Chapter Twenty-Seven: Pest Problem

Avis could not even feel the pain in his stomach, anymore. His sense of time had been one of the first things to go—he did not know if he'd been locked in this room for a day, a week, or a month. Every so often, some food and a small amount of water were sent into his room. It was not enough to satisfy his hunger or thirst…but it was enough to keep him alive.

At first, he'd tried several times to break out of the room with magic…however, every time he invoked the elements, the collar spell that his mother had placed on him would react, violently choking him until he released the magic.

And so, he'd waited. And waited. …and waited.

He'd expected someone to come in and beat him, or rake him over a bed of coals, or cut him up with a blade, or…well, something. If he was really so important to Zamorak…well, he hadn't expected to be tossed into a room with an altar and left to rot.

The boy had shouted a lot, too. Be it rage directed towards his jailors, laments toward himself, pleas towards his lost mentor; he'd gone on almost nonstop, at first, screaming until his throat felt like a bleeding desert.

No one ever answered.

Eventually, Avis gave into his weariness and opted for resting against the door…only to discover that his collar spell would not allow him to sleep, either. He would nod off, his eyes would close…and suddenly his throat would be filled with fire.

After a while of this, Avis eventually stopped eating. It was a bit of a gamble he was taking—he did not want to starve to death, but he was willing to bet that his captors did not want that, either. He was willing to bet that they would take notice of him if he started to place his own life in jeopardy.

It bothered Avis, at first, not being able to know how long he had been imprisoned in the drafty upstairs room; all alone with the chaos altar, the spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling, the large knot in the wood of the wall behind the altar, the small crack in one of the marble tiles that made up the floor, and every single other minute detail of the room that Avis had picked out during his captivity.

There was only one thing that had kept Avis relatively sane in his delirious state of starvation, thirst, and sleep deprivation—the Whisper. Avis was fairly sure it was a figment of his imagination, but he did not care enough to question. A voice was still a voice, whether real or imagined. And another voice was something he welcomed dearly.

And so, Avis was not startled when he heard the Whisper speak to him once again. "Today's the day," it said.

The Whisper had started out as just that—a whisper. But as time dragged on, Avis started seeing manifestations. A mouth in the wall. An orb of light that cast no shadows. A golden scarab beetle. Today, it was a rose growing out of one of the stone walls.

"Today's the day?" Avis asked the rose. His speech was slurred from his sleep deprivation-induced delirium.

"Your first step to freedom," the Whisper replied.

All Avis could do was stare at the rose and smile. "Freedom?" the Mahjarrat youngling giggled. "Freedom, you said? I knew it… I've lost my mind. A rose is whispering to me about freedom."

"You take your first step today…today…" the Whisper faded away on that last word.

As Avis watched, the rose spread its petals into full bloom, and additional buds started to sprout all around it. A piece of the wall fell away, pushed out by the blooming bush of roses. Another chunk of masonry crashed to the floor, and another, and another, until Avis could see sunlight shining through.

The boy crawled forward, slowly pushing himself to his feet, staring out through the hole in the wall. The vine of roses climbed up into the brilliant blue sky, up towards a bright golden light. The light pulsed with a warm radiance, inviting Avis to climb up to it. The boy obliged, extending a hand and grasping the vine.

His quivering hands stilled as he grabbed the mysterious vine, and Avis found a new strength surging through his muscles, and he ascended upwards along the giant rose vine without even really climbing it. He closed his eyes as he rose upward, basking in the warmth of the sun-like golden brilliance. He started to open his eyes to gaze at the wonder…only to be seized by a sudden, fiery choking sensation that filled his throat.

Avis opened his eyes to the view of the upstairs altar room's ceiling, his hands flying to his neck even as the fire in his throat subsided. It was that damned Collar Spell, or whatever his mother had called it… It was really proving to be the bane of Avis's existence. It had just woken him up as he teetered yet again on the brink of sleep.

Avis cast his eyes back over to the far wall…but the roses and the vine were gone. The wall was intact. There was no voice. And so Avis would normally settle back, brushing all memory of the whisper and the hallucination away…only to hear the voice again, and come to the conclusion that the Whisper was just a true figment of his imagination. He would then hear it again, in a long or short while, and would begin the cycle again until experiencing another hallucination.

But this time, after the hallucination ended, after the roses vanished and the Collar choked him back awake…the Whisper spoke to Avis once more, before the boy's doubts could be cemented. "Pray to him, child," the Whisper filled the dark, hazy spaces of Avis's mind. "Your first step…towards freedom… Pray to him, child."

