<html> <head> <style></style></head> <body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'> Act II: Storm Front Evening, Feb 29, 708 CR You have one chance, and one chance only. If you intervene at the wrong moment tonight, you might save him from that particular trap, but you will have no chance against what comes tomorrow. Tonight, you will have one opportunity to remove him entirely from Agemnos' reach. Until then, you must not go to him. You must work from the shadows. Alexastra slipped backward into the darkness, letting it wrap around her like a cloak. Brick rasped cold against her wingtips. "I'm fine with that. I'm used to the shadows." I know. The reply came coupled with a sickly green glow, faint at first but quickly growing brighter, exposing her. But do you know when to step into the light? Alexastra lifted her wing to shield her eyes, cringing away as the brightness grew too much to bear. Searing pain flashed through her... She woke, nose twitching. Smoke. ----- Drift raced down the streets of Euper at a gallop, both sets of lungs gulping air as he tried to keep up with the faster foxtaur Misha. Not that he needed the guide: the red glow over the rooftops and the black smoke racing downwind pointed to their destination like the finger of Eli himself. A flicker of firelight reached through a gap between buildings and the smell of burning fur flashed into vivid memory. He nearly dropped his ring before managing to fumble it onto his finger. Its familiar cloak of cold did nothing for the flames seared in his mind. His mouth tasted like metal, but he couldn't summon up enough spit to clear it. Misha's red fur flared as the foxtaur rounded the corner. A voice in Drift's head pleaded with him not to follow. Just keep running, run away, far away, anywhere but nearer the fire! He almost listened. Misha could handle it. Misha was the best. If he couldn't handle it, no-one could. Drift surely wouldn't be needed... His voice caught twice in his throat and he nearly reached the corner before he finally told Xavier to hang on. At the last possible moment, he made the turn, and Xavier's claws dragged at Drift's fur as he was nearly thrown off the taur's back by the skidding, scrabbling slide. Only a convulsive heave at the end kept them from smashing into the buildings on the far side. Xavier cursed, demanding the reason for such a reckless maneuver, but Drift didn't hear him. The red light, now unchecked, blasted everything away. He stumbled to a halt as the heat struck him: half felt, half remembered. The flames leaped and roared like an angry beast on a slender chain, and what courage remained, fled. He froze. ----- Wolfram vaulted from the wagon and muscled through the gathering crowd. Misha was rallying the bucket line, so Wolfram looked to the next-best asset: Xavier, who was trying to get Drift out of the street, or even to respond at all. "Can't you make it rain instead of snow?" the ram asked, raising his voice over the flames. With an incredulous glare that suggested Wolfram might as well have asked him to exchange the sun for the moon, the weather mage speared one finger skyward. The storm roiled, black in the coming nightfall, pulsing like a living thing. It loomed over the valley from horizon to horizon, sweeping toward them like a crashing wave, ready to wipe away anything in its path. Lightning slammed the earth in great tree-rending strokes. Flying snow cut visibility, whipped by the blasting wind. It also strangely deadened the thunder, dulling the claps unless they crashed directly overhead. "Does that look like something that would take orders?" Xavier retorted. Wolfram backed off. "Sorry. Had to ask." The leopard huffed, raised his ears, and smoothed his emotions with visible effort. "I'll see what I can do," he said, raising his arms against the wind. "Though I make no promises." Immediately, he bent under the weight of it, but growled and fought back. Through gritted teeth, he hissed, "Help Drift!" "I’ve got it: just do what you can!" Wolfram shouted back over a peal of thunder. He gave the mage an encouraging thump on the shoulder, which earned him a venomous 'quit-breaking-my-concentration' glare. With his best asset in play, he turned his attention to Drift. The samoyed taur stood frozen, ears down, tail tucked, hackles up from ears to rump. Firelight burnished his white fur bronze, but deep shadows lined his haunted face. "Drift!" Wolfram shouted, and grabbed the taur's vest, giving him an ineffective shake. "Drift, come on! Wake up!" He switched his grip to the taur's arm next, yanking