Zsolt The Zsombie 

14 OKTOBER 3460

As with every other night, the watch was not needed, as not a creature stirred anywhere close to the camp. The two priests wander off once more in order to pray to their respective deities.

After an afternoon, evening and night of inactivity, many of their wounds have been healed due to the results of Faewen'il and Yaz's herbs and only Yaz himself and Jihan are in need of much in the way of divine healing. It takes two on Jihan, four on Yaz and one on Hrust to get them close to fully recovered again. With plenty of healing power to spare, Jihan, Winnacer and Faewen'il all get top ups to put them back to perfect health, even though they would be perfectly healed by the following morning in any case.

While everyone is together for the healing, Hrust casts another translation spell so that he can finally converse with them:

'I see that I need not tell you how Zsolt's loss fills me with such great sadness, as I see that it has had the same reaction upon you. When I first met Zsolt, he was just another bodyguard, protecting me for a pocketful of gold each month. However, although I have traveled with bodyguards before, as I am no fighter, I have never met one with such loyalty as he showed. Never have I felt as secure as when I knew that I could rely upon his protection.'

'I feel that I am partly responsible for his death. When he was bitten by that creature in the kitchen, he was diseased and it sapped his strength. I asked him whether he wanted to return, but he said he would carry on, as he knew that I would cure him the following day. I blame myself for not insisting that we stop the trip then, as perhaps Zsolt could have outrun the creature had he still possessed his full strength.'

'Although I hope that Zsolt has met with a true death, and not the hell of living as one of those mockeries of nature, I fear that it is not the case. All that I can think of now is getting back to the Tower in order to put my loyal comrade out of his misery as quickly as possible. Yet it would be foolish to run blindly to our deaths, as that would achieve nothing but adding our bodies to that of Zsolt.'

'The only factor stopping us from conquering the death knight is our own fear. It is truly a terrifying creature and it filled me with as much terror as it did the rest of you. However, Blesk can help us overcome our fear of this creature if I ask him to bestow courage upon us all. You will need to find your own courage, but Blesk can help us all to face this creature. If I ask Blesk for this gift, then I shall not be able to assist in healing should we be smitten by the abomination, but hopefully Yaz can ask Prirodna for the power to make us well again.'

'You have all shown yourselves to be accomplished fighters. Although the death knight is a mighty adversary, I believe that we can vanquish it from this realm through a combination of our swords.'

Hearing Hrust's words gives them a little confidence, but another confrontation with the death knight is not something that they relish.

Little by little, they fight the urge to lose yourself in pity for Zsolt's plight and start working on honing their skills so as to reap their revenge upon the creature that took the Pannon.

Xavier spends much of the day practicing with his mace, needing to refresh his memory as to the best fighting style with the implement after having got used to the slashing style of 'The Justifier' and his bastard sword before both blades came to their unfortunate ends.

Robert serves up the remains of the rabbit stew for lunch, and the majority of them eat with relish after eating so little the previous day. Yaz and Jihan wander into the woods in order to pick berries and roots, not wanting to eat the stew.

When the warriors begin their sparring, Jihan joins in with a vengeance, fighting as they've never seen him. His twin blades spin and whirl like steel death, and his strikes come quicker and more viciously than ever before. All the while, his eyes burn with the same fiendish intensity with which they saw him regard the tower. They almost have to physically stop him from continuing when the rest of them have finished for the day. After a shake, he blinks his eyes, as if awakening from a dream. He sheaths his blades in one quick snap, the scabbards on his back filling themselves in hardly half a heartbeat. Then he turns towards the tower, and hugs himself tightly. His eyes stare far away yet again:

"I have seen evil... I have tasted it on my tongue...I have felt its black embrace pushing me... pushing me towards the ridge that is fear and the valley that is death... I have seen evil... I have seen injustice... and I hate... If ever my blades have been slow to mete out Spravedelna's own truth in the past, then never again. The Lady of the Woods guides my life... She is my life...and Her power comes in the cycle that ends in death, inevitable and irrevocable, but Her world is the world of All... life and death both... in harmony, and proceeding as it will... as nature directs it... Too long have I held myself apart... Too long have my people held themselves apart.... Evil will happen if you let it, no matter the carrier. I come to see what Yaromir saw all those years ago... We are of the cycle, and yet we choose our own path in it, and others may choose a path that twists its course and brings the rest of us with them... But we can choose, we must choose, to take a new one, and not just follow blindly. There can be a place in my heart for two Ladies..."

