Truce

"Wh....why have we come here?" asked Adele, wringing her hands anxiously.

"During our ascent, I perceived this place." replied Heraclius. His voice carried a merest hint of uncertainty. Adele was confused; she was sure their transportation here had been instantaneous, yet the dragon spoke as if a measure of time has passed. He observed his surroundings for a while, but soon came to focus on what all who entered this place ultimately became tranfixed by.

The machine stood as it had before - complex, magical, mechanical. Heraclius walked purposely toward it, taking in all of its myriad details and mysteries. For a long time he stared at the glass box, his expression unreadable. Adele followed his gaze, and gasped as she realised that the maggots were gone - not one could be seen, either in the box or on the ground. Had they been in her mind all the time?

Now Heraclius was behind the twisting labyrinth of glass tubes connected to the box, observing intently the runes adorning them. Through the glass, his face appeared warped and chubby to Adele. His eyes narrowed, then abruptly widened again. He emerged from behind the tubes and looked at Adele. His face was grave, and it twitched with what could only be supressed, volcanic anger. He strode towards her, arms rigid at his sides.

"This machine......this is a Nexus. You. You built a Nexus, of all the things. Of all the things, a Nexus!?"

Adele knew she should have been afraid of the burning tone in his voice, afraid of the way he now towered above her, gripping her upper arms tightly, but she was not afraid. Adele sensed his bargain of non- aggression was about to be waived, and she hoped that her untimely death at his hands might redeem her soul enough to avoid damnation. It was a very faint hope, cold and wet and huddled at the back of her heart. A shimmer of flame passed over the dragon's human body.

"Why?" he asked quietly, evidently electing to suppress whatever brutal impulse had taken him.

"I did not build this." answered Adele in a strangely flat voice. "It was my father. He came to this place centuries ago, cursed to immortality by his own reckless experiments with necromancy. I followed him across the land with my friends....."

Sigin filled her mind, but she did not let her regret break her tale.

".....I wanted to help my father, to bring him back to reality. We travelled for many miles; me, my lover Matthias and......and Elaine. We entered these caves unaware. But Minestus, he found us, and then. And then......" And then

And
then


And then she was there, there in that chamber, all those years ago. All of them, in the chamber, not Belboz's chamber but Minestus' chamber, fighting for their lives. Sigin, warping the very space around him as he sent his most powerful incantations raging against the dragon. Elaine and Adele (herself, she was looking at herself, but it was a herself that was not yet stained with murder) summoning all their training and experience for this, their toughest lesson yet. Matthias, who surely could not have hoped to even pierce its armoured scales, charging forward in the name of Telluria, in the name of her, the unstained Adele.

And Minestus himself, Gods, Adele had forgotten how large he had been. As red as surely the burning core of the earth, tail swiping stalagmites like tenpins, neck as tall as a centennial oak. His face, old and angry and happy and other emotions beyond, mocking their paltry attacks with a vicious, oily laughter that infected their minds and killed all traces of hope that lay there. Leaping into the air, he flew around their heads in a circle, coughing spitballs of flame at them, ravaging their magical defenses. Stone tumbled down upon them from up high, and Adele watched as the unstained Adele was tackled by a desperate Matthias, as one second later a boulder the size of a cart slammed down on the place where she had stood.

Defeat and death seemed certain. Sigin looked to Elaine for a brief moment, his face gaunt and morose, before resuming his now frantic spellcasting. Adele and Matthias were on the ground, stunned by their near-miss. And the dragon laughed and laughed. A single bolt of purple lighting streaked from his horns, into Sigin's chest, who cried out like a slapped child. He fell to his knees, but he did not collapse. He still drew breath. The sardonic laughter of the beast had turned Elaine's thoughts to slurry, and she too fell to the floor in exhaustion and despair. Matthias dragged himself over to Adele, and held her tight. All four awaited the final attack, praying as all surely do in their last moment, that it would be quick and painless.

"ENOUGH!" came the roar. Both past and present Adele turned to the source, unbelieving. There stood her father, the necromancer, arms held out to the dragon who was landing with a titanic thud between Belboz and his four new playthings. Minestus flicked his tail, and in an instant a transparent, glimmering sphere encircled the playthings, freezing their motion, depriving them of time. None of them moved, saw, heard or felt.

