Chapter 4

"At any time, in any place and in any language. Call my name, and I will be there for you." In the deepest depths of Kathrine's panicing mind, she heard Bree's voice whisper the reminder of what they'd shared. Kathrine questioned, she always did, but hope won out and the name clawed its way out of Kat's throat. She cried out both in fear and faith. "BREE! HELP!"

The words echoed through the otherwise empty street, dying off into silence as a soft wind brushed over her. There was no flash of light, no blinding ray of salvation on the horizon. There was only the stillness left in the wake of her plea. Nothing moved but the subtle scanning motions of the three men looking to the buildings that lined the main thoroughfare, all of them prepared to move on a moment's notice.

Kathrine herself looked around from her place on the ground, hope still firm in her mind. Bree was a friend, a lover and overall a decent person who kept her word. . .

When it suited her.

That quiet reminder was all it really took to shatter her hope completely. Bree had what she wanted, she didn't need Kat any more than she had needed her to find out what the artifact did in the first place. She'd kept Kat around for her own reasons and now that she'd had her fun she was gone like so much dust in the wind.

Okay, don't panic. Just keep calm. She drew in a breath. It wasn't the first time she'd been betrayed, nor was it likely to be the last. She'd just have to adapt. That's what she did. Adapt. Why was it, then, that she felt an ache in her heart? She'd let Bree in too far, she'd given too much trust and now. . . Now she was on her own.

Some things never change.

Kathrine glanced around, trying to piece together a plan. With no guards or even people on the streets, she was completely at the mercy of the unforgiving cobbles and her own creativity. She could get through it. All she had to do was-

"Pardon me." Bree's clear voice filtered from somewhere down the street ahead of them. The simple, frank tone in her voice was warm and yet totally indifferent to anything going on around her, as though she was talking about the weather. "I believe you're looking for me-"

"Now!" The man with the gravely voice snarled. "Get her!"

Kat squirmed and turned her head up just in time to see Bree, about fifty feet ahead of them, turn on her heel with her hands clasped behind her back. Her wine colored velvet coat fluttered softly in her wake when she turned but she didn't acknowledge the men as they started after her. One of them removed a small crystal banded in copper and aimed it at her while his compatriots spread out to come at her from different angles. There was just a split second where Kat tried to call out before the man atop her grabbed her mouth and muffled it into a dull 'mph!'

Bree, heedless to the danger she was in didn't so much as turn to regard her pursuers. Instead, she walked a little faster but never quite took to a run even as they closed in on her. The man with the crystal muttered some kind of incantation, aiming the device at Bree's back. He looked faintly surprised when nothing happened but in another moment he was conducting the incantation again as his companions closed the distance.

With the men only a few feet from her she halted in mid step and tumbled to the cobbles face first with a solid thump. The man with the gravely voice pressing into Kat's back muttered something indistinct, it sounded distinctly approving. Kat bit his hand only to scream out 'NO!' into his palm.

Bree lay crumpled as the men approached with small daggers at the ready, prepared to strike her down at a moment's notice if she moved. She had stopped cold almost like she'd been struck dead. She wasn't breathing. She wasn't stirring. Panic began to flood through Kat's veins like cold water. Why wasn't she breathing? She was too strong for someone to just kill her like that.

"It's fine, child. We'll protect you. . ." The man whispered in what he probably thought was a soothing tone. It was cold and hard like the edge of the knife Kat could feel pressing to the base of her neck, threatening to silence her next words.

How could they have done that? It didn't make any sense. The woman Bree had been was snuffed out like a candle in the wind and she didn't have so much as a chance? It was the same thing they'd tried to do to her, to get the relic back. The Oghman church was reputedly zealous about guarding knowledge but could they just do that to people? Didn't their god have some kind of 'don't kill people like this' mandate? Didn't they have any compunction about sanctity of life? Kat's mind ran fluid with anger and fear. Confusion and pain.

