Winter 4994, 16-17 Ginmoth 

Shon's head shot up from his prayer, his hand gripping his chest where he could feel a point of cold steel pressed against his flesh. Stay calm, he thought to Ryuuko. The Cleric blessing him flinched away, startled by the sudden movement. Shon stood, "Send the messengers on standby." He ordered.

Turning for the door, Shon left to wait for the others outside the Temple grounds. Continuing his prayer as he walked, Let this end tonight, let us take them alive, all of them, and let justice be served. 

***

Lily rolled off the bed before she could fully contemplate the motion, but as she hit the ground on her feet, she held her hands up and tried to make herself sound scared, "Don't... I'll come..." It wasn't as difficult as it should've been. Antimagic fields brought back horrible memories of a powerless past.

There were two men in her room, and her window stood open, a rope ladder hooked to the sill and disappearing into the alley below. They'd used an area of silence to come in, but it too had been dispelled by the antimagic—so, prepared professionals... but stupid ones. Lily's lip twitched, and she was glad they couldn't see her trying not to smile.

Ryuuko hissed and made a show of struggling as an old man with an eyepatch pushed the little dragon into a cage that a younger man with a hooked nose like a beak, was holding. They should've focused more on the pseudodragon's tail. Even if Lily couldn't fight them both unarmed -and she probably could- all it would take was a single sting from Ryuuko to make it one on one. 

But she didn't want to escape or even capture these two. Yet. "Where are we going?" Lily asked, keeping her hands up and walking around her bed non threateningly to stand before the old man with the knife.

"Hush you." he thrust the knife at her face, stopping at least a foot from her nose, "You'll see soon enough." 

Lily tilted her head at them and looked around at their squinting faces. They could barely see in the dark... She rolled her eyes, "Can I at least put some pants on?" The young man blushed and turned his face away. The older sneered but bent, keeping his knife leveled at Lily, and threw her discarded pants from the day before at her. 

She caught them with a relaxed ease that should've made them nervous and shrugged, slipping them on without her belt, which the old man kicked away. Ryuuko hissed, glaring through the bars of its cage, its own slitted eyes also round in the darkness. It could see their kidnappers as clearly as Lily could, and once again, she had to suppress a grin. This was way too easy...

The younger man took Ryuuko down the ladder first while Lily slipped on her boots, then the older poked her in the back with his dagger to follow. Once all three were in the back alley, he flicked the ladder free and rolled it up to return to his bag. "Can I at least get a hint about where I'm going?" Lily asked sweetly. 

"Shut up." the younger man hissed angrily, shaking the cage and adding Ryuuko's hiss to break the stillness of the night.

Lily held up her hands again and pat the air between them as if to calm him, rolling her eyes again, saying, "Fine, fine."

The older man grabbed her arm, flinched, and pushed her forward, poking her with the dagger again. "Move." 

They took her down the alley, further away from the main road, and nearly to a secondary street before forcing her around another dark corner when a set of guards walked by on patrol.

Lily gritted her teeth in frustration. It would be a divine comedy indeed if the time this pair was caught was when their victim wasn't praying for it.

The young man let out a yowl exactly like a stray cat, and Lily tilted her head at him, whispering, "Wow, impressive, can you do bird calls too?" 

"Shut Up!" the old man actually poked her for real, drawing blood from her arm. Ryuuko hissed again, adding to the young man's cat imitation. One of the guards halted on the street.

The guard called to his companion, "Just a minute, I need a piss..." Lily held her breath, silently cursing and even threatening the gods if they intervened and ruined this.

The older man grinned, "Don't bother praying, and if you try to call out, I'll break your jaw, and you still won't get away." She didn't bother to try and look scared, narrowing her eyes as the guard walked right to their corner. 

The young man stepped out, and Lily nearly reached to stop him. Idiots! Don't get caught now! But the guard just nodded at him and knelt. Metal jingled as he fished in his red leather armor for a set of keys and unlocked the sewer grate in the ground. Ryuuko chittered, and Lily's shushing merged with the kidnappers to quiet it. 