Avis gazed at the chaos altar, at the unholy symbol of Zamorak that was fixed on the top. "My first step to freedom…" the boy murmured. Perhaps it was time for him to play his captors' game, for a time. After all, if he was ever to escape this place, he would never be able to do it if he was still locked up in this room. And so…

Alright, you want my prayers? Avis silently asked the chaos altar. I'll give you my prayers. I pray you tell your dogs to release me from my prison, before I allow myself to pass from this world to the next. If it is my soul you want, you won't get it this way.

Avis took in another deep breath, trying to relax. It was hard for him to calm his mind enough to actually achieve some measure of relaxation, but he managed to do so after several long minutes…or maybe several long hours—he could not tell. And even then, his relaxation dipped down into the realms of sleep…causing the Collar spell to drag him choking back into the waking world by his throat.

Avis crawled across the room and sat back against the chaos altar so that he would not have to continue staring at it. After another long stretch of silence, Avis realized that he had started to sing. He was singing in Arrish, the tongue of the desert…and he instantly recognized the tune. It was an old Menaphite lullaby, sung by parents to children who had trouble finding sleep. Farrah al-Ibn had sung it to Avis many times when he was little—Avis had never been able to exactly remember how it went…until now.

"You speak in the tongue of the sand-dwellers," someone said in Arrish.

Avis looked up and saw that the door…the door was miraculously open. There was a world beyond this room, and Avis was finally getting a glimpse of it. And in the doorway…there stood a tall, muscular man. He had a yellowish-blond beard that was tied into forks, almost like a man from the Fremennik Territories, pale skin…and crimson eyes.

Mahjarrat.

"I speak my own language," Avis replied, switching from Arrish to Commonspeak. "But I will not speak it with you."

"I did not expect to find you weeping, youngling," the Mahjarrat remarked. "This is not our way."

Avis absentmindedly brought a finger to his cheek, not all that surprised when it came away wet. "Our way…" he murmured. "We may be of the same race, but I have nothing else in common with you. Don't try and pretend that I do."

"Well, lucky for me, I am not trying to win your heart and mind," the bearded Mahjarrat shrugged. He clenched his fist and thrust it forward, sending a blast of fire into the floor right in front of Avis, prompting the boy to spring to his feet. "I am here to make you fight like a true Mahjarrat. The elements thrive within you. It is time to unleash them."

Enakhra relaxed on the roof of the chaos temple. She sat in a chair with a reclining back, resting her feet on a cushion, sipping from a goblet of wine. She watched the volcano in the distance as it continued to spew more lava into the air. The lava flowed down its western slope and into a deep gully, channeling the lava into a river of sorts. The chaos temple was built on a hill in the middle of a deep basin, which the river of lava flowed into, forming a lake, forming the moat of lava that surrounded the temple.

It was not the most beautiful sight that Enakhra had laid her eyes on…but the she-Mahjarrat was rather limited in what she could relax and gaze at when she was in the middle of the Wilderness. The next best thing would be to sit inside the temple, and she harbored no great love of staying indoors. And there were times when she could find the combination of lava and wine to be relaxing…whether or not this was one of those times remained yet to be seen.

But regardless, it would not be too much of a stretch to say that Enakhra was not enjoying herself at the moment. She took another sip of wine, watching the lake of lava that surrounded the temple as it bubbled and hissed. She enjoyed it the most when a revenant creature or a zombie—the Wilderness was infested with that kind of filth—came into the area and ended up wading into the lava. It did not happen very often, but when it did…well, she always enjoyed having a good laugh, especially in this day and age where laughter and mirth were such strangers.

"I've always loved the smell of lava, myself," Zemouregal flashed Enakhra a cheerful grin as he appeared from nowhere, disturbing her peace, plopping down a chair of his own.

"It smells like shit," Enakhra remarked, the corners of her mouth tugging downward into a scowl. "Have you nothing better to do than irritate me like a common pest?"

"Even if it were possible for anything to be more enjoyable than irritating you... No, I do not have anything else to do, at the moment," Zemouregal replied, easing himself down into the chair. He then gave a small shrug, and added, "Well, I suppose irritating you is not my sole motive for joining you here. My primary motive, perhaps, but not my only one. Orders came in from the Necropolis, just a few minutes ago. Zamorak has ordered us to free the youngling from his confinement."

