, she put her gloved palm on her forehead.

"Ever-present," she breathed. "Not gone forever, just' absent." Before the priest could respond, she held up a finger, and simultaneously heaved the door to the church open.

"Thank you very much," the cleric offered sincerely. Father John stepped out partially into the rain with her, a kind and concerned look on his face.

"You can always be saved, my child," he told her. "God will be always be waiting."

Sivanna smiled sadly. If she'd had more time, she might have figured this church into Riverview's charity sponsorships, or at the very least gotten to know this stranger better.

"I'm so sorry, Father," she replied softly. "But it is too late for that."





Stale water formed a puddle at Sivanna's feet ten minutes later as she stood in the living room of her own home. Not even the blazing fire at the hearth could banish the cold, sinking feeling that grew in her gut like a fit of nausea. Hers and her husband's home was usually a source of comfort for her, but not tonight. Not now. The soft glow of Ippon torchlights did not release her into a state of calm as it often did. Instead, her eyes were glued to the weapons harness hanging beside the hearth, which held a pair of SigSauer P229 pistols. Krynn had never seen weapons of this kind, and they had been as alien to her when she had arrived on Rhy'Din as had the unforgiving whirlwind of the rest of its impossible technology. They would have to do.

"Paladine help me," the cleric whispered. Steeling her resolve, she kissed the Fae Tear hanging around her neck and pulled one of the guns out of its holster.

He'd been about to take a step closer when he noticed a man walk up to her. Walk seemed like the wrong word, though. The tan-skinned dago hunched and skulked around the flames like he was part of them. Like all he had to do was stop breathing, and the night would swallow him up without complaint. He prowled over to the blonde's side stealthily until he was inches from her, but they didn't touch. Instead, the skinny, broad-shouldered fellow just shifted once and watched the fetid bonfire with her like they didn't care about the stink.

Dago, cholo' whatever he was, he was a little too light on his feet for Ben. He was either a f*ggot or an assassin, and Ben didn't want anything to do with either.

Leaning on the grime-coated wall to his left, Ben chewed off his thumbnail and spat it out. Maybe he could just wait until the guy left, and then follow the blonde until she got herself lost. West End wasn't a very forgiving place to spend a nightly stroll, anyway.

It wasn't until she moved again that Ben noticed she was barefoot. What kind of an idiot walks around barefoot in West End" You got hepatitis just from breathing in and out in that dump. Still, she circled around the fire leisurely, like she was going to pick up her dry cleaning.

That was when the source of the disgusting stink finally became apparent.

Another pair of feet was revealed where the blonde had been standing. It almost made Ben snort, considering that it took him this long to pinpoint the smell of burning flesh and the shape and color of a fire when it was fueled by sizzling fat and shriveling muscle. After all, Ben had experienced such a situation after he had chatted with his father about a certain loan. He thought the stink might never wash off.

But here he was, smelling it all over again. Only this time, some murderous blonde and her dago partner were doing the deed.

At least it gave Ben a chance to escape. He'd been around enough suspicious circumstances to warrant at least several years in the Watch House, even if the f*ggot blues couldn't pin him to his pops' disappearance.

"Always the pretty ones," he found himself mumbling back against the direction he came from. Still, Ben carried himself away from the happy trio as quickly as he could without running. No sense making a big deal and getting himself all wrapped up in crap that he didn't need. He had garbage bags to tie.

He was not halfway down the alley, however, before he felt all the wind rush out of his lungs as his back crashed against the wall he had been keeping close to.

Before he could even move his head, something soft and hard tightened around his throat, making it almost impossible to breathe. He clawed and flailed his arms in front of him, only to find that the body of his attacker wasn't there. Or, as it turned out, his arms weren't moving in the first place. Squinting ahead, Ben leveled his gaze on none other than the blonde from earlier. This time, though, her pretty eyes were completely black.

Just his luck she was a freak. He always had the best taste in women.

Ben's arms and legs were limp and useless as the blonde closed her fingers more tightly around his neck. He had the distinct impression he might have looked like a fish for how he was opening and closing his mouth, seeking oxygen that she would not surrender to him. Reeking of burnt flesh and soot, she leaned just centimeters away from his face, and spoke through her teeth.

"What did you see?" she hissed, her eyes darkening. Some horrible falling sensation washed over Ben and made him choke up vomit. She didn't move her hand, even as it bubbled over his lips and onto her gloves.

Ben wasn't a f*cking idiot. He wasn't about to become a potential witness to whatever the hell she had going on.

"No"thing?" he rasped. He might have thrown in a curse word if he had enough air in his lungs, but the b*tch was relentless.

"Are you lying to me?" she pressed, practically growling. She muttered something else he didn't recognize, and all of a sudden he could breathe just fine. The smell of soot and fire and vomit was swallowed up by a gust of something flowery. It reminded him of the jasmine that grew by his house when he was a kid. It was nice. Made him feel sleepy.

"What did you see?" she asked again.

Benjamin was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to tell her not only the truth, but his whole life's story. She would listen to him. She wouldn't judge him like everyone else. She just wanted to know the truth. There was nothing wrong with that.

The tender, silken embrace around his neck eased so that he could breathe in more of that wonderful smell.

"I saw you burning a body," Ben admitted with a smile, "with that cholo who looks like he has a stick up his as*."

He heard her cursing under her breath as she released him entirely, and felt the strange need to fall over and admire her from the ground. A need that was soon met, it seemed. The concrete that hit his head and whitened his vision temporarily didn't hurt, though.

It should have hurt, shouldn't it"

Looking up at her from below, the subtle angles of her jaw and shape of her eyes stirred a flicker of recognition in Ben. He felt the corners of his mouth stretching into a goofy, elated smile.

"Hey' I know you," he admitted, relieved that he placed her face at last. How could he have forgotten her" He had spent two hours getting one of those cutouts off the restaurant's front door a few months ago.

The scent of jasmine dwindled sharply as she looked back at him, stern.

"No, you don't," she hissed deliberately.

Disappointment didn't even register with him. The only thing he could think of was convincing her to listen to him. To believe him. To love him.

"Yeah, I do. You're that mage chick?" he began. Before he could finish, however, he felt her soft hand clamping over his mouth. The smell of jasmine ebbed more, and he became dimly aware of the rancid aroma of her glove. Revolting as it was, it cleared enough fuzziness out of his head to permit him to recognize fluent cursing when he heard it. Frustration was pretty much evident in any language. The hold over his mouth eased slightly as she looked over her shoulder.

"Don't think ill of me," she told someone in a strangled voice, "and please" Don't tell anyone about this," the mage stammered.

The jasmine was gone, and this b*tch was pinning him to the ground.

"I'm sorry," she was telling Ben tremulously when he looked back up at her. "I can't face this."

It sounded like a confession. What the hell was she doing confessing to him' He wasn't a damn priest.

Ben's eyes widened as he saw her lips move to say something he didn't recognize. The cover of her glove stifled a groan that escaped him as he felt an excruciating pain fill his skull.

He might have laughed. Only one thought ran through his head as he felt the darkness closing in.

Damn it. I forgot to double knot the bags.

((I sorely apologize that these past two posts have quite a bit of offensive language in them. The posts were in no way meant to be offensive, but only to give the reader a glimpse into the mind of the character and mentality of Benjamin Wise. I in no way harbor any of these views.))

At least one good thing came from lingering so long in town. By that time, the Clinic had no doubt emptied— not including the critical patients and overnight staff. The administrative wing would theoretically be completely vacant. It would give her the extra time to do her work in peace.

The squirming vermin scurrying around in the container under her arm were not much for good conversation, so Sivanna trekked back to the Riverview Clinic in relative silence. Save for the subtle click-clacking of patent leather heels tapping on pavement, the streets were soundless and nearly deserted. Only the occasional vendor packing up his wares or a love struck couple on an evening stroll meandered by. Not one of them paid any heed to a businesswoman on her way back to work to deliver one last thing for the night.

Because the Clinic itself was protected by Wards, it made apparation within nearly impossible. Certainly at some point in her career Sivanna could have confronted Anya about that particular inconvenience, but the good doctor already had so much on her plate— what, with being twice-married, once-engaged, and the Chief of Staff of an entire clinic— that she really didn't have any reason or right to be bothered with so trivial a matter. Besides, the cleric's stamina was poor enough to begin with. A little walking was good for her now and again.

Before much time passed at all, the elfess suddenly found herself entering through the sliding doors at the Clinic's entrance. Once again her keen Elvish eyes refocused, pupils shrinking abruptly at the intense glow the industrial overhead beams illuminated the lobby with. No would-be patients resided in the waiting rooms, but a single scrubbed nurse lingered at her workstation, and Sivanna paid her a polite nod. Without looking up, the younger woman lifted a hand in greeting, then resumed some kind of engaging virtual game on her computer console.

The hallway to her office was thankfully as empty as the waiting room and nearly as silent. Only the subtle jingle of Sivanna's keys as she palmed them and worked them into the lock and the dull hum of a nearby water cooler bounced off the matte walls and pristine white tiles under her feet. The closing of her door thundered uncomfortably loudly behind her, but hearing no approaching footsteps in alarm, the elfess merely locked her door from the inside and made her way over to her desk where a medium-sized metal cage with an electrical apparatus was set up. The enclosure was not very large at all— at least one-third the size of the container used to house rodents at the pet store she visited. Aside from a tiny platform and a light bulb attached close to the floor inside the cage, it seemed relatively unremarkable.

Well? unless one counted the pair of dead residents that lay within it.

Drawing up her lips into a neutral expression, Sivanna set her cardboard box beside the cage and removed the latch atop the latter that locked furry things inside. As she reached within to grab one of the rat carcasses and drop it into the wastebin beside her desk, disappointment— not disgust— colored her expression. That had been the fifth pair this week that had transpired during the course of her experiments. If she didn't perfect her methods soon, she would have to resort to buying test subjects from a medical supplier instead of a private retailer to avoid suspicion. That in and of itself was a bad idea, though. Ordering through the hospital meant providing adequate documentation, and though Sivanna was perfectly capable of falsifying product reports and destroying evidence of the entire process, since before Ali's retirement regulators had been keeping a close eye on any inconsistencies in Riverview's budget. She would not have been doing her job correctly if they were not. With all the new hires and recent resignations that had been going in and out of the hospital, the elfess had suggestively implied to the board that they might want to be especially vigilant of their financial operations, as not every employee had received a thorough background check yet. That, coupled with Sivanna's natural suspicion of the unfamiliar meant that a lot of new faces remained bookmarked by security. She didn't fault clinic staff for exercising caution— in fact, she had instructed them to do so. But dealing with bureaucrats was not a hurdle Sivanna was willing to overcome just yet. Not when she had so many other priorities garnering her attention.

Once the rats were safely in the waste receptacle, Sivanna removed her letter opener from her desk drawer and tore through the tape sealing the box to her recent purchases. Glowing red eyes peered up at her distrustfully from within, and as she reached inside, the male wasted no time in shrieking and sinking its fangs through the cleric's glove. Without hesitation or any kind of response, the elfess merely wrapped her hand around the rodent's throat and plucked it out of the container. When she made to insert the thing into its new home it still clung desperately to her forefinger, so she snuck another hand into the enclosure and pinched the rat roughly on the spine until it let go. With another squeak of protest it released her, giving her the opportunity to inspect the tear in her glove. Where there usually would be a fleshy tone contrasting black satin was merely more black. With morbid amusement, Sivanna had begun to consider her hands charcoal briquettes of sorts. She wondered if they burned as well.

Eyebrows twitching mildly in apathy, the cleric dropped into her chair and yanked a journal-sized leather-bound book out of her open desk drawer. The force with which it was dropped onto the flat surface of the desk itself caused the tome to land in an open position, where obvious reading and re-reading had cracked the spine and splintered the dried page glue in one area. Sivanna didn't need to look down to know it had landed on the page she needed. She had read it enough times to know the sound the right pages made when her gloves brushed reverently across them. It was an auditory form of Braille. The sticky purr the raised and depressed ink made when her fingers crawled across the words was beautiful and terrifying and all too memorable. Those words would be forever etched into her memory, and they would be something she would never forget.

And how very ironic that was, given what was actually written.

Letting out a sigh of weariness, Sivanna hooked a finger around the corner of the cage, where she prodded until she heard the telltale click of the electrical circuit switch. As the cage began to buzz and hum to life, she leaned back in her chair and reached again into her desk drawer, where a metal flask lay nestled there. As much concentration as was needed for this experiment, the cleric simply could not banish the brewing frustration that snarled in her gut like an angry beast. And for that, she helped herself to a sip from the flask.

The gnashing monster of dissatisfaction quieted against the burn of scotch at the same time the first electric shock was delivered to the floor of the cage.

Swiveling her chair away from the apparatus to peer through her window, Sivanna redirected her attention to the gentle sway of trees in the dark courtyard outside; willed herself to listen to the hiss of wind through drying leaves over the panicked shrieking from the terrified rat. Fall had arrived, but it would still be some time before the foliage exhibited any signs of the changing seasons. Her favorite time of year was the fickle spurt of life that thrived between Autumn Twilight and Autumn Dark. The oranges and golds never failed to remind her of Silvanost— a place she had found herself missing more and more lately.

By the time the ninth shock had been administered, the protests from the cage had ceased. Swiveling again, the elfess finally brought her face level with the apparatus and watched as the rat circled around the mesh floor of the cage. The circuit hummed to life exactly eighty seconds later, and when the light bulb attached to wall of the enclosure glowed red, Sivanna was pleased to see that the rat frantically scurried over to the rubber platform before it could be electrocuted with a charge that pulsed violently through the metal floor of the cage. She observed this behavior four more times to be certain, but every time the light bulb successively lit up, the rodent always scurried back to that platform without fail.

Satisfied, the cleric flicked a downward glance at the book caressing her elbow, then inhaled slowly. Her spine stiffened as she began to Draw. Dark magic all around her condensed, pulled, and centered in her person, not entirely unlike the mitotic process of cell division. When at last she felt the thrilling power of control passably focused, she opened her ink-filled eyes and gazed upon the rodent in concentration. Dead words once only on paper were given new life and domain as they escaped her lips in a harsh whisper. Deep within, Sivanna felt the tug and pull of dark magic as it left her form, pooled onto the floor of the cage, and crawled up the rat's feet until it smothered its cranium. With prudent calculativeness, she urged that magic further, until it penetrated the subject's skull and invaded the source of its mental faculties. There, she sought out the key to her research, and when she found it, she uttered a single Elvish word to release the spell.

But inside the creature's skull, Sivanna could already feel the creature's mind revolting against such a threatening invasion. Hardly a shriek of objection escaped the subject before all neural impulses ceased and the rat slumped over dead onto the rubber platform— just in time for another shock to be administered to the floor of the cage that singed its fleshy tail.

