Later, at the Quincey's townhouse, Kane rubbed his bleary eyes, looking up from the file he'd been reading. The Avenue Inspectors were certainly busy around Melmond, as evidenced by the piles of paper covering the table. There were files detailing everything the inspectors knew about the fifteen recent missing persons cases in the lower town - Harvey and Gabriel were reading those - files on each of the white mages who had gone missing over the past several months, and another on the missing healing potions at the Chocobo. Kane had started with the fat and particularly detailed file describing the night plague incident at Titan's Cathedral and had only just finished it. He stood, stretching to relieve his restless limbs.

"Too much for you?" Gabriel asked from across the Quincey's broad oval dining table, its polished surface obscured by papers.

"No," Kane said. Though it was true that the file was incredibly disturbing, it was more that he was both unused to studying and unused to sitting still. "I just needed to stand a moment." He went to the window that faced the darkened square in front of the townhouse and tried to clear the horrific images from his mind.

"I told you, those chairs are the worst," said Harvey from a corner of the room. "No slant to the back at all! It's no wonder you Quinceys have such perfect posture, if that's your idea of casual seating at home!" He was sprawled across a padded chaise that a pair of servants had carried in especially for him after he'd complained one too many times about the chairs. His own stack of files was spread out on the floor in front of him, in little groups and piles as though he were organizing them somehow.

"We hardly ever use this dining room unless father is in town with us," Logan said, without looking up from his own papers.

"Where do you eat when he's not with you?" Kane asked, wondering why they weren't conducting their research in that part of the house.

"Out," Logan and Gabriel said together. Gabriel threw his brother a withering glance, but the older Quincey didn't notice, still involved with the reports in front of him, those on the dark mage attacks that had taken place every full moon for nearly a year.

Kane looked out at the street and thought about the file he'd just read. The incident had happened only a few weeks after the night plague first appeared in the countryside. A group of white mages, residents of the cathedral, had gone to the outer farms to treat it. The white mages who lived in the far-flung villages had been the plague's first victims and the farmers had been desperate for aid. A few of those who went roaming died as well, but one, a woman named Selene, caught the disease and recovered. She returned to the cathedral, not knowing the plague would spread.

Worshippers arriving for services the next morning had found all of the cathedral residents dead, all but one. Selene was wandering the halls, feverish and mad, ranting of an overwhelming thirst yet refusing all offers of drink. Her fever worsened, she tried to Cure herself, but she began vomiting blood and died soon after.

Kane couldn't help but picture Lena there, both as Selene and as one of the dead white mages in the cathedral. I won't let that happen to her, he thought, remembering his promise to Sarah, remembering what Jack had said about white mages in reference to the black mage's Oath: "They're who we guard." Well, the black mages could rest easy about at least this one white mage. She's who I guard. Her, and the other Warriors of Light. No matter what.

Some minutes later, when he turned back to the table, he saw Logan squint at a page, flip open a different file and scan its contents, then go back to the first. "Gods, how many people are on this investigation team? I think I've yet to see two files with the same investigating officer."

"Thirteen," Gabriel said. He froze in the act of reaching for the next file in his stack and added a muttered, "Or, I suppose, twelve at the moment," as he seemed only then to remember he couldn't technically count himself among them.

Kane sighed. If a twelve-man team in the lower town and Pollendina's small army of inspectors hadn't solved these murders yet, what difference could they make in only one night? And they only had tonight; according to Logan, Lord Pollendina was away visiting his ailing father, but the files Logan had lifted from the thin lord's office would have to be back in place first thing in the morning.

He sat down again, took up one of the files Logan had already finished, and began to read a report of a man who was killed at home. His wife and daughter returned from visiting relatives in Half-Moon to find him dead in their dining room, the table and chairs shoved to the side to make space for the ritual circle that covered the floor, drawn in blood. The victim had been in the center of it, the ritual knife still in his chest. His body had still been warm.

Kane set the file aside, picked up another. This one, a woman, had been killed in an empty warehouse on the edge of where the lower town became the harbor district. No one had found her until the smell set in. The evidence suggested that the woman, a baker by trade with a successful establishment in the Blue Quarter, had no business being there.

It was all second-hand information. Though the Avenue Inspectors had been heavily involved in investigating the cathedral after the white mages' demise, they were not technically part of the dark mage investigations. That job, and the original case files, belonged to Gabriel's team at the guardhouse in the lower town. Kane read a few more files - consisting only of the copied notes and speculations of various inspectors - until the mix of handwriting started to look as foreign and strange to him as one of Jack's Leifenish books.

Logan, sitting at the table beside Kane, squirmed uncomfortably as he read. "I can't believe the attacks were this bad," the accountant said.

"You didn't know about them?" Kane asked, opening the next file and finding a drawing of a ritual circle, the same one he'd seen in some of the other files.

Logan shook his head. "I knew of them, but only because Gabriel mentioned them in his letters to mother."

