The man was of medium weight and build with raven dark hair streaked with silver, drawn back into a single braid. His expression was mild, calm, that of a careful and thoughtful man seldom roused to emotion, and his dark eyes were calm and unfocused, giving him a perpetual sleepy look. He himself wasn't tall, nor particularly well-built. But he still carried a Presence, like an Old Testament Prophet, a magnetism that demanded attention.

Hauntingly handsome, he cut an incongruous figure, lurking in the wild and savage jungle, dressed in his expensive shirt of scarlet and gold, his fine calfskin gloves, polished boots with golden buckles, and long black cape edged in the palest ermine. A slender grey tie made of old rope hung around his neck. A rapier was belted at his hip, made of Damascus steel with an ivory hilt. But it was no showman's piece, it had known little rest and had served him well for a long time.

He'd finished his work, and turned, his eyes meeting nothing but the sullen, shadowy reaches of the unmapped jungle. Shouldering the shovel, he went with the stealth and easy movement of a leopard, feeling his way cautiously, every nerve alert and straining, but the way was not easy. Vines tripped at his legs and slapped him in the face, impeding his progress and forcing him to grope his way between the huge boles of the towering trees. All through the underbrush sounded vague and menacing rustlings, shadows of movement, and he glimpsed the baleful glimmer of eyes amongst the trees.
He spared it not another glance. The night held nothing more terrible then him.

Imperialism! He could almost believe he loved it! The more advanced cultures decided that they were superior, and therefore had an obligation to enslave and destroy everyone else, loot them as much as they could, all in the name of the greater good. Mankind had changed, now it could no longer loot and pillage honestly. Currency reigned supreme, and that suited him fine. He hadn't had so much fun since the crusades.

He'd come to Africa to kill missionaries, and doing his best to stop the church from getting a foothold in the Dark Continent while he was at it, while encouraging the slave trade as much as he could. Of course, once he'd gotten to the jungle he'd found dozens of other interests to pursue, the relatively lawless British ports he'd stayed at had given him all the distraction he could wish for. There was so much that felt new here, on the frontier, and that suited the Dark Apostle very well.

Limbs and vines lashed at his face as he made his way out of the jungle and back to what could generously be called civilization. The oppressive steam of the tropic night rose like mist around him. The moon, now floating high above the jungle, limned the black shadows in a white glow and patterned the jungle floor in grotesque designs. And the he came to a path, little more then an unpaved trail of trampled dirt and small plants, that led back to the port where the ship would be awaiting him.

Moving out of the growth, he stares out to the port, and is hit by an unexpected silence and stillness. No light, no sound, nothing. The Queen Anne's Revenge was still docked in the bay, and the crew should be helping themselves, and yet nothing. No light in the windows, no sound but the dock rats, squeaking in anticipation and scuttling about.

For all the conquest of the white man, it was the rats who truly benefited, spreading to the few places in the world that had not already been forced to adapt to them by the exploration.

The silence is disquieting, but nothing but a slight tightness in his posture betrays any feeling one way or another about it. He simply follows a path worn into the un-paved road by the eager footsteps of many bow-legged sailors, up along the beach to the cluster of dark buildings –where the beach ends and the taverns and inns begin, yet where there should a tumult of sound and light that cracks the rusty night in debauched celebration, there was but the silence of the grave, the whistling of the ocean breeze and the sounds of the jungle.

The pirates were all dead. Thirty corpses with their tongues torn out were scattered about the place, not his men, but loyal enough for what he was paying them. The rest were nowhere to be seen, but it wasn't hard to note they'd met a similar fate. Edward Teach was in the center, an almost comical look of surprise on his face, his sword on the ground, having slipped from his nerveless fingers. He'd put up a fight, of course he had, the old necromancer would never go quietly into the night, but it hadn't been good enough.

Kneeling, he took a look at the wounds, and noted a sharp blade had done them all. As impossible as it seemed, this was the work of a mortal, no supernatural creature had been involved. A man had done this. He turned slowly, and found himself facing the perpetrator.

A tall, grimly-attired man, towering above the newly-made corpses, clad in black from head to foot, close fitting garments that suited his somber face. Long arms and broad shoulders marked him as a swordsman, as plainly as the rapier in his hand.

His features were saturnine and gloomy, so gaunt he looked as though he'd been boiled until all the flesh had fallen off him. But he didn't look weak. Quite the contrary, he looked as though he didn't need size for strength and so discarded it. His eyes deep-set and unblinking, and looking into them it was impossible to decide what color they were. They were cold, but deep, gazing into them one had the impression of looking into countless fathoms of ice. A high, broad forehead, marked him as an idealist and dreamer, but even so he looked tough enough to make Nicodemus feel like a soft-boiled egg.
His other hand holds a plain staff, with notches in pleasing patterns and a rough approximation of a cats head on the top. It looked old, but little more. It was the rapier that concerned Nicodemus.

"I looked for you in Ireland. But you were nowhere to be found." Said the grim apparition, his voice resonant and powerful, flicking his blade, a line of blood appearing on the wall beside him, then resting it on his shoulder.

"Well, I wasn't there for long." Nicodemus replied, sounding for all the world as though he was talking about the weather. His eyes were sparkling with contempt, as though it was the puritan and not the murderous heretic who was the deviant. "I got restless, and the famine was not what it had promised."

