Chapter 14

Breaking Point

Even though it was very useful in translating all the languages he heard, and allowed him to speak them in return, Wolfe was thinking that Wesdagor's cure to his linguistic disability was worse than having the disability itself.

"I heard that!" the now ever-present voice in the back of his mind shouted indignantly.

"Of course you did. Private thoughts are a thing of the past for me," Wolfe mentally replied in exasperation to the translation symbiont living somewhere near his brainstem.

"Lighten up. Without me, you wouldn't be able to talk to anyone."

"A small price to pay for some peace and quiet, Jelly," Wolfe thought, addressing the symbiont by its abbreviated nickname. Its proper name was Dromalakutajelly, but Wolfe called it Jelly for the sake of brevity and because it looked like a jellybean on the outside.

"This isn't my idea of a party either, you know. I can't believe I've endured two years of this torture," Jelly answered petulantly.

"I'm sure it hasn't been two whole years yet."

"I'm a translator, not a calendar."

"Would you be quiet!"

"Why? I have to hear your thoughts all the time, whether I want to or not."

"You were created for that sole purpose."

"That doesn't mean I wouldn't rather be doing something else."

"Time to earn your keep, Jelly," Wolfe thought, as he approached the end of a queue in front of the gates of a fairly large city called Astirian, which was the capital city of an outlying fiefdom belonging to the Shamballah Empire. At least, officially it did, but judging from the chained beings that looked like they were about to be sold into slavery, Wolfe gathered that the authority of Shamballah must have lost its influence here. He knew that, being roughly the size of Sudan, the Shamballah kingdom proper was difficult enough to administrate. It would take more time for his grandfather to set things straight within the kingdom, which had fallen into disarray itself in the centuries after the old emperor's death. And only after accomplishing that could he start thinking about restoring the fiefs, which together covered a territory the size of Kazakhstan.

It seemed that Yamato had chosen to change tactics in coming here, probably to try to lose himself in a crowd instead of hiding out in a remote place. And losing himself wouldn't be all that difficult for Yamato in a place like this. Despite the city's white walls and colourful banners waving in the gentle breeze, the evil in the air was almost palpable. It was as if the pristine-looking city mocked the unfortunate souls being lead into its gates. Yamato would definitely feel right at home there, hopefully enough to lower his guard and allow Wolfe to finally catch him.

His anticipation grew with every step with every step. He hadn't been this close to capturing Yamato since shortly after his arrival in the Mirror Realm, when Yamato's craft had been damaged by volcanic debris spewed out by the Peaks of Quala. However, Wolfe had been thwarted by the fact that Yamato had also been able to communicate with the Mirror Realm natives. That was how he had convinced a Tribe of Alai that he was Westley's guardian, and that Wolfe was the evil one, trying to kidnap the boy.

The Alai, known in the Earth Realm as Jann, were the least magically powerful and most human-like of the Jinn. The peaceful region they inhabited had turned them into a friendly people with a Bedouin-like sense of hospitality. The absence of hostility in their existence had also made them a bit naïve, so they hadn't questioned Yamato's story. As a result of Yamato's clever ploy, Wolfe had been forced to fend off a tribe of outraged Alai for hours. He could have dispatched them more quickly if he'd used lethal force, but he'd refrained from doing so since a casual scan of the Alai's thoughts had uncovered Yamato's involvement. By the time he'd convinced the Alai with the truth, Yamato had built up a lead again.

The first three months had basically been a chase around the Immortal's Circle with the Prowler, before both the Prowler and Yamato's craft ran out of energy. Then, for almost the complete duration of the remaining year and a half, he'd pursued Yamato across three of the four continents the Mirror Realm had. He'd traversed a huge tropical jungle with so much humidity that it made the Amazon seem like a temperate forest. He'd searched hundreds of villages in an area of grasslands as large as the prairies and plains of North America, the Pampas of South America, and the Eurasian Steppes combined. He'd searched a reef archipelago made up of four hundred islands whose sizes varied from atolls to the size of Jamaica, of which there were a handful. But he'd also passed through more normal places.