"Wait," Gabriel said. "You actually read my letters?"

Logan snorted. "Of course I do! You're my brother! Still, your letters home never mentioned the details…"

"No," Gabriel said. "We don't talk about those much. We try to keep it out of the public eye as best we can. Most of the city doesn't concern itself with anything that happens in the lower town, so that helps."

"But why keep quiet at all?" Kane asked. "Wouldn't it have been better to warn people?"

Gabriel shrugged. "Warn them of what? Random chance? There's no pattern to the victims. Half are men, half women, ranging in age from seventeen to seventy. At least two were killed in their own homes, behind locked doors. You know what you get when you try to warn people about something like that? Panic."

Kane scoffed. "Come on. Surely there must be some pattern."

Redden followed a city guard on his routine patrol. The guard didn't seem to know Redden was there, but still, Redden proceeded cautiously, taking care with each step of his Vanished feet as he moved through the shadows behind the Saucer, the huge theater just outside the Blue Quarter. It was empty now, the last show of the evening having ended hours ago. He himself had watched as the last of the stagehands who cleaned up after the crowd left, locking the doors behind them and calling out farewells to each other as they went their separate ways toward home.

The guard passed by a number of shops and houses, stopping occasionally to check that the doors were locked. He did the same at the Saucer, as Redden had known he would, and then he resumed his course, the same patrol route walked by the guards in this area night after night, a path running past the theater and down the block to the White Quarter, turning toward the cathedral and ending at the guardhouse. Redden had the route memorized by now. That was the key, he was sure. The victims may have been random, but the crime scenes followed a pattern: a patrol pattern.

He hadn't told anyone his theory, not even the six men Leiden had given him to order around, young bucks from the West Hills who had all grown up on stories of the sons of Titan. They had gone with him to the cave, and Redden knew he had their loyalty, but he knew better than to suggest that the person scouting these locations for the Brotherhood had been one of their own, someone at the cathedral guardhouse who had walked these routes and checked these doors, whose business it was to know when a particular building might be unoccupied or a particular street was unlikely to be busy.

They would know soon enough. If he was right, if the Brotherhood struck here, he would tell them how he knew. He would show them the maps. He wouldn't tell them what had given him the idea, how General Garland had supposedly been leading the hunt for the Brotherhood in Cornelia all these years while in reality he had been one of them. What kind of man will the traitor be? Redden wondered. A low ranking guard? A member of the investigation team? One of the captains? The commander himself?

He was confident it wasn't the guard he followed. A black mage would surely have noticed him by now, Vanished or not, and this man was oblivious. Redden kept close behind him, trying to match the rhythm the man's footsteps beat out on the packed-earth streets. They took the turn that led away from the theater, toward the cathedral, and Redden waited for the signal. He didn't know what it would be, but he knew there must surely be one, a light or a sound or a spell, some indication that the guardsman on patrol had passed and that the street was now clear for ill deeds.

They kept walking. When they were nearly a street over, the patrolman whistling a tavern tune as he checked the door on a pawnbroker's shop, Redden began to wonder if he'd been wrong - he'd been so sure! - but then a pigeon cooed three times in quick succession.

At least, it would have sounded very like the cooing of a pigeon to all but the most attentive ear. Redden smiled, stopping where he was. He waited as the guardsman walked on, and if the whistling man noticed that his footsteps didn't echo quite as they had before, he gave no sign of it. When the man was several paces away, Redden turned and crept silently back toward the theater where his own men were lying in wait.

"Officially, there have been ten of these attacks, one every month," Gabriel said. He rifled through the papers on the table, pulled out a single-page map of the lower town, and pointed. Ten sites were circled. "A few of the men on the team speculate that there were others before, going back to when the white mages died - there are some unsolved murders from around then with similar knife wounds," here he gestured at four other locations with question marks drawn on them, "but we weren't sure what we were looking at in the beginning. By the time we realized they might be connected, the evidence had been muddled."

He chose two of the files and opened them so that both displayed descriptions of the crime scenes. "It was obvious that these two victims shared a killer - they were the firsts to involve ritual circles, and they were both found in unoccupied rent houses. Neither were found right away, so we couldn't pin down a time of death. That's why no one made the full moon connection, not at first."

Kane nodded, remembering a conversation he'd had with Jack on the ship one evening, a moonless night when working the aether had left the mage particularly exhausted. Magic could be affected by the phase of the moon, Jack said. Kane hadn't known such a thing before that; he doubted it was common knowledge to anyone besides mages. He looked at the two files, comparing their locations to the map. They weren't far apart. Additionally, both victims had been discovered behind locked doors, with no signs of forced entry. "Did you look into who owned the buildings?"

"We did," Gabriel said, pulling a page from one of the files. "We thought that was our first breakthrough, actually. The buildings had different owners, but later we learned that although they were unoccupied at the time of each murder, they were both being rented by the same man."

