Zharr-Naggrund, same time

The human slave in front of Jasla was bound well. Decent human slaves were hard to come by in Zharr-Naggrund as they tended to die pretty soon unless they were fed from the greenhouses set up by her Germans. And even while Mashka had made a truly stupid mistake Jasla could not readily afford to kill her as her replacement might easily make the same or even worse errors. So she had made sure that she could inflict just the right amount of pain and not have the stupid cow fidget about to the point where she was really injured.
Jasla removed the gag from the mouth after another session of "education" and hoped that the required level of pleading and desperation was now reached.

When the mindless sobbing was finally over the voice seemed to indicate that this was indeed the case.
"I will never do this again mistress, I swear, I really do."
"So do you finally understand what you did wrong stupid?"
"Yes, I have hugged your son despite your rules. It was just a spur of the moment thing, I did not think."
"You did not think my rules were important?"
"They are all-important mistress, I know that. I just forgot them for a moment when he had made up his room so well and looked so lonely. I swear it will never happen again, mistress please."
"Well you should think and not feel stupid. And so that you have added incentive to do so we have another round of motivation before you can go back to your duties."

The screaming and pleading that followed were swiftly silenced by the gag and Jasla went to work. This was really taking too much time, she had other things to do. The railroad test track had finally proven that the Germans knew how to construct a proper steam train and now the first lines had to be planned. And she had to search again, her son had probably hidden another rat from her she would have to poison unobtrusively.
The only love and validation for Mordred could come from her, nobody else was allowed to show any affection or praise him. And if that meant spending an hour or so with stupid slaves then so be it, the price for failure was far too high. Well, another few strokes with the branding iron and she should be finished here.

Glade close to Tyr Vanna, Athel Loren, Königstag 8. Vorgeheim

The glade was as beautiful as only a magical forest or a well-tended "natural" park could be. There were no rotting plants, no thorny bits to grips and no piles of manure to step in. Instead there were straight trees bearing leaves of just the right green, a meadow of grass so pure and close-cropped to make an English gardener cry and enough flowers to lend some colour to things.

There should have been birds to sing and cute animals beings chased by sleek predators while crying in panic and victory, yet none were to be heard. They were indeed there, but tried not to be seen and certainly avoided being heard. The glade was host to a being of great power that was currently matched by an equal grief and fury. It was kept in check only by iron willpower, yet even her retinue feared that her resolve might break at any moment.
Nearly three meters tall, of terrible beauty and threatening grace Ariel, avatar of Isha and wife of Orion floated above the ground. She had the wings of a giant butterfly, but aerodynamics had no role in her flight. The uncomfortable silence was broken by a sound never heard in these parts before, a deep thrumming that quickly rose in volume. It came from an ugly machine that looked a bit like a squashed frog with a windmill on top that stopped its flight on the far end of the glade to release some humans and an Asur from its back end.

Six of them were clad in black armor, carried weapons of a strange design and fanned out to both flanks of the last one. The Asur was slender, young and wore the casual-seeming white and grey robes of his kind. There was nothing remarkable about the khaki-clad man that approached Ariel. He was middle-sized, middle aged for a human, neither overly muscular nor fat, had thinning brown hair and nondescript features. Nothing was exceptional about him but for the fact that he approached the angry avatar of a god like walking to work.
He, the elf and his guards stopped a few meter in front of Ariel and looked up to her.