She didn't deserve that. No crimes she may or may not have committed deserved such a death. She was confused, yes, but she wasn't an animal to be hunted down and killed! Kathrine could feel a snarl growing in her throat as she tried to push against the cobbles with the tips of her toes. The men were only a foot away from the still form of her friend, of her lover. . . Of a basically good person whom they'd just unceremoniously murdered in the streets. "Who are you people!? Who?! WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT!?" Her pathetic cries echoed through the empty street only to be strangled by her tight throat.

"Yes, do tell." Bree's voice cut through the fog of anger and pain like a sword. It kept right on cutting until it got to her heart where it stabbed a new hole to be filled with disbelief and a new kind of terror.

Kat craned her head around to see the man's features slackened with his own terror. Where his hand was touching Kat's shoulder, she could feel a sudden tension in his grip. But his eyes said it clearest. The surprise. The confusion. Things Kat had known first hand in a million different reflections. It felt good to see it in the eyes of someone like that. She wanted to smile but she suddenly realized how petty she was being.

"And while you're at it. . ." Bree cooed with an eerie calm, her crystalline blue eyes sparking with both amusement and focus as she looked at him. She rested her chin on his shoulder as though it was the most normal thing in the world. "Be a dear and see to the girl's release, hm?"

The man swallowed and tensed again. His gaze shot to his left to glance at Bree. "You'll not corrupt this innocent soul-"

"You're one to speak of corruption." She tsked. "Trying to destroy my soul so you can pursue your dreams of immortality? Oh, no, mister Syler, I believe there's a special layer of the Hells reserved just for people like you." With the casual calm of someone still secure in their position in the world, she spared Kathrine a glance and a subtle 'everything will be fine' smile. "Now, if you'd be so kind? Or did you need a blade to cut her bindings?"

The man, Syler, swallowed against the lump in his throat when Bree removed a small dagger from her belt and turned it over to offer it to the man hilt first. The entire handle was bone with blood red inlays that sparkled softly in the afternoon light. As the polished silver weapon changed hands, Kat could see the inlays were actually small glass tubes filled with real liquid blood, yet something seemed slightly off about them.

It was a subtle bristling of arcane energy against the fringes of Kat's senses from the blood or the dagger itself but whatever it was, it was an immediate and undeniable touch almost as if the magical energy contained within the object was a physical force pressing on her. It was power in it's most destructive form, coursing through the veins of the weapon. Waiting to break free. It was hungry for something. Kat squirmed away feebly but Syler's grip tightened once more.

"I am known for my patience, mister Syler." Bree whispered. "You're testing it with this child."

The man muttered something in fluid but hard edged draconic. From what Kat knew of the language the words weren't friendly. She didn't even need to hear the intent to realize it was probably some kind of death threat.

Bree chuckled a melodic laugh right in his ear. It stopped, abruptly and her voice contained no humor whatsoever. "No."

When Kat felt the brush of the weapon slice through her bindings she rolled away from the pair just as the men ahead of them started trying to touch the still 'dead' Bree on the streets. Their hands passed right through her a couple of times before they stole glances at one another and finally back. One of the men pointed at them and shouted but Kat was already running through the incantation for her last invisibility spell.

Bree, however, seemed in no hurry. She watched Kat finish her spell before turning her attention to Syler, making no move to recover the magic blade as a little unreadable smirk pulled at her pouted lips. "Looks familiar, does it?"

He muttered again in draconic.

"Yes, but there is something you're forgetting, young man. . ." The woman pulled back and casually went about straightening out his ruffled black and brown robes. When she spoke again her voice carried a decidedly different kind of tone. One she'd never heard anyone speak in her entire life. It wasn't hard, unfriendly or threatening but something in the inflection sent every hair on Kat's body on end; it was a subtle power that no human could ever have wielded with such control. "We never forget."