"And? What happened when you questioned the man?"

Gabriel shook his head, handing Kane another file. "We never got a chance. He was the next victim."

Redden ducked into the alley where he knew Killian waited, but not so quietly that it would have warranted the West Hills man's surprise when Redden asked, "Did you see them?"

Killian gasped, his hand going to his sword, but he didn't draw it. "Yes," he said when he'd taken a breath to calm himself. "Bugger me, you were right. They're actually here." He looked up and down the dark alleyway, his eyes never quite settling on the place where Redden stood. "You really are invisible. You said you'd be Vanished, but I didn't realize the spell was quite so… complete."

Redden Dispelled himself. "You should have heard me coming at least."

Killian blushed. "I… I did, but when I didn't see anything… I guess I assumed it was an echo from down the street. It won't happen again."

"Which way did they go in?"

"The front, sir. It was just as you said. They had a key. Walked right in, bold as you please."

"How many?"

"Five."

Redden nodded. He and the guards were seven. They could handle five.

But then Killian frowned. His hand went to his chin as he seemed to consider something. "Unless… Unless any of them were Vanished like you were. Do you really think they might have magic like that at their disposal?"

"They may," Redden said. "But that's where we'll have the advantage." He patted at his belt, feeling that the leather pouch was still there, the little satchel of Rot. All of the guards with him tonight had one.

Killian's hand went to his, right next to his sword. "What if they have other weapons? I've never fought an invisible foe before. I can't imagine it."

Redden waved a hand dismissively. "I doubt they're trained to fight while Vanished, not like I am. Even if they have weapons, they'll still rely on their magic. But I have my magic as well, and white magic isn't affected by the Rot. If I find them, I can Dispel them. You just have to keep alert. The Vanished still cast a shadow. Remember, what can fool the eye can't fool the light."

Killian shook his head. "I still can't believe you figured out where they'd be… Malcolm has the team focusing on Grimalkin Lane, where most of those boys went missing."

Redden shrugged. "I had a hunch. Come on. Let's meet the others."

Kane looked closer at the map. The circles and the four question marks were scattered more or less evenly across the lower town, except that there were none in the area known as the White Quarter. Those few blocks between the guardhouse and the cathedral were littered with crosses. "Are these the recent missing persons cases?"

Gabriel nodded. "Last known locations."

Kane counted them: fifteen, all within three streets of each other. More than half were concentrated on a street labeled Grimalkin Lane which ran from the cathedral to some kind of market. Altogether, the various symbols made the lower town look as hacked and slashed as one of the murder victims. Kane pointed toward one of the crosses. "So what's the connection between these and the murders?"

Gabriel's mouth pressed into a line. "I'm not sure there is one."

"What? Don't be ridiculous! Of course they're connected!" said Harvey, leaping up to join them at the table. "The White Quarter's simply buzzing with magical activity! It's almost as if it all boiled over the moment father took you off duty!"

"Exactly!" said Gabriel. "Doesn't that seem strange to you? The Brotherhood avoided that area for more than a year! What are they doing there now? I doubt the dark mages were only waiting until I had my back turned!"

"Everyone avoids that area," Logan said, shrugging. "The rumors say there's some sort of residual white magic around the cathedral. I heard the inspectors talking about it."

"I've heard that too," said Harvey. "That's what a lot of people say!"

"Perhaps it's worn off?" Logan concluded.

Kane blinked, surprised that anyone could talk about something as harmless as white magic in such fearful tones. "That's… That's wrong. White magic doesn't just flutter about. You get white magic from white mages. That's what makes it white magic."

Gabriel looked at him suspiciously. "What would you know about white magic?"

"More than you three, apparently. I grew up around white mages. They're all over Cornelia. And despite that, we still have trouble with the Brotherhood there. Whatever protections white mages may or may not give off, they apparently don't work against dark mages."

The sergeant nodded, seeming satisfied with that answer. "Fine. So, either the dark mages have decided to hunt people down in the White Quarter all of a sudden, or these disappearances aren't related to them at all."

"What else could it be?" Harvey said, holding up one of the files. "One of these fellows literally went missing in the time it took his companions to blink! That sounds like magic to me!"

They didn't use the theater's front door, nor the back. Although Redden suspected there was little danger of the Brotherhood actually bothering to set watches on either entrance, he had nevertheless instructed the men to gather at the small service entrance on the building's north side. They were all there; Redden and Killian were the last to arrive. No one said a word, but Redden nodded in greeting before reaching into his pocket and pulling out the key he had acquired - with very little persuading - from the theater manager earlier that day. The man was so nervous about legal repercussions from the events of Midsummer that all it had taken was Leiden's seal on a letter.