Curling her lip in aggravation, Sivanna flipped off the switch on the side of the cage and reached inside to yank out the carcass and toss it into her trashbin along with the other failures before it. Without hesitation she pulled the more docile female out of the adjacent cardboard receptacle and dropped it with renewed vexation into the apparatus, not even bothering to secure the lid. Turning the mechanism on once more, she watched this time as pulses of electricity were delivered to the floor of the cage. It took this subject only six charges to recognize that the platform was a point of safety within that makeshift torture chamber.

Perhaps women were smarter after all.

For the second time, Sivanna lowered herself to eye level with her subject, and for the second time she uttered the spell of release that consumed the creature's mind. But rather than introducing a flood of the toxin to search out the necessary location in his brain effectively, she utilized only a single tendril of dark magic to weave through neural circuitry and arrive precisely where she needed it to.

That was what it was about. Precision.

Uttering the single Elvish word, Sivanna watched on bated breath as the rodent twitched. She did not tear her eyes from the subject; waited for it to seize or shriek or fall over dead like the others.

But rather than tremble violently from brain damage, the rat blinked twice and casually strolled out into the center of the cage. The cleric did not breathe as it began an easygoing exploration of the enclosure, and then thrashed and shrieked vehemently as the red light bulb lit and it was electrocuted.

Six bouts of electrocution transpired before the rat once again learned where the point of safety lie.

Sivanna did not smile. It was not time to celebrate. The failure or success of this spell would never be cause for celebration. But she had at least perfected the method on a fundamental level. Now it was time to move on to something a little more complex.

Switching off the apparatus, the cleric leaned back in her seat and sipped from her flask as she began to mentally formulate the blueprints for a larger apparatus. She would have to move the experiments out of her office. A kennel-sized, electrified cage could not easily be hidden or explained in the middle of a hospital.

"You're the lucky one today," Sivanna murmured to her subject, patting the top of the cage affectionately before reaching into her desk drawer to procure a directory. Mindlessly she flipped the thing open and paged through it until she spotted the name of a business that appeared to specialize in collecting stray dogs. Etching the number down on a stray piece of paper, Sivanna tucked it into her coat pocket and collected the cage from her desk before moving back to her door.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

For every bit as shrill and irritating as Manny's voice had been, this one's was maddening and painfully arousing. She purred the words out like a lazy cat sated on cream, but spoke them with such sharp force they deserved teeth and claws. It gave him pause enough to gawk for a heartbeat, but not much sooner had she spoken than he wandered forward again, closing the distance between them.

"Oh come on, baby. You ain't even given me a chance yet," Wess crooned in reply, injecting as much sleazy charm into his persistent retort as he could muster. "At least get to know me first."

With agitation— or perhaps it was mere vexation— the blonde let the hand holding her clipboard drop to her side. She turned around to face him, then, glaring daggers at his person. But hell if that smoky look didn't turn him on even more. Her silver eyes glinted like they were filled with chrome.

"I don't have the time or the patience for this, human," the elf hissed in exasperation, her eyes narrowing derisively. "If you value your life, I highly suggest you walk away now."

If he valued his life" That drew a raspy chuckle out of him. What the hell was this skinny little piece of tail going to do' Throw a temper tantrum on his a**" Undaunted, Wess came within several feet of the woman, and nearly grinned maniacally with glee when she compulsively backed away from him and against the brick wall of a closed and boarded-up hardware shop.

"What's a pretty little thing like you doing walking around this late at night, anyway' I can be a good escort, you know," Wess continued until he was within six inches of her. Bracing a hand against the wall beside her head, he tilted his eyes down the elf's fitted blouse through a curtain of black bangs and cracked a lecherous smile as he surveyed her assets.

"This is your last chance," she snapped firmly, tipping up her chin to look down her nose at him. "Leave right now, or I promise you'll regret it."

Wess considered himself lucky that he didn't see the set of keys to the clinic on the elf's immediate person. At least this way he could justify a thorough frisking. But then again, he highly doubted Jesse would care what he did with her, as long as he brought the product back.

"No chance in hell," he replied, growling deep in his throat as he dropped the hand at her head to clutch hungrily at the curves under her blouse. His other immediately went about skirting the hem around her tiny waist to feel for any lumps the keys might have made underneath her clothes. How many places did she have to hide them' Jesse had been so sure she had them on her; said she had left the clinic holding them and had gone straight to the shelter. Then why, as he assaulted her body with his hands, did he feel absolutely nothing of the sort"

Even more surprisingly, the elf didn't squeal or weep as he expected her to. Rather, her lip curled up in annoyance as she dropped her clipboard, curled her fingers into fists, and pressed firmly against his chest. She seemed to be mumbling some kind of vitriolic foreign language under her breath, but it certainly wasn't out of fear.

She wasn't afraid. Wess would have to remedy that.

Setting his jaw, Wess wrapped his fingers roughly around the elf's wrists, which he was surprised again to find were covered with long white gloves. No matter. Exercising every bit of his brute strength, he yanked them violently above her head and pinned them forcefully against the brick wall behind her. His smile grew as he heard a single pained cry escape her lips. The bottoms of those gloves rumpled and scrunched up her arms as he collected both her wrists under one hand and dipped a free set of fingers to hook around the hem of her skirt and pull upward. As he gazed upon her face, Wess became invariably pleased at the stricken, fearful expression she suddenly wore. Good. She was frightened. She had every right to be, with what he was going to do to her.

She wasn't looking at him, though. She was looking where he held her captive.

Looking up, Wess followed her gaze, where his fingers lingered on the bare skin of her wrists. His mouth dipped in disgust as he peeled his hand away, eying the black, dead-looking skin there.

"The f***??" he asked slowly, just in time to experience the sharp and all too familiar feeling of a knee in the groin. Cursing loudly, he crippled over in pain and only watched the backs of the blonde's calves as she scurried away.

"Come back here, you b*tch!" Wess hollered, finally feeling enough of the ache ebb to begin a sluggish trot behind her. That trot slowed again, however, when a new pain consumed him— one the likes of which he had never felt before. Looking down, Wess half expected to find his palm on fire where it had touched her, it burned so god damned much. Though nothing appeared to be outwardly wrong with it, he donned a panicked expression and began shaking his hand out wildly, attempting to extinguish flames that weren't there.

"F*** it burns!" he shouted, wiping it on his jeans. Spying a puddle of leftover rainwater on the sidewalk, he raced across the street and dropped to his knees, dousing his hand in the murky water. It didn't do much good. The pain was getting exponentially worse. Unable to silence himself, he began screaming, wetting and staining the front of his shirt as the dirty water splashed all over him. Behind his shouting, he heard the distant voice of something or someone appealing, but at the present all he could focus on was the pain.

Two feet suddenly appeared in the puddle in front of him at the same time two soft hands cupped his cheeks and pulled upward. He stared into the eyes of his would-be victim, only this time they were filled with worry and panic.

"Look at me!" she commanded, her voice straining to be louder than his screams. "It burns" Show me where it burns." When he didn't move, Wess watched her lips twitch and form a word. Suddenly it grew very quiet, as all that escaped his mouth was air.

"It burns?" she insisted hoarsely as she reached down to pull his hands up and inspect them. "Where you touched me, it burns?"

Wess only nodded pathetically, his hands shaking violently where she held them. Someone somewhere was rejoicing in the poetic irony of the situation.

"I don't' I don't know how to' I don't know why?" the blonde stammered, her gaze swinging up to meet his, suddenly filled with pleading.

What the hell did she want from him' She had her payback. She should at least help him. He didn't deserve this. Well....not really, anyway. She was f***ing saved. He wouldn't touch her. So this could stop now.

For what felt like eternity, the elf merely stood there, looking between his hands and his face, as if trying to decide something.

If she was going to do something drastic like cut his hand off, the least she could do is give him fair warning.

Her eyes seemed to glaze over as she whispered. "Alec, what do I?""

At the same time, however, his voice returned, and Wess found himself screaming again as the pain intensified.

Blinking furiously back to reality, the blonde once again donned a terrified expression. She dropped to her knees there in the puddle in front of him and once again took his face between her hands.

"Shh' shhhhh?" she pleaded, her golden eyebrows knitted together in agony. He watched as her pretty chrome eyes suddenly became as black as the night around them.

F***. Of all the people Jesse had to send him in after, this one had to be a witch.

Just as Wess tried to turn away and hightail it away from the voodoo chick, he felt a growing throb in his head, followed by a comfortable yet dizzying warmth. As his vision swam, he got the distinct impression he was being held closely, like his mother used to hold him and his brother before she died.

"Forget your pain," a whisper echoed in his thoughts.

Three weeks earlier"

Only in the case of a verified blood contract may a paradoxical relationship with a son or daughter of the High God be considered absolute. A blood contract may be effectively engendered by the invocation of deitific influence in congruence with hieratic succor. Once the status of undeath has been achieved, the blood contract is considered partially paid"

Sivanna didn't bother to read on. With a frustrated sigh, she slapped the ancient tome shut, spraying the gray upholstered arm of her comfortable seat with a fine film of dust and mold particles. Across the rounded antique drop leaf table before her that was laden with several stacks of like-colored books, a slender half-elf shed her a sympathetic glance.

"Another bust?" the girl asked, scrunching her nose as she scratched at her temple boredly.

"Another how-to on becoming undead," the cleric replied, depositing the tome she had been reading back onto the table, which wobbled and sagged under the unbalanced weight. Shifting in her seat, she folded her hands behind her head and turned her gaze idly onto the impossibly tall cedar bookshelves to her immediate right. From the outside, the antiquarian bookshop had seemed a tiny, unremarkable little thing, squirreled away in an overlooked part of the Marketplace that accommodated the collectors and the nostalgia-seekers in Rhy'Din. But inside, the establishment's design was well thought out. Bookshelves lined the walls instead of making crowded aisles strictly for maximizing or economizing output or space. The only free furniture that covered the open floor itself was a charming collection of armchairs, two tables, and two settees complete with side tables equipped with shaded lamps. The matte cream color of the walls and felt carpeting had long since faded into a bland beige that vaguely reminded Sivanna of an anemic liver cancer patient; well, if liver cancer patients could live their lives covered in coating of dust as thick as their skin.

"Krynnish folk are awfully obsessed with being undead, aren't they?" the half-elf retorted, plucking up a pen and crossing something off the list on a clipboard in front of her. As she stuck the writing utensil behind a softly pointed ear, her cropped raven hair feathered out delicately and seemed to shape her porcelain face into a long heart. In any other circumstance, Sivanna might have rebuked the alluring young woman for keeping such a beautifully colored mane so short, but the pixie curl of the half-elf's nose and the elegant length of her neck seemed to compliment the freshness and neatness of the cut. Besides, she would have rebuked her companion even further if she had made any attempts at hiding the striking set of olive-colored eyes her bangs framed. They were far too vibrant to disguise behind a mop of shaggy locks.

"I don't blame them," Sivanna replied conversationally, lifting herself to hitch up the legs of her slacks and re-seating herself as the numb repercussions of hours of study set in. "You have to understand that things like vampires and zombies just weren't as common back on Krynn as they are here."

It wasn't until she said it that Sivanna realized her error. A tiny, apologetic chuckle escaped her as she pressed a gloved palm to her forehead.

"I'm sorry, Faith. I keep forgetting."

The dazzling smile that the half-elf returned was enough to make the stars themselves envious.

"That's quite all right, Sivanna," she replied, giggling effervescently. "You don't see many other Krynnish people here, do you?"

"Counting you? I've seen maybe three, and I've lived here almost three years now."

"Yeah, it's a big change," Faith agreed, nodding a little too enthusiastically and sending the pen flying over her shoulder. Rather than clumsily chase after it, however, she merely retrieved another from the table and smoothly slid it back into place over her ear. "When my mom brought us here, she was pretty relieved that all the humans spoke Common, though. Not very good with languages, you see."

"Your mother is human?" Sivanna asked curiously, happy for the opportunity to finally engage in real conversation. The past three hours had been filled with naught but the sounds of pages turning and indignant grumbling.

"Sure was. Dad was Silvanesti, but she never told me much more about him, so I gather that they didn't talk much after I was born. At least he gave me the cool ears." Faith punctuated that statement with a manicured gesture to the points peeking out of her feathery raven hair like snow-capped mountains past dusk.

Her use of the past tense almost prompted Sivanna to offer her condolences, but instead her attention zeroed in on the mention of Silvanost.

"Oh' he was" Oh?" At the blank look from Faith, Sivanna held up her palms penitently. "Forgive me! I didn't mean?"

The half-elf only giggled, flapping a hand in dismissal. "Forget about it. I know, I know. The Silvanesti aren't the biggest fans of humans at all. Believe me, I got enough of that back on Krynn for it not to affect me."

The cleric's gut twisted in shame. Leaning forward, she sought to make further amends.

"I'll have you know, I married a very handsome man who may as well be human by Silvanesti's standards. We're not all of us like that, arwenamin."

Faith's nose wrinkled girlishly before she pulled a white cardigan off the back of her seat and slipped her long, bare arms through the sleeves.

"Yeah' That's really brave, you know," she replied, dipping her head to meticulously fasten each of the sweater's buttons all the way to her collarbone.

"What is?"

"Getting the heck out of dodge for the sake of love. It must have sucked for you guys in Ansalon. The fact that you came all the way here just to be together is kind of ridiculously romantic." Faith looked up and made a dreamy expression. "Makes me want to give up the antiquated collectors' business and start reading romance novels again."

Sivanna's lips pressed together wryly, but she didn't bother to correct the half-elf. It was probably infinitely better that Faith didn't know about her background, given the kinds of research the cleric had asked her to help with.

"But you do this so well," the elfess offered across the table through a charming smile, fanning her hand once outward to the collection of leather-bound tomes threatening to buckle the table beneath them, despite that it was less than one-fifth their age. It had taken Sivanna extensive research of her own to locate a collector like Faith in Rhy'Din. Her Krynnish library was almost as extensive as the Tower of High Sorcery itself. And the fact that a large portion of her collection was comprised of books on necromancy, or that she was originally from Krynn was either a remarkable coincidence, or a very interesting turn of events that she would have to ruminate on. Nuitari forbid she begin considering fate, though. The last thing Sivanna wanted to do was to think like her husband, Alec. As soon as she started thinking like him, she would probably start eating like him. And she really, really hated meat.

Date: The fourth Gateway of Autumn Harvest; September 26 by the local calendar Location: Twilight Isle

The locals here in Rhy'Din call today the Sun day, though I honestly cannot understand why. No more or less sun comes on this day than on any other. Perhaps it is yet another means of finding excitement in the mundane. When there are no celebrations to plan for, one must compensate by creating small victories on a regular basis. I used to believe that my condition permitted me the license to rejoice in small things. But on the contrary; it feels precisely the opposite. I have never been an easy Kin to please, but as the days stretch on, I only find myself getting more and more frustrated with what I have not accomplished. I would not be so vain as to curse a higher power for that indignation. No, I take all the resentment into myself, where it has always dwelled and on occasion surfaces.