"Hurry it up." The guard whispered, gesturing for the sewer. 

The younger man did just that, climbing down with a splash while the older poked Lily again to follow. She did, choosing to jump rather than climb down the rusty ladder bolted to the wall. "Ew..." She held her nose as the older man clambered down after her, and the younger set the cage down in inches of watery sewage. Poor Ryuuko clung to the ceiling of its cage, while the young man tried to light a torch left on the wall with some flint and steel. 

"Hey! You need a hand over there?" The guard's companion could be heard from above. Lily bit her lip and watched the opening as the complicit guard started to close it again and answered, 

"What? You wanna hold it for me? Just give me a minute!" So only one guard was involved. Lily wondered if that would be enough to save the second from Ragther. 

The sewer grate closed and locked, and they were plunged into true darkness that only Lily and Ryuuko would be able to navigate. Lily sighed, turning for the younger kidnapper as he continued attempting to light the damp torch, sending occasional sparks to flash and illuminate his face in golden light. "You know, I could help with that..." She started. 

The old man growled and fumbled in the dark to kick over Ryuuko's cage. Setting the poor little dragon to hissing again as it crawled upside down along the sides to try and stay above the water. "Shut u-" the kidnapper started to snap at her, but Lily'd had just about enough.

She grabbed his wrist and dug her nails into his flesh, twisting his arm around and slamming his face into the slimy stone wall of the sewer. Leaning down, she growled in his ear, "You listen to me, you pathetic punk. You even pretend to threaten Ryuuko again, and I will rip out your throat with my bare hands and feed it to you." She ground his eyepatch into the wall, and he nearly screamed, "Even if you kill it, I will make sure you follow it to the afterlife so it can personally dig out your other eye." 

The torch flared to life, and cold steel rested on her neck, "Let him go, Sorcerer... you don't have your magic, and your familiar will die with you before you can kill him."

Oh yeah... helpless... Oops

Lily let go of the old man and stepped back, raising her hands again, but glared through the flickering fire at him. He trembled but rolled his twisted arm and slapped her across the face. Lily spit into the sewer, mixing her blood with the filth, and didn't blink. "Try something like that again, and I'll do worse than threaten it." His voice quavered. Lily smirked.

"Come on," the younger said, scooping up Ryuuko's cage and starting down the sewer tunnel. Lily followed. This time, the old man didn't poke her. 

*** 

"Where's your armor?" 

Ragther was the first to meet Shon outside the Temple of Hengist's gates, his flail clinking against his black plate mail and his helm held under his arm. Shon sat beneath the lamp across the street from the white stone fortress and didn't look up as he continued drawing his second portrait. "I don't wear armor," He answered.

Yua and Tuth rounded the corner. "How long ago?" Tuth asked.

"Fifteen minutes," Shon answered, flipping his page and starting on the third face.

"Where?" Ragther barked down at him. 

Shon narrowed his eyes at his drawing and didn't answer. The Paladin growled, but Yua said soothingly, "We need to make sure they have enough of a lead not to realize they're being followed." 

"What are you drawing?" Tuth asked, stepping beside Shon to look down at the sketch pad, not his usual journal.

He finished the rough sketch, ripping the three pages free as he stood and holding them out to Ragther, "There are two kidnappers and one guard assisting them." 

Snatching them and snarling a curse that would've earned Shon enough pushups to numb his arms as a Squire, the Paladin glared down at the drawings as if they were the culprits themselves. "They will pay..." 

Shon turned away from him, not wanting the man to see the agreement Shon feared might show in his eyes. Horsa's sense of justice was not nearly as gentle as Hengist's. Yet, that old man had struck Lily across the face...

"They're in the sewers. We can get the guard now before shifts change." Shon started towards the Church and its alleys while Ragther slammed his helm on, and Yua and Tuth rushed to follow. 