Redden opened the door quietly, looking inside, then motioned the men to follow him. Within, it was dark, but two of the men carried shuttered lanterns; one opened his just enough to show the way. They were somewhere backstage, in a hallway full of props closets and dressing rooms. Redden held up a hand to halt the men behind him, then extended his senses cautiously, feeling the aether. No one waited nearby - he could feel that much - no sentries, no ambush, but there was a spell up there somewhere ahead of them, a big one. This was the ritual, the mysterious spell that required a full moon and a human sacrifice.

"Look, I know I haven't told you much about the full moon attacks," Gabriel said, "but those people don't just go missing. We always find the bodies later, always with obvious signs of magic being involved - ritual circles and evidence of herbs. And the blood…" The sergeant sat back, crossing his arms over his chest as he grimaced. "Blood absolutely everywhere, like at a slaughterhouse…"

Redden didn't know what it was for. The ritual circle he'd seen drawings of in the files had been a basic one, one he'd seen recommended for any number of scryings and wardings. He'd asked Jack about it, and Jack had said the same, though Redden wasn't sure how far he could trust the expertise of a young mage who couldn't even function without a focus object on an ordinary day.

He waved the men forward again. Soon, he could hear voices chanting an incantation. He could see a light up ahead from the direction of the stage and he signaled the man with the lantern to shutter it again.

They moved toward the stage with painstaking slowness, but when Redden and the others reached the heavy curtains and looked out, they found the dark cultists not on the stage but in the pits, the large, open area of the floor where the poorest theater-goers watched the plays from standing room only. The five men, dressed in their cowled robes, continued to chant, a strange, sonorous litany that seemed like heavily accented Leifenish - Redden thought he should be able to understand it, but none of it made sense - as they walked slowly in a circle.

Redden gestured the men to hold their positions. They had planned this. They would wait until the victim turned up, wait to catch these Brotherhood members in the act of attempted murder. They all expected it to be a young man, one of those who had gone missing in the past few days, and Redden half hoped it would be Felder or Cole, the missing crewmen that he hadn't had the heart to tell Kane about when he'd seen his son earlier. Redden looked about the dark theater, lit only by the moonlight coming through a domed window in the gallery's high ceiling, but he couldn't see anyone else, no potential victims tied up and struggling in the corner. He caught a glimpse of Killian's face as the young man from the West Hills likewise searched the room with his eyes. He looked to Redden, shaking his head: he couldn't see anyone either.

"These recent cases though?" Gabriel said, pointing at the crosses on the map. "They don't have any of that. No bodies, no circles, no signs of violence! The victims are just gone! They could all have decided to take a nice holiday on the north shore for all we know!"

Harvey laughed at that. "Have you been reading the same files I have?" He opened the file he held and waved its contents at them. "This man was out with friends at the time! He disappeared from under their noses! There's another file over there for a boy who vanished from his attic bedroom without coming downstairs first! Did he go through the roof? It's magic, Gabriel!"

"I know!" Gabriel snapped. "Of course it's magic! People disappearing out of locked rooms and dead end alleyways? It has to be magic, I never said otherwise! It's just, well, I've been hunting the Brotherhood for months now! This isn't like them! These victims? These locations? They're not random enough! They do follow a pattern!"

Kane reached for one of the files; he hadn't looked at them yet. "Father said the victims were all young men?"

"Right!" Harvey said, nodding. "Late teens or early twenties."

"With a few exceptions," Gabriel put in. "The boy from the attic was the youngest, fourteen, a blacksmith's apprentice who looked older than he was. The oldest, a fresh-faced dandy in his early thirties who scarcely looked older than twenty according to his friends."

"Maybe the Brotherhood are choosing victims for their sacrifices?" Logan suggested. "Maybe it took them this long to figure out what kind of person they needed?"

"Alright," Kane said. "Were any of the full moon victims young men?"

Gabriel pushed back from the table and began pacing the floor. "Well, sure! There were also old men, and middle-aged men, and young women, and old women-"

"Alright, we get it," Logan grumbled. "It was just an idea."

Redden tried not to grind his teeth in frustration. If they hadn't brought the victim in yet, that meant more were coming. Seven trained soldiers could handle five mages, but more would be a stretch, even if the soldiers did have the element of surprise on their side. The thought of ordering these men to back away slowly, to retreat and leave some innocent soul to die in this theater, had him grinding his teeth anyway.

The incantation changed, drawing his attention back to the cultists. Four of them were still chanting together, each carrying a copper bowl. Those bowls would contain herbs, Redden was sure, though what kind he couldn't say. The fifth cultist, chanting his own incantation in harmony with the others, carried a knife. He stood motionless outside the circle the others walked, knife raised, and one by one, as the others passed him by, they held their left hands out to him. He sliced a deep gash in each one. The knife dripped with their blood, the cut hands dripped, and the drips formed a circle as the cultists walked.