on the fur. Then, in a burst of inspiration, he seized the taur by wrist and elbow and started pulling, physically dragging him around to face away from the fire. "Drift!" Drift was slow to answer, like a diver surfacing after too long underwater. "What... what is it?" he asked, his eyes lingering on the fireglow reflecting off the buildings, the shadows dancing madly on the walls. Wolfram wouldn't let him go back under. Insistent, he kept drawing his friend's attention away from his waking nightmare, away from memories and back to reality. Switching his grip to the taur's upper arms, Wolfram shook him until his eyes focused somewhere other than the firelight. "Hey, look at me. Don't look at the fire, look at me!" He dropped his voice to a confidential murmur. "You don't have to stay here. The wagon's dropping off some team members and then getting out of here. Go with them. Help them get unloaded." Drift started to look away, but dragged his eyes back before Wolfram could rattle his brains again. "No..." He swallowed hard. "No. I have to do something." Wolfram patted his friend on the shoulder. "Good. That's what I wanted to hear." He glanced around, trying to remember the layout of the town, and then pulled Drift along. "Come on, I know what you can do." "What in the hells do you think you're doing?!" Byron yelled, the cantankerous trapmaster nearly hopping up and down on the wagon as half the team of horses shifted onto two legs and started to unhitch themselves. "You're not leaving my furs next to a fire! We have to get them out of here!" "On level ground, we only need four to pull the wagon, and that fire needs to be stopped!" one of the horses snapped back. "So either sit down and shut up or get down and help!" Harnesses fell away with the clink and rattle of quick-release clasps, swinging down and out of the way of the four that stayed hitched. Those four started forward, the lurch unceremoniously dumping Byron over backward into his furs with a yelp. The four horses left behind snatched clothing from the wagon as it passed. "Go! Go! Hya!" the head stallion yelled, slapping the back end of the departing wagon as if to urge it on with the blow, then jerked on a pair of short trousers and ran for the fire. Byron dug himself out of the cargo and rounded on the remaining horses with a snarl, but the profanity died stillborn as a distraction presented itself: Drift and Wolfram running away from the fire. "Where are those two going?" he wondered. "I wouldn't have expected them to bolt." Then the wagon jerked around a corner and he had other things to think about, namely staying onboard. ----- Wolfram had just gotten Drift posted at the nearest well, putting his strong smithing arms to use winding the dipping pail up and down to fill buckets for the firefighters, when a snow-laden blast of wind staggered the samoyed taur and nearly slapped the ram off his feet. Several blocks away, the fire roared in hearty approval, the glow over the rooftops brightening as the gust carried the fire over an intervening street to another building. Fresh prey. Wolfram cursed. "Blast this wind! We could lose half the town!" Handing a filled bucket to a young runner, Drift surprised his friend with a clear-headed reply. "Wolfram, Xavier is never going to be able to control this." He gestured up at the massive storm. "Ask him if he can make a bigger version of the wind shield he used back at Ice Lake. He'll know what you're talking about." "I heard about that," Wolfram replied with a nod. "Good idea. Are you going to be okay here?" "I'll be fine. Get me some more people to pass buckets before that boy runs his legs off." "Sounds like a plan. Be careful!" "You be careful! I'm not the one running back to the fire!" ----- Wind-blasted snow hissed against Raven Hin'Elric's bedroom window, and a lightning flash momentarily hid from sight the red glow over Euper. Raven paced, worry writ large on her lupine features. It wasn't the fire that worried her- the temple had long-established protocols for such emergencies. Merai and Tessa, along with several healers from Coe's infirmary, had been dispatched to aid in containing the fire and helping the wounded. Saroth had also sent word that a lightning shield was being prepared to ward against roof strikes across Metamor and Euper. No. What worried her was the storm. When Saroth warned her of its approach, and with memories of Nasoj's Yule blizzard still fresh in her memory, she had immediately sought an audience with the aedra lord Dvalin. The weather god's reply had come quickly. Yes, the