As Hiddukel's month draws near, I find myself growing more and more uneasy. A rather entertaining notion, given the consideration that the Prince of Lies is perhaps the god with whom I should commiserate most with. For as I smile and plan and accomplish frivolous tasks, I turn my back and exploit this city's resources in search of a solution. More and more nights are being spent away from home, and it is only a matter of time before Alec begins to feel the sting of an empty bed. I know. I have felt it many times before, and it is never a good thing.

He will not confront me. It is not his way. But he will doubtlessly ruminate on these circumstances until he reaches a familiar conclusion: That I am untrustworthy. If I do not readily proffer information, I am keeping it from him, and violating the soul Bond we share.

I should tell him where I spend my nights. It is no large secret I keep. He knows of what will inevitably transpire. He has known for some time how I weep that I cannot feel his face between my bare hands. He knows how cold I feel when I am not in his arms. He knows that I dwell on things too much. He knows me.

Then why is it I still hesitate" Why is it that even though my mind is offered freely to him, I still feel the desperate compulsion to close it off"

Perhaps it is better that I am spending the night away. Perhaps he knows my thoughts even now.

I find it hilariously ironic that my studies lately have been conducted waterside. I loathe water. It terrifies me. And yet lately I have found a beautiful comfort in its danger. It is as though Zeboim does not laugh at me, but speaks to me. She sings of inevitability. It is a melody I have learned to admire for its simplicity.

Tomorrow I complete the second phase of my experimentation. I regret the incident that transpired recently with the soul in West End, as I was forced to utilize a method I have not had the chance yet to perfect. Still, I am relieved that utilization appears to have no obvious consequences.

Yet another book stolen from Faith's collection has proved useless. I must end this entry for now; if I do not return it, she will surely detect the omission.

Yours, Sivanna Arillae

Just as John reached again absently for his snack, a knock at the door nearly made him jump. He didn't need half a second to guess what guilty conscience was back for another penance.

"If you must, you may say a rosary this evening as well," John recommended through the door as an afterthought, taking up the Danish and setting it on his knee. Mrs. Cowen always did have a problem with guilt. So who knew— Perhaps a few extra prayers would help her overcome it. Then again, it hadn't the last eleven years John had known her.

"I'll keep that in mind," came a much younger voice as the door creaked open.

John started quickly, nearly sending the precariously plated pastries into a pile on the dark green threadbare carpeting of the study. Thankfully, his round belly provided some kind of leverage, and he managed to save the desserts before they became fodder for the carpet mites. Pivoting in his chair, John squinted toward the doorway, blinking as he espied a slender, albeit dirty familiar face.

"May I come in?" a pair of hazel eyes asked hesitantly.

"Of course, my child," John replied, waving her inside with a merry smile. "It's good to see you. How have you been, Delilah?"

"You know I hate that name, Padre. It's just Dee," said the door before it whined and gave a voice to a long stretch of skinny bones and olive-colored skin. Dee entered in a most peculiar way; rather than fully opening the door, she only held it open a large crack and sucked air into her ribs as she slipped inside snugly. It was almost as if she expected the entryway to be spring-loaded; that it would slam shut on her face if she applied too much force to it. But that had always been Dee's way. As far as John knew, her father had been from Amistad and her mother a Caucasian from Earth. A child of two worlds, she had never really fit in anywhere, and despite all John's efforts to make her feel included, she still behaved like an abused stray in the face of kindness. Everything was treated with suspicion and wariness. John had prayed for her, knowing personally the many times she had been offered generosity in one hand while being beaten with the other. It had taken three months just to get her to confess her worries to him, and even that was nearly impossible. Thus, that Dee had come to visit him personally surprised him immensely, though he would not let it be read on his face.

"Of course, Dee. Forgive me. You are nothing like a Delilah, anyway," John responded quickly, beaming her a fond smile. He gestured gently at the armchair across from him as she crept further into the room. She was all knees and knobs, Delilah was. From what John had gathered she was no more than eighteen, though years of secondhand smoke added years to her face. Her long, skinny torso and the razor-sharp cut of her shoulders made her a walking paper crane— an image all the more fitting for the way she bowed her back like a crooked question mark in readiness. Dee always looked like she was poised to fly away.

With a life like hers, John couldn't blame her.

"Aquella mujer que cut that dude's hair, no?" Dee asked, folding herself into the chair across from him uneasily.

"The very one," John affirmed. When he offered her a scone, she shook her head nervously, rubbing her palms on her filthy, cigarette-burned jeans. "What's on your mind, Dee?"

She didn't answer at first, and the shiny white scar that stretched from her right nostril to the point of her chin made a backwards "c" as she frowned. Just as John considered pressing, however, Dee hopped out of her chair and began pacing around the room.

"I know you don't owe me nothing, Padre. And I know this don't exactly concern you," she stammered, threading her stained fingers through the messy mop of black curls atop her head. The grimace of the cobra tattooed on Dee's arm bent and sneered at John from all the wrong angles, eying him like lunch. "But I don't know where else to go' or who to turn to."

As Dee wrung her hands and stared pathetically at her scuffed sneakers, John rose from his seat and crossed over to her. He took her hands in his gently and sought to catch her gaze, willing her to take some of his patience and accept some of his understanding. She probably wouldn't, but the mere fact that she had come to him with her problems honored him. Perhaps that meant he had finally reached her.

"You may tell me anything, my child," John murmured reassuringly, giving her knuckles a gentle squeeze. "What is it?"

Dee's eyes were heavy with dread when they met John's again. "It's Wess," she admitted tentatively. "He's been acting" extra"o lately. Weird."

'Weird' wasn't entirely out of John's vocabulary, and very likely in someone like Wesley's repertoire. After all, until recently Wesley had made a living off selling powdered sugar to cocaine addicts. He could be a troubled young man at times, and not a terribly good influence on Delilah. "How do you mean?" John asked.

"He rambles, Padre. Keeps saying he can't remember something important, but he knows it's coming."

"What's coming?" John retorted, concerned.

"Yo no s"," she replied sullenly, chafing her ashen elbow with the opposite palm. "I found him after he been wandering around for two days, and he didn't know where he was. Es loco. It's crazy. He just keep saying he was looking for 'it.' He say he can follow 'it' by the smell. He say everything stinks except what he's looking for." She paused, likely contemplating her next utterance, then tilted her gaze up to meet the priest's. "If I bring him here, Padre, will you talk to him?"

John frowned. Wesley had a habit of getting himself into trouble, but John had met him twice on Dee's request and he knew that Wesley was anything but eccentric. He was a very calculated young man, and very smart for his age despite all evidence to the contrary. Though Wesley had only said three words to him and shaken his hand once when Dee had brought him to Easter mass, John had discovered countless things about him. He had always been good at reading people. It was probably why he had solved the most cases of anyone in the unit when he carried a badge.

But all that didn't matter anymore. It wasn't his job to be critical, and he needed to stop thinking like that.

"Of course I will, Dee," were the words John heard leaving his mouth. The prayer beads he suddenly held that pressed painfully into his palm were his own personal stigmata, pulling his attention back to where it belonged, and not in the mind of some wearied detective that died along with all those people in Amistad. "But it sounds to me like Wesley needs help. Maybe if I made a call to the clinic?"

"It's got to be you!" Dee burst out suddenly, taking fistfuls of his black button-up shirt. "He won't talk to nobody else. You can help him, Padre, I know it!"

The gesture had startled John, but not nearly as much as her words had. While John had some doubts about being able to reach Wesley and guide him back to the path of righteousness, the plea from Delilah must have meant he had restored some faith in her. Maybe he could still be her salvation. He wouldn't let her down now.

"Very well," he replied patiently, taking a hold of her hands and easing them off his clothing. He gave them another reassuring squeeze before letting go. "If you bring him here, I will speak to him."

The relief in Delilah's face was evident immediately. For a moment she looked about to embrace John, but at the last second changed her mind and wrapped her long, lanky arms around her midsection instead. "Gracias, Padre. I bring him here tomorrow." She gave a nervous glance to the clock perched on an end table in the study. "I better go. Jesse asks questions when I'm out too late."

Just as she turned on her heel and made back for the door, John spoke up.

"Dee" did you give any thought to that other thing we talked about?"

Half-pivoting in place, Delilah eyed John a moment, then put her hand over her stomach and engaged the floor in meaningful conversation. "S"" I've" I've decided to keep it."

"Delilah?" The use of her full name brought her pretty hazel eyes back up to him. "That's a better decision than what you had previously considered, but' are you sure" That is a lot of responsibility for someone so young as you."

"Yo s", Padre," she replied, pressing her hands harder over her abdomen. "But I can't stand the thought of some other mujer raising it in this town." A soft, beautiful smile bloomed on her lips, her gaze soliciting understanding from John. "Besides" I love him, so es bien."

"All right, Dee. I'll make some calls, and see if I can't find you a good doctor." Inwardly, John made a mental note of pressing Wesley to visit the clinic as well, to ensure he didn't have any hereditary conditions that could be passed down that might endanger another life. As he watched Dee stroking her stomach lovingly, John smiled and reached to pat her on the shoulder. "Do not fear, my child. All of this is happening for a reason."

Delilah grabbed his hands suddenly and bent forward to press a fervent kiss to his cheek. Though she turned away immediately afterward, John could feel the wetness that had carried over from fresh tears.

"Gracias, Padre," he heard her whisper before she swung the door open wide and hurried out of the study.

John considered calling after her, but the broad entryway that Dee had left open silenced him with a happy smile on his face.

Turning back into the study, John collapsed into his chair as exhaustedly as if he had just run a marathon. Just as he reached for his cheese Danish again, he frowned, flexing his hands repeatedly.

Not seconds later, Mrs. Cowen's voice sounded behind him.

"Anything else you need before I leave for the night, Father?" asked Edith tiredly from his doorway.

John turned his head to regard the elderly woman, who looked as though she had just followed through four Stations of the Cross masses on her knees.

"Just one thing, thank you," he replied smilingly. "Would you mind turning the AC up? I can't feel my hands in this place."

For long moments, Aelik merely watched her, blinking in surprise. Suddenly, he burst out laughing. "And here I thought you were behaving as something more than a petulant child," he replied breathlessly, wrapping elegantly tapered fingers around Sivanna's wrist and pulling gently. "Come along, my lady," he added, shaking his head smilingly. But what she said wasn't just the incessant rambling of a nine-year-old. Digging her nails into Aelik's wrist, Sivanna tugged against him. "No!" she shrieked, her entire body writhing as she strained to tear herself free. "I'm not just some piece of furniture that's ignored until it finally becomes useful! Let me go!" The elf's mirth dissipated at her pleas. Glowering at her, Aelik took her arm in both hands and bent his waist to create better leverage against her dug-in heels. "I'm not going to let you go, Sivanna, so you may as well stop fighting me." When she shrieked again and kicked at his ankle, Aelik's fine mouth turned up into a grimace and he uttered vitriolic oaths at her in Elvish. "That is enough, Sivanna! Behave yourself!" The sounds of bells that often rang at twilight drifted through the trees and drew Aelik's attention for a split-second. That was enough. Diving forward, Sivanna sunk her teeth into his wrist at the same time she kicked him hard in the groin. He may have been only thirteen, but Aelik had developed plenty enough anatomy for the latter blow to be effective. As he recoiled with a grunt, the elfess sped from him and raced away as quickly as her feet could carry her. When she heard her name being yelled behind her and the sound of Aelik's surer, faster feet, she detoured and darted down the short pier that led out into the lake. It wasn't until she reached the end of it, however, that she realized she had trapped herself. Trembling with the rush of adrenaline, Sivanna slowly turned around to see Aelik edging"and limping— warily toward her with his hands outstretched. "Come along now, Lady Sivanna. It's very dangerous for you here. Come with me, and we'll talk. Just talk." "It won't make a difference," Sivanna lamented, wiping her nose on her sleeve. That she could not swim did not bother her any more than the panicked way Aelik regarded her as she edged backwards. "Nobody listens! They wouldn't care if I disappeared forever!" "You don't know this yet," Aelik replied patiently, his eyes taking on a strangely serene quality to them, "but you and I" we're too young to presume to know what other people think or believe." Wisdom poured out of him hurriedly as she finally ceased her flight and rooted in place. Slowly, his eyes climbed her petite form and narrowed sympathetically on her face. "If you want things to change, you need to understand that recognition comes at a cost." He paused as she paid him the most quizzical look, then added, "You will need to make them hear you." Sivanna opened her mouth again to speak, but before she could, Aelik had her hand gently in his again. "Come along, now. Step careful—" That was as much as she heard over the loud crack of the weak, wooden plank beneath her snapping under both their weights. She watched in slow motion as Aelik's right leg fell through the gap and hurt him again somewhere already tender. Then, his worried image turned upside down as she lost her balance and pitched over the edge of the pier. There were many reasons Sivanna had never learned to swim, and her father had had a say in most of them. It wasn't until that second that she finally understood what he'd meant when he said that water was a torturous paradise to land-folk. It was divine and life giving; granted all creatures a beautiful sense of weightlessness and omnipotent, uninterrupted connection to the world around them. But then their lungs began to burn, and they learned what true hell was. Sivanna felt none of the peace she had read some sailors experienced when they fell overboard. There was only blind panic. And as she thrashed and kicked and screamed, seeing only white and blue and pain, she felt the burning in her chest become a crushing weight that threatened to snap her in half. The water rushed into her lungs, smothering her screams in cruel silence and stealing the light from her eyes. A pauper's punishment for daring to live. A mortal's punishment for daring to breathe. Even as she felt an ache in her shoulder and a brief bout of weightlessness, she forced herself to remember what she knew: that there was always a price to being heard. "Come on, Sivanna. I'm not letting you go, now breathe damn it!" Something hard and powerful struck her back and lit the flames behind her eyes. When she opened them the first time, she saw his beautiful green gaze. But when she opened them a second time, it had much more gold than she remembered. "Alec?" she breathed. Even in the darkness of their bedroom, his mesmerizing hazels were unmistakable. "You were tossing," he explained softly, stroking gently at her cheek. "Are you—" Before he could finish, Sivanna turned into him, wrapped her arms around him in a vise-grip and buried her face into his neck, shuddering from silent sobs. She felt his hand smooth over her hair soothingly, which only made her tighten her embrace. "Alec" I" I?" she gasped. "Dai'sha," he whispered tenderly, "it's all right. I'm not going to let you go."

"Problem here, Father?" called an authoritative voice from the doorway. John was immediately overcome with relief at recognizing the silhouette the setting sun made against Constable Anderson's spry form. The new presence drew the orc's attention and deflated him slightly. With growling reluctance, he let the tray go and grumbled defensively at the Watch officer. The remaining crowd dispersed out the door behind Anderson as he made his way inside and approached the altercating pair.