He sighs then, and looks towards the sky:

"Two sides of life and living that makes me what I am... Two things that make up the center of my heart and my all... As my hands wield the Slayer of Death and It's Dancer, I do so swear: In Prirodna's name do I live my life... and for Her children, I SEEK JUSTICE!"

His voice seems almost to boom at the last, too loud for his small elven lungs to produce on their own.

Then his eyes rivet them where they stand. The rich golden brown of the earth and the forests, and the clear blue of an unclouded summer's day... of a sky wherefrom the eye of Right can look down unimpeded. Then he turns away, and makes his way back to camp. Those that are close, or keen of ear, can hear him mutter to himself:

"Two Ladies... or three?..."

Winnacer responds to Jihan's words:

"Justice shall elude the man full of Hate, for Spravedelna does not know from Hate. He who walks the path of Justice does not seek revenge, he seeks retribution and restoration. The Hateful man strikes only for himself. The Just man strikes for his brethren and for Spravedelna. So quoth "Yaromir: 28:20."

"And yet Yaromir foresook his Goddess out of hatred and anger, to take up Spravedelna's way" Jihan counters immediately. "Say hate... say determination... say passion... say purpose. They are all the same in seeking the destruction of evil. What else drives the hands of Spravedelna here on this worldsrealm? A simple dislike of evil and its minions? A desire for right? Of course, both, but both with an underlying revulsion of Evil... of darkness. A desire to rid the world of evil so strong that it can only be called hate. Would you stop a man who raises his blade in anger against those that would destroy him, his family, and the lives of all around him? Would you hold back his arm and tell him to await a trial? Is a man who fights with passion any less than one who fights by rote?"

The elf's eyes seem almost to flicker as he says this, and he regards the young lord intensely.

"Justified hate burns no less strongly..."

Winnacer immediately responds to the elf's words:

"The story of Yaromir goes beyond its beginning. My new studies of Spravedelna's ways have reshaped the words we once heard. Yaromir's book is entitled "The Transformation of Yaromir" for it dwells on the path that one great man walked to learn the ways of Justice. Yaromir's tale begins with his desire for revenge against those who destroyed what he loved, but it does not end that way. His tale documents the many mistakes and obstacles of his own hate's making on the way to enlightenment. Yaromir's anger and thirst for vengeance constantly made him act without forethought or the consideration of the consequences. His struggles for vengeance would only slake his anger temporarily, when he would find himself surrounded by the slaughtered bodies of innocents and the devastated cries of the newly orphaned. His hatred impaired his ability to be impartial and to evaluate what truly is the greatest good. Yaromir's story was filled with the blackest depression and incredible regret over the consequences of his impassioned actions."

"Yaromir thought often of what the true nature of Justice was and often found his faith being shaken up by the consequences of what he had thought was the truest Justice. Throughout his experiences and sidled with the guilt of horrors that have followed within his wake, he began to understand what Justice truly was. He looked to the oppressed and the wronged to inspire him instead of the anger and frustration that had been driving him for so long. He began to champion the causes of those unable to adequately defending themselves, finding his passion to battle in those depending on him rather than his own bitterness. His hatred disappeared, giving him the clear sight to choose his battles with intelligence and to take the adequate precautions to reduce the pains his actions would cause to others. He learned of the possibility of redemption even amongst the most unredeemable of souls, an option his blind hatred had excluded. With his increased understanding of Justice, his favor with Spravedelna escalated and his exploits began to take on legendary quality. He fought his last battles for the good of the common man, offering up his serene body against the evils that would afflict the world at large. It was said that as he was bleeding to death from his wounds suffered at Boscobelous' hands, his prayers were for Boscobelous' redemption. So sincere were his words of prayer and so devoid of hate was his heart that Spravedelna felt the need to personally intervene. She weighed Boscobelous' heart on Her Balance of Souls and found it too corrupted to make Yaromir's dying wish a reality. It was Her Hand that picked up Yaromir and enabled him to bring Justice to Bohavia with her gifts."

"The story of Yaromir is an important parable of the difference between Vengeance and Justice. While both can lead one explore Spravedelna's Path, the heart of the vengeful becomes black and only amplifies his own personal pain onto those around him. It is the heart free of hate and inspired by Love of his fellow man that can walk the path of True Justice. This is the core of Spravedelna's way and how I aspire to one day be."