The voice that broke the silence was as much received by the minds of the listeners as by the ears and the meaning projected itself into brains circumventing such crutches as language. It was overwhelming for most of those present.
"Who are you to demand entrance into the sacred Athel Loren and an audience with me?"
"Good morning Ariel. I am Ottokar Proktor and I am authorized to speak for the German government, this is Aeolus of the House of Ethelorne, Assistant to the Asurian Ambassador and these are my guards."
"So you think that your guards can protect you or the presence of one of the traitor's race can excuse the heinous crimes committed by your despicable people?"
"If the crime you refer to is our fight against Orion and the Wild Hunt then you should know that he killed more than..."
Both the mental voice and the physical one rose to a pitch that drowned out any independent thought in all but two of the listeners.
"My husband is the Avatar of a God. He has the right to hunt those in his way. He is the right you little …human. You should cower in fear of his passing, not harm your betters. You do not even know what you did and you and your people will pay for it in ways you cannot even remember."
Ottokar Proktor was able to answer, something that Ariel would have noticed but for her rage. The other power that listened in was more impressed.
The voice that answered was not loud, not even angry or anxious.
"Your husband came to Germany to murder many innocents. He burned for that and any of you who try to emulate his feats will get the same. And they will not be the only things which burn."
Ariel`s voice rose to a shriek that rivalled any gale.
"Who do you think you are and what do you think you can do to the sacred Forest?"
"Burn it."

Ariel was silent for a second and her mind moved the powers of the empyrean to convert the annoying human in front of her to a small pile of ashes when the real power present intervened. The forest of Athel Loren had become self-aware when the Chaos Gates opened. It had been an unformed intelligence that had gained structure and organization to its thoughts in its symbioses with the Asrai who chose to make the forest their domain.
Usually it kept to itself, satisfied to keep its influence low-key and unobtrusive, yet now it saw the need to get involved to preserve itself. The icy calm projected by the human in front of the demigod`s rage had hinted at either madness, purpose or both. The forest was pretty sure that this "Ottokar" would be regarded with suspicion by his peers would they know him better, yet if there was a madness in him so was a method.
The forest pushed against a mind it had influenced for many millennia and redirected the energies formed into other channels. Instead of destruction the powers were used for inspection. The mind of the German was clear in interesting ways and obscure in others. Much of the information in there was unusable because it was in shapes and forms unknown to Avatar and Gestalt both, yet once sequence was clear as crystal and frightening enough to stop a demigod in its tracks.

The vision showed a vast army, arrayed before a strong fortress. An army of Chaos, that was clear, but one never seen neither by Athel Loren nor the Asrai. There were warriors, war machines and beasts galore as was to be expected, but also a host of Blood thirsters and other creatures of Khorne like this world had rarely seen if ever. Both Ariel and the forest knew that this army would have been more than a match for their forces-and then the Angel of Death appeared, a strange Angel, with unmoving wings of bright metal and an unending scream that dropped fire on the army. And then the army was gone. The warriors no longer to be seen, the mighty war machines piles of melted metal and fused flesh and the great Blood thirsters mostly gone.
The vision stirred a feeling that was nearly forgotten by both and not welcome in its reminder-fear.

The voice that assaulted the small delegation was not much quieter now, but it had changed. It had lost some of its fury and gained an echo, an echo that had little creaks, groans and rustling in it.
"So what do you want burner of trees?"
"We need to know why the Wild Hunt went to Germany and we need to know how we can prevent it from happening again. We will need some sign of restitution as well, but the first two are the most important for now."
The silence was as deafening as the assault that went before it and probably more frightening. Two minds battled in the silence, one that wanted to smash the insignificant human that dared to insult and the forest that was afraid-and intrigued. The battle raged for seconds despite its intensity and the forest has won, for now.
"Orion, my husband, is at his most powerful during the solstice, in body as well as in his passions. His passion to protect the forest is so great that it has to be guided into the Hunt, lest he is overwhelmed by them. Athel Loren itself provides a beacon so he is guided to the biggest threat to the forest at that time. This time the beacon was inside your Germany and we do not know why."
"If this beacon is to show the enemy why does it point at the Bretonians at times?"
"As there had to be a hunt and as the peasants have to learn to fear and respect us and the forest's borders."
"So why us, we have no common borders and until solstice we never planned anything against you?"
"We do not know. The beacon is normally placed at the highest threat, yet this time it appeared at a point which we do not know."
"Where was it placed and by whom if you do not know?"
"We cannot say if somebody placed the beacon for us, we did not know such a thing is possible, but until now we did not care. The beacon must have been placed somewhere in a straight line between the World Oak and the place where Orion emerged, but farther along that line. There is a residue of the beacon we can still feel."