"What's say we leave these nice people alone, eh Jonesy?" When the orc didn't move, Anderson put his hand over the blaster holstered at his hip and narrowed a look at him. "Don't want to have to waste a cell on you again, buddy. Move along, huh?"

The orc let out a series of grunts and snorts.

"Yeah, yeah. You're breaking my heart, Jo. There's the door." When at last the officer flicked the button open on his holster and held the weapon's grip tightly, the orc begrudgingly inched away from Faith, who was still piercing him with a defiant, olive-green gaze.

"You take care now, Father," Anderson offered over his shoulder as he escorted the bulky creature toward the door to the establishment. "And be careful on the walk home, you two. There've been a whole lot of abductions and missing persons lately."

"Of course, Officer. Thank you very much," John returned politely, taking up a tired lean against the tiled wall behind the counter. When the orc grunted something guttural over his shoulder at Faith, John heard the half-elf let out a thick, ballsy laugh that shook her tiny frame from the roots of her feathery hair to the tips of her bare toes.

"Kiss your mother with that mouth' I'd like to see you try!" she shouted after him just as the door closed.

Emille, the freckled young lad on probation shuffled up to John while Faith made herself busy climbing down from the yellow-tinged, plastic precipice. Compared to the other volunteers, Emille had shown the most enthusiasm in his duties"an interesting happenstance, given that he'd arrived on John's doorstep a foul-mouthed fae dust dealer fresh from the halfway house. But Emille had come a long way from being that resentful fellow shoving a community service slip at John; these days, he even performed his duties smilingly.

"You uh' want me to like" mop or something?" Emille grunted uncomfortably as he pulled his apron over his head and surveyed the damage. That day had been a better one than most, and all that was left to do was dispose of the residual trash, sweep, and lock up. But John knew that Emille had his girlfriend and a new baby girl to take care of. And besides, it wasn't like John didn't need the exercise.

"That's all right, Emille. You go on home," John replied, taking the lad's apron with a smile. "You be careful on the way, though, there've been—"

?"abductions. Yeah, I heard him," Emille interrupted, wiping crumbs of bread off his flannel shirt. "See you next week, Father."

"Next week," John affirmed with a merry rosebud of a smile. When he heard the back door close behind Emille, he slumped against the counter and ran his hand over his face.

"You okay, pops" You look absolutely beat," tittered Faith's bubbly, charming voice from his right.

"Just worried, Faith," he sighed, grazing his nails over the makings of another beard. Briefly he considered whether it was worth shaving it off again. "So what was that all about?" he asked the half-elf, tipping his chin at the platter of leftover sandwiches"all of which smelled like dead cat by then.

"Some fool thinks he can walk off with the whole dang kitchen," Faith fumed, yanking up the sleeves of her white cardigan so she could cross her arms appropriately. "I don't care if he's as big as a dumpster. One sandwich apiece. We keep giving people seconds"or thirds"and the kids like Lizzie don't get anything."

Guilt festered and foamed in his chest like regurgitated soda.

"You saw that, huh?" John sighed. "I guess I should actually practice what I preach. She's just so thin these days; it seems like a strong breeze will blow her over."

"It would probably take less than that. Is that what is worrying you?" The half-elf collected a pair of brooms from beside the dinky refrigerator and proceeded to hand one over to John. He took it with a pleasant smile, but shook his head.

"Only one of many, many things, my dear. And then there's the disappearances. Norm hasn't shown up here for the past two weeks. Neither has Rachel."

"Maybe they found somewhere else to eat?"

John shook his head, trying to slow the accelerated way his brain was functioning to deduce facts'something he'd trained himself to do when he wore a badge. "No one has seen them at all, and then there's Wesley."

Faith paused in her sweeping to look up at John sadly. "That kid you were telling me about' Is there no change?"

John felt his throat dry. "I don't know how to help him, Faith. When he's not catatonic, all he does is ramble about skeletons and dirty things. Dee doesn't want me to, but I think I'm going to have to call the clinic and have someone more qualified see him."

The fine line of Faith's brow furrowed. "What do you mean, dirty things?" she asked in the midst of a series of confused blinks.

"He thinks everything is dirty. Er" contaminated, I think was what he said." John sighed, feeling his years catch up with him, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a sore knuckle. Contaminated things" Was that what Wess had been going on about' It seemed off. What had it been" Filthy' Infected" Infected sounded closer" It wasn't like he had been terribly specific when John had visited him at the Riders" garage. Not much of what Wesley said had made sense, anyway. Besides, John was more concerned with how he was behaving than what he was actually saying. "To be honest, the look in his eyes reminds me a little of?" his voice trailed off, suddenly realizing exactly whose company he was in.

But it was too late: "Reminds you of what?"

Inwardly, John kicked himself for doing his think-out-loud thing. It was one of his worst habits, and one he still couldn't shake despite the fact that he'd been out of the detective game for some time now. He thought about finishing his thought with a white lie or deflecting her question, but Faith wasn't the kind of personality to just let matters drop.

"Well" do you remember those refugees on Tresora?" He immediately regretted bringing it up, for Faith's face blanched and tears welled up in her eyes almost immediately. While his vocation demanded utmost honesty, in times like this he saw it as a curse. He had no right to bring up Tresora to Faith"not after what he'd heard had happened to her family in those terrible fires. Not after what had happened to her.

When she replied at last, Faith's voice was weak. "I try not to," she admitted. John leaned his broom on the counter and reached to grip the half-elf's shoulder sympathetically.

"You're absolutely right, Faith. I shouldn't be saying these things to you. I'm very, very sorry." He was reaching for his broom when he heard her speak again.

"No, Father. Don't be sorry. I'll do anything for you; listen to anything you want." She paused to swallow, her knuckles whitening around her broom as she seemed to see ghosts behind her eyes. "If you hadn't found me when you did, that fire would have" I probably would have?"

"Shhh' It's in the past, my child," John replied, moving to wrap his hand around hers and squeeze it gently. "Don't even think on it. I was just saying things without being considerate of whom I was speaking to. I'm sorry, Faith."

A tiny, demure bow of a smile blossomed on the girl's lips, and for a minute John figured she could have been mistaken for a cherub. "I'm glad you were there, Father. And here, now." The tearful grin she gave him made him tighten his grip around hers before she added, "Rhy"Din needs more people like you."

"And you, my dear," he replied sincerely, a smile of his own dimpling his round cheeks. "Heaven knows Rhy"Din needs more books, too!"

A girlish, effervescent giggle escaped Faith. "Heck yes, they do!" After a beat, Faith took his broom and pointed to the door. "I tell you what. Why don't I take care of things back here, and you pick up on the other side and lock up" We'll get done twice as fast."

John nodded and turned his waddle in the direction of the door. "Got somewhere to be tonight?"

The half-elf puffed some air at her wispy black bangs with a delightful smile. "I have two new books with my name on them!"

Chuckling merrily, John headed for the front and fished his keys out of his pocket. As he moved to slide the brass instrument home and call it quits for the night, however, something caught his eye on the porch step. Frowning, he pulled the door open and bent to retrieve a cellophane-wrapped sandwich that had been left there. After inspecting it, John discovered it was tomato. A returned tomato sandwich. He sighed, suddenly feeling like he needed to sleep for a decade.

Whether it was immoral or not, maybe he was the thief. Matters like this weren't always so black and white. More like...

Tainted. That was what he'd called it.

She knew what she was doing was wrong.

Falsifying certain aspects of the clinic's budget was wrong. Forging a physician's signature on a CT form to study the results of her own experiment was wrong. Tying miles of Riverview Clinic's already extensive red tape into a triple-knotted bow and shoving that into a mountain of like-colored springs was wrong. Worst of all, if anyone found out about the way Sivanna was taking advantage of her position, it would mean hell for the clinic's Chief of Medicine, Anya. And that was the reason the cleric took such extensive precautions to cover her tracks and keep the almost-mother out of harm's way.

It was unfortunate that Sivanna couldn't enlist anyone else's assistance, though. Once her insomnia had worsened, the elfess abandoned her experiments on rodents and took the dangerous step of examining herself. But most of her efforts had been wasted; the reports she often received from neighboring pharmaceutical companies often included complicated words that she didn't understand, or strange colored dots and numbers on a grid that she could not make sense of. More than once her fingers hovered over Anya's name on her cellular phone, but the inherent danger of involving the good doctor in her situation never failed to stay her hand. Sivanna's condition, she had since learned, was extensively detrimental; it went beyond her, or the clinic, or her close circle of friends and family. And it was just the start of something far worse in Rhy"Din.

Though many of her study sessions with Faith had proved fruitless, Sivanna had at least managed to acquire a better knowledge of Krynn's history and its pantheon'something she imagined would prove useful if she managed to remain breathing long enough to solve this puzzle. She'd gathered several pieces, of course; her short interaction with Aelik when he had come to Rhy"Din had arranged that. The gods had abandoned them, Aelik had said. Their prayers on Krynn had long since gone unanswered, and all deitific magic had evaporated like fog against the desert sun. In desperation, mages on Krynn had resorted to what they called "Wild" magic"coincidentally, a phenomenon that only seemed to become available after the pantheon had disappeared. But the use of that "magic" had detrimental effects. Sivanna had learned that much by a short journal she'd found on Aelik's person after she"

It was best to face facts. It wasn't an accident. Sivanna would not have gone to Aelik's hotel room armed with her husband's gun if she did not expect to use it.

Though her guilt had temporarily worsened when she sifted through Aelik's near illegible handwriting, it had quickly been honed into concern when she had read what he'd written about the consequences the so-called Wild magic brought. Burned skin, he'd called it. Like the trunks of trees in a forest a dragon had breathed upon. He had documented observations that the "burned" condition would worsen until some point (that point being grossly inconsistent among those studied), and culminate in cases of violent insanity and fatality.

The symptoms sounded familiar. Too familiar. And while the outcome of that condition had concerned Sivanna briefly, she took solace in the fact that if it came down to it, her husband would never let her get that far. She had to believe he would save her from herself by any means necessary.

Hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

It was a startling coincidence that Aelik had been the one to inform Sivanna about the situation on Krynn. It was an even bigger coincidence that he'd brought with him a record of all his observations. And though the diary had been written in code and was for the most part incomprehensible, he and Sivanna had always thought extraordinarily alike. So it was no surprise that the three words written on the last page of his journal elucidated Sivanna's conclusions to the taint's source perfectly:

Not mortal means.

Sivanna was not arrogant enough and did not have enough faith in mortals to assume that this plague" this taint" came from anywhere but a higher power. Very few men could be gods, and those that were often destroyed themselves for their own hubris. No, this taint had to come from a terrible and ancient power"one strong enough to banish the entire pantheon from Krynn to be able to pollute its souls without interference. To stop the spread of this power's influence, Sivanna needed to not only determine its source, but to uncover some method to restore Krynn's pantheon to its natural order; only the gods she knew were strong enough to save Krynn. Sivanna knew that"believed it with every breath of her sanity. But performing that task, it seemed, was worse than impossible for one mere mortal. There were unlimited dimensions on every astral plane that deities could be hidden, and those were just the planes Sivanna knew about.

It wasn't looking for a needle in a haystack. It was looking for a specific grain of salt in an entire ocean.

Training her expression into a self-important one, the elfess turned on her heel and cast the lab technicians an unimpressed look. The wiry young man on the left she knew; it was Bryce, Georgia's son who was interning in Riverview's pathology department. The elegant, chocolate-haired woman on the right she didn't recognize, but judging by the expert monogram stitching on her lab coat and scrubs, she had to assume it was a senior pathologist. Though Sivanna was clueless as to her name, the brunette at least had some ounce of recognition in her eyes. Before she could speak, however, Bryce gushed out a hesitant apology.

"Oh! Sivanna. I mean, Mrs. Cyredghymn. I didn't realize you were" why are you down here?" he mumbled nervously. Though Sivanna would have preferred not to have been questioned, part of her was proud of him for doing his job.

"I'm just checking what does and does not work," Sivanna lied expertly. "Halo Industries finally approved Riverview as a client and offered to foot the fee for the first set of devices. I'm just investigating what needs replacing."

"In the middle of the night?" Bryce replied awkwardly, shedding Sivanna a wary look.

Sivanna forced herself to roll her eyes and give him the most annoyed and superior glare. "Any other time I'd just be in your way, and you'd likely tell me to come back later." She boredly wrote the words "hat," "flower," and "promotion' on her clipboard in Elvish, then flourished her pen across the page. "But see" I'm just about done, and no one was in anyone's way. Everybody's happy."

As she fell into a slow amble back to the door to the lab, Sivanna felt the weight of a penetrating stare upon her. Glancing up from her clipboard, she slanted a brief look at Bryce, but the young man had since looked away shamefully and moved to busy himself with some kind of slate with several tubes attached. Casually the cleric flicked her steel gaze at the other technician. The suspicious look on the employee's face was a match being held dangerously close to the very short fuse on Sivanna's temper.

"Yes?" Sivanna drawled expectantly, tipping up her chin to look down at the woman, despite that they were exactly the same height.

"You have copies of our equipment"including manufacturer warranties"and copies of their maintenance reports in your office," the woman uttered evenly, her round eyes cutting into an upward slant against high cheekbones. "There was absolutely no reason for you to come down here, especially after hours." From behind her, Sivanna heard Bryce mumble out a whispered, reproachful "Eileen!" but the woman still set her jaw defiantly; crossed her arms and met Sivanna's gaze with sure and unbridled mistrust.

The woman was smart. Too smart. Suddenly the vexation Sivanna harbored wasn't so difficult to fake.

"Eileen, is it?" Sivanna asked condescendingly, flicking a brief glance at Bryce.

"Dr. Fisher," the woman corrected evenly.

"Dr. Fisher," Sivanna repeated, willing herself to resist smirking in approval. This woman's attitude was after Sivanna's own heart. In other circumstances, she might have wanted to get to know her better. "I don't have an assistant, Dr. Fisher," the cleric continued, pronouncing her title deliberately, 'so I unfortunately don't have the time to read through everything the departments send my way. This, however," she added, tipping the clipboard toward the equipment in the back of the lab, "is a much more hands-on and simpler method. It is easier for me. I'm sorry if that inconveniences you."

A low hum sounded in the woman's throat. Maybe it was an acknowledgement of her explanation, or maybe it was the makings of a laugh. Before she pressed, however, Eileen's pretty brown eyes drifted to the clipboard Sivanna had stolen. "So hands-on you felt the need to borrow one of our clipboards?"

This woman's gift of observation was maddening. Any more verbose explanations, and Sivanna would seem more defensive, and therefore more suspicious. She had to steer the attention away from her.