Three times they walked the circle, and still no victim was brought in. The four who walked the circle knelt inside it, each placing their bowls outside of the ring of blood, and they drew aetheric designs in the thick red ink they'd made until the circle looked complete. The chanting went on. The four inside the circle stepped out of it. They knelt by the bowls, one at each of the four compass points. Redden felt the aether move through the room, saw the cultists' eyes light with a black corona. But where was the victim?

The man with the knife kept chanting. He chanted as he pulled back his black hood, chanted as he opened his robe. He was not naked underneath, but he wore no shirt. The robe slid to the floor and he kept chanting as he kicked it aside. He chanted as he stepped into the circle and knelt in the center.

"By all the gods," Killian whispered, not loud enough that he would have been heard over the chanting. "It isn't murder. It's suicide…"

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. The aether moved with the force of a gale wind. They had to stop this from happening. Whatever the Brotherhood was planning, whatever the cultists' thought was worth killing for, worth dying for, they had to stop it.

The man in the circle raised the knife high.

"NOW!" Redden called.

They spent more time reading, all but Gabriel, who continued to pace the floor, grumbling. Kane had nearly worked through all the full moon files. A few shared slight connections - like that of the man renting the buildings that two of the other victims were found in - but the links seemed tenuous at best. Kane suspected Gabriel was right: there was no pattern. It seemed clear the Brotherhood wasn't choosing random people off the street - none of the victims had been travelers, or homeless beggars. Three had apparently been upright businessmen, pillars of the community.

It was likely several of the victims had known each other - the three businessmen, probably; the baker from the Blue Quarter and the woman from the food market, perhaps - but Kane didn't think that mattered. Melmond might be a large city, but social circles tended to be unpredictable wherever you went. He and Shipman had known each other for months and interacted several times before they ever discovered they were both Warriors of Light, while he and Lena had lived only a block apart and never met before that day in the harbor square.

Still, something about his own connections to his friends tickled at his brain. If someone wrote up the details of Kane's life from birth until his meeting with the others, for example, there would have been nothing in that file linking him to Jack. The thing that had brought them together wasn't their jobs or their social status. Their only connection was invisible: it was prophecy, it was...

"Magic," he said out loud. "What if it's magic? What if that's what connects them all?"

The other three looked at him strangely. "We know it's magic," Gabriel said. "That's what we've been talking about."

"Perhaps you ought to head off to bed?" Harvey suggested kindly.

"No, not like that!" Kane said. "I mean, what if they're mages? The victims?"

"Which ones? The murdered or the missing?" Harvey asked.

"Both! Look, this all started when the last of the white mages here went missing, didn't it? The rumors in Cornelia say the Brotherhood take people with magical talent. Black mages, mostly. I've never heard of any white mages going missing, but there's no reason that couldn't be the case."

Logan scoffed. "Please. You really think we had more than twenty mages living in plain sight in this city and nobody knew it?"

"Why not?" Kane said. He knew of at least two mages hidden in plain sight at Melmond Manor, three if he counted Shipman... which he didn't. "You've as good as said you suspect Lord Pollendina might be a mage. How do you know there aren't others? They're not… I mean, it's not as if they have horns or anything! They look just like everyone else!"

"Yes, but you wouldn't get mages living ordinary lives as… as bakers and salesmen!"

Gabriel, his gaze fixed on the map, very quietly said, "Why is it so hard to believe?"

"No one could hide something like that!" Logan said. He tossed the file he was holding onto the table, watching his brother, but Gabriel didn't look up. "Could they? Gods, don't tell me you're a mage?"

Gabriel shook his head. "No… Not me."

That sadness in his eyes, that defensive hunch to his shoulders. He knows someone, Kane thought.

Logan had seen it too. His eyes narrowed, his forehead creased in thought. But when he opened his mouth to say something, Harvey interrupted him. The young Leiden was looking at the papers on the table and had missed the telling expressions that passed between the two brothers.

"Well, alright. If you want to work from that theory... But then wouldn't we have to suspect every single person who's gone missing under mysterious circumstances in the past year of being a mage?"

Gabriel's face went blank. His eyes widened. "Yes," he whispered. "Yes, we would." He straightened and turned for the door. "We're looking at the wrong files!"

The man in the circle kept chanting, even as Redden and the guards rushed forward, leaping from the stage. The four cowled heads of the other mages turned toward them, the shadows of their hoods concealing their faces so that only their corona-ringed eyes were visible, glowing with a wicked black light.

Redden reached the circle at a run. The nearest mage moved to intercept him, but Redden only had eyes for the man in the middle. He drew his sword. His other hand gripped the pouch at his belt. With one swift tug, he broke the leather straps that tied it in place, then swung it like a club at the nearest mage. He felt the aether move in response to some spell but then the blow connected and the little pouch burst open, spilling its vile contents over the man's mouth and nose. The cultist choked. The black corona flickered and went out as the man coughed and gasped against the Rot that covered his face.