storm was his doing. No, Metamor had not offended him: it had merely had several mild and early springs in a row and needed the extra snowmelt. There was nothing to worry about, Lord Dvalin had assured her, so just relax, enjoy the show, and think of good harvests come fall. But Raven did not relax. While there was nothing that she could specifically fault in his explanation, something about the Storm Lord's demeanor caused her gut to tighten. Maybe it was the extra helping of charm the opal-eyed diety had laid on, or perhaps it was the hint of impatience she detected underneath it. Or maybe it was the violence of the storm itself- if snowmelt were the only goal, then why the thunder and lightning? Raven had interacted with the gods, either personally or through watching her father, for the majority of her adult life, and she trusted her instincts. Something was going on. The Temple would stay on high alert tonight. ----- "That bat lady's got some serious big ones, going back in like that." Drift's head snapped up, an icy chill running down his spine. Bat lady? "What did you say?" he asked, breaking into their conversation. "What bat lady? Where?" The sudden intensity of his gaze unnerved the two teenagers, one boy, one girl, and they both instinctively stepped back from the agitated taur. It didn't stop his questions. "What did this 'bat lady' look like? Fox face? Orange ruff around the neck?" "Yes," said the girl. On a closer look, she might actually have been a real teenager rather than a very progressed AR. "The last I saw, she was helping the Mauses get out of their home." The boy began to nod in agreement, but by then Drift was already gone. ----- The snow parted and the wind vanished at a crossing street. Drift didn't notice. The bucket line scattered ahead of his charge. He didn't notice that, either. The fire growled and reached for him. He tried not to see it. Wolfram and Misha closed in from both sides, and Xavier looked up from a strained meditation. He didn't care. His attention, his entire being, strained for some sign of his beloved. She had to be safe! She had to be! "Alexis?" he called. "Alexis!" The name was barely out of his mouth when a scream rent the night, a heart-stopping cry of pain and fear that stalled half of the fire crews in shock. What came next was worse. With a creaking, shuddering crack, the Maus family home sagged under the fire's assault, and the high scream cut off with terrible suddenness. A white blur moved and Misha yelled. "Drift, no!" Too late. Mid-bound, the samoyedtaur shrank to dog and smashed through the door of the burning building like a catapult stone. The foxtaur gaped for a moment, amazed that such a pyrophobe as Drift would do something so rash, then spun to stop Wolfram from duplicating his error. He needn't have worried. Crushing down his own shock, Wolfram was already turning away, rallying the bucket line with command tone worthy of a drill sergeant. The ram turned next to Xavier, asking something about a 'small storm like at the hedge maze', but was answered only with a fang-baring hiss of irritation. The wind shield, extended far beyond its designed parameters in its efforts to keep the fire under control, required all of Xavier's concentration just to keep it from collapsing. It shivered with the lapse of focus and tried again to buckle. Even that one short hiss let another strong gust slip through to the fire's roaring welcome and the weather mage scrambled to shore up against the next. Wolfram pulled back, and finally turned a desperate glance toward the burning doorway where he had last seen his friend. Could he- Misha jerked two Keepers from the bucket line and sent them running to the mage guild and the Lothanasi. "Get help, especially mages! Hurry!" he ordered. Next, he barked, "Wolfram! Get over here!" The fox pulled a small paint brush and an even smaller metal pot from a pocket, rune-making tools he kept with him at all times. He painted a complex symbol onto Wolfram's hand with swift, precise strokes. "This won't last long," he yelled over a crash of thunder, "but it will protect you from the fire and find you good air to breathe. Now go get Drift!" That was all the encouragement Wolfram needed. With a few quick breaths to saturate his lungs, the ram lowered his head and charged into the blaze. ----- Wolfram had been in a fire before. In his youth, the family farmhouse had been struck by lightning and burned to the ground. He knew firsthand just how quickly smoke and fire could fill a room. That's why he didn't question it when the black clouds and