"I left mine upstairs." After a beat, she added, "Exactly what are you both doing down here in the middle of the night?"

Eileen's eyes never left Sivanna's face as she lifted up a vial of what looked like blood. "Emergency patient who needs a transfusion. Bryce is on-call, so I am showing him the how-to's of blood-typing."

The woman's penetrating stare was beginning to make the hairs on the back of Sivanna's neck stand up. She needed to get out of that lab. Shifting gears, she shifted her expression into something more friendly and delved into flattery.

"Oh! Well that's very good of you, I suppose," Sivanna replied fluidly. "I know Bryce is an exceptional student, so you must train him well."

Another humming sound came from the doctor's throat, but she finally tore her gaze off Sivanna and wandered over to where Bryce was setting up what looked like a sheet of paper and several dropper bottles on the slate he had retrieved. For a moment Sivanna considered leaving immediately, but that that would doubtlessly make her presence even more suspicious. So instead, she drifted back toward the small line of microscopes on a shelf on the opposite wall and put up a pretense of examining them. Over her shoulder, she heard bits and pieces of Eileen's explanation for the method of the test they were performing.

?" and once you add the impregnation, we'll determine whether or not any antigens are present. For instance, if she is blood type B, clumping will appear in the anti-B field, here."

Sivanna wrote down more jibberish on her clipboard.

"How long will it take" She's in pretty bad shape?" Bryce responded nervously.

"Only about thirty seconds. Once we find out, we can call up to the OR from here."

"I wish Dr. Ergin-Falconne were still working," Bryce mused regretfully. "I don't know if this one's going to pull through."

"The Chief isn't the only surgeon we have on staff, Bryce. Have a little faith."

"No, but she's the best we have"especially with brain injuries."

Sivanna had reached the end of the line of microscopes. She had lingered long enough. Tucking the clipboard under her arm, she lifted her chin and began a casual but purposeful stride back to the door to the laboratory. "I'm finished here," she tossed over her shoulder, injecting boredom and exhaustion into her voice. "My best to your patient."

"Neutron ovens," she heard Eileen mutter just as she reached the doorway.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Neutron ovens," Eileen repeated, turning her half-amused glance onto Sivanna. "Ours is out of order, and Halo Industries specializes in them."

After a second passed"one second too long"Sivanna nodded and slipped out of the lab. Taking the stairs back up to the ground floor in threes, she directed her rushed walk toward the lobby, avoiding the nurses and doctors who were muttering about some pregnant Jane Doe with skull fractures and cranial contusions.

Sivanna didn't linger. Instead, as she left the clinic's premises she pondered the ways in which she could bribe Halo Industries in the morning" and also, what the heck a "neutron oven? could possibly be.

Date: The second Dance of Dreams in Winter Come; December 9 by local calendar Location: Basement



What is the purpose of dreams? I used to believe they were a way to communicate options. Possibilities. There have been a myriad of Paladine followers I have known who have even been contacted deliberately through dreams, or had subconscious experiences vivid enough to elicit a drastic recalibration in terms of living. My dreams were always vivid, but never enough to change me. The residual fear I felt upon waking would only ebb by mid-afternoon before being forgotten entirely.

The fear is always there now. So much so that I will not close my eyes unless I am in Alec's arms, and even then it is not for long.

It has become more and more apparent to me that my early perception of dreams was not entirely incorrect. Dreams are methods of communication, but they do not speak to you. They haunt you. Still, even as I sit within arm's reach of Alec's clandestine security measures, all brought on by visions, I refuse to believe in the prophesying power of dreams, or in fate. I have always said that it is choice, not chance, that determines one's destiny. And the faces I see while I sleep are constant reminders of that polarity.

Sal is there sometimes. He says nothing; only takes my hands in his and puts them on my neck while he waits for me to expire. Perhaps it is his way of telling me that I have a choice when it will happen, but not whether. Not whether. And that is my own fault as well.

But worst of all is Aelik's voice. It pounds in my head like a beating drum and asks me questions I have no answer to. He asks me where I am. Over and over in my dreams, he asks me where I am, taunting me in the black, empty recesses of my mind, challenging me to find purpose and to understand what is happening. I answer honestly. I say I do not know; that even I am unable to navigate my mind or to stop the spread of darkness. I beg him to understand. I try to apologize. But that's all I ever hear.

My studies with Faith remain fruitless, and I have exhausted her library. I know enough to know that the source of the taint can be traced back to Belleza and Krynn— that much my experiments at the Clinic have shown me. As for whom is behind all of this I cannot say. I can only presume that it is a being immensely powerful enough to hide away Krynn from the holy pantheon. I have felt the emptiness stemming from Nuitari's disappearance, and am beginning to suspect that my forced withdrawal of dark magic in the absence of a god is accelerating the spread of the taint. I will have to cease my invocations if I wish to survive long enough to see the spring.

I am tired, and I am thinking in circles. I am out of options. There are no more sources to turn to. Faith has generously offered to close down her shop while she does extra research for me, and insists that we continue our efforts until I find what I am looking for. But what is left' The only connections I had with Krynn are dead and gone, and my time is up.

I hope I get to see the new year. Anya and her family always decorate the Palazzo so beautifully around then. I had at least wanted to see my anniversary with Alec, but' I guess I'm not destined for that.

Nuitari, watch over me in my time of doubt.

Yours, Sivanna Arillae

"I don't see what?s funny."

Even as he spoke, John didn't recognize his own voice. It was gravelly and dry— progressively worn down like flaking bricks of coal being used to draw on pavement. He and his partner were at least a mile away from the latest surge of fires in Belleza, but the smoke hung heavy enough in the air to mimic the curtain of night. It was just as well, as that was likely the last day Amistad was ever going to see.

For over a month freak fires had been eating away at Tesora's cities, devouring the lush green forests and lively towns like some kind of leprosy and leaving behind deadness and black, crumbling glaciers of buildings and ash where once elegant architecture was erected. It all happened so quickly warnings hardly reached Belleza from neighboring shores soon enough to issue an evacuation order. The telegram forwarded to the local municipal offices where John worked three mornings prior was devastating in its brevity, and eerily prophesied the haste with which his home, the city of Belleza, would reach its end:

PAZ, AMISTAD: 446PM C.C. W. MORIANO

Fires unable to be stopped. Business and local parts Paz all burning. Do not send help. Evacuate Belleza now.

ACTING ADJUDANT GENERAL F.F FRIAR

The very next day, no number of fire engines, no magically conjured rains, and no assistance from other worlds could quit the caustic crawl of death. Off-world portals were consumed faster than they could be used to carry out the evacuation orders, and John had watched helplessly as the fire captured and held innocent victims like flies in its web of extinction. Only three portals were left— one within the city center, nestled in a parking lot, one beside the town clinic, and one adjacent to the Seaside Elementary School that was serving as a makeshift shelter, providing thirty-six families with mechanically-produced oxygen while the evacuation was organized. That was the territory John and his partner occupied for the time being— probably the last fragment of the city that still held some semblance of life, for all John knew. By nightfall, he had no doubt all of Belleza would be gone; the monstrous fires in the distance continued to wave at him tauntingly, as though they expected to be welcomed like an old friend once they finally arrived.

And here Jacob was, laughing. John directed a white, whiskery scowl at his younger, more athletic partner, but noted the emptiness behind his smile as Jacob pulled off the muddy bandanna that had been hiding the lower half of his face. His eyes, though red from irritation caused by the dryness and soot in the air, had a glazed-over look to them as he gazed past Seaside and toward the deathly calm waters sleeping beneath its stilts. Not even a surf tickled the building's legs.

"I had always thought we'd owe our end to a tidal wave," Jacob replied at last, his chapped lips flaking upward into a wry grimace on ebony skin. "It's why I chose to live by the sea. Maybe it is the sailor's blood in me, but I actually embraced the idea of drowning as a pleasant way to die."

"We'll be safe as long as we're by the ocean," John grunted, tapping a sore, sinewy hand awkwardly onto a rounded metal hinge where Jacob's shoulder used to be. "Maybe once you get out of here, you can shack up on some island somewhere."

Jacob's lips twitched ruefully, and for a moment the circles bruised into the dark skin beneath his eyes looked as ingrained and timeless as the rings on a tree trunk. "I doubt swimming will be my strong suit," he replied. Metal creaked and popped as the bones of his healing shoulder moved the fastened plate at the amputation site. "Maybe I'll open a soup kitchen."

John's eyes lingered on the ground in silence, which had become a veritable pasture of tar and black gumbo— a consequence of a constant rain of ash and soot and fruitless firefighting attempts.

"Nothing's ever going to be the same again," he heard Jacob murmur, before his voice was lost in a deafening roar. Suddenly, something hard hit John violently in the chest and threw him several feet onto his back, where he saw white for an instant and heard a sickening crunch. Unable to localize the pain, however, John only groaned and rolled onto his side. His body had all the flexibility of a marble statue, and for a moment, John considered that he should have taken better care of it.

"J" J! The goddamn shelter!" he heard Jacob scream through a pair of steel wool earmuffs. His eyes burning through what seemed like an incessant drip of sweat, John steered his weary gaze toward the shore.

The ocean was on fire.

"The O2 tanks, J!" Jacob grunted from a few feet away. "Those are going to detonate if we don't—"

Before his partner could finish, John rolled to his knees and staggered on stretched legs, pitifully trying to keep his feet glued to the earth, which wobbled intermittently like a seesaw. As the sounds his soles made changed from wet, sloshy thuds to the hard, hollow barks from a warped pier, he watched the fire atop the water race toward the school in an ever-narrowing panoramic letterbox, squeezing all light but splinters from his vision like the helmet on a suit of armor. Screams erupted from within the shelter just as he barreled through the closed doors, ramming headfirst into the backs of one of the evacuees— a tiny, raven-haired girl that couldn't have weighed more than one hundred pounds. Dozens of pairs of eyes inside swung to regard him dazedly through a veil of obvious shock, but the fragments of groups remained rooted in place like petrified antelope being noticeably scouted by a pride of lions. As he tried to scream to evacuate, his voice grated and stuck to the soot in his throat; and even if he could speak, his ears were so full of cotton and the roar of the fire was so loud he doubted anyone would hear him. The fire had to have been close, as he could already hear the high-pitched whining of the oxygen tanks they had set up as components to an air filtration system in the first grade classroom. Thinking quickly, John thought to make an example by taking the young girl he had run into by the wrist and yanking her in the direction of the doors. But the next thing he knew, it was his eyes that were full of cotton and grit— white and dry, as a whole symphony of destruction buffeted his head and back and sucked the air out of his lungs like a vacuum. For the briefest of moments, John thought he was swimming. Then, the only thing keeping him awake was the steady inhale and exhale of the girl he held protectively his arms, the hardness of the ground beneath him, and a constant buzzing, buzzing, buzzing in his skull. Light flickered over his head like a dim light bulb as he watched a haze of fire closing in around them, but it didn't touch. And still, that buzzing persisted.

Buzz, buzz, buzz" buzz, buzz, buzz" buzz, buzz, buzz"

It was a shame Sivanna was incapable of becoming pregnant, but not for the sake of having children.

Certainly the cleric had contemplated the idea. Spending so much time with Anya and AJ never failed to conjure up such familial notions. And on brief occasions that Sivanna would argue were the result of random surges of hormones or a rush of Alec's family-oriented subconscious bursting through their Bond, she had yearned for the moment when she would hold a son in her arms and watch her husband's eyes glow with pride. Would he look at her differently, then" Would she be less of a priority to him' Sivanna had never understood how someone could possibly love more than one person the same amount at the same time. She had never known her mother, and had never cared enough about her father to merit any kind of emotional response. Perhaps it was a selfish matter to deliberately reject the idea of procreating. And in Sivanna's eyes, it certainly was. She was selfish; she would not deny that. But the least she would do was justify such selfishness with the mere fact that her god declined her the ability to grow a child— an unfortunate consequence of polluting a dying body unremittingly with venom' both material and mental.

Anya had known about Sivanna's inability to bear children. She had seen that much during a routine physical exam when Sivanna had come to her about chronic insomnia and fatigue. Thus, if the cleric suddenly took extended time off work touting such reasons as an excuse, questions would be asked. And the last thing Sivanna wanted, as the minute hand slowed to a crawl, was questions.

It really was a shame, because a maternity leave would have solved many of her problems of late.

'A touch of the flu' and food poisoning excuses could only go so far when it came to explaining her chronic absences at Riverview during the day. For the first few weeks the staff had been sympathetic— chocked it up to problems at home or simply 'personal issues.' But after a month of only sporadic attendance— with the extent of that attendance being served within the confines of her office— the look had begun to surface. That look was given to her by her colleagues. The same one that a busy passerby gave a stray dog dying of starvation. There was no concern there; just pity.

Pity always put a bitter taste in Sivanna's mouth.

It was juvenile of her to occupy her free time sulking like" well, like a child. Sivanna knew that. But lately it was becoming harder and harder to put one foot in front of the other, or even to pull herself out of bed in the morning.

One thing was for sure; at least her insomnia problem had been solved. Never in her life had Sivanna slept so much.

It was the first knock on her office door at the Clinic that woke her. When she didn't move from her curled up position on the leather sofa beside her desk, only tugged her blazer up to her chin, the form on the other side walked away muttering about the Chief and twins. It was the second knock kept her from drifting off again, however. It was loud, and it was insistent. The rings on said knocker's hand rattled against the frosted glass in Sivanna's office door and made her teeth taste like aluminum. Thankfully the cleric's lights were off, as they had been for the past four hours. Theoretically she could have returned home during the gap of time until the administration floor was vacated and she could resume studying her condition in secret, but that would have meant summing up the energy to walk the sixty-five feet to the lobby. And that would mean fighting the temptation to visit Anya and her new children. At present, Sivanna couldn't let herself be around other people. There were times that her mood, more than her condition, were poisonous. Then there was also the matter of the stink— the scent of a graveyard that followed her around and was nearly unbearable. It made perfume reek of rotten greens and food taste like ash.

At least when Sivanna was alone— like she usually was, while napping in her office— she could avoid the smell of death.

"I know you're in there, Sivanna. I can hear you breathing."

Whoever was noisily rattling on the cleric's door was keenly astute. But it didn't motivate Sivanna enough to get off the couch.

"I need to talk to you. Would you open the damn door, please" I don't want to have to kick it down!"

Oh! An ultimatum. This woman had brains and balls. And her voice was enormously familiar, too' it had a kind of alluring huskiness to it that always made her sound like she was getting over a cold. Maybe she was a smoker.

"I have something of yours. I don't think you want me to read it aloud here in the hallway."

Hearing a sharp slap, Sivanna glanced up to see some kind of document pressed against the frosted glass of her office door. She could not make out many of the words, save for a few: infective process, blood, and skin. Other smudges formed words like "gangrene" and "synergistic" and "fascial planes."