"So if we find where the beacon was placed and who did it we could make him cease doing so. Would the Hunt still go to Germany?"
"Not if you do not threaten us."
"Normally we have no reason to do so."
"What happened to Orion`s remains?"
"We have some ashes that were magically quite active, we have put them into a safe storage."
The voice went up in volume and anger again.
"You must return these ashes to us human."
"Only if we can be sure that he is no longer a threat."
"You have no right…."
"We have every right, more than 500 rights in fact. If we find that beacon and who placed it we might agree."
"Orion must be returned to us before the end of autumn, he must. It does not matter what you threaten to burn, we will have our revenge if you do not. Do not think your forests are beyond the call of Athel Loren."
"If we find that beacon in time. Help us and it might be easier."
The silence again.
"You will take Silva with you, she is a Spell weaver and speaks your language. She will help you to find the beacon and report if you are honest in your quest. Bring Orion before Winter Solstice and we will stay our revenge."
"Do not threaten us, this is unwise no matter what you are. But we will search and we will take your spell weaver."
"Then be gone."

200 meters AGL, 50 kilometers from Monschau, Festtag 10. Vorgeheim

Silva ad` Garrolin was inhell, a lifeless, loud hell of human devising. Where she was used to being surrounded by living trees, being protected by friendly hedges and treading on carpets of moss and grass;she was now in a box of metal, glass and something called plastic. Where she used to hear the musical voices of her brethren and the sounds of nature,a mechanical cacophony assaulted her ears when she did not have to listen to the guttural voices of the arrogant Germans. Silva loathed her current company with a vengeance. This Ottokar Proktor had threatened Ariel and the sacred Athel Loren itself to the point where even the avatar of Isha had to come to an agreement and dared to live. The Germans had the temerity to complain about the Wild Hunt and had even killed Orion while he led the sacred crusade.

Yet if what Ariel had said when they parted was true than she would have to help find the beacon. It seemed there was a possibility that the beacon had been abused by somebody not of Athel Loren. The thought that Orion himself and the Wild Hunt had been used like common mercenaries was so disgusting that even working together with these Germans seemed acceptable in comparison, even if barely so.
The Germans had taken her to their cold, lifeless country where "forests" were just as natural as their gardens and fields and the food contained things that was more useful in poisoning pests. They had given her a choice of German clothing or that of the traitorous Asur as they stated that Asrai were not popular in Germany right now. She would walk naked before she would carry the clothing of those who had abandoned and attacked her people so long ago, so now she was clothed in German garb which was as dead as the grave. None of this mattered now as she tried her best to sense the remains of the beacon that was getting weaker with every hour. The Germans had put her into a flying machine again they called "Hind" and had asked her to provide the direction in which the beacon lay.

Yet instead of following that bearing they had flown perpendicular to it and had asked her for direction a couple of more times.
Now she saw this "Ottokar" and one of his guides pen another line on a map. The face of Ottokar did not change, that of the guard saw Ottokar talk to the box that connected him to the pilots and the helicopter changed speed and course. Before the craft had settled on it the German had started to speak into one of the boxes that seemed to connect the Germans with one another wherever they went. He spoke quietly at first, then more animatedly and by the end in a tone that did not seem to be him. There were two more calls and then his face minutely changed into one of satisfaction for a second before he closed the distance to her seat.
"We will now fly to the place you indicated. I requested and received permission to enter there as it is magically active and usually off limits. We have wards to keep ourselves safe, can you handle a bit of unregulated magic?"
"If he can." Her chin moved in the direction of Aeolus "then I can for sure.""If you say so. You picked an interesting place."