The man in the circle kept chanting. Redden lunged at him, managing to knock the dagger from his hand. The little blade clattered to the floor on the circle's edge. Redden went for the man then, throwing himself forward for a full-bodied tackle, but he didn't get that far. A bolt of energy like blue lightning arced into him from across the circle, knocking him from his feet. His teeth cracked together as he landed. He was peripherally aware of one of his own men coming down hard beside him.

"Don't stop!" a voice shouted. "We mustn't stop! We have to finish!"

"Cheela!" Redden shouted, calling up fire, but the stench and nearness of even the little satchels of Rot they'd brought with them was enough to make it hurt to do so. He flung the flame wildly against the mage slinging the lightning. It flashed, brief and bright, enough to disrupt the cultist's spells before it flared out, enough to distract him while Killian moved in behind and swung his sword through the man's neck.

Redden's wasn't the only fire. Two of the West Hills men wove and dodged, swinging their Rot-filled satchels, trying to land a blow against a third cultist who fought with fire in his hands. The fourth had retreated across the room toward one of the exits, tossing balls of fire at one of Redden's soldiers while another blocked the door.

Still, the man in the circle kept chanting. Redden pulled himself up again, lurching forward. The man who had fallen to the lightning beside him would never get up again. "Ayu yanudu nasginai eluwei!" Redden called, the invocation for Silence. The chanting became a choked rasp, but still the man tried to go on.

Killian stepped forward, sword raised.

"No!" Redden shouted. "Don't kill him! You might finish his work for him!"

The young soldier lowered his sword, looking alarmed.

"Tie him up!" Redden ordered.

"No!" a voice squawked. He looked down and saw that it was the mage he'd hit with the Rot. The man was still wheezing, but he spoke between breaths. "No, please! You... don't know... what you're doing!" He coughed again, so hard it sounded painful, then collapsed weakly into the floor.

There was a shout as one of the other cultists died, the one with flaming hands. The two men who had been fighting him turned their attentions to the last one, whom their two comrades had pinned down in a corner near the stage. The man was still throwing fireballs, despite the copious splatters of Rot that speckled the front of his robes; a red corona made the fear in his expression more prominent. "Porter!" the man cried. "Porter! Get us out of here!"

The man in the circle was still chanting, a desperate, rasping whisper against the Silence spell, even as Killian tied his hands. The spell hadn't stopped; Redden felt it in the aether. "Do you still have your satchel?" he asked Killian.

"Yes, sir," Killian said, pulling it from his belt and tossing it over.

Redden caught it out of the air, undid the drawstrings, and poured it out over the chanting man's head. He gagged, but kept chanting. The aether still moved.

"Get him out of the circle!" Redden said, reaching for him.

A hand tugged at his ankle, the mage who had spoken before. His voice sounded raw from coughing. "Stop! He needs our power to control her! He's the only thing keeping her in check!"

Redden kicked him in the face, rushing forward to help Killian drag the other man away from the bloody design in the floor. The man struggled against them like a cat in a sack, but still he kept chanting.

Kane rose to follow Gabriel as he strode for the door but was nearly bowled over as Logan did the same. The older Quincey leaped past, grabbing Gabriel's arm. "Where do you think you're going? We're not done here!"

Gabriel tried to shake him off, but Logan held fast. "I have to get to the guardhouse!" Gabriel said. "The commander receives word of unsolved cases all over the state! If I compare those missing persons files to these recent ones-"

"What? Right now?" Harvey said. "You can't seriously mean to head to the White Quarter in the middle of the night after all we've learned here? And with the full moon?"

"Harvey's right," Kane said. "Besides, we haven't finished looking at the white mage files. We might find-"

"I've read every one of the white mage files!" Gabriel snapped. "I know them by heart!"

"Yes, you always have been pro-mage," Logan said, his voice quiet and dangerous. "I'm only now starting to ask myself why that might be."

"Let me go!" Gabriel tore his arm free but didn't leave. "There are plenty of similarities between the missing white mages in the countryside and the recent disappearances if anyone knows what they're looking for. If there are more cases like these, the investigation team needs to know!"

"People go missing all the time, Gabriel!" Logan said. "Generally, when they've had too much to drink and they end up press-ganged on a ship bound for the Stone Coast!"

"Oh, yes?" Gabriel sneered. "And when was the last time you heard of a ship out of the Stone Coast docking here?"

"That's beside the point!" Logan yelled.

Gabriel yelled back, "That's exactly the point! Where else can these people be?"

There was a loud crack as Harvey slammed both hands on the table. The Quinceys turned to stare at him, but he seemed embarrassed rather than angry. "Goodness! That was loud," he said. He cleared his throat, then turned and faced the two brothers. "But it did catch your attention, which was the intent. Gabriel, you're not going anywhere." The sergeant began to argue, but Harvey raised a hand to silence him. "Not tonight at least. And not alone. We'll both go. Kane, you'll come too, yes? Wonderful. All three of us. But tomorrow, in broad daylight. Agreed?"