Rolling to her feet, Sivanna tossed off her blazer and covered the distance to the door in a single step. She didn't bother to smooth out her mussed up braid before she unlocked her office door and eased it open enough inches to size up the chocolate-haired, elegant woman in a lab coat on the other side of the portal.

"And what exactly makes you think that's mine?" the cleric drawled at the pathologist boredly. She might have been more convincing if her eyes weren't bloodshot. Perhaps there was something to be said about looking the part of deception. Eileen only pursed her lips, unconvinced, and shoved the stray analysis report through the crack that Sivanna maintained by wedging her booted toe against the other side of the door.

"No one else has been in the lab in months, Sivanna, and even the cleaning crew doesn't touch our equipment. Exactly what were you doing in there?"

Rolling her eyes, Sivanna gently moved to close the door in the pathologist's face. "Exactly what I told you I was. Now please go away. I have a migraine."

Before she shut away the stink that was the impertinent Dr. Fisher, the woman's feminine, ringed hands were curled around the doorframe. "I know about the inconsistencies in the budget," she added quickly, her pretty brown eyes sticking to Sivanna coldly and uncomfortably like wet sheets. "Fraud is a serious crime, you know."

Despite everything, Sivanna felt a cruel smirk tickle the corner of her lips. This woman was as stubborn as she was. Still, the cleric smoothly pulled the door open the rest of the way. "I thought you were a pathologist, not an investigator."

"I dabble," replied Eileen cautiously as she squeezed into the office. Though the cleric moved back to her desk, the pathologist still remained by the door. For that Sivanna was thankful, as the Chanel No. 5 the brunette had saw fit to baptize herself in reeked of a wet, disemboweled canine left rotting on the side of the road.

"What did you find?" Sivanna asked vaguely, pouring a serving of gin from a bottle on her desk into a crystal tumbler— both of which had no business being in a hospital. After engulfing the helping and refilling the glass, she turned back to Eileen, who stared her down with all the intimidation of a police detective.

"I looked into the orders you've been placing," Dr. Fisher replied defiantly. "No neutron ovens, but a hell of a lot of very expensive tests being run on the hospital's dime, without any charts being made up." After a pause, she added, "All approved by you."

The elfess eyed Eileen for what seemed like hours. It gave her distinct pleasure when she felt the pathologist squirm under her gaze and glance toward the light switch warily.

"So you want money, is that it?" Sivanna prompted her before taking another sip of the freshly-flavored liquor. At Eileen's quizzical look, the cleric flashed her a razor-sharp smile. "You wouldn't have come to me with that information if you didn't want something. You would have gone straight to the police."

Eileen's mouth opened and closed, mouthing the beginnings of some kind of lie. After a moment, however, her lips tugged up into the same wry smile that Sivanna wore. "I want to know who these tests belong to. And why you're hiding them."

The cleric's lips twitched as she set her tumbler back onto the desk. "I'm sorry, Dr. Fisher. But I can't help you."

For a split second, Sivanna thought she was looking at a mirror reflection of herself. Eileen's eyes became rock hard; her jaw set; her face became etched in stone. "If you don't tell me, I'll go public with these. You'll lose your job, your reputation. I'll tell everyone what you've been up to!"

Sivanna felt her lip curl as she traversed the floor until she was within inches of the toxic carcass stink. "What do you care where they came from?" she growled through her teeth.

"What do you care if I care?" Eileen snapped back. Briefly Sivanna considered that the pathologist would have made a very excellent werecat or dog, as she had the hackles for the part. But all at once the image dissolved, as the woman's brown eyes lit up with realization and her expression softened. "It's you, isn't it?" she breathed.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sivanna mumbled, turning around and moving through the dark back to her desk.

"Gloves" the gloves. That's why you?" Eileen rambled. "Let me see. Take off your gloves." When Sivanna didn't comply, the pathologist wrapped her fingers around her wrist.

"Don't touch me!" the elfess growled, wrenching her arm free and hugging it to her chest. Eileen approached her cautiously, like she would a scared cat or rodent.

"I can help you. Let me try to help you," she pleaded.

"No one can help me." From beneath a pair of furrowed brows, the cleric regarded Eileen icily. "Let this be, Dr. Fisher. You don't want to be anywhere near this."

Eileen licked her lips and gave Sivanna an honest look. "I can't. It's too important." For a moment she looked like she was about to add more, but decided against it.

Letting out a half-amused sigh, the elfess unbuttoned the first two of her blouse and swung her gaze up to the ceiling. "A shame. I had thought I'd at least have a few more weeks of peace and quiet."

"It doesn't have to be this way," Eileen responded, her words bleeding with genuine sympathy. Sivanna felt her stomach knot as she regarded the woman emotionlessly. She was right. Things didn't have to be this way. But they were, and nothing could help that.

"Maybe it won't have to be," Sivanna murmured, closing the distance between them until she was chest-and-chest with the pathologist. Casually, she reached around Eileen and fastened the lock on her door. Several moments were taken to lazily roam the woman's body with her eyes, making mental calculations.

Eileen's gaze followed Sivanna nervously as her personal space was breached. She filled the beats of silence that stretched on like death with ragged, shallow breaths. "I'm straight," she blurted out suddenly.

Unable to help herself, Sivanna barked out a laugh. "I'm not trying to seduce you," she crooned, placing her hands gently onto either side of Eileen's head. To her credit, the woman didn't even flinch.

"People will be looking for me," Eileen warned, studying Sivanna's expression daringly. The cleric only smiled, tucking the woman's lovely, soft curls behind her ears.

"I'm not going to kill you," Sivanna reassured her, murmuring an incantation under her breath and feeling her eyes burn with dark magic ichor.

Eileen's own eyes widened. "I'll scream," she breathed.

Sivanna's smile became affectionate as she stroked the woman's hair. "No you won't. People like us, we don't scream." After a beat, she added, "It won't hurt. I promise."

"Why are you doing this?" the cleric heard her whisper as the dark magic left her fingertips and pulsed through Eileen's temples and into her brain.

"I want the time," the cleric replied. "I'm sorry, Dr. Fisher. I know it's selfish, but I can't have you interfering. Now take a breath."

By then, the woman was already well under Sivanna's command. Her pupils had dilated and her body had gone limp. The cleric focused on the tendrils of dark magic invading her hippocampus and tampering with her memories, firmly holding Eileen up against the door with her body. As she felt the memories detach, pulsing back to her through the magical connection like an electric signal, the pathologist's body went entirely slack and crumbled to the floor. With some effort the elfess pulled her to the couch by the wrists, but even after three attempts she could not summon enough strength to push the woman onto it. It wouldn't do to have her wake up in the Public Relations Director's office, anyway.

Then again, it wouldn't do to be seen dragging around a fainted employee's body on a hospital floor.

Breathlessly Sivanna collapsed onto the floor of her office, back braced against the front of her enormous mahogany desk. Rather than risking being lost in the static of her and Alec's Bond, she pulled out her cellular phone and dialed the journeyman's number. He wouldn't like it, but she felt confident he would help at least move Eileen somewhere safe until she woke. The woman had at least a few good hours of dreamless sleep while her brain rebooted.

Or so Sivanna thought it would be dreamless. But as she placed the phone to her ear and waited for Alec to answer, she heard the pathologist mumble drowsily from her own spot on the floor.

"What's that smell??"

"Do you think anyone is still here?"

"Maybe in the bedroom."

There were two of them. They were loud, and obviously were having difficulty navigating through her and her mother's cottage in the dark. They must not have found the fireplace yet.

Beside her under the bed, Faith could hear her mother struggling to quiet her own breathing. Her soft arm tightened around Faith's tiny body as she brought her lips right up against a gently pointed ear.

"How many are there?" Faith understood through terrified, tremulous breaths. Her daughter's half-Elvish hearing was better than her own, and she knew it.

"Two," the half-elf responded with the tiniest click of her tongue and rounding of lips.

"Someone's got to still be here. The door was locked." A pause. "And the hearth is still warm."

They found the fireplace. That meant they were only scant feet away from momma's bedroom.

Something small and prickly crawled up Faith's arm. She shook it off.

"Did you hear that?"

"Come out, come out, wherever you are." It sounded almost like a song.

Her momma's neck rolled in a swallow off the curve of her shoulder. "Stay here, Faithy. Whatever happens, don't say anything."

She felt the weight of her mother's arm disappear just as the body heat beside her evaporated. Suddenly Faith was very cold. So much so that she was trembling.

A flint. Subtle crackling. They had started a fire.

"There's the bedroom. Check the doorknob."

A rattle.

"It's locked."

"Whatever happens, baby, don't move," hissed a distant whisper in the same room.

One thud. Two thuds. Metal breaking through wood. A man's voice, yelling. Broken pieces of the vase that was on the end table rolled under the bed next to Faith. Her mother shrieked.

"Feisty one, ain't she?"

"Grab her ankles."

Screaming. Sobbing. The bed shook and the straw mattress sagged through the wicker frame above Faith.

"Hurry up. I want to have a go next." A loud oath. "You stupid B*TCH!"

A slap. Fabric tearing. A belt buckle.

"Please" please?" were her mother's strangled sobs.

Before Faith could stop herself, a sharp "Leave her alone!" erupted from her chest. The taste of snot and salt filled her mouth before a scream did. Something seized her ankles and yanked her across the floor, embedding splinters in her arms and peeling off the delicate skin of her elbows.

Even in the dim light, Faith could make out every inch of her mother's creamy flesh as it was molested by angry hands. Pleading, glazed eyes followed Faith as she was hoisted into the air. Her narrow waist was encircled by ruthless coils of hard muscle as her momma's screams were smothered in an invasive, stolen kiss.

"Never mind. Keep her. This is more than enough to keep me occupied." A large hand spanned across the entire front of Faith's fragile ribcage. Her kicking legs found nothing but air and concrete brawn.

She screamed. She screamed until the fire in her lungs burned into fairy-tale clumps of golden straw that her mind turned to satin. Her tears dried up on the corkscrew bed of her mother's tangled curls as their heads collided, driven by simultaneously thieving forward jerks. If Faith could only speak loudly enough, her fairy godmother would hear her and turn her into a sparrow to fly far, far away.

Her mother's broken image became lost in the flower fields of Faith's imagination; her cries the singing praise of her princess kingdom playing tag.

"Run away, Faithy. Run away."

Buzz, buzz, buzz" Buzz, buzz, buzz" Buzz, buzz, buzz"

Groaning into her elbow, Sivanna yanked a pillow out from under her head and smothered herself in a desperate effort to keep out the sound coming from the other side of the room. Even if the phone call was from Aja— the only person the cleric had cared enough to keep in contact with of late— she really was far too exhausted and petulant to keep up a conversation. Honestly, it had to have been two days since she had even left the bedroom. Alec had been patient and understanding as he always was, but even through the static remnants of their Bond Sivanna could feel that he was growing more and more concerned with the situation. She didn't blame him. She was behaving like a child, locking herself up and sleeping all day. A two hundred year-old child.

If she couldn't play with her toys, then no one would.

The cellular phone of hers that danced across the set of drawers on the other side of the room still rang incessantly, despite that it had gone previously to voicemail. As a muffled growl escaped her, Sivanna pulled heavy covers up over the pillow, burying herself in a mound of Egyptian cotton and muslin. What in Nuitari's name could someone need to say that badly that they couldn't just leave a message"

Hardly an iota of relief was had in four seconds of silence before the phone began vibrating again.

"Alec, will you get that?" she finally grumbled into her pillow, her hot breath dampening the case and making it more difficult to breathe. Even though the journeyman was likely downstairs working, Sivanna knew that Alec would be able to hear her through their Bond if she focused hard enough. Or at least she hoped he would.

Apparently not, for the buzz only droned on in the silence of the room and rattled Sivanna's teeth in annoyance.

Ripping the pillow and blankets off, the cleric sat up in darkness. "Alec, would you get that?" she repeated loudly enough for him to hear in the basement.

No answer. He must have been out in the forest or in town. He was spending a lot of time to himself recently. Both of them were. The rift growing between them was becoming almost unmanageable. Maybe she could roll out of her depressed stupor for just one night to make him dinner" Just to remind him that she cherished him and didn't want—

Buzz, buzz, buzz" Buzz, buzz, buzz"

"Oh for heaven's sakes!" the elfess snarled as she tore free from the covers. Narrow heels made heavy thuds even on carpet as Sivanna strode angrily over to the mahogany dresser and plucked her cellular phone up from where it had been about to disturb a beautiful bracelet Anya had given her for her birthday one year.

"What?" she snapped into the receiver belligerently once she'd inspected that the call was originating from Riverview.

"Uh' excuse me for bothering you, Mrs. Cyredghymn. This is Dr. Eileen Fisher at Riverview pathology."

Though some reassurance was had from the fact that Eileen had addressed her so formally, the knot in Sivanna's stomach refused to unwind.

"Doctor who?" Sivanna replied, injecting obliviousness into her query.

"Fisher," Eileen repeated. "I don't believe we've had the privilege of meeting."

The knot not only unwound, but its recoil prompted a wave of relief that warmed Sivanna to her very toes.

"Okay," the cleric responded flatly. "Then what exactly do you want?"

"We're having a bit of a situation here. An intern I have with me is claiming that he has some test results in your name that were faxed to the office. I told him it was absurd, given that you are not registered as a patient?"

More results" Sivanna had been certain that she'd received and destroyed the last ones.

This was getting out of hand— too out of hand. For almost a year all she had been doing was tangling herself up in a web of lies that she was bound to hang herself with. It had to stop. Now.

"I'll come down, Dr. Fisher. Keep him there, will you?"

Just this last time. Sivanna would wipe the intern's memory, and then she would write Anya a letter that explained everything.

She would probably have to include her resignation.

"Shall I call the director or Dr. Ergin-Falconne?"

"No," Sivanna responded reflexively. "No, that won't be necessary. I'll be there shortly." Before Eileen could respond, the cleric ended the call.

No, Anya didn't have to know. Once Sivanna had taken care of the latest problem, she would just write the good doctor a letter explaining everything. That would be much better. Just a letter.

A letter. Sivanna would write a letter just so she wouldn't have to see Anya's face when she told her best friend that she had been embezzling from a hospital. From a damn hospital.

"Stop it, Sivanna," the elfess muttered to herself as she donned her pea coat and slipped on knee-high leather boots. She couldn't afford to be so weak if she wanted to be remembered as anything but a coward.

She would talk to Anya tomorrow. Face to face. But for now, she had to keep anyone else from getting involved.

Alec: Gone to Riverview for a few hours. Be back later to cook. Don't eat anything.

I love you. Sivanna

The groan that rolled out of Sivanna's mouth was trapped along with something vile at the back of her throat.