flames seemed to part before him, as if retreating from his path. He just mentally thanked Misha for an excellent spell and ran, shouting his friend's name. "Drift? Drift!" Between the roar of the fire and the groans of the dying building, Wolfram could barely hear himself, much less any reply. Still, he hunted. Fire leapt at him from a side door and he instinctively recoiled, bashing his shoulder against the wall. He actually went partway through before he got his balance back, and he hastily brushed the hot coals from his clothes before they could find a niche to catch in. A faint glow around him seemed to keep the embers off, but he didn't have time to investigate. He had to find Drift and get the hell out, fast. "Drift! Where are you?" In the fourth room, Wolfram found Drift. Back on two legs, the samoyed heaved at a fallen beam, muscles straining under his fur as he tried desperately to lift it. Beneath the beam lay a section of wall, smeared with blood from the samoyed's fire-seared hands. Beneath that... Wolfram's heart sank. "Oh, no..." A limp, three-fingered hand protruded from under the wreckage. The star sapphire of which Drift had been so proud now gleamed the color of dried blood in the firelight. Drift finally noticed Wolfram. "Help me," he coughed. Barely protected from the heat by his ring, he had no protection at all from the smoke. "We have to get this off her." He started pulling at the fallen beam again, not waiting for a reply. Dropping to his knees next to the wreckage, Wolfram felt for a pulse. He frowned and checked again just to be sure. He didn't want to say it, but he had to. "She's gone." Drift ignored him. Wolfram rose and shook him. Drift shrugged him off. Looking up, Wolfram saw fire eating the last two beams holding up the ceiling. They sagged and started to buckle. "Drift, she's gone!" he said, pulling harder. "She's dead! We have to go!" Drift threw him off. "I need to get this off of her!" He hurled himself bodily against the beam, ignoring a shower of sparks and embers. The ceiling groaned, and something crashed in the other room. "Stop, Drift! You'll bring the whole place down!" "Either shut up and help me or get out! I'm not leaving without-" "Look out!" The fallen beam shifted, lurched, and collapsed, pulling down part of the ceiling in a firestorm of debris. Drift and Wolfram recoiled, barely escaping, and the wall vanished into the flames. Drift's anguished wail accompanied it, and the samoyed would have, too, if Wolfram hadn't tackled him. The fire surged, roaring, almost gloating. Then, strangely, it subsided, revealing the fallen wall. Still intact, it lay half-buried, yet tantalizingly askew. The two friends shared a glance, knowing immediately this was the last chance they would get. They raced for the wall. Wolfram grabbed and lifted while Drift dove underneath, reaching for his beloved. "Hurry!" the ram yelled, flinching as more debris showered down. "We’re out of time!" Under the wall, he heard Drift whimper and try to shift something. "Alexis? Honey? We need to go. Wake up. Come on. Alex? Al-" Drift froze. "Oh, Eli, no. Not like this. Please! Not like this!" He scrambled backward, eyes wide. Too wide. Horror laid in them, far beyond what Wolfram had expected, a stark terror that sent the ram scrambling to see what had caused it. He didn't have time. With a cataclysmic snap, the second ceiling beam buckled, obliterating Alexis' resting place. Wolfram barely rolled clear. He grabbed the nearly catatonic Drift and ran. The room, and then the entire building, collapsed behind them. ----- Drift stared at his burned and bloody hands, but his eyes looked beyond them as if they weren't really there. Even the healer, extracting long splinters from his wounds, got no reaction. Drift just sat, unresponsive, as she wrapped his hands in bandages. Misha knew the look, knew it from personal experience: this was going to be bad. Still, when Drift looked up, his eyes full of a horror that beggared description, Misha found himself unprepared for just how bad. "Her throat was cut," Drift said. "It was sliced open, Misha. With a knife." "What!?" The fox looked to Wolfram for confirmation, but the ram was just as stunned. He hadn't had time to see for himself. "Somebody killed her," Drift continued, his voice like shattered glass. "Somebody killed my Alexis. She went in and... and somebody killed her." "My God-" Misha never saw the punch coming. One moment, Drift was sitting down, his eyes a thousand miles away. The next, Misha was on his back seeing stars, and Wolfram was just barely