They passed two sets of patrolling guards, and Ragther snapped at each of them, bidding them to follow with his silent glare and a wave. Together, they reached the Church -and the ones they hunted.

The guards snapped to attention as the Paladin's party approached, and though they both looked nervous, only one glanced behind him in fear.

He looked back in time to catch Ragther's mailed fist with his face. The knight was strong and covered in black steel, but the punch shouldn't have rung out quite that loud. Or send the man sliding along the ground eight feet. The Paladin had put a bit of divine smite in that strike. Shon let slip a little 'tch' of disapproval, but Ragther ignored him. Kicking the groaning guard onto his belly and planting his knee against his spine, Ragther wrenched the guard's arms up behind him.

Ragther used the guard's own cuffs to bind his wrists together and held out an expectant hand to the guard's stuttering partner for theirs. The man fumbled at his belt and held out the manacles for Ragther to grab. He used them to bind the traitorous guard above the elbows, causing him to scream, blood spluttering from his broken nose as his shoulders were nearly dislocated when the Paladin pulled him up. 

Ragther turned to the partner. The other guards could tell what was happening and took him by the arms before he could even consider trying to run. Not that it would've helped. "He isn't involved," Shon said as Ragther took a third set of cuffs from one of the assisting guards. 

"We'll see..." Ragther answered, cuffing the man but only at the wrists and pushing him back into the others, "Take them both to the Temple." he turned back to Shon, "Where are they?"

Shon closed his eyes and looked through the bars of the cage. A door just before the young man swung it open and they started down a different tunnel. He heard Lily's voice, "So we're not staying in the city? I suppose that should've been obvious now that I think about it..."

"Would you just SHUT UP!" another voice sounded from behind. Ryuuko twisted its head so Shon could see the old man pulling his hair but resisting poking Lily again. 

Shon opened his eyes, "They're leaving the city. Heading west. Underground." 

Ragther nodded but turned north, "Let's go, the stables..." 

"We don't want to move too fast," Yua said again.

Tuth nodded in agreement, "Yeah, they'll be on foot the whole way." 

Ragther looked between the two of them, then at Shon, who just nodded. "How do you know that? Why would they-?" 

Tuth shrugged, "They won't have a choice." 

***

The tunnel was almost as wet as the sewer had been, though it smelled of river stink rather than human filth. Lily could feel it starting to slope up at least half a mile after they entered, and after another half-mile, she saw the dead-end ahead. The old man called the young one to a halt and rushed past. Grabbing the torch, he used it to light another kept in the wall and took it as he moved away from them towards the dead-end. 

He reached in his bag and pulled out a slip of parchment, reading arcane words until the wall slid open. So the antimagic field was only about a thirty-foot circle... nice to know. Lily glanced at her younger 'captor' and looked him over. Somewhere he held an item that anchored the antimagic... She sighed and shrugged. Oh well... it would be a while before she would be able to take it from him. They needed to reach the others first, and she was confident they weren't being held this close to the city. 

The old man waved them forward, and Lily passed him to blink in the star-filled night of a field just beyond a low hill that kept them out of view of the city walls and refugee encampment. They'd exited out of a pile of stones at the edge of the river, and there waited three horses. 

"Bad idea..." Lily muttered to the young man as he pulled her towards the tethered mounts. 

The young man jerked her arm and hissed in her ear, "Just stop. Not even the damn noble talked as much as you." 

Lily shrugged, "Don't say I didn't warn you." she let him pull her closer to the dozing horses until they caught her scent. Or maybe just felt her presence. Three equine heads shot up and tugged on their ties, their eyes going wide with panic. The young man fell back in shock, and Lily pulled him to the side, away from a flailing hoof as the closest horse reared and pulled free of its bonds. 

Ryuuko chittered, its wings beating against its cage as it fell to the ground and rolled away. Lily flinched, hoping Shon wasn't looking through the poor little dragon's eyes as it thrashed. 

"What the-!" the old man called as the rock slid shut behind him. He ran forward to try and grab at least one of the mounts before it could bolt. 