Gabriel, breathing hard from temper, glared at his friend, but then he nodded agreement and strode from the room.

"Wait!" Logan called, his voice still angry.

"Let him go," Harvey said.

"We've more to talk about!" Logan growled.

"Like what?" Harvey said. "This mysterious white mage you think he knows? Because I'll tell you this: if he does know one, it's news to me. Do you really think he'll tell you something he hasn't even shared with me yet? Let him go."

Logan stood, fists clenched at his sides. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Tomorrow," he said. "I'm going with you. But then he and I are having that talk, and I swear to Titan if you get in the way…" He didn't finish. He shook his head and walked out more calmly than his brother had.

Harvey went back to the chaise and flopped into it, rubbing his hands wearily over his face. "That went about as well as one would expect," he said.

"Better," said Kane. "I'd say you defused it just in time."

Harvey shrugged. "I've been defusing those two since we were children. I'm old hat at it by now."

Kane shook his head. "It was more than that. You took charge, and they listened to you. You may think you're unfit as a lord of Melmond, but that was a very lordly thing you did just now."

Harvey smiled, but his smile had lost its usual energy. "And what of you? I notice you did more than stand sentry for us while we did all the work! You may have cracked the case open with your theory about the mages - I could tell that Gabriel thinks so!" He bent over and began gathering up the papers he'd left scattered about the floor in front of his chair and putting them back in their respective files. "I should get all these back in the boxes. I wouldn't want Logan to get in trouble with Vince."

Kane began shifting the files on the table, gathering them up, separating the missing persons files from the full moon murders. "I notice Logan wasn't sold on my idea," he said.

There was no answer but the sound of shuffling papers, then Harvey calmly said, "Logan... probably doesn't know any mages."

"You think Gabriel does?"

"I don't know what Gabriel knows," Harvey said, shrugging. "If he's met a mage out in the city somewhere, it's his secret. But I know a lot of people. I did meet a mage once, a perfectly ordinary servant. He worked at the house for awhile. You're right - they look just like everyone else."

"Where is he now?" Kane asked. He boxed up the files from the table, but Harvey was still working on his so Kane knelt in the floor to help.

"Dead more than a year now," Harvey said. "Well before this mess with the Brotherhood started. A highway robbery, I understand. He was on his way to visit family. You needn't help with these. I've got them."

"It's no trouble," Kane said, only then realizing he hadn't looked at the missing persons files at all, preoccupied with the murder cases and the reports of the night plague. "Why did you have them all spread out like this? Do the piles mean anything?"

"Oh, just little similarities I noticed." Harvey pointed at a pair of files to his left and said, "These were the same age." He then indicated three files beside the pair. "These probably knew each other based on their social backgrounds. Things like that. I may not know a lot about lording, but I know about people."

Kane chuckled. "Lording isn't everything. What else jumped out at you?"

"Well, nothing to indicate any of them might have been a mage on the side, if that's what you're asking. Some are rich, some poor. Described as being broad, skinny, tall, short - a range of appearances! - and a slew of professions as well, from scholars to sailors!" He stopped, staring at the file in his hand as though he no longer saw it. "Sailors…" He set that file down gently, and very slowly reached for two others he'd set off to the side. He opened one and read the first page, then looked at Kane with a worried expression. "Kane, those sailor friends of yours you told me about… what did you say their names were?"

Finally, the aether slowed. The man Killian and Redden held between them still chanted, his words grumbling like footsteps on a gravel path as he forced them out around the silence spell, but Redden could feel the ritual ending. He breathed a sigh of relief.

The mage in the corner cried, "No!" as the aether stilled. "We have to do this! You'll bring her down on all of us!" He flung one last fireball at the four West Hills men who had him trapped, but he was distracted in his panic. The spell flew wide, and the men closed in. The mage cried, "Porter!" one last time before he was cut down.

The last mage, the one with Rot in his face, moaned at the edge of the circle, choking on blood as well as the muck. Redden suspected he'd broken the man's nose with that last kick. He raised his sword, but then lowered it again. Here was where his plan broke down. Arthur wanted at least one of the mages alive for questioning. The Rot did seem an effective method of control, but Redden didn't know how long the effects would last. Long enough for Arthur to satisfy his curiosity, I hope, Redden thought. Still, they had two mages left alive, and the one who had been ready to die in that circle for his beliefs - the one still ardently trying to continue his incantation - seemed an unlikely candidate for answering questions. This other one, though, seemed talkative enough.

"I need rope here," Redden called. One of the men, a soldier named Connor, brought some over. Redden knelt and began tying up the mage with the broken nose. He found himself wishing he'd brought Jack along for that sleep spell of his, even if it did mean everyone discovered the boy was a black mage. Consequences be damned.

"Would you shut up already?" Connor snapped at the still-chanting man. "You've lost!"

"Gag him if you have to," Redden ordered.