Winnacer frowns at this thought.

"But it may prove that this path is too difficult for me to walk, for it takes true courage borne from love to walk that path. I ask you Jihan, do not confuse Vengeance with Justice, for it will only despoil all that you hold dear."

Winnacer then watches the sparring matches but does not participate. He spends his time honing 'Old Bohavia's edge with a bitter look upon his face.

Seeing how the Saxon is having difficulties in re-adjusting to the very different fighting style of the mace, Bennett offers Xavier the use of Sorrow if he would like a heavy blade during the tower experience. He does not plan on using it as long as the axe is treating him so well.

"Danke, Herr Bennett" Xavier replies. "Yer are indeed, a friend. I vould be honored to bear Sorrow in my hand, until I am able to buy another. I fight vell vith the mace but it has not the same balance as a sword in the hand. I shall remember this. One does not offer one's blade to another lightly, particularly one that is named. By my hand shall she bring sorrow to those bastards who dwell within."

The sparring continues until the sky starts to become dark and the warriors start to become tired. As night falls, they realize that it has now been a week since they first set eyes upon the accursed tower and still many of its inhabitants, including Boscobelous himself, have not been given the true death which will close the final chapter on the evils that he perpetrated.

They retire to the center of the camp and eat a supper from the last of the rations that they brought with them. It will be game or roots to feed them from now on unless they leave camp and return to civilization.

Knowing that tomorrow will be another traumatic and difficult day, they retire to their tents early. Once again, they organize a watch, although keep only one of them awake at any one time, as they have now been here for more than five nights without being disturbed.

 

15 OKTOBER 3460

Once again, they start on the journey towards the Tower, the journey now being very familiar as it is their fourth journey there. As usual, they pause outside the heavy oaken door before moving inside.

Before they enter, Hrust starts to cast upon them, in groups of two at a time. As he does so, a little of the trepidation that they feel upon entering the tower once more is lifted. Some, but not all.

They walk inside the Tower once more. They check behind the door in case the death knight or another servant of the undead lord is waiting for them, now that he knows that they are determined to finish him. However, the ground floor of the tower is as eerily silent and empty as it has been since they cleared it on the first day within the tower.

One by one, they start to check the rooms on the ground floor before they announce that they are empty. They carry on to check out the cellars, finding that they too are empty.

They carry on up the stairs to the second floor. Halfway up the stairs is a large pool of blood that wasn't there when they left it just under two days ago.

Hrust crosses himself with his zigzag holy sign as he sees the blood.

Will kneels down and touches the blood with his finger:

'It is dry but not that old' he reports. 'I fear that our worst fears have been realized and that Zsolt has been slain by the abomination.'

Just to confirm the situation, a trail of the blood leads upstairs. Before following the trail of blood upstairs, they check the situation on the second floor. Once more, it is how they left it. All the rooms are empty and the tableware is still untouched apart from that put in the sack. The elf's skeletal body is still where they left it also.

They follow the bloody trail up another level, to the temple level, but the trail continues upwards. The temple is also as they left it, including the equipment that they dropped. Raaka's body is not where it fell, however, although a pool of blood forms a memorial to the spot. It has obviously been dragged upstairs with that of Zsolt's body, its blood joining with the Pannon's to form a larger trail. In the knowledge that their escape route is clear should they need it, they cautiously move up to the fourth level.

Yaz had already scanned the stairs for traps and found none. Raaka had also walked up the stairs once with no adverse effects. Jihan, however, checks each step before stepping on it in case some traps have been added recently. The ascent of the stairs goes without incident, however.

As Yaz informed them while viewing the level using Raaka's senses, the stairway leads into a T-junction. Facing them are three doors, all closed and all looking identical. Opposite the doors to their left and right are other doors. From the layout of the tower, it is obvious that these two rooms must be fairly small.

'I think that we said that clockwise was the plan' says Winnacer.

Jihan walks to the door to their left on the north wall of the tower. He advances towards it cautiously, checking it for traps and to see whether it is locked. He finds that the door seems to be unlocked and also without traps. He brings up his listening cone and listens at the door:

'Seems all quiet to me' he says after listening for a couple of minutes.

Not wanting to take any chances, they get into their regular positions, with Winnacer and Bennett to the sides and with Hrust in the center, holy rod in hand. After the regular countdown, Winnacer opens the door with a quick movement and they peer in.