Since Yamato had also been forced to stick to the safer travelling routes both within and between these places, tracking him hadn't been too difficult. After all, these routes meant crossing paths with other travellers, and fortunately Yamato hadn't been as successful as he would have liked when it came to keeping a low profile. Unfortunately he'd repeated his lying routine in many settlements, which caused Wolfe delays every time. However, that had ended some four months ago, when Wolfe encountered a colony of Solarionqwë, known in the Earth Realm's Scandinavian world as Ljosalfar, though even Scandinavian wizards hadn't seen them for nine hundred years. This race of predominantly female Light Elves had somehow seen through Yamato's deception, and though they had failed to detain him, they had sent messengers to anyone who would listen, warning them about Yamato's true nature. Their help had allowed Wolfe to close in on Yamato very quickly, which had led him to Astirian.

Wolfe briskly strode past the queue of shuffling slaves and their snarling guards. Most were tall, hairy hominids that were numerous in the area. They had a primitive lifestyle and a limited form of magic, much like that of goblins and dwarves. In the Mirror Realm they called themselves the Meidels, and back home the native Americans had had many names for them, varying from region to region. The most well-known names among Muggles were Bigfoot and Sasquatch, but there were also other names like Skunk Ape, Oh-mah, Momo, Grassman, and as they were called where his grandmother Tempeste lived, Wookie. Their captors were a race of human-sized goblins called the Woroghs, which also appeared to be the most numerous slavers, though there were also Pinaka lizard-men, Medusas with their eyes covered by dark goggles, and a few Etti.

His intestines twisted with guilt upon seeing a particular family of Meidels he'd run into while passing through a neighbouring area some six months ago. They'd already been suffering harassment from slavers at the time, and having noticed some of his fighting prowess, they had asked him for help. He'd refused, afraid that Yamato's trail would grow cold, and they hadn't even shown any resentment over his decision. Instead they had given him whatever supplies they could spare and wished him luck for his quest.

"Feeling guilty, are we?" Jelly quizzed him in a smug tone of thought.

Wolfe ignored the symbiont to the best of his ability. He'd set things right, after finding his son and killing Yamato. As guilty as it made him feel, he also felt that his decision had been the right one. He probably would have lost Yamato if he hadn't kept on tracking him.

"If you keep telling yourself that, you might start to believe it."

"Cut it out, Jiminy. I'm already a real boy." was Wolfe's terse mental reply. The nerve of that symbiont to act as his conscience..

"Halt!" a booming voice shouted, interrupting Wolfe's internal rant. Half a heartbeat later, an armoured gauntlet landed heavily on his shoulder, and Wolfe had to reign in his defensive instincts that made him want to grab the hand and twist it. He'd been afraid that something like this would happen, and his initial inclination had been to either transform himself into a small animal or shrink himself to get in unnoticed. But the vast number of predators in the region that preyed on fairy-sized beings had dissuaded him from that course of action.

Wolfe slowly turned around, coming face to face with an eight-foot-tall muscle-bound minotaur, the black orbs that were its eyes gleaming with savage fury.

"What is your business here?" the creature snarled, blowing vapour out of its nostrils as it exhaled powerfully. It was a gesture of intimidation, as was its gouging of the ground with its large hoof.

Giving the creature a once-over, Wolfe took stock of its attire. It wore armour plating on its chest and back, while a skirt made of tough, bronze-studded leather strips and metal wrist-guards offered its loins and forearms some protection. Then he stared the creature in the face once more. "There's a slave market, isn't there?"

The creature seemed unconvinced. Wolfe guessed that he didn't look like the average slaver coming through here. "You are here to buy slaves? Where are you from? You look strange, even for an Etti! Are you buying workers?"

