Havoc clashed with Gaunt's sword and sparks flashed into the air, highlighting both combatants as they fought down the stairs. Ewoden was gaining ground, forcing Gaunt back down the stairs until the two of them emerged out into a long hallways with a high ceiling and torch-lit walls.

The floor was carpeted and torch chandeliers hung from the ceiling on ropes.

Through the stained glass windows on the former knight's left hand side the chaos in the streets could easily be seen. Fire was spreading through the buildings as the Sarafan sorcerers, warned in advance of the rebellion made their well planned counter attack. The screams of dying men and woman were echoing even this far to the fortress.

Swinging Malice around in a wide arch Ewoden tried to catch Gaunt on his left. The Sarafan blocked the attack with the black bracer on his left arm before shoving Ewoden back with a solid kick.

Drawing arcane roots in the air, Ewoden fired a spark of elemental lightning at his opponent. Gaunt was struck full on and sent rolling backwards across the floor a short distance before he righted himself.

"Magic won't spare you god's justice, vile mutation!" He stated, before charging again with a thrust from his large sword.

Ewoden dodged the parry, before bringing both of his axes down hard on Gaunt's exposed flank. With a cloud scrapping and tearing the metal armour down the knight's left hand side tore open, leaving a large gash. But weapons did not penetrate the chain mail underneath and Gaunt was free to swipe his sword sharply to his right.

Unable to dodge in time Ewoden was struck across his chest. The plate armour and animal skins managed to absorb most of the blow's ferocity but the blade still bit into him, the silver the sword was made from bushing his flesh and the blood boiled on construct.

Ewoden gagged, spitting out red but still managed to push himself away.

Gaunt drew back, taking the opponent to catch his breath and to admire his opponent's wound.

"Above average melee skills, competent magical abilities and surprisingly the endurance to take quite a bit of pain…" He commented as the former knight refused to fall to his knees despite the nasty looking gash in his side. "If I were to hazard a guess, I would dare to say you've had some Order issue training."

Ewoden turned his head and spat, leaving a red stain on the carpet before staring his opponent directly in the eye.

"Not my finest moment." Before Gaunt could react, Ewoden reached down and grabbed the carpet in front of him. With a sharp tug he tore it out from under the knight's feet. Loosing his footing Gaunt toppled backwards, the weight of his armour causing him to fall onto his back.

Ewoden drove in close, swinging both axes over his head and bringing them down in an attempt to slam them into Gaunt's face. The Sarafan rolled to the side narrowly missing the strike, before back flipping to his feet and landing a kick into the former knight's chin.

Staggering back Ewoden tried to recover himself as Gaunt charge at him. Ewoden was tackled and drive to the edge and almost out a window.

Pressed against the glass, the former knight could see the battlements below. Sarafan soldiers started running out of the towers like screaming madmen before a moment later, the tower roof broke open and two wolf like beasts burst into the light of the full moon, shining out through the strange green clouds in the sky.

One chestnut brown, one oily black; they slashed and snapped at each other sending blood trailing along after claws and teeth.

Obelisk and Kal were fighting a duel to the death. The blood frenzy Ewoden had also experienced in wolf state.

Kicking Gaunt off him, Ewoden swung Havoc down sharply despite the pain the wound in his side. The axe struck the shoulder armour and sank deep, the tip breaking through the chain mail. Blood burst out through the armour and Gaunt cried out, staggering back to the centre of the hall.

Taking the opportunity, Ewoden tackled him and the two of them slammed into a wooden door on the far side. It broke open and they stumbled down along down another flight of stairs, falling down together amassing into the wall several times before crashing with a loud clatter of armour into an unforgiving stone surface.

"What in the name of?" A voice demanded. Ewoden managed to look up despite the pain in his body and the blurred vision. Standing by another open door was a small man with thinning ginger hair and a shallow face. Ewoden recognised him instant. It was the doll maker, the magician whom Sabre had had bring Malek back from the dead.

Seeing them both, he yelped before darting back in through the door slamming it after him. There was a loud clunking sound as it was bolted from the far side.

Ewoden tried to pick himself back up, be was forced back to the floor when Gaunt's boot slammed down on his back. Feeling two of his ribs crack Ewoden cried out in pain.

Scowling, Gaunt lifted Ewoden up by his hair and tossed him hard against the wall. The Sarafan was stunned as well and so the clumsily lunge he made at Ewoden missed and his sword sank into the stone sending dust flying.

"What's going on out there?" The king of Willendorf asked as the little man hurried back to the alchemy room laboratory

"Just a short scuffle the guards sire." Elezier lied casually. "We needn't let it interrupt the proceedings."

The king put on a pensive expression and turned away from him.

"Very well." He sighed.

Chained to the wall nearby was Alicia. Her gown was gone, torn from her body leaving her barley covered by the ragged remains. Her hair was a mess down her shoulders and she had bruises all over her body with cuts down her arms and legs.

The princess was slumped in the chains almost lifelessly but an inner fire her tormentors had not yet beat out of her yet still somehow managed to make itself known in the expression on her face.

The king had forbade any of the guards from raping her, but she was still a prisoner and as such they had not treated her well. Though kicks, punches and slashes with the tip of a sword her father had watched with a vacant expression although the difficulty of it was reflected in his eyes.

"Can you save her soul?" The king asked without looking back.

"Damnation is not something easily tossed aside." Eleizer replied. "I will do what I can to save her to the corrupting evil already besetting her." The king sighed out through his nose and closed his eyes.

