Chapter Twenty-Two, Part One
A Beast Re-settled
Hiram was prepared to protect himself. He had his magic
brimming at his fingertips, eager to leap free and engage in a way he hadn’t
allowed it to for weeks, for longer. Sparks literally flared around him, power
snapping and crackling, readying itself to strike at the snarling beast in
front of him, the beast he knew, that he didn’t want to hurt but wasn’t
sure he’d be able to stop any other way with how he felt right now—
And then the beast crumpled to the stone floor like a forgotten
doll, limbs going limp, chest heaving as it panted desperately, glazed eyes
fixed on Hiram’s face. Those eyes…they were so different from Avery’s, yet
Hiram saw him in those eyes. They followed him unerringly, brimming with
tears even as the beast’s claws retracted and his sharp teeth receded.
“Oh, my darling.” Hiram knelt down beside him and shifted
Avery’s head onto his lap, holding him through the last of his transformation
back into the man Hiram recognized. Gods, he should have known, he should have
seen it sooner. If only he had pushed a bit, dug a little deeper into the
mystery at the center of Avery Surrus. This might not have happened. He could
have stopped it, he could have—
No. Don’t go there. If his past had taught Hiram
anything, it was that he couldn’t take responsibility for someone else’s
decisions, especially not when it was someone he loved. That was the path of
madness, of too many questions and not enough answers. If he let himself get
lost in that mire again, after all the self-recrimination he’d endured with
Andurion, he would never get out of it.
They couldn’t go back; not him, not Avery. All they could do
now was go forward, together. That meant keeping the curse from taking further
hold. Avery had treasure in his hands, but it was still inside the Tower. That
meant he wasn’t too far gone yet.
Avery groaned, something so guttural it could have come from
the throat of his beast. He sounded like he was being pulled in half, and blood
began to flow from his nose even as he pulled away from Hiram. “Don’t,” he
gasped. “Don’t touch me.”
Hiram couldn’t help the little flinch that went through him
at that. “All right,” he said evenly, but that just made Avery hiss with a
combination of frustrated fury and despair. The look on his face, longing and
hatred stamped into the hollows beneath his eyes and along his jaw, stripped
Hiram of his ability to defend his heart.
“It’s not you,” Avery managed even as he pressed to
his hands and knees. “I want to stay, but I can’t—I can’t, I have to get back
in time or I’ll be arrested.”
“Why would you be arrested?”
“Because I’ll turn myself in!” Avery snarled, winding
one hand into his hair even as he staggered to his feet. The other scooped up
the gems, linked together with silver ligaments. “How are you even here?” he
whispered in agony. “How? You should be home, you should be safe, I
can’t—” It looked like it took every bit of will he had in him to lurch toward
the stairs again, but he was unsteady on his feet. “I’m not going to make it
back in time,” Avery whispered. “I’m not going to—I’m not—”
Hiram felt like an idiot when he finally realized what was
going on. The geis, of course; Avery had to do what Marlon compelled him to,
which apparently included a time limit. If he didn’t get his stolen goods back
to the bard in time, he would be forced to turn himself in to the imperials.
If he took the gems from the tower, he would be sinking the
final phase of the curse so deep into his bones that there was no way back
again. But if Hiram interfered…if he gave away his location to the imperial
wizards, it was as good as lighting fireworks for Andurion. They wouldn’t stop
with one troop; they would heap the weight of their magic on this tower until
it finally collapsed, taking him with it.
If he waited for them to do so, that was.
Avery screamed and clutched his hair hard enough to rend, the
trickle of blood from his nose becoming a torrent. There was no more time to
weigh the odds, and even if he’d had it, Hiram’s decision wouldn’t change.
Hiram got to his feet and wrapped his arms around Avery,
pulling him close. He let his magic out, surrounding the two of them in a spell
that was more feeling than technique, one that melded their auras and let him
sense every part of Avery. He sensed the layers of the curse—one that was old
and settled, one that still flared every now and then, and the third fighting
to sink its hooks deep into his bones. He could see the geis as well, a filthy
shroud layered over Avery’s mind and causing him pain that worsened with every
second. He followed the shadow of it beyond the tower to the edge of the
forest, where a man whose magic was like gilded tar waited impatiently, fists
clenching as his arbitrary timer wound down.