Wolfe's first instincts were to dispatch the minotaur and go on his merry way, but he'd immediately discarded that option, realising that it would probably bring most of the soldiers in the city down on him. However, his eyes fell on a trio of Doalun women, also slaves, and he got an idea for a plausible cover story. Doalun were a half-breed race descended from an equal mix of human and Doppleganger shape-shifter blood. There were still some Doppelgangers in the Earth realm, and when sighted by Muggles they'd been mistaken for aliens. Unlike Doppelgangers, who were very slender and had disproportionately long limbs, large and bulging eyes, and a hard-to-discern mouth, nose and ears, Doalun were much more humanlike. They shared their Doppelganger ancestors' smooth, pale skin, but had inherited the hair on their heads from their human ancestors. They also had human-like facial features and a more human-like bodily proportions, and they could still alter their appearance fairly dramatically, though not as much as full Doppelgangers, who could increase and decrease their mass with as much as two-hundred percent of their normal mass. Doalun were limited to about half that.

"I'm from the realm that links to the gate of Shamballah. I am here to buy slaves. Not workers, but concubines. Specifically, Doalun concubines. Males in my realm would pay handsomely for a female who is able to adapt to his vision of the suitable female."

"I thought that new emperor was opposed to this business. And where are your bartering goods?" the minotaur asked, still unconvinced.

Wolfe rolled his eyes. Minotaurs were generally not very intelligent. Just his luck to encounter one that actually used its puny brain. "I'm on a mercantile expedition. I'm here to explore the possibility of purchasing these females and somehow slipping them past the emperor's watchmen. I won't actually buy anything … this time." He faked an impressed expression. "You know, you are a quite intelligent specimen of your kind. We could use talent of that calibre back in my realm. The business we intend to set up with the females could use a minotaur of your insight to keep the undesirables out. Your pay would be very handsome, of course. Much more than that of a gate guardsman, for we'd cater to only the most exclusive clientele."

The minotaur's expression told Wolfe that he'd scored a valuable point in appealing to its greed, and he suppressed a shudder as the creature's foul breath wafted into his face as a consequence of its delighted chuckling.

"My name is Gorback. I live in the barracks of the western quarter of the city. I can always be found around there when I am not on duty. Before you pass, tell me your name."

"Tetsuo Yamato."

"Good one," Jelly piped up from inside Wolfe's mind.

Wolfe smiled and proceeded, making the most of the Metamorphmagus abilities he'd refined over the past year as he changed his features, hair and eye-colour once again. It was a pity that he couldn't deviate from a standard human appearance to look more like an Etti, but at least he had the advantage that Yamato wouldn't recognise him on sight. He followed the throng of slaves and slavers deeper into the city, until he reached the market square. Pretty much everything was on sale there, including intelligent beings.

"Make way for the Duchess of Astirian," someone shouted behind Wolfe, and he copied the locals' behaviour hastily. He couldn't get a look at the ruler who condoned this slavery, since it seemed to be expected that everyone bow their head as the Duchess and her twelve-man guard passed. The reflection of a puddle in the road told him that he wouldn't have seen much anyway, since the mysterious Duchess was carried around in a completely covered sedan chair. It wasn't until the rear guard was over twenty yards away that the people started walking again. Wolfe saw the procession disappear into a wider road that connected to the square. It led up to a grand ivory castle with spires so tall that they cast shadows over the marketplace.

Putting his mind back to the task at hand, Wolfe started walking along the stalls, searching for any objects that Yamato might have bartered for supplies and scanning the surface thoughts of those whose faces betrayed recognition of his unusual appearance, hoping that it meant that they'd seen the only other full-blooded human in the area. But in every case, he saw genuine surprise and curiosity, and after two hours of prowling the stalls, during which he'd discouraged no less that nine hopeful pickpockets, despair and hopelessness began gnawing at the edges of his mind. It had never taken him that long to pick up Yamato's trail before.