How much had she had to drink" No hangover in the world could top this. If she were lucky, her husband would be on hand in just a few minutes to sympathetically offer a gallon of water and three aspirin. Not that it would do much good. The cleric anticipated that this particular hangover would last her a few days at the very least.

Still.

"Alec?" The words came out garbled as her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

After some effort Sivanna felt her eyelids slide open, expecting to see him.

Well" it wasn't Alec, but she was certain she had seen this man before.

"Kind of morose, isn't it?" a singsong voice echoed into Sivanna's left ear. It sounded like they were in a concert hall. "The Catholics are one oblivious freaking bunch, though. I don't care how good a cause you're dying for. No human looks that serene while nails are being driven into his hands."

It only took an inch of concentration to tilt her head, and then it rolled on its own. Her left cheek brushed against something soft while her eyes struggled to make sense of the rows and rows of benches that Faith appeared to be leapfrogging between individually. The red carpet that ran down the center aisle reeked of mildew and old incense.

They weren't benches. They were pews.

"A church?"" the cleric sounded out, the tip of her tongue dry and rough like sandpaper.

Faith grinned back at her and finally sidled back into the center aisle, holding her hands up in a universal helpless motion. "As my bookshop is currently being gutted by the Watch and certain soup kitchens are beginning to stink, the number of venues accessible to me is limited. Fortunately the primary occupant of this building is indisposed at the moment, so you and I have the place entirely to ourselves."

Was she thinking in slow motion' Did she pass out for a split second" All of a sudden, Faith was kneeling on the steps where Sivanna was sprawled. The cleric's head wouldn't permit her another inch again, and so she was left staring at the lone unfastened button on the half-elf's beige cardigan. That infinitesimal, imperfect detail gave Sivanna a surprising sense of power.

"It makes no sense, you realize, dying for other people's sins," Faith commented, interrupting her scrutiny, "Every person is responsible for their own actions. There is no such thing as a blank slate— not unless everyone agrees to follow the same rules. And we don't follow the rules here, do we?"

Sivanna almost replied, but then her head filled with that same nauseating swimming sensation she often got after drinking eight shots too many.

"You know why that is, don't you?" continued Faith, curling her leg underneath herself until her hips hitched at a diagonal angle to the stair she was on. "It is because everyone is so wrapped up in what makes them happy. Selfish desires drive selfish actions. And we're not utilitarian here. There is no thinking about the rest of mankind because" well, let's face it: there's no reason to."

With all her strength, Sivanna finally managed to turn her head against gravity and regard the lower half of the half-elf's face.

"It doesn't matter what you do, or if you've never done anything wrong. As long as people are left to their own devices, they'll continue to destroy themselves." Her lips formed a very thin line. "And other people."

When Faith looked down, the ghastly reflections of light cast off by the altar candles painted tortured shadows on her face. The fire in her eyes ate them up and almost devoured Sivanna in its ferocity.

"You know what I'm talking about, don't you?" she asked Sivanna quietly. Her eyes began to glisten, but the insanity behind them only turned those tears into glass and gave her the look of a doll. Fluidly the half-elf bent until her face was directly above Sivanna's— so close their lips touched and Sivanna could taste the bitter honey of her breath. "How you can try and try and try but nothing will ever change?"

The cool of Faith's hand curled around the cleric's cheek as they locked gazes. "We're tired of watching the world burn."

Sivanna tried to form a thought. A spell. Anything. But her mind had already been undone at the seams and was slowly unraveling like threads of tattered rayon. She wanted to scream, to fight, to call for Alec, but instead the only threads that managed to remain connected formed a single word.

"We?"

In an instant, Faith grinned and leapt up. Though Sivanna could not turn her head again, she heard the aimless patter of the half-elf's feet on the carpet down the aisle. She was pacing. "We're going to change the world, Sivanna," shouted Faith as the cleric stared up at the crisscrossed rafters above her. "His influence is going to take away all the pain and suffering in the world. Everyone will have their ideal life and no one will ever have to hurt again."

Almost silently, she murmured, "Never again."

The cleric nearly responded, but suddenly Faith was kneeling on the steps again beside Sivanna and moving her arms. She was cradling something.

"He found me on Krynn, Sivanna," she crooned. "He promised to make all the pain and death go away. And he did. He will."

As she brought the elfess's blackened, bare hand to her face and used it to cup her own cheek, Sivanna felt her breath hitch, certain that somehow she would be denied the answers she had been searching for over a year.

Still.

"Who?"

Faith's eyes became sharp. Lethal. "The only god who can rightfully know pain and death."

All the pieces clicked into place. The fires on Belleza, the absence of the other gods on Krynn, and the taint that felt so like something she had already experienced once before in her life, when it had been used against her to sever her ties with Paladine.

"Chemosh," she breathed. Faith's returning smile was terrifyingly genuine. She became almost energetic— manic; bounced on the step and clutched the cleric's dead hand to her chest.

"We're going to save them, don't you see" With this?" She gazed down almost lovingly at Sivanna's fingers, "With this we're going to make them all our children and protect them. They'll be our children, Sivanna! All ours!"

"This kills!" Sivanna finally sputtered at last, the disgust brewing in her gut granting her enough strength for outrage. "On Belleza! Thousands!"

"No, no!" Faith's grin became deranged. "You've solved that problem for me! For so long I tested and tested the effects of His influence on those souls from the soup kitchen. But every one that was declared missing died from it." Her gaze shot up to meet Sivanna's again. "But you? you're the key. You've managed to create the perfect vessel." As she paused, something flickered briefly in her eyes. Resentment' Taking a deep breath, her voice dropped. "I regret' that I couldn't be the one to do it." Suddenly Faith's small hands were flying over the cleric's body— stroking, caressing it appreciatively like a fine fabric. They curled around Sivanna's face as Faith dipped again, scrutinizing the cleric's brow, nose, cheeks, chin, and finally her lips. Her breath was tremulous and her eyes were full of hunger.

"What I would give for what you can do," she whispered shakily. Then their lips were crushed together.

It was a cold, hard thing, completely devoid of love or lust. Faith's lips were thinner and softer than Alec's and gave way far too easily. And when she felt the narrow press of the half-elf's tongue against her teeth Sivanna could also taste the ruthless ambition driving it. The kiss was desperate and violent, as if seeking to siphon the cleric's strength out with one sharp intake of breath.

It was almost a shame she couldn't. For at that moment, Sivanna would have given anything to end that kiss.

Thankfully it didn't last long. When Faith pulled back, she shuddered and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand like she'd tasted something vile.

"I want what you have," she hissed, trembling. "But I can't have it. So I'm going to use you."

And your heart beats so slow, Through the rain and fallen snow across the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance. Oh, don't sorrow, no don't weep For tonight at last I am coming home. —U2, A Sort Of Homecoming

Alec had a bad feeling deep in his gut the moment he went into the bedroom and saw that Sivanna was not there tonight. Such a damned shame, he thought " one he chided himself for immediately afterward. A quick search through their Bond proved fruitless, as the static was especially strong tonight for reasons he did not yet quite fathom. Still, there were other senses he could call upon. First there was intuition, which yielded only more of that nameless "bad feeling." This led the journeyman back out the front door and into a mad dash towards town. He let the tau guide him now, using that ancient and timeless energy to lead him back to the woman he loves.

It must have been working. The closer he got to the elfess, the clearer the sensations coming through their Bond became. Through the static he could see the faint outlines of a building; one he had not seen much of in recent months, but soon enough he recognizes it: Riverview. He could also sense that Sivanna was in a great amount of duress, her every movement taking much more effort until she finally collapsed a few yards from the front door of the clinic.

Sivanna...

What was happening to her" It must have something to do with the death sickness that was coursing through her body, the same one that blackened her hands and forearms to the point that she wore those gloves on a constant basis.

Hold tight, dai'sha. I am coming. Could she even hear him through the static" It did not seem so. Alec had had a lot more psionic training than she, so his perception via their Bond was much more clear than what she would experience on those nights when the static was especially strong. Nights like tonight, it seemed. All he could do was quicken his pace and hope that he got there before her condition got any worse. When the black and white sparkles of vertigo assaulted the cleric's senses, only the intense static in their Bond seemed to filter the same vertigo from completely dropping him to his knees. And when a figure finally came into her view, there was no sense of relief that help may have arrived. The opposite was indeed confirmed when he sensed Sivanna being dragged by her wrists into a waiting car.

"No." The journeyman's boots began pounding pavement as he reached the outskirts of the city. The first building he came to was an abandoned three story that might have at one time housed apartments. Using his tau-jin abilities to manipulate gravity, he runs straight up the face of the building to the roof, which led to another. And another higher up, until he was leaping quickly from rooftop to rooftop towards the heart of the city. He was close enough to her that he could now rely on the Bond to track her. As one part of his awareness was kept firmly fixed on making sure that he did not mistime a jump and find himself plummeting to the ground far below, another part was listening in on what this woman named Faith was saying to his wife as she was being taken into another building " a church, as he would learn soon enough. A Catholic church, which just figured. Alec had been raised Catholic, but had not set foot inside a church since high school. Not that any of that mattered ? the context of where he was being held was of little significance....only the location of the church itself held any real meaning to the journeyman now.

The ultimate irony was when Faith told Sivanna that the Krynnian god Chermosh was behind whatever scheme she was setting in motion tonight, thus committing what was an unspeakable blasphemy in the eyes of the Holy See, represented in Rhy'Din by the church she and Sivanna now occupied. And there was another, too. A face that Alec came to recognize as Eileen from the Riverview Clinic. He could also see that she was quite beyond herself; a marionette. A puppet, her eyes glazed and lifeless, no sense of consciousness shining forth from those windows to the soul. As he began to process what all of this meant, he saw through Sivanna's eyes as Faith leveled the barrel of a SigSauer pistol onto the cleric, the same model that Alec carried on him regularly.

Nonononononono!

There was a flash and a bang, in a kind of gray-scale slow motion through the static in there Bond. He felt the 9mm slug impact his chest just as surely as it had struck hers. He could feel his own life trickling out of him. His body went limp as he was in midair, only a few blocks away from the church. He slammed into the side of a building and rebounded back into the air, careening through the air until he hit the ground ten stories below with a loud, bone shattering thud. Only the fact of his superior Ippon physiology kept him from dying from the harrowing fall. His hazel eyes were facing the front of the church, the outlines of it out of focus as the journeyman finally started to come to.

At first there was denial, trying to convince himself that he not really saw and felt what he had. This was Sivanna, after all. General of the armies of Silvanost. Cleric of Paladine, and later of Nuitari. Former Archmage of the Rings of Magic. Wife of Alec Tuttle. Surely she could not be so mortally wounded! But then came the dawning reality that she had, indeed, been shot clean in her chest, her heart cleaved by a single round from what might have been Alec's own gun. The journeyman slowly rolled over onto his belly and peeled himself up off the ground until he was standing rather wobbly on his feet.

Well. We're just going to see where this goes. An anger....no, a fury unlike anything he had ever felt in his life was beginning to well up from his heart, like a vindictive volcano god that would soon demand a life be sacrificed to quench its ravenous hunger. And Alec had just the life in mind as he walked towards the church.

"Sivanna" Sivanna!"

Uttering a soft oath, Sivanna peeled her pillow off her the side of her head and stared blearily at the shiny armored arm shaking her. "Yes?"

"Forgive me for addressing you so frankly, General, but you refused to wake."

Cursing under her breath, Sivanna swung her feet over the edge of her bed, smiling to herself when the soldier politely averted his eyes. Once upon a time she would have taken full advantage of that modesty— perhaps even stripped deliberately in front of him, knowing full well there was nothing he could do about it. And part of her once reveled in that power and control. But since she had left that prison she had felt no lust of the sort— be it primal or arbitrary. Maybe that would change, but somehow the cleric sensed that there was something about the environment that prevented her from feeling passion. It was an emptiness. A forgetfulness. Like she was being drawn elsewhere, but it was a place she could not reach. She was being pulled and dragged there until the soles of her feet were bloodied and raw and full of agony. And that agony extended far deeper into her being than she could possibly imagine.

What was she dwelling on so much' She had what she wanted. Everything she ever dreamed. Or everything she ever used to dream of.

"I dreamt," Sivanna mumbled as she set her feet onto the cold tiles of her bedroom and stared at her toes. A fog of sunlight filtered in through the windows and set the bronze and teal mosaics off like the glow of dawn on the sea. It was ironic that Sivanna could love the idea of the ocean so much and be so terrified of it at the same time. Perhaps it was the escape that she treasured most— one that could not be reached on a boat, and one that did not require swimming.

If it were not for the panic, it might have been a peaceful way to die.

"What did you dream?" mumbled the soldier, obviously uncomfortable. It wasn't like Silvanesti— especially Silvanesti military— to share their innermost thoughts. The sequestered generations were reared to bear emotion and hardships in dignified silence, and with head unbowed. That had always been one of the reasons Sivanna's father had disdained her foul temper. Impatience and fury were the signs of poor breeding.

As she wriggled her toes, the cleric gazed upon the glitter of gold between them. She shouldn't have continued, but something urged her to speak. "I dreamt of hazel eyes and a pair of moons hanging from the sky." It was an odd dream, Sivanna recalled. They had been worried eyes, but they made her feel safe. The moons had kept moving in the night, dancing from side to side in a lovely ballet, but those eyes had remained in one place. And when she dreamt of them that horrible tugging sensation had ebbed, leaving her with a glorious fullness that she loathed leaving behind.

"Extraordinary."

Sivanna's eyes swung up to the Elven soldier's face, only to find it frozen and devoid of color. Wondering if he'd perhaps seen something that frightened him her head snapped to her doorway, only to find the entirety of her room had been bleached of its color until it hummed a dusty gray. Glancing back at the blonde elf, the cleric waved her fingers in front of his eyes. They did not move.

"That you can feel the connection even now is truly extraordinary, Sivanna. It almost makes me regret not giving you to him entirely."

The cleric's quicksilver eyes tracked the voice to the end of her bed, where a robed figure stood in all the glory of surfeit black widow after it digested its prey. Though every lesson of her training screamed at Sivanna to ready a spell for attack, she was stunned to find she continued to breathe in and out with ease. Her body responded to the terrifying stranger like a lover she had once joined with and craved again.

"How do you know me?" she murmured, unsurprised that when she spoke it was calm and even friendly.

"You once needed me," the man responded, his willowy fingers curling on the bed frame as though they were wringing a dishcloth. He tilted his head up until the lower half of his face caught the ghastly, dead light let in by the window. It was turned up in a grimace, exuding disgust. "But now we need you," he said at last.

The journeyman perceived the murderer's knot of tau energy as crouched behind the next row of pews. Grinding his molars, Alec tightened the muscles in his thighs and calves and sprung up into the air, manipulating his perception of gravity to send him on a high, wide arc over her. In mid-vault, he inversed his body, pointing his firearm at Faith and squeezing off a quartet of shots before his arc put him out of position to fire at her. He landed just five feet to Sivanna's right, in a tiger's crouch, ready to react to her responding move.