There wasn’t time to wrest Avery from his control, but Hiram
could at least fulfil the terms of the geis. The alternative was too grim to
mention. He closed his eyes, then wrapped his magic around the length of gems
in Avery’s hand. As long as he didn’t touch it with his hands, he wouldn’t
overwrite Avery’s possession of it. Now, just a little bit of power in the
translocation spell, wrapping the jewels with a wisp of elemental flame that
could pass through mundane dimensions and follow the geis…and then they were
gone.
For just a second, Hiram was able to use the wisp’s eyes to see
Marlon’s shock as it deposited Avery’s stolen treasure into that vile man’s
hands. Then the force of the geis dissipated, and with it so did their
connection. Avery slumped against Hiram, the shocking relief from the geis
turning him practically liquid, and Hiram tightened his grip as he felt the
aftereffects of his spell reverberate through the Tower.
He’d done it now. Used his magic, and not just magic but
high-level fire magic, at that. There was no hiding his presence at this point,
not from the imperials outside, not from Andurion, not from anyone.
But as Avery lifted his head and stared at Hiram in pure
amazement, he found himself able to put his own worries aside. “What…how did
you…”
Hiram smiled. “Just a little trick I picked up long ago.”
“A little trick…you…” His hands clenched in Hiram’s cloak. “Are
you really…Xerome?”
Hiram shrugged. “I did say as much.”
“But…but…” It said something about Avery’s handsomeness that, even gaping like
a jackdaw, he was still incredibly attractive. “I thought you were concussed!”
“I know.” Hiram shrugged. “It’s rather unbelievable when you
think too hard about it, so my recommendation is not to. At least, not yet.
We’ve got quite a bit to untangle first.”
Avery nodded dazedly. “Right. Right…” He looked down at
himself. “I feel as though I should be slavering uncontrollably right now.”
“Mm,” Hiram agreed. “Well, the curse is a bit confused by
the fact that what you stole is gone, but your body is still present here. I
daresay that when you actually try to leave it will hit you again in full
force.”
Avery sighed and averted his eyes. “You know about that,
then.”
“Only just now,” Hiram assured him. “But seeing as the
architect of that curse is still here, I’m optimistic that we can do something
about it.” He could try breaking it, but curses were delicate things, prone to
backlash. The last thing he wanted was for Avery to suffer more from his
ham-handed experimentation.
“The architect?”
“Close enough.” Hiram glanced toward the stairs. “We should
go talk to him.”
A firm hand against his cheek turned Hiram’s face back.
Avery looked at him, blotchy and disheveled, red-eyed and with blood drying in
twin streams beneath his nose. He looked terrible, and yet… “Not yet,” Avery
said firmly, then pulled Hiram into a kiss.
His lips tasted of tears and blood, his grip was tremulous, and
his mouth was sour from a night without sleep, yet it was still better than
Hiram could have imagined. The circumstances could scarcely have been worse,
but the person Hiram wanted, whom he was utterly enamored with, was here with
him and wanting him back, giving him his heat and his determination and his passion.
Avery opened his mouth and Hiram responded in kind, and the kiss turned softer,
slicker, less forceful and more intimate and gods, now their bodies were
pressed together as tightly as their mouths, Avery pushing Hiram up against the
stone wall and bracketing him with his arms. There was so much strength in this
man, not just from the curse but from the ferocity of his convictions, and
Hiram was one of them. Even before Avery knew who he really was, he’d fallen for
him.
They kissed until Hiram’s lips were sore from it, until the
only taste between them was the sweetness of the kiss itself, and Avery finally
pulled back. When he opened his eyes, they were bright—not with tears, but with
satisfaction. “I love you,” he said, soft but firm. “Tell me you know that.”
Hiram smiled and kissed the tip of Avery’s nose. “Of course
I do.” He kissed his brow, then his cheekbone, then his chin. Finally he found
his mouth again and pressed their lips together, light enough that he could
still say, “I love you as well.” Avery trembled against him, then grinned.
“Now, let’s go see what we can salvage from this situation.”
The grin dropped away. “I’m sor—”
Hiram kissed him again. “No sorries,” he insisted. “Not for
anything you did to protect yourself, otherwise I’ll have to apologize in kind
and we’ll be here all day. It’s not too late for this to turn out all right.”
“I don’t see how,” Avery confessed.
Hiram looked up, toward the top of the tower. “It’s all
about who you know.”
Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two
Back and Forth
The Tower was far from silent as they climbed the stairs, as
opposed to the last time Hiram made his way to the apex. Instead, splashes of
color sparked off the structure itself as magicked arrows, bolts, and even a
rock strike from what looked like a hastily constructed mangonel impacted the
stone, hurled by the contingent of four imperial wizards and their soldier
escort on the east side. Hiram stopped at one of the window slits and stared
out morosely at the black- and red-robed wizards working in tandem to bring
Gemmel’s Tower down.
“Idiocy,” he muttered. He was getting a headache just
watching them throw themselves into the destructive work their emperor had
given them. “They don’t even care what magnificence they might be destroying in
here, all they want is to extract me like a bug from a carapace.”
“It’s probably more than just your reputation driving it,”
Avery said in a quiet voice. He had a grip on Hiram’s left hand that didn’t
seem like it was going to let up anytime soon, and Hiram didn’t want it to. “The
Tower of Gemmel has a reputation of its own. I grew up on stories of people
finding ways in only to emerge so mad they couldn’t be cured by spell or
prayer.” He sighed. “I didn’t take them seriously enough.”
Hiram didn’t have much to say to that. Their best hope for
handling the curse was waiting for them at the top of the Tower. “Let’s keep
going,” he said instead, and they climbed the last two stories in an
uncomfortable silence that not even the affection between them could soften. Avery
was clearly distressed, for plenty of reasons both good and not, and Hiram
wanted to soothe him, but they were under a bit of a time crunch now that his presence
had been so firmly established on the outskirts of Lollop.
I’m going to have to leave. The thought didn’t fill Hiram
with pleasure. It didn’t even make him resigned; instead, he detested the
inevitability of it. He’d made friends here, met a man he loved here, made a home
here. He had people who counted on him, Letty’s family and every person who
benefited from his herbology, and Tilda and Jon and even probably Master
Spindlestep as friends, people who liked him not for what he could do for them
or for his perceived power, but simply because they did.
Would Avery come with him? Would Hiram even want him to,
given how unstable his future was likely to be? How long would it be before
Andurion responded to the rumors that he was here and came after Hiram himself?
Avery pulled him to a stop just outside the door at the top
of the Tower. “I can smell your distress,” he murmured, leaning in against
Hiram’s side and pressing his lips just beneath his ear. “What’s wrong?”
You’ll find out soon enough. Hiram just turned and
pressed a kiss to Avery’s forehead, then opened the door. It was still
incredibly bright inside the uppermost room, but Gemmel hadn’t resurrected his
light trap. He sat where Hiram had left him, on the little bench against the
far wall, unmoving except for the lanterns of his eyes. When he saw Avery,
though, he tilted his head with a creak. “Interesting.”
“Hiram,” Avery whispered from behind him in a voice that was
trying very hard to stay calm. “What is that?”
“Better to ask who,” Hiram said. There was no sense in
putting the introduction off. “Avery Surrus, this is the Wizard Gemmel of Clan
Blackstone.”
“But…” To his credit, Avery didn’t voice that it was
impossible. How could he, when the evidence was staring him right in the face?
“Ah,” he finished a bit weakly.
“So.” The construct shifted a bit, folding his hands on his
lap. “You’ve brought me the thief, then.”
“I—” Avery shut his eyes for a moment. “I did steal from
you,” he confessed, stepping up so that he was shoulder to shoulder with Hiram.
Despite the gravity of the moment, Hiram felt proud of him. “I apologize for
that. I never should have done so.”
Gemmel nodded. “Especially not after you felt the effects of
the first time settle in, eh?” He sighed, a wholly mechanical sound given that
he had no lungs to draw air with. “It’s always astonished me how little the
short-lived peoples of this world use their brains. One would think that
experiencing the first level of the curse would be enough to warn you off for
good, but no! You came back not once, but twice more.”
“He was forced to come back this last time,” Hiram
interjected.
Gemmel scoffed. “And is this person’s inability to distinguish
friend from foe is somehow my fault? Such a weak mind deserves to bear the
brunt of my chastisement, I’d say.”
Avery flinched, but Hiram had had just about enough of this.
“Oh, is that the sign of a weak mind?” he asked acridly. “Is it the possessor
of a strong mind that miscalculates its own genius and destroys those nearest
and dearest to him, then? Is it a sign of strength, to use one’s magic to
poison the land and the people living on it and tear their clan apart even
further? Is it a sign of strength that your people, who were one of the
greatest mountain kingdoms for centuries, have given up forges for kilns and
carpentry? If that’s the case, then I suppose all of your kin were simply weak
minds meant for destruction.”