An anguished wail emanating from a young throat dragged his attention to the waist-high platform where the slaves stood on display for the auction. A small Doalun girl no older than six was being dragged away from her family. The slavers concentrated their attention on a tall male who appeared to be the father, implying that he would be speared by their weapons if he even twitched. An older female Doalun, probably the grandmother, tried to restrain a hysterical younger one who was heavy with child. She failed, and seconds later the young mother was hurtling towards her child. One of the Worogh slavers saw her and reflexively lashed out with his halberd, burying the hooked part of the blade in her woman's upper back. It was so long that it went all the way though her body, its bloody tip emerging from her chest. The snarling Worogh pulled his weapon back and the Doalun woman stumbled forwards a few more steps before dropping to her knees and falling backwards onto the platform.

"Mammie," the little girl wept as she bent over her dying mother, who tried to talk to her daughter but ended up coughing droplets of blood into the little girl's face.

"Fool!" the Worogh who appeared to be in charge snarled at the one who had lashed out. "We could have sold her at a good price with another slave growing in her belly!"

"She is far enough along. If we cut it out before she dies it might survive," a third Worogh suggested.

The world around him faded out as Wolfe heard the slaver utter those words, and he saw red. He clenched his fists, no longer able to fight the urge to set things right and free the slaves, even though it meant he'd have to cut down every slaver and every soldier in the city, covering the pristine white walls in their blood!

"Don't do anything foolish. You know the city alone has a standing army of five thousand, many of them being expert archers. You're good, but not that good," Jelly warned him anxiously.

"Just this once, I'll have to be!" Wolfe growled out loud. The Phoenix Katana burned hotly in its scabbard, heartily agreeing with Wolfe, and as he grasped it to draw it from his scabbard, it joined its energy with his, increasing it exponentially. The ground trembled due to the sheer amount of energy coursing through him. Seconds later, large cracks appeared in the soil before large chunks ripped themselves free, levitated upwards and shattered into ever smaller pieces as he drew on and focussed more and more magical energy. He could feel that his altered appearance was blocking the optimal flow of power, so he reversed his Metamorphmagus transformation. That caused the power to really cut loose, and a roaring nimbus of translucent whitish flames erupted around him, at first dancing close to his frame, but expanding outwards four feet in every direction as his power grew.

The Phoenix Katana throbbed in his hand once more as he felt the sword taking their unity to the next level. The roaring aura around him changed its colour to a deep orange with golden sparks dancing around the edges, and the sword began to sing a phoenix's song that added to Wolfe's resolve to give him a type of divine determination. For selfish reasons, he'd been taking the easy way out for a long time. Now it was time to do the right thing.

The marketplace was now silent, save for the final echoes of his scream that he hadn't even been aware of, bouncing off the stone buildings, and the rumbling sound of the shaking and shattering chunks of rocky soil around him. Everyone gazed at him with a mixture of awe and fear. "The slavery ends today!" he roared, despite the rawness of his throat. "Unshackle your captives and leave!"

Of course, the slavers had no intention of doing so, despite being faced with someone shrouded in a nimbus of energy that caused the ground around him to break apart. Still, they didn't underestimate his power and immediately went for their crossbows. Wolfe knew he could dodge their arrows or even banish them in mid-air, but he didn't feel like wasting his time. He channelled his magic into a Speed Charm and whizzed towards his attackers who seemed to be bringing their weapons to bear in slow motion. Four slashes later, the Doalun family's captors were twitching on the platform, blood spurting from deep wounds in their chests.

Sensing they were next, all the slavers who had weapons that could attack from a distance drew them. Wolfe launched another hyper-accelerated charge, this one taking him all over the marketplace, cutting down slavers and slashing the chains that held the slaves. His frenzied assault was prolonged by the reinforcements pouring in from every street that led to the square, but everyone who tried to stop him fell to his blade, until, some fifteen minutes later, when the square was drenched in the blood of hundreds of dead and dying slavers and soldiers, an opponent bone-jarringly parried his slash with a huge steel mace and shoved him backwards with incredible strength.