"And again in Paris. I thought I'd found you again. I missed you by hours, and killed a dozen horses tracking you across the continent."

"Ah, you almost cornered me in Florence. And you did manage to keep my trail? I congratulate you on your determination. Then again, it can't have been hard. I stay in the most expensive accommodations available, I am generous to the help, and leave no shortage of bodies behind. It seems inconceivable you did not meet me on the road. If you had, that would have been the end of you wanderings."

"Then in the Orient. India."

"Yes, that sounds about right. I take it you are the one who accounted for Le Loup? Went out laughing, I trust? Shame, he showed so much promise. But then, this environment you have created gives me no shortage of followers. I have recently rediscovered my love of Empires." He replied calmly.

"Particularly in their opening stages. You justify your greed and kill anyone who has something that you want. Indeed, after watching civilization come so far forward I am almost reassured to see how little has changed. I could grow to love what you Englishmen are doing to their neighbors. It's certainly more interesting then the last years have been." He scratches the side of his head. "Why have you followed me like this?"

"Because you are less then a man, and it is my destiny to kill you." Answered Kane, no more understanding the question then Nicodemus could understand the puritan's single minded pursuit of him since that day in Ireland.

All Kane's life he had roamed about the world, aiding the weak and fighting oppression wherever he found it, he neither knew or questioned why. That was his obsession, the driving force of his life. Those that preyed on the weak sent a blaze of red fury in his heart, fierce and lasting, through the soul. If he thought of it at all, and he rarely did, he considered himself a fulfiller of God's judgment, a vessel of wrath to be emptied on the souls of the unrighteousness. But he was not a man given to introspection, and more then he was to compromise.

"That's hardly the actions of a good Christian boy like yourself." Nicodemus chuckled indulgently, though Solomon didn't even seem aware of the mocking tone. "If I'd wronged you personally then perhaps I could understand, I too would follow an enemy across the world, but I'd never even heard of you before you declared war upon me!"

Kane was silent, his still fury overwhelming him. Though he himself didn't realize it, Nicodemus was more then an enemy to him, he symbolized all that Kane had fought against all his life, cruelty, outrage, oppression and the suffering of the weak.

"You have no chance against me, you know." He continues, his shadow moving between them of it's own accord, not moving so much as flowing, reforming once more to a vaguely human appearance in the pale moonlight. "You have only survived so long because I have allowed it. Some lingering trace of courtesy, and because I found our game interesting. I know I could kill you whenever fancy took it, but I have not had a liking to confront you, and enjoyed the chase, I who thought I'd long since exhausted all the thrills of life."

Kane was silent a moment before he found his words. "No. It is by the grace of God that I have you here, and it is by his grace that I shall end the infernal existence you've sustained." But doubt had wormed it's way into his mind, and a certain fatalism held him in it's grip. Perhaps he would die. All who had tried to kill Nicodemus Arcleone before had, their bodies scattered across the world. It was not death itself that he feared, it was the knowledge that this Black Apostle would continue after him, that once he was dead Nicodemus would go on to commit atrocity after atrocity. It was the thought that all he had done would go unpunished that made him feel something not far removed from fear.

There was more of the pagan about him then the Puritan, whatever he himself might claim. Death did not frighten him, but the thought of this death, the thought of failing did grant him a brooding sort of anger at the world for allowing this to exist.

Nicodemus laughed at his momentary uncertainty. "Insight! To think I despaired." He said. "All of it, all the misery and fear, all the suffering and sorrow, it's simply because I enjoy tormenting men like you. " He studied the back of his hand for a moment, then looked at the warrior who had sought him out once more. "If you ask nicely, however, I might be persuaded to let you leave this place alive." He glanced at the dead pirates particularly at their captain, and his lips narrowed. "You should be quick in your begging, however. You have inconvenienced me quite a bit."

Solomon stepped back, the tip of his sword dipping a hair towards the ground, then he tightened his grip. "Are you quite done? Your craven begging diminishes us both." A man of faith did not meet the works of the Fallen with wizardry of his own. He did not challenge the Dark powers of Old Night with weapons as steeped in depravity and wickedness as they. No the weapons he relied on was courage and determination, to never allow fear and horror to take command of his heart, to never allow doubt and regret to weaken his resolve.

"I am a servant of God." He snarled. "And I shall make you answer for your crimes, though I perish doing it. Doom and judgment are upon you, you blasphemous slattern!" Kane, not being a man given to profanities, his rare curses having double the effect and always startling those that heard, no matter how vicious or hardened they might be.

Nicodemus went very still, then he sighed softly. "I see that I was mistaken. You are an idiot afterall. Perhaps I shall one day answer to your ineffectual concept of justice, but not for considerable time, if at all. There is much I must achieve first."

"We have spoken enough this night, interloper. The hour grows late, and I have little time to bandy words with a corpse that should have died long ago." Kane said, advancing towards the shadowy figure, his sword held before and across his body, his arm steel and knotted oak. Nicodemus steps back, and lifts his arms. His shadow leaps around his arm, flowing out from his hand to reveal a Hellfire-forged rapier. Behind him, his living shadow rises, wings of purest night, and the moonlight seems to dim.

"En garde."