Nothing in the room leaps out to attack them. As Faewen'il shines a lantern in, they see that it is a storeroom, quite full of sundry bits and pieces of equipment. All of the perishables within have long since deteriorated to a state where they are unusable. There are, however, plenty of non-perishables that are there for the taking. After having a rummage through, they see that the following items are usable:

Block & tackle, two buckets, 30' of heavy chain, 17 candles, five pieces of chalk, two sets of flint and steel, an iron pot, a bullseye lantern, 50' of hemp rope and 14 torches.

Seeing nothing that would be of use to them, they leave the tools where they are , closing the dor behind them. Jihan carefully advances to the door opposite, the one that the now deceased skeleton warrior came from. Once more, the elf goes through his checking and listening routine.

'Untrapped, unlocked and all quiet' is the elf's summary.

Once again, they get into the position to open the door and Winnacer opens it.

The room was obviously designed as living quarters. Compared to the mass barracks that they saw downstairs, this one was well appointed, with a real bed, although it is now mostly green with mildew. Two large rotten chairs are before it. To their left is a set of chest of drawers, inches deep in dust.

Sat in one of the chairs is Zsolt.

However, it is not the Zsolt that they knew. The Pannon's skin is gray, his eyes dull and vacant. The right side of his torso shows that he was slain with a massive cut into his flank and some broken ribs are showing through the broken links of his chainmail.

As they open the door, he slowly gets up from his chair and advances towards them with his bastard sword in one hand and shield in the other. His face is devoid of any emotion.

Winnacer looks and sees the terrible look of sorrow and resignation on the faces of Hrust and Bennett:

'Zsolt is already dead' Winnacer says while raising his sword. 'This is not the man he was. Help me to put him out of his miserable existence so that he may meet his god. May Spravedelna bless his soul.'

As the undead form of Zsolt lumbers towards him, Winnacer strikes out at him and hits him with 'Old Bohavia'. Will strikes at him next and hits him with his longsword, also causing him some fair damage. Jihan aims at the sad form next, tears visible in his eyes as he does so. He strikes him with his new shortsword, but Todtaenzer fails to penetrate through the zombie's mail. Yaz tries to strike, but he can find no way through the mail. Finally, Xavier launches into the form with Sorrow, but he cannot pierce the undead's mail either.

Bennett and Hrust simply look on with sadness, still not having the heart to finish their former colleague. Their sympathy for his plight ends rapidly, however, when zombie Zsolt strikes back with a well-aimed shot at Will's gonads. Only his magickal protection stopped the bard from singing falsetto in future, but the damage is still fairly severe. The former Pannon neatly follows up with another shot to Jihan, which cuts him badly across the chest.

Seeing that Zsolt is just as deadly in death as he was in life leads them to redouble their efforts to dispatch him quickly. Winnacer hacks into his injured side with his blade causing him some bad damage. Then Bennett brings 'Retribution' down upon its skull and cleaves it in two. The zombie-like form keels over as he does so, expiring before he hits the ground.

All stand over the fallen form of their former colleague as he falls. All of them who have gods watching over them stop to offer prayers to them to look after his soul, now released and allowed to carry on its journey to its final resting place.

After saying their prayers and devotions, Hrust casts. He goes to the fallen form of Zsolt and gently closes his eyelids. He then picks up his shield and bastard sword and turns towards Bennett:

'Zsolt had a premonition that he would not survive the Tower' says Hrust sadly. 'I told him that he should not continue in that case, but he replies that it was his destiny and so had no choice but to face it. Knowing that he was to die, he told me that I was to give you these.'

He hands the shield and bastard sword to Bennett.

Bennett looks at the shield and sword. He notices the shield in detail for the first time and sees that the Pannon's symbol was a black cockerel on a white background.

'He called it "Heart of Gyur" after his home city that he saw so little of' Hrust explains.

Bennett then observes the bastard sword. It is an unexceptional weapon, although it is obviously an ancient weapon from the large number of nicks in it and the fact that the leather grip is almost worn through.

'He told me that it had been in his family for many generations' Hrust explains. 'So many, that he lost count. He used to call it "Pride of Gyur". Take them both, and remember Zsolt as you use them to further your cause.'

When Zsolt's form has fallen, Jihan moves forward and stands over it, tears falling freely down his face. He kneels by the form with Hrust, and folds his hands in prayer. His pure elven voice lifts in the Journeysong, an elven dirge that they have heard too many times uttered from his lips. Carrying on in this way for about five minutes, Jihan stands and wipes at his face, his eyes hard once more. His mouth a thin line, he searches around the room for anything of value.