The other Oghmans had halved the distance between them and the man with the crystal was aiming it directly at Bree. He opened his mouth just as Bree took a half step back, her body seemingly disappeared right before all their eyes as though she'd walked through a curtain of reality and drawn it closed. Her head was still visible as she whispered. "We'll have our time, but not today." With that she stepped into the shadow of whatever reality she had parted with and was gone.

Kathrine stayed there, looking between the men or some kind of idea what they might be doing next. They looked mildly confused, uncertain and even a little frightened if Syler's face was anything to go by. He turned the dagger over in his hand and drew in a deep breath, considering the relic with the reverence Kat would have given to one of the shrines of Chauntea. To him it was a holy artifact or something of immense importance to whatever they were doing.

Why did Bree give it to them, then?

Syler looked around. "The girl is of no consequence. . ." He rose shakily. "Get Turnik and the others together, start the preparations."

"Of course." One of the men replied. "Do you really think she'd risk the binding spells for the girl?"

The older man looked at the dagger again, brow furrowed. "She's run out of time, it's desperation. . . Or. . ." They looked at one another and a sudden realization seemed to dawn on both of them. They didn't look entirely ready to share except when one of the other men looked at them strangely. Syler shook his head and sighed. "She's going to use the girl to undo the binding.'

"Wouldn't that destroy her soul anyway?"

"I. . . don't know." Syler slid the dagger in his belt. "You, tell the city watch what happened. We'll be leaving within the hour."

"Still want me to tell them we're with the Oghman Church?"

He nodded. "I'll meet you at the docks, I think I saw her cat pet roaming around invisibly. They might have their ship there too." The other men lowered their heads in understanding and he motioned them away. When he was standing there alone, with no one else around to hear him, he sighed. He looked haggard and worn in ways Kat, at her worst, couldn't have.

Some part of her felt bad for him but she couldn't bring the other parts, the parts worried for her friend, to care. It wasn't adding up, there just wasnt' enough information, but there was some kind of connection she wasn't quite making.

"I know you're there." He said abruptly.

Kathrine swallowed.

Syler looked around slowly, scanning the shadows of the buildings and even some of the second stories for something only he knew. When his gaze swept past Kat she let herself relax a bit. He hadn't known she was there at all. Maybe she wasn't his target at all. "She'll destroy you, child. . . She won't think twice about it."

That's where you're wrong. Kat whispered to herself. Strange how distant those words sounded even to her own soul. Not knowing what else to do, she looked to the west and swallowed. Decisions had to be made and if necessary, sacrifices too.

She still had to get that relic before Bree could take off with it or use it. She also had to warn her- to protect her friend. . . "At any time, in any place and in any language. Call my name, and I will be there for you." It was in her nature, it was in her family, it was in her very blood; to stand by those in hopeless situations and lost causes, to be there for people such as Bree or Jezebel. They were friends and lovers and utterly up to their necks in trouble yet she wasn't going to back down now.

Kat started towards the docks at a sprint.

3/16-17/1381

People always ask me why I do what I do. What does it mean to anyone? Why this, why that. . . You know what? If you don't know, I don't think I can explain it.

Well, no, that's not entirely accurate.

See, when my father was in the army he got into a fight with one of his best friends at the time. Over something that got a mutual friend of theirs killed (he never would tell me the specifics) and when it came to it, his friend disowned him, turned his friends on my father and even went so far as to threaten his life once.

Years passed and my father gave the man his distance until he saw him one day in the market, crying into his hands with a bunch of empty bottles around him and a blood stain on the stomach of his tunic. He'd been living on the streets for months after his wife passed away and he lost his job, he'd been begging for coin when someone stabbed him and took what little he had left.

My father carried the man to the inn, dressed his wounds, watched over him while he slept and paid for a meal. After that, he brought him out to Eveningstar and got him a job on Miss Copperbottom's farm. When my father was asked why he did it, he said "A Stoneriver is a friend without condition."

So, when you ask me why I do what I do?

I can't say I'm as strong as my father, but I am a Stoneriver. Maybe that says it all, huh?

-Diary of Kathrine Stoneriver