That piqued Enakhra's interest. It had been nearly a month since Enakhra had sealed her son away in the upstairs altar room, and she had spent most of the time since then settling herself into a routine. She'd needed to take her mind off of Avis. She had not expected Zamorak to command her to remain in the chaos temple to oversee her son's training. And though she would never voice her dissent…she did not enjoy subjecting her son to such treatment. Yes, Avis viewed her as a monster, and yes, he had been heavily corrupted by his upbringing among Humans…but he was still hers.

"He prayed, then?" Enakhra asked. "He prayed to Zamorak?"

Zemouregal gave a slight shrug. "Don't know, don't care. I'm just here to watch the show."

"Show?"

"Kharshai's taking the boy outside."

"Ah…"

As if on cue, the temple's doors opened, and Enakhra watched as Kharshai emerged, her son following close behind. The bearded Mahjarrat drew his sword and used it to draw a circle in the ground. He pointed to the circle and said something to Avis, but the boy did not move. Kharshai then stomped his foot, causing the ground under Avis to burst upwards, sending the boy sailing through the air. He landed in the small circle drawn by the elder Mahjarrat.

"Hah!" Zemouregal snorted, settling back into his chair. "This will be entertaining, don't you think? Hm? Enakhra?"

Zemouregal glanced over to the side, but Enakhra had gone, leaving her chair behind. The Mahjarrat turned his attention back to Kharshai's 'training' session, trying to keep the disappointment from showing on his face.

The old Menaphite was flying.

He felt the wind in his face, the smell of the river below, the golden warmth of the sun. He opened his eyes, gazed down at the sparkling water below as he sped through the air, along the river's path. As he looked around, he saw that he was not alone—there was another man flying alongside him. The other man was much younger than his elder companion—in his late thirties, early forties. His tattoos and overall physique indicated that he was a Qaratai, a soldier.

Eventually, the old man and the soldier came to an island. There was a golden pyramid, a ring of trees bearing fruit that shined like the sun, and beaches laden with sunbathing crocodiles. They soared over the beach and the woods, slowing down and gently descending towards the top of the golden pyramid.

It was a temple; that much was obvious. The old man and the soldier set foot inside, beholding a beautiful woman in yellowish-white desert robes, with vibrant blue flesh. Her body seemed to give off a soft glow the same color as her flesh, giving her the appearance of light shining through water.

Her eyes flared a piercing cyan, and she extended her arms to the two Menaphites. "Come…"

Farrah al-Ibn's eyes snapped open. It was still nighttime, long before dawn. He'd only been sleeping for three or four hours. The old man took a deep breath, sitting up in his cot, rubbing his eyes blearily. That was when he heard the thing that had woken him up—alarm bells. A horn sounded somewhere in the distance.

This was not the first time those alarm bells had sounded—Farrah already knew what was coming.

"Kalphites!" the old man roared, grabbing his saif blade and swiftly throwing on the chainmail suit that he usually wore beneath his robes. He then strode out of his room and into the main chamber, where the children were sleeping. Farrah called out to the older orphans, the ones in their pre-teen years. "Rashid! Ranya! Zaeed! Khaliq! Nadiyya! Get everyone down below, and seal yourselves in!"

While the older kids herded their peers down the stairs and into the basement chamber, which could be sealed with a heavy stone door, the two oldest orphans joined Farrah as he stepped outside through the giant double-doors, out into the crisp desert night.

Jafa and Lessa were the first two orphans who Farrah had taken in, back in Ullek, nearly fifteen years ago. He'd taken in nearly a dozen more over the next decade—children who would live thieving in the streets by day, and under Farrah's old antique shop at night. Then the demons and their underlings had attacked Ullek, and Farrah had taken his orphans and fled into the sewers. Even as the city burned above them, they escaped into the tunnel system that extended out beyond Ullek's walls.

Due to the fighting above, the tunnels of Ullek were denied light or ventilation, and cave-ins had been common. More than once, Farrah had had to navigate around blocked passageways, and they had spent what seemed like an eternity lost in the darkness. Many of Ullek's citizens—the lucky ones who managed to avoid getting butchered in the street—had also fled into the tunnel system, and many never re-emerged. Some were killed directly by the cave-ins, many more died of thirst much later, after having been trapped. Disease became common in the sewers and tunnels, as well.

Farrah's orphans had been the ones to discover the natural tunnels that emerged from the mountains to the west. Farrah remembered with great fondness the day he had emerged from the tunnels into the daylight, breathing fresh air for the first time in weeks. Thousands of others had descended into the tunnels, but only a fraction of this number survived as far as the desert. Farrah had led a group of hundreds southwest to Sophanem, not thousands.