The room is in the same state of neglect and decay as the rest of the tower and most of the contents of the chest of drawers are clothes that have crumbled to dust. In the corner of the bottom drawer, however, Jihan finds a curious object.

It appears to be a small statuette of a tree, standing some 8" tall. The trunk of the tree is made of solid gold and it stands upon roots made from the same shining material. Hanging from the branches are many strands of silver thread, each of a different length. At the end of each of the strands is a tiny emerald, perfectly cut.

'How very curious' Jihan says as he examines the statuette closely. 'Faewen'il, could you see if it is magickal?'

The lass passes her Witchfinder rod over it and sees the gem on the end fizzles and dies.

'Damn' she utters. 'This one must ha been almost used up. Down to ma last one now.'

She takes her final Witchfinder rod and scans the object, but nothing shows.

'No, it's not magickal' she says.

'Curious' Jihan repeats. 'As an ornament, I'd say that it is worth around 600 gold pieces.'

Jihan's attention then returns to the fallen form of Zsolt:

"We must carry Zsolt out of here before we carry on for the day... I would not be able to stand having to... to end him again."

He looks around at the rest of them, his face grim and his eyes brooking no argument.

They could see the wetness in Bennett's eye as he watched the zombie Zsolt fall, and he turns immediately to pick up the body immediately after it falls:

"Before anything else, I must bury him, as I cannot allow the chance he might be brought back while we waste time searching for the abomination that slew him."

Without consulting the group or listening to any of their responses, Bennett lifts the body up over his shoulder, accepting help from Hurst in order to carry the form of the Pannon at the Shaman's insistence.

As Bennett and Hrust start to move the Pannon's body from the Tower, Jihan looks around the hallway grimly and says:

"Now we know beyond a doubt that there is a power within this place capable of casting the enchantments necessary to raise the bodies of the fallen... A power beyond the Knight of Death or any of the lesser minions... Boscobelous may yet tread this earth..."

Still, there is a lingering suspicion in his mind otherwise, but the dread evidence for his supposition lays cold and dead on the floor in front of the rest.

They all file out after Bennett and Hrust. On the way down, they stop to pick up the items that they dropped in their haste to leave the tower on their previous journey. They take the elven chainmail, the skeleton of the dead elven warrior and the tableware. Yaz stops off at the barracks room in order to retrieve his original scimitar after coming to the realization that the supposedly magickal scimitar he had taken from the armory was, in fact, cursed.

They then make the journey back to the camp, taking over two hours as opposed to the regular hour and a half as they struggle under the weight of the items that they are carrying. Upon reaching the camp, they make their way to the site of the cairns erected for Viirin and the party of adventurers.

Bennett immediately begins digging another grave with his treehide shovel, away from Viirin's grave. Although unasked for, all of the others join in, collecting rocks to help build another cairn. Jihan also begins to build a fourth cairn to contain the bones of the fallen elven warrior. The tasks take a couple of hours, but the cairns are finally ready for the bodies to be put inside their last resting place before being covered for eternity.

Bennett then places the body of Zsolt inside, leaning over the grave as he buries him, speaking no words but the intensity in his eyes is enough to make up for the weariness of two nights with no sleep or food.

Before the body is finally covered, he looks at the weapons that Hrust gave to him:

"When the time is right, I will return these weapons to his homeland and tell them all that he has done."

For the first time since the Pannon's death and for some time after this, Bennett speaks to another party member, Will:

"Perhaps you can craft a song that would accurately show his heroism? His home must know how important he was to us and the cause. Can you do this for him, and for me? I have no gift for song or even for words or I would do it myself."

"Zsolt's deeds shall be immortalized with the best of my talents and ability" answers Will. "Fear not, he shall be remembered in song as well as in our hearts. Others will hear and know of this noble man and his sacrifice."

Yaz has been watching Bennett ever since his recent verbal nocturnal emission.

"Bennett," he says loudly, then waits for an answer.

Surprised at being spoken to by the druid, Bennett looks up at Yaz.

The druid speaks slowly and clearly:

"Prirodna would like me to offer you the opportunity to say some last words to the departed Zsolt.

Tomorrow, we can meet at the grave. You will have to tell me what you want to say to him, then I will tell you his answers. If this is agreeable to you, meet me there."