It was a minotaur, looking very much like the one who had stopped him at the city's gates, but bigger and meaner. Wolfe recognised the markings on the beast's shaggy fur as well, leading him to guess that the two minotaurs were probably related. He knew that no minotaur could be strong enough to parry an attack backed by his own magic-enhanced strength, but he couldn't dwell on the source of the minotaur's awesome power, for from the corners of his eyes he saw two more foes taking position. On the left, there was a powerful, nasty-looking, Harpy wielding a ranseur. On the right, he saw a muscular Anthropophagus, a headless being whose eyes, nose and mouth were located in its chest. It carried a long chain with a spiked ball at one end, and it had customized body-armour with the appropriate gaps for the eyes and mouth.

With a flick of the wrist, Wolfe shook most of the blood off the Phoenix Katana and brought the blade up in a high guard, using it as a mirror to see the people he'd heard behind him. Among them he saw a seven foot tall lizard-man, something he'd expected to see since he heard the claws of its feet clicking in the ground. A predatory creature by the looks of its teeth, its upper body was very humanoid, save for the fact that it was covered in scales, and its legs had the toe-walker setup like that of the bipedal dinosaur predators of old, making it capable of very quick charges. It had a net in one hand and a trident in another.

Initially, Wolfe was almost relieved to see that the remaining two were sword-wielding, black-clad Etti warriors, their near-human bodies being more easy to predict in battle. But his relief was shattered when he sensed a strange mental vibe coming off the Etti. A quick probe revealed them to be twins who had a mental link, meaning he was fighting more of a meta-foe than two separate enemies.

Wolfe took a deep breath and exhaled, letting everything he'd learned from Master Lei rush back to the surface. Master Lei had described fighting multiple foes in a situation like this as "herding chaos." There were too many variables to give a definite answer on how to survive an attack like this. Multiple attackers meant that angles, weapons and levels of attack increased exponentially, not just by the sum of the attackers. Six attackers meant thirty-six times the trouble. But there were two constants. The first was to make them dance to your tune, by constantly and effectively moving, and moving in such a way that the attacker one was engaging would be in the way of at least one of the others. The second constant was to attack first, and normally the prime candidate would be the leader.

In this case it was probably the minotaur, since he had been the one to step forward and parry Wolfe's attack. But since he had a source of strength Wolfe didn't understand—yet—Wolfe thought a change of tactics was in order. The easy way out would have been to multiply himself, but that was an ability that he wanted to keep under wraps as long as possible. Instead, he quickly took his left hand off his sword hilt and withdrew the telescoping staff from his belt, extending about half of it and making it seem as if he'd be employing it an off-hand weapon role designed to bat away flanking attacks of opportunity. In reality it served as a distraction, and in the split second that his foes' attentions were focussed on the extending staff, he threw the Phoenix Katana towards the Anthropophagus almost like a throwing dagger, using minimal amounts of magic to keep it straight and level. Wolfe's aim was true, and since the move caught the Anthropophagus completely by surprise, he didn't dodge.

The Phoenix Katana soared though the armour's mouth-gap, spearing its wearer like a fish. The blade immediately used its powers, immolating the Anthropophagus with its magical fire and reducing him to ashes in the blink of an eye. The move had shocked the remaining five opponents into momentary hesitation, and Wolfe capitalised on that by drawing his Spinning Slayer and throwing it at the Pinaka lizard-man behind him.

Drawing the weapon had taken precious time, and the Pinaka proved his mastery of enhanced movement magic by quickly casting his net and tangling the spinner in it. However, the spinner's momentum carried the net away, and the Pinaka made the mistake of letting his gaze follow the objects as they hurtled away. Wolfe used the opening to charge towards him, extending the telescoping staff to its full length as he sprinted forwards. The twins were ready for his move and intercepted him before he reached the Pinaka, each holding their falchions in a middle guard since a common tactic was to swipe at them from the outside, building momentum for a devastating blow.