He did not notice however was Elezier regarding the captured princess with a hungry, almost deranged expression as if his thoughts lingered on something quite provocative.

Alicia just closed her eyes and was outwardly silently. Inside however she was screaming. She was screaming in terror.

She was screaming in pain.

But most of all she was screaming for help.

And that scream did not go unheard.

Like a distant roar it crept up into another's mind, building in strength until it became an undeniable call.

"Alicia…" William whispered as he knelt on the floor of the ancient council chamber.

--

Ewoden drew a complex set of runes in the air with two fingers, the effort showing on his face before he unleashed the most powerful fire spell he had ever attempted. The explosion shook the ground and Gaunt was thrown back by the sheer force of it to smash into a wall, his sword spinning from his grip to clatter against the ground. Breaking through it the knight was sent flying into an adjacent chamber.

It was a chapel where the officers of the order could pray privately. It had a few wooden seats and a podium without a book on it.

Gaunt shook the brick dust out of his armour before righting himself, smoke rising from patches of blackened metal.

Ewoden dropped to his knees, extremely out of breath and hardly able to maintain the strength necessary to keep hold of Havoc and Malice.

Thus weakened he could do nothing to defend himself as Gaunt grabbed him by the animal skins underneath his armour and tossed him back into the chapel to slam hard against the stone podium knocking it over.

Retrieving his sword, Gaunt turned to face the former knight as he struggled to get back up.

"You… you are a perversion." The Sarafan declared, pausing for a moment to wipe the blood away from the edge of his lips with the back of his hand. "Not merely by your curse do you profane, but by your history also. You turned your back on the Order and accepted the dark, rejecting all that was good."

"If you're going to kill me, then kill me." Ewoden snapped. "At least spare me the hypocrisy." With a great degree of effort he managed to make it up to his feet. "I know from experience that the Sarafan could not be further FROM all that is good. You are worse than the vampires you claim to protect the people from." Adopting a fighting stance with an axe in both hand, he defied his opponent. "Tthe only thing they really needed protection from… was you!"

Crying out in anger Gaunt charged, swinging his sword around. Ewoden blocked it with Malice before he swung Havoc forward, striking Gaunt on the helm. The metal cracked and bent and had Gaunt not pulled back at the last second the axe would have struck him in the face.

With an angry yell, he pulled the damage piece of armour off letting his hair fall down before charging in close again.

"You.. You shape changers and blood drinkers would call US perverse?" The Sarafan asked as they clashed. "You commit blasphemy by your mere existence. You're an affront to man and beast alike and I will take great pleasure in restoring the perfect, pristine order of god!" The three weapons, double axes and sword met in mid air and a power struggle began.

"Imagine it. No more mutation… no more of this heretically mentioned 'evolution'… simple creation for all time."

"That's not how nature works, you fool!" Ewoden snapped and in that moment he let his guard down. Gaunt was instantly through his defences, slashing both axes aside leaving Ewoden completely unarmed.

Before the former knight could blink, Gaunt slammed his sword through the flesh in his hip. He'd been aiming for the chest but Ewoden's instinctive agility acted on its own, diverting the stab wound from anything major.

That did not mean however that it did not hurt like hell.

Ewoden screamed in utter pain, writing in agony.

The Sarafan drew his sword back and grabbed the former knight by the front of his armour and tossed him with all the strength he had up into the ceiling.

Ewoden's body hit it so hard that the ceiling broke with the collision. Wood, brick and tiles fell down leaving a roof with a shaft of moonlight coming down through.

Ewoden rolled a short distance before coming to a stop, a pool of blood slowly growing around him.

"And what could you, a mutant, possibly know about Nature?" Gaunt demanded, clenching a fist with a loud metallic ringing that echoed out through the chapel.

The former knight growled, clenching his teeth against the pain and pushed up on his arms, pausing to spit out a mixture of blood and spit.

The wound in his hip was made enough but it had been made by a silver weapon and that felt like salt was constantly being rubbed into it.

But Ewoden was no stranger to pain.

"I was born a slave." He hissed. "I never knew my father and my mother died unable to carry on the work. I spent my youth in the mines, toiling day and night for this countries aristocracy.

Rescued from that existence by Moebius himself, I was trained as a Sarafan soldier and in amongst your ranks I learnt just how depraved your order was.

Drawing from that history I know that no elite, least of all yours, is meant to rule." Slowly he started to try to pick himself back up, the blood staining the animal skins and dripping off his armour. "Like all the Empire's throughout history you're dynasty is going to come crumbling down for that is the natural order of change." The former knight reached up and unclipped the straps holding his breast plate to him. The metal fell away with a loud clattered exposing his chest. Then without equal disdain he tossed the animal skins away.

Gaunt did not understand why his opponent would so willingly expose his heart. Suspicious, he gripped his sword tighter.

"You speak of our perversion, yet you would force nature to obey your ideals.

That is something I draw the line at." Ewoden carried on, removing the bracers on each arm and dropping them to the ground. "Nature follows no rules, no order or guidelines. It grows, and evolves, never one moment the same. That is what I learned merely by looking at it.

You can not command nature." The former knight was now naked from the waste up. Spreading his arms out side he looked Gaunt right in the face. "Just like your Order can not command me. Not anymore!" Then deliberately he stepped backwards into the shaft of full moon light pouring in through the hole in the ceiling.