The landscape below her changed quickly. Where before the huge fields and the countless towns of villages had held sway now a forest slid below her window. Not such a sacred wood as Athel Loren or a primeval forest as the Great Forest in the Empire she had once seen, but unbroken as far as she could see. She could sense the forest, it was strange and wrong to her. Lots of prey, but nearly no predators. Trees of only one kind for long stretches and paths that crossed it here and there. This forest was not a power of its own, it existed to serve the Germans, one more reason to hate then things changed. Not the forest below her but the magic. The beacon had become stronger all the while even when it should no longer be there at all. Yet the beacon shone out of a place of power, of untamed magic that had not been harnessed into a wind. It made her uneasy and she started looking for the source of it. This Germany was as dead to magic as any place on this world she had ever seen, yet here seemed to be a point that radiated it. What could be the cause of that?
The dying light of the day illuminated a lake and five sandstone pillars that rose from the surroundings like giant menhirs hewn by Mother Nature herself. There was a fence around the site, adorned with wards and symbols. When the craft crossed that fence the impact of the wild magic increased tenfold."Sorry, should have warned you. We put a Ward around this area, it is closed to the public for the last two years.""And probably will be closed for about forever if you know what is good and proper. What is this?""This place is known as the Externsteine, the Extern Stones. We know that it was used as a place to stay and worship for a very long time and they had a reputation for "being magic" in the old world, even when nobody could prove anything. Well, a couple of months after the Weltensprung this place lit up like a Christmas tree and we had to close it off. So you say the beacon is somewhere here?""Yes, it is easy to see now,itmust be inside this pillar""Inside the caves then. Well, let us see if we find anything."

Silva watched two of the guards take the point. Both handled weapons which looked a bit like rifles and sprinted from one cover to the next one while the next covered him. Behind them the small party made their way upwards a set of stairs before finding themselves in front of an entrance that led into darkness. One of the guards pointed its gun at the opening and switched on a powerful light that reflected off the roughly chiseled surface. He was about to step forward when the scream stopped him in his track. The scream that could be heard both by ears and minds. It was so loud, so dissonant and carried such a hate that nobody was able to act for long seconds.
The shape that emerged from the cave`s entrance was translucent, like the picture of an old woman done just in greys and lit from within. The shape's mouth was stretched to impossible proportions and emitted an unending scream while the sword in her hand pierced the shoulder of the guard that was closest to the entrance. Fire went from the weapon of the man and the shots went right through her without doing any appreciable harm. The mouth of the attacking Banshee opened even wider and engulfed the man`s head, silencing the scream. Silva was about to ready her staff when the scream renewed itself and increased in fury. More Banshees emerged from the cave and floated right through the guard that was now bathed in his own blood. The Asrai Spellweaver unleashed a spell that she had mastered when she started her training in the ways of magic hundreds of years ago. Wooden splinters and tendrils appeared from the empyrean and sped towards her attacker. The missiles went through the Banshee just like the German bullets had done, but they did damage. Mist dropped from the shape like blood and the scream changed from one of rage to one of pain before the winding thorny tendrils chocked the unlife out of her.

Turning from her victim she saw Aeolus fend off another Banshee with the long dagger of his while another guard had changed something on his rifle and aimed at another attacker. She could see that he would be too late and probably die when two "bangs" could be heard and the ethereal shape dissolved itself. The source of the shots was a surprise as she had not seen Ottokar Proktor carry any weapon. His pistol did not seem like much, but the shot had taken care of the Banshee when more impressive weapon would was about to mouth something when the next scream was far too close to her. Turning aside she faced the onrushing attacker with her staff when a dagger went through the misty flank. The dissolving Banshee revealed Aeolus who just nodded into her direction before placing himself before the two Germans. There was only one more attacker who seemed unable to decide whom to kill. Silva went through the mental contortions necessary to release another spell when two streams of bullets hit the magical creature, tearing her apart.
She looked towards Ottokar Proktor who shrugged "Should have loaded Magebuster right away, but nobody wants to have this stuff next to their face for any length of time. Better keep it in its sheath until needed."

That did not tell her very much except for the fact that the Germans had even more destructive secrets and should not be trusted with any kind of magic. They checked on the guard that had been attacked first just to find he was beyond any help. They pushed into the cave beyond the entrance and were greeted by the stink of decay. The daylight that shone through the door and the lamps of the guard shone on the circle and the body.
The body that rested in the elaborate ritual circle had been lifeless for at least a couple of days, maybe even a week. Her mundane senses told her about formerly white skin and jet-black hair. The senses more turned to the Empyrean had different messages, messages about magic she knew very well, but twisted in perverse ways to achieve ends anathema to anything Athel Loren for. She identified the dead mage as a Druchii easily enough.