Still…there had been several additional waves of survivors that had reached the gates of Sophanem, as well as an almost steady trickle of stragglers. There were many more orphans who made it to Sophanem, having lost their parents in the battle or the subsequent escape. After things became too crowded in Sophanem and the opinion of the refugees started to sour, Farrah took his orphans across the River Elid to the western bank, where he occupied a deserted estate of some unknown Menaphite noble. Many refugees followed his example and moved out to the western bank, setting up camp. There were many more estates along the West Bank—Farrah later learned that they were summer homes owned by wealthy individuals mostly from Sophanem and Ullek. The refugees made themselves at home in these summer retreats towards the beginning of Autumn, after the summer homes' owners had returned to the city.

Farrah had originally thought there would be conflict when the owners of these homes tried to reclaim them next summer…but as more and more refugees joined the ever-growing camp on the West Bank, Farrah soon saw that if those nobles attacked the refugees, they would find themselves dealing with an angry mob the size of an army.

Food was not too much of an issue—hunters brought back various catches each night, and Elidinis provided more sustenance from the river that was her essence, allowing fishermen to pull many meals from her waters on an almost daily basis. The main issue was providing shelter from the cold desert nights to the several thousand refugees. Many of the refugees were lower-class citizens—the workers, craftsmen, and servants—and they began digging defenses around the perimeter of the settlement. They then took water from the River Elid, and they would mix it with the clay and earth that they had dug up. From these ingredients, they would fashion crude bricks, created after having been heated up to a very high temperature.

With this continuous production of bricks underway, many more dwellings and shelters had been built, and work was going to begin on a protective wall to surround this proto-city of refugees. This was due the largest threat to the refugees—the Kalphites.

The sentient, hive-minded race of insects, who had dwelled originally in the lands far to the northwest, had also been driven south by the ferocity of the horde under Thammaron's command. Now, they had taken up residence somewhere nearby, and the refugee settlement would often find itself under attack by the race of intelligent insects.

And until a wall was finished, this would no doubt continue for a long time. Luckily, a small portion of the soldiers who had fought in the Fall of Ullek had managed to follow the civilians into the tunnels, and it was only through the efforts of these fighting men that the Kalphites did not wipe the refugees out back in the Autumn.

A Kalphite soldier was out on the pathway that ran from the orphanage-house to its next-door neighbor, where the Qarat warriors had established their headquarters. The refugees who dwelled in the smaller, new houses in the fringes of the settlement quickly made their way to the estates on the bank of the Elid—it was these individuals who the Kalphite soldier was attacking.

Farrah charged at the Kalphite soldier, sending a concentrated blast of fire through its shiny green carapace. The large insect-warrior keeled over to the side, screeching loudly. Jafa ran past Farrah and plunged his shortsword up into the soldier's less-protected underbelly, putting it out of its misery.

Farrah watched as a group of soldiers emerged from the Qarat headquarters house, moving the gun carriage that bore their only cannon. Normally, the Qarat would not have bothered deploying the cannon, but its ability to fire grapeshot was proving to be deadly effective against the swarms of Kalphites that attacked the settlement by night.

A tall, muscular man jogged in front of the cannon, barking out orders. He wore the armor and helm of a Guard Captain—he was the highest-ranking soldier that had survived the Fall of Ullek. Seeing as how Sophanem did not house a force of soldiers—being the city of priests—all of the soldiers in the area were survivors of the various battles that had driven them so far to the south. Many of them had ended up around Sophanem ever since Thammaron's first skirmishes up in the north. It had not been until the arrival of the survivors of Ullek that one of the remaining Qarat soldiers was a Guard Captain.

The Captain pulled all of the former soldiers into a single, small army, appointing his own officers and deputies. It sometimes occurred to Farrah how he was perhaps the only thing standing in the way of that Guard Captain ruling over the refugees like a Centralian Proconsul. The Captain had never shown to harbor any such ambitions, but Farrah could not help but wonder how differently things might have turned out if he had not made it to Sophanem.

Farrah, Jafa, and Lessa joined the Qarat soldiers at the Inner Perimeter, which was a line that had been established around the summer estates. It was the area that hugged, or was at least near to the river—higher-elevated than the rest of the area east of the river, and therefore easier to defend. Every time the alarm bells rang, everyone who lived in the newly-constructed, westernmost parts of the settlement would drop everything, take up arms, and retreat to the Inner Perimeter. All the able refugees—Commoner and Qaratai alike—fought side-by-side to keep the attacking Kalphites from storming the West Bank. Those who weren't able—the wounded, sick, the elderly, the children—all took shelter behind the Inner Perimter, praying that their stronger brethren were able to weather the storm.