Robert views the four cairns situated on a bluff over-looking the small lake:

"It looks as if there will be a nectropolis here before we're through," he says, shaking his head sadly.

Winnacer gives his thoughts:

"We must forget any thoughts of going back to the Tower today. Blesk's blessing of courage upon us will have subsided by now and we have cannot face the death knight without it. Let us heal our wounds today and continue upon our mission to exact vengeance for Zsolt's demise tomorrow."

Yaz looks a little disappointed at Winnacer's words:

"or... or I was hoping we could maybe check out the sarcophaguses in the basement again. Prirodna has taught me a new spell that would be useful in getting them open - the spell can change the shape of stone, molding it like clay. I figure I can cast it on one end of a coffin so we can look inside."

"If we catch the pox, me and Hrust can cure it, given enough rest... I just hope it doesn't kill too quickly."

"I thought that we had decided that we were going to leave the sarcophagi until we had explored the rest of the tower in case the mystery is solved by something that we find higher up?" counters Winnacer.

"It's up to you, Yaz. If you want to go back today just to open the sarcophagi before returning, then we can do, although it's a lot of walking just for that task. I shall leave it for the majority to decide.'

"What I'm thinking is, if we disturb the bodies of his family" adds Yaz, "in particular his wife, and take her away from the place, we might draw out Boscobelous himself. Use her as bait. Then we could take him on our terms, instead of his.

"If we wanna steal Mrs. Bosco, we should do it today, as I won't have the spell tomorrow. But whatever's fair. Bosco must die, and that's really the bottom line in any of this. Whaddaya think, the rest of you?"

Winnacer is far from being in favor of Yaz's plan:

"We are not grave despoilers nor men willing to bargain" he responds. "You would not despoil a forest if it were to suit your means. I will not deface graves to suit mine. Justice will be served without compromising our integrity."

"YOUR integrity," Yaz corrects. "I don't know what justice has to do with graves, but if graves are to you what the forest is to me, maybe you're saying you'd leave your grave in order to defend it...?"

Yaz looks a little confused.

"Maybe you're not so different from Bosco in the end, then."

Yaz shrugs. "I'm not going to beat this to death... Let's just kill the asshole. But we will eventually disturb those coffins, because we don't know what endlessly tormented undead souls could lie inside them. That, to me, is worth compromising your integrity to find out. If it comes to it, we'll have an arm wrestle later for the rights."

Jihan listens to the druid's words, his eyes widening at the man's mentions of gifts of Prirodna he has only read about, much less heard discussed.

"We all grow in Her eyes..." he mutters, thinking of the twin blades that now rest on his back.

"I for one believe that we must dispatch the foul abomination that is the Knight, as we may leave ourselves open for surprise tactics from him should we decide to dig around in the cellar again. Those sarcophagi should be left until we have nothing else to worry about, and now we know for sure that the tower and its denizens are aware of us: of our numbers and our strengths. Though this may inevitably lead to an ambush upstairs, I would prefer going there suspecting such rather than spending a lot of time in the basement. I say we go up and see what we can do about eliminating more of the tower's living darknesses before we bend our thoughts to those long dead..."

He crosses his arms at this, wincing a little as they touch the wound on his chest, and turns his much grimmer gaze back to Boscobelous lair:

"A reckoning will come today..."

Once the ceremony beside the cairns has been finished with, Jihan hands over the elven mail to Robert and asks if he could practice his squirely cleaning skills on it. Robert willingly agrees and begins to rub away at the soiled armor until it is gleaming. Once it has been cleaned, he hands it to Yaz, to rededicate to Prirodna, a ceremony which he will assist in as a representative of elvenkind.

Wanting to do the dedication properly, Yaz suggests that it wait until morning:

"I will bless the mail in the early dawn, in the first rays of sun."

Xavier sits alone, his back against a tree. He looks up and sees the look in Jihan's eyes. It is one he has seen many times in his sad life, the reflection of his own deep blue eyes. He gives a knowing nod of his head. He gets to his feet and walks over to the elf and sits down beside him. He speaks to him quietly:

"I understand little of the heart of the Fey, freund, but in one thing do I know much. Your eyes burn with it. It hurts like hell does it not. Neither man nor Fey it seems is immune to that cancer which eats our souls. I more than any here, feel your pain. I see my pain reflected in your eyes. The pain of hate.