Karlsruhe,Sigmarstag 11. Vorgeheim

Aeolus had been inside enough German meeting rooms not to be taken aback by this one. Ottokar had commandeered it together with some other local facilities from the local Criminal Investigation branch somehow. He was in here together with the strange German, Silva and somebody he did not know who took notes.
It was equipped with slightly rundown furniture, lit by the cold light of the glow tubes the Germans liked so much and had no windows. It should have freaked the stuck-up Asrai witch to no end but she was so far gone in her rage that she barely noticed it.
She had barely spoken during the flight and used some bastardized form of Asurian meditation to calm down. She had tried three times after her arrival to recount what she had seen and felt inside the cave and had been unable to give a concise report, but this time she seemed to have reined in her emotions to the point where she was able to function.

"This place, these Externsteine, are a very ..powerful place. I cannot prove this, but I believe they were a place of great power a long time ago; even by the way we Asrai count such things. Then it waned but ever since you appeared here it regained its former strength in new ways. This is a place of great potential and you should guard it well, if you can. It will attract all manner of unnatural beasts like the Banshees we encountered and it will mold any mortal in its image who stays there for too long.
What I have been able to make out was that somebody has used a piece of Athel Loren in a wretched ritual that used the power of this place to its fullest. It is possible that this ritual moved the beacon that guides Orion in the Wild Hunt to Germany. If this map here is correct than the World Oak, the place you call Monschau and the Extern Stones are in a line."

"So you think somebody goaded Orion to the Extern Stones and Monschau was simply in the path from the last terminal of the World Root to the place of the ritual?"
"Yes Ottokar Proktor, that is entirely possible."
"So why would somebody do that?"
"Isn`t this obvious, even to you? This was to provoke you Germans into attacking the Asrai and damage both you people and mine. And from whom we found there it is equally obvious who was behind the plot, is it not?"
"Oh, I thought the same thing, it is not that. So you do believe the Druchii were behind this ritual?"

"Oh yes, they were. The magic they used is theirs and they would abandon any of their number who cannot fulfill his role. This is just them and their scheming ways, but they have messed with the wrong power. The paths of the Worldroot still run to Nagaroth and the Druchii will find our revenge terrible to behold. Their own forests will turn against them and the Asrai will band together with the Treekin to cut a swath right through their midst. We will kill anybody who had something to do with this outrage and…"

"Sorry to interrupt you Silva, yet a question-do you think this ritual could be performed by just one mage?"
"No Aeolus, of course not. Even you should be able to see that but…"
"If our misguided cousins were behind this, wouldn`t they try to hide their involvement better? This would point to them far too well. And we both agree that they whoever placed the beacon wanted to stir trouble between Germany and the Asrai-this would not help their cause."
"So, they might have been surprised by the Banshees and fled like the cowards they are."
"They are all manner of things, but cowards they are not, unfortunately."
"Do you defend them traitor?"
"I just speak the truth, no more"
"You.."
"Cut it you two or get a room. The caves are being combed for evidence anyway, let`s see what this will turn up."
"Search for what, the cave was empty but for the body."
"Not if you search well enough. Everybody loses things all the time and we know how to find them."

"Polarstern" Orbit around Warhammer World, Brunntag 12. Vorgeheim

The screens and instruments in front of Nathan Alpers had not changed from his first flight in a "Merkur" spaceship, yet the info they displayed was drastically different. This was hardly surprising as he was no longer atop the fragile cylinder full of volatile fuels known as "Greif" but the command module of Germany`s newest spaceship.