Farrah made his way through the crowds of these noncombatants with his two oldest wards, joining the fray. The Qarat survivors had learned from their repeated encounters with these sentient insects. Those first few nights spent on the West Bank, when the settlement was at its smallest and weakest, the refugees' defenders had taken the most losses. Since then, under the direction of the Guard Captain, they had been adapting to the Kalphite's attacks.

The Guard Captain and Farrah had deemed who the most skilled archers were in the residents of the West Bank settlement, and they had split them all up. When they broke the defenders into teams, they made sure to station at least one archer in every group. A single, well-placed arrow could do to these creatures what hours of prolonged hacking with melee weapons could not.

Mages had always been rather scarce in the Menaphite Empire, and the same held true for the settlers of the West Bank. There were only two others, aside from Farrah, who could consider themselves mages, and they were not exactly the most skilled of mages, either.

Farrah used Fire the most while fighting these creatures. The Kalphites attacked at night, so Fire gave him constant illumination even as he attacked. Insects also instinctively recoiled from flame, and these Kalphite soldiers and workers were no exception.

Of Farrah's orphans, Jafa and Lessa were the only ones who ever took up arms, and Lessa was the only one who possessed any measure of skill with the bow. And so, Jafa would usually focus solely on defending Lessa, rather than going on the offensive himself, because Lessa was much more likely to kill a Kalphite with her bow than Jafa was to succeed with his blade.

The cannon had been taken to the line a short ways south of the hill where Farrah's orphanage stood. It always went to wherever the Kalphite attack was at its thickest. Even now, Farrah could hear the weapon discharging, sending hails of smaller projectiles tearing through the onslaught of insects.

An oncoming Kalphite soldier made its lunge towards Farrah, but a Qaratai stepped into the way, knocking aside the insect's mandibles with his shield. The other men in the Qaratai's platoon quickly distracted the Kalphite by surrounding it and cleaving at its legs. As the soldier moved to deal with the Qarat warriors, Farrah severed two of its legs with a concentrated sweep of fire, sending the Kalphite crashing to the ground. As it lay on the ground, winded, one of the Qarat warriors thrust a spear up through the underside of the Kalphite's throat.

The other Menaphite warriors were already moving on to the next Kalphite, and Farrah decided to let them have it. The cannon went off again, and the old man could just barely hear the screams of the shredded insects that had been unfortunate enough to get hit by the grapeshot. Farrah sidestepped a swipe from a Kalphite worker, bringing his saif blade down onto the knee joint, cleanly severing the insect's leg. The old man finished off the worker with a well-aimed burst of fire before moving on to the next Kalphite.

The raid lasted only ten minutes, or so, but it felt like ten hours. The Kalphites had come tonight in stronger numbers than usual, their raids were becoming more and more frequent. A while ago, the raids had only happened once or twice a week, but they had been happening every other night, up until this past week. This past week, the raids had started to happen two nights at a time. There had been no raid last night, which meant that there was likely going to be another one tomorrow.

"Another night of fortune…" Farrah murmured after the last of the Kalphites fell or retreated.

"Night of fortune, you said?" one of the more senior Qarat warriors raised his eyebrows in surprise, his anger thinly-veiled. "I just lost three more members of my platoon—you would call this a night of fortune?"

"The Kalphites continue to send only workers and soldiers against our lines," Farrah explained. "Their Guardians do not yet move against us. Yes, I do consider it a night of fortune that this is not yet so."

The warriors got to work—hauling off the bodies of the slain Kalphites, piling them up, and burning them. The bodies of the warriors and commoners who lost their lives were also rounded up and buried. The number of losses had been higher tonight—thirteen warriors and nineteen commoners gone.

"Bloody unacceptable…" Farrah muttered, watching as the burial detail finished filling in the last of the graves.

"Hm?" Jafa asked, not hearing what the old man had said.

Farrah came back to his senses, laying his hands on Jafa and Lessa's shoulders. "You have fought well, both of you. Return to the house and get the young ones back to bed…it is still quite some time before sunrise."

"And you?"

"I would have words with the good Captain," Farrah replied. "The Gods are restless, and they seem to wish me to make acquaintance with him."