keeping the samoyed from pounding him into the cobblestones. "How could you let her go back in there?!" he screamed, flailing and snarling as Wolfram dragged him bodily out of range. "Alone! How could you?! My love! My life!" An elbow to the eye snapped Wolfram's head back, loosened his grip, but before Drift could lunge again, more hands closed on him. Keepers from all around risked bites and raking claws to drag the raging samoyed down and pin him. "How could you let her go in alone!" he screamed. "How could you let them kill her!" Misha surged to his feet, his eyes snapping with barely suppressed rage, muscles tensed for an instinctive counterstrike. "You think I let her get killed?" he snarled. "Is that what you think of me?" Feeling teeth wobbling loose in his jaw, he ran the back of his hand across his mouth, amazed that it didn't come away bloody. That had been one hell of a punch. Wolfram stepped between them, hands held up empty toward Misha to stop him from getting any closer. "Easy, Misha, sir. He's not thinking straight." Misha almost pushed through him, but forced himself to turn aside and pace for a few steps, trying to shake off the lingering dizziness left behind by Drift's savage right cross. He ran through an entire litany of curses as a balm for his seething temper, and it slunk reluctantly back into its cage. Finally, he turned back to the samoyed, his voice icy. "Is that what you really think of me, Drift?" he asked. Buried under a pile of Keepers and still half-asphyxiated from the smoke, Drift's hysterical fury guttered out. Only the ashes of grief remained, and broken sobs his only reply. Misha's anger quenched. He gestured for those restraining Drift to resume their duties in the bucket line, knelt next to his friend, his brother, and gathered him into his arms. "I'm sorry, Drift," he said, gently rocking the devastated samoyed and smoothing his soot-stained fur as he wept. "I'm sorry. I didn't see her. I would have stopped her if I had seen her. I'm so sorry." "Nothing left. Nothing left." Drift's voice, almost too quiet to be heard over the wind and flames, ached with despair. Soul-deep exhaustion dragged at him, pulled him down. Only Misha's hold kept him from collapsing completely. "Why does it always fall apart?" "Sir Brightleaf." Misha turned toward the voice, his one ear flattened and his lips threatening to curl, and pinned the speaker with a glare that could have peeled the pelt off a polar bear. A young girl in the garb of a court messenger, she didn't look happy at having to intrude, but she didn't flinch from his ire or from her duty. "I'm sorry, but the Duke needs to speak with you. He requests your presence immediately." Seeing that this alone was not going to get Misha's acknowledgement, she added, "It's urgent. I can't say more." Misha scowled, but he knew he'd given all of the moments he could spare. "Tell the Duke I will be there shortly," he told the messenger. To Drift, he said, "I'll be back as soon as I can. I promise." Helping the samoyed up, he then turned his attention to Wolfram. "Take him home," he ordered. The ram shook his head. "No, sir. With all due respect, I'm not going anywhere until I can lead a Watch investigator to Alexis' body." To Drift, he said, "If you saw what you think you saw-" Drift growled through his tears, a sharp flare of anger. "I did." "-then we'll find the evidence," Wolfram continued. His eyes narrowed. "And I promise you we will find the person who did it." Misha nodded and clapped Wolfram on the shoulder. "That we will." "We all will," Xavier agreed. He approached with a weary stagger, "Help has finally arrived. The shield is stabilized, so I've done all I can here. I'll take Drift home." Pushing back his silver hair, he heaved a sigh of relief and massaged his temples. "I believe I shall sleep for a week once this is all settled. Let me know the moment you find anything." "Of course," Misha nodded and left. Xavier led Drift away, each leaning exhausted on the other. Wolfram took up a guarding position over the ruins of the Maus home, warning away any that approached with a stern glare. The fire, at last denied its encouraging wind, settled down and began to wane. The bucket brigade worked on. In the shadows, a bat and a grubby urchin girl slipped away, snickering with delight. For them, at least, all had proceeded according to plan. A small black cat trailed them, careful to stay out of their sight. It paused to cast a single pained look after Drift before vanishing into an alley. The storm enveloped them all.  </div></body> </html>