Currently he tried splitting his attention between the info on the screens which included two cameras and the gantry that moved by his window. The "Polarstern" was pushed out of "Kopernikus" hangar at the grand speed of one meter every three seconds. The clamps that held the spaceship released in time and even when the two pushers that had moved them stopped inertia made sure the ship cleared the hangar.
The moment when the white walls were replaced with the infinite blackness of space and the unblinking light of a million stars took the breath of the whole crew away for a second. The had cleared the space station by 20 meters when four reaction engines fired for a few seconds which increased the rate of separation markedly.

The next two hours were spent checking out all spaceship systems again, yet no new problems cropped up, which was a good thing as they were on a schedule. Half an hour after the last checklist had been closed the computer decreed that it was time and more engines fired bursts and counterbursts to change the spaceship'sorientation.

"Polarstern, this is Control. Mission is a go."
"Control, This is Polarstern, confirm mission is a go"
Nathan Alpers finger touched one of the few physical buttons below the screens, and powerful pumps in Polarstern's back pushed water into the eight stainless steel cores that terminated in bell-shaped nozzles.

The vapor that emerged from them at great speed dissipated quickly and not much seemed to happen. Nathan Alpers had spent some summers with his aunt who had picked him up in her elderly "Beetle" which had accelerated rather deliberately if at all. Polarstern took even longer to gather speed, yet where the old car had stopped getting faster after a minute or two the spacecraft accelerated for hours and did not stop before it had added nearly 4 Kilometers per second to the Polarstern`s delta V. When the engines finally stopped spewing steam the spacecraft was on its way to Mannslieb, one of the Warhammer World`s two moons.

During the next two days the astronauts kept watch on their spacecraft, ate, slept and sentreports to Control. They even had time for two short interviews and marveled at the space the hab module provided them for the trip. They certainly did not envy the old "Apollo" astronauts who had to make the trip in their seats without the chance to stretch or sleep in a decent sleeping sack.

The Warhammer World itself slowed them down from a speed nearly enough to escape it to the speed needed to orbit Mannslieb. When even more checks confirmed that everything was working as it should a small burst from the main engines slowed them down and eased them into the desired path around the moon.

Cameras were pointed down, radar bounced waves off the moon`s surface and spectral sensors tried to get an idea about its composition. One of the pallets that were open to space released a satellite that would remain in the moons orbit. Another pallet held a lander that was supposed to be released 24 hours after making orbit, but that was not to be.

It was not delayed by technical difficulties, but by the need for reprogramming and retargeting. While the data on the "Sigmar`s Crater" would have been interesting enough the Old One`s factory on the back side of Mannslieb was deemed more important. The lander managed to make a safe landing which was impressive enough.
Nathan - Nathan the AI that was - identified the storage tanks that barely emerged from the ground as a type that usually held He3 - and that made the find really important.

Karlsruhe, Bezahltag 15. Vorgeheim

Silva looked at a great lot of dust, accumulated dirt and a few hairs that had been neatly assembled in bags and clear cases, all of which labeled with the simple German script.
"So this is how you Germans do your divinations, from dirt and dead remains-how very fitting."
"It has a lot more to do with finding the tracks left by those who performed the ritual, something which you should be intimately familiar with."
Damn this arrogant Aeolus who seemed to gain pride from his knowledge about the Germans and their ways. How low the Asur had sunken.
"How do you find tracks on hard stone traitor?"
"These samples contain all the hairs and bits of skin lost by those who performed the ritual. To those with the right lore they can say who was there."
"How do they do that-law of contagion?"
"No, not at all. I think Ottokar is going to explain."

"We are looking at a couple of different samples here. The first batch is hairs, the second dead skin cells and the third is clothing fibers. The hairs can tell us which race the samples below to, the cells will allow us to say if an individual was in the cave if we can get access to him and the fibers will tell us what they wore when they were here."
"How do you do that?"
"Well hairs first. Look at this screen please, these are the magnifications of several hairs we found in the cave. This one is human, this one is Asur, this one is Asrai and that one is Druchii."
Silva had great problems associating the strange translucent things in the screen with hairs but could hear the statement of simple truth from the German. And indeed the "things" were quite distinctive. They had very different profiles, diameters and structures.
"How do you know which hairs are Druchii Asur and Asrai?"
"We have lots of samples from the Asur and Druchii as a baseline and you were so nice to leave yours in the washroom basin yesterday morning."
"What…"
"If you do not like it clean up behind you. Don`t worry, we do not do magic with them."
"You Germans are so..so.."
"Arrogant, base, dastardly, efficient or all of the above?"
"Hrmp"