"Still doesn't seem right," Lessa did not sound convinced. "The man is evil. You know what he did with Avis, back in the city!"

"The man is not evil," Farrah shook his head. "He was a misguided, self-absorbed brute, yes…and some of the things he has done are nigh unforgivable, but none of us have come out of Ullek unscathed—him least of all."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it…" Lessa still was not convinced.

"Well, Fate seldom factors our wants and desires into its decisions," Farrah sighed. "Now, back to the house with you both. Look to the young ones."

And with that, Jafa took Lessa by the arm and pulled her off, heading back in the direction of the house. As for Farrah, he took to the paths and made his way to the house which the Qarat survivors had converted into their headquarters, located just north of Farrah's house-turned-shelter. There were never very many warriors in the headquarters house—it was mostly just for the Guard Captain, his subordinate officers, and their adjutants. The headquarters house also had a walled-off backyard, which was where the wounded Qarat soldiers lay.

There were two Qaratai guarding the house's entrance, but they allowed Farrah to pass—he was the only civilian who the guards would step aside for without question. The Guard Captain seemed to tolerate this, or else he would have ordered his sentries to deny Farrah entry, which he had not done.

Farrah walked down the front hallway, straight into the sunroom in the back, which was more or less equivalent to the family room or den of a Centralian home. Asef ad-Din, the veteran warrior who served as the Captain's second-in-command, was reading a casualty report to the Captain himself, who was sitting in one of the armchairs.

"…and Umar reported five total losses from his company," Asef finished his report. "This leaves us with thirty-two dead total, thirteen of them fighting men. The bugs hit us hard, tonight, sir."

The Guard Captain finished packing his pipe, lifted it to his mouth, lit it. After taking several deep puffs, burning through the false light, the Captain relit the pipe and started smoking it properly, exhaling in a puff of smoke. "Thank the Gods the bugs are not throwing their Guardians at us, at least… I hope that attacks of this intensity are going to be a rare thing."

"Well, you and I both know that they will not," Farrah al-Ibn interrupted, stepping forward and making his presence known. "Ever since we arrived here from the tunnels, ever since we settled the West Bank, the Kalphites' attacks have been increasing in both strength and frequency. Things will not get better—they will only get worse."

The Guard Captain glanced over to the old man, seeing him for the first time. "Farrah al-Ibn," he nodded to the elder man in greeting.

"Jhabour al-Aziz," the old Menaphite returned the gesture.

"I am going to have to speak with the sentries, one of these days…" the Guard Captain muttered. He then took another puff and gestured for Farrah to speak. "What do you want, old man?"

"We need to make some changes, here," Farrah replied. "If the Kalphite attacks continue to intensify, we must focus all of our present efforts on constructing a wall around the Inner Perimeter. The commoners need someplace to fall back to that is secure. Most of the nineteen dead civilians were killed behind the Inner Perimeter by Kalphites that bypassed our defenses. Kalphites that make it this far can wreak untold amounts of havoc before your men can put them down."

"Not all of the refugees have a shelter, yet. The shelters we have already are overcrowded," Jhabour reminded the older man. "It's unwholesome, having them live like that."

"If we do not build defenses, they will not live at all."

Jhabour was silent for several moments, his piercing gaze not leaving the old Menaphite. Finally, he dismissed Asef and anyone else who happened to be in the same room, leaving him alone with Farrah. "I will speed the construction of the Inner Perimeter wall as much as I can, but you already know that I have considered these issues. What have you really come to speak with me about?"

"Puzzling dreams," Farrah replied.

"Do I look like a medium to you?" the Guard Captain grunted. "If you have a dream that needs interpretation, speak with the priests."

"It is not one dream I have had; it is several…every night for the past two weeks," Farrah continued, unfazed by Jhabour's rebuff. "I dream of Elidinis, giver of life, who commands me to come to her. And in these dreams, you are by my side." Jhabour did not speak, but the expression in his eyes and face was enough for Farrah to make an important observation: "You have had these dreams, as well," the older man declared.

Jhabour remained silent for several moments, scrutinizing the older man with a gaze that would make a hawk blink. "Perhaps I have…" the Guard Captain finally gave Farrah an answer. "And how exactly do you intend to act upon these visions? Gods are not necessarily easy to find, you know. I would not even know where to start, if we were looking for Elidinis."

"Elidinis is the River—I believe we should search there," Farrah suggested. "In my dreams, we were flying north, upstream…so I believe it is time we made a flying carpet."