Lily picked up Ryuuko's cage and whispered soothingly to the hissing beast while the two kidnappers threw themselves out of the way, and their horses fled into the night. They climbed to shaking feet, looking aghast at each other, then at Lily. She shrugged and held the cage out to the young man, who grabbed it quickly while the old man continued to look from Lily to the horses.

"Sorry," she said with another shrug, "Horses don't like me. I would have told you, but you keep telling me to-"

"Shut up, damn you!" the old man yelled. 

"Yeah, that." Lily finished.

The old man looked like he was about to burst a vein and looked at his companion disbelievingly, "What's with this bitch?" he eyed the pseudodragon then Lily again. She could've taken the familiar and run. All she had to do was get out of range of the antimagic and she could've sent up a fire signal that would alert the city just out of sight.

Oops. Lily shrugged yet again, "Call me curious..." 

The young man shook his head and came forward to grab her arm again but spoke to the old man, "It's none of our concern. This is our last job. Let's go." 

"But without the horses-" the old man started,

"Ooh!" Lily said excitedly, "Do you think we'll get attacked? Drakwalves, maybe?" 

The young man pushed her hard, "Just get the damn torch out. They're expecting us by dawn, now we won't make it until tomorrow night..." 

"Damn," Lily said as the old man ran forward again, digging through his bag and throwing his burning torch aside, "And if you'd let me bring my bag, I'd have a tent that could hold all of us..." 

"Shut Up!" the two kidnappers snapped in unison. Ryuuko chittered, and Lily shrugged. 

***

Shon and the others did get horses, including two extras -in the hopes of finding as many of the missing Sorcerers as possible. They also found and took the three runaways from the kidnappers, though Ragther was livid that none of the items in the saddlebags served to help them identify their destination.

He sat atop his warhorse, staring to the west as they rode in tense silence. The Ranger woman pulled alongside him and bid her mount to sidestep until her leg hit his and earned herself a glare. "If we catch them too soon, we may not find your sister." she reminded him.

Ragther's lip twitched, and he looked away. Forward again, ever forward, towards... "The swamp." Yua said, "What's there?" 

The Paladin shook his head, "Nothing anymore."

"Anymore?" the Mage asked, coming up on Ragther's other side. 

He nodded, "Twenty years ago, we were hit by a tsunami after a magical storm of green and purple lightning out at sea. The flood went nearly to the city gates, and it never fully drained from some areas. Some villages were never reclaimed, the wetlands turning to foul poison swamp around them." 

Ragther glanced at the Hengist soldier and wondered, not for the first time, what the quiet man was thinking. The Mage hummed, and Ragther turned to him instead, "Another magical storm..." Tuth muttered. 

"You said we were in a peak," Yua said. 

Tuth shook his head, "Yeah but wasn't it another storm that triggered the hurricane? Which in turn caused the explosion of insects that started the plague?" 

Ragther nodded, and Yua hummed, "And that one in Lenare..." 

"Two," Shon said quietly. Ragther and the others turned to him, and he explained shortly, "The fire was triggered by a magic storm as well." 

"That's way too many." Tuth shook his head, "The first was twenty years ago, but still, three more in quick succession? Didn't Lily say the Warlocks believed..." 

"Warlocks?" Ragther barked, but the others seemed to be ignoring him. 

Yua shook her head, "Warlocks are mad."

Shon nodded, but Ragther growled, "What's this about Warlocks?" 

"Nothing to do with this." Shon said simply and pulled his horse to a stop, "They've reached the edge of the swamp and are camping. We should do the same." 

"Can't catch up with them too quickly." Yua said yet again, following suit and dismounting, "Let's just count ourselves lucky that neither of us have been attacked." 

Yet. Ragther thought to himself, joining the others in setting up their camp.

***

Lily walked with the young man while the old led the way, just out of the antimagic range, holding a magical torch that surrounded them in white light even during the day. Once they'd seen a small group of drakwalves, but the beasts shied away from the light that radiated large enough to encompass most of her antimagic field, so probably about a fifty-foot circle.