"Apart from the hairs we can attribute to our team we have hairs of one Druchii and far more hairs that are Asurian. The Druchii hairs belong to the dead mage in the cave. We cannot say for sure from the hairs, but there were at least three different High Elves in the cave, probably more.
We also found lots of DNA in the dust on the floor and.."
"What is DNA?"
"Your body-any living thing we found so far-is composed of cells. The part of the cells which contains the genetic information is called DNA. We can match any cell we find to a person or animal if we can compare with a very high degree of certainty.
And we found five different kinds of DNA for Asur in the cave, which leads us to believe there were at least five Asur mages in there."
"How do you know they were mages?"
"The cells gave off a very slight reading on a magical indicator. Non-mages would do that only when heavily dosed with Warpstone and that would have shown up."
"Uh, whatever."

"We also have fibers of the clothing worn in the cave. We have a lot of black wool from the Dark Elven garb, we have fibers from what we wore when we wore in and we have these."
The next picture displayed white and light grey fibers, of a color known to all in the room. They just needed to look at Aeolus who wore the traditional robes of am Asur. Aeolus needed to clear his throat before he could ask.
"Uh, might the Druchii have used the Asur as sacrifices?"
"Possibly, but unlikely. Why should the mages have left one of their own behind and remove the sacrifices if they were surprised by the Banshees? Also see there is this:"
Another picture was divided into four parts. Each part had a pic of the wrists or feet, and even in their decayed state the hematomas around them were visible.
"We are pretty sure that the Druchii was tied down for some time before his restraints were removed. And from the way the hematomas stay we suspect the restraints were removed only after death."

Nobody said anything for what seemed like a long time. The first to move was Silva who assaulted Aeolus before the young Asur could react. She pummeled his arms and face while screeching something that only those who spoke Sperenthiel would have recognized. It was a torrent of accusations about traitorous Asur who abandoned and attacked the Asrai from behind and now tried to instigate a war between the Germans and Athel Loren.
It took Ottokar Proktor and two other Germans to pull her off the Aeolus and she did not calm down until Ottokar hammered an elbow into her Solar Plexus analog. She spent the next minutes grasping for air and trying not to regurgitate while she was berated by the German in tones that would do a drill sergeant proud.
"We neither know for sure if the Asur were really trying to run a false flag operation, we do not know if their government was involved in it and we do know pretty well that Aeolus was not involved in any. Can you stupid tree hugger restrain yourself until we find out what really happened or do you indulge in further self-satisfying rages that help nobody? Do I have to waste my time and the time allotted to Athel Loren to ask for a new observer?"
"You are a wheeze scoundrel Ottokar Proktor and wheeze arrogant to boot. You are also right, wheeze, and apologize for my outburst wheeze. But I will need very good reason not believe the Asur tried to betray us again."
The voice behind the blue cool pack was a bit mushy from a thick lip. "You stupid strivari call me a traitor? You decided that you wanted to stay in the Old World when it was clear we could no longer afford to. And it was not us who attacked you, it was the bleeding Druchii. If you cannot differentiate between us you are more…"

"Cut it Aeolus, this is not helping any. I will give Silva what we know of the retreat of the Asur from the Old World, it is up to the Asrai what they make of it. This will not being mentioned during this investigation again or I cut you from the team, understand?"
"Crystal Herr Proktor."
"Very well. Now the next step will be to see if we have anything on the Druchii and Asur. If they moved through Germany by normal means they will have left a trail and we will find that."
"How can you follow any trails in this paved hell of yours Herr Proktor?"
"The trails I follow are made of paper or are digital Silva."
"What is digital?"
"I`ll leave it to Aeolus to explain that. Either you can restrain yourself or you will not learn."
There were simultaneous groans from both Elves.