“Hiram,” Avery protested, a tremor of fear in his
voice.
The air in the room went from temperate to cool, then cold,
as the brightness of Gemmel’s eyes flared. “You do not speak of my people,” the
construct intoned. A flare of magic intensified in his aura, black edges with
flickering gold. It was incredibly potent, and Hiram was reminded that this
person was magic, the magic of a famously powerful wizard. The aura
stretched toward them, flickers promising sparks of pain—
And met Hiram’s own fiery glow with an abrupt halt. “I will
speak of your mistakes if it means reminding you to be compassionate. No one
is above making mistakes, not the strongest or weakest among us. I’ve made many
myself.” He smiled without humor. “Some of the biggest ones were turned into
ballads. But at least I can say that I’ve never tortured someone for my own
amusement under the guise of teaching them a lesson.”
“You—!” Gemmel leapt to his feet, magic bursting outward and
into the mirrors. The light trap snapped closed, but Hiram was expecting this.
He called upon his old study of shadow magic and drew both himself and Avery up
into a pocket of shadow in the very top of the tower.
Shadow was a liminal space, one where you could slip inside
the smallest sliver if you knew what you were doing, without being
uncomfortably squeezed. Avery’s breath caught as he realized what they were
doing. “I’ve never seen someone manipulate a shadow so fast,” he murmured as
Gemmel raged below them. “Not the strongest rogues, not even Narion.”
“I daresay Narion’s specialty isn’t shadow magic,” Hiram
replied, keeping one ear on what Gemmel was saying as he fended off rogue beams
of light.
“But…neither is Xerome’s—yours,” Avery said questioningly.
Hiram shrugged. “My position required me to be able to use
any and all magic depending on the situation. I’ve studied everything from druidism
to necromancy, enough that I won’t be caught flat-footed. But you’re right,
it’s not my preference or my strength.” Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t second
or third best at shadow magic in all the Empire, but this wasn’t the time for
bragging. “I shouldn’t have provoked him,” Hiram said after a moment as he
stared down at the clanking construct, magic coming from him in terrible waves
as he searched for the source of his pain. “We need him to release you from the
curse, after all.”
“He won’t,” Avery replied immediately. “Or at least, not for
nothing. Clan Blackstone has a reputation for shrewd dealings, but they’re not
unreasonable.” He bit his lower lip for a moment. “I have an offer for him, if
you can calm him enough for us to speak safely.”
Hiram’s lungs clenched for a moment. “Not your life.”
Avery shook his head. “What life will I live if I leave the
tower as I am now? The curse will make me fully a beast.”
“I can find a way to forestall it,” Hiram insisted. “A spell
of protection, a specific healing path—I can slow time to a crawl if need be!”
He’d just found this man, someone he could love for the rest of his life. He
wasn’t ready to lose him.
Avery cupped Hiram’s face in his hands and kissed him
tenderly. “You’re kinder than I deserve,” he told him. “But I have to face what
I did and try to make reparations for it. Please, just…let me try.”
Hiram stared into Avery’s forget-me-not blue eyes for a long
moment, then nodded once. “I’ll see what I can do.” He looked down and
projected his voice into the room. “Calm yourself, Wizard Gemmel, and we’ll
come out and parlay with you.”
“Why should I parlay with thieves?” Gemmel roared with
brassy thunder, sweeping magic as sharp as a scythe through the room. It
scraped off the mirrors, leaving them flawed but not cutting all the way
through the glass. “Why should I parlay with those who do not respect the dead,
who would steal from a sacred sepulcher?”
“Give him the chance to make amends,” Hiram entreated.
“Please. Let someone make amends for a wrong done to you and yours.
After all…” Despite himself, his mind went to Phlox down at the base of the
Tower, steadily feeding his heat into the false blackstone and weakening it
further. “You’ve endured very many wrongs,” he finished a bit unsteadily.
Gemmel’s ire seemed to cool. “We have,” he agreed hollowly.
“And it is my greatest shame that I added to them. I am magic, but even magic
can cringe in shame and lash out in dismay.” He lowered his hands. “I will hear
this offer of amendment.”