"Handy that. You guys do have an awful lot of expensive toys." She told the youngest as they entered the swamp, slogging through the murky water and trying their best to follow the small patches of land and dead drowned trees when they could. 

They wouldn't have been able to bring the horses this far anyway and had been forced to camp during the day and set out again after nightfall before entering the swamp. Though the torch lit the area almost like a second sun.

Frustrated and both tired from the short rest they'd split, her captors had stopped telling her to shut up. "So I take it some rouge Mage is collecting Sorcerers then?" That's the only way they could possibly afford such tools. Antimagic fields, in particular, were rare, highly regulated, and never for sale, but the torch was something else altogether. Tuth would probably know what it was, but Lily had to imagine that it couldn't be easy to make, or the Temples would force the Guild to use them to keep all kinds of monsters away.

"You know... if you turn yourselves, and them, in, then you might actually get off easy. Though..." she took a moment to tap her lip in thought and corrected herself, "this is Horsa land, so maybe not." she shrugged. 

The young man sighed, rubbing his head with his free hand while Ryuuko snoozed in its cage. "Please stop..." he asked her. 

"Oh!" Lily clapped her hands, "I suppose if you're going to ask so nicely, then..." She snapped her mouth shut audibly, clicking her teeth together, and grinned at him.

He blinked at her, "Seriously?" Lily just shrugged again, silently.

They trudged through the swamp until they finally started to slope up again, the stagnant water giving way to dry land that was nonetheless still dead. Gnarled trees continued to reach for the sky, nearly blocking the stars with bare branches, and the further they walked, the less life they saw. Even the insects that had been a constant biting annoyance long before reaching the swamp proper, thinned and eventually disappeared. 

The land leveled again, and at the edge of the old man's light, Lily could see the remnants of a settlement wall. They walked through the busted gates and down deserted streets. Past destroyed piles of wood and stone that might've once been houses, towards a tower silhouetted by the night sky.

Or, Lily thought the town was deserted... Something just outside the light moved. She squinted, and Ryuuko whistled, but the magical torch stole her night vision, and she couldn't tell what it had been. 

"A person?" she mussed. It was too small for a draken and too large for a kobold. Her kidnapper shuddered but didn't respond. 

The old man reached the foot of the tower and gestured for them to stop -so their antimagic field didn't encompass his magical light- then hammered on the door with the butt of the torch. The banging rang through the still air, and the shadows shifted until they seemed to writhe. But nothing moved close enough for Lily to see. 

She narrowed her eyes further and tried to shield them from the light, even stepping away from her captor until he grabbed her arm, "You had your chance to escape," he whispered to her, "There's no going back now." 

"What are..." She turned, but he was pale as death, and her words faltered. He'd been nervous at the drakwalves but not like this.

The tower door swung slowly open, and Lily was distracted from the man's fear and whatever lurked in the shadows. Looking toward the portal, she saw a woman in a long robe bathed in light from the magical torch. She glared down at the old man, "What took you so long? And put that away." her eyes snapped to Lily and the young man, and she gestured impatiently, "Come on, you're late."

The young man swallowed and pulled Lily forward, his antimagic field swallowing the light as the old man slipped it back into his bag. Only the long rectangle of illumination from the tower door remained. The darkness continued to shift, though nothing came close.

Lily tilted her head at the robed woman, studying her profile as she glared at the old man again, "Well? What took so long?" she asked him. 

"The horses-" he muttered. 

"They don't like me. We had to walk." Lily interrupted him, drawing the woman's gaze, now close enough to see details.

"You..." her voice faltered, and her jaw hung open. She stepped out of the tower and reached up to grab Lily's face, "No..." she breathed, "How...?" Lily's skin crawled. She did her best not to shiver as the woman ran her thumb over Lily's scales, the intimate gesture a disgusting mockery of Shon's loving caress.

"Firewyrm..."