Wolfe had no intention of letting their dreams come true, and instead stuck the staff between them, slapping left and right as he ran closer. That wouldn't have done any damage had it been a normal man holding the staff, but Wolfe's superhuman strength made them feel it even through their armour, forcing them to interpose their swords to parry the blows. Then he was level with them, dropped the staff, grabbed them both under the jaw, snapped their necks with a sudden shake and caught their falchions as they slipped from their lifeless fingers, instantly rearming himself. He then crossed the swords just in time to parry the Pinaka's trident-stab he'd instinctively been expecting.

The sudden shadow and flapping of wings told him that the Harpy would shortly bury her ranseur in his back if he didn't do something quickly, so he jumped backwards, arching his back on transforming the move into a back flip. The ranseur plunged into the ground, and Wolfe knew that the Harpy would attempt to pull it out. Without looking, he threw both falchions into the air, making an educated guess from the sound of her wings flapping and the position of her shadow on the ground. Without even waiting for the result, he dived aside again, this time because he knew he was wide open for the minotaur to attack him. He'd done it just in time, because at the same time as he'd heard the Harpy's shriek of pain, air displaced by the minotaur's mace had caressed his cheek.

Wolfe landed next to the Phoenix Katana, which was lying in the pile of ashes that used to be an Anthropophagus. He quickly picked it up and turned to face his remaining two assailants. The blade throbbed in his hand reassuringly, and he smiled. Still, he knew he was in deep trouble with his two remaining foes, whom he suspected to be the most experienced fighters. They started to circle around him, lunging and feinting constantly and taking him of his rhythm, occasionally committing to an attack that forced him to dodge, and having the partner follow up with another one to prevent him from striking back. Dispatching the first four had been accomplished within ten seconds, but this stage of the fight stretched to ten minutes, and Wolfe felt the flow of power within him starting to become erratic. He knew he couldn't maintain his power increase much longer, and to make matters worse, he was too strained to produce any duplicates. Wolfe cursed his earlier overconfidence while he racked his brain for a solution to this dilemma and scanned the arena while looking for weapons of opportunity. The pile of ashes that used to be the Anthropophagus gave him an idea, and he slowly moved backwards towards that spot, making a show of breathing heavily and acting as if he were looking for a reprieve.

His foes seemed to believe it and moved with him, maintaining the distance between them. When they reached the pile of ashes, Wolfe lunged towards the lizard-man, drawing a reactionary attack from the minotaur. Wolfe evaded with another back flip, this time scooping the ashes up with his right foot and kicking it into the minotaur's eyes. The creature howled in anger and reflexively rubbed his eyes, and Wolfe, no longer in danger of a flanking attack, slashed at the lizard-man. The reptile proved his skill by actually blocking two of Wolfe's attacks, but the third one came too quickly with Wolfe ducking under his guard and twirling passed him, slashing open his opponent's abdomen as he passed. However, Wolfe didn't count on the long and thick tail barring his way, and sidestepping it disrupted the fluidity of his movement, taking away the precious time he needed to prepare for the Minotaur's imminent attack.

Indeed, the minotaur had recovered quickly, and enraged by the demise of its comrade, it charged him with an amazing burst of speed. Dodging was out of the question at that point, so Wolfe braced himself and drew on all his magic to fortify his strength. The impact again rattled his frame, but this time he held his ground. As soon the minotaur started to disengage, Wolfe dropped his sword, reached up to grab the bull by the horns and twisted with the last of his waning strength. Fortunately it was enough, and the minotaur's neck emitted a sickening crunch as it broke.