But the present Adele could move, here in this fracture of memory, and she ran to her father's side as Minestus glowered over them both, casting them into black shadow.

"Who be you to tell me 'enough', deathwarder?" demanded Minestus, his voice booming around the chamber.

"Forgive me, Lord Minestus!" called Belboz, his voice far from confident. "But I beg you, do not do this. Do not destroy them! They are from my homeland, and my daughter numbers among them. Please, Lord! They came here for me, not for...."

A single claw rammed into his body, driving him into the ground. Adele screamed, reaching down to pull the claw away, but her hand passed straight through it. She let out a sob, and fell to her knees at her father's side. Belboz groaned and struggled as the claw pressed against his chest, threatening to go straight through his ribcage with but a slight increase in pressure. Minestus lowered his face until it was less than a foot from the necromancer's.

"Know that I employed great magnanimity in sparing your life, deathwarder, and even more in allowing you to co-exist here, in my territory. And now you make some blathering emotional plea for the life of your spawn in addition? These worms have blighted my province, and I will now unmake them. If this will cause you pain, deathwarder, I suggest you leave this place."

Deaf to Belboz's beseeching cries, Minestus released the claw and turned to the worms, their forms still frozen, devoid of senses. His eyes flared, and from deep within his throat, a great energy grew and grew, far more potent than any power that he had displayed thus far. His neck arched, his mouth widened like a bear trap, revealing the full extent of his awesome jaws, filled with a nest of thin white teeth. The walls trembled.

"Anything! I'll do anything, Minestus! Name your desire! NAME IT I SAY!"

Somehow, the dragon's voice emerged from the glowing, charging throat, though his mouth remained locked open. "What can you possibly do for my desires? Can you undo that which has been done? Can you regress ancient regrets and turn them grand? Can you create JUSTICE, deathwarder? Can you make alive that which is dead? CAN YOU?"

"I CAN DO ALL OF THOSE THINGS! NAME YOUR DESIRE!" screamed Belboz, on his feet and with tears running unfelt down his thin white cheeks. Minestus roared, and it was not a roar of anger, but of regret, of the agony of wrong choices uncorrectable. The unspeakable force generating inside him disappeared as warm mist and the dragon spun back around to Belboz, his eyes totally, completely black.

"Speak!" ordered the beast. "Speak and by Laws explain your claims or I will chew your daughter alive as I rend your flesh across this cold mountain! Speak!"

Belboz did not hesitate, and talked as he grasped each breath. "There is a machine, my Lord. A machine beyond any that mortal hands have ever made. I alone know how it is constructed, and construct it I shall! It is the true reason I came here, Lord. It....it will take many, many years to build, but I......"

This time the claw swiped at his midsection, sending him spinning once more to the ground. His head struck the stone, his vision blurred.

"What does this machine DO?"

And then Adele was back, back with Heraclius. And he was saying something that Adele did not hear. Her father's truce with Minestus. It was the machine, the machine that Heraclius called the Nexus. Belboz.....had offered to build the machine to help Minestus?

She looked down, and was only half-surprised to find that the ring was on her finger again. She moved to pull it off, but Heraclius grabbed and shook her firmly.

"Did you hear what I said, lass?" he scolded.

"No."

"This abomination, this......Nexus.....must be destroyed."

"What!?" exclaimed Adele, mouth agape with shock. "No.....no you can't. You can't."

"Perhaps not by myself." replied Heraclius, misunderstanding. "This is a powerful edifice. But I have not come here alone."

He started to walk away, and Adele grabbed him as a starving beggar might. "No! No, please, you cannot destroy it! My father built this machine, he spent his whole life building it!"

Heraclius was impassive, stern. "Such concerns are trifling in this hour, lass. We must....."

"He built it to save me you bastard!"

Adele slapped him hard, across the left cheek. An awful, shadowy stillness hung in the air as Heraclius raised a shaking hand to his face. The sapphire in the ring had left a deep red mark.

Fury swelled within Adele. Fury swelled within Heraclius.

1. Meanwhile, Fred.....
2. Meanwhile, Euaristus......
3. Adele......
4. Heraclius......

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