"You'll wish you hadn't," said the mage in front of him, spitting bloody phlegm onto the floor.

"And gag this one too," Redden added.

The soldier turned, searching the floor for something that might make a suitable gag. The others were spread out, with one searching the spacious auditorium for anything that might be important and the other three checking the bodies of the fallen mages.

As Redden finished tying up the man with the broken nose, he glanced at the soldier who had fallen to that lightning strike. Redden knew little about him except that he was called Grady and that he'd followed orders. Grady had been closer to the lightning mage at the time of the strike, taking the brunt of it; it was the only thing that had saved Redden. If that charge had hit him head on, he'd be the one lying there.

The chanting mage swung his head from side to side violently as Connor and Killian tried to force the gag into his mouth. He fell hard on his side, unable to catch himself with his hands tied behind his back, but still he flopped on the floor like a spoiled toddler.

"Give it up, Fisher!" the mage in front of Redden said. "We've lost! The spell's broken!"

Only then did the chanting stop. It stopped only for the chanter to exclaim, "No!" The word came out harsh and guttural from the Silence that still clung to him, but when he again cried, "No!" it was in a clear, fanatical voice.

The aether moved, not with the force it had during the ritual, but it flowed through and from Redden and his men into the mage called Fisher. His eyes flashed as the men cried out in pain. The ropes at his wrists crumbled to ash. He threw himself into the circle, at the dagger that lay forgotten just inside the bloody circumference. Redden struggled against the pain of the draw, struggled to get his sword ready to fight back.

The mage called Fisher thrust the knife into his own side. He folded over it, grunting, then wrenched his arm across. When he pulled his hand free, the dagger was still in it; the slice he'd made across his torso burst open like a tomato left too long on the vine.

Killian cried out, rushing to the mage, trying to drag him from the circle.

"Leave him!" Redden said. "It's fine! We've stopped it!"

"Yes," said the last mage, the one they called Porter. "You stopped it." He looked up at Redden from where he knelt in the floor. "You did this," he said, his voice wooden. "When she comes, you remember that it was your fault."

There was a flash like a bolt of lightning, a smell like a summer storm, and the mage was gone. The rope that had tied his hands was all that remained.

The soldiers panicked anew, exclaiming as they looked rapidly about the room.

"He's Teleported!" Redden barked. He knew a Teleport when he saw one. And yet, how? There'd been no corona, no incantations, no signs. Redden hadn't even felt the aether move. "Pair up and search the area!" he ordered. "Killian, with me. He can't have gone far."

The men nodded, hurrying to obey, the two pairs each taking different exits. Redden walked toward the stage, the way they came in. He looked back when he realized Killian wasn't with him. The young soldier was still at the edge of the circle, looking down at the fallen Grady. Young though he was, Killian was the leader of this little unit, or had been until Arthur had lent them to Redden. He cared about these men. "Killian, the search first," Redden said.

Killian nodded, coming away from the corpse, but at that moment something about the scene caught Redden's attention, the bloody circle made bloodier by the bodies nearby, the aetheric designs obscured by the glut of red. His mind called back to him an image of what they had found in the cave: bodies and pieces of bodies surrounding the old altar. Had that been a ritual circle as well?

"If we come across a messenger as we're searching, I'd like to send word to the guardhouse," Killian said, falling in beside him.

Redden nodded absently, preoccupied with other thoughts, wondering now what sort of ritual these Brotherhood mages had been attempting, a ritual one of them had been willing to die for. "You'll bring her down on all of us," one had said. Who, or what, was "her"? Something they were trying to hold back with their magic? Had they been trying to hold it in the cave?

Whatever it was, Redden thought, it's free now. And I think it's here in Melmond.

Author's Note: 2/2/18 - In my ongoing quest to name all my chapters after appropriate songs from Final Fantasy soundtracks, this one, "The Great Warrior," Seto's theme from FFVII, doesn't quite seem to fit the mood. It's a very laid back song for a chapter with murder investigations and magical fight scenes in it. However, I have a Final Fantasy playlist I listen to as I write. Each character has a theme, and "Cosmo Canyon" (from which "The Great Warrior" is derived) is Redden's. Redden and FFVII's RedXIII have a lot in common, setting aside for a moment that fact that one is rather fuzzier than the other. They're both unsure where they fit in the scheme of things, having big ideals they feel pressured to live up to, and both are wounded by mysterious events in their pasts. But I also see parallels in the father/son relationships between Seto and RedXIII vs. Redden and Kane. In the same way RedXIII is disappointed in what he sees as his father's cowardice (not at first knowing of Seto's sacrifice to save him), Kane struggles with his disappointment in Redden, seeing him only as the Cornelian court bard. Sure, he values his father's knowledge and wisdom, but he's not privy to the flashbacks I've shared with you readers, and therefore doesn't respect where that knowledge comes from. Redden IS a great warrior, even if Kane, and Redden himself, have trouble seeing that.