This damn tower eats away at all our souls. I feel it, you feel it. We must end it soon, before we are all left but mere shadows of our former selves. But a warning, be on guard against that which you now feel, it may take you as it so nearly took me. I have lived with that devil of an emotion for some time, you are but new to it"

The elf is silent for a moment, his eyes consumed with the drab smudge that is Boscobelous' lair in the distance:

"But it is more than the tower, my brother, though that certainly is a part of it all. In this past month, I have learned much... More than ever my quiet life of before could have adequately prepared me for... I have learned much, and I have thought much, and come to many new realizations, or revelations, if you would..."

He turns to the man, looking him straight in the eye and continues, his voice lighter somehow, perhaps because confusion of some sort is evaporating. Something of the hesitant, idealistic elf met its end in that tower, something that had been pushed and prodded for weeks. The multi-colored orbs staring out on the world do not glimmer with the willful innocence of but a short time ago:

"You remember, brother, how I said all those days past that in everything that moves on and of the earth, there is Light, and hope? In these days, I have seen life mocked... I have seen abominations that would make others of my people quake in their leathers as they turned a blind eye away, hoping for the badness to go away. I have seen the Light extinguished... and brought back tainted. I have seen the Hope of all living things snuffed out as fitfully as a candle in a gale. Nothing ever that I have read has prepared me for this... For seeing the bones of kin rise up in blind wrath... for dull-eyed corpses walking about in a sick sham of a life... for Zsolt... The armies of Jasckus were but toys in my mind... like machinery... But now I know the truth. I see this seething den of evil, and I must do something about it. In it, I see the Nyemetz... How they take lives and crush them. How they rub them out and use what is left of them to their own ends, to their own TWISTED ends. Boscobelous might have been a wise and gentle man once, but his soul swung too far on the Balance to Darkness... All of this I see, and I realize that all of those that oppress make the choice to do so... No matter what the circumstances, when it comes down to it, they CHOOSE to cause havoc and sorrow. There is a balance, but I begin to think that my Lady does not put so much a hand in controlling it as once I thought... I see that She Herself is the balance, to be pushed by the wills of those She calls Her children, yet loving them all. I see that others push Her towards darkness, freewilled, and I HATE..."

Jihan turns then, his face rock hard, and sets his gaze again towards the tower. There appears no emotional incoherence to what he is professing, but rather, a cold, hard determination:

"Tell me, brother," he says, almost in a whisper, "who were these Fey that so held your dear land under their Iron fist... I have heard you speak somewhat of them, but always you seemed to hold back, perhaps because you did not wish to cause undue friction between us. There are many kinds of elf in this worldsrealm, and even they, once Her chosen, can find their way to the Darkness. For all that my kin in the city are conniving, and those in the forest are apathetic, I have yet to meet an elf such as you have described. Who are they, that have fallen so far?"

After answering Jihan, Xavier then moves to join Hrust. He tries to communicate with him using a mixture of Slovene and Rus words. He tries to give some moral support to the Shaman's pain. He offers him the warmth of a swig of Schnapps.

Communication between the Saxon and the Slovene is difficult but not impossible. Hrust tries his hardest to try and understand Xavier as he is seriously in need of someone to talk to, someone to share his pain, as he has asked Blesk for no more speaking spells that day. He takes Xavier up on the offer of the schnapps and drinks rather more of it than the Saxon would have wished him to, the bugbear having quite an appetite and thirst. As the strong schnapps starts to take effect on Hrust, he starts to ramble a little, talking about all of the adventures that he and Zsolt had together. It's a shame that Xavier is only able to understand a small percentage of what Hrust is saying, as the stories are probably very interesting.

The rest of the day passes, as have the others over the past week, the regularity of it getting to become a little tedious, although it does give each of them the time to hone their different skills.

Will once more saddles his horse and goes off to hunt for something that Robert can cook in the evening. He returns later in the afternoon with another brace of rabbits, there not seeming to be any larger game in this tainted area. Yaz and Jihan wander off in search of more roots to add to the supper.

The warriors continue with their sparring, with Jihan and Bennett still needing the time to get used to their new weapons.

Later in the day, Winnacer walks off from the others in order to pay his own, personal, last respects to Zsolt and to thank Spravedelna for granting the Pannon the release of true death.

Despite these diversions, it still seems to be a long time before dinner is served and the night starts to draw in. They set up a watch for the evening and then retire to their tents.