Disc-laimer: Yeah right. I own the Discworld. Would I be writing Fan Fiction if I did?

* * *

Uyidako opened the door and walked out into the sunlight. Rincewind blinked.

"I am the priestess of this village. You must refer to me as priestess."

"Okay."

"I am respected here, you may have noticed." Rincewind remembered his capture and nodded silently. "I am one half of the Throng sisters."

"Throng sisters?"

"Yes. My older sister and I fought the Pseudopolites when they tried to annex our country twenty years ago. I was fifteen then, and my sister was twenty. We freed hundreds of villages as fast as the Pseudopolites could capture them. We were unstoppable, that we were. I really thing Pseudopolis feared us. And then- my sister was killed by soldiers. I escaped, and have been a fugitive ever since." Rincewind couldn't see her eyes, but there were tears running down her cheeks. He fought his better judgment and put a hand on her shoulder. She whirled to face him. "An exile! This country is where the Agatean Empire sends is exile, and now I am and exile here too!" She calmed slightly. " The revolts began, and I helped throw off the yoke of fear from the people. But I want to be a free trading country with the rest of the world. I want to see the world. So I am with those who are sick of being ruled by anyone. The Ephebians help because they mined gold here with an agreement before the Civil War started. An agreement! The Ephebians took us seriously! They have been here since the beginning, and have tought us their system of democracy. We may try it if we win, or even survive this war. But all that happens is we loose more and more. The Ephebians are looking towards leaving. They stand little chance of making a profit even if they win this war. They have built a last ditch perimeter around Switch' Off. If this is breached, we are done for."

"But how? The Ephebians have the best army on the Disc. How could they be looing so badly?"

"They are up against forty foot tall bronze statues that move."

"Oh."

"Come. I will show you."

"Oh no you don't! I'm staying right here."

Uyidako smiled, in a sad way, and Rincewind realized she was pretty. Not beautiful, but with a possibility of beauty.

"The fighting will come to us soon enough. You may as well become familiar with it."

* * *

"Leonard? Leonard of Quirm?"

The room was a jungle of half completed impossibilities and diagrams that might have been etched on the side of the sort of alien spacecraft you see in bad science fiction movies with names like "Revenge of the Son of the Cousin of the Bridesmaid of the Being." There was a yell from the next room over.

":Hold on, I think I've got it, just a-" A bottle filled with blue liquid and something else shot through the doorway and hit the wall in front of Ridcully was an explosive force. A man stuck his head around the doorway.

"Oh dear. That didn't work at all."

"What was it supposed to do?" asked Ridcully, who was the first to get his breath back.

"I had this champagne bottle lying around, and I stuck a candle in the top of it the way they do back in Quirm, but the candle melted and fell through. So it occurred to me that if I put water in and heat it from below the way might form blobs or something and float around. But is just blew up again. I guess the "Melted-wax-which-forms-blobs-which-go-up-and- down Lamp is a bust. Now what can I do for you.

"We're wizards. And we're having this problem, back at Unseen University."

Leonard of Quirm frowned. "Oh no. I don't do magic."

"There's barely any magic in it at all," wheedled Ridcully, "And it has all sorts of tubes and pipes."

Leonard's eyes glowed "Pipes?"

"And more moving parts than you can shake a stick at. Want to come?"

"But of course!"