Cautiously, Hiram lowered himself and Avery out of the
shadow and onto the floor once more. The mirrors were awry, but he was prepared
to pull them away again at a moment’s notice. Once they were stable, he let go
of Avery, who stepped forward and dropped down to one knee in front of Gemmel.
“Wizard Gemmel, I have wronged you,” he said, voice low but
eyes square on the construct’s face. “I violated your privacy, invaded your
home, and took things that weren’t mind to take. You would be within your
rights to make me suffer forever for that. But…I hope you’ll give me the chance
to fix this instead.”
“Mm. And how would you do so?”
“By retrieving what I stole and returning it to you,” Avery
said. “I don’t know where every piece went, but please give me the time to
track them down and bring them back in exchange for lifting the curse.”
Hiram held his breath as he watched Gemmel’s stiff, stern
face. It was unreadable for a long moment, and then—
“Three months, then.”
Three months? That’s all? Hiram opened his mouth to
argue, but the wizard went on, “This Tower has stood for long enough. It’s past
time for me to take it down, and indeed the lower levels seem to be even more
unstable than I previously thought.” It wasn’t meant as a rebuke, but Hiram
read his own handiwork in the words anyway and grimaced. “It is past time for the
dead, and myself, to be laid to rest.” He glanced at Hiram. “You have been
hunted here, yes?”
“I have,” he said with a sigh.
“Then three months is certainly the most I can offer, with
wizards of the Vordurian Empire attacking. And it will only get worse.” The
thought seemed to cheer him, oddly. He sat back down on his bench and refolded
his hands. “I will keep this room accessible to you for three months,” he said.
“Return here with what you stole, and the curse will be lifted. Fail to do so,
and you’ll bear it for the rest of what will likely be a short and miserable
life.”
“You—”
“Thank you,” Avery broke in before Hiram could protest.
“That’s very generous of you. I will endeavor to return as soon as I can.” He
got up on both feet once more and stepped back beside Hiram.
“Good.” Gemmel nodded at them. “Then it’s time for you both
to leave.” His lantern eyes flared for a moment. “I think you gentlemen will
find it a bit easier than entering was. But first, I must ask for you to brace
yourselves.”
Brace ourselves? Hiram reached for Avery’s arm—
—and the Tower shuddered strongly enough to knock them off
their feet.
Interlude: Wizard Greenlief
To think, I was worried a post to Oribel meant falling in
favor!
It was all the golden-bearded Wizard Greenlief could do not
to rub his hands together in pure glee. To have chanced upon not just the
opportunity to use his persuasive magics for the greater good, but to have
discovered Xerome himself as he did so! Xerome might be a traitorous bastard,
but taking him down would be the ultimate feather in any cap, especially given
the price that Emperor Andurion had laid on his head.
I’ll be able to fund my own tower with that kind of money,
Greenlief mused as his cadre of assistant wizards continued their steady
bombardment. He’d already instructed them in how to set up a magical
catch-basin to recapture and reuse the magic that cascaded off the blackstone,
which was unfortunately most of it, and as a result it was hardly tiring at all
to maintain the assault. Certainly not for me.
Greelief glanced behind him to where his bodyguard stood,
silent and still, eyes fixed on the tower. After the backlash from Xerome
breaking his last spell had laid Greenlief out for a week, even with his
resilient elvish ancestry, he’d boldly requested the services of an imperial
bodyguard. Highly trained, their powers tailored to the individual they were
protecting and the threat at hand, Senica was a rare individual, their
background so crissed and crossed to improve their defensive capabilities that
it was impossible to know precisely from what cloth they’d been cut, so to
speak. Greenlief was a bit intimidated of them, which he masked through his loquaciousness.
“You’ve met him before, haven’t you?” he asked.
Senica’s eyes flickered toward his hands, which he was still
rubbing together compulsively. Greenlief dropped them so that they were hidden
within the lengthy hems of his sleeves, but his itchy fingertips kept brushing
against the smooth fabric liner inside.
“Back in Galenish?” he went on after the silence became too
heavy to bear. “I thought I remembered seeing you in the company of the royal
family during several of the festivals…”
“I’ve met the Wizard Xerome many times before,” Senica
agreed. “But my previous posting was as the personal bodyguard of Princess Misha.”
Greelief’s jaw dropped. “Wha…starlit heavens.” His mouth
opened again before he could stop himself. “How did you survive the burning?”