Just as she moved her head slightly into the open, Faith's sensitive ears picked up the rush of air above her, giving her only precious seconds to roll under another pew before bullets chewed through the wood and marble around her. As she tilted her arm out and squeezed off several rounds at the flying target, a shot sailed straight through the seat to the bench, stinging her in the shoulder of her firing arm. She shrieked and rolled again, clutching the wound as she raced behind a marble column. It was more exposed, but it would give her a heck of a lot more protection than those benches.

Though she'd only seen a glimpse of her assailant, she'd seen enough to know that he was human. Or at least he looked that way. Still" he did not move like a human, and his eyes were disgustingly blue. God, those eyes glowed so much she wanted to vomit.

Faith hated color.

Catching her breath, she considered her options. She had to get him close. She needed to find a way to touch him.

"Who the f*ck are you?" she screamed at last from behind the column.

The only answer the half-elf received for her troubles was another pair of 9mm slugs slamming into the edge of the marble column, chipping off dust and fragments. Beyond that, Alec ignored his prey's screamed request for his identity, choosing instead to sidestep until he was right beside his wife. Two fingers pressed up against the artery in the side of her neck, checking futilely for a pulse. Utter despair threatened to engulf his soul, with only one thought holding its bone-chilling darkness at bay: This is Rhy'Din. Hold on, dai'sha, just a little bit longer. Alec had made a habit over the years of counting off his rounds as they were discharged. A dozen shots per clip. Six shots expended. Six rounds remaining. Once again his eyes searched the innards of the cathedral, his body beginning to tremble from the vicious concoction of rage and tetradrenaline surging through his blood.

"I am the last man in the world you wanted to piss off, you pointy-eared Kin," he finally called out to her as he stood up to his full height. "And I'm the last person in the world you are ever going to see before I send your soul to Hell." Dashing away from Sivanna, he slipped along the wall in an attempt to flank the half-elf.

Faith had only seen a half-blurred image of the bastard bending down to check her host's neck. If that's what he wants"

"She's dead," she shouted at him.

Moving at a full sprint, the journeyman altered his personal plane of gravity again until he was running on the wall itself. Somersaulting away from it when his instincts said he should, he squeezed the trigger three times at the knot of tau energy that represented the murderer in his ethereal vision. Landing with feline grace on the floor, he stalked towards her position while firing off the last of his rounds.

About to say something more, Faith vision blurred, overwhelmed by the sheer speed of the shooter. Her hearing was nearly flawless, but exposure to her god's essence had unfortunately worn down nearly all of her other senses. She'd only a few bullets left and couldn't afford to waste them, but as her target neared, Faith sprayed the last of them at his form. Another two shots drilled into her abdomen suddenly, sending her stumbling back.

Oh, but the flavor of blood was lovely. It almost made her want more.

He was close. So close. He wanted to send her to hell" She could just as easily bring him with her.

Reaching out softly, the half-elf regarded the man with a straightforward look and shuffled nearer him. "She's dead," she rasped, "if you want her, only I can bring her back." Nearly there. If she only laid her hands on him once, she could end him.

Not ever.

Who had said that"

Just as she was about to ask the robed man what he meant, Sivanna suddenly felt a violent surge in her chest and cried out. It burrowed deeper, and deeper still, punching a hole in her heart and dropping her to the floor just as the mosaics began to dissolve.

"We're out of time," the robed man hissed, suddenly gripping her shoulder as he attempted to tug the cleric violently back to her feet. "You must go back before the dream ends, or it'll take you— and all of us— with it. Go!"

Sivanna gasped and shuddered as she stumbled through the cloud where an Elven soldier once stood. As the robed figure gave her a hard shove, her ankle caught on the disintegrating colorless rubble that was the wall to her cottage. Bruised storm clouds in white and violet and ash loomed unexpectedly overhead, rumbling with the throaty laughter of an earthquake about to gleefully ruin a city. As she pitched forward onto her chin, the cleric watched the entirety of her city slowly crumble and be carried away by tumultuous winds that dispersed even the dust into nothingness.

Her jaw sagged in horror, not at the destruction of her city, but the relief that came to her because of it.

It was then she knew. What was dissolving before her very eyes was not her home. It was something that should never have existed in the first place. Something that did not exist.

"Nuitari?" she breathed out of habit.

"I am here," the robed figure hissed as he hovered over her. "We all are. We were all trapped here by Him." He made no move to help Sivanna to her feet as she struggled, only tilted his hooded head up to the sky. "By the looks of things His slave is dead. You must return. Now. We will follow."

A pang of agony hit Sivanna again in the chest just as she stood, dropping her back to her knees. "I can't?" she groaned, clutching her breast. The pain curled its sharp claws around her ribs and burrowed deep into her bone marrow, humming with harrowing thoroughness. "Oh, god," she gasped, "Is this how it feels to die?"

Nuitari slowly leaned down, giving Sivanna a perfect view of his glowing hourglass pupils. "No," he replied. "This is how it feels to live."

As Sivanna met the god's steady gaze, he cracked a cruel smile. "You were fated for this, Sivanna. You are the only one who could have found us. Just as he," the figure practically spat the pronoun in disgust, "is the only one to bring you back."

"Alec," Sivanna breathed. She felt her eyes sting as that pulling within her suddenly made sense. As if he understood this, Nuitari's smile grew wider. It was a strange mixture of pride and revulsion.

"I knew all along that I did not give you to him for nothing," he said. "Now go."

Despite the paralyzing agony burning in her chest, Sivanna heaved herself to her feet and began to run. She ran until her lungs pulled in plumes of fire and her veins pumped acid. But even as the crippling pain overwhelmed her and blurred her vision, the soles of her feet only pounded harder through the dying city and toward the edge of the forest. The burning thrilled her, for beneath the pangs of torture within her breast glowed a fervent pulse of life— something that ached to break free of her and explode in a thousand different directions. It cocooned deep inside her, growing, bursting with energy and warmth and filling her with such exuberance that the muscles in her legs coiled like springs and launched her through the shadow of what looked like Rhy'Din city.

It was Alec. She was feeling him run through Rhy'Din— could see it rush by in her periphery. She could feel the power in his Ippon muscles as he launched himself through the city streets, and it was her power all the same. She was a part of him. God, it was a beautiful thing.

Her feet pounded on wood as the entire world disappeared in her wake, leaving only the edge of a dock and a vast, terrifying ocean ahead of her. The waves reached up, licking her toes as if beckoning her into their deadly embrace.

If she ever made it back, she would have to learn to swim.

Still" as she stood before that tranquil infinity, no panic arose. She felt no terror and no fear of drowning or of losing control. Instead she felt only pure certainty. It was a solidity that strengthened her and chased away the flutter of emptiness that she had so long tried to fill with cravings of power and hollow ambition. She was full. She was full of him.

Even when she and Alec had Bonded together, Sivanna had never surrendered herself completely. There had always been hesitation and the fear of hurt. There was always the calculated mask of fairness and the walls of mistrust that guarded a part of her that she could keep as her own little private secret. But as she opened herself to him, feeling him calling to her from another plane, all that apprehension dissolved until its remnants only tingled in her fingertips. She was suddenly so serene. So buoyant. So completely fulfilled. God, was this what Alec had always felt when he thought of her" Was Alec what she had been missing all along"

Channeling that ache that throbbed within, Sivanna timed it with his heartbeat and embraced it. From wherever she was and wherever he was, she could still feel the drum in her journeyman's chest. It raced in her and pulsed in a heavenly three-by-two rhythm as it pressed to her palm, the sound of his blood pounding in her ears as if it were her own. The connection was staggeringly strong and quite nearly unbearably sensitive. Somewhere" somewhere she must have been touching him. Gazing down at the choppy waters, she placed her hand over her breast and willed the beat to match his.

"Bring me back to you, my love," Sivanna murmured as she stepped off the dock.

The ache in her chest came alive as her body convulsed suddenly, wracked with fits of violent coughing. She felt the water pour out of her lungs in blazing spasms and all her weight flood into her back as fingers dug into her chest.

"Georgia, I need a Yankauer device, please," uttered a feminine voice to her right evenly. Seconds later something cold and plastic was shoved into her mouth, suctioning the water as it came and giving her precious seconds to draw in shuddering breaths. Sivanna coughed for what felt like hours until that burning in her chest slowly subsided, leaving only a throbbing ache that was eased with what felt like a cold compress.

"A bowl of water, please," murmured the voice to her right again.

"Will she need a transfusion?" another woman called huskily from a few feet away.

"Nyet, I do not think so."

Never in her life had Sivanna been so happy to hear Myrrian. She felt her lips twitch.

"Dai'sha" Are you awake?"

Though she had no strength even to groan, Sivanna managed to lift her eyelids and focus them on a blurry, red and tan form beside her. She could not make out its face, but she knew by the three-by-two heartbeat that hummed against her palm exactly who it was.

"Alec," she rasped, relieved.

The form shifted to look elsewhere. "Sestra moya, would you give us a minute?"

"I'll be outside."

A doorknob rattled before she heard the door creak open.

"Anya?"

"Da?"

The heartbeat against Sivanna's palm slowed. "Spasibo."

There was a pause before the good doctor responded. When she did it was wearily, but Sivanna could hear the smile in her voice. "You're welcome, brat moya." The door closed behind her.

"You came for me," Sivanna breathed at last, squinting and forcing her sight to focus. After taking in slowly the paleness of the walls and the aluminum rails of her bed she could only assume she was in Riverview. But as her eyes tracked back to Alec and took in the sight of his completely soaked, darkly stained shirt, she gasped.

"You're bleeding," she whispered, horrified.

Alec blinked tiredly, then followed her line of sight and bore a wry smile. "It's mostly yours," he admitted, reaching out to rub his thumb across her chin and lips. As he lifted it, deep red caught the light and dribbled down his thumb.

Guess that meant it hadn't been water she had been coughing up. No matter. Sivanna still intended never to so much as look at a pool again. As she closed her eyes, however, she saw Faith's cruel stare and instinctively jerked. There was only a sting of pain, and it was manageable.

"Don't move, dai'sha. Anya will have my head," Alec purred, threading his fingers through her tangled locks. His voice was heaven to her ears.

"Faith....Alec, it was..."

"I took care of it," he uttered emotionlessly.

When Sivanna looked at him again, even with the hard set of his mouth into a thin line, she knew he was the first and the last thing she would ever want to see for the rest of her life. Blindly, she reached out and set a gloved hand onto the strong slope of his jaw. "Your face. I want to touch your face," she begged.

Hazel eyes regarded her first with surprise, then with a serene kind of pleasure. Carefully, the journeyman took each of her hands after he removed her glove, pressing both of her pale, perfect palms to his cheeks. She hardly noticed that the necrosis was gone. Alec noticed not at all, for his eyes were only on her.

Still" He'd misunderstood. When Sivanna shook her head he knew it. "No. I want to touch your face," she repeated softly. Lifting her head up with some effort, she seemed to float toward him in those scant few inches before she brushed her lips against his. It was soft at first. A whisper of something that might never have existed. But when Alec opened his mouth and deepened their kiss, sealing the two of them— the one of them— together, an endless infinity of were's, are's and will be's melted into the marrow of their bones and passed between them. It was a living connection, a circuit of something so deep Sivanna could feel it pulsing in the soles of her feet and swimming, swimming, swimming gloriously in her head. It coiled within her breast, filling it with a lead-like heat that poured through the force of Alec's kiss as it blazed on and left her breathless and new. And when the river of infinity— once trapped within the confines of her moral shell— left her at last, she felt it sink into Alec's chest, into his mouth, into his head through her very presence. Through her thoughts. Through her.

Purposefully, Sivanna drew in another deep breath, this time through her nose. She nearly gagged.

Alec broke the kiss, concerned. "Dai'sha""

Smilingly, the cleric rubbed her bare fingertips along his throat. "You smell like blood, sweat, and gunpowder."

Alec chuckled huskily, dipping his head to kiss her fingertips. "So sorry to offend your fragile senses," he teased.

"Don't be," Sivanna replied, feeling her eyes burn. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever smelled in my life."

As Alec purred again and brushed another kiss against her lips, Sivanna felt a growl form in her throat.

"Lock the door," she breathed meaningfully, dropping her hand to dig her fingernails into his chest.

Alec grinned and took her by the wrist before breaking away. "Oh no you don't. Anya will want you to rest. And so do I."

"Alec," Sivanna whined, moving her body. The pain in her chest stung, but not nearly as much as the ache elsewhere.

"I'll make you a deal," Alec said, amusement coloring his words. "As soon as you can sit up on your own, I will lock the door."

Sivanna shifted, trying to push herself up by her elbows. She hissed, biting back a groan as pangs of soreness knotted around her ribs. When she opened her eyes again, she glared at the journeyman's smug little smile. "You're an as*hole," she grumbled.

"You love me," he replied laughingly, dipping his head to press another kiss against her mouth.

"More than anything," the cleric responded, touching his lips before they silenced hers again. Her eyes sought out his, penetrating him, seeing deep into the very core that she shared and cherished. The words came out in a rush. "I never knew, Alec" I never knew what it was like. What it could be like to really share myself with you. I was always so afraid that I would lose a part of myself." Her voice softened. ?" Some part that I wanted to keep separate from everything else. I thought if I could control everything then I could keep myself from being hurt." As fresh tears escaped her eyes, the journeyman caught them calmly with his fingers. She smiled. "But when I heard you, I realized that I wasn't in control at all. And I never was. It's crazy, and I don't know how I know" but I know now that somehow, somewhere, someone or something meant for us to be together. To find each other and to be a part of one another." When Alec only watched her calmly and remained silent, one shoulder of hers shrugged.

"I want always to share that with you, Alec," she said. "I want that life with you. I want a future with you. And I want to be yours forever, for as long as Fate will have us."

When Alec looked about to say something at last, Sivanna quieted him with a look. "And if Fate won't have us, I'll kick and scream enough to make sure that she does."

The journeyman smiled again, and in the blissfully calm lines of his face Sivanna saw happiness that mirrored her own. He had not changed. He was still her rock, and the one thing that she could depend upon.

And her" Well? perhaps they would find that out in time.

Whichever the case, at least parts of Sivanna still persevered. For though Alec's will was a strong force to be reckoned with, her hot temper and selfishness often won out when she was particularly insistent about something.

Still. Alec did not, and would not complain. Not even as he locked the door.

((And so ends this SL! An ENORMOUS thank-you to Alec's player for both the help brainstorming, for the contributions, for the roleplay fodder, for the patience, and for being just an overall wonderful person. Thank you also to everyone else for bearing with me as I worked on this, and for letting me use your characters!))