Wolfe was exhausted. His limbs felt like lead, and the nimbus of energy around him slowly faded away, yet it seemed like the battle had yet to begin, because looking up to the rooftops of the buildings surrounding the square, he saw hundreds of soldiers loading their crossbows and aiming at him. He still had a little energy left, maybe enough to project a banishing field that would repel the arrows for a while. He sheathed his sword and prepared to make a gesture of surrender.

Then, suddenly, something slammed into his back, and half a heartbeat later he was in the air, already outside the city walls. He only knew two beings who were able to move that quickly, and only one who was prone to rescuing people in this manner. Less than a minute later they were soaring over the impenetrable marshlands that began twenty miles to the south of Astirian. Another minute or so after that, his bearer began the descent, manoeuvring to avoid the branches of giant mangroves as they flew lower and lower. Finally they touched down in what seemed like a hidden encampment, and the strong arm that had been wrapped around his chest released him.

"Thanks for the save, Holly," Wolfe said, as he turned around and looked into a seventeen-year-old Holly's surprised face. Then his legs refused to carry him any longer, and a wave of exhaustion swept over him as he felt himself falling to the ground.

X

REALLY IMPORTANT PLEASE READ

Author's Note: This question isn't directed towards the people who review every chapter or every few chapters. I realise that the last few chapters have been so called 'slow chapters', and that this might contribute to the increasing lack of feedback after Chapters 9 and 10. Is that the cause?

The reason I am asking is because (when I'll hopefully have written and published an original novel) I don't want people skimming past any slow chapters. I'm developing a style in which I place some tiny hints about things to come later on in the book or even in the story arc in these slow chapters, and I'd like to use it in my potential original novel. So I ask the infrequent reviewers: Are the slowness of the chapters an issue, or is it merely that you don't feel like reviewing? If so, that's cool, but please tell me this once either via e-mail or by reviewing (some people already have) that you don't feel like reviewing frequently. If you do think that the slowness of the chapters are an issue, please tell me too, so I can work on it. I can't have future readers of my potential novels losing interest halfway or skimming over parts that could be important.

I'm sorry if I seem to be complaining again, but reviews are very important to me. For example, bane pointed out that Wolfe's behaviour in Chapter 6 was, in his opinion, out of character. While I myself, and some others among you, may disagree with this, there mere fact that bane thinks Wolfe was OOC tells me that I should have made more of an effort depicting why Wolfe had mellowed down somewhat. When you're writing a real original novel, you can't have anyone doubting the characterisations. Oh, and bane, the reason Wolfe wasn't so hateful anymore was because he thought that he was about to finish Yamato off and that the nightmare would be over. A sort of elation that his trials were almost over, if you will.

Thank you for reading, and now on to the reviews answers.

lluvatar: You were the first to reviews for this chapter. Congratulations. Even though you are exempt from answering the question above, (you review with one-worders, but you always review) I don't suppose I could entice you into giving an opinion on the matter? ;-)

Gogirl: As time passes and Wolfe seeks the services of Rosy Palm and her five daughters more and more often, the temptation to stray will strike hard. The tactful amount of time after Galatea's death was purely circumstantial. Had Wolfe not left to hunt down her killers, he'd have jumped into bed with Heidi much sooner. He's not a saint, you know!

StarWest45: I used Chapter 13 to practice location-description. Sorry if it was a bit of a drag.

Lady of Masbolle: If you say so.

Numba1: I assume you loved this chapter.

justn: LOL, I'm afraid I haven't written his book.

blah29: Not useless at all, my friend.

gallandro-83: Carey is mortal now because she procreated. And is your pen-name a reference to a Star Wars character?

Fragarach: Keen observation.

Styles: The begging in the last chapter was actually a joke. The author's note in this one is to be taken seriously, though.

Foxfur: They had to make a third movie with a geriatric Arnold to set that titbit straight, eh?

Saint Mike: I think this chapter answered your question. A very annoying cure! LOL

Chloe Black: I reckon Carey told Crystal at some point, yes.