Senica’s gaze turned flat, and Greelief resisted the urge to
bite his own lip. Fool, to mention that to them. The princess’s entire
wing within the palace had been burned to the ground after she and Xerome had
left, along with all of the personal servants of hers that the emperor could
find. Which wasn’t many, in the end—the princess and the wizard had done a very
good job of covering their tracks, and Andurion’s rage had been equally punctilious.
“I was away from the palace at the time.” Their steely eyes
settled upon him. “But you may rest assured that the emperor himself thoroughly
vetted my loyalty. I will protect you to the very ends of my ability, as
needed.”
“Oh, I never doubted your prowess,” Greenlief assured them. “I
just—well.” He smiled and shrugged. “I have a tendency to speak without
thinking things through at times. Do forgive me.”
Senica looked away, and it felt like being out from under
the eyes of a dragon. “It’s all right. But I suggest you take more care when Kelynn
Zar arrives. He’s never been one to welcome questions.”
The wizard’s jaw dropped. “I…Wizard Zar? Here? But why?”
Was that a smirk on the bodyguard’s face? “Someone’s got to
be prepared for personal combat with Xerome himself.”
“I don’t think—”
“You realize we’re just marking time right now, Wizard
Greenlief?” Their words were like a sword through the gut. “Xerome wouldn’t be
found, especially not in a place as backwards as this, if he didn’t want
to be. Whoever ends up handling him, it’s not going to be either of us. We’ll
be fortunate if we can find a way into the tower by the time Zar arrives.”
“But—” But that wasn’t in keeping with Greenlief’s plans! He
wanted to be elevated to the Temple of Presiel in Galenish, wanted to rule from
the glittering palace of the god of love and obsession in the heart of the empire!
Taking down Xerome was meant to be his stepping stone to the greatest station of
his life!
Before he could coherently voice any of his complaints, the
tower…rippled. It was more than a shake or a shudder, more than a sway—it
was as though a wave began at the very top of the Tower of Gemmel and spread
down the sides of it, blackstone bulging before it settled back into place,
down and down, until it got to within twenty feet of the ground itself. And
then—
The ground burst.
Rocks and dirt flew through the air, practically pulverized
by the pressure that had uprooted them. Greelief didn’t see any of it past the
first split-second; Senica’s had thrown him to the ground and covered him with
his own body. He stared, wide-eyed, up at the person’s shoulder as the sound of
several screams and a sound that reminded him of his mother’s family’s tree
being ripped out at the roots by a brute of a giant who was passing through—something
too sturdy to sever without hideous force, followed by an obscure pain that
only someone who’d lost something unspeakably precious could understand. It was
more than a collapse, more than a break—it was a rending.
The magic in the air only carried the faintest hint of Xerome.
Greenlief had been trained to recognize the human’s magical signature; every
imperial wizard was ordered to do so after Xerome’s defection. The rest of it
was much older, something dry, almost stale, but incredibly powerful. And…dwarvish?
Of course, because it was the Tower of Gemmel and Gemmel had been a dwarf, and—
Senica’s shoulder vanished, and a second later Greenlief’s
head was spinning as he was set back on his feet. His bodyguard didn’t linger
beside him, though, instead shouting toward an unsteady cluster of imperial
shoulders, “Triage, now! Gather the wounded and get them ready for healing.
Send someone to the Temple of Melemor for support, and pull everyone back from
the hot zone.”
Hot zone?
Greenlief turned to look at the tower, which was notably
shorter than it had been a few seconds ago. It was as though the bottom level
of it had sunk into the earth, only it hadn’t gone quietly. There was a pool of
what looked like liquid blackstone around it, fizzing and crackling, shimmering
with a nimbus of toxic purple power, and there were still some regular stones
bobbing in the midst of it all, and standing on one of them was a cat, and—
Wait. A cat? Greenlief blinked and looked again.
No cat. Ha, no, of course not. Whatever had just happened, there
was no way a simple animal such as a cat could withstand it.
What an odd thing to imagine.
“Wizard Greenlief, we could use your assistance with the
wounded!”
Ah, of course, of course. “Yes, I…coming!”
A cat. How silly. He shook his head and continued over to
the other imperials, completely missing the faint fluctuation in magical energy
that might have clued him in to the fact that the tower was not quite settled
yet—that, in fact, something…or someone…had just escaped from it.
